Horror – Sids Story
I wanted to write a quick horror scenario which would fit in with pretty much any game and I figured that it couldn't just be a magical teleporting serial killer, like Jason, Freddy or Leatherface.
Inspiration for this one is "Sids Story" from the Captain Britain trade paperback.
http://www.rambles.net/capbrit_88.html
http://marvel.wikia.com/Captain_Britain_Vol_2_4
Summary: A local homeless man is infected with an alien spore. It slowly transforms him into a monster but gives him unnatural urges, bouts of superhuman strength but when they recede, he's just plain ol' Sid. He's driven mad by the spore and even sees himself only as a witness to the killings - so he becomes the primary contact for information. Eventually the horror cannot be hidden beneath his rags and cap and his urges drive him underground.
Sid doesn't get any magical abilities. He's just strong, streetwise, ashamed of his 'condition' and going quite mad - in utter denial of the situation.
Sequence of Events:
- Establish Sid the Homeless Bum as a local contact.
- A powerful shapeshifting beast is defeated by the heroes. You have to make it characteristic - like the creature eats a certain organ or attacks a certain way - perhaps it leaves needles from its back littered around, each covered by a nasty toxin. Perhaps in the purple bulbous nature of its malleable flesh. Whatever it is - make it a HARD battle - but an obvious, showy, non-secret one.
The creatures eggs were taken and eaten by some homeless people. Most died, Sid got sick - slowly. - Bodies show up and it's assumed they died of exposure. No surprise as it's cold out. Sid contacts them saying there's a killer out there.
- Bodies show up, gnawed.
- Body shows up, rent from ear to spleen. Sid blames the killer. The PCs find the needles.
- Let it die down. For a few sessions.
- Bring it back. Sid is changing slowly, in constant pain and still in denial. He needs food constantly so the people attacked are other homeless, the workers in the soup kitchens etc and eventually some rich kid doing community service. Sid contacts them again, both putting them off the trail and telling them more about the creature.
- Fight.
Star of the Commonwealth
Great Britain was, at the time, in the throes of a terrible war, a world war, which assailed them from without as well as within. While bombs rained upon London and young men lost their lives overseas in the pursuit of freedom, a frontier was breached. On a private estate in the English countryside, a connection was made, perhaps even re-opened, by a small party.
The incursion took place on the 9th February 1946. A battalion of rag-tag troops, hastily constructed from a score of regiments established a beachhead and within three hours (by our reckoning) had successfully conquered the land beyond.
During the next four weeks, rationing was abolished and the United Kingdom ushered in a new wealth and independence which changed the face of the world. The curious artifact of the new conquered land which permitted this was the difference in time flow. Years could pass in the conquered land and only hours would pass on Earth. The Government wasted no time in relocating farmers and their families and inviting captains of industry to build great factories. The country focussed their efforts on manufacture and export and quickly rebuilt the failing British Empire.
And of the conquered land?
HRH Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Narnia, sported a fetching maned cloak that following Winter
Two Worlds: A State of Frenzy
"We're doomed I tell you. That planet is hurtling through space towards the Earth and we haven't the power to stop it."
Doctor Henry Warwick of the Royal Observatory could hardly have known that as he spoke, a rocketship sped through the ether towards the rogue planet on a mission to save the planet.
Doctor Alexei Zharkhov, a Russian emigré, had stolen the experimental rocket ship from NACA with his compatriots Flash and Dale and embarked on a mission to deliver a terrible weapon to the heart of the planet and save the Earth.
That was seventy years ago.
Two Worlds
What if Prospero didn't just loop through time and space but also dimensions?
What if it revealed to the modern world the battleground of an unknown war, the genocides of a victorious hero, the possible fates of our world if he, and his two companions had failed in their attempt to stave off the destruction of the Earth.
We'll start this story unexpectedly more than seventy years too late.
More to come soon.
Fiction: Why the UK avoids the space race
The UK's decision to shun human spaceflight was a mistake that needs to be changed, says Europe's International Space Station programme chief ... Alan Thirkettle, a Brit who left the country to head European Space Agency (Esa) projects.
...
"The UK has a long and noble tradition for exploration across our planet. It is time for a new vision and a more distant voyage."
Today, the United Kingdom contributes less than 9% of the ESA budget with the majority coming from France, Germany and Italy. Why did things get to such a state? The truth, of course, is amazing.
It's 1988. And you're part of the Prospero Group
"Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,"
During the 1970s, the space race between the US and the Soviet Union cooled with the race to the moon being allegedly won by the US in their Apollo series. The ESA was quickly able to establish itself as a forerunner in space exploration and quickly became the leader in commercial space flights and payload delivery. Their delivery vehicle, the Ariane series, was proving successful despite negative PR following some flight failures.
The bulk of their rocket science was of course derived from post-war military science and focussed on the delivery of satellites. Prospero X-3 was the only British satellite to be launched by a British rocket and was launched with only a single experiment on board, an apparatus designed to test solar cells. After only two years component failure on Prospero resulted in the programme being labelled an abject failure. But the solar cell experiment was not the only equipment on board. Prospero can still be heard transmitting unknown coordinates and has a orbital lifetime of almost 100 years.
In The Tempest, Prospero was a deposed king who became a sorcerer, a godlike figure. The Prospero which orbits above us certainly has some such qualities.
Prospero can be described as many things. A vehicle. A weapon. A resource.
Prospero can transport objects from one place to another without them crossing the intervening space. Or time.
Prospero represents one of a few spatial and temporal man-made anomalies. On board was a smaller, more compact version of the devices which caused the Philadelphia Experiment and also used in the Montauk Project at Camp Hero. It was felt by the Prospero Group, part of the British National Space Agency, that building the device into something as cumbersome as a destroyer was pointless and keeping it on the ground was tantamount to useless as well as insanely dangerous. As a result, Prospero was launched into space.
Prospero can send people and objects to anything it can see. This includes places it can see in its past. So if you need to be in a certain place at a certain time, it will attempt to send you as close as possible before that time. This can also mean having objects sent into obscure places as they may need to lie undiscovered for days or weeks before being retrieved.
Coterminous places
- Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Philadelphia Pennsylvania,
- July 22nd, 1943
- October 28th, 1943
- Montauk Point, Long Island, 1981-1983
- Prospero Orbit, October 1971 - June 2064
Still needs filled out:
1. Where does Prospero orbit and what can it see?
2. We've got a very limited but very relevant time travel mechanism
3. Other co-terminous places may exist....
One for the millennialists…
Mike Cane 2008 reports that NASA got it wrong and an asteroid that they reported to have a 1 in 45000 chance of hitting Earth actually has a 1 in 450 chance of hitting Earth. It took a 13 year old German schoolboy to validate the figures after NASA experts forgot to take into account the cloud of satellites which could cause the asteroid, called Apophis, to veer into Earth.
The date this is meant to happen is 2029. Now...here's the math. In school, we had a class called Religious Education and one of the nuns who taught, Sister Mary-Jo, was one of the most progressive 'persons of Religion' I have ever met. She explained that the Bible was literal and also interpreted. That it was a historical document but not perhaps in the way it should be interpreted.
She believed that Jesus was real and God was real, that Jesus was born in some time around 3-6 BC and that he died on a cross, aged 33 and ascended to heaven.
If Apophis does hit Earth and cause the "End of Days", in 2029, then it proves one thing. Chris De Burgh may have been right.
I don't know what's more upsetting. That the world might end or that the Lord chose Chris de Burgh to be his prophet?
Of course, as a result I'll have to tie this into my Prospero mini-setting...
[This is a hoax BTW. See NASA statement. But of course, to avoid world panic, they would say that...]