For the game REDNECKS FIGHTIN’ CTHULHU. I hacked into Kobolds Ate My Baby! to make my version (and I highly recommend that game), but there’s a bunch of games that hinge off of insanity, vulnerability, and a willingness to combat eldritch evils, so make your own REDNECKS FIGHTIN’ CTHULHU from scraps and spare parts.
PART ONE: CHICKEN’S TRUCK
The adventure begins when a pickup truck is found bent around a tree deep in the ‘Glades, near the collective homes of the party. With proper investigations, the following information and clues can be gathered:
The pickup was moving steadily and quickly in a straight line before suddenly veering and crumpling into a tree.
The windshield is shattered and the hood is crumpled beyond repair. The passenger's side door appears to be ripped open, the window shattered. On the windshield, an eldritch sigil of Lun-Sol’Clypse is painted in human blood.
Some inhuman yet bipedal creature with three toes was running at speed with the truck before leaping forward towards the passenger’s side door at about the same time the truck started swerving into the tree.
The upholstery inside the truck is absolutely decimated, shredded, and coated with human blood. However, it doesn’t seem like the truck’s driver was killed. It seems more like there was a struggle, and the alien invader stole off with the driver after the truck crashed.
The truck belonged to Billy “Chicken” Henson, an old friend of the party. His mangled and blood-soaked wallet in the driver’s seat verifies that it was him who was driving the truck and subsequently abducted.
The tire tracks are easily visible and followable through the muck, as are the tridactyl footprints. They both lead to the Altar of the Moon...
WHAT HAPPENED, IN FULL: Billy was investigating the Altar of the Moon when one of the few mature Tall Things in the fungal colonies took notice. It gave chase as Billy raced away in the truck. After about a mile, the creature caught up and leaped for the truck. Billy tried to swerve out of its way, but ended up crashing as the creature entered the passenger’s seat. It quickly knocked him unconscious before using his blood to paint the sigil on the windshield and take his limp body back to the Altar.
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
1 d6 Gators.
2 A sigil of Lun-Sol’Clypse carved into a tree.
3 A Tall Thing. 50% chance it will attack, 40% chance it will run away, and 10% chance it will stand and stare...
4 A half-drunk can of Red Bull. Yummy.
PART 2: THE ALTAR OF THE MOON
The Altar lies in a deep pit infested by bioluminescent fungi. It is practically no more than a small pile of stones surrounding a mound of brilliant multi-hued crystal, every surface scored with ancient runes and murals.
Four obelisks carved from algae-coated rock surround the pit at equidistant intervals. These obelisks power an eldritch force field. Shutting down or destroying at least 3 of the obelisks will allow safe entry to the pit, destroying 2 will allow unsafe entry. Outside of the pit lurks the fungally-reanimated Billy Henson and his 3 Gator thralls, who will fight to the death to keep anything out of the pit.
The steep walls of the pit are coated in gently glowing hypnotic fungi. If touched, they release spores that threaten to hypnotize those who inhale into defending the pit from intrusion. Lurking in the fungi, feeding from it as a fetus feeds from its mother, are small, infantile Tall Things. They look like impossibly ancient newborns, eyes of crystal and hair of silver light and emaciated limbs with asymmetrical digits and joints. If disturbed, they will open one tennis-ball sized eye at a time and begin to scream.
There is a 10% chance that any Tall Thing stumbled into is instead a fully mature version. Fungal gills and vestigial ribs and columns of smoke and bone. If the PCs make it into the stone-and-crystal Altar, the Tall Things will not enter with them. Is it out of fear, reverence, respect, loathing, love?
The inside of the Altar is coated in glyphs and murals. In the greatest display, an antediluvian priest lifts her hands to the clouds, in which rests a great orb, an eye with the glyph of Lun-Sol’Clypse as a pupil. The walls are coated with letters and symbols that look familiar, but “off” in a strange way. (In fact, the writing on the walls is Simlish.)
There is a massive, multifaceted, polychromatic crystal structure in the center of the room. Touching it or staying within an inch of it or 30 seconds activates it. A massive wave of energy blasts out, and anything that was in the Altar is teleported to the broken hull of the Hesperatum. The crystal then loses its magic for another 666 years...
PART C: KILL THE MOON
The party should hopefully have teleported from the Altar of the Moon to the deck of the Hesperatum. If not, figure out some other way to get them on a broken-down spaceship orbiting the moon. Not out of the question to have one of the characters have a relative down at NASA.
The Hesperatum is a massive ship, initially designed as a troop transport for a race of turtle aliens called the Tortargons. It was subsequently hijacked and stolen by a group of earthlings, who began taking it for joyrides across the universe. But as they went about, meeting the various peoples of the galactic spiral, when they mentioned they were from Earth, whispers and fear rose around them. The earthlings went to research why this was the case, and found out about the legend of Lun-Sol’Clypse.
Lun-Sol’Clypse was impossibly ancient before the Earth had become cool from its coagulation. It was a nightmare, consumer of worlds and shatterer of minds, a calculating beast loosed onto the cosmos. The forces that be, the ambient nature of reality and the laws of physics themselves, shuddered to comprehend what this entity would do, so they warped themselves so that Lun-Sol’Clypse would be forced into dormancy around a backwater barbarian planet, trapped in endless sleep.
The crew of the Hesperatum realized that this planet was Earth, and that they were one of the few humans to ever know of the threat Lun-Sol’Clypse posed to the universe. They flew their ship back as quick as they could, but it was too late. Lun-Sol’Clypse had begun the throes of its awakening, and a mind-pulse wrecked the ship, sent the ruined and desiccated hull orbiting the lunar surface.
As the PCs teleport up to the Hesperatum, they are met by Axel, one of the last surviving crewmembers of the Hesperatum. They may be able to answer the character’s questions, or may not. They may be sane and sensible, or secretly infected by the madness of Lun-Sol’Clypse. As is right for your game.
From this point, the scenario is left open-ended. How do the players stop Lun-Sol’Clypse from reawakening? What functions remain on the Hesperatum? Can the world even be saved, or is the fate of the planet to weep in gibbering laughter as the moon splits open again and our minds consumed by the psychic entity within?
KILL THE MOON
QUESTIONS
Can Chicken be saved?
What are the Tall Things?
What of the AI on the Hesperatum?
Is Lun-Sol’Clypse dead or asleep?
What of the tides, and the gravitational pull? What happens?
Was Lun-Sol’Clypse standing in the way of something even worse happening?
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