Play@YSDC

Shaken out of her paralysis, Ivy screams, long and loud.

“My God! My God!”

Fuelled by the sheer, simple adrenaline joy of being able to move, she launches herself forward and envelopes Alex in a hug.

“Thank you! Oh My God! I couldn’t move! That thing!”

Recovering her wits, she disentangles herself, smoothing down the remnayof her dress.

“We should get out of here. Poor Jerry - we should take his gun.”

William lead the way to the Winscott house but as he approached, he could feel a nervous tremor in his legs and a cold sweat broke out across his back. The thought of going back into the caves filled him with dread and his purposeful stride faltered.

The front door of the house was open. Had he left it like that? Was that a noise he heard in there? Was it a trap?!

The neighbour looked at him carefully. ”Perhaps we should wait until the police get here?” he suggested.

You’ll require a successful POW roll for William to overcome his fears and venture back inside the house.

Alex found himself gripped by a screaming, hysterical Ivy, her nails digging into his arms! She was babbling about being unable to move, staring about wild-eyed, then she grabbed Jerry’s gun and started making for the exit, pulling at her clothes with jerky movement and babbling away but not making a lot of sense!

Given Ivy’s insanity, I think there’s a disconnect between what she thinks she’s doing and saying and how that’s perceived by someone else (Alex, in this case).

Ivy’s knuckles whiten as her grip on the gun tightens. She shakes her head vehemently and gibbering incoherently, staggers towards the exit.

"Yes, we'll wait here for the police," says William. He gathers his equipment and shines his light through the open door.

Tuesday, September 2nd, 1930 6.10am
79 Power Street, College Hill, Providence, R.I.

Alex had endured a difficult journey back through the caves with Ivy who babbled gibberish, shouted and jumped at shadows. At one point she suddenly screamed out loud, spun around and fired her gun at some imagined threat behind them, narrowly missing Alex in the process. He had to physically lift her up to the ledge when she refused to try to climb with the rope, and another thirty minutes had passed before they were back in the cellar under the Winscott house. As Alex helped Ivy up the stairs and through the kitchen, he found William talking excitedly and being carefully disarmed by two patrolmen, while two ambulance men and some of the neighbours looked on.

The patrolmen had been listening to William with visible disbelief but when the bedraggled but thankfully lucid Alex showed his badge, explained the situation and told them the fate of their comrades, they sprang into action. Reinforcements were summoned and, as William and Ivy were helped into the waiting ambulance, Alex found himself leading a group of heavily armed policemen back down into the caves beneath the house.

Any living creatures had disappeared, leaving behind the dead bodies of Jerry, the patrolmen and the ungodly creatures that they had killed. As they moved deeper into the caves, there was a sudden ‘crack’ followed by a rumbling noise and a gout of dust and debris spat out from some of the tunnels at the far end of the central cavern, at which point the Sergeant leading the search refused to go any further for fear of putting his men in danger.

The bodies of Jerry and the patrolmen were carried out to a waiting mortuary wagon and the bodies of any creatures were covered in kerosene and set alight, setting up a thick, choking smoke that forced them all to retreat to the house. As sun started to come up over the neighbouring houses and Captain Lawrence of Providence PD arrived to take over the investigation, Alex could only wonder at what he had seen and how he had managed to make it out alive… …

—- —- —- —-

That was The Darkness Beneath the Hill from Doors to Darkness. I hope you enjoyed it. The investigation didn’t exactly go to plan - Jerry’s firebomb destroying the lab was somewhat unexpected, and those ghasts were lethal (as Jerry found out!)

We have three investigators who are currently insane (Ivy, Lawrence and William) so they are all going to need a period of downtime to recover. I was thinking our next investigation might be in a sanitarium where they are recovering but that might be too similar to All Unquiet on the Western Front. Alternatively, I’m happy to explore something else instead, after everyone’s had a chance to recover. If you have a preference, just let me know.

SAN rewards:

Leaving Josh Winscott to his fate 1d6+1 (SAN loss)
For escaping and defeating S’syaa-H’risss 1d6 (SAN gain)
For defeating the ghasts 1d8 (SAN gain)

Overall, a loss of two points of SAN. Failure to get Winscott home must way heavily upon our investigators.

I thought you might also like to see the maps:




I had copies of the maps on Roll20 so I could follow where you were.

Having carefully tried to plot your route through the caverns, Mr Handy, it struck me as too good a chance to miss when William went insane and I had him run headlong through the cavern. Just too good an opportunity to miss

I must protest that san loss, Alex did not even know Winscott! Jk, That's how the game goes. Alex will be taking some time to try and recover mentally--and physically-- whether or not that does anything mechanically.

I quite enjoyed the scenario and how Alex kept his cool throughout it. He has a good head on his shoulders. And it was fun being a bit of the pulp hero. We won't talk about being run over by the apes. I do sort of regret making him gay, because IMO he and Ivy have such great chemistry. I suppose there relationship is more of a sibling one. If Ivy ever dies I'll probably opt to have Alex take full san damage because that would be the ultimate failing for him.

No major preference for what we do next. The sanitarium could be great. There's also that weird cult William met down south that could be interesting to follow up on.

But great work as always Philulhu, and thanks for all the hard work in running this. Do we roll for our skills now?

Hi all,

Pleased to hear you enjoyed it, and yes, please roll for skills (Bullfrog - did you roll for Lawrence’s skills last time?)

I’m in two minds which way to go next. Both would be home-brewed so I’ve got some writing to do. Give me a couple of days…

Thanks, Phil.

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