Portland, Maine
August, 1928.
Steven Gilbert is a wealthy businessman, a leading exponent of the bourgeoisie of the roaring twenties. He sees his heritage project going up in smoke, when Timothy, his only six-year-old son, disappears.
A group of investigators will try to find his missing son. The group may include:
1) Police detectives
2) Private detective hired by Gilbert
3) Relatives or friends strongly motivated to find the missing kid
But Timothy´s disappearance is not the only gloomy burden weighing on the Gilbert family. Alyssa, Timothy's mother, committed suicide one year ago, and the reason for such an extreme action is still obscure.
Ivy winces as Michael blunders about (though truth be told she's not exactly graceful herself).
With their position given away, she decides that hiding isn't worth the effort and instead positions herself by the doorway, nightstick raised, ready to strike whoever comes in.
The noises of footsteps ended when the walker got downstairs in the room to the west.
The house soon returns to silence. When the group waits, they hear no other activity.
The nauseating smell invades the nostrils and calls a gesture of protection. Kathryn listens, but the silence seems to dominate the room. After a while, she hears an echo of something dripping, but very far away, as if it were at the bottom of a well.
"All I hear is a distant dripping sound,"Kathryn whispers to the others. She ties her handkerchief around her head to protect her mouth and nose from the horrible stench. "I guess we're going to have to open the door. Everyone ready?"
The room is wide but dark. All windows were closed with wooden planks. There´s no floor in this room. The room walls are continuous with those of a large well that descends down into the earth.
Every little sound produces an echo, suggesting that the well must be somewhat deep. The air is filled by a revolting and terrifying smell of decomposing biological metter, which comes from the bottom of the well. The source could be a mixture of different kind of excrements, along with whatever other nauseating liquids might be secreted from biological organisms.
At the East corner of the hall is a flight of stairs leading to the upper floor.
As the group steps beyond the door, everybody hears something moving fast from the depths of the pit. A few seconds and the thing massively rises from below.
It appears as a horrible and unthinkable creature, a mighty sack of protoplasm, roughly 15 feet in diameter. A plastic column of fetid, black iridescence, oozing tightly onward. A shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming, as pustules of greenish light. The mass has also dozens of tangled limbs, each one plated with a goo seeping from hundreds small black pores. The thing is able to forlimbs, eyes and other appendages at will. It imitates multiple life forms at the same time, awhile performing great feats of strength with their chaotic moving. It is an absolutely unclassifiable life form, being unthinkable as producible from evolutionary history. It looks like a large colony of organisms endowed with unlimited morphology power, so that different parts of the colony can generate new organs in an instant, in absolute indifference to any biological law formulated by man. There seems to be no limit to the morphological variety that its protuberances may generate. In addition to mouths, eyes and tentacles, the shapeless mass is generating gills, pulsating blood vessels, renal sacs, and digestive organs that digest themselves, emitting a nauseating odor.
The thing approaches the edge of the pit and crawls towards the unwanted invaders.
Sanity rolls,Emma [dice]0[/dice]
Kathryn [dice]1[/dice]
Ivy [dice]2[/dice]
Michael [dice]3[/dice]
Emma and Michael are horrified and scream with terror. Emma faints, while Michael stays petrified observing details of the absurd being, as his minds desperately tries to find a sense and explanation. After staring for some seconds at the thing, he has a reaction of terror and disparation. He collapses on the ground and covers his face with the hands, while weeping and trembling.
Michael,Michael has lost 14 SAN and the roll on INT has succeeded. He understood the horror as part of thids world. He understood that the thing existis the way it is and is absolutely REAL. More than that, it represents biological life, as something potentially chaotic horrible and senseless. From now on, he will have to deal with this terrible and horrible truth. Michael disparation lasts for three rounds. As soon as 3 rounds are passed, Michael will have again control of his rationality. There will be some mental consequences. I will let you know.
The group runs out of the room and quickly closes the door behind them. The thing does not follow them. It must have returned to its hole, because, having closed the door, the investigators find themselves in a silent hallway. They are still shocked. Even the neutrality of the furniture around seems difficult to accept as normal and there´s something disturbing about it. Emma regains counsciousness . She looks around in amazement. Her fear is mainly because of the faces she reads on her fellows. She does not remember ever having entered that room, but an exchange of glances with the others is enough to generate discouragement in her about that place.
Michael calms down and breathes deeply, even though a deep restlessness tinges his cold and pale face, like an impressionist painting.
Michael,Michael now has control over his rational faculties. However, he developed a phobia. From now on he will feel disgust, repulsion and fear for any animal form without clearly defined limbs, for example worms, snakes, larvae, jellyfish etc. Those things only degenerates into biological chaos and should not exist at all
