‘Despite racing against the rain on your way northwards, the storm finally caught up with you in earnest and with it the night has fallen, abyssal black and riven by lightning. Conditions on the rain-swept road force your speed down to a virtual crawl so that your head-lamps can pierce the gloom and keep you on the path. The only thing certain now is that the weather behind you and coming fast is worse than that which surrounds you, driving you onwards. What should have been an eventless journey has become something dangerous and unpredictable’
This adventure begins in media res sometime in October 1933 on a lonely stretch of road about half distance from Arkham to Ipswich. It is about ten thirty pm…
You are half involved in a conversation. William Kieffer nervously whistles an almost unrecognizable tune and half laughs at Maynard Heldstom's almost funny comment. The worsening weather conditions make you all nervous and eager to see the lights of the small gas station of Orchard Run a ways down the road, where you might find hot coffee and shelter from the storm that is coming fast. The heavy rain, now falling in an almost constant deluge, is flooding like a river down the car’s windshield so fast that the wipers are hard pressed to clear it. Maybe you should have stayed in Arkham until morning, but some pressing need had you heading north on the Ipswich road hoping to outrun the storm which had begun to overtake you a while back.
Inside the somewhat cramped Ford, the distressed whine of the wipers and heater makes any real attempt at conversation difficult, while the distant rumble of thunder that seems to draw nearer with every muted crash sets nerves jangling and hearts racing as with each boom an increasing volume of driving rain is hurled toward you from a relentless sky. Outside, the blackness of the storm is broken by flaring lightning forks, the gap between flashes and the crash, boom of thunder decreasing as the heart of the storm closes. It is not a good night to be on the road.
The Ford’s engine strains with effort as the combination of weight, weather conditions, and the sharp upward incline of a road that is fast becoming a river conspire to slow progress to a crawl. The stuttering rumble of its overworking engine, so close to stalling at at moment, is almost lost amidst the deeper rumble of the advancing thunderstorm. In each flash of lightning you can easily make out the dense forest that lines the edge of the road close enough to each side of the car to allow a passenger to reach out and break off a wind whipped branch.
Suddenly!! an explosion of forked lightning, so close that it makes each of you jump with its intensity and violence…
OOC: You are in Sean O’Rielly’s 1927 Model ‘A’ Ford, so we begin with him making a Regular Drive Auto Roll. While everyone else makes a Regular Luck Roll. |