A story from my Werewolf: The Apocalypse game
Haven't posted in a while, mostly because I've been busy with far too many things. I realized this morning that I made a great post in a community a couple of months ago which some of you might be interested in, and so I post it here. Somebody had been asking about "true horror" in Werewolf: The Apocalypse games, and so I told this story about what I consider among the most horrific scenes I had ever crafed in my game. Read more about it...
The tricky thing is that Garou are by their very nature so formidable, it's tough to really scare them. They can wade through most of the worst stuff that you can throw at them like they might wade through a two-inch mud puddle.
I find the trick is to really, really hammer down the conceptual horror of the wyrm; the defilement and corruption of the human soul and the world around you is the thing that will do it. I've crafted a few genuinely horrific scenes in my day. My very favourite:
The characters - not yet through their rite of passage - are brought alongside a more experienced pack to check out a report of some strange goings-on. Basically, it's this old abandoned nuclear weapons plant (specifically, the Rocky Flats plant, near Denver, Colorado, which I have made somewhat more ominous in my game), where there are signs that something really intensely wyrmy is happening in the umbra, and there are - for the first time in 13 years - contract workers and armed guards working there at all hours of the day and night.
I actually did some prep work for this scene; I got a CD of thunderstorm noises - about an hour long - and slipped it into my DVD player before the game. The DVD player has surround-sound speakers all around the living room, where the game is played. I left the DVD player on, and secretly placed the remote control for it by my chair. As the player characters set off for the plant, I hit play on the DVD player, so that they were surrounded by thunderstorm sounds for the next scene. It helped set the mood nicely.
When they got there, things... were not as they expected. Most of the lights were out. There was a truck with its engine still running, headlights on, and its driver-side door hanging open. No sign of movement. The rain began to pick up.
As the player characters (and their accompanying pack) went in, stealthy-like, to investigate, the senior ragabash reported that he'd found a building with some people in it... all dead. They went to investigate.
Upon getting there, they found a lot of the workers and guards hung up by chains from the ceiling. Many were eviscerated. Some had more difficult-to-define injuries. All had obviously died in agony. Basically, these were unwitting Pentex employees who had been made prey to the fomori living and breeding down under the plant; they honestly didn't know what was going on here and were completely unprepared for the monsters which came boiling up out of the ground. Most of them were ritually slaughtered. But a few were dragged back down underground. And one... one was left alive.
This guy was just some twenty-something truck driver; not even a Pentex employee. He worked for his uncle part-time, and had been sent to the plant to drop off some hardware. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Completely innocent. He had taken some bad wounds to his abdomen and was dying in agony. Not only had he lost a lot of blood, it was festering with poisons. When he came to, he begged the characters to take him to a hospital. Tears streaming from his one remaining eye, he begged them, please, PLEASE help me. The senior pack - a bunch of battle-hardened Get of Fenris pointed out he'd seen too much. Fomori, monsters, and now this. There was no way he could be allowed to live and carry this news away. The alpha ordered the player characters to kill him. Do it fast, don't make him suffer. Just end it. He's beyond help anyways.
As this driver held out his car keys to one of the player characters, screaming that he would GIVE him his truck if he would just please take him to a hospital. It was then, from behind, that another of the players chomped down on his neck, ripping out his throat. The driver died gurgling, still looking into the eyes of one of the teenaged boys.
Next, they went down into the hole the fomori came from. The senior pack told the boys to check out one passage while they checked out another. If there was any trouble, scream for help and come running back this way. No shame in it. That's an order.
As they travelled down a couple of passages, they see evidence of a riot which broke out those 13 years ago; old blood stains, bullet holes in the walls. Finally, they come to a torn-open vault door containing nuclear warheads which had been TORN open and had their nuclear fueel ripped out - seemingly be clawed hands. They continued on a ways.
They found an elevator shaft which led downwards. Below, they could hear faint noises. A bit of a glow. Steam rising up, carrying strange smells. They decided to invesigate. The shaft went down two floors, and then, below that, there was a continuation; the shaft had been dug-out by the same clawed hands which ripped open those warheads. The light and sound were coming from down there.
Below, they found what looked like a natural cavern, with a small stream running through it. Strange runes were cwrved into the walls, and hand-carved, crude shafts led in various directions; above and below. It was one of the "below" ones which the sound and light and steam were coming from. It was much clearer now; the sounds were grunts and screams and something which sounded like some crude percussion instrument. Some of the boys wanted to go back and report this. Two of the others wanted to continue on. Those two won out.
Down further they crept, until the passage opened into a much wider chamber. They hid in the shadows of the entrance, as they watched a scene of almost indescribable horror. A group of humans - presumably the people abducted from above - had been herded into a little island in the middle of the chamber. All the rest was ankle-deep water, faintly steaming. In that water stood - and danced - several dozen fomori. Horribly twisted into a dozen or more different shapes, those who still had hands were holding in those hands the nuclear material rods from above; now glowing red-hot and plainly searing the flesh of their holders with heat and radiation. They danced around their captives in some crude, horrible rite, beating their rods against one another and the ground in some kind of drumbeat-like manner. The captives, horrified, were occasionally assailed by their captors; little bites, little scratches, little jabs with those red-hot radioactive metal rods.
As the players watched, in horror, one of the people in the middle island began to scream. And scream. And scream. And then claw at her face, and then bleed. And then begin to change. Her face distorted and tore. Her blood flowed freely as her fingers distorted into claws. She warped and swelled and hunched over. And the fomori cheered. They had found a new home for one of the spirits of panic which inhabited so many of them.
Suddenly, one of them took notice of the boys at the entrance. He gave a great cry and pointed at them with his metal rod. All eyes turned towards them, and suddenly, the chase was on.
The boys ran. Ran uphill through the darkness, through unfamilliar caves. As they reached the cavern above which led to the elevator shaft they needed to get free, they saw, faintly, in the darkness. a floating form hoving into view:
http://dave-littler.livejournal.com/45377.html
It unceremoniously vomited down a stream of acid upon the boys. One of them caught the full brunt of it on his legs; swiftly dissolving them altogether. Everything below his waist was turned into a bloody, pulpy mass. He couldn't run, and the vast horde of fomori were catching up. One of them - using mind control powers - forced that boy to crawl, on his hands - towards them. The other boys couldn't save him. They were forced to abandon their friend and classmate to his fate as they ran for their lives.
And run they did. They ran until they reached the surface. There, the sound of the pouring rain could once more be heard. But even over that was the sound of gunfire. The senior pack was in combat with a Pentex First Team, who had arrived on-site to investigate the sudden silence of the on-site security. The senior pack alpha, riddled with bullets, told the boys to clear out, now - just GO these fuckers are beyond you - and ran back into the fray.
And so they did run. Into the night, into the rain, into the darkness, with the sounds of gunfire and screaming fading behind them, along with that last horrible sight of their fallen friend crawling into his own certain doom.
So.
I think I got to the point of true horror there.
Incidentally, if anyone in the greater Vancouver area is interested in joining up with this game, we're getting a little slim on players at the moment with Adam Paysen moving to Saskatchewan and my dear friend Colin moving to Italy. We play on Saturday afternoons near Edmonds station...