adventure – Page 7

The Blood Fiend of Toledo [The Day After Ragnarok]

Toledo, Ohio is a haunted ruin. Just ask anybody. There was a plague, and then there was a huge fire, and then the usual Things moved in – and now the city’s abandoned. Except for the Things. Thankfully the Things keep to themselves, whatever they are, but smart people don’t go into the ruins. Especially once the drained corpses of various animals and lesser monsters started showing up on the outskirts of the city. The legend of the Blood Fiend of Toledo is already making the rounds of all the dives and pirate havens on the Great Lakes, and the tales get steadily taller. Continue reading The Blood Fiend of Toledo [The Day After Ragnarok]

Adventure Seed: The Monster Gallery.

The Monster Gallery – Google Docs

The Monster Gallery

This… facility? Collection? Installation? …is set in a quiet town in a reasonably peaceful region of the world where nothing much ever happens and there are quite a lot people dedicated to making sure that nothing much will ever happen, either. The design and presentation of the outer facade has had more money spent on it than the Manhattan Project, albeit not adjusted for inflation: every angle and every facet is designed to make the average human being see what he most subconsciously expects to see. This can actually be done, particularly if you have access to the classified psychological and neurological research studies: it’s just extremely expensive.

Assuming one notices the place, realizes that the business occupying the building is a front for more clandestine activities, then makes it past the security station and down the stairs into the basement: what will he find, there? Basically, a collection of artist’s workstations. Each station consists of a painting on canvas of a different monstrous figure, plus a clutter of magical and mundane artist’s supplies and tools. No less than three and no more than five artists are in the room at any given time, and the ones working there at any given time give off the impression that they are trying to finish an almost impossibly difficult job in as little a time as possible before they make an inevitable mistake. Continue reading Adventure Seed: The Monster Gallery.

Adventure Seed: Wild Salamander Chase.

Blame this. Kinda.

Wild Salamander Chase – Google Docs

Wild Salamander Chase

The most powerful mages in the animal kingdom are the ones that thrive in two environments. When you say that, most people think ‘birds:’ and it’s true, many birds are powerful magi. But consider the humble turtle. It is [amphibious], so it lives in the water and the land; in fact, the turtle’s shell gives it a special symbolic connection with Earth. The turtle merges Earth and Water; the albatross, Earth and Air. The flying fish is likewise the guardian of the interface of Air and Water.

But what of Fire? What are the animals that speak for THAT element?

…And there is the adventuring party’s assignment, in a nutshell: work out what animals partake of the elements of Fire and each of the other three Elements, confirm that those species have natural mages, and report back to the suitably cryptic Wise One that gave out this assignment in the first place. Or come back and admit failure. There’s no shame in not being able to handle such a difficult task, after all.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Wild Salamander Chase.

Adventure Seed: Ideonic Engineering.

Ideonic Engineering – Google Docs

Ideonic Engineering

Some people think that this is a skill; others think that it’s a celebrity-fueled scam. The truth is a lot scarier: it’s a linguistic disease that fortunately currently only affects a small percentage of the population. And some of those people are asymptomatic carriers.

The public perception of Ideonic Engineering (IE for short) is that it is purportedly a system for ‘unfolding the Primal Success Self-Actualization Impulse by reconquering the First Speech.” Most people will, of course, look at that description and decide that it’s not exactly gibberish, but that it doesn’t really make any sense, either. But a few people will find meaning in it – and those are the ones at risk of getting infected with IE. One dose is usually not enough to get infected, but even a correspondence course in the ‘discipline’ will give enough exposure to ensure eventual infection.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Ideonic Engineering.

Adventure Seed: Deicide Duty.

Deicide Duty

It’s October, which means that it’s that time of year in the Shadow Government calendar when teams of agents need to go out and indiscriminately slaughter nascent, unsanctioned, and superfluous seasonal holiday spirits. And nobody gets to get out of it this year, either. Yea, indeed: the Secret Masters themselves are all on the roster. So no excuses.

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Deicide Duty.

Adventure seed: The Grammar School Wars.

This kind of started off being based on an Onion article, but it all went occult pretty darn quickly.

The Grammar School Wars

Not ‘grammar school’ in the “child’s/teenager’s education” sense: these are the Grammar Schools. These are the schools that teach adepts the operating language of the universe. Or least one variant of one operating language of the universe. It turns out that if you use a ‘dialect’ that strays too far from a particular meta-language (and you want it to stray, because changing the dialect gives you arcane power), you sort of… disconnect from this reality and end up somewhere that’s more congenial to your worldview. And before you ask, adepts know this because the occasional entity pops into our dimension using this method. It happens barely often enough to give researchers some idea of the process involved. Continue reading Adventure seed: The Grammar School Wars.

Adventure Seed: Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN.

Blame this.

Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN

What they’re doing in the airports is a facade. A sham. A ruse, to keep our attention occupied. The TSA’s real focus is much, much more esoteric. After all, who would think to look there for a secret coven of herbalists and natural alchemists?

Don’t think that such things exist in the modern world? OK. But consider the following herbal ingredients:

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN.

Adventure seed: the Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Blame this.

Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Well… strictly speaking, the people behind H.E.R.D. didn’t deliberately genetically-engineer a bunch of sheep into something that could serve as a distributed computer network. What they simply tried to do was genetically-engineer the sheep so that they would produce natural fiber optic cables. The logic seemed sound enough: while inorganic cables certainly work, you require an industrial infrastructure to make them. There are obvious advantages of being able to grow your own, particularly if it could be done without requiring expensively trained technicians. And it wouldn’t even hurt the sheep; after all, they get sheared every year anyway.

Fortunately, somebody didn’t carry the one when making the critical calculations, or something: the sheep didn’t come out quite as designed. They got the fiber-optic wool, sure – but what they also got was sheep that are also the equivalent of an organic motherboard. And do not think too hard on that. Seriously, don’t: doing so has caused at least one biologist to be led out of the room in restraints while she screamed “STOP IT!!!!! Genetics doesn’t WORK like that!!!!!”

Continue reading Adventure seed: the Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Adventure seed: Operation Schatten Rache.

Blame this:

Operation Schatten Rache

By 1943, of course, the writing was on the wall for the Third Reich. As in, literally: on September 19th, 1943, a glowing message in an unknown alphabet appeared on the interior walls of every occult research center in Nazi Germany. A formal translation of that message was never successfully done; but, given that staring at said message for any length of time by a member of the Nazi party caused the cerebral cortex of said Nazi to explode (again, literally)… the ultimate meaning seemed fairly clear in context.
Continue reading Adventure seed: Operation Schatten Rache.

Adventure Seed: The Background Theme of the Universe.

The Background Theme of the Universe

Well, this is awkward. You know about that ‘cosmic noise’ thing? It’s this pervasive – as in, across the universe – sound that goes on above the 15 megahertz range; many scientists assumed that it was a relic of the Bing Bang, or something like that. Which it may very well be; however, we’ve been listening to it for about seventy years now, more or less, which has been barely enough time and sampling to give a suggestion that the sound has… purpose behind it.

Essentially, the universe has a theme song. Continue reading Adventure Seed: The Background Theme of the Universe.