[UA] Screams from Nowhere

[sneadj at mindspring.com]

Gregory Paul Stolze <holycrow at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Just as I was about to sign off, I had an idea for a "Screams from
> Nowhere" UA scenario.  The backstory is... it's a hoax.  Some sick
> punko hid five or six loudspeakers in hollow trees, thickets,
> underground... or maybe up in the tops of trees where a human would be
> obvious.  He just rotates the signal through different speakers to
> keep people distracted.  There's nothing paranormal going on at all.
> 
> Hm... there's the seed.  How does it grow?  Maybe he's doing it as a
> distraction so he can break into houses while the police are off
> searching.  Or maybe he's just a bastard.  
> 
> Perhaps the conflict with the PCs arises when various occult
> investigators show up and start to squabble among themselves.  
> 
> Anyone else got an idea on where to go with this?  I'd really like to
> see more UA scenarios where the paranormal element turns out to be a
> red herring.  (Scully/Scooby scenarios instead of Mulder ones.) 
> Granted, they are a lot harder to write.

How about the PCs hear about this, and being typical occult-
obsessed UA PC types they go investigate.  It turns out that some 
sort of geeky outcaste teen is doing it.  S/he started out attempting 
to scare/impress his peers with his/her faux occult powers, and 
things got out of hand.  Now the teen is a bit scared, a bit proud, 
and starting to think of bigger things.

If the PCs are anything like the folks I game with, their first move 
will be to try all manner of occult stuff which won't work in this case 
(there being nothing occult-related going on).  At this point, the 
PCs may decide that the occult problem is *really* serious since it 
is hidden from their magics (I've seen this happen, and great fun it 
was :)  Play up this angle by dropping hints.

Depending on how the PCs hand things many there may be many 
results:

1) If the PCs act weird enough the teen may follow them around 
attempting to not be seen.  If the PCs do anything actually 
supernatural where the teen can see it, the teen will become 
obsessed with the PCs since they can do *real* magic.  Depending 
upon the PCs having a groupie, an obsessed teenage stalker, or a 
kid who now trys out all sorts of wacky magic knowing that some 
of it should work would be the way to go.  Results could go all the 
way from one of the PCs having a underage student to a kid 
starting to sacrifice the neighborhood pets in magic circles.

2) If the PCs look powerful, official, or highly dangerous in any 
fashion (if one of them has an appropriate avatar, is a cop or 
something similar) and start obviously snooping around the teen 
will get scared and may attempt to do everything from taking down 
the hidden speakers just as the PCs show up at the grove of trees 
late one night (lots of eerie rustling up above them) to slipping a 
cog and attempting to sabotage their car in dangerous ways.   

3) If the PCs merely hang out and watch things develop in a 
discrete fashion, then the teen starts trying to set more impressive 
things up and and *really* scares a bunch of popular kids, possibly 
minorly injuring one of them in some fashion.  Since the teen 
claims to have great occult powers some of the popular fundy kids 
start believing this teen is in league with the devil and attempt to 
get the teen into some isolated location and do him/her some 
serious damage.  This should happen someplace far from any other 
help, but where the PCs have a chance of interfering. This last bit 
only really works in the bible belt, preferably in a small rural town.

Comments?


-John Snead sneadj at mindspring.com 

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