Item
| Image |  |
| Description | This manually bound book contains ghost stories, horrifying "anecdotes," and urban legends from the students of Metroplex University. Each is pretty short, but there are quite a few of them and some are legitimately spooky. |
| Type | Offhand |
| Use | See Notes |
| Effects | +4 Etheric Power |
Sources
Notes
When using this item you get the message
The book is divided into thirteen stories. You flip it open to one at random.
Followed by one of:
It begins in the heart of Metroplex, among the old skyscrapers, before Midgard Headquarters and Silver Towers dominated the skyline. At the time, cars were not playthings of the chosen elite, they were a matter of course, like a roof over your head.
With so many cars, there was simply not enough room, so roads were built atop other roads and then yet more roads built over them. Soon, one could enter the great skyscrapers from three or four levels, some of which would never see the sun.
The homeless, the disaffected, and those no longer welcome in society crept into those pits and rarely ventured out. They moved through the lower levels of the towers, claiming them as their own, building their homes and creating their own societies in the bones of the city.
When the new skyscrapers came, they burrowed back to the ground for their foundations, but didn't dare build entrances to Undercity. No surfacedweller has been down there for decades, but we still hear about what has become of their society.
It may be unkind to call them 'moles' but they've changed over their years in the depths. Barely human creatures, pale and eyeless, crawl beneath the city, claiming more territory every day… and preparing for the day they can return to the forgotten surface.
(And with writhing flesh:)
Ugh. Why would they want to come back? The sun is so bright out here.
Or,
It begins by painting a picture of the great cities and their place in the world. As you leave them, slipping past the suburbs, houses become less and less frequent, until they disappear all together. There are massive highways that few humans see any longer, trafficked and repaired by drones.
But between those highways, there are vast amounts of nothing. Huge swathes of it are despoiled, blasted wastelands like the Slags, everything of worth dug out, poisoned, or evacuated decades ago.
It's said there are a still a few places that have escaped the Corporations' eyes, however. These protected, forgotten pockets are called the Wild Places, and something keeps the Corporations out, something even they fear.
Travelers who claim to have been to the Wild Places say they're guarded by raiders, independant thinkers, or corporate rogues. But in whispers, they still speak of the old creatures that haunt the night and protect the old ways: skinwalkers, vampires, and ancient spirits.
"The premise is absurd, it's sure," the story ends, "but who could stand against them, who could protect these places but the ancient spirits of the night?"
Or,
It begins strangely, talking about long-forgotten corporations from before the Orbital Wars. One of them, it says, found the secret of eternal life and that is what the wars were truly about.
The secrets of life and youth, freeing you from the fear of all injury or illness, in one golden pill. Everyone wanted it but, more than that, none could dare let the others have it. The wars were fierce, millions died, and the golden pill passed from history.
But the secrets of its creation were never truly lost. The mightiest of the corporate elites learned bits and pieces during their war and sought to replicate its success.
One corporate lord stood out from the others, though, walking among the sick and suffering of his city, spending his own vast wealth to extend their lives. It was the mother of one of the sick who asked him about the golden pill she had heard of and, if he knew its secret, why he did not end these people's suffering.
He simply smiled, the same kind smile he shared with even the lowest of his workers, and said "If I ended their suffering, none would be left to make the pills."
(And, if you have a panacea pill in your inventory)
You pull the panacea pill out at look at it. Huh.
Or,
It begins on a chilly February morning, with a young man having his gift of chocolates politely declined, as is so common. His reaction is anything but common, however.
He remains in the cold, wearing his best suit, his arm still extended to offer chocolates. The other students avoid him for hours, trying not to embarrass him further or share in his pain.
But the next morning, every person who had passed him by had gone missing. Hysterical witnesses claimed arms had reached from the shadows and pulled their friends into the darkness, while others were simply missing from their bloodstained beds.
It took hours for security and their dogs to find the students, dismembered and the pieces tossed into dumpsters like so much garbage. No matter where they looked, though, they could not find him. It was as though he had simply melted away… but now you know why the Omegas never turn down a gift from a well-dressed stranger.
(And, if you have the shining glasses equipped:)
It takes a moment for you to realize your mouth has curved into a rictus grin.
Or,
It begins on the rocky beaches of Metroplex, years before the Incident when you could still swim in the water of Lake Metroplex. Everyone had heard the rumors time and again, drunken dock hands and fishermen blinded by the light of dawn, seeing strange shapes moving in the water.
Every year as Halloween approached, a woman would disappear from those beaches. They'd never find the body, but a shoe washed up to shore one year and a mangled hat years later.
Midgard security suspected a serial killer and placed cameras all around the lake, trying to catch him one Halloween night. But instead, they saw a great shape rise from the water and pluck a woman from the rocks, swallowing her in one bite.
For years, they kept their secrets, hoping to catch the beast. The year before the Incident, they finally succeeded, catching it in their nets.
It couldn't escape their nets this time, but it was all for nothing, because the water boiled with a thousand of its young, tearing apart the net and reddening the water with divers' blood. The four who remained burned the records and vowed never to speak of it again, but watch the lake for when one disappearance becomes a thousand and nowhere is safe on Halloween.
Or,
It begins at the turn of the century, in a bustling city ripe with potential and housing many of the most powerful people in the world. They were unstoppable in their city of glass and gold, their arrogance surpassing even their wealth and power.
But a fire began in the bones of the city, near the bases of their great towers and even beneath many of the streets. The towers became little more than chimneys, killing uncountable masses among the rich and poor alike.
(And if you have a Holocaust Coat equipped:)
Huh. Apparently they didn't have a sweet coat like this.It was only the most arrogant, though, even among the rich, that could not accept their fate. Even with only one out of a hundred so filled with pride, dozens of ghosts remained, haunting buildings as they were rebuilt or wailing in the open air.
It's even said that, on the nights of the full moon, the ghosts of the arrogant buildings themselves will be revealed, sparkling in the light. Only then can the living enter them, but they must leave before the sun rises or be trapped forever as another ghost among the mad.
Or,
It begins with a boy being put to bed, begging his mother to explain where Hunter went. She sighs sadly and tells him that Hunter's in doggy Heaven now.
He pushes her over and over about how she could know, so she tells him a story he's never heard before, about his mother walking with Hunter near their home and the man that accosted them.
She tells him how Hunter saved her life, biting the man's hand terribly and scaring him off forever. Clearly, that earned Hunter his place. More than a little awed, her son consented to finally be tucked in and receive his goodnight kiss.
(Without Fearsome Strength:)
Skritch, skritch, skritch.(With Fearsome Strength:)
Ha! Ha ha ha ha! She doesn't even realize what kept her safe for so long. The fool, the fool!
Or,
It begins in simpler times, with a traitor being sentenced to die in the only manner fitting for his crimes: hung from the gnarled oak and left for the ravens.
But he would not die, no matter how long they left him. Even hanging, covered in nothing but blood and rags, he laughed at them with the voice of the ravens.
(With the rag man's cape equipped, the above changes to:)
But he would not die, no matter how long they left him. Even hanging, covered in nothing but blood and the rags you bear, he laughed at them with the voice of the ravens.Finally, the townspeople had enough. They gathered at dawn with sticks, vowing to beat him until dusk if they needed to. But at dusk, the town was empty except for the ravens and a single piece of cloth, left in the gnarled oak, flapping in the breeze like a flag. A flag to warn any who might enter his town.
Now the old village is long forgotten, his village paved over and his tree uprooted to raise a great skyscraper. Now, if you find an alley marked with a single piece of cloth, find another way, because we are all traitors in his land.
Or,
It begins with a man in a rush home from work one cold Christmas Eve. He stopped at an old street vendor, bundled against the cold, to get a gift for his daughter.
Ah! How could she not love this doll? It was her spitting image, close enough to be her daughter or sister! Perfection!
He threw his coins at the old woman and hurried home with the doll. He never saw her looking quizzically down at the coins, watching them sink into the snow, and pushing her cart to the next corner.
The little girl's father had chosen well, though. She loved the doll with all her heart, never letting in far from her side. She dressed it, as anyone would, and talked to it, as many would.
He drew the line, however, at feeding the doll. His daughter begged and pleaded, but he would not let her waste what little food they had on such a frivolous thing. So she refused to eat either, wasting away as he watched.
They fought and fought, about her eating and about the doll, until he finally threw it into the fire and had to watch his daughter burn, her shrieks echoing through their old home.
It's said when security hauled him out of the house, sobbing his innocence, the doll watched on from an attic window, already wearing the face of the girl that would explore that attic next.
(Additionally with headless voodoo doll equipped:)
You look down at your doll suspiciously for a moment and it peers back at your neck.(Addendum with the twisted voodoo doll equipped:)
You look down at your doll suspiciously for a moment and it looks back up at you.
Or,
It begins describing an older man, filthy with long years homeless following the Incident that created that Slags and destroyed his home.
The rest is not so much a story as an interview, or perhaps a story framed as an interview. The old man explains how Midgard's drones act with one mind, one intelligence and choose to serve Midgard for now.
He offers as proof a video, described in the text, of a hound drone in the Slags turning on its human master, overbearing him like a wolf and tearing him to shreds. How he gets from there to one mind isn't clear, however, because he launches into a rambling story.
The old man explains how, when their true master calls, the drones will rise up against Midgard. They will siege the city, purging it of life, before moving on as the perfect army, with one mind and one purpose: replacing humanity as the dominant form of life on the planet.
He says the city's… humanity's only hope is to destroy the drones before it's too late and that none can stand against their master, that only his power is absolute.
(And if you know about the Mysterious Drone Signature)
It's still pretty far-fetched, but it intersects interestingly with what you've seen in those drone memories.
Or,
It begins with a student drinking with an old hand from Midgard, right in the Happy Hour near campus. The old hand is drinking away his sorrows, preparing to retire in the morning because he cannot abide his next assignment.
As they drink, he opens up more and more about his concerns. The project he's being assigned to involves breaches in medical ethics. The student seems certain it's unauthorized testing on animals, but he disabuses her of the notion. It's humans, including children, and that's what he can't abide.
Eventually, she asks why he's drinking so much, then, if he's finally ready to make the right choice. He laughs and says that it's just not the sort of job you quit.
After entirely too many drinks, they leave together. Neither shows up on campus again. When the narrator checks into their records, he finds that they've both been dead for twenty years, murdered outside the Happy Hour by a man with a monocle.
Or,
It begins talking about how neural recordings are made, with networks of specialized cybernetic implants. It's interesting in it's own right, because nobody seems to be able to make them here in Metroplex, probably due to Midgard's laws.
But it continues, talking about a man making an "adult-only" recording when he had a heart attack, trapping him inside the memory core. But the company knew they had something special, making one copy after another of it, tearing him apart.
Now people will pay anything for a copy, but they don't know that some of the people experiencing the recordings changed, taken over by the dead man's spirit, shattered by the endless copying.
And if you have a copy of it, they'll find you. They always do.
Or,
It begins with an old river being dammed and diverted to make room for the subway system, before anyone even heard of Metros. The normal protestors rallied, but so did the oldest, because they had a special love for that river. A few even said, in hushed whispers, that they could feel their loved ones waiting for them on the other side of the river.
The powers that be laughed at their whispers. After all, nothing was across the river but more city and that was, in fact, the entire reason they had to build a subway line. And so built it was.
It was the first of its kind in the city, a thing of beauty no more like a Metros station than a pigeon is like an eagle. But they soon found the whispers they'd discounted were all too true, as the only ones who would ride that train were the dead and the dying, on their way to the other side.
It's said they ran that train for years, too afraid to shut it down or even admit it existed. But one day they stopped and now, the dead have nowhere to go, waiting in that station endlessly for a train that will never come.
Uses
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This item is not a component for any kind of crafting. |
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paper mache |
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.08 Goods |