ÍNDICE DE TABLAS
1.5. ESPECIFICACIÓN DEL PROBLEMA Y PROPUESTA DE INTERVENCIÓN
Description
Hysteria follows certain trends as it works its way through the more hysterical and credible members of the genuine populace. For a while it might be that Dtmgeon's & Dragons is a 'doorway to danger' and then it might shift to the idea that anal-obsessed aliens are kidnapping people and probing them aboard their ships. After that it might be blaming computer games when already crazy kids go on a rampage.
For a very long time there was a persistent myth about
satanic cults operating invisibly amongst society blamed for child murders, kidnappings, cannibalism and a whole host of other perversities. Despite numerous investigations showing up nothing attention seeking people claimed to have been a part of these cults and built up the myth.
What if there was some tmth to these stories and it was merely that the satanic cult was strong enough to cover themselves tmtil the hysteria and media hype went away. What if whole groups of people are in the control of these cults and organisations providing children, animals, money and influence to these groups?
Twist
The cult's circle of initiates converges with the
character's group of friends. These people truly believe but also work very hard on keeping their belief hidden and to themselves. One of the character's friends has been chosen to be a surrogate mother for one of the cult's child sacrifices and she has had second thoughts tmning to the only people she thinks she can trust, the characters. Helping her flee they must contend with the fact that anyone, anywhere may be a member of the cult.
Twist
The characters are a holidaying group of friends visiting a picturesque village on the coast for their holiday. Unbeknownst to them the village is rife with members of a satanic cult who are planning a great sabbat and intend the characters to be their prize sacrifice. Before the goats and the dancing and the pyre fires however they need to find ways of making the character's stay, however they can find to do that, ready for the desecration of the coming Sunday.
Tvvist
The characters are assigned to assist a taskforce that has been given the job of dealing with the latest wave of hysteria. Basically just a hand wave to look into the problem and to assure the people that there isn't really one at all. They are unprepared for the evidence and testimony that they do turn up including plans for a mass human sacrifice. Of course, nobody will listen to them and if anything is to be done to prevent it or bring justice to the culprits then it will be up to the characters.
Epilogue
The cult that exists in this scenario is the worst
nightmare of the most credulous and hysterical person or most evangelical Christian. They are everywhere with influence in every place, all linked like The Masons tmned up to eleven. No matter how well they do in
the initial scenario the cult will remain in place and begin to start looking for revenge, tmning to the devil for powers and ways to get at their hated enemy.
Idea
Combining elements of The Wicker
Man
with Rosemary'sBaby
can create an effective atmosphere for the game keeping the extent of the cult and its power secret until the characters run up against it.Adventure 97
Oh, Rats
Description
As the statistic says, you're never more than twenty feet away from a rat. Alright, it assumes that the rats are somehow evenly spaced across the whole country, which they are not, but still, that is a lot of rats to be considered. Rats are everywhere, feeding on human waste and growing sleek and fat, breeding in great numbers and spreading disease wherever they go, shy for the most part of man but not of taking the spoils from his civilisation.
The characters are residents of a high-rise apartment block that suffers from a disgusting, but so far
unthreatening, rat problem. Droppings are found area and often, in the basement level, raw sewage can be smelled, giving a clue as to where the rats are getting in. One day however, the rat problem changes, going from relatively harmless to extremely harmful requiring the characters to find a way to smvive against the torrent of furry death.
Tvvist
A terrier smuggled across the channel from France by one of the more elderly residents of the flats contracted a form of rabies while over there and has brought it back with them. Htmting rats in the basement the terrier caused one of the rats to contract the disease which has since spread like wildfire through the rat population in the sewers. Now a plague of rabid rats are going to pour up through the building to escape the water of the sewers, biting and attacking everything in their path. It is just a pity the fire escape still hasn't been repaired ...
Twist
The military has been experimenting with a new form of biological warfare called 'ratwar'. The creation of aggressive and intelligent rats that can be delivered into an enemy country or city and used to spread disease amongst the populace as a more effective and long term vector than gas or particles. The experiment, as with
so many experiments, has gone horribly wrong and
its results have been unleashed on the public, large, geneered, intelligent rats whose instinct is to kill.
Tvvist
Under the city The King of the Rats has arrived from wherever it is he comes from, gathering his people in the great red brick cathedrals of the undercity he speaks to them about the glories of the rats, the Black Death, of times when grain was theirs for the taking and he incites them to uprising. Provoked by the latest pest control methods the local government is trying to introduce and pushed on by The King of the Rats the rat army takes to the streets to exact retribution.
Epilogue
The ratwar rats are intended to breed in the wild and to keep doing their task, a self replenishing bio weapon ro be used against the most deserving targets. In theory the scientists have a control, a retrovirus to sterilise them and inoculations against the lovely new diseases that the rats carry. However no virus has an infection rate of 100% and some rats may well have survived and retained their ability to breed. Those rats can spread and grow in number and intelligence, even surprising their creators.
Idea
King Rat by China Mieville provides both a spiritual side to rats and a good impression of London which would make a good setting. James Herbert's
The Rats is the classic of this type of horror.