Our brave, doomed investigators continued exploring the Old
Pendergast House in our Silent Legions game. This time around we got our first case of delirium, as well as our first PC death. Now that’s a
proper horror game!
The Investigators:
- Bernadette "Bunny" Kennedy (Tough/Bodyguard)--A former circus strong woman who turned to occult investigation "just like the old gypsy lady said."
- Veronica Richardson (Socialite/Artist)--She's been having dreams about obsidian mountains under a red sky full of black stars, tentacles, and milky blind eyes.
- Lucian Stone (Scholar/Programmer)--A hacker who lives and breathes the occult sites of the Deep Web. An occult Alex Jones.
- Vinne Morg (Investigator/Business Owner)--A pawn broker who had to leave Atlanta after he sold the wrong piece of weird jewelry and attracted unwanted attention from mysterious forces.
The Highlights:
The PCs find an old black and white TV on a rolly cart. It’s
screen flickers with static, even though the cord isn’t plugged in, and the house
has no electricity besides. Fiddling with the antennas, the image becomes clear—a
super-massive black hole in the heart of interstellar space. A subsonic
thrumming grows louder as a crystalline mass appears in the center of the black
hole. Vinnie and Veronica’s eyes and ears begin to bleed, and Vinnie shoots the
TV.
The noise attract the Logan-Thing. The panicked PCs all hide in the closet and wait for him to shuffle away, anxiously clutching their limited weaponry. It was a high-point in my GM career.
Bunny finds the missing Ashley’s cellphone in the closet. Looking at her
text messages, they discover that the girl just broke up with her weird boyfriend
Kevin after he refused to show up for the party in the haunted house. He
apparently skipped town and warned Ashley to get away from Amber and Chase.
Ashley clearly didn’t take his advice. There’s also glitchy video of the
sinister Chase using some incantation to pass through the alien metal door in
the basement.
They find the remains of a burned journal in a fireplace.
Scraps indicate that Penderghast buried his wife Ligeia somewhere on the property after
her death. It also mentions that he and his wife trapped some eldritch creature
in a prison Kelipot—some creature that serves The House of Broken Glass.
A skinless woman (Amber?) appears in a mirror. She grabs Vinnie
and pulls him half-way through. Behind the mirror, he sees the horrible
liquid-silver energy grid that forms the underlying foundation of the illusion
we call reality. At the center of it all spins a crystalline mass that radiates contempt and hatred. Vinnie’s friends manage to pull him out of the mirror and shatter it.
This ordeal costs him a ton of Madness, and the poor bastard develops an
uncontrollable (if understandable) phobia against reflective surfaces.
They find a secret closet in the old study and discover an
ancient book, L’abces Chache (The Hidden Abscess), that describes the nature
of Kelipah and contains a couple of spells. They also find a blood-stained clay
disk, The Talisman of the Stable Threshold, which they can use to counter the
impossible geometry of the house.
All this time, Lucian has been posting photos and questions
about the Old Penderghast House and the House of Broken Glass on occult conspiracy message boards. Someone called Anonymous
Black has been deleting his posts followed by vague threats. A user on another
forum, Occult_Warrior_17, warns them not to mess with “The House of Broken Glass” which the players eventually discover
doesn’t refer to this house, but is actually the name of an alien pantheon of
dead gods.
 |
| Poor dead Veronica. |
After dealing with more impossible geometry, the
investigators encounter the Logan-Thing again. The monster is unstoppable. Bunny
is beaten unconscious and Veronica is killed. (This was mostly due to simple
bad luck on the players’ dice rolls. The Logan Thing only has 3 hit dice and
his AC was the equivalent of a man in leather armor. All the PCs had weapons;
they just could manage to roll anything higher than a 6.)
Lucian and Vinne drag their friends away from Logan, and Lucian
uses the Talisman to stabilize the house’s geometry and put some distance
between them and the monster. With dead and bloodied friends, they decide to get
out of the house and lick their wounds.
After a day in the hospital, Veroinca’s replacement shows
up. It’s Abigail Spencer, aka Occult_Warrior_17 from the internet! Abigail
(Tough/Reporter) is a You Tube ghost hunter who’s tangled with the House of
Broken Glass before when the rest of her ghost-hunting team was killed while
filming in an abandoned asylum near Spokane. It’s clear that these people in Seattle
need her help.
After resting up, the PCs go to the gun store and get some
better weapons. They get a free MAGA hat with their purchase, but no one decides
to wear it.
Back at the Old Penderghast House, Bunny climbs the porch to
get directly to the attic window. In the attic she finds an old trunk full of
Penderghast’s old adventuring gear: pistol, bullet-proof vest, and MREs from the
1990s. She also finds a painting of Penderghast and Ligeia standing in front of
the alien clock. Bunny makes note of the time on the clock face and heads back
out the window.
That’s when the cop (Officer Park) drives by and asks what the
investigators are doing standing around the abandoned house with a bunch of
shotguns. The PCs panic and run into the house. Officer Park fires at them,
misses, and follows them inside. They manage to lose him in the impossible
geometry, and avoid a Scooby-Doo chase scene.
At the alien clock, they match the five clock hands to the time
shown on the painting. A secret door opens in the clock, leading to a small
kelipot that serves as (wait for it) the Tomb of Ligeia. It’s a pleasant place
with vaulted stone ceilings, a grassy floor, and air that smells like honey. Tiny
brass and stained glass insects flitter through the air. Ligeia’s pink marble coffin
sits in the center of the chamber. Opening the coffin, they find the well
preserved body of Ligeia holding a key made of the same blue alien metal as the
door in the basement. Vinnie takes the key, and the brass-and-glass insects
begin swarming and stinging. The PCs scamper out of the Kelipot and back to the
house as the passageway closes behind them.
They’re back in the house. That’s when they hear a scream
and a series of heavy thuds. Officer Park’s head rolls down the stairs into the
foyer. The PCs hear the thump-drag of the Logan-Thing’s footsteps, and the session
ended.
The game has gotten off to a good start so far. We’re
playing again this weekend, and I’m confident the team will wrap up their
investigation of the Penderghast Place next session, then move on to following
up on all the hooks I’ve scattered through the adventure.
