They're coming to get you, Barbara....
This week's cliche that is begging to get weird is a classic horror staple and dungeon crawl opponent: the zombie. Whether shambling about ancient crypts looking for fresh brains to munch, serving the will of a voodoo priestess, or turning a local shopping mall into a place of carnage, zombies have been a long-time favorite of gamers. Now, let's twist it.
J.S. has already come up with the ultimate zombie weird in "Rum Soaked Zombies," so I won't even try to compete. Instead, I offer up a rather traditional game scenario with an untraditional monster.
Curse of the Graffalon
A short adventure for high level characters.
"Curse of the Graffalon" is a fantasy adventure for 3-5 adventurers that takes place around the city of Gilscot. The Graffalon is inspired by a monster from "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night."
Plot synopsis: After a plague kills hundreds of the locals, another horror begins to affect the town. The dead are returning from their graves. The characters may be passing through Gilscot or have heard of the hamlet's troubles and come to the town to offer their services. The city has had several zombies in the last few weeks attack locals in the night.
When the players investigate a local graveyard they find that all of the graves have had the dirt removed from the tops of the coffins and placed neatly (still in the shape of the rectangle) to the side. The coffins are found to be empty. Visiting other graveyards reveals the same thing.
Shortly after investigating one of the graveyards, the PCs are attacked by the Graffalon: A giant ball of floating corpses. With 200 corpses appearing to cling to eachother, the ball floats above them, dropping 1-3 zombies each turn on the PCs. If the PCs attack the graffalon, more zombies fall off of it, but these ones are not animated The GM will need to keep track of how many zombies have fallen off. After about 25% have fallen off, the PCs will be able to see the creature beneath it. The creature inside is a tentacled thing with several long eyestalks. Once the creature is revealed, it starts shooting telekinetic blasts at the PCs. (This power of TK is also how it made the cleanly dug holes. It simply willed the dirt out of the ground.) As an alternative for D&D players, perhaps it is a Beholde with Necromantic spells.
If any PCs have abilities to sense such stuff, the Graffalon appears to be the combined hate/anger of the collected dead at first but once the creature inside is revealed, they will be able to see that it is what is really what is animating the corpses by bringing back all that anger/hate.
Posted by Nuadha at May 5, 2004 10:27 PM