Cthulhu Dark - Adv - Beast.pdf

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BEAST
Beast
is a non-Mythos adventure for Graham Walmsley’s
Cthulhu Dark.
The PDF
includes a slightly modified version of the rules and a scenario wherein a small band of
investigators find themselves facing a specter that has been haunting the children of a
small town.
Character Creation
Pick an occupation and write a short thumbnail description of your character.
Actions
When the outcome of an action is unclear the player
rolls to see how well her character did. Roll 1d6 for
basic activities, or roll 2d6 and keep the higher
number if your occupation gives you an edge. The
result shows how well the character did, with one
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© 2014 by Shae Davidson
(shae.davidson@gmail.com).
Public domain art by Alvin
Padayachee via Wikimedia
Commons.
representing barely scraping by and a six marking a critical success. When looking for
information, a one gives the character the bare minimum needed to advance the plot
while a six represents a stunning breakthrough.
For example, a social studies teacher has gone to the library to find information about
an old murder. Rolling a one, he finds that he had the wrong address for the murder
site. On a four he learns that one of the detectives who investigated the crime still lives
in the area. Rolling a six, he uncovers a previously unnoticed connection between the
murder and the strange fire that burned Old Man Cutright’s barn.
A player can roll an additional die if she is willing to risk her character’s sanity and
safety to succeed. The insanity die should be a different color than the other dice. If it
rolls the highest number, make an Insanity roll as described below.
If you’re not happy with the outcome of a character’s action you can reroll the dice,
adding the Insanity die to the new attempt.
Characters can also help one another. When cooperating, the players roll all of the dice
they normally would for an action and the Keeper interprets the highest die.
Complications and Competition
If the Keeper (or another player) thinks the story would be more interesting if your
character failed she describes how your character fails and rolls one die. If the number
beats your best roll your character suffers the fate she described. The Keeper can veto a
failure roll if it would completely stall the adventure.
If two characters are competing, the higher roll wins. If there is a tie, the character with
the higher Insanity wins.
Insanity, Fear, and Awareness
Insanity represents the stress and fear experienced by your character as well as her
connection to the Beast—her ability to perceive it and its awareness of her actions.
Your character’s Insanity starts at one. Roll a die if you see experience something
disturbing. If the number is higher than your current Insanity add one to your score
and roleplay your character’s terror.
As your character’s Insanity score grows she is more likely to see the Beast directly and
to feel that it is stalking her. If a character’s Insanity score reaches six the Beast destroys
her—snatching her away from the others and leaving grisly remains to be discovered
later.
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Players can try to reduce their characters’ Insanity by suppressing knowledge of the
Beast. If an investigator’s Insanity reaches five, the character can try to hide evidence or
throw the investigation off-track in order to shield the world from the horror stalking
Pine Grove. Each time a character tries to suppress knowledge roll a die. If the number
is less than the character’s current Insanity the score drops by one point.
The Town
Pine Grove (5500 population, incorporated 1852) is a small town in north central West
Virginia or southwestern Pennsylvania. The county seat of Moebius County, the town
sits on rolling hills with a river running along the eastern and northern edges; steep
forested hills dominate the surrounding area.
Small businesses line Main Street and the Four Winds Bar, the town’s only tavern,
occupies an abandoned theater. Visitors flock to Pine Grove for the annual Riding
Mower Festival (second weekend in May) and Apple Days (second weekend in
September). The county historical society has an archive and exhibit space above the
old dime store and on special occasions has been known to display the strange warm
stone Colonel Bradley found when he built his cabin in 1792. Lessard College, a small
private liberal arts school, attracts students from around the region. According to local
lore the doors in the college’s chapel don’t always open into the same rooms and books
in the library sometimes contain unsettling messages for unsuspecting readers.
Several smaller towns spring up along the two-lane highways leading out of Pine
Grove. Lawrence Run lies about four miles to the west along Route 17. Saint Alfonzo’s
Methodist Church overlooks the post office and two dozen houses from a rounded hill,
and a gravel quarry sits hidden about a half mile north of the town. Visitors to the
small cemetery nestled behind the church have noted that stars seem to be different
colors when viewed from the site. One mile farther west travelers will find Stubbs
Mountain, a tor rising above the surrounding hills. Narrow trails wind up and down
the summit, created by generations of wandering hunters and a logging company that
briefly operated in the area in the 1940s.
Traveling about two miles south from Pine Grove along Route 22, visitors will find
Trenton and the county's only high school, home to the state champion backgammon
team (1990-1992, 2008). Houses and odd businesses pop up along the roads leading to
Lawrence Run and Trenton. Farther to the south the hills become rougher and houses
fewer and farther between. Small logging and mining towns dot the southernmost part
of the county, although their operations ended many years ago. Some residents of these
towns don’t like going out after dark, and avoid damaging the dandelions that grow in
their yards.
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A Visit to Midian School
Carla Bannister, a friend of one of the characters, teaches third grade at Midian School.
She asks the investigators if they can meet her at the school one evening in mid-October
after a parent-teacher conference. Bannister waits until the families leave and the other
teachers turn off the lights in their classrooms and head home for the night before
beginning her tale.
Bannister explains that her students started acting oddly in late September. They
seemed to crowd away from the windows in her classroom and begged her to close the
blinds one overcast day, and seemed reluctant to take the twisting rear staircase that
students at Midian had used as a shortcut to the cafeteria for decades. During recess
some of them huddled in small groups, glancing nervously at the houses near the
playground and across the street at the trees dotting the campus of Lessard College.
She has picked up passing references to “the Beast,” but has met with nervous silence
when she’s tried to question students directly.
At first she thought it was some weird game, but two incidents have caused her to
worry. An animal attacked Sasha Andrews, a student at Pine Grove High School.
Sasha is a close friend of the older brother of Danny Oldaker, a student in Bannister’s
class, and the attack has caused Oldaker to become more nervous about the Beast. He
has been discussing his fears with other students, giving the story new life.
The second episode had a more direct effect on Carla’s class. One overcast morning a
student in her second-floor classroom glanced at the window and started shrieking.
Bannister sent the student to the school nurse, who learned that he had seen a pallid
face peering eagerly through the window. The rest of the students were terrified.
Remembering that the school gym had no windows, she quickly moved her class there
and spent the rest of the day reading to her students to get their minds off the incident.
She has already tried to address the problem. At first she explained to the students that
the Beast was only a game or a story, and that games couldn’t hurt them. As her
students became more fearful and obsessed, however, she decided to try working with
the children’s imaginations to counter the threat. She planned to pick up shiny new
pennies at the bank and handed them out in class, telling the students that they would
be safe from the Beast as long as they carried them. The school’s principal learned
about the plan, however. Claiming that this would only feed the delusion, she
prevented Bannister from handing out the coins. Even though the fear has spread to
other grades, the other teachers have written it off as a weird fad that will be forgotten
after Thanksgiving break.
She leads the investigators around the empty school as she explains the odd events.
Bannister points out the window where the face was spotted, which looks out on an old
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