Saturday, January 15, 2022

Real "Zombie Attacks" That Actually Happened

In August 2016, a 19-year-old college student, Austin Harrouf, reportedly stormed away from a restaurant in Jupiter, FL, where he’d been dining with his parents, apparently upset over the slow service there. He then wandered into a neighborhood, where a couple, Michelle Mischon and John Stevens III, sat in their garage with the door open, enjoying a quiet evening. Harrouf pulled a switchblade on the couple and stabbed them to death, apparently without provocation. A neighbor attempted to intervene and called 911 but was stabbed by the man as well.

When police arrived, they found Harrouf naked, ripping away chunks of the couple’s flesh and eating it. He was also growling, grunting, and making “animal noises.” Repeated use of stun guns and a police dog could not sway Harrouf from his “meal,” and finally three officers had to pull the man away from the bodies by force.

What makes this case especially strange is that Harrouf, prior to this bizarre crime, was a model student who seemed to have things pretty well figured out. It is reported that he had been hanging out with some of his fraternity brothers prior to joining his parents for dinner, but his toxicology report came back clean. Other test results for synthetic drugs are pending, though officials did say Harrouf showed no other characteristic symptoms associated with substances like flakka or bath salts.

Kevin Santos

Kevin Santos was pronounced dead at a hospital in his hometown of Belem in Brazil. The two-year-old was placed in an airtight body bag for three hours while his family made preparations for his funeral.  During the wake, family members noticed the boy moving. Santos then sat up and asked his father for a glass of water. The ecstatic family was let down, however, when only seconds later the boy fell over again. He was rushed to the hospital and declared dead a second time.

Clairvius Narcisse

Clairvius Narcisse died on May 2, 1962 after admitting himself to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelle, a town in the Artibonite Valley of Haiti. He had been suffering from a plethora of ailments, but no direct cause for his symptoms could be determined.  

Eighteen years later, in 1980, his sister Angelina saw Narcisse in a marketplace. He recounted the memories of his own “death,” including being buried alive. He had been placed into a death-like state by a bokor, or sorcerer, and after being dug up he was whisked away to a plantation to serve as a zombified laborer. He escaped after two years of slavery and wandered the Haitian countryside, only willing to return to his village when his brother, whom he believed to have made the deal with the bokor that turned Narcisse into a zombie, had finally passed away.  A researcher named Wade Davis later investigated Narcisse’s case, and claimed to have discovered the key to zombification, namely the use of the datura plant, which, according to Patrick D. Hahn of Biology Online, “contains the hallucinogens atropine and scopolamine, and induces delirium, confusion, psychosis, and complete amnesia.” It could never be conclusively determined, however, whether or not this substance was actually used on Narcisse. 

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

As you enter the morgue

How many times have I used that sentence? many times my friends…many times since 1985 when I first got my hands on CHILL then published by pacesetter.The rules were easy to understand that once you opened the box you were able to play within the hour of opening. I missed those games – Edward Fink ran by my friend John Karnay and Conner Mccloud ran by the great statesman Alan Kaltman. We ran chill from 1985 til 1999 when I left New York and started a new life with my wife. Jump ahead to present, I stumble upon the rebirth of pacesetter when I found ROTWORLD online. I was ecstatic and grabbed a copy quicker then my wife saying no. I loved the rules, but it still wasn’t the same as chill.. it felt like a natural extension to the game I loved . Jumping ahead as a whim, I went back to the pacesetter site and what did I find? Crypt world! again I snagged up a pdf of the game and added it to my kindle. I am home… I feel the need to transpose my old chill campaign (I still have the 1st & 2nd edition) to this new version. One note – I was one of the few people who play tested the doomed 3rd edition. Which is now dead in the water and maybe its not a bad thing.
What should you find on this blog?

  •  Things stats – all of my 20 + years creations posted here for your games
  •  Adventure seeds & ideas – something to help the crypt masters with coming up with adventures on the swing.
  • Full length Adventures!

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Chill First edition Checklist

Chill : Adventures into the Unknown (box set)

  • an 8-page Introductory folio that included four pages of instructions on how to use the action table that governs all activities in the game, and four pages of pregenerated characters;
  • a 64-page Campaign Book;
  • a 32-page Horrors of the Unknown;
  • a full-color map of the world;
  • 140 double-sided die-cut cardboard counters;
  • a range stick;
  • three 10-sided dice;
  • and a 16-page adventure, “Terror in Warwick House”.

Published Adventures / Source books

  • Chill Master’s Screen (included Castle Dracula scenario)
  • Blood Moon Rising (scenario)
  • Creature Feature (sourcebook)
  • Death on Tour (scenario)
  • Deathwatch on the Bayou (scenario)
  • Evenings of Terror with Elvira (book of scenarios hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark)
  • Haunter of the Moor (scenario)
  • Highland Terror (scenario)
  • Isle of the Dead (scenario)
  • Things (sourcebook)
  • Thutmose’s Night (scenario)
  • Vampires (sourcebook)
  • Vengeance of Dracula (scenario)
  • Village of Twilight (scenario)

Board game

Black Morn Manor, a board game based in the Chill universe

The Ride Home


Following a near-fatal bus accident, which the characters survive unscathed, they begin to notice that they are being followed by gaunt cadaverous beings with ashen skin and eyes the color of frozen meat dressed in drab gray Victorian suits; their faces are locked in a deathlike grin associated with rigor mortis.

When the characters are together, these beings stay their distant, watching the characters with their cold unblinking dead eyes. Once the characters break up or go their own way they attack that individual investigator working their way until they have killed everyone who survived the encounter.

Possibilities

1    The beings are apparitions of accident victims on that stretch of land. They are haunting the investigators to see if they can get released into the other side. However, after several days of being ignored, they no longer seek release but instead seek to make the investigators one of them.

2    The investigators escaped death – they should have died that night. The cadaverous beings are minions of the grim reaper, sent to kill the investigators and uphold the balance of nature.

3    The investigators did not escape the accident unhurt; they are all in a local Hospital in comas. The beings that they are seeing are the warped form of their visiting friends and loved ones.

Copyright (c) 2005 Timothy Goss

The Pilgrimess


STR: NA     WPR: 7 (105)
DEX: NA     PER: 6 (90)
AGL: NA     PCN: 6 (90)
STA: NA     PWR: 130
ATT: 1/*      WND: 0*
MV: F 75 (incorporeal)
Experience: 1,000
Ghost Powers
Excise Living
Supernatural Touch
Weakness: can be held at bay with ghost script engraved glass
The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith. In 1675, Isabella sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search for a warm comfortable home in New England, but the tight-knit townsfolk didn’t trust outsiders and isolated her from the town. The town’s livestock began to die mysteriously so the local preacher accused her of witchcraft. As more livestock started to fall ill, the preacher acquired a mysterious illness. The town rallied into a frenzy, cornering Isabella in a barn, which they lit on fire. Isabella miraculously crawled out, still alive without a single burn. So instead, she was sentenced to a slow death in the stocks, where she stayed for weeks on end while children stoned her, women cursed her, and men spat on her. The humiliation grew far worse than the pain, so finally Isabella succumbed to starvation. Her ghost is walking around with her hands still locked in the stocks.
 
 

Supernatural Touch: With this power, a ghost can deal physical damage to an opponent. It uses the opponent’s unskilled melee score as the column for resolving damage. With a C result, the character also feels a bone-numbing chill that paralyzes him for one round.

Excise Living: A ghost may use its supernatural powers to terrorize a victim, instilling fear in him. This costs 5 WPR per round and may affect all characters in a 30’ radius. Each character resolves the specific check for the attack separately against his WPR column.
S = The victim finds himself unable to move for one round, though he may stand in one place and attack or use other skills or abilities.
L = The victim is frozen from fright and can only defend against melee with column 1 or column 3 for missile attacks.
M = The victim runs away in fear as fast as he can for as many rounds as the power is in effect, accounting for any Stamina loss from sprinting or running. In addition, the victim loses two points of WPR per round the effect is active.
H = Same as L, and the victim loses two points of WPR per round.
C = The victim is overwhelmed with fright and loses consciousness for as long as the power is active. In addition, the victim loses two points of WPR per round.

Jonathan Harker

Harker is a recently admitted solicitor from England, who is deputed by his employer, Mr. Peter Hawkins, of Exeter, to act as an estate agent for a foreign client named Count Dracula who wishes to move to England. Harker discovers in Carfax Abbey, near Purfleet, Essex, a dwelling that suits the client’s requirements and travels to Transylvania by train in order to consult with him about it.At Bistritz Harker takes a coach to the Borgo Pass where at midnight another coach drawn by four black horses, waits to take him to Castle Dracula high in the Carpathian Mountains. At the castle, Harker is greeted by the mysterious and ominous Count Dracula and finalizes the property transaction. Soon, however, Harker realizes he has been made a prisoner by his host who is revealed as a vampire. Harker also has a dangerous encounter with the three seductive Brides of Dracula, whose designs on him are only thwarted by the intervention of the Count.

Later, he manages to escape, finding refuge at a convent. He has a mental breakdown upon arriving at the convent because of his encounters with Dracula; his fiance, Mina Murray, comes to nurse him back to health with the nuns’ help and marries him there. He returns home to England and later sees Dracula in London. After learning Dracula killed Lucy, he joins Van Helsing, Seward, Holmwood, and Morris. His clerical skills prove very useful for collecting information and for tracking down Dracula’s London lairs by means of paperwork. He vows to destroy Dracula and, if he could, to send “his soul forever and ever to burning to hell[..]!” even if it be at the cost of own soul. When confronted with Mina’s curse, however, he is unsure how to react; Mina asks the others in the group to kill her if the need comes. While Harker says he would, in the privacy of his journal says that if it is necessary, that he would become a vampire himself out of his love for her. However, Harker manages to avoid that because along with Van Helsing and the others he manages to destroy Dracula. At the book’s climax, he pries open Dracula’s coffin mere moments before sunset and slashes open Dracula’s throat with a kukri knife, possibly decapitating him, while Quincey Morris stabs him in the heart with a Bowie knife.

In a note following the end of the novel, it is revealed that seven years have passed. He and Mina have a son whom they have named after all four members of the part, but call Quincey, after Quincey Morris. Noting Quincey Harker’s birthday is the day Quincey Morris died fighting Dracula, Mina likes to think that some of Morris’ spirit is in their son. Jonathan Harker eventually visits Dracula’s castle along with his wife and son and their surviving friends to reminisce. He returns home with his wife and son and is told by Van Helsing that one day his son will learn the whole story.
STATS
STR 58          PCN 68
DEX 52          WPR 58
AGL 66          Luck 42
PER 50          STA 62
Unskilled Melee : 62    Penetration Bonus : +5
Wounds : 14
Skill                                 Rank                      Score
Journalism                        Expert     80
Language (German)                 Specialist 78
Language(Latin)                   Specialist 78
Investigation                     Specialist 74
Prenatural Lore                   Specialist 78
Social Sciences (Sociology)       Expert     93

And now for something completely different..... Piranaconda

STR:       8 (120)  WPR:     1 (15)
DEX:       n/a         PER:       n/a
AGL:      6 (90)    PCN:      4 (60)
STA:       7 (105)  PWR:     n/a
ATT:       2/53%   WND:    17
MV:       L 75’   F 000   W 90’   
Experience: 500                                     

Part anaconda, part piranha all killer mutant giant snake. The favorite method of attack is to attack with a bite first then follow up with a constriction attempt.

Unsettling Powers

Amphibian: Is able to exist on land or in the water

Swallow whole: on a natural C result with a bite attack, the victim is swallowed whole.

In this sequel to Sharktopus, two Piranhacondas hunt down their stolen egg. The scientist who stole the egg hitchikes the island and meets up with a movie crew on-set of filming. The star, the scientist, and some crew-members get kidnapped by some money-craving people who put them on ransom for some dough. Meanwhile, a Piranhaconda roams the island, along the way eating an island-goer, and some scientists searching for a rare flower. The snake comes to the kidnappers’ hideout and attacks. The crew and the scientist escape. The lead kidnapper finds a camera and realizes that the scientist stole the egg, which caused the snake to attack, and he decides to kill the snake, and the crew. The snake follows the crew, who are in a truck, but is wounded by a grenade. The second Piranhaconda arrives and, sensing blood, attacks its wounded mate. It then decides to track down the crew. The scientist reveals that he had the egg, so they try to escape via boat. But the Piranhaconda stalls their plans. The scientist pretends to get rid of the egg, but doesn’t, causing the creature to follow them. The crew become trapped by the kidnappers, but the Piranhaconda crashes the party and eats the ransomers. The scientist and two crew members get back to the boat, but the man stays on shore to destroy the snake. In the water, the girl realizes that the scientist had the egg all along. She throws it in the river and shoves him overboard. He is then killed by the Piranhaconda. The girl goes back to shore and finds the boy. They lure the Piranhaconda to a waterfall using the egg. Jack slips a bomb into the case and threw it at the beast, then he and the girl jumped into the river below. The bomb went off and decapitated the snake. The two then decide to go on a date. They kiss as a third Piranhaconda devours them both. The camera switches to a shot of the waterfall, and the growl of the Piranhaconda is heard.

The Shadows of future past

October 20  Another day nothing changes.this month marks the birthfay of my late brother.  I used to run a RPG blog dedicatedvto horror game...