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Chaosium Digest Volume 29 Number 04
Chaosium Digest Volume 29, Number 4
Date: Wednesday, December 15, 1999
Number: 2 of 4
-----------------------------
WOODS HAVEN
by Ricardo J. Méndez Castro
rmendez@sheertalent.com
http://www.sheertalent.com/rmendez/
(There's an RTF version of this scenario at
http://www.sheertalent.com/rmendez/woodshavenrtf.zip
which includes a couple of badly-drawn maps and other
explicative images)
PROLOGUE
========
Daniel Matheson stumbled into a familiar clearing, the
five-pronged rock sculpture stretching out of the ground
like the hand of a buried-alive god.
Oh Christ - he thought - I have been wandering around in
circles.
He took his compass out of a pocket, damning the moment he
had given a wrong turn. Holding it carefully in his left
hand, he used the fingerless glove in his right hand to wipe
the muck covering the glass. It was a little difficult,
since he was also holding his flashlight in his armpit, but
he managed. He stared at it for two seconds before his gaze
wandered around the darkened woods for an aeon and he had to
force himself to stare at the useless instrument again. He
was sure that fifteen minutes ago it was indicating a
different north.
That was impossible, of course. Even an inexperienced
indoorsman such as he knew that. He must have just taken a
wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the same place. Maybe
when he thought he heard something behind him and stumbled
when he looked back.
Surely it would be easier to judge the direction if his
hands weren't shaking as much. The compass would be a far
simpler instrument to manipulate if he could just keep his
eyes on it instead of peeking at the shadows for predators
that didn't inhabit this area. And everything would be just
a damned lot simpler if he hadn't taken the stupid
assignment or had been wise enough to listen to the towns
folk and make the shots earlier.
But no, he wanted to have some interesting lighting: the sun
setting behind the strange rock apparatus was sure to catch
the eye of some major newspaper from out of town, and then
he would be on his own! Up and away, on to bigger things
than those which he could find in a small town newspaper in
backward Arkham.
Dan muttered a curse and threw his compass into his
backpack. If the damn gadget wasn't going to be useful it
might as well stay out of the way. He gazed at the sky for
a few minutes, trying to put his non-existent knowledge of
astronomy to good use. If the moon was that high in the sky
and those shadows over there in the horizon were the hills
he had seen, then that little bright thing had to be the
something-or-other that sailors used to guide themselves and
south should be _that_ way.
Absolutely. He didn't even know the name of the blasted
starts; much less he was going to guide himself by them.
Heaving a resigned sigh, Dan sat at the foot of the
claw-like monolith and tried to think straight. His mind
refused to just sit tight and kept running around in
circles, smacking into walls every now and then. Never
mind you, Dan decided, I'm going to get out of here whether
the forest wants it or not.
He took another long, hard look at the compass. Sure
enough, the needle pointed towards him, past the monument
and back into the hills. Just as it had when he had started
out of here countless hours ago. Dan decided that he needed
a plan. He gathered all his wandering thoughts for a
conference. All but one, that is, one that just kept
staring out the window and pointing at something nasty
coming up the road that nobody else could see. Fair enough:
he was allowed to be scared to be in here.
After thinking for some time, Daniel picked up his backpack,
faced straight south and went back into the woods, his
splitting headache just a step or two behind him. He was
using his machete to mark the trees he passed, a brilliant
plan that he should have thought the first time around.
Cruising along in a straight line, Dan chopped those
branches that were closer to where he was going to pass.
That way, if he for some reason turned and stumbled from his
southbound vector, it would be easy to set the correct cours
e again by just finding the original path. Yes indeed, this
plan was surely going to work.
At least he thought that until his machete got stuck in a
branch. Dan tried to wrestle it free, but the branch
whipped out of reach and took his tool with it. Than just
stared at it while another two branches hurtled towards him,
one grabbing him by the waist and the other one getting hold
of an arm. His flashlight fell into the ground,
illuminating something like a goat's feet. However, what
Dan really noticed was the scores of sharp, dirty teeth that
were rushing to meet him. A moment before the thing's mouth
embraced him; Dan finally found the wind to scream.
The scream didn't last long.
INTRODUCTION
============
This scenario was originally created to bring some new
investigators into a running campaign of Walker in the
Wastes. It deals with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, an
old Mi-Go mining area and experimental breeding ground and a
town that may just convince the investigators that they are
all cultists.
While it is certainly short and rather straightforward this
scenario could prove to be deadly for your players, so
exercise caution when deciding which items to include. It
is also a scenario that I'm sure will work best with
experienced players. Since the strange happenings in the
forest near Woods Haven would be easier to investigate using
the technology from the 1990s, it is suggested that this
scenario be played only in the 1920s.
A word: I'm not aware if there are any areas like the one
I've described near Boston. The only reason I set there was
because my players were in the area and I needed a small
scenario set there. In any case, it's generic enough that
it can be moved to the wooded area of your choice.
BACKGROUND
==========
That old mining town
--------------------
Indeed, the Mi-Go are here. They are looking for those
strange minerals that they can't find anywhere else but in
our planet, located on those strange dimensions that overlap
with ours.
Three thousand years ago - give or take a year - a group of
Mi-Go found a large amount of said minerals in the small
woods near what would afterwards become Woods Haven.
Since proper exploitation of the area could take them years,
the Mi-Go set into transforming the area into something a
little more suitable to their purposes. Transportation was
accomplished using their gate technology. The Mi-Go set a
gate squarely in the center of the mining area and a simple
magnetic perimeter (for their standards), and there they
operated for years.
Eventually the zone started drying down. The Fungi,
however, had further plans for the area.
The experiment
--------------
The Mi-Go can't normally reproduce on Earth, since Earth's
gravity would crush the larvae. Fungi scientists decided to
experiment altering the gravitational field in a small area
and a team-entity of five Fungi set to the task.
When they were finished, the scientists had set five
magnetic pilons in a circle of 1-kilometer radius around the
central area where the gate had stood. In the gate's place
now was a concentrator which would amplify the energy from
the other pilons and make it flow in a cycle.
The pilons had been created with their special metals
brought to this dimension, so that the energy they generated
worked not only in our plane of existence but it also
reached through the dimensions and altered the materials
present there too. When activated, the area would become an
environment much better for Mi-Go than the one they had set
up for themselves in our moon.
At unison the Fungi scientists carved the last rune into the
stone and the soldiers sacrificed the last worker whose life
energy would serve to feed the stone batteries. A small,
low hum perceptible only to the Mi-Go started coming from
the rocks.
And then something went wrong. One of the counterparts for
the extradimensional pilons exploded, its shockwave was felt
in our plane. The energy balance around the pilons suddenly
shifted and a great gravitational push crushed the
unsuspecting Mi-Go at the site. At the same time, an energy
wave flowed from the central hub towards the satellites,
altering or killing any living thing in its path.
And then it was quiet.
Fungi scientists who weren't at the site concluded later
through repeated simulations of the experiment that
something must have interfered with the flow of energy on
one other dimensions and unbalanced the hub, a problem that
echoed in the pilons. With typical Mi-Go rationale they
decided that the experiment could be affected by outside
sources and was unpredictable by nature. Mi-Go don't like
random, unpredictable results, and they decided to abandon
the area for good, leaving behind the structure they had
built.
For years the pilons were silent. But slowly the vegetation
started growing again, first some specks of grass, then a
few bushes, then trees started sprouting, their seeds
carried on birds droppings and by the wind. Its roots
reached deep into the soil and far into the area. Sooner or
later they were bound to collide with the bases of what the
Fungi had left. The malfunctioning Mi-Go apparatus started
slowly to drain the life energy from the area and brought
itself to life again.
The Ceremony
------------
Move forward a little over two thousand years. It's 1862.
Sol Goodman, who has spent most of his 47 years of life
looking into the occult, believes that he finally has
something that will work. He found a scroll with a
description of how to summon the Life-Giving Mother, whose
milk shall make him immortal.
Any good occultist knows that a place of power greatly
improves the chance of any given spell working, and Sol has
got just the right place. He mounts his horse and rides
north of Boston, towards the place that he found by accident
so many years ago. He still shivers remembering the hideous
shape of the trees, how the branches embraced each other and
how vines ran from branch to branch, mixing the whole forest
into one pulsing, twisted organism.
He slows his pace as he enters the normal area of the woods,
that section where he can still he the sky. His horse feels
something already and making him go forward is getting
harder and harder. The bag he carries with him has started
twitching again. Sol dismounts and ties his mount to a
tree. He'll be back soon, back a new, immortal man.
Carefully he walks forward, careful of the treacherous roots
and low branches, dragging his sack behind him. He knows
that he is nearing the area where it begins. He can feel it
in the back of his head, in the marrow of his bones.
Fearlessly he enters the place where the trees start
twisting into unrecognizable shapes. Surefooted, he strolls
the distance towards the center of the cancer that has been
deforming the woods. He knows that much now, at least: the
structure in the clearing has been causing the damage for
God knows how long.
But that doesn't concern him as he enters the clearing, his
twitching, shrieking package behind him. Sol doesn't pay
attention to it as he carefully unfolds the parchment and
starts reciting the words in Latin, half of which he doesn't
understand. He puts aside the throbbing in his temples
while he chants, and he manages to ignore the yelling until
it's time to take his cargo out to continue with the
ceremony.
Sol removes the newborn baby and, for lack of a better
place, balances him on the five-pronged thing in the center.
He recites the dedication facing his makeshift altar and
digs his filthy nails into the child's neck, the soft flesh
parting before him as easily as if he was using an obsidian
knife. The little creature gurgles and kicks aimlessly as
Sol lifts it above his head, letting the blood stream over
into his face. Iä, Iä, Shub-Niggurath - he chants - libera
me de morte aeterna. A clamor of drums inside his head, he
brings the little boy down before the life finishes flowing
out of him and swiftly bites into the throat.
His knees fail him; the strength leaves his arm. The
lifeless lump he was lifting falls soundlessly to the
ground. Sol's head is spinning, his gaze unable to focus on
just one thing. And then he sees the baby.
Oh my God - he thinks, sobering up - what in Hell have I
done?
God doesn't answer. Sol covers his bloodied face in his
hands and is about to start weeping when he feels the
presence. He opens his eyes and sees the blasphemous thing
in front of him, all drooling mouths and cloven hoofs and
dripping udders.
She has come.
Sol throws himself forward, reaching towards one of the
glistening nipples. He will drink from her milk. He will
live forever.
WOODS HAVEN
===========
The Disappearance
-----------------
Woods Haven is a small farm town twenty miles north of
Boston. Its population as of 1929 is 39 people and growing.
The town is usually quite calm: people there mind their own
business and don't meddle with anybody's affairs. And if
people like to go into the woods, well, they warn them. If
they don't listen then it's none of their business.
In January, 1928, a young photographer from Arkham named
Daniel Matheson came to Woods Haven to look into a story
about an old apparatus hidden in the woods. The local
folks - who know that there is something wrong with that
forest - tried to warn Daniel against going there. But he
just wouldn't listen to them, too proud and cocky to pay
attention to old fairy tales.
Daniel left his horse in the care of a farmer called Elijah
Jackson, walked into the forest and was never seen again.
The towns folk , who had lived in awe of the forest all
their lives, decided that nothing more could be gained by
losing some policemen to the thing in the woods. When the
police came by asking about Daniel, they all told them that
Daniel had come out of the forest, taken his horse and rode
back to Boston.
The police didn't ask any more questions.
In April 1928 Robert Mathias inherited a small plot of land
in Woods Haven from a relative. Old Elijah Jackson was
chosen to let Mathias know about the thing in the woods, a
thing that walks amidst the trees and howls in the wind.
Mathias had spent some time living in Canada, and the
stories they told him sounded to him a lot like the Wendigo
myth. He wasn't a superstitious man, so he decided to spend
a night in the woods to prove that it was just an old folk's
tale. Luckily for him he found the southernmost Mi-Go pilon
and the night caught him examining it. Thus he was near the
edge of the creature's influence area when it came at him.
Mathias ran screaming back to town and barely made it back
alive.
The next day he went to the Boston Courier and told his
story to a reporter names Harrison Ligotti. Mathias was
sure that the thing that had chased him was the same thing
that had killed Matheson and that the whole town was
covering up the murder. The Boston Courier was having a
slow week and Ligotti humored him by publishing a small note
about the Wendigo myth and mentioning Matheson as the
source.
And there the article lies waiting to be found by the
investigators.
The Forest Today
----------------
The forest north of Woods Haven covers an area of roughly
three by four miles. However, walking from the town about a
mile into it the visitor will notice strange changes in the
configuration of the trees: everything starts twisting and
decaying, as if it was just about to die. The branches mix
above the trees in a way that makes judging where the sun is
a tricky proposition, even for those with experience in
guiding themselves in the outdoors, and the grass has a
mush-like substance like the area had just flooded.
The cause is the Mi-Go machinery, discarded by its creators
ages ago but still active. Nearly five hundred years after
being abandoned, the device started draining energy from the
plant life around it. It turned itself back on after some
years, but due to its malfunction it has been leaking its
own energy into the forest for the past two thousand years.
This unwanted energy has slowly poisoned the area around the
pilons, twisting the forest into the shape that the locals
fear so much.
The apparatus is made of five pilons placed in a star shape
around a central hub. Each pilon is about 5-feet high and
2-feet in diameter. The central hub consists of a 5-feet
base from which sprout five arms, each one pointing towards
a pilon. Every piece of machinery is covered in Mi-Go
runes.
This machine has also altered the state of the forest in a
way the Mi-Go didn't expect. When one of the pilons tore
through the dimensions another plane crashed into ours. Now
the properties of the whole area are in between those of our
world and the ones of that unwanted plane. Its very nature
doesn't allow photographic cameras to work and will make
using Geiger counters and other such devices difficult,
since particles can escape towards other plane as easily as
they stay in ours.
The Magnetic Fields
-------------------
The machine being on has also had a side effect undesirable
for humans: there are magnetic fields flowing between the
pilons and the hub that are harmful to human life, and any
human that spends too much time in them is bound to be
affected. While in this area, humans feel a throbbing in
their heads that intensifies by each hour they spend there.
This has both a disorienting effect and lowers the mental
capabilities of those affected.
These strong magnetic tides affect also any machinery that
had iron in it, including watches and (most obviously)
compasses. Within the contaminated area a compass will
always point towards the nearest pilon, and when between
pilons it will turn around wildly.
For every hour a person spends in the area of effect of the
magnetic fields - which is also the tainted section of the
forest (indicated by a darker green on the map) - they must
make a check against their power. If they fail, the
apparatus will drain 1d4 magic points from them. People who
reach 0 magic points will faint and will be at the mercy of
the inhabitant of the forest.
The Inhabitant
--------------
One of the worst dangers waiting for unwary investigators is
Sol Goodman, to whom the milk of Shub-Niggurath has indeed
granted eternal life. Unfortunately for him it also turned
him into a Dark Young who is now bound to the forest. The
creature can't leave the area of influence of the Mi-Go
machine, which bound him to the area while he was
transforming. This and the dim recollection of his lost
humanity enrages the Dark Young, who vents its anger on
anyone who trespasses its territory.
The Dark Young is active through both day and night.
However, it is able to feel its prey much better after dark,
when the sun's energy isn't interfering with the flow.
During the day, a fumbled group luck roll will make the
investigators run into it. However, as soon as the night
falls it will start feeling the magnetic tides for
interruptions which it will investigate, and will track its
prey through them like a shark tracks a moving victim.
Getting the Investigators Involved
----------------------------------
The most obvious way to get the investigators involved is
through the article in the Boston Courier. Other
possibilities include hiring them to look into Matheson's
disappearance or writing an article about how a myth has
traveled from Canada to the United States. I'll leave that
to the imagination of the Keeper. If you're running Walker
in the Wastes, however, the obvious link is the mention of
the Wendigo. This should attract your investigators like
moths to a flame.
If they contact Mr. Harrison Ligotti, he will certainly
remember writing the article. He will insist, however, that
the investigators don't pay it a lot of attention. It's
just the sort of stuff that gets published when you have
nothing else to run.
A trip to Woods Haven itself will prove fruitless unless
they speak with Robert Mathias, since the rest of the town
is hell-bent in keeping outsiders from knowing what's going
on in the forest.
Mathias has been turning into a paranoid convinced that the
whole town is against him for revealing their secret, and
will talk with the investigators if they follow his paranoid
talk about the Wendigo and the town that worships it. He is
in fact convinced of this and believes that the only reason
why he is still alive is because his name got published in
that newspaper article a year ago. In reality the rest of
the town is as afraid of the creature as Mathias is, but he
believes it so strongly that he may manage to convince the
investigators.
Serious cross-examination of the townsfolk is bound to
detect some inconsistencies in their stories of what
happened with Daniel Matheson. This is certainly explainable
as muddled memories but it should serve to unnerve the
investigators.
Investigating the Magnetic Fields
---------------------------------
Once they have their first encounter with the magnetic
fields - and if they don't encounter the prowling Dark
Young - the investigators are likely to want to know what
those magnetic fields are there for.
They have two main options: they can look for a physics
professor at the nearby MIT or they could take the drive
towards the good old Miskatonic University. In both
universities they will be met with disbelief and told that
magnetic fields that large can't be stable. However, Lazlo
Berenger at M.U. may prove of help.
If they insist on how a theoretic magnetic field created by
such machinery would function, he will tell them that
magnetic impulses between two magnets tend to flow as
waves. Normally the energy would flow on a somewhat
straight line from one pilon to another, represented on the
illustration by the reddish lines. However, assuming that
energy flow from pilon 1 flows towards pilon 2, the central
hub will likely attract it. If it is not absorbed by the
hub and continues until it reaches pilon 2, it will create a
curve. The same would be true about pilons 2-3, 3-4, 4-5,
and 5-1. Berenger will then scribble on the back of a
napkin the diagram above, to explain the way it would work.
This will form a shape that is much like a hand-drawn elder
sign.
The Symbol
----------
While this may not be the way it is really working, the
purpose of the image is to give experienced investigators
the idea that the magnetic field might be protecting
something either from coming in or from going out.
If they don't know anything about the Mythos, anthropology
personnel around Miskatonic Campus may tell them that the
five-pointed star has traditionally been a symbol of
warding and protection, usually carved on items to protect
them from being stolen by demons. It was also drawn on the
floor when summoning an extra-planar creature, who would
then be bound by its limits until dismissed by the summoner.
Investigating the Woods
-----------------------
If the investigators wish to dig into myths surrounding the
woods north of Woods Haven, they may run into some, with
luck, asking around in Boston. While there isn't any
written story over the Ligotti article, old men will
remember stories told about one Sol Goodman who wasn't
exactly well in the head. If convinced that the
investigators really wish to hear the story and won't make
fun of them, they'll tell them that Sol was a warlock who is
suspected with having kidnapped the newborn Rogers's baby
with some unholy purpose and fled. Some people went looking
for him and finally found a lead from a farmer who had just
established himself into what was to become Woods Haven.
The posse went into the forest to get Sol back and hopefully
rescue the kid but they never came back.
Destroying the Dark Young
-------------------------
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and such is the
case with the Dark Young. The main options that the
investigators are likely to explore is, of course,
firepower. But there are subtler ways to accomplish the
same goal.
While the investigators don't know that the creature is
bound to the land and is one with the Mi-Go machine, a
successful idea roll may suggest that. Destroying the
machine would make the forest slowly return to normal,
slowly killing the Dark Young in the process.
This, however, must be done carefully. The hub must be
dynamited first or destroying one of the pilons would upset
the already delicate balance and cause a repetition of the
original accident, which the investigators would be lucky if
they survive.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
============
For more information on the Mi-Go, the only book I can think
of right now is Pagan Publishing's Delta Green Eyes Only
Volume 1: Machinations of the Mi-Go. It's a 52-page booklet
that deals with all you wanted to know about the Mi-Go but
had your brain put into a metallic jar before asking.
The short Latin phrase I lifted from a text by Ricardo
Christe, who in turn had taken it from Faurè's Requiem (I
think).
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