Sylean Werewolf in Khash

Since it’s approaching the end of October, the players in my Traveller game wanted a horror/spooky themed scenario, based around the idea of a haunted house. The Travellers were at a station which was mostly abandoned, so it seemed a suitable place to do it.

There would be a “haunted house experience”, with the Travellers given a chance to spend the night at in a haunted hotel. Dinner and scares would be provided as part of the cost.

But what did I want to run? I decided to go for a two parter – start with a tourist event, and end with a real event. The station was an O’Neill cylinder, and the destination hotel would be next to a river in an abandoned part of the ‘garden’ area of the station.

The tourist story was that several dozen guests and staff were killed by a chemical leak about 100 years ago. The chemicals caused them to go insane, and then those who hadn’t been murdered by others eventually died from the chemicals. The place was now haunted by the psionic residue from the event.

There would be a dinner, some stories about the event, and a chance to mingle with other tourists. The hotel would have a number of holographic projectors and hidden speakers for creating special effects. It also had a psionic amplifier built into the structure of the building (added by the tourist operators) to cause some of the necessary illusions and make the guests scared.

The psionic device was a possibly illegal alien machine that the events company had obtained from somewhere.

There would then be a Vargr hiding out in the hotel, who was being chased down by some gang members who he owned money to. So there would be an attack on the hotel after dinner.

I originally started by trying to draw a map of the hotel (using Dungeondraft), but in the end gave up. It would be a lot of work, and probably not needed. Having to draw a multi-story hotel, with all the guest bedrooms and things wasn’t something I wanted to spend time doing.

In the end I went for a more logical map. Each area in the hotel was drawn as a flow chart, with boxes describing each area, and lines showing where the connections were. Individual rooms weren’t needed, just clusters of rooms. Players would be able to see where everything (and everyone) was, without needing square by square accuracy.

For the start of the scenario, I provided an advertising poster for the event (AI is quite good at coming up with these), and gave the Travellers a bit of the background. The players decided that they wanted their characters to dress up for the occasion, so they all came up with fancy dress options. One of them decided to use an alien cosplay kit to go as a werewolf/Vargr. This was an amusing coincidence, given that there would be a real Vargr involved.

Since there would be a gun battle, I wanted to know who was taking weapons and who wasn’t. Since Dmity’s player wasn’t able to make it, I got to decide that he was taking a revolver as part of his pirate costume. Gan was dressing up as an admiral, so got to carry Irian’s sword as part of his costume. Irian just took a dagger. I had the NPC Nya go with them, so she took a small laster pistol as part of her costume.

They arrived at the hotel, and I gave each Traveller a chance at a recon check to notice something potentially useful about the place. Only one Traveller (Dimitri) noticed anything. I’d made up a 1D6 roll table with a set of details, so the plan had been they’d get some random bits of knowledge that might come in useful later. As it was, they didn’t get much.

They were received by Charlie, the event rep who welcomed them and was very happy that they’d chosen to dress up. She had excessive make-up on, mostly because the portrait I was using (from a set of Cyberpunk portraits/tokens) was drawn that way. There were three other guests, two staff, and a couple of serving robots.

For the original phase, they got to randomly (more roll tables) experience something odd. A cold breeze, footsteps, a flicker of something in the mirror.

Charlie was carrying around a tablet, which had her event queue on it, and info about what was planned. This had prompted to add a new type of software to my Foundry system – “data”. This has no rules effect, it just has a description, and currently a from/to field for email data. With a way to display the content to the chat, it means I can have data cards, emails and other things as equipment items in the game. It’s quite easy to add a button to the data content to copy it into a character’s own equipment list.

This might also be useful for the Deathstation adventure (part of the Traveller Stater Pack), so I might revisit the design of that.

I thought one of them might try to access her tablet, so put some extra things on it, but they didn’t.

There was some socialising, then dinner. The players seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. and at the end of dinner there was a scream from upstairs.

Gan went out to investigate, and met Sasha one of the staff members running down the stairs, claiming that Nashu had attacked her. But Nashu was still sitting in the dining room (in her Vargr/werewolf costume).

They headed upstairs, and found signs of habitation in the store room. Then they ran into the Vargr.

Vargrs do exist in Milieu Zero, though they are rare. Mostly they are descended from those who were part of the Second Imperium before it collapsed, so aren’t connected to main Vargr society.

The Vargr introduces himself as Ekhaghgaen, and apologises for attacking the woman. They both startled each other. He is hiding here from some gang members who he owes rather a lot of money to.

It is around now that there is the sound of barking and growling from downstairs, and the smashing of glass. This is quickly followed by screams. Irian rushes downstairs, and meets Nya coming up – some large dogs have broken into the hotel, and are killing the other guests.

And so there is a battle against killer dogs trying to make their way by the stairs. Irian bravely tries to fend them off with her sword, but is badly injured in the fight. The few guns they have though are enough to fend them off. But then there is shouting of people, and gunfire. Someone calls out “Where are you doggy?” It’s the gang members looking for Ekhaghgaen and anyone who stands in their way.

There is a gun fight on the stairs, but the gang members out-gun the Travellers. Dmitry is wounded, and the Travellers retreat backwards up the stairs. It also seems that the attackers are blocking radio transmissions.

Charlie mentions to Nashu that there are computers in the room at the end of the corridor which are wired into the network, so they head there to call the local security forces.

In the same room, there is a strange electronic machine, which gives Nashu a strange feeling. Staring at it, she gets an intuitive understanding of it, tweaking it to cause fear and paranoia in those at the bottom of the stairs.

There is more barking and gunfire, as the dogs and gang members turn on each other.

Eventually the security forces arrive, and the wounded are patched up. Many of the guests are dead, but the wounded ones are carted off to the station hospital. The Travellers have survived their night of terror, and now seem to have a Vargr trailing along with them. Apparently he is trying to get a ship out to Fornast sector, in an attempt to find his mate who disappeared out that way a year ago.

This was a longish session, with two very different parts to it. Roleplaying and socialising, followed by bloodthirsty combat. The players seemed to enjoy it, and nobody died. The cleanup will happen next session. They potentially have another NPC who could tag along at least for a bit – it’s up to them whether they want to give the Vargr a lift.