Miss
Sheridan’s Dreams...
While
undergoing the party’s experimental process, Elsa is quite willing to go over
the substance of her visions. It boils down to this:
Mercurians:
“They have a language and call
themselves, as nearly as we can express the name, ‘Wooptar’. Their height, or
rather, their length, is approximately 14 inches. They have six legs, on which
they travel with great velocity; large, round eyes and short, sharp tails,
which they use with remarkable skill as weapons in combat. Their skin is of a
tough, heat-resisting substance and changes colour like the chameleon.”
Venusian:
“The Martian is a small-bodied,
large-headed, hairless creature, with two long arms and two long legs. They
have 10 fingers on each hand, but only one toe on each foot. Their hearing is
tuned to the keenest pitch and their sight is extremely sensitive, but their
sense of smell and taste is almost nil. Their 20 fingers serve to receive and
transmit radio messages which are made intelligible by their keen sense of
touch.”
Jupiterians:
“25ft-long creatures which slither
around with heads the size of our own attached without a neck to their slippery
bodies...four pairs of short, clawed legs, rudimentary eyes and small fishlike
mouths which they use to eat lice from off each other.”
Saturnians:
“The Swimps of Saturn are similar in
structure to some of our own tropical fish, but of a distinctly higher mental
state. Their eyes can see for miles and small, hand-shaped appendages are found
on either side of their heads.”
Uranians:
“Six feet tall with grey,
elephant-like skin, they have enormous bald heads with one eye in the front and
one in the back, one ear, shaped like a megaphone, directly under one eye and
an abnormally long nose under the other. They have four octopus-like arms, one
in the front, one in the back, and one on either side of their round,
trunk-like bodies. They travel around breaking all speed records, on wheels
that grow under their bodies.”
Neptunians:
Neptune is inhabited by by beings
which are all face and who live in great shells hanging down from the ice crust
that covers the planet. They don’t eat but live off the fat of their own plumpy
selves until they are consumed. As they are very plump, this usually takes
about 165 Earth years.”
The
final element of Miss Sheridan’s visionary view of the solar system is the
mysterious planet “Herolit”. According to her dreams, it orbits the sun on the
same trajectory as the Earth, but on the opposite side of the star. It is the
home of a completely Utopian society with an ideal world government overseeing the three continental landmasses and
they are far superior – both mentally and morally – than the Earthlings. They
are largely vegetarian, treating their few remaining horses and cows with great
reverence.
*****
The
party members may be as scathing and unaccepting of all this as they like;
strangely though, Elsa seems convinced that what she’s saying is the truth: Psychology Rolls reveal that, whatever
the origin of this material, she believes it to be real.
Provide
the party with the following image as a reference:
Assuming
that the experiment which the Investigators concoct takes place in a controlled
environment away from Elsa’s apartment, the results will be a total negative –
no dreams; no astral travelling; nada.
And things will stay this way all the while that Elsa doesn’t sleep at home. If
on the other hand the group feels that Elsa should be tested in her home
environment and they proceed accordingly, jump ahead to the next section “Elsa
Sleeps at Home”.
Disappointed
by a non-result, Elsa offers to give it another try, if the party thinks that
it’s warranted. As long as Elsa stays outside of her apartment however, the
results will be the same. At some point the party should agree to call it quits
and let Dr. Windrush know that they’ve reached a consensus about Miss
Sheridan’s dream travels. If they telephone the ASPR, Windrush agrees to listen
to their findings and schedules an appointment the following day at his offices
in the early afternoon. Regardless of who makes the call, they will notice that
the good doctor seems enormously pleased with their discoveries.
Later
that evening the group receives an excited telephone call from Elsa: overnight
she had another experience. She claims that she visited Uranus once more and
that she obtained a clearer view of the native beings of that world, although
now, she feels that they aren’t indigenous to that planet at all, but rather
are explorers undertaking a serious mission there. She says that she got the
wheels thing all mixed-about and that she miscounted the eyes before. Further,
she claims that when she awoke her whole room was glowing with a strange light
that gradually faded away. She begs the team to try their experiment again, but
perhaps they could test her at her own place: maybe, she says, she needs
familiar surroundings in order to dream properly.
Let
the party sort this out: if they agree to examine the girl at her home they can
do so that night and still make their appointment with Windrush with a result -
either positive or negative – the next day. Otherwise, they can draw a line
under the proceedings and end it there. In the latter event, Elsa will be
bitterly disappointed, but will understand. Of course, if a romantic
relationship has been established with a party member, they may decide to
perform the experiment at Elsa’s place, with whomsoever of the party agrees to
help out. There are plenty of opportunities in this case to cause ructions and
tension within the group.
Elsa
Sleeps at Home...
There
are two ways that this can come about. First, if the party have decided to tell
Windrush that Elsa’s stories are nonsense, regardless of Elsa calling to claim
subsequent success, then they will receive an horrid shock: the late news of
the following day will headline a terrible murder. Elsa’s horribly mutilated
body has been found in her apartment under mysterious circumstances. If they
choose to try the experiment one last time, but at Elsa’s home, they will be in
a position to see what takes place and possibly save her life.
Elsa
lives in a – frankly – squalid part of town, on the ground floor in an
apartment block, at the end of a cul-de-sac,
near an elevated train line. The basement is rented warehouse space for a
manufacturing concern of some kind, with warehouse doors at the bottom of a
ramp onto the street. The apartment consists of a combined kitchen and dining
area, a bedroom, a bathroom and a large walk-in closet. The party may make
themselves at home, set up their experiment and let Elsa get on with it.
Before
going to sleep, she shows the party an amended sketch of her “Uranian
explorers” – any party members who have had dealings with the Great Race of
Yith, or who have read the Pnakotic
Manuscripts, should make a SAN Roll (1/1D4) upon viewing the following
image:
With
this revelation, the party may start to think that there is something to Elsa’s
dreaming after all...
Particularly
thorough Investigators may have queries about the apartment and the neighbours.
All they are able to discover is little more than what Elsa knows. In the
apartments upstairs live an elderly couple who rarely go out, while the loft at
the top of the building is occupied by a young man who, Elsa thinks, is
“something in the writing line, possibly a journalist” and often away for long
stretches, as he is at present. The basement of the building is used as storage
by some manufacturing business: Elsa has sometimes heard deliveries being made
after hours but what bothers her most are the pneumatic tubes which the
business installed for communication and which run across the outside of her
bedroom wall. Sometimes at night, she hears the thudding of the message
cylinders as they negotiate the bends and descend to the basement. Other than
this, the Investigators will note that the elevated train (or “El”) goes by at
the end of Elsa’s cul-de-sac, running
past her bedroom wall, and, between her home and the train-tracks is, a telegraph
wire. Whether all or any of these phenomena are the cause of her visions is up
to the Investigators to determine.
As
the experiment begins, it is necessary to determine who is where within the
flat. Propriety dictates that any male party members should not be in the
bedroom with Elsa (romantic leanings or not!); female Investigators will be
allowed to stay as observers in the bedroom without any trouble. Setting up
equipment will allow the group to gain some familiarity with the apartment’s
layout.
For
about an hour after Elsa goes to sleep, nothing of any note appears to take
place. Then, the party will need to make Spot
Hidden Rolls: those who succeed will note that a strange glow is beginning
to manifest about the apartment, concentrating like a shimmering mist about
certain locations. At first the glow is a faint purplish colour; then it
lightens to lilac and then violet. Finally, it becomes a colour which is simply
indescribable. In the kitchen, it clings to the stove and its flue pipes, the sink
and its pipes, the ice-box and the fire-ladder outside the window. In the
bedroom, the glow concentrates around the back fire-ladder, the telegraph
lines, the pneumatic pipes and, more faintly, the train tracks of the El: most
interestingly, these objects can be seen through
the walls of the darkened room, along with the glowing objects in the
kitchen. Curious Investigators will also trace this phenomenon to the pipes of
the bathroom, which form a tracery of glowing lines out to the rear of the
building. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the apartment become vague and hazy
– it is now possible to see clearly straight through them. Elsa begins to
mutter and moan, tossing her head on the pillow. Then things start to get really strange...
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