Back From Beyond - Part II

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:

“He has a flat, pointed, shovel-like snout and an enormous belly, one phosphorous eye (made to serve in the dark) and two flat, webbed feet attached without legs to his pudgy body. Each adult is about two feet long.”

Martian:

“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:

Results – Expected and Otherwise...

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...

To be continued...