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Monday 25 March 2013

The Tomb

Reading through the various Lovecraft tales recently has started to spark some ideas for potential side adventures, or plot points, so I thought I'd start to log them here in case they are of any use to others. We'll be starting with the 1922 short story, The Tomb. This story seems like a fairly simple one to weave into a WW2 setting as it only involves having a location...

In the original story a daydreamer called Jervas Dudley discovers a locked mausoleum near a ruined mansion.  Sleeping near the tomb eventually ends up with him being committed as no-one believes the various events that happen to him.

There are two obvious uses for this one:

1) The players accidentally sleep near a similar mausoleum (or similarly twisted location) and start to encounter odd situations that others do not.

2) The players are sent to investigate a spate of allied soldiers going insane while camped near a ruined castle or mansion.

Quite what the players or soldiers encounter or dream is entirely up to you; there could be something important that happened in the area that affects the current mission, or an important artifact like Dudley's key that need to be unearthed.

In the story Jervas finds a figurine that he believes looks very like him, he also finds a coffin with his name on. If you want to start twisting your player's minds you could have them find something with their name or likeness on as well; for example if you're using option 2 above, you could have the soldiers believe they have been trapped in the castle cellar after a cave in that killed most of the inhabitants. If the  investigators uncover the cellar, the names of all the soldiers could be carved into the walls... but no way for the soldiers to have ever actually found their way in to carve them.

 

 

 

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