A 1950’s campaign of fear, incongruity, and borderline madness.

The Sleepers of the late fifties and early sixties had to work damn hard to make the era seem so boring. In those years, the Occult Underground wasn’t so much a subculture as it was another dimension accessed by crazies and unfortunates. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A dimension we will call, for want of a better name, the Twilight Zone.

The PCs are 1950s Sleepers, going around to small towns and cleaning up the occasional occult spillage. Sometimes they’ll have to talk, sometimes they’ll break out the spells, and sometimes they’ll have to go for their guns. Whatever they find, it will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

(Warning: These scenarios contain spoilers for various Twilight Zone episodes.)

Living Doll

Talky Tina is a doll that can do anything. The trouble is, her owner has become very attached to her after her stepfather died and her mother was sent to the asylum. An orphan girl who talks to her doll is a natural target for bullies, but bad things seem to be happening to the people who make fun of little Christine, especially if Talky Tina is within earshot. One rumor leads to another, and sooner or later someone in the Sleepers finds out. A powerful clockwork with a mind of its own is in the posession of a child, and who knows what the worst that could happen is.

The funny thing about Talky Tina- aside from the fact that she’s almost indestructible, makes death threats in the same sweet voice that she professes her love for Christine, and can do anything from talking to walking to murder- is that she is not evil. She doesn’t particularly enjoy killing, nor does she do it randomly to those she hasn’t judged to be deserving. She terrorizes people if they hurt her owner, just as she was built to do. If asked about the death of her owner’s stepfather, she will maintain it was self-defense, as the man was trying to destroy her.

Talky Tina’s reign of terror can be stopped in one of several ways. First talk to the creepy doll. She’s perfectly rational, and if she can be convinced that she’s doing more harm than good to Christine through her actions, she will likely stop. (She can’t be talked to death though, ala Star Trek.) Second, talk to Christine. You can either convince her to tell her doll not to hurt people (which Tina will grudgingly obey) or to give the doll away- but unless she gives it to you, you’ll just have the same problem all over with Tina protecting another child. If you can’t be bothered to try diplomacy you can try to break the damn thing, but Tina is very resilient. She could be taken apart by a good Mechanomancer, though those aren’t always easy to find. The most sinister option is for the PCs to attack little Christine. Tina will do anything to protect her mistress, including taking wounds meant for her. If you give her enough wounds this way, she’ll die. Of course, to take this option you’d have to be the kind of heartless bastard who would actually shoot at an innocent defenseless orphan child…

Jess-BelleIt’s A Good LifeShowdown With Rance McGrew

A TV producer has gotten fed up with the star of a popular western, who has been insisting that he lose regularly to famous outlaws on his show. A loser hero is no way to draw in the viewers, so they hired a new guy. Soon enough, the same thing happened. And then it spread- more and more western stars were declining to win against any real life outlaws. What’s going on?

What’s going on is that a group of demons have taken to scaring actors. They say they’re the demons of Jesse James and Billy the Kid and Sam Star and various members of the Clanton gang, which may or may not be the truth. Whatever the case may be, they’re taking over the bodies of bad-guy actors, casting illusions around the stars to suggest they’ve been transported to the real old west, and challenging them to gunfights. When the stars back down, the demons make them abide by their rules if they don’t want to get shot, and that includes keeping up respect for outlaws.

But now they’ve come across an actor they can’t intimidate- he’s actually good with a gun, and has won quick-draw contests in real life. They can’t let him get away with this, of course, and have taken over the bodies of his villain costars during filming, and armed themselves with real guns. So unless the Sleepers do something, there’s going to be a real shoot-out with demons on live TV.

Little Girl Lost

A Sleeper with contacts in the police office has just gotten a terrifying call- a little girl has vanished from under her bed, heard clearly but nowhere to be found. When they go to investigate, they find a back portion of the wall has temporarily opened up, leading to a horrifying Otherspace. What kind of bastard would take a helpless child into a Room of Renunciation? Agents of the Room of Open Eyes, who bend and break the rules of perspective and the natural world in flashy ways until their subject ceases to think in the conventional way. Sometimes this produces great artists and scientists who refuse to be limited by traditional ways of thinking. And sometimes this produces gibbering lunatics.

One missing child isn’t something that would concern the Sleepers. But the appearance of a new Room, especially one as horrifying as this, needs to be investigated. And if possible, you might as well save the kid.