The Horror

by Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)

HTML by Will Franqui (wfranqui@nmsu.edu)

Here is something to scare, sicken and sadden your players with.

The apprentice tried to brush the chalk-dust from his clothes while the master inspected the circle. "Good work, but the next time, don't try to impress me with writing the names in enochian. Plain Hebrew is just fine. Now, fetch me my robes." While the apprentice scurried away, the mage prepared the altar. The red and grey candles were correctly positioned around the room, the Seal of Solomon placed on the altar, the mirror stood in the Triangle of Art. Good, soon the accursed one would suffer horribly for his treachery, the mage thought with glee.

"...and by the name Sabaoth, which Moses named and all the rivers turned into blood, and by the name Ashar Ehieh Oristone, which Moses named and all the rivers brought forth frogs, and they ascended into the house destroying all things, I hereby open your body for all the forces of Tartarus and the nethermost realms!" The mage triumphantly raised his fist against the old man he saw in the mirror. The man looked up, and for a moment their eyes met. Then the mirror cracked with a resounding sound and the candles around it blew out. The mage screamed curses at the universe and his enemy, his face red with anger and frustration. Suddenly he noticed a movement in the broken mirror. That's funny, he thought, my apprentice isn't in the room...

The apprentice was downstairs when he heard the scream. It was an inhuman, bestial sound, and most definitely his master! He dropped his laptop and ran up the stairs, two steps at a time. Halfway up the stair he felt an revolting odor and heard a female laugh inside the study. A feeling of absolute dread filled him. Summoning all his courage he ascended the rest of the stairs, each step slower than the last. Suddenly the door to the study began to open. The smell became unbearable. He only glanced at the door, seeing something that once may have been a human hand around the doorknob, and then he turned and ran.

Miriam Kraig was a renegade Verbena, who used her magick to remain young, beautiful and dangerous. She was also a borderline marauder, who arrogantly used magick as if nothing could happen. In her long and eventful life, she earned a living as a rogue, stealing tass and talismans, killing people (or other beings) and generally using her magick for fun and profit. She became more and more enthusiastic with horrible Life 4 effects, using them to scare and kill her enemies.

In her last fight she liberally used horrible Life 4 attacks against everyone, gaining considerable amounts of paradox. Finally she was defeated, and almost killed. In her last conscious moment she called upon her ally Abyss, who saved her. Abyss (Also known as Choronzon to the Order of Hermes, who only whisper about it) is a powerful and enigmatic spirit, inhabiting the great Abyss between the near and deep umbra. Miriam fell down a crack before her enemy's eyes, and disappeared into the umbra.

Miriam was in a coma, and charged with extreme amounts of paradox. Her powerful will to live struggled against her failing body and the dissolving enchantments she had made. The paradox began to seep out into the changeable deep umbra. Her own magick turned against her, helped by paradox and her pain. Her body became warped by the paradox, turning into horrible forms without end. Miriam awoke in the abyss transformed into the Horror.

The endless pain of her new existence drove the Horror completely insane in a few hours. It became a kind of lurker at the threshold, skulking around the gauntlet searching for a way out. If someone opens a portal in the wrong place it may escape. The forces of paradox are still strong in it, and in fact it can be regarded as a kind of paradox spirit. If someone gains paradox by damaging Life magick, it might appear for revenge (mistaking the mage for its original enemy).

The Horror does not have any true shape. It looks like a humanoid, constantly victim of painful and disgusting changes. In one moment it's a dried up husk, in the next bloated with pus running out from openings everywhere, in the next moment it is turned inside out and so on. The storyteller should be creative and gruesome. The only constant thing about it is her voice, which still is a low, seductive female voice filled with pain.

The only way the Horror has to relieve its pain is to give it to someone else, by warping its victims into horrible shapes. This will give the Horror a short moment of relief from the pain and transformations, but they will return in a moment. Thus the Horror is constantly seeking after life to destroy.

Typical Magick of the Horror:

Life 4: Constant horrible transformations of itself. Its eyes explode, its blood vessels turn inside out, its inner organs become liquid, its skeleton grows long thorns piercing its flesh, its skin dissolves or any other disgusting effect the storyteller can imagine. These effects do not impede the Horror anymore, since pain and transformation are the only constants of its existence now. Sometimes they even help it.

Life 3: It will not die due to its Life 4 magick, which in a way heals it. In the changing flesh of the Horror, only aggravated wounds will remain for long, and it might use vulgar magick to heal them. While the Horror really desires oblivion, its will to live is extremely strong (a la the Beast in vampires), and it will do anything necessary to survive.

Life 2: The Horror will transform any lower form of life it encounters into something like itself. These small horrors will of course die immediately, but their bodies remain twisted and warped. Insects turn into beautiful, living lattices of chitin, plants begin to bleed from screaming wounds and trees crack, only to reveal intestines. This lessens the pain of the Horror a little bit.

Life 1: It is always conscious of all life in the vicinity, and generally the Horror is malevolent against it. Every living being must be turned into pain and warped flesh.

The Horror (Formerly Miriam Kraig) 

STR-2  CHA-0  PER-2
DEX-3  MAN-0  INT-3
STA-2  APP-0  WIT-3
Talents: Alertness 3, Awareness 3, Brawl 2, Dodge 2, Expression 1, Intuition 2, Streetwise 4

Skills: Firearms 3, Stealth 2, Survival 2

Knowledges: Computer 1, Enigmas 1, Occult 3, Medicine 3

Spheres:

Backgrounds: Avatar 3, Allies 3, Arcane 2

Arete: 5

Willpower: 8

Up to the Spirit Page

Anders Main Page

Anders Sandberg / nv91-asa@nada.kth.se