Re: [DL] Sure it's Evil, but what's it Do?

["R. Serena Wakefield" <raistw@gate.net>]

At 02:28 PM 2/8/00 -0600, you wrote:

>I've got this idea for something evil for my posse to confront, but I'm
>having trouble fleshing it out.  I hope you guys can help.  Potential very
>tiny spoilers ahead.

>Here's the deal.  News comes from someplace like Wyoming or Idaho that five
>priests in five different towns have been ritually slaughtered on the night
>of the 1st-half moon, ten weeks before a lunar eclipse.  All were killed the
>same way at roughly the same time.  The towns were each about a day's ride
>from each other.  If plotted on a map, the murder locations make a nice
>perfect pentagon.  

Oooh, at this point my players would already be scart out of their minds ...


>The problem is this: why are they doing it?  Sure, slaughter of the holy is
>fun, but they're obviously up to something more.  I figure there are three
>basic purposes of a pentagram (this is the Satanic type, BTW, vertical point
>pointing south): summoning something, imprisoning a summoned creature, and
>protecting those inside from evil things outside.  I don't think the third
>one seems appropriate, since killing priests to make a Satanic symbol
>doesn't go with the idea of protecting large swaths of land from encroaching
>evil.

Well, actually this COULD be the case ... if you've got either a really
ruthless villain trying to keep the manitou away from his plans (playing
into their hands all the while) ... or, even better, some truly MONSTROUS
evil lurking in the shadows that takes this kind of ritual to imprison.  I
mean, killing all those Blessed is really bad, but letting Cthulhu loose is
probably decidedly worse.

This gives the posse a real dilemma: when they find out what's going on, do
they let this guy keep slaughtering innocents (REAL heroic, that) or do
they stop him, with force if necessary, and find another means of doing it?

(To steal a riff from a computer game I won't mention, perhaps when the
fellows book calls for a "sacrifice of priests," it's not saying to
sacrifice them, but rather that those priests must make a sacrifice ...
say, a lock of hair from each of them, or a sacrifice of priestly vestments
or somesuch.)


>So, I ask you of the list, what could be so evil and so large and/or
>numerous as to require a state-sized, Blessed-blood-soaked pentagram to
>manifest in, and yet not be the Reckoners themselves?  And who would be up
>to something like this?  Could be a random cult, or the Mormons, or the
>Angels, or voodooists, or Aztecs, or Shriners, Masons, hucksters, Rebs,
>Yanks, the Red-Headed League, Thugees, a bunch of dumb kids with the
>Necronomicon, the French, Dr. Miguelito Loveless, anybody.

You forgot the Romulans.  Or the mind flayers.  >:D

How about some nutcase who THINKS he's all of the above depending on what
hour of the day it is, and leaves appropriate clues and trappings behind?
One murder scene is done up like Hermetic Magic, while at the next one
bystanders report seeing a little grey dude with big black eyes?  And of
course, the whole while it's just one perfectly ordinary fruit loop.  ^_^

-- 
R. Serena Wakefield (raistw@gate.net)
Visit Serena's RPG Dojo:  http://welcome.to/serenasdojo/