A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

In the world of Dark Conspiracy, threats come from all places, above and below. This tabloid article provides the Referee with an interlude for a party already on an investigation, or act as a trigger event for new potential Minion Hunters.

Inspired in part by the Ice Daemon adventure, Storm Warnings offers an opportunity to explore what becomes of the Dark Conspiracy world when it is abandoned by humanity.

The Facts

The Minion Hunters find themselves, for whatever reason, traveling through a remote region near a section of Outlaw – a place uncontrolled by any government or law enforcement. As is often the case during the era of the Great Depression, storms, such as the one the characters are about to find themselves in, can strike without notice. And this one, however, is perhaps the most intense any of the group has seen in all their lives.

  • As rain, thunder and lightening intensifies, a group of travellers find themselves seeking shelter in an abandoned road-side diner – Lou’s Kitchen. Upon arrival the group discovers that they are not alone, as others have also stopped at the lonely refuge.
  • All is not well in the diner, a two bodies, those of a courier and his guard (seemingly the first people to arrive at the location) are found. Upon investigation it seems that they have been killed by shocks of electricity.
  • Very quickly it seems as if the entire diner comes to life, and as the storm around them rages on, simple domestic items – an electric knife, blender etc. – start to attack them. Worse still, the power of the storm overwhelms the electrics in the traveller’s vehicles, rendering them unusable.
  • While trapped, it does seem that group is not alone, as in the distance, clearly seen between the flashes of lightening, are the lights of something – a cluster of buildings or an enclave maybe – in the nearby hills. Salvation?

Options

There are a number of reasons for the world suddenly being turned on its head.  Amongst these, some options are:

  • Freedom in many names – Just east, seemingly hidden the hills overlooking the diner, is the home of the Earls family. This group of survivalists have given up the comforts of the ‘modern’ world and have set themselves up a enclave in which to wait out the ‘end of the civilisation’. During the building of their homes and bunkers a number of self reliant, low maintenance generators were constructed along with a fairly advanced battery storage system stolen from an advanced biotech lab. What the survivalists did not know, was that the battery system is actually run by a trapped Electrogeist (see page 30 of the Dark Races sourcebook), which was being experimented on by the scientists. Outside the security of the lab and now with the raging electrical storm, the weakened Electrogeist had regained some of its ability to jump a portion of its power to nearby unprotected circuits (i.e. those of the diner’s), but is unable to fully escape. Angry at its captivity it is lashing out at those it thinks are responsible. Perhaps it can be bargained with? Or perhaps it needs to be destroyed. Whatever the plan, you know the Earls family are not going to take too kindly to any intrusion.
  • Demonstrations of light and power – The courier and his body guard were no simple messengers. Rather these two individual represented the interests of a empathic sorcerer – Malcolm Devlin – who has made his home in a small proto-dimension known has Tempest. Tempest is the home of the Storm Wraiths (see page 90 of the Dark Races sourcebook), and Delvin has found that the energy stored within Tempest allows him to achieve unimagined powers. However, the sorcerer’s experiments in Tempest has started to irritate the natives and they have begun to move against the intruder and rid their world of what they see is an ‘infection’. To survive this encounter, the Minion Hunters will need to team up with Devlin, working with a man who may well be insane, to find a safe way out of the proto-dimension before they reach a ‘shocking’ ending.
  • This ain’t Kansas anymore – Nothing is as it seems, as the Minion Hunters will soon discover… if they live long enough, of course. Rather than being simply lost in a storm and trapped in an abandoned diner, the group are actually victims of a Dream Master (see page 26 of the Dark Races sourcebook). This creature of nightmares wants nothing more than to lure its targets into a dream death, and uses the illusions of the storm and the electrical attacks to drive each to a death in the waking world. The Dream Master itself ‘sleeps’ in the basement beneath the diner, and will only come out to feed once it has ensured that all present are dead. So it is that the Minion Hunters must locate and defeat this Dark Minion while fighting off the wall of sleep, never quite knowing when they are trapped in the dreaming world or isolated in the waking one.