From it’s earliest incarnation Dark Conspiracy has always relied on the ‘tabloid’ article approach to adventure creation. The idea that the newspapers and media living on the edge of the weird and wacky are actually telling the truth is not a new idea, and this concept can bring interesting and diverse adventures to the gaming table.

  • [Tabloid] Fully Automatic

    A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

    Something stalks the inner-city streets, hunting the innocent and slaying the corrupt. The authorities, what little of them are available or even interested in investigating such things are stumped, with only a few tire tracks and collision marks to tell of the killer’s presence at the scene of each death. The media claim it’s a vigilante that stalks the residents of the city, while older voices whisper of occult happenings and the devil’s due. Whatever the cause it has the neighbourhood spooked and on edge…

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  • [Tabloid] The Hitchhikers

    A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

    An isolated stretch of road passes close to an area of woodland. In the evenings, as dusk falls,  two women can often be seen standing in the trees.  They are both young and attractive if dressed rather eccentrically in long black cloaks and dresses that seem to hark back to the Victorian era. They seem to be waiting for something, or someone. Eventually one, or both of them steps out of the woods and flags down a passing car and asks the driver, usually a lone male, for a lift to their home nearby. The driver usually agrees and takes them to their destination – a mouldering Victorian mansion situated in its own grounds on the other side of the woods down a narrow lane leading off the main road. On arrival at the house the driver is invited inside, with the implied promise of being shown a good time. If they accept, and they generally do, they are never heard from again.

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  • [Tabloid] The Tunnel

    A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

    The Greater Depression saw a worldwide uprooting of provincial communities and mass migration towards the big cities. A significant minority though resisted the pull of the urban centres. Forced to abandon the ghost towns their homes had become, yet unwilling to be cooped up in the sprawling metroplexes they became nomads. In the United Kingdom there was something akin to a revival of the New Age Traveller movement of the 1980s: Families and like minded groups living in mobile homes or vans and buses converted for residential. Not all of the Britain’s nomads opted for life on the road though. Some took to the waterways in narrow boats and other craft capable of navigating the country’s canal and river network.

    The breakdown in civil society experienced by the United Kingdom in the Dark Times means that the canal network, so lovingly restored in the 20th century, has started to fall into decay again. Administration of the network is fragmented and under-funded. Maintenance is haphazard and in rural areas often non-existent. Long sections of canal are half choked with weed and silt, their banks and tow-paths overgrown or slowly crumbling into the water.

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  • [Tabloid] Return of the Beast

    A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

    “In the forest… is a monster.”
    Who Will Love Me Now? PJ Harvey (Written by Nick Bicat and Philip Ridley)

    Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom: British tabloid papers have run a series of stories claiming a monstrous creature is at large in north western Gloucestershire. Eyewitness accounts claim that the beast is a pig or wild boar grown to enormous size and possessed of a highly aggressive temperament. There are reports of the animal smashing through heavy duty agricultural fencing to ravage crops and livestock, ramming vehicles intent on killing the occupants, plus stalking and ambushing the hunting parties assembled to stop the its depredations. The monster has been christened “Moose Pig”, a name once used to refer to The Beast of Dean, a massive boar like creature that terrorised the region in the 18th and 19th centuries.

    With its security section having failed to deal with the threat International Cereal Corp (ICC), the UK’s biggest agri-business and a major regional employer, have offered a sizeable reward to anyone who can bring them the carcass of “Moose Pig”. Professional hunters, outdoor sportsmen plus various chancers and no-hopers are converging on the Forest of Dean intent on claiming the reward. Perhaps the player characters feel like joining them?

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  • [Tabloid] Detroit Bot City

    A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

    The West Eerie metroplex has more than its fair share of problems: Overcrowding, unemployment and poverty. In the old Detroit area these difficulties have been exacerbated by the decline in traditional motor manufacturing. During the Greater Depression the city’s auto manufacturers either went bust or relocated production abroad where costs were lower.

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  • [Tabloid] Where Madness Resides

    A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

    Living in the world of Dark Conspiracy is not an easy proposition; aliens dominate society from dark towers of glass and steel, creatures of nightmare lurk in every alley, and wielders of powers beyond belief hide among the thronging crowds. Sure a few – The Minion Hunters – stand strong against these threats, but what must life be like for the normal populous?

    As is well documented, events of great stress manifest in different ways to different people. On the outside these individuals seem to go about there normal lives. making the best of what they have… But what happens when behind this veneer madness resides?

    In this story seed we explore what has happened on one of those forced to witness horrors thought impossible, and the consequences of such an encounter.

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  • [Tabloid] Storm Warnings

    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.

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  • [Tabloid] Taking on Water

    A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

    For Minion Hunters travelling by ship is a convenient, and more importantly, anonymous form of transport. For many this is a way of regroup and recuperating between ‘missions’ safe in the knowledge that miles of ocean separates them and the evil they fight against.

    Until now that is…

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  • [Tabloid] Here Be Dragons

    A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

    Tashicorp, a large agricorp with interests in numerous sites around America, has a problem. At their Missouri ‘gardens’ (a term used to cover the massive tracks of agricultural land they control at this one site), a number of their automated worker bots have been destroyed in what the corporation calls ‘acts of terrorism’. Tashicorp blames a small community of ‘hold-outs’ trapped within the garden (made up of the original owners who refused to sell up their land) for these attacks, and needs some outside force to rectify the situation.

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  • [Tabloid] A Murder of Crows

    A Tabloid Article by Marcus D. Bone

    The body of Carlos Gratinera has recently been found in on edge of, what was once, Mesa Verde National Park. This in itself is not such an unusual event, with hundreds, if not thousands, of people ‘disappearing’ each day. Moreover, it is certainly not a death that should warrant local, let alone national, media coverage.

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