Allure

Allure

By Tomtomgoose

Wordcount: 1459

Introduction

• Setting: The Forest of Dean. For a setting/accent guide, watch Hot Fuzz.
• A fungus has formed a symbiotic relationship with an ancient yew tree called The Wizard of the Dean.
• When attempting to visualise the fruiting-bodies see undulating colours without a static form, and cannot fix them in your memory.
• If you try harder: SANITY
• Pass - get a headache and stop trying
• Fail - Describe a network of fibers underneath the substance of reality, with the world superimposed onto them, like a film projected onto a tank of writhing, branching eels. And where those eels braid together and bulge out, that is where the fruiting-bodies are visible - 1d6 sanity.
• 10% penalty to look at/examine/precisely-strike a contaminated creature
• The spores manipulate human behaviour, emotions, and memory.
• They create pleasant feelings (See Mycologist’s Laboratory below) to subdue and prey upon humans.
• Contamination – Failed CONSTITUTION/automatic failure
• Stage 1 - Pleasant feelings as described below.
• POWER to overcome lethargy.
• Stage 2 - Mimic pleasant feelings specifically related to PC’s bonds, encourage them to narrate.
• SANITY to realise is not real 0/D4
• Pass: D4 damage to bond: they realise those important feelings/memories were merely a combination of chemical switches
• Stage 3 - Delusion/Hallucination of PC’s bond needing help in direction of The Wizard.
• SANITY 1/D6
• Pass: as stage 2
• Failure: the PC will make decisions to help the fungus (e.g. that is your daughter in trouble, and these strange people are trying to hurt her, what do you do?”)
• Contamination can be treated by sensible ideas or spend d4 WILLPOWER to overcome. But if re-contaminated begin at previous stage.
• Professional respirators prevent this. Improvised require a luck check each time.

Briefing

• Investigate reports that all the people of Hammond-Furlonge have disappeared, along with two policemen
• Mission
• Discover fate of the townspeople and the policemen
• Identify and contain any threat
• Cover-up any sensitive findings

Locations

Cinderford Station

• Sergeant Gullard, 56, overweight and laughs despite making no jokes. Ordered by superintendent in Brichester not to become involved, having already lost a quarter of his uniformed officers.
• Trouble in village of Hammond-Furlonge
• Missing Person report
• 8-year-old male, Carlton Colville. Went into forest foraging. Dog returned in a panic. Blonde hair. 3ft 8in. Blue t-shirt and green trousers. Yellow wellington boots.
• Two policemen sent in to investigate
• Reported entire town is abandoned
• Strange graffiti
• No further contact
• Hammond-Furlonge
• Well-to-do country types, no trouble usually
• A famous truffle grows there, supposedly kids and new-age types get high off it
• Lovely farmers market

Hammond-Furlonge

A “Please drive safely”, sign leads to a cluster of idyllic cottages and houses along winding cobbled streets; a stone church spire rising on the far side. The pedestrianised market square is alongside a pristine village green. The garishly signed Local Shop with its striking CCTV security signs contrasts with the quaint cafés and ample charity shops. At the far side of the square is the grand Yew & Circle pub; two solid chimneys crown a pitched roof, and a double-breasted wooden door sits within an arched porch; above this a wooden sign squeaks in the breeze. Scrawled across the wooden doors in red spray paint are the words “The Wizard!”

Wherever PCs go, they find red graffiti with fragments of “gone to see the wizard”.

Local Shop

• Door is professionally locked and alarmed
• A silly amount of security measures and warning signs for a small village shop
• A locked office with a computer connected to the CCTV cameras
• COMPUTER/FORENSICS/HUMINT - Password on the bottom of keyboard with an unconscionable amount of letters substituted for numbers
• 3 days ago: child with bright yellow boots, face obscured by distortion, staggers through farmers market in direction of church.
• Gradually everyone follow in same direction.
• 2 days ago: the distorted mass of the townspeople following the yellow-booted child across the square towards the woods. SANITY 0/1d4
• One straggler in a hoodie doesn’t follow, meanders around and stops to spray paint the pub doors.
• Reappears later holding a baby and enters a house near the pub
• 1 day ago: policeman arrive, speak on radios, then behaviour changes.
• They walk towards church.
• One hour later stagger in same direction as townspeople, obscured by patchy distortion.

The Yew & Circle

• “The Wizard!” hastily written on the doors
• Poster: ‘An evening with Prof Carsten who will come down from his forest laboratory for one night only, to share his exciting discoveries’, with photos of a man that looks a lot like a wizard, and a shipping container with an airlocked door.
• Abandoned drinks and meals contaminated by fungus. CONTAMINATION check if explore inside

Church

• Beautiful medieval church with a spire. Foul smell as approached.
• Prof Carsten poster on the door
• Interior thickly infected by fungus, complements faded colours of the stained-glass windows, eating through the ornate wooden ceiling - CONTAMINATION.
• Hideous smell from the alter
• Aggregation of human waste on the carpet. SANITY check 1/1d6
• an elderly lady has expired here and reclines against the altar, with an expression of bliss. ID: Eliza Fitzwarren of Rose Cottage
• Mushrooms are already fruiting.
• On inspection the mess has been trodden towards the doors

Rose Cottage

• ALERTNESS: a soft voice for help.

Norton Fitzwarren, elderly man in a hospital bed, horribly dehydrated, one side paralysed from a stroke. Rancid smell of urine and unwashed human

• Their dog ran away, his wife went out looking, never returned
• No knowledge of events
• Good knowledge otherwise
• The Wizard
• Could refer to The Wizard of the Dean
• Ancient Yew tree
• Site of pagan worship - stone circle and lots of bones
• Famous truffles cause divine, euphoric feelings. Would truffle-hunt with his wife…

Ashley’s House

• Either seen on CCTV or ALERTNESS to hear a baby crying
• Ashley de-la-Zouche
• Teenager, tries to hide his privileged upbringing.
• Wearing the same hoodie, unwashed but well.
• Feeding a baby with mixed success.
• Not his baby, found abandoned, poor memory of events
• Obvious surgical scarring to his face.
• BMX accident last year, metal plate in his face, lost sense of smell
• Only partially under the influence of contamination due to metal plate
• Knows The Wizard is the ancient Yew tree, then remembers the townspeople could smell the tree and were heading there

The Forest

Mycologist’s Laboratory

• Converted shipping container with an airlock attached to the door. Can hear thumping techno music inside
• Gunther Carsten
• Long grey hair, a beard and a single gold earring. Wearing a white coat and a respirator.
• German, exuberant, charismatic.
• Discovered exciting, organic compounds in the air here - bond directly to olfactory bulb rather than smell receptors. Directly stimulating amygdala and frontal lobbies, releasing
• Oxytocin: closeness/bonding
• Dopamine: pleasure/reward
• Endorphins: warmth/security
• Gaba: relaxation/memory formation
• Suspected to be from the truffles.
• Paid local boy, Carlton Coleville, to bring him one
• 3 days ago, huge increase in the pleasant compounds, these decreased yesterday
• Always follows contamination procedures
• No idea what happened outside, far too busy!
• Knows The Wizard is the famous yew tree

The Wizard of the Dean

• Entering the forest without a breathing filter gives an automatic contamination level. As does the grove of the Wizard.
• Continue until they lay down in rapture and become subsumed by the fungus
• Ancient grey stones stand amongst the undergrowth in a ring, within them are primordial ferns and strange mosses, and the grotesque and bulging mass of the Wizard of the Dean.
• A yew tree grown fat from the blood meals fed to it over hundreds of years. It’s oddly slick looking bark is enmeshed in the corpse-coloured strands of the fungus’ mycelial network, and almost appears to flow down into the earth where the bodies of the villagers carpet the ground, lying amongst the bulging roots that emerge from the earth like gnarled, writhing serpents. You assume they are dead, lying over each other in heaps, with rictus grins of pure pleasure and the bizarre fruiting-bodies growing from their decomposing flesh. That is until you notice them breathing: calmly, steadily, and occasionally sighing in delight. Sanity 1/1d6
• 1/PC bodies on the ground unfold into a standing position, like a time-lapse of a wilted plant returning to life after being watered. The mycelial network covering them pulses with fluid, as the fruiting-bodies that have grown through their faces turn towards you. The air grows thick as spores are pumped in your direction.

Outcome

• There is no good outcome to this scenario
• The fungus will slowly replace the zombies until the threat is gone
• Destroying the Wizard will cause public outcry, likely drawing people to the site.
• You cannot kill the fungus in a way that matters. Decay is an extant form of life.
• Gunther could develop an anti-fungal if given help/time, but it is too late for the townspeople.
• They must focus on their objectives

Stat-Block

Fungal Zombies

The bodies of deceased humans taken over by the fungus and used to defend the colony. Their goal is to subdue the aggressor, either through physical violence or contamination, and then thereby allow the fungus to feed on them.

STR 12        CON 16        INT N/A        POW 10        HP 14                WP 10

Movement is extremely slow as the mycelial network needs to stretch with each step, and impossible outside the stone circle.

Attacks: Unarmed 1d4, Spore-pump - CONSTITUTION check for contamination

San Loss 0/1

Credits

Allure was written by Tomtomgoose for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tWFlhUPmvCuqr5fc7MSmmjL6VMizzmBZM6BJrmUUX_8/edit