BRIEFING:
Dr. Hugh Williams, a friendly asset to DG, has gone quiet after reporting suspicious activity in his general area. During his last contact with his handler via fax, Dr. Williams expressed that he has recently seen a van outside his home acting suspiciously and believes he is in danger. Handler attempted emergency contact via satellite phone but has not received contact.
Agents have been called to perform a “wellness check” on the friendly asset. Agents are to immediately report to the compound and assess the situation. Expect a loss of contact in the field, and hostiles on site. Extracting the asset is the first and only priority , this is a preservation of life mission.
Make it clear to Agents that they are being rushed into the field and do not have time to research or prepare anything extensive. Let them ask questions to the handler and then Give them their go bags, let them grab their weapons and throw them into the Opera, prepared or not. Flash forward to them pulling up to the mansion at midnight after their briefing.
DR. HUGH WILLIAMS
Williams is a retired Archeologist who operates as DGs specialist when it comes to esoteric artifacts discovered during Operas. He has been described as an aloof and eccentric man who always felt he was born in the wrong era and so has gone into seclusion from the modern world. He is also a wealthy man, having sold rights to many artifacts he found in the field. This money has allowed him to purchase his compound and live in isolation, only going into town to get supplies and make trade offs with DG operatives.
THE COMPOUND:
Williams lives in a remote region of the midwest. The Site has no WiFi or signal, only a hard line to the next town an hour out. Handlers are to make clear to the agents that once on site they are on their own. This means both that help is not on the way, but also no one will check up on them either so they can operate freely. The only lights seen are their headlights and some lights on in the windows of the Mansion. Give Agents flashlights or other forms of illumination if they ask for it.
Dr. Williams lives in a Mansion that looks more like a museum than a home. On approach players can make checks to see if they can spot a Van hidden in some dense foliage off the road. The van is unlocked and has Breaking and Entering gear. Agents can deduce there are signs of 4 passengers and that these are amatuer thieves from the lack of preparedness if they succeed an investigation check. Handlers can place 3 of them, dead or alive as needed to help or hinder the Agents or to help spell out the threat and how to beat it.
THE MANSION LAYOUT:
The mansion opens into a large two-story foyer with a grand staircase leading to an upper floor. On each floor are 4 “exhibit” wings with a different theme.
Ground floor wings are The Cowboy Room, The Cook Quarters, The Tools Room, and The Medieval Dining Room.
Upper floor has the Weapons Room, the Study, the bedroom and the Hunting Trophy Bedroom.
Describe each room with a variety of deadly weapons, tools and objects that might become a threat and can make a lot of threatening noises such as power tools, cannons, animal heads ect. Have fun with your SFX monster!
Behind the grand staircase is a locked door that goes to a basement, but the door is locked with a heavy lock that requires switches in each room to be flipped. There are 8 Red LEDs that will turn Green when a switch is flipped. When all lights are green the basement door will open with a loud noise.
Place a switch for the lock in each room in an obvious place, but make it so that agents have to traverse the danger to get to it. Ex. A switch is in the mouth of one of the bear statues. Make the switches glow bright red so they can be found easily in the dark.
FIRST CONTACT:
When the party enters the mansion, make the first room they enter have a vase in it. Point out the vase. Then after a moment make the sound of the vase smashing in the middle of conversation and make a player make a dodge check. On fail take no damage but feel the effects of a case being hurled at their head. Either result, Point out the vase has not moved. 0/1 San Loss (unnatural)
THE COWBOY ROOM:
A room decorated with all sorts of western gear and weapons styles as a Den Room. One wall is just revolvers and rifles. There is a dead body on the floor of one of the robbers who looks like they are burning alive without any flames. 1/1d8 San Loss (violence). An investigation will show he was hiding in the fireplace and dragged himself out of there. The fireplace has never been used and shows no signs of fire anywhere. There is a vcr playing a western movie that is hardwired into the mantle and will not turn off.
The switch is in the fireplace. Make a crackling SFX. Does the agent hear crackling and burning? Take fire damage if they stick their hand in the fireplace unprotected. 0/1d4 SAN loss (helplessness)
When the players investigate the switch the movie will go “Bang, you’re dead” and play a stock gunshot sound. A creature will die right next to the player investigating as if it were shot. 1/1d8 SAN loss (unnatural)
THE STUDY:
The only normal room. In a desk is a ledger of DG inventory logs, some notes and 4 broken Faberge eggs. Notes and logs can be studied to see the eggs came in with the last shipment of DG artifacts. He received a crate full of the eggs. Dr. Williams could not identify them. Notice the eggs are broken(hatched?) this morning. In the last entry he heard someone breaking in and is going downstairs locked himself in his safe room in the basement.
THE BASEMENT:
Well lit room with many shelves of random artifacts and objects. There are a lot of SFX, like a war made of cartoon noises. At the end of the room Is Dr. Williams, making Gatling gun noises as the shelves explode. He will call for the players to rescue him. There are several of the creatures in the shelves. Treat this as narrative combat if the players attempt to rescue the friendly, making SFX noises as they fight their way to him and back. Accept any noises or ideas. Keep it fun, but remember this is a deadly trench run! Just get everyone to mark silly noises to counter the monster noises. Reduce the monster's rolls by 20% each time the agents make a good sound effect or idea.
The other option is to relock the basement and escape and/or burn the mansion down. Take 2d6/2d10 San loss (helplessness) if you choose to abandon the doctor.
THE MONSTER(s):
The creatures are invisible entities that possess objects, interacting with the world through sound. They can produce the SFX that the object they possess could make, but they can only create artificial sounds. Agents with skills dealing with media, pop culture, audio or similar can make a check to identify this.
Objects possessed do not move but will cause the effects as if the sound produced has happened. For instance, if the creature possesses a bookshelf and makes the creaking noise of the shelf tipping over, the shelf will not move but if a person were standing under it they will get hurt unless they make a notice or awareness to identify the sound and then dodge it. 0/1d4 SAN Loss (unnatural) per odd event
There are 4 of these entities throughout the mansion, and one must die in the cowboy room when the event triggers. If the object possessed is destroyed the creature will move to a new object. Creatures can only be killed by sound effects, such as stock sound effects.
Players can also fight back against the creatures by making their own cartoon sound effects, such as pointing finger guns and saying “bang”, going “Boom!”, or any other onomatopoeias that imply they are fighting the monsters. Players must make the sounds not describe them for this to work and must aim at the correct object the creature is in. If the players are having trouble working this out, remind them of the cowboy room event and/or give them a skill check to come up with this plan. +1d8 San for each kill.
Treat the monsters as having a skill rating of 10% in all actions and increase the skill rating by 5% each time they fail, capped at 60%.
Credits
Onomatopoeia was written by Z-ComiX#4117 for the 2022 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gqsFkL58ei7RWCtkjl05iWtTL1b8jfshQZTQZbrcO78/edit