Masks of Halloween
Details
Pages: 26
Author(s): Oscar Rios
Artist(s): (illustrator uncredited, probably Oscar Rios)
Setting: 1920s, Friday-Sunday October 29-31 1926, "Willowton", Anywhere USA
Appears in: Halloween Horror Returns!
Campaign: (none)
Summary
The town of Willowton, home of the "Haunted Tavern", was trying its hand at creating their own new tradition for Halloween: the First Annual Willowton Halloween Festival. When local pets, townsfolk, and visitors turn up missing, the prime suspect is the Ghost of Witch Virginia Black...
Links
Link to outside reviews or helpful pages.
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Spoilers - Keepers Eyes Only
Players should not read any further.
Synopsis
The town of Willowton, home of the "Haunted Tavern", was trying its hand at creating their own new tradition for Halloween: the First Annual Willowton Halloween Festival. When local pets, townsfolk, and visitors turn up missing, the prime suspect is the Ghost of Witch Virginia Black, who the investigators will soon find is simply a local legend with no basis in fact. The real problem is caused when a disgruntled old man is forced to sell his farm to a family who uses the land "disrespectfully" as the site of the Halloween Festival. In drunken grief and anger, the old man prays to a strange ritual stone for revenge, and begins receiving sinister guidance from Jack O' Lantern, Pumpkin-King Avatar of Nyarlathotep, driving the old farmer to ritual sacrifice and unleashing a pumpkin-themed horror on the town....
References
Player Handouts:
- Halloween Festival Flyer
- Investigators' Map with Map Key (references on the key to site 13 should be removed by keeper)
- Legend of Virginia Black
- Nathaniel Johnson's Halloween Story about Jack O' Lantern
- Newspaper Article About Missing Pets
- Inquiry Into Destruction of Farm Equipment
- Diary Entry
- List of Useful Items (not presented as a hand-out, but could probably be cut up and used as hand-outs if the investigators begin searching the town for useful items after they are mentioned)
- (Note included in scenario: I would suggest printing and handing out one or two famous short stories by Edgar Allen Poe for "Dinner With Edgar Allen Poe", like "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" and/or "The Masque of the Red Death", as well as Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and a few generic, folksy, tourist-friendly stories about local hauntings for the haunted walking tour attraction, perhaps based on thinly-disguised local legends and ghost stories from your own home town adapted with references to the Witch Virginia Black and her lover Morton Black, and perhaps also a basic Corn Maze map of the sort that might appear in the 1920s, all easily sourced and adapted from the Internet, but all these are optional color and have no bearing on the scenario)
Locations: Willowton, a generic harmless rural town in Lovecraft country or "Anwywhere, USA"
Creatures:
- Jack O'Lantern the Pumpkin King, Avatar of Nyarlathotep
- Old Man Johnson
Tomes and Artifacts:
- Ritual Pumpkins (can be expected to be destroyed by the investigators)
- Enchanted Knife
- Ritual Stone (contacts Nyarlathotep; can be expected to be destroyed by the investigators)
- Elder Sign (interferes with and destroys the Ritual Stone, can be expected to be destroyed by the investigators)
Campaigns / Scenarios: (none)
Comments
Comment: The scenario contains three illustrations including one [stock?] photo of a scarecrow and two full-page maps, illustrator uncredited, but probably by scenario author Oscar Rios.
Trivia: Descriptions of a creature that supposedly destroyed the Kent farm match those of an entity called “The Haunter of the Dark”, which appears to be an Avatar of Nyarlathotep in the story The Haunter of the Dark (fiction).
Trivia: The man Emma Johnson encountered and described in her diary was “The Black Man”, yet another avatar form of the Outer God Nyarlathotep, described in "The Dreams in the Witch House".
Keeper Comments
Comments to Keepers about this scenario; Possibly how to run it successfully. Keep general DISCUSSION on the talk page.
