The Fourwentways Bronze Age Cemetery, off the A11 interchange outside Cambridge. Past the roundabout where the trucks park, behind the Travelodge. A small interpretive sign explains the significance: four thousand years ago, primitive Britons inhumed their dead beneath a complex of burial mounds that once stood on this spot. Today, the site is naught but a fenced off patch of grass and a few sickly trees, littered with rubbish from the nearby combination Burger Greggs.
It’s the middle of autumn and the middle of the night. The moon’s the color of bone but you wouldn’t know it through the clouds. Everything is wet.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
The player characters are here
- To illegally dig up bones, potshards and bits of metal for ritual use.
- To catch vandals despoiling burial sites across England.
- To talk to a ghost that haunts the burial ground.
- To purchase a sausage roll and use the restroom at the Burger Greggs.
- To make a transaction with a suspicious dealer at the Travelodge.
- To get gas at the Shell.
BURGER GREGGS
The combination Burger King/Greggs sells burgers and sausage rolls to travelers passing through the area - and truckers spending the night.
- Night manager Daisy Diovis, intelligent but lazy PhD student. Likes working nights because she can do what she wants and the company will never know.
- Burger flipper Arthur Scaramanga lives on his parents’ farm outside Balsham. His nightly commute is an eight kilometer walk along muddy bike trails and country roads.
- Lorry driver Redrick Singh is just here for a coffee, not the shite they call food. He carries a concealed dagger for religious reasons.
- Hitchhiker Sunday was kicked out in the rain for refusing a trucker a second blowjob. He can’t afford a night at the Travelodge so he’s spending the night in the restaurant.
When the dead rise, Scaramanga and Singh barricade the doors while Sunday makes improvised weapons and flirts with Daisy.
THE SHELL STATION
A self service gas station with an attached 24 hour convenience store selling snacks, drinks, cigarettes, magazines and alcohol.- Night clerk Hadrian McGee is too busy playing Underrail on his laptop to notice you. Though he did ring up THE BARROW GANG when they bought all the ice earlier.
- Garf, Lucy and Morris are teenage chavs here to shoplift cider. Garf has a folding knife, Lucy is an expert with a bottle.
- Tim Cotswold, trucker asleep in his rig in the parking lot. He’s carrying a load of cocaine for the Albanians, hidden amid the DVDs and HDMI cables, and is paranoid about it.
THE TRAVELODGE
A cheap two story hotel.
- Night manager Wenna Wadbrook is a voyeur who creeps through crawlspaces in the insulation to observe the guests. She sees everything, but never puts the pieces together to figure out what’s happening.
- Maid Zofia is a hard nosed Pole with passable English and an illegal handgun, given to her by a mobster boyfriend who assumed she’d need it if one of the hotel guests assaulted her.
- Antiquities, weapons and drug dealer GhoulBear waits for a client in room 02 with a suitcase full of merchandise. Her identity is concealed by a Misfits style skull mask, she communicates with sign language and words on a dry erase board.
- THE BARROW GANG are in room 107. They’ve stocked up on the maximum allowable amount of towels and hung a do-not-disturb sign on the door in preparation for THE SACRIFICE.
THE BARROW GANG
A cabal of self appointed Druids, obsessed with reviving ancient magick of the British isles. Led by Dr Ira Frost, history professor at University of Surrey. Dr Frost’s ambition is to possess the body of Bronze Age Warrior King Bell Breaker, whose remains molder beneath the discarded crisp packets and burger wrappers scattered about the burial site.
Dr Frost is aided by his grad students Carnegie “Kerr” Cathbad and Rebecca “Rebbe” Rodenberry. Rebbe wields a vicious bronze executioner’s ax, Kerr has a cricket bat with sharpened pennies wedged in the narrow edge. Both are spoiling for a fight, but their enthusiasm drains as the night goes on.
Dr Frost is aided by his grad students Carnegie “Kerr” Cathbad and Rebecca “Rebbe” Rodenberry. Rebbe wields a vicious bronze executioner’s ax, Kerr has a cricket bat with sharpened pennies wedged in the narrow edge. Both are spoiling for a fight, but their enthusiasm drains as the night goes on.
THE SACRIFICE
Dr Frost lies in the bathtub and the Gang fills it with ice. They cut his head off with the bronze ax. His spirit leaves his body and enters the dead warrior beneath the earth.
Outside, Bell Breaker claws his way out of the dirt, accompanied by THE ZOMBIE HORDE. Unfortunately for everyone, the Barrow Gang’s ritual was meant to be used at most a couple days after the king died. It’s been four thousand years. There’s only so much the restorative magick can do to patch together the corpse. Resurrected as a skeleton, Dr Frost fails his stress check vs Unnatural and chooses fight.
Outside, Bell Breaker claws his way out of the dirt, accompanied by THE ZOMBIE HORDE. Unfortunately for everyone, the Barrow Gang’s ritual was meant to be used at most a couple days after the king died. It’s been four thousand years. There’s only so much the restorative magick can do to patch together the corpse. Resurrected as a skeleton, Dr Frost fails his stress check vs Unnatural and chooses fight.
THE ZOMBIE HORDE
A hundred mostly-decayed bodies. A few wear jewelry, silver bracelets and gold necklaces. Some carry knapped stone or ancient bronze blades, hilts rotted away. The mindless corpses take their cues from their leader, and their leader is brainlessly attacking anything in line of sight. Seeing them shuffle around is a rank 8 Unnatural shock.
Attacks against zombies succeed automatically unless aiming for a specific body part. The challenge is putting them down for good. Destroying the brain doesn’t kill them, and severed hands pull themselves around by the fingers. Smashing the spine and pelvis removes the threat, functionally immobilizing the corpse.
At the edge of the zombie horde, use the normal rules for edged weapons to simulate their attacks, which have a poor chance to hit. Anyone caught in the mob of slowly advancing zombies is torn to pieces.
King Bell Breaker himself is identifiable by the blue dye on his mostly rotted skin and the torc of kingship on his head. His chance to hit with his bronze sword is a respectable 60% but he doesn’t defend himself any better than his minions. If his body is broken beyond repair, Dr Frost’s soul is simply projected into another zombie, which grabs the torc and assumes leadership of the tribe.
Attacks against zombies succeed automatically unless aiming for a specific body part. The challenge is putting them down for good. Destroying the brain doesn’t kill them, and severed hands pull themselves around by the fingers. Smashing the spine and pelvis removes the threat, functionally immobilizing the corpse.
At the edge of the zombie horde, use the normal rules for edged weapons to simulate their attacks, which have a poor chance to hit. Anyone caught in the mob of slowly advancing zombies is torn to pieces.
King Bell Breaker himself is identifiable by the blue dye on his mostly rotted skin and the torc of kingship on his head. His chance to hit with his bronze sword is a respectable 60% but he doesn’t defend himself any better than his minions. If his body is broken beyond repair, Dr Frost’s soul is simply projected into another zombie, which grabs the torc and assumes leadership of the tribe.
RESOLUTION
Characters who run down the highway risk being mowed down by a passing car. Characters who escape via a farmer’s field or pedestrian trail must slog through the muddy, wet ground, reducing their movement speed to not much better than the zombies’. Stealing a vehicle is easier, if the characters can hotwire a car or get the keys off someone. Either way, fleeing while the GMCs fight for their lives inflicts a rank 5 Helplessness shock.
Killing all the zombies is hard unless the players have powerful magick or weapons. They’re dumb but they’re durable and there are a lot of them. They could be barbequed with petrol shot from the gas station pumps, but that’s very likely to cause a disastrous fire as the undead shamble around spreading flames before expiring.
Removing Dr Frost’s head from the bathtub full of ice wakes it up, putting his soul back in his body and de-animating the zombies. He’s still alive and, if caught at a disadvantage, begs to be reattached to his body, promising magickal knowledge and power as a reward.
Loyal to their thesis advisor but uninterested in being devoured by the walking dead, the Barrow Gang eventually stuff Dr Frost’s head in a big sack of ice and make a run for it. They’re quite visible leaving the hotel, running for their well used salmon pink Hyundai in the parking lot.
Killing all the zombies is hard unless the players have powerful magick or weapons. They’re dumb but they’re durable and there are a lot of them. They could be barbequed with petrol shot from the gas station pumps, but that’s very likely to cause a disastrous fire as the undead shamble around spreading flames before expiring.
Removing Dr Frost’s head from the bathtub full of ice wakes it up, putting his soul back in his body and de-animating the zombies. He’s still alive and, if caught at a disadvantage, begs to be reattached to his body, promising magickal knowledge and power as a reward.
Loyal to their thesis advisor but uninterested in being devoured by the walking dead, the Barrow Gang eventually stuff Dr Frost’s head in a big sack of ice and make a run for it. They’re quite visible leaving the hotel, running for their well used salmon pink Hyundai in the parking lot.
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