2026 All Hallows Playtest

Anagram Gematriasts Thomas "The Suit" Fatts and Abagail "The Clown" Rodriguez had been ripped off. They bought a World card from the 1933 run of the Lombardy Zeroth tarot, hoping to use the incredibly powerful and dangerous artifact for a sex change ritual. The ritual was a dud and they were going to get their money back. The Merchant's name was DANI SMALLS and the cabal used ANIMAL DSL to track her to a house in the Capitol Forest outside Olympia.

 

They didn't find Dani in the cabin, but they found a corpse. It was a man and the face was missing, like a bear attack shredded it. The Clown puked. Dani was a woman when they last saw her but that didn't prove anything. The Suit thought of a good couplet for a BEAR ATTACK SEANCE while the Clown went out to search the victim's car. There was no indication of forced entry or bear activity besides the dead man and nobody jumped out of the bushes to attack the clown.

 

Abagail used a length of wire slipped into the windowframe to open the lock. They found a bunch of coasters, menus, and other detritus from Lack of Teeth, the local dive they passed on the way up to the house. There was a box of photos in the back with a machine for converting eight track tapes to cassettes. There was a tape inside, labeled with marker. WILD WAVES MASSACRE 1977. The Clown tried to go back inside and get the suit, but vomited again.

 

  

The Suit lit a cigarette to drown out the stench of puke and corpse. He listened to the tape. At first it sounded like audio corruption but the sound drew closer. A whine like insects or wind instruments. He didn't realize he was clenching his teeth until he bit through his cigarette. But he came up with a good couplet to talk with the corpse. He gathered a fistful of change from around the house, mixed in a hundred dollar bill with the couplet inked in sharpie, and tossed it in the BACKSEAT CENT AREA in the abandoned car. He asked where Dani Smalls was.

 

The coins landed in the shape of the letter I.

 

He tossed them again. And again. 

S
O
L
D
H
E
R
M

Y
N
A
M
E

 

Which explains why the Gematria had locked onto his dead body rather than the living Merchant they sought. The magick sought the thing with the true name. The Clown asked who the dead man was.

G
L
O
V
E
B
O
X

 

The car was registered to Terrence Proust. The lights went off in the house behind them. The Gematriasts agreed this was spooky and went to confront whatever entity was behind it. The body was where they left it but the Clown didn't look at the patch of floor illuminated by the faint starlight through the clouds. They tripped over something in the dark. Another cardboard box. This one filled with articles torn from magazines.

 

 

Two of the articles were annotated. 

 

Planet X arrival
Long period comets, gamma ray bursts emitted by unknown brown dwarf star in oort cloud. A moon? A signal? Periodicity of mass extinctions.

Mass insect die-offs. ARE WE OVERDUE?

 

The lights came back on. Visible now on the interior wall of the entrance, a white board with a list of names. 

 

PROVENDER
Leshawn Carter
Tatiana O’Connor
Troy Lombard
Jeremiah Trenton
Franklin Sigley Jr. (subject 1)
Morgan Rhodes
Paul Stringer (subject 2)

Provender... like food for an animal? The Clown turned FRANKLIN SIGLEY JR into FLYING JARS LINKING and stuck the couplet to a mason jar from the kitchen, which they juggled in hopes of a clue for how all these names were connected. They stumbled backward into a cabinet, tripped over the corpse and sent all the papers and beer bottles crashing down from the dead man's roll top desk. A falling letter opener pinned a highway map as it fluttered to the floor. The Suit pulled the blade out. It made a neat little hole through a suburb in Tumwater. The lights went out again. The cabal loaded the boxes of evidence into their car and set off.

The Clown drove while the Suit relaxed in the background, content to be chauffeured (and also too short to reach the pedals of the Clown's jeep). The Clown thought of another anagram. MORGAN RHODES became GRAMS HONORED in an attempt to find the mysterious provender's dealer. They stuck the sticky note with the couplet to the steering wheel and took their hands off it. The car swerved toward the edge of the road and the woods beyond. The Suit unbuckled his seatbelt and lunged for the wheel, too short to reach it from the back seat. The car corrected itself without Abagail's intervention and the Clown laughed as the Suit was flung to one side. The streetlights intermittently flickered and went out, pulsing red as they struggled to return to life.

  

The residential suburb was carved out of the farmland and wilderness outside Tumwater outside Olympia. It had one entrance, accessible only by car, unless you were prepared to hike through marsh and lake and forest to escape. The car auto-drove itself into the enormous cul de sac and pulled into an alley way where the suburbanites kept their trash cans. Only one house had any lights on and the car almost took the rear fence out, seeking the target assigned to it by the Clown. The Clown yanked the parking brake and the car shuddered to a halt with an awful screeching sound. The fence was taller than either of them and they couldn't see over it. The Clown climbed over and flopped down face first on the other side. The Suit waited until they were out of sight before climbing on the car hood for a boost.

Despite the screeching brake and the falling clown, the teenaged quarterback Troy Lombard didn't notice Body Paragraph trespassing in the backyard. He stood transfixed by some object in the night sky. Abagail interrupted him to ask where Morgan was. The brain-damaged QB immediately attacked the intruders, putting his fist through the fence. Abagail laughed and queried him again. Troy yanked his fist out along with a piece of the fence and tried to swat them. The Suit intervened, wrestling the high schooler (who was twice his size). Troy yelled for LeShawn to get the fuck out here, someone was trying to break in. Someone fired a gun inside the house. The Clown pulled their piece and ran inside while Thomas rode on Troy's shoulders, unable to pin him but unable to be dislodged.

The Clown ran in through the screen door into a TV room and tripped over someone standing up off the floor. Paul Stringer fell over and tried to pull his pants on, swearing. Morgan Rhodes lay unconscious beneath him. Abagail checked the unconscious teen for a pulse, allowing Paul to escape. Morgan was passed out, not asleep, but still alive. Paul ran out the front door and into the night. Another gunshot from upstairs. Two boys shouting and a girl letting loose a stream of homophobic invective. 

 

Upstairs, Jeremiah Trenton ran out of the bedroom clad only in his underwear. He nearly ran into the armed clown, panicked and fell down the stairs. In the bedroom, Tatiana O'Connor grappled with LeShawn Carter. Tatiana was fully clothed and armed, LeShawn wore only a polo shirt and wrestled her to keep the weapon pointed at the ceiling as she discharged it again. The Clown told both of them to reach for the sky. The suburban Black kid immediately grabbed air, the homicidal cheerleader whirled and confronted Abagail. Another one of LeShawn's faggot friends? Tatiana drew down on the Clown, who shot her in the heart before she could fire. LeShawn dove for cover, still mostly naked. Abagail thought it was pretty funny.

 

Troy tried to ram Thomas against the fence to dislodge him. Thomas dropped free at the last second and scrambled between the quarterback's legs as he crashed through the fence. He ran inside the house, through the TV room and into the kitchen. He heard the gunshots from upstairs and something hit him through the open front door of the house. Something heavy and wet. He looked down at the severed head of Paul Stringer. The Pig butcher came in through the front door. A man in a pig mask with huge mittens covered in pieces of broken glass and sharp metal and blood.

The Suit lit a cigarette with a hundred dollar bill, scribed with a couplet he prepared for just such an occasion. THOMAS FATTS became FAST T.A.M. HOST. The burst of speed felt similar to the amphetamines that the high powered executive often munched, but actually translated to increased speed in the real world rather than just in his head. He ran into the kitchen and got a knife, outpacing the lumbering slasher. Abagail heard the commotion and came down the stairs. They ran into the Butcher, who slashed downward with his claws and raked them across the face. Their first shot missed and he pinned them on the stairs. With his welding mitts on he couldn't grab the Clown's weapon arm. They tucked the pistol against their body and shot him point blank through the abdomen. The hogman squealed and retreated out the front door. The Suit pursued with a knife from the kitchen but even with his enhanced speed he lost his target in the dark street outside. The lights in the house went out.

 

Taertage

 

Jeremiah tried to stand up and fell over again, bleeding from a cut on his head where he fell down the stairs. The cabal asked him what the hell was happening. Troy came in from outside. The lights came on. He saw Paul Stringer's severed head and Thomas Fatts standing over it with a knife, and attacked the Gematriasts. He put his fist through the drywall, yelling for help from his friends. LeShawn looked down the stairs at the carnage, panicked and retreated. The Suit sparred with Troy but realized that his superior speed didn't help in a wrestling context. The Gematriasts retreated the way they came in, through the TV room. Something grunted and wheezed in the dark, the room was still unlit. The Suit nearly tripped over the pigman as he humped away at Morgan's unconscious form. The callous wordsmith didn't care that much about some teenaged queer being defiled while he made his escape, but he never missed an opportunity to harm his enemies while they were helpless. He kicked the Butcher and was surprised when his monkstrap connected with the killer's temple and knocked him unconscious. Troy charged into the room and the cabal fled before they could confirm the kill.

 

Abagail and Thomas scrambled over the fence and into the alley behind the house. As they climbed over they saw what Troy was looking at earlier. The clouds had thinned out and a new celestial body glared at them through the gap. A yellow-brown planetoid that gave off its own light. Like a dim star but closer. They went down the street and made sure Troy wasn't still chasing them before deciding what to do next. Was the Nemesis star responsible for the power outages and pigman attack? Could they communicate with it?

 

The Clown's face was fucked up from the Pig's improvised claw. To get some ABIGAIL EYE HEALING they wrote AGAIN ELIGIBLE YEAH on a sticky note and slapped it over their mangled eye, restoring it to function. They tried to figure out what was going on with the evil celestial body. To TALK TO ALIEN STAR they wrote ALTERATIONS TALK and attached it to their own body. A murmur came from beneath their polka dot shirt. They stripped down and their top scars tried to talk to them. The Suit slit the seam with the letter opener from the cabin and the sticky scar became a mouth. It told them that the answer was  BENEATH THE STACKED EXOSKELETONS.

  

A light came on in a van parked down the road. It went out again. The cabal heard the door open on the opposite side. Someone got out, screened by the parked vehicle, and fled into the backyard of an adjacent house. The mages searched the vehicle and found it unoccupied. Inside was a bucket of blood and a bunch of surveillance equipment. There were hidden cameras in the house with the teens. Troy and LeShawn argued about what to do while Jeremiah sat with a beer can pressed to his damaged forehead and Morgan dozed in the recovery position on the couch. The Suit wrote READ LIPS on the letter opener and drove it down into the top of his little bottle of pills to SPEAR LID. He peered at the grainy monitors and surmised that the teens were debating what to do. There were no other lights on in the neighborhood and nobody's phone worked. Jeremiah proposed that this was the malign influence of Planet X. Like Paul was talking about, asked LeShawn? Did he dose us, asked Troy? There was no sign of the Pigman in the house.

 

There was a pin driven into the upholstery of the car with a scrap of paper attached, like something had been attached to it but torn out. It looked like the paper you'd use for a photograph. The Gematriasts remembered the tape recorder came with a box of photos. They circled back to check the evidence stored in the Clown's jeep.

 

A man leaned on the hood of the vehicle. Not a teenager and not a masked killer. A guy in a sweaty silk suit and wife beater. He wasn't fat but his face bulged, like the baby mask worn by the torturers in Brazil. He had the box of photos and was looking through them. He told the Gematriasts that 1977 was a good year and he wished he'd been able to make it himself. The picture fell from his fingers. It was a polaroid, washed out with age. A man in a horse mask holding a weapon, maybe a machete or club, picking his way through the support columns beneath a water slide. Written in sharpie in the same handwriting as the annotations on the magazine article:

 

WILD WAVES MASSACRE 1977

GAS LEAK??? 

The Clown asked what was going on. Mr. Voke told them that the ultrasonics had not induced the desired effect. His associates had disappointed him, but Body Paragraph had salvaged the evening and done great work. His colleague was about to discover that the magic item he gave her didn't work on the Pigman. With the mask on, his identity was changed. The photo no longer represented him. Three gunshots echoed from somewhere down the street. The cabal figured out that Mr. Voke's coconspirator was formerly Dani Smalls, now Terrence Proust after buying the name off the dead man. They didn't much care if she lived or died since she ripped them off, but there was still a chance they could squeeze her for a refund. The Suit went toward the sound of shooting.

 

The Suit caught the Butcher climbing through a window in pursuit of someone. He made too much noise and the hogman turned to see who it was. The pig-masked murderer's head was dented like a beer can. He came snorting after Thomas, who ran down the street and lured the killer away. Abagail transposed TERRENCE PROUST to RUN TO CREST PEER and stuck the couplet on their shoe. They ran down the street, ignored by the butcher, and counted on the spell to help them outrace the fleeing Merchant. They went around the empty house where the butcher was trying to break in and caught Terrence Proust (formerly Dani Smalls) coming out the screen door. They pretended to be a cop and yelled at the Salesman to put her hands up. Terry was relieved that the authorities had arrived and pretended to be an innocent victim, shouting that there was a masked killer on the loose. They realized it was the Clown, who laughed at them. Why were they here? Because you ripped us off, said Abagail. We did the ritual with the super powerful Lombardy Zeroth World card with the hermaphrodite on it and it didn't do dick, pun intended. 

No, the card was the real deal, said Terrence. The deal wouldn't have gone through if it had been a fake. It was a genuine super powerful super evil tarot card and it had the power to change your gender. Body Paragraph must have fucked up the ritual. Abagail laughed, it was too good. No, they wheezed, we wanted a sex change dumbass, not a gender change. The Merchant didn't understand the difference, but they could understand disappointment. They got this magic revolver that didn't do dick. Abagail almost shot her when she pulled the engraved piece from her waistband and tossed it.

The Pig Butcher wheezed and grunted. It didn't sound like a hog, it sounded like a guy who ran out of breath jogging. The Suit hid behind the car and watched as the mask sloughed off the killer's face. The slasher reached to push it back into place and nearly took his eye out with his horrible mittens. The spell had worn off. He tried to take off the gloves and couldn't, like a boxer trying to undo the laces on his gloves. He managed to get one off by stomping on the thumb with his boot and yanking. He took the other one off, then the mask, then after some hesitation his shirt. He used it to wipe the blood splatter off his body. Franklin Sigley Jr. went inside the house and pretended he hadn't just tried to kill everyone in a pig costume. The Suit messaged the Clown and told them the killer no longer had his identity obscured by the mask.

The Clown looked down at their phone. Terry ran away while they were distracted. Mr Voke came out of the house and asked Abagail if they remembered the function of the revolver. Dry fire three times at a photo of the target. Yeah I'll get right on that, said the Clown. They went in the abandoned house and found a photo of Franklin attached to the fridge with a magnet. They took it and went down the street to rejoin the Suit.

 

The Gematriasts went back to the surveillance van. Franky's deception had succeeded. He pretended the pigman chased him around outside and he pretended to be horrified by the severed head of his friend Paul. Only Morgan seemed suspicious of his story. The cabal rewound the surveillance footage to see if anyone did anything incriminating before the night's festivities started. They caught Paul dosing Morgan's drink but Franky didn't do anything obviously evil. Just went in the back yard and stared at the stars before leaving. The Clown turned FRANKLIN SIGLEY JR's name into FILLING JERKS YARN and wrote that on the laptop plugged into the monitor. They wanted to know if the jerk had been under the malign influence of a magickal force compelling him to rape and murder, or if the kid had been in his right mind.

The laptop speakers played a conversation between Franklin, Mr. Voke and Terry/Dani. Mr. Voke instructed Franky in his mission: to cull the human herd. Franky asked if this would avert the arrival of Planet X and the extinction of humanity. Mr. Voke told him the planet would arrive when it pleased, this was personal. An opportunity for Franklin to take what they took from him. Dani instructed him in the finer details of the mask. While worn, any forensic evidence he left would come from a pig and be untraceable to him. If the operation took longer than three hours he needed to anoint the mask with the blood of a victim or it would dissolve. Franky wasn't listening. Voke asked him if he he had other plans. Feelings for one of the women. Or one of the men. The aspiring slasher audibly rose from his chair, incensed. He wasn't some kind of faggot. Mr Voke whistled and he went silent. Dani swore, he wasn't supposed to use the sound while she was in the room. The audio fuzzed out. 

 

The unwelcome half-star blazed brighter, the only light illuminating the street. Abagail decided Franky had to go. They had killed in self defense tonight and not been bothered, killing an unsuspecting murderous enemy didn't make them squeamish. The Suit could care less if the kid lived or died. He was still after that damned Salesman who ripped him off. Not his fault she thought sex and gender were the same thing. He was getting his damn money back.

 

Mr. Voke leaned against the open door of the van. He congratulated the cabal on a job well done. They were his kind of people and if they were interested in more work there would be opportunities soon. If it was transformation they were after, he could pay. The ultrasonics could do more than induce quiescence or homicidal rage. The body could be changed. Abagail told him they didn't trust him and fired three times into the portrait of Franklin Sigley Jr. The bullets came out of the gun like hummingbirds and flew out of the van. Through the door of the house where they chased Franky down and augered into his body, killing him messily in front of the screaming friends he had tried to slay earlier that night. But the Suit didn't hear the shot. All he heard was Mr Voke whistle. A fleshy hum went through his body. It settled between his legs. An organ sprouted from the base of his pubic mound. It was everything he ever wanted but the moment of revelation still came as a shock when he looked in his pants and found an impressive dick and balls where his pussy had been. 

Yeah that's good, said the Clown. Give me what you gave him, but an inch bigger. Not so fast, said Mr. Voke. That was a freebie to establish trust. If you want another you'll have to put in work. The last coming of the planet was in '77, the next one wouldn't wait fifty years. It would be soon. And the killings would avert it, asked Abagail? No, said the sweaty, bulging man. So humanity was doomed? Yes, and he would miss it. So the killings are just for his own amusement, asked the Clown? You are an astute observer of the human scene, said Mr. Voke.

 

Abagail told him to fuck off. The Suit pondered accepting the job as a murderous sex criminal but decided against it. He did bad things for him, not for some alien shit from anti-earth and its stupid brown dwarf star. Mr. Voke was disappointed. He turned to leave and Abagail shot him in the back.

If the last three gunshots in the confined space didn't destroy their hearing, the fourth one certainly did. But Abagail and Thomas both heard what happened next. Gurgling, like someone trying to speak through damaged lungs.

 

The sound rose. A high pitched whine.

 

Then it rose so high they could no longer hear it. 

Then the Clown's gun was in their hand, pressed to the Suit's temple. The Suit's hands closed around their neck.