nihilisticnarration

In Heropa, there is a house.

It’s an ordinary looking house, to be sure: two visible stories, a fairly well-manicured lawn, a cheery paint job and a rather jolly looking jack-o-lantern sitting out on the front step. From this house, you will see or hear something that compels you to go inside. Is it a cry of pain from an innocent animal? A woman’s scream? No, no, not all of you are heroes. Perhaps you see some recreational drugs in the window, ready to be snatched, or you covet some of the other goods inside, evidently unguarded by a single soul. Or maybe the house calls to you as your soccer ball is kicked into the backyard, or the top sheet of a stack of papers you were carrying flies on in, carried by a gentle breeze.

Whatever the scenario, you pass its property lines, and everything seems normal for a moment until things simply go black.

THE BEGINNING

There are many ways your journey will go here, but everyone’s journey starts in the same way. You wake up with your companions in a windowless but otherwise nondescript master bedroom, laid daintily out on the bed, and before you even have a chance to voice your concern, you hear a voice. It’s not an overtly threatening voice, as voices go, but the clearness of it is unnerving; it’s here, in this room with you, but there’s no way of telling where the source of this voice is.

“When the group opened their eyes, they found themselves in a room they’ve never seen before. While they feel the familiar sense of alarm rise in their chests, it’s hardly something they’ve never seen before - they’re all imPorts, after all, and are all too familiar with the sensation of being torn from their homes, but this is something else altogether. Something strange. How did they get there? Why are they here? There are so many questions, and so few answers! As they rise out of their beds and inspect the room around them, they find nothing of note, and press on.”

There’s a moment of silence before the Narrator bursts out, “Oh, this is so terribly exciting, I can hardly contain myself. You’ll have to forgive my lack of a static script - you’re all such interesting characters that I couldn’t possibly write out every eventuality. But we’ll have great fun with each other, I can promise you that. Just listen to what the story tells you to do and you’ll come out of this with a fantastic group of new friends and a new appreciation for life. Now, onwards! Onwards!”

If your character is losing their powers, they will also hear the narrator say: “Oh, but those powers - no, no, no, that really takes all the tension out of things. How do you tell a decent story when your characters can just magically get out of it every time? There’s no grit in that! No depth! No reflection of the human condition! I’ll be taking those. Don’t you fuss, now, you’ll get them back eventually.”

The Narrator is telling the truth. There is nothing here. That being said, if you stay here for over an hour, he will get impatient and say: “All right, all right, I get it, you’re reluctant, but I’ve got too many plans for you to do this. Out! Out with you!” At this point, the room will begin to shrink in on itself, and will continue to shrink until every person in the room has left it.

At this point, we get into the beautiful territory of choose-your-own-adventure - mix and match the next rooms at your leisure! Want monsters to show up in a trap room? Want psychological terrors lurking underneath the ice? It’s all up to you from here! I will be laying out some potential fixes, but characters are free to brute force/trick their way out of anything. Because this is a long event, there are also rooms of respite scattered throughout: ordinary rooms where characters may take stock of what’s going on, heal themselves and each other, rest, sleep, eat from a stock of canned and preserved foods, and get their bearings back. Feel free to make use of these at any time! There will also be a black room filled with flashing, multicoloured lights and this song on permanent loop which the Narrator will admit is a relic from a previous design he’d been contemplating before the horror theme, but was too fond of to get rid of.

Last, but not least, a quick reminder: they will be winding through what seems like an endless series of rooms, with no way to tell what time it is, how long they’ve been in there for, or if they’re making any progress at all. Reality will start to seem a little wonky after a while, and should your character be the sort to question reality, this house of eldritch horrors is a pretty good candidate.

PHYSICAL HORRORS

FIRE & ICE

“You know,” the Narrator says, conversationally. “Sometimes the scariest thing is nature itself. Human beings are so terribly fragile, don’t you think? Even the natural world is out to get you, and there’s so very little you can do about it. But that’s the true beauty of mankind - the willingness to fight. Now, go! Go fight against your horrible, weak, fragile shell of a body and attempt to save yourself from death today so you can go on to slowly die every day of your natural life!”

One room will be filled with fire. The heat is horribly oppressive, and whether or not someone’s been through here before now, it will always have the distinct smell of burning flesh and hair, with the dessicated corpses of the less lucky strewn about the ground. Even if you close your eyes, you won’t be free of the flames dancing behind your closed lids, and soon, you’ll struggle to even gasp through it. But you must persevere: across the room, there is a door.

“Oh, silly me! That’s locked. It wouldn’t be much fun to just race through, would it?”

To get through the door, you must find the key. To do this, you must dodge the exploding barrels, past the swinging columns of fire, and to a restraining chair. You must lock one of your companions in the chair to open the locked box above the chair, and they must remain there until the door is unlocked, or else the key will simply disintegrate. After that - well, it’s up to you, isn’t it? Either save yourself, or brave the flames to run back to your companion, unlock them, and escape together.

One room will be filled with ice. Immediately, you’ll want to leave - it’s so blisteringly cold that you can feel it stabbing into your lungs every time you gasp for breath, hands shaking, knees wobbling, pins and needles prickling all over your skin as you feel your joints grow slow and creaky in the cold. To make things worse, random bursts of cold air will jet out of the walls, and if you’re not careful, you might get frozen alive. For those that are too injured or too hurt to make their way across the room, there is an alcove where you may huddle together for warmth before continuing across.

For the rest of you, the trouble here is a deceptively simple one: the ground is covered in thin ice, and it will only take one hard stomp, one wrong step to crack the ice and become trapped beneath it. Your companions must choose whether to save you or to save themselves… but who knows what lurks beyond those depths?

DIRE DIRE DEPTHS

Whether you’ve fallen through the ice or you’ve simply found yourself here by chance, you’ll find yourself submerged in cold, dark waters. Perhaps you’ll be able to magically breathe down here, perhaps not (that, it seems, is up to the whims of The Narrator), but breathing isn’t your only problem.

“This one is one of my favourites!” The Narrator says, gleefully. “I did a lot of research for this one, you know. Not all of it can be factual but goodness, the looks on people’s faces when they watch a documentary about this stuff are wonderful enough. Now you get to live it!”

You’re still in a house, there’s no doubt about that, but when you peer out of the windows, you’ll only see into the nothingness of the deep sea, nothing but an endless morass of water and sand, and… what’s that? Did you see something out of the corner of your eye? Get out, quick!

Oh. But between you and the door, there are all kinds of spooky creatures waiting, the light emanating off of some of them the only thing lighting the way between you and the door. And when they sniff you out, they’re ready for a meal. Maybe they’ll only get a leg! Or an arm! Or maybe you’ll be swallowed whole and left behind. There’s no telling, so you better get swimming!

TRAPS & TERRORS

“All right, so. This will be good. So much of this stuff depends on jumpscares!” The Narrator yells it, right in your ear. “Did I get you? Ohhh, you won’t admit it, but I did, didn’t I? Anyway, that’s all very well and good, but it’s hardly sophisticated. It hardly challenges your mind. No, only a very real, persistent sense of incoming doom will do that to a fellow. Or a lady. No discrimination here! Equality for all! At any rate, I look forward to watching you get through these ones. Now, ready… set… go!”

Ding! A timer appears on the opposite wall, bright and clear. 60:00, it reads, and begins to count down. By the time it hits the ten minute mark, it will begin to tick. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. You’d better hurry - if you don’t get out in time, all of the traps in the room will simultaneously go off, and there’s no saving you then. What can you expect to find? Good question.

WALLS CLOSING IN: Ah, ye olde crusher. In this classic, the walls will keep closing in on you until you can find the hidden mechanism to turn it off. If you can’t, then it’s smushville for you!

HOUSE OF SWINGING BLADES: Exactly what it sounds like! Be wary of swinging blades in your path, just like you’re doing a speedrun through Bowser’s Castle.

SPIKY TRAPS: It is what it sounds like! Pit? Spikes. Walls? Spikes. Wait, does that couch have spikes on it? Now that’s just overkill.

REMOTE BOMBS: This is pretty simple - you don’t know where to step, but you should be careful, because one wrong move, and - kablooey! Is it your run-of-the-mill explosion? Is it a poisonous gas? Laughing gas? A spray of spikes? Well, that’s up to you. You may also find boxes and chests scattered around the area filled with useful tools, keys, and weapons, but there’s a good chance you won’t live to regret opening them until your next generation.

GUESS WE LIVE IN THIS PIT NOW: Oops! You triggered the pit! If you survive the fall, you find yourself at the bottom of a pit, rigged with traps, with no easy way of getting out. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll fall straight into a coffin that will snap shut, trapping you until some other intrepid soul decides to try to find you amongst the trapped coffins. You’d best think creatively, because you can’t stay here for too long.




MYSTERIOUS MONSTERS

“Now, let’s see… there are some great themes of conflict out there, narratively speaking. Man vs. Man, always a favourite of mine! Man vs. Nature, compelling, but not necessarily always the most exciting thing to watch. Man vs. Self… very fun indeed, but we’ll get to that, won’t we? For now, I think we ought to play around with Man vs. Other. There’s so much more out there waiting for you then just other people.”

In these series of rooms, you may come across an assortment of monsters throughout the house, in the decors of any of the other rooms or, alternately, the decor of a true haunted house: you are simply trapped in a dilapidated, abandoned mansion, furniture covered with cloths, old, rotting food on the stove, broken floorboards and creaky walls, with plenty of hallways to get lost in and plenty of broken floors to fall straight through to the bloodied basement, infested with something horrifyingly flesh-like and crawling on the walls. Be sure not to press your hand against it to regain your balance, because - okay, it won’t do anything to you, but it’ll feel super gross. Here, you may run into:

THE INSECT QUEEN: This crotchety old lady has all manners of bugs at her disposal. Giant spiders that will try to poison you or spin you in their web? Check. Infestations of hornets? Check. Giant centipedes? Check. Hordes of cockroaches that will try to encompass you? Check, check, and check. The woman herself is useless without her horde, but you’ll have to get through them to defeat her.
ZOMBIES: A classic for a reason! These horrifying flesh-eaters come in all shapes and sizes, from your run-of-the-mill slow zombie friends, to sprinters, to malformed genetic experiments equipped with blades for hands and horrible, long tongues that will wrap around you as you struggle to get loose. The only thing they have in common is their desire to chomp down on some sweet, sweet meat.

REGENERATORS: Man, now these guys? These guys kind of suck. They’re ten foot tall monstrosities that lumber towards you flesh and bone twisted into something that’s no longer human, empty pits where eyes ought to be, and they make the most awful sound, like your great-uncle hocking a loogie or your worst nightmare at a movie theatre. They’re slow, but don’t underestimate them, particularly when they come in numbers; if you get cornered, that might be the end for you, because whatever you do to them will simply grow back, good as new, so they can continue trying to tear you apart. Light them on fire, render them little more than rubble, or just run away!

BLINK AND MISS ‘EMS: You feel a prickling on the back of your neck. Who’s there? You can’t tell, but someone’s watching you. Oh - there, in the grand portraits hung around, filled with monstrosities, that’s what it is. But when you look away, the painting’s empty, and - is that a sculpture, or is that real? These monsters will only move when everyone is looking away, but in these twisting corridors, you’ll have to look away sometime, and when they do, it’s almost as though they teleport closer, and closer to you. If they get to you, they’ll want to turn you into a pretty little sculpture too.

BRAINSUCKERS: Boy, there’s nothing fun about these parasites. Approximately the size of a large cat, they skitter quickly across walls, ceilings and, of course, the ground, and while their bites may hurt, they’re looking to do something else: if they get close enough, a long stinger will protrude from their mouths, and they’ll jam it right up in your ear, rendering you underneath their control or braindead. Don’t worry - you’ll get back to normal once they exit this room unless your companions kill you first or simply leave you behind to terrorize the hallways.

BULLSHIT IT UP: Hey, do you know what’s fun? Things that normally aren’t scary, but super big, super strong, and occasionally mixed with other things. You want a giant lion fused with a shark flopping after you? How about killer centaurs? A wolf with the head of a hippo? Whatever this thing is? Killer dolls? Have at it. You weirdo.





PSYCHOLOGICAL HORRORS

DO YOU FEEL YOUR SINS CRAWLING ON YOUR BACK?

“Now, you’re all very interesting people, yes. But good?” The Narrator chuckles and it is, one must admit, a deeply sinister sound. “Well. You could say that all people have committed wrongdoings in their time, but you lot are particularly bad. I feel no guilt over this. Truly, I don’t. You’ve done some terrible, terrible things, and you’ve hurt so many people, whether you meant to or not. Our existence is fleeting; futile. But you! You go out of your way to make it even worse! You deserve what you get. No question about that. Have fun. Maybe you’ll come out of this a little better than when you left.”

This room is quiet, and dark, and ordinary. You’re in the living room, with a quaint floral couch, and a bunny-ear television. What darkness lies within your soul? Perhaps you’ll see the ghosts of those you’ve killed, drifting through the walls. Perhaps you will see a memory, played on the television for all to see. Perhaps an old friend you’ve wronged is here, searching for vengeance.

Don’t worry. If you haven’t done anything wrong, no harm will come to you here. But that’s never the case, is it?

MIRROR MADNESS

"Oh! Oh! Let me explain this one to you. See, sometimes your true fear is yourself, ergo: a room of mirrors! Do you get it? Of course there's some flavour scattered throughout this silly little place, but just keep forging on ahead and don't be tricked by the voices in your head, and you'll be just fine."

In this room, characters will find themselves in a maze of mirrors. For parts of this maze, everything from the ceiling to the floor will be covered in mirrors, but they may delve into other areas of the house, simply with the walls plastered in mirrors. It's not too scary, all things considered.

But then things start going off the rails. Characters will begin to notice that their reflections don't match what they're doing: it looks like there are people in the mirror, and they're alive. Your character may themselves be trapped in the mirror and stuck trying to convince their companion which one's the real one. It may be tempting to break the mirror, but beware: anything in the mirror will transfer back into the real world once it's been broken, but they'll be as broken as the mirror: you might have your friend back, but they'll be in bits and pieces. Very unpleasant!

Or perhaps they'll see some reality bending: they'll see things in the mirrors that don't exist in the real world, twisting spectres of darkness, visions of themselves with red eyes and fangs and twisted features, blood dripping down the walls, moving statues and the flicker of something behind them - and then when they next blink, they'll see the horrors are there in the room with them until it becomes indistinguishable whether they're in the mirror world themselves too, and if they'll ever get out.

FEAR ITSELF

“The only thing to fear is fear itself! It’s a good quote, isn’t it? A little overused, but a classic’s a classic for a reason. See, I tried to make this scary. I really did. And I knew some of you would just bluster your way through without any regard to your traveling party or to your own mortality, I really did, so I was left with a bit of a pickle: for the truly amoral among you, for the truly depraved, how could I make this work? If I hosted a haunted house without a single scare, I wouldn’t be able to show my face in public again.

And then it came to me. I’ll have you do it for me. Let’s see what awful things are knocking about in that noggin of yours, shall we?”

This room is, by nature, an empty one. A white, brightly lit room with four empty walls, and little else. Just when you think that you might have to break your way out, you’ll find someone’s greatest fear come to life here - although do be careful! They might just hallucinate that you are their greatest fear. What you discover here will only be as terrible as your imagination.

THE THEATRE OF DESIRE

"Now," the Narrator says, voice almost gentle. "I had what I wanted, once. It was so very close to me, but it was torn away. I don't want to do that to you, don't you see? This is to help you. To help you grow. And maybe this - oh, I don't know, it sounds terribly silly, doesn't it? But maybe this will help you really realize what's important to you."

In this cozy home theatre, there's a large screen that spans from wall-to-wall, from floor to ceiling. The moment you look at the screen, it will begin playing your greatest desire. While your companion stands by your side, able to watch exactly what your greatest desire is, you will be fully immersed in this fantasy, living it out to its fullest.

But the longer you stay here, the worse off you'll be. First, cockroaches will begin to swarm the walls of the theatre, and the seats, filled with statues of eager theatre-goers, will begin to burst with mold and rot. Then you yourself will start slowly turning into stone. Upon touching you, your companion will be mentally teleported into your fantasy, but will likely appear as an enemy, trying to rip your happy ending away from you - and who wouldn't fight for their happy ending?

If your companion is successful in convincing you to leave it behind, the stone will slip away from your skin, and the theatre will return to its former, pristine glory. If not, you will either remain stone for the rest of your stay or eventually the floor will become so weakened that it will break beneath you, snapping you out of your fantasy in the most violent way possible.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Did you follow the Narrator’s cues? Did you perform to his satisfaction? You may be getting out as the sole survivor, or you may be with your entire group, bruised and battered and broken, but the second you step foot into the foyer, a triumphant song will begin to play, confetti will shoot straight out of the walls, fireworks will be set off behind you, and a sparkler will appear in your hand (if you’ve still got one). “You did it! You survived! And you told such a good story! Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations! Thank you for playing The Stanley - oh, I’m ever so sorry. Force of habit, you see. Thank you for playing my game. You were such a good sport, and I think we’ve made a pretty good attempt at horror this year. I’m ever so proud of you. Go on, then! Get out! Victory awaits!”

Once you leave, all of your grievous injuries will be cured, and you will be standing out on the sidewalk where you came into this place, and you’ll be free to go.


Did you wait out the full three days or until somebody killed The Narrator? All around you, the fantastical things you see will begin to shift and shimmer and change, at which point the house will return back to its natural form: a normal, suburban house, with not a single thing worth noting or taking inside. Your grievous wounds will be cured, and you’ll be free to go, though the Narrator will be entirely absent. Anticlimactic, huh?

OOC NOTE: Is there something here you want that I haven’t provided? Shoot me questions and I’m sure I can accommodate you.