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Seed Tracks: October Rust by Type O Negative

The first Seed Tracks of Halloween. There were so many albums to choose from, but I went with gothic doom band Type O Negative’s fourth album of October Rust as it’s often in my October listening list. This issue of Seedtracks ignores the non-musical and short, spoken word tracks (1, 2, and 14).

Love You to Death

Genres/Games: In Nomine, Urban Horror/Fantasy

Shall I prove I mean what I’m saying, begging
I say the beast inside of me’s gonna get ya, get ya, get…

Parzuph is the Shedite Demon of Fatal Attraction and one of Andrealphus’s Knight of Infernal Pleasures. As it enters its next host (usually through sex) the demon corrupts that person’s vision of a specific target of desire, turning their lust into a paranoid obsession. When the obsession reaches a boiling point the demon leaves its human host. Rarely does Parzuph need to suggest to its host to kill their target or themselves, the ball is already set in motion. As any murder or suicide is fully the human’s decision it creates no Disturbance in the Symphony. This makes the demon very hard to track, but rumor has it that the Shedite is currently in the same town/city as the PCs.

Be My Druidess

Genres/Games: Cyberpunk, Sci-Fi

Our lust increased feeds desire
As we combust, yeah we’re on fire

DRDESS, more commonly known as “Druidess,” is a new nanovirus that’s starting to appear throughout the city [or expanded, in a space game]. This particular virus is unique in that it’s not transmitted via electronic means but through bodily fluids. Given it’s combination of biological and cybernetic nature detection methods are rarer and the machines required for scans are large and cumbersome. No one is quite sure of the origin of the nanovirus and it doesn’t make itself known until those infected are in a state of orgasm. The particular endorphins present during climax trigger the nanovirus and any cyberware components begin to overheat. Carriers with a large amount of cyberware have been known to catch fire. Anyone with cyberware is advised to go to the local clinic to register for deep scans to verify if they have the nanovirus. Of course, if the potential carrier is living off the grid then the scans risk putting them back in the system. Unless, of course, someone can obtain one of the new scanners and figure out how to read the results.

Green Man

Genres/Games: Fantasy

Spring won’t come, the need of strife
To struggle to be freed from hard ground

It should be late spring, but the ground continues to be frozen and snow still occasionally falls from the sky. No amount of prayer to the gods and goddesses have helped. No gods, wizards, or other forces have claimed responsibility, either. Druids are at a loss as to why the cycle has been broken. Most crop stores have been depleted. The wealthy and magical have relied on summoned food, but the poor have been forced to scavenge for roots and hunt for animals that have been hibernating too long. Some may be eating the dead.

The adventurers are summoned to investigate. After weeks of questioning and some dungeon delving for lost knowledge they’ll find that a primordial force of nature was destroyed and a mortal must give up their life to ascend and transform themselves into the Green Man. Will one of the adventurers perform the ritual or will they convince someone else to give up their life.

The greater mystery of how a primordial force was vanquished is a greater mystery that may be woven into part of an epic campaign.

Red Water (Christmas Mourning)

Genres/Games: Urban Horror/Fantasy

The stockings are hung but who cares
Preserved for those no longer there

It began about a week before Christmas; a rash of particularly gruesome murders in a small New England neighborhood. Each night a different household of parents, adults, and teens were brutally killed, leaving the children as orphans. The fact that all the households had children is seemingly the only common factor. Police are baffled, especially as there’s been no sign of forced entry to any of the homes and nothing has been taken. The PCs may suspect the Krampus, but this isn’t the creature’s typical modus operandi. The murders also don’t bear the signs that this might be Frau Perchta.

What the police detectives don’t notice, however, is a now-common piece of ornamentation: an elf on the shelf. The dolls in question are hand-made and larger than most commercial versions of the elf, standing at around three feet tall. Investigation will reveal that the maker and seller of these elves is the same woman who runs the local orphanage. While she appears to be a young, attractive woman in her early 20s, she’s actually a Hag. Her plan is to create enough orphans to feed her for the year where she’ll repeat her murders in another town.

My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend

Genres/Games: Cyberpunk, Sci-Fi

My girlfriend’s girlfriend
She looks like you
My girlfriend’s girlfriend
She’s my girl too

Claude Hill and Juliet Van Moore are two young punks that have recently been seen with a third companion that looks suspiciously like one of the female PCs (or close NPC if there are no women player characters). Their criminal activities with this third member may begin to splash over onto the PC, having her accused of reckless behavior and property damage. She may even be kicked out of bars for fights she was not actually present for.

Claude and Juliet have been hanging out with Raz; a clone of the PC. They had observed the character in action a year ago and managed to scrape together enough DNA to assemble a clone with experimental and highly illegal tech. The clone isn’t a perfect copy; Raz has her own name and personality, but is almost a mirror image of the PC. What will the PCs do with Raz and with the cloning technology Claude and Juliet have assembled (especially if cloning is illegal or unavailable to society at large)?

Die With Me

Genres/Games: Superhero, Urban Horror/Fantasy

Self pity sick
Jet fuel perfume

Brett Burns was a low-powered/low-tier superhero who went by the name “Hothead.” His power was the ability to create small flames, no more than a lighter could produce, within visible distance. Formerly a high school football player, Brett snubbed college when his power manifested; the teen thought that, with practice, he would become more powerful and rise in the ranks of other heroes. This never came to be and Brett’s day job is a home siding laborer for his father’s company. A job he feels is beneath him. But, despite his bitterness and hardships, Hothead still worked as a hero at night, using his physicality more than his powers against petty crooks.

Brett was dating his high-school sweetheart, Brea Jones, and had even shared his secret with her. They had even moved in together. That was until a week ago. She was tired of his complaining and bitterness. She left the ex-football player and moved back in with her parents. Enraged, Brett injected an experimental, highly flammable chemical into his ex-girlfriend’s favorite perfume before packing up and returning her belongings. The next time he saw her on the street he used his power to ignite Brea’s skin and the modified perfume immolated the young woman. Many believe she spontaneously combusted, but forensics verified that the source was external.

The PCs are now investigating the death of Brea Jones and, should they confront Hothead, they’ll find he’s incorporated the flammable chemical liquid into an aerosol-firing plastic string. This new inclusion of flammable (and super-hot once enflamed) “silly string” changes a mostly innocuous power into a deadly one. H

Burnt Flowers Fallen

Genres/Games: Urban Horror/Fantasy

Yeah I know she’s fallen out of love

Breakups happen everywhere, all the time. Not a second passes on this planet without a relationship ending somewhere. A town with two break-ups happening at the same time, both initiated by a woman? Coincidental, but not improbable. Every single straight couple break-up within a population of over 4,000 all initiated by the woman happening at the same time? Highly unlikely. But that’s exactly what happened in Flower Hill, New York. At 4:33pm Eastern, every woman in a straight relationship fell out of love with their partner and terminated the romance.

These are the kinds of stories usually missed in the news, but there were enough comments on the Internet for the Investigators (or a tech-savvy contact) to see something worth investigating. It will turn out that the cause was a spell gone awry. A high school student by the name of Terry Parks knew the object of his affections was in a bad relationship, but Victoria Stathem just didn’t see it. Having already started to tinker with witchcraft, Terry decided to try a spell to make Victoria fall out of love; it was just that the spell affected every woman in a relationship with a man. The spell may be reversed but, for many, the damage to the relationship will already be done.

In Praise of Bacchus

Genres/Games: Urban Horror/Fantasy

A lonely blue girl guards the river bed
She shakes her brown torch at the tide

A small town has a local legend. Sometimes, late at night, torchlight can be seen drifting down the river and young men who chase after the lights are never seen again. This tale is often regarded as tall tales when teens leave the town for something bigger. Others, however, know the story is not the myth it seems to be. A Nereid lives in the river and will light a small torch to attract the attention of males walking late at night or fishing before dawn. If they approach the light alone and get close enough to the river, she drowns and devours her victims. Catching the water nymph will likely require research and using someone as bait…

Cinnamon Girl

Genres/Games: Sci-Fi

A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight

People don’t dream in hypersleep; the suspended animation prevents REM sleep. So, what does it mean when the passengers (including the PCs) in hypersleep all realize that not only are they dreaming, but their dreams are shared? Probably nothing good. Especially when those dreams start to become nightmares from which they cannot force themselves awake. Somehow, at least one of them need to trick their bodies into cardiac arrest in order to trigger the ship’s automated systems into treating them—this, of course, comes with its own risks. And it won’t help when the person who wakes up finds flesh-like tendrils spread throughout the ship and around every sleep chamber as it feeds off the dream energy of the sleepers.

The Glorious Liberation of the People’s Technocratic Republic of Vinnland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europa

Genres/Games: Steampunk, Fairypunk, Fantasy

The revolution, aided by neighboring Europa allies, was swift and bloody. But once the reign of the oppressive overlords was ended, Vinnland was in a precarious state. The Monarch had been defeated, but nature abhors a vacuum. It will be up to the PCs to redraft treaties and confirm alliances before everything crumbles and people are left hungry in the streets.

Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia)

Genres/Games: Sci-Fi

Hey wolf moon
Come cast your spell on me

There’s something odd about colonists on the moon of Canis IV. They’re welcoming, they’re well stocked, and they’re not asking for aid. But, for all that, visitors always feel like they’re in an alien environment, not one dominated by humans. Maybe it’s because all the homes have reinforced bars, or that all meals are served in bowls, or the way the colonists are often found scratching behind their ears. Mostly human, mostly normal, but just a little off.

And, every thirty lunar days, any sense of normality goes away as the bodies of the colonists transform into wolf-like creatures. And the longer the PCs stay, the more they feel their own bodies changing, too.

Haunted

Genres/Games: Urban Horror/Fantasy

Oh I’m haunted

Ghost hunters probably feel like they’re saving the day; the people (who are still alive) are in terror and the hunters rescued them. When the hunters learn of a haunted house, they rush to make sure the family that just moved in is safe. It’s unlikely they’ll expect how nonchalant the two parents and three children are about the supernatural events in their new home. This isn’t their first, or even fourth haunting. Do they want the poltergeists vanquished? Sure, but don’t make a mess or destroy their property to do it.