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View Full Version : DM Help I'm trying to describe some proper horror



HoboKnight
2022-10-24, 11:24 AM
So, the BBEG in my campaign is a coven of epic-level hags. They are able to slowly curse a settlement, drag it into their marshy demiplane and slowly pick it apart, settler by settler, until most are dead and others deranged beyond salvation(children included).

Now, I'd like to show my players what is left, after hags have their fun. Most of settlers in such settlements are dead, but there are a handful, completely broken, or suffering so that hags have let them live(they feed on suffering). My group is a group of adults, so nothing is barred, except, perhaps cheesy and banal/edgy.

Here are ideas I have so far:

- A house with a cradle in it, in it a suffocated child. Next to it, a young woman, hanged by the neck and a fallen chair under her. (Mother, her annoyance with child crying drove her to insanity)
- A house with a raving man in it, talking about threats to his family. In the cellar there are 3 corpses (died of starvation), 1 female adult, 2 kids. There are nail marks on the inner side of the hatch to the cellar. (fathers protective nature pushed beyond all limits)
- There is a man, missing his left leg and a part of his arm. He is feeding pieces of him to his dog(demon dog). There are also human bones in the house. (man’s love of dog perverted to insane self-sacrifice)
- A young woman is fleeing from all other humans. Regularly, a ghost comes out of her, possessing her and she smashes her head into the furniture/ground, cuts herself. She’s unable to process the guilt of surviving the horror that caused others to meet a horrific end. If players harm the ghost, she gets same damage.(guilt manifested)

Got any other concepts/images I could introduce? Also, how could I make these images to linger in a place... like a stain of pain and horror in the place. Just hologram-ish ghosts sound too mundane.

Thanks!

Alcore
2022-10-25, 01:45 PM
Lots of dead people mean lots of ghosts. Plus they likely played with them before death so more trauma often means more likely to linger. Making a lot of assumptions on the demi plane physics here;




Have a ghost reenact his death. Don't make him transparent; we want full contact. Bonus points of a fake witch(s) helping him die. If they save him have him say "thank you" before fading away. Reveal his corpse. As they walk away they see the same man being dragged towards that spot by the fake witch(s). Killing the witch/hag doesn't stop the haunt.


Have a 'friendly' willow whisp. Friendly in that he will not attack first. He's just wandering: just chilling. Maybe he wandered in and has nothing to do with anything...


They meet a woman (half crazed, of course) who tries to invite the PCs to her cellor to protect 'the survivors'. Have her babble and some of it about a specific hag's weakness. If they do follow her they arrive at a cellor full of corpses with one being hers and a few armed people. Mums the word if they look like the PCs or not. I say not! I say the bodies are now all zombies that attack. Is there a mcguffin here to aid in the battle? Maybe. Definitely some information written down in various fluids...

HoboKnight
2022-10-26, 12:30 AM
All the assumptions are CORRECT! I knew I should do ghosts. And those ideas are splendid.

Alcore
2022-10-26, 11:29 AM
Been doing some thinking...

Perhaps Willow the willow whisp did come here on his own. Perhaps Willow knows a way out. Perhaps the PCs need to make a hasty retreat and lack the spells to get some distance between them and the hags. Willow is now their best friend but Willow isn't actually alive in the same way they are; his idea of a safe plane to 'walk' through might be quite lethal to the PCs... but the hags might not ever find them. After all, who would go looking at the plane of negativity for living people?


Hey everyone! Meet Chad! (Actually game name still pending) This wonderful man has a pumkin farm at the edge of town. He is quite normal... in comparison to everyone at least... he just now has his head of in the clouds and in complete denial of current events. He even has a new wife! Which is why he is still somewhat normal but that doesn't mean she isn't waiting for the other shoe to drop; she's just too selfish about the pampering to force the issue.

So come on over! Be treated to an odd tasting, but perfectly safe, home cooked dinner and clean warm beds! You might even get to meet the misses! Just don't go through the pumkin patch in the dark, or bleeding or carrying corpses... you know what? Just avoid the pumkins; they are ravenous little buggers. :smalleek:




I find the best way to invoke horror is to have things appear normal but off. I have no idea how much time you have to spend on this but starting out grim dark bloody lethal and ending that way might not have the impact that a 'slowish' buildup would have.

Grod_The_Giant
2022-10-26, 02:19 PM
Got any other concepts/images I could introduce? Also, how could I make these images to linger in a place... like a stain of pain and horror in the place. Just hologram-ish ghosts sound too mundane.
How about flies, swarming above the corpses and somehow taking the shape of the dead?

EDIT: But honestly, you probably don't need visual images at all for a lot of these. Good horror doesn't describe a scene so much as it does evoke it. You want to give your players enough detail that their own imagination fills in the blanks the way you want--that'll always be scarier than anything you can verbalize-- but not so much that they can tell exactly what's going on.

EDIT 2: The party enters a village and finds it empty--until they get to the town square. There they find hundreds of partially-filled graves surrounded by piles of soil, arms still sticking out. Some bodies have them neatly crossed over where their chest would be; others are frozen halfway through their task of scooping more dirt on top of themselves. Some arms are very, very small.

animorte
2022-10-26, 04:05 PM
And don’t forget skin-tingling, spine-curling, hair-raising ambient music.

Palanan
2022-10-26, 04:08 PM
Originally Posted by animorte
And don’t forget skin-tingling, spine-curling, hair-raising ambient music.

Any suggestions?

animorte
2022-10-26, 04:27 PM
Any suggestions?

Elemental Soundworks (https://m.youtube.com/c/ElementalSoundWorks) has a lot of really good stuff.

Necrisha
2022-10-30, 11:56 PM
A single mother seems remarkably untouched alongside her three daughters, outside of being remarkably ugly for a normal woman. She invites the party to spend the night in safety, In the tax collector's manor, and celebrate her daughters coming of age in the morning. In the well defended manor tucked away in one corner of the region- if the party accepts her invitation, they are woken by flesh golem escorts in the manor's livery and trotted down to the courtyard, as the woman herself is preparing an altar for some unknown ritual, and muttering bout a final reward for long years of service. As the golems list gently in the wind and the diseased boughs of old orchard trees creak eerily, the three daughters walk onto the stage, and begin the transformation into hags.

The golems are there to stall any attempt for the party to interrupt the proceedings, culminating in the mother ecstatically sacrificing herself on the altar to bless her newly hag daughters in the name of said Hags. The blessing takes the form of a weird flying conveyance, which the daughters use to escape the situation- should it have turned violent. Otherwise, they ask the party if they know any places in need of a magical merchant of sorts. If any 'Birthday' gifts were exchanged during the evening meal when everything seemed normal, the Hags are friendly, otherwise they are neutral or hostile depending on the parties actions.

...I like the concept of leaning deep into coming of age rituals perverted for the Grandmother Hags own purposes. I might have really enjoyed the stuff Volo's guide has on Hags, and am a big fan of psychological transformative horror.