Scariest Lines

[Myou]

What's the scariest line (or few lines) you can think of? It could be to describe a foe, set a scene, or something else. :3

[Lycan 01]

"You see Cthulhu."


I'm happy to say, I actually got use that line once during a Call of Cthulhu one-shot featuring an attack on New York City by the Great Old One, a la Cloverfield. The result? One player was already insane and had passed out, another player began to babble incoherantly and rock back and forth, while the third pulled out his pistol, shot himself through the head, and tumbled out of the helicopter they were escaping in. The perfect ending, I believe...

[Fluffles]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.


EDIT: Damned ninjas.

[Project_Mayhem]

Having npcs come dangerously close to saying Hastur three times is always good

[Catch]

DM: "Make a Spot check."
Player: "Alright.... That's a total of 33. What do I see?"
DM: *smile* "Nothing."

[Myou]

"You see Cthulhu."


I'm happy to say, I actually got use that line once during a Call of Cthulhu one-shot featuring an attack on New York City by the Great Old One, a la Cloverfield. The result? One player was already insane and had passed out, another player began to babble incoherantly and rock back and forth, while the third pulled out his pistol, shot himself through the head, and tumbled out of the helicopter they were escaping in. The perfect ending, I believe...

I guess you had to be there.

[Dienekes]

DM: "Make a Spot check."
Player: "Alright.... That's a total of 33. What do I see?"
DM: *smile* "Nothing."

This, and not a line per se but whenever a player passes a note to someone else/GM.

The tension such a thing builds is incredible.

[Masaioh]

Scariest in context: You all wake up in an inn.

Scariest regardless of context: The opening of the Tarrasque's description in the MM, but with plurals.

The first one comes from the first campaign I DM'ed, where the first encounter was started by the inn imploding and the players waking up in what is colloquially known as 'the elemental plane of jello' or 'Ran Ran Ruu'. Queue Giygas theme and flying demon turtles. The line is usually met with some variation of 'Oh, crap, not AGAIN!'.

[Paulus]

"He smiles." Said after the BBEG is supposedly defeated via party's use of all resources and effort.

[BenTheJester]

DM: "Make a Spot check."
Player: "Alright.... That's a total of 33. What do I see?"
DM: *smile* "Nothing."

That's awesome.

[golentan]

Facing a hopeless battle as the last survivors of humanity against a horde of demons, and having barricaded the building we're in in a horror survival game, the DM looks at us and says:

"A handsome man in a well tailored suit simply appears in the room with you. He gives you a charming smile and says 'Pleased to meet you, I'm a man of wealth and taste.'"

The one I pulled on my players was more in line with the Cthulhu ones. In a Sci Fi game they made (by which I mean hideously critically failed, by 40 points) a gather information check, so I winged it and said "You wake up three days later with amnesia, all you remember is the phrase 'President Bartlett commands the humming chair and vacillating shoggoth,' and that it's somehow related to your memory loss." They cleared off that planet in record time, I didn't think it was that scary.

[Starscream]

Any time the DM says "Are you sure?"

Well I'm not now, thanks.

"Interesting" is another heart-stopper.

[Myou]

Lines like 'are you sure?', 'make a spot check' etc aren't actually scary though, that's just the DM inducing a sense of paranoia.

[Kallisti]

Any time the DM makes a cryptic comment, rolls his dice for no apparent reason, or smiles.

Although, actual lines that are frightening in context: "Have you ever been haunted? Ever been the only one in a room...and realized you're not alone? Ever looked in the mirror and wondered if the eyes staring back at you are really your own?"

[Solaris]

"Schnepp, you take point."
"Ahead of or behind the IAs?"
"Ahead."
I could hear the dramatic musical cue. Context? We're clearing a minefield with nothing but our boots. Even better, we did find mines and dug 'em up.
... I don't care if it's an AT mine and supposedly only blows up with a tank on top of it, it's still a mine designed to kill tanks and I'm a whole lot squishier than a tank.

*Ting* "I found something!"

"Let's split up, we'll cover more ground" is even scarier when you're trolling for a random encounter in real life.

"Incoming!" stopped being scary, but boy did it getcha the first time.

"What's the worst that could happen?" is never a good thing to hear.

Had an NCO on his third deployment, both previous managed to evade IED/injury. He didn't like to hear "Third time's the charm."
... Still managed to evade IED/injury.

A guy talking to himself while carrying a loaded weapon. Not exactly a line, per se, but it involves speech and scary.

A guy talking to a stuffed squirrel while on guard in a tower that has no less than four frag grenades and an M240B with enough rounds to kill everyone twice over tends to unnerve some, too.

"You know how to drive?"
"Nope!"

[Volkov]

"Pandorym's body has reunited with his mind, and he's brought friends."

[Dixieboy]

"Woops"
And
"damn"

Not even a line, just words like that. *shiver*

[Jade_Tarem]

I recently had the following line delivered to me by the DM in a PbP game.

"...and high overhead, dracoliches circle nervously."

[dspeyer]

"Can I see your character sheet? I just need to copy down some numbers."

It's got to be either will save or spot modifier, but you don't get to know *which*.

[Starscream]

Lines like 'are you sure?', 'make a spot check' etc aren't actually scary though, that's just the DM inducing a sense of paranoia.

You haven't had some of my DMs. Merely playing with my cousin behind the screen is enough to induce paranoia. Having him say "Are you sure?" is enough to induce incontinence.

[Volkov]

Rogue: I signal the rest of my invisible party to try and sneak by the sleeping red dragon with one hundred twenty virtual age categories.
Me: The dragon's nostrils inhale a large gust of air and then suddenly the dragon wakes up and says "Hello gnomish rogue, I sense that you are about fifty feet away, invisible, and have brought along a dwarf fighter, a ilithid psion, a lizard folk fighter, and an elven cleric. I sense your future will involve a major torching."
The dragon then fires his ungodly powerful breath weapon, incinerating the APL 100 party who forgot to proof themselves against fire, and all rolled very poorly on their throws, with the rogue rolling a one.

[The Demented One]

"Shall we decimate them? That sounds good, nice word... decimate. Remove one-tenth of the Earth's population!"

[Yukitsu]

Apparantly, when I said "They haven't died yet." when someone was asking why I'd killed all these NPCs that had disappeared.

[JonestheSpy]

I found the check-out line at the annual San Francisco Library Used Book sale to be simply terrifiying.

[Volkov]

"You finally reach Demogorgon, his massive eighteen foot frame imposing against your party, but his eyes are dead, and his body drops to the ground, both heads have had their skulls extracted, and an massively powerful elder brain makes itself known, and it doesn't seem to have suffered any damage from the prince of demons."

[Dixieboy]

Waaaaait, can elder brains move?

[Volkov]

You pass by a wagon, with two parrots on your shoulder and all of a sudden the left one starts shouting. "ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS ORCUS!" While the other one shouts "HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR HASTUR!"

[Gourtox]

This is inspiring me to make a game. I really need to finishe my homebrew settign.

[hotel_papa]

The scariest thing I ever said to a party?

"So, as it turns out, the Greater Rod of Cancellation you recovered from the desert temple for your girlfriend? The one you met on a lightning rail at level 1, and insisted upon sleeping with? She's not using it to cure her brother. Her brother is ... was...that cancer mage that the Druid's wolf at back when you were level 5. She's using it to dispel a certain ward on a certain tomb. Which, until now, held her grandfather. Who is a disciple of the Worm that Walks. On the bright side, taking out that Waste Lich got you to level 10. On the slightly worse side, welcome to an Elder Evils campaign. On a signifigantly worse side, your character had sex with a blood relation of both someone with the cancer mage prestige class, and someone with the worm that walks template. You may want to get yourself tested."

[Volkov]

"Roll a fortitude save"
"Why?"
"You hit a spike laced with Pit Fiend Venom, From a max hit dice Pit fiend who has a base constitution score of eighteen."

Pit fiend venom, the death effect on a failed row makes that venom the scariest venom of all.