Steven T. Helt here, and I’ve really enjoyed my first month on the AaWBlog! October is a special month for a lot of gamers, and the Four Horsemen are understandably passionate about the horror genre. I just wanted to thank my friends at Adventureaweek.com for a great year working together before I offer an unusual and scary haunt that plays off of a classic horror trope.
We’ve seen undead, constructs, and outsiders this Halloween season, but sometimes there are worse horrors than the monsters that challenge our PCs. The behavior of mere mortals shocks us in the real world, and in horror roleplaying it should be no different. Always remember that every story we tell together comes from human imagination—therefore any terror we imagine can be conveyed by human activity.
Take religious zealotry as an example. The combination of belief in the supernatural and desire to follow a higher calling may lead to a horrific act—made all the scarier by the certainty that the “monster” labors under deep conviction. To that end, I give you my third haunt of the month: the after-image of an innocent life lost when an exuberant exorcist failed to see that she was torturing an innocent man.
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OVERZEALOUSÂ Â Â CR 7
XP 9,600
LN haunt (a 10-ft.-by-15-ft. room)
Caster Level 7th
Notice Perception DC 20 (to notice a female voice chanting and a male screaming)
hp 14; Trigger proximity; Reset 1 day
Effect A tortured scream erupts alongside the sounds of fevered chanting. Any creature in the area is affected as by a forbiddance spell cast by a lawful neutral cleric (DC 19 Will save). Each time the haunt resets, each creature inside the area of effect counts as having just entered the area for the first time.
Destruction This haunt is destroyed if any outsider (including one with the native subtype) affected by the haunt confesses its sins relative to the lawful neutral alignment. If the outsider willingly changes its alignment to lawful neutral, the “exorcism” ceases and the haunt is destroyed forever.
[Submitted by Steven T. Helt]
Haunts are the residual impression of one or more suffering souls. Those of exceptional willpower might survive their own passing and return from beyond the veil of undeath, and the truly foul might flourish as evil fiends on a malevolent plane. Unique among the events that fall under the rubric of "afterlife", haunts are indicators of extreme misery; souls that meet such a miserable death that they force the same experiences on any who come near until a specific condition gives them their final release. The more traumatic their torment, the more powerful the haunt—and the more difficult the resolution.