Halloween Game the First

    On October 31, 1999, a group of teenage guys (We’ve lost the character sheets, so we’ll just have to know them by the player’s names: Chad, Will, Paul H, Paul E, and Jason) getting together to watch a scary movie on Halloween.  After gathering at Paul E’s house, they realized that no one had rented a movie.  They journeyed to the video store, where they were greeted by a creepy-looking old man with a lazy eye.
    He recommended an unmarked black videocassette, saying in a raspy, evil voice, “This one is sure to scare you.”
    (Note:  This happened long before we saw The Ring.  Creepy, no?)
    Upon returning to the house, the teenagers popped the video into the VCR.  Suddenly, the room seemed to change, and they found themselves, along with a few pieces of living room furniture, on a deserted highway in the middle of a dark forest.  Just beyond them was a large roadway sign reading “Welcome to Halloweentowne”
    Initially, they remained cool, a little confused, but they did not panic.  They had seen enough horror movies to know what might be happening.  After pushing a couch onto the road to stop any passing vehicles, the teenagers crept down into the ditch to wait.  It wasn’t long before a pair of headlights came into view.
    A dirty, old blue pickup truck stopped in front of the couch.  The teenagers took a quick vote, and then Chad stepped forward to talk to the two men in the truck.  He slowly began to explain what had happened and ask where exactly they had come.
    The window slowly rolled down to reveal a shotgun barrel aimed directly at the young man’s head.  The hick aiming the shotgun calmly said, “This makes 37, Jed.”  Chad had only enough time to knock the barrel to the side out of his face before it went off, deafening one of his ears.
    Chad quickly ducked back into the ditch, and the teenagers then fled into the forest.  The murderous hicks thought about pursuing them for a moment, but instead continued down the highway.  The teenagers, now panicking slightly, hid in the forest until they saw more headlights approaching.
    A convertible with a trio of goth girls stopped, and they eagerly began talking with the young men.
    “We’re headed to a great party out in the woods,” one told them.  “You just got to come along.  It’s going to be great.”
    As the teenagers discussed whether or not to go with the attractive young ladies, another vehicle quickly sped into view.  An armored-over delivery truck, driven like mad, came to a sliding stop between the two clusters of young people.  A man in his mid-forties with long scraggly hair, wearing a dirty plaid overshirt and jeans burst out of the drivers seat and opened fire on the goth girls with a machine gun.  The goths screamed and tumbled over in a horrible pile of gore.
    “Get in the truck!” the madman demanded.  The teenagers paused confusedly for a moment, wondering whether or not to obey the psycho.
    Then the goths began to get back up.  Still bleeding profusely, they began to scream a horrible high-pitched chant.  Their bodies began to glow, and they floated slightly above their bullet-riddled convertible.
    The madman shouted again, and the teenagers obeyed, jumping into the back of the truck.  The madman threw a grenade at the goth witches, which stalled them long enough for him to jump into the truck and begin driving away.
    “Let me guess,” the madman said to the rather disturbed teenagers.  “You just suddenly appeared here after getting something from a creepy old man.”
    They responded affirmatively.
    “Thank goodness I found you,” the madman told them.  “If you had gone with them, we’d have to deal with the whole party of witches.”
    The teenagers demanded an explanation, and the madman told them that he’d explain everything just as soon as they got to a safe place.  They rode in silence until they reached a beat-up, three-story house at the end of a neighborhood covered in defenses that even the most paranoid member of the Minnesota Civil Defense would call excessive.  Razor wire, automated guns, floodlights, cameras, everything that could be imagined defended the house.
    The madman parked the truck in the garage next to a sleek motorcycle.  He shut the door, checked to make sure they hadn’t been followed, and then escorted the teenagers into the house.  The teenagers then demanded an explanation again, and, settling into a chair next to a tremendous security control console, he began the story.
    “My name’s Greg Weiss,” he said.  “I’m from the real world, just like you.  Of course, it’s been a long time…
    “Every Halloween, something happens.  There’s this creepy old man, and he gives out some kind of teleportation device that brings a group of people here.  I’ve heard that it’s been books, paintings, video games, nearly everything, but it’s always totally and evilly black.”
    The teenagers told him about the creepy old man at the video store and the black cassette.
    “Ah, great.  For me it was a record of what was supposed to be spooky sounds.  Anyway, every year a group of people come to this dimension filled with Halloweentowne and the surrounding area.  Along with them, a monster appears, just like in any horror story or movie.  It really varies, sometimes there’s a horde of vampires or a giant monster or who-knows-what.  Those witches we met appeared back in the ‘60s, for example.  So then the people and the monsters have to duke it out.  If the people kill the monster, they get to go home.  If the monster kills the people, it gets to stay and kill people every Halloween.  Over time, the monsters have won out a lot more, so the place is pretty much filled with them.
    “Other than the monsters that appear every Halloween, this town is pretty much a normal city.  On Halloween, the unsuspecting natives become victims to the horrible slaughter dished out by the monsters and the whole town is wrecked.  Once the sun rises on November 1, the monsters disappear and the survivors begin rebuilding.  By Thanksgiving, everyone has forgotten about the whole mess.  New people move in, the town recovers, and everything is dandy.  Then, on the next Halloween, the monsters come back and the cycle repeats.  It’s really, really horrible.”
    Greg paused in thought, then continued.  “If you don’t kill your monster by dawn, you’re stuck here.  I’ve been here since 1976.”
    “Why don’t you go after your monster?” one of the guys asked.
    Greg pointed out the window to a haunted-looking mansion on top of a hill.  “You see that!  That mansion was just fine until Halloween 1976, then it was packed full of horrible ghosts.  I ain’t going in there, it’s scary!”
    Needless to say, seeing Halloween again and again had tested Greg’s sanity.
    “Anyway,” Greg continued.  “After my two buddies got killed, I decided to stay here.  There was a guy here before me, from the ‘50s, and he generally taught me everything I needed to know to survive.  He said that we have it easy nowadays, since back then they had atomic super-monsters the size of buildings.  A pair of werewolves got him in ‘93, since then I’ve been alone.”
    Greg sighed.  “It’s kind of my duty to help out the ones who appear.  Imagine what would have happened had you never met up with me.  A giant worm could have ended you before you found out anything.  Anyway, I go out every Halloween and pick up the pieces behind some of the monsters:  banks, jewelry stores, etc.  The police are usually the first to go, so there’s not anyone to stop me.  I use the money to live on through the next year and to get everything I need for next year.”
    Greg stood and opened a closet full of body armor, heavy and light weaponry, and nearly every explosive imaginable.  “Black market stuff.  Costs a pretty penny, but it’s not bad for only working once a year.  Speaking of which, I should probably get going.”
    After strapping several weapons to his body, he opened a drawer and pulled out a bunch of crumpled pieces of paper.  He gave them to the guys and moved to explain.
    “The first is a set of rules I’ve compiled based on experiences here and watching every horror movie known to man,” Greg said.  “Main rules: be good people, and don’t take your clothes off.  Of course, by the looks of you guys, you don’t have too much to worry about that second one.”
    The guys felt rather insulted, but glad to get the list.
    “The rest is a catalog of monsters with some dates about when they might have come.  I don’t know how accurate it is, but it could help you figure out what is what.  Add anything if you can, and if it’s not there, it may well be your monster and your ticket out of this wretched…”  His speech trailed off into expletives.
    Greg then left through the garage, speeding away on his sweet motorcycle.  He would rob many a bank that night to replenish his funds and to buy more weapons to kill monsters next year (it’s every American’s dream).  The guys loaded up on weapons of their own from Greg’s impressive collection.  After that, they piled into the armored-over delivery truck to begin the search for the evil that they are destined to battle.
    The guys then headed out into the terrifying world of nightmare that is Halloweentowne.  After driving a few blocks, they came upon a limo transporting the town mayor, who, according to the list, was a powerful evil wizard.  The guys fought him for a bit, and finally tossed a grenade into his mouth, which put his spell-casting days to an end in a horrible explosion.
    The guys continued to drive around, then came upon the Halloweentowne Museum, where the delivery truck happened to die.  As they tried to crank the engine, mummies began to pour from the Egyptian wing, threatening to kill them all.  They duked it out with the mummies for a while, and then something really, really bad happened.
    A guy with shaggy black hair wearing a black trench coat walked up slowly, staring at the ground.  When he arrived, he looked up and revealed that he has no eyes.  A glance at the list of monsters reveals that he was VERY BAD NEWS and appeared some time in the ‘80s.  (Note:  This monster, named Destruction, is from an older game we played known as the Haunted Campus.  Man, oh man, that was a great game.)
    At the last instant, the delivery truck started and the guys escaped (a staple in horror movies).  After a bit of discussion, they decided they could probably use some holy water (just in case), and they headed over to Halloweentowne’s main cathedral.
    Here they met Father O’Malley, a really great guy.  He responded with only a little concern over the sheer amount of weaponry the guys have, and it turned out he was a friend of Greg’s.  Father O’Malley was one of the few citizens of Halloweentowne who was in the know about the monsters.
    As the guys were filling up a canteen, there was a tremendous roar and a crash at the front gate of the cathedral.  Father O’Malley looked through the door, shrieked, and recommended that they leave.  Outside is the Destroyer of Temples, a monster from the 16th century who spent every Halloween destroying every holy place he could.  The guys sneaked past him and drove off in the delivery van.
    From there, the guys drove aimlessly a bit more.  Then they came upon a teenage girl being chased by a giant alligator.  The guys accidentally hit her, though they braked enough only to knock her to the ground and wind her.  They took out the alligator, and then the girl begged to be taken with them for protection.  The guys argued for a bit, and Paul H suggested the immortal line, “Bind her feet!”  At last the guys agreed to take her with them.  She was a really impressive shot with the pistol they gave her, and she claimed to have gained her great aim in the Girl Scouts.
    After picking up the girl, they met with increasingly more difficult monsters.  In one battle, Chad got severely injured and they nearly escaped before he succumbed to his injuries.  They quickly drove to a hospital and charged in to get Chad some help.  The guys forced their way to the top of the list by their extreme weaponry.  In the emergency room, the doctors work feverishly, and then Chad makes a sudden recovery.  (Unbeknownst to the doctors and the other guys, the girl was actually a demon in disguise and she had another demon possess Chad.  From here, Chad covertly plays as a demon and tries to kill the guys.)
    Now the guys and their covertly malevolent girl headed back to Greg’s to get their bearings and reload for another excursion.  They arrived to find Greg sitting in a massive pile of money, counting calmly.  Greg reacted with a bit of concern at the girl, though performing a good deed of helping someone gives one bonus points on their survival rate.
    Suddenly, Greg’s alarm system went off.  His outdoor cameras showed a horde of flying vampires approaching, ready to wreak destruction.  They all decided to run for it, including Greg who said, “I ain’t staying there with a bunch of vampires.”
    They piled into the delivery van and drove away from the vampires, firing behind them in an effort to kill the vampires without direct contact.  Suddenly, demon-possessed-Chad flicked the pin out of a grenade and dropped the grenade in a box of explosives.  Greg, who saw the act in the rear-view mirror shouted in terror and leapt out of the vehicle.  The guys were not so lucky, and all perished in the resulting explosion.
    (Note:  This action lives on in infamy among our gaming circle.)

    On October 31, 2000, the guys woke up from their slumber of death.  Greg had gathered their bodies after the explosion and had them resurrected.  He, Father O’Malley, and the Rabbi Krabowski, another friend of Greg’s, performed an ancient Jewish ritual that could only be done every 500 years to bring them back to life.  (Coincidentally, there is some kind of ritual like this that happens every year, duh.)  Chad was back to his old self, as the demon could not repossess his body in the ritual.
    “You guys were lucky,” Greg told them.  “Usually the monsters completely destroy the bodies and there’s no hope.”
    Alive again and rearmed, the guys set out again with Greg, this time to find those who had come to Halloweentowne this year.  Because the armored-over delivery truck was destroyed in the explosion, Greg now had a military hummer with a machine gun on top.  (It was a really beautiful vehicle, but I will never forget the sheer coolness of an armored-over delivery truck.)
    They drove back out to the deserted highway where they found some random bits of dormitory furniture, but whoever had been there was now gone.  After a brief discussion, they decided to drive out to the goth witches’ party to find the newcomers.  The party, which is held in a field a mile or so off of the highway, was filled with witches, many of whom were surrounding a bonfire chanting wildly.  Among them was a cluster of college-age girls who seemed very concerned with their decision to attend to the party.
    “Those must be them,” Greg muttered, and they quickly hatched a scheme to rescue them.
    Greg drove the hummer at full speed, tearing through the party of witches.  Meanwhile, the guys were hanging out of every window, shooting wildly, and making good use of the machine gun.  The element of surprise distracted the witches enough for several of the guys to hop out, blast a few witches, and then escort the six rather frightened girls back to the hummer.  Greg then revved the engine, and the very full hummer tore away from the scene.  The few remaining witches picked themselves up enough to turn their bonfire into a flaming dragon that pursued them.
    The dragon beat up the hummer quite a bit while the guys fired many rounds at the dragon to no avail.  At last one of them got the idea to toss up a fire extinguisher.  The extinguisher hit the dragon and exploded, drowning out the dragon’s heat.  Now free from the dragon, the hummer drove away.
    Greg dropped the guys off at a lake nearby Halloweentowne, where, according to reports from last year, a monster had eaten several swimmers.  He did not recall the monster from before, so the guys hoped that this was their ticket out.  Then Greg and the girls hurried off to find more weapons and pursue another monster.  After the guys arrived, they noticed a group of swimmers scurrying away from the shore.  They soon noticed a many-tentacled beast rising from the murky waters.
    Then, at the most inopportune time, a dirty, old blue pickup truck appeared.  Jed and Frank, the two murderous hicks who had appeared a year ago, drove onto the scene and fired wildly at the guys.  Frank, who was driving, was screaming at Jed not to take too many of the kills, as they were both tied at 52 (victims, that is), and he did not want to get behind.  The guys fought both the monster and Jed and Frank, killing the two hicks and wrecking their truck.
    Then they turned their focus on the lake monster.  They lured it onto land, but were soon becoming overwhelmed.  One by one, it ate Jason, Paul E, and Will.  While Will was doing his best to hack at the monster’s esophagus after having been eaten, Chad and Paul H worked to put an end to it.  Taking a canister of propane from the back of Jed and Frank’s truck, Chad lobbed it at the monster.  Paul H snapped off a great shot, causing the propane to explode and destroy the monster.
    The two survivors, Chad and Paul H, reappeared in the living room they had left a year earlier.  They were much scarred by the horrifying experience, which no one believed, even though they could not explain their year-long disappearance.  Paul H lived a below-normal life as an unthinking data processor.  Meanwhile, Chad spent his life vainly searching for the creepy old man who had started the whole mess.

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