[UA] New Ritual : The Spider Curse

[Scott Dorward]

On Mon, June 19, 2006 21:41, Bastien Pilon said:
> The Spider Curse

Ooooh, I like this!  If some of my players didn't read this list I'd
probably hit them with it.  I may do anyway, if I'm in an evil mood.

It reminds me ever so slightly (well, in the use of spiders) of a ritual I
put in an Over the Edge game, that could well fit into UA.  It had been
carried out by a middle-aged woman, who was a former CIA operative turned
freelancer, now working in Al Amarja.  Back in her Company days, she'd
heard about a ritual, while travelling in South America, that would allow
someone to become the centre of a web of perfect spies.  Due to the
hideous demands of the ritual, and her natural scepticism, she'd ignored
it until things turned particularly nasty for her and her daughter in Al
Amarja, when she performed it out of desperation.

The details of the ritual were vague, but they centred around naming
herself the Mother of Spiders, and sacrificing her eyes some that her
children would see for her.  She used a teaspoon and a Stanley knife. 
After the bleeding and screaming she felt a stirring in her womb and
opened a thousand new eyes.

In the game, the PCs were sent to her by a nervous man who kept checking
nooks, crannies and dark corners.  They headed out to a very run-down
suburban house, with a porch covered in spider webs.  The door was
answered by a blank-faced girl (the woman's daughter, shell-shocked by
what her life had become) who led them in silence through to her mother. 
The house was poorly lit and cluttered, full of webs and strange scuttling
noises.  The shadows seemed to move and twitch.

When they met the woman herself, she was sitting in an armchair, wearing a
soiled summer dress.  There were spiders of various sizers crawling across
her skin and through her hair.  She wore dark glasses, but those who paid
attention could see the ragged holes of her eye sockets around the rims. 
She told them all sorts of things that she couldn't possibly know, and
gave them real-time information about things going on in the city,
reported back to her by her children.  As she spoke, there were wet noises
coming from under her dress, with the occasional plopping noise as a
large, fleshy spider would fall down from between her legs and scuttle to
the safety of a warm shadow.

Needless to say, the PCs couldn't get out of there fast enough.  For the
rest of the game, they were nervous about dark shadows and scuttling
noises.  I don't think they were ever stupid enough to kill a spider,
though...

- Scott

--
'"Almighty God, how could these men and leaders of countries fight me
through mental telepathy of their computer minds and have me pushed around
thinking they could exterminate me in the spirit where I would be dead
forever and then the Earth's leaders could take over the Cosmos from me
(God) and exterminate whomever they wanted to be dead in the spirit
forever?" I thought several times as I struggled to hold on and keep my
sanity.'
 - Dan Scott Ashwander