[Campaign Idea] Lost in the Doctor's Time and Space Tunnel

[jayster5]

Hey, everyone!

I want to run a new idea by you guys and see what you think! This one is really based on 1960s era Sci-Fi on television! I started thinking about this during the 50th Anniversary, but it's stuck with me and more and more ideas keep popping into my head. I'd like to get this started for a small group of four to five players soon, so any feedback you have would be welcome!

The concept at game start is all the player characters are somehow affiliated with a government or private scientific research facility. While there are several different areas of experimentation going on, my story focuses on the Quantum Time Vehicle project. After a short introduction to the facilities and the general idea of what's happening there, the PCs will have some time to interact with each other before all hell breaks loose! The facility is under attack by a small group of foreign agents set on stealing many of the Top Secret experiments - including the QTV. At some point, the characters will hide in the QTV for safety (determining that it's larger on the inside) and they will be off on their adventures!

I see the characters are typical archetypes of 60s era TV characters:   The absent-minded professor type (a key researcher on the QTV project who will be able to handle a lot of the hard science); a ranking security guard (enough to provide some muscle, but also tactical advice); an Executive of the government/corporation (think about any character from "Mad Men" with bluster and attitude, but provides the negotiation skills and harbors a dark secret [Dr. Smith from "Lost in Space" perhaps].); precocious son/daughter of the Security guy (gotta get that hip 60s youngster involved - like Susan, Will Robinson,  or even Frankie and Annette!) and finally the Assistant/Secretary (ideally a woman, for that "scream and fall" and "flirt and smile" routine!).

My intention is to start the campaign as a strictly time travel game...maybe up to four or five single-night stories like that - two historicals, two futures (one near present and one far future), and possibly an alternate present timeline story or one where they're trapped inside the QTV for an entire story (think "Edge of Destruction").  Due to a story complication, the space travel idea will kick in and that would end the "First Season" on another planet.

Ideally, I'm going have a recurring NPC that they can contact via radio/video back at the facility (ala "Time Tunnel" or "Quantum Leap") allowing me to give them hints or direction when necessary, and to add some comic relief here and there.  And when the QTV goes missing...so does their contact?

I'd like the story to be played pretty broad and with all the archetypes and stereotypes of the 1960s present in play.  Things should have bright colors like "Star Trek" and "Lost in Space" and lots of rayguns and bug-eyed monsters.

So, what am I leaving out?  What would add to the atmosphere and the fun?  Any particular time periods that we should visit in the historicals?  I have a lot of experience with the real Tombstone, Arizona, so some version of the OK Corral will inevitably show up!  Please give opinions and advice!

Thanks!

[Catsmate]

Interesting idea, The Time Tunnel meets Sliders with bits of Into the Cube and Time Lords.
Some questions to stimulate ideas...

1. Are you retaining the Time Lords in this setting? Will the PCs encounter them?
If so what happens? It's an easy way home (unless the encounter a renegade like the Master or the Monk) or they may not wish to interfere with humanity's first experiments in time travel.

• You could use them but 'file off the serial numbers', having Chronarchs and Omnitopes rather than Time Lords and TARDISes.
• And if they don't want to interfere with the PCs is this because they know they're fated to die/never return home/be expunged from reality?
  

2. Can PCs go home? Or are they trying to undo changes that have happened so they actually exist again?

• Do they want to go home? Or seek out some mythical 'Golden Age' o just conquer the past?
  

3. Is time plastic? And to what extent, what level of inertia? Basically how easy is it to change the past and what happens, multiple universes, history re-written et cetera. If the future is altered so that a PC never existed, do they cease to exist? Does this apply to objects?

• My preferred answer is no, paradoxes exist, but that's just my taste.
  

Or is the past more-or-less immutable, e.g. there's sufficient quantum fuzziness for time travel to happen but you simply can't make significant changes.

• This is an uncommon and seemingly restrictive choice but worked very well in the short lived Time Riders RPG.
  

4. How much control do the PCs have over their craft? Can they select a destination and expect to actually get there? Can others detect/divert them?


5. How does the time machine work? Is it purely human technology or does it require a piece of Mysterious Technology (e.g. an unusually dense icosahedron) to function? Is there a recharge time? And if so is this fixed or variable, and do the PCs know how long they have to remain?


6. Are there other time active groups around? For example:

• Those enemy agents, do they have a time machine too?
• Factions from the future of humanity. If time travel is possible it won't be forgotten (unless it is of course).
  
• Alternate futures; groups attempting to ensure their future comes to pass.
• Ye Temporal Constabulary. Future humans (and perhaps others) attempting to regulate time travel, possibly including the PCs. ("You can't regulate us, we're what has to have happened before there's anything for you to regulate"...)
• If the campaign is based in the '60s then it's practically compulsory for Nazis to appear, perhaps time travelling Nazis with Hitler's brain in a jar. They popped up in The Man from UNCLE, The Tomorrow People, The New Avengers, The Champions even Star Trek to a degree.
• Are there aliens around?

7. What resources and capabilities does the PC time machine have? You state it's larger on the inside but what is inside it?

• Accommodation: can they party stay inside for prolonged periods, or is it more akin to a car and they have to camp out.
• Medical: does it have any medical facilities, and to what extent (i.e. limited to realistic 60s tech).
  
• Workshop & manufacturing: can they fix and make stuff?
• Laboratory: can the PCs test and examine things?
  
• Reference and library: it's the sixties so paper is king. Is there a decent encyclopedia at least? A selection of history/science/culture reference books?
  
• Supplies: weapons, clothes (period or not), food, tools. What's the QTV been stocked with?
  
• Transport: is there room for additional vehicles, if the PCs acquire them? A jeep, motorbike, bicycles, antigrav platform, kayak et cetera.
• Security: is the interior sealed from the exterior, with air recycling? Is it vulnerable to damage (weapons, dinosaur stomp, volcanic eruption) et cetera. Does it have a camouflage or similar device? Perhaps rotating it out of phase with normal time (and of course requiring a 'doorknob' that can be lost/stolen/confiscated. 
• Does the craft have any mobility other than it's time travel capability? Can it fly, be driven, float?
  

Is it completed, or are there "features to be implemented"?

What's the inside like, shape and size, can it be reconfigured? Two ideas:
A: TimeCube: a 2m cube on the outside, but 20m x 20m x 20m on the inside. The interior is pretty normal 60s technology, multiple levels with stairs/ladders and a lift for heavy stuff. A nuclear reactor for power and the actual displacement gadget. Spartanly furnished rooms (for 30+ people so there's plenty of space) but much of the other fittings aren't installed. A reasonable reference library but mostly still crated.

B: a seemingly infinite series of 3m cubes, each with two walls that can be configured to connect to other cubes.


8. You say the PCs will (at least initially) be able to call home for advice/assistance. Is this voice only or can they provide images, video, facsimile as well? Useful for when you need to recognise someone or a map.

• Can they send objects? The Time Tunnel managed this occasionally.

Some suggestions for adventures.

1. Robin of Sherwood (

Aliens optional. But it is an interesting legend. And if it a legend who's made it real, and why?

You could relocate it, for example having the "Robin Hood" live in Barnsdale Wood, rather than Sherwood, in 1244 (nearly fifty years after the death of Richard I) and having him mainly rob the papal tax collectors who use the weakness of Henry III to extract money and have the Sheriff of Nottingham a more-or-less neutral figure.

• Likewise you could run a more-or-less historical, or pseudo-historical, scenario based on Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes, the Musketeers, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Jules Verne/the Nautilus et cetera. After all Simon Hawke did. And he set his finale in Tombstone too...
  

2. Historians are wrong.

Take any disputed point in history (and there are lots of them) and make the less generally accepted version the real one. For example the weakness of Emperor Claudius or the historicity of a semi-legendary figure such as Jesus of Nazareth.

Make sure the PCs view is wrong and let them cope.

3. Fix the past.

A more advanced scenario could be where the party lose contact with their base and find that history has been changed drastically. Now they've got to figure out what happened and go back and fix it. There are many possibilities:

• Winston Churchill was killed in 1911 and the Central Powers win WW1
  
• War breaks out between the UK and Russia in 1904 leading to a very different world. Or not.
  
• Emperor Franz Joseph is assassinated in 1853
  
• The Trinity test fails in 1945 and the Allies invade Japan, with enormous casualties. (I'm working on a writeup of this idea).
  
• The Brotherhood church in Stepney explodes on the 16th of May 1907.

Marcus Rowland's excellent adventure Curse of the Conqueror is set in the 1980s/90s but might work as a near future 'fix the present' scenario.

Alternately most of these could work as well with the party arriving and stumbling over the plot/problem before history is changed.

4. Historical research.

By accident or design the party end up somewhere interesting and decide/are persuaded to do some research. For example the land in Europe in 1889 and try to establish exactly how Crown Prince Rudolf died. Or

• who assassinated John Kennedy (assuming he's dead in the campaign)
• who was the Man in the Iron Mask (actually it was velvet)
• what happened to the Roanoke settlers
  
• what Burr was up to in 1806
• what happened at Tunguska in 1908 (preferably from a safe distance)
• who was Jack the Ripper (just don't actually stop him of course)
• what happened to the Princes in the Tower (nephews of Richard III generally held to have been murdered)

5. Mysterious artifact.

The players stumble over something in the past that seem wildly anachronistic. Is is the product of a local genius, a crashed alien or other time travellers. How do they stop it having an impact on history?

6. Historical research 2 - acquisitions

Instead of being after pure data the party tasked at acquiring something, a lost book, play or speech, for example:

• The actual text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for example (preferably a recording, made with 60s technology...)
• Lost Elizabethan plays, e.g. Shakespeare's Loves Labour's Won
  
• The full Epic of Gilgamesh
  

7. Parallel worlds.

You mention you plan at least one excursion to a parallel Earth, the one suggestion I make is you avoid the stereotypes. Trying going against the flow and making it a better place rather than a hellhole, fascist state or other dystopia.

[Stormcrow]

I once ran a GURPS game of "In The Cube," which is detailed in GURPS Time Travel and GURPS Infinite Worlds. It was basically The Time Tunnel as an RPG. What was really fun about it was each player had two characters: one Wanderer and one Scientist. The game would follow the Wanderers on their adventures until the moment that Control was able to make contact, at which point the game would return to Control the last time they transferred the Wanderers and follow them. When contact was established, some would speak as the Wanderers and some as the Scientists, until another transfer was made and contact lost again.

While the Wanderers dealt with Time Tunnelly adventures, the Scientists were trying to keep their secret project a secret, from a nosy reporter (their solution: show him everything, then shove him into the hypercube!) and from a ruthless, rival scientist who wanted their key piece of technology for himself. Typically, games would alternate between sheer survival (in an arctic wilderness, on the Gettysburg battlefield, in a plague-ridden medieval city) and espionage back home. It was a lot of fun.

[jayster5]

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

1. Are you retaining the Time Lords in this setting? Will the PCs encounter them?
If so what happens? It's an easy way home (unless the encounter a renegade like the Master or the Monk) or they may not wish to interfere with humanity's first experiments in time travel

Yes, actually I DO intend to keep the Time Lords in the setting, but they won't be encountered for a bit.  When they DO first encounter another time traveler it will be Renegade as you surmised.  In fact, as part of the unraveling story, it will be discovered that the QTV wasn't created by humans at all, but was a damaged SIDRAT that was left buried and presumed destroyed in the wake of the "War Games."  Our character has been trying to reverse engineer it's operation, but is NOT the designer.

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

2. Can PCs go home? Or are they trying to undo changes that have happened so they actually exist again?

8. You say the PCs will (at least initially) be able to call home for advice/assistance. Is this voice only or can they provide images, video, facsimile as well? Useful for when you need to recognise someone or a map.
•Can they send objects? The Time Tunnel managed this occasionally.

Yes, their initial plotlines will concern trying to get home while not causing any harm to the timeline.  I'll kind of run this more like "Quantum Leap" than a 60's show, but that should add to the fun! Also borrowing from "Quantum Leap," they will have a line of communication to an NPC back at the complex who is getting data from the QTV and can communicate with them via a viewscreen in the control room. I hadn't considered the idea of sending objects, but I think I'll start out without that capability. Might make things a bit too easy for them.

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

4. How much control do the PCs have over their craft? Can they select a destination and expect to actually get there? Can others detect/divert them?

5. How does the time machine work? Is it purely human technology or does it require a piece of Mysterious Technology (e.g. an unusually dense icosahedron) to function? Is there a recharge time? And if so is this fixed or variable, and do the PCs know how long they have to remain?

They will have very little control to begin with. The fact that they get into the Time Vortex in the first episode is a surprise to all of them! There will be an element that will need to "recharge" before they can try it again, thus locking them in a location/time. This will give the adventures a chance to play out - very similar to times when the TARDIS is somehow "lost" during an adventure and reclaimed at the end. And yes, that will happen as well!

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

6. Are there other time active groups around? For example:
•Those enemy agents, do they have a time machine too?
•Factions from the future of humanity. If time travel is possible it won't be forgotten (unless it is of course).
•Alternate futures; groups attempting to ensure their future comes to pass.
•Ye Temporal Constabulary. Future humans (and perhaps others) attempting to regulate time travel, possibly including the PCs. ("You can't regulate us, we're what has to have happened before there's anything for you to regulate"...)
•If the campaign is based in the '60s then it's practically compulsory for Nazis to appear, perhaps time travelling Nazis with Hitler's brain in a jar. They popped up in The Man from UNCLE, The Tomorrow People, The New Avengers, The Champions even Star Trek to a degree.
•Are there aliens around?

Absolutely! Enemy agents will be attacking the complex in the first episode thus triggering the event that gets the cast tossed into the Vortex to begin with (very "Lost in Space!"}. They will probably show up again a few stories in when they attempt to take a remote control of the QTV and bring it to them. There will be a recurring presence of the enemies as the stories continue. It will be an organization like SMERSH or SHIELD that provides this role - I just need to find a suitable acronym. I love the Nazis in all their different flavors as villains, so they will certainly show up as antagonists in one form or another - perhaps multiple forms. Aliens will come later. The first season will be strictly time travel, but the cliffhanger at the end of that season will be the crew widing up in space somewhere for the first time.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions!! I like a lot of the adventure ideas as well! I'm hoping to get this started in the next month or two. Feel free to add more comments!

[Catsmate]

Oct 21, 2014 20:28:49 GMT jayster5 said:

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

1. Are you retaining the Time Lords in this setting? Will the PCs encounter them?
If so what happens? It's an easy way home (unless the encounter a renegade like the Master or the Monk) or they may not wish to interfere with humanity's first experiments in time travel

Yes, actually I DO intend to keep the Time Lords in the setting, but they won't be encountered for a bit.  When they DO first encounter another time traveler it will be Renegade as you surmised.  In fact, as part of the unraveling story, it will be discovered that the QTV wasn't created by humans at all, but was a damaged SIDRAT that was left buried and presumed destroyed in the wake of the "War Games."  Our character has been trying to reverse engineer it's operation, but is NOT the designer.

Interesting. I speculated (here) that there might have been a few SIDRATS that well off-world during The War Games and unaccounted for. They seemed to be easier to operate than a true TARDIS, so a human group could figure one out. Perhaps a War Lord technician was also captured...

Oct 21, 2014 20:28:49 GMT jayster5 said:

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

2. Can PCs go home? Or are they trying to undo changes that have happened so they actually exist again?

8. You say the PCs will (at least initially) be able to call home for advice/assistance. Is this voice only or can they provide images, video, facsimile as well? Useful for when you need to recognise someone or a map.
•Can they send objects? The Time Tunnel managed this occasionally.

Yes, their initial plotlines will concern trying to get home while not causing any harm to the timeline.  I'll kind of run this more like "Quantum Leap" than a 60's show, but that should add to the fun! Also borrowing from "Quantum Leap," they will have a line of communication to an NPC back at the complex who is getting data from the QTV and can communicate with them via a viewscreen in the control room. I hadn't considered the idea of sending objects, but I think I'll start out without that capability. Might make things a bit too easy for them.

Yeah, resupplying them (with desperately needed XXXX) could be used as a one-off plot device, expensive in SPs, for a campaign climax rather than an ongoing facility. Keeping the PCs short of gear can be handy. Does their NPC link have access to a research group to gather data?

Oct 21, 2014 20:28:49 GMT jayster5 said:

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

4. How much control do the PCs have over their craft? Can they select a destination and expect to actually get there? Can others detect/divert them?

5. How does the time machine work? Is it purely human technology or does it require a piece of Mysterious Technology (e.g. an unusually dense icosahedron) to function? Is there a recharge time? And if so is this fixed or variable, and do the PCs know how long they have to remain?

They will have very little control to begin with. The fact that they get into the Time Vortex in the first episode is a surprise to all of them! There will be an element that will need to "recharge" before they can try it again, thus locking them in a location/time. This will give the adventures a chance to play out - very similar to times when the TARDIS is somehow "lost" during an adventure and reclaimed at the end. And yes, that will happen as well!

I like the idea of a 'recharge period', it helps strand the party when the plot dictates they do something. Maybe that's just me, I played a lot of Timelords at college and (rater like Sliders) it had a variable delay between jumps.

Oct 21, 2014 20:28:49 GMT jayster5 said:

Sept 8, 2014 12:27:54 GMT Catsmate said:

6. Are there other time active groups around? For example:
•Those enemy agents, do they have a time machine too?
•Factions from the future of humanity. If time travel is possible it won't be forgotten (unless it is of course).
•Alternate futures; groups attempting to ensure their future comes to pass.
•Ye Temporal Constabulary. Future humans (and perhaps others) attempting to regulate time travel, possibly including the PCs. ("You can't regulate us, we're what has to have happened before there's anything for you to regulate"...)
•If the campaign is based in the '60s then it's practically compulsory for Nazis to appear, perhaps time travelling Nazis with Hitler's brain in a jar. They popped up in The Man from UNCLE, The Tomorrow People, The New Avengers, The Champions even Star Trek to a degree.
•Are there aliens around?

Absolutely! Enemy agents will be attacking the complex in the first episode thus triggering the event that gets the cast tossed into the Vortex to begin with (very "Lost in Space!"}. They will probably show up again a few stories in when they attempt to take a remote control of the QTV and bring it to them. There will be a recurring presence of the enemies as the stories continue. It will be an organization like SMERSH or SHIELD that provides this role - I just need to find a suitable acronym. I love the Nazis in all their different flavors as villains, so they will certainly show up as antagonists in one form or another - perhaps multiple forms. Aliens will come later. The first season will be strictly time travel, but the cliffhanger at the end of that season will be the crew widing up in space somewhere for the first time.

Very '60s. I liked TAROT (Technological Accession, Revenge, and Organized Terrorism, from the James Bond RPG when they hadn't the rights to SPECTRE) and of course THRUSH (the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity).
Or maybe something more time orientated; Stopwatch, Hourglass, Timepiece...

My game has an organisation called the Hourglass Club, a relatively benign and neutral body of time travellers and people effected by time travel. I used the canonical hours for the titles of most of the officers;

Gnomon	Leader/Secretary	not a canonical hour, it's the shadow casting bit of a sundial
Matins	Records
Lauds	Librarian
Prime	Deputy Secretary
Terce	Research
Sext	Training
None	Treasurer	pronounced 'Nohn'
Vespers	Operations
Compline	Facilities
Vigils	Security	command the Nocturnes [Guards]

feel free to use them if it suits you.

Nazis do make good villains, very few scruples about massacring them. Are you familiar at all with the Chronos Commandos comic series? It's set late in WW2 and features rival US and Nazi time travellers, plus of course Albert Einsten...

If you're using The Time Tunnel as a model Doug and Tony also encountered aliens a few times, meddling in Earth's past. Perhaps they were responsible for Tunguska, Krakatoa, the Dyatlov Pass deaths, the loss of K-129....

In fact if your campaign reached 1968 you could have them appear on K-129 during it's mysterious final mission. Possibly their encounter inspires the effort to raise the sub.

Oct 21, 2014 20:28:49 GMT jayster5 said:

Thanks for all your help and suggestions!! I like a lot of the adventure ideas as well! I'm hoping to get this started in the next month or two. Feel free to add more comments!

Not at all, I'm glad to help if I can. It sounds like an interesting campaign. If any of my scenario seeds are of interest help yourself and let me know if I can help customise them.

[Catsmate]

Hi jayster5, while at a particulary boring meeting today I came up with this list of possible scenarios. I don't know how far into the future you want to go, or if you want to do 'near future' (from the characters' perspective) scenarios. Feel free to ignore or use.

1. JUL1909/Southern Atlantic
Land on the SS Waratah after she departs Durban but before her mysterious disappearance. Could be aliens, mischance, sabotage...
OK, The Time Tunnel used the Titanic but the Waratah's disappearance is still a mystery. I'm working on a detailed scenario seed for this.

2. JAN1913/Vienna
Good for a pure historical or something different; in January, 1913, Sigmund Freud, Franz Ferdinand, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Tito lived within a few kilometres of each other in Vienna.

3. AUG1883/Krakatoa
As used by The Time Tunnel. Was it a natural phenomena, or was someone tampering with the forces of nature? Suits a pure historical with a disaster theme, sting in the tail optional.

4. DEC1900/Hebrides
The mysterious disappearance of the crew of the Eilean Mòr lighthouse inspired The Terror of Fang Rock but why not go back to the source?

5. 1908/Canvey island
Canvey island was (and is) a smallish Island, of about 18km², off the southern coats of Essex, in the estuary of the river Thames, about 50km from London. Due to the Explosives Act of 1875 and the Port of London regulations, dynamite and other explosives could not be stored or loaded within London, so ships would collect it from the isolated Hole Haven creek on the island. Depending on the era from six to fifteen hulks stored hundreds of tonnes of explosives. The island also has a hotel with a reputation for wild goings-on, and a monster.
Plenty of potential for Cthulhu-esque monstrosities, Sea Devils, anarchists, a secret submarine base and more. I've used it several times in various games.

6. OCT1871/Midwest USA
The Night America Burned. Nothing like the prospect of imminent death to motivate players.

7.MAR/1968/Pacific
Sometime in February or March 1968 the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 disappeared in the Pacific, eventually triggering an enormously expensive (and supposedly unsuccessful) salvage attempt by the CIA.
OK a bit similar to Cold War but it's got a missing sub with a strangely large crew, nukes, espionage, Cold War paranoia and more.

8. JUL1945/New Mexico
Sabotage and trouble at the test of the prototype atomic bomb. Were the PCs involved in the Manhattan project?

9. JAN1959/Urals
A party of experienced Soviet skiers dies under decidedly odd circumstances; misadventure, odd phenomenon, yeti, aliens, secret Soviet experiment or something stranger.
Another scenario seed I'm planning.

10. JUN1951/England
The travellers discover a mysterious artefact and become enmeshed in a murder mystery in post-war England.
This is a scenario I'm working on. if you're interested I'll let you have you my notes. It's intended as a pure historical, with an OOPA purely as a diversion. It provides a springboard to further adventures in the period, e.g the disappearance of HMS Affray, the defection of Burgess and McLean, the operation of the MK1 computer, the Festival of Britain, the first Miss World pageant and of course the sinister secret behind the Goon Show.

11. JAN1889/Mayerling
The Mayerling Affair. A good place to introduce other time travellers.

12. OCT1638/Dartmoor
The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor, on Sunday, 21 October 1638, when the church of St Pancras was apparently struck by ball lightning during a severe thunderstorm.
Lots of possibilities, aliens, superstitious natives and more.

[jayster5]

Wow, Catsmate! Such awesome ideas! That really MUST have been an interminably boring meeting! My mind is buzzing with ideas to research over the weekend!

Thanks again for all your suggestions and feedback!

[Catsmate]

Oct 24, 2014 14:33:25 GMT jayster5 said:

Wow, Catsmate! Such awesome ideas! That really MUST have been an interminably boring meeting! My mind is buzzing with ideas to research over the weekend!

Thanks again for all your suggestions and feedback!

No problem, glad to be of help.
Yeah it was bad, this week's proposed changes to the project tower structure for my main IT project. It'll be superseded by next weeks'. Despite years to exposure I had to do something to keep my brain active or I'd have noded of and I was too visible for that to have been OK.

BTW I've written up a seed for the Dyatlov Pass Incident, in case you're interested.