[Scenario Seed] Love Story (for The Secrets of Scaravore)

[thornburgmp]

FOLKS IN MY CAMPAIGN DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL AFTER AUGUST 4. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! SPOILERS ALSO FOR SECRETS OF SCARAVORE.















So my game is transitioning from The Northern Knights (in All of Time and Space Vol. 1) to Secrets of Scaravore. The last scenario ended with me dropping hints about something ancient and powerful hidden beneath the SE British Isles. Upon returning to the TARDIS, our Time Lord tried to reach out to it with the TARDIS and I ended on the cliffhanger of the TARDIS console slowly turning red as Scaravore's mind takes it over. Here's my plan for next session:

The consciousness will pilot the TARDIS to June 21, 2024 in London. Scaravore's subconscious wants to use the TARDIS to help break out of its prison. There's a bit of a ticking clock scenario here. The PCs will have to figure out how to distract Scaravore's mind long enough to reassert control and get away. The PCs will get hints throughout that there's a big Taylor Swift show at Wembley Stadium that night. Different hints and deductions will lead them to realize Scaravore can only perceive the world through the psychic energy of human beings. And so...perhaps a bunch of human minds in synchronization would be the distraction they need. They will (hopefully) realize the Taylor Swift show is just such a distraction. Perhaps they will meet Taylor and convince her or perhaps they will use some jiggery pokery to build a gadget that amplifies psychic energy and plant it near her. Either way the climactic moment will be that night during Taylor's biggest song, Love Story.

If things go according to plan, they will escape and the ground will quake with Scaravore's anger. A few days later, the BBC will read:
Quake it off: Which Swift song moved Wembley most?

Taylor Swift's hit Love Story shook the ground more than any other tune during her first three nights at Wembley, followed closely by Shake it Off, according to seismologists who set up monitors at the stadium.

Love Story on the opening Friday 21 June concert produced the strongest ground shaking - around the equivalent to a harmless earthquake of magnitude 0.8.

Reaction to Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s surprise appearance on stage on the Sunday also registered strongly on the seismometers.

[Catsmate]

Jul 16, 2024 18:45:55 GMT thornburgmp said:

FOLKS IN MY CAMPAIGN DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL AFTER AUGUST 4. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! SPOILERS ALSO FOR SECRETS OF SCARAVORE.















So my game is transitioning from The Northern Knights (in All of Time and Space Vol. 1) to Secrets of Scaravore. The last scenario ended with me dropping hints about something ancient and powerful hidden beneath the SE British Isles. Upon returning to the TARDIS, our Time Lord tried to reach out to it with the TARDIS and I ended on the cliffhanger of the TARDIS console slowly turning red as Scaravore's mind takes it over. Here's my plan for next session:

The consciousness will pilot the TARDIS to June 21, 2024 in London. Scaravore's subconscious wants to use the TARDIS to help break out of its prison. There's a bit of a ticking clock scenario here. The PCs will have to figure out how to distract Scaravore's mind long enough to reassert control and get away. The PCs will get hints throughout that there's a big Taylor Swift show at Wembley Stadium that night. Different hints and deductions will lead them to realize Scaravore can only perceive the world through the psychic energy of human beings. And so...perhaps a bunch of human minds in synchronization would be the distraction they need. They will (hopefully) realize the Taylor Swift show is just such a distraction. Perhaps they will meet Taylor and convince her or perhaps they will use some jiggery pokery to build a gadget that amplifies psychic energy and plant it near her. Either way the climactic moment will be that night during Taylor's biggest song, Love Story.

If things go according to plan, they will escape and the ground will quake with Scaravore's anger. A few days later, the BBC will read:
Quake it off: Which Swift song moved Wembley most?

Taylor Swift's hit Love Story shook the ground more than any other tune during her first three nights at Wembley, followed closely by Shake it Off, according to seismologists who set up monitors at the stadium.

Love Story on the opening Friday 21 June concert produced the strongest ground shaking - around the equivalent to a harmless earthquake of magnitude 0.8.

Reaction to Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s surprise appearance on stage on the Sunday also registered strongly on the seismometers.

This sounds fascinating.
Did you have somewhere specific in SE England? If you're interested I have some notes/ides regarding Penda of Mercia



.

[thornburgmp]

SPOILERS FOR SECRETS OF SCARAVORE

















According to the campaign's ideas, Scaravore is impossibly old (predating the Time Lords) and was imprisoned directly beneath what came to be London. Scaravore can indirectly communicate with human beings and the game holds that London is actually a diagram of its mind. Aside from the four C7 adventures, I tried to kind of shoehorn Scaravore into the North Knights and it would be interesting to see how the slumbering alien influenced the UK.

I'm not  a huge fan of all of the Scaravore adventures so I would appreciate anything you have that I might be able to assemble into something more interesting. I would definitely like to learn more of Penda of Mercia.

[Catsmate]

Jul 21, 2024 20:23:08 GMT thornburgmp said:

 I would definitely like to learn more of Penda of Mercia.

Only too glad to be of assistance.

Penda was a king and a major player in Anglo-Saxon Britain in the seventh century, up to his death in 655. At the time England was split into seven small kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy. Exactly which seven kingdoms differed over time but they're usually considered to be [East] Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex, and Wessex.
Not surprisingly for the period he life was one of constant warfare.

One possible link to the modern day is the treasure known as the Staffordshire Hoard, found in 2009. Might there have been something unusual in the hoard, filtered out by the operatives of Section 9J before it was publicly revealed? Something that suggested alien influences?

• Also, it's rather curious that the hoards was found so close to the surface and in an area previously examined by metal detectorists....
  

Was someone advising Penda? A lost time traveller or crashed alien? Or were they pulling his strings and attempting to turn Mercia into the proto-England? And why?

• If you can find it, I recommend Penda's Fen for inspiration. It's on YouTube.
  

Might the horde have contained some of the Treasures of Britain and Ireland.

An alternative, if you're willing to move a bit north east, is Uffa or Wuffa of East Anglia (wiki). He got a mention in Sherlock Holmes (and in my thread on the 'Untold' Holmes cases) referencing

......the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa.....

which I expanded a bit here.

This links several ways into the various legends of Arthur, and even further back into left-overs from Roman organisations investigating weird happenings. You could mix in the evidence for Chinese contact with Britain in the Roman period.
Maybe Merlin is still waiting in his cave for escape, dangerously close to new construction work....

Hope this helps.