Let's Eat: The Bloom

COLDWATER, WASHINGTON, DAY

Sweeping mountain vistas and deep conifer woods surround the town of Coldwater which rests on the banks of Coldwater lake. The small town is dotted with dated buildings and small-town shops flocking with tourists. In the town center, the preparations for the annual blueberry festival are well under way as townsfolk bustle about, giving one another a smile and cheerful hello. 

COLDWATER, WASHINGTON, SIX DAYS LATER

The quiescent mountain town is exchanged for a horror. Flames lick out from flamethrowers- the guttering  flames accompanied by the occasional burst of gunfire as well equipped hazmat teams sweep through the surrounds. A dated diner is unrecognizable under a heft of black mycelia and fungal growth- tortured moans coming from within as a team approaches, weapons at the ready. 

Camera pans straight down horizontally beneath the town, thick black mycelial cords run from the town surface to a cathedral sized cavern far below, where fungal-crusted residents stand rooted around a descent into the pulsing, blue bioluminescent glow of the mycelial heart- a single blue capped mushroom juts from the heaving mass of growth. 

Sounds of metal on rock in the distance and of something swinging through the air- a large claw sweeps through scene and deftly clips the mushroom away from the mass before tactical chatter and gunfire reveal the approaching cleanup teams in the caverns- the scene is engulfed in flames.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL. 

CRAB sits at the head of a fungi-laden banquet table, a covered silver tray in front of him- thick black mycelial cords run from the tray throughout the room, rooting through the hall and sprouting glowing blue mushrooms. Fish-men in bowties idly wander the room- their eyes crusted by fungi and growths visible pushing up from beneath their scales. CRAB pulls the conspicuous silver lever next to his chair. 

Grating gears and the screech of metal fills the room but is rapidly overcome with a shrieking wail from thousands of voices as a cage in the ceiling opens and a chained ball of clacking skulls and searching shadowy tendrils is lowered above the table. Clinking his glass with a fork, the screaming quiets to a murmur and CRAB lifts the covering on the silver tray, revealing the blue, squirming mass of the heart of a nascent fungal bloom.

CRAB

Hearken to me, ye DAMNED, we're eating The Bloom tonight!

TITLE CARD

CRAB

Published in February of last year, written by Josh Domanski and the Goblin Archives, The Bloom comes to us as- well at least to my knowledge- the third major adventure from Goblin Archives for the Liminal Horror system and the second such adventure jointly written by the authors. This tasty morsel is- of the three so far- my personal favorite and is dripping with gameable sandbox content in a small Twin Peaks style town up in the mountains. Once again, we have art provided to us by Zach Hazard Vaupen this time just for the monsters and NPC portraits from Josh Clark. While not as ever present as the phenomenal art Zach did for the illustrious The Mall adventure- what is there is more than enough to get the neurons firing. As for Josh's portraits, I found them particularly helpful in framing in my head who it was I was portraying- kudos.

DAMNED

[HOWLING OF WIND FROM A BLIGHTED PEAK]

CRAB

Yes the layout by Josh Domanski is particularly readable and flows smoothly; and I'm always one to praise the addition of linked pages in a PDF as being crucial for a GM to keep the pace up. 

Hazy spores cloud the room in a blue-bathed fog as CRAB drinks deeply from a glass filled with hazy amber liquid.

CRAB

Did you know you can make wine from mushrooms? And not just plump helmets. Anyways...

 Right right, the setting. Go read the blurb on their site, but the bottom line is we're adventuring in a Twin Peaks inspired town that has something going horribly wrong with it- and the doom clock to keep things evolving before disaster. As their itch page highlights, this isn't just Twin Peaks- it's "What if Twin Peaks had a The Last Of Us arc?" And that's pretty on point- as the monster of the week is a fungal growth of an Armillaria ostayae variant that infects animal and human hosts- turning them into walking, hunting, zombie-like fungus vectors. 

The DAMNED lash out at creeping mycelia with shadowy tendrils. CRAB puts down the glass and grabs the central mycelia cluster in one claw before devouring it whole. The infected fish-man hosts around the room grow more and more agitated as CRAB wipes the last remains away before hefting a shotgun from beneath the table and loading it.

CRAB

Now, let's do something a little different and roll into the actual play with director's commentary. This time I had the pleasure of actually running this before I reviewed it, and so while I get some cleaning done around the house- please enjoy the show.

Slow zoom to a descending screen on the back wall. A projector whirs to life and the movie begins to play as shotgun blasts fill the room- splattering gore and blue mushroom on the corner of the screen.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

H & R

H & R are our players and their characters, so let's roll with it. R had planned a two week camping trip up into Coldwater with a group of friends but totaled his car and was in the hospital for a week before being able to make it. R on the other hand missed the evite and so got the invitation late but takes the opportunity to treat the camping trip as a time for a writer's retreat. With some minimal camping gear (assuming their friends had the rest to cover them) they drive up into Coldwater.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

The adventure provides a series of archetypes for character backgrounds and some recommendations for how to start the game. My table was drawn down to two players for this session and I knew we only had time for a one-shot, which the module also has considerations for. Deciding to completely ignore those recommendations, we rolled up our party and set them off to join their friends at Coldwater Camp with nothing but the player-facing maps in hand. By no means do you need to runt his adventure with the players being part of the camping group- but it seemed like a good way to draw them into the mystery. Also, I had the Twin Peaks OST cycling through for most of this session.

DAY ONE

Exhausted from the drive, H & R check the map and see a diner in town, so they pull in to get some coffee and food. There, they meet Kass who is more than happy to chat compared to the cold reception from the other locals. In short order, the group mentions they're here to go camping with their friends and the whole room goes quiet. Stumbling over her words, Kass asks the group to wait and have a conversation with the Sheriff, who she calls on the landline.

Sheriff Hank pulls up and greets the party before inviting them to have a conversation back at the Sheriff's office. Once there, he informs them that three days ago a group of campers went missing at Coldwater Camp, their tents destroyed possibly from a bear and no sign of them to be found otherwise. 

The sheriff assures the party that their friends probably weren't there for the attack and should turn up any day now but invites them to go chat with the deputy at the campground if they want to. First up, the two leave and get a room at the only hotel in town, a run-down two story motel called the Lakeview Resort. Up in their room, they find a pamphlet for a strange new age religious service at the Church of Celestial Science in town. H says it looks fishy, but in short order the two first make their way to the campground where they spot their friends' two cars in the parking lot and the deputy, Gerald. 

 CRAB-COMMENTARY

There's a neat voidcrawl procedure to use an overloaded encounter die and generate encounters between travel spots. I'm not highlighting it here when it happens, but it serves to add flavor and additional hints and clues throughout the investigation, and at night brings in some real fun horrors.

A short, bored, man, Gerald shows the two up to the tent sites where some loose caution tape marks the torn apart sites of their friends. Gerald reiterates that they'll probably turn up any day now and then leaves without much further ado- but not before letting slip that he hopes this doesn't turn out like The Incident from last year. The group examines the sites and spend some time identifying whose sites were which, making note of several bullet casings and discovering a folder with a pamphlet from the Church of Celestial Science and a map of the region with the Hines farm circled.

Seeing nightfall approaching, the two decide to check out this Church next but are stopped by the park ranger, Sam. She's disheveled and doesn't look to have had much sleep, but tries her best to answer their questions- but then goes into her theory of a bigfoot attack being responsible. Unsure of how to interpret that but deciding she might be a crackpot, the group leaves amicably after making plans to meet with Sam at dawn for an update and then make their way to the Church- but not before something large and heavy bolts into the woods nearby- spooking the two would-be campers.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

I really dig how the NPCs are framed in the module, with a simple print of desires, secrets, and social bullet points I was able to run them all with a simple glance as they came up- of course this was after reading the whole module twice-over before running it. 

The bigfoot theory was a great red herring and the players weren't sure if it really was a sasquatch attack or not until they find more clues in the next few days.

At the Church covered in modern symbols and gold filigree, the group are about to walk into the atrium to speak with Thomas, the Church's central figure in town- but R spots a photo printout from a CCTV camera in the diner of H & R walking in this morning. Spooked, he pulls H out and the two drive off to the Gorge- the town's local dive bar- to talk the investigation over.

Spinning their wheels for a bit, eventually the Sheriff comes in and the two invite him over for a drink to talk. Hank calms their inquiries about why the state rangers weren't involved yet by saying he'd called them and they should be down- but again their friends should be back any day now. When H brings up The Incident, the Sheriff firmly rebuffs them and says to leave town business alone. Their chat is interrupted as two out of place and clean cut looking people walk into the bar and the Sheriff says his goodbyes before taking the new pair into a back room.

The group heads back to the hotel for the night but get sidetracked investigating a strange glowing blue mushroom in the stairwell that spores when R touches it. Shortly later though, they hit the sack and are plagued with vague nightmares of something watching them from the woods as they examined the campground that morning.

DAY TWO

Noting their similar weird dreams and how tired they were, the group first makes a trip to the diner again and have a chat with Kass and some local fishermen claiming they'd caught a furred trout in the lake. Kass is convinced into talking about The Incident that left 23 dead last year- but she doesn't know much more. She does let some gossip about JJ, the only remaining son of the Hines family who came back after the incident to run the farm.

CRAB-COMMENTARY

 "The Incident" or "The Coldwater Lake Incident" is a reference to The Bureau and is left unfilled in- meaning the details are vague. Something happened, a lot of people died, GM fill in the blanks. For this session, it was never really explained but did hang as a cloud over the town. There's a few other things never really explained- Haru and her whole schtick, or what happened to Gabby at the firewatch tower. These are left vague in the module for the GM to fill in as necessary, which I appreciate.

The next stop is the campground again, the pair meets Sam at her cabin and examine her bigfoot plaster mold and her dozens of cryptozoological drawings before she shows them to the signs of a bloodless scuffle at the hiking trails. Warning them of rain coming in that night, they part.

Stopping in at the hardware store, the pair buys some high powered walkie talkies and tune them into the ranger frequency, the police frequency, and the firewatch tower frequency. On their way out, they run into a buck deer, casually standing in the parking lot. Completely docile, it makes no response to them even after H gives it a kiss on the nose. Unsettled, the pair watch the buck wander off further into town before they decide to check out the firewatch tower they've been hearing about. 

Hiking up and examining all the graffiti, the pair finds the tower abandoned recently and the small room tossed as though it had been searched. A map in the middle of the room has a few locales circled with notes, but the group is most interested in the Hines farm and the illegible note about the Pickman Lodge in the hills above town. H finds a walkman and some cassette tapes and decides to listen to them as the pair head back to their car- determined to check out the farm.

With some experimentation, H & R discover that when listening to the cassette tapes, you can see a hazy cloud whenever people lie. They discuss good ways to employ this but are distracted when they spot Deputy Gerald on the main road, walking backwards into the woods with no car in sight. He makes no recognition of the two and keeps walking and the pair decide to get out of the area and move to the Hines farm next.

The farm is sickly and the crop is doing poorly. First thing that catches the pair's attention though is the front door of the farm house is already swung open and banging in the wind with JJ's car in the driveway. They check the barn in the back and the chicken coop but find both empty. Shouting around for JJ, they get no response. Uncertainly, they enter the house and find an unfinished meal in the dining room covered in fungi. Upstairs they examine a shrine in the master bedroom to the 23 who died in the Coldwater Lake Incident- but curiously note the additional 20 names on the memorial. 

Hearing something from the other room upstairs, they find the guest room blocked by a fallen dresser and push past it to discover a fleshy fungal chimera hybrid of the Hines family goats, some chickens, and their milk cow in the middle of absorbing what looks to be JJ. The chimera cries out with all its voices and the group books it out of the house and speed off back to the hotel to collect themselves. 

Rationally, they order a few pizzas from the Occult Pizza down the road and go over the case again. When they see the mushroom pizza covered in fungus H immediately goes to throw it in the dumpster. The rain started pouring and the sun set, he spots an odd lump in the parking lot and catches a human leg as part of it with his cellphone light before the whole mass shudders and moves off into the woods. 

Back in their room, the pair both reflect on some other odd moments- each thinking they're hallucinating as R had experienced a brief episode where he thought his skin was glowing blue- but refused to tell H about it as he suspected it might be the mushroom spores he inhaled. H meanwhile had been having brief episodes where he saw thick veiny cords under his skin- and again didn't bring it up. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

These hallucinations were my solution to rolls on the dire omen table- an option on the overloaded encounter die that corresponded to the next Fallout the members would experience.

Remembering that the blueberry festival was today, the two head up the road to check it out and find it still in full swing despite the rain. They spot the sheriff getting yelled at by what they presume was the mayor, and offer to get him a beer at the Gorge. Back there, they discuss what little they've found and the flesh chimera with the Sheriff. He seems concerned and tells them to visit the assistant Sarah at the department in the morning and to keep him informed on their investigation before again being interrupted by the clean-cut pair coming in and taking the sheriff into the back room. 

Shortly later, a shotgun blast rings out from just outside and the pair duck under the table as the Sheriff bolts to the front door. He comes back in to let the bar know that it was just someone trying to spook a mountain lion he saw near his porch- which only further confuses the pair who decide to try and get some sleep- but not before noting a strange glowing blue-fungus covered mass in an alleyway nearby. 

DAY 3

Nightmares plagued their sleep again. Once more they roll into the diner where they gossip with Kass, who informs them the clean-cut couple are the newcomers in town, Brett and Angela, who bought out the entire Pickman Lodge as their personal residence just after the Coldwater Lake Incident. The gossip is interrupted as the fishermen from yesterday come in and show off their furred trout. Talking about fishing for awhile, H asks to see it and picks it up before - to his horror - he realizes the fur on the trout is mycelial strands. Furiously washing his hands in the sink, they get back in their car and spot a column of black smoke- visible even in the rain- coming from the Camp.

First, they check in at the Sheriff's office where the assistant informs them they were to be granted access to the armory as necessary- so they pick up two stab-vests and a shotgun before heading off to the camp. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

Right about here is where how late it was in the night led to me moving the story along a bit to get us to a conclusion before sunrise.

At the camp, the pair find the whole place to be covered in fungus and mycelia- the trees rotten and the smoke coming from Sam's cabin. They briefly try to search for her- only to find her and five others covered in fungus, rooted to the ground in a circle in the campsites. At this point, they decided it was probably best to flee the town. 

Running back to their car, they find the engine flooded and make the choice to swap the battery out to the '72 White Chevy Bronco in the lot which had its keys in the ignition. Just as they were about to finish the swap, they find out what happened to the other campers. 

Barreling out of the mycelial growth behind them- a monster of fungus and melded human flesh- the Flesh Hydra makes its first full appearance. H gets a few lucky shots in with the shotgun and keeps it at bay until R finishes the battery swap and the pair flee the campground. As they try and flee the town, however, they find the routes east and west are both flooded. They decided to head for high ground and make for the Pickman Lodge.

Finding the lodge empty, they take shelter from the rain and search the place, finding rooms filled with lab equipment and survival gear as well as one locked door with something scratching on it. They also find a strange red rotary phone connected to data and telephone cables in the dining room- R spends awhile talking to the person on the other side and getting assurances that help is on the way. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

 The phone is an artifact being used by Brett and Angela- Bureau agents. They use it to redirect outgoing calls from town into the phone which tells sweet lies. Per the module, Brett and Angela have been there for a year monitoring the area after the Incident, but have been sending falsified reports for the last week. The module leaves this open to question as to why. I decided to run it because they were seduced by the phone's comforting lies and thought they could keep the situation in town handled without further Bureau help which might try to reposess the phone. 

After waiting long enough to come to the conclusion the voice on the phone lied about help, Brett and Angela pull up and there's a tense stand off with guns drawn on both sides before diplomacy reveals them both on the same side. Brett and Angela fill in that their research and samples led them to believe this was all caused by a fungal mass growth using the caves beneath town to grow (the party had been hearing about these caves from NPCs for awhile) and that there should be a central mass they can destroy to impede its growth. The agents deputize the investigators and make a plan. Brett and Angela search the Hines farm for a suspected cave entrance and the party goes to find some ammonium nitrate at the Station to detonate on the fungus. 

Driving off in the dark and the rain, R is keenly aware of the Flesh Hydra following the party, keeping pace with the car just behind them. It keeps just away as they pull into the Station, a convenience store/gas station, and R fills the tank up while H goes in to find some explosives. He finds a flamethrower for sale and immediately purchases it, before the shopkeep informs him of the explosive barrels that JJ was supposed to pick up are just out front. 

R sees another car pull in and the man get out of his car is slammed into a bloody smear on the ground and dragged into the dark by the Flesh Hydra. R decides it best to go inside now and help H. He distracts the shopkeep while H grabs two pony-kegs of ammonium nitrate and throws them in the car and honks the horn to get R back in and they speed off towards the Hines farm. 

At the farm they meet with Brett and Angela and are shown to the hidden cave entrance in the cellar of the Hines farmhouse. The new party dons gas masks and heads into the caves, with R & H hauling the kegs and Brett and Angela leading the way. 

Some cave navigation later, the group runs into a gas-masked Sheriff Hank and have a tense negotiation about what he was doing there before deciding to tentatively team up. They head further down into the caves following the thickest strands of mycelia into a huge cathedral like cave with a pit leading into the fungal heart of darkness. 

Brett, Angela, and the Sheriff fight off a group of fungal-hosts and mycelial strands that seperate the party and R&H run forward to hurl their explosives into the pit. They're stopped at the last minute though as the Flesh Hydra pulls itself out of the pit and attacks. 

R's shoulder is dislocated and he's hauled up onto the back of the Hydra- still clutching the keg while H's foot gets mangled from another attack but successfully fires a few blasts from his shotgun.With some deft maneuvering, R is able to escape and roll off the Hydra while using the lighter he bought at character creation to partially detonate his keg- blowing the Hydra back into the hole. 

The other half of the party keeps up the assault but Angela goes down as the hosts continue their assault. R & H throw the last powder keg in and on top of the reforming Flesh Hydra- spraying the flamethrower in on top and detonating the mass- barely escaping the blast. The detonation confuses the remaining hosts which are put down in short order as the whole group flees the now collapsing cavern and into the morning sun.

By noon, the Bureau has arrived and begins cleanup through the town. The investigators are given some token monetary compensation and sworn to secrecy and sent on their way with an unassuming gray business card bearing only a phone number to call for work. The pair vow to never eat mushrooms again as the session ends. 

CRAB-COMMENTARY

Things had to wrap up fast towards the end as we'd already been playing for six hours or so- but all in all this was a delight to run. The module presented an intriguing investigative puzzlebox for the investigators to untangle and the town's vibe and detailed NPCs were perfect.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL.

Flesh and fungus smears the tables and halls all around. CRAB sits at the table, covered in mycelia and fungus. With a breath in- the growths slink and retreat under his shell. His eyes glow faintly blue. The DAMNED retract back up into the ceiling with a whimper.

END TITLES

Shadow - CHROMATICS plays.

The camera sweeps back and flits between different rooms in the dungeon. Bodies and gore cover the halls amidst smashed mushrooms and furniture. Fish men in gas masks with bloody mops and buckets are at work cleaning the mess. As the last panning shot ends, a mass of flesh and mycelia rolls with a schlop into the shadows. 

Zach Hazard Vaupen