Weird Moon Rising

Under The Eldritch Moon, the hidden world becomes visible - and things that should never be seen emerge. The party finds itself surrounded by a crowd of ghostly figures. They are maimed, broken, old and young, yet unmistakably dead. Each one carries a story, a memory of its final moments. They are insubstantial, but to brush against them is to relive their deaths - moments of terrible pain and horror. And each brush with death steals a fragment of life from the living.

The Ghosts of The Eldritch Moon are hungry, seeking to consume the vital energy of those they encounter. They are not swift, but they are relentless, and no mundane barrier can stop them. Once they set their sights on a target, they pursue it until banished by sunrise or blocked by Magic. Holy ground can keep them at bay, as can the wards surrounding a Constabulary. If one of the party can cast protective wards against the dead, that too will hold them at the edge of the barrier.

Yet the Ghosts are patient predators. They linger, waiting for anyone to emerge - or until another prey presents itself. A new victim may divert them temporarily, but once drained of life, the Ghosts return to their original targets, and they always know where those targets have gone.

When people are caught out under The Eldritch Moon without protection, they risk becoming Moonstruck. This condition is marked by blackouts and memory gaps, where the afflicted often awaken far from home, with blood on their hands. They do not know what they did - or to whom - but it is never anything good. Moonstruck individuals may seem perfectly normal at first. They speak like anyone else, walk like anyone else, and at first glance may appear harmless.

But they are driven by a pursuit of pleasures - usually of the most profane sort. They seek out brothels and taverns, join in brawls, and think nothing of clubbing someone to death simply for being in their way. Over the course of the night, their eyes gradually turn black, and their behavior becomes increasingly unrestrained. They return to themselves when the sun rises, though they often suffer nightmares afterward - and they have a troubling tendency to become Moonstruck again... and again. After enough bouts under The Eldritch Moon, their eyes never return to normal, and neither does their personality.

A Moonstruck individual out at night is in search of a good time - whether that means getting drunk and brawling in a tavern, taking liberties with anyone who catches their fancy, or simply beating the hell out of anyone they find annoying. They often seek vengeance for petty grievances they would never notice in their normal state, and more than one brutal murder has occurred under The Eldritch Moon. They care nothing for the law, propriety, or restraint. Anyone who tries to stop them risks immediate violence, and there is no limit to their ferocity.

Moonstruck madmen are also difficult to subdue. They are almost completely resistant to mental Magic, shrugging off spells intended to alter their state of mind, including the sleep batons used by ordinary constables to incapacitate criminals. Special Branch squads have found that the most reliable approach is direct: a hard blow to the head. Knock them unconscious, secure them in chains until morning, and place them on a watch list for relapses.

Mirrors are seldom innocent, and under The Eldritch Moon, they become actively dangerous. Most people keep them covered. Some are careless, or foolish, or both. When The Eldritch Moon shines on a mirror - especially a silver one - it can open a portal to Beyond. That is never a good thing. Things can come through.

Most often, what emerges takes the shape of a woman. She will resemble someone the mirror has seen before - but never enough to be familiar. She is strange, unsettling. Her eyes meet no one's, and her voice is high, sharp, and painfully piercing.

She is usually covered in blood. No one knows why.

When a mirror-woman comes through, she begins claiming territory. The house must be emptied of living occupants. Fortunately, most homes contain heavy objects - an axe or two, perhaps - that she uses with judicious efficiency. A few whacks, and the home becomes hers. She secures the doors and begins collecting glass and silver to feed the mirror. By now, it will have already spread tendrils of sharp, reflective shards along the walls. She piles the collected materials near the mirror to nourish it, and then moves on. One house is never enough.

The party is most likely to encounter her during this process of burglary. Mirror-women are telekinetic, able to manipulate objects they can see. Locks are rarely an obstacle; should one prove stubborn, she will simply pull the entire door off - discretely. Once inside, she dispatches anyone who resists and begins gathering glass and silver, bundling it carefully into a sack to return to the mirror and accelerate its growth. She usually remembers to carry the sack rather than floating it, to avoid drawing undue attention.

A fight with a mirror-woman turns everything around you into a potential weapon. She will happily shred anyone in her path with her sack of sharp objects, or bludgeon with whatever heavy items happen to be nearby. Thankfully, her powers work only on inanimate objects - and even then, only those not already held. But she can lift and throw a half-ton wagon with ease, so it is little comfort that she cannot snatch a sword from your hand.

Even once the mirror-woman is dealt with, the mirror itself remains. It grows by the minute, and new monstrosities might emerge at any time. Left unattended, it will overrun the entire house and become a nexus for supernatural incursions for as long as it exists. Breaking the mirror may bring bad luck - but leaving it intact is far worse. Shatter it, and report the matter to your superiors; they have people to clean up the consequences.

Cults are a fact of life. If it isn't the Cult of the Leviathan, it is The Ring, The Obliviati, or some other band of lunatics bent on opening the world and feeding it to something ancient and terrible. And the Cults love to work under the light of The Eldritch Moon.

The party will encounter signs of cult activity. Sigils daubed in blood mark a circle, while torches outline their ritual space. There are rarely fewer than a dozen of them, all keeping watch for anyone who might interrupt their ceremony.

Which cult it is does not much matter - they are all mad, bad, and dangerous. At least one will be an accomplished thaumaturge, and all of them will wield some measure of magical ability. They may have hired guards or burly acolytes patrolling the perimeter of their ceremonial space. That matters little. The ritual must be stopped.

The cultists gather in an open space under the sky, but not easily visible from the street. Magical wards warn of intruders - and sometimes deal with them violently. When discovering a cult ritual under The Eldritch Moon, the party can be certain of a few things: they are outnumbered, the cultists are probably planning to sacrifice someone to their patron - usually a child, sometimes more than one - and they are operating on a tight schedule.

In the streets of Lundeinjon, no creature is more dreaded than Bloody Jack. This monster has haunted Eastbridge for years and revels in carnage. Wherever Bloody Jack appears, the scene is painted red with blood.

He is not human, although one might mistake him for one at first. His eyes burn red, and he is faster than any human could be. He might be a Changeling - but they do not claim him. He might be a leftover from the war, a weapon forged by the Cult of the Leviathan. Nobody ever gets the chance to ask.

Bloody Jack stalks the streets alone at night looking for solitary victims, especially women. He does not enter residences - perhaps he cannot. He prowls the streets shrouded in a greatcoat, a hat pulled low to hide his eyes, hunting his prey. When he finds someone, he strikes. He favors knives and is never without one - there always seems to be another blade hidden in that coat. He slashes and stabs, leaving a gruesome mess in his wake. But knives are not his only weapons. When he wishes it, Bloody Jack can belch a cloud of fire that fills a street from one side to the other. It burns fast and hot, then vanishes, leaving smoke, embers, and a profound darkness - that sudden burst of light is terrible for night vision. Jack does not mind; he knew it was coming, and he can still see just fine. Blinded victims make easy targets.

Jack can take on two or three people at a time, but beyond that, he begins to feel the pressure. When it happens, he flees. He is a fast runner - capable of catching a horse on foot - and he has another trick: he can leap far higher and further than anyone should. Witnesses report seeing him launch over walls and onto rooftops without breaking stride. Once he is gone, he is gone. No one has ever been able to track him through the dark, by mundane or magical means.

On the upside, he is not invincible. He has been killed a half-dozen times, in fact. Each time, the body bursts into flame, leaving nothing but drifting ash and the stench of sulfur.

Pity he always comes back.

Under The Eldritch Moon, the shadows of the city grow hostile and strange. They flicker unnaturally and cling to the faces and forms of people and objects. Everywhere you look, the world takes on an alien, menacing aspect, filling the heart with a terrible, unnatural dread. It becomes difficult to recognize where you are - or the people you are with.

If the players fail to resist, they are terrified, surrounded by enemies in a world gone strange and mad. They might fight - or flee. Neither is a good choice. If they fight, they have only each other to attack, though they will not realize it until the shadows retreat and the aftermath is revealed. If they flee, a different peril awaits. Directions become muddled, and even familiar streets can mislead them. Accidents are easy: an open manhole, debris in a darkened street, chunks of decaying stone tumbling from buildings just as you pass beneath.

If they survive the hazards of flight, they find themselves far from their allies - and the night is far from over.

The party gets a sense that they are being watched - and not by anything with good intentions. Somewhere in the dark, a predator waits for its moment to strike - and it will strike soon. No amount of searching will reveal this creature, but every sound, unexplained scratch, or unusual smell confirms that something was there just moments before the party looked. It is watching. It is waiting - and it holds the advantage. At the worst possible moment, it will reveal itself, and someone will die.

This encounter lingers. Once triggered, the sense of being watched persists until the moon fades, wearing on the characters. They will watch every shadow, anticipating the attack they know is coming - even while engaged in combat with something trying to tear their throat out. It is distracting. It is terrifying. And it places them at a disadvantage for the rest of the night, making it harder to do anything other than search for the threat they know is there.

Most people stay inside when The Eldritch Moon rises. Most people aren't fanatics. The party encounters a group of Wreckers - angry laborers intent on destroying the constructs and factories that have stolen their jobs and livelihoods. They have acquired smoked goggles to protect themselves from the moonlight - likely stolen from a Special Branch cache, as none could afford to buy their own. They have hung all manner of protective talismans about their bodies - some real, most worthless, and none nearly enough to keep them safe on a night like this. Each carries a heavy, two-handed sledgehammer capable of smashing a skull as easily as breathing.

The Wreckers are out to make a political statement. They are also likely to commit a crime or five: breaking and entering, destruction of property, theft, endangering the public, and probably more. Most importantly, they pose a danger to the party. Goggles or not, they are not prepared for the horrors lurking under The Eldritch Moon, and they are just as likely to be turned into weapons by the monsters, unleashed to wreak havoc across the city. They should go home. If they won't, they still need to get off the streets. Arresting a few dozen angry workers with oversized hammers and putting them in jail shouldn't be that hard, right?