BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Role Playing Games CoC Scene 1: The Abramton Diner

The muddy young man at the counter checks his watch again, just as the storm outside builds to a crescendo. The thunder is more like the finale of a major fireworks show than a storm, but strangely enough there's no lightning to go with it.

And then abruptly there's a lightning flash to end all lightning flashes, temporarily blinding everyone in the diner save Ray, who was already deafened by the thunder.

As their sight recovers, the diner's inhabitants are greeted by daylight streaming in from diner's windows.

[For those of you new to Call of Cthulhu, now and then something will happen that is totally outside a character's experience. These result in sanity checks, which area basically a way of seeing how the character is doing at adapting to a reality that isn't the way they have always assumed it is.

The more sanity the character loses, the more they're accepting the way things really are, as opposed to the way they thought thing really were. When your character's sanity gets low enough, I'll PM you with info about how their personality might have changed, or new obsessions they may have gained.

In the future, every time that something happens that requires a sanity check, I'll use the words Sanity Check, and then list the characters to whom it applies. In this case, because of the abnormality of the storm and the daylight at around 10:30pm, that would have looked like this:]

[Sanity Check: Everyone]

The muddy young man is the first to react, stepping down from his stool at the counter and leaving by the front door of the diner.

Derek quickly recovers and looks around, blinking. He checks his possessions, such as they are, and moves to look out a window for the light source.

Ray covers her ears and drops to the floor, eyes tightly closed and whimpering. As everything seems to calm down, she slowly stands, still whimpering slightly. Her eyes open and she blinks a few times, furrowing her brow. "Larry? Is it brighter in here? Or did the thunder just rattle my cage?"

She wants to run to Mike, but doesn't know where everyone is at the moment. She's a bit disoriented.

Larry comes over and puts a hand on Ray's shoulder.

"Damnation," he says, looking out at the sunlight streaming in the window, "they've gone and done it. A nuke-lear war."

Derek, peering out the window, sees nothing but a uniformly pink sky, with a slightly brighter spot nearly directly overhead, as if it were noon, with the sun hidden behind light cloud cover.

John follows the muddy man outside and begins to look around "This can't be right. It was night time....now its day light?"

Derek looks at Larry, "That's no nuke, dumb***. There's something over us."

Ray relaxes slightly and puts a hand on Larry's, just happy to have some comfort. Her face turns in the direction of the gruff man. "Aww, I know Larry can be a little much to take at times, but he's a sweetheart. No need for name calling, darlin'." She smiles to him. She looks back to Larry and takes his arm, "Larry, sweetie, could you point me toward the counter? I'm not quite su--wait, something's over us?!" She looks back in the direction of the man at the window.

The pink sky stretches in all directions as far as John can see, the slightly brighter spot nearly directly overhead.

The muddy young man stares upward and all around, turning as he does so, a look of wonder on his face. He throws his hands into the air and yells triumphantly, then starts jogging toward the coast.

Larry scowls at Derek, but takes Ray's hand and leads her to where she can feel the counter and orient herself. Mike, from behind the counter, asks, "You doing okay Ray?"

Jacob and the college girl look out from their table at the window, shocked at the bright light and pink skies.

With a bright smile, and a bit of a relieved sigh at feeling the counter, Ray brightly chirps, "Yep! Doing wonderfully w--" she's cut off by the yell from outside and frowns. "What's going on? My Spidey-senses are tingling, but I don't know why." She pauses a moment and sniffs the air. "And where's Zeke?!"

Derek turns to watch the muddy man run off and scowls. "Mr. Pigpen is particularly happy about the new fluorescent pink sky. He checked his watch just before it happened. He's got somthin' to do with it."