Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Solo Liminal Horror Part Four

You can purchase Liminal Horror here
You can purchase Jeansen’s Machines here
You can download the Liminal Horror Solo Starter here

Read the previous chapter here

Scene #9 – (Resolution 1/4)
Modified proposal: Cristian quickly leafs through the old book, looking for a solution – Cause confusion, doubt, and questions.
The GM asks you to: Describe the current location, what the character sees
Oracle: Wooden Love

The cabin has suddenly gone quiet. The rain is still coming down, but a little lighter. The scratching sounds under the floor have stopped. Albert asks Cristian what he thinks that thing is doing. His cousin is distracted by the book. Albert makes a passing mention of “grandad’s old hunting rifle” and that he’s going to see if it’s still in the cabinet in the living room. Cristian doesn’t even notice; the book has taken him in.

Cristian hurriedly flips through the book. Looking for any words to do with banishing this thing, killing it. He stops on a section titled “The Bond.” It explains what Albert had told him, plus some more information. The entity is called forth from intense grief, it feeds on it. However, it doesn’t pose a danger to anyone except the griever until a form is constructed. The book explains that the constructs are often bundles of branches and sticks. The entity cannot possess a human, but it is known to strip them of their skin and wear it to blend in.

Even more disturbing is the bonding ritual, which involves sexual consummation between the entity as it wears human skin and the one who beckons it forward. Cristian has to process this for a moment. He realizes his grandfather…mated with that thing in the crawlspace? His stomach turns. Dizziness scrambles his head. He closes his eyes and breathes. Focuses on what is most urgent right now.

A memory from when Cristian was a teenager comes to his mind. Grandma had taken ill. Grandpa said she’d fallen and broke her ankle while doing some yard work. Not atypical at the ages they’d been. She’d been shut away for a few weeks. Cristian was at their house late one night; they had cable TV, and his family did not. Grandma came out of her room and stood in the hallway. Cristian remembered how he could barely make out her silhouette in the darkness. She didn’t say anything, but shuffled into the kitchen, made something, and then went back to her room. Cristian recalls when she stopped and turned to look back at him. In the blue glow of the television screen, he saw her face. Now, he can see what he missed at that moment: the sagginess of the skin and the strange smile on her face. Grandma was already dead at that point.

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Scene #10 – (Resolution 2/4)
Random proposal: Meet or recall a notable character
The GM asks you to: Mention a potential or imminent danger around

Question: Does Albert find the hunting rifle & ammo? Answer: Weak yes
Albert found the gun but not the ammunition. Grandpa always kept it in the first drawer of the cabinet. It’s missing.

Albert comes back to the door of Grandpa’s office. He has the hunting rifle, but also an incredibly worried face. “No bullets,” he says mournfully. Cristian glances up from the book. He wonders if he should share what he realized with Albert. His cousin’s pained look convinces him not to. Not now, at least. A few flips through the book, Cristian recognizes the metal sun he saw hanging up in the crawlspace. The text mentions “the Promethean Fire,” an energy source that the entity seems to view as a god, a punishment. Cristian knows they must force this thing into contact with it now that the sun is glowing. He figures bullets won’t be enough to stop it.

A creak of the floorboards. Cristian can’t see what his cousin does; Albert’s face warps into an image of horror. He walks backward into the office, whispering, “I-I need to get out of here.” Cristian leans out and sees a little boy standing in the living room. But everything about this child is wrong. The skin bulges in certain parts, especially one side of the face. Cristian’s eyes look beyond the boy and see a long wooden branch snaking out the front door onto the porch. This child puppet is wearing real human skin. Now Cristian knows what happened to that poor missing child.

“Mister…can you help me? I’m lost,” the entity makes the child-puppet say in an almost convincing voice. Cristian needs to get the thing close to that glowing sun. 

“Following me down into the crawlspace. Let’s get you out of this rain,” Cristian responds in what he hopes is a very convincing voice.

(Control check 5 vs. 6 – Failure)

“I’m scared of the dark, mister,” the child-puppet says. Can you pick me up?” The arms raise; a branch has torn through one arm and sticks out. 

Cristian bolts to the door in the floor, hoping the thing follows him down. He can tell it’s afraid of the glowing sun.

(Dexterity check 11 vs. 10 – Success)

Cristian turns and gets to the door slams it open, and slips down the ladder, turning to wait for the puppet child or its host entity to emerge from the shadows.

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Scene #11 – (Resolution 3/4)
Modified Proposal: Cristian lures the entity into the crawlspace – Decrease the intensity and tension
The GM asks you to: Explain what’s currently happening & activities around

Cristian stands there and waits. He finds a broken leg from a rotting wooden chair left down there. But nothing happens. He hears some creaks on the floorboards, shuffling, then silence. The glowing sun hangs on the post, and Cristian can almost hear it humming with whatever power fuels it. 

There’s a sudden, quick noise. A fast sliding sound across the floorboards and out the door. A beat. Cristian doesn’t hear anymore. The sun’s glow fades. He emerges from the door in the floor. The cabin is empty. The rain has stopped. A very weak sunbeam cracks through the thick cloud cover. Albert is gone. So is the puppet child.

Cristian has failed his cousin. He sits on the floor and weeps.

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Scene #12 – (Resolution 4/4)
Random Proposal: Locate or trace a useful finding
The GM asks you to: Foreshadow what is about to happen in this place

Cristian took the sun sculpture with him when he left the cabin. He took off on foot, carrying the object in an old rucksack he had found in the cabin. His wallet was still with the police. He felt uneasy about hotwiring his own car. The police were going to think he did what happened at the station and here in the cabin. They wouldn’t believe what he saw. His life, as he knew it, was over.

Hitchhiking was a challenging task. The current era was not one where people trusted. He couldn’t blame them. He found himself distrusting the people who did pick him up. Eventually, Cristian found work, mostly paid under the table. It was hard labor, not the psychology work he was used to, but that felt like a dream, another life entirely. Years passed, and while rummaging through a closet in his one-bedroom apartment, Cristian found the sun sculpture again. He took it to an antiques dealer a few towns over and used a fake name. 

The woman examined it and said it appeared to be from Greece, made sometime in the 17th century. Besides that, she didn’t know much about it, assuming it was used in some cult ritual. Cristian hung it up on the wall of his living room. Some nights, the long dark ones, he sits up slowly sipping beer after beer. He watches the sun hanging there with its frozen smile. He wonders if it will start to glow one day and what that will mean for him. He keeps an eye out for his cousin Albert, knowing he’ll have to start running again if he sees him.

The End.