Not Your Grandpa's Monster Book: Entities and the Mysteries They Leave Behind
So I said I'd talk about the Noora Rose-authored Entities: A Roseville Beach Zine that I published a couple of weeks ago. So today I'm going to do it!
The zine has five entities across about 23 pages of monstery content. That's a lot of pages per "monster," especially since Roseville Beach doesn't have monster stats, so you might be wondering what's in there.
Investigations
Roseville Beach is a game of monster hunting and occult investigations, so the first thing for each monster entity isn't stats or a description or anything you might find in a WotC monster book: it's logs, diaries, and interview transcripts from prior encounters with the entity.
Before you know anything about the entities that some people label "Star Vampires," you know that they operate in pairs. You know that, because it was a pair of them that wandered off with 19 year old Karl Walker in 1977. Karl disappeared from Roseville Beach, but across the harbor in Mainelin County, the same thing happened to Sherri Brit in 1971 and Lynn Delaney in 1973.
Likewise, the only thing you know about shape-shifting slugs that were brought up from the Atlantic depths? It comes from the journal of a scientist.
![PERSONAL OBSERVATION NOTES, DR. JO NORRIS, US DEPT. OF [REDACTED], ON [REDACTED]. TOP SECRET EYES ONLY, CREF: 30492 ANOMALY DESIGNATE “EUCLID.” DECLASSIFICATION STATUS: PENDING. LOG 1, MAY 31 ...brought it in late last night, full spook detail, four frogmen with big-ass guns and what looked like a pressurized cat carrier. I don’t like guns. Peggy’s still filling out the intake. I don’t know how deep they found it but it’s going to take forever to depressurize. LOG 4, JUNE 2 ... scared me half to death. After we spent three days de-pressurizing the container, the subject—I can’t get over calling a sea slug “the subject”— pops out and flops on the table. I thought we’d killed it. Peggy’s the biologist, not me, and she isn’t back until Tuesday working on that other thing. All I could think of was that I’d killed it, and I was going to get my ass fired. It had half-blended into the operating table, and I do mean “blended” - I couldn’t tell where one started and the other ended without physically touching it, which I know I’m not supposed to do but I also know I’m not supposed to lose it. Some kind of active camouflage? I took pictures, which I’m also not supposed to do, but nobody is going to believe me otherwise. LOG 5, JUNE 3 Woke up to two tables in the observation chamber. Somehow it quadrupled in size and is, as far as I can tell from through the window, a perfect copy of the specimen table. Right down to the scratches by the leg.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/454eec1cafcaeaaf1b1b56ff3756a9b0/93f4b657841a132f-a9/s1280x1920/ad9bee3e483024d2840bec1a05f04280c9c1f426.pnj)
(Yes, SCP Foundation fans, we see you.)
It's much the same with the logs of a missing Rose Island Park Ranger who was told the noises and dead animals in the woods were probably a bear (even though there's not any bears on Rose Island).
![NIGHTLY LOG OF ROSE ISLAND NATIONAL PARK RANGER VERNON FOLEY [MISSING, PRESUMED DECEASED]. AUGUST 17TH Another dead dog, another camp- site. This one almost two miles away; dogs don’t stray that far. Could this be like, a crocodile, or a bear? Also funny: no head again. The carcass looks gnawed upon but its like whatever ate it just ate its head. Dogs don’t do that. Again, the only thing anyone heard was barking. Mountain lion? Shit. Called the mayor but he just says “handle it.” Handle it how? Tie a dog to a stake and sit out in a tree all night? AUGUST 19TH Kid missing. Shit. The Dewitt kid. Right after they lost their dog, too. Donald and Stan said in the police report that Rodney heard the dog barking. Swore up and down it was Ranger barking. I guess he waited until his dads were asleep and then snuck out. The good news is there isn’t a ton of ground to cover; the bad news is anything big enough to hunt dogs is definitely big enough to hunt a twelve-year-old. Asked Mainelin County PD for help looking for this whatever but got told to fuck off. Guess I’m camping out tonight.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e962b2de20ad2d91da5bd9f925e6347f/93f4b657841a132f-20/s1280x1920/43ad92b7547c7f17a32e23fdc2d20b172a70faf9.pnj)
These docs lack any GM-only info, so they're ready to print and hand out to players or just use as inspiration. There's also a page of GM advice for each entity (there are spoilers, though, so I am not gonna reproduce those), and then a generator to determine where in Roseville Beach an entity appears, who they scare or hurt, who saw it happen, and who in town might know more.
Pick it up on Itch, get it as part of a bundle, or grab it on DriveThruRPG.
Comments
Post a Comment