Adventure, The Iron Ghost

The Traveler indicates the figures with the flourish of a stage magician. It stares at the PCs, trying to will them to see the significance of this weird display. The smoke figures stand small and still, horribly alive but for their creation from gas.

The Traveler is unable to speak. Its presentation made, it glides to each green figure and breathes it back in, sucking them up like ghastly mucous. The train whistle blows. The Traveler thins as the head lamp of the train burns through the fog and cuts across the platform. The forceful glare diminishes and saps the Spectral Traveler as the light passes through it. Then the apparition joins the mist it strode from, vanishing utterly.

Down

He was staring into the deepest, blackest pit he had ever seen. The walls of the tunnel had disappeared entirely and the place had opened up into a vast underground vault, a canyon. The mist did not drop below the level of the ground where he stood and he could peer through it into the clear, inklike darkness of the bottomless place. It was an abyss, an open mouth in the earth; if you dropped off, you would never touch bottom, much less be found.

If there is a Hell, thought Nick Creedon, then I’m standing at its gates right now.

Where the hell was he?! What kind of place was this? Why hadn’t his foreman told him there were places like this beneath the streets?

Turning from the edge of the pit, he headed for the train. He would have to throw ‘er into reverse and get them out of here immediately.

The Train That Ever Was

The train defies natural laws, within and without. The explorations of the PCs provide most of the impetus for this scenario. Allow them to direct the plot.

The train consists of an engine and four cars. Many sets of the train exist simultaneously in different space-times, though the PCs cannot know this without moving through the locked door at the rear of their sleeping car or through the locked door forward in the dining car.

Once through one or the other way, a space-time of the GM's choice can exist. The passengers are unaware that the train is abnormal. The space-times are separated by doors with spiral-shaped locks. Each passage through a door with a spiral-shaped costs a PC about 10% of their P.P.E. The staff, being already present in those other space-times, ordinarily do not enter again.

The train now stands at the platform, the back end of it invisible in the fog. A conductor steps down. He swings the door open and connects tiny metal steps to the edge of the doorway for the passengers.

The conductor is a tall, sallow man, with a slight stoop and hunched shoulders dressed in a blue conductor's uniform with double rows of brass buttons, black silk piping and a round flat capt. Greasy hair pokes out from under his cap. The backs of his hands are covered with black, stringy hair. His eyes are dark and he has a long chin.   

The station master unfurls his flag and blows his whistle. The PCs must board or miss the train. Once the PCs enter, the conductor pulls in the steps and secures the door.

If the PCs do not board, the GM can have the Train That Ever Was return for them as the next train—this time without the Spectral Traveler, perhaps, or save this scenario for another leg of the rail journey. Or they could learn of other disappearances and be picked up in the course of their investigations.

The entire train in sequence consists of Engine, Corpse Car, Dining Car, Salon Car, Sleeping Car: if the PCs manage to break through to another space-time, they find the same arrangement true for that time, too, but that the details of the cars (or their function and numbers) have changed. Each space-time car is a projection of an essential and unchanging master car, locked in some unfathomable place beyond our ken. Perhaps there are thousands of such projections, each culling a different human herd.

The Dining Car: The door forward from the salon car is locked also. That door lets out to the dining car, and has inset in its upper half a pane of frosted glass. If the PCs try the door, the professor looks up and advises them that they are early. He tells them that the dining car is patronized in shifts by those of the other carriages. He airily waves at them a printed sheet which tells about the train service, then returns to his reading.

The booklet is merely a four-page pamphlet with arrival and departure times, amenities noted, a few advertisements, and dining times. Breakfast is from 7-8am, lunch is from l-2pm, and dinner is from 7-8pm.

Any PC who frequently travels by rail spies something odd about the dining-car door. Instead of the usual square or rounded aperture for a lock, which the conductor's passkey opens, this lock is spiral-shaped.

Set into the opaque glass of the locked door forward is a slightly clearer frosting of the rail company's trademark. PCs peering against this may catch a glimpse of the dining session prior to their own. The diners are men, women and children dressed in fashions from a previous decade or century. The carriage decor seems also of that era.

Staring outside the windows of the dining car, in the falling gloom, appears to be a land of grassy plains and sparse trees, with lions roaming. This is entirely different to the view through the windows of the PCs’ salon car, which shows the appropriate view.

A waiter in the dining car looks their way, steps to the door of the dining car, and pulls a shade down over the frosted glass window. When the PCs saunter back past him, the bartender in their salon car glares at them, but remains silent.

Dinner: As though his voice had been turned on suddenly, the conductor comes through and announces in croaking tones that the 7 pm sitting is now being served. He removes a large key from his jacket pocket. Perspective heroes will note that the key is an odd shape. He inserts it in the spiral-shaped lock, and turns it clockwise. When the PCs pass through, each feels a twinge of nausea, as though the train had just lurched strongly.

The decor of the train’s restaurant car matches the salon and sleeping cars. Wood panels with mirror veneers adorn the walls, its Art Deco décor accented by the crisp-white linens that covers the tables. Crystal and Tiffany globe lamps of stained-glass sparkle in shafts of sunlight wafting through spotless windows of squared glass, creating an Old World movie flicker across the faces of those seated there.

Here is another map detailing the train's route, but this too has lost its final destination. The terminal in the bottom left-hand corner has been scratched out, even more severely than the last.

There are two waiters in the serving section of the car. The kitchen area beyond is closed off from the main section. There is a smoking and non-smoking area, separated by a swinging door. The menu offers simply-prepared courses of soup, fish, meat, salad, and coffee.

Any PC who peered into this car earlier finds the decor and layout bewilderingly changed. The waiters speak only to take orders and answer questions about the menu. They stare blankly at other questions. All bear a disquieting resemblance to each other.

The meal goes by without incident, and the diners are asked to leave after an hour, so that the carriage may be cleaned. The passengers are free to go to the salon car, or retire to their rooms.

When all have left, the conductor locks the door, again using the spiral-shaped lock. This time he turns the key in an anti-clockwise direction. Later on, the PCs feel hungry, as though they had never eaten. But by then the dining car is closed for the night.

The Staff: Servitors on the train serve it, and keep the passengers in order. Those who show too much curiosity are confronted by the Lead conductor.

The Lead Conductor: He is a dark figure

Servitors of the Express: The Servitors are the principal staff, and include the conductors and waiters. They are inhuman, artificial creatures reshaped into human form. There are a dozen servitors on the train, and at any time there are six in the corpse car and six on duty. The thirteenth is the Lead Conductor who while still a servant to the Train and its purpose, has been imbued with greater intellect and increased flexibility in carrying out its duties.

Vapor Masks: The gargoyle in each sleeping compartment is alive and active. After a passenger has gone to sleep, the thing drifts off the door and silently glides to the face of the sleeper. Attached (and dangling behind as the mask move) is a physical connection to the train, a long, flexible thing of gristle and bone like the spine of a snake. The gargoyle head softens, and delicately conforms to the sleeper’s mouth and nose, and withdraws from the sleeper where the character must save vs magick once every twenty or lose 1D4 P.P.E for every hour from midnight to 6 AM. When a character loses over half his/her P.P.E, he or she will become weak, tired, and listless. If a PC is reduced to 2 P.P.E, they will become sleepy, depressed, look pale and their skin will feel cold and clammy. When P.P.E is reduced to zero, the vapor mask begins to drain 1D4 hit points. These points power the train. Appearance of the vapor masks differs in each set of trains.

The Ghosters at the Threshold: They are outside the train. These things are attracted by the presence of human souls, and may attack those who jump off or who clamber about on top of the train. Protean, they change their shape in congruence with the level of the Dungeon in which the PCs emerge.

The Driver-Thing: The Driver-Thing is a loathsome pulling pulsating entity. Squatting in the locomotive cab, it squeals incessantly at a nightmare landscape of endless pain, whining and worrying about matters it will never describe. A quick glance shows no ties, no rail bed, no rails.

By defeating the driver-thing, and taking control of the train, the investigators can save themselves and the other passengers.

The Journey:

Three events occurs during the trip. The Night of Light Slumber is the first night aboard, and serves to deepen the PCS suspicion of the vehicle. Breakfast introduces them to a passenger from another level. The Night of Dark Slumber is the second and final night, where all the sleeping passengers will be drained and their unconscious forms will be moved to the prisoner car, there for the servitors to nibble at and finally be dropped off at the one of the levels of the Dungeon. On the second night, the investigators probably can still save themselves, but no one else.

The Night of Light Slumber:

The first night that the PCs sleep about the train, the vapor mask in each compartment begins its evil task. PCs who remain awake during the night become aware of an increasing torpor and a strange shimmering around the brass face on the inside of the door. Damaging the gargoyle or plugging up its maw disables the living mask for that one night.

The gargoyle head softens, and delicately conforms to the sleeper’s mouth and nose, and withdraws from the sleeper where the character must save vs magick once every twenty or lose 1D4 P.P.E for every hour from midnight to 6 AM.. When a character loses over half his/her P.P.E, he or she will become weak, tired, and listless. If a PC is reduced to 2 P.P.E, they will become sleepy, depressed, look pale and their skin will feel cold and clammy. When P.P.E is reduced to zero, the vapor mask begins to drain 1D4 hit points. These points power the train. Appearance of the vapor masks differs in each set of trains.Unconscious sleepers wake at 8 am, just in time to miss breakfast.

During the slumber, the PCs will have one of the following dreams (GM's choice).

A great, muscular winged being, its enormous arms and legs akimbo, pursues them across a landscape of dead gray. Razor-tipped wings of adamantine protrude from its back, and clash like the sounds of cymbals. The sky is the same leaden gray, and three strange suns strain to pierce the gloom. The creature has blonde locks on its man-like head, and is covered with stretched faces, sliding, shifting, and emerging from its shoulders, sides, elbows. These faces are those of the PC’s companions, etched into the skin of the monstrosity. The thing pursue the hapless dreamers until they fall and can run no more. The winged thing stoops, and folds the dreamers to its muscular chest. The PC awakes exhausted, and with a throbbing headache—indicating that something has happened, but the PCs have no way to know they have lost so much P.P.E.

The PCs awake having had the same dream. It is impossible to tell how long they had been asleep when the change of rhythm began to dispel their dreams. Outside the windows the train is slowing, emerging from a forest of silver birches.

Breakfast with Company:

Breakfast is at 7am. Again the PCs suffer a spell of dizziness as they enter the car (lose 10% of their remaining P.P.E). A different waiter appears, but he still bears the same disturbing resemblance to the others. The menu offers standard breakfast options. After the plates are cleared, the investigators can hear the staff in the kitchen working on the dishes. But also an unusual noise from within the dining car—a groaning, as of someone in pain.

A man is sprawled under one of the tables. He has been there since last night, when he got too drunk and was inadvertently left by his equally intoxicated companions. He is dressed in a distinctive uniform unknown to the PCs (Magog of the Fourth Level).

He is aged nineteen. His greatcoat is torn and careworn, and his long, Gallic face is stubbled. He is dark-haired, and rangy in build. His head is bandaged.

The waiters exchange dark glances when the man scrambles up from beneath the table. One of them disappears into the kitchen. He is a happy fellow left dour and cynical by the horrors of war. He explains to the PCs that he left the battle raging.

A conductor enters through the salon car door, and gruffly tells the man that he will escort him back to his carriage. The PCs are certain that the conductor is the same man as the waiter, and this is true. He changed his uniform. He beckons to the soldiers, who agrees to follow with a shrug, and they leave the dining car, pass through the salon car and sleeping car. The conductor unlocks the spiral-shaped lock at the rear end of the sleeper. If the PCs follow, they see a pall of smoke drift out while the door is open, there is a glimpse of glowing cigarettes, and a murmur of strangely-accented conversation. The door closes, and locks. Sanity point loss to witness this is 0/1.

Five minutes later the conductor emerges. If the PCs are waiting, they find themselves looking into their own dining car. Breakfast is over. The door closes and is locked with the spiral-shaped key.

The Night Of Dark Slumber

On the second night the vapor masks finish their work. The Spectral Traveler endeavors to warn the passengers, but in the train's domain it is now much diminished. It passes fleetingly through the PCs’ compartments as they prepare for sleep, little more than a rustling like that of a wandering moth, or a green shadow which passes too quickly to be fully seen. The Traveler points at the bed and shakes its head mournfully, then drifts through the wall to other compartments to try to alert other passengers.

After midnight, each vapor mask flutters into life and drifts into position. From each maw pours a ghoul-green, ectoplasmic sludge, a vile gel that covers each sleeper and seeps into orifices. Allow each PC to roll to sense something amiss and wake up as the gelid stuff flows across them. Once inside, the substance displaces the sleeper's essence. The mask catches this essence and pumps it out like blood to pulsing arteries in the skin of the sleeping car, in turn connected to the hideous engine of the train.

Wounding a mask for 8 or more damage prevents it from functioning. Each has 15 S.D.C. If the mask is destroyed, the sludge evaporates as a green-hued gas. Roll CON x5 or less on D100 for an investigator not to be overcome with nausea for ID 10 rounds, but each who is saved are otherwise unharmed.

Once the masks have subdued most passengers, the servitors cast off their human guise and rampage through the train, subduing the survivors. Then servitors collect the unconscious passengers and one by one tow them bobbing and bumping to the corpse car, where they consume at their leisure any droplets not pumped out. When they are finally and fully powerless, they are cast onto a random level of the Dungeon which is outside the train. Passengers will awaken, weak and drained but alive (though now they are trapped in the Dungeon, likely for the rest of their lives).

Moving Through the "Levels":

The space-lime connections between the various sets of trains are signified by spiral-shaped locks, to which conductors carry the keys. These doors also can be opened with successful Lockpicking rolls, perhaps modified for difficulty in understanding an alien lock, or forced open by no less than two people. To go up in levels, one unlocks and passes through the door from the dining car kitchen forward toward the corpse car. One then enters some set of cars ahead.

To go back a level, one unlocks and passes through the rear door in the investigators' sleeping car. Four trains from earlier times are provided, since the PCs’ progress seems much more likely there.

The servitors know how to move to the train set of choice, if they use this option. Since they're not talking, the PCs would logically need to plod through each set, eventually ending at the first level, or at its cessation, in some unimaginable final level. Why bring up such messy details? —let the players perceive the sequence of train sets as random.

Only twelve servitors exist on the train. It doesn't much matter, since all can serve in each of the sequential space-times. Logically, though, those servitors killed in earlier space-times might not be present in later space-times. The GM must decide whether or not this should be true for his or her play.

Moving Along The Train

Between each car is a small enclosed section which bridges the interval over the couplings between each car. The rhythm of the train is stronger here. Small side doors at the ends of the cars allow access to the outside, as shown in the train plans. These doors also are locked. Once such a door is open, the PCs may jump from the train, or clamber onto the roof.

PCs may wish to uncouple the carriages by unlocking the pins between them. Though the platform can be moved aside, it exposes pulsing green sinews and arteries of great strength—there are no ordinary couplings. A perceptive character deduces that such organicism might be controlled at or connected to the engine.

Dining Car — Corpse Car Connection

The Servitors have put a walk-way between the left side-door at the kitchen end of the dining car, and the left side-door at the rear of the corpse car. Since the train never goes in other than a straight line across the plain, this short-cut works fine, and saves them having to clamber over the top of the train.

If the PCs notice the walk-way, and take it rather than using the connecting passage between cars, they arrive in the corpse car, and not in some Dungeon train.

Getting Off The Train

In jumping from a moving train, investigators must succeed in a strike roll or take 2D6 damage as they tumble off and away from the train. The appearance of the terrain depends upon the car exited. Thus, if investigators leap from the Wildlands carriage, they land in that level.

Regardless of the direction taken, the PCs always arrive at a railway track station as the train approaches in the distance. The only way out of the landscape is to board the train again, or succumb to the level’s hazards.

Ghosters: These ectoplasmic things patrol the trains, assuming predatory shapes inherent in the hallucinatory landscapes. Their power is limited, and there is always some hint of their true nature. If a Ghoster appears as some natural beast, it is too large or more hideous than the real thing. If they masquerade as a group of creatures (like a pride of lions, for instance), a thin membrane joining them can be seen by those with sharp eyes.

Moving Atop The Train

Climbing atop the train is difficult, but not impossible. This is the quickest and least dangerous way to reach the corpse car and engine. There are ladder-like grips on the roof of each car.

They are easy to hold onto, but each interval between cars requires a successful Jump roll or dex roll to cross.

Failing, the PC loses 3D6 hit points, the effect of which the GM could soften by.

The landscape beyond looks as the investigators expect it to until moving onto the corpse car.

Other “Levels”

Seeing this void costs 0/1D3 Sanity points, since with it comes the realization that the investigators are in a different space-time. Investigators who fall off the train here will see the Ghosters as they are, enormous bird-like things with multiple drooling mouths (Sanity point loss to see them 0/1D6).

Nightmare Places: They see an alien void of spiraling stars.

sky and horizons which blur into infinity.

Wastelands:

The train reconfigures itself into a stately monorail from the derelict Imperium.

Endless Sea:

The light refracts in an odd way that gives the impression of being under water and the whole place wouldn’t look out of place as an underwater sea base.

Battlefield:

From the windows of the train, the PCs survey a blackened, blasted landscape. Clouds of poisonous gas billow through stands of twisted, stunted trees, their wet trunks bent as though they were subjected to explosions. The landscape is an undulation of darkened hills and dead plains, scoured of vegetation.

Salon Car: A wooden carriage that is currently occupied by Magog soldiers. By day it is filled with the buzz of conversation and the pall of cigarette smoke. The soldiers sit on rough seats, back to back. Card games are played between the seats, and in the aisles. The soldiers wager cigarettes and argue vociferously about the honesty of their fellow players. By night the car is quieter, with most of the soldiers snoring in the sleeping car. Some remain, though, and two card games continue; though the players have the dead stares of zombies, none are willing to give up the game. Piles of cigarettes like fortifications guard the winners. Out the windows, the devastation is glimpsed—craters dotting fields like some moonscape, or the skeletons of war beasts, animal and machine, discarded in the endless mud. Passengers include over fifty soldiers, most are wounded. Some huddle in corners and babble, redolent of mustard gas which has ruined them.

Sleeping Car: Here are tiers of bunks three high, covered with heavy army blankets. During the day they are all but empty. One of the wounded lies moaning on his bunk, halfway along the car. He does not speak the native language, and is delirious with fever. By night tobacco, sweat, and disinfectant fills the air. The berths are packed. Groans, whispers, and nightmare screams break the silence. On each bunk hangs a gas-mask. The blank insect eyes of the device glitter with malevolent intent. Each is in fact a vapor mask.

Outside the train hang the ghosters, now in the form of Gog soldiers on a suicide mission.

The Wild Places:

Salon Car: This carriage is constructed out of wood. It is similar in layout to the salon car, its ivory keyed piano can entertain the travelers. The opulence inside contrasts sharply with the rugged countryside of the Veldt without. Exotic, alien beasts can sometimes be glimpsed in the grassy plains.

Sleeping Car: The vapor masks appear as tribal masks hung upon the walls.

Outside the train the Ghosters appear as giant, lion-like beasts.

Tartarus:

To underline their dislocation, the dim light of three suns burn through the gray haze.

The Conductor and staff wear monk's robes.

Perdition:

This is most shocking of the vistas displayed: The train is blooded, lit with brimstone. Sulphuric fumes assault them and hellflame licks at the clothes of the train’s passengers.

The Conductors acquire red skin, their hats conceal the stubs of sawed-off horns. They shovel fuel into the vapor masks, which resemble Moloch idols with fanged maws. They groan as they eat it up, perhaps with the painted souls still contained in the bones that are used instead of coals.

City of Woe:

The silence of the place oppresses unbearably. It is so eerily quiet that the investigator can hear the blood pumping past their eardrums, a rhythmic beat that seems so loud in the absolute silence that they are certain the others passengers back in the train can hear it.

The Cube Maze:

The Corpse Car

This is where the servitors take their meals. It can be entered from the locked door beyond the kitchen of the dining car (at the forward end of the dining car) or by climbing across the top of the train and prying open one of the baggage car ventilation hatches.

Within is charnel horror. Six servitors perch here in their true guise, scattered as the GM chooses.

The rooms of the car are stuffed with jostling, tumbling, naked human balloons, all that are left of earlier victims of the masks. Occasionally vile green liquid drips from this or that body balloon, and it is this that the servitors most crave, squatting to lick and suck seepage from the floor or raising high and tilting a whole body to scour droplets from within, a maneuver at which their prehensile tongues are clever. Finished with a body, the drained bobbing envelope is delivered to one of the stops in the Dungeon. The person regains consciousness only after the train has left.

Twisting, pulsing green fleshy tubes run along the passageway floor toward the engine; these are the same sorts of things seen if the couplings of the cars have been inspected. Here they pulse and writhe with the insane rhythms of hearts condemned.

It is all too obvious what their final destination will be. Has there ever really been any doubt? No wonder it had been torn from every map and erased from every sign. But are there any others like them, passengers who have boarded with their lives and souls intact? Perhaps if they can be identified, their help could be enlisted.

Or perhaps you are alone.

The Engine

The locomotive is large, black, and belches thick, roiling greenish smoke. The smoke stench is pervasive and foul, like burning tires and burning flesh.

The tender of the locomotive is filled by human husks as well as by imitation coal— shifting, sharp, black slippery stuff in wet slabs as sharp as obsidian. It’s easy to slip and cut one’s hands and knees, and the smell of blood alerts the Driver-Thing.

The Driver-Thing is a massive pink and bulbous thing. Its head is a swollen lump with tiny raisin eyes. Folds of flesh flow into a pool on the floor, and from this pool rise strands of various thickness. These flaccid appendages grasp or socket the levers and switches of the train. (As if one would expect otherwise, a successful Operate Heavy Machinery roll determines that the connections and controls are not standard to an earthly locomotive.)

The Driver-Thing's attention is riveted upon the portal in the front of the cab, through which it views the current level of the Dungeon around it. If attacked the Driver-Thing keeps its attention upon its work, while newer and stronger flesh tentacles spring from its back to attack or ward off those who bedevil it. If necessary, the Driver Thing can summon the Head Conductor to defend it.

During the battle, the Conductor taunts the PCs, saying things like "Can you feel it? Perdition is calling you to eternal damnation." and "You have no idea how much I hate the living. You always think you can make a difference."

The Conductor attacks, his hands flying to a PC's shoulders in a hiss that sounds like frustration.

When struck, the world wavers: for a moment the Conductor is not human at all, is a distended parody of a human, bulging-headed, long slobbery tube of a tongue, thin-bodied, belly swelling like that of a praying mantis: and then he is the Conductor, smiling still, but with uneasiness lurking in those deep-pooled eyes.

The pulsing arteries and sinews that hold the train together here disappear into what would ordinarily be the firebox. Prominent above them on the fire wall are four levers, glowing with heat. All are in the up position. These levers release the train sets to return to their respective space-times. (This is a good place to have a successful Operate Heavy Machine or INT x3 roll supply the deduction, if the players miss the point.)

As its statistics make clear, the Driver-Thing is capable in defense, but is not an overwhelming fighter. It has one weapon unmentioned in the statistics, however, and the GM must decide whether or not to use it.

Within the firebox is the entire universe—galaxies, quasars, knots of time, strings of matter—and at the universe's center of course whirls the spiral of stars, clearly visible and flaming in this finite infinite void though vast numbers of light years distant. If the Driver-Thing opens the firebox door, each PC who looks in must see the vision and experience the shocking revelation table from the numbing sight.

If the PCs can kill the Driver-Thing, it dissolves into dust and ash, clearing the way for them to enter the cab. Without a controlling influence, the Iron Ghost begins to shake itself apart. The walls around the PCs strains and creaks. Steel screams and timber tears. The PCs have eight melee rounds for one of them to touch the controls and take control before the Iron Ghost totally shatters, leaving the characters adrift in time-space chaos. If the PCs don't realize this, have the dying Conductor gasp a hint "The controls... take the controls or we will all die."

Conclusion:

Anyone touching the controls is attacked by the power of the train. There is no way to know this ahead of time, unless the keeper wants to allow a deduction roll to deduce the danger. Cautious investigators might use belts or ropes or ropes.

If touching, match the POW of the investigator against POW 12. If overcome, the unfortunate investigator swells to the proportions of the old Driver-Thing, losing all vestiges of humanity and individuality in the process. Sanity loss for this condition is 1D3/1D10 points, while onlookers lose 0/1D6 points. If he or she remains sane, the train is controllable at whim.

If the investigator's POW is not overcome, knowledge of the train's operation crowds his or her mind, but is not overwhelming. The purposes of the controls are clear.

The levers thrown, the train is severed from the will and energy of the Dungeon. The stars in the firebox disappears. Engines and cars of all the space-times snap back to their points of departure. If all the PCs are in the locomotive, their number increases by a servitor engineer and fireman, who just as suddenly fade out of existence. Everywhere rise clouds of steam.

Return

The PCs who return find themselves feeling the thrum and clack of genuine iron rails slow beneath their feet, and look out the windows to see dawn breaking. And like a window opening, each then finds himself or herself stepping off the train in his or her space-time, at his or her starting point. Behind each last dismounting passenger, that space-time train flickers and disappears.

All the passengers, in all the space-times, have the same bewildering experience. Do they get on board the train now pulling in? Probably not, but it is the one they wanted to take in the first place, right on time. Not a second has elapsed since boarding the Train That Ever Was.

And somewhere nearby, everywhere and nowhere, is a figure in black with a broad hat. It breathes out the last of its vapors, exhaling a stream of smiling people who dissipate in the breeze. With the last of them, the figure collapses, leaving only a puzzling pile of old clothes --- men's, women's and children's fashions from many eras. The Spectral Traveler is free.

Rewards & Recurrences

The sanity reward for returning the carriages to their respective limes is 2D6+1 Sanity points if there were no vapor mask casualties aboard their set of cars. They gain 1D6+1 Sanity points for returning themselves and a few other survivors to their own space-times.

The Train That Ever Was is of course still extant, made anew through the will of the God-King, and staffed by another group of servitors, awaiting fresh runs through the dimensions. In future adventures, the train will recognize the PCs. If they should try to find the train and succeed, a new conductor will grab their shoulders as they attempt to step onto the train. "This train's reserved," he rasps. The PCs all but leap back onto the platform as the train begins to chug out of the station, fading from existence before their eyes.

The Spectral Traveler (Living Magic):

Alignment: Neutral

Attributes: I.Q. M.E. , M.A., P.S. , P.P. , P.E. , P.B. , Spd. .

S.D.C: .

Hit Point:.

Horror Factor: .

Natural Abilities:

Special Abilities:

Ectoplasm

Vulnerabilities:

Damage:

Possessions:

Common Item Table:

Unique Item Table:”