I apologize for the lack of length of this installment of Seeds. I’ve been very distracted as of late and was unable to do too many ideas justice. I do have more thoughts about seeds, but I just need to develop them more before showing them off.



And now for the moment both of you have been waiting for…

Trains

For whatever reason, the PCs are on a train going somewhere. Going through a tunnel, everything around them starts to disappear, like it is fading out of existence. The other passengers on the train, the train itself, everything starts to disappear. The characters will also be able to note a noticeable decrease in speed. The train is coasting to a stop.



In the tunnel, there will be many torches to light the way. But after walking for about a mile or so, the characters will not be sure if the light is a good thing or a bad thing. There will be many people hanging by the neck from the ceiling. On the floor, there will be many heads on spikes. The characters will recognize one of the hanging people.



Should the PCs decide to continue on, they will exit the tunnel soon afterwards. They will find themselves in a barren landscape. There will be no train tracks going into the tunnel that they just exited. Off in the distance, they will be able to see a glow. Following this glow will lead the characters to some glowing stones.



The stones will look similar to Stonehenge. In the center of the rock formation, there is a black monolith. The monolith is so tall that it seems to reach into the overcast sky above and just keep going. And in the direction that the characters are approaching it from, there is a door ajar.



As the characters go into this door, they wake up in their respective houses. The thing is, this was no dream. They are dressed exactly like they were on the train. If someone was expecting them at their destination, the expecting person will be calling them. And to top it all off, the shoes that they were wearing have dirt on them from the place that they visited.



A few minutes after they wake up, the phone starts to ring. It is a friend saying that a friend of theirs seems to have disappeared. It was, of coarse, the same person that they had seen in the tunnel.



This whole situation should raise a few questions. Who is doing this? What caused it? How did they get home? And more.



At this point, they will probably start an investigation. A call to the people running the trains will do them no good. They will be polite, but completely useless on the information front. They will deny any odd occurrence involving the train in question. They will have to go to the place that it happened.



Assuming that this is a subway, they will go to a stop and see that there is a sign saying “Train [X] will not be operating today. We apologize for the inconvenience.” Should the characters follow the tunnel, they will see where the transition started. There is a glowing portal about a mile and a half down a tunnel. Going through it, they will find themselves in the tunnel on “the other side.”



From here, you can figure out what you wish. Is there some major villain causing the portal, just some sort of “rip.” Do you deal with other dimensions in your game? Do you want to start? Who or what is in this other dimension? Why was it that only the PCs disappeared? What happened to the other passengers? What is that monolith? Why were the stones glowing? How DID they get home?

Where is Everyone?

The characters are traveling by car when they come across a small town in the middle of nowhere. But this town is wrong. There are no people in this town. There are actually bullet holes all over the place. There are cars that have been shot to pieces, burned out shells of buildings, it’s a basic disaster. Something big went down here, and there is no telling what.



The characters can pass right through and think nothing of it, nothing will happen to them unless you, as the GM, decide otherwise. This may, however, get the characters to stop and look around, especially if they were to happen to get a flat tire, need gas, or something of that nature.



When the characters get out of the car, they will find that the town is very quiet, almost too quiet. There is nobody in the entire town. And now that they look around, even with all of the bullet holes, there are no bodies to be found. Not even a dead pet or something of that nature. All of the stores in town are closed and locked up.



Every bit of paint in the town is very faded. There is no supernatural reason for this, it has just been out in the hot sun for a very long time without any maintenance for about 10 years or so. But this should give the characters an idea how long the town has been like this. None of the players, or anyone else for that matter, will know anything about what happened here or why.



Eventually, the players are going to want to get into one of the buildings or sewer system, or something of that nature. Going into a basement, any will suffice, will reveal that a hole has been dug into the wall. The resulting tunnel seems large and sturdy enough to walk around in.



After walking in for a little way, about 50 feet, the tunnel will start to change. It will no longer be made of dirt, stone, and other natural material. It will gradually get covered by a black, leathery substance. This substance is very cold. It will not give a character frostbite simply by touching it, but it does give off enough cold to make the PCs uncomfortable. After traveling for a while, have them encounter a creature that is vaguely human like in appearance, the differences are up to you.



Basically, what happened here was that some extra-dimensional influence got a grip of this town. It started off with the local drunk, and then the crazy man, and it extended its influence even further from there. By the time the townsfolk found out what was happening, it was too late to do anything. There are one or two survivors outside of town, some further than others, but all of them are stark-raving mad, and would be of little to no use to the PCs.



The way the PCs can find out what happened is by searching people’s houses. There will be diaries with many strange entries towards the end. Some of the better off families would have used a camcorder to record what happened. One or two people would have used a tape recorder as a sort of a diary.



There are many directions you can go with this. Because of the potential lethality of this town, it can be used to kill characters and start anew. Doing something like this gives the players a sense of closure to the campaign. Just make sure you give them worthwhile deaths, don’t have them die for nothing.



The PCs can try to push back the foreign influence that corrupted this town. In order to do that, they would have to look around in the tunnel system underneath the city (which does include the sewers) to try to find clues as to the origin of the influence. Heck, they would have to figure out that it is an influence instead of some lunatic genius.