Signal to Noise (dreamtime)

I'm flipping idly through a game module for some long out-of-print RPG - it's for an adventure in a "Forbidden City" which, by the setting blurb, sounds a lot like something Lovecraft or Chambers would have devoted pages of florid yet vague descriptive text to. The creepy thing is that the front cover of the module has been damaged, so the name of the city is obscured, as though water has been spilled on the cover and left long enough to bleed the ink down the paper. The really creepy thing is that every instance of the city's name has also been carefully excised from the book - not just crossed out or covered with white-out, but cut out neatly, so there are small holes in several of the pages.

Needless to say, I buy the module and make plans to run it using WoD rules.

The POV switches at this point to the action in the game itself. The party (including myself) is picking its way through a series of caves which turn out to be the ruins of a massive highway interchange on the outskirts of The City*

[* The City is a place I frequently end up in my dreaming life. It's huge, contains elements of every place I've ever lived and a few I've simply visualized from books, and for some reason contains large stretches of urban decay - not the dangerous, crime-riddled variety, but the wasteland that's left after even the criminals decide to move to a nicer neighbourhood with a better class of people. We're talking the Bronx during the late 1970s - early 1980s. Or maybe postwar Dresden. The Ciry also contains a huge university, a deeply confusing and arbitrary public transit system, and, inexplicably, an amusement park.]

There are five of us, and five small children. One of the kids is our guide, the others... from sketchy reports of this nameless place and what other people have told us, apparenty young children are the only people able to find their way around the city without becoming paralyzed with nausea from the bizarre geometry of the place. The unspoken reason they're with us, which I'm really not happy about, is that they can't run as fast as adults, so it's like the old joke about not having to outrun the bear, but the other person you're hiking with, only not funny at all. I've made a private resolution that this is not going to happen, no matter what sorts of godawful things we run into.

We finally reach the gates, where a bridge leading to the main entrance has been collapsed into a deep gorge separating the city from the surrounding countryside. Despite the place's reputation, there are a hell of a lot of people milling around, to the point that there's actually a lineup for the improvised cablecar visitors use to get across the gorge. I remark that for an allegedly forbidden city, there are an awful lot of damned tourists. Nobody laughs.

X. and M. wait in line. The kids go off to play with the hordes of other kids building forts out of rubble, chucking stones into the gorge, play-fighting with sticks, and other stuff kids do when left to their own devices. R., V., and I wander around to try to get some more reliable information on what exactly we're getting into here. A frail-looking blonde woman is sitting on a parapet overlooking the gorge, and she smiles at us when we approach. She's perfectly happy to talk to us, chatting about the inhabitants of the city, including her sister, who she's visiting. She says she's never heard of any monsters, and the people are no more mad than they are anywhere else. She brushes some hair away from her face, and I see a small black square on one cheek. V. stiffens and walks away without another word to her, and I make some excuse and hurry after him.

"What was that all about? She was being helpful!"

"Oh yes, very helpful. Didn't you see that mark on her face? She's starting to pixellate. We can't trust a word she says."

"It was just the one square!"

"On her face - but she was wearing long robes. For all we know, she could be nothing but static under there. I'm not willing to take the chance."

When I look more closely at the people waiting in line, I notice that the majority of them, particularly those who have been here before, have parts of their body missing - the area where the limb should be is a hole filled with grey static. Their voices, too, are occasionally obscured by the hiss of a dead radio or occasionally rise into a sharp whine of feedback. The little girl guiding us comes up and stares at me solemnly.

"It's nothing like monsters, really. Mainly it's just that when you can't see or hear anything in particular, you start to make stuff up."