The Beach

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The Beach (Outer God)

Suppose this other reality was once all there was? Then ours came into being and occupied some of its space. We didnt destroy it - it cant be destroyed. Maybe it withdrew a little, to bide its time. But it left a kind of imprint of itself, a kind of coded image of itself in our reality. And yet that image is itself in embryo, growing. You see, he says its alive, but its only the image being put together. Things become part of its image, and thats how it grows was the beach swollen, puffed up as if by the irregular gasping of the sea? Was it swarming with indistinct shapes, parasites that scuttled dancing over it, sank into it, floated writhing to the surface?It was still watching me, indifferent as outer space - and it filled the sky. If I looked up, I would see its eyes, or eye, if it had anything that I would recognise as such Ramsey Campbell, The Voice of the Beach The beach is the earthly extrusion of an Outer God which once occupied our own dimension. Its name is the sound of the sea in the seashells which litter its surface, which sounds slightly distorted, slightly wrong. The Outer God currently covers a three-mile stretch of beach with two tiny wrecked villages along its length, and some beach huts at one end. When, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the standing stones which kept the beach from growing any further were pulled down to accommodate the village of Lewis, allowing it to once more affect the world. By day, the beach appears as just that - a beach; however, by night, the sand phosphoresces and appears to move, and the silhouettes of figures can be seen on the shore, dancing. The nameless Outer God gains power by making people, animals and objects map out certain patterns on its sands, which act like a kind of summoning spell; it does this in a number of ways, either by forcing its victim to adopt certain paths by moving patches of quicksand to make the hapless victim take the route it desires, or by driving its victims mad. The Beach can make quicksand appear anywhere along the sea front. Unlike real quicksand, the quicksand on the beach has an active downward suction, and a victim must succeed in overcoming the beachs STR on either the first or second round or be sucked down into the sand and absorbed by the beach. It prefers not to do this, since it gains no ground by doing this. When a pattern has been completed, the creator of the pattern will lose 1D6/1D20 SAN. If they go insane because of this, he or she will go onto the beach by night at the first opportunity and continue to make the patterns by his or her own volition, losing SAN each time a pattern is complete. If the victim completes a pattern and does not go insane, he or she must still succeed in resisting the Outer Gods POW or be drawn to the beach in the same way. Once a victims SAN is reduced to 0, he or she will, at the first opportunity, walk on the beach and be absorbed. The beach has other ways of causing SAN loss: Distortions of reality: objects - like a derelict car or a ruined building - exhibit unusual fragility and crumble into sand as soon as they are touched. Sand dunes seem to writhe and grow (0/1D4 SAN). In a ruined building, the beach suddenly makes apparent a book, a handwritten notebook, which contains the account of one driven mad by the beach (1D2/1D4 SAN, +2% Cthulhu Mythos). The face of one already absorbed appears on the sand, in the rocks, or on the wall of a house on the edge of the beach, screaming (1/1D6 SAN). Figures can be seen dancing on the beach. They look like theyre made of sand. The closer one gets, the further away they are (1/1D6 SAN). The beach whispers its name, within a minute, it is joined by the voices of its victims (0/1 SAN). A figure, which looks like a victim already lost to the beach, looks like its being pulled down into the sand. Again, when the investigators get there, there is nothing (0/1D4 SAN) The beach glows a little more than usual (0/1D2 SAN) The beach shows its face (1D10/1D100 SAN).
The Beach, unholy extrusion STR 18 CON N/A SIZ N/A INT 30 POW 22 DEX N/A Move N/A DB N/A HP N/A Spells: Any as appropriate. SAN: 1D10/1D100 SAN to see the beachs face, manifest over the sands. Also see above.