Thread: Astounding Predicaments!

Two well-armed torpedoes (Humphrey Bogart and Lon Chaney, Jr.) usher the PCs none-too-gently into the plush upper floor conference room of the Khemet Club. Smoking silently at the head of the table are three immaculately dressed men (Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff). They glower at the adventurers, except for Lorre, who smirks cruelly as if at some private joke. A thin young man (Vincent Price) perches unobtrusively on the edge of the bar in the far corner of the room. He produces a stenographer's pad and a pen as Lugosi announces, "Please be seated." It isn't a request.

What happens next?

Or, how did the PCs come to be in this position?

Ummm... ummm... then two guys kick in the door, guns blazing!

No?

Howsabout... they 'politely' explain that the woman you helped out last month (the one who received her husband's shrunken head in a teak box, sent from some Brazilian hellhole) dropped your names when asked... and would you have any idea where she is now because she managed to slip their grasp (vague mention of a third gunsel who has since passed away in a boating accident, he bore a strong resemblance to George Raft).
Oh, and you wouldn't want to see your charming secretary get hurt so could you please be snappy with the outlay.
As a reminder they offer a photograph a fat man (Sidney Greenstreet) in a white suit, he is holding an elaborately decorated kapala made from a human skull. Next to him are the woman in question (Jane Greer) and an effeminate looking mook (Elisha Cook) with a large revolver... they are in some tropical setting. The woman is dressed much less primly than she was when the PCs met her and she has a cruel smile on her lips that never surfaced during your short time in her employ.

There may or may not be a monkey in the photograph as well as a pterodactyl in the sky above (requires a Spot roll to notice the pterodactyl... if it's there at all). There also may be clues that the tropical setting is merely a painted backdrop and the kapala a prop from a B movie made a few years ago. If there's a monkey there might be visible clues that it is stuffed.

What happens next?

The closer you look, you see its not a monkey, but same strange race of monkey-man hybrid...

Meanwhile, the gunmen have drifted to opposite corners of the room. The tall one (Chaney) idly plays with a handfull of ball bearings; he casually flattens one between his thumb and forefinger and grins at the nearest PC. The lights of a passing automobile momentarily backlight the blinds behind the unholy trio up front. With a successful Spot roll, an adventurer glimpses an ape-like silhouette apparently clinging to the second-story windowsill.

Mrs. (Greer) must have left an envelope containing some "native trinkets" in the player-characters' keeping, Lorre suggests with mock patience. "Please be so kind as to hand it over, as it didn't belong to her but to myself and my associates. We would very much like to have our property returned."

The PCs can recall no such envelope.