For those confused see my last post
I was thinking the Ice Cream Bunny might be a great enemy for the Happiest Apocalypse on Earth. The recent Rifftrax and bad film aficionado attention has empowered him just enough to allow him to resurrect Pirates World’s l boat from its watery grave and sail it to Mouse Park along with a crew of discarded animatronics. Soon he’ll drive his Firetruck down Main Street, straight through the crowds watching the parade
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Old amusement parks are creepy, especially when there’s something inexplicable about them. Pirates World is one of the creepiest ones with that horrible Ice Cream Bunny and all those terrible movies. Also rumors are a kid got killed by a rattlesnake there. They had bands performing there including Led Zeppelin before they made it big so you could totally have the Ice Cream Bunny’s minions blaring the Immigrant Song as they chase you down.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
https://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/pirates-world.html
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Of course, a mascot is just creepy, not scary, so we have to inject some actuall horror into this situation. Otherwise it just turns into your players, having killed the animatronic pirates, kicking the Ice Cream Bunny until the corpse
inside stops twitching. That’s fun but it’s not really scary.
Gurps Horror, a great sourcebook you should all read, says your monster should be a reflection of a fear. Now we need to redefine the Ice Cream Bunny into something scary. Obviously the horro version is going to be a dead guy in the suit leading an army, but that’s only mildly scary once the players get over their fright. There are more potent fears than “ the fear of people in weird costumes”. We need to attach a fear to him that isn’t just “furries” of “things your grandparent’s think are cute that really aren’t”.
The Ice Cream Bunny is from a Christmas movie , originated from a Florida Amusement park, and is called the Ice Cream Bunny, so the “fear of freezing to death” or “the fear of winter” is the best fear to attach to him. It should be an exaggerated winter as well since Florida is so warm and sunny. The kind of winter that the world hasn’t seen since the little ice age or the year without a summer. The kind of blizzard people in Alaska would cancel school for. Now we know the fear. We just have to link him to it.
I found the best way to do that is to steal from someone who can actually write horror, and so we turn to Ramsey Campbell’s book Midnight Sun and lovingly rip it off. If you haven’t read it then I suggest you get off 4chan and go read it instead of this drivel. It’s a tale of cursed bloodlines, the cold before the stars shone, the dark gods of nature and horrible old spirits of legend. Attaching such things to a man in a stupid bunny suit is a weighty task, but myth and history shall be our thread.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
DID SOMEONE SAY GURPS, b-word?
I FRICKING LOVE GURPS, motherlover!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
So do I. I plan to buy a hardcover of GURPS horror once I get the money to afford such things.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I just have the fricking Basic Set but I cherish it greatly.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Pirate’s World’s downfall is often attributed to Disney World opening down south and drawing the crowds away, but there are other more entertaining theories and explanations.
A popular Urban Legend is that a rattlesnake bit an employee on the Steeplechase , and they had to shut the park down because of that. We’ve obviously just found the ghost in the bunny suit, but the question then is how do we attach the endless cold to a guy who died in Florida?
The other explanation for Pirates World closing provides us an answer. Pirates World hosted a concert venue with some of the coolest names in rock and roll playing. Legendary acts like David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan, The Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath and Cat Stevens. The parks closure was heralded by the stadium being declare unsafe and the authorities wanting to shut the park done because it had become a rampant hub for dug-dealing. Fortunately, fiction is not bound by prosaic reality, and so we can end Pirates World with a bang instead of a whimper.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
A Comfortable Fear of Rock was an unusual Norwegian Metal band. Their sound was best described as the bastard child of a three-way between Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, and Abba with a heavy dose of Norwegian folk and liturgical music. This is what Norse folk music sounds like for those curious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drömde_mig_en_dröm.ogg
Their unique sound and bizarre lyrics about “the frozen third world” made them something of a cult phenomena. They even opened for David Bowie for three shows. He described them, in a documentary made on them years later as “nice lads, but jumpy. You could walk up behind one of them and say hi and he’d jump like you shoved a poker up his butt.”
The band was not without controversy. They were accused of satanism, witchcraft, and dealing with the occult. Their interviews were almost lynchian as the band members seemed to deliberately avoid explaining their lyrics and instead preferred talking about literally anything else. They also controversially released a hidden track on one album dubbed by their fans as the Drowning Song of Chappaquidick that includes the line in Old Norse “Dear cursed Kennedy Brother, you will wander the dark caverns of heck for all eternity for the drowning of Lady Mary Jo” and , in English, “you have lost your inheritance for vile participation”. They included literary references like that.
Pirates World was their last show. What exactly happened that night is unclear. What is known is that eighteen people were killed, including the four band members. The four members of a Comfortable Fear of Rock were found, upon autopsy, to have died of exposure to extreme cold in spite of it being a warm Florida Fall night. The park closed soon after and was demolished, but the resulting development was quickly abandoned. The area is unusually cold and silent for Florida.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Imagine, if you will, visiting Mouse Park on a beautiful July Florida day. It’s hot but not overbearingly so and there’s plenty of ice cream and water to be had.
Then, suddenly, it begins to snow. At first it just melts but the snow seems to have brought the cold with it. The temperature drops to the point where it actually begins to accumulate.
The park employees are just as confused as you are. For a brief moment you can’t find one, and then they’re all back. Wearing long pants instead of the standard mousineer shorts. You can see a handful shoveling the path, but they can’t seem to make any progress.
You, along with a whole bunch of other patrons, duck into a nearby Restaurant. It’s an Italian place made out to look like a cozy corner mob front in Chicago. The waiters are all fedora-wearing Italian-type men with what you hope are prop weapons strapped to your back. They’ve got a speakeasy in the basement. One of the few places on this side of the park where you can get loaded without security taking you to see Sheriff Silly and his amazing drunk tank.
The guy pretending to guard the door is a teenager in a suit meant for a much fatter man. The noir look is spoiled by his obvious ceramic braces. There is a waiting area with some comfy chairs. You take a seat and watch the snow continue to fall through the glass doors.
The PA speaker behind the maitre dork crackles to life and begins playing music. It’s not a band you’re familiar with but they've got a good sound. The kid doesn’t like that, and you see him radio someone about “a class three”. “ The snow is now a foot high. It’s really coming down out there.
A girl in a PG version of a gun moll’s outfit comes back offering hot chocolate or mulled cider. Something for free in Mouse Park? You gladly take a cup. It might be a ruined day at the park; but this chair is really cozy and you so nice and warm…
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
You awaken feeling cold. You seem to be the only living person left in the room. Someone pu a suit jacket like the fake made men wearing on you. It’s the only reason you have’t frozen to death. The glass doors lied shattered. The kid with the ceramic braces is dead, and his gun has been snapped. In the snow a man in a strange bunny costume dances. He sees you’re awake and beckons you to join him.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Good job bobby, here's a star
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Occasionally, downstream, someone finds a gator or manatee that froze to death. People who break into the abandoned development occasionally go missing or are found later stuffed into abandoned refrigerators or showing signs of frostbite. A ghost hunting crew who visited the development and even got on the old Pirate Worlds ship found it to be unusually well-preserved for Florida. They also reported noises that sounded like music on the evp recorders, although that could just be a coincidence.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
All those words won't bring daddy back.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
that sounds incredibly boring
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
There’s being a contrarian, and then there’s whatever there’s just being stupid.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
there's being an r-slur and then there's whatever there's saying things like THE COLD BEFORE THE STARS SHONE when describing what a book is about.
i was sorta interested based just on the cover but your description killed it so much i haven't even looked it up.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It’s an ancient eldritch horror. You have to use poetic bullshit to describe it.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
only if you don't want anyone to actually know what the book is about
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It’s a guy who discovers his ancestor found something researching folklore in Scandinavia and now his entire bloodline is cursed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context