The Slasher

I really need to get a new alarm.

Summary: There is an abandoned camp built around a small, secluded lake. A relentless killer stalks the area nearby, hateful of all life and lashing out at anyone who comes near.

Discovery: The abandoned camp is easily visible from anywhere on the lake, which is only a few hundred meters across.

Exploration: Anyone who enters the camp or any of the woods within a hundred meters or so of the lake will draw the attention of the slasher unless they are sneaking from the moment they enter and make at least an Ordinary(+10) Stealth check while doing so. This is not to say that it is impossible to hide from the slasher after arriving, only that the slasher will be aware of anyone who enters out of stealth, will begin planning an ambush, and will know to look for them if they later hide.

The slasher will try to sneak up on anyone who’s alone or in pairs, and gravitates especially towards anyone who, for some reason, makes themselves vulnerable by showering or making out. He also prefers to attack people in the relatively tight quarters of the camp buildings where it’s harder to get away and kite him to death, however he’ll attack people in the woods or even in the shore or out in the camp campus if they’re alone or in a pair (and he can be lured into an ambush this way, especially by snipers and/or gunners hiding in camp buildings while someone walks alone through the middle of the campus whistling or two young lovers make out or something). If the slasher’s stealth check to sneak up is successful, he will immediately attack from right on top of whichever of his victims appears stronger, reading men as stronger than women if there’s no obvious arms and armaments to go by. If detected, the slasher will glower menacingly from the shadows, pursue anyone who tries to flee, and try to vanish and hide from anyone who tries to attack, especially if they have backup on the way.

The slasher will likewise flee if backup arrives to the middle of a fight bringing the total number of enemies to three or higher, however if the characters follow, the slasher will lead them into the woods near the lake. A supernatural fog will rise from the lake, disorienting the characters, who must succeed on a Challenging(+0) Willpower check or else become confused and drift apart from one another. Once the characters have drifted apart, the slasher will ambush them as normal. When ambushed in the fog, characters can cry for help, roar in fury, or just shoot a gun, and all of this will be audible to other characters lost in the fog, who can make a Difficult(-10) Awareness check to hear the confrontation and attack. The slasher will not flee from a fight in the supernatural fog, as at that point he’s already used every trick up his sleeve to try and separate the characters from one another.

Confrontation: If cornered and forced to fight (whether in the fog or just by being physically unable to flee into the woods), the slasher will attack the most threatening target first, using the same criteria as when he was ambushing people alone. The slasher is extremely durable, unable to be killed by any amount of critical damage to his limbs, however if a limb is completely destroyed, then any future targets on that limb instead hit one of the adjacent targets on the chart. For example, a hit that would normally land on the slasher’s destroyed right leg will instead hit the left leg or the torso, at the GM’s decision. The slasher also automatically succeeds on any checks to avoid dying of shock. Any critical effects to the head or body that result in instant death will successfully kill the slasher.

Rewards: The slasher cannot be negotiated with. Warp corruption has driven him to mute slaughter of everything that comes near the camp he calls home. The supernatural fog will likewise respond only to his presence and need for ambush (in theory, you might be able to set up some kind of Rube Goldberg trap that triggers the slasher’s escape into the woods whenever enemies approach in order to spread the disorienting fog through the woods while they’re on their way, while the party is safe inside the cabins, but this is probably more effort than it’s worth).

The slasher’s machete is just as bizarrely lethal in the hands of any character as in the hands of the slasher, however (though it’s still modified up or down by S bonus as normal), and is basically an eviscerator you can fit in a backpack. The first time a character kills someone with the machete, they take 1d5 Corruption, then again for the tenth, and again for the hundredth, and in theory again for the thousandth kill, but it’s probably not worth tracking past ten unless a character uses it as his primary weapon, and probably not worth tracking past a hundred at all. Killing aliens, mutants, daemons, etc. etc. does count towards these kills.