SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #31 — PLAYER’S CHOICE
(× Alien/Space or Anime or Backwoods or Clones/Doppelgangers or Competition or Creepy Kid or Creepypasta/Urban Legend or Cursed Object or Cyberpunk or Darkweb/Technology or Holiday or J-Horror or Killer Animal or Killer Toys or Lost Media or Lovecraftian or Mad Scientist or Spoopy/Pumpkincore or Stephen King Style)

TITLE:  Hallowar

PREMISE:  It’s ON.  In the cyberpunk dystopia (Cyberpunk) there are haves and have-nots.  The well-to-do have a pristine network of MMOs where everybody dwells in beauty and light, the poor have a grotty gore-filled indie basement (Darkweb) called Halloween Online 2.0 (Pumpkincore).  The most influential character there has a child-like avatar (Creepy Kid) but everybody assumes they must be older, right?  That character declares a PvP event (Competition) called Hallowar (roll credits) (Holiday).

The PvP area resembles the US Northeast in fall colors (Stephen King Style), with rows of classic homes on shadowy leaf-strewn lanes.  All the NPCs have been turned into killer ghosts (J-Horror) that sometimes possess dolls (Killer Toys), but is it safer in the craggy tree-covered hills (Backwoods) inspired by The Colour Out of Space (Lovecraftian)?  No, those are full of mutated animals that hate life and love death (Killer Animal).

The timing of the event is such that the tactic of “kill all other players then take time with the puzzle” is not tenable, so all the players are both racing to investigate the mysteries, and fighting each other, with short-term alliances and much treachery.  The mystery plot is about an anime (Anime) that has gone out of print (Lost Media), but if you find a copy (Cursed Object) and watch it, you’ll die (Creepypasta).  Three copies quickly turn up, and players stop taking each other out with shovels and croquet mallets, instead tricking each other into watching the tapes.

But just how many lives do you get in this game?  Nobody said anything about multiple lives, but some players are coming back for another round, even after being killed (Clones/Doppelgangers).  They’re accused of hacking, but there’s something wrong with these avatars, and that suspicion is replaced with worse ones.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The answer to the mystery, when revealed, has to do with a mad scientist (Mad Scientist) who tried to contact aliens (Aliens) and brought their murder-ghosts down to earth in the form of killer EVP and such.  All you have to do to win is be the first to take out the scientist, right?  But in parallel to the events of the game, participants have been acting creepy IRL, and it’s becoming clear they’ve all been the victims of some kind of mad science.  The child avatar emcee appears from inside the lab coat, to offer the last survivors some kind of explanation – or perhaps just to gloat.  Your souls belong to the game now.  Happy Halloween.

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