Grog Extras

Author notes

The Puppetmaker

Eviltwinpixie

on July 18, 2007

This is another picture I drew based on the role playing game I played in 3 years ago, which is now due to be turned into a movie. I drew this after re-reading one of the most chilling passages I've ever seen.
Here it is- a section from the original game, by xv bones- a section detailing a film shown on an old fashioned projector, that is commonly known amongst our group as "the first film reel". Watch out, though- it's graphic


The projector sputters and pops as light is flooded into the reel and projected onto the screen, showing:

The image is black and white. A greyish slate bearing the legend "WILKOMMIN ZU HAUS!" appears on the screen. It flutters and pops for a few moments.

The slate fades from the screen to show a very tall, very, very thin man in some sort of trenchcoat, facing away from the camera, standing in a sublimely familiar room.

Within the space of a few moments, even the dimmest of bulbs would detect that the room on the screen is the exact same room the 'party' sits in, the main room of Der Teufel's Bett hotel.

The figure pivots to face the camera. He wears greyish toned clothing and a dark coat which now appears more of some kind of doctor's coat, as well as a sweetly-smiling cherubic mask.
The man waves at the camera. His movements are slightly sped up, but they do not appear natural. Something about this man is inherently unnatural. He moves like a puppet on taut strings.

The camera watches as he steps behind the checkout counter, and carefully slides a small parcel no larger than a package of cigarettes all the way into one of the mail-cubbies, before he suddenly turns and begins waving to the camera.

He spends a few moments waving brightly to the camera like a happy child, as something shadowy and undefined shifts behind the checkout counter, swirling and moving past him.
He turns and begins to walk towards the hall, beckoning to the camera. The camera follows the man, past the checkout counter and into the hall.
The hall is barely lit, dark, choking shadows obscuring the view for long stretches of time. The man is always visible, though his form is often swallowed by the darkness as he moves through dark hallways, scaling shadowy stairs.
His sweetly-smiling cherub mask is always plainly visible, however. No matter how dark the hall or stairwell, whenever he turns to beckon the camera onward, that mask cuts through the darkness like a knife through muslin.

The film becomes indistict for a moment, and a series of confusing and conflicting images pop up on the screen - the entrance to some sort of cave, set up like a mine shaft; a writhing mass of needle-thin worms; an apple that somehow manages to look inherently sinister, and then blackness.
The reel pops and judders, and the cerub-masked man is on the screen again, standing in a hallway.
He moves like a circus clown, rubbing his hands together with exaggerated glee before pointing to the door behind him with a thumb.
A small plaque on the door denotes it as room 15b.
All hyperexaggerated movements, the cherub-masked man opens the door and beckons the camera inside.

The camera follows the cherub-masked man into a dank, dark, desolate, bizarre room cluttered with metal tables laden with strange and horrible metal tools and archaic medical devices. The masked man weaves through the tables with strange glee. The cameraman follows along, catching glimpses of piles of wet cloth soaked through with some sort of dark fluid, a shelf of jars filled with ominous, dark shapes, a clipboard bearing a key, and then up to fill the screen with the horribly sweet, cruelly smiling cherub mask.
The camera pans back to reveal a scene of nightmarish clarity - another man, dressed identical to the masked man, stands over a struggling male figure, strapped down to a metal operating table.
The two masked men wave brightly to the camera before making a clownish show of selecting a series of sharp, grotesque tools from a table.
The figure on the table writhes and struggles, strapped down to the counter by the hands and feet and torso.

The first masked man slides the point of his scalpel along the bound man's chest, releasing a sudden glut of dark fluid to spray over the two men, who clap their hands and dance a merry jig as they continue, sawing open the man's chest, slicing his belly wide, and cramming insane tools into the gaping wounds to messily and haphazardly extract the bound man's innards, even as he continues to writhe and judder.
The film pops and stutters, flickering on the image of the bound man being eviscerated by these demonic clowns.
the image of the second masked man draping a length of intesine over his shoulders like a scarf freezes on the screen for a few seconds, before being replaced by a full-screen image of the cherubic mask, yet again.

The masked man is moving through the hallways of the hotel like a puppet again, but this time directly towards the camera, rather than away from it.
The camera proceeds him down the hall, down the stairs, catching each inhuman gesture, each mime-ish motion and marionette-like step as he traces his path back downstairs, towards the min room of the hotel.
The camera moves to the side as the masked man places his hand on the door that leads to the main room, and opens it.

The camera sweeps past the masked man, into the room.
On the screen, now, is a brief image that defies logic, reason and sanity.

The camera sweeps into the main room, to see Josh, Bruce, Eddie, Edwin, and the rest, all those currently sitting in the main room, sitting, watching a movie on an 8mm projector.

The image on the screen abruptly ends and the projector shuts down, plunging the room into total blackness.

Ending the scene by showing the game's current players on an old film played on an 8mm projector really set the tone for the entire game. ;)

-Posted on Nov 14, 2006