The group's assembled, but you don't have an adventure prepared for them. What to do? Rather than ripping off the plot of some movie or book that everyone has already seen, turn away from the bookshelf and head over to your CD shelf. It's time for a little Rock and Role-Playing.

The Rules:

1. Select a CD. Try to avoid obvious concept albums and rock operas, which already have a storyline. (e.g., The Who's "Tommy", Pink Floyd's "The Wall", etc.) The goal is to suggest story where it does not exist, and not to lift one already suggested.

2. You must use every song on the album, in the order they appear on the album. Track 1 will be Chapter 1, and Track 10 will be Chapter 10. This includes hidden tracks.

3. You must use the lyrics of each song to describe the action in that Chapter. If the song in question is Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" then the chapter might introduce a musician named Tommy and Gina the waitress. If the lyrics are more vague then you can interpret as you deem appropriate.

4. You must try to work the actual titles of the songs, the name of the album, and the name of the band, somewhere into the overall story. For example, if the album is Def Leppard's "Pyromania," then the adventure might feature a pyromaniac were-leopard named Rakof Ajeez who is hard of hearing, or it might feature a deaf leper named Pirro Manya, who's desperately searching for the mystical Aegis Stone (aka the Rock of Aegis), which can cure him.

5. Subtlety reigns supreme. The goal is to provide a workable adventure that players won't recognize as being based on an album until maybe halfway through, when they suddenly get the joke and start trying to guess what comes next. Under no circumstances should you ever feature "Lord Metallica, the Master of Puppets," but you might work in an Evil Puppeteer who wears a giant metallic A around his neck, in tribute to his lord Asmodeus.

The Album:

Title: nine inch nails, "Pretty Hate Machine"

Lyrics: http://www.nineinchnails.net/lyrics.html

Summary: Released in 1989, this album put industrial music on the map despite being overshadowed by Nirvana's Nevermind. The album features ten tracks which record an individual's seeming descent into madness and melancholy after a bad breakup, but the lyrics are open to interpretation. I'm going to turn this album into a dark, vaguely Cthulhoid fantasy adventure set in a sort of Underdark or mining scenario. This seems appropriate for mid-level characters and probably wouldn't work for newbies.

The Adventure:

1. Head Like A Hole

The player characters are contacted by the head of a dwarven mining company, who would like them to investigate the disappearance of several of their miners. Time is of the essence -- the other miners have refused to enter the mine shaft, and the mine has been shut down, resulting in a mounting loss of income for the wealthy owner. The owner is vague on the rewards, but insists that "I'll do anything for you. Just tell me what you want when you get back and it's yours." Money is all that matters to him. He practically worships it. He will lead the characters into the tunnels himself, knowing that the upper levels are safe since the problem (at least as he describes it) lies deep in the shafts, many hours journey into the bowels of the earth.

Almost immediately upon entering the abandoned mine the characters stumble across signs of violence. One of the miners, or what's left of him, has been nailed to the wall with railroad spikes. The center of his head is gone, leaving but a halo of skull and tissue, as if something exploded out from inside. It quickly becomes obvious what this was, as a beast resembling a bloody brain with legs drops from the ceiling and attacks the smartest character, attempting to control them by taking over their brain. The beast will not stop until it or the character is dead. If it takes over a character, it will appear haughty and presumptuous, demanding that others "bow down before your master", and if challenged it will fight all attempts at removal, shouting "You can't take it away from me, I'd rather die."

After the beast is defeated, the characters will discover that the exit from the room is stacked with the decaying bodies of other deceased miners, apparently dead of some disease or plague that has caused their bodies to break out in blue and purple bruises. The head of the company will wave off any concerns about this -- he's not worried about this apparent sickness at the moment. If his mine is not re-opened, he won't have the money to deal with it anyway. The characters can look for a cure if they want, but he's got no time for it. They have their job and will be paid for it. That's all. He will then head out of the mine, leaving the characters to clamber over the bruised backs of the miners, descending deeper into the mine.

2. Terrible Lie

The dwarf obviously knows more than he's sharing. In fact, what he's told the characters is all a terrible lie. He knows exactly what has caused the disappearance of his miners, because he's the one who sent them to their doom. The dwarf has fallen victim to the same fate as the first dead dwarf the characters saw -- he has been taken over by one of the strange parasitic brain beasts. He's been sending his men down to their deaths over the course of weeks, but unfortunately along the way they stumbled across something that caused a number of them to develop this strange, fatal bruising illness, making them unfit for parasitic takeover. The characters are just fresh meat for the pot.

Hints of the truth will come out as the characters move along over the next several hours. About halfway down the main shaft, they stumble across another pile of bruised dwarven bodies, apparently all dead. One of the bodies, however, is moving. Face purpled beyond recognition, the obviously insane dwarf stumbles about talking to himself, screaming up at the ceiling "why are you doing this to me?" Noting the characters, he will beg and plead for sleep, sweet sleep, which he has not had in days, for his salvation only comes in his dreams, when he can escape the pain and confusion he lives in. As he speaks, his emotions will flip-flop between true sadness and pure hatred for all living things, as he battles with the beast within his head. He, too, is a victim of the parasitic brain beasts.

If the characters realize this, and attempt to cure him in some way, he will shove off any assistance, begging them "don't take it away from me." He is all alone and his only friend now is the beast in his head. He's been betrayed. Everything has been taken from him, and he was left down here to decay. Now his head is filled with this disease. He alternately begs for mercy and sweet release, and when approached, insanely rages against any who come near. Ultimately the only cure for him is death.

3. Down In It

As they move on down the shaft, which will take several hours to descend, each character has a random chance to contract the strange illness that fills the mine -- a 50% chance for any dwarf or gnome characters, increasing by 10% for every day spent belowgrounds and a flat 25% chance for anyone else. Anyone getting the bruising plague will feel lightheaded and strange, as if they were floating on clouds, and may notice (variable chances, GM discretion) tiny little dots on their skin, almost too small to see. This is the start of the bruising, which will gradually spread across their entire bodies.

The disease also causes the strange raging confusion that they just witnessed, causing characters to gradually go partly insane. They will alternately crawl like babies on the ground, rage against their friends, and laugh uncontrollably, having to battle with their own minds to regain control. This is a gradual process -- characters do not go immediately insane, but very slowly and subtly lose control. They will question their sense of right and wrong, doubt their own strength, run in fear from shadows and verge on suicide, over time. It is this loss of control, caused by the bruising illness affecting their brains, which is why the brain parasites do not attempt to enter those affected by the disease. The strange fate of the dwarf the characters met in chapter 2 is evidence of why.

As has been alluded to earlier, no cure is possible from any means the characters might possess. Here with "the world's weight on their backs" there's little to do but move onward, as any afflicted characters battle with fading memories and an increasing loss of control.

4. Sanctified

After several hours journey, the characters will reach the bottom of the main shaft, where a mound of dwarven bodies can be found, heads ruptured in a manner similar to that seen before. None of the bodies bear any sign of the strange bruising disease -- these are pristine specimens, used as fertile breeding grounds for whatever the strange brain parasites are. Those who've contracted the illness are not so lucky. It's still getting worse no matter what they try.

At the back of the central cavern, a strange translucent ichor coats the walls around one of the tunnels, slimy and somewhat sticky to the touch. The tunnel seems to resonate with a strange energy, intangible physically yet somehow inviting. Any characters who have managed to stave off the plague thus far will get a strange, inviting tickle at the edge of their consciousness, a fiery beckoning, an alien female voice. "Come inside. Give all to me." Any who enter the tunnel or touch the strange slime will get a sense of purification,

cleanliness. In fact, any suffering from the plague who touch it will also feel as if they are more clear-headed than they were before, almost as if cured, somehow sanctified. This sense grows the further into the slimy tunnel they proceed, as if the edges of the cave entrance were giant lips, the characters proceeding down a giant throat towards the belly of some strange beast.

The truth of the matter is that the slime does not cure the plague; it only dampens the mental confusion by allowing the afflicted to focus on the voice in their heads, a mind-control spell that is gradually warping their own thought processes, promising purification and an end to their suffering if only they will proceed. The call will be hard to resist, and the further down the characters go, the harder it will become to leave.

5. Something I Can Never Have

The slimy cavern leads straight ahead for several hours, heading slightly down, and eventually opening up into a large, dank cavern. Stalactites hang from overhead, dripping a thin milky substance (merely mineral-saturated water) down from above into pools below, the noise of each little drop echoed and amplified throughout the cavern. Although as salty as tears and quite warm, the water is harmless to drink. The area seems quite safe, and seems to be a safe place to rest for the "night," since characters will have been wandering for many hours at this point. However, sleep will be difficult -- everyone who tries to sleep will be plagued by dreams of the ever-present female voice, beckoning them onward "before it's too late," pushing everyone even to the point of physical exhaustion. Spellcasters, if any are present, will be unable to get enough rest to regain spells. Everyone's head is gradually filled with just one thing, that voice promising to make this all go away. The one thing they want is the one thing they can never have -- at least not until they find the source of this and destroy it.

About this time, any who are afflicted with the plague will begin to notice new symptoms. The purplish bruises begin to enlarge and combine, turning their skin grayish-blue. Characters will also notice that they are somehow stronger than they were before, as if the same disease that was ravaging their minds was giving them renewed vigor and physical capacity. The very thing that's slowly taking them apart mentally seems to have an unforeseen benefit as well.

However, their mental destruction is also increasing as well. Characters will grow increasingly paranoid, being angered and frightened by those around them. And in this place, surrounded by pools of water, even the milky reflections of themselves will seem threatening, reminders of who they used to be before they were afflicted. But through it all, the message from below beckons them on.

6. Kinda I Want To

Only one tunnel leads out of this milky stomach of a cave, spiraling down, corkscrewing madly as it heads into the bowels of the earth, a dank, musty odor pervading everything. Approximately an hour into this journey, the characters will hear a deep rumbling noise from around a nearby bend, almost as if someone were snoring. Unless they are particularly noisy or stupid, they will be able to sneak up on a large, scaly being, snoring fitfully in the middle of the tunnel. The beast is several dozen feet in height, and massively proportioned. At first it will appear to be staring right at the characters, but it becomes clear after a moment that it is merely sleeping with its eyes open, as it has no eyelids.

Attacking and killing the beast before them will be necessary, as there's no way around the creature -- it fills the tunnel end to end -- and ever-present in everyone's mind is the beckoning call, pulling them onward, deeper and deeper. Even if characters know it's not the right thing, they want to proceed. It seems the only option, the only thing they are capable of thinking of.

One way to more easily dispose of the threat before them is to attack the godlike beast's eyes, either covering them up or somehow stabbing them out so that the creature cannot see them clearly. Robbed of its sense of sight, and unable to either hear or smell clearly due to the surroundings, the beast will merely flail about wildly, allowing characters to more easily take it out. Those who focus on the voice from below will find it easier to fight and focus on other activities. The price they pay for sanity seems to be giving themselves over to the voice, despite what other characters may say.

7. Sin

The source of all the sins that have befallen the characters thus far will be found after another hour's journey through the twisting, snaking passages, passing other fallen bodies, some plague-ridden, some not, many not humanoid by any stretch of the imagination. At the center of a tall, narrow cavern is a gigantic, metallic construct, roughly carved into the shape of a prettty, angry four-armed woman (a close inspection will reveal that one of her twenty fingers is missing). Gouts of steam erupt from her "nostrils" and "ears" periodically, and her eyes flash red with flame, a humming, buzzing noise filling the air and making conversation difficult. All who enter realize that this is somehow the source of the strange beckoning voice in their heads, the voice that promises them purity in exchange for giving up control.

The entire cavern is filled with the smell of old worship, stale incense and old sweat, crawling under the skin and making everyone itchy and uncomfortable. Ringing the edges of the cavern are many small altars, some mere piles of rocks, others more elaborate constructions of marble, wood and iron. Some are coated in blood, most of it dried and old, but some contain offerings of fruit, gemstones, coins and other valuables. It is as if a wide assortment of primitive creatures were trying to somehow appease the figure before them in various ways. None of them seems to have been successful thus far.

Weaker-willed characters might be inclined to attempt construction of their own altar, sacrificing their belongings, or their compatriots, to the figure of the goddess before them, kissing its feet and bowing before it in servitude. However, those who are affflicted by plague, or the stronger willed, will see now that this figure is not divine, but merely an effigy to be defaced and disgraced. And it is somehow this figure that is the source of the plague, and thus their anger as well as their resolve to follow the voice to this spot. And so it comes to this -- characters can offer their kiss, in the form of love and worship, or their fist, by attempting to destroy the altar.

8. That's What I Get

Whether through construction of an altar, chanting and praying, or attempting to destroy the effigy before them, characters will at some point make a great deal of noise, at which point, just when everything was making sense, the true nature of the beast is revealed. Suddenly, the cavern falls silent, as the humming noise reverberating from the statue is cut off, the flame and smoke disappearing. And from between the legs of the giant, crouching effigy, a hatch descends, and a strange creature walks forth, followed by a group of the four-legged brain parasites (at least one per character, but no fewer than six).

The creature's head is purplish and bald, as of a bare brain without benefit of a skull, with a mass of waving tentacles where its mouth would be. Its fingers are long and slender, moving delicately as it gestures for the brain parasites around it to maneuver to surround the characters. It speaks with a strange gurgling noise, unintelligible to all. But along with the gurgle, heard within their minds, the characters perceive the female voice that had been beckoning them onward. This is her. This is what they get.

For those who are not plague-ridden, it will be a struggle to resist the call of the beast before them, which encourages them to lie down and accept the brain parasite takeover. For those inflicted with disease, the beast has no further use, and it will attack them, giving them a fatal kiss with its tentacles and attempting to suck their brains out of their skulls. All throughout, the voice in their heads persists, beckoning, calling. Only with the death of the strange beast will the voice suddenly, abruptly, die off. The sudden absence of focus for those who'd given themselves over to the call will be harsh. Having been their everything, it's now taken away from them. Characters suddenly bereft of the comforting voice inside will be fully stricken with the horror of their situation, and may break down in tears or run frantically in a panic.

9. The Only Time

However, the sudden loss of the voice in their heads will suddenly be replaced by an overwhelming, drunken attraction to the female effigy before them. All sense of right or wrong will be replaced by a desire to enter the statue, clambering up the plank that the tentacled beast descended.

Inside the massive construct it becomes clear that this is no ordinary statue. Characters will find themselves surrounded by strange metal walls, lined with tubes of light that flicked and pulse in succession. Following the pulse, or randomly wandering the halls, will gradually lead the characters up several ramps to the "head" of the statue, within which they find a desklike console covered with runes and symbols. Characters with knowledge of religion, spells or astrology will recognize these as icons for various planets, deities, constellations and the like. This is a navigation panel, and the characters are in a flying craft of some sort which has crashed into the bowels of the earth ages ago, and has been stranded here ever since.

The ship itself is all messed up, but it is really alive, and is attempting to communicate with the characters by appealing to their baser instincts, unable to directly speak with them through their minds as the tentacled beast, the ship's last surviving pilot, was once able to. It is currently using the power of lust to drive characters with desire, giving them urgings to press certain of the control icons - characters placing their hands on the symbols for "heaven", "sun", "moon" and "stars" will activate the ship's main drives. The ventilation system will kick on, the ship's skin will drip condensation like sweat as it preps for takeoff, and fluids will pulse through its veinlike tubules like blood. But after a moment, the pulsing will stop, and the ship will fall silent once again. Something is wrong. The source of the problem is outside the ship.

10. Ringfinger

When the ship crashed here, (carved in stone, deeper than the sea) and the pilot began to summon beings to it as a source of food, those creatures gradually came to worship the ship itself as a god, modifying it's already humanoid features to more closely resemble a beautiful woman. Now that they are no longer under the control of the tentacled beast, the details are more clearly mechanical. The ship is not a pretty, hateful woman, but rather a pretty, hateful machine. Her eyes and ears are exhaust ports, her face the forward control console, and her fingers are fuel rods, glowing with dissipating heat. Her hands worked so hard that they literally bled -- one of those twenty rods is broken off and missing, and the ship cannot leave without it. It is one of the ship's ring fingers.

Characters will be led to discover this by the ship itself, playing upon their desires to lead them in certain directions. They will come to understand that if they do this one thing, this one act of consecration, then all their problems will be solved. In fact, the chemical leaking from the fuel rod is what is causing the strange plague that pervades the area, and putting the rod back in place will clear up the plague in the area.

A lengthy search of the area around the ship will ultimately reveal the broken rod, which is approximately 27 inches of dull gray metal covered on one end with a thin glassy layer which reveals the fuel within, approximately nine inches in length. The rod itself was used by one of the many groups of worshipping creatures as a primitive sort of cross, to which they literally nailed one of their own kind as a sacrifice to their goddess. The leaking fuel from the puncture wound has been causing all who approached the area to become sick ever since. Once the creature's decaying body is removed from the fuel rod, and the metal shards removed from it, the skin of the rod will heal itself over, and the plague symptoms will gradually diminish in the area, although it would normally be too late for any afflicted characters. However, with the fuel rod attached once again, and the ship at full power, any sickened characters will be led along by lust to the ship's infirmary, where they will be washed clean in a chemical bath that will remove all traces of the plague from their skins, their minds clearing up a few days later.

With the ship fully healed, characters will be given equal choices by the ship. Fear will beckon them to leave the ship, but desire will lure them with equal passion towards the control room. Characters can decide on their own what they wish to do. In either case, once all have decided, the ship will power itself up and blast off towards the surface, following the long crater it plummeted through aeons ago to exit from the surface in a dormant volcano, heading on from there towards its final destination. For those aboard, this can be the start of a great, terrifying adventure.

For those who remain behind, they can return to the surface in safety to deal with the dwarf who got them into this mess. A victim of one of the brain parasites, he will be found dead, the parasite dead beside him. Characters with fewer scruples might wish to clean out his safe, which is full of gems and coinage, or even take over his mining operation, which is now safe to operate. Perhaps.