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Hallowe'en Hero


teh bunneh

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Years ago, back in the day of AD&D 2nd, I was invited to run a game at a Hallowe'en Con. "Something spooky," they told me. I thought the Ravenloft setting would be perfect, but at the time I was very much into SpellJammer. Then it hit me -- I could combine the two concepts for a truly out-of-this-world fantasy Hallowe'en game. :sneaky:

 

(If you're unfamiliar: SpellJammer postulates a universe in which heroes in magically-powered sailing ships are able to cross the void of "Wildspace." Magic makes the physics go all wonky, so even small ships have their own gravity and carry with them a bubble of air. Ravenloft is a dimension of dark, cursed lands, each ruled by a "Power" who has been cursed by his/her own actions to relive his/her crimes. Once you enter Ravenloft, you cannot escape -- you, like the others trapped here, are cursed in your own way).

 

I ran RavenSpace for 4 years, then the Con sort of petered out, but last year I decided to resurrect it for my own gaming group. Instead of using the old AD&D rules, I converted it over to HERO (not hard, since I basically created everything from scratch anyway, using the published settings for source material).

 

I got my players good-n-spooked last year, and I'm going to run a new session this Hallowe'en. If there's any interest, I'd like to post last year's scenerio for anyone who wants a good, bloody, creepy good time.

 

What do you think, sirs? :winkgrin:

 

Bill.

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The Set Up

 

There are up to 8 PCs (depending on how many show up for the game):

-- Aarondel Silversheen, captain of the ship, an Elven fighter/mage

-- Rhodan of the Pit, a human gladiator

-- Niari Starsailor Ghostfinder Bugsquisher Spiderfighter, a Hobbit rogue

-- Gertha Ironhammer, a Dwarven paladin

-- Ilyana the Spellbinder, a Tiefling wizardess

-- Jocelyn "Pathfinder" McBirde, a human druid

-- Derranthana Singsweetly, an Elven bard

-- Arn Hortassen, a human priest of Tor (god of thunder)

 

This is the overall setup of the game:

You are the command and crew of the Astral Shrike, a decommissioned military ship which you now use as a tradesman, flying through the stars from system to system, making what money you can. Though you expect a life of danger (pirates, hostile ports, alien monsters and the like), nothing has prepared you for what you have been living for the past few months.

 

Since entering the strange system known as RavenSpace, your ship has encountered troubles almost too numerous to count – the biggest of which is your inability to leave the system. Each time you have attempted to fly away from the star, you found yourselves lost in a thick cloud of dust or fog; when the fog finally clears, you find yourselves right back where you started – no matter how straight the rudder, no matter how sure the course.

 

The system itself is rather unusual. There are no planets; instead, the entire system is made up of an enormous jumble of rubble – meteors, asteroids, moons, and small planetoids stretching from the central sun all the way out into the cold reaches of the furthest point of the system. Many of the asteroids are inhabited, though few aspire to more than a few thousand people (who tend to be a sullen, fearful lot). Spelljamming ships are common enough that the arrival of one elicits little more than a few raised eyebrows and excited children. The people who live here don't seem to realize that no one can leave the system – or if they are aware, they are tight-lipped about it.

 

More to come!

Bill.

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Opening spiel...

 

This is the opening spiel for last year's game:

Recently, you ran into some trouble with pirates. Though you were able to fight them off, the ship was damaged in the fight. Unfortunately, you didn't have enough money to make repairs, but (in a rare turn of good luck) you were offered a job. The job will pay well enough to have the ship repaired in a professional dry dock, with a little left over at the end – half now, half on completion.

 

The job is simple in discussion, complex in operation: You are to break into a heavily fortified asteroid "castle," make your way to the center (avoiding detection), and steal a particular object called a "Crown of Stars." A small ship will drop you off at a relatively unguarded entrance, and then will pick you up again after four hours. If you're not at the rendezvous point at the appointed time, you're on your own. If you need to abandon your mission at any point, you can signal the ship to come pick you up – though you will of course forfeit the remainder of your fee.

 

The asteroid is known as the Castle of the Spider's Web, named after the region of space in which it floats – a very dense field of asteroids and meteors very near the system's small white sun. Large ships tend to get trapped and crushed among the space rubble, which makes this castle's position particularly easy to defend. You will be facing scores of trained and dedicated soldiers who guard the castle; so avoiding their notice is your best bet to get in and out of the castle in the appointed time. You will be provided with a rough map of the layout of the castle.

 

The castle itself is build on and into a roughly egg-shaped asteroid about a hundred meters in diameter and two hundred fifty meters long. The main visible part of the castle is built up on the wide, flat end of the egg – however, the castle is built deep into the asteroid, which is honeycombed with tunnels and chambers. The docking facilities are in the middle of the main castle, heavily defended with a series of heavy ballistae and catapults. Other catapults and ballistae act as point-defense, and are situated more or less evenly around the castle, usually with overlapping fields of fire. You will begin your infiltration in the middle of the egg, the furthest point from both ends and the least defended. There is a waste outlet here, where the castle dumps its sewage and trash...

 

 

Bill.

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And here's the Adventure... (pdf attached)

 

Italicized paragraphs are "GM Only;" everything else is to be read (or paraphrased) to the players as they encounter things. Sorry, I've only got one crappy "map" (more of a rough diagram of the exterior of the asteriod -- Keith "Insert Snappy Quote Here" Curtis I'm not), but hopefully you'll be able to figure out the general layout from the descriptions. Characters should be high enough in power to feel like they have useful skills, but low enough that they don't automatically think of combat as the solution to every problem (between 100-150 points seems to work just fine).

 

And remember: it's a horror game; it's all about atmosphere...

 

Bill.

 

Edit: PM me if you'd like to see the adventure and I'll get it to you in .pdf format

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Hey. There is no explanation of what happened!! Where did the clockwork horrors come from? Why are they removing folks brains? Someone/thing went to a great deal of trouble to make the 'hundreds' of horrors. Who? Why? It couldn't have been to get the crown cause the cabinet would not have stopped them for long. Also why mention the asteroid avoidence machine if you are not going to do anything with it? Fair warning if i were to play in this i would be looking for a way to shut that machine off. The party may not be strong enought to take care of all the things but a few large inpacts should clean the rock nicely.

I suppose it all boils down to not feeling like there is enough depth. Mainly though i am wondering where the things came from? If they came from outside the fort then how didi they get there? They cannot move thtough space on their own so they were either brought to the fort or made there. As it stands there is no evidence of either. Also why no evidence of the residents of the fort fighting the things? If an adventuring can take out two or three then there should be at least a couple of onse killed by the soldiers. Speaking of soldiers why is there no evidence of a fight? The fort isn't that big there is no way for hundreds of the things to go unnoticed for long. Sure the first attacks would be unnoticed but as they moved into the main areas the fort would have had time to mount an organized if untimately futile resistance.

All in all this is very good and spooky but it needs a bit more flesh and where did they come from logic hole patched. Might i suggest making the things run by human brains so they were taking them to make more things. This also explains why there are hundreds of things by now. They have been using the residents of the fort as parts. I would however give them a bit more than two days to have done this though.

As i said this is very good and will run well as is. But a bit more chrome and backstory will make the suspension of disbelief easier.

 

My two cents anyway. ~PWO

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Hey. There is no explanation of what happened!! Where did the clockwork horrors come from? Why are they removing folks brains? Someone/thing went to a great deal of trouble to make the 'hundreds' of horrors. Who? Why? It couldn't have been to get the crown cause the cabinet would not have stopped them for long. Also why mention the asteroid avoidence machine if you are not going to do anything with it? Fair warning if i were to play in this i would be looking for a way to shut that machine off. The party may not be strong enought to take care of all the things but a few large inpacts should clean the rock nicely.

I suppose it all boils down to not feeling like there is enough depth. Mainly though i am wondering where the things came from? If they came from outside the fort then how didi they get there? They cannot move thtough space on their own so they were either brought to the fort or made there. As it stands there is no evidence of either. Also why no evidence of the residents of the fort fighting the things? If an adventuring can take out two or three then there should be at least a couple of onse killed by the soldiers. Speaking of soldiers why is there no evidence of a fight? The fort isn't that big there is no way for hundreds of the things to go unnoticed for long. Sure the first attacks would be unnoticed but as they moved into the main areas the fort would have had time to mount an organized if untimately futile resistance.

All in all this is very good and spooky but it needs a bit more flesh and where did they come from logic hole patched. Might i suggest making the things run by human brains so they were taking them to make more things. This also explains why there are hundreds of things by now. They have been using the residents of the fort as parts. I would however give them a bit more than two days to have done this though.

As i said this is very good and will run well as is. But a bit more chrome and backstory will make the suspension of disbelief easier.

 

Hey, PWO, thanks for the questions. They're very insightful. I wish you were in my gaming group! ;)

 

If it were a campaign game, I would've included much more backstory, mysteries to solve, and so forth. For a 4-hour game, I figured I'd be doing well if I could just get the character all screaming and running away in terror. :angst:

 

I tend to write my games in a very linear manner -- "The players go into this room, then they see XYZ, then they do ABC." Of course, things never actually happen like that in actual play, but I've found it's pointless to try to plan for every contingency. If they want to try something crazy (like shut off the asteroid-deflection device, that's a brilliant idea!), I'll just wing it. I also never write down everything in my head, but I guess that's not completely fair to you guys who read the adventure w/o being able to read my mind. :think:

 

And a pat on the back to you: Yes, you guessed it exactly right -- the Clockwork Horrors need brains in order to create more of themselves (the sawed-open skulls is the clue).

 

So, for those who liked the adventure but wanted more (and a caveat: this backstory has little to do with the "official" Spelljammer universe):

 

The first Clockwork Horrors were built thousands of years ago by an elder race who needed powerful and versatile but controllable servitors. They used the brains of animals to make the CWHs semi-sentient. But the CWHs were smarter than their masters intended. They realized that they didn't have to be servents -- they could make themselves more sentient by using more powerful brains! They worked in secret for a long time, secretly killing and using the brains of their masters to build more intelligent, powerful CWHs, until they felt the time was right. In an orgy of destruction, they wiped out all of the elder race.

 

Thousands of years later, a random Spelljamming ship landed on the abandoned, alien world. By this time, there weren't many CWHs left (without fresh brains, they can't "reproduce"). The few that were left killed the strangers and used their brains to build some new CWHs. But human brains aren't as good as the elder race's were, so the new CWHs weren't as smart or powerful as their predecessors. However, the idea that there are more sentient beings out there made the CWHs want to spread out into space and start reproducing their species again.

 

This brings us, more or less, to the present. All CWHs are programmed to spread from planet to planet, to work in secrecy, and to build more CWHs. What generally happens is a few of them will stow aboard a ship and hide. When the ship reaches a populated area, the CWHs will spread out, secretly killing people who won't be missed and using their brains to make more CWHs. Sometimes they get caught and destroyed early on, thus ending the cycle on that one planet. But once there are enough of them (and depending on the population of an area, a couple of dozen are usually good enough -- they're pretty tough), they will rise up en masse and kill everyone they find, using the victim's brains to create more and still more Horrors.

 

(There's a little more to it than that, but that's the basic gist).

 

This is basically what happened at the Castle of the Spider's Web. The room filled with splashes of blood is where the castle's residents tried to make their last stand. Their bodies were dragged off and hidden in the castle's underside (where the heroes had no reason to go, but if they did...). The few bodies left behind were probably people who hid and were caught later -- no reason to dispose of their corpses after the asteroid was secured. Any CWHs destroyed in the big fight were "recycled" after the fight was over -- thus, there was little evidence of the big battle left behind.

 

The Crown of Stars is a red herring -- though it's very valuable, the CWHs don't care about it. They only care about reproducing by killing.

 

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah... why do the CWHs want to kill the heroes instead of just secretly stowing aboard their ship? Hmmm.... dunno. 'Cause it's scarier this way, I guess. And where did the CWHs get all the parts they would need to build more CWHs? Hmmm... you got me on that one, too. ;)

 

Still, hope it makes more sense to you now. If you can come up with some ideas that I didn't, let me know!

 

Bill.

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Hey, PWO, thanks for the questions. They're very insightful. I wish you were in my gaming group! ;)

 

Still, hope it makes more sense to you now. If you can come up with some ideas that I didn't, let me know!

 

Bill.

 

And i wish i could join. But you are not exactly near Seattle.

 

Cool i thought it was something like this. I do have a question though, why does the guard in the closet in the first guard room still have his brain? I suggest having the things CWH's simply remove his head before stuffing the body in the closet. Since they didn't take the body they were clearly pressed for time when they killed him but if the body was still of value they would have come back for it. However if they had the head then the body had no further value so they just left it. The missing head would foreshadow the whole brain thing without lessening the shock of finding the folks with their brains neatly scooped out later. Another bit of forshadowing would be for there to be no metal in the place. Let the party find weapon hafts with the decoration clearly removed. None of the bodies are wearing rings or have pocket change. Their boots are falling apart because the cobblers nails have been removed. Furnature is reduced to lumber as the nails have been delicately pulled. If you do this then the central starway needs to be made of stone. I would have wooden posts with holes carved in the tops sticking out of the stone for every step. Bright players will realize that there was a chain guardrail there. You could play with their heads by having bits of the fort turn up in the CWH bodies. Maybe a fork is being used as a support strut. Maybe the commanders decroative shield/coat of arms has been bent into a partial carapace. Maybe a 'knee' is clearly a door hinge

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Those are really good ideas. I especially like the idea of door hinges for knees and breast plates for carapaces. If/when I run this again, I'm going to have to use some of them. Thanks, man! :)

 

Bill.

 

So you've run this already? How did it go? I thought you were going to run this for halloween this year?

 

Having the monsters incorporate recognized objects creates a connection with thw players. It makes the monster more real somehow. And real = frightning. It also helps to bring out the very scary idea that these things do not see you as a threat, they see you as a resource. Seeing the door-hinge-knee might be enought to spark a connection in a players head between the large number of spiders and the bodies with their brains missing. And that is where the real terror comes into this little romp. The player is not simply faced with death but they are faced with the loss of individuality and identity. And those are nice big buttons for the GM to play with.

Anyway i hope this went well when you ran it.

~PWO

 

 

PS. Oh i see this was Last Year's adventure. What is in store for them this year?

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

And i wish i could join. But you are not exactly near Seattle.

 

Yeah, the commute would be murder. ;)

 

PS. Oh i see this was Last Year's adventure. What is in store for them this year?

 

I'm not sure yet. I'm mulling over some ideas. I like to do "classic" horror with a twist -- I've done a ghost, I've done vampires, I've done a werewolf, I did ghouls, and last year I did spiders. (I'll tell you about them all someday). :angst:

 

For this year, I was originally thinking mummies (a big, mysterious floating pyramid in space), but then I thought "Everybody's seen The Mummy, and while it was fun, it wasn't really scary."

 

Then I thought zombies ('cause there's been like a hundred zombie movies in the last year or two), but I'm not sure where to go with them.

 

If anyone wants to throw out some plot seeds for me (for either concept, or even a totally new one!), I'd be much obliged! :)

 

Bill.

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

This is pretty neat. I really dig mixing horror into my fantasy games. Have you considered the idea of taking a classic horror type villian and giving it a twist? One of my most successful adventures involved a vampire and his castle. Only the vampire wasn't "evil" in the classic sense. Play the so called bad guy with as many human traits and ideals as your comfortable with. In my particular scenario, the vampire was what he was because of love - it was his castle that was downright evil. In the end, the players weren't sure of themselves or if they had done the right thing when they finnally had to kill the vampire. To keep the evil of the castle contained, one of the pc's stayed behind so its evil wouldn't spread, knowing it would slowly turn him into a vampire. I've toyed with the idea of an insane liche, something along the lines of being schizophrenic. Can't die, but one of his personalities really wants to. The mummy idea is very workable, but leave most of the common mummy shtick out. Use a mummified Orc warlord who has returned from the dead for one last campaign. Or maybe the remains of an anient and highly revered elven king who is fed up with what his bloodline has become. The possibilities are almost endless - expand the horizons and incorporate elements that normally aren't associated with such a thing. Keep us posted.

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Here's my rough thoughts for this year's RavenSpace Halloween adventure. Any comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc. are gratefully accepted!

 

The crew is hired to pick up a man from an asteroid and bring him back home to another asteroid nearby (a day's trip, or so). His family are quite wealthy and own several asteroids, most of which are agricultural (they grow a lot of fruit and grains). They sent their adult son to this place so he could get a taste for the business -- they wanted him to get his head out of the books and start doing something useful for the family. They were pleasantly surprised when he increased the crop yield on his little plantation, and so have left him to his devices, not bothering him or hearing much from him for the past couple of years.

 

Now it's time for him to come home and start working more closely with his father. They are afraid that all this time in the hinterlands will start to ruin him and make him provincial, so they've hired the Astral Shrike to pick him up and taxi him back home. It's an easy two-day job and the paycheck is more than fair.

 

What the family hasn't mentioned to the crew is that they want their son back at the homestead (where they can keep an eye on him) because they've been getting odd, disturbing messages from him -- saying how he's able to increase crop yields even further because of something that's happened to his peasants. They fear that life in this backwater asteroid is starting to drive him nuts.

 

When the heroes arrive at the asteroid, they find it completely empty, devoid of life – there is a small hamlet/town, but it's been abandoned recently. Dishes sit on the tables, unused. Food is drying up and spoiling in the cupboards, and so forth.

 

They aren't able to find any apparent sign of foul play or an attack. They head up to the young lord's mansion and find it boarded up -- windows hastily nailed shut, the door locked from the inside, and so forth. It's not hard to get inside, but when they do, a wild-haired man attacks them with a stick of wood, screaming "You won't get me, you bastards!"

 

(Hopefully, they won't kill him). When they subdue him, they recognize him as the young lord. He is excited to hear that his family sent them to save him, and he tells them that they have to get off the asteroid, fast.

 

But by then, it's too late. A hoard of former townspeople-cum-zombies have silently and rapidly surrounded the mansion. They desperately attack any open portal, trying to get into the house. Strangely, the priests find their power to rebuke the Undead is useless! The heroes are now trapped in the mansion, a kilometer away from their ship. The young lord is next to useless -- he won't talk to them at all, evading their questions as best as he can.

 

It will eventually turns out that this is all his fault -- he's been experimenting with things that he shouldn't be, trying to chemically alter his peasants so they would work harder, with little need for food or sleep and not enough free will to question his orders. Unfortunately, he's gone way too far, and these mindless berzerkers are the result.

 

Clues: There is a library filled with books on alchemy and science. There is also a hidden lab in the basement filled with his chemicals and journals on his experiments. There may be evidence that the young lord sacrificed his personal valet to the zombies because the servant was going to spill the beans to the family. The young lord doesn't want to answer questions precisely because he knows that this is his fault, and he will grow more and more anxious the more the heroes poke around (possibly even trying to get them all killed by the zombie hoard, if he thinks he can get away with it -- more desperate to save his reputation than his life).

 

I'm not sure how the heroes will resolve this. Maybe hidden tunnels under the house leading to near the landing field? Maybe the zombies can smell/sense the chemicals they need in the young lord's basement, and if the heroes let them have it the zombies will either die or become docile for a while. Maybe the heroes just run the gauntlet, trying to make a heroic last-ditch attempt to gain the ship and escape.

 

What do you all think? Hints, ideas, advice? Y'all came up with some good ideas for my last game... :hex:

 

Bill.

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Rats, I’m no good at zombies. For me fear is generated in the slow revelation of the threat. With zombies the reveal is too quick. The game changes from horror to tactical survival. It can still be a blast but a known enemy generates less fear. However given the above caveat I’ll do my best.

 

My first question upon reading the outline concerns the alignment of the players. Good players will have a moral quandary about rescuing someone who would kill off their own workers in the name of higher profits. Shades of Union Carbide here. Heck even neutrals might just leave him to his just deserts. So seeing as you want this to be a fast paced game. I say have the young lord be clearly a zombie when they find him. My idea is this. YL developed a psi-based drug that focuses the will absolutely on the task at hand. Problem is it worked too well. Once exposed the only thing that matters to the subject in increasing crop yields. Friends, family, eating all are forgotten even life is left behind in the quest for greater crop yields. This is why the priests balk ability will not work. There is no negative plane connection for the priest to sever. From this point of view the arrival of the party will be a great boon. The party represents more workers and the ship a way to expand cultivation away from this small rock. The town is empty as all the workers are living in the fields to make 24hr plant care easier. Perhaps several buildings have been dismantled to free up more arable land. The PC’s esp. any nature priests or druids will notice the complete absence of any animal life on the planetoid. Also there are no plants living on the asteroid other than the crop plants. The farm animals were worked to death and then became fertilizer along with ever last rat, bird,tree, weed and bug around. The now zombied YL is still in his lab refining and perfecting fertilizers and the zombie formula. The zombies are not immediately hostile and in fact do not look dead, dirty yes, very ill yes, dead no. The lack of insects and the formula retard decay. The goals of the z’s will be 1.to capture and infect the party and 2. To take control of the ship strip it of anything useable to increase crop yields and then use it to colonize other arable areas.

 

Problems for the PC’s

 

No water. The zombies don’t drink and have all the available water tied up in a complex underground irrigation system. Any water left on the ship will be looted as soon as the PC’s are out of sight.

No Food. Or rather no non-infected food. Any food on the ship will be looted for use as fertilizer. The food produced here is abundant, looks wonderful, and either kills or zombifies anyone who eats it. Crop yield, not food value is the only goal. The fertilizers have by now fully infected the plants.

Problems with the scenario.

1. Very linear. Arrive on rock - leave rock.

2. very lethal. the zombies are smart, fanatic,will use grappling and restraining attacks and the pc's are outnumbered about 100 to one. Logically they will be mobbed and infected or killed as soon as they are understood to be a threat to the crop.

3. This post is too -ing long.

Good luck, maybe there is something in this you can steal.

~PWO

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Some review help? Can y'all spot any major plot holes or things I need to shore up before I run this? Does it look like a good evening's adventure?

 

I'm running it on Saturday, Oct. 30, so any comments before that time would be greatly appreciated! :)

 

Bill.

 

Edit: PM me if you'd like to see the adventure and I'll send it to you as a .pdf

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Re: Hallowe'en Hero

 

Do you have a particular idea where the zombies are hiding? With the asteroid only 2km in size and the fields, orchards and hamlet deserted/no signs of life, that leaves the hills, small forest, and stream caverns. Gotta backup plan of the PC's decide to investigate all that before heading to the mansion? Have you considered doing something with the servant that was tossed to the zombies? Maybe to up the scare factor, he's out there with the mob, but different. Being a "2nd" generation zombie because he was bitten and did not partake of the chemicals, he could still retain some intellect and free will. This could give you a beefier critter if the need arises. Someone who could infiltrate the manor by climbing a ladder or rope to a window if the game shows signs of slowing down. Someone who could wield a weapon, say, a butchers knife or farm implement, if a combat gets casual and the tenseness of the game is starting to fade. A lone critter motivated by revenge. Cunning, cruel, and oh so very angry at being betrayed. Just a spur of the moment thought I'd throw out there.

 

And with all those crops......are they vegan zombies? Graaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins!!!

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