Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel
The One-armed Man
A man in his mid-forties, average height, thick build, dark hair and full beard. Wears a blue long-sleeved shirt, with the name Dwayne on a patch above the left pocket, and a pair of jeans. He looks perfectly normal except for his missing right arm. The sleeve on that side is folded up and pinned to the shoulder. If asked, he tells the PCs that a car he was working on fell off its jack and crushed his arm. The arm had to be amputated and he never worked as a mechanic again.
The next time the PCs see him, his right arm is fine and the left is missing. Nobody around seems to notice and if confronted the man will say he's "always been like this". When the PCs see him in the hotel bar - and only in the bar - the man has both arms, holding a beer in one hand and eating peanuts with the other. At these times, he's extremely jovial and will offer to buy a round for the PCs but becomes surly if any of them mention his arms. Other times, he wears a prosthetic arm - sometimes a realistic one with a hand and sometimes one with a hook - but these keep switching sides depending on which arm is missing that time.
The Veteran
An eccentric old man in his late sixties wearing what looks to be an army uniform from the turn of the century. Whenever the PCs see him, he's always reading a newspaper in the hotel lobby. If examined while the man is reading it, the paper looks old, like something that belongs in a museum. However, when he sets it down and walks away or if he hands it to a PC who asks to borrow it, it's just a copy of the local paper with the current date. The only way to learn what the old man is reading about is to ask him. And he's only too happy to answer, going on for hours about the latest developments in the Great War, praising the Brits and damning the Boche. Each day he'll have different news as the war progresses.
Every day, he also looks younger. Nobody but the PCs seem to notice as the old man becomes middle-aged and then young. When the man starts looking like he's around twenty, his stories about the war grow in intensity. He starts raving about the Hun and how God-fearing men won't let them spread their poison throughout the world. He tells anybody who'll listen that it's every man's responsibilty to do something to help the war effort. In fact, he's going to join the army tomorrow. The characters don't see him the next day. The day after that, he's found dead in his room, a bullet in his head. Nobody ever heard any gunshots and everything in the room looks undisturbed, suggesting the man was killed elsewhere.
A few days later, the PCs find the old man in the lobby, reading his paper as usual. Only this time the uniform he's wearing looks a slight bit more modern. He'll deny having ever met the PCs before and when asked what he's reading, he'll tell them the latest news about the war in Europe. The reverse aging continues until the man begins ranting about Hitler and promises to join the army the next day. When the man's body is found this time, it looks like he was killed by a grenade. But he reappears a few days later, talking about Korea. The time after that, Vietnam. After that...
The Ventriloquist
The ventriloquist looks normal until you start talking to him and realize that his lips don't move. He claims that he learned to talk like this after having a stroke that paralyzed his face. It was the only way he could continue to communicate with people. But why does he speak with several different voices? It could be that he's a performer who considers himself "always on". But nobody has ever seen a dummy with him or in his room.
