Urban Unease - Surreal Subway Stories

Inspiration for thread

I remember a great bit for this someone came up with like a year ago.

Every other terminal they come across a shop. It's in one of those enclosed boxes here the shopkeeper talks through a speaker embedded in the shatter proof glass of it's front. They have all kinds of ares from snack food to radios that pick up weird signals, big old #1 foam fingers and air horns, maps of the immediate area but no further than the next terminal, to guns and ammo but are always cagey about why they stock it.

The shopkeeper is always the same individual.

Whenever the players arrive the shopkeeper is always "a few minutes to closing time" so they have to rush there purchases. After a time set buy the DM the shopkeep says all purchases are final, thanks for your business then pulls metal blinders don over the window.

Players never see the shopkeep leave.

If they some how get in or manage to peek in they find it empty, shelves and ground lined with dust and the light bulb burnt out.

When the players finally find a tube station map, they find it has a completely different layout to what it normally has. The stations are smudged and unreadable, but a low level knowledge/science/healing check will let the player notice that the map is now in the shape of a brain, with the players station apparebtly being somewhere in the subcortex, where the subconcious lives.

>As the PCs continue to explore the tunnel system beneath the city, they discover evidence of others who have gotten lost down there in the dark.

>Abandoned backpacks and shed clothing, makeshift campsites and hidden boltholes, graffitied warnings and long-unread goodbye letters.

>Three separate characters slowly begin to emerge: a frihtened college-aged girl, a graffiti-artist and a homeless vet turned survivalist.

>Each one leaves different clues as to what might be happening in the underground and how the PCs might escape that are worryingly contradictory.

Every so often the players come across an old emergency phone in the tunnels, on which they can get a hold of a subway maintenance worker that can give them a little intel and direction as they try to escape the underground. However, this friend on the phone is:

>Just a regular Joe who is totally out past his depth with this spooky stuff.

>A hallucination experienced only by the one player who picks up the phone.

>Some sort of evil entity purposefully trying to confuse and mislead them.

>Lost deep down in the underground just as badly as the players are too.

>The father of another lost girl who really only cares about her safe return.

Does it go something like

My name is Andrew Erics. I lived, once, in a city called New York. My mother is Terrie Erics. She's in the phone book. If you know the city, and you read this, find her. Don't show her this, but tell her I love her, and that I'm trying to come home. Please.

>They literally find clones of themselves trying to accomplish the same goal

>Find a government funded secret lab that conducts experiments on people

>An amalgam of hands, heads, and other extremities that murderers try to hide in the sewers that has come to life

I love science-horror

>Some tunnels have ancient cave painting that seems to imply worship of some sections
>Said sections of the tunnel are sentient and try to digest whoever stays too long in it

>Urban Unease thread

YYYEEEESSSS

As the players are following one of the many tunnels, they realise the style of the tunnel is changing. The cement walls are giving way to elegant marble. The floor becomes flagstones, and then mosaics. Soon it becomes obvious to everyone that the tunnel has essentially become ancient roman in design.

And that's when they find the exit. It's roman themed, with the turnstyles made of elaborate metalwork, and the signs being written in Latin. Even the coinslots indicate they are for denarii. Past these gates, one can see the sun shining down a staircase leaning up. The area seems deserted.

On the wall near these turnstyles, daubed in grafitti:
>DON'T JUMP THE TURNSTYLES, WHATEVER YOU DO.
>No, do it!
>Are you kidding? I saw the 'security guard"!
>Allright guys, I'm gonna jump it. If I make it over ok, I'll come back and write something.

There is nothing written underneath.

>this the dlc from the Urban Unease-Spooky Cozy appartment complex edition
>the player expect something nice, nothing to much murderous compared to what they lived in the appartment
>they are wrong

>Does it go something like
>My name is Andrew Erics. I lived, once, in a city called New York. My mother is Terrie Erics. She's in the phone book. If you know the city, and you read this, find her. Don't show her this, but tell her I love her, and that I'm trying to come home. Please.
No, that's the creepypasta that someone who had read the original story ripped off.

In the original story, the "people" he first encountered looked like monsters but didn't seem to pay attention to him, or at least didn't care that he didn't look like them. I read that creepypasta looking for the real story yesterday.

There can still be creepy-cozy aspects to a surreal subway story, but the PCs are still going to want to escape to the life they'd known before they got spirited away. Think of the subway sort of like an underground, urban Tir-Na-Nog.

I swear that's an SCP.

You can make a lot of thing cozy even subway, but the tone of this thread is a lot more creepy and violent compared to the 3 last thread about the decrepit appartement complex, it was a tad more wacky and comfy

Is there an archive link or any screencaps of that thread? The one that had the little picture of the apartment with the neon signs and air conditioning units.

Check sup/tg/.

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Urban unease

Here you go, there is also some other threads with the same theme

>I swear that's an SCP.
It could be, but I know that this isn't it.

Maybe we should inject a bit of cozy into it then:

>There is a whole society of people living in the tunnels with its own history, art and culture. None among hem have been to the surface in about 40 years and all are politely skeptical of how the PCs describe it.

>One large, domed chamber is covered from top to bottom in graffiti that shines softly and strangely in the darkness. The longer the PCs state at it, the more sure they become that the graffiti is shifting and swirling slowly.

>In various abandoned stations and maintenance rooms, someone has posed groups of department store mannequins and props into dioramas. Some are fanciful and some are funny, but all are a bit off.

>The lighting in one particularly narrow stretch of tunnel is on the blink, regularly throwing the PCs into pitch darkness. Each time the lights come back on, they find that their marching order in line has been rearranged.

>An eternal rave seems to have taken over one old subway station, and always seems to be in full-swing whenever the PCs visit. When asked how to get out of the tunnels, no one seems sober or cojent enough to answer.

>An area of utility tunnels is inhabited by a small group of drunk frat bros. They say they were locked in the university's steam tunnels over the weekend as part of a hazing ritual to join the Upsilon Upsilons.
>They're too drunk to remember where the exit is, and will always insist that they've only been down here for a day or so.
>They seem to have a near-unlimited supply of cheap beer. Every time you turn around, you'll see someone cracking open a 24-pack, or rolling out another keg.
>Some nearby areas of the tunnels are completely walled-in by massive piles of empty beer cans and bottles.

Marebito

I like the idea of the underground being some kind of dark wonderland or urban fae realm that can be good or bad or both or neither, depending on your actions and interactions within it.

>A working Roman bath, complete with a large central public bathing area, frigidarii, tepidarii, caladarii, saunas, and attendants offering towels and oil massages. The changing rooms even include togas for the more-modest bathers to wear in the public baths. And the dirty tunnel denizens who use the baths add an authentic ancient feel.
>Nobody can agree on the origin of the baths. Some people say that it's the remains of a roman-themed public pool from the late 1800s. Others claim that it used to be a gay bathhouse, built anywhere between the 1910s and 1980s. Some claim that it truly is a 2000-year-old Roman ruin, although the masonry doesn't quite look *that* old...
>The baths are run by a fat 70-something Italian guy who is always dressed in a purple toga. He is sometimes seen reciting songs and poetry in fluent Latin (well, it *sounds* pretty fluent).

Anomalous wrecks and ruins of all sorts can be found buried deep beneath the streets, having been tunneled to and co-opted by the people who have taken to living down in the city's subways and sewers. No one knows what the oldest, deepest ruin might be, but many believe it may be responsible for all the rest.

A young man fishing in a reservoir. He never stands up from the blanket under him, almost the same pattern as the surrounding floor. His legs slowly kick over the edge, gently creating ripples in the surface.
Whatever it is, its not water. You saw how it looked on his toes when he bent his knee at an impossible angle just to smell the liquid. He seemed mildly disappointed at the smell, but didn't stop fishing.

So the story of young Cthulhu before he got all old and fat and had to nap for untold millennia because the 'stars weren't right'?

Thats an old /x/ pasta

All right, I WILL finish writing up my NY metro horror session this time, I swear on my lazy ass, this thing is from it Will post it tomorrow evening, at most

That's a far older scifi staple. Even the Simpsons did a variation, albeit the butterfly effect with Homer time traveling and finally giving up when he was able to find a home that was "close enough". Sliders also comes to mind.

You find yourself on an empty subway platform. You notice a staircase leading down. You follow it to another sub-level., another, more dusty and more empty platform. You go further down. How many sub-levels can there be? You think this is the twentieth... or thirtieth. The staircase turns more and more old, dilapidated. Tiles get replaced by bare cement walls, cathode lights by sets of lightbulbs. What gets you concerned the most is that graffiti stopped a couple levels up. Several levels down even the cement disappears. Walls and stairs themselves seem chiseled out of stone. Thick black wire connects solitary, buzzing lighbulbs. The staircase is getting narrower, until only one person could fit. Instead of zig-zagging flights of stairs with clear landings you get a claustrophobic spiral staircase, winding ever downward counterclockwise.
Is it getting hot in here?

Lightbulbs stop and so do you. It's more like a tunnel than any staircase now. Shadows quickly turn into pitch-black darkness and you obviously won't even consider going further. You curse the curiosity that lead you here, stupidly telling you to try go just a couple more steps down. You hear your breath in the hot humid air of this place. Beyond that - drops of water hitting some larger pool further in the darkness. And something else. An echo? Echo of faint footsteps, coming from down below. Some... one?... is coming. You've been heard.

Even though this is basically just scp-wiki.net/scp-087, I quite like it.

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There's a subway conductor on the New Jersey PATH line between WTC and Newark who's always very cheery, way too cheery to be the conductor of the late-night PATH trains. "Welcome to beautiful Newark, New Jersey! This is the end of the line."

Why's he so cheerful all the time? It is a spoooooky mystery!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Subway Cricket Lady:

nydailynews.com/new-york/cricket-flinging-woman-sends-train-riders-chaos-article-1.2765937

When it comes to the subway you really don't have to go too far to make things crazy, because reality does the job just as well

Charon's modern incarnation running the subway line to Hades, New Jersey.

"You can check out anytime you like but you can't ever leave."

>There's a certain order of turns, that most everyone knows, that'll take you to it. It's the real deal, a true exit. You can hear the busy street just beyond, see shadows of of peoples feet as they pass. It seems to open out of a steel sewer drain..... only six centimeters wide.
>There's a had-full of skeletons near and around it. People who've wasted away staring out at their freedom from this dark twisted prison. So close yet, so very far away.

Do they all float down there?

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so the killingfloor shopkeeper?

>Someone has painted this tunnel in a rainbow pattern.
>There's a low, yet oddly pleasant hum as you walk through it. If you run quickly through the tunnel, the hum becomes a beautiful song.

>The players sometimes hear voices when no one else is talking
>Sometimes they even see shadows cast by people who aren't there
>These entities don't seem hostile, but do seem to want to be left alone

That's actually pretty good.

Go to bed, Ragnar.

Mind the Gap between the train and the platform edge.

It is terrible and will show you no mercy.

There's a large crack in the wall of a service tunnel. Some manner of liquid with the rippling sheen of spilled petrol is leaking from it. If you look through the crack, you'll see a place. Everyone sees a different place.

Deep in the tunnels, a war rages. Strange hybrids of rat and cockroach scurry about, plotting their conquest of the surface, swarming over unfortunate hobos to devour or infest. They are opposed by the Best Boys, a small army of once loved dogs who lost their owners. Oddly intelligent, the canines are convinced their masters are still out there somewhere, and throw themselves into battle with the scuttling hordes to ensure the safety of their humans, wherever they might be.

There is a laboratory deep within the tunnels that houses advanced machinery and xenophobic scientists. It's a meth lab that cooks the really high grade stuff.

If one pays close attention to the magazines and newspapers left scattered about, they find that they often reference "current events" from the distant past, or more rarely events that never took place entirely. Allusions to "the event" are often made, but the writers seem to actively avoid speaking about it directly.

There is a librarian deep into one of the substations that is attempting to piece together the fragmented news and bits of history to attempt to work out "where things went wrong". He pays handsomely for new texts, but not necessarily in money. Or at least not in any money you recognise.

Lovely big guns

The secret ingredient is the blood of teenagers that come down in the tunnels to smoke dope and have sex. The "monster" that keeps hunting kids is just a scientist in hi-tech hazard suit to avoid all the hobo piss.

I do like monsters with a biomechanical flourish, nigh indestructible that eventually turn out to be regular jackoffs in some kind of hazard suit.

You've been working your way through some old machine rooms when you start to hear music and muffled conversation. Rounding a corner you find yourself in a bar full of hipsters. Lots of furniture made from pallets and people in strange clothes. Talking to the people there you find out that its the opening party for an art performance art show. The art is pretty bad, but at least there is an open bar.

You occasionally stumble across the bar every now and again in your travels. Although the patrons and occasion is different every time, the drinks are always free.

You have travelled down to the deepest parts of the underground rails. This is an old project, construction that dates to just after the turn of the last century. These were not intended to be normal rails but rather a private system for the richest and most powerful's own use, made with the height of technology at the time and sparing no creature comforts. A separate arterial system connecting the most important, affluent parts of the city: veins pumping the money where it needs to go. The archetecture has a distinctive gothic flair, every tunnel having an arched, tiled ceiling designed like some ancient cathedral. Bas-relief statues rest in alcoves set at intervals along every passage, some of histories familiar faces but given godlike proportions: captains of industry remade as marble deities.

It is difficult to see why the lines never opened. The construction seems complete, rails are laid, even trains sit idle, ready, their interiors old but resplendent. Plush red velvet curtains, pillowy seats, now ravaged by time, thick with coated dust. The handrails flake gold foil at the merest touch exposing worn metal with the patina of ages weighing heavily upon them. Occasionally you hear a rumble, vibrations in the stonework as trains run along active rails. Although it is impossible to be certain, the mind prone playing tricks on itself this far down, it seems as if some of the trains are running BENEATH you. But that would be impossible. All records indicate this is the utmost depth of man's delving beneath the city.

All this splendor around you abandoned to the ravages of time. It's hard to imagine all of this has passed the attention of looters or squatters.

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I'm surprised this hasn't shown up yet:

youtube.com/watch?v=M3mqws965XQ

Wonder City. A city beneath Gotham City. Constructed in the 19th Century it had storefronts, housing, libraries; all the amenities of civilization but expanded with super science made available by the wondrous Lazarus Pit at the heart of its construction. Pity about the long term effects of Lazarus driving the citizens to madness, the entire city erupting into a debased orgy of violence and mayhem until it was sealed off, all the residents who survived dragged off to Arkham Asylum. And Wonder City itself was largely forgotten.

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Old, worn postcard

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Graffiti can be fun, especially if it starts as simple tagging but changes as you move deeper into a location, the messages becoming paranoid, then frantic, then cryptically referring to some kind of threat until finally you come across an area that looks like someone used an awful lot of dark red paint splashed all over the walls and floor. Spray cans are strewn about the place. Some of them appear to have been punctured by something long and thin with tremendous force behind it.

You never find the punk kids themselves.

Over 'ere, stranger.

my.mixtape.moe/sxsfcn.7z
here's my take on what I compiled from an old thread.
not pretending it's an official version, I'm just posting it because I processed it a bit to make it easier to use

A line that leads to an abandoned secret underground church worshipping unknown and thoroughly unsanitary looking gods.

Bonus points if the thing is totally underground and the source of the light streaming in from the windows and upper dome is completely is completely unidentifiable.

I love how those pews look, too. In the middle of the railways for the body these are railways for the soul. But sending it to where?

The railway lines are aligned with ancient ley lines of mystical power with the church as the focal point.

The only source of law deep within the underground is the commission, a group of mafioso that got lost in the tunnels escaping from the cops. Heavily armed with weapons that come from the twenties. People who have done favors for the commission are treated like kin, but crossing them will have a hit put out on your parties collective heads.

"You lookin' at me? Hey, you lookin' at me? Well I don't see any other Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller so you gotta be lookin' at me!"

Seriously, do NOT fuck with the workers who were left to mutate in the underground support structure they built for New York. They still have a very strong union.

Maybe combine these. Rich bastards funding an underground works for themselves complete complete with church, an underground club (the rich men's variety, not the girly dance kind since naturally No Womankind Allowed) their own little world tucked far from the prying eyes of the little people, accessible from their private rails.

Built, of course, by common laborers living in underground camps to speed the lengthy construction. In the ways of such men many of them brought their wives and girlfriends, even ladies of comfort and illest repute. At some point their is a labor dispute that escalates into open revolt. These men end up occupying the opulent structures they built with their own toil. Even the Pinkertons prove insufficient to dislodge them since even the most mercenary thug finds himself ill-prepared to deal with men covered in dark grease to blend into the shadows, in territory they know because they laid it brick by brick, slipping out of the darkness and burying a mattock in your skull.

So if you're a rich bastard who figures the whole affair is spoiled, probably way too much blood on the carpets by this point, you just cut your losses and seal the damn thing up. Claim there was some industrial accident. They'll die off soon enough... only somehow they don't. There's underground sources of water, hell, the problem is often keeping the tunnels dry. Rats are plentiful. They can grow potatoes, at least, and maybe a few other vegetables under certain conditions.

Yeah, you could probably have a divergent breed of hideously inbred mutant molemen living under palacelike conditions, even going to church. Could be fun.

They find these symbols

Breached tunnel; flooding in progress

Something is making a nest...

Amazing discovery in London Underground! Tiny trains for anthropomorphic animals! Furry community rejoices! "Vindication!"

>They get up to the surface and the bright warmth of the suns hits them.
>Wait, suns?
>No, just massively bright lamps hanging from the sky blue vaulted ceiling.
>And those aren't exactly buildings like there used to be either. They're subway kiosks like newspaper or snack venders but built several stories tall (all the doors and stairs and shit are actually set up for people their size, the buildings are just styled after the kiosks and all their products are ones that would be found at them)
>There aren't roads anymore, just subway tracks as wide as a three lane road.

This isn't the surface, just another more massive subway styled after it. And there is a distant rumbling growing closer... Who knows how many dozens of miles away it might be? Who knows how big these trains must be?