Ian Renton« Roleplaying Games
Darkness Falls in the Night Garden
I should explain. I have a toddler. He watches toddler TV shows. I am a geek. If Cthulhu had a TV show, I would be right there. This is what happens when our interests collide. It might be the beginnings of a one-shot game, if there are any sufficiently fucked up people out there.
Mother Pontipine warned you. Yes, she did. It's the way things are. Ten Pontipines leave the house, and ten eventually return. No more, no less.
Until today.
Today, ten Pontipines left their little house. And seven returned.
Mother and Father searched high and low for you all afternoon and into the evening, but they did not find you. The sun slipped inexorably toward the horizon, and they were forced to retreat to the safety of home, bolting the door in three places behind them.
The sun sets upon the Night Garden. One by one, its inhabitants go to sleep, until at last Iggle Piggle is the only one remaining. Before long, he disappears off in his boat to the other world, leaving the Night Garden before night truly falls. So it is every day. He does not know.
He does not know what the Pontipines know; the truth about the Garden.
The reason they lock the doors at night. The reason no human child walks the grass of the Garden any more.
For Night in the Night Garden is true night, absolute night. Night in which terrors stalk the land, twisted dark echoes of their former selves, all teeth and blood and knives and tentacles and horror beyond all imagining.
And you are outside, little Pontipines. Outside, at night.
Oopsie-daisy.
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Comments
I too have been forced to watch this show repeatedly, so have had some somwhat similar thoughts. Ever read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, or watched the episode of Doctor Who where they travel to the end of time and meet Derek Jacobi? Right.
So Iggle Piggle floats on a dark, dead world, it's sun already extinguished. Above him, stars flare and burn out, as the universe burns up the last of himself. Poor Iggle Piggle had to do some terrible things to those he loved, but it was worth for those few extra days of survival.
Soon it's time to sleep, and be reunited with his loved ones in some other world. Like the simple Eloi from Time Machine, they do not and cannot speak. They simply look at him in mute judgement. Always looking with their cold, dead eyes. But what do the great, violent Hoo-Haas want? And do the Morlocks truly lurk beneath the Gazebo?