Grimrunner Tales - Hour of Madness

This week’s focus is: How a game sessions unfolds.

A session in Nightholme begins with a moment of preparation. Players gather items, make choices, and ready themselves for what lies ahead. They then step into a hostile world that demands cooperation and risk. Each Grimrunner must shoulder the dark burden of transforming into the very thing they hunt. Different archetypes offer distinct forms and play styles, and every action drives the session towards a confrontation with a monstrous Gloomfield. The risks are high, but the rewards are too, and may carry far beyond a single play session.

Now for the short horror story... We hope that you enjoy it.

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Hour of Madness

Three of us wait at the threshold, weighing the darkness ahead. I trust my companions. Occultists, assassins, ground down in crowded tombs and abandoned asylums, honed to perfect points. Maybe we’ll survive.

The contract is clear. Our mark tonight is gargantuan and grotesque. Sadistic fucker.

“Looks mean,” my companion mutters, glancing at the file. The cross at his chest catches the firelight, and I brush my nails over my family crest. May our stains protect us. “Good yield though.”

Yes. Brineheart’s bounty and the remains of what we seek to kill. A high enough price. Most wouldn’t do this otherwise. Hallowed hands, mercenary hearts.

With the Gloomfiend in mind, we prepare. Scrolls and maps and coffin scraps. Most importantly, Nocturn. Our chosen forms, those measured descents into madness. What keeps us breathing.

The fire gutters. Time to go.

We step into a city of salt fog and black decay, familiar Gloom-fouled streets. It’s quiet now. That always changes.

“Splitting up,” one of my companions says, already moving. “Rendezvous if you find a Heart.”

Then I’m alone. I prefer it that way.

I match the city’s silence, slipping unseen through its corrupted labyrinth. Things flit and skitter at my periphery, but I ignore them. Some Grimrunners answer every noise with blood. Not me. Sanity is too dear. Madness begins at the end.

In an abandoned square, I find a Fetid Idol sloughing its curse into the stone. My boot unmakes it with a wet crunch that echoes farther than I like. A shadow moves behind a doorway.

I duck quickly into a mouldering house. Avoidance has saved me more often than carnage. What use is blood spent too soon?

Climbing to the attic, I find a boon. A vial of some foul tincture, knucklebone steeped in brine. I pocket it and move on.

An ancient cemetery lies ahead, where the Gloom winds thickest. The crypt beneath a desecrated mausoleum holds my target: a Gloom Heart, clutched in the rotting hand of a Grimrunner I don’t recognize. Pity. He almost had it.

I pry it free of his dead hand. Behind me, something stirs.

A tongue like razor wire lashes from the dark, slicing my leathers, and suddenly they’re on me from all sides.Should’ve known. Never a corpse without reason. I drop one, fingers hovering over the Nocturn on my belt. It’s tempting. Merciless.

Not yet.

I swallow the tincture instead. It burns, scours my throat raw, and the world lurches. And I run.

I weave a jagged line across the district until they lose my scent. When the tincture wears off, I’m still clutching the Heart.

We regroup at the ritual site, and I lay the Heart on the altar beside three others. Our profane invocation.

There’s always silence in the moment after, a vast