After the debacle of Dunkirk, the British military rediscovered "shell-shock." This condition, thought after WWI to be cured by superior officer skills, was affecting a large number of troops evacuated from France. Facing imminent invasion by the Third Reich, Great Britain needed to return as many of these men to "fighting fitness" as possible. In desperate times, desperate measures were needed. Shell-shocked troops were admitted to civilian sanatoriums, and civilian psychiatrists had a free hand to experiment on large numbers of unwilling subjects.

THE SITUATION

The players find themselves in Sutton Hospital in Surrey, in the autumn of 1940, having been evacuated from Dunkirk. They have been diagnosed as having "battle fatigue" as a result of retreating from a superior enemy force and then sitting on a beach for up to four days, being bombed and strafed by that superior enemy.Dr. William Surgant is the chief psychiatrist of the hospital and has started to administer large dosages of sodium amatol to the shell-shocked soldiers. Surgant aims to break battle fatigue by putting affected soldiers into "deep narcosis" for up to three weeks, thereby eliminating the stress caused by night terrors. Surgant is also experimenting with insulin to induce coma, and so break the battle fatigue more quickly. Some soldiers fall into permanent coma before sweetened tea can be administered, but these are just the casualties of war.

In these long periods of induced slumber, the players experience strange dreams; some communal, others more personal. These include:

• A gruelling hand-to-hand defence of a windswept mountain pass in the mountains at the Top Of The World for weeks on end, as endless dark hordes smash themselves against the defences and the defenders.
• A surreal re-enactment of a friend's death which the observer or observers are unable to stop or to change.
• Completing a wondrous patrol of an imaginary land with the Tawny Sun Troop. Exotic lands are traversed, wondrous people met, and fabulous animals encountered, but all are strangely boring.
• A dream within a dream consisting of a continuous series of one's own death; the dreamer awakes not knowing whether he is dreaming until he dies horribly... again.
• The dreamer witnesses a companion being torn limb from limb by a foul denizen of the Dreamlands. Instead of being spattered by blood and entrails, the dreamer is covered in flower petals and fruit. Where the body parts land on the ground, small shrubs start to grow. If the dreamer returns to the location the shrub has borne fruit of small screaming heads, which have the likeness of the departed companion.
  

During the periods the players are awakened to receive food, they start to realise that the number of comrades around them is shrinking. With each period of narcosis, a familiar face disappears from a neighbouring bed. If the nurses are questioned about the missing men, they attempt to shrug off the question, claiming that they recovered or were transferred to another hospital. If the players press the question, some nurses attempts to soothe fears by promising to go to a dance with them - "when they get better"; other nurses will become distant and colder in manner, as if scared of something else rather than the truth. The doctors will refuse to answer the question point-blank, and order another painful treatment of drugs.

The auxiliary staff--the cleaners, tea ladies, and orderlies--are a little more forthcoming: something strange is happening at night. Nurses on night duty have reported strange shapes and noises. Early morning orderlies have stopped whistling as they go about their duties, as if something was listening. Tea ladies don't seem so cheerful and claim it is the oppressive style of the new hospital management.


THE POSSIBILITIES

* Dr. Surgant is part of the New Forest Lodge of white magicians, who are waging an occult battle against Nazi black magicians. The players have become unwitting foot soldiers of another war. Their dreams are tours of duty. Their burden is traditionally that of infantry: keep fighting until death or victory. The players are already casualties, so victory is the only option.

* Dr. Surgant is a Nazi fifth columnist. An accomplished black magician and member of the Green Dragon Order, Surgant is using the soldiers to research ways of physically opening a way into and out of the Dreamlands, in order to bring Nazi agents into Britain undetected before the anticipated invasion. The soldiers who slip into coma, or
are mysteriously removed from the ward, are sacrifices to Surgant's "scientific" endeavours.

* Dr. Surgant is a rogue ghoul who has managed to infiltrate the hospital and the battle-fatigue ward, after consuming the unfortunate psychiatrist as he was testing one of his own "experimental" treatments. The ghoul is now using his position to secure medical waste as hors d'oeuvres, and to render the some of the frailer survivors of Dunkirk as the main course.

* The players are imagining it all. There have been some deaths, as might be expected in a military hospital using experimental treatments. The players will gradually recover, their sense of paranoia diminished, and return to their units fighting fit.

* The players were fatally injured in the retreat from Dunkirk. They died in Sutton Hospital, but haven't quite made it into the Dreamlands yet.


Inspirations

Keepers may want to consult the documentary series "Shell-shocked" shown on the UK's Channel 4 in November 1998, and the film "Jacob's Ladder".


Credits: Adam Crossingham