The Screams Beneath Oakhaven
The Screams Beneath Oakhaven
“A dream-horror investigation where every scream is a clue and every sleep is a doorway.”
— Hook · investigation
“Children have vanished from Oakhaven, and the only clue left behind is a chorus of screams heard in the marsh at night. Their parents beg anyone brave enough to follow the sound and bring the children home before the next moonrise. But in Oakhaven, the things that cry in the dark are not always the things that are suffering.”
— Hook · investigation
At dusk in Oakhaven, a mother's voice rises from the town square as she holds up a child's empty shoe and swears she heard her son screaming from the marsh before dawn. By the time the crowd gathers, the lantern flames are bending inward, and every dog in town has gone silent. The scream comes again, this time from inside the bell tower that has not rung in fifty years.
Mara Vale
Desperate parent pleading in public, then a private appeal for help and discretion.
Rumours
d4 · table- 01The missing children are always taken after someone tells a lie near the town bell tower.
- 02Old Mrs. Thorne says she heard a second set of bells ringing from under the marsh mud.
- 03The scream sounds different to each listener, like it is borrowing the voice of the person most afraid to hear it.
- 04A hunter found tiny wet footprints leading out of a sinkhole, but they vanished before sunrise.
If the party fails, the children remain trapped in a feeding nightmare, Oakhaven's adults become sleepless and paranoid, and the spirit grows bold enough to begin taking the dreams of adults next.
Background Lore
Oakhaven is a lumber town built around a black-water marsh and an old bell tower that predates the settlement. For years, children have vanished on still nights after hearing crying from the trees, and in the mornings their beds are cold, their shoes neatly lined up by the door, and their dreams full of ash. The townsfolk blame wolves, poachers, and bad roads, but the disappearances always begin after someone hears a scream carried on the wind.
Children vanish from Oakhaven after nights of whispered screams near the marsh and old bell tower. The townsfolk want the party to uncover who or what is taking them, follow the trail through the haunted outskirts, and bring the children home before more are lost. Strange dreams, abandoned toys, and terrified witnesses all point to a horror that the sleeping town has somehow fed for years.
