Words & Wonders: Color of Screams
A One-Act Pulp-Horror-Thriller for Dark Evolution × Fractures of Bellmorta
Play Time: 90 minutes
Recommended Players: 3–5
Promise to the Table: You will move. You will choose. You will live with it.
The city does not scream when it is wounded. It hums—low, electrical, and wrong. Somewhere beneath the streetlights and the rain-slicked asphalt, something has slipped its leash, and the night is straining to pretend nothing has changed. Official statements will speak of chemical leaks, isolated violence, regrettable accidents. But you know better. You can feel it in the air, sharp as ozone and regret, where progress has been pushed too far and humanity has begun to peel at the edges. Tonight is not about saving the world. Tonight is about surviving long enough to understand what has been done—and deciding whether some discoveries are worth burying again, screaming, in the dark.
PAGE ONE
THE CITY, THE CRIME, AND THE LIE
OPENING READ-ALOUD
Bellmorta never announces its disasters.
It lets them arrive quietly, wrapped in rain and streetlight, like an uninvited guest who knows exactly where you live.
Tonight, the city smells of wet concrete, cordite, and something faintly chemical—like fresh paint opened in a closed room.
Somewhere nearby, a scream has already ended.
WHAT THE PLAYERS KNOW
Three bodies.
Five nights.
One district that everyone pretends not to notice.
Each corpse is discovered the same way:
- Blood not spilled, but composed
- Eyes removed with unsettling care
- Industrial pigments pressed into flesh as though color itself were being forced to testify
Police reports say serial killer.
Anonymous Veilkeepers (Dark Evolution) says environmental anomaly.
Neither is telling the truth.
The PCs are here because the situation is escalating, and escalation is expensive.
GM TRUTH (DO NOT READ)
This is not art.
This is not ritual.
This is experimentation.
A former Government Researcher (Dark Evolution) has learned how to use Bellmorta’s Fractured Morality as an accelerant—forcing psychic emergence through sensory overload, terror, and pain.
The victims are not chosen for who they are.
They are chosen for what they might become.
DROP THEM INTO MOTION
Do not explain.
Begin mid-incident.
A body hasn’t been secured.
A witness is already running.
A gunshot echoes where it shouldn’t.
Let the table catch up by acting.
PAGE TWO
BLOOD, COLOR, AND PRESSURE
SCENE ONE: THE FRESH DEAD
Location: Rain-slick alley, abandoned tram tunnel, condemned storefront
Mood: Intimate violence, sensory intrusion
READ-ALOUD
The body lies twisted in a way that suggests it resisted right up until it couldn’t.
Blood glistens under the streetlight—not pooled, but shaped. Arcs. Lines. Decisions.
There is color here. Too much color. Red layered with yellow and green, smeared into wounds with the intimacy of touch.
Whoever did this did not rush.
They lingered.
Psychic-sensitive characters feel it immediately:
A pressure builds behind your eyes, as though the corpse is not finished looking at you.
COMPLICATION (IMMEDIATE)
Someone arrives too quickly:
- Police with sealed orders
- A Government “containment” unit
- Local muscle paid to make the scene disappear
This becomes:
- A violent confrontation
- A chase through wet streets
- A grab-and-go investigation under fire
Clues are taken while moving.
SCENE TWO: PATTERNS UNDER THREAT
Information does not come from libraries.
It comes from risk.
Deliver clues through:
- A fixer whispering while loading a shotgun
- Files ripped from a terminal as alarms scream
- A witness bleeding out, obsessed with the color of the gloves
What becomes clear:
- Every victim carried latent psychic markers
- Each death occurred near a minor Fracture
- The pigments correspond to emotional saturation, not symbolism
This is calibration.
This is a test.
PAGE THREE
THE OBSESSION TAKES SHAPE
SCENE THREE: THE ARTIST’S WORKROOM
Location: Abandoned printworks, condemned gallery, industrial sublevel
Mood: Controlled madness, deliberate obsession
READ-ALOUD
The walls are layered in images—photographs, sketches, color swatches, anatomical diagrams—stacked one atop another like a mind that never learned to stop.
This is not the work of a lunatic.
This is the work of someone convinced they are right.
Equipment bears Government Research serial numbers—filed off with care.
Then you meet him.
DR. ETHAN VOSS
Voss is calm. Soft-spoken.
His violence is methodical, not emotional.
He does not threaten.
He explains—often while moving, repositioning, preparing something worse.
“They live numb lives,” he says, almost kindly.
“I only remind them what sensation feels like.”
This scene should not stay still:
- Traps trigger
- Lights flare and die
- Pigment clouds disorient combat
This is a fight through space, not a stand-up duel.
SCENE FOUR: THE FINAL COMPOSITION
Voss’s true site lies beneath the city, where a evil hides easily in the crooked corners, like something sleeping badly.
Civilians are restrained.
Machines hum with barely contained power.
The air tastes metallic and wrong.
The final test has already begun.
PAGE FOUR
DECISIONS IN MOTION
THE CLIMAX
READ-ALOUD
The Fracture pulses, and for a moment the world seems brighter—sharper—too much of everything all at once.
Somewhere, someone begins to scream.
Somewhere else, someone begins to change.
This is chaos:
- Civilians in danger
- Equipment failing
- Voss interfering even as the system collapses
Violence near the Fracture feeds it.
Every action matters.
THE CHOICES (ALL IMPERFECT)
SHUT IT DOWN
Smash. Sever. Run.
Lives saved now.
The district bears a permanent metaphysical scar.
—
CONTROL THE SIGNAL
Reroute. Regulate. Endure.
Fewer casualties.
Dark Evolution gains forbidden insight.
—
TURN IT ON VOSS
Let the experiment conclude—with him.
The test ends.
The consequences do not.
FINAL READ-ALOUD
By morning, the streets are washed clean.
Official statements simplify everything.
Bellmorta absorbs another secret and keeps breathing.
Somewhere nearby, someone wakes from a dream filled with impossible color—
and knows, without knowing why, that the world has shifted.
FINAL GM GUIDANCE
- Keep scenes moving every 5–10 minutes
- Let clues surface during violence and flight
- Reward decisive, reckless action
- Horror lives in certainty, not mystery
- Bellmorta always reacts—subtly, patiently
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