The Less He Spoke: A Dark Whimsical Adventure for Dark Evolution

Hollin’s Oak has gone quiet. Something up on the hill has been listening for fifty years, and it has heard enough to learn your name.

Some nursery rhymes are lullabies. Some are warnings that have been sung so long nobody remembers what they were warning about.

“A Wise Old Owl” sounds like a gentle lesson. Speak less. Listen more. Be wise. But turn it over in your hands the way you’d turn a stone in a creek bed, and look at the underside. There’s a creature in a tree that sees everything and says nothing. The more it watches, the quieter it gets. The quieter it gets, the more it hears. And the last line asks a question nobody should want answered: Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

That question is the heart of this adventure. The Less He Spoke is the newest entry in The Dark Whimsical series for the Worlds of Pulp™ Dark Evolution Pocket World. It’s a one-shot for 2–4 players, built to run in a single 3–4 hour session using The Skinny Complete Action Edition rules. At Scaldcrow Games, this is the kind of story we love building most: small, strange, a little sad, and sharp enough to cut.

Pull your chair closer to the fire. Let’s go up the hill.

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Premise and Tone

The Dark Whimsical Series

The Dark Whimsical line takes the rhymes we learned before we could read and drags them out into the cold light of Dark Evolution. That’s a world of Ravenesque genetic horror, unstable psychic powers, and government conspiracies that never quite died. Each adventure is a self-contained one-shot. Each one treats a nursery rhyme as a cipher and asks what really happened to make someone write it down.

The tone is Brothers Grimm by way of a classified case file. Picture a children’s picture book left out in the rain and found in an abandoned government lab. The cute details are there, like the round eyes, the sing-song repetition, and the little town with the big tree. They’ve just gone sour.

What’s Really Going On

In 1974, the World Evolution Bureau (W.E.B.) built a listening station beneath the roots of an ancient white oak on a hill above Hollin’s Oak, West Virginia. The town sits less than twenty miles from Raven’s Hollow, close enough to feel the hum of that psychic nexus on still nights. The facility was called Station Strix. On paper, it was a county agricultural extension office. In truth, it was a Mindfold Circle project in “acoustic intelligence,” an effort to build a human being who could hear everything.

The lead researcher, Dr. Ambrose Hollin, volunteered as his own final test subject. Ravenesque grafting gave him the asymmetrical inner ears of a barn owl, eyes like wet black glass, and a mind cracked wide open by psychic serum. He could hear a heartbeat through a stone wall. He could hear a thought if it was thought hard enough.

He kept listening. He never stopped.

When W.E.B. shut the project down in 1981, Hollin stayed in the dark beneath the oak. Over the decades, the more he heard, the less he could bear to speak. Eventually he sewed his own mouth shut. Then, starving for sound, he began to take it. He started with gossip carried on the wind and moved on to secrets whispered in bedrooms. Now he takes the voices themselves, drawn out of human throats like thread off a spool and sealed in glass jars that hum in the dark.

Hollin’s Oak has been going quiet for forty years, so slowly that nobody noticed. In the last six months, it has gone silent. The townsfolk are the Hushed. They have no voices, wide dark eyes, and heads that tilt just a little too far when you walk by. They watch for him now. Everything they see, he sees.

Six days ago, a Veilkeeper named Tobias “Toby” Wren drove into Hollin’s Oak to find out why. He hasn’t driven out.

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Rules at a Glance

This adventure uses The Skinny Complete Action Edition throughout. Here’s a quick refresher on the rules you’ll lean on most, plus the special mechanics of the Hush.

Core Resolution

• Standard Roll: Roll 2d6, add the relevant Ability Rank and any modifiers, then subtract 11. Every point above zero is a success. A total of 12 equals 1 success.
• Reroll Doubles: Doubles must be rerolled and added to the total. If Snake-Eyes come up on a reroll, the whole action fails.
• Boxcars: Double sixes on the first roll are an automatic success, a roll on the Critical Success Table, and 1 Boxcar Point.
• Snake-Eyes: Double ones on the first roll are an automatic failure. The character forfeits remaining actions for the phase, and the GM rolls on the Critical Failure Table.
• Stacking: Spend 1 Boxcar Point per additional relevant ability. Roll each separately and add the successes together.
• Competing Rolls: Compare successes. Ties go to the PC.

Difficulty Benchmarks Used in This Adventure

Successes Needed	Difficulty
1–2	Simple
3	Professional
4–5	Notable, Trained
6–7	Exceptional

Combat Reminders

• Initiative: One player rolls for the PCs and the GM rolls for the NPCs. Combat runs in four phases: First Winning, Losing, Second Winning, and Resolution.
• Damage Effectiveness (2d6): 2–4 is a glancing blow for ½ damage. 5–9 is a normal hit for full damage. 10–12 is a devastating hit for 1.5× damage.
• Called Shots: Take a –2 penalty per option, up to three options.
• Death Save: When Hits reach 0, roll against Toughness – 4 during the Resolution Phase. Success means unconscious but stable. Failure means death.
• Hits: Willpower + Magnitude + Toughness – 8 for PCs and major NPCs. SLICs use (SLIC Rating × 3) – 8, with a minimum of 1.

Special Mechanic: The Hush

Within the town limits after sundown, and anywhere on Grandmother Hill, the PCs are inside the Hush. Dr. Hollin can hear them.

The Listening Pool. The GM keeps a pool of tokens. Coins, beads, or bone-white dice all work nicely. Add 1 token to the pool every time a PC:

• Speaks aloud above a whisper. Count it once per scene per PC, not per sentence.
• Fires a gun, shouts, breaks glass, or makes any loud noise.
• Uses a telepathic or clairaudient psychic power. Hollin hears thoughts that are pushed outward.

Spending the Pool. The GM may spend tokens at any dramatic moment:

Cost	Effect
1	Echo. Hollin replays a PC’s own words from somewhere nearby, in that PC’s voice. Use it as a lure or a misdirect, or just to chill the table.
2	Watchers Come. A Parliament Watcher or a group of Hushed arrives within 1d6 phases.
3	Voice Theft. Hollin attempts to steal one PC’s voice from a distance. This is a competing roll of his Voice Theft against the target’s Willpower. If Hollin wins, the PC is Hushed.

Being Hushed. A Hushed PC cannot speak, scream, or use any power or ability that requires a voice. They can still write, gesture, sign, and act. A stolen voice returns if its jar is shattered or Hollin is destroyed. If a PC is Hushed by a Snake-Eyes result, their voice is gone for good unless its jar is recovered.

Secrets Spoken. If a PC says something personal aloud inside the Hush, such as a fear, a regret, or a loved one’s name, write it down and add a mark next to that PC’s name. In the climax, Hollin gains +1 success per mark on any mental or fear-based attack against that PC. He uses their own words against them. He’s been practicing.

Special Mechanic: The Rhyme’s Reward

The less he spoke, the more he heard. The rhyme cuts both ways.

Any PC who goes an entire scene without speaking aloud gains +2 to all Perception tests for the rest of that scene. Writing notes, using sign language, gesturing, and tapping codes are all fine. The PC also earns one Hear It First: they may ask the GM one question about their immediate surroundings and receive a truthful answer.

This is the adventure’s quiet engine. Players who learn to shut up and listen will survive. Players who talk will feed the thing in the tree.

Dread and Strain

When PCs witness something truly wrong, call for a Willpower test. Courage Under Pressure passively stacks with any test against fear, chaos, or confusion.

• Failure: The PC gains a temporary Condition at Rank 6 that lasts until the end of the next scene. Good options include Shaken, Can’t Stop Looking, or Hearing Things.
• Snake-Eyes: The Condition lasts the rest of the adventure.

Psychic Strain: PCs with Dark Evolution psychic powers track Strain as normal. Inside the Hush, every psychic power costs +1 Strain, thanks to the nearby pull of Raven’s Hollow. If Strain exceeds Willpower, roll to maintain control. On a failure, roll on the Excess Strain Effects table.

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Recommended Archetypes

Any Dark Evolution archetype can work, but these six fit the shape of this story best. Each comes with a personal thread to tie them to Hollin’s Oak.

Archetype	Why They Fit	Personal Thread
Aspiring Journalist	Investigation and Networking crack open a town that won’t talk.	Toby Wren was your source on a W.E.B. story. His last text to you was a single word: “Owl.”
Grave Detective	Deduction and Investigation turn pellets and silence into answers.	You worked a missing-persons case in this county in 2009. It went cold. The missing girl’s voice is in a jar on Grandmother Hill.
Rogue Scientist	Chemistry and Experimental Research let you understand what Hollin became.	You’ve read redacted fragments of Project Strix. You’ve always wanted to see the rest. Be careful what you want.
Cult Defector	Cult/Occult Knowledge and Stealth help with a town that worships in silence.	The cult you escaped had a vow of silence too. You know what a mouth sewn shut means.
Night Shift Worker	Observation and Stealth thrive in a story that rewards watching.	You’ve spent years being invisible. Hollin will notice you anyway, and he’ll find that interesting.
Curious Academic	Critical Reasoning and Research decode the rhyme and the records.	You study the history of nursery rhymes. The oldest printed version of “A Wise Old Owl” you’ve ever found was published in Hollin’s Oak.

The Healer, Conspiracy Theorist, and Concerned Parent also play beautifully here. A Concerned Parent whose child has gone silent on a visit to Grandma’s house is a gut-punch of a hook.

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The Hook: The 3:33 Voicemail

Each PC wakes at 3:33 in the morning to a ringing phone. The number has a West Virginia area code. When they answer, there’s nothing at first, just a hiss like wind through dry leaves.

Then comes a soft, low hoo… hoo.

Then comes their own voice, saying something they said in private sometime in the last week. It might be a confession to a spouse, a muttered curse in an empty car, or a prayer. It’s something nobody else could have heard.

Then the voice changes. It belongs to a young man now, hoarse and terrified:

“Hollin’s Oak. Don’t talk when you get here. Don’t — “

The line goes dead.

By morning, the PCs have a message from Ruth Ann Delacorte, the steady, chain-smoking coordinator at Millfield Sanctuary. The Veilkeepers have been watching Hollin’s Oak for weeks. Toby Wren went in six days ago and went dark. Ruth Ann knows the PCs got the call, because so did she.

“Whatever’s out there knows our names,” she tells them. “That means it’s already started. Better you go to it than wait for it to come to you.”

She gives them Toby’s last known location, the Pine Rest Motor Court, along with a county map and one piece of advice she can’t explain: “Bring a notepad. Bring two.”

GM Note: If a player can’t take the call for some reason, let them be the one Ruth Ann calls directly. Then play the voicemail for them anyway, on her phone, in their voice.

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Act One: The Quiet Town

Running time: about 45 minutes

Arrival

The PCs roll into Hollin’s Oak just before dusk. Read or paraphrase:

The welcome sign is hand-painted, cheerful, and old. A cartoon owl in a mortarboard smiles down from a branch. Beneath it, in looping letters: HOLLIN’S OAK — A GOOD PLACE TO LISTEN.

Main Street is four blocks of brick storefronts and dogwood trees. A diner. A hardware store. A Baptist church with a white steeple. A library with a green door. Everything is clean. Everything is open.

And nobody is talking.

A man waters his roses without a word. Two women pass each other on the sidewalk and simply nod. A boy on a bicycle rides by, and as he passes, his head turns to follow you. It keeps turning. It turns further than a boy’s head should.

Above the town, on a hill to the east, stands an oak tree so large it looks like a storm cloud rooted in the ground. Its branches are black against the orange sky. Nothing roosts in it. No birds at all.

Call for a Perception test.

• 1 success: The town is unnaturally quiet. There are no dogs barking and no radios playing.
• 3 successes: Every face on Main Street, whether at a window, on a porch, or behind a counter, is turned slightly toward the PCs. They’re watching. Not openly. Just enough.
• 5 successes: Every face is also tilted the same direction, as if something is listening through them all at once.

The Hush begins at sundown. Put the Listening Pool on the table where the players can see it. Don’t explain it yet. Let them wonder why you just dropped a bead into a bowl when someone made a joke.

The Pine Rest Motor Court

Toby’s rusted Buick is still parked outside Room 6. The manager, Delbert Pike, is Hushed. He slides a guest ledger across the counter and taps it without a sound. His eyes are wide and dark, and the whites are almost gone.

Room 6 tells the story of a man who knew he was in trouble:

• Notes taped to the mirror in Toby’s handwriting, each one shorter than the last. “Town stopped talking 6 mo. ago.” “Library lady can still talk — WHY?” “Extension Office — 1974 — W.E.B.?” “It hears thoughts.” “Stop thinking so LOUD.”
• A cassette recorder on the nightstand with the tape spun to the end. Rewinding and playing it reveals 40 minutes of Toby breathing in the dark. Then comes a soft rustle of feathers. Then Toby’s breathing stops, though the tape keeps rolling.
• A pellet on the pillow.

The Pellet

It’s the size of a man’s fist, gray and matted, like a felted ball of dust and hair. It sits dead center on the pillow, placed with care.

A Rogue Scientist, Healer, or anyone with a relevant background can identify it as an owl pellet, the indigestible remains an owl coughs back up. Pulling it apart requires a Medicine or Investigation test at 2 successes. It reveals:

• Three human teeth, molars with old silver fillings.
• Tiny bones from a human hand. The finger bones are in perfect order.
• A tight, coiled loop of magnetic tape, wound around the bones like thread around a spool.

Call for a Willpower test for Dread.

If the PCs play the tape loop, they hear Toby’s voice saying the last word he ever said aloud: “…listen…”

GM Note: Toby isn’t dead. He’s been taken up the hill and partially remade. The teeth and finger bones belonged to someone else, a victim from long ago. Hollin leaves pellets as calling cards. He’s an archivist. He likes things organized.

The Rose & Thistle Diner

Sooner or later the PCs need to eat, ask questions, or watch the town. The diner is full. Every booth holds Hushed townsfolk eating in total silence. The only sound is forks on plates.

The waitress, Bonnie Sue, writes on her order pad: “Special is meatloaf. Please don’t talk.” When she hands over the check, the back reads in shaky letters: “Library. Eula Mae. She can’t hear him.”

Skill Challenge: Reading a Silent Room
Have the PCs observe the diner. Each PC chooses an approach:

• Perception or Observation: The Hushed have small notepads, chalkboards, and pencils tucked everywhere. They’ve adapted. This has been happening a long time.
• Medicine or Empathy: If a PC can get close enough to examine a Hushed throat, perhaps by helping a choking man, they find the vocal cords gone. The tissue isn’t scarred or cut. It’s smooth and healed, as if it was never there. This needs 3 successes.
• Investigation or Networking: A wall of framed photos by the register shows town picnics going back to 1975. Look closely and in each decade the people in the photos smile with their mouths closed more often. By the 2010s, nobody’s mouth is open at all. This needs 2 successes.

If the table has been talking freely, spend 2 tokens from the Listening Pool. Every Hushed diner in the room turns their head toward the PCs at the same moment and stares. Nobody moves. Nobody gets up. They just watch until the PCs leave.

Eula Mae Crosby

The library’s green door is unlocked. Inside, among the stacks, works Eula Mae Crosby, the 70-year-old town librarian. She has been profoundly deaf since birth. That’s why she still has her voice: Hollin’s power works through hearing, and she has never heard a thing in her life.

Eula Mae speaks a little, carefully and too loudly. She’s much more comfortable with sign language or writing. She’s sharp, funny, and bone-tired. She’s been the only person in town who could still talk for six months, and she’s been talking to nobody.

She shares:

• The town began going quiet “around the time the government men came” in 1974. They built the County Agricultural Extension Office on the old Hollin family land, right at the foot of Grandmother Hill.
• Dr. Ambrose Hollin grew up here. He was a polite, odd boy who used to sit under the big oak for hours “listening to the tree.” He went off to college and came back with the government men.
• After the office closed in 1981, people started finding owl pellets on porches. Then they started keeping their voices low. Then they started keeping their mouths shut. “My mother said it was just good manners,” Eula Mae writes. “We all said that. For forty years.”
• Toby Wren came to see her. She told him about the Extension Office. He went there that night and never came back.

Eula Mae is a vital ally. See her SLIC block below. She’ll come along if asked, and she’s immune to Voice Theft. She can’t hear the Echo lures either, which makes her the one person in the party who can’t be tricked by a familiar voice.

End of Act One: As the PCs leave the library, every streetlight on Main Street flickers off, one by one, moving toward them. When the last one dies, the children’s voices begin.

Somewhere in the dark, children are singing. A playground chant, sweet and off-key:

“A wise old owl lived in an oak…”

But there are no children on the street. The voices are coming from the hill.

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Act Two: Pellets and Paper

Running time: about 60 minutes

The PCs have two leads: the abandoned Extension Office and the First Baptist Church, where Eula Mae says the Hushed gather every night now. Let the players choose the order. Both scenes feed the climax.

Scene A: The County Agricultural Extension Office

At the foot of Grandmother Hill, behind a sagging chain-link fence, squats a one-story cinderblock building with a faded sign. The paint reads HOLLIN COUNTY AG EXTENSION — SOIL & CROP SERVICES. The windows are boarded. The door is chained.

Getting In:

• Lockpicking, Mechanical Repair, or Might: 2 successes to get through the chain quietly. Forcing it loudly adds 1 token to the Listening Pool.
• Stealth: 2 successes to approach without the Hushed sentry noticing. Old Mr. Ferris stands in the weeds by the fence, staring at the building.

Inside, the front rooms are a convincing, dusty farm office with soil sample jars, crop charts, and a 1979 calendar. A Perception test at 3 successes, or a Hear It First question, reveals a draft coming from behind a filing cabinet. Behind it is a steel door marked with a faded W.E.B. emblem and the words:

STATION STRIX — MINDFOLD CIRCLE — AUTHORIZED EARS ONLY

The Records Room

Beyond the door, concrete stairs descend into a records room. Roots have punched through the ceiling like gnarled fingers. Everything is coated in a fine gray down.

Skill Challenge: The Strix Files
The PCs need 6 total successes across the group, using Research, Cryptography, Critical Reasoning, Investigation, or Experimental Research. Each PC gets one roll. They can stack with Boxcar Points. Award information as successes accumulate:

• 2 successes: Project Strix was a W.E.B. “acoustic intelligence” program. The goal was a human operative who could hear conversations through walls, across valleys, and eventually inside skulls.
• 4 successes: Dr. Hollin underwent grafting with barn owl auditory tissue, asymmetrical ear structures that pinpoint sound in three dimensions. He was also dosed with Ravenesque psychic serum tuned to the Raven’s Hollow nexus. Notes in the margin get more frantic over time: “Subject reports he cannot stop hearing.” “Subject requests silence. There is no silence.” “Subject has stopped speaking. Subject says speech is noise.”
• 6 successes: The final memo, dated 1981, orders the facility sealed and the subject “left in place for long-term passive observation.” W.E.B. never shut Hollin down. They left him there to listen. A handwritten addendum, dated just last year, reads: “Retrieval team scheduled. Asset’s collection may be of significant intelligence value.” W.E.B. is coming back for his jars.

The Reel Room

A side chamber holds a wall of reel-to-reel tape machines. They’re all running, and they’ve been running for forty years on no visible power source. Each one plays a different conversation from Hollin’s Oak. There are arguments, love-making, children saying bedtime prayers, and a man confessing to a crime nobody ever learned about.

One machine is playing a conversation the PCs had in their car on the drive into town.

Call for a Willpower test for Dread.

Encounter: The Parliament

When the PCs are deep in the records room, or immediately if the Listening Pool holds 4 or more tokens, the Parliament arrives.

You hear nothing. That’s the worst part. No footsteps. No breathing. Just a sudden awareness that the dark in the doorway has a shape, and the shape has eyes. Huge round eyes, black and wet, set in a face that’s been stretched flat and pale into a heart-shaped disc. It tilts its head. Then it tilts it further.

Two Parliament Watchers attack, plus one more per additional PC beyond two. They’re Hollin’s earliest converts, townsfolk he listened to so long that they became extensions of him. They fight silently and use the dark.

GM Note: Watchers flee if two of them drop or if someone lights a bright flare. They’re returning to report. Any Watcher that escapes adds 1 token to the Listening Pool.

Scene B: The Silent Congregation

The First Baptist Church glows from within. Every pew is full: eighty Hushed townsfolk sitting perfectly still with their faces turned upward toward the ceiling, toward the hill beyond it. No one moves. No one breathes loudly.

At the pulpit stands Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Hushed, his badge still pinned to his chest. He holds an open hymnal. Every page has been scratched out except one line, written over and over in pencil:

The more he saw the less he spoke.

What the PCs Can Learn:

• Cult/Occult Knowledge (2 successes): This is a vigil, not worship. The congregation is acting as a living antenna. Everything they see and feel in the presence of strangers flows up the hill.
• Empathy (3 successes): These people are not gone. Behind the dark eyes, they’re terrified. A Hushed woman in the back pew squeezes a PC’s hand, hard, and won’t let go.
• Perception (3 successes): Sheriff Pruitt’s hand trembles near his holster. He has a note tucked in his hatband: “Toby alive. Top of the hill. Inside the tree. Burn it.”

Complication: If the PCs speak in the church, every head in the congregation turns toward them at once. Spend 1 token for an Echo: the voice of the PC who spoke repeats their words from the steeple. Then the Hushed stand up. They won’t attack unless the PCs attack first, but they’ll follow at a distance all the way to the hill. Eighty silent people, walking slowly behind you in the dark.

That’s a Dread test.

End of Act Two: Whatever order the PCs take, end the act with the playground chant again. This time it’s louder and closer, and it includes their names:

“The less he spoke the more he heard…”

And then, in perfect imitation of each PC’s voice, one after another:

“Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?”

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Act Three: Up the Hill in the Dark

Running time: about 45 minutes

Whisperwood

Grandmother Hill is wrapped in a thick stand of hardwood the locals call Whisperwood. There’s a footpath, overgrown and treacherous, that winds a half mile up to the oak.

The trees here are wrong. Old carvings cover the bark: eyes, hundreds of them, gouged by hands over decades. Round eyes. Owl eyes. Some fresh, sap still weeping. The wind moves through the branches and it sounds, very nearly, like whispering.

Skill Challenge: The Silent Climb
The group needs 8 total successes to reach the oak. Each PC rolls once per round, choosing from the options below. Every failed roll adds 1 token to the Listening Pool. Every Snake-Eyes triggers an immediate Watcher encounter.

• Stealth: Move without snapping branches.
• Perception or Observation: Spot the path through the carved trees.
• Basic Survival or Street Survival: Keep the group together in the dark.
• Willpower: Ignore the voices calling from the trees.

PCs benefiting from The Rhyme’s Reward add +2 to every roll in this challenge. Silence is armor here.

The Voices in the Trees

During the climb, the GM should spend Listening Pool tokens freely on Echoes. Make them personal:

• A dead parent calling a PC’s childhood nickname from off the path.
• A PC’s own voice screaming for help from somewhere to the left.
• Toby Wren’s voice, weak and close: “Over here. I’m hurt. Please.”

Any PC who leaves the path to follow a voice must make a Perception test at 3 successes to realize it’s a trick before they step off a 20-foot drop into a ravine. A failure means a fall dealing 2d6 damage, plus 1 token to the pool when they cry out. Eula Mae can’t hear the Echoes. She’ll grab a PC’s sleeve and shake her head hard.

Encounter: Toby Wren

Near the summit, the PCs find Toby Wren. He’s tied to a lower branch of a lesser oak with twine, swaying gently, eyes wide open. His mouth has been stitched closed with fishing line. His face has begun to flatten. His eyes have gone almost entirely black.

He’s halfway to becoming a Watcher.

The Choice:

• Cutting the stitches needs a Medicine test at 2 successes to avoid tearing his lips. It lets Toby breathe and croak a warning: “Don’t let him hear you think. He keeps the voices in jars. Break the jars.”
• Healing or Rogue Scientist expertise needs 4 successes to recognize that the transformation can be reversed, but only if Hollin dies before dawn.
• Leaving him is cruel but quick. If the PCs abandon Toby, he’ll show up in the climax as a fully turned Watcher.

If freed, Toby can’t fight. He has 3 Hits and is weak and half-blind. He can point the way, though, and he knows one thing the PCs don’t: “He’s afraid of noise. All of it at once. He can’t filter it. It hurts him.”

That’s the trap at the heart of this adventure. Noise hurts Hollin. Noise also feeds him.

Encounter: The Parliament Hunts

Just below the summit, the remaining Watchers attack. Use one Watcher per PC, plus any that escaped in Act Two. They drop silently from the branches above. If the PCs fight loudly with gunfire, shouting, or a chainsaw, every round of noise adds tokens to the pool. Let the players feel that cost.

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Act Four: Inside the Grandmother Oak

Running time: about 45 minutes

The Tree

The oak is bigger than anything alive should be. Its trunk is wide as a farmhouse, its bark split and furrowed like the skin of something ancient. At its base, between two roots as thick as freight cars, a hollow opens like a mouth. Steps lead down. Concrete steps. And from below comes a sound you’ve been hearing all night without knowing it.

Humming. Thousands of voices, humming, very softly, the way you hum when your mouth is closed.

Station Strix: The Listening Chamber

The steps lead into a round concrete bunker, grown through with roots that have cracked the walls and wrapped the old W.E.B. equipment. The floor is inches deep in feathers and pellets.

The walls are lined floor to ceiling with shelves of glass jars. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each holds a faint, swirling silver mist. Each one hums. Each jar is labeled in neat, tiny handwriting with a name and a date.

Bonnie Sue Akers, 2026. Delbert Pike, 2026. Dale Pruitt, 2026. Marjorie Ellis, 1988.

The PCs’ names are on empty jars on the bottom shelf.

High above, in a nest of roots where the ceiling opens up into the hollow trunk, something is perched. It doesn’t move. It’s been waiting.

He is tall and thin, wrapped in a moth-eaten lab coat furred with down. His face is a pale heart-shaped disc, stretched flat, framing two enormous eyes the color of oil. His mouth has been sewn shut with something that might once have been surgical thread — sewn so long ago the skin has healed around the stitches. His head turns, slowly, all the way around, and settles on you.

He doesn’t speak. He opens his throat — the stitches hold — and from somewhere deep in his chest, your own voice comes out:

“Don’t talk when you get here.”

Call for a Willpower test for Dread. PCs with Secrets Spoken marks suffer –1 per mark on this roll.

How the Climax Works

Dr. Ambrose Hollin, the Wise Old Owl, is fully statted below. He’s dangerous in a straight fight, but the real battle is a puzzle of sound and silence.

Hollin’s Tactics:

• He opens by spending the entire Listening Pool. Steal voices first, then Echo PCs’ secrets back at them to unsettle and divide.
• He glides silently from root to root and attacks with talons from above and behind. Thanks to his Head Turn ability, he can’t be flanked.
• He speaks only through stolen voices. He uses loved ones, dead friends, and the PCs themselves. He never once uses his own voice. He doesn’t remember what it sounded like.

Hollin’s Weaknesses:

1. The Voice Jars. Smashing jars releases the stolen voices in a shrieking flood of sound. Each cluster of jars smashed counts as one action. With a Might or Combat test at 1 success, it deals 1d6 damage to Hollin that ignores his Hits Bonus and reduces his Perception by 1. Smashing a PC’s own stolen jar restores that PC’s voice instantly. Smashing jars adds 1 token to the Listening Pool every time.
2. Overwhelming Noise. If three or more PCs make loud noise in the same phase, such as gunfire, screaming, an air horn, or banging pots, Hollin must make a Willpower test at 3 successes or be Stunned and lose his next action. Every source of noise still adds tokens to the pool.
3. Fire. The oak is ancient and dry at the heart. Fire damage ignores Hollin’s Hits Bonus. Setting the tree alight makes the bunker deadly within 6 rounds: 1d6 smoke damage per round to everyone inside after round 3.

The Central Tension: The PCs must make noise to hurt him, and every bit of noise makes him stronger. Smart players will coordinate silently with notes, hand signals, and Eula Mae’s sign language. Then they’ll unleash all their noise in one devastating burst. Reward that planning lavishly.

Eula Mae’s Moment: Eula Mae is immune to Voice Theft and Echoes. Hollin cannot hear her coming in any meaningful way, because she makes no sound she can’t hear herself. She’s also the one creature in the room he can’t read, so he can’t anticipate her. If she’s present, she can smash jars without triggering the Listening Pool. Give her the spotlight. She’s waited a long time for this.

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Climax and Endings

The fight ends when Hollin reaches 0 Hits, when the oak burns, or when someone offers him something he wants more than noise.

That last option is the secret door of this adventure. Hollin is in agony. He can’t stop hearing. If a PC approaches him silently, without speaking a word, and offers him peace, he will listen. That peace might mean silence, his own death, or taking his place.

Ending One: Survival — “The Oak Comes Down”

Hollin falls or the Grandmother Oak burns. As the jars shatter or melt in the heat, thousands of voices pour up out of the hollow like a flock of startled birds. They spiral over Hollin’s Oak and find their way home.

Down in the town, the Hushed begin to speak. At first it’s croaks, then sobs, then the first words some of them have said in years. Sheriff Pruitt laughs until he cries. Bonnie Sue screams into the night just because she can.

Voices belonging to the long dead have no throats to return to. They drift up into the West Virginia sky, and for one moment, the whole valley sounds like a church choir.

Toby recovers, if he was saved. The PCs drive home with their voices intact.

The Sting: Three weeks later, a black W.E.B. van parks at the foot of Grandmother Hill. Men in hazmat suits sift the ashes for anything that still hums. One of them finds a single unbroken jar. The label reads the name of a PC.

Ending Two: Sacrifice — “Why Can’t We All”

Hollin can’t be killed in time. Maybe the PCs realize W.E.B. is coming to harvest the jars. Or maybe the thing on the perch looks at them with such exhausted grief that killing it feels like the wrong answer.

Someone has to keep the voices safe. Someone has to stay and listen so W.E.B. never gets the collection.

A PC can volunteer, or Eula Mae can. Hollin bows his head. He unpicks the stitches from his own mouth, and for the first time in forty years, in a dry, rusted whisper that is entirely his own, he says: “Thank you.” Then he dies, peacefully, in the volunteer’s arms.

If a PC takes his place, they keep their mind but not their voice. Over the coming months, they’ll release the town’s voices one by one and hold back only the dangerous ones, the secrets W.E.B. would kill for. They become the new Wise Old Owl, a guardian rather than a predator.

If Eula Mae takes the perch, it’s both beautiful and terrible. The one woman in town who could never hear becomes the keeper of every sound. “Finally,” she signs, smiling, “I get to listen.”

Ending Three: Dark Resolution — “The More He Heard”

The PCs win the fight, or think they do. Hollin collapses into the feathers. The jars go quiet. Everyone climbs out into the gray dawn, battered but alive.

On the drive home, the PC with the most Secrets Spoken marks notices they keep turning their head toward small sounds. They hear their companions’ heartbeats. They hear the radio in the next car. They hear, very faintly, what their friends are thinking.

Hollin didn’t die. He moved. He climbed into the voice he knew best.

Epilogue: A week later, Ruth Ann Delacorte’s phone rings at 3:33 in the morning. There’s silence. Then a soft hoot. Then a PC’s voice, perfectly calm:

“Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m just listening.”

GM Note: Trigger this ending if the Listening Pool still held 6 or more tokens when Hollin fell, or if the table spent the climax talking instead of planning.

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Stat Blocks

SLIC Characters

The Hushed (Townsfolk) | SLIC: 5 | Hits: 7 | Abilities: Stare Without Blinking, Silent Movement, Relay What They See | Conditions: Voiceless, Terrified Inside, Bound to the Oak

The Hushed are victims, not villains. They won’t attack unless provoked or directly commanded by Hollin. In that case, they swarm in numbers, grabbing and holding rather than striking. Killing one is a Dread test. If Hollin falls, every Hushed townsperson recovers.

Parliament Watcher | SLIC: 7 | Hits: 13 | Abilities: Silent Glide, Talon Grapple, Night Eyes | Conditions: Head Turns Too Far, Light-Shy, Extension of the Owl

Watchers are Hollin’s oldest converts, transformed over decades into flat-faced, black-eyed things with hooked fingers and feathered shoulders. They attack from above and behind. When a Watcher grapples a target, the next attack against that target gains +2. A bright flare, floodlight, or muzzle flash in close quarters forces a Willpower test. On a failure, the Watcher retreats for one phase. Movement is 9 MPH on the ground and 20 MPH gliding.

Eula Mae Crosby (Ally) | SLIC: 6 | Hits: 10 | Abilities: Town History, Sign Language, Reading Lips | Conditions: Deaf Since Birth, Stubborn as a Mule, Lonely Too Long

Eula Mae is completely immune to Voice Theft, Echoes, and any sound-based effect. Her actions never add tokens to the Listening Pool. Hollin can’t anticipate her, so her attacks against him gain +2. She isn’t a fighter, but she can swing a fire poker with surprising enthusiasm. If she dies, every PC makes a Dread test.

Major Antagonist

Dr. Ambrose Hollin, the Wise Old Owl

Core Ability	Rank
Combat	10
Agility	9
Might	7
Willpower	10+2
X-Factor	10
Magnitude	9
Toughness	8
Intelligence	10+2
Perception	10+6

Hits Score: 21 (12 Willpower + 9 Magnitude + 8 Toughness – 8)
Hits Bonus: +21, for a total of 42. The Hits Bonus does not apply to damage from shattered Voice Jars or fire.

Conditions:

• Compulsive Listener: 10
• Sworn Silence: 10
• Hoarder of Secrets: 9
• Sound-Sensitive: 8. This is a vulnerability; see Overwhelming Noise in the Act Four rules.
• Ravenesque Instability: 7
• Exhausted Beyond Words: 6

Abilities:

• Voice Theft: 10. A competing roll against the target’s Willpower. If Hollin wins, the target is Hushed. It can be triggered from the Listening Pool or used as a standard action within 30 feet.
• Mimicry of the Stolen: 10. He can speak in any voice he has ever heard. A PC who hears a loved one’s voice must make a Willpower test at 2 successes or hesitate and lose their next action.
• Psychic Eavesdrop: 9. He hears surface thoughts within the Hush. He gains +1 success on all rolls against any PC who used a telepathic power this session.
• Head Turn: 10. He can’t be flanked or surprised from behind.
• Silent Flight: 9. He glides without sound. Perception tests to track him in the dark need 3 successes.
• Talon Rake: 8. Damage 8, resolved with the standard damage and effectiveness rolls. On a devastating hit, the target bleeds for 1 Hit per phase until treated.
• Night Eyes: 10. He suffers no penalties in darkness.
• Pellet Retch: 7. Once per fight, he regurgitates a mass of bone, hair, and tape that bursts into a cloud of choking down. Everyone within 10 feet makes a Toughness test at 2 successes or loses their next action coughing.

Movement: 6 MPH on the ground, 30 MPH in flight. Inside the bunker, he glides between roots in short silent bursts.

Description: Hollin is tall, starved, and stooped in a filthy lab coat furred with gray down. His face has flattened into a pale heart-shaped disc framing two huge oil-black eyes. His mouth was stitched shut decades ago, and the skin has healed around the thread. His fingers have lengthened into hooked talons. When he turns his head, the vertebrae in his neck click like a slow clock.

Backstory: Ambrose Hollin was a quiet boy who loved sitting beneath the Grandmother Oak, listening to the wind. W.E.B.’s Mindfold Circle offered him the chance to hear everything, and he said yes. Project Strix gave him owl ears and a psychic mind tuned to the Raven’s Hollow nexus. It worked too well. He could never stop hearing. Every heartbeat, every argument, every secret thought in Hollin’s Oak poured into him for forty years. He sewed his mouth shut to add no more noise to the world. Then, starving for something to fill the silence he craved and feared at once, he began collecting voices. He tells himself he’s keeping them safe. He isn’t sure anymore.

Campaign Use: Hollin works best as a tragic monster. Play him as menacing and patient, but let the players glimpse the exhausted man underneath. If the PCs survive, W.E.B.’s interest in his voice collection makes a natural springboard into a larger Dark Evolution campaign. Somebody, somewhere, will want those jars.

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GM Tips for the Dark Whimsical Tone

Use the rhyme as a metronome. Return to “A Wise Old Owl” at the end of every act. Have it chanted by unseen children, scratched into hymnals, or whispered from the trees. Each time, the meaning should feel a little darker. By the climax, the last line should land like a threat.

Go silent at the table. This is the single most effective trick in the adventure. When the PCs enter the Hush, stop talking and pass written notes for a minute or two. Describe the diner scene on an index card. Let the players feel how loud their own voices are. Then drop a bead into the Listening Pool when someone laughs. They’ll get the message fast.

Make the Listening Pool visible. Put a bowl in the center of the table and let the players watch it fill. Don’t explain what it does at first. Fear of the unknown does more work than any rule.

Turn the cute things sour. A cartoon owl on a welcome sign. A playground chant. A sweet old librarian. A town where nobody raises their voice. Every element of Dark Whimsical horror should look charming for one beat too long before it turns.

Write down their secrets. When a player says something personal in character inside the Hush, write it down where they can see you doing it. Don’t say why. In the climax, have Hollin repeat it back to them word for word in their own voice. It’s the moment your players will talk about for years.

Let silence be heroic. Reward the players who figure out the Rhyme’s Reward. The quiet investigator who passes notes and listens should feel powerful in this story. That’s the rhyme’s real lesson, turned inside out: wisdom and horror are both born from listening.

Don’t explain everything. Leave edges unfinished. Why do the reel machines run without power? What’s in the jars with dates from before 1974? Who printed the first version of the rhyme in Hollin’s Oak? Dark Whimsical stories work best when the players drive home still wondering.

Keep it moving. This is a one-shot. If the players stall in Act Two, have the church bells ring at midnight and every Hushed person in town walk silently toward the hill. Nothing gets a table moving like eighty silent people heading in one direction.

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Bring It to Your Table

The Less He Spoke is built to run straight out of the box. Print the stat blocks, grab a bowl and some beads for the Listening Pool, and keep a stack of index cards handy for those silent scenes. Pair it with The Skinny Complete Action Edition and the Dark Evolution Pocket World, and you’ve got everything you need for one long, unsettling night.

If you run it, I want to hear how it goes. Tell me which ending your table found, who took the perch, and whose voice came over the phone at 3:33 in the morning. Keep an eye on this space for the next entry in The Dark Whimsical series. There are a lot of nursery rhymes out there, and every one of them has an underside.

Until then, keep your voices low. You never know who’s listening.

Breathe child. That’s right. There are more macabre revelations to come, but in the meantime, lean into our blog index and enjoy past perilous presentations. GeekOpera Index.