Editorial note: This transcript preserves the actual case dialogue and decisions from the playtest, with light formatting and scene-direction cleanup for readability. No new plot events have been added.
Case file
- Briefing
- Surface Contact
- Investigation
- The Door Opens
- The Exchange
- Entering the Impossible Room
- Dismantling the Room
- Nowhere
- Resolution
- End State
Briefing
Thursday, 8:43 PM. The Vigil has rented two adjoining rooms at a roadside motel outside Baton Rouge. Rain rattles against the windows. On the table is a floor plan for a small suburban house belonging to David and Renee Mercer: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, living room, garage.
Yesterday afternoon, their nine-year-old daughter Emma came downstairs and asked why the man in the fourth bedroom kept asking if he could have her room. There is no fourth bedroom. Renee checked the upstairs hallway and found a door where the linen closet had always been. Behind it was an old bedroom, and a man sat on the bed. He told her, “I thought this one was empty.” Three hours later she found herself downstairs. The door was gone.
This morning David disappeared. At 6:12 PM, Renee called the Vigil after hearing her husband upstairs, moving furniture.
COLE: Family is out of the house. Local police aren’t involved yet. I’d like to keep it that way.
Lena slides photographs across the table: exterior, upstairs hallway, linen closet. One photograph shows a normal hallway, but the mirror at the far end reflects four doors where only three exist.
ELIAS: Could be an optical artifact.
VALE: It isn’t.
COLE: Mara. Before we walk into that house—anything you want to know or do?
Surface Contact
MARA: I will try to do a low impact Contact the Supernatural and see if I determine the nature of what is going on.
Rules note: Surface contact. TN 6. Resolve d12 + Supernatural Contact +2. Roll: 8 + 2 = 10. Clean success.
The motel room goes unnaturally quiet. The rain seems farther away. Mara looks at the photograph and realizes the reflected fourth door is not the real anomaly: the hallway itself is longer in the reflection. Six feet. Ten. Twenty.
The understanding arrives all at once. This is not a ghost haunting the house. Something is adding space. The bedroom is real while it exists. Whatever is inside it is making the house large enough to contain itself.
One phrase comes through with the impression: “Empty rooms are invitations.”
VALE: What is it?
MARA: It’s not just appearing in the house. It’s adding space. The room is real while it exists. And—empty rooms are invitations. I can probe for more. You know the costs…
LENA: Then David may not have left the house at all. He could be somewhere that isn’t on this drawing.
ELIAS: If it’s adding physical volume, I want measurements before and after we go in. Exterior dimensions, interior laser range, thermal, everything. If six feet appear inside without six feet appearing outside, that gives us something concrete.
VALE: Or something has a very different definition of concrete.
COLE: And the deeper version?
Mara explains that deeper contact requires offering the Hollow a meaningful personal truth. In return, the Witness receives an actionable supernatural truth. The roll does not decide whether the truth is gained; it decides what the connection costs.
COLE: We have enough to start investigating without feeding it anything yet.
LENA: We know where the phenomenon is occurring, and now we know what to look for. I’d rather earn whatever we can normally before Mara opens that door wider.
MARA: I agree. See what you can find.
Investigation
The Cell investigates without deeper contact. Lena interviews Renee and Emma. Elias measures the structure. Vale searches property records and old histories. Cole sweeps the house and marks the hallway.
LENA: I believe Renee.
Renee was physically in the house during the three missing hours. Emma independently describes the same man: late forties or early fifties, thin, gray shirt, no shoes. Emma adds that he “keeps moving his things in.” David had recently been clearing unused rooms and closets because the family was preparing to sell the house.
ELIAS: The house is getting bigger inside.
The exterior dimensions remain constant, but the upstairs hallway measures more than three feet longer than it should. The discrepancy grows during the investigation. Elias’s laser rangefinder fails; old plaster dust appears inside its sealed battery compartment.
Vale finds that the subdivision was built over former Harlowe farmland. The family farmhouse burned in 1934. Four occupants were listed. Three bodies were recovered. The fourth, Walter Harlowe, age forty-eight, was never found. In the newspaper photograph he is thin, wearing a gray work shirt, and barefoot. The article says the fire began in an upstairs bedroom, but the farmhouse records list only three bedrooms.
COLE: There’s something upstairs now.
Cole heard furniture dragging behind the linen-closet wall and a man say, “Almost ready.” The chalk marks at the ends of the hallway are farther apart than when he placed them.
EMMA: Mister Cole? He finished Daddy’s room.
Emma points directly at Mara.
EMMA: Now he says he needs one for her.
The Door Opens
MARA: What do you mean, Emma?
EMMA: The room. He said Daddy’s room is done. He said yours is next.
LENA: Did he say why?
EMMA: No. But he knows you can hear him.
VALE: Did the man say anything else?
EMMA: He said she already opened the door.
A latch turns upstairs. Elias checks the cameras. The linen closet is gone. In its place is a bedroom door standing open about six inches.
ELIAS: That wasn’t there thirty seconds ago.
VALE: It reacted to the contact.
COLE: No one goes through that door alone.
A man’s voice calls from upstairs. David.
DAVID: Mara? Please. He says you know how to get me out.
MARA: David? Why are you here?
DAVID: Because I opened it. I thought it was the closet. I went in because I heard Emma crying. She wasn’t here.
DAVID: There are rooms behind this one.
COLE: How many?
DAVID: I don’t know. He keeps making more.
DAVID: Mara… He says you already know.
The Exchange
MARA: My childhood home burned when I was 3… all of my toys and clothes and baby brother… I give the Hollow that. I’m looking for what it is and what makes it vulnerable…
The house reacts to the offered truth. Mara smells smoke from her own childhood fire: hot fabric, wet ash, burned wood, melted plastic. The Hollow recognizes what she has given it.
The truth comes back. Walter Harlowe is not the Hollow; he is what remains at its center. Trapped in the burning farmhouse, he found—or believed he found—another room where no room existed. The impossible room became refuge, then prison, then need. What remains cannot tolerate the idea of there being no place left to go.
Its nature becomes clear: the Hollow is a refuge that has forgotten the difference between sheltering someone and keeping them.
Its vulnerability is equally clear. The rooms persist only while they are accepted as rooms belonging to the house. Doors, thresholds, use, and ownership give them shape. An impossible room that is deliberately denied—emptied, opened, stripped of privacy and purpose—cannot hold itself together. Anything the Hollow has placed inside must be brought back across the threshold before the space collapses.
Rules note: Deep Witness exchange. The requested actionable truth is guaranteed. Resolve d12 + Supernatural Contact +2 vs TN 6. Roll: 6 + 2 = 8. Clean success. Mara gains 1 Resonance from the deep exchange. No Strain, Condition, or teammate exposure.
WALTER, THROUGH DAVID: You lost yours too.
The upstairs door opens all the way.
Entering the Impossible Room
MARA: I did. I lived but lost some of my life that day.
Mara motions for the others to follow and heads upstairs. Cole stays close enough to intercept anything coming through the doorway. Elias carries his equipment; Lena watches the architecture; Vale carries ritual tools and sealed relics.
The hallway is longer than before. The linen closet has become the room: old wallpaper, single bed, dresser, a window looking into darkness. David sits on the floor. Walter sits on the bed. Behind Walter is another doorway, then another room, and another, extending far beyond the house.
WALTER: You understand.
LENA: David first.
VALE: If Mara’s right, we don’t fight this place. We dismantle the idea of it.
ELIAS: Hinges. Trim. Wallboard. Maybe studs.
COLE: And we get David across before we start tearing anything apart.
WALTER: You had nowhere to go either.
DAVID: Mara, don’t let him make another one.
MARA: It’s true. I felt lost. I was lost. But life… is in progress. You have to move on. You have to. It can’t rain all the time…
Rules note: Direct opposed action against the human remnant at the center of the Hollow. Presence d10 + Read People +1. Mara rolls 10 + 1 = 11. The Hollow rolls 7. Clean win.
WALTER: I waited. I thought someone would come. Then there wasn’t anywhere else.
The bedrooms behind him shudder. Distant doorways disappear. Cole moves toward David. Walter notices but does not stop him.
VALE: Keep him with you.
ELIAS: If we’re doing this, we need to take the room apart now.
Cole pulls David across the threshold. The impossible corridor convulses. Doors slam in sequence far into the distance.
WALTER: No.
The room begins rebuilding itself: a second window, a closet, another door.
VALE: Mara. He’s giving it shape again.
WALTER: Where am I supposed to go?
Dismantling the Room
MARA: Get Walter out! Take out the new doors and windows… Hurry!
Cole grabs Walter. Distance stretches between them while neither appears to move. Lena braces Cole and helps pull.
Rules note: Coordinated physical action. Cole leads with Might d10; Lena assists +1. TN 6. Roll: 7 + 1 = 8. Clean success.
COLE: Walter. You’re leaving.
Walter is pulled across the threshold. The impossible room screams—not Walter, but the architecture itself.
Elias pries at the new door casing while Vale tears down curtains and rips away closet doors. The room rebuilds as quickly as they dismantle it.
Rules note: Elias leads with Intellect d10 + Technician +2 + Vale assistance +1, TN 8. Roll: 5 + 3 = 8. Success.
The frame comes loose. The false window is smashed inward. Behind it is bare framing and darkness. The bed folds sideways. The dresser collapses into scorched lumber.
Then the Hollow makes one final attempt. A new door forms instantly on the far wall. From behind it comes the sound of a small child crying—Mara’s little brother. The Hollow has used the truth she gave it.
WALTER: He’s still in there.
VALE: Don’t let it define the room again!
Nowhere
MARA: Leave him… this isn’t that room. This isn’t any room. This is nowhere…
Rules note: Opposed supernatural influence. Resolve d12 +2 for directly exploiting the Hollow’s discovered vulnerability. Mara rolls 12 + 2 = 14. The Hollow rolls 5. Clean win.
The crying stops instantly.
MARA: This isn’t that room.
The doorknob turns once.
MARA: This isn’t any room.
The frame separates from the wall.
MARA: This is nowhere.
The door falls backward. There is nothing behind it—only unfinished wall studs and insulation. The remaining wallpaper tears free. The ceiling ceases to define an enclosed space. Elias pulls the last trim away. Vale knocks the closet frame sideways. Cole drags the bed into the hallway. Lena pulls the scorched dresser until one leg snaps.
WALTER: There isn’t a room.
VALE: No.
Walter looks at Mara as the last impossible wall begins to disappear.
WALTER: What happens to me?
MARA: You rest, Walter. At peace.
Resolution
Walter closes his eyes. The house becomes still. No shifting walls. No stretching hallway. No doors forming where they should not be. Just rain against the windows downstairs.
WALTER: Thank you.
He becomes less present until there is no Walter. The last impossible wall collapses into ordinary framing. Elias measures the hallway: thirty-one feet, four inches. Its original length.
David is alive. Renee reaches him at the bottom of the stairs and embraces him. Emma looks up at Mara.
EMMA: Is the man gone?
VALE: Yes.
Cole unloads the sanctioned shell from the shotgun. The linen closet is a closet again.
End State
| Status | Result |
|---|---|
| Strain | 0 / 6 |
| Resonance | 1 / 6 |
| Conditions | None |
| David Mercer | Recovered alive |
| Walter Harlowe | Released / at peace |
| The Hollow | Resolved |
| Mundane combat | Avoided |
Core loop demonstrated: The Witness offered a personal truth, gained actionable supernatural truth, the Hollow used that truth to gain leverage, and the same truth became part of the final confrontation and resolution.