Well, various area to explore.
You can travel to the Dreamlands: a desperate child (mother sick, dad dead) the night of Christmas remembers the happy Christmas he had a few years ago when there was a big family party. Powered by the strength of his despair and his strong dream, the block he is living in is moved to the Dreamland... as well as the investigators who were just celebrating X-mas at one friends appartment, nearby.
The kid control his dreams and could play cruel pranks on people he feels are responsible for his mom's sickness (the doctor unable to cure her), for his dad death (maybe the company who employed him and was giving him assignment far from his home)... slowly, some entities are creeping into the child's dream bubble and pray on other persons (the child is too strong to be targeted by them).
To survive, the PC's have to identify the cause, reach the kid, and convince him to "go back to sleep" to leave the Dreamland - but he is happy there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_(toy): Shoggoth-R-US...
Mysterious family disappear ? Only their cloths remains !
Mi-Go are testing a new dissolving Shoggoth to clean a small town situated above a source of rare ore needed for some uncanny purpose.
They developped a new "dormant" Shoggoth and with the help of a few cultists/human puppet, they implemented it in the nearby toy factory. The release of the mini-Shoggoth was supposed to happen only after X-mas (according to their human contact it woulde be the most suitable period to insure maximum spread), once the toys were distributed to the whole town.
(Un)fortunately, an operator brought back home a sample for his kids earlier and through some unfortunate manipulations woke up the Shoggoth (trying to micro-wave the slime, presence of strong wifi signals combined to some mineral in the kid's collection) who ate all living organic matter, then dissolved in thin air.
The new Proto-Shoggoth is asleep and should woke only through a specific signal emitted from a Mi-Go station (complexe set of wave-length and radiation). Unfortunately, it can also be awaken through a combination of more mundane items (to be determined by GM) - which happen with this family.
For the PCs (maybe a group of Delta Green agents) it is a race to find out:
- what killed the family (although the Shoggoth disappeared in thin air,it left some strange chemical traces, there is also the packaging of the toy)
- how to prevent the
Shoggo-toy to be distributed
- who is behind it (the packaging of the toy is brand new and is not find in any shop, combined with the fact that one of the parent is working in the toy factory are good clues)
- find what triggers the awakening of the Shoggo-toy
- clean the Mi-Go base with the Shoggo-toy (destroying the emitter would be a good way to delay the destruction and could be considered a marginal victory)
To add a twist: after a few days, the missing family reappears. Dissolving a whole population would only attract far too much attention to the MiGo operation. After the Shoggo-toy dissolve a family, it disappears in the underground where it slowly transforms in the family it digested. They look like perfect copy and from far acts and talks as human. However, they can only do what they were doing in the past and cannot invent or do anything else. They act like perfect "clockwork" meat-puppet.
Advantage for the PCs, the Shoggoth loose its strong digestive property and cannot revert to its more destructive form, but the meat puppet can defend themselves, according to their previous human abilities. In fact, the meat-muppet shoggoth can be killed like regular human. However as long as they are only wounded, the meat puppet are still fully functional (another clue of their inhuman nature).
Last suggestion, this year X-mas is also coinciding with a specific star alignment which will allow "
The-1000-Wishes-Man" (a incarnation of your favorite Nyarly) to be called on earth. In his incarnation, he can only act by granting wishes... The whole meaning of "be careful for what you wish" will never be as true as when "The-1000-Wishes-Man" reaches a nice, wealthy area, where a lot of powerful executives and self-made men live... And strange accidents/deaths start to happen at an accelerating rate. And because it is happening in a wealthy neighborhood, a group of police men and investigators is quickly rushed there (the PCs, who can be local officer or police investigator, coroner & cie).
By getting clues, they will find that in nearby towns a few similar incidents happened. Place on a map, those incidents make up a trail which lead to the original place of invocation of "The-1000-Wishes-Man", where they could find the place of the ritual. The sorcerer who called "The-1000-Wishes-Man" asked to be imbued with more power and The-1000-Wishes-Man possessed his body, imbuing him effectively with more power than he ever dreamed of... The sorcerer book can still be found nearby, with explanation of a ritual to call the king of the Djinns who can grant any wishes, but only one per person.
He will return home when 1000 wishes have been granted. Some stories in the book suggest that he might have cause the fall of ancient civilisations like the mythic Atlantid, the Babel tower or some suitable civilisation of GM choice.
But maybe a well crafted wish could send him back home earlier. However, it will be probably impossible to undo all the mayhem created by other wishes in the meantime.
There is one episod of Supernatural which is based on a similar plot, a magic coin giving incredible luck to his owner, but also his untimely death if he would loose the coin...
