Crowdsourcing ideas

[davywavy]

If I were to say to you a horror story with the title "Murder/horror on the trans-siberian express", what would that suggest to you?

Yes, I'm on the scam for free ideas, but if I use one I get you'll get a credit.

Comments

[ddraiggwyrdd.livejournal.com]

You should read book three in the Nightwatch series by Sergei Lukyanenko -Twilight watch. Most of the last story is on that sort of theme.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

And if this were for something I'm working on right now and don't have time to read it?

[ddraiggwyrdd.livejournal.com]

ah well its a vampire going to the moon:}

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Depends on the era, but...

Vodka barons
Baga Yaga Cultists
Beard smugglers
Rocket scientists
Smuggled Sputnik parts
The last true descendant of Ghengis Khan
Putin's life coach
Putin's life couch
Missing pages from the communist manifesto

[ddraiggwyrdd.livejournal.com]

amongst other things. like the blood of twelve people and where the spells run out

[matgb]

"Monsters? But we're British".

Oh, and Telly Savalas turning up for no apparent reason other than to appeal to the US market.

[(Anonymous)]

Baron von Ungern-Sternberg! ("Kangchendzonga" natch)
Dr Ossendowski
Grand Duchess Anastasia
various escapees (Nina Berberova?)
Trotsky & his Armoured Train
The Peace & Happiness Club (aka the Anhui Clique)
The Bogd Khan mountain (what are the lamas worshipping there?)
Radola Gajda & the Czech Legion
The Bolshevik Famine of 1921 - Samara cannibals
oh and the Battle of Qingshanli (Ch'ang-chiang-hao & his bandits)

There's an insane Korean film called something like "the Good the Bad & the Weird" that involves a train I think (I was quite drunk when I saw it).

This is for period CoC right?

D

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Ghost of depressed Russian author serial-possesses passengers.

Eccentric but wealthy foreign aristocrat/businessman/dilettante/whatever, dying of seemingly natural causes, has gathered his family together one last time. A last will and testament might be in the making, so everyone is secretly excited. But why does he insist they need to be on a train to the Far East, anyway, and why do the family members start experiencing "accidents" along the way?

Train breaks down a million billion miles from anything resembling civilisation, and is immediately surrounded and/or stalked by werewolves/trolls/Mongolian used car salesmen/Baba Yaga/other. (Not too original, but could be fun.)

Plagued by terrifying dreams during the endless crawl over the Russian steppes, a nervous and emotional artist begins sketching images of what he claims to be a hideous fate, which, in a dramatically convenient turn, awaits anyone who carries on travelling aboard the train. Nobody believes him because he's clearly mental. He insists on staying aboard because he feels responsible for warning everyone, but gets increasingly frantic and weird as the journey progresses. By the time he seriously loses it, there's really nowhere to put him; the train is nowhere near civilisation.

A ragged army veteran has bought a ticket to As Far As I Can Get in order to escape a curse that seems to be trailing him. Little does he know that he carries it with him, in the form of a seemingly-innocuous memento he nicked during his last campaign.

Powerful Russian official, famous person, or other dignitary gets his/her own carriage and special service, too! Nice to be them. But their requests grow increasingly... bizarre.

Onboard spy drama over important Macguffin turns out to have an unexpected/terrifying/unusually lethal side. Various sides stumble into each other trying to figure things out. Nobody trusts anybody. The National Interest is at stake.

A greedy collector is secretly carrying away priceless antiquities obtained from Mongolia/China/obscure little indigenous Russian minority z; culturally relevant monsters give chase, wake up from their conveniently placed sarcophagi, or approach unwitting pawns in the hopes they'll get the stuff back.

The little samovars they apparently used to have on those trains don't work. (Kidding, kidding. They did and possibly do have the samovars, though.)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I have actually already used the "monster? But we're british?!" line elsewhere int eh project, almost word for word.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It is, but not the period you're thinking of :)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You're good, you know that?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well, I've got to admit I hadn't thought of that!

[(Anonymous)]

Rasputin as an unkillable villain.

H

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I freely admit that most of these are on some level based on the train functioning as a sort of isolated, wilderness-traversing spaceship for comparatively lengthy periods of time.

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

"Waiter! There's ectoplasm in my soup." or possibly Shuggoth valets..

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Wedged in a snowdrift on the endless deserted steppe is pretty much the same thing.