The Golden Shackle

I could go on for a few pages describing everything that was wrong with "Cowboys and Aliens" but I think it was summed up in the title sequence when the names of FIVE scriptwriters appear. For any film this is a certain guarantee of studio interference resulting in a disjointed, cliché riddled plot. Despite the interesting initial concept there is nothing new here, but the performances of Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and the always nice to see Clancy Brown might make for a worthwhile renter or a slow night on Netflix.

My major peeve is that Hollywood needs a new Alien. In the fifties and sixties we had mindless alien monsters or big headed super races or even humanoids with green blood. Now all we seem to get are piss pour Giger variations with a lot of slime effects to cover up the bad CGI. Nor can anyone give these things an ounce of credit; despite processing superior weapons, advanced technology including (I'm
assuming) an FTL drive, a penchant for genocide and the personal outlook that we are nothing more than insects, the first time the aliens are threatened they all charge out and attack like a gaggle of rabid wolverines, but with slightly less strategy.

Anyway, on the drive home my wife made a comment along the lines of "at first I thought at the bracelet made him like the Silver Surfer. He went first and picked out the victims." See how a simple twist could have made things a whole lot better? It certainly beats my idea that they we're just here to mutilate the cattle.

In honour of this gem of an idea,

Gameraid: Adventure Seed
The Golden Shackle
Either by coincidence or on a mission to find one of the missing persons, the party finds them in a region beset by a rash of mysterious disappearances. One night in a small village a thin, half starved and filthy stranger appears, obviously insane and rambling about the horrors he has seen and how everyone should flee before 'they come for you'. The man is wearing a strange golden shackle around his wrist and when a gang of local toughs try to take it off, the weak and pathetic man proceeds to beat the hell out of them.

That night, the village erupts in screams and confusion as something stalks through village, abducting people and dragging them off into the night. The party meanwhile, finds themselves battling for their lives against something they can't quite see in the dark. The next morning the man with the shackle has disappeared, but the party finds him stumbling through the wilderness, weeping and begging the party to kill him before he is forced to do it again…

There are a number of ways one could go with this… my choice would be to roll d6 twice and combine!
1-The huge pirate ship that was spotted off the coast.
2-A nearby mine was recently closed down after they broke into a massive underground cavern filled with strange ruins.
3-A man in a metal mask calling himself Prophet of the Black Circle has been going around preaching about the end of the world.
4-After a night of falling stars, strange lights have been seen in the skies over the cliffs.
5-In a nearby village that has been almost completely wiped out, one of the few survivors tells of the strange alchemist that they drove out of town for performing unspeakable experiments on stolen livestock.
6-Scholars or rangers may notice that the moon was full when the attacks first began. It is now time for the moon to wax, but instead it remains full and every night the unnatural howls coming from the deep woods are getting louder.