Lights? Camera? Action! The Motion Picture RPG
In The Beginning...
The warehouse sits quietly, nestled in the glamor and glitz of the Hollywood Hills. A worn-down, rusted, chain-link fence lined with barbed wire is all that separates the modern world from the priceless contents of the old, wooden building.
Within the warehouse's walls lie hundreds of reels of motion picture film and dozens of film props. Sealed in crates, these films have lain silent... unused for years.
Picture if you will an ordinary warehouse situated in the premier real estate of Hollywood. Uninteresting to say the least. Yet, within the walls of this warehouse are reels of film that have entertained people for ages. My name is Rod Serling. I am a writer of one of these films, "The Planet of the Apes." I also told other stories. Stories that terrify even to this day. Tales that told of a fifth dimension, one rooted in the pit of man's dreams and the pinnacle of his imagination. However, let me assure you, dear viewer, that the story that is occurring right now in the walls of this warehouse is anything but fiction. It exists in our own four dimensions, and can only be explained by the freak events of a seemingly ordinary night. I warn you, reader, if you are to venture into this warehouse, then you ought to be prepared for all that you will see, for behind its doors is no "Twilight Zone..." simply the strange events that happen every so often in human history.
The security guard paid to watch over the warehouse sleeps silently in his booth outside of the warehouse. The television next to his feet, raised high on his desk, flickers on and off, as the signal from the antenna waivers.
A worn down, 1980's pickup truck pulls into the pathway next to the security checkpoint. The front, right wheel rolls into a puddle as rain rhythmically falls on the windshield. The two men in the front seat of the truck sit, smoking cigarettes, contemplating their actions.
"Ready?" Says the man in the driver's seat.
"Ready." His companion mutters.
A portrait of two men. Species: 21st century human. Their names are unimportant, however for the purposes of this tale they will be called "Rob" and "Matt." These two men, like all men of their day and age, are seeking for wealth. Not wealth of life, love, or spirit; but, rather, wealth in the economic sense. Yet, despite their best intentions, their actions of this evening will precipitate an unexplainable series of events that will affect both the films inside the warehouse, and the world outside of it.
The men slide ski-masks over their faces. The man in the driver's seat rolls down his window and, with a flick of his fingers, sends his cigarette onto the rain-covered pavement. He heaves a revolver out of his jacket pocket and opens the door of the pickup.
As he gets out of the truck, the rain pitter-patters on his head.
He glances left and right as he approaches the door to the security checkpoint. With a well placed strike of his elbow, the glass in the door slides off of the glue holding it in place. The man jams his hand into the sarcophagal chamber. He pats the backside of the door with his hand and feels the door handle. He opens the door and slips inside the small room with the security guard. Gripping the pistol in his hand tightly, he delivers a sharp blow with the butt of the gun to the back of the security guard's head. The guard's body slumps down over the arm of his chair.
The man in the ski mask flips a switch and the metal gate slowly rattles open.
With the flip of another switch, the door to the warehouse opens.
The man gets into his pick-up truck and drives slowly in the darkness of the warehouse's interior. They drive past, and apparently don't notice, a man standing right next to the security booth.
"Imagine if you will the dimension in which you have grown accustomed to living in for your entire existence. It is a dimension of sight and a dimension of sound. Now imagine multiple dimensions laying on top of each other... co-existing to turn a phrase, like sheets on a newly made bed. The dimensions, interconnected, yet some how seperate; each unaware of the other's presence, or even existence.
The path from one dimension to the others locked, though, by forces more powerful than any we can imagine. Consider, however, the possibility that there was a key; able to unlock these boundaries and enable the holder to crossover into the other dimensions, including our own."
The man withdraws a key from his pocket.
"It is an ordinary key in may regards, much like this one, but in one given regard it is unique. For as I said, the key allows the user to undo the proverbial lock and chain and step into another dimension. But be aware, dear reader, that the key is not solid. It has no metal form and there is no lock to put it in. The lock is, like the door to my fictional "Twilight Zone," unlocked with the key of imagination.
At this point, three fictional people, characters to be precise, have, perhaps by chance, found a way to tap into the key's power.
The first is a man named Dr. Emmit L. Brown, a man in disgrace from the scientific community. A man disgraced because none of his inventions work, save one. It was a rainy night in the year of 1955 when Doctor Brown was hanging a clock in his bathroom. With one ill-placed foot, he fell and hit his head. When he woke up, he had a picture in his head. To him, the picture was of a device that could send the user backward and forward through time. It was, in reality, a way to harness the key's power.
The second is a man named Anakin Skywalker. He has learned to harness the key's energy through the sheer use of his will. He can summon objects with his mind and do, essentially, anything he wants to; simply because of the power he has harnesed using the key's power.
And lastly, the third man, named Tom Marvolo Riddle who has learned how to use the key for its true purpose - to travel from one dimension to another. Preferring the alias "Lord Voldemort," Riddle has used the power he discovered to throw his own dimension into a state of fear and panic.
Imagine if you will each man, using their power in unison, unmaking the bed that had been so diligently put together, forcing each universe together as though it had always existed in that fasion."
The man raises a finger and points into the warehouse.
"These two men are breaking into a warehouse in the Hollywood hills. A seemingly normal, if illegal occurance. Yet what they fail to realize is that the circumstances that will align, the happenstance of the universe if you will, will put them straight into events that, although they aren't, ought to be... in the Twilight Zone."
