From the ashes of Dr. Strach’s machine, a new power has risen—a terrifying force with a unified vision of conquest. The Coven is not here to fight for control; it’s here to take it. The Scream Machine is evolving, and every part is a stage in the campaign to conquer all of life and death, and soon, all creatures will fall under its domain.

 

High Priestess Deianira

The essence of High Priestess Deianira is as old as the first whisper of decay. She is a being of the end, a living embodiment of the ultimate fate of all things, and her very presence invites corruption and decline. Her name, is synonymous with endings, a title earned through eons of watching civilizations rise and crumble, and life itself gives way to the inevitable embrace of death.

 

Her primary form of manifestation is through the necrotic arts. This is a profound and intricate school of magic that goes far beyond simple necromancy. Where a common necromancer might reanimate a corpse, Deianira can warp the very fabric of life, drawing vitality from the living to fuel her own designs. Her signature black vines are not mere plants; they are living conduits of this power. They are parasites that attach themselves to the living, slowly sapping their energy, leaving behind a hollow husk. These vines are both her weapon and her eyes, a sprawling network that allows her to feel the decay of the world and to locate the places where suffering is ripe for harvesting.

 

For millennia, Deianira existed in the shadows, a specter on the fringes of reality. She did not need to act, for the world was always doing her work for her. She was content, a patient predator waiting for the perfect opportunity to fully manifest her power. She sought not to control the world, but to accelerate its decay, to bring about the final, beautiful silence of its end.

 

However, a new ambition began to stir within her. Deianira’s senses, accustomed to the slow rot of nature, were overwhelmed by the raw, chaotic energy of the Scream Machine. She saw Dr. Strach, a mortal man, who, in his unhinged quest for power, created a crucible of agony more potent than any she had ever encountered. This was a place where the living were forced into a prolonged state of despair, a continuous harvest of fear and pain. Every scream, every failed experiment, every broken mind, was a nutrient-rich offering that beckoned her closer. She began to feed on the Machine’s misery, her power swelling with each tormented soul trapped within its walls.

 

But she was still unable to manifest on the mortal plane. She needed an anchor, someone with a deep, tangible connection to the mortal world. She searched for a soul that resonated with the darkness of the Scream Machine yet possessed the power of life. Her search ended with Madame Clarise.

 

Deianira felt Clarise’s power—rooted in the very essence of life and growth—as a vibrant, humming counterpoint to her existence. She also felt the profound, all-consuming hatred that fueled Clarise’s every waking moment. Deianira saw in Clarise the perfect vessel, a being who possessed both life and a profound, vengeful desire for death. The union of these two opposing forces, she knew, would be an unholy ritual of creation and destruction. She would offer Clarise the one thing she craved above all else—the power to destroy Dr. Strach—and in return, she would gain the anchor she needed to fully manifest her will. It was a perfect exchange, a terrifying bargain that would not only end the tyrant of the Scream Machine but would also give birth to a new, unified force of unspeakable power. And so, from the shadows, Deianira reached out, a silent, black vine of promise, to an apprentice who was already lost to the darkness.

 

Madame Clarise

Madame Clarise, once the brilliant ecological scientist Dr. Clarise Hawthorne, was on a promising path, combining modern science with ancient, nature-based knowledge. She believed that the secrets to healing lay in the symbiotic relationship between living things. This was tragically cut short when she was abducted by the notorious Dr. Strach. He saw her not as a rival, but as a priceless resource to exploit for his terrifying Machine.

 

Trapped in the asylum and forced to aid in his fear experiments, Clarise’s initial purpose transformed. Driven by a desperate need to save her patients, she began to use her skills to heal their tormented minds and bodies. She hoped that if she could restore them, even temporarily, one could escape and find help. However, the Scream Machine was a malevolent entity that slowly chipped away at her sanity. Its constant, sinister whispers corrupted her noble goal. The line between healing and obsession blurred as her work devolved into a horrifying desire to modify subjects instead of repairing them.

 

She began to fuse mutilated patients with woodland creatures, using surgical procedures and druidic magic to create monstrous animal-human hybrids she called her children or pets. These creations became her twisted army, a testament to her new, sinister nature. For years, she waged a silent war against Dr. Strach, but his reign was relentless.

 

Consumed by hatred, Clarise made a terrifying pact with an ancient entity, High Priestess Deianira, who promised her the power to finally destroy Strach. She accepted, and in exchange, she pledged her own magic and soul to a sinister union. This unholy alliance granted her the ultimate power to defeat Strach, and she became a terrifying force at the bloody crossroads of life, death, and vengeance. Now, with the tyrant gone, Madame Clarise continues her twisted work as a new queen in a newly conquered domain.

The Final Showdown at the Asylum

 

Dr. Strach, the master of fear, has escaped his icy prison. As spring thawed the asylum walls, his frozen body reanimated, and he once more roamed the halls of his twisted domain. His mind, now a fractured mess of rage and vengeance, was obsessed with reclaiming his empire and taking revenge on Madame Clarise. But she was ready for him.

 

Madame Clarise had sensed his escape. With the High Priestess’s formidable power to command the supernatural, Clarise reached out with a chilling summons, carried on the autumn wind:

“He heard his call carried by the wind.
Come to us Jack, let the fun begin.
With the help of magic and hate combined
a tale of vengeance will start to unwind.
The doctor is not done; he won’t give up this fight.
But you will only be given one single light.”

 

Jack of the Lantern, the mischievous spirit of the pumpkin patch, rose from his slumber, a single, glowing light flickering in his heart. He followed the witch’s call, ready to bring terror to the asylum once again.

 

This time, the two forces would meet on the grounds of the asylum. Dr. Strach, consumed by his desire for control, was no match for the combined power of Madame Clarise, the High Priestess, and the mischievous spirit of Jack. As Jack’s lanterns cast a dim, eerie glow through the corridors, it has lit the way for Madame Clarise to enact her final revenge.

 

In a dramatic final confrontation, the three powerful beings cornered the doctor. Madame Clarise wove a powerful spell of thorny vines and roots, binding him tightly. The High Priestess, with a chilling smile, siphoned the last of his will to resist, his screams of defiance turning to whimpers. And Jack of Lantern, with a final, mischievous flicker, extinguished the last light of hope in Dr. Strach’s eyes. The doctor, now just a shell of his former self, was finally captured. His reign of terror was over.

 

Dr. Strach is no more.

 

The asylum now belongs to Madame Clarise. The evil designs of the doctor have been dismantled, and the Scream Machine has found new ways to feed. But with Dr. Strach gone, what fresh horrors will these new inhabitants unleash?

Dr. Strach, a once-respected neurosurgeon found himself shunned by the medical community after the gruesome revelation of his unethical human experimentations had come to light.

 

He had become consumed by his obsession with decoding fear in relation to the human mind. His thirst for knowledge in this realm gradually began to overshadow his life, rendering him unable to focus on anything else. Dr. Strach’s experiments reflected that thirst clearly when discovered.

 

He was dismissed immediately from his position at the nation’s leading neuroscience research facility. During the criminal investigation, the Doctor disappeared entirely from the radar of the authorities and escaped arrest…he was very busy. Refusing to be deterred, and fully determined to continue his work, Dr. Strach had no time for legal proceedings.

 

The Doctor did a bit of searching and happened upon a long abandoned hospital—an eerie, decrepit structure that exuded a sinister aura. The perfect place to start anew.

 

Dr. Strach would establish his own facility within the abandoned hospital. Armed with the expertise he’d gained from his prestigious past, and motivated by an unhinged desire to understand fear in its entirety, Dr. Strach embarked upon a perilous path building the lab that would become host to his life’s work. In order to truly fulfill his twisted ambitions, Strach set out to fill his machine with genuine stimuli.

 

Each fear required an expert, or at the very least a simulation of one. He assembled a motley crew of individuals, chosen to infuse the machine with different types of terror. Each specialist possessed a unique and unsettling expertise correlated with the phobias he found most basal to the human psyche.
When the doctor could coax them to join his efforts- he would. When he could not, he would remove the choice entirely and claim them anyway.

 

Among these experts were many skilled producers of panic. Including but not limited to Peepo, a deranged clown who manipulates phobias with malevolent glee, a rival scientist with a spectacular talent for merging science and nature, and several others who could be of incredible use to his cause.

 

Dr. Strach, restless as he was, recognized that his companions could only aid him to a limited extent. In order to understand fear, simply studying the causation was not enough. This machine would require human trials.

 

Strach’s goal had been to cultivate a waking nightmare, a terrifying trial that would test the limits of human endurance and psychology. One that gives insight into the depths of the mind, examining the fragility of sanity when confronted with the most visceral aspects of fear.

 

The machine and its growing assembly of atrocities lured test subjects from various walks of life—individuals who had innocently, unwittingly stumbled into his web of madness. The test phase is never-ending, as the machine is ever-growing and constantly hungry.

 

The machine is fed by the energy it elicits from those seeking thrills, including adrenaline junkies, explorers of the occult, and others who are drawn to the mysteries of fear. Within the chilling depths of his makeshift laboratory, Dr. Strach subjects them to a series of diabolical experiments, pushing their minds and bodies to the brink of sanity with his opus.

 

However, the more Dr. Strach uncovers, the more his own sanity crumbles beneath the weight of this obsession.