[Ghost Encounter] Flight 108

**Cinder** · 07-13-2017, 02:59 PM

A strange fog rises. Those around feel a shiver down their spine along with an unexplainable feeling of “wrongness”. Other rumors die down and all you’re able to hear are several aircraft engines drawing closer. Suddenly, they emerge from the shadows: planes, coming from many different eras and nationalities. Fighter aircrafts from WWII Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force, American and Japanese bombers from the Pacific Front and even modern jets; all reunited in a eerily silent unit that moves with perfect coordination. The planes look damaged, old and ruined but, no matter how much broken they might appear, they fly perfectly. They might be covered in bullet holes, with engines wreathed in flames and tattered wings, but that does not stop them. The nature of this apparition becomes undeniable when one manages to catch a glimpse of the pilots. The ones driving the aircrafts aren’t human, at least not anymore: they’re restless dead, corpses and skeletons with a spectral light burning in their eye sockets.

That’s how stories about sightings of Flight 108 go. Nowadays, the ghostly apparition has achieved the status of urban legend, becoming a tale that survived through time while being told from man to man. No matter how much these stories might be embellished, there’s still a frightening truth behind them.

The first sightings of Flight 108 date back to World War II, but did not stop with the end of the war. Pilots and sailors have encountered the group of spectral aircrafts across the years and, with each sighting, it seemed as if it became bigger and bigger. New planes joined the squadron, coming from all over the world. It seems as if Flight 108 is somehow bound with the sea, since it rarely appears away from it. It’s pretty much an unwritten law that it’s better to avoid speaking of Flight 108, as if doing so might summon it. The appearances of the flight are inevitably followed by death and bad luck, so the superstition surrounding it has been shaped by common sense. While many of its sightings were nothing more than lies, jokes and frauds, the people who truly have encountered Flight 108 all agree: wherever it goes, death follows. Sometimes, it’s brutally simple: it does not happen as often as tales suggest, but the aircrafts of Flight 108 are still as deadly as they were when their pilots were alive. When the ghostly squadron comes out of nowhere and unloads a rain of fire on those below, there’s not much that can be done to stop it. Few believe to what the survivors remember of the attack. These raids don’t seem to have a discernible pattern or purpose, as if Flight 108 has no allegiance whatsoever towards the living and neither orders to follow. The attacks happen randomly, bringing destruction to all sorts of targets.

Most of the times though, Flight 108 is not as overtly hostile. The ghosts appear to lonely pilots, slowly revealing more of themselves with each subsequent manifestation. When this happens, Flight 108 keeps tormenting the unfortunate man that drew it attention, haunting him until his mind breaks or, after weeks of torture, the ghosts themselves kill the pilot . No matter how much a person can run away, if Flight 108 has chosen you, there’s no place to hide. Being haunted by Flight 108 is a death sentence: the spectres will keep coming and won’t stop until their obtain the life they came for. Inevitably, when this happens, a new aircraft joins the formation in its raids, flying back into the darkness until the cycle begins again.

**Cinder** · 07-13-2017, 03:00 PM

The Truth

Flight 108 is no mere apparition. All the ghosts that are part of it where real people once and some of the planes still carry distinctive signs that make it possible to identify both the aircraft and restless shade of the pilot that drives it. And yet, the ghosts of Flight 108 defy some of the common knowledge about spectres in a way scholars of the occults can’t explain easily. First of all, Flight 108 is exceptionally mobile, appearing all over the world with zero regards to distance and time, the only constant being the proximity to the sea. Then there’s the fact that while the ghosts still show some traces of human emotions, they act more like empty automatons. They might scream, rage and even have fun with their prey but, behind this hollow facade, there’s no sign of their former personality. All one can hope to get from Flight 108 when trying to communicate is a chaotic mess of words sent through radio that make no sense whatsoever. Dates, name of places and people, numbers and old military codes that are little better than a maddening glossolalia.

The ghosts of Flight 108 appear to be completely insane but they act with a precision the best human pilots would envy. Most of those who notice how perfectly the spectral pilots maintain their formation, move and attack with eerie coordination to the point it seems to be guided by a single mind can’t imagine how close to the truth that is.

The “birth” of Flight 108 does indeed date back to World War II, but there’s no way to know where it happened. There are good odds it did on the Pacific Front, the result of battles between the Japanese and American aviation, but it might have happened elsewhere, perhaps from the fights between RAF and Luftwaffe over the English Channel or from skirmishes in the Mediterranean. What does matter are the inevitable results: death. It was during one of these battles something odd happened. Among the multitude of ghost spawned by war, few became inextricably intertwined. The crucible of fire, pain and terror twisted the echoes of death of several pilots into a single, large, and maddened patchwork of minds. As more and more people fell from the sky and plunged into the sea, the spectral conscience gained a semblance of awareness and, rising from death, became Flight 108 itself.

Flight 108 is, for lack of a better description, a gestalt entity whose actions are guided by the fragments of memories, fears and passions of its pilots. The result is inevitably chaotic, since the various ghosts lose any semblance of sanity and empathy once they become part of Flight 108. The many minds that animate it are nothing more that tattered memories howling in pain, trying to find a purpose in their death. The only common element between all of them is that they all used to be soldiers and that, in a way, still defines them.

Flight 108 patrols the oceans looking for enemies that aren’t there and missions that nobody assigned to it, listening to whatever voices are speaking louder at that moment. That’s why Flight 108 watches over and at the same time attacks ships and other aircrafts: the ghosts are still hearing the call of duty that led them to their death. Too bad that no longer makes any sense, being merely a schizophrenic mockery of their living mission.

The other occasions for which Flight 108 appears is not random either. The legion of spectres still carries a semblance of the pride and camaraderie of its members: when it manifests to a living pilot it’s because the man or woman in question has been selected according to Flight 108’s indecipherable criteria. The ghosts are trying to recruit another member for their unit, whether he likes or not. Using its power over death, Flight 108 marks the chosen pilot: it’s only a matter of time before he’s forced to confront Flight 108’s curse. One is either worn down by the curse itself or engaged in battle by Flight 108 after it decided it can no longer wait. The haunting does indeed only end with death, which is something that the voices of Flight 108 whisper in the mind of the one they choose. A pilot has only three options, all painfully clear after enduring the revelatory nightmares of many restless nights. He can die and have his ghost eternally shackled to Flight 108, an idea that’s understandably not appealing, or he can try and bring down at least one of the aircrafts of Flight 108. Not an easy feat, even for those supernaturally gifted, but ones that earns salvation and freedom. Then of course, there’s the third option: he can always kill another pilot so that his ghost might take his place. Having being paid in blood and having recruited another member, Flight 108 will disappear satisfied, leaving the murderer alone and possibly having to deal with the consequences, but alive.

**Cinder** · 07-13-2017, 03:01 PM

Reserved for Systems

**Cinder** · 07-13-2017, 03:01 PM

Reserved for Dealing with Flight 108 and Story Hooks

**Cinder** · 07-18-2017, 05:02 PM

New part is up, with some answers. Next will be the system. Nothing complex or too long, this entry is something a little Night Horrors style, but it's an idea I had in mind for years. Not even sure of the results, but sometimes you just got to experiment

**Master Aquatosic** · 07-18-2017, 06:57 PM

Question, if the stress of being haunted by Flight 108 gives you a heart attack, convinces you to kill yourself, causes you to not notice the banana peel that you slip on and break your neck, etc., do you still join the damned legion?

EDIT: or is this what you meant by "the curse"

**Cinder** · 07-18-2017, 07:16 PM

Originally posted by Master Aquatosic View Post

Question, if the stress of being haunted by Flight 108 gives you a heart attack, convinces you to kill yourself, causes you to not notice the banana peel that you slip on and break your neck, etc., do you still join the damned legion?

EDIT: or is this what you meant by "the curse"

Yup. the system part will make things clearer, but that's essentially it. Curses you with bad luck and stuff, plus the whole emotional baggage of being stalked by a a unit of ghostly war planes. If you die while they're onto you, whatever the reason, you get drafted. I'm going for old-fashioned ghost tropes on this one

EDIT: Unless you murder a fellow pilot so he/she might take your place, that is

[Ghost Encounter] Flight 108

[Ghost Encounter] Flight 108

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