Sapphire and Steel

[Tertius Bellamont]

Imagine a lake freezing over. The lake is time, the past set into shape, the future a mix of fluid possibility, and us, perched on the edge of the ice, where it is still so thin...

Now picture something moving under the ice, something that hates to be trapped when it can still feel the water moving.... somewhere...

Now picture a human. A human doing something wrong, a concentration of emotion, an object that forges a link to the past, and calls upon old, old echoes...

And there, where the strain is greatest... the ice begins to crack...

This old series from the 80s is fairly obscure, but it has gothicism all over it...

Two strange inhuman beings, a cold methodical man called Steel and a mystical but empathic woman named Sapphire investigate places that make your average sinkhole of evil look full of sunshine and rainbows... Places where through the trigger of human events, some far worse power has emerged, and begun to change people...

Seriously, I maintain that the creepiest thing I have even seen is the lengthy episode where they explore an abandoned train station, haunted by the spirits of those who died for pointless reasons (A soldier accidentally shot eleven minutes after the World War I armistice; Three civilians trapped in a submarine test during peacetime in 1938...), and whose rage and hatred is fuelling a dreadful whispering mass that manifests itself as a mass of sentient darkness....

For me, this was really what Ravenloft is about, just enough explanation to enjoy it, whilst really being none the wiser about the absolute truth...

And it's also a good way to show how high level characters might work in Ravenloft. After all, Sapphire can turn back time up to 24 hours, and read people's minds and work out when they are going to die with a touch; whilst Steel demonstrated extraordinary strength and a touch that could paralyze, yet they were still nearly powerless against the evils that were given shape by the trigger because each one was utterly unpredictable...

I wonder, has anyone else seen this...?