The Lamberley Terror

A modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the UK. First played 30th April 2009.

Characters:

Kevin Cooper. Ex-soldier. (Stephen R)
Claudia Henshaw. BBC World Service journalist. (Manoj A)
"Mad Frank" Nicholson. Financial consultant. (Ben F)
Christina Palmer, "security advisor". (Jon D)

---

Three months passed, during which Kevin and Frank wandered, lost in a haze of insanity, and Claudia continued her researches into Stardust Investigations, before going on a sanity-soothing holiday to the United States. The team reunited at the Stardust offices, where Haruki Maru asked them to investigate reports of unusual animal attacks in the small Sussex village of Lamberley. He suspected tabloid hyperbole, but requested that the group investigate just in case. They were also introduced to Christina Palmer, a new employee who was on her first job for the company.

The team set about researching the village, finding a small number of notable mentions through the years. The village manor house, Lamberley Hall, had a long history, including use as a prison during the Civil War, and was known as having one of the finest non-academic libraries in the country; Frank's interest was piqued by this titbit. They also discovered that there were reports of a "vampire" plaguing the village in 1896, reports somewhat similar to the latest wave of attacks, as well as sightings of a large grey canine creature across Sussex, including near Lamberley, in 1939. The investigators also got hold of a map of the village and Cooper began to plot the attacks and sightings, hoping to find a pattern; looking at the map, Frank saw what he was sure was the Yellow Sign in the shape of the village, and became quite disturbed, certain that the settlement had some connection to Hastur and the King in Yellow.

After a couple of hours putting together an inventory of investigative equipment, the team headed down to Sussex in Frank's van. Arriving at the village, they split up, with Frank and Christina going to Lamberley Hall to investigate the library, and Claudia and Kevin going to interview the victims of the attacks. At the manor, Frank and Christina considered joining an official tour of the house, but instead made their own way to the library; on the way, the young "security advisor" noticed that one of the windows had been sealed with electrical tape, and taking a closer look, noted that it had recently been forced open and the connection to the alarm system cut. In the library, Frank found a copy of The King in Yellow on one of the shelves, which he then attempted to take, drawing disapproval from the security staff. While Frank caused a distraction with his strange behaviour, Christina palmed the book (which looked like Crop Rotation in the Sixteenth Century to her) into a fold of her jacket and then left the building.

Meanwhile, the soldier and the journalist interviewed two of the recent attack victims. They assembled a rough picture of the creature, literally in Claudia's case as she got out her art materials, and also found out some local gossip, including the recent tragic death of a local girl, Lucy Elton, from some unknown ailment. They were unable to meet with the third witness/victim, so decided to return the next day, meeting up with their colleagues at the village pub, where they managed to secure a room for the night. At the pub, they compared notes, Frank displayed his find (which looked like Crop Rotation in the Sixteenth Century to everyone else), and Cooper noticed a man at the bar watching them. Heading over for a casual chat, the ex-soldier discovered that the fellow was over from the US investigating the animal attacks for his website, cryptoquest.com; he became quite interested when he discovered that the group were also on the same trail, and he and Cooper made a tentative agreement to share information.

The next day, the investigators travelled just north of the village to visit the last of the witnesses, a farmer who had seen something fast and grey bothering his sheep. His recollections backed up those of the other witnesses, and he also showed them the remains of one of his animals, which he had been keeping in order to show his insurance agents. By all appearances, the poor creature had been torn apart by something much larger and more ferocious than the local fauna. Farmer Myles also confirmed the story of Lucy Elton's death, but could not understand why the team were so interested.

Cooper sensed a connection between the attacks and the deceased Elton daughter, and suspected the father of dark dealings. The group then went to Elton's house for an interview, finding the man a distraught emotional wreck. As Claudia And Kevin sat down with Elton, Frank and Christina sneaked off to investigate his home, the former searching the kitchen and garden, while the latter looked upstairs. Christina found a large number of prescription sedatives in the bathroom, a pristine child's bedroom that had all the feel of a shrine, and a bundle of photocopied sheets in an unknown language (Frank later confirmed it as mediaeval Latin) under the bed in the master bedroom. Downstairs, Frank raided the kitchen for something edible, then wandered into the garden, discovering a heavy padlock on the shed. Curiosity got the better of the unsettled financial consultant and he managed to wrench the lock off the door before shuffling inside. It seemed like a pretty normal shed until Frank noticed an area of disturbed earth in one corner, and, getting on his knees, he dug up the ground with his bare hands. In a shallow grave Frank found Mr Twinkles, the missing cat of one of the witnesses interviewed the day before, and deciding that the dead animal was an important clue, stuffed its chewed remains into his rucksack.

The team then left Elton's home and conferred on the next course of action. With the evidence they'd found, and Cooper's dark suspicions, they decided to return and confront the man. Accusing him of corruption, sorcery and other misdeeds, the group managed to break through Elton's haze of misery and he broke down and revealed some of what had been going on, although the grisly details were far from clear. He told them that "she" had "come back" but "wasn't right" and agreed to take the investigators to her. Elton led the team to the woods just outside the village, but Cooper's new phobia of trees paralysed him, and the rest of the group had to venture forth without their most effective fighter.

In a clearing at the heart of the woods, the group discovered the secret Elton had been hiding as they saw a monstrous figure lashed to a tree with ropes. It had a vague humanoid shape, but its limbs were long and thin, its skin was grey, and its head was misshapen and distended; despite the deformities, it did have the recognisable look of a human child. By this point, Elton had collapsed to his knees, his mind gone once more, and his ramblings seemed to suggest that the creature was indeed his daughter, somehow back from the dead. The investigators decided to take both Elton and his daughter back to headquarters, but nervous of tackling the creature without sufficient combat abilities, they went to fetch the waiting Cooper. Gathering his courage, the ex-soldier put his fears aside and went into the trees to see the thing for himself.

In short order, the creature was sedated, and both it and Elton were restrained and bundled into Frank's van for the trip back to London. There they were met by Maru, who, impressed with their success, agreed to allow the team to accompany him as he took the creature to Stardust's storage facility...

---

A bit of a scrappy one this, as I'd prepared two main plots, but due to the loss of a player, I had to drop the storyline centred on his character and hastily bulk up the other to compensate. It seemed to work, although the joins were obvious from my side of the Keeper's screen. I think the players were a bit surprised by how relatively sedate the scenario was, with no major sanity loss, and the "big" monster trussed up before their arrival, and may have suspected that I was being soft on them following the harsh ending of the previous scenario; however, their success came about mainly as a result of their actions during the investigation and the order in which they did key actions. Had they done things in a different way, they were unlikely to have had such an easy ride. All that said, there were some surprises in the dropped plot, but nothing too huge. I'm not sure if the players were surprised that their request to see Stardust's storage facility was accepted, but I enjoyed seeing them be proactive in their plans, as I've been trying to steer the campaign in a more sandbox-style direction; I think we're all keen to see what happens when they get to the facility.

Why I Don't Use Published Scenarios

As we were packing up after my most recent Cthulhu game, I blurted out, for some reason I forget now, that I'm not using any pre-published materials in the campaign. Stephen asked me why, and I gave a rushed and garbled reason. Since then, I've been thinking about it a bit more, and I thought I'd put it in writing, since that's what blogs are for, after all.

I told Stephen that I don't use published Call of Cthulhu scenarios because most of them are "rubbish", and that one of the regular players has read or run most of them anyway. The latter is more or less accurate, but I at once regretted my sweeping statement about the quality of the scenarios.

A big problem with most published CoC scenarios is that they follow a pretty standard format. The players are called in, they do some investigating, then BAM! they run into some big wibbly thing from beyond space, usually a Great Old One or Outer God. Back in my first run as a CoC GM, I had one book, The Stars Are Right!, which was a bundle of six or seven adventures, all but two of which involved such large scale threats. Azathoth turns up at the end of one of them, for crying out loud! Now this mimics Lovecraft's fiction quite well, as Randolph Carter aside, he wasn't very interested in continuing characters and ongoing narratives. That's not so good for a campaign, though, especially if you want a slower, more subtle curve from blissful ignorance to full cosmic horror.

A related problem is that there is often little invention involved in the published adventures. The entities encountered are almost always straight from the rulebook or one of the stories, which is nice and authentic, but causes disappointment at the table when you go to lots of effort to describe the strange sound of flapping alien wings, just so one of the players can go "Oh, it's a byakhee; these are easy to kill!" Yes, you could change the entities encountered, but in the well-written scenarios, things are tied together in such a way that swapping Y'Golonac out for some minor servitor would make nonsense of the story, which would require a total rewrite, which would make using a published scenario pointless. As for the weaker scenarios, there's no reason to use them in the first place.

So that's why I'm writing my own scenarios for the current campaign. It means that I'm in full control of the pace of revelation, which is what CoC is about, after all. I've also tried to steer clear of using the iconic monsters, or at least to avoid using them in obvious ways, so as to keep both newcomers and veterans speculating on just what that is crawling around on the roof. All in all, it seems to be working out well so far.

All that said, it is only fair to give credit where it is due, and a lot of the published adventures are quite good. The campaigns are also, for the most part, strong pieces of work, and their pacing is much more to my liking. I don't discount their use in the future, but I can't do much with them at this point, and to be honest, I'm having lots of fun writing my own stuff.

Walk Without Rhythm

A modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the UK. First played 13th April 2009.

Characters:

Kevin Cooper. Ex-soldier. (Stephen R)
Toby Greenberg. Motorbike-riding rabbi. (Rich R)
"Mad Frank" Nicholson. Financial consultant. (Ben F)
Winston Richards. London cabbie with the gift of the gab. (Ad T)

---

Frank and Toby, undaunted by their previous experiences, returned to Stardust Investigations when the office called about a new job. There they met two new employees, an ex-soldier from Scotland, and a local cab driver, each with their own reasons to investigate the unexplained. The four quickly introduced themselves to each other, then headed in to find out more about the latest mystery.

They were introduced to two men in sharp but unfashionable suits; the pair were quite different, one short, rotund and largely silent, the other tall, slim and chatty, but there were some distinctive similarities, and the team concluded that the two were brothers. This was confirmed as the taller fellow, David Wilson, told their story. He and his brother Scott were "in the import business", he said, and they had recently come into possession of a strange statue that they were unable to sell, because it made people feel "strange". Worse, their night-time security guard, Dave, went missing a couple of days after they took delivery of the item. For various ill-explained reasons, the brothers could not go to the police, so instead approached Stardust to find out more about the statue, whether it could be sold on, and what had happened to Dave.

Arriving at the brothers' warehouse, the team discovered that the statue was in fact some kind of decorated pillar, carved with an unusual sequence of symbols, which may or may not have been a form of writing. Studying it further, they found that it was heavy, and surprisingly free of erosion and wear. Indeed, an attempt by the soldier to mark the pillar using his combat knife resulted in complete failure. Cooper also discovered a small brown stain or smudge on the pillar, and scraped off a sample for analysis at Stardust's laboratory. Meanwhile, Frank and Toby took a more scholarly approach, and after comparing notes, identified an early Mediterranean, perhaps Greek, style to the carving, although the symbols remained obscure in meaning.

On a considerably stranger note, the investigators began to notice unusual phenomena occurring around the pillar. Cooper, initially wary of radioactivity, felt a prickly itching on his back and neck, almost like sunburn, while the financial consultant and the rabbi felt as if they were being watched, a sensation that almost pushed Frank over the edge, as he began a frantic search of the warehouse, convinced that he was being followed. Pulling themselves together, the investigators stepped away from the pillar and out into the afternoon sunshine, and the eerie feelings subsided.

They decided to head over to see "Nick the Greek", the man who sold the pillar to the brothers in the first place, but found his warehouse locked up. Assuming that he'd gone home for the day, the investigators instead went to security man Dave Morris' home to look for clues. He lived in a small flat above the Dog & Bastard pub, a gloomy and forbidding place, but one in which Winston Richards felt right at home, and he soon discovered that not only did the barman have a spare key to the flat, but convinced the fellow to loan it to the investigators for a short while. Upstairs, they found the place a mess, but not unusually so. They discovered a set of football boots covered in dried mud, and deduced that Dave was a large man; they found some other information pointing to his role in a Sunday league football team, and briefly followed that lead by telephoning a couple of his team-mates, discovering that on the day he disappeared, Dave was in high spirits and seemed quite normal. The investigators also found enough personal information for Richards again to bluff his way to discovering some of Morris' medical history, including his blood type. At that point, the team decided to turn in for the day.

The next morning, Toby and Frank went to the British Museum to visit Professor James Hutchinson, an expert on early Greek carving, and showing him a series of pictures of the pillar they'd taken the day before, easily convinced the scholar to follow them back to the lock-up for a closer look. Hutchinson was quite excited by the pillar and set to immediate work analysing it.

Meanwhile, Cooper and Richards went back to Nick's warehouse, and found it still closed. Noticing a video shop directly opposite, they asked the teenager behind the counter if he'd seen anything of Nick of late, and the boy confirmed that he'd spotted him a couple of days previously, when a large man in a dark blue hooded sweatshirt had visited the warehouse. Nick took the man inside, and about ten minutes later the man left, but the boy didn't notice Nick leaving. After answering a call from Stardust HQ confirming that the stain on the pillar was blood, and that it matched Dave's type, the pair headed back across the road and forced the rear door. Inside, they were immediately assaulted by a putrid rotting smell, which got worse as they approached the main office. Covering their faces, they made a quick search for any evidence of the pillar's origins, and while they found a record of its delivery to the Wilson brothers, they found nothing about how Nick obtained it. They also noticed that one of the desks had been moved, and that there was a significant amount of dried mud on the surface, as if someone had stood on it in dirty boots...

Back at the Wilsons' Hutchinson reported the surprising news that the pillar was made of a substance he'd never encountered before in all his time working with stone. He also couldn't decipher the symbols, but confirmed that the general style of the piece was early Mediterranean. At that moment, they heard David Wilson outside, with considerable surprise in his voice, exclaim "Dave!"

Hopping up on the desk, Cooper nudged aside one of the office's ceiling tiles, and discovered a bloated and decayed body stuffed in the cavity. Assuming that they had found Nick, Cooper and Richards were deciding what to do next when Frank telephoned and told them that Dave had returned. Pausing only briefly to make an anonymous call reporting Nick's death to the police, the soldier and the cabbie jumped in the car and raced off back to the Wilsons' place.

Dave Morris shambled clumsily towards the Wilsons' warehouse, putting the investigators on guard, and to everyone's surprise engaged David Wilson in an attempt to buy the pillar. His speech was slurred, and he ignored any discussion of anything other than the item; to Greenberg's eye, Morris seemed as if he were half-asleep or even drugged. Wilson attempted to stall Morris, but the latter became more and more insistent, eventually becoming physically rough with his employer. At this point, Frank and Toby leaped into action, but were interrupted by a wail from behind, as Hutchinson came running out of the warehouse, swinging a crowbar, and with an insane gleam in his eyes!

A brawl ensued, with the professor getting in a number of heavy strikes with the crowbar, and Morris continuing to prove a threat. The timely arrival of Cooper and Richards helped to swing things back in the investigators' favour, and the scholar was subdued, but not before giving everyone a bruising. The group quickly made a plan and told Morris that they would sell the pillar to him; he immediately turned around and stumbled off, apparently to deliver the message to the "buyer". Frank set off in pursuit, while the rest of the team borrowed a rifle and a shotgun from a "special delivery" the Wilson brothers had been looking after.

Rushing after Frank, the team followed Morris back to a rough area of town, and a crumbling Victorian terraced house. Sneaking in behind Dave, the investigators started to search the building, finding nothing in the front room other than a mouldy sofa and a few pigeons; however, the smell of wet earth was strong everywhere. Greenberg felt a pressure on his mind, as he had once before in Ipswich, and began to worry as the team entered another room and found Morris meeting with a large figure in a dark blue hoodie. Sensing danger, the investigators attempted to end the meeting without conflict, but the hooded man lifted his arm to reveal that his "hand" was in fact a bundle of slugs, worms and other unsavoury creatures, the sight of which shook the team's sanity.

A fight then broke out, with Frank and Cooper opening fire on the hooded figure, and Richards attempting to subdue Dave. They discovered that whatever the thing in the hood was, it was rather resistant to firearms, with each strike spattering all kinds of nastiness against the walls, but otherwise having little effect on the thing. Then it drew back its hood, to reveal that its entire body was made up of this oozing, shifting mass of vermin, a confirmation which snapped the investigators' already battered minds. In a haze of madness, Richards snapped poor Dave's neck, and the rabbi found himself drawn to the monster, feeling some kind of kinship with it, and stumbling into Mad Frank's increasingly erratic firing line. Eventually, the monster fell, but Greenberg was badly hurt, and the entire team was insane, going their separate ways as they fled into the night.

---

An interesting session this, as I had two new players and two veterans, and the split was quite obvious. Frank and Toby were played as having some definite hangups based on their previous experiences, and even though Stephen and Ad were not new to Call of Cthulhu, they did a great job of playing their characters as being unused to such strangeness.

The two halves of the group also separated for the middle bit of the investigation, something which worried me at the time, as it's always difficult to juggle a split party, but I decided to play it on the fly as a series of mini-cliffhangers, so that when one group was just about to achieve or discover something, I'd switch to the others, and so on. I think it worked well enough, especially when things started to go wrong.

Speaking of which, the end of the scenario came as a shock, as the players all rolled quite poorly for Sanity loss, each one of them going indefinitely insane (three months for everyone except Toby Greenberg, who's out for six!). That's not something I've seen in all my years playing or running the game, even during Horror on the Orient Express. The players all approached their characters' insanity in unique and interesting ways, with the standout being Greenberg's vision of the worm-thing as some kind of symbol that God had forgiven him for the murder of a young woman in the previous scenario. I can't wait to see where the character goes now. I also heartily approve of Mad Frank's decreasing sanity manifesting as a type of Rambo-like crusade against the Mythos; I can definitely see him running into a Deep One nest wearing a belt of C4.

Fight On! #4

Fight On! is a magazine for fans of "old school" Dungeons and Dragons, presenting articles, house rules and full scenarios; there's even some campaign setting stuff in there, including a mega-dungeon presented one level per issue. There's a particular focus on Original D&D, but there are enough similarities between the various versions of the game that the contents of the magazine are useful for any edition up to 3rd, and even that's probably workable. And of course, the contents are fully compatible with newer retro-cones such as Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry.

Anyway, it's a solid magazine that's improved with every issue, and to me it feels a little bit like White Dwarf before that publication turned into a miniatures catalogue; Fight On! has that same sense of enthusiasm and creativity that made WD such fun. Like the older magazine, not every article is a winner, but there's so much content that the individual GM is bound to find something of use in its expansive 100 pages.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I have some art printed in this issue, but I'd recommend it even if I were not involved, and I've got no input into the first three issues, which are also well worth a look. You can buy it (and previous issues) in print form here, and a pdf edition will be released soon.

The Unfilmable

A modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the UK. First played 19th February 2009.

Characters:

Claudia Henshaw. BBC World Service journalist. (Manoj A)
"Mad Frank" Nicholson. Financial consultant, circling the drain. (Ben F)

---

After the horror in Ipswich, the team spent time in therapy to try and deal with what they saw. Frank and Claudia were the first to return to active duty, and were assigned to investigate a potential case of spontaneous human combustion reported by the fire investigator working out of the Blackwall station in south-east London. The pair headed over to meet with the investigator, and he took them to the scene, explaining that he wanted them to see everything for themselves before he told them what he thought was going on. The "incident" occurred the day before, in the late morning; neighbours heard a long, piercing scream from the flat in question, tried to gain entry, and upon failing, called the police, who then called the fire brigade.

Claudia and Frank entered a small flat, which showed the signs of a lonely man down on his luck. In the bedroom they discovered a notebook full of ideas, marking the flat's owner as a creative type; Claudia's knowledge of psychology led her to suggest that the individual's creativity was often frustrated. In the living room, they found a vast collection of films, mostly of the horror and suspense genres, and a small library of books on film history and theory. One section was made up of the output of one director, a Terence Masters, who Frank recognised as a fairly prolific maker of horror films in the 60's and 70's.

In the kitchen, the pair discovered a human body curled up in one corner. Although the sight and smell were disgusting, both investigators were hardened after their experiences in Ipswich, and were barely affected. The body was a shrivelled husk, apparently burned in a great heat, but there was no sign of burning anywhere else in the flat, and even the corpse's clothes were whole and undamaged. Claudia and Frank headed back out to chat to the fire investigator, who confirmed Masters' identity and their findings, and expressed his dislike for the spontaneous human combustion phenomenon; it was something they could not deny, but nor could they explain it, and his hope was that the investigators from Stardust would be able to help. He suggested that Claudia and Frank head over to the post-mortem examination, which he had booked and ready pending their investigation of the scene.

The pair then went to see the coroner, who expressed an immediate dislike for them, calling them "charlatans" and "faux psychics", but Claudia turned on the charm and went some way to softening him up. The examination revealed that despite appearances, the body was not burned at all, and rather that it had been subjected to rapid and intense desiccation; if he didn't know the body was new, the coroner would have said it was some kind of mummy pulled from an ancient tomb.

Claudia and Frank then hit the books, and their research turned up two further cases of similar deaths, both in the past year. One was an actor, and another a retired cameraman, and both had worked with Masters on an unreleased 1968 horror film called Curse of the Sign. Digging further, the pair discovered that the film had a reputation as being cursed, and that almost everyone involved in the production had died; certain deaths and accidents during the production period led to the company destroying all existing prints of the film, leading it to pass into fan legend. The investigators pulled two names from their researches: Udo Bellinger, a film enthusiast who saw the unfinished film in a pre-screening in 1968, and Belinda Irons, the lead actor in the production.

Bellinger was by now independently wealthy and spending most of his time on the renovation of the famous vintage cinema in the Hobb's End area of London. Frank became sick at discovering this, as the Hobb's End swimming pool was the scene of his encounter with some bloated malformed creature which ended with the death of his friend; the team passed by the blackened remains of the famous building on the way to the cinema, and Frank's composure was shattered. Arriving at the cinema, the pair gained an interview with Bellinger, and while Frank turned to tea and cakes to soothe his frayed nerves. Bellinger confirmed that he had seen the film, and described it as an intense and disturbing experience that he had no wish to repeat. He briefly sketched out the plot as he remembered it, but explained that many of the details were obscured in his mind.

(He describes an abbreviated version of The King in Yellow.)

Bellinger knew that Belinda Irons retired to Exmoor, where she had become a recluse due to failing mental health, or so the rumours claimed. Bellinger hadn't seen her in person for at least five years. Figuring that someone was trying to kill off anyone involved with the production of Curse of the Sign, Claudia and Frank made plans to head out to Exmoor the next day. They procured a van from Stardust, and spent the morning driving over to Exeter, where they tried to track down Irons' address. They found a rough location, but no exact address, so went to a pub in the area to find out more. Perhaps through luck, perhaps through charm, or perhaps through Frank buying and eating most of the pub's menu, the publican was amenable to the investigator's questions and confirmed that Irons lived just a few miles up the road. Claudia and Frank decided to head over in the morning, and secured a room at a local hotel.

The next day, the pair headed up to see Irons, who turned out not only to be exceedingly paranoid, but armed with a shotgun. The investigators managed to convince the ageing actress that they were of no threat to her and managed to get inside the house, where Irons provided them with tea, coffee and sandwiches, while also keeping them at a distance, shotgun loaded and at hand. During a scattered and confusing conversation, Frank and Claudia came to the conclusion that Irons had a copy of the film, but could not convince her that ownership put her life in danger. The actress became increasingly irritable, but the pair didn't want to leave quite yet, so formed a plan. Frank attempted to distract Irons, while Claudia pretended to leave, instead circling around to get into a position from which to disarm her.

Claudia leaped, and got into a struggle with Irons. The gun went off once, missing everything except the ceiling, and the two women continued to wrestle, until the second barrel fired straight into Claudia's guts, flinging her across the room. Frank entered the fray them, knocking Irons to the ground as she attempted to reload, and retrieving the weapon. Frank quickly applied first aid to Claudia's wound, going some way to stop the bleeding, then called the police and an ambulance. Then, pretending that he'd reloaded the gun, he gave it to Claudia then made a quick search of the house and found a strongbox in the attic in which, wrapped in heavy blankets and curtains, he found an old film canister containing Curse of the Sign. Also finding a small projector elsewhere in the house, Frank chucked both in the van and awaited the emergency services.

Frank and Irons were taken into custody, and Claudia was rushed to hospital. Over the next couple of days, the investigators' stories were confirmed and they were released from the enquiry, Claudia convincing the hospital that she was well enough to travel and check in for treatment at home. Instead, they returned to their hotel, set up the projector in their room, and watched the film, with Claudia making a digital copy.

(The film was a fairly faithful adaptation of The King in Yellow, and the opening credits featured the Yellow Sign, in a Thing style burn-through effect. Frank became quite affected by the viewing, and watched it a second time while Claudia retired to bed.)

Frank tried to convince Claudia to watch the film again with him, as he was certain that it contained some kind of truth, but the journalist was unconvinced; as they argued, Frank's mobile rang, and an Officer Gibson asked if the pair were available to go to Irons' house so that they could put some final details together. Sensing a trap, the pair took the film to Exeter train station and secured it in a luggage locker, while Claudia called the police station to confirm that there was in fact an Officer Gibson, and that he was involved in the investigation at Irons' house. Satisfied, they returned to the moors.

Arriving, they found a police car and a forensics van parked outside, the house lights on, and the front door ajar. Calling and knocking produced no response, and Frank became jittery, deciding to return to the van and the waiting Claudia. Just as he was opening the door, something large slammed into the side of the van, but Frank refused to look around, and jumped into the driving seat. Frank slammed the van into gear and sped down the drive, and a confusing and panicked series of events occurred. Shots rang out, Frank was hit and a number of dog-like creatures assaulted the vehicle, and while Frank crushed at least two below the wheels of the van, he eventually lost control, and it ground to a halt in the scrubland to the side of the driveway.

The pair climbed out of the van, sensing their demise at the jaws of whatever these dog things were, and were hailed by a man's voice from somewhere in the scrub; Frank recognised the voice as "Officer Gibson", but could not place its point of origin. A tense discussion followed in which it became clear that the voice wanted the film destroyed, and nothing more than that, and the investigators managed to convince him that they had the only copy and that they would be happy to have it destroyed. At this, the owner of the voice stepped out from his hiding place and introduced himself as Thomas Church. A dishevelled man with a manic look, Church seemed to be an investigator like Claudia and Frank who had been tipped over the edge by his discoveries; he was aware of Stardust Investigations, and had even heard of the incident at the Hobb's End swimming baths.

Achieving a sort of cease fire, the pair took Church to the train station, and gave him the film canister. A look of great relief passed over the man, then he took out a bottle of some sort of paraffin, poured it over himself and the film, and set himself on fire. He burned in complete silence, and by the time anyone was able to put out the flames, Thomas Church was dead. Claudia and Frank were taken in for questioning once more, but claimed they had been kidnapped at gunpoint by Church, a story supported by the illegal handgun he carried, and the CCTV footage from the train station backed their story of suicide.

The pair then returned home, shaken and disturbed yet again, and clutching Claudia's DVD copy of Curse of the Sign, unsure of whether to report it to the management at Stardust Investigations.

---

Yep, this scenario is indeed named after the movie forum at yog-sothoth.com. "The Unfilmable" was a nice fit for a story about a cursed film, so I just had to use it.
This scenario saw me use the critical wounds table from BRP for the first time. I'd been wanting to use this for a while, as the collection of mental and physical scars is part of the fun of the game for me; the CoC equivalent of experience points and +1 swords. Claudia only just survived an instant kill from the crazy lady's shotgun blast, but got away with massive organ damage instead, reducing her CON and Move by two points.

In Heaven, Everything is Fine

A modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the UK. First played 5th February 2009.

Characters:

Dewi Evans. Professional rugby player. (Tony)
Toby Greenberg. Motorbike-riding rabbi. (Rich R)
Claudia Henshaw. BBC World Service journalist. (Manoj A)
Archie "Hacker" Lang. Ex-soldier and dustman. (Stuart F)
Frank Nicholson. Financial consultant. (Ben F)

Frank had been played in a previous scenario I had run, and as a result had developed a fear of water (particularly swimming pools). The rest of the characters were new, but each had a minor experience with the Mythos.

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The characters had all responded to an advertisement for supernatural investigators posted by Stardust Investigations Ltd, based in London. They all arrived at the same time, and after a brief interlude for tea and biscuits, were introduced to the man who ran the company, a slim middle-aged Japanese fellow named Maru. He explained why they had been picked, what the job involved, and what they would get out of it; as well as financial rewards, the hope was that in discovering more about the supernatural in general, on behalf of the company, the individual investigators would come to better understand their personal experiences. All of the investigators agreed, although Evans was sceptical and Nicholson was reluctant to go any further without access to artillery. Maru stressed that the company would not assist them in any illegal acts, including the acquisition of firearms.

Their first job was to investigate a haunted flat on the Avalon housing estate in Ipswich, about two hours from London. They set about procuring ghost-hunting equipment such as cameras and night-vision gear, with Nicholson visiting libraries and bookshops to pick up anything he could find on exorcism and spirit contact, and the rabbi consulting his books for advice of exorcism. The rest of the group, armed with a list of names associated with the flat, began a ring-around. They discovered that the Avalon estate had been built on a Saxon burial site, and that a team from Cambridge University were forced to abandon their investigations of the site by Ipswich council, who wanted to build the homes as quickly as possible; the head of that dig was still annoyed by the events, even decades later, but confirmed that there was nothing unusual or untoward about the site, although his investigations were obviously incomplete.

They also spoke to some of the previous tenants. The Lund family were most helpful, describing a series of noises beginning almost immediately after they took up residence, strange smells, and most disturbing of all, finding that while asleep, they had been lifted out of their beds and moved towards the door of the flat. Another previous tenant, a somewhat famous writer, was unavailable, while the third proved to be very unhelpful, unwilling to recall her experiences in the flat. All of these tenants had lived in, and abandoned, the flat in the past six months; before that, a man named Ben Willis had lived there for years, but had disappeared without a trace, leading to the housing association attempting to find a new tenant, so far without success.

The group then headed up to the estate, finding it to be pretty typical. Claudia Henshaw documented the trip extensively with a camera, and it was through the camera's lens that she noted that the tower block containing the haunted flat seemed to be in better repair than the rest, with no obvious structural fatigue, graffiti, or other signs of urban decay. They went to the flat, finding it empty and clean, albeit with a slightly musty smell, and made a thorough investigation of its nooks and crannies. They attempted to set up their surveillance equipment, with little success at first, as none had the requisite training, and the instructions turned out to be in Korean. Eventually, by group effort and trial and error, they got their gear in place, and settled down for the night.

Almost immediately, the presence made itself known to them. The rabbi was tapped on the shoulder, only to find no one behind him, and shortly after, the team heard a slight squeaking sound coming from the bathroom. Investigating, they found that the words "GET OUT" had been written on the tiled wall in permanent marker. Greenberg was setting up an extra camera in the flat's airing/boiler cupboard when the door slammed hard on his back, leaving a nasty bruise, and Evans was hit on the shoulder by some thrown object; looking down he discovered that the object was in fact a dead, and quite decayed, pigeon. The team checked their surveillance footage and saw the writing appear on the wall, and the dead pigeon appear in mid air, but the cameras could not pick up the animating force.

Surmising that Willis was somehow still tied to the flat, the team attempted a sort of seance, setting up a rudimentary ouija board. They made contact, with the "spirit" spelling out "OPEN EYES"; the team responded to this by asking "whose eyes?". They heard squeaking again, and saw the word "YOURS" appear on the wall in front of them, again written in marker. They asked a few further questions, and eventually, the word "14E" appeared on the wall. The team were in flat 8E, and guessed that upstairs, they might find answers.

The door to 14E was opened by a twentysomething young woman, who did not look happy at being disturbed at ten at night by a bunch of strangers. Despite their eclectic appearance, the team managed to convince the woman that they were sent by the council to investigate a potential vermin problem, although Nicholson had started to become unhinged by this point, so it was considerably more difficult convincing the young lady to let them in, but succeed they did, although she warned them not to wake her baby. They discovered nothing untoward, until Nicholson saw a figure on the woman's television who did not belong in the programme she was watching; this unkempt hermit-like figure seemed to be waving directly at Frank, until the consultant touched the screen, and the man faded away.

As Frank started shouting about "the man in the telly", Henshaw tried a more forceful line of questioning and interrogated the young woman about what was going on. Meanwhile, Lang on a hunch headed to the baby's room, pickaxe in hand. The young woman threatened to call the police, and began to do so, until Nicholson tore the 'phone out of the wall. Entering the baby's room, Lang felt an immense force on his mind, pressing from the "outside", and something in him snapped. He ran screaming from the flat and into the corridor outside, on the way finding his perception of his surroundings changing from the tidy, well-managed building he saw before, to a crumbling nightmare of mould and concrete, with unnatural fleshy tentacles snaking along floor, walls and ceiling, all apparently coming from the baby's room.

The rest of the team saw the burly ex-soldier running from the room, but couldn't see what got him so riled. Evans followed Lang, while Henshaw and Greenberg went into the baby's room, and Nicholson continued to threaten the young mother. The journalist and the rabbi were suddenly overcome with a desire to protect the woman, and a chaotic struggle between the members of the group began, as Nicholson entered into a flailing fistfight with the young woman, earning himself the name "Mad Frank", and Henshaw and Greenberg tried to contain him. Outside, Lang heard footsteps echoing up the stairs, while Evans continued to try and comfort the ex-soldier; scrambling up the stairwell came a pair of emaciated figures, a woman and an old man, both emaciated and sickly-looking. Both had a sinewy, throbbing tentacle wrapped around their shoulders and neck, apparently trailing away back into the baby's room, and the tip thrust into a facial orifice; in the man's case, this was his ear, but the woman had the thing inserted into an eye socket. These two leaped to attack Lang while more footsteps could be heard below.

There followed a desperate struggle as the team found themselves fighting each other and the new arrivals. One by one, the investigators came to see the actual reality of the situation, all except Henshaw, who remained convinced that the baby needed to be saved from her apparently insane companions, and ran from the flat with it clutched in her arms. Eventually, the rugby player snatched the baby-thing from Henshaw, and Lang subdued the journalist, leaving Evans to do the final, dirty work.

With the death of the creature, the alternate reality faded away, and Henshaw saw the truth. The investigators found the rest of the building's tenants, either in their homes, or on their way up the stairs weapons in hand, all in a malnourished state, and all in some form of coma after the death of the child. Back in 8E, the team found Ben Willis, Nicholson recognising him as the man from the television, dancing and smiling madly, and apparently unaffected by the child's domination. As the tentacles infesting the building began to disintegrate into a slimy mush, the shaken team packed up and made ready to return home, with Evans in particular considerable less sceptical than before.

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This scenario had a number of inspirations. For a while, I wanted to do something with an alternate, underlying, reality like that of the Silent Hill games, but I didn't want to do exactly the same thing. I also wanted to do a classic haunted house scenario, but this group are mostly veterans, and have done The Haunting (my usual go-to for that kind of scenario), and I also wanted to put a twist on the concept. Combining the two, I came up with the idea of the "ghost" actually being a real physical being attempting to warn people, but hindered in this by being trapped in a parallel reality. The baby was partly inspired by a similar entity in a Savage Dragon comic, of all things, and is probably a Whateley-esque spawn of Hastur.

As written, the false reality created by the child could have been broken in a number of ways. Any method of altering perception would have worked, such as drug or alcohol use, and if the worst came to the worst, I had a dream sequence prepared in which massive clues would be given as to the true nature of the situation. As it was, the child's Mind Blast power snapped the mind of one character, instantly revealing the grand deception, and once it became apparent that there was literally more than meets the eye going on, the rest of the players forced their way through the "illusion" with straight POW versus POW rolls. I do think the child's POW was a bit high, which made things a bit more tricky than they should have been, particularly for the rabbi and the journalist, both with a POW of just 9; however, it did work out well this time, as Greenberg's player played him as knowing that something was not right without being able to exactly figure it out. Henshaw's complete inability to break out of the false reality provided a tense finale with her apparently doing the right thing in protecting the child from a bunch of madmen. The maternal implication (all the other investigators were male) was a happy coincidence. All that said, I think I will reduce the child's POW for future runs.