Although these Halloween Month games are one-shots, the players realized that there were connections in this one to the prior week's Call of Cthulhu game.
Characters
Agent Hammer, a slab of a woman with a broken nose
Agent Darling, a dapper older gentleman with slicked-back gray hair
Agent Arrow, a small woman with a narrow face and bright blue eyes
Agent Tower, a man built like he was born to play Superman
Events
The agents came into consciousness inside a four-door sedan driving down a road; the asphalt was cracked and smoke was issuing from the rents in the pavement. In their earpieces, they heard a burst of static from Control, and the only words they could make out amid the din were "seed" and the name "Morten Jaqard." They saw a sign hanging above an oncoming driveway that read "New Centralia University," so they decided that Control must have meant for them to do something at the college and pulled in.
After speaking with a man at the information booth and mentioning Morten Jaqard's name, they were given directions to the English department. In the department's main office, they found Colleen Snover, the department secretary, making copies at a Xerox machine as the fluorescent lights flickered overhead.
When they told her they were looking for Morten Jaqard, she asked them if they were fans of his--it turned out that Prof. Jaqard was an instructor of literature and creative writing, as well as a popular writer of horror and fantasy novels. Unfortunately, Prof. Jaqard didn't have an office at the main campus; his office was located "at the Madhouse"--a former asylum on the hill that had been purchased by the university and repurposed as classroom and office space.
Before departing for the Madhouse, the agents decided to go to the university library to see what Jaqard's books were all about. They found four titles listed in the old-fashioned card catalog: The Bloodstained Mother, The Hand of Niggurath, The Tower of the Thousand Young, and A Dream of the Witch-Road. Unfortunately, the books were all checked out, leaving a gap in the stacks where they should have been. A helpful passing co-ed recommended a book store on Main Street called The Black Goat; the store, she said, had plenty of signed copies of Morten Jaqard's works.
Since they still wanted to take a look at the books before delving deeper into this mystery, they drove over to The Black Goat, a small shop specializing in genre fiction. However, they noted that some of the omnipresent cracks in the road were now spitting tongues of fire. The bookstore was clean and well organized, but the decor was strange--creepy paintings, a Fiji mermaid, and a jar with a malformed fetus floating inside that seemed to move when it wasn't being directly looked at.
From examining the four titles that Jaqard had published, they learned that he wrote pulpy stories that merged horror and fantasy; his novels were stand-alone books, but they had a throughline hinting at some sort of greater eldritch influence at work. The author's photo at the back showed Morten Jaqard looking surprisingly like a big, strapping mountain man with a beard and a checkered flannel shirt. The books also shared the same lurid cover artist, a woman named Petra Sanderson.
Additionally, the agents learned a bit about the history of the Madhouse, which was initially an asylum for inebriates, but grew to house people suffering from all manner of psychological illnesses. The most infamous inmate was a man named Johnny Quint, a serial murderer who escaped the asylum before it was decommissioned--he was still at large. (Note: Johnny Quint was the character who survived last week's Call of Cthulhu scenario, albeit becoming permanently insane.)
Outside of the Black Goat, they encountered four other agents who tried to warn them off of investigating matters further. Which, of course, did not put them off. Instead, they drove to the Madhouse to look for Prof. Jaqard's office. Since no one answered their knocks and the light was switched off inside, they picked the lock and entered. They learned a few things from searching through Jaqard's things: he had a new novel coming out called Beyond the Black Goat's Woods; Jaqard was teaching a course in "The American Unheimlich"; Jaqard had been reading many articles on a small chapel, called the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken, that had been moved brick-by-brick from western Canada to the outskirts of New Centralia. Their search was interrupted by the presence of a thirty-something man in a suit jacket with leather arm patches.
The man proved to be Bill Bartlett, a grad student at New Centralia University and Jaqard's current teaching assistant. According to Bill, Prof. Jaqard had "fucked off on an unofficial sabbatical," which was something he apparently did fairly regularly. From Bill, they were able to get Jaqard's home address.
When they pulled up outside of Morten Jaqard's home, which was in a seedy section of town, they spotted someone with a flashlight poking around inside. The agents split up to cover the front and back doors, then made their way inside. The man they surprised was a knife-wielding Johnny Quint, who was obviously both insane and high on an illicit substance. They managed to talk Johnny down from attacking them; Johnny claimed to have a vendetta against Jaqard because in their teenage years he had left Johnny in a bad situation, forcing him to confront unspeakable horrors, while Jaqard saved his own skin. He also revealed that "Morten Jaqard" was not the man's real name--he was actually Gary Brown. (Note: Gary was the redneck who fled into the metal monolith in last week's Call of Cthulhu scenario!)
Johnny showed them Gary's office, where Gary had printed out more articles about the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken. He also pointed out a matchbook for a bar called the Velvet where cover artist Petra Sanderson was supposed to hand over the art for Gary's next novel. From here, the group ventured into the basement, where they found an old television and a VCR. Pressing play, they saw a few disturbing scenes from a movie called Night of the Niggurath II: Shub's Revenge. As they examined the mattress across from the television, a fresh wet stain began to spread across it and their earpieces exploded with another blast of static.
Then they heard footsteps overhead.
Creeping up the stairs, they burst in and got into a firefight with the four agents who had accosted them outside of the Black Goat. Unfortunately, Johnny Quint was killed in the gunfight, but the group only sustained minor injuries before executing their rivals.
They then drove over to the Velvet, a college dive bar decorated with a black Santa. At a booth in the back, they found Petra Sanderson drawing in a sketchbook. They attempted to grab her to stop her leaving, but she slipped by them all and exited the bar in a hurry. They were able to tail her as she drove deep into the wooded outskirts of New Centralia--to where the Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken was waiting.
Inside, they saw her running down the central aisle to where Gary stood upon a smoking altar. She pulled out a tube--holding the cover art for Beyond the Black Goat's Woods, presumably, but the agents immediately shot her, then put some bullets into Gary as well. However, Gary didn't die so easily--indeed, only Agent Arrow's bullets seemed to have any effect on him at all. He rushed Agent Darling and snapped his neck. Agent Tower grabbed the tube and emptied his clip into it--but the holes he shot into it overran with alien flesh and thin, skittering legs. The "tube" tried to run away on its own, but Agent Tower managed to wrap it in his jacket. Agent Hammer was able to pick up Gary and break his back over her knee, but Gary reached up and pushed his thumbs into the agent's eyes.
Agent Tower rushed to the door of the chapel--and found that the cracks in the world outside had widened to the point where the chapel hung over an abyss of fire. He dropped the tube into the inferno.
Agents Arrow and Tower awoke. They each lay on a reclining chair--like the sort found in a dentist's office--and were connected to various bits of eldritch machinery. They saw two other bodies reclining on other chairs, dead. Rest in peace, Agents Hammer and Darling. The CRVCIBLE agency's technicians, in their red masks and red surgical gowns, thanked them for their service in making sure that the "seed" did not reach "Morten Jaqard."
