Two Reasons Why Call of Cthulhu is One of the Great Horror RPGs

Call of Cthulhu is one of the best horror games I've ever played, and I've played a lot of them. There are many reasons why it works great for horror, but I want to spotlight two elements that make a particular case for Call of Cthulhu as a top of the class game.

Sanity

It has been said, and rightly so, that Call of Cthulhu's Sanity system is a poor representation of actual mental illness.

Everyone who says that is correct. What they're missing is that this is a feature, not a bug.

Used liberally, Sanity loss in Call of Cthulhu is an unstoppable spiral into the abyss. Players should be incentivized to involve their character in the scenario for an important reason (stopping something awful from happening, keeping the people they love safe, etc.), but the act of involving their characters should also always put them in a position where losing precious Sanity is a preeminent threat.

The beauty of Call of Cthulhu's Sanity system is not in how it models mental illness, but rather in how it snowballs precipitously into a spiral of madness. One failed check means the next check is even more likely to fail, which means that the margin of success on the check after that is likely to be the slimmest it's been. 

Couple the viciousness of that unmitigable peril with the fact that every blown Sanity check could be an opportunity to make the current situation worse. If things go truly bad on a SAN check, it might mean briefly handing a player's character over to the Keeper's machinations and forcing them to do something that is contrary to their best interests.

And Keepers? If you get that opportunity, use it. Have the character do something that really fucks them over or makes the situation demonstrably worse.

What this means is deceptively simple: in Call of Cthulhu, even your own character is a liability.

There's also a special social effect that often occurs when the Sanity system rears its misshapen head in Call of Cthulhu. Sanity loss seldom spreads itself evenly across a group of characters; some characters get hit hard, while others remain largely unscathed. This creates a tension within the group between players who want to play it safer (they're watching their character's SAN score plummeting toward permanent insanity) and those who want to explore the scenario more cavalierly (their character is mostly unharmed by the horrors encountered thus far, so they see room for further error without consequences). 

So long as that tension remains at the table between the characters, and doesn't spill over to the players themselves, it makes for a wonderful push-and-pull of anxiety and dread that really enhances the game's atmosphere of horror.

The Character Sheet

At the side, you can see the skill list that takes up the majority of a Call of Cthulhu character sheet. It almost looks like a tax form, doesn't it? There sure are a lot of skills in this game.

They won't save you.

Ideally, there comes a point in a Call of Cthulhu scenario where a player desperately looks to all the skills listed on their sheet and has a horrifying realization: there is nothing there that can help them.

I've never seen a better encapsulation of the futility of human animal come face to face with eldritch horrors than that.

It's the theme, isn't it? The sum of human ability, the skillset that has allowed mankind to flourish on Earth, all that hard-won specialized knowledge and mastery--all of it is ultimately worthless when confronting things the human mind is not equipped to comprehend.

Now, do I think that is an intentional design choice on the part of Call of Cthulhu's authors? Of course not; the skill list in Call of Cthulhu is obviously an iteration of RuneQuest's rules updated for a modern setting. But as an unintentional facet of the game--it's utterly delicious, a nightmarish serendipity. 

The Horror at Hickory Park

I broke one of my own rules: I ran a Call of Cthulhu game set in the modern era, instead of using the 1920s or the Victoria era. In this game, the characters graduated from high school in 1995. That summer, on the Fourth of July, they went camping in Hickory Park with their friend Kim. Kim died on that trip, and her death was ruled an accidental drowning.

Although the players didn't know this about the other players' characters, each character had a memory of being the one who killed Kim. 

The present year is 2005, ten years after the tragedy. Each of the characters received a blackmail letter threatening to expose their secrets if they didn't bring $10,000 to the park on the anniversary of Kim's death. 

Characters

Dan, NYSEG accountant

Mickey, comic shop owner

Jason, journalist

Ruth Ann, yoga instructor and art therapist

Events

The group arrived at Hickory Park in two vehicles: Mickey's Ford Transit van and Ruth Ann's 70s AMC Hornet with a deer painted on the hood. At the gates of the park, they spoke to a park ranger whose nametag disconcertingly read "Kim." Kim explained that there would be fireworks later that night, a family friendly movie at the park's drive-in theater, and that they had accommodated the group's request for a campsite at a remove from the other campers. The booking had been apparently made over the phone by Jason, though he denied making it.

As they set up their tents at the campsite, Mickey was blasting a cd of Led Zeppelin's 4 on his boombox--until it started playing Nirvana's "Come As You Are," their friend Kim's favorite song. They stopped the cd player, started it again, but could not get it to play "Come As You Are" again; the song simply wasn't on the cd.

The group left their campsite to see what was going on at the beach. The beach was full of families, teenagers, and middle-aged people looking to cut loose on the holiday; they passed folks stacking firewood in the firepit for a party on the beach later. They decided to rent a canoe from the pier, where old men were fishing, and row around the river to see what was what. However, before they all set off in a canoe, Jason said he left something at camp. He told the rest of the group he would catch up to them later.

While canoeing on the river, the rest of the group saw workers setting up fireworks on Hiawatha Island. Sharp-eyed Dan also spotted a river cave on the isle, so they rowed for it and dragged their canoe up the rocky beach. They discovered a few strange things inside the cave, such as a shrine to their friend Kim (complete with framed yearbook photo), a mural depicting six people wearing furs and metal masks about to sacrifice a young woman lying in the snow (the young woman had an uncanny resemblance to Kim), and a tin mask and hand-crafted knife (that bore a resemblance to those in the mural).

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Jason searched everyone's tents and found their stashed weapons and hidden cash. The jig was up--he rightly assumed that every member of the group was being blackmailed, even if they had denied it earlier. 

When he made his way to the island in his own canoe, he caught up with the group just as they were examining a strange white globe hanging from the ceiling of a cavern by what looked to be a rope of flesh. The globe was covered with a lattice of some sort, and the chamber itself was frosted over despite the fact that it was a hot summer day. As they began to leave the chamber, they heard an unearthly howl. Ruth Ann panicked at the sound, drew her gun, and shot the orb.

When it exploded, it generated enough force to propel the group against the walls of the cave at speed. They all lost consciousness.

As they awoke, they realized that the world was not as they had left it. Hiawatha Island was piled high with snow and the Susquehanna was partially iced over. The gray clouds above threatened snow. They dug their canoes out of the snow and made their way back to the campground, but when they reached the beach they saw that all the celebrants who had been alive when they set out were now frozen-solid corpses. The cars in the parking lot were also mangled beyond repair.

They quickly made their way to their campsite, but trudging through the snow made them realize that they would soon need cold-weather gear if they wanted to survive the unnatural winter that had descended around them. They found their campsite destroyed as if an explosion had centered on it--the trees around it were bent backwards, their tents were shredded, their belongings scattered, and all the cash they had brought was strewn about.

Desperate for warmer clothing, they headed over to the camp's general store. The door was open, though they did knock over a bucket full of water and a mop as they entered. They found cold-weather parkas and boots lined up in the back of the shop--almost as if someone was expecting a sudden, violent turn in the weather. Within the shop they also found a dead man, his body evidencing multiple recent stab wounds. 

The movement of someone crossing the window caught their eye and they moved to lock the front door. Whoever it was pleaded with them to open the door to save them from the cold, but when they risked a look out a window they saw that the would-be intruder was clad in furs and was wearing a tin mask. They quietly exited out the back instead.

As they plodded near the playground, on their way to the house on the hill, they saw that there were children playing on the swings and teeter-totters. The kids were also clad in furs, and some of the group caught a snippet of their singsong: "Wind walker, wind walker, wendigo! Wind walker, wind walker, where'd Kim go?"

They entered the house through its unlocked back door. Inside, they could hear a rhythmic rocking sound coming from the stairs leading to the second story. The group paused too long in the hallway, riven by indecision; they heard a window shatter in a nearby room and the sound of something large trying to push its way into the house. The group opened the door of the room to see what they were up against: the creature was four-armed, covered in shaggy fur, and its monstrous head devolved into a giant curling horn.

Mickey and Dan both made a break for it, running back outside. Unfortunately, the creature easily caught up to them and messily dismembered them.

Back in the house, Ruth Ann and Jason ascended to the second floor. Unfortunately, they never made it to the origin of the rhythmic sound they heard; the monster squeezed up the stairs and into the second-floor hallway, effectively cutting off their escape route. Ruth Ann unloaded her pistol at it, but to no avail. The monster killed her first. Jason tried to ready a can of bug spray and a lighter to use as a makeshift flamethrower, but--the eldritch horror tore through him as well.

The last image we imagine in this scenario was the can of bug spray rolling down the stairs.

The headline in the Press & Sun Bulletin the next day reported that many died during the "freak storm" that darkened the Fourth of July, but no one would ever truly understand--the Horror at Hickory Park.

Grog of Cthulhu

We are talking about Call of Cthulhu on my discord and I am such a grog when it comes to that game. I have zero interest in running any variant where you have government backing or special powers. You're going to play a law clerk who dies horribly. That's where the fun is! Everything else is pale imitation!

Speaking of pale imitations, I don't really see the point of all the Cthulhu games that aren't Call of Cthulhu. People sure seem to collect them, but they don't seem to actually ever play them. Frankly, Call of Cthulhu just about has that market cornered in ways that its imitators don't even attempt to compete against. System aside, it has a ton of great adventures, and the not-Call of Cthulhus don't. Call of Cthulhu also has some of the best supplements in the role-playing industry, but again, its direct competitors simply do not bring that heat to the table.

Trail of Cthulhu comes the closest to being worthwhile, but even that seems like a game trying to solve a problem (dead-end mysteries) from the wrong side of the issue. Fix that in scenario design, not within the system, you nerds. 

My groggiest Call of Cthulhu opinion? I think the 1920s is the best setting for it, hands down.

Fascinations of the Flesh

I like to run a few horror one-shots in October when I'm able--baring illness like the one I had last year that derailed my plans! For the following one-shot, I offered the players their pick from a bunch of pregens; all they knew about the game in advance was that a) it was going to be a horror game b) the premise was that they would be playing the cast and crew of a horror film called Fascinations of the Flesh that was being filmed at a historic castle in the Swiss Alps and c) they would have a brief description of their characters' abilities and their dark secret.

They did not have character sheets for their characters. They did not know what game system we would be using. And most importantly, they did not know that the scenario was taking place in the world of Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Characters

Aurelia Swann, fx artist

Maurice Ivanov, drug dealer

Vincento Lombardi, actor

Roland Schrader, camera operator

Quentin Markov, producer

Events

We opened with the group traveling in Quentin's car, winding their way up the mountain to Kargen Castle, where Yann Cramling's Fascinations of the Flesh was being filmed. Cramling was well known for his erotic Euro Gothic films, but an indiscretion of some sort--no one could agree as to what it was--had marred his reputation, so Fascinations of the Flesh was to be his comeback film. 

Oddly, when they arrived at the castle, they didn't see anyone milling about despite the fact that a number of other vehicles were parked at the side of the fortress. The castle's main doors were out of reach behind a lowered portcullis. Embedded into the stone of the wall beside the portcullis was a brass plate bearing a strange design. After examining the plate, it was determined that it had four quadrant pieces that could be moved and a dial that could be turned in the center. After fiddling with the plate, the portcullis raised--and they heard the tolling of a distant, ominous bell.

Again, they did not see or hear anyone within the castle, even though they kept calling out hoping for an answer. They did managed to locate the castle chapel; the room was initially awash in gem-like blue and red tones from the light filtering in through the chapel's stained glass windows. Strangely, there was no cross on or near the altar. The altar was made of stone and, upon further inspection, they saw that there was another brass plate embedded into its surface. This plate had a large central circle that could be turned. Once manipulated, the circle slid upward as a cylinder, rotated, and descended back into place with a loud click. The room was immediately plunged into darkness as if the sun outside had been extinguished. 

The group rushed to look out into the courtyard to see what was going on, but they found that the world outside had been plunged into the darkest night. Despite the darkness, they perceived a beam that was darker than the gloom around them that swept the grounds at regular intervals. The beam's origin proved to be a massive octahedron on the horizon that rotated in place. 

While they were looking at the shape, they also noticed that blue light was now filtering from the mortar between the bricks of the castle's walls. A section of the wall opened like a door, from which emerged a humanoid figure. Their skin was so white that it appeared to be tinged blue. The skin of its cheeks had been peeled downward and pinned in place with iron keys. Its black leather skirt was splayed to reveal the mutilation that sat where its genitals should have been. At its belt was a heavy ring of medieval-looking keys, a curved knife, and an instrument that resembled a hacksaw.  

The creature introduced itself as the Chatelaine. It explained that it was an explorer "in the further reaches of pain and pleasure" and that their interacts with the brass plates in the castle had summoned it. Once summoned, it regarded all within the castle to have requested that it take them to "the Labyrinth" so that they too could experiment with the extremity of sensation. It told them they had four hours until they could be claimed; until that time, they were free to spend their time however they wished.

It then stepped aside.

They opted to spend their time searching the rest of Kargen Castle in hopes of finding a means of escaping the Chatelaine. In one room, the discovered a film projector--which they would return to later. For now, they wanted to return to the courtyard and explore the doors they had passed there. Much to their distress, they saw that there was now a large smear of blood across the courtyard's grass leading from the stables to the castle's surrounding wall. They were reluctant to enter the stables, but when they did they found a pile of fur and skin in each stall--it was as if the horses inside had been skinned and their bones and meat had been taken away.

They then located the room that Yann Cramling had been occupying. Aside from his cot and a pile of Gothic novels, they saw that he had not yet finished the script for Fascinations of the Flesh; the final scene was missing from the manuscript. They also located a number of film reels, but the third reel was missing. Finding that reel, and watching it on the projector previously located, now became a priority. 

Ascending the castle's tallest tower, they found another brass plate embedded into the wall at the top. When its moving pieces were manipulated, a chain ending in a barbed hook shot out and injured Aurelia. Tucked within a crack in the wall was a page torn from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Attached to the page was a post-it note on which someone had written a speculation that the scene where the three brides of Dracula menace Jonathan Harker was based on an encounter with three "cenobites."

In another room, the group found a member of the crew who had chosen to hang herself from the rafters rather than be taken by the Chatelaine. At her feet was a dropped crucifix necklace and a suicide note. 

When they explored the upper floors of the castle, they reached a level that should not have existed given what they knew about Kargen Castle's layout. In one room of the mysterious level they uncovered the missing third reel of film. They also found another reel that revealed Roland's dark secret: he had been party to filming a real snuff scene.

While moving a collection of detritus out of a room so they could reach the door beyond, someone cut their hand--this would become important later. In the chamber beyond, they found the body of a woman, the skin of her face flayed back to reveal a hideous grin, who had been nailed to the surface of a table. They quickly found another body; this one had been opened from sternum to pubis. 

When they attempted to return to the lower level, they found a figure standing between them and the stairs. The figure was human, but their skin had been removed and although their body glistened with blood, they did not seem to have enough meat to be complete. They recognized the person's voice as that of Yann Cramling; he told them that the blood spilled clearing the room had allowed him to escape the Labyrinth--but he needed more blood to fully rebuild his body. Unwilling to give up their blood without a fight, they attacked him. He slashed a few of them with a razorblade, but ultimately they were able to destroy his body. 

Watching the third reel made them uncannily aware that it was footage that documented their every move and every encounter since arriving at Kargen Castle.

With their time running out, Roland had an idea he wanted to try: since the script they had found was incomplete, perhaps writing a final scene could warp the reality of their situation and allow for them to leave Kargen Castle? The Chatelaine now slowly made its way down the hall to the room they had huddled up in. Unfortunately, writing their own final scene had no effect. Roland attempted to bargain with the Chatelaine, offering himself as a candidate for cenobite-dom. The Chatelaine was not interested in what was offered; hooked chains shot from the darkness, stringing Roland up, suspending him in the air, before rending him apart. 

Quentin was the next to be caught by the cenobite's chains; his neck was wrenched backwards by a hook through his lip, killing him. 

Vincento slammed the door shut and the remaining three members of the group waited.

Time passed, and nothing happed. They peeked out into the corridor, but the Chatelaine was gone. All three ran to the courtyard and main gates. 

Unfortunately, they found the bloody bodies of the skinned horses guarding the gate. Screaming the Lord’s Prayer, Vincento sacrificed himself to the monstrous horses to give Aurelia and Maurice time to slip through the gate. The last thing they heard was the sound of a hoof caving in Vincento's handsome face.

Once past the gate, Aurelia and Maurice, both heavily injured and teetering on the verge of insanity, found that the world was once again sunny. They could see nothing unusual in the courtyard of Kargen Castle--even Vincento's corpse was gone. They commandeered Quentin's car and sped away into what remained of the day--forever changed, forever marked.

"Uncle Sam Sends His Regards"

Here's what happened in the third session of Mike Royal's Pulp Cthulhu game:

Our next stop in the South Seas was the decaying colonial isle of St. Peters. Our captain, H. H. Humphreys, sent us on an unusual errand: we were to go to shore with a cardboard box and deliver it to a man named Mr. Lao. We were explicitly told not to look at the item in the box.

Of course, we looked in the box.

Inside was a stone idol that we all found quite disturbing. (Read: immediate Sanity loss.) However, our attempt to offload the idol on Mr. Lao was unsuccessful; we were informed that Mr. Lao "fell down the Stairs," meaning that he took a self-directed tumble down an infamous part of the island behind the French tower. We also learned from a salty dog of a sailor that the idol was connected to a maritime cult of ancient origins. Furthermore, we heard rumors of a mysterious location known as the Isle de Cranios.

We wanted to take a look at the tower under control of the French authorities for ourselves. When we spoke to the French soldiers outside, they were friendly and cordial. Our meeting with Captain Rochelle, the island's governor, went a bit more strangely. When we showed him the idol, he immediately commandeered it and declared that it had been stolen from a French museum and needed to be returned. Instead of fighting to keep ahold of our property--especially since French soldiers were filing into the room--we decided to hide out in the nearby cemetery to watch and see where Captain Rochelle took the idol.

Most of us hid behind some tombstones while we kept watch on the tower, but a few of our group decided to explore the church presiding over the burial grounds. They found the priest bleeding from empty eye sockets, gibbering something to the effect that it was "too late to stop what was coming."

When Captain Rochelle and his men exited the tower, they did so in ritualistic garb. They had the idol with them, along with a number of zombie-like men whose eyes glowed green. We followed them to where they had a number of motor boats moored. They took off into the swamps, and we took the two boats they left behind and gave chase.

Two of our party stopped to examine a strange green lantern and were assaulted by what were either the walking dead or men in trances. They had to beat a hasty retreat.

The rest of us kept pace as we shadowed the boats...until it was clear that they planned to jump ship for a larger vessel and take the idol to some unwholesome location. We rammed Captain Rochelle's boat with out own, bellowing "Uncle Sam sends his regards." A gunfight broke out, but we sent Rochelle and his men down to Davy Jones's locker. We recovered the idol and...well, that's where we ended the session.

Escape From the Isle of White Apes

What follows is my fragmentary recollection of what went down in the second session of Mike Royal's Pulp Cthulhu game.

When we last left our heroes, they were descending into the stygian abyss beneath a mysterious ruined temple on an island that seemed curiously out-of-time. We dodged a number of white ape servitors and determined that the area below the temple was some kind of arcane scientific facility.

We chanced upon a fiendish reptile man who appeared to be some sort of doctor--well, he was performing vivisection on a white ape at any rate. Our attempts to parlay with the reptile man proved ineffective, which ultimately resulted in a brutal melee in which we executed said reptile man and performed a mercy killing on the white ape. Negotiations breaking down and setting the stage for carnage would largely be the running theme of our attempt to get to the bottom of things on the island.

We found glass-like pipes filled with magma that seemed to be powering the eldritch machinery within the facility. We attempted to destroy the power source and necessary machinery with some well-placed explosives, but unfortunately the pipes proved impervious to our incendiaries. However, the explosion did cause chaos within the facility; white apes were running to and fro attempting to put out fires and clear the mess.

When we found plinths that held a massive army of reptile men, each frozen out of phase in a temporal shift, we knew that we couldn't leave without foiling the alien threat. The machines at work were bringing the army into the present--we had to stop the plot before earth was overrun by an implacable, scaly menace.

Our resolve led to a desperate assault on a control center housed within an underearth watch tower. Several of us were injured in the firefight, but we managed to kill the white ape soldiers guarding the control panel. We caused more destruction to foil the machinery, piled the corpses of white apes in front of the door to slow anyone who tried to correct the damage, and fled for our lives. We had another tense fight on the way out as we tried to gain control of an elevator to the surface, but no white apes could stop us. 

The volcano was poised to erupt and the island was shaking as we made our way back to our exploratory vessel. Once we boarded we discovered something uncanny: although our ordeal had lasted hours, the crew reported that we were only gone about twenty minutes.

Nazi Submarines and Reptile Men

We played our first session of Mike Royal's Pulp Cthulhu game last Friday. I thought I'd do a weekly write up of our adventures, at least until we all die and/or go insane, but it turns out that my notes were pretty shitty. I'll try to get the highlights down for future reference, though:

We are in the South Seas on an expedition to explore a strange temple on what is believed to be a currently uninhabited island. Before we got to the island, we spotted a drowned man floating nearby. However, when we brought the body aboard, it turned out not to be a human being at all--it was a white ape of a sort never before documented. The white ape was wearing an unusual headband, the purpose of which struck us as perhaps ritualistic. Also, the white ape wasn't actually dead, which I discovered firsthand when it sprang up and attacked my character. A combination of fisticuffs and gunfire brought it down.

With the ape problem settled, we took rowboats from our ship to the island. On the way, we found a wrecked submarine with a strange symbol on its side. (That symbol: a swastika.) We decided to take a detour and explore the submarine. At first it appeared that the submarine was abandoned, but we found a number of skeletons inside--the remains of the crew. Also, it was conspicuous that the technology level of the submarine was higher than anything we were currently aware of in our world. The truth of what was going on hit home when a newspaper (in German) was found and translated: according to the date on the newspaper, the submarine was from the future.

We also found a book written in an unrecognizable language. I'm sure taking that won't come back to bite us on the ass later on.

When we finally reached the island, we found ourselves following a golden metal road. We spotted (and hid from) more white apes gathered together in what appeared to be a hunting party. These apes were also wearing headbands like the one on the ape we killed previous. (We suspect that the headbands may be used to control the apes, but we could be barking up the wrong tree with that.) 

We found a field of giant petrified squid; the squid were bearing runes or sigils of some sort. (They weren't swastikas, at least.) We also stumbled upon a field of dead bodies in what appeared to be, judging by the debris, the aftermath of a zeppelin crash. Each of the bodies was wearing an alien medallion. When the medallions were removed from the bodies, they ceased to be of human appearance--the medallions were disguising the fact that the corpses before us were all reptilian humanoids!

When we finally arrived at the temple, we watched the white apes enter. However, when we entered, they were nowhere to be seen. However, we did find a lever that caused part of the floor to begin to descend into the darkness as a sort of elevator. We will find out what lurks in the stygian abyss when we pick up the game later this week.

Dead Light

Our month of horror one-shots continued with "Dead Light," an adventure for Call of Cthulhu. This session was fun because we got to catch up with the characters from our Call of Cthulhu campaign from earlier in the year, plus we got to know a new character who joined the group of investigators for this outing. 

I ran this particular adventure on Friday the 13th, which was particularly apt as the monster at the heart of this scenario is a bit like if Jason were a floating cloud of mercury that was emitting a baleful light. Also, like a Friday the 13th movie, this scenario had a body count.

People say that you can't do horror in rpgs because the players never really experience fear, but if the players decide to bail on a scenario because they're afraid of what will happen to their characters if they press on--I totally think that counts. Which is exactly what happened here.

The Characters

Sirus Mean, former boxer and hobo

Leslie Cowell, antiques dealer

Hazel Murphy, flapper

Tony Tunacelli, wiseguy

Kunihiko Takeuchi, professor of folklore

Events

The investigators had assembled again because a psychic medium called "Madame Zatarsky" was holding seances that were garnering a lot of attention in Arkham. However, the group suspected that Madame Zatarsky was a fraud who was preying upon the grieving. They had managed to secure an invite to one of Madame Zatarsky's seances and were currently en route. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain as they headed north, and the storm behind them looked even worse. Hazel was at the wheel. Suddenly, a pale figure loomed into view on the road. Hazel spun the wheel, but she clipped the person.

The car was now stuck in the ruts of its skid. Hazel and Leslie jumped out of the car, getting drenched in the process, and found that the figure was a girl in her twenties. The woman was wearing a thin dress, hardly reasonable clothes for the heavy rain pelting down. She also wore a strange necklace, the pendant of was a golden, "foreign" coin. Most importantly, the girl was unconscious. She murmured something about her grandfather and "the light." They bundled the woman into the car, got the vehicle unstuck, and continued up the road to find help.

They drove as fast as they dared considering the conditions of the road and eventually saw lights in the distance. The lights belonged to the Orchard Run Diner and the gas station next door. A cattle truck was stranded diagonally across the road, its driver side door still gaping open. The investigators carried the woman into the diner. Inside the diner was a teenaged waitress named Mary, an elderly couple called Winifred and Teddy, and a farmer with a big beard named Jake. The farmer looked terrified; his hands were shaking, causing coffee to slosh from the sides of his mug.

They attempted to give the young woman first aid, determining that nothing was broken and she probably didn't have any internal injuries. She did have some bruises and cuts, but they suspected that they were older wounds. While they worked, Jake claimed that his truck had been run off the road by a "strange cloud" that looked like a floating clot of mercury that was giving off an intense and eerie white light. Sensing that the supernatural had once again reared its ugly head, Tony went out to the car and came back with the group's collection of firearms--and a few sticks of dynamite. 

Leslie moved Jake's truck out of the road while Kunihiko went next door to the gas station to call for an ambulance. Inside the gas station was a mustachioed man named Sam, who owned both the gas station and the dinner. Sam told Kunihiko that there was a retired doctor nearby named Dr. Webb and got him the number. Predictably, the phoneline was out due to the storm. No help was coming.

Meanwhile, back in the diner the group was beginning to become suspicious of Mary. Mary kept looking at the clock and was relieved to find out that the group weren't cops when Tony started handing out firearms to his friends. When questioned, Mary explained that she was just anxious about her boyfriend, who was supposed to pick her up from the diner. Sam came in from the gas station to check on the situation. He immediately recognized the unconscious girl as Emilia Webb, granddaughter of the doctor he had tried to put Kunihiko in touch with. 

At this point, Tony was feeling the unavoidable call of nature. He was told that the bathroom was only accessibly by leaving the safety of the diner and going around the corner. He didn't have to go alone, however, as Teddy piped up that he also needed to go. At the bathroom, Tony let the elderly man go first, but when it seemed to be taking a long time he peaked his head in and saw a pile of ashes in front of the urinal--with Teddy nowhere to be seen. Tony was pretty sure that Teddy had been reduced to ashes by something.

Back in the diner, Emilia was finally roused from unconsciousness. Unfortunately, she didn't remember what happened at her grandfather's house or why she had been running through the rain in the road. The group spotted an intense light coming from the windows of the gas station, so Leslie, Tony, and Hazel went to investigate. 

However, as they got closer to the gas station they could see that an oval shape in the door was boiling away and the wood of the door was smoking. Hazel found a stick and managed to poke a hole in the melting portion of the door. They couldn't see anything through the hole due to all the light pouring out of it; then, an illuminated silvery fluid began to run from the hole. The investigators turned tail and ran back to the diner.

The group watched in horror as the fluid coalesced into a cloud of shining fluid that began to float through the air toward the diner. Some of the group panicked at the sight of it; Sirus ran to the kitchen and contemplated fleeing through the back door, Hazel began screaming, and Tony moved to confront the cloud with a rifle. The rest of the people inside the diner also didn't fare well. Sam passed out, Jake cowered in the corner, Winifred hid under a table, and Mary fled through the kitchen door and ran off into the woods.

Tony exited the diner for his last stand. He shot the approaching cloud, causing a tiny portion of it to dissipate, but it was soon on him--entering his body through his eyes and mouth. Tony seemed fine, but the knowledge that the cloud was somewhere inside of him was extremely disturbing. The rest of the group locked Tony out of the diner, but Tony accepted his fate. He sat in Jake's truck and experimented with using fire to get the cloud entity to exit his body.

Light began to stream from from Tony's eyes and mouth. He felt extremely cold, as if his very core was freezing solid. The light emanating from Tony grew brighter until all the other investigators could see in the truck's cab was blinding brightness. When the light receded, Tony had been reduced to ash and the glowing cloud was again gently floating toward the diner.

The group sped into action. They got everyone present to leave out the back door, into the storm, and then turned all the diner's gas burners on to high. Most of the group fled as well, planning to cut around the building to Hazel's car. Sirus stayed behind to plant dynamite and throw a lighter into the volatile gas once the cloud had entered the diner. He jumped clear just as the diner exploded in a fiery conflagration. Sirus was picked up by Hazel in the car. They drove away, but in the rearview mirror they could see the luminous cloud rise from the wreckage.

History almost repeated itself, as Mary darted into the road as they drove off--but this time they didn't hit the girl in the road. They did bring Emilia with them, but even when she hysterically pleaded to be let out or taken to her grandfather, they flatly refused. They chose to take their chances with the storm rather than solve the mystery of the cloud. 

Tony's death and the fire that consumed the diner and gas station would later be reported in the newspapers as a gangland hit or a revenge killing in the criminal underworld. The continuing unexplained disappearances in the area, each accompanied by a strange pile of ash found near the victim's last known whereabouts, would never be explained.

Call of Cthulhu and the House Rule Rubric

There are many ways to judge whether a role-playing game is "good." I've talked to indie gamers who define "good games" as the ones that reliably preproduce a specific gaming experience without fail no matter who is playing. I've met OSR guys who define "good games" as ones that stick to Gary's vision of how play is supposed to proceed. I've chatted with casual gamers who define "good games" as having rules that "get out of the way" and let them get on with having fun.

Here's a different rubric: a "good game" is one that inspires a minimal amount of house rules. In this case "good" means the game feels complete and comprehensive for what it attempts to do. It neither has too much nor too little, and it works as intended. 

(Note: I'm not adopting this rubric as the one true lens through which to judge games and define fun. It's a single possible rubric, and it's obviously one with limited utility. But it does have a certain elegance to it.)

By this proposed rubric, Call of Cthulhu is a great game. I'm never really tempted to monkey with the rules. At all. I just don't see anywhere in the game's rules where I could intervene with an innovation of my own that would improve the experience.

As much as I think the small changes present in Call of Cthulhu's 7th edition are nice additions, I also think it's entirely reasonable to play an older edition without those changes. They're nice little flourishes, but I don't think it would even occur to me to create them as house rules on my own.

I'm not sure there's many other games that fulfill the terms of this particular rubric quite as well as Call of Cthulhu.

The Darkness Beneath the Hill

"Oh, I'll run a Call of Cthulhu one-shot," I thought. "It'll be fun, just a little taste of Cthulhu and we'll move on to something else." Well, below is the recap of our fifth session. We were all having such a good time that the one-shot grew into a mini campaign. Here's how it all wrapped up. What follows is a write up of "The Darkness Beneath the Hill," the last remaining adventure we hadn't played in the book Doors to Darkness. If you plan on playing through the adventure, skip this recap! Spoilers ahead.

The Characters

Sirus Mean, former boxer and hobo

Leslie Cowell, antiques dealer

Hazel Murphy, flapper

Tony Tunacelli, wiseguy

Events

While the Arkham Historical Society was holding their weekly meeting, they received a phone call from a man named J. H. Winscott. (Sirus recognized the name: he knew that Winscott was a writer whose lurid tales frequently appeared in the pulp magazines he favored as entertainment.) Winscott introduced himself and explained that he had recently inherited a house in Providence, Rhode Island. He related that during the restoration of the house, a tunnel was discovered in the basement. At first he assumed that the tunnel was part of the old sewer system, but he had begun to wonder if the tunnel was part of the slave smuggling operation always rumored to have taken place in Providence in the Colonial era. 

As a New England historical society, Winscott thought they might be interested in traveling to Providence to help document the discovery. He said that even though the Arkham Historical Society operated a state away, they came highly recommended. When asked who had recommended them, Winscott said that he had run into a man named Larry Croswell at the Athenaeum who put him on to the Arkham Historical Society. This shocked the group, as they had seen Larry's death firsthand.

Despite their trepidation, they agreed to travel to Providence and help document the tunnel under Winscott's house. When they arrived, Winscott explained what little he knew about Providence's role in the triangular trade. Then, it was time for a preliminary look at the tunnel. From the excavation hole, they could see that the old brickwork tunnel eventually turned to a more roughhewn tunnel at either end. One end proved to be blocked by collapsed stone. The investigators found a pile of human bones while exploring the other end of the tunnel. Some of the skeletal remains still had Colonial-era shackles around their wrists and the remaining fabric seemed to be from the same period. It was also bloodstained.

They also found a further tunnel branching off the main one; this tunnel sloped downward into darkness. The group decided to regroup and come back the next day to delve into the tunnel in earnest, a proposition that Winscott readily agreed to. In the meantime, the investigators headed to the Athenaeum. Hazel charmed a librarian into leaving the library's subscription book where they could take a look at it. Sure enough, Larry Croswell had signed the book, but the group knew that his signature did not match what they saw before them.

They also obtained the purported address of this "Larry Croswell." The house turned out to be a half-burned down wreck. The investigators decided to stake out the house. Once night had fallen, they spotted a hooded figure moving around inside the house--someone they hadn't see approach the house. The group stealthily entered the house, but did not find the person. However, they did find a letter left behind by the figure. The letter read: 

Dear Arkham Historical Society,

You have already begun The Process. You have reached The Epiphany. You have opened The Portal. You have received The Gift. Come forth, and experience The Ascension.

Larry Croswell

The next morning, the investigators returned to Winscott's home, only to find that the front door was already open. There was no sign of Winscott in the upper floors, but they did find a cup of lukewarm coffee by the entrance to the tunnel and the butt of one of his Turkish cigarettes near the pile of bones. They ventured into the downward sloping tunnel, hoping to find Winscott. One thing they noticed as they proceeded through the rougher sections of winding tunnel was that the walls were riddled with smaller tunnels--too small for a human being to traverse. They also discovered that the walls deeper in the tunnel system had patches of luminescent lichen clinging to them. Still, they chose to keep their flashlights on for maximum illumination. 

Several unsettling things occurred while they explored. The found further skeletal remains, but they did not belong to human beings. They were certainly human-like, but too small to be human. Worse yet, they had been gnawed upon by something larger than conventional vermin. They also heard inhuman whispering coming from some of the narrower tunnels. They also found a chamber etched with images of serpent-like bipeds worshiping an enormous snake with a white crescent decorating its brow.

The tunnel they were following culminated in a pit leading further down into the depths. The investigators tied a rope to a stalagmite to repel down. Leslie was the first to descend. However, something happened and Leslie found himself pitching headfirst into the darkness. The rest of the group actually saw what had happened: while Leslie was climbing down, a pale white hand emerged from one of the small tunnels. The hand was holding a tomahawk made of bone, which it used to sever Leslie's rope! Leslie was badly injured in the fall. His compatriots tied their own ropes and climbed down to help him without incident. 

Exploring further, they happened upon two of the pale, degenerate creatures living within the tunnel complex. The creatures were human-like, but unnaturally pallid and small. The two creatures they stumbled upon were busy fighting each other. The investigators watched in horror as one slew the other and began cannibalizing its remains. The group edged around the feeding monster. They discovered more of the creatures tending a vast garden of mushrooms in a further cavern, but those creatures showed little interest in the interlopers as they gathered fungus in small baskets.

They also discovered a chamber with a massive statue of a serpent, in front of which was a bloodstained altar. They refused to go further into that chamber.

Their exploration of the tunnels culminated in the discovery of a strange laboratory deep within the complex. A hooded man had his back to them as he worked with the chemicals, alembics, and alien machinery strewn about a scarred table. In an alcove, another man lay sleeping on a pile of furs; his back was also turned to the party. Tony managed to duck into a hiding place, but the man noticed the rest of the group. He turned around to address them--he had the face of Larry Croswell!

"Larry" told them that their encounters with the supernatural had brought them to the attention of certain parts of "the cosmic consciousness." The creature admitted that he had used Winscott and his discovery of the tunnel to lure the investigators to this spot. When challenged with the supposition that he wasn't really Larry Croswell, the creature admitted to the ruse and pulled the skin away from his face, revealing a squamous, serpent-like face beneath the fleshy mask. 

The creature offered to show them something miraculous. The investigators hesitantly agreed. The creature walked over to the man on the furs, pulled the chain attached to the man's collar, and bid him rise; the man was Winscott, gagged and bound with an iron collar. The serpentman brought Winscott and the investigators into a chamber where leathery sacs hung from the ceiling. Each sac was filled with liquid and a dark shape lurking within. 

(Tony remained hidden and followed silently.)

The serpentman told the investigators that they too could be ensconced in one of the sacs; doing so, he said, would plug them in to the cosmic consciousness and grant them a heightened understanding of all the horrors they had hitherto experienced. They might also change into new forms and gain access to strange sorceries--this was The Ascension promised in the letter that the creature had left for them.

The group contemplated whether to accept the serpentman's proposition--perhaps the stars had aligned to bring them to this point. Hazel made up their minds for them as she leapt forward and stabbed the serpentman with her switchblade. The serpentman retaliated with a curved knife of his own, but he was soon put down when the rest of the group (including the hidden Tony) opened fire on him. 

Winscott was released from the collar. The group returned to the serpentman's laboratory. Winscott told them that he had seen the serpentman walk through one of the walls and reappear hours later. They figured out that touching a series of carvings on the wall in a certain sequence made a portal appear. Each of them walked through the wall in turn.

Winscott traversed the door to find himself in one of his favorite European resorts.

Tony emerged in an Italian restaurant in New York City where the mafia was known to hold court.

Leslie appeared in the tunnel by a wall they had determined was near the river. He lit a stick of dynamite and ran for it. The resulting explosion flooded the tunnels, hopefully killing whatever else was lairing within it.

Leslie ran out of the house and met Hazel, who had emerged at the front of Winscott's house.

Sirus found himself in a trainyard. He hopped a train, hobo style, and felt relief at getting out of town...until a fellow hobo in his car scurried out of the darkness and asked, "Tell me, brother, have you see the Yellow Sign?"

Servants of the Lake

I ran another session of Call of Cthulhu, starring the same characters who survived the previous three scenarios. This time they got a relaxing lakeside vacation. Just kidding; this is Call of Cthulhu--horrible things were happening at the lake. What follows is a write up of "Servants of the Lake," one of the adventures included in the book Doors to Darkness. If you plan on playing through the adventure, skip this recap! Spoilers ahead.

The Characters

Sirus Mean, former boxer and hobo

Leslie Cowell, antiques dealer

Hazel Murphy, flapper

Tony Tunacelli, wiseguy

Events

The members of the Arkham Historical Society were contacted by Prof. Richard Ware, whom they had gotten to examine the strange black substance being peddled as a drug in their last investigation. This time it was Ware who had a favor to ask. Convinced that the historical society's members were accustomed to delving into mysteries, Ware wanted them to track down his stepson, James Frazer, who had gone missing. Ware's gut told him that something strange was afoot, something that conventional private detectives wouldn't be able to handle.

Nine days earlier, James had dropped out of Miskatonic University against his parents wishes to go see his sweetheart in Kingsport. The last time Ware had heard from James was a phone call that James made while on route to Kingsport. James claimed to be stopping for the night at a motel between Arkham and his destination. Ware gave them a photograph of James with his physical description, a description of his car, and his car's license plate number written on the back.

Leslie and Hazel visited Travis Bryce, James's former roommate at Miskatonic. Bryce told them that he and James weren't close, and that James spent a lot of his time talking to Emily on the phone. James had packed up most of his belongings; it was clear he wasn't planning on coming back. They also called Emily, who seemed legitimately distraught that James had disappeared. 

Consulting a map revealed that if James had taken the most direct route from Arkham to Kingsport, the only place he could have stopped for the night was the Squatters Lake Motel. Hazel used her charm to get a man at the library to do some research for her--he returned with a book that related the local history of Squatters Lake: colonists abandoned their settlement in the area due to poor fishing and hunting, and the settlement was later taken over by vagrants, escaped slaves, and army deserters who gave the area its name. Their encampment was eventually flooded out and was now abandoned.

The group drove out to Squatters Lake and easily found the motel. The motel was certainly out of the way, and interestingly was built on stilts--presumably in case the lake flooded again. Instead of checking in right away, they pulled their car onto the dirt track that wound around the lake and headed north. 

On the way, they spotted tire tracks that ended at the lake's edge. As someone involved in the criminal underworld, Tony was fairly sure this was the tell-tale sign of a car having been pushed into the lake to get rid of a body. Hazel volunteered to swim into the lake to see if she could locate a vehicle down there, but there was an oily substance mixed with its water than hampered her visibility. She also realized that the lake was extraordinarily deep and any car would be resting farther down than she dared to venture.

Eventually they came to the ruins of the settlement they had read about. Sirus and Tony both saw a pale, naked man slip behind a ruined wall. Hoping to catch him, they split up and approached the structure from different sides. Unfortunately, Sirus felt the earth give way beneath his feet and plummeted down into the settlement's old well. He hit his head and was grievously banged about by the fall. Tony and the others got a rope and pulled him to safety. However, there was no sign of the man they had seen.

They did find tracks--belonging to a barefoot man missing a big toe--leading from the settlement into the woods. The investigators followed the tracks into the woods, where they spotted the naked man scurry behind a tree. They called out to him. He didn't reply, but he did begin to approach with a shambling, lurching gait. They could now see that he had a horrible wound in his chest and a vacant expression in his eyes. Tony and Sirus wasted no time with parlay--they unloaded their shotguns into the man, putting him down before he could reach the group.

The group then made their way to the motel. They were met in the reception area by a very old man with an English accent named William Brophy. He claimed to run the Squatters Lake Motel with his older brother Robert, but said that Robert spent most days sleeping at his age. Behind William were a number of license plates hung on the wall, but they did not spot James's license plate among them. The investigators rented the motel's four remaining rooms; William and Robert occupied one of the rooms, and there were three other guests currently staying at the motel. 

The rooms were fairly nondescript and functional, but Tony pulled back the rug to reveal that there was a trap door set into the floor. It turned out that all of the rooms they rented shared this "feature."  Tony also discovered a left-behind notebook in his room; it proved to be the journal of James Frazer, proving that he had indeed stayed at the Squatters Lake Motel!

The group heard a commotion outside. They spied a young, pimply man arguing with William Brophy. The young man was insisting that his friend was to meet him at the motel and was questioning why Brophy was covering up his friends' earlier arrival. Leslie later paid this kid a visit in his room. His name was Jacob Trent, and he had made plans to meet up with his "friend" Abe at this motel. Abe was supposed to arrive first, and Jacob was convinced that Abe wouldn't have stood him up--so something must have happened to him at the hotel. Since Jacob was in much the same boat as the investigators, Leslie suggested they all team up. That suited Jacob just fine. In fact, Jacob suggested breaking into a mysterious room with a padlock that he had found at the back of the motel.

Meanwhile, Sirus was laying low and scoping out the motel from a hiding spot in Hazel's car. He spotted the two other guests: a mafioso-looking man in a black suit and a young woman with curly brown hair. Tony would later make the acquittance of the "wiseguy," Bill Dunston, but figured out that he was merely a guy looking to do some fishing after a bad divorce. Not a "made man" at all!

When the time came for the break in, Leslie picked the padlock to the room in question. Inside they found some strange stuff: two crates that had blankets at the bottom (as if they were some sort of nest), jars of cloudy yellow fluid, jars of long metallic needles, and boxes of jewelry, clothes, and personal items that they surmised came from the people who had met ill ends at the motel. Jacob was stunned when he discovered Abe's jacket among the discarded clothing.

As they discussed their next move, the decided to take a look at the lake to make sure nothing strange was going on there. The three boats they had spotted tied up at the pier were still there, but there were strange yellow lights emanating from the oily waters of the lake. And then...everyone present experienced a vision. In the vision, they were all swimming to the bottom of the lake. As they pushed aside a veil of seaweed, they saw a city of black spires and crooked streets. The streets were lined with the dead bodies of red-shelled, alien creatures. They swam to the center of the city and saw a creature with a metal body and three yellow eyes sequestered behind a wall of warped glass.

When the vision faded, Jacob began to walk, as if in a trance, toward the woods south of the lake. They let the man walk. Deciding that William Brophy and his brother must be killed to stop whatever was going on at the motel, they invaded the brothers' private chambers. They didn't find the brothers, but they did discover James Frazer's license plate--again confirming that he had been at the motel.

Unwilling to follow Jacob to whatever fateful (and probably fatal) meeting awaited him, the investigators decided to use the oil casks they had found earlier to burn the motel to the ground. They spread oil and lit it on fire. Then they went door to door to let the other guests know about the fire. Bill Dunston sped away into the night, but the girl's door was already open--she was gone, possibly also drawn toward the woods by the lake. With no sign of the brothers or James, the characters departed in haste to tell Richard Ware that his stepson was in all likelihood deceased.

None More Black

I ran another session of Call of Cthulhu, starring the same characters who survived "Genius Loci" and "Ties That Bind." What follows is a write up of "None More Black," one of the adventures included in the book Doors to Darkness. Interestingly, the characters had the easiest time in this one because they adopted the tactics of the villains in Lovecraft's fiction rather than those of the protagonists. If you want plan on playing through the adventure, skip this recap! Spoilers ahead.

The Characters

Sirus Mean, former boxer and hobo

Leslie Cowell, antiques dealer

Hazel Murphy, flapper

Tony Tunacelli, wiseguy

Events

Tony got a phone call from Angelo Fratelli, a mid-level boss in the mafia. After inquiring after Tony's health, he had a favor to ask: the families had gotten word that somebody, maybe the Irish mob, was pushing a new drug on the streets of Arkham that was cutting into their heroin trade. Angelo asked Tony to report back if he heard anything about who was encroaching on mafia territory. 

*

Sirus was eating breakfast at the Starlight Diner. Nance, the little blonde waitress, brought him his eggs and coffee; she asked if he had seen the report in the newspaper about the two dead students at Miskatonic University. Apparently both students had died suddenly of "natural causes," though it was reported that both students had unexplainably blackened tongues at the time of their deaths.

*

Leslie was suffering from a recurring dream that followed the shape of the hallucinations he had experienced last session. He dreamed that the sun was waving fiery tendrils in the lurid sky; it divided into two suns, then divided again and again until the sky was filled with suns. The suns turned black. It began to rain a black, viscous fluid. Leslie saw human beings, naked and hungry and afraid, crawling under the many black suns. Their eyes were wide and wild with fear. They raised their faces toward the blighted heavens and let the black rain fall into their mouths. It ran down their bodies in rivulets. It slaked a thirst they never even knew they possessed.

* 

Hazel knew Walter Resnick, a second-year student at Miskatonic University, to be a charming, kind-hearted, and attractive young man; he was a good student and well liked by all. However, when she ran into him at a local dance hall he had completely changed. At first he was acting excessively giddy; he grabbed her and insisted that she dance with him. She noticed that his tongue was black. By the end of the night he had grown irritable and picked a fight with his friends. Hazel later heard through mutual friends that he’d been missing classes and had been looking disheveled. Then, out of nowhere, Hazel got a phone call from Walter: he claimed he had something that the Arkham Historical Society needed to see.

*

Unable to obtain a response from Walter when she knocked at his door, Hazel called Leslie over to Walter's room at a local boarding house near the university. Leslie deftly picked the lock; inside, they found Walter dead in a chair at the desk. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his black tongue lolled out of his mouth. Nothing else seemed amiss, but they found several small bottles that were mostly empty--drops of a strange black substance clung to the inside of the bottles.

Leslie and Hazel picked up Tony and Sirus, then the grouped headed over to Miskatonic University to have Prof. Richard Ware examine the substance in the bottles for them. Prof. Ware was visibly startled by what he saw. He informed them that the substance appeared to be comprised mostly of alcohol, but there was a kind of cell within the alcohol that resembled a blood cell. What unnerved the professor was that the cells within the alcohol still appeared to be alive in some way.

Asking around on Miskatonic's campus revealed that the two students that had previously been reported as dead and Walter were connected by to a man named Paul Rodgers. Rodgers had been a student at the university, but had dismissed for cheating. Nevertheless, he had been frequently spotted on campus in recent memory. Surmising that Paul was dealing whatever the black substance was as a new drug, they decided to pay him a visit at his house.

Paul wasn't home when they arrived, so they let themselves in to take a look around. They noted a pair of manure-encrusted galoshes in his foyer--an odd thing to have for a guy seemingly unconnected to an agricultural trade. On his desk they discovered a scrap of paper with some sums and figures on it; the paper was torn, but the letterhead read "Campbell's Me--." Under a squeaky floorboard they found six full bottles of the black substance, a wad of cash, and a bank ledger that indicated that Paul had made a lot of money over the past two weeks.

The group figured out that the letterhead belonged to Campbell's Meat Processing, a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Arkham. They drove out there and found an abandoned-looking slaughterhouse. No lights were on, but two older-model cars were parked outside. The group preemptively slashed the cars' tires. Unwilling to venture inside the slaughterhouse, the group devised a plan: Tony would go to town on the cars with a baseball bat, drawing any occupants outside, while the others hid and waited.

A large man came barreling out the slaughterhouse's front door in response to the ruckus; he had a revolver in his hand and took a shot at Tony, injuring him. A firefight erupted as Leslie, Sirus, and Tony returned fire. The large man seemed to take more wounds than any mortal should be able to survive; he wasn't even too phased by Hazel sneaking up on him and slashing his leg with a switchblade. He retaliated by pistol-whipping Hazel, but a shot to the forehead from Tony put him down. Leslie pried the man's mouth open and confirmed that the man had a black tongue.

During the gunfight, Sirus had spotted a number of junkie-looking miscreants running for their lives out of the back of the building.

Still unwilling to venture inside the slaughterhouse, the group decided to throw a lit stick of dynamite inside and let that take care of whatever horrors were inside. The explosives did their work, but as the building burned they saw a black, seemingly faceless, winged creature emerge from a second floor window. The creature pulled a tall, dark-haired man out after it, then flew away.

On the way back to Arkham proper, the group encountered one of the junkies who had fled the slaughterhouse. Tempting her into the car with a vial of the black substance, they pried what information they could out of her. She identified the man who was pulled to safety from the building as Jacob Dover. A few of them remembered the tragic story of the Dover family: they were a wealthy, prominent family in Arkham, but when Margaret Dover died in a boating accident twenty years ago, her husband took their son Jacob on a globe-trotting adventure. The pair had returned to Arkham just last year, but it was clear that the family fortune was now gone. Jacob's father died, and Jacob had been laying low ever since.

Following the paper trail of documents related to Jacob's purchase of the slaughterhouse, the investigators were able to get the address of the seedy apartment he was living in. Instead of picking the lock, they blew the door open with a shotgun. When Jacob emerged from the darkness of the apartment he seemed utterly unbothered. He invited them in, assuming they were trying to muscle in on his operation. 

When Leslie mentioned "Carcosa," he addressed them as fellow occult devotees. He explained that the black substance was the blood of an elder "god" that he was able to conjure from a place beyond conventional space and time with a spell his father had uncovered in their travels. He also made a fairly convincing argument that the "product" he was peddling was no different than any other potentially deadly intoxicant. Referring to Tony's mob connections, he showed a willingness to partner up with the mafia to increase distribution and begin a truly profitable enterprise. The group left, promising to put Jacob in contact with some wiseguys.

However, the investigators staked out Jacob's place and followed his hired taxi when he left to meet with members of the Irish mob. Deciding something had to be done, the group did the unthinkable: they decided to summon a byakhee using the spell they had found previously at the Marsh Wizard's camp. After slaughtering a calf ritualistically and chanting the incantation, a hole in reality opened and the creature emerged. It bowed its head and was given its task: kill Jacob Dover and his black-winged creature.

The group waited.

When the byakhee returned, it's face and claws were drenched in blood. The creature was then banished back to its alien home. Jacob Dover and his burgeoning empire of black blood had been decisively dealt with.

Ties That Bind

I ran another session of Call of Cthulhu, starring the same characters who survived "Genius Loci." They have returned to Arkham after panicking and fleeing the horrible scene that unfolded in the Danvers State Lunatic Asylum. What follows is a write up of "Ties That Bind," one of the adventures included in the book Doors to Darkness. If you want plan on playing through the adventure, skip this recap! Spoilers ahead.

The Characters

Sirus Mean, former boxer and hobo

Leslie Cowell, antiques dealer

Hazel Murphy, flapper

Tony Tunacelli, wiseguy

Events

Enid Carrington, the wife of a prominent and wealthy local banker, invited the members of the Arkham Historical Society to the construction site where her new mansion was being built. As a frequent customer at his antiques shop, she was on friendly terms with Leslie; she figured that the historical society might be able to identify some "strange rocks" that had been left behind at a scene of vandalism on her property.

As soon as the characters arrived, Enid pulled them over to a broken white marble fountain to show them the damage. The fountain's statue had been toppled and lay semi-submerged in water. Tony realized that something must have hit the statue very hard from the side to knock it down like that--almost as if it had been hit from the air. The group also noticed that the rim of the fountain had been gouged in several places; Enid told them that the "strange rocks" had been found near the the scrapes in the fountain's base.

Enid then took them to examine the stones, which she had had moved to the basement of the in-process mansion. The cellar door was solid steel and Enid had set three workers to guard it. Inside, the investigators examined the "stones," which appeared to be bulbous, banana-like structures. They were largely iridescent, reminiscent of mother of pearl, though their "tops" were akin to blue granite. Sirus realized that they were semi-transparent when held up to the light, which revealed that each piece of the "bunch" was filled with liquid and had a small solid mass floating within.

Enid mentioned that professors from Miskatonic University's College of Natural Sciences had been unable to identify them, and it was clear to the investigators that they had been barking up the wrong tree: these objects were not stone at all, they were most likely eggs of unnatural origin.

Some of the eggs had been broken, and their shards lay next to the intact eggs. The group noticed that the bits and pieces didn't add up to the number of eggs that were missing from the bunch. When they inquired into who had moved the eggs for Enid, they found that one of the workers on the site, Alfred Hackett, was absent from work today without explanation. Figuring that Alfred had absconded with one of the eggs, the group obtained his address at the Borden Arms from the worksite foreman.

The Borden Arms proved to be a run-down flophouse. Miss Osbourne, the owner of the Borden Arms, asked the investigators to remind Alfred that he was not allowed to have pets or women in his room--both of which she was sure was up there, given the ruckus she had heard earlier. After the group knocked on his door, Alfred opened it a crack and explained that he had stayed home from work due to illness. The investigators were blunt with him: they accused him of taking one of the alien eggs and hatching it. Alfred tried to close the door in their faces, but a woman's voice from within told him to admit them since the group clearly already knew something of what was going on.

Inside, the investigators found that Alfred was not alone. With him was Mary Carrington, Enid's daughter, and Dr. Leman, a professor from Miskatonic University. The creature had hatched from the stolen egg; they had placed it in a large terrarium in Alfred's kitchen and were studying it. The creature was about the size of a kitten, but its body was insectoid in shape--although it had reptilian skin. It's back legs were bird-like and taloned; its front legs were like those of a praying mantis, except they ended in square, blunt nails. Its head was horned and appeared somewhat like a horse's skull. It also sported batlike wings. 

As they were discussing the matter, a shadow fell over the kitchen window. A pony-sized version of the creature burst through the window, send shards of glass everywhere. Mommy was home! The creature swiped at Dr. Leman, decapitating him easily. Alfred rushed forward to protect Mary; the creature thrust its claw through his abdomen and ripped out his guts. Sirus and Tony unloaded their shotguns at the creature, causing it grab its baby and fly off through the window. As it ascended into the sky, it suddenly disappeared as if it had simply winked out of existence.

Mary Carrington was left in a catatonic state. They rushed her to their car and immediately drove to the construction site. At the site, they observed that the steel door to the cellar was battered and dented, but the creature had been unable to gain entry and retrieve its eggs. Although they were conflicted about what to do next, it was decided that they would destroy the remaining eggs so that no further creatures of this sort would be loose upon the Earth. Hazel decided to wait in the car with the still catatonic Mary.

Down in the cellar, Tony and Sirus took a sledgehammer and a crowbar to the eggs. When shattered, the liquid inside spilled out and immediately became gaseous. The smell was acrid and inhaling it caused Leslie, Sirus, and Tony to perceive the world differently. The walls of the cellar seemed to be breathing.

Back at the car, Hazel was trying to comfort Mary when the creature that attacked the Borden Arms materialized in the air and landed on the hood. It ignored Mary and Hazel, instead turning its gaze toward the mansion under construction. Realizing that its eggs had been destroyed, the creature howled in misery and took flight, again vanishing suddenly from sight.

When Sirus, Leslie, and Tony stumbled out of the cellar, to their eyes the sky was a lurid pink and the burning sun was waving fiery tentacles in the sky. Since Hazel was the only one in any shape to drive, she brought them all back to Leslie's antique shop to recover. As Hazel drove, the trio watched the sun split in two in mimicry of cellular division. A strange song came unbidden into their minds:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Back at the antique shop, all of the statues turned their heads to gaze at the group as they entered--or at least that was how it seemed to Tony, Leslie, and Sirus. Each statue was wearing a mask, which it removed--the faces of the statues curled into ghoulish smiles.

The trio eventually regained their mental fortitude and the strange "hallucinations" stopped. However, Mary continued to be in an unresponsive state. Hazel remembered that Mary's older brother William was a graduate student at Miskatonic, so they drove her to campus and found him--they explained that there had been an accident (but not the nature of said accident) and pawned the girl off on him. 

Later that night, as they hunkered down in the basement of Leslie's antique shop, William Carrington paid them a visit to say that he had Mary committed to the Arkham Sanitarium. He was visibly nervous; he explained that Mary's raving description of the monster that had killed Dr. Leman and Alfred Hackett reminded him of the "dragon-like steed" said to be ridden by the legendary local figure of the Marsh Wizard. 

The next morning, the group did a little research into the Marsh Wizard. Generally thought of as a boogieman, the Marsh Wizard was used to threaten children into good behavior. A number of disappearances, stretching back at least two-hundred years, were also attributed to the Marsh Wizard's villainy. According to the folklore, the Marsh Wizard was supposed to reside on an island in a salt swamp in nearby Ipswitch. However, many attempts had been made to locate the island over the years, all of which had failed.

The group located and interviewed Ron Bryden, a man who claimed to have encountered the Marsh Wizard's flying steed back in 1906. He gave drew them a map of the area where the encounter occurred and which direction the steed seemed to be headed. Following this lead, the group waded into the swamp. Contrary to the experience of previous searchers, they easily located the island and spotted a number of huts in a clearing at its center.

The huts disclosed a grim tale: they found a hut full of human and animal skeletons, the corpse of a recently slain man of impossible age whose fatal wounds looked to have been caused by the monster they had already encountered, a whistle made of bone, and a dangerous spell for summoning the "steed" from a place beyond the stars. A number of their suspicions were confirmed: this was the Marsh Wizard of legend, they had been able to find his island because his death ended the ward hiding it from view, and his demise had also set loose the "steed" he had summoned over the last few hundred years.

However, the death of the Marsh Wizard had not ended a protective spell on the island that summoned six creatures made of moss and stone. When these unnatural wardens suddenly lurched into view, they panicked. Tossing down some dynamite, the group fled back to the island's edge, ready to depart. They noticed that six trees were now ablaze with blue light shining from uncanny sigils carved into their trunks. Surmising that the trees were connected to the creatures, they blew those up with explosive too.

After hiding in Leslie's basement, when nothing horrid materialized to murder them they became convinced that the monster had gathered its single remaining young and departed back to the unthinkable place it called home. Willing to let matters rest where they now stood, they decided that no good could come of delving deeper into this particular mystery.