New Acquisitions & General Update

I recently added two more collections of Call of Cthulhu scenarios to my library, at long last; De Horrore Cosmico, a selection of Roman-era scenarios (i.e., "Cthulhu Invictus") inspired by Lovecraft stories, and Tales of the Crescent City, a selection of Jazz Age adventures set in New Orleans.  Both of these have been released by Golden Goblin Press.  De Horrore Cosmico was my early Christmas present to myself; Gina "purchased" Tales of the Crescent City for me, but between some store credit I had at Just Games and my accumulation of customer loyalty points it only ended up costing her $1.39.  De Horrore Cosmico I've read through and found the adventures thoroughly enjoyable just from a reading perspective, and I hope to run some soon enough.

I spent this morning reading through Tales of the Crescent City, and while I tend to feel a little out of my element with Hastur-centric scenarios (of which this book contains two), overall I like what I'm seeing with this book, I'm looking forward to adding the New York companion, Tales of the Sleepless City, to my collection as well.

In other news, my parents have been in England for the past two weeks, visiting London, Leeds and York.  My mother requested some information about game stores and miniatures I was interested in for the purposes of Christmas shopping.  She has proceeded to stop at every miniatures and hobby shop she sees in the UK and send me photos from them.  She's apparently become fascinated by my hobby and how widespread it seems to be in the UK.  To quote one of her emails, "The Brits sure love their miniatures. There must be a whole industry of just making and painting these."

Mom was really impressed by the painting contest this store in York is having, and frankly, I am too - I may suggest something similar to Matt at Just Games for next year.

The Halloween Investigations

Yesterday, my FLGS played host to what might be the largest Call of Cthulhu RPG convention ever held in Western New York.  Three Game Masters (myself, Brandon and Dave) ran a total of five sessions of Call of Cthulhu over the course of nine hours, from noon to nine pm.

Dave ran a pair of Classic Era (1920s) scenarios, one from noon to 4 and the second from 5 to 9.  Brandon, running Call of Cthulhu for the first time ever, ran The Derelict, Chaosium's Free RPG Day offering from this year, a modern day scenario.  I began the day with "The Dark Forest," a game set in second century Roman-occupied Germania, and ended it with something a bit special: an "Elimination Challenge" game, with a scenario designed to kill characters, with some pretty special prizes for the last to die.

As far as prizes went, Chaosium sent us several copies of the "Quick-Start Guide" for 7th edition, and a couple copies of "Alone Against the Flames," a solo play adventure resembling a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.  Golden Goblin Press, a licensee for Call of Cthulhu, offered a $50 gift certificate for the Elimination Challenge as well as providing an adventure to run.  And finally, I purchased a bunch of Reaper Bones' "Eldritch Demons" and painted them up as patina'd bronze statues to provide trophies.

"The Dark Forest" has the players taking the roles of a Roman long-range reconnaissance team, sent into the German forest to follow up on rumors of bandits preying on caravans and threatening open rebellion against Roman rule.  I had five players at the table, including my sister, her boyfriend, and Sandor, a Cthulhu veteran who made the drive from Albany to Rochester to participate, a good four-hour drive.

The scenario got a bit madcap once the players realized the "bandits" were in fact zombies, raised and commanded by a small group of cultists.  Rather than run from the zombie horde and take refuge in a nearby abandoned hill fort upon discovery that a gladius is a poor choice of zombie-killing weapon, they invented a series of schemes involving fire and barricades before finally taking the hint and retreating from the horde.

After circumventing the zombie horde and confronting the cultists, during which one investigator died to a massive, supernaturally-induced heart attack (there was a Magic: The Gathering event going on at the store at the same time, and the Magic players all stopped what they were doing to listen to my narration of this death.  It was pretty cool), the rest of the investigators took one look at the summoned monster presiding over the ceremonies and decided that two German kids didn't need rescuing that badly, opting instead to retreat, make their report to the prefect, and let someone else deal with the cult.

I decided to deal out the statue-trophies as a Player's Choice award, allowing the players to vote on who they think earned the trophy through good role-playing.  The players decided that Sandor had earned the trophy, and I awarded a Keeper's Choice prize, a copy of the 7th Edition Quick-Start rules, to the person who got the second highest number of votes - who happened to be my sister.  Honestly no playing of favorites there, she got the second most votes so I gave it to her.

After a brief break, we came back and I set up for the Elimination Challenge.  Six players sat down at this table, with Jen, Greg, Patrick and Sandor returning from my afternoon session, and joined by John and Chris.  John had not played Call of Cthulhu in close to fifteen years, and his two sessions today were Patrick's first experience with Call of Cthulhu period.

The premise of this scenario, "The Owlglass," is that the investigators are on a cargo ship traveling between New York City and Southampton.  A fellow passenger, archaeologist Hutton, has brought a large crate on board, and becomes agitated when it's damaged in the hold.  The crate contains "the Owlglass," a large, teardrop-shaped mineral deposit resembling an enormous fire opal, with a curious black spot that looks like the pupil of an eye.  Unfortunately, the damage to the crate allows the Owlglass to "see" the night sky through the open cargo doors, and a meteor streaking across the sky gives its former owner the point of reference needed to track it down.

There was a distinct air of "comedy of errors" in this session, most notably after Patrick's character had a run-in with a slug-like blob of animate, mutated human flesh; the slug-thing shot him in the calf with a dart, and fearing mutation, he proceeded to hack off his own leg below the knee with a butcher's knife.  It was only through a miraculous series of good rolls that he survived at all; as is, he spent the remainder of the session at a single hit-point.  Worst of all, when he managed to laboriously crawl to the infirmary (having hacked off his leg in the ship's galley) in search of painkillers, he discovered that the morphine was in a cabinet on the wall...about five feet off the ground.

The rest of the party went to incredible lengths to try and find a way into the aft cargo hold (where the Owlglass and the inflatable dinghies they would need to escape were located) without having to deal with the Owlglass' mutant servitors, who had gathered around in chanting and praying.

Ultimately, Jen, Chris and Sandor's characters met a variety of ends (including Chris, having hoisted the Owlglass up on a crane, riding the artifact into the briny depths like Slim Pickens riding the bomb after failing to secure himself while cutting the cable), and Greg, John and Patrick were feeling the mutation take hold.  Patrick and John both succumbed to their mutations, transforming into servitors of the Owlglass (it having not been destroyed, only relocated).  Seeing this, and recognizing that he would face the same fate, Greg's character opted to kill himself rather than become one of them.

Since Greg was the last one to die (and I counted "mutated into a servitor of the Owlglass" as "dead" for the purposes of the Elimination Challenge), he walked away with the grand prize, a $50 gift certificate to the Golden Goblin Press webstore.  Based on the speed at which they mutated, I determined that John was our second place winner, and Patrick came in third.  John took home a Cthulhu statue/trophy, and Patrick a copy of "Alone Against the Flames," a solo-play scenario from Chaosium.

Everyone had a phenomenal time, and we helped move some product on the store shelves; Brandon easily spent $200 on Cthulhu merchandise, buying a complete set of 7th edition materials as well as one of the Golden Goblin books, and Sandor purchased a 7th edition Keeper's Guide; I'm sure some of the other players bought Cthulhu material as well, plus other sales; one of the players in my afternoon game purchased a significant quantity of Savage Worlds material.  I think this might become a regular Halloween thing.

Cthuesday: Consumption

It occurred to me that I haven't posted the write-up of last week's game.  We ended up having a few last minute withdrawals, and so we ran with only two players.  Which was a new situation for me - I don't remember the last time I ran for a table smaller than three players.  Possibly never.  The scenario did not exactly go as I, or author Brian Sammons, intended, but everyone had fun nonetheless so that's what matters.

Dramatis Personae:

• Roxanne Bennett (played by Kai), an African-American stage magician
• Janet Whitley-Rose (played by Julie), a widowed woman using her money to hunt ghosts

While driving on the Aylesbury Pike, sometime after their investigation of the Corbitt House, Janet hit a woman who stumbled out of the fog with her car.  Investigating, they found the woman dead - of blood loss; one of her legs had been sawn off, with a belt in place as a tourniquet, which had loosened during her flight.  The woman had been using a broken broom handle as a crutch.  Her tongue had been removed, the stump cauterized.  

They decided to wrap the woman's body in a blanket and stash it in the backseat of the car for now.  

Following the woman's bloody trail through the melting snow and mud, they found the burned out shell of an old two-story house, and behind it, a shack built of reclaimed wood.  Inside the shack, a horror show; a pyramid of ten skulls, their eye-sockets stuffed with mementos of the corpses they'd been taken from.  A bloody bed, ropes hanging from the bedposts.  A grisly hacksaw on the ground, a flayed torso hanging on the wall.  Finding some bloodstained luggage, tattered but once-nice, Roxanne piled the skulls inside, along with the hacksaw.  Checking outside, they found a still-wet bloody knife in the snow and a man's booted footprints, which they followed in the direction of Arkham before losing the trail in drier ground.

Returning to the car, Janet and Roxanne decided the best course of action would be to drop the body and the bag of evidence at the police station as discreetly possible and leave.  

This is where things began to go wrong.  

Pulling up the curb in front of the police station, Roxanne tried to kick the three bags and the corpse out of the car without attracting any attention - and failed, bringing the police running.  She tried to casually throw her registered handgun into the gutter discreetly, and failed, the gun discharging and shooting out one of the tires on the car.  

I've never seen players roll so many 95s and up in such quick succession in Call of Cthulhu before.  

The two women were brought into the station and questioned separately about how they came to be in possession of a woman's corpse, minus one leg, and a bag of human skulls, by detective Michael Cooper.  He assured them that he believed their story, and was calling in a local doctor to give them a once over before they were released to go home.  

Dr. James Bell, a black-bearded gentleman, gave Roxanne a once-over and suggested giving her a mild sedative to help calm her nerves.  Roxanne recognized this as a line of BS and the "sedative" he mentioned as a paralytic.  She jumped him, trying to strangle him with his own stethoscope.  Bell threw her off and made for the door, but was caught blind-sided when Roxanne threw a chair at him.  Bell stunned, Roxanne picked up the syringe of paralytic, shook it up real good to ensure the presence of plenty of air bubbles, and emptied the syringe into Bell's thigh.  

Cooper and Janet burst into the room almost simultaneously.  Roxanne explained that Bell must have had a stroke, quietly kicking the empty syringe into a corner of the room.  Cooper tersely asked the two women to wait in a cell while another medical examiner was called.  

Janet and Roxanne eventually dozed off in the cell, at which time Cooper entered the cell quietly (both players failing their Listen rolls by drastic amounts once more) and casually murdered both of them, caving their skulls with a nightstick wielded with superhuman strength.  He quietly moved the bodies to a waiting hearse, where the local undertaker delivered the two bodies back to the shack for rendering by the cannibal secret society's sociopathic chef.  

A Time to Harvest Session 11: The Doom that Came to Cobb's Corners

Here we are, at what is probably the penultimate session of this campaign.  Here we wrapped up Chapter 5, and Chapter 6, the final chapter of the campaign, is a fairly short one, and I doubt it will require more than a single session to complete, which means the next session, taking place on October 4th, will be the last session of "A Time to Harvest" with my group.  It's been a long strange journey, hasn't it?

Dramatis Personae:

• Perry Webster, journalism student (played by Dan)
• Randall McNally, geography student (played by Sean; formerly Randall Vhloche, but Sean decided on a name change)
• Roni, visiting Finn, history student (played by Katie)
• Horace Hoadley, local laborer (played by Kai)
• Levi Hoadley, local laborer (played by Mike)

When we last left our heroes, Perry and Roni had just laid down on alien operating tables, along with soldier Mack Hairpin, to await brain surgery at the claws of the Outer Ones.  Operating leisurely, the two Outer Ones deftly removed the top of Mack's skull and scooped his brain into a jar.  As they made ready to repeat the process on Perry, a third alien, buzzing and changing colors, entered the room.  Flashing and buzzing in response, one of the Old Ones ordered Perry and Roni to "remain where you are - there is no escape.  We will return momentarily."

As the three aliens left the room, Perry and Roni lifted the grate and jumped down into the same underground river that Randall had escaped into.  

***

Making their way up to the isolated farmhouse they worked at, the Hoadley brothers spotted a trio of bodies floating in the river.  Fishing them out, they quickly discovered them to be alive - Randall, Roni and Perry.  Agreeing to work together to deal with the threat of homicidal children in town, and to rescue the Hoadleys' mother, who lives in town, the five headed up to the farmhouse to "requisition" a steam-tractor and supplies.  Arming up and hitching a wagon to the tractor, they head to town.  

Cobb's Corners is, despite the rain, on fire, with people and tree-monsters silhouetted against the flames as they move back and forth.  Our heroes head first to the sheriff's office, which they find deserted, helping themselves to shotguns and a keg of black powder intended for the town's civil war-era cannon, fired every Fourth of July.  

Heading then to the town square, they find the town deputy, naked, sacrificing people atop an altar made from previous sacrifices, flanked by a pair of tree-monsters, hooting in unison.  A third stands guard over a collection of prisoners, including the sheriff, the school-teacher, and the Hoadleys' mother.  Overhead, darker-than-black clouds swirl ominously.  

Perry, Randall and Roni fired at the deputy, managing to pepper him with shot but not kill him immediately; Horace lept off the tractor, axe at the ready, to rescue his "momma" from the tree-monster; and as one of the hooting sentinels turned and lumbered towards them, Levi threw the tractor into gear and tried to build up enough steam to reach "ramming speed."

Horace sheared through the tree-monster's ankle (one of three, at any rate) and slid under the collapsing beast on his knees, coming out cleanly on the other side as it toppled, sending the prisoners scattering.  The steam-tractor rammed into the second tree-monster, and in its flailings it caught Perry with a tentacle and sent him flying twenty feet through the air.  

Unfortunately, the deputy lived long enough to complete the summoning ritual; the sky dilated open and hundreds of thousands of tons of black, alien flesh, studded with pus-rimmed eyes, salivating, sphincter-like maws and uncountable tentacles, began pouring into our reality, vaster than any dinosaur or whale that had ever lived.  Three enormous legs, each hundreds of feet long, stretched down, planting cloven hooves ten feet deep into the earth, crushing buildings, trees, concrete, anything in its way.  

Perry went violently mad at the sight of the thing, charging at Horace and blasting him away with a shotgun in his insanity; Levi responded by shooting Perry in the chest.  Randall took off running for the river.  Roni got crushed by a tentacle the size of a tanker truck.  Levi rigged the boiler on the tractor to explode and took off running for the river.  

All in all, a good session.  

Queen City Conquest 2016

This past weekend I was in attendance at Queen City Conquest in Buffalo, New York; this is the show's fifth year, I believe, and my second year in attendance.  This year, like last year, I was there for Saturday only; and again, I ran two Call of Cthulhu sessions more or less back to back, with a dinner break in between.  I'm not going to do detailed write-ups of how the sessions went, because by the end of the second one I'd been awake for going on 20 hours and they're already getting a bit fuzzy to me; instead, I'll do a write up of my overall con experience.

Our story begins with me stopping in at Wegman's, my local grocery chain, to buy snacks to distribute.  When I'm running a game, I see myself as host and my players as guests, regardless of venue, and I think it's a nice gesture to provide snacks.  My plan was to hit up the bulk candy aisle and fill up a bag with gummi candy octopuses; what could be more appropriate for Cthulhu, yes?

I get to the bulk candy aisle, and there's two sorority girls (they were wearing Greek letters; honestly, I'm at the point where everybody under the age of 25 looks like they're 12 to me) emptying the gummi octopus bin into a bag.

Girls, there is nothing you need those gummi octopuses for more than I need them, okay?

So casting about, I grab two packages of Halloween Oreo cookies.  This will do.

The drive in is uneventful; I drive past the Buffalo Convention Center where the convention is being held, heading for the nearest parking lot.  I pull in, and am told by the attendant, "Sorry, the last spot just filled, you'll have to find someplace else to park."

Pull into the next lot; the attendant says it's $5, cash only, to park.  I don't have cash on me.  He says, "Whatever, just park there anyways.  They aren't paying me enough to care." So I ended up with free parking for the event.

Queen City Conquest is not a huge convention, but it feels big to me.  I think about 400 people go through the door over the course of the weekend.  This year, QCC was sharing the Buffalo Convention Center with some sort of crossfit/gym-junkie convention, which was pretty funny to me.

Both my sessions this time around were run under the banner of Rogue Cthulhu, an organization based out of Ohio that organizes convention games of Call of Cthulhu; my friends Rich and Heather, who have been playing in my games at Running GAGG pretty consistently for years, are working to expand Rogue Cthulhu into the Western New York region, beginning with this year's Queen City Conquest, and I was more than happy to work with them on this.

For my first game, from 1pm to 5pm, I ran The Derelict again, Chaosium's Free RPG Day 2016 offering.  Having discussed the adventure not too long ago with Sean, one of my regular players who also GMs occasionally, we hit on something that had felt off to me previously; the monster in the scenario carries a gigantic bow and arrows of unknown manufacture, which doesn't feel very Mythos-y to me.  Additionally, the pregenerated characters provided with the PDF of the scenario have some elements to them that don't quite work with the scenario as written - they've all got military connections and guns, for starters, but the thing that's been a thorn in my side is a note in one character's background - that they were told the derelict freighter would be there, and that they should retrieve the contents of the captain's safe.

There is no reference to a safe in the scenario, much less mysterious contents.

So I decided to do some rewriting, to revise the monster, tie the scenario in more strongly to the semi-connected "Cthulhu Mythos" of the RPG, and create an interesting something in the captain's safe.  After playing around with various slug- and worm-like ideas in my sketchbook, I came up with a revised monster that I felt confident in - a fat, wattled worm-creature that dragged itself along on two stubby, webbed arms with a one-eyed, slug-like face and a tongue it could project like a chameleon's, only tipped in a sharp barb; this would replace the bow and arrow as the creature's primary weapon.

I tied this creature in to Lovecraft's short story "The Temple," and more specifically to "Gloon," a worm-like entity with a strange connection to certain Greek-style statues; Gloon is, as far as I know, wholly a creation of the RPG.  I placed a Gloon-connected piece of statuary in the captain's safe, noted in the captain's log (which the investigators in this case never got a chance to read) the statue's origin, and sent the creature to retrieve the statue and kill the unbelievers handling it.

The scenario moved at a leisurely pace, ratcheting up the creep factor; the players decided to head

my set up for the 1pm game

straight to the radio room upon boarding the derelict freighter, rather than explore as they went, so the creature slept through a good portion of the scenario before rousing itself to menace them; the players worked themselves up over finding the mangled remains of crewmembers and damage to the ship's controls and radio room, desperately trying to figure out what had happened.  They did retrieve the statue, having visions of Atlantis as they handled it, which woke the monster up from it's post-binge eating nap in the hold.

Ultimately, the creature killed four of the six investigators; one got impaled through the chest on the tongue-tentacle, the second survived an impalement through the thigh only to be killed when another investigator dropped a molotov cocktail on them; the third got impaled through the head, and the fourth, now obsessed with the strange statue, was dragged under water and drowned when he refused to release his hold on it.

We had one new player and three who had played in one of my games at last year's QCC; two scheduled players weren't able to make it but Rich and Heather were able to jump in.  I really liked the changes I made, and while the characters never learned the origin of the statue or the monster, at least one of the players looked at me and went, "This is from Lovecraft's 'The Temple,' isn't it?" so the connection was not lost.

I had dinner with my sister and her boyfriend at the Pearl Street Grill, a short walk from the convention center, and I'm pretty sure I had the same thing I had last year - a bacon cheeseburger topped with onion rings, cooked medium, side of fries.  Below the Pearl Street Grill is a wonderful little place called Brawler's Deli - I was treated to lunch there by my coworkers the day I left my job at HSBC bank, the day before I moved to Rochester.  Giant, meat-filled sandwiches.  Unfortunately they're closed on weekends, otherwise I would have insisted on a pastrami on rye from Brawler's.  But I digress.

On the way back from dinner, I stopped at my car and grabbed the Oreos, which I forgot to bring in when I brought all my game stuff; as such, I placed one package of Oreos on my table, and one the next table over, where Heather was running a very dark, somber WWII-era Call of Cthulhu scenario.  This was quite a contrast from my 7pm adventure, "The Haunting of De Morcey House," which began life as an attempt to update the classic scenario "The Haunting" to the modern day.  I used a team of fraudulent TV ghost-hunters as investigators, brought in elements from M.R. James' short stories "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" and "The Casting of the Runes," and replaced the lich in the basement with a Crawling One, a wizard's personality and intellect transferred to the worms that ate his corpse.  Finally, I brought in a few touches from an episode of the TV show "Supernatural," specifically one dealing with the "Ghost-Facers," a group of inept ghost hunters trying to get a TV deal.

Two of my players from the earlier session returned for this one, and I think the other four players were either completely new to Call of Cthulhu or hadn't played it in years.  It ended up being a fairly light-hearted scenario, even as they were attacked by swarms of rats and pelted with exploding china cabinets.  Sanity was nickel-and-dimed away by so many "small" events, and then the final reveal when the Crawling One boiled up out of the ground, plus the discovery of a crystalline idol of the Great Old One Yibb-Tstll, really cracked some brains.  The Crawling One blasted two investigators out of existence with castings of the Shrivelling spell, and a third player, having lost almost half his sanity in one failed roll after being granted a vision of Yibb-Tstll in the flesh, woke up three days later, two towns over with no memory of who he was or how he got there.

As an added bonus, one of the new players had recently taken a cryptography and code-breaking class - and so when they discovered the coded message hidden in the stained glass window, he was able to solve the code without needing me to give any help.  An unexpected use for a class he took as an elective, to be sure.

Both scenarios basically took of their entire time slots, which took me by surprise; I had anticipated them both running about three hours, but The Derelict ran for three hours and thirty-seven minutes, while The Haunting of De Morcey House ran three hours and fifty minutes.

I didn't end up buying anything at any of the vendor tables at QCC this year - nothing really jumped out at me, and I didn't want to buy something just for the sake of buying something.  I was surprised to see no miniatures for sale anywhere - one vendor had a couple boxes of ships for the "X-Wing" fleet battles game, but that was it.  I did get a T-shirt with the con logo on it, but I'm not sure I'll get to wear it - I think Gina has already declared it "soft" and thus claimed it.

The drive home wasn't too bad, but I definitely wasn't caffeinated enough - next year I either need to not do an evening game or make arrangements to spend the night in Buffalo, but I'm not sure I was really good to drive home - my eyelids were dangerously heavy.  But overall it was a good show and I'm looking forward to next year's show.

A Time to Harvest Session 10: Cataclysm!

We had a very eventful session this week, and one that I'm happy to report that players referred to as a "nail-biter" and "tense" - good! That means I'm doing my job as GM.  Things are getting bad in the campaign world, and the players are realizing and reacting to that.

Dramatis Personae:

• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism student
• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering student
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography student
• Roni (played by Katie), history student
• Mack Hairpin (played by Dave), soldier

The giant, gelatinous tree-horror had just swallowed Nick Jackson whole, and grabbed Drs. Drake and Matherson.  Bullets passed ineffectively through its soft flesh.  With a roar, an on-fire pick-up truck barreled into the clearing, the driver bailing out at the last minute as the truck slammed into the creature.  With a scream of pain, the thing turned and began to shamble away into the woods.  A thrown grenade seemed to stagger the creature, causing it to drop Dr. Matherson.  

A moment's investigation showed that Dr. Matherson did not survive the blast of the grenade and the twenty-foot drop to the ground when the creature released her.  

With the driver of the truck, a soldier named Mack Hairpin from the FOC military camp, joining them, they gave chase to the creature even as the rain began to come down more heavily, following the trail of barrel-sized footprints and puddles of viscous, greenish blood.  They found the creature pacing back and forth over a ten-foot area on the side of Broken Hill, and split up to try and surround it.  Roni stepped on a twig loudly, and the creature began shambling in his direction; Randall used the opportunity to get close to where the creature was, realizing that it was guarding a trapezoidal cave entrance.  Randall dropped four grenades into the cave and took off running.  

When the grenades went off, Mack charged the creature with his Tommy Gun blazing, getting hit and thrown twenty feet through the air by one of its tentacles in the process.  The creature, unfazed, began to march towards town.  Mack revealed that four more of these creatures, as well as a swarm of the Outer Ones, had descended on the military camp right before he fled.

The investigators debated this, and decided to head towards the military camp to look for survivors and supplies.  What they found was a massacre; men torn to shreds, men trampled into the mud, hanging limp from the branches of nearby trees.  Some men were even frozen and shattered into pieces.  They were all disturbed by this scene, Roni especially.  Feeling his skin begin to crawl and feeling trapped and suffocated in his clothes, Roni was compelled to strip down just to be able to breathe.

They found one survivor, a young man named Teddy Hobson, half-frozen, his legs and left arm shattered.  He looked up at Randall, managed to stammer out about the trees coming to life and a swarm of "big bugs" attacking them with guns that froze, and then his gaze drifted down to the fragmentary remains of his legs.  Hollow-eyed, he looked up again at Randall, shaking.  Filling a syringe with morphine, Randall delivered oblivion to the poor man, holding him as he died to give him a comforting final illusion that he would not be alone.

[GM's Note: This was one of the most powerful scenes I've ever run in my career as a GM.]

Debating whether to follow the tree-creatures - of which they know there is at least five, and nothing short of ramming with a truck seemed to injure - into Cobb's Corners, or whether to return to Broken Hill and look for another entrance into the caves, the investigators decided to pursue the second course of action - they knew that the Outer Ones could be killed.

Returning to Broken Hill as the rain increased in intensity, the sky beginning to flicker with the occasional flash of lightning, they began to circle the hill, looking for signs of a secondary entrance.  While doing so, they caught sight of a squadron of five Outer Ones - a stockier, more heavily-built variation then they had seen before - winging towards them.  They tried to take them out with grenades and rifle-fire, but between the swiftly-moving targets and the storm they failed to do so.

Landing, the lead Outer One commanded the investigators to lay down their arms, flanked by a pair of creatures armed with silvery devices that resembled elongated french horns.  The investigators lay down their firearms, holding on to their collections of grenades, and Darren kept the Electric Gun he had taken from "Professor Harrold"/Daphne Devine in his pocket.

Seizing the investigators, the Outer Ones flapped and took off, flying their captives to nearby Round Hill, alighting with them in front of a cave entrance.  The investigators were marched inside and directed to a surgical suite - metal grates over disposal tubes in the floor echoed with the sound of rushing water, the walls lined with racks of strange instruments, a nearby tub in which Outer One limbs and organs twitched with partial life, floating suspended in a pinkish fluid.  A circle of adjustable tables occupied the center of the room, and the investigators were directed to lay down on these.

Panicked, Randall pulled the pin on a grenade (keeping the lever held firmly in place) and made a dash for the nearest grate, lifting it up and diving down, preferring to take his chances in the waters below than in the Outer Ones' control.  Mack tried to wrestle one of the strange "guns" from one of the creatures, and narrowly avoided being beaten with the butt of it.

Darren pulled the Electric Gun from his pocket and tried to activate it, without success.  At the sight of a human holding a piece of their technology, the other armed Outer One turned its weapon on him, firing a blue-white beam.  The blast took Darren square in the chest and enveloped him, freezing him solid in an instant, killing him before he knew he was hit.

[GM's Note: as written, Mi-Go Mist Projectors produce a quickly-spreading line of freezing vapor, five feet wide.  I decided mine would be adjustable.]

At the sight of this, Roni, Perry and Mack situated themselves atop the tables.  "What are you going to do with us?" Roni asked.

"How would you like life eternal?" the creature buzzed in response.

***

Tomorrow I'm going to be in Buffalo for the day, running two sessions of Cthulhu back to back at Queen City Conquest.  If you see me, come say hi!

Monthly Madness: The Devil is in the Details, Part 1

Saturday night I ran a one-shot at Just Games, a scenario penned by Oscar Rios for Chaosium's now-defunct monograph line.  We actually didn't quite finish the scenario, so we'll be reconvening sometime soon to finish the adventure.  Two players were not only new to my table, but new to Call of Cthulhu entirely, and I'm pleased to report they had a great time.

Dramatis Personae:

• Professor Hossam Ramsey, Egyptologist (played by Sean)
• Sherman Rosenbaum, Accountant (played by Katie)
• Lois Newberry, Secretary (played by Jessica)
• Malcolm Rhodes, Rare Book Dealer (played by Travis)

Accompanying them, as NPCs:

• Paul Doucet, Antiquarian
• Mahira Najii, student intern to Professor Ramsey

Employees of Wallace's Antiques & Collectibles (with the Professor and Mahira being newly-hired consultants), they've been sent on a week-long "working vacation" to Birch Springs, a little summer getaway town in the Catskills.  Here, they're staying at the Davidson estate, a Victorian-style summer home that's been sitting empty for five years until Fred Wallace bought the place cheap, fully furnished, hoping to turn a profit on the contents - the Davidson's were known as collectors of exotic goods from around the world, especially the Near East.  Wallace would be supervising their efforts to catalog and appraise the contents of the house, and their meals would be provided by a hired cook.  If it wasn't February, it'd be a wonderful week.  

Upon arriving, they discovered that Wallace had brought a "niece" with him, the sort that's young, fashionable, and only comes to visit when Mrs. Wallace is away.  After lunch, they get to work; Dr. Ramsey soon discovers evidence of a secret door in the library, while Malcolm notices a concrete obelisk 300 yards from the house, half-hidden in the trees at the edge of the property.  Examination of the obelisk reveals it to be of recent construction, covered in a mixture of Arabic writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics.  Dr. Ramsey and Mahira confirm that the carvings on this obelisk make up about one-fifth of a binding or protective spell; they suspect four more such pillars must exist around the property to comprise the rest of the spell.  They don't manage to open the secret door, and the rest of the day passes uneventfully.  

During the night, Malcolm is awoken by the sound of tiny bells and the smell of honey and sandalwood.  Opening his eyes, he sees a beautiful Arabic woman, dressed in veils and not much else, standing near the foot of his bed.  She beckons to him, and then disappears when he declines.  The smell of honey and sandalwood lingers for about ten minutes after she vanishes.  

The next day begins with "Kitten," Wallace's girlfriend, skipping breakfast to sleep in.  A few hour later, Irma, the cook's daughter, goes missing, and Wallace finds a note from "Kitten" explaining she'd left for New York, having had Irma drive her to Birch Springs.  Irma, it turns out, does not have a license and even if she did, the mountain roads and drifting snow would make for a dangerous drive.  

Lois eventually finds the key to the secret door, in a lock box under a loose floorboard in the master bedroom.  Alongside it are a .32 revolver, a box of bullets, a stack of nude photos, a roll of $20 bills and a battered notebook.  

Reading the notebook, they learn that Reggie Davidson, the last resident of the house, tried to summon something, using a spell found in Arabic scrolls, to avenge himself on the lawyers and creditors that hounded him.  Something went wrong, however, and whatever he summoned attacked him, ultimately being responsible for his death in 1923.  Whatever it is is still in the house...as they come to this realization, the power goes out.

Investigating the generator, they discover the handyman half-decapitated and the gasoline cans emptied down a drain.  Racing upstairs to check with Wallace, they barely have time to tell him what they saw before a purplish cloud wells up behind him, manifesting a series of barbed tentacles.  Wallace is dead before he hits the ground, and the investigators take off running for the secret room.  Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought at the sight of this thing, Malcolm took off running outside, into the deepening snow.  

[GM's Note: I goofed here.  Wallace was supposed to die before the power went out.]

Locking themselves into the secret room, they surveyed the interior; shelves of jars and vials contained various liquids and powders, bookcases overflowing with occult texts, some sort of chemistry set, a case of scrolls and a workbench.  Dr. Ramsey and Mahira began investigating the scrolls, finding them to be a remarkably intact Arabic copy of the Al Azif, a book better known by its Greek translation - the Necronomicon! Sherman and Lois began poring over a notebook on the workbench, finding it to be Reggie's translation of certain scrolls within the Al Azif.  Cross-referencing them, Dr. Ramsey quickly confirms Reggie's translations to be seriously flawed, and that instead of the harmless "mist spirit" he'd tried to summon as a test of his skills, he called up instead a very dangerous entity known as a Jinniyah.

Malcolm, returning to his senses, reentered the house, realizing the snow was falling too fast and piling up too deep to safely make it back to town.  Joining the other investigators, he began examining some of the occult texts with Paul, discovering some more information on the Jinniyah - including how it could be bound within an enchanted glass bottle.  Using this information, Dr. Ramsey was able to find the spells to create such a bottle, and summon a Jinniyah into it, within the Al Azif.  

As they began discussing the possibility of casting these spells, a purple smoke began to seep into the room, forming itself into a beautiful Arabic woman.  She bowed slightly, and said in Arabic, "I have been listening to you for the past several hours as you've researched.  We can do this the simple way, or the difficult way."

Dr. Ramsey urged Lois, Mahira and Sherman to begin gathering the ingredients to make the ink, and began trying to question the Jinniyah to buy them time.  She simply shook her head and repeated her question.

And then Malcolm, .32 revolver in hand, fired three shots at her in quick succession.  

This is where we had to leave off for the night, as the store was closing and we had to clear out.  We're working on figuring out another time to reconvene and finish off the scenario.  

A Time to Harvest Session 9: Bug Hunt

Last week's Call of Cthulhu session ran long, but things were going entirely too well - for me as Keeper at least - to be willing to end the session at our usual cut-off time.  Things began to really ramp up here, and I think within the next few sessions we'll see the animal waste really start to hit the electric oscillator as far as the player-characters are concerned.  This was also, sadly, Greg's last session with us - his work contract had ended and he's leaving Rochester, so won't be able to be here on Tuesday nights any more.  Don't worry, we gave him one Hell of a send-off!

 Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator 
• Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major

Despite the untimely death of Abelard, the Federated Oil and Chemical-backed expedition to Cobb's Corners in search of the Outer Ones, or "metch kangmi" as they may be known, has gone forward as planned, now as much, perhaps, of a mission of revenge as anything else.  For Darren and Perry, it was a return to the MacLearan farmhouse where their adventures began, for Nick and Nathanlie, it was all new.  FOC had renovated and reinforced the farmhouse, installing a radio antenna and powerful electric lights around the outside.  Morrison, their security chief, supervised the installation of a variety of traps and snares around the perimeter of the property.

Randall and Roni, having not been brought into FOC, had pursued their own investigation that led them back to Cobb's Corners; reuniting with their old comrades (and joining the FOC expedition), they shared what information they'd encountered - that Blaine and Daphne Devine, the formerly-missing woman whose brain had been installed in Professor Harrold's body, had been in contact with a woman named Emelda Cratchett to acquire her husband's grandfather's diaries.

Once established (and confirming the local presence of metch kangmi when one apparently loses a leg to a bear trap), the team divides up, with Darren, Perry, Roni, the psychologist Drake and security chief Morrison patrolling the sugar maple forest behind the cabin; this was at Perry's suggestion, recalling the unsettling dreams he'd had the last time he was in Cobb's Corners.

Nick and Nathanlie, meanwhile, went into town to size up the local law enforcement and to investigate Darren and Perry's claims of creepy children.  Randall manned an impromptu watchtower atop the roof of the farmhouse.

Darren, Perry and Roni soon realized that something was wrong with the forest, noticing small, mouthless humanoid figures, pinkish gray in color, watching them from the trees - the same as a creature Roni had seen near the outhouse weeks earlier.  Morrison shot one of the creatures out of the tree, sending the others scattering - and the one he shot sublimated into an ozone-scented smoke within the next few minutes.

Coming across a dilapidated cabin in a clearing, they noticed a piggish smell coming from the shack and a faint grunting, squealing sound.  Stealing as close as he dared, rifle at the ready, Perry tried to peer through the shack's single window.  As he did, a porcine head lifted up into view, peering back through tiny, jaundiced eyes.  Clawed hands grasping the window frame, the swine-thing heaved itself through the window towards Perry, but died quickly to a single shot from the Lee Enfield, dissipating into smoke as it did.  Squealing from the forest told them more of these creatures were on their way, and they quickly barricaded themselves inside the cabin.

I have gotten so much mileage out of this image.

Two more of the swine-things died quickly as they approached the window, but an enormous boar, half again as large as its fellows and sporting a pair of wickedly-curved tusks, circled around the other side of the cabin and began to batter against the door.  Ramming its huge, bony head through the rotten wood of the door, the creature began to break through - only to be knocked senseless by a bullet between the eyes from Perry.  The creature stumbled and fell backwards, its breathing wet and wheezy.  Darren decided to toss out a grenade to finish the creature off, judging the distance to throw the explosive to where it would damage the creature without damaging the cabin or themselves.  His aim was a little off, coupled with the rottenness of the wood, resulting in Darren getting a back full of splinters.

In the root cellar under the cabin, they found a catatonic little girl - and realized that the original swine-thing they'd encountered had been trying to get at her when they'd disturbed it.

[GM Aside: Personally, I really dislike mixing material from Lovecraft's "Dreamlands" stories into my Call of Cthulhu games.  I feel like the tones don't mesh at all and I'm just generally not a fan.  So when the campaign called for Zoogs, Men of Leng, and a Moon-Beast, I replaced them with "Dover Demons" and William Hope Hodgson's "Swine-Things" to suit my own preferences.]

Nick and Nathanlie, meanwhile, after assessing Sheriff Spenser as an authoritarian blowhard and Deputy Cutter as hiding something, go looking for Jason Haggerty, the teenage boy seen drawing "creepy trees" weeks earlier.  Talking their way past the school-marm, they managed to isolate the boy.  Nathanlie laid on the charm, leaning in seductively and using the boy's raging teenage hormones as a lever to pry loose information.

It worked, and they soon learned that most of the children in town were part of a group calling themselves "the Young," that Deputy Cutter was their leader (even though he was almost "too old") and that they would be summoning "Mother" to Earth in accordance with her wishes.

As Nick digested this information, Nathanlie opened her mouth and began to emit a strange, subsonic droning, putting the private eye in a hypnotic state and rewriting his memory to erase all evidence of what the boy had told them.

After having the girl checked out by Matherson and Drake back at base, Darren, Perry and Roni took her home to her parents, and then paid Emelda Cratchett a visit; she was at first irritated to hear reference to Blaine and Devine, blaming them for her husband's mysterious demise just days after he spoke with them.  They managed to talk their way into her good graces, however, and even managed to gain access to her husband's grandfather's journals.  From these they learned of legends of a cave network under Broken Hill, in which the Outer Ones lived.

Taking some time alone back at the base, Nathanlie mixed up a cocktail of heavy opiates and lemonade, distributing it to anyone in the base who would take a cup.  Darren, Perry and Roni returned to base and immediately sensed something off in Nick's explanation of what Jason Haggerty had said, their questioning making him begin to question his own memory.

At this point, something big began to set off traps behind the farmhouse.  As they watched through the kitchen windows, a tree seemed to begin to uproot itself from the ground - or rather, to extract itself from the pit trap it had blundered into.  Towering twenty feet tall, the "tree" was a thick, cylindrical trunk of dense black jelly, pocked with drooling, sphincter-like mouths and patches of coarse, dark hair, balanced atop three digitigrade legs ending in cloven hooves.  Crowning this horror was a mass of squirming, greasy tendrils, four larger "trunks" emerging from the mass of smaller "branches." With a hooting bellow, the thing launched itself against the reinforced wall of the farmhouse.

Behind the group, Nathanlie planted herself firmly in the doorway out of the kitchen, the skin on the back of her neck splitting open as she began to molt out of "her" disguise - revealing the Outer One that had replaced her weeks earlier to observe and report on the Investigators.

The tree-like thing outside was too great for Roni's mind to handle, and in the darkness of the new moon she latched on to electric lighting as a safety blanket.  The sight of an Outer One emerging from Nathanlie like a five-foot cicada was more than Nick could comprehend.  Tommy gun in hand, all he could think was that if Nathanlie had been replaced, the rest of them must have been as well.

Perry managed to put a rifle bullet in the thing wearing Nathanlie's skin, but did not manage to kill the creature.  Squeezing the trigger, Nick swept the entire room with the submachine gun, emptying the thirty-round magazine.  Other than placing three bullets into the creature in Nathanlie's skin (finally killing it), the shots went high from the recoil of the gun, sparing the rest of the expedition.

As Nick stood there, breathing hard, barrel of the gun smoking, the tree-like thing outside burst through the wall, seizing him with two tentacles and pulling him into its bulk before retreating into the darkness of the night.

A Time To Harvest Session 8: Champagne Wishes

Running a little behind schedule in posting this session's write-up, as I've been in giddy wargamer mode since Wednesday, building terrain and tweaking my warband in preparation for a future game of Frostgrave.  It's also been far too humid (it hit 93% humidity the other day...walking outside was like swimming in hot chowder) to do much painting - I know my spray primers won't stick to my ruined buildings in this weather, and I'm a little afraid to apply paint to miniatures for fear of it not drying properly. So I guess I should stop procrastinating and finish this write-up!

Dramatis Personae:

•  Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
•  Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

After listening to the recording of a "metch kangmi," one of these alien Outer Ones, being interrogated, the Investigators came away less than impressed with the scientists at Federated Oil & Chemical, convinced that they have no idea what they're doing in regards addressing the apparent invasion of Earth by the Outer Ones.  Regardless, and keeping in mind the blank check penned for them by Abelard, they continue their firearms training.

The night before they're scheduled to return to Cobb's Corners, the Investigators are summoned by Selena Preston to the conference room on the fifth floor.  Not sure what to expect, Nick showed up armed.  Looking very serious for a moment, Abelard cracked a smile and drew forth an iced bottle of very high quality champagne.  "To our successes," he toasted.  Selena turns on a radio, and everyone begins to let their hair down.

Then, the power goes out.  By the time flashlights are rounded up, someone has slit Michael Abelard's throat, ear to ear in perfect silence.  Those closest to him at the table - David Drake, Nathanlie Peaslee, Peter Murdoch and Morrison, the security chief, were questioned closely, and frisked for weapons - both Morrison and Peaslee had knives in their boots, but these were all clean.  Darren and Nick attempted to search the conference room for invisible assassins by spraying champagne around the area, while Perry and Larry Nekler, the expedition's mechanic, made their way down the stairs to try and fix the power in the basement.

They were interrupted as they passed the fourth floor - from within, they could hear screams, gunshots, and a gutteral, booming croaking sound.  Sneaking past, they were met by opposition a level down - two green-scaled humanoid frogs, standing each six feet tall, still sloughing off the crusty yellow membrane that had sealed them in suspended animation - the "mummies" being rehydrated in the lab.  Perry stumbled retreating up the stairs, but managed to grab a fireaxe off the wall and swing at the lead of the two creatures.  The creature retaliated with a swipe of a huge, webbed claw that almost disemboweled the junior reporter.

Growing uneasy, Nick and Morrison head down stairs to help Perry and Nekler, stumbling into their fight with the two frogs, wherein their firearms made a distinct difference, though Nick's .45 jammed on its second shot.  One frog dead and the other in retreat, Nick helped Perry back upstairs to get medical attention while Morrison and Nekler continued to the basement.  A glance back showed Nick six more frogs emerging from the fourth floor, their claws and jaws bloody, and descending the stairs.

With Perry soon taped up, Nick rallied the group, rearmed, and led the group downstairs to see if Morrison and Nekler were still alive.  Muddy footprints and broken doors revealed that the frogs had left the building and made their way into the Detroit River.  The on-site staff -- security guards, maids, cooks, and lab scientists -- had been torn apart and partially devoured by the amphibious humanoids. And the building's wiring had been torn to shreds at the fuse box.  Nekler and Darren managed to jury-rig a temporary work around to get the building's lights back on.

With Abelard dead and no sign of his assassin (and the looming possibility that one of those present was a double agent for the metch kangmi), the Investigators debated the wisdom of continuing on with their mission to Cobb's Corners, ultimately agreeing that it would be best to launch an attack now, when the metch kangmi expect them to be disorganized and confused.

Recent Acquisitions

I got some new - and not so new - gaming goods recently, thought I'd take a post to show off a little and talk about what I got.

First off, I bought three out of the four new Carcosa modules written by Geoffrey McKinney.  These aren't so much adventures as open sandbox hex crawls - each booklet details a quadrant of a larger map that player characters are free to roam as they please.  Each quadrant is dominated by a single terrain type - Swamps, Barrens and Jungles.

Unlike the 2008 Carcosa release, which was done as a supplement to 1974 OD&D, or the 2011 re-release which was geared towards Lamentations of the Flame Princess, these modules are written with AD&D rules in mind, and as such reference spells and classes that don't previously appear in Carcosa, such as Clerics and Magic-Users (as opposed to Carcosa Sorcerers) as well as monsters not previously seen, such as traditional Lizard-Men.

The books are printed by Lulu, and are well put together, and for what it's worth, this is the first order I've gotten from Lulu that wasn't damaged or otherwise contained an "oops." One time I got somebody else's order combined into mine - so I got my Swords & Wizardry books *and* someone else's apocalyptic new translations of the Old Testament which described God as an extraterrestrial!

Other than the covers, the books are devoid of art, which is a bit of a shame; likewise, page numbers are missing which makes it a bit harder to track down information.  The maps on the back cover are nice, but the hex-numbers are often hard to read.

Of the three, I think I enjoyed my read-through of The Yuthlugathap Swamps the most and felt like it was the most immediately useable, with its assortment of Lizardman strongholds and the internecine warfare that marks their relationship with each other.

Overall, I'm kind of so-so on these books, and I don't really feel like they got me fired up and excited for running a Carcosa game, which is something I have been considering lately.  I don't regret the purchase, and I'm sure I'll pull some useful material out of them for use in future games, but I'm just not excited to run them for people.

On the flip side...

My FLGS, Just Games Rochester, has two collections of old Dragon magazines; on the wall rack, above the endless plethora of Pathfinder releases, are the "new" issues - copies that are still in great condition, nothing's been cut or torn out, while in a compartment under a display table is a stack of "used" issues.  I grabbed two from the "new" rack; issue #137 because I've always liked that Larry Elmore snow lizard painting, and #138 because it was the next one consecutively and it had a bunch of undead in it.

I gave both issues a read-through today while waiting for some paint to dry on a row of figures, I was really impressed by the sheer quantity of content here, with #137 being especially full of material I would absolutely 100% use in a game - the ecology of carnivorous plants, the weather system, the Pleistocene mammals, and the article on animal skins, tusks, etc., as treasure are all good, with three of the four being deep in my wheelhouse.

#138 was useful on two fronts - a great article detailing a new grimoire for Call of Cthulhu and a related monster I've never seen referenced before, and a listing of new and fun undead for AD&D.  Both of these seem like things I'll get some use out of in the future.

A Time to Harvest Session 7: New Beginnings

We had a smaller group this week, and a little bit of trouble with set-up - a folding chair broke under me when I sat down in it and we ended up a bit squeezed in next to an X-Wing game, but overall it was a good session.  Let's have a run down.

Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

A week or so passed since the events in Orne Library and the deal made with the agents of the "Outer Ones." The Investigators were awakened one day by the sound of police sirens heading to campus.  Following the sound of the sirens brought them to Orne Library, where the bodies of those same agents - the tops of their heads neatly removed and their brains missing - were stacked up like cordwood in front of the library.  While observing the scene, Darren noticed a black Cadillac parked nearby, a bearded man visible in the driver's seat.

Since Daphne Devine/"Roger Harrold" was not among them, they swiftly paid a visit to "his" office; not finding "him" there, Nick trashed the office and then they headed to Harrold's residence.  Finding "him" at home, they escorted the ersatz professor to a nearby cafe for interrogation.  They quickly ascertained that "Harrold" had nothing directly to do with the destruction of the agents, but suggested that the "Outer Ones" don't take kindly to failure and don't feel particularly bound to honor bargains made with what they perceive as an inferior species.

Lunging, Harrold concluded the interrogation by drawing a metal ovoid, not much larger than a hen's egg, from a pocket and electrocuting Perry with it, badly burning the journalist and leaving him paralyzed and unconscious for a few minutes.  As Harrold turned to run, Nick pulled out his pistol and shot the professor in the head.  After explaining the situation to the satisfaction of the police, the investigators left the cafe - and saw the black Cadillac.  Deciding to introduce themselves, they struck up a conversation with first the driver, a large Scotsman, and then the passenger - a beautiful blonde woman who introduced herself as Selena.

Michael Abelard

Selena explained that her employer had a job offer for them, a job relating to "our mutual friends in the mountains." Her employer, she explained, was Michael Abelard, the owner of Federated Oil and Chemical - the financiers behind their college field trip to Cobb's Corners, Vermont.

Driving to the harbor, they boarded an amphibious plane and flew to Detroit, where they were met by Abelard, who laid all the cards on the table - his son had been killed by the Outer Ones while mountain climbing in Tibet, in an accident that had also cost Abelard the use of his legs.  Since then, he'd devoted his life and fortune to hunting these creatures and learning everything he could about them in order to destroy them.

He asked the investigators to lead a team of scientists and soldiers into Cobb's Corners in search of a suspected hidden base belonging to the creatures.  His team had the scientific background, but no practical experience with the region or the creatures, which is where the investigators would come in.  Their concerns about being used as "bait" Abelard allayed with a blank check and an assurance that their grades for the semester would be taken care of at Miskatonic.

They were given a week's rest and recuperation at the Detroit facility, allowing Perry to recover from his electrical burns and the investigators to train with firearms.  They were introduced to some of the other individuals who would be going on this expedition - Dr. David Drake, a psychologist, historian and occultist; Dr. Sarah Matherson, a forensic pathologist; Captain Sam Morrison, chief of security; and Larry Nekler, engineer and radio technician.

Dr. Matherson was especially interested to hear about Perry's experience with one of the Outer Ones, and shared her research with him.  She even took the investigators down into the lab for a brief tour, where they glimpsed an autopsy of a desiccated, humanoid form - albeit one with stumpy, pillar-like legs, long arms, no neck and a wide, lipless mouth.  Dr. Matherson explained that a number of these natural mummies had been found at an abandoned base in Peru, and that they were believed to be a new form of the creatures, possibly an attempt to mimic human form instead of having to rely on brain transplants.

Finally, she played them an audio recording, of an interrogation conducted the one time they captured one of these creatures.  The recording was horrifying, the entity begging for food - unable to digest earthly matter - while Matherson demanded it answer her questions, delivering painful electric shocks to the creature when it hesitated. The creature - identified as a "metch kangmi" in Nepalese on the recording, a name Nathanlie recognized as referring to the "abominable snowman" of the Himalayas - was forced to admit to coming from a ninth planet, Yuggoth, at the far end of the solar system, but was able to say little more before Matherson inadvertently killed the creature with electricity.

A Time to Harvest Session 6: The Hallowed Halls of Miskatonic

I don't know if I'm even technically running "A Time to Harvest" any more.  That's how far afield from the anticipated campaign we've gone.  We were down two of our regular players this week, but had a guest player (my friend Greg, in town for work for the next month or so), so it balanced out.

Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
•  Oliver Goss (played by Dave), anthropology major 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

Nick was employed to investigate the apparent suicide of Robert Blaine, found dead in his room with a pistol in his hand, surrounded by empty whiskey bottles.  His investigation quickly led him to Orne Library, where he soon met Nathanlie, Oliver, Darren and Perry.  While initially skeptical of their story, he found himself uneasily convinced once they began to talk to the other students who had been on the Cobb's Corners trip, and heard one of them say that Blaine had been a "weak link in the plan," and that he "had to be eliminated."

A great deal of discussion followed, and the investigators managed, astonishingly, to convince the agents to divulge what they knew and why they were in Miskatonic, inhabiting student bodies.  They learned that the agents were sent to find and destroy any books that might allow others to discover the outpost of the "Outer Ones" in the Vermont hills, as well as to discourage further investigation of a unique mineral sample found in those hills on a previous expedition.

Playing on the unhappiness of agents Keith Clark (his family having been killed by the Outer Ones after he'd bargained for their safe release) and the man, Wesley, whose brain had been placed in Clarissa's body, the investigators managed to successfully argue the majority of the agents into abandoning their mission and going off and living new lives in fresh, young, healthy bodies.

That's when Nick noticed a heavy book rising into the air, seemingly unaided.  Recalling having heard about the invisible assassin inhabiting Terry Laslow's body, he threw Nathanlie's sack of flour at where he thought the assassin was (managing instead to cover himself in flour), then lunged, successfully tackling Laslow to the floor and smearing enough flour on him to render him visible.

Having seen what Laslow was capable of, Perry jumped forward, placing the barrel of the gun he'd previously taken from Laslow against the assassin's forehead and pulled the trigger.  Nathanlie raced, arms full of books, to begin dropping them on the stairs leading up from the library basement to disguise the sound.

Oliver went a little mad at the sight of this, blocking out all memory of who these people he'd just witnessed commit murder were.  He tried to flee, but was stopped by Darren and Nathanlie, the latter of whom ordered him to just sit down and stay quiet.

When campus police showed up, Nick calmly showed them his PI license, explaining that he'd been tracking this man on suspicion of murder and he was shot while resisting a citizen's arrest.  The student investigators escaped into the Arkham tunnels, old smuggler's passages excavated under the city - as an engineering student, Darren knew the tunnels under Miskatonic fairly well, having assisted in the construction of an engineering students-only subterranean lounge in them.

From here, the students considered their options, finally settling on writing a letter to the "Outer Ones" and leaving it for them to find in an abandoned farmhouse that the agents had told them was to be their rendezvous after the library was on fire.  In the letter, they outlined a compromise - in exchange for letting the library stand, Outer One-approved guardians would be appointed to watch over the library and control access to certain books (most of which were already locked away in the restricted section).  The letter drafted and placed, the investigators settled in to await response.

The response came two days later in the form of a letter wrapped around a brick thrown through Nathanlie's bedroom window.  "Your terms are acceptable," was all that was written, in exceedingly neat block capitals.  That same day, it was learned that a fire had swept through the Geology department, with the sole casualty being Professor Learmonth, who had been involved in financing the Cobb's Corners expedition.

Short Notice Sanity Loss: "Dead Light"

Wednesday I got word that a friend of mine was going to be in town for a month on a job, and was looking to play some Cthulhu at Just Games.  I quickly got something set up, deciding on the survival horror scenario "Dead Light," the first release for 7th edition Call of Cthulhu, as a prep-light adventure that could generate a lot of fun.  I'd run it previously at Running GAGG a while back, and recalled it working well.

The group I ran it for at Running GAGG, having been given the opportunity to roll up their own characters, made a group of bootleggers moving product down the Aylesbury Pike.  For this time around, I decided that a set of gangsters, members of Danny O'Bannion's Irish mob out of Arkham, would be an entertaining change of pace.  I decided they'd gone north to Bolton to shut down the operations of a bootlegger unwilling to join the O'Bannion Gang and confiscate his product and sales ledgers.

So I rolled up two drivers (with six players, I decided to space them between two vehicles - a Ford Model T and a Model AA pickup truck), a crooked accountant, a hitman, an undercover Treasury Agent collecting evidence against the O'Bannion Gang, and a trigger-happy girlfriend of O'Bannion's, a blonde sociopath who enjoyed killing as much as she enjoyed the fineries O'Bannion's attention allowed her lifestyle.

So they accidentally hit Emilia Webb with the Model T while driving in a horrible thunderstorm and the scenario begins - and begins to unravel.  I had failed to consider that the gangsters would be much less scrupulous in their deals with NPCs than another group of investigators might be, as their initial plan was to splash some liquor on the poor girl and dump her at the nearest gas station and be on their way.  They learn when she comes to that burglars broke into her grandfather's cottage, and there was a strange, silvery light.  A drunken hog farmer at the cafe attached to the gas station also swears he saw a strange, silvery light, and as his truck, sunk in the mud, is blocking the road, the PCs are forced to go with Emilia to her grandfather's cottage, as it's on a detour they can take.

They find the cottage dark, the door wide open.  The two drivers get the generator in the basement going, and a quick glance turns up the grandfather, dead, seemingly from blood loss, having been shot in the shoulder.  On the ground was the partially-incinerated body of a burglar, and an empty iron cask, like a big jewelry box, on the floor between them.

Outside, the Boss' Girlfriend waited in the car, reapplying her lipstick, when a crazed young man came running out of the woods, screaming about a strange, silvery light.  The Hitman quickly took the young man aside and executed him with a single shot to the back of the head.

Shortly thereafter, the Hitman is attacked by the Light - a slithering, flowing thing, like mercury pouring through the air, flickering like moonlight in the storm.  He's unable to move, enraptured by the sight of the thing, until he flicks a tendril across his chest, almost killing him with a single touch.  He began to spray bullets from his Thompson at the thing, and the rest of the party comes running, guns blazing, to which the thing barely reacts.  A chance flash of lightning sent the thing skittering off, and the gangsters said, "Screw this, this is someone else's problem!"

Shooting Emilia Webb (she was a witness) and looting the house (carrying off $600 cash and a bank account book for $19,000), they pile back into the cars and take off back to Arkham.

So clearly, this scenario didn't go quite as I intended.  Everyone had fun, which was what was important.  But I think next time I'll create a group of investigators with a much stronger drive to investigate and a greater sense of empathy for NPCs - or at least less of a reason to shoot them and drive away.