A Time to Harvest Session 5: "Going Mad at Miskatonic"

We had a smaller group than usual this week, but still achieved a quorum so we still played, and I think had a very good session.

Our Dramatis Personae for this session:

• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee (See Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time for more on the Peaslees - I made the canonical Peaslees ten years older to allow for a college age descendant)
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
•  Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
•  Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major 

When we last left our heroes, Nathanlie Peaslee was steeling herself to torture "Clarissa Thurber," her roommate suddenly displaying strange behaviors, for information, convinced that this was a case of the same strange fugue state that her grandfather had experienced in 1908.  She was stopped by the combined efforts of her father, Wingate Peaslee, and fellow investigator Perry Webster, who together talked her down from the idea of torture.  As they discussed other possible causes of "Clarissa's" strange behavior and whether some such causes could be found via blood test, "Clarissa" finally spoke:

"If you give me what I want, I'll tell you what you want to know."

"Clarissa" revealed that she was actually "Wesley," a chemist and body-builder taken by "the Old Ones" more than a decade earlier.  Unhappy about having his brain placed in a woman's body, he was willing to explain what he knew - that the Old Ones, alien crustaceans, had been visiting Earth for millions of years in search of minerals unavailable on their homeworld, Incredibly advanced, they can remove a still-living brain and preserve it for as long as they please in a sealed canister, even able to transplant it into a different head years or even centuries later.  The students on the Cobb's Corners trip had all had their brains removed and the brains of conditioned operatives placed in their heads, with the goal of collecting information on the Old Ones from various sources in the school's library, setting the library on fire, and stealing samples of a certain ultraheavy ore from the geology lab - ore that had precipitated the geology side of the Cobb's Corners trip.  

In exchange for this information, Wesley wanted to die with dignity; he understood there was no possibility of returning to his own body, and he was uncomfortable with living out his life as a woman.  

A shot rang out; a scarlet blossom erupted on "Wesley's" forehead, and Perry got a glimpse of the rat-like face of Terry Laslow, disappearing into the shadow.  Thinking quickly, Perry hurled a handy mason jar at the fading apparition, nailing him in the forehead.  Snapping into visibility and stunned by the attack, Laslow managed to shoot the boiler and douse the investigators in hot steam, but undeterred, Perry tackled him and Nathanlie lunged with the fireplace poker.  Holding the point inches from his face, Nathanlie demanded he stand down, which he did, calming down and going silent - and then he began to change.

A third eye opened in his forehead, his neck and arms elongating, his hands becoming claws; In a moment, Nathanlie was confronted with the monster that haunted her own nightmares almost as vividly as it did her grandfather's - one of the vast, cone-shaped beings that was somehow connected to Nathaniel Peaslee's experiences from 1908 to 1913.  Panicking, she lunged for the creature's head, embedding the poker in the floor of the basement.  Perry saw none of this, and Laslow used the confusion to kick free, though Perry managed to seize the gun and turn it on Laslow.  

Cornered, Laslow allowed the investigators some information - that he was in fact Lawrence Jarvis, he'd been in the service of the Old Ones for close to three hundred years, and that he would kill them for this.  Disappearing from view, Perry and Nathanlie heard footsteps running up the stairs and, trying to judge the location of the invisible assassin, Perry squeezed off a shot, apparently without success.  

Collecting their wits, Nathanlie and Perry met up with Roni and Randall and discussed what they'd learned.  Randall confirmed with information he'd gathered - attempting to quiz his friend Roderick "Little Rod" Block about the trip had earned him a savage punch in the nose.  Together, they made plans to arm themselves and find a way to protect the library from these strange invaders.  

To that end, Randall bought himself a golf club, Roni a knife, and Nathanlie a knife, a lever-action rifle (with attendant golf bag and club sleeve to disguise the weapon on campus) and a pint of kerosene.  

Casing the library, Roni encountered Jason Trent, the shy folklorist from the field trip, cursing in a broad cockney accent over a book on the American Revolution, and was belittled for his Scandinavian accent by Trent.  

Randall encountered Louis Gibbons, the former pre-med turned botany major, who was seemingly returning to the study of medicine, reading textbooks well above what should have been his level of expertise.  

Perry witnessed Dr. Armitage denying William Noakes, another folklore student, access to the Restricted Section, despite a note from Professor Harrold authorizing Noakes to review passages from the Necronomicon.  Perry delivered a warning to Armitage that certain students had begun acting strangely, and would likely make other attempts on the Restricted Section.  Armitage agreed to work on enhancing security.  

Nathanlie, looking into the possibility of using the library boiler room to encourage students to leave the library and thus shield them from the arson planned by the altered students, found the door locked.  She splashed some kerosene along the bottom of the door to see if it would wick under, before noticing "Little Rod," aka "Keith Clark," studying old periodicals.  Using the "real" name given to her by Clarissa/Wesley, she addressed Keith and spoke sympathetically, hoping to find another unhappy soul and potential ally.  

In response, Keith handed her a newspaper clipping from 1921, covering the discovery of the bodies of Lou Ann Clark and their two children and his own disappearance.  He explained that he'd made a deal with the Old Ones after accidentally stumbling across them on a family vacation; he gave himself to them in exchange for his wife and children's freedom and safety.  

A Time to Harvest Session 4: "Back to School"

First off, to the people in the miniature painting and wargaming community that follow my blog, I apologize for the lack of miniature painting I've been doing lately.  Haven't been hugely in the mood, plus we've had a new arrival in our lives here - this gigantic furball, named Atticus, has been adopted and brought into our house.  He's 20 pounds, or 9.07 kg for my brethren in civilized countries that use an actual system of measurement.  Sorry Americans, I'm pro-metric system.

Since I don't have a dedicated workspace for miniature painting, and I don't want to risk him licking paint or eating a scrap of metal or plastic trimmed off a figure, I've decided to hold off on toy soldier work for a while - at the very least until he's more settled in his environment here and knows the boundaries that are in place.

New feline friends aside, I think this week's session of the "A Time to Harvest" campaign was the best yet in terms of pacing and energy at the table.  We had a new player join us, a woman I knew a little bit at college, who's a big Lovecraft fan but had little experience with the RPG.  This proved no hindrance as she leapt into play without difficulty.

 Our Dramatis Personae:

•  Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee (See Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time for more on the Peaslees - I made the canonical Peaslees ten years older to allow for a college age descendant)
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
•  Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
•  Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major 
• Dave was on his way to Origins, and so was not available to play Oliver Goss this week.  

With Oliver incapacitated by an overpowering summer cold, no doubt contracted during the heavy thunderstorm experienced in Cobb's Corners, Darren, Perry, Roni and Randall have a quiet drive back to Miskatonic, arriving on campus August 20th.  Upon arrival, they immediately begin looking for their fellow classmates from the fieldtrip, while Perry visits Orne Library for an investigation into the history and folklore of the Wampanoag tribes of Vermont (flub on my part - in Vermont it would have been the Abenaki, not the Wampanoag, who were found in what is now Massachusetts) looking for answers to the mass grave-site they discovered.  He discovered native tales backing up the folklore he'd heard in Cobb's Corners, about evil spirits, the "old ones under the hills" that massacred an entire tribe in a single night.

Meanwhile, having recovered from a summer cold that forced her to miss the Cobb's Corners trip, Nathanlie Peaslee set out to find students who had been on that trip to learn what she'd missed.  She soon encountered first Roni, then Perry, Darren and Randall, who filled her in on the strange and unusual happenings of the trip.  She especially latched on to descriptions of students behaving oddly, relating them to the mysterious fugue state and alternate personality manifested by her grandfather from 1908 to 1913.  She made plans with the others to meet over dinner to discuss the matter further.
In the interim, Nathanlie found out where Robert Blaine, the expedition's leader, was living off campus, and paid his apartment a visit, sweet-talking her way past the landlord and giving the room a quick search, soon discovering a book - the handwritten notes from Daphne Devine, one of the missing students from the previous year's disastrous trip to Cobb's Corners, and a letter to Devine from Professor Roger Harrold of the anthropology department, praising her work and encouraging a follow-up trip.

She followed that up with a meeting with her roommate, Clarissa Thurber, a young chemistry major who had been on the Cobb's Corners trip, finding her suddenly sullen, withdrawn, and dressing in men's clothing.  A few carefully-worded questions convinced Nathanlie that whoever this was, it wasn't Clarissa Thurber.  Her suspicions, based on her grandfather's experience from 1908-1913, grew stronger, and she arranged a cab to pick up her fellow investigators for a private dinner at the Regatta restaurant.

Perry, meanwhile, interviewed with Professor Roger Harrold about the last days of the fieldtrip, after he and his fellow investigators had been sent home.  It seemed Harrold bore them no ill will regarding the circumstances under which the investigators were sent back to Miskatonic and happily answered Perry's questions, while inserting a few sly jabs at the quality and skill of the student newspaper's editors.

Darren took to Orne Library to research the footprints he discovered in Cobb's Corners, finding the shape of the tracks to resemble the feet of both owls and chameleons, though of a size to suggest an animal over five feet in length.

Randall looked into the geography and geology of Vermont, and encountered his friend Roderick "Little Rod" Block, who had been on the fieldtrip, and now seemed different; no longer was he wearing his beloved football jersey, and the swing was missing from his step.  He seemed distant and withdrawn; he quickly ended the conversation with Randall, disappearing into the depths of Orne Library.

Reconvening over dinner, Nathanlie provided the others with copies of salient points from Daphne Devine's journal, and discussed plans to gain further information.  It was ultimately decided that Nathanlie would drug "Clarissa" with ether and smuggle her unconscious from Upman Hall to a secure location - namely, the basement of her father and grandfather's house - for interrogation; Perry would assist in moving "Clarissa" inside a steamer trunk to get her past the watchful eye of the Upman Hall chaperone.

The plan works, and "Clarissa" is soon tied to a chair in the Peaslee basement; Nathanlie's father Wingate is aghast, and ready to call the police on his own daughter, however, intrigued by the possibility of learning more about his own experiences, the elder Peaslee is cautiously ready to move forward with the interrogation.  With Perry's help, Nathanlie appeals to her grandfather, winning him over to full approval and overriding Wingate's objections for the moment.

[GM's Note: Perry's assistance granted Nathanlie a bonus die when making a Persuade roll to keep her father from calling the police; the below picture shows the results on the dice.]

When "Clarissa" proved uncooperative, Nathanlie calmly began heating a fireplace poker over the boiler, commenting only that in Ireland, tests of fire and water were used on the seemingly-possessed.  She slowly approached the bound "Clarissa," glowing poker at the ready.  Perry wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

And that's where we left off for this session - a lot got done, and I didn't even hit everything here but I covered the important parts.  Most amusingly, I made Kai *fail* a Sanity check to go through with her torture idea - and she used her Sanity Reroll token to ensure she failed.  It was the first time so far this campaign someone used the Sanity Reroll house rule - my rule is that spending $10 or more in-store on the day of game earns one a token to reroll one Sanity Check that session.  It's my way of supporting Just Games in exchange for Matt offering me a place to run games.

Our next campaign session will be June 28th, but before that, this coming Saturday, June 18th, I will be at Just Games Rochester promoting Call of Cthulhu as part of Free RPG Day 2016.  If you're in the area I encourage you to come by!

A Time To Harvest Session 2: "The Darkest Part of the Woods"

We had the second session of the Call of Cthulhu organized play campaign "A Time To Harvest" this past week, and while it was a short session (I try not to run super long, due to one of my players having anxiety issues that makes it hard for them to spend long periods of time around strangers, plus I've been having wicked insomnia problems lately, meaning my energy levels aren't where I'd like them to be) I feel like a lot was accomplished.  The players divided up and spread across the small town of Cobb's Corners, Vermont to gather information and then came back together to share what they'd learned, piecing together dissociated knowledge in true Cthulhu Investigator fashion.

Once again, our 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 
• Rip Steakface (played by Gina), folklore studies major (Gina is my girlfriend, and this is her first RPG campaign, and she's not taking it entirely seriously. She has stated her intention that every character she plays this campaign will have a name taken from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode in which they riff SPACE MUTINY) 
• Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major 
• Oliver Goss (played by Dave), anthropology major

I'm not sure how we ended up with half the PCs having first names beginning with "R," but here we are.

When we last left our heroes, Perry had just been handed a photograph, seeming to show something flying in front of the moon, by local newspaperman Richard Wendell.  Wendell believed that it was to destroy this photograph that his darkroom was trashed by forces unknown.  Perry asked Wendell to run off a few copies of the photograph, arguing that it would be best to go public with this - whoever tried to suppress the photo can't if there are copies circulating throughout the town.

That night, another round of strange and confusing shared dreams struck the group, afflicting almost all the player characters.  In the morning, on his way to the outhouse, Roni spotted a strange creature, a small humanoid shape about two feet tall with an oversized head, pinkish-gray skin and no facial features save a pair of glowing green-orange eyes.  When he dropped his copy of the Sears Roebuck catalog at the sight of this thing, it glowered at him and took off running into the Sugar Maples behind the property.

Robert Blaine, the expedition leader, sub-divided the folklore students for this day's work, putting the player characters in one group and the NPCs in another (to ease the GM's burden, haha).  Darren was assigned to the "soil" group to assist the archaeologists and geologists, while Perry, a journalist, was left to his own devices.

The folklorists (and Perry, conducting independent research along similar lines), soon came to the realization that there were a few trends showing up in their interviews:

1. A place called "Broken Hill" was significant - some legends marked it as a Native American burial ground, others as a burial ground for massacred white settlers.  Supposedly guarded by a huge, spectral hound that can be turned away by the sign of the Cross.  
2. The valley in which Cobb's Corners sits is largely devoid of insects and wildlife - "only man and what man brings with him dwells here."
3. There is an unusual high death rate among children in Cobb's Corners.  The entire graduating class of 1919 (five students, but still) were dead before the end of that summer.  
4. Agnes Bellweather, living alone past the edge of town, is a witch.  Allegedly, when she caught her husband with another woman, she cursed his privates off and left him to kill himself.  

A visit to the town physician, Dr. Perry, confirmed that there's a high death rate among children.  Dr. Perry voiced his opinion that, as fantastic and unbelievable as it may seem, he's come to the conclusion that a vampire is at work - the children are often found drained of blood, splashed with pig's blood to disguise the loss.  He speculates that Sarah Maclearan, dead 20 years, is the vampire, as shortly after his arrival in town he got called on an unusual case: her grave had been vandalized, and he was asked to ensure that nothing untoward had been done to her body - only to discover that her casket contained a dead calf.  The whereabouts of Sarah Maclearan's body remains a mystery to this day.  

A visit to Agnes Bellweather revealed her to be an elderly woman, barely 4 feet tall, blessed with an abundance of common sense and humor.  She explained that she'd been the village midwife and apothecary until the sheriff forced her into retirement at Dr. Perry's arrival, though people still come to her for remedies for toothaches, infertility, and less medical maladies such as bad luck or feeling jinxed.  Rip made friends with her cat Beltane.  

Meanwhile, the digging team turned up a single arrowhead (Darren's player Mike, being a wise guy, asked me if it was a Clovis point.  Without missing a beat, I said, "No, Solutrean." He's not the only wise guy at the table) and otherwise labored fruitlessly in the sweltering heat and humidity.  Darren did his best to try and catch the eye of the attractive young botanist Clarissa, but without much luck.  

Dark, heavy storm clouds were beginning to roll in and the PCs reconvened at the Maclearan farmhouse, sharing what they'd learned with each other over spaghetti.  Noting that the dig site was nowhere near Broken Hill, they raised the possibility of digging near there to Blaine, who claimed that last summer, the team he'd been a part of had dug near there and turned up nothing of value, plus the terrain is treacherous and choked with thorn bushes. 

That night, Randall, laying awake in a puddle of sweat as the humidity built and built, heard the door to Blaine's room creak open.  He sat up.  "Where are you going, Blaine?" he asked suspiciously.  

Blaine jumps a little, and swings his flashlight around.  "I just have to pee," he mutters, heading for the door.  

When Blaine doesn't return to the farmhouse after about fifteen minutes, Randall wakes his fellow investigators.  "Blaine went out fifteen minutes ago.  I wanna see where he went."

Stepping outside, Oliver began calling Blaine's name, getting no response.  Knocking on the door of the outhouse likewise got no response.  Pulling open the door revealed it to be unoccupied - where had Blaine gone?

***

We ended the session on that cliffhanger, leaving the players to kind of simmer on that mystery until our next session, which will be May 31st.  

I do have some exciting news on the Call of Cthulhu front as well - because demand is so high right now at my local game store, I will be adding an extra game day to my schedule and running an open table event one Sunday a month for people who are interested in Call of Cthulhu but have perhaps never played before, and possibly working with the store owner to arrange an extra game master to begin running Cthulhu games as well.  

This is, to be blunt, amazing.  Call of Cthulhu is a long-standing, much beloved game, but not one that seems to get a lot of love in game stores; Just Games Rochester is the only store in the area with Call of Cthulhu events on its calendar at all, and right now those are all full, so we're creating more to keep up with demand.  

Matt, the store owner, pointed out to me as well that I'm starting to become the public face of Cthulhu in Rochester - I'm the guy busting my hump to run great games, I'm the guy going out and talking up the game, I'm the guy people are getting referred to when they have questions about Cthulhu gaming.  It's kind of surreal, but I'm willing to roll with it.  

I would like to get to the point where I'm helping to arrange more events not just through Rochester, but all of Western New York; there's a game store in Buffalo that I'd like to look at starting to run periodic games at as well to increase the visibility of Call of Cthulhu, with an eye towards bringing in other GMs (unfortunately, I can't run all the games) and getting big monthly Cthulhu events on the calendars of a couple stores.  There's a Savage Worlds group here that I'm looking at as a model of how best to achieve this.  

ADDITIONALLY, Matt asked me to help organize a release party to mark the arrival of the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu books in store, and I'm very excited for that.  Todd Gardiner, Chaosium's director of organized play, was kind enough to provide me with a demo adventure, not yet ready for publication, to run at the release party, and we're going to have that running simultaneously at multiple tables throughout the store to maximize visibility and expose as many people as possible to the infectious madness that is Call of Cthulhu.  I'm debating getting a black robe to wear in my role as master of ceremonies for this event, which will be June 5th starting at noon.  

So there is a ton of Cthulhu gaming going on in my life right now and in the weeks to come.  

A Time to Harvest, Session 1: So Nice to Meet You

This past Tuesday, six players and I convened at Just Games Rochester to begin Chaosium's new organized play campaign, "A Time to Harvest." This campaign is being released in monthly installments, which as a member of their Cult of Chaos GM Outreach program, I received in my email.  Once everything is complete and GM feedback on the campaign is sent in, it will be edited and released as a published, for sale on the shelf book.  By running the campaign in the store (and even better, by setting up tables closer to the front door of the store so everybody coming in has to walk right by us), we increase the visibility of the Call of Cthulhu RPG - which is good for the company, yes, but also hopefully helps Matt, the store owner, move a few more units of product (for the same reason, I've instituted a house rule that spending $10 on merchandise in the store earns players one opportunity to reroll a failed sanity check).  We rolled up characters (interestingly, both female players opted to play male characters) and then commenced to play.

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
• Rip Steakface (played by Gina), folklore studies major (Gina is my girlfriend, and this is her first RPG campaign, and she's not taking it entirely seriously.  She has stated her intention that every character she plays this campaign will have a name taken from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode in which they riff SPACE MUTINY)
• Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major
• Oliver Goss (played by Dave), anthropology major

These six, along with a handful of NPC students, are signed up for a field trip from Miskatonic University to Cobb's Corners, Vermont, to take place just before the start of the fall 1930 semester.  The students are divided up between folklore/anthropology students and geology/archaeology/hard sciences students, all under the direction of grad student Robert Blaine.  

Upon arriving in Cobb's Corners, they quickly learned some interesting tidbits:

• Sheriff Spenser has no time nor patience for college students, believing them all to be fundamentally dishonest, drunkards, and miscreants.  Deputy Cutter, a very young man, however, is more easy-going.
• the Maclearan farm house, where they're staying for the duration of their time in Cobb's Corners, is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Sarah Maclearan, the sister of Sheriff Spenser who died 20 years ago of tuberculosis.  Her husband, Jimmy, has become the town drunk from grief.  
• the town newspaper is pure gossip and scandal-mongering.  
• Jason Haggerty, the 14 year old son of the local diner owners, likes drawing creepy trees.  

After a night of sinister dreams, Rip and Darren got to talking and realized they had had the same dream.  Inspired by their nightmare visions of menacing trees, they decide to forgo school work and go try to find Jason in hopes the boy can provide some clues about the trees.  Blaine throws a conniption fit over the two of them abandoning their course of study for the day, but is helpless to stop them.  They fail to find him, but do talk to a group of children playing some sort of game involving dancing around in a circle and singing about who makes the sun come up and who makes the plants grow.  

Meanwhile, the other students in the folklore group walk the back roads of Cobb's Corners, talking to older locals about the folklore and legends of the region.  From one such individual, Old Man McGoggins, they learned of strange lights and sounds coming from the foothills of the Green Mountains, which he identified as evidence of a gateway to Hell.  He also warned them to stay away from the Maclearan farmhouse, as Sarah Maclearan was a "witch vampire" and would kill them from beyond the grave.  Tiring of this, and using Oliver as a distraction, Perry Webster snuck away from the group and returned to town, eager to interrogate Richard Wendell, the town newspaperman, over anything suspicious or unusual he might have seen, as well as to check his archives for information on the death of Boyd, his former roommate, who died on a previous expedition to Cobb's Corners.  

"Anything unusual, eh?" Wendell said with a chuckle, then closed the blinds, locked the door, and explained very seriously: "A couple weeks ago I was testing a new photographic emulsion, to try and take better photographs at night.  I saw...I'm not sure what, but I snapped a photo of it.  When I got back here, I put the camera under my desk and went to sleep, instead of developing it right away.  When I woke up, my dark room was in flames, everything inside smashed and ruined.  I managed to put the fire out but everything inside was destroyed.  If I had had the camera in there, this picture would have been lost; I can only assume this is what they were after - yes, I think it must have been arson.  And the strangest thing? Deputy Cutter came around to check on things - before I called the police."

He handed Perry a photograph.  It showed the full moon, shining brightly over the town, and a hazy silhouette of something with big, bat-like wings hovering in front of the moon.