Perilous Tales - Refresher Game

 Next weekend I'll be at Running GAGG, my alma mater's gaming convention. This year is their 30th show, and my 20th since I started attending (I think I've missed it once or twice, so I won't say it's my 20th show). I got involved with the Geneseo Area Gaming Group my first week of freshman year when I was a student there, and held a number of officer positions before graduation, culminating in club treasurer; I probably could have been club president if I'd wanted to, but in my senior year I was really trying to focus on finishing my degree (plus when I was treasurer my signature got forged to a purchase order for Magic cards). I served as club minister for both wargaming and role-playing games. Running GAGG isn't a big wargaming convention, being mostly focused on RPGs and board games, but there's always a few demo tables and they've recently resumed hosting a Warhammer 40K tournament. 

This year, I'm taking a break from running RPGs to do a wargaming demo table; the last time I tried this was with Buck Surdu's G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. in 2006, and the only guy who showed up for that misread the event listing and expected it to be a roleplaying game. This year, I'm showing off Perilous Tales, building off what I learned demoing the game last September at Wargames Among the Warplanes. I'm going to be in the lobby of the student union, so I'll have lots of people passing by my table - hopefully I can entice a few people to stop!

Today I experimented with table set up, focusing on making it eye-catching to attract the passerby, and gave myself a refresher game while I was at it. The villain today was the Demon Butcher, which can inflict some decent damage but is supported by minions that can de-buff the heroes in tricky ways. Our heroes today are Officer Bob (Leader), supported by Billy Ray the mechanic, Cliff the mailman, Larry the Lousy Bum, and Sandra the wilderness tour guide (all Teammates). Their objectives are Collect Evidence (take a picture of the Master Villain and still be holding it when the game ends), Call for Rescue, and Escape (move three figures off the villain's side of the table). 

The game started slowly, with the heroes fanning out and moving up the table. Officer Bob used his "Eyes Peeled" skill to check the first visible threat marker, confirming it was an environmental hazard. And then Sandra triggered an ambush, coming within 6" of a threat marker. In fact, two.

She managed to defeat the cultist (the Demon Butcher villain list includes "Urchins" that prevent heroes from using their skills within a certain radius; I'd previously looked at using imps of some sort for these but the Ill-Gotten Games cultists work just as well!), but the rats proved to be a much harder challenge.

And about the rat swarms - At the start of the villain's turn, as long as there's one rat swarm active on the table, another spawns on an unengaged hero. In this case, one popped up on Officer Bob as Billy Ray was running for the pay phone to Call for Rescue. Officer Bob also failed a Horror Check while in base contact with the rats, which means he fell prone.

Billy Ray failed his initial roll to try and Call for Rescue. A cultist spawned in front of him and another rat swarm attacked Larry. Ultimately, the rats ate Sandra.

Billy Ray bashed the cultist out of his way using his wrench, and successfully called for help - which spawned an additional two cultists on the table! Rats and cultists both swarmed now.

Larry and Cliff both succumbed to the onslaught of opponents, while Billy Ray had enough and bolted off the table (fortunately, the Villainous edge, so a victory point scored there!). With multiple cultists and rat swarms converging on him, and the threat level about to hit its maximum, Officer Bob thought about how he'd only been two days from retirement...

The master villain, the Demon Butcher, never showed up! There was one unrevealed threat marker left on the table, slowly working its way in from the back corner turn by turn, but nobody survived long enough to activate it. Which means there was no scoring the "Collect Evidence" objective. I tried getting more characters off the table, but everyone kept failing their rolls to escape from combat, keeping them stuck in melee and taking wounds.

All in all this was a brutal game, but it gave me a better understanding of how the minions (Urchins and Rat Swarms) under the Demon Butcher work. Sometimes just reading the listing doesn't give you a full sense of how they function as part of the villain's network and you really need to see them in action for it to click. Depending on how spaced out the heroes are, it's potentially possible to end up with 4-5 rat swarms on the table after a few turns, and both rats and Urchins will move around and bolster each other, providing bonuses to hitting the heroes. The Demon Butcher isn't as strong as something like the Wolfman or the Gargoyles, but he doesn't need to be - his henchmen do a lot of heavy lifting for him, as seen here. 

I think I'm in good shape for next weekend - we'll see if I get anyone to stop at my table! 

Latest Figures Painted

 As soon as I saw these "FBI Agents" from Crooked Dice, I knew I had to have them; X-Files scared the tar out of me as a sensitive kid in the 90s, but I've since become a fan of the "Monster of the Week" episodes (the overarching mythology episodes, not so much). Having Mulder and Scully on my table was a must for the demo games of "Perilous Tales" I'm hoping to run on February 1st at a localish gaming convention. 

These are another two from Crooked Dice, though maybe less familiar; the armed cheerleader is a dead ringer for Kelli Maroney's character in the 1984 cult classic NIGHT OF THE COMET, while the teenage metalhead is just as clearly intended to be the character Eddie Munson from Netflix's "Stranger Things" series. I even freehanded the partial skull and crossbones on the bandanna he's wearing around his head. 

Finally, I needed multiple rat swarms to represent the lowest grade of minion serving the master demon; these are 3D resin prints from GreenStuffWorld that I found on a spinner rack at Harlequin Hobbies. I like the little extras on these; the king rat directing his fellows, the wedge of cheese, the stack of newspapers. It gives each base personality. Each one is glued to a 25mm Renedra round base. Hopefully half a dozen will be enough for my demo games; I think the Perilous Tales rules actually have Rat Swarms appearing on the table two at a time. 

And this brings me up to current; everything I've finished painting to date has been posted on both the AHPC blog and here.

Miniatures Acquired: 4

Miniatures Painted: 18

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 0

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

Last Miniatures for the Year: Brotherhood of the Boomstick

 Now that they've had time to be seen on the AHPC blog, I can share them here as well; and these, it turns out, are going to be my last finished miniatures for 2025. 

These are some cultists with shotguns, produced as STLs by Ill Gotten Games; they also offer cultists armed with knives, pistols, flaming swords and even rayguns. My years running the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game have given me a soft spot for cultists with shotguns, however, and these were the ones I first brought to my printing guy.

I also grabbed an STL of a big, goaty demon for them to summon/serve:

And a group shot of everyone together. As you can see, the demon's a big boy.

Robes are base-coated in Reaper "Ultramarine Shadow" before being drybrushed with "Ultramarine Blue," while the demon's skin is a coat of "Coal Black" drybrushed with "Midnight Blue." I have another demon and another five cultists in the bag of prints from Dave so I could built an opposing force in red robes for struggles of an ecumenical nature. 

I'm planning on bringing these to Running GAGG in February for a demo table of Dracula's America. Just need to paint some rat swarms! 

And that puts me at 213 miniatures finished for 2025! Not too shabby!

Figures Acquired in 2025: 246

Figures Painted in 2025: 213

Go West, Young Monster

 I got an invite to join a group of gamers locally who are gearing up to start a fresh campaign of Osprey's Dracula's America - a western skirmish that can be played perfectly straight as a historical western game, or can be played as gothic horror in an 1870s America where Count Dracula has become President. Yes, you read that right. 

The game had been kind of vaguely on my radar, I knew I had friends (not local) who were fans, but I hadn't been interested in picking up a new period and a new ruleset. 

So naturally, having been invited to join a group who were playing it and loved it, I picked up a new period and a new ruleset, along with one of Northstar's prepackaged warbands. Or, I should say, my wife Gina picked it up for me - the two Wargames Among the Warplanes days excluded, 2025 hasn't been a great year for gaming, especially (non-solo) wargaming, for me. She was so excited that I'd been invited to join this group that she handed me her credit card and told me to buy whatever I needed. 

It arrived today:

And after dinner I set to work getting everyone cleaned up, flash trimmed and mold lines filed before gluing them to bases.

I also recalled I had another Native American figure in one of my project boxes - a Crow Warrior Woman from Clearco Miniatures, a very small (one-man) operation out of Spain that offers an eclectic mix of Native Americans, Neanderthals and modern zombie hunters. I'd received the figure as a complimentary inclusion in an order I'd placed with Mana Press last year and, not knowing what to do with it at the time, I dug her out and assembled her (her right hand, holding a rifle, is a separate piece), adding her to the collection; she might be subbed in for one of these figures, or be available as a future member of the posse. 

Tomorrow I'll get these 10 figures primed and then I can start painting. The current plan is to begin playing some time in October and I will not be caught with half-painted figures, I can tell you that! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 139

Perilous Tales Refresher Game

 With me running Perilous Tales this coming weekend at Wargames Among the Warplanes, I thought it best I run myself through a refresher game to make sure I knew what I was doing! It's not an endlessly complex game but it never hurts to remind myself how it goes. It also gave me an opportunity to try out the character cards I made for the assortment of heroes I'd selected.

In Perilous Tales, figures are divided into two types: Leaders and Teammates, with the number of each appearing on the table being dependent on how many players are involved. Playing solo, you have one Leader and four Teammates; if two players are playing a co-op game, each of them has one Leader and one Teammate, while with three players everyone has two Teammates and no Leaders. I made eight character cards, each with both a Leader and Teammate version of each character.

My wife supplied the index cards out of her colorful stationary collection, saving me a trip out to the store. I also had her select five characters for me, and decide which one would be Leader. 

So we ended up with:

• Billy Ray, the Mechanic (Leader)
• Lisa, the Veterinarian (Teammate)
• Larry, the Lousy Bum (Teammate)
• Cliff, the Mailman (Teammate)
• Klaus, the Thug (Teammate)

I got the table set up, and selected my villains: the Gargoyles, who are a fun and unusual menace. They operate like the "Weeping Angels" in the modern incarnation of Doctor Who - if two heroes can draw line of sight to a Gargoyle (there's two in the villain roster), it's incapable of moving. If they manage to successfully hit a hero, it's an automatic kill, and they are accompanied by bat swarms that limit heroes' line of sight. The villain roster also includes "Darkness Falls," which once activated limits line of sight to 6" for the remainder of the game. 

The heroic objectives were to Kill the Masters, Flip the Switches and Call for Help. The environmental hazards were Putrid Stench, Utterly Horrible (everyone in 6" takes a Horror Check at reveal) and Earthquake (everyone within 6" falls down automatically at reveal). The Threat Markers (covering both the villains and the environmental hazards) were arranged in the "Aggressive" pattern as determined by a die roll. 

I'm going to cut to the chase.

This game did not go well for the heroes. 

FIVE of the eight Threat Markers revealed at once. Both Gargoyles, a Bat Swarm, "Utterly Horrible" and "Earthquake" all went off at once. 

"Go ahead, Klaus. Try flipping the switch."

Klaus and Billy Ray were taken down by Gargoyles almost immediately. Lisa, Larry and Cliff spent most of the remainder of the game getting swarmed by bats as the Gargoyles crept forward slowly but surely. Cliff, especially, kept getting swarmed by bats, failing Horror Checks, falling down because he was being swarmed, and then getting up, getting a new swarm of bats on him, failing another Horror Check, and falling down again. He was up at down like three times. All three of them were killed "death by a thousand cuts" style by endless bat attacks. 

The heroes were all wiped out and didn't score a single victory point. 

I haven't laughed this hard during a war game since last Wargames Among the Warplanes when the taco truck got weaponized. 

I do think I may have unwittingly penalized the heroes with the big moving truck in the middle of the board. The heroes might have been able to do more against the Gargoyles if that hadn't been protecting the villains from heroic line of sight. I may replace that with the taco truck or leave it off all together. 

All in all, the game took about 45 minutes so I may be able to squeeze in more games on Saturday than I'd originally planned. Or I can wrap up early and finally play that Biplanes vs. King Kong game! 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 158

Figures Painted in 2025: 139

Tales of Horror: Blood of the Legion

 My painting has been a bit spotty since the end of the OWAC, and I am spending a fair amount of time prepping miniatures for next year's Army Challenge. But I have gotten a bit done, and today I treated myself to a solo game using Wiley Games' "Fistful of Lead" skirmish system, specifically their "Tales of Horror" supplement. 

There are things lurking in the dark corners of the Earth too foul for even the hardened men of the French Foreign Legion to handle; Major LeDuc leads a hand-picked team of Legionary monster slayers to to mete out Honour et Fidelitie to the creatures that lurk in the shadows. 

Though LeDuc and his men were too late to prevent the cruel vampire Baron Ferenczy and his coven from locating and retrieving the Golden Idol of Ish-Kabibble from its resting place beneath a ruined keep in the Algerian desert, they have committed themselves to making sure Ferenczy does not bring the Idol (and with it, chaos and horror) to the cities of Europe. Aided by a trio of archaeologists, LeDuc and his men take up positions around the old keep and ready themselves for nightfall...

Hunters:

• Major LeDuc (Leader; Veteran, Encouraging, Swordsman, Tough as Nails, armed with a sword and pistol)
•  Ibrahim (Specialist; Ranged Fighter, Sniper, armed with a rifle and equipped with Blessed Bullets)
• Rokoff the Russian Bear (Regular; Brawler, armed with a two-handed axe)
• Barker the Scout (Regular; Ranger, armed with a shotgun)
• Beni (Regular; Slippery, armed with dynamite)
• The Archaeologists (Grunts; Smart, armed with pistols)
  

 

figures by Pulp Figures

figures by Copplestone Castings

 

Vampires:

• Baron Ferenczy (Leader; Veteran, Fearsome Presence, Cold-Blooded, Cause Fear, Great Strength, Fang and Claw, Fast) 
• Nadja (Acolyte; Stealthy, Mesmerize, Great Strength, Fang and Claw, Fast)
• Karl (Fledgling; Leaper, Great Strength, Fang and Claw, Fast, Bloodlust)
• Anna (Fledgling; Flurry of Blows, Great Strength, Fang and Claw, Fast, Bloodlust)
• Jackals (Horde; Dodge) 

 

figures by Reaper Miniatures

The table was set up, with the vampires deploying in the ruined keep at the center of one side of the board, and the hunters scattered through the ruined village, though none within 12" of the vampires' deployment. 

 

I won't go into detail about the game, since I completely whiffed it - I missed a prominent note in the "Tales of Horror" book about vampires being immune to regular bullets, and thus the game was over in two rounds. Oops. I'll have to set back up and run through it again later this week.

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.

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.