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.  

The Modern Prometheus

Here's a Reaper Flesh Golem I recently finished, and as we all know, the Flesh Golems we've become familiar with thanks to decades of fantasy RPGs are literary descendants of the original creation of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, so you'll forgive me for going with that reference instead of the Monster Manual.  I gave him a snowy base to represent the alpine setting of much of the novel, as well as to make him suitable for use in Frostgrave.

Lady Knight and Noble Steed

I haven't done a ton of painting since the end of the Challenge, but I have done a little bit and it's about time I shared it.  These are a pair of Reaper Bones figures I picked up at my FLGS, painted and placed together on a 50mm base with some basing grit and dried plant matter.

Cthuesday: The Xotl'mi-go

Last week I alluded to T.E.D. Klein's ghastly humanoid horrors, the Xotl'mi-go, from the short story "The Children of the Kingdom," published in the 1980s in the collection Dark Gods.  I read the story years ago, having gotten the book for a dollar at a used book sale - would that I still had it! While much of the plot of the story has faded from my memory, much of the story's imagery, and of course the creatures themselves, remain fresh in my mind.  I decided it'd be worthwhile to devote this week's Cthuesday Creature entry to these grotesques.

The story is set during the New York City blackout of 1977, during which something like 36 blocks of Manhattan were ravaged by fire in under 24 hours, people basically going mad from the heat, the power outage, racial tensions and fears of the "Son of Sam" killer.  Klein took this all-too-human horror and wove a tale of inhuman horror amidst the looting and rioting.  The Xotl'migo, a race of pallid, near-blind, web-fingered humanoids, emerged from the sewers and sub-basements taking advantage of the darkness and chaos to pursue their unwholesome goals.

Much like the Deep Ones, the Xotl'mi-go are driven to perpetuate their race on humankind; mythology suggests that the Xotl'mi-go are a race of men that "God made wrong," and He cursed them with eyelessness and a complete lack of reproductive organs as punishment for their sins.  This lack of genitals has not stopped them from assaulting and trying to forcibly breed with human women, and they are indiscriminate - I recall from the story an infant and an elderly woman being assaulted.

Point blank, I'm going to say this: I'd leave the rape on the cutting room floor in any game I ran featuring the Xotl'mi-go.  I've got both men and women in my games right now, spanning a thirty-year age range, and we play in a public space.  There's no way I feel comfortable presenting the fact that these monsters are rapists at the table, no matter how "real" it makes the horror.  It doesn't have a place in my games.

Let's take a look at the stat block, updated to 7th Edition:

 STR= (2d6+8)x5 = 75
CON = (3d6+6)x5 = 80-85
SIZ = (2d6+6)x5 = 65
INT = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
POW = (3d6+3)x5 = 50
DEX = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
Move: 9
HP: 14-15
Av. Damage Bonus: +1d4
Build: +1
Attacks: 2 Claws, with a chance to bite if a victim is held.

Claws, 30%, dmg 1d6+DB
Bite, 25% if  victim is held, dmg 1d6

Armor: 1 point of rubbery skin
Spells: None, normally
Skills: Jump 55%, Listen 75%, Stealth 80%
Sanity Loss: 0/1d6 for seeing the Xotl'mi-go

While the Xotl'mi-go are not insanely heavy hitters, with these stats they can still be pretty nasty, especially given that they tend to be encountered in gangs of 2-10 individuals.  They're faster than the average man, and stronger as well, and with that 80% chance of being stealthy they're likely to be on a party of unsuspecting investigators faster than they can react.

So how do we want to use these creatures in an adventure? Rather than recycle the C.H.U.D. inspired scenario from last week, I'm going to draw from another horror film from the 80s and tie it into the blackout scenario from the original short story.

Psychiatrists at Oakhaven Sanitarium have been studying an unusual phenomenon - four patients, violent men kept away from the general patient population by electronic locks and armed guards, have begun to correlate their psychoses in an unprecedented fashion, forming a singular, shared obsession.

It began with Jack Cutter, a former POW who served in Vietnam.  He emerged from his captivity paranoid and insomniac, convinced of the existence of "creatures" - not men, but close, with grasping hands and tiny, burning eyes above a mouth like a fanged sphincter - that emerged from the jungle or the tunnels at night, lurching through villages in the darkness of the New Moon, looking for...something.  More than once, he says, inhuman faces were pressed against the bars of his cage, while boneless, rubbery white hands reached for him.  US Army Psychologists suggest that these were hallucinations brought on by the extreme mental strain of his captivity, dehumanizing his captors into loathsome monsters.

In Oakhaven, Cutter found confirmation in Fred "Preacher" Dobbs, a former minister and current pyromaniac who filled Cutter's mind with stories of lost tribes and races of men cursed by God for their sins, made monstrous and driven to the edges of civilization.  Cutter began to rationalize that the creatures he encountered were of such a tribe, while Dobbs found Cutter's stories to prove his own religious mania.

The two of them enlisted Reggie "Lennie" Bruster, a giant of a man judged not guilty of child-murder due to his own simplistic mental state, and Jimmy "Ferret" Skaggs, a rat-faced little man with some fairly antisocial compulsive tendencies and a long history of violence towards women.  Cutter became convinced that Lennie and Ferret were on the verge of being cursed by God to become the creatures he saw, and concluded that he and Preacher had been placed with these men to save them.  The fact that Ferret, in his old job with the sanitation department, claimed to have once seen the hastily-disposed of, waterlogged corpse of a similar creature fished out of the sewer, cemented his usefulness to Cutter.

The four became convinced that they were the only ones who knew for certain of the creatures' existence, and decided that God had ordained them to burn these creatures out of wherever they'd found refuge from the harsh light of day.

When a blackout disables the electronic locks to their cells, the four realize that now is their chance, and set off for nearby New York City, intent on cleansing the Big Apple of the worms at its core.  In hot pursuit are a team of psychiatrists, orderlies and security guards (i.e., the Investigators), eager to return the four madmen to the safety of their cells before they can burn down half the city in their hunt for these imagined "monsters."  But are they so imaginary...?

This scenario takes its set up from my absolute favorite under-known 1980s horror film, 1982's ALONE IN THE DARK, from writer/director Jack Sholder, starring Jack Palance, Walter Matthau and Donald Pleasence.  Using it here, I've made the focus on pursuing the human monsters, which if handled well will lull players into a false sense of security, letting them think that this is a "red herring" sort of scenario where there are no Mythos elements - then BAM, a webbed, slimy hand emerges from the shadows and clamps over an investigator's mouth, dragging them backwards with their friends none the wiser.  Of course, then we have the moral quandary - what do the players do when they realize the lunatics are *right*?

Cult of Chaos Report: "Stern as Death is My Sway"

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway; From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day." - Robert Service, "The Law of the Yukon"

August, 1903.  Elsie Thorne, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Miskatonic University, along with her uncle Charles, a retired soldier, her father's lawyer Jackson Watt, and a hired Canadian guide, Frenchie Sinclair, arrive in the small town of Fort Yukon, Alaska, on the banks of the Yukon River near the Alaskan/Canadian border.

They are looking for Professor Wendell Thorne, Elsie's father and an ethnographer employed by Miskatonic University.  He'd come up to Fort Yukon to record the folklore of the local Inuit people, but his letters had stopped arriving home.  Fearing the worst, Elsie organized a small expedition to look for him.

Their first stop was Haly's Roadhouse, the center of life in the small town.  Arranging beds for themselves for the duration of their stay and food, from proprietor Jim Haly they learned that "the Professor" had not been seen in town in at least two weeks, and that he mostly kept to himself or talked to the local tribal elders.  He also mentioned that one of the local prospectors, a man named Amos Phillips, had struck it big the night he last saw the Professor.

Further inquiries around town netted them the information that the Professor had purchased large quantities of volatile chemicals through the mail (three pounds each of ammonium perchlorate and potassium perchlorate were awaiting pick-up at the post office) and that Amos Phillips had been acting very strangely since his big strike.

Investigating Professor Thorne's cabin, they discovered his journal, in which he correlated Inuit legends of "star people" with the "Old Ones" spoken of in the Pnakotic Manuscripts.  They also learned that Amos Phillips had been by on more than one occasion, and that the prospector's big strike had also opened up a cavern, buried for millions of years, which the professor expected to yield evidence of the "star people."

Checking out Amos Phillips' claim, five miles up the nearby tributary of Porcupine River, they find a bag of dynamite and are shot at by a member of the Billy Boys, a local gang of Inuit teens.  Shooting back, they force him to surrender.  Interrogation yields that he's working for "the Master," and if they want to see the professor they'll need to go through the Master.  They force him to lead them to this so-called Master.

They're brought to a cave in a cliff-face; the cave discovered by Amos Phillips, they realize, and are ushered inside.  They're taunted by a few other members of the Billy Boys, then "encouraged" at gunpoint to go deeper into the cave.  In the next chamber, they discovered a "temple," with a pentagonal altar, a five-sided throne and two rows of pews.  The pews, carved out of the living rock of the cave, are littered with the bones of pre-human creatures, and two mummified examples, still clad in ancient finery, squat in niches on either side of the throne.

In the next room they meet Amos Phillips, squatting with shotgun at the ready, and the Professor, who is working out complex chemical formulas in charcoal on the wall of the cave, near a carefully carven pit, half-filled with bubbling, milky fluid - water mixed with certain chemicals, they learn, as Professor Wendell Thorne takes the ammonium and potassium from them and adding it to the pit.

Wendell Thorne begins to rave joyously about how the "Master" will save the world from itself, and how the investigators will be so happy to serve the Master as agents, advancing his agenda through the world until he is ready to make his presence known.  When they try to argue against this, he gives them a smile, shakes his head and explains it's not their choice to make - the Master's race created humanity, as it did all life on Earth, and "our gray matter is as sculptor's clay to them, to mold as they see fit."

They demand to see this "Master."  Professor Thorne ushers them into the next room, where squats what at first glance is a barrel-shaped, plant-like growth...until its eyes open and it rises up on five spidery legs, tentacles unfurling and raising a glowing, crystalline rod...

The thing whistles and chirped, and Jackson Watt fell to his knees before it, eager to serve his new Master; meanwhile, Sgt. Charles Thorne lit the dynamite on a very short fuse.  Elsie and Frenchie began to make a run for it, narrowly avoiding a shotgun blast from Phillips.  The chemicals and vapors in the cave ignited when the dynamite went off, and Elsie and Frenchie were blasted off their feet just as they reached the mouth of the cave, sending them flying into the river below.  The cave and its inhabitants were no more.

***

All in all, I think this turned out to be a really good session.  The older players liked the change of locale and time period that the Alaskan Gold Rush provided (one of these days I'll run something set in Dawson City, Yukon -- kind of the last no-holds-barred "Western" boom towns) while my youngest player, Katie, went from being kind of ho-hum regarding the choice of characters to really engaged and eager for the next game.

I really liked being able to use the Elder Things finally in an adventure; I played around with an idea that I think I pulled from an episode of the Unspeakable Oath podcast, that the psychic commands used to control the Shoggoths would work on lifeforms derived from the byproducts of Shoggoth-generation -- including humanity.  I liked the idea of an Elder Thing setting itself up as a god to lesser beings - originally Voormis (the pre-humans whose bones and mummified priests were discovered) and now restarting its cult with humans.

Next time, May 3rd, I'm actually going to be starting up the "Time for Harvest" organized play campaign that Chaosium is putting out in installments to members of the Cult of Chaos, and I'm lucky enough to have a full table - six players, including my fiance, who will be playing Call of Cthulhu for the first time.

Cthuesday: the Miri Nigri

It seems like Cthuesday comes around faster every week.  This week we've got something a little bit further off the beaten path, unlike most of what we've covered so far, I'm actually unfamiliar with the source material for the Miri Nigri - I've yet to get a hold of and read a copy of Frank Belknap Long's The Horror from the Hills.  So my only familiarity with the Miri Nigri is the entry in the Malleus Monstrorum.

So these are a race of small, ugly humanoids created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn from toads, to serve him and his offspring.  They look human except for their toad-like faces, cannot speak and exist solely to fulfill the will of Chaugnar Faugn, spending much of their time crawling over their god's inert form (picking off parasites, perhaps?).  They are generally encountered in groups of ten or more.

Not having a lot to go on here, I think I have a lot more leeway to make these creatures my own.  First, the stats:

Miri Nigri, Strange Dark Dwarves
STR = (2d6)x5 = 35
CON = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
SIZ = (1d4+4)x5 = 30-35
INT = (2d6)x5 = 35
POW = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
DEX = (3d6+6)x5 = 80-85
APP = (1d6)x5 = 15-20
Move: 8
HP: 8-9
Av. Damage Bonus: -1
Build: -1
Attacks: 1 claw attack per round.

Fighting 35%, damage 1d3+DB

Armor: none
Spells: none
Skills: Stealth 90%, Swim 75%
Sanity Loss: 0/1d2 to see the Miri Nigri

So what do we do with these strange, dark dwarves? Well, how many horror movies have you seen?

Specifically, I'm thinking of some of the early work of Canadian director David Cronenberg, in my opinion the indisputable master of body-horror.  The first thing that came to mind when I read about these weird, sexless, alien dwarves was Cronenberg's film THE BROOD, in which a woman undergoing an unusual psychiatric treatment manifests her rage as grotesque "children" that kill at her command.  The similarities are striking; she is effectively imprisoned in her therapist's office, leaving these dwarves to serve as her hands in the world, much like with Chaugnar Faugn and the Miri Nigri.

The Miri Nigri are referenced in The Malleus Monstrorum as abducting blood sacrifices for the vampiric Chaugnar Faugn.  I love this imagery, of them descending the mountain to remote villages and carrying off young men and women in total silence.  If you wanted to tie this in to Cronenberg's RABID, for example, I'd give the Miri Nigri a blood drain ability similar to a vampire's - they do the actual drinking of the blood, which Chaugnar Faugn "feeds" on vicariously - via a tentacular trunk, similar to Chaugnar Faugn's, that emerges from a concealed pouch on the body.

So let's put these in an adventure, and I'm going to continue the '70s-'80s horror movie theme.

The Investigators get involved when a homeless man turns up, torn to shreds.  Investigating reveals he was one of the city's "mole people," homeless people who had colonized abandoned subway stations and forgotten sub-basements to make living spaces for themselves, away from the eyes of the law.  Getting down there to speak with them will prove difficult as they are elusive and wary, but communicating with them can earn the investigators word of "those little guys," silent, child-sized figures in bulky clothing that are occasionally glimpsed in the distance but never up close.  They've become an urban legend to the already-legendary mole people, a sort of boogey man; whenever one of their own goes missing, well, "those little guys" must have taken them.

Exploring the city's underworld turns up recurring images scrawled and scratched on walls of Ganesha-like figures accompanied by script in no recognizable language.

The second phase is introduced as the mole people begin to arm themselves; lead pipes, fireplace pokers, anything they can swing like a club gets picked up and carried with them; one of them is caught trying to steal a police officer's pistol, claiming he needed to be able to defend himself against "those little guys." Interrogation reveals that those little guys have been coming closer, lingering longer around human settlements in the underworld.  They never speak, but the mole people pick up..."ideas," for lack of a better term, when those little guys are around.  The ideas are infectious.

First, a mole person begins drawing "the elephant headed fella" and writing the strange runes.  Then they start talking about how the elephant headed fella is the oldest god, the First God, the god that doesn't forget his children and leave them to go homeless and hungry.  They stop blinking so much.  Their bodies hunch and dwindle, their hair falling out.  They stop speaking.  Then eventually, they just slink away into the darkness to join their new family...only coming back to find food for the elephant headed fella.

So that's kind of a blend of THE BROOD, RABID and the 1980s cheeseball classic C.H.U.D., with the Miri Nigri taking the place of the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.  Just about any good Deep One-focused adventure could probably be adapted to use the Miri Nigri as well, while the adventure outlined above would also work with the sinister Xotl'mi-go from T.E.D. Klein's "Children of the Kingdom."

That's it for this week, readers.  I'm running a session at my local gaming store tonight, test-driving a new scenario I've written.  I'll hopefully have the write-up posted Friday.