The following is an account of an ongoing Call of Cthulhu campaign, summarized in narrative form, primarily for the benefit of my players. If you are here by mistake you should probably leave, but if you’re going to read this I’m probably legally obligated to tell you that the majority of this story has been derived from officially published Chaosium materials, usually indicated by the headers, with supplemental material added by myself (and necessitated by my players’ choices), until they reach Lonely Hollow, at which point we’re totally off book and play testing a town and several scenarios of my own design.
Cast of Characters
Aurora Nova: PC Investigator, dilettante and forever student from the general Burlington Vermont area.
Otho Conway: PC Investigator, interior designer and hanger-on with a somewhat enigmatic past.
Geoffrey Clarkson: PC Investigator, antiquarian. Older and slightly out of his depth. Weirdly quick to violence.
Larry Croswell: NPC, occult author and globe trotter. Friend and fellow member of The Order. Has gone on a few adventures too many.
Joshua Winscott: NPC, one time wealthy client and fellow traveler. Current allegiance and status unknown.
Larry Klein AAL: NPC, Croswell/Blackwood family lawyer. Possibly available for legal counsel.
Arthur Blackwood: NPC, lawyer, Larry Croswell’s uncle. Still in prison last you heard so… probably not super helpful.
Miles Truman: NPC, author, New England historian. Boston based. Owes you lunch.
Maud: NPC, Aurora’s family maid and a mother figure to her and her sister. Mid-60s, matronly but scrappy.
Celeste Nova: Aurora’s older sister. More details TBD.
“Wedge”: NPC, usual point of contact with The Order of the Unveiled Eye, Gloucester Safe House. Seemingly war weathered teenager.
“Murgatroid”: NPC, muscle for The Order’s Gloucester Safe House. Young lady of few words and several different firearms.
“Biggs”: NPC usual doorman for The Order’s Gloucester Safe House. Short, talkative, gregarious pre-teen.
“Barney Google”: NPC, point of contact for The Order, Providence. Extraordinarily well dressed. Little person. No nonsense.
“????”: NPC, individual of apparent veneration within the order. Indeterminate age and wounded, appears to wield some kind of magic.
Thomas Kimball: NPC, former client of Aurora’s, Michigan based.
Douglas Kimball: NPC, former target/subject of Aurora’s. No longer entirely human, if at all. Parted on good terms though.
Lonely Hollow Residents
Wilford Borg: NPC, 50s, Pastor at Temple Exalted. Has some awareness of the supernatural.
Orville Borg: NPC, young veteran , visibly disabled, member of The Watch.
Circe Phillips: NPC, girl child, alleged seer, part time produce stand employee
Perses Phillips: NPC, teenage boy, Circe’s occasional enabler, part time produce stand employee
Eli Phillips: NPC, sketch artist, Phillips Produce distribution manager, Perses & Circe’s uncle
Oliver Kord: NPC, Temple Exalted’s Sexton (groundskeeper etc)
Stella Bowheart: NPC, proprietor of the Glass Spider Tavern. Older lady, suspiciously progressive.
Nathaniel Phillips: NPC, Phillips Produce distribution liaison, designated point of contact
Major Dick Loomis: NPC, old veteran, member of The Watch, rag man.
Archivald Conner: NPC, accused murderer and all around wrong’un, possible sorcerer, exiled, current whereabouts unknown.
Annie Conner née Cameron: NPC, Archie’s wife and presumed accomplice, exiled, current whereabouts unknown.
Lonely Hollow Locations:
Glass Spider Tavern: The only inn in town. Older building but well built and clean with good food.
Grand Pavilion: Impressive open air building in the center of the fairgrounds. gathering place and home to big statue.
Hollow Station/The Watch Station: Train station for abandoned rail leg at north tunnel, now serves as HQ for The Watch.
Roane’s General: General Store on the edge of the fairgrounds. Houses telephone, telegraph, post office, and local paper.
Temple Exalted: Church on the shore of Pine Knot Creek. The unofficial center of the community.
Türhaus: Former residence of Archivald and Annie Conner, apparent dangerous ne’er-do-wells.
In Memorium
Thomas “Happy” Lebensfreude: NPC, guard at Danvers. Probably just doing his job when Otho stuffed an ether rag in his mouth.
Andrew MacBride: NPC former contractor turned patient at Danvers. Sent to murder but instead warned of Dr. Berger’s machinations. “Suicide”.
Hilda Francks: NPC, old lady who owned a bunch of dolls that Otho almost certainly startled to death.
Rupert Merriweather: NPC, former associate of Aurora and Otho’s. Summoned a “genie” that almost killed you. Natural causes?
Joshua Thomas: NPC, former professor and friend of Aurora’s. Killed somewhat by alien cephalopod thing but mostly Aurora’s hat pin.
Known Safe Houses
Gloucester, MA – dock warehouse
Providence, RI – apartment complex
Assassin’s End, VA – farm house
Part I: Strange Stirrings
Prelude: Paper Chase
The Society for the Exploration of the Unexplained had so far served as something of an interesting diversion for Aurora Nova, but little more. The occult author Larry Croswell and Professor Joshua Thomas had been invited to give some entertaining lectures on various esoteric anthropological theories, and occasionally a fellow member would present a dodgy newspaper article or an even dodgier photograph as possible “evidence” of supernatural activity, that was about the extent of it. While she had struck up friendships with Mr. Croswell and Prof. Thomas respectively, both of whom regularly alluded to much more substantive encounters with the paranormal, ultimately the group failed to materialize much beyond the odd academic curiosity. So when they received a telegram from one Thomas Kimball of Arnoldsburg, Michigan asking for their help in investigating the disappearance of his uncle Douglas and subsequent burglarizing of his uncle’s books, which happened to coincide with some administrative concerns her father’s business had in the state, Aurora volunteered on something of a lark urged on by her friend and interior designer Otho Conway to look into the situation, if only to ease the concerns of what was likely a harmless old quack. What she found there however would change her relationship with reality for the remainder of her life.
She arrived in Michigan in September of 1921, nearing the autumn equinox. Though her green Cadillac 55’s white walls had a bit of a time on the rugged rural streets, she was able to find her way to the Kimball house on Aylesbury Street without too much issue. Thomas explained the situation to Miss Nova anxiously. He told her that his Uncle Douglas had disappeared quite suddenly, and without a trace, roughly a year earlier and about how, nearly a year later to the day, someone had come into the house in the night and absconded with many of his uncle’s favorite volumes. The police had no leads and he, having no investigatory experience, was clueless as to where to even begin. Though she also had never embarked on anything of the sort herself, Aurora found herself earnestly investigating a disappearance and a burglary in a small town nearly 1500 miles from her own. The absurdity was not lost on her as she attempted to canvas the street, approaching neighbors, looking through old papers, and finally interviewing the cemetery’s groundskeeper.
Eventually a picture began to emerge from the noise of information, transforming disparate and puzzling circumstances into a somewhat coherent narrative. Discovering some rather prominent and recent footprints, Aurora followed them to the entrance of a mausoleum which she successfully opened, but was promptly knocked out from the gust of noxious fumes which emerged from the apparently gaseous underground. Coming to, she was greeted by Douglas Kimball, a man in the midst of incredible changes. He had grown claws and fangs, and his legs had begun to invert like the rear haunches of a goat. He explained how on one of his many excursions to the cemetery to read by moonlight, he encountered a group of strange and fascinating creatures which had emerged from beneath the ground. He struck up a mutual friendship with these creatures and eventually decided to live among them. He found that he felt more at home in the cavernous environs occupied by his newfound companions than he ever had among humans, and that they large left each other alone, pressing no tedious social obligations on one another. So when his new friends began to prepare to move on from beneath this place, he decided to return home to gather as many books from his library that he could carry, and move on with them, into whatever new life awaited him underground for good. Shortly after coming to this understanding, Douglas and Aurora came to a parting, he with his books, and her with an answer to her mystery.
Aurora did her best to convey to Douglas’ nephew Thomas that Mr. Kimball had found contentment and was safe without giving too much of the more incredulous elements of the story away and, perhaps strangest of all, Thomas seemed somewhat resigned and knowing. Aurora returned home to Burlington to find this experience had set her apart from the world in ways she found difficult to articulate. Her fellow Society members when faced with the details of her encounter with the genuine unknown, belied a sort of disbelief that betrayed a disingenuousness which she had not previously realized ran among them. Somewhat quizzically, they appeared to love the mystery more than the answer, prizing the insubstantial above the evidential. Before long they parted ways as a consequence of mutual disillusion, their discomfort with her conviction having left quite an impression on Miss Nova.
1) Genius Loci
When news of her experience and subsequent soft ostracization reached the author Larry Croswell through their variously overlapping social circles, he reached out and they struck up a correspondence on the subject of the supernatural and the cognitive and social consequences of encountering such phenomena. After exchanging a number of letters over the ensuing weeks, Larry found it necessary to seek treatment for a nervous disorder brought on by his work investigating cult phenomena overseas for an upcoming book. This landed him in the Danvers State Lunatic Asylum under the care of Dr. James Berger. When her letters began quite abruptly to go unanswered, followed eventually by a strange and unconvincing proclamation that everything was fine, Aurora decided to pay him a visit. This time, for both moral support and safety concerns, she would bring her friend Otho Conway, whose own interest in the occult was no small driver of her initial dalliance with the unexplained.
When confronted about Larry’s allegedly deteriorating condition, Dr. Berger mostly stonewalled the pair. However after some cajoling they were able to briefly visit Larry, who told them he believed himself to be in grave danger, having overheard a timetable with sinister overtones. This inspired the duo to dig into the institute’s history, both recent and colonial, going so far as to travel to Boston to comb through Berger’s predecessor’s notes. What they found was allegations of otherworldly goings-on stretching back into the days of the puritans, much of which was treated as immutable gospel by Dr. Shine, the previous superintendent of the asylum. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Berger appeared to have removed the ward placed upon the grounds and even had an amphitheater built on the site which was believed to be the epicenter of the alleged curse. Upon returning to their motel in Danvers they were confronted by an escaped patient, Andrew MacBride, who disclosed to them that he had been tasked with, at the very least, scaring them off their investigation, if not outright murdering them, but had decided instead to warn them and attempt to flee. After seeing a story in the following day’s paper detailing MacBride’s supposed suicide they deigned with haste to rescue Larry by any possible means.
That night they scaled the fence, Otho ethered a guard (almost certainly to death), they sneaked into the facility, sprung Larry, and beat a hasty retreat with guards hot on their heels. One after another they all three scaled the fence, meaning to abscond in Aurora’s Cadillac which awaited them on the other side. However, as Otho reached the zenith of the fence a fierce shock wave rocked the grounds, originating from the amphitheater and radiating a strange glow outward, flinging him onto the rear of the car which quickly sped away, Otho clinging to the trunk for dear life. They drove on into the night until reaching Lawrence, MA and in the morning they got Larry a change of clothes and a train ticket. He headed for New York as Otho and Aurora, on Larry’s advice, headed to Gloucester to meet The Order of the Unveiled Eye. Once ready, they were then to reconvene with Larry at the Hotel Ansonia in New York.
2) Interlude: Gloucester Safe House
Aurora and Otho reached Gloucester by late evening, pulling up to the edge of the docks just as the sun began to set. They approached the door of the warehouse which sits at the address Larry had hastily written down for them and, when prompted, provided his password. A young man in a typical newsboy’s clothes, no older than perhaps 12, opened the door and introduced himself as “Biggs”. He escorted them throughout the building which had been filled with what amounts to the walls of a plywood maze until they reached a trapdoor leading to a well constructed underground tunnel system, not unlike an impromptu bunker from The Great War. There they met a young lady (perhaps alarmingly, casually armed with a revolver) referred to as Murgatroid and another young man who introduced himself as “Wedge”. Wedge informed the duo that he and the organization had been aware of Aurora’s activities since Arnoldsburg, and that they are under consideration for recruitment into their clandestine organization, The Order of the Unveiled Eye, which investigates serious and dangerous phenomena. They have resources and a spy network capable of offering support to people who have been pulled into the orbit of the dark forces which appear to inhabit a world beyond human understanding. Wedge then pointed them at an introductory mission of sorts. Joshua Winscott in Providence had communicated to one of their contacts that he may have stumbled on a network of tunnels which are older than what should be there and would like discreet help in investigating them. After reconvening with Larry (code named Moloch), Aurora and Otho (now code named Chaplin and Pickford respectively) are to pay Mr. Winscott a visit and judge the validity of the claim. Once this is complete they are to report to the Providence safe house.
3) The “What’s in the Cellar?” Sandwich
So off they went to New York City to rejoin Larry Croswell at the Ansonia Hotel where they found him holding court with a number of strapping young gentlemen at the “juice” bar. Once there they partook in its vibrant queer nightlife nearly to the break of dawn, partying with the various show folk and other regulars while the booze flowed liberally. Poor Larry however was perhaps a little quick with the liquor and had to be put to bed fairly early, which was perhaps for the best considering his ordeal at Danvers. In the morning, as planned, they accompanied Larry to his family lawyer’s office where they received some unpleasant and somewhat shocking news.
Larry Klein AAL informs the three of you that Larry’s uncle, Arthur Blackwood, has been accused of murdering his late wife, Rose, at their summer cabin. However Arthur has left a recording for Larry claiming that Rose was torn to pieces by “the genie” that lives beneath the cabin and begging him to help clear the Blackwood name and save him from the electric chair. They quickly make it to the cabin upstate and begin investigating. They learn that Arthur’s ancestor summoned a creature and forced to to provide material wealth for the family, protecting himself with a ward in the form of a ring, a ring which Arthur had apparently lost, leading to the tragic end of Rose. Before long the creature begins to attack. Larry, the only one capable of bringing the creature to heel, freezes at a crucial moment forcing Otho to assault him back into his senses with a stiff backhand. Larry is able to banish the creature, if only temporarily, before fleeing in terror from Otho.
After some time either Aurora is able to talk him down or he simply calms on his own, whichever the case it is clear that Larry’s nerves are utterly fried. Aurora drives the trio to Dr. Strong’s Sanitarium in Sarasota where they attempt to regain some semblance of sanity and calm. After several days’ evaluation it is unfortunately clear that Mr. Croswell is deeply at his wits’ end and in need of more extensive long term care so the staff at Dr. Strong’s agree that the Friends’ Hospital in Pennsylvania is for the best. It is there that Croswell will spend the rest of 1921 and the entirety of 1922. Having fulfilled their obligations to Larry, they continue on to Providence as instructed by The Order.
4) The Darkness Beneath the Hill
The pair arrive in Providence late in the evening and meet with Josh Winscott at his aging palatial estate. Throughout the course of the briefing Winscott is forced to confess that his family’s wealth is largely ill-gotten, through the post-abolition slave trade in Rhode Island. It is in this way that Winscott had expected to find smuggler’s tunnels beneath his newly inherited home during recent renovations, which is why he had chosen to undertake such a project by himself, however these tunnels appeared older and larger than he’d anticipated, which is what compelled him to seek discreet help in their unearthing. In spite of their reservations regarding his character, Otho and Aurora resolved to meet him again in the morning to begin exploring the tunnel system together.
Upon arrival that morning, Joshua was nowhere to be seen. It soon became clear that he had gotten an early start underground without them. However not long after beginning their search the two stumbled on the mauled remains of Mr. Winscott’s forebears from over a century previous, with evidence of Joshua’s having come and gone among them. Morally compelled to venture deeper into the subterranean in search of Mr. Winscott, the pair did exactly that. Fairly quickly they stumbled onto what could amount to evidence of an ancient reptilian civilization in the form of a massive graven tableau on the walls leading into a somewhat labyrinthine tunnel system. Soon after that they discovered a shrine to a massive snake god, followed by what appeared to be a giant pipe organ adorned with human heads which moaned on the wind. Finally they found themselves in a large chamber filled sacs of fluid which, upon shining a light within them, revealed gestating man-sized snake-like creatures. Overcome with the compounding reality of their experience thus far, Aurora flew into a fit of unmitigated violence, destroying every last one. Sensing themselves pursued, they fled the scene into a warren of sorts where they encountered an uncanny humanoid species of possible simians, but Otho quickly strategically set the warren ablaze in order to repel the newcomers and cover their retreat from their initial pursuer. Though quickly approaching freedom, they heard the cries of Joshua Winscott from deeper within the caverns, and begrudgingly turned back.
Eventually they discovered an impressively appointed laboratory with Joshua cowering in a kennel-like cell with several simian juveniles harassing him in idle play. Before they could free him a humanoid snake creature in elaborate seemingly ceremonial dress entered the room through a solid rock wall and initiated an attack. In the confrontation Aurora managed to shoot it at least once, but then succumbed to some sort of psychic attack by the creature. Wounded, it retreated back through the wall from which it had come which quickly sealed up behind it, but not before Otho was able to send some lit dynamite in behind it. Upon freeing the near catatonic Winscott, Otho slung Aurora’s unconscious body over his shoulder and hastened their retreat. Nearly halfway to freedom they were confronted by the previously unseen creature which had originally pursued them, now half charred from Otho’s strategic arson. Though it nearly killed Winscott in one blow, they managed to defeat the creature before absconding from the subterranean hell below Providence. Aurora’s wits having returned, the two contacted Winscott’s private physician and awaited his arrival before returning to their hotel rooms for the night. In the morning they once again drove by the Winscott estate to see Joshua, now heavily bandaged and aided by crutches, directing workmen to deposit literal truck loads of dynamite into his home, presumably into the caverns below his basement.
5) Interlude: Providence Safe House
Upon completing the task assigned to them by the Order of the Unveiled Eye, Aurora and Otho drive to the address on the outskirts of Providence given to them by their Gloucester contact, Wedge. There they find a relatively new apartment building that appears to have been abandoned some time between construction and opening. There they followed a series of signs (both literal and ostensible) into the basement of the building where they meet with a young olive skinned little person in a black silk suit with white cuffs and red kerchief and ascot who introduces himself as Barney Google. Barney sits patiently at his portable typewriter as the two recount their experiences below the Winscott house, interrupting only to ask for clarification. When he is satisfied he shakes their hands and tells Aurora to “go home and answer your telephone” before walking into the mechanical area of the basement leaving no clear trace of having ever been there.
6a) A Painted Smile/ 6b) Perchance to Dream
Aurora drops Otho off at home and returns to her family estate, having her first home-cooked meal in weeks courtesy of her maid and surrogate mother figure, Maud, while Otho sees to some personal and financial issues. Before too long Aurora receives a phone call from an historian friend, Miles Truman, asking if she’s available to do a tiny bit of research in Arkham, Massachusetts on his behalf concerning a book on New England architectural history he is currently writing. Assuming this is what Barney Google meant when he told her “go home and answer your telephone”, she gathers Otho and heads to Arkham. There they are meant to meet with Margaret and Mildred Hathaway to find out if they can verify their late grandfather’s claim to the design of a particular fanlight for Miles’ book. Somewhere along the way, however, they are distracted by strange goings on involving the Hathaways’ downstairs neighbor, Hilda Francks.
Hilda, it turned out, was a retired doll maker and a somewhat hostile, notably unhinged recluse. When Aurora and Otho initially arrived to interview the Sisters Hathaway they found a flock of children taunting Hilda from the street for “being a witch” which the children had determined “because she’s old”. As they were leaving for the afternoon, they caught Hilda spying on them in the hall, like a creep. When they returned the next day, concluding their business with the Hathaways, they would find that one of the children whom had been taunting Miss Francks had been found dead, with some evidence that he had been pushed into the street. On their way out of the building they heard a concerning sound from Hilda’s apartment, choosing to check on the poor old woman’s welfare. What they found was row upon row of dolls throughout Hilda’s apartment, in various stages of construction. One doll in particular strongly resembling a little red-headed girl Otho had noticed earlier, apparently stalking the boy to his death, was placed in the middle of Hilda’s bed. As Aurora went out into the street to seek help, Otho attempted to give Hilda some sort of medical aid. In the midst of this Hilda sat bolt upright with a jolt, flung a dire accusation at Otho, then promptly died, triggering a chorus of screams from all of the doll heads in the apartment before they once again fell silent in unison. And that is more or less when the red-headed doll attacked, Otho’s tire iron making short work of it, but not without the entire episode taking its toll on his psyche. Exhausted, they returned to their hotel rooms, secure in the knowledge that the single hostile doll had been obliterated.
That night they had the strangest dream. They descended a long staircase into darkness, and met with two strange sages who claimed to keep the door to the land of dreams. Once there, they met with a man whom they had only encountered a handful of times in his antique store in Boston by the name of Geoffrey Clarkson. Together they ventured into a strange forest, reading an invite by their mutual acquaintance Rupert Merriweather, beckoning them to join him in the city of Ulthar and lend their aid. They left the forest, followed a river, had breakfast with an elderly couple on a farm who directed them the rest of the way to the city. Upon arriving they seemed to be guided purposefully by a colony of cats (with a clear leader) to a large palace where Rupert awaited them. From there they went to the local inn, having food and much drink as Rupert explained to them his error which he needed them to rectify.
When Rupert was a young man, he and some friends got into some occult dabbling for a lark. They went so far as to purchase a small cabin outside of Arkham where they could perform various rituals unburdened by prying eyes. One of these rituals succeeded, the summoning of what the group believed to be a djinn, ending with one friend dead and another gone mad. As he was speaking to them in dream, Rupert was simultaneously lying in hospice with a strange but clearly terminal illness, and feared that upon his death the thing which they summoned would be free to leave the cabin and wreak who knows what havoc on the world. He asked that they go to the cabin and finish what he and his friends had started, banishing the thing back to wherever it had come from, before it was too late. The dour nature of their meeting aside, they continued to partake in the nightlife of Ulthar before finally waking peacefully in their respective beds, with the exception of Otho who awoke to a child sized porcelain doll attempting to choke him.
The commotion of the struggle alerted Aurora who, upon leaving her room to aid Otho, bumped into Geoffrey, who had driven the short distance from Boston earlier that morning. They urgently crowded into Otho’s room, destroying this second doll after a brief yet harrowing struggle. In their research of Miss Francks they found a sad tale of lost love with hints of bitter supernatural fury, surmising that Hilda had been, possibly unwittingly, allowing her slumbering id to possess her dolls to carry out her unconscious desires. Her dolls had murdered her former fiance and his wife decades previous, the boy in the alleyway, and attempted to murder Otho multiple times. They learned from her former lover Clyde Beckford’s journals that he had broken a sacred vow to her and that her spirit would not rest until the vow had been fulfilled. So, naturally, they had to go dig up her corpse and put it to rest in the Beckford tomb with Clyde’s long since decayed body. They made their way to Potter’s Field on the edge of Northside Arkham, covertly unearthed Hilda’s freshly interred corpse, crammed it into a large duffel bag, before making their way to Christchurch Cemetery in Lower Southside.
Once there, Otho and Aurora hopped the fence while Geoffrey waited in the car, keeping watch. Once inside the cemetery, yet another doll began to pursue the pair, darting and weaving between headstones, as they searched for the Beckford crypt. Meanwhile outside the gates, Geoffrey was confronted by the cemetery’s night watchman. He quickly feigned car trouble so that when the old man attempted to diagnose the issue, Geoffrey slammed the hood on the watchman until he fell unconscious. Back in the cemetery, with the crypt located, Aurora stood at the entrance, hatpin drawn, preparing to defend against Hilda’s soul-infused doll’s mad pursuit, as Otho attempted to reunite the lovers. Finally opting for speed over decorum, he shoved Hilda’s body into Clyde’s memorial compartment, ignoring the crunching sounds of her brittle bones as he went. The pursuing doll fell lifeless to the ground as a beaming ray of light flashed from the crypt presumably indicating Hilda’s soul was finally at rest. Upon returning and discovering the scene between Geoffrey and the night watchmen, the trio attempted to treat and bribe the unconscious old man, before fleeing the scene. First they would get some rest back at their hotel, stashing Aurora’s Cadillac well out of casual view, then West to Ross’ Corners and Rupert Merriweather’s cabin.
7) Edge of Darkness
The trio arrived at the cabin early in the day, where Rupert and his friends had long ago summoned the “djinn” to find it apparently empty. Inspecting the surrounding property and nearby barn turned up nothing but old rusty gardening implements so they approached the cabin with a mind to go inside. They found it covered in runic writing, most likely some sort of wards to keep something out or in, or both. In the midst of their searching the primitive dwelling a panicked tramp emerged from the basement, crazed, and bound for the woods. Caught by surprise, there was little more the group could do than watch him go, which they did. Generally unphased by this, Otho attempted to gain access to the attic but was attacked by the entity, his own surprise robbing him of his balance being all that came between him and an untimely end. Continuing to search the cabin, a picture began to emerge. Every one of Rupert’s friends died under mysterious circumstance, even those who, like him, succumbed to illness, puzzled their doctors to the very end. It slowly became clear that, in spite of the wards, the entity’s influence at least extended well beyond these walls. Having discovered the final components to the ritual in the cellar, they went back upstairs and began fortifying the cabin in preparation for the ritual.
The ritual was long and arduous. The entity sent the living corpses of it most recent victims to tear at the trio’s fortifications. Probing their minds and sensing Geoffrey’s weakness, the entity targeting him most directly, appearing as his childhood friend “Elie”, begging him to stop his new friends from completing the ritual and killing her. By then however it was too late, things had progressed too far. Though it was not without its psychic toll (on Geoffrey in particular), the managed to banish the entity back to whatever foul place had spawned it. Exhausted, they once again loaded into Aurora’s Cadillac and drove into the night.
8) Interlude: Initiation Into The Order
Before they managed to get back onto a main road and head home, the trio was greeted by a blockade of sorts. Biggs, Murgatroid, and several heavily armed but visibly frightened companions emerged from their respective vehicles, greeting Aurora and Otho, and introducing themselves to Geoffrey. After the initial pleasantries, a severely disabled man of indeterminate age approached them with some sort of amulet which he slowly waved about them as though it were some sort of dousing rod. Eventually satisfied with its findings, Murgatroid helped him back into the car and Biggs informed them that The Order had been waiting as an act of contingency, should they have failed to banish the entity themselves, The Order had prepared to fight it before it was loosed on the Massachusetts countryside. Since they had clearly succeeded they were to meet a small contingent of The Order in Assassin’s End in Virginia, just outside of Port Royal, for their official initiation into The Order.
Several weeks later, they met The Order at a small farmhouse with a large cellar. There, they were taken through the initiation ceremony and briefly exposed to the Liber Tertius Oculi Velati, or The Book of the Thrice Veiled Eye. They each in turn felt surges of energy course through them followed by images in their mind’s eye places beyond even the stars, of forces both benign and malignant but unfathomably massive and incomprehensibly constructed. Figures like the entity from Ross’ Corners but that stretch out further than the Arizona sky is wide which tire of being kept at bay. This awareness seeping into their minds left cracks within all of their psyches. Upon completion of their ceremony, their minds worn thin and their bodies exhausted, they quietly returned to Aurora’s Cadillac and began the journey home. However, somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania it began to putter to a stop…
9) The Saturnine Chalice
As luck would have it, though in something of a downpour, they found themselves out of gas in front of a palatial estate with the lights on. They moved the car out of the road and approached the house hoping to find some sort of aid. What they found instead would only become increasingly strange as the night wore on. They were soon introduced to the Weylands and their servants the Lynwoods. The Weylands, Augustus and his adult daughter Veronica, made no effort to hide their dabbling or status as practitioners of the occult. To the contrary, Augustus was incredibly proud of his daughter’s upcoming efforts to complete the Abramelin Working, a particularly arduous and even dangerous undertaking, even encouraging our trio to join them for the celebratory dinner honoring her beginning the ritual. Bit of nasty business though, the long deceased demonic spirit of Augustus’ wife Evangeline kept appearing and violently murdering members of the household who would then reappear in another room with no clear awareness of having been recently murdered. The Weylands and Lynwoods just kept preparing for the dinner as though no monster was loose and no one was in any danger. Our intrepid crew, now finding themselves trapped, continued to investigate the house in the hopes of getting to the bottom of this nightmarish turn of events. Eventually another guest arrived, or rather roughly 17 more guests in the form of identical iterations of Lester Goodman, the man who sold Augustus his ultra rare copy of The Book of Abramelin from which he had and Veronica planned to conduct the Abramelin Working. The entirety of the Lester Goodman contingent disappeared at the conclusion of dinner without comment.
Eventually the real body of Veronica Lynwood was discovered in the upstairs ritual room, long dead of an apparently self inflicted wound, along with her diary detailing the death of her father Augustus and her suspicions regarding the authenticity of the book, and the intentions of both Mr. Goodman and the entity which her father had summoned. In her journals she resolved to either trap or destroy the creature which killed her father and she had done so, at the cost of her own life. Some time later, the bodies of Jeremiah and Rosemary Lynwood were discovered in the basement by Otho and an apparent simulacrum of Jeremiah himself. It gradually became clear that these apparitions of the former living occupants of the house were part of some sort of scheme by the hostile entity which had facilitated their murders and that our investigators were required to spring the final stage of Veronica’s trap in order to banish or destroy it. Something they were only in a position to accomplish because it lured them there to attempt to trick them into freeing it.
Discovering Veronica’s wards, the trio brought them closer together, forcing the creature to manifest in front of them, effectively cornering it in the dining room and inviting its wrath. It attacked the investigators’ very minds, stealing memories and cognitive capabilities, but they persevered, tightening the magical snare until it had nowhere to go but far from our plane of existence.
Part II: The Valley of the Shadow of Da’ath
Prelude: A Lonely Thread
Geoffrey having been called to business in Europe, Otho and Aurora once again found themselves in the wooded countryside, a few miles outside of Arkham, Massachusetts. They were out on what should have been a simple social call, a meeting of similar minds on discussions of occult philosophy and beyond with the semi-retired Professor Joshua Thomas. However, upon their arrival, the professor seemed not himself. Conversation with the usually lively old man was stilted, like pulling teeth, and his preoccupations bizarre. He seemed to keep finding trivial excuses to leave for extended periods of time. Finally during one of these extraneous excursions, Otho and Aurora followed him outside. Once confronted, in a clear yet puzzling attempt to block access to his wood shed, he reacted with hostility, violently lashing out at the pair. The scuffle escalated until finally Aurora brought him down with her hatpin. Its host mortally wounded, a large creature with features broadly similar to that of a cephalopod emerged from beneath his jacket and fled into the overgrowth around the shed.
Otho entered the shed in order to discover what the creature piloting the professor’s body had been hiding while Aurora attempted to see to the professor’s condition. Otho discovered a strange thread held in a vice in Professor Thomas’ workshop and some accompanying notes describing the known history of it and an ongoing dialogue concerning it with a man named Archivald Conner, from Lonely Hollow Vermont. Somehow this thread, discovered by Thomas during an archaeological expedition to Egypt decades previous, had been responsible for the arrival of the parasite which took him. Outside, Professor Joshua Thomas cursed Archivald Conner with his last breath. Seeing there was nothing she could do for him, Aurora retrieved her hatpin and joined Otho in the shed where they descended into the wood cellar.
There they discovered yet another hostile entity, one which almost seemed to be constructed of some mutated version of the offending thread, wound into the shape of a person. Whatever it was it had been gestating here while Thomas’ parasite attempted to delay our investigators long enough for it to complete that process. While Otho engaged the monstrosity the parasite returned, grappling itself to Aurora, attempting to bond with her as it had Thomas. Otho shattered his lantern on the beast, causing it to erupt in flames, and gored it with his trusty tire iron. Turning his attention to Aurora, who by then was under the alien’s control, he managed to detach the parasite from her collar and destroy it. They fled the workshop as it burned, grabbing all they could of Thomas’ notes, before Aurora searched the cabin one final time and Otho searched the vehicles parked in the driveway. Aside from a forensic accounting of what had likely transpired in Thomas’ final hours as himself, Aurora discovered mention of another resident of the village of Lonely Hollow in his daily journal, one Wilford Borg. Otho’s search produced a pistol. Armed with this information and keen to escape the spreading fire, they set out for The Order’s Gloucester safe house.
1) Interlude: Gloucester Safe House Revisited
They drove through the evening, arriving at the safe house in the wee hours of the morning, laying out the day’s events to Biggs as best as they could recall. Biggs had the thread and Thomas’ notes placed into a secure storage container for safe keeping and possible study as he considered their words carefully. He revealed that the town of Lonely Hollow had been in the background of The Order’s radar for some time but, without any kind of inconspicuous presence there, they’d never managed to get a good picture of what was going on inside. It was clear they were a notably insular community and with rumors of cult-like activities abound. Considering the sheer potency of the entities and, presumably also, the artifact the duo had encountered, it was clear that some sort of reconnaissance was inevitable if not urgent. And so it was settled upon that Otho and Aurora would go there and learn what they could about the residents; is a deranged cult hiding among them, is it the whole place, is it in the roots or a more recent development, what exactly is going on in this enigmatic village?
2) The Ofre Festival and The Autopsy of Türhaus
On the morning of Friday, October 6th 1922, Otho and Aurora set out from Aurora’s apartment in downtown Burlington to the wilds of the Taconic Mountains, destined for a little known village on the shores of Pine Knot Creek, known as Lonely Hollow. Around early afternoon they finally came through the tunnel which is the singular road in and out of town. Once on the other side they stopped at The Watch Station, a rather glamorous and modern train station which was built as part of a larger project which, for unclear reasons, was abandoned before train service could be engaged. There they met a friendly young disabled veteran who identified himself as Orville Borg, a member of the village watch and assured them that they had in fact arrived at Lonely Hollow, and in time for their yearly harvest festival no less. After a good deal of small talk and a promise of blackberry preserves, the pair proceeded to the Glass Spider Tavern to secure lodgings before moving on to the festival grounds.
The festival seemed normal enough, if a little quaint, and they quickly purchased quite a great deal of bread, preserves, and hard candy. Soon afterward they stumbled upon a very ornate cylindrical tent with a sign purporting to tell fortunes for 50¢. They paid the young man by the entrance who ushered them in and introduced them to Circe the Great and Wise, a 10 year old girl in a fairly elaborate veiled taffeta costume, sitting alone in front of two silver bowls, one filled with small bones the other filled with blood, and an empty wooden bowl. She put the bones into a shaker for a moment before dumping them into the wooden bowl, then she draping a handkerchief into the blood before shaking it over the bones three times while quietly chanting to herself as the blood combusted on contact. After a few moments she began to speak cryptically about the future,
“For some time there has been a great occultation in my vision that I cannot see beyond. This has not changed, but I can see that it is the destiny of one or more of the people in this room to walk through the darkness and clear it from the other side, for better or worse. I see that the black house in the Conner line has driven you here. Perhaps the chaos in Archivald’s cruelty has finally planted a seed which will grow to undo him. This is all I know.”
With that, her brother Perses returned to the room to invite Otho and Aurora to leave.
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