a tale of hubris
(c) 1993 Adam Thornton
Cogito, Ergo Sum
a tale of hubris
Introduction
This is intended to be a campaign spanning several game sessions: it took my players six nights of between four and seven hours each to play through completely; however, there are certainly parts of the game that are inessential and could be reduced or eliminated, and there are also many opportunities for red herrings or hooks into further adventures. I think that four sessions is probably the minimum reasonable time to allow; the six "chapters" I have here presented are approximately what each night of gaming entailed, and they seem to be a logical way of breaking up the campaign.
Prerequisites:
The Keeper ought to have a copy of Call Of Cthulhu--preferably fifth edition, but second can be used nearly as well (as, I assume, third and fourth can)--whether he intends to run the game as CoC or as another system, since the first chapter of the game is based on one of the scenarios in the rule book. Dreamlands is also very helpful, especially for its map. The Keeper should also be very familiar with the Lovecraft stories "Pickman's Model" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". A little background in the life and philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft also helps, especially if the Keeper wishes to play Pickman in the manner I intended him to be portrayed when I created the campaign. Ideally, familiarity with the Boston of the 1920's would be useful, but I managed to run my campaign to my own and my players' satisfaction without it.
On Gaming Systems:
A confession: though this began as a Call Of Cthulhu game, and though the first few groups of players I ran through it (who, however, never got beyond the third session before our group disintegrated) played it as such, in its full form it was played as GURPS. My personal opinion is that GURPS's combat system is a great deal better than CoC's, and allows for a wider range of character types; that, combined with the fact that my current gaming group plays GURPS and does not play CoC made it a better choice. However, when I give statistics for NPCs I will give them both in GURPS and CoC terms. I doubt that it would be difficult to translate this campaign into the terms of any system geared toward low-powered, "realistic" roleplaying--most of the spookiness of the campaign will come from the Keeper's/GM's ability to project the correct atmosphere rather than the mechanics of any specific system. However, if GURPS is used, I would strongly caution the GM to make Strong will cost 8 points/level, to bring it into conformity with Weak Will, and also to use a Sanity statistic--(IQ+Will)x6 with a maximum of 99, for instance--to simulate the wonderful slow leakage of Sanity that is the hallmark of Cthulhoid campaigns. In general, a Fright Check should be about equal to a 1D4 or 1D6 maximum SAN loss; for a 0/1D2 threat, a Fright Check at +3 is appropriate; for 1D3/1D20, a Fright check at -4.
How the players come together is, perhaps, the most difficult part of the campaign. This will be particularly true since you are likely to have a group that consists of something like a professor of Egyptology, a rabbi, a socialite, a trigger-happy WWI veteran, a gangster, and a jazz musician. I chose to cop out and use the old Dungeons And Dragons favorite, "Well, you're all in this bar, see, and this guy walks in."[1] The bar I use is the Spectre Club, a speakeasy populated by the Thelemites, the Theosophists, and the other assorted occultist weirdos of the '20's. The characters should be able to come up with some reason that they're there. For instance, the musician was playing a gig there, the gangster was delivering liquor, and the rabbi had come with his friend the professor, who was trying to pick up once of his students, the socialite, who was a regular at the Spectre.
In any event, the game is yours to customize. If you don't like something about it, then change it. Play with it. Extend it. Add new scenarios, characters, locations, and plots. Take some of the characters or subplots and transplant them into your campaigns. In short, enjoy yourself.
Adam Thornton
Houston
January 1993
Chapter One: The Haunted House
in which the investigators learn that things are not as they seem
"Most people familiar with the game remember being baffled by it."--Call Of Cthulhu rulebook
The first part of the campaign is just "The Haunting" from the Fifth Edition Call Of Cthulhu rule book. This is simply fortuitous accident: I began playing with a group of novice players and, after they had taken care of Corbitt, they were still eager for more. Therefore I took a couple of the loose ends left in the game, and extended the plot.
"The Haunting" must be slightly modified, however. To begin with, this campaign was initially based on "The Haunted House" in the 2nd edition rules, and that scenario has changed a little. Further, to add the hooks that connect "The Haunting" to the rest of the campaign, the motivations of both Corbitt and the landlord must be modified. It is, however, not necessary to include "The Haunting" at all. The campaign could just as easily start with the Chapel Of Contemplation or even Pickman's art show; or someone simply disappears into the tunnels, and the players thus learn of their existence.
I have also changed the chronology a little. In the 5th edition rule book, it appears that it takes place in 1920; I arbitrarily began my campaign on April 20, 1927, a Wednesday, although, if your players are intense types you can make the campaign into a race against time by starting it in early May. Somehow, the message must be gotten to the players--if they are all at the Spectre Club, this is easy--that George Finewall, a realtor, would like their assistance in debunking the ridiculous myth that the house is haunted. He is aware of its reputation (see History box) and would like to be able to give it a clean bill of health before he rents it. He has come to them since the Spectre Club seemed a likely place to find people willing to attempt de-hauntings (fit this to your players and their circumstances).
Keepers who know a little about Boston may wish to make the geography accurate; I know nothing about the city, but luckily, neither did my players. I recommend the pamphlet Off The Ancient Track, by Jason Eckhardt, from Necronomicon Press as a magnificent guide to Lovecraftian geography. Had I had the book when I originally created the campaign, the geography would make more sense. I made up an address for the house--1424 Baker Lane--but someone with real knowledge of Boston would probably do better to figure out where the house should be: it is in a neighborhood that changed from a residential to either a business or a warehouse district in the very early 1900's, but which, when built in 1852, would have been a little way outside town.
The information found in the "History" box can be turned up though a combination of the newspaper morgue, the library, and the building records.
History Of the Corbitt House:
1852: built by Jeremiah Corbitt.
1862: J. Corbitt dies, leaving the house to Walter Corbitt, his son.
1883: W. Corbitt's neighbors file suit as per CoC 5th ed., p. 170.
1909: W. Corbitt dies. His neighbors again file suit to keep him from being buried in his basement. No outcome of this suit is recorded.
1909-1912: House is vacant.
1912: House is appropriated by Mass. government and subsequently resold to Goldblum Realty.
1912-1915: House is rented to a family of French immigrants, the Deverauxes; a series of violent accidents kill the parents and leave their three children maimed.
1915-1919: House is vacant.
1918: House sold to Finewall Realty as part of a large transaction with Goldblum.
1919-1925: House is rented to the Giovanazzo family, Italians. They are ill nearly all of the time, and in 1921 the oldest brother, Angelo, stabbed himself to death with a kitchen knife. Except for the names and the dates, all this information is reproduced on p. 170 of CoC 5th ed. Replace "Macario" with "Giovannazo" and use that information should they be visited in the sanitarium.
1925-1927: House is vacant.
1927: Merlin Thompson, who, judging from his bodyguards, his clothes, his car, and his demeanor, is a gangster, is intensely interested in the house. He is quite ready to move in now and doesn't want all Finewall's rot about its being haunted; however Finewall, being the conscientious sort he is, would like to declare the place "clean" before he allows Thompson to rent the house.
Corbitt left the house to his friend Michael Thomas, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1912 as a result of the raid on the Chapel of Contemplation (see p.171 of CoC 5th ed.) I would suggest making the cover-up a little less extreme, with fewer dead officers and cultists, but still something that should have been noticed. Inside what is left of the chapel, I would also place the Altar, which is a huge oval dais of green-veined black stone that, when touched, sucks Magic Points (or, in GURPS, Fatigue) at the rate of one a minute. While it's doing this, the veins pulse more brightly, and everyone's headaches get worse. Also, in the basement of the Chapel, is a locked door (ST at least 20) which leads into the tunnels under Boston. On the outside of the door is an Elder Sign. In the records, also, it should be revealed that a highly-placed public official (mayor, police commissioner, whatever) was a member of the church.
Inside Corbitt's House
The floor plan is the same except for minor emendations in the cellar. In the dining room, there is also a well-executed oil portrait of Jeremiah Corbitt. He's a very stern-looking 19th-century gentleman, well-dressed. Once Corbitt has revealed himself, he will make the eyes of the picture appear to follow the investigators; however, the picture itself has no magical properties. Its frame is nailed firmly to the wall, and cutting the canvas from the frame will ruin any value it might have had. I also chose to remove the soup tureen, since I can't figure out why the rats would not have gotten it.
The Diaries:
Two volumes instead of three, these are the lab notebooks of Walter Corbitt (SAN loss and the like is the same as in CoC p. 174). The first has its first entry as 7/17/79 and goes through 9/27/03. The second, which is only about a third used, runs from 9/28/03 through 2/12/09. A successful skimming of these (which will take about an hour) reveals that most of the entries are only weather reports, with temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and so on. It will also be clear that W. Corbitt was working on "The Procedure", which involved "Essential Salts" and was hampered by moisture--he continually gripes about the humidity keeping him from getting any work done. The end of the diaries reveals that he is slowly dying of stomach cancer, but that he trusts "MT" to continue his work and "execute my will in accordance with my wishes". It takes about 80 hours to study these, which will reveal the complete procedure for Summoning and Binding a Hunting Horror (cf. CoC, p. 144 and 171), although the creature is referred to as "Wyrm Of The Aether". Corbitt's diaries also include a recipe for "Dust Of True Sight", which is, of course, the Powder of Ibn-Ghazi. The overall effect of the diaries should be one of a very methodical, scientific, disciplined mind, with perhaps a touch of dry humor, but easily exasperated.
The diaries should also reveal Corbitt's exploration of the Dreamlands--however, tell this to your players that he seems to be undertaking a methodical exploration of the geography of his dreams, and only then go on to describe his growing conviction that the Dreamlands are a self-consistent, actually extant, geographical entity. Also included might be a few doses of a drug which, when ingested and the appropriate mantra repeated, send the players to some moderately innocuous place in the Dreamlands such as the Enchanted Wood.
It may also appeal to the Keeper to include another (nonmagical) text with the diaries. I have had great success with photocopies of pages from Paracelsus or Dee's True And Faithful Relation--in any event, a real occult book which your library has and you can thus reproduce for your players.
The Cellar:
The rats in my game are much nastier than in "The Haunting"; however, they can be poisoned en masse, which seems to be what usually happens. Just make sure there are a LOT more of them, and when the false wall is breached, they pour out, cover the investigator who broke the wall, and attack. This can be a great deal more horrifying than is presented in "The Haunting" and will usually force the investigators to regroup.
Corbitt's pallet is a hollow wooden box, with the Elder Sign burned into the inner surface, which covers an entrance to the tunnels. He can be destroyed by the usual methods, though my players, rather ingeniously, ran a firehose from a hydrant down the street and splattered him that way--though I had not foreseen it, Corbitt obviously disliked moisture a lot, and, as a desiccated corpse, rehydration was clearly very bad for him. If it is not destroyed in the melee, there is a picture of Corbitt, while alive, and another man, in front of an altar of green-veined black stone. They are wearing red silk robes. (This is the altar of the Chapel of Contemplation in 1907; the second man is Michael Thomas). There is also, written on the back wall of the crypt, "Chapel Of Contemplation" and beneath that something like "RRSSSSLSS". The bottom line is simply the directions to the Chapel through the tunnels--instructions about which way to go at each branch. I worried that this would be far too obvious, but my players never figured out what the inscription meant. Your directions, of course, may differ, especially if you have some actual knowledge of Boston and choose to create a tunnel system that is physically plausible.
Chapter Two: Tunnels Under Boston and Their Disquieting Denizens
wherein the investigators realize that building does not necessarily imply up
"Those archaic tunnels touched graveyard and witch-den and sea-coast."--Lovecraft, "Pickman's Model"
This and the third section are intimately related and drawn mostly from Lovecraft's magnificent story "Pickman's Model". Among the more disturbing features of the story are the implications that Boston is honeycombed with tunnels full of ghouls and monsters, and that ghouls and humans are the same species; ghoul-changelings can masquerade as humans, and humans can apparently become ghouls. Pickman himself seems to be either a ghoul-changeling or in the process of becoming ghoulish. If you have not read "Pickman's Model", by all means, do so before attempting to run this campaign. Otherwise, a great deal of the plot will not make much sense at all.
The tunnels I have presented are the brick tunnels, built mostly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as tunnels for the slave trade--or for darker secrets. As Pickman says, "There were witches and what their spells summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers..." As such, the tunnels should be described as cramped, mildewed, fetid, crumbling. At places they may have caved in. Unless the players are measuring (with string or measuring tape or the like), feel free to distort the distances you report in the tunnels. And while they are drawn as straight, there is no reason that you need to keep them that way. If one is being accurate, the tunnels will need to be changed to reflect the actual geography of Boston; by the 1920's, it is probably only in the North End that many still come up underneath houses; the rest have been bricked up, severed by the subways, or whatever. But some, certainly, remain open.
And, connecting to the brick tunnels, are the burrows of the ghouls. These are generally round earthen tunnels, muddy, about four or five feet in diameter, which reek of decaying flesh and corruption. Certainly while exploring the tunnels the players will find one of these junctions. Hopefully your description will put them off a bit; if not, see the section later in this chapter. There are also stairs leading down to the sewer system, put in during the 19th century. I suppose a truly assiduous keeper would get a map of the Boston sewers; usually when I describe those stairways as leading down into filthy water, the smell of feces and garbage wafting from it, my players get the hint and don't try to explore.
Places On The Tunnel Routes:
These are the places which must be connected to the tunnels for the story to work.
1. Pickman's Studio off Charter Street. More on this in the third chapter.
2. Corbitt's Basement.
3. Basement of the Chapel of Contemplation.
4. A brand-new section of tunnel, some 50 yards long, leading to a thick (2") steel door, with four strong deadbolts and the Elder Sign embossed on it in copper. This is the only entrance to the tower that Thomas is building, which is described in the fourth chapter.
Places that aren't necessary but that give some color--and the possibility of additional home bases for the characters--to the tunnels.
1. Down a flight of stairs from a door in the basement of Cotton Mather's house that hasn't been opened in 200 years. (I don't know if it's accurate, but I portrayed Mather's home as a historical site-cum-museum).
2. An entrance to the Dreamlands Underworlds from the ghoul tunnels. This, from a dramatic viewpoint, actually is necessary, but the players are almost certainly never going to see it.
3. The Basement of the Old North Church.
4. A stairway to a trapdoor in the floor of the Waite Mausoleum, Oaks Cemetery (this, or something like it, ought to be above ground not too far from Thomas's Tower).
5. The Door to the Freemason's Lodge, with the Eye-in-The-Pyramid. Works best if the Eye is an Elder Sign. What do the Freemasons know and whose side are they on? I don't know--my players never tried to enter here.
6. Whately Crypt, Copp's Hill Burying Ground.
7. Passages into various basements; dramatic opportunities here: scare homeowners, get shot at, pop into a gangster's hideout, deserted houses.
8. A grotto, submerged at high tide, under the wharves.
9. A bricked-up entrance to the police station.
The cemeteries will, of course, be riddled with ghoul tunnels. The brick tunnels are actually pretty safe. There will be rats, but for the most part investigators will make enough noise that everything else will scatter, unless you want to be nasty and have some patrolling Deep Ones, or some well-armed gangsters carting cases of booze through the tunnels. Regardless of their actual safety, however, make them sound spooky. Keep talking about the moss, the mold, the slow dripping of the walls, the puddles on the floor.
The ghoul tunnels are much nastier. Sane investigators should stay out; however, should they choose to go exploring, then you may wish to give them some gentle hints before you destroy them. Suggested finds: gnawed human skeleton, faint glibbering and meeping from around corners, brief glimpses of blue, rubbery beings as lone ghouls flee, loud glibberings and meepings as a horde of ghouls, armed with bones, comes back to repel intruders. They should be described in the most fetid and claustrophobic terms possible. Remember that all of this will be occurring with flashlight illumination at best--and batteries do not last forever. This section should be able to really give your players the creeps if done right.
The tunnels work best if, while playing, you are in a dark room, lit with candles or indirect lighting. Soft mood music is also nice. The more classically minded may find Paganini or Liszt appropriate. I rather preferred the Pain Teens. It should not be permitted to degenerate into a dungeon-mapping expedition; occasional combats with rat packs, unexplained noises, and doors to explore will help guard against this.
Chapter Three: Richard Upton Pickman
in which the party meets a curiously sane madman
"If I had ever seen what Pickman saw--but no!...Gad, I wouldn't be alive if I'd ever seen what that man--if he was a man--saw!"--Lovecraft, "Pickman's Model"
Pickman is the central figure of the campaign. He is probably Lovecraft's greatest creation. In this game, he is the players' only real ally, and a dubious one at that. He can be a very powerful friend, but he is unwilling to risk himself to any extent for the players. However, he is probably their only ticket into the Dreamlands, and it would behoove them to become his friend. The portrait of Pickman given here falls, chronologically, between Thurber's last meeting with him (in "Pickman's Model") and his disappearance from Boston and Randolph Carter's meeting with Pickman the Ghoul in "Dream-Quest".
The Setup:
One of the players will receive an invitation to Pickman's show: some avant-garde gallery will be displaying his new works. The opening is Friday, May 13, at 7 PM, and Pickman will be there. Choose the most likely player, although one may stretch a little--a gangster may be called upon to bring the booze to the reception, for instance; however, a socialite or an artist is a natural to be invited.
Pickman will respond favorably to flattery; certainly if anyone buys his paintings he will be more than willing to show off his "modern studies". However, mere interest in the darker work will suffice for an invitation to his studio.
The Dream Series ($250 each, $1000 for set of five):
The Enchanted Wood
This depicts a huge, brown forest stretching as far as the eye can see. The trees, while no people exist for scale comparison, look to be 400-500 feet high. Visible in the upper left corner is a giant oak with a plain white door set in its trunk. Strange fungi grow on the forest floor, glowing a dim green. Red eyes peek out from behind bushes and mushrooms. If the painting is watched for a long time, the eyes seem to blink and slowly move (this costs 0/1 SAN). The trees are mostly huge, gnarled oaks. A black stream winds through the center of the painting.
The Bridge
This painting shows the massive stone bridge spanning the River Skai between Nir and Ulthar, as Pickman will gladly tell anyone who inquires. It is nighttime in the scene, lit by an unnaturally large crescent moon whose face is not quite the same as the Earth's. Gondolas and skiffs with multicolored lanterns are near the banks; a large oar-driven barge rides slowly up the river. A lone dark female figure rests on her elbows at the center of the bridge, beside a Siamese cat. Pickman's masterful technique is displayed in the amazing way he has captured the moonlight in the ripples on the water.
Sona-Nyl
The Land Of Fancy, seen from a ship about a mile offshore. Crystal headlands sparkle in the bright sun, which is highlighting the golden domes of the white, Oriental-looking buildings on the shore, set in sharp relief to the fluffy white clouds and brilliant blue sky. In the foreground, two beautiful creatures that look like hybrids of butterflies and dragons are engaged in a fluttering aerial courtship dance.
The Vaults Of Zin
This painting is a sharp contrast to the last two. It depicts a huge nightmare cliff, pocked with windows and caves that might once have been windows, crumbling under the weight of time. Hunched nearly-human shapes, and much large shapes, half-human, half-kangaroo, lie strewn about. Some, crouched on their haunches, seem to be feasting on the corpses, heedless of species. Looking at this painting costs 0/1D2 SAN, but luckily the painting, in blacks and browns, is too dim to make out the shapes more clearly.
Celephais
A return to the solar: Celephais at sunset. A brilliant orange sky backlights the Turquoise Temple; Pickman has somehow managed to paint vermilion rays filtered through an aquamarine dome and make it look, not only believable, but photorealistic. The viewpoint looks down a long avenue of merchant's stalls, lit with cheerful colored paper lanterns.
Charter Street
For this section, the best description of Pickman's house and his work is that found in "Pickman's Model". I will simply name the paintings and describe their SAN damage: it is the keeper's responsibility to have made enough notes from "Pickman's Model" to be able to describe them to the players. This is what Pickman regards as his "real" art; shrieks and faintings will please him, if make him contemptuous; open awe of his technique or speculation that this isn't imagination will win his respect.
In the front room, there are the paintings "Ghoul Feeding", "Holmes, Wordsworth, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount Auburn" (0/1D4 SAN), and "The Changeling" (0/1 SAN). Pickman will point out bits of brush technique, if anyone cares, and at some point he will grin and a Spot Hidden or Vision roll will let an investigator notice how sharp his canine teeth are. He'll offer tea or coffee to the investigators. Then he will lead them down a short hall containing "Subway Accident" and "The Unfortunate Necromancer" (the photo of whose antagonist sent Thurber over the edge) (0/1D6 SAN) into his basement studio. They'll notice the well with its wooden lid, and surely someone will draw the parallel with Corbitt's basement.
Before that happens, though, Pickman will turn to an easel, covered with a sheet. He bows deeply and unveils his work-in-progress, explaining that this, a continuation of the Dream Series, is to date his greatest work.
Underworld Triptych
Left Panel: The Fungus Forest
Delicate strands of leprous mycelium weave through a carpet of bones and skulls, human and otherwise. Rotting mushrooms the size of sequoias, twenty-foot maggots, bloated, obscene purple fungi form the scene. In the center is a giant Amanita Muscaria--Botany, Pharmacy, Treat Disease roll to know, or otherwise, "a red mushroom with white spots".
Right Panel: Cemetery of the Gugs
Beneath huge tilting tombstones, ghouls dig in a titanic grave, pulling moldering flesh off a rotting corpse of a Thing, while a live Thing moves in from a terrible cyclopean tower in the distance. The Thing is, as Pickman will explain, a Gug--the painting is in the same blacks and browns as The Vaults Of Zin.
Center Panel: Council Of War
Two canine-looking rubbery-textured ghouls sit around an ancient, crumbling map drawn on some kind of tanned hide. The scene is lit by phosphorescent fungus under and around the map, which lends an even more horrific air to the vision. The ghouls point at the map with suspiciously familiar bones--doctors or archaeologists recognize them immediately as human tibias. Faceless winged monstrosities (nightgaunts, of course) and a standing ring of ghouls surround the two, and their companion. He is a gaunt, slightly disheveled man in a grave-mold smeared tuxedo. He too is pointing at the map with a human tibia.
Pickman
It is absolutely essential to play Pickman well and convincingly. He is quite mad by the time the investigators meet him, and he is well along in his transformation into a ghoul. From the characterization Lovecraft gives in "Pickman's Model", it is clear that he considers himself far superior to most people, that he has no patience whatsoever with the mores of polite society, that he is a racist, and that his arrogance is matched only by his mordant wit. (It always startles my players when I make it clear that Pickman's definition of "white man" excludes Italians and Irish.)
In short, Pickman is a lot like a more self-confident H.P. Lovecraft. That is the sum total of the key to his personality. I try to play Pickman as if he were Lovecraft. What Lovecraft did (or attempted to do--only sometimes, as in "Pickman's Model", did he succeed) with words, Pickman does with paint. And once this is recognized and his respect is won--be forewarned, if there are any Jewish, Black, Italian, female, or anything besides male Nordic investigators, Pickman will be egregiously and intentionally insulting, right up until the first time that investigator does or says something that commands his respect. This can be as simple as asking about the tunnels and then revealing that the group has explored some on its own already, or it can be a learned comparison of Pickman with Goya. At that point, Pickman drops his stereotype and begins to deal with the investigator as someone possibly worthy of consideration as a human being. The investigators should feel flattered--Pickman extends such trust to only a very few.
Pickman has heard the name of Thomas--in fact, about twenty years ago, when he was young and struggling, Thomas commissioned him to do a portrait of him and his friend at the Chapel of Contemplation. If the players produce the portrait that hung in Corbitt's tomb, Pickman will be hooked. Pickman is uneasy about Thomas, and recalls that even then he felt that the Chapel Of Contemplation was something much more deadly than he was willing to investigate. As he will reveal about the ghouls, they and humans need each other--it is a symbiotic relationship. What he gathered about the Chapel was that the ultimate goal of its worshippers would be inimical to both humans and ghouls. And yes, he is concerned about the loss of the ghouls' habitats and feeding grounds to subways, embalming fluid, and hermetically sealed coffins, but not overly so. After all, the ghouls are getting more wily all the time, and society itself is deteriorating. In less than a century, Pickman feels, the two races will be indistinguishable--ghouls and humans not only will live together, but will themselves no longer be able to tell the difference between the races. He is just a little ahead of his time, he'll say, and grin his ghastly grin.
Pickman loves to talk about his painting. It will soon become clear that his Dream Series has a few points of intersection with Corbitt's Dream explorations; if Pickman is shown the diaries or the drug, he will be impressed enough to offer a brief tour of the "more congenial--at least to you and your kind--regions" of the Dreamlands. He will bring a painting--probably "Nir", which resides at his Newbury Street apartment--and a pipe of some strange drug; when smoked in the presence of the painting, the investigators will fall asleep and waken, clothed in simple linen garments, with only a knife, in the locale depicted by the painting. Pickman will gladly go as far as Ulthar, point the characters at the temple of Atal, and then disappear to seek inspiration "somewhere you do not wish to follow". Pickman will also teach the investigators something to say should they be confronted by ghouls at any point in their investigation: "N'glick meepwah n'yat Pickman, kwoanta." This translates roughly as "I come as an emissary from Pickman under his protection", and advises them to carry ankhs as a further method of protection against "my curious and hungry little friends".
Chapter Four: The Plot Thickens, and Curious Travels In the Lands Of Dream
our heroes discover the inadequacy of their geographical knowledge
"And I told them I came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they said, 'There are no such places in all the land of dreams.'"--Lord Dunsany, "Idle Days On The Yann"
Back At The Ranch
While their relationship with Pickman has been developing, the investigators have hopefully linked the steel door in the tunnels with the strange stone tower that has been built in a grove of trees in a secluded part of town. The tower is about twelve yards high and absolutely featureless: it's round, and, as far as anyone can tell, solid. It has no windows and no exterior doors. The only entrance, in fact, is through the thick steel door in the tunnels. Examination at the Hall of Records reveals that the land that the tower sits on has been acquired in the last month by one Merlin Thompson, the same man who is so eager to rent Corbitt's house.
If the players have the intelligence of cabbages, they should be able to deduce that Thompson is actually Michael Thomas. Should they meet him, they might be surprised; he looks something like the man in the painting, but not a great deal. The features are similar, but the age difference looks like more than twenty years. Thompson appears to be a man in his late sixties, but in excellent shape, with thin white hair and a cane. In actuality, Thomas has not aged at all in the last twenty years--it's simply a very good--and magically aided--disguise. He is a successful gangster, but his return has very little to do with his underworld connections and a great deal to do with the completion of what he began with the Chapel Of Contemplation. How he plans to do this will be revealed later. If the players have unwisely told Finewall that the house is clean, Thompson will move in and the players will lose all access to the house; while he will be surprised and disappointed that Corbitt has been destroyed, he will not go after the investigators, as he has no reason to believe that they have linked him in any way with Corbitt, and in any event it will soon be too late.
The Dreamlands
The players have probably arrived here with Pickman. He may tell them--or they may discover on their own--that wishing for something hard enough, combined with a little luck, will make it a reality. This enables the players to equip themselves with snazzy clothes, weapons, and the like--however, the basic technology is medieval, and the characters are therefore not going to get any handguns, flak jackets, or tanks; however, they may be able to conjure short swords, bows, or copper coins.
The first place they should be directed is the tower of Atal the Wise in the town of Ulthar. The predominant feature of Ulthar is the Cats, who are everywhere. Refer to "The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath" and do try to work in--perhaps on the caravan section--"The Cats Of Ulthar".
Atal
The players will climb the hill towards the ivy-covered Temple Of The Gods Of Dream. Knocking on the door, they will wait for several minutes, and an ancient, stooped man will open the huge, creaky door. He is not Atal, and will laugh uproariously if addressed as such. "No," he explains, "the Master is upstairs. I am but his servant boy."
Upstairs, in a huge bed, is an immense pile of white hair, and, in the center of it, a tiny, wizened pink face. This is Atal. He is prone to drift off to sleep--after all, he is four centuries old--but polite conversation will yield some results. Thomas came, not two weeks ago--should the investigators ask--seeking knowledge about the Outer Gods, whom "we here worship not, lest we be destroyed", and "about the grim and terrible science of Oeneroportalogy, whispered of in the vales of Pnath." Atal sent him, of course, to the Great Library Of Caelano, where all knowledge is said to reside. "And better that I sent him there, for what he seeks cares naught for villages, cats, nor old men. Those powers, oh, the little Gods of Dream are nothing to them, and yet were not those Gods enough to snatch Barzai, my mentor, screaming into the sky for his impudence?"
So now, it seems, the investigators must find their way to Caelano. And the way to do that, it will transpire, is by inquiring at the port city of Dylath-Leen, where ships leave for every city of the world, and most of the others.
Trek To Dylath-Leen
This has the potential to be long and boring; frankly, unless the players seem to really be enjoying the fantasy air of the Dreamlands, you might just want to say, "after a long but uneventful journey you arrive." If you do play it, it is probably best to send the players with a spice caravan; have them tell stories, listen to legends, and, to liven the trip up a bit, fight off a cloudbeast (see Dreamlands for statistics--no, they can't defeat it, but after it eats a couple of elephants it will be full and will leave). If you want to run a fun fantasy combat, this is a good place for it--they can always try to sever the tendril that is pulling the Keranian Princess into the clouds. This is also a good way to wind down a long session, by having a pastoral respite in which the players can rest, find out some things about the Dreamlands, and exercise their Dreaming skill. If you and the players want, you can make Dylath-Leen the ultimate destination but have other trading villages along the way--this is a sneaky way to put in a little high fantasy, and give the players a break from the atmosphere of creeping horror. On the other hand, you may prefer just to let the tension continue to build.
Dylath-Leen
The grim basalt port city itself. This can be entertainingly played as a grungy city full of bars like the Cantina in Star Wars. The final objective, of course, is to find a boat that will take the party to Caelano. Each dream-week of search (about a night of sleep) will give a chance equal to a Luck or Streetwise roll that someone knows where a Caelanan ship is. Once located, it is a matter of posting a guard by the ship until the sailor returns.
The Caelanan craft seems to be an assortment of metal tubes connected in a rectangular framework. It's about eighty feet long, forty feet wide, and thirty high. It floats about a foot above the water, except for four pipes, one at each corner, which disappear into the water. The assembly is open, with no sign of cabins, masts, sails, or oars; apparently, there was only one Caelanan sailor, who vanished into the slave markets immediately after docking.
When the investigators manage to meet the sailor, they find him to be a short. stocky man with apparently poreless olive-drab skin; his eyes are veinless, just white, with brown irises and no pupils whatsoever. He arrives with a cart, drawn by a giant iguana-like beast. In the cart are some twenty slaves of all sizes, shapes, and colors, and a burlap bag writhing with many small animals.
However, the Caelanan does not hire out for any normal coin. What he wants is information. The characters' life stories will be sufficient for passage to Caelano, he says. And if any of them have the skills to write other books, and the knowledge that will give them something to write about, then that credit can be applied to their account. His name, he tells the characters, is Sirrith; the journey will take about a week. He can give them a cabin if they supply food, or they can travel as cargo, which he explains as something like sleep.
Should they choose the cargo option, they are herded with the slaves into a small chamber; the door closes, and then it opens to something different--the shock of the sudden alienness outside costs the characters an additional 1D2/1D6 SAN on top of any other losses. Boarding the boat in the first place is an odd experience. Sirrith simply steps out onto nothingness, walks three steps, and vanishes. Should the characters follow, they find that the nothingness is quite firm, and suddenly they are in a long metal corridor (see map).
The Caelanan Ship
1: Control Room. It has a "chair" for Sirrith's real form, screens, dials, gauges, knobs, buttons, and paddles galore. Two screens, 8' high and 12' long, show the front and back views, and might as well be windows. If the ship is underway, these screens will present the brain-warping view of nonspace (0/1D2 SAN); nothing the investigators can do to the controls while the ship is moored has any effect, since they don't have the equivalent of an ignition key; Sirrith will not let them touch the controls in any other circumstance. Should they attempt to hijack the ship by incapacitating or killing Sirrith, they will quickly die, as the ship is utterly incomprehensible to them.
2: Engine Room. Full of huge pipes, boilers, strange lumpy bits of metal, cables, wires, all warm. There is also a machine that consists of 20 wires, ending in needles. 19 of these are plugged into the skulls of skeletal six-legged bony creatures (Zoology reveals these to be of no known order), while the twentieth is plugged into a dying wharf rat. If it is unplugged, the machines will slowly cool and Sirrith will get angry.
3: Cargo room. This is a nondescript rectangular room. If the door is closed, time does not pass inside. This door cannot be unlocked once the ship is moving.
4: Characters' quarters: this is another nondescript room, but with a couple of knobs and dials on the wall. Sirrith uses them to expand the room to a comfortable size, extrude beds and couches, change the appearance (anything from Arabian Nights to Parisian Whorehouse to 1950's Split Level). If the characters insist on screwing around with the controls, they should eventually lose some sanity, and if they persist, put them in a Star Wars trash compactor scene.
Assuming that the characters are traveling as passengers rather than cargo, Sirrith will adjust their room and then enlist them in the grisly task of sweeping the skeletons off the needles in the engine room and impaling the wharf rats he has in the bag: the ship, he explains, runs on life force, and common vermin work as well as anything. (Lose 0/1 SAN for helping with this). Sirrith then sighs deeply, says, "Excuse me", and his forms stretches and tears and bubbles and seethes, to be replaced with his real body. This costs 1D2/1D8 SAN to watch. Then Sirrith, who has the same voice, squishes forward to the control room. If anyone watches the liftoff from the control room, the harbor recedes impossibly fast, and the world drops away until the characters can see that it is, in fact, a disc--the Basalt Pillars at the Edge of the World are clearly visible. Sirrith pulls a large purple lever and the screens melt into bubbling masses of color (0/1D2 SAN). Four uneventful days go by.
At the other end, the ship pops out of hyperspace over a small gray world that looks like the planet at the beginning of Mystery Science Theater 3000 except without the logo. On this world is one enormous building and it is for the building that the ship heads and then docks. The slaves are unloaded and sent off, Sirrith thanks the characters, reminds them of their literary obligations, hands them into John's care, and is never seen again.
Chapter Five: The Library Of Caelano
wherein the party discovers the utter inadequacy of all human knowledge
"The Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret."--Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library Of Babel"
If Pickman is the central character of this campaign, the Library is its central place; if he is its heart, this is its soul. It is the attempt of one intelligent race to accumulate the sum total of all knowledge everywhere. It fills the entire planet, though most of it is in electronic form.
Arrival
As soon as Sirrith disappears, another Caelanan squelches up; it looks, to the players' eyes, indistinguishable from Sirrith. It introduces itself, in perfect, if slightly prissy, English, as John (feel free to call it Martha, if you wish; the personality is that of the Good Librarian we all knew as kids--not the one who viewed checking out books as an affront to her personal connection, but the one who became a librarian because he or she liked books and didn't feel like getting married).
"Human, eh?" John says. "Hmph. I've had more of you in the last two...ah...years? No...um...weeks. Yes, that's it, weeks. Pardon me. Your conception of time takes a little getting used to. Last two weeks than I have all, er, century. Kind of exciting, really. I suppose they'll just have to allocate more funds for human study now. Anyhow, let's get your books out of you, and after that, I'll explain the rules of the Library. Step onto the cart, please."
John herds the investigators onto a white disc about ten feet across, and then boards himself. The disc zips along corridors full of Caelanans, up and down chutes, and finally stops in front of a small metal door. Inside, there are a number of low, padded tables, and a long wire hanging from the ceiling over each table; the end of the wire ends in a six-inch needle. By this point the investigators will doubtless be a little nervous. They will be more nervous when another Caelanan brings in a drooling, idiotic, human in a clean white linen tunic, and John seats him on a table, pulls a somewhat thicker wire from the ceiling, and stabs it into his skull. The idiot, however, does not even seem to notice, and John continues, attaching one of the thinner wires to his brain as well, and then fiddling with some controls on the wall.
"Now, have a seat," says John. "Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to plug you in, and then you just think of your life--and yes, we do insist that the first book you donate be your biography. It's immensely useful for our cultural studies. If you would like a transcript, let me know." If anyone requests a transcript, John twiddles some controls, opens a cabinet, and hands the investigator a pad, connected to the wall by a wire, and a stylus. John then takes the needle and jabs it through the investigator's skull. To those watching, he seems to fall into a trance, and, if transcribing, begins writing at an inhuman speed. It takes ten hours to donate a book.
The investigator who is donating the book hears a horrid crunching sound, but feels no pain; then he simply thinks of what he wants to express; after the book is finished, he will fall asleep. "Writing" a book costs 1D3 SAN; "Reading" costs 1D6 (for a book written by a human) plus whatever SAN the book costs, and is basically the same procedure except that the influx of information is very disorienting. Reading works by nonhumans is usually useless and costs much more sanity; the librarians will warn against such exploits, but the actual effects are up to the Keeper.
John will refuse to answer any questions until he has gotten the biographies from the characters and read them. This lets him know what year the investigators are from--the Librarians do not like allowing anachronisms to creep into their patrons. While John will ask three or four times what year they come from--especially if they ask him for something like a graph of technological development on Earth--it will not be possible to trick him into revealing anything after 1927 (or the year of your campaign). He will cheerfully provide what he knows about human history--which isn't much, although he does, surprisingly, report that about twelve thousand years before the investigators, the level of technology was far, far, higher than anything the investigators know. It then fell precipitously to the Stone Age. (Who the Atlantaeans/Lemurians/whatevers were and whether they have anything do do with future campaigns is up to the Keeper.) He will not say to what year the Library's knowledge of Earth history extends. Dreaming rolls in the Library work differently: it is clearly not medieval. Any weapon or item that the character is familiar with can be created by wishing for it, if the character has explicitly reasoned through--aloud--why he thinks he should be able to get modern equipment here while he couldn't in the Dreamlands proper. However, no ray guns or the like can be made, because, even if the librarians know about them, the characters do not.
Once the biographies have been donated, John will explain the rules: "A book for a book. You have one book apiece now that you are entitled to; ask me and I can find out what books you have on a given topic. You can gain additional credits as well--just write another book for us." These books can either be recorded as the biographies were or actually written. Actually writing them, however, takes much longer. Either requires a successful check of the appropriate skill--that is, an archaeology manual would require a roll against Archaeology, and a novel would require a check against Writing.
The investigators should ask about Michael Thomas, who was the other human to show up about two weeks previously. They can check out his biography, which costs 1D4 SAN and (finally) reveals his nefarious plot.
Michael Thomas's Biography
He is most certainly a magician of the blackest sort. In fact, he is a priest of Yog-Sothoth, and is planning to summon it in a very few days (basically, four days after the current date). That's what the tower in Boston is about--it is necessary as a "lightning rod" to draw the apparition. The manifestation will more or less wipe out Boston, as well as producing some sort of apotheosis in Thomas, making his powers truly superhuman
This is also what the cult of the Chapel of Contemplation was about; however, the police somehow got wind of it and destroyed the temple in 1912; Thomas is not only seeking to transform himself, but to wreak his revenge on those who thwarted his plans the first time.
There are no mentions of Corbitt more recent than his "death" and Thomas's execution of his will. In fact, there is only the sketchiest information about his being a gangster, as if his memories were partially missing for the last ten years or so.
Thomas does not yet know the formula to summon "The Opener of the Gate"; he has come to find it in the Library.
His memory lapse has come about--although the players certainly should not know it until right before the climax of the campaign--because Thomas has successfully separated his dream-self and his waking-self: they each can have independent existence in either of the spheres, and, moreover, can physically travel between them. John will reveal that Thomas did not find what he was looking for in the Mind and set off into the Stacks about a week ago. The investigators will have to follow.
Research Topics
The library contains a great many works. Should the characters ask John, for example, to pull a work on Nyarlathotep, he will play with a terminal, and then say something like "There exist 17,436,928 books in the Mind about the entity you call Nyarlathotep, from 1,495 races. Of those books, some 35...oh, wait, 1927, right?...12 are written by humans and accessible to you." Use your judgment when deciding whose works are likely to be available: Dunsany certainly is; Lovecraft may or may not. Ambrose Bierce will be; Einstein will not. Paracelsus or John Dee might (but it is unlikely); Thomas Aquinas will not be found. Lucan and Lucius Apuleius will be. Anyone literary whose style indicates time spent in the Dreamlands is likely to. The greater grimoires may or may not be available (e.g. The Necronomicon); if you decide that they are, you probably should remind the players that they will go from zero knowledge of the blasphemous book to having it all in their brains at once and that their sanity is not likely to survive (both temporary and permanent insanity are possible from "reading" the Library's books, due to the speed with which knowledge is acquired).
They should be able to find some minor grimoires (allow them a spell or two, at the appropriate SAN penalty); however, nothing that would really help them stop Yog-Sothoth. A trip into the Stacks will be necessary.
The Stacks
All the information of the Mind is contained in a huge crystal, less than a mile cubed, which the players will never get to see. The rest of the planet is the Stacks, dating mostly from those times before the Mind had been developed. The rules of the Stacks are simple: if it is brought back, it may be read without use of a book credit--however, the librarians will record it as it is read so that it becomes part of the Mind. Transcripts are, of course, available. Wilful destruction of a book results in death; wilful damaging of a book in mutilation proportional to the degree of damage[2]. Accidental or incidental damage is somewhat less drastic, but still rather severe. Of course, if it's not reported, how is the Library to know? Whether they keep the stacks under surveillance at all times is up to the Keeper.
To navigate in the Stacks, someone will have to use one of his or her books to get a map of the Library. The players will be provided with a "library cart"--one of the large disks, with a simple three-axis joystick and a knob for speed control. Presumably the players will want to go to the human section--books are grouped by species--which, luckily, is only a couple hundred miles distant and should require only a day's travel.
The players will be passing through the repositories of other species' knowledge on the way, of course. Each of these sections will have lots of "books" and will be lit as that species requires. Particularly cruel Keepers might want to have the navigator make Idea rolls to avoid, for instance, those sections designed for beings that see via X-rays or neutron bombardment, or that breathe chlorine. In any event, SAN checks will be called for as the players realize that, for instance, the titanic stone blocks dripping purple fungus around them are somebody's idea of a book; so are the pulsating multicolored lights, the odd whistling sounds, the mile-long patch of total sensory blackout. And that doesn't even begin to count the Library's patrons, going about their business. Human graduate students are frightening enough--the ones in the Library are everything from intelligent microbes to giant lizards to fifty-foot bats to amoebas to beings of pure energy. Somewhere along the way, the navigator will suddenly lose another 1D6 SAN as he realizes that the Library is non-Euclidean: bits and pieces of it have been tucked into hyperspace and it is much bigger inside than outside.
Eventually, however, the party will get to the human section. It is about a cubic mile of corridors, shelves, stacks, piles, balconies, and cupboards. Obviously it is futile to try to search it all. While all spoken communication in the Dreamlands is generic--that is, all humans can communicate--the books are in their real languages. The great majority of them are languages the characters have never seen. Whether they're from the Lemurians or the Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan in 30000 AD is up to you. Only a tiny fraction are in English, or even French, Latin, Greek, or Arabic. There are several possibilities for the Keeper here. First, if he wishes to introduce a "hook" for future adventures, he can allow a lucky search to reveal an anachronistic book. My party--which is, by some strange happenstance, half Jewish--"happened" to find a copy of The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer. While such books will be confiscated by John on return, he will work out a deal: bring him a physical book from 1927 Earth, and the party can have a copy of the Shirer (or whatever it is you find); this immediately brings up the question of how to get to the Library without going through the Lands of Dream, as well as the--to our party, more interesting--question of how they can change future history, what it would mean to change history, whether the future has already been determined, and what they can or should do about it.
You might just want to let the party find a book about summoning or banishing Creatures From Beyond Space; but that might be too easy. What I did--and what I felt worked well--was to let the party spot Thomas in the Stacks--he's still looking--and intercept him. The Dream-Thomas does not look much like Merlin Thompson. He looks exactly like his picture in the painting with Corbitt. On his library cart, he has two or three books. If confronted, he will at first assume he's merely dealing with other people who want to take away the books he's found, and will get protective and somewhat abusive. However, once he realizes just how much the investigators know, he will cast some distracting spell, trace a Dreamgate with his staff, and, clutching as many books as he can hold, step through it. Alternatively, he can cast a really nasty spell, so long as it is unlikely to damage any books. Try Dissolve Skeleton. If a fight breaks out, Thomas will grab one book, and dive through the Gate. Do not let him get killed in this encounter; if necessary, have him shielded by magic, so the first round of bullets just brings down his magic defenses. He will always escape carrying at least one book.
However, the book or books he leaves behind are enough to thwart his plans. The investigators should read them; each costs about 1D6 or 1D8 SAN on top of the reading loss, has about +5% to Cthulhu Mythos, a x4 multiplier, and contains reasonably complete instructions for Calling Yog-Sothoth. Each book will take roughly 40 dream-hours to read. From this, the investigator who read the book can discover that if two summonings happen simultaneously, the spell may not work--there possibly will not be sufficient focus for Yog-Sothoth to Rend the Veils and appear. The spell takes about an hour to cast, and by about a quarter of the way through, the caster is committed to finishing the spell. If he does not, his soul will be devoured by the peeved Outer God. If the focus is weakened, the god will appear at the primary focus, and, while unable to completely manifest, will be in a great rage and will, in all probability, absorb the sorcerer. The spell must--as per the CoC rules--be cast from a ten-yard stone tower on a cloudless night, and further certain celestial conditions must be satisfied, which, coincidentally enough, will happen about three nights after the one on which the investigators finish Dreaming in the Library. These grimoires also speak of the blasphemous and perilous Evocatus Maior, which, while it is not described, apparently requires a much more determined sorcerer, the sacrifice not of one person but of thousands, and confers something near godhood on the sorcerer if he is successful.
It should be clear that Thomas hopes to use the Greater Summoning--which the book that he now has contains--and that, if successful, he will wipe out most of Boston in his bid for apotheosis. What he will do then is too horrible to be contemplated. He must be stopped, whatever the cost. How to do this is up to the players. Even if interrupted, a partial manifestation during the Evocatus Maior could wreak havoc. However, a standard Calling that is broken off during a Greater Summoning will probably not attract the attention of the god, since it has a much more pressing concern.
After all this has been discovered, it should be clear what the investigators need to do--however, they have to wake up first. If you would like, you can give them passage to Earth's Dreamlands again and play some more there; at any rate, the investigative part of the campaign is mostly over. Now is the time for action.
Chapter Six: The End
the investigators defeat cosmic horror, or die trying
"As much of this infinity as any human brain can hold...is to be opened up to me..."--Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"
Jockeying for Position
Two days before the summoning is to take place, Finewall appears at Corbitt's house with Thompson, if the investigators have not already returned it to him. He writes them a check for the full amount of the dehaunting, and quickly ushers the investigators out of the house. A gun battle with Thompson would be a very bad idea, as he is attended by two large gentlemen with violin cases. If the players insist on it, then, should they through some miracle overcome three well-armed Mafiosi, they will either be arrested, or at the very least have to leave town, in which case the Dream-Thomas will successfully complete the ritual, and the world will be plunged into eternal darkness (or at the very least, Boston will no longer exist).
Thompson's first move is to reinforce and change all the locks. In my campaign, the summoning was to take place at midnight on Saturday, May 28; thus, on that Thursday, about noon, the investigators were evicted from the Corbitt residence. From then until Saturday night at about nine, the two bodyguards stayed in the house, at least one guarding the tunnel at all times. Thompson would knock "shave and a haircut" on the box before coming up through the tunnel--the gunmen were instructed to blast anything else that came their way. Depending on how serious your party is about firepower, you may want the heavies only to have Thompson submachine guns, or you may want them to have a tripod-mounted .50 caliber WWI surplus machine gun. They should be more than a match for the party. Thompson and the Dream-Thomas spent this period preparing the tower. Then, at nine on Saturday night, the heavies were moved to the subterranean door of the tower, with a spotlight and instructions to shoot anyone besides "Mike"--Michael Thomas's dream-self, whom the gangsters thought was just some friend of Mr. Thompson's--who came towards the door.
The plan is for Thompson to begin the summoning at about eleven. At about five minutes to midnight, Thomas is going to return to the door, tell the gangsters to pack up and go back to Corbitt's house, and unlock the door and get inside himself. Two minutes after he does that, Hell, more or less literally, will break loose, and Boston will vanish either in a) a huge flash of white light and radiation or b) after being consumed by something like the Thing in Akira. The only people left alive for miles around will be the two Michael Thomases, one of whom will now be completely inhuman in powers.
If the Dream-Thomas got a good look at the party in the Library--which he may not have, depending on how well they ambushed him, since it was poorly lit--Thompson will be on the alert for trouble, but will probably not take any action against the investigators unless they start a fight; if he can hold out until Saturday night, they will not be a concern. If not, then he will not be expecting any trouble the night of the summoning, but will still take the precautions outlined below.
The tunnel map ought to have been designed so that the players have a spot near the tower from which they can summon Yog-Sothoth to try to weaken the focus. This, combined with waiting until Thompson is committed to the spell and then stopping his summoning, is the optimal solution. However, the Dream-Thomas will be able to spot a disruption in the energy fields and will come try to stop the party's summoning, and he is a fearsome opponent. When Thompson is committed, it will be obvious: a web of green lightning, centered on the tower, will have begun to crackle and twist, getting ever brighter and louder (0/1D2 SAN).
The ideal solution probably runs something like this: once the area has been scouted so the players can determine that the two gangsters are outside the tower door (they probably will not run into the Dream-Thomas, who is keeping himself in reserve for dire emergency), their best bet is either to toss dynamite at them, or, better, summon the "Wyrm Of The Aether" to eat one of them; the other will probably go mad and run away screaming, or get eaten too. Then, if the players can beat Thomas to the machine gun, they're home free: even Thomas cannot stand up against a tripod-mounted gun. If not, then he is probably going to man the gun himself--but he will have to abandon it to stop the players' summoning. At this point, then, some of the players can get past the gun, dynamite the door (the tunnel is very solidly constructed--Demolitions skill will allow the door to be breached without bringing down the tunnel), and kill Thompson, who will not even attempt to defend himself until nearly dead, at which point, he will turn, begin to pronounce a horrible spell, and be eaten by Yog-Sothoth--the god may then decide to devour anyone else present before leaving (seeing this costs 1D6/1D20 SAN). Of course, if the players are smart, they will simply put a dynamite charge topped with shrapnel, scrap metal, nails, and the like, under Thompson, and leave him coating the inside of his tower.
Some investigators may just try to get into the tower and hide under the stairs, letting the spell complete. If they defeat the Dream-Thomas when he returns, they will survive Yog-Sothoth's manifestation. They will not survive Thompson's discovery of them. The Keeper is encouraged to think of a suitably gruesome fashion for him to dispose of such cowards.
Then there is only the Dream-Thomas and the players' summoning to take care of. If Thomas has already been killed then there's no need to dynamite the door--he has the keys. If not, he may have already killed the person summoning Yog-Sothoth, a grisly but effective way to stop the manifestation. If he has been dealt with, then the players have one minor problem to overcome: the player who has been summoning Yog-Sothoth will not stop the spell. The Keeper should be passing him notes throughout the summoning letting him now how attractive he's finding the power that's flowing into him; if he's using other people for batteries (particularly NPCs; in our campaign we had a couple of the socialite's occultist pals performing the task), this would be a good time for them to meet gruesome ends as their eyeballs rupture and their brains incinerate from the inside out (1D2/1D8 SAN). The aforementioned green lightning will be running all over the caster's body, causing no damage, and no additional SAN loss, but looking really scary.
It will take damage equal to half the caster's hit points to shock him enough to be able to stop the spell; at that point, give him the choice of whether or not to continue the summoning. Don't be surprised if he does! In any event, if he becomes unconscious or is killed, he will cease to Call Yog-Sothoth. At this point, anyone still standing will see the lightning coalesce into a ball and descend through the roof of the tower. There is a muffled crashing sound, and the tower will melt, bubble, and collapse inward on itself, leaving only a scorched blob of granite some eight yards across and three feet high. The door will be blown off its hinges and down the tunnel, the last ten yards of which will collapse. Yog-Sothoth will go back to the place he belongs, and the world will once again be momentarily safe.
Alternatively, players can try to ambush Thompson in the tunnels sometime, and then deal with the Dream-Thomas separately, when he attempts the Evocation. They may be able to enlist the ghouls' help, although the ghouls will flee when Thompson reveals magical powers or starts shooting. Ghouls will not charge the machine gun. Pickman, by the way, disappears shortly before the Evocation, presumably to the Dreamlands Underworld.
All surviving players should get about 1D6+10 SAN back; the one who actually cast the spell should get another 5. He probably needs it. Anyone who directly assisted with killing Thompson should get 1D4 SAN, and killing the Dream-Thomas is worth another 1D6.
People And Otherwise
All important NPCs have both GURPS and Cthulhu statistics presented. In general, only the skills with some relevance to the game are given. For example, Merlin Thompson probably has a whole host of accounting skills and underworld patrons that simply are unimportant in terms of the campaign. Some of the Spells presented are found in Dreamlands, which the Keeper may not have. And for GURPS, I don't have the Magic supplement, so I just made up effects. In any event, if you don't like the spells presented, or if you don't have the necessary books, improvise.
NPCs
In order of appearance:
George Finewall:
A quiet, mousy, prudish little man. He doesn't really need any statistics, since he's unlikely to ever interact with the players any more than telling them what he needs done. He is genuinely concerned that the house is haunted, but he's not a weirdo occultist type, just a slightly superstitious landlord. It really is his concern for the welfare of his tenants that is forcing him to determine whether the house is haunted before he rents it to Thompson. He's a nice guy, but somewhat testy, and if the investigators insist on bugging him at work, he will become brusque and eventually rude. He's willing to pay to have the job done right, but he'd like it done quickly, professionally, and without his personal involvement. Eventually, however, he will accede to Thompson's demands to rent the house immediately. Physically, he's in his late fifties, mostly bald (what hair is left is brown), and with a little pot belly.
Walter Corbitt:
If you're using CoC just use the statistics therein.
GURPS:
ST 16, IQ 13, DX 7, HT 17, Will 17 (strong will +4)
Hideous Appearance, DR 4 (dried leathery skin)
1/1D8 SAN to see move/attack (Fright Check at -1)
Dagger @Power (i.e. current strength) --1D impaling
Claw -10 --1D+1 crushing + 1D-4 impaling
Cast Mental Cloud (Contest of Wills)
It costs Corbitt 1 point of ST for every two rounds of moving his body around, 1 point per upstairs action (i.e., moving the bed, opening the window, causing blood to appear), 1 point per dagger attack, and 2 points per mental cloud per round. If he dips into his HT reserve to keep his magic functioning, bits of him start flaking off. ST recovers 2 points/hour. Healing is at normal rates.
Richard Upton Pickman:
Pickman is the only adventuring ally the players are likely to have. Even he will probably go no farther than the near Dreamlands with them. Note that the stats I give for him are quite different from those in the 5th Edition rules.
CoC
STR 11 CON 9 SIZ 12 INT 17 POW 20 DEX 17
APP 4 EDU 17 SAN 15 HP 11
Skills: Bargain 25%, Oratory 60 %, Debate 50%, Dreaming 60%, Dream Lore 43 %, Cthulhu Mythos 50%, Psychology 53%, Spot Hidden 70%, Occult 65%, Anthropology 27%, Paint 96%, Speak Ghoul 55%, Colonial Architecture 70%, Pistol 45%.
Pickman's personality has been outlined above. Physically, he's disgusting. His skin is grayish and rubbery, his canines unnaturally large, he smells, not bad exactly, but just wrong. He's well aware that he's becoming a ghoul, but it doesn't bother him much anymore--it will give him more time to paint, after all.
Spells: Contact Ghoul, Voorish Sign, Enchant Painting (places a Dreamgate within a painting), Dreamgate.
Dreamgate: costs two POW (permanent) to cast, no SAN. If anyone sleeps near a dreamgate, he may, on a successful Dreaming roll, or judicious application of certain herbs, or GM fiat, go through. Unlike the Gate Of Oenirology, this only transports the dream-self. It is usually (e.g. Pickman's paintings) tied to a depiction of the dreamscape. In such a case, the real-world end is of course mobile. To make a gate may well require the success of a Paint roll for depiction of the gate locale. The caster must have visited the locale for the spell to work.
GURPS:
ST 9 IQ 13 DX 12 HT 9 Will 20 (Strong WIll +7 (!))
Sanity 15
Butt-Ugly Appearance -3, Alertness +3
Bard-13, Anthropology-10, Mythos-11, Psychology-13, Dream-17, History-12, Dream Lore-15, Area Knowledge (Boston)-15 (Near Dreamlands)-14 (Dreamlands Underworld)-14, Paint-25, Speak Ghoul-12, Handgun-13
Atal:
See the text. No stats are necessary.
Sirrith:
No stats are needed. He's pleasant enough, but aloof and fundamentally unapproachable. He gets peeved fairly easily at childish behavior but does not mind a pleasant chat now and again, or explaining what he's doing (which will be incomprehensible to the characters anyway).
John (or Martha):
Again, see the preceding text. No stats.
Michael Thomas
Both Thomases are extremely charismatic fellows, who will be inclined to be cordial at the very least, as long as they don't suspect their true natures are known. Remember that Thomas is basically a preacher--he's a good one. He should seem, if he's actually talked to in the library, to be a little distracted, and perhaps contemptuous of the characters' inferior intellects and erudition, but not rude.
Thompson is also very proper and formal. He tends to be brusque; however, he will be very polite to gang members and will suggest a meeting to cement business relations. His gangster cover is both lucrative and convincing. He has no patience whatsoever with fools, or those he regards as fools. He wears expensive suits and looks good in them; in short, he is the very model of the gangster cultivating a respectable appearance. Make what you will of his newly acquired German; in my campaign it may well be a hook to tie 1930's Nazi occultism into the Cthulhu Mythos.
Michael Thomas (dream-form):
CoC
STR 12 CON 14 SIZ 13 INT 16 POW 21 DEX 10
APP 15 EDU 16 HP 14 SAN 0
Oratory 90%, Cthulhu Mythos 90%, R/W Latin, Greek, English 80%, Fast Talk 70%, Move Quietly 40%, Spot Hidden 50%, Occult 80%, Dreaming 75%, Dream Lore 70%, Rapier 60%, Damage 1D6+1
Spells:
Waking World Spells:
Summon/Bind Dark Young
Contact Mi-Go
Call Yog-Sothoth (Lesser--learning Greater in course of campaign)
Elder Sign
Voorish Sign
Shrivelling
Dread Curse Of Azathoth
Dreamworld Spells (nota bene: due to his nature, the dream-Thomas can cast Dreamworlds Spells in the Waking World, but the target gets +4 or +20% to all rolls to resist the effects. Effects are, of course, normal in the Dreamworld):
Awful Doom Of Cerrit
Creation Of Venerability
Eviscerator
Lavender Spheres Of Ptath
Vortex
White Web Of Soren (if victim is overcome in the Waking World, he merely takes 3D6/round he is entangled fully)
Also owns an amulet, which can be recharged from the altar stone in the Chapel of Contemplation, which can hold up to 20 additional Magic Points. Currently it is fully charged.
GURPS
ST 10 IQ 15 DX 12 HT 11 Will 21 (Strong Will +6)
Sanity 0
Charisma +3
Clerical Investment
Fanatic (priest of Yog-Sothoth)
Vow (complete the Greater Summoning and achieve apotheosis)
Enemy (Boston Police Dept.)
Bard-17, Mythos-15, Write Greek/Latin/Hebrew-15, Fast Talk-15, Fencing-14, Dreaming-16, Area Knowledge (Dreamlands, Near and Far)-13, Occultism-17, Stealth-13
Spells: basically those outlined above. As an example of an "improvised" spell, consider the one I used when Thomas was stalking the investigators as they were trying to foil the Greater Summoning. Flame Strike: costs 3 ST to cast, plus one per round of burning desired. When cast, a ball of flame about the size of a softball is tossed at the target. It travels about 60 MPH, and will always hit unless the target makes a successful Dodge+2. When it hits, it does 1D crushing damage, plus 1D of burning damage. Then it will burn for an additional number of rounds as determined by the caster, doing 1D burning damage per round, unless the target drops to the ground and rolls to extinguish it. A similar spell in effect, though more horrifying, would be Maggot Strike, which is identical except that it's a ball of little maggot-creatures with sharp teeth, that chew for 1D damage per round.
Merlin Thompson (Michael Thomas's physical form):
CoC
STR 11 CON 12 SIZ 12 INT 16 POW 18 DEX 10
APP 13 EDU 19 HP 12 SAN 0
Oratory 90%, Cthulhu Mythos 70%, R/W Latin, Greek 80%, R/W English 95%, R/W/Speak German 70%, Fast Talk 80%, Move Quietly 40%, Spot Hidden 50%, Occult 80%, Submachine Gun 60%, Pistol 40%,Credit Rating 70%
Spells:
Call Yog-Sothoth (knows Lesser, is trying to learn Greater)
Summon/Bind Fire Vampire
Elder Sign
Voorish Sign
GURPS
ST 9 IQ 15 DX 12 HT 10 Will 21 (Strong Will +6)
Sanity 0
Wealth +2
Status 2 (successful gangster)
Charisma +2
Voice
Vow (complete Greater Summoning, reunite with dream self, achieve apotheosis)
Fanatic (priest of Yog-Sothoth)
(the Clerical Investment and Enemy do not apply as Thomas has a new identity now)
Secret (really Michael Thomas)
Bard-17, Mythos-15, Write Greek/Latin/Hebrew-15, Fast Talk-16, Write/Speak German-12, Area Knowledge (Boston Tunnels, Boston)-16, Streetwise-16, Occultism-18, Stealth-13, Savoir-Faire-13, Submachine Gun-14, Pistol-11
Spells: see above.
Guido and Luigi
These guys are the heavies that Thompson employs. Standard thugs, none too bright. Cheerful and talkative, especially if well-oiled. Too bad they don't know anything. You may want to develop or differentiate them.
CoC
STR 14 CON 14 SIZ 14 INT 10 POW 10 DEX 13
APP 12 HP 14 SAN 45
Submachine Gun 60%, Handgun 60%, Punch 60%
GURPS
ST 13 IQ 9 DX 12 HT 13
Toughness +1, High Pain Threshold, Duty (to Thompson)
Submachine Gun-14, Pistol-14, Brawling-14