Call of Cthulhu Actual Play: Reanimation in Greenland

Monday, June 3, 1889

The Gustav Ericsson arrived in the west Greenland port of Talluavik. On board her was the Rev. Seamus Murphy, sent by strange visions he'd been having, reuniting him with Ascott, Morton, and Pound.

With the Ericsson staying for two days to resupply a research station in the tiny port, they found an inn (the only inn - the town had maybe 20 buildings plus extensive mines) and drank the night away.

Tuesday, June 4, 1889

Drinking was a bad idea. The next morning the town was filled with reanimated corpses, many of which attacked the inn. The band fought their way out and saw the Ericsson was under attack, with the corpses being controlled by one of two British scientists performing research in the town -a Mister Travers.

The four went to the research station - an infirmity which had been giving immunizations.There they found Doctor Ian Chesterfield, a rather crazy mad scientist who had found ancient Hyperborean writings carved on metal disks in the mines - one of which had a formula he was trying to understand which could reanimate the dead. The dead were a shadow of their former selves, but with refinement he could end death forever. Of course he'd killed the bulk of the miners in his "immunications" as part of his research. Ascott blew his head off.

The four went to the mine to get some explosives in hopes of using them against the corpses assaulting the Ericsson (still going on - a bit of a standoff). Ascott made the mistake of being curious and investigated the Hyperborean temple Chesterfield had found. There was a statue of a toad-like deity, metal disks covered with writings, and a large bowl - which was filled with a formless black spawn which consumed him. The remaining three tried to rescue him. Eventually Ascott escaped with a spell he learned - Immolate the Unfaithful, which melted the flesh from the inside. He was nearly killed by the experience and the spawn survived it. Rev. Murphy used some of his background delving into forbidden texts (as well as perhaps the disks wanting to be understood) to decipher one spell - that allowed him to commune with the spawn. As it waiting for them to worhip Pound and Morton set up the explosives and blew the temple away.

The explosion served as a bit of a distraction, allowing the four (including an unconscious and badly wounded Ascott) to board the vessel and escape...

GM Note

This adventure came perilously close to a total party kill. The group much to my (and their) surprise all survived, though at a cost of using some sanity-blasting magic and some big gains to Cthulhu Mythos skills.

Image Credit

Tsathoggua by Ruud Dirven, Usage licensed under Creative Commons 3.0