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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works b...
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei...
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you contr...
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has ...
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A...
Keep reading