The Seance

The character’s great aunt Frieda is a devotee of Mrs Beddowes, a self-proclaimed mystic. Frieda’s daughter, Charlotte, is certain that Mrs Beddowes is a fraud, and she wants the investigators to help her prove this. Mrs Beddowes regularly holds seances for her clients, and charges a hefty fee for the privilege. Investigators who attend one of these seances experience nothing beyond the stock devices of the psychic con-artist. Music, odd knockings and noises, but nothing extraordinary. However, half-way through the seance, Mrs Beddowes drops dead.

Image credit

Possibilities

1 Mrs Beddowes died of natural causes. Bad timing, but nothing more.

2 Mrs Beddowes was killed by a disappointed client. The client attended the same seance as the investigators. However, the client was more experienced in Mythos magic than Mrs. Beddowes, and when the client realised that Mrs Beddowes was a fraud he killed her with spells. The client thinks that he is a psychic phenomenon, and is desperate to find another psychic like himself. He had hoped that Mrs Beddowes was one. The client will keep looking, and keep killing any frauds that he finds.

3 Mrs Beddowes was never alive. The corpse is the host of a vampiric spirit entity who has several host bodies scattered about the city. The vampire entity activates whatever body it pleases, and keeps the others in cold storage until required. However, the vampire entity has a mortal enemy, and this Van Helsing-type found one of the vampire’s bodies and destroyed it. The shock to the entity was such that it lost control of the Beddowes-body for a few minutes. The Beddowes-body will get up again, confounding any investigators who pronounced Mrs Beddowes dead. The vampire entity wants revenge on its tormentor, and it will also want to kill any investigators who have discovered its secret.

© Adam Gauntlett

The Big Lie

You receive a letter from an old high school friend, Tor Hukli. He is now a rich owner of a line of banks and has heard about your investigation activities and was wondering if you would like to be a special guest speaker at one of his business parties. Naturally, you accept.

Image credit

When you get to his house you realize how big it is - a huge 6 story mansion. You get there at 7:00, and he tells you he would like you to speak right after he gives his speech.

Possibilities

1 Tor introduces you to some of the more notable guests at his party. They are all high-class businessmen, and as you speak to the different people you realize that they don’t know why this party is being held. Most of the people at the party are tired, and in deep thought. Only by getting one of the guests drunk do you learn that everyone at the party is a member of some ‘religious church group’ and that they are meeting in the woods later that night for some sort of ceremony...

2 You explore the house to kill time. The upper four floors are entirely deserted. Most of the rooms are empty or used for storage. At the end of one of the halls is a locked door with intricate designs depicting numerous mythological scenes carved into it. Only by picking the lock or breaking the door can you access the room - and doing so reveals a small alter with a book on it. A mythos book...

3 When Tor gets up to give his speech, the room goes silent. He proceeds to give a long speech about his banking line, pledges, and about how it started and has evolved. Everything seems normal until about half way through the speech when the audience seems to get restless and intimidated. He notices this, and ends his speech and introduces you. As you start to give your speech, the crowd slowly becomes a raving mob and rush forward to sacrifice you to their god Hastur.

© Donswald Badfood

The Rug

The rug measures four feet wide by six feet long. It appears to be a fine if slightly plain-looking Arabic carpet, the central design appears to be divided into four sections with two sections just being woven lines that go from the outer edges to merge at a central point at the centre of the carpet. The other two sides contain black rectangles decreasing in size as they progress towards the centre, one side of this design is not identical to the other with there being a gap between the dark areas and the first line to make its way to the centre.

The whole design gives the rug the appearance of having depth. Around the edge of the rug runs an area of exotic-looking symbols and text adding to its ancient appearance.

Possibilities

1 It is a cleverly woven floor rug. A person standing in its centre will get a feeling of being at a great height, bad news for anyone with vertigo.

2 A search among the fringe at the end of the carpet where the dark rectangles don’t meet the first line, reveals two loops at each end - this rug is obviously supposed to be hung on the wall. When hung on a wall, anyone concentrating on the centre design no longer sees a plain black and white design but a corridor stretching away into the distance. Lining each side of the corridor are doors. It is possible to step into the corridor - and find yourself in the corridor, with a multitude of doors to choose from...

3 The rug was owned by an Arabian vampire before a group of suspicious villagers stormed its home. The villagers didn’t find the vampire, so torched its lair. They brought back booty for their homes, including the rug. Unfortunately, the rug is the vampire’s "coffin" - it retreats there during daylight and in times of trouble. In taking the rug, the villagers inadvertently brought about their own doom...

© Gavin Bourchier

The Rosewood Box

It looks like an ordinary jewellery box with a polished rosewood veneer and stained glass inlaid in the lid. However, the lid is permanently affixed to the case, and the hinges are decorative fakes. If you press on three different studs on the sides simultaneously, a catch releases and a hidden spring unfolds the box into an entirely new and inexplicable shape with mysterious extrusions and outgrowths of no obvious purpose. Whatever it might be, it’s not a jewellery box.

Image credit

The box was one of the items placed at auction in a small local fundraiser to benefit a college library, and in spite of its lack of obvious purpose, bidding for it was intense. The most aggressive bidder only dropped out of the running when an official interrupted the auction to ask him to leave, having discovered that his credentials were falsified. The winner paid in cash and hurried away with his purchase. Later the auction winner and another person were found stabbed to death in a nearby hotel room, and the box was nowhere to be found.

Possibilities

1 The box was created as an offering to Daoloth for a ceremony in which the outer god grants the celebrants powers of perception into realms that mortals ordinarily never see. Its creator never used it, and it was eventually donated to the charity auction by his descendants. The buyer and his partners, and the ejected bidder as well, were ambitious occultists who hoped to gain knowledge from beyond the human sphere by using it.

In order to present the offering, the ceremony’s priest is required to take the box in its unfolded state and reach into the god with it. At the last moment, the chief occultist baulked, afraid of what the god’s touch would do to him. Daoloth left in disgust, and took his revenge by failing to lift the state of heightened perception the celebrants were brought to in order to conduct the ceremony. Both of them went instantly mad from experiencing the world unfiltered through human senses, and were stabbed to death in self-defense by a third conspirator whose job guarding the door meant he didn’t take part in the ritual.

The third conspirator took the box and left to search for a stronger-minded occultist to perform the ceremony properly.

2 The box is a disguised mi-go device for decommissioning interplanetary portals. It was left with a human agent to shut down a portal at the site of a depleted mine, once the aliens had all returned through it to Yuggoth. Before he could carry out his task, the agent was killed by a gang of thugs working for a sorcerer who wanted a supply of the mi-go mineral in order to transfer his brain to a younger body. The sortie through the portal to Yuggoth was a failure, and most of the sorcerer’s hirelings deserted him on the alien planet. They retreated through the portal and paid themselves for the venture by selling off as many of his possessions as they could cart away with them. However, the sorcerer successfully hid from the mi-go and eventually returned to Earth through another portal. He was even able to bring some of the mineral back with him.

Now wearing a fitter man’s body, he’s rebuilding his laboratory by tracking down all his equipment and reacquiring it one way or another.

3 The device is a puzzle box, an ordinary Victorian objet d’art. It belonged to the part-owner of a shipping company, a man whose partners had for many years been blackmailing him into helping them smuggle South-African diamonds into Europe. The box has a secret compartment, which has been used by its owner to store a written confession, including a full account of the smuggling.

Feeling his death approaching, the smuggler donated most of his possessions to the fundraising effort and wrote a taunting letter to his partners, letting them know that if they wanted to stop the secret getting out, they’d have to spend some of their ill-gotten gains on charity. As a final act of revenge, he also wrote to a former business rival, informing him that the partners were now themselves open to blackmail if the confession could be found. Now at least two different groups of criminals are wrestling over possession of the box, one to destroy it, one to exploit its secrets.

© Chris Kerr

Under new management

A local asylum has appointed a new head of staff after dismissing the last one as quietly as possible. The new Doctor has an interesting manner of treating the ill, paying particular attention to each patient, and he has ushered in an atmosphere of respect and dignity. Other members of staff have commented on the doctor’s success with the schizophrenic and paranoid patients who, previously thought incurable, now speak coherently.

The doctor has also shown an interest in events about town, attending those related to the strange or supernatural with noted passion. The investigators, if they have not met him before at the asylum, might encounter him at one such occasion, a dinner party.

The doctor and the investigators attend a dinner party given by a local spiritualist, who heads some local society for the feeble exploitation of the mundanely odd. The investigators enjoy a pleasant evening of food, conversation, and wine with the doctor and the host.

The Doctor is the first to leave, about twenty minutes ahead of everyone else.

On their way home, the investigators suffer from peculiar emotions of disease and apprehension. They feel light-headed from the wine, and the starless night turns their feelings into paranoia. Once they get home they feel safe. For a time.

Image credit

Later that night, they discover an odd doll-like figure in their room. The dolls wear small-scale normal clothes of the period, either male or female, but lack any defining features--their faces are white, blank globes. If handled, the doll squirms, and attempts to scramble up the investigator's arm towards her/his face. The dolls are amorphous and gooey, and all but impervious in their single-minded attempt to reach the investigator’s face.

Possibilities

1 The dolls are a hallucination, a nightmare. Mentioning the phenomena to anyone results in a visit from the new doctor, and a declaration of insanity may be quick to follow. If this happens, the new patient finds her/himself interned in a clean, orderly mental hospital, where the doctor and staff patiently try to cure them.

2 Asking around after the nightmare reveals that everyone who intended the party had some sort of nervous experience, though some decline to share its nature. Investigation reveals that the curious society led by last night’s host is much more adept than it seems at the arts of the supernatural. Investigation leads to a plot to replace officials and people in power in the town, with members loyal to this group. The dolls are part of a dark magic meant to rob someone of their sanity by implanting dementia-causing toxins into the victim’s bodies.

The doctor may at first be thought an ally, but has already been replaced.

3 The dolls are a hallucination suffered by everyone attending the dinner. The hallucinations were caused by the new doctor who poisoned the wine with a powerful hallucinogen on his way back from the restroom. The nightmarish visions persist, and eventually, the victims feel persecuted everywhere, seeing life-sized, faceless horrors shuffling towards them, obscenely sucking air through their white, viscous flesh.

These delusions will eventually turn a sane man mad, without treatment. Unfortunately, the cure offered at the asylum is worse - the doctor is creating from the minds of the mad, a perfect mirror for the mindless horror that is Azathoth. Individuals are locked alone in a dark room, with only a small white doll for company. The hallucinations return, with the creature refusing to rest until it has slid its way bloodily into the investigator’s brain. There it prepares the victim’s mind for the glory and the terror of an eternity of Azathoth.