Trouble on the Tracks

It is sometime in the 1920s when, during one of the worst winters in memory, an overnight sleeper train meets with a terrible accident. Amid a fierce gale, the express jumps the tracks and plunges into the icy waters beside the railroad. A dozen bodies have been recovered from the wreckage, but 20 people are still missing, including the engine-driver and stoker. Survivors and bodies have been taken by road to the nearest town. The police and railroad company engineers are looking into the causes of the accident.

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Possibilities

1 Degenerate Serpent People from a decaying colony in caves near the railway have struck a blow against the hated humans who, with their noisy, polluting machines, have usurped the rightful position of the reptilians as masters of the Earth. The Serpent People have tunnelled beneath the rail-tracks to cause the accident. They are only interested in killing humans: the missing people are dead.

2 Deep Ones from an undersea colony off the coast are experiencing breeding problems. Fertility rates are dropping, and almost every child born to the colony for the last hundred years has been male, so the male/female ratio has become grossly unbalanced.

Desperate to find females to breed with, but aware that raiding another Deep One settlement or attacking a local community would cause more problems than they could deal with, the Deep Ones launched an assault on the overnight sleeper to steal human brides.

Of the people missing from the train, 16 are female. Of the bodies recovered, ten are male. Most of the missing females have been taken to the hybrid settlement.

3 One of the passengers on the train has interfered once too often in the affairs of a particular cult. Enraged by the investigator’s troublemaking, the cultists have summoned a hunting horror to wreak vengeance on the meddler. The Hunting Horror attacks while the investigator is travelling on the train, terrorising the engine crew and causing the driver to take a bend at an unsafe speed.

©  Tony Hickie

To the Future

Antiques are being stolen from houses throughout the area. Only items over a hundred years old are removed and any other valuables are left alone. The only clue left by the thieves is a slogan scrawled across a wall: “To the Future!”

Possibilities

1 There is a group, perhaps based around the artistic movements of Futurism and Vorticism, that is destroying old things as a matter of principle. They wish to rid the world of its past in order to hurry in a new, utopian society. The group could be worshippers of Yog-Sothoth and seek to open a gateway to the future.

2 The group is as above but they are really being manipulated by a group of art thieves. The furnace that the antiques are being sacrificed in is actually a complicated set of lights and mirrors concealing a conveyor belt that leads to a neighboring building. Here the antiques are evaluated and packaged before being distributed throughout the illegal art trade.

3 The thefts are all part of an elaborate insurance scam. The “victims” of the thefts are all close to bankruptcy or are in dire financial need. They have been approached by the thieves who are willing to remove and sell on the antiques for a large percentage of their value.

(Something like this could cause quite a stir among Nephilim as their stasis items would be ripe targets for the thieves.)

© Simon Hopper

Thrice-Blessed Mohammedan Steel

While shopping in an Arabic antiquities store, a curious item comes into view. It is a beautiful, but simple 8th-century dagger. The dagger, according to its supposed history was recovered from a tomb outside of Baghdad.

The owner of the store, Bazzeel Shimmir, drives a hard bargain and will not sell to investigators unless they show significant knowledge of Arabic history. “This is an important artefact, not a trinket or a letter opener,” he says. The investigators are allowed to examine the dagger, but without a detailed inspection, its true nature is not discernable. If the investigators want to find out the daggers true nature, they must buy it or steal it.

Possibilities

1 The dagger was owned by Abdul Al Hazred and was taken from his body after he was torn apart by an invisible monster in Damascus. The dagger was created from metal from a meteor, which fell from the sky. The extra-terrestrial nature of the metal makes it quite effective against mythos entities. The dagger has passed through the hands of many affluent Arabs before arriving here.

2 Al Hazred’s dagger was stolen from a Cthulhu-worshipping death cult from Iraq. They are hell-bent on retrieving it, and Mr Shimmir is not aware of this, nor is he involved in its theft. If the investigators procure the dagger, they can expect trouble from these fellows. Them and their shoggoth.

3 The dagger is a fake and Mr Shimmir has sold dozens like it. He specializes in forging supposedly ancient and rare esoteric artefacts and selling them to pseudo intellectuals and Middle Eastern aficionados. His reluctance to sell was a subterfuge to drive up the price. The Keeper should suggest the dagger glimmers with energy and power (which is actually the lighting and the high polish of the blade); Mr Shimmir steers the dagger’s supposed history to meet the investigators’ expectations.

© Kevin Kaier

The Last Bus

Saturday night, a rather solitary bus stop...

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It’s dark, it rains cats and dogs, the single lantern just flickers a few seconds before going out again... and the last bus for today is [censored] late.

You and the other passengers try to get closer together under the small shelter, but cannot avoid getting an uncomfortable shower blown by the icy wind directly into your face.

Suddenly, lightning. For a full moment the whole scenery is bathed in light, then it’s dark again - followed by thunder and a loud shriek from one of the people waiting. And wasn’t there a dark figure standing right across the street for just a second?

Possibilities

1 It’s just your imagination - a rock or a stick illuminated by the lighting. Still, one of the people waiting is a bit paranoid, and hasn’t taken his medicine recently. Try telling him that there wasn’t anything there in the middle of a rain storm...

2 There is someone out there - a serial killer, neatly equipped with army raincoat, night glasses and a pump gun. The killer likes to strike during dark and stormy nights like this... The more victims, the better.

3 During the lightning, one of the people waiting could clearly see a projected image of Lloigor, one of the twin obscenities, searching for victims. Lloigor appears as a titanic, winged mound of undulating tentacles, and has the power to control great winds, which it can use to snare and capture any unfortunates who chance upon it...

© Philipp Mählmann

The Lady Macbeth

When the investigators are stalled in the investigation of a crime, their suspicions are drawn to a middle-aged woman of nervous disposition, who seems to have few friends, wears black gloves in spite of the summer heat and frequently excuses herself to ‘powder her nose’. It is eventually revealed that the woman’s hands are continually covered in blood, which no amount of washing can remove.

Possibilities

1 The woman is a witch, and her family has long been suspected by the townspeople of conducting degenerate rituals and blasphemous rites for personal gain and to bring about ill-fortune for those who slight them. However, her recent attempt to summon Azathoth itself went terribly wrong and robbed her of her sanity. In trying to remove the remembered taint, she has developed an obsessive compulsion to wash her hands. She scrubs them so raw that they bleed.

2 The woman is a scientist examining meteorites for signs of life. Her studies involve taking samples from fresh meteorites and incubating them to coax any life-forms that may be present to vigour.  Upon analysis, the substance on the woman’s hands turns out not to be blood - at least, not blood in its original form. It is an ichor that seems to have something chemically in common with the faeces of vampire bats. The ichor is in fact the visible manifestation of a parasitic alien organism, which draws the blood into its invisible body and then excretes it. Thus, no amount of washing will make these hands clean.

3 She is suffering from the rare condition of acquired haemophilia, which was triggered by pregnancy. One month ago, she brought a daughter into the world, and her condition has rapidly deteriorated. The pain and stress caused by haemophilia probably contributed to the severe postnatal depression she felt, which led her to smother her baby with a pillow. Although the death was written off as “sudden infant death syndrome” and she has escaped earthly punishment, her guilt has tipped her over the edge. She will not take care of herself and is convinced that her bleeding is not a symptom of illness, but a punishment from God.

© Barbara Robson and Stuart Barrow

The Key

The investigators are asked to look into the strange goings on at a local mansion. Their friend, a struggling real estate agent, informs them that no one will buy the house due to its dark history of murder, insanity and disappearances. He gives them the address and a huge ornate key to the place, telling them that the last eight owners have either been murdered, gone insane or vanished inside its walls.

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Possibilities

1 The key is not just for the mechanical locks on the doors. It serves as the critical component in the summoning of byahkee: it is a summoning whistle.

2 The house is actually a giant conduit for wind to be channelled through its bizarre architecture. When the “key” is placed in the correct position, well hidden in the wall, the wind will blow through the key like a whistle, causing random summoning and horror.

3 The house sits upon a witch’s burial place. Her disturbed and violent spirit has been driving all occupants insane leading to murders and mayhem.

© Matt MacAdams

The Hole

This morning, you and a friend had begun to dig out that old, neglected and long unused well at the bottom of the garden. At first things had gone well, although proving harder work than you had thought, but hard work as they say.

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After digging furiously for what seemed hours, but in reality was probably no more than one, the ground beneath you had given way. You had both fallen about seven feet, both covered in dirt but luckily nothing damaged. By the flickering flame of a cigarette lighter you can see a low, rough-cut tunnel, extending into the darkness both before and behind you. Yet, somewhere in that darkness ahead of you there appears to be a small pinprick of light. A pinprick that seems to be getting bigger.

Possibilities

1 The tunnel provides a means of access to a small, nearby graveyard. For many years it has remained a hidden way of transporting recent remains to ghoul caverns. However thanks to you, the tunnel is no longer secret, and it would appear that someone knows they have been discovered.

2 The tunnel has been created to facilitate an escape from a nearby prison. The planned breakout had been going well, in total secrecy. However, your misadventure has put paid to that, unless the leak in security can be dealt with.

3 The tunnel has been created as part of the new gas pipeline. Coming towards you, at breakneck speed, is on of those new-fangled welding machines. Now if only you can gain an exit before it gets here.

© Andrew Parfitt

The Horror of Fang Rock

Five nights ago, the three man crew of a lighthouse twenty miles off the south Dyfed coast vanished without trace. The St-Davids lifeboat went to see what was wrong with the light, but they never returned Just what has happened the lighthouse men of Fang Rock? The wives of the missing people seek the help of a number of experienced investigators to answer this question.

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Possibilities

1 Fang Rock, which is built on a sea mount has been over-run with deep-ones who are using it as the focal point for a ceremony designed to bring about the return of dread R’leyh.

2 After a particularly violent storm, a strange ancient glass container was fished from the ocean. Inside this container, which was of elder design, was a Shoggoth. When the lighthouse keepers opened the container the Shoggoth was released and has been prowling the lighthouse ever since.

3 The lighthouse stands at the point where the Dreamlands and the waking world overlap. Five nights ago, the way was opened and a raiding party took possession of the lighthouse so as to ship wreck the ship carrying Randolph Carter. By stopping these raiders, the investigators will trap themselves in the dreamlands.

© Rik Kershaw

The House on the Hill

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During a thunderstorm, the hill-top house of elderly eccentric Ignatius Potter is hit by lightning. There appears to be no damage to the house, but in the days and weeks after the storm strange things start happening in or around the house:

• it is only early summer, but already plants in the garden of Potter’s house are starting to wither, brown and die as if winter was fast approaching
• dogs will not voluntarily go near the place, growling, yelping and pulling away desperately on their leashes if they are forced past the house
• at night peculiar flickering blue and violet lights can be seen through the windows of the upper floors
• Potter has not been seen at all - not that he was seen much before - but now there is neither sight nor sound of him. Various people swear that they have felt someone unseen peering round the half-drawn curtains whenever they pass the house during the day.

Possibilities

1 Potter is a latter-day Dr Frankenstein, experimenting with electricity as a means of reanimating the dead. This he did during the thunderstorm, but although his experiment succeeded, he was himself killed accidentally and the side-effects have affected plant-growth in a 15-metre radius. Now his semi-intelligent creation wanders the house alone, dully afraid of it knows not what, feeding on whatever it can find (including Potter). Ultimately hunger will drive it from the house. The flickering lights are caused by Potter’s equipment, which is still running.

2 Potter is a sorcerer who has been experimenting with magicks described in an ancient tome. At least one of his spells succeeded on the night in question, but its long-term effect has been to drive the partly-paranoid Potter now completely so.

Potter’s spell-casting has affected plant-growth around the house; the flickering lights are associated with the after-effects of Potter’s magicks. Anyone who approaches the house will be regarded as an enemy; anyone who enters it will be stalked and attacked.

3 Just before the storm Potter decided that the proximity of living plants was inimical to his health. In the middle of the night he took it into his head to spray everything in his garden with weed-killer. The lightning strike has convinced him that aliens are about to attack the Earth, and himself in particular. He has armed himself with a revolver, automatic shotgun and knife and is prepared to sell his life dearly. He knows that aliens are sneaky and quite capable of adopting human guise to take him unawares, even pretending to be people he knows quite well. The lightning strike has affected the electrics of his house, causing the flickering of the lights.

© Tony Hickie

Unexpected Guest

An old friend of one of the investigators has called for a meeting at his home. Apparently, there are matters to be discussed between people with knowledge of the Mythos. The investigators arrive at their friend’s place. They find him sitting in the lounge. In front of him is a Mi-Go.

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Possibilities

1 The Mi-Go have developed a cloaking device allowing them to take the appearance of humans. Since nobody seems to notice the Mi-Go’s nature, the investigator appears to be the only person immune to the illusion. How or why? Maybe the Mi-Go knows. Or perhaps it doesn’t.

2 It's a trap! The Mi-Go plan to capture the investigators - they have an alien need for the investigators’ knowledge. The old friend has struck a deal with the Mi-Go -  he has sold out the investigators out in exchange for Mi-Go technology.

3 The Mi-Go isn’t hostile and is here to bargain for some assistance concerning a threat to the Mi-Go coming from a group of cultists. The Mi-Go are proposing technology and knowledge in exchange for the investigators’ services.

© 2009 Nicolas Dao Phan

Wabbit Season

It is the start of hunting season, and animal rights groups have begun their yearly protests. The protests have been grim this year, with fist fights breaking out at several demonstration points and many threats being exchanged. The violence finally escalates until a hunter is found dead and trussed like a dead deer.

Possibilities

1 The animal rights groups are cultists of a nature god, capturing and sacrificing the human hunters.

2 An entity is possessing the hunters, causing amnesiac spells during which they slay friends and other hunters.

3 A race from another world is experimenting on humans; the dead hunters are the result. The protesters could be a red herring or actively in league with the extra worldly race.

© 2004 Steven Saus

Where are you, Sister?

A millionaire shipping magnate invites some old university buddies to a reunion get-together at his manor in Liverpool, England.

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While they’re halfway through the reunion dinner, a couple of local police officers arrive and inform their host that they have apprehended a suspect in the matter of his sister’s disappearance. When asked what happened, the friend informs his old buddies, that his sister mysteriously disappeared a few days ago, and that they suspect foul play.

Possibilities

1 The sister has been snatched by ghouls who dragged her to their underground warrens and killed her. The ghouls have been battling a local coven of witches and sorcerers, led by their host, the millionaire shipping magnate.

The coven knows who took the sister, and what has happened to her, but they maintain a veil of normality, while they gather strength to deal a final blow to the ghouls.

The apprehended man is just an innocent crook.

2 The sister’s husband, a renowned solicitor, killed the sister in a jealous rage because he discovered the sister was fooling around with another man. When he realized what he had done, he chopped the sister up and incinerated her remains in his furnace.

The apprehended man is the sister’s lover.

3 The sister was seduced by a visitor from Scotland, whom she met at a society ball. He convinced her to go with him back to his home in northern Scotland. She gladly followed him.

Unfortunately, the man was a member of an old cult that worships an avatar of foul Shub-Niggurath. When the sister arrived, the cult claimed her and performed a fertility ritual. Now, as her brother searches, the sister is trapped in northern Scotland with a foul entity growing inside her. Her sanity is unlikely to hold out for long.

The apprehended man had been courting for the sister’s love - but without any luck. The police now suspect that he’s behind her disappearance.

© Tim Deer

WHEL

A local radio station has just changed its format from country and western to hard rock. They have been wildly successful. Shirts bearing the WHEL logo have spread across town and investigators can hear the station blaring from cars city-wide. During this same period, acts of random violence have increased dramatically during the hours from 1am to 4am.

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Incidents of beatings, muggings and rape have taken an unbelievable upswing. The police force has been placed on city-wide alert and the media has been in an uproar.

Possibilities

1 The two phenomena are unrelated. The radio station is just a radio station, the acts of violence are being committed by a gang operating out of the seedier side of town.

2 The radio station is a front for a sinister experiment in mind control. A local psychologist and physicist got together to conduct a simple experiment in auditory stimulation and mood elevation. Their results were staggering and attracted government attention. Now under the control of a government organization involved with black operations, these two men are being forced to experiment on a larger scale, the populace of a city. From 11pm to midnight, the station sends out a low modulated tone underneath their regular broadcast. This tone increases the propensity for violent actions in individuals with violent tendencies. The government will continue this experiment for another two weeks before moving to a different station elsewhere to experiment with a different series of tones.

3 The station has been acquired by the leader of a cult of Nyarlathotep. This large cult is scattered across the town, throughout the social strata. They have been waiting for a sign for years to begin a concentrated assault against the city, believing that if they can cause riots and mass panic, then their god will appear. Due to certain worldwide events, the cult leader believes the time is now. He is using the station to send coded messages to his followers between 11pm and midnight. The cultists then go out and sow the seeds of discord. The number and level of the atrocities will increase over time, culminating in daylight bombings of several public buildings and civic leaders' assassinations on the same day.

© Matt Cowger

What lurks below

During a visit to a local bookstore, the characters find an independently published manuscript written by a prominent “beat” author. It describes a set of tunnels beneath Hartford, Connecticut where the store is located. The author found the tunnels during his wanderings across the country, during which he was periodically homeless, and briefly describes how hoboes were afraid of them due to rumors that these were haunted.

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The basement has been renovated to contain shelf space. Alert characters might see eyes peering through a breach in a boarded wall in the basement, which separates an unused portion of it from the rest of the floor.

Further research indicates there are unused portions of the sewer system that are separated from the current sewer system and are not up to code. There are also disused canals beneath certain city streets that are adjunct to the tunnels. Characters exploring them discover that the canals and tunnels do connect, but represent only a portion of the underground site described by the author.

Possibilities

1 Certain tunnels were dug upwards into the other tunnels by Ghouls. One of the canal tunnels connects to a breach in a basement at the store.

2 The author did not accurately describe the tunnels. A vampire living there used psychic powers to read his mind and discovered he was a prominent author. It meddled with his mind and sent him away. This creature preys on small groups of isolated curiosity seekers, vagrants and others who will not be missed. It uses its powers to simulate a haunting, has found an outlet in the tunnels near the store and can read minds with some effort.

3 The tunnels were covertly expanded and used for illegal activities such as bootlegging. There are a few dead bodies and evidence of other dark secrets there that at least a few prominent people in the state with ties to organized crime would prefer were never discovered. A community of vagrants resides there. The “thing” in the basement is merely a homeless person residing in the tunnels who could provide clues if the characters meet him.

© Brian Woodman