Sage Advice

At some point in their lives, investigators will have to look to a reputed scholar of arcane lore for advice on their current predicament. Jean Le Strange is one such man. But how do you approach such a man for assistance? And what will be the price for that assistance?

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Born in Paris (or Alsace Lorraine, or Cairo), reputedly during the Revolution, Jean Le Strange is a figure of some notoriety, due mainly to his outre religious and philosophical beliefs. He is said to have inspired works such as “La Bas”, has given guest lectures to the Golden Dawn, made an enemy of Dietrich Eckhart, has been denounced by the Vatican, and has been studied and debunked by the Society for Psychical Research. Independently wealthy, he maintains elegant homes in a number of cities across the globe, furnished with many rare curios and pieces of art. He is a combination of scholarly recluse and Gallic playboy.

Apparent age 37. Height 6’1”. Weight 178 pounds. Slim athletic physique, narrow hips, wide shoulders. Tanned. Short dark hair oiled and combed back. Gallic nose and strong chin. Dresses in dark, rich, sombre, classic, fashionable suits made of silk or wool, white cotton or silk shirts, crimson silk ties, patent leather or suede Chelsea boots, and a dark fedora. Carries an ebony cane concealing a rapier. Speaks many languages with a soft, educated French accent. Smokes Turkish cigarettes and drinks only rich red wines.

Possibilities

1 Le Strange is a sorcerer of considerable power, knowledgeable in the ways of the Mythos and its creatures. He is on intimate terms with The Black Man (Nyarlathotep), who has granted him much of his power, and his position on the ruling council of the Illuminati (or whichever organization is appropriate for your campaign). He acts as a lethal lure for those who have enough knowledge to be dangerous. His great age is attributable to both his dark sorceries and his skill as a deceiver and manipulator.

When the investigators contact him he becomes a mysterious, reserved patron, and will aid them for some months. At some point he will unexpectedly enter a scenario to which he is ostensibly unrelated (e.g. as confidant of a certain high priest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh) and reveal the investigators to the bad guys. He is always guarded by a permanently bound Star Vampire (or two), which has had many years of feedings on foolish investigators during which to wax powerful and become difficult to dismiss.

2 Le Strange is a sorcerer of considerable power who has yet to be seduced totally by the Mythos. When PCs contact him (after establishing a relationship), he is evasive and distant. He is suffering from a severe and odd form of somnambulence. During his “attacks” he cruises the city streets in a large black saloon, engages an escort for the evening, returns to his home, kills her horribly, then dumps the body. He remembers only short fragments which he attributes to nightmares induced by his studies. Astute investigators should stumble across the pattern of slain prostitutes in the world’s fashionable cities, e.g. Paris, Venice, London, New York. This is the secret of his great age as his victims’ life force feeds both him and his personal demon. Those who can help him will make a useful friend, but he will then begin to age normally. Those who follow him at night will bite off more than they can comfortably chew.

3 Le Strange is a well-preserved scholar with more than a passing knowledge of the Mythos. His background is a combination of rumour, a pinch of truth, and a lot of fantasy. However, his occult collection is real. His latest acquisition during his travels is an ornate blue crystal bottle (9 inches tall, 4-inch diameter base, fluted and stoppered, sealed with lead), purchased at an exorbitant price at Sothebys in London.

It is reputed to have once been the possession of John Dee. When investigators visit Le Strange, his extensive house will be empty. In the large parquet floored study is the expected library, with a paper-littered desk and comfy chairs. There is also a wooden pedestal similar to a flat lectern but with nothing on it. On the floor is a fine sand which will crunch under the investigator’s foot. Looking closely will show that it is very fine powdered blue glass. Looking even closer will reveal the “burst” pattern which it appears to have. The floor beneath the wooden pedestal is mainly sand-free. What exactly was in that bottle? Where is the owner? What’s that noise?

(Thanks to David Drake, author of the novel Dagger, published by Ace, for option 3.)

© Peter Devlin

Return of the King

A minibus carrying tourists picks up a hitch-hiker late in the evening on the road to Las Vegas. The tourists aren’t able to get a good look at the stranger , but they are left with the impression of a tall, dark and handsome middle-aged man.

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Over the following days the tourists start seeing glimpses of this man at the casinos, shopping outlets, wedding chapels, and Hoover Dam. It is as if he is shadowing them. The tourists grow increasingly nervous particularly after one of them goes missing while trying to chase after this mysterious figure.

Possibilities

1 The stranger is Elvis. Plagued by health problems he struck a bargain with Nyarlathotep and in exchange for some terrible deed he was given immortality. However, he needs to periodically feed from the life force of humans in order to live. He usually takes his victims from the Las Vegas area, but often ventures to other parts of the US and the world, thus causing the numerous Elvis sightings in the last 20 years. The tourists are being stalked and drained of their energy and this will eventually result in death.

2 The stranger is an Elvis impersonator. There is an unpublicised Elvis convention in town and the tourists are glimpsing Elvis impersonators and are growing paranoid for no good reason. The missing tourist is merely lost, and turns up eventually.

3 The stranger is a harmless wraith-like figure that bears a striking resemblance to Elvis. It keeps hitching rides into the city with strangers and then follows them around, but always at a distance.

© Paulo Rech

Reformatted for Yellow Cubes

From a dream…

A four-inch cube, capable of levitation, bright yellow and of a soft, marshmallowy texture and consistency.

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This object is currently squeezing its way into the mouth of a paralysed man - only his eyes can move, and although he wants to scream he cannot. This object is associated with certain poltergeist-type experiences. Its existence is being hidden through the use of drugs which “reformat” perception... this conspiracy is in collaboration with the intelligence behind the cube, and the drugs normally prevent the cube from being seen...

Possibilities

1 This is a tool, machine, or device of some kind. What is it used for? Who or what uses it and/or constructed it?

2 This cube is an intelligent creature. What is it doing, and why? What sort of world would it have ecologically fit into and evolved upon, and why is it here instead of there?

3 Normally, few people can see this object. There is a deliberate government conspiracy to keep the population drugged, mixing the drug into the water supply, mandatory vaccines, mood equalizers, Viagra-type drugs, etc. The real purpose of the drug is to ensure that nobody can see this cube and other related objects, creatures, events, etc. What sort of people are behind this, and why is this being done?

(In the dream all this came from, those powerful, ambitious people were being offered the opportunity to extend their empires into other dimensions, in exchange for their cooperation here with the creators of the cube. Anyone who failed to take the drugs would not be properly “reformatted”, and could see not only the cubes and their creators, but also the way additional dimensions were grafted onto this reality- and because of all this they would quickly go insane. The cubes would only fly into the mouths of certain people, but it was never really clear to me why this was so. Most victims couldn’t see or feel anything, and the cubes would eventually melt away inside their bodies; however, it was a terrible experience for the rare individuals who could see what was happening- they would have to be paralysed first and never seemed to survive the experience. Sometimes, before the attack, these poor victims, the ones who hadn’t been properly drugged, would leave a room for a moment, and return to find it wrecked or the furniture re-arranged, and sometimes one of the creators might roll through the house wrapped in a blanket- it was impossible to tell what they were shaped like, but they seemed to vary in size between a medium-sized dog and an adult human; their strange behaviour was sort of like a surreal, insane haunting.)

© Yronimos

Problems with Transmission

The program was supposed to start at nine o’clock, but instead the message ‘Problems with Transmission’ appears, and blinks out after a second into a hastily chosen sitcom.

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The show, “Evidence of the Supernatural” was meant to be on, but what’s wrong? What’s happened to cause the show, which promised startling new evidence of the paranormal, to be cancelled?

Possibilities

1 The shows evidence was a method an occultist, Randall Illings, had devised to allow a person to see the spirit world. It was a bluish grey powder he had found the recipe for in a book, and it promised to reveal the hidden worlds and dimensions all around us. Illings had cameras set up, and machines built to continuously spread the powder.

Illings had created a large amount of the Powder of Ibn Ghazi, a material that allows humans to see into other dimensions, and ravenous things to look back. When the police arrived to investigate a frantic phone call from the studio, they found nothing but piles of empty clothes scattered around the building. All of the people had been consumed by the other dimensional creatures, leaving nothing but empty clothing.

The tape of the event has not yet been examined, and is in storage at an FBI Forensics Lab.

2 Randall Illings had found a lot of interesting mentions of government research into the paranormal. He had found conclusive evidence of the CIA testing clairvoyance and fire-starting abilities in a document dating to 1970, and he was going to present this on the show.

However, the paranormal research group, which has since gone rogue, discovered this and secretly poisoned the food of the crew cafeteria. Illings however, a strict vegan, had prepared his own food and escaped poisoning. As people dropped dead around him, Illings fled the scene just as the rogue agents were arriving.

The agents burned down the building and stole the evidence linking them to the murders. As Illings is the only person not accounted for, he is being hunted by the police for the murder of around 60 people, with the rogue agents looking for him as well.

3 The show has been cancelled due to cold feet on the studio’s part. Nobody at the network broadcasting the show really had any truck with the supernatural, and cancelled the show at the last minute.

Randall Illings’ evidence was a 16th Century French manuscript on opening a portal to another plain of existence. Illings has promised his fans that he will show them the manuscript and perform the ritual on a podcast tomorrow night.

© Paul Hebron

Oblivion Circle

One peaceful night the investigator goes to sleep normally in her own bed. Hearing a noise in the night, the investigator wakes to find the world outside her bedroom totally changed. Odd, many-legged chairs and tables and weirdly organic trinkets now furnish her home. Other residents sleep soundly but if awakened, see nothing wrong. They seem well disposed toward the investigator, yet their speech sounds ominously strange; for instance, they swear by the names of unknown gods.

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The night world outside the investigator’s house has also changed. She sees dreamily twisted houses, new bends in once-familiar roads, and inexplicable advertisements. (“Play Canton-Prefecture Super Lotto and win up to three years of life!”) Newspapers bear enigmatic headlines such as “Kaiser denies cranching out of control.” The victim detects no single obvious branch from her previous reality.

Fellow investigators, too, have changed and now pursue surreally distorted goals. Where the victim might remember a journalist ally as a zealous seeker of truth, the changed reporter now just as zealously casts horoscopes of target politicians, divining their future misdeeds. Though friendly toward the victim, changed investigators recognize nothing wrong with the world, instead believing the victim herself mad.

The victim may explore this nightmare world until dawn. Then she awakens in her bed, with the world outside back to normal. Yet she holds physical evidence that proves her “dream” actually happened, and an unbroken circle of white dust surrounds her bed.

Possibilities

1 An enemy sorcerer has magically transported the investigator into a carefully prepared section of the Dreamlands. Eavesdropping on the victim’s movements, the magician hopes to learn the whereabouts of incriminating evidence or a vital object the investigator owns. After the sorcerer learns the desired information, he dissolves the enchantment, returning the victim to the waking world.

2 In a previous adventure, the investigator offended a Cthulhoid cult. Cultists have projected her into a nightmare world of their communal imagining. They forge the physical evidence to make the illusion convincing. Though the spell cannot work in daylight, the cult intends to torment the investigator nightly until she goes mad.

3 The investigator has gone mad and created a submerged, split personality. This personality creates the nightly dream vision, a projection of the world she would prefer to live in. The mad investigator hallucinates the “physical evidence” and dust circle. Because some sane part of her still dwells on current investigations, the subconscious intuitions revealed in her nightmares may prompt genuine real-world leads.

© Allen Varney

O Apple Tree

On the edge of town there is an apple tree that stands alone in a field, its branches picked clean of fresh green apples around summertime by the town’s children. This year is no different as the children make the journey across the field, keeping below the line of the hedges to avoid the farmer’s eye line, and filling their upturned shirts with apples before making the return journey back to market to sell the apples to the market stall, eating the choicest ones on the way.

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However, something is different this year. The children fall sick and are confined to their beds, and a few even die. Thankfully no one else eats the apples and gets sick, but the town is still looking for someone to blame for the deaths of the children.

Possibilities

1 Farmer Evan Wolcott’s farm is failing, and every year he has had a smaller harvest, and had to sell on a little of his land to neighbours. Wolcott has turned to extreme measures to protect his interests, and a few months ago he turned to the books locked away in the attic that had belonged to his brother, the one who had travelled east to learn about magic and summoning.

On the first day of summer, Wolcott carried out a solstice ritual from the book and asked for the old gods of fertility to bless his farm, which they did, infusing the farm with a vigour that Wolcott had never known before. The nature spirits that guard the farm against ruin are ruthless. The spirits struck out against the children for stealing from the farm, and the sickness will kill the rest of them if something isn’t done.

2 The apple tree had a name a few hundred years ago; the Gallows Tree. A notorious witch was hung from the tree by the name of Jane Williams and her last words were reputed to be that she’d live on forever. Williams used magic to bind her spirit to the tree, and she has remained within the tree since then. She has strived to recreate her old body by exerting her limited influence on anyone who lingers near the tree and has been responsible for a small number of murders and suicides in the town.

When the children came this year, she tried a new tactic by transferring a portion of her soul to the apples the children picked. The cursed apples will eventually kill all the children and Williams plans to reanimate their bodies and then enact a ritual to restore her body.

3 The apples have nothing to do with the sickness of the children, but the man who bought the apples from the children did. The apple vendor is a serial killer who travels from town to town poisoning children. He gave the children some poisoned sweets as thanks for the apples, which cause the sickness. 

© 2009 Paul Hebron

Not Quite Dead

The investigators come across news of people presumed dead being spotted alive and well. There is no apparent connection between them, save for the fact that they all were reported to have perished in a mass disaster two years ago, and their bodies were never recovered.

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Possibilities

1 The disaster was part of a ritual to gain knowledge on raising and controlling the dead, and the cult responsible has just released its specimens.

2 The disaster area was cursed, and now the first batch of undiscovered dead is coming out to play.

3 All of them faked their deaths to escape their previous lives. They just want to be left alone. Given the fact that in order to establish a fake identity (or even need one in the first place!), underworld connections are to be expected, if the players are perceived as a threat, they could end up with some pissed-off mobsters on their tail.

© 2011 Angela Burns

Mistaken Identity

One of the investigators has been kidnapped and replaced with an exact duplicate. No one else is aware of the switch (or even suspects anything) until the character starts displaying knowledge of certain disciplines that they would never have normally learned.

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Possibilities

1 The investigator has been replaced by an entity that has absorbed their thoughts and memories. It appears identical and possesses identical memories to the original, but it also possesses its own knowledge and this comes out at random times. The original investigator is now dead.

2 A government agency is replacing random individuals and replacing them with identical clones. The originals are held in facilities where they are used in grisly research, and the clones are sent out into the world so that their interactions with normal humans can be monitored. In order to get the clones to function, their DNA has been mixed with that from a creature from beyond that was captured by the military. The creature can communicate telepathically with the clones and uses them to secure its freedom.

3 The investigator has always been an imposter. This imposter has been with the party for a long time - and he doesn’t even realize that he is not the original! He might be a clone, a conjured copy, or some other replicant, but he is not who he believes he is.

© 2001 Paul Comeau

Missing Kids

Two 19-year-olds, a boy and a girl, are missing from a lakeside camp. The name of the lake: Crystal Lake.

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A popular ghost story is that some years ago, a boy drowned in the lake and never resurfaced.

Possibilities

1 The two kids have eloped, intending to cross the state line to get married. A forgotten diary or a bunkmate might divulge this information. The ghost story is just that - a story. Every camp has one.

2 The two kids went for a late-night swim in the lake and happened upon an underwater cave. As it happens, the ghost story is real, and the ghost of the drowned kid haunts the area. Unfortunately for the two missing kids, they got lost in the labyrinthine cavern, and while they are in a pocket of air... their time is running out.

The ghost, if encountered, might actually prove helpful - he’s not a bad sort, just unfortunate. Of course, if he’s enlisted, he might latch on to an unfortunate investigator, who then gets saddled with his very own haunting...

3 The missing teenagers have watched a few too many horror movies and are hiding, planning to recreate the horror from the Friday the 13th series.

© 2007 Marius Incognito Blomkvist