The Matlock Fire

Dateline Matlock Derbyshire. The Charred body of a man, Mr John Wilson, is discovered at their home by his wife. By the location, state of the body and surrounding furniture, it appears that Mr John Wilson was a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Eg.: His entire upper torso, left arm and right leg have been reduced to ash. His left leg and right arm are still intact. As is the chair he was sitting in. A smoking pipe lies smouldering on the floor. Police conclude that the man died from dropping his pipe onto himself. The British Society for the Investigation of Anomalous Activities is looking for a party of investigators to ascertain whether this was SHC or not.

Possibilities

1 John Wilson was the planning clerk for Matlock Municipal Council and was violently opposed to the destruction of a local landmark, The Five Towers. These towers were built in 1798 by Sir Walter Townsend, to stop the biannual earthquakes that rocked Matlock. The towers have recently been sold to Dr Phillip Greening, who is the leader of a small band of Shudde M’ell worshippers. He has taken over the mind of Mr Wilson’s deputy and is hoping to get the authority to demolish one of the towers and thereby release the great Cthonian who lies pinned beneath the pentacle.

2 John Wilson was attacked and killed by a fire vampire, as a sacrifice to Cthugha by a local cult, of which his wife is the high priestess. She required this rather extreme sacrifice as the first step towards bringing Cthugha into this world. She will not be best pleased at the investigators’ attempts to look into the circumstances of her husband’s death.

3 This is a real case of spontaneous human combustion. And the investigators can get themselves mired deep into the lore and mystery that surrounds cases of spontaneous human combustion.

© Rik Kershaw

The Delivery

Home shopping, customer credit and home delivery have been with us for many years now. Harrods of London and J C Penney have both had such a facility for many years.

Early one morning, there is a ring at the doorbell (or possibly thetradesman’s entrance). Once answered it proves to be James Sheridan, the regular delivery driver for Harrods. He has a large wicker basket full of goodies as ordered earlier that week. However, the wrong items seem to have been delivered.

Possibilities

1 The basket contains the expected groceries and a severed human finger (lleft-handring finger, female, with engagement ring included). It is neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, in a manner similar to a small parcel of butcher meat. It has only recently been separated from its owner, not with surgical precision but with skill nonetheless.

There is a letter inside a sealed envelope. Composed of letters cut from the Times, it says Bring the 1000 to the train station in time for the 19.45 express train to Dover.

The hallmark and inscription inside the ring allow it to be traced via Herzberg Jewellers to its purchaser Basil Milton, a minor aristocrat living in Belgravia. Basils intended, Miss Mary Sheldon, was kidnapped two days ago during a walk on Hampstead Heath.

The identity of the kidappers is a mystery. They have an unwitting accomplice who works for Harrods and it is he who accidentally put the kidnappers’ demand in the wrong basket. If apprehende,d he did not even know the contents of the parcel or about the kidnapping, he was simply bribed to add a package to a delivery.

2 The wrong basket has been delivered. It contains a picnic meal for two (including a fine bottle of claret) and the first sealed clue for a forthcoming weekend treasure hunt. The intended recipient is Clytemnestra Poppelwell, a scatty heiress-to-be. If the baskets are swapped back, Clytemnestra will be keen to have her rescuers join the treasure hunt with her.

The treasure hunt has been arranged by Bertrand Fortescue, a simply charming London socialite. He is the bastard son of Arglye Poppelwell, Clytemnestra's father. He plans to bump off Clytemnestra during the treasure hunt, faking an accident. Then, when old man Poppelwell finally dies of terminal gout, he will inherit the family estates and fortune. He sees little trouble in doing so as all of Clytemnestras friends are airheads just like she is.

3 The basket contains a polished mahogany presentation box 4 x 4 x 4. The inside is green velvet lined and contains an odd grey/blue spherical rock formation just slightly larger than a billiards ball. A handwritten card describes it as An unusually hard opaque silicate formation, highly decorative and resistant to accidental damage. The ideal paperweight.

The rock is a Cthonian egg, discovered by Ms. Erma Smits, a moderately well-known sculptor. She has been supplying small original sculptures to the more exclusive stores for sale as gifts and curios. Erma lives in Yorkshire, where she finds natural rock formations to be the ideal starting point for her pieces. She unwittingly found the egg in the effluvium of a flash flood which caused her local river to burst its banks. Some distance upriver from her home is a tributary fed by The Spout, a fast-flowing stream that emerges from the base of a large cliff face.

Someone has chosen the paperweight as a birthday gift for the scholarly recluse in their life. It now represents a good financial investment as the morning papers all contain the tragic news that Ms. Erma Smitts, a respected sculptor, was killed just

yesterday when her ramshackle cottage collapsed during a minor earthquake. Other articles tell of small aftershocks which have been occurring in the last 24 hours.

© Peter Devlin

The Mythos Collector

It is a stormy night. In an attempt to find shelter, the investigators enter an antique shop by the name of Bradshaw’s Curios. Bradshaw’s Curios is owned by Marshal Bradshaw, a withered old man. (In reality, Bradshaw is only 36 but he has experienced things that have agee him.) Bradshaw is obviously kind but if asked about the weather, he says, “Nice, is it not?” His mind is obviously shattered, and this only a hint of it.

The interior of Bradshaw’s Curios is filled with objects, artefacts and curios of the past and present. There is a flight of stairs at the far end of the shop leading up to a door.

Upon one wall there are five clay bas-reliefs. One is of a pulpy octopus head surmounting a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings (Great Cthulhu). Another shows a monstrous ever-shifting mass of protoplasm (a shoggoth).A third  is of a bloated, grotesque and headless human-like body, completely naked with orifices upon the palm of its hands (Y’Golanac).

One bas-relief is clearly different to the others, as it is more detailed and appears to be more recent. It shows a worm-like entity with tentacles upon its head that has been pierced by an odd crystal. The sides of the crystal are covered various symbols (among them the the Elder sign, the yellow sign, Y’Golonac’s symbols and others).

This bas-relief was carved by Bradshaw himself and shows a trapped and bound Cthonian - a scene Bradshaw saw in life. Due to the realistic like of said bas-relief the sanity loss is much more severe then any of the other statues.

One wall is covered with book shelves that are crammed with books and pamphlets. The collection includes a number of forbidden books: Necronomicon in Latin, Al-Azif in Arabic, the Book of Eibon in English, The Cthäat Aquadingen in German and more.

Possibilities

1 Using sorcery contained within one of the forbidden books, Bradshaw is able to create an illusion that brings the bas-reliefs to life.  Bradshaw does this to entertain himself - he doesn’t have a television or radio.

2 If Bradshaw perceives the investigators as a threat, he will excuse himself and retire upstairs. There he tries to summon a byhakee - but unfortunately the summoning goes wrong. The byahkee arrives, but is merely angered. It lashes out and kills Bradshaw before turning on the investigators.

3 The stairs are a powerful magical illusion. If anyone tries to climb them they fall through the seemingly solid “wall” and into caverns below the shop. The caverns are deep and almost endless - and somewhere down there is a Cthonian, trapped by a giant symbol-covered crystal... 

© Daniel Dunn

Aztec Troubles

In the dusty cellar of a fine restaurant in a close-by city lays a strange clay or stone tablet. It is an Aztec Sunstone and it houses the trapped and dormant spirit of an Aztec Priestess, or so legend goes. There used to be a magic shop in the building and was left behind when the store closed their business in the late 50s. This was a piece of the occult collection that was left behind and long forgotten.

Possibilities

1 The tablet contains the spirit of the Aztec priestess Xiuh-Tu-Nal who, according to ancient Aztec Lore she will be the key to her people’s revenge on the “White men invaders” (the Spanish landfall in the 15th century).

When awakened, Xiuh-Tu-Nal instinctively takes possession the nearest unfortunate victim - but suffers from memory lapses and confusion. She doesn’t speak English and will try to flee unless someone calms her down. As she stays in the possessed body, it warps and transforms into her original form – a process that takes about three weeks.

Before too long, Xiuh-Tu-Nal will remember the ritual for possessing another victim - and will quickly become a body thief, possessing victims and discarding them.

2 The tablet is a valuable Aztec sunstone, worth tens of thousand dollars to collectors. William Fletcher, the son of the former magic shop owner remembers seeing the tablet when he used to play at the shop when he was a kid. He has since seen a similar tablet at auction and stages a ‘bust’ with a couple of his friends. The bust is staged as a gang robbery – however Fletcher’s real goal is not the cash from the register, but the Aztec sunstone.

3 The tablet is sacred to an Aztec cult of cthonian worshippers, and is occasionally the cause for strange tremors. The tremors, when they occur, reverberate throughout the old building. Should the tablet be “used” properly, it will act as a beacon, summoning nearby cthonians.

© Dennis Toepoel

Buzzing

All day long images have been flashing into the investigators brain: electricity pylons, bee hives, neon lights, electric trains, and air conditioning vents. These images don’t have any bearing on what has been going on around her, but still the images are there.

That night, the investigator’s dreams are filled with the same images but this time a unifying theme is sensed: buzzing. All of the items are buzzing, a constant humming sound fills the dreams. Next morning the investigator wakes with an intense headache and still the buzzing fills her head. In fact, now she thinks about it, the sound has been there for the last couple of days, just too quiet for her to detect consciously.

Possibilities

1 The investigator is psychically sensitive but is ignorant of that fact. Some miles below her house a cthonian has laid an egg, an egg due to hatch in the next couple of days. The buzzing in her head is actually the telepathic communications between mother and young. As the hatching gets nearer the telepathic traffic gets heavier and heavier. When the egg hatches the telepathic blast might push her over the edge.

The parent and young then move on, possibly causing seismic disturbances in the process. The effect stops if the investigator leaves the area.

2 The investigator is carrying the eggs of a genetically engineered creature in her head. The creature has been created by the Mi-Go and planted in the investigator as an experiment. The next stage in the creature’s life cycle is a maggot type larva which stops buzzing but instead consumes the frontal lobe of the investigator’s brain causing her to lose all reasoning faculties in the process. Then it eats its way out of the investigator’s head via her ear. Finally, the creature pupates into a large fly-type creature which will search for more humans to deposit eggs into.

The investigator may feel grateful when the buzzing stops but if she realised what was going to happen next perhaps she wouldn’t feel so relieved.

3 Thinking back a few days, the investigator remembers a strange encounter in the street. A small man in a black suit approached her and asked for directions. He had a strongly oriental accent and appearance. After his brief, and dull, conversation with the investigator he touched her left hand very briefly whilst saying “Thank you.” The investigator had felt a slight itching sensation in her hand for the rest of the day but could not identify anything else wrong.

The oriental was in fact a cult assassin trained in the art of the Quivering Palm. The assassin has set up deadly vibrations in the body of the investigator, vibrations that in a few more days will cause the investigator’s head to messily explode.

© Simon Taylor

The de'Vere Pool

Possibilities

1 The pool is haunted by the tormented soul of Charles de’Vere.

A lesser known manifestation is that each time the water turns to blood, the portrait of Charles de’Vere hanging in the hall cries real tears.

2 The soil beneath the pool is on a clay base and occasional natural movement of the earth’s crust brings the clay to the surface, staining the water red.

3 Deep below the de’Vere house a nest of Cthonians festers and seethes. It is their burrowing and worming which disturbs the soil beneath the pool.

© Garrie Hall

The Hatching Rocks

Spherical quartz formations formed when molten rock is cast from a volcanic eruption into water and cools before deforming. Found near Mt. Etna. 1871, J. Castle.

Thus reads the note next to three 10 inch diameter spheres.

The museum is small and its geology department smaller. Nobody has properly identified the stones; they gather dust, ignored and unremarkable.

The stones are Cthonian eggs. Professor Castle found them near Mount Etna and brought them to the museum. His theory on their origin is entirely inaccurate, and he did not examine them in more detail before his untimely death in 1872.

Possibilities

1 The Cthonians followed Castle back to the museum after the theft of their eggs. Before they arrived, he put the ‘rocks’ on display. His heart failed when they tried to telepathically interrogate him and so never found the eggs.

2 The eggs have been stolen from the museum. As the tiny Cthonians slowly matured their telepathic abilities grew, and were sensed by adults. Human agents stole the eggs and took them through to the Dreamlands.

The Waking Worlds are becoming too dangerous and the Cthonians are infiltrating the land beyond the wall of sleep. The plan is in its infancy; so far only a handful of eggs have been taken through.

3 Before an adult (or human agent) can reach the museum, the eggs hatch. The babies first kill birds and rodents but grow rapidly, demanding larger prey. The initial act of vandalism is not high on the police priority list, but they take more interest when the killings begin. It is only time before an adult appears to reclaim the young.

© Steve Hatherley