Music from the Stars

A group of radio astronomers working in a secluded desert observatory have died. Investigation suggests that they all killed each other in a kind of frenzied bloodlust. Detailed investigation reveals that the astronomers were picking up a strange signal from a distant star - a strange kind of music with high-pitched wails and deep groaning moans.

Possibilities

1 The song is the Song of Shoggoth and is transmitted from a star in a far-distant galaxy. The song is a prayer that causes madness in weak-willed humans. Cults in certain areas of South America have duplicated the song in their own way over the years but none of them has ever brought the madness that the true Song of Shoggoth brings upon those who hear it.

2 The astronomers picked up a communication from another galaxy that is being sent by a highly advanced civilization as a message of peace. However, the message is too complex for human minds to comprehend, and those that try are stricken with madness.

3 The music is made by the mi-go as they travel across the vastness of space. It is filled with subliminal signals that are meant to convey an attitude of peace and solitude, but human minds cannot process the complexity of the music and they go insane from listening to it for too long.

© Paul Comeau

Gloomy Sunday

‘Gloomy Sunday’ is a mournful song about a young man deciding to follow the woman he loves into death, written and recorded in Hungary in 1933. A composer named Reszo Seress wrote it shortly after breaking up with a long-time girlfriend, and it quickly became popular, but also began to develop an odd reputation as the ‘Hungarian Suicide Song’. A number of deaths were linked to Gloomy Sunday, with suicides following a playing of the song, or lyrics from it appearing in suicide notes. Shortly after he approached her seeking a reconciliation, the composer’s girlfriend killed herself, leaving a note reading only “Szomorú Vasárnap” -- ‘Gloomy Sunday’.

An English language version was recorded, and Gloomy Sunday’s reputation as the suicide song spread across Europe and America, to a lesser degree than in Hungary, but still worrying authorities to the point of banning it from radio in several places.

(This is all true. There are websites that detail the song’s history or debunk the ‘suicide song’ legend, and various recordings available for download.)

Now, a dusty and rather scratchy original recording of the song being played by its composer has been restored and duplicated with a clarity never heard before, and the original Hungarian version of Gloomy Sunday is regaining popularity -- but this version of the song seems to have a power over its listeners that none of the previously mass-marketed recordings came close to matching. Listeners find themselves babbling snatches of Hungarian they don’t understand, experiencing terrible and sourceless fears, seeing strange visions they can’t explain, and killing themselves at a frightening rate.

Possibilities

1 Seress was a cultist, and quite mad. Along with the strange and troubling music he composed, there were rituals venerating forgotten gods. He forced his fiancee to join him, and at first she went along with it willingly, humouring a man she loved and believed could be brought back to sanity with patience and quiet surroundings. But soon the forbidden knowledge she was learning through their descent into the mythos began to horrify her. When she protested, Seress threatened to kill her if she backed out or if she told anyone of what they were doing.

His efforts were building towards a final rite he was reluctant to tell her about, but her own researches gave her an idea of what he was planning, and the sick fear of it became too much for her: she killed herself. Seress was furious at her betrayal, but continued his preparations for the rite as though he believed there would still be a second participant.

Now, the specially-prepared Gloomy Sunday recording acts as a kind of trap for the woman’s spirit, periodically forcing her to inhabit and possess a listener’s body against her will. It also calls to Seress, who immediately gives chase, armed with magical methods to force her to join him in the final ritual. The repeated suicides are the unfortunate ghost’s only way to free herself from the trap.

If nobody intervenes, the deaths continue until Seress finally captures his late fiancee and goes ahead with the ritual.

2 Seress wasn’t much of a composer, but he was a charming man with a wide range of acquaintances, and an accomplished plagiarist. One of his friends was a German-Hungarian scientist experimenting with brainwave transference using salvaged mi-go technology and money provided by Hitler’s Reichstag. He was exploring a promising method of transferring thoughts and memories from one mind to another encoded in repeating tones like the melody of a song. Seress liked the ‘music’ he heard in the scientist’s home one night, and left with the recording hidden under his coat, eventually publishing an adapted version of it with lyrics written by another acquaintance, as Gloomy Sunday.

Now listeners are experiencing some of the scientist’s recorded thoughts as they listen to his brainwave-duplicating sounds, including his growing doubt and guilt over accepting money from nazis, and increasingly paranoid fear of what can only be mi-go attempts at intimidation in order to reclaim their equipment.

If nobody intervenes, the Gloomy Sunday reputation continues to grow and the recording’s publisher quietly takes that version off the market. Isolated suicides continue, as private copies still exist.

3 Gloomy Sunday is simply a sad, regretful song with nothing supernatural about it. The wax the recording is pressed from is contaminated with toxic chemicals that fill the air with poisonous fumes when played. The hallucinations and deep depression listeners experience are symptoms of exposure.

In time, the recording company will switch to a safer material and try to hush up the deaths, leaving thousands of potentially deadly records in the hands of the public.

© Chris Kerr

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

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.

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

Featherbrains

Archie Haversham, rich gadabout and amateur naturalist, wants a great auk carcass. (The auk is a flightless seabird that resembles a penguin. It became extinct in the late 19th century, but rumour has it that colonies of the birds might still exist in some inaccessible spot. Stuffed specimens and skins fetched astronomical prices; in the early 20th century, a specimen could be worth as much as £350.)

Haversham has heard that Ivor Oleg, an arctic explorer, has a stuffed auk for sale. Oleg is asking £400 for it. Oleg is also dropping hints that he knows of a colony of auks near the Arctic Circle that until now have avoided contact with man. Haversham is desperate to conclude the Auk deal, but he is bedridden with a broken leg and can’t conduct the negotiations himself. Someone will have to go in his place.

Possibilities

1 Oleg is a thief. He stole the auk carcass, and several other things, from Martin Ponsonby, another rich naturalist. Ponsonby is a paranoiac. To him, Oleg’s theft isn’t just a theft. It’s part of a grand conspiracy to steal Ponsonby’s life’s work. In addition, people who buy the auk from Oleg aren’t just unfortunate dupes to Ponsonby. They’re all in on the plot. Ponsonby’s attitude is that his enemies must be destroyed, (socially and legally, not murdered), and he has dispatched private investigators to recover the auk and gather dirt on his foes.

2 Oleg is selling a genuine auk. However, he also wants to con Haversham into funding another Arctic expedition. To that end, Oleg will spin tales of auk colonies hidden away in the inaccessible regions of the world. Oleg will try any story if he thinks it will get him funding. If the investigators hint that they might be interested in, say, hidden temples to forgotten gods lost somewhere in the Arctic snows, Oleg will be more than happy to tell lies about such things.

3 Oleg has been driven insane because of his contact with alien gods deep in the Arctic wastes. He thinks it is his duty to gather victims for the Old Ones. He uses the auk carcass and his story of more auks out in the arctic to gain funding for another expedition. Oleg intends to be the only survivor of this expedition. The others will be left for the God to devour. Oleg has other specimens from his last trip to show to prospective buyers. Fragments of tablet with strange inscriptions, odd carved statuettes made from whalebone, and other odd things that might alert Mythos scholars that Oleg found more than auks on his last trip out.

© Adam Gauntlett

Stones of Doom

The investigators are spending an uneventful night in a supposedly haunted house (it isn’t). At two in the morning they hear the drum of heavy rain, then the clattering of hail. This soon changes to a heavy thumping sound as windows are smashed by severe hail. While trying to block up the broken windows, the investigators see that the hail is not melting on the floor but sinking through it!

One investigator grabs a newspaper, attempts to capture the weird hailstones. These sink right through the paper and into the floor. Another investigator uses a silver tea tray from the table. Only the stones that land on metal survive, leaving three small stones which are of uniform colour and close in size. There are strange markings on the stones...

Possibilities

1 While investigating the stones, the investigators come across the name of Ormand Blecht, a self-proclaimed witch and maker of stone charms. While visiting his remote home, the investigators are attacked by his large black dog, his familiar. They may have to kill it or be severely maimed. This act makes Blecht lie to them about the stones and he says that they are very dangerous in their present state. He recommends the stones be re-assembled during a full moon then buried, so that their power may be neutralized. Doing so causes the stones to hum loudly – and summons two shantaks to assault the investigators.

2 If the investigators re-assemble the stones, the fragments join, creating a solid crystal. This crystal as such is harmless.

Investigation brings the investigators to Dr. Hamilton Crabtree, researcher at Miskatonic University. Crabtree offers to expose the crystal to his light cannon, a primitive laser. (If the investigators refuse, he steals them.) Doing so creates a Field of Silence from the Plain of Sound. (The players must then proceed without speaking to each other.)

The Field of Silence continues to expand until the crystal is destroyed. The Beings of Sghluo (from the Plain) send three dimensional shamblers to guard the gateway in advance of their invasion.

3 The investigators notice immediately that the stones are attracted to each other, almost if they were magnetic. As they near joining they give off a wicked energy. They should not be allowed to join or a great explosion occurs.

Research on the hieroglyphs proves them to be of Atlantean origin, a time when wizards fought battles against each other using such devices. If the stones are placed in separate areas, for example, a safe, a drawer and a pocket, they escape and begin to creep together again. The stones can melt through any non-living material to rejoin.

If the investigators decide to allow the stones to join in a remote place, the explosion occurs and is followed by the arrival of a Hunting Horror.

© G W Thomas

Spare Some Change?

He stands outside the bus station playing badly on a harmonica, it could be “Auld Lang Syne” perhaps. He is bundled in greasy overcoat belted with string and you shudder to think what may be in his pockets. The coat is covered with badges including one with a pyramid and eye, and one bearing the motto “Watch the Skies.” His greying beard is long and unkempt, with “things” in it. His hair is no different.

As he turns his watery eyes towards you an unpleasant, red-blotched bald patch (or is it shaved?) about the size of your hand is clearly visible above his left ear. Moving the harmonica from his mouth, he wheezes at you. “You’ve seen it too, eh? You’ve seen it. You can’t fool me nor them neither, heh heh heh, an’ that’s why their watching you too. They sees everything!”

He nods excitedly in the direction you have come from. Looking back you see two tall, clean-shaven men in dark suits and shades; they could be watching him, or they may be watching you.

Possibilities

1 Robert Beauchamp was a former rising star scientist in the government defence programme. He dropped out (ethical differences) and disappeared. The government has finally tracked him down and considers him a security risk. The men in black are government agents who intend to apprehend Robert, after ascertaining the extent and nature of his real or imagined contacts. They monitor everyone that Robert takes an unusual interest in. As far as the investigators are concerned, this might prove disastrous.

2 In hunting for pickings in the bins outside a corporate office late one night, Robert heard a strange and unearthly wailing. Peering through a window he witnessed corporate officials engaging in some kind of communion with an eldritch being. He fled in terror but was filmed by a security camera. As the players chance on him, corporate agents are moving to abduct and silence him. If he never gets a chance to speak about what he saw, the only clue to where he had been is some crumpled office stationary bearing the company logo in his filthy pockets.

3 Robert suffers from amnesia. The marks on his head are the results of experiments he has suffered at the hands of cultists who held him prisoner and tortured him for extended periods. He has no idea how he escaped – or even that he was ever tortured. Robert has been arrested several times, and his scars have piqued the curiosity of a secret government department responsible for investigating strange phenomena. The suited watchers are from that organisation but do everything to disguise their motives and employer. They are observing Robert to see whom he contacts and, perhaps more importantly, who contacts him.

Roadkill

This one happens while the investigators are in their car, somewhere out in the country. They are speeding along a shady road, anxious to get from point A to point B to further their researches. Suddenly a man steps out from the trees at the side of the road, directly in front of their oncoming vehicle. There is nothing they can do. The car slams into him.

When they get out to check on the victim’s injuries, a terrible smell assails their nostrils. From the decayed and liquescent human debris smeared across the road it is apparent that the man had been dead for a while before they hit him.

Possibilities

1 The wandering dead man was an experiment on the hoof. A Dr Frankenstein-type has a laboratory in the area, where he is conducting his studies in reanimation in relative seclusion. This one, however, got away. The doctor or his assistants may be in pursuit. The cadaver may have been a one-off, or the first in a series of escapees abroad in the countryside.

2 As the investigator who was driving surveys the splattered corpse, the horror causes them to swoon. As they lift their head, they see the road rushing by, their white knuckles gripping the steering wheel - the whole scene with the undead pedestrian was a hallucination, an REM. dream as they nodded off at the wheel. They snap awake just as the car starts to drift off the road, heading at full speed straight for a large tree.

3 The man they have just run down was a lot older than he seemed. His life had been extended by magick (see Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) or surgery (as per Cool Air). When he was accidentally killed, his body immediately reverted to its correct state of decay. The players may never learn his old secret.

© Mark Morrison

The Followers

You are being watched. You cannot see the things that follow you. It could just be your imagination, but movement at the edge of your vision and malicious chattering voices in the wind, haunt your every waking moment. At night they come closer and hide behind reflections in mirrors and darkened windows. And if you turn out the light . . . they become really bold. So you sleep with the light on. Always.

It’s that or the nightmares . . .

Some nights you wake unable to breathe as if something heavy is sitting on your chest. And the room still smells of fetid breath and damp fur.

Possibilities

1 Your block is the subject of secret government experimentation. An experimental drug has been introduced into the water supply, in minute quantities. The drug is heightening everyone’s paranoia and is affecting their sanity.

As well as your own difficulties, other residents are affected. Arguments flare at the slightest provocation. Nobody talks to their neighbours. Security systems are installed. And then nice Mrs Dolittle, who made you cookies the other day, is arrested for making a stew with her husband’s head.

After that, the experiment stops and things slowly return to normal. Nobody is any the wiser.

2 The shock almost killed you. You were having a cup of coffee in a café when suddenly another customer screams and flails at the air as if attacked by something. You stood up to help but, like an after-image of bright lights, you could see things swarming over him. Or at least that is what you think you saw.

Since then you have perceived those things everywhere. And they know that you can see them. Whatever their malign purpose, they wish to do it unobserved and are Now out to get you.

3 For hundreds of years scientists have observed, catalogued and dissected things to see how they work. If a few dogs die of lung cancer or a rabbit has its eyes burnt out, well, it’s all for the common good. We need to know that cigarettes are bad for us and that our cosmetics are kind to our skin.

Now scientist of a different hue are making the same justification. They come in the night and drug you so that you can not remember exactly what has happened and they take you away and conduct experiments. A dissection one night, mazes and electric shocks the next. It’s cruel, yes, but they need to learn a few things before they arrive and it is all for the common good. Well, their common good - and they have never considered that any other kind matters.

© Nathan Gribble

Snails

It's a massive snail. It's body must be nearly 9" long (and maybe 2-3" in girth), with a huge shell to match. Worse than that, it's in the cellar. The cellar was always damp, but never home to giant snails...

Closer inspection reveals that there is a crack in the cellar wall, and the snail has come through from next door. The neighbouring house is owned by Sebastian Crease, a thin gentleman in his late-fifties, who lives alone.

Possibilities

1 Sebastian Crease is a discredited scientist - having been fired from his previous employer he is trying to create a comeback. His cellar is filled with test tubes, petri dishes and tanks full of snails. Crease is trying to create a cheap, nutritious superfood based on snails that he can sell to the agribusiness that fired him. He has successfully bred snails up to 9" long, but is aiming for twice that.

2 The snail is a rare Amazonian Flesh-Eating Snail, and Crease is a snail enthusiast. He keeps them in his cellar, which is full of tanks containing specimens from across the globe.

Unfortunately, Crease is now dead - he slipped on a step-ladder while changing the light bulb in the cellar. He fell onto one of the tanks, shattering the glass and his body ended up on the floor in a pool of blood, a shard of glass in his windpipe.

As for the tank, it contained the giant Amazonian Flesh-Eating Snails, and they have been gorging on the feast. With Crease's corpse mostly consumed, they have gone in search of other food.

3 The Grand Vitae Society is an illustrious thirty-year old society that researches ancient Roman customs and traditions - and re-enacts them. (Since the death of society founder Lucius Splitfoot three years ago, the society has become more enthusiastic in its re-enactments and recent gatherings have repeated some of Roman society's worst excesses.)

Sebastian Crease is a prominent member of the society and is responsible for providing a particular Roman delicacy for the next meeting - fattened snails. He feeds the snails on a kind of pap made from, amongst other things, sweet wine and honey. The snails have thrived.

Having successfully bred the snails, Sebastian is now trying different recipes for cooking and serving them. Anyone who calls is invited to try a plate of meaty snacks and titbits...

© Steve Hatherley