Glossolalia

In a small town, located in the foothills of larger mountains, are more and more cases of people speaking in tongues (glossolalia). It started some weeks ago and it grows. Every day there are more people who are affected.

Possibilities

1 The outbreak of glossolalia can be tracked to an itinerant preacher, who entered the town just a few days before the first cases were noticed. He has always a round slice with him, which is the source.

The slice is an alien artifact, containing a parasite that powers the preacher’s sermons (which are now highly addictive). The parasite drains energy from the listeners to fuel the slice. Once it has enough energy it will return to space. The tongue-speaking is a adverse reaction, but people stop after several days.

The parasite’s energy-drain is harmless, it just lets the people speak in tongues and gives them a little fatigue.

The preacher himself has no idea what is going on, but won’t let the slice be taken.

2 The town is built above a source of raw minerals that the Mi-Go want to mine. They have placed emitters around the town that are affecting human brains and causing them to become disturbed. This leads to the tongue-speaking and incapacitates the people. They won’t eat, drink or sleep until they leave the area (or the emitters are deactivated).

Some of the officials who have come to the town are Mi-Go henchmen and are here evacuate the town. They will also resist any attempt to interfere with the Mi-Go’s plans.

3 The glossolalia is caused by a Serpent Person. A few decades ago one of the ancient serpent-scientists awoke from his hibernation and started to explore a way to overthrow humanity and restore the ancient kingdom. He invented a disease which weakens the human mind sufficient to allow the scientists mental suggestion. The disease has three different stages:

First the victims loses consciousness for some hours, then it awakes.

In the second stage the victim has loses the ability to speak, and only speaks in tongues. This stage is very dangerous, because everybody who listens more than four hours to the victim’s glossolalia will be affected too.

Finally, after some days the victim regains the ability to speak, but is then a viral carrier, spreading the disease via sexual intercourse and obeying the Serpent’s mental instructions.

© Jochen Koltermann

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.

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

The Freighter

The citizens of a small coastal town in northern Florida quickly mobilize a rescue mission when a derelict freighter runs into trouble at some cliffs, and is in danger of tipping over and go under.

When the rescuers board the freighter, they’re met with a horrible sight: the crew and passengers have been brutally slain.

The only person left alive is an insanely mumbling sailor, drenched in blood and armed with a bloody weapon. Being unable to question the mad sailor about the brutal murders, the local police charge him for the murders and incarcerates him in a mental hospital.

But before long, a series of strange and brutal murders starts to haunt the coastal town.

Possibilities

1 The mad sailor is not the killer. He’s the only survivor of a desperate battle against a being of monstrous nature. The being was brought aboard the ship as part of the cargo - ancient artefacts recovered by an archaeological excavation in East Africa.

When a nosy sailor searched the cargo for some valuable trinkets to steal, he released the monstrous creature. Then the murders started.

Moments before the ship ran afoul of the cliffs, the surviving sailor successfully fought the being to a retreat. Unfortunately his mind was destroyed by the horrible ordeal. The monster fled when the resuers arrived and went into hiding, gathering strength.

Now, at full strength, the monster terrorizes the coastal town.

2 The mad sailor murdered the crew and passengers, but an outside source drove him to do it.

The freighter’s cargo contained rare and expensive lumber - which was also the home of a species of arachnid unknown to science. The arachnids’ bite contains a poison that kills small prey but has a hallucinating effect on humans. The hallucinations drives the bitten person to become highly paranoid, and later, permanently insane.

Once onboard the freighter, it was inevitable that someone would be bitten. That someone then went on to butcher everyone else on board, and is the only survivor.

As the rescuers salvage the cargo of rare lumbar and dangerous arachnids, they unknowingly endanger the coastal town.

3 The mad sailor is not the killer. The real killer is a serpent-man sorcerer who infiltrated the freighter, disguising himself as one of the crew. The sorcerer is after an ancient artefact that the passengers, a team of archaeologists, have brought along with them.

The archaeologists were returning home after an expedition in southern Egypt where they located and excavated an ancient temple of mysterious design. The temple, which was actually a remnant of the serpent-people’s civilization, contained a lone, surviving sorcerer kept alive in hibernation.

As the archaeologists entered the temple, they woke the sorcerer. He watched from the shadows until they left, but when he discovered that they had stolen sacred artefacts, the sorcerer followed the archaeologists to the freighter. The sorcerer’s plan was to kill theoffenders and the crew, and then sail the freighter back to Africa.

Things didn’t go according to plan, and there was a fight. Moments before the ship ran aground, the surviving sailor successfully fought the serpent-man sorcerer to a retreat, despite going insane when he witnessed the sorcerer’s real appearance.

As the rescuers arrives onboard the freighter, the weakened sorcerer fled and went into hiding.

Now, however, he is trying to locate the sacred artefacts that are stored somewhere in the town. Anyone who gets in his way is murdered.

© Tim Deer

Pest Trouble

An investigator visits an archaeologist of long acquaintance, Professor Andrew Dutton Long, at Long’s small but well-kept home. The yard is groomed, the house clean and neat, but every room is infested with vermin. Spiders and slugs crawl the walls, fleas infest the carpet, and houseflies swarm so thick the investigator can hardly breathe. No neighboring houses have the problem. Long is friendly and seems completely sane, yet oblivious to the vermin. He does not see them, and he casually deflects all comments. “This is a nice neighborhood,” he says as earwigs crawl over his forehead. “No problems here with bugs or the like.”

Possibilities

1 Long has procured or devised a talisman to summon Atlach-Nacha. The talisman does not work, but it has the side effect of attracting vermin. The necessary research into the talisman snapped Long’s sanity. A strongbox in his basement, covered thickly with ants and wasps, holds the talisman.

2 A serpent man, Haus-saris-sith, has killed Long and assumed his identity. The pests have been drawn by the serpent’s repellent heaps of carrion hidden around the house. As the investigator continues speaking with “Long,” Haus-saris-sith extends its illusion to conceal the vermin, then attempts Cloud Memory. If the investigator succumbs, the serpent plants a post-hypnotic suggestion that compels the investigator to learn Mythos spells and convey them to Haus-saris-sith

3 Dholes spread to new worlds from the Dreamlands by implanting larvae in the dream forms of victims. Eating a dreamer from within, the larvae gradually materialize in the dreamer’s waking world. Exploring the Dreamlands, Long was trapped by a dhole and received a single larva; it now grows in his material body. The manifestation attracts vermin as a side effect. Now mad, Long has blocked all memories of his ongoing nightmare, and refuses to perceive the pests. To stop the manifestation, investigators can kill Long and fight the emerging larva, or enter the Dreamlands, locate Long in the Vale of Pnath, and extract the larva before Long’s dream form dies.

© Allen Varney

The City in the Skull

It is a most peculiar object. A human skull, beautifully engraved in a curiously ragged script and with its eye sockets filled with emeralds. A perfectly circular hole has been drilled in its top.

If the skull is placed over a candle, the light shining through the jewelled eyes throws a strange vista of a fantastic cyclopean city across nearby walls. As the candle flickers, it almost seems as if there is movement.

Possibilities

1 The city glimpsed in the flickering candlelight is the ruined city of Sarkomand in the Dreamlands. The skull helps dreamers find their way to the city and from there to the rest of the dreamlands. Careful research eventually reveals that the engraved script is a simple incantation. Washing the skull and reciting the incantation activates the skull. Upon falling asleep, the character's dream self is safely transported to the dreamlands.

Unfortunately, Sarkomand is close to the Plateau of Leng, whose inhabitants are known to be hostile to casual intruders. Worse, the skull is cursed, and upon activation summons the vengeful spirit of the person who was killed to make it.

2 The image of the city is an optical illusion caused by flaws in the jewels. There is nothing magical about the skull at all; it is merely priceless.

Investigators researching the history of the skull will find that it was stolen from an Aztec treasury by unknown conquistadors. It was stolen again upon its arrival in Spain, and next appeared in 1612 in the treasury of a monastery in Alsace. The monastery was destroyed in 1650 and the skull vanished.

The skull later appears in France, among the treasures of Louis XV. During the French Revolution, it disappeared, and was believed to have been destroyed by the revolutionaries.

Unfortunately, the skull brings bad luck and disaster - as well as attracting thieves from afar. If the investigators hang on to the skull, something bad will happen - soon.

3 The city is Mu. It really does exist, and it is actually inside the skull. When mad Zhoras, the immortal God-King of Mu, realised his land was doomed, he placed it within his skull using his powerful magic. Because of its magical nature, Zhoras' skull is virtually indestructible, and Mu has survived for untold millenia.

The writing on the skull is in the language of the serpent people, added at a much later date. Once translated, it proves to be a gate-spell to the city. However, getting from the city back to the real world is much harder. Furthermore, Zhoras still rules within the skull, and exacts a fearsome toll on trespassers.

© Matthew Grossman

A Turn of Fate

A dreidel is a four-sided top. It’s a harmless toy played with by children at Hanukkah, a Jewish festival celebrating the rededicating of the Temple at Jerusalem. This one, however, is different.

It is always cold to the touch, though a thermometer gives normal readings. Animals, especially cats, seem wary of it or its bearer. Cats will scratch anyone carrying it who tries to pet them. Even the baby who tries to put everything he can in his mouth won’t touch it, and tries to crawl away.

The top itself is solid lead, and weighs about 150 grams, as it should. The four square faces are about 2 cm on a side. The first four Hebrew letters, aleph, beth, gimel, and dan, protrude slightly from each face on the top’s body, one letter to a face. When spun, this dreidel makes an eerie whistling sound, not at all like a normal dreidel. The whistling is due to air rushing through small holes where the raised letters attach to the top’s body, If the investigator pries off these letters, he finds odd carvings underneath.

Possibilities

1 The carvings are Aklo letters representing magic, death, power, and knowledge. The top was once owned by the serpent man Ynarak, who used it to locate strong necromantic regions, such as burial mounds, murder sites, or terrible accidents. The range of this device is about four miles. If there are no places within range, then repeated uses of the dreidel creates one. (Astute investigators may notice an increase in killings coinciding with increased use of the top.) If an appropriate spot is located, the letters glow, and the top acts as a gyroscope with the stem always pointing toward the centre of the region.

2 The top is one of four, and the carvings are mystic symbols which spell the last syllable of Azathoth’s secret name. Investigators knowing the spell Curse of Azathoth will know this. The other three tops spell the rest of the name. If the tops are used in ceremonies praising Azathoth, there is a chance He or one of his servitors will ‘reward’ the celebrants.

Unfortunately, spinning the top becomes addictive and eventually the poor owner is dragged away by Azathoth. At first the owner hears strange piping sounds all the time. Doctors consider this hysteria. Then he begins dreaming about the Outer God. Finally, the owner (and possibly a chunk of the surrounding countryside) disappears.

3 Even with the outer faces removed the top still whistles. It was a gift from Nyarlathotep to the now dead sorcerer Karlon Angor, which increases the chance to summon and control a flying polyp. Unfortunately, each time the top is spun there is a cumulative chance of summoning an uncontrolled polyp. Eibon writes of such devices, though this one is not mentioned specifically. Some experimentation may be necessary to discover the top’s secret.

© Joe Louderback

Small Things Forgotten

Following the death of his two children about 30 years ago, and his wife to pneumonia about five years ago, Hiram Dretts has lead a quiet, solitary existence deep in the hills, working his farm. He is well known and liked by the folk of the nearby town, and is known for a sharp mind.

Hiram’s farm does not have the modern conveniences of electricity or gas, but does have a coal burning furnace. While stoking the furnace one evening, a lump of coal broke apart to reveal an object: a worked triangular piece of green stone. The two long sides measured approximately two inches long, and the piece was about a quarter of an inch thick. The base of the triangle was unfinished and appeared to have broken off from a larger piece. Strange marks were along the two finished edges, giving the impression of some kind of writing or symbols.

Hiram has never had a formal education beyond the third grade, but he knew that what he found was very old. Hiram placed it on his mantle with the intention of sending it to a museum next time he was in town.

Possibilities

1 The fragment is a piece of an elder sign used by serpent people in the late Carboniferous period. The whole elder sign had been originally used to seal a gate but has been destroyed and fragmented for over 275 million years. The gate is no longer active, but if the serpent people learn of the fragment, they may make attempts to recover it and discover if more fragments exist.

2 The fragment belonged to a powerful serpent people sorcerer priest called Tthast-smmun. The fragment contains part of Tthast-smmun’s essence, and as the days progress, the sorcerer begins to take possession of Hiram. Hiram begins experiencing dreams of the long past times of the serpent people’s glory, and his sanity begins to crumble. Over a few weeks, Hirem starts worshipping Yig.

Through rituals taught via dream, Hiram begins a physical transformation into a serpent people-hybrid. Tthast-smmun plans to inhabit Hiram’s body as soon as he is completed. Hiram will be no more.

3 The fragment originally comes from an elder Sign used by the Great Race of Yith to trap and contain a flying polyp. The seals holding the polyp have been destroyed over time, but the polyp has long since been trapped in a pocket in the rock. It is only a matter of time before miners discover more of the fragments, then the pocket itself . . .

© Bill Dietze

The Poisoned Sailor

A doctor is awakened in the middle of a rainy night by furious banging at his front door. If opened, a desperate, haggard-looking sailor will storm in, pleading for help. He rolls up his shirt’s sleeve, offering his horridly bulging arm for examination. Swelled and blackened, it appears to be affected by necrosis. The man begs for help, claiming he was poisoned by a rival.

“Duh bastar’ hates me guts cos my business runs strong, an’ he’s a lazy, warty ol’drunkar’ who can’t keep ep. He’s poison’ me drinks! Help me please, ain’t wanna die, oh Gawd!”

The arm responds to no medical treatment the doctor can come up with. Hospitals have no more success. The necrosis worsens by the hour.

Possibilities

1 The sailor is telling a half truth. The ‘rival’ isn’t simply jealous because of business competition, he’s seeking something the sailor has: an old trophy from a shipwreck, looking like a copper bracelet with intricate designs. The rival, actually a follower of Dagon, knows that it’s a piece of deep one jewellery, and badly wants it. Since the sailor refuses to part with it, the cultist has cursed the sailor, and will later contact the sailor for a bargain.

2 The sailor has tainted deep one blood, but is also cursed. His now-dead (human) mother found the strength of will to break free of the bonds imposed by her monstrous consort.

Furious by such unprecedent behaviour, the deep one asked Dagon to curse both she and any offspring she might have in the future. Any descendant would come to the world doomed to end his life, transformed into a ravenous human-eating monster, one far more horrible than the most degenerate deep one hybrid. Unfortunately for the sailor, the onset time for the transformation is over... but perhaps there is a way to reverse it.

3 The sailor really is poisoned, but it is incredibly potent. A creation of a serpent man sorcerer that the sailor had wronged. But how?

© Ricardo Christe

Peverill Manor

Possibilities

1 After the curse had struck, the witch’s grave was exhumed and found to be empty. Her corpse was never found and is still buried near the house. Her presence is disturbing the other ghosts, when she is returned to her true grave they will fade away, at peace.

2 Peverill Manor is built upon a ritual serpent people grave. Residual magic in the reptilian corpses is mistaken for ghosts.

3 Psychic emanations from a demon trapped below the manor are picked up by those above and turned into ghosts. The Church-Peverills do not fear the ghosts so the ones they create are benign. Visitors, however, are less relaxed and create terrible creatures that haunt them from their own nightmares.

© Steve Hatherley

Virus

Something is wrong with the computer. Its performance slows erratically, it crashes too often. Strange responses appear from ordinary requests. Files are corrupted, data is damaged.

A virus checker reveals nothing – the computer is not infected with any known virus. However, the corruption is certainly symptomatic of virus activity.

Then, of its own accord, things get better. Performance improves, the machine stops hanging. In fact, it almost seems as if it is performing better than usual. Everything is right again. Except...

The files are weird. Fragments, oddly named. They don’t execute, and when examined seem to be random masses of code, or occasionally, sheer meaningless text. Deleting the files does nothing – they just reappear. Careful checking reveals that the files are all modified while the computer is on - somehow it is creating them. And, while it first created lots of small files, it now produces fewer, larger files.

Eventually a single file appears: RUNME.EXE.

Running the program causes the screen to clear – and then an image forms. It’s a box, an old stone artefact about the size of an ordinary cardboard box that was recovered from a recent investigation. And yes, the problems with the computer started about the time the box was retrieved.

On the screen, the box begins to glow...

Possibilities

1 Millions of years ago, the serpent people realised they were losing their battles for control of Earth and made preparations to ensure their survival. They constructed subterranean hibernation chambers to wait out their enemies. The chambers were never reactivated ... although that may change shortly.

The box is a serpent people device, a control mechanism for their hibernation sites. It has successfully created an interface program between it and the computer, allowing for the appropriate instructions to be entered.

On the screen, the glowing box dissolves into a spinning map of the Earth – as it was millions of years ago. And dotted on the map are several brightly glowing dots: serpent people sites.

2 The box is a powerful old one computer. It can now be communicated with, via the interface it has constructed. It is undoubtedly malign.

3 The box is the egg of a virtual demon. As the image glows on the screen, the box itself (the real one, that is) glows brightly, then crumbles into pieces. The egg has hatched, the computer is now possessed by a mathematical demon.

The creature is quite evil, and gobbles up all the files on the computer – and demands more. (It doesn’t like duplicates, either.) It is cunning; deleting files doesn’t work and neither does switching off the computer.

But what does it want? And what does it do when it finds the Internet?

Forked Tongues

Martin Coleford-Johns is fascinated by dinosaurs. His father worked hard uncovering fossilized skeletons of the giant creatures and passed the bug on to Martin. It was only natural that he should attend Oxford and study the science of palaeontology. Now, at the age of 42, Martin Coleford-Johns is the acknowledged leader of the field.

Tall and good looking, many women have fallen for this aristocratic figure. However, Martin has but one passion - dinosaurs. He is distant and uninterested in anything except his favourite subject. When anyone mentions anything to do with the prehistoric world he suddenly becomes lively and alert, almost undergoing a complete personality change.

However, this reclusive man does not like to publicise his work. He lives in the family house set back in extensive gardens behind high brick walls. His two servants, a butler and a maid, aid him. Currently he has only one heir, Justin Coleford-Johns. The boy is at boarding school, his mother having died in childbirth.

Coleford-Johns rarely appears in public, preferring to work either in the field or in the extensive laboratories constructed on his grounds. When he does appear (evening engagements only) he is always impeccably dressed.

Visitors to the house are unwelcome. If the visitors cannot express an interest in either the extensive reptile collection or the study of fossils then they will be shown the door. Otherwise Coleford-Johns will talk animatedly to his fellow devotees on the subject until he grows tired of them.

The Coleford-Johns family has for years been a sanctuary for the Serpent People. With the aid of Consume Likeness the Serpent People have taken the place of Martin, the butler and the maid. There are other Serpent People hidden about the house.

The only human member of the family is Justin, and he is kept away from the house as much as possible. Once he has bred and has at least one heir, the Serpent People will kill and replace him as well.

The house is filled with reptiles and dinosaur books. The shelves are lined with anything even vaguely connected to the subject. There are fossils and bones and several scale models of dinosaurs. There are also several Serpent People tomes, but they are well hidden. Lighting in the house is always soft to avoid casting betraying shadows. The Serpent People never go out in bright sunlight and have most of their needs delivered direct from Harrods.

Coleford-Johns has a purpose other than the study of fossils. He is engaged in a programme to return the People as rightful masters of the Earth. In rooms concealed below the house he has several clutches of Serpent People eggs, just waiting to hatch.

His fossil hunting expeditions across the globe conceal a more sinister purpose. Chipping at rock in distant countries is a good cover for his true goal - finding the lost temples of the Serpent People.

The Serpent People were a violent, possessive race and fought many battles with other aliens that wanted Earth for their own. However, their enemies were cunning and powerful and, at the end of the Permain Era, they began the preparations which would preserve their ancient race until such time as they could reclaim the world for their own.

Their preparations consisted of a series of temples scattered across the globe in isolated locations. In each, a number of the Serpent People were placed in a state of deep hibernation, along with much of their (now lost) technology and sorcery. Eventually, when the wars were over they would awaken to reclaim the Earth.

However, something went wrong and the temples' inhabitants never woke. As the Earth grew older its crust moved and shifted, crushing many temples. Others were lost as the land dropped and the sea rushed in, or were found by other races and destroyed. Now, 230 million years after their construction, there are only a few of the temples left. Martin Coleford-Johns wants to find them.

Possibilities

1 Justin Coleford-Johns is troubled by nightmares about reptiles. In them he dreams of giant walking snakes which talk in strange hissing voices. Sometimes, in the really bad nightmares his father turns into one of these creatures. Periodically he runs away from the boarding school, but is always found and sent back.

2 Carelessly, slip Martin Coleford-Johns is photographed in broad sunlight while working on a large fossil in Utah, America. The photographer is a journalist reporting on the expedition and does not notice the strange, inhuman shadow. However, while Martin is still in the USA, the photograph is printed in one of the London papers. The paper has the print in its files, the shadow is much clearer on that.

3 Should reports pointing to a new Serpent People colony reach his ears, Martin will begin to investigate. Stories of dinosaurs, giant reptiles, and samples of shedded skin will stir his interest.

If the Investigators are involved he may try to infiltrate the group by casting Consume Likeness. Coleford-Johns may decide to use one of his different forms to avoid attracting attention to his sanctuary.

© Steve Hatherley