The Miracle

A weird character in the news has come to the attention of an investigator. It will most likely be a sceptical and cynic investigator, or one compelled to believe that kind of news.

The news, it turns out, deals with a person that seems to have stigmata that match those suffered by Jesus Christ on the cross, according to Catholic Mythology. The man, one Jacobo Lewis from Haiti, seems to have injuries on his hands, feet and side that match those famous wounds. These wounds keep bleeding, but apparently never get infected. People are told to have healed after he touches them, especially those with blood diseases, although none have been documented. Also weird is the fact that Jacobo is 30 years old, the same age Jesus was when he started preaching.

What has the religious community in an uproar is that Jacobo is black, and definitely not a Christian but a practicer of voodoo. He says the wounds were inflicted on him by the Loa of his tribe, as a reminder of his human frailty, and so he could spread the word.

Possibilities

1 Jacobo is, of course, a fake. The people he has been said to heal are healed by their own faith, just as a lot of people get sick when they believe they are. Most likely, those people weren’t even sick.

2 The man from Nazareth was an avatar of the Crawling Chaos. The reason why we don’t know anything about his life from his early years until his 30, is because at that point, he hadn’t been contacted by the Nyarlathotep, and therefore wasn’t important. The Black Man tried to recruit him when he is said to have been tempted in the desert, but he went mad and believed he was the Messiah. Given his newly found powers, that wasn’t hard to do. Now, more than 1900 years after that, Nyarlathotep is willing to try again with the son of a mortal woman. Jacobo might dream about “past lives”, which are previous avatars, and by those means, the players can find out the truth.

3 The Loa did contact Jacobo and inflicted the wounds. Unfortunately for him, the alleged Loa is a vampire, too weak to fully return from his resting place. He was in life a sorcerer and is trying to attract a cult to the place. Then he will control Jacobo to slaughter them all, so with the strength given by their blood he may return.

© Ricardo J. Mendez

The Heist

A violent robbery has occurred at the local bank. After killing 4 staff and 1 policeman, the robbers evaded the police and seemingly disappeared. They escaped with £950,000 in cash and also emptied several safe deposit boxes. Among the objects stolen was a small bluish crystal, said to have occult significance. It was owned by Harold Darlington, the wealthy head of a local Masonic order, who is offering a reward for its return.

n interesting fact is that the robbers were reported not to have faces! The police have not been able to trace the robbers’ identities, but are organising a huge search to find the criminals. Due to the robbery’s violence, it is nationwide news, and is a popular point of gossip.

Possibilities

1 The robbery was carried out by a group of hardened gangsters. The robbery was the result of weeks of careful planning, but came apart when one of the staff attempted to wrestle a gun off one of the robbers. The bank clerk was shot in the head and killed instantly, and the robber freaked out and started killing people at random. The robbers fled, and have likely already left the country. However, the robber who started shooting has escaped and is hiding in the sewers, and has been left paranoid and violently insane after his group abandoned him.

The theft of the crystal is coincidental. It has no magic properties. The reports of the men having no faces are the results of the robbers wearing masks over their faces, to hide their identity.

2 The robbery was planned by a cabal of sorcerers, who heard about the crystal, and believed it to have magical powers. To carry out the robbery, they summoned a group of demons to act as muscle while they took the crystal. They also decided to take the money for the sheer hell of it. However, the policeman started firing at the demons and the demons began massacring the people in the bank. Realising what happened, the sorcerers teleported out of the bank and banished the demons.

The police are saying the victims were shot, to hide the fact they were all torn apart and bitten to pieces. The description of the men as faceless is the attempt of the only surviving clerk to mentally block out the image of the demons.

3 The robbery was carried out by the Faceless Men, the modern day cult of the Great Old One Yegg-Ha, the faceless one. In Roman times, Yegg-Ha threatened ancient Britain until he was destroyed by a band of Roman Legionaries. They broke him into pieces and scattered him across the countryside. The bluish crystal is a fragment of Yegg-Ha, and his cult hope to use it to revive their god.

Harold Darlington is a descendant of the Roman soldiers who fought Yegg-Ha, and is charged with protecting the crystal. The Faceless Ones specialise in violent crime to fund their activities, and took the money to invest in various criminal enterprises. They are violent by nature, and executed people out of habit. The faceless appearance is the result of a spell called “Mask of Yegg-Ha” that makes the face featureless, and both obscures their identity and acts as a form of worship to Yegg-Ha.

© Paul Hebron

The Forgotten Army

The recent discovery of a mass grave has sparked a furore in the archaeological community. Builders digging foundations have unearthed hundreds of skeletons, apparently battle-dead. When archaeologists came to examine the site, they had quite a shock!

Image by Artflow.ai

Possibilities

1 Some of the remains aren’t human. Roughly half the skeletons found are clearly deep one skeletons, and the excited archaeologists are preparing to make their discovery public. Deep one hybrids living locally have got wind of this. They plan to murder the archaeologists and destroy the evidence of their existence.

2 One of the bodies discovered was perfectly preserved as if the man had died only yesterday. The body was moved to the mortuary in preparation for an autopsy, but when the freezer was opened to retrieve the body, it was gone.

The man was a sorcerer who had been unable to avoid being drafted into the army. To escape the battle, he used magic to feign death and was buried with all the other dead. Now revived, he is roaming abroad with unknown intent.

3 At the centre of the grave, the archaeologists found a stone box. The box is being stored at the university, and hasn’t been opened yet. This is fortunate, as it contains something extremely nasty: something that killed hundreds of soldiers the last time it was imprisoned.

© Rob Illing

Sentence Served

A Correctional Officer (CO) at a county jail is worried that an inmate who is currently incarcerated on a drunk driving conviction is set to be released in a few days. He wants the investigators to help.

Image by Artflow.ai

The inmate had been isolated from general housing because he caused too much of a disturbance with the other inmates. He’d never done anything directly; in fact, he’d been nothing short of well-behaved the entire time he’d been there, but he seemed to have a natural ability to make everyone around him agitated. He stank to high heaven, like rotting meat no matter how often he showered and, whatever housing unit he went to would start having problems--fights, unruliness, and a general sense of malaise--as soon as he arrived.

Once in isolation, the CO heard strange noises coming from the inmate’s cell at night--sounds like baying dogs, lions roaring, and hyenas laughing. Yet when he investigated, the inmate would be curled up in his bunk, apparently asleep.

One night, while doing his security rounds, he checked inside the man’s cell through the window in the cell door. The inmate was lying down with his eyes closed; as he turned to walk away, he felt something staring at him. When he turned, the inmate was peering out the cell window at him, his eyes pitch black, his lips drawn back to reveal a smile of pure malevolence.

The officer doesn’t have anything concrete to base this on, but he worries that the area will not be safe once this inmate is released from custody. He’s looking for the investigators to keep an eye on him.

Possibilities

1 The inmate is a powerful cult leader and a practitioner of black magic. He only allowed himself to be caught and arrested so that he could make contacts within the jail. The Correctional Officer is right to be worried - this man is dangerous and has nefarious plans once he is freed.

2 It isn’t the poor inmate’s fault; he’s been tormented ever since he inadvertently summoned a powerful demon during what he thought was some harmless fun with a ouija board. This demon haunts and sometimes possesses this man. He finds some respite in booze, which is how he ended up in jail.

3 The CO is making the whole thing up. He is the real evil one. He knows who the investigators are and wishes to dispose of them, and concocted this story as a mere red herring; something to distract them so he can catch them off guard.

Copyright (c) 2009 Luke Manning

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?

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

Latin Course

This takes place after the investigators have found a book written in Latin - a language they don’t already master. Therefore they need to learn Latin before they can read the ancient book. As luck would have it, there’s a Latin course held at the local university. The course is taken by Professor Donald Brown, an elderly man with a strange accent.

Image by artflow.ai

Possibilities

1 Donald Brown is a sorcerer from Hungary. The locals discovered his Mythos activities and poisoned him. He survived but was partly paralyzed and managed to escaped to the USA. As a professor of Latin, it was easy for him to get a job at the university. The class also gives him opportunity to meet young people with healthy bodies. He now plans on finding someone with a weak mind and perform a mind transfer to get a new healthy young body.

2 One of the other students is Timothy Lyman, a young dilettante. He is taking the course to improve his Latin, as his present skill in the language was not sufficient to read a newly-bought book. The book, however, is written by Nyarlathotep and contains a spell that will summon Azathoth. Once someone has begun reading the book, they are compelled to complete it and cast the spell. If they does not do this then Nyarlathotep sends dreams to the reader, forcing him to finish the task. The dreams describe how anyone casting the spell will be greatly rewarded by the Deamon Sultan. Unknown to Lyman, however, summoning Azathoth resembles detonating a nuclear bomb.

3 The investigators feel unwelcome. It is as if the rest of the class (including the professor) is keeping a secret from them. The truth is that the whole class is a cult, and the lecturer is the high priest. Nobody actually learns Latin during the lectures (instead Latin cult phrases are repeated and learned by rote). The investigators have been placed in this class by mistake - will they discover the mistake before they are abducted and sacrificed at the next sabbath?

© Nicolai E Lassen

Grand Guignol

Showman and master of the macabre, Mondreau the Magnificent has been stunning carnival crowds for more than 15 years with his gory exhibitions. Mondreau, whose real name is Vincent Van Dorpe, puts on a grand guignol show called “The Theatre of Pain”. The blood flows in gouts and the actors scream as their bodies are gouged, burned and maimed by many different cruel devices and methods. “All in good fun” as Mondreau likes to put it. Mondreau assures the stunned crowd it was just a show and always brings the actors out to take a bow. The show is so realistic that most find it hard to put out of their minds.

Over the last few years many people have asked him how he does it. He politely refuses of course. The investigators have been hired to look into the show and what the mysterious Van Dorpe’s ulterior motives are, if any.

Possibilities

1 Van Dorpe is really an ancient and powerful sorcerer and devoted servant of Shub Niggurath. Some of his actors are re-animated dead bodies, which he uses in his show. In addition to his zombies he has a loyal band of gypsy disciples, which he has promised immortality if they follow him and do his bidding. The undead used in the act really are hacked and maimed, but since they are undying, they simply need to be stitched back together. Using several different stage names and acts he has been touring the world with his band of animated dead for the past 122 years. His followers are totally loyal to him and will defend Van Dorpe and the show to the death. Van Dorpe needs to travel as he does to sustain himself and his followers. Large quantities of blood and human sacrifices for his god are all that keep him from the death that he has for so long eluded.

2 Mondreau the Magnificent is the leader of a troupe of cannibals. The Theatre of Pain is a front for their activities. Between cities Van Dorpe and his cannibalistic entourage pick up hitchhikers and transients. The unlucky victims are fed, drugged and hypnotized for use in the show. The people who are maimed and tortured on stage really are. There are no mythos influences involved, just garden variety cannibalism.

3 Mondreau the Magnificent is what he says he is… a showman. He and his troupe have honed their act to the point of perfection. The reason his act is so realistic is that the actors who play the victims really are maimed, but not by him. Van Dorpe uses actors who are amputees or suffer from some form of handicap to add to the realism. When an arm is sawn off in the show it is a realistic prosthetic or when an eye is gouged out it was glass. His troupe of actors is devoutly loyal to him and will not divulge any of Mondreau’s secrets of stagecraft.

© Kevin Kaier

Drinks from Strangers

One of the characters is invited to a convention for occultists at a hotel. During the event, a character encounters a woman who invites him to have drinks with her and her husband. After some drinks, the couple invites the character to their three-story house in a nearby bedroom community.

Possibilities

1 The couple has been enslaved by an undead sorcerer who thrives on draining psychic energy from unsuspecting victims. Victims are reduced to dust by the creature. The couple chose the convention because what little free will they possess is bent on getting free from their condition.

2 They are dangerous serial murderers seeking prey. The man, who is deranged, favors victims that have what he thinks are reservoirs of personal energy that he can harvest to prolong his life. The character is in for a bad evening unless help arrives.

3 They are harmless swingers. The husband wants to watch from the closet while the character has sexual intercourse with his wife. Unfortunately, burglars in the employ of a rival occultist who wants a rare occult manual owned by the couple choose to raid the house during the “festivities.”

© Brian Woodman

Curses for sale

It’s the strangest advertisement ever to have appeared in the local paper:

Curses for sale

Afflict your enemies

Sabotage your rivals

Take revenge for misdeeds

Send $50 cash (no cheques)

plus a photo of the one to be cursed

to

PO Box 55/141

Results guaranteed!

It seems like the work of a harmless crackpot, but it’s harder to laugh off a week later when the post office where the private box is located burns to the ground.  Firefighters investigating the blaze find the bodies of a young man and woman in the wreckage.

The man is charred beyond recognition, the woman is identified as Regina Trett, a local who has often been seen in bad company and is known to have an interest in the supernatural.  She seems to have died of smoke inhalation, her body is unmarked except for an occult symbol burned into her neck.

Possibilities

1 Regina recently broke up with her lover, and helped herself to a few of his prized occult books when moving her things out of his house.  The spells she’s read don’t look too hard, and she’s always been inclined towards mysticism, so she decided to set up shop as a witch for hire.  She had some sporadic success with the curses, managing to summon the odd swarm of flies or force a car to swerve off the road.  This was enough to alarm Mitchell Firth, the ex-boyfriend.  He knew her haphazard approach and willingness to gloss over anything she didn’t understand was courting disaster.

She ignored his warnings, and an attempt to break in and reclaim the books was foiled by the tough women Regina has been rooming with.  Becoming more and more worried, for his own safety as well as hers, he waited at the post office and confronted her when she arrived to pick up the latest batch of answers to her advertisement.

Furious at the interference, Regina spoke a spell she’d memorised and summoned a mystical fire creature to scare him.  She flubbed it though, and while she got the creature she wanted, it wasn’t bound to obey her.  Mitchell was killed on the spot and Regina was burned as she attempted to call it to heel while it spread flames around the tiny post office, eventually succumbing to the smoke.

Regina’s adventure is over, but the danger isn’t -- somewhere along the way she managed to summon something much stronger and darker than she imagined, without making any of the customary offerings or taking any of the basic precautions against its malevolence.  It’s still making its way closer across the planes, but it won’t be long now.  Its approach can already be sensed by the psychically gifted.

2 The adverts were placed by a secretive order of modern-day alchemists.  They’re not serious about curses, their interest is in the people who answer, as test subjects for their research into the chemical processes of human hatred.

Regina was the first of their customers, and studying her advanced their understanding of the brain’s function tenfold.  Completely drained of anything resembling will or thought, she also made a useful living automaton, returning to the post office every day to collect a new batch of subjects presenting themselves for research.

Sick with worry after days of wondering where she’d been, Mitchell was alerted by a bystander who recognised Regina’s face from a flyer posted outside the post office.  The reunion was short-lived, though -- Regina had been programmed to immolate the letters and herself if recognised by anyone.  The pair of them lost their lives in the fire that destroyed the post office.

Even without the latest batch of customers, the conspirators have a list of dozens of potential victims and no fear of being uncovered.

3 The advert was placed by Terry McGivern, a university student studying psychology.  He didn’t believe in the supernatural, he just wanted subjects to write about for his thesis.  It was a pleasant surprise to the amoral young man that he could make some money from their credulity at the same time.

Regina wasn’t interested in buying a curse, but she was terrified that someone had paid to have one put on her.  She staked out the post office and latched onto Terry as he arrived to pick up the money from his next bunch of suckers, begging him to sell her protection.  Amused as well as hoping for a profit, he made a show of reluctantly agreeing to sell her a magic charm to protect her from bad spirits.

It’s Terry’s bad luck as well as Regina’s that a friend of hers was injured in a car accident the same afternoon.  Convinced she’d been outbid by whoever intended her harm, she confronted him again the next day, demanding that he honour their deal and provide her with stronger protection -- as well as healing the friend.

Nothing he could do would persuade her that black magic wasn’t the cause of the accident, or that he didn’t have the power to mend her friend’s wounds.  Pleading escalated to threats.  Regina splashed Terry with a bottle of gasoline and repeated her demands holding a lit match... which she subsequently lost control of, causing their deaths.

Terry is out of the curses business, but his landlady discovered his stash of research material and is embarking on a campaign of blackmail against his customers.

© Chris Kerr

The House on the Hill

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

House of Fun

Once a lunatic asylum, it stands high on empty moorland, desolate and long since abandoned, the huge mansion of an eccentric billionaire. The perfect haunted house, and Sir David Luxely has decided it should become one. He bought and then reconstructed much of the house to make it into a terrifying haunted house. He charged admission to the house with the promise of a huge cash prize if anyone could make it to the topmost floor.

As yet, no one has. A great many have tried, and most have given up. Some have come out screaming, or trembling... or, so Sir David claims, not come out at all.

Possibilities

1 Nothing supernatural is happening in the house - it is simply a clever maze of very scary special effects. It is not possible, however, to win the prize - all the ways to the top floor have been blocked by brick walls. Sir David is sure to win his bet.

2 Sir David is far older than he seems. The original owner of the house, he is an undead entity kept alive by feeding on the energies in the emotions of living humans - and fear is best of all. He actually resides on the top floor of the house (entering and exiting by a well-concealed hidden shaft) and is able to absorb the fear of those attempting to navigate the house to sustain himself. His power does not harm those he feeds from, but gradually fatigues them, making the challenge to reach the top floor very difficult.

3 Sir David is quite insane. He has constructed the house to further his and others delight for death and murder. The whole structure is fitted with hidden cameras that allow him to watch the suffering of those who get past the scary (but harmless) lower floors. He was once a mythos sorcerer and has used his knowledge to turn the higher floors into an inescapable non-Euclidean labyrinth, populated by unspeakable shambling monsters that he has summoned.

© James David Beard

Lost at Sea

The disappearence of Andrew Grayson, the wealthy young Canadian businessman, devastated his friends and family. Grayson was enjoying a Pacific cruise with his family on board the S.S. Arcadia. One evening, he told his wife he was going to take a stroll on deck, but he never returned. The alarm was raised, but Grayson was never found, and was eventually presumed dead, lost overboard.

Possibilities

1 Grayson did fall overboard, and he was washed up on an island. He spent several days surviving off the land before falling foul of the Dzygan. The Dzygan is a flesh-eating monstrosity that was imprisoned on the island centuries ago. It obtains the memories of anything it devours, and can imitate them almost perfectly. With a human form and memories, it can now escape the island.

2 This is not the first disappearance aboard the Arcadia, but the cruise line have managed to cover them up until now. The ship’s captain and a number of the crew are worshippers of Dagon. They sacrifice passengers in return for wealth and fair sailing. Unfortunately for them, this high-profile death has roused suspicions.

3 Grayson, bored of his wealth and his family, turned to ever more exotic experiences to sate his remarkable brain. Eventually he fell in with Angelo Botticelli, an ageing sorcerer who offered him unlimited power in return for sacrificing all his worldly ties. Grayson faked his own death and has become Botticelli’s apprentice. However, a prominent and wealthy businessman like Andrew Grayson can’t easily go unnoticed, and reported sightings of him in Fiji are proving hard to ignore.

© Rob Illing

In the Watches of the Night

The local museum was recently preparing to open a new display about a prominent local family. Edward Eastman, the only son of a wealthy father, had donated many interesting family heirlooms to the museum.

The Eastman family has been in the community for generations, and Thomas Eastman, Edward’s great-great-great-grandfather, was one of the founders of the town. The heirlooms donated included several paintings, some furniture, some letters, and assorted antiques. The most interesting piece was a large, old-fashioned silver pocket watch, with a stylized dragon engraved on the lid, which had belonged to Thomas Eastman.

Image credit

Unfortunately, two days before the museum was scheduled to open, the museum was broken into, and many of the Eastman heirlooms were taken, including the pocket watch. The assistant curator, who had been working late that night, was brutally killed. And to make the case even more complicated, Edward Eastman has vanished.

Possibilities

1 Edward Eastman had a tendency to gamble, and his debts quickly outgrew his abilities to pay them. He didn’t donate his family heirlooms to the museum; he sold them and used the cash to pay off some of his debt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, and the people he owed got impatient and threatened him.

Edward quietly left town before the break-in, hoping to put some distance between himself and the loan sharks. The break-in at the museum was a straight robbery; other valuable pieces were also taken. The assistant curator happened to walk in at the wrong moment.

2 Thomas Eastman was a sorcerer of no small skill. He was also a thoroughly unpleasant person, and was forced to disappear for a good long time, leaving many of his possessions behind. Chief among these was his pocket watch, which he had designed himself. It was something like a magical battery, supplying him with any needed magical energy. Thomas had put himself into a type of stasis, concealed in the basement of his mansion.

Five generations later, Edward Eastman was doing some remodeling, and accidentally woke Thomas up. Thomas killed Edward and started setting about locating his missing belongings. He broke into the museum to recover them, killing the assistant curator when she got in his way. In a few days, the badly mauled body of Edward Eastman will turn up near his house.

3 Edward Eastman had an interest in the occult, which was bolstered by some of the things he read in Thomas’s papers. However, some of his experiments in sorcery attracted the notice of one of the Hounds of Tindalos. Edward managed to seal the Hound into a non-dimensional space, using Thomas’s watch as a focus. Unfortunately, Edward was an amateur sorcerer at best, and the Hound quickly broke through the seal, destroying the watch and several other items. It happened upon the assistant curator, and tore her apart. Then it hunted Edward down and exacted a horrific revenge.

© Megan McKnight

May Tricks

The investigators arrive in a village which, as they approach, seems deserted. As they enter, they are blocked by cars stationery in the street, and surrounded by frozen people and birds hanging in the air. The whole village seems to be under some power that has stopped time across the whole town.

Possibilities

1 This is an illusion. When the investigators enter the local pub, they note that the image on the screen of a TV (or perhaps a thrown dart hanging in the air halfway to a dartboard) is indeed moving, but incredibly slowly. The investigators have accidentally triggered a spell that slows their perception of time a thousand-fold. This spell is powerful but has its price – entropy has been massively increased; the accelerated investigators are ageing a year or two every hour that passes. They must break the spell or wither and die.

2 The Great Race of Yith have frozen time over the village using their stasis cube technology, in order that they or their cultists may study it for them, taking a few human specimens for later dissection. The device generating the stasis field has been secretly built by the cultists in a hidden laboratory and must be shut down to return life to the town.

3 An antiques dealer in the town has discovered an alien artefact which allowed him to communicate with a long-dead sorcerer of the serpent people. The sorcerer tricked him into opening a time warp to the modern age so that he could escape the decline of his people. However, the ritual went slightly wrong and time was frozen around the warp. The sorcerer was able to pass through and reclaim his artefact (the antiques dealer is frozen in the middle of his ritual with his hands clasped as if to hold the absent artefact) and the sorcerer has made the dead town his lair.

© James David Beard

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

Ghost Train

Over the past few weeks people have spotted an antique subway train going through the underground. It is always seen in the dead hours of the night and it never seems to stop at any of the stations it is sighted at. Witnesses have described it as having three cars and have also seen strange lights moving around inside it. The transit authority has no information on the train.

Possibilities

1 The antique subway train is being used in a film. It is on loan from a museum and is travelling to various underground stations for filming. It is only seen at night since that is the easier to transport it during the non-peak hours. The strange lights are from the film crew setting up lighting for various interior shots. The Transit Authority knows what is going on but has been asked to keep quite by the movie company.

2 It really is a ghost train. Back in the early 1900 a novice driver took a wrong turn and barrelled into a dead-end tunnel filled with fuel. Everyone on board was burned to death in a gruesome fashion. Now years later the site of the wreck is being excavated and it has disturbed the ghosts. The ghosts, in their hate for the living have used their powers to recreate the subway train and lure victims to a similar fate.

3 The train belongs to an undead sorcerer who was alive at the turn of the century. Feeling nostalgic it has returned to the old stomping grounds of its life. The train has been created by means of magic most foul and populated with rotting and monstrous servants. The sorcerer takes on passengers for the purpose of needing food or experiment subjects.

© David Kapsos

A Grave Situation

After going to bed one night in the hotel of a sleepy rural town, one of the investigators wakes up to find himself lying inside a padded coffin with air running out!

Possibilities

1 The investigator has been contacted by a Great Old One or Outer God (Nyarlathotep would work well), who has constructed a dream-trap for him in order to extract a service. As the investigator’s last gasps shudder through his body, he hears a whispering in his mind: ‘Serve me or die.’ If the investigator agrees, he awakens in his bed, covered in sweat, with a mind-numbing certainty that he will be contacted soon, and he won’t be able to refuse. If the investigator declines, he awakens in a similar manner, but certain that he has been marked for death by the god’s cult.

Either way, it is time to prepare for a brush with a god.

2 The investigator was drugged and kidnapped by a degenerate cult that worships ghouls. As an offering to the flesh-eaters, they have buried the investigator as a meal for their ‘underground gods.’ As the investigator begins to suffocate, a scratching noise occurs and great claws rend through the wood of the coffin and drag him down into a faintly lit cavern where he is surrounded by six hungry ghouls. Hopefully, his fellow investigators have figured out what is going on and are on their way.

3 The investigator died during the night from natural (or were they?) causes and has been resurrected by a local sorcerer to serve as his undead servant. Within moments after awakening, the coffin lid is pried open by the sorcerer. At first, the investigator is unable to do much except obey the sorcerer’s commands, but over time, when the sorcerer’s mind is on other things, the investigator can act on his own. He needs to break free soon, because the sorcerer is laying a deadly trap for the rest of the investigators, and his new servant is the bait.

© C C Chamberlin

Casual Meeting

It’s a mild, quiet evening - a perfect time for a little walk...

While walking and chatting, suddenly a man crosses the character’s way: he’s clothed in a dark robe, ornamented with strange symbols and soiled with blood. In one hand he holds a long bloody knife, in the other a long stick with a goat head on top. His voice constantly changes between insane laughing and loud cries, while constantly shouting: “Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!”

Possibilities

1 The man is just a ‘normal’ guy who has just come from a Cthulhu-Con, where he won the first price for his costume. He’s so happy, drunk and probably on drugs, that he’s totally into his role now.

2 The man is a worshiper of Shub-Niggurath. During the cult’s current ritual something went wrong and a portal opened, transporting the worshipper from to this place. He’s still a bit disoriented, and it takes a few more minutes, before he clearly acknowledges, where he is. The portal is probably still open…

3 The man is not a cultist – but nearby is a sorcerer’s apprentice who is trying out hallucination and fear spells. The apprentice still has a lot of ideas of other hallucinations he can create...

© 2008 Philipp Mählmann

Man's Best Friend

A dog can be a loyal companion in trying times. One of the investigators has a dog – as a faithful guardian, a reliable tracker, and someone he can always trust. Today, however, there appears to be something wrong - as the investigator comes downstairs, it stands in the hall, growling up at him. It doesn’t seem to want to come upstairs, but won’t let him go down.

Possibilities

1 The dog was scratching around in nearby woods a few days ago when it unearthed a Traveller larva, swallowed it and was possessed. The alien’s ship fell to Earth in an asteroid shower a centuries ago and this entity has only recently been disturbed by the dog’s digging.

The Traveller now seeks a more suitable host and wants to trap the human upstairs until it can attack more effectively - though it has control of the dog and could reanimate it if killed, it cannot yet make the special filament attacks typical of mature Travellers.

Meanwhile, the investigator might recall that the dog has been acting peculiar since going for a run in the woods a few days ago.

2 A sadistic serial-killer attacked the investigator last night and died, but the shans that controlled him simply flew into the investigator’s brain. It made him dump the body and then blanked his memory of the event. The dog can detect the creature, but does not wish to hurt its master.

By day, when the alien sleeps, the investigator notices gaps in his memory (such as not recalling anything in the papers about a serial-killer before, though it has been a lead story for weeks) and small clues that the shans has not yet had time to twist. By night, the alien is active, editing memories and making him kill sadistically, starting with the dog. It even adds memories from previous homicidal hosts, although the investigator’s friends have ready alibis for him in most of those cases.

3 The dog is trying to warn its master to stay upstairs – the centre of the kitchen floor is starting to subside, and the faint scrapings and slippages have distressed the animal all night. A little weight or a little more decay reveals that this part of the house was built over an old well. After many years, dampness in the shaft has decayed the capstone, resulting in subsidence.

On examination this shaft is found to be quite dry – the capstone has been chipped away from beneath until it collapsed. At the bottom of the well are piles of bones. Most are those of children, but those at the top of the pile belong to an adult. Research discovers that the local landowner was thrown into this well after it was discovered that he cast children into it as sacrifices to his dark god. By night, the sorcerer’s skeleton scales the walls to chip away at the stone used to seal him in.

© Pete Wright

The Book of Sand

Very little is known about this volume, but what is known has been reconstructed from fragmentary notes left behind by Dr Anthony Walker (Curator of Sanskrit Manuscripts at the British Museum). Dr Walker vanished from his London home, with the book, a month after his return from India. He had bought the book from an illiterate untouchable for a handful of rupees and a Bible, on the outskirts of Bikaner at the edge of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan.

The book is of octavo size, thick, and bound in cloth. The book has been heavily handled, and the cover and pages are worn and stained. On the spine are the words ‘Holy Writ’ and, underneath, ‘Bombay’. The book is unusually heavy.

The pages are laid out in double columns, as in a Bible, with a tightly printed but typographically crude text ordered by verses. The pages are numbered in the upper corners and out of sequence. The language is unfamiliar.

The Book of Sand is so titled because its pages, like sand grains, are infinite. It is impossible to find the first or last page, for example. Similarly, it is impossible to try to find the same page twice (even with a bookmark) despite the, albeit arbitrary, page numbering.

Possibilities

1 The Book of Sand contains the cursed soul of a sorcerer; the more you read, the more of your personality is absorbed by the book. Worse, the more you read, the more addictive it becomes, until your soul and mind are trapped within the book. When this happens, the sorcerer takes control of your body - providing The Book of Sand remains nearby.

The sorcerer is depraved and immediately plunges into an orgy of sensual pleasure. Eventually, the host dies and the sorcerer is trapped once more in the book.

Several months after Dr Walker’s disappearance he is discovered dead, with the book lying nearby.

2 The book was taken from the Great Library of Celaeno by a philosopher-yogin from a Tibetan monastery at Chamdo, at the head of the Mekong River. From there it was taken to the Cave of Scorpions at the Potala in Lhasa, where it remained for 200 years until it was looted by a Sepoy in the 1903-1904 Younghusband expedition to Tibet. From him, it was stolen by an Indian fakir who, driven mad by the book, eventually sold it to Dr Walker.

The book contains references assembled by the Great Race of Yith concerning the Great Old Ones. Unfortunately, the information can only be accessed by Yithian mental command, otherwise only random pages are accessed. The pages are, of course, still valuable – once you can read Yithian.

The Great Race want the book back. In an attempt to retrieve it, one of the Great Race possessed Dr Walker and is now constructing a time machine to return the book to its owners.

3 The book is one of Nyarlathotep’s avatars. Most of the time it is inert, simply a book - albeit one with peculiar properties. The knowledge it contains is terrible indeed: Nyarlathotep’s perception of reality. Translating it is a perilous course. Descriptions of many of Nyarlathotep’s 1,000 avatars are included in the text.

Occasionally, Nyarlathotep occupies his avatar. The book lurches madly, savagely biting the fingers of anyone holding it, and erupting in a mass of wildly flailing tentacles. The thing then leaps into the air and vanishes, leaving behind only a few torn pages.

This was the fate of Dr Walker - he was unfortunate enough to be holding the book when Nyarlathotep appeared, and was dragged with the Outer God when it vanished. The book, meanwhile, turns up later . . .

Inspired by The Book of Sand, by Jorge Luis Borges.

© Charles Ross