The Man of Her Dreams

The Ashthorns, a wealthy family of noble origins, are desperate, as their daughter Melissa seems to have succumbed to a mental illness:

She refuses to sleep, trying everything to stay awake, from coffee over cold baths to physically hurting herself, with needles, blunt objects etc. If she finally falls asleep, she’s tossing and turning around for a while, before she seems to wake up, acting in a very different manner to her usually gentle personality, which she later denies.

Ask upon these events, the frightened Melissa explains, that sometime before, she encountered a man in her dreams, who claims to be from the dreamlands. The man has become aware of the real world and wants to break through to it, a goal, which in exchange would probably kill Melissa.

Possibilities

1 Melissa is suffering from a severe case of schizophrenia, which derives from being abused by her father and her older brother in younger years. Her ‘other Self’, who is confirming ‘her’ version, has the personality of a lewd, uncaring man, who insults and hits other people, smokes cigarettes and drinks whiskey and shows a deep hatred against the Ashthorne family, even trying to kill the other family members. So far, the personality switch has only lasted a few minutes, but is steadily becoming longer.

2 Melissas story is true, the man from the Dreamlands exists. He is slowly overpowering Melissa, and has now reached the point, where parts of him can physically manifest, resulting in the scene, where an entire forearm comes out of the unconscious, twisting girls mouth! Physical damage to the arm will make him retreat for now, but if nothing is done, he will sooner or later burst out of the poor girls body.

3 Things aren’t quite, what they seems to be: the man from Melissa’s ‘dreams’ is in fact a magician, and he’s not from the Dreamlands, but from the waking world, trying to save the investigators, who themselves are trapped in the Dreamlands. He uses the dream figure of Melissa as a portal to make contact with them, but unfortunately his words turn into gibberish and written contact is not possible. If the magician loses contact, the investigators might be forever trapped in the Dreamlands.

© Philipp Mählmann

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 Gift

An investigator quite unexpectedly gains super-human abilities: his muscles grow, thicken and strengthen, he becomes a speed-reader, he finds all his five senses enhanced, and he can perform incredible feats of skill. If he has a chance to find out, he is also very difficult to injure, as his body seems to easily absorb many types of kinetic energy.

Possibilities

1 Nyarlathotep is meddling again. Instead of sending one of his many forms to spread mayhem, he decided to literally play god by enhancing several individuals’ abilities beyond human ken. He means serious fun though - he has also bestowed upon several religious cults the divine message that his saints walk the Earth once again. If the character shows off in public any of his amazing skills, he will be sought out by one of these groups, who will appropriate him as their Divine Messenger. At the same time, more Divine Messengers will appear, and inevitably some will go public. A clash of cults is imminent.

2 It is a gift - of sorts. Some stars are right, and a race of beings from a distant star has opened a gate to Earth - their seasonal hunting ground. As they find that human beings are generally frail and not that challenging to hunt, each hunter picks one target to be enhanced. These beings are normally invisible - but the enhanced character will now be able to see them. The alien appears after a few days and then gives chase.

3 It is a delusion. The character is not stronger, not smarter, and cannot suddenly read Braille or distinguish five brands of Root Beer by taste. His sudden overconfidence is entirely misplaced, and if he persists in this belief, he will get into major trouble. This might be an effect of lasting sanity loss, or a curse by a fiendish sorcerer. This condition, when noticed, is very disturbing to everybody else. “Look at me fly!”

© Felix Girke

The Ghost of Easter Past

The town is awash with breathless reports: Jesus Christ has returned. The faithful flock to town in the hope of catching a glimpse of their saviour, and all who have seen him preach agree that this man, bearing all the signs of recent crucifixion, cannot be other than the genuine Son of God.

Possibilities

1 Jesus Vasquez, a carpenter from Silver Springs, Fl., has been imbued with an otherworldly spirit, giving him supernatural endurance and magnetism, at the cost of his sanity. He now believes himself to be the manifestation of Jesus Christ. He preaches based on his recollections from Sunday School and his personal prejudices, and his words are given weight by the spirit which is bound to him. The stigmata were self-inflicted with a nail gun. Analysis of recordings of his teachings shows them to be simplistic and contradictory, but it is almost impossible to remain unconvinced when hearing them from Vasquez himself.

2 Although thousands claim convincingly to have seen Jesus in person, he proves remarkably difficult for the sceptical to track down. It emerges that the faithful have met Jesus, not on this plane, but in waking dreams. A creature of the Dreamlands is seeking to open a way through to the waking world. By calling upon the Christian faithful, who willingly synchronise their dreams and mobilise their mental energies for the promised second coming, it is building considerable power.

3 What we know as “God” is actually the shattered remnants of a Great Old One, forced by its enemies to take on a fragile human form, which was crucified and its essence all but destroyed. Over two millennia, it has regained sufficient psychic energy to manifest again as Jesus. While, to some ways of thinking, it is the second coming, this Jesus represents only the death throes of his “father”. The activity of the shade of an Old One will summon others to feed on it. The world will likely not survive such an occurrence.

© Barbara Robson and Stuart Barrow

The Dinner Party

Kenneth Marsh is an eccentric traveller, writer, critic and dilettante whose frequent dinner parties are the talk of the town. Avaricious socialites shamelessly pursue invitations to these cosmopolitan events. Guests come from all social backgrounds and are chosen by Marsh for their idiosyncrasies and entertainment potential. Madonna Scarlatti, a stage actress, and Samuel Waldeberg, a would-be movie star, are among the guests this evening.

After a starter of superb herb and garlic pate, the main course appears, an ‘unusual fish dish’. The guests joke nervously, hoping that it is not calamari; a previous guest had an attack upon learning that she had eaten sauteed baby octopus. “One simply couldn’t live with the thought of eating tentacles!”

Marsh tucks in and everyone slowly follows his example. The main course is excellent. A rich chocolate and coffee pudding is the sweet, to be followed by coffee, brandy and cigars. Marsh, a radical, does not expect the ladies to retire whilst the men smoke.

Conversation turns to the host’s recent travels. Marsh returned recently from the Orient with, amongst other curios, a number of live specimens of a rare genus of venomous catfish. Marsh maintains extensive salt and freshwater aquaria. These catfish have bred extensively in the last few months; the guests have just eaten a few of them.

The Lung-Hung catfish are found only in the precincts of a Cantonese temple to a many-armed female ‘Bhudda’, referred to as The Bloated Woman. The fish are considered sacred as, reputedly, they can heal dermatitis sufferers who bathe in their pool. Marsh does not elaborate on how he obtained live specimens although there was a Reuters article on a riot in Shanghai a few months ago.

Suddenly, Marsh begins to choke. His eyes bulge, he turns purple, and he slumps face-down into his coffee.

Possibilities

1   The cook, Jules Severin, didn’t know how to prepare the fish. He sought the advice of a kindly yellow-robed Chinese herbalist monk who was collecting donations door-to-door. The monk’s recipe deliberately didn’t account for the poison sacs within the fish. Marsh sampled the dish yesterday and ate it again tonight. He has died first. Within 24 hours, all the guests will be dead.

Marsh has an extensive collection of journals in which he relates the tales of the Lung-Hung Catfish as learned from a ‘flower girl’ in Shanghai. There is a small temple in Chinatown, guarded closely by the Order of The Bloated Woman. The monks know of the antidote. It only remains for someone to fetch it in time.

2 Shelby the butler checks Marsh and declares him alive. Then Waldeberg collapses theatrically to the floor with severe cramps; he daringly had two helpings of the main course.

In normal humans the catfish venom causes cramps and fever which may kill those with a weak constitution. On Deep One hybrids the venom speeds the transformation process dramatically. The catfish can feed on dead flesh of humans, and are kept specifically for useon the moulting flesh of such hybrids. This is the background to the tales concerning their healing properties.

Marsh, unknowingly, can trace his family history to Innsmouth. He is in a coma from which he will awake in a few days, a good way through the transformation to a Deep One. Grinning Orientals hide in the bushes outside the window. They await the incapacitation of the guests. They will take Marsh to his true people and kidnap then sacrifice the defilers of the sacred fish.

3 Marsh was poisoned by Madonna Scarlatti, who sits to his left. She used an antique Italian poison ring to slip a lethal dose of cyanide into his dessert.

Marsh and Scarlatti are ex-lovers. He savaged her recent appearance as Lady Macbeth but invited her as a way of apologising for being too harsh. Hell hath no fury...

© Peter Devlin

The Delivery

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

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

Possibilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Peter Devlin

The Cuban Connection

The local tobacconist has just got a new batch of very special cigars. Each of these hand-rolled Havana cigars is extremely expensive, but they are proving popular. Perhaps a little too popular.

Possibilities

1 The cigars are manufactured by clever but ruthless Cuban gangsters. They contain a number of highly addictive narcotics designed to hook not only the smoker, but those in the vicinity too.

2 The cigars are manufactured by Cuban cultists. They contain ceremonial incense that summons strange spirits when burned. The spirits induce a feeling of euphoria, but also feed on the life energy of those in close proximity. A portion of this energy is transferred to the cultists for use in their nefarious activities.

3 The cigars are manufactured by the Slaves of the Atchai. Each cigar contains one Atchai, a creature resembling a tiny trilobite. When the cigar is lit and put to the lips, the Atchai crawls into the smoker's mouth. Once inside the body, it attaches itself to the nervous system and begins to take control of the brain.

© Rob Illing