Chaosium Digest Volume 31, Number 9 Date: Sunday, June 25, 2000 Number: 1 of 4 Contents: * Using Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge (CTHULHU) by Cullen Bunn * Pulse Fear (CTHULHU) by Michael Blenkarn * Terror at Erne Rock (CTHULHU) by RJCHRISTEN@aol.com * The Events of one 2234 Water St. (CTHULHU) by Chris Wilson Editor's Note: Seems that four people were not intimidated by Mr. Boyd's "The Books of Uncle Silas" from a couple of issues ago. We have two excellent Call of Cthulhu adventures, "Terror at Erne Rock" and "The events of one 2234 Water St." In addition we have our first fiction submission "Pulse Fear" which deals with some new beasties for the Mythos. Intended as an introduction for a sourcebook, the author said that he might have some game stats to go along with his story in the future. Topping off this great stack of submissions is an article on "Using Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge" by Cullen Bunn, editor of Whispers from the Shattered Forum, a small press horror magazine. As you can see, we've got a great issue this time around! Enjoy. As previously noted, all Call of Cthulhu, Elric! and Nephilim articles qualify for the quarterly Chaosium Contest. Even though they don't count for the contest, I still gladly accept Pendragon, Delta Green and Glorantha submissions. The deadline for the next contest will be June 30th. The winner gets a copy of the upcoming Call of Cthulhu Keepers Companion http://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu/rpg/2388.shtml for their winning Cthulhu, Elric! or Nephilim submission. So, keep those submissions coming! Don't forget to vote for the Origins Awards! ANNOUNCEMENTS * From Chaosium: The Keepers Screen FINALLY Shipping Well our long delayed Keeper Screen (2387) was delayed a little longer when our printer realized just how much work collating a multi-panel screen with all those swell innards and rescheduled the job. Currently, the Screen is expected to arrive this afternoon or tomorrow. We expect the Screen to begin shipping by the end of the week. Huzzah! ORIGINS AWARDS The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design and GAMA have announced the nominees for this year's Origins Awards. You can view the nominees and vote online at the Academy Webpage: http://www.gama.org/academy/academy.html We're pleased as punch to have our epic campaign Beyond The Mountains of Madness (http://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu/rpg/2380.shtml) nominated for Best Role-playing Adventure of 1999. We're also very happy to see Pagan Publishing's Delta Green: Countdown, nominated for Best Role-playing Supplement of 1999 I strongly encourage everyone out there to swing by the site Academy site and cast your vote. These are the only awards our Industry gives out so please participate! * From Pagan Publishing 2001 MAY BE LAST YEAR OF PLANET EARTH Cthulhu Calendar by John Coulthart & Alan Moore Could Chronicle Humanity's Extinction! (Or Maybe Not) SEATTLE -- Experts agree: 2001 will be a year with twelve months in it. This unusual phenomenon requires an unusual calendar to keep the space-time continuum straight. If the stars should come right, and Great Cthulhu walks the Earth, well--what calendar could possibly appease Him? THE 2001 CTHULHU CALENDAR, of course! Available in September, this 12"x12" freakish piece of occult weirdness belongs on the wall of every sect, next to the altar and the rusty binding-chains. A calendar this sinister could not be produced without sinister minds, and fortunately they have answered the call: Illustrator John Coulthart provides the pictures. John's work has recently been collected in THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK, from UK publisher Oneiros Books. He has illustrated a number of Lovecraft stories and concepts, and his new painting "Red Night Rites" appears as the wraparound cover to issue 16/17 of THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH, shipping this summer from Pagan Publishing. Writer Alan Moore provides the text. Moore is a comic-book legend for his work on WATCHMEN, FROM HELL, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, and many other titles. His recent explorations into higher planes of reality have led to his examination of the Cthulhu Mythos from a Kabalistic perspective, resulting in a set of strange and bewitching texts that accompany the illustrations. THE 2001 CTHULHU CALENDAR includes a charming selection of important Lovecraftian dates, assembled by Cthulhu Chronologist Guy Bock, so you won't miss those extra-special gift-giving occasions. The calendar will be released by Pagan Publishing's bookstore imprint, Armitage House. The calendar will carry a suggested retail price of $13.95, product code PAG3001. A sneak preview of the calendar is available at the publisher's website: http://www.tccorp.com/ * From Tim Wiseman If time allows, please take a peak at my web-hosted adventure 'The Madman' at http://www.geocities.com/wiseman_tim and let me know what you think. The adventure (campaign?) requires just a little more work in the last couple of chapters, which has been a little delayed as I have relocated from the US to the UK in the last month. Please let me know what you think! I have put a lot of time into this. **Upcoming Releases from Chaosium** JUNE >CALL OF CTHULHU Keeper's Screen #2387 $14.95 ISBN 1-56882-149-2 http://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu/rpg/2387.shtml At the printer! CALL OF CTHULHU KEEPERS (Keepers of Forbidden Lore) can now keep their secrets in style. This new three panel Keeper's Screen is jam-packed with vital GM information presented in any easy to use at a glance format. The player's side of the screen features awesome Philippe Caza artwork worthy of its own sanity check. This product includes a new introductory scenario perfect for beginning investigators and keepers alike, as well as three 4-page game aids (weapons table with an alien weapons section, a new 4-page summary of rule book spells, and some character sheet masters to jump-start your new Call of Cthulhu game). JULY >The Yellow Sign & Other Tales THE COMPLETE WEIRD FICTION OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS 6023 $19.95 ISBN 1-56882-126-3 by Robert W. Chambers http://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu/fiction/6023.shtml This massive collection brings together, for the first time ever and with much of the material unprinted since the 1890's, the entire body of Robert W. Chambers' weird fiction work. Chambers is considered a landmark author in the horror field for his _King in Yellow_ collection, but that is just a small part of his weird fiction output. The Yellow Sign & Other Stories brings together tales from five different Chambers collections, and also includes the novel _In Search of the Unknown_ and an excerpt from the novel _The Tracer of Lost Persons_. These stories are also connected to the Cthulhu mythos, for they introduce concepts such as Hali, Hastur, and Carcosa. Selected and edited by S.T. Joshi. -------------------- Using Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge By Cullen Bunn The Cthulhu Mythos skill is one of the most interesting (and notorious) devices of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. While it can prove to be an essential talent for an investigator pursuing lengthy investigations into the mythos, increasing one's aptitude in the skill presents dire consequences. The more knowledge one possesses, the closer one draws to the brink of madness. No other game illustrates more clearly how dangerous knowledge can become. As Lovecraft wrote in the game's namesake story, ". . . the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." However, the Cthulhu Mythos skill can present some difficulties for the Keeper, depending on how it is used. Take for example: an investigator has five points in Cthulhu Mythos after encountering a Hunting Horror in his first exploration of the unknown. During a later scenario, this investigator stumbles across a group of the Fungi from Yuggoth-the Mi-Go. The Keeper takes great delight as the player rolls the investigator's Occult skill to no avail. As the investigator's (and the player's) terror and confusion mounts, the Keeper prepares to spring a few more surprises. But the player calls for a Cthulhu Mythos skill roll and subsequently rolls an 04%. Now the Keeper feels obliged to reveal a little more information about the Mi-Go, and the investigator somehow understands that these alien creatures are known to perform terrible operations and experimentation upon hapless humans. This can ruin at least some of the tension in the game. Additionally, to maintain a sense of realism and a suspension of disbelief, the Keeper must also devise some connection between the Hunting Horror the investigator encountered to earn the Cthulhu Mythos points and the Mi-Go-two elements that were meant to be unrelated in the Keeper's campaign. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with the mechanics of the Cthulhu Myths skill as it is presented in the rulebook, there are some options available that can enhance the game for players and Keepers alike. First of all, the Keeper could decide to disallow players from rolling both Occult and Cthulhu Mythos. Instead, the Cthulhu Mythos skill could interact with the Occult skill similarly to the way in which Martial Arts interacts with Fist/Punch. When you wish to see if an investigator understands the true significance of a newly found artifact, for instance, roll only against the investigator's Occult skill. If the roll succeeds, the Keeper may reveal some tidbit of non-mythos information or may simply say, "During your occult research, you have never come across something like this," letting the investigator know that there is something more to the item. If the roll succeeds and is lower than the investigator's Cthulhu Mythos skill, the Keeper may reveal some of the artifact's Mythos significance. In this way, the two skills work hand in hand. Remember, the Mythos have been around for a long time, and while most people are unaware of things such as Shoggoths and Deep Ones and Dholes, it seems likely that a character with a 90% Occult skill might have stumbled across some small reference to the Mythos during their studies. Perhaps their first encounter with a Mythos entity stirred something in their subconscious. This option can help the Keeper explain how the investigator knows something about the mind-numbing horror he is facing. It also cuts back (ever so slightly) on the number of dice rolls being made during what might be a frightening scene. While rolling dice and testing skill levels can add drama to the game, doing so can also pause the game until the results are resolved. Still, the Keeper faces the challenge of ruining some suspense or killing the fear factor by revealing too much information when a successful Cthulhu Mythos roll is made. If handled correctly, though, successfully understanding the Mythos can be frightening as well. Writers will tell you that strong fiction will "show not tell," and this concept can be applied to Call of Cthulhu as well. Using the example above, our intrepid investigator has succeeded on a Cthulhu Mythos roll. The keeper could simply state, "You remember a reference to something similar to these creatures in one of the books you read in your early days at school. You passed it off as fiction at the time, but the book described these strange beings as not of this earth with a desire to experiment and operate upon unsuspecting humans." Depending on the situation, this might work fine. But imagine that the Keeper says nothing right away. Later, as the investigator sleeps, he dreams that he is being held down in his bed by pincer-like arms. The Mi-Go swarm around him, buzzing excitedly. Blood runs down his face, stinging his eyes. As he watches, horrified, the Mi-Go lift his brain from his skull, showing it to him! A sanity check would, of course, be required as the investigator wakes, sitting bolt right in bed, with a new understanding of the terrors that must be faced. This technique, like any other, can be overdone, but hopefully it will give Keeper's some new ideas as to how to present Mythos information. These ideas are presented only as options for Keepers who may be finding the Cthulhu Mythos skill a bit problematic. Other gamers may have already devised their own methods for handling any problems they may have faced. It is important to handle any given situation as logically as possible, thereby maintaining realism to balance the fantastic. It is also important to maintain an air of mystery, so that the players are kept guessing. By using some new techniques, the Keeper can perhaps make the campaign a little more thrilling, a little more frightening. And that's the name of the game. ------------------------- PULSE-FEAR (Michael Blenkarn) The office was unkempt and the rain pattered listlessly against the smeared windows. I must freely confess that I was considerably impatient to get this over with. Another dreary unfocused time I had been dragged from my comfortably warm office and erudite musings on the raison d'être of the universe with the cloudy, erroneous aid of some rather fine brandy. Another investigative task to undertake on that wet and rainy February evening. The clouds were thick, grey, threatening billows, which promised more rain to come, and the sun, going down with its last hour of deep golden light is steadily receding. My sardonic musings were concluded, luckily before I drowned in my own witty repartee. A worried looking administrative worker bustled into the cramped room and seated himself steadily at the chair opposite me, looking harried and anxious around his receding chin. I only listened with half an ear as his irritatingly hesitant murmuring decorated the room, my mind traversing somewhere else in a desperate search for my hallowed alcohol and the saturnine demeanor it instilled in me. The general gist of the one-sided conversation was that, with subtlety and discretion uncommon to one such as me, I was to investigate the domicile of one David Broussard. The unlikely suspect was an electrical designer, for this rising company which my memory failed to put a name to even as I reposed in its central premises. The always-eccentric thirty-something designer had apparently been making increasingly bizarre and draconian comments and demands, I gathered as my mind circled back into the immediate social reality of the administrator's soliloquy. His hair and beard prematurely greying and becoming infested with an unkempt chaos, unfitting in one so anally retentive. With a characteristic lifted wholesale from the most stereotypical administrator parody, the petty disapproval inflicted irritation into my hirer's tone as he verbally documented Broussard's systematic pilfering of low-level supplies and domestic appliances from the offices and shop floor. It didn't surprise me that with such a manner my investigative talents were required to sift through the house of this most unprecedented employee any more than I was surprised by his unwillingness to do such a task off his own back. Truly the world had found a new stereotype to parody in the weak-minded and officious cowardice of this prince of administration. Wearily I parroted back his description of Broussard's house and my instructions once across the threshold. The facets of my mind were unanimous in the decision to disregard the instructions and wield the instincts that several years as an investigator had given me in this delicate situation. His house, a wonderfully eccentric display of good old fashioned English character, was a converted church oddly resplendent in a dilapidated area of Brichester. I hadn't been to Brichester since my father shot himself in our beautiful family home. I tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. I was overjoyed to discover at this point that my dear colleague had business to attend to and that his secretary, a decidedly more down to earth proposition, was to conclude the interview. In considerably more colloquial tones, which I could thankfully connect to, the secretary elucidated me as to the intrigue wrapped up in this convoluted task. Strange late night noises and uncannily electronic flashes had disturbed the repose of the neighbourhood, until a sudden cessation of activity but a week past, since which Broussard has seemed dead to the world or at least to his employers. In increased agitation therefore the management selected me for this not particularly formidable task in order to calculate the economic fluctuations of their respective payrolls that were symptomatic of the apparent loss of an extremely talented designer at the forefront of their operations. Of the fee of course, I left no bargaining unbargained. The week's worth of notably high payroll which would have been divested to Broussard had he been present and working seemed fair enough to me. Concluding the bartering with a relief for not having to out-math the absent administrator's probable accountancy gene, I hesitated not in acceding to requests and subsequently set off upon an extended journey to the old surroundings of Brichester. It was a long time finding the obscure lane that accommodated the lugubrious abode of my quarry. When I finally did, the coppery sun was sinking into iridescence westward in a fiery beauty of a sunset making the disproportionate and mostly derelict houses around me skeletal and forbidding silhouettes. In the dying light the converted church stood imposing and ominous, in a decrepit rectangle of untended greenery. The sunset shone its calm and flickering glow upon it, giving the gothic overtones and gloominess of the stonework a golden sheen that seems incongruous. Taking in the fragile and discordant beauty which sheathed the decrepitude in strange and unearthly ways, I was a little reluctant to crunch up the short litter strewn path to the imposing portal echoing silence back towards me. The light suddenly reminded me of the beautiful day when my father had taken his own life. I skirted quickly away from the recollection. The door was bedecked with an ostentatious knocker, and to my quiet, closet romanticist's joy, opened with a melodramatic funereal creak. Taking a deep breath of the comparatively fresh air, stunned again by the still, almost unsettling tranquillity of the area, I hastened inside to a routine investigative task. As I thought. My optimism wilted. Dust was the first thing that drew my focused attention as I crossed the threshold. There was a thick, choking carpet of it bestriding the splintered planks, which were slightly warped and cracked with age and damp. The stifling air was dry and eerily still, stale and tasting of age and negligence. The light filtered weakly and dimly through a high, smeared and barred window at the far end of the hall, a dirty yellowish pallor making the peeling paint on the walls jaundiced and unhealthy looking. A fly buzzed ineffectually at the dirty pane, weakly batting it, the sound seeming loud in the empty silence. Stairs, rickety and unstable, climbed precariously up one side of the dusty and unwelcoming hall to an unseen landing, the ascent beginning at the other end of the hall and culminating just above my head. Three doors, ill-fitting in their frames and cracked, scabrous and blotched from lack of care and polish, were set into the uneven wall on the right. A door inset into the space underneath the stairs themselves was held firmly shut with a formidable if rusted padlock. All this I digested in moments, my attention wavering over the details and analyzing the sinister atmosphere. And sinister it was; I couldn't quite explain why but uneasiness overtook me, and an uncharacteristic desire to seek the comforts of the outside, an unwelcome voice that spoke warily through wreaths of time from my childhood. I had investigated deserted houses before particularly as a child, remembering the thrill of the forbidden. But then, youthful exuberance and a rampant desire for exploration and knowledge had powered my steps, not least a healthy dash of adrenaline, all things that I thought the alcohol had drowned long ago. The door swung shut behind me. I ignored it, and though a slight strangeness in the click as it closed bothered some secluded, more energetic part of me, it was soon drowned out by the oddity of my new environment. Shaking my head ruefully at the unaccustomed feelings, I begin to tread lightly through the dust with quiet, disconnected confidence. The childish voice of fright was fogged out by the assurance of professionalism. Here I was in my element; silently stalking for not lives like an assassin but information, the thrill of investigation reawakened in me. I suppose the flicker of elation and childishness had awakened the old enjoyment when this was all new to me and I had not experience enough to be as wary as I should be. Ambiguous as it was I tried to catch the lucidity of the experienced professional in me and make it focus the once-familiar feelings into a hardness of diamond, to create an equilibrium for my own advantage. As this passed through my focused and attuned mind I had sidled quietly to the first doorway I came to and testily, tentatively tried the loosely and unattended door-handle. It rattled like the crack of broken bones in the unsettling silence and exasperation followed my wincing as I stoically tried to open the door slowly and quietly. The room contained no life and my heart fluttered back into a steadier momentum. Where had this fear sprung from? The numerous rudiments of relaxation littered the room in profusion. A sense of character permeated it unlike the deadness of the hallway, which I was grateful for. The bookshelves were shoddy affairs, little more than planks nailed together, and the books filling them were worn, crumpled with damp and decidedly the worse for wear. A couple of armchairs projecting stuffing slowly but steadily from wide and frayed slashes stood facing an archaic and battered looking television set, more than likely an ancient monochrome affair. There was no evidence of over-emphasized piety and no totem-like religious artifacts cluttering the space, which made me a little more comfortable. However, strange and compelling sculptures stood in bizarre postures on the crooked and peeling mantelpiece. Their oddity made my eyes water to try and look to closely at them. In my mind I tried to correlate the personality of Broussard with such a squalid display of dejection. I couldn't. The sinister atmosphere clung uncomfortably to me still and desperately tried to draw my mind into the easy, disconnected blankness, which had made me one of the best in the business. Even the slightest crackle of discarded papers under my feet, crisped with age, made me spin jerkily on my feet almost in a fighting crouch, hands shaking convulsively for no discernible reason. I searched my hip for my small revolver and found it, clamping my left hand comfortingly but readily over it. I leafed through the cracking pages of one book upon the incongruous shelves. An unfamiliar language stared back at me, mirroring my incomprehension. I turned page after page, almost desperate to find anything to suggest Broussard to be an Englishman I could relate to, and when a different sort of crackle entered my life, I barely flinched. I was enthralled in the book for several seconds before the implications of that crackle battered through to my muddled consciousness. I hastily dropped the book and its hypnotic influence and with a practiced movement drew my revolver and spun on my heel. The room was as empty as before. But the television flickered with life. --