Call of Cthulhu Scenario. The Author

 For the Thanksgiving holiday I had the opportunity to poke around and find my old Call of Cthulhu notes from high school.  Evidently a younger Mr. Nightmares had written a one-shot titled “The Author.” I remember that this scenario was heavily inspired by at least one Tale of Terror article in The Unspeakable Oath. Tale of Terror articles in the early Unspeakable Oaths were articles describing scenario seeds and then usually three different ways a game master could make a full adventure from one seed.

I recall that a Tale of Terror presented the idea of a Dreamslayer monster who stalked its victims through their dreams.  Whether the Tale of Terror suggested that the Dreamslayer was a result of a curse of Cthulhu as younger me stated in “The Author”, I do not remember.  I do remember the ending for the one shot though.  The player, having suffered physical damage from being stalked by the Dreamslayer, found the waking world person who was the Dreamslayer and shot him through his office window before he could even speak a word in his defense. That lead to a restful night of peace.

Below are the seven pages of the adventure. “MU” stands for Miskatonic University.

5 Parsecs from Home After Action Report 2 Behind the Scenes and Epilogue

 This post will go into the game details behind the narrative in the 5 Parsecs from Home After Action Report 2.  

Here is a summary of the post battle rolls for the events after the 5 Parsecs from Home After Action Report 1.  The Pirates the crew faced, named the Black Dragons, became Rivals.  The crew received a Personal Trinket from the Battlefield Finds table. A Personal Trinket could turn into a Loot roll for a planet visited in the future if a 9 or higher is rolled on a 2d6.  Each crew member obtained one XP. The Blast Pistol was broken but the crew also bought 2 Colony Rifles and 1 Infantry Laser.  Leomes Gallo and Piklov Demir were in the sick bay and out of action for next turn. 

At the end of turn 1, the crew’s currencies were the following: 10 Credits, 10 Story Points, and 5 Rumors. In addition, the Ship Debt was 14 credits total. 

A note about Story Points. I had been using them to modify out of combat rolls to my favor, but I had missed the rule on p.66 of the 5 Parsecs from Home core book that states, “Any time you have rolled for anything, you may spend 1 story point to roll again, but the new result must be accepted. This works whether you are rolling for your own characters, an enemy action, or something that just happens in the campaign.” I could have been expending Story Points in combat to shift things to my advantage. I however did not do this as you can see in the last playthrough that I wrote up!

After buying the three firearms after the battle in turn 1, I reshuffled the crew’s equipment on the remaining four mercenaries.  Their weapons loadout is reflected in the narrative.

Then, I rolled up random names for Piklov Demir and Levian Nuende’s Patrons. Levian Nuende’s Patron was a shadowy private organization called The Collegium.  Piklov’s Patron was a wealthy individual named Arnav Ton. 

I made similar rolls for the crew’s Rivals. Both Captain Bjorn Ivannox and Anriel had a criminal element as a Rival so I made them the same Rival, just with two chances of appearing (one for Bjorn and one for Anriel).  I rolled up their name to be The Integrated Syndicate.  In addition to that Rival, I also added the note that the Black Dragons, the Pirate clan they had just beaten, were now Rivals. 

In Campaign Turn 2, before the battle, I skipped Travel Steps and went immediately to World Steps. In that step the crew lost a credit to crew upkeep; and Ship Debt (14) was paid down by two credits (12) but then gained one credit in value due to interest (13). I had 7 total credits remaining.  I decided to not pay for medical care for my two humans in sick bay because I was running low on credits. To be frank, the addition of another mercenary or two could have swung the resulting battle in my favor. Lesson learned. 

Next in Crew Tasks, Bjorn and Anriel tried to repair the broken Blast Pistol but failed and destroyed it outright. Fallox Encia tried to Trade but she found tourist garbage that wasn’t even worth a story point. I had decided that in the narrative she spent her time doing a screamcore music gig.  Levian Nuende got lucky in his Exploration roll, found a trainer and gained 2 XP. 

For a Job Offer I rolled that Arnav Ton, the wealthy individual, offered the crew a job with +2 credits in hazard pay.  I decided to take this job immediately (it was only offered for this turn) but then a Rival tracked the crew down! The roll revealed the Integrated Syndicate as the rival, and I wove these random events into the story to make it feel more dramatic.   

The deployment conditions of the battle phase were less than idea for my crew.  First of all, the crew was Caught off Guard, meaning that the crew is forced to act in the Slow Action phase in round 1.  Also, the Rival had Ambushed us, so the crew was forced to deploy with one less crewmember than the standard six, but since I was going into the battle with four squaddies, this particular disadvantage didn’t matter.  

The battle progressed primarily as described in the narrative. However, in the fifth round both Anriel and Bjorn were taken out of action by a Guild Trooper and the Bounty Tracker respectively.  I have to say, rolling up the Unique Individual the Fearless Bounty Tracker with an Aggressive AI, really inspired me to write him up as a character in the Interlude. I think the narrative became more dramatic and tense because of this as well. 

As for the ending, what happens to the fallen Bjorn and Anriel? Who knows? I think it is a much more interesting plot if the question is not immediately addressed. As for the two crew members left in sick bay…

******

Epilogue

Piklov groaned and rolled over in his bed.  An insistent beeping steadily infiltrated the layers of his unconsciousness until he was soberly and painfully awake.  His eyelids opened. He groaned again and shut his eyes, burying his face in his pillow to avoid the sterile pristine whiteness that met his gaze and the black field sprinkled with stars that the smart-window displayed. 

Wait a minute. A starfield? Shouldn’t they be docked at Lanrezac Gamma’s main spaceport? The question came up from the depths of his mind and crested his consciousness.  Piklov Demir sat up, and immediately regretted it as the pain from his torso told him his broken ribs were still healing. But the sharp agony clarified his mind. Yes, that was a starfield, a window onto deep space; and yes, he smelled something pungent and familiar over the omnipresent scent of antiseptic. Incense. 

“Leomes, I know you are up,” called Piklov. “I can smell that you’ve been praying.” 

“Successfully it might seem,” came the warm baritone of Leomes Gallo as the preacher man entered the room in a white shirt and drawstring pants. “We are alive, and … somewhere far from our enemies I believe.”  

“What do you mean?” asked Piklov, “Where is the Captain and what about the mission from Arnav Ton? They should be back by now, right?” He stared at the starfield, confused. 

Leomes Gallo took a beat and composed himself. “When I awoke, we were already in deep space.  The autopilot for the ship was engaged and we were headed on an unknown vector.  All I know is that we are away from Lanrezac Gamma, far away,” he added, “and not by accident.”

Piklov stood up, ignoring the pain and faced Leomes. “The Captain must of planned this.  Have you heard of a dead man’s switch? It’s a failsafe used to execute an action in case the user is incapacitated.  And that can only mean…”

Leomes nodded, his mouth pressed into a thin line. 

“Well shit,” Piklov Demir concluded. 

******

So the adventures of the crew of Captain Bjorn Ivannox may not be concluded! After the Total Party Kill of the After Action Report 2, I figured that the two crew members in sick bay would have got away. After all, the Integrated Syndicate was the Rival of only Bjorn and Anriel, not the entire crew.

So now what?  Well, I plan on rolling up a new crew, totaling six and using the Crew Type Tables on p.14 of the core book. My thoughts are that Piklov Demir and Leomes Gallo spend all of the crew’s credits on hiring the new crew and getting away from the planet where Captain Bjorn met his doom. Rumors and Story Points will be reset to zero. However, since the ship is the same, I’ll have the new crew inherit the current Ship Debt.  Also, I figure that any equipment on Bjorn’s team is forfeit. Gear, items and weapons stored on the ship like the Nano-Doc will be migrated to the new crew.  I’m not quite definite as to exactly what rules I will institute, bend or ignore when creating the new crew so I’ll leave those deliberations to a post in the future.     

Will the new crew swear revenge on the Integrated Syndicate? Are Bjorn and Anriel really dead or wish they were? Will we see that black-hatted Bounty Tracker again? Only time will tell. 

5 Parsecs from Home After Action Report 2

 This is a after action report of a 5 Parsecs from Home game that continues the adventures of Captain Bjorn Ivannox and the crew randomly rolled up here.  This is a narrative story version of the events that happened. A look behind the scenes at the in game events that influenced and generated this narrative will be posted soon. 

*****

Art by Christian Quinot in Five Parsecs from Home 3rd Edition, p40

Droplets sizzled on the concrete ground as the party of four stalked through the sundown shadows of the abandoned market town.  Anriel, the soldier, slowed to a halt in front of the others.  He made some adjustments to the tracker sight on his well-worn infantry laser as the acid rain formed rivulets down his Plas-Tek hooded poncho and spattered around his feet.  Instinctively, his gloved hands went through the motions of maintenance, actions he had repeated with this weapon on countless worlds in countless environmental conditions. It would work, he knew, even here on Lanrezac Gamma’s ruined boom-and-bust towns.

He snapped alert, mentally shaking himself. Nostalgia leads to distraction; and distraction on a mission can get you killed. He flicked on his throat mic. “Check-in time. Anriel, point. Sound off.”

 “Levian Nuende, second,” the mic crackled as the team’s counterfeiter and all-around scavenger responded, hunkered down in cover against the concrete of an empty raised plaza and racking the slide of his colony rifle. 

“Captain reporting, third,” murmured Bjorn Ivannox, glare sword bouncing in its sheath on his hip as he turned around slowly with colony rifle in hand, scanning the red-orange horizon for shapes. Eventually Bjorn’s gaze fell on Fallox Encia behind him, the last member of their party.

“Fallox here, rearguard,” chirped the musician as she readjusted her Plas-Tek poncho so the shatter axe affixed to her back was more comfortable.  Fallox Encia saw Bjorn’s look and gave him a wink, showing off her glitter encrusted eyelids as she gripped her infantry laser.  An unearthly pale face married to phosphorescent strands of purple and pink in her half-shaved brunette hair screamed that she had just come from a discotech.  In fact, Fallox had just headlined there; howling into a megaphone for all her screamcore fans just a scant couple of hours earlier. There hadn’t been time to change. Just throw on a protective poncho, grab a gun and go. 

Instinctively Bjorn crouched, mirroring Levian Nuende’s stance. The subtle tap-tap of rain on the abandoned buildings was only broken by the faint splashing sounds their boots made when disturbing the pools of the caustic downpour.  In this moment of quiet, Bjorn ran through his memory again. 

Recall pulled him back to the meet they had a few hours before.  Piklov Demir, their resident petty criminal, had been in deep conversation with a hologram before they got the nod that the team was to convene in an upscale rhinox steakhouse with a hungry patron.  Piklov Demir and Lemoes Gallo were still injured and were left in the ship’s sick bay as the remaining four crew members booked it to the glitterati sector of the spaceport to make their appointment.  

Arnav Ton was waiting for them, in impeccably tailored clothing and extravagantly cybernetic teeth.  Despite himself, Bjorn was fascinated by how Arnav’s palladium teeth…shifted and remolded themselves to finely cut the rare slice of steak Arnav was masticating. After a modest glass of red wine more expensive than a night out on the town for the entire crew, Arnav Ton outlined his need for the mercenaries to see after his interests in an abandoned area of the planet.  Bjorn remembered eying the empty wineglass and being dogged with his negotiations.  Arnav had agreed to hazard pay provided the team addressed his needs immediately.  Bjorn thought of Piklov and Lemoes still in the sick bay as he secured the promise of extra credits with a firm handshake. What he couldn’t forget, was that Arnav’s teeth mimicked those of a shark when he smiled.    

Breathing out slow and coming out of his reverie, Captain Bjorn racked the slide in anticipation.  With a modicum of mental effort his VR implant overlayed his vision with distance and tracking telemetry in brilliant goldenrod and phosphorescent green.  The team was only five klicks from the zone. Soon credits would be in hand and then—then he heard it. His name. Echoing from every building and tower in the abandoned marketplace. 

“Bjorn Ivannox!” the echo resounded over the empty plaza. Or once empty plaza. Disciplined footfalls and short, muffled commands of a cadre of men came from the buildings north of him.  Bjorn shot a glance at Fallox Encia.  She was looking around wildly, but caught his look and dropped to the ground immediately, pointing her infantry laser in all directions until she focused her attentions to the north. 

“Anriel Breckett!” boomed the mysterious voice again and Anriel, in the lead of their line, sprinted west to the cover of a hab tower, where he crouched. “Who the FUCK knows my last name,” Anriel exclaimed over coms, his targeting sight pinging with four hotspots detected to his north east, moving in and spreading out in a tactical formation across the plaza.  

“Is this a setup?” Bjorn thought, his memory briefly flashing back to Arnav Ton’s wicked shark-smile. “What do you want?” Bjorn yelled out, feverishly analyzing the battlespace for targets, chokepoints and kill zones. 

“Your Balance Is Due!” came a very unfriendly laugh as a figure appeared in the middle of the plaza, clad in a redlined leather trench coat and black brimmed hat, dropped a microphone device and crushed it with his heel. Something whirred in his left eye and he brandished his triple barrel shotgun, heavy with electronics and modifications. 

“Anriel! What can you see?” Bjorn queried over the comms channel. “Four, well, that’s five targets now,” Anriel groused. “That’s got to be a Bounty Tracker, and the others…black carapace armor and orange insignia’s…shit. That’s the snake and column, Captain.” Anriel reported grimly. 

A snake coiling around a column. A stylized combination of the letters “I” and “S”.  That could only mean one thing. The Integrated Syndicate had found them and had them cornered in an ambush, Bjorn thought as his adrenaline surged. For a millisecond Bjorn thought of his family, of lasers piercing the skies, of fire and death. His blood boiled.     

“Listen up,” the Captain spoke in a clear but low tone over the comms, “I know these bastards. Criminals of the worst kind.  I know they have a mark on me, and they’ve got a beef with Anriel as well; but you two, Levian and Fallox, if the situation gets too hot, you can both leave. Anriel and I will keep them occupied.”

“No sir!” Levian Nuende stated. “Captain, you have given me a second chance, a chance for a life with order and opportunity. If you stand, I stand.” Levian stated and pounded his fist into his chest. 

“Where would I be if you didn’t take me on when I hid away on your ship when you refueled at Nasic’s Lament?” Fallox Encia exploded. “I’d still be a servant to the dammed Ash People.  I would have never touched a musical instrument at all!” She shook her hair out of her eyes. 

Grimly, Bjorn Ivannox noted the slow-but-disciplined advance of his five enemies. “Alright then,” he said, raising his colony rifle to his shoulder and looking down the sights. “Let’s give them hell.” And a brief but defiant warcry came from the plucky crew. 

(First Round)

Bjorn and Levian Nuende fired within seconds of each other.  Both colony rifles spat out three round bursts, targeting the closest enemy, the Bounty Tracker. His trophies jangled on his belt, and his trench coat flapped in the wind as he dodged the fire, laughing with dark joy to be in the thick of battle as he started advancing and taking the stairstep on the north end of the plaza. 

Filled with adrenaline, Fallox Encia dove up the stairs of the plaza from the south, skidding to a stop as she slid, crouching against the plassteel fence that bisected the flat rectangle of the plaza. She swallowed hurriedly and readjusted her infantry laser to acquire a target. 

“Gaining higher ground”, Anriel’s comm crackled as the veteran soldier immediately threw himself into ascending a vertical fire escape ladder that would take him to the top of the four-story abandoned hab building, west of the plaza, he had been taking cover against. 

(Second Round)

One of the Guild Troopers in black carapace armor and orange IS insignia began making hand gestures to his team. For his trouble, Fallox Encia slicked her hair back under her hood and took a shot at him. The blast went wide. “Readjusting!” she cried as a hail of bullets came back for her in return.  One bullet hit home, exploding against her shoulder and spinning her around so hard her head slammed into the plassteel fence. Fallox gasped and fell unconscious from the wicked whiplash. 

The crew and its enemies exchanged further blasts of fire and laser beams, with nothing connecting.  Grimly Anriel climbed, his body on the west side of the hab stacks so he was safe from the field of fire. With one final pull he jumped onto the rooftops and strode over some forlorn cheerily colored banner of better times.  Crouching against a pile of boxes, Anriel surveyed the battlefield and began to plot his next move. 

(Third Round)

Bjorn surveyed the scene, his VR implant making it a dazzling display of real shadows highlighted with goldenrod and blazing red. One of the Guild Troopers was wielding a plasma rifle. “Can’t have that,” Bjorn muttered, slamming a burst of bullets into the concrete behind the trooper as he missed his shot. 

“Targeting the big guns,” Anriel’s voice came, calm and collected, as the plasma rifle Guild Trooper dropped to his knees to avoid a laser blast that would have bisected his helmet. 

Levian Nuende howled as he stepped out of cover and opened up on the four Guild Troopers, desperate for a lucky shot.  It was not to be however, as two Guild Troopers turned and fired down the plaza, military rifles making sounds of rock-and-roll as Levian got lit up and planted face first into the puddles of acid rain.  

(Fourth Round)

“We’ve taken casualties!” Anriel voice came through clear on the comms as he exchanged fire from the rooftop with a Guild Trooper on the ground. “I --,” Bjorn was cut off as he quickly wrenched his colony rifle away from an adjacent explosion that nearly ended him. “Just focus on killing these bastards!” Bjorn exclaimed, reloading and repositioning behind cover. 

Peeking up from his foxhole, the Guild Trooper aimed his plasma rifle at the demolished wall Bjorn was hiding behind. Adjusting a few settings, the weapon powered up until there was a *crack* as a laser blast from the top of the four-story hab block penetrated the charging plasma rifle.  There was barely a scream at all from the doomed Guild Trooper. Anriel surveyed the resulting exploding plasma ball as it fell and smoldered onto the concrete.  Disciplined, the Guild Troopers and Bounty Tracker eyed Anriel in the hab tower warily, but they repositioned as doctrine taught them and began to spread out towards Captain Bjorn Ivannox.

(Fifth Round)

Grim realization hit Bjorn as he saw the Bounty Tracker began sprinting towards his position, totems and trophies jangling against his belt and bandoleers.  Quickly Bjorn cracked open an emergency transmitter and began chanting codewords in a low voice. “Indigo Stardust Alpha Chi Sigma, initiate!” he rasped, his hands convulsively shaking as he heard a whirring from above him.  The Bounty Tracker’s left eye deployed a lens with crosshairs and its telescopic chamber whirred as it retreated back into his eye socket. The triple barreled shotgun appeared in Bjorn’s vision, it’s holes as dark as the void of space. “Be seeing you,” the Bounty Tracker smiled like a shark. 

Delta Green After Action Report. Midnight Sun

     I had the opportunity to jump into an M-EPIC game titled Midnight Sun written by Will Roy and run by TopHat, with a fellow M-EPIC agent. I chose the pregen, Canadian Federal Agent Gerard Prunier, because he had a high Bureaucracy score.  The other player was Officer Katie MacLey who was trained as a CSIS Intelligence Officer. We were called in to investigate a missing persons case in the frozen tundra. A team of six mineral prospectors were staking claims in northern Canada, and the American member of the group was claimed to be “fine” by the prospectors but there was neither hide nor hair of him, thus he was the missing person.  Some perusal of the paperwork of said prospectors indicated that they started forging another man’s signature halfway through their land claiming expedition.  To us, that indicated there may be a second missing person so we decided time was of the essence.  

After swooping in on two of the expedition who were gathering supplies, and using hard tactics to interrogate them, we realized three points. First, the leader of the expedition and his right-hand man were staying inside the ruins of a paddleboat steamer in the middle of an icy lake in the frozen tundra. Secondly, likely the whole group had slain the missing American, but as for the missing second man, they were scared out of their wits when confronted with that question. Third, they were very concerned about keeping the boiler in the ship fed with firewood. Gerard Prunier lost a point of sanity and marked a point of helplessness as he regretted using his lawyer-speak misdirection to “promise” one of the suspects immunity and then turned him in to the Mounties. 

In part because Gerard was briefed on the unnatural and in part because I thought lack of fire could be used as a bargaining chip to convince the two members of the prospecting team in the frozen north to surrender, Gerard prepared to take a fire extinguisher. Also, because Gerard wanted to blow up the boiler, if necessary, a grenade was requisitioned. However, Gerard was given a flash-bang instead of a frag grenade. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Gerard took it.  

Katie suggested and convinced M-EPIC to drop us around terrain cover with a helicopter, near the wrecked ship that served as a base for the remaining prospectors.  Katie took care of requisitioning the firearms so Gerard was given a Lee Enfield rifle with a very nice scope and Katie was sporting a shotgun.  Katie, ever the tactician, recommended a frontal assault with the helicopter and as the bird swooped in on the boat, Gerard was shot rather severely with a rifle from one of the prospectors defending the boat.  Thanks to the armored vest he was bloody but still operational.  

Jumping out of the copter into a nicely convenient snowdrift, Katie and Gerard gathered their faculties and began shooting the prospector with the rifle.  Wounded and behind cover, the rifle prospector went down as the leader of the prospectors began to emerge from a stairwell that was at an angle, because the entire boat was at an angle.  Thanking M-EPIC’s requisition system, Gerard threw the flash-bang into the open stairwell and stunned the leader for a turn, buying enough time for Katie and Gerard to handcuff both prospectors and relieve them of their weapons. 

Before interrogations began in earnest, there were sounds like pounding from deeper within the ship.  Thinking of the prospector’s fear of the boiler and desire to constantly keep it fed, Katie and Gerard made their way into the ship’s boiler room.  Katie put her ear to the side of the boiler. It spoke. 

Terrified of the voice’s promise of riches beneath the land if we just kept it warm, Katie and Gerard opened the boiler a crack and flooded it with the contents of the fire extinguisher. Then things happened very fast. A Thing came out of the boiler, discorporate because of the extinguisher’s blast and then reformed into something humanoid made out of ash.  Expletives were uttered and the M-EPIC duo tried to close the boiler. Unfortunately, they only caught the ash-creature around the torso with the doors.  Katie tried to shoot it while Gerard attempted to bring the fire extinguisher down on its head. Both failures lead to the ash-creature screaming and lunging for Katie, catching her in a wicked and fatal embrace.  Katie’s last words were “Run and scuttle the ship” as the creature burned Katie into ash and then retreated into the warmth of the boiler.  

Terrified and desperate, Gerard ran out of the boiler room and looked for method to sink the ship and bury it into the frozen ice and water below, when a shout from the top of the deck reached him.   It was a strange native man that the prospectors in handcuffs looked none to happy to see. Shaken with exposure to the unnatural, Gerard had a very brief very pointed conversation where the man said he could get rid of the monster, but there would be a cost, “Just not for you.” Grim at the loss of his partner, Gerard agreed and led the two handcuffed prospectors by gunpoint down off the ship while the native man began to build a pyre. 

Nightfall arrived.  An aurora borealis covered the sky as the native gentleman began beating on a drum and singing in a language Gerard did not recognize.  Belatedly Gerard realized that the northern lights should not be present at his location when the shaman or whomever he was approached the two prisoners with a bone knife unsheathed.  Frozen in absolute horror Gerard could not even make a sound as the man opened up the necks of both prospectors with his knife, chanting all the while.  Then it happened. Twin aurora borealises erupted from the blood of the human sacrifices.  Gerard could see the ash-thing from ship’s boiler standing straight up against the night sky, confused as the beautiful auroras on the ground swirled around him like dolphins hunting a particularly tasty fish.  The ash-thing screamed but screams turned into echoes as the creature was enveloped into light and swirled up into the air, rising higher and higher until it turned into a far away blood red stain on the aurora borealis in the heavens. 

Months later the nightmares and inability to tell between dreams and reality had mostly subsided for Gerard.  His therapist was an old Mounty. He said Gerard had done good out there when the Earth touched the Heavens and spirits moved across the frozen north.  He thought of Katie sometimes, but more often than not he thought about the next phone call he would receive from M-EPIC.