- Dead Light: the Voie Sacree, a few miles south of Verdun, France - November, 1920
- Edge of Darkness: Verdun, France and countryside - November, 1920
- Dead Man Stomp: Paris, France - August, 1922
- The Auction (heavily modified!) - January, 1923, leading directly in to the first scenario of Horror on the Orient Express
In this spoiler-heavy post (in fact, all posts from here on out are likely to be absolutely stuffed with spoilers, so BEWARE!), I'll talk about the adaptations I made to Dead Light in order to bring it into the time, place, and themes that make up the "Zone Rouge" prelude.
Adapting Dead Light
“Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again and looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had gone to business in the peaceful days before August 1914. But they had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They were subject to sudden moods, and queer tempers, fits of profound depression alternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many were easily moved to passion where they lost control of themselves, many were bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening” - Philip Gibbs, war correspondent, on veterans of the Great War.
I chose Dead Light to be the opening scenario of the "Zone Rouge" mini-campaign. It has a lot to recommend it for this role:
The Investigators will encounter both of these phenomena over the next few scenarios.
- It's self-contained in time and place, a chance encounter on a rural road, BUT
- It has a number of elements that can be teased out and connected with broader themes and a bigger campaign.
- It is not very strongly connected to any given setting. The original scenario was written to take place just north of Arkham, but there's no strong sense of New England here.
- It's a fairly straightforward scenario to run. 3 locations, a handful of NPCs, and one monster to keep track of - that's it.
- It's not The Haunting, which almost everyone with any CoC experience has played.
Changes to Time and Place
The first change I made was to set it in November of 1920, on the road just outside Verdun, France. I spent some time looking for period-appropriate maps, and ultimately decided this scenario takes place more or less here - you may have to zoom, and then squint:
The road that it's on there is the "Voie Sacree." During the Great War, the town of Verdun was the "high water mark" of German incursion into that part of France. The Kaiser's army got just to the outskirts of the city, and then stalled out for 9 horrible months in 1916 (the Battle of Verdun), until things heated up again during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918 that lasted right up until the Armistice of November 11th.
The Voie Sacree was a small road that became the lifeline to Verdun, allowing files of trucks to pass up to and back from the city, bringing supplies and fresh troops, and evacuating casualties. To this day, it's marked as route D1916 in honor of the year of the battle.
The "A4" that's there now was built in the 1970s, but I'm assuming there was some kind of east-west route from the general direction of Paris. That's not really important to the scenario anyway.
The time - November 1920 - puts us almost 2 years to the day after the signing of the Armistice. That means the scars of the war are very fresh, and there's a lot of upheaval in French society. Things like relatively high unemployment, veterans having difficulties re-integrating into society (see the quote above), and an increase in political agitation both from the left-wing (anarchism, socialism) and right-wing (nationalism, fascism). All of those things will be represented by NPCs and descriptions in this scenario.
And physically, the area still bears many scars from the war. One thing that we in the modern era fail to appreciate is just how BIG a crater is left behind when a WWI-era shell explodes. To paraphrase Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast: during the war, those shell craters were often filled with mud, water, and toxic oils from gas attacks - and they were deep enough to drown in if you weren't careful.
In the immediate post-war years, the Zone Rouge - the area around Verdun and stretching northwest, that had seen some of the heaviest fighting in the War - was also home to something called the "iron harvest." Farmers and other homeowners in this area became accustomed to finding unexploded ordnance and spent shell casings on their land. When they found something, they'd collect it and leave it at the roadside for a government agent to pick up. Today, we put out recycling - in the Zone Rouge, they put out bullets and live artillery shells.
And physically, the area still bears many scars from the war. One thing that we in the modern era fail to appreciate is just how BIG a crater is left behind when a WWI-era shell explodes. To paraphrase Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast: during the war, those shell craters were often filled with mud, water, and toxic oils from gas attacks - and they were deep enough to drown in if you weren't careful.
In the immediate post-war years, the Zone Rouge - the area around Verdun and stretching northwest, that had seen some of the heaviest fighting in the War - was also home to something called the "iron harvest." Farmers and other homeowners in this area became accustomed to finding unexploded ordnance and spent shell casings on their land. When they found something, they'd collect it and leave it at the roadside for a government agent to pick up. Today, we put out recycling - in the Zone Rouge, they put out bullets and live artillery shells.
The Investigators will encounter both of these phenomena over the next few scenarios.
Changes to NPCs and Motivations
The scenario as written is kind of a "bottle episode" compared to the standard Call of Cthulhu adventure. There are a fairly limited number of PCs and locations available to interact with, and the setup is such that it's not really possible for the Investigators to go elsewhere. I tweaked them in the following way:
Doctor Godfrey Webb, owner of the Green Apple Cottage, inherited the "Dead Light" and used it to "take care of" infants that were born wrong (whether through bastardy or birth defects).
The journal is alluded to in the scenario but not provided as a handout. I made one that suits the purpose, though others have done nicer jobs than I with this. The purpose of the journal is to fill in the backstory, and also to give a means of using the Dead Light (here called the "Angel of Mercy") on purpose.
The second page (not shown here) is a list of dates from the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, initials, and abbreviations for medical conditions: "cranial injury," "muteness," "fugue," etc. An IDEA roll will reveal these were victims of the angel.
2. Silentium Post Clamores
The title of this pamphlet was originally used for a foundational work of esoteric Rosicrucianism - I feel confident that von Sebottendorf would have been familiar with it. The prop I made is pretty crude - my Photoshop/Gimp skills are minor at best.
A couple of things to note in here:
First, it accentuates the theme of disaffected youth searching for meaning and to recapture the spirit of optimism that the War took from them. This is a feeling that will drive the 1920s globally.
Secondly, it introduces the name "En Kalif." During the Zone Rouge campaign, En Kalif is a barely-relevant figure operating in the background, providing inspiration and funding to von Sebottendorf. He may appear (briefly, hooded, at a distance) during parts of the third scenario, Dead Man's Stomp.
If you have a talent for anagrams and a familiarity with Horror on the Orient Express, you will recognize this figure as none other than the vampire Fenalik, a major driver of HotOE.
At this stage (in my version of the HotOE campaign) he is newly arisen from his long imprisonment in Poissy, but has his wits enough about him to start looking for that which he lost centuries ago. He is using von Sebottendorf to spread political turmoil in France, which will keep local authorities distracted. In the ensuing turbulence, Fenalik hopes to be able to continue his searching unseen by the authorities, and gain access to people and places that in a more orderly time would be beyond his withered grasp. He is not particularly interested in the Investigators themselves here, as they have as yet no connection to what he seeks, and his plans are all set in motion before they interfere.
Fenalik will be a minor, distant part of Zone Rouge - but there may come a day when the Investigators realize their implacable vampire enemy has interacted with them before. And I, as a Keeper, will enjoy that moment immensely.
3. Amelie's Medallion
In the scenario, Emilia Webb has a pendant or medal, with some untranslateable Aklo Script on the back. It has no bearing on the scenario, but is meant to be a link to other plots if the Keeper wishes it. I do wish it! And so, in this case, it's one of a set of medals given to a particular company of troops during the war, a joint American-French group. One member ended up as an unfortunate patient of Dr. Veniard. Another soldier mailed his medal home to his kid brother before he vanished into the mists of war... and that kid brother is one of our Investigators.
I am hoping to sow that particular seed as something that will eventually pay off in the "Dreamlands Express" segment of Horror on the Orient Express, though only if the Investigator in question survives that long!
4. Prop: The Dead Light's box!
The Dead Light is kept in a particular metal box by the Doctor, and it's described as being sealed with a "strange-smelling wax." I bought a suitable small (~3-inch) box from Amazon, applied some sealing wax (one of my wife's hobbies!), et voila! Le box! Whichever Investigator comes closest to madness or death during the play through will get to take her home.
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Next post: Edge of Darkness, and the "Alsatian Circle," a brotherhood of middle-aged esotericists that happens to include one Rupert Merriweather, who is dying and who is feeling very, very sorry for what he's done.
Doctor Godfrey Webb, owner of the Green Apple Cottage, inherited the "Dead Light" and used it to "take care of" infants that were born wrong (whether through bastardy or birth defects).
- becomes Doctor Guillaume Veniard, owner of the Pomme Verte cottage. He inherited something his father called "l'ange de la misericorde," the Angel of Mercy. He used it in the War to bring "mercy" to soldiers diagnosed with various forms of shell-shock; if they lived, the French Army and government would have had to provide for their ongoing care via pensions. The Army asked him to intervene to save them these costs.
- All of this is revealed (more or less) by his journal (a handout I created - see below), and by Amelie's hazy recollections. The Doctor has died minutes before the start of this scenario.
Emilia Webb, granddaughter of the Doctor, key clue-giver to the Investigators
- becomes Amélie Webb; all other facts basically unchanged (except things like changing references to "Boston" to "Paris" and similar.)
Jake Burns, pig farmer, eager brawler
- becomes Jacques Brochard - same profession, but also a likely deserter from his French Army unit early in the war. The circumstances under which he left the fighting are unclear, and he is easily provoked to aggression and anger by talk of the War, or by seeing others lauded for their bravery.
Mary Laker, "conspirator and proto-femme fatale"
- becomes Marie Lacroix, and is the most direct link between this scenario and the broader meta-plot of Zone Rouge.
- In the scenario as written, she is motivated by jealousy of Emilia to get her boyfriend Clem and their associate Billy to rob the old Doctor's place. In this version, she is partly motivated by jealousy, but that jealousy has been weaponized by interactions with von Sebottendorf (in his Erwin Torre guise) who is promoting a blend of anarcho-socialist political philosophy and Eastern occult secrets. Marie is very impressed by this, and she encourages the robbery of Doctor Veniard as a kind of "direct action" wealth redistribution from the wealthy Doctor to the less-fortunate. In this case, the less-fortunate are Marie and her cronies.
- She carries a pamphlet called 'Silentium Post Clamores," which is a handout I created - more on that later.
The other NPCs basically just had name changes to something more appropriate to France/Alsace. Marie's co-conspirator Claude also has a copy of the pamphlet on him, though it is slightly burned by his method of demise.
Handouts and Connections to the Meta-Plot
The original scenario is largely self-contained, and so I more or less preserved that for this version. I did create a few handouts and "feelies," and seed in a couple of things that connect to the Zone Rouge plot, and one thing that plays into one of my Investigators' backstories.
1. Journal du Doctor Veniard
The journal is alluded to in the scenario but not provided as a handout. I made one that suits the purpose, though others have done nicer jobs than I with this. The purpose of the journal is to fill in the backstory, and also to give a means of using the Dead Light (here called the "Angel of Mercy") on purpose.
The second page (not shown here) is a list of dates from the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, initials, and abbreviations for medical conditions: "cranial injury," "muteness," "fugue," etc. An IDEA roll will reveal these were victims of the angel.
2. Silentium Post Clamores
The title of this pamphlet was originally used for a foundational work of esoteric Rosicrucianism - I feel confident that von Sebottendorf would have been familiar with it. The prop I made is pretty crude - my Photoshop/Gimp skills are minor at best.
A couple of things to note in here:
First, it accentuates the theme of disaffected youth searching for meaning and to recapture the spirit of optimism that the War took from them. This is a feeling that will drive the 1920s globally.
Secondly, it introduces the name "En Kalif." During the Zone Rouge campaign, En Kalif is a barely-relevant figure operating in the background, providing inspiration and funding to von Sebottendorf. He may appear (briefly, hooded, at a distance) during parts of the third scenario, Dead Man's Stomp.
If you have a talent for anagrams and a familiarity with Horror on the Orient Express, you will recognize this figure as none other than the vampire Fenalik, a major driver of HotOE.
At this stage (in my version of the HotOE campaign) he is newly arisen from his long imprisonment in Poissy, but has his wits enough about him to start looking for that which he lost centuries ago. He is using von Sebottendorf to spread political turmoil in France, which will keep local authorities distracted. In the ensuing turbulence, Fenalik hopes to be able to continue his searching unseen by the authorities, and gain access to people and places that in a more orderly time would be beyond his withered grasp. He is not particularly interested in the Investigators themselves here, as they have as yet no connection to what he seeks, and his plans are all set in motion before they interfere.
Fenalik will be a minor, distant part of Zone Rouge - but there may come a day when the Investigators realize their implacable vampire enemy has interacted with them before. And I, as a Keeper, will enjoy that moment immensely.
3. Amelie's Medallion
In the scenario, Emilia Webb has a pendant or medal, with some untranslateable Aklo Script on the back. It has no bearing on the scenario, but is meant to be a link to other plots if the Keeper wishes it. I do wish it! And so, in this case, it's one of a set of medals given to a particular company of troops during the war, a joint American-French group. One member ended up as an unfortunate patient of Dr. Veniard. Another soldier mailed his medal home to his kid brother before he vanished into the mists of war... and that kid brother is one of our Investigators.
I am hoping to sow that particular seed as something that will eventually pay off in the "Dreamlands Express" segment of Horror on the Orient Express, though only if the Investigator in question survives that long!
4. Prop: The Dead Light's box!
The Dead Light is kept in a particular metal box by the Doctor, and it's described as being sealed with a "strange-smelling wax." I bought a suitable small (~3-inch) box from Amazon, applied some sealing wax (one of my wife's hobbies!), et voila! Le box! Whichever Investigator comes closest to madness or death during the play through will get to take her home.
-----------------------------------------------------
Next post: Edge of Darkness, and the "Alsatian Circle," a brotherhood of middle-aged esotericists that happens to include one Rupert Merriweather, who is dying and who is feeling very, very sorry for what he's done.
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