Zone Rouge - Scenario 2: Edge of Darkness!

My Call of Cthulhu group is moving along! They are the "Vienna Club", so-named to hint at their affiliation with the world of covert intelligence, where the V in Vienna stands for Section V of the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.

The Orient Express waits for them down the line, but right now they're playing through "Zone Rouge," a sort of prelude mini-campaign I've assembled, set in France between 1920 and 1922. The four scenarios in this prelude are:

1. Dead Light: the Voie Sacree, a few miles south of Verdun, France - November, 1920
2. Edge of Darkness: Verdun, France and countryside - November, 1920
3. Dead Man Stomp: Paris, France - August, 1922
4. The Auction (heavily modified!) - January, 1923, leading directly in to the first scenario of Horror on the Orient Express

In this post I'll go through the process of adapting Edge of Darkness to fit the "Zone Rouge" setting. "Edge of Darkness" is available in the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Starter Set, but much of the material in this blog are things I've created for the purpose. If you're interested in any of the materials or using this prelude setting in your own game, leave me a comment! 

Adapting Edge of Darkness

"'Cause out on the edge of darkness,

There rides a Peace Train horrible Mythos monster

Oh Peace Train Mythos Monster take this farmhouse, 

Come take my sanity again" - Cat Stevens, "Peace Train," loosely paraphrased 

Edge of Darkness is the scenario the Vienna Club thought they were heading for when the Dead Light rudely intercepted them during a gnarly late-Autumn storm on the road outside Verdun. However, the night is done, the storm has passed, and the weary and battered Investigators stumble at last into war-blasted Verdun (which was Arkham in the original scenario).

Gathering and Motivating the Investigators

In the original scenario, the Investigators are all somehow friends of one Rupert Merriweather, an aged and now dying patient at St. Mary's teaching hospital in Arkham. He asks them to meet him, and his time is presumably short. 

For my game, I wanted to spice things up a little bit, as well as connect Merriweather to the larger campaign. By making him more of a pathetic, slightly contemptible character, I could use him as a sort of cautionary tale, highlighting some of the themes and dangers confronting our group as they walk a difficult path: going deeper into Intelligence work, and deeper into the Mythos.

Before starting this Scenario, one of the Investigators received a file from "Q", or Hugh "Quex" Sinclair, the head of their division in British SIS. This file contained a dossier on the over-arching villain of the mini-campaign, one Rudolf von Sebottendorf, but it also contained a good deal of information about our version of Rupert Merriweather. 

To save you having to read the whole dossier, highlights of Zone Rouge's Merriweather are:

• An informer for SIS, but also in pay of multiple intelligence services,
• Involvement with Marion Alard (Marion Allen in original scenario) is both political and occult in nature, and is supported by von Sebottendorf under the alias "Erwin Torre"
• Gassed in ’16 at Verdun; he is dying of something related to this.
• Denied a pension by the Army, he was desperate for money and sold himself out to multiple Intelligence services.

Realizing he's dying, and wanting to atone for his various sins (including the summoning of the Lurker in the Attic at the farmhouse), he sent a telegram to "Q" begging forgiveness, and arrangements were made for the Investigators to come meet him.

And so Q's special instructions to the Investigators give them their hook, and the crux of their mission: 

I made a few other cosmetic changes as well. Because I want Merriweather's story tied up in the war, I made him much younger - about 40 years old. Consequently his poor wife Agnes is now about 35, and his obnoxious shit of a son Bertrand is 17 (nearly 18, he insists!). His adventures with Marion Alard in the farmhouse now were not 40 years ago, but only 3 - the events of the summoning took place in 1917. 

I don't think this hurts the integrity of the setting much, and it makes it even more clear how quickly one's life can fall apart in the Investigators' line of work. Because really, Merriweather is not much different than they are - an Intelligence man, an occultist, someone working in the field for forces much too big to comprehend, someone whose value is only what they can provide to their bosses. And those bosses are only too happy to be rid of them when convenient. (This was a theme well explored in the James Bond film Skyfall - I had that film much on my mind when adapting the scenario).

Changes to Other Characters and Hooks (or: Making Shrewd Use of a Sarcophagus)

The other character to receive significant work is Marion Alard (nee Allen), whose life and death takes place entirely off-screen. In the original scenario he was the leader of the "Dark Brotherhood" occult group and drove a lot of that action, only to be murdered in New Orleans when he shot his mouth off to the wrong person. He had some open-ended plot hooks relating to a malevolent Uncle in Boston, and to the golden sarcophagus-shaped box that held the amber bead that held the monster of this scenario. 

In "Zone Rouge," he's doing a good deal of meta-plot work for us. 

• Alard is our first direct connection to "Erwin Torre" (e.g. von Sebottendorf), and has the most knowledge of anyone now living about Torre's mysterious muse and patron, "En Kalif."
• Though the players may never piece it together, and certainly won't for months of real-time play at least, I have set up Alard's murderer to be none other than Mehmet Makryat. 

As we use him here, Alard has been in touch with Erwin Torre for some time, receiving guidance and tutelage towards two goals: Alsatian independence, and personal growth in occult knowledge and power. Alard reached out and identified some collaborators, including two men whose only role in the story is to die, and one Rupert Merriweather, a disaffected British Army vet stranded in the environs of Verdun.

Together, the four of them - calling themselves the "Alsatian Circle" - spent the better part of a year publishing inflammatory political pamphlets such as the one found as a clue in Dead Light. During this time, they also got up to a variety of occult experiments.

However, Alard became dissatisfied with what Torre was willing or able to teach him. He asked to be introduced to Torre's vaunted guide, known only as "En Kalif", but was rebuffed. Not one to take rejection easily, he hopped over to Paris, asked around for the equivalent of the Black Market in occult knowledge... and came up with the Golden Sarcophagus-shaped box, in which he found the Djinn (or the Lurker in the Attic, if you like).

In the scenario as written, this has hieroglyphs on the outside which reference Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep - which is great, as it will provide a little meta-game thrill to my players. It also ties into some more Nyarlathotep shenanigans to come, namely:

• [Dead Man Stomp spoiler!] Being the ultimate source of the horn used to raise the dead, and 
• [Horror on the Orient Express spoiler!] Being the "Skinless One" at the heart of the origin of the Brothers of the Skin cult.

Inside, originally, was some cryptic language that relates to the fabled lost island civilization of Mu. This doesn't really spark any fires for me though, as our game is not likely to intersect with that. So instead, a regular Language: Turkish or hard Occult roll will identify the characters as related to an early Turkic script (say, around 9th or 10th-century, neighborhood of Byzantium) that, in other objects from the period, was used for wardings and curses. However, this particular example is not exactly that script, and cannot be translated by anyone. 

What it does, however, is put this box in or near Byzantium at around the same time that [again, HotOE spoilers... again, just assume this blog is riddled with them] Sedefkar was active with the Simulacrum. Which means this box is on the radar of the Brothers of the Skin. Which means that, by obtaining it, Marion Alard gets on their radar too... and when he happens to show up alone in Paris, distraught and looking for answers, he's an easy mark for Mehmet. 

In the original scenario, Marion Allen dies with injuries similar to those inflicted by the Lurker, and has the Bloody Tongue mark carved on his head - I suppose, as a link to Masks of Nyarlathotep or other scenarios like Crack'd and Crooked Manse. In this version, it's just a clean stab to the heart - the same method later used to kill the 3 look-alike Mehmets in London! Whether the Investigators make that connection later on, who knows? But at least it's there.

If the Investigators are still in possession of the Box when we get to our version of The Auction (and I am sure they will be, in some sense), it could be an attractive target for the Brothers, or at least Mehmet's little band of them, prior to his cleaning house in "Dancers in an Evening Fog". 

Using Real-life Occult Texts in the Game

As a result of his involvement with the Alsatian Circle, Merriweather obtained second-hand a number of volumes of occult lore in French and German, which he asks the Investigators to bring back to Q as a sort of peace offering, or to purchase indulgences for his sins. Each book takes a week in game-time to read, and offers the Investigators the chance to make an Occult skill-check as though they had succeeded in an occult roll. I like this approach more than having these volumes automatically give a certain increase in Occult. I'm honestly not sure where I saw it, but it's not my idea, but it works well because these volumes are kind of just falling into the Investigators' lap. Since they didn't have to work for them, they shouldn't get too high a reward for reading them.

I found these books mostly via Archive.org's collection of public domain books. By searching for keywords like "occult" and "magic," and limiting my search to things published pre-1930 in French or German, it was pretty easy to come up with some good candidates. The handouts I prepared from them are 8-10 pages of various sheets from each book, focusing on pages that have diagrams and interesting language. I don't expect the players to read this at the table (or ever), but if they want to do so in between sessions, so much the better.

These are just some examples of what was available to interested occultists at the time. When they finally meet Q in London prior to The Auction, his study will have a great number of such books in English as well, which they may borrow and read (if they ever get the time!).

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Next Post: I'm not sure yet! Either an After-Action report on Edge of Darkness (we're scheduled to play it this Wednesday!), or a longer piece on the relationship between Intelligence work and the Occult, as embodied in the doomed, pathetic character of Rupert Merriweather.

Want more of what I do? I have a number of best-selling Adventures and GM guides for the 7th Sea system available via DriveThruRPG! They are reasonably popular and shockingly inexpensive, so check them out!

I'll soon be working on writing my first-ever CoC scenario for publication, giving it the same "behind-the-scenes development" treatment you've seen so far - so watch this space for future posts on that topic!

After-Action Report #1: "Dead Light"

In which I take a break from world-building and campaign construction to talk about my experience actually running the blasted thing...

It occurs to me that in my first 6 posts on this blog, I haven't given any kind of CV for myself. I just started typing! By way of context, then, let me say this: 

• I am a fairly new GM in general. Across several systems, I've probably GM'd 30 sessions in the last 10 years. (I took a long break from the hobby). 
• I am new to Call of Cthulhu 7th ed. I played 5th edition maybe 8 or 9 years ago, and ran a few sessions of Cthulhu Invictus during that time. 
• I am much more comfortable as a writer than as a "live" GM. Storytelling via written materials comes pretty naturally to me. I've written 3 best-selling Adventures for the 7th Sea system (and a bunch of other supplemental materials for that setting, 5 best-sellers in all - check them out here, if you like!).
• I've also created a bunch of handouts and supplementary materials, as you've seen in the earlier posts on this blog.

So one thing I want to do on this blog is document my attempts to become a better "live GM," working on my in-the-moment skills to supplement the preparation/story planning work I already do.

One thing that I've learned recently is that when I run a scenario that I've written, I do pretty well. When I run one written by someone else, I sometimes struggle to keep things moving smoothly. 

I think this is a function, primarily, of organizing the information. The truth is, I find that most pre-written scenarios don't play that well for meat the table, as written. Most are written in long prose, with occasional bolding of key concepts. What works a little better for me is more of an outline, where I can get key information about locations, NPCs and monsters at-a-glance without hunting through paragraphs. 

All of that, I think, was in evidence at my first CoC 7th ed. session, which I ran last night. I introduced the Investigators of the Vienna Club to their first scenario, "Dead Light." I think I did a pretty good job setting up the overall setting, and embodying the NPCs with believable characteristics and motivations. 

Where I think I could have done a little better was: 

• Describing details of the scene. Improving in this will help with immersion, and will help the players figure out where their Investigators are in relation to everything else, since I don't really use minis or battle maps very much. Some things I could have done specifically here: 
• Describe the details of each room and building the Investigators walked into. More sense-descriptions are good, as would be naming more "things" in each place, even if they aren't plot-relevant. 
• Describe distances and relative position better: how far away is the Dead Light? How fast does it move? How close is the drunken bar patron to them? How big is the house?
• Be willing to threaten the Investigators. I have a tendency to back off a threat when it might really harm the Investigators, partly I think because I want to see them make it through to the end of the story. I need to be willing to step up potential harm in a believable way. In the Dead Light scenario, I could have done things like: 
• Used an actual Chase sequence when the Dead Light pursued them out of the house towards the diner. 7th ed. has a pretty good, if somewhat complicated, mechanic for this, but I am leery of trying it out until I'm more comfortable with basic mechanics. 
• Called for 1 or 2 more Hard rolls for Drive Auto in the storm, to force them to get out of the car when they knew what was out there. 

The Session also ended pretty quickly, about 2 and a half hours. I'm not sure that was a problem - the Investigators figured out pretty quickly that electricity is a weakness of the Dead Light, and one of them was an Electrical Engineer, so they came up with a workable plan pretty quickly. 

They didn't seem to want to get too involved with the NPCs' interpersonal dramas, instead being focused on getting Emilia (the Living Plot Hook!) to safety and getting back on the road to Verdun. If I were running it again, I would have set up a much more tense tableau when they got back to the diner. Marie would have pulled a gun and be aiming it at Jacques, with her wanting to go out in the storm and him both being protective of her and ashamed that she was willing to go out when he wasn't. With the Dead Light in pursuit behind them and a powder keg inside the "safety" of the building, this would have been an awesome climax. Oh well. Next time!

Stats from this session: 

• Investigators killed: 0 (in fact, no wounds! I need to try harder ;-) )
• Investigators insane: 1! Poor Mr. Caine the Egyptologist was given a nasty shock by the sight of the half-charred corpse of Claude. He later volunteered to read the Doctor's Journal, and the disturbing content there pushed him over the edge into a temporary bout of paranoia. 
• Plot hooks for future payoffs planted: 2! The medal went over well, but the propaganda pamphlet (which is the first reference to "En Kalif") went mostly ignored. 
• Fun had: By all!

'Til next time!



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Want more of what I do? I have a number of best-selling Adventures and GM guides for the 7th Sea system available via DriveThruRPG! They are reasonably popular and shockingly inexpensive, so check them out!

I'll soon be working on writing my first-ever CoC scenario for publication, giving it the same "behind-the-scenes development" treatment you've seen so far - so watch this space for future posts on that topic!