Cthulhu Mythos Art: Shadows of the Game

1920s female investigator plays Call of Cthulhu

Pintureiro

1920s female investigator plays Call of Cthulhu by Pintureiro – click full size

Part of a series of images from the shadowy fringes of the Internet.  Visuals that stir my sense for the eerie and macabre.  Or in this case, the fun-filled tongue-in-cheek twist on a classic Mythos concept.

This is a lovely piece of art by the super-talented Pintureiro. One of the foundation stones of the Cthulhu Mythos is the notion that dabbling with it in any way is an invitation to madness. Simple fact. We – humans – do not have the emotional integrity to cope with the Cyclopean shifts in comprehension that can come from exposure to cosmic truths of our – human – position in the teeming universe. Step beyond the Quantisphere into the squirming fury of the Outer Chaos and everything you hold dear, those cornerstones of education and knowledge, just don’t look quite right.  If they fit at all.  It’s all a question of perspective. A concept that tends to break down within the mind-warping heat of Mythos energies. In this image a female investigator is playing the game.  The shadow on the wall conveys the forewarning of what will be the result of this.

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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)
BUY > iBook : from iTunes Store

EDGE { novel } Ethan Carmichael, technical wizard and prolific inventor is close to burn out. Taking time out at a luxury snowboarding resort in New Zealand seems like the perfect opportunity to refresh his mind and spirit. But the mountain is a gateway to something much older than humankind, a malign and alien force that even now is oozing back into our reality, hungry for flesh and fear. On the other side of the world, Halo Santana, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from a corporate R&D lab. Quickly out of his depth, he enters a frantic race to track down the missing components to save his life. Both men find their fates tangled in a deadly web of lies, treachery and a cosmic horror that comes from beyond the stars. David J Rodger delivers relentless narrative pace in a tense action-packed novel.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 18th May ¦ Aigues-Mortes – East to Prudence #1

Heading East on a mission…

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by British Science Fiction & Dark Fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also has two novels set within it: Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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Aigues-Mortes established itself as a Living City with perfect defenses against the Infected. However only wealthy survivors get to live within the walls. Everyone else squabbles in the mud outside the walls – and this is where the Canal Market exists

RESUME 12th March  YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened)
Bela and Winter to return to Aigues-Mortes. They’re now free men. They’ve left their jobs here at the market outside Aigues Mortes. Being back is strange despite it only being a few days since they’ve left.  Bela sees Abu and can’t stand the Somalian little piece of shit so walks away, tells Winter he’ll be back in a month – says he needs to be alone in the wilderness to work out what it was he saw that night at the sanctuary at Fable.

Meanwhile, Abu is harassing the young good-looking Portuguese Alex and his new friend (a slim, swarthy maker of moonshine from Marseilles: Jean-Luc).

Baron Toten Reich arrives on his horse, with a new character in tow: an Irishman called Brendan Black – there’s something not quite right about Brendan’s appearance, the eyes are a little too close together and his facial features are narrow and haunted. Dressed all in black, much like the Baron, but that’s where all similarity ends: Brendan’s clothes are caked in mud, his pale skin is greasy with sweat and grime from days being on the road. He exudes an aura of strangeness and seems to not say much but linger back, observing, everything, very closely.  (He is a low-level Road Mage.)

Toten Reich gives the group instructions to head east, to a small survivor settlement built around the tiny fishing port of Prudence. It’s recently been doing very well with fantastic catches of fish and a small tech industry setting up there funded by some UDP science groups who are interested in aspects of the local area.  Oddly, in the past 2 months, 24 fisherman have been found dead – adrift in their boats a few miles from Prudence. All of them asphyxiated.  Toten Reich has friends in Aiges-Mortes who have business interests in the booming fishing industry there and want to make sure nothing is going to jeopardise it. The characters are to travel east, 100 miles, to Prudence and see if they can find out what’s going on.

Toten Reich agrees to pay the group 60 coppers a day, in total, for up to 2 weeks of time. He wants word back from them in 2 weeks about what is happening, otherwise he will cease payment until word is received (after 2 weeks are up).

The rest of the morning is spent selling what they don’t want to take with them and buying what they need.

By early afternoon they set off.

Several days of travel get them only 60 miles. It’s tough going – and this is whilst following the relatively easy route of the Interlink. It doesn’t help that on 3rd day they are ambushed by 11 bandits – desperate half starving men who barely have clothes on their ragged bodies.  These men run onto the road in two groups wielding club-like-branches. And then… recognition flashes between Winter and the bandit leader.  It’s Marius! The man Winter and Bela forced away from Fable. Enraged, the 11 men surge in to attack the people who caused them so much trouble. It’s a long a bloody fight.  Neither side are well equipped. But eventually Winter gets into the swing of things with his two tomahawk blades and the new guy, Jean-Luc proves to be especially deadly and bloody with an old farm scythe he’s brought along.

Later that day, coming to the end of an exhausting trek and reaching the 60 mile mark, bloodied and bruised, the team find an abandoned utility building tucked away behind some trees, surrounded by chain link fence long since smashed down in places. The building exudes decay but Alex and Jean-Luc see it is massive and may hold some items of interest. They step inside.  Brendan and Winter are uneasy. Only a couple of miles back they had to skirt the edge of a Dead City.

Cries of panic from inside realise their worst fear is true. Alex and Jean-Luc come dashing outside.  Three Infected in pursuit.  he Infected scream their dry rasping dead shrieks and sprint at the characters.  It’s an especially dark, bloody and gruesome fight… hand to hand, with Winter and Jean-Luc desperately pushing back and slashing with blades, doing nothing but hacking chunks of Infected flesh off these undead monsters until eventually causing enough damage to cause the things to collapse, dead.

Winter’s clothes are covered in Infected gore. He has to strip off to dispose of the garments. (Jacket / Trousers).

RESUME
Evening of 17th March YD+10.
<> What Clothes is Winter going to wear?
<> Team need to set up a camp.
<> FOllowing day team have still got another 40 miles to travel just to reach Prudence.

GM NOTES:
Rank rolls required.
All money up to date.
Bela has some raw components and specialised components (written on your notepaper).

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Invitation to join: Tatters of the King – Online RPG – Starting 3rd July

Horror Stalks Back to London 1928

The King in Yellow slithers through time to take on the minds that attempt to deny its dominion over this reality.

The King in Yellow may clasp your oblivion yet – click to take part

When Simon Brake isn’t writing blood-drenched scenarios for Call of Cthulhu (see Roots in “The Things We Leave Behind“, collection), or being spotted as a zombie “extra” in a certain movie, he’s giving up his Wednesday evenings July onwards to run an online RPG session called Tatters of the King.

THIS IS AN INVITATION FOR YOU TO TAKE PART:

Just CLICK HERE or go to Facebook to get involved.

Introduction

This game is aimed at fans of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, Robert W Chambers’ The King In Yellow, or anyone who’d like to role-play a horror campaign starting in 1920s London, and spreading further afield and through the decades that follow.

It takes its name from the Tatters of the King campaign for Call of Cthulhu, but will hopefully develop beyond the confines of the one campaign and the one system. I’m hoping to use a much streamlined set of ‘rules’ that will mean the game places out more like interactive fiction (no dice!), whilst still being under the control of the ‘Keeper’ (the games master or, in this case, Admin).

You’re not stupid, so you’ll probably realise that there are spoilers out there on the internet. You’re welcome to look for them, but I’d rather you didn’t. It’ll take some of the edge off the events that will occur.

The game will hopefully be played, as group sessions, on Wednesday evenings, starting at about 7.30/8.00. Players will read and reply to the same thread, although when split up (or, in the case of the opening session, when the Characters will sit quietly to watch a play and filter it through their own past experiences) they’ll be directed to threads where just the individual Character and the Admin can chat privately.

The first session is likely to be on the 3rd July – although it’ll be mid October in game, at which point the Characters will meet up to go see a play…

ROOTS

Roots is a scenario written by Simon Brake for the RPG, Call of Cthulhu.  I gratefully received a beta version to play test. It led to two epic Saturday sessions with my regular game crew and an extreme mortality / character-ending effect. Also demonstrated again how flexible the Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur universe is to accommodate the storylines’ from other RPG systems.

About Simon Brake

Graphic designer. Writer. Father. Happy go lucky. Trying to get more writing done nowadays, but it’s hard to find the time. Still, the words are trickling out into the world and people are liking what they read. This year’s goal: a novel?

Graphic designery person. There’s more info (and graphic designery stuff) on my MySpace page – www.myspace.com/breakerspace – but to be honest I’ve probably got more up to date stuff here nowadays. MySpace is self advertising. Facebook is for reconnecting with real life people. And Twitter… Twitter is where the real party is.

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Available in paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DOG EAT DOG { novel } Ten years after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen seventy per cent of the population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. The majority of urban spaces have been abandoned to the Infected, creatures that were once human.  Whilst above, the orbital colonies spin within their artificial gravity wells, helpless observers to the shocking events below.  Mikhail Drobná and Carlos Revira.  Two survivors, both hungry for money and power, and fuelled by a desire to carve their names onto this new world.  One provides services of violence and protection for powerful corporate criminals in New York; the other is a renegade intelligence agent forever running from the demons of his past. Strangers, until events conspire to bring them together. There’s a complex and deadly political power play in progress. Private armies. Corruption and murder on a massive scale.  Both men seek to seize their opportunity at whatever personal cost.  But a cosmic Evil has infiltrated the remote corners of these brutalised lands and it has its own plans. Will these men work as one to defeat it or will their bitter rivalry bring about their destruction. In the end, who will devour who?  David J Rodger delivers a novel of epic vision, character depth and nerve-popping tension.

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Yellow Dawn – the struggle of post-apocalyptic survival

The hardships lead players to push desperate characters towards considering crime or taking more risks

post-apocalyptic survivor – image credit: unknown

¦ Dialling in from the Sky Bunker ¦

I ran a session of Yellow Dawn (The Age of Hastur) yesterday.

Great game and very different flavour to the high-tech, big action, thunderous magickal power play that’s been running for  the past few years: a previous set of characters who rapidly established a settlement of their own (using rules in the game book for renovating damaged structures) and went on to accumulate a lot of wealth, technology and experience.

All a lot of fun, but it usually meant the characters (and players) were able to side-step many of the issues and hardships of survival. They had a vehicle. They had access to fuel and food and water.  And they had equipment that made life comfortable

This new character group have started dirt poor, starving and stuck in a rut.  No transport.  Low survival skills.  Hemmed in by wilderness, the danger of the Infected and the threat of dying from exposure if they try to get away.

The soft pace of the session really allowed me to build up strong visuals of the area in southern France that I know and love, personally. The medieval crusader fort of Aigues-Mortes, a location I’ve used in the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog and the massive, globe-spanning campaign Shadows of the Quantinex.  It was great to bring it to life in the mind of the players.

But also to indulge in the full background of the new characters; why are they in Aigues-Mortes, what do they want; how will they get it?

I guided them into a simple, small scenario that required them to travel 30 miles to collect goods from a remote settlement. It was a chance to properly use the Wilderness Survival rules (consequences of fatigue and not finding food or water; risk of exposure, dangerous critters and bad weather), and I was very pleased by the result. The characters, not experts, survived, but were uncomfortable, in pain and becoming thirsty.  They players experienced vividly the shock of how “at risk” they were to falling foul of the elements, because of their low skills.  It meant that when they found their destination, the remote settlement, and were treated to hot food and warm beds – there was a tangible sense of “enjoying such simple luxuries”.

 

It’s a good case in point, that keeping the characters poor and hungry for the first few sessions really builds up the tension of survival.

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Their low ability to cope with Wilderness Survival also served to reinforce how trapped the characters are, eking out a hard existence in the grubby market outside Aigues-Mortes. Forced to sleep on the dirty floor of the stall every night, no money for proper accommodation, and actually starving because of not having enough money to pay for proper food (one character suffered a reduction in STR stat over course of 6 weeks due to poor diet)… the players are now discussing desperate measures to try to break the vicious downward spiral. If they stay here, they’ll just waste away, starving, until they grow so weak they can’t do their jobs and then they’ll be tossed out into the mud with nothing.

It really was a bleak experience.

Rather wonderful to have it come to life so vividly. *smiles* Both with narrative, and the hard numbers of the rule systems, showing their lack of funds against the cost of living; and the system generated consequences of not eating enough over time.

You can read the scenario write-up here.

It was also a great chance to use the “map of the land” system, where the GM can fairly quickly generate an expanding route littered with ruins (for scavenging), settlements and other rare oddities. Plus the ever-present danger of encounters with people, wildlife and things that should not walk the Earth at all.

It’s been a great case study of getting back to basics. Seeing how players begin to shift their characters towards crime or high risk strategy’s in order to progress; and this creates more tension, more drama and more opportunity for GMs to weave in further plots for the game.

Just had a text from one of the players who was here yesterday:
“Forgotten how tough it is just to survive. I wonder how the others will fare.”

Result.  And they’ve not even encountered the Cthulhu Mythos yet.

We typically play one Saturday every three weeks. Bookmark this link to read further updates on the character’s exploits to survive – or delve back into the bigger action plots the players went through with previous characters.

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YD 2.5 – from LULU

Paperback : from LULU ¦ Hardback (with black cover): from LULU

Primary Rulebook (2.5) This book is crammed with everything you will need to create characters and run scenarios. [] Features narrative examples of key themes • The Influence of Hastur • Medical theories on the Infection • Zombie surges • Dead Cities • Wilderness survival • Comprehensive scavenging system and how to repair or build things with resources • Backgrounds and motivations of government bodies and corporations • Computer hacking and drug abuse • High-tech immortality options • Non-human characters • Enhancements through cyberware and bioware • Weaponry, equipment and armour • Complete character generation and development system • Complex political, corporate and quasi-religious tensions • Schools of Elemental Magick, occultism, demonology, and the alien horrors of the Outer Chaos – the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 9th March ¦ Aigues-Mortes and the Star of Eternal Life #1

A New Character Group

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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BEGIN 15th Feb YD +10 (ten years after Yellow Dawn happened).

This is a brand new character group for the players.

Storm Winter: a Native American Indian who had been travelling through Europe ten years earlier when the shit hit the fan with Yellow Dawn.  With an innate “body-builder” physique, he’s survived by providing protection and security to people who have needed his help.  Over the decade he’s drifted south, seeking warmer climes, hating the frozen and prolonged winters that savage survivors.  Finding himself in coastal region in the South of France, he migrated to the former medieval crusader fort of Aigues-Mortes.

Bela: once a Hungarian engineer in the UTOC Civil Defence Force, he fell sick like the majority of his platoon when the 1st pathogen struck. But unlike the 70% who died horribly over the next few days, he went into a coma and then woke up… changed.  The military personnel who survived Yellow Dawn had Bela locked up and seemed ready to perform some brutal experimentation on him, in order to try to understand what the heck was happening to the global population of the planet.  Several of his former battle colleagues got him out: recognising the human that was inside of the “monster” being caged in the penal block.  Since then Bela has survived lynch mobs and all the terrors of waking up to be no longer quite human.  Hounded, harassed and hated, his life followed the path of many Changed – suffering the abusive terminology and prejudice reserved for what survivors were calling ORCS.  Drifting south, he made his way to Aigues-Mortes and got stuck there.

Aigues-Mortes, fortified survivor settlement in South of France

Canal Gate Market is situation bottom left, outside the high walled enclosure of the settlement, squeezed in between the canals and amongst the trees (long since chopped down for firewood by early survivors). It’s a landscape of mud and filth and desperate people.

Aigues-Mortes

Within the high medieval walls, survivors are wealthy, successful, political creatures that do whatever they can to ensure their lives remain comfortable and well-supplied with the resources they need.

Winter and Bela do not have such a privileged existence. They live outside the fortified walls.  Always at the risk of any Infected that might stumble into the area – although 10 years after the Infection first showed itself in the screaming, shrieking, biting, flesh-tearing victims that sprinted through populated areas… Aigues-Mortes has done what it can to clear as much of the risk from the surrounding land as it can. There is no Dead Zone. Just the odd cluster of scavenged buildings and lots and lots of wildly growing foliage.

Both Bela and Winter have survived outside the walls for several years.  Bela works for Anitole, a weaponsmith and blacksmith, at the Canal Gate Market. Winter works for Gaiyan, a former boxer, now a greasy, filthy, overweight shadow of the man he used to be, who lives and works out of a carbo plastic hut on the edge of the canal, next to the market, providing bodyguards and security for the market and merchants who need such people.  He always has a cold, unlit, saliva drenched stub of a cigar in his flabby mouth.  Winter walks around the Market ensuring the daily influx of desperate survivors who arrive at the area – and get washed back by the armed militia on the gates of Aigues-Mortes – don’t become a nuisance as their desperation turns them to theft and violence.

It is a grim life for both Bela and Winter. They never make enough money to buy proper food and are often starving.  Winter, best friends with Bela, sleeps on the floor of the market stall, huddled next to the warmth of the idling forge.  Bela rarely feels the cold but appreciate the companionship of his friend.  Besides, neither of them could afford to pay for anywhere to stay.

Life is a struggle.

Water is three times normal price due to difficulty of supply; the local area is very salty.

Outside the walls, people don’t give anything away for free.  And the market area is “controlled” by a criminal gang under the rule of Herriot. His Somalian right-hand thug has an acute dislike for Bela – and the other two Changed – two woman who live and work in the scavenged debris heaps.   Both Bela and Winter have discussed killing the Somalian many times because of his sneering, aggressive taunts towards Bela.

One day, Bela is told by his boss that a young “wealthy” couple have come to Aigues-Mortes to sell a large stash of scavenged metal. They don’t have the metal with them… too fearful of travelling with it. But they sell it to the boss for a low price, on the agreement that the boss will have to go and collect it himself.  The boss sends Bela. And talks to Winter’s boss – who agrees to send Winter with Bela.  This means neither Bela or Winter get paid any extra as it is considered part of their job.

They hike 30 miles, part way along the Interlink and then turn off along a badly overgrown horse trail.

Sleeping one night in the ruined shell of an old farmhouse they discover how hard it is to be comfortable; it’s a grim night. The next day, cold and thirsty, they push on to their destination.

They arrive in A_______, a small wealthy settlement of about 40 survivors, and discover a strange funeral taking place. They are mostly welcomed by the residents who are delighted to have strangers to talk to – and new stories to listen to, although Bela and Winter have very little fun stuff to discuss due to their lives being so grim back in Aigues Mortes – so they talk about who they used to be. But this pleases the residents of A_____ no end.

Strange things occur later that night, with the recently buried body seemingly coming back to life to exact revenge on employees who betrayed his final dying wish; the son and daughter of the dead man compete with others to find a missing piece of jewelry, the star of eternal life.  There is the servant, the corrupt lawyer, and a mysterious Egyptian gentleman who arrives in a jeep in the early evening, claiming the Star belongs to him.

It transpires the dead man wasn’t dead at all but had been so convinced he was dying – and would be resurrected – that he went into a comatose state. And then woke up in his own tomb.

Bela and Winter are involved in capturing the lawyer – who murdered the Egyptian and tried to flee with the Star.

The son and daughter are grateful. As is the settlement of A_____.   All the locals give Bela and Winter a little food or something for their return journey. It’s a token gesture but one that means a great deal to both of them because it is at least some small reward for what they have done.  They received nothing but a handshake and some gratitude from Marcus and Claire (the wealthy son and daughter who return to Marseilles).

Ironically, they get to drive back with the jeep (and the lawyer) allowing them to transport the stash of scavenged metal back to Aigues-Mortes quickly and safely.  They also stop at the ruined farmhouse and spend a day and a night there, doing some asset stripping, gathering metal and other raw components that Bela might be able to use later.

Returning to Aigues-Mortes, both Bela and Winter experience an overwhelming despondency. They don’t want to exist like this. The lawyer departs, with the jeep (as agreed, to return to Marseilles to carry out his side of the bargain that led to him not being strung up for killing the Egyptian or trying to steal the Star). And so the daily grind of life in the market starts to sap away their strength. Literally, Bela’s character loses a point of 1 STR due to not being able to afford a proper diet every day.

Ramparts of Aigues-Mortes

Both characters (and the players) experience the hunger of desperation and the craving to break out of the negative cycle. To do something before they waste away and die here.

But they’re also aware of the trap they’re in. Because they don’t have the skills to really survive out beyond Aigues-Mortes. Their bad night in the ruined farm-house made them acutely aware of how unprepared and unskilled they are.  They could leave Aigues-Mortes, and they could conceivably find enough food and water to survive… but they would never generate an income and they would fade into the filthy peasant things that you find on roadsides along the interlink.

They have no money to really go far or get equipment. So they’re faced with the prospect of turning to crime – or finding some kind of lucky break. Or risking a Dead City run.

Interesting days ahead.

RESUME:

6th April YD+10. Aigues-Mortes market. Two new characters (Chris and Tony) should come online at this session. Meanwhile, Winter has spent several weeks waiting for Bela to finish making a crossbow from some of the scavenged resources they found at the ruined farmhouse, but he keeps making mistakes.Time drags by. They are becoming desperate.

Cash: notes written down and up to date.
Raw Components: 21 KG
Specialised Components: 1KG.
{kept in an unsecured location within Anetole’s market stall}

GM NOTES:
All rank rolls done and up to date; including occupation rep rolls for Bela and Winter.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 16th February 2013 ¦ Roots #2 – end of a character group

Roots

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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RESUME 25th SEPT YD+1 (LATE EVENING )

Clint was visited in his jail cell by a local priest; a father Allberry. He took Clint back to the small house attached to the church (closed) and gave him a bed for the night. In his room he finds a curious photo of a lake, taken a sunset, with figures standing between trees – something ceremonial? A map on the wall shows there is a lake a few miles north. Clint was wary but exhaustion took hold and pulled him into sleep (or maybe something else did).

Paul is with Corrine. She makes him food (possibly drugged) but then seems to have a change of heart; throws away the meal before he can take a mouthful and takes him to the Diner.  Meets Stu Woolley and Chris KNight. She leaves him with them. They drink into the night.

Marcus is with his hostess for the night. A woman called Janine who “comes onto him” but then abruptly backs off – as if sensing something familiar about him.  Remember that Marcus has a potent Mythos Taint due to his encounter with Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in Europe (Horror on the Orient Express). She says… “You have the Spirit within you – why are you here? In this settlement?”

Marcus isn’t too certain about her question but he goes with it.  She takes him to the edge of Lake Nemi where the fuck like wild things – biting – punching – shrieking. Exhausted but not finished, she takes him to what looks like a figure of an ancient satyr carved into the truck of an old tree – except the figure appears to be frozen in the act of emerging from the tree. There by the base is a wooden cup filled with a vile stinking fluid  – something that Marcus remembers intimately from his experience in Europe. She offers it to him, “Do you want to know your Spirit?”
He drinks.

27th Sept YD+1
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Josh wakes up in Daphne’s house and is unable to contact any of his team. He spends time in town trying to find them, becoming increasingly worried. Eventually he finds Clint at the church; he finds Paul hungover but rested at the Old Store…. but there is no sign of Marcus.  Later, Clint also vanishes again after going to find Father Allberry. Clint finds himself by an abandoned church at Owl Creek – he rings the bell but it’s daylight and nothing happens. Meanwhile, Josh and Paul have threatened Janine – grabbed her, tied her up, hurt her to make her talk – to learn where Marcus is. By the lake, she says. But Deputy Steel arrives to check up on her and all hell breaks loose. They disarm and tie up the Deputy. Intimidated by Paul – who clutches the deputy’s throat with his ornate brass-like robotic hand; the deputy explains that the town has always been this way. And that Karen, the missing girl, if she is anywhere will be by the tree (this transpires to be the deputy setting the characters up for a fall).  Later, Josh uses his profound occult powers to Possess the deputy and walk back to the sheriff office to recover their guns.  The Sheriff asks him what he’s doing and Josh (as the deputy) manages to talk a way out of the situation.

Josh and Paul escort the deputy out to the edge of the settlement, into the forest; the deputy leads them to the Lake – where they find Marcus, asleep and partially transmutated into wood, but he shifts back to human and wakes when his compatriots call to him.  Around now, Clint also makes his way to the lake having left the abandoned church to find the place he’d seen into the photograph.  Together again, the team make their way with the deputy leading to the Tree.

It’s a dark and foreboding place.

And as the sun concludes its descent towards nightfall – the place comes alive with the things that are normally dormant (sleeping, looking like wooden figures) during daylight.

It is an epic fight for survival.

But Marcus finds the Taint which has infected his psyche and his physical being since the traumatic encounter in Europe, has a profound and mesmerizing influence on him here. He becomes entranced by the tree – and the new fluids now coursing through his veins lead him to suffer an episode of wild, furious abandon.

The things, dozens of them, that come streaming out of the forest like a swarm of humanoid locusts take note of him and their leader stops to challenge this… would be imposter.  Marcus and the leader square off but Marcus loses the Alpha battle – however, he accepts the authority of the leader and so joins THEM.  Turning against his compatriots.

The other characters are firing assault rifles on full-auto. Burning up 9,000 credits of ammunition every 2 second pull of the trigger (emptying magazines).  They slaughter a couple dozen Things, but are eventually overwhelmed by them… grappled, disarmed, manhandled. Josh uses potent magic to blast them with energy bolts, but he too is finally grappled and dragged to the ground – he is stripped naked and finds himself the victim of the ugly lust and unrestrained passions of these monsters.

“An amusing moment with a lightening bolt.”

There is a fresh clash between Marcus and the leader. Marcus kills him with a blow to the skull – and finds himself becoming the new alpha of hundreds of these Things.

Josh, Paul and Clint find themselves chained to The Tree. Two women arrive. A female matriarch and the missing girl. “Choose one”, the matriarch says to the girl. Clint is chosen. Held down by the Things, he is stripped naked and mounted by the girl. She then cuts his throat at the final moment of climax.  Paul and Josh scream in horror – helpless and agonised by what they’re witnessing. They also lose a dramatic amount of Anxiety points. Clint’s corpse is torn apart by the bare clawed hands of the Things and eaten.

THe night passes and they are ignored. When daylight comes, the Things return to the state of being wood. Marcus is nowhere to be found.  The bloodied, shredded remains of Clint lie nearby… buzzing with flies.

As a fresh night approaches, Josh recalls a difficult occult operation  that he knows might free him. It enables him to flicker between different planes of reality. He tries it and remarkably succeeds – and then endures a terrible struggle to escape the “gravitational” pull of the monstrous entity that occupies the heart of the tree he is chained to. It pulls him IN, so that as the flicker operation ends he finds himself entombed within the solid core of the trunk. He would have died instantly, if it wasn’t for the properties given to him by the Sedefkar Simulacrum.

He tries again and after a mighty battle of wills, escapes. He frees Paul and they flicker, together, back to a safe place. But the forest starts to come alive with the Things which are in pursuit now.

Josh opens a portal. Back to Little Boston, Paul screams. But  Josh takes them back to the Sheriffs office. He wants his stuff. Stepping through, Paul and Josh enter a struggle with the deputy and then the sherif. Eventually overpowering them.

Josh steps into the sherif’s back office where the woman lies bleeding, but alive; and he skins her… taking her flesh.  He then does the same with the deputy. It is hard for Paul to keep his nerve.

But all this delay allows the THings to make a rare appearance in town, as the sun sets. And they crash through the doors, swarming into the office.  It all happens again. Paul and Josh are about to be overpowered. But then… like a miracle. A blaze of golden light fills the street. Outside – an incredibly ornate brass-like version of a steam train has materialised in the road with a figure stepping down, an outline of a human but filled with the fire of the sun, swirling clouds of plasma and energy within his outline… he points at Paul, and Paul comes.  Whilst the THings cower and harden back to wood in the light.  Josh tries to follow but the figure (an Elder God) refuses him to approach: you are accursed.

Paul vanishes with the God and the train.

Josh is surrounded by the swarms of wooden horrors now coming back to life. He flickers away to a safe distance, then makes another portal and returns to Little Boston.

Paul is not there.

Marcus has vanished too – no doubt living a life of indulgent passions of eating, fucking, hunting and killing in the forests around Gerlock.

Clint is remembered with sad fondness.

!!! NO RESUME !!!
This scenario marks the end of the Little Boston group for the foreseeable future. The group is now parked on ice. A fresh set of characters are going to be created – dirt poor and with back to square one with skills and abilities. Probably based outside the survivor settlement of Aigues-Mortes, a medieval crusader fort on the coast of the South of France (as featured in the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog.

<>Josh is planning on heading back into Space – taking the evil Sedekfar statue with him.
<>Paul will be experiencing adventures with Elder Gods – but is likely to reappear at Little Boston, in the train, as if no time has elapsed whatsoever.
<> Marcus is happy with his fate.

About ROOTS

Roots is a scenario written by Simon Brake for the RPG, Call of Cthulhu.  I gratefully received a beta version to play test.  Also demonstrating again how flexible the Yellow Dawn universe is to accommodate the storylines’ from other RPG systems.  Simon Brake will be making Roots commercially available later in 2013.

About Simon Brake

Graphic designer. Writer. Father. Happy go lucky. Trying to get more writing done nowadays, but it’s hard to find the time. Still, the words are trickling out into the world and people are liking what they read. This year’s goal: a novel?

Graphic designery person. There’s more info (and graphic designery stuff) on my MySpace page – www.myspace.com/breakerspace – but to be honest I’ve probably got more up to date stuff here nowadays. MySpace is self advertising. Facebook is for reconnecting with real life people. And Twitter… Twitter is where the real party is.

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Fungi from Yuggoth: 36 strange sonnets by cosmic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft

Containing hidden keys to locked dimensions

Fungi from Yuggoth – art by unknown source (advise and I’ll credit)

First Exposure

I’ve been aware of this piece of work since I first got into H.P.Lovecraft. But that was back in the mid 1980′s and I was a teenager and not appreciative of the subtle magick woven into these words. Back then I wanted pure narrative flow, the creeping, doom-laden, macabre psychological horror of Lovecraft’s short stories and novellas. And the thrills and chills of playing the classic investigative horror role-playing game: The Call of Cthulhu.  And that’s what I got.

Polyphasic Sleep and a New Dawn

Skip to 2007 and I’m working on putting together my own RPG setting – Yellow Dawn: the Age of Hastur -  based on the shared universe of my novels (Cthulhu Mythos horror and cyberpunk science-fiction).  That was an intense year. My dad had recently died and I was in the middle of a 2 year hiatus from employed work – living on savings to focus on writing – so I was throwing myself body mind and soul into this endeavour, keen to finish before my money ran out.

One of the techniques I use to maximise creative output is polyphasic sleep – or what I call my Da Vinci Method. Every 45 minutes I stop work (alarm goes off), then go lie down with a pillow and blanket near my desk and drift off into a light doze.  Another alarm goes off after 15 minutes, making sure I don’t actually fall into a deep sleep. The trick is to fight through any feeling of nausea or disorientation and get up, make a cup of tea or coffee, and get back to it. 45 minutes on. 15 minutes off.  You can go for most of the day and night doing that, reducing the need for proper sleep for a few days at a time. Eventually it catches up with you and you crash for a bit, but overall you’re much more productive.

I have a stack of audio recordings of H.P.Lovecraft stories that I often put on to play in the background whilst I doze off.  One of these was a fantastic array of broken narrative pieces – over an hour long with eerie and haunting musical sounds punctuating the narrator.  And because I was listening to it 15 minutes at a time, rarely in sequence, the whole thing became a dizzying jumble of brilliant morsels of Lovecraftian lore, concepts and raw Mythos atmosphere.  It was only when I stopped to check – what am I actually listening to? – that I discovered it was The Fungi from Yuggoth.  Written by H.P.Lovecraft in late 1929.

Keys & Windows

Some people call “The Fungi from Yuggoth” a sequence of poems – which is quite right, considering they’re numbered as such. But when you listen  to the work (or simply read it), you experience the sleight of hand that Lovecraft employs; leaving you slipping through gaps of narrative blocks, non-linear structures that take you outside of the “Gutenberg Galaxy” – where information can only be processed by following the logical flow – and propelling you instead into the non-Euclidian universe – where shape and matter have no sense – that Lovecraft always did so well to reveal.

So although structured for print, each sonnet is in itself a disparate self-contained gem that when peered into provides overlapping, and at times contradictory glimpses of the universe that Lovecraft is painting.

Yet linked with all the laws of time and space.
A faint, veiled sign of continuities
That outward eyes can never quite descry;
Of locked dimensions harbouring years gone by,
And out of reach except for hidden keys.

Sonnet XXXVI. Continuity – The Fungi from Yuggoth – H.P.Lovecraft

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Lovecraft has crystallised the raw essence of his imagination in these sonnets.  Plunge through them, losing yourself in their sequence or pick them apart, piece by piece to extract the underlying meanings and references – leading you to discover new gates of discovery.

In the first three sonnets: “The Book“; “Pursuit“; and “The Key” – the chief narrator seems to be a person who acquires a book of infernal lore, almost by chance – or by stealth; a book that enables him to access distant and dramatic realms of cosmic wonder – and later of abject anxiety and monstrous horror.  Whether these places and scenes are of “this universe” or are from some parallel dimension beyond time and space is unclear.   But the suggestion is that the book unlocks (or unleashes) a stream of visions – or consensual journeys – upon the man who has stolen the book away.

Much in the same way that the Influence of Hastur (referenced in Yellow Dawn RPG; and short stories House of Heavenly Light; Corrupt Moon; Tainted Moor, all three of which are contained within the anthology of short stories Songs of Spheres) is able to warp, twist, mutate and rapidly change the local reality surrounding an individual who has been “infected” by exposure to… it.

The rest of the sonnets swing and carousel between scenes of brooding horror and looming insanity, as if the narrator has been injected at random into the sensorium of a succession of nameless victims of Mythos mayhem.

And like a bad drug that finally loosens its grip on the conscious mind, with the fragmented narcotic trip in the wane, the chief narrator’s sense of reality begins to return, forever changed – and possibly damaged by the nervous experience.   The sonnet “Expectancy” and those that follow it serve to document the narrator’s estrangement with what was once familiar reality – and normality.

Many of Lovecraft’s “pillar brand” concepts are given genesis and exploration here. The boldly nightmarish tale of Mi-go infestation and manipulation in “The Whisperer in the Darkness”; the Machiavellian mind-games of the Crawling Chaos – Messenger of the Outer Gods – Nyarlathotep.

Audio Renditions

The one I’d really love to share – with the wonderful atmospheric musical accompaniment seems really hard to get a hold of.  But here’s a reasonably well-narrated version by CulainRuledByVenus.

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Related Links

• Dark Art: Farmer Seth Atwood, from The Well, in Fungi from Yuggoth by HP Lovecraft
• Reasons to like Lovecraft: Mi-go (Fungi from Yuggoth)

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The Fungi from Yuggoth – Full Version

I. The Book

The place was dark and dusty and half-lost
In tangles of old alleys near the quays,
Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,
And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.
Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,
Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,
Rotting from floor to roof—congeries
Of crumbling elder lore at little cost.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap
Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,
Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep
Some secret, monstrous if one only knew.
Then, looking for some seller old in craft,
I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

II. Pursuit

I held the book beneath my coat, at pains
To hide the thing from sight in such a place;
Hurrying through the ancient harbor lanes
With often-turning head and nervous pace.
Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brick
Peered at me oddly as I hastened by,
And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sick
For a redeeming glimpse of clean blue sky.

No one had seen me take the thing—but still
A blank laugh echoed in my whirling head,
And I could guess what nighted worlds of ill
Lurked in that volume I had coveted.
The way grew strange—the walls alike and madding—
And far behind me, unseen feet were padding.

Dark Art: porthole with giant tentacle – fabulous #Cthulhu #Mythos horror ornamentation for any room

From ArtAkimbo

Dark Art porthole with giant tentacle by ArtAkimbo – click full size

Part of a series of images from the shadowy fringes of the Internet.  Visuals that stir my sense for the eerie and macabre.

This is a great piece of visual horror ornamentation, perfect for your writing / gaming den – or more utilitarian areas of your abode if you can get away with it (if the partner shares your macabre taste in decor).

This is a simple but really well put together ensemble that should make a bold (and chilling) impression and anybody who understands the accursed place-name: R’lyeh

Or knows the meaning of the dreaded phrase:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.

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The construction is as follows:
A wooden support structure is built. To this, styrofoam is added and carved into the basic tentacle shape. It is then closely covered in aluminum wire mesh.
In the meantime, newsprint is boiled, then whipped into a mush. The mush is allowed to dry over a period of several days, then it is ground into a fine powder. This is combined with sawdust, glue, starch, linseed oil and a bit of bleach and applied to the mesh by it pushing into the mesh to form a very solid base coat. After this coat dries, it is refined with rasps, and a finer mixture of pulped tissue paper,glue and gypsum is applied and allowed to dry. This makes a very nice finish coat. After it dries, the whole piece is sanded and further refined. Each sucker is built in a 3 stage process over a period of several days.
Once the piece is thoroughly dry, it is painted in many thin layers with an airbrush. The depth of the color is further enhanced by a finish coating of highly glossy shellac.
The end product is both lightweight and quite durable.

The porthole is made of plywood and medium density fiberboard, coated with copper paint and chemically patinated to it’s lovely blue green hue.
It can also be made in a rusted iron, a blackened iron or a weathered brass finish.

Vital Stats:

The porthole is 14 3/4″(38cm) in diameter.
The tentacle reaches approximately 36″(79cm) into the room.

Purchasing:

Made-to-order versions available from artist, visit the ArtAkimbo website or Etsy for details.

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Find tentacles and other horrors that stalk the darkness between the stars…

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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)
BUY > iBook : from iTunes Store

EDGE { novel } In the near future, a prolific inventor is close to burn out. Desperate for a break he grabs an opportunity to go snowboarding in New Zealand, thinking it will refresh his mind and spirit. But a malign and alien force is oozing back into our reality, older than humankind and growing strong as it emerges after centuries of absence. Zen Dow snowboarding and ski resort, perched in the foothills of the volcanic mountain Ruapehu, is about to experience mind-shredding consequences as one of the Great Old Ones returns. On the other side of the world, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from the corporate R&D labs. Quickly out of his depth, it becomes a race to track down the missing components before competing corporate agents kill him. David J Rodger’s trademark relentless narrative pace is here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that blends corporate espionage, with a creeping, spine-chilling horror.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 15th December 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Roots #1

Roots

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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RESUME 25th SEPT YD+1
At New Boston, about to set off to the small settlement of Chambrig on request of Captain Kennedy who has close friends whose daughter has “run away” – he’s too busy with training new police recruits in New Boston.  Meanwhile, Josh is abruptly suffering terrible pains in his joints, his skin is starting to discolour and ugly lesions are rapidly forming on his flesh. Any initial attempts to perform a ritual of cleansing fail. And then he gets a radio message from Dr Zach to say that a very disturbing statue has appeared on the roof of the main building in Little Boston – he recognises it as the item the team discussed on their return from Horror on the Orient Express and has made sure nobody touches it – but, can Josh come back and URGENTLY remove it as it is causing a bad vibe at the settlement.

• Team depart New Boston and return little Boston.
• Josh, Marcus, Paul and Clint head up to roof and find Sedefkar Simulacrum there. Clint finds himself entranced by it whilst Paul and Marcus hang back. Josh performs Ritual of Cleansing and suffers fear and terror for an hour after – but the effects of corruption vanish.
• Team head back to New Boston then on to Chambrig – meet parents and young brother sister of Karen.
• Paul gets photo of Karen.
• Josh finds second letter in Karens room (but that’s all).
• Team walk to campsite that night, interview Ali’s parents, then Ali and Max and Steve – discover that Karen didn’t have argument or run away but left according to a plan – heading west, heading towards Gerlock along the eroded road.
• Sleep at campsite – although Paul forced to sleep on his own by a fire pit near woods due to his nocturnal condition.

Monday 26th Sept YD+1

• Team wake up to sound of wood being chopped.
• Try to interview and angry young man with a jeep but he tells them to mind their own business (fuck off) and drives away.
• Team head West on foot – to find angry young man being held up by UDP militia on a road block.
• Team visit gas station and tell Chris and woman there they’re heading to Gerlock looking for missing girl.
• Team finally reach Gerlock around 6pm, both Josh and Clint are suffering aches and pains from a whole day walking (25 miles).
• Town has about 90 residents with a 3:1 female to male ratio.
• Healthy, vibrant looking people. Simple but quality lifestyle – less survivors of Yellow Dawn and more like, they’ve just always been there, getting on with life.
• Encounter Cynthia / Janine on road with young girl and boy.
• Josh, exhausted from walk talks Cynthia up on offer for a place to stay – goes to her house. crashes on sofa whilst she cooks him spicy food; as he eats she tells him how lonely it is living here without a man in the house. Josh gets a bad vibe about eating the food – and doesn’t, just leaves.
• A group of men hang about in centre of town square – watching the characters with muted interest. When characters try to talk to them they slink off, not interested in much conversation (they’re all strong bodied, able looking men; manual workers on the farms etc).
• Clint, Paul, Marcus visit Sheriff, only get to talk to Deputy Steel – he asks them to place weapons in his locker.
• He takes them to see Joy -
• Joy readily admits to sending letters to Karen and is a little bothered that Karen has gone missing, probably whilst on way to see her – but not as bothered as maybe she should be.
• Clint accepts offer to spend night at Joys.
• After a shower he finds his clothes gone – he flees house, climbing through bathroom window wearing just a towel – it’s a little before sunset. He runs across a garden to a woodshed; a few minutes later the neighbours (women) lead Joy to where he’s hiding. Are you OK they ask? Perplexed.  Clint goes back inside with Joy – but then runs away again, into the night. Later he’s picked up by Deputy Steel for being a weirdo. Arrested, he’s locked in cells.
• Josh, Marcus, Paul, meet the old man who runs the general store. He doesn’t seem too bothered about life in Gerlock; been here all his life, nice place – even if the woman are a little forward.
• Josh does go back to Cynthia, apologising for behaviour – spends night with her. She tries it on but he avoids her seductions.
• Marcus sleeps at Janine’s house – yet to be described (Next Session).
• Paul sleeps at Connies house – yet to be described (Next session).
• Nobody has been to visit Father Allberry yet or been into the Diner.

RESUME
Evening of 26th Sept YD+1 (Monday) For Marcus and Paul. And Early AM of 27th Sept for Josh and Clint.

GM NOTES:

• None

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Cthulhu Mythos – Alien Race of #Byakhee, not such a dumb breed

Byakhee

I’ve noticed during many years of game play that for some GMs (and players), Byakhee are possibly seen as nothing but great winged steeds with minimal intelligence.  Certainly bound Byakhee are going to be constrained by the sorcerer that has dominated them, but there is a great opportunity to utilise their innate cunning and maleficent nature.

These are hungry, devious creatures, capable of withstanding the shocking, infectious, ever-shifting and mutating horror of Hastur – and so possibly half-mad, Byakhee should be considered unpredictable, hardy and extremely dangerous when encountered without a “good enough” binding operation in place.

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Back in the mid 1990′s I came across a Call of Cthulhu scenario called “A Happy Family” published by Chaosium. I loved it and used it to great effect with my CoC game group at the time, and again, more recently, with my Yellow Dawn players.  It charts the consequences of a solitary man, living out on the edge of a small settlement in a remote part of the world (perfect Yellow Dawn setting), who has come across a stash of arcane knowledge.  Ultimately the man conjures a Byakhee to flap down, steaming in the dark of the night from the chill of Interstellar space – utterly unbound.  And this is the part I love.  Rather than devour the fool like some mindless monster, the Byakhee puts the man into its service.  Much like a more physical version of the horrible bond between a demon and human servant, the Byakhee takes up residence in the area and begins a campaign of terror: motive, blood sacrifice for its worship of Hastur.

Inspiration for a novel

I spent some time travelling around the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta at the start of this summer. 7,000 years of European, Middle-Eastern and North African history pressed down on this miniscule spec of land that sits at the crossroad of empires.   Whilst there I came up with a rough scamp for a new novel, one to be set in the post-apocalyptic Earth setting of Yellow Dawn (RPG).  The novel charts a small scientific expedition that sets out to the remote islands of Scotland.  What appears to be a case of merely supernatural haunting rapidly develops into the full-blown horror of the Cthulhu Mythos –specifically through characters being exposed to Hastur and a plot that revolves around foolish worship and deal-making with the Byakhee.

Coming back from Malta in May this year, I actually managed to write the novel in 7 weeks. Fastest piece of work yet. It’s now available in paperback through LULU or on Amazon kindle. Details below.

If you’re a fan of the Mythos then I think you’ll enjoy this story. It’s certainly getting some rave reviews.  Let me know what you think.

Djr

Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

THE BLACK LAKE: The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 20th October 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Ghost Dog #2

Ghost Dog

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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Resume 2 A.M on 21st Sept Y+1
Characters turfed out onto the streets of New Boston, with Andrew.
Truck and weapons are locked up by main entrance.

Josh applies magical energy to Andrew’s wounds, providing some relief but he is still terribly weak and confused.

Team take him back to truck to rest; but later that morning Captain Kennedy finds them and takes custody of Andrew again.  The team get involved in research after a ghostly apparition daubs the name Kenley on a smudged bit of glass. They eventually find that Kenley died during 1600s trying to protect a young woman that he’d foolishly fallen in love with – despite being married himself. The young woman was accused and eventually charged with being a witch. Both Kenley and the woman were executed on Kenley’s estate – on request of his pregnant wife, who watched on, spiteful and pleased to be exacting revenge for this embarrassing affair.

However, the young woman was able to imbue part of her energy / soul into the unborn child – and so formed a guardian spirit (hound) that travelled with the bloodline through history.

Team track down the estate and Tempest mansion in a remote area 15 miles north-west of New Boston. They go there – encounter a small frightened community of survivors: a man recently arrived at the abandoned mansion, full of strange questions and frightening abilities (A road mage).

The team approach the abandoned estate cautiously. Three cats…. actually 3 demons – protect the boundary and there is a tense amount of conflict as the demons attack the team. Eventually the road mage himself comes out and takes on the team personally – and would have probably destroyed all of them if it wasn’t for the curious abilities (extra power and protection) of Joshua Crow (thanks to Sedefkar Simulacrum he was tricked into activating at the end of Horror on the Orient Express).

Marcus is temporarily blinded and Josh is hit by a pile-driving blow of raw energy (bouncing off his magical aura).

With the road mage dead – the demon cats disperse (the two that were physically destroyed failed to take possession of Josh, Clint or Marcus).

The team investigate the estate and discover an opened grave by the base of the great tree;  there lies the skeleton of the young woman executed as a witch several hundred years earlier -  the team deduce the road mage was trying to use occult powers to sever the link between the corpse and the protective hound, with the intention of taking control of it for malign purposes – and at the expense of murdering Andrew (to break the link).

Consequences are that Andrew is saved – he makes a full recovery and gets to publish his article about the low-level criminals taking hold of the north end of New Boston; the result is that Captain Kennedy gets more resource to police that part of the town.

RESUME 25th SEPT Y+1
At New Boston, about to set off to the small settlement of Chambrig on request of Captain Kennedy who has close friends whose daughter has “run away” – he’s too busy with training new police recruits in New Boston.  Meanwhile, Josh is abruptly suffering terrible pains in his joints, his skin is starting to discolour and ugly lesions are rapidly forming on his flesh. Any initial attempts to perform a ritual of cleansing fail. And then he gets a radio message from Dr Zach to say that a very disturbing statue has appeared on the roof of the main building in Little Boston – he recognises it as the item the team discussed on their return from Horror on the Orient Express and has made sure nobody touches it – but, can Josh come back and URGENTLY remove it as it is causing a bad vibe at the settlement.

GM NOTES:

• All characters HAVE received COOL rewards for succeeding in the scenario.
• All characters do need to attempt a RANK ROLL
• Josh needs to resolve the issue with his rapid deterioration
• Review Augustus Clay III actions within Little Boston / involvement with Captain Kennedy in a certain prohibited group activity and the proximity / attitude of the nearby UDP garrison.

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 15th September 2012 ¦ Return to Little Boston – Ghost Dog #1

Ghost Dog

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. It also now has two novels set within it, Dog Eat Dog and The Black Lake.

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Resume 17th Sept Y+1
The characters have returned from Horror on the Orient Express and settle back into the almost idyllic swing of life in Little Boston

• Joshua Crow
• Marcus Carfax
• Paul Bishop – and his bizarre magical train

Everyone takes stock of what they have achieved and what they possess.

All other characters that having been “sitting on ice” within Little Boston community were reviewed.

All inventory items were reviewed.  Everything to do with Little Boston is up to date:

Caveat: output from food growing and fuel production needs to be checked at end of month, along with risks from bandits and other wilderness types who might take notice of such a prosperous survival settlement in the middle of nowhere.

Josh is worried about the satyr-like behaviour of Marcus Carfax – ever since he had a deep and potent interaction with  Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in Belgrade (see relevant session notes here) he’s been seducing women left right and centre. To be so “corruptive” here in the closely knit community of the farm, which includes several woman – who are in relationships with other male workers, could be harmful to the smooth running of their food growing and fuel production business. The characters have made Little Boston self-sufficient in this respect.  It could be a disaster if things are disturbed by internal tensions.

Meanwhile, one of the farm hands, Chet, approaches another farm hand – Clint – about a favour, and this results in Clint getting the characters involved in a trip to New Boston (23 miles east on an eroded road, part of the interlink).

20th Sept Y+1

• Josh, Marcus, Paul and Clint take the 2 1/2 ton truck to New Boston
• They’ll nearly blasted off the road by a truck in convoy with armed outriders (Akinolo Odusola).
• They talk to captain Kennedy – details of Marsha and her missing boyfriend Andrew (Sage), and the details behind Andrew being sectioned and his escape.
• They observe and are observed by a couple thugs of the Bronte gang.
• Paul asks around town and learns there are only about 20 thugs in the Bronte gang, that they resent the UDP coming in to take over; they make moonshine and run gambling nights including dog fighting (which is where Andrew was injured) – they’re aggressive but not known to be murderers – but Bronte himself looks like he’s trying to expand the local operation.
• Team visit Marsha at the house she shares with Andrew:
  • - a friend called Patrick is there, hostile to their arrival. He’s skinny and stinks of bong smoke. He’s been sleeping on floor, whilst Marsha sleeps on sofa (she doesn’t want to be in her and Andrew’s room right now).
  • - Josh goes on Astral plane and encounters a hound by Andrew’s bed- it tries to attack him.
  • - Team get Andrew’s sketch book which shows a storm blasted tree, in a clearing in some kind of forest near a house (not drawn) and a large stone slab lying in overgrown grass with a massive black hound watching over it —– in the drawings the house is always looking AWAY from the viewer, as if it has seen something else arriving. Marsha says that Andrew has always dreamed of an old lady and this dog and that they’re normally nice but two weeks ago thinks started to change, the dreams turned bad, 7 days ago Andrew caught by Bronte’s filming the dog fighting, 3 days ago sectioned and escaped.
• Team travel with Captain Kennedy to part of New Boston where clothes and food are going missing in neighbourhood. Clint finds Andrew (Sage) hiding in burned ruins. The team get him to a squalid B&B for safe-keeping, he’s exhausted and weak and badly injured (wounds with no blood)… something keeps attacking him in the in the night …. Andrew says “It doesn’t want to harm him, it’s being made to harm him.”  But the wounds are getting deeper and closer to vital organs.
• That night, sleeping on straw and scratchy blankets in damp basement of B&B, Marcus discovers that Paul’s clockwork heart sneaks out of his mechanised torso and has a passion for sucking blood {think Chronos}.  It leaps onto Marcus’ thigh causing (-1 STR). There is much screaming – with result that owner and her beefy son come running downstairs demanding to know what’s going on. A bribe of 100 credits sends them away. Then an hour later in the wee hours of the night/morning Andrew has another dream attack that leaves him with new wounds visibly appearing in front of the characters eyes – an invisible, intangible assailant. Lot’s of screaming has them ejected from the B&B this time.

Ghost Hound

RESUME
2 A.M on 21st Sept Y+1, turfed out onto the streets of New Boston, with Andrew.
Truck and weapons are locked up by main entrance.

GM NOTES:

• Review Augustus Clay III actions within Little Boston / involvement with Captain Kennedy in a certain prohibited group activity and the proximity / attitude of the nearby UDP garrison.

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Short Animation: At The Mountains of Madness – H.P.Lovecraft – in Spanish with English subtitles

At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favourite Lovecraft stories, despite being long, somewhat repetitive and slightly irksome to read (just my personal opinion). The concept is brilliant.  I first discovered HPL around the same time I first watched John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), a film that really grabbed my nascent imagination and turned me onto the horror confronting a deadly mystery whilst isolated within a hostile environment.  Alien and Aliens are similarly favourites.   And yet HPL crafted this story back in 1931.

On a tangential (and self-serving) note, I’m taking great pleasure in the fact that I’ve recently received reviews of my latest novel – The Black Lake - comparing it to the flavour of At The Mountains of Madness.   The Black Lake is a post-apocalyptic haunting that descends into the surreal cosmic horror of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Michele Botticelli has crafted a short animation that presents his interpretation of At The Mountains of Madness. In Spanish, it comes complete with English subtitles if you require them. The animation is wonderfully low tech which I think works well up to a point. I had to grimace at one scene near the end and instruct my mind to accept that this is a theatrical portrayal.   A little bit like the biplane vs Fungi from Yuggoth fight scene in the wonderful film adaptation of The Whisperer In the Darkness (2011), distributed by HPL Historical Society.  Don’t allow moments like that to spoil your enjoyment of the whole.

So, find yourself 33 minutes and a workstation where you can plug-in headphones during your lunch break or evening without being disturbed, and enjoy.

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Rise of Cthulhu (Mythos)

With the latest tranche of 3D remakes and another generation being exposed to recycled vampires, werewolves, poltergeist, evils spirits and possessed victims it seems like the major movie houses are yet again missing a trick with the Cthulhu Mythos.

This is perhaps epitomised by Warner Bros and Universal failing to act on Guillermo del Toro’s proposal for filming At The Mountains of Madness; although the latter studio seems willing, but only at the cost of introducing a love interest and a happy ending.

Hello – this is Lovecraft>!<

Even though I’d love to see James Cameron render Lovecraft’s Mythos into stunning big-budget digital fantasy, I’d hate to see the Mythos concept diluted by the tired and jaded industry tricks that belong to the 20th century.  Just look at the phenomenal success of the movie Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (based on novel by James Sallis) to see you can have love interest without a happy ending.  So perhaps not everyone is missing the trick; it’s not about Titanic scale budgets, it’s about the right funding to bring the cosmic beauty and breathtaking horror of Lovecraft’s visions to a wider audience.  It’s about finding the Will and having the Courage to take the risk.

Here’s to praying.

Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Links Relevant to this article:

• The Black Lake – a post-apocalyptic haunting with Cthulhu Mythos
• The Whisperer In the Darkness (2011), film based on the H. P. Lovecraft short story of the same name, produced by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and David Robertson and distributed by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society.
• The H P Lovecraft Historical Society Website – Cthulhu Lives!

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The Call of Cthulhu

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

Source: unknown, please advise and I’ll credit

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 28th July 2012 ¦ Horror on the Orient Express # 13

Sofia – Istanbul

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. Learn more…

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RESUME

17th Feb @ University of Sofia

The team begin to display dark veins and diseased discolouration to their faces and heads. It is a clear sign that the head of the statue is now within their domain.

The team are arrested by a thuggish Detective Ratuk:
I know about your journey across Europe and the blood you’ve left spilled in every destination. You might not be the Orient Ripper but he travels with you – and yet knowing this you still come here?

Image from lolailo.co.uk – Orient Express Diary 1920s CoC – Click to go there

Meanwhile, Josh continues to have horrendous visions through his eye, that was plucked from his skull by a mad cultist – and then insanely implanted in the cultist’s head. Josh is viewing momentary glimpses of what this cultist can see.
- inside a cavern lit with oil burning bowls.
- a massive crowd of men in ceremonial robes / middle eastern theme – but with bare chests to expose torsos covered with different patches of flesh, badly fused – the arms of different bodies stitched or fused onto others.
- a mountain of severed heads piled up on the floor, the oldest, lowest ones now skulls – with moist, decomposing ones one top.
- a blurred figure attacking these people, comes into focus
- It’s Count Drogo in his true form, twisted, blackened and stiff like bark from some ancient tree, the centuries of corruption (from the statue) and being locked away are evident in his deformed figure.  He is wild, a Thing of nightmares and molded by madness – he butchers everyone – takes the head of the statue, AND rips away the head of the cultist containing Josh’s eye… and departs.

Josh, in a police van with Marcus, conveys what he has seen happening. He is barely able to stay sane, gibbering, horrified.

Marcus is worried that Drogo, who now has the head and who knows where the rest of the statue is being stored – can come and get it as and when he wants.

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Head of the Sedefkar Simulacrum Statue – image by sirylok

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Josh gets another vision:
Drogo arriving at the hotel suite – assembling the statue, kneeling before it, simpering, holding it, cradling it – and then the young female receptionist comes up into suite thinking Marcus has returned. Drogo – tears her apart.

In the police station, Marcus, Josh and Paul Bishop are roughed up and threatened; Detective Ratuk wants money to let them go.  Josh and Paul get a heavy beating.

A representative of the British government arrives and ensures their speedy release. “Charles Parker says hello and sends his gratitude”.

Back  the hotel, the media are buzzing.

Marcus, Josh and Paul go up to the suite with trepidation.

Blood on the floor and walls. Gore dripping from the assembled statue. Half-eaten carcass of the receptionist in the bathroom.

The team begin to act – they need to leave, and quickly.

Drogo emerges on the balcony outside.

Josh goes to talk to him, and does not yield to his demands of servitude; Drogo nearly eviscerates him with one powerful slash of his claws.

There is a media drone hovering above. Recording.

A huge fight takes place, that stops and starts each time Drogo is driven back – but not away. Marcus has the back of his thigh sliced open.  Paul gets into a hand-to-hand tussle with Drogo, both of them clinging onto one assault rifle; which Drogo then uses to batter Paul in the face.  Josh lays down several three round bursts from another assault rifle into Drogo.  It takes the characters a while (too long) to realise that Drogo will NOT leave but merely lurk, licking his wounds, waiting for an opportunity. Drogo attacks to wound and not to kill; he’s plucking chunks of flesh from the characters – wearing them down, fulfilling the ancient code of his kind – the Great Magi – but not really; his version of the code is twisted and corrupted, as his flesh and soul, because of centuries of exposure to the statue.

Police sirens begin to converge on the hotel. The fight is attracting a lot of attention.

During this fight, Josh is ready to create a portal out of there – taking the statue and the body of the receptionist with them (Paul scooped her shredded remains into a hotel duvet and dragged them to the edge of the prepared portal).  Marcus creates an incendiary device with the contents of the cleaning cupboard (LUCK ROLL) and a chemistry skill check (- double zero, whoops – )

MIxing the contents together in a waste-basket, the steaming hissing gas acts like poison. Marcus collapses, muscles going into spasm, barely able to communicate or breathe -lungs on fire. The gas also affects the main room of the hotel – Paul Bishop collapses, going into cardiac fibrillation. Josh can barely move -but manages to drag Paul out onto the balcony and snaps his and Paul’s ArmWatch Medivac account cards – countdown to rescue is 5 minutes. Paul starts going into cardiac arrest.

Josh crawls back into the hotel to find Marcus – when they return to the balcony they find Drogo feasting on the interior of Paul’s chest, now cracked open, chewing on his heart.

It’s gruesome. Shocking to behold.

Josh drops to his knees with the horror of it – he left Paul out there, this is partially his fault.

Marcus snaps his Armwatch medivac account card.

And then a figure drops down from the roof of the hotel suite. A humanoid that looks similar to how Drogo may have looked before his corruption. Another Great Magi. A powerful one of its kind that has become enraged by Drogo’s activities and blatant disregard for their cultural traditions. This thing kills Drogo.

Then Armwatch arrive.  Aerodynes hovering overhead whilst armoured troops descend on zip lines, accompanied by paramedics.  Paul is bundled into a cryo-tank, his brain’s vital signs stabilised and his body, what’s left of it, put into stasis.

The team regain consciousness 7 days later in a private medical facility, somewhere in Bulgaria.

Josh and Marcus are in adjoining beds, handcuffed.  Paul is in a fridge in the corner. There’s an official in a suit waiting to talk to them.  Things might have been different, even with the fuzzy, badly degraded video footage of Drogo attacking them, if it hadn’t been for personal intervention by Fargas Laslo, who put his reputation on the line to vouch whole-heartedly for the innocence of the team.  “They’re better men,” stated Laslo.

Things are not all great. The corruption of their physical bodies, caused by prolonged association to the statue, is now dramatically worse.  Marcus loses 1 INT and 1 APP; Josh loses 2 POW; Paul loses 1 INT. And it’s accelerating. They can’t lounge around. They need to destroy the statue – as planned – by taking it to the Shunned Mosque in Istanbul.

After some final red-tape bureaucracy..

Josh and Marcus are flown by covert military helicopter out of Bulgaria and deposited at an airbase in Turkey.  Paul remains in Bulgaria, his mind active within a virt, awaiting major surgical operations to replace his rib-cage, lungs and heart, and repair surrounding tissue damage. This will take many many weeks to complete surgery and post-op recovery.

{tony leaves game at this point}

Istanbul Turkey Sultan Ahmed Mosque

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Josh and Marcus are greeted by a senior Turkish military official who begrudgingly asks no questions.  They make their way to a rough part of Istanbul and check into a run down hotel.  Josh is adamant he wants to recover magical artefacts from the cavern-scene he witnessed through his severed eyeball.  He creates a portal that he and Marcus step through, and which closes directly behind them. The cavern is not abandoned as Josh had assumed. There is a brief combat.  Marcus and Josh return with a chest of items. One of these is a cube that Josh accidentally activates – he is hurled back through time, witnesses the artificial creation of this “bubble universe” by  Duc Des Essain!!!! and then further back, through the space-time stream of the true universe – to a primordial age before dinosaurs – where Serpent Men and then before them, the Elder Things, roamed. Bad luck for Josh – he is spotted by a Hound of Tindalos. Josh accelerates forward through time again. Returns to the hotel room where Marcus has only blinked in all the “time” Josh has been away. Josh starts to jabber, panicking, about “something is coming!!!! Get ready!” And sure enough, the Hound soon comes through. It’s a repulsive fight but with Marcus’ magic pop gun and Josh hurling energy bolts at it – they drive it away (for now?).

A fitful night of sleep in the slums of Istanbul.

Next day, they check into the Great Istanbul Hotel, against the wishes of Josh because this place is part of the Orient Express itinerary. And sure enough, their arrival there triggers a number of “flags”.

The manager welcomes them personally, like old friends, and shows them the gold that their benefactor  – Mr Solomon Kane – has deposited in the hotel safe for them.

Upstairs, Josh and Marcus enjoy a brief afternoon of luxury – until the Brotherhood of the Skin arrive to “collect them” – and the statue. It’s strange, it’s as if the Brotherhood believe Josh and Marcus are working for them. They are transported to the Shunned Mosque in the belly flap of an obscene “flying thing” made of once human flesh.

At the mosque there is a diabolical ceremony around the now assembled statue: Josh and Marcus experience horrors that cannot be described here but certainly left characters and players sickened and losing significant COOL points through failed Anxiety checks. Duc Des Essain is there – Josh and Marcus are exceptionally wary of this “god like” figure, but are also baffled by his friendly response – and his surprise that the characters are in fact “one of them”.

At the point in the ceremony where the leader of the Brotherhood (Selim) is about to activate / invoke the power of the statue, he is murdered by his son, who is then blasted and killed by Duc Des Essain – who is seen sprinting towards the statue. Only…

Josh and Marcus suddenly phase out of this world and return to the world of Yellow Dawn. The mosque now empty, derelict and flooded by moonlight streaming through a shattered dome. And there is the statue, fully assembled, glaring back them, radiating menace.

And in their wake… comes a seam of light, and the Duc Des Essain steps through. He’s followed their magical trail.  But as he emerges, he realises exactly where he is. Not in some other part of the universe he created, but in the universe he fled from (the characters discover this later, that  Duc Des Essain fled this universe, from Nyarlathotep, by creating a realm where Nyarlathotep did not exist).

The Duc Des Essain whirls around in a panic, looking for some point to exit by. And is then frozen.  The Skinless One – an semi-human aspect of Nyarlathotep – steps forward and condemns Duc Des Essain.  Josh and Marcus witness a gruesome, grisly end to the great sorcerer.

The Skinless One glances over at Josh and Marcus, then departs.

Josh and Marcus hear the sounds of a vast surge of Infected sprinting towards the mosque. They seen  Duc Des Essain’s briefcase and his horse-hair lasso (used for porting). The briefcase contains scrolls! All the scrolls of the statue.

They use the lasso to return to Little Boston. Quite an emotional and surreal moment, to find themselves standing outside their settlement on the main road, beyond the driveway – watching the storm that started when they came here [ a year of game play, we started this campaign in July 2011 ] now fading and diminishing.

On the roof of Little Boston, Josh attempts to perform the Ritual of Cleansing.

Only to find Nyarlathotep had another little trick up his sleeve.

Bearing in mind that it was Marcus who murdered / destroyed Rahmun Sada – the human aspect of Nyarlathotep in this universe (At the end of Shadows of the Quantinex) as they unravelled the truth behind what caused Yellow Dawn to happen – and what new and nightmarish plot has been lined up against humanity.

Nyarlathotep has been able to manipulate and use the characters to a) destroy Duc Des Essain  and b) re-install a human aspect of Itself within this Universe and c) see the Activation of the statue take place.

RESUME

<>RECONNECT WITH LITTLE BOSTON Settlement and characters.
<>Deal with return of Paul Bishop (arrives in a huge metal steam engine with a replica of the Orient Express train attached – and some very strange phenonemon about it). He has a mechanical right arm and mechanical chest (brass like fittings with steampunk tech).
<> RANK ROLLS  (note all players had rank rolls at end of Sofia and JOsh also had his character birthday roll).
<> Follow up idea of heading back to Sofia – Dead City Run – to find the gold left at the hotel.
<> Understand the consequences for Josh of what has happened to him with the statue being activated – Nyarlathoteps little sting in the table surprise.

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Interview with Drhoz – when art and words collide – Yog-Sothoth comes closer to reality

Artist Spotlight

Some time ago I posted a very rough and ready piece on my blog called Reasons to Like Lovecraft: Yog-Sothoth. It contained a couple of images and embedded YouTube links to the Dunwich Horror audio book.  There was very little explanatory notes about how I perceived Yog-Sothoth from a fiction writing point-of-view (something I’d like to address later this year when I find time to step away from current writing commitments).  One of the images was by an Australian artist by the moniker of Drhoz.

The Lurker At The Threshold – Yog-Sothoth by Drhoz

In my mind, the image encapsulates everything about the menacing, frothing-madness and cosmic horror of this Outer God as it comes streaming through a rent in our reality.  The overlap of a ring of monoliths in a dark, isolated location, where obscene rites are performed, with the rancid, expanding stream of alien influence; conveys the inevitable, unstoppable reign of these monstrous things. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.

And yet… the boundaries of the Quantisphere, however fragile, has managed to enable this “oasis” of existence for the human condition called awareness.

So with great pleasure, I hand over to the artist behind the image.

DJR: Hello Drhoz. Thanks for taking time out to pen some words here.  First question up is around your inspiration for the image.  Are you a fan of H.P.Lovecraft and the body of work that is the Cthulhu Mythos or is it just that you find the particular concept around Yog-Sothoth of interest?

Definitely a fan, ever since I read ‘Colour Out of Space’ when I was in my young teens. Although as it happens I’d read Bloch’s ‘Notebook Found In An Abandoned House’ and Derleth’s ‘The Shuttered Room’ before that. The former is a brilliant piece of work – the later – not so much. As for the picture of Yog-Sothoth – I loved the description – even if the first use I saw of it was in another Derleth piece.

So I got together a bunch of photos of marbles and crystal balls, particle tracks from a collider, and the stone circle, to frame the seething quantum foam of Yog-Sothoth. Then used a few contrast-adjusting tricks to give it the tone I used in this a few related Lovecraftian pieces :)

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Temple of Starry Wisdom by Drhoz

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The_Inhabitant_of_the_Lake_by_Drhoz

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The_Colour_Out_of_Space_by_Drhoz

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Three_lobed_Burning_Eye_by_Drhoz

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Render_of_the_Veils_by_Drhoz

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Statement_of_Randolph_Carter_by_Drhoz

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The_Temple_of_Nug_and_Yeb_by_Drhoz

and a few where I played with Apophysis and LunarCell to make more abstract works; for example:

Mad_Aurora_by_Drhoz

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DJR: Linking into the above. What theme captures your artistic temperament and sees most creative output? What truly inspires you and gives you a tingle of delight to craft within? And conversely, what makes you want to pull your hair out. What concepts are your biggest challenge?

Well, going back over these pieces on a monitor that isn’t on it’s last legs certainly makes me pull my hair out – it shows up all the errors and obvious cuts that were too subtle to see on a cathode ray monitor that old :)

As to inspiration – I do draw, or write, a lot of rather dark stuff. Possibly because of the satisfaction of drawing really ghastly things when I’m generally a pleasant person :)

The Mythos is a favorite, and generating portraits or props such as this photo of a thing the Cthulhu players found under Boston also keeps me happily busy.

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broodling_in_a_bottle_by_drhoz-d3cvgmt

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The Call of Cthulhu RPG, Deathwatch and Rogue Trader, and a Bronze-age middle east themed AD&D campaign also gave me lots of inspiration, too.

That said, I might spend the better part of a week tearing my hair out about one picture, give up, then go back to it months later and decide that actually, this was pretty good.

Oh, and I’m terrible at drawing feet. Witness one piece where I finally satisfied with the rather complex pose and POV, and only then realised I’d given the character two left feet. *headdesk*

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DJR: Are you all about Digital Art or do you hold other skills?  If you were to define yourself, as an artist – what do you say?

Actually, nearly everything I’ve done is with pencil and pen. For example – this character portrait for a Rogue Trader game - 

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navigator_netzach_benetek_by_drhoz

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I’m way behind in drawing though – at the moment a lot of my creative effort is pushed towards making fake 1920s news items and similar props for the Call of Cthulhu campaign I run here in Perth.

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DJR: Do you see the Cthulhu Mythos seeping further into mainstream awareness through cinema and fiction? Do you think this would be a good thing or a bad thing?  A validation of Lovecraft’s work after nearly a century of relegation to a “freakish” sub-genre – or an erosion of deliciously obscure niche that the Mythos sits within?

I’m very much in favour, but admit it’s difficult to sell an audience on indescribable horror and utter nihilism. I’d like to think the old gentleman would have been delighted with Plush Cthulhus though – he was a fan at heart himself, and his letters are frequently very funny.

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DJR: What’s your favourite piece of personal work and your favourite source of inspiration (artist or otherwise)?  (Provide example copy if you like).

Well, I get inspiration from all over – anything might trigger a good idea. Even if that idea is horrible beyond words – My Little Pony / Mythos crossover for example *insert insane laughter here, cue psychiatric orderlies*

but I’m still very pleased with with a portrait I did of another unspeakable character I invented – Eidolon. A complete monster.

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Eidolon_2_by_Drhoz

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DJR: What’s coming up in your world that you’d like to shout about? Any links, events, promos you would like to share with the folks who look at this blog every month?

Well… the Call of Cthulhu and other games I mentioned above are being turned into Actual Play podcasts, and the journals, fake newspaper articles, and props andportraits for them continue to turn up online at various forums. Anybody interested in seeing them is welcome to email me and I’ll point them in the right directions.  I was appalled to notice that the journal for the Cthulhu campaign is already 120 pages long.

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DJR: Final words?

Cf’ayak’vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm!  Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!

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LINKS FOR THIS ARTICLE:

• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Temple-of-Starry-Wisdom-45370679
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/The-Inhabitant-of-the-Lake-28652836
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/The-Colour-Out-of-Space-28653084
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Three-lobed-Burning-Eye-28652931
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Render-of-the-Veils-28653793
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Statement-of-Randolph-Carter-28654452
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/The-Temple-of-Nug-and-Yeb-39866729
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Mad-Aurora-44871477
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Broodling-in-a-Bottle-203021813
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Navigator-Netzach-Benetek-269171042
• http://drhoz.deviantart.com/art/Eidolon-2-43677059

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Yellow Dawn Session Notes 7th July 2012 ¦ Horror on the Orient Express # 12

Belgrade – Sofia

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. Learn more…

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RESUME

15 FEB – around 4 a.m.
The team are scheduled to board the Orient Express for 9.37 am departure to Sofia.
Roman has two satchels, 2 x FN-RAL assault rifles, one with 10 clips, one with 9 clips. 2 x laser scopes.  A bandolier of 5 frag grenades and 5 flash bangs.  Smart SCope goggles with IR and thermal vision.  He also has conduits to carry them across borders – but needs to be careful to ensure he follows protocols.

Characters have noticed black dogs, black cats, black insects…. observing them more of less continuously since fleeing the village.

The team are escorted to Orient Express departure lounge to watch the flux and flow of important and wealthy passengers arriving.

Many stories flicker within exchanged glances or rigid eye contact.

Team quietly discuss the big picture now forming.  There are four parties interested in them / the statue.

(1) Their employer. The man who pretended to be solicitor in London – Solomon Kane. The man who died three times in London. Mehmet Makryat.  A man capable of changing his appearance by killing victims and wearing their skin.  He is the reason the team are travelling across Europe in this train, gathering bits of statue on Mehmet’s behalf.  Why can’t Mehmet do this himself? Because his father, head of cult in Istanbul, Selim, is looking for him.  Mehmet told team that he wants to destroy the statue, to stop his father from activating it and unleashing a terror into the world.  Josh doesn’t buy this.
Query: if the characters phased into this universe – was it on Mehet’s request? Did Mehmet have the ability to make this happen or was it a “favour” from a powerful Outer God?

(2) Selim.  The father of Mehmet and leader of cult in Istanbul. Not much known about him or the cult.  The team are supposed to take statue there – to the cult’s mosque and destroy it by placing it within niches in the walls.  Selim has men scouring Europe looking for his son (to kill him?) and for the statue that he must now is being collected together.

(3) Count Drogo. Previous owner of the statue. A member of the race of the Great Magi. Drogo stole the statue from Sedefkar during the Crusades in the Middle East back in the 12th century.  Drogo survived for centuries, using the statue to walk within the realm of men… a predator concealed in the skin of his victims.  Drogo wants it back – but what has two centuries being bricked away in a wall in an asylum in Paris done to his mind?

(4) Duc Des Essain. The bloated, larger-than-life mad man from Lausanne who created his own “blister reality” where he was able to torment the inhabitants there.  When the Duc approached them in Belgrade, he said this world belonged to him.  What did he mean by that?  This world?  This entire parallel universe or…? Whatever the answer the characters realise he is possibly one of the most powerful and dangerous adversaries they face.  Marcus believes that the Duc wants to stop Selim – or anyone – else from getting the statue because its activation would shift the balance of power. Right now – in this reality – the Duc is king, perhaps?  And the Duc wants to keep it that way.

In the departure lounge, the team take notice of Charles Parker and Walter Protheroe and his assistant, Amy. There is some kind of sardonic dynamic in place between them.

On the train, luxury comfort and relief to be moving again. Characters won’t totally relax until they’re over the border and hopefully away from SPARSK assassins.

Marcus begins to exhibit Satyr-like qualities. An influence of his close encounter with the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Women begin to act very strangely around him.

In salon car, team discover that Fargas Laslow (tall, glossy and highly groomed Italian) is riding with them: his job is to observe them and ensure no more massacres by the “Orient Ripper” take place.

Leaving the region of Belgrade, their following of black birds and insects fades away.  Josh thinks it was Baba-Yaga.

Later…

Walter Protheroe is found dead in his compartment. Shot through the head. Gun in right hand. Window locked and a pile of Arabic stim-pipes crowding a small ashtray.

Laslow puts his ego and desire to best the team, above the desire to properly solve the crime.

Marcus and Josh put together a solid line of reasoning and work through the clues, with a final twist of help coming from Paul Bishop “It’s a locked room case”.

A locked room. Of course.  The room was locked but there should have been a smell from all  the stim pipes.

Team discover a false witness statement and the fact Amy found Protheroe dead from suicide, but she re-arranged clues to try and have Parker (who she hated) accused of the murder – which nearly worked because Laslow followed her bait.

When the truth is revealed Laslow is gutted – and flits between drunkenly sneering or praising them.

The the Bulgarian border, Roman is removed from train by authorities. An issue over protocol; but he ensures the team still have the bags and the webbing.

An avalanche
stops train in the mountains, 2 hours from Sofia. Paul goes to front of train to take a look; Marcus goes with him and so does Josh – but Josh stops to grab a coat. Alone, trying to catch up with the others he is attacked by a maniac with a knife. The maniac gouges out his eye and runs off with it.

Later, a grisly discovery is made in the snow – tracks leading from train into forest… they find an eyeball, but it doesn’t belong to Josh.

Josh begins to experience flashed glimpses of another point of view.  His eyeball now in the head of the maniac.

It’s horrible.

Laslow comes up to Marcus and proffers to him a hardscreen loaded with latest newspaper; page 5, article about a strange ceramic head dug up yesterday by a farmer.  It is the head of the Simulacrum.  International paper.  Everybody who might be interested in it now knows the head is at the University of Sofia for study.

Sofia

Arriving in Sofia the team are taken to their hotel, the Caravaggio. Marcus seduces the reception girl and gets a presidential suite. Private elevator, marble statues, a sunken lounge with window wall views across city, bullet-proof glass, gas-filtered air-vents.  A private fortress.  Josh and Paul refuse to pay the male receptionist “a surcharge of 500 per night, each” so are given “standard rooms”.  These are down in the lower floor of the hotel overlooking car park. They’re not impressed.  Eventually they go up to Marcus’ suite and sleep on sofas there.

They notice when Marcus comes out of shower, stark-bollock naked, he’s walking around as if he has hooves for feet and is stoking his thighs as if they’re covered in coarse matted hair.  It’s obvious this is what Marcus believes. Strange. Instead, Marcus just has the same skin deformity and scars and aching joints across his limbs and torso as the rest of the group (dire consequences of possessing the statue pieces).

17th Feb
Team leave hotel by extortionate taxi (again) and travel to University of Sofia. After much delay and procrastination by people who either wants bribes or don’t talk English, they finally get to meet the professor studying the recently found head.  Meanwhile – Josh is experiencing all manner of strange glimpses of the journey of the maniac who gouged out his eyeball. A river gorge. A cavern.  A ceremony…

The professor is intrigued by the character’s knowledge of the strange, unidentifiable ceramic material the head is made from. He agrees to show them the head.

However, when they walk into the work lab… a horror scene awaits them.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT SESSION

Sofia city

GM NOTES:
() Next Rank Roll should be when they complete Sofia.  Laslow is in Sofia keeping tabs on them.
() All Cs have yet to experience TAINT from Dark Young
(!) Marcus has started experience something particularly potent due to his mind engaging with the things.The question is, where is this going to end up?

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DJR: thoughts for next session on local copy of these notes.

Call to Action: requesting players for beta of Lovecraft/Call of Cthulhu horror LARP (Live Action Roleplay) – October 2012 – UK

Seeking players for Beta LARP

A Live Action Roleplay Horror

 

Horror in the Treetops

The Horror In The Treetops is an atmospheric Lovecraft/Call of Cthulhu horror LARP (Live Action Roleplay) based in a sprawling 20 acre manor estate in Mullion, west Cornwall. Each game takes place over a period of four days.

- David Sharrock
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A mate of mine is setting this up, following on from his experience with playing the incredible 2.8 Hours Later. However rather than being chased around by hordes of screaming zombies, this will be more about atmosphere and the building of tension through play and environment. He’s recruited actors and is in process of finalising arrangements with the venue – a spooky manor house in a remote part of west Cornwall.  There’s room for 6 people so it’ll be first come first play.

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THE LOCATION:

Mullion parish is also important historically, with evidence of prehistoric burial mounds, Celtic crosses and ancient chapel sites, and in more recent times evidence of copper and china clay mining and a World War II airfield at Predannack

The name, Mullion, is believed to derive from the Saint who gives his name to the Parish Church, Melanus. St Mellanus was Bishop of Rennes in Brittany. The name was first recorded in the 13th century.

The current parish church building dates from the 15th century and includes a 13th font and numerous ancient carved bench ends.

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INFORMATION FROM WEBSITE:

The Treetops Estate is situated in the heart of unique and hauntingly mysterious Cornish countryside with nearly 20 acres of atmospheric gardens and grounds perfectly suited to the subtle yet period specific brand of Lovecraft horror. Inhabited since the Stone Age, Treetops sits at the centre of its own secret wooded valley near historic Mullion Cove and is one of the oldest and most isolated estates in Britain.

The Horror in the Treetops is a live action (LARP) horror running over a long weekend (players arrive Friday evening, playing through Sunday to leave Monday lunchtime).

The images below show various aspects of the estate. Much of the game will take place outdoors on uneven ground. Players should be prepared to do plenty of walking and exploring!

Mercutio House (the team’s base for the duration)
The Clocktower
The trees are strange – worshipped by the ancients according to superstition and folklore
Peacocks stand sentinel while the treetops are filled with the eery cawing of ravens
The boundary of the 20 acre Treetops estate where the game takes place, a secure environment completely isolated from the general public.

Tickets & Enquiries

Best if you view the official website (still in beta) and follow-up with David Sharrock directly.

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A novel

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David J Rodger – DATA

Yellow Dawn Session Notes 17th March 2012 ¦ Horror on the Orient Express # 10

Belgrade

Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. Learn more…

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RESUME
6th FEB @ 5 A.M.
SUNDAY

The team have just got back to their hotel and crashed. Today is Sunday. They’ll have to kill time before going back to meet the professor at Belgrade Museum on Monday.  Josh is already gobbing off about they have to buy everything – but does come up with the smart suggestion they should convert the cash into precious metal or gems they can take back to their own true universe of Yellow Dawn – and not remain in this odd parallel universe where Yellow Dawn never happened.

Telfus has booked into a smaller, cheaper hotel and waiting to see what he does with his life now that he dealt with the killer of his sister.

The team grab some sleep then head down for a late breakfast; they agree to buy in:
() Vortek Personal Protection Fields (these are only 50,000 each rather than 500,000 as listed in Yellow Dawn rulebook, because this world is a blister reality where YD did not happen).

() Armwatch Security Cover – snapcards

() Executive quality suits with ballistic and stab resistant weave.

On news in story about assassination of Serbian minister of interior. SPARSK are mentioned. Nobody claimed responsibility but Croatian or Kosovo is picking up blame via speculation. Tensions in country are increasing.  SPARSK militia noted as mobilising across countryside.

They are hassled by a high-ranking journalist from WorldStar Media who wants to know how they bested Fargan Laslow last night – and what happened; but this appears to be more about digging for dirt on Marcus Hardman (wealthy host of last night’s party where the jewel was stolen by Countess Roskoff but recovered by characters).  Characters play silent. Journalist threatens to expose links between deaths and mayhem in Paris, Milan, Venice and Trieste and their arrival in each of those locations on the Orient Express – timescales overlap.

Team ring Marcus Hardman to warm him about journalist digging.

Marcus Hardman says thanks, repeats his promise to have minister of culture approve their paperwork for removing rare artefacts from Serbia.

Team contact Dimitri to ask about a favour. Dimitri was wanting to meet them anyway… Caterina wants to have lunch / dinner with the team before she has to head back to London for an opera.

They all meet at a posh warehouse eating place.  Dimitri arranges for a hacker called Viral 5 to contact characters – to satisfy their needs.

Heading to a cafe near bazaar later on, a car bomb goes off… dozens killed and many more injured. Dimitri hit in leg by shrapnel; everyone else blasted to ground; Paul is hit by shrapnel but it destroys his PA instead.  Then the driver of Dimitri’s SUV (who has a SPARSK tattoo) shoots the other bodyguard, shoots Dimitri and then shoots Caterina and flees.  Marcus and Paul chase after him (as does a drone) and catch him amongst tables and chairs of an indoor cafe (closed). Dimitri’s men arrive to shoo away police and take the prisoner.

Josh and Metz use magic and first aid to save Caterina’s life. Dimitri is ignored and dies from his wounds.

Police are grateful to characters and no awkward questions are asked.

Characters return to hotel to assess situation.

Barely there 30 minutes they’re summoned by a phone call with a modulated voice to meet at a sports stadium. Taxi there. They go in and meet a man in late 50′s.  A Serbian spook. Dimitri was helping internal security protect minister of interior… looks like his failure made him a target of SPARSK. Government spook says thanks for what you did and offers to grease the wheels a bit whilst they’re in Serbia: also says to be wary of SPARSK, now that they helped apprehend the assassin.

The spook leaves. The characters wait a few minutes, standing in the middle of the pitch surrounded by empty rows of stadium seats. As they’re about to leave… the lights fail. In fact, there are no lights ANYWHERE. With a chill horror they realise they’ve phased back into the world of Yellow DAwn.

There are Infected within the stadium – just visible in the moonlight.

Marcus uses his pop-gun to take a couple down. More surge in, attracted by the noise.

Metz falls victim to some kind of mesmerization, he stands there, not participating (caught within Influence of Hastur). The team try to get him out of there but more Infected are running towards them, shrieking and snarling. Marcus shoots. Paul wrestles one to the ground as it thrashes around in his desperate grip.  Josh slashes with his sword cane. Metz get’s tackled by an Infected and slammed to the ground, the Infected bites deep into Metz’s neck, tearing the flesh…

The lights snap back on.

They’ve phased out again; back into this strange blister reality where YD has not happened. And to their horror they can see Paul is still grappling an Infected; one of the things has come back through with them!!!!  It stops struggling and abruptly becomes alert. It looks at Paul and Paul sees a monstrous intelligence seeping into that rotting face… it looks around with growing delight as if sensing a whole new world to Infect. And then it disintegrates into golden glowing particles of dust and blows away. Spreading Infection or vanishing from this realm, nobody really knows. Then all attention turns to Metz who is sitting there clutching a wound to his neck and asking over and over – am I ok? Am I okay? Only a few seconds have elapsed. Josh approaches him, uses magick to heal the wound and steps back… watching cautiously.  The transformation is fast and brutal. Metz snarls, leaps up to attack… but then before anything else can happen he too disintegrates into golden particles of dust.

The team are traumatized to see a long-standing character become Infected and then to disappear like that.

They return to hotel, numb.

7th FEB
MONDAY

A government suit arrives at hotel and hands over paperwork authorising team to take artefacts from Serbia. Marcus goes to Belgrade museum and is told about the village where such artefacts may be found.

Team are driven by their new Serbian security man, Roman, in his jeep, out into the wild countryside to Oraszc.

Encounter the village. The priest and the headman.

A fertility rite takes place.

They sleep the night there.

8th FEB
TUESDAY

Team head out deeper into forest to see the old lady in the woods.
A terrifying encounter with an ancient spirit form – Baba Yaga takes place but the characters pass the test and are told where to find the RIGHT ARM of the statue.
Team head back and witness the beginning of a ceremony, a goat sacrificed on an altar stone and strange chanting.  Marcus and Paul wander down amongst the “cultists” as if to confront them when something large and monstrous emerges from the woods. A Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.

Marcus throws down something given to him as a charm – but it’s a false gift, a trap, and TEN MORE Dark Young materialise!!!

Paul is grabbed by tentacles and hauled towards slobbering mouths.
Roman shoots dead the Headman and priestess, with the random consequences of allowing Marcus to take control of the TEN Dark Young – Marcus commands them to attack the solitary DARK YOUNG. Paul barely gets away with his life.
Marcus grabs the RIGHT ARM and everyone flees through village. They are not pursued. The TEN Dark Young chomp, grab, stamp and devour the cultists.

RESUME
8pm on 8th FEB, just leaving the area of the village in Roman’s jeep – driving like the wind, clutching the RIGHT ARM of the statue and everyone feeling very lucky to be alive. Roman’s right index finger now has a gnarly nail, since Baba Yaga bit it down to the bone and stripped the flesh from the finger (and Josh used magic to repair the finger as best he could).

As they accelerate, Roman has to brake hard and screech the jeep to a halt: a large black dog is on the road, staring back at them with intelligence that is far beyond what is normal.

The team need to get back to Belgrade and get on the next train to Sofia.

LEFT LEG, LEFT ARM, RIGHT LEG, TORSO at Excelsior hotel in Belgrade.  RIGHT ARM is with the team in the jeep as they’re blasting back towards Belgrade.

GM NOTES: all characters had Rank rolls with a +3 bonus.

DJR: thoughts for next session on local copy of these notes.

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Scenes of terror and trouble: Dreaming of Fire

A free RPG scenario

Suitable for Yellow Dawn & Call of Cthulhu

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Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur, first published in 2007,  is an RPG written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger – it blends the Cthulhu Mythos and cyberpunk genres in a post-apocalyptic setting. Learn more…

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The character awakes to find the immediate location on fire.  Their room is now an inferno.  Although this is a dream (sort of) the character should not suspect this at first.  Indeed, the choking, acrid smoke that claws at their lungs and the intense heat and furious crackling of burning walls and furniture, should seriously convince them this is real.

They will feel pain and fear.  If they die in the flames or as a result of leaping from a window (if they were high up) then they wake-up in a cold sweat, clutching their furiously beating chest. They must also make an Anxiety check or lose 1/1d3 COOL.  The following night – the dream will happen again.

Meanwhile, within the dream – they become aware of horrible screaming coming from a nearby room.   It sounds like a woman.

If they go to the room where the sound is coming from, the inferno seems to be more intense here.

Opening the door the character sees a room that does not correspond to what should be there.  Instead the room is a chamber of dark, smoke-stained stone with strange, unsettling symbols daubed onto the walls in a substance that looks like molten lava… the symbols burn and slither across the walls. However, the character’s attention will be rooted on the heavily robed figure of a woman kneeling on the floor within a set of asymmetrically interlocking circles; set on the floor before her is a blackened book, lying wide open with a jet of super-heated purple and dazzling bright pink flames blasting up from its pages and into her face.  The woman is shielding her face with her hands as if trying to stare through the Sun to read what is on those pages; however, it is obvious that whatever protection she has employed is failing and the fire is now beginning to consume her flesh.

As the character enters – the woman will snap her face away from the book and drop her hands to stare at them.  There is a look on her burned, melted features that is part-pleading and part-furious.  “Help me!” she shrieks, or maybe she said, “How dare you!”

The confusion should delay the character a moment. Meanwhile the hot blast of flame does not diminish and rolling clouds of yellow and orange fire come sweeping along the ceiling towards the character.

The book exudes an incredible aura of potent power; what secrets does it contain for the woman to risk such an agony to discover?

The character will certainly be taking substantial damage from the heat of the flames at this point.  They should make a decision: leave, save the woman or grab the book… a huge, churning plume of super-heated flame is now swirling downwards towards the floor where the woman and the book are situated; the character can only attempt to save one.

If the character rushes in they must roll 25 or more on 1d20+DEX or be consumed in an agonising flare of plasma.  They literally vaporise on the spot.  And then wake-up, screaming, shivering, layered in sweat. Make an Anxiety check or lose 1/1d6 COOL for this horrific end.  The next night the dream will happen again.

Penetrating the flames to seek the truth - image source unknown

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Saving the woman

She clings onto the character for dear life, gasping for breath through heat-seared airways, lungs gurgling as they fill up with fluid.  She is human but odd looking, like no race the character will have ever seen before – whorls and other tribal patterns have been tattooed onto her badly burned face.  Stepping out of the room the character should drag her outside, away from the fire that continues to rage through the building – although from this moment the flames no longer do any damage.  It’s as if some of her residual protection is having an effect.

Outside on the street there is nobody else around; nobody -in the dream – is taking any notice of the fire.

The woman looks around at what is obviously a very alien and unfamiliar world to her; she is certainly from a different time and place (in fact, a different dimension).  She is however, rapidly dying – strange colours pulse and glow through her veins, rising up to the surface of her charred skin to sparkle and evaporate.  During this she does not take her eyes from the character – she grips him tightly, lips quivering and muttering unknown words… but there seems to be a look of deep gratitude on what’s left of her face. Then she takes a final, agonising breath, her chest heaves up sharply, her body stiffens and then she disintegrates into dust.

GM NOTES:
The woman is (or was) a powerful sorcerer whose attempt to read the charred book led to her destruction. In her dying panic she created a blister of dream-reality that has randomly attached itself to the character.  By saving her from the fire, the GM is free to decide what rewards comes through but here are some suggestions:

• The ash from her disintegrating body drifts onto the character and dissolves into them. They either gain a bonus to their LUCK (guardian spirit) or increased POW, or perhaps a permanent bonus to certain skill checks.
• The ash from her body glitters in the dream-light – the character can grab handfuls of it as they begin to feel the dream ending.  When they awake the ash is still in their hands – heavy, hard and crunchy like grit.  It can be used for some magickal purpose.
• Some aspect of the woman’s dissipating energy seeps into the character – leaving them waking with a sense of her lingering on the peripheral of their conscious mind. She remains there – providing some kind of “superhero” ability, or maybe just guidance and advice (can be called upon once a day).
• DARK TWIST: the woman is furious that she was dragged away just before succeeding in the reading of the book. Her ash clings to the character like something hot, smothering and irritating. They awake to find themselves carrying a curse that affects LUCK and skill checks.

The dream does not recur now.

Saving the Book

The character staggers outside to find the world still asleep and nobody taking notice of the fire.  However, shadowy forms can be perceived on the fringes of the area – standing in street corners or in the middle of the road, watching from a vague distance…. they shimmer and shift, as if made of smoke, and seem somehow menacing.

The book – although badly burned, is still intact with layers of overlapping leather forming the binding, creating complex patterns; charred, the whole thing creaks like splintering wood when opened or closed.  There are words written on the pages but they’re in no language or script the character has ever seen and they appear to have lost their lustre – the ink now a leaden grey that gleams dully in the nocturnal lights.

Before the character can think of doing anything else they awaken – and find the charred book clutched in their hands.

What the book does and is capable of is down to the GM but here are some ideas:

• It’s a demonic text and contains secrets that reveal the route to heaven (or at least the inner most sanctum of Angelic beings who exist on the outermost rim of the Quantisphere.
• It contains some incredible +to Occult skill, or Mythos skill (or both), and likely contains potent operations to do with fire and plasma energy.  But the process of reading it requires a special operation in itself – and a ritual of fire.
• It is a book dedicated to the worship of Sol’indara (a new Great Old One from Yellow Dawn; however, Call of Cthulhu players can use Cthugha). The book contains a way of gaining control of Sol’indara (or Cthugha) and is protected by a powerful fire / heat energy being (or Fire Vampires).

Regardless of what function the book can perform, it carries a (sort of) curse with it – which is the souls of all the people that have ever died trying to read it.  These are the shadowy smoke-like figures who linger on the borders of awareness. How they affect the character going forward is up to the GM; they could be a subtle presence that only appears at certain times – or they can be a perpetual distraction, bringing a smell of burning flesh and fabric, and a dry, rasping chorus of whispering, stopping the character from getting proper sleep without alcohol or drugs and ultimately leading to madness – until the character attempts to read the book (going through ordeal of fire) and dies or succeeds… in which case all  those souls will be released.

The dream does not recur now.

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Sample Rules for fire and infernos

FIRE STARTS

This can be through arson, or an incendiary device or explosion, etc. At this point the fire has small flames licking other surfaces and a small amount of smoke.

•     Putting out the fire at this point: Needs 1d6 ‘blasts’
•     Risk of spreading: Every round the GM should roll a 1d20. On a ‘20’ the fire abruptly erupts into a lethal inferno.

FIRE BECOMES AN INFERNO
The room / corridor has burst into flames. It is now filled with choking smoke and intense heat. This inferno is pushing in all directions and will begin to spread through the building unless defeated whilst still within this confined space.

•     Putting the fire out at this point: needs 2d6 ‘blasts’
•     Risk of spreading: Every round the GM should roll a 1d20. On a ‘20’ the surrounding area becomes engulfed within the inferno (equivalent to 1 BS space).

The GM should keep rolling 1d20 every round. The next time he rolls ‘20 the surrounding 1 BS (in each direction) become engulfed by the inferno; the next time it is the surrounding 6 BS (in each direction), then 36 BS, then 216 BS, eventually the whole building will be an inferno.

MOVING THROUGH AN INFERO
Once an inferno takes hold the layout of a building, corridor, even a room can change dramatically. Gouts of fire, burning furniture, collapsing structures, all make movement very dangerous, and slower.
To move through a part of a building caught by the inferno (equivalent to 1 BS point), each character or group must roll 1d6 per round. They can only escape that section of building when they roll ‘5’or ‘6’. Each round they fail to roll ‘5’or ‘6’ they are dealing with the consequences of fire changing the terrain, and, they’re suffering damage.
Burn Damage: each combat round spent within an inferno delivers 1 hit-point ‘burn damage’ to one body location. If any clothed-location suffers 4 or more burn damage then those clothes burst into flames, delivering an automatic 1 hit-point burn damage per round.
 Smoke Inhalation: each combat round spent within an inferno the character must roll 25+ on 1d20+CON or face a 20% chance of collapsing unconscious, overwhelmed by the smoke. This includes the act of staying near the floor.
Some things a character can do to avoid smoke inhalation is a) hold their breath, or b) hold a wet rag over face, provides +5 to the 1d20+CON roll for the next 10 rounds.

- Excerpt from primary rulebook of Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur (version 2.5)

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