Saturday, July 15, 2017

The Night of the Monkey Riot (C.o.C.)

So, just for fun thought I'd share my write-up of the latest session of our CALL OF CTHULHU game. Those who are playing through the first organized play adventure from Chaosium shd avoid the following because of spoilers. This was the fifth session, which rounded up the second adventure in the campaign. Our five Investigators are all Miskatonic University students in the early 1930s. The first adventure saw us doing some fieldwork in remote Cobb's Corners, Vermont -- in which days of collecting folklore and unsettling rumors suddenly came to a head with horrific events which left the survivors happy to put Vermont behind them, hopefully forever. The second adventure deals with the follow-up back at Miskatonic, when some of the missing students (including the dead ones) show up a few days later, apparently none the worse for wear but with their personalities weirdly different. It soon becomes obvious that these are different people in the bodies of our former friends, up to no good.

The five player characters are Aaron (Jeff), Harry (Steve), Michael (Sig), Ruth (Anne), and S. S. (myself). Our Keeper (DM) is Stan. For this particular session Anne & Sig, who play via Skype, cdn't make it, so we just had three PCs. Here's the write-up I made so as to share with Sig and Anne what their characters missed and to remind us all next time what's just happened.



Session Five
Just a quick reminder, in case it’s needed, that we’re not playing this weekend. Should give our characters time to heal up from what will always be known at Miskatonic U. as The Night of the Monkey Riot.

Last session Aaron went to Professor Wilmarth and pretty much spilled the beans about flying crustaceans, sudden personality shifts, and other weird going ons, only to have Wilmarth say he cdn’t do anything based on hearsay. Meanwhile S. S. went to Dr. Armitage, the Librarian, with a tale about a plot by some students to steal some books from the library and burn the rest. He wasn’t having any of it and all but threw her out. One of us — either Harry or Aaron — learned that something was going to happen involving a serum the next day but we cdn’t find out who was taking it or giving it to whom. 
   That night Harry, S. S., and Aaron stole into the science lab and stole* the sample of pasqualium,** which is now hidden in Ruth’s museum (which we used as crash space, in case anyone bad came looking for us at our individual rooms).

The next day all hell broke loose. We later figured out that Lazlo and Clarissa went to the men’s and women’s dining halls and put some kind of serum in the food (so Michael was on to an important clue in seeing Lazlo in the food-preparation area the day before, had we but known to follow up on it). Shortly afterwards students were rampaging about, smashing things and shouting Oook-ook. The three of us were lucky not to be affected, so we raced to the library.  Armitage had assigned two guards to watch over things, but they rushed outside to deal with the riot, leaving the brain-swapped students (Little Rod, Jason, and Gibbons, I think) to fill two sacks of books and douse the place with kerosene. Lazlo appeared up in the balcony, casting shove-spells and setting the kerosene afire. Little Rod (whom we know is really semi-good guy Clarke) carried an innocent bystander to safety. S. S. got doused in kerosene and ran burning from the library, collapsing outside in a burning heap. Harry played the hero, noblely sacrificing his raccoon-skin coat to smother the flames. In all the confusion, the bad guys got away, and Lazlo (we presume) nabbed the books as well.

The aftermath was that thanks to our action the library was damaged but not destroyed. We all survived, though S. S. had to spend the following week in the campus or city hospital recovering from her Major Wound. Professor Lehrmark was found dead the next morning, strapped to a lab table and with the top of his head taken off. The brain was missing.

We got lots of SAN reward for partially foiling the sinister plot, but the bad guys got clean away with everything they wanted except the sample of pasqualium. 

The final scene before the Keeper brought the curtain down was Professor Wilmarth introducing us to someone he thinks we shd meet: a Mr. Pasqual.
 

So, who’s on for the 21st or 28th?

—John R.

*S. S. has discovered that bobby pins are great at opening just about any kind of lock, so long as you make that Locksmithing roll

**a trans-uranic alien metal found at the site of a meteor strike up in Vermont

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