The haunter of the dark

And we return, briefly, to the plots from Lovecraft's tales and how they could be twisted to hooks for other games. When I started this, I was aiming at picking ideas that would be useful for a WW2 Cthulhu rpg setting, but as time goes on it's become obvious that these (and most of the previous ones) would also work well as ideas for other games as well. Anyway...

The Haunter of the dark

In The Haunter of the Dark, a cult based on Rhode Island use an ancient artifact, the "Shining Trapezohedron" to summon a being from the depths of time and space (your usual Lovecraft nasty). The artifact had been discovered in Egypt by Professor Enoch Bowen before his return to the US in 1844. It was used by a cult in Providence who would stare into the glowing crystal and summon an avatar of Nyarlathotep called the Haunter in the Dark. The summoned creature demanded sacrifice in return for granting knowledge of forbidden places and information.

At the end of the story Dr Dexter, our would-be hero, throws the the artifact into Narragansett Bay in the hopes that it would permanently place it into the light of day and the stars, which keeps the Haunter at bay.

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There are a number of ways we could use this, so I'll break it down into some ideas for different eras and games

For systems like In Her Majesty's Name, Pulp Alley and possibly even Dead Man's Hand if you fancied adding some oddness, you could run a number of scenarios surrounding the original story:

• A secret cult has been guarding the trapezohedron, keeping the world safe for millenia, until this group of American archeologists come along and start digging up the burial site. Can the archeologists be stopped, or will the Haunter return from the darkness?
• The artifact is on it's return journey to America, along with a number of other items, but the team need to stop off in London. A rival archeologist, cult or somesuch group decides they want something that is in the shipment and must be fought off
• Upon reaching America, the cult in Providence needs to go and find some poor souls to sacrifice. Can they kidnap enough people from the foggy streets before the police catch up to them?

For a WW2 setting we're on shakier ground with the original story as the object is deep underwater by this time. However, it could have been recovered by divers looking for a shipwreck, or there could be a companion to it that wasn't uncovered by the original excavations. This companion could now be in the hands of Black Sun, a German occult group, and it's up to the investigators to retrieve the object before their plans can be finalised.

Charles Dexter Ward

The Charles Dexter Ward tale revolves around a young man who discovers a mysterious lineage to an ancient wizard who somehow managed to defy the aging process and who looks exceedingly like him. Charles becomes more and more frantic in his search modernise information about this ancestor, eventually discovering his connections to wizards in Eastern Europe and a mysterious bungalow in Pawtuxet. As the tale unfolds, we discover that Joseph, Charles' ancient relative is attempting to resurrect himself through Charles.

Most, if not all, of the manuscripts from the Curwen/Ward libraries will have either been destroyed, or moved to  Miskatonic university, but we don't know what happened to the notes created by Curwen's allies in Europe. It is not belond the realms of possibility that they have ended up in the hands of the Nachtwolf, or one of the other occult groups working inside Germany.

Some of Curwen's experiments lived on, entombed within the basements beneath the bungalow for years, so the investigators could be tasked to investigate an abandoned research facility in Eastern Europe or hunt down and prevent the nazis from creating the essential salts needed to keep a man alive forever... Fom what I can remember, the salts were created from the bodies of the recently dead; could this explain some of the mass cleansings that took place during the war?

Copehill Down, UK

In 1943 the entire population of the British town of Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain was evacuated and they have never been allowed back since. The town was, apparently, converted to be a training facility for American troops preparing for the invasion into Europe as they had no experience of the more dense layout of European villages compared to those in America. The town is still owned by the MoD and has been expanded upon to recreate other village types across Europe, including eastern european towns in the 1980s.

But what caused them to pick this village in particular? Salisbury Plain  is home to a number of important mystical sites in the UK; most notably Stonehenge. It wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility that Copehill Down was picked by a cult for their base of operations.  In order to protect the population from whatever was about to (or did) happen, the village was evacuated and turned over to Section D to protect. The village could be part of a gateway through to the Dreamlands, home to a band of ghouls or worse...

The Transition of Juan Romero

The Transition of Juan Romero takes place in a mining camp, presumably in Mexico as the deity Huitzilopochtli is mentioned.

While digging, a deep chasm is uncovered; "too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom".  The night after the discovery of the abyss the narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside the mine, following a mysterious rhythmical throbbing sound. Romero reaches the abyss first and is swallowed by it. The narrator peers over the edge, sees something - "but God, I dare not tell you what I saw!" and loses consciousness. The next morning Romero and the narrator are found in their beds; Romero dead. The other miners swear that no-one left the bunk house...

Huitzilopochtli is a deity dedicated to war, sun and human sacrifice; quite why he's linked to a deep chasm and people dying in their sleep is a bit weird... but this is Mythos we're talking about here. As a deity, he can be transferred to a number of different situations, many of which would be far more suitable. I would imagine sacrifices at sunrise and sunset would be more appropriate.

In terms of converting this to a WW2 mission there's not a lot in the overall plot that ties it to a specific time period, so maybe the investigators have been sent to investigate a series of mysterious deaths a mine. If they only visit during the day they probably won't find much, but if they stay overnight, you could start to introduce elements of the Dreamlands into the meta plot. Normally dying in the Dreamlands would return you to your sleeping form, but occasionally the shock of seeing through the breach and realising that it's real could cause complete heart failure, especially if something hideous like an Elder God, or the city of Leng are seen.

Huitzilopochtlimay be local superstition that is being blamed for the deaths, or he may actually be a facet of an Elder God...

Dagon

The next installment of the Lovecraft related plot ideas is based upon his second short story, Dagon.

In the story a sailor from WW1 gets shipwrecked in the Pacific and ends up on an exposed piece of land with strange topography. He wanders the land looking for a way off, but instead encounters a series of alien carvings and statues. He escapes the island, completely insane, in an attempt to escape from a monstrous being that rises form the deep...

Shifting this from WW1 to WW2 is simple enough, but having the players actually step foot on the island and encounter Dagon may be a bit too much unless you want to either kill them or drive them completely insane; so what can we do with it?

1) The sailor may have brought back rubbings of the carvings, or a small statue. This artifact could lead to a number of different missions; maybe the original visit to the island was during WW1 and the artifacts made their way into the British Museum. Perhaps they get stolen during the evacuation of the museum treasures during the Blitz and the investigators need to track it down and preventing a cult from using it to raise Dagon.

2) Alternatively, the investigators may be sent to a mysterious new island in the pacific and end up trying to prevent the Germans/Japanese from raising Dagon.