Call of Cthulhu
Write-ups
1920s Call of Cthulhu Campaign
Scenario Name: The Dark Wood,
round 2
Scenario Written By: Fred Behrendt
Scenario Publisher: Chaosium, in the book Adventures
in Arkham Country
Run Date: Sep 1993
Keeper: Allan Goodall
Write-up Written By: Lorna Toolis
Characters: Edward Arlington (Martin
Sloan), Deloris Del Rio (Liza Ordubegian), Teddi Mason
(Sherry Moore), Dana Mulgrew (Chris Smith), Jana
Struharikova (Kate O'Donnell), Calli Thorne (Leann
Goodall), John Wellington Wells (Lorna Toolis)
July
1926, Thursday
The next morning there is a knock on the door. Town
Constable Tristram Whately and Dr. Allenby Chestwood of
Aylesbury, who serves as coroner for Aylesbury and
Dunwich both are standing in the door, asking for Orem
Highbridge. We wake Orem up and head out to the site. The
coroner makes a cursory examination, noting with surprise
that there are no maggot eggs in the corpse's eyes. He
tells this to Edward, after making certain he cannot
offend the delicate feminine sensibilities of Teddi and
Deloris, both of whom are furious. With the coroner, with
Edward, with the corpse and for that matter, with the
maggots.
Dana and John stand watch outside, while Jana clears the
remaining dirt away from the totem pole. BAD PLACE // GO
AWAY // DEATH seems to be the message.
A body shrouded in mystery and light-weight cotton - Dana
After Edward, the coroner and the constable place the
body on the cart, we stay to `help' Orem check out the
site. Left alone, we search the chamber. Deloris
accidentally falls and breaks a stone ledge while trying
to check out the wall with the hieroglyphs on it. Jana
cannot pry any of the metal filling the glyphs out, which
is surprising to say the least. Deloris, having used her
whisk, is convinced there is something odd about the
glyph wall, but she can't quite put her finger on it.
Eventually we give up and head back towards the farm,
making a slight detour toward some standing stones on a
nearby hill. The hill is covered with stunted, yellowish
grass. At the crown there are two pillars in the middle
of a ring of standing stones. The pillars are four to
five feet apart, with what look to be crude copies of
Hyperborean glyphs on them. The pillars are about ten
feet tall; they are much older than the two pillars which
appear to be no older than the 18th C.
Edward looks carefully at the glyphs and the pillars, and
then tells the rest of the group that he believes this to
be an interspatial, transdimensional transtemporal
transmitter - in simple words, a gate, able to chenge
locations in time as well as space. We listen to this in
respectful silence, then Calli heaves a rock through the
pillars just to see if anything will happen. Nothing much
does; there is some discussion about the merits of
blowing up the gate right now, but we are not quite clear
about which side of the gate the Desh is currently on,
and we wouldn't want to cut of its' retreat.
On our way fown the South face of the hill, we find a
cave. After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, John,
Jana and Deloris go in to take a look. Pentagonal in
shape, it is obviously not a natural formation. About 35'
in we find a perfectly flat wall with some odd marks on
it. Deloris copies the squiggles, while John goes and
gets Calli. Calli identifies the marks as the remanents
of a gate. The runes are not hyperborean. Jana is able to
tell us with the excavation and carvings are at least a
thousand years old.
We head back to the house where Rebecca tells us about a
McCutcheon cousin who got herself pregnant without a
husband around 1904. Orem returns and we given up any
hope of useful activity for the night.
The next morning Rebecca doesn't wake up. Deloris can't
wake her up, although the shouting eventually arouses
Orem. We send Orem for the doctor in Aylesbury, 8 miles
away, while Calli tries her first aid techniques on
Rebecca. Calli finds an ominous star-shaped irritated
mark on Rebecca's head. She sticks her elder sign on
Rebecca's head in the hope of slowing down whatever
process is underway.
The group searches the house without finding anything.
Dana and Edward check out the grounds immediately
surrounding the house, while John checks out the stable.
John and Deloris go to town to bring Mary Bishop out to
Rebecca, where guilt may make her more verbose. She tells
us she doesn't know anything that will help us, but that
Mother Bishop may know something that will help Rebecca.
When we ask about Johnny Courage, she tells us to talk to
Henry Saddlemaker. She writes a note to Mother Bishop
(Come quickly. These are our friends. Believe!) and
advises John to take her a present. John sets out on
Sekhmet, stopping at Osborne's General Store along the
way to buy some gifts for Mother Bishop. He has to read
her the note, but she doesn't argue about riding on the
saddle in front of John, which saves a fair amount of
time.
However, once she has a look at Rebecca's head, she tells
us that the satar-shaped thing is new to her, but she
thinks that the attempt upon Rebecca has misfired. She
doesn't know anything much about Charlene and is pretty
sure the McCutcheon's sent the pregnant cousin to Boston.
We ask about the hill with the standing stones on it, so
Mother Bishop settles down beside Rebecca with a cup of
tea to tell us about Wizard's Hill. According to legend,
the hill is older than the Indian tribes, but in the 18th
C. Jacob Whately started using it for horrible,
un-natural rites. To this day the hill is supposed to be
haunted by Jacob or some strange being which moves around
the standing stones after dark.
When we ask her about Johnny Courage she strongly
suggests that we talk to Henry Saddlemaker. John hitches
Sekhmet up to the cart and we head out to Saddlemaker's
shack, which is 3 miles north of Dunswich.
There is a certain amount of unpleasantness when we
arrive, due to Mr. Saddlemaker's conviction that we are
agents of the IRS. Teddi and Deloris are able to persuade
him that we are just nice normal folks and get him to
talk to us.
Eventually, he tells us some of what we need to know.
When Johnny Courage's parents died, Johnny came to Henry
to learn more of the ways of his people. Fairly soon,
Henry realized that Johnny "carried the blood of the
Elder People and lusted after their forbidden
knowledge." Henry refused to teach him and Johnny
went elsewhere, still looking for a teacher.
Henry tells us that the site Orem destroyed was created
by the Elder People. They were found sleeping in it when
the first Indian tribes moved to this area. They
intermingled with the people and eventually took the
tribe over. Eventually their blood line weakened, but
some Indians still carry the tainted blood. Henry feels
their powers are seuctive but ultimately destructive. For
him, between dusk and sundown, dawn and sunrise memories
that are not his own come to him, memories of a time when
men were more than men.
Henry also knows about the desh.They have been with us
for many years. My father's father knew them and knew how
to summon them. Do not look at them, for to look upon
them is to see the dreams of the people they have
destroyed and go mad!" Deloris and Teddi are
astoundingly persuasive; he tells us that he knows how to
send the desh away, no one else knows how or can learn.
He adds that it would be more difficult to kill Johnny
Courage than we seem to think. It will take him one to
two days more to make his preparations to send the desh
away.
Unhappy, but unable to get anything more out to Henry, we
leave. Arriving back at the farm, we learn that Rebecca
was briefly coherent, but otherwise there is no change.
While John makes supper, Deloris hears Rebecca mumbling.
At first incoherent, eventually she makes out, "...
should have been him, the Desecrator, the one who must
die but instead it was one of my own, dying in the dark,
with the rock pressing down, getting closer and closer,
while the worm pressed against his skull..."
"I'd hate to barf on his head and add insult
to injury..." - or..."Where do desh go for
deshert?" - Edward
We are uneasy about our chances of surviving the night.
So, we all settle down in the living room with a blazing
fire and a double watch, one person with Rebecca and one
listening for noises from upstairs. We want Rebecca
downstairs too, so John drugged Orem during dinner.
Edward hangs an Elder Sign on Orem's door, with a view to
ensuring that nothing nasty comes through it.
Between 2:30 A.M. and 2:45 A.M., Dana hears a crash,
followed by an odd thump ing noise. Edward and Dana go
upstairs to see what is eating Oren, Calli takes Rebecca
in a fireman's carry in case we have to run for it, while
John, Teddi and Deloris all wait with shotguns out,
waiting to see who or what comes down the stairs.
There are no screams or anything. Eventually Edward and
Dana come down the stairs. They seem vastly relieved, but
are obligated to mention that something came through the
window and bit off Orem's head. Orem, having been drugged
by John, was completely defenseless. Too bad.