Who ate all the spies?

My roleplaying group used to cut loose up to four times a year with seasonal one-shots. It's a tradition that died out in the pandemic never to fully resume, though we still try to fit in a special around Christmas -- almost the only roleplaying I get to do these days.

Fifteen years ago I ran a scenario called “A Long Time Dying”. The idea was based on another Christmas tradition, at least of my childhood Christmases, when there would always be a James Bond movie on TV between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. I don’t think it’s essential for Christmas movies or Christmas one-shot games to be set at Christmas, although for this scenario I buckled. Cold War stories always benefit from a touch of frost.

The game is set in 1962 and the player-character cast list will give you the general idea:

• “Number Six”
• Illya Nikovich Kuryakin
• Harry Palmer
• George Smiley
• Napoleon Solo
• John Steed
• Simon Templar

I thought that would tell my players what to expect, but I’d forgotten that most of them weren’t born until the 1970s, so probably only Smiley meant anything at all. That may explain why the game veered off into a rather Roger Mooreish arched-eyebrow take on Cold War espionage, but – well, these one-shots were never fully serious. I know a lot of people prefer silly games, but for me there's no point in roleplaying unless you're going to take it seriously. Specials like this, though, are just for fun.

I've changed the scenario title to justify a Shirley Bassey theme song. So here's

THE RHYTHM DIVINE

Monday, Dec 17, 1962                    

(Music track: Nunc Dimittis by Arvo Pärt.)

(This is a “pre-title” sequence that is presented to the players without them being present in character. Normally I’d have no truck with such metafictional malarkey, but it’s a one-shot. Come to that, I don’t normally include music tracks in my scenarios either.)

A railway station near Haskovo, southern Bulgaria. It’s the early morning, just before daybreak. Troops from the nearby 4^th Fighter-Bomber Air Base wait in the cold. Gritty snow falls, skittering like dust over the icy cold platform.

Then: the sound of a train horn. Lights appear out of the blue pre-dawn dusk. The train pulls into the station. Red Army soldiers jump down and the two commanders salute each other.

A tarpaulin is removed from one of the carriages to reveal a large bomb, about 8m long by 2m wide, with the single word царь painted on the side.

Sergeants shout orders, their voices sounding short-tempered and nervous. A crane is lowered and begins to unload the bomb, which swings wildly to one side, the support frame just missing a row of soldiers who have to throw themselves to the ground.

The crane sweeps across the platform, smacking the bomb into the station wall. The frame buckles and the bomb falls. Absurdly, given the size and nature of the bomb, everyone dives for cover. The bomb strikes the iron-hard ground –

And cracks, with the sound of splintering wood. The Soviet colonel picks himself up, sweeps the snow off his coat, and strides over. In gloved hands he lifts part of the wreckage: painted wood, filled with sand for ballast.

He looks into the east, where the dull glimmer of dawn barely penetrates the heavy shelf of snow clouds, and perhaps imagines the gulag where he will be sent for this.

Music as we fade to black: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

THE SETTING: 1962

This is the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both the USA and the USSR are aware of the need to safeguard against such incidents in the future, so when a new threat emerges only a couple of months later, the best operatives from both sides of the Iron Curtain are assigned to an international team to track down the diabolical mastermind behind it.

NATO

• USA                President: John F Kennedy
• GB                   Prime Minister: Harold Macmillan
• France:            President: Charles de Gaulle
• W Germany:   Chancellor: Konrad Adenauer

EASTERN BLOC

• USSR               First Secretary: Nikita Khrushchev; Chairman of the Presidium: Leonid Brezhnev
• Rumania:        General Secretary: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
• Bulgaria:         General Secretary: Todor Zhivkov

NON-ALIGNED

• Yugoslavia      Marshal Josip Tito
• Albania           First Secretary: Enver Hoxha
• Tunisia            President: Habib Bourguiba

Thursday, Dec 20      

(Music track: The Avengers theme.)                                                      

Whitehall on a grey morning with snow falling outside. Control waits with George Smiley and Colonel Ross. John Steed arrives and the introductions are made. A few minutes later, Harry Palmer looks around the door – “Late as usual, Palmer,” says Ross irritably, waving him to a chair.

Control relates what Smiley has found out from his Bulgarian contacts about the stolen bomb. Control and Smiley have made an approach to the KGB to assist them in looking for the bomb. The Soviets have agreed, but on the condition that their man will head up the joint operation. Steed, Palmer and Smiley are to fly to Berlin, where they will meet up with two more international operatives codenamed “Tailor” and “Thief”.

• London to Berlin: flight 2 hrs.
• Paris to Moscow: flight 4hrs; train 36 hours; car 72 hours averaging 60 mph.
• Berlin to Moscow: flight 3 hrs; train 27 hrs; car 49 hrs averaging 60 mph.

Thursday, Dec 20

(Music: The Man from UNCLE theme.)

It’s mid-afternoon when they reach Berlin. It’s icy cold but not snowing. Their liaison in Berlin is Dr Franz Six, a former Nazi who now works for British Intelligence.

Smiley, Steed and Palmer are to make contact with their colleagues at the Adlon Kempinski Hotel. At reception they are told that “Herr Solo” is in the coffee bar. Smiley goes through and nods to Napoleon Solo just as a man coming in off the street recognizes Smiley, sees that he knows Solo (whom he was coming to meet) and rushes out.

The man is Otto Vessler, an East German spy whom Solo has been reeling in for weeks. In the west he poses as an industrialist, but with his cover blown he’s going to make a dash for the Wall. He grabs a motorcycle and the chase is on…

(Music: The Saint.)

Halfway through the chase, Simon Templar turns up. He’s been tracking Vessler as part of his own private investigation, so may take some convincing to team up with the others.

Their flight leaves Berlin at 5:30, arriving in Moscow at 11:30 pm (ie 3 hours ahead of Berlin time).

Thursday, Dec 20

(Music: Diamonds Are Forever.)

Midnight in Red Square. Snow on the ground, but a crystal clear sky full of stars above the Kremlin – and among those stars the small but growing collection of satellites launched by the superpowers, including Telstar which was put up in the summer.

They are taken to meet Illya Kuryakin, along with an academician called Andrei Sakharov, who explains:

“The bomb is based on the Teller-Ulam design and has a yield of 100 megatons. That’s three thousand times the combined yield of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – or, to put it in terms of conventional explosive, twenty times the total of all explosives used in WW2. The explosion would cause third degree burns at a distance of 100 km, stone buildings would be destroyed up to 55 km. Two such weapons would equal the detonation of Krakatoa.”

Brezhnev comes in. He’s wrapped up in a thick fur coat and there’s a waft of vodka on his breath. “We have a captive spy at the Black Sea facility. He could be useful and it’s on your way, a bit. You’ll have to spring him, though, as SMERSH will never give the nod to releasing him.”

• Moscow to Odessa: flight 2 hrs; train (HSR) 8 hrs
• Odessa to The Village: 2 hrs by car
• Berlin to Moscow: flight 3 hrs; train 27 hrs; car 49 hrs averaging 60 mph.

Incidentally this is the first time Solo and Kuryakin have met each other. U.N.C.L.E. is still a few years in the future, and in fact this adventure paves the way for its formation.

THE VILLAGE                              midday, Dec 21?

(Music: The Prisoner.)

To get Number Six away from the village, they need to get past Rover (the Water Balloon Monster):

Whether Number Six’s real identity is John Drake is up to the player to decide.

THE TRAIN ROUTE

10 hours across Romania

(Music: From Russia With Love)

They set out from Kharkiv in the south-west USSR, via Kirovohrad and Chisinau, into Romania at Iasi and then via Bacau and Brasov.

Just beyond Zarnesti in Romania, the train carrying the bomb entered a mile-long tunnel through the Carpathians. Thereafter it went via Bucharest without stopping, crossed the Bulgarian border at Ruse, and from there via Veliko Tarnovo and Stara Zamora to its destination.

Investigation inside the tunnel at Zarnesti discovers an apparatus built into the tunnel roof. The mechanism has been removed but it was obviously recently excavated and a large piece of machinery was housed here. Caves lead off from the excavated area.

Investigation: Some discarded screws. Engineer roll to conclude they are West German.

Investigation: Part of the apparatus is found – part of a plate scraped off against the rough walls of the cave, stamped with “CHIRO-” (from Chiroptics GmbH).

Investigation by questioning the driver (Engineer Boris Utkin) or officer in charge (Col Yuri Lagunov) reveals that the line was blocked by a fallen tree just after the tunnel, forcing them to stop for about fifteen minutes while it was cleared.

Investigation further along the track after the tunnel reveals a disused branch line that has been recently uncovered – the line towards Yugoslavia, sealed off when the two countries fell out in the 1950s. It leads to Dubrovnik.

Investigation before the tunnel reveals a siding where a train was recently (engine oil on ground). Somebody waited a while (cheroot stubs; Connoiseur roll to identify as 25-cent Marsh Wheeling stogies).

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

Boswell Brontë’s mercenaries (all ex-US special forces, led by a stogie-smoking WW2 commando called Major Dugan) swapped the bomb for their fake, then when the train had gone they brought up their own carriage, loaded the bomb, went on and used to branch line into Yugoslavia, hooked up with a train carrying the circus troupe, and smuggled the bomb out as fireworks bound for Venice.

Investigation of ships out of Dubrovnik into western ports on Dec 18-19: the Suske, carrying the Carobnaci od Vatromet circus troupe, arrived in Venice on Dec 19.

Monday, Dec 24

Venice. A cold wind blows across the lagoon. The local CIA agent is Candy Sweetmeat, a young “swinger” type. She’s eager to please and very nice, so no doubt the bad guys must kill her at some point. (Or try to kill her, if she’s a player-character.)

Boswell Brontë is giving a fireworks display on the Grand Canal on Christmas Eve, which also happens to be the night of the new moon. If the characters attend, they will see Brontë give a rambling speech about how he met his wife “here in Europe” seven years ago tonight. That’s followed by Mrs Brontë lighting a champagne-bottle-styled firework that begins the show.

One part is particularly impressive: the Yugoslav acrobat troupe do a trapeze juggling act over the canal, throwing lit fireworks to each other that are timed to go off in mid-air at the exactly right moment and orientation to create the highlights of the display.

If the characters have been at all indiscreet about their investigations, Miss Hazzard sneaks in while they’re watching the fireworks and plants a bomb in their hotel suite (Observation roll at -5 to spot, character involved only.)

OR

They might sneak into the Brontës’ suite (though in fact they’re going back to the yacht after the show) in which case they may have to deal with Miss Hazzard and an appropriate number of mooks.

EITHER WAY

They get to discover some finely ground glass that seems to have been trodden into the carpet on somebody’s shoes.

Investigation of the glass factory on Murano owned by Chiroptics GmbH discovers glass with microcracks (Observation roll) caused by sonic effects (Physics roll). The sonic equipment itself has been moved out. (This was where Brontë’s scientists worked out the correct array of parabolic reflectors.)

If Brontë needs a rapid departure from the city, either as an outright escape or simply if the referee wants to create a dramatic moment if the characters are closing in with a view to confronting him, he leaves by hydroplane on the Grand Canal.

CRUISE TO TUNIS                      takes 48 hours -> arrive midday Friday 28th

Investigation: if they talk to Boswell, they discover that he is fascinated by Rome’s struggle for supremacy with Carthage, and how he admires Hannibal – who nearly dealt with “those upstarts”.

The Jericho leaves Venice at 9am on Dec 26 and arrives in Tunis midday Dec 28.

Investigation: Brontë International has a facility 50 miles south of Tunis where they are building arches of various sizes using synthetic rock (similar to sandstone).

• Observation and Physics/Engineer: the arches are curved and would fit together to create a large parabolic surface with a radius of over 50m.

Investigation: the company books show that enough arches were made here to build hundreds of similar parabolas.

• Physics/Engineer roll at -5: An array of such reflectors would have an effect similar to one enormous reflector hundreds of miles long.
• Physics roll at -5: The size of the parabolas suggests they are designed to focus or reflect sound of low wavelength.

Investigation: an Accountant looking into Brontë’s business discovers he has a network of shell companies in the finance sector. On a roll at -5 they can see that many of these companies have been shorting US stocks and bonds.

The opening night of the opera is 8pm on Dec 29. The stage is spectacular, being a floating platform hundreds of feet across set in the bay, complete with replica backdrop of ancient Rome.

The opera is attended by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, Foreign Minister Mongi Slim, and King Mohammed Idris of Libya. (There is talk of the two countries merging into one, which would signal a rise in the price of oil, but that’s actually a red herring.)

The opera stage is self-propelled and submersible, docking with Boswell’s undersea base (see below) in which the bomb is located. Of course, at the time the bomb detonates (6am on Dec 31) he plans to be safely inland at his villa in Corsica.

THE MASTER PLAN

Boswell plans to detonate the bomb on the sea bed, where an array of parabolic reflectors will direct the resulting pressure wave through the Straits of Gibraltar, and across the Atlantic, where it will create a tsunami that will wreak devastation along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Boswell has heavily shorted US stocks and the dollar, and stands to make billions when Wall Street crashes.

THE UNDERWATER BASE

The “stage” docks with the underwater base where the bomb is located. Brontë plans to detach from the bomb housing, return to the surface, escape by helicopter, scuppering the stage so that it sinks to the sea bed with the characters trapped on board.

The characters will need to break out of the stage, survive the pressure (luckily they’re on the saddle of seabed connecting Tunisia and Sicily, not on the deep bed), get to the bomb base, gain entry, disarm the bomb, and return to the surface.

THE CORSICAN VILLA

Visitors arrive by helicopter. It’s a replica of Nero’s palace in the Bay of Naples.

Monday, 11pm, New Year’s Eve: FINAL JEOPARDY IN MONACO                       

Three of the circus acrobats come to kill whichever of the characters is “man of the match” – so out-of-game it’s kind of a reward. Think of the final jeopardy scenes traditional in 007 movies.

That character is taking a shower while the others are waiting in the casino. He notices a slight ruffling of the shower curtain as the balcony door is opened and closed.

Game notes:

The players were all characters in our long-running Immortal Spartans campaign, although this tongue-in-cheek one-shot was not canonically part of the "real" campaign. That explains the title, "A Long Time Dying", which felicitously both sounds like a Bond title and describes a 2500 year lifespan.

Being Spartans from Thermopylae, all the characters were male even though the players were not. But that fits with the assumptions of high adventure in 1962. If you have players who prefer female characters there are some from the period who you could use, eg Dr Cathy Gale from The Avengers. 

The scenario originally appeared on my Patreon page; you can join as a free member if strapped for roubles.

The stats are given in GURPS 4e terms because that's what I used originally, but it should be simple enough to adapt the scenario to any system. (Other options: Classified, Cold Shadows, and Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes.) I usually don't care for what are now called narrative games (it's good that they encourage improvisation, but I prefer character-playing to storyteller-playing) and the only capers I enjoy are the sort that go on pizzas, but I recently played in a Blades '68 one-shot that was a real hoot and a thorough pleasure, a kind of gaming crossbreed of Spy and Hudson Hawk, and I can't deny that those Forged in the Dark based rules deliver a lot tighter and brisker gaming experience for one-shots. Given that you're only going to be playing these characters the once and they're all daft caricatures of the classic fictional originals, it's barely roleplaying anyway. So why not?

Regarding the music, if you're not a purist then there are some funked-up versions of some of the tracks here.

Finally, if your players attempt to defuse to bomb at the bottom of the Mediterranean, as mine did, here's the track for that.

"Abnormal Growth" (a Cthulhu Mythos investigative scenario)

Almost exactly 89 years ago, on March 15, H P Lovecraft died. That's my pretext for posting this scenario, which ties in with the rules for Dagon Warriors (sic) but could just as easily be run using Infinite Night or Call of Cthulhu or whatever system you prefer. (But don't for the sake of your own SAN use The Yellow King.) This is a modified version of a post that appeared on my Patreon page; sign up there and you'd have seen it a year earlier. The artwork below, apart from the growths vignette and the Fernsby house, is by Tillinghast23 on DeviantArt, who has lots of other stylish illustrations for work by HPL, Clark Ashton Smith, and others. The examples here all accompany HPL's poem 'Fungi from Yuggoth'. There is a downloadable copy of "Abnormal Growth" with Call of Cthulhu stats here, and another Depression-era scenario is "Bleak Prospect" by Scott Dorward in the collection Nameless Horrors.

The year is 1930. Prohibition has gripped the nation, and the roar of the Roaring Twenties seems a distant memory for many. In the sleepy town of Lucan Falls, nestled amongst the rolling hills and dense forests of upstate New York, life moves at a slower pace. But beneath the surface of this tranquil community, a sinister force is stirring. The player-characters start by looking into the disappearance of a Cornell dropout and end up confronting a horror from the fringes of the solar system.

The disappearance of Stanley Cakebread

The disappearance of Stanley Cakebread (21, brilliant but highly strung), a vagrant with a troubled past, has thrown the quiet town of Lucan Falls into a state of unease. Stanley, a Cornell dropout who had embraced a nomadic lifestyle, sent regular postcards to his parents in Manhattan. However, the postcards abruptly ceased a month ago, the last one postmarked from the small town of Harmony, just south of Lucan Falls.

The characters

The scenario is suitable for about six characters of 1st rank, or three characters of 2nd rank. The investigators may find themselves drawn into the mystery in various ways. As this is a one-shot, not all the player-characters need have the same background. It will make for a more interesting adventure if some are recruited by the Cakebread family, then encounter other PCs when they trace Stanley’s route to Lucan Falls. 

• The family: Stanley’s wealthy parents, distraught over his disappearance, enlist the characters to find him. They meet at the family’s brownstone on March 24th, 1930. The characters could be private detectives, family members, and/or Stanley’s former college buddies. The parents provide his last few postcards, the final one sent from a town neighbouring Lucan Falls (see Handout below). 
• Local law enforcement: Sheriff Harlow (see below) perhaps reluctantly deputizes the investigators, hoping to quiet any rumours before they spread. Missing hobos are one thing, but the loss of someone with wealthy family connections could attract unwanted attention. Or the characters could already be law enforcement officers in Lucan Falls. 
• Town residents: Characters could have connections to the missing people, such as friends of a vanished hobo, or Miss Gretchen Price, a schoolteacher who briefly interacted with Stanley. 
• Personal connections: One of the investigators might have previously known Stanley Cakebread, or even better (since other PCs are prioritizing Stanley’s whereabouts) they might have known one of the missing hobos. Perhaps one of the investigators has led a vagrant life themselves, either owing to the Depression or because they’re researching a book or a newspaper story, and shared a campfire meal with Stanley on his travels.

Handout

Stanley’s postcards trace his progress northwards through New York state, the last being postmarked February 28th 1930 from the town of Harmony. It reads:

Lucan Falls

Lucan Falls is a small, quiet town of 1,800 nestled in the Adirondack foothills. Its economy relies on logging and a small textile mill, but the Great Depression has left many out of work. A single main street features a general store, a diner, a post office, a modest library, and a barbershop. Surrounding the town are thick forests of pine and maple, dotted with winding trails and the occasional cabin.

Prohibition is in full effect, but moonshiners operate in the woods, supplying locals and visitors alike. The townsfolk are tight-knit and slow to trust outsiders, but they’re polite enough if you don’t ask too many questions.

Disappearances

Starting in November of 1928, family pets started going missing on the north side of town – mostly cats, but also one dog that ran away from its owner and was never found. That spate of disappearances stopped around March of 1929 and, insofar as the sheriff took any notice, he put it down to a wild animal. The elderly Miss Victoria Erwin (72, vague but charming) whose cat Mel was the last to go missing, says, ‘I think a bobcat must have been prowling around the town and then moved on.’ But Mrs Emily Hensley (80s, widowed), contradicts her; she insists a ‘monster’ was to blame for the disappearance of her cat: ‘He’d have seen off any two bobcats and not even taken a scratch. Not scared on any living thing on this earth, my Darkie.’

From April to September, three recently-deceased bodies were stolen from the town graveyard. Only one of these was noticed, in June when the nights are shorter, the headstone having been chipped in the grave-robber’s haste. That was the grave of Arthur Hempel, a local truck driver who drove off the road one night in a state of intoxication. The sheriff’s investigation concluded that it may have been the work of bootleggers irate at Hempel’s refusal to carry their wares. There was no evidence to support that theory, but in the absence of any other explanation the case was closed.

Starting the investigation

It shouldn’t take long for the family-hired characters to narrow the search down to the Lucan Falls area, at which point they can quickly meet up with other player-characters. There are various leads to chase up and NPCs to talk to.

Sheriff Clyde Harlow (40s, world-weary) isn’t aware of the hobos’ disappearance, but he’s sufficiently bothered by the news about Stanley Cakebread to assign a deputy to help out – even while maintaining that Stanley may never have even come to Lucan Falls: ‘Might be he headed over Porterstown way. More opportunities for casual labour there, I’d think. And it ain’t a whole lot further from Harmony.’

Following leads

The two hobos who went missing were (in November 1929) Daniel Louth, an unemployed construction worker from Albany, and (in January 1930) Harcourt Rosedale, a former art dealer who lost his life savings in the Wall Street crash. The authorities have no reason to suspect foul play as in these straitened economic times vagrants often pass through looking for work. However, there are those who can say more if the investigators do a little digging. Get the players to take the initiative and roleplay it, maybe chivvying things along with some PERCEPTION rolls if they need it:

Louth was due to meet up with some mechanics from a local garage. Forrest Packard (27, furtive) might be got to admit he owed Louth a couple of dollars from a crap game the previous night and was surprised he didn’t show: ‘I was set to tell him I only had but the buck fifty, and it was a take it or leave it type deal, but he mustn’t have needed it that bad as he never showed.’

The cook at the diner, Big Lou (50s, gruff but kind), remembers a drifter who came around begging for food back around Thanksgiving. ‘Tough, stringy little guy. Hands that had done some work. I remember thinking he could do with some gloves. I gave him some scraps and a half-bottle of – well, let’s say it was soda pop.’

Harcourt Rosedale kept to himself, but a local hunter, Bruce Dent (40s, heavy-set, affable) saw him a couple of times and could lead the investigators to the area where Rosedale must have been camping out. They’ll find his bedroll, some rusty cooking utensils, and even his boots. ‘Huh, fancy him leaving those behind,’ says Dent.

Jeb Gurney (50s, taciturn), a farmer who lives a couple of miles out of town, remembers chasing a figure away from his toolshed back in January. (That was Rosedale. Normally the trail would be too obscure by now for tracking, but Rosedale had only been on the road for a month or two and made no careful effort to hide his tracks, so allow a Scout to make a d20 PERCEPTION roll to find his camp site if Dent hasn’t already led them to it.)

More importantly, the investigators will want to look for evidence that Stanley Cakebread passed through here. Despite the sheriff’s reluctance to admit it (he privately hopes that Stanley never came to Lucan Falls) there are several people who encountered him.

The general store is the heart of town gossip. The owner, Edna McAllister (50s, sharp-tongued), recalls a young man who came in and asked to see a map of the local woods. ‘Said he needed to take a look at the trails hereabouts. Claimed to be hiking, but I know a bum when I see one. Pointed him at the library yonder. I’m not running a charity, am I?’

Miss Gretchen Price (30s, intelligent but guarded), a schoolteacher, ran into him in the town library. ‘I was struck by the sight of this pale young man whose clothes were shabby but well-cut. Of course, the economy has dealt just such a blow to many good folk unused to hardship. He had a cultured accent, too – oh yes, we spoke. I remember him being very interested in news of the new planet that had been observed. There has been talk of what to name it, and the young man said that it should be Pluto, “for wealth is far out of our reach now”. And he smiled as he said it, but it was the feverish and darting-eyed smile of one who is very deeply troubled.’

The hardest clue to uncover involves a couple of moonshiners, Guy ‘Giggles’ Pink and his brother Marvin, aka ‘Mule’ (both early 30s, clever, flash, ruthless). They chased Stanley away from their still on February 28 – the night he went missing. It was a new moon and he was blundering around with a flashlight, so if the Pink brothers weren’t so mistrustful they might have realized that he wasn’t looking to rob them. Of course, they won’t volunteer any of this to anyone associated with the law, but it’s possible to get them talking if they think they have a customer for their product. Alternatively, if surprised at night they may well turn violent.

Giggles Pink will resort to a revolver if they are outnumbered, but he is sensible enough not to want a gunfight – he has no intention of losing his life over a few pints of hooch – and so will threaten rather than start blazing away.

Whether or not the investigators encounter the Pink brothers, they could stumble across the still if they diligently search the woods north of town. However, the still is well-camouflaged – roll the still’s effective STEALTH of 19 against the searching character’s PERCEPTION (roll on 2d10; use the highest PERCEPTION in the party). It is much easier to find the flashlight that Stanley dropped when running away from the Pink brothers. On its own that proves nothing, but not far off the characters may find (d20 PERCEPTION roll needed) Stanley’s Kappa Alpha Tau fraternity pin and broken spectacles. This was where Walter Fernsby ambushed him.

What actually happened

Walter Fernsby (36, lank, burning-eyed, sullen, reclusive) is an amateur naturalist and former timber worker who lives in a ramshackle house along the road that runs north-west out of Lucan Falls. A little over a year ago, walking in the woods, Walter discovered a small patch of unusual fungus or lichen growing near a gouge in the earth apparently caused by a metallic or ceramic shell that was already deteriorating. Intrigued by the iridescent hue of the fungus, he scraped it up and took it home. Unbeknownst to him, the spores were the remnants of a Mi-Go – an alien being somewhat resembling terrestrial fungi – that had been destroyed in the crash.

Walter tried to culture the ‘fungus’ in the dampness of his cellar. As it grew it began to take the form of a new Mi-Go, developing intelligence, telepathy, and an insatiable need for organic matter to sustain its growth. Of course it had no knowledge of its nature or origin, but it used its natural intellect to learn English (which it speaks with a rasping, buzzing sound) and later it developed its power of telepathy enough to communicate with Walter and even exert subliminal control over him over a range of up to half a mile.

To provide the organism with food, Walter at first used small woodland animals. Then he caught a few cats that came around looking for milk. As the growing Mi-Go demanded more and more sustenance, Walter first tried grave-robbing, but after nearly getting caught he saw that the risk of discovery was too great. Then he found a down-and-out whom he got drunk on moonshine and then fed to the Mi-Go in the cellar. That was Daniel Louth. After that he killed Harcourt Rosedale, figuring that when hobos disappeared most people would assume they’d just moved on – if they even took notice of them in the first place.

Walter came across Stanley Cakebread in the woods at night. It was the dark of the moon, but the Mi-Go’s telepathy helped guide Walter by means of other senses than sight. Urged on by the almost fully-grown Mi-Go, Walter was incautious – instead of finding out who Stanley was, he coshed him with a tree branch and then strangled him. But Walter made a mistake in assuming that Stanley was just another vagrant nobody would miss.

Identifying the culprit

What will draw the characters’ attention to Walter Fernsby? He is the subject of much local gossip, an eccentric even before the Mi-Go pushed its tendrils into his mind, but nobody has any reason to mention him in the context of the disappearances. The characters will need to specifically ask about strange behaviour, in which case they may discover the following.

Walter's increasing isolation has been noticed around town. Always a loner given to long walks in the woods, he quit his job about a year ago and started to snub his former co-workers. ‘He used to buttonhole you and talk about tree roots and crown gall and what insects do to dead birds. Crazy coot. But lately he’d turn right around and hurry away. He was an oddball even as a boy, that one, and I said he’d only get stranger as he got older.’

Always very devout and involved in church affairs, Walter has continued to show up on Sunday mornings but he hurries away as soon as the service is over. The pastor remembers: ‘Once I tried to talk to him. “Walter, we could use your help at the summer fete.” He looked – I don’t know, almost grateful that I’d spoken to him. I thought he was going to say something, but then he looked around, as if he’d heard someone calling his name, and hurried off mumbling to himself. I really fear that young man has been seduced by the devil liquor.’

‘Took to buying a lot of fertilizer,’ says Edna McAllister. ‘For how long now? I can look it up right here. Starting November year before last, and he doubled the order a couple times since then. Oh, I forgot this. Last spring he got me to order a sheet of something called Wood’s glass from a factory in Syracuse. Got real impatient waiting for that to come in. And he bought a bunch of incandescent bulbs once he fixed himself up a generator last summer. Don’t seem to last him. Look here, a new box of bulbs every six weeks or so.’

Walter has become obsessed by the idea that the alien creature in his cellar is actually an angel. With Easter less than a month away, he goes to see the Reverend Thomas Loughty (50s, politely detached) to discuss descriptions of angels from the Bible, specifically Isaiah 6:2, Ezekial 1:15, Ezekial 10:12 and Daniel 10:5. He is extremely agitated and urgent, but says nothing about the Mi-Go, only insists that judgement is coming and we should open our eyes to ‘the seraphim and the ophanim, for they will come to guide the faithful.’

Distractions

There’s no challenge if Walter is the only suspicious person around town. There should be red herrings. The Pink brothers can be quickly dismissed as suspects – they’re unscrupulous and hardboiled, but hardly murderous. Their activities bring them into regular contact with bootleggers from the city, though, and the desecration of Arthur Hempel’s grave could lead the investigators off on a wild goose chase. The investigators will hear gossip about a near-legendary gangster, Billy ‘Spats’ Malone (30, wiry, with a perpetual five o’clock shadow), so-called not because of his dress sense but because he’s always having spats with people. Malone is a career criminal who found his niche managing the practical side of bootlegging operations for Vincent Costello, a mob boss in Albany. Malone oversees the drivers, muscle, and logistics, ensuring the hooch gets where it needs to go while keeping the law at bay. He wears practical clothes – a leather jacket, flat cap, and sturdy boots – and relies on the force of his personality to keep people in line, but has a set of brass knuckles in his pocket ‘just in case.’ The characters may never encounter Malone, but if they do then he’s quick with a wisecrack and quicker with his fists. He knows the backroads around Lucan Falls like the back of his hand and doesn’t take kindly to strangers poking into his affairs. Maybe he could become a useful contact in subsequent adventures if this adventure develops into a campaign.

Leonard Fisk (40s, truculent if thwarted) is a travelling salesman who occasionally blows into town and stays at a boarding house run by Joseph and Phillipa Dawes (50s). Fisk sells suspicious ‘miracle elixirs’ and is always asking odd questions. He hints that he might have spoken to Stanley Cakebread and even leads people to think he knows more than he’s letting on, but there’s no truth to that. He read about Cakebread in the paper in New York, where the family posted a classified ad asking anyone for information about their son, and just figures that a whiff of mystery might help his business.

In the woods north-east of town (quite a few miles from Walter’s house) the characters may come across a splintered tree and a furrow along which strangely misshapen plants grow in febrile profusion. This is where the Mi-Go probe crashed seventeen months ago. There is no sign of the probe itself, its casing having ablated in Earth’s atmosphere, nor are there any Mi-Go growths (Walter collected the only patch of spores), but radiation from the probe has caused the local flora to mutate in the soil it ploughed through.

For comic relief the characters could encounter a bunch of kids who style themselves the East Side Private Eyes. 10-year-olds Ron Bishop, Ken Heald, Andy Monroe and (accepted on sufferance by the three boys) Kitty Bateman scoot around town on their bikes and fancy themselves to be bold and resourceful investigators, although at least half of what they have to say consists of bragging and make-believe rather than actual evidence.

Out at the Fernsby place

If the characters go snooping around Walter’s house they find a refuse pit with the bones of rodents, birds, and even what may be the remains of a housecat. Walter is careful not to dispose of human remains so haphazardly, however – those he puts in his furnace. The pit also contains heaps of burned-out electric bulbs.

If they get close to the house they’ll risk telepathic detection by the Mi-Go, who will alert Walter.

The Mi-Go is aware that it will soon need to move beyond Walter’s cellar. To that end it would like to enlist better helpers with greater resources, both practical and social. It’s highly unlikely that the player-characters as a group would fulfil that purpose, but if it has the chance to recruit a lone character it will try that before ordering Walter to attack.

The Mi-Go keeps to the cellar during the day, but now that it is fully grown it has become daring enough to venture up into the house and even outside at night. A trail of scattered notes and drawings across the floor of Walter’s living room show his sketches of the creature as it grew, from a pulsating mass of flesh-coloured gills and lobes to something resembling a grotesque coral sculpture of a kind of winged insect or crustacean.

The description given by Henry Akeley in ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’ is of ‘a great crab with a lot of pyramided fleshy rings or knots of thick, ropy stuff covered with feelers where a man’s head would be [...] They are more vegetable than animal, if these terms can be applied to the sort of matter composing them, and have a somewhat fungoid structure; though the presence of a chlorophyll-like substance and a very singular nutritive system differentiate them altogether from true cormophytic fungi.’ 

It glows with an eerie flickering that makes it impossible to photograph as anything but a blurred shape. If Walter is with the characters when they encounter the Mi-Go, he starts ranting: ‘See the halo around it? The glory of God! Kneel! Kneel! It is an angel come among us!’ 

Is this his unforced belief, or the way his religious upbringing has led him to interpret the compulsions the Mi-Go has been planting in his brain? Your guess is as good as mine.

The Mi-Go can use the following Mystic abilities from the core DW rules as a 5th rank Psionic:

• Mirage (level 1)
• Dazzle (level 2)
• Mind Cloak (level 3)
• Telekinesis (level 3)
• Clairvoyance (level 4)
• Enthrall (level 4)
• Force Field (level 5)
• Mystic Blast (level 5)

Its telepathic communication is an automatic ability that does not need a roll to cast. It can sense the presence of minds within 100m (like the ESP ability but with longer range) and can project images and sensations (to communicate, not as an attack) to beings in its immediate vicinity whom it is conversing with.

Permanently killing the Mi-Go requires fire or acid, as otherwise it (or rather a new individual) will regrow from the spore-laden remains.

Wrapping up

The characters are far too late to rescue Stanley Cakebread. All that remains of him is the pocket watch his father gave him on his 21st birthday, discarded on the floor of the cellar amid sacks of fertilizer and a few small bones. The inscription is a quotation from Seneca that reads: ‘Dandum semper est tempus: veritatem dies aperit.’ (‘There is always time, and the days disclose the truth.’)

Echoes from outer voids

H P Lovecraft would have been 135 years old today -- though, let's be honest, that's just an excuse to do something with the pun* on Dragon Warriors, celebrating only its 40th anniversary. (Incidentally, this is an abbreviated version of a post that appeared on my Jewelspider Patreon page; go there for more lively awfulness.)

Dagon Warriors uses a variant of the Dragon Warriors rules for Prohibition-era adventures. Characters are categorized into types depending on how they deal with adversaries. These are not descriptive of the character’s role in the game; a character could be a private eye, a cop, a war veteran, a gangster, a librarian, a scientist, a reporter, a sculptor, or whatever they like – and still be of any type.

• The Boxer (corresponds to DW Knight) fights scientifically.
• The Brawler (like the DW Barbarian) flings themselves into the fray with fists and feet.
• The Psionic (DW Mystic) has recourse to paranormal abilities.
• The Scout (DW Assassin) relies on stealth and observation.

The world of the Cthulhu Mythos is science fiction, not fantasy – at least, it is in this version. So there is no sorcery, even though the powers of the mind might sometimes seem uncanny. MAGICAL ATTACK and MAGICAL DEFENCE are renamed PSYCHIC ATTACK and PSYCHIC DEFENCE in these rules. We also recommend capping character progression at 10th rank to prevent the game turning into HPL-meets-the-MCU.

Boxers get the following special skills:

• Disarm (applies to any weapon, not just swords)
• Two-handed fighting (fists, improvised weapons or handguns)
• Marksman (equivalent to Master Bowman in DW)
• Quick Draw
• Haymaker (equivalent to DW Swordmaster but applies to a punch)

Brawlers get the special skill See Red (equivalent to DW Bloodrage)

Psionic powers (equivalent to Mystic spells) are:

Level One

• Invigorate
• Suspended Animation

Level Two

• Darksight
• Might
• Pursuit

Level Three

• Allseeing Eye
• Mind Cloak
• Nourish
• Telekinesis

Level Four

• Clairvoyance
• Hidden Target
• Telepathy

Level Five

• Force Field
• Truthsense

Level Six

• Purification
• Survival

Psionics also get the abilities of Premonition, ESP and Awakening (corresponding to DW Adepthood).

Scouts do not have the alchemical or special combat abilities (throwing spikes, shock attack, etc) of a DW Assassin. Unlike DW Assassins, their ATTACK and DEFENCE scores increase by 1 every other rank (at 3rd, 5th, 7th rank, etc) and their Health Points increase by 1 at 2nd, 4th, 6th rank, etc. Their special skills are limited to:

• Stealth
• Inner Sense
• Meditation techniques up to Void Trance (8th rank)
• Climbing
• Disguise
• Pilfer
• Picklock
• Track
• Memorize

Firearms

Player-characters do not wear armour. We have to be prescriptive about that otherwise you will end up with players like the guy in our Wild West campaign who insisted on tooling around town in a Conquistador breastplate. They may cite the gunfighter James Miller, but – no. Just no.

You could wear a bullet-proof vest. It’s encumbering (reduce ATTACK by 2 and STEALTH by 5) and when hit you first roll to see if the bullet struck the torso (indicated by 4-6 on d6) and if it does the AF is 8. The vest won’t stop you getting hurt – you’ll still take damage, and you’ll feel like you’ve been kicked by a Pierson's Puppeteer, but if the shooter didn’t make their armour bypass roll then you won’t be killed.

Revolver (d10+1, 5 points)

• Range (S/M/L): 20m/50m/75m
• Fires every round for six shots. Takes 6 rounds to reload completely.

Rifle (d12, 9 points)

• Range: 50m/100m/200m
• Bolt-action: requires 1 CR to load a single round or 5 CRs to reload a full magazine (5 rounds).

Firearms jam on an ATTACK roll of 20, requiring 1-3 rounds to fix.

Creatures

Some examples of Mythos creatures are given below. It’s not anticipated that player-characters will go toe-to-tentacle with such beings, however. If they did, their adventuring careers would not be long. Adversaries will usually be cultists (deluded humans who imagine their prayers are noticed by powerful otherworldly entities) and servants who have been forced or hypnotized into doing the bidding of an alien creature – as in the scenario "Abnormal Growth" which accompanies these rules in the original Patreon post, and the title of this post gives a hint as to what that scenario is about.

* The suggestion was originally John Hagan's, it just took me nearly a decade to get around to it.