At the recent GameHole Con (Quick review - great convention in Madison, you should go), I ran a part of a Call of Cthulhu campaign I had done years ago. Then characters were all underclassmen at Miskatonic University in March of 1925, when, according to Lovecraft's original short story, The Call of Cthulhu, the Great Old One stirred in his sleep, disturbing the dreams of people throughout the world.
And for this I created some pregens, gave them backgrounds, and had them make a POW check. Those that succeeded got strange dreams. Then I asked them what their term project was in the class. Here are the characters:
Frank Johnson was our athelete, a football hero playing with the Miskatonic Badgers.
Deborah Blaine was our "New Woman" journalist.
Virginia Frink was our science student - her parents disappeared at Devil's Reef, near Innsmouth
Skip Cavanaugh was our dilettante, changing majors six times in six semesters.
Jedediah Wright comes from a long lines of Congregationalist ministers. He is studying theology.
Samuel Whately is pre-med, and comes from a farming community in Vermont. He interns at St. Mary's in Arkham.
Some made their Power Check, some didn't, but it was an interesting writing challenge. Here are their dreams
Frank
Johnson’s Dream
You are
in the woods, a thick pine woods. It is a summer night, but a full moon
provides ghostly illumination, and the stars twinkle overhead. Your path leads
west, towards a clearing. As you approach, white flowers glow in the field
below you glow like fireflies, and the stars are obscured by a mounting
thunderhead. You watch its moon-limned edges grow on the horizon, until it
looms over you.
Then
the thunderhead turns, and you see two huge yellow eyes emerging from the mass,
and you know the towering creature is no cloud. It screams and you scream and
you are awake.
Please
make a SAN check.
Deborah
Blaine’s Dream
You are
at a trendy party, mingling with guests in tux and tails, or sequined gowns.
There are waiter carrying trays of champagne and appetizers, and no one seems
to care about Prohibition. There is jazz music playing in the distant in an odd
minor key. You walk towards people and they turn away from you, some in
disinterest, some in fear. You are concerned and try to join small groups that
break up as soon as you arrive, and soon you are moving quickly from person to
person, only to find the other guests flee from you. Something is wrong with
your face.
You
reach a mirror and recoil in horror at yourself. Your face has melted, the skin
gathered in on itself to form long, looping tendrils around you nose and mouth.
You try to scream, but you cannot – the tendrils themselves coil of their own
volition. You reach out to the mirror and your reflection touches you as well,
but it reaches through the mirror and grasps you by the wrist, seeking to pull
you inside. You awaken in a cold sweat.
Please
make a SAN Check
Virginia
Frink’s Dream
You are
in an old house. Belonging to your parents? You are not quite sure. It’s night,
and the ocean thunders outside, and you know without looking that the house is
up on a cliff (your parents’ house was nowhere near the shore). There are
shouts outside, but you know (someone warned you?) not to look out the windows.
The sound of the surf grows louder, and with it the groaning of ancient timbers
under sail, and the shouts grow louder as well.
You
finally look out the window to see a great sailing ship breaking up on the
rocks. The crew is abandoning it, and other dark figures are swarming over it
like ants, killing the seamen they encounter and shredding the sails. Behind
the wrecked ship is a great wave rising out of the ocean, a single pinnacle of
water streaming off all sides.
Then the
wave parts and reveals the tip of a huge leathery wing, the ocean itself
draining off its flesh. The creature it belongs to, some massive dragon, turns
towards you and you sudden awaken.
Please
Make a SAN check.
Skip
Cavanaugh’s Dream
You
dream of a strange, burning city. Even on fire, its buildings seem to flicker
and fade into and out of phase with the world, and twist inwards on themselves
in patterns that seem to make sense but deny all reality. The buildings are
huge, built by ancient giants, and you see people like ants trying to scale
them, climbing up their burning sides to avoid the waters below.
Waters.
Yes. You are now waist-deep in thick, salty waters. The tide is coming in. No.
The city itself is sinking, and the ocean is coming in. You try to run to one
of the towering, flaming structures, but you are trapped in mud. Not mud. You
are ensnared by tentacles, looping round your legs like strong ropes, holding
you in place and dragging you beneath the surface. You open your mouth to
scream and salt water pours into your throat.
Please
make a SAN check.
Jedidiah
Wright’s Dream
You are
in a church. Anglican, you would guess, from the amount of decoration and
stained glass, and the smell of incense and heavily oiled wooden pews. There
are parishioners in the benches, but you have a hard time focusing on them. They
seem to fade in and out like ghosts. The stained glass seems to shimmer as
well, and its scenes are aquatic in nature – coral, tropical fish, and octopi.
The
minister is your father, or your grandfather, with a full white beard and wild
white hair, gesticulating and shouting loudly. His words are unclear, but it is
a hellfire speech. As you walk up the aisle, you see that he is bleeding from
the eyes, the blood running down into his beard. And then you realize it is not
a beard at all, but rather a nest of snakes, coiling and coiling like tendrils
round his saw-toothed, lamprey-like mouth.
You
awaken with a start. Please make a SAN check.
Samuel
Whately’s Dream
You are
in the morgue in the basement of St. Mary’s. It doesn’t look like the morgue
you know, but you are sure of it. Instead of a small room with a bank of
drawers holding the deceased you are in a great marble-shod palace, the biers
of the dead laid out with military precision in all directions, each body
covers in a translucent white sheet. Somewhere, far in the distance, a gong
sounds.
The
gong sounds again, and the cadavers begin to stir. The gossamer sheets slide
from them and you see they are monstrosities, partially unmade through partial
autopsies and botched studies. Great surgical wounds crisscross their forms,
the skin pulling away from the stitches to reveal the oozing muscles beneath,
the organs straining to escape. You run, but there is no place to run, the dead
are everywhere.
You
awaken in your bed, breathing hard. You catch your breath, and hear you
roommate snoring across the room. In the distance you hear the university bell
tower. Then the arms of the dead things reach up from beneath your bed and
seize you dragging you down beneath the floorboards to join them. You awaken
again, but are unsure if you are truly awake.
Please
make a SAN check.
More later,
