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Chaosium Digest Volume 08 Number 09
Chaosium Digest Volume 8, Number 9
Date: Sunday, November 6, 1994
Number: 4 of 4
Contents:
Porphyry and Asphodel, Part Four (Penelope Love) CALL OF CTHULHU
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From: Penelope Love <bassst@zikzak.apana.org.au>
Subject: Prophyry and Asphodel, Part Four
System: Call of Cthulhu
THE WALL OF SLEEP
When all volunteers are ready to embark on this strangest phase of
their quest, Randolph Carter takes them into a dimly lit onyx chamber
in the oldest part of his palace. Incense burns sweetly, and from
some distance beneath comes the murmured chants of priestly
invocations.
Randolph Carter warns them that experience of the gulf between sleep
and waking is different at every visit, especially under these
circumstances, but that those entranced will see a wall. The Silver
Key is at the base of the wall. Once it is in their possession they
will all wake from the trance. They are cautioned not to climb over
the wall, for that will return them to the waking world. They are
cautioned not to look at anything too closely or too long. They are
then, by means of mystical passes and mutterings, sent further into
the realm of sleep and dreams, sinking gently through darkness into a
deeper and less human sphere of existence.
The entranced dreamers find themselves standing on a plain flooded
with a luminous white dust. The dust continually sifts down from the
void above, so all dreamers are soon liberally coated. This is the
dust of the ages. In the distance a towering wall sends towards them
a titanic shadow. Behind the wall loom other shadows, more diffuse
and less explicable. As they trudge forwards they discover the true
immensity of this place, for what they took to be a vapor-wreathed sky
are the walls of a vast gulf, that ascend beyond their sight. Ask the
players to imagine the deepest depth they can, then tell them to
multiply it a million times. And the gulf is still unfilled. A SAN
roll has to be made, or 1D6 SAN is lost by this incomprehensible
perspective.
The dreamers are so small, that they must wonder if they will ever
reach even the black line that marks the boundary of the shadow of the
lofty wall. Onwards they toil, in a climate neither hot nor cold,
where time is marked not by day or night, but only by the sifting,
spiralling fall of white dust. They go forwards for what they feel to
be weeks, months, years, and in that time struggle across an
infinitesimal fraction of the mammoth floor. Their mouths are dry
with the white dust, their limbs leaden, yet they cannot stop to rest
or the white dust will bury them. Eventually the wall will be covered
by this white dust, and then there will be no barrier at all between
the lands of sleep and waking.
At some point it should occur to someone to use their Dreaming skill
to forward their progress. If they do not they will walk for what
feels like centuries, and then millennia, and still be no closer even
to the tip of the wall's shadow. Whether use of the Dreaming skill
propels forward the dreamer, or the wall, is difficult to tell. For
each successful application of the skill, it is as if the wall were
violently lunging towards them.
With the first successful skill roll, the dreamers find themselves
engulfed just within the boundary of the wall's shadow. It is
intensely cold. The wall is still too distant to be clearly made out,
except that it is now so tall that it blocks out the terrible sight of
the gulf wall beyond. If the dreamers linger long, invisible
nightmares surround them, first nuzzling with feeble-clutching
tentacles, then nipping with what feels like the parrot-beak of
octopi, and fumbling with vasty flukes, then tearing flesh from bone
and bodies from heads of delaying dreamers. These are Things that are
not yet born, or born too late. Experience of them costs 2/1D8 SAN.
With the second successful use of the Dreaming skill, the dreamers
find the distance before them halved again. Now the blocks of masonry
that comprise the measureless wall can be made out. To call them vast
is to diminish their full impact. Now is the time to ponder whether
they are travelling towards the wall, or it is travelling towards
them, for clearly a third successful roll will bring them together.
Shadows press thick and potent around them. If dreamers look closely,
they can see within the swarming blackness the rise and fall of
countless inhuman civilizations; the births and deaths of worlds; the
universe falling in on itself and expanding again. If they have
looked this long they must make another SAN roll, or lose a further
1D6 SAN.
The third successful Dreaming roll brings them to the base of the
wall. It towers so high and so wide in every direction that their
sense of perspective, which for a little while had resumed, is again
suspended. In an act intended to stave off permanent insanity, the
human brain shuts down those parts of it that deal with perspective,
leaving dreamers to tackle a world in which 'up' and 'down' have no
meaning, and angles are impossible to judge.
Fortunately they have arrived at the precise point of the wall where
the Silver Key is lodged. It gleams in the bitter blackness. A
problem is immediately evident, for the Silver Key is on the same
gargantuan scale as the rest of this place. It is several thousand
feet high. Things titter in the void behind the dreamers, and
galaxies explode.
In order to touch the Key, dreamers must first make a Dreaming roll.
If they succeed, they can carry the key from this place to another
where lucid examination is possible. If none succeed, then none of
them can carry the Key from this place, and the only way to wake is to
scale the wall and drop over onto the other side.
Once the Dreaming roll has been made, the Wall of Sleep fades from
view. They awake in the chamber in the oldest part of the palace of
Ilek-Vad, to the murmured and repetitious sounds of a soothing chant
and the sweet scent of incense. They are covered with white dust,
breathless and mad-eyed, starving for sensation of the human world,
even if it be the fantastic world of dreams. One of them holds the
Silver Key.
THE SILVER KEY
The key is of tarnished silver covered with cryptical arabesques.
Although huge it is of human and rational dimensions. It appears the
same in both dreaming and waking worlds. The dreamer who holds the
Silver Key knows that they hold the key to ultimate knowledge. The
Keeper should judge their character's reaction to this, and decide
whether they lose or gain 1/1D8 SAN points as a result. This benefit
or loss is removed when the Key is used to save Mary Doherty.
The Silver Key works by opening or closing channels between different
spheres, in this case between the worlds of waking and dream. Its use
is bound about with arcane theories of time and reality. Its ability
to unlock other realms remains untapped, for they are encoded in an
ancient papyrus document abandoned in the Carter house on earth,
twenty years in the future, as waking time is reckoned. Until that
time, when Carter seeks the Key out, it does not entirely exist. It
cannot be stolen from him in the waking world unless the investigators
use Gates to travel into the future and take it from him once he has
found it (thus altering his own history). Carter unknowingly summoned
it out of the hidden mists of the Wall of Sleep in the desperation of
his twenty years exile. He was able to do this because the artifact
is an inheritance of his house, and intimately tied to his blood-line.
If dreamers wish to use the Silver Key for their own
self-enlightenment, they have to research the location of their own
lock, and embark on their own gruelling and personal quest. The key
fits this lock. The events of the Lovecraft story, 'The Dreams in the
Witch House' offer a suitable model for their fate. The
collaboration, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is another
example, but an inferior one. Keepers should feel free to abstract
what they feel is interesting and useful from both stories to create
their own scenario.
RETURNING TO THE CASTLE CALLED SLEEP
It now remains only for dreamers to thank their kind host, and recover
any losses. When suffering nightmares, those who experienced the Wall
of Sleep endure utter panic when perspective again fails them.
Those who went insane whilst entranced can be cured by the wise
priests of either Ilek-Vad or Thran, or perhaps simply by a long and
restful sea-voyage. Nothing happens to mar their return journey,
although they may meet several, still puzzled ghouls if they arrive in
port at night. For now the dreamers must return to the hills above
indefinable Thran, there to confront the final horror of the Castle
Called Sleep.
As the dreamers approach the Castle Called Sleep, they encounter a
large band of timorous Zoogs, numbering several hundred. One of the
Zoogs that followed them is the son of a powerful Zoog chief, and this
chief has decided to attempt to find out what happened to him. If any
Zoogs are held captive by the dreamers, this Zoog-son is amongst them.
Their mercy is rewarded. The Zoog war-band rejoices at the sight of
his safe return, promise fervently that he will be punished for his
impetuous violation of the treaty, and provide in thanks several
flasks of their moon-wine, an innocuous and pleasant liquor that
appears in the waking world as mead enclosed in a gnarled gourd. When
drunk before sleeping, this mead ensures automatic entry into the
Dreamlands at any point the dreamer desires. The released Zoogs
scamper sheepishly for the safety of the trees. The dreamers are
assured of welcome whenever they visit the forest.
If the dreamers have no captive Zoogs they must convince this war-band
that they know nothing (by means of gestures and their limited Zoog
vocabulary, equalling a half-Oratory skill roll). The Zoogs, even if
displeased, are wise and level headed. They dare not violate Carter's
treaty as flagrantly as the smaller band did. They leave the dreamers
alone, but mutter and scowl violently amongst themselves. The
dreamers had best be wary, or they had best not stray, in those places
where the Enchanted Forest is known to touch upon certain forests of
earth.
Befriended Zoogs and ghouls can also be persuaded to accompany the
dreamers into the Castle Called Sleep, although any alliance which
includes both cats and Zoogs is likely to be an uneasy one.
Using the Silver Key
When the key is turned in the lock in the shrine, the wall turns first
milky and then opalescent, then vanishes entirely, revealing a stair
leading down. After travelling an unpleasantly long distance, the
dreamers come to a second key hole, set into a rough rock wall. The
Silver Key unlocks this, but sticks in the lock. The wall rotates in
a strange and non-Euclidian fashion, revealing a long corridor that
leads directly forward, out of sight. The Key vanishes with the wall
(back to the gulf between waking and sleep). A SAN roll is now
required. Those who fail lose 1D6, and realize it is not a corridor
but a pit, the pit of their nightmares.
Those who fail to grab the edge of the pit start falling, doubtless
screaming. Those who make their SAN roll manage to convince
themselves that the pit is a corridor. This is made difficult by
their plummeting companions. Dreamers who make Climb, or Jump or DEX
rolls can grab hold of the edge of the pit, and climb out.
The Phantom Face
A white blob becomes visible in the distance, travelling towards them
immeasurably swiftly. It metamorphoses as it grows closer into the
face of Hypnos, grinning idiotically. SAN Loss: 1D6/1D20. The magic
of the Silver Key forces the god to abandon his assault on Mary, but
he does so without grace.
Dreamers who fall through this Phantom Face vanish from the world of
dreams. Their waking self sleeps for as many weeks as they have POW
points. They spend all this time in the thrall of Hypnos, and wake
1D10 SAN points poorer. They must also make a Luck roll. If they
succeed, their dream self gains 1D10 points in a three random
characteristics. If they fail, their dream self loses 1D10 points in
four characteristics. If any characteristic reaches zero as a result
of these deductions, their dream self dies. The character remains
forgetful of their experience, waking only sometimes with the night
sweats, with dim recollection of terrible dreams whose exact nature
they do not wish to pursue.
However, if this Luck roll is a critical success or critical failure,
then Hypnos becomes enamored of them. They never wake (causing an
immediate and ironic diagnosis of 'sleeping sickness'). Their dream
body becomes alien to them, changed to fulfil the god's inscrutable
desires.
Survivors scramble from the pit and race upstairs, pursued by the
phantom Face, which fills the stair behind them. Two Climb rolls or
CON rolls must be made to reach the stairs ahead of the Face. The door
slams shut behind them, resulting in a moment of false peace.
The Porphyry Face
Then the face carved into the porphyry wall bulges leeringly out. It
laughs, an immense and insane laugh that rises up all around them.
The vision of the shrine is wiped away, so that above the dreamers
stands the formidable perspective of the heart's four chambers, rising
up dizzyingly far out of sight. Then the laugh hits that note that
shatters stone, and the Castle Called Sleep comes tumbling down, its
enormous blocks of masonry lost with its bizarre roundelay of tastes,
scents and experiences. Shreds of exploded, rotting, corpses rain
down all around.
The laughter continues. All the masonry and corpses are swept away on
its billows. The shrine alone retains its reality. Dreamers must
make DEX rolls to cling on, and DEX vs. SIZ rolls to grab loose
colleagues. Meggs, caterwauling, hangs onto several cracks in the
paving. The fabric of dream is now threatened, thinning around the
shrine. Thran glimmers below, as insubstantial as gossamer; the
winding river Oukranos becomes a silver thread that will in a moment
blow away. The scented jungle is a child's toy to be discarded when
it fails to amuse. Beneath the stuff of dreams the chasm of the
limitless universe yawns.
Dreamers can attempt to stop this happening with use of their Dreaming
skills, or with any implements that exist in both worlds. Hypnos in
his spite has manifested a part of himself in the dreamlands, and this
part can be forced to retreat.
Dreaming skills might destroy the carving (picturing a smooth wall,
for example). This robs the god of his purchase in this world.
Altering the last picture of the folio book to remove the carving
depicted there alters the reality of the shrine, if the remover
succeeds in an Art skill roll.
The Face has 11 hit-points (representing a rough one-fifth of Hypnos's
total of 56 hit-points), but is shielded by 10 armor points of
porphyry crystal, giving the Face a total of 21 hit points. Porphyry
armor points are reduced by the appropriate amount with each blow,
until the crystal is shattered.
The removal or destruction of the porphyry Face does not destroy
Hypnos, merely causes the god to retreat. But it is not in the god's
interest to destroy the world of dreams. Even if the dreamers are not
succeeding in their counter-attack, the Face abruptly pulls back.
Both key hole and carving vanish with it.
The fabric of the dream world reasserts itself. The dreamers stand in
a porphyry shrine, in a meadow of asphodels, above the mystic city
Thran and the scented jungle Kled (within which are hidden the marble
temples of an extinct people, protected by the strange magics of the
Elder Gods until there is need of these temples again). A young woman
clad in white samite lies sleeping on the veranda, her dark hair
spread over the stairs. Meggs approaches, purring and curls up beside
her.
The reward for freeing Mary is an immediate 1D20 SAN gain.
CONCLUSION
The cryptic power of the Silver Key frees Mary's beleaguered soul.
She wakes as Meggs settles beside her. But there is no cure for the
sleeping sickness, not in all the realms of waking or in all the
worlds of sleep. There is only one way the Silver Key can fully
release her from Hypnos's attentions. At the same time as the
dream-Mary wakes, a hopeless catatonic dies, quietly and suddenly, in
a dreary sanitorium in Arkham.
Mary's surprise, her heartfelt thanks, her tears of release, happiness
and gratitude, and her belated, joyful greetings are interrupted by
Meggs. Spitting, the cat launches himself into a series of impossible
jumps at the sky, and then bolts to the back of the veranda. There he
vanishes, having woken himself.
Looking up the dreamers see that a rift has appeared in the blue vault
above, through which the void of the Outermost Universe leers. From
this gap springs a light of that same hellish blue that protected the
chamber of the shrine. Spurned Hypnos is taking his revenge.
With her waking form dead Mary cannot be harmed, but the dreamers
certainly can. Those who do not succeed in waking themselves are
dragged screaming into the sky within a column of blue light, to spend
eternity with a angry, vengeful and cryptically inventive god. Pride
in their ability to withstand the god gives survivors an additional
1D10 SAN, although they had better delay any further visits to the
land of dreams until Hypnos has forgotten them.
Several days later, in the waking world, the investigators' attention
is drawn to a two inch column story in the 'Arkham Gazette'. For
those who know the full story, this news is both tragic and
reassuring. Investigators first lose 1D6 SAN, then gain 1D6 SAN, as
they learn it.
SAY THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH?
Sudden Death of Victim of Sleeping Sickness
A Mysterious and Tragic Fate
From Our Special Correspondent
It is your correspondent's sad duty to inform the reader of a recent
death amongst those patients supported by public benevolence at the
Arkham Sanitorium. A young woman, left a hopeless invalid five years
ago as result of the 'sleeping sickness', yesterday breathed her last.
Dr. Malkowski, her physician, took your correspondent into his
confidence after this tragic event. Although a charity case, Mary
Doherty was a young woman of excellent character who never made any
trouble for staff. "It was scarcely possible for her to do so," Dr.
Malkowski said, with a melancholy smile, "for she slept since the day
the illness struck her." This is hard to believe but true, as your
correspondent can attest from other sources.
Dr. Malkowski added that Mary was a great favorite with staff at the
sanitorium. "We would often remark on her self-absorption," he said,
"It was as if she was concentrating overwhelmingly on some inner
battle, that took up all the will-power and energy that might
otherwise have recalled her to 'life'. I would say that in the end
this battle was finally lost."
Father O'Brien is the parish priest who supervised Mary's religious
instruction, and now has the mournful duty of supervising her burial.
When he heard Dr. Malkowski's words, Father O'Brien rebuked him. "Say
not that the battle was lost," said this worthy man, "but rather that
the battle was finally won."
STATISTICS
GINGER MEGGS
STR 3 CON 12 SIZ 1 INT 15 POW 13 DEX 35
HP 7 Move: 10 Armor: None
Weapon Attack% Damage
Bite 30% 1
Claw 40% 1
Rip 80% 2D3 - 1D4
All cats are able to leap through space to other worlds. Megg can
call together a pack of 1D20 Earth cats.
ZOOGS
Weapon Attack% Damage HP
Bite 30% 1
Knife 25% 1 12
Dart 20% 1D6 - 1D2 6
Skills: Climb 60% Dodge 50% Dream Lore 75% Hide 70%
Sneak 70% Track 50%
SAN: 0/1D3
QZARG THE ZOOG LEADER
STR 6 CON 12 SIZ 3 INT 18 POW 18 DEX 30
HP 8 Move: 8 Armor: none Spell: PASSING UNSEEN
ZOOG FOLLOWERS
Zoogs hang out in groups of 1D8
STR 3 CON 8 SIZ 2 INT 10 POW 8 DEX 20
HP: 5 Move: 8 Armor: none
GHOUL
STR 19 CON: 15 SIZ: 17 INT: 13 POW: 12 DEX: 14
HP: 16 Move: 9 Armor: projectiles do half damage (round up)
Damage Bonus: +1D4
Weapons Attack% Damage
Claws 30 1D6+1D4
Bite 30 1D6 + automatic worry
Skills: Burrow 70% , Climb 85%, Hide 60%, Jump 75%, Listen 70%, Scent
Decay 65%, Sneak 80%, Spot Hidden 50%
Sanity Loss: 0/1D6
Ghouls appear in packs of 1D6
MAGAH BIRD
STR: 2 CON: 3 SIZ: 1 POW: 12 DEX: 19
HP: 2 Move: 10 (flying) Armor: none
Weapon Attack% Damage
Peck 40% 1D3
All looking and listening to the bird must succeed in a POW vs. POW
roll or be hypnotised by the beauty of the magah bird's song and
plumage. Its peck automatically hits one hypnotised target.
TURBANNED MERCHANT (MAN OF LENG)
STR: 18 CON: 13 SIZ: 15 INT: 16 POW: 13 DEX: 15
HP: 14 Move: 8
Weapon Attack& Damage
Spear 25% 1D8+1
SAN: 0/1D6 if clothing, turban and boots removed (revealing horns,
hooved feet, and furred body).
MOON BEAST SENTRY
A "great, greyish-white slippering ... sort of a toad without any
eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the
end of its blunt, vague snout."
STR: 20 CON: 15 SIZ: 26 INT: 15 POW: 15 DEX: 15
HP: 21 Move: 7 Armor: all impaling weapons cause minimum damage.
Spells: THE RAVENING MADNESS, SERVICEABLE VILLEIN
SAN: 0/1D8
Weapons Attack% Damage
Tentacles 45% 1D10+1+1D6
SHIP'S CAT
STR 2 CON 10 SIZ 1 INT 12 POW 10 DEX 25
HP 7 Move: 10 Armor: None
Weapon Attack% Damage
Bite 30% 1
Claw 40% 1
Rip 80% 2D3 - 1D4
All cats are able to leap through space to other worlds.
WASP
STR 1 CON 4 SIZ 1 INT 18 POW 18 DEX 15
HP 3 Move: 10 Armor: None
Weapon Attack% Damage
Bite 30% 1
Claw 40% 1
Rip 80% 2D3 - 1D4
All cats are able to leap through space to other worlds. Wasp can
rally the entire population of cats of Ilek-Vad.
CATS FROM SATURN
Almost abstract bodies, formed of arabesques and filagrees in many
bright hues. Great round multi-coloured heads in a baroque head, and
a reticulated tail. Cats from Saturn can unfold two, four or more
legs from their complex bodies, each ending in a long whip-like paw.
STR: 15 CON: 12 SIZ: 10 INT: 3 POW: 12 DEX: 17
HP: 11 Move: 9 Armor: all impaling weapons do minimum damage.
Weapon Attack% Damage
Paw 40% 1D4
Skills: Dream Lore 30%, Hide 50%, Jump 90%, Spot Hidden 70%, Sneak 80%
SAN: 0/1D4
Cats from Saturn attack with 1D4 paws a round. They hate Earth cats,
and are allied to the moon-beasts. They appear in packs of 1D6.
MAP OF THE CASTLE CALLED SLEEP
Available on request.
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