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Chaosium Digest Volume 24 Number 11
Chaosium Digest Volume 24, Number 11
Date: Sunday, April 5, 1998
Number: 3 of 5
Contents:
>From Foreign Shores, Part 3 (Paul Williams) CALL OF CTHULHU
--------------------
From: "Paul Williams" <paulw@betanet.co.uk>
Subject: From Foreign Shores, Part 3
System: Call of Cthulhu
Scene 30: A Bit of Mythos Knowledge
Amongst the ancient tomes and scrolls that line the shelves of
Schuler's shop are several which contain individual spells relating to
the Mythos. Sorting these books out would take years and the rewards
would not necessarily warrant the time expenditure. However, one
scroll in particular stands out as it is lying on the counter facing
towards the Investigators. Its title is in Latin and translates as
"Dark Truths of the Egyptian People."
The scroll is extremely old, well worn, slightly discoloured from the
sun and written entirely in Latin. It is five or six feet in length
when completely unfolded. Skimming through the scroll will take
approximately six hours, assuming the cramped Latin handwriting can be
translated.
Successfully skimming through the scroll reveals some interesting
facts, such as the spell names, and also the location of a temple
supposedly inhabited by a fearsome monster and built by the Sea
People. One part of the scroll is written on a section of its own but
no reference is made to it anywhere else in the document (Player
Handout #3).
[Player's Handout #3
Player's Version:
>From the dark blue bottom of the sea left my brothers many. Three
travelled far north along paths long lost two fell ill gave up and
died. Press onwards my brothers. Two fled the disaster along the sandy
shore onw met great death up a high mountain. Press onwards my
sisters. Four fled distant south along with their followers two
stayed as gods up until their end. Press onwards my kin.
GMs version:
FROM the dark blue BOTTOM of the sea LEFT my brothers many. THREE travelled
far north ALONG paths long lost TWO fell ill gave UP and died. PRESS
onwards my brother. TWO fled the disaster ALONG the sandy shore ONE met
great death UP a high mountain. PRESS onwards my sisters. FOUR fled
distant south ALONG with their followers TWO stayed as gods UP until their
end. PRESS onwards my kin.
Press buttons 3 - 2; 2 - 1; 4 - 2]
The scroll is vitally important to the rest of the adventure and it is
crucial that the Investigators acquire it. Whether they buy it
outright or whether Mr. Schuler throws it in as an incentive for them
to buy something else is irrelevant. Schuler will sell it for 15 LE to
interested Investigators.
Scene 31: Taking a Balloon Ride
If the Investigators decide to travel to the ruined temple mentioned
in the old journal, their Dragoman happily tells them that he knows of
this site and can guide them there. He says that by camel it will take
almost four days to get there and back, two days by boat and only a
single day by balloon.
Luckily, he has a distant cousin who runs a balloon excursion business
and who would undoubtedly love to aid the Investigators in their
adventure. For the generous sum of 1 LE per day the Investigators can
get themselves a balloon and enough provisions to last three days. Of
course, the Dragoman insists on coming with them to act as guide.
The weather on the day the Investigators depart from Alexandria is
fine and sunny with hardly a cloud in the sky. A small throng of
tourists has gathered to wave goodbye to the Investigators; word has
spread that they are "famous explorers off on a great voyage of
discovery."
A successful Pilot Balloon roll is required to safely lift off and
clear the city. If the roll fumbles the basket hits a building and
takes damage to the value of 1 LE, according to the owner anyway,
which is payable on their return.
Scene 32: A Quaint Native Ritual
After approximately four hours of travel the Dragoman tells them that
they are a little behind schedule due to the wind but they will reach
the site in the early evening. Each of the Investigators may make a
Spot Hidden roll as they float gently across the huge expanse of the
Egyptian desert.
Those who succeed see a small collection of tents and more permanent
structures down below. Small patches of green, which stand out clearly
against the yellow of the dry desert, indicate where the crops are
grown that sustains the populace. It seems to be a small village and
the locals are gathering for some sort of meeting.
A second successful Spot Hidden roll reveals that the villagers appear
to be about to sacrifice a young boy, for they have tied him to a block
of stone and are dancing about him maniacally. Questioning the
Dragoman reveals that the Egyptians do not perform any sacrifices as
part of their religion as Allah forbids it.
Scene 33: Uninvited Guests
The Investigators may decide to stop the cultists' ritual. Their best
courses of action are either to fly the balloon overhead and shoot the
cultists, or to land the balloon and attack the cultists on firm
ground.
If the Investigators choose the former they may be dismayed after
having fired a few shots to see the cultists flee into their abodes
and then come back out armed with rifles. A pitched gun battle may
damage the balloon, therefore hampering the Investigators' travels
quite severely, something the Investigators should consider. It they
do not realise this themselves have them make an Idea roll to come to
that conclusion.
In order to land the balloon safely the pilot needs to make a
successful Pilot Balloon roll. Once down the Investigators can drop
the anchors and then deal with the cultists without risking the
balloon.
The cultists themselves ignore the balloon unless the Investigators
fire at them or land. The former is dealt with above and the latter
causes the cultists to swarm towards the landing balloon, armed with
long knives.
The cultists are fanatics and fight with no regard for their own
lives. There are a total of thirty villagers, although only ten of
them are cultists. Once the cultists are defeated, the remaining
villagers flee into the desert without food or water.
Scene 34: The Curse of the Pharaohs
If the Investigators cause enough damage to kill or incapacitate the
priest, with his last gasp of breath he draws forth a whistle from his
while robes and plays a maddeningly impossible tune on it. He then
waves it all the Investigators and shouts something at them in Arabic
before he collapses.
It they can translate the priest's rantings the investigators
discover that he has invoked a curse on them and has summoned
something which translates as "the winged guardian of the
pharaohs."
The Dragoman has never heard of such things before but only as statues
that guard the royal tombs from intruders. Being a typical
superstitious Arab he is worried and looks nervous from now on.
The mad priest has actually summoned a Byakhee, which arrives in three
hours' time. Because of the curse the Byakhee does not need to be
given orders by the priest and knows where to find the
Investigators. Avoiding it is next to impossible.
Scene 35: "What Ugly Villagers"
Investigators who inspect any of the dead cultists discover that many
of them exhibit the same strange skin disorder that Professor
Hutchinson is suffering from. The villagers are breeding deep ones who
live in the nearby Nile and have been doing so for dozens of
generations. All of the villagers have some degree of skin problems,
the priest more so than the others.
Scene 36: Wondrous Things
Once the ceremony has been slopped and the cultists dealt with the
investigators can search the area. There are several items of interest
at the scene and these are detailed individually below.
* Lying beside the altar is a small piece of papyrus. This contains
the ritual which the cultists were performing and would have invoked
deep ones. The priest, who also ran the cultists' village, was
summoning the deep ones for breeding purposes. The papyrus is
detailed in Appendix A. ("Papyrus Found at Ceremony")
* Clutched in the dead priest's hand is an enchanted whistle, used in
the Summon/Bind Byakhee spell. It has no other uses and is not worth
much money.
* Lastly there is the mask worn by the sacrificial victim. The mask is
made of seventy-two individual pieces of lapis lazuli (representing
the seventy-two co-conspirators of Set who killed Osiris) and will
fit any human between the Sizes of 6 and 16. The mask has eye, mouth
and nostril holes, and seems to remain fixed to the wearer's face by
suction as no external help is required to keep it in place. The
mask allows the wearer to communicate with deep ones in their own
language and also to breathe underwater without artificial aid. As
long as the mask remains on the wearer continues to have these
powers. Once removed, which is done by simply removing the mask, the
wearer's face feels oily and itches for about one hour afterwards.
After wearing the mask for a total of 24 hours the wearer's face
begins to turn scaly and he loses 1 APP point. The wearer loses 2
point of APP every 8 hours thereafter that the mask is worn, his
visage becoming more and more horrifying as the scales spread across
his deforming body. When the wearer's APP reaches zero he is
transformed into a deep one, permanently. The shock of this causes
1/1d6 San points to be lost. To a collector of Egyptian artefacts
the mask is worth perhaps 750 LE, less to a general antique
collector.
Scene 37: "We are Under Attack!"
Once the ceremony has been stopped, the cultists dealt with, and the
Mythos items safely stored away, the Investigators can continue with
their journey. After some two-and-a-half hours of good progress make
them roll their Spot Hidden skills. Those who succeed spot a small
object in the distance moving towards them. It looks like a large
bird. The object continues to get closer until, at about two hundred
yards, the full extent of exactly what the creature is becomes
horrifyingly apparent. Standard SAN checks for seeing a Byakhee should
be called for at this point.
The Byakhee will attack at the Investigators in the basket until it
has been reduced to half hit points or less. At that point it flies to
the top of the balloon, out of sight of the Investigators, and starts
to shred the balloon. The Investigators will soon catch on to what it
is doing when they begin to rapidly lose height.
If the Investigators manage to kill the Byakhee before it can shred
the balloon it plummets to the ground, hereupon its extra-terrestrial
matter dissolves leaving no trace that it ever existed except for a
vague outline in the sand which the wind soon obscures totally.
Scene 38: "Brace for Impact!"
With the balloon burst the basket can remain airborne for no more than
a few minutes. The pilot must make a successful Idea roll in order to
find a flat area to land. The Byakhee continues to hover nearby as it
intends to finish the investigators off once they land
The pilot must make a Pilot Balloon roll as the basket hits the ground
at some speed. If successful each Investigator takes 1d6 damage. If
unsuccessful them each take 2d6 damage. A successful Jump or Luck roll
halves the damage taken (if both succeed then the Investigator still
takes half damage and not a quarter).
Once they are free of the wreckage the Byakhee swoops in to attack
them. This is a fight to the death!
Scene 39: Desert Survival the Hard Way
If the Investigators balloon has crashed they are in serious
trouble. Although the Investigators can reach the ruined temple in a
manner of hours, it will take them several days to make the journey
home, and they do not have the food or water to last that
long. Without these two basic commodities survival chances are very
poor indeed.
Investigators without food or water take 1d4 damage per day. Those who
go without food and water lose 1d8 hit points per day. A successful
CON x1 roll halves the damage for that day, rounding up fractions.
This can not be cured with First Aid or Medicine but only with food
and water, and plenty of rest. Once these are provided the
Investigators recover ld3 hit points per day of complete rest.
Scene 40: Arrival at the Temple
Assuming the Byakhee has been dealt with without too much damage to
the balloon the Investigators reach the site of the ruined temple
three-quarters of an hour later. The area looks completely deserted
and much of it is buried in sand. A smaller building stands at the
rear of the temple. A pool of water stands in the middle of the
site. There is plenty of good soft ground on which to land the
balloon, although the pilot still needs to make a successful Pilot
Balloon roll.
The main temple, although Egyptian in design, was originally built by
the Sea People and was taken over by the Egyptians following the
destruction of the Sea People. Although much of the temple was
redesigned several parts are still from the original buildings.
The pool was once used as a ceremonial pool for bathing in before
entering the temple. It actually connects to an underground water
supply and is only dry during the long, hot summers. Investigators
drinking from the pool are in for a shock--the water is salty. The
pool connects through a long, winding series of underground springs
and rivers to the Mediterranean, although the Investigators have no
way of determining this or getting through the tunnels, which run for
hundred of miles. These tunnels also connect to the great tomb,
detailed later. Several colonies of deep ones live within the
tunnels.
Scene 41: Exploring the Temple
The temple itself is a dark and gloomy structure. The inner rooms are
filled with pillars which serve to increase the amount of writing
space as much as support the high ceiling
The etchings on the walls arid pillars, written in the Egyptian
hieroglyphic tongue, tell the story of how the Pharaoh Rameses III
defeated the Sea People by commanding the gods to cause earthquakes
and floods and then driving them from Egypt with his army. One large
scene towards the end of the story depicts Rameses in his armour
slaying a very Large Sea Person (actually a fairly accurate
representation of Dagon). The Sea People are drawn in careful detail
and seem to have scaly skin and big bulging eyes. Investigators
viewing the entire story must make a SAN check or lose one point of
SAN.
A blatant lie it all may be, but the story is well known to historians
and Egyptologists. An Investigator who sees the pictures and makes a
successful History roll can recount the facts of the story, as given
above.
Other pictures depict the god Osiris, god of the Underworld and also
of vegetation, to whom the temple was dedicated.
All the temple's valuables were removed long ago when the priests'
defences could no longer hold back the encroaching desert. The temple
was officially abandoned some six decades after it was first liberated
from the Sea People.
Scene 42: Yet Another Golden Triangle
If the Investigators choose to search the temple, have each make a
Spot Hidden roll. The Investigator who succeeds and rolls the lowest
spots something glinting dimly from within a crack in a wall After
chipping away to enlarge the hole the Investigator sees the item to be
an irregularly shaped golden object, the sides and angles of which are
cut straight. There, are no rounded corners or curves. The outer
surfaces are dotted with hieroglyphs.
If the Investigators have already acquired one or more pieces of the
item they will immediately recognise it for what it is. A successful
idea roll allows the Investigator to realise that it is part of a
larger item, some sort of puzzle. At a guess it could be pyramidal in
shape.
Scene 43: Translating the Pyramid's Text
Once back in civilisation the Investigators can try to have the
hieroglyphs deciphered. The following text explains what occurs if
this is only the second piece of the golden pyramid that the
investigators have found.
Professor Breccia of the Museum of Greco-Roman Antiquities can, if so
asked, read these hieroglyphs on the investigators' behalf. He marvels
at the pieces as he fits them together and looks the thing over,
scratches his head a few times and then sighs heavily.
"It makes a little more sense now," he says. "It says something
about the awakening of a god and the stars being right and there are
some partial directions but there are still crucial words missing. You
will need to find the other piece so I can translate the full
text. When you find the missing piece the museum will happily take
possession of such a glorious find when you come to hand it over to
the Department of Antiquities.
Investigators making a successful Law roll know that removing
artefacts from Egypt without the proper paperwork is an offence
punishable by up to twenty years imprisonment. Inspector el-Mahduk
happily explains this to the investigators if they ask him about the
"exporting" of artefacts from Egypt.
Scene 44: A Room Full of Stones
Those investigators who check the smaller structure behind the main
temple enter into a single, dark chamber with a stone floor. The walls
of the chamber have been plastered but there are no drawings or
hieroglyphs adorning them. In the far-left corner of the building is a
heavy stone trapdoor that requires a STR vs. STR roll against its
effective STR of 25 to lift it.
Under the trapdoor is a large, rough-cut chamber approximately twice
the volume of the chamber in which the investigators currently
stand. It is filled almost to the brim with pieces of bone, some of
which look human. It is very easy for an Investigator to reach into
the hole and grab some bones.
A successful Natural History roll reveals them to be from a bipedal
creature, which would be of larger build and greater height than a
human would. However, the Investigator cannot identify the species.
A successful Archaeology or Idea roll reveals that the bones were
probably placed in the chamber over a period of time. Those at the
bottom were undoubtedly from the era in which the temple was
constructed whilst those on top are from a much later period, maybe as
little as fifty years ago in some cases.
Investigators who make a successful Spot Hidden roll find a skull in
the bone pile very similar to the one in the Greco-Roman museum in
Alexandria.
Scene 45: The Living Desert
Shortly after discovering the golden pyramid segment the Investigators
hear a scream of horror from their Dragoman, who has gone outside to
check on the balloon, followed by gunshots. If the Investigators go to
check on him they see him firing wildly at dozens of humanoid figures
which are slowly approaching from all sides.
These are Sand-Dwellers and they have a small colony near the
temple. They only wish to drive the Investigators away and do not
necessarily wish to destroy them. Because of the large number of
Sand-Dwellers present, all Investigators who fail their SAN checks
lose the maximum number of SAN points for seeing a single Sand-Dweller
(6 points), those whose SAN roll succeeds still lose a single point.
The Sand-Dwellers keep coming in seemingly unlimited waves until the
Investigators either flee or are killed. Wise or experienced
Investigators will take the former option and leave the site quickly.
Scene 46: Decoding the Triangles
Once all three parts of the golden pyramid are assembled the entire
message encoded on them can be successfully deciphered. Either
Professor Breccia of the Museum of Greco-Roman Antiquities or the
astrologer Ibrahim can aid the Investigators in this endeavour. The
entire pyramid text is below;
"Far to the west, in the depths of the great marsh we call home, there
lies a great river valley. At the end of this valley is a monument of
stone carved in memory of the god who rules in absence. On the Night
of Thoth, when the stars are right, the sun shall strike with its
dying breath the unopenable portal and reveal the truth that lies
within. The chains that hold the mighty One who is named Oannes shall
shatter ad he shall he released upon the undeserving world "
After the investigators have had time to read the deciphered text
their Dragoman says that he knows the area described in the text and
can take them there, although he wants more money to do so as it is
"an accursed place, full of bad things "
Scene 47: Back to the Desert
Once the Investigators know where they are heading for, they need only
arrange transportation there and buy some expedition equipment. It
will take five days hard ride to reach the area, although they could
be there a lot sooner with a balloon.
The balloon they borrowed earlier is available to them if they ask
their Dragoman to find them transportation. The charge has increased
to 3 LE because of the dangerous terrain through which the balloon
will be passing. If the Byakhee tore the Balloon, the Dragoman's
cousin has a spare he is willing to sell the Investigators for 5 LE.
The Investigators should be encouraged to make a list of the equipment
they wish to purchase for this expedition. Exact details do not need
to be worked out, but items such as lanterns, rope and, of course,
food and water should be listed. As long as the list contains no very
heavy items or items that are illegal or hard to acquire in a short
space of time (such as fifty sticks of dynamite) the equipment on it
should be available.
The balloon can be made ready in one hour, the equipment in three.
The Investigators should he allowed to make any other preparations
they feel are necessary without too much bother (assuming they are'
possible). None of the NPCs they have already encountered, with the
exception of their Dragoman, William Franklin, and Inspector el-Mahduk
will accompany the Investigators on their expedition. These three are
effectively spare characters in case an Investigator dies or is
otherwise incapacitated.
Scene 48: First Impressions
The tomb in which Father Dagon is imprisoned until the Night of Thoth
is located at the far end of a small, dead-end valley. The valley
itself is two miles long and at points is no wider than one hundred
yards across. Like much of the area the floor is not covered with
sand, but with rocks, making walking awkward, although not especially
hazardous. The cliffs along the side of the valley rise steeply to a
height of 500 feet and climbing is dangerous under the best of
conditions. Because of the narrowness of the valley it tends to trap
heat and temperatures can reach heights of 160F in the middle of
summer.
The ancient builders constructed the tomb in the cliffs at the end of
the valley and then placed a temple at the front so the human cultists
could continue to honour Dagon even when the tomb was closed.
The front of the tomb consists of a low, flat building with tightly
spaced columns filling the expanse of the building. Each column is
decorated with carvings and painted pictures depicting the might of
Dagon. There are over two hundred columns in the shrine.
A broad, shallow stair leads to the roof of the shrine. Standing at
the top of the stairs, the gigantic statues dwarf the first time
viewer. There are six statues, each depicting Dagon in a different
pose. Seeing them requires the viewer to make a SAN check or lose 1d2
SAN points.
Centred in the wall is a smaller alcove. Except on the Night of Thoth,
it is a featureless socket in the rock. The entrance to the tomb
doesn't exist except on the Night of Thoth. The entire sixty feet
section behind the wall is solid rock.
--
