Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Props Packet

The Obelisk of Axum is the second of the original scenarios that I’ve incorporated into Eternal Lies. Like the Severn Valley, it was developed as an organic response to the choices made by my original players. And there are two distinct roots that underlie its origins:

First, in the original campaign there is an oblique reference to the Obelisk of Axum is used to justify why the archaeologist Bartolo Acuna has returned to Africa thirteen years after the failed expedition he led which the PCs are investigating just in time for the PCs to question him directly. (It’s also one of the key indications that the campaign was not originally designed to begin in 1937, since by March 1937 the Obelisk was already back in Rome. With the travel times involved, you’d have to start your campaign on January 1st and hope the PCs bee-line for Ethiopia.)

As I’ve discussed previously, part of my work on the remix involved beefing up the mythological references to Gol-Goroth, the God of the Black Stone. The Black Stone itself is frequently described as an obelisk, and I thought it would be effective to have the Obelisk of Axum related to it (and, by extension, to Gol-Goroth). So I beefed up Acuna’s discussion of the Obelisk, using it as an opportunity to begin establishing Gol-Goroth in the minds of the players.

I hadn’t anticipated that the players would hear Acuna’s interest in the Obelisk and conclude that they should also be interested in it, prompting them to mount an expedition to Axum.

The second point of orign for this scenario is the odd route that my players had taken to get to this point: They followed the anticipated trajectory of New York to Savannah to Los Angeles. But then, after turning up enough information to learn of the cult’s expedition to Ethiopia in 1924, they decided that the cult’s drug-running activities in Los Angeles were too dangerous for them to tackle directly. As a result, they booked a flight to Ethiopia and skipped town without procuring any of the other leads.

This was something of a problem because Ethiopia is the only locale in the campaign which is structurally a dead-end. (Which makes sense because the cult was active there 10 years ago, but isn’t now. So there are no fresh leads to follow up.) While it was certainly possible for the PCs to investigate Ethiopia and then, without any further leads, simply return to Los Angeles, I knew that had the potential to be frustrating for them.

However, I’d already decided that Savitree Sirikhan had been mounting a series of expeditions. I decided that I would have her “anti-Investigators” (which I would shortly redub the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities) active in Ethiopia. Once they crossed paths with the PCs, they would drop leads that would point back towards Bangkok, which had already been turned into a secondary hub that would put their investigation back on track (so to speak). I was playing around with the idea of having the Emporium also investigating Ayers’ decade-old expedition, but when the PCs decided to pursue the Obelisk of Axum I realized that it was the Obelisk itself which had brought the Emporium there.

USING THE SCENARIO

Fortunately, if you’re using the remix, you won’t need to have your players follow that precise sequence of events. I’ve incorporated clues pointing to the Obelisk of Axum into both the Ethiopia and Bangkok material. You can also strengthen these ties by increasing the activity of the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities during the Ethiopia locale and having them attract the PCs’ attention. A few options might include:

• They kidnap or murder Acuna, interrogating him for information about the Obelisk. (If this happens shortly after the PCs question him, they might become suspects.)
• They decide to investigate the Dallol dig site. (Which they may have learned of from Acuna.)
• If the PCs are already well-known to the cult and it’s possible for Sirikhan to know they’ve gone to Ethiopia, she might telegram instructions to the Emporium members to put them under surveillance or have them killed.

More detailed notes on how to integrate the Emporium’s active investigations into the campaign can be found in my description of the Severn Valley.

PROP NOTES

The Obelisk of Axum shares the poster map used for Ethiopia. The various photos of the Northern Obelisk Field and so forth are designed so that they can be added to the Ethiopian diorama as the PCs explore Axum.

USING THE OBELISK OF AXUM AS AN INDEPENDENT SCENARIO

Unlike the Severn Valley, it can’t be trivially broken out of the campaign and  run independently. (As designed, it really lacks any sort of conclusion: The PCs come to Axum, poke around, learn some stuff (that’s mostly meaningful in terms of the larger events of the campaign).

If you wanted to run it as an independent scenario, you’d probably want to have a stronger conclusion focused on the Obelisk itself in some way. Did Frumentius remove something from the Obelisk during its destruction? If so, the PCs might need to race the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities to retrieve it.

Or the EBA might already have it, in which case the scenario becomes about them triggering something horrible with the Obelisk itself. Maybe one of them enters the Obelisk and is horribly transformed by it. (You could pull some of the lore books form the Los Angeles cult concerning Gol-Goroth and his obelisks to help establish some of this conceptually.)

Of course, you’ll also need to figure out some sort of independent hook for getting the PCs involved. Maybe they’ve been hired by the Italian government to prep the Obelisk for looting and, when they arrive onsite, they find the EBA already ensconced?

Go to 2.3 Malta

Don’t prep plots, prep situations.

That’s a maxim I first started preaching on the Alexandrian back in 2009. And one of the key things I talked about in Don’t Prep Plots is that you want to focus your prep on developing toolboxes instead of contingencies. Prepping contingencies catches you in the Choose Your Own Adventure trap, where you waste a lot of time trying to second-guess your players and developing mutually contradictory material for every possible choice they might make.

I’ve seen a lot of GMs, both before and after I wrote Don’t Prep Plots, discover the virtues of this lesson. And what frequently happens is that they begin applying the lesson at the macro-level of their scenario design, but continue making the same old mistakes at the micro-level. This is ironic, because it’s actually the micro-level stuff that is frequently the biggest and most useless time sink.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Eternal Lies lately, so I’m going to use it as an example of what I’m talking about.

SPOILERS FOR ETERNAL LIES

In Malta, the PCs find a hospital where two boys are being held by cultists and fed a “treatment” regime which is actually making them sicker. The published adventure anticipates that the PCs might try to rescue the boys and this happens:

Leaving the Hospital Superbissima is not especially difficult if the PCs are just visitors or patients. An Investigator may use Medicine or Disguise (Difficulty 5) to pose as another Investigator’s doctor and authorize the transport of the character to another hospital. (This probably requires the authorizing Investigator to sign a few forms.) A bit of Reassurance convinces hospital clerks that a patient feels fine and is ready to depart. A Reassurance spend convinces a clerk to the point that he or she doesn’t even write a suspicious note in anyone’s file or form much of a memory of the character — good for anonymity, if they need it.

The real challenge to escaping from the hospital appears under two other circumstances: when Donovan’s guards are there, watching who comes and goes, and when the Investigators have patients with them that are under Dr. Solazzio’s “special care.”

(Note that Investigators in the hospital as patients can get dosed with Nectar or put under Dr. Solazzio’s care for two broad reasons: either the cult recognizes them as enemies and decides to make use of the PCs’ vulnerability, perhaps to draw out their comrades, or you as Keeper decide that Dr. Solazzio’s attentions fall on them for purely dramatic reasons such as for pacing or exposition.)

If the Investigators attempt to slip out in pursuit of Donovan or while his guards are in the hospital, see the scene Malta 4,”Pursuing Donovan,” p. 232, for stats on those guards. They take immediate note of strange behavior in their vicinity.

If the Investigators try to get Alexi or Monte (or both) out of the hospital, they have to get around some nurses and orderlies and go through the security staff. (They may even have to get through Donovan’s own guards, if they time their escape poorly.) This is not all that hard to do, really; it’s just hard to do anonymously. Waving guns around or making a total of a 2-point Intimidation spend is brutish enough to clear a gap through the hospital staff. Getting Alexi and/or Monte out of the hospital likely leads to a citywide manhunt for the boys and their “kidnappers,” with both crooked and legit police on the search for the Investigators.

Thus the Investigators may want to wear surgical masks or Disguises, since even a simple disguise (Difficulty 4 or 5) at least renders a character unidentifiable to witnesses who might be called upon, in this era without security cameras, to assert that “yes, that’s the one who carried that boy out of the hospital.” A surgical mask gives any character a dedicated pool point of Disguise within the hospital. A doctor’s white coast grants an additional pool point of Disguise. Either or both gives you a good reason for some NPCs to make lazy assumptions (“Just another surgeon, I guess”) or obstructive assumptions (“Excuse me, doctor, can you help me?”) about the character, depending on the success of the attempt. NPCs might challenge a disguise if the Investigators draw attention to themselves or interact with an NPC. Not all interactions call for the Difficulty 7 test befitting proper impersonation. In this context, it’s easier (Difficulty 5 or 6) to impersonate “a doctor” than it is to impersonate a particular Doctor (Difficulty 7). A Medicine spend might count as a point toward a Disguise roll if, for example, an Investigator wants to portray a visiting specialist (“Didn’t you get my telegram?”).

All disguises are temporary affairs, anyway, buying just enough time to take action, stymie the opposition, or delay consequences for recklessness or failure.

Once the Investigators get out onto the street, they must have somewhere to take the rescued boys (though see “The Knight”). Thus the situation gets more complicated. You may want to call for a Stealth or Shadowing test (Difficulty 5 close to the hospital, Difficulty 4 after that) to describe the Investigators’ attempted escape from the scene of their rescue. Alternately, they may try simply Fleeing the scene until they can make a single Stealth test to hide.

If the Investigators have devised a whole scheme for rescuing the boys and getting them free of the cult (perhaps involving fake papers and a ship out of Malta), let them explore it. If it proves to be too much of a distraction from the job at hand, gloss over details or assume that the characters succeed rather than testing for every damn task. Securing papers for the boys might just require a Law or Streetwise spend among the right contacts, for example, and getting the boys to safety might simply involve flying them out in the Winston-Rogers plane to Sicily and then sorting out the rest of it between Locales. If the logistics of a complicated rescue seem to be spoiling the players’ good feeling for doing the right thing, make things easier on the players (even if things stay complicated for the characters between scenes).

You can immediately see that there is a ton of verbiage being dedicated to specific plans that the PCs may or may not actually come up with. What I’m suggesting is that the prep for this should look something more like this:

ESCAPING THE HOSPITAL

There are two exits from the Hospital Superbissima: The front door and a side entrance used by employees. There are tall windows in the patient wards, but many of these are not designed to be opened.

NURSES: Collectively, the nurses of the Hospital Superbissima benefit from Awareness +2 to notice investigators snooping around areas they don’t have permission to be in or any other suspicious activity happening in the hospital.

HOSPITAL SECURITY: Security around the hospital is surprisingly tight. In addition to two guards in the lobby, a guard is also found at the nurse’s desk on each floor of the building.

[Insert a stat block for the hospital security guards here.]

DONOVAN’S GUARDS: If Donovan is on the premises, his guards are stationed at the entrance to the third-floor Intensive Care Ward and will respond immediately to anything they view as strange or suspicious.

[Repeat the stat block for Donovan’s guards here for easy reference.]

GETTING THE BOYS OUT: Getting Alexi and/or Monte out of the hospital, this likely leads to a citywide manhunt for the boys and their “kidnappers,” with both the crooked and legit police on the search for the investigators. Securing a place of refuge where people can’t spot the boys and report them may be difficult. Getting them out of the country may require securing (or falsifying) legal papers.

SIDEBAR: Remember that the Knight may already be watching the investigators at this point. If they get into trouble in the hospital, he’s likely to step in and help them out. Or at least offer them a place of refuge.

ON THE USE OF TOOLS

And that’s pretty much it. What’s the distinction here, beyond a greatly reduced word count (and, thus, work load)?

As the GM, note that if your players were to propose any of the escape plans proposed in the original text, you should be able to look at the tools provided in the second description and figure out what the result or response will be. More importantly, if the players propose some completely different plan (calling in a bomb threat, rappelling through the windows at night, taking hostages, casting a spell to escape with the kids to another dimension, etc.) you should also be able to pick up the tools (the layout of the hospital, the nurses, the security guards) and figure out what will happen.

While prepping the adventure, you don’t need to think to yourself, “What will happen if my players decide to disguise themselves as doctors? Well, I guess they’d make a Disguise check. I better write that down!” Not only because it’s self-evident, but because there are at least a half dozen other possibilities for what they might do. Whatever work you’re putting into trying to figure out the myriad tactics the PCs might employ in a particular tactical situation, you’d be far better off making your toolbox larger and more interesting.

PREPPING YOUR TOOLBOX

But what constitutes the difference between a tool and a contingency? For example, isn’t prepping this information about the hospital dependent on the PCs going to hospital? Doesn’t that make the whole thing a contingency? And even if we lay that concern aside, how do we actually identify what the useful tools are? I mean, the bad guy might have a collection of early Picasso paintings. How do I know whether to prep the Picasso collection or the alarm system on his windows?

I find this generally boils down to two questions.

First: What will the PCs be interested in? Not what they’re going to do, but what they’ll be interested in. Where their focus will be. (In a mystery scenario this is relatively easy to predict because it usually equates to wherever the clues are pointing them.) It’s possible to get pedantic and argue that “being interested” constitutes an action, but I think the distinction being sought here is generally pretty clear.

Second: What are the NPCs’ plans? These can be specific to the events of the scenario (“they want to blow up Woodheim”) and possibly even specific to the PCs (but not specific to the actions of the PCs) if their current plan is aimed at the PCs (like Lex Luthor obtaining kryptonite to deal with Superman). But most of the plans you’ll be looking at will actually be a lot more general and long-standing than that.

The hospital scenario is an example of this: The cult doesn’t want the boys to escape. What precautions are they taking to prevent that from happening?

Similarly, if you were designing a mansion for a mob boss you’d ask questions like: What type of security system does he have? What does he enjoy doing at home? What does his daily schedule look like?

If the mob boss is currently planning to assassinate the head of the local Triads, then you’d start asking yourself questions like: Who does he hire to do that? If things go bad, what resources does he have to protect himself?

All of these questions will guide you towards creating either the long-standing status quo or the current trajectory of action that the PCs are going to be thrusting themselves into. And what you want to focus on is that situation which exists without the PCs and let your players worry about the thrust.

Which, I suppose, ultimately brings us full circle:

Don’t prep plots, prep situations.

FURTHER READING
Empower Your Prep: The Rachov Principle
The Railroading Manifesto
Node-Based Scenario Design
Gamemastery 101

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

Ethiopia receives very few changes for the remix. There are a few minor changes, mostly aimed at either (a) incorporating the Obelisk of Axum into the campaign or (b) creating a clearer path by which the PCs could reach Ayers. (I knew that there was literally 0% chance that my players would choose to just blindly ride into the desert in a vaguely western direction on the off-chance they might run into him, so I created the mythology of the Dream-Scourged Halls of Oloth-Waaq to give a little flavorful direction.)

One thing I did change, however, was the custom Heat Track the campaign uses for desert travel. I posted these previously on the Alexandrian when I first developed them, but I’ll share them here, too, for easy reference.

The effect of prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures in Trail of Cthulhu is very straight-forward: Investigators are considered to be hurt, resulting in them suffering a +1 difficulty on all tests.

The designers of Eternal Lies had a desire to make exposure to extreme heat more mechanically interesting and they introduced a rudimentary heat track. I found their treatment interesting, but wanted something a little more robust (particularly when it came to treatment and recovery). These mechanics are specifically designed for desert travel.

HEAT TRACK

0. Not suffering heat.

1. Can only make spends after first resting for 10 minutes (to gather their thoughts and spirits).

2. Difficulty of contests +1 (including hit thresholds).

3. Difficulty of tests at +1.

4. Can only make 1 spend per day and must make it in the morning after a good night’s sleep, before the day’s temperatures begin to rise.

5. Cannot make any spends.

6. Can only refresh 1 Health per day. If Heat Track would advance, it remains at 6 but character suffers 1 damage.

ADVANCING HEAT

Desert Travel: +1 Heat track per day. Characters who traveled during the day are considered to be under extreme heat conditions for the purposes of treating heat.

Camping: Characters who take a rest from traveling by camping for one full day are considered to be in favorable conditions for the purposes of treating heat.

Oasis: An oasis or similar place of significant respite may be considered “controlled conditions” for the purposes of treating heat.

TREATING HEAT

A given character can be treated for heat once per day.

First Aid/Medicine in favorable conditions to prevent advancement or reduce position on the heat track by 1.

First Aid/Medicine (difficulty 3 + heat track) in extreme heat conditions to prevent advancement or reduce position on the heat track.

First Aid 1 / Medicine 1 in controlled conditions to bring an investigator back to 0.

PROP NOTES

Dallol Diorama Photos: These colorful illustrations of the deadly beauty around Dallol should be added to the diorama after the PCs begin exploring the area.

Acuna’s Letter to the University: This is a nifty little prop, but I get the feeling that no one will ever see it. Lemme know if your players prove me wrong!

Reference – The Heat and Interpreters: This isn’t really a prop, per se, but it’s designed to be something that you hand to the players as a useful reference for the special rules that apply in Ethiopia. Thus, for lack of a better place to put it, you’ll find it here in the props pack.

Go to 2.2.1 Obelisk of Axum

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Scenario – Diorama – Props Packet – Map

Now we come to one of the two completely new locales that I introduced to the campaign. The Severn Valley is 60 pages, 40+ props, and 20,000 words. It’s also robust enough that you could easily run it as an independent scenario (and I’ve included notes for doing so below).

The origin of the Severn Valley scenario was relatively straightforward: Eternal Lies incorporates a lot of elements from Ramsey Campbell’s stories of the Mythos. I was not previously familiar with Campbell’s fiction and so, as part of my preparation for the campaign, I began reading through all of his Severn Valley stories. Then, as I described over here, I decided to create a list of expeditions for Savitree Sirikhan’s exploration team. I thought it would be a nice tip of the hat for one of those locations to be the Severn Valley, and I included an oblique reference to the Severn Valley reference in the props I designed for The Obelisk of Axum.

I was not anticipating that my original group of PCs would immediately seize on that oblique reference and decide that their next stop should be the Severn Valley itself.

My initial intention with the scenario was to do something relatively simple and straightforward. I decided that visiting the meteoric lake from Campbell’s “The Inhabitant of the Lake” was a good bet: The PCs might be able to have a brief encounter with Glaaki, which would give them some visceral reference for the “Prisoner of Glaaki” references sprinkled through the rest of the campaign. The lake had no name in Campbell’s original story, so I decided to call it Deepfall Lake and started work. (Ironically, I would discover that Campbell had later named the lake Deepfall Waters in The Last Revelation of Glaaki.)

But as I worked at unraveling the enigma of Deepfall Lake, I found that what I had initially taken to be a relatively isolated location was, in fact, all tangled up with the rest of Campbell’s Mythos. And all of it began looping back through the Revelations of Glaaki. My Severn Valley scenario became one of those creative endeavors which take on a life of its own.

INTEGRATING THE NEW LOCALES

Both The Obelisk of Axum and Severn Valley were specifically designed for use in my campaign. In terms of adapting the specific material to your own campaigns, the most notable factor to take into consideration will be the dates involved with the activities of the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities.

Integrating the locales into the general flow of your campaign requires a bit more finesse, however. These two locales are designed to provide the current expeditions being pursued by the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities. (By providing a sense of activity on the part of the cultists, you’ll create a sense of urgency in the PCs. Like the floating scenes, it also makes the campaign world feel more alive and active, instead of entirely passive.) Because the PCs can visit the locations in almost any order (the exception being that there’s no practical way for them to go to the Severn Valley without visiting either Axum or Bangkok first), however, it can be a little difficult to manage all the moving parts.

In general, there are four possibilities:

BANGKOK FIRST: If the PCs go to Bangkok first, then I recommend having a current expedition at the Obelisk of Axum. In this scenario, include Fauche’s Axum Telegram (modifying it to have a recent date) with the notes on the Obelisk of Axum. If the PCs go to Axum next, they’ll find the EBA there. If they skip ahead to Severn Valley, I’d recommend having them discover that the EBA left Axum shortly after Fauche’s telegram and that they’ve already reached Severn Valley. (When they double back to Axum, you’ll need to make a few modifications to the material, but it will require significantly less work than modifying the Severn Valley material to a pre-EBA state.)

AXUM FIRST, THEN BANGKOK: Include Husain’s Site Report and Fauche’s Second Axum Telegram with the Obelisk of Axum notes. The PCs can visit Severn Valley at any point after Bangkok with little or no change to the material.

AXUM FIRST, THEN SEVERN VALLEY: When the PCs get to Bangkok, include all of the above props plus Soliman’s Letter from Severn and Survivors’ Telegram to Daniel Lowman.

AXUM FIRST, AND THE PCs KILL THE EBA: The easier option is to have Savitree hire a new team and quickly dispatch them to continue her research. (She’s increasingly desperate to figure this out, remember. She’s also well connected, so some quick telegrams to London’s archaeology community might allow her to quickly get a team on the ground.) The more complicated option is to heavily modify Severn Valley. The potentially crazy (but potentially totally awesome) option is to heavily modify Severn Valley and have Savitree try to hire them to explore it for her. (“We both want the same thing: We’re both scared of what this Great Entity can do. We both want to know how to control it. How to limit its influence. How to free ourselves from it.”)

In my campaign, the PCs went to Axum first, finished their business in Ethiopia while the EBA went to the Severn Valley, and then followed them there. The timelines in the Severn Valley scenario reflect that. If the PCs are hot on their heels, the EBA will move rapidly in the Severn Valley: They’ll get to their expedition sites faster and cut more corners while investigating. They’ll hire thugs and assassins to delay or simply murder the PCs. (One particularly good set of timing, however, would be for the PCs to catch up with them at Deepfall Lake just as Glaaki is attacking them.)

AFTER SEVERN VALLEY: After Soliman’s “death” in the Severn Valley, the Emporium members will be beached in Bangkok for a time. If the PCs haven’t gone there yet, you can have them complicate the situation in Bangkok. If the PCs have already wrecked Bangkok, it’s possible that Fauche might try to pick up the pieces. Or they might ally with other cult leaders. Or they might organize efforts to seek revenge (or simply regain any research material the PCs stole from Savitree).

Savitree’s Research Notes do include details for a future expedition to the Great Sandy Desert in 1935. This is a reference to Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time”, but my intention is that the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities DON’T end up going on that expedition. (The negotiations fall through.) But if you wanted to run a Trials and Tribble-lations style adventure where the PCs and the EBA are running around in the background of “The Shadow Out of Time”, I say more power to you. You could use that as an opportunity to reveal the meteor-cities of the Yithians. The connection of those meteor-cities to Glaaki could be another method for pointing the PCs towards the Severn Valley if they haven’t already visited. (The meteor-cities are explained here in my notes for the Severn Valley scenario.)

THE MYTHOS OF THE SEVERN VALLEY

Most of Campbell’s Severn Valley stories are set during the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s (when they were written). With the campaign set in the 1930s, I seized the opportunity to create a dynamic prequel to Campbell’s stories: Not only will players familiar with Severn Valley have a chance to spot familiar sites, I’ve also structured the scenario so that the probable outcome is for the PCs to set up the circumstances which give rise to Campbell’s stories. Conversely, if your players aren’t familiar with Campbell’s stories they should get an extra thrill from reading them after the campaign is finished. If you’re interested in reading the specific stories which make up the fabric of the scenario, they are:

• “The Inhabitant of the Lake”
• “The Church in High Street”
• “The Stone on the Island”
• “Cold Print”

There are also references to “The Room in the Castle”, “The Render in Veils”, “The Plain of Sound”, and The Last Revelation of Glaaki. You can get all of the short stories in a single volume by tracking down a copy of the 1993 expanded edition of the Cold Print collection.

While I have done my best to scrupulously adhere to Campbell’s continuity, however, I have also taken the opportunity to vastly expand the Severn Valley Mythos.

THE DOUBLING OF TIME: At the core of my conception of Severn Valley is the doubling of time and place. Glaaki, riding within a meteor, arrives on Earth in 1787. His cultists perform a ritual using the reversed angles of Tagh-Clatur which rewrite history and warps space in the Vale of Berkeley. This means, first, that Glaaki’s meteor has always rested in the Vale of Berkeley, so that his influence on the world now stretches back to prehistory. And, second, the “weight” of the angles invoked actually increases the size of the local terrain: The city of Brichester now exists in the Severn Valley.

See, Campbell’s city of Brichester is fictional. And what I discovered when I tried to create a map of the region is that not only does the city not exist, there isn’t enough room for it to exist: It’s supposed to lie between the River Severn and the A38 north of Berkeley. But that span of land is only 4 miles across. It would be difficult to squeeze the metropolis of Brichester into that area all by itself, but it’s supposed to be surrounded by areas of wilderness that takes hours to walk across. So in order to create a map of the fictional Severn Valley, I would need to actually expand the size of the region.

And then I thought about how utterly terrifying it would be if that had actually happened and only a few people knew about it. (And, of course, you would consider those people insane. It would be like someone trying to claim that Chicago, IL wasn’t supposed to exist.)

Figuring out how Glaaki had managed to make this happen, I ended up linking the Isle Beyond Severnford (from “The Stone on the Island”) directly into the Glaaki mythos.

THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE TOMB-HERD: Another conundrum I struggled with while unraveling Campbell’s Mythos was the identity of the tomb-herd. They’re referenced as either working for or allied with Glaaki in “The Inhabitant of the Lake”, but they receive a full description in “The Church on High Street” (which has also appeared under the title “The Tomb Herds”) with a mythology that doesn’t quite square with the later reference.

One possibility is that there are multiple tomb-herds, but I found a different way of squaring the circle by, first, entertwining the history of Glaaki’s cult and the Church in High Street and then postulating that the tomb-herd are, in fact, the next stage of development for the glakeen. I don’t know if Campbell would approve (although I do take some comfort from the amorphous transformations of The Last Revelation of Glaaki), but I hope you find the results compelling and terrifying.

LINKING ETERNAL LIES: The other thing I wanted to do, of course, was to tie Severn Valley to the Eternal Lies campaign. I did that through the character of Tricia Piper. In “Cold Print”, Ramsey Campbell establishes that an additional volume of the Revelations of Glaaki, steeped in lore concerning Y’Golonac, was written by an inmate at the Mercy Hill Asylum. I decided that the process of writing this volume started in 1924 and it was a direct result of the ritual that was performed by Echavarria in Los Angeles.

I don’t know if you’ll share the same thrill of excitement that gives me: But the idea of players being able to link the exploits of their characters into a wider world in subtle and insidious ways just seems to invest such a unique depth of meaning above and beyond all the normal ways in which a campaign can deliver meaning.

 UNTANGLING THE REVELATIONS OF GLAAKI

There are a number of reference sheets throughout the Severn Valley scenario to help you keep track of the complicated and overlapping continuities and mythologies. There were times when it felt like I was sweating blood to pull those coherent references together, and this was never more true than with the six page reference sheet for the Revelations of Glaaki you’ll find at the end of the scenario.

This final reference sheet is less organized and condensed than the others. Its function is, instead, to contain every scrap of information I’ve dredged up about the Revelations from Campbell’s work (and others of note). As with the other aspects of the scenario, I have expanded upon the known body of lore concerning the Revelations of Glaaki for my remix, but I wanted a solid body of reference to build from. And because the Revelations are, in many ways, the central pivot on which the mythology of Eternal Lies turns, I suspect you may find it useful, too. (Or, at the very least, of interest.)

PROP NOTES

Alan Thorpe’s Notes: The front and back cover of Alan Thorpe’s Notes are designed to be printed out on cardstock (I used matte photo paper) and taped together to form a folder that you can then slide the actual Notes into.

Birch Sculptures: It doesn’t matter which picture goes with which Birch sculpture they discover. The visual references are atmospheric in nature. (These sculptures are, in fact, the work of Cris Agterberg, who is name-dropped in the scenario as supposedly taking influence from the completely fictional Birch.)

Faces of the Violet Cube: If you wanted to cut the cube out and tape it into an actual cube, I’m betting that would be pretty awesome.

Husain Soliman’s Notes: The conceit I’m shooting for here is that the notes are made in a little notebook. You could copy them out by hand if you’ve got an appropriate notebook. What I did was to print these out, cut the sheets down, and staple them together to form a little pseudo-notebook. (If you wanted to put a hole through them and stain them as if Glaaki’s spine had speared straight through the notes and into Soliman’s chest cavity, more power to you.)

Journal of Thomas Cavanaugh: These are designed to be printed as a booklet. The cover is presented in a separate file (I printed it on matte photo paper to give a nice, sturdy cover).

Photo of Grotesque Statue: You can actually buy this statue as a resin kit for $40 CAD if you want a really awesome, physical prop to drop on the table and freak your players out.

Revelation of the Herd: This is sized to be printed on a very nice piece of stationary paper that I happen to own which looks like the sort of thing you’d find in a 1930s hotel. (Which is, in fact, where it ended up being written in my campaign.) Note that the handwriting actually DOES match the handwritten Revelations of Glaaki excerpts.

USING SEVERN VALLEY AS AN INDEPENDENT SCENARIO

The core of this scenario is that the PCs are coming to the Severn Valley on the trail of a group of archaeologists from the Emporium of Bangkok Antiquities. It’s relatively easy to use the Emporium while severing its connection to Savitree Sirikhan and the Eternal Lies campaign. (Alternatively, you could actually use Severn Valley as an alternative way of kicking off an Eternal Lies campaign, although you’d want to add more clues that would allow PCs to track the Emporium back to Bangkok.)

The reason for the PCs’ pursuit of the Emporium might be professional (the Armitage Inquiry is interested in consulting the group or putting them on retainer), hostile (Project Covenant has identified the group as a potential security threat), or concerned (the PCs are also associates of the Emporium who have come to find out why their colleagues have stopped reporting back).

EXPANDING THE SEVERN VALLEY: Another option would be to expand Severn Valley to include more of Campbell’s stories. The setting practically screams for being turned into a full-throttled sandbox focused around the local Mythos forces drawn to the region by Glaaki’s presence (like the Mi-Go and the cultists of Goatswood), with telltale traces throughout the region gradually pointing the PCs towards the terrible truths of the Valley’s true history. (Basically, a big orgy of the Campbellian Mythos focused through the lens of Glaaki.)

For a sandbox campaign, there are a number of ways that the PCs could be drawn into the Valley for the first time:

• The Brichester Scholars, based out of Brichester University, would be a relatively standard “scholars vs. the Mythos” set-up.
• The Winchester Group, an SIS workgroup tasked with the unwise mission of discovering how Mythos technology could be exploited in the inevitable war against fascism, would probably result in the campaign looking a lot more like Raid on Innsmouth than Shadows Over Innsmouth.
• The Summer Holiday structure would reframe the Severn Valley as a gothic romance: School chums come to spend their holiday in the Valley, only to be drawn into its horrors.
• A special guest appearance by the Bookhounds of London (with their frame focused around the many volumes of the Revelations of Glaaki) would make a lot of sense.
• I’m also struck by the idea of a Children of the Blitz frame, featuring a Narnia-like premise with young children evacuated from London.

Go to 2.2 Ethiopia

To paraphrase somebody famous, there are two ways to handle a meta-story: The right way and the wrong way.

When handled correctly, a meta-story adds depth and complexity to a roleplaying game. Instead of merely describing a setting as it physically exists at some given point in time, a line of products becomes capable of describing dynamic relationships within the setting as they evolve over time.

When handled incorrectly, a meta-story becomes a marketing gimmick – stringing the customers along from one product to the next, always keeping some essential piece of information just out of reach in the “next release”. Buy Product A, which will only work if you buy Product B, which will only work if you buy Product C… Instead of serving as a spice, the poorly managed meta-story becomes a flaw: Existing customers get frustrated with having to purchase books they don’t want in order to keep up, while new customers get lost in a flurry of books whose interrelationships are murky and unclear.

And then there’s Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear: The standard by which all other meta-stories are to be judged. The meta-story of this game is clearly presented, compellingly conceived, and brilliantly executed. No other game has come close.

There are three keys to this success. First, there is the Timewatch system. On the back of every single Heavy Gear product there is a date printed: The date in the game setting which the material in the book describes. This idea is so simple and elegant that it would, literally, cost absolutely nothing for every single producer of roleplaying products to mimic it – and yet the effect it has on the Heavy Gear game line is profound: The Timewatch system strips away an entire level of complexity and potential confusion and resolves it in the easy reference of four digits.

The second key is the strength, clarity, and flexibility of the methodology underlying the Heavy Gear product line. “Clarity” because the purpose and scope of every supplement is clearly communicated to its audience. “Strength” because of the interlocking levels of detail and coverage, combined with strong, continuing support across the board. “Flexibility” because each supplement is truly modular – requiring nothing more than itself and the core rules to be fully useable. The importance of all this cannot be understated: The ability for a newcomer to be able to look at a shelf of products and know exactly what each book covers and which books they should buy, and the ability to buy only those books which contain precisely the information they need, makes Heavy Gear the most accessible and durable line of RPG products on the market.

This second key leads directly to the concept of the Storyline Book: Instead of spreading the development of the meta-story across a myriad array of unrelated products, Dream Pod 9 has instead concentrated the story into this single set of books. The information to be found here, of course, is supported in other products – but it’s supported in the same way that other game lines support their standard world information. In other words, if you want more information about, for example, the Black Talon program you’d pick up the Black Talon Field Guide. But if you weren’t interested in having detailed coverage of the Talons, then the information found in Return to Cat’s Eye would be more than sufficient to let you know what the major developments with the Talons are. This gives you the ability to follow the meta-story of Heavy Gear without having to buy every Heavy Gear product that the Pod produces (regardless of whether or not you actually want the information found in that product). The Pod will make you want to own the books, but will never require you to own anything more than a tightly controlled set of core resources.

And the third key? Mind-blowing quality. The story being told by Dream Pod 9, the first part of which appears in these three books, is one of the best you’re going to find, in or out of the gaming industry. Intrigue, power, politics, war, love, murder, mayhem. You name it – Heavy Gear’s got it.

This story is so good, it’s worth reading even if you don’t play the game – and it’s accompanied by a visual tour de force that fans of the Pod have come to recognize as par for the course. There is no other company in the industry that can feast your eyes the way the Pod can (supported, as they are, by the astounding talent of Ghislain Barbe) – and all the while doing it with exactly the right balance: The art is always there as a supplement and companion to the writing, never overpowering it or distracting from it.

These books actually are designed to stand on their own. The Heavy Gear universe, and this story, were conceived as a whole. They were not produced, specifically, as a “roleplaying setting” or a “tactical scenario”, but rather as a product which could stand on its own. Its creation was a collaboration, combining not only the written word but also the visual elements of the world as an organic whole. The result is a universe broad in scope and rich in detail, driven by a story which is epic in proportion and gripping in the telling.

Crisis of Faith begins the story in TN 1932, as the world of Terra Nova begins to spin towards global war. Told through the collected notes and intelligence data of Nicosa Renault – a “retired” master spy who still keeps tabs on the powerbrokers of her world – the story of Heavy Gear begins to unfold before you through the thoughts, conversations, video logs, and journals of actual Terranovans. As the book nears its conclusion things begin to spiral hopelessly out of control, ending with a shocking surprise ending.

If the last six pages of Crisis of Faith hit you with the power of a sledgehammer, then the first two pages of Blood on the Wind will send you reeling across the room… and the thrills are just beginning: The world goes to hell and Dream Pod 9 is taking you along for the ride. If you thought the beginning was surprising, just wait until you see the end: A grand mystery is left unsolved and a new crisis looms on the horizon.

Return to Cat’s Eye brings the first part of the Heavy Gear storyline to a conclusion. The pieces left hanging from the first two books are slowly brought to their resolution, but just as you think you’ve figured out the rules of the game, new players begin to appear… and old players do the totally unexpected.

These books are masterpieces. They make me proud to be a gamer. They are something which I can point to and say: “Why do I roleplay? Because things like this are possible.” You’ll use them. You’ll read them. And then you’ll read them again. They are treasures to own, and joys to appreciate. They are something you simply must not miss.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Philippe Boulle, Marc-Alexandre Vezina, and Hilary Doda
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $19.95 / $17.95 / $17.95
Page Count: 112 / 80 / 80
ISBN: 1-896776-21-3 / 1-896776-27-2 / 1-896776-59-0

Originally Posted: 2000/10/14

When I wrote this review, I had previously written reviews of both Crisis of Faith and Blood on the Wind. I am honestly uncertain at this point whether I had simply forgotten that I had written those review or if (more likely) I decided that a review of Return to Cat’s Eye would have been rather slim by itself and that it would make more sense to look at the collective effect of Heavy Gear‘s “first act” (so to speak) in a single package.

I had originally intended to follow this up with a review of the next trilogy of Storyline Books, but four days after submitting this review to RPGNet (and several days before it was actually published) I received an offer from Dream Pod 9 to revise material from an unpublished supplement I had written for them so that it could be incorporated into the fourth Heavy Gear storyline book. That prompted me to post a rather weird “I’m biased now, but I wasn’t biased when I wrote this” notice shortly after the review went live.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.