Go to Part 1

BASEMENT

BASEMENT – KITCHEN PORCH

Liquor Crates: Mostly empty crates which originally contained three dozen bottles of Minnesota 13. A half dozen or so bottles remain, unopened.

• GM Note: Gladys brought the liquor in these crates and had them dropped off at the back porch.

FIRST FLOOR

FIRST FLOOR – HALL

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Hall

Corpses (3): Two on the floor. One on the stairs.

FIRST FLOOR – ART GALLERY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Art Gallery

3 story tall pipe organ. 12 foot high fireplace on the opposite wall. Expensive art lining the walls.

Corpses (3): One playing the organ. Two in an amorous embrace on the bench.

FIRST FLOOR – LIBRARY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Library

Corpses (3) – One of the corpses is Frank Candide (ID in his wallet; he was married to Evelyn, whose body is in the attic).

FIRST FLOOR – MUSIC ROOM

• Upright piano. Victorian wallpaper. Crystal chandelier.
• Portaits of James J. and Mary T. hang on the walls to either side of the door.
• Coats and purses are stacked on a divan.

• Simple Search: To sort through the IDs.
• Evelyn’s ID: Evelyn Candide’s ID is here, so if they haven’t found the bodies in the attic yet, this will indicate a missing woman.
• Alicia’s ID: Alicia Corey’s purse is here and a photograph inside can be used to identify her corpse. It also lists her name and address on a small “Please Return” card.

FIRST FLOOR – TERRACE

• Evidence Collection 1 / Evidence Collection (Lucretia’s Testimony): There is a trail of fingerprints “walking” across the terrace. (Go from the house down the stairs and then vanish into the grass.)

SECOND FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR – BALCONY

Fluted balustrades around the edge. Lounging furniture fashionably arranged.

Corpses (1 + Alicia Corey)

ALICIA COREY’S CORPSE: This corpse still has its left hand, which is clenched in a tight fist.

• GM Note: Alicia’s purse and ID are downstairs in the Music Room.

Shattered Hamsa: Clutched in her left hand, there are shards of glass and lead. (Prop: Shattered Hamsa)

• GM Note: This was Alicia’s Hamsa charm. To prepare this prop, print out the picture of the Hamsa and cut it up into pieces. Allow the players to assemble the pieces like a puzzle.
  

Slit in the Palm: There is a strange slit or cut in the palm. No blood, but some kind of clear, jelly-like substance in the slit.

• Medicine: The liquid is aqueous humor — the introcular fluid which fills the eyeball.

SECOND FLOOR – RACHEL’S ROOM

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Rachel’s Room

THIRD FLOOR

THIRD FLOOR – SERVANT’S QUARTERS

A simple room, but with the same rich oak trim found throughout the house.

ATTIC

THEATER

Converted into a small stage. (For the production of amateur theatricals by the Hill children.)

Corpses (2): Located on the stage behind the curtains.

• Rupert Wild and Evelyn Candide.
• Evelyn was married to a Frank Candide, whose corpse is in the Library.

Tanit Hands (2): These hands were trapped in here.

CRAWLING HAND OF TANIT: Athletics 2, Fleeing 6, Scuffling 4, Health 4

Hit Threshold: 4 (tiny, quick moving hand)
Alertness Modifier: +1 (10% eye by volume)
Stealth Modifier: 2 (tiny skittering hand)
                Weapons: eye gouge, scratching, unpleasant probing (-3)
Stability Loss: +1
Eye of Tanit: Pupil twists into a curlicue. Stability test (no loss). On failure, establish trance like state. On second failure, can issue a hypnotic compulsion that will last until trance ends. Being controlled has a potential of 4-point Stability loss.

RACHEL HILL

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Rachel Hill

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• In a state of shock covered only by her excellent manners.
• Dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.
• Weakness melts away if pushed around; then she wields her full strength as a millionaire’s heiress.

BACKGROUND

• Grew up in New York.
• Had diptheria as a child.
• Married Egil Boeckmann, a University of Minnesota football hero (scored touchdown that tied first “Little Brown Jug” game with Michigan) in 1913.
• Moved back into James J. Hill House when her mother became ill in 1919.
• Recently hired a photographer to take pictures of the property before it’s given to the Archdiocese.

CLUES

• She did not drink, as she’s teetotaler.
• Gladys Roy left early. She had invited a friend – Alicia Corey – to the party.
• Reassurance 1 / Interrogation 1: She asked Gladys Roy to secure the alcohol for the party (and brought it in the later afternoon). (She won’t admit this without reassurances that she won’t get in trouble. Otherwise her story is that people brought their own booze.)

NOTES

• Rachel was married in the Drawing Room of the mansion. (The dissociation between that memory and the corpses currently in there.)

RACHEL HILL: Athletics 4, Driving 2, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 4, Weapons 2, Health 7
Alertness Modifier: -1 (oblivious)
Stealth Modifier: 0 (unskilled)
           Weapons: Fists (-2)

LUCRETIA GRAY

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Lucretia Gray

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Nervous around authority figures.
• Protective of members of the Hill family. Refers to them as Mr. Wallace, Ms. Rachel, etc.
• Gives a “look” to anyone she considers to be acting foolish.

BACKGROUND

• Her husband was a butler in the house. He died in a trolley accident in 1919. They had no children.
• Has worked with the Hill family since 1911.
• Last servant working in the house (the rest were assisted into other positions or given pensions after Mary T.’s death).

CLUES

• She sent the invitations out for Ms. Rachel’s party. (Has a list of addresses and could, for example, give people contact information for Gladys Roy.)
• Gladys Roy brought the liquor (Minnesota 13) to the party at Rachel’s request. She dropped it off on the back porch and Lucretia would run bottles up as people requested more.
• Reassurance 1: As she was calling the police from the phone in the den, she saw something crawling across the Terrace and disappearing into the darkness.

LUCRETIA GRAY: Athletics 10, Driving 0, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 6, Weapons 3, Health 10
Alertness Modifier: +1
Stealth Modifier: +1
            Weapons: Fists (-2), Household Implements (-1)

Go to Node 1: The Black Cats

Go to Part 1

As the scenario begins, one or more of the PCs have received a call from Detective Fred Watson in the middle of the night. Perhaps they’ve worked with him on previous cases. Perhaps they’ve been recommended to him. Whatever the connection, he has a case that needs their ‘special skills’ and he needs them to come up to the James J. Hill House in St. Paul immediately.

BACKGROUND – THE HILL FAMILY

• James J. Hill (1838-1916) was the CEO of the Great Northern Railway.
• Met Mary Theresa Mehegan (a daughter of Irish immigrants; waitress working in the Merchants Hotel in St. Paul) in 1864; married her in 1867. She died in 1921.
• They had 10 children together: Mary, James, Louis, Clara, Katherine (d. 1876, infant), Charlotte (d. 1923, pneumonia), Ruth, Rachel, Gertrude, and Walter.
• The children have largely scattered – most to New York. Walter lives on a ranch in Montana. (Louis and James are still local, but went with Ruth and Gertrude back to New York a couple weeks ago. Ruth and Gertrude were in town arranging the donation of the house with Rachel.) Only Rachel is currently in town.

BACKGROUND – THE MANSION

• Exterior built of a reddish stone.
• The mansion was completed in 1891. It was the largest and most expensive home in Minnesota, containing 36,500 square feet on five floors (13 bathrooms, 22 fireplaces, 16 cut-glass chandeliers, profusion of elaborately carved oak and mahogany woodwork, a three-story pipe organ).
• President McKinley visited in 1899.
• Back side of the house is on a kind of bluff. It looks out past the Cathedral (which rears up from some unseen depth) and across the sweeping, gently swelling hills of Saint Paul.

OVERVIEW – THE PARTY

• Rachel Hill wanted to throw one last party before she and her sisters donate the house to the Roman Catholic Dioceses of St. Paul. (They have recently purchased the house from her mother’s estate.)
• She invited 8 people. 13 people actually showed up because people brought friends or dates, so there were a total of 15 people in the house (including Rachel and the house servant Lucretia Gray).
• Gladys Roy left early (because she has an aerobatics show in the morning).
• Rachel went to bed with headache shortly after midnight.
• At 1 AM (the thirteenth hour), the Tanit-tainted liquor activated. Alicia Corey activated her Hamsa, which disrupted the ascendance of Tanit, but killed everyone there. Alicia Corey’s left hand was partially saved; but the partially ascended Tanit fragments in the left hands of the other guests separated from their hosts and crawled away.
• Screams awoke Lucretia. She woke Rachel. The police were phoned and arrived around 1:40 AM.

LOCATIONS OF THE DEAD BODIES

• Carriage Porch (1)
• Hall (2)
• Library (3)
• Art Gallery (3)
• Balcony (1 + Alicia Corey’s body)
• Attic Theater (2 + 2 Hands of Tanit)

GM Note: If the number of bodies are compared to the count of guests given by Rachel, it will be noted that one is missing: Gladys Roy (who left).

INVESTIGATING THE DEAD BODIES

Left hands are missing. Stumps left behind are not bleeding.

Some bodies have a small amount of bleeding from nostrils or ears.

Medicine: The flesh on the stumps are pink and new.

• Medicine 1 / Pump Stomach: The contents of the victims’ stomachs are slightly purplish and resemble a non-Newtonian fluid; like water mixed with corn starch. (This can be analyzed with proper lab equipment. See General Research: Lab Analysis – Tanit Parasites.)
• Medicine 2 / Autopsy: Cause of death is acute hemorrhaging in the brain, similar to an aneurysm.

Autopsy: Multiple sites in the right side of the brain are damaged. Left side of the brain appears entirely healthy.

• Autopsy (Medicine 1): The Broca area of the brain, in the left hemisphere, shows signs of very slight atrophy.
• Autopsy – Alicia’s Body / Hand of Tanit: Tissue in the left hand has been replaced with some sort of purplish, crystalline structure. (This counts as a 1-point dedicated pool when investigating the tophet serum, allowing the researcher to automatically see how the hexagonal cells are forming the biocrystalline structures.)

Alicia’s Biocrystal: The structure has decayed throughout her hand; some sort of apoptosis or necrotic effect damaging the tissue. It extends up the Ulnar canal – the semi-rigid longitudinal canal in the wrist which allows passage of the ulnar artery and ulnar nerve into the hand.

Hands of Tanit: The biocrystalline structures are connected to the eye in the palm of the hand. Their exact function is unclear.

AROUND THE HOUSE

These items can be found throughout the house. The GM should liberally strew them wherever it seems appropriate.

Minnesota 13 Whiskey Bottles: They were being drunk everywhere.

• Prop: Minnesota 13 Whiskey
• See Node 2: Research – Minnesota 13
  

13 Black Cat Flyers: Several people have them in their pockets, etc. There may also be a few strewn around on tables and the like where people abandoned them. (See Node 1: The Black Cats.)

• GM Note: Gladys Roy was handing them out.

ARRIVAL @ HILL HOUSE

There’s a gaggle of reporters at the front gate (which is being watched by two patrolmen; they’ve been told to expect the PCs). Police officers mill about on the front lawn. Fred Watson meets them as they come across the lawn.

Detective Fred Watson:

• Police arrived. He got called in. Saw the missing left hands and concluded this was the type of case he should call the PCs in for.
• Cleared the cops out of the mansion so that the PCs would have a clean slate (and to put some sort of stop to any weird rumors that are beginning to spread).

GM Note: The structural key here is that the PCs should be allowed to do their own investigation. If they just listen to Watson tell them what he’s found or have him lead them around the house, that’s really boring game play.

Three Key Points from Fred:

• There are bodies; he doesn’t know how many.
• Rachel Hill, the owner of the house, is in her room on the second floor.
• He’s going to go talk to the reporters now; the PCs should go look at the house.

GM Note: Fred won’t think to mention Lucretia (she’s just a Negro servant after all); but if someone explicitly asks if there are any other witnesses he’ll mention her. She’s in her room in the Servant’s Quarters on the third floor.

Cops: If the PCs question the cops who were cleared out by Fred, they can tell them:

• The known locations of dead bodies (see above; although they don’t single out Alicia Corey).
• That Rachel Hill is in her room on the second floor.
• That Lucretia Gray, the household servant, is in her room on the third floor.

Carriage Porch: There is a corpse with a drop-cloth over it on the front stairs.

Next: The Hill House Investigation

Go to Part 1

REFERENCE – TWIN CITIES 1925

NOTABLE NEWSPAPERS:

• Minneapolis Tribune (since 1867)
• Minneapolis Daily Star (since 1920)
• Minnesota Pioneer (since 1849, first daily newspaper in Minnesota, morning paper)
• Saint Paul Dispatch (since 1868, evening paper)

TRANSPORTATION: Twin Cities Rapid Transit operates 524 miles of electric trolley lines, laced between Minneapolis, St. Paul, and into the suburbs as far as Anoka and Lake Minnetonka. (Map above.)

UNIONS: Minneapolis’ reactionary, anti-labor employers organized into the Citizen’s Alliance. They blacklisted labor organizers, hired spies to keep tabs on “radicals”, crushed strikes, maintained scab registries, etc.

The Minneapolis CLA (Communist League of America) is led by Carl Skoglund, a Swedish socialist who immigrated to America in 1911, and Vincent Ray Dunne. These Trotskyists undermined the business-friendly leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). The first strikes would not actually happen until 1934, but the union-business espionage ran rampant through the ‘20s.

Source: Red Teamsters

FARMER-LABOR PARTY: Founded in 1918, by 1925 the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party – operating on a platform of farmer and labor union protection – was beginning to dominate statewide elections.

• J.E. Meyers is the mayor of Minneapolis. He ran as a member of the Loyalty Party, focusing on a patriotic platform of supporting America’s World War I veterans.
• Laurence C. Hodgson, a former newspaper reporter and poet, is the mayor of St. Paul.

GENERAL RESEARCH – HAMSA

Occult 1 / Library Use: The Hamsa symbol, also referred to as the Hand of Fatima and the Hand of Miriam, is a protective sigil or charm taking the figure of a hand with an eye in the center of its palm. It is supposed to guard against the “evil eye” and is widely recognized throughout the Middle East and North Africa, with some scholars believing it to have originated in Carthage.

GENERAL RESEARCH – TANIT PARASITES

Lab Analysis (Chemistry/Medicine): The purplish color in the whiskey / denatured ethanol is due to a contaminant. This appears to be bacteriological in nature.

• If analyzing raw ethanol, this will be remarkable because alcohol is generally antibacterial – it destroys cell membranes, penetrates the bacteria’s cytoplasm, denatures its proteins, coagulates the enzymes, binds water (dehydrating the cell), and dissolves fats, leading to massive cell dysfunction and death.
• Closer inspection of the bacteria reveals it to be disturbingly unusual: The cell envelope is shaped like a symmetric hexagon. Its internal structures are simplistic, similar to those of a prokaryote (the first form of life on Earth) and lacking anything suggestive of an internal nucleus. It’s possible that this is some atavistic remnant of an alternative evolutionary path.
• Chemistry 1 / Medicine 1: The hexagonal cells interact strongly with each other, forming honeycomb-like lattices and, due to their symmetrical nature, capable of forming tightly-packed, perfectly tiled structures similar to hexagonal crystals. Within these larger hexagonal bio-crystals, the individual cells appear to take on specialized functions – although its impossible to determine exactly what those functions are, it would seem they serve a function similar to organelles. Thus, in relation to the prokaryote-like individual cells, the bio-crystals are analog to more complex eukaryotic cells – although organized in a way seemingly completely alien to terrestial biology.
• Chemistry 2 / Medicine 2: The interactions between the cells within each bio-crystal seem to possess a neuronal character – perhaps synapse-like micro-structures could explain the coordination between the various “organelle cells” of the crystal, in a fashion similar to a nervous system or brain tissue.
• GM Note: If investigated in a later time period, researchers might detect electrical signals “disturbingly reminiscent of human brain activity”, but neither the equipment nor knowledge of the human mind necessary for this conjecture exists in the 1920’s.
• Organic Tissue: If exposed to organic tissue (whether human or not), the tanit parasites will swarm – forming a kind of purple halo around the tissue. (Investigation of this specific phenomenon with Chemistry or Medicine would suggest that this is stimulating biocrystal growth, as described above – and functionally reducing those point spends by 1 point each.)

Tophet Serum: If dosed with tophet serum, a character must make a 2 point Stability test each day. If they succeed on three tests in a row, the effects dissipate and no further tests are required. (During this time, they will begin to manifest hallucinations, motor apraxia, and alien hand syndrome.)

• If the character is Shaken by tophet serum, they begin to manifest symptoms of dissociate personality. (The bicameral division of their mind is breaking down, their perception of self is evaporating, and the Tanit consciouness is striving to take sole control of their body). This takes the form of a Driver that can impel actions (i.e., Tanit’s consciousness is taking control). As with any other Driver, obeying the driver restores Stability per the normal rules, but also prompts a 7 point Stability test (due to Possession).
• If the character is Blasted by tophet serum, in addition to permanent mental illness they also develop an Eye of Tanit on their left hand.
• A character who is rendered Incurably Insane by tophet serum has become a fully-realized host of Tanit.
• Non-Human Hosts: Unknown effects.
• GM Note: Those who observe the progression of tophet serum may realize that virtually everyone who drinks it will, in fact, be lost to the Tanit consciousness. Realizing that hundreds of serum-tainted whiskey bottles have been sold (and presumably drunk), they may make the intuitive leap that Barca has successfully created hundreds of fully-realized Tanit hosts. (Cthulhu Mythos could also provide a similar revelation.) Where are they? Some might be lost to insane asylums, but most are just quietly continuing the façade of their mortal lives – an invisible army of sleeper agents who will continue to pursue the eventual re-awakening of Tanit throughout the 20^th century.

Go to Part 3: Arrival at Hill House

I’ll be serializing this scenario for Trail of Cthulhu, set in the Twin Cities (Minnesota, USA) in the 1925 over the next few weeks. Originally run in an abridged format at Gen Con 2017, it will be presented here in its entirety for the first time. If you’re a member of my local gaming groups, you may want to steer clear of this one, even if you’ve played this scenario before: The background elements (discussed in depth in this first post) aren’t fully revealed in this scenario and may feature in future scenarios I design.

STARTING DATE
Friday, November 13^th, 1925

DAWN OF MAN

Tanit and Ra are both incomprehensible alien intellects which came to Earth (or perhaps arose on Earth) in a prehistoric era. Some legends speak of them as brother and sister, suggesting the possibility that they are both exemplars of a single species (or perhaps a single entity turned against itself). But it’s more likely that they are utterly unlike in nature except for their shared point of commonality in humanity.

Before the origin of the conscious mind, humans were simply very smart apes. In anatomically modern humans, tool use and even agriculture were more advanced than among other animals, but they did not possess true intellect.

THE HERDS: This made them ideal hosts for Tanit and Ra, both of whom infested the minds of man like viruses and turned them into extrusions of their will. The resulting herds created the first civilizations, although they still did not exist as individuals – they were merely tools wielded by Tanit or Ra; a physical host for a vast hive consciousness.

THE FIRST HUMANS: The First Humans came to exist when Tanit attempted to infect the herd of Ra (and vice versa). Human consciousness was born from the friction between them. The bicameral mind is, in fact, a manifestation of this conflict between Tanit and Ra – and in its asymmetry, human consciousness is given form in the discontinuity between the mind’s two halves.

THE REBELLION: The First Humans rebelled against the herds. In Egypt, there is some evidence that the ensuing rebellion may have even fractured the Ra consciousness (into Amun-Ra and Aten-Ra). Tanit endured in her last refuge of Carthage until the Punic Wars razed the city.

FUNDAMENTAL METAPHYSIC: To be clear, it is not the case that there is a human identity which is plagued by Tanit and Ra. Rather, all human identity is nothing more than a byproduct of the conflict between vast alien intelligences. The lateralization of brain function in each individual is merely the wavering frontlines of an ancient war. Your entire sense of self and all of your conscious thought is nothing more than a metaphysical fever boiling out of the trench warfare being fought in the sulcus of the cerebral cortex.

Note: Ra is primarily active in the left hemisphere of the brain. Tanit in the right.

TANIT

In a fully realized host (i.e., one in which the taint of Ra is not present), the parasite which is Tanit manifests as an eye in the palm of the left hand.

THE FASCICULUS: Tanit forms a cluster of nerve tissue within the hand, suborning the Ulnar nerve and altering the structure of Guyon’s canal. This cluster is the actual seat of the Tanit consciousness, with this “mind” or “eye” of Tanit remotely controlling the primary brain of the host. It is capable of operating the hand as an independent entity in the case of death (a “hand of Tanit”); and in some cases may even lend a semblance of motion to an otherwise brain dead host (as long as the brain stem is intact), creating a shambling, zombie-like thing.

INFECTION: Tanit is a parasite — microscopic and slightly purplish in color. When a host is infected by Tanit, the parasites cluster in the left hand, where they join together (in accordance to a biology utterly foreign to terrestial life) to form more complex structures.

Child Sacrifice: Tanit uses rituals of child sacrifice to create tophet serums of viral payload capable of overriding (or destroying) Ra’s presence in the host. This effectively kills the human “personality”, and creates a fully realized Tanit host.

FACE OF BAAL: Tanit is also referred to as the Face of Baal (a word meaning “Lord” or “master” in primal Semitic tongues). This suggests that perhaps the Tanit hive consciousness is nothing more than a representative or tool of some greater and even more inexplicable entity.

RA

Ra transmits itself to new hosts as a primarily memetic virus — it is written that Ra created man by “speaking their secret names” (proper verbal coding can actually alter the Broca area of the brain, effectively infecting the host; fortunately, the memetic payload must be customized to each victim). Direct transmission via liquid, however, is also possible — in another Egyptian tale, Ra weeps and from his tears man is given birth. In the Book of the Dead, Ra cuts himself and his blood transforms into the personifications of Hu and Sia.

HU/SIA: When fully realized, Ra’s hosts manifest in two forms — the Hu (authority) become central coordinators while the bulk of the host is made up of Sia (mind). (Hu is the deification of the first word, the word of creation, and was “companion to the pharaohs”.)

Hu-manifestations are at least somewhat resistant to the Tanit parasite. Those with a Hu-strain of Ra may experience this as an enlightened/mystical state. But the more a Hu-infected host opens itself to Ra, the more its own personality is destroyed.

Note: There could be fourteen different manifestations of Ra (in the “train of Ra”). In some translations of the Book of the Dead, Chapter XVII begins: “I am Tem in rising. I am the only One. I came into being in Nu. I am Ra who rose in the beginning… The pillars of Shu were not as yet created. It is Ra, the creator of the names of his limbs, which came into being in the form of the gods, who are in the train of Ra” (i.e., the gods who personify his phases) “– fourteen Spirits, seven dark and seven light…”

APEP SERPENTS: Hu-infected hosts can be particularly long-lived, with their bodies undergoing severe transformation which eventually leaves them in a form similar to a huge, misshapen, white wyrm.

Apeptosis: Apep serpents can sometimes undergo a bizarre fission, rapidly undergoing a clonal fragmentation in which their mass collapses in a multitude of small serpents — almost maggot-like in character, but incredibly fast. These small serpents can enter potential hosts through eyes, ears, or other orifices and rapidly infect them with Ra.

Replication Errors: Apeps are dangerous to Ra, however, because they can diverge from the parent-state and become independent entities. In a fully-realized Ra society, therefore, Apeps are often killed before this happens. In the modern world, Apeps are particularly dangerous because there is no guarantee that their apeptotic fission will maintain a state of equilibrium with Tanit (which could result in anyone being infected by them having their humanity destroyed).

EYE OF RA: Eyes of Ra were extensions of Ra’s will. They included Hathor, Sekhmet, Bast, Wadjet, and Mut.

SISTERHOOD OF FATIMA

A coven of witches who have passed the secrets of Tanit and Ra down through the ages. They are particularly focused on preventing outbreaks of the Tanit parasite.

The Virgin Mary, Miriam (sister to Moses), and Fatima (daughter of Muhammad) were all members.

The inner mystery of the Sisters of Fatima is that they are all Hu-manifestations of Ra. Their mystic rites are the result of opening themselves to Ra, and their interest in crushing Tanit is not entirely wholesome for mankind.

THE HANDS

HAMSA: Also referred to as the Hand of Fatima and the Hand of Miriam, the Hamsa is a protective sigil or charm taking the figure of a hand with an eye in the center of its palm. It is supposed to guard against the “evil eye” and is widely recognized throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

In mundane scholarship it is theorized to have originated in Carthage and to spring from Tanit worship. The reality is the inverse: True Hamsas are created by the Sisterhood of Fatima to both “warn and ward” against Tanit and her cultists.

MANO PANTEA: Also known as the Hand-of-the-All-Goddess. Known to Egyptians as the Two Fingers, with the fingers representing Isis and Osiris; the thumb, their child Horus. Used to invoke a protective spirit of parents over their child, it was later adopted (through Byzantine) by Catholicism as a sign of benediction, derived from a Roman symbol meaning “to speak” and eventually gaining a retconned meaning of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Mano Pantea was used by Tanit cultists to identify themselves to each other. The meaning inverted when agents of Ra began using the symbol to expose Tanit worshipers (by initiating false calls and returns; you give the sign and if the other person responds you know you’ve found a Tanit cultist), eventually eking into common Egyptian culture as a general ward against children Tanit infections.

Tanit cultists still use it as a ritualized greeting for each other. (The fact that a number of organized religions adopted it suggests Tanit cultists infiltrated them at very high levels.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part 1: Revelation List
Part 2: Background & General Research
Part 3: Arrival at Hill House
Part 4: The Hill House Investigation

Node 1: The Black Cats
Node 2: Minnesota 13
Node 3: Alicia Corey’s Boarding House
Node 4: Harriet Tubman’s Asylum for Colored Orphans
Node 5: Fatima’s Shrine
Node 6: Davis Farm
Node 7: Harris Chemical Plant
Node 8: Minneapolis Federal Reserve
Proactive Nodes

Pregenerated Characters

DOWNLOAD
Patron PDF + Prop Pack

Trail of Cthulhu contains some rudimentary guidelines for the use of explosives. They can be found on my system cheat cheet, but I’ll briefly summarize them here for easy reference.

SETTING EXPLOSIVE DEVICES: Requires an Explosives test. A Sense Trouble test (difficulty 4 or the result of the Explosives test) can be made to dive out of the way our pull comrade to Close range.

THROWN EXPLOSIVE: Make an Athletics test (difficulty 2 for point blank range, 3 for close range, or 5 for near). If aiming for for a very specific spot the difficultyies are 3 for point-blank, 4 for close, or 7 for near. If the explosive is not balanced for throwing, add +1 difficulty.

OTHER EXPLOSIVES: Artillery/mortars use a Mechanical Repair test. Rifle-Grenade uses a Firearms test.

TRANSPORTING EXPLOSIVES

These basic guidelines are quite useful. However, at the, let’s say, “prompting” of my players, I’ve found the not-so-occasional need to figure out what might be involved in the transportation and use of truly prodigious amounts of explosives. In the case of globetrotting campaigns like Eternal Lies or Masks of Nyarlathotep, this has often included hauling explosives on lengthy wilderness expeditions. (You’ll probably have similar experiences with the scenarios in Pelgrane’s Mythos Expeditions, although I don’t own that book personally yet.)

DEDICATED PORTER: An additional porter is required per 1 large gun or 1-3 charges of dynamite.

CARRIED BY INVESTIGATOR: If explosives are carried by an Investigator, they will suffer damage per day and an increased difficulty to physical tasks (as shown on the table below). A maximum of 6 charges can be carried by a single Investigator.

URBAN AREAS: Transporting large amounts of explosives through metropolitan regions usually requires a Stealth test (or similar precautions). The difficulty of this test is increased based on the number of charges (as indicated on the table below).