Darius West

One thing I like about 7th Ed a LOT is the chapter on chases. If there is one game which needs good chase rules it's this one. How do you handle a bear? Pick up a couple of branches and flap them wildly and make the loudest most absurd noise you can. The bear will probably fail its SAN check and flee. Failing that, discharging a gun is normally enough to scare a bear away. Bears aren't stupid. Humans are better distance runners and more manoeuvrable between trees, plus bears are on a calorie budget that doesn't allow for long chases. If food is close and available, they will attack. If dinner outdistances them, they will look for an easier meal. Food too is a good distraction. https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/scarebears.htm

True dat. High production values for 7th Ed noted.

I am normally a handouts and imagination Keeper, but one time I ran a grid map game adapted from Space Hulk where the players were hunting ghouls under Hangman's Hill in Arkham. With added rules to accommodate tunnel squeezes, climbs, crawling through fetid goo that got turned up like other counters, and spot hidden rolls in the dark totally dependent on light sources it became really tense. Add to that a chess clock and a 7 minute ceiling before the ghouls move again, and it was wonderfully tense and the players loved it though they were all but pissing themselves with terror and adrenaline. Will you goop up your gun barrel? Can you re-light the improvised flamer in time? Did that thing at the end of the passage move or is that my imagination? Will Genivieve move her fat behind in time to allow me to get a clear line of sight. Oh no! You're too close, don't fire that thing or we'll all be deaf... BANG ! Mawp... mawp...

In my game one of the characters started as a jazz musician raised in a New Orleans brothel. Since moving to Arkham he has become a pimp, a bootlegger, and ultimately used his mythos encounters to provide himself with a commercial edge over his rivals. As his little criminal empire has grown I have found ample opportunities to have him trip over Arkham's nasty little secrets. if you are looking for mythos hooks, try these... 1) Unsavoury hideouts. Gangsters are often looking for abandoned properties to set up in. Whether it is as a drop point for booze, or a hidden fuel stop for a run from Canada, a spot for a new speak, or a run-down coastal mansion for rum running, there is always the opportunity for something slithery. Don't overdo it or it will become too predictable. 2) Cherchez la femme. A bad woman can be the ruination of a fella I tell ya, but the suckers keep lining up for the same old honey pot. You never know what sort of trouble a dame's gonna land you in brother. The real trouble always comes in the best packages and it always comes with a classy name, because you wouldn't go to all that trouble for buck-toothed Daisy Mae in her hillbilly frump sack dress now would you? 3) Money is useful, so why wouldn't a cult get in on the action? They probably don;t advertise, but when you get right down to it, isn't the Mafia a secret society? So what if they weren't the only one involved? 4) You can't fight City Hall. A deeper conspiracy. Someone actually knows what is going on, and the whole damn institution is rotten to the core I tell ya. Ask them journalists, they'll tell ya if they ain't been snuffed yet. Maybe the mayor's behind it all, maybe he ain't, but I guarantee that bastard's getting kickback payola from all sides. 5) Mythos vs Mythos. Just because you worship some disgusting horror from another dimension doesn't mean that we worship the same horror, or that we're gonna get along. It could be that a minor player or a small league outfit can use their smarts to leverage their position and set the bigger players against each other, then step in and clean up the whole pot when they're weakened. The thing about cultists, they're crazy, too busy raving about the stars in the sky to see what is going on under their noses. 6) Sewers. Remember how we rubbed out Jimmy that little rat and dumped him in the sewer? Well his body ain't there no more, and that has the boss to thinking that maybe he weren't rubbed out and we got ourselves a traitor who let Jimmy walk. Now if you get my meaning, that is your problem, capiche? 7) There are lots of ways to make a buck. There are lots of rackets, protection, illegal gambling, unlicensed fights, loan sharking, numbers games, narcotics, prostitution, infiltrating labour organisations, corrupt construction contracts, fencing stolen goods, you name it, go read a law book. Suppose your loan shark lends money to the wrong guy, or one of your drug addicts is seeking out something called "The Fix What Don't Exist" ? Or you lean on the wrong fella? Anything can happen. 8) Law enforcement. Even when they're on the take they are a problem. Do some research on what the local police can bring to bear on a problem. Also look into outfits who will be anti-bootlegger like the Women's Temperance Movement and the KKK. Private Detectives like the Pinkertons and investigative journalists can also be a knotty problem. There is a rich source of material on Prohibition era crime. Whether it is contemporary movies, or more modern offerings. I totally recommend Ken Burns' Prohibition and Jazz docos. I also recommend Boardwalk Empire, Miller's Crossing, and Lawless.

I have been running a very alternative version of CoC for 3 years now, based in Arkham with Miskatonic students and starting in 1920. We are now just getting to 1922. I am currently running 3 teams of players, Team Goo, Team Dim Sim, and Team Jackass and have 15 players who regularly criss-cross each other's paths. 1) One of the main ways I have kept the game running is by including non-mythos related stories to punctuate the pace. The 1920s provides a rich setting in which characters can get involved in all sorts of shenanigans. The obvious one is bootlegging to earn some extra money, but there are also plenty of back story opportunities to be built on. As I had my game set around Miskatonic University this provided ample opportunity for introducing NPCs. I find building a rich background of persistent and recurring npcs who have ongoing plots and story lines is great. For example I had A list and B list and C list mythos celebs. A listers were characters from Lovecraft such as Randolph Carter, B listers are characters from works by the likes of Derleth and Smith, and C listers are characters from games like Arkham Horror. One C lister was Ruby Standish, who is a perennial bad girl economics student and queen of the Bohemian set, who uses her stealth to keep her friends out of trouble and is clued in about the mythos to some degree. The game started with her casing the Fraternal Order of the Silver Twilight (which I places on the outskirts of French Hill) because there was a valuable book there she had a buyer for. I also had her written up as the daughter of a well-to-do NY doctor, and very materialistic. Imagine my surprise when a newly minted character Norman Blitherington Smythe is a young great war veteran of the ambulance service with wealth and an aristocratic title in Devon, who is attending Miskatonic on a rowing scholarship, and who went and got a job as a waiter at the Silver Twilight (who were impressed by his value as a potential recruit). Well, Ruby decided that he was going to be her new boyfriend, and that opened the party to her contacts in the Bohemian set quite serendipitously. 2) Developing the setting means allowing the characters to develop their relationships with NPCs. Some NPCs are broadly capable and can even be an asset when confronting the mythos. Others have useful skills or might allow characters to, say, rent their grocery truck for example, if they think the characters are trustworthy. One of the best loved NPCs was a big slobbery St Bernard dog called Lumens that Team Jackass bought. Now Lumens was very big and strong, and true of heart, but not overly bright, and when he died it was a bit of a party tragedy and cost them each 1d3 SAN because they had all become attached to that stupid dog. If that is true of a dog, how much truer for the loss of an npc girlfriend, family member etc ? Developed NPCs are key for a long term game. For the most part I make ordinary people pretty good-hearted; after all, humanity should be worth the effort to save. 3) Jobs. Some characters were independently wealthy, but some are poor but on campus due to scholarships and needed part time work. As Arkham is a creepy place, some jobs were on the level, while others were dubious. I had fun with one job, that involved the character being given a key to a post office box. They would find a letter in it addressed to them and inside that they would find instructions to follow. If they did as the letter told them they would receive their pay, if not, they wouldn't. In fact they were doing a cult's dirty work and it eventually dawned on them. I had handouts prepared with essentially lists of scenario ideas. Some jobs were pretty crappy, and the high paying ones all came with a nasty catch. 4) House Hunting. Say your characters don't want to live on campus in the dorms anymore, partially because they are scared of who-knows-what and partially because they need privacy to delve into who-knows-what. Can you imagine a worse job than being a Real Estate Agent in Arkham ? Well, needless to say, I had a pre-prepared handout with more enticing properties that were actually scenarios waiting to happen. Now if characters play their cards right, the mythos may never find out where they live and follow them home "The Grudge" style. Suffice to say that Team Jackass developed a great problem maintaining their tenancy anywhere for long, and the other parties used to lay bets on how long they would last in their "new place", much to their chagrined amusement. 5) Mythos Adversaries. My game has always been an open ended sandbox. I played with multiple classic mythos outfits operating simultaneously, knowing the objectives of each, and the assets they could bring to bear on a problem. If left to their own devices the baddies would succeed in their mission and start their next phase. This was all run to a timeline in a campaign diary. It wasn't like Skyrim where you could leave a story line mid-way and do something else without appalling consequences. If you poke the bear it will keep coming after you. Team Jackass at one stage had bought up Crowninshield Manor and had grandiose plans for it, but had left plenty of mythos enemies still operating, such that the manor was raided by 4 different groups in 3 days in May 1921. Suffice to say it was fascinating to watch how that all played out, and, largely because they ran like whipped dogs, the characters survived. I also made a point of developing the mythos outfits into something more original and threatening... for example the Mi-go are a lot more like Carpenter's "The Thing", while the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign had advanced technology that makes them terrifying when combined with their magic. 6) Non Mythos Adversaries. Whether it is the plans that the members of the Miskatonic Club have for redeveloping the characters' neighbourhood, or the local chapter of the KKK harassing their hobo buddies, or the Glee Club feuding with them over use of the stage, there were ample opportunities for getting on people's bad sides. Sometimes it was possible for compromise, sometimes not. Once players got some spells, it was surprising to see how prepared they were to use them on people who annoyed them surreptitiously. This leads on to point 7. 7) Players are their own worst enemies. Give them some rope and they will hang themselves. They would periodically be rewarded with mythos tomes and learn the spells. One time a team managed to obtain a Hyperborean flying ship. Another team had a shoggoth they could control like the Elder Things did. Given a little bit of power, it was surprising how ready the players were to use that power in unscrupulous ways, and how often they screwed themselves up inadvertently by doing so. One thing I did to help this process along was a very useful little house rule... if you learn a spell, you don't know what it actually does until you cast it. The books might provide some information, but can you really trust them? They are, after all, mainly written by crazy cultist types. Also, magical items need to be tested, unless you have some other means of analysing their properties. That once ended up with a character hypnotised by a piglet in a bathtub before another player whalloped it with a fire axe. It's funny how things play out sometimes... 8) Dreamlands. While access to the Dreamlands is restricted to those who figure out how to gain entry, once in, it is a great place to set adventures that allow players to have big mythos adventures without leaving Arkham, or interrupting their routine lives. 9) Deities. I have been sparing with these. I had great fun playing an interaction with Nyarlathotep's Black Man incarnation at one stage. It involved dog headed zombies (human bodies) smoking and playing cards in the parlour while Nyarlathotep basically body swapped from one character to another, while the misplaced person was put into the body of a zombie. Very SAN ouch. I played Nyarlathotep in a spaced out deadpan, directing my gaze deliberately right through the players with a thousand yard stare that was fixed on the starry space beyond their reckoning, while he recounted elements of what they had done to thwart him, and how if they joined him all would be forgiven. He even cracked jokes, but when delivered in an unfocused deadpan, the effect was apparently utterly chilling. Finally he left them some brandy snaps in the letterbox just to mess with their heads... and it worked... The mere mention of brandy snaps drove the players, let alone the characters, into conniptions after that episode, I think they actually lost some SAN for real over the brandy snaps. The players said it literally made their skin crawl it was that scary. Score 1 for my acting ability I reckon, "oh what an artiste is lost in me that I tread not the hallowed boards tra-la!" etc. I don't think anything I have said contradicts any other posts here. Yeah, that ought to do it for now. Hope this was helpful.

Wow. Graham Walmsley's "Stealing C'thulhu" looks like the bomb! Gotta get me a copy! As for "The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse" I know it very well indeed. It was the first CoC scenario I ever played back in the 80s in a tournament, and I happened to win it. As a result I have a certain fondness for the scenario and have keepered/kept/GMed it a few times over the years for friends. It is also really well written, and yes, the need to flee is palpable, I agree. I can't say I am familiar with "A Time to Harvest" sadly. I will seek it out on your suggestion.

Rainfall has no effect on fertility? None? What about the fact that Rhinos need to drink then? Personally I think magic potentially provides a huge edge, but there are basic laws of life that are pretty unalterable. On the other hand I would definitely reduce the effectiveness of Orlanth's rain spells by half in the wastes as it is not his land. As for Waha not allowing things... Tell that to Unicorn Tribe, the Zebra Tribe, and the Pol Joni. Does Waha allow Sable Riders to go join the Antelope Lancers and follow the Lunar Way? Or allow Storm Bulls to team up with Orlanthi via Uroxi middlemen? I am sure Waha isn't overjoyed at how the Ostrich Tribes and the Unicorn Tribes have ties to the Yelm Pantheon either, or how there are Agimori and Basmoli wandering Prax. Also, where do the Oasis people fit in things? In short, I am sure that deities don't smite their worshippers for cutting deals with people who give them a survival edge. If a few families devote themselves to another deity or spirit that benefits the tribe, nobody will care provided their first loyalty ultimately remains to the tribe, and the tribe's first loyalty remains to Waha's Pantheon. It is a bit like having a shaman of thunderbird in the tribe. I also remember a reference to Wind Khans of Orlanth at Pairing Stone.

The Rhino Tribe are definitely in major trouble. On the up-side Rhinos can eat a lot of different plants for nutrition. I could see a situation where the Rhinos set up in the Valley of Avalanches, where mountain run-off would create better grazing. I can also see the Rhino Tribe worshipping Orlanth for his ability to bring rainfall. Potentially we all know that Rhinos hit like a train, but they are a bit slower than other Prax beasts. I suspect the Rhino tribe already subsists on a diet of other herd beasts rather than their own tribal stock. Potentially there is another answer though. If the Rhinos were to move into the Pavis Rubble permanently they would have access to the Zola Fel, and could potentially thrash any other force in that enclosed space. No matter how fast they are, even impalas can be trapped inside the walls. And if their lances are long enough, they can even defeat Yelmalio Sarissas. Even trolls would look askanse at facing the Rhino Tribe. Of course this will gradually lead to a potentially more sedentary and settled Rhino Tribe, less Praxian of necessity and potentially another Pavic ally. I imagine them setting up in the Big Grazing or the Huntlands. As tribe numbers recover, potentially they can spread out into Prax and Vulture Country again.

For those who haven't heard with regards to Lovecraft scholarship, one of the most original things about Lovecraft's writing is his creation of the philosophy of Cosmicism. The central notions of Cosmicism include an indifferent universe with no guiding intelligence (as realised in the mindlessness of the deity Azathoth), and the utter irrelevance of humanity in the scheme of things within that universe. In fact even the deities of the C'thulhu Mythos are no more than fish in an endless cosmic ocean that dwarfs them and makes them merely a scale larger than humanity but not necessarily more meaningful within the scheme of things. This probably even includes the Elder Gods, who, even as they created this universe were no doubt merely the products of another equally vast and indifferent universe. Lovecraft evokes these ideas in his horror fiction through the following means: 1. Deep Time. The use of geological time in the billions of years in stories such as At The Mountains of Madness. Within the scope of geological time, even on Earth, our home, humanity's entire history is miniscule. The inferrence being that we are but one more species that will come and go like many others before and after. 2. Ignorance is bliss. The juxtaposition of the revelations of science and progress with the notion that ultimately our pursuit of knowledge is a trap that is unravelling our sanity and humanity, and may ultimately destroy us. Thus we choose between a disempowering ignorance that feels comfortable and a monstrous truth that threatens to consume any meaning in out lives even while such knowledge may yet save our species. 3. Powerlessness. The idea that the forces we are dealing with are utterly beyond human ability to affect, even as a whole society. That the whole planet Earth is just a microscopic dot to an endless universe. Also, that humanity's ultimate destruction is as inevitable as our own personal deaths, and that humans are not only powerless, but they aren't even particularly interesting in the grand scheme of things. There are probably other techniques he used as well, of course. Now the questions... (a) What do you as a Keeper do to evoke Cosmicism in CoC that you think works best? (b) If you are mainly a player, what did your Keeper do that made you best feel Cosmic Horror ? and (c) Which Chaosium adventure best evokes Cosmicism in your opinion. (d) White chocolate is neither white nor chocolate. Discuss...

Yes, exactly mvincent, when I mentioned Blackmarsh Security I meant Blackwood Detective Agency. Thanks for the correction.

Personally I have met people who had an extreme dedication to a specialist pursuit of excellence in a single field. Many of them had Aspbergers Syndrome to some degree, while others were academics. They say 10,000 hours of study will make anyone a world class expert in any field, but what if you double that? Certainly such specialists are very good at one thing, and often quite bad at other pursuits.

Hi auyl, The way I am working it is by saying that the Nephilim are the larval form of the Elder Gods, and yes, the Elder Gods banished the Outer Gods. The way I put it elsewhere is that the humans are mixed up in it the way flora and fauna were mixed up in the WW2 battle for Peleliu.

Hi Spoon, When you look at the history of the BOI, it may not be quite what you are looking for. They were involved in federal juristiction crimes such as trafficing women across state lines for prostitution (The Mann Act), and hunting what were deemed the USA's domestic political enemies such as anarchists and communists. The BOI answered directly to the Department of Justice and specifically the Attorney General of the USA. With the advent of prohibition in 1920 and the totally inadequate response of the Treasury to a crime that essentially fell within its specific jurisdiction, the BOI was given a measure of responsibility in major breaches of the Volstead Act. https://www.fbi.gov/history/brief-history While it could be argued that if the USA was infiltrated by extraterrestrial aliens, that such would fall within the purview of the BOI prior to 1932, it is also likely that the scale of the threat and the sensitivity of the information would see a separate organization formed by memorandum, or the duties would be passed to an organization like the ONI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Intelligence . Another possibility is that it would be passed to the Black Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber, given the propensity for mythos tomes to need decoding, and the high mental competence and occult familiarity of that organization. The Black Chamber members IRL used to decode occult documents for practice, but notably failed to crack the Voynich Manuscript. It is not impossible that the Black Chamber could be given a covert investigations role against the mythos in the period before the Raid on Innsmouth in 1927 and the subsequent formation of Delta Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Green (if you want to use that source material). If an organization had the role of hunting the mythos, then any scenario could feasibly be used. If it were the BOI, then it would be harder to justify, unless the cultists had been performing crimes across state and county boundaries and local law enforcement wanted help. Another possibility is to use a private investigations company like the Pinkertons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency). They might feasibly be called in on any sort of case. I have used Blackmarsh Security from the Call of Cthulhu card game on occasion.

Good work Mankcam, as to how much SAN you lose by living in Australia... well that sort of depends. If you live by the coast in a city, you probably won't lose too much. On the other hand, does anyone really know when they have hit 0 SAN? Especially if it is a cultural norm? People who have enjoyed Convicts and C'thulhu may also enjoy this little game: https://www.clockworkempires.com/ It is a colonization game with thorough-going mythos overtones.

Umm... was Pavis really only a half elf? Because closer inspection of the myth may reveal that he was a bit more of a hybrid than that, potentially with dwarf, troll, and other admixtures besides. Adari has always been something of a crossroad and mixing pot of the races, as well as being a squalid little town like Corflu. I am of the opinion that Pavis was actually enough of a hybrid to constitute being a Man Rune more than a man. Also, don't humans who have sex with elves often get some sort of horrid fungal infection?

I agree with trystero that there should be some sort of proceedure for creating skills that effectively flesh out a character as is done sometimes half jokingly in scenarios. Personally I have always loathed the process by which everything is transferred over to being a lore or an art/craft, which is far more guilty of point spreading than any other skill system. As for Mike M's sugestion that adding skills that aren't specifically represented in scenarios will mean that players have wasted points, to this I would say, that is more a symptom of bad Keeping if you can't step even narrowly outside the published materials. "Heaven forfend the Keeper allow the players to stray off the railroad tracks in a published scenario so far as to use something other than a regulation skill". I would agree that other communications skills probably can take the place of streetwise however. On the other hand I notably disagree with the idea that somehow Police Proceedure defaults to Law. The two skills are simply not equivalent. Police are involved in enforcing the law and they will by necessity have some idea of what the law is, but, that is far from the same as having a formal education in torts, jurisprudence, contracts, family law, criminal law, commercial law etc etc. On close insepction one might even argue that the Law skill needs revision because there are too many sub-categories, and it needs to be divided into different disciplines like Science is divided into physics, biology, chemistry etc. But of course in this is simply adding more skills to the mix and that is, of necessity, a bad thing, isn't it? Despite the fact that IRL people can spend their whole lives perfecting their understanding of particular branches of the law without ever really dabbling in any of the others outside their tertiary education. I find it far more problematic that CoC has so many different communication skills i.e. Fast Talk, Intimidate, Persuade, Charm, when arguably the whole point of RPGs is for players themselves to do the communicating, so why have any communication skills at all? What is the point of calling it a role playing game if despite the player's best efforts to communicate well, it all comes down to a dice roll anyhow? Or more importantly, even if you were okay with that philosophical contradiction, why have 4 skills when one would suffice, i.e. Persuade (except without the ludicrous restriction that it takes 4 hours to perform). I mean, really isn't persuasion that what every communicaton skill is aiming to do anyhow ? Aren't charm, intimidation and fast talk merely communication tactics, not skills in themselves? I hope people enjoy this post, and understand that the purpose of the polemic is to encourage discussion more than anything else.

Well this is pretty cool.

Oh FFS. What you need to do is introduce an endearing NPC and have them be apparently lost in the woods. Remind players that losing a friend will cost them more SAN for running away than going and investigating. Have the Sheriff come and personally ask if they want to be involved in the search party. Let the players make a Psych roll to notice that the Sheriff is observing their reactions unnervingly closely, like he suspects something. Now they are in the woods with support. Support gives them the illusion of security; build up the sense that perhaps the woods as a whole seem normal, even pretty. Then draw their attention to something that seems bad which is a red herring, like a savaged deer carcass. What your cowardly players need is an adult to hold their hand... Of course you do have to ask yourself how much you are railroading your players. Railroading is easy if you know how, but it also sort of sucks for your players if their characters are too SAN thrashed. Have they really earned the punishment through stupid decisions or has it just been cruel dice?

That is so cool styopa ! I assume the HPLHS will descend on you now.

So basically the character is severely brain damaged. They still eat and breathe and move but they are operating at an animal or infantile level. They have lost most of the power of speech, but may remember simple words and commands, but behaviors will have to be trained as with animals. They likely have no sense of self i.e. they have no reflexive association with the idea of themselves as a person, they cannot "be" they merely "do". They have no notion of deferred gratification i.e. they cannot plan ahead. They also have no theory of mind i.e. they don't identify with people and don't understand their relationship with other people because they don't recognise sentience in others or themselves. It goes without saying that they will not be toilet trained, and will have no notion of personal hygiene. They may also become aggressive if frightened. They will also scream quite a lot because they don't understand what they are doing. They make Ruprecht the Monkey Boy seem like the model of civility.

Good stuff Warchilde, and somewhat similar to where I went and am going with it. I had a good deal of fun with Atlantis and my players are still very excited about it. There are 3 player characters in the party: "The Cat": International man of mystery. Could even half of what they say about him be true? Aurelie Butcher-Bourgeois: A bohemian seeress from a rich family who is in some sort of open relationship with The Cat. Frank Torgeir: Circus strongman, now chauffer and bodyguard to The Cat. As background, The Cat has been doing business with the Rum Runners of the Biminis and Bahamas. Essentially he has a shipyard where he builds or reconditions sloops, fills them with re-plated stolen cars, and sells the whole lot at auction to the Rum Runners, making a tidy profit. Some of that money has gone into the purchase of South Cat Cay where The Cat has hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a Resort complex capable of standing up to any hurricane that he can use to further cement his domination of the Rum Running. It turned out that South Cat Cay is actually built on the remains of an old Atlantean Pharos, and that Mr. Wright is actually the present incarnation of the Nephilim "Imhotep". There they found a crystal ball that linked to another crystal ball and with magic they figured out that it was near Berry Island. They could also see a pyramid under water. After a preamble that involved chartering a boat and using the side effect of a gate spell to provide them with gills temporarily, the party wended their way to the pyramid after recovering the other crystal. They had by this stage managed to win Wright's trust after am incident with wraiths in the Pharos so he came too. Wright, being a Nephilim could understand Senzar. The pyramid subjected them to a "ritual cleansing" announced by a hologram that only Wright could understand, and they were all hit with a series of nasty rays before they were finally healed. They were then allowed entry through huge Iris doors. They found the Pyramid was devoted to Atlas and staffed by cyclops automata which Wright was able to ascertain were going through the motions of maintaining the facility on an emergency footing. After a bit of fancy footwork the party figured out that they could effectively apply for Atlantean citizenship and take up "jobs" in the Pyramid provided they could supply enough paper and ink to get the cyclops bureaucrats to provide forms. They also realised that the cyclopses were willing to pay in gold for cargoes of "essential goods". Literate Atlanteans had access to documents stored on "Crystal tablets", but sorcerers had to store their spells (by law) on Emerald Tablets. The party came within a hair's breadth of causing a "security breach" that would have killed them all by opening a gate withing the Pyramid, but thought better of it thanks to Aurelie being on the ball, and set it up outside. They found that the system for negotiating transit to the rooms was managed by way of statues that animated, and would quasi-teleport you withing the structure if you kissed them. Some parts of the pyramid were intact, other parts were too damaged to enter, but the party has so far managed to redeem $20,000 US in gold and they are pretty happy.

For what it is worth, I opted to solve my little Atlantis dilemma by incorporating Nephilim, as it has an interesting background that is rich in Atlantean lore that fits quite well with CoC after a bit of tweaking. In my Campaign, the Nephilim are basically a species of terrestrially generated Spirit parasites who are also the larval stage of the Elder Gods, and their presence on Earth is one of the things that drew the Mythos in to feed. Essentially the humans are an afterthought, a bit like being the wildlife on Peleliu prior to the US Marines landing to fight Japan.

I am a bit flummoxed by how to manage HQ missile combat. Could someone maybe talk me through a fight between a party of Yelmalio Phalangites (20 with pikes, 10 with bows) versus a similar number of Sable riders (10 with lances, 20 with bows), assuming everyone's primary skills and their augmenting skills being at about 1W, it being a fine day in Prax, and with the fight being conducted initially with the Sable riders coming up a dry "serpent" bed out of sight of the Yelmalios ?

I bought Convicts & C'thulhu but I can't see why any of this has to be mis-attributed to the Mythos. All the horror and disappearances are a perfectly normal part of the Australian way of life in the outback, thanks to Australia's unique fauna. We took my Norwegian in-laws out to our cabin at Harrietville and they all nearly lost their shit over a couple of spiders the complained were the size of coffee tables. I mean, spiders make bloody great coffee tables; they're a big fuzzy novelties if you ask me, and we trained them to bring the drinks closer, but the Norwegians didn't seem to want the beer, and that is very unlike Norwegians. Spiders though are not so bad; feed them right and they will eat off your hand (of course feed them wrong and they will eat off your hand up to the elbow). I think everyone is just over-reacting. Have a look at this lovely series of slides from Tourism Australia http://www.swifty.com/destinations/7681/17-nope-animal-pics-that-prove-australia-is-absolutely-terrifying/#slide/0 A trip to Australia is an unforgettable experience, and very affordable at 8-20 SAN loss net total. Here are some lovely places to visit: http://www.castleofspirits.com/blackmount.html http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=16290 https://portarthurparanormal.com/ http://www.mynrma.com.au/travel/holiday-ideas/nt/the-lost-city-in-limmen-np.htm https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/wolfe-creek-crater http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/the-chilling-record-of-lost-lives-at-devils-pool/2008/12/01/1227979901593.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521752/Children-incest-cult-living-deformed-mute-Australian-valley.html https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g552137-d9559909-Reviews-Asylum_Ghost_Tours-Beechworth_Victoria.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_shark_attacks_in_Australia http://listverse.com/2011/03/30/top-10-most-venomous-snakes/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/viral-video/11446648/Watch-Deadly-snake-and-killer-spider-duel-in-Australia.html Yeah, getting through all of that probably cost you about 2d4 SAN. Man up and stop whining.