ATtH: Modern Myths, Noho

[joggiwagga]

Finally started running Chapter 1 today (first attempt was last month and coincided with an unofficial and unplanned city shutdown due to a local pot festival).

I had 4 players, none of whom who had played a recent edition of Call of C'thulhu, and the only one with any experience with earlier editions hadn't played since 4th.  For simplicity we used pre-gen characters and it worked well.  Two men, two women, though one of the women is playing a male character.  So we have Thaddeus Kent, Ernest Trump, Genevieve Jones, and Dermot Malone.

Biggest issue on my part is there doesn't seem to be a standard "notice/perception" check beyond maybe "Spot Hidden."

We got through the first two days completely (game two will start at morning of Day 3).

I used one of the forum provided props for NPC visuals (the pictures with names that could be folded in half, picture on both sides) - which I lined up along the top of my GM screen with a notes about them written on the inside if I needed reminders.  This allowed players and me to see the visuals and worked pretty well.

Players have a lot of interest in Blaine, not b/c they think he's up to something, but because they think he's a bit of a dick.  First night they snuck off to search his room and see if they could short-sheet his bed (they were sad when I reminded them he was sleeping on a cot).  I decided the gun wasn't hidden in the room, fortunately b/c the player rolled an extreme success.  I decided the only thing of interest they found was an unsent love letter to Daphne that was written after she turned him down but never sent since news of her disappearance came first.

As for Trent.  I didn't need to even try to come up with reasons for him to be sketchy.  The players all looked at his visual and went "he looks sketchy, we don't trust him."  One player (Ernest) thinks he's a vampire (I don't know why, but it's honestly kind of hilarious).  Another player thinks that Trent looks like he's strung out and clearly is the person to buy cocaine from and therefore Thaddeus totally wants to be friends with Trent, and Trent has no idea how to react.  Of course, Thaddeus is also possibly trying to hook up with Rod, so there's that.

For player connections the Genevieve used to date John Jeffrey, which made for a good link and reason for connection.  Two players making hard POW successes got them in on the dream as well.  Details of the dream were written down in personal journals, and the only person it was shared with was the one PC who didn't have the dream, so it wasn't until early evening the next day that they actually got to the whole "we all had the same dream" moment.

Genevieve was also the one to see the zoog, and reacted by screaming and fainting.  The PCs came running, with various amounts of skepticism regarding the story, but Dermot did find the tracks and could tell that they were both rodent like and oddly bipedal.

Day 2 had them going directly to Jason at the diner to see if he knew anything about the Sarah's Shade legend, and then later to the Doctor's.  This led to Ernest being even more convinced that Trent is a vampire.  Then they hit up the library and made various finds (or not finds).  To shorten things up I just gave them snippets of interesting facts from the rest of their interviews for the day.

 

On my part I had a brief bit of confusion b/c some of the handouts don't seem intended for this session, but for a later chapter.  However, when a player rolls a crit success on a Luck Roll I let them find the Azathoth book.  And then realized that I don't have the stat block for any effect this book would have on someone.  So for the meantime Thaddeus, a student of linguistics, has a book that seems to be the rantings of a madman with some really interesting linguistic structure, and while OOC we know it has things going on, IC Thaddeus doesn't have the means to comprehend just yet exactly what he has.

 

Genevieve is the only PC with a sciences background, and also happened to be the only one to find anything (the arrowhead).

 

Once regrouped, the players finally shared with each other that they had a shared dream, with some sanity loss.

 

Around this point Dermot wanted to dig up the garden on a hunch.  However since it was still daylight and he refused to give any explanation, Blaine made him stop as to not damage the property they were staying at (consequences and awareness people...).  Then the players wanted to investigate the woods, due to the dream and the zoog.  They go into the woods, see some zoogs, and Dermot throws a rock (and misses).  At that point more zoogs come out into sight, the players realize there's a veritable swarm of zoogs staring malevolently at Dermot, and they all book it back out of the woods (we were running short on time and I didn't want to run that combat, so I decided a miss didn't count as a full provocation).

 

Dreams on night 2 had one player quietly freaking out, which was awesome.  Game will restart on morning of Day 3.

 

Everyone had fun.  One player is down something like 7 or more sanity.

I'm eagerly awaiting the bound books in stores so I can buy the full rules, which may help with some of my question as a Keeper (I have trouble learning a system from a PDF, so I didn't buy the PDF rules).  If anyone wants to help with those  points of clarification:

-is there an info block for Azathoth and the Others?

-is there a basic awareness/perception/notice roll (other than Spot Hidden), or is it situation dependent?

-do players ever spend luck?  the sheets have an "out of luck" line written on them, and the quick start rules do specify that you're at a starting point, but they don't specify spending it, only making luck roles.

[morganhua]

Spot Hidden replaces all the search/notice rolls and can Keepers use them for both passive and active searches such as just glancing around (passive) or tossing a place (active) for something.  There is a Listen skill that can be used for awareness.  So, Listen (audio) and Spot Hidden (visual) can be used for awareness depending on the situation.

Spending luck is an optional rule in CoC 7th.

I don't think posting copyrighted material in this forum is a good idea.  If an official from Chaosium posts that's fine, otherwise you'll have to find the stats for the book elsewhere. It is in the CoC 7th Keeper Rulebook.

[joggiwagga]

10 hours ago, morganhua said:

Spot Hidden replaces all the search/notice rolls and can Keepers use them for both passive and active searches such as just glancing around (passive) or tossing a place (active) for something.  There is a Listen skill that can be used for awareness.  So, Listen (audio) and Spot Hidden (visual) can be used for awareness depending on the situation.

Spending luck is an optional rule in CoC 7th.

I don't think posting copyrighted material in this forum is a good idea.  If an official from Chaosium posts that's fine, otherwise you'll have to find the stats for the book elsewhere. It is in the CoC 7th Keeper Rulebook.

Thanks for the clarifications.

Spot Hidden still seems super weird to me as the notice skill, but at least it has a high 'untrained' base value.  It just seems odd to me for use in general situational awareness.  But this isn't really the place for my rule-set quibbles, and I suppose I can start getting creative in Luck use.  Also good to know that I'm not going crazy by not seeing anything about spending luck in the quick start rules, since it makes sense an optional rule isn't there.

Wasn't trying to be inappropriate with my question about the book (and hopefully by next game they'll be in the store so I can buy the Rulebook), but I was asking knowing that people have posted direct excerpts from the book in this forum for clarification (in particular in regards to creating Student investigators.  My intent was for a small bit of information to be posted out of a larger whole so I could properly utilize this plot detail while I'm unable to have a physical book (as stated before, I have trouble with using PDF rulebooks, so I'm stuck waiting for a physical copy).

Would anyone be willing to provide me a general heads up then concerning the book?  It's included in the scenario as a red-herring (which a player is gleeful about).  What I mostly need to know at this point is: can they learn magic/mythos from this book, and is/when/what sanity toll is there?

[Herjan]

6 minutes ago, joggiwagga said:

Would anyone be willing to provide me a general heads up then concerning the book?  It's included in the scenario as a red-herring (which a player is gleeful about).  What I mostly need to know at this point is: can they learn magic/mythos from this book, and is/when/what sanity toll is there?

Being "just" a book of poetry no spells can be learned from Azathoth and Others, SAN loss is 1D4, Cthulhu Mythos is +3% for the full reading (should take about a week to read).

[joggiwagga]

57 minutes ago, Herjan said:

Being "just" a book of poetry no spells can be learned from Azathoth and Others, SAN loss is 1D4, Cthulhu Mythos is +3% for the full reading (should take about a week to read).

That is perfect.  Thank you!  Hehehe now to see if he manages to not lose the book!

[joggiwagga]

Well, I guess I didn't need to worry about the effects of Azathoth and Others, the possessing PC was taken by the Mi-Go.  Need to do my write up, but the end status is two PCs were taken (one b/c he walked in to trouble trying to help, and the other b/c she was passed out after self-medicating with laudnum and then drinking whisky on top of that), and the other two escaped by dint of taking the found missing girl directly to the Doctor and rolling REALLY (multiple extreme successes, including a 1) on Charm/Persuade checks with Sheriff.  They also wanted to stay in town over night to make sure the girl was going to come out of it OK even without the Sheriff not wanting them to wander off.

I'll have to modify the start of Episode 2 a little bit to reflect being sent home in a cloud of unproven suspicion rather than being sent home in full disgrace.

Full write up later, right now brain is consumed by LARP related stuff.

[joggiwagga]

Episode 1, Session 2

This was session two of A Time to Harvest, Month 1.  Same 4 players as session 1.  First session we got through the second night and were ready to start out with Day 3.  For mood and getting into the setting reasons, I started them out with the dreams of night two as a review.

 

Between last session and this one I realized I had made a mistake - that when someone fails a sanity roll I should be dictating their next action as their character experiences the side effects.  Previously, the players had self offered reactions to their sanity loss (such as screaming and fainting), so I put out there that this is something I may do as dramatically appropriate, but that dramatically appropriate actions taken on their own part may serve as well.  I'd say this worked out pretty well, and gave us a bit more room to play with regarding the effects (basically, it can be super fun to let the players creatively screw themselves over).

 

So Day 3 everyone has to deal with the rain.  Things went well in terms of running the game, though a little confusion on why they'd even bother with waiting around for someone to go to a farmhouse and not just drive to one themselves since they were at the vehicle.

 

In the first session, Thaddeus was definitely romantically pursuing Rod, so I decided to pull on player heartstrings a little, and had Rod ask if Thaddeus wanted to compare notes for what they'd been finding.  Add in some booze (thanks Blaine!) and some really boss Charm rolls, and the two of them had a charming evening of comparing notes and socializing until they fell asleep leaning against the wall.  I figured should Thaddeus survive the session this would make things all sorts of fun come Episode 2.

 

That night finally everyone in the group experienced the dreams (before now three of the four had).  Ernest, the last to experience them, blamed everyone else for telling them about their freaky dreams since now they're having weird ones of their own.  The three male PCs ended up barricading themselves in the room two of them had been sharing upstairs, the female PC was "not that kind of girl" and stayed in her own room (which she shared with the female NPC).

 

In the morning, the male PCs made their way to and from the outhouse as a pack, and on the way back found the skeleton.  The PC who had wanted to dig up the garden earlier on failed his sanity roll and reacted by digging frantically in the ground to recover the rest of the skeleton.  Genevieve didn't fail, but voluntarily screamed and fainted.  This seemed to be her thing.

 

However, that made for a great excuse for her NOT to go on the camping expedition.  Clearly she was of a worryingly weak constitution with how much she'd been fainting in the past few days.  She swapped places with the anthropology NPC, with him and Blaine was sold on the suitability of said swap due to his academic interest lining up with the promised finds of the expedition.  They PCs took Genevieve to the doctor's just to be safe (and b/c of her issues sleeping and weird dreams wrangled some laudanum as a sleeping aid), and also arranged for Blaine to be checked out, since they thought he might be suffering from a brain injury after wandering in the woods lost for so long (maybe he fell and didn't remember?).

 

They really wanted to find ALL THE THINGS in the town records.  Like how long families owned properties, etc.  But eventually I pried them out of that avenue of research and they chose to talk to Wendell, where they got the photograph, before going back to the farmhouse.  They also made a stop at the local store, and without Blaine immediately on hand to stop them, they made to purchase some hunting supplies, coming away with a rifle, a shotgun, a knife, and really no knowledge how to use any of them.

 

Back at the farmhouse they teamed up and went into the woods, where they'd already been itching to explore.  The fight with the moon-beast was hilarious.  Genevieve did the most damage by flailing at it.  Ernest failed his sanity roll and ran screaming at it with a knife... and largely failed to do much damage at all, and Dermott and Thaddeus missed every shot they took.  Also, I honestly rolled horribly for the moon beast so they all came off pretty well.

 

Oh yeah, and then the body of Jeffries in the rock... even if Genevieve hadn't failed her sanity roll she asked if she could voluntarily do so (since he was her ex).  Dermott kept her from running to him, and everyone held it together, though barely so, when he started speaking in their heads.   Until the body moved that is.  At which point Thaddeus involuntarily fired the gun he was holding into Jeffries' head making the one successful gun roll of the night.  I whispered to the player that he felt a feeling of gratitude from Jeffries before he faded away, which got a great emotional response from the player.

 

That made rescuing Emily super easy, and they decided that two of them would take her straight to the doctor, screw any risk of suspicion. It was the right thing to do afterall.  On the way to where Emily was, Genevieve dosed her self with laudanum for the stress which put her out of the running for driving into town.  So Ernest and Dermott go into town with a vehicle, leaving their weapons behind, and roll amazingly to keep themselves from actually being arrested on straight up suspicious timing, however they want to stay the night to make sure Emily is OK, and the Sheriff would rather they be where he can keep an eye on them regardless.

 

Back at the farmhouse there's dinner, and Genevieve eagerly partakes of all the whisky she can... on top of the laudanum.  Needless to say, she's out cold before long.  That leaves Thaddeus and the NPCs.  When things start going down his reaction is to bunker down and try to find a defensive position (with his gun) in the house.  So I have an NPC responding to the call for help get taken down in the doorway within Thaddeus' view.  His response was to run to the fallen NPC and try and help... and which point he failed his roll to not be knocked out by the Mi-Go.

 

In the morning the Professor shows up, and has everyone go home.  Says he'll be gathering everyone at the farmhouse and wrapping things up.  No one's officially in trouble at this point, but they are tainted by the brush of suspicion.  I'll build up more of a case against them in terms of "evidence of drunken and lascivious behavior" by the group at large for the talking to once they get to back at Arkham.  I'm also super looking forward to having the taken PCs show up as NPCs.

 

For replacements, one of them is playing a zoologist (big game hunter) with a connection to Dermott and the other an English major who was Genevieve's roomate.

[joggiwagga]

Episode 2 (run 7/31)

Slight change up with this group, one of the original four couldn't make it, and we had one new player.  Also had to start out with some modifications to the scenario as the two who returned managed to talk (roll) their way out of trouble and escaped only with a cloud of suspicion, as well as having two former PCs in with the NPCs.

 

Both new PCs had connections to Genevieve - Genevieve's former player now playing her roomate, and the new player playing her cousin (a quite pretty but not all that bright young man by the name of Kenneth... and yes, he was inspired by Kevin from Ghostbusters).

 

The PCs suffered some due to this fracturing of the party - they had connections and crossed paths, but they tended to act as individuals (or with Dermot and Ernest, who came back from Cobbs Corner together, as a pair).  Kenneth tried really hard to form that bridge, but it took some doing (Kenneth also served as an unexpected venue for getting plot hooks out there, but more on that later).  

 

The PCs also pretty much avoided all of the plot dangles... except for curiosity about Blaine's whereabouts... and in that case failed (or botched) nearly every roll to actually achieve things.  They rolled well to talk to his friends, et, but that was pretty much it.  They failed to convince the landlord to be let in to check-in on Blaine or his room.  They tried calling Blaine and failed to talk their way through the landlord (even with deceptions like "We're from the library, he has an overdue book"), they tried to break in (in the middle of the day) and botched their stealth roll to avoid notice when sneaking around the back (a botch was worthy of them being spotted lurking and slipping around back by a police patrol).

 

Since I had two ex-PCs, I had to slot them in.  With the multiple connections with Genevieve, I made her body the host of a lady friend for Jarvis, and had her out and about at all odd hours, being bitchy, dressing differently, but very little came of those invitations to interact or follow her due to her suspicious behavior.  Thaddeus was present... but his player wasn't in attendance so there was less hooks involving him.

 

It was decided that Kenneth, while pretty, wasn't so good at romance.  And this led to what can only be described as infatuated stalking of Clarissa Thurber.  Kenneth, it is worth mentioning again, is also not very bright, and therefore being physically abused in response to his overtures didn't quite dissuade him.  Instead, it led to both hilarity and opportunities to drop information - something the player had loads of fun instigating.  Kenneth sought romantic advice from his cousin "Genevieve" (no Jarvis' body-swapped girlfriend) and from Genevieve's roommate (who's name I have written down and not with me) when Kenneth came to their room seeking his cousin.  Genevieve's roommate was in college for English and wanted to be a writer, so she recommended writing poetry.  The group took it upon themselves to write (collectively) a really really bad love poem.  It was... kind of epic (I'll post it later)

 

His wooing (stalking) put him in the position of overhearing the meetings with Professer Learmouth.  Which was great because no one else was doing any sort of following.

 

With so little poking a plot I decide to push things forward, working well with Dermot deciding to go make another check up trip on Blaine (who he has ascertained is actually at home).  He shows up at the house (alone) and begins talking to the landlord when they hear the shot ring out.  They both rush upstairs, and the landlord runs to call the police.  Dermot only has a brief time to look around (and no rolls better than a regular success) so the only thing he noticed of interest was the stack of occult books which he grabbed.

 

Meanwhile (since the party was split) the others went to the library, and fed up with everything Ernest marches up to the NPCs and declares something along the lines of "I know you're not who you say you are!"  Which kind of put the kibosh on drawing out Jarvis' torment of them as well as needing to actually do the graveyard mod in order to actually drop information about their plans.

 

In retrospect, I should have drawn things out a night or two.  I also probably allowed a bit too easy acceptance of "these are not the same people."  But I didn't, in part b/c I felt the active confrontation would trigger Jarvis to act violently. 

 

Late that evening Ernest gets a call to meet, because they have something to say.  I bumped the time table to a little later, which allowed Jarvis to be in the know about the confrontation and time for Dermot to get back.  The PCs all roll out (Kenneth was the only one with a car), with Ernest and Dermot coming openly (since they were both in Cobb's Corner together, and used that as their justification), and the other two hiding near by (and coming in from a different angle).  They did manage to stay mostly ahead of the weird fog (some damage was taken), reacted in ways I didn't expect to the hallucinatory projection in front of them, and managed to get out .

 

After all that goes down, the PCs decide they do not want to go back to their dorms because clearly it wouldn't be safe, so they find an all night diner, get some food, and then sleep in shifts in the car (some of them taking time to read the books Ernest took from Blaine).

 

The next day they struggled with incomplete knowledge, but managed to find some information and to also convince authorities that someone's planning to heavily vandalize the library - specifically the rare books, which needed to be kept safe.  I let this facilitate some of the rare book collection being moved to an alternate location (I've worked in academic libraries, there's usually a secondary location storage if not vault option for long term storage).

 

Then, after a long tiring day on little sleep, they all decided to eat dinner in the dining halls.  I started to describe what they were feeling as reality began slipping and then let them give me some input on how their character would react, then turned that into part of the narrative and describing things as they came out of their delirium.  This part was lots of fun, even if it was more narrative setting than player action.

 

After coming out they find the library damaged, but thanks to their intervention at least some of the rare books were saved.  They also find the body of Professor Learmouth.  I plan on having Episode 3 start with there being rumors about the investigators because they were they were seen in proximity to Professor Learmouth's body first.

[joggiwagga]

Playing some catch up b/c while I emailed Dustin, I never posted them here (if anyone is curious about my results).
 

Episode 3, Run 8/28/16

Game started out with needing to do some timeline establishment.  The framing of Episode 2 led me to think it happened within say the first half of the semester.  Clearly Episode 3 happened post Black Tuesday, so that required some shifting around.  We established that Episode 2 wrapped up late in the Fall Semester, and that Episode 3 was taking place around the beginning of the Spring Semester, which allowed us to still have the appropriate amount of winter left to work with and worked as a general transition.
 

I had my three core players from the first game (one of the original four was out of state), playing Ernest, Dermott, and Vivian (formerly playing Genevieve Jones).  None of them were hard sciences majors, so the lower reaches of FOC were never explored, and no one really tried to pump Albard for information about his experiences once they were in.  All of them wanted to work on their marksmanship training (which I allowed for some skill rolls) and Dermott has decided his life goal is to become a wizard and spent 90% of his time studying what he could from Albard's library.
 

They went to Canada, and went with "we're with FOC" as their introduction to pretty much everything.  Worked OK with the cops since the context was PI's for FOC, but got clearly didn't work so well with the priest.

They never bothered going to the site the body was found at, instead watched the church from the cafe, eventually following the Priest back to his lair, and managing to stop him from actually killing the homeless guy, largely b/c they failed at getting in stealthily and the priest ran to get his gun.  Dermott was hit by some shotgun pellets, but overall they came out OK.

So at this point they know nothing of what's in the basement.  They come back, they're debriefed.  Dermott is treated and goes back to studying.  Throughout all of this they all claim they're fine and don't need to meet with the shrink.  Then the party happens.  Going down they decide to split off b/c they hear things going on behind the door.  Fortunately the response to pretty much what they see on the floor and coming up the stairs is to run away.
 

This is where I have to admit, I wasn't hard enough on the players.  Vivian probably should have died b/c she thought the best way to fight them was by punching them, even if she clearly realized the need for cover.  

Dermott had been drinking heavily (before I even had them roll he said he was going for that).  He'd also been studying scraps and fragments in his effort to become a "M-F-ing wizard."  So he decides he wants to try and cast a spell, knowing full well he knows none.  I, finally having the book, go "you know what, this could be funny," find a barrier spell in the book and pull from that.  When asked how many MP he wants to put towards the attempt he says "all."  So I let him in a drunken certainty draw something out with salt and blood on the floor while the deep ones try to break in, and let him actually very briefly (like 2 rounds) have a barrier go up... while he falls on the floor unconscious (then seizing) for the rest of the scene, in addition to some sanity loss.  Dermott will have NO memory of doing this or it's success, and I've told he player it won't happen again either without an actual spell.
 

Ultimately they got everyone up on top of the elevator and above combined with killing enough of the Deep Ones that they escaped instead of pursuing.  Plans were made directly with the missing original player to bring his character in for Episode 4, which I'm about to go and run!

Edited November 5, 2016 by joggiwagga

[joggiwagga]

Episode 4 (9/25/26)

It was a serious challenge not to TPK this group.  Nothing against a TPK, but I want it to be more than a "you done goofed" situation (also, a lot more horror from just one or two dying than all four...).  There was a lot of missing clues and hints, failing idea rolls, and generally making the worse choices possible.  The original player who missed the past two games was finally present with his "Zoologist" (ie. big game hunter), Dennison.  Dermott's player was absent, so he was largely shadowy and indistinct.
 

Dennison charmed the heck out of the Cobb's Corner locals, which is hilarious since he was the least social character out of everyone and looked a bit like a woods hobo.  While Vivian and Ernest tried fo research occult (and get distracted by poetry) in the library, Dennison went out on his own and learned all sorts of things about animal attacks and the strange rate of children deaths.
 

They did a loop to the school house and got all of the info bits from the first session, as they skipped it earlier on.  Overall fail at Cuzra for various reasons.  In some cases it was player RP increasing the already challenging task of getting through to him.  But they went and trespassed a ways down the road to the standing stones.
 

During the attack of the Dark Young, Vivian took a big sanity hit and it resulted her in seeing the Dark Young as GOD.  She got taken when she basically went willingly into the embrace of her god.  Engineer NPC was taken as well. Party didn't seem to get that shooting and explosions weren't doing much damage b/c of a resistance, but they went in pursuit straight to the mine, never checking in on the FoC armed encampment.
 

At the mines they rigged the car to drive with a stone to the gas to make a distraction.  They distrusted the gateway, and instead hiked all the way in.  Lots of room exploring, it was decided that Dermott would have grabbed random books, I plan on at least one of them being a romance novel in another language.
 

They eventually find their missing compatriots.  The NPC was already dead, Vivian was about to be cut into.  They start trying to extricate themselves, but the Mi-Go start talking and I decided that Dr. Sarah is incredibly susceptible to their sales pitch (after all, she's written as having an interest in information exchange with them).  Instead of grabbing her and running Dennison fires his shotgun at the MiGo.  Twice.  Which means pretty much any idea of stealth is over and done.... and they're in a dead end area of the mine.
 

I basically gave them the jump down the drain grate to the river way out in the end.  They were very to all being taken.  But the ending game with them soggy and frightened on the underground river bank was a REALLY good end point.  I'm happy with the atmosphere of the ending, though I really wanted to kill off some of them, I think it worked better to let them survive rather than kill them all.

[joggiwagga]

Episode 5 (10/30/16)

Two of the regular group were missing due to other conflicts, but we had a brand new player (new to group and completely new to CoC).  I gave him a rough sketch of the game so far, and gave a few general options for what he could play (hand wave another student or something along so far, give him one of the still alive NPCs, someone local...).  He proposed that he was basically a local hermit type who "knows stuff" - so we built a quick woods hobo (using Tribal Member template for some occult), and I took him aside and told him about some of the weirder local stuff.
 

We ended up getting through stuff a lot faster than normal here, so the game session was shorter without me using all of the plot options.  Much less side chatter and banter threw off my sense of pacing I guess.
 

When leaving the underground river, Dennison does not pass his swimming check, so rescue by Franklin McAllister, our new woods hobo, was a good way to get everyone together.  This also made for fun moments such as when Sam realized his compass wasn't working for Franklin to dismiss compasses as never working, but also meant it made sense for them to have a slightly easier time communicating with the freaked out local sorts. The two missing PCs stayed with the farmer and his son who were fending off the children (and the players interrupted the summoning) - again, with the local connection it made communication and eventual wary trust actually slightly possible).  The idea being that they'd help fortify the farmhouse and defend it from further mauraders.
 

I decided the carvings on the cow included marks/runes that matched stuff seen at the standing stones.  They nearly didn't save the girl trapped in the basement, but with trepidation they went in and then realized there was an adult to save and helped her out.
 

In town they come up with a plan for interrupting the ritual and trying to free folks, and as Franklin gets on top of a building to act as a sniper I had the ritual complete.  Franklin, Dennison and Dr. Sarah (NPC) failed their Sanity test, Ernest and Sam (NPC) passed.  I made the 1d100 roll on the table in front of everyone.  And with that Franklin and Dennison (with 63 sanity) took a 68 sanity loss and went permanently insane.  I gave them some pieces and let them come up with input how they actually went out.  Dennison's choice was to have essentially a berserker moment inspired by a scene in Independence Day, and Franklin had a very... Cthulhu Mythos act of self mutilation and suicide (cut out his own eyes, and then slitting his own throat and pulling the wound open to hasten his own death when cutting out his eyes doesn't remove the wrongness of the Mother's presence).  I like what my players come up with when something horrible happens to their characters, it's often worth it, especially when they're excited that their characters are going insane and dying.
 

At this point Ernest goes for flight, once he recovers from his comparatively insignificant sanity loss.  Tugging on Sam's arm they run off and find the Stanly Steamer, and make it to the farm house where they saved the farmer and his son.  They stayed there through the night, and in dawn by climbing up on a roof they could get a brief glimpse of the wreckage of Cobb's Corner.

Everyone had loads of fun.  I get the feedback where people are wondering about why this wasn't the final chapter, as it's a tough one to top.

We did go through content way faster than I intended or thought we were, in part b/c much of the interpersonel drama (mainly Ernest and Vivian sniping at each other) was missing and there was less distracted chatter.  But honestly no one minded that it went faster than normal.

And next, on to the moon!