Call of Cthulhu RPG #2

Sorry for the total lack of blogging lately. I'll try to change that  for now :P

A week ago Love lead his second Call of Cthulhu RPG. The first was on Halloween and it was a great success. But at the second he failed a little at the sensations. However, still being a horror RPG I was sitting at the edge of my seat in the end, and it was thrilling and cosy all at the same time - just the way a good horror story is supposed to be.

The story of this RPG picked up where the last one ended, although only the priest (I) and the occult professor were kept as characters. All the others had made new ones. The story starts with the priest and the professor examining the journals found in the last house.

Then the new story kicks off and we are in a hospital room with an old dying man called Rupert Merryweather. He asks everyone  (even his stupid son) to leave the room and then tells us his story. When he was a youth he was part of a Brotherhood that experimented with the occult. He tells us how the last experiment goes terribly wrong and they conjure something that only wants to kill. The creature is bound to the house, but will be let free when all the conjurers are dead and Merryweather is the last one still alive. We are given a box and then asked to leave. When we leave the room everyone is introduced. It's ofc the priest and the occult professor from before, two private detectives; Nunez and Cover, a librarian called Fog and a psychologist.

We all gather at the professor's office, which is really small and we can't really fit all of us in there. In the box we were given there's a small black nothebook and a small golden box shaped as a sarcophagus with hieroglyphs on it. The notebooks is a list of all members of the Brotherhood and journals from the meetings of the Brotherhood. Cover opens the sarcophagus, but it's empty. The psychologist tells us that the signs inside of the sarcophagus are said to originate from a vanished continent called Mu. The notebook tells us that the Brotherhood bought a house outside Ross's Corner to perform their experiments in peace. The leader carved protective runes all around the doors and windows of the house. It says that in 1882 (this is 1920) the leader bought the golden sarcophagus and inside it was a big amber with some kind of creature trapped inside. The perform the experiment to conjure the creature and it's described in the notebook as a great black hole with lots of claws and mouths. One member instantly got mad and one instantly got killed. The others fled the site and the mad one was placed at an institution. There are years written next to the members' names; which turns out to be the years they died. There's only one member left with no number and that's Merryweather who also seems to be the one who's been writing in the notebook. In that moment we get a phone call saying that Merryweather just passed away. A book is mentioned in the notebook but nothing more.

The priest, Fog and the occult professor heads out to the library and to the library's occult division. The professor remembers that she has heard of that book before and knows that she will need the key to a locked room to get it. The chief of the library has it and while the professor tries to persuade the chief to give her the key, Fog and the priest try to force their way into the room by picking the lock. They get the door open and the alarm sounds. Both of them manage to hide themselves, but no book and they return to the office. At the office the professor examines the sarcophagus and Fog tries to translate the hieroglyphs, which proves impossible. The three others, who have been out doing research on their own, shows up later and tells us that the powder used to make the pentagram needed to perform the ritual to conjure the creature vaporates when it leaves the house. The priest remembers that it has been mentioned in the journals from the other house and that it's called Powder of Ibn-ghazn. It's used to conjure or dispel creatures in rituals. They have found out the cause of death for all of the members except two and the priest calls all the communities in the city asking for the cause of death of those two members. One of them died of a falling piano and the other of natural causes.

We meet up again on the morning the day after av leave for the house. In Ross's Corner we stop to ask about the house. The children think it's an exciting haunted house and there have been children dared to go there. No one seems to remember anyone coming to visit the house. We find out that a middle-aged woman has disappeard during the night. The house is situated on a hill and it's only one floor, but seems to have an attic. The professor, the priest and Cover recognises the protective runes, and after examining the house on the outside and the grounds we enter through the back door, which happens to be open.

We see one staircase leading up and one leading down, a fireplace, open cans and a blanket. Someone has spent the night there. The professor and Cover hear something from the basement and Cover starts heading downstairs with the only torch available. The professor stays upstairs to guard the door and the rest of us follows Cover downstairs. When we have almost arrived down a bum tries to hit Cover with a table-leg. We all try to hit him but all of us miss and the bum manages to hit some of us. Finally Nunez hits the bum and he falls down unconscious. Cover puts first aid on him and he wakes up. His name is Jake and he keeps talking about some darkness that wants to kill him. We bind him and enters the next room where we find a cigar box full of Powder of Ibn-ghazn. We also find 10 papers turned slightly yellow. 6 of them are copies of a chant. 3 seems to come from the book we couldn't get a hold of and the 10th paper show the symbol. It's not the same handwriting as in the notebook.

Nunez hears something from the attic and while Cover, the priest, Fog and the professor stays in the room to prepare the ritual, Nunez and the psychologist leaves to examine the attic. We hear screams and rushes out into the hallway just in time to see Nunez's body getting dragged up to the attic. Then we hear sounds as of eating. The psychologist falls down the stairs and can't stop laughing. He stops when Cover hits him in the face. We all leave for the room with the ritual and lock the door. When the sounds of eating stop Cover opens the door a little and sticks out his head to take a look. Then he quickly pulls back and we see claws where his head would have been. We close and barricade the door with furniture and explosives and then we wait for midnight to perform the ritual.

The story fast-forwards to midnight. The priest, the professor and Fog are chanting. The other two keep a look-out. The first 20 minutes go by without trouble and then we hear something move upstairs. After 10 minutes it becomes more violent and the house starts to sway. The the creature starts screaming and the walls starts leaking some weird fluid. Then everything suddenly becomes very quiet. We hear someone pounding on the door and a voice says that it's Nunez and he wants to come in. We don't open the door. We see Nunez pounding the windows but it's not the real Nunez. He has a hole where his heart should be. We continue chanting. There's goo coming out of the walls. Everyone steps away from the goo. The Nunez-zombie can't get inside. The ritual continues and the psychologist falls down shaking. A female zombie shows up next to Nunez. Fog starts running towards the door and Cover beat her down. When there's only five minutes to go the creature appear in the middle of the symbol on the floor. It can't move outside the symbol. Finally it disappears but we continue chanting for 10 more minutes. There is no trace of the creature. We put the powder in the sarcophagus. Cover opens the door. We run to the cars. And there's a dead Jake in Nunez's car. We drive back to Boston in the other car and walk to the closest police station. On the way Cover leaves his explosives, the psychologist and Fog at his place. The police station is closed and no one is there. We go back to Cover's flat and the professor calls the police who won't listen. We all fall asleep and the psychologist calms down.

The next morning the professor discovers that the sarcophagus has vanished. Merryweather's son comes knocking with a lawyer and asks for the box his father gave us. Cover slams the door in his face. Half an hour later the police knocks on the door. The police take us all down to the station where the professor leaves with the son to give him the box (empty). The others convince the police of their story that they had nothing to do with the dead bodies at the house (because the police have already been there) and that we had left the place when Nunez was dragged up to the attic.