Masks of Nyarlathotep (3/3/2024)

GM: Sam Tillis
Players: Adrienne Mueller, Dylan Arena, James Lawton, Sean Nittner, Sarah Terman, Matthew Fisher
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition

Disclaimer: details for this post are likely scant and inaccurate. I’m writing it four months late and trying to use context clues to reconstruct it!

This game has a lot of firsts for me.

First time playing a campaign game of Call of Cthulhu (plenty of one shots before, but this was the first time I join a campaign).
First time playing with a professional GM. You can see more about Sam here.
First time knowingly diving into an epic campaign (I’ve never played Masks, but I know it’s HUGE) with the plan to play it all the way through!

Adrienne invited me to the game, which has already been going for a little while, so I worked with Sam to find a character that would fit well in the group.

Our Cast:

Colby Slater (played by Dylan) is an archeology professor (who specialized in antiquities found in Peru) and rugby player. Colby accepts there are many things in this world that we don’t understand, but staunchly does not believe in anything that is magic or otherworldly, just things science hasn’t found an explanation for yet.

Reggie Morsley (played by Adrianne) is the dreamy dilletante descended from the same family as the deceased Edward Morsley (Adrienne’s prior character). Reggie is a carouser and heartbreaker, his affections for both Amos and Catherine left us all wondering what would every come of of them. And wonder we still will do… Despite his many skills as a disguise artist, charmer, and general good fellow to have around, Reggie is always trying to figure what he was meant to do (other than dodge the attention of is disapproving family).

Amos (played by Matt) is a lecturer (not professor) at Miskatonic University, which is a position only he seems to think is a reputable one. He’s a boxer and (at least when I joined the group) the only investigator whose mind had been opened to the Mythos (in a horrific and grotesque manner at that). He’s one step short of obsessed with the study of eldritch horrors, much to the chagrin of his sister Iris.

Iris Morsley (played by Sarah) is a botanist and an actual professor at Miskatonic (though she knows how most folks just raise their eyebrows when the name is mentioned, so she doesn’t flash it around like Amos does). Iris is also the widow of the late Edward Morsley (who died horribly in front of her) and more than anyone else, trying to keep all the rest of us safe. She misses him dearly (she still dresses in black some time later) and wants to make sure that none of us come to harm or lose ourselves to the knowledge held in the texts that Amos can’t get enough of.

Francois (played by James) is a photographer that shares Amos’ fascination with the otherworldly. When he did being to read the Book of Eibon and fell into a great depression, he posed as the most iconic French man full of ennui…staring out at see, the rain coming down around him, a barely lit cigarette held lifelessly in his hands.

Catherine Ewing (played by me) was the daughter of Albert Ewing and because of her fascination with mathematics, cryptography and cyphers, we recruited by her father to work in Room 40 and was part of the team that decoded the Zimmerman Telegram. Since her father’s departure in 1917, however she’s been having a hard time finding a place. She revealed information about the Zimmerman Telegram that were state secrets and as such, was never going to work for the home office again. As opportunity after opportunity to prove herself dwindled she eventually debased herself enough to apply for a fellowship at Miskatonic, which she only obtained because of some help from Iris and Amos (a bit of backstory we established at the start). Catherine believes all puzzles can be solved if a sufficiently complex model for them is created. She’s a mechanist at heart and loves to build (and take apart) complex machines to serve as those models. She loves understanding the worlds around her and believes it is full of secret messages. She’s so fucking doomed!

Catherine is portrayed by Rachel Weisz from the Mummy:

Prelude

We started the session to a flashback I had requested as a means of connecting me to Iris and Amos. As noted Catherine was trying to find her place in the world after working for Room 40. She was convinced that secret messages were still being passed between German and it’s allies… but more importantly that there were just so many more cyphers to understand, and that by understanding them we could understand more of the world around us.

She had built her own decryption machine and was doing everything she could to convince the bursar at Miskatonic that if he would only give her and audience with the dean, he would realize what a brilliant invention it was and how Catherine’s expertise could be of use to the university. Amos and Iris witnessed this from a distance and thought little of it…

Until they later saw Catherine struggling to climb through the window into a hallway that would grant her access to the dean’s office. They helped a very flustered Ms. Ewing through the window and asked what she was doing. Assuming they also meant to interrogate her (as the bursar had been) she launched into a a diatribe about the importantce of keeping up with modern cyphers and that had it not been for the work of Room 40 and the decryption of the Zimmerman Telegram, the These United States would have been caught unaware as Germany made a treatise with Mexcio, and further that it since the word Arizona was not in the German codebook, it had to be split into phonetic syllables, which formed a recognizable pattern, and, and, and. Amos and Iris said they would put in a good word for her, and then parted ways.

Cut to…

Present day 1924. The team of investigators knew there was going to be a soiree at The Carlyle Estate and that at the estate was a safe with very important items inside. I’m not sure if they knew exactly what was there, but they knew it was tied to the Carlyle expedition and they needed to get it. The party was a masquerade ball, so that made sneaking in and getting the safe possible…if they only had a safe cracker.

Enter Catherine, a former colleague Iris and Amos remembered from Miskatonic, who after a phone call or two, the realized was stationed on Staten Island to complete a research project. Never one to forget a favor, Catherine agreed to help them with this little bit of larceny, just as she had helped her years before!

Getting all dressed up

The images of clues Sam provided (see below) reminded me of a few things that happened before the party

Amos met with a trusted librarian (from a secret order of librarians) who entrusted him with an elder sign, a symbol of protection.

Our Cast of Partygoers

Miss Erica Carlyle – The host of this fancy party. Suspicious of all of us.
Carlyle’s head of security
M’Dari – Cultist with the power to drive people to madness if he looks into their eyes.
Gene Tunney, a famous boxer
Victoria Post, a wealthy heiress adventurer-type obsessed with seances.
Harry Houdini – just there to be sour grapes about mysticism
Several other characters I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Notable Events at the Party

Amos being discovered as a fake Gene Tunney, and then boxing him in the courtyard as a cover (I just came here because I’m such a fan). Amos lost the fight but held his own and earned Tunney’s respect.
Finding the Four-Faced mask and everyone panicking. Iris explaning it was dangerous and using her knowledge of botany to explain the psychotropic effects caused by the wood it was made from.
Dodging the head of security (unsuccessfully most of the time)
The mask disappearing!
Francois finding a friend murdered in a bedroom with the same mark as seen in the previous cult murders. Did we also find the weapon that made it? (I think so but maybe misremember)
Convincing my friend to hold a seance to get Houdini mad about it as a cover to get away from security and make it into the library… where we found the safe… which once cracked revealed some very scary books (The Pnakotic Manuscripts, Book of Eibon, and Life as a God, and one more I’ve forgotten).
Peacock mask switching hijinks involving Iris pretending to be Catherine!
M’dari appearing and placing the mask by the seance.
Picking up the mask and following him.
M’dari running to Colby and looking him in the eyes, which caused Colby to see the truth, that everyone wore masks and lied about who the were. Not before Colby slashed M’dari with his knife inflicting a grievous wound.
Catherine pulling the mask over M’dari’s head so he could not look into our eyes (the faces of the mask didn’t line up with a person so you couldn’t actually “see” out of it).
Colby believing “knowing” that only M’dari was wearing his true face and that everyone else was lying an pretending to be someone else. Catherine watching him hold the bloody knife…terrified that he would use it on her.
Colby eventually recovering and leaving with Catherine but jumping off the roof and getting very hurt! This would linger.
Reggie charming Erica Carlyle and getting access to the servants quarters.
Amos listening to Houdini and asking him the finer points of his theories.

We left the party with the books in hand and the séance happening behind us. That night was the solar eclipse and over a phone call we received we we returned to the hotel, we heard a description of the rest of the evening… that ended in horror. Tentacles descending from the sky and devouring everyone in the courtyard.

Following the Carlyle Expedition to London

Catherine had been witness to something awful and Colby had revealed to her just how dire it was for them to find out who was behind all of this. With only a little trepidation, she agreed to go with the investigators to London and follow the tracks of the Carlyle Expedition, wherever they might lead!

The party thankfully found quick passage via ship to London, and would spend the next week on the sea…grappling with the horrors they had endured!

Books

I decided that in addition to playing Masks, I was also going to read a book that Catherine might have access to in 1924 for each session. It’s part of goal to read more and reading “in-fiction” books felt like a fun way to do that. So for each game (well, most), I’ve got a book to go with the game as well. When I can, I use quotes from the book in the session.

Book: Inferno, by Dante Alighieri