GM: Sam Tillis
Players: Adrienne Mueller, Dylan Arena, James Lawton, Sean Nittner, Sarah Terman, Matthew Fisher
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition
Content warning: body horror and graphic violence masked (like this)
There was solace, once, in dreams. Once, you could believe that no matter what ills you suffered under the light of day, the sweet embrace of sleep could cleanse your soul, refresh, prepare you for whatever travails awaited in the day to come. But dreams intrude now on the waking world. From ancient scars, they seep. You have tasted their power, and you have born witnesses to their cost. Now, as you move towards the culmination of your task in the land Down Under, we will learn if Dream will be your salvation or your doom.
Curvilinear Monuments protruding from the ground, covered with inscriptions we could have spent a lifetime studying. Around them, tent shells that were long abandoned, shredded by a unnatural wind, and two shacks, one sporting a winch in the top.
Below them, Colby could see a freshwater spring that shined bright in dream. He walked with Catherine down and escarpment to find the spring itself.
Above Iris and Nora inspected the tattered tents and could tell it was more than just desert wind that destroyed them. Something powerful blasted them apart. They also spotted large pseudopodos footprints that started and ended abruptly in indicating something had flown down…and then flow away.
One of the of tents had been mended, and showed recent signs of habitation. Someone…likely not Huston by the looks of the meager provisions, was staying here on occasion.
Below, at the base of the escarpment Catherine, Colby, and Winnie saw that in the red rock wall a tiny hole allowed spring water to dribble out and into a…kitchen sink that had somehow been building into the rock wall. When Colby tasted the water it was the freshest water he had ever tasted, like a dream of spring water.
Nearby we spotted the tracks of several large dogs and a man’s footprints that lead them.
After assaying possible threats, we climbed back up and Catherine and Colby got to standing up a scaffolding that had been blown down in the wind. While Colby stabilized it, Catherine climbed up to the top to get a better look at the glyphs etched into the basalt stone.
Nora opened the shack with a winch on top of it and found that inside there was a hole going deep into the earth and many, many spiders. The lift was in the “up” position, but (if she could get past the spiders) Nora was confident she could lower it.
Winnie climbed onto the other shack to keep a lookout for anyone who might approach in the sky or on land, regardless of foot size.
Nails took one look in the shack and the closed the door and clambered onto the roof as well. “Winnie, do you like to know about terrible things or not?”
“Why yes. In general I prefer to know what to watch out for.”
“Well, this shack is full of two things…dynamite and spiders.”
“Mr. Nelson. Are you someone who smokes?”
Nails nodded down to the veritable powder keg of explosives below them “Not today, I’m not.”
Deciphering Yith
Catherine set about deciphering the inscriptions and between her knowledge of cryptography and her nascent skill with the Yith language itself, she was able to complete a partial translation of what Huston had been focusing on:
Two time six (12)? Two to the 6th power (64)? Two to the 5th power plus two (24)? Catherine wasn’t sure about any of it. She made her best guesses to fill in the gaps: city, legacy, memory, etc. But even those did not seem to capture the meaning. As she tried to fathom the individual words, Iris realized this may be a beacon…a means for the Yith to find their way back to time…to our time. Nora on the other hand, focused on the glyph that had greater emphasis (depicted in purple in the text).
A Visitor
Winnie and Nails, atop the shed spotted a man with eight massive dingoes approaching. For the most part he wore tattered clothes but his shoes were…Oxfords…and well preserved at that. He drank from the water at the spring but then looked up with a start. Suddenly aware that something was not as he left it.
Preferring to announce our presence rather than surprise him, Catherine called out “Hello there.”
He looked wide eyed at her and the her companions and shouted “What devilry is this?!?”
Catherine tried to assuage his concerns “We’re not ancient horrors or monsters.”
Amos added “Or cultists.”
After a bit of reassuring, the man calmed slightly and told us that he had seen Carver (aka Huston) and his people digging here. He came with a friend to find out what treasured Carver had found but then there was a change and “God showed me the way!”. Carver performed a ceremony where he summoned a huge bat creature like he had never seen before. There was a horrible gnashing of teeth and many died, but afterward, Huston and the diggers that remained headed out west. He said after the rituals he was changed.
Colby, who could see the dingoes as if his eyes had been restored completely, asked “How did the dingoes come to join you?”
“I wanted it!” The man barked.
“And the water?”
“I wanted it!”
“And the shoes?”
“I wanted it! Since I left the world of man, I have wanted to three things: friendship, water, and a good pair of shoes.”
Iris mulled on who is friend might have been and asked “Sir, are you Jeremy Grogan?”.
He was startled at first. That name no longer seemed familiar to him, but when he was in the world of man, that is what he was called.
After more discussion he told us that he could show us the way to Carver’s new camp to the west, where he saw Carver’s expedition go into a hole that they haven’t emerged from.
Leads to follow
Should we follow Jeremy to Carver’s camp? Should we try to use the Yith tools to enter here?
As we debated the options Winnie asked Nails if he thought the dynamite in the shack might help. For the first time ever, Nails had a look of embracement. With some coaxing he finally admitted “I really don’t like spiders…Please don’t tell anyone.”
Catherine had earlier learned that this place, if it was a beacon, would respond to a certain energy, so she set to work with Iris to build a Yith receiver and transmitter. She notably didn’t include Colby in the process because despite his superior understanding of Yith technology, she never wanted him to have to use it again. Not after the ocular devices. “Iris, I could use your eyes on this.” She said, knowing it might hurt him, but more afraid of what would happen if he started to work with the Yith technology again.
Before Grogan left, Nora took him aside and shared the Yellow Sign with him. It rattled him, but he didn’t yet understand the doom she had laden him with.
Winnie read True Magick and learned about demonic creatures that can blow winds so hard they wither and flay flesh from bones. The experience shook her deeply and she ended up hiding under the truck until she could eventually be coaxed out by Iris.
When the Mark 4.0 device, unpolished and ungainly as it was, was completed, Jimmy drive the truck right up to the monument so Catherine could use the device from the roof of the cab. The signals coming from it, in the form of static on a radio, indicated that the monument/beacon/lighthouse revealed a way to reenter the city. There was not a signal to send here, but a knowledge that was pass along to only some of the Yith. Those who the builders wanted to return.
Examining the spires from an archeological perspective, Amos and Colby surmised that what we saw above the surface was just the tip of the iceberg and that a staggeringly massive city lied beneath it.
Coaxed by Nora to try the simple solution, Catherine simply pushed on the the highlighted glyph and beneath them all the ground shook as the three monuments and the super structure beneath them raised 20′ in the air and then shot a beam of purple light to the east!
We were all startled and one of our trucks was destroyed as it toppled down into the dirt and sand below, but we saw the light pointing not far into the distance and for the first time thought we might have discovered something the sorcerers has missed (as Carver/Huston has moved to the west not the east).
We climbed down using the scaffolding as a latter and headed east as the sun was beginning to set. Amos convinced Jeremy to come with us, for now at least and we all piled into a single truck to follow the light.
Entering Dream
A short drive lead us to a hillock that looked on the verge of collapse. We heard bats (normal bats) inside and when a few flew out we realized they flew through the hill. Catherine reached her hand through and realized the hillside was an illusion. She and Colby stepped in and found a steel sloping path down, likely not safe to traverse. We tied some ropes to the hitch of of the truck and started walking carefully down. Colby in the lead with Catherine behind guiding him. 160′ later our rope ran out but thankfully we made it to the bottom.
At the base we saw a massive open cavern and in the distance a quaint house with a white picket fence and smoke coming from the chimney. Amos could sense a sorcerer here, but not in any specific location, sorcery was ALL OVER. We slid most of our belongings (yith artifacts, books, maritime chronometers, etc) down the hill knowing we might not be able to get them back up.
Dr. Robert Huston stepped out of the cottage as we approached “You people are not quiet. Please join me for a meal. I see so few people here. Ah…Amos. I love your work.”
We did not join him inside so he brought out a tea service and spoke with us in a circle. He was cheerful and amiable. He agreed with us that his friends were terrible. M’weru wanted only revenge. Penhew wanted power. Huston, he just wanted a release. Release from the suffering and horrors of humanity. He tried to help so many people and in the end decided we were all just too flawed to go on. As he told us this, he never seemed to register why we would disagree with him so vehemently. Or if he did, he likely thought we were just childish and naive in our our hope for the species.
Winnie leveled a gun at him, but he seemed unphased.
Catherine finally decided to take him up on his offer and drink the tea. Like the spring water above, it was the tea of dreams, which meant it carried with it the intentions of the dreamer. Catherine used Dreaming to understand more of the man and she could see his despair. Once he wanted other things, but something along the way broke him.
“I’m sorry for the pain you feel. You convinced Hypatia to have an abortion so she could bear the child of chaos. You watched your friends become monsters. I’m sure that caused you terrible pain. But to bring that pain to others is just selfish and cruel.” And she forced her tea cup though the man just as she had the illusion above.
The dream ended. Huston and the cottage and the tea service disappeared. We stood in awe as we looked up to the great city of Pnakotus. Resplendent in it’s massive spires, the city await us.
Pnakotus, at last.
Catherine had sought this city for so long. In the past she thought it might bring her knowledge or insight, that she might learn to see the world as the Yith did. But now she only wanted to find the great rift in dream an close it. To stop the sorcerer and destroy the beacon so the Yith could never return.
Before entering however, we decided to try using the Mirror of Gal one more time. Winne poured the red liquid on the mirror and we saw a slightly more disheveled Huston inside a three story building laden with lights that lead off in four directions on long strings. He was pacing as we watched him. She sprinkled the black powder on his image and it was drawn into his form. Huston resisted the attack however and his body erupted into spiders. To most of us, it appeared that he had turned into the spiders, but Colby, could see he had just retreated further into dream, leading the spiders behind as a distraction.
Believing this was the last sorcerer we would face and that if it could not kill him, it should no longer exist, we decided to destroy the mirror. Iris faced it against the rock wall, stood back and fired a bullet into the back of it. There was a sound of the gun firing but when the bullet struck the mirror there was only silence as the shards of the mirror exploded outward and then were sucked back in, along with a truck size portion of the rock wall. The sheer power overwhelmed us. Catarrhine gasped and Iris ran into the city, terrified of what might have happened if she was facing the mirror when it shattered.
Iris ran down a city street but thankfully stopped just before falling into a giant hole that filled it completely. There was 15′ wide lid that was open and a sign Catherine could read that indicated no honorable or worth creatures would be found below. Deep, deep, down Colby could see movement in dream, but could not make out what creatures were below.
With our combined effort we hoisted up the lid, tipped it over, and covered our ears as it slammed shut.
As we entered the city we began to understand just how massive it was [Hex grid baby!]
Eventually we came upon a string of electric lights, like those we had seen in our vision of Huston. As we explored we began to understand some of the city design. It was centered around the plazas (like the red plaza that was beneath the giant structures we had see on the surface) and temples (like the blue temple Amos and Catherine shared in their dreams).
After some time of traveling the “gift of serenity” that Amos cast on Winnie (before she tried to use the mirror) wore off and she dropped the plant, which Iris lunged to catch. “How could you make me me do that? Use that terrible mirror?” She slapped Iris on the face and the broke down crying, embarrassed for what she had done.
Catherine grabbed onto her and held her close assuring her that a slap was far from the worst we had done to each other “there, there, you didn’t electrocute her.” She held Winnie as she sobbed. We heard the giant plate behind us slam open again, and decided to keep moving!
Eventually we determined from glyphs on the walls that the Blue Temple was to the northwest but on our way there we were cut off by a work crew led by two cultists. We could tell that the crew did not act of their own volition, but they still moved towards us with menace! We shot at the leaders, who were equipped with lightning guns and used the strands of lights to bind the crew (not before one of them lunged at Catherine and knocked her back). Nora, though and effort of will commanded them to stop and they heeded her. For now. We took the lighting guns and the leather robes from the leaders and moved closer to the temple.
Blue Temple
At last we came upon the giant structure of the Blue Temple, more than 2000′ across it was difficult to behold. Inside it was a smaller building, this one merely 500′ feet across, but also the place that Catherine knew from dream. Colby could see the whole temple was glowing from dream, blurred by a few shadows of things that were not dream within.
Catherine used Dream to will the robes they recovered to be blue and match the color the temple. With Colby at her side, they crept into the temple toward the center where giant edifices of Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, Azathoth, and other old ones were present. All of them surrounding a towering edifice of bone and sticks, made in likeness of the Crawling Chaos, of Nyarlathotep. Above a giant bat creature hung from the roof watching all below. Seeing it filled Colby with terror. He was unsure how to keep Catherine safe in this concentration of evil.
From the center of the room a giant cable ran out of the building and to the northwest. Perhaps this is where they were drawing power from? On the floor of the temple were Yith glyphs that Catherine believed she could operate
Outside most of our companions were waiting with guns ready should the bat drop down upon us, but Iris was looking outward and felt a dream wash over her, the dream of Uranus, the father of titans, and with it came a message “find me!” She sensed he was close.
Inside Catherine began to run her hands over the signs and they started to glow blue. The giant bat flew down and her protectors Colby, Amos, Nora, Winnie, Nails, and Iris all opened fire. As the bullets tore through the creature it distended and stretched in impossible ways.
Catherine established a connection to the city… and what is more, she opened her mind to it and realized she had the chance to not just understand the city, but to become the city.
She queried the to find the Eye of Light And Darkness and learned it was in the Outpost/Fallback/Colony/Depth/Height. She also learned that the city did not contain it, but that it could take her to it.
She told Colby “I’ll never leave you” and prepared to make the transference but he stopped her “Wait, that sounds like something you’d say just before leaving me. Tell me what you’re doing and what I need to do.”
Catherine paused, realized she didn’t need to keep this secret and told him what she was going to do, that the consciousness in her body would not be her own, and that when the work was done, how to get her back out.
Outside Iris looked around her and many creatures skittering about. She tried to hide from them but as she slid away, one of them winked at her with both eyes on the left side of its face. “Who?”
The Architect
The city Pnakatus that was in Catherine’s body, the architect, tried to destroy her mortal shell. She bashed her head (Catherine’s head!) against Colby, breaking herself in the process. He wrestled her into a full nelson, but Amos could see the look on her eye, even incapacitated she would try to destroy the physical body that held her captive. She could bite herself to death. He cast Earthly Serenity on her, and for a moment the Architect knew peace. “The Catherine must be stopped. She is doing what must not be done.” When Amos and Colby argued for free will and her choice and the future being unknown she told them their understanding of time was Infantile!
Architect-Catherine went back to trying to destroy herself and Colby decided he must knock her out for her own good. He choked her into unconsciousness and the tied her up with a silk scarf Winne took from her person.
It’s consciousness free, the Architect returned to the city and sought out The Catherine withing. She had to move fast to keep it off her tail. But in the time she had alone, she learned of the location of several other locations, including:
- Intruder! Error!
- Outpost/Fallback/Colony/Depth/Height Access
- Renegade
- Red Plaza
Catherine-the-city lit the way for her companions to find Renegade, while hiding her presence so the Architect believed she had moved to the Red Plaza and would seek her out there. Cat and Mouse.
The Architect responded by deploying a defense system and air in the city began growing cold. More and worse would happen soon.
Huston’s Rage
At the Blue Temple Huston flung magical energy and dreams at the glyphs, frantically hammering them trying to get the city’s attention. Catherine-the-city, unsure how much it would take from her decide to answer, mimicking the architect as best she could “You’re understanding of communication is infantile.”
“Stop. Stop this cold! He demanded. It appears the defenses were affecting his servants as well.
“I do not serve at your disposal.” Catherine-the-city answered imperiously.
“I am the master of Dream! You will obey me!” He shouted. When he received no response he drew power from the idols and cast a spell to make many copies of himself, then each of then hurled more magical energy into the glyphs, trying to force his way in.
The Renegade Kakatak
The investigators moved through the city, following the glowing glyphs an found another towering building where the massive cable was run into.
Inside they found three chambers. The first full of crates of machinery. The second featuring a weird console interfacing with city technology, leather Dream couch, controlling helmet and receiving helmet connected by wire, thick cables on the floor, electric-curtain doorway. And the third, a room barred with an electrified barrier.
When Iris approached the electrified prison she heard a voice from within.
“You’re late.” It spoke in an alien tongue that somehow she could understand.
“Who are you?” Iris inquired.
“Kakatak. Have you slain the Robert Huston?”
“Not yet. We’re working on it.”
“Then let me out.”
“Will you help us kill Huston.”
“It is not my purpose to help you kill Huston. It is my purpose to present you with the choice.”
Battle for the City
Huston batted his will against the City and Catherine decided to answer the call once more. She could feel how much it was draining her to activate the city’s mechanisms, so she hoped he would take the bait and pour his stolen energy into the city itself. She connected him to the city and watched as they raged against each other.
Meanwhile Kakatak and Amos discussed what was going on, why this Yith was incarcerated, and why he supported Catherine when others wanted her destroyed. “My philosophy differs from the orthodoxy. We believe different gardens should be protected. You are close to making a choice that would provide a conduit that would protect this garden.”
The city began to glitch as Huston and the Architect fought for control. Huston activated every system he could and the power momentarily went out of the city. Amos took the opportunity to hack the power line that charged the cell and freed Kakatak. “What is the choice?”
“You will understand it when we arrive. Now we must go.”
Embodied one more
Colby asked Kakatak if he could help Catherine return to her body and he said there were many mechanisms in the city that would aid her. He could do so with the device that Huston used to make people into mindless slaves, but that might damage her mind. More sophisticated tools existed in the city…so everyone made haste to find them. Thanks to keen eyes from Amos, Iris, Winnie, Nora, and Nails the quickly found and assembled the pieces.
Winnie also found a small silver egg, and when she picked it up, she knew all there was to know about the year 1404, a snapshot of the world as it was more than five hundred years before. For the Yith, this was but a trinket.
Kakatak gently plunged a needle into her skull (Colby had impressed upon him her fragility) and Catherine’s consciousness was returned to her body. The process would have taken her spiritual reserves [Mana] but none remained so it sapped her body instead [Hit Points]. She was bleeding all over, and panicked from the experience of going from so large to so small as a creature with a single body, but Colby was there, and he reassured her she would be okay if she did not panic. Probably a good thing since Kakatak then pulled a giant needle from her.
“It is good to see you again The Catherine.”
Catherine realized that Kakatak was the Yith she had communed with with she contacted the Observer. It was he who told her of gardens, and the Hounds of Tindalos, and ways she might be able to avoid them.
“It is good to see you as well Kakatak.” She quickly became serous though “Huston is in the city. Or at least his mind is. When you pulled me out, he got pulled in. He commands more power than I did but he’s focusing it all on controlling the city. I’m sure he’ll find us, but he’s got to fight the Architect for control. If we go right now, his body is defenseless in the Blue Temple.”
Kakatak returned to his earlier refrain “The Robert Huston must die.”
The last of Robert Huston
We agreed and went running towards the temple but it was three miles away, and as me moved the city began crumbling above us. Jimmy, Li Wen, and Nails agreed to take our possessions towards the access point so we could all move quickly and meet back up there.
Buildings were crashing down, lights were flickering, the cold began to set in again. Catherine learned the cold gas was meant to cause drowsiness amongst the Yith, but would cause madness to humans, and that was just one of the city’s defenses!
“We don’t have time to get there and back.” Catherine yelled above the cacophony of falling buildings. “But this close to the tear, we could Dream ourselves there.” She and Amos both knew the dream of the Blue Temple, but he did not want to leave Iris’ side. Catherine was desperate so she flung her mind back into Dream and with great effort she arrived back in the Blue Temple.
Colby seeing her disappear broke into a sprint, running as fast as he could to the temple but was cut off by a flying cist. A terrible creature that would have descended upon him with terrifying force had not Winne used her dream of Scintillating to blind it. She did not know how to Dream, but Iris showed her the way and in that moment, her Dream was alive. The creature was surrounded by fireworks that distracted and blinded it, just long enough for Colby to get by, but everyone else was cut off!
Catarrhine appeared inside the Blue Temple and saw Hutson and his simulacra. The were easy to discern, for their bodies were all withering away at the cost of his great magic and he would of course leave a single body, his own, untarnished by the effort. And that was her target!
Armed with the Sword of Dreaming, Catherine staggered forward, past the shriveled simulacra to Robert Huston. And that is when he did what she would not. Bereft of his own body, Huston tore open the tear in Dreaming even further and and changed his face to be that of the Crawling Chaos, that of Nyarlathotep. Catherine’s only shield was her practiced dream of the Blue Temple. In her mind she it as Colby did, the dream of the temple and Huston was but a shadow within it. A shadow she beheaded [What a time for an extreme success on sword roll!]
Though him mind was sill in the City, Catherine knew in time, the Architect would destroy it and Huston would be no more. But for now, the city was still in chaos and she was alone…or so she thought.
“Catherine!” Colby shouted, out of breath. He had sprinted the three miles to get to her. She ran into his arms.
Miles away Amos asked Kakatak what they could to help, and as the Yith assured him “They will make it” Amos suddenly stopped sensing the presence of Huston. “She’ done it!”
Amos sent a Dream to Colby. Normally both would need to be asleep for this to work, but in this place, so close to Dream, anything was possible. In the Dream they agreed to meet at the access point. In the Dream Colby also had eyes, and he used them to look at Catherine by his side.
Colby navigated their way through the carnage, benefiting from Catherine’s memory of the city map, and the companions gathered once more at the outpost access.
A 20′ diameter arch filled floating just off the ground was head. It was filled with a shimmering substance. A portal to another place. “Through that portal is where you will make the choice. But you will need skins” Kakatak confirmed.
Beside the portal were crates full of scuba suits outfitted with strange accoutrements. Jacks for wires to be run between the for communication, air tanks, small visors, and puncture repair kits.
Weightless
We stepped through the portal together and at once felt a strange weightlessness. We stood on a great shorn pyramid atop grey rock. Across from us was a second shorn pyramid that Kakatak pointed towards. Around them, a sea of small pyramids, and among them, dozens of cultists, moving like ants.
Winnie looked up and above us she saw a pale blue orb with clouds floating above it. In that moment, as she realized it was the earth she was seeing, and the moon she was standing upon, Winnie could take it no more and she tried to pull the false skin off her body. Iris and Amos assured her that though this was terrifying, the suit she was wearing was the only thing keeping her alive. She focused on that and was able to regain some semblance of calm.
Together they took bounding steps forward. Unsure what they would find on this alien world. Tired, scared, and lost, they had each other. Catherine was beyond drained, she had nearly nothing left [0 mp, 1 hp, 1 sanity away from indefinite insanity] but like her companions, she moved forward.
We all looked like the other cultists except Kakatak so Amos drew his blade and held it behind him, attempting to appear as though he was guarding Kakatak like a prisoner in transport. And as we thought might happen, another cultist bounded toward us. He plugged his jack into Amos’ and asked what was happening.
“I’m moving the prisoner!”
“Why?”
“I did not ask. I only do as I was told. We all know the punishment for disobedience.” We in fact did not know the punishment, but given Huston’s mind erasing device, Amos guessed it was pretty bad! The cultist looked us over, saw the there were nine of us escorting the Yith and finally decided it wasn’t worth the chance or earning Huston’s ire.
Kakatak led us to the other pyramid, washed his had over glyph and the pyramid rose up and expose an entrance. We quickly entered and it sunk back down, leaving up protected. Inside it was a veritable museum of history, including history that had not yet happened. 30′ tall books, glowing green devices, rooms that resembled eras of earth history and it’s future. Though the scholars in us longed to stay and study these wonders, we pressed on into a room with a giant silver egg. In this room their was air and we could remove our helmets, though Winnie was not ready to do that yet and kept hers on.
Kakatak gestured to the egg, which was cracked open and had room inside for all of us to fit if we desired. “We do not have the Eye of Light and Darkness here, or rather we do not have it now. But this device our way to travel between gardens and hide from the Hounds of Tindalos. This is the Choice.”
The Choice
We stood before it battled, unsure who should enter and who should stay.
Catarrhine yearned to go but the last portal she went through nearly killed her and she did not believe she would survive another such journey. She told Colby she would understand if he went, but he was staying right there with her.
Winnie would remain as well. She was too terrified already to make such a journey.
Nora, Amos, and Iris decided that they would enter, and face whatever new horror or revellation the Yith would reveal.
Iris assured Winnie that she would be okay in time. “Just give it some time. You’ll get through this.”
Catherine embraced Iris. “Iris, you are my sister. You have been there for me so many time when I did not deserve your patience and your care.” Iris held her close “You are my sister as well Catarrhine. You have done so much and been so brave.” When the released each other, Catherine gave Iris the necklace with Reggie’s emerald “I think it has brought me luck, maybe it will do the same for you.” Iris handed her a dried flower “If I don’t make it back, bury this beside Edward’s grave”.
Nora remarked “We now it just sound like we’re not going to make it.” She tried to smile away the fear.
The stepped into the pod and and the door closed between us.
The revelation shared to the tune of this cover of House of the Rising Sun.
And so the pod rises into the air, compelled by a gravity all its own, up, up, out through the flat top of the pyramid, beyond the surface of the moon, leaving your companions behind, until your vision is dominated by the blue-green sphere of earth, stunning, beautiful under the light of the rising sun. Through some Yithian trick you can see nations, cities, vehicles, even individual people despite the staggering distance between you and the world, as your mind learns to draw them into focus. It is just as you learn this trick that there is a jolt, a mechanical whirr, and electric whisper in the system into which you are plugged, and gradually, and then faster, time. Speeds. Up.
Wars you see, great armies ravaging the surface of your world, devastations; a holocaust of flame consuming whole cities in an instant. Years, decades, centuries roar past in accelerating seconds, and in that time humanity refines the art of cruelty, perfects it in ten thousand ways, masters the crafts of self-destruction as they crack open the earth and fill the skies with dust. Tens of millions die pointless deaths at the whims of the few, forced by the systems of man into lives spent blithely digging their own graves, unknowing yet doomed to triviality. Can this possibly be the future in which you win? For you see no Great Gates, no sinister Gods, just humans, humanity, devising their own apocalypse after apocalypse after apocalypse. You need not breathe in the Yithian machine; you find you cannot blink; and here tears cannot blind you to the masquerade that plays out below, as time and again humanity crawls back from the brink of degradation only to fall once again. Soon, later, in ten billion years, the sun itself expands and engulfs all that remains. One by one the stars wink out, and you get a brief vision of a dark towering figure, the size of galaxies, that idiot god who jibbers outside the universe attended by unspeakable things. Then all is merciful darkness, throbbing, waiting.
A point of light explodes, and the universe is born anew! The cycle resets, the garden once again grows: gas turns to galaxies, stars form, planets coalesce, life stirs, a succession of things descend upon and war upon the Earth before withdrawing, and humankind does once again emerge to dance its dance of madness and sin and horror, the soul of the plot. And your pod descends upon Egypt, five years shy of the moment you left behind; the purpose of this journey, to allow that future, against that which Nyarlathotep pursues. And so you have done, for in our time, our garden, too, a version of you has come from a time before, found the Eye of Light and Darkness, and slowly stumbled with it to Australia to meet with your companions once again.
And that is where we left off. Till next time space cadets!
Who is The Catherine?
Many parts of Catherine’s personality have stayed the same during play, but her motivation, and what she is willing to do has changed profoundly.
In New York, she wanted to be involved in uncovering mysteries. After leaving Room 40 she though she might never be part of unraveling a great mystery again. Oh boy, she was wrong about that. She wanted to understand the underlying patterns in the world.
In London, she felt challenged at every turn to prove herself as capable. She wanted to show she was more than just her father’s daughter, even though she loved him very much. She wanted people to believe in her.
In Egypt, after her connection to the Yith in Darby, Catherine believed she found an even greater mystery to uncover. She wanted to find Pnakatus and learning all there was to know of the Yith. She saw the Yith technology as a treasure trove to study and understand.
This desire persisted through Africa and into China, but it started to change when Colby destroyed his eyes to insert the ocular device. It made her remember electrocuting Iris in Egypt when she almost removed herself from time. Yes, the Yith technology was incredible, but it came at a cost. Colby, and to a lesser extend Caterhine, were barred from Dream. Something was not right.
In Australia, where we learned about the war, the great tear in dream and all the harm they had done, her enchantment with the Yith turned to revulsion. She felt disgustingly dependent on the technology, even knowing the harm it caused. She was grateful that the devices could be removed from Colby, but at what cost, now he could not see at all. Or rather, he could only see in Dream.
As we reach the final chapter of the game, I was surprised to see Catherine’s greatest motivation was fear. She didn’t think she could make another trip, and she was afraid to find out what was on the other side of that journey.
I’m delighted to how much our characters have changed and grown through play. Francois went from photographer, to occultist, to high priest, to a fragment of dream. We’ve all had such an incredible journey, I’m delighted to see how it will end!
Thoughts on game
After losing 8 sanity when she became the city, Catherine should have been temporarily insane and I didn’t play that out. I think I should have portrayed her as being confounded by being inside a body, believing she was still the city. I’m not sure it’s germane now, but if possible, I can bring that in next session.
