#080 Oscar Rios and The Third Cthulhu Companion

Join us in this special mid-week release as we speak with Oscar Rios from Golden Goblin Press about Island of Ignorance – The Third Cthulhu Companion, a Call of Cthulhu accessory containing articles and adventure Scenarios.  The KickStarter for this book is going on now and Oscar talks to Danny about all of the articles and even gives us some exclusive hints at what to look for in the finished book.

Oscar has also graciously agreed to let us host a give-away of one of his previous campaign books, The Legacy of Arrius Lurco, that he will even sign!  To enter just leave us a comment below with your favorite character death story before midnight on May 25th and we will roll for and contact the winner by June 1st.




7 Replies to “#080 Oscar Rios and The Third Cthulhu Companion”

  1. This might not count as there is no actual death however my favorite “permanent removal” of a character was my investigator in a Delta Green campaign.

    During the campaign, Agent Pamela was foolish enough to read the name of Y’Golonac in the Revelations of Glaaki. She did her best to try and stem the ongoing corruption but slowly she found herself becoming dangerous as Y’Golonac slowly started spreading his influence.

    Eventually she went to visit Stephen Alzis in an attempt to find out how to stop the Great Old One from possessing her. Alzis made a deal and the next day Pamela vanished. P Cell followed her trail and eventually found she was trapped in Carcosa. Another deal was cut with Alzis and the players entered Carcosa to find the lost Agent Pamela. Eventually she was found with her father (a former agent long since missing) dressed in a medieval style dress and mask. She seemed unaware of who she was, the only thing she knew was if she left this place then “He” would come. The group left her behind unsure as to what they could do. The only way to stop Y’Golonac from manifesting through her was to stay forever in Carcosa as one of the many revelers at the final ball before the King in Yellow appeared.

  2. This one’s from one of my players:

    I’m Keeper for Bermuda Triangle, updated to present day Delta Green. This is meant to be a fairly low key mission to recover after their last ‘night at the opera’.

    During the course of play the players have learnt two spells, but don’t know what they do. They know one is called “Communion” and the other is called “Water Breath” both translated from Latin.

    In actuality, one is contact sea ghouls (basically amphibian ghouls from the Bermuda Triangle book), the other is breath of the deep (which is an offensive spell).

    Being curious they decide to find out what the spells do, fair enough you might say, but probably not the best idea. First they try “Communion”. Sea ghouls turn up and start to circle their boat. The ghouls are relatively friendly (because they are bound) and all is well. The agents even stick their head in the water and mime actions, which the ghouls respond to.

    Later they see more shapes swimming around the boat. Thinking it’s the sea ghouls again one of the characters sticks his head into the water. Yep, Deep Ones. He takes a massive amount of damage (and facial scarring) but the other agents pull him out.

    Later they decide they should use this other spell that will (definitely) give them underwater breathing. They cast it on the same agent and his lungs fill with water. He’s gasping around on the deck of the boat, they figure he can’t breath air and needs to breath water. They kick him over the edge. Nope, turns out he was just drowning and now he’s dead.

    There’s a reason A-Cell have the no magic rule.

  3. I ran a Cthulhu adventure based on Walls of Eryx, which involved a members of the French Foriegn Space Legion. The lizard aliens were collecting “samples” from the human colonists (i.e. organs). Well the hapless Legionaires tracked the lizard aliens to an underground lair, which contained the poisonous atmosphere that the lizards needed to survive. The Legionaires had filters, so they were ok. When they finally encountered the Aliens, they psychically assaulted the Eugenics bred soldier from Nevada, whose psyche was more disciplined and rational, but should that rationality be compromised, he would slip into a psychosis much easier than most humans. (Higher San to resist, but double San loss if failed). Well sure enough his mind couldn’t take to strain on direct cerebral contact with an alien mind and he snapped. Believing he was “one with the lizards”, the hapless Legionaire stripped his survival gear and wandered into the alien mists, his arms open wide, bleeding from his orafices as the atmosphere ate away his tissues.

  4. One of the better character deaths in a game I’ve ran went so in a Cthulhu Dark Age game .

    Our main protagonist a haggard, landless knight named Wolfgang on the trail of a monk scrivener who made off with a monasteries collection of unholy books, using them to cause trouble as he worked his way to the East.

    The monk used the information contained in the books to find the location of an ancient, pre-human necropolis where he convinced the locals to tear down a standing stone, so he could ‘cleanse’ the area (which was feared by the villagers) of evil. What he actually did was open up a gate to the nether-regions of the Dreamlands. A thick fog engulfed the entire area and denizens of nightmare strode forth, hidden and slaughtered the villagers, their livestock and anyone foolish enough to enter the fog ridden region. The monk of course escaped, leaving the fog behind to slow his pursuers.

    Wolfgang, while in pursuit came upon a fleeing woodsman named Erkenbald, who told of a demonic fog, a hell that spewed forth from the devil haunted ruins. He told him of the monk and how he convinced the villagers to pull down the black stone.

    After running around in the fog fighting ghasts and a gug, which was brought down by a devastating lance charge by the knight (great rules for lance charges in the game btw-uses horse damage bonus!!) Eventually after finding all the villagers slaughtered and the source of the corruption. They decided that the only way to stop the horror was to return the stone to it’s upright position, they tried but didn’t have enough strength (Wolfgang’s horse was gravely injured by the gug mentioned earlier and mercifully put down). They needed the help of draft horses or oxen.

    Erkenbald knew where the next village was and where to get oxen. Wolfgang used his knightly station to commandeer two oxen and the two heroes fought their way through the mist back to the necropolis.

    While hooking up the ropes around the standing stone a gigantic gug approached noisily. Wolfgang ran towards the gug to give Erkenbald time to hook the oxen to the stone. The gug came upon the brave knight, rending his shield and forcing him to retreat and harry the gug as best he could. With the oxen finally at the ready, the gug now tired of playing ‘ring around the rosey’ with Wolfgang turned his attention to the now grunting oxen and the noisome Erkenbald, who was trying with all his might to urge the now terrified oxen on. Hearing the gug’s approach, rather than run, he continued to pull the nose rings of the oxen with all his might. Straining, tears and sweat streaming down his face, he screams as the gug breaks through the fog, towering over him. He yells a final curse, “GOD CURSE YOU…UNCLEAN FOULNESS…BACK TO HELL!! BACK TO HELL!!” With his last action as the gug bears down upon him, wass to hook both his arms through the oxen’s nose rings. He closes his eyes, the gug grabs him and starts to rend his flesh with it’s four claws. The terrified oxen, now frothing in terror bleat and buck. The monstrous gug yearning to feast on Erkenbald’s flesh lifts what’s left of him to it’s maw….thus pulling the oxen forward, returning the stone to it’s original place, closing the gate.

    THE END.

  5. We’re playing “Future/Perfect”, and the investigators are going to encounter a Serpent Person trapped by a group that they think are villains (it’s actually more complex). He’s help up on a wall by an X-shaped set of bars, as well as being in a heavily-reinforced room with a locked door in an otherwise ridiculously secure facility. The Serpent Person is supposed to be of at least human intelligence, and capable of casting any number of illusions; it will try anything to get the investigators to release it. And that’s about all the information in the scenario, so I have to plan what it’s actual attempt will be.

    I don’t want to make it too hard for the players, but one of them is both genre-savvy and playing a paranoid military type who shoots everything (and is very, very good at shooting). I decide to give them an encounter that they should be able to see through pretty easily, but that will look like a good effort on the part of the Serpent Person.

    Instead of disguising itself, the Serpent Person will first appear as itself to the investigators, but will snarl and hiss at them like an angry but unintelligent beast. Then it will appear to flicker and fade, as if an illusion is being dispelled. It will then look like a heavily injured female child who is clearly exhausted and terrified. While she won’t be too coherent, she’ll say things to imply she’s been secured and tortured here, that her captors were using her magic powers for something, that she had tried to scare them away by looking like a monster, and that she was too exhausted and hurt to continue. Then, if they released it or killed it, it would revert back to it’s actual form. It would look like a clever double-bluff, but any genre-savvy player would know not to trust a small girl in a horror game.

    Then, during the session, Mr. Genre Savvy and paranoid had something come up and had to leave early. I didn’t have time to rethink the encounter, so I ran with what I had. The other PCs were a very naive housewife (who’s only child had been stillborn), a drug dealer and former model with a very high APP but a low CON, and a well-intentioned Fish and Wildlife Service agent.

    The housewife and agent are instantly sympathetic and want to take the girl down, but the agent is still a little suspicious, and the dealer a bit more. It occurs to one of them that they could at least ease the girl’s obvious pain by giving her a small dose of the morphine that the dealer took from a nearby stockpile of medical supplies a few minutes earlier. If she is a real threat in disguise, the morphine could also render her a bit less dangerous. They all like the idea, so the dealer rolls his Pharmacy skill to calculate the right dose for a child of her size. He actually has a pretty high skill in Pharmacy, but the dice come up 100.

    I rule that he gives her a dose that’s obviously far too large, and she immediately becomes totally unconscious – it’s not even clear if she’s still alive, since if she’s breathing it isn’t enough to be visible. The dealer says, “Oops, I figured, you know, that’s about half what I usually take…” The housewife and agent panic and start screaming at the dealer to take her down off the bars immediately. He says, “okay, okay”, takes her down, and tries to feel her pulse. At this point, the adult serpent person he’s cradling in his arms reverts to its natural form, and shreds him.

    After about five seconds of this sinking in, someone says, “oh god, we underestimated a little girl in a horror game…” The genre-savvy player is not impressed when he hears what happened.

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