Trail of Cthulhu - Not So Quiet.pdf - Trail of Cthulhu - siemszak

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

Contents

NOT SO QUIET

Credits

Publisher: Simon Rogers

Author: Adam Gauntlett

Layout: Beth Lewis

Artwork: Jérôme Huguenin

Playtesters

Alexandra Gödecke, Miriam Walter, Anke Wetlaufer, Reni, Nico Walter, Hubertus

Walter, Daniel Lotz, Clemens Huder, Joachim Krisch, Arne Gödecke, Daniel &

Desiree Heald, Ian Heald, Matthew Hunt, Sue Isle, Alicia Smith and Rob Masters,

David vdB, & Garry Winterton, William Bargo, Keith Callison, Donald Taylor, Will

Norman, Bob Norman, Andrew Millar, Dale Elvy, Glenn Ballam, Igor Divjak.

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

Table of Contents

Synopsis

Skeletons in the Closet

The Awful Truth

The Bell Tolls

The Spine

Where is Pombal?

Bribery and Corruption

Scenes

His Enthusiasm is Commendable (Injured)

The Last Thing You

Remember (Injured)

Amateur Archaeology

The Anointed

Seeing France (Posted)

Cleaning Duty

Hate

Cheery

Emma ‘Cheery’ Patterson

God’s Away on Business

Arrival at the Hospital

Pombal asks for Help

Pre-Generated Characters

The Cult of Mordiggan

Paul Remi

Night Time Perambulations (Injured)

Francis Patterson

Meeting with a Cult Member

Evelyn Ryce

Meeting with a Senior Cult Member

Sergeant Terry Randall

One thing after Another (Posted)

Hauptmann Ranulf Keppel

Checkmate

Private Benjamin Morel

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

Not So Quiet

A Purist/Pulp Trail of Cthulhu scenario set

at a military hospital during the GreatWar.

skill Cop Talk is replaced by the skill

Military Talk , which has exactly the

same intent and works the same way,

except that now it is used on military

men rather than the police. Players

shouldn’t assume that they all must

have Military Talk ; many soldiers

on the Front were only very recently

civilians, and may know little about

the army and its rituals. The Keeper

should feel free to rule that Military

Talk has a different function when

applied to different armies; French,

American or colonial troops may not

get quite the same response from a

British officer than they would from

officers of their own nationality,

while German troops caught behind

enemy lines can expect a reduced

result from using Military Talk

in a British encampment. Reduced

does not mean negligible; serving

officers, particularly career military,

have a kind of brotherhood that often

transcends national barriers, though

a linguistic barrier may be more

difficult to deal with.

SYNOPSIS

The characters are either serving

soldiers or on the front line during

the War, for whatever reason. They are

sent to Military Hospital Number Five,

either because they are wounded, or

because they have been posted there.

Credit Rating functions normally,

except that the medium of exchange (if

such is needed) is cigarettes, pots of jam,

records, and food packages from the Red

Cross, all of which are prized items in the

barter economy of the Front. Characters

with higher Credit Rating can be

assumed to have better access to these

forms of ersatz currency. This may allow

them to buy special favours from those in

authority, or just make their own lives a

little bit more comfortable. Encourage

the player to specify what each point of

Credit Rating represents, as this may

prove useful later. A collection of French

pornographic photographs would make

excellent bribes in many circumstances,

for example, but might not work so well if

offered to a nurse. This change in the way

Credit Rating works has no bearing on

class; social differences are just as they

were before everyone put on a uniform.

It is spring 1917 and yet another Push

is on; broken men are being sent back

for medical care every hour of every

day. The hospital, being so close to

the Front, is not immune to danger. It

has been shelled twice in the last two

weeks, and gassed once. The staff are

shattered, driven to the limits of human

endurance by overwork and fatigue.

Casualties are high, and the burial

parties are constantly busy.

Worse is to come. A group of dedicated

people working to further the ends

of the Charnel God are attempting

to contact that grim entity. Unless

stopped, they will start a chain of events

that will end with the camp being

utterly destroyed, killing everyone in

the hospital.

Purist or Pulp?

As written, the bleak setting and plot favour a Purist game. This is reflected

in the damage dealt to the characters at the beginning and in the heavy Stability

losses in the final encounters. The protagonists should always feel as though they

are on the edge of losing everything.

That said, there’s nothing to prevent the game being played Pulp.The wartime

setting could favour two-fisted action just as easily as mind-numbing horror;

after all, this is the same Great War that spawned Bulldog Drummond, the Saint,

and Biggles, and was formative in the development of Lord Peter Wimsey and

Hercule Poirot.

Keepers who would prefer a Pulp game should therefore downgrade the

damage dealt in the first scenes and the stability checks in the final scene, to give

the protagonists a slightly less fraught adventure. Damage dealt in the initial

Injured scene should be a die only, not a die +3; this means that a successful

Athletics/Fleeing check in that scene reduces the damage to a die -3. The

Stability checks in the final dream sequences should be reduced to difficulty 3,

with Zenna’s being difficulty 5.

Some characters will be serving in the

military, since the scenario takes place

at a British military hospital. However

any character of any nationality could

end up dragged, bleeding and possibly

unconscious, to Military Hospital

Number Five. Civilians might also end

up there, particularly if they have been

wounded or if they are working for the

military. The characters do not know

each other prior to this scenario.

For the purposes of this scenario the

TRAIL OF CTHULHU

Not So Quiet

The Awful Truth

A nurse, Zenna Borden, has been

driven mad both by the horrors she

has been exposed to and by her own

consciousness of sin. When she last

served at Military Hospital Number Five

she had an affair with an infantry officer

(since killed) and became pregnant. She

managed to wangle a leave and went to

England to have an illegal back-alley

abortion. Since then she has become

convinced that what she did was not

only wrong but unforgivable, and is

determined somehow to make amends.

She wants her baby back and will do

anything, sacrifice anyone, to make that

happen.

The Forbidden Zone

This is a story about loss and the destruction of hope. The antagonists are all

people who would never have come into contact with the Mythos had it not been

for the War, and who will now commit any atrocity to get back the lives that they

used to have. The protagonists are, in a sense, no different from the antagonists;

the Mythos would never have touched their lives, had not the War intervened,

and now they too have to do what they can to stave off an awful fate.

This is reflected in the land about them. It was once fertile Belgian farmland,

with houses and towns much like their own, that have now been almost completely

destroyed, the men and women who lived there having been killed or turned out

of their homes. There is no reason, in early spring 1917, for those on the front

lines to think that the War will ever end; if anything, the March Revolution in

Russia is a grim suggestion that the whole world may be about to tear itself apart

in a frenzy. Nor are the Russians the only ones on the edge. There are strikers in

Britain and the U-Boat menace is wreaking havoc on shipping, the Germans are

starving, the French have been bled dry and their army is on the verge of mutiny,

the Americans are still too proud to fight (according to Woodrow Wilson, though

that will soon change), and the Western Front is one long open wound across the

heart of Europe. Not one decisive battle has been fought on the Front, but there

have been plenty of bloodbaths. The Somme, both battles of Ypre and Verdun

have demonstrated the cost of aggressive action. A British attempt to open things

up on another front ended with half a million dead at Gallipoli.

There is every reason to despair. The antagonists in this story have done

exactly that, and if asked, would no doubt argue that theirs is the only logical,

sensible course of action. If everything they ever believed in is about to be or has

already been destroyed, what price sanity?

She believes that the spirit of her child is

talking to her, telling her how to break

the bonds of death and get her baby

back again. Thanks to her devotions and

sacrifices (she has sent over fifty souls to

the Charnel God, and has become adept

at covert murder) she has gained magical

power, and thanks to her ‘healing hands’

she now has a small group of followers,

the terminal cases whose pain is eased

by her ability and who hope that she,

somehow, can make them whole again.

Her goal is to conduct a ritual that will

contact Mordiggan directly, and then

bargain with that entity for the life of her

baby and for the lives of her followers.

to each other and to the War. Soon

afterward they arrive at the Military

Hospital, where they discover (either

on their own or because they are told

so by the priest, Pombal), that all is not

well. Patients are dying by the dozen and

Pombal suspects a spiritual corruption.

Death is all around them, and death’s

servants, the ravens, seem unnaturally

interested in events at the Hospital. The

cult, meanwhile, continues to carry out

its daily routine of exchanging their

pain, passing the agony that they should

be suffering on to other patients. It is

this that is increasing the death rate;

the extra agony, passed on either

through medication or food, is causing

the other patients to die before their

time. The cult may attempt to subvert

the characters, or the characters may

try to expose the cult. The priest,

Pombal, goes missing, and his corpse

is discovered, showing the characters

that the cult, for all its protestations,

is willing to do what it takes, murder

anyone, to get what it wants. In the final

scene the cult tries to expunge all of its

pain, appealing to Mordiggan while

offering no sacrifice in return. It is this

that will destroy the cult, and possibly

also the Military Hospital and everyone

in it. The characters will have to defeat

the cult, breaking down the members’

last pillars of sanity, if they are to have a

hope of saving the Hospital.

Mordiggan will be unwilling to bargain,

and his reaction to this suggestion will

be enough to destroy the camp and kill

everyone in it.

If the characters are to succeed, they

must stop Borden from carrying out

this ritual.

The Spine

The action opens with the characters in

an ambulance convoy on their way to

Military Hospital Number Five. Their

first challenge is to avoid being blasted

to fragments as their convoy is shelled;

this conflict introduces the characters

Trail of Cthulhu - Not So Quiet.pdf

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