Restenburn’s Reavers, Session 1.5 - The Malevolent Manor of Montecrux

Trudging through snow, four adventurers approached a decrepit mansion.

• Cornyx, a Level 1 Warrior-Priest of the Living Flame. 

• Dr. Holmen, Level 1 Chirurgeon.

• Malakai, Level 1 Templar of the Crucified God. 

• Yvonne, Level 1 Illusionist.

Yvonne was here to reclaim an ancestral birthright. The others were just hoping the tavern hearsay about a stash of alchemical gold was true (and that the rumour of ghostly hauntings wasn't). 

Water-clogged stormclouds blotted out the dying sun and a thick sea-mist had rolled in from the jagged coastline of the Empty Sea, so Cornyx lit his torch and Yvonne cast Light. They began a thorough perimeter sweep of the house, prying open boarded-up windows and searching for tracks. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, they carefully breached the main doors.

Art from TSR's "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh"

The interior of Montecrux’s mansion was littered with bird shit, crumbled plasterboard and patches of mould. Despite the dismal conditions, the party noted the stonework of the building was still of sound construction. The same couldn’t be said of the main staircase snaking up to the second floor, whose steps were rotten and decayed. Seeing no immediate dangers beyond the architectural, the party split up to clear the first floor of threats and search for valuables. 

Yvonne and Malakai began sorting through the manor’s library, finding a trio of magical treatises that, if refurbished, could be sold for a healthy sum of silver. Meanwhile, Cornyx sifted through a document-laden drawer in the study - finding a hidden compartment containing a vial of liquid with the appearance of blood-tainted sea water. Dr. Holmen begged him not to engage in the rigorous scientific test of “sipping some” until after they had cleared the dungeon. The fur-clad zealot begrudgingly agreed, stashing the unidentified potion for later.

As Yvonne and Malakai left the library, they heard an ear-splitting screech from the next room. Rallying with the others, they searched the adjoining sitting room but came up empty-handed. Muttering to themselves about ghosts, they searched the rest of the floor carefully, finding a kitchen, wash-room, refectory, sauna and stairway to a basement.

Right before they finished their sweep, a loud crashing noise came from down a hallway - caused by a giant driver ant gnawing its way through a boarded-up window.

The critter gnashed its jaws at them in a territorial display, before retreating into an unexplored side room. The insect was a bizarre sight - someone had obviously dressed it up in heavy furs (even adorning its foremost leg with a shiny silver necklace) and the thing had a cordyceps-like fungus growing out of its head. 

Eyeing the ant’s jewellery with avarice, the adventurers chased after it, entering a debris-stridden room whose fireplace was filled with yellow mould. Malakai and Cornyx braved the clacking of the ant’s massive mandibles; hacking it to death with their blades. Its mutilated corpse fell backwards into the thick carpet of mould and kicked up a cloud of spores. Unwilling to risk death from respiratory failure, they threw burning pitch onto the patch of fungus and left to let it burn off.

Soon after, the party began to hear noises from above them as well. Dr. Holmen’s keen ears picked out two sources of sound - muffled cries for help and the skittering of some many-legged thing, too light on its feet to be another driver ant. He presumed it was a giant spider, eliciting nervous muttering from the assembled mercenaries.

Steeling themselves, they readied weapons and carefully advanced to the second floor.

More art from the Sinister Secret

The upper storey windows were unboarded - providing weak lighting from the world’s dying sun. The adventurers crept down a hallway, checking the two rooms on their right and discovering near identical chests in each. Voicing concerns about mimics, Cornyx, Dr. Holmen and Malakai all piled into the first room, spending several minutes interrogating every detail about the chests. Meanwhile Yvonne was left alone to guard the hallway, armed with nothing but a staff with Light cast on it.

As she glanced back to the dithering of her comrades, she heard a scuttling noise down the hall - turning to see the second floor’s eight-legged resident trying to bushwhack her. She grabbed Dr. Holmen to use as an impromptu human-shield, but he pushed the panicked wizard away. Thankfully the spider missed Yvonne - its spray of webs instead ripping out a section of ceiling and showering her with plaster dust. It then retreated, using the plume of debris to cover its escape.

Accepting that the chest probably wasn’t a disguised aberration, the adventurers decided to deal with the immediate threat first. However, before they could pursue Yvonne’s arachnid attacker, they heard gabbering in an unknown dialect approaching their rear. Taking cover, they saw four spear-wielding humanoids stagger up the staircase. The diminutive creatures were fungal in origin - flesh the consistency of mashed potatoes and glue.

The Moss Goblins!

Though Dr. Holmen didn’t understand these Moss-Goblins' language, the cadence of their shouts sounded like someone calling out for a lost dog. The party, realizing that they’d probably beaten these creatures’ insectoid pet to death, decided to double down on violent solutions and launched an ambush. Under a flurry of crossbow bolts, sword blades and throwing axes, three Moss-Goblins perished messily.

The lone survivor barely escaped with its life, fleeing in terror back down the staircase. 

Satisfied their flank was secure from wandering monsters, the mercenaries stacked up on the web-covered doorway to the spider’s den. Cornyx, waving a torch and screaming prayers to the Living Flame, breached the door. He saw a human-sized bundle of webs yelling for help in the corner, whilst the spider hid deeper in the room.

The priest ripped the hostage free, but not before the spider leapt out and scored a savage bite into his chest. Yvonne and Dr. Holmen daisy-chained a flask of incendiaries to Malakai, who tossed it past Cornyx into the room - covering the webs in tar pitch.

Additional Sinister Secret art

Kicking the spider away, Cornyx dragged the unknown man through the door - tossing his torch into the sticky morass of flammable pitch as he did so. After Malakai slammed the door shut, the party heard the monster’s last panicked movements before its nest was totally consumed by flame. 

Thankfully the house was ice-ridden enough to not combust, so the adventurers had a spare moment to patch up Cornyx’s injuries and interrogate their rescuee. The man said his name was “Ned” and that he was a mushroom forager from Restenburn who had foolishly taken shelter in the manor. When asked where his supplies, mushrooms and other equipment was, he claimed that Cornyx must’ve burned it all along with the spider. Unable to confirm or deny Ned's story, the party ignored his pleas for everyone to flee the haunted manor and press-ganged him into being their torchbearer.

Searching the now cleared floor, the adventurers found no mimics. But they did find a scroll of Hold Person and a stash of recently-hidden diamonds which Ned desperately claimed no knowledge of (no-one believed him). Yvonne also recovered four paintings from an old art gallery, all created by James Montecrux himself. The first three were beautiful depictions of the mansion before the coming of the Eternal Winter - definitely valuable, but she staunchly refused to sell any of her ancestor’s creations. The last was half-finished, but appeared to depict a sea cave looking out onto the Empty Sea. 

Making their way back downstairs, the adventurers stopped briefly to recover loot from the smouldering corpse of the dead ant, before approaching the basement stairs. As Malakai took the first step, a bone-chilling scream that morphed into a deranged giggle was heard from the dark basement - rapidly approaching the foot of the stairs.

Ned begged everyone to retreat, but Yvonne pulled out the scroll of Detect Magic (that she’d liberated from Sir Hancock’s corpse) and smugly identified the noise as a Magic Mouth spell. Casting Light on a brick, she tossed it down the stairs - illuminating a section of a dusty wine cellar.

However, as the adventurers descended into the decrepit basement, they noticed a plate-mail clad corpse collapsed among the remains of a wine rack. The man was dressed similarly to Malakai, in the vestments of the Crucified God’s followers. He was also several days dead - his neck horribly broken from where something had violently thrown him into the wine rack. With Detect Magic still active, Yvonne announced that the armour was in fact enchanted - although she couldn’t yet tell with what.

As the wizard knelt down to perform a thorough arcane appraisal, the other adventurers busied themselves searching for loot stashes and secret doors. After all, a horde of alchemical gold might actually be hidden here if someone had cast a 2nd Level spell to ward the basement against intrusion. Their diligence was rewarded, as Malakai announced he’d found a camouflaged door on the far wall.

This caused Ned to groan audibly, before throwing his torch at Yvonne and trying to flee back up the stairs. He only made it two steps before Cornyx body-slammed him into unconsciousness. The adventurers breathed a sigh of relief upon realising their traitorous conscript had missed Yvonne with his improvised missile, instead striking the dead crusader. Then the wizard screamed a warning that she’d identified the “enchantment” - an Animate Objects curse.

Y-17 Trauma Harness

The torch’s impact awoke the bewitched armour; it surged to its feet and threw a punch that would’ve caved Yvonne’s chest in if she hadn't scrambled out of the way. Thanks to her advice, Cornyx and Malakai knew armour was the threat (not the dead templar imprisoned in it) so they showered attacks onto its joints - severing an arm.

The armour gave as good as it got, delivering a gut-punch that would’ve ruptured Cornyx’s internal organs if he hadn’t no-sold it by channeling the Living Flame. Before the construct could wind up another haymaker, Dr. Holmen scooped up the Light-enchanted brick from the floor and pitched it straight into its dented chestplate.

The “magical” brick impacted with a burst of crackling energy, causing the armour to collapse into a smouldering pile of wreckage. Yvonne, having recovered from her near death experience, began hypothesising how the Light spell might’ve somehow reacted with the armour’s curse. Meanwhile, Malakai gave the mutilated body its last rites, Cornyx ate half a ration (burning the rest as a sacrifice to the Living Flame) and Dr. Holmen listened at the secret door, confirming that no one had audibly reacted to the commotion of battle.

Rallying themselves for a confrontation, and leaving the concussed Ned tied up on the floor, the party threw open the secret door and surged inside the hidden room. Within was a sight completely different from the rest of Montecrux’s Manor, a large, well-lit and relatively clean basement. It had a table, foodstocks, fireplace and a row of beds that were obviously being used as living quarters for a dozen people. Indeed, one of them was staring straight at the party, mouth agape.

Even more art from the Sinister Secret!

The heavily tattooed stranger lurched up from his chair and ran towards a door on the opposite side of the room - likely to fetch reinforcements. Malakai produced a pistol (also liberated from Sir Hancock’s corpse) and demanded he surrender.

The man told Malakai to go fuck himself, so Cornyx threw a nearby bar stool at him, cracking the man painfully in the back. Malakai followed suit, throwing a chair at the man’s legs, causing him to fall and smash his head on the stone floor. They ran up to disarm him, but he was already twitching fitfully in a rapidly-expanding pool of blood.

With the threat eliminated, the party swept the room - finding a small stash of smuggled goods from the Central Territories, silks and alcohol mostly. Yvonne swore under her breath; a gang of criminals must be using her dead ancestor’s manor to run a smuggling ring. They also found a secret passage to the sitting room where they'd heard the shriek from (in retrospect, definitely another Magic Mouth ward).

Aside from the double-doors the smuggler had run towards, the basement also contained an entrance to a small bedroom and a boarded-up doorway which had “DANGER. DON’T FUCKING OPEN IT.” scrawled on it in the common-tongue.

As Yvonne began to search the bedroom and the meat-shields stared warily at the fortified door, Dr. Holmen knelt next to the double-doors and listened carefully for any reinforcements. He didn’t hear any sound of activity, but he did smell something.

The sea.

(I used a modified version of TSR's "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" for this starting dungeon. I think it's OK, but can be quite linear and lacks any meaningful opportunity to engage in negotiation or similar non-combat gameplay. Still, as something to launch into for the first session, you could definitely do a lot worse. Once I've finished running my players through this dungeon, I'll attach the hand-drawn maps - of varying quality - that I used in this session.)

Restenburn’s Reavers, Session 1 - A Cold Open

The world grows cold. 

A decade ago a new Ice Age began, dubbed the “Eternal Winter” by those who survived the subsequent famine, social upheaval and mass violence. Madmen whisper that the Sun is dying, its energy devoured by a nameless entity from beyond the stars.

Most of mankind fled to the “Central Territories” - hot, equatorial land with rich soil that can still support crops. But the Territories are densely overpopulated, riddled with starvation and disease, and ruled by a sorcerous madman. So many instead seek out a life in the “Frontier”, the icy extent of the known world. 

Frostpunk Concept Art

The river barge came to a sudden halt. Molan Tala, the dark-skinned woman from the Territories helming the ship, shivered in the inescapable cold as she consulted her Pseudodragon. It had recently returned from one of its regular bout of aerial scouting, and it whispered something concerning into her ear. Frowning, she turned to those hired to protect the barge on its route to the Frontier city of Restenburn:

• Cornyx, Level 1 Warrior-Priest of the Living Flame. 

• Dr. Holmen, Level 1 Chirurgeon.

• Malakai, Level 1 Templar of the Crucified God. 

• Yvonne, Level 1 Illusionist.

All four adventurers had their reasons for fleeing the Territories, chief among them the Wizard of the Pale Tower. Since seizing power, the crazed sorcerer-tyrant had outlawed all religions that didn’t worship him as the One True God, and made a habit of executing any rival magic user who refused to bend the knee. At least, in this icy hell-hole, they could escape his long reach. 

Molan’s Pseudodragon squealed an explanation in its uncanny mimicry of human speech: there was a suspicious blockage beyond the next bend in the Resten River. Molan directed the mercenaries to deal with it, whilst she and her two brothers, Ali and Hakim, guarded the boat. When the Pseudodragon was asked why the obstruction was unusual, the reptile squawked that it was shiny and smelled weird.

The adventurers groaned. That didn’t sound good.

A short hike through the freezing wilderness confirmed their suspicions. A naval chain stretched taut across the river, threatening any ship which tried to force a way through. The chain was anchored to a crank inside a fortified camp, consisting of three tents behind a log palisade. Within, two bow-wielding men were visibly keeping a watch on the treeline. Dr. Holem noted their steamy breath was both unusually hot and reeked of the rotten-egg smell of stinkdamp.

The Siege of Derry

After dithering for several minutes and nearly getting spotted, Malakai and Yvonne decided to approach the camp - eliciting a cry from the sentries to identify themselves “in the name of Morlock the Lawgiver, the rightful Baron of Restenburn!”. The rest of the camp soon woke up and readied themselves for a confrontation; four more rebels armed with spears and axes, plus a chainmail-clad warrior clutching a flintlock pistol and falchion - the ragtag outpost’s commander.

The pair explained themselves to the commander, who introduced his men as the “Brotherhood of the Lawgiver” and himself as “Sir Hancock”. Hancock claimed the Brotherhood was fighting a war of liberation against Restenburn's town council, who had launched a coup after the previous Baron died on campaign 5 years ago. Yes, the traitors had imprisoned the late Baron's youngest daughter and wife, but the eldest daughter had escaped and married the Lawgiver. Hence, Morlock was the legitimate ruler of this land and, as his representatives, the Brotherhood would need to inspect the barge (and confiscate cargo for the war effort). The two adventurers said they’d tell their vessel to comply with the search, and departed without mentioning Cornyx or Dr. Holmen - both still hiding in the treeline.

Soon, the barge rounded the riverbend and dropped anchor. The rebels prepared their inspection, with Hancock producing a scroll of Detect Magic and demanding the crew lay down their weapons. They agreed, and Yvonne soon approached the assembled paramilitaries with a piece of parchment, explaining she held the ship’s cargo manifest. As the boarding squad expectantly stepped forward to examine it, they were promptly blasted in the face with her disguised scroll of Colour Spray.

With half the outpost now suffering from grand mal seizures, the ambush was swift and bloody. Cornyx burst from his concealed position and embedded his fokos in the neck of a sentry, whilst the disorientated Hancock had his throat opened by Malakai’s bastard sword. The commander collapsed to the ground, his wound spewing foul-smelling sulphurous smoke. The surviving rebels threw down their weapons and pleaded for their lives, barring the man who tried to flee for the treeline. He made it four paces before Dr. Holmen’s crossbow bolt punctured his occipital bone.

The adventurers took stock of the aftermath - four prisoners and their stash of stolen trade goods wasn’t a bad haul. Dr. Holmen, for his part, conducted an impromptu autopsy of a dead soldier - discovering their body had been colonised by a symbiotic, sulphur-based organism. It granted them immunity to poison and resistance to the cold, along with God-knows-what-else. Upon interrogation, the prisoners explained it was a blessing from the Lawgiver, received after drinking a foul-smelling golden liquid during the Brotherhood's initiation rites. The adventurers filed that information away for later, reboarded the barge, and left before rebel reinforcements arrived.

Two uneventful days later, they arrived at Restenburn. The Frontier city was an imposing sight, built upon cyclopean ruins that dated far before the earliest recorded settlement of the area. Restenburn Keep towered above the rest of the town, constructed from a massive pair of hollow stone towers standing over 150m tall. Even more impressive was the network of hissing steam pipes crisscrossing the settlement, providing the heat necessary to sustain life in the frozen Frontier. The pipes all originated from a semi-spherical brick building adjacent to the hollow towers. Clearly there was some form of magic at play, generating all this heat.

The barge sailed below a fortified exterior bridge which was protected by the flinty-eyed soldiers of the “Wallmen”, Restenburn’s town guard (read: military junta), and their alchemical flamethrowers. Passing unaccosted, they docked with the Crescent Moon, a merchant vessel anchored in the harbour. Here, the party was greeted by Khadiga Tala, the merchant who’d hired them for the protection job.

Smiling with a mouth full of glittering silver teeth, she waved over the buyers of the cargo - a strange group of wizards wearing lead-plated robes. They introduced themselves as the “Nurturers of the Sacred Glow”, unloaded numerous small lead boxes from the barge, and carefully carried them towards the steam-pipe building.

Satisfied with their execution of the contract, Khadiga paid the party and offered to buy the loot they’d “liberated” from the rebels, albeit with the usual 25% import tariff. Else they could try their luck with the Wallmen (who’d probably just confiscate it all without paying a dime). The adventurers agreed to her deal, whilst also deciding to exchange their rebel prisoners for a sizable bounty with the Wallmen at Restenburn Keep. At the end of the day’s escapades, they’d accumulated enough money to indulge in some much needed hot baths and strong drinks.

By the following morning, the soldiers of fortune were relaxing in a well-heated tavern; sipping mulled wine, nibbling spiced fish and being wholly unsure of what to do next. Yvonne took the opportunity to make a proposal to the assembled mercenaries:

She’d travelled to the Frontier to inherit the abandoned manor of her second-uncle, James Montecruz, a powerful alchemist who was thought to be dead (he’d been missing for half-a-decade). Yvonne wanted help reclaiming her ancestral manse, and offered an equal share of any treasure recovered as compensation. It quickly came to light that Restenburn was abound with rumours about the old manor hiding hordes of alchemical gold and it being haunted by soul-devouring ghosts raised up by Montecruz's unspeakable sorceries. This only served to further pique the interest of her fellow adventurers, so all three agreed to lend their support.

Without further ado, they purchased some additional equipment, hired a handcart and struck out into the icy Frontier - seeking the Malevolent Manor of Montecruz.

The River Chain Encounter

(This was the first session of a campaign using Mellonbread's Begone FOE! system for playing OSR-style D&D. It did go for nearly ~6 hours, so I’ll be splitting the game report into two separate posts for the sake of readability and ease of reference.)

Some Changes For Last Things Last - Part 2

In my last post I gave some examples of (hopefully) fun, minimalistic additions to make to Baughman's apartment in Last Things Last. In this post, I'll be expanding on an oft-given piece of advice for LTL - to use the contents of the locker in Baughman's Cabin as an opportunity to seed future scenarios.

To this end, I put together the "Baughman Locker Jam" on the N@TO Discord to create a sizeable numbers of items that connect in some way to a published scenario/faction. Whilst we didn't quite approach a wholistic list, I'm still very pleased with how this Jam turned out. Many thanks for those who took part, and contributed a total of 11 submissions! I'll be displaying all of them here for posterity, and putting all of your preferred online handles next to your entries.

Now, I certainly wouldn't recommend dumping all of these in Baughman's poor little locker - just the ones for scenarios you want to run in the future. But for those you don't use, they can always make good entries to pad out any Green Box the Agents might stumble across in the future!

(Of note, whether examining these entries grants skill percentages and/or costs SAN, like a true Unnatural Tome does, is up to the Handler's discretion. If you were to do so, I'd limit the SAN loss to between 1 - 1D4 and cap skill percentages at 1 - 3%. And I wouldn't add any Rituals.)

Baughman's Locker Contents

1) Sentinels Of Twilight - By Dragoleaf

A thin manilla folder containing a series of files. The first are numerous missing person reports for children (between the ages of 3-14) lodged with the National Parks Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and numerous local law enforcement agencies. There's a great deal of crossover between this list and cases reported in the Missing 411 conspiracy theory - especially as the files are focused around disappearances in the United States' national parks.

Someone has exhaustively plotted out the last known locations of these missing people, and then superimposed that data over maps of American cave systems. While there is a disturbing correlation arising from this statistical comparison, it's nothing definitive. Additionally attached are diagrams of the internal structure of Earth - with the mantle scribbled out and annotated with: "ALL A LIE. N'KAI LIES BENEATH. WHAT DO THEY WANT WITH THE CHILDREN?". 

The final file is a crude sketch of a towering stick figure snatching up smaller figures - children.

2) Presence - By Dragoleaf

An intercepted communication from a Canadian non-profit, the Paragon Foundation, to an unknown recipient - dated 26/01/2000. It's a report on the "suspected presence of a sizeable population of Talents located in the CONUS. Intelligence suggests a potential psychic hot-spot within the state of Vermont. Our assets are not permitted to investigate south of the border, as Embassy Row has the Gods recalcitrant to authorize it. Stand by for further instructions".

The paper has been annotated with several scribbled writings in red pen - "What is a ‘Talent'?", "Gods = P.I.S.C.E.S?", "Must watch out for infestations.", "Fucking head-lice better stay out."

3) Hourglass - By Dragoleaf

A 1987 case file from the police department of Hourglass, Oregon. Its subject, Joseph Owens, claimed that a "little boy with the eyes of Lucifer", whom Joseph was unable to accurately identify, magically swapped bodies with him. Joseph testified that in the hour-long period that he was trapped in the young boy's body, he was sexually abused by laughing, masked men who spoke in bizarrely antiquated New England accents.

It was this story that Joseph used to explain why he had a total lack of knowledge regarding him raping, murdering and dismembering his wife of seven years, Candice Owens, and their four-year-old daughter, Jessica Owens. The case file states that an attached videotape, which Joseph had recorded himself, shows the man gleefully committing the inhumanly sadistic deed. Thankfully, the tape itself isn't present within Baughman's locker.

Joseph was successful in an insanity plea, with numerous psychologists attesting that he must have suffered a catastrophic mental break. Further research reveals the man later committed suicide in the Oregon State Hospital in 1993. A brief inquiry was held into how staff enabled him in taking his own life, but no findings were ever officially reported.

4) Kali-Ghati - By Dragoleaf

A very recent CIA intelligence report by clandestine service officer Timothy Ellis. It's entirely unclear how Baughman managed to get his hands on such restricted information.

The report regards Officer Ellis' preliminary investigation into "unexplained electromagnetic interference" in the southern Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, near the Durand Line (the Afghanistan-Pakistan border). Ellis was stationed out of Forward Operating Base Turner, in the Sar Hawza district of Afghanistan's Paktika province - under the cover of being a Major in the United State Army Signals Corps. Despite being ostensibly benign, Officer Ellis' report is still classified "TOP SECRET//SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-SECURITY STUDIES GROUP".

4) Music From A Darkened Room - By Dragoleaf

A poor-quality tape showing a trio of masked urban explorers performing a nighttime exploration through an abandoned suburban home. The atmosphere is oppressive, with the men complaining about hearing strange noises that the camcorder never picks up. Two explorers, including the cameraman, claim to hear a piano playing in the next room and move to investigate.

They become visibly disturbed upon realizing there's no one in the room, especially as both men are obviously able to hear the piano still playing in front of them.

When the explorers return to find the third explorer, they discover him standing in front of a mirror in the house's bathroom, smiling at them through the reflection. Without turning around, he calmly slits his own throat with a shard of glass. The man doesn't move, continuing to smile widely as blood gushes from his ruined throat - even as his face goes pale from exsanguination. The other two explorers scream and the camcorder is dropped - abruptly ending the footage.

Reviewing the footage in post and cleaning it up reveals an easily missed detail - at several points in the video the diminutive form of a wrinkled old woman (always completely naked) can be seen in the periphery of the frame. The explorers never notice her. She's always smiling widely - revealing something stuck between her teeth. It looks like hair.

6) Meridian - By Dragoleaf

An audio surveillance tape with an evidence tag identifying it being from 1998's New York FBI field office. It holds a recording of two unidentified female voices in muted conversation. 

VOICE ONE - “You can’t die, Kattie, you can count your cars forever. You’re gonna say thanks, aren’t you, Kattie?”

VOICE TWO - (Coughing.) "Th- thank you my Lady."

VOICE ONE - "Don't waste your gift Kattie. Your's is an eternal work."

VOICE TWO - (Continued coughing.) "Y- y- yes my Lady."

VOICE ONE - "Very good. As you were Kattie."

VOICE TWO - (Begins listing the make, model, license plate, occupants and approximate speed of cars. This continues for ~4 hours without any breaks, until the tape runs out.)

7) Observer Effect - By Tairbaz

A hastily written list of times (22:03:37, 18:46:16, 20:57:50) written on a piece of paper. 

The crumpled paper is stained with flecks of dried blood and has obviously been torn from a larger sheet. Agents with Science (Physics) 40%, or who succeed on a roll, note that the paper comes from the printout of a powerful supercomputer - the sort that processes complex physics and mathematical data. Unfortunately, the paper's origins are impossible to investigate further.

The first Agent to interact with the paper who succeeds an INTx5 roll realises the scribbled list is transcribed their own handwriting (0/1 SAN to the Unnatural). If the blood stain is examined forensically, it is found to be an exact match to that same Agent (0/1 SAN to the Unnatural).

8) CONTROL COPY - By Gravityspiker

A single manila folder with two files inside. The first file is a blurry copy of an arrest warrant for one “Jan Weever”, dated 06 February 1997. The listed crime is delinquent tax evasion, and the issuance court is located in Newark, New Jersey.

The second file is a death certificate for this “Jan Weever”, dated 17 November 1997 and issued by a county coroner in New Mexico. Weever's cause of death is listed as multiple gunshot wounds sustained during a shootout with state troopers and federal agents. No irregularities, notes, or other indications of unnatural incursions are present in the documents.

8) The Good Life - By Fee Fi Fo Fin

A ring-binder labeled “RHIZOME ‘87”. Inside are plastic sleeves, containing old newspaper clippings describing the ritual held by the Ku Klux Klan atop Stone Mountain in 1915. 

Other sleeves contain old, stained photographs of Ku Klux Klan rituals, including grainy photocopies of the Stone Mountain rituals. Notes in the margins, and upon torn pieces of paper, link these rituals to European occultism, particularly of the Salem witch trials and various witch trials in Spain and France. A hand-written note in the back of the binder reads as follows:

“Jean, 

This is all I was able to find, couldn’t tell ya what came of the rest of it. Send this along to Uncle Joe and see what he can tell you. It’s a far cry from what you were telling me, about your ‘friend’ Teddy, but maybe something will turn up. Ask him about Chile too, if any of those old files are kicking around. Best of luck.

Be Seeing You,

C.B.”

9) The Labyrinth: The Lonely - By Ceurelian

A sheaf of papers printed in the default layout of a Microsoft 7 Word document. The papers detail a fictional story about “Marcus”, a dark fantasy wizard that the audience seems to be expected to know, committing violent genocide against various Tolkien-style settlements. 

According to the story, each use of his magic spells rot Marcus’ body further until he degenerates into a skeleton animated solely by hateful magic. Amidst this stack of papers is a newspaper clipping outlining a 2011 mass shooting and suicide bombing of a rural Michigan police station, perpetrated by Marcus Wallace, social malcontent and member of a play-by-post D&D forum.

A lime green sticky note is stuck to the clipping, reading: “Jay Sanders”, “Ann Scottsdale,”, “Dan Portman”, “All ours. How did he know? Call Phone 3.”

10) The Labyrinth: Agent Renko - By Max/Owlbear

A manila folder containing a dossier with documents from both the CIA and NSA about suspected male and female Russian spies operating on U.S. soil from the period of 2006-2012. There are photographs of numerous suspected spies, with one particular collection featuring a handsome, slender man in sunglasses and a dark suit meeting with an individual who appears to be a male escort. Agents can later learn that this is Agent Renko of GRU-SV8 if they meet him. 

Several handwritten notes, varying calligraphy implying several authors, exist in the dossier’s margin: "potential unnatural connection?", "does MI6 know?", "not this one”, "would fuck", "why always carrying salt?", "Dagestani mountains?", and anything else the Handler desires.

10) Impossible Landscapes - By Idas

A small brass gear which, if incorporated into a clockwork device, never needs to be wound up. Agents who thoroughly inspect this anomaly lose 1/1D4 SAN to Unnatural.

A map of the Trivelino Mall, an abandoned property in western Massachusetts. Every word and symbol present has been redacted, except the pictograms of fire identifying the emergency exits.

“I Wear No Mask: The Shadowed Face of Gods, by Arthur Logan” - a book on syncretic religion which cherrypicks stories from different cultures into the story of the King In Yellow: a stranger who comes to town and is revealed to be the most high divinity in disguise. The writer, getting high on his own sociological supply, asserts this is the most important connection between faiths. Agents who study this book and fail a POWx5 roll, lose -5% from Anthropology and History, but gain +15% in Occult as they begin to believe the book’s ridiculous and ahistorical “truths”.

A partly melted video tape of an interrogation within a dingy cellar. Baughman sits opposite a subject who’s probably a Caucasian man in his 30s-40s. It’s hard to tell with the burlap sack covering their face. Baugman asks them to “start at the beginning”. The subject only gets to say “along the shore, the cloud waves break-” before the screen fills with static. Despite this, the garbled video tape proceeds for another hour, until the camera suddenly clears and reveals a single, still shot of a raging fire. The video then abruptly ends.

11) The Labyrinth: CMC / Sentinels of Twilight - By Salazaar

A waterlogged dossier from the Centre for the Missing Child consisting of papers, dating from 1982 to 2010, that pertain to the disappearance of Brandon McGill and other children of similar ages in the Hetch Hetchy area. The files include photos of the Devil’s Chair as well as interview transcripts from the missing childrens’ parents. 

The files include  notes in messy handwriting, growing increasingly distressed with the lack of solid leads for the case. The files appear to have been collected by Donna Stibbert of the CMC, in her mid-thirties at the time and now buried in Oak Woods Cemetery.

This was among the first cases the CMC investigated, already cold when they picked it up. Donna maintained a lifelong obsession with the McGill case, and briefed Joe Dawant on it when he joined the CMC in 2007. Neither ever came close to solving it.

Dawant’s knowledge of the McGill case can be used to insert him into Operation FULMINATE:

• Stage One Dawant is a helpful consultant, only getting involved if the Agents ask. Getting trapped in the station can be a good first exposure to the Unnatural for him. 

• Stage Two Dawant will go to the ranger station of his own volition, and will act irrationally and violently to protect and “rescue” (read: kidnap) McGill. 

• Stage Three Dawant is the most dangerous, as he will insist on bringing Mudede and possibly DePasqua as a field team to help solve the case, exposing them to the Unnatural.

12) Reverberations - By AstroCat

A heavy book with a dark green cover, and no author, titled "Space-Time: Perception or Law?". It argues that time is a manifestation that humans place upon themselves and it can, in theory, can be moved through by freeing the mind from the “shackles of Euclid”. 

Annotations in an unusual Southeast Asian dialect (that Agents with Anthropology 70% can identify as the native tongue of the Tcho-Tcho) criticize the book’s thesis. They state that while the mind can move through time, movement through space is only achievable by higher entities.

A newspaper clipping from the Chicago Times' cultural section discussing renovations of the Chauchua-American Advocacy Alliance HQ in Chicago after a racially motivated arson attack. An improvised incendiary was thrown through the street-facing window of the CAAA building by Anna McCallan, 54. McCallan was reported to have been shouting slurs and blaming the group for the death of her son, Charlie, in a botched drug deal last Saturday night. 

Officials have stated “no known connections between the CAAA and organized crime”. The letters “R. E. V. E. R. B.” have been circled in red ink and the words "no known" are crossed out.

A 2002 autopsy report of a woman struck by a car outside “Studio Underground”, a nightclub in downtown Chicago. The woman was under the influence of MDMA and an unknown alkaloid that toxicology could not identify. It appears that the autopsy report was seized by the DOJ and since classified as "TOP SECRET//SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-YELLOW COMBINE".

13) VISCID - By Blaborb

A CD in a clear jewel case. The case does not have an insert, but someone wrote the word "RECOIL" on the CD in black marker. The reflective layer of the CD is slightly discolored and has small holes in some places, the first signs of disc rot.

The CD contains a few dozen image files in TIFF format. All of these images appear to be low-quality scans of files pertaining to soldiers that were employed by the US Air Force in the 1990s: personnel record files, medical records, security clearances, etc.

The onsetting disc rot has resulted in artifacts in many of the images, making the information in them difficult to read. One of the better preserved scans is that of the death certificate of First Lieutenant Daniel Ulee, who apparently died in a training exercise in 1992. Also listed is his spouse, Isabella Ulee, and their home address: 19099 Pulaski Street, Billings, Montana.

14) Iconoclasts - By Akai

A very old OSS mission report from the 1940s, describing an Iraqi Delta Green operation. 

The paper is yellowed detailing the activities of a team of OSS Agents, their names long blacked out permanently and their local contact, a Tariq Mohammed Rassam, a well educated Iraqi who taught the OSS Agents an “Action of Sealing”. This ritual was employed against a nest of  flesh-eating desert "djinn" found in a cave - fires that consumed consciousness and thought. 

It is mentioned that Rassam is considered a long term asset in the region. A search for a man by that name brings up an alumni of the University of Cambridge, a Professor of the University of Mosul specialized in Mesopotamian archaeology, folklore and history who retired in 1997.

15) Puppet Shows And Shadow Plays - By Orvikino

A cream-colored fabric wrapped around a hollow wooden dowel. A thin leather cord is threaded through, presumably in order to hang  on a wall. When unrolled, it reveals a cross-stitch of a long poem, bordered by a very stock southwestern-style pattern and fringed at the bottom with colored feathers. It has the sense of the most schlocky gas station souvenir sold to easily-bilked tourists in the American southwest to hang in their suburban bathrooms. The poem reads:

“one day, Coyote sees Duck walking her ducklings,

Coyote asks her how she keeps them in a straight line,

Duck says she sews them together

with white horsetail hair every morning

and tugs on the line gently,

until the horsehair disappears,

that is how she keeps her ducklings in a row”

“as usual, Coyote leaves smiling, she sees a white horse

grazing in a nearby field,

she plucks a few strands of tail hair

and returns to her burrow”

“the next morning, one by one

she begins to sew her pups together”

“when she finishes, she gently tugs on the horsehair

and drags their little bodies along the ground,

Coyote tilts her head in dismay and becomes distraught,

she realizes she has killed her little pups”

–Laughter, by Crisosto Apache

16) Impossible Landscapes - By Suda

Inside the trunk contains a small Super 8 canister. There is a label in permanent marker that says “Macallister Building”. Once watched it just shows a two minute film of the small apartment building, with people walking past it. The film appears to have been taken in the early 1970s. 

Taped inside the canister are a series of polaroids and an old business card. Each polaroid is of a different entrance into the Mcallister Building, with one even including the roof access door. The business card is for a clown rental company, decorated with a faded monogram of a clown in a style reminiscent of the 1930s.

17) Impossible Landscapes - By Suda

On Reconstructing Extinct Languages by Dr. Ein K. Nige (“Drinking Eye”)

Language: English. Read time: 1 Week, +5% Anthropology, +20% Foreign Language (Tartessian)

An introductory text from 1890 on the science of language reconstruction. It is thorough yet written in a way that even a novice can understand. The book’s tone takes a sharp turn with a section on Tartessian. It ostensibly begins as an example of reconstructing a pre-Roman Hispanic language. However, midway through the first section, the professor announces a startling discovery: he has found a native Tartessian speaker, a little girl staying at a nearby hotel.

The unlikelihood that Nige found a speaker of a language last spoken in the 7th century BCE grows when he gives example sentences in Tartessian: ordering food at a hotel, making plans for a night at the theater, informing gendarmes of suspicious activity. These aren’t concepts that a language that old would be likely to have. 

Eventually one of the professor’s colleagues writes an epilogue. Dr. Ein has had a psychotic break. He claims the young girl on which he has based his Tartessian research comes out of the lake and returns to the lake after their interviews. As such he’s been quietly institutionalized.

If the player realizes that the little girl Ein mentions matches the description of Maude from Maude Goes to the Masked Ball they lose 1/1d6 SAN from Unnatural and gain 1 Corruption.