Ruminations and retorts, murder most foul, high tea with feeling

The morning brought an unexpected twist. Kalabos woke in Dawsons office/crashpad to find Dawson gone leaving a note saying he had been taken ill and had to be away for a short while. Kalabos thought this was fishy at best and decided to search the office for valuables which netted him nothing more than a half-full change jar. Kalabos was very happy but was soon ejected by Dawsons secretary Nancy who pointedly provided our hobo with a bar of carbolic soap. Kalabos remained confused about this throughout the session and offered the soap as a remedy for all ills when the opportunity arose.

After meeting together for brunch the group went on for a meeting with the Armitage Inquiry where they reported their progress so far and consistently dismissed Dawsons claims that it was all a conspiracy by some sort of fish-men hybrids. Armitage brought up references to the so called Deep Ones in the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Eltdown Shards. Lady Letrauc-De'ath replied she wasn't interested in anything unless it was mentioned in Tatler. The meeting ended with Armitage promising to do more research int the Deep Ones and The Esoteric Order of Dagon and the group as unresolved as before.

After stopping for a light lunch in Arkham our intrepid trio headed out to the cheap part of Kingsport for the meeting with Finlayson. Totally bypassing any house containing terrible old men they soon arrived at the ramshackle four-storey boarding house where Finlayson resided. Paying a local urchin to take care of the car our intrepid investigators proceeded to Finlaysons appartment where they found a scene of pure horror!

It seems someone had arrived at the apartment before them and dealt with Finlayson in a rather extreme fashion. The sight of his body parts strewn across the room tested the stability of our heroes and it was only through a real effort that they continued. Shambles examined he corpse and found that the visible wounds were in four parallel rows and razor sharp, something which he had never seen in his time in the wilds. Lady Lautrec De'ath searched the room and found some sort of notebook or diary left by the victim and decided to read it later.

Kalabos meanwhile went out to interrogate the urchin who revealed that Finlayson was a right git and that he'd seen somebody go into the building earlier that morning. The man was a stranger heavily wrapped in a large coat, scarf, gloves and a hat had entered the building. For some unknown reason Kalabos then took the young child up to view the corpse with predictable results. Our friends then left the scene only stopping to call the police anonymously and pay the urchin to give the police all the information they had excepting their prescence.

Realising that they may be in danger our group went to the nearest safe place in Kingsport, The Kingsport Yacht Club. Their host, Oliver Gardiner, was very happy to have them for high tea and reamained solicitous throughout though our lady was a little icked out by him. During the tiffin Shambles and Kalabos brought up Horace 'Diamond' Walsh into the conversation but their host never took the bait.

After tea Kalabos took the opportunity to have a look around the grounds. It seems that he and Shambles had struck upon the idea that Gardiner might have something in his office that might give them a clue towards what's going on. Kalabos' investigations were cut short by the onsite security but he did find that they carry guns. Meanwhile Shambles introduced Lady De'ath to one of the clubs waitresses, Annie, who our lady offered a future job to if she stayed at her current one and reported back to them. Poor orphan Annie with two brothers to support readily agreed so it seem that they have an ally in the enemy camp. Or another future corpswe.

This nut may be a tough one, perhaps Dawson may help if he returns.

Keepers ruminations

So besides just talking about what happened how do I feel about the game so far?

In my mind it was going to be slightly darker but I should have thought of my players more, there's always a certain element of farce in anything we play.

The system so far seems to work quite well. I like just giving the clues to the players and I'm hoping that I'm managing spends quite well though I'm not sure how to put in core clues with this style of play. I decided on one for the session, damned if I can remember which one, and I remember it felt just right at the time. It's difficult to use this part of the system when you're essentially making it up as you go along.

This brings me to the plot which so far has been pretty straightforward. I was at first worried about making a villain very obvious though I had very good reasons for doing so. For a first session with some new players I didn't want the mystery to be so murky that they felt that they weren't moving forward at all. Of course this doesn't mean that the plot is so obvious, it isn't like they can just walk up and shoot the person they see as the villain or that killing one person will stop the plan.

As an aside I love the use of the Cthulhu Mythos skill in the game. At this point I'd decided that blatantly revealing a villain would be good for the plot and my player so went with the consequences. The danger/reward aspect is very good and gives a different shape to the game.

Our heroes learn their plaice, they mussel their way into the club, Dawson gets the squids

Okay there was a bit of a delay but here we are again.

On leaving the Miskatonic Club our noble protagonists set out to unearth more clues. De'ath had to get her beauty sleep and Shambles went to do whatever shambles does but Kalabos and Dawson had other things on their minds.

Kalabos immediately went down to the Arkham docks to find out more about the yacht club. When I say immediately I actually mean he stopped off to sell his ill-gotten gains and borrowed suit before anything else. Not much was forthcoming but he did learn that hobos had been disappearing in the vicinity of the club though as they were hobos they may have just headed west.

Dawson called his trusty secretary Nancy to see if she could find out more about the yacht club and Oliver Gardiner. He also mentioned that Kalabos would be sleeping at the office and advised to her to lock up the whiskey and the valuable, he never revealed what the valuable is. Nancy got back to him in the morning saying she'd been hanging out with some of the boys from the precinct and learned some interesting news, whilst there's no hard evidence our Mr Gardiner has been linked to the mobster Horace "Diamond" Walsh. It may be nothing but perhaps there's something deeper going on. She also revealed that Walsh had recently married a Zora Smallidge, a girls from a small coastal village, only weeks after his wifes death. Rumour is that she is with child.

Armed with rumours and innuendo our stalwart bunch headed out to the Kingsport Yacht Club that evening, De'ath being surre to have a brace of her best purdeys in the trunk of the car. On arrival they found the club to not be quite what they envisioned. Though palatial it felt cramped, there was a film of yellowy cigar residue over everything and amongst pictures of dignitaries there were may paintings of eviscerated animals. Ushered through the club they were shown to the office of the president emeritus himself, Oliver Gardiner!

Gardiner failed to impress most of them. Whilst obviously well-bred he seemed just a little too bug-eyed, his handshake a touch too slimy and in general a smidgen too scaly for their tastes. None of our group held this against the man and were happy to engage in small-talk whilst Lady Lautrec-De'aths memebership details were taken. None that is except for Sam Dawson! Dawson seemed uncharacteristicly shaken and couldn't be brought into the conversation or even into the reach of Gardiner. Sharp eyes would have noticed the feverish gleam in his eye and how his hand kept moving towards his revolver.

Once our dear Lady was signed up our comrades removed to the dining room for their repast. Though Dawson was convinced to order he would not eat the food there whilst the others dug into the fine victuals with relish. Kalabos amused himself by trying to chat up a poor women whilst Shambles made firm friends with Colonel Haddock, an old English warhorse, and reminisced with him at length about killing natives in the far reaches of the empire. Meanwhile Dawson wandered over to the bar where the gnarled old barman, whilst giving him his Jack Daniels, warned him that he was in danger and passed him a note. Brave, stalwart Dawson immeditaely cacked his pants and demanded they leave. Lady De'ath agreed with him though this had more to do with the increasingly boorish behaviour of Shambles and Kalabos than anything else. Suffice to say they decamped to the Lautrec-De'ath residence before having the opportunity to sample the coffee and cigars.

Away from the club Dawson was able to reveal what had shaken him so much. The reported disappearances of the hobos, the closeness of Kingsport to a certain ill-fated town called Innsmouth and finally the meeting with Oliver Gardiner had given him susspicions which could only be confirmed by accessing knowledge he had repressed deep within his mind. Knowledge that could drive him to the very brink of madness and beyond but which he must plumb! When he did this he realised that Gardiner was not human he was a Deep One! A half-human, hald-fish creature bent on the destruction of humanity and bringing back the reign of the old gods who would wipe us from the earth! Naturally this had made him a bit jittery.

There were rumours that this all had something to do with an organisation called The Esoteric Order Of Dagon which had operated out of Innsmouth until that ill-haunted town was cleared out by government forces in 1928 but no hard facts. Dagon could be an ancient fertility god, a creation of a mad writer or an ancient god of the sea but who knows?

Finally they turned to the note handed to Dawson at the bar. It revealed little but that his name is Lem Finlayson, he believes that they are investigators just as he is and that the club is too dengerous a place to talk so they should meet him at his boardinghouse on the afternoon of the next day.

After much discussion the party decided to talk to the Armitage Inquiry first thing in the morning then go on to the meeting with Finlayson. With that they retired to bed.

Our intrepid group of cliches sets forth, nightclubbing we're nightclubbing, something fishy's going on

Session two began with all our investigators, barring Prof Shaftesbury who had some marking to do, starting their investigation of the Kingsport Yacht Club. Lady Lautrec-De'ath used her high society connections to discover that the club was a very exclusive one open only to those with an obscenely high credit rating and even then membership could only be gained through the sponsorship of a current member. After a moments pause our Ladyship put her obscenely high credit rating to work and called her old chum Alastair de Vries who turned out to be a member of the club and invited her for drinks at the decidedly swank Miskatonic Club to catch up and see how he could help. Gathering her colleagues together and getting them to smarten up, something which ranged from Dawson making sure he wore the hat without the bullet-hole to loaning Kalabos a whole suit, De'ath prepared for an evenings nightclubbing.

With but a little negotiation De'ath managed to get the maitre de to allow her motley crew into the exclusive confines of The Miskatonic and over the strains of live jazz introduced them to de Vries who turned out to be a thoroughly spiffing fellow who was amused by the Mexican hobo, intrigued by the detectives work and able to ignore the rudeness of the author. Over drinks and nibbles De'ath talked about her interest in the yacht club and de Vries agreed to call the president emeritus of Kingsport Yacht Club, Oliver Gardiner, right away and put her forward for membership. True to his word he had a telephone brought to the table there and then and arranged with Gardiner that they could go over at eight the next evening so De'ath could sign up. As all this happened Kalabos managed to secrete quite a significant amount of silverware, champagne flutes and ashtrays about his person with only a few suspicious glances from the staff. Armed with an opportunity to have two nights on the razzle in a row the group set out to further their investigations.

Real life has got in the way of completing this weeks blogpost so I'm putting this up now and we'll continue tomorrow.

In which our heroes meet, the first Files are presented and the game's afoot

I put this post off as long as possible to allow the players to present their characters in the companion thread but time has run out. Our first session was spent creating characters and introducing the Files.

Ian created ex-boxer, ex-polis officer and current PI Sam Dawson, a man driven by revenge! Ian has been kind enough to introduce the man here and here.He's a salt of the earth upright guy who's undoubtedly going to die horribly.

Martin created Jesus Kalabos the improbably named hobo. Driven by bad luck explaining why he's a hobo, his explanation of himself is here. It makes as much sense to me as it does to you and I'm a little worried he's going to die a horrible death.

Rosa is playing Amelia Lautrec-De'ath an English noblewoman who's family has a dark past that may lead to he dying in a horrible fashion.

Our other two players haven't been able to make a post regarding their characters as yet.

Jamesie is playing Professor Shaftesbury, known as Shaft by his friends, an academdic who speacialises in architecture and is driven by his need to be seen as a great scholar and attain tenure. This may lead to his death. Possibly a horrible one.

Irish Paul plays Tom 'Eagle Eye' Shambles an author who's drive is not yet revealed. Paul spoke at length about how this character is writing about Amelia but to I'm still not sure exactly what this is all about. He's in a battle to get it published before his horrible demise.

Our investigators were summoned to a special meeting of The Armitage Inquiry a secret organisation with Miskatonic University begun after the affairs of The Dunwich Horror and The Whisperer in the Darkness and the disasterous expeditions by the university to Australia and Antartica. From all this the universities head librarian and a few colleagues have learned that our world is really not ours. Aeons before we came Gods and Titans ruled the world and they but sleep until they do so again. Humans are just a pestilence that will be wiped away when they rise. Even worse there are cults within our very own species working to bring these creatures back! The Armitage Inquiry works to put off the inevitable for as long as possible without revealing all to the world and leading it into madness.

At the meeting it was revealed that within days of each other two documents had mysteriously appeared at Miskatonic, both written in the hand of Dr Henry Armitage himself. He has no memory of writing them and their appearance is a mystery. The Inquiry Board are split on what this means. It may be that Armitage is writing them unkowingly, that a cult has forged them as part of an attack or that they come from somewhere else. Reaching an impasse they decide a different perspective could be of use and call our investigators.

Our investigators were then presented with the two documents and asked to ascertain their meaning. Upon reading the documents seemed to suggest that they were sent from the future by Armitage and allude to some sort of apocalypse. Labwork shows that the first document contains traces of blood, pulverised concrete and ither substances and may be from a later date than the second. From the myriad references in the documents our investigators focused on two. A reference to some type of circus or carnival and another to the Kingsport Yacht club. As Kingsport is but the next town over it was here they decided to begin their investigation. I fear it may lead to many deaths, horrible ones!

In which our host introduces himself, fears are revealed and the Armitage Files discussed

So this is the first post of my roleplaying blog and I'm a bit freaked out by the whole thing. I'm not all that concerned about blogging about my game as I've blogged a bit before so it's not a reall hassle, I'm not scared of doing Cthulhu as I've been a keeper of the game for over 20 years, though not of Trail of Cthulhu, but I am shitting myself over The Armitage Files.

You see traditional Call of Cthulhu games are normally pretty tightly plotted. They're mysteries in which there's a clear villain with a clear agenda and it's pretty easy to spot the beats and use them. If anything Trail of Cthulhu pushes this even more with a rule system that concentrates on giving the clues directly to the players making their discovery of the plot everything.

The Armitage Files throws this all out of the window.

The book consists of ten rather long handouts and a host of characters and background. There is no plot. Instead you have a toolkit to improvise the game based on how the players react to the, frankly apocalyptic, handouts. I've done quite a bit of improvisational stuff before and I'm okay at it but this is something different due to the whole mystery angle. I have got to run a mystery game where I don't know who the villain is or their plan. It's a bit scary.