A Shadow in the Pit (Call of Cthulhu)

This is the second adventure I wrote for my gaming group (the first one was done in pen and paper). The previous adventure left our investigators rescuing the niece of a former associate (Montpellier LaPlage) from some atrocious cultists. Feel free to pilfer.

A Shadow in the Pit

Setup

The group has been contacted by Arthur Sedgewick a friend of Mr. Montpellier LaPlage, who had heard of the unpleasantness regarding his niece. He contacts you all individually through Montpellier, and knowing you have some experience tracking down missing persons in unusual circumstances, you seem like a good fit for the problem he’s having.

Arthur
STR (3D6) 9
CON (3D6) 4
SIZ (2D6+6) 12
INT (2D6+6) 11
POW (3D6) 15
DEX (3D6) 7
APP (3D6) 4
EDU (3D6+3) 11
HP (-) 8
db (-) +0

He asks to meet you in a quiet bistro in York, of which he happens to be the proprieter.

Scene: The Gilded Swan

The Gilded swan is an upmarket eatery, with dark wainscoting and dark green wallpaper, flocked with a subtle fleur-de-lis pattern, the tables are in a dark wood matching the wainscoting, and it is cosy but comfortable. The room you are meeting Arthur in is towards the rear of the establishment, and is intended for private functions. As you arrive, he has already ordered for you. A delicious-looking veal pie is on the round table in front of each of you, with assorted roast vegetables and a tumbler of rich, golden whiskey.

He invites you to eat, and as you are eating, he gets down to business.

“The reason I’ve called on you today, is that my Brother George is having some problems with his Coal mine. You see, we keep sending lads down there, and sometimes they don’t come back. We’ve searched every shaft and crevice down there, and haven’t been able to find so much as a single hair from their heads. Even the older men, who have decades of experience are afraid of going down there now, and it’s getting bad for business. My brother is at a loose end, trying to meet demand whilst this unpleasantness is going on. Montpellier, who I worked with in the war said you managed to track down Juliette for him, and that things got a little odd there for a while, and this mess seems odd to me, so I’m talking to you now. Would you all be able to help?”

When pressed for information, he will insist that he doesn’t know very much (he doesn’t), but regardless of anything you do he will offer to cover your expenses there. The colliery is located in Brockton-by-the-Nail, which is in the middle of the moors.

If you agree to continue, he arranges an uneventful train journey there. If not, then this adventure is over, and you all miss out on the story don’t you.

Brockton-by-the-Nail

Brockton-by-the-Nail is a fairly typical colliery town, established in the late 1890’s to provide accommodation to the workers in the pit and their families. There are row upon row of terraced houses, broken up occasionally by the occasional shop.

The high street has grocers, a butchers, a library, a police station and the village school. There is a working men’s club and a couple of public houses, one of which will be providing accomodation.

Places to investigate

Church

There are a few upset women in here who are praying for their loved ones to return. If pressed too much, this could result in a physical altercation with some of the miners, who obviously will feel slightly irked at someone upsetting people who are clearly mourning.

Human #1 #2 #3 #4 #5
STR (3D6) 12 14 11 16 7
CON (3D6) 8 10 6 12 11
SIZ (2D6+6) 16 13 12 10 13
INT (2D6+6) 11 12 8 12 11
POW (3D6) 8 7 9 6 14
DEX (3D6) 12 7 10 10 9
APP (3D6) 9 9 10 10 11
EDU (3D6+3) 12 14 14 14 12
HP (-) 12 12 9 11 12
db (-) +1D4 +1D4 +0 +1D4 +0

The priest there will tell you about how some of the more experienced miners claim to have seen things down there that “don’t make sense” and have asked the priest to bless them and to pray for them etc. They asked about parts of the bible that concern demons, and often shook their head about the descriptions saying stuff like “That isn’t right” and “No, that’s not it.”

One of the older miners, Harold Gramble claims to have seen things enough to give a detailed description, but everyone assumes he’s lost the plot a bit. He can be found in the working men’s club.

Library

The surprisingly well-stocked library has a number of tomes that may prove useful:

Library Use + History

1 Success Level - you find that there was an unpleasant accident when the mine open, and some of the miners were killed in a cave-in.

2 Success Level - You find that there are local legends about another town being here, which was swallowed by the earth.

3 Success Level - You find that the original site of the town had saxons ruins scattered nearby, which, following another successful history test, show that the indiginous tribe to the area dissappeared, and that the vikings AVOIDED this place, as it was where Nifelheim was connected to Midgard.

Pub

The pub mostly seems to be filled with scared miners, who babble about shapes moving in the dark.

One of the younger miners in here, Harry Trussle can be easliy persuaded (base rate) to accompany you into the pit, but he’s not very experienced.

Working Men’s club

Same as the pub really, but Harold Gramble is there, eager to talk to you about stuff he has seen down there, black, humanoid creatures with no eyes, stumbling with arms outstretched in the dark. He claims to have hit one with his pick, which slowed it down long enough for him to get away.

A -20 persuade skill with two degrees of success can talk him into joining you down the pit.

George Sedgewick will turn up towards the end of this conversation, and try to beg the people to start working again. When presented with the information that his brother sent you there to help out, he’ll be skeptical, but will relucantly agree to kit you out to go down into the pit. If you go down into the pit without the necessary tools and experienced guide the pit bit could get awkward.

Grocer

The grocer will agree to talk to you about what he’s heard, but only once the shop is closed so that he doesn’t scare off any of his customers. When you return later, he seems odd, and can’t recall saying anything to you earlier. If you press him on it, he will pop into the back of the shop and never be seen again.

The Pit

The pit is a fairly typical layout, it has the typical structures, like pumps, carts for getting the coal to the surface, equipment sheds etc.This pit is deserted, as all the workers are too scared to go down.

A perception test on the way in will make the party take note of the work roster on the way in.

There are two main shafts, (a redundancy built in following a series of horrific accidents at other pits.

If the party have an experienced coal miner with them, he will take them to where the people go missing, immediately (within an hour).

If they have an inexperienced miner with them, it will take four hours (take a constitution test and if they fail, subtract 20 from dice rolls until they have an opportunity to rest for an hour).

If they don’t have a miner with them, it will take six hours, and the constitution test will be necessary, but there is a risk (on a roll of 90+, roll twice, the first one will be a near-miss that causes D6 damage) that they will cause a cave-in and die. (If they have no equipment either, the roll will be 80+ twice)

Once they are a the location, an extended spot hidden test (4 successes needed) will allow them to spot a faint glow from behind some rocks, which will lead them to the next grotto.

Prior to reaching the location, force them through a narrow tunnel, and make the light go out for a second. When the lights are back, the miner they are with will be missing. IF they don’t have a miner, each one of the people will need to make a dodge roll, or they will be missing until the next scene.

The Sunken Church

Our intrepid investigators emerge into  a giant stone grotto, with a cemetary and church in the center of it. The church is lit from inside, but the windows look wrong somehow. A spot hidden test and a latin test will show that the images and words form a pattern that hurts the brain, causing 0/D4 sanity damage.

If one of our party is missing, you will find him shaken and hurt (1d6 health damage, and 1D10 sanity damage). He can’t describe what happened.

If a miner went missing, you will find him, blackened from coal with both his eyes missing, stumbling around emiting a low gurgling sound which (upon a listen test) turns out to be some ungodly language which causes D4 sanity damage to whoever was stupid enough to try and listen to it. Use the zombie stats for this, there’s going to be a fight with it, consider it armed with a pickaxe.

A spot hidden test will reveal that the dates on the graves are from a while back, but some of the names line up with those on the work roster that could be seen on the way into the mine.

Following the combat, a spot hidden test on the graveyard finds the the tombstones are made out of smashed up celtic marker stones, as is the church. The graves look disturbed. Looking inside the church shows the signs of unsettling, blasphemous rituals that can be studied to learn some stuff for mythos points, and might hurt people’s sanity (D3?). Play it by ear really.

Further spot hidden tests will lead to the crypt, which has a hole in the bottom of it leading to a further underground cavern, in which you will find a bunch of eyeless miner cultists, who are unhappy at being disturbed.

Zombie #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10
STR (3D6 x1.5) 16.5 18 7.5 12 9 4.5 10.5 7.5 6 9
CON (3D6 x1.5) 9 6 10.5 7.5 9 7.5 15 13.5 10.5 13.5
SIZ (2D6+6) 9 12 10 9 11 8 16 9 13 9
POW (-) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
DEX (2D6) 5 6 4 7 10 7 5 6 2 4
Move (-) 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
HP (-) 9 9 11 9 10 8 16 12 12 12
db (-) +1D4 +1D4 +0 +0 +0 -1D6 +1D4 -1D4 +0 +0

The Subcavern

On the way in, the party can see a pile of corpses (over a week old), many of whom are people you’d encountered in town hours earlier Sanity loss: 2/D6. This obviously raises a lot of questions.

The architecture in this pit seems strangely wrong, the angles hurt the eyes (presumably, this is why the miners don’t have any now...). At the centre of this group is a THING (Juvenile Chthonian) which these idiots are worshipping.

If the Chthonian is killed, then the humans are freed from it’s thrall, and pretty much die of shock. This is just one of the young, a bunch of older ones could turn up afterwards, have a loud roaring sound, followed by a load of banging sounds. As they escape, a massive crate of dynamite can be seen following a perception test.

On the surface, the entire town is deserted, but there are piles of discarded skin around, implying that there were never people here in the first place.

Chthonian full adult #1 #2 #3
STR (3D6 x5) 25 55 30
CON (3D6+30) 36 38 41
SIZ (3D6 x5) 25 65 45
INT (5D6) 18 19 12
POW (5D6) 14 21 17
DEX (2D6) 2 8 5
Move (-) 6/1 burrowing 6/1 burrowing 6/1 burrowing
HP (-) 31 52 43
db (-) +2D6 +6D6 +4D6

Shadows in the pit

Formless spawn, big #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10
STR (6D6+6) 17 15 21 19 20 21 20 23 23 23
CON (3D6) 8 6 7 6 6 5 6 3 7 4
SIZ (6D6+12) 26 26 25 22 28 32 28 33 29 21
INT (2D6+6) 9 9 8 10 9 8 10 8 11 9
POW (3D6) 11 4 9 5 5 10 7 7 8 4
DEX (2D6+12) 14 14 14 16 17 15 18 18 15 16
Move (-) 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12
HP (-) 17 16 16 14 17 19 17 18 18 13
db (-) +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6 +2D6