Dragoness Eclectic's Journal

I have been using an old Call of Cthulhu adventure as the basis of a fanfic, and as a result, I have been combing over it in minute detail so I can describe and/or modify the action. In doing that, I have discovered several things:

• Someone at Chaosium skimped a bit on the copy-editor budget--inconsistent name spellings abound. Except for Mythos monsters, those are always correct.
  
  
• Evil Cultist Guy gets mad at the gangster he hired to buy the Evil Cursed Artifact, because said gangster stole it instead and pocketed the money. I'm not sure why this is a problem; if he'd bought the Evil Artifact as instructed, the money would still be gone.
  
  
• Evil Cultist Guy kills gangster by doing a ritual sacrifice. Since part of the ritual involves slicing his throat, I suppose the gangster would hold still after that. Apparently doing a lengthy, bloody sacrifice and a full summons of Nyarlathotep is more important than picking up the money that the cops later find all over the floor. Even though he killed his hireling over it. I'm not sure why he was summoning Nyarlie at this point, but SAN 0 baddies do the whackiest things. Meanwhile, the cops are kicking in the front door...
  
  
• Nyarlathotep fails at body disposal, only partially incinerating the corpse, but obligingly leaves before the cops finish kicking the door in and Evil Cultist Guy bolts out the fire escape. There's an awful lot going on in a few minutes in a small tenement apartment.
  
  
• Nyarlathotep handed out an Evil Cursed Artifact capable of banishing himself. Remedial reading of the Evil Overlord List recommended.
  
  
• Ethnic Religious Figure introduced at the beginning to help the PCs with the Evil Cursed Artifact. Ethnic Religious Figure is summarily killed by Evil Cultist Guy the GM mid-adventure, only to be replaced by another Ethnic Religious Figure from the same religion, same monastery even. This one's leveled up his magic and lore skills and knows how to fix the Evil Cursed Artifact problem. Why wasn't he introduced in the first place?
  
  
• Well actually... that was done so the Evil Cultist Guy (whom no one has seen in person yet) can pretend to be the real Replacement Ethnic Religious Figure and mislead the PCs, who have to guess who to trust. My money is on most groups deciding they don't trust anyone and pitching them both off the train/boat/whatever.
  
  
• Replacement Ethnic Religious Figure is the only one who knows how to fix the curse from the Evil Cursed Artifact, so if the party ditches him, they are screwed. If he gets killed, they are screwed. He also summarily disposes of the Evil Cultist Guy if the players let him. Guess the adventure didn't need him after all, and the PCs don't actually need the closure of defeating Evil Cultist Guy themselves. (He was only the guy who caused all these problems, including casting the curse.)
  
  
• If not disposed of, Evil Cultist Guy continues to make a nuisance of himself, summoning lesser things to ambush them, leading them into packs of ghouls, that sort of thing. Apparently he and Nyarlathotep aren't on speed-dial with each other, because Nyarlathotep is waiting at the Evil Temple for the party to arrive with the Evil Cursed Artifact, so why waste time with ambushes?
  
  
• The adventure makes the usual mistake of assuming all monsters are on Team Evil and work together. True Lovecraft aficionados know that, for instance, ghouls do not work for Nyarlathotep and don't give a shit about him.
  
  
• The boss fight at the climax of the adventure is pretty much guaranteed to kill one party member per round. It would really suck if it were the Replacement Ethnic Religious Figure, because he's the only one who knows how to uncurse whoever got cursed by the Evil Artifact. Unfortunately, he's written as the person who will initially try to banish Nyarlathotep with the Evil Cursed Artifact, which Nyarlie takes major exception to, so he will be target #1. Oops. Better hope he's good at "Hitting Mythos Diety with Evil Artifact" combat. Even if he is a kill-stealer. It's not like the PCs could use the SAN gain from defeating a Mythos Diety themselves.
  
  
• It doesn't look too good for whoever got cursed, either: the cursed visions occurring during the whole trip to Egypt have been steadily draining the Accursed PC's sanity: Best case: 21+1d3 loss. Worst case: All SAN and then some. Also, given the likelihood that the PCs will pfaff around for the first few days and not realize that the Accursed has to go to Egypt ASAP, said Accursed will lose another few points of SAN, and so exhausted that he has to be all but carried to the final confrontation.
  

At least the ethnic stereotyping is fairly benign in this adventure. There's another, much beloved CoC adventure that isn't so benign (and mutilates the hell out of not just Lovecraftian lore, but Chaosium's own previous Mythos lore). Said adventure is, however, a really well-structured and -paced adventure for a diverse group of PCs, which is why it is so beloved.