Lesser Evin

The GM: Brian and Jon

The Characters:

Game System: Call of Cthulhu

Game Type: One-Shot JonCon

Synopsis:

Lesser Evil was a 2-round Cthulhu tournament run at JonCon '97.

Round 1 won a Jon Cazares Roleplaying Award for Best Game in a Single Night.

Round 1, session 1

In round one, session one, the characters were archeologists exploring a volcanic island off the coast of Alaska. Their investigations led to the discovery of a previously unknown native population: primitives that worshed the volcano at the island's center. The group also discovered the remains of a previous expedition, including a journal with a partial translation of the native language, and translated exerpts of their legend of the ancient god in the volcano.

As the game continued they realized that the natives would sacrifice people to the volcano god to raise it from its sleep -- and with the help of some byakhee plaquing the landscape the characters came to believe in this god. Specifically that every time it had supposedly risen, the nearby costal cities of Alaska were ravaged by some kind of natural disaster.

Eventually the characters managed to stop the sacrifice (though they lost some of their number in the course of the night), only to realize too late that their translation was incorrect... the sacrifice was meant to keep the god from rising, and now it was too late. The remaining living members learned of a wise man in Louisiana who might have access to the key to preventing the god from rising in three days, an Elder Sign...

Half the group advanced to the final in round 2. The other half was killed.

Round 1, session 2

In the second round 1 session the players were all graduate students in the New England area. Though they all had different fields, varying from religion to sociology, they all were working together on their thesis project about cults. With deadlines looming, they traveled together to a small, ramshackle MA town in search of the rumors of the cult of Dagon.

Their investigation lead them far closer to the cult than they would have wished. Eventually they uncovered a horrible truth and witnessed the cult summoning a Star Spawn in the ocean, to prepare the way for a greater evil, three days hence. The group discovered a log of every previous summoning attempt over the last two hundred years: for the vast majority were failures, or ended in the deaths of the cultists. But each of the few successes corresponded with a great natural disaster -- hurricanes and plagues -- that led to the deaths of tens of thousands along the costline.

The few who survived the Star Spawn staggered out determined to stop the thing that was to come. They had found a map that would lead them to what they needed -- the Elder Sign. The only problem was they couldn't read the strange language written on the map. However, they learned of a wise man in Louisiana who might have access to the key to preventing the horrible eveil from rising in three days.

Half of the group advanced to the final in round 2. The other half was killed.

Round 2

The final round of Lesser Evil was entirely Live Action.

It began in a back-country vodka bar in which the remaining members of both round ones (those who advanced) arrived in search of the man who had knowledge of the elder sign. This scene was run in the party room of Ryan's apartment complex. Many ordered drinks, and were surprised to learn that we were using real vodka as props (actually, we had a vodka bottle filled with water that all of the NPCs in the bar drank from). Eventually the two groups met each other and learned they were looking for the same person, who they finally found.

Unfortunately they learned there was only one Elder Sign, and both Old Ones were rising thousands of miles apart on the same night. Thus, the characters had to choose which was the Lesser Evil, which they would allow to rise, and which they would stop.

But first they had to find the Elder Sign. The old man told them that various dark creatures were attracted to it, so he finally buried it in a swamp, and no longer had his map or the notes of where it was buried. As it happened, Session 2's group had the map, and Session 1's group had the journal that partially translated the text on the map {Note: they literally had a map of the swamp with strange symbols all over it, and a journal with a partial translation of the symbols}.

So they went to the swamp, still live action. A half dozen GMs were on hand to take the role of Nightgaunts filling the swamp. If the GMs touched a player, that body part was torn to shreds and useless. Thus an arm couldn't be used, or a leg couldn't be walked on without support of another player. A head or body hit meant they were dead. They were given two flashlights and fifteen minutes to translate as much of the map as they could while 6 GMs scattered into the 2 square mile swamp (with a more accurate map of the trails).

In the end they retreived the Elder Sign (buried in a cool little box) and chose to stop the New England evil from rising, at which point they were confronted with Great Cthulhu. Most went insane on the spot, and they failed to stop the summoning.

Notes of Interest

This was the first and only time that Great Cthulhu actually appeared in a Call of Cthulhu game run by Jon or Brian.

There were slightly too many GMs -- some of whom were being a bit more aggressive about hunting the players than they should have -- and the players spent far more time running madly than actually hunting for the exact spot in a two square mile swamp in the dark that an eight inch box was buried (burial site was marked with black roses). After a couple of hours of running around the swamp Brian and Jon had to point out the exact spot to the players to keep the game moving.

A long half-mile chunk of trail was listed on the map as being incredibly dangerous and deadly -- and the Elder Sign wasn't buried there. This was to decrease the acreage that the game covered to something more manageable. Alas they didn't get around to translating that part of the map, and Dan ended up heading down this really long path alone. Brian ended up going after him to bring him back.

Memorable Moments

(Brian): One of our strategies was to give the players flashlights that effectively blind them to the shadows -- without them your eyes would adjust - and of course the bobbing flashlights in the dark stood out to us GMs. I knew the swamp really well, so after Jon and I had jogged to the far end to bury the box, we strolled back along a back path next to a pond to cover a path that we didn't have any other GMs covering -- but it would be a while before anyone reached it, so we were just chatting quietly and enjoying the awesomness that was this live action game. This was the most memorable moment of this game to me -- the slightest mist hung over pond and the moon was reflected in the black water and then we heard a girl's screams of terror echoing across the swamp. Then we knew that the game was working.