This story was the first of our campaign, and was a bit of a rough pilot episode. It was a one-shot that turned two-shot: I still wasn’t familiar with the fact my group tends to crash out after 3 hours. Some of the stuff mentioned here will come back, but some of it won’t: mostly my goal was to provide an introduction to Call of Cthulhu and identify if it would work for the story I had in mind.

Adventure goals: #

• Introduce (some of) my friends to Call of Cthulhu
• Bring the Strange Journal into their posession
• Kick off Irene’s plotline

Overall, I’d say it was pretty good for my first time running this system.

Official recap: #

Written by: Me

“Although I will request that other people do recaps starting next time, I will post the one-shot recap for “Will You Help Me Hide A Body” here.

RECAP (because we apparently need one: note that this is all PUBLIC information):
After discovering a series of bloody footprints that somebody tracked from the downstairs of the house y’all are renting, Irene became convinced it was a live assailant scenario and dived dramatically behind the kitchen island in search of a knife. Meanwhile Blair (whom I think of as slightly saner) walked in, practically honed to where the Really Bad Smell was coming from… and opened the bathroom to discover the corpse of a man named Kevin.
After some investigation (which involved Irene dismembering Kevin like a chicken and Blair having the murder weapon fall on her foot, pointy side down), the duo decided to 1) cover up the mysterious cleanup job by blaming it on one of Irene’s notoriously messy/smelly Art Projects, and 2) take Blair to the university’s medical wing.
Post bandaging of the foot (and hearing rumors about chaos in the chemistry wing), they decided to go to the local Waffle House. Here, they met Mariza, a waitress who Kevin (who is a figure in the Student Gambling ring (IE the local equivalent of the mob)) was harassing. After cleverly grilling her for information, they then spoke to Jessica (the vengeful ex of the deceased) and petted her cat, Dumpling. They also learned that the mysterious note left on the fridge contained directions to a mineshaft.
After a short detour to investigate (and NOPE out of exploring) the chemistry wing, they met with the pottery teacher, professor Leah Breutzman. Who, naturally, needed them to retrieve a book (and her nice chalk) from her colleague Phyllis Axelrod. Whose office was in the chemistry wing.

Naturally, Irene and Blair proceeded to go there, discover a mysterious ritual circle, grab the book used for it, got double whammied by something that resembled fireflies and a hangry mass of ground beef-like stuff with eyes. Cue the chase sequence (where Blair was hit by too many chemicals, as well as Irene’s knife), where they only made it out because the THING that chased them was stopped by the ritual whatever marked near the elevator.
Cue 1) the discovery that It Was The Wrong Book, and 2) Blair making another trip to the medical wing. Irene offered to get Blair a sandwich, which was gratefully accepted. Cue Irene asking Luca (the group’s housemate/law student) not only how she knew what was going on in the medical wing, but why the fuck she knew about Kevin. (Guess whose 8AM Saturday class forced her to clean up Someone Else’s Mess?)
Play cuts at the PCs reading the articles Professor Breutzman brought up in The Other Book.”

This marked the session break.

“One shot finale: The group (Irene and Blair) enter the science lab (which is abnormally dusty) and notice large puddles and dust particles. Making it to the third floor only to discover the massive hole in it, Blair falls in and needs to be rescued by Irene.
Eventially running into the mystery lights, the group defeats it with a well timed/placed Fire extinguisher, located by Irene throwing a smudge stick with impressive accuracy. Irene then dealt the final blow. At dusk, the duo, Luca (who was wearing sunglasses), and Jessica take a ride in the pickup truck of a man named J.J, hurl the corpse to its final resting place, and head back. Irene can’t help but suspect someone saw her moving the corpse…”