Time On Your Side...?

This is not an adventure per se, but a sub-plot of sorts which can be overlain onto your existing campaign in order to spice things up a bit. It requires the assistance of a fairly mature player who will do justice to the material, so the wise Keeper will choose carefully before launching this piece of mayhem.

Be advised that many elements of this story will cause major disruptions within a standard party of players, breeding mistrust and suspicion; so make sure that your team can weather the shocks!

This tale works well if your party of players has run up against the machinations of Nyarlathotep in the past and have maybe given it cause to seek vengeance; this might well be a tasty aftershock to the “Masks of Nyarlathotep” campaign.

To kick things off, one party member gets a watch. It doesn’t matter how this happens, as long as the player is as pro-active as possible in the watch’s procurement. That is, don’t just deliver the thing to the character via the post; try to have them claim it as an object of desire, or a prize worth winning (possibly the affectation of an NPC nemesis?). Alternatively, it could be taken in as part of the evidence in an investigation – the contents of a victim’s pockets for instance – or as spoils of war – discovered in a valise once owned by a dreaded enemy along with some cultish documents. It absolutely should not be a gift from a valued friend, relative or acquaintance.

The watch is a pocket watch on a fob chain. It is made of some black metal with black enamel work and gold inlay; most interestingly, the white face displays a pale blue five pointed star with thin rays spaced equidistantly around the dial, along with the usual numbers. The watch is wound by means of a small key and it can be set to chime with a soft ringing note at a desired time. An incentive for keeping and using this timepiece is that its unusual colour makes it useful in night work, when a normal gold or silver watch might be too shiny and draw unwanted attention.

The only other thing of note about the watch is the inscription on the inside of its cover:

“If the leader is filled with high ambition

and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will,

he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.”

A Library Use roll and half a day in a library will reveal the quote to come from Carl von Clausewitz’s book On War.

Once the watch is in play, if possible let it sit for awhile, until the players forget about it and stop thinking of it as a plot hook.

Once the watch has sunk into the fabric of the story a little, it manifests itself during the next time that the party is embroiled in a desperate situation. Wait until the watch’s owner needs to make a crucial roll; not just a necessary successful toss of the dice, but a roll that will seriously mean life or death to the character. If it’s a success, let it go and await the next instance; if it fails, ignore it and continue playing as if the roll was entirely successful – as good as it could possibly be. Your player will be confused, knowing that he flubbed his roll, but no doubt he will take the opportunity provided.

What happens next will be somewhat more alarming. Everyone involved in the situation with the watch’s owner will have appalling luck. Guns will jam; magazines will fall out; knives will slip from clumsy hands. Equipment will malfunction; batteries will drain; bulbs will break. Have every other player roll everything that you can throw at them – DEX rolls; LUCK rolls; SAN rolls. Add huge penalties to skill rolls and watch the party fall to pieces. Of course the watch just altered the Universe in its owner’s favour so naturally there are going to be consequences to that.

When the chaos is over, the watch owner hears a distant soft chiming. If they think to look at the watch, it will seem unchanged; but a successful Spot Hidden roll will notice that the pale blue star on the watch face now has only four arms...

*****

Now the ball is in the player’s court. What will they do? Will they raise their suspicions with the other party members? Or will they keep quiet about it and see what happens next? Perhaps they might say nothing and quietly try to dispose of the watch – this is fraught with difficulty.

If the player throws it into a river, say, the next time they sit down to a fish dinner, the watch will turn up inside the fish that they’re eating (I know – it’s an old chestnut, but it’s a good one). If they throw it out of a train, or taxi, window, some well-meaning passer-by will witness the event and kindly return the watch at the next opportunity. Basically, whatever the Keeper can devise, the watch will make its way back to its owner, in a logical and serendipitous fashion.

If they decide to break the watch, even stranger things will happen: the pieces will slowly re-combine in the trash heap, or fireplace, and make their way back to where the owner lives: the next time they open their desk, or their underwear drawer, there it will be, lurking like a suddenly-discovered cockroach. If examined, it will appear to have been obviously broken at some point and will now make odd clicking and other cranky sounds as it works, rather than running silently as it did before. Keep this altered appearance in mind if the player later tries to get rid of the watch by selling it – no dealer will take on such an obviously damaged piece.

Furthermore, the owner will start dreaming about the thing. In these dreams the watch will feature prominently: at a solemn event, it will not stop chiming; during a scary pursuit, the watch will grow bigger in the owner’s pocket weighing them down and keeping them from getting away; the chain of the watch fob will become incredibly long and entangling, while the watch itself becomes a dead weight. Eventually, the dreams will start to inflict minor SAN penalties as they become more macabre.

After an initial loss of sanity, the owner will start to entertain the notion that the watch is following him around, somehow creeping about their home like a kind of mechanical spider. Small movements in shadows, or out of the corner of their eye, help to reinforce this creeping menace. As well, the owner will become convinced that they can constantly hear the ticking of the thing, even if it’s miles away.

And then it gets worse...

*****

While this is going on, each time the party gets into a difficult encounter and the owner of the watch needs to make a critical roll, he does so (even if he doesn’t) while the rest of the party suffers. If this leads to debilitating injuries amongst their peers, or even deaths, so much the better. Things become ludicrous. While trying to sneak past a guard, our player stumbles, falls through a plate glass window, trips over a glass coffee table, knocks down a tall ice sculpture and backs through a champagne fountain: nobody notices. When one of the other party members tries (and prima facie succeeds) all hell breaks loose. Each time it happens, the watch’s benign little chime is heard and there’s one less point on the star on its face.

Then it starts to grow. Initially, it stays as a pocket watch, but, after being broken or discarded, it starts to assume different sizes and dimensions. It morphs into a carriage clock, then into a mantel clock, and finally into a full-sized grandfather clock. In each new iteration it retains its sinister black finish with gilt trim, but starts to display ever more baroque and abstruse decorative finishes. In these larger formats, it no longer needs to be with the character to exert its baneful effects.

At this stage, everyone is going to notice that something is up. The timepiece is obviously monstrous and menacing; it makes odd mechanical sounds and seems to be almost breathing in a raspy, mechanical fashion; it is now not only black, but seems to exude darkness like a pervasive enemy.

Some may decide to do research on the clock and its makers and this will lead to some suggestive results; however, nothing will be absolutely conclusive. On the dial of the clock are the faded letters of the manufacturing company in cursive script: “Ticktackmann, Leipzig 1870”, along with a motto: “Ein Heiliges Muster”. Showing this to dealers in such mechanisms will mostly result in blank looks and dismissive gestures; however, a Luck Roll when talking to such a dealer will result in a dim memory that there was such a manufacturer in Germany in the mid-1800s but that its output was rare and its history shadowed by misfortune. Either way, no dealer is willing to handle it.

Two things may occur to the researchers: “Ein Heiliges Muster” translates in English as “a holy pattern”; this is an anagram for “Nyarlathotep”. Also, a Cthulhu Mythos roll by a party member may remind them that the Crawling Chaos has a machine-like avatar...

Finally, the party might decide to deal with the brute once and for all...

*****

After the last point of the star on the clock’s face disappears, the monster is free to take matters into its own hands. Rather than being just a looming presence in the home of its owner, it now starts to actively stalk them, seeking to do them harm. Time for the party to intervene!

Tick-tock Monster

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	28	POW	25	Age	n/a
CON	50	DEX	12	HP	36
SIZ	21	APP	n/a	Magic Points	25
INT	18	EDU	n/a	SAN	n/a

Damage Bonus: +2D6

Weapon: Bludgeon 45%, 1D6+½db; Cog Wheels (1D4) 35%, 1d4; Lashing Springs 35%, special; Stomp 55%, 1D8+db

Armour: 12 points of wood and steel + Regeneration: 1D10 HP/5 MPs

Skills: Hide 75%; Sneak 65%; Tell Time 100%

Spells: Dampen Light; Enthrall Victim; Vanish

SAN Loss: It costs 1D10 SAN points to see the Tick-tock Monster

The creature is only able to attack once it has affected reality in its owner’s favour five times; by that stage it will be an enormous lurking presence in its owner’s home, a presence that will have to be flushed out and brought down.

Much of this process will be determined by the locale which the owner of the clock calls “home”. Obviously, if the owner lived in a large abandoned factory, it would be ideal; however the chances of that being the case would seem unlikely at best. The Tick-tock Monster is able to move along walls and ceilings as well as the floors, so it will soon be intimately familiar with the surroundings in which it finds itself. In targeting its owner, it will endeavour to save them until last, if the entire party marshals its forces to defeat the creature.

When entering the creature’s lair, a pervasive ticking will be heard, along with the periodic stretching of springs, the occasional bonging of a chime and a persistent creaking of wood. As well, the place is dimly lit due to the creature messing with the light levels, and no amount of torches or lanterns will ameliorate this (because it’s magical darkness, not physical).

The Monster moves by building itself in various directions, taking elements of its body apart and replacing them in the directions it wants to move – in this way it can climb up walls and move along ceilings. Of course, it can just build for itself large stomp-y legs and move by walking also.

The Monster attacks by clubbing its opponents with its beefy arms; it does this twice per round, once at the beginning of the round and again at the end. Alternatively, it can try to stomp on its targets with its big stomp-y feet. It can also eject pieces of itself for the purposes of combat: it can shoot out 1-4 razor-sharp cogwheels like shuriken, or it can lash out with a net of springs and cables in order to Grapple its foes. It has 12 points of Armour, however these are ablative and will eventually be chipped away; note however, that if it uses its Regeneration ability, these Armour points will be restored as part of the process. On the plus side, the creature takes double damage from fire.

Magically, the Tick-tock Monster can hypnotise enemies using its Enthrall Victim spell. Rather than speaking to the victim it focuses the somnolent power of its ticking on the target: the victim matches its MPs against those of the Monster and, if they fail, they fall into a fugue state unable to act independently until vigorously shaken or wounded in an attack. This costs the Monster 2 MPs. Its Dampen Light spell is always signalled by the clock chiming: it can expend any number of points on this effect to a minimum of 1, with each extra point extending the radius of the zone by another metre. The effect is centred on the beast and moves with it, blinding those inside the area. Note however that the Tick-tock Monster doesn’t “see” per se, and so is unaffected by the spell.

While alone in the owner’s home, the creature has detached part of itself and has hidden it in a cunning location therein. By spending 5 MPs, the Tick-tock Monster can Vanish from any location, reappearing alongside this detached portion of itself instantly; this is a useful trick for it to have ready if the party seems too powerful. The Monster needs a full day to prepare this spell and the detached portion contains 2 points of its POW until re-absorbed; if an Investigator destroys the portion, those POW points are lost and the spell ruined.

*****

In the final analysis, the party is in for a big fight with a menacing creature. Much of how the story unfolds will depend upon the actions of the character who gets saddled with the watch – if they decide to exploit the reality-bending capabilities of the thing at the cost of the other party members, then there will most likely be a break within the group and the character will be left to defeat the Tick-tock Monster on their own. However if the team sticks together and rallies around to destroy the horror, there will be this final moment for them all to share:

“Out of the ruin of the loathsome creature, a coalescing column of darkness rises. From this emerges a hideous, fanged maw with a lashing tongue.

‘Fools!’ the mouth spits in anger, ‘once more you have defied my will! You will not survive my third strike however, and I will relish the slow devouring of your souls!’

At this point it bursts into maniacal laughter before exploding messily as an oily, black, but benign mucus which covers everything in the vicinity.”

The Investigators can soothe their harried minds with a 1D10+4 SAN point reward.