Rip It & Run! A Comics Offering...

So, there’s this:

I’ve been thinking for awhile now of how to take this short tale and inject it into a “Call of Cthulhu” campaign. It’s just a short narrative with a cute twist and certainly nothing that could be extended into a full-length story arc in an ongoing campaign; however, many are the times that a session of gaming is planned and then all but one or two of the players and the Keeper suddenly have their lives intrude and everything goes south. Little stories like this – which can be drawn out to a single session’s play – are great ways to fill in these holes in the campaign schedule.

Firstly, this is a comic obviously created in the 70s and heavily influenced by Hammer Horror movies. We can safely ignore most of the trappings - such as hair, costume and make-up - and alter these to suit whenever our campaign taking place. It’s really the mood that we want to preserve, and the cunning twist at the end. The crucial element which we need to construct is a means of injecting the players’ characters into the narrative. In the comics format, the reader embodies the role of the presumptive player character; what we need is a means of placing the character into the story, to be the witness who experiences the shocking revelation.

Another thing to address is the scripting. Since this is a comic – and a heavily space-restricted one, limited to only one page – the story has been pared down to its merest essentials. Obviously, in transferring this narrative to a roleplaying format, we have to let go of any notion of a script: after all, the Keeper and players are here to tell their own tale, not to put on a play-reading. That being said, there have to be enough trappings present to keep the session grounded and on track towards the final, shocking, reveal.

Let’s begin then. First, let’s assume that your regular Friday night get-together has largely fallen-through and that only you (the Keeper) and, let’s say, one other player have shown up. Not wanting to waste the beer and pizza, you decide to play a short side story, a sidebar to the campaign’s main events. Here’s a tricky bit: you’ll need to sideline the other characters. That’s easily done if they’re Librarians or Researchers – you can just assume that they’re banging the books. Fighters and Tinkerers can be out “on patrol” if that’s appropriate. If the last session left your party on a cliffhanger, you may want to jump back in time and play this short story as an earlier event (even inserting some handy widget or piece of information, if the party looks set for falling off that cliff!).

Begin with the player’s character at their usual abode – their home, the group’s headquarters, or somewhere else that they regularly frequent and where they are likely to receive mail. If they have a clubhouse, let the player be the only one there when the postman calls and have everyone else incommunicado for one reason or another. The letter that arrives should be addressed to the group as a whole (if sent to their base of operations), or personally, to the player character.

The letter is a bit short on detail, but makes it clear that the writer has heard of the character’s (or the group’s) exploits with the supernatural and seeks their assistance with such a matter that very night at a local graveyard.

Allow your player to make whatever arrangements they like for the meeting – telegrams, or e-mails, to the other party members; assembling a ghoul- or vampire-slaying kit; cadging some holy water off the local priest. Crucially however, there must not be a great deal of time for them to do any in-depth research about the author of the letter, or else the cat will be let well-and-truly out of its bag. On your side here, as Keeper, is the relatively little amount of info. about the sender contained in the missive.

Here, I want to make a significant change to the original material. In the comic, our protagonists are “Teresa and Michael Smith”; in order to keep our players guessing, we’ll need to be a bit sneaky. We’ll re-name our bereaved husband “John Parker” and our ghostly heroine will also take on a “J” name: in a Victorian or Edwardian setting, she could be a “Jane", or “Jemima”; in the Twenties, a “Juliet”, or “Josephine”; in the modern era, a “Jacinta”, or “Jodie”. Whatever seems to fit. In this way, having signed the letter “J. Parker”, the missive could have originated with either party. Sneaky, huh?

Now, down to business. The graveyard should be nearby and accessible. In densely modern urban, inner-city necropoli, the gates are generally shut after hours and security guards run patrols; in less densely-populated areas, such measures aren’t necessarily observed. You want to select (or invent) a gnarly, spookily-overgrown and tomb-infested cemetery near to your group’s base of operations and you want to set up some plausible, but not overly onerous, barriers to entry. Of course, security concerns are really only a requirement for Modern settings: in Gaslight or Classic era games, the thought of entering a graveyard after dark to spray graffiti, or kick over headstones, doesn’t really enter any normal person’s head, and any policeman encountered walking his beat could be deterred from interfering by offering a gentlemanly assurance of good intent. If playing a Modern version of this tale, your players might have to cut a gate lock, dodge a security camera and avoid the patrols of a security company employee, but this stuff should be relatively easy for a seasoned operator. Again, rural graveyards don’t often have this kind of security.

Arriving at the appointed time, our player character enters the cemetery to find it shrouded with a thick fog. Any obstructions should be quickly dealt with and a short walk through the obscured headstones and morbid statuary ensues. An owl hoots overhead in the dark. Underbrush is disturbed by some creature of the night. Clouds overhead promise rain later on. Everything is good to go.

Suddenly, a young woman steps out into the light, and is momentarily startled by our adventurer. She is dressed for the outdoors (another slight change from our source material) and in a mildly-excited state, given the weather and the situation. If questioned, she reveals that she is “J____ Parker” and responds delightedly with the exclamation “Oh! You got my message!” (here, she is not referring to the letter, of course, but to the traditional – we assume – attempts by all departed souls to contact the living via séances or Ouija boards). Now comes the tricky part.

Having encountered our spectral lady, the Keeper has to maintain the illusion that she is alive, a living breathing being. She reveals early on that tonight is her husband’s birthday and that “at the moment of their parting” he appears beside the family plot. After an all-too-brief moment he then vanishes once more, until the following year. She lets on that it has happened for the last five years without fail. This particular house of cards can come crashing down if certain pertinent questions are put to her: what did he die of? Where is he buried exactly? The Keeper needs to play our heroine in a somewhat histrionic fashion, glossing over details that could reveal the truth too quickly. If all else fails, the old ‘A-Yowling-Cat-Jumps-Out-From-Behind-A-Grave-Marker’ routine can momentarily distract too searching a line of questioning. To really play this non-player character effectively though, it’s time to sort out some history…

How did she come to die? Traditionally, ghosts only make a nuisance of themselves because some important piece of business was left undone by their deaths, or some act of revenge is required to allow them to rest in peace. What would cause “J____ Parker” to show up by her grave each year on her husband’s birthday, only to glimpse him momentarily before vanishing? Here’s a thought: perhaps she was murdered. Who would commit such a horrible deed? Well, perhaps someone who was jealous of the fact that she was married to John Parker. And who could that be? How about John’s best friend? Things begin to look intriguing…

Let’s say that John has been coming to the gravesite these past five years with his best buddy – let’s call him “Howard” – in tow. Because Howard is accompanying him, our murdered bride can’t maintain her presence in order to pass on the truth: when John shows up with Howard, “J” has to vanish. If only she could get a moment alone with her beloved to tell him what happened that fateful night, his combined birthday and wedding celebration six years ago…! Of course, we’re moving outside the ambit of our source material here; but if the original writer had been given more room in which to pen their tale, they might have stuck in a “Howard” also.

When they reach the graveside with our murdered bride, the player character may ask them what happens when John shows up? She will say that there’s a sort of glow that appears out of the mist and which gets stronger and stronger, until finally he stands forth. The player may interpret this as someone moving through the dark with a lantern, or a flashlight, and decide that some kind of chicanery, or scübidüberism is taking place. They might feel a little foolish about bringing along the vampire-hunting kit…

Once we’re at the graveside, the players may wish to examine the final resting-place. Here we have to be very cunning and, again, depart from the source material. In the comic, the headstone inscription is the big reveal (although, sneakily, it’s right there in shot in the first panel also), but we want the identity of the interred to be kept a secret for as long as possible. Our headstone should be well-obscured by some kind of rambling rose, solidly-entrenched after five years of unrestricted growth. If you want, you can have the words “Sweet Prince” clearly shown on the stone surface, which, if the greenery is stripped away, clearly reads “My Sweet Princess” – God knows this couple seem treacly enough for this kind of epitaph! It will take a Resistance Roll of the character’s STR vs. the rose’s STR of 20 to tear this foliage away.

Soon, our character discerns a growing light appearing through the mist and the sound of someone approaching – booted feet crunching gravel. A Listen Roll by the character will reveal that there are two voices getting closer; should they ask the woman who this other person might be, she will say something like “Oh no! It must be Howard! He mustn’t see me here!” What happens next is up to the player and whatever they believe is happening. Do they hide in the undergrowth and wait to see what emerges from the darkness? Do they rush forward to make contact with the intruders before they reach the graveside? Or do they wait and see what happens? It’s up to them – as I said earlier, there’s no script.

According to the rules we’ve established, once the married couple clap eyes on each other, the ghost fades away into nothingness for another year, so getting the woman to Hide or leave the grave to watch unobserved from a hidden locale will allow her to hang around for a while longer. This effort must be instigated by the player and the character’s own Hide Skill is their chance of remaining unseen (she’s not really there after all). Once she’s hidden, the player may step forth to reveal themselves without her pulling a disappearing act.

Confronting the approaching visitors will bring forth some questions from “John Parker” (for it is he) along the lines of “Who are you?” and “What are you doing beside my wife’s grave?” The person beside him urges him to calm down and insists that there must be some explanation: this is Howard. Once the character identifies themselves John says “Oh, then you got my letter! We must have missed you at the cemetery entrance!” The pieces fall neatly into place.

At this point, the player will be more or less aware of what has been going on. Now they can question the bereaved husband more closely about the circumstances of his wife’s death, and how he discovered that her phantom appears by the graveside each year on his birthday. Questions reveal that his wife was knifed outside the church in which the wedding had taken place; the only witness to the attack was Howard who, as the best man at the event, was waiting with her while she prepared to leave on her honeymoon. He claimed that thugs, or possibly a demented hobo, perpetrated the deed while they were waiting for the bridal car to be brought around and he himself suffered wounds in the assault. A year later, a tearful and drunken John asked Howard to accompany him to his wife’s grave on the anniversary of her murder: he claims that he saw her ghost momentarily but that she vanished soon after they locked gazes. Howard says that he saw nothing and that any spirits John saw were the ones at the bottom of a bottle.

During the discussion, it will be clear that John believes he saw the ghost and Howard firmly maintains there was nothing to be seen; however, they come to the grave on every anniversary at Howard’s insistence. Howard also strongly implies that John is losing his marbles – attending séances and using Ouija boards and such nonsense - and John is a short step away from agreeing with him. If our character makes a Psychology Roll while talking to the two of them, they will realise that Howard is lying about having seen nothing at the grave and also has a vested interest in convincing John that he is losing his mind. In fact, Howard has learned that J____ is around each year at this time and fears that she might spill the beans about how he murdered her outside the church in a jealous rage. He shows up to keep her from squealing and will soon get John committed – a sure way to sweep him under the carpet and out of the way of learning the truth.

But now, Howard is faced with the fact that his best friend has told this “ghost hunter” about their annual shenanigans. He’s keen to find out what our Investigator knows and whether he’s about to ruin his plans. He will be nervous and cagey, asking searching questions of his own. If pressed, he will reveal that he carries a pistol, if the country has appropriate laws and it seem reasonable that he do so – no, wait; that’s only in the US; in any other place on the planet, he carries a knife. He will threaten to kill the Investigator, or John, or both, at which point a soul-shrivelling scream rings out across the cemetery. A quick character will take this opportunity, while Howard is Surprised, to disarm and neutralise him, leaving John to head towards the source of the baleful noise and learn the secret of his beloved’s demise…

*****

Well, that’s one way it could play out anyway. Like I said, this isn’t a dramatic reading.

Again, this proves that inspiration for “Call of Cthulhu” ideas come from many different places, even cheesy old 1970s romance comics. Lock this one away in your ‘rainy day’ adventures folder and you might make something of that non-starter game session after all!