Player Handouts: “Edge of Darkness”

People seem to be enjoying the player handouts that I created for the Chaosium introductory scenario entitled “The Haunting” so I thought I would do some more. This set of handouts is designed for a beginners’ level adventure that was released with the sixth edition rules back in 2004. It was written by Keith Herber and is entitled “Edge of Darkness”. It appears in the rulebook right after “The Haunting” and is a good follow-up to that story. It reveals to neophyte players exactly how the business of Summoning, Binding and Dismissing alien entities works in “Call of Cthulhu” and gives players a first-hand experience of the various levels and effects of sanity and its loss. It’s also set in the Arkham environs during the Classic Era period of the game, so it’s a solid entrée to Mythos roleplaying.

First up, the players are summoned to the bedside of an Old Friend (not my favourite way to hook in a group, but never mind). Rupert Merriweather is dying, and it transpires that he and his extinct friends have left behind them a huge mystical mess that needs sorting out. It involves – initially - the contents of a metal box:

(There are a number of boxes in this story – it pays to keep track of them!)

Within the box are an envelope containing a deed to a farming property outside of the Arkham city limits, along with the key to it; a journal; and a small gold box shaped like an Egyptian sarcophagus. Obtaining this stuff is contingent upon working around Merriweather’s snarky son and heir, so some deft arbitration is called for.

The main focus of attention is the golden box. It’s shaped as a traditional sarcophagus (a Greek word meaning – quite appropriately – “corpse eater”) and it has hieroglyphs on its lid, within a cartouche, along with another set of glyphs on the underside of the same – these are quite different in style.

The most interesting thing about this item is that it has practically nothing to do with the story. It’s a MacGuffin to hang future adventures on and, while it’s of little use in the present situation, it’s loaded with all kinds of possibilities for an erstwhile Keeper.

A more pertinent source of clues is the Journal of the Dark Brotherhood. In the scenario as presented, the Keeper is instructed to determine which player character takes charge of this object and to dole out information to them as outlined in a section entitled “Reading the Journal”. I’ve broken up this information into a number of graphics which should be distributed in the following order:

Here's a close-up on that newspaper article:

The original scenario parcels this information up into a different arrangement of documents, but ultimately, it all works out the same as presented here.

On the basis of this reading, the party is encouraged to do some research in the local libraries about what they’ve just discovered, and some of those options are summed up here:

For characters who successfully use their History or Egyptology skills there's this:

And this is for characters who successfully use their Occult skills:

(I couldn’t resist throwing a reference to James Churchward in here – he was an English writer and polymath who conducted serious research on the Lost Continent of Mu. His major opus, The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man, was published in 1926 and was thoroughly pillaged by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price.)

Finally, for characters who choose to trawl through back-issues of the local newspapers there’s this:

Next, after absorbing all of this information, the players may decide to head out to the sleepy village of Ross’s Corners to check out the farm. The locals are reticent, and the place is a mess, but soon another box is found – this time an old cigar box, with two small containers and a sheaf of yellowed pages within.

Again, the contents of the box are of minor interest. The canister contains a necessary material component for the Summoning ritual while the small box is full of the Powder of ibn-Ghazi – not really necessary for this story, but a mean trick on anyone who uses it on the Summoned, partially-invisible horror!

The information on the sheaf of papers is the good oil here:

Six copies of the chant required for the Summoning;

Some reference and background information on sources (I threw in this reference about a colleague with access to the Restricted Library because the scenario doesn't cover how Allen got to see Prinn's book and also to further show how shonky he is!);

A picture of the Pentagram with some cryptic chemical information about the brown powder in the small tin canister;

And the transcribed details for running the ritual.

(The original scenario calls for 13 pages all up in this bundle, but I’ve condensed it down somewhat for the sake of brevity.)

And that’s it. This is a nice little introduction to Lovecraftian horror roleplaying with lots of scope for embellishment by the Keeper and room to create ongoing story material. Seek it out and see what you think!

(All information presented here is copyright Chaosium Inc., taken from CALL OF CTHULHU 6th Edition, 2004.)