Player Handouts: Spawn of Azathoth, Part 1 – “A Ghostly Presence”

I was going to be concluding my series of module handouts from the CoC version 6 rulebook by doing the resources for “Dead Man’s Stomp”; however, they have proven to be fairly tricky and time-consuming, so I thought I would jump into the “Spawn of Azathoth” campaign in the interim. “Stomp” has handouts which are vastly more interpretive than the usual scenario – the information is left largely in the hands of the Keeper - whereas “Spawn” has information which is more-or-less cut and dried… although the sheer quantity is terrifying! This is a beast of an undertaking, but it has the virtue of being able to be broken down into bite-sized chunks, making my workload a little less Sisyphean. The clear parallels between these two projects is that they are both incredibly well-written – the first by Mark Morrison and the second by Keith Herber – and I don’t want to get them wrong.

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The introduction to “Spawn” is called “A Ghostly Presence” and embroils the party with questions surrounding the death of a former teacher and mentor, Dr. Philip A. Baxter. One party member receives a horrible visitation in the night prompting them to try and contact their old teacher: they are informed by the housekeeper that the Professor died just the day before. A death notice in the morning newspaper supports her statement, and provides details about the resulting funeral:

Azathoth Papers #1

Players attend the funeral and meet all of the NPCs pertinent to the ensuing saga. They respond with varying degrees of friendliness: Emmett Baxter, one of the professor’s two sons, is quite abrupt and offers the players only his marked business card and a request to “make an appointment”:

Azathoth Papers #3

After the funeral is over and everyone has gone their separate ways, the players arrive back at their base to find that a telegram has been delivered, inviting them to the reading of the Professor’s will, at the offices of Baxter’s lawyer, Judge Braddock:

Azathoth Papers #2

The will reading is a fraught session of grief, anger and recrimination – as is usual for these kinds of things – and many interesting nuggets of information can be found. During the proceedings, the party is given a manila envelope, prepared for them by Baxter. It is noteworthy that a second envelope is also present, for an un-named individual not able to be there.

Azathoth Papers #4A

Azathoth Papers #4B

In the original text, this dream journal is presented all as one document; however, for the purposes of adding colour and legibility, I have broken it up into several images. There is also a map:

Azathoth Papers #4C

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That’s all for the set-up – from here the players need to get to Providence in Rhode Island and start poking about in the dead Professor’s affairs. What they’ll discover might unnerve them completely… 

(All material presented here is copyright Chaosium Inc., Hayward CA., 1986, 2005.)