(Light hearted and strongly character based roleplaying game running
in Edinburgh on Thursdays 8-11pm. Five female players and two male. Mail
Nicky for details)
More on the background of the characters can be found at
A Cthulhu
Chapbook
There's also an on-line game of
De
Profundis based in modern day Edinburgh.
Character Profiles
Chapters 1 to 15
Chapters 16 to 29
Chapters 30 to 41
Chapters 42 to 50
Ch51 - Some Tainted Wine, Ch52 - The
Great Detective, Ch53 - Mysterious Rituals in the
Cellar
Great Aunt Abigail's elderly
neighbour, Mr Flannery, arrived one evening in early June 1924, shortly
after dinner with a bottle of wine containing not only wine but a bizarre
squid-like creature. He informed her that he had purchased a box of six
bottles from a stranger in a pub. Great Aunt Abigail did not recognise the
creature and said that she would take it to the university the next
morning for investigation.
In the middle of the night Great Aunt Abigail and
Hari were woken by the sound of intruders
in the hall. They rushed downstairs armed with pokers and were attacked by
two burly villains. Hari laid into the villains with great effect. Great
Aunt Abigail's efforts at hitting them were somewhat less successful but
her loud and outraged shouts of "Get out of my house!" and "How
dare you break in here, you ruffians!" attracted the attention of the
local constable, who rushed to the rescue.
The villains ran off with the constable in hot pursuit. Despite carrying
a heavy box between them they succeeded in eluding the forces of law and
order. When the constable returned Abigail suggested that he call to make
sure Mr Flannery was all right.
Mr Flannery was, in fact, not all right at all. The villains had beaten
him up to force him to tell them where the missing bottle of wine from the
box could be found, and had left him tied up in his house. They had also
stolen the remaining five bottles of wine with creatures in.
The following day Great Aunt Abigail took the creature in the wine bottle
down to the university. The zoology department were very excited to see a
creature they didn't recognise and wanted to open the bottle immediately.
Great Aunt Abigail hedged for a while for fear that the creature was
dangerous. Drusilla and
Stephen's researches in the library and
Robbie's researches in back issues of "Wierd
Tales" yielded no results except that squid like things included
Cthulhu, although this line of enquiry was quickly dropped since Cthulhu
would not fit in a wine bottle.
A further call on Mr Flannery revealed that the addressee for the case of
wine he had received was actually Mr Flannelly. Only one Flannelly was
listed in the Edinburgh directory, so Great Aunt Abigail paid him a call.
He claimed to know nothing about any wine deliveries although Abigail
suspected him of lying. Robbie asked around the local errand boys and
found out that two men had been seen carrying a box up to the house late
at night.
Eventually the zoology department were permitted to dissect the creature.
Abigail, Hari, the Laird and Robbie
attended the disection. Robbie soon discovered that autopsies on
mysterious unknown creatures were just as dull as staking out villains in
hotels and libraries. The Laird gave him five pounds to stop fidgetting
and go away.
The creature did not re-animate and attack anyone while it was being
dissected. Great Aunt Abigail insisted that a sample of the wine was sent
for chemical analysis.
from Robbie: After Abigail and Hari were set upon by ruffians
who had broken in, Robbie decided that he wasn't going to let his two
favorite old people put their lives at risk without him being there to be
a hero. (Also, he hates missing out on any fun, and heaven knows Hari and
Miss Carson have lots of fun....) So he turned up with all of his worldly
possessions in a kit bag slung over his shoulder, announced that he was
moving in, and took possession of one of the attic rooms. (Current state
of residence: pulp magazines stacked on the shelf and a variety of caps
hung from hooks behind the door.) He accepts that a weekly bath and
regular scrubs behind the ears will be part of the sacrifice he will have
to make. On the other hand he gets room and board, and gets to witness
first-hand lots of weird stuff, and the Laird just handed him a five pound
note for no reason....
from Great Aunt Abigail: Having joined the Carson household,
Robbie will be learning a variety of interesting card games from someone
with sixty years experience. He will also be instructed in the important
art of Indian snake and spider identification. It is vital to know which
species are deadly and which are harmless. Robbie might not have plans to
go to India, but Miss Carson will insist anyway. She hasn't seen any
poisonous snakes in Scotland yet, but vigilance is the key to survival.
Anyway, Robbie probably enjoys the gruesome descriptions of the effects of
venom...
from Hari : Old?!?!?!?!? If Robbie actually uses this adjective to
describe Hari to his face it may go so far as to elicit a blink, though
not a change of expression, obviously. Hari will ensure that Robbie KEEPS
his pulp magazines and any books he acquires neatly stacked on the shelf -
Robbie will have to learn to keep his space as well as himself clean and
tidy. He will be pretty strict with Robbie about, behaviour, cleanliness
etc, but he will secretly rather enjoy having the young thing around. It
takes him back years. It is, however, unlikely that Robbie will find out
how much he has in common with Hari - at least not from Hari himself, what
Aunt Abigail chooses to talk about is of course her own affair.
Great Aunt Abigail is not proposing to adopt Robbie, so there
won't be any "When Hari was your age..." stories. But it is nice
to have a youngster around the place and Abigail can see that Hari is
rather enjoying the process of housetraining Robbie.
from Robbie: I forget exactly how old Hari is, but Abigail's just
turning 69 or so in June 1924 (when the current scenario is running) and
Robbie's 15 and a half. I don't know what mortality rates were at the
time, but given that Robbie's immediate family and general social circle
would all be connected to the coal mines, and thus no doubt prone to nasty
lung diseases and generally bad diet, Hari and Abigail may well be some of
the oldest people he's ever met. Certainly they're more active than any
old people he's known before! [about being tidy] I'm sure some
positive reinforcement will do the trick. He's a typical lazy teenager,
but having his own space (and soon his own exciting profession) will do
him a world of good. Certainly this will be the first time that he's *had*
his own space to be proud of; if you live with lots of siblings, or with
other boys, there isn't terribly much incentive to keep the place neat
even if you want to, because everyone else will just mess it up again. I'm
not sure Robbie will have the patience to learn bridge, though.... :)
Great Aunt Abigail was born on 20th June 1858, which makes her 66
years old, but that is quite impressively old in the 1920s. She has no
objection to being referred to as old, but Hari, who is now 51 years old,
is still middle-aged. Another thought that occurs to me is that Hari and
Abigail won't look as old as Robbie thinks they should. Both have had
relatively easy lives, unlike Robbie's friends and relations. Poverty,
hard work, poor living conditions and food shortages tend to make people
age much more quickly. Hari probably looks younger than Robbie's mum, who
is presumably still in her thirties or forties.
Robbie decided to invest his brand new five pound note in setting
himself up as a private detective, so he got some business cards printed
up, hired a Post Office Box and put out some adverts asking for cases of
an unusual nature.
Great Aunt Abigail, Hari and The Laird concluded that he was less likely
to end up being arrested or eaten by monsters if they assisted him in this
plan (and anyway both Great Aunt Abigail and The Laird rather like having
puzzles to solve). Hari offered advice on the wording of cards. Great Aunt
Abigail offered to impersonate The Great Detective's secretary, and did
some set-dressing in The General's old study to make it look like the
office of a serious gentleman investigator. Robbie himself is not
permitted to use the study as he has not completely mastered the art of
keeping his hands clean for more than two minutes at a time. The Laird
handed some money to Hari with instructions that it should be spent on
suitable items for Robbie, including clean clothes and a second hand
bicycle.
The first case assigned to R. Burns (detective) was to watch Mr
Flannelly's residence. Robbie and a group of local boys organised a rota
and followed the gentleman around. Robbie also found a reference (in a
pulp fiction book) to the use of wine with halucinogens in as part of
occult rituals.
Inspector Menzies was reluctantly dragged
in to investigate the attack on Mr Flannery and the break in at Miss
Carson's house. Mr Flannery was not pleased to find the police were
involved but Great Aunt Abigail cheerfully pretended to be too senile to
know what he was talking about...
The Laird bravely volunteered to try to track down the man who had been
selling the tainted wine by a process of asking around all the local pubs.
He may well have found out the mystery gentleman's identity but was in no
fit state to recall any information by the time he got home that night.
The Major, meanwhile, opted for the
rather less sociable strategy of telephoning local wine merchants to make
enquiries about importers. He restocked his cellar at the same time.
Great Aunt Abigail played "peek-a-boo" with Rosemary in the
drawing room of the Major and Drusilla's house, before paying a call on
the Hunters to make sure that Henry hadn't picked up an American accent
while visiting his relatives in the Colony.. Jasmine
assured her great-aunt that since all Henry could currently say was "goo"
and "burp" the accent was unlikely to be a problem.
Chemical analysis of the wine in the bottles proved to be inconclusive.
Robbie's experiments into methods of getting an octopus into a bottle were
eventually successful, although Hari made him clean the kitchen up after
he'd finished.
After several days of watching Mr Flannelly, Robbie was finally lucky
enough to see him leave the house carrying a large leather satchel. Mr
Flannelly hailed a cab and Robbie gave chase on the second-hand bicycle he
had recently bought. The cab pulled up outside a large house in Newington
and Mr Flannelly was seen heading into the cellar through a side door.
Robbie observed for a few minutes and then went in search of a public
telephone box (introduced in the UK in 1906) from which he called
Hari and then the Laird. Hari telephoned the Major and all four of them
drove to the house in an attempt to stop Robbie breaking in to it. The
Laird was driving a little too fast and was stopped by the police and
asked to be a little more careful in future, so he was last to arrive at
the scene.
The group investigated the grounds and looked around the outside of the
house for other entrances, but none were found. Another two young men
arrived at the house after Mr Flannelly, and, luckily for our heroes and
heroine, the last one forgot to lock the door behind him.
Opening the door, the group saw an entrance area with four coats, four
leather satchells and four keys lying around. Robbie took one key, Hari
took another. Robbie found a piece of paper in one of the coat pockets.
Faint sounds could be heard from the cellar downstairs. Hari glided down
the stairs in butler-like silence and discovered that the sounds were
probably chanting.
The group retreated into the garden to consider the next step they should
take. Robbie read the paper and yelped in shock. Great Aunt Abigail then
read the paper and discovered that it said something about raising a Him
from the Darkess.
Thinking that raising anything at all from the Darkness was probably a
bad idea, the group decided that the best thing to do was to disrupt the
ritual. The Laird sent his dogs down the stairs and made some noise, but
this appeared not to have any effect, so he opened the door at the bottom
of the stairs. Inside was a small chamber with a table and five empty
glasses of wine. Peering through a curtain at the far side the Laird saw
five figures in masks dancing and chanting. He strode through the curtain,
closely followed by his dogs, Great Aunt Abigail, The Major and Robbie.
Great Aunt Abigail entered into a religious debate with the young man who
appeared to be the leader of the group while Robbie and the Laird looked
at a mysterious old book which was propped up in the corner of the room.
Both were very disturbed by the illustrations they saw, although they
couldn't read the Latin text.
The Laird demanded that Mr Flannelly show himself, which he did, rather
sheepishly. There was then a discussion about the assault on Mr Flannery.
Mr Flannelly told them who he had ordered the wine from and promised to
send Mr Flannery a crate of wine as compensation for the trouble he had
suffered.
The long suffering Inspector Menzies was informed of who had sold the
wine and was able to track down and imprison the two gentlemen who had
attacked Mr Flannery. It emerged that the squids in bottles were in fact
of a known species and had been placed there by dodgy local criminals
intent on conning gullible young believers in the occult into parting with
large sums of money. This news was something of a disappointment to
members of the Zoology Department, but a relief to everyone else.
Links :
Character Profiles
A Cthulhu
Chapbook
Tales of
Plush Cthulhu
Cthulhu Versus the
Dread Smiley Face
De
Profundis - Edinburgh
The King in Yellow
Hello Cthulhu
The
Littlest Elder God