The Great Trap.Part 1
The Great Trap (written by Heinrich D. Moore for Call of Cthulhu), GM-Alex
The investigators receive a letter from themselves: one that
they have no recollection of signing. The letter urges them to meet at the home
of professor and physicist Adhemar Osterman.
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You are all
part of an investigator group called The Esoterics, based out of the
University of Chicago. The Esoterics meet up semi-regularly for
investigations into the unknown, meetings you colloquially referred to as the
“book club”. |
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Ai-Ling (Bill-Nebraska) 48yo Chinese. Parents hoped
she’d marry rich; to their displeasure, she’s an Astrophysicist at CU
hypothesizing interstellar civilizations communicating with the human race. |
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Florence Maxley (Chance) 29yo attractive black Student,
fashionably dressed. |
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Professor Flint Larson (Mark-Australia) Former MI-8
codebreaker now Mathematician. Only call him “The Old Man” as he wears
elbow patches and a perpetual perplexed look. |
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Professor Nathaniel Daystrom (David) 53yo History
Professor dressed in tweed with a pipe, purporting an outdoorsman look
along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt. |
|
Julia
Chase (Xiao-Australia) 40ish Accountant. Reasonably good-looking in
her jumper with long hair and haunting green eyes. |
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7pm- June 8th, 1927. In the University of Chicago
math department basement storage room where they held their weekly meetings. They
each took turns looking over the letter that a Miss Virginia Peaslee had handed
to Flint's secretary. None of them remembered signing such letter. A hoax?
There was a haunting tone to Florence's weak laugh as she exclaimed, “Look at
the date; I wasn't even born.” The phrase "yours throughout time"
teased her memories. Ling remembered professor Adhemar Osterman as one of her
mentors. “I am embarrassed to say I lost contact with him after his
debilitating head accident 5 years ago. I remember his townhouse address.” With
his analytical eye, Flint studied the letter to verify its age authenticity of
faded ink and paper texture. He took everyone's signatures to compare to those
on the letter. Nathan was ready to retire for the night with a list of topics
to research tomorrow. Who were Walter and Ursula? What was Osterman working on
5 years ago? Julia suggested the night was still young; so, they drove by his
house.
They climbed into Nathan's Studebaker to head toward the
Hyde Park neighborhood. He drove past the two-story house with a faint single
light on upstairs. He stopped two blocks later to let three passengers out
under the gas streetlights. Flint suggested he and Julia stroll as a couple,
which she shut down with a curt, “Don't flatter yourself.”
Ling angled toward an adjacent house with its lights
still on. Gruff grumbling in a husky voice and thudding footfalls preceded the
owner answering the knock. Ling acted embarrassed at having lost contact with
her professor mentor who was his next-door neighbor. “How has he been doing all
these years? Does he have a nurse to care for him?” Allen Kincaid cared less
for his neighbor with all of the hammering racket over the years. “I complained
to his woman attorney who visits him every day. At least it recently stopped.”
Julia and Flint kept a respectful distance from each other
as they walked from streetlight to streetlight back towards the house. Flint
paused in the shadows as if to relight his pipe but really to peek at the
townhouse where he saw the upstairs silhouette of a man standing next to
bookcases. Julia, on the other hand, noticed two figures in the backyard
watching them! A woman with an older man. That eerie itch as if she was looking
at herself and Flint in a mirror. To test the theory, she leaned in to give
Flint a hug to then look if those in the backyard also hugged. But that couple
was gone. And Flint was left confused by the sudden amorous warmth of an
unexpected hug. Which caused Julia to push him away with an "Eew."
Still in the car, Florence trained her binoculars on the
house. Until Nathan began swatting at his shirt and pants to extinguish the
tobacco he accidentally knocked out of his pipe. “Sorry, I became distracted by
the haunting memories of our signatures.” He got out of the car and approached
the stone wall surrounding the backyard. Trash littered the overgrown yard
lacking proper care. His vision drawn to the streets as another car drove away.
Another Studebaker, with the exact same dent in the bumper as his, and a black
female passenger! Why was he not rattled by this mirrored image?!
As they waited at the curb for Nathan's return, Flint
checked the mailbox but found no backed up collection. Meanwhile, Julia pointed
into the darkness, "Just when I thought I was out, I'm back in. Like
looking in a mirror."
Awkward moments when they climbed back into the Studebaker.
Nathan offered a local speakeasy he knew of nearby, below an antique shop, so
they could compare notes. Three knocks and the password "Cheers" and
they were ordering drinks from Albert.
At a back corner table, Nathan confessed to: odd dreams, old
letters, and the fact that he already had 23 grandkids yet he was only 53. With
the described mirror images, Florence theorized time travel. To which Flint
questioned the possibility, "Why not Go back and stop the Great War?"
Meanwhile, Ling practiced changing her signature from a forward to a back slant…in
case they encountered more mysterious letters with their signatures. The
ability to determine past or future?
When Nathan approached Albert to order second rounds, he
asked about Ursula and Walter, on the off chance they frequented this
speakeasy. "Ursula? Didn't she pass away 5 years ago? Last I remember, she
had on a silver necklace I'd never seen her wear before.”
At the announced last call, Flint slipped cash over to
Albert as a favor: find someone to keep an eye on the Osterman house and report
all comings and goings. He slipped a little extra bribe for Albert.
As they drove away with a slightly inebriated Nathan behind
the wheel, Julia confessed her past life in the Twilight cult of the Yellow Mask.
“I was involved in some crazy stuff. Sometimes you don't get what you expect.”
Florence admitted her own uneasy feelings of old memories and not feeling
herself. Nathan reflected on laps in memories or scenes of past events that
didn't make sense. “Sometimes as if someone else was driving.” Mirror images or
doppelgangers?
After dropping the others off at their houses, Nathan drove
to a familiar opium hall to get a tattoo of the altered dragon biting its own
tail. His secret in hopes a doppelganger would not know to recreate it on
itself. 4 hours of sleep... Overkill.
Dreams: In their dreams, a purple-tinged fog parts to
reveal a portal attended by a Guardian in shimmering opaque robes. Through the
Gate, each sees silent visions of themselves playing out like a picture show.
Some visions each recognize, but others are unfamiliar. The Guardian beckons each
forward. [describe a terrible moment in your character’s past that did not happen
but might have.]
Ling- The setting reminded her of home in Nanjing near the Purple Mountain cloaked in purple and gold clouds. That's where her father slapped her in
the face when she announced she was going to Chicago.
Florence- they lost the family dog
in a fire when she was young. Yet when she graduated it was there. She still
has shirts she thought she had lost.
Flint- during the Great War, if
he'd only invented a decoding machine to stop the sinking of ships and the
resulting loss of lives.
For Those That Stepped Forward: “I am ‘Umr At-Tawil,
the Prolonged of Life. Do you bear the Silver Key?” the figure asks as you
approach the Gate. Suddenly you remember signing a letter in the company of a
man once a friend, now a stranger. You see yourself running from the shrill whistling
of an invisible assailant. Foresee yourself walking towards the trumpet sounds
of a dying alien race. Visions of what was, what is, and what may yet come to
pass. Then the visions are gone. [that triggered sanity checks].
June 9th- Research topics:
Ling – Research the physics
department 5 years ago with notes on Osterman- what was he working on at the
time? Also to study the signals from the
other side.
Flint- to arm up.
He chose a revolver as easier to conceal versus shotgun. From his pantry- bag of flour as his "dust for invisibility".
Florence - Occult Tomes, time
travel, spells, rituals
Failed push= spent all day only to
learn Peaslee was a legitimate attorney. But the voice of an old woman in her
head offered comfort, "Leave spells to me when the time comes."
Nathan- access the restricted
library to research the silver key, doppelgangers, and Umr At-Tawil.
Failed pushed= at a cost! While
mumbling over ancient pages, he learned about Yog-Sothoth, known as “Opener of
the Way”, or in Arabic: Tawil at’Umr, which means “The Prolonged of Life.”
Julia (to track down Benny who was
in her prior cult).
She found Benny as the shell of his former self working as a grocer at the local market. In the cult he directed how things were supposed to go and told others where to cut. He looked at Julia as if she was a ghost. "Math has symmetries; are you familiar with the Fibonacci sequence? Doppelgangers? What side is their heart on?" And that's when the manager arrived to break up their meeting.
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Ling mentioned her disappointment that the Kreuz observatory was closed to the public a few years ago. How she sensed almost a Morse Code pattern in the radio signals she recorded as if they are telling her to visit the Kreuz observatory.
Julia admitted the observatory was where their occult met.
And that Flint helped deprogram her.
Nathan pulled out his own journal and questioned if everyone
had journals. He reasoned Ling was lucky to have the antennas pointed
correctly. He theorized they recorded blasts of random information from living
entities among the Stars. A repeat of Ling's thesis.
Which prompted Flint to open his own journal and study a
string of numbers that had always puzzled him. "To prove themselves, maybe
these alien numbers represent today's date, time and horse number to place a
bet."
They returned to the speakeasy where Albert relayed the
house report: a woman arrived and carried a big package up the steps.
As they sipped on their drinks, Nathan talked about Yog-Sothoth
and the silver key. “Ursula probably wears it.” Julia physically checked
everyone's heartbeat to confirm their heart was on the left side.... No
doppelgangers here. Flint started to question when he was actually born. Nathan
started to believe it was the aliens telling them to go to the 9am meeting at Osterman’s
house. Was it drunkenness that caused Nathan to mumble something about his own
past car accident and him now ordering fufu umbrella drinks that he never drank
before?! Time passed quickly as Albert was already announcing last call.
Florence admitted to past dabbling’s with break-and-enter
and suggested she go to Peaslee's office. Nathan drove but parked three blocks
away. Florence stood in the shadows of the unlit building and used a bobby pin
to unlock the door and stealth inside. She used her pin light to study the
office books and confirmed Osterman was Peaslee’s sole client who paid her five
times the going rate. There were no receipts or account entries to account for
whatever she delivered earlier today.
June 10th. To the diner for coffee before they drove
to Hyde Park for the 9am meeting. Virginia stood beside her car parked in the
driveway and greeted them as she climbed the porch, "Please come in."
Housekeeping was non-existent. Piles of books occupied every
nook and cranny. Virginia motioned toward the staircase, "He is waiting for
you in his office." They heard his hobbled walking after he unlocked the
door. He was already seated when they entered. For a 60-year-old he actually
looked younger in his forties yet still had a bandage on his scalp and had a
patch over his right eye.
With a slow, weak, and measured voice, Adhemar revealed,
"The letter has to do with the device we created. If my theories are
correct, it possibly breaks the walls of different universes where time is not
the same. Even I do not remember signing the letter. It appeared on my desk the
day before the accident. As a professional rival, Walter stole the
device."
Wondering if he was even human, Nathan stepped right
up to his face, yet Adhemar did not react to the invasion of his personal space. Ling stepped
forward to give Adhemar a comforting hug for having ignored him these last 5
years. In truth, she wanted to confirm his heart was on the left side. At first,
he looked confused about her approach but then slowly stood. His body felt
tense and awkward... just as he clutched his chest as his one good eye rolled
up, and foam boiled from his lips. The diminutive Ling barely guided him back
into the chair as Nathan rushed forward to shove a book in his mouth, "
Don't just stand there, he is having a seizure! Someone call a doctor,
NOW!"
NEXT SESSION:
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