The year is 1937 and a team of professional investigators has been assembled to track down and thwart a global cult! Under the patronage of wealthy heiress Janet Winston-Rogers, the medium Amadeus Ra, renowned physician Dr. Evelyn Malley and tough as nails P.I. Freddy Elliott have crossed the globe digging out the drug-running debauched followers of The Thing With A Thousand Mouths.
After losing companions to the rigors of travel, madness that destroys mortal minds and heroic self-sacrifice our heroes are in need of aid as they set out into the Yucatán jungles in search of answers! Do you have the grit to survive the trek? The brains to separate the truth from the lies?
Do you have the willingness to post regularly and adapt to a game system that isn't super well-known but I find to be a great system for Play By Post games?
Recruitment
Eternal Lies has been going for a little over two years now, but we've had a lot of player attrition- surprisingly not due to PC turnover but either because a Cthulhu game isn't up everyone's alley, people didn't like the rules system or plain old RL issues.
So I'm looking for one or two more players that can step into this campaign either with their own characters or some of the pre-generated characters that I have available. Previous experience with or interest in the Chulhu Mythos are a plus, as is experience playing Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu- but they are not prerequisites. Being able to post a few times a week at least is a prerequisite, however.
Trail of Cthulhu is unique in that it works with the GUMSHOE system, made entirely for investigative games. Player characters have pools of points in two different categories: Investigative skills and General skills.
Investigative skills are used to acquire clues and are never rolled. If you have the relevant skill, you can get the necessary clues to move the mystery forward. Points spent from Investigative skills provide extra benefits or make the PC look particularly smart or competent.
General skills are rolled using a d6 against a difficulty number. Typically the difficulty is 4 but it may be higher or lower depending. Points in general skills are spent to add points to the d6 roll.
Player characters have a Health stat to reflect their physical resilience and Stability and Sanity stats to reflect their mental fitness. Stability is a measure of how your character keeps their cool in the moment- characters with low stability tend to panic in extreme situations, characters with high stability are flinty or desensitized. Sanity reflects how close your character is to coming permanently unwound from the things they've learned about the universe they once thought they knew.
Stability is regained in between "cases" or "chapters" by spending time with friends and family or with the use of the Psychoanalysis General skill during time in the field. Sanity almost never comes back once it's gone. In some cases, Stability can be regained by following a character's Drive, their reason for taking on dangerous cases and investigating mysteries.
What's Happened So Far (Briefly)
The team has started in the U.S., traveling from Savannah, Georgia to Los Angeles gathering information on the Cult and its Nectar drug trade. Following clues gathered from the LA cult mastermind's journal (after destroying a giant mouth belching forth the hedonistic Nectar drug), the team headed to the island of Malta and dispatched the European and North African Nectar distribution hub. They learned that the Cult's alien god has a body located under a "Devouring Mountain" on Earth that opens to reveal its form when the stars are right. Identifying the correct location of the Devouring Mountain has become the investigators' only hope of permanently destroying the cult. After time spent following leads in Mexico City, the team is currently in the city of Mérida in the Yucatán Peninsula preparing to follow the Mexico City cult leader's expedition to a place called Chichén Xoxul where the cultist had hoped to learn more about the The Thing With A Thousand Mouths than what the LA cult leader was telling him.
Who We Need
In narrative terms, an Archaeologist or Professor of Anthropology/Archaeology, an adventurous Dilettante out for a thrill in the jungle or a criminal tomb robber would fit most easily into the expedition to Chitchén Xoxul, but almost any PC could work. The only lacking skills that may be particularly useful down the line would be Oral History and Explosives; beyond those two skill gaps, almost any sort of character is welcome. Campaign clues point to a cult cell in Bangkok and one of the cult's founding members from 1924 disappeared into the deserts of Ethiopia long ago- connections to those locations whether through language knowledge or personal experience could also prove helpful.
Recruitment will stay open until we have at least one definite new player. Pre-generated investigators will be posted soon. Join us, we're all mad here!
Occupation: Criminal
Occupational Benefits:
When making a Conceal or Shadowing test, you may spend points after rolling the die. For every 2 points you spend after rolling, increase the die result by 1. However, you may only do this if you are undistracted and not being directly observed, and never during a contest. Describe what almost went wrong and how you barely caught it in time.
Pillars of Sanity:
• The fundamental value of a human life
• Your personal code of decent living: Assume the best, prepare for the worst, and never shoot someone in the back
Sources of Stability:
• Charlie, your on-and-off mentor and boyfriend
• George Sullivan, a former cop who’s now your parole officer
Background: You were 16 when the Crash happened. With your father’s suicide, you were an orphan. No home, no family, there was only the street. Rummaging through trash bins and picking pockets was a welcome alternative to prostitution, and you took to it with everything you had. A year later, you met Charlie and started running simple cons, beginning to pull in the kind of money you could live off of. On the day you turned 21, you held up a bank… all by yourself. And when you told people about it afterwards, they wouldn’t believe you. Even that son-of-a-b%+~& Charlie wouldn’t believe you.
Personality: You feel alive when you’re doing things. Real things, things that matter, things that make a difference. Most people wouldn’t know something that matters from the hole in their… well, you know. You don’t dislike people; you just wish that the so-called “civilized” ones could get a glimpse of how all the stuff that they think is so important — their fancy silverware and their black shoe polish and their precious daily routine — just doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, everyone’s just got their life and what they do with it. You aren’t going to waste yours, that’s for sure.
Academic Abilities: Accounting 0, Anthropology 0, Archaeology 0, Architecture 0, Art History 0, Biology 0, Cthulhu Mythos 0, Cryptography 0, Geology 1, History 0, Languages 0, Law 0, Library Use 0, Medicine 0, Occult 0, Physics 0, Theology 0
Interpersonal Abilities: Assess Honesty 1, Bargain* 2, Bureaucracy 0, Cop Talk 1, Credit Rating 2, Flattery 2, Interrogation 0, Intimidation* 2, Oral History 0, Reassurance 1, Streetwise* 3
Technical Abilities: Art 0, Astronomy 0, Chemistry 0, Craft 2 (specialties unspecified), Evidence Collection 0, Forensics 0, Locksmith* 3, Outdoorsman* 2, Pharmacy 0, Photography 0
General Abilities: Athletics 8, Conceal 2, Disguise 0, Driving 2, Electrical Repair 0, Explosives 3, Filch 0, Firearms 8, First Aid 4, Fleeing 0, Health 12, Hypnosis 0, Mechanical Repair 0, Piloting 2, Preparedness 3, Psychoanalysis 0, Riding 0, Sanity
8, Scuffling* 6, Sense Trouble* 8, Shadowing* 4, Stability 8, Stealth* 4, Weapons 0
Drive: Scholarship
Occupation: Professor
Occupational Benefits: Using Bureaucracy allows you access to restricted library stacks, private and government archives, and research institutions as long as you can prove your academic credentials (a Credit Rating of 3+).
Pillars of Sanity:
• The warm blanket of accumulated and known human history
• The satisfaction of a good work ethic
• The firm trust you put in the physical laws of nature
Sources of Stability:
• Robert Herbenshire, head of the Department of Archaeology at Columbia
• James McConnel, your father, a pastor back home in Virginia
• Trudy Robins, a former student and now your best friend
Background: To say that it hasn’t been hard work would be a lie. Your meteoric rise — from graduating top of your class at Smith to obtaining your professorship at Columbia in only a few short years — may appear inspired and lucky to some. But they haven’t been there for the grueling hours hunched over the library table. They haven’t seen the meticulous research, the reading, rereading, and tight analysis of every document. They haven’t accompanied you to digs in the hot sands of Syria. That you’re now on track for publication and tenure is simply the trajectory of all that work. Who wouldn’t have something to say after learning everything you’ve learned? Perhaps, someday, a young woman will pour over your books at the library.
Personality: The people of the past have always been better friends than anyone living now. They tease you with little hints of their forgotten lives. They play games and leave clues. It’s easy to get lost in the books and sketches and artifacts. Your ability to cope with the living is primarily geared towards teaching. If you know about it, you can go on for hours about it. It’s all this business of flattery, faculty politics, and idle chatter that leaves you in the dark.
Academic Abilities: Accounting 1, Anthropology* 2, Archaeology* 4, Architecture 1, Art History 1, Biology 0, Cthulhu Mythos 0, Cryptography 1, Geology 0, History* 2, Languages* 2 (Greek, Latin), Law 0, Library Use* 2, Medicine 0, Occult 1, Physics 0 {1}, Theology 1
Interpersonal Abilities: Assess Honesty 0 {1}, Bargain 0, Bureaucracy* 2, Cop Talk 0, Credit Rating 3, Flattery 0, Interrogation 0, Intimidation 0, Oral History* 2, Reassurance 0, Streetwise 0
Technical Abilities: Art 0, Astronomy 1, Chemistry 0, Craft 0, Evidence Collection 1, Forensics 0, Locksmith 0, Outdoorsman 0, Pharmacy 0, Photography 0
General Abilities: Athletics 2, Conceal 0, Disguise 0, Driving 3, Electrical Repair 0, Explosives 0, Filch 0, Firearms 0, First Aid 4, Fleeing 8, Health 11, Hypnosis 0, Mechanical Repair 3, Piloting 0, Preparedness 3, Psychoanalysis 0, Riding 0, Sanity 10, Scuffling 4, Sense Trouble 8, Shadowing 0, Stability 11, Stealth 4, Weapons 3
Drive: Curiosity
Occupation: Author
Occupational Benefits: During adventure downtime for your character, you can refresh one Academic pool point up to four times per game session by reading, checking your notes and files, and the like, as long as you have time and access to reasonable and relevant resources.
Pillars of Sanity:
• Anything that can be written down can be understood
• The social fabric provides shelter from the storms of life
• God’s physical landscape of beauty and goodness
Sources of Stability:
• Travis, your opportunistic publisher.
• Micah, your brother.
• Cromwell, your aging mentor, an author of popular fiction.
Background: It started as a joke, really. Books about the supernatural and the occult — readers would just eat them up. Mix a few folk tales, your mom’s superstitions, and the tiniest bit of research, and you were writing one best seller after the next. You never claimed they were to be taken seriously. And then the correspondence started happening. Readers began writing letters to you by the truckload, so convinced that you held a kernel of truth about the afterlife or South American curses. They believed you. They corroborated your stories with anecdotes of their own. Of course you always took them at face value; you didn’t want to insult them. And they weren’t all children or particularly simple. Graduate students — even professors — started quoting you in their papers. You started to believe you were on to something. What’s more: you couldn’t really prove you were wrong. Someone in a newspaper called you the leading authority on mysticism the other day. There’s no going back now.
Personality: Although you have an unfettered and romantic imagination, you are uncomfortable in most social situations, with increasing discomfort arising from increasing formality. You take your social cues from those you admire intellectually, which does not always advance your best interests and probably explains your spinsterhood. Even so, you spend little time worrying about your social status, because time spent away from your writing and correspondence is all too often time wasted.
Connection: Walter Winston was one of your most dedicated readers. He began corresponding with you after your second book. An anecdote of his, concerning some sex cult, ended up in your third book. Come to think of it, much of your research for your first series was really just things you picked out of his letters, changed some names, and embellished on. That Walter himself never really picked up on this was a surprise to you; he probably just thought they were similar tales that worked to confirm his own. The letters stopped coming back in 1924, but you still sent him a gratis copy of every volume of the next two series you wrote.
Academic Abilities: Accounting 0, Anthropology 1, Archaeology 1, Architecture* 2, Art History 1, Biology 0, Cthulhu Mythos 0, Cryptography 1, Geology 0, History* 2, Languages* 2 (French, Spanish), Law 0, Library Use* 4, Medicine 0, Occult* 2, Physics 0, Theology 0 {1}
Interpersonal Abilities: Assess Honesty* 2, Bargain 0, Bureaucracy 0, Cop Talk 0, Credit Rating 1, Flattery* 2, Interrogation 0, Intimidation 0, Oral History* 2, Reassurance 1, Streetwise 0
Technical Abilities: Art* 2 (writing, drawing), Astronomy 0 {1}, Chemistry 0, Craft 0, Evidence Collection 0, Forensics 0, Locksmith 0, Outdoorsman 0, Pharmacy 0, Photography* 2
General Abilities: Athletics 2, Conceal 3, Disguise 0, Driving 0, Electrical Repair 2, Explosives 0, Filch 4, Firearms 1, First Aid 0, Fleeing 6, Health 8, Hypnosis 0, Mechanical Repair 4, Piloting 0, Preparedness 0, Psychoanalysis 4, Riding 4, Sanity 10, Scuffling 1, Sense Trouble 6, Shadowing 0, Stability 10, Stealth 4, Weapons 4
Drive: Duty
Occupation: Clergy
Occupational Benefits: You have access to church records that the rest of the public doesn’t by using Theology or Reassurance. This does not include access to secret archives, such as the “Z” Collection in the Vatican Library, but a Keeper may allow it with a sufficiently large spend.
If you are dressed as a priest or otherwise identify yourself as such, once per game session you may refresh any Interpersonal ability pool by talking to a member of your faith (but not a fellow Investigator).
Pillars of Sanity:
• Unwavering belief in God, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit
• The intrinsic good of humanity
• For everything there is reason and purpose
Sources of Stability:
• Mrs. Sloane, a trusted confidante in your former parish with whom you most certainly did not have a romance
• The Archbishop of Boston
• Fr. Simon, who leads your former parish
• Jessica Meinardus, your spinster sister
Background: When life as a parish priest didn’t work out, the Archdiocese of Boston had another plan for you. Your new vocation is to travel to various towns in New England and investigate claims of miracles, ghosts, and demon possession. Where they got the idea you’d be good at this, you’re not quite sure. Perhaps you showed some aptitude at seminary when you performed that emergency exorcism in the neighboring dorm room. Perhaps they’re just trying to get you out of the small town where the parishioners have begun to spread unjustified rumors about you.
Personality: You had planned for a life behind the altar and in the confessional, not one on the road. You’re always calm, patient, and courteous. You are serious about your new mission and have given it careful study, but you often find that the claims you investigate have more to do with the people making them than any suspected paranormal causes. It’s always been your ability to listen paired with careful contemplation that has led to any success you’ve had.
Academic Abilities: Accounting 0, Anthropology 1, Archaeology 1, Architecture 1, Art History 1, Biology 0, Cthulhu Mythos 0, Cryptography 1, Geology 0, History* 2, Languages 2 (Aramaic*, Latin*), Law 0, Library Use* 2, Medicine 0, Occult 2, Physics 0, Theology* 2
Interpersonal Abilities: Assess Honesty* 2, Bargain 0, Bureaucracy 0 {1}, Cop Talk 0, Credit Rating 2, Flattery 1, Interrogation 0, Intimidation 0, Oral History* 2, Reassurance* 2, Streetwise 0
Technical Abilities: Art 0, Astronomy 0 {1}, Chemistry 0, Craft 0, Evidence Collection 1, Forensics 0, Locksmith 0, Outdoorsman 0, Pharmacy 0, Photography 0
General Abilities: Athletics 2, Conceal 2, Disguise 0, Driving 0, Electrical Repair 0, Explosives 0, Filch 0, Firearms 0, First Aid 5, Fleeing 6, Health 12, Hypnosis 0, Mechanical Repair 0, Piloting 0, Preparedness 4, Psychoanalysis 4, Riding 0, Sanity 10, Scuffling 4, Sense Trouble 7, Shadowing 0, Stability 12, Stealth 5, Weapons 0
For anyone interested, this game has been a blast! If you are into investigation/ mystery/ exploration type games this would be for you.
The system is also pretty light, so it's simple to learn.
I believe I applied for this way back when, looking at Cora King.
If you guys don't mind a newbie asking dumb question I'd still be interested. Maybe she could be modified to be a bit more academic?
Edit: Wouldn't mind Dr McConnel either if it's easier to explain her being in Merida.
So, uh, what're you guys looking for in a recurit? :)
All I'm looking for is someone that's willing to post a few times a week at least, post in character and have fun. If you find you don't like the system or something isn't working for you (and this goes for any and all of the games I run with anyone I play with) please don't hesitate to speak up and let me know. I'd rather try to work things out for you than have you drop out if I can help it.
It's also helpful to skim the gameplay thread to get an idea of what's been going on- I will post a more in-depth summary of events so far as I have a chance, but the general recap above is pretty accurate I think.
Feel free to move points around on the characters and take whichever you like, though the things to remember are that * marked skills are profession skills, so taking points out of those might be more hassle than they're worth and you should only spend points from Investigative abilities in the Investigative category and the General abilities in the General category. Fleeing skill points are also a little weird, so let me know if you want to reassign those and I'll help you figure it out. If you have an idea of what skills you would like to have more of, I can also give you a few points to bring you up to speed.
Maybe Cora King spent a lot of time in libraries during her rough adolescent years and picked up a few things, including a desire to travel financed by her criminal activity and she's looking to go to Chichén Xoxul to find artifacts to fence back in the States?
For the system itself, I found this cheat sheet to be pretty helpful.
Alright well I can make an alias and jump in if you want.
How's this for an idea. Cora King is a quarter Mexican from her Father's side and grew up enraptured with her grandfather's tales during happier times. Her grandfather dying when she was close to 16 is what started her father's despair and the Crash just cemented it, ending with his suicide; within two years Cora went from a good life with two father figures to nothing and that's where the rest of her background kicks in.
Because of that she knows Spanish as well as English and it makes sense for her to occasionally be a middle woman for criminal types between the States and Mexico explaining what she's doing in Merida. Does that mean she'll have to have one point in Language? If so makes sense to move it from Geology to Language.
That should also get her a good Oral History. Maybe take a point from Flattery to do that?
Does that sound reasonable?
Sounds great! That plan sounds reasonable- since everyone else has put points from their misadventures into other stuff, you can just add a point in Languages for Spanish and a point into Oral History.
I'm definitely interested. I've never played Trail, but I've played a lot of Call and it's been on my radar as something to check out for awhile now.
Since I lack the rules, maybe Dr. McConnel? A Professor is always fun to play.
She could be tracking down the location/myth of Chichén Xoxul for pure research reasons or just down in Merida on an unrelated Mayan research project.
That's what I was thinking with the character too. Welcome to the game! I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Will create an alias tomorrow :). Let me know when and how to jump in. Hope to have a fun game with everyone!
Ready to go. Let me know when to jump in and how.
thejeff, if you're down to jump in you're welcome to make an alias and join us as well.
Are you still looking for players?
Are you still looking for players?
We are full up at the moment, but I'll let you know if the situation changes.
I'd be way up for this game if you happen to lose any more players, looks super fun :)