Terminus: Cthulhu Hack remix

I really like TERMINUS. It’s got that specific London-transport dread: fluorescent logic, wayfinding that assumes you’re compliant, the sense that the building is designed to move bodies efficiently… and then the geometry starts moving you.

When I prepped it for The Cthulhu Hack, I found myself wanting one extra layer: a sensible structure that makes it easier to run at the table, keeps the investigation moving, and still gives the scenario room to breathe. The result is this remix: a GM-facing running order you can keep beside the original, with some practical table craft baked in.

It’s loosely inspired by the “remix” mindset: don’t rewrite what’s good; reorganise it so it plays the way you want it to play.

Warning: Everything below is full of spoilers.

The core idea

This is a two-session spine rather than a rewrite.

You can try squeeze TERMINUS into a single sitting as I did, but you lose a bit of what makes it hit: the slow turn from “this is odd” to “this has rules” to “someone configured those rules.” The Station Below also deserves to be a destination, not a corridor you sprint through on the way to the finale.

So the aim here is:

• Session 1 ends with certainty (the threshold crossed, the horror made real).
• Session 2 is containment (rescue, confrontation, decisive outcome).

Pre-game primers (so you avoid the info dump but keep the good scenes)

A big quality-of-life change is shifting some “background acquisition” into player hands. As starting context that lets the players do the exposition for you and keeps your early pacing sharp.

I’d give two players a short primer before the first session, with one instruction: work it into the briefing or early investigation when it feels natural.

Primer 1: “There’s a survivor at NHNN”

Give this to whoever plausibly has NHS access, press contacts, or just “knows someone who knows someone.”

What they know (keep it light):

• A woman named Cassi survived something impossible connected to Tottenham Court Road.
• She’s at NHNN, shaken, and willing to talk (or at least not refusing).
• Your job in the first hour is to interview her properly before you do anything reckless.

That’s it. No details of what she saw. No mechanical “solution.” The interview scene stays valuable because the table discovers the details through questions, tone, and pressure.

Primer 2: “Crossrail had rumours”

Give this to the infrastructure nerd, historian, journalist, or anyone who likes digging into systems.

What they know:

• Crossrail excavation had persistent rumours: artefacts, odd findings, and “unsubstantiated” weirdness.
• The name David Light is connected to the work (directly or by reputation).

This primer turns the architect’s name from “a breadcrumb” into recognition, which feels much better at the table.

The thing that helped most: prepped, repeatable descriptions

I did prep evocative descriptions ahead of time and it benefited the run a lot, specifically because they were repeatable.

The Tube is a place of motifs: tiles, signage, lighting, announcement cadence, the smell of dust and warm electrics. If you echo those motifs and skew them a few degrees more each time, the station starts to feel like it’s learning the players back.

Here are the kinds of beats I keep ready (short enough to drop under pressure):

The glitch corridor (Tottenham Court Road): clean, new, anonymous… until the mosaic pattern doesn’t repeat the way it should. Once you notice that, it’s hard to convince yourself it isn’t adjusting to you, like a camera trying to focus.

The Station Below (first platform): everything is almost right, adverts almost legible, announcements almost English, like someone rebuilt the station from memory and got bored halfway through.

St Patrick’s back rooms: dust, tea, damp plaster… and then one edge that’s too clean: tool marks, disturbed grime, a draft where there shouldn’t be one.

Reorganising the scenario so it’s runnable

This is the boring part that saves you when the table goes sideways. Reorganise what you need into fast-access pages.

• What is true (1 page): the actual situation in plain language.
• Clue vectors (1 page): what points to what (Doorway → Station Below; Light → St Patrick’s; Cassi → escape logic).
• Location cards (half-page each): TCR hub, Doorway route, Station Below, St Patrick’s/catacombs.
• NPC strip: name + one-line roleplay handle + what they can offer.

It means that when someone asks “wait, who was the architect again?” you don’t go PDF-diving and lose the room.

Running TERMINUS as two 3-hour sessions

Session 1: Pattern → Threshold → Proof

This session is about discovering the shape of the problem and crossing the line where it becomes undeniable.

0:00–0:25 — Briefing + Tottenham Court Road hub
Start with urgency: Sam is missing today. Use your hub NPCs (station manager/security equivalents) to establish access and stakes. Let your primer players do some of the early context sharing so you’re not front-loading exposition.

0:25–1:10 — Interview Cassi at NHNN (keep it player-driven)
This is worth playing, not summarising. Cassi is your tone-setter: a real person trying to describe something that doesn’t fit into words.

Your job as GM is to keep it from becoming a monologue. Let the players’ questions shape what comes out. You’re aiming for three outputs by the end of the interview:

• The Station Below is not “some tunnels.” It behaves like a place with intention.
• Help Points / announcements / signage aren’t neutral, they feel like interfaces.
• Cassi’s escape wasn’t luck. There were conditions. (You don’t need to state them as a “solution,” but the players should leave the scene feeling like survival has rules.)

1:10–1:40 — Back to the hub: CCTV / Sam’s trail / the route becomes actionable
Now you pivot from “story” to “do.” You want the players to be able to say: we can try the Doorway.

1:40–2:45 — Walk the Doorway → arrive in the Station Below
Run the Doorway like a ritual, not directions. Slow intent. Attention to signage. The vanishing should be banal.

Once they’re in the Station Below, don’t try to “complete” it. Hit the arrival, the wrongness, the first Help Point weirdness and then end the session on certainty.

2:45–3:00 — End on a cliffhanger that proves it’s real
Good endings for session one:

• They hear Alice clearly and realise she isn’t coming back.
• They find Mihai.
• A train arrives and the doors open on something the table doesn’t want to describe.

End on the moment the room goes quiet.

Session 2: Rescue → Containment → Consequence

This session is about getting someone out, finding the human fingerprint behind the horror, and making a decisive containment move.

0:00–0:20 — Recap and pressure
Do a quick in-character “what do we know now?” Keep it tight. Make sure the table remembers the two big ideas: the Station Below has rules; Light is a real-world vector.

0:20–1:15 — Return to the Station Below: rescue Sam
Now you run the Station Below as a mission. Keep the temptation of the trains explicit. Make the place feel like it wants them to make one bad choice because it will be easy.

Get Sam. Get out.

1:15–2:00 — Push to St Patrick’s
This is where the “Light” thread pays off. Session two doesn’t need a sprawling investigation; it needs momentum toward the underways.

2:00–3:00 — Catacombs + Waking Dream finale
Keep the finale focused around a decisive containment goal (seal the threshold / move the Vessel / disrupt the working) and let the confrontation with Light orbit that objective.

The best endings here aren’t “we killed the bad guy.” They’re “we stopped it this time,” with Sam saved, Alice still lost, and the sense that London is full of places that are only safe because most people never walk the wrong route slowly enough.

Running it with The Cthulhu Hack (light touch)

I wouldn’t over-engineer this. I use the Hack’s simplicity to keep pressure up.

If you’re using resource spends, let them function as competence: spend to secure access, to get CCTV, to keep Cassi talking, to notice the detail that matters. Roll when the outcome changes the situation or costs them something meaningful.

For sanity pressure, pick moments that matter (the glitch corridor; Cassi’s account landing; entering the Station Below; hearing Alice; the Waking Dream), rather than calling for checks constantly.

Why this structure work

This two-session shape gives TERMINUS what it wants: time for recognition to settle in, and space for the Station Below to be a true threshold rather than a speed bump.

You still get player agency. You just get it in a frame that actually lands the ending and doesn’t leave you saying, two hours in, “we should probably get to the good bit.”

If you run it this way, the one thing I’d love to know is: what did you end session one on. Alice, Mihai, or the train doors?