Call of Cthulhu
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Children of Fear – Episode #8
29th November 1923. After two months of road-dust, resthouse noise, and the steady attrition of distance, Tun-Huang arrived like a held breath finally released. The oasis felt half real, half mirage, green pushed up against rock and wind, until the caravan turned toward the valley of Ch’ien-fotung and the cliffs rose in tiers, dark apertures
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Children of Fear – Episode #7
The story of Sian had begun like a nuisance, missing canes and porcelain pillows, rumours of little people and funerary coins, but it ended like a knife turning. Before the caravan ever rolled out of the western gate, the investigators learned what the city had really been doing. Testing their curiosity, baiting their conscience, and
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Children of Fear – Episode #6
24 September 1923. The morning arrived without drama, which in its own way felt like its own kind of warning. No one woke to missing possessions. Zahra’s carefully prepared invitation, her ghazal baited with blood and sincerity, had not been taken in the night. Kulou House held its quiet, rain-dim composure, and for a few
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Children of Fear – Episode #5
23 September 1923. The expedition’s timetable said Sian was a pause. The last city with General Wu’s escort, the point where the university cars would turn back east, the place where arrangements with Mi Han would be made before the long pull toward Tun-Huang. In practice, Sian behaved like something else entirely. It offered the
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Children of Fear: Who’s Who in the Midnight Society Expedition
For readers of the Children of Fear campaign, here is a short profile of the investigators introduced so far. The campaign uses both Open Table and Troupe play so the number of player characters is probably larger than most campaigns. Hopefully, this serves as a useful guide for those following along the story. Miriam Ashcroft
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Children of Fear – Episode #4
23 September 1923.The gate’s echo was still in the investigators’ bones when Sian closed around them. Rain hissed on brick. Steam lifted from cookshops. Lanterns tilted in the wind like watchful eyes, and the city seemed to breathe in bells and coal smoke. Mi Han’s runner, quick, unremarkable, and certain of every turn, pulled them
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Children of Fear – Episode #3
22–23 September 1923. Peking fell away behind the convoy under a low, rinsed sky, the city wall shrinking to a pale bruise against the rain. General Wu’s escort moved with competent purpose. Trucks that coughed and rattled, carts and canvas covers tapping like loose drumskins, flags snapping in the wet air. The investigators sat among
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Children of Fear – Episode #2
21 September 1923, Peking. The morning after the lecture carried the familiar texture of routine. Breakfast trays, soft voices, the faint clink of cutlery. Yet it landed wrong. Too many of the investigators had woken with the taste of their visions still on the tongue, the sense of having been briefly displaced into somewhere real
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Children of Fear – Episode #1
20 September 1923, Peking. In the Foreign Legation Quarter the air always feels a little staged, as if the city has been asked to stand politely behind a rope while the West takes its tea. Outside those streets, Peking is vast and alive and complicated. Inside them, the rules are clearer, the uniforms sharper, the
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A Simple Call of Cthulhu Chase System
I like Call of Cthulhu’s chases in theory. On the page, they’re clever: abstract locations, hazards, vehicles, movement rates. At the table, though, I always hit the same snag: I can’t remember the sequence, I start flicking through the book, and what should feel like a breathless sprint turns into a rules consult. So I
