Cthulhu in Vancouver - The Mountains of Madness

'No Mr. Taxman, I don't have my R-271 filed, but I just so happen to have this lovely maiden to act as proxy...'

Late last week I was out in Vancouver (to what many Canadians call 'The Left Coast') for work, and so I managed to tack-on a few extra days to get in a visit with some good friends. In preparing for the trip, I thought that since I still had most of the miniatures still packed up from my last Great War Cthulhu scenario, I'd schlep the game out to Vancouver so I could give the guys a good dose of tentacly, Lovecraftian horror.

A stunning view of downtown Vancouver, with the mountains as backdrop, as seen from Doug's apartment.

After donairs, sliders and beers had been consumed (along with a few other things) the six of us were reved up and ready to play. I ran the charts and split the guys up between the sides of Good and Evil. Doug, Paul and Chris took the Belgian, British and French teams respectively, while Kyle and J ran the 'Cultists of the Yellow Hand'.

I won't go into too much detail regarding the scenario, but if you're interested you can see it described here. The thumbnail plot is that the Forces of Good are tasked to save a damsel in distress, thwarting the Evil Cultists who plan to sacrifice the poor girl in order to summon a Dark Power into our world.

The Heroes push off from their start line to fight the Good Fight.

The game rattled along at a good pace with several lively skirmishes being fought as the Heroes slowly advanced towards the Captive's location (with epic die rolling, on opposite sides of the spectrum, by both Doug and Kyle). 

One of the many highlights was Doug's Belgian priest blessing Paul's Lewis Gun, making it a very nasty weapon to contend with (that is until a team of cultists, crewing a Hotchkiss HMG, caught him in the midst of a reload).

There's nothing like a Holy Lewis Gun to put a crimp in cultist strategic planning.

Despite their valiant efforts time ran out for the Heroes and the poor girl was messily offered up to the Dark Powers. This resulted in a Daemon being summoned into the material plane, which wanted nothing other than to grow in evil power, devour all of humanity and spray non-euclidean graffiti on public buildings. This nasty lad took the form in what 'Strange Aeons' calls 'The Dark Puppeteer'. This beastie is essentially a tentacled psychic horror that can perform long-range possessions to take control of specific Heroes in order to have them do his foul bidding (it actually reminds me of a few girlfriends I've known...). 

'The Dark Puppeteer'

Someone's having a very, very bad day.

For several turns the Final Showdown seesawed back and forth with both sides perched on the edge of their seats to see who would have initiative for that turn. In a particularly nasty sequence 'The Dark Puppeteer' (run by J) took control of the French lieutenant and compelled him drop a hand grenade amongst his own men, wiping out half of them. Cheeky git.

The Dark Puppeteer forces the French officer to drop a hand grenade at his feet. Some of his retinue try to leg-it away.  '3,2,1... KRUMP!'

The good news for the Heroes was that they had largely conserved their special equipment   which proved significant in their efforts to destroy the Daemon. Grenade attacks from the Belgians, lucky talismans and accurate rifle fire from the British all served to finally banish the Puppeteer to whence it came. Alas, the poor captive had been killed, but the world had been saved - well, for today anyway...

My thanks go out to all the guys for coming out to Doug's to visit and play the game (and to Doug for some of these pictures). It was great fun and a lot of laughs! 

(...and take heart Kyle, you must be out of 1s after that game...)