Picking up from Shanghai Bullets, a group of investigators has possession of a deadly mythos artifact as they return from China to America. Unfortunately it also appears to be indestructible. They research methods of destroying the cursed thing and soon find themselves embroiled in investigating the supernatural full time, including bouts of missing time and encounters in the Dreamlands. This eventually leads them to a missing person’s case in Hollywood. A young actress has disappeared before her next film is set to debut. The investigators know it is tied to the occult, but they have no idea how far down the mystery goes.Finding the actress is somehow tied to destroying the artifact, but how?
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Sorry about the delay and sound quality – I took longer to encode this episode because it had sound quality issues so I took extra time to clean it up a bit.
Thanks for the effort; the sound quality is good!
I really like Sean’s little history asides. the past is pretty much a closed book to me. the only things in the whole world I know about are chloroform and entoptics. and Inquanok. #iswearyouonlysaythesethingstohurtme
think it’s a really good idea to have a lengthy prelude to Masks. I’ve heard the campaign criticized as starting on a jarring emotional note, because players are just sorta told they liked Jackson. this is much better, especially now he’s right on-screen and has some personality. having him want to SCIENCE the star vampire was great, made him come clear as a person much more distinctly. the adventure itself sure is dragging its feet, but nobody at the table seems to be getting impatient with it and I wasn’t listening to it, either, so it can’t be going tooooo slowly. thriller moments with shitty retro exploration equipment: always a good idea.
and this was much less toastery! good work on the audio quality.
Half of this session was entirely PC-led – they wanted to destroy the mirror, so I let them experiment as much as they wanted to. The dream plate retrieval is from Fearful Passages, a Call of Cthulhu supplement. Dream Factory doesn’t actually begin until 2/3s into the session. I promise you, next session things will get a bit…hectic.
BTW, Manly Hall was totes real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Palmer_Hall
Those are some proactive PCs! Wary, paranoid, almost killed Jackson themselves, but very proactive.
That was a fun listen; I particularly enjoyed the MANY attempts to destroy the thingy, and the hilarious drunken boat cap’n. Good times.
If Amri is an NPC here, does that mean he won’t be appearing in the regular Masks campaign?
That’s a bit disappointing.
This is a prequel to Masks, so Omri will remain involved in this campaign.
Wasn’t Jackson Elias also a background NPC in Caleb’s Wives of March?
Hey, new to this podcast. Can i listen to this without listening to the other call of Cthulhu episodes or do i have to listen to them as a series?
@kodamann – there is one prequel adventure called Shanghai Bullets, which is linked in the show notes above. It explains the origins of the PCs and how they got the cursed mirror they try to destroy in this episode.
Looking forward to more of this, and someday Masks! Don’t have anything to add, except that I’m curious about the artwork above — I sorta recognize Malkovich and Dujardin on the left and right respectively; so who are the two in the middle? (So much for my cine-cred!)
“You want to do the Year Walk right? You could totally do the Year Walk guys.” Nice try Ross. When I played Year Walk my first thought was “this would be a great Cthulhu hook” too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Walk
Where can I buy this adventure?
Dream Factory is part of Mortal Coils, which you can buy here: http://arkhambazaar.com/games/mortal-coils-1920s-cofc-scenario-book/
Love it, but the chips and munching into the mic makes me shudder!