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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, Peru

Mythos Monsters – Kharisiri

Posted on Keeper Doc

The Peru Chapter offers a novel Mythos threat in the kharisiri, who serve as the “cultists” of the Nyarlathotep avatar, the Father of Maggots. Originally a small band of 16th-century Spanish explorers seeking plunder, these men attempted to loot the Andean pyramid imprisoning the Father,  broke the golden seal, exposed themselves to its infectious, burrowing larva, and transformed into the hungry, half-dead servants of Nyarlathotep. Before the arrival of Augustus Larkin, these fat-sucking Spanish vampires functioned more as mindless predatory servitors stalking the Andean highlands and providing their master with a steady stream of nutritious regurgitated adipose tissue; however, with the advent of a more intelligent Nyarlathotep agent, the kharisiri begin to expand their numbers

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Random Events – Going Off-Script in Masks of Nyarlathotep

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Since the dawn of role-playing games, random event and encounter tables have been available as tools for gamemasters to fill time and space during play. This campaign requires ongoing, dedicated preparation, so it can be nice to toss out a simple encounter and improvise. Empty travel time can suddenly become an opportunity to interactively illustrate the world your players inhabit. A lull in the action at the table can spontaneously be disrupted. Or a missed clue can be revealed in a chance encounter. The campaign book provides two random event tables, including a wonderfully detailed d10 table in Egypt for complications encountered en route to Nyarlathotep’s Chamber (p.352). A second random encounter table can be

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Preparing for Death & Insanity

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  As we have mentioned before and you well know, MoN’s fame and legacy rely in no small part on its reputation as an unforgiving PC meatgrinder. However, the latest edition mitigates this in several ways by altering some particularly deadly bits and introducing Pulp Considerations. Even still, MoN remains a dangerous campaign with a high probability of gruesome Investigator deaths and crippling insanity. While we here at Prospero House do enjoy some gory blood-soaked tales, we also prefer for them either to be thoughtfully constructed or very clearly grindhouse fare before we sit down with them.  In a similar vein, you will want to prepare your players, particularly ones new to RPGs and/or CoC,

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Nyarlathotep – A Foe of 1,000 Possibilities

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  The pantheon of Mythos deities includes a wide range of horrors threatening the weak hold we humans attempt to maintain on the already flimsy fabric of reality. For example, take Azathoth, the Daemon Sultan, a sprawling, ineffable cosmic monstrosity spiraling in the outer void. Sure he’s old, beyond scale, and probably a malign black hole that will eventually consume the universe, but he’s also pretty dumb and, like we said, way way out there pretending to be Sagittarius A* for some reason. Then we’ve got the great Cthulhu, who instantly melts brains worldwide when he wakes up from his long sleep to make a trip to the bathroom, but he spends most of his

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Session Zero for MoN

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The experience of Keeping and playing MoN requires a significant commitment from everyone involved. A baseline non-play session before commencing the campaign provides an opportunity for you and your players to discuss the campaign while aligning your goals and expectations for the collaboration. You may approach your Session Zero with a specific campaign conception in mind (Classic or Pulp, for example) or you may be exploring your player’s interests and deciding together. Even if you have an idea of what sort of campaign you want to Keep, a Session Zero should be approached as dialogue aiming to form an optimal consensus to ensure everyone has fun. By agreeing to a shared vision of the campaign,

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, New York

Ju-Ju Rising – Backup Cult Hideouts

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  A well-paced New York chapter typically concludes with a climactic confrontation involving the Cult of the Bloody Tongue. The campaign book presents the Ju-Ju House as the likely site of this potentially explosive conclusion; however, a hasty team of Investigators may move quickly to shutter (or burn down) the cult’s headquarters well before the end of the New York chapter. Having some alternative sites for a secondary base of operations and dramatic showdown with the cult and its leader, Mukunga M’Dari, will allow you to keep the tension running throughout the chapter.  First, we’ll touch briefly on a popular secondary location for the chapter climax, which often occurs at Erica Caryle’s house during a

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Cat Links MoN - Keeper, Peru

Killing Time – Between Peru & NYC

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With the Father of Maggots returned to his putrid quiescence and friendship blossoming with Jackson Elias, your Players may be ready to return to their own lives and personal adventures. At this juncture, Keepers will be confronted with the question of how to pass the time between Prologue and the New York Chapter. You will find a number of opportunities to consider here.  First and easiest, you can simply fast forward to the Jackson Elias telegram and New York, which will probably leave Keeper and players feeling unsatisfied. Instead, you can simply ask your players to provide an explanation of what they have been up to over the intervening years. You could even elicit this

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Cat Links Keeper Tips, Peru

Random Events – Peru

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  Unlike the rest of the campaign, the Peru Prologue follows a linear track moving from Lima to Puno to the Ruins. Depending on how things develop in Lima, your players may choose to bypass events in Puno entirely. Some random events may serve to punctuate some of the travel time between locations or add some Peruvian spice in the populated locales. As mentioned in our general random encounters discussion, you need not roll on the table, but can simply select your favorite or best-fit event. Instead of using the specific encounter, you could just opt for something similar out of the category, such as a bit of Local Color like some native Quechua-speaking craftsmen

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Mythos Tomes – Africa’s Dark Sects

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Physical Description: Very poor condition with a cracked spine, blue pasteboard covers with marbled endpapers and tattered blue-stained page edge, multiple dark stains around the edges of dog-eared pages. Multiple marginal notes in two different hands. The bookplate inside the cover states the work belongs to Harvard University’s Widener Library Author: Nigel Blackwell, a descendant of British East India Company merchants, an amateur explorer with various assets throughout Africa. Reported to have died during an expedition to the Belgian Congo. Publication History: Immediately banned after a limited print run in 1920. Only 13 copies remained following the work’s seizure and destruction per the dictates of the Obscene Publications Act. The posthumously published book and its

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