[OOC]Prologue - Peru, March 1921

[Anatomist]

You ok Raiko?
Im not trying to push you to post btw (GM are allowed to take absence as long they need in my book), just a concern

[Raiko]

Sorry again.

Thanks Anatomist, everything's great at the moment to be honest - I've just been really, really busy quite unexpectedly and kept running out time or forgetting to post.

I'll pretty embarrassed.

I will try and adjust my routine back so that I post here every day again. We've almost reached the end of the prologue now, and so I'll see how I'll doing while we wrap up this part of the adventure.

I very much hope that I'll be managing to post regularly again, if not then I'll delay starting chapter one by a few days, as I definitely want to be posting at full speed again when we begin the main adventure.

Don't worry - I'm really enjoying the game, and I am totally committed to playing - I just got distracted by real life at home and work.

[jp1885]

Great to hear mate - real life can be a bugger can't it? It's been over a month since my gaming group got together for some CoC fun as we've all got stuff going on.

[Silver Priest]

Quality takes time, as they say, so no worries.

[Anatomist]

Your 46 points of luck spend is #EPIC , what now maggot head!?

[jp1885]

Cynthia doesn't do things by halves!

[Raiko]

Okay, congratulations you have basically completed the prologue adventure of Masks of Nyarlathotep now. I need to make a couple of longish posts to wrap things up - the first of which will include any details that you discover during the survey of the pyramid led by Dr. Sánchez and that's it - onto 1925 and chapter one.

I might get the first post up today, but I'm busy with several IRL things today, so it's more likely to get posted tomorrow. I'll leave it a couple of days then so you can all make some final prologue posts if you like, and then I'll post a final prologue post over the weekend and hopefully the opening post of chapter one. There will be one or two things to decide on after your survey of the site, before we move on, so there's a chance it'll take a little longer to conclude this chapter.

After the prologue is wrapped up, I'll need a few things sorting as prep for the main adventure. I should be fine to post again at my normal pace next week, so as long as I can conclude the prologue over the next few days, Chapter One should be running by next Monday.

The prologue has taken quite a bit longer than I expected, but that mainly due to me adding extra stuff to allow you to take your own path - rather than railroading you back to the prologue's linear plot. It ended up being more or less the same length as a main chapter, so I'm very happy with how long we've taken.

One thing that I do need you to think about now, if your character isn't normally based in the North East of the USA, is that Chapter One begins in New York in January 1925 and you will only have a couple of days to get there. The winter of 1925 was one of the coldest in history for the New England region and when the chapter begins on the 12th or 13th Jan, New York has already suffered several heavy snow storms. So while Cynthia could certainly hop on a train from Chicago and make it to New York, even with the bad weather - Dr Sánchez and Atauchi would really need to have relocated to the US during the intervening years - quite possibly as a result of the events in the prologue.

Marcus is likely to no longer be John's bodyguard (unless you'd like me to recruit a new player for John), but can still be employed by Pinkerton - or be a P.I. (maybe with Atauchi?).

Before the prologue was added, Masks of Nyarlathotep traditionally began with one or more of the investigators being contacted by their old friend Jackson Elias. So regardless of how your characters spend the intervening years, Jackson will stay in contact with you all, his new book The Hungry Dead will be published in 1923 detailing events in Peru, but omitting supernatural details.

Then in June of 1924 he departs alone for Africa to investigate the origins of Augustus Larkin, who was born and raised in Kenya (British East Africa at the time Larkin lived there). Jackson believes that a possible prequel book could be in the works.

@ Mr. Handy: Obviously, during your previous couple of attempts to play Masks with Amy as your character, she began the game engaged to Jackson Elias. I'm assuming that you still wish to begin Chapter One engaged? When we last tried playing, I did struggle a little, during our short 1924 intro, to justify why Jackson went off without Amy and was so secretive. He'll be much less secretive this time, as she already knows he's following up on Larkin and the writers "recasting" Jackson as an African American makes the rest a little easier to explain.

My current thinking is that since mixed race marriages had a social stigma at that time - even in New York where mixed race marriage was never illegal - Jackson feels that he needs to follow up his leads for what he believes will be his greatest book ever prior to the wedding, and possibly prior to making the engagement formal. He will however write to her several times between June 1924 and January 1925.

I won't be running a "goodbye" intro for 1924 this time, as it would require getting everybody together in New York twice.

[jp1885]

I've enjoyed the prologue immensely Raiko. Thanks very much for all the effort you've put into running it.
I look forward to plotting Cynthia's progression (no doubt involving the purchase of a lucky rabbit's foot, lucky heather and the search for a four leaf clover) and seeing how she fares in the next chapter!

[Zero]

Heh, now I can finally watch/listen to the prologue chapters of the actual play podcasts for Masks. I've been interested in seeing how we've solved things differently than perhaps intended or at least how other groups have. Avoiding the spoilers has been difficult as this is a new release.

[jp1885]

Heh, now I can finally watch/listen to the prologue chapters of the actual play podcasts for Masks. I've been interested in seeing how we've solved things differently than perhaps intended or at least how other groups have. Avoiding the spoilers has been difficult as this is a new release.

+1

[Anatomist]

Dr.Sánchez being a Archeologist with this experience of meeting the karashiri, takes an enormous interest in Anthropology, trying to find out if the krashiri "illness" had spread from Peru and beyond or even if it was introduced by some older civilization. He was quite sure that the spanish conquistadores were victims in this context. They had that journal as proof of that.

Dr.Sánchez would travel latin america from south to north reading and looking for clues until he met Clark Wissler curator for the New York Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology in curating some Olmec sacrifice axes. He started a collaboration with Wissler to prepare a large exposition on Mexico and Central America, specially the Olmec civilization in collaboration with Archeologist Alfonso Caso.
Nemesio Sánchez had a special interest in the Olmecas as the earliest civilization builders in modern day Mexico, he had his suspicious that the Olmecs sacrifices culture had something to do with the karashiri, it was at least one of his main hypothesis.

Dr.Sánchez (and his team?) is in New York the autumn of 1924 working on the exposition.

-------
If Zero wants Atauchi can be Dr.Sánchez's tracker and survival specialist. Dr.Sánchez would also had offered Marcus Ambler a job as security advisor, furthermore, Cynthia and Amy being Students would be more the welcome to finish their studies with Dr,Sánchez and called upon to help collaborate with Clarck Wissler in 1924. Would Michael Anderson join the team as Dr.Sánchez partner in Archeology?

[Silver Priest]

I'm fine with whatever you decide for John. Depends on if you want a new player.

I also like working as a PI with Atachi, but it seems like the best way to keep us together is to have us all work for Dr. Sanchez, since he's offering, so I'd be up for that.

I really enjoyed the prologue. I was surprised by the supernatural elements, I assumed it was going to end up like a Scobby-Doo mystery and have a bad guy in the mask, so I was as surprised as Marcus. I'm interested in how this changes the story, since as I recall in the original module Elias is a debunker of the paranormal.

Heh, maybe we'll be able to save his life and he'll end up in a coma the entire game after providing us with one critical clue.

[Zero]

I did accidentally stumble upon one spoiler when I was perusing various CoC discussions across the interweb. Sanchez was supposed to die as a mostly forgettable NPC. The timeline has changed, perhaps it's the Mandela Effect or we're just that good.

Anyway, I think the only logical reason for Atauchi to leave South America prior to receiving a summons by Jackson Elias would be to do as Anatomist suggested and take a position with whatever University the Professor attaches himself to and work alongside him as a tracker and survival expert on his expeditions. He's smaller in statue than de Mendoza, but I feel he can be very much of the silent intimidating presence.

As for John, I think his part in the story has ended unless he pops up as a guest NPC at some later point. That being said, I personally would welcome another player. We have a lot of investigators with similar skill sets and while I realize that we were over capacity at the start, I feel like 1 more would be helpful.

[jp1885]

Cynthia has a great interest in archaeology and will definitely stay in touch with Sanchez, as well as Elias. However she's a psychology student, so she will probably continue her studies in that field.

By 1925 she would have finished her bachelor's degree and gone on to complete her master's degree. With typical stubbornness she will be fighting with the establishment in a bid to try for a Ph.D (I gather that a woman so qualified in this field would have been very unusual in the 1920s - https://www.yog-sothoth.com/forums/topi ... s-america/ refers).

If there are no colleges or universities willing to accept the idea of a female Doctor of Psychology, then maybe 1925 is the perfect time for her to embark on another adventure...

(Oh, and I'm happy for another player to join, either as John or a previously unknown chum of Elias).

[Mr. Handy]

Yes, Amy would begin engaged to Jackson, even if there's been no formal proposal yet. The whole "forbidden romance" aspect would make it even more appealing to her. She'll be a graduate student at Columbia in January 1925, so there's no problem getting her to the scene, though she's going for a Master's rather than a Ph.D. She'd be happy to work with Dr. Sánchez again.

I was also not expecting the supernatural to be so obvious in the prologue, as in the original campaign Jackson Elias was a skeptic, and here he's confronted with undeniable proof of the supernatural. I haven't read or played The God of Mitnal prologue from the Companion, but I think that one preserved Jackson's skepticism. His being "recast" as African American was interesting, though it may not actually be a recast. I haven't read the original campaign, but I don't think it ever said that he wasn't, and one of the authors of the new version of Masks said he was even described in the original campaign as "dark."

[Anatomist]

Oh... and im positive to another player.

[Silver Priest]

What exactly was Larkin trying to do with us? I feel like he did not really need us, and we basically just foiled his plan at every turn. Bit of a mistake on his part.

As for Elias, I always thought he resembled a minor character from Hitman: Blood Money. I have to recalbirate my mental image of him now, clearly. :p

picture,[img]https://i.postimg.cc/Zq2JrWzK/Henderson-Reading-Mission-1-file.jpg[/img]

[Mr. Handy]

I don't think Larkin was able to touch the ward, nor could the kharisiri. He wanted to use us to break it even more so that the Father of Maggots could escape.

I'd be happy with a new player too.

[Raiko]

I really like Anatomist's suggestion to get you all into New York for chapter one. It also makes it a bit easier to ease in an extra player.

Sorry, my wrapping-up posts are slightly delayed. This is mostly the fault of Ole Gunnar Solskjær.
I'll get stuff done this evening before I get distracted by football again.

There's nothing to worry about spoiler-wise by discussing the prologue - or watching / listening to other groups who played through. So:

Yes, Mr. Handy is correct, Larkin and the kharisiri could not touch the ward themselves so he needed to persuade somebody else to do it for him. His plan was to persuade a group of foreign adventurers to get rich / famous by plundering the pyramid of its gold - starting with another section of the ward. As a back-up he had a couple of useful spells including Mental Suggestion which he intended to use to make sure that one of you damaged the ward if appealing to your greed failed.

He failed to recruit any locals to visit the site, as residents of Puno are aware enough of the myths to be superstitious of the old pyramid and the kharisiri. And he avoided Dr. Sánchez because: (a) he's too knowledgeable about local history, (b) he'd be unlikely to want to plunder the ruins.

As this is just a short prologue one-shot though, he isn't the most capable of evil-masterminds. Although he is already suspicious of Jackson, he expects that his foreign recruits will all travel with him to the site without meeting either Sánchez in Lima or Nayra in Puno. De Mendoza attempts to kill both Sánchez and Trinidad in any case, and the kharisiri were actively hunting Nayra in Puno.

If any of you do take a look at other play-throughs, you'll probably find they're much shorter. Here's how my game differs from the average run.

The default way to run the museum section is that de Mendoza has just murdered Trinidad when the investigators arrive. This gives him more time to create a better distraction to separate Sánchez from the investigators, and the most likely time you'll confront de Mendoza is right after he implants one of the maggots into Sánchez.

It's then likely that both Sánchez and de Mendoza die at the museum, and that the investigators go to Larkin's hotel before de Mendoza can recover. Larkin at that point is laying on his bed stoned from heroin. Most groups kill Larkin when "possessed sorcerer Larkin" shows up (any time "drug addict stooge Larkin" is in danger). So Larkin rarely makes it out Lima.

Our game changed initially, because I used the optional suggestion to allow a Luck roll to get to Trinidad before she died (she's a nice NPC, so I gave her a chance to live!). Even though the luck roll was failed, I decided that de Mendoza was still dealing with her when you arrived in the basement, which made his distraction (stabbing passer-by Cynthia) less effective and saved the NPC version of Sánchez. De Mendoza's preferred distraction was to start a fire, or at least to stab someone while he wasn't being chased.

Then, because you met up at your own hotel before heading to confront Larkin, de Mendoza had time to get him out of there and escape with the trucks. At the time that I decided they'd escaped the hotel, I didn't anticipate you being so tenacious in chasing them - resulting in some hurried research about the outlying areas of Lima, and the local tram network! So everything involving the haulage firm was added in by me, but at least it gave me chance to have an NPC impregnated by one of the maggots. Doctor Sánchez that should have been you! The way that the encounter played out I was worried that fate was going to kill Sánchez as intended - it was like a final destination scene. Lol.

I also fleshed out the kharisiri activities around Puno a lot, including adding the Rancho con Vistas al Lago and Eliza's family tragedy, mainly to give Larkin more chance to catch up before you reach the pyramid.

[jp1885]

I know nothing of 'Masks', save what I've played here, but I couldn't see the join between the official material and the bits you added, so kudos to you Raiko.