Chapter One: The Souls of the Heathens (Part One)

Table of Contents

It is February 13, 1922, and it is a cold and rainy Monday morning in London.  Three days ago, Professor Emundr Ragnarsson was found dead in his hotel room. The investigators will visit and revisit various important locations, speaking to witnesses and gathering clues in order to find out who killed the professor.  Meanwhile, a rival detective at Scotland Yard will be conducting his own investigation, and an acquaintance of the victim’s has his own theories as to what happened. The real killer is out there, however, and the investigators must discover the truth before he and the mysterious organization he serves strike again. 

(All page numbers refer to the Seventh Edition of the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook, published 2015 by Chaosium, Inc. I am in no way affiliated with Chaosium or the writers of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game system. Content notes for this chapter: murder, mentions of sexism and racism, memory loss/mind control, drowning.)

Lead-in:
I reminded the players about what their characters found in Session Zero, and asked them what they want to do as the campaign proper starts.

Last Wednesday, Ernest Wilde received a letter from a man he’s  never met, a prominent academic in very different field. He was then attacked by strange men—just as the letter warned.  Now, he reads in the paper that the professor who contacted him is dead.  

While Kurt and Ellie were promised a lucrative case, the client did not show up to the meeting, and now it seems he is dead.  From what the detectives know, it’s unlikely that his death was an accident, so there is still a case to be solved—and potentially money to be made.  

As a detective for the Metropolitan Police, Iskandar has no choice but to be involved.  He comes into work Monday morning, and his secretary informs him that the coroner found something “unusual.” 

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There are three primary locations at which to gather clues:

• Scotland Yard, where the evidence from the scene is being held
• The hotel room where the body was found, for any clues not yet found
• Oxford, where Ragnarsson lived and worked.

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Scotland Yard

In the 1920s, the Metropolitan Police headquarters is still in its second location, a two-building complex on the Great Victoria Embankment, close to Westminster Palace.  It is an office building constructed in the Victorian Era, and it is lit by tall windows and electric lighting. When the police force moved to this location, it had over 13,000 officers, and it has only continued to expand.  

The current fictional commissioner is Winston Pembroke, Sr.  Under his direction, the force is slowly adopting new forensic techniques, and struggling to increase conviction rates, but isn’t making many strides in public image.  

During the day, the building is busy with officers and administrative staff running errands, doing paperwork, and handling arrests.  At night it is much quieter, with only the bobbies on night shift and a few detectives working overtime. The sound of conversation and typewriters fills the space.

Emilia Niyazova, secretary for the Metropolitan Police

Emilia takes her job very seriously, despite or because of her and the detective being relegated to the smallest office (unofficially but obviously on account of being foreign).  She feels protective of her employer for a number of reasons, including a belief that foreigners should stick together, concern over her own job security, and the fact that Iskandar, as a person, is a bit of a mess. Because of the dangerous cases Detective Meshkia has been known to take (particularly organized crime busts), she maintains a policy of “no one sees the detective without an appointment” and has occasionally had to enforce it with the revolver she keeps in her desk. She can be assigned to other player characters working for the Met, or the Keeper can put her in contact with other investigators as a contact.

Outside of work, Emilia is mostly interested in going out dancing with people of various genders.  She is an independent, forward-thinking woman (though she doesn’t quite have the figure to be a typical flapper). She believes in striving for justice, particularly for women and marginalized people. 

Facts and Clues:

• Emilia can be a great resource for the investigators, as she (officially or not) has access to the Metropolitan Police’s records and can obtain information from various other sources.  She has a large number of connections, friends, and “friends” both on the force and off.
• She heard the professor give a talk at the British Museum a couple years ago, but she missed most of it due to her date being boring, so she wandered off to look at swords.
• Since his death, however, she has done some research.
  • The professor filed a police report in Oxford in August of last year, claiming he was being followed around the university, but nothing came of it.  The inspector who signed off on it is named Julian Walters, and he noted that he did not notice any of the suspected stalkers actually doing any stalking.
  • The professor’s next of kin, his only daughter, is on her way from Reykjavik and should be arriving sometime today.
• Later, Emilia can alert the investigators that Pembroke Jr. is trying to take over the case. 

Howard Compton, coroner for the Metropolitan Police

Compton is a jolly, middle-aged man who seems entirely too well-adjusted to have voluntarily chosen his profession.  He is particularly interested in new forensics techniques and wants to make sure that Scotland Yard is always up-to-date.  To that end, he has been petitioning for a new microscope for his lab. He is as interested in the pursuit of justice as the next person, but his true interests lie in scientific advancement.

He is a family man who likes to talk about his children and their accomplishments (“Anna just got engaged, he’s a lovely gentleman, the wedding is this summer…Johnny just got accepted into Cambridge, he’s going to be a doctor, we’re very proud”).  He likes people who will humor his small talk, and will become gruff with those who want to just get down to business.

Facts and Clues:

• “Well, Inspector, it’s just the most bizarre thing.  It seems the professor drowned in seawater. His lungs were completely filled with the stuff.”
  • He will specify that he does indeed mean “seawater” and not just “saltwater”—there was debris and bits of plants in it (he has a sample jar to demonstrate)—and he’d be willing to bet it came from London Harbor, though he has no way of finding out for sure. This is the result of the spell Breath of the Deep (p. 247).
• Though the professor apparently drowned in a hotel room miles from the harbor, what is even stranger is the fact that there was no sign of a struggle, nor that he could have drowned himself. 
  • There were no handy containers of water and no bruising or other signs of fighting off an assailant. “Well, he didn’t fall into the harbor, drown, and then walk back to his room, so I’ve gone ahead and told the commissioner you ought to be looking for an assailant.  This very well could be a murder. At the very least you should rule it out.”

Evidence from the Scene

Everything that was found in the hotel room has been taken back to the station.  It can be revisited at any time, though investigators not affiliated with the Metropolitan Police will need to be accompanied by an inspector or convince the staff to let them in.

• The photographs Constable Taylor took of the room before the detective arrived.  They show the body slumped over the desk, the pile of papers on top of the desk, the otherwise untouched room, and the open window.
• Several blank sheets of paper, damaged with water.
• A handwritten chart containing a list of locations around a university (“Library,” “Commons,” “Yard,” etc.) with dates and times.  Each has a single descriptive feature (“wooden leg,” “moustache,” “red hair”). The dates begin in August 1921. As far as one can tell, there are more occurrences of whatever he is keeping track of as time goes on, but the chart is a bit difficult to parse.
• Two photographs, slightly damaged around the edges.  One shows a woman in a wedding dress standing beside a tall, bearded man, and the other shows a much younger Ragnarsson with his wife and daughter (who is around five years old in the picture).
• A ferry ticket to France, dated the evening of the 10^th.
• A page of text in an alphabet the investigators likely don’t recognize (Handout 1-1). 
• A cheque made out to the private detectives, for 250 pounds (or whatever amount was agreed upon).
• A book of Old English poetry. Tucked in between the pages is a business card for “Milton’s Rare Books,” with an address on the South Bank. Opening the book to where the card sits shows a passage from a poem called “The Wife’s Lament” (Handout 1-2).

If the Keeper is pressed for time (or the players have a strong aversion to puzzles), they are welcome to substitute this decoded copy of the text in the professor’s handwriting:

Transcript: “On the feast day of Mary Magdalene in the year of Our Lord 795, a party of Northmen descended upon us like wolves in the night. The heathens slew Brother Conn and Brother Faendelach and plundered all the gold from the altar and the scriptorium. And I the unworthy Brother Bran begged the Northmen to spare us with the promise of greater riches to the north at the hollow island. They departed with their plunder and they will not return. I fear I have done the unforgivable and I pray God might have mercy on our humble souls and on the souls of the heathens.”

Transcript:

Heht mec mon wunian on wuda bearwe
under actreo in þan eorðscræfe.
Eald is þes eorðsele, eal ic eom oflongad,
sindon dena dimme, duna uphea,
bitre burgtunas, brerum beweaxne
wic wynna leas

The evidence file will also contain a note in a different handwriting, if it was found in Session Zero. Otherwise, it will still be at the scene, behind the desk.

“Before you leave, meet me at the Cross & Coin.  —N”

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Ragnarsson’s Hotel Room

The room has been closed up and untouched since Friday.  The chair is still pulled back from the desk, but otherwise it is undisturbed.  The note and the address list, if they were not already found, are behind the desk. There are also footprints, the size of an average man’s shoes, in the flowerbed outside the window. It has been raining lightly all weekend, so it will take a hard Spot Hidden check to find them. 

The investigators can talk to Frederick Matthews, the hotel owner. He can show the guest book where Ragnarsson signed in, but otherwise has no further information than he had in Session Zero. 

Facts and Clues:

• The professor seemed a little nervous, but nothing too noticeable.
• He paid for one night only, which was this last Thursday.
• He used the phone in the lobby early that evening, and then returned to his room and did not leave it again.  Matthews found him early the next morning.

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Oxford

Oxford University is exactly as austere as you would expect.  As the weather is unpleasant, the people you see on the grounds are quickly trying to get elsewhere.  Classes are in session, and aside from the absent late professor, everything is business as usual. The investigators can go to the archaeology department and examine Ragnarsson’s office and talk to his colleagues.

Ragnarsson’s Office

A small room with two walls lined in bookshelves, a sturdy oak desk, and a window looking out onto the yard. The books reflect his areas of study: Icelandic sagas (in translation and the original), collections of historical records (including several editions of the Annals of Ulster), bound academic journals, and the like.  The room is unlocked, and there are a number of faint scratches around the keyhole, where someone picked the lock with a bent paperclip (Spot Hidden, Locksmith, or other roll). The air inside is still with a faint smell of smoke. 

The desk is in disarray, the drawers pulled out and the surface scattered with papers: notes for a lecture on Viking colonization and a list of call numbers for some library books.  There is also an empty picture frame, facedown on the desk. Under the desk is the source of the smell: the professor did not smoke, but the wastebasket is filled with burnt paper.  Careful examination (a Spot Hidden or other roll) shows that someone had either stirred or sifted through the ashes after the paper was burnt. If the investigators go through it themselves, they can find some fragments of text, including part of the English translation of the manuscript that first led Ragnarsson to the expedition site (Handout 1-4). It can be used to decode the encrypted text found in the hotel room.

The fragments read:
It is possible that there is no connection, but
st reject Nigel’s the
Jasmine reminds me that the women of the island had to have been many, but I must confess I think of them as “her”—
and there is nothing green that remains
On the feast day of Mary Magdalene in the year of Our Lord 795
I have yet to find a complete source. I fear it only exists in the memory of a singer long dead
green grows the lily green grows the lily green grows the lily
Perhaps it is time to abandon the project

Archaeology Department

There are three other professors in this department: Burton, Dietrich, and Hale.

Professor Thomas Burton, archaeology department head

Professor Burton is a dignified gentleman in his late 60s with a distinguished white beard.  He has been department head for the past ten years, and he takes his position very seriously.  His specialization is ancient Egypt, and when he was younger, he went on several expeditions himself. His office is somewhat larger than Ragnarsson’s, and meticulously organized. 

While he and Ragnarsson were not close personal friends, he valued the late professor greatly as a colleague.  However, Burton’s main concern is for the university in general and the archaeology department in particular. Though he had great respect for Ragnarsson’s work, and found his papers quite brilliant, he is perfectly willing to dismiss Ragnarsson as insane, foolhardy, or fallen in with the wrong people if he feels the need to distance the victim from the department.  Burton also does not want word of the deaths on the expedition, or the fact that Ragnarsson was murdered, to be widely known and damage the department’s reputation. He will cooperate with the investigators as long as he is assured the knowledge will not be spread around. Otherwise, he will offer very little, unless presented with a badge. 

Facts and Clues:

• Burton is the only person in the department who can say why Ragnarsson’s expedition was called off: two workers and a student were killed in the field.  
  • He can show the investigators the records from the dig. 
    • The expedition included Ragnarsson and his assistant, Jasmine Indrani, as well as another student (Caleb Thomas) and six workers hired to haul equipment, plant explosives to blast through the rock, pilot the boat to the island, and so on (Cullen O’Mara, Peter Brown, Robert Campbell, Charles Howard, Gareth Jones, and Eske McIvor).
    • Gareth Jones was crushed when the brakes failed on the vehicle they took to the island to carry their heavy equipment. Peter Brown and Caleb Thomas were found three days later with their throats cut. 
    • Everyone on the expedition was present and accounted for. A note in Ragnarsson’s handwriting says that Eske McIvor, as the newest member of the team, was initially a suspect, but Jasmine provided him an alibi, though the note does not say what it was. Eske was hired in the Northern Irish port town of Coleraine, the expedition’s last stop before traveling to the island.
    • The team successfully opened the first door of a temple-like structure on the island, and entered the hall and the first chamber and began cataloguing objects there, including parts of skeletons. They were unable to delve further before the murders made Ragnarsson call the expedition off.
    • Two objects were removed from the structure: a flat stone roughly twelve inches in diameter that was affixed to one wall of the first chamber, and a large and remarkably well-preserved iron key found among the skeletal remains.
    • The island is described as gray and desolate, with no living vegetation.
• The surviving student on the expedition, Jasmine Indrani, withdrew from Oxford shortly after returning.  Last he heard, she was living in London, but that was months ago.
  • Burton did not approve of Ragnarsson taking on a woman, and a foreign woman at that, as his protegée.  
• While Burton supported Ragnarsson’s work, he was reluctant to support him getting additional funding for a second expedition, and had been putting him off for several months. 
• He can talk about Ragnarsson’s increasingly erratic behavior in the months leading up to his death—paranoia, missing lectures, distraction.
  • Ragnarsson’s wife died before he was hired on at Oxford; his daughter lives in Iceland. Burton does not know of any other family.
  • Ragnarsson rented an apartment in Oxford, and Burton can direct the investigators there.
• Burton can be persuaded to give the investigators access to the university’s manuscript holdings (at the Bodleian library) if they want to see what Ragnarsson was working on, but the manuscripts are in Latin and Medieval Irish and will be of little use to investigators without those languages. 
• The department had a meeting the evening of the murder, which Ragnarsson obviously missed, but provides an alibi for all three of the other professors.
  • Burton can direct investigators to Dietrich and Hale for more information.
  • Each professor has a key to his own office, and Burton has a spare for each one. A cleaning service also has access to the department, but they have been instructed to leave Ragnarsson’s office alone for the time being.

Professor Josef Dietrich, archaeology department member

Originally from Munich, Professor Dietrich is a small, nervous man in his early 40s. His office, defying stereotypes, is cluttered; his specialization is in Central and Eastern Europe.  He collaborated with Ragnarsson on a dig in the Rhine River valley about five years ago. They were great friends and often met to discuss ideas. 

Dietrich very much wants to help the investigators and will tell them anything he can.  He feels guilty as the facts come to light, believing that if he had listened more to his friend, he could have prevented the murder somehow.  He is nervous around everyone, but particularly around Burton, the department head. Ragnarsson was of a similar forceful temperament to Burton and often stood up for Dietrich and other lower-ranking faculty.  Some of Dietrich’s nervousness could be attributed to being a German expatriate in postwar Britain.

Facts and Clues:

• He has only known Ragnarsson for five years or so; he never met Ragnarsson’s wife and only met his daughter once.
• He will tell you that Ragnarsson was in excellent health—he didn’t even smoke and only drank on occasion—and seemed lucid and clear even as his suspected paranoia got worse.
• He says he may have seen some of the people Ragnarsson claims were following him, but was not sure they were actually doing any following. He fears he was mistaken in disbelieving his friend.
• He did not go on the ill-fated expedition, and no one told him why it was canceled. He figures it was a matter of funding.
  • Ragnarsson began the project three years ago.
• Dietrich met Jasmine, Ragnarsson’s graduate assistant, and describes her as quiet and studious, commenting on how unusual it was to see an Indian woman at Oxford.
• He can read Old English, and can offer a translation of the passage from “The Wife’s Lament.” He can also recognize the runic alphabet from Ragnarsson’s briefcase as Elder Futhark, though he will explain to the investigators that the text is untranslatable gibberish.
  • The Old English translates, roughly, to:
    “They forced me to live in a forest grove/barrow
    Under an oak tree in an earthen cave
    This earth-hall is old, and I am filled with longing
    The dales are dark, the hills so high
    Harsh/bitter hedges overhung with briars
    A home without joy”
• If the investigators do not know about it yet, Dietrich can direct them toward Ragnarsson’s apartment.

Professor Frederick Hale, department member and unwitting cult plant

Hale joined the faculty three years ago, but despite being relatively new, is quite well-respected.  He and Ragnarsson did not work closely together, but they knew each other professionally. His office is neat, with a few small artifacts from India and Indochina adorning the packed bookshelves, and a few more books are stacked on his desk. A Spot Hidden check will reveal sooty fingerprints on his doorknob.

Hale is a plant working, mostly unknowingly, for the cult.  It will be a hard Psychology roll to sense his ulterior motives, as he truly does believe most of the things he is saying.  The cult pulled strings and placed the easily-influenced Hale after they learned of Ragnarsson’s discovery. While Milton has suggested fame and riches to Hale (much like he planted the idea of Deep Ones for Blackthorne), Hale is mostly acting under the effects of the Mental Suggestion spell.  The only outright lie Hale will tell is his evaluation of Ragnarsson’s behavior: his attempt to discredit him, however, is mostly a result of professional jealousy. He will try to derail the conversation toward his own work in India and how he is tired of being cooped up in dreary old England.

Facts and Clues:

• Milton has put Hale under the Mental Suggestion spell (p. 260), and has given him several suggestions over the years, mostly to break into Ragnarsson’s office and gather notes, books, or other information to deliver to cultists lurking around Oxford.  A number of skills could be used to find this out: Psychology, Occult, Cthulhu Mythos, etc.
  • Hale has a business card for a shop called “Milton’s Rare Books,” with an address on London’s South Bank, tucked into one of the books on his desk.
  • Inside this book is all Hale could find in Ragnarsson’s office that Milton would find relevant: a list of addresses for everyone who accompanied the professor on his last field expedition (Handout 1-5)
• Ragnarsson had a canceled meeting and walked in on Hale searching his office last Monday, which alerted him to the situation being dire. 
  • Hale went into the Ragnarsson’s office one last time after the latter’s death and did a final search, which didn’t turn up anything, as Ragnarsson had burned everything.
    • As he was under the spell, he was not terribly careful, and he left a soot mark on the outside of his own office door. 
  • He has only brief flashes of memory of the things he does under suggestion.  When confronted by Ragnarsson, he was very confused as to what he was doing in an office that was not his.  If accused of breaking into Ragnarsson’s office by the investigators, he will say that the idea is preposterous.
  • He has several bent paperclips, used to break into Ragnarsson’s office over the weekend, in his wastebasket, and the ceramic dish of unused paperclips on his desk is mostly empty. There are also several receipts from the bookstore and train ticket stubs from frequent trips to London—the Mental Suggestion spell requires line of sight. 
    • His most recent stub is from a return trip on Monday, February 6th.
• Another note tucked into a book can have a time and a place matching one of the places Ragnarsson made note of (“Commons,” “Yard,” “Library,” etc.). There won’t be any clues, as the cultist Hale went to meet has moved on, but this can help the investigators develop an idea of what was happening in Ragnarsson’s last days.
• Hale has a good idea of what Ragnarsson’s work entailed, but says that it was foolish of him to dig on rocky northern islands when there is greater wealth and renown to be found elsewhere. 
• He believes Ragnarsson was insane, and has a generally low opinion of foreigners (though Scandinavians are not the lowest on his list).

Jasmine Indrani, 138A Roseberry, London 
Robert Campbell [no address]
Charles Howard, 10 Wharfdale, London
Caleb Thomas, 24 St. Michael’s St., Oxford
Peter Brown, 54 Castle St., Salisbury
Cullen O’Mara, 72 Saint Augustine St., Dublin
Gareth Jones [no address]
Eske McIvor [no address]  

Ragnarsson’s Apartment

A tiny, sparse flat within walking distance from the college.  Ragnarsson spent little time here, judging by how unused everything looks. There is a small living room with a fireplace and a couch, on which is a stack of books (some old textbooks, nothing of interest).  Another empty picture frame is on the mantle. A stack of mail has been rummaged through and scattered throughout the room, in stark contrast to how neat the rest of the apartment is (as was the office). The tiny kitchen only has a stale loaf of bread and a box of tea.  The bedroom looks like it has not been slept in for a few days. The closet is full of clothes, mostly professorly tweed jackets and the like, and there is a spare pair of glasses in the nightstand drawer. The bed sleeps only one. 

Investigators can talk to the landlady, Mrs. Johnson, who lives downstairs. If Freydis has already given her statement at the police station, she will be found here, packing up her father’s belongings. 

Sarah Johnson, landlady in Oxford

Mrs. Johnson is a middle-aged woman who has rented out apartments for income ever since her husband died in the war. 

Facts and Clues:

• She will tell you that the professor was a perfect tenant, a very nice man who always paid his rent on time and was always quiet.  He entertained no guests she was aware of. He had been living here for three years.
• Some men stopped by, saying they were from the college and needed some important documents out of his flat since he had died.  She let them in, and they only spent about half an hour there.
• Mrs. Johnson keeps a garden, and heard from a gardener friend about a plant blight and that someone at the University of London is looking into it.  (This is how Ragnarsson learned about Ernest, but if the Keeper has no players working on the blight, the investigators can talk to an NPC there.)

Oxford Police

If the investigators want to talk to the Oxford police, they will find out that Julian Walters, the officer who signed off on the police report filed last August, does not work here anymore.  He transferred somewhere up north in December. There is no more information to be found here.

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This concludes the initial clue-gathering phase, though the investigators can visit these locations in any order. They should return to London for the next phase, which will include:

• Speaking with Ragnarsson’s daughter, Freydis.
• Decoding the page of runic text from the crime scene.
• Going to the Cross and Coin and identifying the “N” from the note (“Nigel” from the wastebasket fragments).
• Following up on the addresses from Ragnarsson’s list.
• Following up on the plant blight, if no investigators are already involved.
• Visiting Milton’s Rare Books.

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Forward to Part Two

Back to Player Characters/Session Zero