Tag: horror

The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Three

Belisia

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

To place the box in which Mikhail’s corpse currently resides into the temple’s extensive graveyard, Berend will have to pay one hundred silver pennies. 

He is informed of this by Father Reeves, the priest in charge of funerary services, a tall man with a shaved head and an aquiline nose. He is paternally comforting and coldly distant, often at the same time, and it’s an unsettling effect. Long brown fingers make notes with a quill in a yellowing ledger. 

We all end up as numbers. Berend hands over the money. It’s most of what he has. He’ll need more if he’s going to continue sleeping in a bed until his next job. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Three” →

The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Two

Warder

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

Isabel sits at the small table across from Brother Risoven, her tea growing cold and a piece of bloody-colored fungus lying on a scrap of paper beside it. It’s stained the paper a wet reddish brown, and it’s shriveled a bit, but otherwise it hasn’t changed noticeably from when she pulled it off the side of a shack in the Shell District last night. In the thin early morning light from the high, narrow windows of the chapel’s living quarters, it looks rather like a severed finger, dark and twisted from putrefaction. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Two” →

The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter One

Mikhail

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

The gods weep when a Son of Galaser dies.

Berend would know. It rained for five days straight after the battle on Braenach Hill, when nine Sons out of every ten were slaughtered in the grass, seven years ago. He stood in the mud, afterward, water pouring down on his bandaged head, and listened to the announcement that he and the handful of others still standing would be out of work, as part of the terms of their employer’s surrender. 

Not many walked off that hill. Even fewer are still around. 

And now one of them is lying in six pieces on an embalming table. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter One” →

New project!

Next week, I’ll be starting a new multi-chapter story, The Book of the New Moon Door. As always, it’ll be completely free to read, and released one chapter a week on Wednesdays until further notice.

The world is changing.

The old orders of the world fade away. The church’s power wanes, replaced by secular states. Magic gives way to science.

Berend was once a member of the Sons of Galaser, the most prestigious mercenary company on the continent. Now, the Sons are no more, and only a handful of his former companions remain, one of whom was dismembered last night in what appears to be a demon-summoning ritual out of an old legend.

Isabel is a Sentinel of Ondir, the god of death. Armed with bell, book, and candle, her job is to send restless spirits to the afterlife–and there has been much need of that, of late. Asking the ghost of a murdered ex-mercenary if he saw his killer before he died is a simple task, but she soon finds that things will not be so easy: though everything Isabel knows tells her it’s impossible, it appears his soul has been damaged.

As Berend and Isabel search for a murderer who can dismember a soul, and navigate their places in the changing world, they discover the terrible secrets hidden behind the veil of progress.

Chapter Four: A Home Without Joy (Part Two)

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Bottom text reads, "A fan-made Call of Cthulhu module."

Table of Contents

The investigators have arrived at last at the seat of the cult’s power: the hollow island in the North sea. Already, the Great Mother’s servants are gathering, and they will stop at nothing to prevent our intrepid heroes from ending their evil and saving the world.

In Part One of this chapter, the investigators procured transportation and sailed to the island, hiding their boat and making their way over the jagged rocks to the underground temple. Armed with the spell in the Westmont Text, and possibly some explosives obtained in Dublin, they must now enter the temple and seal the Mother’s well for good.

(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: eldritch horror, cult activity, forced drugging, abduction, monstrous pregnancy and miscarriage, explosions, and geographic destruction.)

Continue reading “Chapter Four: A Home Without Joy (Part Two)” →

Chapter Four: A Home Without Joy (Part One)

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Bottom text reads, "A fan-made Call of Cthulhu module."

Table of Contents

The investigators and their allies have faced the summoned creature and the cult in Dublin. They are left with a number of bodies in an abandoned barn and a black scar on the earth in someone’s field, or with the city crumbling in the horror’s wake.  If the investigators failed to defeat the summoned creature, they will receive no more help from their allies in Dublin. All efforts will be redirected to mitigating the damage and saving as many people as possible. Even if it and most, if not all, the cultists have been killed, arrested, or otherwise put out of action, the repercussions of their activities continue. Specifically, there has been a bombing in the city followed by quite a lot of gunfire just outside it.  It would be reasonable to assume that both the British and Irish governments will conclude that the local IRA members have broken the terms of the treaty and the previous ceasefire and restarted a pattern of sectarian violence. 

(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: mentions of terrorism/bombing, cult activity, forced drugging, a general sense of doom.)

Continue reading “Chapter Four: A Home Without Joy (Part One)” →

Chapter Three: The Singer of Tales (Part Two)

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Bottom text reads, "A fan-made Call of Cthulhu module."

Table of Contents

The investigators are in Dublin, seeking an artifact and some information from the late professor’s demolitions team. The cult is here as well, and they are planning something even more terrible than they attempted in Oxmoor. A young woman, Grace Callahan, has already gone missing. The investigators are running out of time.

(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: violence, kidnapping, murder, blood sacrifice, eldritch horror.)

Continue reading “Chapter Three: The Singer of Tales (Part Two)” →

Chapter Three: The Singer of Tales (Part One)

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Bottom text reads, "A fan-made Call of Cthulhu module."

Table of Contents

Having thwarted the cult in Oxmoor, though perhaps not without casualties, the investigators now know they must travel to the island in order to stop them once and for all. Before they can do that, however, they must first stop in Dublin to obtain the “key of the hierophant” from the professor’s former demolitions team, who stole it when they learned they would not be paid. This is a momentous and bloody time for Ireland, and the investigators will find themselves in the very tense quiet between storms. As temporal politics rage on, the cult is still making plans of the supernatural sort—and by now, the investigators are starting to experience the effects of the terrible island as the artifacts they have obtained plague them with nightmares.  

(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: mentions of WWI, the Anglo-Irish War, the Easter Uprising, and the Irish Civil War; mentions of terrorism and bombings, homophobia, and blood sacrifice; references in folklore to rape, incest, and infanticide.)

Continue reading “Chapter Three: The Singer of Tales (Part One)” →

The Well Below the Valley has returned

I’ve finished my edits, and all the links on the table of contents are now active again!

I made a few new handouts, and moved some clues around in Chapter One: The Souls of the Heathens to make the mystery both more mysterious and more solvable. Chapter Two: Green Grows the Lily is also available again.

You can go here to start the module from the very beginning, here to begin with Chapter One, and here to start Chapter Two. As always, all available material is accessible from the “Read my writing” tab at the top of the blog.

I’m back on my alternating schedule from here on out. Next Wednesday, I’ll post a chapter of Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea, and I’ll be back the week after to start Chapter Three of this module, “The Singer of Tales.”

Enjoy!

Chapter Two: Green Grows the Lily (Part Three)

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Bottom text reads, "A fan-made Call of Cthulhu module."

Table of Contents

The time of the summoning grows closer and closer. Can the investigators find the cult’s base of operations and stop the ritual?

(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: kidnapping, murder, blood sacrifice, potential mob violence, eldritch horrors.)

Continue reading “Chapter Two: Green Grows the Lily (Part Three)” →