Call of Cthulhu : Masque of Delusion

**Call of Cthulhu : Masque of Delusion** is a Story Arc of the the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Interra and follows the perspective of two young investigators. It is a sequel to Call of Cthulhu : Holiday Special and is followed by Call of Cthulhu : Abyss of Human Contempt.

## Main Arc

### Welcome to the Masquerade

Charles Ford, a young man searching for his brother Richard Ford, stumbles upon the small town of **Salt Lake Creek** where the enigmatic Aston Grey claims to have seen him. On his way, he encounters the enigmatic woman known as Dianthea, a talented ballet dancer searching for purpose and her true love. Aston invites them to a masked ball organized the very same night.

After discussing with Richard's local contact, a painter named August Picker, Charles begins questioning Richard's purpose there, as the latter came to the village soon after his fiancee Olivia Redfield's death. While the pair investigates, mysterious females, wearing enigmatic masks, start to appear and seemingly stalk the two protagonists, ending with wounding both of them.

### Fall into Carcosa

Enigmatic whispers notify the pair that they have stumbled into a strange phenomenon, with a heavily, bloodied and distorted town, where everyone wears a mask and seems to be afflicted by a strange madness. This constant hallucination, a miniature Mindscape generated by an occult force, seems to stem from Picker's workshop, which the pair investigates.

There, they find Picker seemingly creating abominable, faceless womanlike entities from fleshy growths - although he claims to be painting, the Mindscape's interpretation of his gesture shows him giving birth to these aberrations. This power seems to be given to him by Aston, whose talent for occultics is now obvious. The group attempts to storm Aston's castle, but are stopped by more mannequin-like women.

### Faded Pictures

Charles manages to stop Dianthea from being captured and thrown away into an infernal-looking, burning dump, before the pair is rescued by Richard, who has been trapped in the quasi-real place for entire months. Richard then reveals the truth about this place - it was created by Picker's imagination and art due to a pact with Hastur, an abominable Great Old One.

Furthermore, Richard reveals that he attempted to revive Olivia through Picker's portraits, hence the "flawed" faceless creations - and Dianthea, one of Picker's greatest attempts to resurrect Olivia, but still a failure. Driven to the brink of madness, Dianthea almost guns down the two brothers, but ends up collecting herself in order to face the one responsible for everything.

### Breaking Out

The group corners Aston in his palace, and through a mix of luck and observation, manages to burn down a portrait of Aston that kept him alive for that long - it is revealed that Picker and Aston are several centuries old. As Aston burns away, he is pressured into revealing the key to leaving the Mindscape - piercing the place's "heart", in the subaquatic area in the center of the nearby heart.

As the group is about to do so, an enigmatic figure, later revealed to be an avatar of Hastur itself, manifests, and taunts the group, claiming that destroying the heart would erase Dianthea and prevent her from truly existing. After hesitating, a maddened Dianthea ends up piercing the heart herself, ending Hastur's pact. As Hastur is briefly weakened, a man who observed the entire action steps in. Revealing himself to be Josue, the man seizes Hastur's face, Dianthea, and disappears, leaving the two brothers to recover.

## Characters

* Charles Ford
* Dianthea
* Richard Ford
* Josue
* Hastur
* Aston Grey
* August Picker

## Trivia

* This Story Arc heavily borrows from the Yellow Sign mythos.
* Its theme song, as chosen by its creator, is Poets of the Fall's **The Poet and the Muse**.