Call of Cthulhu (2020 game)

## Call of Cthulhu Plot

In the 20’s, private eye Edward Pierce takes a job to investigate the island of Darkwater regarding the mysterious death of famed painter and resident Sarah Hawkins. After checking around town and meeting characters such as bootlegger and gang leader Cat, as well as the last acting captain James Fitzroy, he searches the Hawkins warehouse, discovering a bizarre painting somehow there following the fire that claimed the Hawkins estate. Police officer Ethan Bradley accompanies Pierce to the manor and investigate the source of the fire. Realizing there was a fight that started the blaze, Pierce and Bradley pursue a cloaked figure that retreats into a hidden passage below the mansion, where they discover a cult at work in the mines below the estate. They both are confronted by the presumed dead Charles Hawkins, who appears as a deformed, mutated figure. After Charles kills Bradley, Pierce flees the crumbling caves, and wakes within the Darkwater hospital, where he is experimented on by Doctor Fuller.

Waking in an asylum cell in the hospital basement, Pierce is greeted by young doctor Ann Marie Colden, who helps Pierce in his escape. On his way out, he runs into and speaks with Francis Sanders, an occult art collector who knew Sarah Hawkins. He questions him on Sarah and learns of a being called “the Shambler”. It is then that an unseen force throttles and kills Sanders, and Pierce barely escapes the hospital with the help of Bradley, who is somehow alive and unknowing of the events under the mansion. Pierce goes to question Sanders’ wife Irene and finds the Shambler is a painting Sarah sold him. While in Sanders’ art gallery, the creature itself emerges from the painting and attacks Pierce, who finds and uses a special ceremonial dagger to banish it. On advice from Cat, he visits the bookshop of occult scholar Algernon Drake, and discovers a safe holding the Necronomicon.

Upon opening the book, he is shown Colden, who investigates the hospital basement to find the truth behind the inhuman changes of the patients at the hands of Fuller’s experimental drug; Fuller catches her and subdues her. Pierce awakens and meets Drake, who tells him of the occult and urges him to find Colden. Entering the empty hospital, he avoids the Shambler as he uses a lantern to get past invisible glyphic walls. He finds Fuller with Colden in the basement, the latter which is altered and appears to be dead. After suffering more hallucinations, he finds Fuller has vanished, and he discovers a hidden cell containing the deluded Sarah Hawkins. Pierce heads with her to destroy the gas dispenser which Fuller used to weaken the minds of his patients. They are confronted by Charles, who reveals to Pierce he hid Sarah from the cult and she has dangerous powers, before they both manage to overpower and kill him.

Pierce discovers that Sarah inadvertently summoned the Shambler after painting it from a vision she had prior. Finding the key of R’yleh, a pendant with a protective mark on it that was recovered from Charles Hawkins travels, Drake plans to use it to protect Sarah from the voice a mysterious entity. Police chief West arrests Pierce due to his shady presence, and while in jail, Pierce has a vision from a massive creature called the Leviathan, who is later revealed to be a “miraculous catch” from decades earlier; it is, in fact, an intelligent, other-worldly sea creature with powerful telepathic abilities, who shows Pierce Sarah and Drake beneath the manor to conduct a ritual to banish the Shambler. The painting is being smuggled by Cat, but she flees when the monster manifests itself. Sarah uses her lantern to wipe away the glyphs used to anchor the Shambler, though Drake’s survival depends on Sarah’s actions. Sarah is overwhelmed by the call of the cult.

Pierce later is shown visions of Cat investigating the unexpected murder of Chief West. As she deduces the events, she realizes he was murdered by the cult, including Fitzroy. The effects of the creature the cult worships begin warping the minds of Darkwater. In the chaos, Bradley frees Pierce and tells him of her going to the boathouse. Pierce fights through the savage residents while making his way to the boathouse, encountering several powerful hallucinations which he either fights or submits. During the visions, he kills Fuller, and overloads the boiler to destroy the boathouse. He’s stopped by the cult, who have now begun to mutate into humanoid cephalopods much like Charles, with the exception of ringleader Fitzroy. Escaping into the sea, Pierce witnesses the Leviathan escape from its imprisonment from beneath the town, retreating back into the depths.

Pierce washes up near a system of caves occupied by the cult, where he discovers the creature’s intention to get caught and infuse its lifeblood into the town to increase susceptibility to the god of the cult; he also argues and converses with a hallucination of Colden. Pierce suffers various hallucinations of individuals he’s encountered, including Charles, Fuller and Sarah, as well as two projections of his mind, hostile Truth and sensible Reality.  Through all of these visions, Pierce learns many things of those he’s met: Cat actually secretly respects Pierce; Bradley, while stoic on the outside, actually suffers nightmares and paranoia; Sarah, the Oracle of the cult, desires that the god will be able to bring back her son Simon, and that his Pierce’s desire to help others is meaningless; Charles desired to be the one chosen to awaken the god, enraged to discover it was in fact Pierce; Fuller and Fitzroy were among the crew of the “Miraculous Catch” decades ago, granted agelessness – while Fitzroy worshipped the being, Fuller was fearful of the apocalypse it would bring, and sought to use his experiments to remove the consciousness of the individual into space to avoid it.

Pierce reaches a stone walkway on a cliffside, where the dagger of the ancients is prepared for the ritual; all that remains is his choice. If Pierce chooses to do the ritual, the Great Old One Cthulhu is awakened and the world falls into homicidal madness. If Drake survives and Pierce chooses to undo all of it, he and Pierce perform the counter ritual, where Cthulhu is permanently kept in sleep, but Pierce suffers from a fractured sanity and is institutionalized. If Pierce’s choices result in him having low sanity, he can choose to kill himself to prevent the ritual from happening; his office is emptied, with a painted image of his death shown. If his choices keep his sanity high, he can choose to refuse to perform the ritual, but also refuse to give into his desire to kill. Sarah Hawkins then steps off the cliff and dies, and Pierce returns home, drunk and depressed over her death.