Call of Cthulhu : Pharaoh's Bride

**Call of Cthulhu : Pharaoh's Bride**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 : Song of the Deep and is followed by Call of Cthulhu : Dread Dreaming City.

## Main Arc

### A Strange Town

Uncovering a strange string of disappearances in the town of Ongash, young private detective Ann-Lise Adler decides to investigate, while Shella Duncan, a policewoman haunted by strange dreams, finds herself drawn to the place as well. The two women decide to investigate together.

They discuss with the town's mayor Brenwick who tells them that strange events in town are caused by the actions of witches. They also discover a strange room in the town hall, which is heavily guarded. Furthermore, even more confusing is the great number of difformities among townsfolk.

Ann-Lise and Shella interrogate multiple people and rest at the inn. There, the innskeeper confirms that disappearances are caused by witches, and the two investigators realize that they coincide with solstices and eclipses. They also realize that tomorrow is the date of the next eclipse.

### The Ygrett Mansion

A name however has been pronounced : Alicebeth Ygrett, the town's first witch, killed 55 years ago. The pair is guided towards the old Ygrett mansion, where the sight of **Elder Sigils** and similar forbidden magic hurts Shella's mind. Despite everything, they enter the mansion, where they uncover a woman wandering on her own.

The woman turns out to be Alicebeth's aging daughter Mathilda Ygrett, who tells the investigators that there are no witches in the village, only insanity and psychosis that makes the villagers kill one of their own during every eclipse. Perplexed by this revelation, the two investigators quickly exit the cursed mansion.

### Understanding the Truth

Determined to know what lies in the town hall, the two interrogate villagers, all of which give the same answer : it is a stone, used to drown the witches in the nearby **Ongash River**. Donnell O'Brian - a nearby farmer who suffers from few mutations and difformities and seems saner than most - tells them even more secrets about the town : for example, the fact that Mayor Brenwick is around 120 years old, and that he personnaly killed Alicebeth.

Knowing that Alicebeth is the cause behind everything, the pair returns to the mansion and explore Alicebeth's library. They find books written by A. Alhazred, several treaties on witchcraft, as well as Alicebeth's own diary. In that diary, she recounts how she used a summoning ritual, then failed, and met a tall, dark stranger with whom she fell in love a few days after her husband died. Mathilda, while confronted with that, enters a trance where she repeats a single word : Nyarlathotep.

Going further in the mansion, the two investigators find a secret passage leaving to a devastated room where the end of the diary has been hidden, written with a maddened hand. Alicebeth has slept with her husband from above and was bearing a child when Brenwick drowned her for witchcraft. The child, they realize, has been growing in the river since then, feeding on its mother's corpse and the corpse of other sacrifices and infesting the town with madness.

### Against the Riot

By the time the pair realizes that, their sanity shaken, the eclipse is already upon them - not a daytime solar eclipse, but a lunar eclipse. It is too late to escape as the villagers, entranced by the curse of the Abomination within the water, start besieging the mansion in order to take Mathilda as a sacrifice.

While Ann-Lise borrows time by forcing the villagers into a trap and escaping by the backdoor, Shella finds Brenwick's notes, written in trance, begging for the thing to be burnt. As the ritual stone - covered with elder sigils, allowing the Abomination to continue existing - is brought towards the edge of the water and Mathilda is finally captured, Ann-Lise and Shella drive their cars towards the stone.

The stone is destroyed in the impact, and the abomination seemingly dissolves, after taking Brenwick's life as a last act of spite. However, the pair is not unscathed ; mentally scarred, and with Shella being horribly burnt and her leg crushed as the result of not escaping the car in time. However, it seems that the abomination has been expelled from Ongash forever - perhaps to find its horrible father somewhere in the void between worlds...

## Characters

* Shella Duncan
* Ann-Lise Adler
* Alicebeth Ygrett
* Mathilda Ygrett
* Mayor Brenwick
* Donnell O'Brian
* Nyarlathotep
* Nyarlathotep's Unnamed Daughter

## Trivia

* **Ongash** is meant to be an approximation of the word **Onagahassi**, a portmanteau of native american words meaning "putrid waters".