Call of Cthulhu: Path of Perdition

***Call of Cthulhu: Path of Perdition*** (sometimes referred to as just ***Path of Perdition***) was a nine session series taking place in 1921 America.

## Campaign Summary

#### Part 1

The campaign begins by introducing the investigators, who later board the California Limited, the train where they meet.

James is informed that Vito Castiglione, a bootlegger and outlaw, will be boarding the train. Vito's bounty is high, especially in Alberquerque. He is persuaded to get Vito's bounty, and buys a ticket for the train.

On the train, Mason and Kit stumble into a British man with many facial prosthetics named Bertrum. He apologizes for the accident and offers to take Kit's bags back to his compartment.

James also meets Jackson on the train and a Spanish man named Salvador Suarez, who was a fan of Jackson.

All the investigators meet each other, and Jackson, at lunch. During lunch, Kit spots a man with a suitcase of a German gun manufacturer.

The next day, at night, a gunshot rings through the train and the passengers wake up to the conductor yelling for a doctor. Kit, being a doctor, rushes to the scene where he finds Vito has been shot and killed. Upon further inspection, he finds a paper with Mason, Sybil, and his room numbers on it.

The investigators spend the morning questioning other passengers, including the conductor, Bertrum, one of Vito's associates, and the man Kit had spotted the other day. While investigating, they find out the Bosco, Vito's bodyguard, was missing. James and Sunil look through Bosco and Vito's compartments.

Later, Sybil, Mason, and Kit finds out that Sybil's luggage was stolen. And shortly after, James and Jackson find Bertrum trying to find a key, with two suitcases around him. One of the suitcases contains Sybil's belongings. Bertrum takes out a luger, the gun that was used to kill Vito, and points it at them. He is not actually British, but German. He pulls off his mask and is revealed to be Peter Hase, one of the people Sybil, Mason, Kit, and Jackson met during their expedition to Peru.

They chase him around the train to the roof of the vehicle, and once cornering him, he surrenders. They get off the roof, and attempt to calm him down. He explains that he never meant to kill Vito, and that he was only trying to get money to pay off his debts. But after Vito threatened to hurt the woman Peter loved, he lost control and shot him. The shot woke up Bosco, whom he also shot and threw out the train.

The investigators chose to let Peter go and jump off the train. After, they celebrate solving the mystery in the dining car.

#### Part 2

After their celebration, Sunil has a dream. He's in a train with seemingly endless cars, until he's in Room 410 with a ringing phone. The phone plays a backwards message, which says, reversed, "Jackson Elias is in danger." The scene changes again and he meets a man with bandaged hands, a Native American man, and an ominous man named Lester Goodman.

He wakes up and sees he's stranded in a desert with no memory of how he got here. He looks around and sees Sybil, Mason, and Kit lying on the floor next to him. Sunil wakes up Kit, who then wakes up the other two, and they look at themselves and their surroundings. Kit had Mason's gun, a key with the numbers 410, and blood on his fingers. Mason also found out he had been shot and the previous sutures on his wound, which were done by Kit, had broken.

They arrive in Madrid and go to a hospital to help Mason, and find out seven days had gone by since their celebration. They have no memory of the past seven days, which confuses them.

Mason shares a room with Jerry, a man with bandaged hands. When Mason falls asleep, he also has a dream with the man from Sunil's dream, Lester Goodman.

The next day, they find out James came to the same hospital and reunite with him. They realize Jackson is still missing, and look around Madrid to find him. However, they are stopped by police and are placed under arrest for instigating a shootout. They are taken to the station, and on the ride there, Sybil falls asleep. She also meets Lester Goodman in her dream.

The investigators are brought to the sheriff for questioning, and when he is told they have no recollection of the past week, he lets them go and helps them get to the bottom of this mystery. He also shows James and Kit a body from the shootout, which had already rotted and was covered by maggots and the like, despite having only been dead for a short while.

They and the sheriff drive to Santa Fe, where they find out they had checked into a hotel and Salvador had checked them out recently. They also find their missing luggage. After, they go to the church where the shootout started in, but find nothing. They head back to the station.

Upon going back into the room with the rotted corpse, they find a dead police officer and a large mass of maggots and worms in the form of a human where the corpse once was (the creature is revealed to be a crawling one). Mason attempts to kill it, but fails to. Kit tells him to get out, but he doesn't comply. The others come, and James faints at the sight. Sybil and Sunil drag James out, while Kit tries to kill the crawling one. He pushes the shelf onto the crawling one which kills it.

While James is unconscious, he dreams and meets Lester Goodman.

Later, the receptionist from the hotel in Santa Fe comes by the station and asks to see Sunil. She tells him that the Native American man in his dream was her grandfather and that he could help him and his friends. They agree to meet him.

The arrive at his house where he was waiting for them and offers them tea. He then tells them to lie down and sleep, and there they would enter the dream realm.

Each investigator has a short dream before being led to a staircase. In Kit's short dream, he too meets Lester Goodman.

The staircase leads to a group of people who ask them if they are ready. They say yes, and are reunited. The same group of people ask if there is anything they'd like to take with them in the dream realm. Kit and Sybil take an item with them in the dream realm. Kit takes his rosary, and Sybil takes her mother's opal ring.

In the dream realm, they are places into familiar circumstances. James is surrounded by gunfire, shelling, and dying soldiers. Kit is in a trench, where he is greeted by the corpses of soldiers, one of them being his own sister. Mason is in the brothel he works in, and is pressured by his boss to continue working. Mason is attacked by the client, and fails his sanity roll, which causes him to wake up. Sybil is greeted by her family before they're engulfed by flames once more. Sunil is shown his sickly father hooked up to toxic medicine which messes him up more. He fails his sanity check, but does not wake up like Mason. Instead he gets a white streak of hair from the shock.

After facing all that, they are taken to a house where they once again meet Lester. More Lesters form, and start lunging at each other. They tear up each other and eat them before the original Lester finishes them all. He then attempts to offer the investigators something, to which Sunil tells him to "eat shit and die." They combine their magic points together to purge Lester, and they wake up with all their memories back.

They remember that Salvador kidnapped Jackson and was taking him to Kansas to his mining company. So the investigators rented two cars and drove to Kansas to save Jackson. However, they get caught by security and are taken inside the company's building for questioning. The door opens and Jackson pistol whips the security guard watching over the investigators and helps them escape. While escaping, they find the machine Salvador was working on. Kit and Sunil decide to mess with it way it's wired. They continue escaping and hear a rumble. They escape just in time and hear screaming from inside.

A few days later, it's revealed that there was a collapse in the mine and that Salvador was killed.

The investigators and Jackson head back home and say goodbye.

#### The four year skip

The four year skip is the time between *Path of Perdition* and its sequel, *Masks of Nyarlathotep*. *Path of Perdition* takes place in 1921 and *Masks of Nyarlathotep* takes place in 1925, hence the four year skip. During the years, many important things happened to the investigators:

* Sybil and James started dating and are now married.
* Mason brought down Aphrodite's (his boss) prostitution ring and became a film actor.
* Kit moved to Berlin and started working with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld.
* Kit and Sunil started dating and are currently fiancés.

## Characters

### Investigators (Player Characters)

* James O'Connel, played by SplitGuardian
* Kit Sullivan, played by Atwas
* Mason Allen, played by Upgraded Moon
* Sunil Pandey, played by Brodingles
* Sybil Cordova, played by Kristen Trawczynski

#### Part 1

* Vito Castiglione
* Peter Hase

#### Part 2

* Lester Goodman
* Salvador Suarez
* Deborah Barrows
* Johanna Daisy
* Bill

Dream Realm

* Erin Sullivan
* Gotam Pandey
* Aphrodite
* Augustus Larkin