Spoiler Warning
This game report will (hopefully) be an entertaining read and be a useful resource, both for GMs in particular to see one route this scenario can take if they are thinking of running it, and for people who just want to get a feel for a Call of Cthulhu game. If you are a player then you read on at your own risk, as it is contains many spoilers. You have been warned!
Poor Dorothy. As the final part of ‘Blackwater Creek’ begun, she was very much caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Across the creek from her, reporter Rita Eisler had just keeled over, and from the trees where Dunk and Tom had wandered into there came a sudden crashing and screaming as the tree bearing Webster’s remains suddenly shed its bark to reveal a quivering mass of glistening black tentacles attempting to ensnare the pair of investigators! As they watched in horror, Webster’s corpse was absorbed into the tree-thing’s bulk, but they managed to scramble back out of range of the tendrils and scramble back to Dorothy, their sanity now considerably more fragile than before due to the abomination they had witnessed.
Seeing her compatriots were out of danger (but thankfully ignorant of what they had just witnessed), Dorothy leapt over the creek to see to Rita – but gaped in shock as she seaw that Rita’s formerly-beautiful face now looked bloated, shiny and unhealthy, with black, suppurating lesions forming on her body. Meanwhile, Tom on the other side of the creek convulsed, also breaking out in black sores, and his muscles engorged seemingly at random, leaving him immensely strong but lumpen and deformed. Much debate was then had but the investigators’ next course of action, given the afflicted state of two of their party, but this was cut short when Dunk started marching northward upstream into the foothills, following the strong sense that his mother was calling him home.
Resolving to accompany their clearly deluded companion, both for his safety and because the investigators recalled the mention of a cave in Prof. Roades’ letter, the team trekked up the creek through a fetid valley of oversized, pulpy vegetation and oozing black sap, toward where it could clearly be seen emerging from an opening in the side of a hill. All the while, the investigators fell more and more under the spell of whatever lay within, and by the time they reached the cave’s mouth, not only had they found some dynamite, but they were all also being subjected to the sounds of their mothers’ voices echoing from within the cave.
As they proceeded into the cave mouth, and towards the sickly pink glow emanating from deeper within the cave, disturbing organic tendrils appeared, winding round the walls, ceilings, and through the creek the investigators were splashing through. Finally, they rounded the corner…and beheld the Womb of the Mother, which bore the thousand screaming faces of Abigail Roades and was the source of all of the corruption they were falling prey to.
Their minds shattered as one. Dunk was seized with the compulsion to protect Mother, while Tom attacked those he saw as rivals for Her love, and Rita started hysterically bludgeoning the organs entwined in the organic morass of the walls with her flashlight. Dorothy, having earlier resolved to solve the mystery or die trying, was suddenly seized with the notion the she must die nobly to destroy this menace, and lit her dynamite. Pandemonium ensued, with screaming investigators being dragged into toothy maws and fighting each other before the dynamite exploded, burying them, and the Womb, beneath the hill forever.
The creek dried up, but the Mother’s corruption had spread far – although it would progress no further. Henry Roades was never found, and eventually the authorities had no choice but to pursue a scorched-earth cleansing of the area to root out all altered people, animals and plant life they could find. Back at Miskatonic University, Prof. McTavish, the unwitting instigator of this cavalcade of nightmares, was reeling in total confusion at the news filtering back from Blackwater Creek. What had happened? How? Why? People he knew and trusted had vanished amid talk of abominations, explosions, and a colossal secret government cover-up operation. Just then, his (new) secretary knocked at the door.
“Dr Henry Armitage to see you, Professor.”