Call of Cthulu Campaign Beat Sheet

These are just mystery beats and plot hooks with references for some of these ideas. It's for a thing I'm doing with my brother and a good friend; both of whom I dearly want to scare the shit out of in a role playing game.

Mystery beats:

 1)The Swaying Lady

Place of Interest: The Stairs

"Roll a Perception check."

Fail="On the landing, you barely sense the hint of something. Fragrant. Clean. Floral. You think "Lavender...?"

(Note: player is the only one who sees it.)

Success= "Catching something in your periphery, you snap your eyes downward! Above the landing is a black mass: a large shadow, rocking from side to side... "

Hard Success=You see a woman in a night gown, the bones of her neck jutting under the skin, her head rolling against her chest. The rope lists from side to side-- you drag your eyes, kicking and screaming, to the rafters.

You blink; the lady and noose are gone...!

2)"Water, water, everywhere..."

 Places of Interests: the stairs, the bathroom, the upstairs hallways

"Roll a Perception check."

Fail="Your foot slides on a patch of water; your body whips into the air! You slam back first on the ground! For several moments, a soft moan squeezes between your lips."

Success: "As your right ear goes partly deaf, a plodding staccato whispers in your left--a soft, persistent drip-drip-drip! You screw a finger into your ear, working your jaw to dislodge the sound. Suddenly, the world, at full volume, shrills in both ears, your hearing returned; the sound of dripping water only a memory...."

Hard Success: "Across the hall/Up the stairs/over the tiled floor/ you trace a foot steps--small, humanoid--going from X to Y...!"

Inspiration:

'The Family Ghost' King Diamond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=822fjjKQGi4

'Abigail' King Diamond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AA1g_TM2Ik

'The House on Haunted Hill'

'Burnt Offerings'

Story beats:

1)There's a secret chamber in the walls with gas lamps inside. Cultists devising the Yellow Sign would smuggle children into the door-less room, blowing out the lamps' pilot light so the children would succumb to the gas. Later, the room would be vented, and the bodies harvested. Their fresh blood is required to write the eldritch formula for the Sign, the Gateway to Carcosa.

Notes: The walls are slashed, fingernails imbedded where the children clawed for dear life, as the gas poured invisibly into the room.

Notes: There's a nursery in the house with "vintage" toys, scavenged from the victims. Some dating back a century ago.

Based on:

H.H. Holmes' "Murder Castle"

Lavinia Fischer's 100 victims

2)There's a booby-trapped pedestal featuring either the diary of Celia Talbot--teeming with all her exploits as an "old dreamer", or the journal of Edgar Stowe, the occult mathmatician who constructed the formula for a Yellow Sign, a Gateway to Carcosa. The mad city of poets connected to every corner of the multiverse including the Dreamlands.

Note: The design for the booby-trapped pedestal is the same as 40,000$ puzzle in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4_OohISn6Q&t=1178s

 Note: the puzzle is comprehensive and there will be visceral choices, forks in the road, determining how it's solved. It's an insanely useful tool in the game, so, it has to be earned. It can't just be taken.

One of the origins for the King in Yellow play:

A court bard was accused of seducing the queen after her son was born a blind dwarf, with three pupils to one eye: one of them the same color as the bard's.

To spare the bard from Judas' cradle*, a miracle was required; the king commanded the bard to write a play, the greatest the world would ever see.

The doors and windows to his chamber bared, the bard had one night.

The next morning, the guards found the bard, huddled over his manuscript. His hands--aged prematurely with terror--quaked, his hair thin and white as cobwebs. His gaunt face, swollen and tear-stained, was frozen in a rictus grin--he laughed and wept in equal parts between teeth clenched so tight, his jaw shivered. In the center of his forehead, a single yellow bead, the eye of a storm. Minute symbols--unsettling in their alien beauty--spiraled across his face, converging with other storms of text sprawled across his body.

'S'that it, then?', One of the guards reached across the table. "Well, the king's gonnuh want to see it's done--oi! What're you bloody...!'

The bards eyes bulged; his fingers, bone thin, strangled the guard's arm--he moaned:

'Hhhhe wears no mask...!'

The guards snatched the manuscript, barring the doors: when they returned, the bard was gone.

*The king thought it fitting, given the bard's treasons, to suffer death by a slow penetration.