When I spoke with Chris Birch, President of Modiphius Entertainment, during the Achtung! Cthulhu Kickstarter, he had a very specific vision for the setting. “Cthulhu is everyone’s enemy,” Birch said. “Look at the cover of the Keeper’s Guide. There’s a German, French Resistance and British soldier together on the bike and sidecar running away from Cthulhu.”
Birch didn’t want to make a game where the occult-crazed Germans were the sole source of evil, stirring up the Mythos. The Keeper’s Guide shows how various British citizens are in league with Mythos entities. The Pacific Guide does a brilliant job showing how the Rising Sun is under the Naga’s sway.
When I approached writing “Willing Blood,” A Savage Worlds module for Achtung! Cthulhu, I consciously approached it from Birch’s perspective of many parties across the globe discovering and using knowledge man was never meant to know in order to get an edge in the global conflict. The German organization Black Sun wants Elder Gods to show them how to achieve incredible leaps in technology so they can build weapons that level a city in the blink of an eye. American cultists fear their nation will be drawn into the conflict and consult with Nyarlathotep’s cousin, Mynoghra, for knowledge of how to remain outside the war. The Naga, an ancient serpent race that ruled the Earth before man, learned their god Yig is imprisoned near Oklahoma. They’re willing to work with the American Mynoghra cult for access to Yig’s prison. Finally, a group of British World War One veterans come into possession of a powerful alien artifact that allows them to communicate with Nyarlathotep. This British cult’s obsessed with learning how to make Britain so strong it can end this new world war before too many British boys perish.
Most of those motives are noble. The lengths the cult leaders are willing to go to achieve these ends…they’re all bad ideas.
With so many groups contacting the Elder and Outer Gods, the trickster Nyarlathotep came up with a fun game: set the different cults against one another. Whichever cult acquires three willing sacrifices, direct descendants of the last priest to control the Church of Starry Ways before it was destroyed, and spills their blood on an ancient artifact at an isolated monastery, will win an audience with the Elder God of their choice.
When the adventure begins, the first willing sacrifice has been taken. The daughter of Lord Shoe, a member of the British House of Lords, gets snatched off the downtown London streets by German spies. The investigators comprise a team assembled by Lord Shoe to travel the cold ocean waters near Scandinavia to bring Lord’s Shoe’s son home before he gets abducted. Lord Shoe assures the team that a battleship full of Her Majesty’s Navy’s finest is not a safe enough spot for his son. The rescued son begs the investigators travel to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to bring his wife and daughter to him. He’s afraid for their safety.
From there, it’s a race to uncover Nyarlathotep’s nefarious plot and rescue the willing sacrifices from American, British, German and Naga cultists. Only through luck and guile can the investigators hope to prevail and save the world from one of several very unpleasant and abrupt endings.
“Willing Blood” is a Savage Worlds module for Achtung! Cthulhu by Modiphius Entertainment. It requires the Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer’s Edition, as well as the Achtung! Cthulhu Investigator’s and Keeper’s Guides. It contains a color map for the suburban house encounter and a Keeper’s map for the monastery scene.
Download the module here.
