The American chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep takes place years after the Peru adventure in New York City. All the investigators receive a telegram from their good friend Jackson Elias, claiming he has important information he needs to tell them in person. He’s staying in New York City at the Hotel Chelsea in room 410.
Everyone shows up and hears sounds of a struggle behind the door. They force their way inside to find three men with strips of cloth resembling tongues wrapped around their foreheads. They hold African blades and have just finished slaughtering Jackson.
There can be a fight, a chase down the fire escape into the alleyway. The killers can all get away. They can all die. The damage is done. Jackson is dead.
Here’s where the Keeper’s work done in the Peru chapter really pays off. If the Keeper was successful, the investigators are so outraged by Jackson’s killing they are determined to solve the murder. Also, when they visit Jackson’s publisher and go over the notes Jackson turned in, the investigators see a linkage between Jackson’s murder and the fate of the Carlyle Expedition Jackson was researching. The investigators need to be so moved by the murder they trace Jackson’s steps around the globe in hope of finding the truth behind his murder and the slaughtering of the Carlyle Expedition.
Before getting into the Carlyle Expedition, it’s important to play out the events following Jackson’s murder. Do the investigators call in the murder and cooperate with the police who are going to brush this killing under the rug or try to pin the murder on the first suspect they see? Do they try to keep as far as possible from the public discovering the fate of the eclectic author?
Then, there’s the funeral. It can be hand-waved, but I recommend really getting into it. It’s a good opportunity to introduce a couple of characters who will become contacts integral in the rest of the story. Also, it’s a dramatic moment for the heroes to dwell on the ghastly fate of Jackson and remember how fleeting life is in a Call of Cthulhu campaign. In the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion there is a wonderful chapter that describes the funeral service in detail, including passages from the key NPCs’ eulogies. The purpose of this scene is to further entrench the investigators in the hunt for Jackson’s killer and becoming willing to travel the globe to retrace Jackson’s footsteps to find what information he missed in those locales.
Eventually, the investigators get to the publisher’s office and are confronted with pages and pages of notes from Jackson from his investigation of the Carlyle Group. I won’t lie. This is not going to be too fun to roleplay. Everyone will spend half an hour reading handouts, seeing how Jackon’s sanity wavered as his investigation continued, until he was paranoid and frantic at the end, unable to put words together in meaningful ways.
The Carlyle Expedition was the brainchild of playboy millionaire Roger Carlyle, after starting a relationship with a strange African lady. He put together a team of archaeologists and brought in ex-girlfriend Hypatia Masters to be the team’s photographer. They were to uncover lost pyramids in Egypt. First, they went to London to consult with an expert in Egyptian digs. Then they went to Egypt, where they didn’t seem to be successful in uncovering anything monumental. Roger got sick, so everyone decided to take a holiday on safari in Kenya. There, the entire group and their servants were allegedly massacred grotesquely by natives.
The investigators meet with Jackson’s lawyer at the reading of the will and find out Jackson changed his will mere days before his murder. He leaves his small fortune to the investigators to go on a worldwide quest to discover who killed him and what actually happened to the Carlyle Expedition. Jackson believes at least some of the Carlyle Expedition survived or wasn’t present at the massacre.
Roger has a surviving sister who’s inherited the family empire, Erica. It might be smart to pay her a visit. This should be challenging, since she is a multimillionaire who does not meet with visitors from the general public and wants to get past her brother’s unfortunate demise. Creative roleplaying and cunning choices could lead the group into Erica’s mansion, where she can give her impressions on the Carlyle Expedition’s principal players. She even has some of her brother’s old books (some of which are Cthulhu Mythos tomes).
The other lead the group has is the recent slue of murders taking place in Harlem, which match the style of killing done to Jackson. This part of the story deals with racism and the corruption of police, where white police officers falsely accuse people of color who stand up against the cult responsible for the murders.
Everything leads to the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, which is based in the basement of an African curios shop in Harlem, the Ju-Ju House. Depending on when the investigators break in, there might be a ceremony complete with human sacrifices and an intimidating head priest called M’Dari. Trapped in a pit covered by a stone block is a horrible creature that grows in might as more victims are fed to it. This is the Chakota. Every time it kills someone, it grows another head that resembles the head of its latest victim. The many-headed many-armed abomination wails in its dark pit, always longing to be fed.
My group visited the Ju-Ju House in the middle of the night on an eve there wasn’t a ceremony. They found all the clues there were to be found. They caught a glimpse at the Chakota and decided the entire building needed to be burned to the ground. This was their frequent solution to problems.
Once everything is done, the group should be pretty certain the Cult of the Bloody Tongue was responsible for the murder of Jackson, but they should suspect this cult is a cell in a much larger organization, one which Jackson angered. The group should be ready to leave America behind and start untangling the web of intrigue behind Jackson’s murder and the fate of the Carlyle Expedition.
