Between countries in Masks of Nyarlathotep, it was expected the investigators got down time. This was when they leveled up and prepared for the horrors waiting for them in the next country. Since travel from London to Cairo was substantial, I decided to throw in a side quest. I took the adventure Ties That Bind from the 7e compilation Doors Into Darkness. It involved a wealthy family who found their prized fountain damaged and filled with strange ovoid rocks. The rocks were byakhee eggs. One, taken by a workman and given to the daughter of the woman whose estate the eggs showed up at, hatched. Baby byakhee had the charm of Baby Yoda, until mother showed up wanting her young. She slaughtered most of the people in the room and took off to collect the rest of her eggs.
There was a casualty in the final confrontation with the byakhee, and my friend Mike decided to take the NPC brother of the sister who was given the egg and turn him into his replacement investigator. The NPC was described as a student steeped in the arts and literature.
The investigators reached Cairo and tried to make contact with an ongoing archaeological dig. The archaeological group, up to no good, had armed guards all around their site and used them to drive off the investigators.
The fun for my group came after they tracked down a former member of the impolite archaeological team. This researcher was given the location to a lost Temple of Bast, goddess of cats. He went to the temple and found a sacred scroll, which he took from the temple and stashed under his cot in the back of a shop.
Ever since he got the scroll, he was haunted by cats. The investigators offered to help him out by returning the scroll to the temple. They did, but not before one of the investigators, Doctor Rico, had an encounter with a beautiful Egyptian woman who was Bast’s lead priestess. She promised great rewards if the scroll was returned. She turned into a panther and disappeared.
The scroll returned, the whole group was bestowed with the honor of being a friend of Bast. Dr. Rico took things further, learning spells from the scroll (which he copied) and became a priest of Bast. Cats followed him everywhere. While keeping watch in the hotel, he heard the roar of a lion on a nearby rooftop. The cats were keeping watch to keep their priest safe.
The investigation pointed toward a mysterious wealthy man, Omar al-Shakti. Not only was he the leader of the local cult of Nyarlathotep, but he was in charge of Edward Gavigan’s cult in London. Gavigan, suspecting the investigators, sent a telegram to al-Shakti, warning him about the group. The civil approach would be getting invited to the plantation to have a heart-to-heart with al-Shakti. My group wasn’t that group. They planned a military-style raid on the plantation.
It was a lot of fun running the raid. I remember Dr. Rico using a Summon Animal spell to summon local crocodiles to help fight al-Shakti. Given that the investigators were playing in Pulp mode and were super strong in abilities, they overcame al-Shakti with the help of surprise and the crocodiles.
From there, the investigators traveled to the Bent Pyramid. They used several clues they’d uncovered to find a secret passage that took them to Nyarlathotep’s throne room. There, they met the god in his Black Pharoah mask. He opened a portal to ancient Egypt and invited anyone to go through. When they all refused, he used his intensive knowledge of the group to bribe them to complete their investigation. He didn’t like how the cults who were worshiping him were going about things and wanted them stricken from the Earth so he could start anew. The group felt a little confused, siding with the evil god. They knew he was playing a game with them but couldn’t figure out what the game was.
Nyarlathotep showed ancient maps on the wall that showed the location of several important points on Earth: London, Cairo, Kenya, Shanghai and southwestern Australia. The Elder God explained at an exact moment coming up in a couple of months, the stars would be right to perform a worldwide ritual that would open a portal in the sky to the Elder Gods, bringing them to this world. Nyarlathotep set the Carlyle Expedition in motion, showing them what needed to be done to successfully perform the ritual. Now, he wanted the ritual to fail. It was a bad idea. My wife’s character resisted and taunted Nyarlathotep. He reached into her chest, pulled out her heart and put it in a jar at his side. She would be hard to kill, but her soul belonged to Nyarlathotep.
Armed with a lot of exposition, the group moved on to a temple hidden beneath the feet of the Sphinx. There they found a monstrous cathedral at the heart of a labyrinth. In the cathedral was a sacrificial pool, where victims were thrown in with giant leeches that drained all their blood. Mike’s character, now the English major student, fell into the pool and was rescued with barely any life left in him. Dr. Rico used some parts from a Mythos creature the group had recently defeated, and used them to make a potion to save the boy’s life.
It sort of worked.
It turned the character into a vampire.
I took over the character and had endless fun chasing the group throughout the cathedral of Nyarlathotep and the endless tunnels around it. When they got a killing hit on the vampire, it turned into mist and drifted into the tunnels to reform.
The group took a rest to heal up from the fight, only to have to fight the vampire again, since it also healed itself up. This time they followed the mist back to where the vampire considered its grave to be, turned back into a corpse and was properly killed.
Mike needed yet another character to play.
He’d make another character as the group prepared to travel to Kenya.
