Innsmouth Garden Society: Conclusion
Chapter: Season Three
I’ve had such a great time with this Innsmouth story arc. I love to draw the period costumes and play in the deep end of the Cthulhu pool. I will do this again, no doubt.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the series. If this ending leaves you gasping and crying “what the fuck!?” fear not, a epilogue shall follow that gives you the final scene of this adventure and sets the stage for future Innsmouth Garden Society story arcs.
After the epilogue, we will get back to the antics of Sam, Brett and the rest of the cast with the d20monkey you know and tolerate.
See you on Monday!
Brian
Commenters: Have you ever  ended a session, adventure, or campaign with a similar bang
Going out with a bang is always quite satisfactory. I have to say I’ve never had much interest in playing in horror games in general or the Cthulhu mythos specifically, but this story arc has me wanting to give it a shot.
Absolutely loved this arc!!!Sad to see it end.
EPIC! My gaming groups are completely incapable of this level of storytelling.
We actually ended a Call of Cthulhu adventure in that manner. At the climax, we thought we had the appropriate cultists and/or deities in the cavern, so we blew everything up with dynamite (ourselves included). According to our Keeper, we screwed up though, and the world was destroyed anyhow. Oh well…
I think the Dave (Now cultist) is the ancestors of the bomb strapped terrorists that we know in middle east.
P.S- This is typical ending of Call of Cthulhu! Everyone dies.
I enjoyed this arc so much, I hope there will be more.
The biggest bang we ever ended a Cthulhu adventure in was the one where we had to escape from some prison island. It was extremely hard, but we captured a plane and we did it. When we took off, one of the players found a hand grenade and decided to toss it at the guards that were still firing at the plane. He rolled a clean 100 (botch with a capital B) and dropped the grenade. I leave the rest to your imagination.
Picture it: Indianapolis, 2002…my second D&D 3.0 campaign and the first I set in the Forgotten Realms. The Big Bad was a gnomish necromancer. When the PCs finally tracked him down to his lair and the battle started going poorly for him, he decided to take them with him and broke his Staff of Power.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated how much the average damage would be versus how many HP most of the PCs should have left and I nearly wiped the party. Some players were peeved that their PCs died (though I think they were more peeved when, during the epilogue, they were reincarnated into something other than they were because they couldn’t afford raise dead or resurrection), others thought it was a fitting end.
It was the only time the campaign ended with a Big BOOM by design. The other times were near TPKs by Big BOOM because of a math error by me (yeah, it happened at least once more that I remember, possibly twice).
Of course, almost all of my Paranoia games at conventions end with a flash, mushroom cloud and simultaneous destruction of the bad guy, all the PCs, and a sizable portion of Alpha Complex.
I never really got to go out in a big bang or similar. Although I am notorious for my bad luck with dice, every time I tend to make a final stand I tend to survive barely.
On the other hand I was running an Evil Campaign a few months back and it seemed that our group always ended with some sort of arson. Especially once the Sorcerer got his combustion spell. Lets see, they burned down an orphanage (children inside,) Burned down a inn, and then that village’s crop fields, after downing a princess they were suppose to kidnap from another thieves guild, they burned down the thieves guild.
Moral: If you give them fire, they will burn
Sorry to see this arc end, looking forward to more Innsmouth at some point. Great job!
I really loved this story arc and want to see more of it!
Awesome arc!
I had a big bang finale as well, but not as good as yours.
After more than a year of Cthulhu campaign our investigations lead us to a ritual in a desert island. We could not stop it and Cthulhu appeared from the sea. Our characters were quite epic by that time but we knew nothing about how powerful he was. After he killed 2 of our fellows he grabed me with his mouth tentacles. My character ( for some reason too long to explain ) was carrying a backpack full of dynamite, so trying to distract him long enough for my remaining comrades to escape I blowed myself up in a TON of D6 damage. Cthulhu was nothing near badly hurt but he was hurt enough to give my pals a couple of turns to take our hydroplane and flee.
I was sad about my character dying but I was also proud of how he did it.
I’ll be glad to see another Innsmouth arc, this one was great! Oh, by the way..yes, yes I have.
“BLAM! And then he was mucilage!”
–Max, from Sam and Max: Freelance Police.
I really enjoyed this arc a lot and would love to see more Innsmouth Garden Society.
In a BESM d20 game, my character was a bomb flinging nut. The finale was a giant behemoth was attacking the city. Nothing we did could hurt it, stop it or even make it flinch because of it’s super tough scales and hide. So, I ended up climbing a tower and jumping into it’s mouth when it roared. Once inside it’s stomach, I activated all of my explosives. 🙂 The joke was he left the world how he came into it. Inside a bigger creature followed by an explosion. XD
in one of my more recent 3.5 campaign we were fighting a group of cultists fueling magic much more powerful than they should have been able to cast with ritual human sacrifice (some kind of homebrew our DM dug up) there was a very near TPK and my archmage and my friends ranger were the only serviving charecters, so I got myself captured with a maximized Death Throes and Permanency, the ranger followed me to pick off the surviving cultists after my explosion broke thier circle.
Best End!
In my first D&D session, we’d been fighting off an troll siege of an elven town, and went to take out what we assumed was the lead troll. Get there, finish him off after a rather close battle, and suddenly get enclosed in a magical barrier as the real Big Bad steps out of the shadows and tries to get us to join him. Banter back and forth, we try to escape, he tries to kill us, and our party leader (Sorcerer) figures the barrier may be weak enough to allow him to Dimension Door us out. He was right and wrong; We got out of the barrier, but we all ended up in the middle of a nearby hill. It was not hollow.
Makes me think of one of Wick’s various players. Apparently, when he was playing in Wick’s CoC game, there was a little tradition of sorts. You see, the players would write down a number and put in on a little badge. This number was how many sessions of the game they had survived. This particular fellow, as I remember, made it to seven, the most of anyone. He never opened any books, he kept his weapons close, and, like Caldy, had a Vest of Last Resort. When he finally died, I’m sure he went out with as much of a bang.
As long as we’re talking about explosive ends to campaigns… look up Old Man Henderson. I believe his manner of winning a Call of Cthulhu campaign takes the cake.
Winning? WINNING?
Now I need a shirt that says “Have you seen The Old Man Henderson?” on it. Thanks. 😛
god bless you old man henderson
… this game looks *amazing*. I may have to find a group and play it.
gotta say, for a comic that popped up randomly advertised on one of the other webcomics i read daily this series was, and IS I must say, pretty damn awesome.
like probably 99.999% of the rest of the readers here, it’s no surprise that i too am a gamer. i started when i was 7 with the pre-Elmore Red Box basic set, my mom was DM, and i played D&D with my Dad, My cousins Patty and Kim, my Grandmother (of all people) and my cousin Wesly who introdcued it to us. tho, for the life of me, i cant remember his name, my first character was a child-thief that was a fusion of Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger. since then, ive pretty much played every system under the sun. D&D (mystara/boxed game), AD&D, Gamma World 2nd and 3rd Edition, Star Frontiers, pretty much everything Palladium (all merged into one game), Star Wars by West End Games, and the entire Chaosium lineup.
this meant RuneQuest Fantasy (it really WAS as complex as people make it sound), Stormbringer, Call of Cthulu and…drum roll please….the Elfquest RPG (which i proudly own) as we ran a multi-versal stormbringer campaign, i introduced to (as a bit of an homage) a young Go-Back Elf named Kyra who had fought in the war for the palace, but lacked a more serious place amongst the Go-Backs due to her being magically endowed. and to make matters worse…she was a HEALER.
her story went that Leetah taught her the basics of her power, but left before she could learn more, and Rayek proved to be not much help, while practicing in the room with the Scroll of Colors, she inadvertantly opened a minor version of the warp-tear that stranded the elves on the world of two-moons originally. falling through the universe, she ends up on the Rogue Mistress, a multi-versal ship sailing the seas of Fate, and where the party (two melniboneans, three humans, and a cloaked figure) have booked passage.
Kyra, falling in the with melniboneans, despite their human-like appearance joins their mission with the reward that if she helps them, she can kill every human on board. gleefully leaping at the chance, she ends up being the sacrificial lamb to take control of the demon-blade (named Knife) after having the controller for the blade (the Law Modulator) Kyra is transformed into a very biomechanical looking version of herself, upon seeing the monstrosity she has become, she promptly blows her own head off.
strangely enough, at the end of the adventure, kyra is raised from the dead by the gods of chaos, and becomes a potent follower in the church of chaos, devoted to Arioch and Xiombarg. becoming a powerful sorceror of chaos, she inadvertantly frees cultists trying to bring the end of all things to a world the rogue mistress has stopped at to take on supplies. Kyra becomes enamoured of the head cultist, who is really a deepspawn in metamporphisis. drugged, she hallucinates, believing herself to be surrounded by powerful warriors, and gives in to her lusty nature, however, the drug wears off and she sees her ‘partners’ for what they really are, she and the melniboneans destroy the cult….
…only to learn some time later that despite all odds she has somehow become pregnant…
fearing what she will give birth to, she begins to use her healing powers and flesh-shaping powers on her un-born child during her pregnancy, eventually giving birth to a daughter that is half-elf/Half-Human. to make matters worse, Her daughter is still able to hear the ‘song’ of the cult, making her a tool Kyra uses for exacting revenge, her war against the mythos, taking an even more bizzare turn when they find yet another ‘elf-ship’ with a cocooned ‘firstcomer’ type elf. Kyra and the firstcomer elf recognize, and she gains even more power as she ties to their ‘ship’ able to summon more and more powerful demons to her side, Kyra eventually summons an enormously powerful demon and lays waste to a world infested by deepspawn and for the first time encounters a fragment of C’thulu, her rage saves her and she begins to power a ritual that will bind c’thulu to sleep…she simply needs a sacrifice.
without a second thought, she stabs her mate through the back, lifts him impaled on her sword and flings him into the center of the pyre she is using as a focus.
her spell? she has summoned the swarm of Sister-swords to Stormbringer and Mourneblade, and calls upon them to feast on those that live in the world, deepspawn, human, and ally alike….one of the blades likes her so much, it agrees to serve her faithfully…
the melniboneans and kyra’s daughter flee, as the swords begin to scour the world, and they narrowly escape on the rogue mistress, leaving Kyra behind….not realizing that small ‘palace-ship’ that they had found the firstcomer previously now responds to her thoughts…
and that is how that campaign came to an end, with the ‘heroes’ fleeing knowing they’ve unleashed an even worse scourge on the multi-verse….
Looove this comic! I once played a call of cuthulu game where my character had started the arc by finding papers from a former professor, watched his closest friend go insane as they investigated (my friend really enjoyed that role), and then was forced to take an ancient artifact and flee as his last surviving (though fatally injured) ally blew up the cultist’s altar. Only then did our GM tell us about the nearby coal mine, and the entire TOWN blew up, my character having to make roll after roll to try and survive the explosion. Amazing “bang” finish.
Can’t wait to keep reading these!
Y’know, rereading this begs the question of whether he just, carries that dynamite strapped to his person at all times? Because that is… certainly a lifestyle choice. I guess with all the fates worse than death that exist in CoC it’s a good idea to have a way out for yourself that comes with a chance to take out the Horrible Thing as well.