Until Death: Part Thirteen
You read that correctly, The Caretaker was once a Knight of Salem (in the days before they lost their shit).
He served the order bravely and without question until the day he met the Librarian, a kind-hearted Witch of the Wood. In the IGS universe Witches of the Wood are protectors of nature, home, and family (specifically children) with covens dotting large forests the eastern United States and across Europe.
Soon after meeting, love blossomed and the couple wed in secret, while the Caretaker pled his case to the Knights. He recognized the difference between evil witchcraft and magic used to protect the lives of innocent children. Sir Montgomery, however, turned a deaf ear to his plea for reason and ordered the Caretaker to slay his wife. When he refused, the Knights turned on the lovers, forcing them to flee their home.
How did they become the Librarian and Caretaker of Witch Hour Hall? How did the Librarian lose her hand? Why is she a ghost? What are their real names?
Spoilers, kids. Spoilers.
Lovin how this plot is turning out, storytelling at its finest.
Villains cut mid-speech is an interesting trend around here.
(Seriously… this page is awesome, as usual! )
Possibly my favorite (action) strip ever. Wow. I love the Caretaker’s hair on the last panel.
Chilling! Love the color on the last panel!
p.s. i hope the professor is okay! ♥
I don’t think the professor has been okay for quite some time. 😉
Awesome stuff!
Can everyone see through this guy’s human disguise now, or just the professor?
Yep! That was the “The charade ends” line. Since his cover is blown, “Montgomery” said fuck it and let his true form run wild.
Man this is awesome, and it’s really making me want to get some CoC together. I have only ever played a tiny bit but this makes me hungry for more.
Also I am somewhat concerned for our dear professor, since he seems to be swimming in the deep ends’ deep end.
Bigger question, will the professor ever get any sanity back? Tune in next time: same bat time, same bat channel.
Also I love the panels, they look awesome!
I don’t much about CoC so I’m unclear, who is “Montgomery” referring to, both with the possessive “his” and with the “psychic filth” reference?
A lot of folks assumed/speculated that the “He” the Knights refer to is the Lord but it would appear Montgomery is serving someone else’s name here (as yet unrevealed).
As for the “psychic filth” remark, it was the Professor’s abilities that outed his true nature, so he has a grudge at the moment.
Ah, so the Professor is the psychic! I thought he was just troubled by his wife’s(?) specter and she was causing him to see a warped version of reality, but instead it is rather that the warp is reality. Makes sense for a Cthulhu environ, I suppose. 🙂
So it’s as a couple of people were suspecting on the last page. He failed the sanity check so hard that it actually came out useful (not that the doctor himself could actually do anything about it)
This series has shown me that I’m horribly afraid to try CoC as I will lose my goddamn shit every 5 minutes.
While I’ve enjoyed the strip series, it really doesn’t seem very much like any Call of Cthulhu campaign I’ve ever played in or run. I’d encourage you to try it and find your own path.
Oh I totally cop to that. When I run CoC in a normal, long-form environment the horror/mythos is much more subtle. For these strips, I tend to accelerate it a bit and turn up the volume, so to speak.
So, the best Cthulu game I’ve been in is one where the GM lied to us BEFORE THE GAME BEGAN. See, he’d sold us on this gritty, day-to-day, realisitic Gumshoe game, with a well-made stability system (YEEEAAAAHHH GUMSHOE!! ALL THE INVESTIGATION!), where we’d be London detectives. After a couple sessions, we saw a few links in the murders we were coming across, crazy messages written in code around the bodies, placed in busy thoroughfares late at night. As time went on, we began to fray and crack, and occasionally freaked out a little. We started seeing things. Things that *COULDN’T* be real. Finally, we traced the group responsible to a warehouse, and called in a special weapons team to help us clear them out. The cultists mostly died in the firefight (one of them was my character’s son). And that completed the ritual. The campaign ended with my character holding his son in his arms as the bodies around him begin to rise again. Because the best way to get around the player’s Meta Knowlege is for it not to come up.
Aaron: I did something similar, though it was a 1920s Gurps game, with the PCs all working for a small crime syndicate. Mostly gin-running, you know.
Their first indication Something Was Not Right was after they had a shootout with another gang at the docks, leaving four gang members dead. The papers the next day said THREE gang members… and two police officers…
Then there was the guy who came into the speakeasy, played a few hands, then suddenly died at the blackjack table. His body was stone cold to the touch.
Then there was the mysterious gold nuggets, that slowly oozed a red oily substance, and was measurably radioactive… in one-second pulses…
Then the weird stuff happened.
This story-line is awesome! While our gm and our group have a huge amount of imagination, I think I shall bow to your Uberness. I shall try my hardest not to incorporate your ideas into my CoC world as that would be cheating…but it is sooo lush!!
xxx
Wait. I’m loving this, good stuff, but…did the NPC just kill the BBG? Isn’t that a little…odd? I’ve never played CoC, but it seems the players were just along for the ride. Did I miss something?
Patience, grasshopper.
Rude!
The origins of a society like the IGS might be an interesting setting for a CoC RP. Starting with some of the non-magic having ‘I can’t believe it’ things, and slowly evolving over time into the sweeping society that the IGS seems to be.
With, of course, many of its founding members being driven insane or dying along the way.
I don’t get the total rejuvenation + hair color change + wounds direction change in the professor. Explain?
If you mean the guy with the sword, that isn’t the Professor at all. That’s the Caretaker from a few panels back.
Oh, right! Part 7!
Okay I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to this one, but humor this d20 junkie; this story arch is based off a CoC campaign you ether ran or played in Brian? The sheer richness of the setting is very different form your other “in-game” stories with the exception of Krathun, so that was my clue.
And I, for my part, am digging the background in the last panel most of all – it’s _anything_ but negative space! The lush colour and brushwork (?), the aura coming off the Caretaker’s body, espcieally his sword arm, where it seems translucent flames are rising up….
Beautiful, man, simply beautiful…
*starts to open mouth…*
What’s the timescale here? I thought the knights went off the deep end centuries ago?