Call of Cthulhu adventure help - Fathead, stay out!

[Tewligan]

Okay, I've promised to run a Call of Cthulhu adventure for my gaming group sometime before I move this summer, and I've finally settled on an idea for it that I like. Problem is, the idea currently isn't much more than a basic concept, along with a couple of images I find (un)appealing. Anyway, here's what I've got so far:

PREMISE: About 14 years ago, Farmer Thompson was plowing his fields, and had to pull up a big boulder/tree stump/something. Underneath, he found what looked like a huge cocoon of some sort. It started to writhe and pulsate when exposed to the sunlight, and he was just about to smash it with his hoe when, inexplicably, a baby girl crawled out of it. Instead of turning the child over to the authorities, Thompson and his wife decided to raise the child, telling townsfolk that they had adopted the daughter of a distant family member who was unable to care for her own child. I'm not positive why they decide to keep a child from such odd circumstances - it's either because they were unable to have children themselves and were desperate, or maybe she had some low-grade psychic power that influences people to care for it while it's weak. Anyway, she grows up as a normal human child, if perhaps a little cold and distant. Normal, that is, until...

THE PRESENT DAY: The adopted daughter has hit puberty, and starts becoming less and less human. She's begun to kill and eat local animals - stray pets, livestock, and eventually people. She also feels the need to reproduce. She begins dating a local boy, and of course kills and eats him once she's impregnated. Investigators will ideally find out what's going on in this small town, and put an end to things.

That's the rough idea, anyway. The image that makes me want to run this is when the investigators figure out the source of the town's troubles, make their way into the Thompson's house, and break into the (heavily padlocked) cellar. When they make their way downstairs, the air reeks of rotting meat. The bare concrete floor is scattered with the gnawed bones and offal of children and animals. In the corner is the daughter. Now barely recognizable as human, she sits huge and bloated, black eyes staring at the investigators while her mandibles chatter furiously. She sits on an enormous egg sac, which starts to move and split open as she becomes agitated. The whole room is lit by a bare bulb at the bottom of the stairs - your typical unfinished basement.

Anyway, that's what I've got so far. What I need is ideas to get from 14 years ago to the investigators going down those stairs. I've got a few ideas and odd bits and clues, such as:

* Noone being able to verify the supposed birth mother when the girl was adopted.

* If the investigators meet the girl before she gets locked away and changes too much, they may notice some heavy bruising on her face. They may suspect child abuse, but it's actually from the skin being badly bruised when she dislocates her jaw to eat something fairly large like a dog or a toddler.

* An empty dog house at the Thompson place, but no dog (the girl killed it recently)

* An empty wheelchair at the Thompson place (she used it for a while at the beginning of her change, before she became too horrible)

* The adoptive parents quickly going insane from guilt and horror.
They know what's happening, but have no idea why or what to do. They've finally locked their daughter in the basement, but don't have the heart to contact the authorities or put an end to things. They may have even started supplying human flesh for her.

So, that's pretty much all I have so far. Criticism? Ideas? I'll take any input you care to give. This is my first time running CoC, and I'm hoping to make it horrifying and, well, not stupid.

 

[Turanil]

I'm not positive why they decide to keep a child from such odd circumstances - it's either because they were unable to have children themselves and were desperate, or maybe she had some low-grade psychic power that influences people to care for it while it's weak.

Let's go for psychic powers.

- The girl has psychic powers, and they have developped as well as anything else has developped with this creature. At first the girl used her power only to have her parents and people around love her and protect her. (So a side effect: everybody will tell you how a nice littel girl she always was, how everybody dreamed to have such a nice little girl as their child, and how jealous was another normal little girl in the vicinity, who is now a normal adult, but still resent this.)

- Once an adult, she now sends dreams into people afar, who dream of strange and horrendous things, etc. In fact, the creature-girl is also jealous of other young women and induce fear and suspicion in other men's minds, so they begin to abuse, beat, etc. their wives, etc. (So, the PC discover that maltreatment of women is much worse here than anywhere else statistically, and began when the little girl reached puberty; before it was statistically average).

Lets Induce Paranoia!

- While investigating, the PCs must encounter a so niiice little girl, so charming that they would never hurt her in any way, and everybody around love her so much, because she is so niiiice... And of course she is taking a liking of one of the PCs in particular. Plus maybe, there is another one in the vicinity, who soon will become a young and beatiful woman, and seeing her, you would find her soooo sweeeet....

 

[Turanil]

- While investigating, the PCs must encounter a so niiice little girl, so charming that they would never hurt her in any way, and everybody around love her so much, because she is so niiiice... And of course she is taking a liking of one of the PCs in particular. Plus maybe, there is another one in the vicinity, who soon will become a young and beatiful woman, and seeing her, you would find her soooo sweeeet....

Anyway, please don't ask me why I am still single...

 

[Joshua Randall]

Thematically this is somewhat similar to Lovecraft's story The Colour Out of Space, which you should read for inspiration (if you haven't already). It also has some of the vibe of the Species movies.

Anyway... you mentioned that the little girl was mostly normal until puberty. Emphasis on mostly. Aside from being somewhat cold and aloof, what sorts of things would she have done in the past, that would stick in people's minds? Example: she particularly relished dissecting frogs in biology class, even though the other kids were grossed out.

How is she getting her kills back to her lair? She can probably pick up a dog and drag it back with no problem, but a cow or an adult human is too heavy for her to lift. So, maybe she dismembers her prey where they fall and takes just part of them back at a time. The PCs might initially think aliens are mutilating the cattle -- in fact, you could have a credulous local newspaper reporter playing up that angle.

Also, let's throw in a red herring. A group of local boys have been torturing dogs and cats for 'fun', and some of the blame falls on them. You can either make these kids sympathetic Huck Finn types, or they can be degenerate inbred scum in the true Lovecraft mold.

It could also be fun to have the whole town under the girl's sway. Perhaps psychically, or perhaps they have been implanted with some kind of insectoid larvae that controls their brains a la Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. As the PCs get closer and closer to the girl, the townsfolk become more and more obstinate and aggressive. The PCs have to figure out a way to neutralize the girl without slaughtering innocent townsfolk.

Hope this helps!

 

[Turanil]

I would mix my own suggestion with those of Joshua Randall:

As the PCs get closer and closer to the girl, the townsfolk become more and more obstinate and aggressive. The PCs have to figure out a way to neutralize the girl without slaughtering innocent townsfolk.

Yes, but only men, never women. Plus all victims were males, never female. The girl-creature invade the dreams of men in the vicinity at night, and slowly influence them. This is how she attracts animals and else to her: they come by themselves because they are psychically induced to. Now, the girl-creature, for some reason, has much more difficulty to influence women / females. It's one of the reasons she tries to have the males around hate their wives and girlfriends. Now, lets also say that female PCs will get a bonus to their saving throws against the girl-creature's psychic powers.

 

[Tewligan]

Ah, some good ideas here. Even though I mentioned the psychic thing, I didn't even think about the possibility of using that influence to attract prey. Good call! I also like the idea of a higher incidence of abuse in the town because of her hate of other females. That'll give a little more of a feel of wrongness to the town rather than a couple of dead animals and missing people. I'll check out The Color Out Of Space, as well. I took the part of finding the creature under a rock in a field from the Clive Barker story Rawhead Rex - the more influences, the merrier!

I don't know if I'll have the whole town actively controlled by her. I'll have to think about that one, although I do like the idea of everyone generally perceiving her as pleasant. I think her parents will keep her locked away once she becomes really monstrous, but they'll still be doing it because they feel the need to protect her.

Good stuff, guys - keep it coming!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Once the PCs discover the girl (and by the way, she needs a name -- preferably a really cutesy one like Annabell), I would play up the pathos of the situation. She may be a monster to them, but to herself she is a scared kid who has felt compelled to eat a bunch of animals and people in order to give birth. To an egg sack. Eww... but anyway, Annabell may not even fully understand what or why things are happening. She doesn't know that she has psychic powers; she just knows that she wants people to protect her, and then she perceives other females as threats.

It would be really cool if you grabbed a picture of a cute little girl from somewhere and let the PCs have it as a prop. Then, when they finally encounter Annabell in her transformation, she is still -- barely -- recognizable. And pitiful. And dangerous. Muuhahaha!

 

[Turanil]

This adventure is going to be really cool.

- My advice is to not forget to add another very cute, nice, etc. little girl around, that meets and befriend the PCs. Maybe her parents, who came from another country, died in a car accident a year ago. Why? Because if the PCs inquiry, they cannot be sure if the girl was born normally as a human being. Now, this is NOT a sub-plot or what-not; the PCs should NEVER know, once the adventure is finished, they should leave, and the cute little girl remains there, and you never tell them anything about the little girl. Maybe she is also a monster, maybe a simple human being. There isn't any clue except she is so cute and so niiiice...

- Another useful thing would be to add a foe. Let it be the sheriff, who is (unknowingly) under control of the girl-creature. Not active control, but he wants to oppose the PCs when they seem to be close to the truth. He even doesn't know why he acts like this, but is not aware to becoming aggressive, plus is stubborn etc. Here is a suggestion for this sheriff. It comes from a CoC adventure I ran long ago. (This comes from an old CoC thread)

I just wish to recount the last CoC adventure I ran, a long time ago. When I saw the players' schocked faces, I really knew that I had succeeded in doing a memorable session that day. It was set in basic thirties, so it won't be of much help to you, but you could anyway get some idea from it (for instance, in turning the sheriff into a witch-finder).

So, the PCs had come to a small town in the deep US. A woman had called one of the PCs (who was a pastor) to her help. She worked as a servant to a doctor, so the PCs went to the doctor's home. The doctor, however, answered that she had left some days ago, and that the PCs could go and look elsewhere. However, some clues let them strongly suspect that she was still in the doctor's mansion, and in very bad situation. So they came back later, intruded the house, and found the woman, who was incidentally prepared for some nightmarish ritual involving some atrocious things I should better not speak about...

Anyway, they freed the woman, and went to question the doctor about this scandal. Of course, this degenerated into a heated dispute, with the doctor threatening to call the sheriff. And there, the PCs said: "You want to call the sheriff?! So do it, and we'll see who is really guilty about all of this affair!"

Bad idea: when the sheriff came, they quickly discovered that he was the worst person they had ever encountered in their life. The sheriff said he was going to imprison them for the trouble they had caused. When someone pointed out that they had done no trouble at all, the sheriff took his gun and shooted in their car. He then said: "I have seen you using firearms, as this shot in the car attests, so you are now under arrest!". Later, as they were in jail, another PC told the sheriff that he had the "legal right to give a phone call". The sheriff agreed and gave him a phone, except that the phone line was cut. Everything else was like that. (Of course, the sheriff was the totally evil and insane cultists' leader as you may guess.)

I can tell you, all of these incidents with the sheriff were the best part of the adventure. My players had naively believed the sheriff represented the law, and that they could count on him. Their shocked expressions was the best part of that gaming session. Years after, I am still having fun when remembering it.

 

[Eben]

Perhaps there were several of these eggs spread around the country/continent/world. If you figure out an MO, perhaps you can have your PC cross-reference it and find out several of these cases. The different cases (perhaps some reports from ancient tomes, too keep the typical CoC feel going) might form a trail to the source of the eggs. (I'm not up to specs on my outer god knowledge, so I won't be doing any suggestions.)
Of course en route the PC's will be thwarted by cultists, whose goal it is to locate and hatch as many eggs as possible, because the children are needed to waken the mother (or something similar).
You could have a grand finale fo the PC's eventually finding the lair of the mother, with thousands of identical girls running around at different ages and caring and nurturing and being fed to the mother in an attempt to aweken her.

OOH! Maybe you could start of with an abduction or an attempted abduction of you girl n°1 and have the PC's investigate that! Great Cthulhu fun: they'll have two weird things happening: a strange otherworldly girl everybody likes, but is eerie to them (she uses natural chemicals to influence people (more animalistic), and the PC's haven't been near her long enough) and a lead to a child abducting cult.

 

[Artemisia]

I'm new...well my account is, I'm a chronic lurker...
but I think you should go with the psychic powers/mind altering chemical...who (especially in Lovecraftian settings) can believe that people, even desperate ones, would take in a strange kid and not have questions even on their own and suspicions unless they were under the influence of some mind-bending power?

*grins*