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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8160154" data-attributes="member: 5948">The Playwright and PraecipuaDark ParagonName LevelBinary SunsStuck ElevatorCursed SwordBardic CollegeRedundant OgreA modern-day Call of Cthulhu adventureOwlsley College is an old, highly respected English university, one step below Oxford and Cambridge, that has fallen on hard financial times.  Funding has fallen, heritage buildings require maintenance, and the curriculum's historical focus on philosophy, classics, and literature means it attracts fewer students than rivals emphasising tech or business.Professor Andrew Ffoulkes (the Redundant Ogre) is head of the Department of Shakespearean Studies (the Bardic College), and Shakespeare is his life.  Irascible and much-feared by students, he was recently informed that the department was to be closed and merged with the larger Department of Literature, and that he himself was to be made redundant. He took this badly, locking himself away in isolation in the Department's building, burying himself in the old folios and editions that he loved and managing his dwindling Department by scrawled memos while the last postdocs saw to what teaching duties remain.Deep in the Department's archives, he found a truly ancient folio containing verse scraps from no known Shakespearean work, but which unmistakably bore The Bard's style. Dated just before Shakespeare's death, it is entitled 'The Arches of Praecipua', and contains fragments of a tale of the Great Old One G'Qaroc, the Blossomer in Darkness.  Hook: a pawnshop owner contacts the PCs (or their superiors assign them the investigation) when someone pawns a peculiar swordThe sword is of unknown design, material, and provenance, obviously used but in good condition, but is oddly proportioned and balanced if intended for a human wielder. It is inscribed with markings that resemble writing but are in no human language. The sword is a relic of Praecipua, and is cursed from its long association with that place.  If the sword is ever in complete darkness, one of G'Qaroc's Blossoms will emerge from it. This is a feeding and sensory appendage of G'Qaroc, and desires only to consume.  Any organic material it encounters in the darkness will be attacked and devoured; inorganic material might be shredded, tasted and discarded, or arranged in disturbing patterns.The pawnshop's books reveal the sword was part of a parcel pawned by Stewart Coulthard.  Coulthard runs a shady low-bid contract construction and maintenance firm, and will brush off questions.  Investigators asking his other employees can discover that the other items in the pawned package are personal belongings of Pamir Mashwani, a laborer who nobody has seen for a few days.  Coulthard brusquely assumed Pamir had been deported as illegal, and decided to sell his belongings to make extra cash.  He doesn't know where the sword came from, though Pamir's co-workers remember him looking unsettled and pale the last time they saw him, and refusing to talk about his current job.Coulthard's records indicate that Pamir was last contracted to the Department of Shakespearean Studies at Owlsley College.  The purchase order was signed by Professor Ffoulkes, for 'miscellaneous remodelling' of the 5th floor.The Department is housed in an ugly and deteriorating 60s-era six-level office building.  Entering the foyer reveals the elevator has a 'No access by order of Professor Ffoulkes' sign on it and the only stairs (the fire escape) are decrepit and collapsing.  There is no student presence.  A largely-empty staff guide pinned to the noticeboard names Ffoulkes as head of department, with phone number (no email address) supplied.  Nobody answers it.  Messages left in Ffoulke's mail slot are removed but not responded to. Next most senior listed staff member is Ronica Marshall, a research fellow and acting deputy head.  She is contactable, though her office is in the more modern Literature department building.  She can tell the investigators:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the old Department building is a dangerous derelict and is in the process of being abandoned.  There's no reason to be remodeling it</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">students and classes moved into the Literature building long ago. Only Ffoulkes, archives, and paperwork remain</li> </ul>- Ffoulkes rules ironfisted over the tiny department <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Level 5 is long-unused tutorial rooms</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She knows nothing about the remodel.  Ffoulkes told her nothing - her research focuses on post-colonial re-interpretation of Shakespeare and he despises her for it</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Nobody has seen Ffoulkes for weeks. This is not unusual.  His office is on level 6.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fire escape has been broken for a long time, but there was nothing wrong with the elevator last time she checked</li> </ul>The elevator works, but no matter what floor is selected, it'll proceed to level 5 and then get stuck. The floor readout doesn't work and there's no floor number at the destination, so PCs may not notice this.Level 5 (the Name Level) was completely remodelled by Pamir. It's rough work, dusty exposed structural members, piping and naked drywall - Ffoulkes demanded form and speed over finish.  Pamir knocked holes in walls to create passages, blocked corridors with rough drywalling etc.  The entire level's layout has been modified so the floorplan traces a sinuous sigil that is the name G'Qaroc - there are no side passages or intersections. PCs mapping the path they walk here must make a sanity check, and can make a Cthulhu Mythos check to recognise the name.  Walking the path to the end, they reach a storage closet.  The door opens to the desolate city of Praecipua - walking the Name of G'Qaroc opens the way to where the Great Old One dwells.  Praecipua is an inhuman city on a faraway dead planet.  It is a multilevelled maze of stone archways, pillars, walkways, towers, and bone-dry aqueducts casting a crazed mosaic of shadows in the light of the Binary Suns in the starless sky above. The air is windless, cold and dry but breathable.  Small piles of disturbingly proportioned weaponry lie around, swords and less recognisable items from when the inhabitants fought their losing battle against G'Qaroc's Blossoms.  Pamir retrieved the sword from here once he finished his work and inadvertantly walked the Name.  Obsessed by what he had seen, he went back the next day and was devoured by the Blossoms.  PCs can find his inorganic possessions - glasses, credit cards, phone components - arranged in an uncanny pattern beneath an archway.  Anything retrieved from Praecipua carries the same taint as Pamir's sword.G'Quaroc has wholly consumed Praecipua. Nothing organic remains on the planet. G'Qaroc itself - the Dark Paragon - lurks on the unlit side of the planet, continually moving and seeping into the places where the light from neither sun reaches.  Unless PCs have researched G'Qaroc, they'll learn this the hard way when Blossoms spring forth from places where the latticework architecture of the dead city blocks the light of both suns.  The only way to avoid this is to monitor the movement of the suns and the criss-crossing shadows cast by the city, and stay in the light always.  Praecipua is in a bowl-shaped valley centred around a large open ampitheatre where thousands of rows of spectator's benches surround a great stage.  On the stage is a lectern, holding a completed copy of Shakespeare's 'Arches of Praecipua'.Ffoulkes senses the presence of this work, and obsessively seeks to retrieve it and chant its verses to the world.  It will be his vindication, his (and Shakespeare's) final triumph over the beancounting modernity that had no place for him.  Walking G'Qaroc's Name dozens of times has warped him physically and mentally - he is a huge twisted long-armed shambling horror now, grey-skinned and clawed.  Unnatural darkness envelops him.  Level 6 can be accessed via the elevator shaft, breaking through the level 5 ceiling, climbing the outside of the building, or by the crumbling remnants of the external fire escape.  The windows here are covered with lightproof shielding, and all lightglobes smashed.  Ffoulkes is here, muttering Shakespearean verse under his breath and mingling it with fragments from the Arches (San check to hear).  He attacks anyone with a lightsource, seeking to extinguish rather than kill initially.  Level 6 is lightless, but if a PC recites a line of Shakespeare Ffoulkes is compelled to complete the couplet, and can be located by voice using this method.  He can be herded with bright light (from torches or broken windows).  If cornered, he will smash through the floor or climb spiderlike down the elevator shaft, walk the Name, and flee into Praecipua on a final bid to retrieve the complete Arches.  PCs can find the partial copy of the Arches in his office, along with his diary, scrawled maps of Praecipua and notes on a pathway to the lectern that avoids the Blossoms.PCs may thwart Ffoulkes' return by destroying enough of Level 5 so the Name is no longer meaningful, or else can confront him in Praecipua.  Ffoulkes' primary focus is on the complete Arches, but he will fight in self-defense or furiously if the Arches is damaged.  Downed PCs will be crippled and laid in Praecipua as helpless offerings to G'Qaroc as the two suns set and perfect darkness approaches.There is another complete copy of 'Arches of Praecipua'. It lies in Shakespeare's grave, interred in a lead casket next to his unnaturally swollen and misshapen skeleton.</blockquote>

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