AGaslight Nightmare of Steam�Powered

Terror

Geoff Gillan &Dean Engelhardt

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This scenario was first created by Geoff Gillan in 1995. The version that appears here has been substantially revised and re-worked

by Geoff Gillan and Dean Engelhardt and the present text is copyright © 2014 by Geoff Gillan and Dean Engelhardt.

This edition was published in 2014 by Cthulhu Reborn Publishing (www.cthulhureborn.com)

Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu by Gaslight are Registered Trademarks of Chaosium Inc., and are used with permission.

(www.chaosium.com)

Project and Editorial by Cthulhu Reborn

Book design, cover design and book layout by Dean Engelhardt

Proof-Reading and copy-editing by Andy Miller

Original artwork on the book covers, title page, and illustration on pages 3, 6, 21—31, 36—41, 46—49 and 55 created by

Cinthya Álvarez (cinthebarbarian.deviantart.com) and used by permission of the artist.

Maps and handouts by Dean Engelhardt

All remaining images are sourced either from clipart collections or sources for which copyright has expired.

This PDF edition is released under an unported Creative Commons license. Permission is granted for free duplication and distribution but all commercial

exploitation rights of the intellectual property are reserved by the authors.

Clear Credit

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Scenario Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Keeper’s Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Investigator Introduction) . . . . . . . . . . . . 6The Face in the Steam) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6The Machinery of Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . 7The Light of Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Newspapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Calling at the British Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Unfortunate Mrs. Cumber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Print Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Dream Abroad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

London Science Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Entering the Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Professor Phelps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Museum Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

A Dysfunctional Tour of the Machine Age . . . . . 13

Blair’s Seizure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The End of the Tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The Dream Machine Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The King Revealed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Appointment In Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The Luddite’s Revenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The Bomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Steam Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The View From The Hill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Yern’s Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Running The Realm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Independently Exploring The Realm . . . 26

Through The Workers’ Hovels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The Factory Belt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The Mines Of Despair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

The Enclave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

The Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

The Dreamers’ Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

The Foundry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

The Palace Gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Palace Of The King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Within The Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Serving The King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Serving The Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

The Dreamers’ Dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

The King’s Plea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

The Flight of the Monarch . . . . . . . . . . . . 45The Great Steam Dream Chase . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The Hammer Tunnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

The Ruin Of The King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Dream Machine’s Nightmares. . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Steam Gate Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

The Museum In Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Rise of The Bomb Beast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

The Tinkerer Of Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Aftermath and Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Game Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

MACHINE HULKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

THE BOMB BEAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

YERN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

STANDARD WORKER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

BLAIR, Anarchist and Dreamer . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

LEAPER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

LESTER HEMDALE, The Machine King . . . . . 58

TYPICAL MUSEUM THUG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Table of Contents

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nce more Dean Engelhardt has ushered into a new and improved form a musty old work from my Cthulhu-writing past. For once

when I say musty it is not hyperbole. The manuscript was feared lost when most of the contents of my home were destroyed back in the Wollongong fl oods of 1998. Since it was written years before, for a Chaosium Dreamlands book that never got beyond the planning stages, the typescript was the sole copy. After the fl ood cleanup it could not be found. I felt its loss quite keenly since unusually among my own works, I actually liked it. Years passed and my friend and brother in law, Martin Knight was clearing out his garage and found a garbage bag full of stuff from my fl ood cleanup. The cleanup had been a frantic drive to claw up as much as could be salvaged since we were warned by the cops that looters would be by as soon as the premises were left unattended. Boxes and bags were packed up and went in all directions. In the garbage bag were a bunch of my old manuscripts, still stinking of river mud but essentially intact. I rejoiced that some lost material had been found, but being then in the middle of yet another house move, I boxed it all up in an airtight container and promptly forgot about it.

Skip forward another decade and I was contacted by Dean who wanted to bring to life an old adventure of mine, The Past Is Doomed. I let him loose and in the process gained not just an editor and colleague but a good friend. As you all probably know Dean has an insatiable hunger for old Chthloid scribblings and is probably more to be pitied than shunned—in this spirit, when he asked me if I had more from the old days, I began to wonder. Was Machine King, the unwanted Dreamlands scenario still around? Could it be that Martin, ironically one of its original playtesters, had

Original Playtesters: Rhonda Gillan, Cathie Knight (now Cathie Gillan), Jason Rowland, Martin Knight, Greg Cech, Darren Gore, John Evans, Andrew Maclnnes, Bruce Cech, Grant Horrocks.

Author's Notesalvaged it unknowingly from the river muck? I had a vague feeling it was among those papers but it had been so long I could not honestly remember. So I rummaged through the papers in my current house in Brisbane and there after much digging in all the wrong boxes was a clean Manila envelope with an ancient manuscript inside. Also there were all the notes and photocopies of steam-age illustrations that had inspired it. The original book Machine King was intended for was abandoned before the piece was viewed by an editor, so the draft still needed a lot of work. Dean has proved himself more than equal to this task. He has thrown himself so enthusiastically into shoring up its creaky beams he became a co-author as much as editor, and a welcome one at that.

For the last few years I have taken an unexpected detour into Call of Cthulhu past: revising The Past Is Doomed; adding an historical essay and research to the upcoming revision of Love & Morrison’s ground-breaking Terror Australis; writing some new background and adventures for the Second Edition of Horror on the Orient Express. Now The Machine King completes that cycle. There is no more past material to disinter: from here on it is all fresh meat.

So here is The Machine King, genuinely reborn, with new content, gorgeous new art, and thanks also to Dean’s generosity free to the Call of Cthulhu community, you to whom I owe much. Your kind interest has kept me going through many long years and I thank you, and salute you. I hope if you see my by-line on some future work you will check it out, for old time’s sake.

Long may you reign, and longer may you gibber.

Geoff Gillan, Christmas, 2013

nce more Dean Engelhardt has ushered into a new and improved form a musty old work from my Cthulhu-writing past. For once

O

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Covers from JMachine King body L full+chao mid-blow