Cinq Supplices

Here comes the summary of our use of Book 4, as part of the Post-Mortem of our "Cinq Supplices" campaign for Call of Cthulhu. The serious business begins.

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Book 4, i.e. the third book of scenarios, takes us into the heart of the campaign by giving the characters their first steps in Manchuria, hot on the heels of the Japanese army and its sinister aquatic manipulators. We leave for good the relative mildness of the first two parts of the campaign and step with both feet into the nightmare of war - our group sweated a lot during its interactions with the invader. This book constitutes my first genuine difference of opinion with reviewers like the eloquent Nebal. I hope to offer a convincing alternative point of view.

Forum summaries

• Visit to Dairen
• The Captive of Dairen
• The Blind Man Who Guards His Own Tomb
• Prisoners of the Japanese

In short

Arriving in Dairen, the investigators make the acquaintance of the apothecary Meng Zhude, who a little too quickly identifies himself as a Keeper of the Last Sacrilege, willing to help them fight Sayk Fong Lee. The group meets the antique dealer Kang Dai and follows two leads he throws at them: that of the ship seen in Shanghai at Louis Lonsdale's, and that of the "Captive of Dairen". Their investigation only resumes the day after their arrival, leaving George Guédon time to reach his post.

Part of the team follows the ship's trail up to the taxidermist's house, while the other gathers information about the "Captive". They all end up in the cellar of the falsely abandoned house for the scenario's "big brawl": Tsatoba shows up, plugs Jacques in the shoulder and flees, while the Deep Ones rout the rest of the group, leaving the Gaunt Beast of the Night behind. Through sheer perseverance (and grenades recovered from Japanese soldiers), the protagonists nevertheless manage to set the residence ablaze, allowing the Captive to make a run for it. They then join Qian Lan for Bayuquan. During the confrontation with Tsatoba and the Deep Ones around the Blind Man's remains, Zhude manages to gravely wound Tsatoba, and the group gets hold of the Hu Feng Burner. The Japanese invasion goes less smoothly, since between wounds, captures and plague incubation, the group struggles to maintain its cohesion. Saito is captured and carved up. His rescue operation goes wrong when the team fails to set fire to the Togo unit's barrels. Zhude is sent to the Island of Suffering to die of the plague. The others join the Yellow Snake's pirates, abandoning Qian Lan and Guang Ying to their fate.

Commentary

Hard to say how the players experienced this passage. From what I know, they found the Japanese opposition arduous, but the absence of deaths on their side still indicates they remained in control of the situation. To me, that seems rather positive: your team sweats, but comes out victorious through sheer reflection. What more could you ask for?

For my part, I experienced the first big divergences between the author's recommendations and my players' actions. No, Georges Guédon did not die: he left the group, which preferred to take its time investigating the Captive rather than rushing ahead. No, Tsatoba did not pocket the Hu Feng Burner: Zhude landed a critical success in his teeth, and the group bitterly fought to keep this precious object against the Shen De. No, Qian Lan and Guang Ying did not follow the group to the Yellow Snake's fleet: the group botched it and was forced to make a hasty run for it.

Does that mean this campaign is linear, as many reviewers claim? While its writing style may make it seem so, the consequences of a variation are always easy to implement. Georges Guédon survives? There he is, stuck in Dairen, behind enemy lines. For the PCs, it is as if he were dead. The storyline therefore does not suffer; only the pace suffers a little, since his disappearance mainly serves to reinforce the impression of isolation in enemy territory. The Burner falls into the group's hands? They were bound to get it within a session or two anyway. Tsatoba will probably die aboard the Yellow Snake's junk, but the campaign explicitly plans for this eventuality. You will just have to remove one of the Wandering Peddler's predictions - and replace it with a concoction of your own. Guang Ying and Qian Lan missed the last shuttle? The old man can simply wait in the Empire of Shadows, under the watch of the ingenious beggar woman who is certainly trying to reach Harbin overland.

On the other hand, I partially grant the reviewers' point regarding the PCs' involvement in the story. Partially, because they never really wondered "what they were doing there": as soon as the Japanese started their invasion, that question no longer made sense. They were trying to survive. However, the next steps of their chase against Sayk Fong Lee seemed much less obvious. The Blind Man very nearly slipped under their noses, forcing me into a few out-of-game stratagems: prompting the team to put their ideas in order, "innocently" re-reading Louis Lonsdale's notebook in front of their eyes at the start of the session, and so on. And when Guang Ying finally rejoins the group... well, he quickly becomes a problem again. Once again, his surplus of wisdom and the sometimes obscure objectives he imposes on the PCs seem straight out of an MMORPG. [Père Fouras voice] "Go to the Island of Suffering, that is where you will meet the old tattoo artist Sayk Fong Lee is looking for. Save the cheerleader. Save the world". Thank you, oh quest-giver. Also noteworthy: the inclusion of Shirō Ishii in the story proves about as subtle as that of Kenyatta in Masks of Nyarlathotep: where the founder of modern Kenya took on the air of a guide-and-cake NPC whose inclination towards the investigators came out of nowhere, the Japanese war criminal's "cardboard cutout diabolical villain" side goes down rather poorly. In particular, his little speech revealing his plans (cut from our campaign) lends an unwelcome "B-movie" feel to a scenario that meant to be more respectful of the period's context. Admittedly, we are talking about a detail - Ishii disappears immediately, never to return - but why include this historical scoundrel, only to exploit him in such a superficial manner?

Finally, the invasion of the Japanese soldiers coincides with a nearly unlimited supply of grenades for the group. If you have already run a Call of Cthulhu campaign, you probably understand the implications. It may sound silly, but you must at all costs take this variable into account in your campaign, because your players will have the possibility to blow up (literally) pretty much everything that presents itself during the session. A monster with 35 hit points, endowed with 6 points of damage reduction? A group of threatening Shen De? The situation is desperate? One grenade will do. Oh no? Well then take another one, while you are at it.

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