Thro’

Centuries
Fixed
INTRODUCTION
Thro' Centuries Fixed is an investigative adventure that starts from the premise of a blank
slate. As with all investigations for Cthulhu Hack, you should establish a comfort zone for
your Players in dealing with elements of horror and distress. The adventure touches
upon amnesia, dissociation, and the impact these have on personal relationships.

The adventure assumes a contemporary setting, but you can certainly adapt the events
to earlier periods. The adventure presupposes ready access to information, but the GM
can compensate for this with well-informed and good-intentioned locals. The premise
also supports a strong line of investigative play over brute strength and combat.

Events kick off with the characters waking with no recollection of where or who they
are. As a result of this amnesiac state, Players have the freedom to play characters
without worrying too much about the fine detail, which they can fill in as they go.

You can follow the standard process for character generation, but don't worry about
rolling on the Occupation table. As the game proceeds and players describe their
characters, you may allow them to make a decision about what they do and what Skill
they possess. This would also work well if you're using the free-form character creation

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system, where Players assign ten dice to their Resources. This approach provides a more
natural approach to filling out the detail of a character on-the-fly. For the first Scene or
two, you may allow Players some freedom in how they allocate their dice steps.

SYNOPSIS
"Queernesses that had baffled others seemed to harmonise terribly with some background of black
knowledge which festered in the chasms of my subconscious."

— H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

Have you ever met someone with whom you've instantly clicked? Like you've known each
other your whole lives? Have you ever woken up and not known how you got there or why
you're there? Have you ever had both happen to you on the same day?

The characters wake to strange rooms and a strange town and have no idea how they
come to be here. As they explore and try to put their lives back together, they struggle
to recollect their lives up to that morning. Complexity arises from a confluence of
mind and memory, as the “soul” within the character’s body is not the one they expect.

The characters will, through the course of their investigation, encounter an individual
with whom they have an immediate 'spark'—someone they will feel as if they know
intimately. They will also come across situations where memories come out of the blue
and without explanation.

How has this happened? All of the characters

have become the unwitting receptacles of
exchange with The Great Race. The spark—that's
just recognition, the visceral sense that you know
someone or have been somewhere before—is
because they have! The Great Race initially
occupied members of the community, but then
made a further exchange with the curators at the
local museum. The players characters are those
curators trapped in the halfway house of the
community members’ bodies (see left).

Characters will experience a “spark” of recognition every time they see their bodies. As
the brain fog of exchange clears, the spark might break them.

Given the combination of minds and bodies, players will sometimes roll [Sanity]

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before investigative dice during the course of the adventure, remembering
information if they fail the roll—the info comes from their body’s memory or the
lingering attachment of the exchange with the Great Race. Other information will
continue to come from standard Resources, using [Flashlight] and [Smokes] dice.

THE TRUTH
"Another thing that cloudily worried me during my investigation was the somewhat greater frequency
of cases where a brief, elusive glimpse of the typical nightmares was afforded to persons not visited
with well-defined amnesia. ... For a second they would be fired with alien force—then a backward
lapse and a thin, swift-fading memory of un-human horrors."

— H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

Here's what's going on. The player's characters—the ones for whom they have
character sheets—are who they will play for the duration of the scenario.

However, those characters aren't who they think they are. All of the characters were (or
more correctly are) members of the curator staff at the Blackwoods Museum. The
minds of the Great Race have leap-frogged from the character's current bodies and
displaced the minds of the museum staff. The player characters will remain in their
current physical state until the final confrontation with the entity the Great Race has
come hunting.

"Physical strength returned at once, although I required an odd amount of re-education in the use of
my hands, legs, and bodily apparatus in general."

H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

Initially, it makes little sense that someone would awaken in a new body and suddenly
be a jujitsu master. But then, neither do the Great Race. The dominant proportion of
what we think of as 'ourselves' is simply an unconscious response to external stimuli.
When that mechanism is disrupted, for whatever reason, it is a serious issue requiring
steady restoration or medical intervention.Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee took almost a
decade to recover from his “exchange.”

Allowing the Players to determine who and what they're going to play is a large part of
the fun of role-play. Body switching with a member of the Great Race does not inhibit
that freedom or enjoyment; indeed, the interesting complexity of the experience
might well add to the head-scratching fun during the endgame.

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TIMELINE
The following timeline outlines events before the Characters involvement as well as the
progression, going forward, assuming non-interference or interaction with the fixed
process of events after they "wake up" in their current bodies on Day 0.

◆ Aeons past: The Great Race subdued the Unseen and drove them underground to
caverns of the inner earth. They sealed the entrances, imprisoning the Unseen in the
nether abyss, and left sleepless sentinels posted. The Unseen grew strong and numerous
and in time (c. 50M BCE) destroyed the iridescent cone manifestation of the Great Race.
◆ Sixty centuries ago: Wabanaki Indians colonised Mount Desert Island.
◆ Four centuries ago: European settlers colonised Mount Desert Island.
◆ Two centuries ago: One of the Unseen, imprisoned in the spaces beneath the
Island, used its influence to shape the development of the local community. It sought its
freedom from the underworld, from which its substance could not otherwise escape.
Over the next two centuries, a geological anomaly allowed the Unseen's control of wind
to create sonic resonances to manipulate human senses. The anomaly, Music Hill, lay
between Jordan Pond and the inhabited south-eastern reach of the Island. A wealthy
settler, by the name of James R. Peaslee, built a folly from basalt ruins on the southern
shore of Jordan Pond.
◆ Five decades ago: Arson destroyed Peaslee Folly leaving only the blackened
foundations on the lake shore. The destruction didn't free the Unseen, but the psychic
resonance of the violent act loosened the bonds in the upper dimensions where the
immaterial Unseen rested. From this point, the Unseen exerted increased influence over
the population. In the lake’s reflection, it became intermittently possible to spy basalt
spire that once stood there, atop the Unseen’s cell. This became the source of occasional
tales and fireside stories.
◆ 2 years ago: Ibrahim Peaslee visited Mount Desert Island, following the notes in
his great-great-grandfather's journal. While in Otter Creek, he came under the Unseen’s
influence and committed to support the creation of the Peaslee Collection near Jordan
Pond. Work commenced on construction within weeks; Ibrahim moved onward in his
travels.
◆ 75 days ago: Blackwood Museum received the Peaslee Archive in preparation for
the opening of the Collection. Members of the museum staff commenced an item-by-
item check and careful cataloguing of the Archive.
◆ 30 days ago: The Great Race arrived in Otter Creek after identifying the potential
Unseen presence. They seized members of the Community to gather information as to
the state and location of the Enemy.
◆ 2 days ago: The Great Race uncovered the presence of a fragment of the Eltdown

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Shard in Blackwood Museum. They exchange bodies with members of the museum
Curators to access the Archive; the curator minds switch into the bodies of the
Community; the minds of the Community folk remain in the past.
◆ A day ago: The Great Race-Curators—tolerant of exchange sickness due to a
human-human move—shift part of the Peaslee Archive to the Collection.
◆ Day 0: The Museum employees shift more of the Peaslee Archive into the Peaslee
Collection, and they start to set up the exhibits to a scheme defined by the possessed
Great Race-Curators.
◆ Day 1: The Great Race-Curators access the Archive and the Eltdown Shard. They
cannot read it due to the visual manipulations of the Unseen on their human senses. The
Great Race-Curators use their influence over Curator-Community bodies to seek out the
resting place of the Unseen. The setup of the exhibit at the Peaslee Collection continues.
◆ Day 2: Museum staff move the last of the components of the Peaslee Archive to the
Peaslee Collection building. The particular setting of the various finds weakens the
binding of the Unseen in our dimension. As savage winds cut from west to east across the
island and the distortion over Music Hill causes widespread synaesthesia in the people of
Otter Creek.
◆ Day 3: Unless stopped, the Unseen escapes as the bonds over the trapdoor
shatter, allowing the entity to bring together all nine dimensions of its essence and lay
waste to the island with a horrific storm seeking to destroy the Great Race. The media
coverage reports this catastrophic natural event, which claim thousands of lives,
including the Otter Creek’s population and Museum staff.

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THE SETUP
At the start of the session, normally the Players would introduce their characters. On
this occasion, the GM should ask each player to fill out some detail as the character
awakes from what feels like a long and restless sleep. Players may describe who is in
their character's immediate circle. Then have each player make a [Sanity] test.

Why? The character is waking up—and while the players will not realise it, they're
waking in this situation and these bodies, for the first time, in a fully lucid state. This
is not their body, and they have no clear cognition of who or where they are.

The character wakes up—perhaps in a bedroom, small apartment, or somewhere else—

and immediately faces a struggle to find context in their circumstance. The GM feed
detail into the sense of confusion and ask the Player how their character feels. So, if they
stated the character has a husband and adopted daughter, the GM can describe their
small apartment and build to a certainty that they live alone.

From the character's perspective, they find that they don't know where they are or
what is happening. From the GM's perspective, encourage the Player to role-play this
sensation. You may wish to introduce a roll on the Side Effects Upon Awakening table (p.
26) to add complexity, or the Synaesthesia table (2e, p. 86) in the Core Rules.

Whoever the characters encounter after waking—whether dependants, relatives, friends,

or supporting professionals (like doctors or care workers)—will be as caring and
understanding as seems appropriate. However, once they start to interact, they will show
signs of puzzlement, distance, fear, loathing, and distress—without clear explanation.

Discussion with whoever finds the character may yield any of the following:
◆ Wherever they went the previous night, they returned without explanation and
pressed to get to sleep, without excuse or account of their activity;
◆ Whoever they encountered, whatever questions they might have asked, they
did not divulge where they had been or what they'd been doing; indeed, this much has
been true for the past several weeks;
◆ It had been a month since their strange behaviour started with numerous long-
distance trips, late-night conversations in foreign languages over Skype, fragile and
oddly shaped packages delivered by courier, and frequent appointments with
associates at odd times of the day;
◆ The strange activities, meetings, and communications have inevitably led to
consternation, gossip and unexpected conclusions—including potential mental

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breakdown, midlife crisis, affairs, substance abuse, or similar; the activities and
conjecture have strained relationships to breaking point
.
"…Ugly reports concerned my intimacy with leaders of occultist groups, and scholars suspected of
connexion with nameless bands of abhorrent elder-world hierophants... A fresh and evil wave of
underground cult activity set in about the time of my odd mutation."

—H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

The GM and the players can set up and play out these encounters however they wish.
The fundamental elements (for the purposes of this scenario) are that the characters
have, for the last month:
◆ Undergone a drastic set of behavioural changes;
◆ They have given up, or eventually been fired, from their jobs;
◆ They have devoted massive resources to travel, learning (you might roll on Paths of
Discovery to decide on the focus, p. 26), and the gathering of paraphernalia from all manner
of queer and esoteric websites and local stores;
◆ They have been meeting with strangers in odd locations only to sit opposite each
other drawing weird shapes on notepads, swapping them over, drawing new shapes,
swapping them back and continuing... sometimes for hours;
◆ They have new tattoos and body piercing, despite—in most cases—never having
before favoured or considered such bodily decoration;
◆ They've maxed out their credit cards, applied for finance, and/or borrowed
heavily from friends and family;
◆ They've spoken to their close friends and family as if they are strangers; and
◆ Last night, they returned from somewhere and went straight to sleep, each
locked in their rooms listening to ambient sounds from an app on their Smartphone
(or played on a record or cassette player if you set the adventure in an earlier period);
the Smartphone, on inspection, will have been hard reset overnight (cassettes
magnetised, records shattered)
This morning they have come downstairs acting like they have never seen the breakfast
table before.

"Of real friendliness, however, I encountered little. Something in my aspect and speech seemed to
excite vague fears and aversions in everyone I met, as if I were a being infinitely removed from all that
is normal and healthful."

—H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

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DISCOVERY
At this point, or at some point in the scenario, the player characters will likely wish to
investigate what has happened in the past month. The details can be reconstructed
through role-play between the GM and the player, but here are some suggested 'fixed
points' and discoveries:

◆ [Flashlight] Names and numbers of all the other player characters stored on the
SIM card of their mobile phone or a cluster of curled sticky notes. Oddly, the
information will include keyword notes on physical descriptions, picking out
notable features that nevertheless clearly identify through uniqueness.

◆ [Flashlight] A stash of stubs, tickets, and loyalty cards in pockets, bins, or organised
piles on shelves. These include parking tickets for Acadia National Park, entry stubs
for the Blackwoods Museum, marketing flyers for the soon-to-be-opened Peaslee
Collection (due to open next month), and a well-used Bean Awhile Cafe loyalty card.

◆ The Collection flyer bears strange, curving, hand-drawn markings in the margins,
and the names of several members of staff from the Museum have been circled
(don’t make it obvious, but there as many names as there are player characters).

◆ [Flashlight] or [Smokes] Each character has spent a lot of time in the Bean Awhile
Cafe meeting with the group of people who match the descriptions of the other
player characters. A search of possessions will find napkins, takeaway cups,
receipts, and branded detritus scattered around the room and house.

Given the small local community, speaking with almost anyone uncovers the fact that
the characters have been meeting at the Cafe at all hours, often sitting together in
silence and almost always leaving drinks or snacks to go cold. While they each always
bought something, it would inevitably be the same thing, they would never engage in
small talk with staff or customers, and they never tipped. Weird stuff and blatant
rudeness spread quicker than wildfire in a small town, though that stopped after the
first few days.

The Great Race regularly visited the Cafe to coordinate and communicate. As a meeting
place for many humans, the Cafe seemed the best place to acclimatise and fit in. After a
few days they worked out they could stay in the Cafe without buying something to eat or
drink. They came across as distant and distracted, if not outright cold.

Right now, the Bean Awhile Cafe would be an ideal location for the player characters to
meet up with one another. If the player characters choose to get in contact, they can
compare notes and stories. They may come across one or more of the members of the
Museum staff (the Great Race) for the first time (see below) in chance encounters at the

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Cafe but not realise the significance. Play up the sense of the "spark" that may develop
into a strange feeling of recognition with each passing encounter. It might manifest as
something that feels like attraction, at first, but it’s more than that.

Visiting the Cafe for the first time will require a [Sanity] check. A 1 or 2 means that an
overwhelming sense of déjà vu kicks in, along with a wave of emotional feedback. The
characters will have specific seats that they feel they must sit in, even if someone has
taken the spot (ref. The Big Bang Theory). Everyone has a muscle memory reaction to
order certain food and drink, asking for something odd/unpleasant/repulsive like it
was the most natural thing in the world—and the Cafe staff fully expect the request.

Anyone who fails this [Sanity] check will experience a strange symptom (instead of the
usual roll). They can't smell or taste anything that being in the Cafe exposes them to, no
matter how hot, spicy, aromatic or sour. Food and drink just taste like bland mush. The
coffee alone should present an abundance of aromas, but they experience none—at first.
Over time—after d10 hours—their sense of smell and taste returns.

OTTER CREEK
The village of Otter Creek lies on the far outskirts of Bar Harbour. It sits on the east
side, in the eastern lobe, of Mount Desert Island (DEZ-hurt) off the coast of Maine. Otter
Creek is scattered along the edge of Route 3, with a population of around 2,000. The
heavy woods of the Acadia National Park surround it on all sides.

Much of the industry in the area once came from fishing and lobstering; now, a brisk
trade in tourism and a variety of small businesses keep Otter Creek reasonably
prosperous. Numerous hiking trails snake off from the west and north of the village,
including a well-sign-posted path to the Blackwoods Museum, Blackwoods Campsite,
and access to the Park Loop Road.

Bean Awhile Cafe

"Home of the best coffee in town", the Cafe is around 15 minutes walk from Blackwoods
Museum. It is bright and airy inside, with several sofas and an array of mismatched
chairs and tables, both inside and outside. The Cafe’s baristas and waiting staff are
friendly and professional. The drinks aren’t cheap, but it's a local family-run chain,
eking out a niche as a hyper-green alternative to the major players, and the community
like to support that.

A failed [Sanity] roll reveals much upon first visiting the Cafe, otherwise investigative
Resources will work.

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[Smokes] The group of characters met every day, taking the same seats and ordering
the same food. Aside from a misunderstanding on the first day, they always paid but
never tipped. They seemed pleasant but distant. Even Ed, the most customer-focused
barista in the house, couldn't break the ice.

[Smokes] Oddly, they rarely consumed any of the food purchased and always seemed
lost in thought or conversation—sometimes not interacting at all, except to occupy the
same space. If the player characters choose to engage with the staff, conversation will
come as a surprise. Each staff member will have had experiences with the characters.

[Smokes] When the characters enter and find a seat for the first time, a waitress will
ask, "If they want their usual."—or might even rock up with a loaded tray. Alison served
them several times over the past month. She assumed the characters were deaf/mute
at first, as they spent a lot of time making hand signals or scribbling notes. The
markings were rounded and loose, a bit like shorthand, but no one could make sense
of it. After a couple of visits, it became clear that they were not mute or deaf at all, but
they still occasionally lapsed into wordless communion.

If shown one of the Peaslee Collection marketing flyers, she identifies the marks in the
margin as identical to those she saw scribbled. As with all the other members of staff,
she seems surprised if the characters show a change in attitude and personality.

[Smokes] The characters walked to and from the Cafe over the first couple of days and
then later took public transport or drove. If the characters arrive here by vehicle, the
waitress can point it/them out without hesitation. They never all visited together more
than a couple of times, and occasionally not at all. These times correspond with any
evidence that the player characters might have gleaned about some of them taking trips
out of town or off the island.

BLACKWOODS MUSEUM
On the edge of Acadia National Park, the Museum is a group of formerly residential
homes set far back from the main road amid generous lawns and leafy sycamores.

The Museum has a rotation of exhibits displayed throughout the year of artefacts
covering the island’s history over the last 350 years, with a focus on the changing face
of Otter Creek and many artefacts of the Wabanaki Indians.

The Museum is open to the public from 10am to 3pm. General and senior staff—the
Curators—usually arrive between 8 and 9am. There are between 3 – 6 staff members

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handling tours for visitors, working the front desk, and keeping the Museum running
at any given moment during the course of the day.

A character researching [Flashlight] the Museum will find adverts for the forthcoming
opening of the Peaslee Collection. The Blackwoods Museum received a grant secured
from Ibrahim Peaslee, who also donated his great-great grandfather's Archive to the
Museum.

[Flashlight] A large Better Drive van laden with crates and bubble-wrapped display
units arrives, pauses and leaves from the car park throughout the course of the day. The
Museum staff are currently coordinating the carefully planned move of the Peaslee
Archive to the new, purpose-built Peaslee Collection by Jordon Pond. The trip takes
about 15 minutes in the van between here and the Collection, then unloading takes
anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

Peaslee Archive
The Peaslee Archive consists of the key finds and personal effects of Nathaniel Wingate
Peaslee, [Flashlight] a notable explorer and author who died in 1961 at a grand old age.
Peaslee is noteworthy for his explorations of Australia and his contribution to the
Australian Outback conservation movement. Peaslee combated mining in and forced
development of areas of outstanding natural beauty, archaeological importance, and
First Australian significance in the Outback, protesting with fanatical fervour.

Peaslee was also an eclectic writer [Flashlight]. Amongst other books, he authored The
Philosophy of Yiang-Li; a Biography of Bartolomeo Corsi; Pre-Incan Peruvian Astronomy; The
Roman Province of Theodotides of Britannia; Atlatls: Mythical or Simply Lost?; and, The Absurdity
of Manners (a collection of tips on how to incorporate cutting insults into conversations
without appearing rude, written under the pseudonym of Pierre-Louis Montmagny).

The Peaslee catalogue offers an ideal opportunity to drop in hooks and teasers for future
adventures. That said, nothing should divert attention too far from current events.

The Archive was collected and donated by his great-great-grandson and includes an
exotic range of finds. Among the items in the Archive, there is a highly polished and
lacquered ceramic fragment Peaslee retrieved sometime after his trip to Australia in
1935 from South England. This is an Eltdown Shard (see pp. 13 – 14).

The Peaslee Archive is not presently open to the public; some of the Archive remains in
crates and boxes at the Museum, the rest secured in the Peaslee Collection building on
the south shore of Jordan Pond. This is part of the reason the Great Race decided to just

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“move in” en mass. Gaining access presents problems. The player characters need a
plan—which may include any of the following or something more ingenious. In any
instance where the hindrance is an individual, like a staff member, it will necessitate
a Charisma Save to avoid getting blacklisted and/or turned over to the authorities.

◆ Break in. The Blackwood Museum's Collection has standard manual security,
such as good locks, secured windows, movement-triggered lights, and a basic
burglar alarm. While historically significant, the Collection does not contain any
pieces with transmutable historical value, like gold or precious stones. A good plan
or an appropriate Occupation—or a suitable Save—should suffice to gain access.

◆ Talk their way in. [Smokes] Posing as a Museum patron, a member of the Peaslee
family, a bureaucrat from the State funding committee, or a PhD student might gain
them a visitor's pass to the Archive, which may even stretch to more than one visit.

◆ Contacts and Influence. [Smokes or suitable Occupation] Persuading

someone close enough to the Archive will take a lot of work. The only 'people' with
regular and easy access are the primary Museum staff—the individuals the player
characters were before the Great Race completed their second exchange. That said,
it’s the normal floor staff completing the lift-and-shift trips in the van with the last
of the exhibits. Seduction, intimidation, persuasion or bribes of the non-Curator
staff for access off the books might work. It would be easiest if the Curators were
engaged elsewhere, like on a lunch break at the Bean or engaged in a conference.

◆ Impersonating one of the Museum Staff. Characters impersonating a

member of the museum staff will find it surprisingly easy to trick the Great Race. The
entities really don't pay much attention to human appearance and struggle to tell one
human from another. Relevant Skills or Occupations will make it even easier.

◆ Talking to Ibrahim Peaslee. Ibrahim is currently in France, but a little digging

will track him down, and [Smokes or suitable Occupation/Skill] will have him put in
a good word to allow access to the Collection for a day. He confides that he visited
Mount Desert Island 2 years ago while researching his family history and found
himself enamoured by the place. He struggles to communicate the focus and
strength of the attraction and begins to sound upset once he’s talking about it.

Once inside the Museum, a [Flashlight] reveals that the archives appear poorly stored
and disordered. Whatever paperwork should exist by way of inventory seems to be
missing. Some of the items in the Archive have been removed, split up or even
damaged. The only people with enough time and access to do this without getting
noticed would be the Curators (i.e. the Great Race).

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[Flashlight] There’s a heavily annotated and modified plan for the new Collection
attached to a clipboard amidst the mess and disarray. Marks indicate a wholesale
change to the layout, with telltale curling, swirling hieroglyphs in the margins.

The location of the Eltdown Shard depends on the progress the player characters have
made up to this point. If they've struggled or have taken some time to enter the
Museum, it's there in storage. Otherwise, the Eltdown Shard has been transferred and
secured at the new Peaslee Collection building at the Pond. In that case, [Flashlight]
locates a catalogue image of the Shard along with a manifest and relocation number.
The papers with the catalogue indicate the item shipped out the day before the
characters 'woke' for the first time.

THE ELTDOWN SHARD

A highly polished, jagged shard of pottery with beautiful and intricate engravings.
Player characters won't need the Shard itself to attempt to interpret the markings; they
will only need an image or a copy—so a quick snap on a Smartphone camera will
suffice.
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The Shard's symbols are twisted and elaborate hieroglyphs [Sanity and Flashlight],
engraved from the perspective of an eye that experiences shapes and colours differently.

While you're free to add your own interpretation of The Eltdown Shard or leave its
origin open, the baseline assumption is of broken or inactive Mythos technology.

High technology is indistinguishable from magic to primitive apes. The Eltdown Shard
is the equivalent of a broken tablet computer, a shattered snapshot of data.

Physically, the Shard looks like a slab of

dark grey clay, cold to the touch, glazed
on one face in a way that looks like an oily
puddle.

[Sanity] Interpreting the Shard takes

1d4+1 hours of uninterrupted effort. The
Great Race was unable to make sense of
the Shard due to the intervention of the
Unseen with their higher state of
perception. Because of the limitations
of human senses, the Unseen currently
cannot exert the same influence. The
combined of imperfect human
perceptions with the mild enhancement
of fading Great Race senses in an
exchange subject makes it possible to
decipher something of the multi-
dimensional script.

What they glean from the Shards are

sensations and visions, like fragments of dreams or the fleeting recollections of places
briefly visited. A study of the Shard might feel like a sudden seizure or an
overwhelming assault on the senses. The GM should require [Sanity] checks for any
ongoing research. Visions include:
■ A great blackness
■ A wellspring of life and nature
■ A resting place or prison
■ The Spire

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The Eltdown Shards
[various] Index: 7, Ire D8, Taint (CHA): -6, Lore: +4 [+4] | Folklore, Hypnosis, Shroud
Form, Mind Fog, Soul Incision

"It had to do with those debatable and disquieting clay fragments called the Eltdown Shards, dug up
from pre-carboniferous strata in southern England thirty years before. Their shape and markings
were so queer that a few scholars hinted at artificiality, and made wild conjectures about them and
their origin. They came, clearly, from a time when no human beings could exist on the globe."

(All quotes) H P Lovecraft, "The Challenge from Beyond"

Fragmentary shards, of ceramic composition, in varied states of weathering and wear.

The Shards vary wildly in colour and finish, and present a complex arrays of glyphs—
some on one or more external surfaces, others embedded deep inside. While the
number of Shards believed to exist across collections and museums number twenty-
three, an abundance of earnest scholarly studies, cross-referencing descriptions and
sketches, suggest that there are more. Exposure to certain spectra of radiation—and
certain other conditions—cause the glyphs to change, shift, move, advance, and
retreat, as if processing or scrolling across a computer monitor or tablet.

The theme of each Shard tends toward autobiographical insights, presented in a

logical format and timeline. Source language seems to vary, but the nature of the
Shard seems to serve as a visual translatory medium, converting diverse and
sometimes lost languages on the fly.

“About 1912 … the Reverend Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall had … published at his own expense … a
“translation” of the primal and baffling “inscriptions”—a surprisingly long brochure in view of the
limited number of “shards” existing."

A small run of pamphlets exist, purporting to be a translation of the Shards (In: 3, Ir:
n/a, T(CHA): -1, Lore +1 (+2) | Folklore, Shroud Form).

THE CURATORS
The Great Race possess key museum staff, or for simplicity’s sake, let's refer to them as
the Curators. These are the player character's 'original' bodies and lives. Should the player
characters meet 'their' Curator, the player character will feel a strong draw toward that
individual, not dissimilar to a physical attraction. They will want to be near them, to
spend time with them, to get to know them and to share their experiences. They will feel
far more affection and kinship to this "stranger" than their own relatives or friends.

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The curators won't recognise them—as the Great Race suck at faces and will attempt
to conform to polite human behaviour instead. The Great Race will shake hands,
smile, nod, pretend to listen and engage in a way that feels slightly awkward. In
general, they display limited social skills.

Portray the Great Race as extraordinarily shy and nervous of strangers. You might,
indeed, play them up as potential victims in the greater scheme of things rather than
the perpetrators of the character's 'abduction'.

If the player characters investigate the Curators, they must check [Sanity]. If they fail,
they automatically gain the information that they wanted (simply remembering it).

For example, John takes steps to find out where 'his' Curator lives and
immediately rolls [Sanity] in place of his Investigative Resources or Skills. If he
fails, he gains the knowledge, and his Sanity steps down a die.

Otherwise, John can roll [Flashlight] or [Smokes] to gain the same information
through more traditional investigative means, or leverage Occupation/Skills.

The Curator's domestic situations are precisely that which one would expect from
ordinary people of their age and income. They may have one or two dependants or live
alone; live in a comfortable apartment or house share; have a car or bicycle. Improvise the
Curator's 'personal lives', and if asked, any relatives or dependants of the curators the
player characters come in contact with will be upfront and open about the changes of the
last couple of days, but they see it as the side effect of pressures getting the new Peaslee
Collection ready. The Curators appear quiet, distracted, and somewhat out of sorts.

None of the Curators or their families will have been acquainted with the player
character's current bodies.

The number of Curators matches that of the player characters – though the Museum
has more members of permanent staff. The Great Race has specifically taken on the
persona of the senior employees with influence over the arrangements surrounding the
new Peaslee Collection. The characters will occasionally see the Curators out and about
with other members of the museum staff or helping, awkwardly, with loading the vans
to move the Archive. The Great Race have no wish to cause the characters any harm, nor
do they carry any weapons, though they can improvise something with ease.

If the players decide that the Curators are enemies, the GM should refrain from
intervening unduly. Allow the players to hunt, imprison, or even assassinate a
Curator before starting The Confrontation. It is advised that whichever Curator a
player character kills or incapacitates happens to be the Curator occupying the player

16
character's original body, as the Great Race inside the Curator will immediately swap
bodies with him or her. ('You awaken lying on the floor in a pool of something warm
and wet...'). The player will need to contend with a badly injured character who Can’t
Explain Why It Just Feels Wrong (p. 29).

When dramatically appropriate, the Curators will 'crack' the Eltdown Shard as their
perception slowly degrades and becomes more human or they might directly enlist the
characters’ assistance. They then tool up—by assembling armaments out of the lenses,
pipes and rods that they recently ordered online—and wordlessly gather, at night,
travelling to the south shore of Jordan Pond (see The Lake and The Confrontation).

GREAT RACE
Hit Dice: 5 (30 hp) Potency: 3 Special: 9
Attacks: 2 Resistance: 5 Motivation: Survival
Defences: Tentacles (5) x 2, Lightning Gun (6, SD 1d8, Electricity)

Origin: From where the Great Race originally came is an unknown—potentially they evolved
in an adjacent universe. They persist as formless spirits of pure intellect and can exchange
places with the minds of other entities through trans-spaciotemporal telepathic link. It is this
mastery over space and time that earned them their title as the Great Race. They arrived on
Earth hundreds of millions of years ago and used their power of possession to assume the
shape of enormous iridescent cone creatures. Until the arrival of the Great Race, the conical
species had significance without superiority on Earth; once possessed, the Great Race
achieved ascendance and became the dominant force, subjugating all others. They subdued
The Unseen early in their occupation; later, they would war with the Elder Things, Yuggothi,
and other creatures, their power waxing and waning until their “destruction” by The Unseen.

Purpose: Survival through complete mastery of all knowledge of events. The Great Race
go to immense lengths—even risking their own near immortal existence—to acquire a
breadth and depth of knowledge about all time, past and future. By gathering this
information, they seek to identify the extent of their existence, without intervention,
and do all they can to manipulate that time flow. If they cannot manipulate time
sufficient to guarantee the longevity of their body, they look for suitable higher
lifeforms to occupy in the future or off-world. Their pursuits might seem scientific and
relatively benign, if not for the brutal truth that their exchange, as a species, to save
their lives will condemn an equal number of minds from the future to oblivion.

Common Qualities: The Great Race in the past occupy enormous iridescent cone
creatures, about ten feet high and ten feet wide at the base, and made up of some ridgy,

17
scaly, semi-elastic matter. They have four
extendable limbs—two manipulators, one
sensory and for acts of fine manipulation, and
the last for assimilation of nourishment. They
move like a mollusc, expanding and contracting
the skirt of rubbery material. Materially, they
have features both vegetable and animal, not
unlike the Elder Things. They reproduce through
seeds that cluster around the base of their skirt—
though their longevity means reproduction is slow.

Transcendent Senses. The Great Race

have two of the senses we
recognise—sight and hearing—
but of other senses they have many, all
of them incomprehensible to humanity. For
this reason, a common side effect of
mind exchange is an experience like
synaesthesia (pp. 84 – 85). The Great Race
communicate with a kind of clicking and
scraping and lack the sensory apparatus to
experience pain or discomfort.

Lightning Gun. These weapons were

designed with hunting The Unseen as
their core purpose. They fire blasts of
electricity with a line-of-sight range. Any
damage cases ignores Resistance, unless the target possesses
some natural immunity.

Time travel. The Great Race have the power to 'time travel' at will, as they do during the
events at the outset and the conclusion of this adventure. The process of finding a
target involves research in the Great Libraries, but they can Possess a target in line of
sight without the need for complex preparation.

Possess Form. The Great Race use a method of time travel that projects their psychic
essence from one physical form into another, regardless of the target's relative
position in time and space. They calculate the target location based on the
information in their extraordinary library. Possession results in a period of
unconsciousness—4d6 hours—after which the individual suffers Disadvantage for all
DEX and WIS Saves, for 1d3+1 days, as they acclimatise to the body's movement,
extremities, and range of senses. External idiosyncrasies of the acclimatisation may

18
be randomly generated (see tables, pp. 28 – 29). While irrelevant for this adventure, the
period of possession varies wildly in length—to randomly generate roll: d10-4 years,
d12-3 months, d20-2 days, d12-1 hours and d10 minutes.

Memory Purge. The Great Race use an intricate mechanical hypnosis to purge the mind
of all memories and learning acquired during the period of exchange. That said, the
process is not perfect or complete, leaving shadows of knowledge deeply ingrained in
the physical tissue of the human body and the recesses of the mind. Anyone who has
undergone an exchange may have access to these remnants with a failed Sanity check.

Magic. The Great Race have natural or technological abilities that equate to the
following spells: Starry Ward, Derange, and Loathing. The GM may choose to gift them
with additional 'spells' as deemed appropriate.

Improvise. In 1d3 Moments, the Great Race can improvise a device that can either provide
immediate Advantage (or force Disadvantage) in a task OR inflict a total of 10 hp of damage
spread across any number of targets (per attack). The improvised device becomes useless,
and all components are ruined at the end of the Scene.

Cultists. Followers of the Great Race adhere to a sort of pastoral role in supporting and
guiding them, during an exchange, while in the midst of Earth's Holocene epoch. These
cultists benefit from some of the Great Race’s knowledge of the future to support their
existence financially and provide aid to their masters.

“There probably never was a time when groups or cults did not secretly cherish certain of these hints.
In the Necronomicon the presence of such a cult among human beings was suggested—a cult that
sometimes gave aid to minds voyaging down the aeons from the days of the Great Race."

H P Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time"

Lightning Guns
The Great Race fashion tools and weapons by combining components purchased through the
Internet or local hardware stores. Their guns resemble a tubular collection of metal pipes and
rods interspersed with large circular camera lenses.

The Lightning Guns work by angling the lenses toward a light source, which causes the
mechanism to vibrate wildly and noisily (demanding great strength to hold steady).
They fire with infuriating irregularity, producing a tremendous electrical arc (flip a
coin to determine when the Gun fires, 50-50) that causes 2d6 (6) damage to a target
within line of sight, ignoring Resistance.

19
A character must make a STR Save or collapse prone when firing a Lightning Gun—
due to the bone-wrenching kick—and triggering a Supplies check for breakage.
During The Confrontation, the characters have the residual understanding of the Great
Race to handle the Guns and brace their stance to avoid this inconvenience.

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

I have used references to real-world locations like Acadia National Park and Otter
Creek because players like to do their own investigations! The Blackwoods Museum,
Basalt Castle and Peaslee Collection are fiction, but the players, with a quick web
search, can see where they would be, on the southern shore of Jordan Pond. Or, you
can search and print out pictures before the session.

Acadia National Park is located in the U.S. state of Maine. It covers an area of 49,000
acres of mountains, shoreline, woodlands, and lakes, including various islands and
parts of the mainland.

The Park stretches across east and west lobes of Mount Desert Island, with the greater

on
Collecti
Peaslee

20
part covering the eastern lobe, where the adventure is set. Species in the Park include
moose, deer, fox, coyote, bobcat and black bear. The east lobe supports a mix of trees
with a great density of deciduous varieties like aspen, birch, alder, and maple.

Jordon Pond lies in the mid-south of the eastern lobe, west of the town of Otter Creek.
At the southern tip lie the remains of a Castle over which the Museum has constructed
the glass-and-steel structure of the Peaslee Collection.

The Lake
Jordan Pond is a misnomer, given it stretches more than 2 km north-to-south and
more than half a kilometre from side to side. Characters can reach the "pond" by taking
the Park Loop Road that runs out from the southern end of Otter Creek—a winding
journey of 5 km—or via a number of trails across the Triad Pass, which lies between
Otter Creek and the waters—a rough and varied hike of about 3 km.

Tracks near the lake offer access to various public areas, though parts of the loop road
are closed to non-resident vehicles from December to April.

During the summer months, residents enjoy access to a swimming area, municipal
boating programs, picnicking and other recreational facilities. Residents and non-
residents alike enjoy the lake for fishing, as it is a state-stocked fishing area open to all.
Hikers often stay at the Blackwoods Camp Site, immediately south-west of Otter
Creek, and then travel on foot to the Pond and further afield to take in the breathtaking
views and wider areas of interest.

The Peaslee Collection will further extend the recreational options of the Park. Those who
walk there can access the area for free, while drivers pay a small charge for parking.

The Basalt Castle

European settlers first discovered these windowless black basalt ruins not long after
the colonisation of the island. The Wabanaki Indians warned against approaching the
site and would have nothing to do with it. All attempts to date the structure have
defied all past and current techniques, but it is immensely ancient.

In the late 1800s, Dr James R. Peaslee renovated the remains of the Castle, adding various
finishing details, including windows. The Castle was sold to the community at the turn of
the century. In the late 1960s, a free-spirited commune occupied the location and, in a
drug-fuelled frenzy, lit a fire that caused serious damage. Soon after, the Acadia National
Park took over management of the location.

21
"What strange architect had designed this place? The castle, rising on a single outcrop of rock… was
built very largely of books … the stones, every one of them, all the tens of thousands of cubic metres
the castle must be composed of … were saturated, filled full of hidden, indecipherable lettering."
—Iain M Banks, "Walking on Glass"
Peaslee’s renovated castle was the size of a large house—and an artist's impression in
the literature for the Peaslee Collection shows it to have once been an imposing spire of
black rock. Now just parts of the ground floor remain and have become the centrepiece
of the newly designed Collection building, an inspired modern work of grey-green steel
and glass offering majestic views over Jordan Pond to the north.

The Collection has yet to be opened to visitors, but the coming and going of removal
vans and museum staff make access possible during the day. By night, the characters
will need a plan, as they did if they broke into the Blackwood Museum (pp. 10 – 13).

At the time of The Confrontation, it will be empty and locked but not electronically
alarmed or physically guarded. One blast of the Great Race armaments will blow the
main door off its hinges.

Anyone approaching the lake from further to the north, along the west shoreline, or
travelling across the water in a boat, can see the Collection building on the shore and
the reflection of a towering black basalt castle, necessitating a [Sanity] roll. The trees
around the reflected castle bend and twist under the assault of a violent wind, like a
massive tornado. Anyone submerging themselves in the water can feel and hear the
raging storm and must make a CON Save or lose consciousness, necessitating rescue.

THE CONFRONTATION
"The aperture was black with a darkness-almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive
quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed and actually burst
forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the
shrunken and gibbous sky..."
—H P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
Whenever the GM feels it is dramatically appropriate, the Curators, having
discovered the location of the Unseen by accessing the Eltdown Shard, will arm
themselves, make their way to the site, and then confront it... At that moment, they
immediately swap their consciousness back into the bodies the player characters
currently inhabit leaving the characters to do the dirty work.

Describing how and when this happens will vary greatly depending upon the activities

22
the player characters are engaged in, and it is very possible one or more of them will be
following, or even with, the Curators when they decide to initiate the confrontation.

If player characters are within sight of one of the Great Race/Curators, they will witness
another Curator approach them and, without word or ceremony, click his or her fingers
in rapid succession without discernible rhythm or pattern. Both Curators will then
wordlessly walk off, either together (if it is close to night) or separately (to await nightfall
in safety and silence) and then make their way to the lake. Once they arrive, the Great
Race will retrieve their armaments from their vehicle and complete assembly.

Half (rounded down) of the Curators strip naked, place their weapon(s) down on the
shoreline, and begin to wade out into the lake, ultimately submerging, while the
others take up positions in front of the Collection building. If they brought a vehicle,
they will manoeuvre it so that the headlights are on and behind them, aimed toward
the lake (to allow them to catch the light to power their Lightning Guns).

The Curators in front of the Collection building will then begin a chant. Anyone listening
hears a lyrical quality intermingled with hard stops, clicks, and scraps of what sound like
actual words. At one point, the chant includes a cappella of the first 100 numbers of pi.

Explain to the players that when the Curators submerged, their presence beneath the
surface appeared to swing through 180 degrees, as if they swam back to the shoreline.
On the reflected shore stands the looming spire of black rock with the glass and steel
of the modern building weirdly impaled. Part of the lower tower shatters, followed by
an explosion of glass and metal. Behind that, a trapdoor lies open and, for a moment,
something shimmers and fractalizes the air. The Great Race's weapons lie precisely
where they placed them on the shoreline.

Soon after the swimming Curator(s) disappear beneath the mirror surface of the lake (or
as soon as the players attempt to disrupt the ritual), a howling tendril of turbulence
erupts from beneath the water. Like a horizontal tornado, the tunnel of screaming wind
picks up litter, leaves, turf, glass, and loose exhibits before stabbing forward. Inside the
Museum, the trapdoor in the centre of the exhibit shudders, the material splintering.

A short while after the Curator(s) disappear beneath the water, they complete the
exchange. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, each player character's vision
goes black and then resolves through new senses—or, more precisely, their old ones.

They awaken in their original bodies: the bodies of the Curators. They immediately
remember who they are, what their job is, their occupation, who their dependants are,
and meeting people who look exactly like the bodies they just left during a tour at the
Museum.
23
The players must roll a [Sanity] test. Those who fail remember how to use the Great Race’s
weapons and can fire without penalty for lack of bracing. This is a deliberate memory
left behind by the Great Race to help enable the destruction of The Unseen.

Any who succeed in the Sanity check have Disadvantage with the gun until they roll a
success on both dice (i.e. they roll two 20-sided dice with a result lower than their DEX).

The player character's statistics remain the same. Justify this in-game as residual
muscle memory and neuro-plasticity settling as they re-adapt to their original
bodies. Within 3 hours, they will be back to normal; until then, they sense and
command their bodies as if they are still within their consciousness' last home—
which saves from launching into a new wave of character generation before a fight!

The Great Race has been forced to take this step because they realise they can only face
the Unseen with reinforcements. The entity's manipulation of their senses, amplified
and distorted through the local geology of Music Hill, puts them at a disadvantage
they can only correct once they acclimatise. The Unseen's assault leaves them battling
at a Disadvantage and struggling to focus.

Place a big 6-sided die on the table, establishing a Countdown of 6. The characters
have 6 Moments to make their mark - act, attack, yell plans, or whatever.

If the characters can't find a way to defeat or trap the Unseen before the die drops to
zero, the trapdoor (in the real world) shatters, at which moment the Unseen
establishes a presence in our world, meaning the Great Race and characters must
then defeat two of them—the one in our world beneath the trap door and one released
from the reflected primordial state in the surface of the lack. The Unseen are, if
anything, weirder than the Great Race!

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
"Then came out of the earth the black spirits of earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full of dim rumors
picked up in caverns beneath forgotten sea-bottoms. But of them, old Castro dared not speak..."

—H P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

These are The Unseen, monstrous entities that annihilated the Great Race 50 million
years ago in an age of revenge for what the Great Race did to them millions of years
before. The Unseen are only partly material—as we understand the matter. In fact, like
the Great Race, their material existence extends into dimensions outside of our own
perception or understanding.

24
THE UNSEEN
Hit Dice: 6 (36 hp) Potency: 4 Special: 11
Attacks: 4 Resistance: 6 Motivation: Vengeance
Defences: Unnerve, Slug and Slam (14), Squall (see below)

Origin: The Unseen originate from a divergent universe, an area of angular space askew
from our own. Our cosmos offered something that home did not. Unlike so many others,
the Unseen’s purpose was relatively benign—although not without violence borne out of
necessities like hunger. The Unseen could only traverse part way into our universe, the bulk
of their form lingering in the interstitial void outwith all things. They explored, colonised,
settled, and found their place in the order of things—not too distant from the position
humanity holds over the species of planet Earth at the beginning of the 21st century. By 600
million BCE, they dominated Earth and three other planets in our solar system, living in
towers of windowless black basalt. And then the Great Race arrived.

Purpose: The Great Race perceived the Unseen as another species to subdue and with
their mastery over lightning weapons they drove them underground. Both coming from
other universes in angular space, the Unseen materially
offend the Great Race at an atomic level. They cannot
tolerate them, cannot exchange with them, cannot
read them. So, they imprisoned them instead.
That act drives the Unseen thirst for
vengeance, a vengeance that the Great
Race has foreseen and know that their
conical forms will not survive. Beyond the
defeat of the conical forms in 50 million
BCE, the Unseen patiently await
opportunities for revenge. They do not
perceive humanity as a threat on any
level, but they don’t tolerate acts of
violence or disturbance against their
half-polypous form.

Common Qualities: The Unseen

manifest partially. Their natural state in
this universe is invisible, immaterial and
they have no common senses with our
own unless they assume some partially
material form. When material, they manifest
pseudo-pods of plastic fleshy material that
25
interact with normal matter. Their strange relationship with our universe means that
even when immaterial, they cannot move through barriers, though their senses—such
as they are—suffer no interference from matter.

When The Unseen puncture holes into our material space, the interaction creates
violent wind-like disturbances that they can channel to push, batter, pull, repel, or
throw. This form of attack emits a high-pitched whistling sound.

Unnerve. “an inexplicable aura of menace and concentrated fear” When someone comes within
Distant range of The Unseen for the first time, they make a WIS Save or experience
effects of a failed Shock check (roll an outcome on the Shock table (1e, p. 28; 2e, p. 58).
The Unseen can choose to modify the outcome of this attack, and instead force a change
in Attitude. For 2e, roll d10 on the Attitude table (p. 65) and the character must adopt the
change indicate for the next 1d4+1 minutes. For 1e, roll d4 on the Reaction table (p. 30).

Whistling Shock. At the start of combat, all opponents must make an INT Save or
suffer a Disorientation condition.

Squall. Every other round, instead of a Slug and Slam (see below), the Unseen can blast
a single opponent hard enough to throw them Far Away from Nearby, which will
inflict 15 hp in damage. A DEX Save reduces this by half, to 7 hp damage.

Unseen. In response to one potential attack per round of combat, the Unseen can
flicker in and out of existence. That attack Saves with Disadvantage.

Slug and Slam. The Unseen can buffet opponents, pulling them in and shoving them
away with a tumult of wind attacks, and manifest fleshy limbs that thrash, grab and
slam. In a Moment, The Unseen can inflict from one to four attacks, spreading 14 hp
in damage evenly among them.

Vulnerable to Electricity/Lightning. The Unseen benefit from no Resistance to strong

electrical attacks, including the Great Races Lightning Gun—developed specifically to
fight them with.

CODA
What happens next depends on the players and whatever assistance they garner from
the Great Race. If they destroy The Unseen with Lightning Guns, collapse a building
on it, or get the Great Race to improvise something from artefacts in the Collection,
the aftermath finds both curators and the other bodies back to "normal" and many

26
questions to answer.

If The Unseen is undefeated long enough for the reflection to reinforce it, events may
take a turn for the worse. The Unseen combine their powers to generate a massive
storm that runs riot across the whole island, killing tens of thousands in a wave of
destruction. The Great Race might survive, but only by completing another local
exchange, probably to bodies on the Maine coast.

If the Game Moderator and Players want to continue from this point—whatever the
end game—then they have the basis for a Connection, per that outlined on p. 149 of the
2e Core Rules. They have the common exchange experience with the Great Race and
may now have a common cause in tracking down the Unseen, escapees, or themselves
be sought out by cultists loyal to the Great Race.

CREDITS
Written by Paul Baldowski, based on an original work by Martin Dempsey.

Originally published November 2016. Revised edition, for CH2e, July 2023.

The Great Race by Andrés Sáez Martínez | The Unseen created through the procedural
assistance of Mid-journey AI and Adobe Photoshop by Paul Baldowski | All other art is
CC0 License, released into Public Domain; created, with some procedural assistance,
by Paul Baldowski; or licensed stock art from Shutterstock.

Adapted from INCOMMERS, written by Martin Dempsey | Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Published by Xipe Totec Press.

27
RANDOM TABLES
Strange collections of common thought and colour provide a Game Moderator
with something to pull ideas from, and that’s the theme in these varied tables.
I Have A Bad Feeling… Side Effects Upon Awakening
1 Chaotic 1 Dissociative Amnesia (loss of self)
2 Glimmering 2 Aphasia (difficulty with language and speech)
3 Queer Transcortical dysphasia (difficulty with tone,
3
4 Astonishing emotion, and facial expressions)
5 Vague Wernicke’s dysphasia (inexplicable use of
4
6 Haunting nonsensical and incomprehensible terms)
7 Abnormal 5 Paranoid Personality Disorder (distrust of others)
8 Hideous 6 Dystonia (involuntary muscular movement)
9 Blasphemous 7 Glossolalia (uttering pseudo-words)
10 Dread-Mingled 8 Ataxia (difficulty with coordination and balance)
Visions of Primal Architecture Paths of Discovery
1 Arched entrance ways and corridors 1 History
2 Colossal round windows 2 Science
3 Dark wood shelves and panels 3 Folklore
4 Vaulted crypts of monstrous machines 4 Art
5 Curious carvings of curvilinear mathematical design 5 Language
6 Monstrous megalithic masonry 6 Geography
7 Jars of purplish metal and rods with stained tips 7 Anthropology
8 Great globes of luminous crystal 8 Sociology
9 Floors of massive octagonal flagstones 9 Medical
10 Mammoth underground passages for transit 10 Business
11 Broad thoroughfare of smooth stone Before the Switch
12 Tremendous tessellated pools 1 Aching head
13 Rooms of curious and inexplicable utensils 2 Loss of Control
14 Colossal caverns of intricate machinery Seeing strange
3
15 Ruins of incredible sunken cities shapes
16 Vast dark windowless ruins Peculiar
4
breathing
17 Fragments of cyclopean masonry
Curious
18 Carven megaliths with curved tops 5
syllables
19 Solidly vaulted octagonal-paved cyclopean corridor Disturbed
6
20 Peculiarly secured rustless metal storage racks feelings
28
Those about to undergo an exchange may display symptoms Before the Switch, and
once the visitor arrives they will follow their own Path of Discovery with Impressive New
Talents, Non-Trivial Pursuits and (temporary) Side Effects on Awakening.

A returnee can expect to feel out of sorts and out of place, with The Strangest Feeling
that everything feels off, though they Can’t Explain Why It Just Feels Wrong. And the
the dreams and Visions of Primal Architecture and haunting Gardens kick in…

Non-Trivial Pursuits Impressive New Talents

1 Lecturing on obscure subjects Interpretation of complex figures
1
2 Visits to remote and desolate places and formula
Successful investment in niche Rapid assimilation of information
3 2
business ventures from books and papers
Frequent and high profile displays Influence over the thoughts and
4 3
of ennui actions of others
Casual recollections of events long A fresh and evil wave of
5 4
forgotten or yet to happen underground cult activity
Collection and construction of Engineering of inexplicable devices
6 curious paraphernalia into strange 5
from an array of common objects
apparatus
Guarded recollection of far-off
Great Gardens of Yith 6
consequences
1 Abnormally vast fern-like growths
The Strangest Feeling
Great spectral things resembling 1 The moon seems inexplicably small
2
calamites
You feel lost amidst unfamiliar
3 Tufted forms like fabulous cycads 2
constellations
4 Grotesque dark-green shrubs A pale, listless sun hardly manages
3
Small, colourless, and to light the sky
5
unrecognisable flowers Thin, acrid rain with hardly the
4
Vivid blossoms of offensive contour vigour to slake nature's thirst
6
and artificial breeding An artificial haze that smothers and
5
7 Fungi of inconceivable size chokes the far horizon
8 Singular waving fern-like growths 6 Lifeless grey water, dulled and flat
I Can’t Explain Why It Just Feels Wrong
1 Profound and inexplicable horror concerning the self
2 A fear of seeing one's own form
3 An odd sensation of an external, artificial restraint on one's memory
4 A queer disjoint in the perception of time and correlation of events
29
30