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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN num: 9781568821849
ISBN number: 1568821840
Label: Chaosium Ltd.
Manufacturer: Chaosium Ltd.
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 232
Printing Date: February 28, 2006
Publishing house: Chaosium Ltd.
Sale Popularity Level: 781260
Studio: Chaosium Ltd.
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Rated by buyers -
I used to detest the Yellow King. Now I seek him out wherever his gaze falls. If you like the disturbing and unwrit world of Robert Chambers' classic and its literary progeny, this is the adventure for you. Call of Cthulhu is a great game and this is a great, multi-part, multi-year adventure.
Rated by buyers -
I run a Living Arcanis campaign, which also contains Freeport. With a wealth of material at my disposal, I decided to pick up Tatters of the King (TOK) to see how I could fit it into my campaign. I should point out that this is a long playtest review that contains spoilers galore. To help clarify what I did differently in my campaign, I will use a PLAYTEST tag.
Tatters of the King is a massive Call of Cthulhu adventure that details the invasion of Hastur on Earth. It's Hastur's grand oeuvre, presenting him as a Cthulhu-like entity, as the King in Yellow, and as a husband deity to Shub-Niggurath. Four cultists, each participating in a different path to bring about Hastur, endeavor to contact him, only to go their separate ways. It's up to the player characters (PCs) to stop them.
Montague Edwards and Lawrence Bacon made an Unspeakable Oath with Hastur. Edwards regenerates, Bacon never sleeps. Alexander Roby is inexorably tied to Carcosa and the Yellow Sign, and only he can summon it to Earth. Malcom Quarrie is the most dangerous and the most committed to bringing the King in Yellow to Earth. The four unknowingly have a rival cultist in their mist, one Wilfred Gresty, who worships Shub-Niggurath and doesn't buy any of this "bride of Hastur" stuff.
The adventure begins with an opening night of the play, The King in Yellow, that drives people mad who witness it. There's an after-party held in celebration of the sucess of the event, wherein the PCs get to meet the author, Talbot Estus, and his players. A great introduction to the insanity to follow.
[PLAYTEST: I placed the events in Freeport. Two of the PCs were present and ultimately escaped the madness that ensued. They returned in time to attend the opening night reception. There, one PC (Sebastian the sorcerer) decided Talbot Estus, was too dangerous to live and murdered him in cold blood.]
In the mean time, the PCs are tasked with getting their friend, Alexander Roby, out of an insane asylum at the behest of Doctor Trollope. There were murders in the prison blamed on Roby, although how he committed them is impossible to tell. In reality, Edwards, who posed as a guard in the prison, committed the murders. The PCs are encouraged to interview Roby, who provides a telling prophecy both for the end of the campaign and of Doctor Trollope's death.
[PLAYTEST: I changed Doctor Trollpe to be Kham the psychic warrior/rogue's father. I made Roby a childhood friend of Kham to provide more relevance. I also inserted a few adventures here involving finding Kham's father and a side jaunt into a "The Thing"-like adventure. The PCs witnessed a strange summoning involving nine monoliths and were attacked by byakhee. It also started to snow, unheard of in tropical Freeport. I made it a point of having an incarnation of the King in Yellow tell Kham that "he was the key."]
With Trollope knowing too much, Edwards' chief henchman, Michael Coombs, assassinates him. The PCs receive a posthumous note from Trollope indicating that Roby predicted his death with a spell. Wilfred Gresty, a rival cultist of Shub-Niggurath, slips one of the PCs a note about Lawrence Bacon's whereabouts with the intent of catching him in the act of draining the homeless of their lifeofce.
[PLAYTEST: Having Trollope be Kham's dad infused the adventure with a lot of emotional energy. Once he connected Bacon to his father's murderer, Kham tracked down the cultist and a showdown ensued, resulting in Bacon falling off a bridge into icy water. One cultist down, three to go!]
A subsequent search of Bacon's home reveals a group of ghoul living in Bacon's basement.
[PLAYTEST: In my campaign, ghouls were created through an addictive drug called ghoul juice. It wasn't too much of a stretch that Bacon was both a drug dealer as well as a dealer in antiquities. Kham, with no regard for his own safety, barely escaped with his life.]
Determined to summon Hastur, Edwards breaks Roby out of prison. The subsequent connection is an obituary for Bacon, written by none other than Aleister Crowley. The PCs are expected to visit Crowley and wheedle information out of him about Montague Edwards.
[PLAYTEST: As a real-life analogue, Crowley had no place in Arcanis. So I went all out, turning him into the front man for a sadistic cult. They kidnapped one of the female PCs. This culminated in a battle in Crowley's basement, who eventually gave up the information they sought but escaped penalty due to his social and political connections.]
Hot on the trail of Edwards, the PCs journey north only to discover that Roby succeeded: Carcosa has been summoned to Earth. Coombs plays a cat-and-mouse game with the PCs until they finally kill him. They then track down Roby and Edwards just in time to see Edwards summon thousands of byakhee and Hastur himself.
[PLAYTEST: ... Read More
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