Tickets For A Prayer Wheel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OPENINGS .......................................................................................... 2
Introduction For the Players .................................................................... 2
ALTERNATE OPENING: GRAY NINETIES DREAMS ......................................................... 3
THE MECHANICS OF THE DREAM ...................................................................... 4
third OPENING: the time gate .................................................................... 5
personnel – referee’s characters ................................................................ 6
an initiatory encounter ......................................................................... 6
the first ticket: first encounters ............................................................... 8
the base ........................................................................................ 8
the opium den ................................................................................... 8
THE MAD CAPTAIN SCHWÄRMER ....................................................................... 9
The final plan ................................................................................. 11
magic: ......................................................................................... 12
npc statistics ................................................................................. 14
the second ticket: patrolling the earth ........................................................ 16
the assingment ................................................................................. 16
the first day .................................................................................. 17
out of the jungle .............................................................................. 18
cover up ....................................................................................... 19
albert shiny, war hero ......................................................................... 19
mr. squishy .................................................................................... 19
npc statistics ................................................................................. 20
the third ticket: the cao-dai pagoda (acts 14:11) .............................................. 22
the land ....................................................................................... 22
the village .................................................................................... 23
the pagoda ..................................................................................... 23
the drug (hammer) .............................................................................. 24
pieces, clues and further information .......................................................... 24
the smugglers .................................................................................. 25
on drugs ....................................................................................... 25
npc statistics ................................................................................. 26
the fourth ticket: research ..................................................................... 27
ethnicity in tickets ........................................................................... 30
the green beret bunker ......................................................................... 31
1

the fifth ticket: idylls in west vietnam ....................................................... 32
the secret cia drug base in laos ............................................................... 33
the sixth ticket: sauce from the sage .......................................................... 35
the Vietnamese doctor .......................................................................... 35
the catholic priest ............................................................................ 35
return ......................................................................................... 36
co chi nguyet .................................................................................. 36
the vc band .................................................................................... 37
capture by vc .................................................................................. 37
the tcho-tcho village .......................................................................... 37
the seventh ticket: archaeology by the sea ..................................................... 41
the meeting .................................................................................... 41
on the beach .................................................................................. 42
wongar ......................................................................................... 43
npc statistics ................................................................................. 43
the eighth ticket: to the mountain in laos ..................................................... 45
the situation .................................................................................. 45
the summons from pernell ....................................................................... 45
the flight ..................................................................................... 47
the mountain fortress .......................................................................... 48
solutions ...................................................................................... 54
the ritual of infinity ......................................................................... 56
who’s there? ................................................................................... 57
killing patty holeran .......................................................................... 58
SCHWÄRMER’s death .............................................................................. 58
the flight ..................................................................................... 59
npc statistics ................................................................................. 59
the ninth ticket: the prehistoric monastary .................................................... 61
Tibet in fact, fiction and mythos .............................................................. 62
the last ticket ................................................................................ 62
endgames: tying up loose ends ................................................................... 65
on the fungi ................................................................................... 65
goals and quests ............................................................................... 65
cthulhu and Christ: religion in tickets for a prayer wheel ..................................... 68
just a dream ................................................................................... 69
nasty surprises table .......................................................................... 71
luftbard letter ................................................................................ 72
2

OPENINGS
The following material sketches a Call of Cthulhu adventure set in Vietnam in late 1969.
The adventure is named after the fact that it is divided into nine sections, each designed to
be played in a single night. As written, the adventure will require nine sessions with the
entire group of players present, plus a few more sessions with the referee and one or two
players. The adventure proceeds as if the players are unpeeling an onion. The layers of the
onion are the tickets that the title mentions, although the prayer wheel can glorify, in
Lovecraft's words, “no suitable or wholesome gods”.
The characters may be provided; certainly, they should be generated for this adventure.
They should be American servicemen, with perhaps a newspaper reporter and one
Vietnamese native (either as a guide or as an attached ARVN observer, possibly both
functions can meet in one character).
The second way provided is for Cthulhu Now characters, who are spiritual or psychic
investigators. They are hired by a disabled Vietnam veteran with a troubled past. Don
Luftbard is returning as a tourist and wishes them to accompany him, to help him lay the
ghosts of his past. He has many mysteries attached to him. The Nineties opening will do for
these players.
The third way into the adventure is through time travel. This can be accomplished in
three ways. The use of time machines has been gone over in Cthulhu by Gaslight and has
limited appropriateness in this campaign unless the game is more science fiction than
horror. The Great Race of Yith also uses time travel, but the likelihood of stumbling on
their ancient machines is something the Keeper can determine for himself. The exchange of
bodies necessary for this method is ideal for the introduction of new characters for the
Vietnam game. A Time Gate, created by sorcery, would be more suitable. These things,
detailed in Cthulhu by Gaslight, allow travel through time. This is the most awkward way
to begin this adventure, as Cthulhu 20s and Gaslight characters will be out of place in the
war and will want to go home more than they want to solve the mystery. If the Keeper
Gates the investigators into the game, he might wish to have a guide to advise them that
completion of the adventure will bring their return home. Note that the use of a Gate from
1890 to 1969 requires 7 magic points, and that Gaslight characters take a 10% loss in
language skills as a result of the eighty-year gap between the Boer War and Vietnam.
There might be other Gates in Vietnam, from the Chinese or French occupation. The
Keeper should be careful about intrusions from Vietnam into the past. The investigators
could experience the events of Tickets as a dream, as the 90s investigators can, but this is a
threadbare excuse for the adventure. Do what suits your ongoing game the best, but
consider integrity before making the choice of how to run Tickets.

INTRODUCTION FOR THE PLAYERS: DRAFTED FOR HELL
To the Keeper: The suggested introduction to Tickets is for the characters to be American
servicemen bound for Viet Nam. Give this section to the players or read it to them. If you
have characters who don't fit the outline given below, alter it to fit. They could be different
in any number of ways, but must have a reason for encountering the data below and acting
on it. Be careful.
You're a regular guy. Least you always thought so. But this war, it's getting to be too
much. You heard about the war as soon as you were old enough. Not much to hear:
Americans and natives fighting to stop a Communist takeover, save democracy. Nobody
you knew had been there. Unless you were bright in school, you had a rough time recalling
just where the place was; older texts call it French Indochina, newer ones Southeast Asia.
3

You saw pictures. Little men with flat faces and slanted eyes, villages of thatched huts
amidst jungle and rice paddies. If you go to church, there was news of the missions. The
war was remote; you hoped we'd win. We won Korea, and the big ones before you were
born. Your parents talk about the older wars more than the current one.
They drafted you. You thought about Canada, hurting yourself, going the conscientious
objector route, even jail. Maybe you didn't. Not enough money, not enough time. At least
it paid better than your old job. Dad was a vet. Keep the faith, right? In boot camp they
showed you how to shoot a gun and throw a grenade, and they told you about the war. The
North Vietnamese were Communists and wore black pajamas, the South Vietnamese peace-
loving democratic folks.
The stewardess was named Mary. She brought you a beer, told you to have a nice war.
She would have been worth fighting for. It was like summer, but hotter and wetter, and
then you noticed the smell, and then you saw the bags that were waiting to go on the plane;
looked like they had dead guys in them. Then lots of people were all around the truck you
guys were in and they threw things at you, and one of the things bounced off the truck and
exploded. And you couldn't tell if any of them in the crowd was a Communist, because they
all look alike.
They gave you seven days to get used to the "tropical climate" and then packed you off
to an airbase, outside Saigon, to work in the hospital. You were lucky. Some guys went
right to the bush. Some of them came back. They looked older. And nobody here was sure
what the war was about, and nobody really wanted to be doing what they were doing, and
the guys who were around here didn't call this place Southeast Asia. They called it the
Nam.
Use the characters below, or generate your own, as per the character generation
guidelines below. They get a week to adjust to the climate; then it's orderly duty, and
sweeping the floors at an American airbase. This could be Cam Ranh, Tan Son Nhut, or
another. There are Americans there, Vietnamese doing the scut work, even a few
Australians, Koreans, and Europeans "advising" the whole mess. The PX has warm Cokes
and old Life magazines. The investigators settle into the round of work punctuated by
screams and mortar explosions as another VC artillery team finds the place. They are just
getting used to the horror when they meet with something worse.

ALTERNATE OPENING: GRAY NINETIES DREAMS
The adventures of Tickets for a Prayer Wheel could open in the 1990s. If a Keeper wishes
to bring his modern players' characters into Viet Nam war during a modern campaign, then
use this introduction to Tickets. The characters' trip around the world turns into a trip
through dreamland. And they will experience such nightmares!
A wealthy Vietnam veteran, possibly known to the players from previous games, asks
their help. His name is Don Luftbard, director of Tahoe Larn, PTY, a computer company
in North Platey, California. The nation of Vietnam is once again receiving American
visitors, but as tourists ("Vietnam! The Tourist's Paradise!"), and he is, like many vets,
drawn back to the place where he suffered. Convinced that the nation is haunted and has it
in for him, he wishes spiritual advisors. The investigators are obvious for the role, as they
are adept with all related to the supernatural. He offers them the cost of the trip, plus a
small retainer, if they will accompany him and "protect" him against any and all magical
assault. The investigators, of course, accept. They need the money, and after all, who can
refuse a free trip to Vietnam? (500,000 American troops can't be wrong!)
4

They book passage through a Canadian travel com mpany and fly f from a majorm Amerrican
airport to
t Toronto. Here
H as man ny other plaaces, it's posssible to tie in At Your Door. Certainly
the new Black Dra agon Restau urant is reccommended during thee inevitable layover. If the
Keeper isi using Mrr. Shiny in this adventture, and iff the playerrs have not dealt with h him
previoussly in a way y that woulld make succh an encou unter imposssible, then he should show
up at the airport. Shiny
S is bou
und on busiiness to Kru ungthep for Rothmersh holm Limiteed, to
which heh is attach hed as a consultant.
c If asked, he will rev veal that pharmaceut
p ticals
manufacctured there e are being cleared forr import intto Canada and a the USSA; Shiny has to
close thee deal. As usual,
u Shin
ny is lying. The drugs are the psy ychoactives CTH and UHL, U
capable of producin ng violent psychotic
p sttates and en ndless hallu ucination reespectively,, and
Shiny seeeks formula as from thee opium lord ds who havee been analy yzing samplles that How ward
Finley reetrieved fromm Indochina.
Thennce to Hono olulu, Krunngthep, and Ho Chi Minh M City, which,
w he investigators
as th
quickly notice,
n everyone still caalls Saigon. There are the usual hagglings
h w
with officialss and
a day in a crumbling French hootel, and theen the tour begins in ea arnest.
The chatty
c younng tour guides drive theem to a guesst house cun nningly rem modeled from m the
remains of the larrge Americcan airbasee outside Saigon. S Huuge tropicall flowers bloom
b
everywhhere. A dele ectable meaal in the garrden caps th he evening, and then a performan nce of
Vietnammese revolutionary opera. Bottles of "dreadful
Vietnammese vodka" are availab ble, as well as
a warm sofft drinks in
many flaavors. As th he water gives most (m make a roll on 5 times
CON) diarrhea, these are a goood idea. Doon must be helped h into
a bunk bed,
b as he is wheelcha air-bound. The investigator who
does thiis gets a Spot
S Hiddenn roll. Succcess means that the
investigaator sees thhe O-rune scar
s on thee man's thig gh and the
faded ha awkmoth ta attoo over his heart. Don will fall asleep
before thhe investiggators can ask any qu uestions. Finally
F the
investigaators go to bed.
b Then the
t fun startts.
Theyy awaken in n the same building. But it look ks new, and d the tacky tourist deccor is
gone, repplaced by Spartan
S millitary appoiintments. Helicopters
H fill the roooms with noise.
The basee is full of men in cam mouflage ou utfits, speak king English h, and the calendar on n the
wall readds October 25,
2 1969.

THE MECHAN
M ICS OF THE
T DRE
EAM
The drea am in which h the game takes placee is not an ordinary on ne, nor propperly one ta
aking
place in the Dream mlands outlin ned by Loveecraft. Thee state of mind
m that is dealt with here
may be termed "drream-dream ming", or "trrue dreaming", and in nterleaves with
w the waaking
world in curious wa ays.
Woun nds receiveed in the dream
d worldd manifest in the wa aking world d as "hysterrical"
injuries-the pain annd inability that would normally result
r from the wound are presentt, but
without a physical wound
w to acccount for th
hem. The fuull amount of
o damage does
d not app
pear-
the dammage carried d over to the
t wakingg world is proportiona al to the SAN
S lost in
n the
adventurre. The wou unds do nott heal normmally, but reequire the regaining of SAN lost inn the
adventurre. As the SAN returns to its normaln maxximum of 99 9 minus th he Investigaator's
Cthulhu Mythos sccore, the "w wounds" hea al and the pain and disability
d va
anish. Limb bs or
other pa e carried oveer into the modern waking world as "phantom pain"-thee odd
arts lost are
phenomeenon in whiich sensatioons don't ma atch the boddy parts tha
at produce thhem. As SA AN is
5

regained, the lost foot is once more palpable-it was visible all the time. The amputee, in
Tickets, awakens with his foot but without sensation in it.
THIRD OPENING: THE TIME GATE

It is presented as most Gates will be. The Gate is in a place that the investigators will have
to search for, and they will find difficulty in doing so. He had access to powers beyond those
of mortal men, the townsfolk whispered, after his immense fortune sprang from nothing
and he stayed young beyond his years. The reference to Yog-Sothoth in its form as Umr al-
Tawil, or Tawil at-Umr, Opener of the Way, is obvious. The Mythos roll provides the
information that although this entity is a form of Yog-Sothoth, it is a relatively benign one,
and does not harm those who seek only to use its mystic powers to enter other spheres.
Obviously, the circumstances of this opening will vary depending on the campaign that led
to the investigators' passage through the gate. The following is a sample of the way in
which the passage can be handled.
The investigators find the door in the attic of the old Whipple mansion, after searching
the rooms below for old Wizard Whipple. It is of tropical hardwood-make a Botany roll to
recognize Indochinese mahogany, richly carved. An Idea roll reveals that the door doesn't
lead anywhere—it’s in an outside wall on the third floor, and the wall outside shows no
trace of it. An inscription runs along the wooden frame. It is in Roman letters in the
R'Lyhec language and reads thus: Shf'argjnaqh ulktlanyya Umr al-Tawil franthplorn
gowj'jascrowpth n'grah. A Mythos roll can decode the inscription at a cost of 1 SAN; it
reads, “Through The Gate and The Key pass to the dead and the unborn by saying these
words.” Anyone saying the words can open the door. Otherwise it can be destroyed. It has
a STR of 20 and 20 hit points. Destroying it gains nothing. Saying the words allows the
person who says them to open the door. Others may follow at a cost of one point of POW
and one magic point apiece. Once all have passed through, or one day later in any case, the
door closes. It cannot be opened until the adventure is done. In the unlikely event that any
investigator uses the Create Gate spell, the investigators may return to the door in the
attic.
Passing through the door brings instant consciousness of heat and humidity(No, they're
not in Hell, but close enough.) The travelers stand in a jungle glade, in which the bodies of
half a dozen dead men lie. Four are Asiatics, and an Anthropology roll recognizes
Annamois, natives of French Indochina, which this tropical place is likely to be. These
bodies wear black cotton pajamas and straw hats. The other two are white Europeans in
strange clothing. No denizen of the 20s or the Victorian era had ever seen camouflage
fatigues. Tell them that the long trousers and shirts of these youths are mottled shades of
green, as if they wore the paintings of French impressionists, or had splashed paint at
random over their clothing. Try to maintain the sense of distance-the sense of the future,
though the investigators do not know yet that they are in it.
One is killed by a machine-gun blast. The other, with a gun in one hand, has died of
snakebite after killing four Vietnamese. His weapon is like none known; it is an M16A.
Both Americans wear watches that run without ticking. One carries a letter dated October
6, 1969.
Move from this encounter into the airbase sequence of the first ticket. The investigators
should realize quickly that they can cover themselves while they investigate the events of
the mystery by pretending to be soldiers or reporters, and that the key to the way home is
likely to be nearby. Wizard Whipple and his ilk(the makers of the time gate) do not have to
be involved anymore. In the event that the Keeper involves them, then he should invent
6

more traces of 20s time travellers in the Vietnam setting. For example, the sumptuous
women's dress in the eighth ticket should be a ballgown from that era, and the Fungi might
wear flying helmets in their weird vehicle. The destruction of the jewel will close the gate.
PERSONNEL: REFEREE'S CHARACTERS

REDMOND John B Cpt, USAF
PERNELL Henry D, Cpt, US infantry, cmndng firebase HI25 and 'Charlie Company'
SCHWÄRMER Jacob F Mjr, US special forces, age 42, and his not-so-motley crew:
MULLER Ernst 1LT, combat, pilot, age 45
ANDERSON Richard 2LT strategy/tactics, pilot, Vietnamese, Yao, Lao, Tai, age 31
VAN PELT Kurt SGT, hand-to hand, Vietnamese, Yunnanese, Yao, Tai, Phnong, age 35
KONIG James CPL, Vietnamese, Yao, Lao, Tai, Kha, Bru, Rhade, Hmong, Mandarin, Cantonese,
Yunnanese, Burmese, etc., etc., age 25
BORG Theodore PFC, engineer, age 30
VON ROSTOCK, Michael PVT heavy weapons, age 26
BRANDT , Ludolf Johann medic, age 22
JAEGER*, John Mark PVT survival, heavy weapons, age 26
HIMMELGART Frederick Joseph medic, strategy, age 20
BOK Karl Haldemann, age 27
BINH François, "Frank", houseboy, age 12
TRAN Kim V Cpl. ARVN, attached to US infantry, C company, age 19
CAMBORN Gerald D pilot, US Army("Crazy Jerry"), helicopter pilot and PCP addict, age 20
HAYES William E pilot, US Army("Wild Bill the Mannequin-Fucker"), helicopter pilot,
sexual deviant and PCP addict, age 21
CAMPBELL Christopher Robert, PVT, helicopter door gunner, age 22
Wu Pao-yu, Chinese Vietnamese national, owner of opium den in Cholon

Chin Lucy, Chinese-Vietnamese national, owner of whorehouse in Cholon
Bu Thuyet, "Sally", whore
Nang Jenrao, whore
Nguyen Cao Kim, headman of Xa Kim village, Hué district, Republic of South Vietnam
Co Nhi Yanye, his aged mother, deaf as a post and thrice as pious
Co Chi Nguyet, corporal, NVA guerrilla fighter
Pitt-Nebiker, Elizabeth Boudicca Cholmondeley, archaeologist, age 69
Wongar, Abraham Wakurna, her helper, age 32
Bloss-Neville, Uffington Lewis, a graduate assistant, age 24
Finley, Howard Mark, anthropologist, age 24
Tanner, Henry Praisegod, archaeologist, age 79
Hei Ren Tzu, a Yunnanese opium tycoon
Kwak Chu Bon, a Trung-Cho chieftain and friend of Capt. Schwärmer
AN INITIATORY ENCOUNTER
The Keeper may want a little something for his players to whet their appetites. The
following gives a little action and introduces a few characters and situations that occur
later. It can follow straight from anything above-either the first mission in the bush for 60s
characters, or the experience following the time gate for 20s types. The dreamers can even
wake up in this initiatory encounter-no need to pinch themselves.
They are in a clearing when the rain stops. The radio buzzes. “Mother Hen to Baby
Chicken, Mother Hen to Baby Chicken.” The investigators find a codebook in a pocket
7

stating that they are Baby Chicken. They report. They are told to "find worms to eat",
which being interpreted means to find VC tunnels west of them and mark them for entry
later. They head west.
Entering a huge area of burnt and defoliated jungle, they are attacked by a sniper. This
unsociable man will fire ten bullets at long range. He has a 30% chance to hit, and will pick
his targets at random. His hits do half damage. Spot Hidden picks out his muzzle flash on
a distant treeless hill. Critical success sees him appear (head and shoulders) fire, and
vanish. Obviously, he is in a tunnel. The players may try to avoid him. If they do, he has
another clip of bullets. They may charge him, in which case he has only ten. When the
players are on his hill, across the empty ravine from the edge of the woods, he shoots for full
damage. Do not kill too many investigators just yet. The confrontation should be quick.
He has the rifle and a knife. He is alone, and his tunnel small.
As the investigators move through the landscape, allow them to call Mother Hen, the
main base. At one point there will be much static. Then another voice appears. It is
buzzing and mechanical-simulate as if using tinfoil held over the mouth to distort the
voice. The voice knows little of the proper military protocol. If the players ask for help, the
fungi (it's them, all right) interfere with the communication and relay a demand for much
napalm on the present position of the players. The base comes back on to tell the
investigators about the huge airstrike that is coming to their present position. If the
players protest, the base hears only the fungi agreeing, and the players hear only the fungi
blandly assuring them of the coming disaster. No one seems to realize that something is
wrong.
After the incident with the sniper is over the planes arrive. The players may flee, and
avoid the napalm's direct hit. They will still be surrounded by flame, and need Luck rolls to
avoid 1D4 of damage from fire. If they hide in the tunnel, the VC will attack from hiding.
If he is dead, the investigators will find a bag of rice, a jar of pickles, a sleeping mat, a pot of
human waste, and the rifle. There is a trap in the tunnel, requiring DEXx5 rolls to avoid a
fall onto 1D4 points of damage from the stakes below. The stakes are also dipped in waste;
roll CON x5 to avoid lockjaw. Eventually the heat and bad air force the investigators back
to the surface. There is a small area unburned to the west. There they await the flame.
They see an amazing sight. A tall man is walking through the fire, placing bare feet on
white-hot coals. He is in no apparent distress. He is six feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, and
wears a Special Forces uniform. The insignia declare him a captain. He walks up to the
investigators, ignoring glances or guns pointed his way, and says, "Captain Jacob
Schwärmer, US Special Forces. I'm here to help you." With him are as many of his men as
half the investigators. If attacked, they will fight. If the investigators agree to do what he
says, he will direct them to remove shoes and socks and then his men will take them by the
hand and lead them through the fire, which will feel pleasantly cool to them. They will
carry the wounded. Any who lose hold or deliberately break away will roast. This is
napalm. It does 1D6 points per round.
The Captain will lead the investigators to a burnt clearing where his troop wait with a
helicopter. Here he may also look for a suitable investigator to make his special favorite.
See the description of him below for details. This little sequence is just Schwärmer's way of
showing that he cares.
8

THE FIRST TICKET: FIRST ENCOUNTERS
The game proper opens in the red dust of a large American airbase outside Saigon, where
the investigators become aware that horribly mutilated corpses are charred by American
fire-when already dead. These actions hide the even more horrible wounds inflicted by a
cannibal witch cult in the hills. The pilot John Redmond lies in a Saigon opium den,
drugging himself to forget his own central role. This section introduces two important
settings for the game-the airbase, a "safe" place to rest and recuperate, and Green Flower
Street in Cholon, a lowlife locus of dives, dens, and whorehouses, where old hands such as
Lucy Chin and Monsieur Wu may have useful information, in return for certain
considerations.
THE BASE
Personnel at an American base in Vietnam (the newspaper reporter) discover that military
officials, high ones, are ordering the cremation of corpses with napalm before the ashen
bones are sent home in body bags. There is a reason for this, but only Johnny Redmond, a
pilot, knows that it is to hide the horribly mutilated bodies that MedEvac removed from
certain lost jungle patrols and overrun VC bases. The bodies had the eyes, genitals, and
large muscle tissue removed, in that specific order; not all bodies had completed the course
of mutilation. A very few (less than 5%) of bodies were reduced to burnt and scraped bones,
marked by metal implements, before Americans recovered them. A total of fifty-one bodies
have been discovered, thirty-two having the muscle tissue removed, the rest lacking only
genitals and eyes. Redmond is found at Madame Chin's, a singsong house on Green Flower
Street in Cholon. He will give the foregoing information in return for opiates, to which he is
addicted. The medic can easily remove said drugs from stores to satisfy the need.
THE OPIUM DEN

The place where the investigators find Redmond could be of some interest. Green Flower
Street is part of the vice district of Cholon, Saigon's Chinatown, and is short and obscure. A
priest beats a wooden fish with a hammer before a Buddhist temple; a springroll man
hawks his wares loudly into the night, and small boys run everywhere offering soldiers
pleasures no guidebook lists.
Chin's place is done in Chinese style, a bit rundown. Paintings of mountain landscapes
adorn the walls, and on busy nights a girl plays the classics on the lute or zither.
Americans here are greeted in poor English, but the food, drink, opium, and women are
much cheaper here than elsewhere, even by Vietnamese standards. If the Keeper wants a
graphic introduction for the investigators into the drug trade, have Johnny die here, killed
by his girl when he gave her hammer that had been mistakenly packaged as heroin.
Opium is the main concern of the place across the way. Louis Wu's is a fumeur, a
smoking den left from the days of the French government monopoly. Louis, the host and
owner, greets the guests in Chinese robes. As many come merely for the excellent food in
the dining room, he asks where his guest would prefer to sit. If they answer "In the back",
he leads them to the dens, where lacquered screens hide alcoves of couches and cushions.
Little tray-tables are brought holding teapots, cups, rice wine, sweets, and several pipes of
opium, replenished as the smoker requires them. Louis has the usual smoker's opium as
well as the pure oil, but the latter is more costly. He does not serve heroin, although some
bring their own. One must also provide one's own intimate company; Louis is no pimp.
9

Zimbabwe's Palace is the one business on the Street that is not Chinese. It's a bar
frequented mostly by blacks. The owner, Muhammad al-Hallaq, is a huge Wolof from
Senegal who married a Saigonese under the French regime and saw no reason to leave
later. He speaks good English, albeit accented, and can tell the players a lot. His ritual
scarifications cover most of his cheeks.
Muhammad knows Johnny. John got drunk one night and told about the mutilations,
and that they occurred at Firebase HI25 near the border. Muhammad has also serviced a
tall blond man who cared little for his bar, Capt. Schwärmer. Müller likes the place. The
drinks are cheap, and the women oddly tattooed. Muhammad can direct the interested to
the best tattoo places in Saigon (Van's Tattoo Shop), the best whores (Hall of Mirrors), the
best dope (Tu Do Street) and the most elegant dope (Louis Wu's).
At some point in the first ticket, the players should see or even meet Captain Jacob
Schwärmer. He is vitally interested in their investigations into the mutilations, as he is
responsible for them. He was not able to remove the pictures completely, but having them
damaged was not so hard. He will follow them, and is a good tracker in both urban and
rural settings, but is not perfect, especially in town. He can be seen frequenting Louis Wu's
and Zimbabwe's Palace on Green Flower Street, the first for the boys that Louis can provide
and the second for the connections of the Africans there with the Bloody Tongue Cult and
the Cthulhu worshippers. For more about him, see the section on him.

THE MAD CAPTAIN SCHWÄRMER
This section gives in one lump all the information that the referee will need to portray the
major villain, Captain Jacob Schwärmer. An outline of his life, including his various
romances, adventures, and Mythos escapades, precedes a detailed description of what he
can and will do to conceal the great evil plan that he serves and how he will try to deceive
and destroy the players' investigation.
The referee's characters in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel are more fully developed than is
usual. The Keeper may decide for himself the depth of reality that he wishes to give them:
they can be used as villains, heroes, allies, enemies, and sources of information in the
manner of ordinary role-playing, or he can devote time to making them more.
Captain Jacob Francis Schwärmer serves a variety of roles, being both an officer in the
US Special Forces and an associate of Nyarlathotep. He has done much evil in the service
of love. He was born April 30, 1927 to Rudolf Otto Schwärmer and Maria Kunegonde St.
Pauli Schwärmer of Brussels, Belgium. In 1930, they emigrated to Charleston, SC. Rudolf
Schwärmer, a veteran of the Belgian Army became an advisor to the US Marines on
unconventional warfare, and raised his son in the strictest European manner. Jake was
bright and serious, speaking English, German, French, and Flemish. The family joined
Fritz Kuhn's Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund and sent Jacob to the German-language
summer camps so popular in North America during the Thirties.
At thirteen he went to Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia. Schwärmer
found a protector in Terence Alexander Baldwin, a cadet from Charleston, South Carolina.
His affection for Baldwin would have been merely personal friendship anywhere that there
were women, but Baldwin was overcome. The referee can decide for himself and his players
how much to emphasize the physical aspect of the relationship; that such things happen is
obvious to anyone. In playtest, the players were at a loss as to whether the boys had ever
consummated the love affair.
The two were inseparable all through school. They enrolled in The Citadel together in
1944. Alec Baldwin died one night in what looked like an accident. Schwärmer knew
10

otherwise. He exposed his friend's death as a hazing murder. The cadets involved were
tried, convicted, and given laughably light sentences. Later, one broke his neck in a vehicle
crash and strangled on blood unable to move in the hours before the vehicle was found. The
second suffered third-degree burns over eighty-three percent of his body surface in a
gasoline explosion and was hospitalized. The next day he crawled from his bed and hanged
himself from a pipe, taking quite some time to choke to death. The third (this is all in
military records, but has never attracted attention, so far as the players can tell) ate a
broken light bulb in a suicide attempt after he found lethal doses of poison in candy sent to
him through the mail. When he was prevented from dying in this manner, he grabbed a
needle from an orderly, wounding him, and then when straitjacketed chewed through his
own ankles and bled to death. These horrible events were never traced to Captain
Schwärmer, but he was responsible, operating in the weird and sinister way that has
characterized his life ever since. He influenced the men to commit suicide through the
Send Vision spell, the first spell he learned.
After he graduated cum laude with a BA in languages and political science, he enrolled
in the US Army. During the Fifties, he served at a number of US bases but was longest in
Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, and South Africa. If the referee's game
includes other centers of world Mythos activity, or of other worldwide evil cults, tie them in
here. He met members of the cults of the Old Ones, but did not become a follower until he
found out that the Mythos cults promise contact with the dead. He searched library after
library and ritual after ritual, and by 1968 had his goal--the return of Alec from the dead in
the body of his son.
Schwärmer picked Aryans to form a Special Forces team. This won't be obvious, unless
the characters are unusually perceptive. It might be best to wait until the players are sure
that Schwärmer is a villain before letting them see that he is also a Nazi.
Schwärmer acts as the Special Forces liaison with the Tcho-Tchos, supposedly US allies
in the war. He wears the brass bracelet that marks him as a member of the tribe.
Actually, he uses the liaison to funnel arms and equipment to the tribe so that they can
capture soldiers to sacrifice and eat. He is always sending Tcho-Tchos on suicide missions,
but they are all insane and don't care.
Schwärmer takes his men on leave to Hong Kong, for the libraries, Melbourne, likewise,
and Bangkok and Singapore for the billy girls. They are trained killing machines and are
all insane. Of them, Muller is the hardest to ignore; his habits of taking trophy parts from
human corpses and his blatant sadism mark him as a madman, though Schwärmer has
been able to keep him quiet. Himmelgart is new to the team. Himmelgart is a potential
avenue of approach for the players, as when the game begins he has not yet fallen entirely
under the spell of his captain.
Schwärmer is a devout believer in coincidence (he is a devout believer in a lot of things)
and found out at age ten that his name, in addition to meaning fanatic in German, meant
the hawkmoth, or sphinx moth. He has not neglected the symbol; investigators will find the
hawkmoth tattooed on the left breast of Borg and Brandt, and on Himmelgart's rump.
These men are Schwärmer's regular partners, and he has had them decorated thus to mark
them as his. All the team bear the brand of Odin's O-rune on the left thigh, and Müller has
many other tattoos.

ERNST MÜLLER
This man would aver that there is nothing special about him. He is a soldier, his creed a
soldier's, his loyalty to his Captain, his nation, and his race. In fact he is the right-hand
11

man of Schwärmer, who is of course one of the most dangerous and evil living human
beings. Raised by nationalist German parents in Wisconsin, Muller grew up hearing the
Holocaust denied and Adolf Hitler extolled as a racial hero. Naturally, his playmates
disagreed, but Muller knew he and his father were right about these things, and when he
met Captain Schwärmer in Germany in 1961, he knew himself vindicated. The two men
became very close, though Muller's boozing and pedophilia went ill with the Captain's
emphasis on study, monastic discipline, and clean living.
Muller's value to the Captain is that he is a dumb slab of beef that will do anything he's
told to for the greater glory of the race. His general bestiality can provide the Keeper with
a little gallows humor. Muller is heavyset and muscular, with hair the color of wet sand
and close-set piggy blue eyes. He is tattooed with the hawkmoth on his breast over where
most people think their heart is, and also has a screaming eagle on one bicep, an anchor on
the other, and a snake around his waist.

JAMES KÖNIG
König's mother was a whore in Richmond, VA. in the forties. She was raped one night by
two men in fatigues. They were Schwärmer and Baldwin; he is Baldwin's son. If the
Keeper has designated another, such as a player, as the man, then König's family are dull
Virginia German military.

FRANK BINH
François Cao Binh is a métis or Eurasian. His father was a French soldier and his mother
a prostitute whose village shunned them both. He stole a bottle of her hair dye and ran
away into the jungle. A large snake was attracted to him and gave the small boy a rough
time. Captain Schwärmer was in the area, and killed the snake with an iron spear in an
Odinist ritual. The Captain found that no one wanted Frank, and so took him in. Rumors
exist that he is the captain's slave or that he is the Captain's bastard son. He has no
magical or occult powers and is poor at fighting, as he is twelve. He's a good cook and
sweeper and speaks fairly good English. Frank is 4'11" tall with slanted hazel eyes
and orange hair with black roots.

THE FINAL PLAN
The Captain is a part of a larger plan dedicated to the return of Great Cthulhu and the Old
Ones. Other participants in this plan include the Starry Wisdom cult, the Esoteric Order of
Dagon, the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight, the sinister "Full Wilderness" group, the
ancient cult of Cthulhu, such nonhumans as the Mi-Go and Deep Ones, and a few oddities
such as the "Mr. Shiny" from At Your Door, who as of 1969 is a drop-in at the opium
fortress of Hei-Ren-Tze, or Patty Holeran, or Nyarlathotep.
The goal of the great and disorganized conspiracy is the return of the Great Old Ones to
the planetary surface of Earth, the eradication of the human species being incidental to the
matter. The Captain participates, like most human cultists, with limited understanding.
As a devout follower of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, he believes in the inherent worth of
strength and the contemptibility of weakness. He sees a world in which the human species,
deprived of a suitable opponent by its mastery of nature, strives with itself and is divided,
with the least desirable elements (the inferior races) choking the Earth with their numbers
and filth. The Great Old Ones came here from the stars, and then withdrew, leaving
humankind to grow and multiply. But the signs of their return are many and imminent.
12

The Great Race and others have revealed that the human race becomes extinct in a finite
timespan of the future. Schwärmer wants to see the blessed event, or to know its
nearness. Nothing is too bad for the species three of whose members killed his friend Alec.
But not all humans will die--the Brown University professor Cornford, called Nathaniel
Wingate Peaslee by H. P. Lovecraft, met and spoke to members of a future race in his
journey into that mysterious and mocking shadow out of time. Schwärmer counts on a
handful of superior humans, a master race, to survive the cataclysm, made greater by their
struggle against the Great Old Ones, and found a new and more marvelous human world
upon the slimy ruins of the old.

MAGIC
The Captain is a worshipper of the Norse gods. He is not a member of any neo-pagan sect
unless the Keeper would like to have him be so; he merely uses Odin as a focus for his
racist and magical beliefs. He is not capable of "rune magic" or other Norse witchcraft
unless the Keeper wants him to be even more powerful than he already is.

New Spells:
Divert Attention
This is a Wiccan or neopagan spell, used to prevent rites of the faith from attracting
unwanted notice. The caster spills water and salt and says magic words, whereupon all
involved expend a number of magic points. The spell lasts an amount of time proportional
to the number of magic points available. If one is spent, then the spell lasts fifteen minutes,
each point spent doubles the duration. The spell also costs 1d6 SAN. The effect is limited:
anyone near the caster(s) does not think about them unless they cross his path or are
mentioned. To break through the spell one must be mentioned or cross the path of the
caster and must match his POW against the number of magic points expended in order to
concentrate his attention on the subject. The spell is kept going by the team whenever they
are on base and even when they are off. It prevents the base commander from seeing their
evil and the high command from remembering their atrocities. This spell does not make
them invisible or all-powerful, though, and the Keeper should tailor its effects to fit the
plot. It does not do to have evil exposed too soon.

Transfer Attribute
This spell enables a magician to temporarily give another person one of his attributes. The
caster spends 3 magic points and 1d4 SAN, and performs the ritual. The target has the
ability until sunset, until the campfire burns low, or for 1d6 hours. A skill, spell, or
characteristic may be so transferred. For example, Schwärmer uses this spell to empower
the Tcho-Tcho snipers and to give three of his men the ability to walk through fire, which
he himself got through Transfer Attribute from the elder things. The ritual as the Captain
learned it involves an exchange of bodily fluids; often he uses blood. There may be other
ways to perform the spell.

Bonding Ritual
This is a further development of the Transfer Attribute spell, used only by a few cultists.
Two or more can use this spell. The lesser of the two loses one point of POW, then available
to the greater. If one is injured or killed, the other will know. Within a range of a hundred
yards the linked characters can see through each other's eyes and use each others' spells.
The Captain is so linked to all his men. The spell costs 5 Magic Points and 1d6 SAN. He
13

can see through their eyes, but they are not so gifted. They cannot cast his spells, but can
use his skills if they wish. The Captain casts the spell through an exchange of body fluids.
There may be other ways to cast it.

Send Vision
The spell enables the caster to send a dream or vision to another person. If the person
resists, then make a POW Vs POW roll on the Resistance Table. The vision can last 1 hour
each time the spell is cast. The spell costs 15 Magic Points to cast, and is thus rarely used.
The disadvantage of this spell is that one may cast it involuntarily. This happens about 1%
of the time. If this happens, the caster loses 10 Magic points involuntarily, usually during
sleep, and a dream of the Keeper's choice strikes a random target. This is a good way to
distribute information in a Call of Cthulhu game. Note that this spell does not enable one
to enter the Dreamlands, or to cause another to enter them.
New Insanities:
Xenophobia
This phobia is already familiar to readers of Call of Cthulhu, but manifests in Tickets in a
more sinister form. A xenophobe who acquires the phobia in Vietnam, or some other
strange place, may express his fear as hatred. In this case, the phobiac will have to check
SAN whenever confronted with stress generated by Vietnamese characters. Examples of
this might be bargaining in a crowded market, arguments with villagers during a search, or
attack by the Viet Cong. In the case of failure, the character with the phobia will be unable
to function. In the case of a fumble, he may, at the Keeper’s discretion, attack any
Vietnamese uncontrollably. This phobia may also manifest in other settings, especially
ones with severe racial or ethnic problems.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Not a phobia, but a full-fledged mental illness in itself, PTSD troubled many Vietnam
veterans. It is a mental disorder in which stress received is internalized until released
explosively all at once. To simulate it, the Keeper should assign PTSD to the player when
he loses SAN, and assign another mental illness or set of phobias, but keep them hidden.
The loss of SAN will not manifest immediately, and the player can play his character
normally for a while. But at a certain time, the accumulated stress will release, and the
mental illness that the player acquired will appear. The results can be deadly. The game
effect of this is not simply to delay inevitable mental collapse. The Keeper should employ
the threat of collapse subtly, to heighten the suspense inherent in the Call of Cthulhu
game.
Sadism
Sadism is a mental illness familiar from many sources. It should be used carefully in a
game setting, as it lends itself easily to parody and abuse. A sadist derives pleasure
(especially sexual pleasure) from (or exclusively from) hurting others. The more SAN the
sadist has lost, the more cruel he will become and the more likely he will be to derive
pleasure only from causing suffering. The Keeper should assign this insanity only to a
skilled role-player, as a lesser player would have trouble articulating the change in
character necessary to play the role. A sadist is not only cruel and is not cruel to everyone.
Many cases of sadism in Tickets will be coupled with Xenophobia and will manifest when
the madman meets Vietnamese .
14

NPC STATISTICS
Captain Jacob Francis Schwärmer, US Special Forces
STR 18 DEX 19 INT 18
CON 17 APP 16 POW 21
SIZ 19 SAN 0 EDU 18
HP 18
MP 20
Any modern thrown or fired weapon 95%, Sword 60%, Spear 70%, Dagger
50%, Fist 90%, Kick 85%, other weapons as needed.
Skills: Flemish 70%, German 90%, English 80%, French 40%, Latin 85%,
Old Norse 40%, Swedish 20%, Icelandic 40%, Mandarin 40%, Cantonese
30%, Vietnamese 50%, Spanish 30%, Greek 25%, Arabic 5%, Thai 5%, Aklo
30%, Tcho-Tcho 30%, Rhade 10%, Anthropology 40%, Archaeology 10%,
Botany 5%, Camouflage 90%, Chemistry 50%, Climb 70%, Debate 40%,
Cthulhu Mythos 15%, Dodge 40%, Drive Auto 40%, Hide 20%, History 50%,
Occult 80%, Oratory 80%, Pharmacy 20%, Pilot Aircraft 10%, Sneak 50%,
Track 80%, Seduce 30%, Perform Odinist Ritual 50%, Vietnam 29%
Spells: Divert Attention, Transfer Attribute, Voorish Sign, Contact
Nyarlathotep, Contact Fungi from Yuggoth, Contact Old One(Elder
Thing), Bonding Ritual, Send Vision
Attributes: Cap acts as 4pt armor. Schwärmer is also invulnerable to
flame, although he can be hurt by flaming weapons.

Henry Pernell, Captain, US Army
SIZ 11 SAN 50 EDU 17
HP 11
Skills: Rifle 40%, Pistol 45%, Dagger 15%, Credit Rating 55%. Drive
Automobile 60%, Law (Military) 60%, Make Maps 25%, Oratory 45%,
Psychoanalysis 10%, Military 30%
John Redmond, Pilot, US Army

HP 12
Skills: Rifle 30%, Pistol 10%, Pilot Aircraft 69%, Pharmacy 20%, Drive
Automobile 50%, Speak Vietnamese 10%
Opium addict
Louis Wu, Owner, Louis Wu's, Age 65

STR 8 DEX 15 INT 16
SIZ 8 SAN 70 EDU 12
HP 11
Skills: Pistol 50%, Dagger 40%, Cantonese 80%, Vietnamese 75%, French
60%, English 50%, Accounting 50%, Anthropology 15%, Bargain 45%,
Credit Rating(Vietnam) 90%, Cthulhu Mythos 1%, Fast Talk 50%, Linguist
15%, Pharmacy 15%, Pick Pocket 20%, Psychoanalysis 50%, Psychology
45%, Sneak 20%, Treat Poison 25%, Spot Hidden 30%, Massage 50%,
Etiquette 50%
Opium addict
15

Chin Wu-Tzi (“Lucy Chin") Mama-san, Madam & Maîtresse, Age 50
STR 5 DEX 15 INT 16
SIZ 7 SAN 50 EDU 9
HP 10
Skills: Dagger 10%, Pistol 30%, Cantonese 70%, Vietnamese 75%,
English 12%, French 25%, Bargain 70%, Credit Rating(Vietnam) 60%,
Diagnose Disease 5%, Fast Talk 70%, Listen 35%, Pick Pocket 35%,
Psychoanalysis 55%, Sing 50%, Massage 55%, Etiquette 50%
Ma Yin Ti ("Patsy"), Typical Singsong Girl, age 16

STR 5 DEX 16 INT 11
SIZ 7 SAN 55 EDU 6
HP 9
Skills: Massage 70%, Seduce 55%, Cantonese 80%, Vietnamese 70%,English
25%
Ernst Müller, Lieutenant, US Special Forces, age 43

STR 17 DEX 14 INT 8
SIZ 17 SAN 0 EDU 13
HP 17
Skills: Speak German 80%, Speak English 70%, Speak Vietnamese 60%,
Speak Tcho-Tcho 20%, Speak Chinese 25%, Rifle Attack 50%, Knife Attack
60%, Pistol Attack 60%, Martial Arts 40%, Crossbow Attack 30%, Occult
50%, Cthulhu Mythos 10%, Camouflage 50%, Climb 40%, First Aid 50%,
Jump 40%, Linguist 40%, Heavy Equipment 50%, Pilot Aircraft 5%, Spot
Hidden 50%, Swim 50%, Throw 60%, Track 80%, Vietnam 50%
Jim Koenig, Sergeant, US Special Forces, Age 25

SIZ 14 SAN 0 EDU 16
HP 15
Skills: Speak English 90%, Speak Chinese 50%, Speak German 50%, Speak
Vietnamese 60%, Speak Hmong 60%, Speak Tcho-Tcho 40%, Speak Yunnanese
30%, Speak Lao 30%, Speak Tai 30%, Speak Yao 20%, Speak Khmer 20%,
Speak Pacoh 10%, Speak Phnong 20%, Speak French 60%, Speak Bru 20%,
Speak Rhadé 25%, Speak Burmese 10%, Speak Tibetan 10%, Rifle Attack
50%, Anthropology 20%, Climb 45%, Drive Automobile 50%, First Aid 50%,
Hide 45%, History 30%, Library Use 40%, Linguist 80%, Oratory 10%,
Spot Hidden 30%, Throw 40%, Track 50%, Swim 40%
New Skills:
Vietnam [Lore]
Knowledge of a country, its people and ways, can be an important accomplishment,
especially for a stranger. Vietnam [Lore] connotes knowledge of the customs, geography,
and heritage of the dragon-phoenix people themselves and all those who share their land.
Upon completion of the first ticket, give each investigator 5% Vietnamese skill, and allow
checks after any ticket in which interaction with the Vietnamese played a major part.
Differing levels of this skill produce different results. For example, a character with 5%
Vietnam skill knows about the stinky fish sauce that the locals put on their food. 40% skill
confers knowledge of its use and nature, but an 85% score means that the character looks
for the choice vintage from Phu Quoc Island.
16

THE SECOND TICKET: PATROLLING THE EARTH
A jungle patrol including the players, is sent to set up a three-man listening post in the
mountains west of Hué near the northernmost terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in South
Vietnam. The area in question has been cleared of its montagnard natives by the US
Special Forces and presently has no human inhabitants. The patrol bivouacs in a remote
mountain area. The night watch characters see and hear nothing save perhaps a scuffling
in the bushes nearby. The characters wake to the sickening sight of a number of men
whose bodies are missing eyes and genitals, removed with surgical precision. They appear
to have bled to death silently. (Sanity checks will be mandatory here, as per the rules.) Any
electrical devices will have stopped running during the period in question, including a
radio; the effect is similar to that of EMP.
The missing parts were removed by cultists of the Mi Go, or Fungi from Yuggoth. They
are responsible for similar mutilations in North America. The organs are necessary for the
cultists to summon the fungi to aid them; or so the cultists think. In actuality, the human
cultists are the pawns of the fungi, who institute mutilation and horrible acts to ensure
that their worshippers can never again be accepted by human society at large. They must
work to make themselves look innocent, though, and the mutilations of cattle in America
and of humans in Vietnam act as a psychological bond between the worshippers and the
fungi. The initiate, having done the deed, can not go back on his oath of loyalty to the cult.
To do so would be to admit that he or she had committed a crime. In Vietnamese society,
such acts transfer Confucian loyalty from parents and elders to leaders in the Cult. Ho's
ability to transfer loyalty from traditional authorities to himself was the main reason for
his success as a revolutionary leader.
If the players Spot Hidden and Track immediately after finding the bodies, they
discover a naked Viet child, about eight years old, body covered with filth and head and
shoulders crawling with huge blue flies. The child's mouth, should the head and face be
exposed, is full of human eyes--this requires a SAN check also. Her teeth are filed, the only
ornament on her and a sure clue that she is a Tcho-Tcho. The patrol of cultists that follows
to carry the severed muscle tissue will be spotted only if the players make a series of critical
successes, and move at incredible speed.
The action begins in earnest as the investigators move to a remote hilltop firebase near
the border between Vietnam and Laos, and near the tribal boundary that separates the
peaceful Pacoh from the Phoung. In between are the Trung-Cho or Tcho-Tcho, about which
the less said the better. A jungle patrol in the empty land between ends when characters
awaken to find mutilated corpses littering the campsite-eyes chewed out with superhuman
precision. Quick work may catch the culprit, whose nature will boggle the mind.
THE ASSIGNMENT
The sergeant gets orders to take the investigators' squad out for a mission. The helicopter
will drop them near the Lao border. They will sweep west for three days, avoiding known
VC routes, until they reach a spot overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail as it enters South
Vietnam. There they are to set up a listening post and return to a pickup zone south of the
area. Three referee's characters are sent along for the extra firepower and to man the post
if there are not enough players(eight) to make a whole squad.
The problem with this assignment is that the investigators are in an area that
Schwärmer had promised the Tcho-Tchos no humans would disturb. The Pacoh, the
original montagnard inhabitants, have fled south. The cannibal cultists scout this area for
meat, and the investigators are trailed by a hunting pack.
17

THE FIRST DAY
The helicopter flight is eventful. Wild Bill the Mannequin-Fucker, their pilot, seems to be
writing his name in the air with the Huey. He plays loud rock music-we suggest the Small
Faces or Iron Butterfly. He eventually lets the squad out on a clear hillside with the
remains of log buildings. He wishes them good luck and adds that Hortense does too. The
investigators may feel good if they've forgotten that "Hortense" is the mannequin glued to
the front of the chopper. The hillside is a ruined Pacoh village, with a few small personal
items(plastic rings, broken cooking pots, rags of the hand-woven montagnard cloth) and
endless waste and potsherds. There is nothing interesting, but try to delay the players.
Delay and suspense are essential.
They march off west-northwest into the jungle. It is clear and open at this altitude.
There are many wild animals-deer, pigs, monkeys, and endless birds screeching in the
trees. They go over streams in flood from the monsoon-make DEXx 5 rolls to avoid slipping
and falling into cold water. There are bugs and mosquitoes everywhere. Using mosquito
repellent helps. Otherwise roll Luck. Losers lose 1 pt of damage from mosquito bites and
the resultant scratching and welts. A truly fiendish Keeper may introduce mosquitoes with
Lassa Fever or HIV from the eighth Tickets, but there's no need.
Night comes soon. Let the players role-play the squabbles over who sleeps where and
who stands watch. Make them tell you where everyone is sleeping in the campsite and
where the watchmen are. There is no sign of danger as the players go to sleep.
This changes. As the night wears on, have watchmen make CONx5 rolls to stay awake.
The insects stop making noises, and radios and electrical devices stop. Watches run
backward. If they fail, they fall asleep-maybe you can give them a dream here. They wake
to find a buddy dead, his eyes and genitals removed with more than surgical precision. The
radio works again; as does everything else. Everyone looking at the body needs a SAN
check for “be surprised by horribly mangled corpse.” If there are enough players that there
were no referee's characters present, then choose an investigator for the honor. Let the
player return as another character, of course; a new trooper just rotated in is ideal, in the
next ticket. If the man who died was a player character, any who knew him from the first
ticket also lose SAN for "see good friend or close relative die". Not too many investigators
should go insane from this, as it is early yet in the game. Enough should by the end of this
ticket that the players fear what they face.
The second day and night are like the first. The investigators may try to use chemicals
to stay awake. There is a problem with this. Coffee keeps them awake, but if they drink
enough to keep them awake after a whole day of marching over mountains, then they run
the risk of amphetamine psychosis. For every three(or so) cups or every dose of stimulants
used, make a CONx 5 roll. Every repeat of the dosage means another roll, perhaps with a
lowered multiplier. If the investigator fails the roll, he loses ID3 SAN. Sleep will restore 2
SAN per hour of sleep, but sleep can restore only SAN lost through amphetamine psychosis,
not SAN lost to Cthulhu Mythos entities. When everyone is asleep, the murder and
mutilation will begin again.
The first time someone gets killed, give the investigators a chance to find the fly girl. If
they Spot Hidden and Track successfully, they see her fleeing at the speed of a bicycle
through the jungle. If either alone succeeds, they find her track but not her. A critical Spot
Hidden also sees her. They can try to chase her. She will slow to let them stay in sight of
her until she has lured a few investigators far from their patrol, whereupon she will flash
past them and leave them to the Tcho-Tcho cannibal cultists. These will attack only when
they outnumber the investigators two or more to one, and there are only five of them. They
18

have knives of black glass and spears with metal points. They are under the influence of
shzor-shong, the psychedelic mushroom described below, which they swallow as soon as the
girl alerts them to the need for battle. They will fight madly until all are killed. It would
be better not to let the investigators find the cultists on the first night.
If the girl is killed, the cultists will send her brother after the investigators. If he too is
killed, the cultists step in to do the dirty work themselves. Let the person attacked and the
sleeping watchstander each get a POW x1roll to notice the cultists. Although trained in
silent maneuver all their lives, they are no match for the girl and her brother.
If the girl or boy are taken prisoner, they will never speak. Their sanity is long gone
and they are tools of the evil plot. Shock therapy or some kind of esoteric drug treatment
might make them able to speak and interact, but there is no time for such activity.
Witchcraft or crystal healing may also help, but such matters are really outside the scope of
this adventure. The Keeper may do as he pleases. The boy and girl know nothing. They
are Tcho-Tchos, raised in a backwater mountain village, and relentlessly warped to serve
the ends of the cannibal cult.
OUT OF THE JUNGLE

The investigators may call for MedEvac at some point. If the Keeper decides that the
players have had enough, there is an LZ area nearby-or an area that a little blasting will
flatten. They go back to base. If not, then the radio does not work, or the metallic voices of
the fungi answer. When the listening post is finally established, they will take it over
anyway. If the players call for MedEvac, the fungi may interfere with the communications
again and drop napalm. The Keeper should tailor the end of this to the amount of resources
left in the squad. A napalm attack when most of the party are already dead or insane
serves no purpose. On the other hand, if the investigators have taken care of the botfly kids
and their cultists, then a little interference might be just the thing. Make sure to heighten
dread as much as possible, without making the game into a frustrating mouse maze.
Eventually they return to the firebase. If the players have been stupid or reckless,
many will be dead or insane. This is not the reason for this ticket, and the Keeper doesn't
have to kill most of the squad to make his point. The reason for the ticket is to introduce
the investigators to the horrors and give them a chance to fight back. If the Keeper wishes
to award SAN here, the defeat of the botfly kids is worth 1D6 SAN, the cultists 2 SAN
each.
Character Construction for Vietnamese Locals:

Typical Vietnamese
SIZ is rolled on 1D6+4; EDU on 3D6, POW is 2D6+6. Peasants have EDU of 2D4, while the
upper classes roll EDU on 3D6. All Vietnamese get Speak Vietnamese free, and Read/Write
it at base chance(EDUx5). They get Vietnam skill at INTx5 or EDUx%, whichever is
higher. They must buy Speak English at full price, as well as French and Chinese, the two
most commonly spoken foreign languages. A character from a minority gets his native
tongue free too. Nungs and metis characters roll SIZ as 2D6+6, as Europeans do.
Skills per Profession:

Vietnamese Soldier (ARVN) First Aid Spot Hidden
Camouflage Hide Sneak
Climb Listen Rifle Attack
Fast Talk Operate Heavy Machinery VC (Viet Cong)
Electrical Repair Speak English Camouflage
19

Climb Pharmacy Track
First Aid Psychoanalysis Pharmacy
Hide Sing Rifle Attack
Track Montagnard Tribesman Entertainer (USO-type)
Listen Climb Bargain
Spot Hidden Crossbow Attack Credit Rating
Sneak Dodge Drive Automobile
Any Attack Hide Fast Talk
Martial Arts Jump Oratory
Dodge Listen Photography
Singsong Girl Occult Psychology
Bargain Oratory Psychoanalysis
Credit Rating Sneak Sing
Fast Talk Spot Hidden Play Instrument
Speak English Swim
Massage Throw
Other likely occupations, especially for new investigators, are Journalist, Missionary,
Doctor, Clergy, and of course Soldier. Most of the investigators should be the last named,
although interesting games could be had with the others.
COVER UP
If the Keeper thinks that the investigators are covering too much ground too soon, he can
always take advantage of the fact that Schwärmer is watching them. The investigators,
especially the reporter, can be called on the carpet and threatened with military discipline,
if soldiers, or expulsion from the warzone, if civilians such as the reporter or a nurse. The
officer who cautions them will not be Schwärmer unless the referee deems it necessary to
use him. Pernell would do as well, although he would act with his usual vague, inattentive
manner. Mr. Shiny might reprimand the players, if he's around.
ALBERT SHINY, WAR HERO

It is apparent that the redoubtable Mr. Shiny had a long and various career before he
comes to work for Rothmersholm in the 1990s. He has been a Sumerian godking, an Arab
prophet, and a Chinese mandarin, and in Tickets he will dust off his long-unused
commission in the Iraqi army and do his part to fight Communism. He can appear at any
time; use him to his best advantage.
Shiny will tell the players that the Iraqi government sent him to fight Communism.
The aware player will recognize at some point that Iraq, dominated in 1969 by the Baath
socialist party, had no more interest in fighting the Vietnam War than it had in damming
the Pacific. Shiny does not know this, ignorant as he is of many things human. Allow his
accent to thicken as he tried to lie his way out of this one. If the players allow him to collect
the thoughts scattered through his brain tissue, he will say that it is his duty as a free man
and a Muslim to fight Communism. This flimsy fib will be the total of his cleverness for
that talk, and he will return to whatever topic he is currently attacking. He may bring his
friend Mr. Squishy along.
MR. SQUISHY
The Mythos is full of strange things. Shiny is one; his companion Mr. Squishy is another.
Squishy appears as an Oriental in bulky clothing. Outdoors, his face is heavily smeared
with sunscreen. Indoors, it is covered with exotic makeup, or even "mud pack" facial creme.
20

Squishy speaks English slowly and with a slight hissing speech impediment. He poses as a
colonel in the Japanese Air Force. He has good reason to wish to hide his face. It's a mask.
He is a fungus from Yuggoth, expertly assuming human shape. He has stopped at the
cannibal fortress and drawn power from the mystic stone to alter his form.
Squishy will aver that his government has sent him to learn how to fight Communism
in Asia. Investigators doubting that Vietnam is the place to do this will meet with his
disdain. Democracy is always right. Did not the Japanese Emperor himself say so? Squishy
avoids conflict, combat, or confrontation. He is unwilling to push his disguise.
NPC STATISTICS
Colonel Albert Shiny, Iraqi National Army
CON 14 APP 9 POW 18
SIZ 18 SAN 0 EDU 20
HP 16
Move 10
Damage Bonus 1D6
Crush 100%,2D6, Rhino Fist 2D3+2D6
Spell: Dominate
Skills: Arabic 20%, Archaeology 10%, Bargain 15%, Biology 65%,
Chemistry 25%, Choose Tasty Victim 90%, Climb 75%, Credit Rating 45%,
Cthulhu Mythos 12%, Demotic Egyptian 10%, Elder Thing 65%, Electrical
Repair 10%, Electronics 10%(early period only), English 60%, Hide 90%,
History 35%, Law 10%, Library Use 35%, Listen 75%, Military 1%,
Oratory 30%, Physics 20%, Psychology 15%, Sneak 70%, Spanish 30%,
Sumerian 5%, Track 75%
Mr. Squishy (“Colonel Tetsu Yakitori”)

CON 11 APP 7 POW 13
SIZ 10 SAN 0 EDU 40,000
HP 11
Skills: English 70%, Vietnamese 80%, Chinese 50%, Japanese 15%,
Cthuhlu Mythos 20%, Pistol 10%, Mining 10%
Spells: Call Elder Thing, Voorish Sign, Dread Curse of Azathoth,
Contact Nyarlathotep
The Botfly Girl

STR 7 DEX 19 INT 11
CON 16 APP 5 POW 18
SIZ 5 SAN 0 EDU 0
HP 10
Sneak 95%, Camouflage 75%, Dodge 75%, Climb 50%, Hide 85%, Jump 45%,
Listen 60%, Spot Hidden 75%, Track 90%
Move 12
Bite 80% She will attack a waking target only in utter desperation.
Her brother's statistics are just like hers.
21

THE THIRD TICKET: THE CAO-DAI PAGODA (ACTS 14:11)
The investigators have another patrol-this time to a pacified village. What could be easier?
Paranoia and jumpiness could turn this hike into a massacre. If they keep their heads, the
soldiers could win the cooperation of the village chief, whose aged aunt is the last to
worship at the dilapidated Cao-Dai pagoda above the paddies. He knows that men from the
north come there by night but not who they are, and is afraid to ask. The pagoda holds
opium, secreted by the smugglers, and guarded by deathtraps, and a thing more
astonishing, in the sanctuary: a picture of H. P. Lovecraft, worshipped as a god.
THE LAND
Near the firebase there are no people, and the
The Cao-Dai Faith & Other
Montagnard tribes are so loyal as to require no
Syncretisms
comment. The rivers valleys closer to Hué,
however, hold the usual assortment of Viet
The Cao-Dai, a weird religion of
peasants. The village of Xa Kim warrants Vietnam, is a syncretism of Roman
comment. Its three hamlets, one of which is Catholicism, Confucianism,
abandoned, pooled their resources long ago to Buddhism, Taoism, spiritualism,
build a pagoda sacred to the Cao Dai, a sect to mumbo-jumbo, and humanistic
which many adhered. reverence for the great deeds of great
A successful Viet Nam skill roll will reveal men. Tickets assumes that in
that the sect was founded in 1927, has two addition to Poe and Victor Hugo the
million followers, and regards itself as the Cao-Dai chose to reverence H. P.
Third Amnesty (Buddha/Confucius and Lovecraft, and proceeds accordingly.
Moses/Jesus being the first two) of God and
also reveres a strange eclectic pantheon that
includes everybody from Pericles to Joan of Arc. Players with a sense of Mythos history will
immediately notice that the sect was founded on the year and day that Cthulhu rose from
the waves. (The year also saw the birth of Jacob Francis Schwärmer, the mad Green Beret
captain whose team has wreaked frightening atrocities throughout the warzones in praise
of the mishmash of Norse and Mythos powers that they venerate.)
The pagoda stands on a rise in the swampy bend of the river that the villages inhabit,
and commands a fine view of the valley for many miles. Captain Pernell is suspicious about
renewed activity in the area-trains of people entering and leaving at night, carrying
baskets, and so forth. He suspects that the VC may be using the pagoda as a base of
operations, and orders the players to investigate the pagoda thoroughly, checking for VC
presence in the area also. As the villagers have been models of loyalty to the US in the
past, the squad is to refrain from wanton destruction of property or human lives, and is to
spare the pagoda at all costs.
At many points in this ticket, the referee may wish to roll on the Nasty Surprises table,
above. This table details some of the horrid things that may lurk in dark holes and crevices
in the Nam. If the horror chosen is inappropriate for the occasion(for example, a snake in
an area devoid of life from chemical warfare, or a VC bomb in a VC leader's bed) then the
referee may roll again or ignore the horror.
22

THE VILLAGE
Upon arrival in the village the players are greeted by the headman with a horrid
obsequiousness that turns the stomach. He informs them in Vietnamese or broken
French(he will not try his laughably poor English on them, as he is reserving much of the
little pride that remains to him on this subject) that the pagoda was sacred to his father but
not to him, that the elders of the Cao Dai are no longer able to make the trip from Hué to
Xa Kim and that the pagoda is no longer visited much save by his aged aunt, who keeps it
presentable and well cleaned and makes offerings herself.
Men come from the north every so often, well armed, and ask to worship at the pagoda,
after dark. The headman doesn't know what they do there, as he is nonreligious. Out of
fear for perfectly ordinary dangers, he avoids the old place. He does not think that the
Tonkinese men are VC, though VC have come to his village before. They do not call
themselves VC, but the men of Hei Ren-Tzu, who from his name might be a kaitong, or
opium godking, in the mountains of the west. The men of Hei Ren-Tzu take rice from his
village, but do not steal his sons, as the VC do. They last visited before the monsoon, and
may come again before Tet. He does not know. Once the kaitong visited his village. The
kaitong was slim, below the middle height, with dark eyes. Hei-Ren-Tze looked like a
Chinese, but the headman was far from sure that this was the case. In the description,
avoid gender references. The headman did not know that his visitor was a woman.
The old lady herself can be found in the second hamlet. She is a bent crone with a
dowager's hump, four feet high, who walks with a cane. She is deaf as a post and any
remarks addressed to her must be shouted via a successful Oratory roll, in perfect
Vietnamese. She will mumble constantly to herself about nothing of any consequence; the
Keeper should make up inane village gossip about pigs and chickens if pressed, and the trip
to the pagoda passes without complication. Have the players make Spot Hidden rolls to
find VC every few minutes. A critical success will reveal little boys playing in the bushes
with sticks, farm animals, snakes, holes in the ground, and so forth. There are no VC here.
But don't tell the players that.
THE PAGODA
The pagoda has a four-tiered roof, flaking gold leaf. The old woman pauses at the gate and
at each door to make sacred and purifying signs. She cannot be hurried, as the day passes,
and will complain about her aching joints and the lack of respect from the young. Within
the outer hall of the pagoda are tattered banners dedicated by the elders that bear illegible
slogans in archaic Vietnamese. A photo of the elders has a date attached; the last ceremony
held here was in 1944, twenty-five years ago. The floor boards wheeze with rot as the
players advance into the sanctuary.
The sanctuary is dimly lit by clerestory windows; it is dusty and smells of incense. At
the far end is the altar. It is flanked by depictions of great men. The men depicted here are
Confucius, Buddha, Lao-Tse, Muhammad, Jesus Christ, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and H.
P. Lovecraft. The altar itself holds an eye in a triangle, the pupil a swastika. The old
woman will offer riceballs to the gods. If questioned about her ritual, she'll say the obvious:
she is propitiating them for their goodness. No one else cares. She knows that the three
writers were writers, but she can't read.
Leaving the temple, the players may fall through the floor. Make a Luck roll for each.
The rotten floor will hold the woman, who weighs perhaps ninety pounds, but the huge
Americans may fall. The space below is a sump reeking of stagnant water; all present will
be bitten by swarms of mosquitoes and must make luck rolls to avoid infection with a
23

virulent strain of malaria. The cellar area has a lump of packages at its center. If the
players wade through the crud to them, they find a mighty pile of decayed Cao-Dai religious
tracts, unreadable from mildew, and nothing else. Leeches will be clinging to them as they
crawl out. Use the lump carefully. If the players see monsters under every rock, then the
pagoda basement is a good place to have some fun. The slimy pile looks and smells like a
Cthulhu Mythos creature.
A successful Spot Hidden as the players leave will reveal a trapdoor in the vestibule,
under a hump in the mats on the floor that is obvious only when the light is behind it.
Beneath is a crawlspace intended for the storage of incense burners (a few brass ones
remain) and used at present for the storage of baskets of opium resin. The old woman
knows nothing of this. The men from the North are opium smugglers using the pagoda for
storage; the opium in the baskets is worth about a million piastres( $10,000) if cut and sold
to American soldiers. If refined into the purer oils or into morphine base, its value would
mount incredibly. The players may do what they like with the noisome stuff, although the
penalties likely to fall on the villagers are as obvious to an Idea roll as the ones that the
player's characters could get from authorities if they take the opium.
Also in the basket is a more sinister cache. There are three foil packets. Each holds
twenty grams(less than an ounce) of white powder. The smell and taste of the powder are
utterly unlike any drug known to the investigators. 90s characters may achieve a critical
success on the Pharmacy skill roll to notice a similarity to methylphenidate, Prozac, and
several other drugs that drastically affect higher brain functions. The drug is CTH, or
hammer, an experimental drug refined from hallucinogenic mushrooms at a secret CIA
base and later used by the Army in a horrible experiment.
THE DRUG (HAMMER)

When the doses are ingested in food, injected in serum, or otherwise introduced, they turn
the drugged person into a raging psychopath. He will act normally for one to five minutes
after injection and for thirty to seventy minutes after ingesting the drug, then will
mindlessly attack anyone in sight. He will fight until he reaches 0 hit points, and then
collapse dead. Short of bludgeoning the user into unconsciousness and keeping him there
for a number of hours equal to ten times the number of grams he has ingested, there is no
antidote. Sedation also quiets the user until the drug breaks down. In no cases can its
effects last more than a day. The user will gladly attack his best friend and kill him. When
alone, he will be violently destructive, or self-destructive. This drug is so obscure that no
government is known to have banned it, but no one not mad or desperate would ever take it
deliberately. For more on drugs see below.
PIECES, CLUES AND FURTHER INFORMATION

The headman, if confronted, will plead ignorance, and is telling the truth. He knows
nothing of the drugs and dares not investigate. If the players do something drastic, a RC
present will object, and on return to the base will file a complaint. The characters are in
real trouble if they attack or kill these innocent villagers.
H. P. Lovecraft has been included here to introduce him to the campaign, which would
otherwise lack any real hint of the Mythos. The view of him used in the present work is
dealt with elsewhere, but in this game it is certain that he lived and wrote. His picture
bears no name. If anyone photographs the picture, a teacher at American School or Saigon
University identifies the man as a reclusive New Englander whose horror tales imitated
those of Poe. More comes with library research.
24

In French Indochina séances were very common and the one that founded the Cao Dai one
among many. The Cao Dai added the portrait of Lovecraft in the fifties, when Cao Dai
worship was at a height all over Vietnam, and the sect was almost an independent nation.
The sect's power waned with the rise of the line of dictators that ruled south Vietnam for
the last decade of its existence. In the early 1960s, many pagodas were abandoned with the
massive return to Catholicism that accompanied the Catholic regime of Diem. Later still,
many of the sect died in the war, though the sect survived. Cao Dai was an example of a
fairly common type of religion that seems to spring up whenever cultures clash. Other
examples are the Serapis religion in Roman Egypt, Voudon in Haiti, and the Peyote cult or
Native American Church of the US.
Players or their investigators may think the Cao Dai is a source of harm or protection for
them. Some may express interest in it, even to the point of wanting to join. Do not
encourage this. If the individual Keeper has the resources for a lengthy look into the
mysteries of the Cao Dai, then it may play a central role in his campaign, but it is not very
important in Tickets.
THE SMUGGLERS
If the Keeper wishes, the opium smugglers may come to the pagoda that night. They are a
band of twenty porters with Kaysone as their leader. This man buys opium from
monatagnards in Laos and has it refined there into smoker's opium, the type described
below. Each man carries twenty kilos of the stuff. They move east toward Hué and south to
Khe Sanh and the A Shau valley, where Vietnamese dealers buy the stuff and resell it,
often to GIs. Kaysone uses the old pagoda as a convenient storage shed and bullies the
headman into silence. He is neither a fool nor a knave and wants only his profit. If
cornered, he will fight to keep the drugs, but he is no hero. He knows Patty Holeran well,
but does not know that she is the Crawling Chaos.
ON DRUGS
The use and abuse of chemicals was a prime factor in the Vietnam War. Here are a few
guidelines. The most popular drug was alcohol. I need say no more. Stimulants have been
detailed above. Hemp, called reefer, pot, or by other names, was cheap in Vietnam-about
$20 a pound. When smoked, it produced a mild euphoria. Effectively, any character using
the stuff is totally without motivation for a few hours. He also loses 5% from his Know for
each dose of hemp taken. Hemp cigarettes are often “dusted” with other drugs, in which
case the effects of the other drug apply also.
Opium, the resin of the poppy plant, was the reason for much conflict in Southeast Asia,
and still is. It comes in several forms, treated the same way for game purposes. Opium
was smoked in pipes, these holding a small lump of the refined resin or a large amount of
the raw poppy gum. For each pipe smoked, take one point from STR, DEX, INT, and POW.
When O is reached in any category, the smoker is in a daze and can do nothing save take
more opium. When O in all categories is reached, he is asleep in a dream world. One point
in each characteristic can be regained per hour of rest. Americans often smoked opium in
larger pipes such as those used for hemp and tobacco; each of these holds 2-12 pipes worth
of opium at once, but was often shared among a group. Opium is physically addictive. After
using it a number of times equal to his POW, the user is addicted. If an addict goes for a
day without his opium, allow a SAN roll. If the roll is failed, the addict loses one point of
SAN. Smoking more opium will not restore SAN, but no more will be lost.
25

Heroin and morphine, opium derivatives, are stronger. They can be eaten and drunk like
opium, but are smoked (the purest heroin can be sniffed) or injected. Each dose of heroin or
morphine is equal to 3-18 pipes of opium. Addiction to opiates can be cured by therapy.
Treat this just like psychotherapy to cure the insane. It takes just as long, costs just as
much, and has the same chance of success.
Another popular class of drugs were the hallucinogens, such as LSD. When a character
takes one dose of LSD, he loses one point of SAN, and must make a SAN roll. If he fails, he
goes indefinitely insane for one day. Choose a state from the table in the Cthulhu rules or
make something up. If he succeeds in the roll, he merely sees bright colors and hears
pretty sounds, acting much like a hemp smoker. He is not really impaired in his ability to
do anything, but the Keeper is free to throw hallucinations at him. Note that seeing a
Mythos creature while drugged still costs the same amount of SAN, maybe more.
NPC STATISTICS
Tran Giap Truc, The Headman of Xa Kim Village
STR 8 DEX 11 INT 14
SIZ 7 SAN 50 EDU 5
HP 9
Rifle 30%, Knife 40%
Skills: Speak Vietnamese 75%, Speak French 40%, Speak English 10%,
Accounting 30%, Bargain 60%, Listen 50%, Oratory 30%, Occult(Buddhist
and Ong Ba)30%, Read/Write Vietnamese 50%, Track 40%
Kaysone Krangsan, Chinese-Lao opium smuggler

SIZ 8 SAN 30 EDU 9
HP 10
Automatic Rifle 50%, Rifle 55%, Knife 50%, Crossbow 40%
Skills: Speak Lao 70%, Speak Cantonese 50%, Speak Yunnanese 30%,
Speak Mandarin 20%, Speak Yao 40%, Speak Hmong 20%, Speak Tai 40%,
Speak Lolo 10%, Speak French 10%, Speak English 35%, Speak Vietnamese
40%, Bargain 80%, Botany 30%, Debate 20%, Fast Talk 70%, Hide 40%,
Listen 20%, Pharmacy 20%, Track 40%
26

FOURTH TICKET: RESEARCH
We hardly think of Vietnam as a place to go to study. But the land has its own long
tradition of scholarship and poetry, and the French added to this all their own learning.
The Investigators will eventually come to the point at which they wish to read up on things,
and here are the notes on how to run this. Note that this ticket, although listed in order,
may be arrived at and returned to at any point. Whenever the players have opportunity for
research, they are essentially in this ticket.

Research may be conducted at any time. The answers to likely questions are mostly above.
Remember that the players are at war. Idle hours in the base library usually end the loafer
washing dishes. The answers below are by topic. Judge the amount of data released to the
players by the degree of success on the roll and the reliability of the source.

The Cao Dai
The term Cao Đài literally means “high place.” Figuratively, it means that highest place
where God reigns. It is also the abbreviated name for God, the creator of the universe,
whose full title is Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma-ha-tát (translation: Cao Dai [the]
Ancient Sage [and] Great Bodhisattva Mahasattva). Within the title are representations of
the Three Teachings: Saint, Sage and Buddha.
Caodaiists credit God as the religion's founder. They believe the teachings, symbolism
and organization were communicated directly from God. Even the construction of the Tây
Ninh Holy See is claimed to have had divine guidance. Cao Đài's first disciples Ngô Văn
Chiêu, Cao Quỳnh Cư, Phạm Công Tắc, and Cao Hoài Sang claimed to have received direct
communications from God, who gave them explicit instructions for establishing a new
religion that would commence the Third Era of Religious Amnesty.
Adherents engage in ethical practices such as prayer, veneration of ancestors,
nonviolence, and vegetarianism with the minimum goal of rejoining God the Father in
Heaven and the ultimate goal of freedom from the cycle of birth and death. Estimates of the
number of Cao Đài adherents in Vietnam vary, but most sources give two to three million.
Some estimates are as high as eight million adherents in Vietnam. An additional 30,000
(primarily ethnic Vietnamese) live in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
According to Cao Dai, before God existed, there was the Tao, that nameless, formless,
unchanging, eternal source referenced in the Tao Te Ching. Then, a Big Bang occurred, out
of which God was born (emanationism). The universe could not yet be formed and to do so,
God created yin and yang. He took control of yang and shed a part of himself, creating the
Goddess to preside over yin. In the presence of yin and yang, the universe was materialized.
The Goddess is, literally, the mother of the myriad of things in the Universe. Thus,
Caodaiists worship not only God, the father, but also the Goddess, literally refer to as the
Mother Buddha.
There are 36 levels of heaven and 72 planets harboring intelligent life, with number one
being the closest to heaven and 72 nearest to Hell. Earth is number 68. It is said that even
the lowest citizen on planet 67 would not trade place with a king on 68 and so forth.
Charleston, South Carolina

A charming place. Terence Alexander Baldwin, 1926-1944, is buried in Saint Johns Church
yard, in the family plot dating to the eighteenth century. His death is not discussed. The
November 2, 1944 Charleston Ledger-Star records it as an accident, nature unspecified.
His parents are dead. His sister, Marjorie Marilyn Baldwin Marion, married well and is
27

now a society matron. She knows about her brother's friendship with Jake; he visits her on
occasion. She recalls that the last visit was July 5, 1968.
The Ledger-Star records an unusual crime on that date. A grave in the Baldwin family
plot was dug up by night, the coffin opened, the remains removed. The police were called
but found only booted footprints, and have closed the case since. Of course, Schwärmer
took the body to cook it down to its salts, for the grisly resurrection in chapter 10.
Richmond, Chatham, Hargrave

Hargrave Military Academy was founded in 1909 in the town of Chatham, Virginia.
According to school records a Terence Alexander Baldwin matriculated there in 1938 and
graduated 1944. A Jacob Francis Schwärmer entered a year later and graduated the same
year with honors. An old teacher, Mrs. Otelia Watts, recalls them. They were wild,
brilliant, inseparable. The Clarion, the Hargrave yearbook, records their scholastic and
academic success; they were nicknamed the 'Bedlam Boys'. Mrs. Watts tells anyone who
asks a lot of things. (Mrs. Watts tells anyone who asks a lot of stories about the two. )
The News-Leader records a crime in Richmond that somehow rings a bell. On May 14,
1944, a woman not referred to by name or profession reported that two young men in
military fatigues approached her with indecent intent. They took her to a house where they
outraged her violently and repeatedly, each encouraging the other. She thought them off-
duty GIs, but no men answering her detailed description were stationed nearby.
The crime was unsolved, because Schwärmer doesn't like hassles. Alec wanted a
woman; Jake liked to watch. James König was born in Richmond, Virginia on February 14,
1945. Only Schwärmer knows the truth. His use for König is explained in Chapter 10.
The Corpse Mutilation

Research will reveal no historical reason for the mutilations in Vietnam, despite the
widespread practice of cremation. Tibetans are known, however, to practice excarnation
(the removal of flesh prior to disposal of the body) and there is some suggestion that
Tibetan and Himalayan forces may be operating under the control of the Red Chinese in the
area described. The idea that they did it is a red herring, but the Mythos sea holds stranger
fish.
Ho Chi Minh
Ho died in 1969, ending an era of Vietnamese history. The grim determination to finish
what he had begun won the war. In the months after his death, the US thought that with
him gone, the North Vietnamese would give up the fight.
The Mountain in Laos

Spies have managed to get close enough to realize that the base holds something
important. It is off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and not a center in the drug trade. In actuality,
this place is the climactic center of the adventure, the cult center where the fungi,
assuming the human shapes of powerful guerrilla leaders, meet with Party officials to
direct the ongoing war, which is a front for their own plots. Ho Chi Minh sought them in
order to avoid his own death. He knew well what they taught others long before.
The wizard Joseph Curwen, of New England, learned evil magic enabling him to send
his spirit beyond death into Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key, where it would exist until a
descendant revived him through a complex magical process involving the essential salts of
his body. When Curwen died in the seventeenth century, his body was buried in an
unmarked grave, but his descendant James Julius Page, called "Charles Dexter Ward" in a
28

story by H. P. Lovecraft, managed to find it, reduce it to its essential salts, and conduct the
magic ritual. Page returned Curwen to life, but Curwen, the wiser and wickeder, took the
place of the callow boy who had been foolish enough to call him back from death. His
masterful plot to unearth the corpses of the world's great men and through their returned
shades rule the human species was thwarted by a clever New England doctor.
Space Travel, the Moon

American astronauts landed on Earth's Moon for the first time in July 1969. This activity
included the confirmation that the Moon's surface held no air, water, or life. While on the
Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin did not sleep or dream, and spent less than a day.
Mutilation of Animals
Mutilation similar to that described above seems to happen rather frequently in North
America, near the Rocky and Appalachian mountain ranges. It was discussed by many
authors who dealt with the paranormal or supernatural, especially Charles Fort. The
removal of muscle tissue is nowhere recorded, and in North America, the victims are
usually cattle. More sane authorities agree that the mutilations are the result of buzzard
and blowfly action.
Geography, Rivers
The rivers of Vietnam and China, the Mekong, Red, Yellow, and Brown, flow from the
Himalayas. Together with the Indus and Brahmaputra-Ganges systems of India, they
provide water for fifty-four percent of the human species. Those wise to the Mythos will
notice that India and China are centers of the cult of the Great Old Ones. These nations
are seldom visited by American investigators owing to language difficulties, but cult
practices continue to this day in India, and China veils herself in Marxist orthodoxy. Those
who myopically see New England as the center of paranormal activity may read Lovecraft,
who spoke of a world center of the Cthulhu Cult in the mountains of China. This can be an
allusion to no other place than that occupied by the Chinese so long, the center of occult and
mystical practice, the source of the long Asian rivers, none other than Tibet.
The Green Berets

British Rangers adopted the beret as their symbol during World War Two. At the
foundation of the US Army Special Forces, the beret became their symbol as well. The
Green Berets practice special warfare in Vietnam. They sabotage enemy installations, kill
enemy leaders, run spy rings, infiltrate, and train native soldiers to do these things.
Schwärmer
The captain of the Special Forces team attached to HI25 is one of the most decorated men
in the US Army. A Stars and Stripes article will reveal the basic facts of his life(his Belgian
parentage, his graduation from the Citadel, his early commission and rapid promotion) but
is mostly a record of his awards and decorations. He has almost everything that you don't
have to die to get, including a Congressional Medal of Honor if the Keeper feels like it. He
is the kind of hero that makes young men excited and old men nervous. Any further look
into his life will mean that the Keeper has to go into the section on his life and choose what
to say.
Nurse Davidson
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As one of the few American women left in Vietnam, she naturally attracts some attention.
She has no Mythos knowledge, but does have an odd story about the Captain. When he
first achieved his rank, and formed his own Special Forces team, she still had her little boy,
Scottie, with her. He was blond, blue-eyed, and handsome at age two. The Captain would
often stop by her base housing or the play yard and play with the little boy, who liked him
very much.
One day she had to work late at the hospital, and the Captain offered to take the tyke
for a while. She agreed; after all, he was a hero, and her son loved him. Schwärmer went
off and rounded up the men in his command. A friend told her what he saw. The men
formed a circle and sat the baby in the middle, then joined hands. They chanted a long
verse in a language that the watcher, an orderly, did not know. It sounded like German.
The child laughed at the new game that he was playing. The men then went off to a bar
and got drunk, while the Captain returned the sleeping toddler to his mother. She had no
idea what had happened and has never confronted the Captain, as her baby was
unharmed.
ETHNICITY IN TICKETS
The present character-generation system for Call of Cthulhu is, laudably enough, ethnicity-
neutral. Lovecraft's stories, while they involve a variety of people from all over the world,
usually center on white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males from New England. Lovecraft
himself was one, and took much pride (perhaps too much) in his heritage. For purposes of
the usual Cthulhu 20s game, the assumption that all Investigators are white Anglo-Saxons
is perfectly tenable-and perfectly in keeping with the spirit of Lovecraft. This idea breaks
down in the heat of Tickets for a Prayer Wheel.
The Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the old Mythos stories avoided Vietnam as much as
possible, and the American army was, as is now well known, a mad hodgepodge of regional
and ethnic rivalries. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and other minority
groups all took part in the war and may appear as characters in the game.
The Chinese found Vietnam dominated by the Viets, the people of the sacred phoenix.
The Viets migrated from south China into the Red River delta about 200 BC. They
practiced wet rice culture in paddies and were Mahayana Buddhists. They drove before
them the Champa, a darker people. Pockets of Champa remain along the coast. Khmer, or
Cambodians, live further south. Many are Muslims.
The city of Saigon is also the home of about one million ethnic Chinese. These are
mostly Cantonese and keep the old ways. Saigon Chinatown, or Cholon, is the location of
Green Flower Street, where some of the first ticket takes place. The Chinese suffer much
from Vietnamese prejudice, as the Vietnamese think that they own all the money and
businesses in the cities.
The Montagnard people are remote hill communities, in villages or chiefdoms, and make
their living by slash-and burn agriculture, with a variety of religions. They can be divided
linguistically into the northern groups who speak Mon-Khmer tongues, and Malayo-
Polynesian language speakers in the south. Allegiances shifted often, and only a few
groups were consistently loyal to one side in the war. All the tribes hate the Viets.
North Vietnam has such Montagnards, and also tribes speaking Thai-based languages.
These minority groups practice wet-rice cultivation as the Viets do, and are similar to the
Zhuong of Yunnan. The North Vietnamese government afforded them a measure of
autonomy, or pretended to do so.
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Across the border in Laos, opium cultivation was rampant, and encouraged by the US-
backed chieftains. The governments of Laos were powerless to affect the opium trade. Laos
served as a route for the VC to enter South Vietnam while technically immune from
American attack on its neutral territory. American covert operations, however, continued
throughout the war. A rather unusual one forms the climax of Tickets, in which the players
attempt to find and kill the mad Captain Schwärmer.
THE GREEN BERET BUNKER

The Special Forces team occupies a bunker of its own down the hill from the main troop
barracks at Firebase HI25. The investigators will quickly become aware of the location and
nature of this building, but the team will never invite them inside. The investigators may
eventually try to get there anyway.
The bunker is perhaps thirty feet long, dug into the side of the hill. The door is bamboo
and boobytrapped. It's open when the team is at home and Frank sleeps inside the entry.
When they are gone, it's closed, and any attempt to open it must begin with a stealthy
shove on the left side of the door frame to disarm the trap. If this isn't done, then the
crossbow hidden in the frame fires a poisoned bolt. The bolt does 1D4 damage, plus one
point every ten minutes until the victim is treated or dies.
The entry holds muddy boots and sandals, ponchos, a low table for reading in the
daylight from the door, the tall brass kettle that Frank uses for cooking on an outdoor fire.
There are two doors. The left leads to a bunkroom for the team. Eleven beds stretch the
length of the room, though seldom are all occupied at once. Footlockers sit at their feet.
There is also a bench and a long table stained with body fluids, leather manacles attached
at the corners. Implements of torture and sexual deviance line the walls. There are dozens
of lamps and candles everywhere. The men's uniforms and weapons hang here.
The right door leads to the storage room. This has every kind of weapon used in the war
and then some, including an eight-foot spear, bolt action rifles, and Montagnard crossbows
and blowpipes. There are costumes for all walks of life, including European, Vietnamese,
and Australian uniforms for the team, black pajamas, mandarin robes, and women's clothes
that might fit the houseboy (they do, if anyone gets a chance). There is a locked chest that
Müller has the key to, holding ten thousand dollars, a million piasters, ten thousand
dollars in gold, ten kg of opium, the same of heroin, ten grams of hammer, twenty of the
dreamlands drug, and three sets of fake passports for the team—German, Australian,
Canadian.
Beyond is the captain's bedroom. There is a bed of bamboo, wide enough for one soldier
or two good friends. There is a small bookcase that locks and serves to carry the books, a
desk and a footlocker. The books include many racist and occult classics. The locker is
locked and has a STR of 10. It holds spare clothes, a knife, an untouched bottle of cologne
twenty-five years old. The battered leather picture frame is at the bottom. Behind the left-
hand picture are two yellow newspaper clippings, cited above under research. Behind the
right is a two-inch lock of fine straight sandy hair. The left picture is two boys in the full
uniform of a Southeastern military school. The taller is the younger Schwärmer, the other
a delicate-featured youth with light sandy hair. The right-hand picture shows the same
two arms round shoulders at poolside, with an old Tidewater townhouse behind them. On
the back is written in a clear copperplate hand, “Me & Alec 1943”.
31

FIFTH TICKET: IDYLLS IN WEST VIETNAM
The players' platoon is sent on a jungle patrol that will involve their reconning the presence
of a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the mountains of Vietnam, calling in an airstrike,
and finally reaching a radio outpost in the mountains maintained by Special Forces, where
helicopters will whisk them to safety. The station will also relay the platoon's coordinates
for the strike.
The march is eleven kilometers through jungle and mountain. The investigators will
have to move fast to make it by sundown. Keep reminding them of what time of day it is,
and how long they take to do things. If they argue among themselves, dock them a little
time for their deliberations.
The investigators are descending the first slope when they are shot at. The sniper has
an M1 Rock Island Arsenal match quality bolt-action rifle, but only ten cartridges. He is
using a telescopic sight and boat-tailed ammunition, but is over a mile away and so his
chance to his is 40%. He can't see anyone who Hides successfully, or anyone who lies
perfectly still. He is a Tcho-Tcho in black pajamas, hidden on a mountain spur to the
northeast. There are three men with him, but he is the only one to have Transferred
Attribute from Capt. Schwärmer, the skill in question being Rifle Attack. At any shorter
range, he cannot miss. A critical success on Spot Hidden will see him, and the investigators
can track him down. If they do not, he has only ten shots, and likely cannot kill all the
squad before he runs out of ammo. His buddies are typical Tcho-Tchos and will not chase
the squad until they obviously outnumber them by two. Even then they will attack only
from ambush.
The players have to cross the river, now in flood and ten meters wide. They could waste
a lot of time that way. As they approach, each makes a DEXx5 roll to avoid being cut by
the grass. Failure means 1 point of damage. Someone could swim across with a rope, or
they could throw it. Or everyone could swim—the point is to slow the group.
While still many klicks away, they encounter a naked American, completely insane,
shouting, singing, and rhyming, his body covered in blood, running from numberless
scratches. He is the only survivor from the base, but is unable to relay this, or anything.
He will be violent, even fatally so, at the slightest provocation. The observer has a small
chance of determining that the marks on his body are in regular patterns, and that they
spell out a message written in understandable though archaic English. They are written
upside down from the point of view of another, though rightside up from his. They are his
last attempt to encode the horror which he saw at the base, which has been overrun by the
human cultists, and then by the fungi themselves. On realizing this, the observer loses 0/1
SAN, and on reading the writing, more. See the handout for the text.
Planes may rumble. If the Keeper wants a possibly fatal distraction, the fungi can call
an airstrike. The airstrike will come early and off target-the fungi are trying to scotch the
players and blame it on pilot error to damage the idea that radar and radio guidance can
allow carpet-bombing and that instruments are at all reliable. If the players can reach the
post, they find disease signs, in English and Vietnamese, posted, and a huge pyre still
glowing. Two Special Forces techs still remain inside the building, and will explain through
a window that they cannot have personal contact with the players, that Lassa fever struck,
making the techs' minds wander and killing all but them in a single day. Their voices seem
husky, and their heads are covered with sores and swelling. In fact, (of course), the places
of the Green Berets have been taken by fungi from Yuggoth, masked with skin to resemble
human beings. Their caution comes from the fact that they have to delay until the
helicopter comes, when the players will get aboard and the thing can be maneuvered into a
32

crash by faked radio signals. The fungi can then slither off into the bush, discarding the
"waxen mask and the robe that hides", and wreak further havoc. Alternatively, the fungi
can call a squad or two of VC from the bushes to do their dirty work, then hopping aboard
the helicopter and flying to the sea(below).
The fungi disguised as men will warn the players away from the pyre, saying that the
heat has not yet killed all the germs. Actually the fungi are afraid that the investigators
will find the human skulls and skeletons in the pyre, the remains of the two men they
killed. The third escaped, of course. He was sunning when the things came, and fled
rather than suffer their fate.
If the players gain access to the fungi, their bodies will be found to be stooped and
crooked and covered with masses of fur, with numerous appendages. They are wingless.

THE SECRET CIA DRUG BASE IN LAOS
Deep in the Lao mountains is a secret CIA base that aids in the smuggling of opium to pay
for covert operations and also manufactures "hammer" and other drugs. It is located in an
otherwise uninhabited area near the border with North Vietnam, above the Ho Chi Minh
Trail.
Learning about this place should be difficult enough that the players realize that they
have stumbled onto secrets. Perhaps they could find documents left by the Green Berets, or
intercept a coded message on a radio altered by the fungi. If Schwärmer likes an
investigator, and the man plays up to him, then the Captain might take him there, but this
is unlikely to happen until repeated exposure to deviance and horror has ruined the
character's mind. Documents in the cannibal fortress also refer to the drug plant, but the
investigators are unlikely to visit the place after the eighth ticket, as they are likely to be
too pooped to party.
The map is below. (Editor's note, it is not included as of now anyway.) Here are the
buildings.
A. Guard longhouses. Twenty Tcho-Tcho warriors from a village in southern Laos

guard the plant. At any time two will patrol the jungle and two will guard the
plant. The rest are sleeping, talking, or doing other things. 5-15 will be in the
guard's house at any time. It has typical raised sleeping platforms, a central hearth
for cooking, and chests for the storage of the guards' belongings. Apart from a grisly
Tcho-Tcho souvenir or two, there is nothing of interest here.
B. Storage shed. Here the techs store food, canned goods, and supplies of opium,
morphine base, smoker's opium, morphine, heroin, acetic anhydride, mushrooms,
and hammer. There is a lot of each of these. Each is in a separate locked box with a
STR of 20.
C. Tech's quarters. Each bedroom is shared by two of the four techs. They have girlie
magazines and posters tacked on the walls, footlockers for their possessions, and a
weapon or two apiece. They know that in the event of a real attack even the Tcho-
Tchos could not save them, and so do not always go armed, though they do so often.
At night, they all sleep here; in the day time they work on the drugs, go plant
hunting in the jungle, or fool around.
D. The laboratory. Here is everything needed to make the drugs mentioned above,
including the smoker for the mushrooms and vats for producing heroin. There are
33

lots of drugs here also, but they are locked up save when the techs are working on
them.
E. Radio building. Here is a hugely complex radio with a bewildering variety of dials
and knobs, and a built-in code mechanism. It can call anywhere the investigators
think to ask, but without a successful roll they will likely get either the CIA
operatives in Vientiane or the mad Captain.

34

SIXTH TICKET: SAUCE FROM THE SAGE
The two people most knowledgeable about the particular mystery that the game addresses
are a priest and a Confucian scholar. Each has his own way of seeing the matter, of course.

THE VIETNAMESE DOCTOR
By now, the investigators have become very curious about the matter of the whisperers.
They have seen incontrovertible evidence that nonhuman sentient beings are present in the
game, although they have suspected this for some time. It may occur to them to consult a
sage character. They may find that a Vietnamese doctor, Tran Nguyen Phu, has a
reputation for knowledge of the wilder corners of his country's folklore.
He will consent to a brief meeting for tea in the garden of his mountain home in Dalat.
He knows of the mutilations but blames them on buzzards, blowflies, and brain-damaged
soldiers; many think that Americans are responsible. The cult center is feared. Chinese
fear it, and recently the rumor of its evil has waxed. Hairy monsters are said to walk its
paths by night; scraped bones wash down the river. As he speaks, his beautiful daughter
will emerge from the house, heavily made up and dressed in the traditional au-dai. She will
play the Chinese classics on the ch'in, or zither. If asked, the doctor will say that she's here
on holiday from the university in Saigon where she is a student—he's lying. Her hair is a
wig and her makeup conceals the scars that the investigators may already have seen; the
girl is Co Tran Troung Nguyen, called Chi Nguyet in the VC team she commands.
The players' stories will bring concern for their mental states. Hallucination is common
in Vietnam. When pressed with multiple witnesses, he will admit that such mutilations do
occur, and that they occur near the shrine area. He has heard of the alien things that the
legends describe. Texts translated from Champa temples call them "the fishers". He does
not know what they mean, but will hint that they fish into the world, especially Vietnam,
from above, meaning the Himalayas or a place higher still. He will offer Annamese tea,
with ginger from Dalat and tidbits spiced with fish sauce.
In fact, the fungi know about Tran, and wish to gain his brain. They would wish Ho,
who is by anyone's standards one of the greatest minds to come from Indochina since
Mongkut ruled Siam, but Ho is inaccessible. The fungi made him so. Ho knew that he was
aging, and would soon die. He consulted with the bandit leaders, who were Fungi, and
made a pact. His nation would never surrender to the Americans, and the fungi would be
unimpeded in their activities, but when Ho died he would pass into Yog-Sothoth, as did
Curwen. Ho's body was reduced to salts and a waxwork took its place. The salts are
hidden in a remote jungle stronghold(see below). On the boy's twenty-fourth birthday, the
magic rites would restore Ho's soul to his son's body. The returned Ho (?) would then lead
his people to victory, or if victory was achieved, to further glory.
THE CATHOLIC PRIEST

There are other sources of information. If the investigators ask around among Catholic
clergy and such, they will be directed to Pére David François-Xavier LaMettrie, the priest of
a small Catholic mission in the town of Xa Dai, south of HI25. The town is in the mountain
foothills. A helicopter takes them there in less than an hour, but the trip is some hours by
jeep.
The priest can be found in the mission church, teaching the kids of the village how to
read and recite their catechism. He is a tall, stooped old man with a beard, dressed in the
habit of a Franciscan friar. He is a Niçoise, though it would take a critical success on a
35

Speak French roll to identify his accent. If anyone speaks French to him, he will add 10%
to his reaction roll. He will consent to meet with the investigators. If they are soldiers,
they have to help him do something first. A bomb fell during an airstrike and has lain in
the main street of the village unexploded. The investigators must defuse it. They can try
their Electrical Repair rolls once apiece. Success defuses the bomb. Failure leaves it
unexploded, while a fumble kills the defuser and the two closest people. Unless the
investigators themselves are closer, two small boys from the village will be there, peeking
at the bomb's inside, and 'helping'. Their deaths will make the village very angry, not to
mention Pére David, and the investigators must Fast Talk or fight their way out learning
nothing. If they refuse to deal with the bomb, or promise to call specialists, then Pére
David will not talk to them. If he does, he can tell them many important things. Bring
these up one by one in conversation as the investigators ask for them.
He knows that the legends of scuttling, whispering monsters are real. He calls them the
whisperers ("les chouchouteurs"). The priest here before him, Pére Lapalissoise, was old,
and grew sick. He himself was stationed at Hué and visited Pére Lapalissoise every so
often with supplies. Once Pére Lapalissoise was “sick”, and afterwards went about only at
night in a long cloak. Thinking this unsuitable, the Church offered to remove the old man to
a hospital, and Pére Lamettrie was sent to get him. Lapalissoise refused to go, and was
confronted by Lamettrie at midday in his darkened vicarage, where he whispered blessings
to his Vietnamese flock. The older priest ran, his waxen mask falling to reveal an inhuman
insect face. Pére David made a report that the old priest had died of a tropical disease and
been buried quickly, and none objected. Sometimes his old friend's voice still whispers to
him from the depths of the woods at night, while he tries his best to sleep. His research
since then has turned up a protective sigil used by the natives, which is unobtrusively
woven into the carving on the doors of the church—it is the Elder Sign, the only spell he
has learned.
He knows that the Tcho-Tcho are not on the level. He strongly suspects cannibalism, as
he has found evidence that the Jesuit priest sent to them in the nineteenth century was
eaten. This man, Father Daniel O' Malley SJ, disappeared in Laos in 1895. His gnawed
bones were found by a troop of soldiers, who returned them to the Church.
RETURN
If the players leave either of these men unguarded, and then return, then the men will be
killed and replaced by the fungi from Yuggoth. In both cases, the person will pretend to
have suffered a crippling accident, rendering walking difficult, and damaging the voice box.
They can talk only very softly, and the voices sound different. With any exertion, the fungi
will reach the limits of their human disguise. They will prefer not to walk if possible. They
will stay indoors in day, blinds drawn. If exposed, they will rely on the horror of their
appearance to foil any attack. Both have the heat gun, but will be reluctant to use it.
CO CHI NGUYET
The readers of Tickets can be forgiven for wondering when the VC were going to show. As
crowded with menace as the game is, it would be incomplete without them.
The area around the base is patrolled by a VC troop led by a man, Ha Tran Phu. His
recent crippling in a bomb strike has caused the command to be taken up by his second in
command, Co Chi Nguyet. This female cadre is a fine example of Vietnamese womanhood
at its best.
36

THE VC BAND
The VC group are not trivial characters in Tickets, but the game may go by without them
appearing. They are a platoon operating out of a base in the valley east of HI25, at the end
of a branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Their leader is the redoubtable Co Chi Nguyet, or
Sister Moonlight. She is a woman leading a double life-she is the daughter of the learned
Doctor Tran, the sage consulted in Ticket. Her second-in-command, Vu Thi Luoc, is rather
rabid.
The VC will avoid field combat; despite their advantages of surprise and stealth, and
skill with weapons, they know that any direct confrontation with either Pernell’s might or
Schwärmer’s ferocity would wipe them out.
CAPTURE BY VC
If the investigators are captured by the VC, the VC will provide the bare minimum of food-
rice and plants, with fish sauce. The captives will be housed in underground tunnels, well
guarded. Allow one chance per day for the individual investigator to catch the VC off
guard-then you may play the escape. The VC will chase the investigator—play this
carefully; they know the jungle well. They will not kill the investigators unless there is no
alternative—they are not bloodthirsty. The investigators will be urged to the Communist
point of view. If they resist, they will be persuaded. Allow one roll per player for SAN in the
context of Undergo Severe Torture. Investigators who lose enough SAN to warrant a
disorder will likely be afflicted with PTSD, Xenophobia, Hostage Psychology, Sadism or
some perversion.
If the investigators never escape, they will be taken up the Trail to North Vietnam and
will be imprisoned. The Keeper must figure out how to run this. The prisons are grim.
From a base period of two years, subtract the investigator’s POW. This is the time he will
spend in the system, being re-educated through labor. Each month, make another SAN
check for severe torture. If the investigator contracts Hostage Psychology, and surrenders,
he will never be tortured again, and is allowed limited freedom of movement. If he goes
permanently mad, he will be adopted by the government as a propaganda tool. An
investigator may also sham cooperation: match POW Vs POW to see if his jailers are fooled
into believing him. Of course, when word reaches the US, the investigator will be branded a
traitor and will have some trouble going home.
This could be the start of a whole new campaign, but the scope of possible events is too
large to cover adequately here. The investigators can reenter the mainstream of Tickets in
several ways. Escaping, they will seek the mountains or head south, cycling them back
toward HI25 and the scene of the action. Remaining in captivity, they could be brought by
Patty Holeran to the final rite at the cannibal fortress, to be sacrifices celebrants in the
awful sacred marriage there enacted. If dreamers, they could exit the gulag only to find
themselves insane in their Nineties selves—or find a time gate somewhere in the prison
mazes. Perhaps the most frightening possibility is that of covert operations—for if those he
has chosen are taken captive, then at the head of a Special Forces rescue team will appear
the mad Captain Schwärmer.
THE TCHO-TCHO VILLAGE

If the investigators win the Green Beret’s trust then they will be allowed to visit the Tcho-
Tcho village. They could also find its location by other means and visit without the team.
Captain Pernell has the location, but the spells put on him by Schwärmer to divert his
37

attention have succeeded. He won’t think to give the players the information, and if they
ask him specifically to find it, he must make the kind of POW roll described above in the
description of the spell. The use of any sort of magic to find the location of the village or to
find the village itself will involve a POW Vs POW struggle with the witch doctor of the
Tcho-Tchos, described below, or with Capt. Schwärmer himself, if he is nearer. The village
is on the Vietnam-Laos border, eleven miles southwest of firebase HI25 in rough mountain
terrain. It is well hidden under an overhanging bluff in thick forest, with the necessary
swidden plots dispersed widely in nearby jungle. It boasts two hundred inhabitants, the
largest concentration of Tcho-Tchos east of the Mekong and one of the largest outside the
Golden Triangle. The Tcho-Tchos will call themselves refugees. It would be hard to say
whether they or Schwärmer gained the most, when the brass bracelet signifying honorary
tribal membership was clamped to his wrist in 1964.
The village is surrounded by garden plots.
These grow maize, cabbage, and tubers in The Secret History of the
profusion. A roll vs. Botany or some other Tcho-Tcho
appropriate skill will reveal that no slash-and-burn
field should yield so richly. The fertility of the field The Tcho-Tcho are first recorded
is entirely due to the application of the Milk of the in Tibet in the early Buddhist
Dark Mother, summoned in ghastly ceremonies. period (600s AD). Their name
Any seeds or cuttings from the field will refuse to means “destroyer sorcerer
bear elsewhere and will die and rot. The crops people”. They are ill liked, and in
grown here are identical to those at the cannibal the nineteenth century moved
east and south into Burma,
fortress in Laos in the eighth ticket.
where they live in the
Approaching the village, those not entirely mad
remoter highlands. Some kept
or idiotic will first notice the smell. Schwärmer will going, and settled in Laos,
claim that filth is ubiquitous among the lesser races, Vietnam, or even Malaysia. They
and knowing Vietnam, the investigators will be hard are evil and abominable.
put to argue. The villagers are obviously strangers
to toilets, bathing, and garbage cans. The sight of
the place is as bad. Five longhouses lie about a
central square that seems to be simply a rubbish dump pounded flat. Human and animal
waste, carcasses, burnt food, and the refuse of American aid, mostly weapons and cheap
candy and toys, lie everywhere.
These people have low foreheads, ugly crooked eyes, short barrel-chested bodies, and
black hair cut in a circle. The women are bare-breasted. Both sexes dressed originally in
wraps of hand-woven cloth, but men often wear whatever clothes they can scrounge. The
leaders wear brass and silver jewelry, and all the Tcho-Tcho, even the babies, have sharp
pointed teeth. They will explain that they file the children’s teeth to make them beautiful.
Investigators who disagree will raise a ruckus from the Tcho-Tchos.
In the longhouses, joints of meat hang from the rafters, and a Spot Hidden roll sees
them. If questioned, the Tcho-Tcho will say that they travel far to hunt deer and pig(the
haunches are neither, as any investigator with Hunting or Cooking skill will know), and
return having smoked the meat en route. This is a lie. The meat is human, and their
favorite repast. The headman’s lodge is larger and more gaudily decorated than the others.
He or the Captain will point out the squid-like and frog-like monsters with long slimy
tentacles that decorate the façade. Here give players the chance to voluntarily drop one
point of SAN. Within all is clutter and stink. The Tcho-Tchos slouch among piles of
ancestral bones, war trophy scalps, cloth and looms, baskets of rice and maize, tubers,
38

ritual masks, strings of dried herbs and mushrooms, and weapons both traditional and
modern. Fires burn on clay hearths on the floor, filling the rooms with smoke.
The investigators may make a Spot Hidden roll to see a number of odd people and
objects:
• A number of children with light skin, blue eyes, and brown or blond hair. These
Metis and Amerasians are the offspring of Tcho-Tcho women whose husbands
sought the favor of GIs, or who mated with prisoners about to be sacrificed.
• Human skulls, some with gold teeth and obvious dental work. Many are boxes: if
opened, the brain case will hold a little drift of “salts”, used to conjure up the living
dead.
• Photos, taken by König’s Polaroid, of the ceremony used to initiate Schwärmer into
the tribe. He is invited to the village, dresses in the native loincloth, receives a
brass bracelet and drinks beer with the headman from a clay jug. An unidentified
ethnic Vietnamese is led bound for their approval. Schwärmer is shown splashed
with blood, his loincloth askew. Then there is a feast.
• Drums for the rites. One head has a design on it. With bright light it can be seen to
be a tattoo.
• An old, old Tcho-Tcho. He huddles by a fire. His skin is covered with scars. The
headman will call him his grandfather. In fact, this man is the headman’s
grandfather’s grand-uncle, a hundred years old. He is the last known of the hairy
Tcho-Tchos written of so long ago by the high priest Ter-Leth. This man is a potent
witch doctor, though human wizards do poorly with his spells.
If the investigators are with the Green Berets and ask about these relics, the Green Berets
will claim that the taking of trophies has ended. The headman himself will pretend not to
understand English when asked about these things. If he cannot do this, having already
betrayed his knowledge of the language, he will state that the remains are those of
Communist soldiers killed by loyal tribesmen eternally allied to the US cause. A Psych roll
will reveal the lie.
If attacked, the Tcho-Tchos will retaliate en masse, hoping to slow attackers down long
enough for a few of their number to reach the longhouses and eat the hallucinogenic
mushrooms called shzor-shzong. These fungi, produce a violent psychotic state; the user
will never retreat or surrender. CIA research in the late 1960s refined the active principle,
known as CTH(chloro-tetraphenylalanino-hydronorepinephrine) and colloquially called
cath, catharsis, or the hammer. The Army’s research isolated the same material, referred
to as the Ladder, and did a series of tests. Schwärmer and Patty Holeran brought these
fungi to the attention of the CIA.
If the investigators observe the Tcho-Tcho village from hiding, they will see that these
people are utterly inhuman. They hunt to capture live animals and torture them to death,
doing the same to human captives. They believe that this improves the flavor of the meat.
If there has been a battle recently, there will be American and South Vietnamese prisoners
bound in the longhouses, being tortured. The victims are killed and eaten when they can
live no longer. When there are many captives, the Tcho-Tcho will worship Shub-
Niggurath. They troop to a huge stone in the midst of the fields, break the legs or spines of
captives to immobilize them, and enact the gruesome rite that calls the Dark Mother. The
Green Berets, if they are present, will sit by, watching the rite, but will not participate
themselves. Any investigators who are collaborating with them are expected to do the same,
39

losing 1d6 additional SAN for the knowledge that they could have tried to stop this atrocity.
She appears soon (lose 1d10/1d100 SAN), as a cloudy mass, sending out vile pseudopods.
Any investigators who know that the goddess is coming may look the other way and take
the minimum San loss. Shub-Niggurath will eat her sacrifices, dance horribly, leave
deposits of her Milk, and withdraw whence she came. She will have no effect on the play of
this game.
Father David Lamettrie, Catholic Priest

STR 8 DEX 12 INT 15
HP 12
Skills: French 90%, Vietnamese 70%, English 50%, Religion 50%, History
45%, Latin 55%, Greek 5%, Vietnam 80%, Psychology 50%, Psychoanalysis
45%, First Aid 45%, Library Use 70%, Orate 45%, Cthulhu Mythos 6%,
Occult 10%
Spells: Elder Sign
40

SEVENTH TICKET: ARCHAEOLOGY BY THE SEA
Here we seek answers in the past. Unless the players have some kind of unnatural desire to
be made into chutney, they have likely requested transfer to a less dangerous setting. They
get it. An eccentric elderly Australian archaeologist, Dr. Gale, is doing a dig at a site south
of Hué that was uncovered by bombing during Tet in 1968. The American government has
offered a few troops to keep an eye on things, and the investigators fit the bill.
The site is a fifteenth-century Chinese temple erected by Cheng He during his
celebrated voyages to Africa, which were obviously undertaken for the purpose of gaining
information on the Mythos, including a complete copy of the Necronomicon, transliterated
into Chinese characters and tattooed onto the hides of a hundred Nubian slavegirls, who
were shipped to Vietnam and skinned to make the book. The temple rests on the site of an
earlier Champa shrine to unspeakable evil, which in
turn covers a cyclopean prehuman thingamabob. The
Elder Ones used to hang out here. They may again,
soon. The Amazing Dr. Gale
As a relief to those who have

THE MEETING begun to wonder about the
Elizabeth Boudicca Cholmondeley Pitt-Nebiker is used author's SAN score, he proudly
to people staring at her name before trying to offers a Keeper's character to
pronounce it (“Chumley”). She is also knowledgeable rival any seen so far. This is the
about the Mythos and a valuable ally for the amazing Elizabeth Boudicca
investigators. Cholmondeley Pitt-Nebiker, B.A.
She was born on a sheep station in the Outback in
M.A., Ph. D., called by her
1899 at the hands of an aboriginal midwife, to
friends "Dr. Gale." She is an
immigrants from Britain. Her years at girls' school
expert in the history, archaeology,
whetted an appetite for antiquarian things that only
and anthropology of the
her love for Australian aboriginal culture could
match. She paired a degree from Jesus College, Austronesian culture sphere, and
Oxford, with another from Melbourne University in is in Vietnam to conduct one last
anthropology, adding another doctorate in Southeast dig before either she or the site
Asian Studies later. Years of fieldwork among the leaves this world.
Aranda, Pitjantjara, and Western Desert aboriginals
gave her fluency in their language and immersion in
their culture, eventually leading to initiation as a member of a Western Desert hunting
band, from which she acquired her field worker, student and friend Mihirung, who took the
name Abraham Wakurna Wongar and accompanied her to Europe and Asia.
A recent shell from a naval battle has exposed layers of early(pre-Buddhist) stonework
with odd carvings. These depict crinoid-like, half-vegetable entities emerging from the sea
and humans worshipping them and offering meat animals as sacrifices. These people are
recognizably of primitive Cambodian stock, and the whole affair resembles the legendary
Angkor Wat. In fact, this area is older, and a center of human contact with the Old Ones
until the coming of higher population density meant that the Old Ones could not come and
go without recognition by human enemies.
No normal Viet will go near this place. The South Vietnamese government has to
provide protection for such an expedition, but chooses to ask the American command for a
few troops, and Charlie Company fills the bill.
The records of the Chinese monk Fa-Hsien contain a note that the place was inhabited
by devil-worshippers.
41

ON THE BEACH
The fungi meet the elder things on this beach, the place where their remote realms are
closest. The elder things rise from the deep-ocean trenches where they survive near the
volcanic vents, to the surface. The fungi stop at the cannibal fortress and make use of the
mystic stone there to transform themselves into human likeness. They pull up in two
jeeps. Their nominal leader, whose Yuggothian title translates as Decider, is in the first.
The fungi are in human form, disguised as VC cadres with black pajamas and scarves on
their "heads". A Spot Hidden roll reveals that these people are not normal in that their
movements are not in accordance with the human norm. A critical success reveals that
they are clearly inhuman, though only one who knows the whisperers will recognize the
scuttling gait and clicking noises. They bring Capt. Schwärmer to the meeting for a ritual,
and Col. Shiny for translation-their machines can imitate the piping of the elder things, but
Shiny is a native speaker. His 'cousin', Mr. Squishy, may also be present, in fake Japanese
business suit. They pipe and whistle to one another as the other beings gather.
The fungi draw strange designs on the sand and buzz to one another, with lapses into
English. Decider is casting the spell, seldom used, of Contact Elder Thing. The spell
succeeds and the fungi settle down to wait until the elder things arrive. This takes six
hours. The investigators will know this if they are close enough to hear the fungi talk to
Shiny and the Green Berets. Schwärmer is good with languages, but Yuggothian was
beyond him and the fungi have to use human language. The soldiers may play-practice
fighting with Shiny and Squishy for the occasion, swim, light a driftwood fire, or just sit
and talk old times. Shiny will not appear nervous, but a Psych or Mythos roll reveals that
"he" is under great stress. The situation is like that of a bad dog being visited by its bitten
master, save that people did not create dogs. Shiny has very unpleasant memories of the
conflict in the Pleistocene wherein he and his fellows faced their masters, and he knows
that despite his millennia of manipulating humans, he is not so good at facing their and his
superiors. The average elder thing can think rings around an average human, let alone a
mere shoggoth.
The elder things arrive at about four AM with a splash, and a piping whistle. They
approach guardedly, recalling past wars. If the investigators are still watching, they lose
the usual 0/1D6 for each of the four elder things, to a maximum SAN loss of 6 points. The
elder things each carry a tool pouch and certain weapons. A clever investigator may try to
stir trouble by firing at random to start a fight. Schwärmer will then try to locate them. If
he cannot, then the squishies kill each other, leaving him rather dazed; he will leave.
The conflict avoided, the four species sit(?) down to parley. They use Shiny and Squishy
as translators into the elder tongue, and the Mi-go use English. They draw maps, dividing
the world into feeding zones, breeding zones, mining areas, and whatnot, with a few human
wilderness areas for good measure. They mark the road to R'lyeh, and the riverway to
Tibet. They ask the captain precise questions about the locations of the planets and the
demography of Asia.
If the investigators try to fight, they will probably all die. The fungi and elder things
are not so heavily armed, but the captain is, and knows how to use his weapon. König and
Müller are likewise.
If no one interferes, the conference gives way to ritual. The elder things make a circle in
the sand and draw magic signs. The captain strips and stands in the middle, as the four
elder things gather round him. They pipe and whistle their arcane incantation, then each
cuts itself and smears Schwärmer with the black ichor. They coat his skin with the stuff
until he is completely covered. This bizarre ritual costs 0/1 SAN to see. It also renders
42

Jake immune to fire damage for another four years. If he had killed an elder thing and
bathed in its blood, he would have been immune for life; this is not recommended as a
personal option. After this is done, the elder things slip off into the sea, not to return.
Shiny is palpably relieved.
WONGAR
The doctor's personal assistant is a man of singular appearance. He is six feet tall, with
bushy black-brown hair, black skin, and a red beard. He usually wears bush shorts and
shirt, with a sun hat, although he hardly needs one. He is an Australian aborigine, born
1939 in the Western Desert to a mob that the Doctor had been initiated into sometime
before, after ten years of fieldwork among them. Named Mihirung Nyunga Warakurna, or
Mihirung Walking Man, he caught the doctor's eye as a child. She sent him to school on a
scholarship, and he went on to get a degree in anthropology from the University of
Melbourne. For purposes of Western record keeping he called himself Abraham Warakurna
Wongar. “Wongar” will do.
Wongar is no stranger to the Mythos. His band is a composite of two others. One was
the nameless mob visited by the Father of All Bats, known to English-speaking Mythos
adepts as the Haunter of the Dark, yet another of the thousand forms of Nyarlathotep. By
the time of Wongar's childhood, the exploits of Power Boy, who was an uncle of Wongar's,
were already legend. The whole affair of the City in the Sands is chronicled in Terror
Australis, a Chaosium publication. As related there, Power Boy vanished into Dreamtime,
and the city was destroyed. There seems to have been no Mythos activity in the area since,
but it is a historical fact that the general area was used for nuclear testing in the 1950s and
60s, at the time when the last Aboriginal peoples were driven onto reservations. Dr. Gale
fought to reach and warn as many aborigines as possible, but her success was limited, and
most of Wongar's small band died. He took to following her worldwide on archaeological
digs and teaching assignments.
NPC STATISTICS
Doctor Elizabeth Boudicca Cholmondeley Pitt-Nebiker(“Dr. Gale”), Age 70
STR 7 DEX 11 INT 18
SIZ 9 SAN 70 EDU 25
HP 10
Skills: Pistol 45%, Rifle 30%, Boomerang 20%, English 99%, French 50%,
Latin 60%, Greek 45%, Hebrew 10%, Arabic 15%, Mandarin 50%, Vietnamese
40%, Japanese 5%, Aklo 5%, Aranda 50%, Pitjantjara 40%, Western Desert
Aboriginal Dialects 20%, Lardil 15%, History 90%, Archaeology 90%,
Anthropology 85%, Credit Rating 45%, Cthulhu Mythos 5%, Diagnose
Disease 10%, First Aid 35%, Library Use 90%, Occult 25%, Pilot
Aircraft 10%, Ride 25%, Linguist 80%, Botany 15%, Zoology 10%, Vietnam
5%
Abraham Wakurna Wongar, Aboriginal Archaeologist, age 35

CON 15 APP 9 POW 18
SIZ 17 SAN 90 EDU 9
HP 16
Skills: Rifle 45%, Pistol 50%, Dagger 30%, Boomerang 60%, Spear 55%,
Aranda 50%, Lardil 35%, English 65%, Archaeology 25%, Anthropology
43

15%, Sneak 80%, Hide 89%, Spot Hidden 90%, Climb 70%, Camouflage 90%,
Occult 50%, Cthulhu Mythos 5%, Swim 90%, Track 90%, Jump 50%
Uffington Aethelfrith Bloss-Neville, Graduate Assistant to Dr. Gale, Age 24

STR 12 DEX 9 INT 15
CON 12 APP 10 POW 6
HP 11
Skills: Rifle 20%, English 80%, Latin 35%, Greek 25%, Archaeology 80%,
Anthropology 50%, History 50%, Photography 20%, Zoology
60%(Butterflies only), Recite Poetry 90%
Decider, A Fungi From Yuggoth (in human form)

STR 9 DEX 15 INT 17
CON 10 APP 0 POW 16
SIZ 10
HP 10
Skills: Speak Yuggothian 95%, Speak English 55%, Speak Tibetan 75%,
Speak Vietnamese 50%, Speak Chinese 60%, Pistol Attack 45%, Astronomy
90%, Camouflage 70%, Geology 70%, Linguist 50%, Make Maps 80%, History
45%, Mythos 25%, Credit Rating 10%(in human disguise), Occult 10%,
Physics 80%, Sneak 15%
Spells: Dread Curse of Azathoth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Voorish Sign,
Resurrection
Mathematician, A Fungi From Yuggoth (in human form)

CON 11 APP 0 POW 14
SIZ 7
HP 9
Skills: as above plus Mathematics 90%
Spells: none
The Leader of the Elder Things

CON 24 APP 0 POW 15
SIZ 40
HP 32
Skills: Swim 99%, Elder Thing 95%, Cthulhu Mythos 30%, Genetic
Engineering 80%, Architecture 45%, Geology 40%, History 90%, other
skills incomprehensible to human readers
Spells: Contact Fungi from Yuggoth, Summon Shoggoth, Bind Shoggoth,
Brew Space-Mead(actually another concoction, but with the same effect;
Leader has never used this spell), Elder Sign
The other Elder Things might be called Grey Follower, Red Follower, and Green Follower,
as they wear tool belts of these colors to hold their personal effects. Their statistics are
similar to those of Leader, though less talented.
44

EIGHTH TICKET: TO THE MOUNTAIN IN LAOS
A few bodies are missing. Unfortunately for the peace of mind of all involved, so are the
Green Berets attached to HI25. The helicopter that the firebase uses was found missing, its
pilot sapped and brutally mangled. The chopper was last seen headed west, and its
destination is not a matter of speculation. So begins the last venture of the campaign. The
investigators have a choice of sterile equipment, and set off in an unmarked helicopter for
the mountains of Laos, where Captain Schwärmer and company have gone to celebrate a
feast.
The goal is a mountain mentioned earlier, the fortress hidden in a maze of tunnels.
Here the fungi stop to be empowered and transformed, here the witch cult holds its
unspeakable cannibal feasts, and here the Green Berets meet with the Kaitongs, with Ho,
and with Nyarlathotep.
THE SITUATION
The morning of the 20th of December 1969, the The Life and Adventures of
investigators are in the firebase where they and the Nyarlathotep
Green Berets are billeted. This is HI25 unless
there is reason to place them elsewhere. If so, then Nyarlathotep differs from the other
wherever they are, the Green Berets are also, beings in a number of ways. Most of
having been assigned there for a little while. If the them are exiled to stars, like Yog-
big battle with the VC has just happened, then the Sothoth and Hastur, or sleeping and
Green Berets were posted there for that purpose. dreaming like Cthulhu; Nyarlathotep,
however, is active and frequently
The Keeper can adjust the location to suit his own walks the Earth.
campaign.
Whatever the place, there are bodies about, or Most of the Outer Gods have their
were last night. If anyone dear to the players has own cults serving them; Nyarlathotep
died lately, the body bag is still there. In any case, seems to serve these cults and take
they hear a helicopter take off before dawn. A care of their affairs in their absence.
Listen hears screams and blows. Anyone rising Most of them use strange alien
will get outside just in time to see Ernst Mueller languages, while Nyarlathotep uses
human languages and can be
carry Crazy Jerry onto the Special Forces team mistaken for a human being. Finally,
helicopter. Jerry protests. The chopper leaves. most of them are all powerful yet
The investigator notices that all the body bags are purposeless, yet Nyarlathotep seems
missing from the landing strip. Something is to be deliberately deceptive and
deadly wrong. manipulative, and even uses
propaganda to achieve his goals. In
this regard, he is probably the most
THE SUMMONS FROM PERNELL human-like among them.
The commanding officer, Harry Pernell, will call
the investigators to meet with him, sending word
by Adkins, who acts as his orderly. They will(it is
presumed) go to meet him in the Officer's Club, at least those who are alive or sane enough
to do so. New characters may make up much of the party, after the showdown by the sea;
they are invited as well-even if no one is left who recalls the beginning of the adventure.
Pernell does, and for the first time, he will take decisive action to stop the evil that has
flourished under his nose.
The Officer's Club is a long low building. As the investigators enter, they are stunned
by the cold-the air conditioning, absent in their quarters, is turned to fifty degrees
45

Fahrenheit. There is a roaring fire in the grate at the end of the room. The only occupant
is Captain Henry Gerald Pernell, sitting in a large armchair with a glass of bourbon in his
hand. From his appearance, it is not his first. He sits the investigators down in leather
chairs, begins to speak:
“Glad to have you here, men, "(or, "ladies and gentlemen", or "And you too,
miss"), You've heard, maybe, about the missing helicopter. Well, there are
other things missing as well. Twelve of them, maybe thirteen.”
He will wait for an investigator to state or guess what these things are, and then have
another sip.
“Yes, the distinguished Captain Schwärmer, hero of Lai Minh, Van Truc and
Pho Gaw, is missing with his entire team on a very unauthorized mission.
You might know who else he took with him.”
Here, if the investigators have lost a buddy recently, they will know that his corpse was
missing from its place that morning. If they have lost no one, make up names of dead
soldiers, preferably characters you've used before. The important thing is that Captain
Schwärmer stole bodies, living or dead, for his horrid rites. If it could be someone that the
players like or know, so much the better. If there is no one else, it is Gerald Camborn-
“Crazy Jerry”.
“Yes, Camborn's gone. And a combat helicopter. And the whole Special
Forces team, when they had orders to be here for regimental inspection. Now,
that's not all. I suppose you know today's date.”
If no one does, it's December 20, 1969.
“Tomorrow is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Now, for some
reason, I never thought about this before, I don't know why.”
It's because the Green Berets had clouded his mind with black magic, but he doesn't know
this. If the players tell him this, he will believe them.
“So? I had suspected something like that for a long time. But you will notice
that every winter solstice, the Captain has been absent. I've been here a while,
known the man for five years, but never noticed it till now. There is more.
They could be anywhere by now, in that chopper, but we think we know where
they are.”
Who's we? The Captain, Adkins, and Wild Bill the Mannequin-fucker. No one else.
“Here.”
He pulls out a map of Laos. He points to a tall mountain, deep in the back country, near
the Plain of Jars. The site is that marked by the fungi on every map of theirs that the
investigators have seen.
46

“We don't know what this place is, but our Montagnard allies won't go near
the place. They say evil things from the stars haunt it.”
He drinks again.
“Of course, that's all superstition.”
Is it?
“We know that Ho Chi Minh went there at least six times, always on religious
holidays. We're guessing that it's a center for the drug trade, and that he met
with the dealers there. We don't know what Schwärmer plans to do there,
especially with Camborn, but that's the direction he was headed when the
guard on duty saw him. Now, I have no authority to send you men on a covert
operation. And I have no access to sterile arms and equipment, in the
warehouse here, so obviously I couldn't send you on one, even if I wanted to.”
If there are civilians or women present, he will add that they could not go even if everyone
else went.
“But it's a pity that I didn't count the weapons there. Or see if the helicopter
was fueled, or give Bill any orders for today or tomorrow. And I haven't seen
my map of Laos lately; anyone know where I put it? As a matter of fact, I have
a very bad memory about these things. Gentlemen, am I understood?”
Here the players ought to realize that they are being asked to find Schwärmer and if
necessary, kill him "with extreme prejudice". They will probably accept.
“Gentlemen?”
He draws from a drawer as many glasses as there are investigators and a bottle of
Calvados. He pours.
"Confusion to our enemies!"
The investigators probably need it. He turns round and stares at the fire until they depart.
THE FLIGHT
The investigators wait until nightfall they make preparations Pernell likewise. He cannot
go with them. Adkins, his orderly, will show them to the 'sterile' warehouse at the edge of
the camp. Here is the equipment they will need.
The material is sterile in the sense of being untraceable to the USA. All is
manufactured in nations not aligned in the war. The investigators are asked to remove all
clothing and equipment, and to don black fatigues without insignia. Their weapons are
replaced by arms manufactured in Sweden, Israel, South Africa. and the like. If the Keeper
wishes, he may itemize. Wild Bill, the helicopter pilot, is beside them equipping himself,
and will fly them into Laos (which he refers to as “West Vietnam”, a designation all too
appropriate). Adkins sees them off, wishing them well shyly.
47

The flight is without incident. The Keeper may make something up, but is urged to avoid
anything too deadly. The campaign is about to take a turn for the worse, and there will be
no real chances for relief or for replacement characters. They head out over the nation of
Laos, following a map without national boundaries. After a flight of some hours, they
arrive at the spot marked on nearly every map that has appeared in this game so far, a
high mountain overlooking the strategic Plain of Jars, a mountain more terrible than they
have ever suspected.
THE MOUNTAIN FORTRESS

The helicopter's target is a high mountain overlooking the Plain of Jars. Centuries ago it
was hollowed by the Tcho-Tchos and hallowed to Shub-Niggurath, whose rites were
performed here. As the helicopter lands, give each player an Idea roll on seeing the
mountain under a full moon. Critical success means that the investigator perceives that
the mountain is anomalous—it does not fit into the terrain. A Geology roll tells the same.
They may assume then that the mountain is manmade. They could not be more wrong.
The slopes are covered by garden plots, with the same vigor that marred the Tcho-Tcho
fields. There are enough cabbages, turnips, and yams here to feed an army.
The Gallows and Entrance

On the mountain slope the shape of an inverted L is visible in the moonlight. From the end
of it hangs a human body. The investigators, if they approach, see that the man has been
stabbed with something while hanging from the wooden frame. A critical success on Occult
rolls will reveal that this is obviously a sacrifice to Odin. The man is Crazy Jerry, or some
other person that the players know.
Below the frame is a trapdoor, of bamboo covered with earth, leading to the fortress.
The marks of bare and booted feet lead up to it from all directions, but especially from a
place toward the top of the hill. If the investigators check it out, they see the swash of dust
from a helicopter landing, and the prints of some things that are not feet. A SAN roll is
required for seeing these prints, 0/1 SAN is lost for it.
The entrance is silent and unguarded, but don't tell the players that. If they sniff, a
Spot Hidden will smell dinner smells, familiar to all from the American Southeast(the
smells are greens and barbecue). A Listen critical success hears music, unidentifiable.
The entrance opens freely, and within is a tunnel of clay dug by hand. In other words, the
usual.
Tunnels
The tunnels are higher and wider than the usual VC issue, with six-foot-ceilings. Those of
SIZ 15 or more will still have to stoop. Every so often, there is a niche in the wall, made for
a Pathet Lao or VC to sleep. The investigators can creep up on the first few niches, until
they find out that there is nothing in them. The Pathet Lao used this place for a while, but
the desertion of the area around the Plain of Jars during the 1969 takeover of the heroin
trade forced them to redirect their attention toward the capital. They return tonight. If the
Keeper wishes, there can be more encounters along the tunnel paths, but nothing serious.
As the investigators near the second-floor exit, the music will become recognizable as a
piano. It is well played, and a Music skill roll will identify a French art song, something by
Edith Piaf, most likely. The smell grows stronger near the kitchens.
48

The Kitchens
The first kitchen is a gourmet's delight, with copperware, a Thai samovar bubbling with
fresh tea, pastries hot from the steamer, and the array of knives and other implements
usual to restaurants. The kitchen includes human corpses being prepared for the table,
which is set for a holiday feast whose centerpiece is human thigh prepared as per the
Cantonese recipe for roast pork. There are no corpses in the kitchen; the heads and such
have all been trundled off to the feast hall. A tenderloin lies on a table, roast and sliced,
and there are steamed buns with a filling of human flesh prepared as roast pork. Several
paté tins and terrine molds lie empty, and bread pans attest to the preparation of a huge
feast. There are also ears in a jar of vinegar, as the Vietnamese prepare pig's ears. A
successful Idea roll is needed to identify them as human, and they are anyway hidden on an
upper shelf, next to the pickled cabbage. A midden holds burnt and scraped bones.
The second kitchen is a mess, holding kettles, each fifty to a hundred gallons worth, of
cabbage, turnips, and tubers, without any salt or seasoning. The slop is food for the herds
who live huddled in the mouth of the Great Old One whose body the mountain is. There
are troughs in a corner with handles to carry the swill. The boiled crud is disgusting and
the pots are filthy. While the stuff is edible and nourishing, nothing else can be said for it.
There are four kettles, holding a total of 300 gallons of food. If investigators probe the
bottoms, they will find bones, human-sized but from no animal any of them has ever seen.
These are from the creatures raised by Schwärmer from imperfect salts. Unlike James
Page and John Scott before him, he did not keep the things for ritual, but roasted cuts of
meat and threw the bones in the stockpot. Teutonic thrift is a wonderful thing.
The Door into Digestion

Down the hall from the kitchen is a two-meter hatch of wood, round and with handles, set
into the wall. The hatch is always locked and has a STR of 30. If the hatch opens, all must
roll CONx5 or less on D100 or faint from the awful smell of rotten meat, filth, and things
less easily named. The shaft revealed is dark all the way down. The walls are stained with
food and waste. There are cries and moans from the darkness.
If anyone throws a flare or climbs down with a light, he will see about a hundred feet of
shaft, and then horror. Human or half-human monstrosities swarm and scrabble in the
cave of filth at the bottom of the pit. Above them the walls are no longer earth or rock, but
flesh, and the final vision will be the rows of sharp spikes projecting from them. An Idea
roll recognizes them as teeth. Getting back up might be difficult.
This chasm is actually the mouth of the Great Old One Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh, who is the
hill. When the Ice Age ended, the islands that are now the Indochinese and Malay
peninsulas did not "sink". They rose, and Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh with them. It is asleep, as
are all the Great Old Ones on Earth, but even so is hungry. It feeds on these human herds,
descendants of those dumped here by the cult that began to work sorcery here. They will
slay and eat anyone who falls among them. The energy gained by the larval Great Old One
enables it to supervise its worshippers and to sweat the ooze found in the laboratory
(described below). Seeing the masses trapped in the monster's mouth costs 1 SAN. Seeing
the mouth itself costs 1/1d20 SAN.
Conference Room
This room has a bamboo roof, obviously to allow movement and fresh air. It is at ground
level; by cutting through the STR 20 bamboo walls, one can step outside onto the hill slope.
It is furnished with mats and cushions, with water thermoses and cups here and there.
This was a conference room for the leaders of the conspiracy. Maps show the world in 1927,
49

in 1969, and in 2027. Dots outline population groups. In the century recorded and
projected, the population of the Earth will have increased fivefold. Green stars mark the
Pacific seafloor, the Mid-Atlantic ridge, the deep Russian Antarctic, the Himalayas. Lines
on the 2027 map move from the ocean sites through the river valleys of Asia, taking in the
areas of densest population.
There are also many letters. Three in English may draw attention:
Dear Captain Schwärmer,
I received your letter last year with the recipes and crafts
hints. You have certainly attained more than I in that regard. My
own efforts, of course, were solitary. Owing to my present
confinement I am unable to use any of your suggestions, but I will
try for my release soon, and look forward to resuming my old
haunts. Perhaps we can meet for dinner.
Yours, Edward Gein
Dear Captain Schwarmer
All is well here; the Family has accomplished its first

missions and greater glories await as the Rising unfolds. The
work at the Polanski house followed your directions. I am
intrigued by your apparent disinterest in psychedelics. The
Family has derived much benefit from them. In hope that we can
meet on your next leave and in dedication to Helter Skelter
I make ready for the war to come.
C. Manson
The third is crayon on child's tablet paper:
Dere Captan Schwarmer,
Our teacher said if we get a letter from the soldier she

toldus to rite to him agan. Hi I hope you are fine. I am
fine, I did what you said in yor last letter. Then buried the
stuff that was left over in the back yeard. I dont think
anyone will catch me, nobudy notices those people anyway.
Your friend,
Jeffrey Dahmer
50

The Boudoir
The lower hall has three doors in the walls. The first leads to a sumptuous boudoir. The
door opens on incense and perfume. The room holds a dressing table with mirror, a
wardrobe, and a huge bed. The bed is a Hepplewhite original brought here in the
nineteenth century. Montagnard masks top its posts. Its canopy is thrown back; on the
spread lies the compete uniform of a US Army corporal-Himmelgart, down to his green
underwear. In the wardrobe are women's gowns from the first half of the twentieth
century. Some are large enough to fit a man. The vanity holds all kinds of perfume, mostly
French brands such as Chanel and Jovan. A bottle of Avon's White Shoulders lies
untouched. A fan and scented gloves lie on the table, with makeup, jewelry and lipstick.
The players lose no SAN for seeing these things, but one of them may realize the horrible
weirdness they point to when no human woman has ever seen this place.
The Larder
The larder is across the hall from the lavishly appointed bedroom. The larder is a
meatrack, made to hold captives until the time came for a feast. In a world without
refrigeration, the Tcho-Tcho hit upon the method of the digger wasp-to paralyze the prey
until needed. The larder holds a number of American servicemen whose tags show them to
be missing in action. Here are two:
Ronald Earl Ray, Staff Sergeant Recon Leader, born 11.8.47

William Theodore Brown, Sergeant First Class Recon Leader, born 9.19.35
Their necks are broken to prevent movement and they are hung, for days until needed, on
bamboo racks through which their waste can drop onto the floor. A degenerate subhuman
woman, grossly pregnant, cleans their filth from the floor and feeds them. Most are
comatose, incommunicado, or beyond reach. Death would be a mercy for them, of course.
If the investigators have lost a friend or two more than absolutely necessary, then have
him here, still aware of his horrible fate. Otherwise, have William Brown awake, conscious,
and breathing harshly. First Aid skill will reveal that he is, like the others, dying slowly of
massive spinal trauma, incurable. If the investigators cure these living dead somehow,
most will be insane. Brown will make noises like speech in his throat. An investigator
bending until his ear touches Brown's lips may hear something like this:
the stooped things the crooked things oh Bill you were right you were right oh
mother make it hold still make it stop wheres my arms and my wheres my legs
the whisperers those damn whisperers who are they woman with the black
hair black eyes man of gold gold man who are they why doesnt he ever miss he
cant miss black eyes black woman their teeth are so sharp their faces they
arent human arent human oh mother make it stop the whisperers and the
stone they werent men until the stone the gold man the stone in the stone bird
the gold stone jacob why the black eyed woman I never hurt you jake smash
the stone her perfume his perfume who is the stinking man in the hole the
stone smash the stone red robe man in the hole why him why me Bill make it
hold still smash it smashed smashed its always night
The preceding gibberish holds a number of clues. The gold man is the mad Captain, the
black woman Patty Holeran or Nyarlathotep. The gold stone is the amber crystal holding
51

the millennia-old statue, the smashing of which destroys the power of the fungi to enter
human shape and stand the heat and moisture of Vietnam, thus ending their role as
provocateurs in the war.
The Pits in the Hall

Three wooden grates lie in the earth floor of the hall. The first is about a meter square, the
other two, two meters square. They are the lids of prison pits. The first, if listened to, is
silent, smelling of rancid grease. It has a STR of 10. In the pit is a lone old man in a yellow
robe. He is Asian; an Anthropology roll identifies him as Tibetan, almost certainly a monk
or lama. He sits meditating on Mahakala, the Shining Black Lord of Transcendent
Awareness. He will gladly leave the pit and follow the investigators, though he will fight
only if he has no other choice.
Yeshe (his stats are below) is from a small monastery to the north, established by
Tibetan refugees. He came to see if the old evil that once animated this place was renewed;
it was. The Tcho-Tcho tortured him, hoping to gain the secret of access to the monastery,
but he resisted. Schwärmer was to have had at him next, but the agenda may change.
Yeshe is near death from exhaustion and torture, but if addressed on the subject will speak
of the need to destroy the stone, resting in the floor of the feasting hall.
The second pit resounds with animal screeches and howls, deafening in volume. It is
full of African green monkeys dying of an unknown disease with sores in their groins and
armpits. They will attack madly with bite and claw. There is nothing else in the pit save
for them, their waste, and the remnants of their last meal. He didn't die a happy man.
The third pit seems much deeper, and it is. It also resounds with screams and
screeches, but these are human. The pit is full of African women, skeletally thin, covered
with black sores at armpits and groin. They are mindless with privation and speak no
English anyway. There are nineteen of them.
Anyone who gets blood or fluids from either the monkeys or the women into his system
in any way should be noted by the Keeper. In about fifteen years, the character may
manifest the symptoms of human retrovirus disease. These animals and people are part of
Nyarlathotep's plan to infect the world with AIDS.
The laboratory above the corridor ends in a door. It is locked, sounds of chittering and
has a STR of 15. It leads into a room filled with rat cages and long tables full of modern
scientific equipment. Microscopes and test tubes share space with hissing Bunsen burners
and bubbling beakers. A map shows distribution of major pathogens and likely vector
species. The rats are labelled in French; some carry bubonic plague, some Lassa fever,
some retrovirus. Many other diseases are here represented. Nyarlathotep used this room
for her research into how to infect the world with horrible diseases to destroy human
society. There is also the necessary equipment for refining opium into heroin, morphine,
and such, as well as a huge pile of shzor-shzong, the smoker for preserving them, and the
equipment to turn them into CTH. All is standard sterile CIA issue, marked “Property of
Air America Airlines”.
The Laboratory Beneath

The stair across from the bedroom lead down through dirt and rock to a chamber of stone in
the lowest area of the mountain, directly above the living flesh of the Great Old One. It is a
single huge hall lit poorly by kerosene lamps. At one end are a series of tables holding glass
beakers, alcohol lamps, test tubes, stills, vats, and so forth, and an array of porcelain ware
answering to the same needs. Huge retorts cool after the task of cooking bodies for their
salts. At one wall a huge rack holds jars resembling Ming-era porcelain, each labeled in
52

Chinese characters with a brush and English with a grease pencil. A magic circle has been
drawn on the floor with chalk.
Nearby a black-letter copy of Borellus lies open on a reading stand. On the open pages
are the words of the Resurrection spell, given below under the heading "Ritual of Infinity",
in a fine clear hand in black ink. The rest of the book is a typical magical text. Reading it
takes at least four months serious study, and a Read/Write English roll. It gives a spell
multiplier of x4, and adds 10% to Mythos knowledge. The only magic it teaches is how to
make the salts of a being from its corpse and how to restore the being using the
Resurrection spell. The use of magic to preserve the soul within Yog-Sothoth is also
covered, as it the evil enchantment that causes one to become an obsession with one's
descendants. It is written in Latin with extensive early modern English notes, and costs
1d10 SAN to read. In the frontispiece is the notation, “From John Scotte to mye Dear
Ffrend Symon Orn, Aprille 30, 1775”. This book would be worth over one thousand dollars
to a collector, while one knowing its Mythos significance would pay any price. The volume
was rare even in the 1920s, and may be one of ten or twelve copies remaining in 1969.
The jars hold the essential salts of great men and women robbed from their graves.
Allow an investigator to look at the names: Caligula Caesar, Jingis Khan, Tomas de
Torquemada, Attila, Donatien Alphonse François Marie de Sade, Napoleon, Karl Marx,
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Tamurlane, Sargon, Iyeyasu, Tojo, Mussolini, and Ho Chi Minh.
If the investigators try to raise any of these, let them. As they are almost certainly here
before they visit the banquet hall, allow time to pass as the piano music plays. The rite of
raising the dead may be repeated, but each time warn the investigators with swirling
clouds of smoke and awful glimpses that the sight is not one for human eyes. Each use of
the spell costs 1d10 SAN, and seeing the risen dead costs 1d4 SAN, as the existence of these
beings violates cosmic order in spades.
The dead once raised will rant and gibber, utterly useless even to those who know their
language. An Oratory roll might convince them to speak amicably for a moment, but they
have little to say that will help the players-their concern is with the long-past time of their
lives. These rulers were to return and rule the world as satraps of the Cthulhu cult at the
end of time. Simon Orne, Joseph Curwen, and John Scott all came here to learn the spell
and to learn the skill of how to prepare the salts. This skill is the only one in the Borellus
book, as detailed above. Other memorabilia point to the presence of these necromancers: a
ring bearing Scott's name, a wardrobe of Georgian clothing, a letter in Aklo glyphs with
Curwen's signature. Other chests hold clothing for the raised dead: shapeless robes and the
garments of various periods.
At the other end of the hall, a big door is set in the wall. It has a STR of 30. If this is
overcome, it will open. Within is a solid wall of flesh, warm to the touch, and foul-smelling.
This is the physical body of the Great Old One Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh, who is the mountain.
Seeing it costs 1d6 SAN. A player making an idea roll may realize what it is. If he does, he
may voluntarily drop more SAN. A spell written in Chinese and English, Contact
Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh, in the mass of papers that litters the lab can cause the flesh to leak
fluids that will cook a human body into essential salts. Remember that the skill of making
the salts must be learned from the book, a matter of interest only in the long run.
Banquet Hall
The banquet hall is a scene out of Dante. The floor bears a huge circle of stone, in which a
dinosaur skeleton clutches a crystal of amber as large as a man's head. In the crystal is the
statue, a hundred million years old, of one of the Mi Go, referred to elsewhere as the
whisperers. There are three long tables of Lao teak, priceless elsewhere, each SIZ 32. They
53

seat the Green Berets, who are eating, drinking, gambling, talking, enjoying the feast. The
main course is laid out on the high table, roasted and carved. If possible it is a friend or
comrade of the investigators. Seeing this sight is cause for a SAN roll (“horribly mangled
corpse”). If any investigator goes insane as a result, which is likely, then the Keeper may
rule that he vomits explosively, knowing what dishes were prepared in the kitchen. There
are other roasts, soups, steamed and baked pastries, and vegetable stir-fries drenched in
bak bon dshzow (“human ganglia paste”, a Tcho-Tcho specialty). A fine assortment of rice
wines, beers, and liquor complete the menu, and some of the team chose to cap it off with a
few pipes of opium. If the investigators are thinking of violence, Müller is covering them
from the corner with a machine gun; he won't miss.
Hei Ren-Tzu, or Patty Holeran, herself waits at the banquet table, politely bidding the
soldiers to have a bite to eat. She is a trim Chinese woman of middle age, with the serenity
that many hope for but few achieve. In 1945 she succeeded to the opium ring that her
husband, Giap Chin Truc, had managed before that; she has run it with an iron grip ever
since. She is an excellent piano player, having learned from the cultured Edward Candler,
and having honed her music skills by lessons with the shade of Erich Zann.
In fact, she is an avatar of Nyarlathotep. He (it?) came to Indochina in the wake of his
smashing success in the Manhattan Project, and has been spreading drug addiction and
death ever since. If pressed, she will admit her identity by chanting Lovecraft's poem of the
same name; bullets will only hasten her physical death and the change to the monster form
described elsewhere. Schwärmer and Himmelgart are here, the former in full dress
uniform plus green beret, the latter, unrecognizable until he turns to face the players, in
full and amazing drag, a Thai silk evening gown made for the wife of a French opium dealer
in the Triangle. His bouffant wig is the final touch; a green beret sits atop it.
SOLUTIONS
The investigators are at the mercy (if that is the right word) of the most evil and ruthless
men in the American armed forces. They can try several ways out.
Violence is the least likely to succeed. The Green Berets are drunk and stoned, but even
so they are far better fighters, and have the drop on the investigators. Schwärmer almost
never misses and is wearing his sidearm. The investigators are almost certain to be killed
if they try this, though the Captain will not kill them unless he is enraged.
They may try to argue for their freedom. If Schwärmer is in full possession of his
faculties he won't let them go. The secrecy of this place can't be compromised, and any
revelation of his horrible activities will destroy him. He will not believe any promise of
silence; he does not know that the Pathet Lao's drive to take the Plain of Jars has reached
this mountain tonight, and he could leave no sentry-who would want to sit outside and miss
the fun?
They may play along with the Green Berets and try to get them drunk or stoned enough
that the players could leave. Let them try. All of the team have high CONs and are heavy
drinkers. A pinch of CTH slipped into drink or opium would make the whole scene into
raging madness, but again the team would likely not be so far gone that the departure of
the investigators would not be noticed or stopped. Note that if the captain is down, his hold
on his men will be weaker. It will be possible, though unlikely, that they could be convinced
to disobey him. The idea would have to be phrased as indirectly as possible (“Hey, the
captain is a freedom-loving American, so he would like it if you let us get up off the floor.”
“Only a Communist would keep his own countrymen tied up like this.”)
54

They may try to get the mad captain arguing with Nyarlathotep. This is a real possibility,
as Jake Schwärmer's biggest problem with her has always been that she's not white.
Appealing cleverly to his outrageous racism would probably work. Ridiculing him for his
sexual and magical activities would not. The person who jeers at him may be selected for
gruesome torture to make his comrades agree to cooperate or simply to entertain
Nyarlathotep. Jeering at Himmelgart in drag is similarly dangerous.
The most dangerous angle to try can only work if the investigators know all about the
ritual(see below). The ritual to resurrect Alec from his salts is the real reason for the
presence of the men here tonight; it's the real reason for the past twenty-five years of
Schwärmer's life. If the investigator(s) whom the Captain respects and likes (there should
be at least one of them) can soberly, honestly talk to the Captain, they can try to convince
him that the ritual will not work. If the ritual has been tried and has not worked, then this
argument is much more likely to succeed. The Captain has lived the past quarter-century
in depravity so insane that it would have sickened de Sade, but for a reason. Deprived of
that reason, he will not wish to live. If the players roleplay this realistically and well, then
they might be able to bring him down off the manic high that he is on when they encounter
him and distract him. If they do this, then likely the fungi or the Pathet Lao show up
shortly. He will spurn the fungi, and fight berserkly against the Laotians, maybe even
sacrificing himself in battle. If at all possible, run his death as described below.
THE RITUAL OF INFINITY

The Green Berets are here for three reasons. The first is to confer with Patty
(Nyarlathotep) about the upcoming destruction of the human race. This has been done
before the investigators arrive, the remains of their talk being the material in the
conference room. Then they moved to pleasure-the initiation of Himmelgart as one of the
team. He was dressed for the part, wined and dined, and dances with Schwärmer prior to
the consummation of the sacred marriage, in which he will play the female rôle. The third
and most important reason was that this was the night long promised and so often delayed:
Patty has promised that she will teach Schwärmer the spell that will revive Alec in the
body of his son.
The son is either Jim König or one of the player characters, in which case the theft of
the bodies and the abduction and murder of Crazy Jerry were only lures to bring the
investigators here to the fortress. The ritual is a variant on the normal Resurrection spell
detailed by Borellus, which requires only the essential salts to recreate a living body.
Joseph Curwen used this method to restore the great dead of the past in his Massachusetts
study. Upon his own death, he prepared incantations allowing himself to draw to his
rescue his distant descendant James Page, the Charles Ward of Lovecraft's story. Alec
made no such plans, and so Schwärmer could simply call him from his salts, but has taken
the precaution of bringing to the scene the son of Alec Baldwin, who will provide the
physical body that the spell could only imperfectly supply.
The Keeper must decide how to run this sequence. If the whole matter of the mad
Captain is unimportant to him and his players, he may assume that the spell does not
work, and that the Captain's years of labor have served a cruel lie. In that case, when he
learns the truth, the Captain may kill the investigators or Patty in his rage. It may be
possible, once he knows that Alec is not coming back, to try to persuade him to give up the
plan and abandon the Mythos. This is unlikely. If this is the path that the Keeper chooses,
he can use the rite as a source of tension-have Jake always asking Patty “When is he
coming back?”, “When will I see him?” and other questions. Jake is at the edge of his very
55

dubious hold on reality tonight, and he will need little goading to produce a horrid spectacle
indeed. The stream of ragged demands will go on.
The Keeper may choose to work the situation for irony. If this is the case, then the man
supposed by Jake Schwärmer to be Alec's son is actually his own son. The magic is useless
and all was for nothing. Schwärmer will react as above.
Another choice is to have the ritual proceed as planned. The man thought to be Alec's
son will stand in a diagram drawn on the floor. His cooperation will be assured, if
necessary, by machine guns. Jake will go to him, cut both of them, and mix their blood.
This recalls his mixing of blood and fluids with Alec long ago. By doing it, he may explain,
he returns Alec's blood, from his own body, into the body of Alec's son. He then kisses the
man good-bye and steps back to chant:
“Y'AI 'NG'NGAH
YOG-SOTHOTH
H'EE-L'GEB
F'AI THRODOG
UAAAH”
The spell takes hold. Smoke billows, mercifully hiding the alteration of face and body as
the twenty-five-year-old soldier assumes the form of a slender, handsome youth seven years
younger—Baldwin at the time of his death. All who see this lose 0/1D3 SAN. Here again
the referee has choices.
WHO’S THERE?
The person crouching on the floor inside the magic circle could be one of three people. If the
Keeper wishes to twist the situation further, it is a fiendish villain who has taken the body
of Baldwin. Good examples include the Tcho-Tcho wizard, if he's dead, or his evil
grandfather, or Old Wizard Whipple, if he's around. Use someone your players will
recognize, but someone horrid and eager for a new lease on life. Or the spell could unleash
the horror spawned of imperfect salts, but this is unlikely, as the body need not be created
from the salts but is already present.
It could be Tawil at-Umr, the Opener of the Way, the Gate and the Key. This figure is
known to take human form to advise travellers through the many worlds and to lead them
to their goals. If this entity is present, and if anyone thinks to utter the proper formulae
(both Schwärmer and Patty know them, as does anyone who knows the spell Contact Yog-
Sothoth), it will negotiate calmly with any who will talk to it, and then offer passage home
in return for the jewel. Of course, Patty will not want to lose the jewel, as the Fungi will
then be unable to help her in the drug trade. Schwärmer will go either way, as he is lost
before Baldwin's face. Handling this option would be more difficult for the Keeper.
Most difficult of all is the assumption that the spell worked as planned and that Terence
Alexander Baldwin of Charleston, South Carolina, 1926-1944, is there before the players.
Baldwin will, of course, lose SAN for his Resurrection, and if he is kicked over the edge, will
react with panic. The last thing he remembers, after all, aside from an extradimensional
flutter or two, is being tortured for hours in the hazing session that killed him. He awakens
to see a dozen blond men in green berets looming over him, with a Chinese woman looking
on and roast human bodies on the table. He may actually lose further SAN from the whole
scene. If Baldwin is not actually driven mad, he is still as shaken as he can possibly be
from the whole matter. He will shake his head amid Jake's frenzied greetings.
56

His first speech will be something like "Deadeye, what are you doin' so old all of a sudden,
and who are all of y'all?" He is totally lost to find himself alive(after dying) in
Laos("where? y'all mean French Indochina?") and twenty-five years on. The idea that he
was raised from the dead by magic will be incomprehensible to him. He will be horrified at
the monster, rapist, and cannibal that his old roomie Jake has become. In fact, the
investigators could win Alec over to their side if they play their cards right. ("Come with
us, Alec; we'll take you home!") Alec has no Mythos knowledge and no magical powers, and
is a poor shot. He is, however, gracious and charming, and will win hearts with ease. The
problem here is dealing with the one he won thirty years back.
KILLING PATTY HOLERAN

If the players manage to kill Nyarlathotep in its form as Patty Holeran, they will see the
SAN-shattering transformation into another form as described in the rulebook, and will
know no more of that puissant entity all their waking days. The Crawling Chaos takes the
shape of a saxophonist of great skill and begins spreading music and disease in the bars
and nightclubs of the world's great cities.
There remains the question of the Green Berets. After Nyarlathotep recites the poem
describing him and admits his identity, he will transform into a giant shaggy mole with
burning fur and tunnel into the earth and stone below the hall. The team will appear
amazed as the players. At an appropriate point in the conversation, thirty Pathet Lao
guerrillas break down the door and enter with blazing guns. The resulting firefight should
show the players that the Special Forces men are better fighters than they had ever feared.
Muller will run straight into the approaching horde with a grenade in each hand,
sacrificing himself to destroy most of the guerrillas. They kill a few Green Berets through
overwhelming force of arms, but only if the players do not help Schwärmer's men will there
be a melee. Then, let a player get badly hurt. The Green Berets after the fight will warn
the players of the need to flee. As the players leave the complex they each must make a
luck roll to avoid the rats with Lassa fever, who the Lao set loose. Investigation of the Lao
corpses will reveal numerous rat bites.
SCHWÄRMER'S DEATH
The Green Berets will flee, taking their dead and wounded with them, as well as any dead
or wounded investigator with an APP of 16 or greater. They head for the surface, and their
camouflaged helicopter. They can pull the tarp off the helicopter in 2 rounds. The
helicopter starts in 10 rounds. Several are pilots, so that piloting the thing is not a
problem. If the investigators have a Green Beret and vice versa, the captain offers a trade.
If not, try to run a sequence like what follows:
The Captain sends Müller out to get the players. They fire a machine gun as the
helicopter takes off. It hovers as Schwärmer offers them a ride. They know not to take
rides from strange men, but this is ridiculous. Their own chopper may not return, if it's
gone. They throw a grenade. The captain catches it (remember that DEX) and throws it
back, wounding an investigator or Brandt(who may be with the investigators if they know
his future self). Any wound Brandt receives will be his lower leg wound familiar to those
who know his future self. Attempts to kill him will likely backfire-or maybe not, if this is
all a dream. The captain steps from the helicopter, maybe covered by a gun, maybe not, to
kill the investigators with his rune spear. They shoot him. He keeps coming. They empty
a clip into him. He reaches the nearest investigators and spears him, then falls. An
investigator should hear his last word—it is, of course, Alec's name.
57

Anyone currently at 1 or 0 hit points will have a near-death experience. He will be drawn
down a long dark tunnel toward a bright light, hearing a ringing noise. As he falls down the
tunnel, he will see a figure overtaking him. It's the boy from the photograph, the young
Jacob Schwärmer. At the lip of the bright light there sits a small figure, knees drawn up. It
is Alec; they meet and go off together.
THE FLIGHT
If Yeshe is with the investigators, he will urgently request that they return him home. His
fellow monks must be told of the horror; they can help the wounded investigators; they can
end the horror if they have the investigator's help. If the investigators have further doubts,
then the helicopter is low on fuel—there's enough to get them to the monastery, but not
back to Vietnam. They may try to make for the secret CIA drug base instead. If they do,
use the section above for details. They could also try to walk away from the cannibal
fortress. If they do, they will spend weeks hiking through remote wilderness, encountering
hillmen of the Pou Eum, Phou Tai, and Bo peoples, VC, opium growers, opium smugglers,
and possibly the fungi from Yuggoth. The exact events of the march must be up to the
Keeper; areas of the route were almost uninhabited at the time, and other Mythos sites
might well exist. If the investigators do this, then the remainder of the adventure may not
take place, although the conclusion can be presented as a dream.
NPC STATISTICS
Patty Holeran, Opium Queen and Avatar of the Crawling Chaos
SIZ 7 SAN ? EDU ?
HP 12
Skills: Beretta 9mm 100%, other weapons, skills and spells as needed.
There is nothing that Nyarlathotep does not know.
SAN: There is no SAN cost to see Patty Holeran. If and when she
changes into a more monstrous form, 1D10/1D100 points of SAN are lost.
Alec Baldwin, Beloved and Bedlam Boy

SIZ 9 SAN 55 EDU 13
HP 10
Skills: Rifle 30%, Fencing Sword 40%, Bow 25%, French 40%, History
45%, Bargain 20%, Fast Talk 25%, Credit Rating 80%, Etiquette 80%,
Charm 80%
Phum, a Typical Pathet Lao Militiaman

SIZ 7 SAN 55 EDU 5
HP 9
Skills: Lao 80%, Rifle 30%, Dagger 45%, Pistol 50%, Track 50%, Climb
50%, Camouflage 50%, Dodge 30%, Hide 50%, Sneak 40%
58

Yeshe Norkay Rinpoche, Tibetan Monk
STR 9 DEX 14 INT 15
CON 16 APP 9 POW 17
SIZ 8 SAN 50 EDU 17
HP 3(normally 12)
Skills: Tibetan 80%, Sanskrit 50%, Chinese 30%, English 10%, Lao 5%,
Vietnamese 5%, Debate(Tibetan only) 50%, History 40%, Occult 50%,
Cthulhu Mythos 30%, Sing Tibetan Sacred Music 90%, Perform Buddhist
Ritual 80%
Spells: Elder Sign, Voorish Sign, Gyüto Chant
Typical Nameless Human Food Animal in the Mouth of Hell or African Captive
STR 12 DEX 11 INT 5
CON 13 APP 5 POW 9
SIZ 8 SAN 0 EDU 0
HP 10
Skills: Bite 40%, Fist 50%, Screech 90%
Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh, pupating Great Old One

STR 100 DEX 0 INT 0
SIZ 1000000
HP 500,000
Move 0
Attacks: Slime, 100%, 1HP
Bite, 100%, 1D100 damage
Spells: None
Skills: None
This being is virtually mindless and almost never moves. It will bite only if someone casts
the Contact spell inside its mouth. It weighs over ten million tons. The author of this work
cannot think of a way to kill it. Perhaps someone else can…
New Spells:
Contact Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh
This spell can be cast at only one place, namely the site where Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh itself
sleeps, disguised as a mountain. The spell elicits no cooperation from the Great Old One,
merely causing it to excrete a caustic substance. Anyone touching the ooze takes 1 point of
damage. Using the ooze, one can reduce a body to its essential salts, a task otherwise quite
difficult. The spell costs 1 Magic Point and 5 points SAN.
Render Salts
This spell takes from one week to one month to cast, and requires that the caster do
nothing else in that time. He must have a fully-equipped laboratory in which to work. He
must expend 15 Magic Points and 2d10 points of SAN. The result is the “essential salts”
from which a human body can be raised. It is recommended that investigators be
discouraged from learning this spell.
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THE NINTH TICKET: THE PREHISTORIC MONASTERY
After a bloody gunfight with the Pathet Lao, the investigators may or may not still have the
Green Berets on their tail. A place marked on the captain's map offers help-the Green
Berets avoid it, and it's within the helicopter's limited cruising range. The site turns out to
be a prehistoric monastery, long abandoned until Tibetan refugees reoccupied it after
fleeing Chinese oppression. Their abbot speaks some English and understands the
dilemma of the situation. The Dreamlands are identified by the monks with the Buddha-
fields or Western paradise, and from that vantage point they know of the evil done by
Nyarlathotep, but are unable to combat it.
The upshot of the cult is the attempt of the fungi to reach the sea, nowhere nearer than
Vietnam to the mountains. There they can seek the aid of the Old Ones, whose survival on
the ocean floor is plain to them from reading reports of Antarctic trips to the Mountains of
Madness and Leng. Though the Old Ones and the fungi warred in the past, the Mi-Go now
wish their help in transport and in alliance against the Cthulhu spawn. The octopoids have
never been amenable to reason, and their coming rise from the sea's bed bodes ill for all
other intelligent species. In addition, the fungi and Old Ones can together enslave the
human species, since the Mi-Go have experience in this while the Old Ones have military
might, and do not wish to repeat the Shoggoth debacle.
High above the cannibal fortress, near the Laotian-Chinese border, is a hidden
monastery, penned in on Schwärmer's maps, a target for the Fungi and their allies. It is
inhabited by Tibetan monks fleeing Chinese oppression who have mastered the Gyüto
chanting technique as a weapon against the Great Old Ones and the Fungi. When the
monks chant in the Gyüto style, any non-terrene matter in earshot automatically explodes,
doing no physical damage to bystanders but costing them a few points of SAN. The monks
are twelve in number, their abbot being Tenzing Norje Rimpoche, an incarnate lama.
Tenzing knows English(Speak English 60%) and can instantly discern the players'
nationality and origins. He will propose that the players use the dream-inducing drug to
enter the Dreamlands in the monks' company. The monks, owing to their perfect Buddha-
mindedness, can enter the Dreamlands still awake, in perfect meditation, and do so often.
They can tell the players the essential truths of the campaign, although they do not really
understand everything. They will express everything in their native terms, and will refer
to the halfworld or Dreamlands as the Buddha field or the Western Paradise. They cannot
themselves fight Nyarlathotep, owing to the danger of revealing their real-world location,
but the players can do so.
Another way of ending the scenario is to destroy the crystal, which can be carried into
the Dreamlands unaltered. Smashing it on the many stones of the Dreamlands or
Alcheringa will end the power of the fungi to descend from the hills to the jungle and
conduct their horrid rites. Wongar, the Australian aborigine, can conduct the players into
Alcheringa, but there will have the form of a giant bird, a mihirung, and no hands. He is
unable to grasp the stone. See the section on Wongar for more details.
If the players succeed in foiling the plots of the fungi, they gain 3D10 SAN, and
additional SAN for killing or stopping the Green Berets, equal to the largest amount lost by
that player for witnessing their evil acts. The Keeper may wish to end the game with a
flash-forward to the surviving characters in the 1980s, seeing the coffins of bones brought
home from Indochina, and suffering the additional horror of knowing that the bones are
scraped and gnawed by human teeth.
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TIBET IN FACT, FICTION AND MYTHOS
Tibet is one of the most isolated parts of the world. For centuries it pursued a monastic
pattern of civilization unlike any modern European model of the nation-state. Its contact
with Europeans in the early-to-middle twentieth century produced the small quantity of
Tibetan mystical literature that has become much talked about in the West and a much
larger body of pseudo-Tibetan gibberish, designed by Nyarlathotep to fuddle Western
perception of Tibetan wisdom.
Tibet came relatively late to "civilization" as the term is commonly used. In the first
millennium AD, the people of Tibet were tribes, groups of tribes, and archaic or primitive
kingdoms, living by yak herding, barley farming, and plunder. Their religion, known as
Bön, (pronounced pern), was shamanism, with hints of darker influences. When Milarepa, a
Buddhist monk, converted them to Buddhism, there began their transformation into a
society ruled by a monastic elite. By the middle of the second millennium, after the Mongol
hordes had wrecked Tibet's older political structure and been themselves converted to its
faith, the incarnate deity known as the Dalai Lama had become accepted as King of Tibet.
The Lama was chosen by mystic signs at birth, and ruled over the wild and savage Tibetan
people as well he could. The last Lama fled after the Chinese invasion and now resides in
India.
THE LAST TICKET

The Dreamlands mirror or shadow area on Earth. For instance, Olathoë and Lomar are
dreams of the Nordic past, while the marvelous sunset city seen by Randolph Carter is the
exaltation into wonder of Providence, Rhode Island. In this case, Leng is certainly Tibet, as
we can see from the profusion of hairy men and prehistoric monasteries. Leng's
associations with Antarctica come from the isolation and loneliness of the lost city there
and the "elder Pharos, the primal white jelly" seen by Danforth as he and Dyer (Henry
Praisegod Tanner, in reality) fled the abominable city located in the Antarctic highlands,
which sight was almost certainly a vision of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate and the Key. This
puissant entity provides the connection between Antarctic and Asian Leng, and it would not
be surprising to find evidence of Leng-like associations in the high Andes.
The monks at the monastery are Tibetan refugees, fleeing Chinese oppression for
isolation in the mountains of Laos. When the helicopter touches down they will come forth
to greet the players. If attacked, they will flee or die; they have no combat skills. Two of
the younger monks know a few words of English, enough to fetch the abbot, who is fluent
and speaks with a singsong Indian accent. He will offer the players tsampa, a revolting mix
of butter, barley and tea in a bowl, and watch as they make CONx5 to try to keep it down.
Any who need first aid receive it now. If the monk from the cannibal fortress, Yeshe, is
there, his brethren will receive him with great joy, and treat the players better. If not the
abbot will expect news of his fate. If Yeshe has died, the abbot will remark that he will
have much merit in his next incarnation.
The monks have mastered esoteric chanting techniques, enabling each of them to sing
three notes at once. This method of singing is hauntingly beautiful, and many ceremonies
have been recorded and are commercially available. It has Mythos significance also. The
70-cycle notes that the monks sing are attuned to the vibration rate of nonterrene matter,
and any entering earshot of this music automatically disintegrates. Thus any Fungi spies
cannot enter the place. The same is true of Cthulhu spawn, although none are known to
frequent the Laotian mountains.
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The monks give the investigators a place to rest for the night, and in the morning perform
the final ceremony, one designed to send the players to the dreamworld where the mystic
stone can be destroyed. The ceremony is set in the main hall, a place richly decorated with
icons and paintings smuggled from lost Tibet and a few made here on the spot. The
investigators sit on a rug in the center as nine monks place a complex sand-painting on the
floor about them. Laid grain by grain, the painting depicts the landscape of the Buddha-
field or Western Paradise. This place, called the Dreamlands in Call of Cthulhu, is the
collective unconscious of the human and nonhuman dreamers of planet Earth. Created by
the first sentient beings to dream on Earth, perhaps the Cthulhu-spawn, it was later ruled
by serpent folk and gugs, after which power passed to the Great Ones, called the gods of
Earth. Among these are the Buddha-figures of Tibetan mythology.
The monks finish the carpet and pass a red silk rope to the players. Each monk carries
the rope between his palms, and it finally ends in the hands of the abbot. He begins his
eldritch chant and the monks respond. The smoke of incense blurs the investigators' vision,
and the rope begins to slide upwards between their hands. Clinging to it, they are carried
up the rope to find themselves in a field of red clay. By them is a car, a new 1941 Buick.
They can drive anywhere, as the keys are in the ignition, but on the horizon are the tents
and Ferris wheel of the South Carolina State Fair, 1942. There, they might suspect who
will be waiting for them. At the gate, they find the money of the period in their pockets,
and their clothes have also changed—one more transformation, into people who inhabit the
happiest dreams of the mad captain.
The Keeper must run this very carefully. The players should have come to understand
the tragedy of Captain Schwärmer by now, and to feel some sympathy for the grief that
drove him to madness. If they are unable to understand this, then play the two boys as
spirit guides, who show the investigators the way to the door and then depart. If they have
shown any signs of understanding the tragedy, then use this encounter as a way of showing
them that the Captain has redeemed himself by his death and is reunited in it with the one
he loves most.
On the midway of the fair are many attractions. There is an Octopus Man, a Fat Lady,
a Hairy Man, a Tattooed Man, a fire-eater, and a sword swallower. There is also a variety
of games. One is called Chinese Prayer Wheel; fairgoers throw darts at a spinning nine-
spoked wheel and try to hit the one golden spoke. Three darts are fifty cents, nine for a
dollar. One hit wins a stuffed heart, three a bear. Standing before the game are the two
figures, just as depicted in the picture in Schwärmer's footlocker. This is obviously a scene
from that long-lost happy summer. The investigators will likely talk to the boys, and if they
offer to buy them "tickets for a prayer wheel", Schwärmer will gladly accept. He will then
throw, hit, and win the prize. The boys will split a Coke with the investigators and talk of
small things. Jacob Schwärmer will look sidelong at them, and Alec will be his usual
charming self. If the player hint of future events, the boys will respond cryptically, Alec
may ask if the investigators are friends of Jake's, and the younger boy might say, “I don't
know you. But maybe I will.”
They will show the investigators to a door that no one else seems to notice. It is set
upright in the air. Passing through, they find themselves in a barren moonscape by a
sterile lake. Throwing the jewel into the lake ensures that the Minions of Ghadamon will
eat it. Smashing it with another rock destroys it utterly. This action ends the power of the
Fungi.
For this action the investigators receive 1d20 SAN each. If they killed Schwärmer, thus
ending his part in the massive plot to destroy the human species, they each get back SAN
equal to the total lost beholding his macabre works. That is, if one player lost 12 SAN from
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seeing the eyeless bodies of friends, the sacrifice to Odin, the rapes and perversions, than
all players will receive that amount back, up to the usual maximum of 99 minus any
Cthulhu Mythos skill.
New Skill:
Tibetan Trance Running

This skill can be learned only by one who has spent a long time in study of the mystic arts.
It enables the user to run at 10-20 miles per hour for as many hours as he has POW points,
one of which must be spent for each hour running. While running he is entranced and
cannot speak. He can regain one POW per hour of rest.
Tibetan Gyüto Chant

This skill takes years of study to learn. It enables the user to sing three notes at once, the
root, third and fifth notes of a chord. This unearthly music has two uses. A singer can
enter the Dreamlands awake while chanting, and take one person along for each three who
chant. He cannot act in the Dreamlands, but can behold their wonders. Second, no Mythos
creature can enter the place where the chant is sung. In effect, the chant is a verbal Elder
Sign.
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ENDGAMES: TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
The Keeper may have to integrate the investigators back into the frame of a 90s game, and
this may take some time.
Scott Davidson will go on to inherit money and live a life of ease. He is a subject at the
Winthrope Institute for Dream Research and later a successful businessman. He goes on to
practice magic of the Wiccan school, shunning the Norse mysticism of Schwärmer's
disciples and the Mythos as well. His At Your Door self is a very different person. Brandt,
who is also Don Luftbard, may go on the finer things or back into a mental hospital at the
Keeper's discretion; it is certain that he will not go back into the Mythos. He is
rehabilitated or wounded still further, depending on whether the players completed the
dream-mission or not, but his ghosts have been laid to rest. If Schwärmer did not die in the
dream, then he did not die. He and his followers went on to spread evil and horror, infect
people with diseases, eat human flesh, lose the Vietnam War, and attain government posts
of high degree. In the best of all possible worlds, Jacob Schwärmer might be content with
dying well. In the worst, he is probably a regular guest on Jennifer Armbruster's
bodybuilding program, “Working out with Shub-Niggurath”. The Green Berets would be
prime supporters of Full Wilderness and would be on the top of the list for visiting passes to
the “preserves” that the group proposes to create, void of human artifacts.
In Army records, the player's names may appear as men missing in action. The Green
Berets are all listed as such, unless Brandt makes it out with the players. In a 90s
campaign, these men could appear as leaders of skinhead mobs, as Aryan fascist guerrillas,
as medieval re-creationists, or as senators and congressional representatives.
ON THE FUNGI
Among the most interesting creatures to come from the typewriter of H. P. Lovecraft are
the Mi-Go, or Fungi from Yuggoth. These creatures are the primary movers behind the
story The Whisperer in Darkness, in which their actions come to light. In the story we find
that they visit Earth's mountains, notably the Appalachians and Himalayas, to mine exotic
minerals unobtainable elsewhere. They are said to have a vast interstellar empire of
planets, dark stars, and other things, and to have come originally from outside our own
space-time. They can pass as humans by wearing disguises (a shift impossible to Great
Cthulhu, for example), and often do so, though the disguise presented in the story was
viable only in dim light and as long as the creature wearing it did not move. Presumably
other and more sophisticated disguises are known, and a recent Chaosium publication
states that the Yuggothian population of Peru's Himalayas uses such.
GOALS AND QUESTS

There are several major subplots operating at once in this game setting. They can be
summed up in a series of questions. Many of the questions are of variable importance, and
all will never show up in a single run of this game-or at least, to handle them all would take
a referee's utmost concentration:
1. Why are the bodies being mutilated? Who's doing it? Answer: The mutilations are
being performed by Tcho-Tcho cannibal cultists led by a girl whose body runs with
botflies. She bites off the parts in question, then the flies clean up the edges of the
wound. Then come the tribesmen with obsidian knives and remove meat from the
arms and legs for drying and smoking. The eyes and genitals are ritual delicacies
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that do not keep long. The many mutilations are the work of about six people: they
travel at Tibetan trance running speed between sites.
2. What are the burnt corpses hiding? Answer: The American commanders are burning
the bodies with napalm to hide the mutilations above. Schwärmer suggested it to
the commander at Tan Son Nhut, but the commander has forgotten this with time.
3. Who is Jacob Schwärmer? What is he? Why does he do what he does?
Can he ever be redeemed? Who is Frank? Answer: These questions deal with the
same topic. Schwärmer is a Special Forces captain in league with the Mythos
powers, driven to their service by the death of his buddy Alec Baldwin. His followers
are driven mad by repeated exposure to the Mythos while on assignment with him.
His ultimate aim is to secure the return of Alec in the body of Alec's bastard son, or,
failing that, to raise Alec from his salts. Schwärmer could return to the human
point of view enough to see the evil of his ways, but is very unlikely to do so. This
could only happen if Alec returned and convinced him that his actions were wrong,
or if someone proved that Alec was never coming back. Frank is a metis, the son of a
French corporal and a bar girl, adopted by Schwärmer as a personal companion.
4. Who is meeting in the Cao-Dai Pagoda? What does the headman fear? Answer: The
people who rendezvous at the pagoda and cache drugs there are smugglers moving
opium, heroin, hemp, and CTH, or hammer, south from the secret base in the
Golden Triangle to South Vietnam. The headman knows this, but is afraid that he
will be punished for revealing the secrets of the kaitong Hei-Ren-Tze, or CIA secrets.
He know the CIA only as the Company.
5. Who is Louis Wu and what does he know? Answer: Louis is the son of a Tonkinese
woman and a Chinese soldier. His opium den is the last of the great Saigonese
fumeurs, catering to a mixed clientele. He knows that Patty Holeran is a dope
smuggler with a base in the Triangle, and that she is a great kaitong. He also
knows just about everything about sex.
6. What are the Tcho-Tcho or Trung-Cho? Answer: A tribe expelled from Tibet for
practicing cannibalism and black magic. Groups have settled in China, Malaysia,
and Burma, and one village in Vietnam. They are utterly abominable. They
worship Shub-Niggurath with human sacrifice, use her Milk to fertilize their fields,
and plunder and eat anyone who gets near enough. In their case genocide would be
downright praiseworthy.
7. What is happening at the mysterious mountain in Laos? Answer: The Tcho-Tchos
and Nyarlathotep are producing food on the slopes because underneath lives the
larval Great Old One Qaggjhaqq-Unglorh. This being eats the human herds that
are bred in the antechamber of his cave, which is actually his mouth. The laboratory
in the hill tunnels has a door that opens onto his flesh, which is the source for the
arcane chemicals used to reduce a human body to its essential salts and restore it
from them. Schwärmer uses the place for his rites, and has come to initiate a new
member of his band and to revive Alec. Depending on the Keeper's whim, this may
or may not be possible.
8. What is happening at the seaside at the archaeological site? Why do the natives fear
it? What do the Chinese carvings mean? Answer: The site is a Chinese temple
erected in the 1400s by Cheng He, the Muslim eunuch who sailed to Africa. In
Arabia, he became aware of the existence of the Necronomicon, and reproduced a
copy by writing Chinese characters to represent the Arabic text and then tattooing
them onto a hundred Nubian slavegirls in white ink. The girls would not survive
the return trip, so at the temple site he had them flayed and the book bound from
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their hides. The natives buried the temple because it symbolized Chinese
domination. Under it is a Champa temple to the Hinduized Mythos gods of the
Indian subcontinent. Under that is a prehuman shrine. The carvings replicate the
Necronomicon in Arabic and Chinese and the Rlyeh Texts in Chinese. They also
warn of the danger that the temples guarded against: that the evil ones met at this
place.
9. What is the horrible drug called hammer? Who makes it, and from what? Why?
Answer: The Army refined it from the hallucinogenic mushrooms of the Tcho-Tcho.
They believed that the fighting frenzy that the drug produced could be controlled.
They were wrong.
10. What are the dreams that investigators have? Why do they involve the
Captain? Answer: The dreams are Schwärmer's dreams, his happy memories of
boyhood times with Alec. The Dreamlands experiences come to those who are
ready.
11. Who is the investigator who enters the game as an adoptee? How can he use his
unusual origin to help the player-investigators? Answer: He is a Ghoul in human
form. At maturity he starts to change, and as the game progresses he will center
more and more on death and corpses. He can enter the Dreamlands awake, a feat
impossible to most.
12. Who are the whisperers in darkness? Why do they avoid the prehistoric monastery?
What is the stone and what does it do? What can be done about it? Answer: They
are the fungi from Yuggoth. They cannot enter the monastery because the chant of
the monks would cause their bodies to explode. The stone allows them to assume
human form and breathe hot sticky air with no visible discomfort.
13. Why did Ho visit the cannibal fortress many times? What did he do there? Who is
the pregnant woman and what will happen to her and her child? Answer: He sought
to impregnate a woman so that he could return as his own son even if the plot to
cook him up from his salts should fail(as, historically, it did). The child will rule
Vietnam when he becomes aware that he is his father as well as himself. He will be
a part of the Mythos plot to take over the world by reviving the great dead.
14. Who are the final movers behind this? What do they want? Who is Patty Holeran?
Answer: Patty is Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos. She plans to spread drug
addiction, witchcraft, and AIDS throughout the world to ruin human society. She
knows that the Vietnam War, the French colonization, and the Chinese invasion
were all a plot to keep Vietnam a nightmarish backwater so that the Fungi had a
safe route to the sea.
If the game was set in the Sixties, it is over upon the return of the dreaming investigators
to the prehistoric monastery in the Lao hills. The game can simply end there and the
characters be retired, never to be heard from again. Or the Keeper can play out the trek
from the mountains back through enemy territory to South Vietnam and some safety (or
Thailand and less safety). The characters may reappear in a Cthulhu Now campaign as
fathers or patrons of modern characters, or even be characters themselves-who better to
delve dark mysteries than those who have already fought them on the other side of the
world? In a Cthulhu 20s game, the Sixties characters would have more trouble appearing,
and would likely lose some SAN just trying to adjust to being marooned in the past. Their
advanced knowledge and skills could prove useful if handled properly (bets on the Stock
Exchange, anyone?) or very dangerous (“What do you mean, “Free Love”?). An especially
vicious idea for Keepers who have not used Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is to have the Vietnam
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veterans appear as a result of Lostalus Black's conjuring during a meeting of “Look to the
Future”. Black, being one and the same as Hei-Ren-Tze or Patty Holeran, might choose to
let the investigators go freely. For the dreaming 90s characters, this would be a further
wrinkle.
The Keeper can work up a sequel set in Laos, as this is where the action ends. The
investigators could pursue the plots of the fungi, who are everywhere. They could seek
employment with the opium lords in the Golden Triangle. They could fight for the Royal
Lao government, the Pathet Lao, the KMT Fifth Army, the Burmese Communists, the Shan
United Army, or the Muppets. They could do whatever the Keeper lead them to do. So far
the story is written. What happens next is up to you. Good hunting.
CTHULHU AND CHRIST: RELIGION IN TICKETS FOR A PRAYER WHEEL

H. P. Lovecraft was a devout atheist. A childhood in the essentially post-Christian
atmosphere of turn of the century New England shaped this attitude, and a life in the
intellectual circles of science fiction and fantasy writers reinforced it. Lovecraft's world was
a mindless dance of molecules void of reason or plan, and humans who think otherwise get
nothing but trouble. The cosmos is indifferent to human wants and wishes, an example
being the blind mindless Azathoth, the idiot god at the center of the universe. The
dominance of man of Earth was an illusion born of human ignorance; other sentient races
had ruled the world before him and would rule it after. Man was destined to become
extinct and would have no effect on the course of world affairs beyond a footnote or two in
the records of the Great Race of Yith. Religion was either self-delusion, usually in the mind
of and inferior human being, or was a front for the manipulations of the Great Old Ones.
The "gods" of the Dreamlands, or Great Ones, are not indifferent to human wishes, but even
Randolph Carter is not able to speak to them, and they are really beings of dream in any
case. While Lovecraft is not as hostile to religion in general and Christianity in specific as
his earlier contemporary Mark Twain, religion doesn't come off looking too good in his work.
All this changes when the Mythos enters the hands of other writers. Many after
Lovecraft wrote Mythos stories, the most notable being August Derleth. In his tales, the
Mythos becomes dualistic. Derleth, a lapsed Catholic, assumed Elder Gods of good who had
fought the Cthulhoids and driven them down. These Elder Gods are ill-defined. The game
Call of Cthulhu ignores the Elder Gods, and for good reason: Lovecraft did not invent them,
and they are so poorly described that it would not be very interesting to use them. But the
mention of the Elder Gods brings up an important point. Lovecraft's eccentric Anglo-Saxon
dilettantes are the original Call of Cthulhu characters, but they are not typical Tickets
characters any more than they are typical human beings. No such people fought in the
Vietnam War, and to import them or their moral framework is to grossly misrepresent war
and warriors. A mad mishmash of religious expression flavors the thirty years of the war,
from the Spartan Communist piety of the VC cadres to the evangelical oddities of the
Americans and the intense weirdness of the Cao Dai. How do the varieties of human
religious experience and the ways that they affect human personality, nationality, and
character relate to the Cthulhu Mythos, and how do religious beliefs and practices affect
human response to the Mythos?
We can offer a simple answer. From the researches of Phileus Sadowsky, the renowned
Bulgarian occultist, we know that the Mythos was known in almost all ancient human
cultures. The name Cthulhu was known in China, Palestine, Arabia, Greenland, India, and
many other places; and is mentioned in the Bible twice(in two different forms). The major
religions of the world, such as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and others, begin
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with a ban, common to them all, on the worship of idols or of other gods. In the past,
rationalist scholars have called such commandments proof of blind ignorance or prejudice.
They ask what harm is done when prayers are offered to idols, or to other gods. The
obvious answer, to any student of the occult is that these religious laws have a very real
meaning. They existed to suppress the Mythos, whose destruction was the aim of all major
human religions. No society worthy of the name could exist unless the Cthulhu cult and its
ilk were abolished, and so great religions came into existence. The god or gods established
by these faiths were of varying nature, and their existence is often doubted in a universe
full of pain and suffering. However, next to the entities of the Mythos, anything was
preferable.
JUST A DREAM
These sequences are intended for the referee who wants the campaign to take on greater
depth or who feels that his players would be interested by the more complete exfoliation of
the plot that they offer.
There are three ways that the referee can include the sequences. First, if he has no
characters who are experienced dreamers, he can simply insert them as regular dreams and
play them as solo runs between gaming sessions. If some players have visited the
Dreamlands of H.P. Lovecraft, the referee can use the Tickets dream sequences as openings
to the Lovecraftian dreamworld. The dreams taking place on Earth, but in the past, are
actually the Captain’s dreams, carried to investigators by his sorcerous powers. These all
have to do with his boyhood friend, Alec Baldwin, the loss of whom began Schwärmer’s
plunge to Mythos madness. They have two uses; first, to explain the mystery if the
investigators have trouble finding out what happened by other means, and second, to
enable the investigators to feel more fully the tragedy that lies at the root of the Captain’s
evil plans.

The Captain’s Dreams
The dreams are in no particular order, but cover a period of five years, from 1939 when the
two friends met, until Baldwin’s death in 1944. They may repeat, and more than one
person may have the same one, in which case the referee can compare reactions. If
Schwärmer does not yet have a favorite among the players, use their reactions to these
sequences to select one. The loser will be the one who grasps the implications of the scenes
most deeply.
The dreamer is walking down a hall at night, in the barracks-like dorm of a

military school. The latrine is lit up, and muffled curses come from within.
The dreamer is not himself (if the dreaming character is a woman, she may
voluntarily drop a point of SAN upon finding herself a male) but a smaller,
younger person-the latrine mirrors show an adolescent Anglo-Saxon. The
dreamer knows that the noise is an illegal and violent hazing session. He may
turn around and go back to bed; these dreams bring knowledge but do not
compel. In the latrine, two bullies known to the dreamer's new self harass a
small ninth grader, a newcomer whose English is broken and heavily
accented. The boy’s face drips, and he is gasping from being held with his face
in water and gut-punched. The dreamer, if he wishes to fight the two bullies,
will find that they flee after one has been hit hard. Their victim will be
incoherent to English-speakers. Those investigators who know German will
68

find his speech intelligible, though laced with odd idiom. He will thank his
rescuer profusely. The faces of these two characters will be familiar to any
who have seen the photo at the bottom of the Captain’s trunk, but they are
much younger, and the difference in height is great. The dreamer will likely
help the little guy back to his room, and will exchange a few words, the light of
hero worship already burning in the smaller boyís blue eyes. He will tell the
dreamer that his name is Jakob Franz Schwärmer.
***
The dreamer stands in a doorway in a creaking old house. He looks into a

room with high windows, a dresser and desk, and a bed where a blond boy
with a crewcut lies tossing and turning. Rain and cold wind lash the house.
The desk holds a framed picture of a stout pretty woman no longer young, in a
dress that ignores the 1930s fashions, and a letter in a language that
resembles German, and is actually Flemish. The dressers holds sheets folded
with lavender, and winter blankets; on top are a comb, brush, and other
grooming articles laid out with precision. The suitcase on the floor contains
clothes that look as if they would fit the boy lying in bed, and awards from a
summer camp run by something called the Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund. If
awakened, he will not be fully aware. If ignored, he will get up, mumbling in
Flemish to himself, and will walk out the door of the room in bare feet and
pajamas, tugging a blanket after him. He is at best half awake. He will go
down the hall to another bedroom, much larger. Here the bookcases are full of
children’s books, classics, and reference works. The walls are full of ship
models, hunting prints, and such. In a four-poster bed, another boy sleeps
peacefully. The insomniac will walk over to the empty side, crawl in, and fall
asleep. The referee should run this scene very carefully, as it’s difficult to
convey the emotions involved. The suggestion might be made to the players,
through their character’s memories of childhood, expressed as a successful
Idea roll, that the insomniac has always been so. Many sleepless children are
indulgently allowed to crawl in bed with their parents, or with a sibling. This
might be what’s happening here. (In fact, it is exactly what was happening,
but was not all that it led to.)
The faces are those of Schwärmer and Baldwin, of course, but younger
than in the pictures. An investigator who already knows of their intimacy will
realize that this was the first night that they spent together.
***
The dreamer finds himself walking down a street in muggy heat. He is not
himself. He wears a gray uniform and marches precisely. The air is full of
magnolia and gardenia scent; itís early fall. A few automobiles roll by. The
marching man turns into the dooryard of an old Episcopal church, and sees
his own reflection in the windows. It is the face from the graduation picture
and no other. Then he sees the freshly turned grave, still lacking a marker,
and awakens. A player who understands fully now may wish to drop SAN, but
this isn’t really necessary.
69

NASTY SURPRISES TABLE
D30 Roll:
1. Large spider
2. Large cockroach, 2D6, able to fly about and buzz loudly, but not deadly
3. Biting ants. Take 1pt damage from bites
4. Scorpion. Make luck roll to avoid being stung. Then make Con rolls to avoid loss of 1
hit point from poison each hr until death or until injection with antivenin
5. Snake, not dangerous
6. Snake, lucky species idolized by Viet, will anger them if killed
7. Snake, poisonous, as scorpion but each minute
8. Snake, 1D6
9. Snake, D%
10. VC bomb, will explode if touched, disguised as random object
11. Ticking bomb, explodes in a few minutes
12. Bomb that will explode if hit or dropped
13. Gas grenade, nerve gas
14. Gas grenade, mustard gas
15. Gas grenade, tear gas(even VC have their off days)
16. Bag of rice, normal in all ways
17. Bag of rice, with any of the above buried in it
18. Crock of stinking rotten tofu, can be sold to Viets as delicacy
19. Insect that carries dysentery
20. Insect that carries malaria
21. Insect that carries yellow fever
22. Weird ritual object(make Idea roll to recognize any Mythos significance)
23. Hornets, as ants but can fly
24. Icky worms. Wash your hands before you eat or catch a tropical disease!
25. Leeches
26-30 Referee's Choice
70

Tahoe Larn, PTY. July 4, 1991
P. 13 Trothy Lane , North Platey, Ca.
Dear Sirs,
I am a Veteran of the Vietnamese Conflict. Recently, as you may be aware,

Vietnam began welcoming visitors from the U.S. as tourists. Although Vietnam
was the scene of much suffering for me, I can not but wish to return to a land so
beautiful and strange ó I am drawn to that county as a moth to a flame.
Because I am personally convinced that forces other then the purely worldly were
at play in Southeast Asia, and still are, I seek the services of Spiritual
Investigators. Your names were recommended by an associate, Laren Patothy,
who read of your earlier work.
I wish you to accompany me to Vietnam. I offer expenses and a fee of $1000.00.

We will take AIR CANADA to Toronto on the 11th, then to Honolulu, Krungthep
and Ho Chi Miinh City. We will have a tour of 9 days, during which I expect, no I
fear, some paranormal incursion. You and Your Associates are to maintain a
watch for any threat, both physical and metaphysical, and take active measures
against them.
Sincerely,
Don Luftbard
71

Tickets For A Prayer Wheel

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Tickets For A Prayer Wheel

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Introduction For the Players .................................................................... 2

ALTERNATE OPENING: GRAY NINETIES DREAMS ......................................................... 3

THE MECHANICS OF THE DREAM ...................................................................... 4

third OPENING: the time gate .................................................................... 5

personnel – referee’s characters ................................................................ 6

an initiatory encounter ......................................................................... 6

the first ticket: first encounters ............................................................... 8

the base ........................................................................................ 8

the opium den ................................................................................... 8

THE MAD CAPTAIN SCHWÄRMER ....................................................................... 9

The final plan ................................................................................. 11

npc statistics ................................................................................. 14

the second ticket: patrolling the earth ........................................................ 16

the assingment ................................................................................. 16

the first day .................................................................................. 17

out of the jungle .............................................................................. 18

albert shiny, war hero ......................................................................... 19

mr. squishy .................................................................................... 19

npc statistics ................................................................................. 20

the third ticket: the cao-dai pagoda (acts 14:11) .............................................. 22

the land ....................................................................................... 22

the village .................................................................................... 23

the pagoda ..................................................................................... 23

the drug (hammer) .............................................................................. 24

pieces, clues and further information .......................................................... 24

the smugglers .................................................................................. 25

npc statistics ................................................................................. 26

the fourth ticket: research ..................................................................... 27

ethnicity in tickets ........................................................................... 30

the green beret bunker ......................................................................... 31

the secret cia drug base in laos ............................................................... 33

the sixth ticket: sauce from the sage .......................................................... 35

the Vietnamese doctor .......................................................................... 35

the catholic priest ............................................................................ 35

co chi nguyet .................................................................................. 36

the vc band .................................................................................... 37

the tcho-tcho village .......................................................................... 37

the seventh ticket: archaeology by the sea ..................................................... 41

the meeting .................................................................................... 41

on the beach .................................................................................. 42

npc statistics ................................................................................. 43

the eighth ticket: to the mountain in laos ..................................................... 45

the situation .................................................................................. 45

the summons from pernell ....................................................................... 45

the flight ..................................................................................... 47

the mountain fortress .......................................................................... 48

the ritual of infinity ......................................................................... 56

who’s there? ................................................................................... 57

killing patty holeran .......................................................................... 58

SCHWÄRMER’s death .............................................................................. 58

the flight ..................................................................................... 59

npc statistics ................................................................................. 59

the ninth ticket: the prehistoric monastary .................................................... 61

Tibet in fact, fiction and mythos .............................................................. 62

the last ticket ................................................................................ 62

endgames: tying up loose ends ................................................................... 65

on the fungi ................................................................................... 65

goals and quests ............................................................................... 65

cthulhu and Christ: religion in tickets for a prayer wheel ..................................... 68

just a dream ................................................................................... 69

nasty surprises table .......................................................................... 71

luftbard letter ................................................................................ 72

THIRD OPENING: THE TIME GATE