Crimson Letters

A Call of Cthulhu 7e scenario, found in the Keeper’s Rulebook.

Crimson Letters is a great scenario if you and your group likes investigation, puzzles, and quirky NPCs. It plays like a whodunnit murder mystery, with the investigators trying to figure out how a Miskatonic University professor died in his locked office of a strange seizure, and where the valuable papers have gone that he was appraising. With a full cast of interesting, distinct and memorable NPCs, an emerging monster, a lot of handouts available online, and an exploration of the city of Arkham, it allows for a lot of creativity and fun for both players and keepers. And to top it off, as a keeper you get to pick who the culprit is!

The scenario starts with a short history of the story; which relevant events have happened in and around Arkham in the past, and what has transpired over the past couple of months leading up to the professors death? It then gives you a full, detailed background on each relevant NPC (including a portrait, and advice for what to adapt if you pick this NPC as the culprit). Finally, it describes some of the relevant locations your investigators might explore, and gives some tips on how to build tension and dread. Stat blocks for each NPC and the monster are included.

Keeper’s preparations

For keepers, the scenario is fairly easy to prepare. The text is ordered logically and systematically, and finding info during play is easy. There’s no handouts in the scenario itself, but I recommend this great set of handouts by Evo Eduardo Zanin, which includes different versions of some handouts depending on your culprit and the order you want to give information to your players. It’s amazing, it looks great, and it really makes the investigation feel real.

As for the NPC’s, I recommend making a profile for each of them to reference during play, describing what they look like, how they behave, what they know, what they will say and what they will hide, and what they want to achieve. I printed out the portraits to show my players who they are dealing with, as it helps bring the NPCs to life and makes them even more distinct and memorable that they alreay are from the scenario.

The monster slowly emerges during play, as characters who have touched the papers are cursed, and slowly degenerate into paranoia and madness, or get killed by the horror. This means it helps to prepare the signs of passage that the scenario describes. It gives some examples of clues and effects for the investigators to witness or discover that build up to the final escaping of the Horror in Ink. I would advise to expand this list, depending on how long you expect the investigators to take. Mine took a couple in-game days to solve it, but other groups have rushed through it in a single in-game day, so anticipate what your players will do and how quickly you need to build up the horror.

The players

My group enjoyed the scenario immensely, as they love puzzles and investigation.

The clues are spread out over mutliple locations or conversations with multiple NPC’s, slowly uncovering the truth piece by piece, whilst the horror gains ground.

The horror

There are two “horrors” that the players slowly unveil during their investigation. The first they will probably hear of, is the witch Keziah Mason, who lived in Arkham when the town was just founded, and was prosecuted as a witch and child-killer during the Arkham Witch Trials in the 1690s. It’s unclear whether she was actually killed or escaped. Not much is known about the Arkham Witch Trials, which is why the papers that the professor was appraising are so valuable.

The second horror, which they might only clue into later, is the horror in ink. A monster that was entrapped into Keziah Masons papers with arcane diagrams. Her papers were seized upon her arrest and included in the Witch Trial Papers. When the artist starts forging copies of the papers, and makes mistakes in copying the diagrams, the evil starts leaking out and the monster starts beating at its prison, slowly breaking out. Once it is fully released, it will wreak havoc on its surroundings before fleeing back into its own dimension.

This horror in ink is the final challenge to the players, though they might not know it until after the scenario has “ended”. If they find the papers, and do not know about the horror, or are not careful, they might get cursed themselves. When they hand the papers over to the Dean of the university or to Abner Wick, they might consider their job done and the scenario over. But over the following days, they might realise they themselves have been cursed, and will have to go back and either retrieve the papers to destroy the curse, or find other means of escaping it, before it destroys them.

In summary

A wonderful scenario, with lots of investigation and roleplay, a slow build up of horror, and a lot of opportunities for world building as the investigators explore Arkham.

Perhaps a bit tough for beginning keepers with all the NPCs, motives and clues to track, (maybe play it after you’ve done a couple other scenarios first). If you like roleplay and investigation, and you and your group are in for a treat!