Call of Cthulhu / Scooby-Doo
The Call of Cthulhu event (named “Danger-Prone Daphne”) involved the team of “Cthulhu-busters” of Freddie, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy (with Scooby), from the Saturday morning cartoon, along with four “generic” characters. I played Freddie, the stalwart leader, who was not to be trusted with any firearms. Daphne had had a series of unlucky accidents in previous sessions (including Freddie hitting her in the back with a shotgun), finally having her soul placed into a succubus, her own body having been possessed by someone else and killed earlier.
The whole scenario was about picking up the pieces after the previous session, which saw us kill Aleister Crowley physically and trap his spirit in the Dreamlands. The gateway to the Dreamlands was accompanied by a set of teleportation booths; we knew the destinations of all except one, and that was marked by a symbol that the players would recognize but that the characters wouldn’t. We experimented with the unknown booth for a while (with no success) and then used another booth to return to Arkham to investigate Crowley’s quarters in town.
While we were in Arkham, Daphne and Freddie went out to dinner, followed by Velma, who thought that Daphne was acting very much out of character. (Considering her past treatment, it was no surprise that she hated men.) When Daphne and Freddie went up to their room, she followed, keeping in touch with the others by radio, only to be mysteriously silenced. The rest of the people showed up, to find Freddie and Velma asleep and Daphne missing.
When the finally woke Freddie (me) up, I told how I had seen Crowley barge into the room and toss some glittering dust at Daphne and me, and then I fell asleep. It turns out that Crowley had access to an arcane device that allowed him to take physical form in the waking world for limited periods. Since it was readily apparent that Crowley had kidnapped Daphne, we had to return to the Dreamlands again to rescue her.
When we got back into the Dreamlands, we faced a long trek, following Crowley’s trail, until we found them in the large port city. There we saw a large golden barge, bearing the same symbol that we didn’t recognize before. When the GM said “golden barges”, everything clicked and I said to the GM “You are one sick puppy!” The symbol was the eight-armed symbol of Chaos, and the barges were Melnibonéan, straight out of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. Crowley has got some pretty powerful allies in the Dreamlands!
Late that night while we were sleeping at the inn we were visited by two beings, one a large ogre-ish creature, the other a small, lumped, boxy humanoid, who introduced themselves by saying “Duh, our master sent us to help you.” Well, we’re in the Dreamlands, right? What’s more natural to find in the Dreamlands than the Sandman? In this case, the Jack Kirby DC comics character, and these were his two assistants. At this point, recognizing the characters, I stood up and started (faking) pounding my head on a nearby girder in disbelief. They gave us packets of sleeping sand and magic whistles that can put people to sleep to help us.
Later that same night, using the sand and the whistles, we snuck aboard the Melnibonéan ship and rescued Daphne. Well, we sort of snuck aboard. Just after we rescued Daphne and got back out on to the main aft deck, being very, very quiet, what do we hear but “Our master sent us to help you.” Guess who’s back? Unfortunately that woke the dragon whose (huge) cabin was in the middle of the aft deck. The dragon, being magical, was not affected by the whistles or the sand, and it took a bundle of dynamite to stun and damage it. Everyone jumped into the water to escape the blast, and that was where the scenario ended.
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