This last Saturday, my group started the beginning of the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. We started off with a dinner of Peruvian quinoa salad and Pisco sours. I wish I had learned about these earlier in the summer, I would’ve been shoving them in my face on the really hot days. We’re starting off with a group of four (It would’ve been a group of five except my girlfriend got a free ticket to the hippie dirt rave.) composed of:

Lillian Fogg- Museum curator

Lydia Lisbon- Photographer

Chomden Tsomo- Mountaineer

Curtis Flanagan- Author

WARNING: If you’re planning on playing the campaign and not run it for others, you should stop reading now.

For their own reasons, each of them found the newspaper article about Augustus Larkin’s expedition in Peru to an exciting endeavor. They each contacted him to express their interest in joining and to present their bona fides. A few days later they each received a telegram, welcoming them to the expedition and to meet to discuss the plan for the expedition in Lima, Peru on March 18th, 1921.

*The romance of chugging at snot speed in a steamer that could go down at any second.*

The investigators get to Peru and meet their patron at the Bar Cordano in Lima. They enter to meet Larkin along with his aide du camp, Luis de Mendoza, and another member of the expedition, folklorist Jessie Hughes. There is a chill between de Mendoza and Hughes that is noticeable, but is moved to the background as Larkin and the investigators introduce themselves and talk goes to Larkin’s plan.

Larkin explains to the investigators that after a chance meeting with a farmer in the highlands of Peru, he is sure he knows the location of a lost pyramid filled with vast treasure, a treasure he intends to find first. He tells the investigators of how the farmer he had met there told him of the gold artifacts that his own father had found, as well as the general location of the pyramid. When the investigators asked for evidence, Larkin looked around to make sure they were not being watched then pulled out gold cup and chalice, both obviously old.

Larkin explained that he had bought the two pieces from the farmer but could not get the man to show him exactly where the location of the pyramid was. Lillian asked to examine the pieces. She assessed that the artifacts were definitely old, but they were from different cultures and about a thousand years apart in age.

Larkin explains his plan: On Monday morning the expedition will meet in front of the Hotel España where he and de Mendoza are staying. He has hired trucks to take them from Lima to the city of Puno. In Puno, he will get supplies and burros and hire a few men. From there they will trek to the pyramid which should take three days, four days maximum. With the research he had done, he is sure he knows where the location of the pyramid is. He would not risk money and his delicate health otherwise.

When asked if he could share his research, Larkin states that he had burned it to keep other, less scrupulous treasure hunters from making him a target in their own quest for the treasure. This threw the party off-guard, but he assures them that his memory is exquisite and he has forgotten none of it.

With logistics explained and all other questions answered, Larkin tells the investigators to enjoy the weekend in Lima and that he will see them on Monday. The investigators notice that Larkin is looking much more peaked than when they first met him.

Hughes asks the others if they wanted to grab something to drink and discuss the expedition. The investigators agree and they order a round of refreshments. He asks what the party thinks of Larkin’s plan and story. There is a general consensus that his story is odd, and not to be fully trusted. Hughes admits to the party that his name is in fact Jackson Elias. He writes about cults and secret societies, and he believes that Larkin and de Mendoza are much more dangerous than they lead on.

Elias came to Peru after researching his new book in New York. He learned of a mythic vampire type of creature in Peru called the Kharisiri. The Kharisiri were purported to be white-faced men who would suck the fat out of farmers and leave them desiccated husks. As the time when the myth of the Kharisiri coincided with the coming to the conquistadores, and there is no real love of the memory of the conquistadores amongst the rural folk of Peru, the metaphor of white men sucking the fat out of farmers isn’t a particularly deep one. He thinks that the Kharisiri are a death cult that have existed since the time of the conquistadores, and one that could still be performing ritual murders today. Elias decided to make the Kharisiri the focus of his new book and booked passage to Peru.

While in Peru researching the Kharisiri, Hughes was warned by rural folks to beware of the Kharisiri, and to beware of Luis de Mendoza for he is one of them. With this de Mendoza as his first link into the death cult, he did all but avoid him. Elias followed leads he could find about the man and tracked him to Puno. While there, he learned of de Mendoza’s association with Larkin, and Larkin’s plans to explore a lost pyramid. Figuring the pyramid is a central base of the cult, Elias joined the expedition under an assumed name, lest Larkin find out who he truly is.

Elias learn that Larkin had been shot down by locals when he tried to initially put together the expedition, and had resorted to hiring foreigners. Elias had befriended Professor Nemesio Sanchez of the Archaeology department at National University of San Marcos. Prof. Sanchez told Elias that after he had read the newspaper article about the expedition, he had tried multiple times to meet Larkin to discuss it. Every time he had been rebuffed. Prof. Sanchez suspects that Larkin is nothing more than a common treasure hunter, stealing the history of Peru for filthy lucre.

For this reason Prof. Sanchez wants to initiate his own expedition and get to the pyramid before Larkin does, making sure enough publicity occurs to keep Larkin from just stealing the rich cultural history of Peru and then bouncing. The investigators agree to help. Prof. Sanchez tells them of his plan to get the steamer from Lima to Mollendo, then take a train from there to Puno, then on to the pyramid from there. Prof. Sanchez’s plan could have them at the pyramid almost two days before Larkin.

Prof. Sanchez tells the investigators one of his students, Trinidad Rizo, has been assisting him in researching the pyramid, and that she’s downstairs in the storeroom looking through the artifacts and documents related to the pyramid. Eager to see the Archaeology department’s storeroom, most of the party goes down to help Rizo while Chomden stayed with Elias and the professor in his office.

When the investigators get to the storeroom they find a dessicated, practically mummified corpse dressed in modern clothes, a ragged hole in the corpse’s chest. In one of its pockets were notes regarding The Final Confessions of Gaspar Figueroa, a 17th century conquistador.

The confession tells of Gaspar and his fellow conquistadores hearing a pyramid in the Andean highlands, supposedly filled with treasure. Setting off to the mountains southwest of Lake Titicaca (We made a drinking game out of that. It went poorly.) they found the pyramid. Discovering a maze-like tunnel system under the pyramid, they found the tunnel walls had an ornate gold inlay throughout them. The men took a chunk of the gold inlay.

Figueroa goes on to write of how an evil sickness overtook his cohorts, turning them into pale, corpselike shades of themselves. Roaring about their great hunger, they pursued him. One of them, by the name of de Mendoza (dun dun dun!!!!) attached himself to Figueroa like a leech, leaving him to shoot de Mendoza in the head to get away.

Figueroa made his way back to Lima with some of the gold, including what was taken from the wall, a pale shade of his former self. He wrote of hearing his friends’ voices, wailing in piteous hunger, as well as another voice. It was ancient and powerful, trying to get him to come back to the pyramid. The voice told him how to contact it, but Figueroa was too terrified to try.

The notes end with the priest who performed Final Unctions stating that Figueroa died the day after he completed his confession.

Next to the corpse they find a small wooden crate smashed open with a piece of gold inlay within it. There is burnt skin on the cold gold.

Come back next month for more!

Masks of Nyarlathotep: Session 1