Dead Light and Other Dark Turns

Dead Light and Other Dark Turns is a scenario collection for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu 7th edition that includes revised, new, and DiY content centered around the “You’re out driving and everything goes really wrong.” trope. It includes an edited version of the survival horror scenario “Dead Light”, a new, bizarre scenario entitled “The Saturnine Chalice”, and a handful of scenario seeds for you to make your own scenarios out of.

Dead Light, originally published in 2013, is a short survival horror-themed scenario that can be played as a one-off, or part of a larger campaign when all your investigators can’t make it. If they’re driving on a back road somewhere, it’s easily adaptable.

The scenario involves the investigators driving home on a dark and stormy night when suddenly a young woman appears in the road, almost getting run over. The investigators find her distraught to the point of hysteria. The scenario continues, an unknown Mythos horror gets involved, a community secret is learned, small town crime occurs, and not necessarily in that order.

Dead Light reads like a horror movie and gives the keeper plenty of opportunities to play it up as such. The story structure is straight ahead enough that scenes can be embellished upon without messing up the ongoing story. Think of all the horror movies you’ve seen involving strangers trapped in a diner together. Think about all the ways you though you could do it better. Now’s your chance. 

This edit of Dead Light takes care of some minor inconsistencies that were in the original, streamlining it and getting rid of unnecessary questions. They also improved on the handouts for the scenario, making parts of its mystery much more detailed and less likely to turn the scenario into a wild goose chase. 

My one gripe would be that when they edited the scenario, they didn’t do away with the antique chain and coin-like medal. It literally has nothing to do with anything. I’m not a fan of red herrings, and the scenario would lose absolutely nothing by its absence. 

The second scenario in the collection is “Saturnine Chalice” and hohohoooooleeeeee crap is it a thing. There is more packed into this single-session scenario than I’ve seen in some two-to-three session scenarios.  

The premise is simple enough: Wealthy occultist tries to use the Book of Abramelin to summon his Holy Guardian Angel to resurrect his dead wife.

 Needless to say, everything goes sideways for said occultist. Daughter of said occultist tries to use the book to find out what happened to her father, things go poorly for her, too. The hired help of said occultist come back from vacation, things go boobies up for them too. So now you essentially have the House That WTF Built. How can it possibly get worse? Well, the investigators show up. 

The long narrative and investigation in Saturnine Chalice is complex as it is packed. Part of the investigation is the solving of occult puzzles, which can be done either by combined rolls or, if you’re feeling like a particularly challenging keeper, you can give your investigators the opportunity to try actually solving them. This is an innovative, immersive part of the scenario, and not a little bit challenging. I could see players obsessing over the puzzles and turning the one-night  play session into at least a two-nighter, so be careful with presenting actual solving of the puzzles as an option. Even so, it’s a wonderful addition to the scenario. 

The narrative itself becomes horrible (as it should) and surrealistic. The dinner party scene will give investigators a definite sense that everything is so far from alright in the house, and gives the keeper a great opportunity for role-playing, as do the conversation points with the house’s “residents” which lead to some really disturbing “Aha!” moments. 

The complexity of the Saturnine Chalice is pretty advanced for a single-session scenario, and I recommend reading it a few times before attempting to run it. Even so, I personally think it’s the gem of the two scenarios in the collection. 

The collection also includes six “Out for a drive we should be home soon oh crap what just happened” scenario seeds to be fleshed out into one-night scenarios or part of an on-going campaign. None of them are particularly horrific in their brevity, but do definitely lend themselves to some interesting ideas, so they’re a welcome addition in that sense. 

Overall, Dead Light and Other Dark Turns is a strong, lean collection that provides a lot of high-quality playtime for the small size, and is a definite recommendation for keepers and players across the spectrum of experience.  

Dead Light and Other Dark Turns is currently available in PDF format directly from Chaosium.