Kırşehir earthquake

On April 19th, 1938 the Kırşehir region of Turkey suffered a massive earthquake that killed 224 people. The epicentre is located near Kaman-Kalehöyük, an archeological site that has, since excavations in 1986, revealed artifacts from the Bronze, Iron and Ottoman eras. In 2005 archeologists discovered the world's earliest known example of steel manufacture in the form of a fragment of carbon steel.

We could go down the usual route of blaming the earthquake on a summoning, but there are other possible causes that have been covered up. The fact that we have this archeological treasure trove near by with items from multiple time periods makes me want to invoke some sort of time slip here that drags people into the wrong era. Alternatively we already have stories like The Tomb that create a link between current day (for the dreamer) and the past, allowing items and relationships to be formed. In either case, that carbon steel fragment may be a piece of world war 2 era equipment that had somehow made it's way back through the ages; whether it's wielder was also dragged back is another matter.

Anyway, back to the earthquake. The Tomb doesn't really give us a mythos cause for this as it's going to drive everyone mad. A gateway into a Dream realm however, could. Kaman-Kalehöyük would have also been on numerous caravan routes across Turkey and we all know how shifty some of those caravan owners were (well, they are in folk tales and holywood films, so that's enough right?). Some less scrupulous caravans may have either formed, or used, a gateway to a Dream realm in order to gain power over others, or strange artifacts to trade for profit. The gateway may have been covered over during some big storm in the past, only to be uncovered by a german archeological team in search of mystical powers. I can see this being another location for Walpurgen's experiments in breaching the veil between worlds.

Opening or closing the portal could have caused such a backlash as the fabric of reality is changed that it would cause the same effect as an earthquake.

The Dreamlands

Many of Lovecraft's stories tell of people having exceptionally vivid dreams and losing touch with reality, for example, in Polaris the narrator tells of entering a city in his dreams and, over time, feeling like he is becoming more real in this dream world. He eventually feels that his waking state is actually a dream from which he cannot wake. In some the dreamers are completely aware that they are in the Dreamlands, in others they just catch glimpses of magical (sometimes terrifying)places and beings.

The Dreamland stories begin to be covered with the Achtung! Cthulhu book, Heroes of the Sea. In here it's made clear that the Nazis have discovered a way to create a permanent, mobile portal through which anyone physically enter the Dreamlands, allowing full exploration and exploitation of it's resources. They have also created a drug to allow anyone to be put to sleep and enter the dreamlands that way too. Karl Friedrich Walpurgen, a noted occultist that is working with the Nazis is heavily involved in their investigations to the Dreamlands and their exploitation. Given that we don't ever encounter Walpurgen in the story, we can safely assume that his experiments don't end with this one portal, leaving things open for future nastiness.

Depending on how successful the investigators are in their mission, they may have actually managed to capture the submarine containing the Dreamlands portal, or a sample of the dream drug. Either of these will allow the allies to explore the odd world of Dreams in a more controlled fashion. Even if they don't capture the submarine, or the drugs it should now become apparent to the players that there is another world that sits along side ours that isn't quite right and should spark some investigations into further dream related apparel. Most cultures have some belief in dreams, be it holy visions or mystical rights... but the most obvious ones are probably the Native American tribes.

Native Americans saw dreams as a means of obtaining sacred wisdom and guidance for life and that their ancestor's spirits would visit them at night; most likely they knew the secrets of the Dreamlands and how to access them, but how will you persuade them to help in a war that isn't (yet) theirs?

 

 

The Tomb

Reading through the various Lovecraft tales recently has started to spark some ideas for potential side adventures, or plot points, so I thought I'd start to log them here in case they are of any use to others. We'll be starting with the 1922 short story, The Tomb. This story seems like a fairly simple one to weave into a WW2 setting as it only involves having a location...

In the original story a daydreamer called Jervas Dudley discovers a locked mausoleum near a ruined mansion.  Sleeping near the tomb eventually ends up with him being committed as no-one believes the various events that happen to him.

There are two obvious uses for this one:

1) The players accidentally sleep near a similar mausoleum (or similarly twisted location) and start to encounter odd situations that others do not.

2) The players are sent to investigate a spate of allied soldiers going insane while camped near a ruined castle or mansion.

Quite what the players or soldiers encounter or dream is entirely up to you; there could be something important that happened in the area that affects the current mission, or an important artifact like Dudley's key that need to be unearthed.

In the story Jervas finds a figurine that he believes looks very like him, he also finds a coffin with his name on. If you want to start twisting your player's minds you could have them find something with their name or likeness on as well; for example if you're using option 2 above, you could have the soldiers believe they have been trapped in the castle cellar after a cave in that killed most of the inhabitants. If the  investigators uncover the cellar, the names of all the soldiers could be carved into the walls... but no way for the soldiers to have ever actually found their way in to carve them.