Replay of Type 40’s Call of Cthulhu Seeds of Terror scenario, Endless Light, written by Allan Carey.
This game of Type 40’s Seeds of Terror scenario, Endless Light, was run on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server. I highly recommend the scenario for just about any group, and you can read my review of it here, complete with a short spoiler-lite version for players and a longer spoiler-full review for keepers. You can find it for purchase it here (DriveThruRPG single), or here (DTRPG Bundle), or here (Type 40 Patreon). I also highly recommend checking out the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server for conversation with other Call of Cthulhu and TTRPG fans, as well as plentiful pickup games. And of course, the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast is wonderful.
This narrative replay is completely full of spoilers. If you are a player, I would suggest not reading any further – but do share it with your friendly keeper!
A few miles off of Maine, in a particularly dangerous stretch of coastal waters, a lighthouse sat upon the bleak rock of Midland Skerry. Its keepers, Joseph and Amy Bethel, expecting a baby in the coming months, had ordered a cottage to be constructed. But first, the craggy surface of Midland Skerry would have to be blasted flat for the build site.
The rugged island rose over the horizon, a lonely grey lump in the blue seas and skies surrounding it, as the supply boat Dark Horse plied through the calm waters. Fretting over her equipment, particularly her dynamite, the engineer Genevieve Wallace, head of excavation operation, once more ran down her mental list of preparations. At the till of the boat, Captain Doherty Graves loosely gripped the wheel – not at all difficult, given paltry waves – and puffed at his pipe. First-mate Bill ‘Happy’ McCready scowled and stomped up and down the deck, having little to do and being none-too pleased about the unneeded relaxation. Studious Robin Jennings, the boat steward, checked the boat stores and ensured everything the engineer needed would be ready to unload. And staying out of Happy’s path, young shipmate Geoffrey Hyatt waited on his captain’s beck and call, even though there had been not one beck nor call since setting off from York Harbour.
The Dark House slowed as it rounded Midland Skerry, slipping between the main island and its miniature companion Little Skerry, a wind and wave blasted spike a hundred yards to the north. The lighthouse keepers, Joseph and Amy Bethel, waited on the stubby dock as the Dark House came to a stop. The sailors quickly tied up their vessel while Captain Graves and Genevieve greeted the keepers. The couple were friendly, glad to have company and excited to get to work building the home for their future family, and warmly greeted each sailor as they finished securing the boat.
Then the dock beneath them creaked, and the island itself groaned, the reverberation shaking the group. Joseph Bethel quickly explained that there were frequent tremors, but always small and never dangerous. Amy’s pursed lips showed she was less convinced, and still concerned, Genevieve asked to see the excavation site to make sure it was still safe for blasting. The Bethels agreed, and with the sailors hauling Genevieve’s equipment, clambered up the rocky shore.
As they neared the site, Genevieve asked the Bethels if they had a map, and Joseph provided her with a detailed sketch of the island he had made during his frequent hikes. Genevieve quickly noted cave entrance markings on map, and when asked, Joseph explained that tunnels pockmarked much of the island. Alarmed again, Joseph assured her that the build site had been chosen specifically to avoid the tunnels. Seeing he hadn’t completed assured her, Joseph promised later to show her a map of the tunnels he’d explored so far.
Despite the fine weather that day, a sudden rush of clouds gathered over the island in the early afternoon. A downpour soon broke out and the Bethels urged everyone to shelter in the lighthouse while the squall passed. The captain and Genevieve hurried after their hosts, letting Happy and Robin pack the sensitive equipment, namely the dynamite, to the lighthouse’s storage annex, while Geoffrey went to make sure the Dark Horse was secure. Waves beat against the boat hard. While Geoffrey may have been few in years, he knew his knots, and soon the Dark Horse held fast against the dock.
Dry and warm in the lighthouse, Amy Bethel tried to make her guests comfortable, heating some coffee and preparing a stew, and pointed out some books, mostly passed lighthouse keepers’ journal. While Doherty accepted some coffee, heavily fortified with a pour from his flask, and settled in a chair to weather the storm, Joseph dug out the cave map for Genevieve. It indeed showed that the excavation site and the lighthouse stood on sturdy ground, but she stared wide-eyed at the web of tunnels that wormed throughout the rest of the island, gathering in a large subterranean sinkhole of sorts in the centre of the island. Worse, she realised that the entire shore seemed to be slowly crumbling into the sea. Another deep rumble from the island beneath their feet punctuated her worry, but Joseph once again assured them it was just a little tremor, probably the rock settling due to the storm.
Joseph himself grew more concerned about about the weather though, and as the clouds darkened and rain fell in sheets, he went up to start up the light to guide any ships caught in the storm. Robin went up as well to see if he could help. Soon the beam of light scythed through the downpour. Joseph elected to stay with the light, and so Robin made his way back down, but something caught his eye through one of the windows. He squinted, the sea nearly black now, but then gaped when the sweeping light illuminated a ship floundering in the waves. A ship attached to broken apart dock.
He raced down the stairs, shouting that the Dark House had slipped free. With a bark the captain tore out the door, his crew in tow. But there was little they could do but stand and be soaked through, watching the waves toss about their ship, still moored to the pier, itself ripped off the island. And then like a toy in a bath, the Dark House was dashed against the craggy spire of Little Skerry. With a sigh Captain Doherty slunk back into the lighthouse, lit up his pipe, and sat dripping and puffing away. The crew settled into the lighthouse – they could only wait out the storm and hope for the next ship.
Robin thought to help Amy with the cooking, but she shooed him after the first pot of stew ended up on the floor. He instead leafed through the journals and was soon engrossed in the tall tales of the past lighthouse keepers. A pattern quickly emerged – the earthquakes. One old keeper had written that when the island shakes mermaids would arise, another that the quakes brought out ‘wyrms from the deep,’ and one more that a great storm had sunk half the island, leaving only Little Skerry remaining. Amy laughed it all off when Robin shared what he’d read, saying that fishermen had crazed stories and myths for every mile of coast along New England, and Midland Skerry was not different. She emphatically stated that just a soon as the storm passed, everything would be fine.
The ground leapt up. Plates shattered, books fell, and a great crash came from the storage annex. Amy rushed to the annex door, then cried out. The floor had collapsed into a gaping maw of darkness, consuming Genevieve’s equipment, along with the lighthouse’s supply of paraffin barrels. The faint crashing of the rolling barrels could be heard echoing down the sloped tunnel. Amy begged the group to get at at least one of the barrels, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to keep the light fueled, and ships would be sure to run aground in this storm.
Electric torches in hand, the crew scrambled down the hole. They crept down the dark and dank tunnels, leading down into the heart of the island. The rock around them was pockmarked with scores of small, foot-wide holes, making their footing even more precarious along with the frequent aftershocks. Captain Doherty peered into one of the holes, and in a flash of his torch, he thought he saw something rope-like, black and slimy, shift. He hurried on his crew with renewed urgency.
The slope leveled off into a large opening, deep in the island, and the barrels and dynamite waited in a heap. Genevieve grabbed the dynamite while Happy and Shipmate Geoffrey started rolling the barrel back up the tunnel. Taking up the rear, Captain Doherty heard a deep rumble, but not like a regular quake. Something rustled, squished. With a gulp he peered through one of the small holes at his feet. A mass roiled beneath the chamber, massive, a coil of thick, wet black ropes that shook the island with their slithering. And then they convulsed.
Rocks tumbled down the cavern, and Genevieve lost her footing and fell on her face. And as she raised herself up, with Doherty and Steward Jennings turning to help her, she came face-to-face with a thing wriggling free from one of the holes. A fat three-foot long slug-thing, black and glistening, its face a mess of bulging eyes around a circular jaw full of needling teeth, rows of tendril-like legs dragging it along the rocks. It’s lumpy head swiveled towards Genevieve, and then began scrambling forward. Jennings dragged Genevieve back out of the way, leaving Captain Doherty closest to the thing.
It stopped a few feet before the captain, rose up on the hind-half of its slimy-mass, and stared. Doherty let out an involuntary gasp and paled, unable to break eye contact with the thing’s baleful gaze. But a well-aimed rock from Shipmate Geoffrey sent the creature spinning away, and Doherty joined the others scrambling back up the tunnel. A tunnel they now shared with dozens of the eel creatures, burrowing up through the rock or flopping out of the holes. The island shook violently, and all could now see the writhing mass beneath them through the pockmarks, grinding through stone.
None of the slithering things opposed the group and they successfully extracted themselves and their load into the lighthouse without issue. Amy gaped at their incoherent explanations of the things down below. But there was no rest, as massive quake after massive quake slammed the lighthouse, and they could hear massive chunks of the island cracking off into the churning sea. They peered out a window to see how badly the island was being hit. They soon regretted doing so.
Something moved on the shore. Not just the eels, scores of which slipped and slid about the rocks, but something else. Men. In a sweep of the light, they saw figures coming out of the waves, moving inland with oddly loping movements. Another sweep of the light showed more.
They were not men. Bulging eyes. Fins. Distended bellies. Heads of frogs and fish. Spears, tridents, and other wicked tools clutched in their webbed hands. They hopped and jumped across the island, chasing, spearing, and collecting the eel-creatures in algae-slick bags of kelp and bone.
Doherty, ashen-faced, turned to Amy and asked if there were any other boats. She replied that a small lifeboat hung from a davit on the upper floor, but it only fit four and fair-weather. No matter, as Captain Doherty made an executive decision to leave. Now. The others quickly agreed, but Amy shook her head. Despite the terror in her eyes, she said someone had to keep the light, and that was the Bethel’s job. No ships would wreck on their watch. Jennings’ pleas to be rational proved fruitless against the stubborn women, and with a shrug Doherty led his crew up the lighthouse, leaving her behind. She picked up the dynamite satchel as they tramped up the stairs.
A wild-eyed Joseph met them above, and he was just as stubborn as his wife. He bid the party good luck, though he obviously thought them mad to try braving the storm in an over-burdened lifeboat, and then head down the stairs to be with his wife. The dingy swung precariously in the buffeting wind. One by one the sailors and Genevieve steeled themselves and jumped into the dingy, until only Geoffrey remained. His compatriots beckoned him to jump, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He shouted for them to leave and released the boat.
Genevieve, Doherty, Jennings, and Happy clung white-knuckled to the boat as it dropped into the convulsing sea. Doherty nearly lost his grip, but Genevieve wrapped her arm around his, keeping him from being flung overboard. No one paid the same mind to Happy, who soared through air into the white-waves when the lifeboat smacked into the water. The crew peered into the roiling surf, and by some extraordinary stroke of luck, Genevieve spotted Happy’s sputtering face. Working together the three managed to pull him up into the boat, shivering and coughing brackish water.
After watching his companions vanish into the storm, unsure if they had managed to escape the island or immediately capsize, Geoffrey joined the Bethels downstairs. He found them holding the dynamite satchel and whispering together. They were surprised, but not at all disappointed, to see him. Amy said that if what Doherty thought he saw below the island was true, maybe the dynamite could blast away whatever it was. She and Joseph had been arguing over Joseph going alone, or doing it together. Not expecting to survive this madness anyways, Geoffrey volunteered.
He descended part way into the tunnel, lit the dynamite, and hurled it with all his might. Then he ran, praying he could make it into the light house, praying that the dynamite had rolled into the centre of the chamber full of barrels, praying that he had lit the sticks properly, praying that the blast would be powerful enough to clear away the horror deep in the island.
From the dingy, a few hundred yards away from the island, the group ducked down at a massive flash. Then the island burst. Chunks of rock soared through the air, tendrils of fire licking after them. And in the midst of the turmoil, a massive knot of nightmares uncurled, tossing abominable worm-like beasts as thick round as a tree into the ocean, back down to watery hell they had arisen from. The fish-men snatched the remaining fat slugs, some smoking or blasted apart, scattered in the debris, and then also slipped away into the abyssal depths.
It broke the sailors. Maybe just the sight of those inhuman and unnatural things proved to much to bear, or the physical and mental stress of the ordeal overwhelmed them, or perhaps the knowledge that the ocean they lived and worked over contained a world so horrible just beneath them caused the mind to shriek and recede. No matter the cause, Genevieve couldn’t snap the men out of their rambling madness. Nor could she manage the boat on her own.
The storm quickly faded, and from the pillar of smoke and steam rising over the ruined island, the light still swept its circle. But the dingy drifted.
Geoffrey’s prayers were answered. The day after the storm a coast guard vessel arrived to check in, and found the extraordinary site of the lighthouse standing on a tiny rock outcropping. The rest of Midland Skerry was simply gone. The Bethel’s and Geoffrey returned to Maine, but Geoffrey never learned of his companion’s fate. He could only hope, and pray, that they had simply drowned.
He now knew there were worse things at sea.
If you’d like to see how this scenario turns out for your group, you can purchase the scenario, along with the other Seeds of Terror scenarios, on DriveThruRPG individually or as part of a bundle, or on Type40’s Patreon.
Before you go, though, maybe take a look at some more scenario replays?
MJRRPG: Branches of Bone
Seeds of Terror: The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, Endless Light, One Less Grave, Hand of Glory
Chaosium: Amidst the Ancient Trees, The Necropolis, What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder
Japonism: Do Gods Dream of Digital Drugs?
Bibliothek 13: A Cup of Horror