The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Having seen William Hindmarch's nice Star Trek reviews last week, I've decided I'd have a go at writing a review with some amount of organization to it instead of just a long convoluted rant about why Sarah McLachlan sucks and you should buy the latest Pagan product. (Though really, it's a Pagan product. You should buy it. 'Nuff said.)

So instead I've decided to start with a basic descriptive paragraph, then have a paragraph for appearance, then have a section for content. This content section is where I'll stick my long convoluted rants. After that, I'll have a final thought. Y'know, like Jerry Springer. "It reflects more on the observer than the observed when words like freak are used to describe a person." Coo'.

So, a description of the product. First I suppose I should say SPOILERS! As I said in my Golden Dawn review, most CoC books aren't for players. This is no departure from that general rule of thumb. Mortal Coils is a book of adventures for Keepers only. Oh, just in case you hadn't figured out, it's a book of adventures for Call of Cthulhu. So, once again, this review contains SPOILERS!

APPEARANCE

Mortal Coils is well bound. I just felt the need to point that out, since I recently picked up some of Pagan's really early releases and yikes. The front cover is an extremely eerie drawing done by the incredibly talented Dennis Detwiller. The edge of the cover has the same tile pattern from Realm of Shadows, 'cept instead of red it's green. I hope that they decide to stick this tile pattern on all of their books from now on. I like being able to pick out a book type with but a glance. Y'know, like when you look over your collection and without seeing titles, your brain automatically says 'Mage, mage, mage, vampire, werewolf, mage, werewolf, wraith, changeling'. Back on track.

The internal art is split up between Dennis Detwiller, Heather Hudson and Toren Atkinson. Of the eight adventures, Dennis Detwiller does art for four of them, Toren Atkinson does art for two, and Heather Hudson does the art for (do the math) two. Toren Atkinson's art is average for Pagan, which is needless to say, generally very good. They make sense for their content, and they're well executed, if sometimes rather dull. Heather Hudson is a extremely talented penciller, each of her drawings were better than the last. The single most disturbing image in the book was drawn by Heather Hudson, and I shall curse her name for having given me the bizarre nighmares it spawned. Dennis Detwiller is similarly excellent, if quite a bit more surreal, but I've come to expect that from him.

The book is well layed out, though there is some quibble between the various writers about whether they wanted to have the player aids in the adventures or if they wanted to have the player aids in the back of the book. It's no problem, really, but it does make me think that Brian Appleton should have been using the hickory stick a bit less judiciously.

What is a CoC adventure without a map? The maps, aside from a few exceptions, were very well done. The map in the God of the Mountain really sizzled my neurons. Supposedly this is an enormous city, the scope of which should blow players' minds. Looking at the map, it's slightly smaller than Griswold, Iowa.

Each adventure has different artwork on the page edge, so all one has to do is look at the end of the book and flip to the appropriate section. Theoretically, anyway. Several of the edges are quite similar, and require some pagebending if one really wants to save time by flipping directly to it instead of looking in the table of contents. An extremely minor quibble, when one considers that this is a bonus, something only Pagan really does. (They did the same with Golden Dawn, but I didn't think to mention it in that review, cos I suck.)

Each adventure has its own table of contents, listing the important bits of information for easy reference. This should actually be mentioned in content, I suppose, but I wanted to note that on the page opposite the table of contents, for each adventure, is an exceptional demonstration of what a person with a few photographs, some time on their hands and quite possibly a computer can do. They are beautiful and often quite disturbing. I wish I had a clue who in the world did them. Unfortunately, the book doesn't mention. (Or else I'm too thick to find the reference.)

CONTENT

This is my favorite part. Though instead of going on about unimportant crap, I'll just write up info on each adventure.

VIGILANTE JUSTICE (by John H Crowe III, 36 pages)

Synopsis: One of the investigators' daughter has been kidnapped, and it's up to the group to get her back. The adventure revolves around a small rural county in turn-of-the-century Kentucky, where a good portion of the community is a member of a lloigor spawned cult. Every decade or so, a virgin female member of the high priest's bloodline must be sacrificed to Ithaqua. Unfortunately, an epidemic has killed most of the direct descendents of the current high priest, and he has to get creative. Fortunately for him, the wife of one of the investigators is a distant cousin, so the investigator's daughter fits the bill.

Review: It's a nice game, well paced and well written, using the realities of small town existence against the PCs (town bullies being someone no one will go up against, secrets being things everyone knows, no one talks about) and for them (the gossip network and everyone knowing everyone.) My only real complaint is that this adventure is impossible to work into an existing campaign, unless one of your players just happens to be from Kentucky and have a wife. It's more of a one-shot scenario, or a lead off for a campaign, where most of the characters are farmers and townies from the Kentucky community. Unfortunately, when it comes to one-shot scenarios, I desire, nay demand!, sample characters to be provided. The idea of a one-shot is that it's something someone does when they have nothing else planned. Requiring players to create new characters makes that a real sumbitch.

A MURDER OF CROWS (by John H Crowe III, 32 pages) I suppose after the previous review, I should mention that I really like John Crowe's adventures, and I'm glad to see that he's still writing for Pagan. I wish he'd join the Delta Green list, so he could see all the people screaming for blood, demaning that they rerelease the Weapons Compendium he wrote. Realm of Shadows, Walker in the Wastes and Coming Full Circle are all, in my opinion, some of the finest long-term CoC scenarios out there. Role Playing is lucky to have Call of Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu is lucky to have Pagan and Pagan is lucky to have John Crowe. Enough with the fan-boy pandering, and on with the synopsis.

Synopsis: The Crow brothers, students at Miskatonic University, went down to Louisiana to prove the existance of a lost tribe of American Indians called the Minlani. Their research leads them to Black Moss, a small city where everyone is a member of a cult to Shubbe-Mig, a form of Shub-Niggurath. Now they've disappeared, and their father has asked the investigators to find them.

Review: To start with, it needs to be said that this adventure deals with some mature subjects. Even moreso than your standard mindblasting horror-laden CoC campaign. One character the PCs will run into is a pedophile, while another is the local physician who has unhealthy relations with the corpses in his basement. Furthermore, there are ghouls in this adventure. I have no clue why. I think that maybe Mister Crowe wanted an excuse to reprint the extra ghoul information from Realm of Shadows. Either way, there are ghouls here and they do seem kind of unnecessary. Still, it's yet another example of John Crowe's talent as a writer. Until the end, anyway. There is no ending scenario. I pretty much leaves the end completely open to whatever you want to have happen, which some may like, but I at least like a 'best case scenario' which outlines what should happen, to give me something to hold on to, even if my characters do something crazy. It seems to assume that the players will contact the state troopers and then the game will end. Unfortunately, I've never known any players who were that reasonable.

NIGHTCAP (by Jeff Moeller, 22 pages)

Synopsis: The sheriff of Leshay County hires the investigators to discover why Brent Johnson, a miner in Heighton, Kentucky, has gone insane. It seems Brent drank a little too much moon wine and his mind has taken a walk off the map. As if that wasn't bad enough, when his brain went sideways, he dropped the wine jug and it spilled into the water supply. Doh! And on top of all of that, there is a giant bear out there in the woods someplace who guzzled down a jug of the wine a few decades back, and he's hungry.

Review: An average but neat (in the form of 'neat and tidy') adventure, with all the parts of an adventure that makes an adventure worth doing. When I ran it, I extended the bits where the players ended up gulping down moon wine tainted water, giving them many more hallucinations than Mister Moeller offered up. This is, of course, a Keeper thing, and depends on what you feel your group wants/can handle. Frankly, I think that the bear is tossed in there as an afterthought.

GOD OF THE MOUNTAIN (by Michael Cisco, 10 pages)

Synopsis: The Tregellis brothers have disappeared in Peru, searching for the lost city of Tahaun. The investigators are hired to go down there and find 'em. (Sound familiar? I suppose the name A Murder of Tregellisses would have been pretty crap, though.) The city if Tahaun is alive, though, and anyone who enters it becomes property of the God of the Mountain. One of the Tregellisses is firmly under the control of the god, while the other aimlessly wonders the city, awaiting his fate as a sacrifice to the mountain.

Review: A very short adventure, easily run-able in one night. It leaves too many unanswered questions for my taste, though. Which isn't to say I want to players always to have everything wrapped up in a tidy package, I don't. I think that the Keeper deserves that much, though. Just what the God of the Mountain is remains a complete mystery to everyone but Michael Cisco. Other than that, the adventure is particularly spooky, with the players spending a lot of time exploring and researching without anything happening, so that when something does happen, it seems quite a bit nastier than it is.

COMMON COURTESY (by Jeff Moeller, 11 pages)

Synopsis: Ellen Black-Nasfari has disappeared, and her lawyer, John Clancy, asks the investigators to find her. It seems that after her husband (of convenience) died, her mother-in-law came and demanded to be given the body and control over the funeral. Ellen, strong-willed girl that she is, refused. In truth, her mother-in-law is a two thousand year old high priestess of an ancient cult which demands adherence to their ancient rituals. The funeral ritual for royalty, which Ellen's husband was, requires that fifty servants, fifty horses and his concubine all die. Ellen's husband was gay though, and she only married him because he was dying.

Review: This scenario is unique in that there doesn't need to be any Mythos connections at all. It could simply be the players versus an ancient cult which wants to kill lots and lots of people. It's also unique in the fact that those lots and lots of people aren't necessarily unwilling to die. Except for Ellen, of course. There is a nonviolent solution, but it's one which can take quite a toll on an investigator's sanity.

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY (by Rebecca Strong, 12 pages)

Synopsis: Uncle Freddy is dead, killed in a fairly grotesque way, and the investigators get to find out who did it. They're gonna wish they hadn't bothered, though. It turns out that Uncle Freddy stole a magical amulet from a cult. The amulet could destroy the world, and the only way to destroy the amulet is to commit a human sacrifice. Uncle Freddy couldn't bring himself to do it, so he swallowed the amulet and was killed by the angry cultists. Now the investigators get to butcher Freddy's carcass to get the amulet, and perform a ritual that involves human sacrifice to destroy it. Fun.

Review: Despite the fact that this scenarior, as Miss Strong puts it 'explores a moral gray area always present in Call of Cthulhu but seldom emphasized', it's one of the worst in the lot. It will take a bold sort of Keeper to ignore everything Rebecca Strong wrote other than the basic plot, and run with it. Other than Miss Strong's tendencies to assume a lot of things, the concept of the adventure is really quite good. Still, being told that by such and such a point my players WILL have done X and figured out Y is very annoying, cos players have a tendency to do exactly the opposite of what scenario writers seem to think they'll do. Most writers seem to realize this though. Miss Strong doesn't, and a lot of what she writes relies on the players doing exactly what she thinks they will. They won't. She writes an extremely linear adventure which probably won't be followed. Be prepared to either force your players to do what you say, or to let them do what they want and to toss aside the written material for the ephemeral adventures in your mind. (How poetic.)

DREAM FACTORY (by John Tynes, 37 pages)

Synopsis: A hot young new starlet in Hollywood has disappeared. The players get to find her. Alexander Solonitsyn, the primary villain, has created a magical camera which can suck up the life forces of a person to create films that have incredible emotional impact. His latest revision on the camera allows him to actually pull someone into the film, removing them from the real world and adding such power to the movie being watched that people come away from it swearing that it's the greatest thing ever filmed. When the starlet, Laura Angel, disappears, Solonitsyn is sent away by the studio PR agents to keep him from taking any sort of bad press. Solonitsyn's cronies offer quite enough information for the investigators to discover the nefarious activities going on in the roaring twenties' tinseltown, though.

Review: One of the best adventures in the book. It has it all. Crazed eunich cultists, an Outer God who might even make a (filmed) appearance, serial killers, a really evil villain, a chance for redemption for one of the baddies and a thousand elephants. (Ahaha. A little Pratchett reference.) Best of all, there is a potential for a Delta Green link hidden in there. The cult of which Solonitsyn is a member will be detailed in the next Delta Green release, _Countdown_. A well-paced adventure with lots of background material for the PCs to get into, several subplots and hours of entertainment for everyone involved.

MYSTERIOUS MATRIS OBLITAE (by Dennis Detwiller, 18 pages)

Synopsis: The University of Mexico City receives a bizarre picture of a dead horrible creature being gawked at by Mexicans and indians from the priest of a church in Neuvo Voso, Mexico. The creature, as it turns out, is a minion of Matris Oblitae, the Forgotten Mother, an avatar of Abhoth. She controlled many of the locals until a revolution in 1910 lead to many of her followers being killed. Now she probes the area again, looking for those to bring into her fold.

Review: Dennis Detwiller is just a excellent a storyteller as he is an artist. Though us Delta Green types knew that already. The story rapidly moves from an experience with the unusual to full-frontal brain-damaging horror. (I already said mind-blasting.) Yet another in a fine collection of adventures.

OVERALL: A+

An excellent book of adventures for CoC, with only a couple of real missteps. I admit that I balk at the mention of so many missing persons whom the investigators are sent to find, but consider that the adventures are not meant to be run one after another, but sprinkled over the course of an existing campaign, or as one-shot scenarios. With that as what they are, this is one of the best adventure books currently available. Pagan Publishing has done their job. Then again, they always do.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Mortal Coils
Author: Michael Cisco, John H Crowe III, Dennis Detwiller, Jeff Moeller, Rebecca Strong and John Tynes Category: game Company/Publisher: Pagan Publishing Cost: $20.95 Page count: 204 ISBN: 1-887797-11-4 Capsule Review by Adam Schroeder on 09/02/98. Genre tags: none	Having seen William Hindmarch's nice Star Trek reviews last week, I've decided I'd have a go at writing a review with some amount of organization to it instead of just a long convoluted rant about why Sarah McLachlan sucks and you should buy the latest Pagan product. (Though really, it's a Pagan product. You should buy it. 'Nuff said.) So instead I've decided to start with a basic descriptive paragraph, then have a paragraph for appearance, then have a section for content. This content section is where I'll stick my long convoluted rants. After that, I'll have a final thought. Y'know, like Jerry Springer. "It reflects more on the observer than the observed when words like freak are used to describe a person." Coo'. So, a description of the product. First I suppose I should say SPOILERS! As I said in my Golden Dawn review, most CoC books aren't for players. This is no departure from that general rule of thumb. Mortal Coils is a book of adventures for Keepers only. Oh, just in case you hadn't figured out, it's a book of adventures for Call of Cthulhu. So, once again, this review contains SPOILERS! APPEARANCE Mortal Coils is well bound. I just felt the need to point that out, since I recently picked up some of Pagan's really early releases and yikes. The front cover is an extremely eerie drawing done by the incredibly talented Dennis Detwiller. The edge of the cover has the same tile pattern from Realm of Shadows, 'cept instead of red it's green. I hope that they decide to stick this tile pattern on all of their books from now on. I like being able to pick out a book type with but a glance. Y'know, like when you look over your collection and without seeing titles, your brain automatically says 'Mage, mage, mage, vampire, werewolf, mage, werewolf, wraith, changeling'. Back on track. The internal art is split up between Dennis Detwiller, Heather Hudson and Toren Atkinson. Of the eight adventures, Dennis Detwiller does art for four of them, Toren Atkinson does art for two, and Heather Hudson does the art for (do the math) two. Toren Atkinson's art is average for Pagan, which is needless to say, generally very good. They make sense for their content, and they're well executed, if sometimes rather dull. Heather Hudson is a extremely talented penciller, each of her drawings were better than the last. The single most disturbing image in the book was drawn by Heather Hudson, and I shall curse her name for having given me the bizarre nighmares it spawned. Dennis Detwiller is similarly excellent, if quite a bit more surreal, but I've come to expect that from him. The book is well layed out, though there is some quibble between the various writers about whether they wanted to have the player aids in the adventures or if they wanted to have the player aids in the back of the book. It's no problem, really, but it does make me think that Brian Appleton should have been using the hickory stick a bit less judiciously. What is a CoC adventure without a map? The maps, aside from a few exceptions, were very well done. The map in the God of the Mountain really sizzled my neurons. Supposedly this is an enormous city, the scope of which should blow players' minds. Looking at the map, it's slightly smaller than Griswold, Iowa. Each adventure has different artwork on the page edge, so all one has to do is look at the end of the book and flip to the appropriate section. Theoretically, anyway. Several of the edges are quite similar, and require some pagebending if one really wants to save time by flipping directly to it instead of looking in the table of contents. An extremely minor quibble, when one considers that this is a bonus, something only Pagan really does. (They did the same with Golden Dawn, but I didn't think to mention it in that review, cos I suck.) Each adventure has its own table of contents, listing the important bits of information for easy reference. This should actually be mentioned in content, I suppose, but I wanted to note that on the page opposite the table of contents, for each adventure, is an exceptional demonstration of what a person with a few photographs, some time on their hands and quite possibly a computer can do. They are beautiful and often quite disturbing. I wish I had a clue who in the world did them. Unfortunately, the book doesn't mention. (Or else I'm too thick to find the reference.) CONTENT This is my favorite part. Though instead of going on about unimportant crap, I'll just write up info on each adventure. VIGILANTE JUSTICE (by John H Crowe III, 36 pages) Synopsis: One of the investigators' daughter has been kidnapped, and it's up to the group to get her back. The adventure revolves around a small rural county in turn-of-the-century Kentucky, where a good portion of the community is a member of a lloigor spawned cult. Every decade or so, a virgin female member of the high priest's bloodline must be sacrificed to Ithaqua. Unfortunately, an epidemic has killed most of the direct descendents of the current high priest, and he has to get creative. Fortunately for him, the wife of one of the investigators is a distant cousin, so the investigator's daughter fits the bill. Review: It's a nice game, well paced and well written, using the realities of small town existence against the PCs (town bullies being someone no one will go up against, secrets being things everyone knows, no one talks about) and for them (the gossip network and everyone knowing everyone.) My only real complaint is that this adventure is impossible to work into an existing campaign, unless one of your players just happens to be from Kentucky and have a wife. It's more of a one-shot scenario, or a lead off for a campaign, where most of the characters are farmers and townies from the Kentucky community. Unfortunately, when it comes to one-shot scenarios, I desire, nay demand!, sample characters to be provided. The idea of a one-shot is that it's something someone does when they have nothing else planned. Requiring players to create new characters makes that a real sumbitch. A MURDER OF CROWS (by John H Crowe III, 32 pages) I suppose after the previous review, I should mention that I really like John Crowe's adventures, and I'm glad to see that he's still writing for Pagan. I wish he'd join the Delta Green list, so he could see all the people screaming for blood, demaning that they rerelease the Weapons Compendium he wrote. Realm of Shadows, Walker in the Wastes and Coming Full Circle are all, in my opinion, some of the finest long-term CoC scenarios out there. Role Playing is lucky to have Call of Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu is lucky to have Pagan and Pagan is lucky to have John Crowe. Enough with the fan-boy pandering, and on with the synopsis. Synopsis: The Crow brothers, students at Miskatonic University, went down to Louisiana to prove the existance of a lost tribe of American Indians called the Minlani. Their research leads them to Black Moss, a small city where everyone is a member of a cult to Shubbe-Mig, a form of Shub-Niggurath. Now they've disappeared, and their father has asked the investigators to find them. Review: To start with, it needs to be said that this adventure deals with some mature subjects. Even moreso than your standard mindblasting horror-laden CoC campaign. One character the PCs will run into is a pedophile, while another is the local physician who has unhealthy relations with the corpses in his basement. Furthermore, there are ghouls in this adventure. I have no clue why. I think that maybe Mister Crowe wanted an excuse to reprint the extra ghoul information from Realm of Shadows. Either way, there are ghouls here and they do seem kind of unnecessary. Still, it's yet another example of John Crowe's talent as a writer. Until the end, anyway. There is no ending scenario. I pretty much leaves the end completely open to whatever you want to have happen, which some may like, but I at least like a 'best case scenario' which outlines what should happen, to give me something to hold on to, even if my characters do something crazy. It seems to assume that the players will contact the state troopers and then the game will end. Unfortunately, I've never known any players who were that reasonable. NIGHTCAP (by Jeff Moeller, 22 pages) Synopsis: The sheriff of Leshay County hires the investigators to discover why Brent Johnson, a miner in Heighton, Kentucky, has gone insane. It seems Brent drank a little too much moon wine and his mind has taken a walk off the map. As if that wasn't bad enough, when his brain went sideways, he dropped the wine jug and it spilled into the water supply. Doh! And on top of all of that, there is a giant bear out there in the woods someplace who guzzled down a jug of the wine a few decades back, and he's hungry. Review: An average but neat (in the form of 'neat and tidy') adventure, with all the parts of an adventure that makes an adventure worth doing. When I ran it, I extended the bits where the players ended up gulping down moon wine tainted water, giving them many more hallucinations than Mister Moeller offered up. This is, of course, a Keeper thing, and depends on what you feel your group wants/can handle. Frankly, I think that the bear is tossed in there as an afterthought. GOD OF THE MOUNTAIN (by Michael Cisco, 10 pages) Synopsis: The Tregellis brothers have disappeared in Peru, searching for the lost city of Tahaun. The investigators are hired to go down there and find 'em. (Sound familiar? I suppose the name A Murder of Tregellisses would have been pretty crap, though.) The city if Tahaun is alive, though, and anyone who enters it becomes property of the God of the Mountain. One of the Tregellisses is firmly under the control of the god, while the other aimlessly wonders the city, awaiting his fate as a sacrifice to the mountain. Review: A very short adventure, easily run-able in one night. It leaves too many unanswered questions for my taste, though. Which isn't to say I want to players always to have everything wrapped up in a tidy package, I don't. I think that the Keeper deserves that much, though. Just what the God of the Mountain is remains a complete mystery to everyone but Michael Cisco. Other than that, the adventure is particularly spooky, with the players spending a lot of time exploring and researching without anything happening, so that when something does happen, it seems quite a bit nastier than it is. COMMON COURTESY (by Jeff Moeller, 11 pages) Synopsis: Ellen Black-Nasfari has disappeared, and her lawyer, John Clancy, asks the investigators to find her. It seems that after her husband (of convenience) died, her mother-in-law came and demanded to be given the body and control over the funeral. Ellen, strong-willed girl that she is, refused. In truth, her mother-in-law is a two thousand year old high priestess of an ancient cult which demands adherence to their ancient rituals. The funeral ritual for royalty, which Ellen's husband was, requires that fifty servants, fifty horses and his concubine all die. Ellen's husband was gay though, and she only married him because he was dying. Review: This scenario is unique in that there doesn't need to be any Mythos connections at all. It could simply be the players versus an ancient cult which wants to kill lots and lots of people. It's also unique in the fact that those lots and lots of people aren't necessarily unwilling to die. Except for Ellen, of course. There is a nonviolent solution, but it's one which can take quite a toll on an investigator's sanity. WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY (by Rebecca Strong, 12 pages) Synopsis: Uncle Freddy is dead, killed in a fairly grotesque way, and the investigators get to find out who did it. They're gonna wish they hadn't bothered, though. It turns out that Uncle Freddy stole a magical amulet from a cult. The amulet could destroy the world, and the only way to destroy the amulet is to commit a human sacrifice. Uncle Freddy couldn't bring himself to do it, so he swallowed the amulet and was killed by the angry cultists. Now the investigators get to butcher Freddy's carcass to get the amulet, and perform a ritual that involves human sacrifice to destroy it. Fun. Review: Despite the fact that this scenarior, as Miss Strong puts it 'explores a moral gray area always present in Call of Cthulhu but seldom emphasized', it's one of the worst in the lot. It will take a bold sort of Keeper to ignore everything Rebecca Strong wrote other than the basic plot, and run with it. Other than Miss Strong's tendencies to assume a lot of things, the concept of the adventure is really quite good. Still, being told that by such and such a point my players WILL have done X and figured out Y is very annoying, cos players have a tendency to do exactly the opposite of what scenario writers seem to think they'll do. Most writers seem to realize this though. Miss Strong doesn't, and a lot of what she writes relies on the players doing exactly what she thinks they will. They won't. She writes an extremely linear adventure which probably won't be followed. Be prepared to either force your players to do what you say, or to let them do what they want and to toss aside the written material for the ephemeral adventures in your mind. (How poetic.) DREAM FACTORY (by John Tynes, 37 pages) Synopsis: A hot young new starlet in Hollywood has disappeared. The players get to find her. Alexander Solonitsyn, the primary villain, has created a magical camera which can suck up the life forces of a person to create films that have incredible emotional impact. His latest revision on the camera allows him to actually pull someone into the film, removing them from the real world and adding such power to the movie being watched that people come away from it swearing that it's the greatest thing ever filmed. When the starlet, Laura Angel, disappears, Solonitsyn is sent away by the studio PR agents to keep him from taking any sort of bad press. Solonitsyn's cronies offer quite enough information for the investigators to discover the nefarious activities going on in the roaring twenties' tinseltown, though. Review: One of the best adventures in the book. It has it all. Crazed eunich cultists, an Outer God who might even make a (filmed) appearance, serial killers, a really evil villain, a chance for redemption for one of the baddies and a thousand elephants. (Ahaha. A little Pratchett reference.) Best of all, there is a potential for a Delta Green link hidden in there. The cult of which Solonitsyn is a member will be detailed in the next Delta Green release, _Countdown_. A well-paced adventure with lots of background material for the PCs to get into, several subplots and hours of entertainment for everyone involved. MYSTERIOUS MATRIS OBLITAE (by Dennis Detwiller, 18 pages) Synopsis: The University of Mexico City receives a bizarre picture of a dead horrible creature being gawked at by Mexicans and indians from the priest of a church in Neuvo Voso, Mexico. The creature, as it turns out, is a minion of Matris Oblitae, the Forgotten Mother, an avatar of Abhoth. She controlled many of the locals until a revolution in 1910 lead to many of her followers being killed. Now she probes the area again, looking for those to bring into her fold. Review: Dennis Detwiller is just a excellent a storyteller as he is an artist. Though us Delta Green types knew that already. The story rapidly moves from an experience with the unusual to full-frontal brain-damaging horror. (I already said mind-blasting.) Yet another in a fine collection of adventures. OVERALL: A+ An excellent book of adventures for CoC, with only a couple of real missteps. I admit that I balk at the mention of so many missing persons whom the investigators are sent to find, but consider that the adventures are not meant to be run one after another, but sprinkled over the course of an existing campaign, or as one-shot scenarios. With that as what they are, this is one of the best adventure books currently available. Pagan Publishing has done their job. Then again, they always do. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)