WTF, D&D: Cthulhu 90s Solo Project – Straight Out of Coptic
The year is 1993. Kurt Cobain is drinking ayahuasca in the desert and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is getting Toned up. Compton-based troubadour Eazy-E is joined by the flute-playing horror Station on an expedition to investigate a meteor that has crashed in Egypt. When the meteor goes missing and a strange assassin strikes, E and his faithful companion must unravel an international conspiracy that may extend into dreams.
Steve: I get nervous playing as Eazy-E. I know you’re going to accuse me of doing something racist.
Zack: Eazy-E is Eric Wright playing a character. So you’re playing as the same character. You’re Eazy-E, level 10 nasty-talking, gun-slinging Compton gangster turned rapper.
Steve: Is he multi-classing or dual classing?
Zack: What’s the difference?
Steve: Dual class you switch back and forth between the two classes, and you can only be one at a time until you reach a certain level. Multi-classing you gain experience for both classes at the same time, so you advance in all of them at once, but more slowly.
Zack: Eazy-E is both a gangster and a rapper at the same time, so I would say he’s multi-class.
Steve: Yeah, okay, but only demi-humans can multi-class. Is Eazy-E human?
Zack: RACIST!
Zack: Eazy-E is hanging out at his Compton compound having a summer barbecue. Friends with attitude are there, lots of fine women in bikinis are there, some guys from the neighborhood are shooting hoop on the half court and Station is painted up to look like Grimace to give the kids rides around the yard. E, naturally, is working the grill.
Steve: Station, don’t eat none of them kids. Hey, yo, Dre! How long I got to cook these tofu dogs?
Zack: Dre is getting a butterfly painted on his face at the face painting stand. “It should say on the package,” he says gently.
Steve: Grill marks not showing up on these gray MFers. Feels like I’m cooking up alien dicks or something.
Zack: You have to swear as Eazy-E. Either don’t use the profanity at all or use it properly.
Steve: Look at you tellin a nigga how to say motherfucker.
Steve: Oh man that felt real bad.
Zack: I didn’t tell you to use the n-word, Steve. Don’t do that. Just say “friend” like I did.
Steve: So you’re making me cuss, but I can’t cuss another way.
Zack: It’s for your own good. Let’s not get bogged down. E is grilling. Station is swinging some laughing kids around by their ankles over his formless, purple-painted body. The boom box is booming out some beats and the pool is full of honeys.
Steve: Gonna start mixing up E’s classic guac.
Zack: You hear the back door open and are surprised to see a familiar, bleached-blond white woman walk into your back yard. Courtney Love is dressed, as usual, in her labcoat.
Steve: Hey, yo, Courtney, what’s up with your fine self? Did you finally decide to get rid of that boy with the guitar and come make it happen with some chocolate heat? I’m just playin’ girl. What’s up?
Zack: “We need to talk, E. Something has come up.”
Steve: Alright, girl, let me just get some friend on the grill. Yo, Cube, can you handle this?
Zack: Ice Cube was weaving flowers into his bandana. He hops up and takes over on the grill.
Steve: Head down into my secret mythos lair in the basement.
Zack: The shelves are piled high with occult texts and various artifacts of your misadventures. A large map is mounted to the wall and well-lit. Red push pins show where mythos activity has occurred. Green shows where E, Kurt, or Left Eye have taken care of it. There is a lot more red than green.
Steve: Yeah, maybe Tupac could handle some shit once in a while.
Zack: Courtney pushes a red pin into your map in the deep desert of Egypt.
Zack: “Once every 75 years, the earth is caught in the so-called Arcturian Meteor Shower. The meteors are remnants of a cosmic event over five billion years old and according to written record they have produced colorful displays, but always burn up in the atmosphere. I’ve been contacted by an associate of mine at the Royal Geology Society of Egypt that one of these meteors has landed in Egypt’s Western Desert. Strange glowing lights have been reported in the vicinity. It could be a natural phenomenon or it could be related to something occult. I believe the latter and I need you to investigate.”
Steve: Let’s get the crew together and go.
Zack: “I can’t, I have studio time booked to record and Kurt and Left Eye are busy. I need you to go to Cairo and meet with my friend, Sir Edmund Blackbourne. He will take you to the meteor site.”
Steve: Yeah, sure, but I’m bringing Station too.
Zack: I would advise against that.
Steve: You can advise all you want, girl. I ain’t trusting Dre to feed him and make sure he don’t take those explosive shits all over my couches. You know he eats fifteen whole chickens a day, right? Just sucks them in one end and a skeleton comes out the other end all covered in slime. It’s disgusting. Dre don’t know how to handle that.
Zack: “Good luck. Call me if I can help.”
Steve: E gets his guns and some helpful books and magic items or whatever. Packs up some of his favorite hats and goes to a costume store and rents a camel costume. Like one of those double person costumes. Station can wear that.
Zack: Station is much bigger than a camel. He rips the costume when you put it on him and ends up looking sort of like a giant mound of garbage with a dead camel skin over top of it.
Steve: I’ll just tell everyone my camel is sick.
Zack: Fine. I’m not even going to try to imagine how you get to Cairo with Station. Maybe smuggling him in a crate or on a ship or something. You arrive in Cairo. The heat is overwhelming and the streets are eerily quiet. There are furtive glances and shadows seen in ancient alleyways. Soldiers patrol the streets as if they are afraid violence might erupt.
Steve: Just me and you, Station. Don’t make no sudden moves.
Zack: You hire a truck to transport you and Station to the Royal Geology Society of Egypt. It’s sort of like a museum full of unusual rocks with some actual science being done in the back. There are no visitors and the security guard is asleep. You find Sir Edmund Blackbourne waiting for you in his laboratory. He’s a well-dressed Englishman with an effete manner.
Zack: “Oh, hello, you must be the Mr. E that Miss Love spoke of.”
Steve: Call me Eazy.
Zack: Is Station with you?
Steve: Yeah, he goes where I go unless I say otherwise.
Zack: Sir Blackbourne adjusts his spectacles and tries to get a better look at Station. “What is this… parcel you have brought with you into my laboratory?”
Steve: Oh, that’s Station. He cool.
Zack: Station makes some flute noises and gurgling. Sir Blackbourne recoils.
Zack: “Yes, right. Well, I suppose we should be off. The excavation is underway.”
Zack: You drive with Sir Blackbourne into the depths of Egypt’s Western Desert. Hot winds pull at the tarp covering the back of the truck and dust slithers across the sun-baked roads. You past standing rocks and the occasional eroded outpost, some goat herds here and there, but little else in the way of traffic. Eventually, even that disappears, and you cross into the desert along an almost invisible dirt track. Sir Blackbourne seems to know where he is going.
Steve: So, like, Lord Blackman, you got any feel on what this shit is? Like is it a ball of evil or what?
Zack: I can’t say. We received word of the impact six days ago form bedouins passing through the area. By the time my team had arrived to begin the excavation, the meteor had disappeared.
Steve: That ain’t good. So what are you digging up if it’s gone?
Zack: You’ll see.
Zack: A large encampment of tents and trucks appears out of the shimmering desert. There are several dozen white and light blue tents and a large number of Egyptian Army soldiers. Groups of bedouins have also set up there camps nearby to try to sell things to the workers.
Steve: This is some Indianas Jones shit.
Zack: “Yes, quite,” agrees Sir Blackbourne. He drives past an army checkpoint and within sight of the crater. It is bigger than you expected, perhaps a hundred feet across, with a sharp relief of a meteor like a toy pressed into wet sand and then removed. Workers are scurrying around in the crater.
Steve: That’s a big ass meteor. How’d that not blow up the planet?
Zack: A good question, Mr. E. While not quite large enough for global destruction, this impact should have created a blast radius akin to an atomic weapon. There were reports of a loud booming sound, but nothing on the scale one would expect.
Steve: “One would expect I gotta go have a look a this shit up close.” Getting out of the truck with Station and heading down into the crater.
Zack: Some of the workers, particularly the bedouins, recoil from Station. Some of them actually run away. You may have hidden his true horror with your camel costume, but clearly there is something seriously wrong. Even the army soldiers are on edge.
Steve: Now they know who not to fuck with. My friend the space monster.
Zack: Stairs have been dug into the side of the crater, allowing you down into the bottom where most of the digging is taking place. There are about twenty people working, using sifting pans and gathering very small quantities of faintly luminous silver dust.
Steve: That get you high?
Zack: “Uh, no, it is most likely toxic,” says Sir BlackBourne. “Among its many other unusual properties.”
Steve: What sort of properties?
Zack: “I’ll show you,” says Sir Blackbourne. He brings you over to a tray where a small quantity of the dust has been piled. A copper coil has been inserted into this small pile and this coil is attached to a battery and a switch. “At the slightest electric charge, the dust reacts.”
Zack: He flips the switch and the dust shoots into the air, like the spray from a sneeze, but it remains there, vibrating slightly. After a few seconds, some of the particles begin to sink back down. The instant they make contact with the copper coil, they fly back up to their original position.
Steve: That’s a cool trick. But what is it? What’s the dust?
Zack: He shuts it off and the dust settles back down. “It is an element we have never seen before. Possibly several element forming a molecular alloy. It reacts to moonlight as well. It begins to give off bright lights. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Zack: Station seems really interested in this stuff. He is sniffing around where they are digging the holes and being a little unruly shoving people out of the way and sucking up some of the dust. “Please, Mr. E, control your animal! He’s damaging the dig site.”
Steve: I don’t control that friend so much as suggest things to him. Yo, Station! Station! Come on, let’s get up out of this pit. You’re wilding.
Zack: He starts bleating discordantly at his flute. He doesn’t seem to want to leave the crater.
Steve: Blackman, you got like fifteen chickens? Gonna have to lure him out of here.
Zack: Blackbourne rushes off to fetch you some chickens. As you’re trying to tug on Station and get him to climb out of the pit, you notice one of the bedouins watching you seems a little strange. He’s much shorter than the others and he’s wearing a hood that hides his face.
Steve: Shouting, “What up, cuz?” to the bedouin with the staring problem.
Zack: He turns and goes running off into the people crowded around the crater.
Steve: Station, friend, snap out of it. We got to get that friend who was peeping on us. He knows some shit.
Zack: Station does snap out of it. He goes scrambling up the steep side of the crater, exposing tentacles as he rolls his monstrous bulk up over the mouth of the crater. You can either watch him do this or run after him or hang onto his costume for dear life and hope it doesn’t fall off.
Steve: Oh you know E is hanging onto that camel. He’s not letting his friend Station get into all this action solo.
Zack: It’s a bumpy ride, but you manage to hang on as Stations stampedes wildly through the encampment, pursuing the bedouin. The man runs furiously. He seems to be only very short, less than five feet tall, but he’s fast, keeping well ahead of Station.
Steve: See if that friend can outrun bullets.
Zack: You draw your guns, but it’s impossible to get a good shot on this guy with Station running out of control. However, the guy does turn around for a moment and fire some sort of blowgun dart back at you. It sticks in the brim of your baseball cap.
Steve: I don’t care if I can’t get a shot or not, I am opening fire on this motherfucker.
Zack: Your guns flash and boom and bullets fire off in a dozen directions. Fortunately, you’ve run out of the encampment by this point, so no one is in the line of fire.
Steve: Dart spitting motherfucker gonna get iced.
Zack: Station chases this guy across the desert, towards an ancient, crumbling tower. The guy races up the stairs, narrowly staying out of reach of Station’s tentacles. They run right out of the top of the tower without a look back. Station follows them out, realizes there is nowhere to go, and just barely clings onto the sides of the ancient ruin as momentum carries you out the door.
Steve: Can I grab anything?
Zack: You try, but there’s no chance. Station is moving too fast and you didn’t see this coming until it was too late. You go flying off Station’s back and into the evening sky.
Steve: STATTTION!!
Zack: Tentacles wrap around your arms and pull you back through the door and onto your feet. Below you, your hat flutters down to land near the broken body of the man you were chasing.
Steve: Well, that didn’t go too well. I lost my fucking White Sox hat.
Zack: Station is rubbing your face and patting you with his tentacles. He makes an apologetic burbling sound.
Steve: Not your fault, big man. That angel dust makes a friend crazy. You got to stay off that candy.
Zack: Station burbles in agreement. Egyptian soldiers drive up to the tower in Jeeps as night falls.
Steve: Going to investigate this dude.
Zack: His broken body lies twisted with blood flowing into the desert sands. You push your way through the soldiers who are standing around and looking at him. You pull back the hood and the face is an Asian man with ritual scars and tattoos all over his face.
Steve: Damn lookin’ like Gucci Mane.
Zack: Gucci Mane is like twelve in 1993.
Steve: Just sayin that friend got like an ice cream cone on his cheek and the EA Sports logo.
Zack: These scars and tattoos are tribal. More like Maori style.
Steve: Do I recognize them?
Zack: What’s your Cthulhu Mythos score?
Steve: 31.
Zack: Dang, E is getting knowledgeable about some evils. Alright, yeah, you do recognize them. These are a design common to the mysterious and reclusive Men of Leng. Rumored cannibals and occultists, Leng is a remote plateau in Central Asia in modern day Turkmenistan. Supposedly, it is a crossing place into the Dreamlands and other realms.
Steve: Ohhh shit now. I do NOT fuck around with no Dreamlands. Gugs and Moon Beasts and shit. I know Kadath. I ain’t interested.
Zack: Sir Blackbourne joins you. He picks through the pockets of the dead man and discovers several vials of the dust from the crater along with a note written on parchment. “It’s an ancient language, similar to Coptic. I think I can translate. It seems to be a sort of mantra. ‘Float thyself upon the Cerenerian waters to Sarkomand, for all things dream, not only man, and not all dreams must end.’ A bit odd, wouldn’t you say, Mr. E?”
Steve: Tight lyrics though. Get Dre to put down some beats and add in some shit about titties.
Zack: “Do you think this poor chap was related to the disappearance of the meteor?”
Steve: Yo, you got a map with Sarkomand on it? Where is that?
Zack: Mythos check.
Steve: Made it. Barely.
Zack: You remember Sarkomand as a place in the Dreamlands, it is the fallen city of Leng that is on the coast of the Cerenerian sea. Supposedly something terrible happened to this city and the people of Leng who still dwell there are slaves to unseen, but terrible masters.
Steve: But that’s in the Dreamlands? That’s not like a real place I can go to?
Zack: Not exactly, but you could go to Leng and you might be able to reach Sarkomand there. There is a mystical connection.
Steve: Well then, looks like me and Station are booking the next boat to Turkmenistan.
Zack: There aren’t any boats that go there.
Steve: Figurative boat. The important thing is I am not going into no Dreamlands and fucking with no Gug. Fuck that.
Zack: Do not fuck with the Gug.