More often than not are hotter than hot
In a lot of good ways."
- "Arabian Nights", Disney's Aladdin
When designing and planning stuff for Cairo, I looked back especially at pulpy media and stories set in the 20's and 30's for inspiration. As stated before, The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) were big influences for this chapter, and some of their scares and special effects even made it into the scenario proper. I wanted to make Cairo feel full of secrets and adventure, so I knew I would need to focus on making sure the tone was set early - the exotic nature of where the PCs were and how different, unique, mysterious, and overall touristy the city was. Knowing next to nothing about Muslim culture as it pertains to someplace like Cairo, I ended up doing a lot of research into Islam, even reading some pieces of the Koran for inspiration. There was a lot of fascinating material there, and it actually really helped me define the culture of the place in a way that wasn't just a stock Aladdin montage. I also drew inspiration from mosque designs and Islamic art, its geometric nature and feel was very appealing and helped inform later artistic and descriptive choices in the game. It also reinforced Islam's aspect as a religion of balance and symmetry, and made the horror and chaos that followed afterwards all the more intense and terrifying when it hit.
I set the scene early as the PCs landed on the banks of the Nile with heavy descriptors: the clothes, the bazaars, the crowded streets, the thick humid heat from the river, and the three-pronged jewel of architectural marvel that are the Pyramids of Giza. It should be fairly obvious by now that I have never been to Cairo (though seeing some of the sights in Egypt is on my bucket list), but I very much love the general aesthetic of the Middle East and especially ancient Egypt, and wanted to bring those ideas front and center as best as I could. I was incredibly excited to run Cairo for that reason, and not just because of all the fun things I got to do to the players there. I didn't like The Black Cat as a scenario because I felt it didn't fit and was too much of a diversion, so I subbed in Shadows of Sekhmet, a similarly feline but much more pulp scenario from the AnyKey System. I think that was for the best, and it made for a hell of a game and a great blog entry. It was also all done in one night along with the lead-seeking, and that was probably not a great idea - we did it all in one long session as Cairo's introduction, and I think it was just too much for my players to deal with after the stress of finals week, my graduation ceremony, and a lack of sleep for everyone concerned in general. Protip, don't run a game twice in one week when everyone is already in a position of stress, it never ends up well.
Speaking of Shadows of Sekhmet, let's talk about why I used this scenario over The Black Cat despite the extra work it made for me. Your players' characters are in Egypt in what is at least a somewhat pulpy campaign, so sooner or later the topic of actual ancient Egyptian deities is going to be broached or discussed. Both of these scenarios use similar goddesses - Bastet/Sekhmet - and both imply the goddesses in question are just as real as Nyarlathotep is. The difference, however, is in how they do so. In Black Cat, there's magical felines that worship Bastet and also a priestess of Bastet hunting down a foolish archaeologist who took some sort of scroll from her temple. Oh, and the priestess can turn into a giant panther. While the implications of this are very fun if you decide to stitch in Dreamlands content, it's just not all that frightening after what the Investigators have seen thus far, and kind of seems a little too easy to cause players going in the wrong direction in my opinion. It also is another investigative slog, which might put some players off after London, and it seems way too simple to solve, all for an artifact that really doesn't do much other than tell the players what they already know. It's a nice scenario and there is really nothing wrong with it functionally, but it verges a bit Gothic Horror in what is a Pulp Adventure-Horror campaign, and it's too easy in my opinion for the third chapter of an epic-length game. Yes, it ties in very nicely to other aspects of Masks and even gives the players new leads to follow with the Clive Expedition, but it just feels like it belongs in a different game... so, I scrapped it for a Gaslight campaign later, tweaking it to fit that game.
Shadows of Sekhmet is about the spirit of a priestess of Sekhmet, the war goddess. She's seeking aid from anyone she can to help take back the Temple of Sekhmet from some threat that has ruined it and disturbed her rest, and the Investigators end up wrapped up in it when the woman she's possessing, Miss Wittingham, gets kidnapped. From there, a lovely one-night romp ensues that should be a great little break from the horror that has hit them so far, and ultimately gives the group a chance to triumph and maybe realize Egypt has ancient secrets far deeper than what they originally anticipated... Our run of it was absolutely spectacular, and really set the tone I wanted for Cairo early in the chapter. My players loved the intense car chase with the Brotherhood, the seance scene with Miss Wittingham, and tricking the cult. They even learned Elder Sign, a direct precursor to them learning The Eye of Light and Darkness later, from the scenario! In other words, it fixes many of the problems Black Cat has.
That's not to say that Shadows of Sekhmet is flawless or that it fits every run of MoN. In fact, if you're not running a pulpy game of MoN, don't bother - this scenario doesn't make sense in a game that's not pulp, and your players may get confused if its paper-thin plot doesn't fit the rules of your established world. It also needs some tweaking to fit - as written, the scenario occurs in the 1930's and uses Nazis as its bad guys in a very Indiana Jones style plot, but it's nothing too troubling to fix. It's relatively easy for a Keeper to just replace the weird crocodile-imp Sobek-related critters with more fitting monsters like ghouls and Hunting Horrors, replace the Nazis with the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, and then tie it into the Brotherhood's plan to resurrect Nitocris like I did. There's also not much substance to the scenario itself unless you add to it; it's just not built as anything other than a fun little adventurous diversion. Your players might find it too unbelievable and unfitting unless they like a good romp through pulp tropes, but if they're sick of the constant grind of arrive-investigate-horror that is just about every chapter of MoN, this is a good cure for that. Is it perfect? No. Is it fun? Oh my Outer Gods, yes, it is so much goddamned fun for player and Keeper both. Sure, Shadows of Sekhmet might not do much, but it does it very well and makes it quite enjoyable, and for that I give it 6/10 cat paws. If you're interested in downloading this scenario for yourself, you can grab it right here.
Concerning the characters, I especially wanted to breed an atmosphere of "who can you trust?" and "who knows what's around that next corner, in that next narrow alley?" I knew the cultists would act from the shadows and be sneaky bastards, and that they would only reveal their allegiances when pressed or when it would be terrifying to their victims to do so, but the other characters were different. Specifically, I had a few ideas for how I wanted to run Faraz Najir, the Bedouin tour guides, Mah'muhd the beggar boy, Haram should they have chosen him as their guide (they saw through his ruse and did not), Zehavi, Dr. Kafour, Nigel Wassif, and especially Nitocris the Ghoul-Queen. Najir was easy, I portrayed him a lot like a more paranoid version of the Merchant from Aladdin mixed with Bennie from The Mummy. Since he was basically Hunting Horror food after he gave the Investigators the info they needed, I didn't feel too bad about not fleshing him out much. I'll admit for the tour guides and the hired help, I again stole a bit from Aladdin and made them like generic citizens. Dr. Kafour had a bit of an old professor feel to him, somewhat like an older and semi-retired Indiana Jones, and Nigel was intended to be more of a dashing heroic spook character, a bit like James Bond. The distinctive cigarettes were an addition from the Companion, and it proved to be quite helpful in fostering an atmosphere of mistrust for him, but I was surprised they didn't trust the knowledgeable and helpful Dr. Kafour. Maybe I was just too good at breeding paranoia, eh?
I've discussed Shakti and the Brotherhood before, but here it's even more important to point them out - my Shakti was clever and a bit conniving, staying in the background while the cultists did the dirty work, but that didn't stop him from being a threat. Even without his direct presence, he hovered in the background like a vulture, the leader of a cult of shadows and mayhem that worked best under the cover of darkness. Mystery and secretive actions were the Brotherhood's MO, and this just sealed how clever they were. Ironically, this would be Shakti's undoing - he was just so convinced he and his men were too smart to outsmart, and in the end, they couldn't even control a handful of Investigators. Besides, he came back to haunt them much later even after they shot him in the chest and presumed him dead... he wasn't, of course, and that made him more of an enigma. His cat, Hetep, was also very fun to use as an oddball monster, and it nicely foreshadowed Wu the Demon-Cat in Shanghai. With so many tools and tricks at his disposal, is it any wonder I barely needed to use Shakti himself as a threat? The Investigators had enough on their plates without him as it was!
Mah'muhd I shamelessly patterned a bit after Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I know this is probably a bit of a divisive opinion, but I actually kind of like Short Round - I think he's cute and kind of a fun extra hurdle for the otherwise serious Dr. Jones. I wanted a similar feel for my group, and as it turns out, they loved him! Aidyn even got so attached, her character Sarah adopted the child. As for Queen Nitocris, who sadly never got the chance to show up, well... The Mummy (2017) was about to hit theaters at the time, and I knew it would end up bombing because of how many changes they made to it from even the 1999 remake, let alone the 1930's source material. I didn't end up seeing it, but as it turns out, I was absolutely right and I saw its DVDs in bargain bins almost as soon as it came out. The best thing I got from it was that I drew inspiration from the title character's appearance for my Nitocris. She was going to have all sorts of hieroglyphs and praises to Nyarlathotep written on her skin, sharp teeth, and four pupils/irises. Strikingly and darkly beautiful, dusky-skinned, and dark-haired, she would have been a hell of an addition, but my players were quick on the ball and stopped her summoning before it even started. That was okay, but not at all what I planned, which was a theme in this chapter especially.
Yeah... about that... Cairo was really the first time my players seemed to feel confident in going out on a limb and doing whatever they wanted to without my guidance. They spread their wings like so many ibises in Egypt, and that informed the tone of the rest of the game. However, this meant they often made some strange choices as a group, and I had to scramble to fill in the gaps. The first few bits of the chapter went exactly as planned - they spoke with Najir, got the information they needed, sought leads, and otherwise followed my breadcrumbs without fail. The trouble came when I started to introduce the demises of allies and information brokers, with Najir being the first victim of the Brotherhood's actions. I based his death off the absolutely horrific and amazing art for the Elder Sign: Omens card "Master of Amulets", which involved a shambling corpse with the aforementioned amulets stuffed in its eye sockets and mouth. It was just disturbing enough to make for a memorable mental image, and I couldn't help but make it even more disturbing by having it tinged with Brotherhood influence in the form of inverse ankhs everywhere.
It worked like a charm (heh, puns) until the group discovered the Hunting Horror protective amulet on his body. It was at this point that somehow, Kat became convinced there were more of these amulets somewhere, and from there her character Ewan managed to somehow convince the others to go along with his plan of robbing a dead man's house. Those familiar with MoN will see the issue immediately - Najir's home and workspace is never actually detailed, because there's nothing of great import there besides Najir. This whole decision occurred in the middle of the game, and took me so by surprise I had to call a 15 minute break to hash out what would happen. I knew I wanted a Brotherhood ambush somewhere, so I put it in Najir's house. I also knew there was nothing there, but detailed his home anyway, putting aspects of Tewfik's and even Tandoor Singh's homes into it. The result was slapdash, but good enough for government work, and my players of course never knew the difference. The resulting clash between them and the Brotherhood got them good, and even wounded Chance's character Ted to the point he had to retire. This proved fortuitous, because Chance was going to be absent for a few weeks. Sadly, he was absent at a really cool point of the campaign, which once more occurred someplace I really didn't want it to be.
That point, of course, was the experiences hunting down clues at the Red and Bent Pyramids, and the ensuing encounter with a god. On the one hand, I tried to slightly ward them away, feeling the dramatic irony eat at me from within as a result, but on the other, it was one of the most fun parts of the campaign to me, and I had planned for it extensively. I built up the finding of Besart and his drug-addled antics, the retrieval of part of the Eye of Light and Darkness, and the trip out into the desert. I wanted to make the pyramids alluring, yet ominous, and events there basically went off as planned until they got to the Bent Pyramid itself. I was half-hoping they'd just go deal with the Clive Expedition first - I moved it near the pyramids for that reason. Unfortunately, they did not, and everything kind of ended up being out of order from what I expected. Fortunately, I had everything for it ready: I knew I wanted Nyarlathotep to really shine here, as this was their first (to their knowledge anyway) encounter they'd have with him in the campaign. I let them explore the place and do as they wished, described in detail what they found, and built up slowly to the fact that something was very wrong. Of course, by that point it was too late, and Nyarlathotep deigned to appear in all his dark pharaonic glory. This was it - the point of the campaign and of this chapter I had most been waiting for...
I cannot stress this enough to the Keeper preparing to run Masks of Nyarlathotep for the first time: you absolutely have to nail every single Nyarlathotep appearance in the game, down to the letter and down to the mannerisms. Your players bought their year-long tickets for you to scare the absolute bejeesus out of them with the Crawling Chaos, and therefore if he's gonna show up, it should be and is always a big fucking deal. He's a god, he deserves that amount of build-up and respect, and the campaign does a great job building and teasing his appearance. Your players are going to ask, all throughout NYC and London, "Hey, when are we actually going to see Nyarlathotep in this campaign?" Chance asked this so much I actually had to tell him to stop; my players and him especially were champing at the bit for the main god himself to arrive. By the time they got to Cairo, they'd had enough teasing and dreams of the Messenger-God to bait them for the inevitable appearance of the Black Pharaoh, but by the end of it, they wanted to stay out of his sight forever. Make their desire to know, to see, to meet the ineffable, one and only Nyarlathotep their downfall. Scare them enough, and you can lord it over them and taunt them with it, a threat to their very sanity and an inescapable torment. I promise, if your players are even half the masochistic fuckers mine are, they will absolutely love you for doing this type of low-key gaslighting to them.
When running the scene in the Inner Sanctum, or any scene with Nyarlathotep physically present, don't let the players take away his spotlight with goofiness. Ever, ever, ever. He is the focal point always when he's there, a dazzling and blinding stage light flooding the room and commanding attention regardless of the form taken. Whenever Nyarlathotep appears, the joking should vanish and cold fear should take its place; wherever he goes the small hours will be rent with the screams of nightmare, in this case from your players' characters. It's your job to make them so terrified of Nyarlathotep, they never want to run into him ever again after meeting him the first time, and the Black Pharaoh's appearance is a wonderful way to do just that as well as to steer the campaign in the direction you want it to go. It should not only set to your players how your Nyarlathotep thinks, acts, and works, but also set a sense of urgency for the plot of the Great Gate. To this end, I prepared dialogue and descriptions of the events in the Sanctum for what I thought was every direction the conversation could go, since there are so many choices the players might make. You can view my notes for this on my Dropbox right over here.
Above all, do not squander all your careful preparation by not planning and not knowing how a given Mask is going to act, react, and influence things, and for the love of Azathoth, if he's going to do an evil laugh, it better have a goddamned purpose other than you just wanting to do an evil laugh. Fuck up this opportunity, and you'll be kicking yourself forever. I'd also recommend playing some scene-setting music, dimming the lights, even using a red-tinted flashlight for a lighting effect. I did all of this - the song I played for the Inner Sanctum was "The Chosen" from the Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem OST, and killing the lights goes a long way towards disorienting the players in the dark. I even got up, walked around, and touched my players' hair, shoulders, and arms to really freak them out. There's nothing like getting into someone's personal space to really set their teeth on edge, especially if an Outer God is doing it. Double especially so if you're sneering, sardonically quipping, and murmuring or whispering terrifying secrets into their ears...
Nyarlathotep, when I play him, has a different walk, different body posture and stance, different presence in the room, and even a different voice. He should be absolutely unmistakable from anyone else, sowing seeds you can later reap for little "coincidences" later. I also like to give him a glamor failure style "tell" which is very useful for more of those "coincidences" later on if you use Human!Nyarlathotep; I always give him pitch black eyes (sometimes with stars and galaxies in them) and sharp, predatory, shark-like teeth. Another Keeper I know gives his Human!Nyarlathotep dry, bleeding, cracked, and decaying lips, teeth, and gums. Yet another I know almost always has him drinking espresso drinks, very specifically, always red-eye caramel macchiatos; still another has him connected to a specific piece of music they play. It's just as effective, however, to have his mannerisms peek out from behind the mask every so often, and often a lot more subtle to do so. Having this sort of "tell" suggests he may purposefully be allowing his facade to slip in order to frighten or intimidate PCs, and can also suggest an implied connection to Satan (it is said in lore that Satan cannot hide his cloven hooves even when pretending to be human) that will go a long way in giving your more religious or occult-savvy players pause.
I said earlier that I prepared for every eventuality, but I didn't prepare for everyone to just... not talk to the Black Pharaoh at all. In retrospect, they made the absolutely correct choice in not pissing him off or otherwise back-sassing him - hell, I didn't even have to use the portals with the monsters that come out of them - but at the time, I was slightly disappointed in my players. Of course, it is pretty hard to talk when you're busy panicking, dealing with a friend who's become a True Believer and nearly kills you, and then the door out of the room has sealed shut to boot. That's bad enough without the Crawling Chaos involved. I ended up having to improvise on the spot, which fortunately wasn't too hard for me since I had been in Nyar's headspace for most of a year at this point. Eventually he had to coax them, yes, for real, to calm down a bit and explain that he only wanted to talk; that seemed to get them to speak up and gave me more to work with as a result. Choosing Sarah to be picked on by him was 100% arbitrary; Aidyn just so happened to be the one who was acting the most terrified (she wasn't used to how intense my Nyarlathotep can get, and this was a lot for her to handle). That made choosing her irresistible, pure Keeper crack. I like to think the results in the blog speak for themselves.
Of course, by the time they all got out of the pyramid, we had no choice but to save the Clive Expedition for later - they were too mentally battered and needed a break, so I granted them it. Well, for the most part. There ain't no rest for the wicked until they close their eyes for good, as Cage the Elephant so sagely once put it, and I threw them near immediately back into the fray with the events at the Mosque of Ibn-Tulun. God, this chapter was so jam-packed, it was a miracle I even got to everything, but once there was some sort of order to their actions again the rest fell into place... well, except the Clive Expedition, and except the one day there was another player absent - Chance again. It should be obvious by now, but the sandstorm was a plot device to bridge a gap. I still got to throw in the Sand Face and the Flesh Scarabs from The Mummy though, so I was happy enough with it. All that was left from there was the Clive Expedition and Under the Pyramids. This went off less as a ritual (since they stopped it without ever realizing there was going to be a massive ritual) and more as a "The cult kidnaps them and takes them hostage" moment similar to how Indy, Short Round, and Willie ended up being trapped by the Kali cult in Temple of Doom. The result, I think, went very well, though I had to skip over it in the blog proper due to time constraints and various 0ther reasons.
As for getting them out of Cairo, my players chose once again to break the mold - despite Kenya being closer and despite having every reason to go there, they chose to follow up leads in Shanghai next. This posed a problem, since Shanghai was intended to be the endpoint of the game, not in the middle! How on earth would I get them from Cairo, Egypt to Shanghai, China in any feasible sort of way, let alone provide a good way out of Cairo that was fitting for the tone I'd worked so hard to establish? Enter Rob's next character, Francis McCloud, and his plane the Tin Man's Heart. Something similar occurred for Aidyn, mostly because she really wanted to play her newly minted smuggler, Muuzaji, next. This meant they both had to play two characters for the segment involving the plane ride to Shanghai. Even more problematic was the fact that Kat also lost her character Ewan and picked up a new one, Mahmoud Sabri. Now I had another issue, how would I make the plane ride memorable and introduce new characters to boot?
Thankfully, my answer came in the form of two sources - back issues of The Unspeakable Oath and White Dwarf Magazine. Both are already excellent resources for any Keeper, and they proved their worth here, too: it was in an issue of the former I discovered Fear of Falling, and in the latter that I discovered Fear of Flying. The Companion suggests pairing these together in MoN, and the result was absolute perfection. Now, I could gush about how much fun it was to throw some poor Investigator into the nightmare of Falling, only to follow it up with a slightly tweaked Flying, but it'd be pointless since both are basically just little interludes. Both involve nightmares on a plane - Flying is about a cultist who attacks in the plane to retrieve an artifact, while Falling is every Investigator's worst nightmare: a monster attack in an enclosed space several thousand feet above the ocean, and they gotta jump for it. I of course tweaked both to fit my game a little better, but otherwise they fit into any run of MoN very well. I'm not really going to grade them because they're so short, but I will say this - they're fun, they're made to go together like peanut butter and jelly, and it's criminal that they're in two different issues of two different zines from the 80's instead of put together and collected in one volume. Someone needs to get on this. TUO, I'm looking at you - collect all your past scenarios into one big volume and release it, please. For the love of all things non-Euclidian, do it. Some clever fan did it for WDM's Call of Cthulhu stuff, so do it for yours! I and every other Keeper looking for older material will thank you.
Even without the bonus material and other scenarios I added in, Cairo as a chapter is the absolute gem in Masks of Nyarlathotep's crown, the centerpiece, the crux and hub to an excellent campaign. It's got its flaws: The Black Cat is a bit of an oddball blemish in its facets, and getting Shakti characterized as a threat can be a challenge since he's not physically present most of the time unless the Keeper chooses otherwise. These however are very minor nitpicks and my silly little opinion anyway, nothing too major. As a campaign chapter, Cairo is everything I want in a pulp horror campaign - action, adventure, mystery, magic, investigation, horror, and exotic flair. And, for someone obsessed with Nyarlathotep in general and the culture and history of ancient Egypt, it's quite simply irresistible. It's got a nice arc that builds up and answers lots of plot-related questions, and really cements the threat of Nyarlathotep and his cults - as it should, since Egypt is his stomping grounds... For this, MoN: Cairo, were it a stand-alone campaign, receives a 9.5/10 golden inverse ankh medallions. It's nearly perfect, in my opinion, as a piece of Call of Cthulhu game material. It's just such a great chapter and so much fun as a literal big sandbox, what Keeper could resist the alluring charms of the Nile with how much is packed in and its themes of nothing being quite what it seems?
I almost didn't want to leave Cairo, I just wanted to stay there and add more to it - maybe Thoth's Dagger, as the Companion suggests? But alas, time was short, and I had to move on. Shanghai beckoned, and with it new adventures where life is cheap, horror hides behind a fan, and anything goes...