CREDITS WRITING

JAMES M. THOMSON III COVER ART

TITHI LUADTHONG INTERIOR ART

TITHI LUADTHONG THE ARTIST KNOWN AS ALIENCAT THE ARTIST KNOWN AS PEUT THE ARTIST KNOWN AS KRSMANOVIC THE ARTIST KNOWN AS LIKOZOR THE ARTIST KNOWN AS LOCUSFOCUS THE ARTIST KNOWN AS PROMETEUS THE ARTIST KNOWN AS MAZARTEMKA THE ARTIST KNOWN AS OUTSIDERZONE THE ARTIST KNOWN AS SELLINGPIX ALL UNCREDITED ART IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN CARTOGRAPHY

JAMES M. THOMSON III, INCORPORATING SOME ELEMENTS OF A PAINTING FROM FAT GOBLIN GAMES (USED WITH PERMISSION) Special thanks to our Elusive Muse, without whom this project could never have been possible. Brava! Brava!

Call of Cthulhu is a Trademark of Chaosium Inc. and is used with their permission via the OBS Community Content program. SampleFor more information please visit Chaosium’s website: www.chaosium.comThe Miskatonic Repositoryfile Logo is used under license. Tales From Ye Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe ©2019 James M. Thomson III

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 5 Getting the Investigators Involved ...... 8 The Mad Professor...... 8 The Vanishing of Millicent Snook ...... 10 The Simple Opening ...... 10 Uncle Phineas and the Book of Splendor ...... 11 The Sixth Beginning, aka The Lost and the Damned ...... 13 Finding the Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe ...... 13 Description of the Shop ...... 15 Into the Deep ...... 17 The Trail of Millicent Snook...... 18 The Monster ...... 19 Things to Do When a Monster is Chasing You ...... 19 Peek Through the Shelves ...... 19 Peek Over the Shelves ...... 20 Burrow Through the Shelves ...... 20 Call Mom and Tell Her Ill be Late ...... 21 Knock the Shelves Down ...... 21 Hide in the Ceiling ...... 21 Call a Cop...... 21 Confront the Beast ...... 22 Run Like Hell ...... 22 An Additional Option: The Man in the Chair ...... 23 In Far ...... 24 Escape From Carcosa ...... 24 My Plan Doesn’t Cover Aldebaran...... 26 No WiFi in Carcosa ...... 26 Climbing the Shelves ...... 26 Knocking Over the Shelves ...... 27 Damaging the Shelves ...... 27 Destroying the Books ...... 27 Reading the Books ...... 27 Taking Books out of the Library ...... 27 The Plight of Professor Van Loopenkuecker ...... 27 The Fate of Millicent Snook ...... 30 Rescuing Millicent: The Easy Way ...... 31 Rescuing Millicent: The Hard Way ...... 31 Optional Encounter: A Dedicated Reader ...... 32 Optional Encounter: A Serpent in the Stacks ...... 33 Keepers Option: The Enemy of my Enemy is a Scaly Horror ...... 34 Keepers Option: How Not to Get Eaten by a Serpent ...... 34 Rewards of Victory ...... 36 Postscript ...... 37 Appendix A: Dramatis Personae ...... 38 Horrors From Beyond ...... 43 Four Volunteers From Ye Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe ...... 46 SampleAppendix B: Pregenerated Investigators ...... file49 Appendix C: Maps and Handouts ...... 51

4 INTRODUCTION

The shabby environs of Ye Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe are as redolent of defeat and despair as any seven bus WHAT’S CARCOSA? stations—or perhaps even a rest home's day-room. This is where unloved books go to die. Newer Keepers and those less obsessed with the Technically its name is the "Friends of the Essex Cthulhu Mythos than the author may be asking County Library Store" but no one calls it that. It's Ye this question. Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe to the lonely book-hounds The answer is that Carcosa is a nightmare city, and impoverished single mothers who know that it dead and silent, which lies either on a planet exists. Even if they haven't heard its nickname, it feels orbiting the star Aldabaran, or in a foul baryonic like a dusty old crap shop to them. Under-Verse outside of time and space. Or both, The public library sells off its books here when they get worn out, or when the demand for newer volumes in some awful, incomprehensible way. pushes them off the shelves, or when everyone gets It is a place of limitless entropy, sorrow and sick of looking at them. All the world's great literature despair. It is where the dreams of young poets can be found here, buried somewhere in between go, when they die of cancer before they can write forgotten bestsellers from the seventies and copies of them down. It is where the decrepit demons of "Windows 95 for Morons." And it's all yours for fifty defunct and abolished Hells reside. It is a place cents each. of things lost and forgotten. The Great Old One known as (or the Unspeakable, or That Which Should Not be Named) presides over this silent city, reigning in desolation over its nothingness, presiding at an endless and terrible masked ball. The Investigators won't encounter Him, thank goodness (at least not during this adventure) but they will find that a trip to Carcosa's public library is quite dangerous enough.

Pretending to go to class? It's hard to say. But they're always here. And now you are here, too. We hope you leave alive, and that you've kept your receipt for tax purposes. As a nonprofit, purchases from Friends of the Library are wholly tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

KEEPER'S INFORMATION Things at Ye Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe are just slightly worse than they appear. At times, its air of desolation grows so strong that its deepest and most neglected corners connect with the libraries of dread Carcosa— the nightmare city beyond the stars. The investigators have the misfortune to arrive at just such a time. And

they may have to rescue someone from the depths of The dying mall outside of town gives them a space those terrible stacks. But can they even rescue for free. It's very worst space. The shop is tucked into themselves? an odd corner of the bottom level, accessible only We offer the Keeper a number of different hooks (all through the outside of the mall. To reach it, you enter of them cruel and rusty, we hope) to draw the a sort of tunnel and then turn right. investigators into the shop and the deep dank places The shop is not marked on maps of the mall—you that lie beyond it. We will go over all of these in much have to know how to find it yourself. This is not easy. greater depth later on in the section "Getting the But a certain kind of person always seems to. Shabby investigators Involved" on Pages 8-14. This is just an failures sit in the shop's uncomfortable chairs at every overview. Samplehour of every day, their faces buried in crumbling We have five different beginnings file (organized into paperbacks. Are they retired? Hiding from work? three different categories) that you can use to draw

5 1: The Mad Professor Decades ago, a maverick professor of Library Science, the crazed genius Dr. Vidor Van Loopenkuecker, vanished from the haunts of men. He had explored the library of Celeano and had begun to probe the more terrible archives of Carcosa and he knew that his explorations were hazardous. It was clear to Van Loopenkuecker that he might eventually need to be rescued from some distant, loathly part of the Carcosa stacks. With strange alien science he learned the time and place where a rescue could be effected, and who might be able to rescue him. He left instructions with the storied law firm of Slotworth and Slocumb to contact the appropriate parties on the critical date and send them to his rescue. That time has come. The investigators each receive a visit, a letter, and a promise of strange rewards if they come to Van Loopenkuecker's aid.

2: The Vanishing of Millicent Snook If the promise of weird vistas and secret knowledge would not motivate your players (or would make them run away screaming), then you may have to play rougher with them. Little Millicent Snook has disappeared from the shop. This is of course impossible. There is no rear exit, there are no storerooms for her to be hiding in. If she went out the front door, everyone would have seen her. There seems to be no rational explanation for her disappearance.

The poor little thing is just seven years old, but various types of investigators into the adventure, plus improbably wise beyond her years. She loves books suggestions for a free-form sixth one. In almost all of and bookstores, but this one may not have loved her them, the investigators will be trying to retrieve a back. Can the investigators pluck her from the nighted book or rescue a person (we have provided you with a depths of Carcosa before it's too late? mad professor and a sweet little girl who each need rescuing). 3: The Worst Lunchtime Errand in Once the investigators find themselves wandering History toward Carcosa, they will face roughly the same Perhaps the investigators already know about Ye challenges. A dimensional shambler pursues them Dusty Olde Crap Shoppe. And while they have no through the shelves. A dangerous patron stalks the desire to visit it, they have been sent here on an stacks, looking for the book that will make it happy. errand. Their spouse or boss or drug-dealer has sent Terrible librarians may appear at any moment to them here to pick up a book. One of the clerks at the inflict awful penalties on intruders. desk tells them where to find it. But in browsing The investigators may have to face any of these around the shelves they soon lose themselves entirely. perils or none, depending on their own actions and This hook works best if you combine it with one of the Keeper's sadistic whimsy. They may encounter the the rescue missions. Perhaps the investigators professor or the little girl, whether or not they set out stumble over poor lost Millicent Snook or chance to rescue either one. across Professor Van Loopenkeucker while stumbling We conclude with five endings, one for each through the halls of Carcosa. Perhaps they try to beginning. So the structure of the book gives you five rescue them. beginnings, five endings, and something like a Whether or not they do, it's going to be a long, hard common middle. Five tales from Ye Dusty Olde Crap road back to our reality. Shoppe, intertwined like Cthulhu’s tentacles. Sample Here are summaries of the beginnings. file

6 6: The Lost and the Damned However the Keeper gets them into the shop, once the The most difficult, but perhaps the most rewarding investigators go into the shelves, out of sight of the way to involve the investigators is if they are door, their troubles begin in earnest. themselves patrons of the shop, brought here by It won't be obvious when they step over the line into hopelessness and ennui. Perhaps they come here another and still more terrible world than ours. At every day, for no reason they can clearly identify. They first they just keep encountering more and more may vaguely know each other or they may be just bookshelves, going further back than they expected. nameless figures that silently hunch in nearby chairs. Before long the titles start to look ominous and the In any case, while wandering through the shelves cataloguing system deranged. But before they can they all simultaneously discover spaces they have turn back, some unseen creature behind the shelves (a never visited before. And soon they are all thrust dimensional shambler, to be specific) starts chasing together on a terrifying voyage to the beyond, driven them, pushing them further and further into the deeper and deeper past the edge of reality by a store's murky depths until all the books around them monster that stalks them, unseen, always just around are copies of the King in Yellow and the halls look very the corner behind them. strange indeed. They are in Carcosa now. And whether they are here to rescue someone or they are just trying to escape with their lives, they are either going to have to evade the monster or find another way back. We include detailed notes on what the libraries of Carcosa are like (to summarize: they are bad) and how to find your way around them.

THE PLIGHT OF PROFESSOR VAN LOOPENKUECKER AND THE FATE OF MILLICENT SNOOK In this section, we find out what has become of Professor Van Loopenkuecker and Millicent Snook, and how they can be rescued. We also learn about a ghastly patron of the library, the serpent man known as Sss-Thsss-Shrruss, and what happens if the investigators encounter him at his dismal labors; with notes on ways that he can help, hinder or eat the investigators. We follow with a section on how the investigators can get safely home, either with a rescuee or by themselves.

REWARDS OF VICTORY We conclude by talking about the ways the voyage to Carcosa may have changed the investigators. Rewards they may have earned—or for that matter acquired without earning them). Well-deserved punishments and forfeits to lavish upon them (or undeserved ones, as the case may be). As a coda, we have a postscript about what becomes of the shop after they leave, and what further

adventures it might or might not push them on to. AND THEN... Sample file

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