Casting Shadows

This minor seed is being musically planted by moonlight for Call of Cthulhu. Aimed at characters in the 20s and 30s, it can take on extra special significance in a generation game.

My Saturday Seeds also reappear on Ancient Scroll on random Saturdays~

The seed

The seed involves a neighborhood bar which has featured live musicians for decades, shifting ever so slowly with the cycles and trends of music, but always behind the times. Dark, private, and above reproach for those who know obscure greats and the lingo of the in-crowd. Something, despite all that is right within, is very, very wrong.

Planting the seed

The seed can be best planted at the beginning of a campaign and allowed to fester as an oft-frequented location down session after session. It should be a safe haven, a place of recovering sanity shredded by the horrors committed by men, and the madness they summon.  It should be a historical landmark, and a legacy passed on from older brother to younger, generation after generation. Once the place is well-planted in the collective consciousness of the troupe, the disturbing truth may work its way out of the depths of the apple.

The Details

The Apple of Eve is a small, dark, brick-walled basement club which has a knack for attracting the best musicians and holding on to the vibes longer than any other. The walls are lined with sketches, photographs, and album covers of musicians.

The place is run by three men, friends from way back, who are said to have inherited it from their fathers. It is a close-knit group. To keep their hands in, they still work the club. One serves as host and booking agent, one as chief bartender and advisor to all troubled souls, the last as a house musician; backing up the greats. For these men, life is music, liquor the law overlooks, and camaraderie. They open their doors to all, and brook no trouble within. Rarely, does it need to be escorted out… but there is, of course, a price.

What’s going on

The owner, the bar tender, and the talent share a secret, and no ulterior motive other than to keep the party going…despite the cost which they have long since rationalized away along with their basic humanity. They are free-wheeling automatons falling through history clutching at ever-mutating notes and the dream of playing a funeral dirge at the end of the world.

The three men have found a secret of immortality, and the coldness of heart to use it. For nearly a century, and decades in this same location, the three have feasted on the specially prepared flesh and fluids of the right kind of patron, sacrificed in just the right way in exchange for more life. Seeing their music and the beloved nature of the Apple as recompense for their sin in a minor key, the men have long since left guilt and worry behind. Much like poker night, the abduction, brutalization, preparation, and consumption of the people they need to keep their unnatural life flowing has become routine.

The men harm no one other than the runaways, hobos, and drifters they capture and kill under the dark of each moon. They participate in charity, run a soup kitchen (mostly as bait), and teach local children how to play music. They are institutions each in their own right.

They are brutal killers and cannibals.

If anyone were to closely inspect the photos on the wall, or go looking for a familiar family face in the shots on the walls, if they were sharp-enough of eye and open enough of mind, they might notice the same three faces, down through the ages, mainly unchanged. It’s the eyes that give it away; the empty eyes.

Enjoy~