Part 1

A DBA Production
Visual Effects provided by: Chaosium
Screenplay: Matt Staroscik & John Wick
Editing: D. J. Trindle & Rob Vaux
Starring: Your Hapless Players
Directed by: You

How To Use Crude Oil

Crude Oil has been designed to be used by beginning Keepers and Players for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. However, it can also be used with just about any other modern horror game, and Keepers can easily adjust the scenario to give more experienced players a run for their money. The first part of this scenario took place in 1927, and the events can be found in the Background section.

Crude Oil is an introductory adventure for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. While it has been designed to be easy to run for beginning players and Keepers, it can be easily modified to give more experienced Investigators a run for their money. The scenario is fairly short and can be run in a single session, or dragged out over several sessions if the Keeper so desires. This is Part Two of "Crude Oil." Part One can be located in the last issue of SHADIS, but you don't need a copy of it to run Part Two. A brief summary of past events is included to bring you up to speed. Your players will be taking the parts of FBI and CDC agents investigating a rather bizarre mystery. They'll be digging up files from 1927, informing them (somewhat) of the events of the past which may guide them (or mislead them) along the path to an encounter with the horror of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Losing Power in CoC and a special Keeper Kit.

Background

Seventy years ago, Federal agents and detectives from the Burns Detective Agency investigated a murder in New Jerusalem, MA. They discovered an extraterrestrial creature possessing as an oil field worker, trying to free hundreds of its brethren from a magical tomb deep under the earth. Depending on the outcome of the first part of Crude Oil, the small town of New Jerusalem either survived or was destroyed by a thousand Formless Spawn. The man who built the oil field, Sean O'Bannon, left town after his daughter was killed by the Formless Spawn (she was torn to shreds), and now his mansion stands empty and abandoned.

Local rumors say that the ghost of Kathy O'Bannon wanders the hallways, looking for her father. Seventy years have passed since the Formless Spawn tried to unlock that subterranean tomb, and now, a mortal man is going to try it so he may bring back the Formless Spawn's namesake: the Great Old One Tsathoggua.

Adventure Structure

While the first part of Crude Oil took place over several days, the events in the second part will take place in just a few hours. While the emphasis is not on investigation, there will be a great deal of deduction involved. There will also be much more action than in Part One, as Investigators will be facing many angry Formless Spawn while they try and save a pack of frat-house flunkies from a fate worse than death. Because of the free-floating nature of the scenario, a Timeline has been provided to allow you to keep track of events going on outside of the Investigators' viewpoints. What the Investigators do after certain events take place will generally not effect the Timeline.

Adventure Overview

Characters for Crude Oil can come from several sources. Most players will probably want to create their own, but if not, then the templates provided in Appendix 3 should suffice. Regardless of how they are made, however, the characters in Part Two should be similar in balance to those in Part One, and there should be at least two FBI agents in the group.

The investigators will be assigned to check out a possible new plague breaking out in New England. They will do the majority of their research over the course of a single day before flying to New Jerusalem to check things out.

The Investigators will arrive in New Jerusalem the next day and will either find a small village scraping up a living out of the railroad or a ghost town, devoid of any signs of life (which version they find depends on the outcome of the last episode). They'll be able to question the inhabitants or search out the remains, but in either case, they'll turn up next to nothing.

However, that night, a bunch of rowdy frat boys turn up for their yearly initiation rites. They've got a bunch of freshmen with them, whom they plan to scare in New Jerusalem's "haunted house." They'll enter and start their ghost story, but when they try to leave, they'll find all the doors locked with brand new padlocks. Then they'll discover that they're going to have all their Power sucked out in a grand ritual to summon Tsathoggua to New Jerusalem. One of them will escape and run screaming through the streets, awakening the Investigators and drawing them to the house where the ritual is taking place. From there on, the story is up to them.

The Briefing

(The introduction below assumes that the players will be running the pre-generated characters in Appendix 3. It should be adjusted to fit the particulars of your party.) On a rainy March morning, the two FBI PCs (who work at the Boston bureau) are summoned to the office of Special Agent Martin Trask. Trask has run the Boston office for eleven years, and is well-liked — and highly respected — by the agents who serve under him.

As the storm hammers away at the huge window behind Trask's desk, he gestures for the PCs to seat themselves at a small conference table. Once they are settled (and have helped themselves to coffee and donuts, which are piled in the middle of the table), Trask will address them.

"I have just been informed that we may have an unusual situation developing in New Jerusalem. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a miserable little burg about 40 miles south of here. I understand there was a profitable oil field there in the '20s, but nowadays it's practically a ghost town.

"Over the last several days, the residents have found four corpses in and around the town. While this might be unremarkable here in Boston, it's damn unnerving in a town with only seventy-some people to begin with. Furthermore, the state the bodies were found in is… curious. It was so odd, in fact, that the local doctor, Allan Miller, placed a call to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta — he suspects there might be an outbreak of anthrax.

"So, Atlanta called me to let me know they are sending a man down. You're to pick him up from the airport, and then all of you will drive to New Jerusalem. When you get there, get in touch with Dr. Miller so the CDC's agent can take a look at the bodies. While he's doing that, you will be coordinating your efforts with the Boston PD; they're sending a unit down there, too. The PD sure as hell isn't assuming these people died of anthrax, and I'm not either. Let's help them out.

"Oh, make sure you check out a Suburban from the motorpool. In this kind of weather, you're going to need it. The road between Boston and New Jerusalem is a mess, I'm told."

Of course, anthrax isn't the problem; it's the two Formless Spawn that Edmund Tillinghast released from the wreck of Well #3. The Spawn instinctively sought host bodies upon their release, but they are unpracticed in the maintenance of them, so they wrecked them in short order. Special Agent Trask knows none of this, and he's also totally unaware of what really transpired in New Jerusalem in the 1920s. He is telling his agents the truth as he knows it.

If the PCs ask the right questions, Special Agent Trask will tell them the following additional pieces of information:

• Sean O'Bannon used to run the oil-field in New Jerusalem. He was a small-time gangster until he got rich off his legitimate oil business. For some reason, he abruptly left New Jerusalem in February, 1927. He is believed to have moved back to Dublin.
• If asked about previous unusual events in New Jerusalem, Trask will provide the report of Special Agents Reid and Halsey, below. Note that this report has been tampered with; it glosses over the unsettling truths of the original investigation.

Special Agents Halsey and Reid's Report

Actual criminal investigation reports are long and full of dull legalese. There's no need to make your characters slog through a realistic one, but here are some of the highlights of the report Halsey and Reid filed in 1927.

"…the murder of Arthur Whipple at first appeared to be the result of competition for the affections of Kathryn O'Bannon with Scott Ridley, another oil-field worker. However, events took a turn for the worse with the murder of 5-year-old Billy Bowyer, whose body was discovered the morning of February 12, one day after we arrived. The body was found under the derrick of Well #3.

There at first appeared to be no connection between the events, but at approximately midnight on February 13th, we encountered Scott Ridley while staking out Well #3. Upon revealing ourselves and our identity as Federal agents, Ridley attacked us. In an exchange of gunfire, Ridley was accidentally immolated when a waste oil drum he was taking cover behind ignited, presumably due to the muzzle flash of his weapon. The connection between Ridley and the child could not be established, but it seems likely he was the perpetrator in the child's murder, though his motive remains unknown."

Those of you who have played Part One will notice right away that some things don't ring true here. Ridley didn't have a pistol, but rather was possessed by the Spawn. There's no mention of the runes on the wellhead, and the only photographs in the report are of Whipple's and Ridley's corpses. Furthermore, there is no documentation on Ridley's alleged firearm. In brief, most of the report is bogus, glossing over all the otherwordly details of the events that transpired in February 1927. Any agent reading the report will immediately notice these omissions but will be unable to fill them in. If they question their superiors, they receive nothing but frustration. Trask and anyone else in the Bureau they can get a hold of will be truly ignorant of the matter — the cover-up was long before their time. If the PCs continue to stir things up, they might attract some unwanted attention, at the Keeper's discretion.

Despite the fact that the report has been faked, it still has all the information that the first agents were given in their briefing, as well as the Arthur Whipple autopsy results (see SHADIS #26: page 39 sidebar and page 43 proper). Perhaps the person who was responsible for "sanitizing" the original report wasn't familiar enough with the case to delete all the suspicious information. This might lead the PCs to believe, correctly, that the original investigators were not part of the conspiracy.

If an aspiring agent gets lab work done on the report itself, they'll find that the paper and ink used were not commercially available in the 1920's — a fake report apparently was used to replace the original one at a later date. The location of the original report is now a complete mystery, and asking too many questions about it won't be good for any PC's career. The only way they can get to the truth is to track down a surviving relative of one of the original PCs, who might be persuaded to part with a diary or other record of "grandpa's weird case." We'll leave the details up to the Keeper. Just remember that the PCs don't have to know the truth about 1927 to play Part 2, but if you want to turn Crude Oil into an X Files-style campaign this is one way to do it.

Lost in Time

New Jerusalem is not, by any means, a modern town. There are no cellular phone antennas; all calls have to go over land lines. Likewise, the characters will be unable to rely on pagers, if they have them. There is no cable TV; if you want HBO you need a satellite dish. And of course, the whole town uses septic tanks instead of sewers. There is running water and electricity, at least.

The Fate of New Jerusalem

Depending on the success or failure of Part One, New Jerusalem with either be a slum or a ghost town. Here are two brief run-downs for the alternate New 'salem's your Investigators will encounter.

The Quiet Town

New Jerusalem has suffered since 1927. After O'Bannon left and the original Investigators stopped the plot of the Formless Spawn, the small town turned to the railway to survive. There's a small switchyard for the local rail service and all the trappings that surround such a place. A modest café/rest area stands next to it, where the railworkers can stay the night and get a hot breakfast in the morning before they take another job back to Boston.

Further down the street, there's a gas station and a small truck stop, with a large parking lot and a restaurant where truckers can stop and sleep, and get a meal if they need to. Across the street from the train station, there's a tiny grocery store run by an elderly couple, who manage to keep their place clean and tidy (in contrast to the rest of the town). Andy Cottonmaker's hotel (see "The Lost Town," below) is on the edge of town, on the road back to Boston. Down by the lake, a small fishing company manages to stay in business selling nearly all their catch to the cafés and the street markets in Boston. The workers there tend to keep to themselves, and ignore the transient population of the railway station and truck stop.

A substantial piece of New Jerusalem's economy has no set location. There's a whole lot of women who are eager to keep truckers and railworkers company for the night; they can be found around loitering around most of the businesses in town (although the elderly couple keeps them away from the grocery store). And high on a hill, casting its shadow over the entire town, is the ruins of the O'Bannon mansion. Of course, the place is haunted by the ghost of the Irishman's daughter, Kathy. The total population of New Jerusalem (including the families of those who work in the switchyard, the cannery, the grocery store, the two cafés, and the gas station) count up to only seventy-three people.

The Ghost Town

New Jerusalem has been deserted since 1932. The buildings are in disrepair and the great old mansion of Sean O'Bannon sits high above the ruins of the town. The only residents are squatters who stay for a while and jump the trains as they pass by the empty switchyard. Andy's hotel is the only legitimate business in the entire area. Stories of Kathy's ghost tell of a sickly white figure dressed in dripping wet clothes and empty eyes, calling sweetly and sadly for her father as she bleeds from every pore in her body along the empty corridors of O'Bannon's mansion.

Our Villain

The man responsible for the mess the Investigators are about to get themselves in is Edmond T. Tillingast, known to his friends as "Nightraven." He's twenty-six years old with dyed black hair and pale skin, and he looks about as fragile as an oak leaf in November. His hair has been cut short in the back and left long in the front (so he can hide behind it). He has no life, works at a goth clothing store in the mall and lives in a house his folks rent out. He's been attending Boston Community College for five years now and still hasn't achieved any kind of degree.

A couple of months ago, an anthropology professor was rather careless with an ancient document and Nightraven procured it. ( The history of the book will explain part of this Mythos.)

Nightraven is a selfish, spoiled little brat who is only interested in furthering his own temporal power. He's a student of the new school of occultism (he's got a set of Native American Tarot cards, lots of rocks that keep his karma right and even an Ouija board somewhere in his closet) which means that he doesn't know what he's doing. He's read the text and his early tampering has released a pair of Formless Spawn from their crypt (they promptly possessed a pair of transients and have begun murdering people, which is why the characters are here). He figures that if he can sacrifice some lives to the God Beyond the Gate, he can get some real mystical power.

He knows the local frat boys meet once a year in the "spook house" in New Jerusalem to scare the pants off their pledges, and he figures that sacrificing jocks is "active Darwinism" and "thinning the herd." Unfortunately, the formula he's using is corrupt and incomplete, and when he uses it, the offense will be felt to the very bowels of the Earth, and the slothful Tsathoggua is actually going to get rather miffed…

Timeline

Here's how the events for the evening are going to unfold:

6:00 p.m. The Investigators arrive in New Jerusalem.

11:00 p.m. The frat boys arrive in New Jerusalem.

11:45 p.m. Nightraven sneaks about the house, putting brand new locks on the doors.

12:00 a.m. Nightraven begins the ritual in the basement.

1:00 a.m. One of the frat boys escapes the house and gets to the general store.

1:45 a.m. The Investigators are awakened by the owner of the general store.

app. 2:00 a.m. The Investigators arrive at the old O'Bannon house.

from app. 2:15 a.m. The Investigators have to find a way to close the gate Nightraven has opened, and the only way to do that is by completing the incomplete ritual that Nightraven has begun.

The Lost Town (6 p.m.)

At around 6 p.m., the Investigators will arrive in New Jerusalem. Use the descriptions provided above to give the Investigators an idea of what the town has become. Despite the fate of the town, there is a general store/gas station/wayside hotel near the road to Boston, run by Andrew J. Cottonmaker (a friendly fellow in his fifties who smiles with a bright smile and has a crimp in his back from working on the railroad). The place used to be owned by his grandfather, Joseph P. Cottonmaker and his father, Phillip A. Cottonmaker, before everything turned to dust.

While the Investigators check in (it's a nice little place that Andy keeps very clean, because it's the only real hotel in the area and he takes pride in his birthright), he'll give them the following speech:

"Town turned to dust about seventy years ago, or so I'm told. All happened twenty years before I was born. My father, that's Joseph, he watched grandpa go nuts when he saw what he saw. Grandpa said the whole night came alive that night. It was like the darkness come to life and moved. A bunch of flatfoots were there, hired by O'Bannon. They were there 'cos two of O'Bannon's boys was fighting over his daughter, a fine lookin' girl from what daddy told me, and one of them went a bit too far. His rival disappeared, and everyone figured he had done the poor guy in. The flatfoots was there to find out who did it — as if nobody knew.

"Anyhow, those boys found something they wasn't supposed to, and there must have been hell to pay. Grandpa — he was at the yard that night and saw the whole thing — he told me that something from the well did it. I don't know what that means, but I do know that grandpa wasn't very well after that. He always slept with the light on, so there weren't any shadows anywhere in the room, and he kept a piece of this weird slab with him under his bed. Don't know where he got it, but he never slept without it. The night he died was the night that my mom took the slab out from under his bed and grandpa couldn't find it and his heart kicked out on him that night. Bad time. Real bad time. That piece of rock's the only thing I got left of his — 'sides this store, that is.

"But anyway, you know that the house up there (Andy points up to the old O'Bannon place) it's haunted. O'Bannon's daughter – that pretty thing – she's up there walking around, looking for her father. She wanders the empty hallways, finding anyone who comes into the house and gives them a kiss. It's the kiss of death, they say. Makes your blood boil, and then you die screaming as your eyes and lips turn black as the night. Happened to Fred Tomilson twenty years ago, I tell you. My cousin, he saw it. And that's the truth."

After this little pontification, canny investigators may want to examine the stone slab Andy mentioned (see sidebar). It is an unremarkable piece of rock, like the headstone of a grave. It has been broken and a significant portion is missing, but the beginnings of a line of runes can be seen along one side. These runes have bearing on the conclusion of the adventure (see below) and players would do well to remember it.

They can wander through the town and question the locals (if there are any left) but they won't come across any real evidence of foul play. Dr. Miller will not be available until the next morning and the four corpses they were sent to investigate will have to wait until then. However, the O'Bannon house will cast shadows across the entire town, and of course, that's where the Investigators will want to look …

The O'Bannon House

Map of the O'Bannon House (FOR GMs ONLY!)

It's all locked up. Padlocks are on the doors and all the windows are boarded up. The only opening into the house is through the storm cellar, which is isolated from the rest of the house. The walls of the cellar are filled with old shelving covered with spider webs and dusty jars of rotten preservatives. An old dog carcass is rotting in the northwest corner, covered in mold, spiderwebs and flies.

The Investigators are undoubtedly going to want to take a look at the house. Go ahead and let them. They'll have to break through the padlocks, but they should have no problem doing that. The inside of the house is deserted. They'll find old dust tarps thrown over the furniture and long, drooping cobwebs filling the halls. A map is provided for the layout of the house. Nightraven is hiding in the secret basement (where O'Bannon kept all his hooch). He'll hear the Investigators moving about upstairs and stay put. He'll watch them through the secret viewports (another installation of O'Bannon's) and realize that they are not the frat boys he's waiting for. The Investigators can search all they want, but right around 11 p.m., the frat boys are going to show up for their initiation whether they like it or not.

The Initiation (11 p.m.)

The new locks on the doors belong to the frat boys. They'll unlock the front door, bring the lock inside with them and lock themselves in with the pledges. Then, they'll put the pledges in the library (where the Investigators from the first part met with O'Bannon) and take their blindfolds off. Five of them will start telling the pledges about the ghost story that the Investigators heard from Andy while the other two run to the secret passages that O'Bannon used to use to run whiskey out of his house (see the map below). From those secret passages, the two brothers will pound on the walls and make moaning sounds to scare the pledges. It's all pretty traditional stuff. Until midnight, that is.

Preparations (11:45 p.m.)

At 11:45, Nightraven will sneak out of the secret basement to where it opens up on the beach just below the house. He'll climb the stairs up to the house (which are obscured by false rock and a steep angle), put a new lock on the front door and creep back down the stairs to the secret basement. Then, he'll begin the ritual that will open the Gate to Tsothuggua.

The Ritual Begins (Midnight)

At midnight, Nightraven will begin the Gate spell. He's reading the spell from the Clayburth Document, which is incorrect. The symbols are in the improper order and corrupt. He thinks he's casting a Summoning Spell, when in fact, he is casting a Gate Spell. This will open a doorway between the house and the deepest stygian pits, allowing Tsathoggua to come through and investigate (if he can get his big slothful butt off his throne, that is), but he'll more than likely send some Formless Spawn to do it for him.

The ritual will suck Power from the pledges and the fratboys, draining them of one point of Power per fifteen minutes. The moment the ritual is begun, they'll feel the Power drain. This will go on for forty-five minutes, and then everything will go wrong. That's when Nightraven messes up the ritual. Suddenly, every living soul in the house will be drained of 1d10 Power (that's just in case some Investigators are hiding out somewhere; if they complain, tell them the story about a cat and his curiosity). A single frat boy (who's in the secret passage) will lose only a single Power point; he'll see what's happening to his buddies (they'll be shriveling up into prunes about this time; see sidebar for details), and smash through a weak spot in the wall, running to Andy's hotel for help.

Dilemma at Andy's Place (app. 12:30 a.m.)

At approximately 12:30 a.m., Andy will be awakened by the sound of pounding and screaming — the frat boy (Kip Winser) trying to raise some help for his friends. Investigators staying there have a chance of getting awakened by the sound (a Spot Hidden roll with a 20% penalty may be appropriate). Kip will tell Andy about their prank and claim that the ghost is sucking everyone's soul. He swears that he's seen the ghost (he hasn't, but unfortunately, Kip is a little insane at this point) and further maintains that it's wandering through the halls, kissing the frat boys and drinking their souls. His wild-eyed testimony will drive Andy to go up and wake the Investigators (if they're not up already). If any late risers want to hear Kip's testimony, they'll be out of luck. By the time they get downstairs, Kip will be out like a light.

To Face the Ghost (Sometime after Kip's testimony)

The Investigators now have to go into the house and face "the ghost." Andy gets out his old shotgun (his grandfather's 1912 12-gauge Winchester pump action [4D6@10 yards, 2D6@20 yards, 1D8@50 yards] ) and demands that he go with. Of course, the Investigators will decline, but he'll insist, starting out the door ahead of them. One way or another, Andy is going to show up at the House: Destiny (the plot) demands it.

When the Investigators show up at the house, it's all alight with eldritch fire. The ritual has successfully sucked out all the Power from the frat boys and is now starting to work on Nightraven. The Investigators will enter the shuddering building and discover that the thunder and screams are coming from below the house. As they move through the hallways, they'll eventually enter into the study, where they'll find the crimson light leaking up through the floorboards. A few shots with a shotgun will blast a hole big enough for them to peer through.

Nightraven is standing in a magic circle. The symbols around the circle are unfamiliar to anyone without Cthulhu Mythos knowledge. His skin is pallid and wrinkled, and his eyes are ablaze with an unearthly red flame. His face is turned up toward the Investigators, and he's screaming like a banshee. His cheeks are shallow, his teeth are gone and his tongue is black and bloated. He screams "Help me! Oh God, please help me!" just as his spine snaps and his last ounce of Power is sucked from him. His body will be torn in half and a black ichor will ooze from both sides of the ragged wound.

This sight will cost the Investigators 1/1d6 SAN.

The Gate has been opened, however, and now comes the real trouble. If the Investigators are able to make it down to the secret basement (the 15 foot drop will cause 1d3 damage to anyone who fails a Climb or Jump roll; make a Luck Roll to see if anything's sprained), they'll discover the Gate.

Viewing the Gate will cause another 0/d3 SAN loss. Looking into the Gate will bring attention to one's self, causing the release of a Formless Spawn within 10 Turns (roll a d10). Roll each time an Investigator looks into the Gate for the first time. Tsathoggua isn't too pleased about this intrusion and he wants the Gate closed. If that means coming across the Gate himself, he will do so. But, more on that later …

Closing the Gate

With the incoming Formless Spawn, the Investigators are going to have to shut down this Gate pretty quick. The only way to do that is by chanting the incantation in reverse and chanting it correctly. Unfortunately, the symbols in the magic circle are incorrect, and in the wrong order. Clayburth was rather creative with his interpretation of the magic runes (see sidebar above). The Clayburth Manuscript is lying on the floor of the secret library, just inches from the circle. It's been smeared with Nightraven ichor, but still legible. The page Nightraven was reading from has been marked and a reading is provided in a nearby sidebar. If the Investigators should read the text, they should make the connection to the slab Clayburth is referring to and the slab that Andy was talking about earlier. If they don't, have one of them make an Idea Roll, or have Andy make the connection (bad Investigators, no cookie).

The Investigators will have to get out of the secret basement (a successful Spot Hidden at a 20% penalty will spot the secret passage out to the beach. If they are actively looking for it, give them an even break). The slab back at Andy's place is also incomplete (the first seven symbols only), but it will have the beginning of the correct sequence. The Investigators are just going to have to put the rest together from there.

The Ritual will involve putting the runes in the circle in the correct order (they're incorrect the way Nightraven drew them) and chant the words written in the text (those are right). Once this is done, the Gate will close and Tsathoggua will be happy. Everyone in the area loses 1d6 Magic Points each time the Ritual is performed incorrectly. Any character that reaches 0 Magic Points will lose 1 POW each time the Ritual is muddled. A character that reaches 0 Magic Points is unconscious. A character who reaches 0 POW is dead. It takes ten minutes to perform the Ritual correctly. Remember, the Investigators are also going to have to deal with angry Formless Spawn. Details on the Spawn can be found in Appendix One.

At the conclusion of a successful Ritual incantation, a total of 10 POW must be sacrificed in order for the Ritual to be completed. This 10 POW can come from any character(s), including Andy. The Ritual implies this sacrifice. When it's completed, all in the area will suddenly become aware that they must sacrifice a small bit of their souls in order to compensate for the insult against Tsathoggua. If the Investigators decline, Andy will give up the ghost to close the Gate.

Each time they fail to close the Gate, roll d100. After the first failure, there is a 10% that Tsathoggua shows up personally to deal with the Investigators. All future attempts add 10% to the roll (2nd attempt = 20%, 3rd attempt = 30%, and so on). We've provided stats for the Great Old One just in case he decides to show up. He will not be accompanied by any Formless Spawn. He will quickly sit on the Investigators and give them miserable deaths. Those that are driven insane by the experience are brought back to Tsathoggua to serve as mindless slaves for the rest of eternity.

Conclusion

If the Investigators successfully close the Gate, they deserve a hand. Let each of them roll a d10 SAN gain. If they did not allow Andy to participate in the POW sacrifice at the end of the scenario, they deserve another d6.

If the Investigators fail, well, they'll either get killed by Tsathoggua or end up as slaves. No need for Sanity loss here.

This is the end of Crude Oil, but it need not be the end of your Investigator's careers.

Provided below are a series of Lights, Camera, Action! set-ups to direct your FBI guys in new directions.

Appendix One: Tsathoggua and his Formless Spawn character specs.

Appendix Two: Lights, Camera, Action! provides off-the-cuff storylines for the adventure.

Appendix Three: Agents provides specifications for five FBI, CDC, and Detective Investigators.