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Reschedule slate; rebuild DEAD AIR around the Fuehrerbunker and Ahnenerbe

Browse Source 
Slate: Another Bloody Treasure Map moves to Wed afternoon at 6 players; DEAD AIR
moves to Thu/Fri/Sat evenings at 6 players. Black Summer, The Favour and Mr
Parker's Diary shift to the freed afternoons. Game folders renumbered to match.

DEAD AIR reframed: an SS-Ahnenerbe unit built an acoustic chamber below the
Fuehrerbunker to make one broadcast on the last night. The occult programme was
not a regime finding power, it was something cultivating a regime that could
build transmitters. Part One retitled Ash & Concrete. Bible gains a Handling the
Nazi material section as a binding design constraint (no wonder-weapon glamour,
victims named, bunker kept banal, no regalia in the art) and a six-player design
section (Act Twos split 3+3).

Flyer, Warhorn blurbs, schedule and production tracker rebuilt; flyer re-verified
as a single A4 page.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-07-31 22:18:20 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 6055a1c5ca
commit 563ccf6921
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README.md
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| # | Day | Session | System | Game | PCs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wed 27 | Afternoon | The Walking Dead Universe (modified) | [**BLACK SUMMER — Last Flight Out**](games/slot01-black-summer/) | 5 | Outline |
| 1 | Wed 27 | Afternoon | VANITY | [**ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP**](games/slot01-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/) | 6 | Outline |
| 2 | Wed 27 | Evening | Blade Runner RPG | [**AFTERIMAGE**](games/slot02-blade-runner-afterimage/) | 4 | **Port — con-ready (v2.2)** |
| 3 | Thu 28 | Afternoon | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR I — Ash & Amber** (1946)](games/slot03-dead-air-1-ash-and-amber/) | 5 | Outline |
| 4 | Thu 28 | Evening | The Dee Sanction | [**THE FAVOUR**](games/slot04-dee-sanction-the-favour/) — sequel to *The Princes Bride* | 5 | Outline |
| 5 | Fri 29 | Afternoon | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City** (1962)](games/slot05-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/) | 5 | Outline |
| 6 | Fri 29 | Evening | VANITY | [**ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP**](games/slot06-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/) | 5 | Outline |
| 7 | Sat 30 | Afternoon | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR III — Full Volume** (2027)](games/slot07-dead-air-3-full-volume/) | 5 | Outline |
| 8 | Sat 30 | Evening | Vaesen | [**THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY**](games/slot08-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/) | 4 | Outline |
| 3 | Thu 28 | Afternoon | The Walking Dead Universe (modified) | [**BLACK SUMMER — Last Flight Out**](games/slot03-black-summer/) | 5 | Outline |
| 4 | Thu 28 | **Evening** | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR I — Ash & Concrete** (1946)](games/slot04-dead-air-1-ash-and-concrete/) | 6 | Outline |
| 5 | Fri 29 | Afternoon | The Dee Sanction | [**THE FAVOUR**](games/slot05-dee-sanction-the-favour/) — sequel to *The Princes Bride* | 5 | Outline |
| 6 | Fri 29 | **Evening** | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City** (1962)](games/slot06-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/) | 6 | Outline |
| 7 | Sat 30 | Afternoon | Vaesen | [**THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY**](games/slot07-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/) | 4 | Outline |
| 8 | Sat 30 | **Evening** | Call of Cthulhu 7e | [**DEAD AIR III — Full Volume** (2027)](games/slot08-dead-air-3-full-volume/) | 6 | Outline |
| 9 | Sun 31 | Afternoon | — | *Reserve — re-run of highest-demand game* | — | Held |
| 10 | Sun 31 | Evening | — | *Reserve — pick-up / open table* | — | Held |
The three **DEAD AIR** games are a linked Call of Cthulhu trilogy running in the
same session slot on three consecutive days, so a player can book all three
without a clash. Each also stands alone. See the
[trilogy bible](docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md).
The three **DEAD AIR** games are a linked Call of Cthulhu trilogy running on
three consecutive **nights**, so a player can book all three without a clash.
Each also stands alone. It begins in a room built under Hitler's bunker that
appears on no plan, and it is about what the Reich's occult programme was
actually *for*. See the [trilogy bible](docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md),
including its **Handling the Nazi material** section — a design constraint, not
a disclaimer.
---
docs/Contingency-2027-flyer.pdf
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docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md
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# DEAD AIR — Trilogy Bible
*A Call of Cthulhu trilogy in three eras. Berlin 1946 → the Urals 1962 → Berlin 2027.*
*A Call of Cthulhu trilogy in three eras. The bunker, 1946 → the Urals, 1962 → Berlin, now.*
> *Every government that found it thought it was a weapon. It was an advertisement.*
> *They thought they were calling something. They were the call.*
**Contingency 2027 · Slots 3, 5 and 7 — Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons.**
Same session slot on three consecutive days so a player can take the whole arc.
Each part is written to stand alone; nothing essential to a single afternoon
depends on having played the one before.
**Contingency 2027 · Slots 4, 6 and 8 — Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings.**
**6 players.** Same session slot on three consecutive nights so a player can take
the whole arc without a clash. Each part stands alone; nothing essential to a
single evening depends on having played the one before.
---
## The spine, in one paragraph
In the last winter of the war, a German broadcast-research unit recorded
something that was not a sound and pressed it onto lacquer discs. It is not a
weapon, though three states in a row have spent enormous effort proving to
themselves that it is. It is a **lure**: a pattern that survives by being heard,
that lodges in a listening mind and makes that mind a relay, and that needs only
enough minds holding it *at the same moment* to arrive properly. Every regime
that has possessed it has responded the same way — by building a bigger
transmitter. The trilogy is the story of that pattern getting a larger and larger
audience, from a flooded basement, to a closed city, to the open internet.
Under the Reich Chancellery garden, below the shelter levels that appear on every
captured plan, the SS-Ahnenerbe built a room. It is not a bunker. Its geometry is
acoustic, its walls are wrong, and it was constructed to make one broadcast at
the moment the Reich died — not a message to the German people but a **summons**,
carried live over the Grossdeutscher Rundfunk network to every loudspeaker still
standing in Europe. The broadcast went out on the last night. The network was
already in pieces, so only fragments landed. But the pattern got its first
audience, the lacquers survive, and every state that has found them since has
responded exactly the way the Reich did: by building a bigger transmitter.
## The truth (GM only, all three parts)
- The material was catalogued by its German handlers as **die Folge** — *the
Sequence*. Nobody involved has ever agreed on what it is. It has no body, no
location and no demands. Its only appetite is **simultaneous attention**.
- A mind that has held the Sequence for long enough becomes a **carrier**:
outwardly normal, occasionally producing the pattern unprompted — humming it,
drawing it, tapping it. Carriers are not possessed and are not villains. Most
of them are victims, and the arc's cruelty is that every part asks the players
what to do about a person who has done nothing wrong.
- The Sequence propagates but does not scheme. There is no cult with a plan.
What there is, in every era, is a **committee** — men in a room deciding the
thing in the vault is an asset. The recurring antagonist of the trilogy is
- The Ahnenerbe unit catalogued its work as **die Folge** — *the Sequence*.
Nobody involved has ever agreed what it is. It has no body, no location and no
demands. Its only appetite is **simultaneous attention**.
- **The inversion, and the point of the whole trilogy:** the occult programme was
not a regime reaching for power and stumbling onto something. It was something
cultivating a regime — because a regime is a thing that builds broadcast
networks. The Ahnenerbe's researchers were not practitioners. They were an
audience being taught to build a bigger room. Everything they believed they
discovered was handed to them.
- A mind that has held the Sequence long enough becomes a **carrier**: outwardly
normal, occasionally producing the pattern unprompted — humming it, drawing it,
tapping it. Carriers are not possessed and are not villains. Most are victims,
and each part asks the players what to do about a person who has done nothing
wrong.
- The Sequence propagates but does not scheme. There is no surviving cult with a
plan. What there is, in every era, is a **committee** — men in a room deciding
the thing in the vault is an asset. The recurring antagonist of the trilogy is
institutional confidence, not a monster.
- **What actually happens if it completes:** not an eruption or a summoning. The
world simply becomes a place where the Sequence is one of the things that is
true, retroactively, and always was. Nobody notices. That is the horror, and it
is why the players' win condition is always *keeping the audience small*
rather than *destroying the thing*.
- **What happens if it completes:** not an eruption or a summoning. The world
simply becomes a place where the Sequence is one of the things that is true,
retroactively, and always was. Nobody notices. That is the horror, and it is
why the win condition is always *keep the audience small* rather than *destroy
the thing*.
## Handling the Nazi material
This is the part to get right, and it is a design constraint, not a disclaimer.
1. **No wonder-weapon glamour.** The occult programme is depicted as a delusion
that was itself being farmed. The Ahnenerbe men are credulous, careerist and
frightened — never impressive, never cool, never competent-but-evil. The
scenario gives them no victories and no good lines.
2. **The victims are named.** The listening trials used people. The ledger of
initials, durations and outcomes is the single most disturbing object in the
trilogy, and Part One's first act is built so that the players read it before
they see anything supernatural. The camps are historical context, present and
never used as set dressing for spectacle.
3. **No uniforms on screen as spectacle.** By February 1946 the men who did this
are dead, missing, or in a queue being processed. What is left is paperwork,
concrete and water.
4. **The bunker is banal.** Damp, low, smelling of diesel and drains. Every
description resists the mythic. The room *below* it is the only place the
scenario allows to be strange.
5. **Hitler is not a character.** He does not appear, is not the villain, and is
not secretly anything. He was, in this scenario's terms, an audience member.
Say that once, in Part One's Act Three, and never labour it.
## Timeline
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 1938–44 | The unit's research runs out of a broadcast annexe in Berlin. Human listeners are used. The records of what was done to them are what the 1946 players find first. |
| Feb 1945 | The unit's director orders the material destroyed, then doesn't. He seals the sub-basement and floods it. |
| **Feb 1946** | **PART ONE.** An Allied technical-intelligence team and a Soviet trophy brigade race to the same address in a shattered city. What the players find is split three ways at the end of the afternoon — and *how* it splits is the players' choice. |
| 1937–44 | Ahnenerbe unit "Folge" runs listening trials on prisoners and patients. The ledger. |
| Jan 1943 | Construction of the lower chamber begins under cover of the Führerbunker works. It appears on no plan. |
| 29–30 Apr 1945 | **The broadcast.** Made from the lower chamber over a network already in pieces. Fragments reach an unknowable number of listeners. |
| 2 May 1945 | The Soviets take the Chancellery. The lower levels flood. |
| 1945–46 | Soviet investigators work the bunker complex for months, looking for a body. They are not looking for a room. |
| **Feb 1946** | **PART ONE.** A room that is on no plan, under two metres of water, and two intelligence services above it who both want what is in it. |
| 1947–61 | The Soviet share becomes a state programme. A closed city is built over the work. |
| **Oct 1962** | **PART TWO.** The programme's own staff, sealed in during a containment failure, in the fortnight the world is closest to ending for entirely unrelated reasons. |
| 1963–89 | The programme is buried, its paperwork scattered into archives. Discs go missing individually rather than all at once. |
| **Oct 1962** | **PART TWO.** The programme's own staff, sealed in, in the fortnight the world is closest to ending for entirely unrelated reasons. |
| 1963–89 | The programme buried, its paperwork scattered into archives. Discs go missing individually rather than all at once. |
| 1991–2010s | Archive dumps and private collectors. Lacquers surface at auction, mislabelled, cheap. |
| **Jan 2027** | **PART THREE.** Berlin. A disc has been digitised, sampled, and is about to be played to an audience of a size no previous era could have assembled. |
| **Jan 2027** | **PART THREE.** Berlin. A disc has been digitised, sampled, and is about to reach an audience no previous era could assemble. |
## Arc rules
1. **Each part stands alone.** Any part can be a player's only DEAD AIR game and
1. **Each part stands alone.** Any part may be a player's only Dead Air game and
must land completely on its own. No part ends on "to be continued".
2. **Each part is a different genre of investigation.** Part One is a scramble —
competing teams, a physical dig, a deadline set by rivals. Part Two is a
closed-box procedural — no way out, everyone a suspect, the enemy is the
institution. Part Three is an open-city sprint — too much information, no
authority, a clock set by a scheduled broadcast.
2. **Each part is a different genre of investigation.** One is a descent — a
physical dig against a rival team on a deadline. Two is a closed-box
procedural — no way out, the enemy is the institution. Three is an open-city
sprint — too much information, no authority, a scheduled broadcast.
3. **Each part escalates the audience, not the monster.** One room, then one
city, then everyone. The Sequence never gets stronger. The speakers do.
4. **Continuity is a reward, not a requirement.** Returning players should get
three or four specific payoffs per part — a name in a file, an object they
handled, a person they spared. New players lose nothing but the shiver.
5. **State hand-off explicitly.** Each part's Epilogue records what the table
decided in a short "carry-forward" block. The GM notes it and honours it in
the next part where cheap to do so. **Default assumption if a table's choices
don't feed forward:** the Soviets take the material in 1946, the programme is
shut down but not destroyed in 1962, and at least one disc reaches Berlin.
Part Two and Part Three both open with a one-line reconciliation note so a
contrary Part One result is absorbed, not contradicted.
4. **Continuity is a reward, not a requirement.** Returning players get three or
four specific payoffs per part — a name in a file, an object they handled, a
person they spared. New players lose nothing but the shiver.
5. **State hand-off explicitly.** Each Epilogue records what the table decided in
a short carry-forward block. **Default if choices don't feed forward:** the
Soviets take the material in 1946, the programme is shut down but not
destroyed in 1962, and at least one disc reaches Berlin. Parts Two and Three
each open with a one-line reconciliation note so a contrary result is
absorbed, not contradicted.
6. **Nobody gets to be right.** Every climax is a decision where each option
costs something real, and all options are written.
## Six players
The trilogy runs at **6** — the largest table on the slate, and deliberately so:
these are document-heavy investigations and more hands means more of the archive
gets read. Design consequences, applied in all three parts:
- **Built to split 3+3.** Every Act Two runs as two parallel tracks — paper and
place — each holding half of a revelation, alternating in ~12-minute segments.
- **Six pregens, no passengers.** Each has one lane nobody else covers and one
seam into another PC. Drop order at 5 and 4 is stated in each part.
- **The set-piece gives idle players jobs** — holding the countdown cards,
voicing the rival team, reading the ledger aloud.
- **More PCs, not more scenes.** Content stays at ~3h15; the extra players
absorb into existing scenes as more voices, never as extra locations.
## Recurring elements
| Element | Part One | Part Two | Part Three |
|---|---|---|---|
| **The object** | Twelve lacquer discs and a listening ledger | The discs, transcribed to tape and fed to an antenna array | One surviving lacquer, digitised, in a sampler |
| **The object** | Twelve lacquers and the listening ledger, in a flooded chamber | The lacquers, transcribed to tape and fed to an antenna array | One surviving lacquer, digitised, in a sampler |
| **The carrier** | A survivor of the wartime listening trials | A senior engineer who has been humming it for thirty years | A musician who doesn't know where the hook came from |
| **The committee** | Two intelligence services who both want it | A ministry that wants the array switched on | A label, a festival and a streaming platform |
| **The clock** | The rival team's dig | The scheduled test | The scheduled broadcast |
| **The clock** | The rival team's pumps | The scheduled test | The scheduled broadcast |
| **The choice** | Who gets it | Whether to end it or hide it | Whether to stop it publicly or quietly |
## Tone and content
Bleak, procedural, adult. Horror comes from paperwork and from decent people
following instructions. Keep the supernatural sparse: in a 3h30 slot the Sequence
should be directly *experienced* no more than three times, and the third time is
the climax.
should be directly *experienced* no more than three times, and the third is the
climax.
**Content warnings (stated at the top of each part):** Nazi human
experimentation and its documentation; the Holocaust as historical context;
Soviet state violence and coerced labour; suicide; institutional cruelty to
people who have done nothing wrong; in Part Three, self-harm and mass-casualty
risk. Safety tools stated in 30 seconds at the top of each table, no ceremony.
**Content warnings (stated at the top of each part):** Nazism and the Holocaust
as historical fact and present context; human experimentation and its
documentation; Soviet state violence and coerced labour; suicide; institutional
cruelty to people who have done nothing wrong; in Part Three, self-harm and
mass-casualty risk. Safety tools stated in 30 seconds at each table, no ceremony.
## Art direction
Ink and pencil, hand-drawn, never photorealistic — house style. Each era gets its
own register: **1946** ruined-city line drawing, heavy blacks, wet stone.
**1962** technical-drawing precision, isometric plant schematics, Cyrillic
labelling. **2027** cold flat vector and screen-grab textures. The Sequence
itself is only ever drawn as a waveform or an oscilloscope trace — never given a
face, in any era.
own register: **1946** ruined-city line drawing, heavy blacks, wet concrete, a
sectional diagram of a shelter with one room too many. **1962**
technical-drawing precision, isometric plant schematics, Cyrillic labelling.
**2027** cold flat vector and screen-grab textures. The Sequence itself is only
ever drawn as a waveform or an oscilloscope trace — never given a face, in any
era. **No swastikas, no eagles, no regalia** — the 1946 register is bureaucratic
forms and engineering sections, which is both more disturbing and the right call
for a public table.
Asset IDs: `DA1-ART-##`, `DA2-ART-##`, `DA3-ART-##`; handouts `DA1-H1-A` etc.
@@ -118,8 +166,11 @@ Asset IDs: `DA1-ART-##`, `DA2-ART-##`, `DA3-ART-##`; handouts `DA1-H1-A` etc.
1. Is the trilogy pitched on Warhorn as a series with booking priority for
players taking all three, or as three unrelated CoC games with a quiet nod?
2. Pregens: three fresh sets, or one family/institutional lineage carried
through the eras (a name recurring across three generations)? The lineage
option is stronger for returning players and more work.
2. Pregens: three fresh sets of six, or one institutional lineage carried through
the eras (a name recurring across three generations)? The lineage option is
stronger for returning players and more work.
3. Does Part Three use modern-day CoC 7e straight, or lean on Delta Green-style
handler structure? Straight 7e is the default until decided.
4. How much of the real bunker's floor plan to reproduce as a handout? A genuine
sectional drawing with one room added is a superb prop and needs a decision
about how obviously the extra room reads.
docs/one-page-flyer.html
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<div class="col">
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Wed &middot; Afternoon &middot; 5 players</div>
<h2>Black Summer: Last Flight Out</h2>
<div class="sys">The Walking Dead Universe RPG</div>
<p class="hook">New York, six weeks after the fall. The army&rsquo;s last plane leaves an old Brooklyn airfield at dawn and boarding needs a stamped chit with your face on it. Between the five of you, you have three. <em>The queue at the far end is longer than anyone wants to think about.</em></p>
<div class="slot">Wed &middot; Afternoon &middot; 6 players</div>
<h2>Another Bloody Treasure&nbsp;Map</h2>
<div class="sys">Vanity &mdash; a light house d6 game</div>
<p class="hook">You bought a treasure map off a man in a tavern. Yes. You know. So did four other groups this week, and by Tuesday there were three parties on the same road being extremely rude to each other. Here&rsquo;s the thing, though: the map is real. The vault is where it says it is, there is a great deal of gold in it, and the old man who printed four hundred of them <em>wasn&rsquo;t running a swindle. He was recruiting.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Wed &middot; Evening &middot; 4 players</div>
<h2>Afterimage</h2>
<div class="sys">Blade Runner RPG</div>
<p class="hook">Los Angeles, 2037. A memory designer is dead in his studio and Rep-Detect has the case with a whisper attached: <em>rogue replicant</em>. The whisper comes from a corporation, and it is a lie of the useful kind. Nobody here gets to be right &mdash; you only decide who pays.</p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Thu &middot; Evening &middot; 5 players</div>
<h2>The Favour</h2>
<div class="sys">The Dee Sanction</div>
<p class="hook">Six months ago you left a witch finder at a crossroads with a list in his hand &mdash; three villages where the evidence didn&rsquo;t add up and the verdict came anyway. Dee took the list. Now Garratt has called in the favour, and the village has its own view. <em>A sequel that stands alone.</em></p>
<p class="hook">Los Angeles, 2037. A memory designer is dead in his studio and Rep-Detect has the case with a whisper attached: <em>rogue replicant</em>. The whisper comes from a corporation, and it is a lie of the useful kind. You have until dawn, the case you were handed is wrong in every particular, and nobody in this story gets to be right &mdash; <em>you only get to decide who pays.</em></p>
</div>
</div>
@@ -211,17 +204,24 @@
<div class="col">
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Fri &middot; Evening &middot; 5 players</div>
<h2>Another Bloody Treasure&nbsp;Map</h2>
<div class="sys">Vanity &mdash; a light house d6 game</div>
<p class="hook">You bought a treasure map off a man in a tavern. Yes. You know. So did four other groups this week, and by Tuesday there were three parties on the same road being extremely rude to each other. Here&rsquo;s the thing, though: the map is real. The vault is where it says it is, there is a great deal of gold in it, and the old man who printed four hundred of them <em>wasn&rsquo;t running a swindle. He was recruiting.</em></p>
<div class="slot">Thu &middot; Afternoon &middot; 5 players</div>
<h2>Black Summer: Last Flight Out</h2>
<div class="sys">The Walking Dead Universe RPG</div>
<p class="hook">New York, six weeks after the fall. The army&rsquo;s last plane leaves an old Brooklyn airfield at dawn and boarding needs a stamped chit with your face on it. Between the five of you, you have three. <em>The queue at the far end is longer than anyone wants to think about.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Sat &middot; Evening &middot; 4 players</div>
<div class="slot">Fri &middot; Afternoon &middot; 5 players</div>
<h2>The Favour</h2>
<div class="sys">The Dee Sanction</div>
<p class="hook">Six months ago you left a witch finder at a crossroads with a list in his hand &mdash; three villages where the evidence didn&rsquo;t add up and the verdict came anyway. Dee took the list. Now Garratt has called in the favour, and the village has its own view. <em>A sequel that stands alone.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Sat &middot; Afternoon &middot; 4 players</div>
<h2>The Curious Case of Mr Parker&rsquo;s Diary</h2>
<div class="sys">Vaesen &mdash; Nordic Horror</div>
<p class="hook">A parcel reaches the Society: the field diary of an English naturalist who drowned in a northern lake last October &mdash; posted three weeks after he died. The first sixty pages are ordinary. The last twenty are in the same hand, plainly and unmistakably his, and they are written from somewhere outside his own life. <em>The final page is dated nine days from now, and it describes your arrival.</em></p>
<p class="hook">A parcel reaches the Society: the field diary of an English naturalist who drowned in a northern lake last October &mdash; posted three weeks after he died. The first sixty pages are ordinary. The last twenty are in the same hand and written from somewhere outside his own life. <em>The final page is dated nine days from now, and it describes your arrival.</em></p>
</div>
</div>
@@ -230,33 +230,33 @@
<div class="tri">
<div class="th">Dead Air</div>
<div class="ts">A Call of Cthulhu trilogy &middot; Thursday, Friday &amp; Saturday afternoons &middot; 5 players</div>
<p>One pattern, pressed onto lacquer in the last winter of the war. Every government that found it was certain it was a weapon.
<em>It was an advertisement.</em> Three eras, three investigations, and an audience that keeps getting bigger.
<b>Each part stands completely alone</b> &mdash; take one, take two, or take all three.</p>
<div class="ts">A Call of Cthulhu trilogy &middot; Thursday, Friday &amp; Saturday <b>evenings</b> &middot; 6 players</div>
<p>Under the Chancellery garden, below every level that appears on a captured plan, they built a room. Its walls are the wrong shape. It was made to broadcast once, on the last night, to every loudspeaker still standing in Europe.
They believed they were calling something. <em>They were the call.</em>
Three eras, three investigations, an audience that keeps getting bigger &mdash; <b>and each part stands completely alone.</b></p>
</div>
<div class="parts">
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Thu &middot; Afternoon &middot; Part One</div>
<h2>I. Ash &amp; Amber</h2>
<div class="slot">Thu &middot; Evening &middot; Part One</div>
<h2>I. Ash &amp; Concrete</h2>
<div class="sys">Berlin, February 1946</div>
<p class="hook">You catalogue German science before the other lot get to it, and it has been six weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then an address turns out to be a broadcasting annexe that officially never existed, with a sub-basement somebody deliberately flooded. Two armies are digging for the same room.</p>
<p class="hook">You catalogue German science before the other lot get to it, and it has been six weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then a requisition turns up for forty tons of concrete, delivered to a building that was already finished. <em>There is a room under the bunker that is on nobody&rsquo;s plan.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Fri &middot; Afternoon &middot; Part Two</div>
<div class="slot">Fri &middot; Evening &middot; Part Two</div>
<h2>II. The Quiet City</h2>
<div class="sys">A closed city in the Urals, October 1962</div>
<p class="hook">You have worked here eleven years and long ago stopped being curious about the tapes. On Monday the gates shut for an &ldquo;administrative period&rdquo;. On Tuesday a technician takes off his headphones and walks into the lake. <em>On Friday, at six in the morning, someone is going to close a switch.</em></p>
</div>
<div class="game">
<div class="slot">Sat &middot; Afternoon &middot; Part Three</div>
<div class="slot">Sat &middot; Evening &middot; Part Three</div>
<h2>III. Full Volume</h2>
<div class="sys">Berlin, today</div>
<p class="hook">A lacquer disc came out of a box of Cold War acetates at auction and sold for four hundred euros to a producer who liked the label. He sampled fifteen seconds. You have almost certainly already heard it. <em>At midnight it closes a festival, uncut, live, to two hundred thousand people.</em></p>
<p class="hook">A lacquer disc came out of a box of Cold War acetates at auction and sold for four hundred euros to a producer who liked the label. He sampled fifteen seconds. You have almost certainly already heard it. <em>At midnight it closes a festival, live, to two hundred thousand people.</em></p>
</div>
</div>
docs/one-page-flyer.md
+43 -39
View File
@@ -14,70 +14,73 @@ tools at every table.
---
**BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT** — The Walking Dead Universe RPG
*Wed afternoon · 5 players*
New York, six weeks after the fall. The army's last plane leaves an old Brooklyn
airfield at dawn and boarding needs a stamped chit with your face on it. Between
the five of you, you have three. The queue at the far end is longer than anyone
wants to think about.
**AFTERIMAGE** — Blade Runner RPG
*Wed evening · 4 players*
Los Angeles, 2037. A memory designer is dead in his studio and Rep-Detect has the
case with a whisper attached: *rogue replicant*. The whisper comes from a
corporation, and it is a lie of the useful kind. Nobody here gets to be right —
you only decide who pays.
**THE FAVOUR** — The Dee Sanction
*Thu evening · 5 players*
Six months ago you left a witch finder at a crossroads with a list in his hand —
three villages where the evidence didn't add up and the verdict came anyway. Dee
took the list. Now Garratt has called in the favour, and the village has its own
view. A sequel that stands alone.
**ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP** — Vanity, a light house d6 game
*Fri evening · 5 players*
*Wed afternoon · 6 players*
You bought a treasure map off a man in a tavern. Yes. You know. So did four other
groups this week, and by Tuesday there were three parties on the same road being
extremely rude to each other. Here's the thing, though: the map is real. The
vault is where it says it is, there is a great deal of gold in it, and the old
man who printed four hundred of them wasn't running a swindle. He was recruiting.
**AFTERIMAGE** — Blade Runner RPG
*Wed evening · 4 players*
Los Angeles, 2037. A memory designer is dead in his studio and Rep-Detect has the
case with a whisper attached: *rogue replicant*. The whisper comes from a
corporation, and it is a lie of the useful kind. You have until dawn, the case
you were handed is wrong in every particular, and nobody in this story gets to be
right — you only get to decide who pays.
**BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT** — The Walking Dead Universe RPG
*Thu afternoon · 5 players*
New York, six weeks after the fall. The army's last plane leaves an old Brooklyn
airfield at dawn and boarding needs a stamped chit with your face on it. Between
the five of you, you have three. The queue at the far end is longer than anyone
wants to think about.
**THE FAVOUR** — The Dee Sanction
*Fri afternoon · 5 players*
Six months ago you left a witch finder at a crossroads with a list in his hand —
three villages where the evidence didn't add up and the verdict came anyway. Dee
took the list. Now Garratt has called in the favour, and the village has its own
view. A sequel that stands alone.
**THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY** — Vaesen, Nordic Horror
*Sat evening · 4 players*
*Sat afternoon · 4 players*
A parcel reaches the Society: the field diary of an English naturalist who
drowned in a northern lake last October — posted three weeks after he died. The
first sixty pages are ordinary. The last twenty are in the same hand, plainly and
unmistakably his, and they are written from somewhere outside his own life. The
final page is dated nine days from now, and it describes your arrival.
first sixty pages are ordinary. The last twenty are in the same hand and written
from somewhere outside his own life. The final page is dated nine days from now,
and it describes your arrival.
---
## DEAD AIR — a Call of Cthulhu trilogy
*Thursday, Friday & Saturday afternoons · 5 players*
*Thursday, Friday & Saturday **evenings** · 6 players*
One pattern, pressed onto lacquer in the last winter of the war. Every government
that found it was certain it was a weapon. **It was an advertisement.** Three
eras, three investigations, and an audience that keeps getting bigger. **Each
part stands completely alone** — take one, take two, or take all three.
Under the Chancellery garden, below every level that appears on a captured plan,
they built a room. Its walls are the wrong shape. It was made to broadcast once,
on the last night, to every loudspeaker still standing in Europe. They believed
they were calling something. **They were the call.** Three eras, three
investigations, an audience that keeps getting bigger — **and each part stands
completely alone.**
**I. ASH & AMBER** — Berlin, February 1946 *(Thu afternoon)*
**I. ASH & CONCRETE** — Berlin, February 1946 *(Thu evening)*
You catalogue German science before the other lot get to it, and it has been six
weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then an address turns out to be a broadcasting
annexe that officially never existed, with a sub-basement somebody deliberately
flooded. Two armies are digging for the same room.
weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then a requisition turns up for forty tons of
concrete, delivered to a building that was already finished. There is a room
under the bunker that is on nobody's plan.
**II. THE QUIET CITY** — a closed city in the Urals, October 1962 *(Fri afternoon)*
**II. THE QUIET CITY** — a closed city in the Urals, October 1962 *(Fri evening)*
You have worked here eleven years and long ago stopped being curious about the
tapes. On Monday the gates shut for an "administrative period". On Tuesday a
technician takes off his headphones and walks into the lake. On Friday, at six in
the morning, someone is going to close a switch.
**III. FULL VOLUME** — Berlin, today *(Sat afternoon)*
**III. FULL VOLUME** — Berlin, today *(Sat evening)*
A lacquer disc came out of a box of Cold War acetates at auction and sold for
four hundred euros to a producer who liked the label. He sampled fifteen seconds.
You have almost certainly already heard it. At midnight it closes a festival,
uncut, live, to two hundred thousand people.
live, to two hundred thousand people.
---
@@ -85,4 +88,5 @@ Booking opens on Warhorn · sign-ups also taken at the event.
Contingency is a members-only event — membership £10 per year, £5 if you
volunteered or GMed at a Wyrd Sisters event in the last year.
Every game is run with pre-generated characters and full content notes on its
listing.
listing — the Dead Air games carry historical content warnings worth reading
before you book.
docs/production-tracker.md
+20 -13
View File
@@ -2,16 +2,16 @@
Legend: **—** not started · **◐** in progress · **✔** done · **n/a** not required
| # | Game | Outline | Scenario v1 | Pregens | Handouts | Art | Playtest | Print | Console |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BLACK SUMMER | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2 | AFTERIMAGE | ✔ | ✔ *(port)* | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ ×3 | ◐ reprint | ◐ port |
| 3 | DEAD AIR I | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 4 | THE FAVOUR | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 5 | DEAD AIR II | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6 | ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 7 | DEAD AIR III | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 8 | MR PARKER'S DIARY | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| # | Slot | Game | PCs | Outline | Scenario v1 | Pregens | Handouts | Art | Playtest | Print | Console |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wed aft | ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP | 6 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2 | Wed eve | AFTERIMAGE | 4 | ✔ | ✔ *(port)* | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ ×3 | ◐ reprint | ◐ port |
| 3 | Thu aft | BLACK SUMMER | 5 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 4 | Thu eve | DEAD AIR I — Ash & Concrete | 6 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 5 | Fri aft | THE FAVOUR | 5 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6 | Fri eve | DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City | 6 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 7 | Sat aft | MR PARKER'S DIARY | 4 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 8 | Sat eve | DEAD AIR III — Full Volume | 6 | ✔ | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
**A game is convention-ready when:** the scenario is at v2 or later, pregens are
audited against the rules, handouts and art are produced, it has survived at
@@ -27,20 +27,27 @@ Everything else can proceed without them.
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~~Was Witch Finder Garratt on screen before?~~ **Resolved:** yes — *The Princes Bride*, Continuum 2026 Sunday Slot 7, Faversholme Oct 1586. THE FAVOUR is now written as its direct sequel off the crossroads Tangent scene. Remaining sub-question: reuse the seven *Princes Bride* pregens, or build fresh? | THE FAVOUR — pregens only |
| 2 | Does Ilse Brandt (Part One) return in Part Two, and does the Brandt name carry to Part Three? | DEAD AIR II and III — Act Two shape |
| 3 | Trilogy pregens: three fresh sets, or one lineage across the eras? | All three DEAD AIR pregen sets |
| 3 | Trilogy pregens: three fresh sets of six, or one lineage across the eras? | All three DEAD AIR pregen sets |
| 4 | Confirmed Warhorn slot times. | All print, all timing tables |
| 5 | Which TWDU book edition is at the table? | BLACK SUMMER Runner stat block |
| 6 | Which Vaesen bestiary entry the ferryman is built on. | MR PARKER'S DIARY v1 |
| 7 | **Do the Searles game rooms seat six?** Four of the eight games do. If not, the trilogy and ABTM drop to five. | 4 games' pregen counts |
| 8 | How obviously the Part One shelter-section handout shows the extra room. | DEAD AIR I Act One |
## Shared production
- **VANITY rules digest** — copy the Continuum 2026 build into
`games/slot06-.../reference/`. No rewrite.
`games/slot01-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/reference/`. No rewrite.
- **GM console** — one Contingency 2027 build with a module per game. The
AFTERIMAGE module already exists and ports; the rest are new.
- **DEAD AIR is one production with three outputs.** Shared bible, shared NPC
lineage, shared art direction, one print run. Treating it as three separate
scenarios is the main way this slate becomes undeliverable.
scenarios is the main way this slate becomes undeliverable. It now also runs
three nights back to back at six players — the largest sustained commitment on
the slate.
- **The trilogy's art carries a hard constraint:** no swastikas, eagles or
regalia. The 1946 register is bureaucratic forms and engineering sections. See
the bible's *Handling the Nazi material*.
- **Art** — house style throughout: ink sketch / pencil, hand-drawn feel, never
photorealistic. Generate via `mj-gen "<prompt>"`. Each game states its own
direction line on top of the base style.
docs/schedule.md
+40 -30
View File
@@ -20,31 +20,38 @@ content. Session clock counts play time only and pauses for the break.
| # | Day | Session | Game | System | PCs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wed 27 | Afternoon | BLACK SUMMER — Last Flight Out | Walking Dead Universe (modified) | 5 |
| 1 | Wed 27 | Afternoon | ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP | VANITY | 6 |
| 2 | Wed 27 | Evening | AFTERIMAGE | Blade Runner RPG | 4 |
| 3 | Thu 28 | Afternoon | DEAD AIR I — Ash & Amber | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 5 |
| 4 | Thu 28 | Evening | THE FAVOUR | The Dee Sanction | 5 |
| 5 | Fri 29 | Afternoon | DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 5 |
| 6 | Fri 29 | Evening | ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP | VANITY | 5 |
| 7 | Sat 30 | Afternoon | DEAD AIR III — Full Volume | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 5 |
| 8 | Sat 30 | Evening | THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY | Vaesen | 4 |
| 3 | Thu 28 | Afternoon | BLACK SUMMER — Last Flight Out | Walking Dead Universe (modified) | 5 |
| 4 | Thu 28 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR I — Ash & Concrete | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 5 | Fri 29 | Afternoon | THE FAVOUR | The Dee Sanction | 5 |
| 6 | Fri 29 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 7 | Sat 30 | Afternoon | THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY | Vaesen | 4 |
| 8 | Sat 30 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR III — Full Volume | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 9 | Sun 31 | Afternoon | *Reserve* | — | — |
| 10 | Sun 31 | Evening | *Reserve* | — | — |
## Why the slate sits this way
- **DEAD AIR runs Thu / Fri / Sat afternoons** — same session, three consecutive
days. A player who wants the whole arc books one time of day and never clashes
with themselves. Each part is written to stand alone for drop-ins.
- **Wednesday opens on the two most physical games.** Black Summer and
AFTERIMAGE are the least prep-hungry on the day (AFTERIMAGE is already
finished) and the best "arrival day" energy — a hard survival run and a
noir case.
- **Evenings alternate tone** against the afternoon's Cthulhu: Dee Sanction
(Thu), comic fantasy (Fri), folk horror (Sat). Never two bleak games in a row
on the same day.
- **VANITY sits Friday evening** — the loosest, funniest game on the night the
bar is busiest and the table is most likely to be tired and social.
- **DEAD AIR owns Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.** Same session, three
consecutive evenings: a player who wants the whole arc books one time of day
and never clashes with themselves. Night suits it — this is the bleakest
material on the slate and it wants a dark room and no daylight afterwards.
Each part is written to stand alone for drop-ins.
- **The trilogy runs at 6, the biggest tables of the week.** These are
document-heavy investigations; more hands means more of the archive gets read,
and every Act Two is built to split 3+3.
- **Wednesday opens light.** Another Bloody Treasure Map is the arrival-day
game — a loose comic dungeon crawl for a table that is half strangers and
entirely unsettled — and AFTERIMAGE follows in the evening needing no prep
at all, because it is already finished.
- **Afternoons carry the variety.** Zombie survival (Thu), Elizabethan horror
(Fri), Nordic folk horror (Sat) — each one a complete change of register from
the Cthulhu that follows it that night.
- **Never two bleak games in a row on the same day** is now impossible to fully
honour, since every evening is Dead Air. The afternoons therefore do the
balancing: Thursday's Black Summer is the only other genuinely grim game, and
it sits before Part One rather than after it.
- **Sunday is deliberately empty.** People leave, energy drops, and two reserve
slots absorb overspill demand or a re-run without new prep. If Sunday evening
never fills, that is a feature.
@@ -53,23 +60,25 @@ content. Session clock counts play time only and pauses for the break.
| Day | Games | Prep-heavy? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wed | 2 | One (Black Summer) | AFTERIMAGE is a port — read-through only |
| Thu | 2 | Both | Heaviest day. DEAD AIR I must be fully finished well in advance |
| Fri | 2 | One (DEAD AIR II) | VANITY reuses the existing convention rules digest |
| Sat | 2 | Both | DEAD AIR III is the arc payoff — needs the most playtesting |
| Wed | 2 | One (ABTM) | AFTERIMAGE is a port — read-through only. Gentle opening day |
| Thu | 2 | Both | Black Summer, then Dead Air I. Heaviest day of the week |
| Fri | 2 | Both | The Favour, then Dead Air II |
| Sat | 2 | Both | Mr Parker's, then Dead Air III — the arc payoff, needs the most playtesting |
| Sun | 0 booked | — | Reserve |
**Consequence:** eight new-or-ported games is a real workload. The three CoC
games share a setting bible, NPC lineage and art direction, which is what makes
the count achievable — treat DEAD AIR as one production with three outputs, not
three productions.
**Consequence:** three consecutive nights of six-player Cthulhu is a demanding
run for one GM, and the three afternoons before them are all new material too.
The trilogy shares a setting bible, NPC lineage and art direction, which is what
makes the count achievable — treat DEAD AIR as one production with three
outputs, not three productions. If anything on the slate has to give, it is a
Sunday reserve, never a playtest.
## Prep deadlines (working back from 27 Jan 2027)
| By | What |
|---|---|
| End Sep 2026 | All eight scenario drafts at v1. Trilogy bible locked. |
| End Oct 2026 | Pregens complete for all eight. First desk playtests on DEAD AIR I–III. |
| End Oct 2026 | Pregens complete for all eight (three sets of six for the trilogy). First desk playtests on DEAD AIR I–III. |
| End Nov 2026 | Playtest fixes applied (v2). Handouts and art briefs written. |
| End Dec 2026 | Art generated, handouts laid out, GM console modules built. |
| 10 Jan 2027 | Print pack produced: sheets, handouts, GM screens. |
@@ -78,7 +87,8 @@ three productions.
## Open logistics questions
1. Confirmed slot times from Warhorn — the table above is assumed, not verified.
2. Table size cap at Searles (does 5-player seating work in the game rooms?).
2. **Table size at Searles: three of the eight games seat six.** Confirm the game
rooms take a six-player table comfortably, or the trilogy drops to five.
3. Whether the DEAD AIR trilogy can be flagged on Warhorn as a linked series with
booking priority for players taking all three.
booking priority for players taking all three nights.
4. Power/table space for the GM console tablet in the evening rooms.
docs/warhorn-blurbs.md
+70 -63
View File
@@ -8,18 +8,18 @@ Copy these into Warhorn as-is once the slot times are confirmed.
---
## Slot 1 · Wed afternoon
### BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
**The Walking Dead Universe RPG (modified)** · 5 players · pregens provided
*Survival · downbeat · human antagonists · high lethality*
### ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP
**VANITY** (a house d6 game — no prior knowledge needed) · 6 players · pregens provided
*Comic fantasy · dungeon crawl · light rules · rivals*
New York, six weeks after the fall. The army is still flying people out of an old
airfield in Brooklyn, and they stop at dawn. To board you need a stamped transit
chit with your face on it. Between the five of you, you have three. Ten miles of
dead city lie between here and the runway, and the queue at the far end is longer
than anybody wants to think about.
You bought a treasure map off a man in a tavern. Yes. You know. So did four other
groups this week. Here is the thing, though: the map is real, the vault is where
it says it is, and there is a great deal of gold in it. The old man who printed
four hundred of them was not running a swindle. He was running a recruitment
drive.
**Content warnings:** graphic violence and gore, a child in danger, summary
execution, crowd crush, PvP possible. Safety tools in use.
**Content warnings:** cartoon violence, greed, one genuinely unpleasant moment at
the vault door. Safety tools in use.
---
@@ -41,26 +41,43 @@ and consent. Safety tools in use.
---
## Slot 3 · Thu afternoon
### DEAD AIR I: ASH & AMBER (1946)
**Call of Cthulhu 7e** · 5 players · pregens provided
*Historical · investigation · competitive · part one of three — stands alone*
### BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
**The Walking Dead Universe RPG (modified)** · 5 players · pregens provided
*Survival · downbeat · human antagonists · high lethality*
Berlin, February 1946. You catalogue German science before the other lot get to
it, and it has been six weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then an address in the
Soviet sector turns out to be a broadcasting annexe that officially never
existed, and under it is a sub-basement somebody deliberately flooded. By tonight
what is down there will be in somebody's hands. You get to decide whose.
New York, six weeks after the fall. The army is still flying people out of an old
airfield in Brooklyn, and they stop at dawn. To board you need a stamped transit
chit with your face on it. Between the five of you, you have three. Ten miles of
dead city lie between here and the runway, and the queue at the far end is longer
than anybody wants to think about.
**Content warnings:** Nazi human experimentation and its documentation, the
Holocaust as historical context, conditions in occupied Berlin, drowning,
suicide. Safety tools in use.
*Part one of the DEAD AIR trilogy (Thu/Fri/Sat afternoons). Each part stands
completely alone — play one, two or all three.*
**Content warnings:** graphic violence and gore, a child in danger, summary
execution, crowd crush, PvP possible. Safety tools in use.
---
## Slot 4 · Thu evening
### DEAD AIR I: ASH & CONCRETE (1946)
**Call of Cthulhu 7e** · 6 players · pregens provided
*Historical · investigation · a descent · part one of three — stands alone*
Berlin, February 1946. You catalogue German science before the other lot get to
it, and it has been six weeks of frozen filing cabinets. Then a crate of
untranslated requisitions turns out to be for forty tons of concrete, delivered
in 1943, to a building that was already finished. There is a room under the
bunker that is on nobody's plan. It is under two metres of water, and you are not
the only people who want it.
**Content warnings:** Nazism and the Holocaust as historical fact and present
context, human experimentation and its documentation, conditions in occupied
Berlin, drowning, suicide. Safety tools in use.
*Part one of the DEAD AIR trilogy (Thu/Fri/Sat evenings). Each part stands
completely alone — play one, two or all three.*
---
## Slot 5 · Fri afternoon
### THE FAVOUR
**The Dee Sanction** · 5 players · pregens provided
*Historical horror · investigation · moral trap · no clean ending*
@@ -81,9 +98,9 @@ completely alone. Returning players may take their own agent back.*
---
## Slot 5 · Fri afternoon
## Slot 6 · Fri evening
### DEAD AIR II: THE QUIET CITY (1962)
**Call of Cthulhu 7e** · 5 players · pregens provided
**Call of Cthulhu 7e** · 6 players · pregens provided
*Historical · closed-box procedural · paranoia · part two of three — stands alone*
A closed city in the Urals that is not on any map, October 1962. You have worked
@@ -93,48 +110,15 @@ his headphones and walks into the lake. On Friday, at six in the morning, someon
is going to close a switch.
**Content warnings:** Soviet state violence and coerced labour, institutional
cruelty, suicide, medical horror. Safety tools in use.
cruelty, suicide, medical horror, the Nazi programme this one inherited. Safety
tools in use.
*Part two of the DEAD AIR trilogy. Stands completely alone — no need to have
played part one.*
---
## Slot 6 · Fri evening
### ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP
**VANITY** (a house d6 game — no prior knowledge needed) · 5 players · pregens provided
*Comic fantasy · dungeon crawl · light rules · rivals*
You bought a treasure map off a man in a tavern. Yes. You know. So did four other
groups this week. Here is the thing, though: the map is real, the vault is where
it says it is, and there is a great deal of gold in it. The old man who printed
the maps was not running a swindle. He was running a recruitment drive.
**Content warnings:** cartoon violence, greed, one genuinely unpleasant moment at
the vault door. Safety tools in use.
---
## Slot 7 · Sat afternoon
### DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME (2027)
**Call of Cthulhu 7e, modern day** · 5 players · pregens provided
*Contemporary · research sprint · escalating scale · part three of three — stands alone*
Berlin, today. A lacquer disc came out of a box of Cold War acetates at auction
and sold for four hundred euros to a producer who liked the label. He sampled
fifteen seconds of it, and the hook has been going round the city for eight
months. You have almost certainly already heard it. At midnight it closes a
festival, live, uncut, streamed to two hundred thousand people.
**Content warnings:** self-harm and suicide, mass-casualty risk, drug use in a
club setting, loud audio and flashing lights described in play (described only —
no audio or lighting effects are used at the table). Safety tools in use.
*Part three of the DEAD AIR trilogy, and its payoff. Stands completely alone.*
---
## Slot 8 · Sat evening
### THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY
**Vaesen — Nordic Horror Roleplaying** · 4 players · pregens provided
*Folk horror · archival mystery · slow burn · winter*
@@ -151,10 +135,33 @@ use.
---
## Slot 8 · Sat evening
### DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME (2027)
**Call of Cthulhu 7e, modern day** · 6 players · pregens provided
*Contemporary · research sprint · escalating scale · part three of three — stands alone*
Berlin, today. A lacquer disc came out of a box of Cold War acetates at auction
and sold for four hundred euros to a producer who liked the label. He sampled
fifteen seconds of it, and the hook has been going round the city for eight
months. You have almost certainly already heard it. At midnight it closes a
festival on Teufelsberg — live, uncut, streamed to two hundred thousand people —
and it was cut, eighty years ago, in a room under a bunker.
**Content warnings:** self-harm and suicide, mass-casualty risk, drug use in a
club setting, Nazism and the Holocaust as historical context, loud audio and
flashing lights described in play (described only — no audio or lighting effects
are used at the table). Safety tools in use.
*Part three of the DEAD AIR trilogy, and its payoff. Stands completely alone.*
---
## Submission checklist
- [ ] Slot times confirmed against the published 2027 schedule
- [ ] Decide whether DEAD AIR is listed as a linked series with booking priority
- [ ] Player counts confirmed against room/table sizes at Searles
- [ ] **Six-player tables (Slots 1, 4, 6, 8) confirmed against room capacity**
- [ ] "Pregens provided, no system knowledge needed" stated on every entry
- [ ] Content warnings reviewed once more before submission
- [ ] Content warnings reviewed once more before submission — particularly the
DEAD AIR entries, where the historical material needs to be visible to a
player deciding whether to sit down
games/slot06-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/README.md → games/slot01-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/README.md
+4 -3
View File
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
# Slot 6 · Fri 29 Jan, evening — ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP
# Slot 1 · Wed 27 Jan, afternoon — ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP
*The map is genuine. That is the problem.*
**System:** VANITY (Tim's own d6 pool game) · **5 players, one per class** ·
**System:** VANITY (Tim's own d6 pool game) · **6 players** ·
4-hour slot (3h30 play) · simple D&D-shaped dungeon crawl · comic on the way in,
straight-faced at the vault door.
@@ -12,7 +12,8 @@ straight-faced at the vault door.
**Status:** outline. Next: full scenario draft to v1.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 5 pregens (one per class) · the map itself as a
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 6 pregens (one per class, plus one variant
build inside a doubled class) · the map itself as a
physical handout · rival-party cards · art (woodcut/scratchboard, matching the
VANITY rulebook) · desk playtest ×2 · print pack.
games/slot06-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/scenarios/another-bloody-treasure-map-outline.md → games/slot01-vanity-another-bloody-treasure-map/scenarios/another-bloody-treasure-map-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 6] ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP — a VANITY one-shot
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 1] ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP — a VANITY one-shot
> *The map is genuine. That is the problem.*
@@ -9,12 +9,17 @@ Crown* (Continuum 2026), which is the proven VANITY convention structure.
## Overview
- **Slot:** Friday 29 January 2027, evening
- **Slot:** Wednesday 27 January 2027, afternoon
- **System:** VANITY (Draft 13) — the house d6 pool game. Table copy of the rules
digest carried over from Continuum 2026.
- **Setting:** generic high-fantasy, played broad. A market town, a bad road, and
a hole in a hill.
- **Players:** 5, pregenerated, one per class
- **Players:** 6, pregenerated. VANITY has a closed class list, so the sixth seat
is a **variant build inside a doubled class**, not a new class — a different
fighting style, lane emphasis or loadout, with the audit maths shown so it is
provably legal. Give the two doubled-class heroes a Vice pointed at each other
(a Rival, or duelling Glory-Hounds) so the extra seat brings table chemistry
for free. Drop order at 5 and 4 stated in the pregen file.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 play in a 4-hour slot
- **Content warnings:** cartoon violence, greed, one genuinely unpleasant moment
at the vault door. Nothing that needs a warning beyond the usual line.
@@ -34,6 +39,9 @@ hands the GM a Bane. At **6 Banes → THE RECKONING** (2d6 table). No HP —
should feel like one.
2. **Funny on the way in, straight at the vault.** VANITY's register — the jokes
buy you the right to play the last twenty minutes completely seriously.
This is also the **arrival-day opener** — first slot of the convention, people
still finding the room. It has to work with a table that is half strangers and
entirely unsettled, which is exactly what a loose comic dungeon crawl is for.
3. **The joke of the title is the premise.** Everyone at the table has done this
before. The scenario knows that, says so, and then makes the map real.
4. **Rivals, not monsters, are the pressure.** Three other parties have the same
@@ -99,7 +107,7 @@ that no one person qualifies — and then nothing leaves at all.
| Section | Budget | Cumulative | GM checkpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 15 min | 0:15 | Pregens dealt, one practice roll each, map handed over |
| Introduction | 15 min | 0:15 | Pregens dealt, one practice roll each (six seats — keep it brisk), map handed over |
| Act One — The Tavern | 45 min | 1:00 | Map read, at least one rival party met, the road taken |
| Act Two — The Road | 40 min | 1:40 | One fight won, one rival party outmanoeuvred or joined |
| Act Three — The Hill | 35 min | 2:15 | Vault entrance found; the two who are still in there met |
@@ -131,11 +139,15 @@ door when the party arrives rather than trailing them.
1. Does this share a world with *The Vain Crown*? A one-line nod (the same
peacock motif, a mention of Nettlebrook) is free and rewards returning
players.
2. Five classes — confirm the VANITY Draft 13 class list is unchanged since the
Continuum build before the pregens are written.
2. Which class gets doubled for the sixth seat, and confirm the VANITY Draft 13
class list is unchanged since the Continuum build before the pregens are
written.
3. The map handout is doing heavy lifting: it must be attractive enough that
players read it in Act One and dense enough that they miss the terms. Prop
design needs a dedicated pass.
4. How mean is Act Four allowed to be? A table that splits the hoard perfectly
gets nothing out — is that a valid ending, or does the scenario always give
them a way to leave with *something*? Current lean: valid ending, and funny.
5. Six in the weighing room is a crowd. Confirm the division scene still gives
every seat a line, or give two of the six a specific stake in the split
(a debt of their own, a rival's offer) so the conversation has sides.
games/slot01-black-summer/README.md → games/slot03-black-summer/README.md
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# Slot 1 · Wed 27 Jan, afternoon — BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
# Slot 3 · Thu 28 Jan, afternoon — BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
*The plane leaves at dawn. You have three chits and five people.*
games/slot01-black-summer/scenarios/black-summer-outline.md → games/slot03-black-summer/scenarios/black-summer-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 1] BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 3] BLACK SUMMER: LAST FLIGHT OUT
> *The plane leaves at dawn. You have three chits and five people.*
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ shape and the rules modifications. The full scenario is written against it.
## Overview
- **Slot:** Wednesday 27 January 2027, afternoon
- **Slot:** Thursday 28 January 2027, afternoon
- **System:** The Walking Dead Universe RPG (Free League) — **modified**, see below
- **Setting:** New York City, six weeks after the fall. Late autumn, rain turning
to sleet. From a Manhattan basement to Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn.
games/slot03-dead-air-1-ash-and-amber/README.md
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# Slot 3 · Thu 28 Jan, afternoon — DEAD AIR I: ASH & AMBER
*Berlin, February 1946. Two armies are digging for the same basement.*
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e · **5 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30 play) ·
competitive scramble · physical dig set-piece · the players choose who inherits
the thing they found.
Part one of the [DEAD AIR trilogy](../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md)
(Slots 3, 5, 7 — Thu/Fri/Sat afternoons). Stands alone.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| [`scenarios/dead-air-1-outline.md`](scenarios/dead-air-1-outline.md) | Synopsis, design intent, plot truth, act skeleton, open questions |
**Status:** outline. Next: full scenario draft to v1.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 5 pregens · handouts (the listening ledger, a
disc label, a T-Force inventory form) · art (`DA1-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×2 ·
print pack.
---
*Call of Cthulhu © Chaosium Inc. Private convention play materials — not for
sale or distribution.*
games/slot03-dead-air-1-ash-and-amber/scenarios/dead-air-1-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 3] DEAD AIR I: ASH & AMBER
> *Berlin, February 1946. Two armies are digging for the same basement.*
**Status:** outline (pre-v1). Part one of three — read the
[trilogy bible](../../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md) first.
---
## Overview
- **Slot:** Thursday 28 January 2027, afternoon
- **System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e
- **Setting:** Berlin, February 1946. The British sector, the Soviet sector, and
a flooded sub-basement under a bombed broadcasting annexe that sits, awkwardly,
on the line between them.
- **Players:** 5, pregenerated — a mixed Allied technical-intelligence team
(T-Force / CIOS pattern: officers, technical specialists and interpreters sent
to catalogue German science before anyone else does). Runs at 4.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 play in a 4-hour slot
- **Content warnings:** Nazi human experimentation and its documentation; the
Holocaust as historical context; the condition of civilians in occupied Berlin,
including hunger and coercion; drowning; suicide.
## Design intent
1. **A scramble, not a mystery.** The players know from minute one that someone
else wants what they want. The tension is speed and leverage, not deduction.
2. **The horror is a filing cabinet.** The worst thing in the scenario is a
ledger of names with listening times beside them. Keep the supernatural to
three moments; the paperwork does the rest.
3. **The city is the antagonist's ally.** Ruined Berlin in February — no light,
no heat, no reliable authority, a sector boundary that changes what a piece of
paper is worth depending on which side of a street you are standing on.
4. **The ending is a distribution, not a victory.** The material *will* leave
the basement. The afternoon is about deciding, under pressure, who ends up
holding which part of it — and that choice is the seed of Parts Two and Three.
5. **No competent authority.** Nobody the players can report to will act in time.
## Player experience
You are here to make lists. That is the job: get into German laboratories before
the other lot do, write down what is in them, ship home what matters. It has been
six weeks of frozen filing cabinets and it has been fine.
Then a name on a captured requisition doesn't match anything, and an address in
the Soviet sector turns out to be a broadcasting annexe that officially never
existed, and a Russian major you have shared cigarettes with all winter suddenly
has no time for you at all. Under the rubble is a sub-basement somebody
deliberately flooded in the last weeks of the war. In it are twelve lacquer
discs and a ledger of people who were made to listen to them. By this evening the
discs will be in somebody's hands. Before the light goes, you have to decide
whose — and whether you tell anyone what they actually are.
## Plot summary (GM truth — players never see this page)
**Reichssender research group "Folge"** operated out of an annexe of a Berlin
broadcasting facility from 1938. Its stated brief was psychological broadcasting.
Its actual work, from 1941, was the capture and reproduction of a signal its
director, **Dr Anselm Vehr**, believed was already being transmitted and merely
needed to be heard properly. To find out what hearing it did, the group used
people: first volunteers, then patients, then prisoners. The ledger records
initials, duration and outcome. The outcomes column has four symbols and only
one of them is good.
In February 1945 Vehr ordered the material destroyed. Then he did not destroy it.
He sealed the sub-basement, opened the water main, wrote a two-page account of
what he thought the Sequence was, and shot himself in the stairwell — where his
body still is, above the waterline, holding the account.
**Twelve discs survive.** So does one listener: **Ilse Brandt**, nineteen,
subject in the 1944 trials, now living four streets away, working as a
*Trümmerfrau* clearing rubble. She has not spoken since 1944. She hums, and what
she hums is the Sequence, and she has been humming it in a city of ruins for two
years to an audience of nobody in particular. She is not dangerous. She is the
scenario's conscience: everyone in the story wants her as evidence, and the
players are the only people who might treat her as a person.
**The competition:** Soviet trophy brigade officer **Major Yeva Kravchenko** has
the same requisition the players have and three days' head start on the digging
equipment. She is not a villain — she is competent, tired, and under orders she
cannot refuse. She will trade. She would rather trade than dig, because the water
is a real problem and she is short of pumps, which the players' side has.
**What the Sequence does, on the page:** heard once, it is a fifteen-second
pattern that is not quite a tone. It stays. Days later you find you are tapping
it. The scenario's Sanity costs come from the ledger, from Vehr's account, and
from the third and last direct exposure at the climax.
### Timeline
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 1938 | Group Folge established at the annexe. |
| 1941–44 | Listening trials. 60 subjects. The ledger. |
| Oct 1944 | Ilse Brandt, subject 51. |
| Feb 1945 | Vehr seals and floods the sub-basement; suicide in the stairwell. |
| Jan 1946 | A captured requisition reaches Allied hands and is filed wrongly for three weeks. |
| T-3 days | Kravchenko's brigade begins clearing the site. |
| **Play begins** | The players get the file. |
## Structure
| Section | Budget | Cumulative | GM checkpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 15 min | 0:15 | Pregens dealt, safety line, the file in their hands |
| Act One — The Paper Trail | 60 min | 1:15 | The address identified; Kravchenko met; Ilse found or heard of |
| *break* | 10 min | — | Ends on the first descent into the water |
| Act Two — The Annexe | 90 min | 2:45 | Ledger recovered; Vehr's account read; the Soviets are inside too |
| Act Three — The Division | 30 min | 3:15 | The material distributed; Ilse's fate decided |
| Epilogue | 15 min | 3:30 | Per-PC vignettes; carry-forward block recorded |
- **Act One — The Paper Trail.** Requisitions, a bombed records office, a former
technician now working as a translator for the Americans, and an approach to
Kravchenko across the sector line. The act's real work is establishing that
everyone wants this and nobody knows what it is.
- **Act Two — The Annexe.** The dig and the flooded sub-basement. Cold water,
bad air, a body on the stairs holding a confession, twelve discs in a rack, the
ledger, and — once — the Sequence itself, played by accident. The Soviet team
arrives partway through, which turns the act from an exploration into a
negotiation conducted while standing in freezing water.
- **Act Three — The Division.** Above ground, at dusk. A decision, not a die
roll. The discs, the ledger, Vehr's account and Ilse are four things, and there
are at least three parties who want them. Every split is playable and each one
is written. **Default carry-forward for Part Two: the Soviets get the discs.**
Any other outcome is absorbed by Part Two's opening reconciliation note.
- **Set-piece:** the flooded descent — cold-water exposure, failing lamps, a
rising level and a rival team on the stairs. Own GM quick-reference page.
## Cast
- **Major Yeva Kravchenko** — Soviet trophy brigade. *Wants the discs delivered
and to go home.* Will trade pumps for access. Honest, and out of options.
- **Dr Anselm Vehr** — dead on the stairs. *Wanted to be believed.* His account
is the scenario's central handout.
- **Ilse Brandt** — subject 51. *Wants to be left alone.* Hums the Sequence.
- **Capt. Hugh Ferrers** — the players' own liaison. *Wants a clean report.*
The voice of the committee: whatever the players find, he will describe it as
an asset.
## Handouts (brief)
`DA1-H2-A` the listening ledger page (initials, duration, outcome symbols) ·
`DA1-H2-B` Vehr's two-page account · `DA1-H2-C` a disc label · `DA1-H1-A` the
T-Force requisition that starts it · `DA1-H3-A` the inventory form the players
must fill in at the end, which is the scenario's last quiet joke.
## Open questions
1. Are the pregens all one nationality (British T-Force) or a mixed Allied team?
Mixed is richer and complicates the sector-line politics usefully.
2. Does Ilse Brandt survive as a written NPC into Part Two (aged 35 in 1962,
somewhere in the Soviet programme)? That is a strong arc payoff and needs
deciding before Part Two is drafted.
3. Historical register: how much real 1946 Berlin detail — sector boundaries,
rations, the Trümmerfrauen — before it becomes homework? Current intent:
heavy on texture, light on dates.
4. Sanity budget for the afternoon: the ledger and the account are both hits, and
the climax is a third. Confirm that is not one too many for a 3h30 slot.
games/slot04-dead-air-1-ash-and-concrete/README.md
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# Slot 4 · Thu 28 Jan, evening — DEAD AIR I: ASH & CONCRETE
*There is a room under the bunker that is on nobody's plan.*
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e · **6 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30 play) ·
a descent against a rival team · flooded-chamber set-piece · the players choose
who inherits what they found.
Part one of the [DEAD AIR trilogy](../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md)
(Slots 4, 6, 8 — Thu/Fri/Sat evenings). Stands alone.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
| [`scenarios/dead-air-1-outline.md`](scenarios/dead-air-1-outline.md) | Synopsis, design intent, plot truth, act skeleton, open questions |
**Status:** outline. Next: full scenario draft to v1.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 6 pregens · handouts (the concrete requisition,
a sectional drawing of the shelter with one room too many, the listening ledger,
Vehr's account, a lacquer label) · art (`DA1-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×2 ·
print pack.
**Read first:** the bible's **Handling the Nazi material** section is a design
constraint on this scenario, not a disclaimer — no wonder-weapon glamour, victims
named, the bunker kept banal, no regalia in the art.
---
*Call of Cthulhu © Chaosium Inc. Private convention play materials — not for
sale or distribution.*
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 4] DEAD AIR I: ASH & CONCRETE
> *There is a room under the bunker that is on nobody's plan.*
**Status:** outline (pre-v1). Part one of three — read the
[trilogy bible](../../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md) first, including its
**Handling the Nazi material** section, which is a design constraint on this
document.
---
## Overview
- **Slot:** Thursday 28 January 2027, evening
- **System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e
- **Setting:** Berlin, February 1946. The Reich Chancellery ruins and the
Führerbunker complex, in the Soviet sector — and two metres of standing water
in a room that appears on no captured drawing.
- **Players:** 6, pregenerated — a mixed Allied technical-intelligence team
(T-Force / CIOS pattern: officers, engineers, an archivist and interpreters,
sent to catalogue German science before anyone else does). Drop order at 5 and
4 stated in the pregen file.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 play in a 4-hour slot
- **Content warnings:** Nazism and the Holocaust as historical fact and present
context; human experimentation and its documentation; conditions in occupied
Berlin, including hunger and coercion; drowning; suicide. No uniforms,
regalia or atrocity as spectacle — see the bible.
## Design intent
1. **A descent, not a mystery.** The players know from minute one that a rival
team wants the same room. The tension is water, air, light and leverage — not
deduction.
2. **The horror is a filing cabinet.** The worst thing in the scenario is a
ledger of initials with listening times beside them, and the players read it
in Act One, before anything strange happens.
3. **The bunker is banal.** Damp, low, diesel and drains, mattresses and empty
filing rooms. Every description resists the mythic. The chamber below is the
only place permitted to be strange.
4. **The occultists were the mark.** Nothing in this scenario suggests the
Ahnenerbe unit found power. It found an instruction, and followed it, and the
players work that out from the paperwork rather than being told.
5. **The ending is a distribution, not a victory.** The material *will* leave the
chamber. The evening is about deciding, under pressure, who ends up holding
which part — and that choice seeds Parts Two and Three.
## Player experience
You are here to make lists. That is the job: get into German facilities before
the other lot do, write down what is in them, ship home what matters. It has been
six weeks of frozen filing cabinets and it has been fine.
The Chancellery is Soviet ground and has been picked over for nine months by
people looking for a body. You are here for something duller — a crate of
Ahnenerbe requisitions nobody has bothered to translate. Except the requisitions
are for acoustic plaster, cable and forty tons of concrete delivered in January
1943 to a construction site that, on every drawing you have, is already finished.
There is a room down there that is on nobody's plan. It is under two metres of
water. A Soviet major who has shared her cigarettes with you all winter suddenly
has no time for you at all, and she has the pumps.
## Plot summary (GM truth — players never see this page)
**SS-Ahnenerbe unit "Folge"** ran from 1937 under a research brief that changed
three times and meant nothing by 1941. Its actual work was the capture and
reproduction of a signal its director, **Dr Anselm Vehr**, believed was already
being transmitted and merely needed to be heard properly. To find out what
hearing it did, the unit used people: first volunteers, then patients, then
prisoners. The ledger records initials, duration and outcome. The outcomes column
has four symbols and only one of them is good.
**The chamber.** From January 1943, under cover of the Führerbunker's
construction, the unit built a room below the shelter's lowest level. Its
geometry is acoustic. Its purpose was a single broadcast at the moment of the
regime's death — carried live over the Grossdeutscher Rundfunk network to every
loudspeaker still standing. Not a message. A summons.
**It went out on the last night**, over a network already in pieces. Fragments
reached an unknowable number of people. Vehr, who by then had understood what his
unit actually was — not practitioners but an audience taught to build a bigger
room — sealed the chamber, opened the water main, and shot himself on the stair.
His body is still there, above the waterline, holding a two-page account.
**Twelve lacquers survive** in a rack, dry, above the water. So does one
listener: **Ilse Brandt**, nineteen, subject in the 1944 trials, now living four
streets away and clearing rubble. She has not spoken since 1944. She hums, and
what she hums is the Sequence, and she has been humming it in a city of ruins for
two years to an audience of nobody in particular. She is not dangerous. She is
the scenario's conscience: everyone wants her as evidence, and the players are
the only people who might treat her as a person.
**The competition:** Soviet trophy brigade officer **Major Yeva Kravchenko** has
the same requisitions and the pumps. She is not a villain — competent, tired,
under orders she cannot refuse. She would rather trade than dig, because the
water is a genuine problem and her generators are failing, and the players' side
has cable and a working compressor.
**What the Sequence does, on the page:** heard once, it is a fifteen-second
pattern that is not quite a tone. It stays. Days later you find you are tapping
it. Sanity costs come from the ledger, from Vehr's account, and from the third
and last direct exposure at the climax.
### Timeline
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 1937 | Unit Folge established. |
| 1941–44 | Listening trials. 60 subjects. The ledger. |
| Jan 1943 | The chamber built under the bunker works. On no plan. |
| Oct 1944 | Ilse Brandt, subject 51. |
| 29–30 Apr 1945 | The broadcast. Vehr seals and floods the chamber; suicide on the stair. |
| 2 May 1945 | The Soviets take the Chancellery. |
| Jan 1946 | A crate of untranslated requisitions is filed wrongly for three weeks. |
| T-3 days | Kravchenko begins pumping. |
| **Play begins** | The players get the crate. |
## Structure
| Section | Budget | Cumulative | GM checkpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 15 min | 0:15 | Pregens dealt, safety line, the requisitions in their hands |
| Act One — Above | 60 min | 1:15 | The concrete discrepancy found; Kravchenko met; Ilse found or heard of; the ledger read |
| *break* | 10 min | — | Ends on the first descent into the water |
| Act Two — Below | 90 min | 2:45 | Vehr's account read; the lacquers reached; the Soviets are on the stair too |
| Act Three — The Division | 30 min | 3:15 | The material distributed; Ilse's fate decided |
| Epilogue | 15 min | 3:30 | Per-PC vignettes; carry-forward block recorded |
- **Act One — Above.** Requisitions, a bombed records office, an Ahnenerbe
clerk now working as a translator for the Americans, the Chancellery garden
with its nine months of Soviet excavation, and an approach to Kravchenko across
the sector line. The act's real work: establishing that everyone wants this,
nobody knows what it is, and forty tons of concrete went somewhere.
- **Act Two — Below.** The descent. Cold water, bad air, failing lamps, a body on
the stair holding a confession, twelve lacquers in a rack, the ledger, and —
once, by accident — the Sequence itself. The Soviet team arrives partway
through, which turns the act from exploration into negotiation conducted while
standing in freezing water. **Splits 3+3:** the chamber and the stair.
- **Act Three — The Division.** Above ground, at dusk. A decision, not a die
roll. The lacquers, the ledger, Vehr's account and Ilse are four things, and
there are at least three parties who want them. Every split is playable and
each is written. **Default carry-forward for Part Two: the Soviets get the
lacquers.** Any other outcome is absorbed by Part Two's opening note.
- **Set-piece:** the flooded descent — cold-water exposure, failing lamps, a
rising level and a rival team on the stair. Own GM quick-reference page. Idle
players hold the air and lamp cards.
## Cast
- **Major Yeva Kravchenko** — Soviet trophy brigade. *Wants the material
delivered and to go home.* Will trade pumps for access. Honest, and out of
options.
- **Dr Anselm Vehr** — dead on the stair. *Wanted to be believed.* His account is
the scenario's central handout, and its last paragraph is the one that says
what the unit actually was.
- **Ilse Brandt** — subject 51. *Wants to be left alone.* Hums the Sequence.
- **Capt. Hugh Ferrers** — the players' own liaison. *Wants a clean report.* The
committee in one man: whatever they find, he will describe it as an asset.
- **Herr Löwe** — former Ahnenerbe clerk, now a translator. *Wants to be useful
enough to keep eating.* Credulous, careerist, frightened, and the scenario
gives him no good lines.
## Handouts
`DA1-H1-A` the requisition that starts it (acoustic plaster, cable, 40t concrete)
· `DA1-H1-B` a sectional drawing of the shelter, with one room too many ·
`DA1-H2-A` the listening ledger page (initials, duration, outcome symbols) ·
`DA1-H2-B` Vehr's two-page account · `DA1-H2-C` a lacquer label · `DA1-H3-A` the
inventory form the players must fill in at the end, which is the scenario's last
quiet joke.
## Open questions
1. Are the pregens all one nationality (British T-Force) or a mixed Allied team?
Mixed is richer and complicates the sector-line politics usefully.
2. Does Ilse Brandt survive as a written NPC into Part Two (aged 35 in 1962,
somewhere in the Soviet programme)? Strong arc payoff; decide before Part Two
is drafted.
3. How closely does the handout sectional drawing follow the real bunker plan,
and how obviously does the extra room read? Too obvious kills Act One; too
subtle and nobody finds it.
4. Sanity budget: the ledger and the account are both hits and the climax is a
third. Confirm that is not one too many for a 3h30 evening slot.
5. Six players in a flooded chamber is a real staging problem — confirm the Act
Two split (chamber / stair) gives the second three enough to *do*, or move the
negotiation with Kravchenko fully onto that track.
games/slot04-dee-sanction-the-favour/README.md → games/slot05-dee-sanction-the-favour/README.md
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# Slot 4 · Thu 28 Jan, evening — THE FAVOUR
# Slot 5 · Fri 29 Jan, afternoon — THE FAVOUR
*He kept his side of it. That is the problem.*
games/slot04-dee-sanction-the-favour/scenarios/the-favour-outline.md → games/slot05-dee-sanction-the-favour/scenarios/the-favour-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 4] THE FAVOUR
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 5] THE FAVOUR
> *He kept his side of it. That is the problem.*
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ unhurried hand. Either way, **the list reached Dee, and Dee took it.**
## Overview
- **Slot:** Thursday 28 January 2027, evening
- **Slot:** Friday 29 January 2027, afternoon
- **System:** The Dee Sanction
- **Setting:** **Skelthwaite**, a lead-dale village in the West Riding of
Yorkshire — April 1587, six months after Faversholme
games/slot05-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/README.md → games/slot06-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/README.md
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# Slot 5 · Fri 29 Jan, afternoon — DEAD AIR II: THE QUIET CITY
# Slot 6 · Fri 29 Jan, evening — DEAD AIR II: THE QUIET CITY
*October 1962. The gates are shut, the phones are dead, and the test is on Friday.*
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e · **5 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30 play) ·
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e · **6 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30 play) ·
closed-box procedural · no way out · the institution is the antagonist.
Part two of the [DEAD AIR trilogy](../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md)
(Slots 3, 5, 7 — Thu/Fri/Sat afternoons). Stands alone.
(Slots 4, 6, 8 — Thu/Fri/Sat evenings). Stands alone.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
@@ -14,9 +14,9 @@ Part two of the [DEAD AIR trilogy](../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md)
**Status:** outline. Next: full scenario draft to v1.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 5 pregens · handouts (programme file, the
array schematic, a censored letter home) · art (`DA2-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×2 ·
print pack.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 6 pregens · handouts (programme file, the array
schematic, the untranslated 1946 Berlin file, a censored letter home) · art
(`DA2-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×2 · print pack.
---
*Call of Cthulhu © Chaosium Inc. Private convention play materials — not for
games/slot05-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/scenarios/dead-air-2-outline.md → games/slot06-dead-air-2-the-quiet-city/scenarios/dead-air-2-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 5] DEAD AIR II: THE QUIET CITY
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 6] DEAD AIR II: THE QUIET CITY
> *October 1962. The gates are shut, the phones are dead, and the test is on Friday.*
@@ -6,22 +6,24 @@
[trilogy bible](../../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md) first.
**Reconciliation note (if the table played Part One):** this scenario assumes the
Soviets took the discs from Berlin in 1946. If the Part One table sent them west
instead, open with one line — the material was recovered from an American
facility by a KGB operation in 1951 — and change nothing else.
Soviets took the lacquers out of the chamber under the Führerbunker in 1946. If
the Part One table sent them west instead, open with one line — the material was
recovered from an American facility by a KGB operation in 1951 — and change
nothing else.
---
## Overview
- **Slot:** Friday 29 January 2027, afternoon
- **Slot:** Friday 29 January 2027, evening
- **System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e
- **Setting:** **Sosnovy-9**, a closed city in the Urals — a place that is not on
maps, whose residents have no address, and which exists to house Programme
SIRENA. 22–27 October 1962.
- **Players:** 5, pregenerated — the programme's own staff: engineers, a
- **Players:** 6, pregenerated — the programme's own staff: engineers, a
physician, a political officer, an archivist. They are not investigators sent
in. They already work here, and that is the point.
in. They already work here, and that is the point. Drop order at 5 and 4 stated
in the pregen file.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 play in a 4-hour slot
- **Content warnings:** Soviet state violence, coerced labour and the camp
system as background; institutional cruelty to people who have done nothing
@@ -65,11 +67,18 @@ on Friday, at 06:00, someone is going to close a switch.
## Plot summary (GM truth — players never see this page)
The twelve Berlin lacquers reached Moscow in 1946 and became **Programme
SIRENA**: an attempt to weaponise the Sequence as a broadcast psychological
agent. Sixteen years of work has produced no evidence it can be aimed and
abundant evidence it does *something*, which in this system is enough to keep a
budget.
The twelve lacquers taken out of the flooded chamber beneath the Führerbunker
reached Moscow in 1946 and became **Programme SIRENA**: an attempt to weaponise
the Sequence as a broadcast psychological agent. Sixteen years of work has
produced no evidence it can be aimed and abundant evidence it does *something*,
which in this system is enough to keep a budget.
Nobody in Sosnovy-9 has ever been told what the room in Berlin was *for*. The
1946 file in the archive says it plainly, in a German engineer's account nobody
has translated since 1949 — that the Reich did not build the chamber to project
a weapon at its enemies, but to make one broadcast at the moment it died. The
array on the ridge above this city is the same idea, built larger, by people who
would be appalled to be told so.
**The array** — a phased transmitter across the ridge above the city — was built
to project the Sequence at range. It cannot. What it does is expose everyone
@@ -125,9 +134,10 @@ wants to say "industrial accident".
report form with a box on it labelled *cause*. Establishes the city, the wire,
and that the players' own signatures are on things.
- **Act Two — The Files.** The long act: three departments, three partial truths,
one archivist who has been quietly indexing this for years. Splits well —
one archivist who has been quietly indexing this for years. **Splits 3+3** —
archive track and medical track, each holding half a revelation. The 1946
Berlin file is in here, and returning players will recognise the ledger.
Berlin file is in here, with Vehr's account and the ledger, and returning
players will recognise both.
- **Act Three — Friday, 06:00.** The transmitter hall. Sorin is already there.
The options are all written: let him do it, take his place, cut the feed and
face what the ministry does to a city that fails a test, or expose the
games/slot08-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/README.md → games/slot07-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/README.md
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# Slot 8 · Sat 30 Jan, evening — THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY
# Slot 7 · Sat 30 Jan, afternoon — THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY
*The last twenty pages are in his hand. He has been dead a month.*
games/slot08-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/scenarios/mr-parkers-diary-outline.md → games/slot07-vaesen-mr-parkers-diary/scenarios/mr-parkers-diary-outline.md
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# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 8] THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 7] THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY
> *The last twenty pages are in his hand. He has been dead a month.*
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
## Overview
- **Slot:** Saturday 30 January 2027, evening
- **Slot:** Saturday 30 January 2027, afternoon
- **System:** Vaesen — Nordic Horror Roleplaying (Free League)
- **Setting:** the Mythic North, February 1901. The Society's castle in Upsala,
then **Hällvattnet**, a sawmill parish in northern Sweden, in the fortnight of
@@ -160,5 +160,6 @@ telegram.
Mythic North) or should he be Swedish for tighter fit? Current lean: keep him
English — the outsider is the point, and the Society is used to English
correspondents.
4. Four players or five? Vaesen's Society archetypes reward five, but the
Saturday evening slot is late and four moves faster.
4. Four players or five? Vaesen's Society archetypes reward five. Four is the
current call — it is the smallest table on the slate, deliberately, sitting
between two six-player Dead Air nights.
games/slot07-dead-air-3-full-volume/README.md → games/slot08-dead-air-3-full-volume/README.md
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@@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
# Slot 7 · Sat 30 Jan, afternoon — DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME
# Slot 8 · Sat 30 Jan, evening — DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME
*Berlin, now. Eighty years of secrecy, and it goes out live at midnight.*
*Eighty years under a car park, and it goes out live at midnight.*
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e (modern day) · **5 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30
**System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e (modern day) · **6 players** · 4-hour slot (3h30
play) · open-city sprint · too much information, no authority, a broadcast clock.
Part three — the payoff — of the
[DEAD AIR trilogy](../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md)
(Slots 3, 5, 7 — Thu/Fri/Sat afternoons). Stands alone.
(Slots 4, 6, 8 — Thu/Fri/Sat evenings). Stands alone.
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
@@ -16,9 +16,9 @@ Part three — the payoff — of the
**Status:** outline. Next: full scenario draft to v1. **This is the arc payoff —
budget the most playtesting here.**
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 5 pregens · handouts (auction lot listing, a
waveform print, the platform's takedown policy, a set list) · art
(`DA3-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×3 · print pack.
**Remaining prep:** scenario v1 · 6 pregens · handouts (auction lot listing with
the unit's catalogue mark, a waveform print, the platform's takedown policy, a
set list) · art (`DA3-ART-##`) · desk playtest ×3 · print pack.
---
*Call of Cthulhu © Chaosium Inc. Private convention play materials — not for
games/slot07-dead-air-3-full-volume/scenarios/dead-air-3-outline.md → games/slot08-dead-air-3-full-volume/scenarios/dead-air-3-outline.md
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@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 7] DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME
# [Contingency 2027 — Slot 8] DEAD AIR III: FULL VOLUME
> *Berlin, now. Eighty years of secrecy, and it goes out live at midnight.*
@@ -6,7 +6,8 @@
[trilogy bible](../../../docs/dead-air-trilogy-bible.md) first.
**Reconciliation note:** this scenario needs exactly one thing to be true — that
at least one lacquer disc survived and reached the West. Every Part One and Part
at least one lacquer taken from the chamber under the Führerbunker survived and
reached the West. Every Part One and Part
Two outcome allows that, including the ones where the players thought they had
destroyed everything. If a previous table burned the lot, the surviving disc is
the one Vehr kept in his desk rather than the vault, and that is a *better*
@@ -16,15 +17,19 @@ opening line, not a retcon.
## Overview
- **Slot:** Saturday 30 January 2027, afternoon
- **Slot:** Saturday 30 January 2027, evening
- **System:** Call of Cthulhu 7e, modern day
- **Setting:** Berlin, January 2027. A Kreuzberg record archive, a Charlottenburg
auction house, a Neukölln studio, and **Teufelsberg** — the abandoned Cold War
listening station on the rubble mountain, where the closing set of a broadcast
festival goes out live at midnight.
- **Players:** 5, pregenerated — no agency, no badges: an archivist, a mastering
auction house, a Neukölln studio, the car park on Wilhelmstrasse that is all
there is to see of the Führerbunker — and **Teufelsberg**, the abandoned Cold
War listening station standing on a hundred metres of the city's war rubble,
where the closing set of a broadcast festival goes out live at midnight. *The
arc ends where it began: on the Chancellery's own debris, which is in that
mountain somewhere.*
- **Players:** 6, pregenerated — no agency, no badges: an archivist, a mastering
engineer, a music journalist, a historian of the East German security
apparatus, and one person who has been hearing it since childhood.
apparatus, a promoter's fixer with festival access, and one person who has been
hearing it since childhood. Drop order at 5 and 4 stated in the pregen file.
- **Runtime:** 3h30 play in a 4-hour slot
- **Content warnings:** self-harm and suicide; mass-casualty risk; drug use in a
club setting; flashing-light and loud-audio content described in play (state
@@ -67,9 +72,11 @@ will not stop for anything less than a reason.
## Plot summary (GM truth — players never see this page)
The disc is **one of the twelve**. It travelled west in a document dump after
1991, mislabelled, and sat in a private collection until the owner died and the
estate went to auction in May 2026.
The disc is **one of the twelve** pulled out of the water under the Chancellery
in 1946. It travelled west in a document dump after 1991, mislabelled, and sat in
a private collection until the owner died and the estate went to auction in May
2026. Its label still carries the unit's catalogue mark, which is the thread the
players pull.
**Kasimir Adler**, 34, producer, bought lot 118 because the label was pretty.
He sampled fifteen seconds into a track called *Amber*. It did well. It did well
@@ -127,11 +134,16 @@ listen to it deliberately.
catalogue, a dead collector's estate, and the growing realisation that the
players have all heard this already. Fast, sharp, lots of screens.
- **Act Two — Provenance.** The long act. The archive holds the 1946 material
(returning players meet the ledger again) and a Soviet file from Sosnovy-9 that
arrived via a 1990s dump. Meanwhile: the platform's takedown process, the
festival's promoter, and Adler himself, who is reachable, reasonable, and
cannot be convinced by anything except the thing the players cannot prove.
Splits well — archive track and Adler track.
(returning players meet Vehr's account and the ledger again) and a Soviet file
from Sosnovy-9 that arrived via a 1990s dump. Between them they give the whole
chain: a room built under a bunker to make one broadcast, and every state since
that decided it was an asset. There is also a walk to the Wilhelmstrasse car
park, which is a flat rectangle of tarmac with an information board on it, and
which is the most frightening scene in the act precisely because there is
nothing there. Meanwhile: the platform's takedown process, the festival's
promoter, and Adler himself — reachable, reasonable, and unconvinceable by
anything except the thing the players cannot prove. **Splits 3+3** — archive
track and Adler track.
- **Act Three — Teufelsberg.** Night, the rubble mountain, the radomes, four
thousand people and a stream. A decision, not a die roll: cut the power and
cause a story; get Mila to the desk and have her surgically strip the Sequence