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Sacraments of Evil (Call of Cthulhu Horror Roleplaying, 1890s)

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The title of this Call of Cthulhu supplement comes from a line in Arthur Machen's "The Red Hand" - "there are sacraments of evil as well as sacraments of good in this world..." Arthur Machen, who was a master of the weird tale, was very influential on the development of HPL's writing and so the title seems fitting.

In Call of Cthulhu, you investigate mysteries. And some of those mysteries are genuine; that is, they cannot be explained by natural or normal causes, and something Outside must be the source. As Machen said, some of these Outside causes are evil, just as we accept that there are mysteries of good as well. Well, the Outside is ALL evil in this book. Or perhaps no more evil than a wasp that lays its eggs in a grasshopper, waiting for its young to hatch and eat their way out...

There are 6 scenarios in SACRAMENTS OF EVIL, all of them dealing with mysteries beyond our comprehension, the Outside that is inimical to us, and once it has found us it is too late to close our eyes and forget. One is the story of an Outsider that switches minds from body to body, enjoying carnal pleasures and base passions before burning out a body. And it plans to bring more like itself to this world. In another, a family is cursed by the use of dark magic to overthrow a rival. But now, that rival is the very agent of revenge about the descendants.

A man who can truly be said to be "ill-conceived" returns to the ancestral home. Horror hangs about it like a palpable shroud, but what is the source? Something, many things, move about, almost unseen, in the forest, but their true nature is more terrible and debased than any of the characters can imagine. And then they meet Helen...

Someone has begun a series of murders around a local cathedral. The bodies are found missing part of the brain, but for what purpose? There are worse things to be found in a cathedral than gargoyles, and this secret is definitely worthy of the title "sacraments of evil".

Man knows so very little about the oceans and the deeps - what atavistic horrors may be dredged up from the depths, and how can they be escaped in the middle of the Atlantic? Or is it worse to bring the horrors home? And speaking of the past, what would happen to a mind sent too far back in time? Can a human mind contain the horror of non-existence? Or might there be physical changes to accompany the mental disordering? Or perhaps, something lies in wait, where the dimensions of time and space meet at shallow angles, something that seeks to destroy those traveling minds to satisfy needs and urges incomprehensible to those of us dwelling in the familiar curves of space?

These mysteries, sacraments, of evil and Outside-ness pose challenges to the investigators that they MUST resolve. Unfortunately for them, the end is only the beginning.