Edge of Darkness (part 4)

Almost done with the props for this scenario now! I admit, this was a lot more work than I had originally anticipated. It’s nice to be creative and problem-solve again, though I wish I had more time than a week between scenarios. The Keeper doesn’t even know if he’ll be running Edge of Darkness this week, as the first session (Servants of the Lake) went well, but his investigators are VERY brand new, and the scenario took a lot longer than he expected. They also didn’t do very much investigating, opting to shoot from the hip instead, and impulsively dove right into confrontation, which did NOT work out well for them. The Keeper did a wrap-up discussion with them and is trying to encourage them to do more research, preparation, and investigating, but that might drag out the next sessions even longer. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be an issue at all, but next week we have a buddy visiting who loves Call of Cthulhu, and he’s already run Edge of Darkness so they can’t just add him in as a player…

But back to the props!

Edge of Darkness Handout #4 is a simple translation of the hieroglyphics found on the sarcophagus. I downloaded some free letterhead from HPLHS and just typed up a translation report using AFL Font for the typing and Lemon Tuesday for the signature:

Edge of Darkness, Handout # 4 – TranslationDownload

Next up was Marion Allen’s letter, found in the trunk in the basement. I used a font called LaDanse to write the letter, and just put an old paper texture as the background behind it. The PDF has a blank page with just the texture as page 2, so you can print it front & back and have it look more authentic.

Edge of Darkness Handout #5 – Marion Allen’s LetterDownload

The next two handouts were (sort-of) a part of Geedunk’s props in the sheaf of papers document. But it looks like Geedunk used a different version of the scenario, or just used artistic liberty with the contents of the handout. I consulted with the Keeper, who decided he wanted to stay true to Chaosium’s handout, so I decided to create my own handout:

(Latin version on the left, English translated version on the right)

Once again with this handout, page 2 and 4 are blank pages with just the background so you can print the file front & back and have the paper look a little more authentic. I printed 3 copies of the entire file, so that I’d have the 6 copies in Latin (and then, once the players roll for translation, 6 copies in English).

Edge of Darkness Handouts #6 & #7Download

…and VERY last, but not least, I used Geedunk’s prop as a basis for the last handout, Marion Allen’s notes on how to banish the creature. Since all of my dates shifted to 1877, I revised the date on the Geedunk file, and also revised the Geedunk handout to use the sigil found in the Chaosium book. I think s/he took artistic license with that, too, and the Keeper and I liked Chaosium’s better:

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I had to print this one out on aged paper that I had ordered on Amazon, mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to make images transparent using Adobe PDF. Usually, when I create my own files from scratch, I usually use Microsoft Publisher and Paint and it’s pretty easy to throw a background image in there behind the text, so anyone downloading the file can just print it out on “aged” paper. When I’m working with someone else’s files (such as in the case with Geedunk or sometimes HPLHS files), it’s much harder for me to figure out how to add a background or make an image transparent, etc. In this case, it was just easier to take the file (with the white background) and print it on aged paper.

Geedunk Sheaf of Papers, Revised by TessaDownload

Whew! For a beginner scenario, this one had a lot more props/papers than I had realized. Glad it’s over and I can move on to the next scenario!

Edge of Darkness (part 3)

The next few props are very specific props – that is to say, props from New Orleans police department and the office of the medical examiner. Since I’m not likely to find those, I used a copy of the Arkham autopsy report from the Miskatonic Collection and edited it accordingly. I did the same thing with the (as always, completely awesome) police form props from the HPLHS. Since these prop documents already basically existed, it wasn’t too much work to do a bit of editing to customize the props for the scenario. I used Apalu, Signatures, and Lovely Home fonts for the signatures:

Edge of Darkness Medical Examiner’s ReportDownload

Edge of Darkness Handout #3a – Police ReportDownload

Edge of Darkness Handout #3b – Police ReportDownload

Edge of Darkness (part 2)

This morning we hit up the local antiques shop/flea market and then stopped by Michael’s craft store and picked up a few props for this scenario that I’m excited about. For one, we found some tiny little prop glass bottles that we filled with brown powder and silver powder:

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The silver powder was from Michael’s, a super fine glitter-like powder, and the second stuff is basing sand that George (the Keeper) uses for his Warhammer miniatures.

One of my favorite finds at the flea market was a tiny little wooden box with a sliding lid that was freaking perfect for our tiny vial of Ibn-Ghazi powder:

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MAJOR bonus points that it was originally from Boston, LOL. Evidently before USMC stood for US Marine Corps, it stood for United Shoe Machinery Co.

One of the best things about buying the glass bottles at the antique shop is that they wrapped them in packing paper aka newsprint paper so they wouldn’t break on the way home. Which was perfect because I was able to use the newsprint, cut it down to the size of a normal piece of paper (pictured below where I measure and cut the paper down to size), and run it through my printer to print out the absolutely fabulous newspaper props created Geedunk Props. Massive shout-out to cthulhureborn.wordpress.com for mirroring the props and hosting them so they don’t disappear!

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Full disclaimer: I edited the newspaper props a bit, to keep dates consistent. There seems to be a lot of debate about what the dates for everything are, and a lot of inconsistencies across the board. A lot of props I’ve found have dates where everything happens to be in 1882. In a lot of other props (including the dates in the book and props from Chaosium’s starter pack that we bought), the dates where all this starts seem to be in 1877. So…in an effort to be consistent and accurate all across the board, I’ve edited ALL dates in any of my handouts to occur in 1877ish.

Newspaper Clippings – Revised by TessaDownload

So – one of the reasons the inconsistent dates turned into this Big Thing, is because when I sat down to look at the absolutely fabulous Geedunk journal prop, I was a little confused. For one thing, printing it out the way the instructions described left me flipping through pages trying to figure out how to put the journal together. For another, the book was supposedly manufactured in 1882, but there were journal entries in there for 1881, which is a year before the journal itself was manufactured. Also, I think it’s a Chaosium error, but March 18, 1877 was a Sunday, not a Saturday (as a lot of people on Reddit have pointed out). The prop journal from Geedunk also (as far as I could tell) also didn’t include Chaosium’s new handout detailing that Allen is leaving Arkham and going to New Orleans.

So I decided to revise the journal, editing dates so they made sense to me, corrected the Sunday/Saturday issue, and the manufacture date of the journal. I also added in the additional handout entry. The journal handout doesn’t include Chaosium’s handouts word-for-word, but it includes all of the important information, and additional stuff as well, that sets the tone and builds up more the excitement and suspense more than Chaosium’s handouts do. More journal-like. It’s an awesome prop by Geedunk, seriously!

So. After revising and tweaking the Journal PDF file, I printed the entire thing, double-sided. Then, I took the stack of papers the printer spit out, and reverse collated them – basically the paper on the top of the stack went on the bottom, and so on. Then, I took each individual page and folded it in half, keeping the crease as crisp as possible. Once the entire “booklet” of paper was put together, I grabbed one more piece of paper – this one was kind of tan and slightly thicker than a normal piece of paper, folded it in half, and used it as the ‘outside’ of the whole booklet.

Then, I grabbed a needle and some thread, and “sewed” the seams of the whole thing together:

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It was actually not too difficult – just used the sewing needle to poke four holes along the crease of the booklet, wound the thread around two of the holes – one at the top, and one at the bottom.

One of the things I picked up at the flea market this morning that I was super excited about was the cardboard cover for holding an old antique photo:

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It was kind of ripped and falling apart at the seam a little, so I just put a strip of electrical tape along the seam to make it seem like it was supposed to have a black binding, and removed the photo.

Then, I used Mod Podge and a paintbrush to spread a super thin layer of glue on the outside of the tan piece of paper and glued it to the cardboard cover:

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Since it was a super thin layer of glue (and because the tan paper is slightly thicker than a regular piece of paper), I was careful to smooth out the paper as I was laying it down, and it didn’t wrinkle once it dried.

The end product is an awesome looking journal, and I’m really proud of myself for basically creating a book from scratch!

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Since the journal took a little bit longer than expected to work on, I didn’t get as much of a chance to do the Coroner’s Report and Police Reports today, but I have a game plan for them!

Honestly, one of the best things about Call of Cthulhu is the active player community, and how so many forms/props already exist out there that you can tweak as needed. It makes it SO much easier and faster to make props for a scenario if you already have some templates to work from.

Full Journal PDF, Revised by TessaDownload

Geedunk Allen Death Newspaper, revised by TessaDownload

Edge of Darkness (part 1)

Since the Keeper will be running (approximately) one scenario a week, the prospect of doing all of the props for Edge of Darkness was a little bit daunting. Luckily, the Edge of Darkness is a super popular scenario, and there are SO many resources out there for it – when it comes to this scenario, a quick Google search for props and I realized that truly, I would be standing on the shoulders of giants. So much so, that I almost decided not to blog about this one, deeming it unnecessary. Almost.

Ultimately, I decided to do some of my own props that I wasn’t able to find elsewhere, and I figured I might as well pull all of these documents all together in one place.

I started with the easiest one – Rupert Merriweather’s letter (Handout #1). I scanned in some letterhead I bought last year into MS Publisher, and was able to layer on a text box with Costiera font to approximate a letter written on letterhead:

Edge of Darkness, Handout #1Download

We’re going to use a metal key we picked up at Marshall’s awhile back in the home decor section, and bought a sarcophagus on Amazon

In the meantime, I couldn’t really find a good document of the deed to the farmhouse that I really liked. I was super impressed by a copy of deed paperwork I found on imgur but it looks very similar to the deed for when I bought my house last year, and the Keeper and I thought it looked a little too modern, so I decided to make my own.

I found an image of Call of Cthulhu props for a land property deed and land abstract of title in The Trove. I think they might have originally come from Miskatonic Repository, but I’m not 100% sure. Either way, they made a good base for the prop for this scenario! I had to edit the deed a little bit, to reflect the 1800s instead of the 1900s.

Other than that, the deed is mostly just filling it in, using JMH Typewriter and Deigratia font (seriously, isn’t that the coolest signature font ever?). I also yanked the seal from 1800s letterhead to use on the deed to make it look more official, and threw an official gold sticker on it. (You may recognize the gold sticker as the same ones I used when doing Horror on the Orient Express props, the ones that came in the HP Sample Pack) The end result looks like this:

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The title abstract probably wasn’t necessary, but the file was there and I figured I might as well go for broke and make it look super official. I used the same JMH Typewriter font, as well as Jellyka-Estrya’s Handwriting font for the signature. I also grabbed the most basic photo from a tutorial on how to draw a map from fantasticmaps.com to use for my “sketch” of the property, adding in information on the map to match the deed information:

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Edge of Darkness Farm DeedDownload

Edge of Darkness Land Title AbstractDownload

That’s all for tonight…the deed/title abstract took a little bit longer than I expected. Tomorrow I’ll work on the journal (which will be super easy and take minimal graphic design/editing, thanks to others who have already created the files!) and the police/coroner reports.