Kenya, in my opinion had the highest chance of a TPK in all of Masks of Nyarlathotep. There was a lethal fight scene on a train, followed by a truly epic confrontation with Nyarlathotep in the mask of the Red Tongue… very kaiju.
First, historical context was required before running the Kenya chapter. Kenya was a British colony at the time of this story, and background themes included racism and imperialism. Such topics needed to be handled sensitively so everyone enjoyed the game and avoided presenting the characters as insensitive stereotypes.
There was also the issue that this chapter, unlike the others, dealt with actual historic figures. Johnstone Kenyatta made an appearance, He was a central figure in the Kikuyu Central Association, campaigning for African nationalism. He would lead Kenya to independence and become its first president.
When the group arrived in Kenya, they took the train to Nairobi. There was a cultist agent on the lookout for the group. He summoned fire vampires, sentient balls of fire that were hard to hurt unless you had a lot of water on hand. I’d hoped my group would climb on top of the train cars to fight the monsters, but instead they fought from the inside, scavenging as much water as they could.
When the group got to Nairobi and checked into a hotel, the cultist following them summoned more fire vampires to attack the hotel. This wasn’t as much to kill the characters but to discredit them and get them thrown into jail. Luckily, my group was used to fire vampires by now and were quick to put down the Mythos monsters.
The purpose of Kenya for the group was to study the actual massacre of the Carlyle Expedition. While on safari, something or somethings ambushed the Carlyle Expedition and tore them apart in a grisly manner. The investigation involved British soldiers who witnessed the killing fields, claiming there were no white people amongst the found bodies. The investigators also had to contend with the commander who tried to brush this unfortunate event under the table.
Eventually, the group got wrapped up in a subplot side trek involving a lodge where everyone who stayed in the hunting stand (which was more of a penthouse than a chair on a stand on a tree limb). It turned out the dead rose from the bones scattered across the ground and attacked the living in the hunting stand. The group needed to survive the night and then find a shaman to sanctify the ground so the dead wouldn’t rise anymore.
Then, the group was taken to meet a wise old shaman, named Old Bundari. He lived in a shantytown and had the ability to travel between the planes, leaving his body behind in this plane. Once returned from his planar wanderings, Bundari set the group on a quest to go to the Mountain of the Black Wind, where every year a powerful monster was unleashed and fed on prisoners taken from the local villages.
This year was a very big deal because Nyarlathotep had impregnated a member of the Carlyle Expedition, Hypatia Masters, and she was to give birth to the Elder God’s child. Horribly mutated by her foul pregnancy, Masters was cared for by the cult’s high priestess, and mastermind behind the Carlyle Expedition, M’weru. Cultists traveled from all around the world to witness the birth of their god’s child.
Finally, the group reached the Mountain of the Black Wind, ascended to the caves where M’weru conducted her foul rituals. They witnessed Masters giving birth and quickly killed mother and child. M’weru summoned a three-hundred-foot-tall mask of Nyarlathotep who stood on the mountaintop, scooping up cultists and sacrifices alike, throwing them off the mountain like rag dolls or consuming them in its maw.
The group escaped the Red Tongue and raced away from the Mountain of the Black Wind, pursued by hundreds of cultists. They made it to Nairobi, avoided the first waves of cultists to arrive in town and took the train back to the coast, where they could leave Kenya behind.
The chances of the group getting killed by the Black Tongue or the pursuing cultists were quite high, and running it I needed to convey to the group the difficulty of staying a step ahead of their pursuers. Luckily, my group spent a lot of money on military gear, including a mortar launcher which they hid near the Mountain of the Black Wind. They used their military toys to reduce the quantity of foes following them.
From there, the group would journey to Shanghai, where they would come face to face with the actual alive but very insane Roger Carlyle.
