Shanghai was the most exotic of all the locations the investigators visited. Between the language and cultural barriers, the characters had a lot going against them as they tried to navigate through the underbelly of Shanghai society.
With luck and skill, the group tracked down an American who seemed to be tied up in Jackson Elias’s and the investigators’ search for clues. The man turned out to be Jack Brady, a member of the Carlyle Group and friend to Roger Carlyle. He suspected the intentions of M’Weru and smuggled Carlyle out of Kenya before the massacre. He sailed to Shanghai and had to admit that he was too late: Carlyle had gone mad.
If they got Brady on their side, he turned out to be a fountain of information, who could point the investigators to the asylum Carlyle rotted in. He could also help fill the group in on the master plot. Carlyle Expedition member Aburey Penhew was on a local island assembling a special rocket. If it was launched at a specific time, coinciding with the time specified by Nyarlathotep back in Cairo, when cults all the world over performed a ritual, a gateway could be torn open in the sky, allowing the Elder Gods to come to Earth. It would spell the end of mankind.
Brady was working with a guerilla outfit who planned to assault Penhew’s Island.
What would a chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep be without a cult in residence? Shanghai was home to a group who worshipped the mask known as the Bloated Woman. The leader was the respected businessman Ho Fang. The investigators eventually broke into Fang’s compound and performed a dungeon crawl, where amongst other things they found Fang’s young daughter who had witnessed her father murder her mother during a perverse ritual. She was found eating earthworms and bugs, her sanity gone.
Inside a glass coffin was Choi Mei-Ling, girlfriend to Brady. In a compartment over seven different parts of her body were diseased rats. To torture Me-Ling, a compartment would be removed and the rats would be allowed to bite her skimpily-clad body. The torture’s purpose was designed to extract information about Brady’s plans. Mei-Ling was yet to break. The next part of her body to be exposed to the rats was her face.
For the conclusion of this part of the adventure, which was supposed to be the climax of the campaign (however my group chose to come to Shanghai before they went to Australia), the group traveled alone or with Brady’s militia to Gray Dragon Island. Guarded by Deep Ones, Penhew’s laboratory was inside a dormant volcano.
In the lair, human and Deep One slaves were whipped by a shoggoth overseer, a shoggoth-twsha. When combat broke out, the creature telepathically controlled the most dangerous creature pit before the investigators: a shoggoth.
In my game, Dr. Rico did some cunning thinking to formulate a plan where the giant statue of the Bloated Woman was knocked over, knocking over the rocket. In the midst of the ensuing chaos, the group strode into the lair, guns firing. They took on the shoggoth and all of Penhew’s minions.
Accessible from the lair, the group found a tunnel that led into a luxuriously appointed den. On a work table was the warhead for the rocket, next to the schematics for assembling this device. In this workshop, adorned with ancient Egyptian relics, the investigators made their stand against the sorcerer Penhew.
For my group, most of the work was already done. However, clues led to activity in the western outback of Australia. Before going home and settling in with a nice hot cup of coffee and a good book, the group charted a boat to take them to the land down under. However, none of them would return alive…
