Clockwork & Cthulhu Story Arc

Butters wrote up a concise synopsis of the games arc to date on our community page. Here it is reprinted for those interested in the plot which has unfolded so far. This is a cockpit view of the PC's experience as they've rolled through the adventure I've set up as Keeper over a year of play. Make no mistake; this is not a regurgitation of description I told my players, they're knowledge has come from kicking in doors, faces, and prodigious lopping of limbs (not to mention the caving of baby skulls with rocks in the rain). Two PC's have died bloody death piecing things together so far. The game has been run bi-weekly, sometimes with a month break; and managing pace, intrigue, and excitement has been a fun challenge. The big lift, the helpful bits have come from using published game material and hacking it to my tastes. Trying to come up with all this stuff on my own and not be dull and predictable would be demanding.

What is he up to?

Mallebench and his brother come to Norfolk looking for heretical items all of which are possibly connected with the order of Kites a religious crusading order which their ancestor belonged to.

Mallebench brings in the Crows a mercenary band whilst his brother brings in the Cardinals to support him.

Mallebench goes to a great deal of trouble to get himself set up in Norwich, he arranges to have Randolph Nutley (A clockwork engineer) murdered by the Crows so that he could take his place at Norton Ironworks. This gives him access to a clockwork production facilities and after impressing the owner with his skills managed to become part of the companies inner circle very quickly especially after he helped secure a major military contract and happened to discover a nearby source of cheap coal.

All this seems to have been done to be able to secure men to mine and further guards/enforcers as the military contract required armed guards to be employed and as he was so trusted by the now grateful owner there was very little oversight on how resources were being used.

His brother remained outside of Norwich itself and seemed to be roaming around the surrounding countryside with his gang (The Cardinals) collecting artifacts and gathering information.

They were killed during the incident at Gothards hollow where they had attempted to recover a strange ruby bell from the tomb of a knight who later on appears to have been their ancestor from the Order of Kites.

Meanwhile Mallebench was spreading his influence in Norwich bribing some whilst corrupting others through blackmail he even hired a local gang by the name of the name of the Tenebrous hand

Seemingly one of the first to fall was a man called Rimehart a man who ran an import /export company of somewhat shady reputation and ideally placed to help Mallebench gain more artifacts and blackmail material. More weak men followed including a Captain in the town garrison.

Also during this time he seems to have set up a satanic temple and recruiting members of the upper classes into it this provided more funds as he soon made requests for soft loans.

All this effort seemed to be in aid of gathering resources and funds for some big operation various tunnels were explored under Norwich including several under the castle (The source of the cracked wall?)

It seemed he was after something in particular though as he seemed happy to sell a powerful artifact to one of the new Satanists (The cursed sword) for a huge amount of money.

All this effort seems to be spent suddenly after something was found at the small hamlet of Conistan and even though his brother had died the plan was still on.

Mallebench now started spending money and transferring miners from the New Norton coal mine at Wythburn to excavations now starting at Coniston.

More and more resources were diverted from Norton ironworks including men, digging equipment and a variety of clockwork devices.

This couldn't go on for too long though as the diverted resources started to effect the main ironworks the dwindling supply of coal being the most noticeable.

The dig at Coniston uncovered a strange and terrible structure which seemed to be a vast temple complex

Soon all the German miners were sent to the Coniston dig where they were all sacrificed to call forth a demon of some sort if this was the plan then due the somewhat accidental actions by the Party this failed to go off correctly resulting in the destruction of Coniston, the sending back of the demon? and the creation of the blighted area.

Mallebench then seemed to go into clean up mode as the effective removal of the demon combined with the Parties return from the Pale Ladies realm not only caused a big explosion, the Blight but brought other strange changes. So after leaving the Coniston area via Keswick (This resulted in the centre of Keswick being burnt down during a flesh beast attack) he returned to Norwich and seemed to begin eliminating anyone who could identify him.

The Hand were set up to be attacked by the Party after failing to recover some books that he wanted he also arranged for the murders of the Satanist group he had set up.

The last of the Crows died in a cavern under a ruined church in Norwich to some sort of hell toad ? Whilst trying to return those self same books.

So what's Mallebench up to his brother is dead, the demon didn't work out, he blew his cover at Norton's by using up all those resources, he hasn't managed to get his books back and seems to be destroying whatever was left of his Norwich network so what is he up to and what if anything is he still looking for? What were Ghwon and Tobias doing in that cavern and more importantly where the hell is he?

Still alive

Rimehart