Ten scenario seeds for Call of Cthulhu, each recorded the way Arkham Sanitarium records everything: the patient, the delusion, the truth, and three scenes. Every scene carries its cue from the case-file albums — the ▶ starts the Arkham Wireless on that record. Roll a d6 against the complications when the table gets comfortable. New admissions are filed monthly.
Admitted
Case 1926-03 · Ward C
The Tide Comes Inland
Patient: fishmonger, Kingsport, 44 · Brought by: his sons, soaked to the knees on a dry road · Effects: a small green idol he will not let go of, carved of stone that is always wet
The delusion
He insists the tide follows him uphill — that his cellar floods at sea-rhythm three miles inland, and that the high-water mark on his stairs climbs one step each week.
The truth
He pulled the idol from a net and kept it. It is a tribute piece, and Y'ha-nthlei accounts for its tributes. The water is not rising toward his house; it is rising toward it — and next month the mark reaches the bedroom floor.
Three scenes
The interview. Ward C, low light; the patient lucid, precise, and right. The idol sits on the table between you, drying wrong.
The cellar. His house: barnacles on the beams, a tide pool where the coal bin was, and something's patient tapping under the flagstones.
The return. A rowboat over Devil Reef at slack water. Giving the idol back is easy. What surfaces to receive it expects interest.
Complications · d6
1–2 A collector has heard of the idol and arrives with a better rowboat. 3–4 One son has begun bathing in the cellar. 5–6 The Sanitarium discharges the patient mid-scenario — he wants to come along.
The horror is a ledger, not a monster. Play the Deep Ones as creditors: unfailingly correct, never cruel, never negotiable.
Admitted
Case 1927-11 · Ward C
The Orchard Man
Patient: farmer, hill country west of Arkham, 61 · Brought by: the county, after the third neighbor complaint · Effects: a jar of preserved pears that glow faintly when the ward lights are out
The delusion
He eats only what his own orchard grows, because — he says — the trees have started keeping the family fed on purpose, and refusing hospitality is how feuds start.
The truth
Something came down in his well-field years ago, and the orchard grew around what leached out. The trees are not generous; they are fattening. The pears are how it gets into a body that never drinks the water.
Three scenes
The visit. The farm out of season: heavy fruit in November, no birds, a smell of cider that isn't cider.
The neighbors. Cold Spring Glen farms, half-abandoned; those who stayed have started trading for his pears. Their kitchens glow a little too.
The well-field. Digging at night by lamplight, the trees leaning in without wind, and the thing at the bottom not dead — dormant, and fed.
Complications · d6
1–2 An investigator has already eaten a pear at the interview — the patient offered. 3–4 The county sends a surveyor for a reservoir project. 5–6 The trees begin dropping fruit toward the road, where travelers stop.
Never show the thing in the well. Show the harvest.
Admitted
Case 1928-02 · Ward C
Act One and a Half
Patient: actress, Boston, 29 · Brought by: her director, who has since left the state · Effects: a costume of yellow silk, tattered in a pattern no moth makes
The delusion
She speaks mostly in lines — beautiful, unfamiliar lines. Asked which play, she says the one they rehearsed privately last winter. No script is on file with the company. She is word-perfect and terrified of Act Two.
The truth
The company performed the first act of a certain play at a private booking and stopped there, believing that made them safe. But a play is a contract, and an unfinished performance accrues. One by one, the cast are being collected to finish it.
Three scenes
The reading. She recites Act One for the investigators — and it is lovely, and nothing happens, which is how it gets them to keep listening.
The company. Tracking down the cast: one vanished, one repainting his rooms yellow, one insisting he was never in any play at all — with pale eyes.
The curtain. An empty theater, house lights failing, the missing cast assembled onstage — waiting for her, because the show cannot go on without the lead.
Complications · d6
1–2 An investigator reads three lines of Act Two aloud "to check the handwriting." 3–4 The private booking's host wants a repeat performance and has money. 5–6 The patient's understudy has begun visiting her — the patient has no understudy.
Let the players fall in love with the language. The play should be the best thing you write all year.
Admitted
Case 1925-09 · Ward C
The Cartographer of Sleep
Patient: draftsman, Providence, 33 · Brought by: self-committed, exhausted · Effects: forty-one hand-drawn maps of cities no atlas contains, in ink he does not own
The delusion
He maps the places he visits asleep. He wants them confiscated, because — he says — the maps work in both directions, and lately things have been checking his surveys.
The truth
He is a natural dreamer of unusual precision, and precision is valuable. Something in the Underworld of dream wants a survey of the waking side, and his notebooks are almost complete enough to use.
Three scenes
The portfolio. Reviewing the maps: one city matches ruins dug up in 1902 — and one map, dated last Tuesday, is of Arkham, with the Sanitarium marked in another hand.
The descent. An investigator with any talent for dreaming goes down the seventy steps to fetch the missing forty-second map back.
The survey party. They come up to verify the work — politely, at night, with instruments. The scenario ends when the notebooks burn, or change hands.
Complications · d6
1–2 A university geographer has already photographed twelve maps. 3–4 An investigator appears on the Arkham map, labeled. 5–6 The patient starts sleepwalking to the drafting room; the ward doors do not stop him.
Runs beautifully as a quiet, almost gentle scenario — until the instruments come out.
Admitted
Case 1929-01 · Ward C
The Cook Who Answers
Patient: expedition cook, repatriated via Australia, 38 · Brought by: the shipping line, quietly · Effects: none; he gave everything away at the dock, including his coat
The delusion
He answers to any voice with that voice. Call him in your accent and he replies in your accent, perfectly — your phrasing, your breath. He has refused every mirror in the building and will not say what he cooked for, down there.
The truth
The expedition's southern camp found the under-ice galleries, and something learned the crew one by one — the cook survived by being the last one learned, and incompletely. He is mostly himself. The part that isn't is getting better at him.
Three scenes
The specimen interview. Establishing what came back: his answers are true, his voice is borrowed, and the tape recorder catches a second breath.
The dark ward. A power failure, corridors by candle, and something moving between rooms trying door-voices like keys.
Tekeli-li. The word surfaces — from the patient, then from the orderly, then from the investigator who has been quiet too long. Finding which of them is still original.
Complications · d6
1–2 The expedition's sponsor sends men to retrieve "company property." 3–4 The patient begs to be moved somewhere cold — warmth accelerates it. 5–6 A second crew member is found alive, and identical in the wrong ways.
A bottle-episode horror: one building, one night, one word. Keep the ward small and the candles few.
Admitted
Case 1924-12 · Ward C
The Thirteenth Plate
Patient: portrait photographer, Arkham, 47 · Brought by: his assistant, who developed the plates first · Effects: twelve glass negatives; the thirteenth is in the Sanitarium safe, face down
The delusion
Every group portrait he takes now contains one extra figure, standing politely at the edge, slightly out of focus, in every exposure — and, he swears, one step closer on each plate.
The truth
He photographed a public lecture by a traveling showman last spring. The showman collects audiences, and a camera is an audience that never stops watching. The figure is not approaching the sitters. It is approaching the photographer, through his own work.
Three scenes
The darkroom. Reviewing the plates in red light, in order, watching the figure cross twelve frozen rooms. Plate thirteen is due for viewing.
The lecture circuit. Tracing the showman through handbills and hypnotized townsfolk — every town remembers a different face, and every town's photographer has retired.
The sitting. The only way to face it is to schedule it: one last portrait, investigators in frame, and whatever stands at the edge finally in focus.
Complications · d6
1–2 A newspaper wants to publish the plates as a curiosity. 3–4 The assistant has been selling prints. 5–6 Plate thirteen in the safe is now blank.
Never describe the figure's face. Describe everyone else's when they see it.
Admitted
Case 1927-06 · Ward C
The Whateley Ledger
Patient: traveling salesman, hardware and sundries, 52 · Brought by: state police, found walking the Aylesbury pike at 3 a.m., counting · Effects: an order book with one page torn out
The delusion
He owes a delivery he cannot remember taking an order for. He counts his stock nightly, and nightly it is one item short — a different item each time — and he says the farm he sold it to keeps moving closer to the road.
The truth
He made one sale at a hill farm that isn't on the county rolls, to a customer he could hear but never quite see, and payment was taken in kind: the torn page bears his own signature as the invoice — and the goods listed are not hardware.
Three scenes
The route. Driving his circuit with his order book, interviewing farms that remember him — and one farm that everyone describes in a different place.
The stocktake. A night in his warehouse, counting with him, and catching what does the taking — something that pays for everything it removes, in coins that predate the mint.
The delivery. The only way to close the account is to complete it: driving the final order up the hill road at dusk to a gate that is more of a gate than it looks.
Complications · d6
1–2 The old coins are wanted by a Miskatonic numismatist with poor instincts. 3–4 A rival salesman has started working the same farm, cheerfully. 5–6 The missing items reassemble into something in the farm's barn — inventory has a purpose.
Commerce as cosmic horror: every rule of the scenario is a rule of trade, honored precisely.
Admitted
Case 1926-10 · Ward C
Low Tide Choir
Patient: church organist, coastal parish north of Innsmouth, 58 · Brought by: her rector, "for rest" · Effects: hymn books annotated in a wet hand
The delusion
She hears the congregation singing a half-step below the pitch she plays — all of them, together, every service — and when she stops playing, the lower hymn continues for one bar more.
The truth
The parish took in three families from Innsmouth after the federal raid, quietly. The families brought their liturgy with them, folded inside the old one. The congregation isn't flat. It is in harmony — with a service being held somewhere under the harbor, on the same schedule.
Three scenes
The service. Attending incognito: the hymn, the half-step, the pews nearest the aisle left empty facing the sea.
The annotations. Her hymn books: the marginal notation is a second voice part, and an investigator with any music can reconstruct what it summons — or accompanies.
Low tide. The night service nobody announces, down on the exposed flats, where the congregation walks out to meet the other choir halfway.
Complications · d6
1–2 The rector knows, and considers it ecumenical outreach. 3–4 An investigator's voice fits the lower part disturbingly well. 5–6 The organist asks to be returned in time for Sunday — she has never once missed a service.
Score the whole scenario in halves: whatever music the table hears, imply the other half beneath it.
Admitted
Case 1928-07 · Ward C
The Understudy
Patient: bank clerk, Arkham, 31 · Brought by: his landlady, after the third night of rehearsing · Effects: a schedule of engagements written in his hand, for cities he has never visited, with dates that have not happened
The delusion
He says he has been cast as understudy for a performer he names only as the Stranger, and must know the part perfectly — every gesture, every crowd, every demonstration — in case, some night, he is needed.
The truth
The Crawling Chaos has a thousand masks, and it is training a spare. The rehearsals are real: each night the clerk performs to an empty room, and each morning a city on his schedule reports a night of strange dreams. When the schedule reaches Arkham, the understudy goes on.
Three scenes
The audition tape. Watching him rehearse through the ward hatch: a mild man performing charisma far beyond his own, in a voice from continents away.
The itinerary. Matching his schedule against newspapers: dream epidemics, sleepwalking towns, one city per line — approaching.
Opening night. The Arkham date arrives, the ward empties toward the auditorium nobody booked, and the investigators must decide which performer takes the stage — and what refusing the role costs the man.
Complications · d6
1–2 The Stranger's advance man arrives to check the venue — affable, forgettable, wrong. 3–4 An investigator dreams a seat number. 5–6 The clerk's performance improves suddenly; somewhere, the principal has missed a show.
The tragedy is the clerk: he is not possessed, he is chosen, and part of him is proud.
Admitted
Case 1923-04 · Ward C
The Return Ticket
Patient: schoolteacher, Kingsport, 26 · Brought by: her sister, gently · Effects: a return ticket, second class, from a station that closed in 1890; sand in every pair of shoes she owns
The delusion
She wakes tired, with sand in her shoes and salt in her hair, holding the same ticket — used outbound, unused return. She says she cannot remember the journey, only that somewhere, a city with a sunset in its windows is holding her seat.
The truth
She is dreaming her way toward a city that wants inhabitants, and the ticket is real currency there. Every night she travels one stop further, and the return half is only good until she arrives.
Three scenes
The old line. Walking the closed railway with her by day: rails silver where they should be rust, and a platform swept clean by nobody.
Riding along. Investigators who sleep beside the line board the same train — a gentle, beautiful, wrong journey with other passengers who stopped waking years ago.
The terminus. The sunset city, and the choice it offers her — and the fact, awkward for everyone, that it is genuinely lovely. Getting her home means arguing against paradise.
Complications · d6
1–2 The sister wants to go in her place. 3–4 The conductor accepts other fares: years, names, first memories. 5–6 The return half of the ticket is dated tomorrow.
The rare seed with a happy ending available — if the table can win a debate with a city.
All seeds are free to run, adapt, and publish play reports of. The records they are scored by live in the case files. New admissions monthly — the wards are never full.