TICKETS FOR A PRAYER WHEEL
OPENINGS
What is this all about?

"There are six countries in Southeast Asia.  Three of them are shaped like flowers.  Two of them are shaped like lumps.  One of them's shaped like a dragon, and that's where all the trouble is." 
                                                                                -a drill sergeant

The following material sketches a Call of Cthulhu adventure set in Vietnam in late 1969.  The adventure is named after the fact that it's divided into nine sections, each designed to be played in a single night.  When played properly, the adventure will require nine sessions with the entire group of players present, plus a few more sessions with the referee and one or two players.  The adventure proceeds as if the players unpeeled an onion.  The layers of the onion are the tickets that the title mentions, although the prayer wheel can glorify, in Lovecraft's words, "no suitable or wholesome gods". 

The characters may be provided; certainly they should be generated for this adventure.  They should be American servicemen, with perhaps a newspaper reporter and one Vietnamese native(either as a guide or as an attached ARVN observer, possibly both functions can meet in one character). 

The  second way provided is for Cthulhu Now characters, who are spiritual or psychic investigators.  They are hired by a disabled Vietnam veteran with a troubled past.  Don Luftbard is returning as a tourist and wishes them to accompany him, to help him lay the ghosts of his past.  He  has many mysteries attached to him.  The Nineties opening will do for these players. 

The third way into the adventure is through time travel.  This can be accomplished in three ways.  The use of time machines has been gone over in Cthulhu by Gaslight and has limited appropriateness in this campaign unless the game is more science fiction than horror.  The Great Race of Yith also uses time travel, but the likelihood of stumbling on their ancient machines is something the Keeper can determine for himself.  The exchange of bodies necessary for this method is ideal for the introduction of new characters for the Vietnam game.  A Time Gate, created by sorcery, would be more suitable.  These things, detailed in Cthulhu by Gaslight, allow travel through time.   This is the most awkward way to begin this adventure, as Cthulhu 20s and Gaslight characters will be out of place in the war and will want to go home more than they want to solve the mystery.  If the Keeper Gates the investigators into the game, he might wish to have a guide to advise them that completion of the adventure will bring their return home.  Note that the use of a Gate from 1890 to 1969 requires 7 magic points, and that Gaslight characters take a 10% loss in language skills as a result of the eighty-year gap between the Boer War and Vietnam. There might be other Gates in Vietnam, from the Chinese or French occupation.  The Keeper should be careful about intrusions from Vietnam into the past.  The investigators could experience the events of Tickets  as a dream, as the 90s investigators can, but this is a threadbare excuse for the adventure.  Do what suits your ongoing game the best, but consider integrity before making the choice of how to run Tickets. 

INTRODUCTION FOR THE PLAYERS--DRAFTED FOR HELL

To the Keeper: The suggested introduction to Tickets is for the characters to be American servicemen bound for Viet Nam.  Give this section to the players or read it to them.  If you have characters who don't fit the outline given below, alter it to fit.  They could be different in any number of ways, but must have a reason for encountering the data below and acting on it. Be careful. 

You're a regular guy.  Least you always thought so.  But this war, it's getting to be too much. 

 You heard about the war as soon as you were old enough.  Not much to hear: Americans and natives fighting to stop a Communist takeover, save democracy.  Nobody you knew had been there.  Unless you were bright in school, you had a rough time recalling just where the place was; older texts  call it French Indochina, newer ones Southeast Asia.  You saw pictures.  Little men with flat faces and slanted eyes, villages of thatched huts amidst jungle and rice paddies.  If you go to church, there was news of the missions.  The war was  remote; you hoped we'd win.  We won Korea, and the  big ones before you were born.  Your parents talk about the older wars more than the current one. 

They drafted you.  You thought about Canada, hurting yourself, going the conscientious objector route, even jail.  Maybe you didn't.  Not enough money, not enough time.  At least it paid better than your old job.  Dad was a vet.  Keep the faith, right?  In boot camp they showed you how to shoot a gun and throw a grenade, and they told you about the war.  The North Vietnamese were Communists and wore black pajamas, the South Vietnamese peace-loving democratic folks. 

The stewardess was named Mary.  She brought you a beer, told you to have a nice war.  She would have been worth fighting for.   It was like summer, but hotter and wetter, and then you noticed the smell, and then you saw the bags that were waiting to go on the plane; looked like they had dead guys in them.  Then lots of people were all around the  truck you guys were in and they threw things at you, and one of the things bounced off the truck and exploded.  And you couldn't tell if any of them in the crowd was a Communist, because they all look alike. 

They gave you seven days to get used to the "tropical climate" and then packed you off to an airbase, outside Saigon, to work in the hospital.  You were lucky.  Some guys went right to the bush.  Some of them came back.  They looked older.  And nobody here was sure what the war was about, and nobody really wanted to be doing what they were doing, and the guys who were around here didn't call this place Southeast Asia.  They called it the Nam. 

Use the characters below, or generate your own, as per the character generation guidelines below.  They get a week to adjust to the climate;  then it's orderly duty, and sweeping the floors at an American airbase.  This could be Cam Ranh, Tan Son Nhut, or another.  There are Americans there, Vietnamese doing the scut work, even a few Australians, Koreans, and Europeans "advising" the whole mess.  The PX has warm Cokes and old Life magazines.  The investigators settle into the round of work punctuated by screams and mortar explosions as  another VC artillery team finds the place.  They are just getting used to the horror when they meet with something  worse. 

ALTERNATE OPENING--GRAY  NINETIES DREAMS

The adventures of Tickets for a Prayer Wheel could open in the 1990s.  If a Keeper wishes to bring his modern players' characters into Viet Nam war during a modern campaign, then use this introduction to Tickets.  The characters' trip around the world turns into a trip through dreamland.  And they will experience such nightmares!

A wealthy Vietnam veteran, possibly known to the players from previous games, asks their help.   His name is Don Luftbard, director of Tahoe Larn, PTY, a computer company in North Platey, California.  The nation of Vietnam is once again receiving American visitors, but as tourists ("Vietnam! The Tourist's Paradise!"), and he is, like many vets, drawn back to the place where he suffered.  Convinced that the nation is haunted and has it in for him, he wishes spiritual advisors. The investigators are obvious for the role, as they are adept with all related to the supernatural.  He offers them the cost of the trip, plus a small retainer, if they will accompany him and "protect" him against any and all magical assault.  The investigators, of course, accept.  They need the money, and after all, who can refuse a free trip to Vietnam? (500,000 American troops can't be wrong!) 

They book passage through a Canadian travel company and fly from a major American airport to Toronto. Here as many other places, it's possible to tie in At Your Door.  Certainly the new Black Dragon Restaurant is recommended during the inevitable layover.  If the Keeper is using Mr. Shiny in this adventure, and if the players have not dealt with him previously  in a way that would make such an encounter impossible, then he should show up at the airport.  Shiny is bound on business to Krungthep for Rothmersholm Limited, to which he is attached as a consultant.  If asked, he will reveal that pharmaceuticals manufactured there are being cleared for import into Canada and the USA; Shiny has to close the deal.  As usual, Shiny is lying.  The drugs are the psychoactives CTH and UHL, capable of producing violent psychotic states and endless hallucination respectively, and Shiny seeks formulas from the opium lords who have been analyzing samples that Howard Finley retrieved from Indochina. 

Thence to Honolulu, Krungthep, and Ho Chi Minh City, which, as the investigators quickly notice, everyone still calls Saigon.  There are the usual hagglings with officials and a day in a crumbling French hotel, and then the tour begins in earnest. 

The chatty young tour guides drive them to a guest house cunningly remodeled from the remains of the large American airbase outside Saigon.  Huge tropical flowers bloom everywhere.  A delectable meal in the garden caps the evening, and then a performance of Vietnamese revolutionary opera.  Bottles of "dreadful Vietnamese vodka" are available, as well as warm soft drinks in many flavors.  As the water gives most (make a roll on 5 times CON) diarrhea, these are a good idea.  Don must be helped into a bunk bed, as he is wheelchair-bound.  The investigator who does this gets a Spot Hidden roll.  Success means that the investigator sees the O-rune scar on  the man's thigh and the faded hawkmoth tattoo over his heart.  Don will fall asleep before the investigators can ask any questions.  Finally the investigators go to bed.  Then the fun starts. 

They awaken in the same building.  But it looks new, and the tacky tourist decor is gone, replaced by Spartan military appointments.  Helicopters fill the rooms with noise.  The base is full of men in camouflage outfits, speaking English, and the calendar on the wall reads October 25, 1969. 

THEMECHANICS OF THEDREAM 

The dream in which the game takes place is not an ordinary one, nor properly one taking place in the Dreamlands outlined by Lovecraft.  The state of mind that is dealt with here may be termed "dream-dreaming",  or "true dreaming", and interleaves with the waking world in curious ways. 

Wounds received in the dream world manifest in the waking world as "hysterical" injuries-the pain and inability that would normally result from the wound are present, but without a physical wound to account for them. The full amount of damage does not appear-the damage carried over to the waking world is proportional to the SAN lost in the adventure.  The wounds do not heal normally, but require the regaining of SAN lost in the adventure. As the SAN returns to its normal maximum of 99 minus the Investigator's Cthulhu Mythos score, the "wounds" heal and the pain and disability vanish.  Limbs or other parts lost are carried over into the modern waking world as "phantom pain"-the odd phenomenon in which sensations don't match the body parts that produce them.  As SAN is regained, the lost foot is once more palpable-it was visible all the time.  The amputee, in Tickets, awakens with his foot but without sensation in it. 

THIRD OPENING--THE TIME GATE

It is presented as most Gates will be.  The Gate is in a place that the investigators will have to search for, and they will find difficulty in doing so.  He had access to powers beyond those of mortal men, the townsfolk whispered, after his immense fortune sprang from nothing and he stayed young beyond his years.  The reference to Yog-Sothoth in its form as Umr al-Tawil, or Tawil at-Umr, Opener of the Way, is obvious.  The Mythos roll provides the information that although this entity is a form of Yog-Sothoth, it is a relatively benign one, and does not harm those who seek only to use its mystic powers to enter other spheres.  Obviously, the circumstances of this opening will vary depending on the campaign that led to the investigators' passage through the gate.  The following is a sample of  the way in which the passage can be handled. 

The investigators find the door in the attic of the old Whipple mansion, after searching the rooms below for  old Wizard Whipple.   It is of tropical hardwood-make a Botany roll to recognize Indochinese mahogany, richly carved.  An Idea roll reveals that the door doesn't lead anywhere-it's in an outside wall on the third floor, and the wall outside shows no trace of it.  An inscription runs along the wooden frame.  It is in Roman letters in the R'Lyhec language and reads thus: Shf'argjnaqh ulktlanyya Umr al-Tawil franthplorn gowj'jascrowpth n'grah.  A Mythos roll can decode the inscription at a cost of 1 SAN; it reads, "Through The Gate and The Key pass to the dead and the unborn by saying these words."  Anyone saying the words can open the door.  Otherwise it can be destroyed.  It has a STR of 20 and 20 hit points.  Destroying it gains nothing.  Saying the words allows the person who says them to open the door.  Others may follow at a cost of one point of POW and one magic point apiece.  Once all have passed through, or one day later in any case, the door closes.  It cannot be opened until the adventure is done.  In the unlikely event that any investigator uses the Create Gate spell, the investigators may return to the door in the attic. 

Passing through the door brings instant consciousness of heat and humidity(No, they're not in Hell, but close enough.)  The travelers stand in a jungle glade, in which the bodies of half a dozen dead men lie.  Four are Asiatics, and an Anthropology roll recognizes Annamois, natives of French Indochina, which this tropical place is likely to be.  These bodies wear black cotton pajamas and straw hats.  The other two are white Europeans in strange clothing.  No denizen of the 20s or the Victorian era had ever seen camouflage fatigues.  Tell them that the long trousers and shirts of these youths are mottled shades of green, as if they wore the paintings of French impressionists, or had splashed paint at random over their clothing.  Try to maintain the sense of distance-the sense of the future, though the investigators do not know yet that they are in it. 

One is killed by a machine-gun blast.  The other, with a gun in one hand, has died of snakebite after killing four Vietnamese.  His weapon is like none known; it is an M16A.  Both Americans wear watches that run without ticking.  One carries a letter dated October 6, 1969. 

Move  from this encounter into the airbase sequence of the first ticket.  The investigators should realize quickly that they can cover themselves while they investigate the events of the mystery by pretending to be soldiers or reporters, and that the key to the way home is likely to be nearby.  Wizard Whipple and his ilk(the makers of the time gate) do not have to be involved anymore.  In the event that the Keeper involves them, then he should invent more traces of 20s time travellers in the Vietnam setting.  For example, the sumptuous women's dress in the eighth ticket should be a ballgown from that era, and the Fungi might wear flying helmets in their weird vehicle.  The destruction of the jewel will close the gate. 

PERSONNEL: Referee's characters

REDMOND John B Cpt, USAF 
Pernell Henry D, Cpt, US infantry, cmndng firebase HI25 and 'Charlie Company' 
SCHWÄRMER Jacob F Mjr, US special forces, age 42, and his not-so-motley crew: 
MULLER Ernst 1LT, combat, pilot, age 45 
ANDERSON Richard 2LT strategy/tactics, pilot, Vietnamese, Yao, Lao, Tai, age 31 
VAN PELT Kurt SGT, hand-to hand, Vietnamese, Yunnanese, Yao, Tai, Phnong, age 35 
KONIG James CPL, Vietnamese, Yao, Lao, Tai, Kha, Bru, Rhade, Hmong, Mandarin, Cantonese, Yunnanese, Burmese, etc., etc., age 25 
BORG Theodore PFC, engineer, age 30 
VON ROSTOCK, Michael PVT heavy weapons, age 26 
BRANDT  , Ludolf Johann medic, age 22 
JAEGER*, John Mark PVT survival, heavy weapons, age 26 
HIMMELGART Frederick Joseph medic, strategy, age 20 
BOK Karl Haldemann, age 27 
BINH François, "Frank", houseboy, age 12 
TRAN Kim V Cpl. ARVN, attached to US infantry, C company, age 19 
CAMBORN Gerald D pilot, US Army("Crazy Jerry"), helicopter pilot and PCP addict, age 20 
HAYES William E pilot, US Army("Wild Bill the Mannequin-Fucker"), helicopter pilot, sexual deviant and PCP addict, age 21 
CAMPBELL Christopher Robert, PVT, helicopter door gunner, age 22 
Wu Pao-yu, Chinese Vietnamese national, owner of opium den in Cholon 
Chin Lucy, Chinese-Vietnamese national, owner of whorehouse in Cholon 
Bu Thuyet, "Sally", whore 
Nang Jenrao, whore 
Nguyen Cao Kim, headman of Xa Kim village, Hué district, Republic of South Vietnam 
Co Nhi Yanye, his aged mother, deaf as a post and thrice as pious 
Co Chi Nguyet, corporal, NVA guerrilla fighter 
Pitt-Nebiker, Elizabeth Boudicca Cholmondeley, archaeologist, age 69 
Wongar, Abraham Wakurna, her helper, age 32 
Bloss-Neville, Uffington Lewis, a graduate assistant, age 24 
Finley, Howard Mark, anthropologist, age 24 
Tanner, Henry Praisegod, archaeologist, age 79 
Hei Ren Tzu, a Yunnanese opium tycoon 
Kwak Chu Bon, a Trung-Cho chieftain and friend of Capt. Schwärmer 

AN INITIATORY ENCOUNTER

The Keeper may want a little something for his players to whet their appetites.  The following gives a little action and introduces a few characters and situations that occur later.  It can follow straight from anything above-either the first mission in the bush for 60s characters, or the experience following the time gate for 20s types.  The dreamers can even wake up in this initiatory encounter-no need to pinch themselves. 

They are in a clearing when the rain stops.  The radio buzzes.  "Mother Hen to Baby Chicken, Mother Hen to Baby Chicken."  The investigators find a code book in a pocket stating that they are Baby Chicken.  They report.  They are told to "find worms to eat", which being interpreted means to find VC tunnels west of them and mark them for entry later.  They head west. 

Entering a huge area of burnt and defoliated jungle, they are attacked by a sniper.  This unsociable man will fire ten bullets at long range.  He has a 30% chance to hit, and will pick his targets at random.  His hits do half damage. Spot Hidden picks out his muzzle flash on a distant treeless hill.  Critical success sees him appear (head and shoulders) fire, and vanish.  Obviously he is in a tunnel.  The players may try to avoid him.  If they do, he has another clip of bullets.  They may charge him, in which case he has only ten.  When the players are on his hill, across the empty ravine from the edge of the woods, he shoots for full damage.  Don't kill too many investigators just yet.   The confrontation should be quick.  He has the rifle and a knife.  He is alone, and his tunnel small. 

As the investigators move through the landscape, allow them to call Mother Hen, the main base.  At one point there will be much static.  Then another voice appears.  It is buzzing and mechanical-simulate as if using tinfoil held over the mouth to distort the voice.  The voice knows little of the proper military protocol.  If the players ask for help, the fungi (it's them, all right) interfere with the communication and relay a demand for much napalm on the present position of the players.  The base comes back on to tell the investigators about the huge airstrike that's coming to their present position.  If the players protest, the base hears only the fungi agreeing, and the players hear only the fungi blandly assuring them of the coming disaster.  No one seems to realize that something is wrong. 

After the incident with the sniper is over the planes arrive.  The players may flee, and avoid the napalm's direct hit.  They will still be surrounded by flame, and need Luck rolls to avoid 1D4 of damage from fire.  If they hide in the tunnel, the VC will attack from hiding.  If he is dead, the investigators will find a bag of rice, a jar of pickles, a sleeping mat, a pot of human waste, and the rifle.  There is a trap in the tunnel, requiring DEXx5 rolls to avoid a fall onto 1D4 points of damage from the stakes below.  The stakes are also dipped in waste; roll CON x5 to avoid lockjaw.  Eventually the heat and bad air force the investigators back to the surface.  There is a small area unburned to the west.  There they await the flame. 

They see an amazing sight.  A tall man is walking through the fire, placing bare feet on white-hot coals.  He is in no apparent distress.  He is six feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, and wears a Special Forces uniform.  The insignia declare him a captain.  He walks up to the investigators, ignoring glances or guns pointed his way, and says, "Captain Jacob Schwärmer, US Special Forces. I'm here to help you."  With him are as many of his men as half the investigators.  If attacked, they will fight.  If the investigators agree to do what he says, he will direct them to remove shoes and socks and then his men will take them by the hand and lead them through the fire, which will feel pleasantly cool to them. They will carry the wounded.  Any who lose hold or deliberately break away will roast.  This is napalm.  It does 1D6 points per round. 

The Captain will lead the investigators to a burnt clearing where his troop wait with a helicopter.  Here he may also look for a suitable investigator to make his special favorite.  See the description of him below for details.  This little sequence is just Schwärmer's way of showing that he cares.