This is the much anticipated continuation of the Call of Cthulhu chronicle created by Jim Comer for Viet Nam.  If you missed the earlier Tickets, you can read them first by going to the Tickets Intro Page.

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Chapter Six
   Fifth Ticket
Idylls in West Vietnam

     The players' platoon is sent on a jungle patrol that will involve their reconning the presence of a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the mountains of Vietnam, calling in an airstrike, and finally reaching a radio outpost in the mountains maintained by Special Forces, where helicopters will whisk them to safety.  The station will also relay the platoon's coordinates for the strike. 
     The march is eleven kilometers through jungle and mountain.  The investigators will have to move fast to make it by sundown.  Keep reminding them of what time of day it is, and how long they take to do things.  If they argue among themselves, dock them a little time for their deliberations. 
     The investigators are descending the first slope when they are shot at.  The sniper has an M1 Rock Island Arsenal match quality bolt-action rifle, but only ten cartridges.  He is using a telescopic sight and boat-tailed ammunition, but is over a mile away and so his chance to his is 40%.  He can't see anyone who Hides successfully, or anyone who lies perfectly still. He is a Tcho-Tcho in black pajamas, hidden on a mountain spur to the northeast.  There are three men with him, but he is the only one to have Transferred Attribute from Capt. Schwärmer, the skill in question being Rifle Attack.  At any shorter range, he cannot miss.  A critical success on Spot Hidden will see him, and the investigators can track him down.  If they do not, he has only ten shots, and likely cannot kill all the squad before he runs out of ammo.  His buddies are typical Tcho-Tchos and will not chase the squad until they obviously outnumber them by two.  Even then they will attack only from ambush. 

     The players have to cross the river, now in flood and ten meters wide.  They could waste a lot of time that way.  As they approach, each makes a DEXx5 roll to avoid being cut by the grass.  Failure means 1 point of damage.  Someone could swim across with a rope, or they could throw it.  Or everyone could swim.  The point is to slow the group. 

     While still many klicks away, they encounter a naked American, completely insane, shouting, singing, and rhyming, his body covered in blood, running from numberless scratches.  He is the only survivor from the base, but is unable to relay this, or anything.  He will be violent, even fatally so, at the slightest provocation.  The observer  has a small chance of determining that the marks on his body are in regular patterns, and that they spell out a message written in understandable though archaic English.  They are written upside down from the point of view of another, though rightside up from his.  They are his last attempt to encode the horror which he saw at the base, which has been overrun by the human cultists, and then by the fungi themselves.  On realizing this, the observer loses 0/1 SAN, and on reading the writing, more.  See the handout for the text. 

     Planes  may rumble.  If the Keeper wants a possibly fatal distraction, the fungi can call an airstrike.  The airstrike will come early and off target-the fungi are trying to scotch the players and blame it on pilot error to damage the idea that radar and radio guidance can allow carpet bombing and that instruments are at all reliable.  If the players can reach the post, they find disease signs, in English and Vietnamese, posted, and a huge pyre still glowing.  Two Special Forces techs still remain inside the building, and will explain through a window that they cannot have personal contact with the players, that Lassa fever struck, making the techs' minds wander and killing all but them in a single day.  Their voices seem husky, and their heads are covered with sores and swelling.  In fact, (of course), the places of the Green Berets have been taken by fungi from Yuggoth, masked with skin to resemble human beings.  Their caution comes from the fact that they have to delay until the helicopter comes, when the players will get aboard and the thing can be maneuvered into a crash by faked radio signals.  The fungi can then slither off into the bush, discarding the "waxen mask and the robe that hides", and wreak further havoc.  Alternatively, the fungi can call a squad or two of VC from the bushes to do their dirty work, then hopping aboard the helicopter and flying to the sea(below). 

     The fungi disguised as men will warn the players away from the pyre, saying that the heat has not yet killed all the germs.  Actually the fungi are afraid that the investigators will find the human skulls and skeletons in the pyre, the remains of the two men they killed.  The third escaped, of course.  He was sunning when the things came, and fled rather than suffer their fate. 

     If the players gain access to the fungi, their bodies will be found to be stooped and crooked and covered with masses of fur, with numerous appendages.  They are wingless. 

THE SECRET CIA DRUG BASE IN LAOS 

   Deep in the Lao mountains is a secret CIA base that aids in the smuggling of opium to pay for covert operations and also manufactures "hammer" and other drugs.  It is located in an otherwise uninhabited area near the border with North Vietnam, above the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

     Learning about this place should be difficult enough that the players realize that they have stumbled onto secrets.  Perhaps they could find documents left by the Green Berets, or intercept a coded message on a radio altered by the fungi.  If Schwärmer likes an investigator, and the man plays up to him, then the Captain might take him there, but this is unlikely to happen until repeated exposure to deviance and horror has ruined the character's mind.  Documents in the cannibal fortress also refer to the drug plant, but the investigators are unlikely to visit the place after the eighth ticket, as they are likely to be too pooped to party. 

     The map is below. (Editor's note, it is not included as of now anyway.)  Here are the buildings. 

A.  Guard longhouses.  Twenty Tcho-Tcho warriors from a village in southern Laos guard the plant.  At any time two will patrol the jungle and two will guard the plant.  The rest are sleeping, talking, or doing other things.  5-15 will be in the guard's house at any time.  It has typical raised sleeping platforms, a central hearth for cooking, and chests for the storage of the guards' belongings.  Apart from a grisly Tcho-Tcho souvenir or two, there is nothing of interest here. 

B.  Storage shed.  Here the techs store food, canned goods, and supplies of opium, morphine base, smoker's opium, morphine, heroin, acetic anhydride, mushrooms, and hammer.  There is a lot of each of these.  Each is in a separate locked box with a STR of 20. 

C.  Tech's quarters.  Each bedroom is shared by two of the four techs.  They have girlie magazines and posters tacked on the walls, footlockers for their possessions, and a weapon or two apiece.  They know that in the event of a real attack even the Tcho-Tchos could not save them, and so do not always go armed, though they do so often.  At night, they all sleep here; in the day  time they work on the drugs, go plant hunting in the jungle, or fool around. 

D.  The laboratory.  Here is everything needed to make the drugs mentioned above, including the smoker for the mushrooms and vats for producing heroin. There are lots of drugs here also, but they are locked up save when the techs are working on them. 

E.  Radio building.  Here is a hugely complex radio with a bewildering variety of dials and knobs, and a built-in code mechanism.  It can call anywhere the investigators think to ask, but without a successful roll they will likely get either the CIA operatives in Vientiane or the mad Captain.