Desperation
The “The Red Eye of Azathoth” is a millennia-spanning Call of Cthulhu campaign in five parts. It pits the investigators against two Mythos factions battling over whether to summon Azathoth to destroy the world. It starts on an island off the coast of British Northumbria in 887 A.D., just after Viking raiders raze a British monetary. The investigators reincarnate four times to continue their battle to save the world, in medieval Japan, Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, colonial Roanoke Island, and finally the Arizona Territory in 1887. Tim Connors wrote the Viking/monk adventure, Tim and I co-wrote the Spanish Inquisition adventure, and I wrote the Arizona Territory installment, which we all came to call Wild Westathulhu.
Here’s the main map of the wild west adventure setting, Cañón de Espiración, a small box canyon east of the Mojave, named for the sound of the desert winds sighing between its cliffs. Ten years before the adventure, three thousand souls filled the canyon’s gold-mining boomtown. By 1887, most of the town’s mines have been tapped out, and its population has plummeted to fewer than two hundred. Many buildings stand vacant, and everyone simply calls it “Desperation.”
I cannot tell you how much fun I had with this map! Of all the maps in this set, this is the only one of which I’m really proud.
Take a look at the street pattern. They form the Mythos symbol for summoning Azathoth: a humanoid body whose head forms the pupil of an eye. It’s the image in the tiny black-and-white file attached. The players’ investigators have been bumping into this symbol through five lifetimes, but they likely don’t notice the pattern until they try drawing their own map of the streets they’re walking.
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