Special Treat: Turning a Call of Cthulhu one-shot into a novella

I write a lot about tabletop roleplaying games in my Special Treat posts.

Outside of erotica writing, which is my main profession, running roleplaying game sessions and writing little adventures for my friends is my main hobby outside of cooking, videogames, and generally being a fat slor online.

So I suppose it makes sense how much I cover it. I just hope it continues to be entertaining to all of you. Sound off in the comments if you want other content, and if so, what.

But I digress. Call Of Cthulhu...

Old Timey Spookfests

I will admit, my main exposure to the works of Hewlet Packard Lovecraft is the tabletop roleplaying game from Chaosium. I was blessed to buy a moldy old copy of the game at a yard sale in the late 90's. It was the third edition boxed set from 1983.

I hung onto it for years, reading over its byzantine and confounding contents without any real understanding of how the game was to be played. It wouldn't be until the late 2000's that I'd play Call Of Cthulhu for the very first time in college, and by that point we were playing sixth edition.

I adored the game immensely.

Something about playing a waifish ingénue with pretentions of being an occultist, who would ultimately go mad from seeing supernatural horrors beyond her comprehension, was enormously appealing to 20-something me.

God...I should've realized I was trans so much sooner...

The memories of those games inured me to works of cosmic horror. It was a genre I was enamored with for ages, but finally had the experience to grapple with as an adult.

That said, I was always coming to it through second hand stories. Works inspired by Humpty Penisnose Lovecraft, rather than his direct works.

I wouldn't actually read Lovecraft until I was well into my thirties.

Horrors Beyond Measure...But Sexy

I lived through the 'Cthulhu Craze' of the mid 2000's, where things like plush Cthulhu, Cthulhu Saves The World, and that one episode of South Park reintroduced the great old one to a new audience of teens.

Back then, there were only two things I understood about Horse Pills Lovecraft: that his writing was needlessly verbose, and that he was weirdly racist for the time period he was writing in.

The latter fact was enough to keep me from reading his works for multiple decades.

It wasn't until I was introduced to his writing through the excellent audiobooks narrated by Wayne June (the narrator of Darkest Dungeon) that I gained an appreciation for Lovecraft.

The two things I understood about his works turned out to still be true. They were verbose and racist in equal measure, but I also quickly discovered something else about them: their otherworldly horrors had been completely defanged by both the passage of time, and a difference of perspective.

So much of the horrors of Lovecraft's short stories amounted to the fear of being thought of as crazy; of being stripped of your agency and control, forced to contend with an uncaring universe that cares little for you, as you realize you are ultimately insignificant and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

My guy...that's just so much of what life is like as a woman, living in our own sexist, patriarchal society. Like, that's everyday, my dude.

So now I'd listened to and read a whole bunch of these stories that weren't especially scary or compelling, yet I still found I liked them. Why?

Cuz monsters, mostly.

The one thing Lovecraft's works had going for him more than a lot of his contemporaries was the pantheon of creepy creatures he imagined. The outer gods and great old ones and shambling abominations of eyeballs and tentacles and vaguely inhuman nightmare shapes.

Good stuff. Also, kinda sexy for a monsterfucker like me.

The Horror At Chubscliffe

At the start of 2025 I aimed to write, design, and run a mini-campaign of CoC for my vtuber friends. I'd gotten the cosmic horror hyperfixation once more, watching longplays of Alone In The Dark on YouTube and listening to the aforementioned Wayne June narrated audiobooks. I was getting hype about it.

I'd never run CoC before, but I figured I had an abundance of Game Mastering experience. How hard could being a Keeper be?

Harder than I expected, actually. Running dungeons and fantasy romps is very different from running an occult mystery to be solved.

Still, I did my best to come up with a lengthy one-shot scenario that combined all the hallmarks of a Call Of Cthulhu campaign (1920's setting, period drama, creeping horror rooted in classism of the time, wet damp times) and the abundant perversions my players come to me for week after week (weight gain, stuffing, decadent women getting fatter).

The final result was an adventure module called The Horror At Chubscliffe.

The module starts with a letter sent to the investigators from an old friend:

To [Insert Investigator’s Name],

I write this letter in haste under the cover of darkness, lest I be seen by prying eyes. The town of Chubscliffe, Louisiana has far too many eyes as of late. You remember our promise to each other? To come if either of us needed help? I desperately need your help now. If you are reading this, I am most likely already dead. Despite what anyone else says, know that I was murdered.

Come to Chubscliffe and visit my home. I can say no more, other than that my killers are cunning and influential individuals who will stop at nothing to hide their sins from the world.

Your friend, Alana Reigh

This was followed by the premise of the adventure:

Chubscliffe, Louisiana. 1923.

This idyllic, sleepy town is filled with prosperous happy people with a dark secret.

Their plump and robust physique is the result of offerings to an eldritch god, and in return that God provides an electric syrup made of pure light that causes immediate weight gain and inspires maddening gluttony.

These fattening rays have already resulted in the death of one townsperson, Madam Alana Reigh, who contacted the PC’s all prior to her death to investigate Chubscliffe.

Her death kicks off the adventure, as all of the Investigators are invited to her wake.

It was as solid enough of a premise to get things started. What followed over three sessions was exploring a half-sunken town filled with fat socialites with shady pasts, collecting clues and artifacts that lead to a crazy shindig where an occult ritual was taking place in the basement.

In the end though, the cast of investigators ultimately failed in their investigation.

The eldritch being known only as The Fattening Light was revealed to be the offspring of Shub'nigurath, an elder god called Zwel’Vorta, whose eyebeams could cause a human to gain hundreds of pounds in an instant.

Zwel’Vorta's summoning was a success, resulting in its kaiju-sized form stomping around the town. The only way the investigators thought to solve this giant monster problem was by casting their own spell in the form of Summon Deity.

From there, it was all up to the RNG.

They rolled...well.

Resulting in great Cthulhu rising from the bayou to do battle with Zwel’Vorta, ultimately destroying all of Louisiana.

...fun times!

But can I turn this into a novella?

I'm struggling to find more horror stories to share for Fanfiction Fridays, as most of the works I've written for clients based on fandoms and media aren't horror related (at least, the ones I haven't published yet aren't).

So I'd like to turn this adventure module into a standalone story. As it's based in the works of Horshack Poorshack Lovecraft, it would technically be fanfiction.

I'll be starting work on it this weekend while I wrap up this month's Fiverr orders, and I'll keep you up to date on how it progresses.

I think you'll really like it, though~