The Hommas Leaf Mystery

Campaign: Scooby Cthulhu

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Connie Hardwood's antiquarian mentor Hommas Leaf is missing. Where has he gone?

Recording of game session (YouTube)

Summary

(Spoiler alert: this summary reveals plot details of the Pelgrane Press adventure, The Murderer Of Thomas Fell.)

The gang is approached by Professor Makepeace at Miskatonic University while they are making their plans for the summer vacation. He asks them to drive to Pennsylvania to check on Doctor Hommas Leaf, a former professor at Miskatonic and an old friend of Professor Makepeace.

The gang drives to Pennsylvania, where they meet Jan Joyce-Cleveland. Finding a key under the doormat, they enter the house. A large section of the house has somehow been replaced with strange stones and vines. From his papers and notes, it appears that he was planning an expedition to South America. In the cellar, they find a four foot tall stele inscribed with strange symbols.

The gang is suddenly transported to what they eventually deduce is a plateau in the Peruvian Andes. They find a strange labyrinth and a monster that can move through the rock of the labyrinth ("The Mouth In The Stone"). They find two victims of Hommas Leaf (dead), and two victims of The Mouth In The Stone (not dead yet, but slowly being turned to stone). They learn that Leaf has gone mad, ranting about "protecting the stones" and "seeing where the stones will take him". While pondering the nature of the Mouth In The Stone, it erupts from a wall and bites the head off of Jan Joyce-Cleveland.

The gang eventually catches Leaf, dragging him back to a shrine on the opposite end of the plateau from the stele that brought them there, but he refused to take them back home. From Leaf's ranting, the gang deduced that the key to the stele was (somehow) in Leaf's chest, but they weren't willing to kill him to get it out of him.

Leaf says the gang can stay there, on the plateau, or go with him wherever the stones would take them. "Why go back when I can go forward? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The gang decides that anywhere is better than here, so they join hands and Leaf activates the stele at the southern end of the plateau.

After a disconcerting transition, they all land next to a much larger stele, in the middle of an alien city. The sky is a huge mouth, with tentacles the size of freeways coming out of it. As the tentacles notice the gang and start stretching down toward them, Hideyori tiger-claw punches Hommas Leaf and tears the key stone out of his chest (it is about the size of an Oscar trophy).

The gang scrambles to the massive stele and touches it, and lands back in the basement of Leaf's house, next to the 4' tall stele in Leaf's basement. They then get some gasoline from the motorhome and some common household chemicals, and make a bomb, blowing up the stele and Leaf's house.

Then they drive to Ohio and call Professor Makepeace from a gas station, telling him that they went by Doctor Leaf's house, but he wasn't home.

People

  • Jan Joyce-Cleveland, financier of the Leaf Expedition
  • Hommas Leaf, former professor of Anthropology at Miskatonic University
  • Knox Makepeace, professor of Anthropology at Miskatonic University