Call of Cthulhu 7E: Berlin - The Wicked City

In the aftermath of the Great War, Berlin has a reputation for licentiousness. A place where anything may be had for the right price. It is both a city of hedonism and a city of business; its streets overflow with disabled veterans, prostitutes, destitute immigrants, and political agitators—all rubbing shoulders with buttoned-down businessmen, scholars, and artists. The gutters run with the blood of political assassinations, where Communists and völkisch Nationalists clash with each other, as well as with the police. Long into the evenings, Berlin’s world-famous cabarets offer music, dance, and titillating entertainment in stark contrast to the gray buildings that run on for endless miles along the sprawling city’s byways.

Into this bubbling stew, Berlin: The Wicked City introduces the weird elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. A hotbed of occult organizations, strange cults, and half-whispered lore. Amid the wicked air of the world’s capital of sin, the very nature of what it means to be human is questioned. And, as the city hurtles toward its inevitable dark destiny, the oppressive atmosphere pushes the sanity of investigators to its breaking point.

This book presents an overview of 1920s Berlin as it would be experienced by visitors and residents of the time. Guidelines are presented for creating investigators for a Berlin-centric campaign, as well as investigator organizations to help bind groups together. Notable personalities, key locations, and a system for generating details of the urban landscape on the fly are provided. With crime and punishment, the city’s underworld, and also its high culture detailed, the tools provided help the Keeper gain an understanding of what makes Berlin unique.

Three scenarios are included, spanning the events and history of Berlin between the end of the Great War and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Each contains colorful details of Berlin and its inhabitants, focusing on differing themes of horror, and may be run together as a Berlin-centered campaign or as stand alone adventures for either Berlin residents or visitors to the city.

In The Devil Eats Flies, Germany teeters on the brink of economic ruin and political chaos. The ghost of a madman stalks the city, turning its own citizenry against itself. To stop a demonic spirit and save a Russian princess in exile, the investigators must strike a bargain with other sinister forces and ask themselves: who else are we prepared to see die in order to save the city?

Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy takes place in the city’s golden years, when things have become superficially stable and prosperous again. A bungling sorcerer, a debauched dancer, and a strange cult of gnostic Saturn-worshippers threaten to put all of that to an end and turn Berlin into a pit of madness and depravity.

Schreckfilm sees Berlin racing toward its grim future. The investigators come face to face with a shadowy cabal of the city’s movers and shakers who are determined to turn the city’s worldfamous film industry toward ill ends. Trapped in a labyrinth of their own making and hounded relentlessly by dark forces beyond their ken, the investigators must confront the fundamental question of what is real and what is illusion.