Call of Cthulhu Scenarios by Miskatonic Repository / Chaosium
Three One‑Shots. One City on the edge of being written off.
The Palimpsest Trilogy is a set of three standalone Pulp Cthulhu scenarios set in a modern American city being quietly erased by a corporate optimization system. Run them as one-shots or chain them into a three-session mini-campaign where every ending bends the next night. The horror isn’t a monster. It’s a process.
NeonDyne Systems built the Pattern Engine to optimize reality — erasing redundant people, places, and memories the same way a corporation eliminates headcount. They ran it too long. Now three nights are converging, and the investigators standing in the way are a janitorial crew, a documentary filmmaker’s friends, and a grocery store night shift.
THE PALIMPSEST TRILOGY is three modern-day Pulp Cthulhu one-shot scenarios for 4–6 investigators. Each runs in 3.5–4 hours as a standalone, or they chain into a tight three-session mini-campaign where each outcome visibly shapes the next scenario.
Scenario 1: Deep Clean
Atlas Janitorial sent a crew to deep-clean a vacated tech floor overnight. Simple job. Except the floor is still running an optimization system that has been erasing rooms, personnel records, and coworkers — and the crew just got added to the list.
The building doesn’t hate them. It evaluated them. Their jobs are redundant.
Scenario 2: The Missing Playback
A documentary filmmaker went missing two weeks ago. His last rough cut just arrived in the mail. Every time someone watches the footage, the city gets closer to the version on screen and the people who don’t fit that version start becoming inconsistencies.
The film isn’t haunted. It’s training data.
Scenario 3: The Last Customer
A graveyard-shift supermarket. A storm keeping everyone inside. A last customer with a cart who moves through the store like something doing an audit because that’s exactly what it is.
The city has been edited, optimized, and weaponized across two nights. Now something has arrived to decide whether what’s left is worth keeping open.
What’s Included
- Three complete scenarios with act-by-act structure, scene goals, pacing guidance, and multiple outcomes per scenario
- A trilogy through-line that tracks player choices across all three nights, with nine distinct outcome combinations
- Six fully built Pulp Cthulhu pregens — janitorial supervisor, stocker, cashier, ex-cop, paramedic, street videographer with stats, skills, Pulp talents, and built-in crew relationships
- Complete NPC casts for all three scenarios, including the Pattern Engine, the City Overlay system, and the Auditor each treated as an environment and a process, not a combat encounter
- Keeper notes on pacing, tone, visual motifs, and “environment as monster” technique throughout
Designed For
- Keepers who want horror grounded in labor, media, and systems rather than ancient gods and hidden cults
- Tables that enjoy competent investigators facing genuinely strange problems
- One-shot play or short campaign arcs that fit a few weekends
- Players who will absolutely try to negotiate with a cosmic audit
Player Choices Matter
The Palimpsest Trilogy is designed so that outcomes echo forward:
- How the crew ends Deep Clean (destroy, weaponize, or abort too late) changes how broken the city is when The Missing Playback begins.
- How they resolve The Missing Playback (composite restore, targeted overlay, or crash/fragment) sets the tone of the cosmic audit in The Last Customer.
Run them all, and your players will see their fingerprints all over the world they’re trying to defend.
Pregens & NPC Support
To get you straight to the fun, the book includes:
- Six modern‑day Pulp pregenerated investigators, built as blue‑collar and gig‑economy specialists: a janitorial supervisor, conspiracy‑minded stocker, underpaid clerk, ex‑cop in loss prevention, scrappy videographer, and veteran medic/security specialist.
- Each pregen has two pulp talents and a short bio, designed to feel like a real person on a night shift, not just a stat block.
- A shared backstory hook (“The Night of the False Drill”) that ties the whole cast to NeonDyne and Palimpsest before the first session.
- NPC summaries for each scenario, with just enough detail for Keeper portrayal and only a handful of full stat blocks where combat or repeated interaction is likely.
For Keepers Who Like…
- Blue‑collar and service‑industry horror
- Corporate and media‑driven Mythos stories
- Environmental and process‑driven “monsters”
- Short arcs where decisions in session 1 really matter by session 3
…this trilogy is aimed squarely at you.
The Palimpsest Trilogy is a one‑person, labour‑of‑love project—written, developed, and laid out by a single Keeper who likes night shifts, bad lighting, and systems that get out of hand. If you pick it up and bring it to your table, I’d genuinely love to hear what your group did to the city—and what the Auditor decided about your reality.
SYSTEM: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition (Pulp Cthulhu)
ERA: Modern Day (2026)
LENGTH: 40+ pages
PLAYERS: 4–6
PLAYTIME: 3.5–4 hours per scenario / ~12 hours for the full trilogy
Three nights. Three shifts. One city deciding whether it wants to keep existing.
The investigators are the only reason it might.
The Palimpsest Trilogy is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.
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Voices From The Pulpit 