Swamp Song Backstory

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Introduction

  Swamp Song takes place in late Spring 1923 during a creative symposium held in New Orleans’ French Quarter. This short scenario should span no more than 4-8 hours, and serves well as a one-shot, campaign interlude, or a brief, linked adventure for two or more investigators.   An adventurous author invites his friends to an assembly of fringe writers, artists, and performers in The Big Easy where he plans to discuss his latest publication. Upon arriving in New Orleans, the investigators soon discover that their friend went missing after attending an avant-garde performance the prior evening. This development sets them on a search of the French Quarter to learn more about the staged event and its creator while seeking out the Author and the rest of the performance’s missing attendees. As they gather clues and encounter suspicious characters, a ferocious tropical storm begins to batter the city. The investigators must hasten to rescue their friend and his fellow audience members before they succumb to the elements in a hidden subterranean chamber. Here, beneath a graveyard crypt, the investigators face the disastrous results of the performance artist’s painstakingly planned masterpiece.    Thanks to historic preservation in the French Quarter, this scenario easily runs in other periods with slight modifications. This adventure draws inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and Pickman’s Model.