The Salesman - Chapter 5 - Missing People Return!

2:35 p.m.

I explore a new area of Another Dimension. I see something that looked like a shrine with all sorts of hieroglyphs I couldn’t understand. They don’t teach that in marketing class. Somehow I feel as if I should be terrified, that I should panic. But I guess years of grinding through the 9 to 5, moving back and forth cities, has either strengthened my will or has alienated me to the point of indifference. I think dehumanized is the word.

But now that there’s monsters, portals and prophesies of doom, selling “top quality” General Store supplies doesn’t seem so important anymore. Why am I even here? I’m not the hero type. If I wanted to be a hero, I’d have been a soldier and not a salesman. It’s in my nature, I guess. I do what needs to be done. Yesterday, I needed to make money. Today, I need to do something else, and I have a feeling that whatever it is that I now need to do, pretty soon, I’ll be efficient at it too.

Well, I couldn’t read the hieroglyphs so I start shooting at the shrine, just to see what happens. Suddenly, the ground shakes and the portal I came through begins to close. I run towards it with the strange feeling that if I don’t make it to the portal, I’ll be lost in time and space.

Either way, the gate I entered will automatically close. The only concern right now is which side of the gate I’ll end up in.

The Salesman - Chapter 4 - An Evil Fog

01:22 p.m.

As I leave the General Store and head out to the Rivertown Street, I met someone in an Indiana Jones costume, complete with a bullwhip and a .38 running around. When he saw the glowing blue chalk the old shop keeper gave me, he walked towards me.

“You have an Elder Sign,” he said.

“A what?” I asked.

“You’re the chosen one,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

He tried to walk closer.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said.

From a distance, he told me that he was Monterey Jack, a treasure hunter. He started talking about destiny, cultists who murdered his father, and all that jazz. He even took the arm of the cultist I shot earlier and showed me a tattoo symbol. He said that there’s a conspiracy going on a secret organization is trying to wake an Ancient God.

I told him I wasn’t much of a religious man and I didn’t believe in gods. He offered to help me in my “quest” and gave me some holy water, “to destroy evil horrors,” he said. I wouldn’t believe him so he poured a little on the dead cultist and it burst into flames.

I said, “No thanks.”

I didn’t want to handle homemade explosives in Catholic containers. I made my way to the graveyard and found two warlocks trying to raise the dead. A security officer tries to stop them, but they cast a spell of some sort to make him choke and die. These people don’t mess around. They see you, they kill you. So, the best course of action, I figured, was to shoot them before they see me.

Blam! Blam!

I reflect on the recent events and wonder whether I should be more affected by all that’s going on. But, I’m not. At most, this will sound a bit morbid, but I’m moderately amused. I feel like I’ve been liberated from a spell that has bound me for years – my organizer. Now, I’m free of it and everything is so different.

I move towards the warlocks and discover clues about what’s going on in the city. They were not trying to raise the dead. I realized that they were trying to open a portal. I realized too that if one walked close to a portal, that the portal would suck you in and take you to another dimension.

The Salesman - Chapter 3 - Headline! Family Found Butchered.

12:10 p.m.

“He left his axe,” said the shop keeper. “Take it. You might need it too.”

So I have the .45, an axe, a flask of whiskey I always keep in my coat pocket for celebrating closed deals. I have no idea why I have all these items. My organizer doesn't know either. I check it again and the rest of the pages are blank. I'm pretty sure those pages are not supposed to be blank. Something really strange is happening right now.

I was about to leave when the shopkeeper stopped me and gave me a weird blue piece of glowing chalk. It looked like a blue Christmas light and he told me that I could use it to draw elder signs.

“I don’t know what those are,” I told him. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. He starts laughing, and laughing, and laughing. “It’s happening again,” he says. “The Ancient One slumbers, you better seal those gates before he wakes up, otherwise, you’re going to have one hell of a slumber party,” he chuckles as he walks out the store to the Rivertown Street to look at the evil fog.

He stops laughing and looks at me and says, “There are more of them… at the graveyard.”

From out of nowhere, a robed man attacks him from behind. Out of instinct, I pull the .45 and shoot. The man falls to the ground. “A cultist,” the shop keeper says and he starts laughing again. “I guess your gun’s working,” he says.

“I guess it does,” I tell him.

Then the shop keeper breaks down and starts to sob in the middle of the street. I help him inside and tell him to stay there. "The graveyard," he said earlier. There are monsters in the graveyard.

I guess we'll find out if monsters do exist.

An evil fog envelopes the city.

The Salesman - Chapter 2 - R’leh Rising

11:21 a.m.

A dark, purple cloud passes overhead as lightning storms pass through them. It was like the sky was a big purple brain and it was having an epiphany. People run past, in panic screaming, “Mosters! Monsters!”

My first instinct was to reach for my organizer and find out what I should be doing. My organizer tells me, that I shouldn’t be in Arkham, I shouldn’t be at the General Store, and monsters are not supposed to be roaming around the city.

For the first time in years, I realized that I didn’t know what to do. They don’t teach you about monsters in marketing school. Now, I have never seen a monster in my entire life, but apart from being efficient, I’m also very open-minded, so instead of badgering the old shopkeeper about some antique gold coins, I figured I needed something to efficiently protect me from monsters and I thought of getting myself a gun.

An evil fog envelopes the city. My vision blurs. I decide to enter the store.

As I enter the General Store, I hear the news on the radio. News says that a family is found butchered. A man with a back pack was by the counter paying for some wares. He says to the shopkeeper, “I’d leave too, if I were you.” “Maybe I will, Mr. Colt,” says the old shopkeeper, “Maybe I will.”

The Salesman - Chapter 1 - The Story So Far…

10:18 a.m.

Was it Monday yesterday? My organizer says so, but I’m never sure. When you’ve been travelling as much as I have, it stops to matter. A rose with any other name would smell as sweet. A day with any other name would be the same.

I don’t have work days. I have work weeks and work months. When you’re on the road, the hours and days merge into a long monotonous dream. It’s like being on an elevator that goes up a hundred floors. You know you’re moving, but it feels like nothing ever happens and you’re not going anywhere. That’s how it is to be a travelling salesman – you know you’re moving, but you’re not really going anywhere.

I have been traveling so much that sometimes when I sleep, I wake up in the middle of the night afraid that I missed my stop.  When the alarm clock rings, and I take comfort in the fact that I have the luxury of an alarm clock, because I know I’m on a bed. I’m not sleeping on a train where I might have missed my stop. I know I’m in a hotel, motel, or inn somewhere in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have to worry because I won’t be lost if I don’t wake in the next hour or so.

Why did I choose this job? Because it’s something I’m really good at. I am organized. I am punctual. But I have a lingering suspicion that I was hired not for what I can do, but for what I can do without. I can do without friends, or moral support, or inspiration, or hope. When you’re on the road, you won’t have any of that, and if you’re a little soft-willed, you will go insane.

I am a salesman because I am a practical man, an efficient man. You see, the business of sales is all about efficiency. You don’t have to be excellent at anything, but you have to be efficient at everything. That’s what I am – efficient.

However, in order for a man to be efficient, he has to be organized. When you travel your mind is jarred. You move through different time zones and the mind gets confused, you forget things. You have to write things down. I know a travelling salesman who ended up in the hospital for forgetting to eat, another almost died from insomnia. He stayed up for days, forgetting to sleep.

I know it was Monday yesterday because I kept notes. I know that I’m in Arkham and I know I’m on a bed at Ma’s Boarding House. But I also know that I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be on a train headed elsewhere, but I saw something yesterday that made me miss my train.

Yesterday, I was at the General Store on the Rivertown Streets to take an order from the shop keeper. I was supposed to leave by train at 11:00 a.m. It says so on my organizer.

While I was in the General Store, a robed man came in and bought several items, paying with old gold coins. I turned to the shopkeeper for an explanation, but the man just ignored my questions, simply saying, "That happens, sometimes."

I’m not leaving until I figure out where those gold coins came from. If I plays my cards right, maybe this will be my big score. If I hit the jackpot, I’ll retire and buy that boat I've had my eye on and spend the rest of my days fishing in a tropical paradise.

Here’s the odd thing though… the idea of fishing in a tropical paradise never entered my mind until I saw those coins.

Now, it’s Tuesday. It’s 10:18 a.m. and I’m back at the General Store. I’m not even sure if I even like fishing or boats. I've been travelling so much that the last thing I should want is to be on water, in motion. But there’s just something that draws me here, an odd feeling that I have to be here – that I need to be here.

Introduction

Hello, reader. Welcome to my blog. Arkham Horror is a great game. But you know that already. That's why you're here. You're probably a fan of both the game and the Mythos of Lovecraft.

However, as much as I (we?) like the great fiction the game was based on, what I'm really interested in is to find out more about the characters in the game. I wanted to know more than their backgrounds or their motives. I wanted to flesh them out. I have been playing this game for a few weeks now and, to be honest, I like playing it alone more. It allows me to really immerse and imagine plot lines in my head. It allows my mind to play.

In one game I played with three characters (Bob Jenkins, my favorite, Mandy Thompson, and Monterey Jack), I did a little experiment and tried to make a session report. But as I took notes on what happened where, who moved to what location, and which card I drew when, I started writing dialogue between characters who meet in the same locations.

A story began to form. In one turn, I moved Bob towards a gate in the Independence Square, but just before I engaged the monsters there, I decided to check their stats. I realized that Bob would probably end up in the hospital if I continued the encounter. So, with the rest of his movement, I moved him back to the General Store to buy more equipment. On the same movement phase, I had Mandy go to the General Store and started to think, "What if they were real people and this was the first time they met? How do you start a conversation with someone about 'saving the world'?"

<"Hi. I'm Bob. I'm trying to save the world by sealing gates with Elder Signs. Do you have any with you. Maybe we can work something out? You look like a strong-willed girl, maybe you can jump into the gate that leads to an alien world, while I keep the horrors busy. Do you have enough clues with you, though?"

That's probably not how that conversation would go. It's this curiosity, this interest in the interactions that happen between investigators, and the private thoughts they have in their head that compelled me to write. I enjoyed the plots that developed as I played the game and I hope that you will too.

The first character I decided to write about was Bob. There was something about a regular, middle-class guy thrown into a saving-the-world role that really appealed to me. Unlike other board game personas that usually had special powers, medieval costumes, or alien ancestors, Bob was a regular guy, a salesman. He was someone I could relate to. He's the average Joe. I thought it was a brilliant idea to force a regular 9-to-5 travelling salesman dude to save the world.

What goes on in his head as all this is happening? How do you go, psychologically, from selling wares for a store to killing Hounds of Tindalos? And how come Bob has such a high will? Monterey Jack is a treasure hunter whose father was murdered by a cult. You'd think that he'd be more resilient to strangeness given that he has more experience with history and mystical items, right?

So that's the starting point I selected.

Before I start, I just want to say that this blog is for fans of the game. I know the limits of my storytelling skills and the limits of the material available. These stories will not be as good as standard short stories since I will be incorporating many of the game's elements. You can't buy a gun for $5 in real life from a General Store. But these are some of the things that will happen in the stories I tell because that's how it is in the game.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I hope you enjoy reading my work. Feel free to make comments and suggestions. Cheers!