Cold War Spies, Cthulhu-Style

We’re excited to be announcing the release of “Known Unknowns”, another new Cthulhu Eternal scenario and another in our Australian Aeons series. This one is a 1950s Cold War Lovecraftian thriller which blends gritty espionage (as opposed to cinematic spy-jinks), Soviet-era paranoia, and schemes to steal Atomic secrets. Also terrifying forces from other dimensions (naturally).

It’s a heady mix of shady Cold War spy-vs-spy from an era when Atomic Scientists were considered minor gods … or demons.

The events in this scenario are inspired by a real life mystery — an unexplained corpse that was found on a suburban Adelaide beach in 1948 suspiciously devoid of any forms of identifying papers or even clothing labels (all had been carefully cut away). The unknown dead man became known as “Somerton Man” and has been a source of speculation for many decades. The prevailing assumption for much of that time was that the dead body was somehow tied to Cold War spy shenanigans, although the most recent DNA-based suppositions (in the news a couple of years back) point to a more mundane explanation. Either way, it’s probably fair to say the real case did NOT involve extra-dimensional entities and summoning rituals. Real life isn’t that interesting.

Our scenario “Known Unknowns” is playable with the CE Cold War SRD (which you get for free bundled with the scenario, if you don’t already have a copy). You can nab it right now over on DriveThruRPG. Decrypt if you dare …

As always, if any of our wonderful blog readers does anything interesting with this scenario (or any of our stuff), we would be delighted to hear about it! We love hearing about games that have made it to your table — and how they turned out.