Five months trapped in Innsmouth

It’s been five months since my last post! That’s no good. Instead of playing game books, I played Bioshock and Alien Isolation again, after having played them several years ago. It was nice to revisit them, but I have way too many game books that I’ve never played and many that I’ve not played in so long that I don’t remember. So, let me tell you about my trip to The Tides of Innsmouth.

I’m Silas Marsh. I’m a salty seaman (heh heh, take that however you like) but fishing and shipping haven’t paid well lately, so I took up a job I found in the paper. Some folklore professor named Addison wants to look for a shipwreck and the sunken treasure. Sounds daft to me, and I know a thing or two about ships and wrecks. I’m from Innsmouth, too, and can say that there aren’t legends of such a wreck – even if there were, it would have been retrieved generations ago. But, I’ve been having the dreams again, of the sunken city and the voice that isn’t a sound, and I’m not sleeping well. Best to take her up on her fool’s errand, and clear my mind with some paying work.

I go by boat, of course. There’s only one bus, and it’s not reliable. I put in at the harbor, and again am chagrined that this place is such a damned wreck. I hear that a few generations ago, it was actually a nice enough place, or at least enough to support a harbor and a town. Now it’s just the odd-looking “Innsmouth look” people… well, and one outsider-looking guy, obviously drunk and homeless. He seems to want to talk, but I’m just gonna get to the hotel and meet Addison. I know the way there and it’s not far.

Two o’clock comes and goes, and no sign of Addison. The hotel clerk tells me her room number, but she’s not there. So, you know what? I force the door open, because I know that creep downstairs wouldn’t be helpful even if I asked nicely, and I gotta keep the plot moving, you know? The room is shabby and moldy, like everything else in town. Addison isn’t here, but she left a diary and a tide table. The diary notes that there is a tunnel on the beach below the high water line, which perhaps leads to the book store. Why would she want to break into a book store via tunnels? Well, I grab the diary and the tide table, and get out of there before the clerk comes investigating that crash when I broke in.

In town, I have several choices of stores and locations to visit, hoping to catch up with Addison. I pick the book store, since that was mentioned in the diary. It’s a cozy, sweet place, everything you could want in a New England book store. It feels so out of place in this rotten corpse of a town. I browse around the stacks a bit, feeling the place out before I ask the proprietor whether Addison has come here. Most of the material is uninteresting, or at least over my head academically, but there is a brief history of Innsmouth describing the bustling town that it once was, and the plague some 80 years ago that brought the town to ruin.  This is odd – the former owner left a bookmark, which is a map of some tunnels? Huh, tunnels and book stores… My curiosity satisfied, I ask the proprietor whether Dr Addison has come in today. She then describes a person (I’ve never seen Addison, so can’t say) before changing her mind, and angrily insisting that nobody has been in today at all, then kicks me out. Very, very odd behavior – a mite suspicious.

How about the curiosity shop across the way? I pop in, and notice the hot young guy behind the counter. Why, hello, Jack! No, focus, man, focus. I admire his shortwave radio, then browse around for a bit. I find one thing really interesting: a sea map of the local waters, with “Atlantis?” and “ship wreck?” marked on it. Sounds very relevant to me, so I buy it with one of my precious Resources. I ask about Addison, and he says he hasn’t seen any strangers except me, but he can put on some coffee and cookies and we can chill. While I’d love to get some shore leave with this gorgeous man, I also think that Innsmouth is the kind of place where questions like that will guarantee my coffee to be drugged, so I just scamper off while he’s putting the water down to boil. On my way out, the weird artifacts call to me, to look through the odd art work, to drown in the shelves of bric-a-brac, to marvel at the small statues. But, I miraculously roll a 6, and get myself together, and walk out.

Now, each time I visit a place I gain +1 Doom. And remember, I’m cursed so every time I gain Doom I have to spend a Resource too, or else +1 extra Doom. So exploring is really unhealthy. But I have absolutely nothing to go on, except the clue about tunnels at low tide. Oh, which I guess is probably a good clue. So I sit and try a few combinations of words: “the beach” “tidal tunnel” and so on, plus the time I found in the tide table. And it works! I make my way down to the shore.

Addison was right. There is a grotto here, and at low tide there is a tunnel. There is a T junction, with footprints one direction, and grooves like something was dragged or wheeled to the right. In both directions, the tunnels are conveniently lit by plot-generated bioluminscence, so that’s nice. There is also a +2 Doom that I can buy my way out of, with the last of my Clues and Resources.

I head left, then I get lost. There was a navigation roll but it’s 2d6 + Intellect with a target of 13, so I had a slim chance anyway even with the +1 bonus by having a map (seriously, only +1 on a target of 14? some map). I eventually end up at a pool that seems to be a submerged tunnel, but I fail the willpower test (again, punishingly high with slim hope of making the roll, despite being a sailor) so I chicken out and keep walking.

Eventually, I sit to rest next to an underground lake. I’m wet and lost, and am starting to lose hope. That feeling intensifies when a fish-man-monster thing crawls out of the water, and plods toward me with sharp teeth bared. I try to fight it off, but the rolls just don’t work out and I lose. The fish monster grabs me, and drags me into the water. I kick and struggle, but was already tired out from the failed fight, and I struggle less, and the hideous fish monster squeezes tighter, and I struggle less, … and my adventure ends here.