Case File One – Dawlish Disasters (1924) | Contains case notes for ‘Child’s Play’, ‘Daisy Chain’, ‘Genius Loci’, and ‘The Devil’s Footprints’ | Investigator(s): Minerva St. James and Duke Morgan. Alive, relocated to San Francisco.

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Returning back to England after a troublesome few years over in America, Minerva S.t James had found that wherever she turned, darkness waited. Thinking it was an American problem, Minerva was surprised when an old school friend and now police detective – Duke Morgan – asked for her assistance with a case of missing children in the area. The case, being something new and alien to the English police service, turned out to be a gentleman by the name of John Wentworth who had been moonlighting as both a contractor and child’s entertainer to infiltrate homes and then abduct his victims. The case ended with John killed in his retaliation against the duo entering his house and searching for him.

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Later, it was revealed that John had been working alongside a failed doctor by the name of Diana Jefferies, who had been taking the children from Wentworth and trying to make a zombie-like fix to the case that ruined her; the child she couldn’t save. When the bodies didn’t take to the experiments, Jefferies and Wentworth would use the Botanical Nursery that Jefferies owned to cover the graves with flower beds.

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After Duke nearly died in the capture of Diana Jefferies, the pair shacked up as Minerva insisted that Duke rest after his release from hospital. Noticing a running theme between Jefferies’ work and a case she had dealt with in America, Minerva started to look into Gla’aki, an ancient deity that was said to have landed on the plains of America, millennia before it were known as that, and slowly started to build a network of avatars and servants to do its bidding. She tracked down the information that Gla’aki had been working on expanding from America to the other powerful continents of the world and had now settled into Chew Valley Lake, near Bristol. She nearly went out there to deal with the deity and end her life, before her psyche stopped her by causing a bout of agoraphobia.

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Duke tried to get her slowly back into work by looking at a story in the paper that told of sheep walking in ritualistic fashions, and turned out to be involved in blood magics being performed by a shocking member of the upper crust of England. Charles De Gaul was a man that, to the public, appeared like a godsend but turned out to be a vampire that seemed to be working on some unsettling experiments in the South of Devon where no one would pry.

Minerva and Duke took a long holiday in California after killing the vampire, currently on the run in their minds as if the entire country knew that she had been the one to slay their beloved charity leader …

 

 

Case File Two – The Last Station (1924, alongside Case File 1) | Investigator(s): Tilly Green, Maggie Lacey, and John Radley, all deceased.

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Coming to London to deal with her recently deceased cousin’s affairs, Tilly Green found herself thrown from her life as a primary school teacher into the world of espionage and contract work for a government body known as The Green Rose. Paired up with an apparently fledgling member of the order, Tilly tried to pick up the work of her cousin in searching for a mythical item known as the Wallace Hammer, the stone war-hammer that William Wallace was said to wield against Edward Longshanks in the war between England and Scotland at the beginning of the 12th century.

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According to her cousin’s notes, the Hammer had been dismantled into several pieces and spread across the country, and a group of ne’er-do-wells had sought to thwart her cousin and take it for their own nefarious reasons.

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Heading off and collecting a piece surprisingly quickly, Tilly was then thrown into the macabre and spooky when arriving in Bristol looking for the second piece. The investigation led her into Bath where she was abducted and beaten by some Scottish thugs that turned out to be Deep One Hybrids. She also had a mind-bending experience of travelling to a realm of existence in the churchyard; being sent to a world of stories by the ghost of Mad Sweeney, the Irish folk lore legend.

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Meanwhile, another two recently added agents of the Green Rose were sent to Kent to collect a third piece and after some investigating and a shocking evening dealing with their first brush with the supernatural, found that there was a splinter group known as The Greying Thorn that had been using the agents for their own gain. Taking the pieces and heading to the place near Inverness that was said to be the place to destroy the item, Maggie Lacey lost her sidekick in a fire at a pub that seemed to be out of some gothic horror. Her trail led her to Edinburgh to collect the final piece before finding Tilly Green, who informed her that she had been turned on by the agent she had been working with.

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The King of England, Rupert II, had been playing the innocent newbie within the organisation and using it to gain the hammer for his own use. Maggie chased him down to the location in Inverness where the item was said to be made, then destroyed and found that the village of Innsmouth seemed to have replaced the Scottish village. Heading out into the sea’s front, Maggie finally found her partner in the Hall of Cthulhu beneath the cliffs of Inverness, where they fought to stop Rupert and his Hound of Hell as he took the Hammer for his own.

Maggie died in the struggle though, as did Rupert.

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Case File Three – Treading the Boards (1920) | Investigator(s): Fiona Barton, deceased.

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Down on her luck after being rejected from role after role, only ever rising to Understudy, Fiona Barton was shocked to find herself called upon by a famed Director/Playwright Hugo Sullivan to star in his latest project; The Seventh Seal. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but a little apprehensive all the same, she went to the small village of Gunnislake in Cornwall to meet the ensemble of ‘nobodies’ and a surprising turn of the lead role being taken by famed actor Lawrence Mercer. Whilst being welcomed by the cast and the director in turn, Fiona learned that she was at a disadvantage in that two of the other cast members had worked with Sullivan before and her other virginal co-star seemed a little too wired to be of any use.

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However, over the weekend she had been given to learn the script, Fiona found herself in a nightmare. Looking for some words of wisdom, Fiona returned to The Tamar Theatre late on her first evening in Gunnislake to speak with Lawrence only to find him dead in his dressing room. Whilst investigating the backstage areas of the theatre, Fiona found that Hugo and his daughter – Helena – had been in a further dressing room and knew of Mercer’s death; the interaction ended with Barton knocked unconscious whilst the duo seemingly tidied away the evidence.

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Speaking with a young Duke Morgan (later to be tied into the agency with Minerva in 1924), Fiona found herself at a loss as she tried to wait out the weekend to see what would come next. After a perturbing meeting with the local soothsayer, she was informed that the cast were to meet Sunday morning. Arriving earlier than the rest of the troupe, Fiona took it upon herself to revisit backstage, though with dire consequence. Hugo had been back there praying to some sort of unknown deity and on hearing Fiona’s steps, chased her down. The two exchanged blows as Hugo revealed himself to be some sickly squid like monster with a large maw in his chest, where poor Fiona found herself engulfed when all was said and done. She, or her soul, awoke in the Hall of The King in Yellow; never to be heard from again…

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Case File Four – Bloodlines (2020) | Felicity ‘Flick’ Carver, alive. Bucker Grey, deceased.

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The recently turned 30 Flick Carver is trying to reinvent herself by reaching out to an old school friend and taking an unexpected trip to Dawlish. Whilst visiting the small coastal town, Flick is shown the old file room of one St James Agency who investigated the supernatural goings-on in the South of England.

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Her friend, Bucker Grey, introduces the concept that the duo are descendants of people who started to show unique abilities in the early 1900s with The Green Rose (see The Last Station for more). It’s just a theory, but it’s put to the test as they find a deadly Siren coming out of the seas and killing local townsfolk.

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After dealing with the monster in the local Crazy Golf circuit, the duo visits the mentor that helped Bucker to channel his magic abilities. During this winter sabbatical, Flick starts reading Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith. All plans go out the window as the duo find the old mentor dead in his home and the actual Spirit of Winter challenging Felicity as the new Chosen One. Although she loses her friend, Flick defeats the Wintersmith for this year’s trial, and we leave her for another case file later down the line.

 

Case File Five – Masks of Nyarlathotep (1925) | Lizzie O’Connor, Georgie Burke, and Simon Esken alive. Emily Cooke, presumed deceased.

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On 15th January 1925, Lizzie O’Connor and Georgie Burke are called to the aid of their friend – famed occult writer Jackson Elias. Arriving at his hotel room in New York, Lizzie finds cultists fleeing through the window and gives chase. The duo learns via the police that a death cult has been running amok around New York and a man has been arrested in relation to the killings. Taking some of Jackson’s research materials, the duo attends their friend’s funeral and meets Elias’ lawyer, Carlton Ramsey, who invites them to his office for the will reading shortly after. As part of Jackson’s will, the first strands of his research into the Carlyle Expedition in 1919 are given over to the duo and they are requested to investigate what really happened six years ago.

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Starting in New York, the pair look into a local Import Business which leads to a tense encounter with members of the cult that attacked Jackson. Changing tact to their approach, Lizzie and Georgie head to Shanghai to investigate the potentially still living member of the expedition, arriving on 21st February 1925. Their efforts draw an unsatisfying conclusion as the fence for the missing adventurer refuses to set up a meeting with them and a letter explaining why the person has been hiding in Shanghai since is given in lieu. They reach out to Carlton to ask for assistance in London whilst they try to travel back. Enter, Emily Cooke.

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Emily is a young graduate in Journalism looking for her first big job in London. She’s been a small-time writer for her local paper back home but wants more. After landing an interview with The Scoop – a British paper dedicated to sleuths and sleaze – she is quickly whisked back North to Lesser Edale in Derby to investigate a potential werewolf attack with in-house private investigator, Simon Esken. The visit, taking place just a few weeks after Jackson’s death, leads to a conspiracy that the Vane family of Lesser Edale are harbouring werewolves. The conspiracy is found to be true as the attacks were the daughter, Ophelia Vane, being subjected to the curse on the females of the Vane family, in which they are morphed into beasts on every full moon after their 21st birthday. Vicar Stratton of the local church had been charged with finding a cure but was revealed to be the true father of Ophelia and hiding his research from the Vanes. Lawrence Vane, the son of Lord Vane, promised a favour owed to Emily if she got the research to him. After making good on her promise, she and Simon returned to London just in time for Carlton’s reach out to the Editor of The Scoop.

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After a successful interview and trial story, Emily is paired with Gregory Gnollson; an eccentric private eye known for odd behaviour and odder outfits. The new team is given the tip off that several Egyptian dignitaries have been murdered whilst Emily was away, and the story is needing investigation as soon as possible. However, before Emily can get her teeth into the story proper, she is attacked in The Scoop offices by Gregory. The crazed P.I. appeared to have filled the room with narcotic gas and Emily saw a pedestal with a floating ball of black ichor above; tendrils shooting off to multiple people and choking them in place (it would be later noted on the margin of the case file that the people appeared to be the previous investigators on the previous case files at The St. James Agency). Gnollson, somehow tearing away flesh and revealing a hyena-like creature underneath his human skin, pushed Emily into place and finalised the circle where Emily blacked out.

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She awoke in a waiting room where she met with a very dapper editor referring to himself as The Black Pharoah or Nyarlathotep. The editor told Emily that her soul was now his property and he’d be sending her as his collector of stories, much like the job she had wanted so badly in life, so he could keep up to date. It has yet to be confirmed what really happened in the office or to Emily Cooke, but it is suggested by those who have been interviewed since that she potentially found a lead that led her too close whoever had been slaying the dignitaries around Soho.