Another game of Fiasco!, the wild improv-disaster game by Jason Morningstar.
How is that game played? Read the basics of Fiasco! here.
This time we were five players, and we picked the Playset “Call of the Necronomicon”, inspired by Cthulhu-mythos influences.
Trigger Warnings: Multiple! Especially around religion, sexuality, and violence. Read with care if you are tender-hearted, and not at all if you can’t handle crazy.

The characters were

• Pastor Robert Morris, a former Texan clergyman who always kept his altar boys close by so they could do his chores and serve him wine and look after his needs. Outside of his clerical duties he was a passionate painter, and his most prolific nude model was
• the mysterious Daphne Du Mourier, a beauty with long, flowing hair the colour of fresh honey … and secretly a dark cultist who was planning to sacrifice the unemployed, endebted Art student
• Greg Lightsmith. Greg, the victim to be, was living the full bohéme life, but owing hundreds of thousands of bucks to those backers who made that possible. He was also a distant nephew to
• Professor Mary Deepsmith, a scheming university professor of occult colour theory at the Miskatonic University in Arkham. Mary was engaged to her lesbian lover AND student
• Theresa van Avila, who was rich, coming from Old Money, and struggled with her sexuality because she was deeply faithful… just her bad luck that her pastor was Robert Morris.

Many quite terrible people, only one who looks like she’s going to be hurt.

• Pastor Robert and Theresa shared the Need to get away from all that unchristian stuff;
• Pastor Robert and Daphne shared a Location: an Airplane in Antarctica;
• Daphne had information from Greg: the location of a relic;
• Greg and Professor Mary shared a Need: to get a certain Mythos object and sell it for a lot of money!
• And lastly, Mary and Theresa shared a Relic: a precious ring with a stone the Colour from Outer Space.

In the First Act,

Daphne knew about Theresa’s family ring and was inching closer to her via Pastor Robert. He blabbed a lot and she made sure she knew about the next meetings between her Artiste and the enamoured heiress. Meanwhile, poor Greg got a visit from Russian debt collectors Vasilij and Dmitrij, who were there to threaten him, but Greg turned out to be quite the fast-talker. He talked circles around the stunned muscle, about massive new Art projects until they retreated .. still, he knew his time was running out! So he pressured his distant Aunt about that ring again, which would alleviate his material needs. Aunt Mary had her claws deep in poor hapless Theresa, enticing her to go ahead and hand over her valuable ring. Alas, Theresa still struggled deeply with her conscience, and wanted to make sure it was all well and in order – she desperately needed to speak with her pastor.

When Robert Morris next visited Theresa to kneel with her and pray for enlightenment, he secretly poured from her finest wines while she poured her heart into finding answers about how to handle her deep love to her female professor. Daphne was also in the house. She had quietly entered behind the pastor and investigated the house library, seeking occult family lore of the Van Avila line. Success! She discovered a tome containing a detailed engraving of the powerful ring – and saw the object of her desire right there on Theresa’s hand. But she also found that it was dangerous to simply take it. There was a ritual involved, needing the “Blood of a Creative from the Family of Love”, as the book claimed. Daphne knew just who that had to be: Greg was from the same line as Theresa’s true love, Mary: And he was an Art student, so a creative person. His blood was the key. So he had to die, and his blood would secure taking the powerful artifact.

For now, she chose to retreat, until Greg could be at hand. However, he was! Greg was working outside as a gardener, cutting the hedges, while peeking through windows looking for valuables. And so he accidentally cut off the index finger on his left hand! Shrieking for help, he ran into the house, bleeding profusely. He begged for help, spraying bright red blood all over Theresa’s fine dress — the poor woman lost her consciousness.

That was Daphne’s cue! She wanted to take the ring, once splattered with the Blood of a Creative! It was not to be, though, as the depraved Pastor chose this moment to reveal his greed for blood, drinking right from the wound and even downing whatever Daphne managed to collect in a wine glass. Neither of them answered his pleas for First Aid (but under no circumstances for a doctor, given his material wants!), He also fell, his blood depleted, unconscious. But Daphne’s chance had passed.

Theresa came to under the tender care of her betrothed, Professor Mary. She recounted the harrowing tale of her wounded gardener and all that terrible blood. Mary calmed her down and once more queried for the ring. As a grand romantic gesture, she offered that the two of them could take Theresa’s pastor and go to romantic Antarctica, to the southernmost church on the globe, to tie the knot and exchange the ring. Thersa was overwhelmed by emotions and accepted gladly .. even agreed to pay for the whole trip.

Pastor Robert Morris meanwhile found himself under the iron scrutiny of his bishop, a hard taskmaster who had gotten wind of the pastor’s unsavory dealings with his little altar boys, and put the pressure on: he needed to throw someone to the media, and he was of a mind to let Morris take the fall … but only after extracting from him what he could. Pastor Morris felt that his time was up and the trip to Antarctica came like a god-send! He had to bring his nude model, of course, hoping to paint her and his favourite altar boy Timmy naked in the snow… alas, she insisted to bring her pal Greg instead of Timmy. She convinced him that, in the right kind of light, Greg could almost pass for a 14-year old, so he relented.

Tilt

Two Tilt elements:

• Mayhem: Spectacular Self Destruction
• Someone who should be Dead appears

Act Two

started already in the plane, after refuelling in Cape Town, crossing the ice cold seas towards Antarctica, and to the southernmost church of the globe, located at the Norwegian polar base. A Norwegian Church at the South Pole. Back home, Pastor Morris was all over the news, he could never return. In the pilot seat: Dmitrij, the debt collector, who was moonlighting as a private pilot. While the others were discussing the ceremony to take place in Antarctica, and the pastor dared make advances on pretty boy Greg, Daphne sat close by Theresa. She knew she had to bring down the moving parts in this act: she could sacrifice one person at the right spot, but not two. So when Theresa got tired and the droning plane motors let her slip away into sleep, she pulled out her sacrificial dagger and fatally stabbed the lovestruck heiress with one deft motion. She put the sleep mask on the poor woman’s face and then made sure that someone else would be sitting close by the body when it would be discovered. Meanwhile, Mary pilfered Theresa’s handbag and found the ring in there, not on Theresa’s hand at all — and pocketed it.

Landing near the Norwegian base, Pastor Robert discovered Theresa’s death and wrecked his brain to find a plausible explanation for the untimely death. But he was lucky: As soon as the plane stopped on the runway, Theresa jerkily rose and shambled toward the exit. “Jetlag” seemed to explain the odd behaviour handily. However, the Norwegians wondered about Theresa’s odd behaviour, a clearly sick person who failed to communicate at all .. so they moved her right into the medical station, next to the Church, under guard. Terrible news indeed, as Greg and Daphne both wanted access to Theresa to get the ring! (not knowing that Mary already had it)

Daphne was turned away by polite, but stern Norwegian guards at the sickbay, while professor Mary tried to convince Dmitrij to fly her back to civilization in exchange for a few thousand bucks. But that fell flat. Dmitrij wasn’t having any of it: he had just flown here, he wanted a good, long rest more than money.

Then things went haywire very fast and very hard:
Greg set the Norwegian Church on fire, with him still inside, throwing the whole station into chaos, and letting Theresa, or what was left of her, slip away into the darkness.
Daphne had espied Mary with the ring and ambushed her, stabbing her in the back in an attempt to get at the ring… alas, that was now with Pastor Morris. Confronted by the murderous model with the bloody dagger he raised the ring and pulled off its cover, and the Colour from Outer Space twisted evey onlooker’s mind in strange directions.

Aftermath

When Daphne came back to her senses he was right where the pastor had wanted her: out in the ice, and in the nude! She was horrified: her designs had failed, and now she was about to die most horribly, freezing to death! But then she heard a growl… she turned around and saw dead Theresa approaching with this weird, otherworldly gait!

Greg survived the fire … and got back home. He ended up right where he had started: jobless, broke, with massive debt … minus a finger, plus terribly painful burn scars. Then someone knocked… the debt collectors.

Professor Mary and her poor fiancée Theresa were both dead, felled by the wicked cultist dagger… or were they, truly? Or were they damned to haunt the endless ice until their lifeless bodies fell apart?

Pastor Morris found himself locked up in a Norwegian military prison, still out at the south pole, surrounded by the smoking wreckage of the southernmost Church of the world. With penguins as his cellmates… well, if he squinted very hard, the penguins could pass for little boys in tuxedos! Not bad… not bad at all, he felt.