Podcast / Y'all of Cthulhu

The cast of "Y'all of Cthulhu" Season 1 from left to right: Father Flint Westwater, Lance Kilkenny, Ellie Bishop, Johnny Rhodes, Jeremiah Fensworth.
Artwork by Athena

I am a dead man walkin'.
I see the light comin'.
And it feels warm on my face,
But I can tell it's gonna burn me down.

— Cody Fry, "Dead Man Walking"

Y'all of Cthulhu is an original production by Ain't Slayed Nobody that takes place in the "Down Darker Trails" setting of the Call of Cthulhu RPG; with a scenario written by Will Baizer and cuppycup. The theme song for Y'all of Cthulhu is "Dead Man Walking" by Cody Fry.

Y'all of Cthulhu was broadcast between May 2020 to August 2021, and features a ragtag posse setting out from Canutillo, Texas to hunt for the notorious outlaw Colin Brock... and biting off more than they can chew in the process. Main cast members include cuppycup as the Keeper of Arcane Lore and various NPCs, Alex McDaniel as Deputy Sheriff Ellie Bishop — the justice-seeking daughter of a sheriff who Colin Brock murdered, Jay Arnold as Lance Kilkenny — a gunslinger and former member of Colin Brock's gang, Brandon Wainerdi as Father Flint Westwater — a hunky lapsed Catholic priest, Chuck Lawrence as Johnny Rhodes — an earnest hobo who just happened to wander into town, and Wes Davis as Jeremiah Fensworth — a miner from Idaho who never goes anywhere without his trusty pickaxe.

The Medicine Show, a prequel starring Jeremiah in 1860s Silver City, Idaho, is also available on the team's Patreon. The second season, given the subtitle Bleeker Trails, began airing in March 2022, starring a new cast of characters.

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Ain't Slayed Nobody has examples of:

• Adventurer Archaeologist:
  • Professor Henry was an archaeologist conducting research alongside his assistant Kate Caldwell, who failed a few too many sanity checks and became a devotee of Shub-Niggurath, summoning one of her Dark Young and performing a "Freaky Friday" Flip on it and Kate. By the time the Posse encounter him, he's an eccentric old hobo going by "Sparky".
  • Professor John Wilkinson, who debuts in Episode 4, is employed as a chemistry professor by the newly established New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, but his true passion is archaeology. He ropes the Posse into helping him conduct an expedition to the mines and caves under Baylor Peak in search of evidence of Indigenous inhabitation or a lost conquistador expedition. It turns out these caverns are infested with ghouls descended from exiled Tiwa clansmen, with the conquistadors having fallen prey to them.
• All There in the Manual: Several details that were left unrevealed or undiscovered in the session were revealed in the Q&A episode and design notes released on the Discord channel. In particular, Mgepgathg is the accidental progeny of Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath, created when some cultists in what would later become Olvido sacrificed an infant marked by the former to the latter. With Mgepgathg being the subject of some Ancient Egyptian prophecies that it would reshape the cosmic order — possibly by awakening Azathoth — Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath flung the newborn Great Old One into a black hole, leaving it dead but dreaming of freedom and imposing order on the universe.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Ida, an enigmatic merchant who the Posse encounters in Las Cruces and again in Olvido is revealed to be more familiar with the ins and outs of the Cthulhu Mythos than she lets on; and is implied to be somehow connected to Shub-Niggurath, with Johnny seeing her with fangs and scary eyes while conducting a ritual... though he could have just been hallucinating.
  • Bertie — a baby the Posse find Buried Alive in the ruins of a barn outside Olvido — is strongly implied to be something other than human. Despite the baby's uncanny nature, Ellie and Johnny are more than happy to adopt her and frequently bicker over which of them should get custody.
• Ambiguous Situation: Even in the final episode, it isn't clear whether the Humanoid Abomination avatar of Mgepgathg that emerges from Colin Brock's sacrificial ritual chamber is it indwelling and transforming Ellie's body to suit its purposes — as it's promptly squashed like a bug by Shub-Niggurath before it can do anything. Whether or not this permanently kills Mgepgathg or just stops it from manifesting is also unclear.
• And Show It to You: In the final episode, Colin Brock uses the Clutch of Nyogtha to rip out Ellie Bishop's heart, eats half of it, and then stabs the rest of it with the knife as a final sacrifice.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: While exploring the caves under Baylor Peak, the Posse come across a remarkably well-preserved sword that once belonged to Carlos de Navarro, one of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's conquistadors. The sword comes in handy fighting the ghouls inhabiting the caves, but is more-or-less worthless in the Wild West, where combat is typically carried out using rifles and six-shooters, and ultimately ends up being lost after Lance loses his duel with Colin Brock.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • In Episode 1, one of the two thugs who ambushes the Posse to retrieve Maxwell Posey's corpse gets his leg blown into "femur mist" by Jeremiah, accidentally killing him.
  • As part of a ritual, Johnny cuts off most of one of his feet, though the effects of the ritual turn the stump into a psuedo-hoof.
• Asshole Victim: In Episode 11, Jimbo shoots Lance and tries to make off with the Posse's horses... only to be ripped apart and eaten by a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.
• Bar Brawl: In Episode 8, while the Posse unwinds in the Boot Jack Saloon they're approached by a man nicknamed Heck, who points them in the direction of the Prestwick House — a derelict house on the outskirts of Las Cruces used as a laboratory by Colin Brock. Heck's friend Jimbo abruptly picks a fight with Lance, leading to Lance and Father Flint brawling with Heck and Jimbo, Johnny attempting to sneak away after almost getting brained with a chair, and Ellie putting a stop to it with a "Shut Up!" Gunshot. Heck and Jimbo escape in the chaos, and later testify against the Posse at their trial by claiming they started the fight.
• Beat Still, My Heart: In Episode 2, the Posse come across a ten-foot-tall humanoid effigy with a goat-skull on top and a still-beating human heart in its torso. Jeremiah finds a chunk of obsidian inscribed with glowing green sigils in the skull's mouth and takes it, the heart stops beating and starts rotting.
• Beneath the Earth: Baylor Peak outside of Las Cruces is honeycombed with a network of caverns that the Posse gets sidetracked into helping Professor John Wilkinson explore. It turns out these caves are populated by ghouls, with the Posse barely making it out alive.
• Benevolent Abomination:
  • After the Posse finally arrives in Olvido, Colin Brock frames Mgepgathg as a benevolent force that will destroy Nyarlathotep, end the corruptive chaos of the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones, and bring a pure order to the cosmos. That Mgepgathg's rituals still involve human sacrifice and its servitors are vicious shadow-monsters undermines Brock's claims pretty quickly, however, and the writers have noted that Mgepgathg's order would be just as bad for humanity as Nyarlathotep's chaos.
  • In the final episode, Johnny forms a pact with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath that the Posse had encountered in a forest outside Olvido, discovering it contains the consciousness of Sparky's apprentice Kate Caldwell. While she remains a vicious and predatory monster to everyone except Johnny — and even then he tests her patience a few times — Kate is affectionate and even flirtatious towards him, and helps him stop Colin Brock's cult from summoning Mgepgathg.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Sparky is an eccentric old man who lives in a decrepit cabin a few hours' ride from Canutillo, but he knows pretty much everything there is to know about the Posse before he even meets them and is far more cunning and dangerous than he appears at first glance. It turns out his real name is Doctor Henry, and he's an archaeologist who was driven insane by eldritch knowledge and became an acolyte of Shub-Niggurath; having been trying to stop Colin Brock's plans for some time. The Q&A episode reveals he and some other cultists of Shub-Niggurath slaughtered Colin Brock's thugs sent to rescue Maxwell Posey, with only two getting away.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In Episode 10, Dutch — the bartender of Blue Owl Saloon in Mesilla — testifies at the Posse's trial and says Jeremiah threatened to cut out his tongue, with Sheriff Ellie doing nothing to stop him. Jeremiah did nothing of the sort, having threatened to shoot him before being talked down by Johnny.
  • When Jimbo testifies at the Posse's trial in Episode 10, he tells Sheriff Higgins that they started the bar fight in Episode 9 when he was the one who picked the fight.
• Body Horror: The Fultons' inn is revealed to have a hidden laboratory in its basement where tortuous experiments on humans and animals were carried out. Sinead the horse is captured by the Fultons and subjected to gruesome surgical experiments that graft a boar's head onto her neck.
• Botanical Abomination: In the final episode, Shub-Niggurath manifests as a horrifying mass of otherworldly eye-and-mouth-lined rootlike-tentacles that rip Olvido and the nearby mountain to shreds, crushing Mgepgathg and devouring its shadow-minions, while readying to birth new Dark Young. When her roots touch the corpses of the fallen cultists, they blossom into nightmarish trees of flesh and bone.
• Buried Alive: The Posse find a (seemingly) human infant buried alive in a barn on the outskirts of Olvido, and decide to name her Bertie, with Johnny and Ellie getting a Promotion to Parent and frequently bickering over who gets to raise her. In the epilogue, Ida — having promised Johnny she'd take care of Bertie — promptly buries her again.
• Cassandra Truth: Nobody believes Johnny when he claims to be an undercover government agent, but the epilogue of Season 1 indicates it to have been true.
• Continuity Nod: The final episode references the events of the Patreon-exclusive prequel The Medicine Show, making mention of Jeremiah having encountered a glass man and knowing a spell for erasing memories.
• Conviction by Contradiction: At the end of Episode 9 the Posse is arrested for the disappearance and presumed murder of Professor John Wilkinson, and when placed on trial each member of the Posse delivers wildly inconsistent accounts of what happened in the caves under Baylor Peak. Lance says that Professor Wilkinson sacrificed himself fending off predatory wildlife. Father Flint says they were attacked by demons, only to change his story when told off by Lance. Jeremiah starts ranting that they were attacked by "ghost-goblin looking things" and is promptly deemed stark raving mad. Johnny remains deliberately vague about what attacked the Posse and possibly bluffs that he's a government agent conducting a federal investigation. Ellie argues that the Posse's actions don't warrant a murder trial, but fails to convince the judge and is deemed guilty.
• Creepy Changing Painting: While exploring Colin Brock's manor, Father Flint and Jeremiah come across a painting depicting a cosmic expanse related to Mgepgathg... which begins eerily moving and bleeding into reality until Father Flint — in a bout of religious zealotry-infused madness — splashes holy water onto it.
• Creepy Child:
  • Bertie, a seemingly human baby the Posse find buried alive in an abandoned barn outside Olvido, is noted to have a Thousand-Yard Stare and be unusually silent.
  • While seemingly a normal child at first, Nina Fulton is complicit in the gruesome experiments her mother was conducting in the dungeon under Olvido's inn, and later gleefully sacrifices her mother.
• Critical Failure: The final episode contains a doozy. When Kate and Colin Brock attempt to use magic against each other, Chuck rolls a regular success for Kate and cuppycup fumbles Colin Brock's power roll with a 100, to everyone's delight. This results in Kate effortlessly overpowering Colin and grabbing him with her tentacles.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Lance's pistol duel with Colin Brock turns into one due to Brock using magic to cheat, enabling him to shoot Lance dead. Ellie's attempt to avenge Lance fails due to her having been possessed by an Ashen One, which stops her from attacking Brock.
  • In the final episode, Johnny and Kate burst into Colin Brock's ritual to summon Mgepgathg. Even when Brock ascends into a Humanoid Abomination to confront them, Kate effortlessly overpowers him with her dark magic and Johnny easily cuts him down with a dagger enchanted to kill immortal beings.
  • At the end of the final episode, Kate and Johnny are surrounded by Mgepgathg's shadow-minions as the nascent Great Old One takes over Ellie's corpse to manifest an avatar and summons shadow-minions. Before it can do anything or even escape from the alter, Kate summons Shub-Niggurath — who effortlessly disposes of Mgepgathg and wipes Olvido off the map in the process.
• Custom-Built Host: Colin Brock was attempting to create a human host for Mgepgathg to indwell and use as an avatar, with Ellie, Bertie, and the unnamed infant in Brock's manor being some of his test subjects.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Lance Kilkenny is a former member of Colin Brock's outlaw gang, and The Atoner for having killed Ellie's dad on Brock's orders.
  • Jeremiah Fensworth is a proud miner from Idaho involved in a mining accident that killed his brother, and is haunted by the things he saw down in the mines.
• Darkest Hour: The final episodes are a tense Near-Villain Victory with numerous Hope Spots that end up dashed. All of the Posse except for Ellie and Johnny are dead, with Ellie being trapped in a ritual sarcophagus to be turned into a vessel for Mgepgathg. With Nyarlathotep's help, Ellie almost beats Brock in a metaphysical duel while Johnny feeds the cultists to Kate — a "friendly" Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath — but Brock manages to triumph over Ellie and ascends into a Humanoid Abomination as Mgepgathg's nascence draws nigh. Kate stalemates Brock in a magic duel, buying time for Johnny to kill him with an immortal-slaying dagger, but Mgepgathg is born... for all of five seconds, as Kate promptly summons Shub-Niggurath to put the infant Great Old One in its place.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • For all his claims of being redeemed, Colin Brock is revealed to be the high priest of a stillborn Great Old One called Mgepgathg, whose coming he is seeking to bring about, as it would dethrone the balance of power maintained by the Outer Gods Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep. Despite being unborn, Mgepgathg nonetheless grants Brock access to powerful magic and eldritch knowledge.
  • Professor Henry made a pact with Shub-Niggurath, granting him powerful magics and eldritch knowledge at the cost of his sanity.
  • In the final episodes, Ellie makes a bargain with Nyarlathotep in exchange for its help in vanquishing Colin Brock. Despite Ellie losing her metaphysical duel with Brock and her physical body being destroyed by Shub-Niggurath, the Outer God makes it clear it still has plans for her and in the epilogue turns her into a wraith to serve as his enforcer.
• Desecrating the Dead: The Posse deliberately trample Maxwell Posey's body with their horses... multiple times. And to add insult to injury as they ride off one of the bridge's support beams falls off and crushes him.
• Did You Just Hijack Cthulhu: Towards the end of Season 1, Kate Caldwell is revealed to have had her consciousness swapped with that of a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, giving her the body, powers, and Horror Hunger of an Eldritch Abomination. However, the ritual was flawed, and Kate's humanity was eroded as a result.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: In the final two episodes, Johnny wastes no time flirting with Kate Caldwell — whose mind was swapped with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. In turn, Kate behaves very affectionately towards Johnny, calling him plant-themed pet names like her "little twig". In the final battle, Johnny and Kate even make Twerp Sweating jokes, such as Johnny asking if Kate's mother — the Outer God Shub-Niggurath — would approve of him — which flies over Kate's tentacles and she bluntly replies that Shub-Niggurath couldn't care less.
• Dire Beast: After awakening from their shared nightmare in Episode 3, the Posse acquire an inexplicably ten-foot-tall red-furred camel they name Erik — who was originally going to be twenty feet tall.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In Episode 10, the Posse get comeuppance for being jerks to the NPCs when said NPCs provide very unflattering testimonies at their trial, which nearly results in the Posse being executed.
• Dwindling Party: The Posse gets through some serious scrapes and touch-and-go moments, but in the end only one survives the finale:
  • Lance is killed in a duel by Colin Brock — though Brock cheats using magic to get the upper hand — and is then zombified by Colin Brock and Father Flint, who was in the middle of a bout of madness and believed he was bringing Lance back to life.
  • Father Flint dies after unwittingly ingesting some of the zombified Lance's severed fingers in a bout of madness, which burrow out of his body from his stomach.
  • Jeremiah gets mind-swapped with Sparky and is sacrificed by Colin Brock, while Sparky-in-Jeremiah's body is sacrificed by Johnny to bind a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.
  • Ellie dies in a metaphysical duel with Colin Brock, though Nyarlathotep still has plans for her...
  • Johnny ends up the sole survivor, but is in the process of fusing to the Dark Young.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Professor Bleeker — one of the main characters of Season 2 — cameos in the epilogue of Season 1, helping a team of federal agents investigate the Olvido Incident.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The ultimate goal of Colin Brock and his gang-turned-cult is to summon Mgepgathg, a Great Old One who is the accidental progeny of Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep, and is prophesied to bring "order" to the cosmos by killing the latter.
  • The Posse come across a giant wicker figure depicting what's implied to be Shub-Niggurath, who is worshipped by the ghouls under Baylor Peak. Shub-Niggurath herself makes a guest appearance in the final episode, crushing Mgepgathg like a bug.
  • As they draw close to Olvido, the Posse has a run-in with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath later revealed to contain Kate's mind.
  • In the finale, Ellie contacts Nyarlathotep and tries to solicit his help in stopping Colin Brock.
• Explosive Stupidity: In Episode 5, Johnny uses a carbide lantern and a water canteen to make a makeshift grenade in the tunnels under Baylor Peak, badly wounding or outright killing several pursuing ghouls at the risk of causing a cave-in.
• Failed a Spot Check: Literally, as the Posse frequently fail Spot Hidden and Listen checks that would've clued them in to further details — beginning with Brock's thugs' ambush in Episode 1, which only Johnny catches a glimpse of only to be ignored by the others until it's too late.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: One of the spells exposited enables a person to swap minds with another person or entity. Sparky used it to implant his assistant Kate Caldwell's mind into the body of a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, and later to swap places with Jeremiah in a bid to escape being sacrificed by Colin Brock... only to wind up being sacrificed by Johnny to in a ritual to bind Kate.
• Functional Addict: Leaving aside that the Posse liberally imbibe alcohol on numerous occasions, Father Flint is noted to have a bit of a drug habit and indulges in both marijuana and cocaine, but it only comes up occasionally.
• Get It Over With: In Episode 1, Maxwell Posey's last words are to curse both Lance and Colin Brock, and tell them to just get it over with and hang him, with cuppycup and Alex's out-of-character banter joking that he's considering jumping off the bridge himself.
• A God Am I: In the final few episodes, Ellie is trapped in a sacrificial alter and suffers a Bout of Madness, coming to the delusion that she is a goddess capable of easily curb-stomping Colin Brock. As such, she gleefully bathes in the blood of Jeremiah-in-Sparky's-body and the Dark Young-in-Kate's-body, and demands more even after the Bout of Madness ends. Colin happily obliges, butchering Dust Devil and several unnamed cultists to submerge her in gore.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Jeremiah is noted to have a very short fuse, and his habit of mouthing off and threatening NPCs gets the Posse into hot water more than a few times. The theme song for the prequel series "The Medicine Show", "Reckless" by Valley of Wolves, is meant to highlight this character trait.
• Hanging Around: The first episode begins with Ellie's posse setting out to execute Maxwell Posey, a member of Colin Brock's gang turned in by Lance, by hanging him from the side of the bridge outside Canutillo. Lance shoves him off the bridge after some mutually-scathing last words, though cuppycup teases the cast for not having picked Maxwell's brain for more clues before killing him.
• Hanging Judge: In Episode 10, it's exposited that the local law enforcement have little federal oversight and frequently summarily execute criminals — and Sheriff Higgins of Las Cruces makes it crystal clear that were it not for Sheriff Ellie's presence he would have happily had the Posse strung up with no trial the moment they got back to town. After being accused of the presumed murder of Professor Wilkinson while exploring the caves under Baylor Peak, the Posse struggle — and fail — to keep their stories straight upon finding themselves at the mercy of Sheriff Higgins and Judge McPhee, whose definition of justice consists of removing one bullet from the Sheriff's revolver for every story that he deems plausible, choosing one member of the Posse to play a game of Russian Roulette, and exiling the others from Las Cruces. When the Posse protests this, Judge McPhee snaps that they're lucky he didn't just have them all strung up the moment they got back to Las Cruces. To Sheriff Higgins' frustration, everyone except Jeremiah and Ellie passes their Fast Talk and Persuade rolls, and Johnny wins the game of Russian Roulette.
• Haunted House: The Prestwick House is a derelict two-story house on the outskirts of Las Cruces that was used as a research facility by Colin Brock. The first floor has fake furniture hiding a secret door leading to the basement lab, where the Posse has their first run-in with Ashen Ones.
• Hell Hotel: The Fulton family's inn in Olvido is a nice enough place on the surface... until the Posse start suffering from bizarre dream-visions and Sinead — Lance's beloved horse — goes missing, with the innkeeper pleading ignorance. The Posse discovers a hidden dungeon under the inn, where she was conducting tortuous and gruesome experiments on captured animals and people. Sinead ends up with a boar's head attached to her neck, while Johnny, Flint, and Jeremiah rescue a wolf with goat legs who they nickname Paws.
• Hero of Another Story: Professor Henry and his assistant Kate came to New Mexico to study the culture of the indigenous Tiwa tribe, and became drawn into the conflict with Colin Brock's cult well before the Posse. As told through Kate's diary and the dream-visions, Kate was studying Egyptology and drew the ire of Nyarlathotep when she got too close to discovering the prophecy of Mgepgathg, with Professor Henry saving her via communion with Shub-Niggurath. Kate became Professor Henry's assistant, the two of them travelling the world and eventually learning of Colin Brock's plan to incarnate Mgepgathg. Professor Henry — now called Sparky — summoned a Dark Young and transplanted Kate's mind into it in an attempt to make it controllable, intending to use it to level Olvido. When that backfired, Sparky killed several of the thugs Brock set to rescue Maxwell Posey — resulting in only two being left to attack the Posse at Canutillo Bridge — and later attempted to blow up the bridge to Olvido to prevent people from getting in or out, but was captured and due to be sacrificed when the Posse arrived.
• Hope Spot: In the final few episodes, Ellie communes with Nyarlathotep and convinces him to help her fight Colin Brock, the Outer God pulling them into the Dreamlands where they engage in a metaphysical duel. Ellie almost wins, but Alex fumbles a critical roll that enables Brock to gun Ellie down.
• Human Sacrifice: The final episodes reveal that Colin Brock and his cult have been hunting servants of Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath in order to sacrifice them, intending to combine their essence to create a vessel for Mgepgathg. Sparky swapping minds with Jeremiah causes things to go awry, and Brock sacrifices Kate — or rather, a Dark Young in Kate's body — to compensate. He also carves up Dust Devil and several Olvido citizens-turned-cultists when Ellie — in the throes of a Bout of Madness-induced god-complex — demands more blood.
• Humanoid Abomination: Three appear in the final episode:
  • The first is the Stranger (aka Nyarlathotep), who appears as an emaciated gunslinger with charcoal grey clay-like skin and a lipless too-wide grin, clad in a black ten-gallon hat and duster coat made of darkness.
  • The second is Colin Brock, who starts undergoing an Eldritch Transformation after sacrificing Ellie to Mgepgathg. Even getting his throat and face ripped apart by Paws isn't enough to kill him, though Kate's curse weakens him enough for Johnny to deal a killing blow with his Immortal Breaker knife.
  • The third is Mgepgathg, who indwells Ellie's body and turns it into an avatar for itself.
• Imagined Innuendo: In episode 4, when cuppycup starts describing the shaft — that is to say, a vertical tunnel — leading to the cave system inside Baylor Peak, the cast start cracking jokes about it being a... different sort of shaft.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • In the final episode, the Dark Young in Kate's body eats a chunk of one of the cultists' faces, snarling that he's lucky she only has one mouth.
  • In the final episode, Ellie contemplates drinking the blood filling the sacrificial alter she's in to awaken the eldritch essence within her, but instead settles for scrawling sigils on the lid and defiantly spitting blood against it — contacting Nyarlathotep in the process.
• Immortal Breaker: In the final few episodes, Johnny and Ida enact the Ritual of the Seven Cuts to create a weapon capable of slaying gods and other immortal beings, at the cost of Johnny lopping off most of one of his feet with the weapon in question. Despite the unbearable agony, blood loss, and sanity damage he incurs, Johnny turns his trusty letter-opener into the weapon that puts the apotheosizing Colin Brock down for good.
• Imperfect Ritual:
  • In the final two episodes, Colin Brock captures Ellie and tries to turn her into a vessel for Mgepgathg by sacrificing Sparky, who was a servant of Shub-Niggurath. However, Sparky swapping consciousnesses/souls with Jeremiah throws the ritual out of alignment until Brock overcompensates by sacrificing Kate — whose mind/soul had been swapped with that of a Dark Young — as well. This results in Mgepgathg incarnating in a weakened state and being easily destroyed by Shub-Niggurath.
  • In the final episode, Johnny learns he must sacrifice someone close to him to bind the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath outside Olvido to himself. Balking at sacrificing his beloved horse Sinead or the goat-legged wolf Paws, Johnny decides to sacrifice the comatose Jeremiah... who regains consciousness just in time for Johnny to discover it's actually Sparky in Jeremiah's body just as he plunges the knife into his heart. This throws the ritual off, resulting in Johnny's influence over the Dark Young not being as strong as it would have been.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In Episode 1, Lance — after getting shot in the leg — shoots back with his revolver and nails the outlaw in the torso at a distance of over fifteen yards.
• In and Out of Character: Even — if not especially — during tense combat situations, the cast spends almost as much time bantering and bickering with each other and the Keeper, cracking jokes, and making pop-culture references while out-of-character as they do while in-character... and that's just the content that makes it through the editing process.
• Intrepid Merchant: In Las Cruces, the Posse encounters a sarcastic and enigmatic merchant named Ida, who buys a conquistador helmet off them in exchange for a book of spells. She shows up again in Olvido, where it's revealed she's far more knowledgeable about arcane and eldritch matters than she lets on, and is implied to be somehow connected to Shub-Niggurath.
• Just Desserts:
  • In Episode 11, Jimbo, a thug who starts a Bar Brawl with Lance in Episode 8 and later lies while testifying at the Posse's trial in Episode 10, shoots Lance and attempts to steal the Posse's horses and Erik the camel. He's promptly ripped in half and eaten by a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath that had been pretending to be a nearby tree, who then proceeds to eat two other members of Jimbo's gang.
  • In the final episode, Kate — the Dark Young who ate Jimbo — embarks on a feeding frenzy in an attempt to stop the cultists from summoning Mgepgathg, though even with eight maws she can't eat them fast enough.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • In Episode 5, Johnny fashions a makeshift grenade out of a carbide lantern and a water canteen, knocking a pack of ghouls into an oil lantern that shatters and sets them on fire — killing a few of them.
  • In Episode 6, Father Flint sets a thick patch of thorny bushes on fire while a pack of ghouls are climbing through it, immolating them.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the final episodes, Jeremiah casts a spell that pops into his head in a desperate attempt to get away from Dust Devil, not knowing what it does, how he knows it, or even if he's doing it correctly. It turns out that it's a memory erasure spell he learned at some point in the past, but he botches it and ends up erasing his own memories as well as Dust Devil's. It's implied that he used it once before, to forget his experiences in K'n-yan and the death of his brother.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Invoked with Ida's curio shop in Episode 7, which up and vanishes not long after the Posse get their hands on a Tome of Eldritch Lore. Sheriff Higgins nonetheless manages to track her down to get testamony regarding the Posse's character, but she tells him off. She later reappears in the finale, helping Johnny perform a ritual to turn his letter-opener into an immortal-slaying weapon. Justified as her shop is based out of a wagon, and can be packed up and moved out as she sees fit.
• Malaproper Cuppycup has a habit of pronouncing "wolf" as "woof" in his narration, which becomes a Running Gag after the Posse rescues Paws, a wolf with goat legs.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: When Kate is mind-swapped with a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, the Dark Young in her body becomes articulate in English — albeit feral in behaviour; while Kate quickly loses touch with her humanity, has zero qualms about devouring anyone and anything she comes across, and needs to remember how to speak English when Johnny forms a pact with her.
• The Morlocks: The caves beneath Baylor Peak are revealed to be infested with formerly-human ghouls descended from a faction of Tiwa natives imprisoned deep underground by Chief Tada-Than centuries prior for cannibalism and other monstrous crimes. The Posse run afoul of them after they stop in Las Cruces, and Professor John Wilkinson is presumed deceased after he sacrifices himself to help the Posse escape... but in the epilogue of the final episode is revealed to have been mutated into a ghoul himself.
• Mr. Fanservice: Father Flint has a ridiculouly high Appearance score, and spends most of the series shirtless and being compared to a male stripper, with his attractiveness becoming a Running Gag.
• Multiple Head Case: Johnny's beloved horse Sinead ends up with a surly still-living boar's head attached to the side of her neck by the Fultons.
• Near-Death Experience: In Episode 4, Ellie loses all of her hit points after being mauled by a ghoul and falling off a thirty-foot cliff in the caves under Baylor Peak. The rest of the Posse are able to stabilize her but she spends the next couple of episodes teetering on the brink of death. After they escape the caves she regains consciousness, and manages to make a full recovery.
• Nightmare Sequence:
  • Kate Caldwell's journal mentions that, following an encounter with a Humanoid Abomination with "long limbs and glowing eyes",^note An avatar of Nyarlathotep. she began suffering from horrific nightmares involving a faceless dark entity.^note Shub-Niggurath
  • At the end of Episode 2, Sparky casts a spell that gives the Posse nightmare-visions that provide them with fragments of cosmic knowledge and foreshadow things to come. The Posse finds themselves on a bone-white "bridge" of sorts suspended over a river of sentient darkness and surrounded by fog, with what appear to be children's hands pressing up against the edge of it.^note They're actually goat hooves. Upon peering over the edge of the bridge, the Posse notice a chain dangling off the edge roughly where they hung Maxwell Posey in Episode 1, and pull it up to find a body at the other end, with each of them seeing a different person.^note Johnny sees his old partner Jack, who was drowned by something in Bradley Creek, North Carolina; Jeremiah sees the face of his brother Joseph, who died in a mining accident in Idaho; Lance sees Colin Brock's lieutenant, who he personally shot dead; Father Flint sees his mother; and Ellie sees... herself.
  • In Episode 8, while staying at the Lacroix Hotel in Las Cruces, Johnny falls asleep in a bath and has a vision of falling into the void of space towards the constellation where Mgepgathg was imprisoned, only to be stopped by a woman with tentacle-hands — implied to be either Shub-Niggurath or Kate — and the undead corpse of his partner Jack. Ellie, meanwhile, has a vision of Kate's encounter with Nyarlathotep and her apprenticeship under Dr. Henry, providing the ultimately fumbled opportunity to learn more about the mysterious Egyptian tablet they recovered from Sparky's cabin. After passing out drunk at the saloon, Jeremiah has a nightmare about his brother Joseph, who died in a mining accident in Idaho, before being pulled into an Eldritch Location populated by with living effigies and statues depicting eldritch abominations like Yig, Cthulhu, and Shub-Niggurath. While getting high on pot, Father Flint has a nightmare where he's chained to a pulpit in a church that turns into a temple to the elder gods, with a congregation of humanoid abominations.
• Noble Wolf: While exploring the Fulton Inn in Olvido, Johnny and Jeremiah discover a wolf with goat legs, who they decide to name "Paws". Paws accompanies Johnny for the rest of the adventure, behaving more like a dog, and even helps out in and survives the final battle.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot:
  • At the end of Episode 6 and beginning of Episode 7, Sam Steel — a student of Professor Wilkinson's — is spooked by the sound of the Posse fighting off a horde of ghouls, and when they come up to him without Professor Wilkinson he starts panicking. Despite the time-sensitive nature of the situation, Johnny tries to calm Sam down, saying that they'll explain what happened after they get away from Baylor Peak... but Jeremiah blurts out that Professor Wilkinson is dead, and good riddance given that he lost his beloved pickaxe in the process. Sam assumes that the Posse murdered Professor Wilkinson, and opens fire with his rifle — narrowly missing Jeremiah. Episode 7 reveals he was actually shooting at a ghoul, but Sam haemorrhages sanity points during the ensuing fight and ends up accusing the Posse of murdering Professor Wilkinson once back in Las Cruces. It also doesn't help that the Posse stop specifically to tie him up and gag him when he speaks up to tell them there is a hospital in Las Cruces.
  • In Episode 10, Father Flint says that his account of what happened to Professor Wilkinson will match Lance's exactly... and then proceeds to say they were attacked by demons rather than wild animals, only changing his story when prompted by Lance. Jeremiah's testimony is a rant about being attacked by "ghost goblins" that leads to him being dismissed as a lunatic — not even getting a Fast Talk or Persuade roll to sway the guilty verdict.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: In episode 4, Lance insists on mispronouncing Professor Wilkinson's name as "Wilkerson" despite being repeatedly corrected by the increasingly annoyed professor. In the epilogue, Professor Wilkinson — transformed into a ghoul — irately corrects Sheriff Higgins' mispronunciation of his name before eating him.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Posse consists of a deputy sheriff, an outlaw-turned-gunslinger, a hobo who's actually an undercover government agent, a miner, and a lapsed priest, who set out to bring a notorious outlaw to justice.
• Record Needle Scratch: In the first episode, there's a record needle scratch abruptly cutting off the eerie music when cuppycup starts describing of Maxwell Posey's agony after Johnny stuck a knife in his belt... only for Chuck to interrupt and point out that Johnny didn't stab Maxwell.
• Reforged into a Minion: In the finale, Ellie is killed by Colin Brock, but Nyarlathotep turns her soul into a wraith patrolling the Dreamlands and enforcing his dark will.
• Retired Outlaw:
  • Lance Kilkenny is a gunslinger who used to be a member of Colin Brock's gang of outlaws, and betrayed them to claim the bounty on Maxwell Posey.
  • When the Posse finally arrives in Olvido, they discover that Colin Brock has become the mayor and high priest, and claims to be fully reformed, with the remaining members of his gang taking up honest jobs. The truth, of course, is much darker.
• The Reveal: The last few episodes drop some dramatic reveals about the Posse's past:
  • Lance is revealed to be the one who killed Ellie's father, albeit on Colin Brock's orders, and joined the Posse to repent for having done so.
  • Sheriff Clay Bishop is revealed to have been a high-ranking member of Colin Brock's cult, and collaborated with Brock to turn Ellie into an avatar for Mgepgathg by infusing her with Nyarlathotep's essence.
  • Jeremiah's "mining accident" possibly involved him stumbling across the underground city of K'n-yan.
• Sanity Slippage: Par for the course in a Call of Cthulhu game, the Posse encounter numerous mundane, monstrous, and eldritch sights and events that tax their minds to — and beyond — the breaking point. Kate Caldwell's journal also tracks her slow descent into madness and desperate attempts to cling to her sanity while trying to comprehend the eldritch truth.
• Second-Person Narration: Used to creepy effect in the opening of Episode 3, where cuppycup uses the second person paired with a Voice of the Legion filter to describe Ellie's visions of planet-sized eldritch horrors silhouetted by an eerie fog. It abruptly changes from scary to comical when the menacing voice filter cuts off when cuppycup incredulously reveals the source of the terrifying presence Ellie feels is Father Flint.
• Sequel Hook: The epilogue of Season 1 contains a few story hooks for Season 2:
  • Profesor Bleeker and his Medicine Show arrive to investigate the ruins of Olvido, recovering the enchanted dagger from the rubble.
  • After Mgepgathg is slain by Shub-Niggurath, Johnny asks Kate if she wants to help him wrap up some unfinished business in Las Cruces. In the epilogue they are still at large and implied to be responsible for a massacre at Las Cruces mentioned by Professor Bleeker.
  • Ellie is turned into a wraith by Nyarlathotep, who employs her as his "deputy sheriff", and is reunited with Bertie in the Dreamlands.
• Sexy Priest: Father Flint Westwater is a handsome — if somewhat lecherous — drug-addict of a Catholic priest, and the source of many shirtless scenes — spending most of the series wearing only his priest collar on his upper body, with several comments being made about how attractive he is.
• Shame If Something Happened: In the final episode, Johnny nonchalantly informs the shopkeeper-turned-cultist that his new friend Kate — who has him wrapped in her tentacles — has a "powerful hunger", with Kate drooling and letting out a screeching roar for emphasis. Johnny means this as a bluff, but Chuck fails his opposed power roll and Kate promptly eats the man before apologizing.
• The Sheriff: Ellie Bishop is a deputy sheriff — having been the apprentice of her dearly beloved late father Clay Bishop, who was murdered in cold blood by Colin Brock — and is a tough-as-nails law-woman with a strong sense of justice and a wry sense of humor.
• Shout-Out:
  • At the beginning of Episode 2, cuppycup snarks that Johnny "died of dysentery" after Chuck crit-fails a "Natural World" roll while looking for something to hunt for food.
  • In Episode 2, when Jeremiah mentions there being stories of "living tree people" where he's from, Lance asks if he's talking about ents and cuppycup jokingly asks if Jeremiah is from Middle-earth.
  • When the Posse come across Sparky's abandoned cabin in Episode 2, they make The Cabin in the Woods and This Old House references. Lance kicks the door in while shouting "Here's Johnny!", which Chuck (whose character is named Johnny) and cuppycup have a field day with.
  • Upon Ellie finding Kate's journal, she's jokingly referred to as "Kissin' Kate", and Father Flint inquires if the book contains a rock hammer.
  • In Episode 4, after Hiram Hadley — the headmaster of the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, abbreviates the campus' name as "NMA & MA", Jay and Chuck start singing the "Mahna Mahna" skit from The Muppet Show whenever it's brought up.
  • In Episode 4, upon Professor Wilkinson informing the Posse of how dangerous underground rivers can be, Ellie summarizes by quipping "Don't cross the streams."
  • In Episode 5, when building a makeshift stretcher for Ellie out of various human and animal bones, Jay, Wes, and Chuck note that "Bone Stretcher" would make a cool WWE stage name and start making references to "Bone Saw McGraw" from Spider-Man.
  • The boar's head surgically attached to Sinead's neck by the Fultons ends up being nicknamed Wilbur.
• Smarter Than You Look: In Episode 5 it's revealed that Johnny — despite purportedly being a wandering hobo — is a lot smarter than he looks and usually lets on, such as turning a carbide lantern and a water canteen into a makeshift grenade.
• Spooky Painting: In the caves under Baylor Peak, the Posse comes across ancient cave-art depicting Shub-Niggurath and several Dark Young being worshiped by ghouls. Jeremiah has the bright idea to smash the wall-art with his pickaxe, which only enrages the ghouls further and robs them of the protection of the glowing green rock's light.
• Summon Bigger Fish:
  • Sparky attempted to do this by summoning a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath and stuffing his assistant Kate's mind into it. Johnny later finishes the ritual and sics Kate on Colin Brock's cult, to her ravenous delight.
  • Ellie attempts to solicit Nyarlathotep's help to defeat Colin Brock... which backfires on her when she narrowly loses a metaphysical duel with Brock.
  • In the final episode, when Mgepgathg's minions have Johnny, Kate, and Paws the wolf surrounded and Mgepgathg's itself is about to manifest, Kate calls out to her mother for help. Cue Shub-Niggurath ripping a hole in space-time, squashing Mgepgathg like a bug, and wiping Olvido off the map — killing everyone except for Johnny, Kate, Paws, and Erik the camel.
• Super Smoke: Throughout their adventures, the Posse frequently encounter hostile entities seemingly made out of smoke and darkness. These entities are a modified version of Ashen Ones from the Malleus Monstorum handbook, manifested by Colin Brock using Mgepgathg's essence, and in the finale Ellie is infected by one that prevents her from attacking Brock.
• Targeted Human Sacrifice: In the second-to-last episode, Colin Brock sacrifices Sparky in order to combine his essence of Shub-Niggurath with Ellie's essence of Nyarlathotep, turning her into a vessel for Mgepgathg. However, Sparky anticipated this and swapped his consciousness/soul with Jeremiah's, causing the ritual to go awry. When nothing happens, an angry Brock sacrifices Kate — or rather the Dark Young in Kate's body — as well as most of the inhabitants of Olvido to (over)compensate, but the ritual is still flawed and results in Mgepgathg's manifestation being flawed and weakened.
• Team Pet: The Posse end up with Lance's horse Sinead, Jeremiah's horse Mr. Wriggles, Erik the Red Camel, and a wolf with goat legs affectionately named Paws.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In the final episode, rather than try to fight Mgepgathg and its shadowy servitors themselves, Johnny asks Kate to see if her mama — the Other God Shub-Niggurath — is home. Shub-Niggurath proceeds to effortlessly annihilate Mgepgathg and its servants, as well as wipe Olvido clean off the map.
• To Serve Man: The posse encounters several predatory monsters more than happy to feast on human flesh — specifically ghouls and a Dark Young.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: At the beginning of Episode 21, when Johnny vetoes Kate eating Paws she decides to just eat Jeremiah's body instead... only for her to promptly spit it out in revulsion and cry out for her Mother due to it being infused with Sparky's essence.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Olvido was taken over by Colin Brock's gang, with the townsfolk being brainwashed into a cult for Mgepgathg.
• Transhuman Abomination: In the final episode, Colin Brock is imbued with the power of Mgepgathg and starts to ascend into a horrifying Humanoid Abomination... only for Kate to effortlessly overpower him with a debilitating curse and Johnny to easily kill him with a knife enchanted to kill immortal beings.
• Trial by Ordeal: When trying them for the disappearance and presumed murder of Professor Wilkinson during the disastrous Baylor Peak expedition, the Hanging Judge in Las Cruces decides to leave the Posse's fate up to God by getting them to play what amounts to a game of Russian Roulette. For every account of what happened that the judge finds suspicious, the sheriff loads a bullet into a revolver, then selects a member of the Posse and spins the barrel.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The Posse frequently splits up to investigate multiple locations, with cuppycup alternating between groups and ending episodes at suitably dramatic moments — a standout example being Episode 4, which ends right after Ellie loses all of her hit points after being mauled by a ghoul and falling off a thirty foot cliff.
• Unfortunate Names: P. Tinkle is the butt of several urination jokes in Episode 9. He shows up tortured and mutilated in the basement of the Fulton Inn, and is later dismembered and decapitated by Brock's cult.
• The Unsolved Mystery: In Episode 2, the Posse come across a giant wicker figure that creeps them out... and decide to check it out. Johnny — who's lived in the area in the past — determines that it's not Apache in origin, despite its proximity to the tribe's territory, and is horrified to see it contains a still-beating human heart. While the Posse don't discover its purpose or origins in the series itself, the production and writing team stated in a post-series Q&A that it was an effigy of Shub-Niggurath that was built by Sparky as a threat to Colin Brock and his gang, the heart inside it having belonged to one of Brock's thugs set to retrieve Maxwell Posey.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Ellie and Johnny develop this dynamic in the latter half of the first season, frequently bickering and snarking at each other over which of them is the better parent for Bertie.
• Voice of the Legion: In the finale, Kate the Dark Young speaks with a distorted voice overlaid and interspersed with grotesque pops, clicks, gurgles, warbles, growls, and shrieking roars.
• Wacky Wayside Tribe: The Posse's journey to Olvido — only a couple days' ride from their starting point of Canutillo — is repeatedly derailed, extending what was initially assumed to be a relatively short campaign of a few episodes over the course of three days out over twenty-one episodes. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Posse are press-ganged into helping Professor John Wilkinson conduct an archaeological expedition into the cave network under Baylor Peak to search for the conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's long-lost army, who went into the caves and never returned. They find what's left of Coronado's soldiers... and a horde of ravenous ghouls, and narrowly escape with their lives.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Father Flint loses his coat and shirt — save for his clerical collar — in the caves under Baylor Peak, leading to him going around with a "Chippendale" look.
• Weird West: The story's setting takes place in Texas and New Mexico in 1891, with a heaping helping of the Cthulhu Mythos mixed in.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Episode 10 was set up for the sole purpose of calling the players and their characters out for being jerks to all the NPCs, with various side-characters being called upon to testify as to the callous, uncouth, and violent behavior of the Posse, which almost results in them being executed.
• Wicked Cultured: When the Posse finally confront him, Colin Brock plays at being this — having set up shop in a lavishly decorated mansion and claiming to be a changed man. It's all a front, however, and he's gone from being a dangerous outlaw to an even more dangerous cultist.

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