Tabletop Game / Achtung! Cthulhu

Achtung! Cthulhu is Tabletop RPG published by Modiphius Entertainment, available for Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Fate and Modiphius' in-house 2d20 system. Adventures adapted for Prose Descriptive Qualities and GUMSHOE have also been released.

Set in World War II, players take on the role of Allied heroes investigating, exploring and discovering the truth behind the malign influence of the Cthulhu Mythos as war engulfs the globe, and fighting the Secret War against the Nazi occult. Powered with ancient secrets and otherworldly allies, these dark factions seek to unleash horrific monsters and alien weaponry upon the world.

In Achtung! Cthulhu, the Axis and Allied powers fight out a Secret War behind the scenes of major battles and campaigns (with occasional centre-stage appearances). Whilst this Secret War will have an influence on the events and outcome of World War Two, neither the Secret War nor the Mythos can fully explain how the conflict pans out. Furthermore, neither the Secret War nor the Mythos are the cause of, or reason for, every event or outcome of the war. In particular, the Secret War and the Mythos are not the source of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis or anyone else.

Achtung! Cthulhu is a milieu which places the Mythos front and centre of the action. It is unabashedly pulp and grounded in weird war sensibilities. Dark horrors still lurk in forgotten tombs amidst blasted heaths in faraway lands, but players are expected to be able to use weapons like dynamite, flame throwers and machine guns to take down the evil baddies—which will be your classic movie Nazis or perhaps Japanese militarists who might have the Tesla death ray on their side, as well as the Great Old Ones.

Other media based on the setting includes:

• Shadows Over Normandie: Achtung! Cthulhu (2015) - Board Game based on Heroes of Normandie.
• Achtung! Cthulhu: The Secret War (2016)
• Achtung! Cthulhu Skirmish (2016) - A skirmish game using rules based on Spartan Games' Dystopian Legions 2.0 system.
• Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics (2018) - A Turn-Based Tactics game developed by Auroch Digital and published by Ripstone.
• Cohors Cthulhu (TBD) - A prequel set in Ancient Rome.

For the other, more gritty World War II Lovecraftian RPG setting, see World War Cthulhu. Delta Green is another Lovecraftian Spy Fiction-Horror RPG involving a Secret War against the Ghostapo.

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This game provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • Blevins steam weapons fire a gout of superheated steam and high-temperature-activated enzymes, dissolving large chunks of monstrous flesh almost instantly. The ammunition for these weapons is in short supply, as these enzymes must be harvested from shoggoths and properly purified and packaged before use.
  • The Riesenhammer's Sternewerfer fires magically-created white-hot orbs that explode on impact and burn through armour.
• Abstract Eater: The ys'bwor absorbs the memories of the victims that it bites. Those bitten by an ys'bwor are in danger of losing their mind and being unable to function as the creature consumes their memories.
• Achilles' Heel: The Cloud-Thing may be susceptible to various meteorological inventions. Investigators are encouraged to be creative!
• Acid Attack: The Ophidian equivalent of a panzerfaust, the rain of venom is a hollow tube sealed with wax. Once the seal is broken, it unleashes a jet of pressurised, acidic venom that will eat through metal armour in seconds.
• Age Without Youth: Although they aged little, centuries of existence have taken their toll on the Muqarribun. Beneath the silk veils of their robes, only their bones remain—bleached bright white by the heat and sand of the deep desert.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Varangian Order come from all walks of life, but usually from a limited number of highly-placed Greek and Greek-Turkish families in Istanbul. Some are members of the Varangian Club; others are deep undercover, in positions of power and influence. All of them would rather die than betray the order's existence to the outside world—that's the only way they've survived the past five hundred years. They're intensely pro-Byzantine and support the Megali Idea.
• Ancient Order of Protectors:
  • The Sons of Roanoac is the network of watchers set up in 1587 to watch over a dangerous artefact brought from England to The Lost Colony of Roanoke by cultists. Consisting of an alliance of men from the various local tribes, each selected for their bravery and cunning, over time the watchers come to include the descendants of the Lost Colony who survived and intermarried with their custodians.
  • An ancient and venerable order formed at the time of the Angevin Empire in the 12th Century, the Knights of the Broom are a secret organisation dedicated to the protection of their homeland. Throughout the Loire Valley's history the hand of the Knights can be seen deftly protecting the people of the region.
  • The Servants of Mehmet are a very ancient and secret Turkish occult society, dedicated to preventing the Varangian Order and the Empress in Purple from ever again gaining ascendance in Istanbul. Their code of honour and pact with the ghouls keeps the city—and the upper world—safe.
• Ancient Tomb: The Book of Thoth is carefully hidden in the City of the Dead near Memphis, inside a tomb heavily protected with both physical and magical traps, should anyone attempt to find and enter it.
• Arch-Enemy: After the battles in ancient pre-history between the star spawn and the elder things, a great enmity has developed between shoggoths and star spawn. Despite their willingness to switch sides, the shoggoths were granted no clemency by the star spawn, nor was there any indication that they cared about the shoggoths' loyalty (or lack thereof) and so the two races have come to be bitter rivals. If a shoggoth and a star spawn should happen to be on the same side, the shoggoth will attempt to sabotage whatever the star spawn is doing, as long as it can do so without detection. If on opposite sides in a conflict, the two will immediately attack each other, ignoring all other opponents (regardless of circumstances) until one is destroyed.
• The Archmage: Taking into account his astounding age and considerable knowledge, Sss'haa is perhaps the most accomplished sorcerer ever to have lived.
• Asteroids Monster: With no central nervous system or brain, die Draugar are extremely difficult to destroy—pieces hacked from the main body will continue to attack, with fire-based weapons being the only effective deterrents.
• Atlantis: After a cataclysm destroyed Hyperborea, the survivors fled south to Atlantis, driving out the serpent people from their second kingdom and transforming their island home into a well-defended paradise of learning and achievement, until it was destroyed and sunk under the sea by earthquakes and tidal waves caused by Crom-Cruach, who swore vengeance after its nest was disturbed by an Atlantean expedition. The wisest fled to establish new civilisations elsewhere, away from the corruption they saw all around them, each aware that the others had survived but maintaining their distance.
• Attack Animal: Shoggoth behemoths are controlled by a handler that can be any distance from the actual creature. A behemoth must be under human control at all times, or it will turn feral and head towards the nearest sea, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The shoggoth will follow navigational instructions and will eagerly obey orders that let it kill and engulf living things.
• Bald of Evil: Reiner Lang's body and head are devoid of hair, even eyebrows, a side-effect of his experiments with noxious substances.
• The Baroness: Mina Wolff is both strikingly beautiful and completely driven in her goal of bringing German victory in the war. The Nazi style uniform and riding crop she carries around only enhance it more.
• Base on Wheels: The Wolfszorn is mounted on six giant tracked units, each the size of a Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte. The main chassis sits between these units and carries the power plant, crew quarters, and a vehicle bay containing three armoured scout cars, ten motorcycles and nine Sd. Kfz 251s. The Wolfszorn's operating crew is supported by a company of Nachtjägers consisting of a scout platoon, three infantry platoons, a mounted scout platoon and a command unit.
• Beast of Battle: Creatures enhanced with Blauer Kristall are added to Nachtwölfe units, trained and deployed in combat roles. Most common are the iconic Alsatians so beloved of the Führer. Fragmentary though credible reports suggest that some Bestienmeister are able to work with iconic creatures favoured by the Nazi regime like eagles, bears, wolves and even the fabled aurochs.
• BFG: The NW-Jagdgewehr StGw43-A looks like an oversized version of the StGw44 with a heavier, longer barrel and an eerily blue finish. Its brutal recoil can dislocate the arms and break the collar bones of wielders with insufficient strength and body mass.
• Bioweapon Beast: The shoggoth shocksoldat is a smaller, though slightly larger than man-sized version, of its terrifying parent, specially cloned by Dr Franz Amsel as a new breed of battlefield horror. The independent will and malevolent intelligence of their parent has (almost) been bred out of them, allowing any who wear a Totenkopf ring to control and give them simple commands.
• Black Site: Situated in Tunisia, the Nachtwölfe Expedition Headquarters is a closely guarded secret, and even Erwin Rommel is unaware of the actual location of what is officially referred to as the 'research station'. Black Sun agents who have attempted to discover its whereabouts have all, unsurprisingly, disappeared.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The name Irem Zhat al Imad has, for centuries, been translated to mean Irem of the Pillars. However, the translation is a false one. Among the ancient mystics of the desert, the word for pillar also has another meaning: Elder or Old One, changing the meaning of Irem's moniker to something far more terrifying: Irem has stood since long before the Earth was formed.
  • Similarly, the true name of Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter) has been corrupted. The first men to discover this place, the sinister Kahin seers of pre-Islamic times, named the place the Void Quarter, as it was truly a gateway into the void.
  • The Spanish version of Che'nal Ek' is full of translation errors, and a large proportion of the original is not translated at all, because Diego de Landa could not understand its Mayan glyphs.
• Blob Monster: A manneskin appears as a darkly shimmering, amorphous blob that can change shape in an instant and uses pseudopod-like extensions to create illusions and to ensnare its prey.
• Blood Knight: A Soldier Demon of the Outer Reaches is a warrior summoned to unleash carnage and horror, and hungers for violence, the more brutal, the better. In the hands of Resistance cells, these creatures can serve as powerful frontline troops, but the danger of collateral damage is ever present.
• Blow You Away: Being creatures of wind and air, djinn are able to summon tornados around them to blast their foes.
• Bottomless Magazines: The default state of using any sort of ranged weapon is having unlimited ammunition for it. You only ever "spend" mags when either fumbling rolls or performing special attacks.
• Brain in a Jar: Using their Mind Revival Device, derived from mi-go technology, the Brain Institute has reanimated Lenin, in a manner of speaking. Lenin, his personality restored, looks exactly like what he has become: a brain suspended in a nutrient-rich broth inside a transparent sphere nestled within a huge alien machine. Attached to the sphere are a plethora of sensors and transducers that permit the Teacher to communicate with the outside world, all connected to a massive power plant in the Brain Institute's basement. Lenin still has his memories and is a quick thinker, though he tires easily. However, he does not know what he has become; as far as he is concerned, he has only recently awoken from a coma, his last stroke having paralysed and blinded him.
• Brother–Sister Team: The Egyptian branch of Section M is led by twin siblings Frank and Fleur Denham. Together, they make a formidable team.
• Brown Note: Gazing upon one of the phaya as they writhe in and out of sight is a terrifying experience, as the human eye is incapable of forming a coherent image of what it sees.
• Chainsaw Good: Although commercial chainsaws are only available after 1947, Majestic has secured a few prototype gas-powered chainsaws for its military endeavours. It is surprisingly useful against unearthly foes, but are too noisy for covert ops.
• Chaos Architecture: Object 143 is an extremely hazardous place. Some sections are in imminent danger of collapse while others shift location without warning. Careless explorers can wind up buried or unable to find the route back because the rooms they have just passed through have moved to another part of the city.
• Counter-Attack: Ithaqua is immune to steam-based weapons, whose steam rapidly freezes in his presence and can be turned back on the wielder as a slew of tiny ice shards.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front:
  • The Le Droit Building, headquarters of Majestic in Washington, is apparently just a plain, old office block with a few shops on the ground floor. It is so ordinary, in fact, that none suspects the small legal company in Office 401 of being anything other than what it claims to be.
  • Section M's Egyptian branch is established in one of the games rooms under the guise of the Mitzráyim Whist Club.
• Creepy Cemetery: The Malookhtinskoye Cemetery, said to be the final resting place of imperial alchemists, warlocks and sorcerers, is an ominous place where many lone wanderers disappear without a trace. Because the Cemetery is not consecrated, the League of Efraim chooses it as a venue for many of its black rituals.
• Crossover: A series of sourcebooks combine Achtung! Cthulhu with Godlike, Dust and Interface Zero.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Red Ruin is a haemorrhagic aerosol absorbed through the skin and uses the victim's own blood as a catalyst. The victim's own blood renders their body down to its essential acids, dissolving even bone. The fatal process takes minutes, and the victim is in agony the whole time.
• Crusading Widow: The Nochnyye Ved'my are a sect of Nyarlathotep worshippers from the Taman Peninsula. They are the wives, daughters and mothers of a long line of Cossack warriors, embittered at the loss of their status and the treatment meted out to them by the Red Army after the Russian Civil War. They hurl spells and stones with holes in their centres at Nazis and the Red Army alike in their attempts to drive them out of their lands.
• Cult of Personality: The Cult of Red Horus is a secret organisation comprised of members of the Brain Institute who worship Lenin as a god. A true cult of personality, which aims to be far greater than the one Stalin has built for himself, they firmly believe that they are crafting the spiritual future of the Soviet state.
• Cyborg: The Stormtrooper is one of Nachtwölfe's earliest experiments in combining Blauer Kristall with cybernetic technology to create a super soldier. Enhanced to considerable size, Stormtroopers have various technological body modifications including arms for strength, eyes for night vision and even legs for additional speed/leaping capabil-ities.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • To those who win the Muqarribun's favour, and who are prepared to make the necessary sacrifice (which is always counted in human souls), they will provide their services, but strictly to the exact letter of their agreement—no more, no less—so those dealing with them should consider their requests carefully. For those who fail, or who somehow displease them, only a horrific death at the hands of the djinn awaits.
  • In the fifteenth century, Constantine XI was desperate for the Eastern Roman Empire not to fall to the Ottomans. He commanded the Varangian Order to perform an ancient ritual, known as Azel's Bell, to summon a power to protect the city from its foe. It is likely that neither Constantine nor the Varangian Order understood what they were doing. The ritual opened a portal to allow 'the Sun of the Night' to enter into the world. Possibly an avatar of an Outer God, this black sun threatened destruction not merely for the city but for Valusia itself. It was only through the intervention of the Empress in Purple that the Black Sun was satiated—with the price being the downfall of the ancient Imperial line.
  • If an investigator uses the relevant Contact spell to communicate with Abhoth, it is keen to bargain. Abhoth may give the investigator a sentient spawn for use as a bodyguard, assassin, or servant, any spell, or a small amount of Mythos knowledge. Regardless of what is given, Abhoth will want something in return, whether it is a blood sacrifice or a dirty deed done in its name (which could form the basis of a scenario).
  • Byatis will make deals with supplicants, as well as with people who resist its Promises of Power. However, Byatis is always looking for a way to destroy the hand that 'feeds' it, so any bargain is likely to prove a double-edged sword.
• Demonic Possession: When activated, there is a chance that a mi-go Transformer's mind will attempt to take control of the user, transforming them into its avatar on Earth. Once in possession of its new body, the mind will seek to expand its understanding of the universe around it, secure its safety, and expand its own cognitive abilities. A Host of the Mind appears, at first glance, to be a normal human. However, their movement is often very strange, and they often exhibit signs of self-harm or mutilation.
• Devour the Dragon: The SS-Ehrenringe serve a secret purpose known only to Reinhardt Weissler, his Priors and Canons. When the correct incantation (Leech Essence) is invoked, a sorcerer can drain any individual wearing a ring within his line of sight. Unwittingly, the SS have become a vast magical reserve for Black Sun's ultimate rites.
• Dragon with an Agenda: In 1918, Yakov Sverdlov launched his most audacious plan yet: an attempt to contact the ancient gods. Although it failed, Sverdlov remained undaunted and hoped to eventually accrue enough power to overthrow both Lenin and Trotsky, but in 1919, during a political trip, he caught a cold and died. His protégé, Sevastyan Solokov, now intends to liquidate Stalin's tyranny and become leader of the Soviet Union. He knows there will come a time when only his ever-deepening knowledge of magic will save the Motherland, and he plans to take full advantage of any opportunity that presents itself to further his own career.
• Drill Tank: The Grendel earth mover is a giant burrowing machine created by Nachtwölfe to aid in the Nazi occult's many subterranean endeavours. Mounted on its front is an enormous tilting Blauer Kristall-powered drill which the vehicle uses to burrow through the earth, vaporising tons of earth and rock as it goes.
• Driven to Suicide: When Klaudia Fleischer accepted Reinhardt Weissler's invitation to witness the Black Sun for herself, the vision was too great a strain on her mind. Upon her return to the waking world, Fleischer took a straight razor and opened her veins from wrist to elbow. Only Weissler's magic prevented her death, and since that day she has been both thankful and resentful of his intervention.
• Dug Too Deep:
  • In 1932, surveyors from Matsumi Mining detected considerable mineral deposits in the deep chasms that honeycombed the Sobaek Mountains and sent engineers to explore the depths. Only as the great seal on the ancient doors slid aside for the first time in millennia did the engineers realise the truths behind the tales the natives told of the dragons of the mountain. As they dissected the last of the survey team, the naga learned of the world above them, called forth the spirits of their dead kin from eons past and placed their essences within the bodies of the engineers, before returning them to the surface.
  • A special office of Institute 21 is established in Vorkuta during the Great Patriotic War, tasked with the excavation of an ancient basalt city near Halmer-Yu. Researchers uncover a city they believe belongs to a heretofore unknown culture. Unfortunately for them, the city is actually home to the remnants of a colony of insects from Shaggai. They have been struggling to survive since the cold killed off their original servants, and are quite happy to enslave the workers to enable their hedonistic lifestyle.
• Elaborate Underground Base:
  • Not shown on the publicly-revealed plans for the Führer's Eastern command centre, deep beneath the ground, through vast blast doors closed to even the highest ranking officials, lies the true Wolf's Lair, which is designed to survive the destruction of the base above, and built in utmost secrecy.
  • Institute 21 is headquartered in a sub-basement of Lubyanka 2. It is connected to the Kremlin by a series of secret tunnels; additional tunnels lead to a private airfield, a crematorium, and a hidden subway station.
  • Most of the main Sverdlovsk headquarters of Institute 21 is underground so that the researchers can undertake their terrible experiments, summon beings from other worlds, and open portals to other dimensions without alerting the local populace.
  • Most of Otdel MI's Leningrad headquarters is underground, connected by tunnels dug for the suspended Metro system. The main laboratories are in the cellars of the Peter and Paul Fortress, while artefacts are stored beneath the Hermitage and St. Isaac's Cathedral. Access is gained from secret street-level doors and via partially constructed Metro stations.
  • The basement and sub-levels of Clemens Park contain a series of well equipped laboratories that extend someway beneath the earth, and much further into the Kent countryside than the estate's formal boundaries.
• Enchanted Forest: Wewelsburg II is surrounded by gnarled and sickly woodlands, which are alive with stunted and mutated creatures, including the malicious Bloodborn.
• Enemy Civil War:
  • As the Red Army marches into Poland, Reinhardt Weissler orders his Canons and Masters to attack Nachtwölfe formations in a bid to get rid of them once and for all. In the Battle of Poznań Forest, Black Sun and Nachtwölfe face each other on the open battlefield, leaving the Wehrmacht to fend for themselves against the Red Army. Hundreds of elite troops and trained creatures are slaughtered, hastening the eventual fall of Germany.
  • In the Pleistocene, the onset of glaciation made vast areas of the world uninhabitable to the cold-blooded Ophidians. A civil war erupted, and city fought city over dwindling resources. Whole cities were scoured from the map by powerful sorcery and nefarious magical weapons as subsequent Emperors, Empresses and Sorcerer-Lords unleashed their full might against their fellow children of Yig. After years of conflict, the empire began to crumble until Yig commanded that the war be ended and that the remaining Ophidian rulers work together to ensure the survival of the species.
• Enemy Mine: NPC Nazis, like the investigators, might fear and hate the Cthulhu Mythos, even (or especially) if the entity in question was summoned by their own Sturmbannführer. Do the players accept help from the Luftwaffe? From the Waffen-SS? From Einsatzgruppen troopers, fresh from shooting Jewish civilians in the head all day? As the war goes on, there are a number of situations where Nachtwölfe and the Allies co-operate, actively or covertly helping each other against their mutual enemies.
• Energy Absorption: The Living Flame of Deepest Black is invulnerable to fire weapons and explosives, and any 'damage' inflicted with such weapons will actually heal the creature one hit instead of injuring it.
• The Engineer: Samir Jawalaprasad Bunakar's calm, meticulous, and conscientious work with booby traps and minefields earns him a reputation as the man to turn to when faced with the dangerous and unusual. He came to the attention of Section M when his ability to devise creative solutions to tricky situations helps them deal with an infestation of ghouls in the ancient tunnels under Heliopolis without bringing down large parts of the area on their heads.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Unlike the racially pure Schutzstaffel, Nachtwölfe boasts some diversity within its ranks. Intellectual prowess is valued, with the Gruppe often turning a blind eye to gender, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.
• Even Evil Has Standards: There can be no doubt that the Nazis are the darkest manifestation of human evil the world has yet to witness, but there is a name that when whispered strikes fear into the heart of even the most ruthless Einsatzgruppe: Die Schwarze Sonne, the Black Sun, who practise the foulest of crafts alongside the SS, and all (allegedly) in the name of the Führer. Men would sooner face the frozen Eastern Front than hear Black Sun calling the names of their terrible gods.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Elder Gods aren't exactly the nicest bunch, but they aren't happy with Nyarlathotep using the Dreamlands as a fortress for his Black Sun minions, and are secretly helping the Fraternity of the Inner Light defend Britain because of this.
• Evil Old Folks: Years of poring over ancient tombs have taken their toll on Astrid Urner. She walks with a stoop and requires a cane due to the deterioration of her spine. Her breathing is often laboured and ragged, her speech is frequently punctuated by fits of wracking coughs, her hair is dull and brittle, and her watery brown eyes squint out from behind thick spectacles.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Wewelsburg II, the true twisted heart of Black Sun, is a great citadel of impossibly tall towers and gargantuan obsidian walls slumbering beneath the Black Sun itself, the pennants of Black Sun and the Nazi Party hanging from its sheer walls.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Deep Ones will never make their peace with the Mi-Go, whom they regard as cosmic interlopers and fierce rivals for eventual dominion of the surface world.
• Evil Versus Oblivion:
  • Nachtwölfe are fanatically loyal to Hitler and the Nazi ideology, but they despise the Black Sun, who are trying to unleash Yog-Sothoth on the world (not that Nachtwölfe is aware of it).
  • the Ordo Novi Templi, a secret society dating back to 1909 that subscribed to a similar worldview as the Nazis later would, was all but wiped out by the Black Sun by 1942.
• Fantastic Metals: In the bowels of Wewelsburg II, metal ores mined from the Plateau of Leng are combined with fragments of obsidian taken from the Valley of the Black Sun to produce black steel, an alien alloy far stronger than terrestrial steel, and possessing a number of unusual properties.
• Feed It a Bomb: If investigators manage to get an explosive inside the Father-of-All-Sharks, they score two hits (and kill anyone trapped inside).
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Dragon's Breath Mk.II is a large, two-handed flamethrower which uses an early form of napalm, and is incredibly effective against mortal foes, fortifications and Mythos monsters alike.
• First-Name Basis: The Right Honourable Alexander Ward-Gray, Viscount Towton does not stand on ceremony, preferring to be called simply Alec by his associates, only using his title when he knows it will gain him the upper hand in negotiations.
• Flesh Golem: Der Draugr is a biological weapon (typically delivered as a gas) which causes the uncontrolled reanimation of dead tissue. Die Draugar possess no intelligence but are able to sense living matter and attempt to add it to their overall mass. They do not maintain their original form but are composed of tissue, muscle, cartilage and bone fused together in an abhorrent, writhing mass that pulls itself across the ground using appendages formed from its overall seething bulk.
• Flunky Boss: Terrors often have otherworldly servants they can summon to keep the investigators at bay; many have fanatical cultists who will defend both the Terror and its places of worship to the death.
• For the Evulz: No one remembers how their association with Tulzscha came to be made, and the Waldgericht seems to gain little from it other than a personal sense of power and moral superiority.
• Frontline General: Albrecht Lohmann, Black Sun's military commander, prefers to lead by example, and he is known to undertake some of the most critical missions in the field himself. His willingness to stand beside them in battle has created a strong bond between him and the Canons who are utterly loyal to him, a fact that causes increasing alarm to the other Priors.
• Gatling Good: The Höllenfeuer repeater shotgun looks like a snub-nosed Gatling gun with an octagonal arrangement of barrels, and uses a similar rotary mechanism.
• Ghostapo: Black Sun and their master Reinhardt Weissler move with impunity behind the scenes of the Nazi machine, practising the foulest of crafts alongside the SS, and all (allegedly) in the name of the Führer.
• Ghost City: Lying beyond Murzuk in Fezzan, G'harne is a vast deserted and decaying mudbrick city. The distant location makes finding it a huge and uncertain challenge.
• Glass Weapon: The sliver rifle converts sand into crystal slivers, which are then fired at high velocity.
• Godzilla Threshold: Die Auserwählten are deployed to guard Black Sun's most secret places, primarily in Wewelsburg II where their appearance will not cause panic among the uninitiated. However, as the war progresses, and particularly after the failure of Operation Barbarossa, Black Sun begin to release them onto the battlefield to act as shock troops against the Soviet juggernaut. In April 1945, in desperation as the conflict spirals out of their control, Black Sun even stoops to releasing those previously considered as truly dangerously unstable onto the streets of Berlin.
• Golem: Created as a wedding gift for Erich Ludendorff by his astronomer and occultist brother Hans, Ludendorff's golem is a strange hybrid creature, constructed based on Jewish rituals that are now banned by the Third Reich. Although made of the traditional clay, unusually for a golem the creature has an embroidered fabric face, and the rest of the body is also covered in a soft, flesh-coloured cloth, making the golem look uncomfortably like a gigantic doll. After Ludendorff's funeral, where a huge, heavily bundled, shambling figure can be seen at the back of the cortege, the golem disappears.
• Guardian Entity: A fierce huntress and goddess of nature, healing and hunting, Arduinna was worshipped by the Celts who settled in the Ardennes during the Bronze Age, and has protected the region ever since mankind first walked beneath the shade of the boughs. She is an implacable foe of the Crimson Cultists and the Slumbering Horror, Chartotharkis.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Reinhardt Weissler is the disciple of Yog-Sothoth, and sees it as his life's mission to free his master from his imprisonment and let him loose upon the world to rain down untold terror and destruction.
• Half-Human Hybrid: For centuries, a powerful Valusian serpent woman named the Empress in Purple bred with the kings of Byzantium and the emperors of Constantinople in a dreadful wedding ritual to provide the city's rulers.
• He Knows Too Much: In 1937, Herman Wirth is removed from his post in the Ahnenerbe. Officially he is discharged for his contrary views on German religion compared to those of the Nazis, but in reality Wirth dug too deep into Black Sun's special research projects. Having witnessed cadavers spasming and lurching at him from operating tables, he begged Heinrich Himmler to destroy the sorcerers' unholy experiments. Himmler, in a rare display of compassion for an old acquaintance, arranged for Wirth to be exiled from the Reich.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Few outside of the Black Sun, and only a small number within it, know of Reinhardt Weissler's ultimate goal to release Yog-Sothoth from its solar prison in the Dreamlands and unleash its unholy rays on Earth.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The tomb of Nephren-Ka and its Walls of Truth are not easily found unless it wants to be. The entrance to the tomb is located in a dingy courtyard of a non-descript house in Old Cairo. On his deathbed, Nephren-Ka sacrificed 100 of his priests to gain visions of the future from Nyarlathotep. Today, the tomb and its truths are guarded by a secret priesthood, and they will only reveal its location to those destined to know it.
• High Priest: One of the first and greatest of the Priests of Yig, Sss'haa has been the supreme and revered religious leader of his race, in veneration of the Great Serpent, since the days of the First Empire of Valusia.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Care must be taken when deploying a Yithian stone hunter, as the hunter may, in fact, target the thrower if no other target is in sight.
  • If a Riesenhammer shoggoth tank is destroyed, an extremely angry shoggoth is released onto the battlefield, hellbent upon revenge against those who imprisoned it.
• Horse of a Different Color:
  • The Nochnyye Ved'my are a sect of Nyarlathotep worshippers who fly across the night skies of the Taman Peninsula on shantaks given to them by the Crawling Chaos.
  • A cadre of Black Sun operatives specialise in riding the Schnee-Koloss, using them to survive on the inhospitable Antarctic terrain as a cheap and more reliable alternative to adapting vehicles for arctic conditions.
  • Gryphons often serve as cavalry or mounts for the Ophidian nobility, though there is no reason they would not respond well to a human rider who is an accomplished animal handler, provided the handler can win their trust and keep them well-fed. The process is much simpler if a gryphon is reared from an egg, but they always have a slightly capricious nature and the rider should always watch their back (and fingers).
• Hover Tank: A Schwebpanzer Mark I looks like a Panther tank with about twenty square angled metal suspensor plates (instead of tracks) attached to the underside of the Panther chassis. The tank can move like a hovercraft and skim across the dunes of the desert.
• Human Disguise:
  • A Chernyi Geolog usually appears as an Evenk hunter or a middle-aged Russian man dressed in black travel clothes, carrying a backpack, a knife or TT pistol, a rifle and an ice axe.
  • There are stories of sand dwellers disguising themselves in desert costume for the purpose of tricking and confusing intruders in their domain (though even loose-fitting clothing cannot fully conceal the inhuman articulation of their limbs).
• Human Sacrifice: The Waldgericht sacrifice their victims in the darkest dells of the oldest woods. Strung up between two linden trees, their victims are left to rot just enough before the Outer God Tulzscha is summoned to consume them.
• Hungry Weapon: Flesh Drinker, a Celtic leaf-bladed sword, seems to actively thirst for blood and flesh and relish the carnage of battle and slaughter. If it inflicts an injury on a victim, it drinks deep.
• Hybrid Monster: The Schnee-Koloss is a carnivorous quadruped, resulting from the blending of genetic material from dinosaur-like creatures, mammoths, and something totally alien to this world. The result is a powerful, vicious brute, capable of carrying immense weight but possessed of a foul disposition.
• An Ice Person: A Stalin's Lamp attacks by emitting a biting cold (which the creature can focus into a ray when necessary), and anyone who touches one is immediately stricken with frostbite. Once a victim dies, a lamp moves on to the next target.
• Immune to Bullets: Standard small-calibre weapons cannot inflict hits on Terrors.
• Improvised Weapon: The Eye of the Black Sun is actually the result of a failed attempt to create a stable portal to the Valley of the Black Sun. The experiment tapped straight into the repugnant heart of the Black Sun, killing the research team involved, even though the rent remained open for only a fraction of a second. Rather than discard the research, the new team assigned to the project repurposed the device as a weapon.
• Interservice Rivalry:
  • Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi chief racial theorist, has a particular loathing for Reinhardt Weissler and his methods. His own organisation, Amt Rosenberg, charged with developing and monitoring the cultural policies of the Third Reich, clashes regularly with the Priors of the Black Sun both in the corridors of power and in the field. Rosenberg attempts to block the activities of Black Sun, and repeatedly calls for Heinrich Himmler to 'rein in his hellhounds', although he does not realise the potential danger this places him in; nor does he understand the true nature of Weissler's machinations, seeing him only as a rival plunderer of archaeological resources. Himmler, for his part, shows little enthusiasm for the suggestion.
  • After Mina Wolff leaves Black Sun to establish Nachtwölfe, the two rival branches of the Nazi occult clash almost immediately, often clashing over the rights to new sites.
  • Institute 21 actively uses magic for the advancement of its own dark purposes. This causes contention with Otdel MI, whose followers believe in communism more than sorcery (although both agree that it can be a very useful means to an end). It is not surprising then, given their different outlooks, that the two organisations are waging a private war against each other (not unlike their German counterparts, Black Sun and Nachtwölfe).
• Invisibility Cloak: The mi-go bio cloak makes the wearer invisible to other mi-gos, elder things, yithians, deep ones, insects from Shaggai and serpent people, but not humans.
• It Can Think: A sacred crocodile is one venerated in the worship of the ancient Egyptian crocodile deity, Sebek. These are much like ordinary Nile crocodiles, except that they are somewhat larger and display greater intelligence and awareness. They are sensitive to the desires of their god and those who serve him, and may appear to act unnaturally in order to achieve a goal. When an investigator realises this particularly large crocodile is operating with near human intelligence, it is worth a 0/1 SAN loss.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: If trapped inside the Father-of-All-Sharks, investigators must score one hit against the creature to escape.
• Lightning Gun: Electric discharge weapons work by using the target as the second terminal of the lamp: a successful hit produces an instantaneous circuit between gun and target, ionising the intervening air into a brilliant blue-white light. All lightning guns are harmless to anything primarily made of metal, but function well as anti-personnel weapons and supernatural deterrents.
• Living Weapon:
  • Ebon Ivy is a form of razor-sharp vine possessing a low animal intelligence, and deployed by Black Sun in place of traditional barbed wire. Anyone unfortunate or foolhardy enough to attempt to cross a patch of Ebon Ivy is lashed and clawed by the plant, which attempts to ensnare its prey before ripping it to pieces.
  • Deepwater pufferfish are utilised by Deep Ones as a delivery systems for various chemical reagents. Some are used as smoke grenades, an exothermic reaction taking place on exposure to the air, others are used to deliver airborne toxins or acidic payloads.
  • The Dämon Luger has a monstrous tumour in its handle pulsing with an unpleasant life. Instead of bullets, it fires small, concentrated balls of plasma converted from the very air by the symbiote dwelling within it.
• Lovecraft Lite: Heroes in Achtung! Cthulhu are capable of achieving small victories, but always at some cost due to exposure to the Mythos—the hallmark of such stories. They may buy the world a brief reprieve from annihilation, but they alone cannot do so forever. Heroism and sacrifice will still have meaning to the untold millions who are unaware of the doom that awaits, but the Mythos will still grind their mind and body into dust.
• Mage Tower: When Leningrad is besieged, Otdel MI moves most of its operations to Kuibyshev, occupying a massive bell tower in an Orthodox cathedral, with their offices and laboratories located on the ground and first floors.
• Magical Camera: Boris Blokov's camera can be used to attack Mythos creatures or freeze them in a two-dimensional space that renders them inert and bound. A successful Summon spell cast on the image will summon the creature back, destroying the image in the process. Its effects on humans have yet to be understood as it has not been tested on living subjects (as far as anyone knows).
• Magically Inept Fighter: Sathasaa, probably the greatest general of the serpent people, is unusual among his race in that he does not practice sorcery, though he makes up for this in sheer brute strength and speed, preferring to close the distance with his enemies in the blink of an eye before tearing them apart with his metallic claws and fangs.
• Magic Cauldron: The Cauldron Which Never Empties contains powerful healing properties, and once per 24 hours it can resurrect anyone who had died within the past 12 hours and/or heal a person completely of any injuries sustained if that person bathes in it for one hour.
• Magic Staff: The Atlantean power staff closely resembles a blunted, ornate spear. Embedded in the head is a small crystal that can generate a directed beam of energy when triggered by a recessed button set into the carved shaft. The crystal is continuously recharged by the Aten Life Giver via a wireless, atmospheric energy transfer system that Nikola Tesla would be proud of.
• Magnetic Weapons: An experimental mounting platform on the Wolfszorn houses the Elektrokannone system, a prototype rail gun still in its developmental stages.
• Make My Monster Grow: During the final transcendence, a naga's body bloats and creates a thick cocoon inside which its body begins to change. Its skeleton stretches and elongates, its height increases tenfold, and its skull stretches to give the naga a much larger and more vicious set of jaws, lined with several sets of barbed and jagged fangs. The transcended naga maintain its tails and limbs, though again, these are elongated and stretched by the transformation.
• Manchurian Agent: During her time with the Black Sun, Mina Wolff and Astrid Urner become obsessed with ensuring the loyalty of their followers through psychological and mystical conditioning. Urner does not realise it, but Wolff subverts her research, creating a programme designed to create a sleeper personality in Black Sun personnel, and embeds the subconscious order as a parasite personality which will cause the agents to turn against their leaders once activated. Wolff estimates the process is successful in one in five of the subjects. After defecting to form Nachtwölfe, she keeps the implanted agents within Black Sun, reasoning they would be better employed later in the war, should Black Sun become too much of a threat.
• Manipulative Bastard: Unlike the human followers of the Great Old Ones, the naga have a much more subtle and long-term view of the world, and their plans reflect their incredible longevity and patience. While Black Sun and Nachtwölfe work feverishly for domination, the naga prefer to work in the shadows, never showing their hand or revealing their influence unless they have no choice. Only when their activities are directly threatened will they intervene, and even then they will try to resolve problems by using the jian rather than revealing themselves.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Die Blutfahne was carried at the forefront of the march from the Bürgerbräukeller towards the Feldherrnhalle during the Beer Hall Putsch. During the annual ceremonies at Nuremberg, Hitler uses it to 'bless' the flag of every military unit under his command. Whether the Blutfahne has any genuine mystical powers is open to debate, but for those who have sworn allegiance to Hitler, it is a powerful symbol.
• Mechanical Abomination: The mi-go Transformer is, effectively, a God in a Box; a device that, when interfaced with via a neural network, emulates a god-like mind but with the fringe benefits of being without self-awareness, motive, or desire. The mind exists simultaneously within both its host and the box, and both are required for the god to form. All minds spawned by the Transformer actively try to improve their host's mental abilities and, as the length of their possession increases, they always cause massive but slow physiological changes in their hosts.
• Mind Rape: The Norn stalk the dreams of enemy commanders, blighting their minds and leaving them as shattered shells.
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • Am'mut have the head of a crocodile, the mane and forelimbs of a gigantic lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus.
  • The Serpopard is commonly depicted as having the body of a leopard or lion, and the neck and head of a snake. It is more lizard-like than cat-like, the colouration of its scales giving it a mottled look and the serpentine head has a bony neck frill and spurs giving it a vaguely catlike appearance.
• Mordor: The Valley of the Black Sun in the Plateau of Leng is surrounded by jagged peaks of blackest stone and ice, and entered only by the most perilous of paths. A stark wilderness lies within, a swampland of brackish, black pools and stunted, blighted undergrowth, inhabited by twisted versions of life. All is bathed in the impossible light of the Black Sun, hanging malevolently over the landscape. Extended periods of time in the Valley slowly gnaw away at willpower until one looks at the Black Sun directly.
• Multinational Team: Section M is a truly multinational affair, recruiting from the various nationalities of refugees that find themselves in Britain as a result of the conflict, and from members of the Commonwealth and Empire.
• Murder by Cremation: During the Siege of Leningrad, NKVD personnel have restarted the old furnaces in the crematorium to burn cannibals and monsters, not all of which are dead when they are tossed into the ovens.
• Mythology Gag: Terrors of the Secret War notes that military units cannot harm Cthulhu without steam-based weaponry, magic, or a boat, referencing how Cthulhu was defeated in the original story.
• Nazi Zombies:
  • Die Toten are created by the Black Sun from the ranks of the dead, their bodies and minds preserved through perverse magics and blessed with unearthly strength and reflexes in unholy ceremonies in the shadowy vaults of Wewelsburg. Born in darkness, die Toten have one weakness: natural sunlight.
  • Die Gefallenen are the reanimated corpses of fallen soldiers, instilled with a cruel parody of life. Possessing only the most basic intelligence, die Gefallenen are animalistic and savage creatures capable of understanding only the simplest commands from their creators. Die Gefallenen do not require sustenance of any kind, nor do they appear to have any desire or instinct other than to attack anything living they encounter. Although they have been given a new semblance of life, decay cannot be halted, and so over time die Gefallenen eventually rot away.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Both Nachtwölfe and the Black Sun have conducted extensive research into ways in which fallen soldiers of the Reich could be given a shadow of life and unleashed once more upon the battlefield.
• No Immortal Inertia: Reinhardt Weissler's ageing process has effectively been halted, but at a cost. Once each month he requires a transfusion of fresh blood to prevent his body returning to its true age of 102, an event that would doubtlessly kill him.
• Non-Human Head: Like its god, a servant of Sebek is a monstrous figure, humanoid but with bright green crocodile skin over its entire body and a giant crocodilian head. Crocodile/human hybrids also consist of a human body with a crocodile head, copying the form of Sebek and his Servants. In combat, they seek to both grab and bite victims.
• Non-Human Undead: Crocodile/human hybrids can be mummified; these creatures are useful in that they can be given commands and will wait centuries for the opportunity to obey them.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: During the siege of Leningrad, the League of Efraim and their numerous ghoul associates regain much of their former strength due to the increase in desperate people resorting to cannibalism and driven mad by hunger. In response, the leaders of the local Otdel MI department resolve to take swift and decisive action, creating new AK (Anti-Cannibal) squads from NKVD personnel, who execute any civilians suspected of cannibalism.
• Not Quite Dead: In October 1944, Erwin Rommel committed suicide. Were it not for a hush-hush new unit known only as NWDS, whose commander is enigmatically listed as der Silberfuchs, most would think the matter closed...
• Older Than They Look: The secrets imparted by Nyarlathotep to Reinhardt Weissler have preserved his tall, lean body, and outwardly he appears to be no more than 50 instead of his true age of 102.
• Our Demons Are Different: Summoned from the infernal reaches beyond our reality, demons are spirits of violence, chaos and hunger. It is hard to say with any certainty whether they are genuine infernal creatures or entities of the Mythos adopting their guise, although they are considered Mythos entities in Achtung! Cthulhu. Demons come in all shapes and sizes, with agendas, needs and wants nearly as varied as humanity's own.
• Our Genies Are Different: Djinn are an ancient race that were enslaved and tortured by a long-dead alien race for their pleasure, until the djinn finally rebelled and, revealing their true power, destroyed the alien sorcerers and reduced their great city to ruin. Their original appearance was one of beauty and perfection, though the inhuman torture inflicted upon them has turned that beauty into something truly terrible. Their minds shattered, the djinn are volatile and capricious, and have little respect for life, even their own, though they are fearful of magic and wary of those capable of wielding it. Thanks, in part, to Arabian Nights being mistranslated from French into English, the English word djinn has become synonymous with genie (a spirit who grants its master's wishes). This is a dangerous misconception, and one that has cost the lives of countless foolhardy wish-hunters over the years.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: Perhaps the original inspiration for Herodotus' Hieracosphinx, which had the head of a hawk and the body of a lion, the gryphon has featured in many world mythologies. They are possibly an evolutionary offshoot between the dinosaurs and their avian descendants, although they may also be the result of Ophidian bio-engineering.
• Pieces of God: The impact of Pl'vrka with the earth sent tiny splinters of its consciousness across the vast area devastated in the Tunguska Event. Damaged by the fall, the fragments seek to protect themselves, forming strange, layered creatures of rock, muck, wood and snow akin to a matryoshka. All a matryoshka wishes to do is rejoin with Pl'vrka, but this is impossible unless it breaks free of the protective shell it created for itself.
• Piggybacking on Hitler: Black Sun's work for Hitler's regime is not their true goal. Seeing the Nazis as a means to an end, Reinhardt Weissler provides them with cantrips and simple displays of magic in order to maintain their support, but he would cast them aside without a second thought if it furthered his quest to release the Black Sun into the world.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Wewelsburg II places a constant strain on the fabric of the Dreamlands, with only continual reinforcement of its existence preventing its destruction. Less powerful Norn are brought to the citadel, their minds sacrificed to hold the unreality of the Dreamlands at bay, but their eventual loss is of no real consequence to Black Sun.
• Prison Dimension: Within each Klein Cell is an endless tubular maze, where all movement appears to lead in exactly the same direction. The effect of this imprisonment quickly causes the mind to break. Through their magic, Black Sun's sorcerers can view the progress of the victim and decide when they are ready for interrogation or, in the case of the permanently insane, disposal.
• Psychic Powers: The US, lacking the magical background of the other Allied nations, turns to research into psychic, paranormal and extra sensory powers to counter the threat of Nazi occultists and their paranormal allies. Fundamentally, psychic abilities are little different from traditional magic, and are essentially spells of a modern tradition.
• Puzzle Boss: Mh'ithrha is instantly banished from this world when lured into an area containing no angles inscribed with an Elder Sign, or when circumscribed by a circle drawn on the ground surrounding it.
• Pyramid Power: The Chthonian Pyramid, an ancient artefact from Roman von Ungern-Sternberg's collection, is crafted from an exotic, smoky material which continually changes colour. If held over any flat surface, the pyramid levitates. The peak of the pyramid is always oriented toward the nearest trans-dimensional gate.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Section M's Egyptian branch is a ragtag band of Commonwealth soldiers, academics and their local confidantes, aided by a small number of trained military personnel, all of whom are volunteers approached for unusual experiences and undoubted courage. One could be a highly trained and well-respected French archaeologist, or a tough Aussie from the Outback who takes no nonsense from anyone, especially not the ridiculous Poms running Cairo.
• Ray Gun:
  • The Eye of the Black Sun redirects the energy released by the Black Sun as a devastating ethereal light beam.
  • The Angurvadal Directed Energy Weapon uses a particle beam to literally slice through its target.
• Really 700 Years Old: Mina Wolff's striking beauty appears to place her in her late twenties, and no one remembers her changing much over the last two decades. Those who enquire too closely about her exact age and origins are seldom heard from again. The truth that she has been a pivotal influence at many key points in mankind's history, working to shape his destiny and development to her own secret agenda. Her work in a specific age done, she retreats into a profound hibernation. When Mina reawakens, sometimes centuries later, she has forgotten much of her past, until her age-old drive and knowledge eventually begin to re-assert themselves.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Josef Schatten was originally sent to the Adlerhorst facility in Tunisia after a disagreement with Mina Wolff over the direction of his research. For a time, his work suffered as he contemplates what seems like his banishment to this long forgotten ruin, until he found a new hobby: researching the local effects of the blue crystals.
• Red Shirt: Investigators can command military units to divert attention from the investigators, absorb damage from attacks, and score hits on enemies in an attempt to drive them away. Military units have no way to defend themselves from Terrors' special attacks, and the investigators should always take the decisive actions in a combat.
• Reptilian Conspiracy: The serpent people have a method for transferring the spirits of their dead back into new human bodies. Once the spirit takes over its new host, it begins to undergo a transformation, slowly altering the body from within until it is fully compatible with serpent physiology, though on the surface it still appears to be human. The jian, as they are known, possess all of the memories and abilities of their host, combined with the abilities of the serpent people. The jian are often used to interact with other humans and infiltrate human society.
• Rock Monster: Yithian stone hunters are seemingly small, carved stone statuettes with indeterminate features. If thrown at an enemy, a stone hunter suddenly expands to humanoid proportions and will hunt down the first target it sees until either it or the enemy is destroyed.
• Salt Solution: Two successful hits with rock-salt-based weapons will strip off Gol-Goroth's thick, scaly armour, rendering it vulnerable to conventional weapons.
• Sapient Tank: A shoggoth is bound within each Riesenhammer tank, which is controlled a group of five highly trained Black Sun sorcerers wearing shoggoth control helmets.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The naga know that the phaya are lost to their race, but the long and tragic history of the serpent people prevents them from killing these insane killers. Instead, they chain them to this reality and lock them deep within the vaults of Hsatth. Perhaps when the stars are right, Yig himself will touch these lost souls and cure them.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: If Cyaegha is under human control, it can observe and psychically report on the battlefield from its position in the sky.
• See the Invisible:
  • Ibn-Ghazi grenades are used in situations where dangerous invisible entities are likely to be encountered. As well as a standard fragmentation charge, these grenades also feature a small amount of an occult powder, which has the ability to reveal unseen entities, nullifying any concealment such as phase-shifting or invisibility.
  • The entity detector is calibrated to identify energy fields or emissions outside of normal background radiation or the visible spectrum, as well as unusual airborne pheromones. As such, it is extremely useful in identifying the presence of invisible or out-of-phase entities.
• See-Thru Specs: An Andersseher-Helm allows the viewer to see creatures and beings that the human eye is normally incapable of seeing, including star vampires and flying polyps.
• Sharpened to a Single Atom: Ophidian cleavers, honed to an almost molecular sharpness, are designed to remove limbs cleanly and quickly.
• Shock and Awe: A shoggoth Babbage engine builds up a charge of electricity to defend itself against targets in its immediate vicinity.
• Single Specimen Species: In the cavernous depths beneath Wewelsburg castle, Black Sun found a corpse-white tree, devoid of vegetation, whose trunk is covered in wicked, barbed thorns interwoven with the bones of fallen warriors, embedded within the wood itself. It is unique, the only one of its kind.
• Sinister Sentient Sun: The Black Sun is an aspect of Yog-Sothoth that manifests as a void-like star giving off a frigid, grey light that strips everything of contrast and depth, and much larger in the sky than our own sun, the Black Sun radiates an unbearable sense of malice and intelligence. Looking directly at the Black Sun burns the eyes just as looking at the sun does, but it is only when one looks away and sees the impossible shapes burnt onto their retinas, still moving, that the true nature of the Sun is revealed.
• Skeleton Key: When activated with warm blood, the Ayrshire metal could reshape itself to match its surroundings. Further experimentation by the Section M's espionage teams created a small number of Living Keys. When a key is inserted into a lock, the agent holding it suffers a wound which causes minor blood loss and powers the Living Key to reshape itself. Until reshaped again, the Living Key opens this lock as if it were made for it.
• Smashed Eggs Hatching: A bonecrawler bomb consists of a cluster of bonecrawler eggs. When fired or hurled, the eggs break upon impact, releasing very hungry and angry bonecrawler hatchlings.
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club: The Order of the Crocodile is currently more like a Sebek-influenced version of the Freemasons, an Egyptian businessmen's club with pseudo-religious trappings. Membership is fairly socially exclusive; even the lowliest entrant would, at the very least, have to be the proprietor of a prosperous store.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Each Ophidian city is ruled by a Sorcerer-Lord or Lady, an ancient and powerful being skilled in sorcery and alchemical science.
• Soul Eating: All demons share an overwhelming hunger for their favourite food: mankind's souls.
• Spawn Broodling: Servitor overlords can plant spores in humans which will later transform them into yet more servitors of Nyarlathotep.
• Stealth Sequel: The Assault on the Mountains of Madness campaign can be one to the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign from Call of Cthulhu, with the source book providing some information about the events of the latter campaign and letting the keeper decide whether or not to incorporate them. The details provided about the Starkweather-Moore expedition are deliberately left oblique, as the two campaigns don't perfectly match in tone or story, so the keeper would have to modify one campaign or the other for them to sync up. An aspiring group can treat the original Lovecraft story, Beyond, and Assault as a polar horror trilogy.
• Stealthy Colossus: The Schnee-Koloss are ambush predators, their large size often being cleverly concealed amongst the snow and ice by their all-white colouration.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Nachtwölfe is devoted solely to discovering and learning how to manipulate ancient Atlantean and Hyperborean technology, which is believed to hold far more potential to allow the Nazis to take control of and win the war. From force plates to power armour to energy weapons and beyond, Nachtwölfe lost no time in converting their discoveries into devices that could be employed on the battlefield to ever-growing efficacy.
• Super Serum: During one of its many digs in the Middle East, Nachtwölfe archaeologists unearthed a carved quartz vial, which contained a small quantity of a milky fluid, which detailed analysis revealed to have a remarkable boosting effect on living tissue. Keen to see if the serum could enhance his soldiers, Obertsleutnant Richter volunteered to become the first human test subject. Spurred on by the obvious improvements in his physique, stamina and reflexes, Nachtwölfe scientists began to develop their own version of Vitalität, though an exact reproduction proved impossible. Precisely what happened to those tested with Vitalität I-VIII is a closely guarded secret; with Vitalität IX, the researchers have come up with a compound that at least enhances physical prowess, albeit at the expense of intellectual acumen.
• Super Smoke: Djinn may assume a non-corporeal form which allows them to fly at incredible speeds and pass through even the smallest opening, and makes them impervious to physical harm.
• Supervillain Lair: Wewelsburg, a castle long associated with the dark arts, was used to imprison thousands of witches during the 17th century, many of whom are tortured and executed at the site. In 1935, it became the inner sanctum of the SS and the new lair of Black Sun, allowing them to carry out their horrific rites hidden from the world. Black Sun's activities have done little to dissipate the castle's ghoulish reputation, and the locals whisper of the shadows hanging over the castle, barring their doors whenever the black Mercedes limousines glide to and fro.
• Surplus Damage Bonus: How Momentum operates. Getting more successes than needed is transformed into a meta currency that can be used by the whole party to enchance their following rolls.
• A Taste of the Lash: Leather whips studded with fangs are used by Ophidians to discipline their slaves or encourage them to work faster.
• Technicolor Fire: The fire generated by the Schwarzer Flammenwerfer is a viscous black-green slime igniting on contact with the air. It does not burn so much as corrode, leaving a hideous stench behind.
• Temple of Doom: A few miles downriver of Aswan there is a dam to regulate the Nile's flow. When the water level behind the dam is exceptionally low, the top of a square cut doorway can be seen in the sandstone sidewall. Locals who know of the spot say it is a den of crocodiles and nothing more, and investigators will have to be extremely generous to convince boatmen to accompany them. Like an Egyptian tomb, the complex thrusts into the stone, and the interior is pitch black beyond the first raised hallway. Wall paintings depict the god Sebek in his later dynastic manifestations as a part of Ra. The whole place smells vile, the air thick with buzzing mosquitoes, and there are as many crocodiles in residence as the Keeper deems appropriate.
• Threatening Shark: The Father-of-All-Sharks is accompanied by a multitude of mutated hammerhead sharks whose hammer-shaped head is now covered in a mass of writhing tentacles which can be used to attack and hold an unfortunate victim.
• The Tunguska Event: On 30th June 1908, Evenk shamans attempted a ritual to summon Azathoth. Fortunately they failed, conjuring forth Pl'rvka, a minor deity that appears in the sky as a burning ball of fire which falls to the taiga, causing an apocalyptic explosion on a previously unheard of scale. It then disappeared from sight, burrowing deep into the earth, the only sign of its passing being the massive devastation left in its wake. And there, beneath the taiga, it slumbers.
• Tunnel King: Sand dwellers are capable of burying themselves very rapidly and effectively in sand with a shuddering motion that removes any tell-tale tracks from the vicinity. This permits them to ambush prey with great effectiveness, bursting up out of the desert almost from under the feet of their victims.
• Tunnel Network: An extensive network of tunnels runs under Leningrad. According to legend, during prehistoric times these tunnels were home to a race that believed in the might of a dark demiurge. When the first humans arrived, the ancient race burrowed deep into the bowels of the Earth, using the tunnels to secretly strike at surface dwellers. Otdel MI know that the tunnels are dangerous, home to cannibals, ghouls and other beasts, all of which increase their attacks during the siege. Some German assault squads uncover the tunnels and attempt to use them to launch surprise attacks into the city. Most are never heard from again.
• Transformation of the Possessed: Once the spirit of a naga takes over a human host, it begins to change the body from within until it is fully compatible with serpent physiology, though on the surface it still appears to be human.
• Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Reiner Lang is an odious and unwholesome man who shows little interest in hygiene, and his dark, darting eyes and rotten teeth only add to his vile appearance. His dress uniforms are spotted and smeared with untold stains and splatters of both his last meals and the remains of his experiments.
• Underground City:
  • Object 143 is an underground city in Central Siberia once inhabited by the mi-go and discovered by Leonid Kulik in 1927. Kulik describes Object 143 as an enormous underground settlement comprised of several thousand basalt structures incorporating bizarre, unnatural geometry. Some sections of the city appear to have been laid waste by a powerful weapon, while others remain strangely intact.
  • Access to the naga city of Hsatth is through three miles of twisting and treacherous caves which the naga can navigate effortlessly, but which present considerable dangers to humans.
• Unfriendly Fire: As the war enter its final phases, Mina Wolff starts ordering Nachtwölfe soldiers to bomb Black Sun facilities and make it look like an Allied attack, while Reinhardt Weissler orders his own men to 'accidentally' target Nachtwölfe on the battlefield and ensure that Nachtwölfe soldiers lack the Schwarzsonne armbands that would protect them from Black Sun's monsters.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Done deliberately with Momentum. The game expects from the whole party to act and play in such a way to constantly maintain their Momentum pool, allowing them to get through otherwise tough challenges. Since keeping Momentum going requires extensive teamplay, it becomes weaponised The Power of Friendship.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Nachtwölfe does not realise that the blue crystals, and the Blauer Kristall material fabricated from them, each contain a tiny sliver of Sarthothus. As Nachtwölfe collects more and more of the blue crystals, Sarthothus' presence is once again gathering. It is only a matter of time before Sarthothus sits fully formed in the minds of the most powerful Nachtwölfe members, with access to some of the most devastating technology available to man. It will then set Mina Wolff's technologists and warmongers on a very different course to the one she has planned.
  • The Thousand Sons is a new movement within the Japanese military cadre, apparently dedicated to the preservation and defence of the Empire. In reality, this order is a vehicle via which the naga can subtly influence Japanese policy and operations to their own ends, mainly to ensure they have access to the resources they need for their final transcendence. Human members have no idea of the true origin of the order. The jian act as the upper ranks of the order, guiding the oblivious human pawns and watching over naga concerns under human guises.
• Vampiric Draining:
  • Black Sun Degen possess the innate properties of all Black Steel weapons, but are additionally enchanted to drain the life of their victims.
  • Bloodborn eggs require blood to gestate. As bloodborns exsanguinate a victim, the eggs mix with the rich, vital blood and grow with alarming speed into new bloodborn.
  • The ys'bwor can eat and drink as humans, but they get their true nourishment from feeding on the life energy of animals, especially humans (apparently so they can savour the memories of their dying prey).
• Walking Tank: Not long after the Great Patriotic War commences, rumours begin to circulate of a strange tank appearing in the midst of battle, chasing down infantrymen and crushing them before rising on two mechanical legs and stalking from the scene. It would appear that Baba Yaga has found herself a new form, better suited to the modern age.
• Wall Crawl: The seiryu's reptilian DNA allows them to move at a normal rate across any surface, including walls and ceilings.
• War for Fun and Profit: Whilst the Ophidians did not start World War II, there are those amongst them who have taken a keen interest in prolonging and escalating it. They have embedded agents at all levels, on both sides of the conflict, with infiltrators from different cities operating unaware of involvement by others of their kind. These agents distribute misinformation or intelligence, always seeking to maximise casualties, as well as sabotaging peace efforts and protecting those in command calling for more brutal offensives. Some hope to goad humanity into a doomsday event that will end its dominance and trigger the rise of the serpent empire once more.
• Was Once a Man: When standing before the Black Sun itself and allowing its light to bathe them as part of their initiation into the Black Sun, some find their souls forever warped by the gaze of their terrible god. Their minds and bodies mutated and warped, they join the ranks of die Auserwählten. No two are afflicted in the same manner, but all show signs of the taint of the Black Sun, sprouting new limbs and writhing tentacles.
• Weakened by the Light: Born in darkness, die Toten have one weakness. Their grey, lifeless flesh is incredibly sensitive to natural daylight and, if exposed, begins to smoulder and burn. To counter this effect, they wear thick uniforms and steel masks, which have no eyeholes.
• Weather-Control Machine:
  • Intended for anti-aircraft defence, the whirlwind cannon is able to create a tornado that can destroy buildings or medium tanks. In optimum weather conditions, it can create a full-scale tornado.
  • The Sverdlovsk Meteorological Laboratory includes a main laboratory building equipped with a high-frequency electromagnetic wave generator that allows researchers to affect the weather anywhere in the Soviet Union, Poland, East Prussia and Finland. Exactly how the weather is affected is, for the moment, a relatively random occurrence as Institute 21 are only just coming to grips with the fledgling technology.
• We Didn't Start the Führer: Discussed and defied. Keepers are instructed to not paint Nazi atrocities as caused by the Mythos, at all costs. Nyarlathotep did not dictate the Wannsee Conference; Mengele was not channelling Yog-Sothoth in his surgeries. Playing it that way lets the Nazis off the hook: they were only following orders from Cthulhu's nightmares! Rather, humans who build industrial-scale gas chambers, massacre towns down to the children and house pets, and torture women in low-pressure capsules are the kinds of humans who find the Mythos. The Necronomicon doesn't make Himmler evil and crazy: Himmler is so evil and crazy already that he wants to weaponise the Necronomicon. As Lovecraft put it, first mankind 'become[s] as the Great Old Ones', then the Old Ones 'teach them new ways to shout and kill'.
• Weird Historical War: Achtung! Cthulhu is a historical horror game, one in which the Axis and Allies fight out a Secret War involving the Mythos behind the scenes of major battles and campaigns (with occasional centre-stage appearances). Whilst this Secret War will have an influence on the events and outcome of World War Two, neither the Secret War nor the Mythos can fully explain how the conflict pans out.
• Western Terrorists: La Fraternité de la Cagoule Rouge-Sang subtly wages its war of terror and blood-letting, causing mistrust between the different Resistance factions and, where possible, inciting them to do their dirty work for them. The Occupation merely widens the field of targets, with the Cagoulards holding true to their ideal of creating a blood-drenched, free French nation.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Although die blaue Reitgerte inflicts no more damage than an ordinary crop, the wounds have an unnatural indigo tinge to them, and are both difficult and slow to heal.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: While the hominids of Nachtwölfe are useful tools, when the Mi-Go have learned the secrets of the Blauer Kristall, they turn upon their erstwhile allies. The Mi-Go secure a large amount of Blauer Kristall before making an expeditious retreat, and Nachtwölfe covers up the betrayal using an Allied air attack as cover.

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