The Children of Fear

by Lynne Hardy

There have long been stories of two rival kingdoms, hidden from the world in ages past. Their names: Agartha, the City of Fear, and Shambhala, the City of Peace. Although their legends have become confused over time, there is one constant: that opening the gates of the hidden kingdoms shall herald the end of this epoch and usher in the new. And, whoever prevails wins the right to shape the new age in their image, for good or ill...
September 1923: an urgent and mysterious telegram from an American adventurer plunges the investigators into an epic journey across China, Central Asia, Northern India, and Tibet. Often following in the footsteps of the famous Chinese Buddhist monk and explorer Hiuen-Tsiang (immortalized in the fantastical Chinese saga Journey to the West),the investigators will encounter looted temples, lost lakes, dusty museums, charnel grounds, venerable monasteries, and hidden secret valleys in an epic quest to prevent the King of Fear and his lieutenants from destroying everything they hold dear.

The Children of Fear is a multi-part campaign, set during the 1920s, exploring some of the fascinating myths and legends of Central Asia and Northern India. The central core of the campaign is designed to be player-led, allowing the investigators to determine the journey they take. In addition, the plot is designed to be flexible, allowing for different scales or types of Cthulhu Mythos involvement all the way from the Outer Gods themselves down to a more low-key, occult-focused series of adventures. Guidance is provided for the Keeper to tailor the exact nature of the threat to best suit their group s tastes.

Eight chapters cover the sights, encounters, and dangers to be found in Peking, Sian, the Taklamakan, Peshawar, and Kham, to name but a few of the places visited during the campaign, as it travels from China, through Northern India, and on to Tibet. With detailed appendices covering travel, useful non-player characters, spells, a reference

Genres: Horror

416 pages, Hardcover

Published June 15, 2021

Reviews

[Ryan]

This is the sixteenth book I've read from the lot my friend sent me.

This is another long campaign module. The players trek across India, China and Tibet in an effort to stop a powerful entity known as the King of Fear from triggering the end of the world before its time as laid out by the ancient Hindu prophecy known as the Kali Yuga. The players will encounter many fantastical figures from Hindu and Buddhist lore while also having to navigate the bombastic political and social situations taking place all across Asia in the 1920s.

This is a really interesting book. The King of Fear is entirely derived from Hindu mythology, though the writers cleverly include ways of tying it to the Mythos if the Keeper so chooses but he's just as intimidating, unknowable and powerful as any major Mythos entity. They also do a great job of adding more minor Mythos elements that dovetail beautifully with the other mythologies at play. As usual, there's a great deal of historical set dressing, and I love it just as much as I do in any other CoC book. More so than most of these books, actually, because I know so little of the history of these countries in this era or the older eras that are covered to help inform the 1920s setting. This also has to be one of the cleanest CoC books I've read in terms of typos and other errors. Excellent book with a really unique setting and villain.

[Benjamin]

Part X of my sometimes project to read all the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition products I've bought.

The Call of Cthulhu RPG is known as the RPG with probably the best published campaigns, with "Masks of Nyarlathotep" being recognized as probably the best campaign ever. Chaosium re-releases that campaign, with some tweaks and additions, every edition or so (same with their _Horror on the Orient Express_), but I guess they were feeling the need for a completely original campaign for 7th edition that still captured the appeal of those campaigns: epic, mutli-part, and some flavor of exotic. Or put another way: part of the appeal of these sorts of multi-part campaigns is that your characters move around a bunch.

"The Children of Fear" hits all those requirements: your 1920s PCs are traveling around China, Tibet, and India, trying to enact a ritual to stop evil monsters from breaking into our universe. Just from that description -- before I get into any spoilers -- this might seem like a perfectly normal CoC campaign. The art is a mix of public domain historical photos and nice art, the pages are well-laid out, and the research seems deep and vivid, to the point that you could probably use this book as a good sourcebook for the time/location. (Chaosium makes a _Secrets of Tibet_ book, but nothing for 1920s China and India, I think.)

But this is a non-conventional campaign, and here I'm going to get into spoilers and also the little itch I had when reading it. Because the plot of this is: the PCs are being manipulated by an evil cult to enact a ritual which will actually open the gates to the evil "realm" of Agartha. (Whether Agartha is actually an evil city, an evil god-thing, or something else is up to the GM.) And so, though the PCs have some obstacles to overcome, these are things like a rat monster or grave-diggers or creating bone instruments. There's nothing particularly Mythos-y. Which is fine -- not everything needs squamous tentacles. But even though we get some exposure to long time frames, alternate moralities, and strange dimensions, I don't feel like this campaign is very horrific.

And there's something that really itches at me about the villain plot here: they want you to do something that they can't do themselves (because they need a willing and holy victim for the ritual, fine), and the main good NPC is convinced of this so will just tell the PCs that this is the right thing, so ... is there any way for clever PCs to rumble the truth before the climax? Or does it feel like we're just tricking them into doing something?

So, I found this campaign as a campaign to be a little slow and unhorrific and also a little too tricksy. But that said, I like so much of the incidents and episodes; and I can imagine using the rules for travel and the background here for other adventures.

(Now, all that said, I have seen a bunch of positive reviews and notes on how this campaign was good for both experienced and new players, so you may like it!)

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ohmigosh. That took forever to read. It's dense and packed with info. I think this could make a cool campaign, but I don't think it's one I'll ever run. It's also not really very Call of Cthulhu, feeling much more classic Pulp in the mold of The Shadow or Carnackie the Ghost Hunter. There is some advice for making it more Mythos, but it feels shoehorned in, at best.
Even if you're not planning to run this campaign, the book is full of useful historic and cultural information, as well as a lot of useful info about travel in the region, which will be a challenge. Large parts of Western China and Northern India, as well as some of the smaller countries around there, were going through a lot in the 1920s and good transportation was not high on the list.
Anyway, while not for me, I think it could make for a useful book for games set in that part of Asia.

[Hollowaxis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very high quality book. Well laid out and full of excellent art. The historical information and setting are brilliantly done.

However, the actual campaign and side quests are terrible. This would be incredibly boring to run and frustrating to play in. Simply a few fetch quests chained together. An incredibly frustrating 'twist' and then more fetch quests.
NO investigation, nothing to gugure out. Either a super powerful PC helps and tells the characters what to (while traveling with them) or he gives them explicit written instructions... And leaves them to go do those things while he does others.

The crux of it is, why are the investigators involved at all?

I will keep the book and perhaps use the information to run other adventures in the setting. Disappointed that this book doesn't work as a Call of Cthulhu adventure (which is why I purchased it).

[Ferio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia interesante, pero no es una historia de los Mitos: han cogido elementos de las culturas orientales, les han asignado rasgos homólogos a los de sus equivalentes de los Mitos, y han aprovechado que el sistema sirve muy bien para casi cualquier ambientación de terror. La verdad es que me ha costado un poco y he tardado un mucho en terminarlo, pero lo han salvado los capítulos de la segunda mitad, que han removido en mi interior un interés que ya parecía muerto aunque yaciera eternamente.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting attempt at a campaign set entirely outside the usual Call of Cthulhu haunts and drawing on a wider variety of cultural touchstones, but does include some conceits which may frustrate more than entertain depending on taste. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...