The Timeless Terror by Marco Danili is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. through the Miskatonic Repository Community Content Programme for use with Call of Cthulhu, the horror role playing game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. This is a modern-day scenario.

The supplement is available as a 13-page PDF for free from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and one the front matter.

The Timeless Terror explains that this is designed for the 7th Edition, works with a variable number of investigators and should take about 4 hours. The entire adventure takes place on a train during a limited time frame.

The Introduction explains that the investigators are invited by a friend of theirs, a geologist, to visit his camp in Canada. He’s discovered an ancient crystal that he wants to show them. However, a Yog-Sothoth cultist is on the train and knows what the crystal is and plans to summon the god with it. The train is then stuck in a time loop and the investigators are the only people who know this as they were awake at the time it happened. There’s an overview of the five repetitions of the loop and some more details on the geologist and cultist.

The Adventure starts off perfectly normally on the train, with details of what happens during each hour. They end up discovering that their friend has been murdered and may discover that the crystal was stolen. The events, without the murder and theft, repeat until either the fifth loop or the investigators stop it. If they fail to stop Yog-Sothoth’s summoning. the god will appear and they will die. Events are not always perfectly duplicated in each loop, even without the investigators’ actions, and they can get clues from this. Even stopping the train doesn’t stop the summoning.

Locations details the various places of importance on the train.

Conclusion looks at several possible endings for the scenario.

Finally, NPC’S gives the stats for the various NPCs and one monster.

The Timeless Terror in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though short, has enough sections that these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two-column format and various minor errors were noticed. As well as the map of the train, there are some pieces of black and white filler. Presentation is okay.

This is a simple enough, though potentially very deadly, adventure. There are more than a few Sanity losses and the potential of Yog-Sothoth appearing and ruining everyone’s day. This may be comparatively straightforward, but that doesn’t make it easy or safe; this is a decent little adventure that may work best as a one-shot. The Timeless Terror can be downloaded for free by clicking here.