Box 13

Campaign Overview

*Box 13* is a Call of Cthulhu campaign that **began in 2015**. Five players each play both an actor (off-screen) filming a supernatural procedural TV show, and the character they portray (on-screen). The seam between the two layers will not hold. **As of Session 6 the timeline has jumped ten years** (≈2025): the crew's descent into the night floors **aired as an unfinished episode**, and the show is **still in production** a decade later.

Investigators (PCs)

Keeper: Stewart

Actor	Character	Player
Cory Vandermere	Elias Vance	Jeremy Magyar Groom
C.W. Patrick	Det. Jimmy Palmer	Jeremy Thomas
Daniel Boulton	Kip Fedora	Diana Wynn
Beckett Blank	Mordecai Mordant	Lazarus Fox
Wade Keegan	August "Gus" Vale	Rich Teachout

Active Plot Threads

Kyle Alexander Case — first case; Kyle is the only survivor (in hospital); Ryan, Jessica, and Clarence confirmed dead
Amy Langon Case — second case; Amy found alive at museum; blood, a statue, and a beer bottle in a dusty basement
The Actor-Character Seam — the seam is breaking; the Rooftop Symbol (the Yellow Sign, per The Red Book) crossed into the on-screen world; Marcus speaks scripted lines; Mr. Wild appears in script and person. Session 6 tore a third layer open: a book held the real player's dream (The Sleeping Man's Library); "Have you seen the Yellow Sign?" spoke through the whole party (The Daribondi Clipping); the entire night-floors descent was filmed — O'Nay called "cut, great episode." Mordant is named on the bottle (The Group Photograph). Session 7: the seam is now off the set entirely — an LA anniversary masquerade tuned to the case, the Red Book surfacing on the plane to name Hastur, and Tara dreaming of a hospital she can't leave
Sterling Horselover disappearance — missing from a locked roof with no exit; HBO's line was "on hiatus"; Session 6: he appeared in the night floors doorway doing the join-us gesture (only Cory saw him) — and is still gone ten years later. Session 7: glimpsed again in the masked crowd at the LA anniversary gala — the same evening the show eulogized him as its departed creator
Abigail Wright Case — Operation ALICE; Abigail Wright missing from her McAllistor Building apartment; Session 6: the crew entered the night floors (a dream-built structure of puppets, re-staged deaths, and trapped people), learned the ritual is "herbs, words, stones" (Hygromanteia), met the trapped David — then the descent was cut and aired as an unfinished episode. The aired finale removed the night floors entirely — on-screen, the team leaves empty-handed and Abigail is never found. Mr. M is angry it was never completed; the case is open, ten years cold. The Art Life Dossier gives the building a 65-year history — owner Henry Lundine died on the roof stairs in a white mask (1952), his musician son hanged in the ballroom (1950), and the architect was a suspected child-drowner. Session 7: the marionettes were real veterans murdered in 1955, faces skinned off — the night floors re-stage a real killing (Carter and Burbach Records); and Daribondi built nine mundane-looking NYC buildings that still stand, one of them the Hotel Broadalbin on Madison Square Park (The Daribondi Books). On-screen, a pine box delivers The Zielony Invitation — routing the crew to Boston's Gateway Bridges Restaurant (the "GBR" from Abigail's napkin), stamped with Marcus's green triangle and hiding a Goetic-sealed cipher
India Moon — new (Session 8); Dr. Barbus hires the crew to find six of the group's own missing operatives (The Operative Roster) — committed to Boston's Dorchester House Psychiatric Facility (dir. Richard F. Dallan) after contact with the book of many titles, then vanished together on 28 AUG 2015. Recover the book but do not read it (a rule Beckett already broke). Shares its codename with the radio in Abigail's apartment; a wall verse names Abigail as a rescuer — and the facility's own site shows Abigail was a patient there (demon-named nurse, "a new script for life"). A continuation of the Abigail Wright Case running through the same ward. Then the twist: a "sat phone" Barbus gave them — opened up, it holds no electronics, only rock, earth, a green leaf and a dung beetle — delivered a kill order: "Agent Executor is out of his depth. Dr. Dallan is the target, and is to be eliminated." The recovery job and the assassination may be two operations under one codename. Research ties the ward to Daribondi — same architect as the McAllistor Building, so likely its own night floors — and a 3 AM delivery (stiff courier, brown truck, the same stamped box) hands the crew an Access Level 3 card to the facility's locked third floor. Meanwhile Palmer has cracked — seeing a mannequin hand him a box that was really a dirt-caked suitcase. At the door, the trap sprang: the card let them in, the world went black, and the party woke as their actors — stripped, in blue pajamas, each alone in a bare cell — committed as patients of the ward. The seam inverted and locked (The Actor-Character Seam). Then Dr. Friendly told Carlton the counter-story: they haven't worked with Amy in 10 years and have always been patients here — the whole show may be the delusion. Actor-vs-patient is the new seam. Pressed, Friendly dates it — the last real episode was "the museum" (Session 2 — Episode 7) — so the whole Abigail/night-floors/ten-year arc is, per the ward, delusion. Carlton's escape got him beaten down by Mr. Ed and the orderlies, then "go back to sleep"
The World Remade — the ten-year-gap handout: a 2015–2025 timeline that begins as real history and ends in an America of lethal chambers, a federal register of banned publications, "First Families," and serious dynastic talk — Chambers' Repairer of Reputations 1920, installed as the campaign's ≈2025 present

Key NPCs

Mr. M (Alan Ladd) — Director, Box 13; soft-spoken; shark instincts
Sterling Horselover — Showrunner
Tara Orlando — Sterling's assistant; sees everything
Amy O'Nay — HBO rep; does not leave
Special Agent Marcus — CDT agent who retained Box 13; real name Dr. Marvin Bloom, head of NY's X-Files M-cell

Sessions

Session 1 — Kessler — March 30, 2015
Session 2 — Episode 7 — October 22, 2015
Session 3 — Something Big — November 15, 2015
Session 4 — Places, Please — November 2, 2015 (filming the Nov 28 finale)
Session 5 — The Tenants Stir — Nov 29 off-screen / on-screen 10 PM in the Macallistar
Session 6 — Great Episode — into the night floors; the descent airs as an episode, then the campaign jumps ten years
Session 7 — Ten Years On — 30 OCT 2025; the LA tenth-anniversary masquerade (Horselover glimpsed and eulogized), the Red Book on the plane names Hastur, back in Dallas Tara dreams of a hospital she can't leave and Alan tries to quit. Plus the loose-end research: the marionettes were real 1955 murder victims and Daribondi's "B" hotel is the Broadalbin. On-screen, a pine box delivers The Zielony Invitation — a Boston lure to the Gateway Bridges Restaurant (the napkin's "GBR"), green triangle and hidden cipher included
Session 8 — India Moon — Fall 2025, Boston; the Zielony "party" is a hiring meeting with Dr. Barbus (crunchy with paper, reeking of oil). He commissions Operation India Moon: find the group's own missing operatives, committed to a Boston facility after reading the book of many titles, then vanished together 28 AUG 2015 — recover the book but do not read it. A wall message names Abigail Wright as a rescuer; the codename matches the radio from her apartment

Box 13 — Campaign Index