Clod of Cthulhu: Sewer Shark This Ain’t

Still a wee bit on the loopy side, but I’ll push through it—I’m a man on a mission. I’ve got a character to mock, and if I have to deprive myself of sleep to do it, I can rest easy knowing it’s for the greater good of mankind. Or, actually, I guess just sit here and type easy, because I’m not really resting at all. And the whole good of mankind thing might actually be –yeah, actually, let’s just dive into the review.

Anyway, for a lethargic dunce who’ll risk evisceration if it means he can get his beauty sleep, Jack’s a squirrely little bugger in a tight corner. He manages to give the Innsmothketeers the slip time and again, utilizing his previously-unrepresented stealth expertise to do what he should have done from the start: run away from the Gorton’s Fish-men, and not look back.

Anyway, at some point, he bumps into a somewhat-sympathetic townie who tells him that the order will track him down wherever he goes—anywhere, that is, but the sewer. “Down sewers is the only place that them folks balk at venturing… and for good cause at that, mind you.”

Wow, what an ominous, clearly-foreboding statement that states unambiguously that the sewers are not just unpleasant, they’re dangerous. Allow me to patronize you by saying, “I can cope with foul air; it’ll be a welcome change from the smell of dead fish.”

The guy patiently explains that there are demons the likes of which I’ve never seen before lurking in the sewers. Jack completely brushes him off—blah blah shoggoth blah, you’re not scaring me, I’m sure it’s just one of your crazy folk superstitions. There’s no such thing as monsters—the massive nightmare creature that I unleashed six years ago, have only recently begun remembering, and have had dreams about for the past few nights, was probably just…like, I don’t know, mass hysteria or something. Mini hysteria? Whatever. And that fish-creature that I got a clear look at before it escaped and tore apart a young girl—everyone knows that raccoons are frequently mistaken for violent abominations by amateur cryptozoologists. Go talk about your eldritch evils somewhere else, I’ve got a cult to run away from.

Jack decides he ultimately wants to go into the sewer. He does this by removing the block from a truck parked on a hill, getting in the back, and letting it roll free down the street before plunging past two guards into a deep, inexplicably open sewer pit. As it begins rattling unchecked down the cobbles, leaving him to roll around with no handholds or seatbelts in the back, he comments, “I’m not so sure this was one of my better ideas.”

Well, let’s look back. Came here, nearly got arrested, got a girl killed, the whole…inn…thing…. actually, Jack, when you look at the numbers, it actually might have been one of your better ideas. You really have reached a point where rolling down a hill while standing in the back of a truck, letting it plunge down a deep pit into raw sewage while crazy cultist hicks shoot at you, is one of the top five best ideas you’ve had all night. Congratulations.

You’re an idiot.

So, not much to summarize about the sewers. You get creepy visions, you see the girl you killed earlier, you bump into some shoggoth slime—oh, and those loveable townies drop down the body of the drunk guy you met earlier. Hey, who would have thought that aiding and abetting an outsider would lead to an untimely death?

Innocent People Jack’s Gotten Killed: Three.

Actually, wait a minute, about that drunk guy. This game takes place in the US during the 20s. There was this thing called prohibition during that time. We clearly see Mr. Drunky staggering out of a bar earlier, and Innsmouth doesn’t strike me as a speakeasy kind of town…where was he getting his booze? What’s going on, writers?

Jack escapes the sewers, pokes around, and finds the house of the mysterious woman (Rebecca). Her father was a man of God—not a very popular thing around these parts—and she’s sympathetic to Jack’s plight, and agrees to finally cut the crytocrap and tell him what’s happening.

The following is a direct excerpt from the game.

Jack: Save it, sweetheart. You found anything more on Brian?

Rebecca: He never made it out of town. The Order has him holed up in the old
jailhouse… until he’s needed.

Jack: Needed? Needed for what?

Rebecca: Sacrifice, Jack… to Dagon. They’ll take him out to Devil’s Reef, and
he’ll never be seen again.

Jack: Dagon? Sacrifice? This is crazy talk. Innsmouth’s old fishing tales have
muddled your mind.

Emphasis mine.

Jack, you are just about the stupidest meathead sonofabitch I have ever seen in my entire goddamned life. Are you just completely out of your skull? “Guh, sacrifice him in the name of Dagon? Don’t be silly! You’d have to be a total nutbar obsessed cultist to do something like that! Not unlike, and this is sort of a random example, the horde of total nutbar obsessed cultists who have been chasing me all night, and have been murdering people for religious reasons for like fifty god damned years!” Jack, just what the hell are you high on? Because if it’s life, I think you’re going to smoke yourself out of it real soon.

Finally, he allows himself to be persuaded that this evil murderous religious order who’s framed Brian, captured him, and kept him locked up, is not merely planning to throw him a surprise birthday party. Rebecca explains that he’s locked up in a jail, and the quickest route for Jack to take is a tunnel hidden under Rebecca’s father’s old church. They don’t like going in there, so once they arrive they should be safe.

For some reason, Rebecca feels the need to go with Jack. She’s shot and killed.

Innocent People Jack’s Gotten Killed: Four.

Jack gets inside, completes an easy puzzle to get into the tunnel, completes an annoying puzzle to proceed further, and ends up making his way towards the jail. He bumps into the FBI guy, Mackey—Mackey gives him some cryptic nonsense, some exposition about a guy named Robert Marsh who runs a refinery nearby and is in charge of the Order, and gives Jack directions on where to find the jailhouse. Thanks, pal. Hey, I know you’ve got a gun—how about lending it to me? No? Okay. Fine. Sure, fine.

Jerk.

(Almost done with Innsmouth—the idiot finale of this chapter, I’ll save for next time.)