This is part of my campaign report for Horror on the Orient Express.

If you followed my previous advice, your players should be eager to investigate Paris to find the piece of the simulacrum that remained in France. However, there is still a risk that they will not want to stick around. This is one of the major flaws in the campaign structure: it repeatedly introduces the idea of a race against time that doesn’t practically exist. My players wanted to leave Paris immediately!

  • London introduces Makryat who wants the Simulacrum, but is secretly waiting for the investigators to gather it for him
  • Paris introduces Fenalik who wants the Simulacrum, but is also secretly waiting for the investigators to gather it for him

In later chapters, legitimate foes will appear who are truly racing against the investigators, but mechanically the investigators always arrive at each location just in time to foil their plans, so again secretly there is no urgency. You could try adapting the campaign to handle investigators who show up late or even skip a location entirely, but good luck going entirely off-book.

Because of this, my investigators immediately proposed 1) departing Paris ASAP without investigating anything and 2) splitting up to try to get ahead of the other seekers of the Simulacrum, both disastrous prospects for me as keeper. To try to keep this on the rails, I had to force them to spend a couple days in Paris (“Sorry, there are no more Orient Express trains for a few days”) and fudge some of the Library Use rolls to ensure they found enough interesting tidbits to keep them digging for more. It was so bad that even when my investigators went to visit the Loriens, they were still asking me “Can we make it back to Paris in time to catch the Orient Express tonight!?” So I had to keep up the game of making it super clear that interesting stuff was going on there that was worth looking into.

This was fairly easy to do, since the book provides lots of weird things to happen. My main struggle was with clearly portraying the Loriens as victims. Even after retrieving the arm and lifting the curse, my investigators still suspected the Loriens of somehow being complicit.

As recommended on Reddit, I liked having Fenalik appear when the investigators sleep over at the Loriens (since they are unlikely to meet him at the asylum). This is a super fun scene to play. I had him appear as a black mist, which appeared again in the cellar, making the retrieval of the arm very tense. My players were expecting a boss fight and were baffled when the mist simply flew out of the room. For his first appearance, I tried translating his questions into different languages to enhance the effect:

  • “What god do you serve?” in Latin (Sanguis Omnia Vincet): “Cui deo colis?”
  • “Who is king?” in French (Les Fleurs du Mal): “Qui est roi ?”
  • “Who do you seek?” in Frankish (The Dark Crusader): “Hwat suokis thoo?” (This is a guess, I couldn’t find a source for how this language was spoken)

For Latin/Frankish, have them test INT to recall the sentence later to be able to look them up.

Some handout notes. Edit Paris Handout #6 to make it much more compelling, otherwise your players may try to skip Lausanne as well. Ensure they get Dreamlands Handout #2 at some point if you want to run The Dreamlands Express and drop a reference to The Devil’s Simulare being found in Venice if you want to run The Dark Crusader.

In preparation for the Milan chapter, have Caterina Cavallaro sing “Vissi d’art, vissi d’amore” from Tosca (rather than Aida) on the train and give out tickets for the same. Remember that you will likely need to recap key details of this chapter much later on, as your players are about to have a very long dream.

Next: Ch 2.5: The Dreamlands Express