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FURTHER READING

Everyone approaches a larp differently. Some of us want to know every detail before deciding to join, while others only need a quick overview. Both approaches are perfectly valid.

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If you are the kind of player who enjoys reading everything, you will find plenty of material here to dive into.

 

If you prefer a simpler path, then read the front page, Is this larp for me? and practical. This will give you enough to decide whether The Last Call is right for you.

Below is more detailed information on many aspects of The Last Call.

THE STORY AND EXPERIENCE

You will play a member of one of several smaller cults, called through dreams and visions by the slumbering Great Old One. You will travel to a mysterious island, drawn there to join others in performing dark deeds, rituals and sacrifices. Your actions will help empower cultists across the globe, each of them facing a world already collapsing under climate change.

Together, you will prepare the way for the corpse city of R’lyeh to rise again and for Cthulhu to be unleashed upon a humanity too blind to see its own ruin.

There are three main groupings present:

  • The various cults of Cthulhu

  • The mutated hybrid spawn of the Deep Ones, children of the sea who worship Dagon

  • Agents of another Great Old One, infiltrating the gathering in secrecy and acting on the hidden agenda of their inhuman master


You will be entangled in far more than rituals and sacrifice. You will be consumed by ambition, betrayed by intrigue, and caught in the constant struggle of factions clawing for power while the end of all things draws near. At the same time, you will face the slow death of Earth itself, its air, waters and flesh poisoned beyond repair.

Beneath it all lies the deeper truth of cosmic nihilism, an alien universe where human choices echo like whispers in a void that does not care to listen.

You will watch your character’s humanity unravel, thread by thread. What the world calls sanity will slip from your grasp as zealotry takes hold. You will witness and partake in deeds most people would call abhorrent, and through them, you will gain a sharper sense of the inhuman forces that rule the cosmos. In the end, you must decide what, if anything, still matters to you in a universe that has no concept of mercy.

MADNESS AND DEPRAVITY

There will be rule systems and calibration tools to shape the play, but they are not where the true experience lies. The heart of this larp is not in the mechanics, but in what you dare to risk with your character.

It lives in reaching for ambition and failing because you were too weak, too greedy or too blinded by your own hunger. It lives in allowing yourself to drift toward madness, to let yourself fall, piece by piece, until nothing recognizably human remains. To taste the truth of the cosmos. To dissolve in order to be remade. To be lost in order to finally belong.

You may cling stubbornly to your humanity until the very end, your sense of self battered but unbroken. Or you may surrender to the fall and let go of yourself layer by layer until nothing familiar is left. Both choices are welcome and oth choices will shape the story, and both offer their own rewards in the face of a universe that does not care whether you survive whole, broken or not at all.

PLAYSTYLE

The Last Call is a larp where we encourage players to explore the descent into madness, what it means to become a monster and to slowly lose what once made you human, all within a cult with strict rules.

At the heart of the larp lies a simple philosophy: personal drama is where the deepest play emerges. On the grand cosmic scale, there are no true victors, only brief struggles and inevitable ruin. By creating stories together in which triumph is fragile and loss carries weight, every participant can find something fulfilling in the experience.

Lovecraft left much unsaid, covered in vagueness and silence. Here, we choose either to take artistic liberties or to reshape his writings in ways that create the most compelling story. This is not a larp of happy endings or heroic victories. There is no single mystery to uncover, no final puzzle that must be solved to make things meaningful. There are competitive elements in the design, but this is not a larp one can truly win.

The story is woven together, and its power lies in that shared creation rather than in conquest.

Makeup and prosthetics will be available for those portraying the hybrid offspring of the Deep Ones. This is not a larp where monsters arrive only to be slain or admired. The horror is subtler and more insidious. The true monster is what you may become, or what you are willing to carve out of yourself in order to follow your ambitions.

DO I NEED TO KNOW THE CTHULHU MYTHOS?

You do not need to have read Lovecraft or know anything about the Cthulhu Mythos to play The Last Call. Everything you need will be explained on the website and in the workshops before play.

If you enjoy having a bit more context and atmosphere, we encourage you to read some of the stories and terms below. None of this is mandatory, but it can deepen your experience and give extra flavour to the world you are stepping into.

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RECOMMENDED MYTHOS READING
You can read any or all of these. Short stories are enough.

“The Call of Cthulhu”
Introduces Cthulhu, the sunken city of R’lyeh and the idea of scattered cults preparing for their god’s return.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth”
A coastal town, strange fishlike people and the Deep Ones. Very relevant for the Hybrid Children and the sea worship in this larp.

“Dagon”
A short, early story about a sailor who encounters something from the deep. Good for mood, ocean dread and the feeling of a mind unravelling.

“The Dunwich Horror”
A rural cult, a monstrous offspring and a community living with a secret they do not fully understand.

“The Colour Out of Space”
Cosmic horror expressed through environmental ruin and a landscape slowly dying from something it cannot fight.

A NOTE ON H. P. LOVECRAFT'S PERSONAL BELIEFS

H. P. Lovecraft has been a major influence on horror fiction, but his racist and often homophobic beliefs, expressed both privately and in his work, are indefensible. These views have no place in our world today.

The Cthulhu Mythos has grown far beyond Lovecraft. It has been reshaped by many different writers and creators who have expanded, challenged and transformed it. We engage critically with this legacy, embracing the cosmic horror and mystery while rejecting the racism and bigotry present in parts of his work.

This event is a space for exploration, storytelling and shared creativity. We are committed to inclusivity and welcome all participants. Themes of the unknown, fear and discovery will be explored with care and respect. Together, we create a world where horror is immersive and thought provoking, yet open to all.

WHAT IS COSMIC HORROR

Cosmic horror is the realization that humanity is insignificant in a vast and indifferent universe. It is the slow dread of confronting truths too immense for the human mind to hold, and of recognizing that gods and monsters alike care nothing for us.

 

For The Last Call, cosmic horror becomes a tool for play: not through jump-scares or monsters in the dark, but through atmosphere, ritual, and personal drama.

 

Players can explore what it means to cling to fragile beliefs, to grasp for power that will never be enough, or to surrender to the inevitability of forces beyond comprehension.  Here, horror is not only in the cosmos itself, but in what we become when we realize we were never at the centre of the story.

MYTHOS TERMS THAT MAY NEED EXPLAINING

These are Cthulhu Mythos related words and concepts that might be unfamiliar if you have not read Lovecraft. You can use this as a small glossary on the page or in the player handout.

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  • Cthulhu
    A vast, part-human, part-dragon, part-octopus entity that lies “dead but dreaming” in the sunken city of R’lyeh, waiting to awaken.

  • Cthulhu Mythos
    The shared fictional universe built around Lovecraft’s stories and expanded by many other writers. It includes Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, other gods and a particular style of cosmic horror.

  • Great Old One / Great Old Ones
    Powerful, ancient entities that exist on a scale far beyond humans. They are not “gods” in a human sense, but beings so immense that people often worship them as such.

  • R’lyeh
    The drowned city where Cthulhu sleeps. Its geometry is impossible and inhuman. When R’lyeh rises from the ocean, it is a sign that the world is ending.

  • Deep Ones
    Amphibious, immortal beings from the sea that worship Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. They often make pacts with human communities, resulting in hybrid offspring.

  • Father Dagon and Mother Hydra
    Two oceanic Great Old Ones associated with the Deep Ones. They are often depicted as enormous sea creatures worshipped through sacrifice and breeding.

  • Hybrid Children / Deep One hybrids
    Offspring of humans and Deep Ones. They often look mostly human at first, then slowly transform, developing more and more sea creature traits as they “grow into” their heritage.

  • Cosmic horror
    A type of horror where the true terror comes from recognising that humanity is small, fragile and irrelevant in a vast, indifferent universe filled with things we cannot understand.

  • Eldritch
    A favourite Lovecraft word for things that feel strange, wrong and not entirely of this world. Often used about architecture, sounds, movements or entities that do not fit human logic.

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