There are so many unknowable eldritch horrors, not all of them get to use a museum or ruined mansion for their schemes. To avoid the waiting list, other potential properties are available.
Toy Shop
L’ondeki has a fondness for children. They are so ready to believe what they’re told. The big new shopping mall on the edge of town has a huge octagonal toy store at its heart. The manager leads the cultists in arranging the toys and the shelves to point at the centre piece display. During the day the toys shape how the children play, whispering words only they can understand. At night the toys guard the store, waiting for the time when the children will come to them and bring their master forth.
Garden Centre
Nygnygtla despises all animal life. In her blissful garden realm there will be only the peace of endless flora. She finds wonderful irony in using a shop where people enslave plants for their beauty to bring about humanity’s ruin. The garden centre sells the most fragrant flowers, the smell of which binds and twists minds. The cultists gardeners obsessively tend to the trees, which whisper as you walk between them. Each spring the winds spread Nygnygtla’s power further and further.
Retirement Home
Iqudang feeds on bitterness, regret and the pain of lost memories. What better place for it then where the elderly reside? Its cultists own and run a chain of retirement homes across the country. The residents are carefully selected to meet Iqudang’s tastes; underachievers, the ill and those neglected by their families. The cultist staff fuel their fear and channel their unhappiness via rituals in the basement. The residents are prevented from dying, living on so that they may feed Iqudang’s insatiable maw.
Aquarium
The Phaigha are not one entity, but thousands. They swarm in the freezing ocean depths but cannot survive the dry human realm. The aquarium owned by their cult has a pleasant public face, but only a quarter of the tanks within are on public display. The others are filled with dark and sinister horrors pulled up from the deep below. These abyssal creatures are the true servants the Phaigha. Once enough of them are secure upon the surface, they will cause a great flood to begin their master’s dominion.
Haberdashery
The power of Yakenephac is in the ancient runes unique to him. These words of great power are known only by Augusta Primrose, an elderly woman who owns an old Haberdashery. The sole cultist of Yakenephac, she knits and sows the runes of power with her weekly knitting group. Her book of knitting patterns came third in a county contest and its originality was. After a life of work the task is nearly complete. She has crafted nearly all the runes and soon will need to put them in place. The yarn god cometh.
Image Credits:
- Estate Agent’s Window by Paul Wilkinson – CC-BY-2.0
- Dolly Shelf Sunday by Hitty Evie – CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0
- Radio Flyers by Mary Beth Griffo Rigby – CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0
- USF Health in The Villages by Ted Eytan – CC-BY-SA-2.0
- CRW_5289 by Frank Chan – CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0
- Chapel Market by Lucy Fisher – CC-BY-2.0