“The natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s struggling breath.”

–H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

Blood on the Altar is now available for Arkham Horror: The Card Game!

The third Mythos Pack and fifth chapter in The Dunwich Legacy campaign, Blood on the Altar welcomes you to the eerie little town of Dunwich. The setting for one of H.P. Lovecraft's most beloved tales of horror, Dunwich has always been a bit more dangerous than it appears. And when you arrive to find that the townsfolk are all on edge due to a series of recent disappearances, there's already an almost palpable aura of danger in the air.

How are the Dunwich disappearances connected to the bizarre events in Arkham? Might they be related in some way to The Necronomicon and its sinister prose?

The answers to these questions are more hideous than you would ever imagine, but it's your job to find them. Along with the missing townsfolk and the secret chamber in which they await their gruesome fates. Can you find these abductees and stave off greater evils before it's too late? Much depends upon the results of your previous investigations. Much more depends upon your current haste.

Perhaps you and your fellow investigators should split up to cover more ground…

Lone Wolf

Due to the way that investigators interact with locations in Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you and your friends always find yourselves facing the classic horror story conundrum: stay together for safety and risk failing to complete your investigation in time, or split up to cover more ground?

There's a difference, however, in the way the choice is presented in the Arkham LCG® versus the standard horror story. In the standard horror story, splitting up is always the wrong decision. Nonetheless, it's the choice that the protagonists—or victims—almost always make. They split up, and then, one by one, they become prey. But in the Arkham LCG, the choice is real. There are dangers associated with splitting up, yes, but splitting up can also lead to real advantages.

For example, in Blood on the Altar, you need to locate the hidden chamber, and you need to locate the key that unlocks it. These are each randomly placed facedown beneath one of the five locations connected to the Village Commons.

You'll need to move quickly to investigate all five locations. Perhaps you'll get lucky and find the hidden chamber and its key at the first two or three locations you explore, but the odds are that you'll look for clues in one or two locations where your search leads only to new treacheries or encounters with violent townsfolk.

And with your time bleeding away—like the blood that flows from a sacrificial offering—you may look at your fellow companions and say, "Let's split up. We'll cover more ground that way." And it might even be a good decision, especially if you've developed your Talents as a Lone Wolf investigator (Blood on the Altar, 188).

Maybe you've become a Lone Wolf because you're playing solo, and you're the only investigator on this case. Maybe you've developed this Talent early on, but just haven't had to make much use of it until now. Maybe you've simply become used to watching your fellow investigators run after the shadows that flit through the alleyways and are now more self-reliant. Either way, by rewarding you with valuable resources, Lone Wolf makes you better able to work on your own.

Just make sure that you're wandering off on your own and peering behind closed doors without backup because it's the right thing to do, not simply for the resource benefit. You'll still have to carefully decide whether to split up or chase after your fellow investigators, and though Lone Wolf gives you an extra boost when you're on your own, you'll still find plenty of times you wish you had help.

Dark Omens in the Hush of Night

By day, the town of Dunwich leaves you feeling a touch uneasy. But by night, it simply resonates with a lurking sense of evil. Numerous signs point to the fact that something is terribly wrong. They're little things, and if you saw only one—or saw it in another context—you might think nothing of it. But as you walk the village streets under the pale moon and hear the rising and strident songs of unseen whippoorwills, you can't help but wonder if the villagers were right. Perhaps, the call of the whippoorwill really is an omen of death.

And if it is, whose death do the birds sing?