When most of us think of Arkham, Massachusetts, we tend to think of the classic aspects of Lovecraft Country. We think of the dry lectures on obscure religions and strange cultures at Miskatonic University, the bizarre pieces of art found hanging in campus galleries and the dusty shelves of the restricted section of the school library. You think of aging houses with dark secrets, late-night meetings of secret societies, and the whispered, fevered ravings of the mad and delirious in the Arkham Sanitarium.

In the classic era of the 1920s, though, there is another aspect of Arkham that is often downplayed or forgotten about; crime. The Roaring 20s was the time when organized crime rose to prominence in the U.S. thanks to the government’s ban on alcohol, and along with the bootlegging trade there came other crimes as well; prostitution, gambling, theft, assault, murder and worse. And though these are aspects of life that Lovecraft would have had little knowledge of (and even less desire to put on the page in his work), for a game setting, though, the criminal elements present throughout Arkham can be a useful tool for Keepers, as well as for investigators trying to solve various plots.

Whether you need to flesh out the seedy underbelly of one of the game’s most commonly used cities, you want to introduce a rougher element to your game or you want to explore what it would be like to have everyone play investigators who are part of the criminal underworld clashing with cults and other servants of the Old Ones, the following NPCs should help you breathe a little life into this part of Arkham’s existence. While some of these characters are independent operators, others are members of specific gangs, and some are even dancing on the fringe of the law, all of them may prove useful to your story. Lastly, the NPCs are arranged by neighborhood/district, making locating them within Arkham an easier task for the Keeper.

Here are some sample results:

44. Joseph Skinner: A rawboned man with high cheekbones and a thick, black braid of hair, Joseph was one of the sky walkers working in New York City on their various skyscrapers. Nobody knows for certain what brought this Mohawk man to Arkham, but he’s often found doing odd jobs around River Town. Quiet and self-possessed, he’s also capable of scaling a wall with the speed and surety of a mountain goat. While nobody can prove it, there’s suspicions that more than a few break-ins across the city have been by his hand.

45. Fredrick Rainier: An older, black man who did big time for a small crime in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, he took up blues music to keep his soul. Billing himself as a jazz musician these days, he’s quite popular as an entertainer on the south side of Arkham. While he does his best to stay out of anything that would put him back behind bars, most “respectable” places won’t let him inside, much less pay him to play. So he’s wound up in speakeasies and gin joints, and those who are allowed in past the front door can attest to just how fast his fingers can work his guitar. Even if he’s just guilty by association, it’s the town’s gangsters who make sure he has enough money to keep his strings and pipes in order for the paying customers.

46. Annabelle Barker: An olive-skinned woman on the tailend of youth, her dark hair is worn in a bob cut, and tattoos peek out from the edges of her sleeves. Annabelle runs a cafe in River Town that’s quite popular among the artists and writers on the Miskatonic campus, as well as some of the working-class philosophers in the city. While the place is usually heavy with smoke of all kinds, there’s never liquor to be found there. There are, however, lots of guns kept in a hidden backroom, along with maps and plans. Annabelle and her associates are card-carrying communists, and while they try to use logic and reasoned arguments to sway the student body to their side of things, they know that the money that’s been buying politics all these years can only be stopped with bullets.

Released: 10th June 2023 Pages: 15

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