31 Days of Character Creation #20 – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation

I’ve run through this character creator twice before and it is one of my favorite ttrpg tools I’ve ever played with. The characters you create are full of interesting hooks, conflicts, and contradictions. I decided to forgo building a whole Call of Cthulhu character as it is a little more time consuming than I would like. Here you’ll have a very strong foundation to stat out the character as you see fit.

The book is described on its DriveThruRPG page thusly:

Heinrich’s Guide is a role-playing product for creating character backstories through emergent storytelling. Experience your investigator grow up from strange going-ons accompanying their birth, to them finding love (and then rescuing said loved one from cultists), to skipping class to spend more time studying esoteric pursuits, to being recruited by a “Secret Government Agency,” to traveling to other dimensions!

Heinrich’s Guide is not a standalone product and is enhanced through use of Chaosium’s Seventh edition Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook and the Investigator’s Handbook.

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I went through the process and came up an incredibly fascinating character in a contemporary context. Meet Baylen Sari.

Baylen Sari was born under grim circumstances in a prison hospital in American Samoa. His mother, Amelia, imprisoned for drug dealing and theft, passed away during childbirth, leaving him in the care of his elder sister, Kiara, who was just eighteen at the time. Kiara’s resourcefulness became the foundation of Baylen’s early life, and she went to night school, became a nurse, providing her little brother with a comfortable middle class life.

Baylen’s intellect was apparent from a young age. By the time he was six, he could read complex texts and solve puzzles that baffled adults. However, his brilliance was overshadowed by a troubling aspect of his childhood: his imaginary friend. The entity, which called itself “The Dead Eater,” was no figment of his imagination. It whispered secrets to Baylen, revealing knowledge far beyond his years. The entity’s presence grew darker over time, manifesting in ways that left Baylen plagued with nightmares and an phobia of corpses by his adolescence. His Catholic upbringing added another layer of conflict, as he struggled to reconcile the entity’s existence with his faith.

At fourteen, Baylen claimed to have been visited by an angel, an event that solidified his fervent religious beliefs. He described the angel as an awe-inspiring being of light, imparting cryptic but profound messages about his purpose. Whether this encounter was divine intervention or another supernatural phenomenon remains a question Baylen himself cannot fully answer, but it became a pivotal moment that steered him toward a lifelong fascination with the unseen.

Baylen excelled academically, earning scholarships that took him to a small but prestigious university on the mainland United States. While pursuing his doctorate in parapsychology, he stumbled upon a hidden library in the depths of the university’s archives. Among its collection of forbidden texts, one tome stood out: the Key of Solomon, also known as the Clavicula Salomonis. This grimoire seemed to resonate with him on an almost spiritual level.

Baylen stole the book, driven by an inexplicable compulsion that he attributed to his angelic visitation. He believed the Key of Solomon could provide him with the means to protect humanity from malevolent forces. Since then, he has used its rituals sparingly and with great caution, often employing its protective seals and invocations during his investigations. However, the theft did not go unnoticed. Years later, the university hired Andy McCray, a private investigator, to recover the stolen artifact.

After completing his doctorate, Baylen’s reputation as a parapsychologist grew. He was approached by Cecelia Moses, a figure of immense wealth and influence who offered to fund Baylen’s work without explanation. This patron’s motives remain a mystery, but Baylen’s suspicions were piqued when he was required to get a tattoo of a stylized black goat on his left forearm. Though he agreed, the experience left him uneasy. He could not shake the feeling that his patron might be an avatar of a cosmic being. The truth eludes him, but the pact has provided him with the resources to pursue his work on an unprecedented scale.

Baylen’s greatest professional success came during an investigation in Chicago, where a dilapidated tenement building was plagued by a spectral entity with no distinct form. The spirit’s presence brought misfortune to all who lived there. After months of research and sleepless nights, Baylen discovered the remains of the spirit’s physical body, hidden in the building’s foundation. He performed a ritual from the Key of Solomon to destroy the remains and sever the spirit’s connection to the mortal realm, successfully purging the haunting. The event cemented his reputation as a capable and dedicated parapsychologist.

Meanwhile, Baylen’s personal life remains fraught with challenges. His sister, Kiara, was recently arrested on charges of drug trafficking. Despite their close bond, Baylen finds himself questioning whether she might be guilty. She’d fallen on difficult economic times and was still friends with the people that got their mother sent to prison. As he juggles his professional endeavors, the mysteries surrounding his benefactor, and the lingering presence of supernatural forces in his life, Baylen remains a man caught between the mundane and the arcane.

Click here to check out the full character sheet in detail