"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Have you ever wondered what lurks beneath the tidy veneer of reality? What if, by solving the right theorem, speaking the right words, and shedding just a little bit of blood, the things underneath it all could be made to sit up and pay attention? Careful though! Some of them are hungry...
Present-day Finland. Summer. Lapland. Mosquitoes, midnight sun, bogs, and barely a human being in sight.
When several young people go missing and something goes wrong with sleep itself in the normally sleepy little town of Peräköngäs in deepest Lapland, field agents of the secret Maahis- ja hiisiasioiden valvontavirasto (The Finnish Supernatural and Cult Matters Authority) are sent to investigate. It is their work to deal with the informational leakage between different dimensions – in a word, magic – and the dangers thereof, and the local field office very much indicated that something was amiss when they last made their report.
“The trolls are restless, the milk has curdled, and the locals are going mad. Send help.”
After that, nothing.
It is soon clear that something is very wrong in Peräköngäs. Why can't any of the residents fall asleep, and why do they seem oblivious to this fact? How is this tied to the mysterious disappearances among the local youth? What is really lurking out in the peat bogs? Where has the local field office disappeared to?
This is a game of fantastical horror mixed with ordinary workplace comedy, as the players take on the role of civil servants with a mandate to protect the common citizen from the horrors that lurk in the multiverse and monsters under the hill, while also try to keep their sanity unshattered and their expense claims straight, lest the ghouls of the Accounting Committee come after them.
(The setting is the same as the Laundry Files by Charles Stross, but no familiarity with this is necessary.)