This adventure begins with the party being summoned to a meeting at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana. Any party members who are not Federal Agents already are hired as FBI consultants. The ostensible task is to investigate the death of a local law enforcement officer who appears to have died from heavy metal poisoning, but it's all rather odd. That usually takes some time, but he became ill and died in a couple of days, and hadn't been in contact with any heavy metals anyway.

The Introduction explains in a very few words what the problem actually is, then launches into getting the party tasked and onto the scene. Apart from a loose timeline of what NPCs would do unless the party interferes with them, the rest of the book contains information you can draw upon depending on what the party decides to do. Despite this apparently free-form nature, there are some things the party will need to pick up on, although the necessary lines of inquiry ought to be pretty obvious once the investigation begins. Generally, there is more than one way to pick up a given clue, in case the relevant skill is not held by any party member or someone flubs a die roll.

There's a remarkable amount of detail, and much of the investigation will rely on interacting with a regular army of NPCs, all of whom seem to have an individual 'voice' - their reactions and personalities are well-described making them easy to role-play when encountered. This does mean that there's a lot to absorb before you run the session, but this preparation does make for a vivid and compelling scenario.

The threat is very real, but it is possible to contain it - at least for now - giving the potential for a more satisfying victory than is usually available when investigating the Mythos. There's a fairly short section about what might happen afterwards. Overall, this is a cracking little investigation with a bit of an X-Files flavour to it, which should make for a memorable game.

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Reviewed: 13 November 2017