My first steps

During the early 2020s, I started sketching out a few drafts for scenarios I wanted to develop. They were all in Swedish and set in Sweden in the 1920s – the default era for both Call of Cthulhu and the Swedish Call of Cthulhu Sverige.
I actually got some additional motivation from a competition that was arranged in 2022, on a Swedish Call of Cthulhu Facebook group, about writing a synopsis for a scenario set in, yes, Sweden in the 1920s. And I just happened to have an idea.
Long story short, my contribution won! The jury called it “a chilling tale told at the intersection of modernity, folklore, and cosmic horror”. And as a part of the prize was getting help with developing the synopsis into a full-fledged scenario and getting it published at DriveThruRPG.
This was to become Händelser vid Svarttjärn, in which a construction company hires the investigators to negotiate with villagers in a remote and rural part of Sweden regarding compensation for relocating to make way for a planned hydropower plant dam on the Hammarforsen river. But the village is protected by mysterious forces that have held sway over these parts long before any people arrived.
A funny thing is, I was at this time working as a communication manager for a major hydropower company, and much of the historical background in the scenario was based on facts.
In Händelser vid Svarttjärn, I introduced the brook horse as a Cthulhu Mythos creature. This mythological beast occurs in various versions of legends in several parts of Europe, including Sweden. In Scotland, it’s known as the kelpie.
This scenario was also the first I translated into English, then titled The Flooding of Black Tarn.
Both of these, I wrote and designed by myself, having no training or actual experience in publishing, using Google Docs. I relied heavily on public domain photos from Unsplash and DigitaltMuseum, but I also invested some money to buy the rights to include artwork by Lars Strömquist for the brook horse, and also some original NPC illustrations. If you can afford it, I highly recommend commissioning actual artists (even better if they’re local) to make your ideas come across.