Hi everybody,
today we played a game against Cthulhu & the Black Goat, and something unusal (to me) happened, as a consequence of an encounter in the Strange High House in the Mist.

So, Rita was in the SHHitM for a chat with William Bain, and she was instructed to go to the Dreamlands, draw to OW cards, resolve one and then return to the Strange House. She went to the Dreamlands and draw the two cards, as instructed. One of those cards said "pass a Lore (+0) check to [...]. If you succeed, return to Arkham".

As a general rule, if I've understood this correctly, if you are in a location (A) and draw an an encounter saying "move from (A) to the location (B) and have an encounter there. Then return to (A)", but the (B) encounter forces you to go in a third place ©, then © is the final destination.

Is this a case where the above mentioned rule can be used? If she had chosen that card (in fact, I chose the other one, because it was of great help for the whole team), would she have been able to return to Arkham through an open gate to the Dreamlands (well, no gates to such an OW, but she had the Gate box, so technically whe could have returned everywhere) and then close / seal it, or in this case the "return to Arkham" should be intended as a "return to the location from which you arrived", thus the House in Kingsport?

I think your understanding is correct. If your encounter in the new location sends you to yet a third location, then you don't return back to the first location. Since, in this case, you had a Gate Box, you can return to any open gate! Otherwise, of course, there is a chance that you could have been Lost in Time and Space, no thanks to Bain...

The way I think of it is that Bain had something equivalent to a magical tether that can rope you back in (not to be pictured as an actual glowing magical line: the psionic equivalent). But when you get unexpectedly pulled to yet another location, the tether is drawn too far and breaks. Or, you've gone out of reach of Bain's influence and are lost to him.

Tibs said:

Thank you, Tibs ::smiling:: It was a very... tricky (?)... series of events... I reached Bain via a Mythos card, Traveller lost in the fog, and not via the Causeway, moving there from the 2nd area of Yuggoth... then back to the Dreamlands... can't imagine the jet-lag ::laughing::