And shove he did.
Skids (Pizza), Akachi (Zebra), Hank (Wings), & Darrell (Me) vs. Glaaki with the Lurker. Dunwich was the only other town, but saw very little action.
This was the first time my Lurker Herald was meeting other players. I hoped the Lurker put in a good enough showing to get a definitive yes or no as to his continued use. Unfortunately, we also pulled Glaaki (still my arch-nemesis), because I haven’t found that the Lurker really makes any specific AO behave any better or worse (except maybe Yog), so I didn’t “trim” the AO pool before drawing. The funny thing is, Glaaki pretty much left us alone for quite some time, only rearing up for the endgame…but he made sure the rest of the game plowed us but good.
Akachi (for Seals) and Skids (for Story) went Clue hunting, Darrell went shopping (Press Pass!), and Hank went monster-hunting with the brand-new sledgehammer. Wings loves to kill things, so it’s great when she gets an Investigator that excels at that. Plus she had the Skullcrackers Relationship with Zebra.
On his second turn, Darrell failed to read Zanthu tablets, and then lost another Sanity grabbing a free Knife at Hibbs. The Lurker is quite the boon for Darrell’s excrement-laden Story, allowing him to use a little Power to Seal since he can’t have five stupid Clues, so I just decided to take a Soul Pact now and hop into a Gate with full Sanity. Boy, that was optimistic. 
There was a Ghost and a Cthonian in the Downtown Streets, and let me give you some foreshadowing: in this game, almost every time a Cthonian moved, we rolled a 4-6. I have never had an Akachi beaten so ragged before. Akachi had a plan, to sneak past Downtown and cast Curse of Darkness to remove the giant worm to the Outskirts. On the way, she failed to sneak past the Ghost (even with a Sneak Skill, Blackest Night, and her Survivors Relationship with Skids!), but for the plan to work, she couldn’t take even a slight graze from the Ghost. So we all watched demoralized as Akachi’s giant Clue pool dried up. She did finally pass on her last roll, so the plan did work, but Pizza thinks that it was twists like this that helped us destroy ourselves. The Cthonian was removed, and then Akachi successfully decrypted Darrell’s Zanthu Tablets for the other Curse of Darkness (to remove the Ghost).
A Reckoning forced someone without a Dark Pact to take one. After seeing a coupld of these Reckonings, Pizza wanted no part of these, and Wings wasn’t all that thrilled either. So Zebra gave Akachi a Soul Pact and then used the Asylum to load up on Power to replace all her lost Clues, and dove into Another Dimension at Independence Square.
Hank pulverized a Byakhee, but then failed to Evade his Wraith partner, and then failed the Horror Check, thus failing his Story (not the worst Story Fail at all; it’s actually kinda “balancing”), before finally evading it. Didn’t matter: next turn, more failed Evasions had the Wraith knocking him unconscious. Hank only had his Sledge and no Clues at this point, so Wings just went old school with an extended Hospital stay to avoid drawing an Injury.
A Reckoning took Akachi’s free Gate Trophy. We went from a -1 Luck Environment to a -1 Fight Environment. The Dreamlands MotorGate came into play, and immediately moved into the Streets. (Boooo!) Since it could only be closed now anyway, Darrell closed it (since Akachi was already offworld) for a Story trophy.
Then more disaster. After an extended evasion of an Elder Thing which had surged onto her Gate the turn she was Returned to Arkham, Akachi hadn’t held onto enough Power or Clues to Seal, settling for a closed Gate Trophy. Luckily Hank Sealed the Lenglands Dual Gate in the same turn, removing that tenacious Elder Thing.
Why aren’t I talking about Skids? Because Skids was having an awesome game while the rest of us were nursing fractured spines and shattered souls. Skids had passed his Story (odd Pass Results for his stats…), gained a Control Gate Spell, a Book of Dzyan for more Spells, and the Pharaoh’s Staff to cast them! I think the Lurker left him alone as a curiosity.
Akachi went after the other Moving Gate (Another Dimension), which had also trundled out into the Street the moment it opened. Then Darrell got Reckoned inside the same Gate, and got stuck out there with two Delays! We decided that if Akachi closed it, Skids could use his Control Gate to get the third Another Dimension Gate in the bag to give Darrell a way out…
…oh right. I’ve tested a few different Gate Cup compositions, and I’ve decided I like to throw in a few of the old Gates with the new Lurker ones, giving each Other World three Markers instead of two. I haven’t found it changes much mechanically, but it does heighten the possibly-false hope that you just might get a Gate that won’t do something weird. Believe me, there is definitely that small heart pinch when you know that not every Gate is a bushwhack, and you might just get lucky…before you get crushed all the same. I call this the Ghatanothoa Effect, and any way I can get that into my games is a huge emotional win. 
…which allowed us to replace the revolting R’lyss Dual Gate at the Woods with the Yuggother Dimension Dual Gate. Modifier-wise, it really wasn’t that much better, but Darrell was eventually able to Seal it with five Power.
Skids, still refusing to make a Dark Pact, spent his whole wad of Clues to pass the Good Work Undone Rumor. You have to admire his resolve, the holdout weasel.
As if the game wasn’t absolutely killing us with bad dice, it decided to really heat up the electrodes: the Southside Strangler showed up. This is the Rumor that Glaaki LOVES, as it feeds him Servants every turn. Hank went to the Unvisited Isle to get the Servant, not realizing that Spawns aren’t trophies and it might just come back. (Did I not make that clear…? Oops.) Wings was very upset that the Spawn had taken the Press Pass she was planning to use to build to the next Seal, but since no one had the Clues or the Power to end the Rumor, it was only five turns to Glaaki waking up, and we only had two Seals. As much as I pleaded with Skids to just take a Dark Pact and end the Rumor, he wouldn’t do it. (Pay no attention to how many times the Reckoning Deck booted Darrell and Akachi around like soccer balls!) Now here was the real beauty of the situation: because of the stupid Fourth of July Parade, a one-brained Akachi couldn’t get north to gain Power with her Soul Pact because of an impassable Formless Spawn at Rivertown, and Hank couldn’t leave the Unvisted Isle! So Akachi took a Blood Pact and ate into her precious Stamina to end the Rumor. But not before Glaaki got two more Servants out, one of them being the same one as the first, confiscating Hank’s Sledgehammer. Wings was VERY UPSET with me.
By the time Darrell had gotten his second trophy sealed, a double-doom Mythos (curse me for preserving a shadow of Dark Pharaoh!) had brought Glaaki to Doom 11. We had squandered our Clues on so many bad rolls that we felt had required survival, but Akachi had ended up with Double Vision and a Head Wound anyhow, two very bad injuries for an Akachi player could have. (Pizza has become very concerned with our inability to hold on to our Clues.) Our lack of Seals was shameful, but it cannot be said that the game even tried to give us a break. Any luck we found we scratched out of the wooden coffins ourselves.
When Glaaki woke up, we were so ill-equipped it was painful. Akachi had nothing (and still no Sanity to cast Spells), Skids had Grapple, Hank had an Enchanted Knife, a Fight Skill, and Skullcrackers, but was Cursed, and Darrell had the Pharaoh’s Staff. With a one-time Intervene, cumulatively, that’s about ten dice. And we threw them all at Darrell’s useless permanent Retainer. Four successes total. Glaaki LAUGHED. 
Glaaki took away all our Unique Items after that. That left Skids with one Intervene to give three dice to Darrell. Nothing. After that, it was the Hank Show: roll for Curse, roll two-dice Combat Check, raise terror level. Three times Wings rolled a six on the Curse, and at least one 1 on the Combat Check (once, she supremely rolled Snake Eyes). The Curse was finally lifted at Terror Level 8, and Glaaki absorbed us all into his undead horde with ten Doom Tokens left.
Not sure what to say here. That was one of the nastiest games I’ve played in recent memory, even without some of the more notorious Mythos Cards. The labeling of the Lurker as a “Guardian” is just silly: the ones that had bargained with him were totally violated, our Sanity and Stamina crushed to powder by a dozen other game elements, effectively rendering our “game-abusing” Dark Pacts virtually useless. Pizza will bellow his haughty laughter at such a notion. Not quite as certain about Wings; I honestly think her rage at Glaaki will overpower any rational debate over the Lurker for a while. On the other hand, Zebra seemed to enjoy his abuse quite a bit. I kinda did too. I certainly enjoyed goading Pizza all night:
“Try it!”
“No!”
“It’s free!”
“No!”
“You’ll save us all!”
“NO!”
Heeeeeeeeee. 
the grand slug is still my arch nemesis too. But lately the game here has been equally crushing - Nyogtha awake by 3 doom tokens,followed by Bokrug at 6. Adding Lurkers boost to Too many open Gates makes a need to speed up your game even more and delay is deadly.