Arkham Horror - The Scarlet Keys Campaign & Why Ancient Artifacts Matter
The Arkham Horror LCG is a fantastic and often frustrating game. Like many other games I’ve covered, it also has a lot to do with both Lovecraft and Archaeology. I’ve written a fair amount about it before, but I recently started re-playing The Scarlet Keys campaign, and I had some new thoughts about how the game reflects archaeology.
Lovecraftian Archaeology
Unlike other short stories, the Scarlet Keys and the source material doesn’t have anything directly to do with archaeology in the same way something like At The Mountains of Madness does. Instead, it is a little more indirect and subtle, which makes things more fun to dive into.
However, the globetrotting nature of The Scarlet Keys campaign and the way that the game has you collecting various artifacts, or at least keeping track of them, has a wealth of information to get into that does correlate to various archaeological topics and themes. Granted, anything that has to do even marginally with the human past can be tied to archaeology, which is a big part of the fun of studying it, but there are a little more specific details here.
The Scarlet Keys
This campaign, unlike others in the franchise, seems to be a mostly original creation. While there are bits and pieces taken from Lovecraft’s stories, the main storyline is fresh and new. There are keys referenced in some of his original works, mainly The Silver Key, but these are different. And, as far as my research has shown, the Red Gloved Man seems to have no basis in the original stories themselves.
I find this very refreshing. As was pointed out in this article from WBUR, creating something fresh has the advantage of allowing FFG to sidestep the racism and xenophobia present in many of Lovecraft’s stories. I’ve spoken more directly on that subject in Under the Pyramids, but given that this is a globetrotting adventure dealing with many different cultures in the 1920s, it would’ve been easy to keep those negative themes present; however, they were not.
What I really want to talk about today, however, are the keys themselves.
The Keys As Powerful Ancient Artifacts
Ancient artifacts have always had a “mystic” sense about them in the popular imagination. This is partly due to authors like H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, but it goes back far further than that as well. Even ancient peoples believed that objects older than their civilizations held power that others did not. This includes items like the Shield of Achilles, which was supposedly looted by Alexander the Great when he visited Troy (though probably in reality he didn’t take Achilles’ actual shield - but that’s a different article).
However, it is far from the only example. The Aztecs believed Teotihuacan to be a holy city, when it was abandoned long before they rose to power and began to see and use it as such. There’s something about ancient history that has always drawn humans to see it as something more powerful than their present reality, even when we know that it was made and created by other humans just like us.
In the case of The Scarlet Keys campaign in the Arkham Horror LCG, there are eleven total keys that represent powerful artifacts that you can find throughout the game. Some of which you can earn, some of which will become guarded or found by another character. The campaign changes quite a bit depending on where you go and who you choose to side with, so where they end up is up to you and how well you play.
While I don’t want to get too bogged down in details, I do have the images of several of the keys here, so that you can see them. You can skip past them if you don’t want to know what they do.
Three of the eleven keys you can earn throughout the campaign (Credit: FFG 2022).
For those that know me, you might already guess that The Light Of Pharos stands out to me the most. This one, unlike most of the others, is a direct reference to a historical place in the region of the game you find it in. Alexandria was the first place I headed off to once given the choice. The Light of Pharos is directly linked to the Pharos of Alexandria, otherwise known as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I spent a long time studying Macedonian history during my studies, and seeing this was quite exciting.
As a side note, project PHAROS is currently working on digitally restoring the Lighthouse from blocks found underwater.
The Eye of Ravens might well be a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, but that is not clarified. However, we do get a few clues as to what these items are throughout the Scarlet Keys campaign. The first (or at least the first one I came to) big hint is, in fact, in Alexandria when players get the chance to speak with the Claret Knight. He reveals that the Red Coterie, the organization that the player works both for and against throughout the campaign, is an agency that works to protect these powerful artifacts and use them to defend humanity from outside threats.
Ece in Constantinople will tell players much the same thing, as will others. You do get a fair amount of the same information from different sources, given that the campaign is more modular and not as linear as most of the others. The Claret Knight is the best source of information if you make a deal and hold up your end of the bargain.
The most important bit of knowledge is that the Red Coterie protects objects that are too powerful for most to wield but too valuable to discard. He also reveals that they are used to do battle against forces that come from outside our world, and that these relics are humanity’s last line of defense. In the final scenario, these objects and others are used to help you defend humanity from these external threats.
But that’s the game.
The Power Of The Past
In real life, however, it is still very much a common belief that very similar artifacts hold power. It is portrayed over and over again in pop culture. You can see Indiana Jones and the Nazis fighting over them throughout the series, various mummies reawakened in the Mummy franchise with them, even a singular powerful artifact in a museum causing havoc for one security guard in Night at the Museum.
This doesn’t end in fiction.
The search for powerful artifacts on the part of the Nazi party was real. Alexander believed that his newfound shield gave him power when he acquired it (at least as far as we can tell from the historic texts), and there are still people searching for the Ark of the Covenant. Regardless of whether these items actually have magical powers or not, they do contain a real and weighty power over people. The power of the past is enormous, and it is used over and over again to exert real forces on entire countries and more.
Bettina Arnold has a lot to say on the matter, specifically concerning Nazi Germany, but that isn’t where the story ends. It’s a good example to use, because almost everyone is familiar with it, but you can see it at play today. It’s why there are protests for and against the statues of Confederate generals being taken down. It’s why museums still exist. It’s why nation after nation uses the imagery of Greece and Rome to command power. It’s why Trump’s campaign ran a promise with a slogan to bring a certain past back, even if that past was quite different than the rose-tinted version nostalgia carries.
The past shapes elections, creates meaning, and can even define the physical health of future generations for a long time to come. These objects in a game are representations of that. The Red Coterie might not exist, but the power the past has to change the course of humanity remains quite real. Archaeologists need to be careful when interpreting the past for that reason, as it can be used to do harm and to do good.
I’ve had people ask me why I chose a “useless” major, but I don’t see it that way. It’s a very dangerous one. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be rewriting history books when it suits us. The past is important, and recognizing that it is dangerous and that it does hold power - even if its not supernatural - is just as important in real life as in a game.
For now, I’ll return to my current run through of The Scarlet Keys and consider how best to use these keys to save the world from an external and supernatural threat. But I’ll always keep in mind just how much real power the past has, and how we must be careful how we use it and be aware of just how much it can also be used to influence us without our knowledge.
