Hey,
Just listened to the Wives of March conclusion and loved it. ^_^
I thought about it and it seemed like so soon after the podcast had been put up people might want some kind of spoiler buffer, I hope this is ok.
[spoiler]It really made me wonder if in a longer campaign whether one of the by now probably quite jaded and bitter companions might consider feeding information to an outsider in the hopes that they might bring about their deaths earlier if they were able to wipe out the 'shoggoth' thing birthing them all when they die. The self destructive element could be a double edged blade for a player character making use of this help though, I mean if you're really really old, angry and crazy and all you've got to choose between is dying in the next ten years and dying in the next thousand years maybe this means you don't help them to the best of your abilities because you don't really expect them to succeed. Possibly you send potential 'rescuers' in to harms way unprepared but you know they won't stop trying seeing as how you've clued them in on the future of humanity being at stake. The sappy part of me also envisions a dramatic anime ending where there is only one pair of companions left and after tearfully reuniting one last time they turn into sparkling light when the last 'shoggoth' is murderised, finally released from their endless torture and in the knowledge that it didn't cost them all of humanity into the bargain. It's only
slightly off tone for the scenario.
But seriously, I did in addition to being horrified by it all feel genuinely bad for the companions. It kind of reminded me of Tithonus and how his lover? wife? Eos asks Zeus to grant him immortality but forgets to ask for eternal youth and so Tithonus ages away forever, apparently turning into a cicada and still living on only begging for death. I guess that's a more passive version of this though. The lessons being, contracts with meticulously read fine print are a must have when negotiating your own immortality.[/spoiler]