Think Wickerman (not the new one with Cage, the older one with Hammer fan favorite Christopher Lee ). Even play it in Summerisle for mood. Weave in moral corruption beneath a veil of civilization with a covenant or town or manor's villagers practicing quant old rituals over a facade of piety (come to think of it sounds like a lead into most Lovecraft group stories). Throw in a search for the child/person, an innocent to cause the companions or magi to dig around. Slowly introduce moral corruption to give the "things aren't quite right". Then at the last moment drag in the infernalist descended of Diende, the Diende, or hedge magicians descended from Diende. Christopher Lee as a Diende covenant prima. An infernal Britt Ekland to seduce a player character... Or maybe just a lucky grog. Could get a nice contrast between pagan and Dominion theme. Then, In the best gothic fashion everyone (or almost everyone) dies, with a lone author escaping pursued by eevil. Or he goes mad (just like Lovecraft).
An interesting idea. I am quite the Lovecraft buff, and did have some fun using thinly-veiled approximations of the Cthulhu mythos and its beasties in a Mage campaign a few years back. That said, since most of my players are also well-versed in Lovecraft and Call of Cthulhu, I think I should shy away from overuse of Lovecraftian atmosphere and squamous creatures, for fear of over-familiarity.
It's still an interesting concept though, and I'd be interested to hear more if you get any further with it.
I like this. The Wicker Man is one of the finest horror films ever made, and pretty much all of my games wind up featuring a Christopher Lee-esque NPC somewhere. (I can do quite a good impression of his voice.) That said, I'm trying scrupulously to avoid the over-use of classic horror tropes. See Chaosium's Goatswood and Less Pleasant Places for an example of just how badly it can be done. Likewise, I've always been dubious about the 'Return of the Diedne' plot device. I'd rather use them (and our old chum Dav'nalleous) as bogeymen to keep the player characters on edge than as outright antagonists.
A good idea, dealing with the loss of friends remains a surprisingly under-used challenge in roleplaying games. One of my favourite, and seemingly most effective, tools for impressing a sense of mortality and helplessness, which I used in my Provencal saga, was to let the player characters make plenty of friends and contacts early in the story and then have them all killed or ruined as the game went on.