The Forerunner (RPG Horror)

It was Christmas Eve.

I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and the habit clings to me.

Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary to mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story ... Jerome K. Jerome, Told After Supper

I've been reading a lot of ghost stories over Christmas. I've a small collection of Ash-Tree Press books, any of which I'd recommend to a reader interested in older, more obscure ghastly tales. I'm not saying they're all winners - far from it. But when they work, they are brilliant. 

Christmas is a troubling holiday. In the early days of the Church the date varied; it might be celebrated in January, March, or December. However in pagan traditions, and in particular the Roman Saturnalia or observance of the birth of the Sun in Mithraic tradition, the proper celebration was in mid to late December (17th to 24th). Since the early Church depended on converting pagans it was felt prudent to shift the Christmas celebration to its current date. 

This, mind, is also the season of the Lord of Misrule. The dead return; in fact, in some traditions that's the whole point. In former days the entire house would be swept clean, the meal prepared, everything laid on - and then the family would go to church, leaving the house empty so the ghosts could visit, and feast. 

It's traditions like these which give birth to the old habit of telling ghost stories at Christmas.

One of the collections I've been reading is by David G. Rowlands: The Executor. Rowlands is a ghost story nut; he picked up the bug by reading M.R. James' work many years ago, and couldn't shake it. His style is similar to the Jamesian Circle, authors like Swain, Munby and Wakefield - in fact Rowlands is so fond of Swain's work he wrote several stories about Swain's clerical the Rev. Mr. Batchel and his Stoneground parish. I very much admire Rowlands' work, though he does have a habit I find annoying. He refers back to the old classics explicitly, by name, having his characters say things like "why, this is just like the events in Charles Dickens' The Signalman!" Do that once and you're forgiven; after the third or fourth repetition it becomes annoying.

For this post I want to develop an idea Rowlands uses in his very short piece, The Previous Train. I can't discuss this without spoilers, so be warned - but The Previous Train is only one small piece among many others, so I hope you'll forgive me for spoiling this one.

His long-running protagonist, Catholic priest Father O'Connor, is trying to catch a train. As with many of Rowlands' works the exact date is unclear, but judging by the circumstances it's probably 1930s-adjacent. He's in the Suffolk countryside, it's late at night, and there's nobody but O'Connor at the station. Even the station master has gone home, and there's little light; O'Connor has to read the train timetable by the glimmer of his bicycle lamp.

O'Connor hears an approaching train. It's not on the schedule, so he assumes it's not stopping and is probably a goods train, so he moves back from the track. However it is a passenger train and it does stop at the station. Thanking his lucky stars, he tries to put his bicycle in the goods wagon, after which he intends to board.

By the dim light within I saw the Guard. He was standing at the hand-break in the center of the floor. The feeble interior light came not from the lamp overhead, but seemed to emanate as cold phosphorescence from the very fabric of the compartment.

The Guard had not moved, and I was about to put my questions to him when I saw the cobwebs over his uniform, from his arms to the brake pillar; from the clutter of packages on the floor to his legs; across his face ... 

Fortunately O'Connor escapes, by luck more than judgment. It transpires that this ghost train isn't a relic from the past but a warning of things to come, for one year later exactly there is a wreck on that line and all aboard are killed.

Forerunners are supernatural warnings of approaching events says folklorist Helen Creighton, and are usually connected with impending death. They come in many forms, and are startling, as though the important thing is to get the hearer's attention.  

They share many characteristics with the German Doppelganger in that both phenomena can appear as warnings of tragedy soon to come. Or of tragedies just this minute playing out; Poe's William Wilson and the later short The Student of Prague play on this theme. An evil twin separates from the original - literally the protagonists' reflection, in Student - and goes off to create chaos.

Forerunners don't have to appear as a person; they can be an event, a sound, a recurring phenomena. A similar trick is often used in science fiction narratives, where the forerunner effect is often played off as some kind of time loop.

 

In The Previous Train the forerunner is a train, but it's not clear why it appears to O'Connor. After all, there's nothing the priest can do to stop the tragedy, even supposing he knew what the forerunner was trying to say. Nor is there any suggestion that this is a personal warning; there's no risk O'Connor will catch the train on the fatal day.

Moreover the forerunner in Previous Train is malevolent, potentially fatal. 

The jolt swung the figure of the Guard around like an awkward puppet and I looked into his dead face. I am convinced that my heart stopped for that instant, then I felt it pound away again. The skin was seamed and gray, blotched with decay and softly luminous. The last straw was to see a dim spark of light deep down in the eyes, behind the cobwebs. It was not the light of intelligence, but some infernal animation building up ... building up from the emotion and vitality that were draining out of me!

Using this in an RPG is a little tricky, in that the whole point of a forerunner is that it happens before the action happens. So where in your average scenario all the really gruesome, action-packed stuff happens towards the end of the narrative, in a forerunner story the supernatural unpleasantness happens in the first few moments of the narrative, and the players spend the rest of the session unravelling it.

For that reason I don't think a forerunner suits a one-shot session. A one-shot demands action in the final scenes, as a kind of pay-off or reward for a shorter narrative span. However it could be a really effective device in a long-running campaign, where there's a big event coming in the final chapter and you want to give the characters some advance warning. It has real potential as the inciting incident of a longer narrative, in which the characters' ordinary lives are violently interrupted by a blatantly supernatural warning, which they spend the rest of the story trying to understand.

It could be a very interesting trick if the forerunner creates duplicate versions of the characters, as with The Student of Prague. Then the GM has ready-made antagonists for the campaign, enemies who will advance in power as the characters advance and will oppose the characters at every opportunity. Always one step ahead, the doppelgangers ruin the characters' reputations, upend their triumphs, undermine their successes. No matter where they go, they can't escape. 

In any kind of horror setting the forerunner springs from the same source as magic. If magic happens because of demons, then the forerunner is demonic. If magic is the result of super-science beings meddling with the fundamental building blocks of the universe at the dawn of time, then dopplegangers are an after-effect of those same experiments; the universe's version of a bad acid flashback. If, as with Bookhounds, the energies of the city itself power magical effects, then those same energies can create forerunners.

A megapolisomantic working uses the city as a sorcerous engine to accomplish magical effects. Whether the city generates magical energies, or merely focuses pre-existing forces (astrological, geomantic, divine, Mythos, etc) is a metaphysical matter left up to the Keeper. Are all cities megapolisomantically significant? Bookhounds of London, p 76.

Let's say for the sake of this discussion that this is a Bookhounds game and you, the GM, want to use a forerunner event to set up a later, Mythos-relevant disaster. Let's also include Megapolisomancy, with the presumption that it's the innate power of the city that causes the event.

From that we get:

Shadow Train

This seed presumes the characters' book store is somewhere near an Underground Station. That's not difficult; there are plenty to choose from, including a long list of fictional stations. I'm going to call this station Hobb's End, after the station which plays a major role in Quatermass and the Pit. 

One or more of the characters are waiting for their train. It is the end of a long day, and they are exhausted. It is close to midnight, and there aren't many other people with them, down there in the dark.

It gets darker. The station lights flicker and dim, and characters with magical or megapolisomantic ability sense a disturbance, as if something powerful is gathering strength. There comes a pulsing of energy from the tube line, perhaps heralding an approaching train - but as the whatever-it-is emerges from the tunnel the station lights fail altogether, plunging the platform into darkness.

The characters can still see. Whatever-it-is coming out from the tunnel sheds its own ghastly light.

It's not a tube train, at least not as they know it. It is black, and its livery doesn't match any train line they're familiar with. It grinds to a stop but its doors do not open. 

Sitting in the train, so close the characters could touch them, are the characters. At least, in every possible way these creatures with their dead, luminous eyes resemble the characters. They gaze with indifference at their living counterparts. Try as they might, the characters won't be able to get on board the train or communicate with their doubles.

There's something else on the train. Large, motile, a mass that flows and bubbles.

With a sudden start the train begins to move again, and soon it eases down the tunnel. Once it's gone, the station lights come on again.

If the characters ask, the other people on the platform saw this happen but none of them know what it means. Station staff, if asked, disclaim all knowledge, though one or two of them might privately admit that 'odd things' have happened over the last few nights. Nothing on this scale, and as it never happens again station staff and other witnesses are all too keen to forget it ever happened.

Two things result from this experience.

First, any character who did not already have a Megapolisomancy pool has one dot now. They're attuned to the inner workings of the city, for good or ill. 

Second, any character present feels a persistent sense of impending doom. They don't know what it is. They don't know what it presages. They only know that it is coming and that right soon.

The rest of the campaign arc will be spent unravelling this sense of impending doom and discovering what it means. Exactly what it does mean is up to the players and Keeper. It could be a very personal event, like a disaster on the line. It could be a citywide event, or something of planetary significance, like England being destroyed by the awakening of an Old One. Whatever it is, is up to you.

Though the characters will not appreciate this at first, there is a third result. Their twins are busy. They, like the Student's reflection, are as like the characters as it is possible to be, down to mannerisms and dress - yet they are opposed to the characters in every way. They dog the characters' actions. If the character asks for a book to be reserved at the British Library, their opposite arrives and claims it before they do. If the character attends an auction, their double is there and bids for the prize.

These creatures are creations of pure Megapolisomancy. They cannot exist outside the city, and it's not clear whose bidding they follow - if they follow any creature's bidding at all. It may be they are figments of the city's imagination, as a dreamer populates her dream - but if so, does that mean the city is an entity unto itself? Is it dreaming?

Will it wake up?

Enjoy!