The Cauldron (RPG All)

A short while back I talked about genre mixing. I thought it would be fun to put those ideas into practice.

This multi-setting chronicle will start (chronologically at least) with School of Night, pass on to Bookhounds of London/Tombhounds of Egypt, and conclude with Night's Black Agents. 

Before I delve into the details, let's spend this week talking about setting.

The great thing about setting a story of whatever type in a city like London is, it's been there since forever ago and its history is well known. You shan't have to spend the first half-hour describing the basics; you can assume the players already know the basics. The same could be said about Paris, Berlin, Rome and a dozen other places I can think of. It's the kind of location where, even if the players don't know exactly what London is like, they can fake it. There's a pub and a Pret a Manger on every corner, Cockneys talk funny, there's an Underground. Sorted. 

School of Night is Elizabethan, Bookhounds and Tombhounds are 1930s games and Night's Black Agents can be any period but tends towards modern day. There's nothing that says you have to play the sessions in that order. You could start with Tombhounds, pass on to School of Night then Bookhounds then Nights. Or Nights, then Tombhounds, then School of Night, Bookhounds, and Nights again. The world is your crimson-tinged oyster. 

However, you do need a reasonably solid core at the heart of this whole thing. Some reliable touchstone that the players can refer back to, so they don't get lost in the alphabet soup. 

Let's set this primarily in Southwark, London. The assumption, since this refers back to Night's Black Agents in the end, is that this is primarily about vampires. It doesn't have to be. Night's has specific rules for a Cthulhu v spies vibe and as Director you can do as you like, but let's not think too far out of the box this time around. Vampires it is. Whether the players are dodging horrors in Cairo or arguing the finer points of literature and history with Shakespeare, it's all vampires, all the time. In the Four Things parlance, vampires are the Fourth Thing. 

What do we know about Southwark that's campaign-useful?

To the Wikipedias!

Recent excavation has revealed pre-Roman activity including evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity ... Southwark was mostly made up of a series of often marshy tidal islands in the Thames, with some of the waterways between these island formed by branches of the River Neckinger, a tributary of the Thames ... without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area ... For centuries London Bridge was the only Thames bridge ... Londinium was abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation in the early 5th century and both the city and its bridge collapsed in decay. The settlement at Southwark, like the main settlement of London to the north of the bridge, had been more or less abandoned ... Just west of the Bridge was the Liberty of the Clink manor, which was never controlled by the city, but was held under the Bishopric of Winchester's nominal authority. This lack of oversight helped the area became the entertainment district for London ... Southwark was also the location of several prisons ... In 1836 the first railway in the London area was created, the London and Greenwich Railway, originally terminating at Spa Road and later extended west to London Bridge ... Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders, who would sell goods and conduct trades outside the regulation of the city's Livery Companies ...

That will do to be getting on with. 

There are all kinds of London legends that could be data-mined for this. I'm going to invent one for campaign purposes, but it would be as simple to borrow something from a source like Funk & Wagnalls or London Lore. 

Borrowing from the Wiki:

evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity. Burial mounds sounds useful, as does ritual activity. I'm going to assume that the site I intend to detail for campaign purposes was a burial mound at one point in the far-off times. Further, since this is marshy ground with lots of running water and that useful River Neckinger, I'm going to assume that this location was chosen deliberately as a kind of vampire defense system. That means one of the vampire banes/blocks of the setting ought to be water, whether the vampires themselves are traditional, alien or something else. 

The Neckinger allegedly got its name from hangings and hangmen. I'm going to assume that the tradition goes back much further than anyone realizes, that ritual killing by strangulation was a part of the location even way back in pre-history.

without London bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area. That suggests London Bridge as a key ritual location, something that can be used by megapolisomancers and magicians of all stripes. A kind of fane, perhaps? Something that can be drawn on for power.

the location of several prisons. The Clink covers the School of Night period, which is helpful.

Southwark was outside of the control of the City of London and was a haven for criminals and free traders. All kinds of benefits here and this is a situation that lasts a very long time. There are still remnants of it in the modern day - there's a reason why they set Only Fools and Horses in Southwark.

 OK, all that said, let's lay some ground rules. 

There are four big moments in the setting's history:

• Prehistory - when the ritual area is first established, the first killings happen, the magic is evoked.
• Elizabethan - when the first ritual plays are performed by a group I'm going to call the Children of Christ's Chapel.
• 1930s - when the Children of the Sphynx establish their temple on old, tainted ground.
• 1980s - when an Edom rocked by scandal has to deal with a new Strangler attempting to evoke old horrors.

Prehistory

In a time when Southwark was marsh and river, a group lost to history established a fane in a place protected against vampires.

• There they sacrificed human victims by strangulation, boiling the remains in a cauldron which they then used for ritual, divination purposes.
• They created an artefact, a cauldron, for this purpose. The cauldron was in several pieces and those pieces are lost to history.
• The remains of this cult were put to flight and thought destroyed when Caesar first came to Britain. When Claudius completed the invasion that Caesar left undone, no remnant of the cult was discovered.
• Vampires: the leaders of the cult either became vampires or were murdered by the earliest version of the vampire conspiracy.

Elizabethan

When Southwark was a place you went to for entertainment, a boy's performing troupe, the Children of Christ's Chapel, became briefly famous.

• The Children were nominally backed by a nobleman, Sir Jacob Colkins, a man of many investments particularly in the New World. 
• Sir Jacob's antecedents are obscure. He claims to be able to trace his line to the conquest; his enemies say his grandfather was a gond farmer (or dung merchant) for the tanneries.
• The Children performed plays written by Sir Jacob's creature, a scrivener named Francis Harman most famous for being accused of witchcraft - though he escaped punishment.
• Vampires: The vampires used the Children's playhouse, the Devil, as a base of operations. In the past, it had been the ritual site where the Prehistory cultists carried out their human sacrifices.

1930s. 

The Children of the Sphynx establish a ritual site and a small occult press, which proves very popular amongst certain Bohemians.

• The Children of the Sphynx first arise in the 1890s as a smallish rival to the Order of the Golden Dawn, but as an occult order they never amount to much. As a publishing house, they have more success.
• The Devil Tavern, a rattletrap place with a peculiar history, is their unofficial base of operations. They meet here, sometimes hold auctions here.
• One of the rituals - a requirement for entry - is strangulation. The Children describe it as 'a means of enhancing the mystery.' Failures merely fall unconscious, or even die; those who succeed see terrible visions.
• Vampires: The Children are vampire hunters, and their most obscure - and valuable - texts are about hunting vampires.

1930s (Tombhounds).

In the early 1910s an archaeologist, Douglas Colkins-Firth, sets out on an expedition to find a lost tomb of great importance. He never returns, but some think he was on to a rich find and are determined to follow in his footsteps.

• Judging by sketches and notes, Colkins-Firth was looking for evidence of a prehistoric cult whose rituals spread the length and breadth of Europe, but whose roots could be found in Egypt.
• Colkins-Firth was one of the founding members of the Children of the Sphynx, and it was he who first developed the strangulation ritual which is the Children's signature.
• One of the most dangerous seekers after the Colkins-Firth find is a Nazi, Gottfried Frank, who believes that Colkins-Firth was about to discover a powerful artefact when he went missing.
• Vampires: Colkins-Firth had been corrupted by the vampires and was looking for a replacement cauldron; Frank is about to stumble onto the vampires and what he'll do when he finds them is anyone's guess. 

1980s (Night's Black Agents)

In the early days of Thatcherism an Edom reduced by internal scandals to a remnant of its former self is thrown into disarray when one of the Dukes is found dead by hanging in his apartments - and there's the possibility he was attempting some kind of ritual when he died.

• The Duke isn't the only one to have gone this way, just the most high-profile. Scotland Yard thinks it may be a serial killer.
• Edom is further rattled when it appears as though the death of the Duke - or something very like it - is the subject of an unfinished Hitchcock thriller, pages from which are found at one of the death scenes.
• The Hitchcock thriller borrows heavily from an obscure play written by an Elizabethan playwright, Francis Harman, and a true-life killing (or possibly series of killings) that took place in the 1930s. How did Hitchcock get this material?
• Vampires: It's all been about divination, storytelling, and the vampires think they're on the cusp of a breakthrough - but they don't know how to complete the ritual. A dead Hitchcock does them no good - but did he really die in April, 1980?

OK, that's the bare bones. Next week, it's time to talk about this old and creaky Building.

Enjoy!