Stone Age Soundtracks (Channel 4, original concept Paul Deveraux)
The quality's not the best but I recommend watching the whole thing. I have mentioned this documentary before; it stuck with me.
Brief and inadequate summary: our ancestors discovered the power of ritual sound by accident, in ancient caves which they transformed into temples. They attempted to replicate the effect, with some success, in artificial environments - long barrows and similar megalithic sites.
That's the core concept for the Node I contemplate coming up again and again in this campaign: the Ritual Site.
This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales.
Omadios is a variant name for Dionysus, as in Dionysus the Raw-Eater. Sacrifices of flesh, usually thought to be human flesh. There's an old tale of Zagreus, son of Zeus, in which the child was butchered by Zeus' enemies and his flesh torn apart, devoured, some of it cooked. When Hermes discovered what had happened he informed Zeus, who destroyed the child's killers with divine thunderbolts. Zagreus' heart was the only thing that survived, and was later used to create Dionysus.
From that myth our vampires are born, the Pentheus and the Maenad variants. They hear a sound, a song, that echoes through the ages. Some claim this sound is the echo of the Titans, the hideous creatures that tore apart infant Zagreus. That, if they can somehow make sense of it, the Titans will come again. Of course, this is coming from a group of creatures whose mental stability can best be described as Shaky, so take that with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it is what some of them work towards, even if in an indirect way. They are constantly looking for old ritual sites, so they can examine the design and use it in their own projects.
This has been going on for a very long time. It's likely that some of those old, abandoned castles mentioned in the Dracula Dossier were ritual sites with their own sound chambers, once upon a time. That locations like Carfax or HMS Prosperine might have sound chambers, or that someone's been working on an old orphanage run by Heal the Children to turn its concrete corridors into a ritual location. Opportunities abound.
Mechanically, something similar already exists within the Dracula Dossier setting: the Red Room.
The Red Room was a place of power for Dracula in London. Magically (or tellurically) designed to focus and amplify vampiric energies and wavelengths, he used it (or planned to use it) in 1894 to cement his hold over the high-society degenerates he recruited to his faction. Since then, Edom might have taken it over for their own purposes, or Dracula may have created another, or both. [p187 DD]
In that text the Room is a singular area in a specific place, with a variable power set. I'm proposing multiple Rooms in many areas, with one known power set (create vampires, under specific ritual conditions) and any number of unknown power sets. Not all of the Rooms work. Many or most probably don't work, or, if they do, they work in unexpected ways. Not even the vampires understand them, though there are some within the Conspiracy who claim they do.
The perennial McGuffin in this situation is something I'm going to call the Instruction Manual. It might be a crumbling set of texts held in some forgotten monastery, translations of some Greek histories that go all the way back to Herodotus. It might be a transcript from the researches of the magician John Dee or some similar occult experimenter. It might be research notes from a Silicon Valley tech bro relying on the previous researches of a former Nazi, but whatever it is, it represents the most likely means of finding out how the Ritual is supposed to work.
Everyone wants it. Factions within the Conspiracy - all of them a Pentheus variant - want it because they think it will help them create more Pentheus. The Maenad want it because they think it will create more Maenad. Other occult factions want it because they believe it will help them do X, whatever X may be. Immortality is a popular choice, but you do you.
Meanwhile the various factions continue with their occult traditions, experiments, what-have-you, relying on the broken version of the Ritual that they think they understand, in hopes of getting what they want. This broken version sometimes does what it's supposed to but there are nearly always side effects, and most of the time it doesn't work at all. This may be because the Ritual site is contaminated or broken in some way, or it may be for some other reason.
Note that in this version the Conspiracy has factions within factions working against each other. Broadly speaking, this is true of any organization. Regardless of the united front it presents to the world anything, whether it is a business, political party or other collective organization, has factions within it that want to promote X, whatever X is. Point being that, in this fictionalized example, those factions are hyperviolent blood drinkers who may or may not be insane.
The important thing to bear in mind, from a Director's perspective, is that this Conspiracy has one defined Goal: understand, and replicate, the Ritual which creates Vampires. Regardless of who's doing it, this is what they are doing. That gives this Conspiracy an end goal, whether they're in Turkey examining Neolithic sites, in Ireland digging up a megalith long barrow, or in some secret underground bunker in, say, Texas, surrounded by technology of dubious origin.
... I see this kind of vampire as something that arises from a shared delusion, created less by a Sire and more by a Circumstance. At the back of it all might be a Dionysus figure but, ultimately, these vampires arise from supernatural occurrences and places and are drawn together by that shared experience, by the madness that propels them forward, always forward, in search of that elusive melody that lingers in the back of what is left of their mind ...
OK, no storms forecast for this weekend so with a bit of luck I can finish this thought.
Duckman
I see this vampire divided into two types.
The Pentheus is the planner, the organizer, the one trying to make sense of it all. They're the backbone of the Conspiracy. They accept their condition but are trying to prevent themselves sinking into madness. They don't really grasp the true nature of their condition because, if they did, they'd stop functioning. They see the others as a kind of Awful Warning. In a Dracula Dossier game, Dracula is the ultimate Pentheus, hanging onto sanity by the atoms on the tips of their fingernails.
The Maenads, on the other hand, are children of madness. They fulfil the commands of Dionysus, or at least that is what they say they do. They carry on a ritual whose purposes have long been forgotten. They have no idea if what they're doing is what they are supposed to do. They see themselves as driven by a higher power. Think of them as you would the Cthulhu Cult, except there is no Cthulhu, no promise of anything divine or beyond mortal understanding. Where they go, bloodshed follows.
At the heart of it all is the Ritual, which is how you get more vampires.
This, ultimately, is location-based. In the earliest days it would have had sacred fanes high up on the mountain top, some grove or cave or other hidden place where the rituals are conducted. There the Omadios, eater of raw (human) flesh, awaits its portion, and in exchange grants a kind of extended life. Brings the dead back from the lands of Hades. At least, so goes some of the tales.
Now, in this degraded modern life, a sacred fane might as easily be a site of mass murder. A place where blood soaks the soil, perhaps because of a terrorist attack, or some other hideous deed. From this horror madness springs eternal, and a corpse left in this place, treated appropriately, might come to life once more. It might help if that corpse, in life, committed some atrocities, or shed their brother's blood, or, or, or ...
Because that is the horror of the Pentheus. They don't know how it works. They serve the Ritual in hope of getting more Pentheus to carry on the tradition, but when it comes right to it the vampires don't understand the whatever-it-is that made them so there's no way for them to reliably make more. Instead, they flock to places where tragedies happen, sometimes engineering events so that a tragedy happens, and all the while it could be a colossal flop. All that effort, and no vampire to show for it. Or, which is slightly worse from the Pentheus' POV, all that effort and only a Maenad to show for it.
Meanwhile the Maenads flutter off like exploding butterflies. They have absolutely no self-control. They do not care what happens to them and they definitely do not care about other people. At all. A Maenad is driven by the song. They can hear it at the back of their minds. They might constantly hum it, or tunelessly sing it. A Maenad with some musical ability might perform it, but never perfectly, never the way they know it ought to be performed.
These creatures die off, but not before doing tremendous damage.
This kind of Conspiracy best resembles a terrorist organization. We think of these the same way we do organized armies. They have generals, officers, troops, a mission; they work towards a defined goal. This absolutely is not how these groups work in practice. Yes, there may well be a guiding brain - the Pentheus - out there somewhere, trying to make sense of all this. There may be schemes. There may be long-term plans. But the organization itself is as loosely structured as it is possible to be, because that's the only way it can survive and recruit. Everyone's hand is against it. It cannot afford the kind of structure an army has, because armies can be identified and met on the battlefield. This is, at its heart, a civilian organization. Destructured. Disorganized.
When war breaks out and the Phoney War becomes all too real, as the Germans push through Belgium in May 1940, as the Battle of France begins and ends in a heartbeat, Dion Fortune does her bit to save England from the Germans.
She organizes the Magical Battle of Britain, with a cycle of rites beginning July 1940.
Bear in mind, that’s a busy month. You’ve got bombing raids on mainland Britain, the Cardiff Blitz; the Germans are chewing up the RAF in the Kanalkampf in preparation for Unternehmen Seelöwe; Vichy is the new French government, allied with its conqueror Germany; the country’s plunging into debt to fight a war in which it seems it will soon be the sole Allied combatant, with Churchill telling the country they’d fight on alone, seeking no terms or parley; the buying and selling of new cars is banned, the first of a series of stringency measures; everyone thinks the German invasion is imminent, including the Germans. It’s one of those times when you daren’t read the newspaper because you know what the headlines will be. It’s enough to scare someone into spiraling depression.
In all this, Fortune marshals the occultists of Britain to … actually, it isn’t entirely clear what the point is.
With a title like ‘Battle of Britain’ you expect, well, combat. Of some kind. Lonely duels high in the sky, where life and death is seen as a scattering of contrails punctuated by crashing aircraft. Explosions. Derring-do, that kind of thing.
What actually happens is a little less exciting.
Fortune gathers together a number of people, not all of them occultists but all known to her personally. She persuades them to meditate on a particular subject at a particular time and write to her with the results of their meditations. She then wrote back, instructing her correspondents that they weren’t to open or read the letters until just before the next session, at which point the cycle begins anew.
Fortune openly admits that what she’s attempting is more about morale building than anything practical. Victory, if it is to be had, must be fought for and won in the physical realm. What she’s after is more of a spiritual victory.
You know what that reminds me of?
ITV News
Again, bear in mind when this is happening. This is the bleakest point in the war, for the English. The news isn’t going to get better any time soon; the actual Battle of Britain is about to see some of the heaviest casualties, the most significant engagements. The Hardest Day is coming in August. Everyone knows a family where someone’s died, or is that family mourning a loss. Food is running short. Meanwhile Charles Lindberg the celebrated American aviator is telling his fellow Americans not to get involved; that so long as America is strong, none will dare invade her, and she need not intervene on another’s behalf.
People need to feel as though they’re doing something, even if it’s a gesture of defiance.
Foreign Correspondent (1940, Hitchock)
I have to wonder whether Fortune was drawing on her own war experiences in the Women's Land Army during the First World War. That was all about rallying round and doing your bit, even if it was less than spectacular and didn’t require a lot of derring-do. It’s also where she allegedly had her first serious spiritual experience and began her communications with the Ascended Masters. Was she intending some kind of mass recruitment to the esoteric cause? Introducing her followers to the Ascended Masters that first intrigued her so long ago, during another war?
As the war news improves, Fortune loses interest in the effort. It becomes more about what will happen after the war, when peace returns to the green and pleasant land. She begins developing ‘the Arthurian Formula’ where Arthur and his knights become dim and distant reflections of Atlantean forebears. Not that she has long; leukemia will claim her by 1946.
OK, that’s what actually happens.
How to gamify?
Probably the simplest method is to assume that Fortune embarks on the Arthurian/Atlantaen bit a good deal earlier than she does. The occultists she recruits - the player characters - are all Knights in her Arthurian army, and there are dragons on the horizon attacking the very soul of Britain itself. Their job is to use scavenged Atlantaen rituals (and later, technology) to establish a perimeter - castles, in her vernacular - first on the coast and, later, when those are bombed in the Battle of Britain alongside the coastal airfields, further within. From these castles the Knights defend the realm against foreign psychic incursion. The intent is to provide aid at first, when the country's need is greatest, and later, when the tide turns, a base for assault across the Channel against those same foreign dragons who were ravaging the countryside a few short months prior.
All Arthurian stories need a Mordred figure and in this instance there's one ready-made: occultist Aleister Crowley. He seems friendly enough to Fortune, but his smiles hide evil intent. He may present as an ally at first, but someone's working with the dragons, and it may well be the wickedest man alive.
Now, some options:
Option One: Yithian Malice Fortune isn't a free agent. She's been corrupted by the Yithians, who see the outbreak of war as their last chance to scoop up as much Pnakotic material and lost technology as they can before the war ravages what's left of their network. The Yithians intend to gather all this at their Oxford Camelot, a secret base where they'll hide all of their secrets until some future date when they can re-establish their network. The Yithians see this as a rescue mission - shades of Three Damsels of the Fountain - but the player characters may disagree, particularly since the Yithians follow an old human maxim: no witnesses. In this version, Crowley is Mordred, but Mordred isn't the real enemy of mankind.
Option Two: Dragons of Dream Fortune is facing real threats, but these are threats to the English Dream. The Dragons ravage the nightmares of all who listen to Haw-Haw's broadcasts and it's up to the player characters to perform miracles of resistance. They may be assisted in this effort by whatever's left of the Dreamhounds of Paris who may be trying similar methods of resistance in occupied France. In time the characters may become a kind of psychic Special Operations Executive; entirely unofficial, but there were many such unofficial, undocumented operations. A supernatural Small Back Room, with Fortune as the lead brain and Crowley as the greasy politico.
Small Back Room
Option Three: Accidental Arthur This borrows from Pagan Publishing's Golden Dawn and Pelgrane's Dracula Dossier, but neither are required reading. In the dying days of the last century Golden Dawn occultist Randolph Northcote attempted to bring back King Arthur to save Britain, but his attempts ended in disaster and Arthur's plans to reestablish his Shub-Niggurath cult were thwarted. Temporarily, at least, though some of Arthur's ideas and forbidden texts he and Northcote consulted found their way into the archives of a secretive supernaturalist organization within Military Intelligence. Now that same obscure branch of Military Intelligence is drawing on those old ideas to create a new Arthurian cycle, and in the process bringing back Arthur's Shub-Niggurath cult. Fortune the Golden Dawn inheritor, in this version, may be the heroic resistance, or may be a willing catspaw of British Intelligence; if the latter, then Crowley/Mordred is what little's left of the heroic resistance. The ultimate goal is to bring back Arthur the same way Northcote did, but Northcote didn't realize what he was bringing back, and neither does Military Intelligence.
That's all for this week! Next week, something completely different.
Violet Firth (born 6 December 1890 died 6 or 8 January 1946) was introduced to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1919, when she would have been in her late 20s. MacGregor Mathers, the founder of the Golden Dawn, had died the year before during the influenza epidemic and the Golden Dawn was under the occasionally shaky leadership of his widow Moina Mathers, working in partnership with an ageing J.W. Brodie-Innes. Brodie-Innes was himself not long for this world and would pass in 1923.
Firth came from a wealthy background and was well educated. Her father, anxious not to be seen as a money-grubbing parvenu, adopted the motto God, not Luck - Deo, non Fortuna - from which she would derive the pseudonym by which she is best known. Though in her view Dion Fortune wasn't so much a pseudonym as Violet Firth was her deadname.
Fortune had a long-standing interest in occultism before being introduced as a neophyte in Alpha et Omega in 1919. She was well versed in psychotherapy, the works of Freud and Jung, and had experience as a medium and psychic sensitive. She'd also served in the War in the Woman's Land Army but had never been posted overseas.
King says something interesting, though it's a bit of a non sequitur. He describes Fortune as a 'slim young girl' in 1919 and goes on to add that 'later she was to become very fat; for some reason most mediums seem to do this - probably there is some relationship between mediumship and the glandular balance of the metabolism.' Which, frankly, sounds like utter garbage, but in a game world where Y'Golonac exists there is something to be said for a fictional universe where mediums become enormous under psychic influences.
Fortune soon becomes disenchanted with the Golden Dawn's mismanagement and its lack of a rigorous training program. It doesn't help that Mathers is milking it for every spare dollar, pushing Alpha et Omega as if mystical learning is a self-help experience. Initially Fortune counters this by trying to bring in new blood, with Mathers' blessing. New recruits were a good thing for Mathers the Empire-builder. This creates the Fraternity of the Inner Light, a sub-group within Alpha et Omega, in which Fortune is a leading player. Mathers hates that idea; in Alpha et Omega, Mathers is Imperatrix, the only leading player.
Fortune and Mathers soon fall out, and Fortune alleges that Mathers engages her in psychic assault. This takes the form of a plague of cats. "I suddenly saw, coming down the stairs towards me, a gigantic tabby cat, twice the size of a tiger. It appeared absolutely solid and tangible. I stared at it petrified for a second, and then it vanished. I instantly realized that it was a simulacrum, or thought-form that was being projected by someone with occult powers." Fortune beats off this attack with her own occult powers but not without cost; when she goes to bed, she sees she has been scored as if by claws.
Again, going back to gaming, this can be significant in a game world in which dreams, mystic cats, and Bast worship exist. Was Mathers secretly a worshipper of the cat god, or had she, by chance, discovered a means of using Bast's powers? Was Mathers a Dreamer?
This becomes even more important later, when Ms. Netta Fornario, a member of Alpha et Omega, dies under very mysterious circumstances. She travelled to Scotland in 1929, evidently engaged in some kind of ritual exercise on the Isle of Iona, and was later found dead there. Possibly her death was the result of exposure to the elements, but there were deep score marks on the body and, before her death, Netta claimed she was being attacked psychically. Fornario and Fortune were friends. Fortune believed Mathers was responsible for Fornario's death.
By this time Mathers was dead; in fact, she died the year before Fornario's trip to Iona. Any further breach between Fortune and Mathers was irrelevant, at least in the physical realm, though Mathers' psychic influences may have remained.
Again, going back to gaming, this could also become in-game relevant if Mathers was a Dreamer, and if her Dream-self survived. Particularly if you, as Keeper, intend this to run contemporaneously with Dreamhounds of Paris, since Mathers will be in the Dream fomenting occult dissent just at the time the Dreamhounds are sculpting the Dreamlands in their own image. What would Mathers do if her Egyptian, Bast-centric artistic vision is interrupted by French Surrealists while she, at the same time, is continuing her feud with Fortune?
By this point Fortune is utterly disenchanted with Alpha et Omega. Fortune has effective control over her own Fraternity, and she's more interested in personal development than getting bogged down in psychic attacks and the day-to-day bother of running an esoteric society. She begins corresponding with other occultists across Europe, expanding her horizons and generally making a name for herself. Not just living occultists either; through meditation she contacts Madame Blavatsky, and more esoteric entities. Her career as a writer begins to flourish, and her most well-regarded book, The Mystical Qabalah, is published in 1935.
Ultimately, she approaches paganism, abandoning her former Christian beliefs. She begins to develop a mystical practice entirely her own, based on rituals of her own devising.
War approaches. The mystical Battle of Britain is about to begin ...
Last post before the holidays! No post next week. Next post will be the first week of January 2025!
Hind Horn is a Scottish traditional ballad with many, many variations. The story goes that Hind Horn, the hero of the tale, is given a ring as a token of love from the King's Daughter. The ring has diamonds, and she tells him that when those diamonds grow pale and lose their luster, it means her love for him is fading.
They part. He notices that the diamonds are in fact fading. He returns to the kingdom to find that she is being married to another. He approaches the wedding party disguised as a beggar and contrives to show her the ring. When she sees it, she offers to go with him, beggar or no, and they go off together.
This legend is one of the reasons why it became traditional that, should a beggar come to a house where there is a wedding, the beggar be given whatever reasonable thing they ask for.
With that in mind:
Hind Horn in Winter
The Hounds find a job lot of old ballads, loosely compiled, in one of the boxes from the last auction.
On inspection, most of them seem to have come from a house sale somewhere up North, and the Hounds find with the ballads notes on someone's academic work. The parson, or some other minor church functionary, was amusing themselves between sermons by collecting, transcribing and examining old ballads. Most of them seem to have been local to wherever the parson was (that part's not clear) and some of them seem to be much older than first glance.
If the Hounds examine the documents very closely they find (1 point) that one of them is in fact a 15th Century manuscript, 3 pages long, apparently a version of Hind Horn written/transcribed by Charles of Orléans. God alone knows how that treasure found its way into an obscure parson's trove.
It's not quite a Windfall but it is a very valuable find.
The air is chilly, the mornings frosty, and it's getting more and more difficult to heat the shop. As winter draws ever nearer the Hounds find three customers all determined to purchase (or steal) Hind Horn: A Scot cleric, Andrew Baird, lean and corpselike; a young man, John Egan, poor as dirt and importunate; a young woman, Hattie Keeble, an upper middle class coquette. They all want Hind Horn. They seem to know, without telling, that the Hounds have it. If one of them gets it, the other two will be outraged and cause all sorts of scenes. Diplomacy is called for ...
Just as this becomes a problem, a peculiar item turns up in lost property: a diamond ring. A wedding band. Nobody recognizes it or knows how it ended up on the shop floor.
Option One: Dusty Memories. None of this is real. There's a Dust Thing attached to Hind Horn which, in fact, is not a 15th Century original but an 18th Century forgery. It's quite a good forgery, so it will pass muster for all but the most eagle-eyed of experts. The Dust Thing is drawing on the Hind Horn story to create ring, Baird, Egan - but not Keeble. Hattie is real enough. She saw the document at the auction but lost out to the Hounds, and now she wants another bite at the apple.
Option Two: Dead Men's Tales. Baird is in fact what's left of the parson who, all those years ago, compiled the documents. Baird was also an experienced Dreamer and picked up some very peculiar, Mythos-oriented, views on the origins of human folklore. Baird became convinced that stories like Hind Horn are actually about Mythos narratives, and spent his life trying to prove his thesis. His life, and beyond; his compulsion leads him to defy death itself. Egan, Keeble, the ring and the fable are all dreams, part of Baird's delusion, though he believes they're real enough. If this goes too far, the shop may find itself incorporated into the dead parson's fantasies.
Option Three: Hind Horn Redux. The document was never written by Charles but it is a 15th century manuscript, a Mythos text hidden in a literary code. It is in fact dedicated to Gol-Goroth, the Fisher; it is the Old One who created the ring, which is a holy thing. Gol-Goroth uses text and ring as lures, and it has three on its hook: Baird, Egan and Keeble. Possibly the Hounds as well, if they get too close. If Gol-Goroth manages to lure someone close enough, that person becomes part of the narrative, and the text grows ever longer. Those too close to the story begin to dream of cold climes, far, far colder than London, and of peculiar dark mountains where strange treasures are hid. The text of Hind Horn is part finished; if Gol-Goroth gets all three - Baird, Egan and Keeble - then the text will be complete. Much more valuable, too, from the Hounds' perspective.
Two warring noble houses, each alike in dignity, find themselves played for suckers by a third party. The third party has a deep grudge against one of the nobles, and that noble, not realizing the depth of the third party's enmity, asks the third party to make him some fantastic lanterns so the noble can win a competition.
The third party obliges ...
I've seen some peculiar films in my time but, brother, this one's a doozy. You think you know what's coming. Then you see what's coming. All of it.
It's mostly shot in-studio on a handful of sets, and that allows the filmmakers to really lavish detail on their setpieces. The villain's lair is a horror-show. The main actors are some of the best, both in martial arts prowess and as actors. The villain's costume, which seems a little comical at first glance, works remarkably well and there are more than a few moments when that grinning death's head provokes an involuntary shudder.
Definitely one to watch, on a cold Halloween night ...
But let's talk gamification.
First, that lantern festival. Fantasy settings seldom have festivals, or parties of any kind, unless it's a celebration of the Hero's Victory or 'Christmas, but with Orcs.' Which is a shame, because festivals are a good excuse for inciting incidents and character development. The film doesn't go into a lot of detail about its festival, probably because the Shaw Brothers assumes most of the audience knew all about it. Given that it's a 2,000-year-old tradition drawing on a mix of folkloric and historic sources, there are all sorts of ingredients to choose from.
I quite like the tradition of the lantern riddle: "The lantern riddles are done by a host blocking one side of the lantern and pasting riddles on the remaining three sides of the lanterns. Participants will guess the blocked side by solving the riddles, which is called "breaking/solving lantern riddles"." If you guess correctly you get a small prize, but the bigger prize is prestige.
In games like Dungeons and Dragons where riddle-tests are popular, you could easily sneak one of these into a festival and have the 'reward' be transportation to a small dungeon area, where the characters then have to find their way out again. Along the way they complete a minor quest of the riddle-makers choosing.
Ravenloft's I'Cath setting would work well with a scenario seed like this one. The characters encounter the riddle-lantern as part of a festival in the dreaming world, and are pushed out of the dreaming world into the waking one with this quest: find a way to bring the riddle-maker's family out of I'Cath. There are some riddle lanterns in the waking world that will bring characters back to the dreaming one, but who knows who (or what) made those lanterns ...
Or in Swords of the Serpentine there could be a lantern festival organized either by a cult or some foreign faction, which is suddenly adopted as a fashionable craze by the aristocracy. Everyone flocks to the lantern makers for their latest creations, each noble house trying to outdo the other. The finest, most fantastical lanterns are prized possessions. But in a sorcerous twist, some of the best lanterns are Tainted ...
Next, the lantern maker.
In the film it's heavily implied than the lanterns have some peculiar quality all their own, as a consequence of the method of their creation. Even knowing what they are, the hero calls them beautiful. Their luminous seductive image is the last thing he thinks of, when everything else is done.
The film doesn't answer the question, 'what happened to the lanterns?' It's set in nebulous before-times which, for the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to assume is 1800s-ish. Heavy on the ish, and probably closer to 1800 than 1850.
So in a Bookhounds game those lanterns are, perhaps, 80 years old.
Not that long at all, really.
Antiquities with Bite
A customer of particular importance to the shop has gone Chinoiserie-mad.
It all started with a glimpse of some antique lanterns in a Limehouse dealer's storefront. The customer, Martyn Bower, swears blind that they felt the power oozing off those lanterns, and they must have them. Except they couldn't persuade the shopkeeper to accept Martyn's bona fides and, wouldn't you know it, Martyn just didn't have the cash on them at the time. Won't the Hound do Martyn a favor and come with Martyn to the store, to help them convince the shopkeeper that Martyn's credit is good?
Either the Hound does or does not do this. If they do, then Martyn cannot remember exactly where the shop is and they spend the rest of the day looking all over Limehouse for it.
Disconsolate, Martyn spends the next few weeks moaning and kvetching about how those lanterns were almost theirs. Martyn seeks out anything to do with lantern making, which at least means the Hounds can pick up a few bob catering to Martyn's new craze.
Then Martyn drops out of sight for a month or two, which at least means the Hounds don't have to listen to Martyn's whines.
When Martyn pops up again, they are looking for a particular book: The Daedalus Mysteries of Light and Art, 1743, English translation of a supposed Chinese original, author unknown, translator Dawes Hapson. Allegedly the original is a text from Shanghai but, as the only person who ever knew for certain is Hapson and he's long gone, tracing that legend is near-on impossible.
Martyn says they got the lead on Hapson's work from his inquiries in Limehouse.
Option One: Cult Activity. The text is real and moderately well-known to members of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan. In fact, it was one of the cult who first interested Martyn in all this: it was in the cultist's shop that Martyn saw the peculiar, bewitching lanterns. Now the cult is trying to ensnare Martyn by having Martyn create some lanterns of his own, but to do that they need to make sure that Martyn gets what he wants ... in as unsuspicious a manner as possible. Enter the Hounds.
Option Two: Dreamlands Adjacent. Martyn didn't see those lanterns in a shop in the waking world. Martyn saw them in the Dream and awoke so befuddled that he confused the Dreaming shop he saw them in with one he remembered in Limehouse. Ever since he's been trying to retrace his steps and, in so doing, treads a ritual path through London. He's on the verge of creating an Oernic Gate entirely by accident, and the Daedalus Mysteries are the final piece of the puzzle. If he gets that and makes the lanterns he's craving, London (or at least that bit of it containing the Hounds' shop) could be plunged into waking nightmare.
Option Three: Devilish Inspiration. Martyn has always been devil-obsessed. His feverish imagination has taken him a step too far. Now things are noticing him and ensnaring him in their machinations. The Daedalus Mysteries aren't about lantern making; that's just a cover. It's actually a text written by the astrologer-priests of Daoloth, who used lantern making as a metaphor - bending light itself to their own ends. The idea being to create the tiniest piece of Daoloth in this world, the most microscopic portion, which could then be used to illuminate a kind of lantern-oracle. One of the descendants of those astrologer-priests is using Martyn as a catspaw, to bring this about. Once the lantern is made, assuming Martyn survives the process, the astrologer-priest's descendant intends to take that lantern and use it in their own rituals.
I run a small cinema group down here. We watch films on the big screen in the drama society bar. I supply the film every Monday night. October is on its way and I'm putting together the cinema list: Yokai: 100 Monsters, The Haunting, probably Night of the Demon and then I'm a bit torn. I have options. I could go for Kurokeno. I could go for Kwaidan. Both are solid choices.
Then I reminded myself that House exists.
So of course I had to watch it again.
Have you seen it? Once seen, never forgotten. I don't know that I'd recommend it, exactly. You have to have a love of surrealist imagery and a tolerance for nonsense. If you have both those traits, then, by golly and by Gadfrey, this is a film you'll love.
Gorgeous, a headstrong teen, is surprised when her film composer dad comes back home from a shoot with a new bride in tow, replacing her beloved dead mother. Consumed by angst and mommy issues, Gorgeous decides to run off to the countryside for a while to see her aunt, her mother's sister. She gathers up her friends Kung Fu, Professor, Sweet, Fantasy, Melody, and Mac, and brings them all to a nice place in the country. It will be a summer vacation to remember.
For the rest of their lives.
Director and producer Nobuhiko Obayashi would go on to have a long and successful film career, but this was one of his earliest outings and a big risk for Toho Studios. They wanted him to make Jaws, the Japanese version. He wanted ... well ... this. Which was a tough sell. All Toho's usual people refused to direct it, thinking it would end their careers. To be fair, it probably would have. This is the kind of thing that can only be made by someone who truly believes in the material.
Obayashi believed.
This is one of those times when the belief shines through.
The aunt turns out to be a Hidgeous Fiend In Human Form. That's not me spoiling; the movie makes it very clear from the moment she shows up on screen, early in the runtime. She's a vampire, and she's not at all well, since all the young people are dead or moved away and she has nobody to eat. Now here's the niece with her six friends. begging to be devoured. Yum!
Special shout-out to Mac, the one who goes first. Before she does, she turns her head and gives a smiling farewell to her dear friends, not realizing she's about to become vampire chow. But the way that moment happens ensures the Audience (with a capital A) knows what's about to happen.
It's not the last time Mac appears on screen. It's just the last time she's seen alive.
Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite films, and that's not just because it's a classic. It's because you can see, on screen, everyone's enthusiasm for the project. It was made by a bunch of crazy cinema fanatics sleeping in bunkbeds in an old house that was going to be torn down once the shoot ended, so they could do what they wanted to it. Furnished by Goodwill. The car in the opening sequences belonged to the director's mother. Made on a shoestring, crafted with care. That sort of thing.
That's how I feel about House. It's ropey as hell. The special effects are certainly ... special. But it has that quality, the raw enthusiasm bleeding off of every scene. Crafted with care.
There's really nothing else like it.
If I had to drag one fact off the screen and use it in every TTRGP from now until the end of time it would be this: enthusiasm sells. Your game is not perfect. I guarantee you will make mistakes. But you are the best (and often only) salesman for this product. If you go all-in, if you make sure everyone sees how much care you invested, if you show your enthusiasm, you will get players onboard.
Not all players, mind. Not everyone loves House. But you will get players, and you can't game without them.
Includes text from the Petit Albert, Grand Grimoire and Key of Solomon, purports to contain healing magic and means of finding hidden treasure.
Any Hound who gets an opportunity to look at this piece immediately notices something odd. The book is said to be rebacked; that means its spine was damaged beyond repair and it had to be completely made new. If so, the repair was remarkable in its fidelity to the original. The embroidered binding, which resembles tiny eyes woven into the design, is without flaw. It is impossible to see the repair at all.
The book is fairly typical for its type. Allegedly the wisdom of St. Cyprian, a pagan, passed down by Sulphury Jonas - clearly a devilish pseudonym - this is the usual mishmash of occult 'wisdom' seen in any of a dozen similar texts. Its claims to fame are the binding and those grangerized mezzotints, depicting occult ceremonies and demon summonings, which lend it flair. It looks more valuable than it ought to be, and is definitely eye-catching.
The Grandes de España Abrantes, if anyone thinks to check, is not the Duke of Abrantes. Pity, as the Dukedom has the blood of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II in its lineage, which would lend the book a certain gravitas. This Grandes is in fact a much more obscure line of nobility.
If anyone really digs, and spends points digging, they discover that the Grandes is one Harry Wicklow, a notorious scam artist whose specialty is obscure foreign nobility. If the Hounds track him down and make him talk, he says he picked the Book of St. Cyprian up at a French auction house, which claimed to have bought it from a Spanish owner. It was rebacked when he bought it, and the embroidered binding was, when he had it, extensively damaged. He doesn't know when it was repaired. He knows he didn't do it, and neither did the French.
Those who skim it pick up two dedicated points towards divination magic and talisman making. Those who study it, and who make a point of cracking the obscure alchemical code in the marginalia, pick up 1 point Mythos.
Students who go that far claim to discover references to hidden treasure somewhere in Abrantes and dream nightly of an obscure tumbledown monastery in Bemposta where this treasure is supposedly buried. The monastery is featured in the mezzotints grangerized into the book. According to the alchemical marginalia there is a means of directly transporting a scholar to the monastery from anywhere in the world; they brew a potion according to the book's direction, drink it, and are flown to the monastery by demons.
Anyone with Mythos who makes a point of investigating this claim realizes that the potion is in fact Create Dream Gate, a one-time-only transportation of the person who consumes the potion to a location in the Dreamlands, actual destination unknown.
If anyone does complete this ritual they are never seen again. However, when this happens the book's condition improves. The embroidered binding is already near-perfect and the rebacking almost impossible to spot. If someone completes the ritual again then the book improves from Good to Very Good condition, increasing its value.
Life, mostly. Anything and everything can be turned into grist for the mill. I've taken inspiration from a church fete, from Greek myth and a dozen other things besides. It's all there for the taking. Which is why, in my collection, I've books about train wrecks, ghost towns in British Columbia, about New York, London, Paris, the Lusitania, flying aces, domesticating drink, flim flam, stage magic - the list goes on and on, but the point is you need to absorb as much as possible, even if all you take on at first reading is the skim version. You need to have a decent grasp of what's out there before you can start work.
Sin eating is an old funerary practice. The eater takes on the sins of the dead, symbolized by eating a ritual meal handed to them over the coffin of the deceased. Munslow got into the practice when his children died and carried on as a service to the community. Given that Munslow died in 1906 it's reasonable that the practice is still well known in the 1930s, prime Bookhounds territory.
If adding a bit of mythos to the ritual, charnel god Mordiggian is the best fit. The progenitor of the ghouls, that ancient symbol of decay. The main book gives several versions but I'm going to use this one:
Mordiggian, the Charnel God, appears as an enormous, worm-like mass of death, darkness, and corruption. Its idols resemble limbless, eyeless, rotting corpses. Its exact form shifts like time-lapse photography of putrescing flesh and is hard to determine, not least because the Great Old One absorbs all heat and light in a room.
With that I give you:
A Hearty Meal
du Bourg's has suffered a financial reversal and a tragedy: the eldest of the family, Edouard, has passed away at the grand old age of 42. Nobody's entirely sure about the cause of death; only the family know for certain and they're not saying.
However, there's no storm without a silver lining and this time the silver is a sale: du Bourg's is clearing out some of its older material at bargain prices, in a keep-the-lights-on blowout. The auction is to be held at do Bourg's, after hours.
To get in, prospective buyers have to pass one simple test: they must eat a portion of Edouard's sins, passed to them in pie form over Edouard's open casket. Nobody knows for certain what's in that pie. Except that's it's packed full of meat.
As the Bookhounds approach du Bourg's on the appointed day they see one of their rivals stumble out of du Bourg's, retching. The rival flees down the street rather than answer any questions.
Now it's their turn at the pie.
Option 1: Charnel Meat. This, the investigators will realize (potential Mythos spend), is a ritual to Mordiggian. It's not clear why Edouard's brothers and sisters chose this ceremony to honor their departed brother. What is clear is that the meat is Edouard's. A nibble is enough to get entry to the auction; a hearty bite earns them a special scene with Mordiggian itself, as the room gets colder and darker by the moment. Of course, they could fake it; Filch may help them pretend to have a bite. Faking it may fool Edouard's brothers and sisters but Mythos old ones aren't so easily betrayed, and Mordiggian will mark the defaulter down in its own special charge book.
Option 2: Rashomon. Eating the pie puts the eater in a temporary dream state in which they relive Edouard's last day on earth. They discover that Edouard was murdered; the question is, by who? Was it his sister Eloise, who wanted advancement in the family business but was never going to get it while her brother was alive? His second-in-command, Marcus Shelby, who was afraid that Edouard had finally realized that Shelby was fiddling the books? Was it his brother Daniel, who was afraid that Edouard's worship of Mordiggian had taken him down a cannabalistic path that could only end with a death in the family?
Option 3: Adulterated Meat. The pie has been unknowingly dosed with some of the Elixir of Kathulos, prized by the Hsieh-Tzu Fan. Edouard's sister Eloise did the dosing; she found the stuff amongst Edouard's possessions and mistook it for an exotic spice. Edouard wasn't an enemy of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan but he was hardly a friend; he'd been hired by one of his more eccentric clients to acquire the stuff and acquire it he did, but the Hsieh-Tzu Fan found out and killed Edouard. The cult wants its Elixir back and there's still a good portion of it left; anyone who ate some of the pie can find the rest. Of course, eating strange elixirs found in funeral meat has its own complications ...
I've seen it in his eyes. Screaming mad. Starkers! And dishonest! Hiding his face behind a fright mask. Well, no masks for me! I have nothing to hide! Joker, Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady)
Opening scene, Halloween, John Carpenter
“Who dares,”—he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!” Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque of the Red Death.
Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask! Robert W. Chambers, The Mask
Masks are odd things.
You don't often see them outside of carnival, traditional dance and ancient theatre. The Greeks and Romans were fond of masked actors taking on archetypes - the drunk, the old man, the soldier, the wife, the cuckold, the prostitute or wanton. Sock and Buskin, aka Comedy and Tragedy, come from this tradition, as does Commedia dell'arte
In mythology you often hear about masks allowing the wearer to take on archetypes, whether heroic or tragic, but the difficulty with mythology is that it's impossible to check your data. All the people who actually knew what it was supposed to mean are long since dead. Dead, dead, deadski. Almost no written records survive, which means you can make things up as you go and there's nobody to tell you different.
Then, of course, there is Halloween. Where masks are the only thing separating us from the normal people. Originally a time to honor the dead, it has become a Saturnalia of booze and chocolate, fun as much for the adults as the kids. The original Myers Halloween mask, the iconic one in the film, is actually a William Shatner mask suitably modified - $1.98 at a costume shop, they were on a budget - but now it's so iconic that, if you mention Halloween to people, odds are one of the first images that springs to mind is that blank, hideous non-face worn by the most evil kid who ever lived.
You don't often find them in ghost stories, funnily enough. Sometimes they float to the surface along with the other mental flotsam and jetsam lurking in the deeper waters of the psyche, but usually they don't appear except in the old-time tales of the likes of Poe.
In film, masks work best when establishing mood, or defining a character. Everyone remembers Jason; everyone remembers Scream. Even if they didn't watch any of the films, they know just by looking at them exactly what kind of character they are. As cinematic shorthand, they work wonders. Even a mediocre film - and God knows there are plenty of those in both franchises - becomes just a little bit memorable when those masks appear on screen.
Why wear a mask?
Performance
Ritual
Protection
You want it to enhance your performance (which can include performance in combat), provide magical assistance or evocation in a ritual, or to protect you against some form of attack whether natural or supernatural.
In the superhero genre - and possibly only in that genre - masks are used to protect identity. Which is ludicrous, but there we are. I've lost track of the number of people who know who Batman is (there must be a list somewhere), but it never makes any difference to the ongoing plot. It sometimes feels as if the 'protect identity' bit is an excuse for ever more elaborate costume concepts, each more evocative than the last.
In our world 'protect identity' becomes 'play a part.' At Halloween the part is pretty simple - sexy nurse or sexy pirate? - but there are more elaborate versions. Carnival, a masquerade, a pantomime - all these involve ritualistic behavior of one kind or another, played by actors whose job it is to impersonate the characters that everyone knows and loves. Harlequin plays an important role in early pantomime, St George and the Dragon are traditional characters in a Mummer's Play. The modern version is the Pantomime Dame, the comic mother figure, and a host of others - but the Dame is the most recognizable.
The old May Day traditions follow in this train. You abandon your identity to play another and your role is preordained - the fool with his bladder, for instance.
Wicker Man
The chief benefit - or problem - in all three cases is that masks are impersonal, therefore unsettling even at the best of times. A gas mask protects against inhaling poisonous or dangerous gases, but there's no denying that the odd inhumanity of them frightens those who see them. The Samurai mask in Onibaba was meant to be unsettling. Jason's blank fright mask empowers Jason and terrifies his victims. All of which is to say that they work just as well on your friends as your enemies; it's terrifying either way.
Yet often - as with Onibaba - the true horror comes when the mask comes off. When Michael Myers removes his mask he stops being the Killer; he's just a little boy. When the Scream mask comes off, the killer, a friend, is revealed.
All that said, how best to use them in, say, Night's Black Agents?
OK, you could adapt one of the ideas like Pantomime or Carnival and stick them in a scene. The major event in the scenario takes place at Whitby during May Day, that kind of thing. It could also work well in a dream sequence - your nightmares are masked and you're being chased through, oh, your old high school, why not.
But.
What if the vampires are the masks?
Works best in a Supernatural or Damned setting, but picture this: ancient vampire spirits bonded with the masks they used to wear in Saturnalia or the Bacchanal - too many crimes made the man less than a man, the mask more than a mask. Now the only way the masks can survive is to bond to another human, effectively superimposing its vampire spirit onto the host. Every time the host dies, a small part of it becomes part of the vampire mask. The first few times this happened it was accidental, but they've spent their centuries perfecting the technique so that now, for instance, the traditional mask makers of Venice are one of their many Nodes, manufacturing new vampire masks to join the cult.
The masks can extend the lifespan of the host and give them powers beyond comprehension, but only while wearing the mask. Even an extended lifespan eventually ends, but before that happens the host has to make sure the mask is passed on to someone else.
As the host ages, the signs that they're tainted by the mask becomes more obvious. The masks have developed special techniques to disguise these marks but they become less effective the older the host becomes. Which is why that renowned actress, for example, retired early from film and spent the rest of her days in her mansion, refusing all calls for an interview. Or why that industrialist is so reclusive, never leaving their yacht.
You could, if you choose, go for a classic mythology route. One interpretation of the Medusa myth is an ancient cult used Gorgon masks to frighten the profane. When their shrines were overrun, the masks stolen, mythology interpreted the event as the beheading of Medusa. Suppose Medusa didn't die, and her cult lived on through one mask that survived the event? That the cult rebuilt using that mask as a prototype? Then your characters have the opportunity to literally behead Medusa; if they destroy that one ancient mask, the others lose their power and the cult is broken for good. Dracula Dossier for the ancient Greek history enthusiasts.
Why go this route?
First, it works in any setting. I mentioned Night's Black Agents but you could as easily use this in Trail, Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, D&D - whichever you fancy, really. Details change, the concept remains the same. The mask is the monster; the monster wears the mask.
Second, it becomes a means of setting friend against friend. Your Network Contact, your friendly NPC at the tavern, whoever, whenever, can fall under the spell of the mask. You can never be sure who's on who's side. Think of it like an addiction mixed with Possession; the person wearing the mask can't bear to be without it, but at the same time you never know what will happen if they put the mask on.
Third, it sets up an enemy that is both iconic and undying. Sure, you can burn the mask, drop it in acid, whatever you fancy - but there will be another mask. Someone's making them. Who? To what end? If the enemy wears a Michael Myers mask does that mean they become Myers? Share his abilities, obsessions?
This is an annual festival event in Guernsey. There’s the walking trail with its scattered hordes of straw men, all designed to parody local and international events. Next door is the church with a big wide field for other events & tents. Exactly the sort of thing you’re probably thinking of; ice cream, bring & buy, local produce, that sort of thing. Bring the kids. Make a day of it.
What if that were transposed somewhere else?
What if that event were taking place in Cthulhu City?
Well, you’d need somewhere with an agricultural history. Somewhere with a church. Maybe a field, though that’s optional; you could do the same thing in a parking lot.
In a Cthulhu City context you’re looking at locations like Dunwich or Salamander Fields. Places with an active farming community or a former agricultural history. Dunwich is probably the better option with its connection to the Church of the Conciliator, but the Esoteric Order – encountered in Salamander Fields – works just as well.
Somewhere with lots of narrow little lanes for the walking tour. Dark alleys. Twisting corridors. Maybe some of the houses or tenements have scarecrows hanging out of the windows, that sort of thing. You don’t even have to change the name. There’s plenty of French speakers in New England. Probably worth mentioning that the literal translation isn’t scarecrow; it’s monkey, or baboon. Except in Guernésiais, which apparently includes an extra letter in its Norman French version of the language.
In the actual world by 1919 the state government, following Federal guidelines, would have instituted programs designed to discourage multilingual education as part of its Americanization program. However, Cthulhu City isn’t the actual world. It’s something altogether other.
Cthulhu City:
There is – by certain unreliable and maddening accounts, and now by your own dreadful experience – a city on the eastern seaboard of the United States, in northern Massachusetts. You do not recall seeing it on maps when you were growing up, and no-one of your acquaintance ever admitted coming from that place until you found yourself living within its eerie confines …
Under the rules:
Masked: The Masked take on a location describes it as relatively untouched by the strangeness of the
city – or at least, its horrors are hidden beneath a mundane mask.
Unmasked: The sinister, Mythos-tainted version of the location, where the horrors wear no mask.
Cast: NPCs who might be encountered there.
Clues: Clues leading on from this location, pointing to other locations, individuals, or deeper mysteries ...
With all that in mind:
Les Babouains
Masked
A yearly festival where visitors are invited to take a tour round a series of vignettes, all of which are made up of scarecrows arranged in comic poses. Here’s one dressed like a politician everyone hates! Here’s one based on a local event or scandal! The tour trail is along a series of dark alleyways or overgrown, rocky paths; take care not to injure yourself. Once you have had enough of those, feel free to wander over to the food & drink tents, shop at the bring & buy, drop a few coins in the collection box. The Church appreciates your support!
Children and adults giggle, at first, when they set off down the scarecrow trail. It soon becomes quiet; fear, ever-growing, stops tongues. Did that one move? Are they all … moving? Why is it so dark down here? It seemed sunny before. The displays are supposedly built by locals but you can never be sure who made what, and after a while the displays aren’t even named. They’re just … there. Did you make a wrong turn? What does the map say? Oh, you needed to retrace your steps after number 16 and never did – but was that number 16? Well, at least there’s the bring & buy, though some of those second-hand items have peculiar stains. Is that an atlas? Did this come from Dr. Armitage’s library? Let’s go over to the food tent and have some of that local brew. I’m sure no harm can come from it. After all, Prohibition’s long in the past, ha-ha!
Unmasked
Careful not to take a wrong turn on the scarecrow path. Some of these trails are deliberately arranged to lure the unwary into a situation they can’t easily get out of. Cultists use these as a means of snatching up victims for their sacrifices. That fellow in the doctor’s outfit is actually from the Sanitarium, as are the burly ‘nurses’ with him. It seems there’s always an incident or two each year that require the Sanitarium’s tender ministrations. Those with Mythos realize that the scarecrow path has its own peculiar significance; participants are actually wandering the holy maze of Theseus, and each step on the path powers the ritual. As the ritual comes closer and closer to its denouement, the sensitive may notice sounds of a large beast, padding after them on the trail. Perhaps the Priest knows more about this; the sweat on his gleaming brow increases as the day wears on, as if he’s waiting for something. Of course, each year at least one person on the Trail never comes out again but nobody likes to talk about that ...
Cast
This is the kind of event that attracts people looking for a good time, as well as those looking to see and be seen. Artists, Gadabouts, Servants, Students, as well as at least one Priest, possibly a Mystic or Grifter. There’s a decent chance one of the Afflicted can be found out on the trail, howling at the unknown or petrified by the scarecrows.
Clues
Some of the items in the bring & buy did come from dubious sources and may contain information on the Occult or Theology. A chance encounter with the Sanatarium staff (Oral History, Flattery) may lead to further information about that dubious institution, or perhaps even allow the player to develop a Contact there. Outdoorsman may allow the character to turn the tables on whoever-it-was who arranged the scarecrow trail, perhaps even leading to a means of sabotaging the ritual. Medicine or Pharmacy allows the character to make an unpleasant realization about the food on offer - in turn leading to a plot by one of the cults or local gangs. Possibly a Cloned Tyrone moment ...
I keep a folder called Useful Twitter. Every so often someone posts an image or a graphic that I know I'm going to find useful in the future, and I save it there against the day when I need inspiration. For much the same reason I buy books like London Cameos and Fabian's London After Dark - not because I think the history is 110% reliable but because the stories can be useful inspiration.
The image looks a little too perfect, when all is said and done. But as an inspiration ...
The Green Folk
Horror, Urban, Any Modern Setting
This neighborhood is on the edge of redevelopment. Developers have been eyeing it up for years but, for one reason or another, the money was never there. Times change and opportunities arise. It looks as though the wrecker's ball is ready and the architects' plans are fully developed.
You are:
Impoverished renters or squatters who've recently moved in because there was nowhere else to go, or at least nowhere that was close enough to where you work/study.
Urban explorers determined to map out the area before the wreckers move in.
House strippers determined to steal everything that isn't nailed down before the wreckers move in.
Social workers or equivalent do-gooders trying to reach out to the inhabitants before the wreckers move them on.
Government workers or the equivalent tasked with mapping out and rezoning the area to make it easier for developers to move in.
Party people who got completely blitzed at the last pub/bar and are wandering in a haze looking for somewhere else to go.
This row of houses and shops was once a bustling area but about sixty years back it started to slip into decline. Then came recessions, changes in government, urban blight, and before anyone realized what was going on there was almost nobody left. The people who do live here don't talk much to outsiders. They're not unfriendly, exactly. They just don't talk.
You'd have to look close to realize that they don't talk because they don't have mouths any more.
Characteristics of the neighborhood:
Almost no lights after dark. The street lights are mostly bust, there are few businesses, and the houses/apartments keep their windows covered.
Old-fashioned business signage, or businesses. Who calls themselves an Automat these days? Who operates a news stand? Is that a horse and cart down the street?
Peculiar mold smell, like rotten straw.
No children. At all. The school is vacant, as is the only playground.
No vagrants. At all. Nobody spare-changing, nobody sleeping in alleyways.
No buses or public transport. At all. There are still bus stops and one subway station, but no buses, no trains - no commuters. In or out.
The Awful Truth
Seed of Corruption. At the heart of it all is an old-fashioned botanical garden, in the grounds of a Victorian era house. It's the oldest home on the street, covered in ivy, and the garden at its center is a cultivated garden in perfect order. There are people living in the house who say they're the children/grandchildren/great grandchildren of Sebastian Montogomery, who built the garden. They all appear to be 30 years of age exactly, and they all look very alike. They maintain the garden. The garden is all that matters. The garden is the life ...
Disease But No Death. About [x] decades ago there was a pandemic that sickened millions and killed tens of thousands. In order to bring peace and some kind of solace to the people the priest of the local church obtained a relic (potentially a Mythos relic if this is a CoC style narrative) which they believed would cure those who kissed it. It prevented them from dying but it also prevented everything else; no children, no desire, no energy, no will to do anything but sleep during the day and wander aimlessly at night, except for certain nights of the year when they all gather in the church for ceremonies. The people who live here are basically harmless so long as they're not disturbed, but if they're disturbed ...
Joined In One Dream. The neighborhood everyone sees isn't the one that actually exists. There is something else under the skin, but that skin is the dreamworld of one of the people living here - or who used to live here, at least. Horror novelist Peonie Dark (aka Tom Ward) spent their entire life working on this reality, painted the walls of their apartment with images of the kind of story they wanted to express, went out at night with a spray can and a dream to create images of the world they wanted to tell stories about. As they became more active, and sicker, and sicker, the 'real world' began fading away; Peonie's fading life force couldn't keep the body alive but it could suppress the lives of everyone else. Now Peonie's basically a husk, empty of everything except a desire to create, and the world around them is their canvas.
OK, I do have a Solo Ops post written and ready to go, but this arrived on Friday and I just cannot wait to talk about it.
Jiansghi: Blood in the Banquet Hall is a Kickstarter from way, way back in the mist-shrouded Before Times - that is, before COVID and before the UK's exit from the EU - with an original projected physical release of Nov 2020 (or Oct 2020 for the .pdf version). It funded on its first day and has gone from strength to strength ever since. I spotted it during the campaign and Tweeted about it, backed it to .pdf level and later upped my pledge to physical.
Time makes a mock of us all, and especially enjoys poking fun at Kickstarter release dates. It wasn't until late last year that the physical went out, and what with COVID and other shipping issues I didn't get my copy until this week.
It's no secret I love horror, and vampire films, and things that go argh! in the night. So when something floated into view that, on closer inspection, not only fulfilled all of those wants but also gave me something very close to Bookhounds of London, another of my fave settings, I had to give this a shot. Above all else, I particularly loved the thought of being able to play a kind of Mr. Vampire hybrid, except rather than being exorcists operating a funeral parlor your characters are owners/operators of a Chinese restaurant. What's not to like?
Physically this is a very beautiful product, with evocative art both color and otherwise. The central board operates as a time tracker and organizer, showing you where you are and what you ought to be doing at each given step in the process. You, the characters, each have a sheet with all kinds of stuff showing you what you might be able to do, how well you can do it, what you have to do it with, and so on. The board's in the center, your characters on the periphery, and the whole thing operates like a Catherine wheel of options, spinning like a top and throwing off sparks.
I really want to see this in play. In my minds eye it looks like a restaurant place setting, with the main dish in the center and each person's plate at the periphery, as we all sample the available options.
As the restaurant's owners/operators, your primary duty is to keep the restaurant running because the restaurant, that shared responsibility, is what keeps the family together. If if fails, then everything, including the family, falls apart.
In order to do that you need to accomplish tasks, everything from keeping the place clean to cooking and serving to bribing the cops to a dozen and one different things, and if you fail in one task then it will be harder to accomplish the next. A cascading failure is always on the horizon, and it's your responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.
Meanwhile each of you have your individual hopes and dreams that you're trying to fulfil, independent of any obligations you might have to your family. Balancing your personal needs against the needs of the family is what keeps your character going, and just like the restaurant there are plenty of obstacles that might prevent you from fulfilling those personal needs.
As if all that wasn't bad enough there are vampires, the dreaded Jiangshi, lurking in the shadows and making things much, much worse for everyone involved. If the characters fall under their influence then they become sick, and so find their daily tasks that much more difficult. Become infected with their disease and you might become a Jianghsi yourself, turning against the family and making their lives much more difficult.
Mechanically all this is accomplished via cards and dice, and played through in Scenes which represent the passing phases of the day. Morning, when everything is prepped. Afternoon when food service starts. Evening, when the Jiangshi make their presence known, and Dead of Night, when the restaurant shuts and the Jiangshi's power is at its peak.
In each Scene one or more characters will have stuff to do, and how well they achieve their goals determines plot progression. The characters only have 6 working hours in the day to distribute between the various tasks, and if they've been infected by Jiangshi or the restaurant has accumulated Neglect, both of which is represented by cards on the board or on the character sheet, then they won't be operating at full strength. That means they have less time, fewer options, which makes it more difficult to accomplish tasks. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold ...
It's easy to see how, even without the Jiangshi, if the characters are selfish and devote more time to their personal goals than they do to the shared goal of the restaurant, the family will fall apart. The Jiangshi is an added stressor, one they really don't need, but if they band together the family has a chance. A good chance? Eh ...
It's a d8 system, low being bad news, 5-6 being success with consequences, 7-8 being critical success. A roll of 4 is especially awful because 4, the Death number, cancels out a success. Therefore it's possible to roll 0, if you roll only one success in your pool and accumulate one or more 4s. A result of 0 is a critical fail, with nasty consequences. You can accumulate bonuses and extra dice if everything's going well, but if Neglect or infection has blocked off those options then it's just you, the dice, and a famished Jiangshi waiting for you to let your guard down.
While it's very definitely a horror game the true nightmare isn't so much that dusty bloodsucker lurking in the shadows. The nightmare is the collective failure of the family. If the family fails, then everything falls apart and the game - the story - is over. That lends this narrative - and it is a narrative far more than it is a game - a personal punch that RPGs like it lack.
Consider Bookhounds of London. There the central conceit is the Bookstore, which all the characters operate and possibly also own. If one character fails or falls, that doesn't really affect the Bookstore, because ultimately in that game the Store is simply an excuse for the characters to be together as a group. It serves the same function as Delta Green or Ordo Veritatis. It provides flavor and shared backstory, but has no real influence in play and will survive even if the characters fall.
That isn't the case here. The characters are together as a group and the restaurant is the proof of their group solidarity. If the restaurant is failing, that's because the group is unravelling. If the restaurant goes under, that's proof that the family has disintegrated. In short, the Store is more than an excuse for the characters to coexist; the Store is evidence that the characters are successfully coexisting.
You might have noticed that, unlike, say, Troubleshooters, I've had nothing to quibble about so far. Nor will I quibble. This is a solid, well-thought-out and well-designed product. Nothing here to make me go Eeek! or question why an image indicates one thing and the text another. Designers Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim, with their horde of co-conspirators, have put together something that's beautiful, functional, and inspirational.
Together with the board, cards, dice, character sheets and other bits come two very interesting books. The first, the main game book, includes everything you need to play the game and also a brilliant explanation of the setting, its history, Gods, Qui, religion, vampires and other supernatural creatures, and plenty more besides. The second book, Haunted Tales, includes eighteen horrifying scenarios for you and your group ranging from historic to modern day, with side orders of Mexican, Filipino, Jewish, African American and Islamic stories, each with their own particular supernatural problems and concerns.
There's a lot to love, and I hope you'll love it as much as I.
Our knowledge of London is increased by the buried dead. The suicides of the city were, until 1823, buried at a particular crossroads that still exists at the junction of Grovesnor Place and Hobart Place; it may therefore be deemed to be an unlucky spot. Peter Ackroyd, London Under: The Secret History Beneath The Streets
Faust, directed by F.W. Murnau of Nosferatu fame
What is a crossroads? Why is it significant?
From Bullfinch's Mythology: The place where two or more roads intersect. Something sinister about crossroads has made such conjunction of highways a matter of interest for superstitions, beliefs and customs connected with this particular spot. Crossroads superstition was prevalent generally throughout Europe, in India, Japan, Greece, among the Mongols and the American Indians. Here were to be found demons, evil spirits, ghosts and witches, sprites, kobolds and faeries. It was the burial place of suicides and murderers, a dump-heap for parricides, and a rendezvous for witches who frequently used this uncanny place for their sabbat revels. Anything might plainly happen here. People feared and avoided this meeting of the ways.
Divinities were sometimes associated with the crossroads, perhaps to repel or neutralize the evil influences attached to the locality. In Greek mythology, both Hermes and Hecate were connected with the crossroads. Such ceremonies were practiced at this spot as sacrifice, offerings, divination and many magic rites.
So this is a spot where the influences of the normal world are weakest, where strange things lurk and occasionally peep through the cracks. In Esoterror terms, the Membrane is weak here.
It's also a psychic dumping ground. If you bury your unwanted or evil dead all in one spot, you have to expect some kind of spiritual leakage from all those unclean corpses.
As can be seen from the Murnau clip, the best - that is, the most evocative - crossroads are far from any sign of human life. So far distant from light, warmth and all things comforting, it is easy to see how such a fell and lonely spot might loom large in popular imagination.
Of course, things change. New York's Times Square Broadway is a crossroads. It's difficult to imagine a less lonely spot on the planet; at any time of day you're bound to meet someone there. Whether you want to meet them or not is something else again. That, and there would have been a time when what is now Times Square was just a collection of dirt tracks separating farmsteads, just as lonely and desolate as you like. Cities grow, and swallow the lonely places.
Ackroyd mentioned a particular spot in London:
As you can see from the map the crossroads he cites are right on what is now Grosvenor Gardens, among other things. Some very high-end houses, hotels and businesses round that way, which presumably haven't been put off by the miasma from the suicides buried beneath their businesses and cafes. Clearly it can't be that unlucky a spot.
Although you do have to wonder what it's like at midnight.
Gamification:
Assignation at a Crossroads
Your contact has agreed to meet you at a crossroads at midnight. Whether this is a bustling metropolis or a lonely roadside cafe (or perhaps just a collection of scrubby trees and badly maintained street lamps) you can't help but feel a frisson of nervous anticipation. What information do they have? Why meet here, of all places?
Psychic Dead Spot. The contact chose it because a crossroads is a kind of protection against psychic intrusion and spiritual eavesdroppers. A conversation held here can't be overheard by the dead, or those who rely on ghosties and ghoulies as their eyes and ears. However, the contact is being followed by the dead so as soon as the characters leave that spot they will be picked up on, perhaps pursued. Is there a safe way of leaving a crossroads?
Meeting of the Damned. The contact doesn't realize that this is where a particularly dangerous group of undead lurk - perhaps strigoi, perhaps even vampires. The contact doesn't realize this because the contact has been suborned, and is working with the enemy. This is a lure, a trap to get the character to meet somewhere their protections are weakest. If this is a savings throw or advantage-style game like D&D, then all saves and combat rolls are at disadvantage while the characters are within a certain distance of the crossroads. Those who can see spirits see the unhallowed dead all around them, hampering the characters' every move.
Crossing Signals. The contact is trying to find out whether the characters are in league with the enemy. He wants to see how they behave around a crossroads, whether they're affected in any way by their proximity to the unhallowed dead. If the characters pass the test then he has valuable information for them. If they don't, he has something considerably more lethal in mind. Occult spends may be very helpful here, convincing him that he has nothing to fear.
