Recently someone discovered desiccated human remains in a garage in Ohio, but you'll be pleased to hear that, just this once, it wasn't a gruesome murder.
The tip-off came when a neighbor heard what's been described as 'youthful voices' coming from a detached garage in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Further investigation uncovered no suspicious youths (I firmly believe it was four meddling kids and a dog) but did find the bones of what proved to be a very long dead gent.
Turns out the garage was formerly a different building altogether, and was used by the Odd Fellows as a lodge. The bones were kept there for ritual purposes. Time passes, lodge changes hands, lodge is torn down to be turned into a garage, and lo and behold here's our pal Bonesy.
What do you do when you find a corpse in your new garage? Why, you keep it, of course. The new owner didn't seem inclined to, I don't know, bury the dead, but he wasn't going to turf the poor thing out with the trash. He boxed it and forgot it. Then someone else found it.
The Odd Fellows is a very old masonic organization. The first lodges date back to the 18th century, and nobody really knows what they got up to; its traditions are shrouded in antiquity and, as any historian will tell you, the absolute best way to make everything clear as mud is to shroud the historical record in antiquity. Broadly speaking it's a charitable, philanthropic organization with a penchant for fraternalism and benevolence. Sounds very nice, I'm sure.
Hot Fuzz, second in the Cornetto Trilogy
The Catholics didn't like 'em much, but then the Catholic Church in its day has condemned everything that isn't Catholic and some things that are, so it's not that difficult to see why the Church might have had a downer on the Odd Fellows.
If you want to know more about the Odd Fellows there is an interesting book over on Gutenberg, first published 1901, about the American branch of the Odd Fellows.
On Jericho Road is about as gnomic and mystical as you could possibly hope for. It poses the obvious question: "If," it is demanded, "the aims and purposes of the order be legitimate and praiseworthy, why shroud them in mystery rather than give them the broad sunlight of publicity." only to answer it with the most banal retort possible. "But if the preference of Odd-Fellowship be for quieter and less obtrusive methods, pray who shall fairly contest its right of choice?"
If it specifically mentions bones and peculiar rituals, I didn't notice. That said, I couldn't read it cover to cover and I shall be surprised if you manage it. If you wanted some bland yet useful text to make a mystic, or even Mythos, tome out of, you certainly couldn't do any worse.
We travel from star to star, from system to system, until we reach yon lonely star that appears to be performing the Guardian's task, upon the verge of unmeasured and immeasurable space. We may descry and describe the form and outlines of those heavenly bodies, detect their movements and approximately determine their distances and dimensions. But what more? Little that is satisfying ...
OK, let's talk gamification. This could be a purist Trail of Cthulhu scenario. In that event the Lodge gets knocked down, say, in the 1890s and replaced with [insert building here - something modern and industrial]. There's a fair amount of junk left over from the old Lodge and the building's new owner can't be bothered to throw it out, so it ends up in the spare room. You know the type. Every office has one. Nobody remembers what its original use was; now it's a place you put things you don't want to have to think about.
It could also be Fear Itself, or Esoterrorists, or any one of a dozen different modernist settings. Given the Youthful Voices, it could also make a fun BubbleGumshoe scenario. It might be a little tricky to turn it into Night's Black Agents since, in that setting, finding human remains in an unexpected place is just another Tuesday, and not a very exiting one at that. However if you replace the human remains with, say, any of the relics from Dracula Dossier, or some similar McGuffin, you're off to the races.
Let's round out with a few story seeds.
The premise: someone finds human remains in a [mundane setting] and it turns out that these bones are older than expected and came from the building that used to be on this spot, but which was torn down forty years ago to make room for this one. What happened, and what will happen next?
- What happened: the old building used to be an occult lodge, and the bones were kept for ritual purposes.
- What will happen next: The new lodge, located somewhere else in town, is startled to discover its old ritual artefacts hidden away in some forgotten spot, and will do its best to get them back - using magic, if they have to.
- What happened: the old building used to be a funeral home, and was put out of business because it was breaking all sorts of laws regarding the disposal of human remains. The new owner found these bones, decided they didn't need the negative publicity, and put them somewhere forgettable.
- What will happen next: The former owner of those bones wants to be buried properly, and will haunt the finders until they do that.
- What happened: the old building was someone's home, back in the 1840s or thereabouts, and they wanted to be buried on the old homestead. So they were. The bones were excavated as part of the new build and the developer didn't want the headaches that come with admitting you've found human remains on the property. So they hid the bones.
- What will happen next: The bones become the focal point for a peculiar kind of time dilation. The psychic powers of the dead person were such time doesn't really exist for them: it's always 1840, where they are. Now they've been disturbed the bones will start rebuilding reality to fit its internal vision: first the bedroom where they spent their final hours, then the rest of the house, hall by hall. Soon people in the new building will find themselves walking into the old, by accident, and there's no telling when or how they'll get out again ...
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