Zero Company and Villainy (RPG All)

 

Zero Company final trailer

I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. Saw the original when it came out, loved the first three films, and after that just dropped off the rock. Gameplay-wise, I've never enjoyed shooters and flight sims only interest me if it's Great War biplanes stuff, so the Star Wars franchise never caught my attention.

However, I am an X-Com fan. 

When people started describing Zero Company as X-Com but in the Star Wars universe, I was on board.

This isn't Not Quite Review Corner so I shan't go into the bits and bobs, except to say that there isn't as much X-Com here as I'd hoped and the game overall feels as if they had a lot of ideas and not much execution. Plus, for a hero-based game, no romance options, which seems a little boneheaded. Even X-Com's Chimera Squad, which this closely resembles, hinted at relationships between the characters. The closest Zero Company gets to this is Bennic's puppy dog eyes. 

No, I want to talk about villains this time out. 

Once upon a time I said:    

The problem with villains is, too often they exist only to do one thing: be foiled by the player characters. Villains are punching bags, paper Nazis, colorful targets that sit on the far end of the shooting range and never shoot back, or at least not accurately. There’s nothing unique about them, nothing that makes the players think ‘I want to know more about this guy.’ If the players don’t feel engaged by the villain, they won’t respect him, and at that point the whole thing falls flat ... Consider this tactic, when designing your own villains. Find out what they want, what they fear people will find out about them, what they’re prepared to kill for. 

Zero Company has this problem in spades. 

Star Wars in general has a villain problem, to be honest. The setting doesn't have that many honest-to-God villains and, when it finds one, it re-uses that character again and again till whatever personality they once had has lost all meaning.

Fathom is the worst example of this. The definition of a punching bag. I have no idea what she wants or why she wants it. I know she's doing Bad Things and, as the hero of the series, I have a vested interest in stopping Bad Things. 

She has subordinates, Cultists. I have no idea what they want. Or why they let themselves get infected with this plague that seems to be the McGuffin of the narrative. It gives them cool powers and cool powers make the world go round, so here we are.

Let's design a cult. I haven't done that for a while.

Cults recruit on broadly the same principles as spies. They go MICE - money, ideology, coercion, ego. 

Cults, like OPFOR, have the same important characteristics:

1. Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
2. Goals.
3. Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

Let's say for the sake of it that this particular cult got its start in a card game during the Great War.

Six young men sat in a bunker playing cards, waiting for orders. The game intensified. All eyes were on it. The stakes went as high as they possibly could. Then, at the moment of revelation, enemy shelling obliterated the bunker, and only one of those men survives.

That man is convinced that providence spared him only because the game wasn't over, and if it ever ended somehow, at that moment he'd die. 

He collected all the playing cards used in the game. The only one missing was one of the aces; he has no idea what happened to it, but he's convinced it's still out there. 

That man became the nucleus of a peculiar cult: the Players. 

It started within his unit. Just a few listeners to his crazy stories. They didn't take him too seriously, but it was a fun story and he told it well. Then they saw what happened next, how he dodged every bullet, bit of shrapnel or bomb. It was uncanny. Risks that would have killed a normal person, he survived. He started collecting medals, getting promotions. Soon he was in command of the company, and those few listeners stuck to him like glue, certain that whatever luck had attached to him would benefit them too, if they were loyal.

If. 

Living can go to your head. A man can be awarded medals, do remarkable deeds, but if there's no moral compass, no center - and in this case whatever was there before soon eroded to nothing - a man can be convinced the world exists to benefit him and him alone. 

After the war the hero went home again, followed by a few true believers. Old soldiers convinced their commander could do no wrong, utterly certain that the same luck which dogged his heels in wartime would follow him devotedly in peace. 

They were the first Players.

Now the former commander has set up a gambling operation in [select big city]. The Players are part of that operation, all sharing the same Ideology. Others drawn into the cult come in because of Money or Ego. Either they want what the cult seems to have (financial success) or they think they have what it takes to be winners (ego).

The commander has set up a household god totem somewhere in the gambling operation. It might be in his offices or somewhere close by, but it can't be outside the gambling house/casino. The body of this household god is trench art, made of old shell casings and bits of bone. Cordite stench clings to it. 

The commander believes he is becoming a vampiric entity and is pondering the utility of blood sacrifice. It's appealing. He has his eye on a couple luscious young things who might do. His reasoning is, it was blood sacrifice that got him this far, but those deaths can only power so much. If there is a way of living forever by consuming the lives of others, well ... 

He thinks he has five lives' worth of immortality juice right now: the five who died before that card game ended. But he doesn't know what five lives' worth is, really. Can it be measured in decades, years? Months? Does that mean he can be killed five times before the end and, if so, how many lives did he use up during the War?

The two recruitment vectors are the signature features of the cult: Money, and Ego. In any encounter with the cult or its supporters, those two factors are always evident. They show off all the trappings of wealth, or they inflate the ego of their victims.

The cult's Power comes from money and all that it will buy. It doesn't have legions of soldiers (though its core membership have military experience) and any expertise (safecrackers, pickpockets, card sharps and so on) are hired help. The experts might be seduced into the cult, but they don't start off as recruits nor are they loyal to the commander.

It has a private Goal and a public one. 

The private goal is to find a way to turn the commander into a vampire. Not all the Players are briefed on this goal; the commander is keeping it close to the chest. Thefts, research, the hiring of occult experts are all geared towards this private goal.

The public goal is to increase the status of the commander and, by extension, the Players. Political and economic power, mostly. If that means aligning with certain groups (eg. the Fascists) then that's what they will do. This power feeds the household totem, which in turn gives its benefits to the Players, increasing their luck, their ability.

The cult's assets include the gambling house/casino, a host of civilian gamblers and other low-level fodder, the Players (the main core of whom are ex-military) and any experts they might hire with the money the casino generates.

Now, the commander. What does he want, what does he fear people will find out about him, what is he prepared to kill for?

The commander wants immortality. Life is sweet: the War taught him that. He wants it all, every last drop. He likes being in charge of a casino, having loyal followers, and the Players are his friends. He would dispose of it all, including the Players, in a heartbeat if it meant he got to live.

He fears that missing card. It's out there, somewhere. Constant appeals to the household totem have not told him where it is. He fears that someone will find out his weakness, uncover that missing card, and put an end to him by finishing the game. He keeps all the other cards locked away in a safe, and if someone were to steal those cards he would become frantic.  

He's prepared to kill for immortality. It doesn't matter who he kills. It could be a baby in the cradle, but if killing that baby would give him even another decade of guaranteed life, he'd slaughter it without a second thought. 

I've deliberately not mentioned locations or settings. Obviously, this would work well in a setting after the Great War, so Trail of Cthulhu, Call, Bookhounds and so on, but it could as easily be made to work in a setting outside Earth - Eversink, say. You'd need to change little. Fireballs rather than shellfire, that kind of thing. Or Paris, rather than London, if you'd rather make this Dreamhounds than Bookhounds. Cairo, and make the commander a seeker into Egyptian promises of immortality, for a Tombhounds take.

It's your Cult.

Vitaï Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Enjoy!

Death Mask 3 Exploring Rome

Rome: Masks, hidden identities, hidden agendas, Gorgons, the shadowy influence of Egypt's past, the Pharaohs of old returning to take their rightful place.  

Let's dig a little deeper. 

The whole point behind the cult is that it's run by masks, whose main purpose in life is to make more masks, to extend their already lengthy existence. These masks derive their motivating force and their purpose from the old Gorgon cult, which fled to Egypt when the original cult bases in Greece were smashed. Now the cult promotes a return of the old Pharaonic ways, mainly to encourage new Egyptian recruits to join, but at its heart it's the same Gorgon cult it was many centuries ago.

It's probably worth remembering that when Perseus allegedly slew Medusa he did it using flying sandals, a cap of Hades that made him invisible, and an adamantine sickle. Those sound like useful cult-bashing relics to me. Some or all of these might have found their way to Egypt over the years and are now hidden in some tomb or other, or perhaps on the back shelf of one of the many, many curio shops in Cairo or Alexandria. 

What if, for instance, that adamantine sickle is in fact a khopesh?  Ceremonial versions of those were found with Tutankhamun; if King Tut can have them then there's no reason why Perseus' old blade can't have found its way into some priest's tomb. What if those battered sandals are hanging up with the stock in some souk or other? 

The cap of night found its way into several different hands; Hermes had it, Athena had it, there's no telling where else it might have gone after Perseus used it. He may have dropped it in Mycenae, where he was King. If so, then the archaeologist Schliemann might have found it while digging for Trojan loot, in the later 1870s. If that happened then the cap would be in Berlin at the time of the campaign, but then the Great Museums of the world are part of the Building so there's no reason not to have a side trip off to Berlin. Nor, for that matter, is there a compelling reason why a German archaeologist might not sneak the thing away in their bags and baggage for a trip to Egypt. For ... research purposes. Not because they're a cult member seeking promotion. Or because they're a cult opponent trying to smash the new Pharaoh. Possibilities ... 

OK, so we have some Banes and possibly also treasures to be sought for in the first arc of the campaign. Fine. So who's the OPFOR?

Remember, all OPFOR have:

• Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

What does the cult have?

Power: far-reaching political, social and quasi-military authority and influence within Egypt. Their spies and enforcers are everywhere. They can have people killed. They can deploy assassins, peculiar occult magics, ancient mummies - all within Egypt proper. Outside Egypt, their influence drops off dramatically. They can send agents to do their bidding, but they can't just snap their metaphorical fingers and have a man in, say, Berlin, drop dead that same moment. 

However, this power is basically illicit. They have no actual civil or legal authority. They exist behind the scenes. Everyone fears them, but it's not as if they have an office building, a flag, a government post. 

For the purposes of plot, it can be assumed that their power extends as far as Egypt extends. Which means, among other things, that it extends to all those museums and other places where Egypt mania is all the rage. Where the mysteries of Egypt - and, by extension, the cult - influence art and architecture.

Do the civil authorities in Egypt - at this point in time, the British military occupying forces and the Egyptian civil government - know about the cult? Probably. Inasmuch as the cult is active and does things, the authorities will know about those things. They may not have connected the dots and realized that this peculiar murder, or the rise of that politician, are all connected to a power-hungry pro-Pharaoh movement. They know something's up, but not what. Further, there will be some within the civil authority who have connected dots, who suspect much, and are either opposed to the cult or who seek alliance with it for their own ends.

That rival Power opposes the cult's own, and the cult will constantly be aware of it. This limits the cult's overt activities. It cannot expect to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, not without consequences. It can have a man killed, but if that killing is very troublesome for the civil authorities then the cult had better have someone to take the blame, go to trial and perhaps get executed. Otherwise, the political fallout from the killing may upset the cult's plans. 

Of course, all this is before the new Pharaoh steps forward and takes their rightful place on the throne temporarily occupied by Fuad I. The cult will probably be paying very close attention to the career of Mohammed Ali Tewfik, the heir presumptive, but he spends most of his life outside Egypt. Why? Who can say? But he does have a magnificent Cairo palace full of artefacts and practically swimming in history. It's very private, of course; it won't become a museum until after his death. But I'm sure that can be worked into the first story arc. Perhaps that's where the cap of night is now, or perhaps the person who has it seeks an audience with Mohammed Ali so they can sell it to the heir presumptive. Sounds like a job for some plausible go-betweens ...  

Goals: The cult has a hidden goal and an up-front goal.

The up-front is to restore Pharaonic rule. There will be a new golden age of such and so forth. Egypt will once more become the yadda yadda. This is the goal that all the cult members know about. It's the carrot that brings in new members. It's the lure that keeps radicals, Nationalists, Communists and the Muslim Brother hood on board. Work with us, and we'll help you get what you want. Those groups may not have everything in common with the cult but they have one common enemy: the British occupying forces. So long as the cult keeps playing the public game, and drumming up hatred for the British, the more likely it is the cult will get what it wants from those other groups.

There is another way to play this which could be just as interesting. Have the cult ally itself with the British. All the other groups - Communists, Radicals, Nationalists, Muslims - are against it now, but so long as it can keep them fighting each other they'll lack the resources to come at the cult direct. It does mean that player characters cooperating with the British will never know if the policeman, say, or the Colonel they ally themselves with is, in fact, a cult member. Or even a cult leader. 

That's the up-front. The hidden goal is simply this: survival.

The cult remembers all too well the bad old days after the initial collapse, when it was on the run, fearing for its existence. There were a number of times when it might have vanished altogether. Its final shrines vandalized, the last masks smashed or burnt. It has been surviving in the shadows in Egypt for centuries, eating scraps, gathering strength. The oldest among them remember the bad old days and want no more of that, thank you. They would sacrifice every single Pharaonic cult member, every dollar in its coffers, if that meant the cult would survive another day. It knows how to relocate and start fresh. It's done that before. 

That's the old guard, of course. The ancient among them. The newer masks? They quite like luxuries. They like ruling over men. The shadows are comforting, but also an irritant. Wouldn't it be grand to show off their true power? To take center stage? These are masks, after all; they don't feel they truly exist if they're not performing. These are the cult members who will take risks, who will execute the grand plays and come up with power schemes. They don't care as much about survival. They've been fed scraps for too long. Now they want what's on the center table. 

This is a bit different from the average cult in a Cthulhu-esque game. In the typical setting cult members are just a means. Everyone gets fed into the cosmic woodchipper in the end. In the meantime, they work to bring about the return of [insert squid-faced monstrosity here.] This cult is nothing like that. It exists to exist. If there ever was some deeper meaning in its rituals, that meaning is long forgotten. 

Except, perhaps, by the most ancient among them. 

Can you say gerontocracy? Bet you know what that feels like. The old guard might have believed in something once, when they first started out. Now they just believe in holding on to power, for as long as their cold, dead hands can grip.

Assets: at the street level, hundreds if not thousands of willing servants. Everyone from that knife-grinder in the souk to the policeman, the museum curator, the archaeologist, and more. 

They all have their reasons. Some buy into the return of the Pharaoh shtick. Some just like the idea of sticking it to the British (or, alternatively, to the King, the Muslims, the Communists, or whoever). Some join forces for professional advancement or knowledge. After all, who better to know where the best dig sites are than the cult which has been around since forever and who probably built most of those dig sites in the first place? Some just want loot. Whatever the desire, the cult can provide. 

At the not-quite-street level, the youngest of the masks and the mask-makers. The ones who look like Venetian carnival masks, or just Halloween fun times masks. These are the center of any immediate cult activity. If there's a bunch of cult members centered around the local dig workers, then there will be a mask at the heart of it, probably worn by the reis. If the museum curators are in league with the cult, then one of them will be wearing a Harlequin mask. If the staff at Shepheard's are being blackmailed into doing the cult's bidding, then the blackmailer will be wearing a mask.

These masks give some power to the persons wearing them. Think of these as Renfields, if this were a Night's Black Agents game. So long as the mask is on, the wearer gets that power. However, there is a price to be paid. The wearer either has to make a blood sacrifice to keep going, or to give up some of their own life energy to go on. This can mean the wearer dies with their mask on, in particularly dire circumstances. 

Above the street level are the advanced members. The ones who know what's really going on (or who think they do). The ones who are working to bring about the new Pharaonic dynasty. These are highly placed persons and high-powered masks. The masks themselves are probably quite old, if not ancient. At least a century's worth of experience. They might be original Commedia; they certainly date from that period. They were made in the time when the cult was just beginning to reinvigorate itself, to draw on new membership. They don't remember the bad old days, at least not first-hand, but they've heard the old stories time and time and time again. Their loyalty wavers. Perhaps, they mutter among themselves, the time has come for a new direction. 

The oldest among them, the original Gorgons, are ancient indeed. They remember the old days first-hand. These are the ones obsessed with recovering the artefacts that Perseus (whoever that may have been) used to destroy the cult the first time. They realize how fragile life can be. They exist in the shadows. So long as the cult keeps bringing them people to eat, they're happy. These are the only masks with the ability to annihilate a person just by looking at them - the turn-to-stone ability. If there is a whisper of some peculiar theatrical troupe that performs once every so often, for a select audience, this group of masks is at the heart of that rumor. The ancient Roman or Greek theatre, reborn. Except the audience never gets to go home ... 

This final group is the one with real power. They can kill; they have access to ancient knowledge; they can summon up spirits or command mummies to rise. They have in their possession the ancient texts sought after by so many occultists and Tombhounds. They know where the real dig sites are. All they want is to continue to exist. For that to happen, they need to get the relics of Perseus. For that matter, they also need anything else that might pose a threat to them. If it should turn out that some modern artefact, say, has the same potential as Perseus' adamantine sickle then they will want it in their possession, toot sweet. For that reason, they may be very interested in any surplus Great War weapons or sinister death rays that some mad scientist left lying around. If you want to turn the game towards a kind of superhero (or at least super-science) direction, that's the way to do it.  

So! Rome. This is where it's all heading. This cult with its desire to just keep on existing, who plays with making men into Gods. 

Next time, let's talk the first arc.

Violet Firth aka Dion Fortune

 Last week I talked about ritual magic and this week it's Dion Fortune. Some of the material I'm going to discuss comes from Francis King's The Rites of Modern Occult Magic. 

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 ...

Gabriel Hounds (Bookhounds, Dracula Dossier)

Brook Manor in Buckfastleigh, Devon, is said to be the inspiration for Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. The story goes like this:

In the 17th Century the Manor was owned by a Richard Capel (or Cabell), who had a fearsome reputation. He owned two manors, one being Brook (sometimes spelled Brooke), the other Hawson. Whenever he spied a woman he liked the look of, he captured her and locked her in his manor at Hawson, riding over to visit her whenever he felt the need. When it came time for him to die, either he was howled to death by demon dogs parading outside Brook Manor, or he was chased down by the same on his way from one manor to the other, depending on which version of the story you prefer.

Devil dogs are relatively common in British folklore, particularly when it comes to ghouls and the undead. Often they are seen trailing after the living dead, or tormenting soon-to-be-damned souls. Their howls are a warning, both to the prey and to anyone else who might be nearby.

The most common version is the Gabriel Hound, often found coursing in packs. Also known as Corpse Hounds, they hover, like the Banshee, near the houses of those about to die. Occasionally the pack is supposed to be led by a man - the Gabriel of the story - a Sabbath-breaker whose punishment is to lead the Devil's pack for eternity. Some Victorian legends suggest that the Gabriel Hounds are actually the souls of unbaptized children, who cannot go to Heaven but are not condemned to Hell Everlasting, so they hover between the two.

In the case of Brook Manor and Richard Capel, the story has a postscript. Capel didn't get a church burial. His tomb was not far from the manor house, and had an iron grill over the entrance. It was said by the children of the parish that, if you marched counterclockwise around the tomb the correct number of times and stuck your fingers through the grill, Capel would come up and nibble your fingers. Why that was considered fun is a question best left to antiquity.

Brook Manor still exists in the present day, and if you have a spare few million you too can live in a Grade II listed ten bedroom manor house. 

So let's gamify this.

Devil dogs and Gabriel Hounds could easily be linked to the Hound-Lich, said to have its origins in the corpse-eating cults which dwell at Leng. However if the Gabriel tales are true, then the Hound-Lich isn't really a creature of Leng at all; its ghastly territory extends much further than that, and may not be linked either physically or spiritually to those fabled amulets of jade.

Church carvings come in all shapes and sizes, and the misericords of Grinling Gibbons are famous, but hounds often appear in stone form across the British Isles. Suppose for a moment that each of these markings is a warning, or possibly an indicator, that a Hound-Lich is nearby? Those strange and terrible demons found in church after church could be an attempt to capture the fluid essence of the Hound-Lich, neither corpse nor dog nor winged ghoul, but a combination of them all. Given the known links between the Hound-Lich and ghouls, the carvings could also be an attempt to warn people ghouls are nearby, or haunt the local churchyard.  

Typically the Hound-Lich stalks and kills those who steal its amulet, almost certainly from some forgotten, damned burial chamber. All of this comes courtesy of the 1922 Lovecraft short story The Hound, which isn't much different from the Howard Carter-ish Mummy's Curse. He who disturbs this tomb shall pay the penalty … 

All of which is very Pulp. However if your game is Purist then the whole idea of spectral tomb guardians may be unhelpful, particularly since the Leng name-drop is just so much excess baggage in the original story. Sure, it comes from Leng. If it came from Cleveland, Ohio it'd still be a slavering killing machine, but Leng's a better postcode. It has that Addams Family vibe.

That said, The Hound does have several markers that are close to, if not identical to, the Gabriel Hound story: the howling, the persecution of its victims, the presence/close proximity of the walking dead. The two big differences are the corpse-eating, and the strong inference that those killed by one might turn into one.

Suppose the Gabriel Hound was a Hound-Lich. What, then, do the legends signify?

Well, the spectral hounds forecast death, and they seem to be linked to certain spots - like Brook Manor. They might pursue a particular family for centuries, always appearing whenever one of them is close to death. So they're either linked to a place, or to a bloodline.

The bloodline bit fits neatly with the Bad Luck and In the Blood drives. Some people attract these things. Perhaps it's the star they were born under, or the ghastly taint flowing in their veins. Whatever the reason, put someone like that in proximity to the Gabriel Hounds' hunting grounds, and watch the sparks fly. Of course, to find out where those are you want to carry out a little Library Use or Cthulhu Mythos research, and keep an eye out for unusual stone carvings in old churches. In the case of In the Blood, it might also explain why your forbears were so keen to leave, say, Devon. Perhaps you're related, however distantly, to poor Capel, whose sins were not so black as history records, but whose blood proved irresistible to the Gabriel Hounds.

The location idea suggests a link to Magic, in some way. The Rough Magicks book gives several different paths to magic, from Elder Thing bio-tech to Dreamlands holdover to perceptual gravity. The key is, the source of magic, whatever it may be, is also the source of the Hound Lich. It gravitates to magical places, but cannot pass through them to its home dimension. Hence the howling, and all those stories about spectral guardians. The Hound-Lich isn't that fussed one way or the other about people, but it's perpetually frustrated and angry, so when it does find someone  on whom to take out all that rage … well, it usually doesn't end well for the someone.

Of course, Britain and folk magic go together like peanut butter and slavering hell-beasts from alternate dimensions. All those standing stones, ley lines, pagan sites, mystic wells, pilgrim's paths and peculiar rituals … Pick a hill or desolate moor, and chances are there's some kind of link with an ancient and malevolent past.

In the original story, the jade amulet serves as a kind of phylactery. It embodies the Hound-Lich in some way; remove the amulet, anger (and summon) the Hound. For this version, assume that there are several ways to create a phylactery, and it doesn't have to be jade or any particular material. That peculiar carving above the church door, on the tomb at Brook Manor, or even on the gate pillars of the old mansion, is the actual phylactery. Someone was clearly trying to create a means of disposal, or at least to anchor the Hound Lich in one place so it couldn't go roaming the countryside looking for victims. Wherever that marker is, so too is the Hound Lich - beware!

Perhaps there's some way to use the phylactery to defeat the Hound, but if so, that method is lost to time. Some crumbling grimoire, or some dangerous experimentation in the field, is needed to decipher the secret.

In Bookhounds, the secret of the Gabriel Hound can be found in some obscure, potentially Mythos-significant text. The client who wants it is either a Baskerville clone who wants to get rid of the family curse, or a necromancer who wants to use a Hound Lich for her own purposes. The Bookhounds search far and wide for the book that will explain everything, possibly because, if they don't find it, the Hound will come for them.

In Dracula Dossier, the Gabriel Hound could be Edom's early, abortive attempt to use supernatural means to destroy England's enemies. At least vampires are intelligent, and can be reasoned with. Gabriel Hounds are insane wights which kill anything they fancy. That's probably why Edom dropped the idea, but the sad story of this early experiment can still be found in some forgotten card file.

Alternatively a Gabriel Hound could be an indicator of vampire activity; the Hounds follow the undead, baying in their wake. This probably only works in certain locations, like Brook Manor, where the Hounds are known to congregate. The howls could be an early warning system for vampire-savvy locals, or the Hounds might attack vampires on sight. The occasional human Hound victim is an acceptable price to pay, for that kind of security.

This probably works best in a Supernatural or Damned game, especially with a Mythos tinge, but there's a lot of potential for other vampire types. The alien stone from the main book works well here. Just what are those fabled amulets made of, and why are they always buried in the cold, dark earth?

Enjoy! 

Believe In Magic (Night's Black Agents, Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists)

You probably noticed an article that's been floating around these past few days about skeletons in Spain. For those who haven't: divers discovered a bag of human remains off the coast of Alicante, and when the police got involved several other dump sites were discovered. All contained skeletal remains, some contained personal items as well, and DNA tests showed that the weathered bones from the first bundle had been buried in soil for decades before being disinterred and dumped at sea.

Naturally this sparked lurid theories about Santeria, because when you find bones in peculiar places naturally your first thought is 'witchcraft!' Oddly if you Google search skeleton and Alicante one of the first hits is Skeleton International, Removals and Storage but this has got to be someone's idea of a joke.

Also found with the remains were letters and photographs, including official documents from the Tax Authority. All three bags were found close together on the sea bed, and contained bones from several different people.

If the website Think Spain is to be believed - and I'm not sure it is - also found, but not mentioned by other news sources, is "a type of wooden pole, split down the middle which signifies the end of the road in certain areas of witchcraft, and a closed basket containing laurel leaves and a hermetically sealed container filled with a yellow-colored liquid."

All of which sounds a little lurid, which makes me suspicious; my usual attitude is 'if it sounds too good to be true, somebody's lying their arse clean off.'

That said, in folklore laurel's well known particularly in the Mediterranean for its purgative and purification properties. Sacred to Apollo, laurel "was believed to endow prophets with visions, and is associated with poetry partly because, as evergreen, it symbolizes immortality, and largely because its intoxicating properties are associated with poetic inspiration." (Funk and Wagnalls Folklore, Mythology and Legend). It can be used as a love charm, and has been used in tales to induce forgetfulness.

Funk and Wagnalls has this to say about bones: "the use of bones in divination is world-wide. Astragalomancy, divining by means of small bones, has given rise to several series of games: board games like pachisi [sic], dice games, jacks, etc." So you can thank diviners for your favorite RPG.

It also says "The Chinese have elaborate ceremonies to keep the physical soul out of their houses and contentedly in the tomb or sealed up in it. If the animal soul [which resides in the bones] has sufficient vitality, it will animate the skeleton or skull and commit horrid and revolting crimes - cannibalism, rape, etc - in the countryside." Bear that in mind next time you watch Mr Vampire.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying it doesn't have to be Santeria to be witchcraft of some kind. Laurel's forgetfulness combined with the tax returns and photographs could indicate someone's trying a novel way of managing their income tax burden. Or this is some kind of love charm, but personally I'm rooting for tax fraud. Love charms are so 14th Century.

It's difficult to judge this kind of thing from several thousand miles away and through another language; I doubt that the English-speaking sources have the whole story. I have some sympathy for the Santeria worshipper who says that this kind of thing doesn't happen in his religion. It must be wearing to know that every time a non-believer sees something vaguely like an episode of Buffy the non-believer turns to your religion, points a finger and calls it crazy.

That said, it does seem like a ritual attempt. It's the tax returns that really pique my interest. If it were organized crime or a serial killer trying to move evidence from an insecure body dump site to a more secure one, you'd think the only thing found would be the bones. Maybe some clothes or shoes. Paper, though, after thirty or forty years in the ground with a corpse and then an indeterminate time unprotected in the ocean; all due respect to CSI but you wouldn't be able to tell if it was tax returns or a Disneyland brochure. Which argues that the paperwork was a more recent addition to the dump, and tax returns are too easily traced for this to be an attempt to hide evidence. Criminals are often stupid, but you'd have to be an award-winning idiot to do something like that.

I'll offer one other supposition: whoever did this has access to a boat, but isn't an experienced boater. Someone who knew what they were doing wouldn't have dumped the bones anywhere near a spot where they'd be easily found. Someone who regularly went out to sea would know where divers congregated. It's not as if they roam like migrants across the ocean waves; if you're a dive school and you know a safe spot for lessons, you keep going back to that safe spot. It's only sense. You've got enough unknown variables with the students without adding to your troubles by going somewhere you don't know well.

With all that in mind, let's try some gamification:

• Night's Black Agents: Some of the documents found with the bones can be traced to a low-level Conspiracy asset. The asset, a property developer, was riding high before the 2008 crash but suffered catastrophic losses when the market tanked. That's when the Conspiracy moved in; it needed a safe haven in this port town to cover its smuggling operation, and hid its money, equipment and special-build vampire havens among the property developers' asset list. The property developer has never liked this arrangement and has turned to witchcraft in hope of getting the bloodsuckers off its back. The witchcraft may or may not be genuine, but the fuss this discovery raises is about the blow the lid off the whole shebang.
• Trail of Cthulhu: Transposing the action to the 1930s, the bones were put to rest during the Rif War as an attempt to use witchcraft to guarantee the safety of the witch's relatives, sent to Morocco as conscripts. This attracted the attention of a Deep One colony off the coast, which interpreted this as a ritual sacrifice intended to placate the Deep Ones. Now the fish-men are leaning on the witch's family like a kind of Mythos protection racket: keep providing the sacrifices and we'll keep your relatives safe with our magic powers.
• Esoterrorists: The bones were put there by an Esoterrorist cell which is trying to provoke conflict between the authorities and worshippers of Santeria. The cell thinks that stirring up controversy with provocative headlines will make people fearful of witch-cults next door, which in turn will lead to a weakening of the Membrane. The bags of bones were just the start; the cell intends to stage a fake Santeria terror strike, perhaps some kind of ritual sacrifice gone wrong. The cell disguises itself as a reality TV show, and its camera crew always being in the right place at the right time is the first clue that something's up.

That's it for me. Enjoy!

Trail of Cthulhu Alternate History: Bookhounds and Bombings

Let's talk about Bookhounds of London, this time with the Irish in mind.

From the mid-1930s onwards, a man named Seán Russell, a very significant figure within the IRA Army Council, began planning a bombing campaign. It would later become known as the S-Plan, a series of targeted strikes, initially against custom houses within Norther Ireland, and later targets within Britain. Starting in January 1939, and continuing until March1940, around 300 explosions were set off in mail rooms, underground stations, railway station left-luggage rooms, and other targets. Not all of the devices were incendiary; several cinemas, for example, were targeted with tear gas and magnesium bombs, the intent being to panic and injure rather than kill. The most spectacular incident took place in Broadgate, Coventry, August 1939; over fifty people were wounded, and five killed. Historically the S-Plan is considered a bit of a bust, from an organization that had yet to really organize.

At much the same time, the German Abwehr (military intelligence) was taking an interest in Ireland. First contact was made in 1937, but nothing really came either of this or subsequent attempts to co-operate, though much consideration was given to supplying arms and munitions. The Germans had no love for the S-Plan; it didn't do nearly enough damage to military targets. In the end, after Operation Sea Lion was taken off the table, the Germans lost all interest in their Irish friends.    

From here I'm going to take a slightly different tack, and talk about the poet William Butler Yeats. Cthulhu players, and fans of Pagan's Golden Dawn campaign, will remember that Yeats was a significant figure within that occult organization;  he features prominently in Pagan's mini campaign, as a player-focused NPC support. He had a lifelong interest in the occult, was a member of the Ghost Club, a Hermetic scholar and a Theosophist. He was also a member of the IRA, in its earliest incarnation. Later in life, and particularly after the Great War, he began to revert to a more conservative and aristocratic type; he lost faith in democracy, and  distanced himself from the IRA. He began to drift towards fascism, expressing admiration both for Benito Mussolini and also O'Duffy's Blueshirts. He also experienced an unusual mid-life rejuvenation in 1934, courtesy of Eugen Steinach's vasoligature, an operation designed to reduce fatigue and the consequences of aging, while at the same time increasing sexual potency, through a form of vasectomy. Yeats died in January 1939, in France, where he was buried until 1948, at which point his friends were able to recover his remains and bury them in Sligo, as per Yeats' wishes.

With all that in mind, let's create a Trail NPC - possibly an antagonist, possibly an ally - who for the sake of this discussion will be Maurice / Mary Haire, Irish poet, playwright, mystic, sexual adventurer and radical.

Haire was born in 1865, and rose to prominence as a poet in the 1890s, with her Country of The Dead cycle, created during her association with the Rhymer's Club in London. Her exploits both public and private were the great scandal of the age, and led to her being arrested in 1894 and briefly imprisoned, an experience which would later form the basis of her epic Within the Walls of Troy. She's known to have been a member of the Dublin Hermetic Order from 1896 onwards, and formed a Ghost Circle in London in 1899, which she was the founding member and chair of until 1902, when there was a significant falling-out between her and the occultist Johnathon Haddo. The Circle survived until 1915, at which point it dissolved for lack of members, but by that time Haire was involved in other pursuits.

From 1924 onwards Haire became more and more enamored with the Fascist cause, seeing totalitarianism as the best way forward after the Great War demonstrated beyond doubt that democracy was a lost cause. She is vehemently anti-socialist; it is rumored, though by no means proved, that she was involved somehow in the assassination of socialist leader Gabriel Plenge, in Paris, 1928. She has visited Mussolini's Italy several times - a guest of honor at more than one Opera Nazionale Balilla event - and in 1934 visited Hitler's Germany for a surgical operation which, she claimed, extended her lifespan by at least ten years. Her social influence is still strong, despite her declining literary output, and she's involved in many different literary societies, occult groups and theaters in London, Paris and Dublin.

In a Bookhounds game, Haire is what a casino owner might describe as a whale; she spends money, and lots of it. Nobody's sure where that money's coming from. Certainly the rights to her many poems and plays must be worth a packet, but at the same time she's constantly embroiled in lawsuits, and is famous for making bad investments. Her political views are notorious, and she constantly claims that British Military Intelligence is "out to get her." It's less well known that she's very interested in calligraphy, papermaking, document analysis and forgery, and has many friends with a less than savory reputation.

It's up to the Keeper whether she's actually an Abwher asset, perhaps recruited during one of her many visits to Hitler's Germany, or an enthusiastic supporter of the IRA bombing campaign in London. Is she looking for someone capable of supplying forged documents, or a convenient safe house for illicit materials. Then there's that mysterious surgery in 1934, supposed to have rejuvenated her by a decade; what really happened over there, and was it mundane or mystical? Are Haire's mystical pursuits those of an enthusiastic amateur, or is she planning something more spectacular? Is she well versed in The Knowledge and, if so, why? Is it just something she's picked up over time, a skill she intends to use as part of a terrorist plot, or does she really intend something megapolisimantic?

Maurice / Mary Haire      Poet and literary genius, age mid-60s.
Stability 3, Sanity 7, Health 6
Athletics 2, Auction 12,  Drive 8, Espionage 8, Explosives 4, Firearms 4, Fleeing 9, Magic 14, Scuffling 4, Weapons 2

Alertness Modifier: +1 (deeply paranoid)
Stealth Modifier: -1

Investigative Specialties: Art, Library Use, Occult, The Knowledge
Potential Pool (if ally): 2, in any one of the above Specialties.

Three Things: Sexually liberated, and known for seeking the attention of younger lovers. Has a special fear of horses, brought on by an accident when she was a child. Enjoys drama, and constantly hints that she knows more than she's telling, whether she does or not.

Hooks:
Haire was in a relationship with the person the protagonists are trying to find more out about. It was years ago, and ended badly; Haire's exactly the kind of person to carry a grudge.

In an auction during which the protagonists were made to fight for whatever it was they were after, Haire is seen afterward slapping the face of the person the protagonists were bidding against. She seems in a towering rage, and shortly afterward the auctioneer is found dead. What was going on behind the scenes, and how is the auctioneer involved in all this?

Haire knows all about the S-Plan, but thinks it far too unambitious. She's using her contacts in Germany and Italy to supply her with materials, and is on the lookout for several occult texts, as well as a site she refers to as John Dee's Hidden Library. With those resources, and some dedicated occultists from her time with the Dublin branch of the Golden Dawn, at her disposal, she intends to bring London to its knees. The IRA is less than enthusiastic, but doesn't know what it can do to stop her, while the Abwher is alarmed at finding its intelligence asset suddenly co-opted by more esoteric groups within the SS. Moreover Haire herself is hardly the most stable of people. Nobody really knows why John Dee locked up his Hidden Library in 1594, with strict instructions that "my daughter Myfanwy not be mourned." There are no other records relating to this daughter, and many scholars believe she never existed; but those same scholars don't believe in the Hidden Library either.