Les Babouains (Cthulhu City)

 

You can get inspiration from anywhere.

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 ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Not Quite Book Review Corner:Army of Thieves (Night's Black Agents)

Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves is the most recent incarnation of Matthew Reilly's Scarecrow, his Marine Corps hero not seen since Hell Island in 2005. This time Captain Schofield has to save the world from a Soviet era doomsday device, which has been captured by the Army of Thieves, an Anonymous-style terror group with a battalion strength armed force at its command. The Army is hiding out in a remote Soviet fortress on Dragon Island, a former test base for superweapons, currently mothballed. Can Scarecrow stop the Army from unleashing a weapon that will, in one fell swoop, ignite half the world in a fireball that will wipe out billions?

I picked this up as a freebie, hoping that it would give me some Night's Black Agents material. Having read it, I'm confident that Reilly is, or was, a gamer. Nobody's that obsessive over maps and tactical minutiae without spending at least a portion of their misspent youth crawling down a dungeon corridor, ten foot pole in hand, checking for traps every step of the way.

The maps are really what caught my attention, and the reason why I'd recommend this to a Night's Black Agents director. Every step of Scarecrow's way is carefully planned out, and that includes pretty much every part of Dragon Island. Ah, Dragon island, where they test themobaric weapons, acid grenades, and train mutant polar bears to kill on command.

'This,' Ivanov said, 'is the Stadium. This is where my colleagues tested the bears in combat.' 

You have my undivided attention, Mr Reilly.

However, as with the Book of Spies mentioned previously, there's a lot not to like here. Reilly has a nasty habit of telling you what you ought to feel, rather than letting you feel it. He'll write a paragraph or two describing how the flesh and skin melts off a victim of acid attack, as they claw their eyeballs out in agony, and then he'll say 'It was really disgusting,' or something like it. Of course it's disgusting, but the reader doesn't need the author telling everyone that. It's disgusting on its face, without need of embellishment. Plus, there's the ! recurring ! exclamation point ! issue, which arises whenever ! tension ! needs ! to ! be ! heightened. Thankfully these writer's tics tend to calm down later in the book, and he resorts to them less often.

Certainly, in terms of writing style, this book flows more smoothly than Book of Spies, which is a bonus. Partly this is because the protagonists have a lot to do, and keep on doing it. Schofield and his team never slow down, rattling on from one action moment to the next with barely a pause for breath.

On that note, pop quiz: would you survive in Scarecrow's world? Answer the following questions:

1) Do you have a cool nickname, like Scarecrow, Barbarian, or Fox?
2) Are you in love with one of the story's supporting characters, who has no real personality but who's described as physically attractive?
3) Are you a robot?

If the answer to all of those questions is No, then sucks to be you, sunshine. You're going to be shot - usually in a hail of overwhelming gunfire, so your body is torn to shreds - blown up by a thermobaric grenade, such that your body vanishes in a puff of logic, immersed in acid, or otherwise messily torn to shreds. Possibly by a mutant polar bear, because hey, polar bears. You can pretty much tell from the opening paragraphs who's going to live and who's going to die, and though Reilly does pull some intriguing fake-outs, ultimately there's an element of predictability about the whole thing that undercuts the action on the page.

That said, there is a lot of action on the page. Buckets and buckets of action, with plenty of casualties and loud explosions. To give you a taste: the French have put a bounty on Schofield's head, because in previous installments Schofield not only sank a French submarine, he also blew up a French aircraft carrier, killing everyone aboard. Now, to sink one tiddly sub is excusable, but to blow up an aircraft carrier - in fact, the only carrier the French have, according to Wikipedia - seems a little careless. Before we're even a fifth of the way through the book yet another submarine is on its way to the bottom. You begin to wonder whether the French navy is going to be reduced to two rubber dinghies and a sobbing subaltern before the series is over. And that's just the French; there's still a whole army of crazy terrorists to get through before the book's done.

I don't recommend this as high art, because God knows it ain't that. It's Pulp, Pulp and more Pulp, entertainingly written, but ultimately forgettable. The sort of thing you'd pick up on a long flight, in fact, much like Book of Spies.

However I do recommend it to any Night's Black Agents Director looking for inspiration for the next Conspiracy Node in the Pyramid. The maps alone are worth a look at. Plus there are plenty of intriguing tech-toys to steal for your campaign, and some brilliant chase scenes to borrow wholesale.

I don't know whether it's worth having a look at the rest of the series - there are five Scarecrow books in all - but I'm reliably informed that one of them involves recovery of an alien spaceship, while another has mutant killer gorillas. Whose heart is so hardened that they can say No to killer gorillas?

Enjoy!