Human Lanterns (film, Shaw Brothers)

 

Human Lanterns trailer

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.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

 

The Senses (RPG All)

First, a bit of housekeeping.

I shall be abroad next weekend, so no post. It's a bit of an unexpected trip for me but I need to see a tailor. No, really. A tailor. For lo, I am that in need of one, forsooth.

Now, on with the show.

I had intended to do a bit on Silent Hill 2, as the remake is out and, as a treat to self in October, I bought a copy. The plan - sinister and wicked, I'm sure you'll agree - was to play yesterday and talk about it today. I'd even intended to record some footage. 

Life had other plans. I couldn't get the damn thing to play. It hard crashed every time I left the cemetery, roundabout where Silent Hill Ranch is. I convinced myself it was a game problem, but in fact it was a me problem. I had to turn off my VPN. Once I did that, it worked a treat. However, the footage I'd been trying to shoot was lost to the void and it's difficult to get that 'first time' energy when I'd already seen the intro three or four times by that point. 

Still. What little I've seen so far is convincing. If you enjoy the genre and the series, it's worth your money and time. 

It does mean that I'm left with little to talk about. I haven't seen much beyond the first half hour or so. I haven't been to Neely's Bar. I can say that, while this is very like the original, it isn't exactly alike beat-for-beat. The game can still catch you by surprise, even if you - as I have - played the original, perhaps many times before. 

Let's talk about atmosphere and the senses. 

Touch. Sight. Taste. Smell. Hearing.

Let's use a stock location to explore options: an art gallery. Located in a not-quite-fashionable part of town. What used to be tenements and low-rent housing has become just that little bit gentrified, and this is the result. 

The sky is dark. Streetlamps gleam, little oases of light in inky darkness. The air is heavy and wet; a storm is coming. A brace of stars glimmer in a cloud's rent, the moon smothered. Not another soul on the street, but there are lights in some of the windows, a radio's buzz, laughter, a touch of warmth.

The gallery's doors are wide open.

The first piece that greets you as you walk in the door is a sculpture half the size of a man, twisted as if under a colossal weight or pressure, its tendons gleaming. The floor under your feet is somehow sticky; the soles of your shoes protest just a little every time you move. Peppermint. The antiseptic air is underlaid with the slightest whimper of peppermint. The sensation waters your mouth, just a little.

Touch, Sight. Taste. Smell. Hearing.

It's worth your while borrowing a trick from Dungeons and Dragons. In that system, and in BRPG to a degree though not as often, it's standard practice to write up a brief description of each room in the dungeon as the players enter it for the first time. 

Unfortunately, Dungeons and Dragons often wastes that opportunity by telling you the dimensions of the room or other trivia. As if it matters whether this room is 20 foot by 15. What matters is what the floor is made of, whether it's rough, smooth or something else, whether the air is fresh or foul.

If you've ever been into a house or office that's been shut up for a while, you know it instantly by how the air feels. A kind of trapped, heavy sensation, underlaid with a little damp or rot. If something died in here it decomposed long ago but there may still be a little reek, adding its stench to the mix. If you're sensitive, you may break out in hives or find it difficult to breathe. Your skin may reflexively prickle, as if touched by a thousand needles at once.

It's difficult to think of the right words, on the fly. Much easier to do as D&D does and write them down in advance. Which is what the Cameos and Stock Locations in GUMSHOE are for. They give you something to hang your ideas on; what you do after that is up to you.

Some ideas:

• Touch:  
• Slippery, twisting, a cat's reluctance.
• Sticky, its casing covered in fluids.
• Hot, just the wrong side of comfortable to the touch.
• Cold, as if it's been dipped in negative space.
• Sight:
• Far-off, just on the edge of perception.
• Somehow visible in every possible detail, to the least crevice and crack.
• Impossible to see completely, it fades in and out.
• Behind you - but you can see a portion out of the corner of your eye/
• Taste:
• Cloying, sweetness overpowering and omnipresent.
• Sharp, acrid, bitter, poisonous.
• Molten sunlight that lingers and vanishes.
• A sensory nail through the tongue that no amount of milk will kill.
• Smell:
• It rips through your nostrils demanding instant attention.
• Antiseptic, bitter, a thousand thousand hospital floors.
• The least hint of something, like daffodils in the Milky Way.
• Leaden absence of life, light, hope - dust, and nothing more.
• Hearing:
• A siren's bold wail, out of sight but drawing nearer.
• Laughter's warm spice, without malice, without shame.
• A sudden glimmer of caution, a warning just on the edge of perception.
• Battering and blowing, a gale demanding entrance.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Sinister Buns (Call of Cthulhu, Hong Kong Cinema)

I held off getting a blu-ray player for a long time. 

I didn’t see the need. Drives are dead. DVDs are yesterday’s tech. Physical is so last century.  

Then those wicked pork buns drew me back in. 

See, physical is still the best way to get hold of anything that isn’t Main Street USA. If I want Hollywood, if I want anything North American really, it is easily had. There are any number (God, oh God, so many) ways to get that content. Streaming options beyond the dreams of avarice. 

But. 

If I want, say, The Untold Story, how do I get that? If I want any kind of non-English language media, how the hell do I get it? There must be Spanish, German, Italian streaming services, and I shall want a VPN at the very least to access them, never mind a working knowledge of the language to understand the menu options. Netflix is a gateway but it offers only a glimpse; besides, damned if I’m paying $22/month for yet another streaming service. 

No, if I wanted my pork buns – hot from Terracotta in the UK – I’d have to get an external blu ray drive for my PC. Which is exactly what I did. 

The Untold Story is a retelling of the infamous Eight Immortals killings in Macau. Two high stakes gamblers, one a restaurant owner with a family of ten, argued over debts. The restaurant owner Zheng Lin refused to pay Huang Zhiheng so Huang, in a fit of rage, tried to force Zheng to pay up. That went badly wrong and Huang killed Zheng’s whole family, thus becoming the owner of the Eight Immortals restaurant. Briefly.  

How do you get rid of all those bodies? 

Well, there’s a perfectly good restaurant in need of meat for its famous pork buns … or so the story goes. That part may be apocryphal, but it became part of the narrative.  

The 1993 film version won awards and made a ton of money at the box office, but due to its graphic scenes of rape and murder – plus, of course, those buns – it was age restricted to 18 and up. It’s mildly notorious as a slasher, but difficult to get hold of. Unless you buy from an outlet like the folks at Terracotta.  

Having seen it, my review: 

It’s an odd little duck. The killing scenes are about as bloody and nasty as anything you’re going to see on screen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang as killer Wong Chi-hang is a standout. The comedy cops in hot pursuit are an incompetent bunch of bozos; they’re all stereotypes of one kind or other, led by their fearless Lieutenant Lee, and there’s a peculiar running gag where Lee parades around with a host of prostitutes on his arm much to the disgust of his only female subordinate Bo (Emily Kwan) who wants Lee all to herself. It doesn’t pair all that well with the main plot. That said, it does end in a stunning moment when all those same comedy cops realize that the pork buns they’ve been chowing down on free of charge came with a hidden cost. 

Cheap, nasty, entertaining. It may be the unrelenting realism of the gore scenes (a stark contrast with modern cinema) but it really does stick in your mind in a way that few other films can. 

If you want a good retelling of the pork buns saga I recommend Kento Bento’s version, which I believe is on Nebula; not sure as it’s been a while since I watched Nebula. 

From a gaming POV there have been plenty of examples of suspicious meat on the menu. Sweeny Todd, Telltale’s Walking Dead (the comic too, for that matter, in a different plotline), Fritz Haarmann the Vampire of Hanover, who allegedly sold the meat of his victims on the black market – take your pick, really. 

There haven’t been as many haunted restaurants. 

There is a starting Call of Cthulhu scenario in the main book, The Haunting. It’s been around for donkey’s years. You can find it in the free-to-play Quick Start rules. In that scenario the investigators are called in to investigate a haunted house. So far, so normal – at least, normal in a Cthulhu-esque way. 

What if it wasn’t a haunted house? What if it was a haunted restaurant? What would need to change? 

Not much, really. The Keeper would need to change some of the details of the ground floor plan. But the plot would tick on regardless, and you’d have some interesting horror options – particularly in the kitchen. The family would live above the restaurant, so you wouldn’t have to change much about the upper floors. 

The Macario family would be the ones running the restaurant of course; a nice little red-sauce-spaghetti joint. Until Mr. Macario decided to add a little extra to the Bolognese. Then there’s a discreet pause while the place is shut up for … let’s call it redecoration.  At that point Mr. Knott, the building’s owner, calls in the investigators. He wants to rent the place out to new tenants but the restaurant’s reputation frightens off any interested parties. If they could just give the place the all-clear, he could rent the place out. 

A potential plot change: as written Vittorio Macario, the former restauranteur, is locked up in the asylum. His only plot function is to hint at a way of defeating the evil. 

Suppose he has a secondary function. Suppose he escapes from the asylum with one thought on his mind: a grand reopening of Macario’s Restaurant.  

He’ll need meat for the Bolognese, of course … 

That’s it for this week. Enjoy! 

Another Mask Behind You

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. 

Onibaba Trailer (1964)

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?

Finally, it might just set up a moment like this:

Twilight Zone 'You're caricatures! All of you!'

Which, as the ending of a one-shot, is priceless.

Enjoy!

 

The Silent Church (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)

 Look at her eyes. Look at her eyes! For God's sake, what happened to her eyes?

The Evil Dead

Body horror is a genre that, Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or to any other creature. 

A ghost story is often seen as cosy, gentle, perhaps a little creepy but not, well, grotesque. Yet some of the best ghost stories take body horror concepts and run away with them. Take M.R. James:

This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct … The Stalls at Barchester Cathedral

Somehow, the idea of getting past it and escaping through the door was intolerable to him; he could not have borne—he didn't know why—to touch it; and as for its touching him, he would sooner dash himself through the window than have that happen. It stood for the moment in a band of dark shadow, and he had not seen what its face was like. Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. O Whistle and I’ll Come To You

Interesting how often James resorts to a similar idea: remove or muffle the face, and horror follows. He does this trick in A Disappearance and a Reappearance, for example, and The Tractate Middoth. Whereas in films like The Evil Dead and its many sequels some of the most memorable moments have to do with melting, changing, malleable faces.

After all, what are people without their faces? When we talk about the Uncanny Valley it’s chiefly to do with how faces look to us. We don’t scrutinize hands, feet, legs with the same intensity we do faces. We don’t look for discrepancies elsewhere first, and then look to the face; we look to the face and then elsewhere. 

I once spoke about Lafcadio Hearn and I’m reminded of his spectral Cousin Jane:

Then, as if first aware of my presence, she turned; and I looked up, expecting to meet her smile ... She had no face. There was only a pale blur instead of a face …

Sometimes this can be used to show mindlessness, a lack of soul. Zombies are good for this, those shambling, sightless, soulless things. More often it’s used, through gleaming eyes and sharp or snaggle teeth, to show evil, predatory traits. Very rarely, as with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s done to accentuate the weirdness of the situation. I suspect at least in Del Toro’s case it may spring from half-remembered Catholic iconography of Satan and the damned, via Hieronymus Bosch and the like.

Sometimes it can be simple, awful. No face. Or no mouth, no eyes. A face of crumpled linen. A peculiar mask that covers almost everything, or show the ‘true face’ – a wolf mask, say, or a tiger mask. Del Toro does something similar by moving eyes from where they’re expected to be to the palms of the hands, and then moving those hands to the head making a mockery of how flesh works – or at least how we think it should work.

Let’s start playing with the idea.

As a reminder, I’ve said this about Hauntings before:

There are any number of tales that could be told, but there are some things the Keeper should bear in mind:

The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.

It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.

It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

Let’s say that as a consequence of this Haunting, this memory of things past, there is a sound. That sound is so horrible that it causes those who hear it to want to stop hearing anything ever again. They ram objects in their ears, but it doesn’t stop the sound. So they ram more objects. More still, till their heads resemble porcupines, and yet they still hear. 

A memory of a sound so hideous that people cannot bear to hear it.

The Silent Church

There is a little chapel close to the edge of the Metropolitan Cattle Market, King's Cross. Nobody can remember a time when it was not there. Architecturally it resembles some of the works of Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, but nobody can find any link between Wren and this little church. Best guess is that it was designed by a contemporary or possibly a student.

Nobody worships there. Nobody is seen to go in or out except for a little man who is popularly supposed to be the verger, and he almost never speaks to strangers. He's stone deaf, and answers to the name of Moody; apparently he lives at the church.

On the rare occasions when workmen are called in to carry out repairs - something which, the neighbors say, ought to happen more often given the condition of the place - the workers are always from McCaw and Sons and the elder McCaw claims to have known Moody when he was a boy. McCaw doesn't gossip. His workers do. They say they have to plug their ears whenever they work there, on Moody's orders. They never stay long and are never there before nine in the morning or after six in the evening.

It's not difficult to sneak in. Moody's hardly the most efficient watchdog. However, if anyone's ever tried they've not said what they found there, or what happened when they went.

Sometimes the apprentices in the Cattle Market dare one another to make the attempt but nobody ever has.

Anyone who crosses the threshold notices immediately that the noises from outside can't be heard inside the Church. It's as if the building completely muffles all outside sound whatsoever, however loud it might be. 

If they go early in the morning, or after it gets dark, they hear what seems at first to be singing, perhaps a chant, from far away. It never gets louder but it scrapes on the nerves, as if the words meant something hideous - yet they're unintelligible. Potential Stability 2 loss.

If they stay until it is night - say, between 10 pm and 3 am - then they see shapes. Perhaps shadows perhaps people, they pace throughout the church at all hours, mouths moving. Their ears are spiked clean through by what appears to be thousands upon thousands of needles, so heavy that they make the creatures' heads loll from side to side. It's apparent that these are the singers yet the noise never gets louder, or the words clearer. Potential Stability 5 loss. Anyone who loses 5 or more Stability feels an overwhelming urge to Flee; failing a Fleeing test or resisting this urge means they must deafen themselves by any means necessary. If they cannot or will not then they take +3 damage every round they remain in the Church without deafening themselves.

Those who make the Stability check and remain long enough to hear the music for a minute or more gains 1 Mythos and 1 Magic. This can only happen once. Repeated visits do not increase Mythos or Magic though the Stability loss remains as well as the potential to permanently damage hearing.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Body Horror (Cyberpunk)

Generally speaking people know what they're getting into when they play a particular system. A James Bond game is all about being Bond and therefore can be expected to fulfil Bond tropes - the quips, the car chases, exotic locations and world-shattering evil masterminds. A Trail game is about Cthulhoid horror and can be expected to be moist and squamous, with a heavy dose of American gothic, possibly a hint of film noir. A Cyberpunk game is about dystopia, people lost in a futuristic landscape looking for meaning in all the wrong places.

You rarely see mixed genres in RPG settings, but it can be very interesting. The old Cyberpunk had a quasi-horror setting, the Night's Edge books, that worked remarkably well. In that setting you might encounter vampires, ghosts, Voodoo acolytes and terrifying dreamscapes. It had its faults; it leaned a little too heavily on serial killer tropes. But when it worked, it sang.

Body horror is a storytelling method where the narrative attempts to invoke intense feelings of physical and psychological disgust, or squick, and plays upon anxieties of physical vulnerability. One of the most effective versions of this I've ever seen on screen is the 1999 Takashi Miike movie Audition, in which a lovelorn businessman attempts to spark romance by auditioning women to 'be in his movie' - but things go badly wrong when he meets Asami, a fascinating woman with a past. And a few extra feet. There is a moment with a sack ... but I've said too much, and the trailers I can find online are a bit too spoilery, so I'll stop there.

The essence of body horror is making the human form do things we consider unnatural, though what we consider unnatural can be very revealing about our own prejudices. Stephen King once pointed out that, in the 1950s, you could freak American kids out just by having characters with a relatively mild physical issue. Even a bad case of the zits and shaggy hair was a major taboo, at a time when good hygiene, medical advances and three square meals a day had sorted out most of a generation's physical issues. Cleft palates, goiters, and many other ailments once relatively common, vanished almost entirely from the landscape. Bones lengthened, teeth straightened, complexions cleared. People forgot the old normal and replaced it with the new.  

Clive Barker treads similar ground in Hellraiser, in which physical punishment - nails through the head, being skinned alive - masquerades as spiritual punishment. The spirit and the body are, apparently, one - mutilate the body, torture the soul.

Or Cronenberg, in films like Rabid, implying that a once-normal, healthy body can be tainted by, in this instance, a medical procedure, becoming a necrotic, corruptive influence.

There's no suggestion that a person's spirit and corpus is somehow separate; no immortal essence hidden behind a mortal façade. In body horror the two are one, and you can tell corruption at a glance because they don't look or behave like us. Often this is a buckets-of-blood genre, where guts and slick essences are spilt all over the screen and, by implication, your own home, since the whole point is to make the audience think this might happen anywhere at all, but especially where you feel safest. There's a reason why Hellraiser takes place in an ordinary house, why Rabid is set in semi-rural suburbia. 'This looks like where I live,' you're meant to think. 'This could happen here.' Of course, the logical tagline is 'it could happen to me,' which as you'll recall was Edwardian ghost story master M.R. James' famous bit of horror writing advice.   

It doesn't have to be awash with gore. Invasion of the Body Snatchers achieves a very similar goal without the slightest drop of blood, by creating invaders that look like us but aren't quite like us. All flesh, no soul. Whatever immortal shred resides within that flesh is annihilated when the Body Snatchers take over.

In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind... All of us — a little bit — we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear ...

If body horror is the subversion of the natural - exploding guts and all - then cyberpunk is the conversion of the natural. We think we know what normal is, and then our expectations are upended. The only difference is, in conversion we willingly accept the change, where in subversion change is forced upon us.

Manga and movies like Ghost in the Shell explicitly play with this concept, going on and on about the Ghost without ever really exploring the concept beyond muttering 'The Ghost!' as if they were all ravens programmed to say Nevermore every few minutes. Paying lip service to the spirit without really confronting the concept, yet taking every possible opportunity to show off fantastic new body conversions. At times you wonder whether there are any downsides to becoming a cyborg, beyond a compulsion to mutter 'The Ghost!' every other episode. Nobody changes; the Major is always the Major, Batou always Batou. Even when changes seemingly occur, the series reverts back to the status quo ASAP in the next episode. For all the characters talk about the Ghost, it rarely impacts the narrative.

Cyberpunk the RPG setting does something similar with Empathy/Humanity. 

Empathy: Your ability to relate to and care for others, and take others into consideration. Particularly important as it offsets the effects of cyberpsychosis, a dangerous mental illness common in the Dark Future ... For every point of Empathy the Character has, they gain 10 points of Humanity (HUM) ... Cyberpsychosis Humanity Loss is defined (for this purpose) as a loss of empathy for others and a corresponding loss of self-regard or sense of self preservation. Subjects with low Humanity have trouble emphasizing with themselves or others as "real."

All of this should sound very familiar to CoC and Trail players since this is basically the SAN/Stability mechanic, except where in CoC or Trail SAN is permanently lost by exposure to Mythos sources and  temporarily lost by exposure to any number of frightening circumstances, Empathy and by extension Humanity is lost by grafting on technical adjuncts to the flesh. There's a side mechanic where Humanity can also be lost by exposure to terrifying circumstances, but it's encapsulated in a small chart on p. 231 and I wonder how many GMs run with the idea. Sanity is a major concept in CoC and Trail; Humanity doesn't seem as important in Cyberpunk. 

It's difficult to make those numbers mean something without engaging the players' imaginations, and it's difficult to engage imagination though numbers alone. Particularly when those numbers have a mechanical consequence - in this instance, loss of the character. To cyberpsychosis, but really loss of the character to anything, whether it's cyberpsychosis or the Spaghetti Monster, is just as frustrating to the player.  

Exactly the same conversation's been going on in CoC for decades. At first SAN and loss of same meant a roll on the Temporary (or Permanent) Insanity table, which meant that in some or all future scenes the player had to behave as though their character suffered from, say, a fear of insects, or a fear of crossing bridges. From that relatively simple (at times cruel, unintentionally or otherwise) beginning, systems became more complicated, until now we have setups like Delta Green's relationships, bonds and disorders system, actively engaging the players in their own spiritual demise. Because if they don't tend to those Bonds, in-game, the characters lose out big time.  

I'm going to suggest to you now that body horror is indispensable to Cyberpunk because body horror gets the players to engage in what it means to be Cyber, in ways other than crunching HUM numbers. Those implants and modifications they desire come at a cost, and it's not just in Eurobucks. Further, that body horror doesn't have to be guts and gore; it has to be a subversion of the norm. 

 White Zombie, 1932 Bela Lugosi film

White Zombie isn't a particularly interesting film. It's historic, as it's the first zombie movie ever, based in part on William Seabrook's book The Magic Island. However everyone who's ever seen that film remembers this early scene if they remember nothing else, because it's the most chilling moment in the movie. Nature can be cruel, but only man can be so pointlessly cruel as to set up a system like this. The dead toil to grind cane into sugar, and it doesn't matter if one falls into the mix and is ground up with the cane. 

It has a lot in common with the Moloch scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis:

Sourced from MU History

Both scenes are dehumanizing people in service of a mechanized, semi-supernatural overseer, for a goal that might be pointless. Both turn people into things. Both destroy people to achieve their objective. The workers of Metropolis march to their doom just as unthinkingly as White Zombie's dead men tend the sugar mill. Both are made in an age when socialism and worker's rights were hot topics, vigorously debated in the halls of power and on the factory floor. 

Body horror - the subversion of body and soul.

Going back to Cyberpunk's player guidance:

1: Style over Substance: It doesn't matter how well you do something, as long as you look good doing it. Why should it matter if you look good? Because everything else doesn't. Imagine what decades of poor hygiene, lack of medical care and poor diet is going to do to people. Then add in radiation poisoning. Sure, if you're a corporate beaver, that's not a problem. Most people aren't corporates. Why do people cyber up if they can afford it? For the same reason people get plastic surgery. Not everyone needs a gun arm, but everyone needs to fit in.

2: Attitude is Everything. It's truth. Think dangerous; be dangerous. Think weak; be weak. Remember the sugar mill, and Moloch. The average primitive screwhead is going to end up sacrificed on that altar because they have no other choice. The average booster is going to die for some corporate's big power play because they don't know any better. That's what grunts are for. Are you a grunt?

3: Live on the Edge. The Edge is that nebulous zone where risk-takers and high rollers go. On the Edge, you'll risk your cash, your rep, even your life on something as vague as a principle or a big score. Why? Because the alternative is worse. Your principles are your soul, and you're trying to keep that as pure as possible in a world where people trade their souls in every day for a better butt or a new pair of eyes.

As GM you need to be banging away at body horror as often as possible, and you need to be making much greater use of that handy-dandy Humanity chart on p. 231. You should also encourage your players to go to Therapy (p 230) as often as possible, and maybe consider small Humanity rewards for interesting roleplay moments, much as CoC or Trail rewards heroic moments with a little SAN or Stability boost. After all, Humanity is ultimately about being human; there should be a reward for engaging with your Humanity.

As a final what-if, consider these potential body horror moments:

You enter the ripperdoc's dimly-lit den and notice, among the jars and storage tanks lining the walls, a new-harvested face floating in preservatives. You know that face. It belongs to the bartender at the Mad Hatter; you recognize that cute little mole on his cheek. He's been talking about selling his face for months, but until now you've always persuaded him otherwise. Guess he needed the money more than you thought. Wonder what he looks like these days ...

Womb rental - it's the latest thing. Some prefer vat-grown, but a healthy female with no significant black marks in her genetic history can command a substantial fee. They just put you into the factory for nine months, fill you full of sedatives to keep you compliant, and pop goes the baby. Of course, there are rumors that some of these women aren't exactly what you'd call volunteers, but hey - corp beavers need kids ...

You hear about the new factory they're building out by Jesus Street and Memory Lane? Remember about five years ago when they were going to renovate the old St. Simon Building, but the job stalled out? How they lost a cleanup crew? Well, turns out they didn't precisely lose that cleanup crew. I guess someone forgot to unlock a door when shift ended, and they've been down there ever since. Pretty airtight in those vaults, so they didn't decay so much as, well, became liquid. Anyway, there's good cheddar on offer for anyone who, you know, wants to scoop up the slurry and dump it somewhere legal. Or at least somewhere out of sight and mind ...  

You see that group over there? Garbage pickers. They work the mounds out by Hooker Loop. How can I tell? Well, look at the fingers, choomb. See, on the one hand you get those who've been able to buy new hands, or at least good second-hand digits. See how the metal gets pitted and cruddy-looking? On the other, well, there's this kind of ulcer you get from that work, it eats fingers ...

You want to sign up for the Hustle Truck? Comes by every morning, picks up folks who want to earn a little extra by doing odd jobs. It's not a lot of money, and the work ain't much, but it's legal; it'll cover your coffin costs, choomb. One thing, tho; you got to get the Hustle Truck chip if you want in. It's nothing serious. The people who run it, they want to keep tabs on you - how you spend your time. Just when you're working. The chip doesn't monitor you when you're not on the job ...

Remember how Nixon used to tell those tall tales about Japanese ghosts? The what-was-it, the nupper-something, that was the one that really stuck with me. How it could just wipe its face away, leaving nothing behind but a blank. Well, they say that the braindance viewers over in the Night Market that sometimes pops up in Bitters has this problem. You go into the dance, and everything's slick. You come out, and sometimes you see faceless people. Now, are these real faceless people? Or is this some hot-shit rewired brain bull you get from the Dance? This one chica, she swears that after she did the Dance she went to, you know, freshen up, and there was this woman in the same stall, red hair, and the woman turns around ... nothing there, man. Nothing. Blank, from forehead to chin ...

Enjoy!