UNMASKED: A REVIEW OF THE NEW CYPHER SYSTEM SUPERHERO SETTING

Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on...

-Billy Joel, "The Stranger"

1986...

It's the year the Challenger exploded, the year Chernobyl blew.  It's the year Halley's Comet revisited us, and the first PC virus, Brain, made its debut. Thatcher is in London.  Reagan's in Washington.  Gorbachev is in Moscow. "Money for Nothing" and "Addicted to Love" are the two hottest things on MTV.  And your life, the life that you have been living, is about to change.

Just a few weeks before your first day of high school, you wake up different. You somehow are able to see. All around you, all around town, random little objects now pulse, shimmer, with power. A soupspoon. A broken shard of glass. A bird feather. The hands of a clock. Somehow you can see which objects have been imbued and which haven't...and if you touch these objects, you somehow know what they can do. Each one of them has a trick, a spell, a power. Use the power once and its gone.

But wait...

...some of these random little things call out to you, whisper in your brain. Not many; just a select few. Somehow you just know which ones you need to collect. Somehow you just know what they want you to do. You collect these charms and they teach you, they show you how to make it.

Your Mask.

When you put that Mask on you are not you anymore. You are something more powerful. Something greater. Something more than human...something superhuman.

And this is how it all begins...

Origin Stories

Unmasked (192 pages, $44.99 hardcover, $17.99 pdf) is the latest offering from Monte Cook Games.  Unlike Ravendesk's Vurt, this is not a stand-alone game powered by the Cypher System, but a setting and sourcebook for the Cypher System Rulebook itself.  You'll need that book to use it.

Unmasked is the welcome return of veteran game designer Dennis Detwiller to the superhero genre. Part of the team that brought the world "Cthulhu meets X-Files" classic Delta Green, Detwiller was later the driving force behind Godlike, a 2001 RPG that married superheroes to the gritty, "war is hell" setting of WWII.  Godlike was very well received as a fresh take on what was already a bit of a warn-out RPG genre.  It's protagonists, called "Talents," eschewed the costumes and the masks for a much more grounded, realistic take than we had seen before.  This is a bit ironic, because Unmasked is literally all about the masks.

Funny things, masks.  They seem to embody the very concepts of transformation and mystery.  Their earliest uses in the murky origins of human society seem to be shamanic; in putting on the mask, the wearer channels or even becomes a god or spirit.  Even the word itself, "mask," is problematic.  We have no clear idea where it comes from or what it really means.  It might derive from a proto Indo-European word meaning "black, obscure," the Spanish más que la cara ("more than the face"), or even the Arabic masakha, meaning "transformed."  All of this feeds quite nicely into the mythology Detwiller is creating here, marrying the mythic, almost religious mask traditions with the concept of the "masked man" or masked hero.  The result is a game about perfectly normally teenagers compelled to create and wear Masks that transform then, body, mind, and perhaps even soul.

That is something critical to understand here.  This is not a game about super beings who put on a mask (or pair of glasses) to conceal their identities.  The Teen and the Mask are two different entities.  A Mask might be a different race, a different gender, a different species from the Teen that crafted it.  It might have very different drives and agendas.  The protagonists in this game are more like Billy Batson than Peter Parker.  This is where the game's much promoted "horror" elements come in.  The Mask isn't you...or is it?

We Could Be Heroes

Because this is a Cypher System Rulebook supplement, from here on it we will assume you know that game.  If not, following the link above for any of what follows to make sense to you.

Mechanically, Unmasked builds on the rules Monte Cook gave us in the core game.  Characters are once again defined by being "An (Adjective) (Noun) that (Verbs)."  This time, however, there is a twist.  The character sheet is split into the Teen and the Mask.  The Teen is defined only by a Descriptor and some appropriate skills.  He or she might be a "Tough Teen," or a "Naive Teen," a "Driven Teen" or a "Weird Teen." The Teen then gets his or her own Stat Pools (each starts at 6, with two additional points to assign).  This is the unmasked character.

The game calls its protagonists "Prodigies," and as hinted at above, they are normal young men and women who wake up in a world that has suddenly changed, but only they can see it.  Some event--and the nature of that event is very much up the the GM--has littered the world with cyphers (in this setting, called "Mementos").  As in other Cypher games, these are one use objects each containing a single special power.  Prodigies are the only people who know a Memento when they see it, and when they touch it they know what it can do.  Likewise, they are also able to identify each other.  What transformed these teens and these objects?  That is part of the story, and Detwiller gives the GM specific rules to decide the nature of the changes (Psychic? Mutation?  Mystical?) and guidelines on how to reveal the answers over the ongoing campaign.  However, the Prodigies are haunted by dreams of a nightmarish figure, the monstrous Prester John, who seems to be hunting Prodigies the way the First was hunting potential Slayers in the final season of Buffy.

Some Mementos call to Prodigies more powerfully than others, compelling the Teen to assemble them and use them to create a Mask.  Each Mask is unique.  When the Teen puts the Mask on, he or she becomes a completely new character, this time with its own Descriptor, Type, and Focus.  These Masks also have their own Stat pools and skills.  Most importantly, perhaps, they have "Power Shifts" (Cypher System, p. 270).  These shifts automatically lower difficulty levels by one step each.  So a Mask with 4 shifts in "Feats of Strength" would automatically lower any difficulty of that type by four, even before effort or other assets are applied.  This is part of what makes them truly superhuman.

Descriptors:  Given the nature of the game and the genre, any Descriptor from the Cypher System Rulebook or even Numenera or The Strange might be acceptable with GM approval.  While the game introduces new Teen Descriptors (Metal Head, New Wave, Punk, and Show-off) there are none that are Mask specific.

Types: The four standard Types have been reworked a bit here into the Smasher (Warrior), Thinker (Adept), Mover (Explorer) and Changer (Speaker).  They Type determines your initial stat pools (still a total of 34 points, but with the base values altered a bit), suggests where you put your Power Shifts and what Focus you chose, and gives you additional Power Shifts and abilities as you rise through the tiers.  

Foci:  Surprisingly, Unmasked introduces relatively few new Foci; Flies by Night, Lives on the Dark Side, Travels back from the Future, and Wants to be Adored are the only new entries.  Groups will need to really on the core rulebook (and possibly Expanded Worlds) for these power suites, and given the nature of the genre, any applicable Foci from Numenera or The Strange as well.

What emerges is a superhero form that is an entirely different entity from the Teen character.  This recalls heroes like Shazam, Thor (in the old days), and the Hulk, and introduces all sorts of role-play contradictions.  The Teen and the Mask share memories, but do they share goals?  Values?  Agendas? Are they operating in concert or at odds?  These are character design questions each player will need to consider as they craft their Masks.

Once a Mask is made it forms an almost supernatural bond with its Teen.  It cannot be "lost," and will always somehow return to the Teen who made it.  It cannot be destroyed by anything other than another Mask.  If a normal human tries to destroy it, the Mask will miraculously survive.  Even for other Masks, it is a level 15 difficulty challenge to destroy a Mask; doing so unleashes an "explosion" of power only other Masks can sense, and creates a half dozen or so new Mementos (cyphers) in the area.  Removing a Mask from another Mask is also an epic task, with a difficulty of 10.  Note this means Unmasked follows the Superhero genre conventions in Cypher by expanding difficulties from 1 to 10 to 1 to 15.  Since normal humans lack Power Shifts, tasks beyond 7 remain nearly impossible.

Two other points need to be made about Masks.

First, a Mask cannot be killed.  It has a separate damage track from the Teen wearing it, and when its Pools are depleted, the Mask simply falls off.  It cannot be worn again until a recovery role is made, and though the Mask and the Teen have discrete damage tracks, they share their recovery rolls.  This could easily result in an exhausted and beaten Mask falling off of a Teen and leaving them vulnerable in the midst of battle.  Teens can be killed.

Second, the Mask advances using XP, not the Teen.  Despite this, the Teen can gain XP for the Mask by (for example) doing their homework and fitting in at school, keeping their connection to the Mask a secret, and keeping the whole Mask phenomenon under wraps.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Unmasked is very concerned with its setting, with the world the Masks inhabit and bringing it to life. More than half the book is devoted to this.

In broad strokes, this is a world in which Teens have gained impossible powers and are drawn into a secret war.  The game focuses on the 1980s as the backdrop, but other eras, such as the Roaring 20s, the 1960s, or even our own could be selected instead.  A modern campaign probably provides the biggest thematic challenges; how can we believe in a secret war in an age when everyone has cameras and the Internet?

Detailed rules are given to walk GMs through creating the town the Teens inhabit and the high schools they attend; rural like Smallville?  Suburban like Buffy?  Urban like Spider-man Homecoming?  Something else?  There is ample support in the book to craft these key elements of the setting however you like.  

Also to be considered is the nature of what is going on.  Where do these Masks come from?  Who is the villainous Prester John?  Are their evil Masks to fight?  What do the police know?  What does the government know?  Unmasked walks you through all of this, and your choices will make each campaign unique.  Your game could be a supernatural one like Buffy, connected to alien technology like Smallville, extra-dimensional like Stranger Things, or a half dozen other options.  

Unmasked offers guidelines for making these choices and then structuring the campaign around them, Tier by Tier, to build a satisfying arc.  To my mind, this is where Unmasked shines the brightest.  It painstakingly details how to guide the players through becoming Masks, mastering their powers, encountering their first threats, dealing with the Big Picture, and confronting the final foe.  Several model campaign arcs are outlined, as well as a complete example campaign setting.  Since the rules are already covered in the core rulebook, Unmasked devotes its bulk to actually using those rules to create a vibrant campaign.  It is a page count well-spent.

If you have been itching to play superheroes in Cypher, this is the perfect opportunity to do it.  Dennis Detwiller has proved the old adage wrong by making lighting strike twice.  While Godlike and Unmasked are light years apart in many ways, both are stories of ordinary young people dragged into massive and monstrous conflicts by powers they struggle to understand and control.  They are both extraordinary tales of superhumans (and come to think of it, Unmasked would work very well in Godlike's WWII setting as well).  I highly recommend Unmasked to lovers of the Cypher system and lovers of the supers genre.  It doesn't disappoint.

VURT: THE TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAME (A REVIEW)

THEY SAY IF YOU DREAM OF FEATHERS it indicates a desire to ascend, to reach up to a higher plane of being or consciousness.  Indigenous peoples, like the Native Americans, saw them as keys to the spirit world, symbols of power and freedom and wisdom.  The ancient Egyptians weighed their hearts against feathers, facing salvation or damnation in the next life.  And then there was the strange case of Somerset, England, 1878.  Workers found a hidden room while demolishing an old house.  Completely inaccessible, without widow or door, it contained six brooms, an armchair, and a knotted cord with feathers woven into it.  People whispered it was the room of a witch; the chair was for resting, the brooms for flying, and the feathers were for casting spells.

All these legends are true. All of these people were dealing with the Vurt.   They sensed the greater Univurt.  It spoke to them.  They went to the Vurt world in dreams and sometimes in those dreams there were feathers.  Blue and Pink, Yellow and Black, rarely terrifyingly Silver.  

But I am getting all ahead of myself.  Let's take it slow.

Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is a sumptuous, sexy tome full of hallucinogenic art, haunting dreams, and colored feathers.  Based on Jeff Noon's award winning series of novels, this 420+ page volume is a cyberpunk setting powered by Monte Cook's Cypher System.  We are well past the point, kittlings, where I get give you an elevator pitch for the game; first-gen RPGs were easy that way, emulating a genre like High Fantasy, Space Opera, or the Old West.  Second-gen games were all about the mixing.  High Fantasy Meets Cyberpunk.  Horror Meets Spies.  But games today, like Floats and Spanners and Squids (oops, getting ahead of myself again) are all genetic soup.  They are weirder and wider and wilder.  Vurt is very much that.  Basically, it's like Michael Moorcock at his most extreme.  Think TORG on psilopsyban or RIFTS with an LSD chaser.  In more prosaic terms, Vurt is very much your standard cyberpunk--megacorporations run a highly polarized society of wealthy elites and desperate masses, and technology introduces transhumanist questions--but in Vurt, the genre concept of virtual reality is front and center.  If standard cyberpunk blurs the lines between Man and Machine, Vurt blurs them between the Virtual and Reality.

Some background;

A long time ago and through most of history people thought dreams were just that...dreams.  They didn't know dreams constituted a whole liquid universe next door that our brains shaped and molded like clay.  They didn't know we were peopling an entire cosmos with Santas and Hamlets and Zeuses.  They didn't know that some of the people on the receiving end of our shaping resented it.

But real it was, and around the end of World War II the first mathemagicians began to prove it.  These people began to see existence as pure numbers and their equations could do things to reality we hadn't seen before.  Basically, the discovery that Earth was just a single facet of a big, fucking, multidimensional Univurt rewrote the science books and allowed us to start doing things previously confined to science fiction.  Androids.  Ridiculously tall skyscrapers.  Hovercars.  Spaceships.  Reality had become a lot more plastic, and that's the kind of thing that is bound to lead to trouble.

A string of world-shaking disasters ensued, and the biggest of these was a plague of sterility that threatened the human race with one-generation-left extinction.  So some geniuses came up with Fecundity 10, a viral mathemagical fertility drug that basically turned people into insane nymphomaniacs and satyromaniacs.  Think the rabid zombie people in 28 Days Later that want to hump the shit out of you instead of kill you.  They didn't just screw people; they screwed animals and corpses and robots (later they screwed Vurt beings too), and because this drug guaranteed fertility, and the walls of reality were basically Jell-O...these unions were all fruitful.  After a few outbreaks of Fecundity 10 there isn't just a human race but 31 modes of being, for your basic Dogman to Robomanshadodogs, five separate categories of being all mixed up like a rubix cube no one has bothered solving.  

Oh but wait: you wanted to hear about the feathers.  Right.

So we'd known about the other side of the looking glass forever.  Humans have always dreamed, after all.  And the mathemagicians had us pressed up real close to the mirror, nearly humping our reflections.  But it was a girl named Celia Hobart who actually pulled an Alice and walked us through.  She's the one who came up with the feathers, see.

A Vurt feather is a mathemagical key to the Other Side.  Put the feather in your mouth and millions of tiny barbed neuromatocysts latch on to the back of your throat and access your nervous system.  Each feather is a program, a program that shapes part of the dream world and then plugs you into it.  Say goodnight Hollywood.  Bid adieu to TV.  Why watch a story when you can be a story?  Pop a perfectly safe and legal Blue feather (a "baby blue") in your mouth and then you are one of the Friends sitting in the Central Perk coffee shop quipping with your buds.  You are Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon.  You are Frodo bearing the ring.  You experience a full programmed dream, from start to finish, and best of all you can bring your friends.  Everyone pops the same programmed Blue and enjoys the ride together.  As mentioned, this is completely safe; your consciousness pops into a Vurt body made for you.  In Cypher System terms, whatever damage you take to your stat pools reverts back to the same levels you were at before you went into the dream.  It's the Vurtverse equivalent of a holodeck ride.

Less vanilla, but just as safe and just as legal, are the Pink feathers.  These babies are Vurtworld porn.  Flying solo?  Pop a Pink in your mouth and experience an orgy.  Are you and your partner feeling adventurous?  Spice up your sex life with feathers that make you and your partner look like your favorite athlete, rock star, or supermodel.

N0w--and understand this kittlings--with Blues and Pinks your mind gets settled in a nice cozy body made of Vurt stuff. You aren't you anymore, you are someone else.  Take a Blue to experience your favorite superhero movie and you are that superhero, with all his powers and abilities.  Disappointed with the equipment nature gave you?  Pop a Pink and you are the best endowed porn star around.  The feather dictates the form you take.  Also, with Blues and Pinks, you can jerk out of the feather anytime you please, coming back to the "real" world.  But where we are going next--the Blacks and the Yellows--that's a whole other game.

The Black feathers are illegal, and provide a much higher stakes thrill.  When you take one, you appear in the Vurtworld as yourself, in a dream body that is an exact copy of you.  This extends to the equipment you carry.  All your talents and abilities are your own.  For some featherheads, Blacks offer the chance to pit themselves against challenges not found in the meat and bone world.  Are you a martial artist who wants to prove she could kick Bruce Lee's ass?  Here's your chance.  Big game hunter bored with hunting lions in Africa?  Try tackling a dragon.  For other feather users Blacks offer darker thrills...more intense BDSM pleasures, the slick joy of killing with your own bare hands.  Whatever your kick there is a feather for it.  The drawback of the Black feather (some would call it a feature rather than a bug), is that whatever damage you suffer in the Vurt is likewise suffered by your waking world body.  And if you die in the Vurt, you die period.  Jerking out is also harder, requiring an Intellect roll against the feather's level.

Yellow feathers are the ultimate in risk.  Highly illegal, they are also highly prized.  The Yellows are full-on Through the Looking Glass, and come with consequences.

When you take a Yellow, you enter the Vurt so deeply that you cannot come back until the program in the feather is finished; there is no jerking out.  Like Blacks, whatever injuries you suffer are real, and dying is dying.  Unlike Blacks, Yellows have a nasty habit of pulling you all the way in.  In other words, your body can vanish from the waking world completely.  You are in the Vurt, equipment and all.  This doesn't just have repercussions for you, but for the world...because when something goes into the Vurt, something else must come out.  Using Yellows can therefore unleash Vurt creatures and beings into the world of flesh and bone, and some take up residence here.

In game terms, completing feathers provides XP.  Blues and Pinks offer 1 XP for a level 1-3 feather, and 2 XP for levels 4-6.  Blacks offer 3 XP for levels 1-3, and 4 XP for levels 4-6.  With Yellow feathers, the haul goes up to 5 XP and 6 XP.  

Since we brought up the rules, Vurt as mentioned runs on  Monte Cook's Cypher System, so if you have played it, or Numenera, or The Strange, you know the drill.  There are a few tweaks, however, to make the system fit the setting.  For example, the Descriptors have now been replaced with "Modes."  Remember when we talked about Fecundity 10?  Modes stem from that.  The reality-bending fertility drug that saved humans from extinction made it possible to breed with artificial lifeforms, animals, dream-beings from the Vurtworlds, and even the dead.  This created hybrids, and the hybrids in turn crossbred with each other.  Vurt gives you, then, 31 combinations of these "races" as Modes; you could be Pure Human or Pure Robo (artificial lifeforms capable of producing offspring), but you could also be a Dogman or Shadowman (half living half dead), A Robodogman or Shadowvurtdog, etc etc.  The names get eccentric, sounding like the types had been tossed in a blender, but they work pretty much like standard racial Descriptors, and once you have a sense of what each baseline Mode is like, it isn't too difficult to imagine what the combinations might play like.

Cypher System fans will recognize the Character Types--these are still the Explorer, the Speaker, and the Warrior.  The Adept has been refit into the Mathemagician, a numbers-crunching genius whose prowess with mathemagical equations allows the character to bend and sculpt reality.  In most respects this is the standard Adept, and players will recognize it right away.

The Foci, which are really the heart of Cypher characters, are all new and setting specific.  Maybe your character Can't be Mithered, Craves the Fix, Is a Lucky Bleeder or Top Gears.  There are around 30 new Foci, many of which could be adapted to any cyberpunk game and some suitable for whatever genre you like.  Each is customized for this setting, and helps players better understand the setting they are slipping into.

Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is a slick, gorgeous product.  Both the PDF and the hardcover are chock full of  excellent, full-color art perfectly evocative of the hallucinogenic setting.  Both the dreamworlds of the Vurt and the meat and bone megacity of Manchester are detailed, with descriptions of the megacorps, histories of the setting, tons of write-up for adversaries, new cyphers, and even adventures.  Ravensdesk Games delivers on the high quality we have come to expect from Cypher System products and then some.  If you like cyberpunk, if you liked Lovecraft's Dreamlands, if you liked Shadowrun but would like to try a more "cyberpunk meets dark fantasy" instead of "high fantasy," Vurt deserves a place on your shelf.  Cypher fans will want it just for its new collection of Foci and ideas for running other cyberpunk settings.  Don't let not having read the books dissuade you...the book is an excellent introduction to Noon's world.

So there, kittling, is the feather.  It remains up to you to pop it into your mouth or not.

    

   

CALL OF CTHULHU: AWOKEN

Every Halloween, my players and I do a one-shot horror scenario.  This year, we took a break from The Dracula Dossier to revisit an old favorite, Call of Cthulhu.  What follows is "Awoken," the Halloween one-shot.  The Dossier's influence should be obvious, as well as my wink and a nod to Brian Lumley.  

HOOK:  A team of Investigators in the employ of Lawrence “The Uncanny” Underwood—escape artist, stage magician, and outspoken skeptic—is sent to the rural Massachusetts town of Shiloh.  It is 1932, and the countryside is in the grip of the Great Depression.  The team has been working for Underwood for some time; they have investigated (and debunked) dozens of hauntings, seances, mediums, and spiritualists.  This time, they are set to the home of Emily Putnam (36) and her two children, Susan (12) and Tommy (7).  For the last two months, their remote farmhouse has been in the grip of a haunting.  Doors open and close.  Objects move.  At times the water runs red as blood.  There are nocturnal moans, thumpings, rattles.  And in little Tommy’s room, a cold spot has developed.  Emily wants help.  She cannot afford to leave the house in such perilous times.    

LINE:  The secret to this investigation is a little Geology and Library Use.  A few days before the haunting started, Massachusetts was affected by a rare earthquake.  It cracked the bedrock beneath the house and subterranean, iron-rich springs are bubbling up under the house.  The icy water has created the cold spot; the iron in the water makes it red; the trapped gases from the spring cause the moanings, the thumpings, and at times are violent enough to shake the little farmhouse, shutting doors and moving objects.  Case closed.

But while they are investigating…

The local undertaker, Martin Crane, vanishes from his mortuary.  Blood is everywhere, but there is no sign of a body.  The next evening, his daughter, Mary, vanishes from her bedroom.  His assistant, the gravedigger Paul Rudlidge, vanishes from his cottage the same night.  

And all across town, a stillness has fallen.  No birds sing.  No crows caw.  No insects buzz.  The farmers report their animals seem panicked.  At night, dogs incessantly howl.

Constable Parker Goodman, knowing the Investigators solved the Putnam House mystery, turns to them for help.

SINKER:  The same earthquake that that shifted the ground under the Putnam House cracked an ancient slab of shale at the edge of the woods bordering the Shiloh Cemetery.  This slab was covering an old well, long since run dry.  Just days after the well was exposed, Crane started dreaming of it, of something calling to him.  His journal speaks again and again of the Caduceus, of the Bronze Serpent that protected the Israelites.  He scribbles in the margins over and over again “the wyrm, the wyrm.”  During the day, he started walking along the edge of the cemetery searching for the well and the voice.  When he found it, he tied a rope around a nearby tree and went down.

His meticulous journal records nothing beyond this point.  His wife, however, reports him locking himself up in the mortuary for days.  When she peeked in on him, against explicit instructions, she saw him hovering over something she describes as a “leather ball, but a funny sort of thing…it looked more like a ball of string than anything else.”  During this time, his neighbor’s dog, Silas, vanished.  

In that well, Crane found the remains of a vampire…a Wamphyri leech coiled up into a shriveled ball in the rib cage of a male skeleton.  An iron stake had been driven through it.  Crane removed the stake, took the leech back to the mortuary, and fed it the blood of the neighbor’s dog.  The leech awoke, regenerated, and then snared him in its barbed coils before sliding down his throat.  Now it dominates him, slowly transforming him into a full vampire.  He has already turned his daughter and employee into Thralls.  More will die soon.

THE WAMPHYRI (Mythos Vampires): are a race of leech-like aliens born in the fetid swamps of an alien world.  Neither plant nor animal, they are most akin to a sentient fungus.  Their gelatinous, protoplasmic flesh can change shape at will, extending barbed tendrils and feeding suckers, membranous wings, or thinning to squeeze through even the narrowest of fissures.

On Earth, they are rarely encountered in their natural forms.  Brought to this world millennia ago, they survive in our atmosphere by forming a parasitic relationship with a human or animal host.  The leech coils around the heart, sending a fine network of feeding tubes throughout the cardiovascular system, and sending forth feelers into the nervous system and brain. Seizing control of autonomic and motor functions, as well as accessing memories and experiences, the leech comes to completely dominate the host, which is eventually driven mad.  This hybrid creature is known as a vampire.

Vampire Powers and Weaknesses 

The vampire lives on blood, and reshapes the host’s body into a perfect predator for the purpose of obtaining it.  The leech’s metamorphic properties are partially transferred to the host, allowing it to extend its teeth into ripping fangs, its fingers into grasping claws, and even to sprout wings for flight.  The skeleton and muscles are reshaped and reinforced, increases the monster’s strength and stamina.  A human host no longer ages, is immune to sickness and disease, and regenerates damage at frightening speed (each combat round the vampire heals 1d4 hit points).

In addition to these formidable physical powers, the vampire possesses potent psychic ones.  It can communicate telepathically and read minds; if the target is awake and alert, the vampire must overcome the target in a contest of POW vs POW.  If the target is asleep, the vampire can slide quietly into its dreams.  By making eye contact with a target, the vampire can attempt to mesmerize him or her (again with a contest of POW).  Success means the vampire can paralyze the target for feeding purposes, issue simple, one  or two word commands, or even cloud the victim’s memories.  

Vampires are not indestructible, however.  The parasitic infection transfers many of the leech’s alien weaknesses to the host.  Silver burns and scars the vampire, doing 1d3 points of damage per round of contact which cannot be regenerated.  Damage from fire is suffered normally and cannot be regenerated either.  Exposure to sunlight is the most lethal of all, however, doing 1d6 per round of direct exposure.  Again, this cannot be regenerated.  The only way for the vampire to heal any of this damage is to enter a deep, coma-like sleep.  In this state it recovers 1d4 HP per day. 

Additionally, garlic causes weakness and nausea to the vampire, causing it to flee.

Piercing the main body mass of the leech (the coils around the heart) paralyzes the creature.  It will be held in place until the stake is removed.

The best way to destroy a vampire is to catch it while slumbering.  Vampires do this during the daylight hours, particularly between 9 AM and 3 PM.  Or, the creature can be caught while in a longer, regenerative slumber.  Either way, driving a stake through the heart “pins” the leech.  This is traditionally followed by a beheading, and the entire remains are burned.  Any of these alone may not guarantee the destruction of the beast.  A stake will only paralyze it; and beheading a vampire will cause the leech to rip free from the host, slithering away to seek a new one.  Fire can reduce the human host to ash, but the leech will coil into a hard, leathery ball the size of a fist.  This is immune to further further damage, save from sunlight or silver.  Dormant, it still possesses the power to slide into the dreams of those nearby, especially the weaker willed.

Vampires can be identified by their failure to cast reflections or shadows…a byproduct of their alien, protoplasmic flesh.  They are usually pale, and their eyes have a reddish caste that glows in darkness.  

Vampire Reproduction

Vampires reproduce by means of an egg.  It takes decades—even hundreds of years—for a leech to generate one.  Once an egg is formed the leech will keep it indefinitely, until a subtable host is selected.  The leech will then inject the egg into the target, where it nestles against the heart and starts to grow.  The transformation can take weeks or months.  As the infection spreads through the victim’s system, it feeds first on his or her flesh and blood.  The victim grows thin, pale, and weak, developing a hunger for raw meat and blood.  Sunlight causes extreme pain and red welts like hives.  Garlic becomes revolting.  As the leech takes over, the victim loses time, sleepwalking under the control of the leech.  Eventually, he or she “dies,” and over a three day period transforms into a full vampire.  The host’s consciousness remains trapped in this body for years, unable to resist the domination of the leech.

Finally, vampires are able to create Thralls.  A Thrall is a reanimated human or animal victim that the leech infected with spores while feeding on it.  A Thrall is a lesser vampire, an infected victim without a leech under the psychic domination of the vampire that created it.  It has no will of its own, and can act as the eyes and ears of the leech that dominates it.  A Thrall possesses all the powers and weaknesses described above, but is not as physically powerful as a true vampire and can be killed by simple decapitation or burning.  In addition, reducing a Thrall to 0 Hit Points destroys it.  Thralls are immobile during daylight hours, lying in a trance-like sleep.  They are not always human; a vampire can create them from bats, canines, or birds as well. 

Vampires Thralls (Human)

STR  3d6 x 2 (20-22)  3d6 + 2 (12-13)

CON 2d6 + 6 (13)        2d6 + 6 (13)

SIZ      3d6 (10-11) 3d6 (10-11)

POW 2d6+6 (13)         2d6+3 (10)

DEX 3d6 (10-11) 3d6 (10-11)

Move 12                    10

DB        +1d6         +0

Armor 2 pts none

Weapons

Bite 50% 1d4 + 1d2 blood drain each round after; Claw 50% 1d4 + db

Skills

Human Psychology 60%, Scent Blood 75%

Habitat

Tombs, ruined manors

Sanity Loss:  0/1d4 to be attacked, 1/1d6 to fully comprehend what the vampire is, 1/1d8 to see the leech pull free of a host.

THE VAMPIRE IN QUESTION:  Samuel Cartwright was a Puritan minister in London.  Born 1598 to a prominent barrister, he later attended the heavily Puritan Emmanuel College in 1613 where he became a minister.  Austere and fervent in his beliefs, he nevertheless harbored a dark secret.  Rumors surrounded him of assignations with young men and boys.  As time wore on, the whispers became more sinister, linking him to the disappearances of children.   

In reality, while at Emmanuel the young Cartwright drew the attention of Adorján Ferenzcy, a centuries old vampire.  The creature was amused by the young man’s torment. As a homosexual living in an age and culture when such a thing was abomination, the struggle between his faith and his flesh proved irresistible to the vampire. It saw in him dark potential, and decided to infect Samuel with its egg.  As the leech inside grew, Cartwright’s hungers grew dark and more intense.  Homosexual impulses became pedophiliac, and these turned sadistic and murderous.  Terrified by what was happening to him, he fled to the New World.  There, the leech consumed him.

The monster Samuel Cartwright had become prowled the Massachusetts Colony feeding its obscene hungers for blood and flesh.  In 1683, it came to Shiloh.  Mutilated livestock and vanishing children convinced the local minister, Andrew Morton, that he was struggling against the Devil.  Morton travelled to Boston seeking help.  There, he enlisted the aid of scholars Edward Garrison and John Lich, who along with a 22 year old Cotton Mather, returned with him to exorcise Shiloh of its demon.

The details of their hunt are vague—supposedly Mather wrote of it in his lost work, A History of the Devil in the Massachusetts Bay Colony—but it ended with the quartet tracking the young and inexperienced vampire to its lair, where they drove a stake through it.  Instead of burying it in holy ground, they dumped the remains in a dried up well on the edge of the vampire’s property and covered the makeshift tomb with a slab.  The rest of their lives they apparently believed they had destroyed the vampire.  Garrison and Lich went on to found Arkham College in 1690, which eventually became Miskatonic.  Cotton Mather, of course, went on to play a pivotal role in the Salem Witch Trials.

And Cartwright…slept.     

The Spine of the Investigation

• Arriving at the Putnam House, they meet the family and begin to experience the “hauntings.”  Geology, or Idea Rolls in a pinch, reveal the haunting symptoms could all have underlying geological causes. There was an earthquake in this part of the country just three weeks ago, before the haunting started.  Of course Geology is necessary to confirm this theory, and if no one has it, an NPC geologist will need to be brought it.
• At some point before they conclude at the Putnam House, stage an atmospheric scene at night where suddenly all the crickets, the peeping frogs in the marsh, and the birds just suddenly fall silent.
• After they have confirmed the geological source of the haunting, have them stop for fuel on the way out of town.  Here Constable Goodman stops them and asks for help.  The timing of this is the day after Mary Crane and Paul Rudlidge go missing.  To sell it, have him tell the players he has the coroner’s journal, which is full of “weird, spooky nonsense.”
• Reading the journal reveals Crane’s dreams of the well, the voice in his head, and the sudden obsession with divine snakes.
• Speaking with his distraught wife (Persuade, Psychology) reveals Crane’s odd behavior and the existence of the leather ball.
• Following the hints in the journal and exploring the property will lead to the well.  To discover more, someone will need to descend into it.  The darkness, cold, and stench grow greater the further the Investigator descends.  At the bottom of the well the earthen floor is covered in a weird, sickly white mold that looks suspiciously like veins and capillaries.  Half concealed in this filth is a skeleton.  Medicine or Biology identifies it as male and at least 200 years old.  It has recently been disturbed.  A wrought iron stake lies beside it (SAN roll 0/1d3).  There is evidence this was in the skeleton’s chest.  Examining the weird mold more closely requires Spot Hidden and triggers a second SAN roll (1/1d4).  The mold covers a vast carpet of bones and insect carapaces…rats, birds, snakes, desiccated beetles.  It is almost as if the mold was feeding on all this.
• Shiloh has nothing resembling a library.  The nearest one is twenty miles away in the county seat of Arkham.  Using the Library there turns up the volume Towns and Tales of the Miskatonic River Valley.  Shiloh is mentioned in this book, as is the “witch scare” of 1683.  It includes rumors that the town minister, Andrew Morton, enlisted the aid of Cotton Mather, Edward Garrison, and John Lich to investigate rumors of witchcraft behind the mutilation of livestock and the disappearance of young boys.  
• The first night after they interviewed her, Mary Crane will come to her mother and vampirize her.  She will vanish like the others.  If the Investigators are with her that night, they will encounter their first vampire.
• The next day, two local boys—Jack Draper and Rummy Boyle—will also be discovered missing.
• Towards the end of his life, Andrew Morton (d. 1716) built a home in central Shiloh that still stands.  It is now owned my the town doctor, Stewart Hughes.  There are papers in the attic dating back to Morton’s lifetime, and these can be found with Library Use or Spot Hidden.  In very poor condition, badly faded and with many missing pages, they tell the same story as Towns and Tales above but from Morton’s point of view.  He mentions Samuel Cartwright by name, and mentions he hails from London.  He also mentions Garrison and Lich discovering the “nature of this fiend” in “the book of one Ludvig Prinn.”  There is a strange passage about the “wyrms of the Earth having their origins in the Stars.”
• Miskatonic has a copy of Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis of course, but this will require Credit Rating, Persuade, Fast Talk, or something similar to be allowed to see.  It cannot be removed from the library.  It would take weeks of study to read and comprehend.  However, Library Use and a period of 2d4 hours will track down Prinn’s references to “the blood drinkers” and “the leeches from the Void.”  It describes these as “demon wyrms coiled round the heart of corpses giving them horrible life and hunger for blood.”  SAN loss 1/1d4, Cthulhu Mythos +03%.  Apparently the “traditional remedies” have basis in truth, but Prinn warns not to “put your faith into the devices of the Church.”  He advocates staking, decapitation, and burning, lest “the wyrm survive the corruption of the flesh, coiled into a ball in slumber.”
• Library Use, either at the town library in Arkham, the Miskatonic University library, or the Miskatonic Valley Historical Society (also in Arkham) can track down the location of Samuel Cartwright’s old farm.  It once stood adjacent to Martin Crane’s funeral home.  The farmhouse is long gone—it is all woods now—but conducting a search of the forest beyond the well (which once stood on the edge of the property) will reveal (with Spot Hidden) a set of stone steps that descend into a hole in the ground.  This is partially covered in brush, and the steps themselves are carpeted in leaves.  Descending reveals a root cellar hewn into the rock with a dirt floor.  This was the cellar of the Cartwright house.  It is here that the vampire lairs, surrounded by his Thralls.  Between the hours of 9 AM and 3 PM, all will be completely immobile.  Beyond those hours, the vampire will appear to sleep but can awake and attack instantly.          

THE QUICK: I like to use a fairly simple rubric for NPCs in Call of Cthulhu.  Unless the NPC is a main antagonist or critical ally, I simply assign it a single “stat,” usually between 1 and 20.  This serves as an average characteristic, like INT, STR, or DEX, and also represents hot many hit points and magic points the character has.  Doubling it gives you a damage bonus.  “Core skills” for the character are assumed to be stat x 5%; “secondary skills” are stat x 3%.  For example, a (12) night watchman might have Blackjack and Handgun at 60% and Dodge, Listen, and Spot Hidden at 36% each.  If I need the character to have higher skills, I just assign them.

Emily Putnam, Concerned Mother, (10).  Emily’s husband, Ernest, died young, having been wounded back in the Great War and never fully recovered.  She is a simple, plain-spoken woman with little or no book learning but a lot of common sense.  She doesn’t understand what is happening to her family, and though religious has never believed in ghosts.  She just wants the disturbances to stop, unable to afford relocating her family.

Constable Parker Goodman, (13).  Another veteran, Parker is a husky bear of a man…but like so many with his inherent size and brawn is really a bit of a teddy bear.  He is a good cop for so small a town; drunk and disorderly he can handle with his big brother charm, but multiple murders and disappearances is way out of his wheelhouse.  He doesn’t know what to make of what is happening in town and is more than happy to ask for help.

Doctor Stewart Hughes (9, First Aid 80%, Medicine 65%).  With Crane missing, it is very likely the players will reach out to the town doctor if any medical mysteries or exsanguinated bodies turn up.  Hughes is semiretired; he’s 68, though still sharp-minded and vigorous.  Trained in Boston, he is a highly educated man (EDU 20), literate in both Latin and Greek.  he is not a believer in the supernatural, but presented with evidence of things beyond is ken is open-minded and inquisitive enough to accept them.  Note that he currently owns Andrew Morton’s house.           

AND THE DEAD: The only full vampire is the leech formerly inhabiting Samuel Cartwright, now nestled in the body of Martin Crane.  The most important thing to remember here is that this leech grew from an egg in the body of Cartwright, so it identifies completely with the Puritan minister.  Despite now being hosted in Crane, it speaks antiquated colonial era English, and finds the brave new world of the 20th century terra incognita. In addition, the Keeper shoulder bear in mind that Cartwright is a very young and inexperienced vampire; he was active only a few decades before Morton, Garrison, and Lich condemned him to the bottom of the well.  Older and experienced vampires have far greater powers, such as access to Mythos magic and spells.  Cartwright has only his strength, enhanced senses, and telepathic abilities.

Mary Crane, Paul Rudlidge, Jack Draper, and Rummy Boyle are all undead Thralls.  Ravenous, the leech inhabiting Martin Crane drained all of them, infecting them with wamphyri spores to reanimate them.  He did so primarily out of fear; he is alone in a strange new world, not fully adapted or come into his powers, and needed servitors to protect him.  Mary Crane and Rudlidge were easy targets…the two boys fell prey to the vampire because he still carries the perverse appetites of his previous host.  

The Thralls are essentially mindless revenants.  They can speak, and possess a low cunning, but they are no longer remotely human and the only thing they are after is blood.  Cartwright dominates them utterly, and if he wills it can speak through them and see what they see and hear what they hear.  As of now, they nest with him, sleeping on the dirt floor of his cellar (see above) around him.  It is up to the Keeper whether or not he creates more Thralls—he wants and needs their assistance and protection, but creating too many draws attention to himself and is more competition for the food supply.  

Perhaps the best way to use the Thralls is to have the players encounter one or more of them first.  Because these seem like more or less standard vampires—reanimated, blood-drinking corpses—it will make Crane/Cartwright and his leech all the more shocking.