THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON, AN UPDATE

Introduction 

As J.R.R. Tolkien phrased it, "the tale grew in the telling."  The project started as one thing, but then just kept growing and growing and growing.  Now, as Six Seasons in Sartar: The Company of the Dragon nears completion, I thought it would be a good time to pull the curtain back on the campaign and let you know just what you have in store for you.  We are in the layout and art stages right now, adding some final material and a fresh new chapter I hadn't planned on including, but decided it needed, and am looking towards a mid-January release date.  I will keep you posted if there are any delays.

The Company of the Dragon is the sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar, but we have spent a lot of time and effort making sure you can run it as its own campaign, without ever having played Six Seasons at all.  If you did play Six Seasons, then The Company of the Dragon will tell you what happens next.  Your Six Seasons player characters will become the main protagonists of this saga, and you can bring along any of the NPCs who survived the Battle of Black Stag Vale as well.  If you never played Six Seasons, you and your friends will sit down and create brand new characters for the campaign.

The Saga

The story follows "the Company of the Dragon," one of the rebel warbands operating in Sartar between Earth Season 1620 ST and Kallyr's ascension as Prince in 1625.  Traditionally, the Orlanthi warband was a group of young men following Orlanth Adventurous and fighting women following Vinga sponsored by their clan and overseen by the Orlanth Rex cult.  The warband's actions were sanctioned and given legitimacy by this oversight.  They quested, conducted cattle raids, fought Chaos, all on behalf of their clan and their chieftain.  With the Lunar Occupation, however, the Orlanth Rex cult was banned, leaving warbands across Sartar without guidance, authorization, or control.  Some turned to banditry.  Some became mercenaries.  But some took a different route.

Kallyr of Kheldon, in exile since leading a failed rebellion against the Empire in 1613, saw in these warbands an opportunity.  As holder of the Iron Torc, Kallyr is the High Priest of Orlanth Rex, and she reached out to the leaderless warbands of Sartar offering them a deal.  If they fought for her, under her authority, she would grant them the sanction and legitimacy the Orlanth Rex cult offered of old.  This gave Kallyr a private army of rebels scattered throughout the hills of Sartar.  For the warbands, it was a lifeline.

Because Sartar before the Dragonrise is a nation divided against itself.  The tribal kings and queens, as well as the cities, have largely accepted Prince Temertain and Lunar rule.  Many of them profit from it, in fact, now having access to a far larger network of trade routes than ever before.  The clans living amongst the hill tribes of Sartar, however, cling fiercely to the Old Ways.  In their eyes, Kallyr is the legitimate Prince of Sartar and Temertain a pretender.  The warbands operating in her name thus gain aid, support, and comfort from the hill tribes, while in the cities they are viewed as bandits and terrorists.

If you are coming from Six Seasons in Sartar, the Company of the Dragon is composed of the surviving Haraborn, joined by the Third Wind and other rebel groups operating in Kallyr's name.  These are all united, and forged into a new community, by the Draconic spirit Shah’vashak the Rainbow Wyrm.  Discovered imprisoned in a Second Age EWF temple, Shah’vashak is a severed piece of the Brown Dragon's soul.  Kallyr needs it, and the other severed pieces, to awaken the Brown Dragon as a weapon against the Lunars, but Shah’vashak has its own plans.  The Company of the Dragon introduces a new twist on an old Gloranthan myth, and a unified vision that ties together the constellation Orlanth's Ring, the Dragonrise, Argrath, and the end of the Third Age...

If you are new to all this, the book will walk you through creating your own Company, where they came from, and how they met the Rainbow Wyrm.

A Five-Year Adventure

The campaign consists of 23 possible adventures, one per season.  The book gives you, however, more than 50 episodes which can be used to fill these slots.  Episodes can be combined or run on their own, which means with 23 openings and over 50 choices, no two campaigns need play alike and you can replay The Company of the Dragon differently each time.

The timeline is likewise divided into three phases; "Guerrilla War" in which the Company is always on the move, hiding out in the hills and striking at the Lunars every chance that they get; "The Great Winter," in which the Company has the chance to secure a base of operations and faces the challenge of helping its allies survive the darkness that descends in the wake of Orlanth and Ernalda's "deaths," and "The Dragon Rising" which brings the Company back into Kallyr's path as she needs them to awaken the Brown Dragon and liberate the land.

Along the way the player characters have the chance to tangle with Delecti and Sir Ethilrist, to negotiate with Mostali, Uz, and Aldryami, to participate in the Battle of Auroch Hills and witness the Dragonrise.  

New Systems

The Company of the Dragon introduces a simple, streamlined resource management system which allows the players to govern the warband, use its power to create changes in the world, and puts them in the position of having to strengthen and maintain it.  It also introduces Draconic Conscious, a form of Illumination taught by Shah’vashak the Rainbow Wyrm. Also included are "Character Arcs," a simple narrative system that shifts the spotlight from character to character over the campaign as they pursue their own personal development and goals, and expanded use of "Character Ratings" or "CR" from Six Seasons in Sartar.

Stay Tuned

I will be looking more closely at aspects of the campaign as the release date approaches.  Stay tuned here for additional information and sneak previews.

 

      

LIFE OF MOONSON, BOOK ONE: CHARACTERS - A LOOK

 

THE ARGUMENTS GO BACK forty years.

You have the Roman Camp, who will point to the Imperial legions, the liberal use of terms like "centurion" and "tribune," and the existence of a Senate. Obviously this makes Sartar Gaul or Germania...possibly even Judea.  Then you have the Persian Camp, who remind you of the Satraps and sultanates. This casts Sartar in the role of the brave Greeks holding off the forces of Xerxes I. There is a Byzantine Camp, who point out the existence of a state religion that is keen on conversion, a Soviet Camp who view the insidious spread of "Illumination" as a euphemism for Communism (not to mention, the empire is "Red"), and even a Star Wars "The Empire" Camp...because let's face it, there is something rather Death Star-like about the Red Moon just hovering there. Each side, given the chance, has made convincing cases initially around gaming tables, then later message boards, and nowadays the Internet.

Of course the real answer is simple. The Lunar Empire is all of these things.

In a world based on myth, the Lunar Empire is the archetypical Empire, a mold into which you can pour any empire you like (or dislike, for that matter). Alternatively, if you are the team that put together 2020's A Rough Guide to Glamour, you cram that mold close to bursting with every single empire you can think of. Glamour served up a Lunar Empire that was simultaneously Rome, Byzantium, Moscow, Britain, Palpatine's, and more than a little Oceania, spiced up with pop culture and humor, and served hot in the Jonstown Compendium. Now the band is back together for Life of Moonson, Book One: Characters.

Both A Rough Guide and Moonson originated with a LARP run at Gloranthan conventions in the late 1990s. It was a strange period of history for "Glorantha in the real world," when the setting had just split from RuneQuest but had not yet been reborn in Hero Wars (later HeroQuest). Yet this LARP played a crucial role in assembling the Avengers, the people who would become--in the words of Jeff Richard--"a veritable Who's Who of the modern Team Chaosium." So it felt "right" for a Rough Guide to be expanded, illustrated, and published for the new Jonstown Compendium, and it feels right for the Life of Moonson books to follow it now.

While A Rough Guide detailed the setting of the LARP--the Lunar Empire's capital of Glamour--this volume, Characters, contains more than 50 characters for it, each illustrated, with pages of description  background, personal objectives, secrets, and things the character knows. There are no game statistics here, but the characters are so complex and fleshed out that adding a few for RuneQuest or QuestWorlds would be well worth your while. These are the movers and shakers of the Lunar Empire. the heaviest of the heavy hitters. Within you will find the Red Emperor himself, Sor-Eel, the Great Sister, the Dean of the Field School of Magic, even Jar-Eel the Razoress. This makes it invaluable to anyone wanting to run a campaign in the capital, or at the highest levels of the Empire. For the rest of us, its just makes for damn juicy reading.

The production values are upped here from A Rough Guide, which is actually saying something as that book set the bar for other Compendium works. The writing team of David Hall, Kevin Jacklin, Nick Brooke, Chris Gidlow, the notorious MOB (Michael O'Brien), and Mike Hagen are joined by illustrator Dario Corallo, whose art so perfectly matches the spirit of the book. As with A Rough Guide, Moonson portrays the luminaries of the Empire in the guise of famous actors, performers, and artists we all know. I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to identify them all at your leisure. 

At 235 pages Life of Moonson is massively expanded from its original source material, with new essays  and maps courtesy Phil Anderson and Nick Brooke. Book Two: The Rules, is on the way and will deliver the basic story of the LARP (seven years after the Dragonrise, the great and the good of the Empire have come together the celebrate the Lunar New Year...), the rules, and tools needed to run it.

Even if you have no intention of playing the LARP, Life of Moonson belongs in your collection along with A Rough Guide to Glamour. LARPs have never been this reviewer's cup of tea, but I still find both books terrific RPG references. Like so much from the Compendium they are passion projects, and it shows. They also shed light (scarlet, crimson, and vermillion light, of course) on a part of Glorantha we don't often get to see.

Life of Moonson is available now in PDF from the Jonstown Compendium.  Buy a copy, and help it get past the threshold for print on demand eligibility. 

     

CTHULHU DREADFULS: THE WYSTDOVJA VALE GAZETTEER and KISS OF BLOOD, a Pair of Reviews

STARTING WITH FRANKENSTEIN in 1931, Universal undertook the creation of a bizarre little pocket reality.  It wasn't intentional, not at first.  It simply cut costs to recycle the same sets and props.  Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and to a lesser extent The Mummy cobbled together a black and white Europe where everyone spoke English, used German place names and titles, and the date was somewhere between 1890 and 1940.  As the sequels rolled out and all the crossovers began, the universe became ever more interconnected.  Dracula had a daughter, Frankenstein had a son, and by the end films like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula had all the monsters teaming up.  

A decade after Bud Abbott and Lou Costello sent all these monsters to a shameful and embarrassing demise, Britain's Hammer Film Productions resurrected the dead.  Kicking off again with Mary Shelley, The Curse of Frankenstein, The Horror of Dracula, and The Mummy used the same trick and even improved on it.  Here again was a weird shared universe, still English-speaking with oddly German peasants and villages, but this time more confidently gothic.  The date seemed firmly 188x.  Tame by modern standards, but infamous at the time for their sex and gore, for the true horror aficionado the Hammer films were pure gold.  With talents the like of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Ingrid Pitt, they were delicious cocktails of camp, melodrama, and terror.

The first attempt to capture the magic of these films in a roleplaying game was probably Pacesetter's Chill (1984).  A more direct attempt came with the game's second, Mayfair edition; the Chill Companion included horror "subgenres" to customize the feel of the game, and included both Universal and Hammer lenses for it.  In 1990, Chaosium winked at the genre in their Blood Brothers, but it was really TSR that same year which jumped right in with Ravenloft: Realm of Terror.  This was, quite literally, a pocket dimension, peopled with residents and horrors that would have been quite comfortable on a Hammer film set.  It almost lured me to play AD&D.  Almost.

Now I haven't written for Chaosium's "Miskatonic Repository" yet...the "Jonstown Compendium" keeps me too busy.  Both are outlets, however, for fans of Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest respectively to publish their own original works.  If I had written for Miskatonic, I might have done something very similar to The Wystdovja Gazetteer and Kiss of Blood.  Because the "Brinoceros" (I shall assume the alter ego of Brian Brethauer), along with Kevin Brethauer, Amanda Brethauer, Cody Chavez and Amanda Gutowski, has produced a pair of perfect little love letters to Hammer horror for Call of Cthulhu, exactly the sort of thing I would have liked to have done.

Set in Cthulhu's "Gaslight Era" (circa 1890), The Wystdovja Gazetteer removes us from London to Wystdovja (wist-DOE-vee-ya) Vale, a broad river valley surrounded by jagged mountains and situated in...well...Hammer film country of somewhere between Austria and Transylvania. Instead of setting your tales in Arkham, Dunwich, or Innsmouth, Wystdovja brings you Skeltzenberg, the seat of culture, power, and commerce in the Vale, decayed Middenport riddled with crime, and idyllic Karoczig.  And in-between these, the Gazetteer tells us; 

...can be found antediluvian groves, ruined monasteries, mysterious Romani camps, isolated country inns, dark forests, lonely crossroads, dangerous mining operations, degenerate railroad junctions, treacherous mountain passes, and an array of noble estates, each hiding more than a hundred years of scheming mystery...

This 40-page PDF covers a lot of ground, describing the history of the region and the key locations in it.  It is more suggestive than exhaustive; don't expect street-by-street descriptions of neighborhoods.  In true Hammer style, the Gazetteer occasionally has its tongue firmly jammed in its cheek with "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" references like Castle Hammerstein and the Gorgo Pass, but really this only adds to its charm.  Tonally, it is pitch perfect.  If you love the Hammer films and yearn to game in them, buy this.  

Now, along with the Gazetteer I am reviewing the first scenario set in Wystdovja Vale, Kiss of Blood.  As much as I enjoyed the Gazetteer, I LOVED this.

If you follow the blog you know I do not talk about scenarios for fear of spoiling them, but whether or not you use this in conjunction with the Gazetteer, Kiss of Blood deserves to be in your collection.  This is a beautifully illustrated 70-page PDF that tells a ripping good yarn, introduces new spells and a new (variation of a) monster, has a host of colorful characters, and--above all else--is The Vampire Lovers scenario that you didn't know you needed but you really, really do. If the team plans on doing more of this, I am the first in line for it.  

Don't let "fan made" put you off.  From the screen shots I shared you can see the layout is clean and professional, the art is great, and the writing top notch.  If like me you are physically incapable of turning off a Hammer film when it is on TV, if you want a solid Call of Cthulhu answer to Ravenloft, or you just want a terrific gothic romp, Kiss of Blood is for you.     

THE CHILDREN OF FEAR: A CALL OF CTHULHU CAMPAIGN

I’ve also been digesting something of vast interest as background or source material... ...the Atlantis-Lemuria tales, as developed by modern occultists & the sophical charlatans. Really, some of these hints about the lost “City of the Golden Gates” & the shapeless monsters of archaic Lemuria are ineffably pregnant with fantastic suggestion; & I only wish I could get hold of more of the stuff. What I have read is The Story of Atlantis & the Lost Lemuria, by W. Scott-Elliot.

HP Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 17 Jun 1926

MYTH MAKER, PSUEDO-HISTORIAN, and professional digger of rabbit holes Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) casts a long shadow.  The co-founder of the Theosophical movement, her best known works are the sprawling, convoluted, and completely bonkers Isis Unveiled and the less sprawling, but arguably even more convoluted and bonkers Secret Doctrine.  These are works which purport to reveal the "secret history" of the world, a saga that covers millions of years and a half-dozen "root races," including Hyperboreans, Lemurians, and Atlanteans.  A seventh race is predicted on a continent or island that will rise in the Pacific, before everyone ascends and migrates to Mercury.

Still with me?

The "long shadow" I referred to extends far beyond the Theosophical Society, which continues to exist today.  Blavatsky's influence on Western esotericism is evident in both the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley, with their reliance on ascended "Secret Masters" guiding the destiny of the world, as well as the Aryan pseudo-anthropology that fueled the Nazis.  Her ideas also appear throughout 20th century weird fiction, all the way from the pulps to works like the Illuminatus! trilogy.  There are shades of Blavatsky in Robert E. Howard, in Clark Ashton Smith, and of course in Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  Yet to my mind Blavatsky's most significant influence was on bringing Hinduism and Buddhism into the West.  Now, I would be remiss as someone who started his career in the field of religious studies (specifically in Eastern religions) if I didn't mention she got everything all wrong (I did mention bonkers twice), but the fact remains that she did ignite tremendous interest in Europe and America in things like reincarnation, the kalachakra or "cycles of time," and even in mythical cities like Shambhala and Argartha.

Which brings us, at last, to The Children of Fear.

Roughly the same size as Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, this massive 418 page campaign takes Call of Cthulhu east into China, northern India, and Tibet, and is rooted in the mythology of that region...well, sort of.  Because this is Call of Cthulhu, not Eastern Studies 101, so naturally the campaign leans heavily on the pseudo-history and weird fiction traditions inspired by Theosophy.  A telegram drags the Investigators into the struggle between Shambhala--the Land of Living Fire--and Argatha, the City of Fear.  Mentioned in both the Kalachakra Tantra and the Vishnu Puranas, Shambhala is spoken of as a city or kingdom which will be the birthplace of Vishnu's final incarnation before the end of the current world.  For Theosophists, it was the city of "the Sons of the Fire Mist," godlike beings who overthrew the evil empire of Atlantis 12,000 years ago.  In The Children of Fear, however, Agartha replaces Atlantis as Shambhala's rival.

While Shambhala is generally regarded as the "good guys," Agartha gets cast as both good and bad.  In some legends Agartha is an advanced empire inside the hollow Earth, of which Shambhala is the capital.  For Theosophists, Agartha was a subterranean kingdom beneath Tibet and populated by demons.  This is more the treatment it gets in The Children of Fear, where the plot revolves around preventing the sealed gates of Agartha from opening and releasing the King of Fear from emerging and ending the current age of the world.

Now I have been yammering on about Theosophy for a reason.  The Children of Fear is refreshing in that it is not necessarily about the Cthulhu Mythos at all.  It could be run as an occult thriller, with nary a reference to Outer Gods, Old Ones, or familiar alien races.  Compatible with both standard Cthulhu and Pulp Cthulhu, the Keeper could easily portray the antagonists here as Buddhist demons, wicked ascended masters, or one of Blavatsky's Root Races run amok.  They could just as easily make the cities the strongholds of Lovecraftian gods or Old Ones.  The book contains comprehensive guidelines on going in either direction and in shaping the campaign into exactly what you want.

Before we move on from this point, I need to add that it is about d*** time.  Call of Cthulhu says, right on the cover, "Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft" (emphasis mine).  Long before "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," or "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," Lovecraft was writing weird fiction that arguably had nothing to do with what would come to be known as "the Mythos."  It really wasn't until late in the game that the concept of a unified universe of horror emerged.  It is easy to see The Children of Fear as being inspired by something he wrote in his earlier pre-Mythos days.  If your characters roll their eyes and say "oh no, not another shoggoth, this might be the campaign for you.

Across eight-chapters, which like Masks of Nyarlathotep are explored or not explored in an order determined by the player character Investigators and not the Keeper, The Children of Fear explores a setting that has nothing to do with Arkham or Miskatonic University, and that is refreshing too.  Loaded with hand-outs, pre-generated characters, new monsters, new spells, and a ton of resources, The Children of Fear is more evidence that Chaosium has cracked the code on how to make a massive, sprawling campaign accessible.  There is some terrific storytelling in there as well, none of which I can give you without spoilers.

With art by Kristina Carroll, Caleb Cleveland, Mariusz Gandzel, Doruk Golcu, Katy Grierson, Sija Hong, Victor Leza, Pat Loboyko, Magda Mieszczak, and Mali Ware, it is also another example of Chaosium putting together a gorgeous looking book.  Given the setting, it is also a very different style of art, much of it reflecting local sensibilities.  This gives it a fresh, vibrant look and feel.  Nicholaus Nacario's lay-out is terrific as well, fitting this book in nicely with the other recent 7th edition titles.

This is another campaign you are going to want, especially if you have any interest in a Call of Cthulhu campaign that shakes things up a bit.  Full of colorful detail and explanation, you need know nothing about Theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, Chinese legends, or Tibet to run it.  It has all the detail you need.

     

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GREAT HUNT: A KING ARTHUR PENDRAGON REVIEW

“For I have promised to do the battle to the uttermost, by faith of my body, while me lasteth the life, and therefore I had liefer to die with honour than to live with shame ; and if it were possible for me to die an hundred times, I had liefer to die oft than yield me to thee; for though I lack weapon, I shall lack no worship, and if thou slay me weaponless that shall be thy shame.”

Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book IV Chapter X

IF YOU HAVE READ any of the reviews here, you know I like setting the stage with backstory.  Games, like films or novels or any other sort of story, don't exist in a vacuum but have history and context.  In talking about The Adventure of the Great Hunt, a quick-start scenario that gives us a preview of next year's King Arthur Pendragon 6th edition, things are a little different however.  I've pretty much already set the stage in my 2019 review of the current edition.  If you would like more context, gentle reader, I refer you there.

The Adventure of the Great Hunt (hereafter just Hunt because nothing is as unlovely as typing TAotGH over and over again) is a free 26-page PDF released for WeAreAllUs 2020, a celebration of the life and work of Chaosium-founder and master game designer Greg Stafford.  Again, I have already written about Greg and how his passing affected me, so we can move on.  Greg considered Pendragon his masterpiece, and that is saying something.  Aside from creating Glorantha and Chaosium, his contributions to the hobby are staggering.  With Ghostbusters he gave us dice pools.  With Prince Valiant, the storytelling game.  As John Wick (Legend of the Five Rings, Houses of the Blooded, 7th Sea etc etc) put it, "if you believe you've come up with a clever mechanic, Greg Stafford already did it."  So it seems right for Chaosium to remember his passing this year with a sneak peek at what he considered to be the "ultimate edition" of his greatest game.

It feels a bit pointless reviewing free downloads.  If you are reading this review you probably already have it.  If you don't, I am not sure why you are reading the review.  Yet if for some reason you haven't gotten a copy yet, I urge you to do so.  Written by Stafford with assistance from David Larkins, layout by Simeon Cogswell, and art by Riley Spalding, Kalin Kadiev, and Eleonor Piteira, Hunt is a splendid little treasure, and eight-page scenario steeped in both the medieval tradition of the Hunt and in the Arthurian tradition of symbolic and/or magical beasties.  Set nominally sometime in the Conquest Period (519-530 AD) of the The Great Pendragon Campaign, the player character knights are guests of Sir Servause le Breuse, a renowned hunter.  After feasting his guests, Servause's household unexpectedly receives Sir Ector, foster-father to the King.  His lands are being ravaged by a dragon, and being of advanced age, no true knight could forgo aiding him.  Yet dragons are not easy creatures to beat, and Servause comes up with a novel suggestion that sets events in motion.

This is Stafford at the height of his Pendragon powers.  The set-up, where Servause makes his suggestion to the players, could easily come out of the pages of Le Morte d'Arthur.  For example;

“The panther is a great cat of variegated color, known for its kindness and gentility. All beasts are its friend—save for the dragon! When the panther has eaten its fill, it sleeps for three days. When it wakes, it emits a belch of sweet perfume, not unlike the aroma of all-spice..."

Much like Glorantha, the Britain of Pendragon is not the typical fantasy world of "mostly sciencey with a dash of magic added."  It is what Malory and other medieval romanticists thought it to be.  Hunt evokes this marvelously.  Playing through it, there is no doubt you are playing Pendragon.  It simply could be nothing else.

In addition to the scenario, there is a two-page appendix of hunting rules, three pages of pregenerated player character knights, and--in what I suspect many of you have been waiting for--a six-page preview of next year's 6th edition rules.

From the taste we have been given here we are looking at more of a refinement than an overhaul.  There are tweaks, but nothing quite like the changes between, say, the 3rd and 4th editions (yes, "Celtic magic system," looking at you).  The Appearance Attribute, for example, is now "Appeal," but functions the same way.  The most interesting tweak is the apparent highlighting of "Honor."  Always a vital part of the game, it now seems to have been elevated up beside Glory in what drives and motivates a knight.  Glory accumulates, but Honor can be lost, and if too much is lost, the character is no longer recognized as a knight.  As I said, this was in Pendragon before, but it seems spotlighted in this preview.

There are a few other surprises, but people new to Pendragon will not notice and experienced players should probably just download the PDF and take a look.  One thing that should be said, however, is that the look of this PDF bodes very well for the new edition.  Pendragon 5.2 is a fine looking book, but the design here suggests the new Pendragon will be more like Call of Cthulhu 7th edition or the new RuneQuest in being laid out with richer backgrounds and better art.  The PDF genuinely looks like an illuminated manuscript.  

This is a terrific Arthurian adventure, and the perfect example of why Pendragon remains one of the best loved and most celebrated games of all time.  Veterans will love it, and it is just light enough to introduce new players to the game.  As a free gift to fans, it is a perfect way to remember Greg for 2020's WeAreAllUs.  I suspect that watching us from distant Avalon (or probably, knowing the old shaman, from visions in his Crystal Cave), Greg is grinning.

 

THE DARE: A CALL OF CTHULHU SCENARIO AND SOURCEBOOK REVIEW

WE PROBABLY HAVE TWO "STEVENS" to thank (or, depending on your tastes, to blame) for the quaint and curious genre that--if it had a name--would probably have to be called "Eighties Pre-Teen Adventure Horror."

The first would be the "ph" Stephen, the right honorable Mr. King, whose 1982 novella "The Body" was adapted into the immensely popular film Stand By Me.  While "The Body" didn't contain any supernatural elements, it set a mold for coming of age tales which pit pubescents against the macabre, including the obligatory bully.  Building on the elements in "The Body," the prolific King unleashed his 22nd novel, It, the same year Stand By Me hit the screens.  This was a supernatural tale, and an extremely Lovecraftian one as well.  In it, we see a group of middle school outsiders struggling against an ancient, extraterrestrial horror.  While neither "The Body" nor It were actually about 80s kids--both have the kids in the late 1950s--their appearance in the 1980s link them indelibly to the decade, so much so that when It was remade in 2017 and 2019, this time it was updated to have the young protagonists in Reagan Era America.

The other Steven is the one with the "v."  Richard Donner's The Goonies was something of a cultural phenomenon, an immensely popular 1985 film that earned six times its budget in box office returns and has since been marked by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."  But The Goonies came from a story by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, whose film company Amblin also produced the film.  The Goonies is about--no surprises here--a group of nerdy middle school outcasts who this time end up in a wild adventure to win a pirate treasure.  While again it is not strictly supernatural, there are enough pulp fiction elements in it to see how it feeds into the genre.  Spielberg, like King, was extraordinarily adept at using kids as protagonists, the epitome of which was probably his 1982 film E.T. (speaking of cultural phenomenons).  The immense success of The Goonies threw open Pandora's Box, and out would spring films like Monster Squad, The Gate, and The Lost Boys (all, curiously, in the very busy year of 1987).  A genre had emerged which fused the elements of King's fiction with the young adolescent horror/mystery comedy of The Goonies.  The genre experienced a resurrection of sorts in the second decade of the 21st century, with JJ Abrams 2011 Super 8 (produced again by Spielberg), three seasons of the Netflix smash Stranger Things (2016-present), and the aforementioned big screen adaptation of King's IT.  All of these were tales of school age outsiders in the 80s caught up in the weird and the unnatural.

Like the two new It films, The Dare (Sentinel Hill Press, PDF, 70 pages, $14.99 US) is itself a remake.  Originally released back in 1990 as a Call of Cthulhu tournament module, this Kevin A. Ross classic has returned re-imagined and greatly expanded for the 7th edition rules.  With Bret Kramer riding shotgun, Badger MacInnis on layout, art by Ian MacLean and Katie von Csesfalvay, and Dean Engelhardt, Richard LeDuc, and Clint Cronk providing handouts and character sheets, The Dare is more than the sum of its parts.  It's a Cthulhu scenario, yes, and a terrifying one at that, but it also is a terrific introduction to the venerable old RPG, a new interpretation of the rules, a love letter to the films mentioned above, and a sound foundation for a unique Call of Cthulhu campaign.  

Let's take those in order.

I am not, obviously, going to tell you too much about the scenario.  River Song would scold me.  I will tell you that your "Investigators" will all be a group of preteen kids back in the 1980s, dared to spend the night in the town's obligatory haunted house by a slightly older bully.  What comes next is itself a bit of an homage, a salute to Lovecraft (especially "The Dreams in the Witch House"), King (It and especially his 1984 short story "Gramma"), and the iconic Call of Cthulhu scenario "The Haunting."  Ross pulls no punches here, and The Dare wisely comes with two modes of play, PG and R.  The PG mode is a bit lighter and suitable for younger players, while R serves up very adult levels of terror.  

Which brings me to the next point; The Dare is a perfect introduction to Call of Cthulhu, particularly for younger players.  The reason for this is that the book contains a new, streamlined version of the 7th Edition rules called--brace for the eye roll--"The Call of Kid-thulhu."  Geared specifically for portraying kids rather than crusty-old academics or hard boiled detectives, this is a fast and easy-to-learn presentation of the rules with an abbreviated skill list heavy on charm.  Be A Pal, Be Sneaky, Gym Class, Science Class, and my personal favorite Play With Matches are all prime examples, condensing the Call of Cthulhu skill list to about 15 things.  "The Call of Kid-thulhu" rules make The Dare more than a scenario, because a Keeper could easily take them and spin out an entire campaign of kids versus the Mythos.  Stranger things have happened...like Stranger Things.

Which leaves us with the love letter.  From the front and back covers that have been made to look like battered old 1980s video cassette boxers (right down to the "be kind, rewind" sticker), to the character sheet, The Dare absolutely nails its source material.  And I mean all the source material; The Dare is painstakingly authentic to 80s adventure horror but it is also genuine Call of Cthulhu.  We are not talking Blood Brothers here, this is full-on Mythos horror.  Indeed, the layout and fonts are designed to look like Call of Cthulhu books from the 80s.  On the other side of things Brian M. Sammons closes the rules off with a terrific little survey of the 80s horror films that inspired The Dare, reminding us what a neat little trick the Sentinel Hill team has played here.  Like Pulp Cthulhu, The Dare manages both to be Cthulhu and to be its own thing.  If the gang is planning any follow up releases in "The Call of Kid-thulhu" subgenre, all I can say is "rad."    

SEEDS OF TERROR - THE MUMMY OF PEMBERLEY GRANGE (A CALL OF CTHULHU REVIEW)

MUMMY DEAREST

THE STORY IS SO WELL-WORN every child on a playground knows it.  Intrepid explorer digs around in Egypt.  Intrepid explorer finds a mummy's tomb.  Intrepid explorer disturbs said mummy and triggers the "mummy's curse."  The mummy then rises from the dead to strangle the intrepid explorer or he and his assistants all meet a grisly and macabre end.

It's a surprisingly modern fable though.  The ancient Egyptians didn't inscribe curses on the walls of tombs for the same reason gravestones do not typically read "John Smith 1818-1898 - Rob this grave at your own peril."  The idea is generally so taboo people A) don't expect it to happen and B) don't like to talk about it if it does.

The stories really seem to begin around the 17th century, long before anyone could read the tomb walls to know whether they were cursed or not.  One story speaks of a Polish traveller who purchased a pair of mummies in Alexandria, storing them in the hold of a ship on the journey back home.  In a Dracula-esque turn the ship was plagued with storms and fog the entire voyage, and the crew haunted by nightmares of a pair of specters roaming the vessel.  This all ended when the mummies were tossed overboard.

In the Victorian Era, the idea became a staple of the gothic novel, beginning with Louisa May Alcott's (yes, THAT Louisa May Alcott) Lost in a Pyramid and culminating in Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars, which did for the mummy legend what Stoker had done for vampires six years before.

The story didn't really enter popular consciousness until the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1923 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter, however.   The deaths of Lord Carnarvon, his financial backer, Carter's secretary, a member of the excavation team, and even a visitor to the tomb ignited a mummy's curse media frenzy.  Nine years later Universal's The Mummy made the mummy's curse a horror film staple (though to be fair, the 1911 silent film of the same title was the first to show a revivified Egyptian corpse.  The rest as they say is history.

THE MUMMY OF PEMBERLEY GRANGE 

All this having been said, when Type 40's new Miskatonic Repository offering, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, asks us "Jessica Pemberley, rich socialite and Egyptophile, has shipped a mummy all the way from Cairo and has invited you to an exclusive "unwrapping party" at her manor house in the country...(w)hat could possibly go wrong?" we all know exactly what could go wrong.  That is exactly the point.  Written by Allen Carey and Nice Holland, Pemberley Grange is one of the "Seeds a Terror," a series of concise, easy-to-run Call of Cthulhu scenarios that can be prepped and played in a single session.  Part of the package is that these stories are built around well-known tropes...but come with an unexpected twist.  This time it is the old "mummy's curse."  Yes, Pemberly Grange comes with a deadly twist on this.  No, I am not going to tell you what it is.

Your purchase includes an 11-page PDF, a pair of well-rendered hand-outs, 5 pregenerated 1920 Call of Cthulhu characters ready for play, and really fantastic blueprints of Pemberley Grange, the setting.  A Keeper will be literally ready to run this in ten minutes, a feature that brings a sort of fast and ready Dead of Night approach to Call of Cthulhu.  My first thought was that Pemberley Grange ( and presumably the rest of the "Seeds of Terror") would be an ideal introduction to Call of Cthulhu paired with the Starter Set.   I mean let's face it, Masks of Nyarlathotep is not exactly what you would call beginner friendly!

By relying on a trope we all know and love, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange is able to tell its story from start to finish in four pages, and the twist here is simply delicious... If further "Seeds of Terror" contains similar clever twists, count me in. 

     

 

LEGION: THE DEFINITIVE JONSTOWN COMPENDIUM OF BROO

FIRST, A WORD FROM THE REVIEWER...

...who has been accused of being outspoken, stubborn, and unapologetic.  Some of you might wish to just skip to the review of Neil Gibson's terrific new Jonstown Compendium book.  

AN ALARMIST MIGHT SAY that art, and artists, are under attack these days.  A cynic would point out they always have been.  I probably fall closer to the latter camp.  I am old enough to remember my parents' fury when Annie Lennox dared sport sideburns to perform "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" at the Grammys, their insistence I get rid of the Eurythmics' albums and buy no more.  Likewise, I recall my high school D&D club being shut down during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and the horror that two books discovered there confirmed everyone's worst fears...Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror.  All the occult whispers about RPGs had to be true if the books said "cult" brazenly on their covers.  And yes, I fully recall TSR caving and pulling all mention of "devils" and "demons" out of their 2nd edition.

No, if there is art someone is going to be offended by it and demand its removal.  Growing up, from Mapplethorpe to the Dixie (er, excuse me, the) Chicks the attacks came from the Right.  Now the Left has embraced cancel culture with equal passion.  In all cases, and on both sides, the critics "know" moral authority is on their side.

It's come round to gaming again, and unsurprisingly D&D has once more been the one to flinch.  Drow, Orcs, and other "evil" races are now no longer allowed to be evil.  Oh sure, there are a few bad apples, but you can't brand a race evil these days.  Not even a fictional one.  Art must bend to the will of the people, after all. 

That brings us to the Broo.

LEGION

Chaos is not for everyone. However, from the very first Snakepipe Hollow scenario I have been in love with the concept of Broo. I recall early days of playing D&D and encountering with the ubiquitous Orcs. However after moving to Runequest Broo seemed to have so much more depth, danger and dare I say character. They are classic evil protagonists. In a roleplaying system that is often ubiquitous and containing shades of gray, it’s refreshing to have clearly evil creatures where there is pleasure to be had in dispatching them.

--Neil Gibson; "A Love Letter to the Broo"

In Greg Stafford's Glorantha you are hard pressed to find capital "E" Evil.  There are no alignments per se, just conflicting motivations.  Even Chaos, which most people would consider the purest form of Evil, has its defenders, and the Lunar Empire--which embraces Chaos as a necessary part of creation--is actually for most people there a terrific place to live.

As author Neil Gibson points out in the passage above, the Broo tend to be an exception.  Generally goat-like, they are like the satyrs of classical mythology stripped of even a single redeeming feature.  They are a hybrid race, each one different from the next, a mixture of its Broo parent and whatever unfortunate creature it had offspring with.  They hate most other living things and worship the very foulest gods, including one who spreads disease.  If it is sickening, cruel, or despicable, the Broo probably do it.  They are one of the few things in the setting you can kill guilt free.

Gibson's Legion, a supplement for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, is nearly 80 pages of Broo.  Each one is unique, each one is fleshed out, each one is sheer, horrific delight.  There are Broo of all danger levels here, from Rune Levels down to their followers.  The book is simply page after page of gloriously terrible antagonists.  

Inside you will meet the likes of Vuz Dog Witch, a hyena-broo hybrid carrying distemper.  There is Mad Eye, who has no eyes where one should reasonably expect them...but instead has eyes opening and closing all over his body.  There is the Black Bull who...er...well...originally born of a rock lizard has been mutating beyond all comprehension or recognition by his (?) worship of Porchango.

The diversity of the monsters included is amazing, and the book comes with several new diseases tucked away in the back.

    

No, this is not The Big Book of Gloranthan Bedtime Stories, but Gibson's Legion is as responsible as a work of horror or dark fantasy fiction could be.  It includes a giant warning right up front as well as in the product description.  It politely sidesteps any mention of Broo reproduction. and Gibson deftly manages the trick of going right up to the line between taste and gratuitousness without ever crossing it.  For those of us who love Gloranthan as it is, chills and all, Legion isn't a love letter to the Broo, but to us.

Shout outs also have to go out to the terrific artists, Tho Connell, Mika Koskensalmi, Yoza, and Rick Hershey.  And how could I not to mention Teguh Suwanda's glorious cover, which has to be my new favorite cover in the entire Jonstown Compendium.

At 8.95 US for an 80 page PDF, it is a treasure.            

   

NEPHILIM, PART THREE

A MAJOR OBSTACLE for many potential Nephilim players and gamemasters was that they simply weren’t sure what to do with it.  Once your Nephilim character was made, what did it actually do?  What are adventuress like?  When my players asked me, I simply quoted Hermes Trismegistus to them; 

“Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.

― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

Well that clears everything up, doesn’t it.

But really, it does.  Hermes is describing to us the Golden Path, the Road to Agartha.  He is laying out what every Nephilim must aspire to do.  Because “veiled,” “obscure” and “impenetrable” are all good synonyms for “occult” however we can expect it takes a fair bit of deciphering to make sense of it!  Fortunately the original authors already handed us the keys in simple numbers; to reach Agartha you need 90% in a Third Circle Occult Technique, 90 points in your Dominant Ka, 90% in a Hermetic Lore, and 90 points in your Metamorphosis.  With those numbers we can start to make sense of the passage.

“Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem...that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science...”

Mastery in a handful of key skills dates back to RuneQuest, and the requirements for becoming a Rune Lord.  With a wink and a nod, Nephilim is saluting its parent game here.  But Hermes too urges the initiate to seek mastery.  Specifically in game terms four masteries, mastering at least one Hermetic Lore and three circles of an Occult Technique.

To increase their knowledge of the Occult, Nephilim need resources.  They need libraries and laboratories.  They need to seek our rare tomes—the older the better—from private collections and museums.  They need to hunt for artifacts.  This probably requires a fair bit of globe trotting, and adventures that lie somewhere between The Ninth Gate and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Nephilim as “treasure hunters” is probably the most accessible mode of the game for most players.  And don’t forget mundane resources!  It takes money to zoom around the globe, and safe, secure labs and libraries are not cheap.  Entire adventures could be built around Nephilim raising capital to finance their Occult pursuits, putting off nosy reporters, the curious, and dangerous rivals.

“Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal...”

To reach Agartha, a Nephilim must also raise its Dominant Ka to 90.  This is developing its spiritual nature to its very highest potential.  A Ka of 90 is practically a demigod.  Raising skills is a matter of study and having the right materials.  Raising Ka is what we call “initiation.” It only happens through the successful exercise of magical powers.  GMs should always remember to “mix the planes” in a good Nephilim campaign.  In other words, “as above so below,” and even mundane adventures should provide opportunities for magic use, making them also initiations.  The idea of the Symbol and the Veil is critical in the Occult.  A Nephilim doing something as pedestrian as conjuring a breeze to air out a noxious smelling room is, on another level, understanding the Nature of Air as an agent of Change.  In this game, everything has meaning, everything is a symbol of something else.

(F)nd your home in the haunts of every living creature; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave...

A requirement for Agartha is complete Metamorphosis; 90 points must be achieved across five characteristics, marking total union of the Nephilim spirit and the mortal host. Just as a Nephilim needed 90 points of Dominant Ka for Agartha (signifying perfection of spirit), it needed 90 in Metamorphosis to signify perfection of flesh.  “As above, so below. “    Metamorphosis is described as a physical transformation of the host, not the spirit.   

GMs must take care to emphasize the importance of the Simulacrum in their games.  Nephilim pursue the Golden Path because they cannot ascend without the human element; the Simulacrum is a critical element, the base matter, the lead being made into gold.  Outside of a Simulacrum, a Nephilim is an unconscious creature driven by instinct, as we see in both Khaiba and Narcosis.  Identity, Will, Awareness, these are all Solar traits.  Only Incarnated can a Nephilim think and act.  Further it seems clear from Hermes that Solar cyclicity, the way the Sun rises and falls, dies and is reborn, is also part of the Golden Path to Agartha.  For these reasons the Simulacrum is critical to Agartha, and something a wise Nephilim takes good care of.

The Trumps Lovers, Art, and Sun from the Thoth deck, or in Nephilim terms, Incarnation, Metamorphosis, and Agartha

This makes Nephilim something of a super-hero game.  Like Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, or Clark Kent, the Nephilim leads a double life.  The Simulacrum is necessary to it, and a clever gamemaster will spin plots about this.  Does an ex-wife reach out to the Nephilim because their son needs an organ donation or transfusion the Nephilim is a match for?  Does the Simulacrum have a vengeful rival at the office making like difficult for the Nephilim?  Does the Nephilim still maintain its job and social engagements?  Conflicts between esoteric and exoteric matters are at the heart of the game.

...the Pure will be thought insane and the Impure will be honored as Wise.  The Madman will be believed brave and the Wicked esteemed as Good...

― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

Come now...you didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?

While the Nephilim struggle for the Light, they are surrounded by enemies.  The Templars, Thule Brudershaft, and the Carbonari pursue global schemes of world domination.  The Black Star hunt you for your magic.  In many ways this is a game of Occult espionage, where every government, every corporation, conceals a dread conspiracy.  Assassination, extortion, spying is everywhere.

Or perhaps it is a game of horror.

There is a secret society of things that make vampires look tame...and they have not forgotten the Nephilims’ betrayal.  The Selenim—as cannibalistic ogres, murderous werewolves, soul destroying succubi and the mummified blood-drinking dead—plot revenge in the shadows.  Then there are the Old Ones and their cults, the ancient Saurians, cyclopean Titans double-crossed by the KaIm.  In the deep places of the earth, beneath mountains and seas, they lie dreaming but not dead, waiting for the stars to be right for their return.  Beyond these, the world is full of elemental beings, some monstrous, for the Nephilim to face.

    

NEPHILIM, PART TWO

NOTE:  This is the second part of an ongoing series of articles about Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying.  Part One can be found here.

The Hebrew word that is translated as “giants” in the book of Genesis is Nephilim. This word is believed to be derived from Nawphal, “to fall...” Biblical literalists believe that this passage describes a historical event – angels in physical form interbreeding with humans before the time of Noah’s flood...In an esoteric sense, however, these readings are incorrect and miss the point of the passage... The simplest esoteric explanation of the Nephilim story is that it was created to explain the existence of individuals with spiritual or magical abilities...The marriage of Angel and Human that opens the door to greater magical power and understanding...(this) has much in common with a successful marriage, and the “child” brought forth from this union is in fact the magician him or herself, enlightened and perfected...

Scott Michael Stenwick, The Descended Angel

NEPHILIM IS A GAME. This is obvious, but having just spent the previous article showing how Nephilim is a fairly accurate depiction of the Western Mystery Tradition, it needed saying.  A completely authentic game depicting the progress of the Initiate in their quest for gnosis would be monstrously dull indeed!  Thus, while Nephilim's entire core premise--the marriage between a spiritual being and a material one that elevates both--is an honest reflection of Traditional teachings, much of the game arises from the imaginations of its authors and players.

While future entries might further explore the myriad ways Nephilim weaves occultism into its saga of secret societies and elemental entities, I would like here to focus on Nephilim as a game and as, despite what you may have heard, an extremely playable one.  If I have done my work correctly, hopefully by the end you might consider picking up a copy and giving the game a try.

THE MYTHOLOGY

The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…

Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Following the publication of the first article, a brief conversation with one of the authors of the original French edition, Fabrice Lamidey, confirmed something long suspected and revealed something I had not been aware of.  Namely, that two of the game's literary influences were Umberto Eco's tour de force Foucault's Pendulum, and The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers.  Eco's novel is a favorite of mine; in Tokyo, where space is somewhat limited, most of my novels are now read digitally, but if I turn my head slightly to the right Pendulum sits there proudly beside a few rare others.  It concerns a group of bored Italian editors at a publishing company which opens a vanity press department for writers of occult books.  Reading these insane and conspiratorial manuscripts, the authors start to play a game in which they re-imagine all of human history as a behind the scenes battle between secret societies, and eventually concoct "the Plan," a theory want these societies are after.  The joke is on them, however, when secret societies do start coming out of the woodwork believing these editors have stumbled across their designs.  

I start with Foucault because Nephilim owes so much inspiration to it.  It is, in fact, a game that re-imagines all of human history as behind the scenes battles between secret societies.  Chief amongst these in both the RPG and the Eco novel are the Templars, and in both works the Templar's Plan is strikingly similar.  To set the table for the rest of this essay, then, let's dig into the mythology of the game.

Science is an Illusion, History is a Lie

In the primordial Chaos, the ether, centers of order began to form; the stars.  Our local one was the Sun.  Its life-giving and creative solar energies brought planets into being around it.  Each acted as a sort of lens, transmuting the solar force into something else.  Mercury generated the force of Air; Venus generated the force of Water; Mars generated the force of Fire; Jupiter formed the force of Earth.  Another body, the Moon, generated the Lunar force, and out beyond Jupiter on the edge of the Void a dark force manifested in the form of Saturn.

There are, of course, elements in the classic sense, meaning they have spiritual, celestial, and material correspondences.  Everything in the mythology of Nephilim depends on them.  Certain colors, certain forms of life, certain gems and minerals, days of the week, signs of the Zodiac, etc etc ad infinitum are associated with them.  

The energies of the five planets formed as nexus and a seventh body formed amidst them...Earth.  Too distant, Saturn initially had no influence.  Because the Moon was closest to Earth, the Lunar force was strongest and the dominant life form on the planet was the great reptiles, the Saurian Priest-Kings.  Decadent, alien, sensuous, they created a sorcerous civilization and engaged in all manner of perverse delights.  

Around this time another type of being, formed by conjunctions of the five elemental fields, started to appear.  These were the KaIm, beings of Air, Earth, Fire, Moon, and Water.  When the Saurians conceived of a plan to create a second Moon, a Black Moon that would blot out the hateful Sun and create eternal night for them to bathe in, the KaIm intervened.  The Black Moon exploded, damaging the White Moon so that it would thereafter wax and wane.  Their powers greatly diminished, the Saurian went extinct or into eternal slumber, and the KaIm inherited the Earth.

These beings possessed mastery over the elemental magic fields and could form bodies at will, but they lacked the capacity to evolve, change, and ascend to even greater heights.  This is because they were missing the Solar element.  To rectify this, in their empire paradise of Atlantis they started breeding life forms rich in Solar force.  They had particular success with a species of apes that came to be called "human."

The original plan was to perfect these humans into vessels for the KaIm.  They would fuse their elemental forces with the humans' solar force, uniting higher and lower into a Perfected Being.  Two things went horribly wrong, however.  On one hand, a KaIm known as Prometheus took it upon itself to "awaken" humanity and give them sentience.  On the other, the Black Star fell from the sky.

A comet or meteor from the planet Saturn, it smashed into the KaIm paradise of Atlantis drowning it, and melted into the planet's core.  The dark essence of Saturn infused the metals of the planet, especially iron.  This was a sort of "anti-element" that destroyed the other planetary energies on contact.  The KaIm fell, losing the ability to create bodies and losing their center.  Now subject to mortality, and severely weakened, they called themselves the Nephilim, or Fallen Ones.

Some humans learned how to use the new Saturn-infected metals against the Nephilim, rising up and hunting them.  Some wanted to destroy the Nephilim, others enslave and use them.  Thus the first Secret Societies were born. The weakened Nephilim might have fallen if not for an unexpected and terrible ally...the dread Selenim.

While most Nephilim were experimenting with Solar force and merging with photo-human vessels, a faction led by Lilith became fascinated by the artificial Black Moon element created by the Saurians.  Merging with it and shedding their other planetary energies, they became Selenim, creatures of darkness that devoured living Solar force (just as the Black Moon had been fashioned to eclipse the Sun).  Because the Black Moon was artificial, it was immune to the baleful energies of Saturn.  In the Ice Age caused by the Black Star colliding with the Earth, the Selenim began to hunt humans en masse, ravenous for their Solar life force.  The humans with their Saturnine iron weapons could do nothing against them.

And thus, a bargain was struck.

Humans and Nephilim began to form alliances against the Selenim.  The Nephilim learned how to preserve their spirits in material objects called stases, and could emerge from these to temporarily inhabit specially trained human shamans.  This gave the shamans the Nephilim power of magic, and protection from the Selenim.  In return, periodic incarnation allowed the Nephilim the focus and concentration they needed to pursue spiritual evolution and perhaps escape their fallen state.  Eventually, the Great Compacts was formed, in which the Nephilim were allowed to permanently fuse with certain royal and priestly lines.  These divine priest-kings built civilizations and empires, using their powers to rule over and protect the non-Nephilim human race.  History as we know it began.

Behind the Veil

In Nephilim, all of human history is a secret war between the Nephilim and the secret societies. Every major event veils a "true history" behind it.  The pharaoh Akhenaton, for example, was not a mortal king revolting against Egyptian priesthoods; he was a Nephilim revolutionary who shattered the Great Compact and defined 22 paths to Agartha, the transcendent, perfected state in which the Nephilim reclaims not just the lost powers of the KaIm but access to higher planes of being as well.  He carved these into 22 Emerald Tablets, the Major Arcana of the Tarot, each of which became a society of Nephilim, a tribe.  

Against these are the human secret societies, the most dangerous of which are the Templars.  These are not the crusader knights of human history--that was just an exoteric manifestation--but a society with its roots in ancient Egypt bent on enslaving the Nephilim and seizing control of the magic fields generated at the center of the Earth.  Some societies seek to use the Nephilim, some to serve them, others to bind them...but all are distractions and obstacles on the Nephilim's True Path.

Playing the Game

That "True Path" and the singular focus of the Nephilim is Agartha.  It involves raising one's elemental energies to the highest levels, mastering fields of occult knowledge and magical techniques, and well as completing the fusion of the spirit and the host into a single, united whole.  The few able to complete this find the doors of higher reality opened to them; they become immortal again, with mastery over the magic fields.  This makes Nephilim that rare RPG with an actual endgame.

The heart of a Nephilim campaign lies in getting there, however.

In a typical campaign, you create a character by choosing the spirit's elemental focus--is it an Air, Earth, Fire, Moon, or Water Nephilim--and one or more past lives.  Since their Fall, disembodied Nephilim do not experience the passage of time, have no sense of space, no real "consciousness," and cannot interact with the material world.  Worse, their elemental energies degrade over time until they cease to exist.  Thus each Nephilim needs a stasis, an enchanted artifact or object that holds its slumbering spirit between incarnations.  When the planets are right, it awakens and unites with a nearby human host.  If that host dies of old age or some other cause before Agartha, the Nephilim returns to stasis and tries again later.  These previous attempts are then the past lives.

When the Nephilim awakens again at the start of the campaign, it incarnates in a human host.  This host, the simulacrum, experiences a mystical awakening, a moment of revelation.  John Smith the English banker suddenly realizes he is also Orogariel the Phoenix, a Pyrim (fire Nephilim).  He is still John Smith--he knows his wife Miriam and his two children, he remembers his entire life--but now he also remembers being Memtet the ancient Egyptian charioteer, Iulian the Carolingian knight, and Sir Richard Stone, the student of John Dee.  He remembers their lives and inherits many of their skills and abilities.  More importantly, he remembers how to do magic, and because of his new elemental powers, is able to make it work.

What happens next is up to the player, the GM, and the campaign.  Does John Smith remain with his wife and family, conducting his search for Agartha on the side?  Does he slowly separate from them in an amicable divorce?  Does he simply vanish into thin air?  This is in the hands of the player; only they know if John's love for his wife and children is more important to the new Nephilim that Agartha.  The game does not dictate this.  Each player navigates the dual identities of the character.  

This is not a bug, it is a feature.  It is not unlike a comic book; how does Peter Park balance his relationship with MJ and Aunt May along with the duties of being Spider-man?

The Possession Problem...Again

Ah! Mr. Waite, the world of Magic is a mirror, wherein who sees muck is muck.

Aleister Crowley, The Goetia

Despite the above, there will always be a potential player or two who chooses to see incarnation as "possession."  Initiation is not for everyone, neither is Nephilim.  The world of the occult is a mirror that shows us ourselves.  If you look into it and see evil and the Devil, perhaps what you are really seeing is a Fundamentalist religious background you were raised with.  If you look at the Nephilim and see body-hijacking, possession, and rape...perhaps there are issues you should first deal with that a game cannot cure.

For most players, though, it is easy to get around this.

1. Meet Dax.  Around the same time Nephilim appeared to an English-speaking audience, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine audiences were introduced to Jadzia Dax.  Jadzia was a young woman fused with an alien symbiont, Dax.  Captain Ben Sisko had known Dax before in a previous host, Curzon.  Over the course of the show, we learn all about the symbiont's previous hosts, and see Jadzia die and Dax implanted in a new character, Ezri.  Each host is different, but has all the memories and abilities of its previous hosts.  This complex character is the perfect analogue for how to deal with a Nephilim character.  Have the potential player revisit the show.

2. Meet Castiel.  In the horror-drama Supernatural, protagonists Sam and Dean Winchester ally with an angel, Castiel.  Spirit beings, angels do not have bodies of their own, he has incarnated in a human host, Jimmy Novak.  This is something Novak prayed for, however.  He wanted union with Castiel.  If this helps the player, simply have the Simulacrum being a willing host.  Perhaps they are an aspiring magician who located a Nephilim stasis and awoke the spirit hoping for incarnation to occur.

3. A Second Chance.  Something I have used in previous Nephilim games is incarnation as a second chance.  One player decided his simulacrum was a human on the edge of committing suicide when the incarnation occurred and gave him a new purpose and meaning in life.  Another, and my favorite, was my college girlfriend, who created a simulacrum who was a seventy-five-year old dementia patient abandoned by her family in a retirement home.  Sitting in the same chair alone, day after day, she is reborn when an Air Nephilim comes to her and for the first time in years she gets up and walks out of the hospital.  Incarnation can be a blessing, not a curse.         

4. Feels Like The Very First Time.  Perhaps the easiest way around discomfort is for this to be the Nephilim's first incarnation.  Nephilim are born in the nexus of planetary energies...perhaps a new-formed Nephilim blindly incarnates in banker John Smith.  Suddenly John starts developing weird senses and magical abilities, but has no sense of being anyone else.  There are no past lives to remember.  Eventually he stumbles across the world of the Nephilim, joins one of the 22 Arcana, has his first stasis made, and selects a Nephilim name for himself. 

These fixes should open the game to just about anyone, but there will still be some for whom the human is the end-all and be-all.   Perhaps they can play a human ally of the Nephilim?  Though of this, I suppose Frater Perdurabo would say;

A Sorcerer by the power of his magick had subdued all things to himself. Would he travel? He could fly through space more swiftly than the stars. Would he eat, drink, and take his pleasure? there was none that did not instantly obey his bidding. In the whole system of ten million times ten million spheres upon the two and twenty million planes he had his desire. 

 And with all this he was but himself. 

 Alas!

Crowley, The Book of Lies, Chapter 27

In the next part, we will look in depth at what a Nephilim campaign might look like, and how a typical scenario might go.