Summer 2021 Pitches: Geist Noir

 In the city that never sleeps, the dead don't rest easy. Ever since your "accident", the one that should have killed you, you can see them. As you lay there bleeding out, you made a deal with something older and stranger than a ghost. Now it haunts you. You work as a private detective for the dead, tied up in a strange world of ghosts, vampires, and others like yourself.

Setting: New York in the 1930s. Things are bad all over. Gangsters and corrupt politicians run things. The odds are stacked against good guys like you.

Mood: Noir. In a world of shadows and pessimism, hardboiled detectives and femme fatales, your investigator is trying to do the right thing. Or at least make the rent.

Action: The game would be mainly investigative punctuated with two fisted combat and bloody betrayal.

System: Geist: the Sineaters

Theme Possibilities:

• Old Secrets: The vampires have their fangs in this city. They also pay well if you don't ask questions. As someone who has secrets of your own, you respect that. You do odd jobs for the Giovanni's, a clan of gangsters, mystics and politicians. But lately their dirty laundry appears to floating to the surface. Or waking up. Why does the moon look red to you these days? What are the Giovanni smuggling into the city? And why are there bodies turning up that seemed gnawed on by human teeth?
• Rise of the Psychopomps: Some ghosts see you as a sort of ferryman for the dead. Someone to help them complete tasks they couldn't in life. Their payment is odd but honest. But there are older stranger things than you. Shadowy ravens and owls who nest in the low places, gateways to the Underworld. Why are those gateways opening so easily these days? Why are some people not staying dead? And why are there so many ravens around?
• Transitions: Death is a doorway everyone goes through eventually. It is supposed to swing one way. But sometimes rules get broken: a wealthy man staves off death by sacrificing others, a mad ghost decides to possess a human being forever, a corpse crawls out of the grave to inflict vengeance. Then you need to get involved. Somewhere someone is gaming the system. Why is it happening more often? Who is behind it? The Giovanni necromancers? The Orpheus Company? Or one of your own?

Gamify It! Ghostbusters 2016

Last week I reviewed the Ghostbusters 2016 remake. You can find it here. The film's villain enacts a plan to release an army of ghosts on New York by powering up the local ley lines. Let’s see how we can make that plot work in the Chronicles of Darkness.

Gamify It! Ghostbusters 2016

Some Assembly Required

The main elements of this story seed are:

• Ley Lines
• An otherworldly gate that the antagonist hopes to open
• Spectral manifestations
• Some form of technology or techno magic to make it all work.

Within the Chronicles of Darkness, ley lines serve to transport resonance (Mage: the Awakening). Where lines intersect mystical power collects. With the proper spells this energy can be used for mundane purposes like powering a building. The resonances can also be used to make an area receptive to other magics, to provide nourishment to spirits, or just to alter the character of the area the lines pass through.

The resonance concept works well with an Underworld, or Avernian, gate. The Book of Dead describes a system for opening gates based on specifics of the opener and the location. Filling a space with death resonance should provide a bonus to rolls to open such a portal.

While Ghostbusters focuses on an Underworld gate, there is no reason that needs to be the case. Any sort of resonance might help breach the Gauntlet into the Shadow. Specifically a potent spirit can feed on that energy on the other side to grow stronger. A strong enough spirit can create its own gateways.

Alternatively an Abyssal or Infernal taint might allow the creation of a portal to the Abyss (again from Mage: the Awakening) or the Inferno (from World of Darkness: Inferno).

All of these options (Underworld, Shadow, Abyss, Inferno) come with their own cast of problematic entities. These beings could use the gates to enter the "real" world or be summoned to help create the gateways. Ancient ghosts can be artificially anchored to this world with Supernal magic (or perhaps specialized rituals or supernatural powers). Spirits with the proper resonance can be summoned (and perhaps later fed to each other create a strong enough entity to finish the ritual). Abyssal manifestations are dangerous even to the summoner but eager to arrive. As are demons of course.

The method for summoning the entities and opening the portal are going to depend on the individual in question.

Madmen and Geniuses

Mage: the Awakening: this is my go-to for the villain. A focused mage can access any of the options I listed above. They can easily summon and bind ghosts (using Death 2 and 4), spirits (Spirit 2 to 4), or other entities. With other spells they can weaken the gauntlet (Spirit 3) and help manifest the normal incorporeal entities. The plan works only a little different for infernal demons, with horrible acts creating wounds in the spirit world from which demons to emerge.

A mage might also seek to open a door to the Supernal, not to let it in but go through themselves. Though only Archmasters are likely to succeed, many mages would like to try. A first step might be flooding the local ley lines with Supernal resonance (perhaps with a Demense placed on the intersection of some ley lines). Then they might summon supernal entities to further push the local conditions to converge with their chosen realm. All of this is as likely to punch a hole into the Abyss as a higher reality.
Werewolf: the Forsaken: The logical antagonist here is one of the Pure, trying to bring about the good old days before the Gauntlet. Using a special Rite they lower the local gauntlet. Spirits cross over to gather power from the material world. Once they have enough power the werewolf enacts a larger version of the Rite to bring down the Gauntlet across a whole city.

Alternatively a Bale Hound might seek to deal with Infernal powers, creating such negative resonances (with spirit and werewolf fueled atrocities) that wounds in reality open up. Then they just wait for their masters to arrive.



Geist: the Sineaters: After mages, these are the folks most likely to be opening gateways. Perhaps a rogue Sineater seeks to release old ghosts back into the world. They open Avernian gates around the city. Using special rituals they anchor the ghosts to this world so they can escape the Underworld. The climax focuses on the Sineater’s use of this spiritual power to become a God of Death.

Demon: the Descent: A dedicated demon might try to create a portal for much the same reason as a Supernally obsessed mage: the find a way to their personal hell. Alternatively perhaps this is a plan of the God-Machine. In Ghostbusters, Rowan does summon four ghosts along the ley lines. And four is a a sign of the Machine’s plans. Was Rowan a cultist?

One Last Idea

My final idea concept is to have it all be mundane. Stealing from the Esoterrorist’s setting, perhaps Rowan hopes to make people believe in ghosts. The technology he uses creates convincing holograms to scare people. Once enough people believe in ghosts, he hopes this weight of belief will make it true.

That makes him a threat to all supernatural creatures who desire to remain hidden.

To add to the confusion, perhaps a group of NPC ghostbusters emerges to combat this threat. Theses deluded ghost hunters think they can deal with the (fictional) dead.

But what happens as people begin to believe in ghosts? Do real ghosts suddenly find it easy to manifest? Do vampires take to the streets and pass themselves off as fairly solid apparitions of the past? What if something spectral appears but it isn't effected by the normal rules of ghosts?

Thoughts from the Twilight Zone IV

I continue to push through season 1 of the Twilight Zone, searching for novel ideas and inspirations. Here are some interesting new ones: Sin Eater sightings in the Hitch-Hiker, time travel trouble in the Last Flight, and a larger horror story forming in Mirror Image.

Season 1: Episodes 16-20

I’m skipping a few more stories here either because there is nothing truly supernatural about them (The Fever) or because they don’t do anything interesting with the premise (The Purple Testament).

The Hitch-Hiker

A woman notices a strange hitchhiker following her as she drives across the United States.

After a long stretch of uninteresting episodes (including most of this episode), I finally encountered a new idea. The twist is hinted heavily at the beginning of the episode. She’s dead. She died before the story began when her tire blew out and she crashed her car at the start of her trip.

But what I find interesting are the implications of the hitch-hiker and the nature of her journey. The man doesn’t quite come across as Death himself, just another traveller, one that has been journeying longer than her. Is he looking to mentor a fellow ghost (for a Wraith setup)? Or is he going to help bring her back to life for a price (for a Geist game)?

The journey is also interesting. Is it a dream? Or are the sailor, the gas station attendants, and the mechanics all “real”? The mechanic might have “fixed” her car days after her accident (with the skid marks still fresh). Is she moving in and out of our world (and the Twilight Zone)? Perhaps she has become a phantom driver crisscrossing the country. Or perhaps she is now a Sin Eater with the thin gray scarecrow of a man as her Geist?

The Last Flight

A cowardly WWI pilot from 1917 lands in 1959 and learns to face his fears.

At first glance I thought this story was too tidy but then I started to think of how the protagonist travelled through time. The strange silent cloud sucked up at least two pilots according to his tale. Who knows how many more got time lost? In a TimeWatch (or other time travel) game, the PCs might need to scramble to track the cloud down through time, fixing the damage it caused as they go. Where did it come from? What or who created it? Can it be stopped?

Elegy

Lost astronauts land on a cemetery planet running since before World War III. They find its inhabitants frozen at the moment they would most like to spend eternity in. Unfortunately for them, they wanted most to be on their rocket about to go home.

This plot and its murderous caretaker interests me. I could see adapting it for lost time travelers (who must escape being frozen at their happiest moment in a far future ‘heaven’) or as a weird Dead Dominion in the Underworld (where all the ghosts enjoy eternity and the living are made to join them by a kindly Kerberos).

Mirror Image

A woman looking to catch a bus instead finds a doppelganger out to steal her identity.

This episode leaves many interesting questions unanswered. Is the bus station a way station for these doppelgangers? The caretaker asks how the woman got to the station which raises the question “where is here?”

With multiple doppelgangers appearing in the story and at least some of the originals being taken away by the police, is there an asylum of doubles out there?

The Doppelgangers seem better informed about what they are. How did they get here? Are things better here? What are they escaping?

As for gaming, World of Darkness: Urban Legends includes this very plot, minus the creepy mirror realm that these being seem to come from. Another option for the Chronicles of Darkness would be for the doubles to be spirits or other intruders slowly replacing humanity like some sort of pod people. In TimeWatch, the doppelgangers might be survivors of a disaster in an alternate timeline, stealing across to our reality.

The Unusual Suspects: Seattle Dominion

The Seattle Dominion is a final piece of dropped material from my Demon: the Descent game, at least for now. It was the third possible variation on one of the parallel worlds for the setting. Like Little Arcadia, this world would be a mirror of Seattle but run by another supernatural faction than the God-Machine.

In this case, that faction would be the denizens of the Underworld and the Sineaters that deal with them.

The Seattle Dominion

This gray purgatory lurks between the Underworld and the world of the living. The sun never reaches this city and between the rains a thick mist rises to cloud the streets. Even the geography is altered: the cemeteries spread farther, urban decline replaces gentrification, and the architecture tilts closer to the Gothic than the modern. Ghostly echoes of old buildings and neighborhoods replace much of the city. Where they don't the streets stand empty with cracked glass and graffiti decorating the asphalt.

Ghosts mingle with the living and those masquerading as the quick. Death is not the end. It’s just a stage of existence.

The edges of this Dead Dominion lie bound in iron chains and potent magics to resist the pull of the Underworld. The pact with the God-Machine forged these bound, bounds it can quickly release should its tithe of souls end.

Those souls typically come from those who have broken one of the many Old Laws of the realm. When one of these convoluted mandates is violated, the Sin Eaters and Geists hear the toll of the Iron Bell. They know who broke that law and where they are. And they feel compelled to catch the lawbreaker.

Some choose to run. Some stand and fight. Many simply surrender themselves. The result is the same in the end. They are captured, their soul ground down into Stygian iron and then added to the next shipment bound for the God-Machine.

Demons try especially hard to avoid notice, drifting in and out of the mists that shroud the city. Still they come to visit despite the danger. The great draw is the Midnight Train, a spectral locomotive that can take one anywhere. Tickets are elusive but can be the ultimate prize.

Infrastructure: Alternate Pattern Spider

Hidden throughout the world are pieces of Infrastructure, devices and beings designed to serve the occult purposes of the Machine, a universe spanning entity working to unknown purposes.

Continuing on last week's post we look at an alternative pattern spider to Cob and something stranger still.

Alternate Pattern Spider

The concept for these characters came from the Mage: the Ascension adventure Loom of Fate which I adapted to my Mage: the Awakening chronicle "The Darkness That Men Make". Due to some parallel reality troubles in that chronicle my players got to see Norna Weaver make both choices: to choose to keep her humanity AND to become Cob's replacement. Add to that a clever mid-game plot by the PCs to replace Cob themselves using the proto-Geist (ghost-spirit hybrid) of Simon Ellsworth from the adventure Chicago Workings and the result is a fairly complicated assortment of spirits attempting to hold Chicago together.

Arachne/The Weaver

Norna Weaver felt like a prisoner of fate but in the end she got an opportunity few do: to change her fate and live both lives.

On one path she struggled against her destiny and refused the path laid out for her. The young Acanthus mage took on the name Arachne and helped by the cabal that rescued her became a potent oracle for the Mysterium.

Then an act of Imperial Magic provided her the opportunity to rewrite her own past. Her past provided many tragedies to alter: the murder of her mother, the death of her father, the cataclysms of her days as a neophyte. She chose instead to change a pivotal moment in her past, her one real choice: whether to remain human or become something greater and stranger.

In the reality that currently holds sway, she accepted her destiny on her own terms. Subject to a powerful magical ceremony she shed her humanity and Supernal spark, becoming something more spirit than flesh. She became the elegant Weaver, a silver skinned pattern spider which combines order and chaos in a way to promote balance and strength throughout the city. She replaced the fallen Cob, rebuilding the spiritual reflection of Chicago stronger than before.

Rank: 4
Attributes: Power 10, Finesse 10, Resistance 8

Willpower: 18  Essence: 25
Initiative: 20     Defense: 10
Speed: 30          Size: 6
Corpus: 14

Influences: Balance 3, Infrastructure 3
Numina: Chorus (order spirits), Greater Influence (x 2), Material Vision, Mortal Mask, Prophecy, Strengthen Gauntlet
Ban: The Weaver can be bound by a net (without a resistance roll) that includes a strand of hair from Norna or her parents.

Ellsworth

A third entity supplemented Cob's position for a while in a now lost version of Chicago. Once a gifted but fundamentally mundane architect, after his death Ellsworth rose to become something greater than a ghost but not quite a spirit.

In life Simon Ellsworth pursued sacred geometry by following secrets left behind in a text known as "Chicago Workings". With it this geomancer infused his spirit into the city itself, imparting some measure of his sense of charity to the people living there.

That might have been the end of it if not for the death of Cob, a crisis within the city, and the inventiveness of a cabal of Mages. Using a spell crafted by a long dead (but not entirely departed) Mage, they elevated Ellsworth from a fading ghost to something greater and stranger. He became part ghost and part spirit, composed of ephemera and infrastructure.

Ellsworth resembles the aged bald man he was in life but his eyes shin like sunlit glass while his skin has taken on the texture of steel and brick. Despite the inhumanity of his appearance, those in his presence feel a comforting warmth.

Virtue: Charity. Ellsworth looks after the needs of everyone in the city down to the lowliest beggar.
Vice: Pride. Ellsworth pushes himself hard and refuses to accept less than perfect results from himself.

Attributes: Power 6, Finesse 4, Resistance 5
Influence: Chicago Architecture 3
Numina: Gauntlet Breach, Chorus (city and infrastructure spirits), Commune (Reaching), Hallucination
Ban: He cannot refuse a request from someone who is truly homeless.

Willpower: 11
Initiative: 10     Defense: 4
Speed: 20          Size: 6
Corpus: 11

Infrastructure: Grinding Teeth

Hidden throughout the world are pieces of Infrastructure, devices and structures designed to serve the occult purposes of the Machine, a universe spanning entity working to unknown purposes.

Grinding Teeth

Within the city, an unassuming building sports an odd sheen of metal along the seam between the stones that make up its lowest level. Passerbies instinctively keep away from this decoration, sometimes complaining of a grinding noise.

To those who can see past the simple illusion, this sheen takes the form of thousands of bronze teeth, constantly gnashing and grinding past each other, as if chewing on something. In addition to a metal grating, one can sometimes hear the faint screams of its latest victim.

The entire building serves as a means for the Machine to destroy and recycle potent supernatural creatures and devices, grinding them down into a purer form of energy to power its other projects.

Interpretations

The idea that this building serves the Machine is just one of several possibilities:

• Mage: the Awakening: A potent cabal of Mages constructed the building to serve as a way to remove otherwise indestructible artifacts from the world. These "Guardians" claim to know which items deserve to be saved and which must be destroyed. Unfortunately that grimoire you need is next on the building's menu.
• Werewolf: the Forsaken: The teeth are merely a clue that the building has been Claimed by a potent hunger spirit. It prefers to eat werewolves and other spirits but in a pinch it will devour anyone. Slowly people disappear from the structure's many offices, snacks for the spirit's unending feast. Recently a cult has formed within one of the businesses housed there by people who see the building for what it truly is: a god. Some claim to have Werewolf kin. The god demands sacrifices.
• Geist: the Sineaters: the building has particular tastes, it only eats the dead: ghosts, Geists, Kerberoi, and...Sineaters. No one knows who built it but rumor says they somehow created a Dominion outside the Underworld. Within the building's neighborhood, all dead beings must obey its single law: the dead must be devoured.

Mechanics

So what happens if your character is the unlucky sap thrown into the teeth? The process of being ground into nothingness is painful but slow. Mechanically, the character suffers 1 point of Aggravated damage and loses 1 Dot from their power stat (Gnosis, Primium, etc.) each day. Once they reach zero in their power stat, they suffer 3 Aggravated damage per day instead as the teeth render their body into energy.

Lost Dots return at the rate of 1 per week should the character somehow escape.

Someone with access to the building can easily siphon off energy from the process, gaining 5 points of Aether or Essence each day as long as the teeth are fed fresh victims.

Lynchpin

While taking down an entire building clearly would stop this piece of Infrastructure from working, it would also bring down lots of attention from the collateral damage.

An alternative method would be to feed the Grinding Teeth a poison pill: a being or artifact whose destruction would drain or destroy its mechanisms. Likely options include: a Promethean (who might survive due to Azothic flare), an Abyssal spirit, a Mummy or some other deathless thing.

Double Feature: The Woman in Black and High School of the Dead

I'm watching and reviewing at least two horror movies a week in an effort to better enjoy my Halloween season. Along the way I'm adding some thoughts on adapting them to gaming.

I'm adding another haunted house story this week with The Woman in Black. I also watched the anime, High School of the Dead, as I continue to be very loose in my own definitions.

As an aside seeing the Hammer Films logo at the beginning of The Woman in Black reminds me that I've never really watched the classic Hammer Horror films. Expect some reviews along that line in the coming weeks.

Warning: lots of spoilers!!

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black is a very quiet film of slowly building tension and a growing sense of eeriness. Some of the scares are lost on someone who has to deal with an rampaging 1-year-old every few minutes. By which I mean, please watch this film alone in the dark if possible.

The premise is that a spectral woman in black forces children to kill themselves whenever she is spotted. In her appearance, the wetlands that she haunts, and how her presence heralds death she reminds me of the legend of the banshee. She even wails. Of course her story goes deeper than that.

Daniel Radcliffe plays a widower in Edwardian England whose wife died in childbirth leaving him to raise their son alone. This Arthur Kipps remains haunted by his wife, in danger of losing his job at the law firm and barely holding himself together. As his last chance he is sent to review the papers of the late Alice Drablow to make sure the firm has the final will. Drablow's son died as a young child, drowned in the wetlands that separate her island home from the mainland.

With the exception of the local gentry, Mr. Daily, everyone in town tries to convince Kipps to move on quickly. It seems they fear he will see the lady in black and thus endanger their children. Of course this only drives him on.

Eventually he makes it to the grand if decaying home. The creepy location holds many secrets and as he works, we the audience watch as the woman moves about in the background.

It takes some time for Kipps to unravel the mystery, haunted by spectral cries and both the ghosts of the woman and her child. It seems that Alice's son was actually her deranged sister's, now the woman in black. She never forgave her sister for stealing him or for letting him drown. So now she steals the children of others.

Eventually Kipps accepts what is going on. With two children dead already due to his poking around, he tries to stop his own son from coming to town. When that fails, he decides on a desperate gambit to lay the ghost to rest. With Daily's help, he reunites the ghost with her son. Things seem to work.

But the ghost vowed never to forgive her sister and continues the killings, sending Kipps's son into the path of a train. Oddly I found that when Kipps sacrifices his own life failing to save his son, it actually gives the film a less depressing ending. He and his son are reunited in death with his wife and escape the horror of the movie, leaving the woman in black to menace us the audience.

Overall I think this film is excellent and most issues I have with it are issues I have with the entire genre.

The one issue I have with the movie is suspending my disbelief that things have lasted this long. Giving how extreme the ghost's activity becomes at night, I can't see how Alice managed to live at the house by herself for so long. With the number of deaths over the years and how many townsfolk put one and one together, I'm surprised no one burned down the house. I know there's a sequel set in the 1940s which clearly shows people don't understand how fragile old houses are.

Gaming Discussion

Warning: ranting

Now for my major problem with the genre as a whole. Vengeful ghost stories always make me consider what it means to “never forgive.” The concept of an implacable monster that will relentlessly hunt for victims forever implies some troubling issues for the world at large. A single ghost like this is fine but there are a lot of dead people on our planet. Even if a small number become killer ghosts, most old cities and towns should be unlivable by this point. We never hear about killer Neanderthal ghosts or spirits from tribes no one remembers existed, let alone the dozens of murderers who die every century in any given location. Yet we are expected to believe some ghosts who will haunt the world for centuries.

In the West, it always seems those ghosts that are remembered are a threat. You don't see forgotten spirits being a danger (out of sight out of mind). Eastern ghosts do get riled up by being forgotten, though after a certain point even they stop being restless. It just always bothers me that it's the memory that is dangerous, as if we damn ourselves. Which I guess given the nature of superstitions is true.

Rant over

Anyway getting back to gaming.

The movie itself could make a nice introduction scenario for a period Hunter: the Vigil game or any game pitting low powered mortals against the supernatural. Geist: the Sin-eaters of course has a natural lead in though to make the Woman in Black a real threat she would need to be a Geist herself or a very powerful ghost. Mortals work better given the lack of an easy way to fight the ghost. Weakness helps breeds fear.

I also want to comment on how the Underworld in the new World of Darkness (or the Skinlands in Classic World of Darkness) helps deal with the issue of huge numbers of ghosts. In those settings ghosts are tied to the world by anchors. If those anchors are lost, the ghost finds itself banished from the living world forever. Thus ancient ghosts are rare as their anchors die (if mortal) or crumble (for places or things). It allows for a natural decline in the population of ghosts on Earth.

Though I now am filled with a desire to run a horror game where ghosts are powered by the belief of the living, essentially tulpas of our fears.

High School of the Dead

From ghosts to zombies and from movies to anime, I move to High School of the Dead. Like many zombie stories, this series isn't actually about the scares but instead the psychology of the survivors and man's inhumanity toward man. We watch as these young protagonists are forced to discard the trappings of civilization to survive.

However, it would be really nice if the creators were not obsessed with breasts and panties. The level of nudity, jiggling breasts and panty shots exceeds tastelessness and enters the realm of the grotesque. I have to mentally block it out to enjoy the series. At first, it felt like sticking anime cosplayers into a period drama just to make your audience happy, but by the middle of the series it is just ugly.

Despite this I like the series overall (even if I have to keep ignoring what seems like 1/3 of each episode). The psychological element, especially as narrated by our male protagonist, is really compelling. At first the heroes struggle to kill zombies, those who were their classmates and teachers, in order to survive. But soon they find other survivors to be a larger threat. They struggle for resources, to protect themselves (especially the women), and find themselves killing the living to survive. Some struggle with the fact that they enjoy this new life and can't stand the thought of returning to how they once were.

Meanwhile around them civilization crumbles. People protest as martial law is declared. Police do inhuman things to maintain what order remains. People obey their consciences and die or suffer while others descend into insanity or barricade themselves in their homes, killing those who seek help.

Our cast spans a nice range of high school archetypes. We have the brain, a kendo champion, a delinquent, his former girlfriend who happens to trained in the spear (got to love Japanese sports), and a nerd whose obsession is guns. Rounding out the gang (ugh the horror of that pun) is an absurdly voluptuous nurse.

I find the structure of each episode interesting. Typically it starts with some soliloquy from the delinquent but his ending soliloquy doesn't always coincide with the end of the actual action (not counting previews or the randomly spaced snap shots of the world's decline into savagery and chaos). In fact I don't think I've really found much in common in how the episodes flow except to end with some hint of worse to come.

I also like that the characters examine how the zombies behave and there is some underlining logic. While the cause of the worldwide outbreak is unclear, the monsters obey some rules. They don't see and react to noise alone. Head shots kill them but other damage causes no reaction from them. They are strong and hungry but only really seek out things making noise. If not for their numbers and strength, they might easily be overcome by snipers and perhaps some specialized vehicles with front mounted wood chippers (heck just set one up in an alley and turn on a siren behind it).

Gaming thoughts

Remove the porn and you would have a serviceable survival horror story. Working their way up from improvised weapons and sports equipment, the player characters slowly acquire first police weaponry and then military arms, growing in skill and numbers. But eventually those they save become liabilities and they must either sacrifice what they've fought for or rise to establish a new order. along the way we would need some way to track their relative sanity, perhaps using Integrity from World of Darkness 2nd edition or the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies.

Double Feature: House II and Thirteen Ghosts

The last few years I've been disappointed with my Halloween season. I think my general lack of horror movie watching contributes to this feeling. To rectify this I plan to watch two horror movies a week throughout what I consider the holiday season. Along the way I will provide some short reviews and thoughts on the movies from a gaming perspective. This week we have House II and Thirteen Ghosts.

Why movies about haunted houses? I'm doing research.

Warning lots of spoilers!!

House II: The Second Story

I think this movie is technically horror but really I'm just indulging my love of terrible 80s movies. More camp than scares, the movie comes off as more surreal than anything else.

The center piece of this movie is the house, a creepy stone mansion with a heavy Aztec motif. Which is fitting given that the plot revolves around a magical crystal skull. The skull apparently can be used to gain immortality (after a fashion) and bend space and time (allowing our heroes to fight a caveman, Aztec priests, and some claymation "dinosaurs").

In a lot of ways this reminds me of My Science Experiment (another of my guilty pleasures) though with a weaker plot.

Anyway the movie introduces our villain in the opening sequence, an old west gun fighter (Slim Razor), former partner of the protagonist's (Jesse) great great grandfather, turned zombie who wants the skull. The great great grandfather (who shares the same name as our hero) killed him and stole the skull intending to live forever. The elder Jesse does live on after a fashion, as a 170 year old zombie.

Jesse and his friend Charlie try to keep the elder Jesse a secret and make sure no one steals the skull. In short order, Jesse loses his wife, Charlie his girlfriend, and they barely keep the skull out of the hands and beaks of some "stone age" monsters (like dinosaurs) and Aztecs.

Along the way we encounter Bill the electrician, a seemingly unflappable sort who isn't bothered by encountering dimensional portals or engaging in sword fights.

In the end Jesse has to take down Slim, now a zombie as well, survive the insanely gun happy cops, and escape into the old west. At which point they leave the skull lying around for anyone to grab.

Hope that made any sense.

I actually enjoy the movie and will probably will watch it again. I have to admit however that it is pretty bad.

Gaming Ideas

How could you not use this? The movie reminds me of what often happens when players characters hit an otherwise serious storyline. Great great grandpa had a crystal skull? Let's dig him up and find out. Travel into the stone age? I bring back a pet pterodactyl.

For a story idea, just take the central premise. The players inherit a house where doors open out into different times. They must deal with the problems that come from this while trying to exploit the effect for their own benefit. GURPS Time Travel had a less wacky version of this in the Horatio club but I bet TimeWatch would work more smoothly (and with more pulp!).

Alternatively a cursed artifact with powers over time (immortality, time gates) could also spur an entire campaign. Who wants it? Who would kill for it? Who has been killed for it and now wants revenge? If users become zombies, that reminds me of a certain game premise I should revisit soon.

Thirteen Ghosts

I admit my main motivation for watching this was to see the glass house again. The visuals in this movie are fairly amazing. It's too bad the characters are a bit one-dimensional and that it relies on gore for its "scares" (and not even much of that).

Our intro scene shows us the villain's (Cyrus) ghost hunting team in action. A well equipped force led by a psychic misfit (Dennis) head into a maze of wrecked cars swath in police tape. Their quarry is the ghost of a serial killer. Our psychic knows this is bad news and after accidentally reading Cyrus's mind knows it will get even worse.

Despite the efforts of some mystics trying to "save" the ghost from this fate, it gets caught. Of course it murders several ghost hunters, the lead mystic and Cyrus in the process.

I love the world carved out in that scene. Psychics who can read minds and sense ghosts. PETA for ghosts (which I hereby dubbed PETG). Tape recorded spells and exorcisms. Glasses that let you see spirits. Quicksilver flares. And a truck full of blood acting as chum. Then finally we seal the ghost in a glass room covered in mystic writing. As a premise this sounds awesome.

Okay time for a change of gears. The movie gives us a nice rotating montage of our protagonist's (Cyrus's nephew Arthur) recent life: the fire, the death of his wife, and the decline of the family's situation. All nicely done with some nice audio clips and by panning over a scene that morphs from happy home to decaying apartment.

Anyway after that we meet Arthur's cheerfully morbid son Bobby, forgettably bland daughter Kathy, and their nanny Maggie. From Cyrus's lawyer, Ben Moss, they learn they have inherited Cyrus's house. Cyrus even gives a video explanation of his will which hints to the rest of the audience that he will in fact be back.

With that drummed into our heads all the characters including Dennis and the surviving PETG member Kalina make their way into the house.

Again the visuals are stunning. The house is like some sort of magical clockwork punk device with numerous gears, endless glass walls covered in Latin, and lots of nicely displayed artifacts.

The ghosts, all twelve of them, remain sealed in the basement. At least until the lawyer collects his pay, tripping the countdown and dooming everyone. The psychic tries to warn them but of course is too late. After that is just a standard pattern of gory death, ghosts that somehow fail to be scary, and trying to get us to care about characters that are just not very like-able.

The house shifts, closing off hallways and opening up new paths for the ghosts to one by one escape into the house. The mom eventually is revealed to be one of the ghosts (of course). All the while, pressure builds on Arthur to save his family. Kalina eventually reveals he can do it by sacrificing himself to turn off the machine.

Of course this is all a trap by Cyrus. The sacrifice will allow him open the eye of Hell and see the future. He returns, kills Kalina, and then ruins his own plan running into his nephew. The ghosts turn on him and the nanny manages to cause the house to self destruct. The family escapes, sees their mother one last time, and we get a happy ending.

It would be great if I cared about any of the characters. Dennis and Arthur perhaps get the best characterization. Dennis ruins it by being a jerk most of the time and Arthur really doesn't do anything. Despite what should be terrifying ghosts, it doesn't pack many real scares of either the horror or thriller variety. I'm not sure if I'll watch this again.

Gaming Ideas

I think bad movies make good games. I rarely find players able to reach the level of seriousness and skill necessary to match good movies (which are often too well scripted to leave much in the way of good loose ends anyway). But a bad movie? There are often far too many ideas to pick from the wreckage.

So here we have something that sounds a team from Hunter: the Vigil (or whatever your low-level action horror game of choice is) aided by a tame psychic and being paid by a rich ghost hunter for the most dangerous ghosts. The fact that he's collecting the "Black Zodiac" of spectral horrors just gives you the perfect end game.

Like I said above, the world describe in the first few scenes sounds far more interesting the action that follows. Even the house and its ultimate goal of allowing one to see all time could power a long story arc (though perhaps you would want to dump the "Eye of Hell" moniker).

For Demon: the Descent imagine the house as a piece of Infrastructure, collecting vengeful ghosts as a power source. In Geist, it might be the construct of a mad Sineater hoping to control a Dead Dominion. A Mage might pursue either of these or even hope to use the power to reach Stygia itself (or the Lower Depths...).

Switch gears (and game systems), the house could be the ploy of cult hoping to summon Yog-Sothoth or one of the other cosmic beings of the Cthulhu Mythos. Or what if you TimeWatch agents need to be deployed because someone has used dark magic to see all time, endangering the course of history itself. Of course he would know you are coming too.

RPG-a-Day: 4th through 10th

Since I posted several RPG-a-Days last week I guess I'll have to continue with it this week. So its time for 7 more RPG-a-Day entries.

Most Surprising Game

Honestly there haven't been that many games that surprise me. I have a good bead on what a game will be like. Most often it is my players who throw me for a loop, heading off in a direction I failed to see or understand. A surprise in a game is typically a downer for me because it means the game failed to live up to the hype in someway. Geist: the Sineaters for instance, despite being a well written game, failed to open any new avenues of play for me which I think was a first for White Wolf.

Most recent RPG purchase

My most recent RPG purchase was at GenCon and the last book I bought there was Dread. I didn't expect to come across a physical copy but as I was searching for a copy of Spark I ended up in the wrong booth and ran across it. I've played the horror game a few times but had yet to read the text itself. It's an okay read so far and I'll probably finish it in another couple of days. Now I just need a set of Jenga blocks.

Most recent RPG played

Since Sundays are when my online group plays this would be Apocalypse World, specifically the Climbers. It's possible that as of this posting that we've played our final session. If however we go by calendar date, the final game would be the Fate game I played at the end of GenCon where our heroic cybernetic bloggers uncovered the awakening of the Internet and its possession of people through craigslist.

Favorite Free RPG

I like to pay for my games and I don't know that I've picked up many for free. Fate however was pay what you will. So I can say I didn’t pay anything for the main book (before anyone gets uppity, I have since shelled out for a physical copy and bought supplements from Evil Hat directly). Since I've gotten significant usage out of it, I can say it's a favorite of mine.

Favorite appearance of RPGs in the Media

Honestly I don't pay much attention to how RPGs depicted on TV or in the movies. Most of the time it seems to be used mock geek culture. Sometimes it's good-natured mocking (like how not to run a D&D game), other times not so much. As someone who would like RPGs to go more mainstream, my favorite media appearances are when some celebrity reveals that they are a roleplayer. So news media primarily.

Favorite media you wish was an RPG

It seems like all my favorite media either has a dedicated RPG already (Doctor Who, Marvel) or could easily be adapted to it (X-files, Sense8). I don't see much media of any sort left that isn't already represented, let alone media that I like. All most lack is a dedicated world book. I like to make my own worlds so I don't really need stats for my favorite characters.

I suppose if we included campaigns I've played in the past as (very) limited release media then I might have some choices. In particular I'd love to explore the world of Into Darkness more with others (as a player).

Favorite RPG Publisher

Currently I have to say Onyx Path with Pelgrane Press as the runner-up. They are both producing a lot of great content right now. Onyx Path's spread is particularly impressive from all of the classic World of Darkness including anniversary edition material and Vampire 4th edition to 11 game lines (excluding blue books) for new World of Darkness to things like Exalted, Scion, and Aeon.

Sample Sanctum: Residents of the Engels House

Now to look at the residents (prior and current) of the Engels House. Hopefully they approve of their new housemates.

Residents of the Engels House

Moving In

Many clues remain as to the history of the sanctum from the graves out back to the lingering enchantments. A fallen chandelier in the dining room is etched with the phrase 'Rota Taro Orat Tora Ator' (The wheel of Taro speaks the Law of Love). Other etchings, Atlantean runes, hide behind the few pieces of furniture or inside the walls themselves. Careful study reveals they once helped bind the warding spells of the house. Now only a few threadbare enchantments remain.

Another magical sign can barely be made out in one of the second floor bedroom. The summoning circle lies almost worn to nothing. A careful rubbing (or use of magic) reveals it to be focused on summoning angels.

More clearly visible is a large blood stain near the fallen chandelier. Old and black, it marks the spot where the former owner perished. A potent resonance of Death, Mind, and Spirit magic lingers here.

Thick vine encrust the gravestones, oozing a strange gel at midnight. This ectoplasm evaporates if removed from the graves unless stabilized with Death magic.

Lastly those who dwell within the house are haunted by dreams of an endless stairway.

Lingering Enchantments

There are 3 existing enchantments in and on the house:

• Ward (potency 1, cast by an Adept of the Arcana of Space): threadbare and decayed, this covers the house protecting it and those within from scrying and sympathetic attacks.
• The Dream Quest (potency 5, cast by an adept of Fate and Mind) this strange spell draws those who possess the potential to follow the former owner's Legacy to the house and then brings them dreams.
• Stygian Demense (potency 5, cast by a Master of Death with Gnosis 8): this lies in the basement but is currently inoperative. Fixing it requires repairing the runes down there (damaged by ground water). The soulstone is hidden by other magics. It is invisible (potency 2) and covered by a Mind spell (potency 4) that distracts people from seeing it.

The Others

The "ghosts"of the house are wise to the way of mages and keep their distance. However they leave many clues to their presence:

• Dripping water from a leaky roof forms a pool in one room. The owners discover wet foot prints leading away from it.
• Low voices are heard upstairs but the speakers flee before the owners reach them.
• Whispering and a soft crying emanates from the graveyard.
• Doors slam in random parts of the house.
• Heavy foot falls are heard elsewhere in the house.
• The cutlery is rearranged into Atlantean symbols overnight.
• Ticking sounds emerge from the cellar.

Spirits of the House

The secret of the residents of the Engels House is that they are neither ghosts nor spirits but a strange hybrid (called Geists) created by the former owner, a heretical mage known as Rota. Of his many experiments only a handful linger here:

The House (Ezra)

This creature actually began as the spirit of the house. Decades of experimentation left it bound to dozens of weak ghosts. The old woman Ezra has come to dominate it, causing it to manifest into two ways. In one, it resembles a decaying house with windows that shine like eyes and a square toothless mouth. The other resembles a bent old woman with a flat plaster face. Its voice, rarely used, quavers and creaks. It mostly slumbers.

Attributes: Power: 6, Finesse: 2, Resistance: 4
Traits: Size 20
Numina: Phantasmal Boneyard 4 (8)

The Bogeyman (Adam)

The youngest and darkest of the Geists, the Bogeyman appears as a looming figure cloaked in darkness. The light that penetrates the shadows reveals an eggshell white head, cracked open at the top and hollow. The creature smiles with a toothless idiot grin. Though capable of violence, it hides in the face of multiple intruders. It can often be seen looking around corners or through doorways at any women or girls who come to live here.

Attributes: Power: 6, Finesse: 2, Resistance: 6
Notable Traits: Size: 7
Numina: Terrify 8

The Whisperer (Doris)

The most social of the Geists, this spirit was once Rota's sister. Now twisted and mad, she babbles in a cacophony of voices. Two mouths open where her eyes would be along with a further pair upon her palms. She whispers of secrets and times long past, carrying several threads of discourse concurrently. Sometimes the voices even whisper to each other. Beyond her inhuman features, she resembles a younger woman with long silvery hair dressed in the flamboyant style of a flapper.

Attributes: Power: 4, Finesse: 4, Resistance: 4
Numina: Ghost Speech 8

The Watchman (Mobius)

Obsessed with time, this ghost stands bound in chains from which hang hundreds of pocket watches. Heralded by an endless ticking, this ghost mage possess influences over Time and Fate. Though he never seeks to harm others, he reflexively tampers with the Fate of those around him, bending them toward's Rota's plan. He lurks most of the time within the cellar.

Attributes: Power: 4, Finesse: 6, Resistance: 3
Influence: Fate 4, Prime 2, Space 2, Time 4
Numina: Telekinesis 10

Geist Noir: Story Seeds Part III

Originally published August 6, 2014

I was clearing out my backlog of drafts as I end my paternity leave and I found a final article on my Giest Noir setting.

Geist Noir was a Geist: the Sineaters Chronicle proposal that failed to win over my players in Fall of 2013. I've blogged most of the NPCs, monsters, and stories I outlined for that game. Today I'll be presenting the remainder of the material.

One thing I usually do when planning a new campaign is scour my game library for existing story seeds and adventures for ideas. It saves time and I find adapting adventures to the specifics of my game fun. Even if they are not directly helpful, they can serve as inspiration for actual stories.

Death At Midnight

Pitch: A high-class party is held at a hotel rumored to be haunted. Unfortunately this turns out to be true. Worse someone has decided to use the spike in spectral energy to conduct a dangerous ritual atop the high-rise building. While the guests deal with hauntings and possessions, the PCs must battle their way to the top floor and defeat a rogue necromancer. All before the sacrifice at midnight of course.

Background: Death at Midnight is inspired by the adventure A Nightmare At Hill Manor which was a free World of Darkness adventure released on Free RPG day in June 2011. I loved the idea of being trapped in a haunted apartment complex and having to navigate the haunted building to escape.

Death at Midnight would borrow heavily from the scenes there but have Hill Manor be repurposed as a stylish hotel. The guests would then become New York City socialites.

The PCs would be guests at the hotel or attendees of the party. Alternatively they may have received advanced warning of the ceremony and crash the party before the doors seal shut and the entire hotel becomes inaccessible. For extra oomph, the necromancer involved could be a potent Sineater enemy of the PCs, a vampiric necromancer or a Strix attempting to become something more than a vampiric shade.

Antagonists: The ghosts have been conjured up from depths of Underworld, summoned by the potent ritual underway atop the hotel. They should be numerous and more potent than the average shade to deal with the powers of Sineaters.

Aftermath: Even if the necromancer is thwarted there may be a lot of fallout. Some guests may be permanently possessed, requiring exorcisms. Others may have died and need help moving on. Perhaps some die but get better, resulting in new Sineaters.

A particularly creepy possibility is that everyone who survives the party becomes mystically marked and are doomed to rise again after death in some fashion.

Then there is the necromancer's goal. Possibilities include summoning and binding an ancient and powerful Geist, merging of a mortal and Strix to creating something greater than a Sineater, or the transformation into a Death God.

Roots and Branches

This is a story from World of Darkness: Ghost Stories and could be used as is. I did have some ideas for customization however.

Outline

Basically a tree once used to lynch someone becomes haunted. It then causes others to die in its presence or draws nearby ghosts to it. These spirits then become trapped, haunting the park where the tree now stands. Only by helping the original ghost pass on can the tree be exorcised and the malignancy cleansed.

Customization

Clearly the tree while powerful is no match for a group of Sineaters. I would recommend increasing the power level and giving it some Manifestations or Numina to make it more of a threat to those who can see and directly interact with ghosts.

Additionally I would restructure the story so to be the slowly building B plot to another story or series of stories, where the hauntings and ghostly messages can be more easily lost in the shuffle. In the original adventure the creepiness of the hauntings drive the story but that would be too heavy-handed and easily solved for a Sineater Krewe.

To escalate the story, perhaps defeating the tree requires a trip to the Underworld to find where its roots dig deep into a Dead Dominion. It might even necessitate convincing the Kerberoi there to aid them.

A Piece of Me

This tale builds off the Unwilling Organ Donor of Urban Legends. While successful organ transplants are far in the future, the research was going on during the 1930s. In the World of Darkness, with the help of the supernatural, it is even working.

Focused on an Abmortal, a rich and elderly socialite whose thirst for life overpowers her morals, the Sineaters encounter a series of angry and maimed ghosts. Each is missing a vital organ: a heart, a lung, an eye. Each know nothing about where their missing part went but each desires it back before they move on. Research indicates each victim was found in one of the slums of the city.

Eventually they can trace the crimes to an unethical doctor and a murderous gang of ruffians in the employ of the Abnormal. Complicating matters is that the Abnormal is a pillar of the city, whose passing or murder will have significant repercussions. Can they get revenge for the donors without stirring up more trouble?

And how did the Abnormal learn that she could survive the treatment? What shadowy figure connected her with the doctor and to what end? Why are the doctor's notes stamped with the insignia of a centaur?

Hungry Ghosts

The final story deals with Bhuta or as I like to think of them Ghost Claimed. They come from Night Horrors: the Wicked Dead.

Pitch: Two weeks ago bodies began turning up in the local river. The authorities (the real ones, the vampires) tried to cover it up. The bodies were drained of blood and covered in human teeth marks.

The vampires know it wasn't one of their own but the press is screaming about vampire killers. So they hired you to find out who really did it and to make them stop.

Outline

This story would play out as a straight up murder mystery. The twist is that the killer has no connection to the victims and can jump bodies. The thrill is in the hunt as the Bhuta stays one step ahead of them.

And what happens when a second and third Bhuta appears? What is their connection? Why do they keep appearing near the MET? Does it have something to do with that new Egyptian exhibit?

Review of Hunter: Mortal Remains

Originally published May 7, 2014

Last week, Hunter: Mortal Remains was released. This eagerly awaited title covers the various supernatural monster types not already dealt with by the Hunter line. Previously we had vampires were covered by Night Stalkers, werewolves by Spirit Slayers, and mages by Witch Finders. This book covers Prometheans, Changelings, Geists, Mummies, and Demons as well as providing a limited rules update for the God-Machine Chronicle rules.

Overview

Each monster receives their own chapter following the rough layout shown in earlier books. Each chapter begins by describing the monster's abilities, its background and its relationship to hunters. Then the creature's mechanics are provided, simplified for use in Hunter: the Vigil. Then we are given the viewpoint of each Conspiracy and Compact on the monsters. In previous books this has been one of my least favorite sections but the presentation in this book did not feel so drawn out. Many of the Conspiracies are provided new Endowments as well. Then we are given a few "Wandering Monsters", sample antagonists for the Hunters to encounter, as well as a series of story hooks that can be customized by tier. Lastly each chapter ends with a set of books and movies to use for inspiration.

The Monsters

Chapter 1 details Prometheans from the perspective of Hunters. Since Promethean: the Created is my favorite limited line next to Demon: the Descent, this was my favorite chapter. It was nice to see some new material for the line, even in passing, after all of these years. The chapter is full of useful crunch including 6 new Endowments, 3 sample monsters, and a Condition to handle Disquiet. The viewpoints of the Hunter groups do a good job of demonstrating the conflicted nature of hunting a monster who just wants to be human. I found the material inspiring and useful, even the nicknames for the different lineages had some nice gems I intend to use in my next Hunter game.

Chapter 2 deals with Changeling: the Lost as well as True Fae, Fetches, and Hobgoblins. The majority of the material however focuses on the most visible and vulnerable, the changelings themselves. This chapter is also quite well written and also plays up the ambiguity of hunting a monster that is essentially a victim. Like the previous chapter we get 6 new Endowments and 3 sample monsters (including one ancient and powerful member who would make a nice urban legend). My enthusiasm was dampened mainly by the fact that I've been playing and running Changeling for a year now and I'm feeling a need for a change. The material itself was excellent.

Chapter 3 describes the Fogmen, Hunter's nickname for Sineaters from Geist. This section is fairly weak on crunch and history, but the modern-day fluff provides interesting ideas and points out how Hunters and Sineaters can and do work together against hostile ghosts. We get only one sample monster and no new endowments however. It may be the shortest of the limited lines, but I would have like some more example characters at least.

Mummy: the Curse gets discussed in Chapter 4. As one of the most recent lines, the material for these ancient horrors is ironically much fresher than the previous chapter. In addition to the normal overview, we get a sample monster, a new compact and a new conspiracy. The compact, the Habibti Ma, deals with saving people from cults. It is not as action oriented as other groups but would make an interesting allied group in a Hunter Chronicle dealing with Mummies or their cults. They come off as more of a help group than a monster (or cult) fighting organization. The Faithful of Shulpae are a conspiracy devoted to the idea of getting closer to divinity by eating their flesh. Thus they are not very player character friendly (unless they like playing Ashwood Abbey types) but do make a good if creepy antagonist group to use against Mummies. Overall I liked the chapter.

Chapter 5 deals with the most recent addition to World of Darkness, Demon: the Descent. This section includes not just the demons of that game but some of the ideas from World of Darkness: Inferno as well as "Institutional Demons", demons that embody companies and structures, in other words Infrastructure of the God-Machine. The ideas here are excellent and I really look forward to using the ideas within the Institutional Demon section. We get 3 new Endowments for the old Conspiracies as well as a new Compact and Conspiracy. There are no sample monsters however. The Compact, Utopia Now, is a group using parts of the God-Machine (and possibly demons) to build the world of tomorrow. They would be a good fit for a God-Machine Chronicle, Demon, or even Promethean. The Knights of Saint Adrian is our new Conspiracy, a bounty hunter company working for Angels. With a new endowment that uses magical tattoos to expose and defeat demons, they seem fairly interesting, if unsuited to where I'm planning on going for my Hunter and Demon games.

Then we reach the Appendix. Here we get a massive load of new Dread Powers, updates for the old powers to interact with God-Machine rules update, and advice on building monsters. There is plenty of great material here and between the monster material and the Rules Update (below), this is probably the strongest section of the book.

Rules Update

Finally we get a rules update for Hunter: the Vigil. Note that this is not a Chronicle book like Blood and Smoke. There are no major changes here, that will have to wait until another day.

What we do get are tweaks to existing merits, practical experience, risking willpower, and the benefits of status in a Compact or conspiracies. Several Endowments also get revised. Overall there isn't much to change and the material might seem underwhelming. I would have liked update to Tactics in general or some new Tactics as well as thoughts on how to incorporate Tells into Integrity system.
Conclusion

All in all the book is great. We get a nice view of how hunters view the various monster lines, great advice on creating their adversaries and tools for doing so, and a number of ideas for stories. We also get a little system update to tide us over until Hunter can get its own Chronicle book.

If you are planning on running a Hunter: the Vigil game or the God-Machine Chronicle, I would recommend taking a look at this. For those of you running Demon: the Descent or Mummy: the Curse, you might find some handy antagonists here. And those of you who miss Promethean: the Created like me might enjoy seeing something written about them.

Giest Noir: Rise of the Psychopomps

Originally published January 15, 2014


Geist Noir was a Geist: the Sineaters Chronicle proposal that failed to win over my current players. In the interest of seeing some of this material used, I am presenting and expanding my game outline for you. This week we will look at the outline for the Rise of the Psychopomps story line.

Psychopomps, or guides of souls, is one way one could refer to Sineaters, the protagonists of Geist. One major theme of the game is helping ghosts pass on to the afterlife. While the game is deliberately vague as to what that means, it is fairly clear that is an improvement over the Underworld. Helping ghosts pass on refills a Sineater's store of Plasm, the juice for their powers.

Psychopomps however can also refer to other, darker things. Like the titular character in The Crow, psychopomps can carry a soul to and from the afterlife. Many cultures have legends of creatures that can serve to transport a soul such as ravens, dogs, crows, owls, and sparrows. In Stephen King's The Dark Half, it is sparrows who carry off the villain in the end while the Black Dog of Celtic lore heralds death.

In Rise of the Psychopomps we explore both sides of this story: the spiritual forces that join the Underworld to the land of the living and the role of Sineaters in ensuring that that the spirits of the dead move on. What happens when something tries to replace the Sineaters? Do they help or hinder this abomination? And what price must be paid to upset the natural order?

Designer Notes

In a prior game, I created material about a group known as the Black Flock. These information brokers were a secretive cult of were-crows. I originally envisioned them as having a group of rivals, a spy ring of skin thieves. Skin thieves take the skins of animals, in my original version pigeons, and use them to take the form of that animal.

Ultimately I ended up not using any of that material but the idea lingered in my head. With the Rise of the Psychopomps I wanted to make revisit this concept. So I combined the group and its rivals into a new imagining, mixing in a bit of Classic World of Darkness's Corax.

So my Black Flock became a group of skin thieves, using the hides of crows to become animals. They use their powers to collect information, selling it for wealth and occult lore. They also gained access to minor rituals and power over the dead.

At the same time, I had read Requiem for Rome and Night Horrors: the Wicked Dead. With the Strix Chronicles approaching, I wanted to do something with that creature as well.

The Strix, for those that don't know, are shadowy owls and ravens, somewhere between a spirit and an undead thing. They might be the source of Vampires and can possess similar abilities. Straddling the line from life to death, they certainly sound like psychopomps. And Book of the Dead, World of Darkness's book on the Underworld, mentions strange shadowy animals that might be psychopomps and/or the Strix.

So I decided to give my skin thieves a patron, a Strix with an unusual goal. To emulate a Geist and bond with something mortal.

Rise of the Psychopomps explores this quest with the players as witnesses to the creation of something new and horrible in the World of Darkness. Focusing on a single nonplayer character (NPC) with strong ties to the player characters (PCs), we follow that person's descent into a strange world of black feathers, ghosts, and something older and more horrible than Geists.

Character Creation

In terms of the player characters, the important thing is that they each have a connection to a central nonplayer character. This character, who we will call the Host, should be sympathetic and possess some connection to death or interest in the occult. Ideally the players should create this character together, perhaps even going so far as to allocate Attributes and Skills.

Some concept possibilities are a well meaning medium or fortuneteller, teenager or child gifted or cursed with minor psychic abilities, or a just a nosy reporter who gets in too deep. This character's problems serves as a catalyst for the formation of the group.

Lastly the story arc presented below begins with No Way Out from last week's post so another constraint is that the character's each have a connection to the ghost in that story. Alternatively if the Host is intricately connected to the Richardson family, then he or she can serves as their tie to the initial story.

The player characters themselves should be in the spirit of Noir: hard boiled detectives, nosy reporters, ex-cons, and the like. They have each been touched by death and now find themselves harassed by the ghosts of the city. They might willingly help the spirits move on or do it grudgingly.

An interesting possibility would be to include a Vampire in the mix. In this case the secret patron of the Black Flock becomes an active threat to the local Vampire society, possessing and destroying them one by one. This might put the player character (PC) in the interesting position where they are ordered to slay the Host by the reigning Prince.

For the really ambitious, one could play a member of the Black Flock. The character would be weaker than the Sineaters but would have a unique inside look at the cult of the Black Flock. I would be careful about making that PC the focus of the Strix's attention since the story is at least partially about trying to save the Host from that plan. For the story to work, the Host would lose some agency.

Story Arc

At its barest level, the Rise of the Psychopomps is a three Story Chronicle forging the group as guides for the dead and then forcing them to face a force that is pulling the dead from the Underworld. Make sure that the imagery of crows is scattered throughout the story. Any time the character looks around while outside, there is a crow nearby. When they need help, a helpful fellow in black is willing to trade some clues for a bit of coin or a Memento. This seeds the Black Flock as a pervasive force in the Chronicle.

We begin with the story seed No Way Out, opening with David Richardson's funeral. The Host is introduced in the introductory scene as a close relative or associate of David's, perhaps one of his children or his wife. The player characters should each have their own reasons for attending the funeral even if it is just to show support for their friend, the Host. For the Host's part, they seem intrigued by the ghostly activity and begin to learn more about the occult.

Afterwards, we move to Wake the Dead. The introduction can be as outlined in the story seed or perhaps an opportunistic member of the Flock can bring the information to the PCs, looking to earn some reward in the process. While dealing with this threat, they spot the Strix hanging around the cemetery. While not hostile to them, the creature certainly doesn't help them.

At the same time, the Host begins to go missing for a period. When they turn up, they seem different, less balanced. By this point the Host's investigations have led them to the Black Flock and in the effort to gain their secrets they have become a skin thief. How the players react to this information is up to them, but uncovering it should be a subplot in Wake the Dead or a later story.

From there we go to a story I called Death at Midnight where the Host is drawn to a haunted apartment building by the Strix. The PCs in turn have to come to deal with the ghosts and hopefully rescue their friend. Meanwhile the Strix hopes to use the occult energy it has gather to enact its plan. This can serve as the final story for the Chronicle or the opening piece for a larger Chronicle, either focused on the Strix and their plans or on others who are upsetting the natural balance.

You might also consider rounding out the number of stories, particularly between Wake the Dead and Death at Midnight. This will serve to pace out the Host's descent into the Black Flock.

Antagonists

The underlying antagonist for this Chronicle is the Black Flock. While not directly opposing the PCs until their patron's plot is revealed, their actions are impetus for the story. Ultimately it is their patron who is the true threat.

As I mentioned before, the Black Flock is composed of skin thieves. I'll present their basic abilities below but for more options look at the Werewolf: the Forsaken book Skinchangers.

Note that these stats assume you are using the God Machine Chronicle rules.

Basic Abilities

The Black Flock is able to transform into crows and ravens (in other words, corvids) by making a ritual mask from the hides of one of these birds. The cruel slaying and skinning of the bird tends to degrade their Integrity which means many of the Black Flock are a little unbalanced.

The mask itself lasts about a month though some senior members of the Flack have learned rituals to maintain it indefinitely. Once the mask is created (process that only takes a couple blood soaked minutes), changing shape costs a Willpower point. The person's clothes are also transformed though anything held in their hands or on their should like a backpack, might be dropped when they change. They gain the generic abilities of a crow or raven as shown below.

Base Form: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Size: 2, Speed: 14

While transformed they need not make Integrity rolls until they resume human form at which point they make each roll from worst to easiest. Also if they are "slain" as a bird, they resume human shape with all current damage plus an additional 1 Lethal.

The standard powers of the Black Flock include:

• Animal Speech: the Flock can speak to corvids using these bright animals to expand their spy network.
• Corpse Witness: by eating the eye of a dead creature and rolling Manipulation + Occult, they can see what it saw in the last day.
• Enchanting Affinity: with a Presence + Animal Ken roll they can control corvids, using them to defend her.
• Know Name: easily the creepiest ability of the Black Flock, by rolling Intelligence + Investigation vs. the target's Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance, they can learn their name.
• Sense Weakness: once per day for a particular target they can roll Intelligence + Empathy to learn one of the target's Persistent Conditions or his or her Vice.
• Sweet Voiced Fiend: all penalties applied to Persuasion or Subterfuge rolls are reduced by 2.

All members of the Black Flock also have something like Psyche which manifests as Supernatural Tolerance 1 for resisting supernatural powers. They can also hold 3 Plasm and spend 1 Plasm per turn to fuel powers and rituals.

Normally a skin thief uses Essence for their powers, but since I am tying them to the Underworld and the Strix, I'm adjust them to use Sineater rules. It also helps to make them rivals for Haunts and opens other power possibilities. Perhaps if the Strix succeed, they will even gain Manifestations.

The Cult

Black Flock is also a cult. They believe their patron to be divine and that it is only though its power that they can turn into crows. In gratitude they spy and inform the Strix. They also find the information they gather useful to others in the occult underground. They sell information to gain wealth, allies, and more magical power.

The core tenants of the cult are that they are the eyes and heralds of the Underworld, that they are part of a new covenant with Death, and that they will usher in a world where death is no longer feared and none must lose a loved one. Their membership not coincidentally is composed of those who have lost loved ones and those who fear death. They believe by acquiring more occult power they will be able to realize their patron's dream of a better world.

All members of the Black Flock have at least one dot in the following Merit:

Black Flock Initiation (1 to 5 dots): This merit is the cult status merit for the Black Flock with each rank, the member gains more and more access to the cult's resources and knowledge.

• 1 Dot: the cultist gains a dot of Contacts (Black Flock). The Flock shares its knowledge (relatively) freely with its members.
• 2 Dots: the cultist has now gained the confidence of the patron of the order. Gain a dot of Allies (Strix).
• 3 Dots: the cultist now has easy access to the group's network. Gain two dots of Allies, Contacts, or Retainers. These can be with almost any mundane group (as well as ghosts) as the Flock has its feathers in many pots.
• 4 Dots: the cultist unlocks one of the secret powers of the cult. Learn to transform into a Hybrid or Swarm form.

The character turns into a mixture of human and crow. With huge black wings, terrible claws and massive beak they are a terrifying horror.

Hybrid Form: Strength human form+1, Dexterity the higher of human form+1 or 4, Stamina the higher of human form+1 or 3, Size: 6, Speed: species factor 10 flight, 5 ground

They deal 1 Lethal with their claws or beak.

Alternatively the character turns into a murder of cawing crows.

Swarm Form: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Size: (Special, treat as 5 for the purposes of Health), Speed: 14

The swarm suffers only a single point of damage from normal attacks. Area attacks deal normal damage. They also inflict 1 Lethal damage per turn to all within the swarm. the swarm is 2 yards in radius.

• 5 Dots: Further occult lore opens the cultists eyes. They gain the Aura Reading merit.

Other useful merits for the Black Flock include Animal Affinity (see below), Medium, and Unseen Sense (Ghosts). They actively try to recruit those who might be able to deal with the dead, seeing them as closer to their leader's ideal.

Animal Affinity (1 to 3 dots): for each dot in this merit, the characters gains a +1 bonus to social rolls involving a particular type of animal.

Strix

Description: A large raven sits on a tombstone. In the dim light its aged and tattered feathers seem to fade into the shadows. It slowly cocks its head to watch you with a single ebon eye. As you close, it stretches its wings out impossibly wide in warning before vanishing into the night.

Background: Like most of its kind, this Strix has no name. Its "followers" do not even realize there is more than one. As for how old it is and where it came from, these are not questions that interest it and as such it ignores them. It remembers darkness, it remembers the lightless halls of the Underworld, it recalls the days of flame and ruin when Rome fell.

What concerns it now is the future. It troubles this Strix that it lacks a purpose, a mission to pursue. In that terrible absence, it has studied the other denizens and interlopers of the Underworld. While it looks down on the pale shades of the dead, it recognizes something of note with the Geists. They were lowly ghosts who broke free of their past and became some greater and stranger. They found purpose.

The Strix is jealous. It wants purpose too. So it is looking to become like them. Using the Black Flock as its pawns it is gather occult lore and magical resources to complete its task. It offers them a new beginning, using it current knowledge to reunite them with their loved ones and to cheat death. In the end they are expendable. But perhaps among them it can find a soul to bond with. And find purpose.

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Composure 5
Physical Attributes: Dexterity 5
Social Attributes: Presence 5, Manipulation 5, Resolve 5
Skills: Animal Ken 4, Athletics 3, Empathy 2, Intimidation 4, Investigation 3, Occult (Underworld) 5, Persuasion (befriending) 4, Socialize 1, Stealth (high up) 5, Subterfuge 4, Survival 3

Virtue: Hope
Vice: Envy
Defense: 8
Initiative: 10
Speed: 20 (6 through cracks, 2 completely solid surfaces, can't move through fire or sunlight)
Size: 2
Willpower: 10

Weaknesses: The Strix are not physical entities. Bullets and other physical weapons cannot harm them. The only things that directly affect them are fire and sunlight. Fire holds them in place while sunlight does the same while also inflicting 1 Willpower damage per turn of direct exposure. Blessed weapons and similar effects might also harm them, damaging their willpower. If a Strix loses all Willpower they are destroyed and vanish.

Powers:

• Hollow Bones: while the Strix is immaterial, its powers also are conferred on those it possesses. This allows it to triple the jumping distance of its host. It also takes only 1 Bashing per 10 yards that its host falls.
• No Surprise: add dots of Investigation to any rolls for the Strix to detect an ambush. Even if something gets the drop on it, it still keeps half of its defense against attacks.
• Owl Eyes: the Strix can see perfectly in low light conditions, even through fog and smoke. They gain a +3 bonus to perception rolls in well lit locations.
• Possession: the Strix can possess corpses, vampires and the living, though possessing the living removes the host's soul and leads to their death under normal circumstances. Assume that the Strix can possess a host by spending a willpower and rolling Wits + Manipulation + Occult vs. the targets Resolve + Composure + Blood potency. They cannot possess Sineaters. In the case of corpses and the living, the longer they stay in the host, the more the body decays.
• Terrible Rush of Wings: by spending 1 Willpower and rolling Presence + Occult the Strix can summon a number of illusionary ravens made of shadow to distract and confuse its enemies. Official stats can be found in Night Horrors: the Wicked Dead or you can use the Raven stats from World of Darkness book. The number of ravens is equal to the number of successes.
• Shadow Parliament: by spending 1 Willpower and rolling Manipulation + Composure, the Strix can make to make shadowy duplicates of itself that mirror its actions and sounds. This grants it +2 Defense.