First Ruminations on how Trail of Cthulhu can meet Demon: the Fallen

After musing awhile on how best to integrate Demon: the Fallen with Call of Cthulhu, I've decided that the greatest horror I can give to my players would be to make many of these horrors more personal.  Since the Great Old Ones make great fodder for the new Earthbound (as do Masks of Nyarlathotep), and the War with Heaven led to the construction of many warrior races, I'm figuring what about laying the blame for many of these horrors further at the fallen's feet.

See the horrors of Ithaqua?  Of Cthulhu's Siren Song?  Those are your brethren turned mad.  That is your potential fate.

See the Mi-Go?  That is what some of your people in the Silver Legion made of humanity to make them 'Better' in the war.  Of course, now they have been contacted by the Things Beyond many of them have warped further still.  What of the Deep Ones?  Well, Belial (now Cthulhu) needed a hobby and through dreams and lore they were carved of mortals who walked into the waters well after the Earthbound were re-summoned to Earth.

In this version, however, the Fallen didn't make the universe but the galaxy and God is an entity that sits within the sun.  It consumes sentient thoughts, hope and faith, having been gutted by its brushes with the Things Beyond and having heard the tunes of the Court of Azathoth since the Fallen rose humanity to sentience and thus shook the foundations of reality itself.  God never smote the world in revenge against the Fallen.  It never cursed them out of spite.  Oh no, it simply offered the only real way to keep reality in check.  And when humanity became sentient, reality cracked as the slithering tendrils of the Things Beyond began to roam.  Knowledge is a potentially deadly and corruptive force in the Lovecraftian worlds, after all.

Thus, everything the Fallen ever believed in is a Lie.  They live in a crumbling reality filled with an essential decay which has snaked into their brethren (the Fallen) and slowly warped them in horrifying and maddening ways.  Of course there could be some Great Horror with what God was doing with human souls, perhaps using them to shore up reality itself, but to be honest it's more horrifying if God was simply a compassionless figure who couldn't understand reality but wished to create a place to slumber. 

Then Second World spoken of for the Slayers which was slowly being built by the dead spiritual matter of plants and animals could well become the holding place for human souls, lacking a better option, since humanity contains a spark of the Thing in the Centre of the Sun but were too contaminated by reality to rejoin with it.  Perhaps?  I'm not sure what to do with that.

Naturally Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth would remain essential principles within the universe rather than sentient entities in their own right because it's simply cooler that way.

And yes, it definitely changes the feeling of Call of Cthulhu, but having allowed my players to become supernatural does that on its own.  So why do it?  Well, I love Demon: the Fallen characters but I love the Call of Cthulhu campaigns and while it changes the setting immensely and the style of horror invoked it doesn't change that these campaigns will still be good and fitting for what I want to do.

Dark Before Dawn Session Summary: Freedom From Darkness

The players began this session in the venue’s rather long corridor, clutching their prop stones that were used to vote for the God Machine or the Ghost (or for themselves if they chose not to vote) during the first session.  As they slowly came through the corridor, they discussed their circumstances among themselves and used Obfuscate where necessary to cover any blood stains.  Once they left the corridor, they were described as entering North Terrace from the front doors of the SA Art Gallery.  They also realised when they checked their mobile phones that three months had passed since they were last out and about.  It was now the Autumn Equinox while their last memories were of the Summer Solstice.

There they stood in the central game space, discussing where to go now, and they decided to go to Amity Fine’s nightclub.  I’d already chatted with Amity Fine’s player about The Velvet Nightclub as it seemed a likely option and I’d dressed the main game space accordingly.  I’d also set up a playlist for their arrival.

 

However I wanted to give the PCs a chance to gossip among themselves and witness the strange darkening shadows that pressed around certain sections of the city (namely a chunk of the ring road around the Adelaide CBD) so I set up Amity Fine’s player and two new players whose characters weren’t present thus far to describe what they saw en route as temporary assistant Game Masters.  We used the two side rooms and the main game space to represent the cars and I set up the chairs accordingly.

Amity Fine offered to drive a few of the vampires while the others had to go in taxis (portrayed by the two new players).  One was meant to be an overly exuberant driver who liked to honk the horn, and the other was slightly creepy.  Naturally one of the players decided his PC would walk to the destination instead so he had to wait awhile in the kitchen before being paired with the taxi driver player (once the others had been dropped off) who now played the role of a random drunk here to harass him.

Finally they head into Amity Fine’s nightclub, returning to the main hall as the music goes on, and the players are given a description of the club’s VIP section.  We assign one side room as a private meeting area within the VIP area and the other side room counts as “Everywhere Else” outside the club.  Having three rooms really works out brilliantly as it’s great when people need to split up for more personal (or political) roleplay.

I, as Lead GM, portray Amity Fine’s simpering ghoul for a bit and do a little bit of fetching here and there.  One of the taxi driver players enters the game pretty quickly after their arrival as her actual PC, Guilherma de Miramont, is a local vampire who just happened to not be sucked off into the first session.

The other taxi driver player had to wait a bit, but not too long, as his PC was getting picked up from the docks by Gary Dodd (a PC currently in the game).  I sent the two of them into the “Everywhere Else” room for ten minutes to represent the car ride and give them a chance to chat en route.

I do recommend doing this as small group roleplay really does give people more of a chance to roleplay and get a handle on their characters … just don’t enforce too long a “sitting out period”.  Five to ten minutes does marvellously to sim.

Everyone had a name badge to help people remember.

There was a third PC to be introduced in game whose player wasn’t available until halfway through the game.  That worked out brilliantly as it gave a new injection of excitement just as the game was starting to slow down at the halfway mark.

I enter as an NPC from the first campaign arc called Peter Walsh and haul in a staked vampire that he’d fetched from inter-state.  Staked vampires from other cities certainly cause a bit of a splash and there was some searching of his pockets before unstaking him and later some interrogations in a side room.

Walsh ended up owing a boon to Amity Fine for just dragging in a random staked vampire unannounced.  He also ended up owing another one when the staked vampire (called Thomas McAllister) drank half a bottle of Lacrima without asking (vampire wine, costs around $1000 due to rarity).  An expensive night for the NPC!

There were words exchanged between McAllister and Amity Fine, and finally he was kicked from her club.  That could have been an awkward moment as the player would have nothing to do but as Amity Fine’s player needed to head off early, they all simply went to a different location where he could attend.

Amity Fine ended up in the harpy role that session, too.  Vampires and their love of boons.
Other major events that happened included:

*  Siobhan O’Baoill got drunk on Lacrima after realising that she dumped her fiancé to protect him after her Embrace (she has no memories of the past few years) and despite the other fledglings trying to distract her, she slipped out with Talitha Salvatore and was spotted by a police co-worker.  The trio almost went out through one of the (deadly dangerous) Shadow Walls together in his car when a ghostly image of her sire, Seamus, flashed before her eyes and she grabbed the wheel to swerve them out of the way.  They then went to bust into the old Women’s & Children’s Hospital where Talitha and Siobhan had once been held hostage but their antics were stopped at the door by Seamus’ arrival.  All of this occurred in the “Elsewhere Room.”

*  Jonathon Williams was a ghoul who had been drained to death in the first session and then came back as a Mekhet.  This means he has no sire.  In fact his creation just after his possession by a Strix has left him a creepy Khaibit who has connections to the incorporeal world.  He accidentally manifested some shadows on a few occasions, creeping out the court.

*  I traded notes with people to represent them texting people they knew though most of the vampires from Campaign 1 were incommunicado.

*  Much of the session was taken up with discussions from those with history in the city (i.e. from the first campaign), those who attended the first session and knew about the votes, and those who had newly arrived.

It was a pretty quiet first session (compared to the later sessions) since most of the characters didn’t know each other enough to feud and scheme but it worked out pretty nicely and gave people a good launching point.

Trail of Demonic Cthulhu: Base Demonic Template (edited)

So here's the rules of my new Trail of Cthulhu demons thus far.

Powers

Those fallen who are in possession of bodies will gain far fewer powers than the canonical World of Darkness versions.  Each fallen will gain a single power that has greater versatility, such as pyrokinesis, to encourage the players to think in terms of a defining power rather than a random assortment of magic. 

The Fallen will have an extra ability based on their full demonic form which holds true for all members of their House and two abilities that are unique to their particular purpose and sub-House.  Using their demonic form can draw the attention of local supernatural forces and can sometimes cause them more trouble than its worth.  It costs a point of Faith to use one's revelatory / apocalyptic form but it lasts until the Fallen wills it to end.  So long as they are wearing their apocalyptic form, they may suppress or re-establish their active abilities with a thought.  As an example, they may begin with wings, suppress them to move through a hallway, then unleash them again to fly over a gap.

They may use rituals, much as anyone else, but doing so typically causes their minds to brush the greater cosmos or even channel the power of Earthbound and Outer Gods, which is still stability shaking to them.  They may spend Faith instead of Stability on a 1 for 1 basis when using spells or rituals as part of the activation cost. 

Some things may become normalised to them with exposure and thus after each exposure the possible Stability cap will be reduced by 1 for each independent exposure.  This works twice as quickly for Deep Ones and Zombies which even humans can become inured to (not typical of the game but there are enough examples in the books of people being disturbed by the monsters but no longer falling into hysterics).

They still need to worry about losing sanity as they come to comprehend how the universe truly works - unravelling their human comprehension removes the bulwark of protection against the torments of the abyss, after all.

Base Abilities

When the Fallen die, they can potentially claim new Hosts.  The players have given me the power to simply provide them with a logical host after the first which I'll draw from the Masks of Nyarlathotep companion book or other NPC guides depending on the country they're in and the campaign they're playing.

Fallen heal faster than mortals.  Thus they heal 1 hit point per day without rest, 2 health points per restful day and 3 health points if given medical attention.  They can spend a point of faith to undo an injury (i.e. broken limb or lost finger) or regain health points on a three health points for one faith point basis.  Fallen also won't lose their last health point from bleeding out. 

 

The Fallen can also invoke each other using their celestial name which allows them to converse through whispers from across a field as though they were standing beside each other.  Once can detect this power's use through the Awareness skill.  Mortals can also invoke them with their celestial name but this is a one-way street.

It is a +3 stability cost to witness a demon's apocalyptic form and their reactions will be dependent on the Fallen's overall behaviour toward humanity.  A Fallen Angel who slaughters humanity with relish will provoke terror, while one who seeks to protect humans will typically leave them awestruck and astounded.  The cost will be reduced by one point for every encounter until the third encounter, whereupon the mortal will lose 1 point of sanity but no longer lose stability to gaze upon them as their mind has come to accept them.  After all, they are creatures that helped stabilise reality so they do not appear as "wrong" as most. 

Thralls only take a hit to their Stability the first time they see the Fallen.

Fallen angels may refresh their native faith pool (i.e. equal to their normal Faith rating) through the quiet worship provided by mortals but only if they have recently done something meaningful for that mortal (i.e. save their life, defend them in apocalyptic form, torture them).  This is called 'reaping faith' and it can be performed on a thrall if the situation is right.  Typically they may only do this once per case though exceptional circumstances may allow additional refreshes.
 

Additional Skills

Faith is a General Skill that is capped at 3 for starting characters.  Fallen may gain double their initial rating through pacts (i.e. temporarily increasing it to six) on a one Faith per pact basis.  There may be some occasions where a Fallen needs to roll their Faith rating as a contested pool though typically it is simply spent to perform an action.  Fallen recharge one Faith per day and must reap from mortals (see last paragraph in Base Abilities) or ravage their thralls to regain more (see Pacts below).

Awareness is a General Skill that is used as a sort of sixth sense for the supernatural that can sometimes glean further information, but is typically used as a divining rod for relics and current magical effects.

Eminence is an Investigative / Interpersonal Skill that is used as a sort of Credit Rating skill for the fallen.  There is also a downside in that other Fallen are more likely to remember their names and potentially even syllables of their True Name.

Legacy is an Investigative skill where Fallen may spend points to remember situations and events from before their time in the Abyss.  Most Fallen would have at least one point in this skill.  Typically spends will lead to short flashbacks.

In order to better reflect these skills, I have used a 28 / 75 point system.  Yes, these are a lot of points but in a two-player game with additional skill requirements I don't see this as a major hindrance.

Weaknesses

One can use their True Name to bind them to perform a certain number of actions to fulfil the sorcerer's will.  Earthbound can bind them forever if their True Name is known or even consume their souls should their hosts be broken before one.  Fallen can be banished or abjured against through mortal ritual and certain ritualistically enhanced items affect them more keenly than any mortals. They cannot succumb to mundane disease nor do they age, but they do need to eat, sleep and breathe like any mortal.  Elder Signs are particularly effective repositories of human faith (i.e. psychic energy) as they are already powerful occult matrices.  They don't need to see the Elder Sign, or know it's there, to be affected by it.  On the other hand, they can easily approach should they come across a neglected Elder Sign displayed prominently.

Pacts

The Fallen can make a pact with a mortal in exchange for more Faith.  Each mortal in a pact provides an additional point of temporary Faith but the Fallen may only have as many pacts as their Faith rating.  The Fallen may ravage the mortal for more faith (rolling his own Faith rating to see how much is gained) but this costs the mortal +7 stability and permanently reduces both their current and maximum sanity by two.
 

A mortal (aka thrall) under the effects of a pact ceases to age or be affected by the rigors of age (including rigors currently experienced), and gain three points in an investigative skill and five points in a general skill (may not be Sanity or Stability).  This skill may be Awareness and, indeed, is typically the only way such individuals may obtain that skill.  The Fallen can roll their Faith to sense the mortal's location, no matter where they are.

There is also a once off benefit at the point when the pact is established where the Fallen may either refresh all of the mortal's hit points to full while curing them of a disease or injury, or provide them with apparent youth and beauty, or provide them with 3 sanity points (as they remind humanity of their value in the world) or grant them the use of an apocalyptic form trait known to the master which costs the thrall -2 stability to use.  
The Fallen may also possess the thrall at will should they ever be ejected from their host.  They can also open up their thrall to possession by another, but only if the thrall's current stability or sanity has been reduced to 0 or they are unconscious.

Trail of Cthulhu meets Demon: the Fallen (because I can!)

I've always loved Call of Cthulhu campaigns but I've always loved Demon: the Fallen characters.  Ancient spirits corrupted by millennia in the abyss, who nevertheless fell for love of Humanity, who are now in possession of a host that infiltrates their own previously maddened minds with real emotion and memories, causing them to become some sort of hybrid ensures some very complex characters.

Plus the Demon: the Fallen setting includes these same Fallen sometimes being drawn into reliquaries where they become Lovecraftian monstrosities glutted and warped by the twisted faith of their evil cults.  And while the form of horror would be different … there is something terrible about looking up at some monstrous being and seeing your horrifically warped kin.  Actually there is something quite Lovecraftian about that, especially as these characters could warp the same way eventually….

Naturally this requires a few setting changes to both.  Namely the God who made the angels didn't make the universe but this portion of the galaxy and it made it according to certain rules that would stabilise reality and prevent the rise of more horrific entities.  It never told the angels this, of course, never thinking they would disobey as it couldn't truly comprehend them either.  It had three life giving planets created to support intelligent species that could clamp down on reality and prevent the infiltration of other entities.

These included the Elder Things, Mi-Go and Humanity.  The angels were divided in focus across these three planets and instructed to love them as much as they loved God (love = devotion in their terms) but these creatures were left in a state of blissful ignorance (which fits in with the Lovecraftian Knowledge = Sanity Loss).  Eventually one small prophetic angel set to examine the possibilities of the future foresaw something horrific coming and so one third of the angels (led by Lucifer) went to bring sentience to the three races so that they could be better prepared.

Things went well for a time, but then the Great Entity saw what they had done and offered to un-make the accidentally rebellious angels (they thought the Great Entity would want that)as penance and to remove sentience from the three main races.  Few angels agreed with the suggestions though a third of humanity and Mi-Go agreed (the Elder Things just telepathically projected themselves into the future to avoid what was coming).

The world was scoured by the Great Entity in its attempt to re-set the clock, protecting only the earlier obedient angels and those mortals who had chosen ignorance, but the fallen hid with their chosen people, divided up into five factions, and went to war.  A number of creatures were made during this war, such as the Deep Ones (products of the Palace of Sighs) and the Shoggoths (created by Elder Things empowered by Rabisu during the more enlightened eras).  Eventually they were rounded up and cast into the blackest pit, a place called the Abyss, in the lightness centre between solar systems.

Of the three races, Humanity was always the weakest, and yet in its weakness came a certain quiet fortitude in terms of holding the sanity-shredded otherworldly reality at bay.  While the Mi-Go quickly fell to the assault of otherworldly beings connecting to their minds, and the Elder Things fell to hubris, Humanity kept quietly churning along in a way that kept this solar system in particular from falling to the reality bending horrors that were right outside our door.

Eventually some of the fallen angels were summoned from the pit and found no sign of the other angels nor the Great Entity.  They were typically some of the more powerful spirits, since their names were more widely known in whispered dreams, and they could not possess humanity due to their great spiritual weight.  Instead they were cast into grave idols.  These fallen angels slowly devolved due to their own madness from the abyss and the fell prayers made to them and are now hideous versions of what they once were.

Many of these Earthbound Fallen are the fell entities of Call of Cthulhu and many of the splinter masks of Nyarlathotep are actually separate entities thought to be one.  The Arch Dukes are Cthulhu / Belial, Mask of the Bloody Tongue / Abaddon, Black Pharoah / Asmodeus, Daoloth / Dagon and Hastur / Azrael.  Only Dagon's original name has been changed to XXX to avoid confusion with a certain large Deep One.

Shub-Niggurath, Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth all remain as they are in the Lovecraftian universe as terrible things from beyond the stars, or causal principles given life.  Y'Golonac and the like are typically lesser Earthbound.  Of course if the players start to assume that all entities they glimpse belong to their own species they're going to get a very rude surprise.

MY POSTING HABITS

Well I've been posting very intermittently lately because of my Dark Before Dawn multi-modal LARP.  Something about running monthly LARP sessions, with attached downtimes, play-by-posts and tabletop scenes tends to fill up your day!  Especially as it's a high mechanics LARP (lots of rules!) with character sheets and booklets that constantly needed updating.  Things will slowly get back to normal (I think!) after late May once my finale is done.

Meanwhile I'm in the planning stages for the following LARP campaign - Paradise Island (monthly LARP sessions, nothing else), enjoying Southern Wilds LARP (fortnightly boffer LARP), and continuing my Iron Gods and Wrath of the Righteous campaigns (currently on hiatus due to upcoming Finale).

I'm also working on finally doing the Cthulhu campaigns I've always wanted now that I've found a second player with the same love of tactics, investigation and NPC interaction.  It's a little too heavy having to do it solo because of all the decision making required.  Two players should be perfect as it gives each player plenty of time to enjoy their characterisations -- and it's much easier to interrogate a witness with two (maybe three) players than with four to six.

I'll be doing the Cthulhu campaign a little differently, however, because it's me and I like to tinker with settings.  The tinker posts will be their own topic, though, and worth their own post.  I will say that it will be using the Trail of Cthulhu rules and that I might start in Innsmouth and move on to Masks of Nyarlathotep and then finish up with Mountains of Madness.  Presuming we have the energy for all of these!  And then Achtung Cthulhu may tempt me.

Wrath of the Righteous: The Midnight Isles (Getting There)

Wow!  I haven't updated Wrath of the Righteous for awhile.  So let's see if I can recap.  They obtained everything they needed and were pulled in to meet Queen Galfrey and the Herald of Iomedae in Nerosyan's Pathfinder Lodge.  There they were given their marching orders to assault Minagho's hideout, enter the Abyss, seal the rift behind them (with Queen Galfrey's assistance) and disrupt the Nahyndrian Crystal routes on the Abyssal side.

So they teleport to Minagho's hide out, well their teleportation goes awry so they need to spend some time journeying to it, and slowly slaughter the demonic inhabitants.  They do leave the cambion alive when he makes a deal for his life.  He is an alchemist whose worked on the Nahyndrian crystals, after all, so he seems useful to them.  He's also labouring under the delusion that they are Lawful Good (rather than Neutral Good and Chaotic Neutral) and that they'll obey their oaths to the letter (not truly understanding how lawful humans can adapt).

He gets charmed by Minagho (luckily they spot it and don’t figure it for a betrayal) and fights on her side until he's injured.  Then he spends his time using cure potions and staying out of it until fully healed, by which time Minagho and the others are all destroyed.  Then Queen Galfrey and her troops arrive and are disgusted by the sight of the cambion, but are willing to escort him to Drezen for interrogation.

Our heroes enter the abyssal rift while Queen Galfrey positions herself on the other side, and the two groups shove two pages from the Codex into the rift and chant it closed.

I skipped a few of the battles on the way through the caves as they weren't all that exciting compared to what was upcoming and wouldn't have proven a challenge anyway.  They reached the temple, correctly guessed the puzzle, and appeared in Alyshinyra. 

We then took a few weeks off as I had a bit of a think about what I'd like to do there.  After all, the book can't devote much space to describing it fully and truly and I didn't want it to feel like Cheliax for demonkind or only as strange as Kaer Maga.  I think I did a good job, in the end.  You can judge for yourself when I write it up next week!

Iron Gods: Beating "Father"

It's been a few weeks since the last one so I can't remember all of the details.  I know they took out the robots in the last room and then decided to go and chase down some information on their friendly neighbourhood drug dealing merchant whom they are damn sure is a Technic League spy.  Our lovely tiefling seduces him and the others (plus Cleric of Brigh as a witness) rock up to interrogate him under a spell that prevents him from lying.

Sanvil Trett deflects their questions for awhile before finally drawing his sword … and being soundly beaten and grappled.  Then he finally admits that he is a Technic League spy, but he's willing to defect so long as he can investigate the ruins once they're done.  They accept this possibility but keep him under house arrest at the Evercandle Inn for awhile as they go off to get a broken elevator part repaired (which takes a couple days due to bad rolls).

Once they have the part repaired, they decide to follow up on a lead given by their newfound "friend" into certain strange activities at a particular warehouse run by Garmen Ulreth.  While approaching the warehouse, they start getting headaches.  Going inside they find a couple thugs and having decided that punishing the previous thug left them with a bad taste in their mouth, they went non-lethal.

All except for Nathaniel who decides to go for the kill.

When the thugs press their attack, they manage to bolt the door on Nathaniel who stealths away and around the building, brooding.  The others manage to get inside and head into the office to try and intimidate Garmen Ulreth who's sitting in his makeshift office.  In the end, when Luna tries to open the wrong thing (or rather, the right thing), Garmen calls in his guards and attack.

Luna keeps the various doors shut and bolted while Garmen tries to get his troops in, and they kill Garmen Ulreth.  Once their boss is dead, they open the door and use his corpse as a reminder that the thugs should run.  Which they do.  Promptly.

They find a strange device in the warehouse but they don't yet know what it does.

And that's where we left them.