Darius West

For those who haven't heard with regards to Lovecraft scholarship, one of the most original things about Lovecraft's writing is his creation of the philosophy of Cosmicism. The central notions of Cosmicism include an indifferent universe with no guiding intelligence (as realised in the mindlessness of the deity Azathoth), and the utter irrelevance of humanity in the scheme of things within that universe. In fact even the deities of the C'thulhu Mythos are no more than fish in an endless cosmic ocean that dwarfs them and makes them merely a scale larger than humanity but not necessarily more meaningful within the scheme of things. This probably even includes the Elder Gods, who, even as they created this universe were no doubt merely the products of another equally vast and indifferent universe. Lovecraft evokes these ideas in his horror fiction through the following means: 1. Deep Time. The use of geological time in the billions of years in stories such as At The Mountains of Madness. Within the scope of geological time, even on Earth, our home, humanity's entire history is miniscule. The inferrence being that we are but one more species that will come and go like many others before and after. 2. Ignorance is bliss. The juxtaposition of the revelations of science and progress with the notion that ultimately our pursuit of knowledge is a trap that is unravelling our sanity and humanity, and may ultimately destroy us. Thus we choose between a disempowering ignorance that feels comfortable and a monstrous truth that threatens to consume any meaning in out lives even while such knowledge may yet save our species. 3. Powerlessness. The idea that the forces we are dealing with are utterly beyond human ability to affect, even as a whole society. That the whole planet Earth is just a microscopic dot to an endless universe. Also, that humanity's ultimate destruction is as inevitable as our own personal deaths, and that humans are not only powerless, but they aren't even particularly interesting in the grand scheme of things. There are probably other techniques he used as well, of course. Now the questions... (a) What do you as a Keeper do to evoke Cosmicism in CoC that you think works best? (b) If you are mainly a player, what did your Keeper do that made you best feel Cosmic Horror ? and (c) Which Chaosium adventure best evokes Cosmicism in your opinion. (d) White chocolate is neither white nor chocolate. Discuss...

Yes, exactly mvincent, when I mentioned Blackmarsh Security I meant Blackwood Detective Agency. Thanks for the correction.

Personally I have met people who had an extreme dedication to a specialist pursuit of excellence in a single field. Many of them had Aspbergers Syndrome to some degree, while others were academics. They say 10,000 hours of study will make anyone a world class expert in any field, but what if you double that? Certainly such specialists are very good at one thing, and often quite bad at other pursuits.

Hi auyl, The way I am working it is by saying that the Nephilim are the larval form of the Elder Gods, and yes, the Elder Gods banished the Outer Gods. The way I put it elsewhere is that the humans are mixed up in it the way flora and fauna were mixed up in the WW2 battle for Peleliu.

Hi Spoon, When you look at the history of the BOI, it may not be quite what you are looking for. They were involved in federal juristiction crimes such as trafficing women across state lines for prostitution (The Mann Act), and hunting what were deemed the USA's domestic political enemies such as anarchists and communists. The BOI answered directly to the Department of Justice and specifically the Attorney General of the USA. With the advent of prohibition in 1920 and the totally inadequate response of the Treasury to a crime that essentially fell within its specific jurisdiction, the BOI was given a measure of responsibility in major breaches of the Volstead Act. https://www.fbi.gov/history/brief-history While it could be argued that if the USA was infiltrated by extraterrestrial aliens, that such would fall within the purview of the BOI prior to 1932, it is also likely that the scale of the threat and the sensitivity of the information would see a separate organization formed by memorandum, or the duties would be passed to an organization like the ONI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Naval_Intelligence . Another possibility is that it would be passed to the Black Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber, given the propensity for mythos tomes to need decoding, and the high mental competence and occult familiarity of that organization. The Black Chamber members IRL used to decode occult documents for practice, but notably failed to crack the Voynich Manuscript. It is not impossible that the Black Chamber could be given a covert investigations role against the mythos in the period before the Raid on Innsmouth in 1927 and the subsequent formation of Delta Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Green (if you want to use that source material). If an organization had the role of hunting the mythos, then any scenario could feasibly be used. If it were the BOI, then it would be harder to justify, unless the cultists had been performing crimes across state and county boundaries and local law enforcement wanted help. Another possibility is to use a private investigations company like the Pinkertons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency). They might feasibly be called in on any sort of case. I have used Blackmarsh Security from the Call of Cthulhu card game on occasion.

Good work Mankcam, as to how much SAN you lose by living in Australia... well that sort of depends. If you live by the coast in a city, you probably won't lose too much. On the other hand, does anyone really know when they have hit 0 SAN? Especially if it is a cultural norm? People who have enjoyed Convicts and C'thulhu may also enjoy this little game: https://www.clockworkempires.com/ It is a colonization game with thorough-going mythos overtones.

Umm... was Pavis really only a half elf? Because closer inspection of the myth may reveal that he was a bit more of a hybrid than that, potentially with dwarf, troll, and other admixtures besides. Adari has always been something of a crossroad and mixing pot of the races, as well as being a squalid little town like Corflu. I am of the opinion that Pavis was actually enough of a hybrid to constitute being a Man Rune more than a man. Also, don't humans who have sex with elves often get some sort of horrid fungal infection?

I agree with trystero that there should be some sort of proceedure for creating skills that effectively flesh out a character as is done sometimes half jokingly in scenarios. Personally I have always loathed the process by which everything is transferred over to being a lore or an art/craft, which is far more guilty of point spreading than any other skill system. As for Mike M's sugestion that adding skills that aren't specifically represented in scenarios will mean that players have wasted points, to this I would say, that is more a symptom of bad Keeping if you can't step even narrowly outside the published materials. "Heaven forfend the Keeper allow the players to stray off the railroad tracks in a published scenario so far as to use something other than a regulation skill". I would agree that other communications skills probably can take the place of streetwise however. On the other hand I notably disagree with the idea that somehow Police Proceedure defaults to Law. The two skills are simply not equivalent. Police are involved in enforcing the law and they will by necessity have some idea of what the law is, but, that is far from the same as having a formal education in torts, jurisprudence, contracts, family law, criminal law, commercial law etc etc. On close insepction one might even argue that the Law skill needs revision because there are too many sub-categories, and it needs to be divided into different disciplines like Science is divided into physics, biology, chemistry etc. But of course in this is simply adding more skills to the mix and that is, of necessity, a bad thing, isn't it? Despite the fact that IRL people can spend their whole lives perfecting their understanding of particular branches of the law without ever really dabbling in any of the others outside their tertiary education. I find it far more problematic that CoC has so many different communication skills i.e. Fast Talk, Intimidate, Persuade, Charm, when arguably the whole point of RPGs is for players themselves to do the communicating, so why have any communication skills at all? What is the point of calling it a role playing game if despite the player's best efforts to communicate well, it all comes down to a dice roll anyhow? Or more importantly, even if you were okay with that philosophical contradiction, why have 4 skills when one would suffice, i.e. Persuade (except without the ludicrous restriction that it takes 4 hours to perform). I mean, really isn't persuasion that what every communicaton skill is aiming to do anyhow ? Aren't charm, intimidation and fast talk merely communication tactics, not skills in themselves? I hope people enjoy this post, and understand that the purpose of the polemic is to encourage discussion more than anything else.

Well this is pretty cool.

Oh FFS. What you need to do is introduce an endearing NPC and have them be apparently lost in the woods. Remind players that losing a friend will cost them more SAN for running away than going and investigating. Have the Sheriff come and personally ask if they want to be involved in the search party. Let the players make a Psych roll to notice that the Sheriff is observing their reactions unnervingly closely, like he suspects something. Now they are in the woods with support. Support gives them the illusion of security; build up the sense that perhaps the woods as a whole seem normal, even pretty. Then draw their attention to something that seems bad which is a red herring, like a savaged deer carcass. What your cowardly players need is an adult to hold their hand... Of course you do have to ask yourself how much you are railroading your players. Railroading is easy if you know how, but it also sort of sucks for your players if their characters are too SAN thrashed. Have they really earned the punishment through stupid decisions or has it just been cruel dice?

That is so cool styopa ! I assume the HPLHS will descend on you now.

So basically the character is severely brain damaged. They still eat and breathe and move but they are operating at an animal or infantile level. They have lost most of the power of speech, but may remember simple words and commands, but behaviors will have to be trained as with animals. They likely have no sense of self i.e. they have no reflexive association with the idea of themselves as a person, they cannot "be" they merely "do". They have no notion of deferred gratification i.e. they cannot plan ahead. They also have no theory of mind i.e. they don't identify with people and don't understand their relationship with other people because they don't recognise sentience in others or themselves. It goes without saying that they will not be toilet trained, and will have no notion of personal hygiene. They may also become aggressive if frightened. They will also scream quite a lot because they don't understand what they are doing. They make Ruprecht the Monkey Boy seem like the model of civility.

Good stuff Warchilde, and somewhat similar to where I went and am going with it. I had a good deal of fun with Atlantis and my players are still very excited about it. There are 3 player characters in the party: "The Cat": International man of mystery. Could even half of what they say about him be true? Aurelie Butcher-Bourgeois: A bohemian seeress from a rich family who is in some sort of open relationship with The Cat. Frank Torgeir: Circus strongman, now chauffer and bodyguard to The Cat. As background, The Cat has been doing business with the Rum Runners of the Biminis and Bahamas. Essentially he has a shipyard where he builds or reconditions sloops, fills them with re-plated stolen cars, and sells the whole lot at auction to the Rum Runners, making a tidy profit. Some of that money has gone into the purchase of South Cat Cay where The Cat has hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a Resort complex capable of standing up to any hurricane that he can use to further cement his domination of the Rum Running. It turned out that South Cat Cay is actually built on the remains of an old Atlantean Pharos, and that Mr. Wright is actually the present incarnation of the Nephilim "Imhotep". There they found a crystal ball that linked to another crystal ball and with magic they figured out that it was near Berry Island. They could also see a pyramid under water. After a preamble that involved chartering a boat and using the side effect of a gate spell to provide them with gills temporarily, the party wended their way to the pyramid after recovering the other crystal. They had by this stage managed to win Wright's trust after am incident with wraiths in the Pharos so he came too. Wright, being a Nephilim could understand Senzar. The pyramid subjected them to a "ritual cleansing" announced by a hologram that only Wright could understand, and they were all hit with a series of nasty rays before they were finally healed. They were then allowed entry through huge Iris doors. They found the Pyramid was devoted to Atlas and staffed by cyclops automata which Wright was able to ascertain were going through the motions of maintaining the facility on an emergency footing. After a bit of fancy footwork the party figured out that they could effectively apply for Atlantean citizenship and take up "jobs" in the Pyramid provided they could supply enough paper and ink to get the cyclops bureaucrats to provide forms. They also realised that the cyclopses were willing to pay in gold for cargoes of "essential goods". Literate Atlanteans had access to documents stored on "Crystal tablets", but sorcerers had to store their spells (by law) on Emerald Tablets. The party came within a hair's breadth of causing a "security breach" that would have killed them all by opening a gate withing the Pyramid, but thought better of it thanks to Aurelie being on the ball, and set it up outside. They found that the system for negotiating transit to the rooms was managed by way of statues that animated, and would quasi-teleport you withing the structure if you kissed them. Some parts of the pyramid were intact, other parts were too damaged to enter, but the party has so far managed to redeem $20,000 US in gold and they are pretty happy.

For what it is worth, I opted to solve my little Atlantis dilemma by incorporating Nephilim, as it has an interesting background that is rich in Atlantean lore that fits quite well with CoC after a bit of tweaking. In my Campaign, the Nephilim are basically a species of terrestrially generated Spirit parasites who are also the larval stage of the Elder Gods, and their presence on Earth is one of the things that drew the Mythos in to feed. Essentially the humans are an afterthought, a bit like being the wildlife on Peleliu prior to the US Marines landing to fight Japan.

I am a bit flummoxed by how to manage HQ missile combat. Could someone maybe talk me through a fight between a party of Yelmalio Phalangites (20 with pikes, 10 with bows) versus a similar number of Sable riders (10 with lances, 20 with bows), assuming everyone's primary skills and their augmenting skills being at about 1W, it being a fine day in Prax, and with the fight being conducted initially with the Sable riders coming up a dry "serpent" bed out of sight of the Yelmalios ?

I bought Convicts & C'thulhu but I can't see why any of this has to be mis-attributed to the Mythos. All the horror and disappearances are a perfectly normal part of the Australian way of life in the outback, thanks to Australia's unique fauna. We took my Norwegian in-laws out to our cabin at Harrietville and they all nearly lost their shit over a couple of spiders the complained were the size of coffee tables. I mean, spiders make bloody great coffee tables; they're a big fuzzy novelties if you ask me, and we trained them to bring the drinks closer, but the Norwegians didn't seem to want the beer, and that is very unlike Norwegians. Spiders though are not so bad; feed them right and they will eat off your hand (of course feed them wrong and they will eat off your hand up to the elbow). I think everyone is just over-reacting. Have a look at this lovely series of slides from Tourism Australia http://www.swifty.com/destinations/7681/17-nope-animal-pics-that-prove-australia-is-absolutely-terrifying/#slide/0 A trip to Australia is an unforgettable experience, and very affordable at 8-20 SAN loss net total. Here are some lovely places to visit: http://www.castleofspirits.com/blackmount.html http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=16290 https://portarthurparanormal.com/ http://www.mynrma.com.au/travel/holiday-ideas/nt/the-lost-city-in-limmen-np.htm https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/wolfe-creek-crater http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/the-chilling-record-of-lost-lives-at-devils-pool/2008/12/01/1227979901593.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521752/Children-incest-cult-living-deformed-mute-Australian-valley.html https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g552137-d9559909-Reviews-Asylum_Ghost_Tours-Beechworth_Victoria.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_shark_attacks_in_Australia http://listverse.com/2011/03/30/top-10-most-venomous-snakes/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/viral-video/11446648/Watch-Deadly-snake-and-killer-spider-duel-in-Australia.html Yeah, getting through all of that probably cost you about 2d4 SAN. Man up and stop whining.

Thanks rsanford. The way Nephilim is written it is easy to be sympathetic to the nephilim, but in many ways they are every bit as bad as the various secret societies determined to destroy them suspect. They are essentially weird and unnatural body invaders. The Star Arcanum are interesting in my game as they seek to discover "alien nephilim" who are in fact the Great Race of Yith. Naturally the Great Race are not interested in being found and the probable negative impact on their time line to their next species jump. One of the ideas I have been playing with is that the reason that C'thulhu and the whole Xothian civilization have attacked Earth and currently lie dormant is because the Nephilim are actually infant Elder Gods, and when the stars are right and the Mythos rises they can consume the young of their great enemies and potentially escape this, their prison Universe. The Nephilim of course want to escape that fate, and that means transcending out of the world through the Subtle Realms asap. Another thing that I am using is that some humans know the secrets of initiation, which in Nephilim terms means that they have an awakened Solar Ka, and this is true of all Dreamers i.e. people who have entered the Dreamlands. The problem is however that Nephilim are not human, and so cannot enter the Human Dreamlands, as they were locked out as part of the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis. (Atlantis physically sank, but it also sank into the human unconscious). As a result, the Nephilim can only physically enter the "Subtle Realms" by way of the spell "The Gate of Oneirology", which is a rare one (Needless to say that the campaign focuses heavily on players finding the clues to find the clues to work that out). Once in the Dreamlands however, the Nephilim are at a huge advantage, because they are the true originators of the Dreamlands, for example they can invent new spells there. As far as SAN loss for seeing Nephilim goes, they are rated by their level of transformation, 1-20 =0/1d2, 21-40=0/1d4, 41-60=0/1d6, 61-80=0/1d8. Not every SAN check is about being scared out of your wits, sometimes it involves a loss of your sense of reality. Viewing a Nephilim who is using some of their magic can also incur more SAN loss, e.g. You see an Angel with Burning Bands of Flame and Wind surrounding them; seeing an angel is bad, but the extra special effects add to how alarming that will be.

Has anyone else noticed how easily a game of Nephilim can be crossed into C'thulhu? There are a few hang-ups, in that the esoteric history of the Nephilim doesn't quite fit in with the broader and geological time history of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it is easily possible to create work-arounds. In essence, the Nephilim are a species of immortal spirit parasite that have followed a very similar trajectory on an evolutionary scale to that of the Great Race of Yith. The difference being that the Nephilim are of terrestrial origin, while the Yithians are aliens. As for Nephilim magic, it makes for an interesting juxtaposition to that of the Mythos. The links between the Nephilim and Atlantis are well established, but the Mythos makes only casual reference to Atlantis, making the question of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, and Thule, open slather as to what a Keeper wants to do with them. Of course by involving Nephilim this also serves to make the "magic of Atlantis" largely unavailable to player character human investigators. For me, the most interesting thing to develop is the Dream Lands as a Subtle Realm. The Subtle Realms are where the magic of the Nephilim comes from, and clearly dreams and the dream lands are intensely magical, so perhaps the Nephilim created the Dream Lands as a sort of virtual reality and magical laboratory ? Has anyone considered that perhaps Innsmouth is merely a colony of Tritons at an advanced stage of Nephilim transformation? I would be interested in how other people have developed these ideas, as I KNOW this is not an original idea.

The Chaosium supplement "Enlightened Magic" essentially covers translating Nephilim magic into BRP.

When I saw the title "Nephilim Clone" I immediately thought it would reference Chaosium's BRP supplement "Enlightened Magic". This item essentially takes the magic from Nephilim in a form that allows it to be incorporated into any BRP game.

Thanks for the flood of help everyone. What I am specifically looking for is fonts for Aklo (a couple exist, but I don't like them), Elder Thing Cipher, Mi-Go runes, Muvian Naacal, R'lyeh Glyphs, Senzar and Tsath-Yo. I am well aware of the fine work of the HPLHS, in fact I bought their fonts back in 2013. The HPLHS site has some really great period fonts, but they don't have the fonts I'm looking for. Here is what I have come up with thus far... http://www.fonts2u.com/hieratic-numerals.font Egyptian Heiratic makes a better Aklo imo. http://www.fontspace.com/digital-type-foundry/enochian Might as well use Enochian for Enochian http://www.dafont.com/iokharic.font Iokharic is a fine looking jagged script that is vaguely like Senzar http://www.dafont.com/rongorongo.font Rongorongo, the characters from Easter Island are a bit like R'lyeh Glyphs...obviously a derived language http://www.fonts2u.com/maya-hieroglyphics.font Mayan Heiroglyphics provide a decent Naacal font http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1221931/rosicrucian_cipher Rosicrucian Cipher Font. http://www.fonts2u.com/masonic-cipher-symbols.font Masonic Cipher font http://io9.gizmodo.com/5218119/13-alien-languages-you-can-actually-read' This site was an eye-opener. http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/conlangs.htm This one is cool too. Don't get me wrong, I love period fonts for the 1920s too and I have quite a few, but I am after "constructed language" mythos fonts. For those who have the Keeper's Companion 1 from 6th Ed, the article on pages 38-40, with special reference to the illustrations provided as examples. When keeping, I give out handouts in these fonts periodically and award the first people to decipher them a +5% in the language in question. Normally I only use a simple substitution cipher to make it do-able. My players love it and look forwards to it... perhaps they are already insane?

As a keeper I have always enjoyed making my own handouts, and to that end I have gathered a few fonts together to stand in for various runes, glyphs and sigils of the various mythos creatures. One of my dearest wishes is that Chaosium would release official fonts for languages like Aklo, Tsath-Yo, Senzar, etc.

Thanks Vorax. I will definitely go have a look.

So far I have decided to provide the ruins of the lighthouse with a few things. A crystal ball that acts as a visual communicator... but with what? Shards of a large lens that if all the pieces are found will produce a 2 million candlepower light capable of stunning anyone who looks at it, but weights 50lb and needs to be powered by magic points or a ley line. There is also a parchment bag with a string. You pull the string and it heats up rapidly and turns into a flying lantern that is very bright and hot and flies straight up. There is also a lot of high quality orichalcum wire that was once used to tether a rescue kite. As to monsters, I am thinking one lonely but terrible wraith of an Atlantean lighthouse keeper.

That's true, Deep ones are a good fall back. I was thinking more something like a magical item that probably shouldn't be messed with... that players will inevitably mess with... Something a little like the crystal ball in this link http://www.philipcoppens.com/nap_art15.html but more problematic.