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EricW

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Everything posted by EricW

  1. Stonehenge was an astronomical calculator, helped determine whether spring started or summer ended. https://blog.britishmuseum.org/here-comes-the-sun-stonehenge-and-the-summer-solstice/ Wicker man was more of a family event, where people went to see all the criminals roasted alive. “See Johnny if you don’t behave that could be you one day!” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker_man
  2. Just give them a Browning 1911 specially chambered for .45. There were tons of them around after WW1, and they can always change magazine if they need more shots, or even have a special magazine made. People were tinkerers back then, so no problem with the availability of modified kit.
  3. Are people inside contact barriers like the Syndics Ban able to communicate with their gods? If so, why can't gods provide information about what is happening in those regions? If not, what happens to the worshippers and their descendants? Did Orlanthi lose their ability to teleport?
  4. Doesn’t Elmal help take care of the stead while the grownups are off heroquesting? And maybe Barbeester Gore, guarding the stricken Earth? That could be fun, Babs and Yelmalio trying to share a quiet afternoon. “Whose turn to change the nappy?”
  5. PCs only know they are losing sanity because they can look at their own stats. What happens to NPCs who are exposed once too often to the mission, who leave their humanity behind in their fanatical quest to destroy the mythos threat? Do NPCs who hit SAN 0 always end up joining the other side, or do some of them stay "true" to their quest, like war criminals who have spent too long on the battlefield, who believe their atrocities serve a greater cause?
  6. There is an awesome Spanish film adaption of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. This isn't a scenario, but might help with ideas.
  7. If the PC is spending an educational afternoon with Nyarlathotep, you could probably bend the rules and allow multiple SAN losses and mythos points. But a person who attracts that kind of attention is likely already doomed.
  8. Maybe Argrath had his kids after the moon fall. Which brings the question, what happened to Argrath?
  9. Probability is fun, well worth reading an introductory book. Some of it is very non-intuitive. For example, if you have a 10% chance of succeeding and you have 10x attempts, your success probability is not 100%. In this case you have to multiply the failure probabilities, so: 90% (chance of failure) x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% x 90% = 35% chance you won't succeed after 10 attempts. Even after say a million attempts, you have a small chance of failure. Even less intuitive, say someone presents you with 10 boxes, one of which contains a prize. The game master asks you to pick a box. Then the game master throws away all the boxes except the box you picked, and one other box, and asks you if you want to stick to your original choice, or pick the other box. In this case it always makes sense to pick the other box. Even though you now only have two choices, the history of how you arrived at that choice matters - it is far more likely the prize is in the other box (90%), than the original box you picked (10%). The reason - the probability you picked the right box on your first choice is still only one in 10, 10%, so the probability the other box contains the prize must be 90%. All good fun.
  10. According to King of Sartar, Eurmal taught men to speak to dragons. So the question is, was there ever an Eurmal Draconic cult? What was it like? Could Eurmal be persuaded to do this again? Who was the foolish man?
  11. Dragon Pass surely has a slightly draconic Earth Goddess? Maybe the idol is her statue?
  12. I think its difficult to capture how interesting London can be if you haven't spent time there. There is (was?) a tunnel entrance to Waterloo Station which at times is full of drug addicts - extremely dangerous, like Skid Row but underground. There are dark places and violence, even today, streets where muggers hang out in dark corners, like Roupell st between Southwark and Waterloo stations, which have probably been a mugger's haunt for centuries - yet nobody provides street lights, the locals just know to avoid that street at night. All those old little pubs, some of them seem to go out of their way to hide themselves - yet they are full of people. The old shops around Leister Square, where you really can find ancient tomes covered in dust, that can't be found anywhere else. Or that open market book stall under London Bridge, which nobody can remember when it started. A city full of life - yet turn a corner and you can suddenly find yourself in a very dark place. A place where people know each other but don't. Gangs and strange alliances and desperation bubbling just under the surface. An impersonal place - but sit down and very someone will approach you, for their own reasons - to ask you if you are OK, or to beg for a place to stay that night, or to invite you to a Dyanetics meeting, a political protest, or their small church group, or who knows what purpose. ** Don't worry I never get mugged. When you are 6'2 and 150Kg, muggers tend to approach you then change their minds...
  13. If your Yara is a Godlearner, then the "elephant" could be his doom, held in check for centuries since the fall of the God Learners. Or you could make it like Bridge of Birds, in which a sorcerer achieved immortality by an unspeakable heroquest abuse. Liberating the elephant sets nature right (cue sorcerer crumbling into dust, or being carried off screaming, or whatever). So many options to choose from...
  14. Of course its not just the divorce. There are several scary Earth cults women can join if they feel bitter about their treatment. I'm not sure what the options are for guys, I suspect nothing remotely socially acceptable...
  15. Personally I'm shocked at the laziness, I mean criminals have all that desert to bury bodies, yet they can't be bothered digging a hole, just dump the body in the water supply.
  16. Time to sign up to that secret cult, and join the back of the nom nom queue for the sacrificial feast which will herald the return of the Great Old Ones… 🙂
  17. I've never got it straight, what exactly is preventing Belintar from returning, which hero questers can't fix? My understanding is JarEel did something bad, but it seems strange that no Vargast Redhand or Harmast Barefoot has appeared to set things right?
  18. Maybe we're looking at this wrong. "... What the police did extract, came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. ..." - seems pretty structured to me. Maybe when the GOO finally arise, the undying cult leaders simply come out of hiding, and become the aristocracy of the cruel empire, by guiding humanity into a structured pattern which allows people to co-exist with their new masters, at least until the monster food runs out. Perhaps CoC story gave us a glimpse of this cruel future. The undying leaders gave instruction to Castro. Castro's group in turn preyed on the locals. But in time perhaps the locals would have come to an accommodation, where they provided sacrifices of their own free will, in return for Castro agreeing to be more socially sensitive about selecting sacrifices - like the villagers in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”. Most people in such a settlement - the villagers - would have been relatively sane, aside from the pain and loss of sacrificing a few of their number every month. Most of them would have had more sense than to go into the woods to spy on the cultists. The cultists in turn would have themselves been barking mad, but a functional form of insanity which allows them to co-exist with the normals, though there is no doubt who is in charge in that arrangement. Welcome to the cruel empire.
  19. Hmm. Rigidly ritualistic doesn't seem much like "... for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside ...", though to be fair maybe the ritual enabled those who embraced it to survive the "... holocaust of ecstasy and freedom ...". Perhaps most of them just keep their eyes closed during the interesting parts of religious services, have lots of group therapy sessions, and quietly dispose of the wizards who develop insanities which are un-conducive to community harmony. Do the GOO actually care what humans do with the sorcery they learn, so long as the sacrifices keep flowing their way? Nyarlathotep might occasionally take delight in taunting individual humans, or entire societies, and Cthulhu might be a bossy micromanaging b*stard, but most of the GOO seem way too impersonal to care what humans do with the power they share. Or maybe the humans in the cruel empire are all utterly insane. Old Castro in the Lovecraft CoC story was able to be civil, answer questions and give coherent descriptions of cult activities, but as an active and knowledgable participant in awful sacrifices and rituals he was probably totally insane in game terms.
  20. Perhaps thousands of years have provided a way to live with the mind wrenching fear. They might be insane from our POV, as per the prophecy in CoC. But it would be a very short lived empire if say kids couldn’t grow up into viable adults, whatever that would mean in such an age. “…The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.…”
  21. I always figured the Plateau of Leng was the horrible reality underpinning the myth of Shangri-La. Perhaps it is buried under ice, but will be revealed when global warming disturbs the balance, and the Great Old Ones begin stirring back to consciousness. As for the cruel empire, I doubt we fully understand it. The protagonist enjoys a long association with a resident of the empire in The Shadow Out of Time. I suspect people in the empire are not necessarily insane, the way people of our world go insane, more they have somehow made an accommodation with their horrible reality.
  22. Could explain Yelmalio fighting himself…
  23. Oh my, maybe the Hill of Gold like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where different groups of Christians regularly battle with clubs and other weapons over physical control the church, to decide who will perform important services to honour the Prince of Peace.
  24. Dorastor's chaotic leader Ralzakark claims to have been born in the Emprire of Light, but somehow survived Arkat's purge, until he was awakened in the second age (Dorastor - Land of Doom). I suspect there is a high chance any other powerful survivors of the Empire of Light would be similarly horrifying and perverse, and likely extremely dangerous - but very illuminated. So they wouldn't necessarily look dangerous.
  25. I'm a fan of The Chronicles of Bael, about a Lhankor Mhy who gets in way over his head with a chaos plot, but the last update was 2019...
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