Magic in Call of Cthulhu

[RogerDee]

I have mentioned about about running a campaign where players are immortals running through the ages. While browsing Raiders of Ryleh, it was talking about Occult magic, and Mythos magic. So it started me thinking....what if I used magic from Aquelarre for occult stuff, and then used the Grimoire for the Mythos stuff.

Has anyone tried doing this? Planning on doing this?

[rsanford]

57 minutes ago, RogerDee said:

I have mentioned about about running a campaign where players are immortals running through the ages. While browsing Raiders of Ryleh, it was talking about Occult magic, and Mythos magic. So it started me thinking....what if I used magic from Aquelarre for occult stuff, and then used the Grimoire for the Mythos stuff.

Has anyone tried doing this? Planning on doing this?

I wish I was that far advanced with Aquelarre... I haven't finished reading it yet and the first game is likely months away. Sounds fun though!

[RogerDee]

45 minutes ago, rsanford said:

I wish I was that far advanced with Aquelarre... I haven't finished reading it yet and the first game is likely months away. Sounds fun though!

Cool, thanks mate.

Looking forward to starting it soonish.

[EricW]

I think the risk is if your immortal can just fling magic about without personal risk, what kind of plot could you provide to make things seem dangerous?

You could maybe tone down the power a bit. Your "immortal" could be a wizard who lost their memory and somehow regained some sanity, and has no idea why they don't get older. All sorts of plot lines possible, the peril of regaining memory, strange skills popping into their minds, disturbing nightmares if they encounter the mythos, old "friends" who know more about what is happening than the PC, ordinary folk trying to kidnap the PC for medical experiments, all sorts of fun.

There's a cool low budget movie + sequel, "The Man from Earth", about someone who tells a story to his university colleagues about how he is 30,000 years old. No magic, no special powers other than a claim of immortality, but some pretty wild stories.

Edited September 4, 2020 by EricW

[rsanford]

11 hours ago, EricW said:

I think the risk is if your immortal can just fling magic about without personal risk, what kind of plot could you provide to make things seem dangerous?

You could maybe tone down the power a bit. Your "immortal" could be a wizard who lost their memory and somehow regained some sanity, and has no idea why they don't get older. All sorts of plot lines possible, the peril of regaining memory, strange skills popping into their minds, disturbing nightmares if they encounter the mythos, old "friends" who know more about what is happening than the PC, ordinary folk trying to kidnap the PC for medical experiments, all sorts of fun.

There's a cool low budget movie + sequel, "The Man from Earth", about someone who tells a story to his university colleagues about how he is 30,000 years old. No magic, no special powers other than a claim of immortality, but some pretty wild stories.

Is that the one where the guy told his colleagues that he was in fact Jesus Christ and that he had borrowed a lot of ideas from Bhudism?

[EricW]

3 hours ago, rsanford said:

Is that the one where the guy told his colleagues that he was in fact Jesus Christ and that he had borrowed a lot of ideas from Bhudism?

Yep

[RogerDee]

On 9/4/2020 at 7:57 AM, EricW said:

I think the risk is if your immortal can just fling magic about without personal risk, what kind of plot could you provide to make things seem dangerous?

You could maybe tone down the power a bit. Your "immortal" could be a wizard who lost their memory and somehow regained some sanity, and has no idea why they don't get older. All sorts of plot lines possible, the peril of regaining memory, strange skills popping into their minds, disturbing nightmares if they encounter the mythos, old "friends" who know more about what is happening than the PC, ordinary folk trying to kidnap the PC for medical experiments, all sorts of fun.

There's a cool low budget movie + sequel, "The Man from Earth", about someone who tells a story to his university colleagues about how he is 30,000 years old. No magic, no special powers other than a claim of immortality, but some pretty wild stories.

Having refined my idea, and having purchased Apocthulhu, perhaps if the players are at the end of civilisation? They find a spell sending them back in time, and can work to stop the end. Only problem here is they change history too much. 

So maybe have them survive through the ages. Heck, may even have them survive history such they end up in a Star Trek type future. Maybe....

The film Man from Earth (guy who wrote it also wrote Requiem for Methyseleh from TOS Trek), and its sequel Holocene Man is exactly what inspired the idea actually.  Great minds and all that. Essentially immortals will get small bonuses to stats during chargen, kind of like in Highlander series how immortals are stronger and faster, but it is marginal. So they are killable but it is not easy to do.

Occult (Aquelarre) magic generally requires ingredients, but for Mythos magic, as per Grand Grimoire, that is absent, and very hard to find a teacher. With it being more pulpy, (Robin of Sherwood inspired too) having an immortal use magic is okay. There will be no permanent attribute expenditures, or san loss. That may be reserved for more powerful nagic, but only temporary. Players will have a hard enough time as it is, being infirm would ruin it.

From a world building perspective, before Atlantis a few humans became immortal, because magic was more common then their powers fell into legend. An age later they became known as Olympians. They're dead now, probably. What killed them? Well who would want to poke that hornet's nest? Any immortal must have some kind of deathwish.

Because we are pulpy, the players are heroes, flawed and fighting a battle they cannot win. But that does not stop them putting out a few fires.

And they are not alone.

Delta Green are also fighting the good fight. Maybe an unchanging immortal that keeps popping up in history may get noticed? Perhaps DG will help them? And there are other organisations are out there too. Most are not benevolent - some seeking power, a good number totally malevolent. Will an immortal get on their radar, and could their unending lifeforce be used to power spells?

Best they don't find out.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by RogerDee

[EricW]

4 hours ago, RogerDee said:

Having refined my idea, and having purchased Apocthulhu, perhaps if the players are at the end of civilisation? They find a spell sending them back in time, and can work to stop the end. Only problem here is they change history too much. 

So maybe have them survive through the ages. Heck, may even have them survive history such they end up in a Star Trek type future. Maybe....

The film Man from Earth (guy who wrote it also wrote Requiem for Methyseleh from TOS Trek), and its sequel Holocene Man is exactly what inspired the idea actually.  Great minds and all that. Essentially immortals will get small bonuses to stats during chargen, kind of like in Highlander series how immortals are stronger and faster, but it is marginal. So they are killable but it is not easy to do.

Occult (Aquelarre) magic generally requires ingredients, but for Mythos magic, as per Grand Grimoire, that is absent, and very hard to find a teacher. With it being more pulpy, (Robin of Sherwood inspired too) having an immortal use magic is okay. There will be no permanent attribute expenditures, or san loss. That may be reserved for more powerful nagic, but only temporary. Players will have a hard enough time as it is, being infirm would ruin it.

From a world building perspective, before Atlantis a few humans became immortal, because magic was more common then their powers fell into legend. An age later they became known as Olympians. They're dead now, probably. What killed them? Well who would want to poke that hornet's nest? Any immortal must have some kind of deathwish.

Because we are pulpy, the players are heroes, flawed and fighting a battle they cannot win. But that does not stop them putting out a few fires.

And they are not alone.

Delta Green are also fighting the good fight. Maybe an unchanging immortal that keeps popping up in history may get noticed? Perhaps DG will help them? And there are other organisations are out there too. Most are not benevolent - some seeking power, a good number totally malevolent. Will an immortal get on their radar, and could their unending lifeforce be used to power spells?

Best they don't find out.

 

 

Interestingly a few years ago I wrote to the author and suggested a third movie based on an unstoppable ancient disease, which emerged from a corpse buried in permafrost which melted due to global warming.
 

Only one person’s blood has the antibodies, because the immortal is the only living human who ever encountered and survived the ancient disease.

So to save humanity he has to reveal his secret.

Author liked the idea but sadly the third  movie never got made AFAIK.

Edited September 8, 2020 by EricW

[RogerDee]

1 minute ago, EricW said:

Interestingly a few years ago I wrote to the author and suggested a third movie based on an unstoppable ancient disease, which emerged from a corpse buried in permafrost which melted due to global warming.
 

Only one person’s blood has the antibodies, because the immortal is the only living human who ever encountered and survived the ancient disease.

So to save humanity he has to reveal his secret.

Author liked the idea but sadly never got made.

Strangely there are a series of books, e.g. Immortal from Hell. Adam is an immortal around 60k years old. It starts off as a slightly tongue-in-cheek urban fantasy, only with no magic. The races like demons and vampires have existed on Earth. He encounters another immortal, who can enter another dimension, and use it to become seemingly out of phase.

It turns out there are other beings that live there. They worship her, as does hunanity under such names as Kali. Although she prefers the name Eve. She hates Adam, as there was another group of immortals, all dead except her.

Adam killed them all, but he cannot remember doing so. Weirdly a disease has started to afflict her - immortals can only die through violence, and can survive any kind of virus, disease, or bio-warfare; Adam was captured at one point and the government tried.

This strange virus only affects nonhumans, so Adam is looking for a cure. 

Except she seems to have recovered.

On the last book at the moment. It us a kind of fun little series, which also acted as inspiration for this rp too.