NPC idea for 1920s San Francisco....

[Merlin Monroe et alia]

I just had an idea for a grayish-morality, sympathically villainous organization for my upcoming 1020s City by the Bay (San Francisco) CoC campaign, currently tentatively titled "The Fog Hides", "Who Are You When the Fog is in You?", and/or "When Will the Fog Reach Home?"

My group is full of queerdos, mostly all involved in a chain of nonmonogamy ("polycule") around the new eldritch monster in my life. 
PCs:
Lesbian journalist who came to SF to get away from homophobic Orthodox Jewish family
Chinese-American waiter struggling to resist the tong violence they've been pushed into by racist society
parapsychologist/former freakshow act who doesn't realize he's a deep one hybrid
ghoul zealot, deity tbd

Thought I'd start with the adventure "The Ferry Ride" from *Secrets of San Francisco*, in which a midnight ferry ride is interrupted by a mysterious junk (Chinese boat) carrying Mythos-opium. Masked people then sneak on & take the cargo, implying that they knew it was there & had something to do with its passage from China to the Bay without a living soul on board.

Here's the idea. What do you think? Point me at inspirations? Any ideas to flesh it out?

A small cult (name TBD) of Uranians (homosexuals) worships the Magnum Innominandum/Nameless Mist & Hastur. Hearing their entire life that they harbor the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, they take these beings as patrons, as unnameable as their love.

The cult fought (met?) in China during WWI, discovering nightmare opium & hatched a plan to smuggle it into the States by TBD magical means for TBD ends (possibly just money).

I'd make them the primary lurking threat to start the campaign, leading (hopefully) to my PCs finding it difficult to oppose them, as they certainly understand what homophobia feels like.  At that point, it would be up to the players whether they become allies, enemies, frenemies, enimallies, a resource, a project, whatever.

Thoughts?  Ideas?

[soltakss]

The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name is an interesting concept and fits very well. the members could be people alienated from society and free to behave as they want, inside cult bounds. It sounds like a Secret Society, as well, for there is a big overlap between cults and secret societies.

If the PCs meet NPC members of the cult, socially, by accident or deliberately arranged by cultists, they could find, at first, a group of sympathetic people with a similar lifestyle, they could get sucked further into the cult through favours and so on, each step revealing something deeper. They don't have to realise that it is a cult straightaway, in fact it probably works better as a loose organisation with the cult stuff reserved for deeper members. 

[EricW]

I've always thought of the relationship between being a cultist and sex as being like the relationship between a meth head or heroin addict and sex. Initially the magic and frenzy might drive heightened sexuality, but after a while the madness displaces all remotely normal urges. To put it another way, to a cultist, a sexually attractive person is not for seduction, they're a useful ingredient for powerful necromancy, or a fitting vessel for birthing the mythos hybrid who will bring down the world of mankind. A cultist might use seduction to lure their victim to the temple, but the end goal is not sex, in any normal sense.

There are exceptions, like deep ones want to have lots of sex with humans, and insane cultist humans at least tolerate this attention, if not relish it - the selling point is the gold, the magic, and that the children will never die from old age. But this seems more transactional than based on genuine sexual urges, at least from the POV of the humans, though who knows where the insanity leads in this case.

Edited November 27, 2021 by EricW