Black science

Mention black magic and what comes to mind is curses, necromancy, blood sacrifice, summoning demons, making pacts with Things From Beyond. All of this is obviously bad and wrong. You can immediately recognise that magic is black because there's never any positive outcome from, eg., raising the dead. A curse is a nefarious thing, even if you're cursing for a good reason. 

I'd like to create a concept of black science. Not just science conducted by illicit means, but science that poisons its goals, offends the gods (if they exist) and generally gets the scientist chased out of town by a pitchfork-wielding mob. Which might turn out to be nothing more than magic with added blinkenlights, but if that's the case then so be it.

Science is often considered to be equal but opposite to magic, particularly in RPGs. If you're talking about black science, you're talking about:

• Re-animation
• Opening portals to the hell dimension
• Mind control
• Mutating victims
• Harvesting organs/fluids
• Killer robots
• Blowing up the moon. (Too specific?)
• Draining energy from intelligent beings
• Planarianism (learning by extracting the brain of someone who knows what you want to know)
• Altering history
• Biowar/chemwar
• Bargaining with evil aliens

(Note: Since assembling this list I've been informed that it's only black science if you don't know what you're doing. If you know exactly what you're doing, it's black engineering.)

There's obviously some cross-over here. You could imagine a guy in a labcoat and butcher's apron trading threats with a guy in a purple robe and butcher's apron over the top of a freshly filled grave. Elizabeth Bathory took blood from her servants to stay young, Alexander Bogdanov took blood from his students. In DC's old Captain Marvel comics, one of the villains was Dr Sivana, who could speak a scientific formula that allowed him to walk through walls.

What does a black scientist want?

Money, power, revenge, respect... the usual gamut. He may also be motivated by a pure but reckless curiosity about things that mankind were obviously Not Meant To Know. A willingness to sacrifice others in pursuit of forbidden knowledge is a given. You don't make a megalomania omelette without breaking a few egos. Black scientists aren't necessarily mad, but they have an intensity that smaller minds can't match.

 

Signs and portents

 

Evidence that there's black science going on should leak out in the form of mass headaches, deformed animal births, mass bird deaths. A hint that someone's messing with radiation and/or ultrasonics. Power drains? Stepford people? MIBs? Mysterious lights at night?

Stepfords could be people who've thrown their ambitions in with the scientist ("Dr Deathbringer is a respected member of our community! His portal to the vampire dimension will bring industry and business back to this town!") or actual smiling zombies ("Dr Deathbringer knows what's right. We should do as he says. Dr Deathbringer knows what's right. We should --"). In the latter case, they could turn into rage zombies if something takes them outside the parameters of their programming.

I like the idea that black science inadvertently summons or even creates Men in Black. Maybe they're observers from elsewhere. Maybe antibodies in a universal immune system. Always enigmatic. Sometimes working for the scientist, sometimes opposing him.

 

Witch marks

 

Lab coats, jacob's ladders, and cackling laughter are a bit on the nose, aren't they? So maybe we don't use those. Wild hair and a tendency to rant is fair game, though. Poor social skills. A general lack of patience for ignorant outsiders.

Question: is this just a reskinned magician? Mmm, possibly. Better question: what kind of game do I intend this for? Probably not off-the-shelf fantasy. Something pulpy? Something post-WWII-cold-war-red-scare-stranger-danger-ish.

The Infamous Blackie Powells

Blackie Powells is a pirate who committed a series of daring but inexplicable crimes. He kidnapped a theatre troupe. He burned a logging camp. He smashed a dam. He was the puzzle and the laughing stock of the kingdom until his master plan came together and he made off with a good portion of the royal treasury.

"He kidnapped the actors so he could dress his men in their town guard costumes... he burned out the loggers so the river would be choked with logs and the ferry couldn't operate.. he smashed the dam to lower the water level and expose the old ford. It's genius!"

That was a generation ago. Blackie's reputation has grown and grown because since that time, people have been blaming their failures on him. No, I didn't fall asleep and let the flock wander off -- Blackie took them! Of course I made all the pots you ordered -- but I watched Blackie himself throw them all down the well! Blackie held me at knifepoint just to let the loaves overcook!

What crime did Blackie commit here (2d12)?

1. Stole
2. Burned
3. Seduced
4. Painted
5. Undermined
6. Disguised
7. Forged
8. Pickpocketed
9. Delayed
10. Framed
11. Drugged
12. Rebuilt

1. A noble's daughter
2. A herd of cows
3. A farmer's cart
4. A blacksmith
5. A barn
6. A boat
7. A fisherman's wife
8. A stone keep
9. A town guard
10. A flock of crows
11. A cabinet
12. A stables

In order to (2d12):

1. Hide
2. Impersonate
3. Replace
4. Steal
5. Destroy
6. Surprise
7. Rob
8. Trick
9. Abduct
10. Antagonise
11. Redirect
12. Corrupt

1. A magistrate
2. A guard troop
3. A wealthy merchant
4. A baker's wife
5. A trade guild
6. A church
7. The baron's children
8. A widow
9. A bardic trio
10. A hunting party
11. A tax collector
12. A royal herald

The truth, if the characters manage to discover it, is a bit different. Blackie Powells retired and lived a quiet life after his big heist. Now he's an old man in a house too big for him, being gently bullied by his three adult daughters. They won't let him have strong drink, or red meat or salty cheese! They want him to drink spring water and eat leafy greens and walk outside in the sunshine for an hour every day! In fact, if the characters can help with his scheme to get away from them, he'll give them a share of the remaining gold. He just needs them to commit a small list of inexplicable minor crimes...

What if we kicked Cthulhu's arse? - part 2

Part 2: The bad stuff.

Read part one of this article here.

Ithaqua

The world is freezing. Ithaqua is spreading his influence from the poles, extending great sheets of ice down across North America and up through Australia. The seas are beginning to ice over. Greenland and Siberia are uninhabitable. Scandinavia is gone. Maybe Ithaqua is taking revenge for Cthulhu, maybe he just sees an opportunity to take over now that we're enforcing Cthulhu's sleep.

It isn't normal cold. The UN has tried to reverse the cooling by launching giant orbital mirrors to collect more sunlight, and pumping heat-retaining chemicals into the atmosphere. They made no difference. Every year the ice walls eat away another hundred kilometres of arable land.

November

The most immediate threat to the world is the people given the job of protecting it. Stolid and unimaginative as they are, November agents get repeatedly exposed to influences the human mind isn't built to tolerate. Counselling, drugs, working in pairs and in some cases specialised forms of brain surgery aren't always enough to keep them stable. Some go independent, striking out on their own to fight the mythos without government backing or approved methods. Some go rogue and sell their skills to organised crime. Some go mad and turn cultist. Those are the most dangerous, using their knowledge and contacts to threaten the world instead of protecting it.

Cults

Despite November's suppression of mythos knowledge it leaks out, corroding human sanity wherever it comes in contact. Cults tend to fall into two distinct patterns. The first spring up when the right kind of mind reads the wrong kind of book and begins actively recruiting followers. Extremist, hysterical, violent, they burn out after a few months - destroyed by the authorities. The other sort of cult forms when someone with a plan begins searching out mythos knowledge. Patient and calculating, they often spread for years before November even becomes aware of them. These cults are more dangerous by far, because they're patient and work towards a goal without distraction. The leaders have made a cynical choice to gamble the fate of the whole species for personal gain.

Deep Ones/Shoggoths

With Cthulhu neutralised, the Deep Ones have broken into opposing factions. They worship Dagon, who is an avatar* of Cthulhu. One faction wants to restore Cthulhu, as their god's god. Another wants to elevate Dagon to take his place. The third (and currently largest) faction wants to keep the status quo, using human breeding stock to revitalise their race. The human hybrids make up the largest percentage of the zealot factions, and are far more active.

So far no one faction wants to break with the others and go it alone, so there's a veneer of unity. In secret, all three are taking action to further their own goals. Both zealot factions want access to the human accumulation of mythos knowledge, and with shoggoths at their command they're a formidable force. After losing several archive buildings, it became necessary to shift the others into low Earth orbit. The authorities don't want open war with the Deep Ones if it can be avoided, but the shifting balance of power between their factions makes negotiation difficult.

Ghroth

Ghroth has changed course and is now heading directly for Earth. What it intends to do when it gets  here is anyone's guess. Even if it does nothing and simply passes through the solar system, the results will be catastrophic. The passage of a planet-sized creature will disrupt planetary orbits and cause hurricanes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions the likes of which the world has never seen before. Its speed isn't consistent, so estimates on its arrival vary between five and 20 years.

S'glhuo

The beings of the plain of sound need very precisely-modulated matching sounds on this side of the dimensional divide to cross over, but it turns out the cracking of splitting ice sheets is close enough. They've been able to cross over on their own in the colder regions, and travel south by sticking to the hospitable areas of Earth's sound-scape.

What they want from us is the human vocal apparatus. Jaw, teeth, tongue, lips, some of the throat lining, vocal cords and a lung. Their technology can remove the organs without killing the 'donor'. So far all the victims have been displaced refugees without much in the way of documentation or community, so November investigation has been hampered.

What to do with this?

My first idea would be to run a slightly more optimistic Call of Cthulhu game. You, the characters, are probably going to die horribly but the human race isn't necessarily doomed.

Or if grimdark is the mood for the game, it might be fun to say that the human race has been extraordinarily lucky for half a century but now it's over and the Great Old Ones are pissed at us.

* My personal interpretation. Your Mythos May Vary.

What if we kicked Cthulhu's arse? - part 1

Part 2 of this article is now up here. 

A campaign idea that starts from the point where we win the Cthulhu Mythos.

Mythos fiction is some of my favourite fiction, but you have to admit it's dark. The setting comes with the explicit knowledge that some day, probably sooner rather than later, the stars will be right and the Great Old Ones will rise. The human race will collectively go mad under Cthulhu's psychic influence and turn on each other in ecstatic slaughter.  If we survive at all, it'll be as just another lowly servitor race to Big C. And with the Mi-Go interested in Earth's resources, shoggoths hating us for not being them, Lloigor malice, Nyarlathotep's games, etc.... that's probably the best outcome we can expect. Dark.

Something I enjoy is taking nihilistic settings like this one and extrapolating what they would be like if we solved all the existing problems. And introduced a few new ones so they're still interesting to play.

Your mythos may vary. There have been so many writers involved that you have to to pick and choose. Lovecraft gets in, obviously. Also Ramsey Campbell, Frank Belknap Long and August Derleth (although I don't give any credence to his shuffling of Great Old Ones into neat elemental associations).

Campaign idea: Hobo Wizards

Hobos as mystical defenders of the nation. An idea I've had swimming around in my brain since reading Tim Powers' Earthquake Weather and Charlie Elmer Fox's autobiography in the same week.  

Reefer Charlie clearly had his rose-coloured glasses on while dictating the memoir: in his mind hobos were knights of the road, upright and chaste. They always gave a day's work for a day's pay and supported each other in tough times. Sister of the Road (Boxcar Bertha's autobio) is much grimier with its free love, prostitution and Bertha's regrets about being too drunk to join an anarchist bombing campaign. What I take from Powers is the idea that America has a secret king and the health of the land is directly tied to the king's health. All three of these books are good reads and I recommend them.

For the campaign, the Dust Bowl was the Apocalypse and all of Earth has been dragged into Hell. With the exception of the US, which is defended by the hobomages' Great Work. Now they form a court of councillors and bodyguards that travel with the King of America as he treads the boundaries of his nation (by riding the rails) and keeps the magic wards strong.

The king doesn't know he's king. The mages got him good and drunk for the coronation, he doesn't remember a thing. He just knows that his luck tends to go bad if he stays anywhere too long, and there's always a well-paying seasonal job available in a city just a little further down the coast. The Great Work prevents him or any mundane citizen from realising what's happened outside the country's borders.

The hobomages are wise and powerful, but for the most part they work for food and lodging like any other hobo. They need to stay hidden. The devil can enter the US if he limits himself to human form and power, and he's always sniffing for the source of the protective magic. If he gets a hint of a mage's identity he sends for his Yeggs, human agents picked from among the most degraded hobos. They don't care who they're working for and violence is their trademark. 

 

If a hobomage wants to work magic, it has to be subtle, using sympathetic effects like the laws of similarity and contagion. The idea being that yeah: the players can reveal themselves as the titans of magic they truly are, but then they have to fight off an army. If the king gets killed the country could literally go to Hell before a replacement can be crowned. Hobomages themselves can't be permanently killed because they've hidden their lives away with the greater part of their magic, but when they revive, they revive wherever that is and not where they need to be.

I'm not sure what I'd use to run this. Probably a system that has some kind of stress mechanism for tracking the heat players bring down on themselves through ill-advised magic use.

Edit: It seems there's an existing RPG called Hobomancer, using the QAGS system. And it won an Ennies Silver, so I should have been aware of it sooner. I've read the quickstart and it's clear the writers and I are dipping into the same well. We both have the idea of riding the rails as a mystical symbolic journey. We even found the same (admittedly famous) public domain photo of hobos walking the rails. I don't think I'd run my game in Hobomancer, because it appears to be higher-powered than what I'm thinking of. Less serious, too. One of the classes is the 'stinkomancer' which cultivates body odour as a weapon. 😃

Fantasy X-Men

In a previous post I mentioned an idea about ordinary characters having minor superpowers because they're polymorphed monsters and don't know it. Each character would have an ability stemming from their monster nature and a taboo that would undo the spell if they transgressed it.

The original idea was for each party member to be the only one who knew about another member's taboo, and have the responsibility for making sure they didn't break it. The monsters would effectively be each other's guards. However, I'm not that fond of games that give you knowledge your character doesn't have. Where's the fun for the player in uncovering the mystery?

So instead I think it should be handled by the GM. Players don't even need to know what sort of polymorphed creature they are. They can just be told that they always have advantage on certain skill tests, or that they have a supernatural power that works once per level per day. And supernaturally punished when they break their taboo, which they also don't know about.

I looked through the B/X Essentials monster manual for creatures that were A) living and B) intelligent and found a bigger list than I expected. Some are close enough to be cousin species, but that's an advantage if it gives a player the chance to form a completely wrong theory about what they are.

As of right now, I'm going simple and saying that breaking a taboo causes a psychic shock that does 1d6 HP damage, but it could easily be expanded into another subsystem. Maybe it damages the illusion and once you realise what you really are Wizard X unleashes the hounds of Tindalos to destroy you.

1)Bugbear
Bonus: Advantage on stealth rolls for character and anyone accompanying.
Taboo: Labour for wages.

2) Centaur
Bonus: Movement rate tripled.
Taboo: Carrying a person.

3) Djinn
Bonus: Breath weapon. Any creature of lower hit dice in a 5-space cone ahead of you is knocked prone. Equal hit dice are driven back 1 space.
Taboo: Go underground.

4) Doppelganger
Bonus: Imitate a person's voice and mannerisms perfectly. +2 bonus to disguising yourself as someone specific.
Taboo: Speak your own name.

5) Dragon
Bonus: +1 spell slot which can be cast hit dice x times per day.
Taboo: Give up a prized possession.

6) Dryad
Bonus: Advantage on woodcraft skill tests.
Taboo: Light a fire.

7) Efreet
Bonus: Instinctive understanding of fire - how to start it, how it spreads, how to contain it.
Taboo:Immerse yourself in water.

8) Gargoyle
Bonus: Wakefulness. You're immune to charm person and sleep spells and can stay awake for hit dice x days with no harmful effect.
Taboo: Sleep in a bed.

9) Giant
Bonus: Advantage on strength rolls.
Taboo: Act humble.

10) Gnoll
Bonus: Advantage on tracking rolls
Taboo: Eat before the party leader does.

11) Goblin
Bonus: Advantage on caving skill tests.
Taboo: Pay for something honestly.

12) Harpy
Bonus: Cast Charm Person hit dice x daily.
Taboo: Let a personal offence go unpunished.

13) Hobgoblin
Bonus: Advantage on stealth rolls for character and anyone accompanying.
Taboo: Enter combat without backup.

14) Invisible stalker
Bonus: Automatically surprise on your first attack in any combat.
Taboo: Alert someone to your presence.

15) Kobold
Bonus: +2 AC without armour, advantage on rolls to dodge.
Taboo: Attack an opponent from the front.

16) Lizardman
Bonus: You can slow your metabolism at will, entering a meditation-like state you can dismiss instantly. You need no food or water in this state.
Taboo: Kill a snake.
 
17) Lycanthrope
Bonus: Improved senses, especially smell. You can only be surprised on 1-in-6.
Taboo: Handle silver.

18) Manticore
Bonus: Poison bite. Hit dice x times per day. Victims must save or die.
Taboo: Speak words of comfort.

19) Medusa
Bonus: Cast Sleep on one target hit dice x times per day, by making eye contact.
Taboo: Look into your own reflected eyes.

20) Merman
Bonus: Advantage on swimming tests, hold breath for 2 + hit dice x minutes.
Taboo: Taste brine.

21) Minotaur
Bonus: You can handle weapons as if you were a larger creature - eg. weild a two-handed sword one-handed.
Taboo: Handle ceramics.

22) Nixie
Bonus: Cast Charm on up to hit dice x animals, once per day.
Taboo: Kill an animal.

23) Ogre
Bonus: Advantage on strength rolls.
Taboo: Share food.

24) Orc
Bonus: Advantage on caving skill tests.
Taboo: Enter combat without backup.

25) Pixie
Bonus: A successful save vs petrification nullifies all fall damage, otherwise fall damage is reduced by half.
Taboo: Harm a winged creature.

26) Salamander
Bonus: A successful save vs breath nullifies all heat or cold damage (choose which at character creation), otherwise damage is reduced by half.
Taboo: Use your opposing force as a tool or weapon.

27) Sprite
Bonus: Cast a minor curse up to hit dice x times per day. The curse target will suffer a clumsy accident, have a tool break, or some other distracting inconvenience.
Taboo: Speak a compliment.

28) Treant
Bonus: Up to hit dice x times per day a tree will find a way to help you - drop a branch in the right place, bear fruit out of season, etc.
Taboo: Cut wood.

29) Troglodyte
Bonus: Advantage on climbing tests.
Taboo: Sleep under open sky.

30) Troll
Bonus: When you roll for healing, use the rolled value or your number of hit dice, whichever is better.
Taboo: Handle open flame.

Destiny combat

Image by Pete Linforth

I've been noodling with a concept I call destiny combat, which is how the very wise and powerful get their revenge on each other. The idea is that with a great deal of planning and effort, you can ensure a rival fulfils their destiny in the absolute worst way possible.

The foundational premise is that everyone has a destiny, whether it be large or small. You're fated to live and die in a particular way, and that's unchangeable. But while the outline may be fixed, the details are forever changing. That's why fortune-tellers are unreliable and oracles are mystical and cryptic. They can only see your current future and by the time it arrives it may have changed.

The outline of your destiny is important to the world, but it's the details that are important to you personally. For example, your outline might be that you're destined to inspire generations of the world's great philosophers. That might be through founding one of the great colleges, with a strong tradition of sharing knowledge... or by getting tortured so horribly that a religion forms around it. Obviously you'd prefer one. Your enemies might prefer the other.

The very powerful are capable of reading destiny (theirs and others) but they usually don't. In the process of looking hard at someone's fate, it gets fixed in place. Both the outline and the details. That might mean the good outcome gets selected, but then again it might not. It's a heavy responsibility to bear. And if you fix your own bad outcome in place you'll have good reason to regret being so curious.

Naturally, wizards will ward their own destiny to prevent someone else examining it. Even so, there are ways and means to get partial but accurate glimpses of a future without running into a ward or altering fate. Certain places, times and rituals you can follow. To outsiders, the process seems even more vague and mystical than normal wizardry. Use them properly and you can observe a fate like a bird in your peripheral vision, ready to fly away if you turn your head. You can make guesses about it based on that, and maybe nudge it a little to move in the direction you want.

This is the work of years, or perhaps even lifetimes. Great sages trying to uncover and fix their own good end in place, and infer from unexpected changes who’s working against them and how.

In a world like this, what happens to people who achieve their great destiny and survive? If you believe that the workings of destiny are as perfect and omnipresent as physics, they probably just live quietly until they die unremarkably. In a world where it’s a legitimate threat that a god might drunkenly lose your planet in a game of cards, things might not be so neat. I think a party of former Prophecied Heroes would be perfect agents for a high-powered wizard. Cut loose by destiny, unpredictable and un-divineable. And it makes sense of the way players will stomp all over a GM’s plans for them.

And it makes this scene possible:

“You’re a former chosen one of the prophecy? So am I!”
“And me! I fulfilled a prophecy. What about you?”
“Well, yes. But I don’t like to talk about it. There were spiders.”
“‘Scuse me, I just recently fulfilled quite a big prophecy--“
“Shut up, assassin. We’re still turning you in for the bounty.”

Fantasy Medieval X-Men

Image by Mohammed Hassan via Pixabay

I don't know if this idea has legs or not. It's an interesting metagame but I'm not sure it's fun. But I've had it in my head for far too long without progressing it one way or another, so maybe I can get it out by writing it down.

Wizard X has assembled a team of heroes, each with their own special quality. By way of example, Sir A is as strong as an ogre. Lady B has hypnotically fascinating eyes. Sir C can swim like a fish. They roam the countryside doing good deeds, but the local peasants are always grateful when they move on. There's something unsettling about them.

Each of the characters is cursed and doesn't know it. Sir A just knows that Lady B is under a dark fate and must never see her own reflection. It's his job to keep tabs on her and make sure she doesn't. Lady B knows that Sir C must never taste sea water and it's her role to see that he never does. Sir C knows that Sir A can never eat uncooked meat under any circumstances, and the task of stopping it falls to him.

But the real truth is that Sir A is as strong as an ogre because he is one. Wizard X permanently polymorphed him into human shape and geased him never to think about his past. If he ever eats raw meat, that part of the spell is undone. Lady B has some of the powers of a gorgon because she's a gorgon. Sir C is a Saghuin. Each of them has a taboo they can never break, or their real nature will be revealed to them. Wizard X never told them about the 'curse' or the taboo because he didn't want them to know even that much about their situation. In order to keep them from crossing the line, he gave each of them the job of managing one of their companions.

I think it would be on-theme for only the GM and a character's minder player to know what their taboo is. I can't imagine it being hard to figure out, the cat's going to be out of the bag on the meta level within the first session or two. From there it's going to be about playing their character like they aren't aware of it and don't know why another character is constantly trying to stop them doing something. Obviously for this to make it into a game, players will have to be comfortable with acting out in-game conflict between the two characters. Some people aren't, and that's fine. I'm not sure I could make this work at my table. I know some larpers who might go for it.

It could be a good gimmick for a streamed game, on reflection.