Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

CULTS OF THE AKSUMITE EMPIRE

Written as a thesis paper by Brill Davidsen in 1897 and published in a purely limited edition in that year. This copy has been recovered in some sort of reptilian hide.

Daviden’s thesis is a remarkable work of scholarship, delving deep into the cult history of the Kingdom of Axum along the Red Sea coast during the 5^th century BC, the resurgence of these cults during the Zagwe Dynasty of the 12^th century, and even hinting darkly of evidence that the cults were still present (or at least their folk beliefs) well into the 19^th century as the interior of Africa was opened to European eyes. There are suggestions that Italian colonists may have carried some of the Aksumite beliefs back to their homeland, possibly infecting Masonic lodges in Venice and Rome with their barbaric rites.

Davidsen also references the Revelations of Glaaki, suggesting strange parallels between those apocryphal book of prophecies and lurid blasphemies and the Axumite beliefs he charts over the course of a millennia. At times it is unclear if he is suggesting that both the English text and the Axumite beliefs spring from a common source; or if he believes that the Axumite beliefs may have somehow traveled to Europe much earlier than the 19^th century (possibly via Roman legionnaires) and found fertile soil in Celtic Britain. The last three dozen pages of thesis are given over to a detailed symbological analysis of the “Prisoner of Glaaki” and the “Maw of the Mouth”, equating the two figures on a deep level through complicated Jungian metaphors despite the gross differences of their disparate mythologies.

BENEFITS OF PORING OVER

• Cthulhu Mythos +1
• Learn details of a “Spell to Open the Sky” from photographs of stellae meticulously reproduced in the text. (Sufficient details in order to actually learn how to cast the spell.)

FISHING THE RIVER OF STARS

A strange and curious text reputedly among those in the blasphemous library of Auguste Chapdelaine. Recovered during the Second Opium War and brought back to London in 1858, the origins of this anonymous work were lost with Chapdelaine’s life. (Chapdelaine, along with other Chinese Catholics from his circle of followers, was arrested and executed in Yaoshan, helping to precipitate France’s involvement in the war. Reputedly Chapdelaine was condemned for his missionary work, but darker rumors suggest that it was dark rites emerging from his study of forbidden Chinese texts which ultimately brought down the wrath of the local mandarin.)

Fishing the River of Stars is reputedly a first-hand account of the rise of the Northern Song Dynasty during the 10^th and 11^th centuries in China. Much of its bulk is taken up with routine and unsurprising bureaucratic “revelations”, but the choice passages which have given the book its particular notoriety are those revolving around the legendary engineer Zhang Sixun, who served Emperor Taizu of Song.

Zhang Sixun is said to have been served by a council of “thrice-mouthed advisors”, each of whom was said to “speak with three tongues” and to “balance the words of one hand against the other”. The strangely cryptic and disturbingly inhuman descriptions of these advisors are echoed eerily in a description of the inner (or secret) gardens of Emperor Taizu, where the author reputedly saw flocks of blue-green hummingbirds, their “feathers flecked with gold and with lipped mouths gaping upon their hovering backs”.

There are also suggestions that the ingenious armillary sphere of Zhang Sixun’s astronomical clock tower, which employed liquid mercury in its escapement mechanism, was only the “precursor” or “broken model” of the true clock tower which was “hidden by the Emperor”. This “true tower” was reputedly powered by “reddened mercury”.

In its final, black chapters Fishing the River of Songs reputedly supports the legends that claim Emperor Taizong killed his brother Taizu to inherit the throne. Here, however, it is intimated that the “Golden Shelf Promise” (the sealed document which validated Taizong’s claim to the throne) was filled with such horrid blasphemies that its “golden inks were placed in flame until they melted into screaming lead” and the scroll was replaced with a more palatable forgery.

As for the bizarre claims that the “honey of the hummingbirds” nevertheless corrupted the blood of Taizong’s sons, it can only be said that the text descends into almost incoherent poetry and the true meaning of whatever metaphor is being sought is perhaps lost within the archaic Chinese.

RIFT OF THE MAW

This thin, ebon-covered book is a collection of thirteen meditative mantras. The character of these meditations, however, is severely disturbing to any civilized mind: They fixate upon imagery of depraved acts both sexual and violent in their character.

Each mantra is disparate (albeit varied) in its perverse obsession, but the common theme which joins the mantras together is that of the “Mouth” and the “Maw”. The Maw is the void from which both Truth and the turgid release of the flesh emanates. It is the gaping hole beyond the empty gulf which is the world of mortal perceptions.

The Mouth is characterized as being connected to the Maw. It is the path which cleaves its way through the barriers of the mind which lie between your voided gulf and that place beyond, releasing thereby the wisdom of the Maw. It is also the font from which such “honeyed knowledge” is spewed forth from the world.

Delving deeper into the imagery of the mantras, however, reveals another layer of truth: That there is a more direct path to the Maw. A rift. And that the “new-mooned Rift” will give “clear skies of truth” to those who find it.

The final mantra issues a chilling warning against the “name of the Maw”. For the name of the Maw is the Maw and the name of the Maw is its wisdom and the name of the Maw is its void and the name of the Maw is the gulf which swallows and the name of the Maw is that which destroys. The name (which is not given) is a shortcut by which the Maw of the Mouth can be regurgitated (or vomited) into this world; but such sudden and overwhelming truth would “sear one whose mind has not been glazed to the stars beyond one’s own”.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING:

• 1-point Mythos Stability test

EFFECTS OF PORING OVER

• 4-point Mythos Stability test
• 2 dedicated pool points for any Investigative ability involving the Maw of the Mouth (usable once per adventure)

UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN

Fredriech Wilhelm von Junzt

Written by the German eccentric von Junzt, the original edition of Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults) is also known as the Black Book. That edition was published in Dusseldorf in 1839; this copy is the cheap and faulty translation pirated by Bridewell in London in 1845. It is nevertheless markedly superior to the better known, but thoroughly expurgated, version published by Golden Goblin Press of New York in 1909. And even moreso because the margins of this copy appear to have been heavily annotated by someone consulting the original German text.

Von Junzt (1795-1840) spent his entire life delving into forbidden subjects; he traveled in all parts of the world, gained entrance into innumerable secret societies, and read countless little-known and esoteric manuscripts in the original. In the chapters of Nameless Cults, which range from startling clarity to murky ambiguity, there are statements and hints to freeze the blood of the thinking man. Reading what von Junzt dared put into print arouses uneasy speculations as to what it was that he dared not tell.

In addition to the annotations mentioned above, there are additional annotations in a different hand calling particular attention to specific passages regarding the Black Stone. These annotations appear to cross-reference and copy text selected from some unknown secondary source (perhaps a travelogue of some sort). These notes identify the Black Stone – that curious, sinister monolith that broods among the mountains of Hungary – as the “spikes of his world” and the “ladders of faith” (intimating, perhaps, that other such monoliths might exist). It is described as octagonal in shape, some sixteen feet in height and about a foot and a half thick. Its surface had evidently once been highly polished, but it was now (according to von Junzt) thickly dented as if savage efforts had been made to demolish it (although to little effect). The travelogue draws parallels between the surviving symbols upon the Black Stone and “crude scratches on a gigantic and strangely symmetrical rock in a lost valley of the Yucatan”. A note of commentary remarks, “The God of the Black Stone cannot be summoned without the link of His stone or the Fire of his Jewel.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 1 dedicated pool point for any Investigative ability involving cults (usable once per adventure)

BENEFITS OF PORING OVER

• Cthulhu Mythos +1 (Bridewell edition)

ZIGGURATS OF THE PRE-HELLADIC PERIOD

Kornel Alexander

A fascinatingly inchoate and bizarrely unorganized survey of its titular topic. Great and particular attention is given to Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavation of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, which was essentially contemporary to the composition of this text. Its dimensions (both real and hypothetically reconstructed) are given in painstaking detail and some sense of the structure of Alexander’s text begins to become apparent as one realizes that these dimensions are being equated through complex mathematical transformations to the dimensions of other ziggurats.

This, perhaps, also explains the sharp and sudden departures of the text from its topic: While drawing complex relationships between the ziggurats of Babylon, the ziqqurats of Akkadia, and the pre-zigguratical zaqaru of the Ubaidian period, Alexander will abruptly introduce discussions of monoliths and other structures from South and Central America and even from his native Hungary.

It then becomes clear that the dimensional diatribes – which at first seem a secondary characteristic of the text, wedged between lengthy narrative descriptions of each site – are actually of the primary and utmost important to the author: And in unwinding the strange cycles of his numbers, one realizes that he is making the bold claim that all of these disparate works of stone draw their ultimate inspiration from the preternatural dimensions of the “Black Stone” which the author ultimately claims “thrusts into the heart of every building constructed by man; thrusts into the very subconscious of our modern edifices of pride and hubris”.

 Ziggurat of Ur

BOOKS OF THE LOS ANGELES CULT: UCLA LOT
(PDF Copy)

Go to Books of the Los Angeles Cult – Echavarria’s Library

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

Los Angeles is, in many ways, the heart of this remix. By scattering several additional clues around the area (and obfuscating some of the material originally found in Trammel’s Testament), the PCs’ investigation is complicated (while, in some ways, also becoming clearer). They’re still given just as many options, but it will hopefully feel less like those options are being presented to them on a platter and more like they’ve been hard-fought and hard-won.

LOS ANGELES NPCs

One thing to note about the Los Angeles location is that there are a lot of NPCs running around there. Hopefully the NPC briefing sheets will help you run them all, but it should also be noted that several of the NPCs could be easily forced into becoming proactive nodes if the PCs are running into problems. (For example, private security or publicity agents hired by Olivia Clarendon could easily tip her off that people are poking around subjects she would prefer remain buried.)

PROP NOTES

Ayers Research Notes: Note that there are two versions of this prop. Give the players the first version when they discover the research notes. Give them the second version after they’ve spent time poring over the research notes.

Safe Deposit Box: Similarly, note that there’s a secondary prop for the safe deposit box that is only given once the books of account have been successfully decoded.

Walker’s Report on the Investigators: As indicated in the file, make sure to scrawl a phone number on the top of the page. You’ll want to change the specifics of this prop (and the Telegram from Bangkok) to match the specifics of the PCs. (Only include these props if the PCs have been observed by the thugs in Savannah or otherwise detected by cultists working for Savitree Sirikhan.)

De La Luz Recording: You can burn the audio recording onto a CD and then use the Neato CD label to print a label for the front of the CD. (Or you could just play the MP3, I suppose.)

Trammel’s Testament: This prop is heavily based on a prop from Yog-Sothoth, but it’s been significantly reworked to fit this remix.

Books of the Los Angeles Cult: The props file for this location does NOT include the cult’s Cthulhu mythos tomes. Those are presented separately (see link below).

Go to Books of the Los Angeles Cult – UCLA Lot

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

Welcome to Savannah, GA!

The only major structural shift to this section of the campaign is the addition of a viable path by which the PCs can track the local cult agents back to their boss in Bangkok. Combined with the wide enrichment of the campaign’s node structure, this opens the door to a radically different experience with Eternal Lies (in which the PCs begin investigating the extremities of the cult before turning their attention to the nexus of its operations in Los Angeles).

What the remix primarily offers in this section of the campaign, however, is a plethora of props.

NPC NAMES

I’ve includes sheets with a list of sample NPC names for each of the major locations in Eternal Lies (male, female, and last). These should come in handy whenever you need to improv a new lead or contact.

RESEARCH

Each location includes a “Research” section. These list any general research topics that the PCs might pursue in a location. If the PCs are researching a specific node or NPC, those research results are listed with the node or NPC. (Savannah breaks the “rules” here a bit by including general research on the Henslowe Estate and Joy Grove Sanitarium, which are also specific nodes. That’s just because I hadn’t quite figured out my format yet.)

REVELATION LIST

Each location also includes a revelation list, which briefly summarizes all the clues which point to each node or NPC. If the clue is local, it’s simply listed. If the clue is picked up in a different location, the location is indicated. For example, the revelation list for Joy Grove Sanitarium reads:

• NEW YORK: Douglas Henslowe’s Letters
• Interviews at Douglas Henslowe’s Estate

Which simply means that the PCs could have obtained letters in New York that would point them at the Sanitarium. Or there are multiples NPCs at the Henslowe Estate who can tell the PCs that Henslowe is at the Sanitarium.

As described in the Three Clue Rule, you can use this revelation list to keep track of what information the PCs have obtained and what information the PCs have missed. This will allow you to quickly troubleshoot the investigation, easily picking out revelations that they’ve missed entirely.

The revelation list also included a list of Proactive Nodes: These are nodes that the PCs generally won’t find; instead they’ll come and find the PCs. (The group of Bangkok thugs in Savannah is an excellent example of this.) The bullet points below each proactive node lists triggering conditions. (In the case of the Bangkok thugs, they’re watching Douglas Henslowe and Edgar Job, so they’ll become aware of the PCs as soon as they interact with either of those characters.)

Collectively, these revelation lists also provide a handy table of contents for the location.

STAT SHEET

Fairly self-explanatory: The stat sheet at the end of each location collects all the miscellaneous stat blocks for the location onto a single page for quick and easy reference. (NPC stat blocks generally aren’t repeated here.)

PROP NOTES

Savannah Sanitorium Ambience: This is a really fantastic track from someone over at Yog-Sothoth. You can play it pretty consistently throughout the sanitorium scenes, flipping in tracks from the official Eternal Lies Soundtrack when they’re interviewing Henslowe and Job.

Henslowe’s Cemetery: I mounted this graphic on corkboard. The rope that the PCs can find at the Henslowe Estate was represented with a piece of string that I marked appropriately with purple marker. Using push-pins, the players could actually play around with positioning the “rope” in order to figure out where the stash had been hidden.

Henslowe’s Stash: I placed the items from the stash in a fancy box (not included). The “stone dagger” referenced in the campaign notes is an art piece I bought on vacation in Mexico. I’m afraid you’ll have to figure out your own object for the protective artifact.

Go to 1.3 Los Angeles

If there is one place where the would-be RPG publisher goes wrong, it is when they think like an amateur instead of a professional.

The amateur is giddy and excited: A labor of love is finally going into print. You’ll see their inability to cope with the realities of publishing in a thousand different ways: Even though it took them two years to finish writing their core rulebook (and they have nothing else ready to go), they’ll include announcements in the back of the book for a new product every month until the end of the year. They’ll start under-capitalized so that, even if they did have material ready to go, they won’t have the money to print it until their print run for the core rulebook sells out. They’ll alienate their customer base by making extravagant claims about their game which only confirm their ignorance of the game market. They’ll publish something with low production values… but then charge the consumer the same price as a product with higher production values.

But there is one mistake that they will make which will put the final kiss of death upon their product: They will fail to take their competition into account.

For example, let’s say you want to create a Tolkienesque fantasy game – elves, dwarves, the whole nine yards. What’s the first thing that should come up on your radar screen?

D&D.

What’s the second thing that should come up on your radar screen?

Earthdawn, Ironclaw, Shards, Ars Magica, Sovereign Stone, Warhammer FRP, Hero Wars, and a dozen other games – major and minor – that fall within the classic fantasy marketplace to one degree or another.

And at that point you should be asking yourself a simple question: Can I offer something that these other games don’t?

For example: Ars Magica (arguably) does magic better than any other game system around. Legend of the Five Rings was an Eastern Fantasy game at a time when there wasn’t any serious competition. Ironclaw is anthropomorphic. Hero Wars has Glorantha. And so forth…

And if Enchanted Worlds possesses a flaw, then this would be it: It’s a game without purpose. Without a niche. Without a role to fulfill.

The boxed set, as a whole, comes across as a slightly amateurish effort, but with a certain amount of quality within those boundaries: A ring-bound booklet, a short introductory adventure, two eight-sided dice, a full-color map, a reference card, and a handful of character sheets.

The main booklet presents both rules and setting information. The rules are difficult to learn and reference because almost every single system is split up – with one half of the system described on an overview page and the other half of the system located later on in the book. Once you get past this odd fact (and the lay-out, which routinely leaves major sub-sections completely unlabeled, mixing dissimilar concepts together into one big lump of text) the system is fairly clean: Point-based character creation, a simple Attribute + Skill incarnation using a 2d8 die roll, and casting spells from a list.

The setting for the game is squeezed into about a dozen pages, and looks the worse for wear: It’s a standard Tolkienesque fantasy settings (elves, dwarves, humans, and the humanoid minions of evil), and the limited information which is provided does little to nothing in helping it stand out from the dozens of other settings out there that look just like it.

There’s a persistent problem with everything in this box: What’s there is fine for as far as it goes… but it doesn’t actually go anywhere in particular. There are at least a half dozen games on the market which do almost exactly what this one does – and do it better.

So I’m left searching for some reason you should buy this game, and I’m afraid I just don’t have one. I’ve seen this game before… only it was in full color and about 200 pages longer.

Ultimately, that’s a problem Enchanted Worlds just can’t live down.

Writers: Matthew Rodgers and Daniel Price
Publisher: New Worlds Gaming
Price: $14.95
Page Count: 40
Product Code: EWRSK1

Originally Posted: 2000/09/05

If I had written this review a couple of years later, I could probably have gotten away with just writing IT’S A FANTASY HEARTBREAKER! in blazing capital letters.

By the time this review rolled around, I was receiving RPG review copies from a number of different sources, including RPGNet, Games Unplugged, and the defunct Gaming Outpost website. Graveyard Greg over at Gaming Outpost contacted me about this Enchanted Worlds Starter Kit, complaining that he couldn’t find anybody who wanted to look at. Could I help him out? I said sure.

About a week later I got a copy of the game in the mail, but it wasn’t from Greg. Instead, Games Unplugged had decided to also throw me a review copy. A week after that I got a second copy, but this one ALSO wasn’t from Greg: New Worlds Gaming had somehow gotten my snail mail address and had sent me a copy directly with a request that I produce a review. (I never actually figured out where they got my address from.) The Gaming Outpost copy showed up shortly thereafter.

So now I had three copies of this shitty game.

I also had an obligation to both Gaming Outpost and Games Unplugged to produce a review of it. Which, after some deliberation, I did: I wrote two completely different reviews (albeit with the same basic conclusion) for two different outlets. You’ve just read the Gaming Outpost review (which actually appeared second). I’ll be posting the Games Unplugged version next week.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Diorama – Props Packet

New York is relatively straight-forward and is primarily designed to launch the PCs on their investigation.

The major addition to New York for the remix is to follow-up on local leads: Going to Winston Mansion will foreshadow some of the horrors which are to come, but major progress can be made if the PCs manage to dig up Walter Winston’s travel records (which can point them directly to Los Angeles without stopping in Savannah first).

NPC BRIEFING SHEET

I’ve prepped briefing sheets for each of the key NPCs in Eternal Lies. (In the case of New York, that means Janet Winston-Rogers and Frank Kearns.) These use the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template, which I’ve discussed previously as part of my remix of Keep on the Shadowfell and also used as part of the “Muse on Your Left” concept for Eclipse Phase. Here’s a quick overview of how I’m using them in the Eternal Lies remix.

Character Portrait: Most of these NPCs have a photograph associated with them. It’s reproduced in miniature on the briefing sheet for the GM’s reference (and to make it easy to find the corresponding photographic prop to hand to the players).

Character Description: A short description of the NPC.

Roleplaying Notes: This is the heart of the briefing sheet, but it should also be the shortest section. Generally two or three brief bullet points at most. I’m looking to identify the essential personality traits or mannerisms which will serve to define my performance as the NPC.

Background: Also bullet-pointed for easy reference. This provides a detailed reference for when you need to pull out specific information

Clues: This section fluctuates a bit throughout these campaign notes as I experimented with different ways of presenting this information for Trail of Cthulhu. The general format is a bullet-pointed list, with additional details where necessary and almost always an indication of what investigative skill would work best for gaining the clue.

Notes: Some NPCs also get a separate section for important notes. This is stuff that it’s really, really important that you don’t forget about while playing the NPC, but which don’t comfortably fall into Roleplaying Notes or Clues. Most of this stuff would probably be appropriate for Background, but I don’t want it to get “lost” in there during actual play.

Stats: Should be fairly self-explanatory.

THE SILVER SABER

Unless the PCs do something totally wacky, Janet Winston-Rogers will loan them a plane for their investigation. As detailed in the campaign notes, the Silver Saber is a DC-2 that’s been upgraded by her personal friend Donald Douglas (owner and founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company) to include features from the DC-3.

The idea of getting an “updated” DC-2 has no historical basis as far as I know, but the basic concept here is that the DC-3 could make transatlantic flights and the DC-2 couldn’t. While it’s possible to limit the group’s use of the Silver Saber to the Americas, the bulk of the campaign takes place in Eurasia and I liked the image of the plane serving as a touchstone throughout  the campaign.

But the DC-3 doesn’t fly until December 1935. Hence the compromise.

PROP NOTES

Silver Sable Photos / Interior: A large number of photographic references are included for the Silver Saber. The plane is meant to remain a significant set piece throughout the campaign, so I wanted to provide a rich visual reference for it.

Henslowe’s Letters: These are deliberately designed to be a vague trove of information. The players are likely to pour over them again and again throughout their investigation in Savannah (and perhaps beyond). I printed these on some very nice linen parchment and then crumpled them up, tore their edges, and the like. If you wanted to make the players really work for it, you could take the letter dated August 9th, 1933, and tear it up completely (forcing them to piece it back together). This would direct their attention strongly towards the journal, of course.

Go to 1.2 Savannah