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Chaosium Digest Volume 13 Number 11
Chaosium Digest Volume 13, Number 11
Date: Sunday, March 31, 1996
Number: 2 of 2
Contents:
Magnification (Timothy Ferguson) NEPHILIM
--------------------
From: Timothy Ferguson <Timothy.Ferguson@jcu.edu.au>
Subject: Magnification
System: Nephilim
This story was prompted by a stream-of-conciousness series of
inspirations sitting on my bed one night. I'd just misintepreted
something someone had said on the Nephilim list and laid the boot in,
so I was lounging around on my bed thinking about my Pendragon
campaign and my selbspiel Nephilim, who was an angel of the Temperance
or Sun Arcarnum. Then I noticed, for what seemed like the first time
in ages, the human-faced sun motif on my doona cover. Then the CD I
was listening to started a new song with, I sang your praises daily...
which reminded me, since I was thinking of Pendragon of another CD
whose liner notes discussed the worship of the Feminine by poets,
through the praising of their loves as Her earthly vessels. I knew I
needed a song and I saw Julian May's _Magnificat_ in a bookstore, but
couldn't afford the hardcover version.
Thats where the story started. The same artist who talked about
troubadors in her liner notes talks about The Visit on another of her
albums, the point at which creative grace descends and touches people.
I hope I'm up to writing the story as I see it in my mind, before the
Visit ends.
MAGNIFICATION
Introduction
The player characters should already know each other before this
scenario begins, or you might flesh it out so that they are drawn
together by this incident. It would be helpful if some of the players
or their characters are musicians, but this is not vital. On the first
attempt at writing this text, characters, places and incidents were
kept general, but to make the material more interesting it has since
been fleshed out. The extra detail assumes that the player characters
are reasonably easy to contact and blend into Western Middle Class
society with little trouble. If this is not the case, keep the bare
bones and alter the NPCs to make their presence seem more probable.
The characters are contacted by Marabas, a Satyr of the Empress
Arcanum in as subtle a manner as is possible. He'd prefer a
face-to-face meeting, but will try to make it both brief and a suprise
for the PCs, so that if they have informants observing their actions
he will not be easily followed. He would prefer a place the
player-characters do not frequent, so as to prevent interception of
their conversation with microphones or lasers reading the vibrations
caused on panes of glass by the sounds inside. He won't attract
attention to himself by using Ka speech. If talking with the
characters seems likely to draw the attention of others to him, he
will find a way to sneak them a casette tape with much of the
following information. If he uses this method, his voice has been
altered electronically, to prevent the acquisition of voiceprits.
Although Marabas is a Satyr, it is not noticeable without Ka vision.
His Indulgent score is rather high, but the rest of his Metamorphoses
are only minor. He doesnt actually like his inner nature much and
hopes one day to become something else, by entering a Nexus. He wears
a discreet pin-striped two piece suit unless this would draw
attention, in which case he will wear a brown, leather bomber jacket,
jeans and a shirt. He is shaggily bearded, with brown eyes and
weathered, leathery skin. His hair is brown and he is tall and rakish.
He loves coffee. Lots of coffee.
Marabas express concern over a recent incident and requests that the
player characters assist him by investigating the trouble. If the
characters seem likely to assist, either from altruism or after some
other bargain is struck, he will go into further detail.
Marabas' responsibility within the Empress Arcarnum is to research the
effects of music upon human consciousness, including the implantation
of ideas through subliminal messages. Recently, he was attempting to
overlay a track of subliminal urges onto a demo tape sent him by a
band called Painting By Numbers and noticed that the music was having
odd effects upon his psyche, similar to those that its simulacrum
experienced while it was active in the sixties drug culture, but both
more subtle and less disorientating. While listening to the music he
finds his mind made clearer and his Ka-vision more sharp. He is unable
to investigate the band as he is busy trying to determine if the
effect is emotionally addictive, while also attempting to remove some
of the graininess from the original, hopefully enhancing the effect.
He has contacted the PCs because Painting By Numbers has members who
have some link to the PCs. Make them members of the same ethnic group
or subculture.
Marabas counsels haste, telling the Nephilim that this new music might
prove a blessing, if it has no side-effects, or a curse, if it is
addictive. He offers them a copy of the tape, on the condition that
they listen to it once then destroy it. He has already offered the
band a contract and suggests that the characters act as if they were
his employees while visiting the humans. He further cautions them
against addiction to the music before taking his leave.
Nephilim who listen to the music do feel the strange sensations that
Marabas has mentioned. In game terms, while concentrating on the music
to the exclusion of all else, those listening to the tape have their
primary Ka raised by five points. Even minor distractions disrupt this
effect, so it isn't terribly useful, but notheless it should be
intriguing enough to motivate the PCs to follow the leads they have
been given.
Painting by Numbers
Painting By Numbers is an acoustic group with five members, who should
be customized enough that the reason why Marabas chose the PCs to
interact with them is immediately obvious. They are just starting out
in music and do a circut of clubs, weddings and civic events. The
players will first see them at a Church fair. They have been together
for three years, but have lost and gained members over that time.
One of the members of the band to arrive within the last year is
Sandy, a girl who should have been born in the Forties, as she wears
beads in her long, brown hair, a headband and prefers sarongs. She is
a precussionist and lays down the beat to many of the band's songs,
though most of the other members do their own thing with their
instruments and ignore her if they feel like it.
Sandy looks for musical inspiration eclectically and has recently
found it in a book called "Poems of Mystic Love and Sex" by Professor
Jill Sherwood, through Tauntalus Press, a small company of which the
PCs have never heard. For one of the tracks, Sandy has copied her
synchopations from a pattern of dots and dashes surrounding a
Troubador's verse, and it is this rhythmn that causes the unusual
effects. Player characters listening to the band perform live will not
feel the effect except during this song, which they tend not to
perform, since they are given their playlist by whoever has hired them
for their function.
Characters who have not destroyed the tape can play it and ask for it
to be sung, or can hum a few bars, or give the title, to identify it
for the band members. The musicians will be chuffed by these music
execs who are obviously so deeply into their music.
Indulgent PCs, satyrs for instance, can listen to that track, and only
that one track, for hours on end. GMs may want to play the Frente!
version of this to their players, over and over until the Satyr tires
of it. The GM should stress that the Frente! version is far simpler
than the Painting By Numbers cover, which has more instruments, more
voices and is generally less elegantly simple.
Every time I see you falling,
I'll get down on my kness and pray,
hoping for that final moment you, say the words that I can't say
Bizarre Love Triangle Frente!
Eventually the PCs may realise that it is the precussion that is
special, possibly by getting the band members to play their pieces one
at a time. If the PCs fail to work this out, then Marabas will
discover it when the band get together to record their first albumn
and Sandy lays down her backing track.
When questioned about the piece, she'll gladly ramble on, eventually
showing the PCs the book and the dashes. Characters can tell that the
manuscript that is reproduced in the book is a spell focus, but the
technique of replication has made most of it illegible, as the
important parts are border decorations that have been clipped to fit
the verse onto the page. It seems to be an odd sort of Air effect,
where the Nephilim summons itself, or some such thing. It is not
usable in this form, nor will summoning Sandolphan assist characters
in their use of the spell, although it might provide some information
about its nature and effect.
Jill Sherwood
Professor Jill Sherwood, the author of "Poems of Mystic Love and Sex",
lectures in classical literature at the University that is most
familiar to the GM, or that fits their needs best. Although she is
curious and meddlesome, she is not a member of a Secret Society.
Although meeting her is easy, she is a busy woman bogged down in the
mundanities of helping run an understaffed Department and has little
time for chit-chat during work hours. Characters who are scholars and
can trade information with her, lightening her research load will be
welcomed profusely. She will speak to the characters at length about
her work, if they meet her during the evening.
Jill lives in a small apartment with her pet cat Morrie. Morrie is a
Moon Nephilim, but he'll spot the PCs before they see him and will
keep away from them. He will watch them at times, to protect his pet
human from harm. Jill is middle-aged, with dishwater blonde hair,
lighter on top than underneath or at the ends. She wears thin
spectacles with round lenses and black frames. She likes tweed jackets
and comfortable shoes.
After dinner, which is a lamb hot-pot, she'll gladly discuss "Poems of
Love and Sex". The book was given a rather provocative title in the
hope of increasing sales and Tauntalus Press was dreamed up by the
university printery to make the book sound raunchier. In fact it's a
rather nice set of poems about love in all its forms, drawn from
original documents. Essentially, it is a more expensive version of her
course textbook. She can identify the Museum who owns the original of
the poem in which the player characters are interested, but if they
seem to be cranks, she will warn the University, by telephone, in
advance, of their odd behaviour. The Museum must be in another
country, just to make things bothersome.
If your player characters come from Australia, it is an English one,
for instance. Americans and Britons should cross the Pond. The party
may have to divide, as some characters refuse to fly and others hate
ships. To add even more mundane interference, send the characters to a
non-English speaking country. Spain is a good choice, as is Hong Kong.
Arrival at The Museum
To make things easier, just think of the floor plan of the local
Museum and use that. If you don't have a local Museum then go mock
Greek on the exterior. Marble and columns with statues of lions.
Inside, have thick carpets, staircases, bannisters of polished wood
and rooms where the decor matches the theme of the exhibits in that
room. Depending on where you put the museum, the themes of the rooms
will change, but all exhibits should be in glass cases which are
carefully sealeed and are fitted with burgular alarms.
Make it clear that you are playing in the real world and unless the
Nephilim has previous experience in defeating electronic surveliance
systems, they will be caught if they attempt to steal anything.
Player-characters may attempt a break-in anyway, but they should be
given fair warning.
The Director of the Museum is Dr. Gregory Fairfanks. He's a likeable
old fellow who has taken up this job after retiring from a University
about six years ago. He's thin, balding a little and has grey hair.
He's sharper than he looks, with a high Solar-Ka, but he isn't a
member of a Secret Society and doesn't believe in the occult beyond
reading his stars in the paper, chuckling about how many young,
beautiful women the astrologer owes him on account.
Doctor Fairfank's secretary will not give the characters an
appointment unless they seem to have legitimate business with him.
They will probably need one, because the document is in storage. The
best approach is to use Jill Sherwood as a decoy, having her request
that the document be recopied for a new edition of her book. She can
take a couple of PCs along as research assistants or postgraduate
students. Alternatively, corrupting one of the custodians would allow
the player-characters access to the document.
Wheels Within Wheels
Unfortunately, the Museum is riddled with Secret Societies, with the
fellow in charge being oblivious to the whole business, save for the
occassional public tiff. The curators have been engaged in covert,
factional warfare with each other for about six years, the victor
presuming that he will succeed the current President. The two main
factions are the Fraternity of the Hidden Mask, a Templar-assisted
group sliding into Ordinancehood and the Patient Keepers of the Seal,
a sect within the Priuer di Sion.
Both groups know where all of the magical items in the Museum displays
are and each knows about the magical nature of the poem, although only
the second has any idea of what it actually does, since even the
original form is incomprehensible. The two societies will clash over
the arrival of the Nephilim.
The Hidden Mask will attempt to track down where the Nephilim are
from, so that they can trade that information to their masters in the
Templars.
The Prieure di Sion will contact the Nephilim, telling them what a
terrible mistake they have made, and will encourage a broad-scale
assasination of their enemies, wherein a minor member of the
Fraternity is kidnapped and set up as the murderer of the rest of his
collegues. During this process, security tapes and dossiers will be
recovered from the Fraternity member's homes, concerning the Nephilim
and two homoculi whom they have created, but no longer possess.
Unless the Nephilim are quick, mundane authorities will be called in
to protect all members of the museum's staff after the first three
deaths. Police may question the visitors, but they consider their
involvement to be profoundly unlikely, unless one of the Nephilim has
a criminal record. The Fraternity will realize what is happening and
will first fight back, then, if all seems lost, steal all of the
magical items they can and flee, after killing a minor member in a car
accident and planting some other stolen pieces in her home.
Whether or not they get away with dossiers on the current simulacra
and interests of the Nephilim is up to the GM. In theory such
information could have been read to a supervisor over the telephone at
any time. Truth told, it is unlikely that this has occured so long as
the PCs have been circumspect. The Priure will play on the
insecurities of the characters as far as possible, though, as this
gives them unimaginably greater firepower for use in their conflict
than either they or their enemies had planned for.
The Recovery of the Poem
When the players finally do see the document, it is lying flat in a
large metal drawer inside a cabinet in a humidity-controlled room.
Most of the storage area looks like this, but inquisitive players are
bound to poke around. If they ever go into the taxidermy room, they
will find an ape being eaten by beetles. Blood beetles are the usual
way of stripping flesh from bone prior to mounting a skeleton and both
secret societies know of them and are willing to use them to destroy
cadavers of opponents. The little insects are remarkably quick and
disgustingly thorough in their work, feasting on a person's flesh so
rapidly that his is nothing but bone after several hours.
The document is vellum, a sort of parchment made out of sheepskin and
is beautifully illuminated. It shows a man in period dress, with a
stringed instrument like a guitar, kneeling beneath a tree in which
his lady sits. The tree is part of an apple orchard, but unlike the
others it has no fruit. The maiden holds a golden apple in her hand,
as if ready to toss it to her suitor. The poem is wonderfully penned.
Even if the PCs can find the document and make a copy, the message of
the dashes, which is a substitution coded paragraph in thirteenth
century Castillian, is obscure. Even the wisdom of Sandolphan will not
assist them here, as the direct translation of the encoded sections
are a series of allusions that will not make sense to the player
characters. Those with appropriate skills, or who bother to believe
the little card below the page in the storage cabinet, used while it
is on display, can narrow down the time of writing to the thirteenth
century.
The text is a love poem, wherein the author glorifies his love and
through worship of her, worships all womankind and the Great Woman,
the Spirit of the Feminine, which manifests itself in the world
through her. Read literally, the poet's lover seems to be an Angel in
an advanced state of metamorphosis. Her voice may really have been
music to his ears. She may well have been as sweet as honey. It is
entirely possible that she glowed with radiant beauty and her eyes
truly did sparkle with wisdom. The document is in Lange Doc, but the
translation in Sandy's book is accurate. Priure Di Sion curators will
also provide accurate translations. Templar curators will slip in
phrases like "Static here I rest" to see how the player characters
react. Although her name is not given, extensive historical research
has been done on the manuscript, and the lady involved seems to have
been the wife of a powerful north Castillian nobleman.
One clue is the gilt apple, which was the symbol of the Discordian
cult in ancient Myceane. The gilt apple also, however, appears in many
pre-Ryder-Waite tarot decks on the card of the Lovers. The choice as
to which woman to give the apple to was seen as depicting the need to
make choices in love. Ryder and Waite did away with this because they
were rather sympathetic to the Lovers and didnt want to keep rubbing
in the error made all those years ago over Helen of Troy. A Life
Experience (Mycenae) roll, a Tarot Lore roll or a Lovers' Lore roll
will tell a Nephilim that this is a symbol of the Lovers Arcarnum.
Only characters from a particular sect of Lovers who have followed the
inner path and have a translation of the Castillian phrases can use
this skill to break the Code. Those who are outer members can use the
skill to identify the sect, The Court of Fine Armor, a Provencal
grouping now dissolved, and the author, a Nephilim called Kaddisha.
Kaddisha
Characters might now wish to call for assistance. Their Arcanum has
links to the Lovers and can pass on a request for contact. Sandolphan
can tell the characters where Kaddisha's stasis is. As she is
incarnate, the Sages will be of no assistance unless the characters
know of another Nephilim whose memories might be useful, such as a
member of the Lovers' Inner Circle. Gazur might be summoned, but that
really is overkill. If they cannot find her, after a time Kaddisha
will find them, tipped off by another section of the Prieure di Sion,
which have managed to track her down. She is currently inhabiting the
body of a Spanish noblewoman, the descendant of the bastard born to
her previous simulacrum by her ardent troubador lover. Her
transformation is well-progressed, with both her voice and skin
noticable to those without Ka-vision. She is witty, exhuberant and
enjoys flirtation but otherwise has the personality traits of an Angel
as per _Chronicle of Awakenings_.
Characters wishing to speak with her will have to travel to Gallicia
in northern Spain. She lives in a frighteningly romantic old castle
where knights re-enact the Reconquista for tourists. Have fun with
this section. Use lots of opulent adjectives and pile on the flash and
colour. Pagentry and japery should abound at this point. Make things
so light and fluffy that suspicious players begin hunting for the
ambush you are suckering them into.
Of course, there isn't one.
Personally, Isabella, or Kaddisha, if you prefer, and the Nephilim
almost certainly will, is beautiful in the classic Iberian way that
you see stereotyped in stories like Zorro. Characters who have a
rather scatterbrained and pious image of angels will find her
sallacious and shocking. Those who are used to Dionysian orgyists as
Lovers Arcarnum members will find her rather prim, if flirtatious.
The faction of the Arcarnum to which Kaddisha belongs, the Damosels
and Cavaliers of Courtly Love, are emotional gorumands rather than
sexual gluttons. They delight in the higher emotions and in finery,
rather than in organistic responses and glitz. They, led by the more
aescetic practices of the Cathari, try to find a less eartly, physical
love, revelling in the emotion of armour rather than in sexual
contact. Many members of this small group are angels and they claim
direct descent from those sons of God who saw the daughters of Men and
found that they were beautiful. Most know that this is fanciful, but
they feel it adds a spritual dimension to their pagentry. Kaddisha,
like the other members of her Court believes that individuals find
Agartha easiest when working in close groups bound by Love, like
Galahad and Amide or Galahad, Percival and Ector.
Kaddisha wants back the love letter, since it is part of her past and,
like most of her Tribe, she is a sentimentalist. Beyond this, she also
desires the encoded spell focus she has encrypted within it. The spell
is the Magnificat, a ritual performed on Mary, the mother of Jesus, to
prepare her body to house the Zero Arcarnum.
The Magnificat
The Magnificat is a Sorcerous working that has a musical, vocal
component which can only be performed by an Angel whose voice has
undergone Metamorphosis to the point where even humans notice its
harmonic quality. It requires mastery of the Third Circle at at least
50% to be performed accurately, although lesser effects, from poor
performances, can be created even by mere humans.
If performed by an Agarthan, the Magnificat has profoundly uplifting
effects on the spirits of all who hear it, summoning them closer to
Agartha. Since there isn't an Agarthan around to perform for the
player-characters, we can ignore those.
If a Nephilim performs the Magnificat, it awakens the Solar Ka of all
humans present and raises it by one point each. This only happens on
the first performance, although later performances still have minor
miraculous effects. Nephilim who hear the Maginificat for the first
time are drawn nearer to Enlightenment, gaining points in their
primary Ka, a process that removes all experience checks they may have
accumulated for their Ka Scores. Eolim gain 3 points, Faerim and
Hydrim add two and Pyrim and Onirim acquire one. In each future
incarnation that the Nephilim hears the Magnificat, it advances by one
point of Ka. Humans hearing a version of the Magnificat performed by
another Human feel a sense of yearning and happiness and sometimes
awaken.
Performing the Magnificat raises the Ka of the human or Nephilim by
one point, but only once for a human, or only once per Simulacrum for
a Nephilim. Angels who have learned the Magnificat usually become
rejumpers, as they can gain 2 Ka each incarnation through this song,
compensating them for the incarnation cost. Kaddisha does not have the
spell inscribed, but will inscribe it at the first opportunity. She
was unable to use it properly in her first life, during which the poem
was penned and did not realise its importance until a later
incarnation. She has been searching for it since.
Marabas will want all of the details and a copy of the spell if
possible. He will advocate its removal from the Museum, but the Priure
di Sion may already have stolen the manuscript.
--------------------
The Chaosium Digest is an unofficial electronic 'zine about Chaosium's
Games. The old digests are archived on ftp.csua.berkeley.edu in the
directory /pub/chaosium, and may be retrieved via FTP. Happy April
1st.
