Machenesque Mysteries

In the wake of the Great War, men brought the horrors of the trenches on the Western Front home with them. Yet there was no respite, for there were horrors on the home front. As the Jazz players trumpeted a new golden age and the Bright Young Things danced into the light, some returned to the dark, bucolic wilds of Wales. Promises of sleep free of terrible memories lead to labour of another kind to build edifices deep mountains, of solitary walkers dragged away by creatures out of legend never to be seen again, of young girls playing with new friends in the woods only to return the following day having aged years, of witch-driven cults dedicated to ancient practices that promise healthy harvests. Others returned to the metropolis to become ensnared in dark doings in grimy alleys and fog-shrouded back streets, dank basements, and behind the façades of genteel clubs and societies. Scientists explore beyond the rationality of reason in pursuit of knowledge that only their ancestors understood the dangers of. The Cult of Dionysus spreads its influence as it inducts civil servants and other officials into its ranks. Creatures out of myth and legend prey on the lonely and the lost, unnoticed amongst the city’s teeming masses. There are signs of the occult and weirdness everywhere if you know what to look and have had your eyes opened. There is worse beyond, for on the other side of the Veil lies the Otherworld, which goes by many names—‘TírnAill’ in Ireland, ‘Annwn’ in Wales, ‘Avalon’ in Arthurian legend—and is a strange and twisted domain, home to gods whom our ancestors gave form and name, such as Arawn, Pan, Nodens… There are points where the Veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its weakest and that is when the influence of the Otherworld begins to seep through and worse, even let its gods in.

Fortunately, there is a group of people who know about the Otherworld and investigate signs of the weird and the horrific and the terror it triggers. The Gold Tiberius Society was founded in 1906 as a collective to investigate such occurrences and as these took their toll upon the founding members, it began to look for new members at the beginning of the Jazz Age. Those it invites are of independent means and have the time and inclination to investigate, delve deep into the society’s archives scattered across London, and continue working on the Scarlet Map, a geographical representation of the Veins that seem to connect and criss-cross the capital as well as lead back into the Welsh countryside.

This is the set-up for The Terror Beneath: An Investigative Roleplaying Games of Weird Folk Horror. Published by Osprey Games, best known for roleplaying games such as Hard City: Noir Roleplaying and Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, it is written by the author of Romance of the Perilous Land: A Roleplaying Game of British Folklore. It is roleplaying game based on the works of Arthur Machen, the Welsh horror writer, author of books such as The Great God Pan, The White People, and The Inmost Light, who explored themes such as decadence, the degeneration of the human soul, the corruption of the innocent, scientists combining technology with the occult, the revelation that murderous beings from the other side lie behind common folklore, pagan practices to ancient deities, and more. There are elements of folk horror here, but also eldritch horror, such that Machen’s work is seen as a precursor to and influence upon the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The latter is important in The Terror Beneath in several ways.

The Terror Beneath is written for use with The GUMSHOE System, most notably used in the roleplaying game Trail of Cthulhu, published by Pelgrane Press. Originally designed for the roleplaying games, The Esoterrorists and Fear Itself, the concept behind The GUMSHOE System is that investigative scenarios are difficult to run with most role-playing games. What it does is make sure that not only are the clues needed to push the story and the investigation forward easy to find, but also that the Investigators are competent to find them. Further, if the players and their Investigators want more information, they can look for it and if they have the area of expertise and the points to pay for it, they find that too. Then it is up to the players to interpret what their Investigators have found. The Terror Beneath uses the most recent version of The GUMSHOE System, most recently seen in Cthulhu Confidential and Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. What this means is that Investigative Abilities do not have points, but instead have Pushes, which the player can spend to gain the extra information or a benefit. Nevertheless, this means that The Terror Beneath is compatible with Trail of Cthulhu, Pelgrane Press’ roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, and as its inspiration is the precursor to much of Lovecraft’s fiction, it has links to Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition published by Chaosium, Inc.. For example, Noden appears in the Keeper Rulebook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, and Machen’s ‘Little People’ appear in the scenario, ‘Plant Y Daear’, in the anthology, Sacraments of Evil.

In terms of framing, The Terror Beneath is set during the 1920s though much of Machen’s fiction was written and takes place before the Great War. The Gold Tiberius Society is a device designed to facilitate investigations and provide a reason for the Investigators to delve into the horrors that lurk in the shadows. It is thus set a decade before Trail of Cthulhu, which takes place in the Desperate Decade of the thirties, but it shares the same squalid metropolis as Bookhounds of London and perhaps a reverence for Britain with Fearful Symmetries. Perhaps as the Roaring Twenties draws to a close, a campaign for The Terror Beneath could dovetail into one or the other, if not both?

What The Terror Beneath does share with Trail of Cthulhu is Modes of Play. In Trail of Cthulhu, these are ‘Pulp’ and ‘Purist’. In The Terror Beneath, they are ‘Terror’ and ‘Pulp’. In ‘Terror’ mode, the Investigators can suffer less Shock and fewer Injury Cards than in ‘Pulp’ Mode, which is slightly more forgiving. That said, The Terror Beneath draws a distinction between ‘Terror’ and ‘Horror’. Terror is the feeling of dread and uncertainty before the actual horror is revealed, and it is this terror that the Game Master should be striving to invoke in her players and their Investigators.

An Investigator in The Terror Beneath is defined by two types of Abilities—Investigative Abilities and General Abilities. Investigative Abilities, such as Assess Honesty, Essayist, Folklore, Occultism, and Streetwise, are used to gain information. If the Investigator has the Investigative Ability, he receives the information or the clue. General Abilities, like Driving, Fighting, Health and Sense Trouble, are more traditional in that their use requires dice to be rolled and a test passed to determine the outcome. He also has a name and a Drive, which motivates the Investigator to expose himself to the terror of the horrors that lie out there, such as ‘Adventure’, ‘Duty’, or ‘Morbid Fascination’. Investigator creation is actually easy and fast. A player selects an Occupation Kit like Antiquarian, Museum Curator, and Scientist, and combines it with a Background Kit such as Conscripted Soldier, Farmhand, Munitions Factory Worker, and Shipbuilder. The Occupation Kit provides the Investigative Abilities, whilst the Background Kit provides the General Abilities.

Name: Winifred Messam
Drive: Show-Off
Occupation Kit: Bright Young Thing
Background Kit: Silver Spoon
Investigative Abilities: Charm, Culture, Inspiration, Society
General Abilities: Athletics 5, Composure 7, Driving 4, Fighting 5, First Aid2, Health 6, Mechanics 0, Preparedness 2, Sense Trouble 1, Sneaking 0

There are some notably different Investigative Abilities. ‘Dérive’ is the ability to notice the strange changes and differences in London from walking the streets regularly, whilst ‘Essayist’ represents the writer's ability to navigate literary London, understand its numerous figures and their relationships, and present a coherent argument on the page and in person.

Mechanically, an Investigator in The Terror Beneath only spends Pushes for Investigative Abilities to gain extra clues beyond the basic, and then points from the General Abilities to perform actions. In general, an Investigator does not necessarily fail in a task, but instead fails forward, perhaps finding another way to approach the task or succeeding with a complication. A Push is used in conjunction with an Investigative Ability. For example, if used in conjunction with Linguistics, the Investigator might acquire an occult tome for a better price, set up a working relationship with an expert philologist, notice that a tome is a palimpsest, and so on. Once spent, there will be moments in play when the points from General Abilities and Pushes can be refreshed.

Combat in The Terror Beneath is designed to have a narrative flow and be brutal. Initiative order is determined by the number of points from the Fighting General Ability invested in the fight and then the progress of the fight is tracked by the margin between the Difficulty number for the foe and the die result each player rolls. Individually, if the result is less than the Difficulty number, then the Investigator will suffer the effects of the foe’s Minor Injury or Major Injury Card, depending upon how low the margin is. If the result is equal to, or higher than, the Difficulty number, then the Investigator succeeds and the player can narrate how his Investigator carries out the objectives set out at the beginning of the fight. If it is three or more, it is kept at three and the Investigator will receive a Fight Benefit, such as a Push or a refreshed General Ability, at the end of the combat. Even if the Investigator succeeds, he still suffers a Toll, the effect of actually fighting the foe. Typically, this will be a levy of a single General Ability Point, which can come from Athletics, Fighting, or Health. At the end of the round, the running total the margins determines if the fight is going in the Investigators’ favour or against them.

Injuries are handled as Injury Cards, which can be Major or Minor. For example, the Minor Injury Card for a Hound of Annwn is ‘Annwn Bite’ and the Major Injury Card is ‘Annwn Paralysis’. Mental hazards require a Composure test and, on a failure, the Investigator will suffer a Minor Shock or a Major Shock. For example, when the Investigator enters a foreboding place, the Minor Shock is ‘Foreboding Place’, but the Major Shock is ‘Terrible Place’. These typically last for the length of an investigation, and impose penalties upon an Investigator’s actions. An Investigator cannot have three Injury Cards or three Shock Cards, although he could have two of either. However, if the third and final Card is an Injury Card, the Investigator is dead, or loses grip on reality if a Shock Card. Either way, the player has the opportunity to narrate the outcome. The Terror Beneath lists all of the Shock and Injury Cards in the back of the book.

Combat focuses on brawling rather than shootouts. In fact, there are no stats for guns in The Terror Beneath, but this does not mean that they are not present in the Roaring Twenties it portrays. Rather they are in the hands of NPCs rather than the Investigators. For example, the Gangster is armed and it is possible for an Investigator to be shot. This is represented by a Minor Injury Card and a Major Injury Card, ‘Grazed’ and ‘Shot’ respectively. Melee attacks are handled in the same way, such as the ‘Cudgel Blow’ and ‘A Thorough Thrashing’ Injury Cards. There is thus a brutality to combat and the Investigators are trying to avoid suffering damage and its deleterious effect as much as inflicting it on their foes or stopping what they are doing. Combat in The Terror Beneath is something to be avoided.

Similar to a Mental hazard, it takes a Composure test to perform sorcery and if failed the caster suffers a Major Shock. There may also be a Toll on the caster’s Athletics, Fighting, or Health, even if successful. This can be one, two, or three points, so it is often better to cast spells as a group. Some spells require a higher Bleed value for the spell to be cast without penalty. The list of spells in The Terror Beneath is not extensive, but this is not a roleplaying in which the Investigators will be casting a lot of spells.

In terms of setting and background, The Terror Beneath presents a broad overview, that over the course of the book looks at Arthur Machen’s fiction, weird folk horror investigations, the Gold Tiberius Society, and both London and Wales, the two contrasting locations for Machen’s fiction. For London there are descriptions of the various cults and secret societies in the city, whilst for Wales there are the places of power in the rural countryside and the pagan cults found there. Both cults and societies provide numerous human threats with links to the Otherworld and the terrors that the Game Master can develop as the basis for her scenarios. Besides the gods of the Otherworld and numerous creatures drawn from folklore and definitely dark and dangerous, there is advice for the Game Master on handling both Terror and Horror, primarily by building points where Terror might strike into a scenario, building backwards from the horror to create the mystery and basis of the investigation, laying out clues, and so on.

The Terror Beneath includes a scenario, ‘Mystery: Don’t Sleep’. The Investigators are called in to look into the sudden disappearance of a London dock worker. This is set in the capital—there is no mystery set in rural Wales in The Terror Beneath—and takes the Investigator into the communities of London’s docks and veterans of the Great War to discover the consequences of a secret military project conducted during the war. It explores Machen’s theme of misused science and its vile consequences.

Physically, The Terror Beneath is a relatively slim book. The book is well written, though lightly illustrated with dark, murky artwork which swirls with threat and peculiarity.

The Terror Beneath is published at a time when the interest in folk horror continues to grow and grow, yet it offers more than that. Its horror is eldritch and ancient, verging on the unknowable, yet rooted in folkloric explanations for the unknown, so there is a familiarity to elements of it. This is more cultural in origin as opposed to the unknowable we have learned from the pen of H.P. Lovecraft and through roleplaying games such as Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu. Setting The Terror Beneath in the Roaring Twenties means that we can explore a period normally associated with Lovecraftian investigative horror and do so without the negative aspects of Lovecraft’s writings. Ultimately, The Terror Beneath: An Investigative Roleplaying Games of Weird Folk Horror enables us to explore the horror of Arthur Machen, his precursor, primordial and peculiar, veiled and vile, and regarded as the first modern writer of the genre.