Mauve Madness II

From the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the ghost stories of M.R. James, from the adventure tales of H. Rider Haggard to the speculative fiction of H.G. Wells, and the social commentary and mystery of Charles Dickens to the fantasies of Lewis Carroll, from the so-called perversities of Oscar Wilde to the murders of Jack the Ripper, from the fog-shrouded streets of London to the dusty frontier of the Punjab, from the refined and mannered lives of the aristocracy with their downstairs servants to the squalor of the slums and rookeries, there is much that we know about the Victorian Age in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is the period of La Belle Époque, the Golden Age between the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 when the great European powers dominated the world like never before, their rivalries and tensions affecting millions of people around the world, but barely at home, a situation that would drastically change in the twentieth century when the great alliances that had previously helped to keep the peace calamitously clashed and changed the world like never before. This is a world that will be familiar to many, though both history and fiction, and has been ripe for gaming since “The first ‘Truly British’ role playing game”, that is, Victorian Adventure published in 1983. It is a roleplaying game that William A. Barton certainly saw and reviewed and perhaps was influenced by when he wrote Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England, published by Chaosium, Inc. in 1986. This boxed set shifted the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos from the Jazz Age and the USA of the 1920s as presented in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 (and ever since) to the streets of London and the far reaches of the British Empire in the Mauve Decade. It has remained a popular setting for Call of Cthulhu over the years, the setting receiving two further editions in 1988 and 2012, but it returns with a fourth edition with the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide and Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide.

Together, both volumes return the Mythos to the Mauve Decade of the 1890s as a standalone book. What this means is that neither of the Keeper Rulebook or the Investigator Handbook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is required to run and play Cthulhu by Gaslight. In addition, the setting and rules are compatible with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos for a more adventurous style of play and with Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West, should a Keeper and her players want to escape the stuffy confines of London and the East Coast of the USA and venture onto the American frontier. Of the two, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide – Mysteries & Frights in the Victorian Age presents a grand overview of the Victorian era and setting, its society and attitudes, its science and pseudoscience, and of course, the means to create Investigators appropriate to the era, whether that is in Victorian London or the wider British Empire, or further afield on the east coast of the United States of America and even in Lovecraft country. What the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide does not do, is explore the horror of the period. That is what the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide is for.

If the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide is all about preparing for the horrors of the Victorian Age, then the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide is all about those horrors. As it acknowledges, the period was rife with real-world horror, including cruelty, crime, poverty, and disease, let alone social attitudes, even before thinking about the place of the Mythos and its influence in the period. It is thus no surprise that the supplement begins with the mundane, even ordinary horror, that the Investigators are likely to encounter again and again. The deprivations of the workhouse, the last recourse of the destitute where the poor were divided by age and gender, effectively splitting families up, and then essentially then forcing them to work as a punishment for being poor. This is described in detail as are Victorian asylums and also crime and punishment before it explores some of the most notorious crimes of the era. This includes a pleasingly sober treatment of the Jack the Ripper murders and the ‘Murder Castle’ of H.H. Holmes at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which is suggested as alternative excursion, and some nicely detailed real-world crime figures, including the ‘Napoleon of Crime’ and the Forty Elephants, an all-female gang of shop-lifters and extortionists, both of which are begging to be added to a Cthulhu by Gaslight scenario or campaign.

Of the villainous organisations, the ‘Hatfield Club’ is a dining club for university students is an obvious nod to the Bullingdon Club, but with its cruelty and heartlessness turned up a notch, and the ‘Morley Gang’, ex-Resurrection Men turned caterers to England’s Ghoul population! The next Mythos connection is more controversial, linking scientist Francis Galton and his belief in eugenics to contact with Martians via a Mi-Go artefact. More benign is the ‘Servants of Empire’, an organisation consisting of civil servants in the Colonial Office and India Office, which secretly directs investigations into the Mythos and the occult, and would serve well as a patron or Investigator organisation, though its designs are ultimately imperial. More neutral perhaps is the inclusion of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, expanding on the details in the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide, presented as an organisation that the Investigators can join and progress through its Orders alongside their normal careers and investigations into the Mythos. It can be used as a social organisation as much an occult one, but it is up to the Keeper to decide how much its members know about the Mythos and how much actual magic they know. In conjunction with Pulp Cthulhu, it could become a Mythos fighting organisation, but lean in the other direction, the members of the Golden Dawn become mystical dabblers at best, unaware of the dangers they are dealing with. Mechanically, members of the Golden Dawn are supported with rules for astral travel and combat, skills like Hermetic Ritual, Astral Projection, and Divination, as well as astral monsters. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn has been detailed for Call of Cthulhu before in the 1996 supplement from Pagan Publishing, The Golden Dawn. Of course, that supplement has long been out of print and complemented with the content from the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide, it is pleasure to have it detailed once again, giving the Keeper the scope to use it and its members however she wants. Equally, there is scope here for Chaosium, Inc. to support this inclusion with further content.

Numerous Victorian notables are described in the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide, some of whom are given Mythos connections, such as Major General Chares George Gordon having encountered cults and monsters, but not yet connected them to a ‘Mythos’, and Madame Helena Blavatsky’s links to the ‘Mahatmas’ or ‘Masters of Ancient Wisdom’, whomever or whatever they are—it is left up to the Keeper to decide. Some of these have stats, but not all, and in addition, there are some fictional characters included. Amongst them are Ayesha or ‘She’ of H. Rider Haggard’s eponymous novel, Captain Nemo from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and Doctor Moreau from H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. What they do not include is Sherlock Holmes and that really does not feel like an omission since the rationality of the character would be at odds with the Mythos.

The general advice for the Keeper gives some guidance on dealing with problematic content, but mostly focuses on advice for the new Keeper that looks at different campaign types and themes. The most notable of the latter are Victorian Science Fiction and Folk Horror, as well as advice on using particular aspects of the period, whether that is the workhouse, Victorian family values, the Empire, the Dreamlands, and even the Martians. The inclusion of the Martians obviously ties into H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and their appearance in earlier editions of Cthulhu by Gaslight, as well as the discussion of Francis Galton and the stats for the Martians given in this supplement.

In terms of the Mythos and horror, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide details numerous Mythos tomes, many familiar to the Call of Cthulhu Keeper, many not. It also describes the activities of many cults across the country. Some like the cults of Shub-Niggurath or the Cult of the King in Yellow are dedicated to particular entities and so their treatment is comparatively broad, but some of the most entertaining are those that particular to the period. For example, The Factory Girls’ Sunday Club is made up of young girls who work in factories and having discovered and studied a Mythos tome, their leader is bent on revenge on all those who have done her wrong, whilst the Mothers’ Institute is a middle class charitable organisation in favour of women’s suffrage, whose members actually worship Shub-Niggurath free of the influence of men!

However, the bestiary is of limited use. Its focus is on Victorian horror. So, the Beast People of The Island of Doctor Moreau and the Martians of The War of the Worlds alongside personality monsters like Carmilla, the eponymous vampire from Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel, Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Helen Vaughn from Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan. This shifts the focus of Cthulhu by Gaslight away from the traditional Mythos of Call of Cthulhu and towards a Gothic, even a ‘Universal’, style of horror, and even a Pulp style of horror. Although it shows the flexibility and differences of the setting, it still means that the Keeper will need access to the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook if she wants details of the Mythos monsters and entities contained therein, perhaps in developing the cults mentioned earlier in this supplement.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide includes two scenarios. The first is ‘The Forby Masterwork’, previously published as ‘The Masterwork of Nicholas Formby’ in 1993’s Sacraments of Evil. It is also a Gothic horror scenario rather than a Mythos scenario. It takes place over the course of a weekend in August 1890, at the Forby home in West London. In keeping with the genre, it involves family illness, a family curse, a dastardly villain, a monster stalking the grounds, and secret upon secrets. It also includes two options in terms of set-up. In option one, the Investigators are asked for help by an old school friend, Harold Forby, who is suffering from an old childhood sickness, in finding a family treasure that might restore the family fortune. In option two, the Investigators are not of Middle or Upper Class standing, but of Lower Class—and worse—of criminal standing! Perhaps associates of the Forty Elephants crime gang mentioned earlier in the book, these Investigators are hired by the Forby family as new servants and go in search of the treasure for their own ends. Advice is given on running both groups, but the criminal Investigator option is likely to be the most entertaining and likely the most demanding to play and run. The scenario mostly confined to the family mansion, its grounds, and nearby locations, is a busy affair, heavy on investigation and interaction and there are a fair few number of NPCs to keep track of. The scenario is pervaded by a wane, sickly feel as the Investigators tiptoe around the house and household dealing with the family and servants, including a very annoying nine-year-old boy. The only real problem is that the name of one of the NPCs which is bit too on the nose, but otherwise this is a well done, creepy affair.

The second scenario is ‘Oranges & Lemons’. It shifts the action to Shoreditch in East London, involves middle and lower class Investigators, and starts with a bang! The Investigators are at a coffee shop when a man stands up, cries out for help, staggers over to them, vomits copiously over them, and then drops down dead on the floor where his corpse rapidly desiccates. The players and their Investigators may need a bit of a push to investigate the death, but when they do, they quickly learn that the man’s death was not only odd one in the district of late. Learning more will send the Investigators back and forth across the district as they discover one victim after another, and quickly, the strange rash of deaths is linked to a local apothecary and then to a well. What will also drive the Investigators to act is the possibility that one or more of them will begin to feel ill and even act out of character, which begs the question, have they been infected by the same thing as those who died? The scenario makes good use of London’s history and the Victorian obsession with waters, having been influenced by the Broad Street Pump and cholera outbreak of 1854. This is the more straightforward of the two scenarios in the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide and is easier to run. The Keeper advice on how handle possible Investigator infection will keep the players on edge whilst the finale really does reveal that there was something nasty in the water!

Unfortunately, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide could have been better organised. There are places in the book where the flow of the content is split by the intrusion of unrelated material, such as floorplans between the discussion of the workhouse and crime and punishment and the situational rules placed in the middle of the advice for the Keeper. Another issue is that even together, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide and the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide do not feel complete. Certainly, the Keeper can run both scenarios in the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide and create and run scenarios using the Victorian horrors it details, but beyond that, the Keeper is going to want to consult the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook for a deeper treatment of the Mythos at least.

Physically, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide is a good-looking book. It needs a slight edit, but the book is well written and very readable, and the artwork and the cartography are both decent.

The Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide does a good job of complementing the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Investigators’ Guide with an informative and genuinely interesting guide to horrors mundane and horrors Victorian rather than Mythos. It is better in its treatment and examination of Gothic horror, Victorian Science Fiction, and folk horror than it is Mythos horror, though it does at least lay the groundwork for the latter in its pleasingly extensive coverage of Mythos-related cults in the period. Their details and that of the Golden Dawn do lend themselves to some great campaign possibilities and scenario ideas should the Keeper—or publisher—want to develop them. However, as presented and in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keepers’ Guide does slightly underwhelm, leaving it reliant on the more experienced Keeper to bring out the best in the book.