Part of a UA/CoC crossover. Great Old Ones as Archetypes. Mordiggan is the Consumer of Corpses and Keeper of Secrets.
Avatar: The Ghoul (Mordiggan)
The Ghoul is the inhabitant of the graveyard, the eater of the dead, companion of maggots and the keeper of the secrets of the grave. Avatars of Mordiggan seek dead flesh, dead knowledge, and secrets best left buried. They drag skeletons from their closets and crack their bones for the marrow of their lives. They dress in funeral weeds and fashions decades old which smell of rot and mildew. At low levels, they resemble the dead upon which they feed. As they advance, their teeth grow sharp and doglike to rip and tear the corpses of men, and their nails grow into hard claws with which to desecrate graves and disturb the rest of those within. Their Bite and Dig skills must be at least equal to their Avatar rating to remain in Mordiggan’s favour.
At least one human corpse must be consumed for every advance in the Avatar: The Ghoul rating. The Avatar rating is also the percentage chance that anyone encountering the Ghoul will perceive them truly as an undead monster rather than mistake them for a fellow human.
Ghouls gain access to a unique language at a skill equal to their Avatar rating, which sounds like gibbering and meeping sounds to the uninitiated. No non-Ghoul can learn this language by mundane means; eating the dead causes specific changes in the linguistic centres of the brain, by a process akin to Kuru. It might be possible to learn it magickally.
As long as the Ghoul continues their unnatural diet, their aging is slowed by a fraction equivalent to their Avatar: The Ghoul skill. An Avatar with a rating of 90% would age at 1/10th the normal speed.
Mordiggan is not a jealous God, for all people and things die, are buried and come to him as food. Even the Archetypes are thrown down to become meat for the maggots when the fleeting beliefs of humans shift. A ghoul may preserve (but not advance in) a single other Avatar skill of 50% or below from the times when they still walked among the living, provided that it does not exceed their Avatar: the Ghoul skill.
Taboos: expressing preference for the present or the future over the past (eg: preferring the living to the dead; Eating fresh food rather than rotten; preferring current rather than former fashions, manners of speech, etc). Killing other than in self-defence – Ghouls should wait patiently for the gift of Mordiggan. Consuming the dead is a sacred trust, not a wanton indulgence to be hastened with violence.
Possible Avatars in History: H.P. Lovecraft
Masks: The works of Clark Ashton Smith; “Principles and Parameters” by Meredith L. Patterson.
1-50%: Walking Corpse: The Avatar increasingly resembles a corpse, and gains some of the unnatural resistance of the walking dead. On a successful Avatar: The Ghoul roll, the damage done by firearms (and other weapons relying on sudden system shock rather than massive trauma) is reduced by a percentage equal to the Avatar score. Vulnerability to heat and cold is also reduced.
51-70%: Instruct the Worm that Gnaws: By consuming a moderately intact brain of a dead body and making a successful Avatar: The Ghoul skill, the Ghoul may access the memories of the dead. On a critical success, the memories are retained permanently. Otherwise, they fade within 24 hours. To find a specific piece of information, make another Avatar: The Ghoul roll. A critical failure results in the Ghoul being possessed by the person whose memories they are attempting to consume.
A special exception is made for the learning of dead languages, for this is an activity Mordiggan looks upon with great favour. A dead language is always retained permanently by the ghoul, and can be learned from even the tiniest scrap of brain tissue. For a language to be dead, it must once have been a first language of a group of people (so artificial languages don’t count) and there must be no living person (ghouls and other undead excepted) who speaks it with conversational fluency or better (so Latin and Greek, still spoken by many scholars, are out). Being the first ghoul to learn a dead language causes rapid advancement in the path of the Avatar, and so many ghouls will seek out long dead corpses from forgotten civilisations, or the last members of almost extinct ethnic groups, and wait patiently for them to die, like vultures or, well, ghouls. Teaching a dead language to a living person breaks taboo. Performing a specific translation might not, depending upon the purposes of the translation (Publication is right out – Secrets are to be learned, but then kept).
Digging into the Grave and into the Brain is also digging into the Unconscious. On a successful Avatar roll, the Ghoul can find the places deep within their warrens that lead to the caverns of the Dreamlands, and enter therein.
71-90%: Dead Man Walking. On a successful Avatar: The Ghoul roll, the Ghoul can take on the seemingly living form of any dead person whose body they have consumed (more than 50% of the body must have been eaten). A fresh roll must be made every 24 hours to maintain the illusion. To successfully fool someone who knew the living person requires a second roll. This does not affect security cameras, etc, but does affect the person viewing the footage. A security guard watching over a CCTV would be fooled, but an automated/computerised facial recognition system would not be.
91-99%: Skeleton in the Closet. Everyone has secrets we wish to keep dead and buried, but Mordiggan is the lord of all dead and buried things. By simply touching someone (living or dead) and making an Avatar: The Ghoul roll, the Ghoul knows one secret that the person wishes to keep. The most deeply buried and personal secret will be learned FIRST.
At 91-99%, the Avatar becomes a Greater Ghoul, growing huge, apelike and maggot-fat on corpses. It is impossible to mistake them for a human without use of the Dead Man Walking power or similar Magick.
The current Godwalker of Mordiggan is believed to live beneath the great cemeteries of Paris and to have gained the post during the Black Death. It is rumoured that he/it can command the dead to rise and form an unstoppable zombie army, bringing joy to the hearts of Romano fans and fear to everyone else.
I don’t think this really fits into UA, at least not as an avatar. Perhapse this would make a better duke.
One way to sort of fit the Great Old Ones into Unknown Armies is to use the idea that they are the still twitching corpses of Archetypes from past cosmii. I mean, Shub-Niggurrath seems like the Mother Archetype seen through a much different universe, where the act of giving birth is caught up in the act of consumption, corruption, and death.
Archetypes are shuffled into the great beyond the veil by the Cruel Ones after their run at the cosmos is over. But like demons, particularly wily souls willing to strip themselves down to the bare essentials of power and effect are able to escape into the dark places of the next cosmos.
These AntiArchetypes, or uberdemons, do their best to regain their former stature – to take up a large enough prescence in the minds of current humans to reascend.
The humanist horror in this interpretation seems to come from the harsh light the ancient concepts of lost times cast on our own. The Great Old Ones that emerge into our world are the ones that have the most purchase on our souls. They linger in us like a spiritual infection, and we are vulnerable because we see what we could be, if we were to let ourselves be more like the Great Old Ones…
Great Old Ones don’t have the psychic impact as true Archetypes – they don’t have enough power to spread around to grant true avatar channels. But the idea of sacrificing this universe’s idea of humanity to attune yourself to a dead god – it feels a little like CoC to me a little.
As always, YMMV
Now I’ll admit, when I first read this entry, I was a bit skeptical. Didn’t really fit as an archetype, but I felt that could slide because of your statement at the beginning. Obviously, you know about archetypes, and you want to fit CoC into UA. Fair enough.
Snorlison, though… the corpses of past archetypes trying to regain power… antiarchetypes… I really like this idea. Adds a new dynamic into UA, maybe even gives archetypes something to do in the Statosphere besides look down upon the earth, impressing their presence upon humanity.
I could see a new UA level above the Living Mirror of Heaven where archetypes are fighting to keep these Great Old Ones at bay, and maybe walking the earth themselves to cut off their influence. Something like Nobilis, I suppose, in terms of rules and power.
Hmmm – well I wouldn’t be the first person to try, or to fail, to integrate the two universes. I do like Snorlison’s “dead god” idea. I don’t own Stratosphere though, so some of the refs are over my head – who/what are the Cruel Ones and the Living Mirror?
The Living Mirror of Heaven is the third level of play in UA, where the players are fully immersed in the Occult Underground and know many of the secrets about the way the world works. They may know about what demons truly are, and how archetypes shape the next incarnation of the universe.
The level above The Living Mirror of Heaven (anyone got any awesome name ideas?) could be a level where the players are archetypes, and are fighting the Great Old Ones and their influence.
We haven’t been given much to go on for what exactly the archetypes do up in the Statosphere. Players at that level are more like gods than anything else. Most GMs would probably have a player make a new character if his old character ascended.
As for myself, I’ve been reading the Nobilis rules, and think that model would work well for archetypes, Great Old Ones, the Cruel Ones, and other god-like beings one might encounter. Base powers would always trump mortal magics and ability checks (except maybe major magic and crits) without requiring a roll.
Instead of ruling over a certain element or concept, archetypes would have a measure of power over what they represent. Like avatar channels, but much more powerful and not tightly defined. If it’s strongly connected to your definition as an avatar, you basically have absolute control (logical and metaphorical) over it, limited by your domain attribute.
Expanding that dimension of play, the Nobilis concept of anchors (mortals held in servitude by your power through love or hate) could give archetypes direct avatar agents to use upon the earth. I suppose the archetypes might even incarnate themselves and take matters to earth if matters warrant (who’s the godwalker now?). Most of the other stuff in Nobilis you could ditch, but I’ve been trying to find an excuse to use its rules with UA for some time now.
Ah, as for the nature of the Cruel Ones? That’s entirely up to you. The books don’t define them.
For reference, here’s a site with some info on Nobilis stats and rules for character creation.
Thinking more about the threat of the Great Old Ones….like snolison mentioned, they have purchase on human souls because somewhere, buried under layers upon layers in the strata of the undermind, the mass human subconscious, there are parts of humanity which resonate to their power, remembering how the Great Old Ones used to shape us when they were still archetypes.
Clawing back into existence through the closure of the past universe (or universes?), trying to hold onto their power, has twisted them beyond reason and sanity, yet they still have claws within the undermind.
Their true threat is that they can evoke that power over humanity, and begin to twist human souls into something…other…that has absolutely no connection with what we define as humanity, or the archetypes which act as humanity’s representative.
They rip into the soul of humanity, trying to shape it as their own, or tear it to shreds. Anti-archetypes indeed.
One more thought. If the Great Old Ones are a continual threat to humanity and reality itself, even across universal resets, then maybe the universal reset is itself a defense mechanism, orchestrated by the Comte de Saint-Germain, who’s desperately trying to save himself and humanity.
Rather than recreating the universe time and time again, maybe the reset creates yet another universe, transferring the undermind and souls of humanity into this new haven. The Comte uses the power of the reset and the new universal barrier as another protective shell about humanity.
Humanity, then, is continually on the run, hunted beyond infinite realities by the Great Old Ones, who smash through the shells of previous universes, getting ever closer, as the Comte desperately tries to influence archetype ascension to do battle against the Great Old Ones and to provide enough power to trigger another protective reset and retreat.
OMFG! That’s all I really have to say. That, and this almost sounds like an entirely new RPG concept/UA tie-in game. This concept has been batted around before (I’ve considered it, too, when pondering a UA/CoC crossover), but I haven’t seen it expressed quite as well as I have both in ths entry and in the comments below it.
I suppose you could thematically explore all of the ‘classic’ great old ones–Cthulhu representing the pull of the undermind itself as expressed in dreams of incomprehensible horror, Tsthoggua as the Male Principle run amok as lover and hunter combined into one awful, bestial entity, etc.
Now that idea by Shatterfreak really does it for me. I’ve been looking for a way to tie gnosticism into this, and that idea of Great Old Ones inhabiting/breaking the shells of previous universes fits perfectly with the myth of the Qlipoth. Thanks.
Cthulhu, the Dreamer in the Depths, coming up.
Good work all around!
Now we’ve got the grand metaphysics sorted out 😉 does anyone have any suggestions to improve mechanics, game balance, channels, etc for this Anti-Archetype? I’m a novice at UA compared to CoC, so I’d really appreciate some comments on those aspect(s)
That sense of slow rot from within, and the idea that in some way the Mythos corruption is already inside us, was exactly what I was trying to get at, Shatterfreak.
As for name, The Cradle Of Dead Gods sticks out at me.
Would intelligent non-human races (eg Elder Things, Mi Go) have an Invisible Clergy of their own, or have some of the 333 set aside for them?
I think that non-human races should stay out of the picture. The crux of UA’s difference from CoC is that it’s humanocentric. That’s what I’ve been loving about this thread: it’s a version of the “Great Old Ones” where they are human (or were), just a kind of human that we no longer recognize, something older than our very universe. It perfectly fits the concept of their roots in the precosmic past and their strange non-existence: the Great Old Ones are, were, and yet shall be; they are not dead but do not live. However, as with the Ghouls you’ve so elegantly demonstrated, following the paths of the Great Old Ones could result in some entities that appear far from human.
This is beautiful, by the way. I never thought I’d see so elegant an attempt at combining these two mythologies – and this isn’t just an attempt. It’s a success.
We’re kind of cluttering up JamesH’s entry here. I’m going to submit an entry under Mods with the basic system we’ve covered (leaving Nobilis stuff out). We can link from that entry to extensions such as avatars following anti-archetypes. Joint copyright between myself, snorlison, and JamesH. Sound fair?
Deal.
Since I don’t think anyone pointed it out: “Romero” is the seminal zombie-horror director of fame. “Romano” is a cheese.
Go for it, I’m in.
Oops. Umm…
Perhaps zombie movie fans like cheese, huh? Didn’t consider that possibility, didja?
The first channel could use a bit of clarification. Say you’ve got a skill of 25, and someone shoots you for 40. Do you take 15 damage, or 30?
In the CoC rules, Ghouls take half damage from firearms. In that ruleset, you’re either a ghoul or you aren’t, it’s not a gradual process. I thought the best way to simulate that was to reduce firearms damage to the degree that one is a ghoul. So the answer to stange person’s query would be 30. Otherwise, I think the bulletproofing is too powerful for a first level channel.
Alternatively, it could be “on a successful role, firearms damage is reduced to hand to hand damage”?
Yeah, that would be easier to calculate on the fly.
This is really brilliant work. I’m honored that my little story helped contribute to something this thought-provoking. Thanks.
Wow, it’s Meredith Patterson! Love your work! Especially the application of Chomsky to the mythos.
(For those who haven’t read it, Meredith’s story can be found here: http://www.thesmartpolitenerd.com/principlesandparameters.html )
While I’m back on this page, Mattias suggested a couple of modifications:
Ghoul path: First channel should be bulletproof stomach – as in “you can eat rotten food without getting sick and die” (needing a roll of course, PC:s violently throwing up rotten meat and then trying to eat it again is what this path is all about!).
Mattias generally suggested moving things “up a notch”. For example, the requirement to eat dead people only kicks in at 51% (making it possible to become an unconscious ghoul by being obsessed with the past, without yet being a cannibal). Bulletproofing and ghoul-speak becomes the 51-70 power, memory reading and likeness stealing the 71-90 power.
A new one is added to 91-98 to replace the broken 2 “avatars at once rule”: As well as Skeleton in the Closet, you get “Theophagy”:
“By eating the corpse of an Avatar with a greater than 50% Avatar rating and successfully consuming their memories, the Ghoul can gain access to the Avatar channels of the dead, at the corpse’s Avatar skill rating. Their access is limited to the subordinate channels possessed by the dead Avatar (i.e. if the Avatar was a 75%er with 3 channels, the Ghould can only access the first two). The effects last for 24 hours or until the Ghoul’s next meal, whichever comes first.
Here’s how I would do the order of the channels.
Instruct the Worm that Gnaws
Walking Corpse
Skeletons in the Closet
Dead Man Walking