I like the idea of the Peace Corps as a source of mostly well-meaning, defensive-minded actors.
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Originally Posted by Icelander
Wow, that was a really good read. The Atlantic article, that is.
There is actually a fringe theory in occult circles in my setting about the Nazis (and a lot of other things). It goes that there wasn't really a period in the 20th century where no magic worked. That's just how it looks in the aftermath of what happened, which was some sort of world-shattering manaclysm at the end of WWII. The world that now exist is an alternate universe that came into exist as the 'real' one ended, with the area of history around the manaclysm being hollow history, lacking the reality of mana which pervades the entire world.
Which would make this the same setting as my Weird War II campaign of Götterdämmerung on Walpurgisnacht was set in, albeit one set after the Götterdämmerung.
I said it was a fringe theory. |
Neo-Nazis also serve a useful plot purpose: you can place them anywhere in Europe and the Americas, they are often armed and prone to violence, and its hard to get too upset when a Shoggoth eats them. So you could use most Neo-Nazi movements as a source of clueless guys with guns and cranks whose rituals and tree-lore just get them into trouble, and add a few excellent scholars (inspired by real figures like
Junge who signed his articles "from the western front, ...", Heidegger, or
von Soden) who are not so sure that the spells they study are nonsense and a few slippery characters who make the right noises about Jews and Roma but really want to talk about holding the next gathering at this mass grave not that one, adding these three lines in Gothic to the leader's speech, and embroidering those runes into the banners.
So you avoid the tackiness of suggesting that the Holocaust was anything but senseless, and you create a break in the tension when after a failed ritual the Outsiders devour a bunch of street thugs and their backers in suits instead of a well-meaning church choir-cum-Austin chapter, Texas Syriac Club.