[Icelander]

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

Spice things up (pun very much intentional) with some exoticism. Mummies and Egyptian sorcerers,

As noted in the posts about the first two sessions, Dr. Stanley appeared to have learnt some Egyptian sorceries on his visits to that land as a military surgeon. After his death, he returned in a mummy-esque form, which vomited locusts as a form of attack and disgorged more locusts in place of blood when struck. There were also Egyptian-esque dog creatures.

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

golems and Hebrew magicians,

The PCs have formed an allegiance with the congretation of the Great Synagogue in Duke Street. Some of the PCs know the kosher butchers, drapers, costermongers, milliners, seamstresses, ironmongers and other tradesmen of the Jewish immigrant community around Aldgate.

Father MacManus is even friendly with a young rabbi among them, Moses Kogan. The Chief Rabbi, Nathan Marcus Adler, as well as his son and assistant Rabbi Herman Adler, and a few other older rabbis, however, are secreted away in the Great Synagogue, debating the religious significance of the supernatural events that have taken place. The PCs have so far not been able to speak with them.

It is, of course, far from impossible that there are some occult-minded people among the Jewish community; whether that be Sephardic Jews who have been there for centuries, wealthy Ashkenazim born of German or Dutch Jews who moved to England a generation or two ago or the recent Eastern European Ashkenazi immigrants. Those who know some supernatural lore might find that it is rather more useful in a world with powerful working magic than in a world more like ours, which the game world appears to have been before the supernatural event which started the game.

Several clay statues* of 9' to 12' tall warriors of various cultures that the PCs have spied among the villains that occupy the Royal Mint have fuelled speculation among the players that a renegade rabbi or qabbalist might be among the villains. Of course, it is not clear why such a person should elect to create statues/golems** that are built to resemble such warriors as a Malay pirate, a Japanese Samurai, a Chinese soldier in scale armour carrying an exotic polearm and an African spearman whose origin may lie in Ethiopia.

*The players are morally certain that these statues will move when it comes to violence between their PCs and the villains.
**Accepting, for the moment, the players' hypothetical as true.

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

Chinese wizards and horrors.

The PCs have now met a Chinese commander of armed Lascars and native-born dockside criminals named An Wei. He spoke of a Lord of Strange Deaths, who appeared to be at least as senior as the masked Agreus, the apparent commander-in-chief of the rag-tag army besieging the Tower of London. A mysterious Dutch-Chinese merchant prince of Singapore, by the name of Li Van Holt, also appeared to be familiar with the Lord of Strange Deaths and surprised indeed that Reggie Woodsworth knew that title.

All the PCs know of this mysterious Lord of Strange Deaths is that he is said to direct much of the opium trade and exotic criminal doings of the Chinese in Limehouse and the Lascars of the docks. There are those who say that London is the least of his concerns, that he controls a secret society or tong, as they call it in China, which extends secretive tendrils of influence into the very Forbidden City of Imperial China, as well as controlling the nefarious underworlds of dozens of South-East Asian port cities.

On the PC side, Georgie 'the Teapot' Frankton knows the proprietor of a curiosity shop down by the docks, on the old Ratcliffe Highway (now named St. George Street East). The name locals use for him is Chink Charlie and he acts as a receiver of stolen goods of exotic nature. In his shop, he sells many trinkets that purport to come from islands in the Indian Ocean, China or other Asian countries.

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

Cool! Then definitely throw a bit more of that in the mix. Ghuls, golems and penanggalen...

Only a few survivors managed to win clear of the horror that engulfed Aldgate station of the underground as the supernatural event that began the campaign occured. When the PCs were forced to go down there, they found what used to be human commuters had been transmuted into terrible blood-thirsty creatures with long talons in place of fingernails and grotesquely enlarged teeth adapted for tearing flesh and breaking bones to get at marrow.

Originally Posted by Cornelius

The Return of Cagliostro
A body hopping warlock, servant to some demonic power, which is looking for a better kind of immortality (Body hopping leave you very weak for days and gives you horrendous migraines)
Currently he's posing as a stage magician (The Amazing Ardini!), noted for his incredible "tricks" and "feats of magic". He is also known as a stauch enemy of mediums and seers, which he considers as fools, in the best case, or swindlers.

At present, there have been no encounters with anything suggestive of body-hopping warlocks.

Originally Posted by Cornelius

A dash of Mesmerism
A young boy is unwittingly a very powerful telepath. His dreams conditions people around him, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the worse, but usually in a very funny way. The problem is that his powers are devouring him. Can the players cure him and find a suitable teacher?

A lot of the supernatural phenomena that occured within Dr. Stanley's town house on Whitechapel High Street had connections to the works of Arthur Machen, who was kept as a prisoner in that house. Of course, that might just be because the secret society of occultists to which he tangentially belonged inspired his stories and they were really worshipping the Great God Pan.

Alternatively, it might be that Machen's imagination had given substance to certain powers. In that case, the fact that the PCs have left him behind with other survivors while they go do deal with an army of villains is quite unfortunate...

Originally Posted by Cornelius

BEDLAM!
The soul asylum of Bedlam was quite a terrible place. Now has become even really dangerous. The Genius Loci of the hospital has awakened and is spreading his madness in the city.

While London after the events that began the campaign resembles little so much as Bedlam, that old mental hospital is not in any way concerned.

Spirit Loci, however, might well be real in this world. The PCs have spoken with an entity that they suspect is an awakened mechanical telephone exchange.

The Spirit Loci of the Tower of London might be a very valuable ally to the PCs, if one could be contacted. Similarly, perverting it or the Spirit Loci of the London Stone might well be among the goals of the villains.

Originally Posted by Cornelius

London Exposed
While the victorian society ostended a virtuos image of itself, the truth is that London was home to a staggering numer of brothels for any kind of taste no matter how perverted and disgusting. Even the most important men of the nation gave way to their sordid desires there. But someone now is collecting evidences of their vices and he must be stopped.

The damsels in distress that the PCs have set out to rescue are mostly prostitutes from Whitechapel. One of the people they have disguised as maidens brought to the villains for a midnight sacrifice* is a teenage 'Molly Mandrake'** she-he, or a cross-dressing male prostitute.

*It's a long story, but the PCs are pretending to be criminals on the side of the villains, in return for a hefty payment from the Royal Mint and some of the royal jewels of the Tower of London.
**Fictional slang term, playing on the historical slang terms 'molly' (somewhat outdated at the time of play) and 'mandrake' (current at the time of play) for homosexuals and 'Molly Maguires' for a secret society of Irish labour activists.

Originally Posted by Cornelius

In Winter
A strange being has been seen on the roofs of the city. Some claim that it was an ape, and a monstrous one too. Others say that it's impossible, that an ape could not survive London' harsh winter. Or maybe it's fled from a private zoo, like the one own by a strange doctor, obsessed by primates.
A doctor which is researching, and a few whisper is also selling, a wondrous drug against old age. Funny, there also lot less beggars around, aren't they. Must have been the winter. They surely went south...

Among the villains is a Dr. Robert Taylor Leraux, who is a researcher in the field of Gregor Mendel. He has been very vocal on the subject of 'drawing forth the inner ape' from human subjects and has apparently carried out some experiments using human volunteers* and animal subjects from Jamrach's Animal Emporium down by the docks.

He spoke with great animation with Reggie Woodsworth about the recent stage adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', which he found a fascinating example of an artist intuitively perceiving scientific realities to which the mainstream medical and scientific community remained willfully blind.

He had also had remarkable success with fusing together dead flesh and living, adding a great mass of muscles to living subjects and 'giving them the strength of three men'. As a consequence of the process which fused the flesh together, their flesh kept growing, even closing wounds made in their living or dead flesh with great rapidity. There were, however, some unfortunate side-effects, 'some apparent pain, irritation, a deal of mental unstability, loss of ordinary human facilities of speech and reasoning'.

*Or not-so-voluntary subjects.

Originally Posted by Cornelius

Something you like?

As noted, I like a wealth of ideas and influences.