Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
Thanks a lot.
It is certainly true that the stories of homeless children in Miami was especially inspiring. I wonder if Alice Talbot, the PC anthropologist who is supposed to be working on her PhD on the evolution of Jamaican folklore among immigrant communities, might actually be getting sidetracked into investigating folklore among homeless children in Houston.
She's not Charitable (which would pretty much clinch it), but she is Curious and if she notes that children from other ethnic backgrounds are telling stories similar to ones that at-risk Jamaican children are, she might want to investigate more closely. Especially if she recognizes anything that sounds like it might be true, in a world with magic.
Then again, with Shyness and no real social skills to speak of, Alice isn't the best field interviewer. I guess Pitiable would help her gain the trust of children, though. For best results, though, she should be paired with someone with impressive social skills, who can handle getting people to open up, while Alice memorizes everything they say and collates it with her reference-file mind.
Mental note, make sure to detail an outgoing NPC who is partnered with Alice on her research. For best results, make her every bit as Curious as Alice, but pushy and disturbingly good at getting people to talk about things they weren't planning on disclosing, which will no doubt play very nice with Alice's extreme reluctance to disclose anything of her own past.
I tried to get the players interested in creating active practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, but none did.
There is one obeah woman aboard the yacht they live and one PC, 'Nonc' Morel, is a rootworker with a background in Southern 'hoodoo', which is not a religion, but simply a magical tradition. He's actually a 'druid', now, but before developing his own magical style of druidism, his magical study was in the field of hoodoo/rootwork.
Lucien Lacoste has the talents to be a truly impressive shaman, being a natural medium and very good at any magic having to do with spirits, but he's simply a devoted Catholic and not interested in voodoo, vodoun or any other Afro-Caribbean religion. Well, 'not interested' might be understating things, as Lacoste came across a lot of criminals who used voodoo rituals for nasty things in his work as a detective and Lacoste feels that the idea of allowing spirits, who might as well be demons, to possess one is not only dangerous, but actively against God's word.
Lacoste does suspect that his grandmother, Nana Lacoste, might be less orthodox in her Catholic religion than he is, given that she has a reputation among the occult underground in New Orleans.
I intend for practitioners of various Afro-Caribbean religions to be potential allies, rivals, foes and villains in the campaign, so any detail is useful. From Kessler's history, an allegiance with elderly Cuban santeros (or even more likely, santeras) is quite probable, whereas my setting background makes it almost inevitable that many Dominican Drug-Trade Organisations (DTOs) will be strongly influenced or even dominated by people (or beings) with supernatural powers.
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The fact that those seem to be real emergent folk tales makes them fascinating, while at the same time the horror of them is heart-wrenching.
Myths and fairytales project human experiences into frameworks that allow the creators to try to deal with those experiences, psychologically and emotionally. That means those children have lives so grim that they create stories in which even Holy Mary, Mother of God, lacked the strength to resist corruption by evil.
That news feature is 20 years old, now, and I'd hope that things have gotten better for the poor children of Miami. Unfortunately, I sort of doubt it.
From a campaign standpoint, the stories are great sources. Having worked with kids in the past, I know they
can provide really good information, as long as the question is asked carefully.
They're really easily led, are taught to obey adults, and usually want please the grown-ups around them. If the questioner takes care to make sure the child knows that accurate descriptions of what actually happened is the way to please, then the bald-faced facts are exactly what they give -- like it or not. :)
Moreover, kids see and hear
everything, but frequently escape notice, themselves. For an investigation campaign such as yours, they could be a great asset for the PCs, and allow you to create a sense of existential despair -- or deliver some humor, or even both.
As for the approach you've chosen for spirits, that works well on your setting, as it's considerably darker than mine. While I include evil spirits, most of those in my campaign are nature spirits.
That doesn't mean they're
nice -- nature is red in tooth and claw, and cat spirits like to play with their food -- but that's not
evil. It's just cats being cats.
For a horror campaign, it would make perfect sense for demons and creatures of darkness to pretend to be benign, so they could more easily prey on those who contact them. Under those circumstances, Voudou and Santeria become much more hazardous.
What about the shamanism of indigenous people, though?