GURPS King in Yellow

[roland]

This campaign for GURPS is focused in Bologna (a town in the northern Italy), Rome and Carcosa, the unreal home of the demon known as King in Yellow.
Why in Italy? Bologna is my hometown (and therefore i know very well it). Rome is the most beautiful city in the world. Both cities also have been, in the twentieth century and now, crossroads of plots of intelligence and terrorists of various countries.
Carcosa, in closing, is the brainchild of the american writer Robert W. Chambers. It is place of desperation and insanity and the mere fact of reading its description makes crazy the people.
Among fascist terrorists, masons, serial killers, hideous creatures and a merciless enemy deriving from the past, the heroes will have to risk life and limb to achieve the victory.
The books absolutely indispensable are GURPS "Basic set: Character", "Basic Set: Campaign", "Horror" and "Mysteries". The happening occurs in the XXI century, the present day, therefore Gurps "High-Tech" is useful.
For those who do not know the cities of Bologna and Rome, the use of internet maps, wikipedia and "Google Street view", in addition to a guidebook, is essential.
Remember that in Italy, in addition to the Police, there's "L'Arma dei Carabinieri" (The Carabinieri's Army) which is an Armed Force in addition to a police force. For further details, i exhort whoever want run or play this campaign to carry out a piece of research about the Carabinieri and their hierarchy on wikipedia.

PRIOR EVENTS

44-10-5, Marzabotto, Italy. A town in the province of Bologna. The major Walter Reder, commander of the 16th armored unit scout (Panzeraufklärungsabteilung) of the 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer SS, is appointed to clear the area of Montesole from a small group of partisans called "Red Star", which in the past months ambushed many times soldiers of the Wehrmacht. The killings are horrible.
Reder likes partake in the raids. He's brilliant, strong, very skilled in the waepon's use and merciless. He adores kill men, women and children with knife. He adore kill, that's that.
Now, he's leading a small group of SS soldier to a valley that lies south of Marzabotto. The area is unusually quiet. Only in the distance one can hear the rifle bangs of the executions. The soldiers are aiming to an old building, where there have been strange sightings. In the distance Reder sees the building: it's an old, ebony black tower with an unfathomable yellow-colored mark in front.
There's a few men in front of the main door. They are motionless and characterized by vacuous eyes. Reder and his men fire at the guys. They fall down, riddled by the rounds, but after a few seconds, rise. And attack.
They have a huge endurance, vigor and bloodlust. They pop up from everywhere and start to kill. The hunters become the preys.
The Reder soldiers fire, attack with bayonets and die, but a few succeed to enter the building. Reder blocks the door. There're, in addition to him, four men. Before the soldiers there's a huge chamber and, in the middle, an ebony black altar.
Before the altar, there's a pulpit with an open book, dark and yellow. Reder approaches the pulpit, picks up the book and start to read......

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Reder shouts and cries and laughs. He begins to shreds the skin of his face.
His men approch him, shocked. Suddenly, Reder jumps at the throat of a soldier, tearing it off by biting. Breaks the neck of another one and, while he slays the third soldier, his last comrade grasps the book and tosses it through the building window.
The book falls into the underlying creek, and loses its way.

2015-6-28, Washington D.C., USA. Seated on his armchair, a man observes a few papers. Printed on the wallet there's the writing "TOP SECRET". The man smokes and a sneer appears on his visage. Suddenly, he stands up from the mahogany desk and approaches the armored window. He thinks to the Greek recession, the uprising in Syria, the ISIS menace...... some of his greatest masterpieces. Not yet to the level of the overthrow of Allende, but.... Looks at his face reflected in the window and sneers: a hideous face, with the flesh stripped from it. And yet, a man with a similar face get the most powerful nation of the world in the palm of his hand. His influence over people the caliber of Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice and Kerry was, and is, absolute.
The man relaxes his visage, massages it. He sits again and resumes to observe the papers. Allende my ass! If he succeeded in snatching that ****ing book, the world should be in his hands!
After all, not only the mere fact of reading the book brings the people to go insane, but the decay of the substances the book is written and printed with turns the poor devils in bloodthirsty beasts (unless promptly reeducate) and confer them a few..... powers.
It took longer than expected (about 70 years) to get a hold of himself, master his rage, penetrate the USA establishment, restrain the spectres caused by his augmented intellect and search for..... the "scions".
Sometimes the effects of the book damage immediately, sometimes skip one generation, sometimes two or three....
The man, Reder, is sure he is the first scion. There're other eleven, in Italy. Ten of them are a Bologna, a town in the northern Italy; another, the last, is missing.
Reder peruses the code-name's list: the "Iguana", the "Black-Fiesta's Ghosts", the "Werewolf", the "Riddler", the "Bomber", the "Hatemonger", the "Fury", "The Bride", the "Judge", "Zanzibar" and, last but not least, the missing scion, the "Yellow-Marked Fiend".
A few already started to kill, the others are yet asleep but sooner or later will explode.
Before throwing the cursed book, Reder was able to read only another stanza:

When the King's children will be destroyed,
The Black Bishop will tame the
Yellow Beast.
If the Bishop will perish along with the Beast,
The human being's world meet with
Carcosa
And the King will rule. If the
Bishop
will destroy the Beast, even the
King
Will fold to him

Reder closes the wallet, picks up again and sneers. It's time to set his sleuths on these horrors, figure out their secrets and become a God!

2017-11-8, Rome, Italy. The Minister Minniti looks at the people beyond the heavy ebony desk in the middle of the room. Two men and a woman. The woman is Lieutenant Lucia Dellisanti, of the Carabineer's Army. Lucia is the youngest official of the Army: she's 22 years old, has I.Q. of 143 and an impressive curriculum. The woman ran the investigations leading to the apprehension of the most dangerous terrorists on the italian territory.
Leaned against the wall there's a muscular man. With his concerned and cunning gaze, the young man is the french Gerard Reno, the veteran of the Foreign Legion, involved in countless international operations. Reno was being rescued by Minniti from the execution. The soldier, in a surge of anger, killed his superior. With a pencil.
The one who mainly draws Minniti's attention is a cloacked figure seated on the couch. Franco Ulyanov, un italian-russian middle-aged man, is a true mystery. Survived miraculously to the massacre of the Bologna train-station, on the morning of 2 August 1980, when he was a little boy, Ulyanov got severely injured. The explosion taken away the right leg and eye.
One murmurs, inside the SISDE, that the man has huge abilities, in the magic field too.
"Glad you accepted my invitation to come and visit me in Rome" say Minniti. "I will make a long story short. There're bad guys out there and the Italian Government wants they being killed. They all are very, very dangerous and are a great dishonor for our country"
Minniti throw the magazine "Internazionale" on the desk. On the cover stands out the heading "What's happening in Italy?". A very long article illustrates a dramatic situation. Actually, from december 12th 1969, when begun the "Years of Lead" with the massacre of Piazza Fontana, the country is ravaged by terroristic attacks, explosions, targeted murders. Sometimes Minniti ask to himself.... what if the Berlin Wall was fallen? Maybe this horror would end, the Soviet Block and the NATO would end their proxy war on the italian territory.
But in Italy, in particular the city of Bologna, it's not only terrorism... malady is in the air. Insanity, occult groups, weird murders are part of what is, likely, an greater plan.
The concentration of Minniti is being upset by someone knocking the door. It's a young maid, arrived to serve thé to the four-person group. As though she comes, she quietly goes.
"Lady and gentlemen, inside this little box there're some data about your preys. They are reports about nine persons which live and kill in Bologna. The reports possess a security system which will make them self-destruct upon three minutes from the opening.
Lucia looks at the the mini-CDs inside the box. Upon each of them there is a name: "Iguana", "Black-Fiesta's Ghosts", "Werewolf", "Bomber", "Hatemonger", "Fury", "The Bride", the "Judge", "Zanzibar". Only reading the names causes goose bumps to the girl. Maybe, she thinks, this time the task is too much for her.

[Andrew Hackard]

I moved this because I think it's a call for players for a new PbP game. If I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll move it back.

[roland]

It's the 2017 of an alternative world where Pope Wojtyla has been killed by a sniper in the 1979, the Solidarnosc movement never started and the Berlin Wall never fallen. The Soviet Union still is a reality. The world is split in two blocks, just as our world before the 1989, and Italy is in-between. Two italian cities are mainly hit by the outcome of this situation: Bologna and Rome.
Actually, the history is changed in the 1944, 5 october, when Reder found out the cursed book. It is Reder himself who, animated by a dream, shot Wojtyla in the head, doomin the world to an endless Cold-War.

[roland]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

I moved this because I think it's a call for players for a new PbP game. If I'm wrong, please let me know and I'll move it back.

It is an attempt to talk about my GURPS campaign.

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by roland

It is an attempt to talk about my GURPS campaign.

My mistake - I'll move it back immediately.

[roland]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

My mistake - I'll move it back immediately.

Thanks!!!! and sorry for my bad english

[roland]

Chapter 1: Bologna

"This city, Matera had told her, is not like other cities. Before, while running with the car to look for a girl who shared the apartment with the murdered student, Matera had knocked his knuckles on the glass of the window and bent his head on a shoulder, to indicate out. This city, he had told her, is not what it seems. You say small because you think about what's inside the Walls, which is little more than a town, but you do not know this city, inspector, you do not know it. This is what you call Bologna is a big thing that goes from Parma to Cattolica, a piece of the region posed along the Via Emilia, where people really live in Modena, work in Bologna and in the evening go to dance in Rimini. This is a strange metropolis of two thousand square kilometers and two million inhabitants, which spreads like wildfire between the sea and the Apennines and has no real center but a widespread outskirts called Ferrara, Imola, Ravenna or the Riviera”

Carlo Lucarelli, Almost Blue

[roland]

In this chapter the PC's will meet the first ten above mentioned horrors. The succession of events should bring to Rome, to the struggle against the "Yellow-Marked Fiend" and his followers, the Great Orient Lodge.
I utterly refer to the sourcebook "Gurps Mysteries" about the issues concerning the characters that the players can roleplay,..... For example a Carabiniere, especially high-rank ones, has much more "bargaining power" than a mere private eye, but much less free rein.
The sections of the chapter bear the name of the enemy the heroes will bump into and include a brief description of the character hystory, his stats, the hooks about how the PC's will meet thier nemesis, the city areas where the villain operates and much more.

[roland]

The "Black-Fiesta's Ghosts"

The Black Fiesta's Ghosts are members of a commando that kills indiscriminately anybody who is under their rifle-range. They are three: the Tall, the Short, the Pillow.
The Ghosts go around the city of Bologna onto a car, a black Fiesta, that seems materialize out of nowhere. They materialize, kill and run away, leaving no trace. The Ghosts are three cops. By Day, they carry out, ruthlessly, their policemen activity. By night, they kill, rob banks and armored van and instil dread. In the past, thet killed four carabinieri and a magistrate, for the mere delight of assassinating influential persons.
The Tall and the Short are brothers, Gianni and Francesco Murgo. They are in the Police since fifteen years, and friends of the "Pillow", Amilcare Sarti, since ten years. The three rogues begun to rob the banks and armoured vans almost immediately, killing, in their first raid, five people. Since then, over the course of eight years, they killed thirty-one people. In the last raid, near a sumptuous villa, after the usual carnage, rescued a book, with three weird marks on the cover. Only touching it caused the rogues experience terrible pains. They drop the book, and go back to the lair onto their car, a Black Ford Fiesta. After three days in coma-like state, were born the "Black-Fiesta Ghosts".
The villains begun to wear a black full evening dress and a white skull-like mask. By touching the book, they got weird powers: the Tall grew a super strenght and resilience; the Short became amazingly agile and coordinated. The Pillow, so called because of the ability of absord kinetic energy for heal himself, is the mind of the syndacate, a character of great intellect and will force. But the greatest power is those of the car: when the rogues are onto the Fiesta, and the car has the engine started up, it..... vanishes in the fog.
Now, the three rogues have planned an ultimate heist: kidnapping the leader of Forza Fratelli del Nord, Umberto Salvini. Salvini is disliked by many people, particularly by the members of Communist Party, and has been subject to a great many of menaces and assassination attempt.
Salvini is closely watched by scores of bodyguards and carabineers. Although the Ghosts are declaredly fascist guy, the leader of the ultra-right party is the ultimate prey, ideal to show their fighter valor.
Just this last chase could decree the ruin of this terrible trio.
As the Ghosts will discover, Umberto Salvini will be a very difficult prey, also thanks to an eventual interference by the PCs. Without "curbing" the PCs too much, the development of the story should be roughly the following:
1. the PCs put themselves on the trail of the Ghosts.
The heroes should meet the Ghosts during one of the raids of the latter; after a brief gun battle with the PCs, the Ghosts should disappear into the fog. The firefight should occur by chance, for example at a petrol pump, a bank, a post office.
2. The Ghosts continue to kill some illustrious and powerful personalities.
The Ghosts have struck again: the Police Chief of Bologna and his escort, consisting of 12 men, were brutally killed. The heroes are warned by a call from Minister Minniti. Their arrival is timely and they manage to reach the place before the news and the scientific; on the spot they should find something to bring back the true identity of at least one of the Ghosts. Given their passion for military objects, one of the criminals may have lost a pennant, a particular and rare pendant. Speaking to some connoisseur, the heroes may discover their rarity and may have some information about the owner's identity.
3. the heroes discover who the Ghosts are, but the latter manage to escape them;
The heroes understand that the Ghosts are policemen; they could make a direct reference to the home of one of them or go directly to the Police Headquarters, where it is easier to find them. The policemen will not be at all welcoming, indeed they will be particularly grumpy and arrogant. Perhaps a test of strength and resolution should be enough to make them work together. If the heroes manage to convince the cops, even the most reluctant, they will call one of their superiors who will open the criminal locker.
Perhaps due to excess of presumption, perhaps due to a feeling of impunity, in one of the lockers the heroes find a picture of Salvini whose face is marked by a sight drawn with a red marker.
If they contact the Ministry or, in any case, some security staff at the Police Headquarters, the PCs can find that Salvini and the escort are on the Bologna-Milan motorway, as they are expected in the Lombard capital for a conference.
When the PCs arrive, they see in the distance that the fog has risen, a clear sign that the Ghosts have already arrived.
4. The gun battle between the PCs, the carabinieri and the bodyguards of the politician, and the Ghosts should be played as a scene from a 1970s crime film, in a very tense and realistic way.
The GM should try to "save" the dr. Salvini. But remember not to overdo it. The campaign should tend more to the sandbox than to the railroading.
If Salvini is killed by the PCs, let that happen; otherwise he is rescued by his bodyguards.
What should not happen is that the PCs disregard themselves and let the Scions slaughter each other. If this happens, let the Ghosts become aware of the PCs and turn their firearms against the heroes.
5. The fight, in an ideal game, should end with Salvini that saves and the PCs chasing the last surviving Ghost along the highway. At this point something absolutely unexpected should happen: the fog rises, this time not coming from the Ford Fiesta; the fog comes from an even more terrible creature, a Highway Shark (see Monster Compendium, pag. 274), which will mercilessly attack the surviving criminal. The scene should have a dreamlike connotation and be interpreted in an almost dreamy way.
It is absolutely left to the GM if the Leviathan attacks or not even the PCs.
Why did this happen? Perhaps the Ghosts have made the King in Yellow angry, by trying to kill another Scion, or perhaps the King will not tolerate the losers. Or maybe for any other inscrutable reason. The fact is that GM should not give any explanation, simply must describe the fact in the manner indicated above.

[roland]

Safarà

July 1993. Marina Romea, a seaside resort in the province of Ravenna, Italy. First the librarian of the small but neat municipal library died. Suicide, the Carabinieri said. The body, in fact, was found hanged in the cellar.
Then, the mayor of the town, a shady figure who probably had contacts with organized crime, appointed as a new librarian a funny little man from the top hat who immediately reorganized the entire library.
First of all he eliminated many books that he himself branded as "junk". At first people were surprised, as they were also classics or international bestsellers. At the same time he flooded the small city with leaflets with a strange tenor, though undoubtedly containing very captivating cryptic messages. "Come and visit us in our library, you will find exceptional readings! You will be able to express yourself freely and you will truly know your neighbor!"
First timidly, then more and more, people rushed to the library and began to spend an increasingly significant time there. People wrote their secrets, read the secrets of others and, after a fair payment, could know the names of the authors of the writings.
A few weeks later a small shop near the library appeared, selling small items, souvenirs, sometimes childish things. The shop was immediately greeted with joy by the citizens of Marina Romea. It seemed that citizens and tourists had rediscovered the objects of their childish fantasies and were willing to pay huge sums to get them.
Then, suddenly, the suicides began. First isolated facts then more and more numerous. Some of the marvelous tree-lined avenues of the town were littered with corpses. Some had cut their veins, some had hanged themselves on the branches, some had jumped from the houses.
Finally, the ineluctable. People began to lash out against each other. Those who managed to survive said that there was nothing more human in the eyes of the assailants.
The army intervened and Marina Romea was almost annihilated, the library and the shop set on fire. Everything was silenced by the Government, worried that the news of the massacre could create panic.
Some soldiers saw, in the flames, a man in a top hat who, sitting on the roof chimney, laughed like a madman. A second later the man was gone.
Safarà is the librarian of the King in Yellow, and he is, in addition to the Bride, the only one which has known the King.
He has a nasty mind: his hobby is settling in a country town or a medium/small-sized city and perverting the dwellers. To do this work, he kills the local librarian and replaces him by turning to the Mayor to blackmail him with learned secrets.
Once Safarà holds the office of new librarian, clean out the library of the classics, bestsellers, comics, roleplaying games, collections of poems and fills up it with other kind of writings....
He encourages the people, through local advertisements, commercials, etc., to anonimously write, against payment of a few hundred euros, their opinions and their most intimate secrets. If someone wants to read the manuscipts, he have to pay a few dozen euros, while if he wants to know the author's name, it may require thousands, or ten of thousands, of euros.
Shortly thereafter, with the money earned and the secrets learned thanks to the library, Safarà opens his well-stocked shop, where he sells the objects of desire to the visitors of the library.
People get up to their neck in debts for purchasing, presenting or destroying the objects. This and the shame for the rivealed secrets lead the people to commit atrocities.
Whole towns have been destroyed.
Today Safarà has settled in a small library in the Margherita Gardens of Bologna, near a beautiful pond. The previous librarian, Marco Iannassi, is drowned in that little pond. A rather strange death. Safarà, after killing the old librarian, contacted the Mayor and, knowing his sexual problems (it's a pederast), brought him to a young boy just over 18 years of age and took pictures of him. Then he blackmailed him, until the Mayor appointed him as new librarian.
The most disturbing aspect of all the work of this Machiavellian demon is that human beings who come into contact with it lose their soul to reach the most morbid knowledge.
The library is a small building with two distinct wings: once the heavy mahogany door has been opened, the clients will be able to see, on their left, a large hall full of shelves, which, in turn, contain hand-written files; on the right a small but well-stocked shop full of junk and childish minutiae.
Continuing along the left wing, there are the private rooms of Safarà and its three servants: Isabella, Narsete and Belisario, a personal gift from the King in Yellow.
Despite their fairly conventional appearance, Isabella, Narsete and Belisario are actually morally and physically monstrous creatures.
Isabella has the appearance of an old woman who moves the carts of books from one room to another. Obese but, at the same time, apparently fragile, in reality Isabella is a dangerous Snake-Hag (see Monster Compendium, pag 261). She is extremely gossipy and devious and will insinuate suspicions in the hearts of the customers of the library and of the heroes themselves. Only when someone turns out to be a danger to herself or to Safara, the monstrous servant will show up.
Narsete and Belisario are actually one creature (Kolossus and Midget of the Nukeland, see Monster Compendium, pag. 299). Narses is gigantic, an imposing physique and a total idiot look. He is the "bouncer" of the library, as well as the bodyguard of Safara.
Belisarius is a physically contorted and hunchbacked midget, busy climbing the library shelves to store manuscripts. His eyes give off a fierce intelligence.
The customers of the library, once made contact with Safarà or Isabella, undergo a rapid process of moral and intellectual decay.
At the beginning, those who write or read the stories will be hyper excited and eager to "empty" and tell their penniless minutiae, their dislikes and their weaknesses, and read the bad things of others.
They will get indebted, trying to learn a lot more about the writings, to know the names of the authors, to say their evil opinion about everything. They will spend hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of euros in the nearby gift shop.
Their excitement will turn into despair and then into a more and more accentuated apathy. Then, something will spoil completely and break. When Safarà understands that he has enough "customers" to hurt or even destroy the whole community, he will send the signal and suddenly the customers will turn into "Rancids" (as he likes to call them) and as blood-hungry zombies, they will start killing.
The librarian has a diabolical irony and has always chosen Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as a signal. When at 22 o'clock a summer night, sultry, very hot, Safarà will launch the hymn from the library's speakers, thousands of men and women will rise from their bed and start to kill for hours and hours of grisly celebrations.
It is possible that, in any case, some isolated cases become "Rancid" before the Hymn. Only a few start to kill before the signal, but sometimes it happens.
But what's terrible about these writings? Nothing ... or almost. Some stories are of the following tenor:
"I am still a pleasant woman, despite being over forty. Unfortunately, I have almost reached if not menopause, at least the climacteric, and this has, so to speak, procured deviations in the instincts. Now, my sweet friend, I am looking for a person who understands me and helps me. I have a husband, you ask me? No ... No more ... That bastard left me for a little girl. But do not worry. I still love. I have only one small problem and I want to talk to you about it.
I have become very constipated and sometimes it seems to me that my belly is about to burst and I cry because I remember how I felt during pregnancy: I felt very heavy. But one day a man arrived, dressed in white, with gloves that helped me to free myself and I was very grateful even if the child was born dead. Even now I could express such gratitude if someone came to my rescue. I would pay with kisses and money. I won the football pools a few months ago and now I have a lot of bills closed in the bank, also wanting to get out of that hole. I am ready to give, to give, to give. "
These are rough stories, sometimes scandalous. Sometimes they give indications of criminal intent, sometimes of crimes committed but long forgotten.
All the system that underlies the library is based on the desire to tell and "get rid of" their burden, their obsessions, together with the humble desire to know the despicability of others, in a gloomy game of mirrors. The final touch is the indebtedness, both to know, and to buy the minutiae of one's dreams. All this leads people to go crazy, to "empty" their humanity and kill.
The investigators could arrive on the trail of Safara or investigating the death of the previous librarian or being attacked by one of the "Rancids" awakened too soon. However it is important that when the call comes, that hymn to the joy that activates the Rancids, the heroes have not yet stopped Safarà or the players will lose the true climax of the chapter. As it may be fun to face the three servants of Safara and the same Scion, the most interesting aspect is certainly to prepare the entire night of the hymn as a film by Romero or Carpenter (the heroes besieged in a place closed by many still "human" zombies).