Ideas Please: Cabal in the Revolutionary War

[quarkstomper]

I have a vague idea that I'm trying to get to coalesce and hoping that input from some other people might help.

I've been thinking of adding the Cabal into my current Infinite Worlds campaign. The players haven't encountered the Cabal yet, but have visited worlds with magic in them.

My idea is this: I send the group to a parallel where the Revolutionary War is being fought, but where magic exists. I'd like to tie the traditional Masonic mysticism of the Founding Fathers with a sorcerous secret society.

There are two ways I could work this out: I could have magic be a new form of technology, (as in the novel Newton's Cannon ). Here the magic would be open and each side would have its own sorcerors.

Or I could have the magic be secret, which would make fitting the Cabal in much easier. Say, Ben Franklin learned some secrets of magic when he was hob-nobbing with natural philosophers during his diplomatic stay in England. He does not consider himself bound by Old World pacts of secrecy and begins sharing files with Tom Jefferson. This brings the Cabal in on the British side of the Revolution to bring the American sorcerors under control.

I like that. But I still need to focus it as a plot. What specifically will my players be doing and what will they be involved in? Who else is a sorceror in this world? Alexander Hamilton was born in the West Indies. Does he know any Voodoo? Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne had the Devil's own luck; did he have magic on his side as well? And what would Puritan Sam Adams and the Massachucets contingent think of all this blasphemous doings?

Dang! I only have an hour to figure it out!

[vitruvian]

This brings the Cabal in on the British side of the Revolution to bring the American sorcerors under control.

Given the actual connections of many of the Founding Fathers, it seems more likely that the American side is in fact *fomented* in large part by a Cabal faction with Scottish Rite Freemasonry as one of the outer Lodges, with others including the Rosicrucians and the Bavarian Illuminati; albeit there may also be loyalist Cabal factions, but I think this works better than supposing the Americans to actually be free of Cabal influence.

There's also the Stuart connection to deal with...

[quarkstomper]

What I wound up doing was deciding that the American Freemasons were associated with a splinter group of the Cabal. We haven't gotten to see much of the American Cabal yet.

My group was sent to this timeline (codename: Masonic) looking for a dimension-hopping mercenary they had encountered previously; (he blew up the Trojan Horse with a Stinger missile).

They meet General Washington, whose army is pinned down by the British on Long Island. They learn that their target is indeed working with the British. The British also have some sorcerors who have been targeting and eliminating Washington's own magicians. The group agrees to loan Washington the group's mage, who will create a fog bank as cover for his withdrawl to the Brooklyn Heights. Meanwhile, the rest of the group sneaks behind enemy lines to get their target.

They are captured by the enemy and encounter a sorceror who explains to them what the Cabal is all about before he kills them. Well, except they escape of course.

Back on shore, the mage is attacked by a Cabal vampiress, but this is one case where specializing in College of Light spells came in handy. And having a teammate who is a former minister. The vampire is driven off.

At the end of the session, the mercenary is still at large and the group has learned that the Cabal intends to go to Philadelphia where most of the members of the American Cabal (scattered amonst the members of the Continental Congress) are located and take out Ben Franklin.

I wound up combining my two ideas and I'm not completely satisfied. Is magic a secret or is it used openly? I kind of fudged on that issue. How precisely is magic being used in this war? I side-stepped that issue too, although I'll need to address it in the next session.

What kind of techno-magic is Ben Franklin working on anyway? How much do you want to bet it has something to do with lightning?

[Ed the Coastie]

Dude, if we ever move back to Wisconsin, my wife and I have to get into your game!!!!!

[Lord_Kjeran]

Chello!

Well, sounds like you might deal with this for a couple of more sessions. an interesting read is Kaherine Kurtz's novel Two Crowns for America; it deals with the Masonic involvement in the AmRev.

Amazon link

If you have the time, it should prove interesting to help you out.

Tony

[thastygliax]

Some ideas from various conspiracy theory/secret history sources that I've seen:

* Adam Weishaupt (founder of the Bavarian Illuminati) is either the same person as George Washington, or his doppelganger. (This is part of an alternate/auxiliary explanation of why the dollar bill has GW & the Eye in the Pyramid on it.)

* The colonies are attempting to establish their own sacred kingship, autonomous from England's. (Washington's eventual refusal to be crowned king may be either a failure of that plan, or an attempt to magically redefine the position.) Benjamin Franklin fills the Merlin-esque "kingmaker" role in this new "Camelot."

* Franklin is a modern-day alchemist, seeking the philosopher's stone. (His experiments with electricity might also make him a sort of Frankenstein [Franklinstein?] figure.)

As far as sources go, you can find more on these theories in Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission column (in Pyramid) and Robert Anton Wilson's Everything is Under Control, as well as some good old-fashioned web searching.

[quarkstomper]

This is how the plot ended.

In doing some research, I found that immedeately after the battle which forced Washinton from Long Island, the British commander Admiral Howe made an offer to sit down with representatives from the Americans to negotiate a peace treaty. Congress was not impressed by the offer; Howe said he could not recognize Congress as an official body and it was dubious whether Parliment would recognize any treaty he signed. Nevertheless, some delegates argued that to refuse Howe's offer would make it look like the Americans were the obdurate ones unnecessarily prolonging the war.

So Congress sent a delegation to Howe composed of solid patriots who would not be bamboozled: Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, John Adams, and good ol' Ben Franklin.

This worked into my plot perfectly. I had Cabal agents along with Admiral Howe who wanted to capture Franklin but who had been so far prevented by Howe's procratinating battle tactics. The peace mission now would bring Franklin right into their clutches.

Meanwhile, the rogue mercenary the players had been sent to capture sent word to them. He says he's a loyal American and is being forced by the Cabal to help the British. He wants to defect, but only if he can get a guarantee he won't go to prison.

Adams and Franklin arrive and part of the group accompanies them as bodyguards. The meeting with Howe on Staten Island goes uneventfully. As expected, the two sides come to no agreement, but neither are any attempts made on the American delegates. Or are there? The player panics a bit when Franklin steps out to use the privy, but he comes out apparently unharmed.

As the delegation is returning to New York, the rest of the team gets another message from the mercenary. The Cabal intends to replace Franklin with a magical duplicate! Ever since leaving the privy, Franklin has seemed a bit out of it; obviously the switch has already been made!

The team goes back to Staten Island to rescue the real Franklin, little knowing that they are playing right into the Cabal's hands. The Franklin they are rescuing is the counterfit; the Cabal has duped the the team into making the switch themselves!

The ending was a little rougher than I would have liked. I was getting rushed for time and so I precipatated the conclusion more rapidly than would have happened naturally. Also, I hadn't really worked out well how the Cabal was going to get the real Franklin once the heroes had "rescued" the fake one. Still, the game went pretty well.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Howe's already taken over? Pity - because if ANYBODY in the Revolution had Illuminati connections, it was Sir Thomas Gage. His entire record reads like "The Keystone Kops Meet the Marx Brothers", yet he kept getting promoted. It's a never-ending cycle of "screw-up - colossal disaster - promotion to a more important position - screw-up again". A number of specific complaints listed in the Declaration of Independence are a result of Gage's direct actions as Commander-In-Chief of British Forces in America.

So how did such a monumental incompetent keep getting promoted to better and better positions? Obviously Illuminati connections. Or powerful spirits guiding his career. It could be argued that someone with vast influence and power masterminded Gage's career for the sole purpose of making American Independence inevitable ...

[Fionn The Otaku]

I'd like to think things would be a lot more complicated then simply the founding fathers and there army vs the Redcoats, due to the Native Americans fighting on both sides bringing there magic workers and gods with them, also some of the Faerie races native to America would be involved and old world Fae, the sidhe and Brownies, might be involved to.

The wiser Native powers would try to be on the side of the British hoping that England's power could be used to limit the expansion of the colonies, but many would be forced to side with the colonists due to alliances and decisions made by the tribes.

[quarkstomper]

I've wrapped up the plot on the Masonic Timeline, but I liked the setting and might very well return to it. It would make a good setting for a campaign, but I'd need to research the era a bit more and be better organized on how I wanted to establish the various factions of magic.

Thanks for all the suggestions, everybody.

I think this afternoon I just might watch "1776" again.