View Single Post
Old 01-01-2019, 02:01 PM   #13
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
That reminds me ... what forces are the Army Corps of Engineers and the city fathers of New Orleans really trying to hold back when they keep the Mississippi in its current channel? Perhaps they learned something relevant in Iraq at Ur of the Chaldees which also died when its river went away? And what powers has someone invoked to help them do this?
Hmmm... it's hard for me to propose any occult explanations for events that occured after 1890 or before 1980 or so, as during that time, the history of the game world is supposed to have been so near to identical our own world that there are not detectable differences (to save me from having to come up with an entirely new world).

Magic and the supernatural simply didn't work and was only of interest to the superstitious, religious, anthropologically inclined or resolutely stubborn old occultists, who'd not accept that their source of power had been fading since the Scientific Revolution and was now apparently gone for good.

There was a last paroxysm of oddness around the 1880s and, obviously, a lot of people continued to believe in the supernatural, but performing esoteric rituals and occult workings was no more efficacious than it is for us.

So it's pretty far outside the established parameters for history in the setting to postulate an occult reason behind something done in the 60s. Granted, some number of people still did things for occult reasons in the 60s, but as their occult workings didn't actually work, we tend to think of them as cooks and cranks, harmless (most hippies and New Age enthusiasts) or otherwise (Manson family). And while Jack Parsons was both a crank and important to secret government projects, I don't think this was all that common and generally, the Army Corps of Engineers would tend to be populated mostly by hard-headed materialists.

That being said, I note that the involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers in the course of the Mississippi River started in the 19th century, solidly within the time period when the supernatural could still impinge on our reality. And, I'll admit that it's very tempting to make use of this in some way, given that one PC, 'Nonc' Morel, is a Cajun swamp 'druid' who claims to be the chosen Wilderness Guardian of a large swathe of the Atchafalaya Basin, having formed a pact with 'Papa Mangrove', allegedly a genius loci of the area.

Ah, yes. Googling around your excellent suggestion, I've come across the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. I would be remiss indeed if that were not significant in my campaign, and to both 'Nonc' Morel and 'Papa Mangrove'.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
What went wrong in the presidency of Bush Minor to let the city flood, and what THINGS BEST LEFT UNDISTURBED awoke when water slopped into their above-ground crypts which are bigger within than without?
I almost never worry about the perceived sensitivity of having secret occult explanations for historical events. On the other hand, Katrina is so very recent and so many people who might actually read these forums have lost family, that I cannot help but wonder if it would be insensitive to the point of actively hurting people's feelings to cast it as a conscious act of evil, with someone set up as secretly responsible, rather than an impersonal act of nature.

None of my uncle, aunt, cousins or other family on the East Coast was affected by Katrina or Rita, Isaac, Nate, etc., beyond a couple of days of inconvenience and nervousness, but I'm aware that not everyone was so lucky.

In my campaign, I think I'll make a point that random natural disasters still exist and can still cause untold damage, entirely aside from witches, werewolves, vampires, ghost, guppies and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. However, I can certainly have the catastrophic effects of such natural disasters stir up unnatural things and forces, with flooded tombs and crypts being a particularly good example.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
Similarly, the University of Texas at Galveston medical school is experimenting on implanting vat-grown lungs in pigs.
In real world terms, that's pretty neat.*

In occult terms, how do you suggest I use it?

In my setting metaphysics, the local mana of scientific laboratories full of scientists and high-tech equipment generally ranges from No Mana to maybe the occasional Very Low Mana spot of -10. It would take a very powerful ley line or Place of Power to overcome all the TL penalties to local mana.

Also, within higher Mana Zones, it is possible for cryptids to come across from other realities, for humans using magic or afflicted by phenomena from other worlds to change shape and for all sorts of impossibilities to happen, what generally happens when a blatantly unnatural creature is killed or captured and brought into a lower mana zone is that the ectoplasm or other Out Of Place material that made it into a supernatural monster starts fading away and the end result is usually just a human or animal carcass.

This makes it frustratingly difficult to scientifically study various exotic monsters, as it's almost impossible to have a properly set up laboratory without reducing the local mana to almost nothing and even if you could, perhaps using ley lines and Sacred Architecture, you'd have a laboratory where high-tech equipment kept malfunctioning.

Of course, I am casting Galveston as a place where several ley lines intersect and Places of Power are more common. It has always been that way, in my campaign, but whereas it was apparently just a general location of elevated magical importance in the late 19th century**, with perhaps a preference for Path of Chance and Path of Crossroads effects, it is now a death-aspected location where Path of Spirit magic and various ghostly phenomena are unusually strong. After all, it was the site of the most deadly natural disaster in US history in 1900 and every single street served as a makeshift graveyard in that terrible year.

I wonder whether the University of Texas at Galveston was built at any terribly significant location?

It would be neat if there was a particular lab there where equipment kept failing, but it was not moved to a different location because Kessler, a huge donor, made it a condition that it be located there (and underwrote all the damage caused by the inexplicable electrical failures).

*After my grandfather got a heart valve from a calf, he makes it a point to moo a lot and claim that he prefers pork and lamb to cannibalism, but I've not actually noticed him turning down any steaks.
**J.R. Kessler, the PCs' Patron, is in possession of some pretty extensive notes written by esoteric students and occult practitioners from Galveston. While some do record ghostly visitations after the year 1900, no one was apparently able to work ritual magic in Galveston (nor anywhere else), for most of the 20th century. According to Kessler, this changed at the start of the 1980s, with his first experiments succeeding in 1982.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Icelander is offline   Reply With Quote