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Old 12-31-2018, 08:12 AM   #1
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats

In a new Monster Hunter campaign set in the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, I'll be making use of biologist, cryptozoologist and paranormal writer Ivan T. Sanderson's Vile Vortices.

These areas, or Vile Vortices, will then be places where the veil of reality is weak and Other Places can seep through, opening ways for the sort of creatures that Monster Hunters, well, hunt. The world as a whole ranges from No Mana to Very Low Mana, with Ley Lines and Sacred Places sometimes reducing the penalty to use rituals and other supernatural powers down to -5 or so, but very rarely less than that. Within the Vile Vortices and ley line tangles adjacent to them, the local Mana Level is Low Mana (-5) and sometimes, in the vicinity of pathways between worlds, even approaches Normal Mana (+0).

I'm not using templates from the Monster Hunter line, but I might use a lot of concepts and monsters from there. I am using the RPM magic system and additional material by Christopher R. Rice, such as Thresholds from 'Safe as Houses' (Pyramid #3/58) and the Facade from 'Mask of Humanity' (Pyramid #3/97).

I want to try to achieve a sort of Ken Hite-ian effect in linking real world mythology, speculations of various occult writers and gameable detail. In short, what he did in his Suppressed Transmission, which originally appeared as an ongoing article series in Pyramid.

The PCs will mainly be working in the Bermuda Triangle, the Vile Vortex closest to their home base, but I want to feature news and possible adventure hooks connected to other Vile Vortices, possibly patrolled by allies, acquaintances or rivals of the PCs' eccentric billionaire Patron.

I also want to link famous Places of Power and/or Mystery somehow to the Vile Vortex theory, even if there is some geographic irregularity, but I'm looking for suggestions on how to do that.

So, a few random questions to start with.

1) Among the twelve Vile Vortices listed by Sanderson, at least according to Wikipedia, there is one he calls the Algerian Megaliths, supposedly located 'south of Timbuktu'. What, precisely, is being referred to here? Most of Algeria's famous ruins or other archaeological sites are decidedly north and west of Timbuktu and, indeed, south of Timbuktu is Mali, the country Timbuktu is located in, not Algeria. Does he mean Megaliths built in an Algerian style, but located in Mali, or is this some odd way to refer to the location of archaeological sites that are in Algeria?

2) Assuming that I want to connect the historical eruption of Krakatoa to a Vile Vortex, how do I go about that? How far is it between the agreed-upon area of the Wharton Basin to Krakatoa?

3) How do I work Croatoan island into the campaign?

4) Can the Vile Vortices being areas where other worlds seep into this one somehow be contorted to explain the Tunguska Event or other notable unsolved mysteries of that nature?

5) Does anyone have thoughts, comments or suggestions?
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