[MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats

[Flyndaran]

Must the edges be fixed or can they wobble through time? Perhaps the edges were creeping larger in the past but some group(s) fought back squeezing it to the minimum boundaries of the present.

I imagine tendrils like lightning leaders seeking and priming an area for a strike.

I haven't read much on the theory, so I'm sorry if this idea contradicts the concept.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Must the edges be fixed or can they wobble through time? Perhaps the edges were creeping larger in the past but some group(s) fought back squeezing it to the minimum boundaries of the present.

I imagine tendrils like lightning leaders seeking and priming an area for a strike.

I haven't read much on the theory, so I'm sorry if this idea contradicts the concept.

No, this can absolutely suit the concept, with the addendum that changes in one Vile Vortex might affect one or more of the others.

[Flyndaran]

That could be interesting info for MHs. The vortex you're studying seems to retract or decrease in "charge/danger" suggesting one of the others has increased.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That could be interesting info for MHs. The vortex you're studying seems to retract or decrease in "charge/danger" suggesting one of the others has increased.

Just so.

I intend recondite applications of Hidden Lore (Ley Lines), Intelligence Analysis and Thaumatology to drive much of the PCs' actions. NPC academics, occultists and former intelligence analysts will pour over disparate reports from around the world before J.R. Kessler calls the PC into a meeting, tells them as much of the guesswork and theories behind the analysis as the players can stand and then dispatches them to some Caribbean island to prevent an unspecified catastrophe, armed with hints and portents teased from study of the Vile Vortices and whatever specific reports Kessler has managed to obtain.

[Icelander]

What mythological or legendary threats do forumites first think of when they hear something described as the 'Cold Ones'?

What cultures or traditions might forumites expect to have a concept of demons, evil spirits or other supernatural beings that might deserve such an appelation?

If I were to make up a mythology around them, where should I look to find the bare bones of reality to hang my fancies on?

[mr beer]

1. 'Cold Ones' makes me think of the dinosaur-like warbeasts of Warhammer.

2. Some kind of ravaging spirit bringing supernatural cold, accompanied by nasty weather, starvation and madness.

3. The Wendigo plus anything Eskimos and related people had going on. I'm sure there's something.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by mr beer

1. 'Cold Ones' makes me think of the dinosaur-like warbeasts of Warhammer.

2. Some kind of ravaging spirit bringing supernatural cold, accompanied by nasty weather, starvation and madness.

3. The Wendigo plus anything Eskimos and related people had going on. I'm sure there's something.

Indeed.

As for 2. and 3., my last campaign had that as the villain. I had something else in mind..

Ah.

Cold Ones (also Ice Giants, the Finality, Lords of the Last Waste)

Mythological beings who dwell at the end of time, during the final blackness of the universe, the last surviving remnants of the war of all-against-all over the universe’s final stocks of extropy, long after the passing of baryonic matter and the death throes of the most ancient black holes. Savage, autocannibalistic beings, stretching their remaining existence across aeons-long slowthoughts powered by the rare quantum fluctuations of the nothingness, these wretched dead gods know nothing but despair, hunger, and envy for those past entities which dwelled in eras rich in energy differentials, information, and ordered states, and would – if they could – feast on any unwary enough to fall into their clutches.

–Mythographies of the Worlds, 53rd ed., Third League Publishing & c.
(Actually, somebody's blog that I'll link when I'm not using a tablet)

There's the effect I'm going for, now I just need some neat connections to one or more real world culture or tradition, to make up convincing exposition for rolls against the PCs' Archeology, Anthropolgy, Expert Skills, Hidden Lore, History, Literature, Occultism and Theology.

[Flyndaran]

Wechuge, like Wendigo but with a heart of ice.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Wechuge, like Wendigo but with a heart of ice.

I've already introduced some minor beings connected in some way with these 'Cold Ones'. These are incorporeal spirits without form or substance, who with the performance of a certain ritual inhabit a humanoid construct made of black mud and blood.

The humanoid constructs were, at least when the PCs saw them, fairly unformed and shapeless, without eyes, eyelids, lips, teeth or other human features. They were more or less pitch black in colour, though it's possible that a conjectured brown-reddish hue would have been more noticeable in daylight than at night, with flickering lights, in the stock room of a Walmart's.

The Intuition and Hidden Lore (Spirits) of one PC, who captured one with a Pentagram Trap, tells him that these are beings aspected toward cold, both envious and covetous toward light and heat, and either not very intelligent, or so alien that their more complex mental processes do not register to humans.

As it happens, I had decided that a precious stone of some sort, associated with cold in some magical tradition or folklore I could discover, should serve as the fetish for each spirit, binding him to the golem body, where it would be the rough analogue for a heart. I would welcome suggestions as to which kind of precious stone, mineral or other material this should be.

And, oh, it's not come up in play, but I expect the PCs to stop soon and carry out a more thorough examination of the captured spirit, now encased in a crucifix serving as a secure spirit prison. And when they do, they'll find out that even trapped inside a spirit vessel, the cold spirit is somehow siphoning light, heat and energy into itself. It's not growing any warmer or more solid, however, and it will probably be within the analytical abilities of the PCs to determine that the spirit is linked in some metaphysical way with another entity or entities and that the energy is traveling down this metaphysical link.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Icelander

What mythological or legendary threats do forumites first think of when they hear something described as the 'Cold Ones'?

What cultures or traditions might forumites expect to have a concept of demons, evil spirits or other supernatural beings that might deserve such an appellation?

If I were to make up a mythology around them, where should I look to find the bare bones of reality to hang my fancies on?

I saw a documentary on the Gorgon that pointed out that the oldest image of the Gorgon was a human face distorted in the same ways as an untreated/unembalmed corpse's face. The documentary looked at several similar beings including certain female Vampires of India who all had faces distorted like the faces of the not yet rotted dead. I also remember that the Rusalka is often described as "mermaids that live in oak trees all summer and in winter they go underwater and become dead maidens." The Rusalka is often described as cold and from the first snowfall until the Thursday before Easter they look like the corpses of maidens. Between Holy Thursday and the first snowfall, they look like fair young maidens.

In reading a book called, Greek Heroine Cults I found that corpses washed up on beaches were often given shrines and worshiped as heroes. This was most common with female corpses. "The corpse of the sea is calling me./Dead, it calls with a living mouth"

Many scholars describe the idea of the fairies as the souls of the pagan dead and confusions between the fay and the dead.

Try this idea, The Cold Ones are non-material beings that can inhabit the bodies of the dead and give dead flesh a new inhuman life.

Any good for you?