Monthly Archives: October 2020

Maister o’ the Auld Toun

A Liminal Crew Patron for an Edinburgh setting

https://whitechapelwitch.tumblr.com/post/106589806391/x

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to pull together some background material for my Edinburgh-based Liminal setting with the focus being on some of the main NPCs and factions I felt the Crew would know about given their involvement in the Hidden World of the city.

The first of these NPCs is a mostly-benevolent city Spirit whose domain is centred on the Old Town of Edinburgh, an area loosely defined by the limits of the Flodden Wall. This NPC will be the main Crew patron in my setting so I have provided a more detailed background to support this important role he will have in the campaign.

History

The Spirit that would become the Maister o’ the Auld Toun or, simply The Maister, has been present on the Castle Rock long before the early inhabitants of Scotland settled on this craggy volcanic plug.

It had been worshipped directly at various times in prehistory but by the time the Romans came to the Lothians, a pantheon of Gods had taken precedence for the inhabitants of the hillfort of Dun Eidyn and the spirit drifted into legend, even amongst the Fae.

As the medieval city of Edinburgh grew the Maister reawakened, perhaps by the incessant human digging into the Castle Rock and began again to make its presence felt. This time though, it was less connected to the rock itself and more attuned with the town and its inhabitants, becoming almost the personification of Auld Reekie and a city spirit in all but name.

Over the next half-millennium, he took on a protectionist and paternalistic role, keeping the Old Town’s inhabitants safe from supernatural threats while attempting to remain as neutral as possible with the other Liminal factions. His powers held many of the doors to the ghost realms beneath the city closed, keeping the monstrous regiment of the angry dead from attacking the living. He also stopped attempts by geomancers to tap the many the nodes in his domain, appearing to them directly and driving them off, or using his allies amongst the Liminals to do the same.

During this time, he accumulated a number of nicknames, these are mostly archaic now, but are still used in derogatory terms by his enemies: Laird o’ the Luckenbooth, The Lumheid and Keek-the-Wynd.

In the last few centuries though his power has begun to dwindle. This is most evident in wintertime, or Samhain, when he is uncommunicative rarely visible. On the shortest days of year Edinburgh’s dimly lit and narrow wynds become more dangerous as his protective wards weaken, the doors to the Ghost Realms begin to crack open and their inhabitants slip out to haunt the living. At this time of year even those without the Sight avoid the deep shadows of the vennels and keep to the busier streets with their modern lighting and the welcome chatter of the living.

At summertime/Beltain though he is at his greatest strength; in August, when the streets are thronged with Festival artists, visitors and tourists he is frequently seen wandering openly amongst mortals, often mistaken for a street performer or gangly stage actor and apparently delighting in the sights and sounds of the Fringe.

Appearance & Demeanour

The Maister most commonly adopts the appearance of an unnaturally tall, pale and skinny man dressed in a soot-stained top hat and tails or, some equally grubby Victorian garb. In the Festival season he often appears as a mime artist, street performer or some other bizarre/interesting individual, inspired by whatever act he has watched recently.

He is a Spirit of few words, preferring instead to gesticulate elaborately with his spider-like fingers while using his wide-eyed, expressive face to convey his mood. When he does speak his voice is rather hoarse and quiet which is in contrast to his sharp, icy breath which can chill the air even on the warmest of days.

Base of Operations

The Maister has no particular base of operations in the city and is frequently seen on the streets by characters with the Sight who venture into the Old Town. He tends to avoid encounters in the street though, preferring to meet in the Angus Ogg pub, making his presence known when the Locked Room is opened.

The ‘Angus Ogg’ Pub

The Angus Ogg is one of the oldest, if not the oldest extant public house in Edinburgh. It is however almost completely unknown to the wider public: it does not appear in any guidebooks nor is it included in any tours, yet it is right in the midst of the busy Cowgate, a hotspot of student drinking dens. Only those who have been to the pub before or have been brought by someone who has, can gain access. Regulars wander down Dyer’s Close and if there is no-one else present, an intricately carved door made of unvarnished elm will appear in the wall and open at their approach.

Occasionally the door in Dyer’s Close opens to those not of the Hidden World for reasons that are not understood. These new patrons are often in a desperate situation and always in need of help and this is usually where the PCs come in.

The interior of the Angus Ogg is not significantly different from many of other vaulted underground pubs in Edinburgh with its bricked, curved roof and slightly damp, mouldy air. What does set it apart is its lack of modern conveniences – it is illuminated by a gas lighting whose copper pipes are much in evidence and there is a complete absence of any electrical equipment.

There is a good dozen hand pulls on the large wooden bar offering a variety of beers but most of them will be unfamiliar: Ushers 80/-, Bernards Pale Ale, Drybrough Heavy, etc. The source of these beers from long vanished breweries remains a mystery but the cellar is always well-stocked. Spirits and wine are available and poured from unmarked, corked, clay or glass bottles of indeterminate age. The Angus Ogg never offers food though regulars do bring in their own and the occasional smell of a fish supper or takeaway pizza fills the room on busier nights. The numerous nooks and corners are filled with an eccentric collection of tables and chairs, some are barely functional, but others are obviously of great age and evident value.

The staff of the pub are all Liminals of one description or another, usually outcasts and the lost such as newfound Changelings trying to find their place in the world.

The Angus Ogg’s customers are always those that have glimpsed the Hidden World and need a place of solace on neutral ground or, to relax knowing that their safety is assured. Albert and the staff take the sanctity of the pub seriously and anyone causing trouble is swiftly barred, a rebuke which also carries social consequences with the local Fae.

Behind the bar there is the office, occupied most of the time by Albert, a clockwork man of unknown origin Albert is the acting manager, but he also plies his own trade offering customers intricate tattoos or making fabulous clockwork automata. He was found in the Locked Room some decades back and has remained in the pub since then, rarely venturing out where his large and oddly shaped frame can draw unwelcome attention.

The door to the Locked Room is covered with otherworldly carvings reminiscent of the Apprentice Pillar at Roslyn Chapel. Sinuous designs evocative of Fae or Pictish art overlay clearly biblically inspired motifs. It has no obvious handle or fastening and remains closed until the Maister wishes otherwise and has resisted all magical and mundane attempts to open it. The interior of the Locked Room appears to be the study of a madman and is filled with books, odd paraphernalia, junk and copious quantities of dust. If present, the Maister can be found here reading or puffing on a clay pipe.

As always I welcome comments and suggestions on this post.

Late edit from one of my players – Tom – who suggested this NPC for the Angus Ogg.

Martin

The lonely Echo of a former pub employee who has yet to realise his fate.
Martin was once a rising star in Scottish & Newcastle Pub chain and was on track to be appointed as the company’s youngest area manager when he came tragically unstuck in a Grassmarket cellar in the early 1990s. A furious poltergeist who haunted the pub found the unscrupulous duty manager pouring unfiltered slops back into the 80 shilling ale and decided to make an example of him, pulling down a full keg onto his head.

Thirty years later, still sporting cargo trousers, turquoise shirt, bowl cut and clutching a Filofax, Martin’s ghost found its way to the Angus Ogg. With no real grasp of where he is, or what happened to him, he’s never in one place for long. In his current haunt he can be seen pouring over a ledger in the office, trying frantically to get the floats to balance or slamming down NVQ hospitality paperwork on the bar and bemoaning the slovenly appearance of the staff, the bar and the clientele. Visitors might see him smoking nervously at the end of the bar, fretting over an impending Area Meeting or muttering about ‘targets’.

He is tolerated by the staff who make the pretence of listening to him. On occasion they have caught him in the cellar furtively clutching a filtration kit, which he tries to conceal before dashing for the door.

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Liminal: Edinburgh

Destruction of Carthage - illuminated manuscript

Despite having approaching 40 years of gaming experience I have never ran a game, or even played in a game set in my home town of Edinburgh.

It was never something that had ever occurred to me before but after my initial reading of the Liminal core book I was firmly decided that I wanted to set here. I was inspired partly because Edinburgh is referenced directly in the rules (see sections on the Edinburgh Enquirers crew, pg. 67 and the Aldermen pg. 147-148) and this made me think that for a contemporary UK-based game it would be enjoyable to play somewhere that is very familiar setting for to my playing group but tweaked to contain a supernatural aspect.

So why I have I never played in an Edinburgh setting before? There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly, many of the RPGs I enjoy playing do not have a contemporary setting, let alone one set in the UK. Alien worlds, fantasy or early 20th Century America are fine but 21st Century Scotland has never featured. Secondly, if you are looking for the escapism that RPGs offer, the mundane world right outside your front door is an unlikely place to find fun-packed adventure. Your mileage may vary of course but I my day-to-day life rarely features supernatural horrors.

I presented my idea of an Edinburgh-based Liminal campaign to my gaming group expecting push-back or disappointment because it was set in a too-familiar location, but the exact opposite was the case, they seemed very keen on the idea and set to work coming up with character ideas. The character generation system is very lightweight & straightforward so it was easy to realise the novel and interesting concepts my players had for their PCs. We also had a fun ‘session zero’ discussion about their base of operations (more on the Angus Ogg pub later), how their characters interacted with each other, and how they saw their connections to Edinburgh’s Hidden World.

All this endeavour and we have yet to play a single scenario!

This is one of the great things about Liminal – most people can have an innate grasp of the Hidden World without the need to consume a vast amount of preparatory material. There are enough urban fantasy books, films and TV series that players can draw on for inspiration that gives them a solid basis of what is possible as a character and what they might encounter in that world.

My aim is to run a couple of pre-gen scenarios modified for the Edinburgh setting to familiarise the group with the game system before I get underway with writing up my own ideas, of which I already have a couple.

Before I get underway with running scenarios in Edinburgh I wanted to provide my players with an idea of the movers and shakers in the city; who they are allied to and who they need to be wary of. I also need to provide them with a brief on how each of the main factions operate in Edinburgh, basically all information that their Crew would know.

Over the next few blogs I am going to go into detail on some of important NPCs and minor factions specific to Edinburgh within my campaign, notably:

  • The Maister o’ the Auld Toon – A spirit known to the inhabitants of the Castle Rock since the Iron Age and who has gone by many names over the centuries it he has interacted with the populace and the other local Liminal beings. He is viewed as a benign, subtle but elusive influence in the Hidden World, helping to keep the Old Town as safe a location as possible. The Angus Ogg pub is under his protection, offering a sanctuary within the Old Town to those in the Hidden World looking for solace or help.
  • The Spirit of the Water of Leith – Opinion is divided on whether there are two spirits or a single being with two aspects. The spirit that bides in the western end of the water is helpful, almost childlike and seemingly unconcerned by events in either world. It’s counterpart at the eastern end near the port of Leith is a different creature entirely; aggressive, defensive and argumentative. It is known to attack the unwary who approach it for information but can be placated with the corpse of a cat or cheap foreign rum.
  • The Enlightened Brotherhood – A society of geomancers with roots in freemasonry and the Speculative Society. They were influential in the creation of Edinburgh’s New Town, it’s layout allegedly linking and enhancing some existing local Nodes. They remain allied with the Council of Merlin but their influence is on the wane.
  • The Covenant – Edinburgh is the UK city with the largest amount of green space making it a haven of sorts for the Fae. The local realms are numerous but small and fractious. Slights and bickering spin out of control leading to frequent turf wars and intrigue. The larger realms representing Edinburgh’s hills and the ‘charmed circle’ of wells have a loose federation called the Covenant which they use to maintain some order and also to present a united front when they have to deal with the Winter King. The larger Fae realms are not above intrigues of their own and complex shifting of alliances can be hard to fathom and follow.
  • The Angry Dead – Though stories of unfortunate plague victims being walled into Mary Kings Close are just legend, Edinburgh’s old town is a great citadel to the dead and a vast Ghost Realm. For hundreds of years the cramped, brutal and unsanitary conditions of the Old Town and within its notorious basements and vaults were a great source of misery and untimely death. Now the restless spirits of these dead folk roam the Old Town in great angry swarms, sometimes coalescing at the portals to the Real World, desperate to vent their frustration on the anyone who strays into their domain. Thankfully Aldermen and knowledgeable Liminals can navigate the safe passages and avoid the places where the doors to the Ghost Realm are often open. There are also rumours of a number of ancient Ghosts who can bargained with to allow safe entrance.

The above is all a bit of a work in progress but it should form the basis of my Liminal setting. As always, I welcome comments and suggestions

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Liminal Magic : Alchemical Servants

I had an idea for a new magical path covering the creation of artificial beings – a more palatable option than using cadavers as presented under Raising the Dead, an extra trait for Necromancy, see pages 100-101 of the rulebook. Coincidentally one of my players came up with the idea of a Liminal character who was a Clockwork Man, a Victorian mechanical artefact, who has a soul and a personality but who was created in some bizarre ritual in the 19th Century. I thought that this was too good an idea not to include in my campaign so readily agreed and I will cover him in more detail in another post.

Returning to the idea for a new magical path, there are a number of examples of magically created beings in literature and myth such the Jewish Golems, Alchemical Homunculi, Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster, the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huangdi and I am sure countless others across a breadth of human cultures.

In essence, the magician is able to imbue lifeless, inanimate matter with some spark of life, perhaps even a soul, to create a powerful servant who can be commanded to do their bidding. The exact mechanism for this would vary according to the magical style of caster – with some perhaps sacrificing a portion of their own soul, others calling on a God to do so and still others trapping or persuading a free soul or spirit to inhabit the artificial body.

My thinking for the rules around this was that it should follow the Raise the Dead trait but allow the magician to spend Will to grant additional supernatural traits to their servant but that this would be a permanent expenditure of Will while the being existed.

Here is my suggestion for the new magical path, I welcome any comments, suggestions or corrections.

Alchemical Servants

“That the sperm of a man be putrefied by itself in a sealed cucurbit for forty days with the highest degree of putrefaction in a horse’s womb, or at least so long that it comes to life and moves itself, and stirs, which is easily observed. After this time, it will look somewhat like a man, but transparent, without a body.”

Paracelcus, De natura rerum (1537)

Magicians with this trait are able to imbue inanimate matter with a lifeforce allowing them to create an semi-autonomous artificial servant – traditionally, a Golem or Homunculus. These Servants can follow rudimentary commands and can be enhanced with further abilities.

The magician must first fashion a body for their Servant out of suitable materials – this could be clay, stitched-together body parts, a clockwork automation, wood or similar. The magician then spends two points of Will and makes a Lore test against Challenge level 8 to animate the servant. They can then assign 5 points to Physical Skills to the Servant to represent its intended function.

At creation, the magician can add +2 to the Challenge Level and spend an extra point of Will to add a further 5 points of Physical skills to their Servant. This can done only once.

Note that the Servant is a permanent creation and any Will spent cannot be recovered unless it is destroyed or the magician reverses the spell.

At character creation or advancement you can spend further trait points to extend the abilities of the Servant.

Spark of Life (2 points)

You can spend an additional three points of Will during the creation of an artificial servant to gift it with a soul and free will albeit one that is bound to that of its creator. In addition, it can no longer be destroyed by its creator reversing the spell. The construct in essence becomes an NPC and can accumulate experience and skills over time.

The Servant gains 5 points of skills to split between Mental and Social, and gains the Obliged Limitation towards its creator. The creator can release its Servant from this limitation to recover the expended Will.

Basic Enhancement (1 point)

The creator can imbue their creation with any one point Exceptional ability or Toughness trait, subject to GM approval, for the permanent cost of one point of Will.

Superior Enhancement (2 points)

The creator can imbue their creation with any two point Exceptional ability or Toughness trait, excluding Magic. This is subject to GM approval and costs two permanent points of Will.

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