Hacking the Scenario: Island of the Dead (pt.2)

 

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Mayas, the Terrible Grandfather of the Forest

The Abawi feel a close relationship to the "people of the forest", the orangutan man-apes, and hold them to be their spiritual cousins. They have a legend concerning their origin, it is a local variation of a tale told across several parts of Indonesia:

Once there was a family who lived in the middle of a great jungle. There were no floods or forest fires there, the animals were all living in harmony, and the people never had to starve because the forest provided fruits and vegetables aplenty. But then one day, the only son of the family, called Mayas, contracted the "good people's sickness" (local name for smallpox). His parents tried out many drugs from different shamans, but to no avail. In the end, they decided to send Mayas to the deepest part of the jungle. They intended his isolation in the forest as a wish that he would be healed. After some time, Mayas had learned to live alone in the jungle, and hair had slowly grown all over his body. He was no longer able to speak. One day he met a woman who was also isolated because of [smallpox] and had also grown a fine orange fur. Thus, the gods had destined Mayas and the girl to survive and multiply.

They gave birth to the first orang-utans, and later other types of monkeys and apes. Because the girl changed ever more, the longer she stayed in the jungle, all her children turned out a bit differently. She became more primal and animalistic over time, and so all the other apes are less intelligent and further removed from humans than the orang-utans. Mayas also changed. His disease was never cured, in fact it became worse, and the jungle gave him a number of new sicknesses on top of it. But his body transformed in reaction to the diseases, to become stronger in fighting them off. He became very large, and survived carrying the many plagues. He grew four more arms, to climb in the trees even better, and defend his wife and the children with. His teeth grew long and sharp from eating a lot of meat. One day, he found five dead crocodiles near a pond, and ate them all. Then he lost the fur on some places of his body, since his skin there had become like scales. He also developed a liking for sweet fruits and honey, and a taste for eating bees and ants.

There are numerous stories about his capers, exploits, and tribulations, such as the ones where he takes a liking to some new sort of food and gets into trouble (usually with humans, sometimes dangerous animals such as leopards or wild boars) over it. Other tales describe how one or another of his diseases got worse, and gave him a hole in his back, or made him go blind for some time.

To the Abawi, Mayas is a god and a cultural hero. They project much of themselves onto him by way of their myths. Perhaps it is this unconscious channeling of their dormant human divinity that has pulled the creature closer to the borderlands of Elysium.

The Abawi claim that Mayas would be enraged if he knew that his grandchildren (the orang-utans of Babingepa) are being tortured and killed for sport by the cruel adherents of the Vile Boar, or alternately, that he already knows and is indeed already enraged about it.

They are planning to do a great tribal ritual, an Invitation Dance to call the Terrible Ape God to the island.
(Or might they already have summoned him by the time the PCs arrive there?)

Encountering Mayas

The PCs might come face to face with the monstrous creature in several ways:

• when travelling the Gaia-infested part of the jungle, he might be freshly summoned there by the Abawi. He might attack them, or simply rummage around for food, or be seen conferring with orang-utans and/or Abawi tribesmen.
• when visiting the Abawi village, the PCs might witness their Invitation Dance ritual, and perhaps the subsequent arrival of Mayas to the village.
• when roaming the forest east of the mountains, Mayas (and the Abawi) might be heading for Harkness' wild boar cultists and cross the PCs' path.
• when fighting against (or captured by) natives of the Yori or Baluwa tribes, the monstrous ape god might indirectly come to their rescue as he attacks the Golab-worshippers seeking to enact revenge for the torment and killing of his grandchildren.
• the same also works if the PCs are captured by the sailor cultists, for example while they drag them off to their mountain stronghold.
• during a showdown fight in the City of Ruins or at the Mountain Temple of Babi Ngepet, the Terrible Grandfather Ape might suddenly appear, possibly with a dozen Abawi warriors in tow, to tip the scales of the conflict - possibly making a previously extremely foreseeable battle into a much more unpredictable affair. He might afford the PCs new opportunities (but also new challenges), for example by drawing attention away from them, smashing the prisoners' cages, destroying the sailors' weapon storage, scaring off (or killing) a critical cultist or three... or alternately by attacking the PCs, blocking their path, or destroying something important or valuable to them.

Appearance

Mayas looks like a shockingly large (easily upwards of 3m) ape with six arms, covered in patches of long fur and sickly-colored scales. He moves through the forest by climbing and swinging between the trees or hopping leaps on the ground. His gaping maw is studded with teeth that are longer and sharper than a normal ape's should be, and he has too many eyes that glitter darkly like those of a gigantic insect. Boils and pustules from unknown diseases can be seen dotting his flesh, and disgusting liquids seep from his orifices and encrust his fur.

Mayas

Home: Sweltering jungles and plague-riddled swamps in Gaia.

Creature Type: Unknown. Could be an Enwildened God, or a distorted human.

Attributes

Combat 4 [move between two range increments in swift leaps],
[attack multiple victims at once], [throw someone], [large and massive]

Influence 2 [consort with and command orang-utans],
[demand worship, sacrifices, and protection from the Abawi tribe]

Magic 1 [transfer a supernatural disease]

Abilities

Monstrous Form: PCs must Keep it Together upon first seeing the distorted
giant ape.

Huge: Cannot be thrown, pushed, knocked over, or grappled and held. 

Multi-limbed: All combat actions against Mayas are at -1 to the roll. He can grab
and pick up up to two victims before he loses this abilty.

Thick fur and scales: His unholy anatomy grants him 1 armor.

Sharp senses: Very acute senses of smell and hearing. Any attempts at hiding
from or sneaking up on him are at -2 to the roll, unless other loud noises or
strong scents are around to distract him.

Attacks

(all at Distance: Room unless otherwise noted)

Pummel and smash [3] [any armor is reduced by -1 against this attack]

Grab and pick up [1] [victim is grabbed, must Act under Pressure to escape]

Throw [2] [must be grabbed first, Avoid Harm at -2 to the roll upon impact]

Bite [4] [must be grabbed first]

Transmit disease [*] [Distance: Field. Bellowing a single word, Mayas gives a name to one of his many diseases and thereby magically transmits it to someone he is touching or has touched earlier in this scene. Use one of the example diseases below or make up your own.]

Wound Rot: One of the victim's Serious Wounds is infected with a necrotic disease that rots away the flesh. This wound cannot be stabilized or naturally healed. In the future, any time the victim's immune system is weakened or strained (e.g. from getting another Wound, or failing a Fortitude roll against starvation, poison, disease, or intoxication, there is a 50% chance that the rot gets rapidly worse. Within the day, the victim gets another Serious Wound (equally incurable as the original one) and effectively loses all use of the affected limb or body area.

Haunting Fever: The victim starts running a high fever that brings terrible headaches, joint pains, and nerve-wracking hallucinations. Every morning the victim must roll +Willpower or +Fortitude, whichever is lower.
On (10-14) the GM takes 1 Hold, on (-9) it's 3 Hold. This can be used during the day to do one of the following:

• force the player to reroll the higher dice of a roll they just made.
• reduce the victim's Stability by -2.

Once the victim's Stability drops to Critical Stress from this, they turn into a constantly nervous wreck. Their Stability can not increase above Anxious (4) anymore, until the Haunting Fever is cured. This requires magical healing or otherworldly medicine, as no known cure exists in Elysium.

Wounds O O O O O O O O O X

Harm Moves

• The attack bounces harmlessly off his scaly hide.
• He bleeds a little but ignores the wound.
• Painful hit to the face [loses his Multi-limbed Ability for a few moments].
• Injured leg [he can now be pushed and knocked over].
• Injured arm [no immediate effects (he has enough arms to spare one or two), but if this is done to him thrice he loses his Multi-limbed Ability].
• His agonized howls attract a small gang of orang-utans that come to his aid.
• A large boil or pustule bursts open and sprays foul liquid at someone nearby [makes a Transmit disease attack].
• Deep bleeding wound, he tries to escape into the trees or flees between some large nearby rocks.
• The huge monstrous ape falls over and stops moving. Is it truly dead?

Strange Plant Life

Even while still firmly within the Illusion, the tropical rainforests of Indonesia are home to many plants that are deeply unfamiliar and sometimes disturbingly alien-looking to visitors from other climates. Some of them are hauntingly beautiful, others may look and smell disgusting to us. A quick google search or three will provide the enterprising GM with ample source material to draw on when describing the plant life on Babingepa. For example, this region is home to the world's tallest, biggest, and most colourful flowers - and that's only the ones we know about. Tens of thousands of plant species exist here that have never been catalogued yet. One of them is the Kaligera Flower.

The Kaligera Flower

This strange plant is originally native in the deep jungles of Gaia, but has spread to also occasionally grow in the tropical borderlands of Elysium. The PCs could randomly come across a patch of them growing in a valley or clearing (in or near the Gaia-infested patch of Babingepa), or they might happen to observe a small group of natives carrying off a severely injured tribe member to such a place. If they manage to follow them while staying hidden, they might witness the effects of the plant on the wounded warrior. 

Or perhaps they see some Abawi gatherers picking some of the flowers and preparing them with great care and reverence - as if for a ritual offering or sacrifice... maybe the PCs might even become witnesses as the Abawi shaman offers them to Mayas himself. (Who gladly takes and ingests them, knowing they'll soothe his ailments at least temporarily)

Appearance

This alien plant is like nothing the player characters have seen before. Looking like a faintly purplish, semi-translucent mixture between a fern and an orchid of some kind, fine veins and capillaries are visible inside its soft, squishy stems and meaty leaves. The only part of the plant that isn't half transparent are the blossoms, vividly orange in color and branching into rounded tentacly ends that sway softly in a non-existent wind like a sea anemone. The flower exudes a sweetly enticing smell that is noticable from several meters away. 

Use

Anyone who comes across this flower when it's in bloom can immediately attempt to See Through the Illusion. On a result of (15+), you clearly realize the plant's healing potential (and its drawbacks), to the degree that the GM might read you the options listed below (at least the in-fiction info, if not the mechanics). On (10-14), you get a vague but convincing sense that eating this plant will not be bad for you, or at least not entirely bad. On (-9), you still sense that there is no immediate danger from the strange flower, but you also behold disturbing visions from beyond the Veil, attract the attention of the island's dead souls, or might get noticed by something that lives deeper in Gaia... [The GM makes a move]

When you eat the blossom of a Kaligera flower in bloom, you may choose one of the options below:

• a gruesome injury scabs over and starts to close, unnaturally fast
  [reduce a Critical Wound to a Serious Wound].
• your flesh knits itself together to mend a cut, stab wound or broken bone
  [heal a Serious Wound, and stabilize any other Wounds you may have].
• it strenghtens and revitalizes your metabolism [cure an infection or disease].
• it purifies your bloodstream  [cancel the effects of a poison or drug].
  

However, you must also roll +Willpower or +Soul (whichever is lower) to withstand the Influence of Gaia deteriorating your mind to a more primal state. 

On (10-14), reduce one Attribute that is not Fortitude, Reflexes, Perception, or Violence, by -1. 

On (-9), reduce two Attributes, but also regain 1 Stability. 

"He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man", indeed.

Live is, in its own way, truly much simpler when embracing - or embraced by - the primordial wilderness. At the very least it is devoid of many of the anxieties and fears that a more cultured or civilized mind must endure.

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Once again this has gotten rather long already, so another split is in order.

Read more about the exciting horrors that Gaia has to offer for your game of Island of the Dead in Part 3 of this series!

Hacking the Scenario: Island of the Dead (pt.1)

The Island of the Dead

is a great and very versatile scenario to begin with. It can be played as a relatively quick one-shot (recommended for a long session of 7-9 hours, although I've heard of one playthrough that did it in an incredibly short 4 hours), or as a longer series of sessions, up to a mini-campaign of perhaps 4-6 sessions. If you really delve into the survival challenges, and let your player characters explore the island and all its many threats in great detail, you could easily get 30 hours of gameplay or more out of it.

So... if it's that great, why hack it?

Well, as good as it is, it can always be improved, eh? One of the most frequently asked questions about it concerns the presence of any Gaia related elements in the adventure. Which, going by the text as written, we have to negate. No influences from the Hungering Wilderness seems to exist on the island.

This seems unintuitive, however, and while certainly not necessary in order to make it an enjoyable - and thoroughly horrifying - experience, I have seen it argued several times that it might be even better if something along those lines were included in it.

So, What Are We Hacking In?

Here's my agenda:

• add some Gaia to it, in the form of
  - a beastly supernatural creature
  - an otherworldly plant
  - an eerie, surreal location
• diversify the portrayal of the native tribes a little bit
• create some additional character ideas (for use as PCs or NPCs)

I think these are pretty much self-explanatory, so let's get right to it.

More Gaia, Please!

One of the island's regions could be easily be made to be an extended area of especially dense jungle with patches of fetid swamp, an ancient and utterly untamed expanse of extraordinarily primordial nature, where the Illusion easily breaks towards the Borderlands of Gaia. So we'll do just that. This area exists on the island. You decide where exactly it's located. (My suggestion, if you use the provided map, would be somewhere around halfways between the mountains and the north-eastern tip of the island, perhaps.)

Some, if not all of the native tribes will be fully aware of this area, and have their own myths and beliefs about it. They might mostly avoid it out of abject fear, or hold a religious reverence for it and bring sacrifices there on certain nights of the year.

When travailing this part of the island, one may encounter strange beasts and unfamiliar plants. Naturally, this will not be readily apparent to city-dwelling 'visitors' however, since very many of the exotic plants and animals will appear strange and unfamiliar to them either way. Additionally, the Illusion may obscure some of the clearly otherworldly creatures and other phenomena with its powerful Veil, at least in the beginning of an encounter, or on but a casual glance.

When blood is shed here, though, the Illusion can easily tear, and reveal the Living Wilderness of Gaia beyond. The same can happen when someone is overwhelmed by the intense feelings of primal anxiety and stress associated with hunting or being hunted, when human flesh is eaten, or when wild and uninhibited sex is had here.

There are scary monsters and weird plants and otherworldly locations to be discovered here - but we'll get to these a bit later. Let's lay some more groundwork for them, first.

Unite Diversify the Tribes!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with uniting the tribes, mind you. But, that's the job of the player characters, if they so choose - and incidentally, I'm about to make it a good bit harder for them in fact, with this very hack.

As written, the island's three tribes are very much homogenous. Little to no detail is given as to their various differences, if any. Now this makes perfect sense if you want to keep them as a incommunicado threat factor, an alien 'other' that cannot be negotiated or cooperated with. In that case, it doesn't matter. 

But the scenario does in fact specify that they have learned some amount of English due to their prolonged contact with Harkness' sailor-cultists. So it would be perfectly possible for the characters to talk to the natives, and try to reach some agreement or other. (If things go well, that is. Of course, this being Kult, they very often don't.)

So to repeat, in the original text the native tribes are very much the same. Basically everyone on the island is under the influence of the Death Angel Golab, and will accordingly be sadistically hostile towards anyone else they meet - very much including (though not limited to) the PCs.

I want to vary that up a bit.

Since we are adding Gaia as an additional influence on the island, I think it would be interesting to make things more nuanced, but also even more tense right off the bat, if the tribes were already in conflict with each other when the PCs arrive. Everyone will still be hostile to virtually anyone else, but on different spiritual/metaphysical sides. 

So we'll have one tribe that is pretty firmly under the influence of Gaia. They revere the otherworldly manifestations of the Living Wilderness, and worship an Enwildened God that can sometimes enter our world under the right circumstances. They are fiercely in conflict with another one of the tribes, who have fallen entirely under the sway of the Golab-worshipping cult long ago, and with the sailor cultists as well, of course. 

The third tribe has for the longest time tried to stay out of all that, and just keep to themselves. However, the influence of Golab that permeates the island has spread to them as well, and they are now on the brink of embracing it more completely.

All the tribes, in spite of their differences, still share some characteristics though. Their overarching culture is largely untouched by outside influences - such as so called civilisation for example - and so has remained very similar for many generations of their isolation on the island. Perhaps most relevantly to the scenario's unfolding events, the tribes all still respect displays of strength. Success at hunting and proficiency in melee combat will likewise impress them and make them willing to talk to the PCs.
This can come in especially handy when (and if) the characters have come across the dormant remainders of a certain Archon's last lingering presence on the island...

Because I do not want to keep calling them "tribe 1", "tribe 2", etc. for the whole rest of this post, we'll come up with some fictionalized names for them.

Let's call the first tribe, the close-to-Gaia one, the Abawi,

the second one, who worship Golab in the form of Babi Ngepet, will be the Baluwa,

and the third one described above we'll call the Yori.

In case you don't like these names, and want to make your own, here is a short list of examples. These are actually existant tribal communities in Indonesia. I used them as a basis to make up my own, fictitious names for the tribes in the game.

Korowai                  Dani                        Dayak

Asmat                   Yali                       Mentawai

Bajau                Lamalera                Orang Rimba

Baduy                   Abui                        Bali Mula

You can google them to find additional inspiration about their IRL traditions, myths, lifestyles close to nature, and possibly even for visual handouts to show your players to give them an idea of how they dress and look.

So, the Yori are the ones that are teetering between Influences. Like the other tribes, they respect strength. In their case, prowess at hunting and fishing is most important. They adhere to an ancient culture that holds up the island's leopards as sacred animals and spirit patrons, and practice a form of magic known as ilmu siluman macan tutul, which allows them to imbue certain select newborn children - usually the firstborn offspring of the tribe's current chief - with the mental and spiritual traits of a leopard. This is held to guarantee them success in life, as long as they don't offend or disappoint their patron spirit animal.

The Babingepa leopards' unnatural cruelty and persistent thirst for blood are influences of Golab - and they mirror the Yori's own creeping infestation with the Death Angel's Principle of Torment. Their seasonal rites have gradually incorporated more bloodletting, whipping, scalding, piercing, and other sadistic elements, and their disputes are more often settled with physical violence or contests of who is able to torment a small animal for a longer time before it dies of its wounds.
It is unknown - and perhaps unknowable - whether the tribe itself has started to become corrupted first, and that has bled over to their spirit animals, or whether it was the other way around. Can the player characters' actions nudge the tribe back from the brink of full and open Inferno worship yet?
I cannot ultimately say, so I figure you'll have to play to find out!

In any event, the Yori are nowhere near as fully gone over to Golab as the Baluwa are. Their entire culture has been permeated by the Lord of Screams' vile compulsions. Their hunting, their language, their social hierarchy, hell even their singing and lovemaking all have a pervasive undercurrent of sinister cruelty. A bitter climate of scorn and spite, and mutual torment at any turn. Whenever any one tribemember shows weakness, even just for a moment, it is the other tribemembers' duty and opportunity to make them suffer for it. Punishments are draconic, and needlessly elaborate - not to mention agonizingly painful, of course. To impress these people with strength means to impress them with superior viciousness and inventive ways to inflict mind-rending pain on someone.

Not a very nice bunch to encounter, and the player characters are admittedly (probably) unlikely to make allies - let alone friends - of them.

Finally, the Abawi. They are probably the most remote tribe from where the characters' plane crashed, and it takes quite a hike across the island to get to their village. (And you'll come close by, or even through, that patch of highly-Gaia-infested jungle on the way there.)
But, if the PCs are travelling in the jungles east of the mountains, the Abawi may well come their way.

Their traditions and culture are the most down-to-earth of the three tribes. They still hunt, fish, and farm, but they use only very basic tools and techniques. This is by choice. The Abawi rever closeness to nature, and accept its harsh and often fearsome embrace into their daily lives willingly. 

All the same, the rift towards Gaia that is in the jungles does not extend all the way to their settlement. Far from it. Even these very primordially-living people still have footpaths, acres, huts, boats, and push carts. They value the concepts of generosity, hermitage, and patience at difficult or lenghty tasks. They respect the abilities to weave good fishing baskets and to build musical instruments (keeping in mind that what they build is hardly more sophisticated than basic flutes and drums, but even these simple implements can either be remarkably well-made, or, well... less so).

But they do remember the old traditions, and have in recent generations actually moved back closer to them again. They have, under the duress of their Golab-worshipping rival tribes' sinister excesses, started to practice certain ancient and forbidden rites again - occult rituals that are designed to connect their souls to the mother spirit. Through these practices, their shaman has remembered the knowledge of how to summon Mayas, the Terrible Grandfather of the Forest, and the tribe is currently preparing to do so.

This article has gotten a good bit longer and more elaborate than I initially thought it would, so I'm splitting it up into several pieces, and we'll get to see what's up with Mayas (and a lot of other stuff I promised above) in Part 2 of this Hack.

No rhyme, no reason. 
We tame the world around us predominantly by attributing meaning to it, but The Living Wilderness defies our every meek attempt at this. The unbridled randomness and ultimate pointlessness of its everlasting chaotic excesses of birth, growth, disease, strife, death, decay, and rebirth mercilessly overwhelms our senses. It is enough to stagger even the sturdiest mind into broken ramblings of nihilistic despair. I must proceed cautiously...

(one of the last journal entries of a truth seeker who has since gone missing)