Alternate Wound Penalties Chart

This comes up occasionally on various socials, and I've been wanting to make a handy blog post to point to, for my own personal houserules about the matter.

Wound Penalties and how I handle them.

So, we all know the original chart for numerical penalties to actions performed by PCs on the basis of physical injuries they previously sustained, from page 124 of the K:DL Corebook.

I use those pretty much rules-as-written, but modified the numbers a little bit. This caused me to make an alternative version of the chart itself, in order to easily present the slight increase in granularity... and vehemence.

You can see it here:

So your first Serious Wound gives you a -1 modifier to any rolls, ongoing until the wound has been stabilized or healed.

The second Serious Wound you suffer will increase this penalty to -2, with the same conditions as above.

(Wounds that have been stabilized - even if not healed - do not count for this consideration of "Is it two or more Wounds?", only non-stabilized ones do. Naturally though, stabilized Wounds can always reopen, especially when engaging in hurried and/or rowdy physical action, and, say, rolling a (-9) for something wild or risky... And when the stitches tear and your bandages start soaking red, or when that improvised splint breaks and your bone starts cracking again... Well then the Wound very much counts once more!)

The same would happen if you got a Critical Wound right away: -2 to any actions for which it makes sense that the injury could hinder you in your performance. And since this category of Wounds has such lovely examples given for it in the corebook such as: punctured lung, severed aorta, ruptured eyeball, or spinal cord damage, amongst others - well, let's just say it may be most rolls that could reasonably be affected...

Here I am already being a little more harsh than the corebook is with its -1 for a Critical.

The final step, then, aggravates it to -3, when you have both Serious and Critical Wounds. I feel this reasonable for such a messed up state of physical health. Also, perhaps I just like my players to suffer and despair. But what can I say? The game - and especially all sorts of combat and violence in it - is supposed to be harsh and brutal, after all.

 

A note on crunch - If you're wondering about the level of severity this adds, and whether you'd want it in your game, here's some maths if it helps:

So, I wanted to know what a +1 modifier would do in K:DL's 2d10 system, in percentages, so I crunched the numbers (which is rather easy, since for a roll of 2d10 there's exactly 100 possible outcomes. So that maps to percentages very nicely. And it turns out that a +1 bonus (or penalty) will affect the rolled result in exactly 15% of all possible rolls. 

By "affect the result" I mean that this single modifier makes the difference between either a full success and a partial, or a partial and a miss. In other words, the question was "How often does a +1 penalty end up turning my 9 into a 10, or my 14 into a 15?"

And the answer is, 15% of the time. 

(This remains true also when you factor in Attribute bonuses, it only becomes slightly less at extreme values, such as at a +4 Attribute, another +1 bonus will increase your result only around 13% of the time. Attributes of -3 or lower are likewise affected. But for our purposes here, that is largely negligible. Let's just operate on the assumption of "+/-15% for every +/-1 bonus/penalty".)

So a -3 penalty adds up to 45%. That's how often your combined Serious and Critical Wounds will reduce your 10 to a 7, your 11 to an 8, your 12 to a 9, your 15 to a 12, your 16 to a 13, or your 17 to a 14.

So the question one can ask themselves when pondering whether to use the original chart or the above depicted one, is basically this: Do I feel that "Oh man, 15% are plenty and 30% is properly hurtful?" 

Or can I get on board with "Yes, a really badly mangled person should when acting under duress be performing less well than normally around half the time they try to do something ambitious, complicated, or dangerous?

My game, my table? Solidly in the latter camp. Your table? Your call!

She says she wants to playtest her new homebrew damage rules.
What do you do?

 

A bit later, after a couple games with the above table, I had another idea, and wanted to see if it could be incorporated into it.

I made a second version of my chart from above, which features a little extra twist I came up with:

 

Numerically, this is the exact same as the one shown above - except for the addition of the new modifier to See Through The Illusion. 

I found this enjoyable for two reasons: 

- it fits that Basic Move's trigger, when you suffer shock, injury, or distort your perception through drugs or rituals..., and thus is just too sweet of an opportunity to pass up for making move snowballs and mechanically funnel the fiction into driving towards my GMing Agenda: Tear back the Illusion to reveal the True Reality behind it.

- it mirrors the thing that happens from Stability at its lowest levels, so I feel that neatly ties together the Madness and Death aspects of these two mechanical subsystems. 

I've been using this one in my games ever since, but am sad to have to report that it hasn't yet triggered in an actual game. Hmmm, could it be because I'm still being too nice to my players... Perhaps I should punish them even harder... Yes, that must be it!

Excuse me while I go cook up some new depravities and mutilations for them to suffer through.

Be back to you soon with the next update!

The Expectant Bride

 

There is a monster, cursed with an impossible pregnancy, fated to die in agonizing pain - unless it can violate someone else to fulfill its needs, before its procreational doom impends.

Desperate to give birth, the gynachid (K:DL 302) has pried its way into Elysium and now wanders the nightly city streets in search of a suitable surrogate mother.

 

Sniffling and groaning under its breath, it is able to smell human women who are young and strong enough to carry its infant to term, and seeks them out when they're alone and vulnerable.
When it finds a suitable victim, it approaches her, sobbing and crying and gesturing for help.

In the Illusion the creature appears like a frail young woman clad in a white wedding dress, complete with veil, gloves, shoes etc, but worringly frayed and torn in places, and stained with mud and grime. She looks beautiful but also scared under her silky sheer veil, and is evidently highly pregnant. She speaks only in slurred words and animalistic groans. It may sound like the woman is intoxicated, mentally challenged, or in the grips of a deep shock. She is also clearly in pain, intermittently writhing and shivering with cramps, and indicates her own swollen belly as the cause.

When comforted or asked how she could be helped, The Expectant Bride will whimper and meekly point to the direction of a lonely alleyway, shadowy building entrance, or some badly lit underpass. She will also allow a would-be helper to take her into her car, or another secluded place nearby. If the victim seems hesitant, the gynachid may try to indicate fear of an unseen pursuer, begging with mewling pleas to be taken to some sort of safety. 

As soon as she is alone with the victim however, it hastens to initiate its grotesque and violating impregnation process. A perverse distortion of the consummation of marital vows, the necessity of which humankind itself has inflicted upon the creature, once upon Times Immemorial.

It is only when it pulls back its veil and takes off its dress to start doing this, that the creature's true appearance is revealed to the victim. Even if she is not shocked into a paralyzed stupor by this very sight, and manages to run from the monster, her chances of escape are minimal against the desperate, inhuman Bride.

Her chances of survival however, are in fact very high - both in the short and long term. The gynachid wants to avoid killing the future mother of its infant at almost any cost. And even in the future, once the impregnation has been successfully completed, it will follow her around unseen, watching from beyond the Illusion to ensure the surrogate mother's continued health.

Powerful Leaps: The creature can cross a considerable distance in a single instant. [Able to move from Distance: Room to Distance: Arm and can act before the PC has a chance to react or withdraw.]

Grab and hold someone [1] [Distance: Arm, victim must Act under Pressure to wrench loose]

Paralyzing terror [*] [Distance: Room, victim must Keep it Together or freeze up defenselessly for the remainder of the scene]

Long arms ending in broken claws [2] [Distance: Arm, when attacked or enraged the creature's vicious rakes are at -1 to Avoid Harm against]

Wounds: O O O O O X

(image is copyright Brahim Bensehoul @ ibralui-art, no infringements allowed nor intended)

Alternate Stability Chart for one-shots

Have you ever ran a one-shot scenario, fierce and intense, intended to deliver a fast escalation of horrors and swiftly dovetail into some hard and cruel resolutions towards the end?

Have you ever, in such an endeavor, found the Stability chart of K:DL as written just, well... 

...a bit too slow?

Here is an alternate version I made, designed to cater to just that kind of situations:

 

Description:

Compared to the default variant, this chart obviously features fewer boxes, and you will notice it does not include any mention of Disadvantages. Instead it frontlines Keep it Together as the move that gets penalized earliest, and hardest.

In addition, there is a penalty to "all other rolls" - which is of course intended to be read with "...at the GM's discretion" attached at the end. Naturally, if you ever deign that any given roll should not be penalized under the present circumstance in the fiction, you may freely ignore this modifier in that case. 

Finally, this chart gives a bit of a bump to the Illusion-tearing properties of low mental stability, doubling the bonus to See Through the IIllusion when down to your last couple boxes. 

Design Notes:

The fewer boxes are there simply for a faster progression towards the player characters' madness. The original Stability chart strongly feels like it was designed primarily with longer-running campaigns and multi-session scenarios in mind. It excels at providing a slow burn, a steepening decrease which increasingly spirals out of control over some time. 

But in a one-shot (or two-parter), how many scares and horrors can you feasibly throw at your players? Taking into account that they'll succeed on some of those Keep it Together rolls, or get (10-14) results which cost them only 1 Stability (if that)... you will often never manage to really whittle them down in time for the session to wrap up and any meaningful breakdowns have happened. (Which would make for good resolution fodder / epilogue material, however, and so are seen as highly desired in this hacked version.)

The focus on Keep it Together over Disadvantages is due to the fact that many oneshots and shoter scenarios don't even use Disadvantages. Certainly many of the published and fanmade ones don't include them; thinking of Oakwood Heights, The Driver, Divided We Run...
The mechanics of Disadvantages (meaning Holds, mainly, but also the frequency with which their triggers are designed to be fulfilled in the fiction) are more suitable to longer gameplay as well. And they perform admirably in that setup, but can often be a bit redundant for shorter, quicker, and more focussed affairs.

Of course, penalizing Keep it Together rolls earlier, and harder throughout, also increases the speed with with more Stability is lost during the session. This is what we want, here. We want to see them break. And if we don't get there now, we'll never see it happen.

The penalty to "any other rolls" is there simply to give the GM a mechanical angle to represent the general strain of stress and terror on the human capability to perform risky and dangerous actions.
It can be used or waived as seen fit, and is phrased briskly enough to not take up a lot of space on the chart - while also general enough to give the players (who will of course see and read it on their sheets before their PC ever descends to those levels of Stability) a bit of a scary anticipation of madness to come.

Finally, the bonus to See Through the Illusion has been upped for basically the same reason as the frontlining of Keep it Together and the reduction in number of boxes - we want to see this sort of stuff happen, and we only got one shot to get there! Consider that even in a very fast and furious, crazy and chaotic, madness and mayhem filled session, you'll be lucky to get maybe one or two rolls for this, per player, roughly...

Additionally, the game's very GMing Agenda (corebook, p.145) tell us to:
Tear back the Illusion to reveal the True Reality behind it.
...and also to let the PCs' actions make an impact [...], which totally ties into this as well.

So that sounds like hopefully this variant Stability chart might be keeping things firmly in the spirit of that, helping us GMs of Kult: Divinity Lost to make our one-shot games even better than ever before!

In fact, now that I made this thing, I can't wait to try it out in one of my own games! 

I'll keep y'all posted on any new insights I may or may not derive from any such attempts, sooner or later. Game design is an ongoing adventure of trial, playtesting, and error, after all.
In the meantime, your opinions and experiences are always welcome - did you use similar things or ideas in your your own games? Found different workarounds or hacks to achieve similar intents? Does this look like something you could see yourself using in the future? Are there any painfully obvious weaknesses to its design? 

Hit me up here in the comments or over on Discord, always excited to discuss hacks and houserules of any kind!

Hacking the Scenario: Island of the Dead (pt.4)

Savagery vs. Sadism 

or: On the Difficulty of Distinguishing between Gaia and Golab

So like, this is a passage that should've probably come much sooner
in this series, but I couldn't really find a good place to fit it in so far.
But I still feel it is important to include, so here it goes now:

Originally, the scenario revolves just around Golab (and a tiny little, dormant presence of Netzach) - and its themes reflect that. By adding the influence of Gaia to that, how do the themes change? What's the difference between them, anyways?

There is suffering and death on the island, in spades. There is agonizing torture, cannibalism, decay, horrible bodily deformations, you name it. One might be pardoned for thinking "Isn't it all the same, whether the Death Angel of Torment or the Living Wilderness gets the characters in their grasp? Will their cruel demises not be all but indistinguishable from each other?"

Well, yes and no.

See, it's a matter of perspective, and agenda. Of what are the means and what are the ends. 

The Principle of Gaia, to break down civilization, does include its fair share of torment and agony. But contrary to Golab's Principle, that suffering is not the end goal, it's just a byproduct or incidental event of the drive to tear down civilization. 

Gaia will cause torrential rain that washes away bridges and roads, and sets mouldering rot to huts and the food stored inside. She will have you digested alive over the course of weeks or even months by gargantuan flesh-eating flowers. She will make the leopards toy with you cruelly as you drag yourself bleeding through the jungle, looking in vain for help or the safety of a settlement. The bugs she sends to infest your wounds will make you scream until your vocal chords tear as their eggs spread throughout your bloodstream and their larvae hatch in your brain stem.

All this pain and despair, however, is not what she cares about. Her endgame is simply the deterioration of all that is cultured, all that is man-made.

The Lord of Screams, on the other hand, has suffering as his primary and ultimate agenda. His worshippers will also eat your dead (or living) flesh, yes - but that's almost just the windowdressing to their orgies of torment that are the central purpose of their cruel abuse. The leopards influenced by him viciously maul you even if they have no hunger to sate. They may even just ambush you once and then leave you alone, losing interest, just because they saw an opportunity to inflict pain and seized it simply because they could. Golab may utilize diseases, beasts, poisonous plants, bad weather, bodily distortions, assault and abuse, and many more tools at his disposal - but whatever he uses, it is solely aimed at making you suffer.

As such, the two Powers are inconsolably at odds with each other. Gaia would have all the native settlements on Babingepa rot and crumble to sludge, overgrown and decomposed and forgotten forever. Golab, however, requires worshippers. He wants the settlements and their inhabitants to suffer, yes, but he ultimately needs them to keep existing.
Gaia needs no worshippers, she craves only primordial chaos. Such chaos also spawns suffering, but merely incidentally and never for very long. New growth and healing always occurs in her mad cycles as well, and ultimately, there is just not enough meaning to it all, to lend any power to the suffering incurred.

The sadistic purgatories of Golab and the feral onslaught of Gaia may look very much the same to an unenlightened human being. But on a higher metaphysical level, the two Forces have to fight each other.

What does that do to the scenario's given themes, then?

Survival: What are the characters willing to do to survive? Will they help others or prioritize saving themselves?

This theme ties in with Gaia very well. The motifs of scarce resources and interleaved scenes of calm and stress employed by the scenario work great with the challenges posed by the Living Wilderness. While the forces of Golab may posit the same questions to the PCs in a sadistic and hateful manner, the influence of Gaia will force them to make the same decisions, albeit not mailciously but rather uncaring.

Violence & suffering: Will the PCs yield to the violence on Babingepa, or manage to withstand Golab's temptations?

Here the scenario directly ties this theme to Golab, and rightly so. There are no temptations from Gaia, merely the (super)natural pressures of evolution and survival. However, one may still succumb to the violence & suffering inherent in that. To descend into this mindset means to have first your cultured identity, and ultimately your entire personality gradually devolved, until only beastly instincts and primal drives are left. Is that a fate more merciful than the purgatories of Golab? (which are ultimately also designed to erase your personality, of course)
Your PCs might have to decide that for themselves, and the answers might vary between them.

Guilt: Will the PCs seek forgiveness for their sins from the dead who haunt them?

This is one theme that Gaia has very little to do with. The themes of guilt, punishment, repentance, and absolution are intimately tied to Inferno and the Death Angels. The Living Wilderness has next to no use for these concepts. The Grove of Souls presented in pt.3 of this series, however, creates a certain tie-in for this theme with Gaia. Dead souls who have been placated by sincere apologies, or had their revenge by wreaking lethal havoc upon their spiritual and moral debtors amongst the living (read: the PCs), may be more inclined to let themselves be guided there, and more likely to settle down for the specific variant of "eternal peace" that this place offers.
(The same may very well be true for PCs who have died and been drawn there by the Call of Gaia, if they can manage to forgive themselves.

Additional characters

Here I present ideas for four new characters who may have survived the plane crash on the Island of the Dead. They can be used as either PCs or NPCs.

I will not as fully develop them as the premade PCs in the original scenario text, with regards to Attributes, equipment, starting situation, etc. Rather I aim to provide ideas for the GM to flesh out and use as you see fit.

If using them as NPCs, you can use the stats for Survivors (p.152 TaOT) to represent them mechanically, and the texts below to colour their fiction.

For use as PCs, I trust you can with little effort draft up complete character sheets  for them (with or without the players' input, at your own discretion) by using the existing premades as guidance and examples.

As per the advice given on p.137 of the scenario text, each of them has been given a connection to death or the dead. Additionally, some of them are set up to have pre-existing ties to Golab, Netzach or Gaia.

How to use them:

• write short blurbs for the original characters as well as the new ones here, and let players choose freely from the eight choices thus available.
• use the new PCs (or any combination of original/new ones) as a secondary party. They got washed ashore some distance away from the first party, and they never met at the beach. This can be used to showcase different venues of exploration and survival on the island.
  Perhaps the two groups meet up in the finale, or perhaps roughly half of the characters in each party get captured by the sailors, and it will be up to the remaining characters to team up and try to save everyone in the showdown?
• Pull a twist reveal on your players by fooling them into thinking their characters could actually die on the island. When the first PC dies, give their player a "backup" character from the unused ones to continue playing with. The next PC who dies, do the same thing... until at some point, you describe one of their original characters waking back up (as described under Golab's Influence on p.140 TaOT), back at the beach or somewhere in the jungle.
  This variant requires a bit more cutting back and forth between locations and characters from you, and a firmer hand at scene framing in order to make it work - but can make for a very cinematic experience.
  

So here they are...

Whoa, hold up!

Some Trigger Warnings are in order for the Dark Secrets found below.

What you are about to read contains crisp and explicit mention of:
Murder of innocents, Psychological abuse, Depression and suicide,
Physical assault, Torture, Exposure and isolation, and Cannibalism.

Okay, now here they are:

Malcolm

An elderly black man (58), now retired after many long years in the military. He used to keep himself pretty well fit but with age has gotten a bit more out of shape than he likes, or may necessarily care to admit to himself.

Reason for travelling: Family visit in Thailand, goes back home to the States.

DARK SECRET: GUILTY OF A CRIME.

He was once made to perform exemplary executions on five civilians by a ruthless and brutal lieutenant. It may have been during the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, or in some other theatre of war. He had been dragged by the bullying officer for a while, for being a dutiful, but quiet and withdrawn member of the platoon, and things came to a head one day in a village full of non-combatant natives. Making a show of making the "reluctant and lazy" trooper "finally carry his weight in the war effort", the lieutenant jeered him on to shoot the defenseless innocents in the head. Under the psychological pressure, Malcolm did it, one after another, in front of a crowd of their peers gathered and kept there at gunpoint by his platoon mates. The deed has haunted and troubled him since, driving him into habitual drinking and a number of other self-destructive vices to cope with the nightmares caused by his trauma and guilt.

Personal Drive: Punish yourself.

Disadvantage: Alcoholic.

Advantage: Dead Shot or Ruthless.

Best Attributes: Violence, Perception, Coolness, Fortitude.

Katsuro

A young Japanese man (24) who works as a nurse. Humble and busybee-ish, he dedicates himself to his profession like usually only someone does who is driven by an oath or on the run from a dark past.

Reason for travelling: Going to a hospital in California for a semester of specialized medical training.

DARK SECRET: CULT SURVIVOR.

Pressured since childhood by his father to always excel, always compete, always succeed, so he could one day be worthy to take over the company, the lonely and  silenced boy eventually couldn't take the pressure anymore and became severely depressed. In his youth he joined a suicide cult he first discovered in a chatroom. At first it was internet-based only, but at one point the cult had accumulated enough members in his area and there were physical meetings. Katsuro felt a deep and intimate bond connected him with the other members, like what true friendship must feel like. They renewed their suicide pact at every meeting, but when the time came to go through with it, he backed out at the last moment. The others all went through with it, and left Katsuro feeling completely alone again. Deeply devastated, he luckily found good counseling, and eventually it gave him the strength to stand up to his father and take his life into his own hands for the first time. He feels he is on a much better path now, with a purpose that fulfills him. Nevertheless, bouts of survivor's guilt, regrets, and saddening memories still plague him, even as he pursues his otherwise strong drive to make something good out of his life.

Personal Drive: Dedicate your life to contrary or redeeming ideals.

Disadvantage: Guilt.

Advantage: Field Medicine or Good Samaritan.

Best Attributes: Intuition, Reason, Coolness, Willpower.

Priya

A middle-aged Indian woman (41), supermarket worker, chatty and outgoing on the surface, but with a sad look in her eyes that her smile never quite manages to wash away. Wears a number of religious talismans and superstitious trinkets but doesn't really seem to be a remarkably devout type.

Reason for travelling: Under the guise of a well-earned holiday, she is going to see an exorcist in Seattle, to help her with the voices she hears and other manifestations she suffers.

DARK SECRETS: VICTIM OF A CRIME, VISITATIONS.

Priya died alongside her children in the course of a home invasion conducted by violently insane thugs, as retribution from a brutally ruthless local crime lord against her husband for "insulting his honor" by not being able to pay off his huge gambling debts. The thugs tortured Priya in front of her husband and children in order to make her husband tell them where he kept the family's hidden valuables. There were no such valuables though, but they ended up killing the children and leaving Priya bleeding out on the floor as they took her husband away with them, never to be seen again. The doctors later said that Priya was dead for several minutes before they arrived, but they could bring her back through resuscitation. She remembers the afterlife as... a highly unpleasant place, and ever since the dead have whispered, squealed, and screamed to her from beyond the grave. Almost every night she hears their pleas, threats, and commands. They all want something from her, and she has been plagued by many different souls over the years. But never by the only two she would care to hear from... never by her own children.

Personal Drive: Find a way to silence the entities haunting you.

Disadvantage: Involuntary Medium.

Advantage: Stubborn or Desperate.

Best Attributes: Soul, Intuition, Charisma, Willpower.

Laura

A hispanic teenage girl from Australia (15), who lives a completely normal life with school, weekend job, friends, a cute boyfriend, music, movies, and all that. Habitually stuffing herself with sweet food and drinks almost constantly, one might wonder how she is still only mildly chubby, and not much bigger yet... but hey, maybe her metabolism is just pretty good that way?

Reason for travelling: Coming from Sydney, she and a handful of schoolmates, as well as two of their teachers, are going to New York for a three weeks history/cultural school excursion.

DARK SECRET: RETURNED FROM THE OTHER SIDE.

She used to have a younger brother, Paolo. In their childhood, the siblings went on a camping trip where both of them got lost in the jungle of Northern Australia. Several search details failed to recover them - but Laura suddenly reappeared on her own, over three months later. She was completely dishevelled and mentally detached from reality. Paolo was never found. Doctors wondered about how young Laura could have managed to survive in the jungle for so long, and how she was much less malnourished and generally in physically much better shape than she should have been after that long time. She herself used to have clear memories, and would tell them freely - but the adults quickly ensured her that those were impossible events, and must be nothing but fever fantasies spawned from hunger, exposure, and loneliness. They are right, of course, and Laura has repressed her 'phantom memories' long ago. Only in her dreams do they come back these days. But there are also certain facts written in her medical records, and she remembers the adults always squirming uneasily whenever these were addressed. There were what looked like old, healed-over claw marks and bite wounds on Laura's body when they found her, and the reddish brown grime under her cracked fingernails was not just dirt...

Personal Drive: Ignore the stupid fever dream phantories as best you can, and just lead a totally normal life. Paolo would have wanted you to.

Disadvantage: Gluttony
(like Greed, but with sweets, comfort food, softdrinks, cigarettes,etc).

Advantage: Survival Instincts or Death Drive.

Best Attributes: Carisma, Violence, Perception, Reflexes.

Scene Ideas

Malcolm

The ghosts of his murder victims appear to him, but apparently not to assault or chide him for his deeds. Instead, they just follow him around silently, wherever he goes. Sometimes other (living) people can see them, sometimes not.
There is only one way to get rid of them: A bullet in the head, like the first time. That will 'kill' them, whereupon they dissolve into groans and wisps of fog, and do not reappear for a while.

When Malcolm is at a tribal settlement on Babingepa, his old superior officer Ltd. Rick Jensen appears (indicating that, yes, he has died since, even though Malcolm may not be aware of that) and tries to talk him into violence against the natives.
"You know as well as I do that there's only one language these savages will understand! I taught you the way! Restore discipline, ensure compliance, all it takes is just to make a handful of examples. Do your duty, soldier! Or have you forgotten that we're at war here?!"

The victims' ghosts may appear in such a situation as well, and agree with Ltd. Jensen. "You know he is right. We really were plotting for insurrection and terrorist acts, you know - and your intervention was the only thing that kept us in line. The only thing that kept you and your comrades alive while you were stationed there with us."
They kneel down in front of him with bowed heads, as to indicate they are subdued by him, and he has their full servitude and loyalty.

If he refuses them (or otherwise angers the ghosts), they might leave... until one of them returns later, running at the PCs' campsite or wherever they are, visibly strapped with an explosive belt. [Malcolm must Keep it Together]
If only Malcolm can see the ghost, and he starts shooting at it, he may inadvertently hit other PCs, allies of theirs, or destroy important gear or equipment.
If he doesn't shoot or otherwise prevent the suicidal assault, the explosives will detonate, and their effects may be physically real, fully illusionary, or a mixture of both. [Perhaps any PCs within range must Endure Injury but rolling +Willpower instead of +Fortitude for it?]

Alternatively, the ghosts might attempt to recreate the situation of their own traumatic death - but with Malcolm and his friends in the position of the victims. They might capture the party at gunpoint and terrorize them with the threat of executing one of them (which can be Malcolm but doesn't have to be, as long as he it is someone he seems to care about and he is forced to watch)

Katsuro

His friends from the cult appear to him, visibly marked by their chosen method of death (e.g. bulging, bloodshot eyes and rope marks around their necks from hanging themselves, discolored veins and vomit drooling from their mouths if they used poison...), admonishing him for not preventing them from their suicidal plan.

"We made a terrible mistake. There is no salvation in death, only eternal pain and torment. We didn't know better, but you did, didn't you? You could have talked us out of it - but you chose to only save yourself. It's your fault we died!"

Alternately, if (when) things are going badly for Katsuro on the island, the ghosts might coax him to join them in death. They'll promise a relief from his struggles and pain, and warmly suggest to make good on his earlier betrayal of their friendship.

"We did the right thing, you know. It is nice here, quiet and warm and peaceful. We're going back to the other side, soon. Really we just came here to find you, so you can come with us... We could be together, forever, finally and for good."

Note: You can do both of the above scenes, even if it is the exact same ghosts talking to him. The dead are irrational, and the Influence of Golab directs them to say and do whatever has the greatest potential to cause suffering - and create more lost souls trapped on the island.

Alternately, perhaps there is one ghost who acts differently from the others. Perhaps his refusal wasn't just a betrayal of friendship, but one of love? Maybe there was this one girl (or boy?) he liked...

Additonally, if you want to play up the Netzach angle a bit, you could have Katsuro's dad appear as a ghost as well (which would mean that he has died at some point in the past, of course), and hassle him about acting like a weakling and a loser - instead of stepping up to the challenges on the island and taking his fate in his own hand, as his father taught him to.

"Didn't I always teach you to be a winner? Even your name means 'victory', as you are well aware. Yes I know, you think you turned your back on all that, and are living a different life now. But, think about it - you defied me. I wanted you to take over the company, but you refused. You got what you wanted, and I didn't. I died without an heir to continue my life's work, and you went on to have your [distorts face in disgust] medical career. You defeated me. Now damn well quit playing the victim, straighten your posture, and go back there and show them what your are made of!"

"If you could defeat me, you can defeat anyone."

Priya

If Priya is in play, her presence will centrally affect the entire party's gaming experience. As soon as she enters Babingepa, her Involuntary Medium Disadvantage will be activated almost constantly. (Its trigger is 'whenever you encounter spiritual entities or haunted places'... and the whole island is very much a haunted place.)
Going by the principle that you shouldn't have a player roll again for a Disadvantage while you still have Hold from it, there is no need to trigger this anew for every new region she enters or even every new supernatural creature she encounters. But, don't hoard your Holds once you got them - use them!

And pretty much as soon as you're out of Holds for it, look for an opportunity to have her roll for new ones, as soon as possible.

However, don't use all your Holds on her alone. Let the other characters have their share of the fun, too. Use the options to use her body to act in their interest and communicate through her, to make her pick up or operate items relevant to the other PCs' ghosts, write messages from them, or let Priya talk with the voices of the other PCs' dead relations.

Note: since you'll be using that a lot, make sure to start small and keep it relatively subtle and minor for some time. There will be plenty of opportunity to ramp things up later, but once you escalate it, it's hard to dial back down.
Also, share it around equally, so no player feels overwhelmed by all the attention, but one feels left out either.

Priya also has her own ghost-induced problems to deal with, however. Virtually all of the dead souls on the island can practically smell her previous exposure to the Influence of Golab. The scenario's theme of violence & suffering can be addressed very directly with her.

Ultimately, the island will be very interested in pulling Priya over to its side, and have her become a willing, even gleeful, torturer herself. Although it will also settle for using her as just another victim for the sadistic ghosts (and cultists) cruel delights.

Consider ghostly voices and apparitions scaring Priya - who has previously been subjected to horrible, horrible violence and trauma - into anxiously anticipating that others around her may exploit her easily-perceived weakness, and victimize her all over again. Perhaps the ghosts urge her to find some sort of weapon to defend herself with, and hide it on herself, "just in case..."
Maybe they 'helpfully' warn her to leave the party before the others have a chance to throw her under the bus or commit terrible violence on her. Or they try to agitate her into killing one of the other characters in their sleep, maybe because "we saw the way he is looking at you..." or similar hocus rationales.

When you want to step things up a notch, one of the thugs from the night of the home invasion might show up and come after her (perhaps alone at first, then later with a small gang of other purgatides in tow?) announcing his intent to finally finish what he started back then.
Ask the player to name which household object (kitchen utensil, home improvement tool...) the demented killers used to inflict the worst of their tortures on her - and have the thug wield just that object as he menacingly closes in on her.

If he catches her, he may play a sadistic game with her in which he presents another captive person (a native perhaps?) and forces Priya to choose whether she torments that person (under the thug's enthusiastic direction) or she herself is to be the victim of torture (at the hand of either the native or the thug).

Priya's children may also appear to her, but contrary to what she may have hoped against hope, they are not innocent souls... not anymore. They have fallen under the influence of Golab since the manner of their death was so strongly influenced by his particular Principle, and have turned into artfully tormented, and eagerly tormenting purgatides.

As Priya first beholds them, describe how she is horrified to see her children covered in gruesome yet morbidly artistic scarrings, brandings, gilded piercings that hold open gory wounds, crude needles impaling their flesh and nailing muscles to bone, as well as their scorched-out eyes weeping streaks of black tar down their gaunt little cheeks...
Twist it around by having her see the children lovingly caress each other's injuries and mutilations - and going on to inflict new ones. Before her eyes they indulgently keep on disfiguring each other and themselves.

"Why are you crying, mommy? Is it from joy? Aren't you proud of us? We were so proud of you, you know! The things you went through to protect us, to show us how to be strong and beautiful, in those last moments we had together..."

"We never wanted anything more than to be just like you. But now look how many more things we learned... we practiced so long for this... It's so much fun, mommy! And now we can all be together and make each other even more beautiful than before!"
[closing in with arms outstretched for an embrace, delicate almost toy-like torture instruments dangling from their piercings and leather straps]

Laura

The mere fact of being marooned on the island will be extremely triggering for Laura, since there is jungle, isolation, exposure... all the things she experienced as a child in the wilderness of northern Australia. She will frequently have to Keep it Together against the 'phantories' (what she calls the phantom memories in her mind) invading her thoughts when facing her present-day problems. Her Gluttony is a suitable stress response, so a failed roll may in turn trigger that Disadvantage, compelling her to stuff herself with sweet fruits or draining the last bottle of pepsi, or whatever is availabe.
(Offer her chances to steal another character's last pack of cigarettes, or ask her if she wants to leave camp alone to go collect some of those juicy red berries they saw wearlier, instead of just dried rations and stale water...)

The Influence of Gaia on the island will likewise not be lost on her. Primitive instincts she had forgotten (or at least thoroughly repressed) are welling up to the surface again, as she is forced to flee, hide, and fight for her mere survival. She will tend to "go feral" faster than the other characters, and her Best Attributes and chosen Advantage can be used to support this.
(if she gathers enough experience during the scenario to earn an advancement, perhaps consider allowing her to 'remember' her other Advantage, the one she didn't choose at character creation, and continue playing with both. Or consider offering her a choice between Escape Artist, Sneak, Parcour, Inner Power or similar advantages that might provide a hint at how she managed to survive in Gaia as a child all those years earlier...?)

Finally, at some point when she is lost, exhausted, and most importantly especially hungry - her brother Paolo's ghost may appear to her and console her that: "It's okay, you can eat from me again".
He lifts his arm in front of her, the flesh looking dead for at least a week (she can tell, perhaps without fully knowing why), in a gesture of offering.

"But don't wait too long this time. You know I'll be all wormy and full of bugs again soon, in this heat."

And with that, this series of blog post concludes... for now anyways. I may expand more on it at some point, but for now I'm all out of gruesome ideas to collect here. Hope you enjoyed them, and be glad to read any comments below or over on the Kult: Elysium discord.

Carefully mind your steps on the Island of the Dead, for the horrors it spawns do not hatch from the fetid, rotten earth underneath your feet. They grow directly out of your own dark past.

Your sins and fears, unforgotten and unforgiven.

They're all waiting for you here.