Blood of Count Orlok - The Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Rpg With The Orpheum Lofts By Miguel Ribeiro, Sílvia Clemente, & Joe Coombs For The Wretchexploitation & The Wretched Époque rpg Session Report Two

' Wait, young man. You can't escape destiny by running away ..'

This blog entry will pick right up from here. One of our players very much undecided about what he wanted to play in our current  Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars campaign. Paul's PC Jacob Hutter  awoke from a nightmare covered in rats with two small puncture marks on his neck. Jacob Hutter has no memory of how he got in the abandoned apartment in Brooklyn at 9:00 PM at night. What he does know is that his throat is so incredibly thirsty. 

He knows that his friends are looking for him after he was kidnapped by the strange carriage in the middle of Central Park by the driver with the fiery eyes back in '73. Jacob Hutter looks at himself in a nearby puddle no charming, suave seducer is he. With his bald head, bushy eyebrows, rat-like teeth, pointed ears, nails as long as the fingers they are attached to, emaciated build, and stare that seems to come from the bottom of Hell itself. What happened to the 20 year old college student?! 

Jacob remembers signing a contract with a creature straight from nightmare itself but the rest of the following months have been a blurr. He remembers so many terrible deeds and violent fights with so many monsters. Before being found by his current crew. 

But it was when Jacob tackled that supposed business woman from Harlem that was trying to drain Chrissie that thing had gone sideways. Her head detached itself from her body and fed off of Jacob instead. And Jacob had fled into the night and he was now dreaming of his former master Count Orlok. Orlock who offered to help Jacob fight the supernatural by becoming one of them. Orlok who was trying to establish a foot hold in New York city by unleashing an undead  plague & a horde of rats upon the city to cover his activities. Orlok who sent Jacob to take on his rival. 

Jacob has deep connections to a woman with whom he dated in his mortal life a student at The Orpheum Lofts. He has no idea that she sold him out to her coven nor that Jacob was a bargaining chip between Orlok & the Orpheum Lofts sinister powers. 

Jacob Hutter has gone from being a helpless college student to an instrument of vengence against a clan particularly nasty clan of Penanggalan. When Jacob's crew found him in '74 he was more animal then man or monster. It took lots of time get him back to something resmembling even a normal vampire. 

So what the Hell's going on here?! Going back to our Victorious rpg game 5 years we needed a rival for the NPC Dracula within our campaign and who better then Count Orlok?! Orlok is a force of nature within the silent film Nosferatu. In Seventies New York City Orlok is  a disease vector. And so he fits right in with the Wretchploitation rpg ideals. Orlok is a major NPC player & faction leader within our Nightshift campaign. And the players hate him with a passion. Everytime some minor threat pops up that involves a vampire their quick to blame him. 

The fact is that Jacob is Paul's PC and Orlok manupulates him from the sidelines from time to time giving him assignments and tasks which Jacob has little to no memory of. He does this through his hordes of rats that run rampant throughout New York City. 

Is Jacob Hutter a weapon, a supernatural errand boy, toy, a hero, or something much,much, worse?! Time will tell 

OSR Wretched RPG Campaign Idea - Wretched Époque rpg 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror II The Second Movement '

 So this morning, our group of gamers spent time at the local coffee shop having a brew & talking gaming. The usual conversation came up but we came back to the Wretched Époque rpg ;"The Wretched Époque takes place in the period known as the Belle Époque. This is the time and the fictional place where Umberto Eco's Simone Simonini crosses paths with Jacques Tardi's Adèle Blanc-Sec, Edgar Allan Poe's Chevalier Auguste Dupin and Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, amidst anarchist bombings, the echoes of the Dreyfus affair, the catastrophic side effects of secret societies conspiring in the shadows and the mysterious results of experiences conducted by mad geniuses" 

Why?! Because we came back to one of the most influencal vampire films created Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (German: Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens) a 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok. And when we look at the wiki entry on Nosferatu's plot; "In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisborg,^[1][6] Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer, estate agent Herr Knock, to visit a new client named Count Orlok who plans to buy a house across from Hutter's own home. While embarking on his journey, Hutter stops at an inn where the locals become frightened by the mere mention of Orlok's name."  So all of the events of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror take place in 1838 very much outside of the events of the Belle Époque which takes place in 1871–80 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. What if Count Orlok wasn't destroyed in the sunlight by Ellen's valiant sacrifice. Instead Orlok's essence flees back to his coffin where he reforms until 1872 & then makes his move on Paris this time instead of Germany. 

Orlok makes his move by having his corpse & coffin shipped to a castle on the outskirts of Paris & begins to create mayhem with plague rats moving across the countryside. Plague begins to take over as he feeds on the human essence and fear. Count Orlok isn't your average vampire but one who has a deep & abiding connection to the Beyond allowing him to feed on not only the blood but the very souls of humanity. 
This will be a massive campaign with the player's PC's getting an updated 'Book of the Vampires' with the ancient tome being studied & updated by the L' Institut Scientifique Pour l'Étude Des Phénomènes Occultes (ISEPO). The vampires of Paris see this ancient upstart as out & out predatory competition to their herd population within the city of lights. This is a sprawling campaign involving both villains & heroes who will have to work together to rid the country of this upstart & his plague of vileness that has invaded the French countryside! 

Wretched Époque rpg 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror II The Second Movement ' Foes & Encounter Ideas: 

1. The PC's could come face to face with plague infected animals under the control of Count Orlok. There could well be all kinds horrors that await the player's PC's. 
2. Hordes of undead plague victims to cause the players delays, weird encounters, and more. 
3. The player's PC's are called before the vampires of Paris to discuss destroying Orlok freeing France from the grip of the invasive undead horror. 
4. Abandoned towns, villages, etc. become the hunting ground of ghosts & far worse as the dead do not remain quiet. France is known for its ghosts but Orlok's plague creates far more then the living know. 
5. France begins to slip into the grip of the beyond as dead shift the balance of power from the living to the supernatural. Things begin to cross between worlds.