Wolf in The Fold - Wretched Darkness Session Report With 'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign'. Session Report

 A couple of months ago we had a Wretched Darkness second edition game mini campaign set in the Wretched Interbellum period. We were using Wretched Darkness second edition for our PC's who had been transported to pre WWII California. This followed on the heels of Wretched Armageddon Volume I: War I in which the PC's were on the heels of the cult that was opening the seals of the Revelation. 

We were in the middle of California and now that game has picked up right where we left off here way back in June. We journeyed deep into the night with guns, ammo, and more ready to deal with the cult that had stranged our party in the 30's. Now we're on our way to a nearby ranch/safehouse of this blood thirsty cult. Several young and very pretty women have gone missing in the deserts of California. This is the section of the state no one really talks about. 
As we approach the ranch we see the sentry over the bluff standing watch armed. We don't care and let loose Arthur who changes into the beast as soon as the moon hits the car. The doors open and he leaps out. We don't slow down as the man's strangled scream doesn't come but his shape disappears. 

We sneak in on the Five's location (The Five are actually incubi that have aligned themselves with the powers of Hell). We don't bother with the outer guards and move in on the other's location. 

Arthur dispatches guards left and right as the werebeast takes out whatever gets in his way. The violence of his attacks shocks the guards. As Nuna's bargain with the minor demons paves our way with silence. The ritual has been a success but the cost was high but her Invisible College contacts proved just the right mystical information. 

 The cost of several thousand dollars was worth our time. But the promise of the victim's souls is far more then Nuna bargained for. Still all in the costs and wages of sin. Victor our man of act slits the throats of several guards but then he is hit with the hooked chains. 
This alerts 'The Five' & this is when all Hell breaks loose. Literally as Hellfire flares around our party and we're confronted by one of the Incubi who transforms into his full demonic form! We've got a few things with ready with conjurers waiting in the wings. That is until one of our players fumbles her roll and has psychotic break in the middle of melee. 
And now we've got to improvise! Fortunately we've brought a few grenades to liven things up! We tear the crap out of the Incubi's mortal form and he's banished back to the pits of the Beyond where he crawled out of. We free the ladies after helping ourselves to the treasure of 'The Five'. This operation isn't a charity and we don't take Green Stamps. 

Wolf in The Fold - Wretched Darkness Session Report With 'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign'.

 My crew & I have travelled back in time to the Thirties after investigating  the Acolytes of Pain cult who were opening doors into the past using an occult ritual!  You can read about that last session of Wretched weirdness here. This week's session picks right up with the last off. 
The PC's are now in the desert foot hills of Cailifornia being given new covers and lives by two very young members of the Invisible College. The year is 1934 and things are about to get very interesting for a small town in California. 

The PC's are down two comrades and have been spent part of the morning digging graves and planning thier next move. The graves are for two of thier own who were hit by stray gun fire last session after the occult ritual went off. 
Thier next move is a small rural cemetary outside of the Hollywood stunt  ranch where thier staying. The cemetary houses the remians of one of thier own. Arthur Rowen was a World War I soldier who was killed during the closing days of World War I by the Germans. Arthur is also a werewolf which means that he's one of the damned whose soul will never know rest. 6 shovels and two pick axes later we're heading to the small out of the way Great Rest cemetary. 
We find the crypt just as we left it in 1914. 

We slowly dig the hard packed red clay from the secret door and then put the key in. The tomb is just as we left it. With the sarcophagus's lid wrapped in silver chains and a very sturdy lock. The next key goes in the chain as well as lock tumble to the floor and the sarcophagus's heavy stone lid cast aside. Within rests the body of Arthur wrapped in a pile of wolf's bane. 
We quickly get ready with a set of manicles as the moon hits Arthur returning him to life! The beast is loose but we quickly subdue it with the silvered manicles. It's going to take days for the lunacy to work itself from Arthur's mind. We quickly get the beast to the truck & replace everything back the way it was. 
And we catch sight of a group of wispy ghosts like figures following Arthur back to the truck. The ghosts of Arthur's past victims have arisen to follow him from the Grey Limbo of the Beyond! We drive quickly back to the L-O Ranch and our shaman prepares to go into battle with these ghosts. They have no intention of letting Arthur roam the Earth to add to thier count. 
We are in desparate need of supernatural muscle however and our shaman Paulo goes to meet with them on the Astral. And this is where things get weird as the usual protections don't work and the entire party is drawn into the dream like astral world of World War I Europe. We experience Arthur's life from his victim's perspective. And we meet the ghosts of his victims on thier home turf. His victims are mostly German soldiers however and the party quickly gets the upper hand because it's soon going to be war again. 
The ghosts are put too rest with the asurance that Arthur will be put back into the grave as soon as the mission of war is over with. And there's the lingering smell of blood in the air. Arthur is a gibbering mess as the ghosts get in one last moment of torture within the poor fool's mind. 

Damned In The Past! - Wretched Darkness Session Report With 'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign' Part II

 This post is going to follow up on the Damned In The Past! Session Report from the other day. The PC's are right now being debriefed by the operatives of the Invisible College. Where the PC's actually are within the Wretched Interbellum era. The timeline of Wretched Interbellum lines up very nicely with  'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign'.

However we've got two players who want to be able to bring in two Wretched Chanbara rpg characters as 'guest star' PC's. Wretched Chanbara is a 'lost  world' in our campaign from an alternative timeline. There is a brief period during the Interbellum period where Japan had almost but not quite demoncracy. Chanbara is another world entirely where the 'old ways' are still practiced. 

One of the things that I'm going to be doing is teasing the fact that the PC's are not sure if they are in the Wretched Armageddon universe. Because according to the Armageddon universe timeline there is an Interbellum lead up to the diabolically charged WWII. 

Could the PC's possibly push the events of Wretched Armegedonn back? Not a chance! Seriously there are events far outside the PC's purview that have happened within the pre WWII that set up the Hell on Earth to come! 
And here's where we bring in both the  Apostles of Pain & the demons from the  Wretched Armegedonn rpg setting. 
This brings in some of the demonic powers from 'The Invisible College' because your going to need to use the  Wretched Armegedonn rpg setting's take on these. This is going to be especially true of page 85 the Shattering of the Seals in Wretched Armegedonn. The seals have been broken & all Hell is let loose upon the Earth. 
The Wretched Interbellum is shattered as Europe erupts in tanks and Hellfire! 

The question isn't can the Invisible College handle it?! But simply a matter of when?! The forces of darkness are arrayed against them and everyone is about to suffer Hell on Earth quite literallly. 

Damned In The Past! - Wretched Darkness Session Report With 'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign'.

 "The PC's in tonight's Wretched Darkness/Wretched Vigilantes game were investigating the Acolytes of Pain cult back in the the latter part of April. Here's the session report. . Well, they followed the cult members on a murder spree and got way more then they bargained for. 
They followed several cult members to an abandoned military base just outside of Los Vegas. Because the cult members had two victims were due to be sacrificed in bloody ritual to open the way. The PC's found themselves in a desert field filled with scrap metal henges and just as the first victim was about to be sacrificed. The party saved them! This is when they came face to face with Hu Tan the immortal. Hu tan is a 'murder immortal' & has been using the acolytes of pain cult as his cats paws. The ritual needed to be completed & lucky enchanted  dagger throw took out one of the PC's! Thus completing the ritual! "

The PC's are confronted by two radically scarred indivduals along with two strange insect like humans. 'We have come and time folds unto itself. The sacrifice has been made now return to the past with us!' A wave of stomach wrenching power hits the PC's and they find themselves in the 1930's at a secret United States army base during the day! 
Without even catching a word the PC's hide diving for the base's building supplies stacked all around them. Hu Tan the immortal is no where in sight and the PC's grab thier dead. 

Our party runs smack into two very young  members of the Invisible College who escort us off the base into the back of a waiting pick up truck! And this is where the game session ended tonight. 
Now a little background DM Paul has been planning on doing this for months ever since grabbing  'The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign'.  The Pundit Files Invisible College: the 1930's Campaign highlight's the Invisible College and it's competing factions during the pre WWII years. We're really not sure if we've skipped timelines to arrive on the Wretched Armageddon universe. The air seems alive with diabolical possibilities. 

Between The Cracks Of Reality Campaign Set Up - Wretched Interbellum & The RPG Pundit Files The Invisible College: 1930's Campaign

 So over the last couple of months I've gotten to play in a friend's Wretched Interbellum rpg game and he's thrown in some bits and pieces of  RPG Pundit's Invisible College. Because the Red Room is having a special promotion on The Rpg Pundit Files: The Invisible College, there's a huge discount on the Wretched Interbellum campaign setting; "This is the largest Pundit Files yet at 24 pages. And the cost is still $3.50! Also, when you buy this issue, you can use the promo code invisiblecollege for a 50% discount on the purchase of Wretched Interbellum, the Wretched setting that covers the 1930s. That’s a $6.50 discount on a 390 page setting book for a $3.50 purchase!"

The 1930's were marked by an increase in occult activity & Wretched Interbellum reflects this. The psychic fall out from WWI has put millions of restless dead into the supernatural ether.  hits on the fact that the Invisible CollleThe RPG Pundit Files The Invisible College: 1930's Campaign's occult and supernatural secret societies are struggling to keep up with the demands of the 1930's. We as DM's and players get a plethora of snap shots and details on how these occult and supernatural sects react as the years go by. 
These details can be worked into a Wretched Interbellum campaign easily. The factions of the Invisible College are going to butt heads and clash with the factions of the Wretched Interbellum even if they are fronts for other Invisible College factions. A war would be happening on two fronts the battles of Pre WWII and the occult clashes behind the scenes. In our Wretched campaign, Wretched Interbellum's Europe has been invaded by the Greys. And the Invisible College is aware of the invasion! 
The first tenative steps to this happened in 1917  because of Aliester Crowley's the "Amalantrah Workings," According to the Grey's Wiki entry; "As early as 1917, the occultist Aleister Crowley described a meeting with a "preternatural entity" named Lam that was similar in appearance to a modern Grey. Crowley believed he had contacted the entity through a process that he called the "Amalantrah Workings," which he thought allowed humans to contact beings from outer space and across dimensions. Other occultists and ufologists, many of whom have retroactively linked Lam to later Grey encounters, have since described their own visitations from him, with one describing the being as a "cold, computer-like intelligence," and utterly beyond human comprehension"  This contact allowed the Lam to punch holes into our reality from the Beyond. 
 The Greys are on the expansion train again and using cults to build gateways that allow them appear in New York and Europe. New York is on a 'slow kill breeding & expansion'  program. LAM are opening gateways into apartments and buildings then snatching people. The LAM are using a black liquid evolutionary accelerant virus that rewrites the victims genetic material. This process hollows out the victim's body allowing a 'feral LAM' to be born. Feral LAM are monsters of pure instinct and hunger with sharp claws and teeth. Any meat or protein is used to fuel the evolutionary change into the far more logical LAM form. The LAM have been expanding operations in major cities in America and Europe because almost no one has noticed. Anyone exposed to the accelerant virus must make a disease save or contract the LAM genetic material that will overwrite thier own material allowing the hatching of feral monster killing the host. 

Only by using a variation of the Banishing rite page 106 can one banish and close the psychic door of the LAM. This will force the entities back to the Beyond and they as well as thier works will evaporate. There is a breeding hive in Midtown Manhatten that has become ground zero for the LAM. 
Cults actively capture any 'feral Lam' that they come across and then secret them into facilities in the wilds of New York state and New England. A process repeated across Europe. 
The Machitore are monitoring the situation and watching with cold logical detactment.  Thier agents have been getting a bit close to the action and two or three have already been killed. 

The Invisible College's agents approach the PC's or are actively are part of the party. This means that the PC's are going to be stretched thin. 
The Adventurer's Club is being pushed to get involved The AC's occultist are pulling back and making adjustments with thier own adventurers. Note that the AC is very active during the Wretched Interbellum period. They work with the Invisible College from time to time. The AC knows that something is up with the Black Lodge but not what?! 
The Black Lodge lost a ton of ground & resources during World War I and have been acively canvasing to get back ground. 
The Black Lodge is trying to push further support to the German Nazi party. The Black Lodge believes that Hitler & co. are going to be easily controlled. The Thule society and the Vril oganization have contacted the LAM. They believe that they can make covenants with the LAM not knowing the true danger of these creatures. The LAM continue to fuel the German's Vril and Thule laced dreams. The rest of the Earth has no idea of the true danger that they are in.