Hey /tg/, I would like to make a Call of Cthulhu adaption of 'Atlas Shrugged' or 'Fountainhead', can you give me any tips or ideas? It can't involve Dagon or the Deep Ones because the original BioShock already did Objectivist horror underwater.
>can you give me any tips or ideas?
The "Unobtanium" steel is of alien origin and the guy who "invented" it has to deal with Mi-Go to get it.
>'Atlas Shrugged' or 'Fountainhead'
Dear gods, why?!
I would be interested in a CoC adventure where Ayn Rand is a cultist.
To maximize the horror, of course.
Lovecraftian themes and Objectivist themes are blatantly at odds with each other; you should decide which one is "truer" at the start.
>Galt's Gulch is a trap made by Mi-Go, John Galt is a Mi-Go puppet; they wanted to trick the juiciest brains into showing up for their experiments
Pnankotus shrugged
A upsurge of fabulous new inventions are created by a number of prominent thinkers and businessmen. In response, the government issues a series of regulatory measures which aim to limit the impact and spread of these fabulous new technologies if not to out-right confiscate them.The inventors flee in the face of these new measures. The party after some investigation trace them to a secluded valley where they have built a advanced settlement seemingly of alien manufacture and far beyond the normal capabilities of man. Talking to the the inventors, they all share a similar story that they they went through an extended period of mental fugue followed by a sudden resurgence of identity, knowledge and creativity that allowed them to create their new inventions. They have all had their minds exchanged by Yithians. The Government has recognized this and is attempting to suppress their work.
Satisfied, one of the group, John Galt who seemingly has recalled more than most, asks to be taken back to the city so he might speak to the other people of his experiences. Once they he speaks on the radio a sanity blasting diatribe about the insignificance of man, the amorality of the universe and the right of the good and the strong to lead the rest of humanity and their expected support. This induces a mass riot and general anarchy around the city.
Goverment G-men swoop in to take Galt into custody (and the asylum) but fanatical partisans rescue him at the last minute.
Objectivist
>Individual is the absolute most important unit of society. The will of an individual is the most powerful driving force in a society.
Lovecraft
> The individual is a unit so utterly small as to be nonexistent within the larger unit of human society that is itself so utterly small as to be almost unnoticeable. The will of the individual is appropriately irrelevant.
>Alien accent
>Stranger ideas
>Considered to be rather nasty by most of the people
>Strong willpower
>Has a bunch of weird followers
>Fez hat
Rand would probably be an avatar of Nyarlathotep.
I really don't get the love Ayn Rand gets. Massive hypocrite and all around awful person.
Her racism is almost on par with Lovecraft so I guess they might be a good match.
>Once they he speaks on the radio a sanity blasting diatribe about the insignificance of man, the amorality of the universe and the right of the good and the strong to lead the rest of humanity and their expected support.
I chuckled. However I think the members of the Great Race are too collectivists to be objectivists. Didn't Lovecraft himself describe their society as "socialist"?
Galt's reaction is a knee jerk both to the Yithians own society and the sudden revelations that he has had, in so far that he becomes massively objectivist opposite to that of the Great Race.
>Objectivism says: the universe is rational and can be objectively understood through logic and empiricism, and there are no gods. Individuals have the power to choose for themselves, and should fight against those who would seek to control them.
>Lovecraft says: the universe is an incomprehensible mad house, populated by insane and dangerous deities. Humanity is an insignificant speck of dust subject to the whims of very powerful gods and aliens, and there is nothing we can or should do about it, so it's probably best to ignore the universe so you don't break your mind.
They would make interesting competing ideas in a story, but yeah, it would be hard to have both be equally true.
Assuming you want to stick with Rand's protagonists this might work:
>The nations of the earth are slowly falling to the corrupting forces of a Lovecraftian cult.
>The lovecraftian cult preaches the abolisment of the self, or something else that can be compared to the hardcore socialism that rand used as a bogeyman in her novels.
>Set in an America that is the last nation on earth not entirely overtaken by this scourge.
>Plot follows the basic pattern of Atlas shrugged but instead of inventing a magic engine John Galt holds the secret of thwarting the otherworldly invaders.
>It ends with all the people left who have the mental fortitude to resist the call of the old ones going to live in the mountains while the cosmic horrors devour humanity so they can go rebuild a more worthy, objectivitist humanity in a thousand years or so when the old ones return to sleep.
The RPG elements would be locating Galt before America falls and the old ones awaken.
Bonus points if you reveal just after the group has seemingly won that it was entirely pointless and they were also devoured.
Business according to Rand goes:
>create something, become to big to fail and let the gouvernment pick up your bill for all of eternity.
I guess in this case it's
>create something, become too big to fail and let the gouvernment deal with the horrors from neighbouring dimensions that stalk the streets now.
Make it a bunch of escalating short stories about people getting scared, getting hurt and ultimately getting killed en masse and slowly reveal that the cause of it all is that thing that's now too big to fail.
I agree with this post.
HOWEVER, that could be exactly the premise. An objectivist capitalist libertarian BioShock character decides that he wants to follow his dreams to become rich or powerful or successful or whatever. He's trying to fulfill his individual wants. They are pretty lofty and difficult to obtain, but his belief in personal empowerment leads him into the occult. He has no problems with summoning and treating with demons and alien gods because he believes that, as an individual, he is powerful enough to handle them. Obviously he isn't and he gets devoured or possessed or whatever.
Rather than agree with objectivism, show that, at least in a Lovecraftian universe, it doesn't really work.
Because most people are basically selfish, conniving assholes, and Ayn Rand's books are all about her philosophy which is all about how charity - or even expecting basic empathy from you - is stupid evil parasitism and being a selfish, conniving asshole is actually a really good thing. We live in a fiercely capitalist society that idolizes the rich basically solely for being rich and considers the less fortunate to be almost by default disgusting lazy evil parasites, so it's not hard to see how Ayn Rand's philosophy would really speak to people who are all about the benjamins, so to speak.
> An objectivist capitalist libertarian BioShock character decides that he wants to follow his dreams to become rich or powerful or successful or whatever. He's trying to fulfill his individual wants. They are pretty lofty and difficult to obtain, but his belief in personal empowerment leads him into the occult.
Howard Roark tries to design a building that works as a gateway to the Outer Gods, and the Investigators must stop him. Pity they already used this plot in "Ghostbusters".
Both Ayn Rand and Lovecraft's philosophies were based on the existence of objective, Platonic "Truth". They only really vary on how one responds to it. Lovecraft repulses in horror, Rand gets a massive erection.
All you need to do is have the protagonists be Lovecrafts and antagonists be Rands.
>Atlas Shrugged
Someone who has discovered Objective Truth has squirreled away a small parcel of land and is gathering together people to perform a Grand Scientific Action.
A rival conspiracy has constructed the railways to carve the entire continental US with the Elder Sign.
>Fountainhead
A deranged architect is bringing pieces of Carcosa into our world, one apartment at a time. You have to burn them down.
>A deranged architect is bringing pieces of Carcosa into our world, one apartment at a time. You have to burn them down.
That is an amazing idea totally independent of the Rand theme and I am going to steal the shit out of it if I ever find an appropriate situation.
>"I guess they just don't make them like they used to."
>"No! Nobody EVER made them like this!"
>the East is falling to Hastur's cult and teaching, obscuring individuality behind masks
>the West is the home to the rising Electric Church of rationality, behind which lurks our good friend Neil Arthur O'Tep.
>A rival conspiracy has constructed the railways to carve the entire continental US with the Elder Sign.
Wasn't that a plot point in Priest? Or was it Hellboy? Some rich industrialist building giant pentagrams and magical sigils using railways?
There's something like that in Good Omens, where a highway has been shaped into a sigil.
I bet an Objectivist would see the Colour Out Of Space and figure out a way to capture it/synthesize more and sell it as a dye and paint.
Cue society literally crumbling as everything painted in Objectivique starts being consumed by the star vampire fragments inside it.
Come to think of it it actually could be an interesting moral predicament. Cultists of a philosophy that worships the concepts of greed and sociopathic levels of selfishness, versus the Great Old Ones. The world has been reduced to an objectivist hell in which a rich, powerful few actively prey like wolves upon a weak, ruthlessly-exploited many over whom they rule as masters over slaves. Nyarlathotep watches and grins at this picture of world-wide systematic inhumanity, of people being used and preyed upon like cattle by a small cabal of wealthy, monstrous sociopaths. And all the while, Cthulhu begins to stir from his ageless slumber, and the end draws near...
How does Objectivism cope if someone produces something that damages the consumer? If the state stepped in (as would typically be the case in such things) then surely that would be decried by the various objectivists as interference in laissez faire capitalism?
>"I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown."
The opening paragraph of "Nyarlathotep" is basically a summary of the first few hundred pages of "Atlas Shrugged."
It would be incredibly easy to have the general state of decline and social malaise gripping Rand's setting be the result of a malign otherworldly influence. The whole thing with people saying "Who is John Galt?" all the time without knowing what it meant already had a pretty Lovecraftian feel to it. And instead of John Galt being a mad scientist, have him be a mad explorer who brought back his technology from the ruins in "The Mountains of Madness."
>if you produce something that harms the consumer
You mean like cigarettes?
The idea was that the objectivist would look at the Space-Colour and go "GAP IN THE MARKET MOTHERFUCKER I'M GONNA BE THE EXCLUSIVE OWNER OF BLORANGE" and start selling all the shit they could in the new colour because muh free market muh profit motive etc.
Essentially, the only way that an Objectivist would be happy with something harmful being taken off the market is if the market ITSELF decides it doesn't want it or if the creator decides they don't want to to sell any more.
They consider it the right of producers. It is wrong to stop someone from doing anything that earns them more money, and it is wrong to tell someone that they can't do something with their money, even if it's something horrifyingly immoral.
So yeah, if the state stepped in Objectivists would decry it as interference in proper Laissez Faire Capitalism, because the notion that anything done either with money or in the pursuit of it should be freely allowed and encouraged is basically the entire point of Objectivism.
Or the hellish existence has poisoned humanity so deeply that anything that might have wanted to devour us is put off. The Objectivist nightmare ends up "saving" humanity.
What about fraud, though? Would an objectivist support a company selling a harmful product to consumers if it knew the product was harmful but advertised it as safe?
Long story short - objectivism doesn't care. As long as you are "free" to do whatever you want and "capitalise", everything is wonderous. Because in this fantastic ideology it's your fault if someone exploits your ass
Think Reagan-era capitalism. Then multiply it by 100. Then add Chinese stance toward safety and environment.
Welcome to Objectivism.
So you and Galt in this adventure would kill Cthulhu with free market capitalism?
No, Galt would probably hide somewhere and wait till the world go to hell, after which he will emerge and rebuild his ultra-individualistic, leissez-faire utopia for the chosen few that will worship him as their saviour.
Because objectivism is even stronger than cosmic horros that devours your soul and tear your planet apart. It's this kind of bullshit
The thing is that Galt wouldn't want to STOP the Apocalype. He's kind of a social darwinist - half the plot of Atlas Shrugged is that he decided most people deserve to die for not doing enough to fight socialism or just didn't subscribe to his philosophy. He knew the apocalypse was coming and just let it happen.
>Similar to the Innsmouth scenario in that you have a town (non-seaside) secretly run by a cult with everyone working frantically to get access some vague notion of paradise.
>In this case, the struggle for paradise is a struggle for individual excellence
>One must elevate one's self by acquiring as huge a mass of wealth and servants as you can.
>Most in the town don't know about this struggle, as learning of it is another sign of "excellence"
>Every few years, when one of the wealthy men of the town becomes indisputably worthy among his peers (and they're glad to be rid of him as a result) he proceeds to the main temple to enter paradise.
>He and a vast entourage of servants, laden with as much wealth (converted to gold) as they can carry, enter the forbidden inner sanctum
>when the doors close, they and all the gold are devoured, because the entire town exists only as a mechanism to creating worthy food for a dark god of greed.
Plot for Ayn Rand/Cthulhu cross-over:
All the selfish greedy douchebags who think they are irreplaceable decide to do the ultimate "Go Galt" and step through a one-way gate to an alien world.
Life on Earth continues exactly as normal and they are not missed.
The End.
But anon, Lovecraft aren't supposed to have happy endings.
>But anon, Lovecraft aren't supposed to have happy endings.
I suppose I'm imaging an unhappy end on the alien world for the Galt-ers.
P.S. To anyone who really does buy Rand's sociopathic garbage: call my bluff!
Go Galt, and see how much the world misses you.
There's a wonderful old saying, "The graveyards are filled with indispensable men."
An essential part of the way things work in Lovecraft stuff is that trying to control Mythos critters and occult powers always, always backfires. Because the Mythos stuff simply is what it is (and what it is is generally inscrutable), and doesn't care about your ideology.
An Objectivist would run facefirst into this wall at full speed, because their champions are all about trying to exploit everything they can.
So basically, you'd have many objectivists, but with varying levels of intelligence, and, using that, you could tier up a long story. You run into the dumb ones first; the ones that, as earlier posts suggested, try to bottle and monetize the color out of space. These meet their ends quickly in localized disasters that mentally scar the player characters but don't change the world.
At the far extreme is the ultrasmart pure avatar of objectivism, who has grown to be the puppetmaster behind many things, because he uses the occult only sparingly and indirectly, knowing that to do otherwise will destroy him. This is the guy who does the classic recruitment attempt once the party reaches him, using the argument that he's actually suppressing the bad stuff (killing off humanity is bad for business) and that the best scenario is where HE is the one in charge. It's the mythos, therefore he's automatically wrong about being able to control it... but the argument may convince some player characters.
>A rival conspiracy has constructed the railways to carve the entire continental US with the Elder Sign.
I like it. What cities should be connected to show this?
I'd presume it would be some kind of special rail way. Connects a few large cities, but then what tips off the players is that large expense is being spent to connect small towns that just make no sense.
But what cities?
Good Omens had it being the M25 around London. The shape of it was the Single Odegra of the priesthood of the lost continent of Mu. The effect of all that frustration and resentment churning around it everyday polluted the cosmic atmosphere for thousands of miles.
Crowly was very proud of it.
At least one major metropolis that can be used as the sacrifice for the Old Ones, and many smaller towns and settlements for a boost.
You could throw a bit of Gatica in there as well. Once the "rules free high achievers" leave to create their "paradise," you start getting time-traveling horrors from the future terrorizing already mentally unstable individuals who no one will believe. Meanwhile, the citizens of the "paradise" start perfecting each generation, then quickly deviate from anything that could be considered human. Many generations later, when they couldn't even be called transhuman, they develop time-travel. It quickly becomes a sport to see how much trauma you can cause a puny mon-keigh without significantly altering the time-line.
Let's go with the star version.
I looked up a map of the continental US with the major cities on and I worked out a decent route would go like this:
Topmost "point" at Bismarck, North Dakota.
First line goes south-east to Montgomery, Alabama.
Next line goes north-west to Boise, Idaho.
Then west to Columbus, Ohio
Southwest to Phoenix, Arizona
Then northeast back to North Dakota
The end result would come a little squashed and should put the middle "eye" around the Nebraska/Kansas border.
As far as Atlas Shrugged, I'd think the campaign would be focused on trying to figure out why people are checking out of the system.
The investigators notice that people 'in the know' or who would be in a position to see large elements of society are going gulch.
The investigation would likely see this as sinister, but in reality it would be people becoming aware of the 'mythos' taking over the government/world and trying to find a safe spot to hide while the rest sorts itself out.
I think it makes more sense that the Gulch IS the cult. I mean, that's practically what Galt's Gulch is already. Little isolated community with very clearly defined roles, you're not allowed to be a member of the community if you're not a member of the ideology at the risk of tainting their ideological purity and the classic "I'm technically not your leader - but I'm clearly your leader" thing going on with Galt himself.
So in the event of Mythos Emergency, Nebraska is the safest place in the world?
>Rail Wars in Call of Cthulhu, racing to draw sigils before the rival conglomerate
Yes please.
It opens a way passageway trough time and space, if I remember correctly. It requires some rites to be activated, I think.
So, if the Sigils center is Nebraska, the whole Nebraska will transform into a portal to another world when the Sigil is activated by the cultists (or by the clumsy investigators).
So in the event of Shit Happens, you activate the Elder Sign Network to set up a defensible position in Nebraska. If that's not tenable, activate GTFO Protocols and take Nebraska somewhere.. else.
What about the line over water? Do you think maybe they might consider making a bridge to keep the circle.. circular? If you're pulling a stunt off of this size, a bridge wouldn't be to much of a stretch.
>What about the line over water? Do you think maybe they might consider making a bridge to keep the circle.. circular? If you're pulling a stunt off of this size, a bridge wouldn't be to much of a stretch.
Well, I guess they could just claim that they want to build a Wisconsin-Michigan line over the lake, but it would gain much attention. Of course that could be a reason why our investigators start to investigate this at the first place? Still, it would be a big and costly project.
Yeah but in symbols like this you really don't want to risk shit like improper design on your magic circle. You need that shit PRECISE or else it doesn't work - or goes horribly wrong. Best case scenario it fizzles, worst case scenario.. is a REALLY worst case scenario.
It's worth the expense and the risk.
>What do you mean "We could modify it a bit and add Colorado Spring to the network?" Do you really think this has anything to do with transporting things?
>Well now that you mention it it certainly has a lot to do with transporting things, but not from Colorado Spings.
>Where's there a little circuit at the Four Corners?
>.. tourism.
>SLC
>Albuquerque
>Shreveport
>Las Cruces
>Springfield
>St. Paul
>Bismarck
>Lubbock
>dead empty area in Western Kansas / East Colorado is the center
I like it. It builds its own story nicely.
I like how some of the little circles fall on interesting things.
You've got the Four Corners, a little circuit through Midland and Odessa. But then you've got that one up north with almost nothing there.
What do you think we could put there?
The secret cult hideout?
A repair station for trains that is haunted by some sort of creatures from the Beyond?
An ancient Indian burial ground?
An ancient pre-human ruins that lead to the underground warrens of the Serpent Men?
A dark forest that is full of ghouls?
Well it's not far from Cedar Rapids, the "City of Five Seasons" - and whose early prosperity was founded on meatpacking.
There's horror potential there.
When is our railroad of doom constructed? I subconsciously assumed that all of this happens in 20's or 30's because of Lovecraft, or at 50's because of Rand. But I guess all of this can work on a modern-day setting as well.
And since we are at the topic of time, how long would a construction of a railroad of this magnitude took?
A long time. That railroad sigil crosses several dozen rivers which need to be bridged. At least a decade to get it all done, more if it's a modern-day thing because the US exported all their Chinese slave labor jobs back to China.
>Chinese slave labor
Ah, the Chinese people, one of the many, many things that Lovecraft was afraid of. Maybe some of the oriental railroad workers were actually cultists of the Bloated Lady?
So, I guess the investigators come along at the last stages of the plan, ruining everything at the last moment before the Sigil is completed.
What kind of rituals this Sigil needs to be activated? What exactly happens when it is activated?
It WOULD be a big costly project, had the newest steel alloy not been invented.
>What kind of rituals this Sigil needs to be activated?
Killing everyone in Bismark, SLC, Las Cruces, Shreveport and Springfield is probably step one.
What exactly happens when it is activated?
Now the question is which horror is on the other side waiting to be released?
The "center" is prime cattle grazing country and the dead ass middle of nowhere. Could have increasing numbers of cattle mutilations as they finish cutting the right-of-way for the rail lines, but before the beds and rails go in.
The final activation requires timed sacrifices in the exact center of the three circles. This then causes everything living in the central quadrilateral to have their life force burned as fuel, which opens a portal to Somewhere in Colby, KS.
The US adopted the plane to do a lot of their passenger and cargo shipping.
They still have a huge network - which is mostly bulk cargo and the rails themselves are falling the fuck apart.
This conspiracy could be posed as a "revitalization" or something.
>China
What if this is a modern day thing with a Chinese-owned firm coming in to set up shop in America? They're beginning to slow their growth in the same way Japan and Korea did before them - pricing themselves out of the market.
>What kind of rituals does the Sigil need?
I'm seeing some kind of "special train" that needs to trace out the whole thing. Like, something like a huge abbatoir-train that is basically painting the symbol in slaughtered cattle.
>What happens when it's activated?
Well, two options.
1) America goes somewhere.
2) Something comes to America.
I also like the idea that because of the sheer SIZE of the spell, stuff just gets weird around sites where the lines cross over. Like, in Bismarck, ND, people start seeing eyeless dopplegangers behind themselves..
Maybe increasing fuel costs makes rail travel more economical than flying, and it gets fancy again.
What I'm saying is throw some Snowpiercer in there.
>Now the question is which horro is on the other side waiting to be released?
That is a pretty big summoning circle, so I guess that whatever it is it is really, really big. Maybe even Azathoth? If I remember correctly the Serpent Men summoned him once and caused the extinction of dinosaurs.
>The final activation requires timed sacrifices in the exact center of the three circles. This then causes everything living in the central quadrilateral to have their life force burned as fuel, which opens a portal to the Far Realm in Colby, KS.
I hope the citizens of Colby enjoy their new, non-euclidean train station.
Non-euclidean reminds me, do the tracks have some unnatural effects on the trains that use it? Short trips take days and long trips only few hours, things like that?
>Tindalos Railways: Our Trains Run On Time
Depends on if the Objectivists are on the same side as the cultists.
>Free train ride for everyone
>("everyone" = parasites)
>thisrideneverends.jpg
The citizens of Colby are the epicenter of the blood sacrifice. They stopped having the ability to care well before that half-transit hub, half-sentient hate-driven monster from beyond the starts extruded a three dimensional polyp into our reality.
>thisrideneverends.jpg
Mr. Bones was the leader of the Train-Cult all along?!
Speaking of Bismark, the city is obviously central in the ritual.
Now, is everything coming from Bismark, or is everyhing going to Bismark?
Bismarck, North Dakota - Wikipedia
> In 1872 the future capital city was founded at what was then called Missouri Crossing, so named because the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the river there. The new town was called Edwinton, after Edwin Ferry Johnson (1803–1872), engineer-in-chief for the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1873, however, the Northern Pacific Railway renamed the city Bismarck, in honor of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in hopes of attracting German investment.
>Edwin Ferry Johnson (1803–1872), engineer-in-chief for the Northern Pacific Railway.
This thing is writing itself for us.
>why_not_both.jpg
On a more serious topic, it strikes me as a good place to "start". Like, when I was imagining where to draw the points of the Elder Sign on the map, I spotted it as one of the larger and most northern cities on there. So maybe that's the main point of the conspiracy, the origination of the project.
On another topic, what if deliberately CRASHING trains is part of the ritual? Using tragedy and loss of life to charge the points of the circle by essentially slamming two trains into each other. It would take advantage of the repeated circular motif.
Oh god, it spans generations.
I like it. There a 27 points where two or more lines cross, and we'll have train crashing at every one of them.
Bismark Central Station? That's gonna be a massacre.
Few ideas...
- E.F. Johnson was the original founder of the Train-Cult.
- One of the German investors brought a copy of "Unaussprechlichen Kulten" to the town, and it ended into the coal-black hands of the Train-Cult.
Also, I think we need to name this cult. The Train-Cult sounds little bit silly don't you think?
A train cult with an insane agenda... how about The Loco Motives.
Well they're probably going to have this really boring and official sounding name, right? Like Ferry Johnson Transamerican. Maybe in the modern day it's like "FJT" or something.
So at the time of the sacrifice, if all goes according to plan, the head of the corporation building these trains, along with numerous scientists and experts on the occult will be riding the train into Colby to be caught in the brief gateway and harvest their new interdimensional supernatural resources?
Yeah, I think they NEED that legit front (or perhaps SEVERAL legit front companies working together) and then an Inner Circle that knows The Big Secret Plan.
But why not using real name of railway company? I mean... they ARE railway company, right? Then why creating some front if you are using one in the first place to summon eldritch horrors via specific railway placement?
The railway company is the front for the cult.
No-one goes into a bank asking for a business loan to carve arcane sigils across the continent and summon an elder horror. Though you could probably get tax exempt status by arguing it's religious.
The question IS what is the cult BEHIND the railway company called?
I think for that you need to ask what they're doing the carving for. Since we're going more for the Gateway Sigil rather than the Elder Sign, it makes sense that they're summoning something Big. I think the reason it centers of the big empty nothing space in the middle of America is because the thing they're summoning needs a lot of physical space.
So they probably work for something like Shub-Niggurath, or maybe Nyarlathotep who's looking to bring in a form that's less Avatar and more real-deal.
Its a hegelian mediation mate. A Lovecraftian universe interacts with an Objectivist worldview, which is reflected back into the lovecraftian universe because it doesn't work within itself. You could also have some ambiguity if individuals can succeed in the lovecraftian universe, or if they're just being tricked and manipulated. It doesn't have to be blatant.
It would make for an interesting game.
For the name of the cult, it could reference their construction materials. The Order of Iron or something like that.
Alternatively, you could go for something that plays off of the word "Sleeper", which would have a fun dual meaning in this context.
>Since we're going more for the Gateway Sigil rather than the Elder Sign, it makes sense that they're summoning something Big.
Either that, or they are trying to summon many lesser creatures instead of a one big fish. Or maybe they are trying to create a stable dimensional portal that would last a really long time?
Maybe someone has made a deal with the Mi-Go and they are trying to transform Earth into a colony? Maybe all the train tracks are made from Tok'l-metal that they provide to the Leader of the cult.
But the Mi-go don't need a portal. They're already present on Earth and have enough infrastructure to do bulk mining operation.
What about a time-portal? It could be a Yithian escape route.
Groups tend to be assigned names, either by themselves or others. In a horror game, atmosphere is super-important so having an imposing or sinister name can create that. Your counterpoint to that would of course be that leaving it un-named could have the same or greater effect - and I'd agree. But a group this large and well-connected, having lasted so long will have AT SOME POINT developed a shorthand way to communicate among themselves about who and what they are. Some way for them to tell "this business is Cult Run, this one isn't."
It doesn't HAVE to be a super-scary name, of course. It might just be a little symbol on their marketing materials - a little yellow circle, for instance. Or there might be an email list for the "Sunday Golf Society" or something like that might help.
No, using sinister or imposing name just makes them ridiculous and cheesy as fuck. They don't need such name for anything, then why should they call themselves? Why not use your railway company, with it's name and internal structure as the way the cult works? Not only you already have all the names and ranking system, BUT you have also a very good cover story, because no-one will accidently slip anything about "High Priest of Some Shitty Deity".
I wonder how you can play Call of Cthulhu without realising such obvious things. You can have a perfectly concilled cult that would be extra hard to find out and then even try to destroy instead of some bunch of lunatics in colurful pajamas that can be taken down with emptying your Tommy gun. Now try to stop a company that not only is perfectly valid as a company, but also you have no real means to identify who is just an employee and who is a cultist.
I never said that it HAD to be a Doomy Order of Great Doom calibre name, just that the inner circle should have some way of identifying themselves to each other.
The thing is that an operation this size is bound to fail - too many people, too many leak-risks. Best if it's just people in key positions - chief engineers, financiers, government transport planning officials. Bob in Accounting doesn't need to know, so he wouldn't. Of an enterprise potentially employing hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, a few as a dozen might understand its true purpose.
THOSE PEOPLE need to communicate, co-ordinate and plan. Yes, the company itself is a great shell for the cult. Now, if the cult is overtly a cult - then there is by definition mystical and religious elements to it. You might not like it, but if it doesn't have that it's not a cult. They need to have shared beliefs, some sort of goal and some sort of internal structure within the Inner Circle. And they are Doing Grand Magics. Yes, this might borrow from business terminology - but that's just the wallpaper we're putting on a cult-framework.
To bring this back to Atlas Shrugged, what if the founders of the cult met in college like how Galt, Dacosta and the pirate guy whose name I forget all met in a philosophy module? That's an innocent sounding cover for the inner circle too - it's a "class reunion" when they go and meet in a cellar to chant about Cthulhu.
Turns out that the famous "invisible hand of the free marked" is real, and the objectivist cult is trying to summon it. Or at least something they think is it.
"Sunday Golf Society".
They didn't even choose it themselves: back when the conspiracy was only twelve guys and a book, they used to gather every sunday and hang out, read the thing, and brainstorm the first ideas. In times, some of them got a girlfriend, some got married and they settled that, as far as anyone other than them was concerned, they were gathering to play golf, because Bartholomew's father owned a golf course.
Eventually, one of their wives came up with the name "Sunday Golf Society" as a joke, and it stuck.
Today, more than a century later, no original member remains, the gatherings aren't on Sunday anymore, but the name remains, because it's just a good excuse.
>How come the bigheads of Ferry Johnson Transamerican, the Mayor of Bismark, and the Governor of Oklahoma know each other so well?
>I heard they used to be part of a golf club or something back in college.
Also the investigator's face the first time they care to open a letter marked "Sunday Golf Society", while such envelopes had been found on desks and shelves since the very beginning.
Or even better
>"How do the chief execution of Ferry Johnson TransAm, the Mayor of Bismarck and the Governor of Oklahoma know each other so well?"
>They don't.
>But their fathers...
>More like grandfathers.
>And uncle.
>And friend of the family.
I like the idea of a company existing and pursuing the agenda as a semi-autonomous super-organism. Perhaps that can be worked into there as one of the component companies that work a part of this conspiracy. Say there's a mining company in Alberqueque that exists only on paper. It has offices, it produces paper work and revenue, files taxes on time - the mine even produces metal. But at no point has any human touched a pick, their office buildings are empty..
This idea leads to interesting conclusions. Either investigators let the cult complete the train project, or they have to kill every important possible cult-member, even if they might actually be innocent. Or, knowing the players, they find a third way to solve the situation that we haven't think of.
Please tell me how killing employees of big railway company by small group of individuals will stop said company from finishing it's projects.
Or for that matter, the competitors, when the evil company will have to get back from some area, but the same project will be picked by other, completely oblivious and innocent firm.
This is exactly this kind of scenario where PCs will fail, unless they will pull some trully heroic shit a la Old Henderson.
>Please tell me how killing employees of big railway company by small group of individuals will stop said company from finishing it's projects.
Uh, I guess the players could also just bomb railways and sabotage the project in general? I don't know, I am not playing investigator currently.
> the same project will be picked by other, completely oblivious and innocent firm.
But the problem is, most of the railways do not make any sense if they are "just" railways. They end up in the middle of nowhere and have no major cities near them, because they are not designed for commercial but magical purposes. So the next company would not construct those lines, thus not creating a giant sigil.
But the project is already ordered and the money is already on the table. It's the bureaucratic mess I'm constantly referring to. It doesn't matter if that makes any sense. If you get a job to build acording to a project, you just do that, not ask questions if that makes sense. The best example - road outside my window. The company was paid to dig a ditch on the side with trees without cutting them, while on the other side there was already dig ditch and no trees. So they filled it with earth, because that's what the project asked them to do. Stupid? Yes. Wasteful? Yes. But that's what the project and contract said. People don't ask questions - they want their part of the job done and getting paid for that.
I actually like this idea about bureaucratic horror, tough it moves closer to Kafka than Rand.
Maybe have several cults in charge of different collections of companies. Each cult is trying to get its own mark carved upon the landscape for their own reasons. Shit just went global.
We are talking about an evil cult-corporation building a gigantic summoning circle out of railways to summon a gigantic octopus-monster from the Outer Darkness, and players possibly, maybe, perhaps 'winning the game' (or even stopping the cult while dying/going insane) is the most unrealistic part of this all?
Within the very concept of this scenario the most unlikely part is PCs stopping the whole thing. It's simply waaay above their reach. After all you have 3-6 people against interstate construction company that can pull a lot of strings to get rid of anyone, one way and another, while STILL acting within boundaries of law. So the concept of few average Joes stoping conspiracy this big in setting that is based on "average Joe, his civilisation and his dog are meaningless" rule is simply ridiculous. They are bound to fail.
Even if they manage to pull some Elliot Ness court bullshit and get "evil cultists" sentenced for tax evasion, that would take a very specific investigators, very specific situation and extremely high surivality rate to reach the court alive and sane.
>can't stop it, tax evasion is the only way
Have you never heard of a bomb?
And you gonna bomb what? Trans-state railway? With hundreds of bombs? And few different offices of said company? And kill all their workers?
Do I need to remember that your PC is average Joe or even without it this "bomb them" plan is ridiculous?
A bomb is good when you have to dispose of your "standard" cult, sitting in single house, with less than 20 people involved. And we are talking about massive construction company, employing thousands of workers. It's like you were proposing using a dude with single hammer to get down the whole country.
I can save everyones time and just set my game to the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was created by the Old Ones when the Train-Gate opened a way to them.
Of course they're incompatible, objectivism holds individual human achievement as its highest value, and Lovecraft says that nothing anyone does matters because we're all just specks on the universe's taint and if Azathoth so much as sneezes we'll have never existed before you can say f'taghn.
Well, I don't usually do "end-of-the-world" scenarios. I have, thus far, done only low-level games like "the Serpent Men are trying to kidnap a woman to continue their race" and "by accident the Soviets have bore a hole to the sleeping place of a lesser Old One". None of my games had the stakes this high. I mean, we are summoning something really big here.
Sacred geometry. They need to construct things EXACT to get that sigil right and it's super-easy to put a wrench in something that exact.
As for the size - that's actually a point AGAINST the conspiracy. The bigger the conspiracy, the more likely it is to leak, schism etc. The huge multi-state initiative is more likely to get whistleblowers, defectors etc than a local-scale scheme with similar methods.
>As for the size - that's actually a point AGAINST the conspiracy. The bigger the conspiracy, the more likely it is to leak, schism etc. The huge multi-state initiative is more likely to get whistleblowers, defectors etc than a local-scale scheme with similar methods.
Of course our conspiracy is so out of this world (quiet literally) that even if the knowledge of it leaks the authorities will probably find it difficult to accept the premise of the whole thing.
"They are constructing a gigantic magical symbol that will cause the end of the world!"
"Uh, I am not sure if there is any law against that. I mean, mmmh, it is their property after all."
But the stockholders would probably complain if they are not cultists themselves.
There are still the planned train crashes etc. If nothing else, I'm still thinking this makes more sense as multiple companies in cahoots and there's probably some law against such anti-competition things.
What the cultists are trying to summon seems obvious: the Dreamlands. They realized their ideology didn't work in reality, so they decided to turn at least some of the world into a place where they could decide what reality was.
Also, have it so that the giant sigil is part of the larger general rail network, with the sigil differentiated from the rest of the rail net by an infusion of a special alloy into the specific tracks that form it.
"Call of Cthulhu: The Dream Train"?
Well, the Dreamlands is relatively 'safe' place comparing it to, for example, Yuggoth. That also would explain why the cultists aren't raving madmen, they are not (necessarily) under the control of the Old Ones.
The problem the cultists will have is that any one individual does not in fact have all that much influence on a given area of the Dreamlands, and that they're going to create a portal other things can use to enter reality.
Or, alternatively, the cultists can exert as much control over the Dreamlands as they think, in which case they need to be stopped before they turn reality into a literally nightmarish objectivist dystopia.
