Chaosium Digest Volume 15, Number 1 Date: Sunday, June 16, 1996 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: The House on Old Main Rd. (Jocelyn Y. Tourigny) CALL OF CTHULHU Summoning: Oriel (Geoffrey C. Grabowski) NEPHILIM FAQ: Nomads of the Time Streams (Allan T. Grohe Jr.) ELRIC! Editor's Note: This time around, articles for a triad of Chaosium games. The House on Old Main Rd. is a vignette which can be used to generate a fun Call of Cthulhu scenerio. The Summoning of Oriel is a new Nephilim spell which answers the question "why would people lace their computer wiring with Orichalka?" It first appeared on the Nephilim Mailing List. The Nomads of the Time Streams FAQ contains the newest information on the Michael Moorcock Appreciation Society. It recently appeared on the Eternal Champion Mailing List. Shannon NEW RELEASES: Lots of Lovecraftian releases should be arriving at stores in the next week. * Call of Cthulhu - _The Golden Dawn_ (Pagan Publishing, 192 pg., $19.95) is actually several weeks old. It's the long-promised sourcebook of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn for Cthulhu by Gaslight. It's contains: tons of background on the history and the members of the Golden Dawn; a set of four Golden Dawn Adventures; and a number of appendices, which include player's information, notes on creating victorian investigators and more. Players of Nephilim will probably always want to take a look at this resource. _The London Guidebook_ (Chaosium, 96 pg., $14.95) recently shipped from Chaosium, and should be available late this week. It's a sourcebook on 1920s London, including overviews of all the different districts and notes on famous people, recreation, occult London and much more. * Mythos - _Legends of the Necronomicon_ (Chaosium), the third booster for Mythos, is scheduled to go on sale on Monday, June 17. This third booster includes the new Middle-East region and the city of Boston in Lovecraft Country. New monsters, new tomes, new spells and new adventures round out the set. Each complete box of boosters also contains a package of all 9 double-sided investigator cards. _Mythos Investigator Cards_ (Chaosium, $5.00) have also shipped. If you don't want to buy a complete box of _Necronomicon_, or just want more investigators, this seperately bundled packet also contains all 9 double-sided investigators. -------------------- From: Subject: The House on Old Main Rd. System: Call of Cthulhu A NEWSPAPER REPORT: THE HOUSE ON OLD MAIN ROAD "After much debate in the local newspapers and council meetings, despite the avid protests by the local Historical Society, the house at 138 Old Main Rd. is finally going to be destroyed. Its hollow husk has been perched on the deserted property since times immemorial, its wicked iron fence a menace to the curious neighbourhood children. "One of the very first houses built in this city more than 150 years ago, very few are sad to see it go, not so much because of a bad reputation (which in fact it doesn't really have), but because of its anachronistic presence in the new neighbourhood and its seemingly irresistible attraction to vagrants and children." The event is well publicized in the local papers, at least on the Society Page. The present owner (in whom's family the deed to the house has been passed on for nearly four generations) will not even be coming to town to witness the destruction, seeing as he lives overseas. THE MAD MAN AT THE HOUSE On the day the house is destined to be torn down, as the machines come on to the property, a man peers through the door and starts threatening the workers and the photo-journalist covering the story. He seems terrified at the thought that the building will have to come down, and keeps screaming that he can't leave, that he'll die if he does. He needs to stay there, he says, to preserve his life. He starts throwing things from the inside at the workers. Hoping to scare him off, they advance towards the house with their machines, and as they hit the house's cornerstone the man falls to the ground screaming hysterically. All this is covered in the evening papers, along with pictures of a strange glyph noticed by the journalist on the cracked cornerstone. The man is brought to the hospital, weak, unconscious, and covered with strange marks, thought self-inflicted. The destruction of the house will wait a few days to give time to process this new development. INVESTIGATOR RESEARCH A little research will uncover that one of the first owners was well known in the young community, one Jonathan Chetwood. Through the years, and in front of the town, he went from a young eccentric recluse, the cause of many a whispered warning, to an old paranoid recluse, recipient of mocking glances and wary sniffs. He was found in front of the house in his night clothes one evening, staring blindly at the house and shouting garbled obscenities. Authorities brought him to the hospital, for he seemed ill, and in fact he did deteriorate rapidly despite all their help. He died in their care a few days later. After him, the house passed into the hands of an out of town relative. For the past 30 years, it has housed an endless parade of homeless individuals. Strangely enough, almost nothing has been displaced or stolen. The man who was inside the home is David Leroux, a 28 year-old factory worker who just recently got laid-off. His wife declared him missing a few days ago, when he went drinking one night and never came back. He lives a few streets away. POSSIBILITIES There are several possibilities here: 1) David has become agoraphobic recently, and is deathly afraid of being outside the house. Unbeknownst to his wife, he was introduced to a long-standing local cult by a drinking buddy. After he became aware of some of the activities they participate in late at night, he decided it wasn't for him and tried to leave. They warned him that for him to be excluded he would have to die; he took his chances and they summoned a star-vampire to kill him. Walking home after a drink one night, he was attacked and was nearly killed before he reached the house in a panic. The strange glyph kept the creature at bay, but in the hospital, he knows he isn't safe. David can name the cult, and where they meet, although the doctor overlooking him is a member. He secretly monitors all his conversations. Ironically enough, Johnathan Chetwood was one of the founding fathers of this cult. It is mostly harmless, believing itself invested with Satanic powers, when only one minor member has any real mythos knowledge or spells. 2) David will be released a few hours later, and will find his way back to the house. Others will start to join him, from different social backgrounds, all claiming that they have to stay in the house. They do not object to other people coming, as long as they are not asked to leave. Inside the house, they sit around the basement, using broken bottles to mark their skin, and letting the blood fall to the floor. Some sort of large creature lives buried under the floor, kept imprisoned by the glyph on the cornerstone. It contacts people by implanting thoughts, asking them to come and wait for its arrival, when it will need lots of fresh people. It was too weak all those years to contact any people except the very sensitive, but now that the glyph has been damaged, its work is much easier. Johnathan Chetwood is not responsible, although he did know about it. He fought most of his life with the creature's thought-sending, but finally lost, and became a broken and mindless man. There are hidden books inside (that David holds as "holy tomes") that may help. 3) The soul of Jonathan Chetwood has lived on through the years, trapped in the cornerstone of his house. For some now forgotten reason, perhaps through his own occult research, his soul got tied to the odd glyph on the stone, which made it impossible for him to go too far from his house for any extended period. Tired and angry at the end, he tried to stay away as long as he could, but eventually died, and his soul returned to the stone. Throughout the long years, he has tried taking over many bodies, and succeeded many times, continuing his search for an escape, but they all eventually got away from him. At the very least, he has been able to preserve his house and its possessions. Now Chetwood has taken hold of David, and is still in him at the hospital. This is the farthest he has been in over 150 years, and he is anxious to get back to the house, to pursue his research. With the glyph broken, the body he inhabits is deteriorating and his soul will finally die if he cannot find an answer to his 150 year old dilemma soon. ^..^ Cat -------------------- From: The Raindog Subject: Summoning: Oriel, Lord of the Golden Tower System: Nephilim PENTACLES, THE REALM OF HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE ---------------------------------------- Oriel, Lord of the Golden Tower, Serpent Armed with the Bitter Sting of Dreams Circle: Pentacles Ka-Element: Air Threshold: 40% Contract: 28 Rupture: Capture Duration: One Intrusion Range: Unlimited Autonomy: Total Oriel appears as an androgynous being in long green robes with intricate golden patterns worked into them. His face is beautiful, and his hair is a mixture of silver and gold. His voice is melodic, but without emotion. Oriel rarely converses with his summoner, instad simply carrying out his assigned task and departing. He carries a golden rod in his right hand, and bears a living asp in his left. His head is crowned with a circlet of gold. Oriel is a lesser prince of the the elemental fields of Air, and a servant of Sandolphan. He will not Capture anyone who has previously made a pact with Sandolphan. Oriel will perform only one service, the penetration of security around electronic networks. So long as Oriel is present and the computer used by the caster can trace a network connection, no matter how tenuous, to the target computer, the summoner will have full administrative access to the machine. This access cannot be logged or detected by normal means, though traces of their presence like deleted and altered files may be. Machines which have no outside connection (power lines do not count), are turned off or which are shielded by Orichalka are immune to Oriel's influence. Certain Secret Societies and Arcana are rumored to have the means to detect and trace Oriel's influence as well as block it. Oriel's summoning has long been known, but his purpose and powers remained a mystery until recently. |Geoffrey C. Grabowski|gcgst1+@pitt.edu|Undergrad, U.Pittsburgh|Swing Heil!| -------------------- From: Allan T Grohe Jr Subject: FAQ: Nomads of the Time Streams System: Elric! The FAQ below also appears on my web page (url below), and gets posted to alt.books.moorcock, rec.arts.sf.announce, and rec.arts.sf.written about monthly to every six weeks. If your news server doesn't carry alt.books.moorcock, ask the sys admins to add it. [Info on the Nomads of the Time Stream has appeared previously in V5.6 and V5.10, but this FAQ is considerably updated and contains new info.] _THE DEAD GODS BOOK_ THE NOMADS OF THE TIME STREAMS FAQ Version 1.1, 22 May 1995 This is the FAQ for the Michael Moorcock fan society, and contains answers to the following questions: 1. What is/Who are The Nomads of the Time Streams? 2. Why would I want to join? 3. How do I join? 1. What is/Who are The Nomads of the Time Streams? The Nomads of the Time Streams (Nomads for short) are a group of over 250 (at last count, in May of 1992) fans devoted to the writings and music of Michael Moorcock, World Fantasy Award winning author. Founded in 1988, the Nomads are currently based in England. 2. Why would I want to join? Membership among the Nomads offers several rewards: a. _The Time Centre Times_ (TCT for short): a 32-40 page quarterly newsletter that features regular columns from the editors, a letter from Moorcock (detailing the current exploits, travels of him and his wife, fun at conventions/book signings, etc.), current/forthcoming news about MM derived/related groups (info on MM appearances/signings, book releases, role playing game releases, info on Hawkwind, etc.), artwork (reproductions and original) drawn from MM works, original MM stories (both rare reprints and material that sees first publication in the TCT), members' classifieds (free), and various articles about MM. b. Special Offers only available to Nomads: Include discounts on the purchase of the White Wolf/Millenniun/Phoenix House editions of MM books (for example, the WW Eternal Champion books cost $19.99 for h/c but Nomads can get them for $15, surface postage paid; Millennium EC editions retail at 14.99 BPS h/c and 10.99 BPS p/b--Nomads pay 11.25 BPS h/c and 8.25 BPS p/b). Note that if you buy four h/c books at discount, your membership pays for itself.... In addition to the discounts on books, other offers exist: - Nomads are the exclusive distributors of recordings of Michael Moorcock's "Elric: Live at the BBC" readings from April 1994 (1 cassette available for $6/3 BPS surface postage paid) - Griffin Music has reissued MM's _The New Worlds Fair_ 1975 album on cd with two bonus tracks (the previously unreleased musical demo of "Candy Floss Cowboy" and "The Brothel in Rosenstrasse"), available to Nomads for $22.50/20 BPS (retails at $29.95) - signed first editions, discounts on limited editions, very limited special offers, etc. are available from time to time as well - Nomads also offers photocopies of long out of print MM material to members at cost (including such items as Burroughsiana and other magazines MM edited/wrote for in the late 1950s and early 60s). In addition to these various monetary discounts, when MM makes convention appearances, he regularly holds meetings and signings open only to Nomads, during which he also answers questions, talks about his current writing projects, and otherwise socializes with the members in attendance. 3. How do I join? Two different levels of membership exist in the Nomads of the Time Streams, yearly and eternal. Yearly memberships last for four issues of the TCT (if delays occur in production your membership may last for longer than a year) and cost $20 in the USA, 10 BPS in the UK, and 15 BPS for the rest of the world (non-USA, non-UK). Eternal memberships last the member's lifetime. We have, at last count, 21 Eternal members (including Michael and Linda Moorcock, Ken St. Andre (author of Chaosium's _Stormbringer_), Kirk Hammmett (guitarist for Metallica), and Edgar Winter (leader of the Edgar Winter band), among others. Eternal memberships cost $150 in the USA, 100 BPS in the UK, and 150 BPS for the rest of the world (non-USA, non-UK). All checks should be made payable to "Nomads" and should be sent to the following addresses: North American memberships: Nomads of The Time Streams P. O. Box 5201 Pinehurst, NC 28374 USA UK and rest of world memberships: D. J. Rowe 18, Laurel Bank Truss Hill Road, South Ascot Ascot, Berkshire SL5 9AL England For more information, other questions, correspondence, etc. write to: John and Maureen Davey 45, St. Mary's Mansions St. Mary's Terrace, London W2 1SH England 24 hour fax machine: +44-171-724 1360. or email to Allan T. Grohe, Jr. (iscladoc@falcon.cc.ukans.edu) Allan. -------------------- The Chaosium Digest is an unofficial discussion forum for Chaosium's Games. To submit an article, subscribe, or unsubscribe, mail to: appel@erzo.org. 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