HISTORICAL FIGURES IN KULT

A little while back someone mention Rasputin and historical figures and their relationship to the Kult cosmology. I've used a few historical figures in the past who reemerge with new names and new identities...it seems like every lictor & awakened human my players run into have some historical identity...

One of these was a lictor, who was based on Li Ssu, a Chinese legalist philosopher who was one of the assistants to the first Emperor of China. This Emperor ruled with an iron hand, burning books, burying scholars, imposing order on all of China (sounds a bit like an Archon of Kether!). The moral basis for this power came from the Legalist philosophy that the Emperor had absolute power and Li Ssu was one of the creators of this philosophy...Li Ssu was a nefarious sort...he and a eunuch plotted to keep the Emperor's death a secret, forged the Emperor's will so that his named heir would have to commit suicide, and then ruled secretly from behind the throne until the Legalist and the Eunuch had a falling out and civil war broke out...

Well, Li Ssu (the lictor in my game) lost a book known as the "Book of a Thousand Names" known in occult circles as the "Book of a Thousand Fiends" (of course, I didn't inform the players of the latter title until later... bwahahahahaha!) which essentially was a list of all the names of Azghouls. Yeah, I know that's a headache if the characters were able to keep the book, but it was written in ancient Chinese script (two thousand years ago!) so I wasn't too worried. I do feel that giving all these bad guys a history makes their opponents a lot more interesting and a sense that the PCs are mere nobody's compared to their foes...

Someone had mentioned historical figures in Kult as antagonists and the like...and I had mentioned Li Ssu, a Legalist Philosopher ('ard as nails) and his Book of a Thousand Names...This book had recently been owned by a Japanese gentlemen. The characters were shocked to find out that this gentlemen was one General Katsuhide, a Japanese General who (fictionally) played a role in the "Rape of Nanjing" during the Second World War, and that was how he had captured Li SSu's Book of a Thousand Fiends, so that the players, when they recovered the book, had a lictor (Li Ssu), an evil awakened human (General Katsuhide) with his katana (ouch), azghouls, and human cultists all pursuing them...to make a long story short...they lost the book and their detective agency building burned down...but the point is that by adding historical events such as the Rape of Nanjing it creates a depth to the game, and really makes the characters feel as if their operating out of their depth.

I totally agree; great lictor story about Li Siu! It's a bit difficult to make lictors at the same time bloated, hissing monsters and all the Great Historical Figures of the past, but it's fun in the way that movies like THEY LIVE and SOCIETY are fun, and I think it gives some satirical bite to the game if it doesn't get too silly. In THE GAIA SOURCEBOOK, a KULT supplement written by myself and being serialized in Darrell Hardy's blood-drenched and tempting RPG mag THE AWAKENING (plug! plug!.. ;) ), I have a description of an Environmentalist lictor who for most of the 19^th century was John Muir, the famous Environmentalist. Some day I'd love to do a campaign involving the 18th century in some way and having the Marquis de Sade be either a razide or an Incarnate of Gamaliel, as he appears to be in LEGIONS OF DARKNESS.