The Whitechapel Golem - Notes

This story is designed to fill a gap between a Keeper’s regular, Mythos-based adventures. It helps to raise the profile of the team of Investigators (by having them solve an Occult, not necessarily Lovecraftian, mystery), it provides them with a genuine (albeit low-powered) Mythos tome with useful spells, and helps boost some flagging SAN points without savaging the players’ worldview too much. It hardly needs to be said, although I’m mentioning it anyway, that the Keeper who chooses to run this game shouldn’t tell their players that it’s called “The Whitechapel Golem” – once the ‘G-word’ is out there in the open, the story loses much of its punch!

Rewards:

Defeating the Golem: +1D6 SAN points;

For each member of the Golem’s ‘hit-list’ still alive at the end of the adventure: 2 points per intended victim;

If David Cohen survives: +1D6 SAN points (plus the 2 points above);

If the players facilitate the engagement of David and Ruth: +1D4 SAN points;

If the players actively facilitate the chastisement of the Rabbi by story’s end: +1D4 SAN points;

If Benjamin Maylott survives: +1D4 SAN points.

If the Golem remains unvanquished: -6 SAN points;

If David Cohen dies: -1D6 SAN points;

If Benjamin Maylott dies: -1D4 SAN points.

*****

Despite some gruesome deaths along the way, I’ve kept the SAN loss on these events fairly low and left things to the Keeper’s discretion. Loss of Sanity upon discovering a corpse is largely modified by the finders’ familiarity with the victim. Should the party have met Simeon Goldschmidt and have been brought in to the adventure by this NPC, discovering his dead body might justify a 1/1D6 SAN point loss later on, as in the case of seeing Tom Bamford being killed. Blasting sanity is really dependent upon what sort of horror story the Keeper is going for.

There are lots of unqualifiable possibilities with this tale, that depend upon the players’ engagement with the narrative and their roleplaying nous. The thwarted lovers, Ruth and David, can be brought together; Rabbi Maylott can be made to see the error of his ways: I have added Rewards for achieving these goals above, but some teams may not be so interested in such story-based objectives, so I leave it to the Keeper’s discretion.

Other rewards accruing to the players are as follows:

Lord Batwick will be very pleased if the mill dispute turns out favourably and if his chief foreman’s murder is avenged. The influence of having a Peer of the Realm on side cannot be understated.

Benjamin Maylott, if he survives, will be a handy resource for the party if any other Hebrew weirdness comes their way, or if there are ramifications from having the Sepher ha-Sha'are ha-Daath in their possession...

*****

Relocating the Story.

This is a Gaslight Era Call of Cthulhu tale and works best for that period. All that the Keeper need do is to integrate their players and it should run smoothly.

If the Keeper’s story arc places the Investigator in the US, then the story can be re-located to, say, New York, with little difficulty. Places and handouts will have to be altered to fit the milieu, but it is do-able. “Lord” Batwick would have to become just Henry Batwick, wealthy mill owner and financier, but his role would remain fundamentally the same.

Transplanting the story to the 1920s Classic Era Call of Cthulhu setting would involve some extra work, but could be achieved. The Jewish communities of the East End of London were on the wane in the ‘20s but they still existed. References to Jack the Ripper and the levels of crime in the district contain less force and are less of a threat, and so should be toned down somewhat. Urban poverty, disease and lawlessness had been largely addressed by this stage so the Keeper should bear this in mind before creating any anachronistic faux pas.

Taking the narrative across the Pond at this time is easier than leaving it in England. If set in New York, the Prohibition backdrop and the general tenor of gangland lawlessness in Manhattan lends a better atmosphere to the story. Perhaps some of the tailors are running hooch in their fabric supplies, or turning over their warehouses and workshops to operate as speakeasies after hours: the possibility of having the golem slither into a nightclub through the eye-slit in the front door is too cool an image to ignore!

Updating the story to a Cthulhu Now setting is probably too problematic, and the Keeper is advised to come up with some other narrative to bind the elements together. By modern times, the population of London’s East End is mostly Bengali and Islamic, all of the synagogues having become mosques, or having been re-purposed as townhouses or nightclubs. An enterprising Keeper could still fabricate something with a little research.

A Golem Sourcebook

The Sefer Yetsirah:

No story about a golem is complete without a mention of this book. The title translates to “The Book of Formation”, or (incorrectly) “The Book of Creation”, and academic debate is rife as to whether the book’s purpose is an occult, kabbalistic one, or simply an exercise in mathematics.

Traditionally, the book is ascribed to the patriarch Abraham, although some sources say that Adam is the original author and that he passed it on to Noah who then handed it over to Abraham. Many scholars, however, claim that the work was written in the early Medieval period or perhaps earlier, based on the tonal values of vowels used in early transcriptions, possibly around the 2^nd Century CE.

Legends associated with the book claim that it was used to artificially create a calf to be eaten upon the Sabbath day; Abraham is said to have created such a beast to feed the three angels who visited him and foretold that his wife Sarah would soon give birth.

Versions of the book are available and mention of the golem can be found within its pages.

Jewish Folklore:

Traditional golem stories read more like fairytales and they are intended that way, as they discuss the hubris of mankind and the danger of over-reaching oneself. It's only fairly recently that tales about golems have taken on a sinister cast. Still, the early legends are essential for understanding the 'golem rationale', so into Fairyland we go!   

There are quite a few books out there concerned with Jewish legends and folk traditions. Golem stories traditionally involve the famous Rabbi Loewe of Prague, who created a golem to free his community from oppression at the hands of a cruel (sometimes just misinformed) ruler. Most of the later golem lore starts here. Below are two handy titles for those interested.

Schwartz, Howard (Ed.), Miriam’s Tambourine: Jewish Folktales from Around the World, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Patai, Raphael (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, Routledge, 2012.

Golem Novels:

The proliferation of fantasy writing has seen the golem concept take off in various directions including some humorous examples from the pen of the late, great, Terry Pratchett. Many of these takes tend to err on the funny side rather than the horrific and so I offer the following as better fare for Call of Cthulhu players, especially the Meyrink which oozes atmosphere.

Meyrink, Gustav, The Golem, Kurt Wolff, Leipzig, Germany, 1915.

Weisel, Elie, The Golem, Summit, New York, NY, USA, 1983.

Bashevis Singer, Isaac, The Golem, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, NY, USA, 1982.

Rogasky, Barbara, The Golem: A Version, Holiday House, New York, NY, USA, 1996.

Visual Aids:

There aren’t a lot of golem-based cinematic offerings this side of “Charmed” or “Supernatural”. The ones I can best recommend are the following: the Wegener movie has lots of moody visuals, but also a fairly earthy and broad sense of humour which you may wish to ignore; on the other hand, the X-Files episode has Kim Manners (RIP) at the helm, so you know you’re in good hands!

Wegener, Paul, & Carl Boese, “Der Golem (wie er in die Welt kam)”, Projektions-AG Union, 1920 (there was also an earlier version in 1915, but it's harder to find).

Manners, Kim, The X-Files, Season 4: “Kaddish”, Ten Thirteen Productions, Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.

Other "Golems":

Of course there are many parallels between the golem legend and other stories where foolish mortals use god-like powers to produce results which they probably should have left well enough alone. A modern-ish take on the golem is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (along with its many cinematic interpretations) and of course there's HPL's infamous "Herbert West: Reanimator" for a more directly Lovecraftian inspiration!

Oh! And don't forget that freaky broom from Fantasia!

*****

If you liked this tale and enjoyed running it for your group, let me know how it went. I'm always open to hearing about how my scenarios could be improved upon, so let me know if you have any ideas!

Enjoy!