What’s
Next?
From
here on in the story really runs on rails: eventually, the golem is going to
either break free from the tenuous hold that Benjamin has over it, or it will
run out of victims and fade into the background, purposeless and undirected –
until it breaks free from Benjamin’s tenuous control!
The
Keeper should keep in mind that the Jews of Whitechapel, especially the older
citizens, cannot detect the creature (unless, of course, it attacks them directly),
but that the Gentiles are not so blinded.
Lord
Batwick is Not
Amused...
With
the death of his master foreman, Lord Henry weighs in and demands that
something be done. He contacts the police and demands that Rabbi Maylott be
arrested on suspicion of murder. This is not such a stretch: the Rabbi has been
shouting to the world about his woes and has attacked Lord Batwick’s workers,
his clients, and himself personally, warning of vengeance and threats against
person and property. The Peer arrives in person to see that the troublesome
cleric is put away and nods in grim satisfaction as the police officers apply
the manacles. A crowd of onlookers – some of them very vocal in their
opposition to this treatment of the holy man – gathers to watch: amongst them is
the golem, and Lord Batwick is soon the latest addition to his ‘hit list”.
The
gaoling of Rabbi Maylott is a crucial part of the narrative. While he
languishes in his cell, the golem is sure to move on to the next victim on its
list (Simeon Goldschmidt) thus proving that the Rabbi is not the mysterious
murderer and that there is no legitimate reason why he should be imprisoned.
Rest assured that he will berate everyone who comes to release him for their
ineptitude and lack of respect!
Inevitably...
...The
golem is going to break free of Benjamin’s control. Even though the chance of
this happening increases dramatically with each death, the base chance
increases by 5% each week the golem hangs around, despite its activities. Once
this happens, Benjamin will automatically be aware of the severed connexion
between them, and understand that the creature he created is coming after him
with a vengeance. The first thing that Benjamin will do is rush off to find the
Investigators (assuming that they have been fairly prominent in trying to solve
the mystery) or David Cohen, who will then drag the errant scholar to the
Investigators.
Benjamin
has with him an old book. He explains that he found it in a barrow in Petticoat
Lane and bought it for a shilling. He thought that it was just an old
cabbalistic work, probably Portuguese or Spanish in origin; it turned out to be
something quite different.
The
book is the Sepher ha-Sha’are ha-Daath,
written in 1664 by the discredited Nathan of Gaza, and which is the nearest
thing to a Hebrew version of the Necronomicon.
Benjamin reveals that he found a spell within the work which would create a
golem and that he used it to show his father that he could be of some use to
him in his crusade, rather than the cringing, sickly child which his parent
always accused him of being. What he wasn’t prepared for however, was the toll
that the spell would take on him and the cost of trying to control the creature
which he unleashed.
With
this information, the party can formulate a means of shutting the golem down
and returning the streets of Whitechapel to normal once more. The Sepher ha-Sha’are ha-Daath has a formula
for reversing the original incantation; however, it is time-consuming. In the
meantime the monster has to be prevented from its killing spree: this
effectively breaks the party of investigators into two groups – the hunters and
the magic workers.
Uncreating
A Golem
The
original spell called for the caster to create a cloth doll of shatnez material and, on the Sabbath,
utter an incantation while immersing the doll in pig’s blood. The caster must
ritually prepare for this blasphemous rite by fasting for a full day, eating
nothing from before dawn until after sunset, all the while concentrating on the
creation of the creature. At the end of the Sabbath ritual, the caster loses 5
points of POW and the spell is done.
In
order to undo the spell, it effectively must be performed in reverse. On the
Sabbath, after fasting, the doll must be bathed in clean water to remove the
blood and then it must be unmade, and the linen separated from the wool.
Benjamin still has the poppet – made from two vaguely human-shaped pieces of
woollen felt crudely sewn together with linen thread and stuffed with cotton
wadding – and he willingly surrenders this to the Investigators, along with the
cursed book. Undoing the spell costs 15 Magic Points, pooled from amongst all
the spell’s practitioners. In order to discover this information, the
Investigators must first read the Sepher
ha-Sha’are ha-Daath, and suffer
the commensurate SAN losses which this entails.
Sepher
ha-Sha’are ha-Daath; 1664 AD - Nathan of Gaza
This
work, whose title translates as the “Book
of the Gates of Knowledge”, contains a commentary on two chapters of what
the author – the cabbalist, Nathan of Gaza – refers to as the Book of the Alhazred. He discusses the
notion that Abdul Alhazred travelled on a quest to the ‘land of the Qlipoth’,
the shards of a former reality, in order to redeem them, and that this was his
greatest accomplishment. It is said that this commentary is the closest thing
to a Hebrew version of the Necronomicon.
Nathan
of Gaza later supported Shabbetai Tsevi in his attempt to be identified as the
Messiah; the subsequent conversion of Tsevi to Islam in 1666, dramatically
ended his claim and brought Nathan of Gaza into general disrepute.
Examining
this book isn’t easy. As the reader begins to partake of the passages, they
start to hear unintelligible whispers, distant at first but growing more
incessant, with utterances that sound like the reader’s name. Along with this
audial hallucination, the reader starts to see movement out of the corner of
their eye. Sleeping becomes difficult and awakening with a start becomes
commonplace. Eventually, the combined effects of these two phenomena will raise
the reader’s anxiety to fever pitch, resulting in the SAN loss for reading the
work. The effects die away after about a week, as long as the reader puts some
distance between themselves and the book.
Hebrew; Nathan of Gaza; 1664 AD; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +8 percentiles; 13
weeks to study and comprehend
Spells:
“To Build a Man of Truth” (Create
Golem); “To Banish a Demon” (Cast Out Devil); “A Mystic Gesture” (Voorish Sign); “A Circle of Protection”
(Warding)
Obviously the party needs to be able to
read Hebrew in order to access the book’s capabilities. This is easily
circumvented by having Benjamin handy to translate the text, as is the lengthy
study time required, since he’s already done the hard yards.
*****
Fighting
a Golem
There
is another way to defeat a golem: the word upon its forehead which animates it
and gives it life, is composed of three letters; if the first of these letters
is removed or defaced, the golem is instantly destroyed. Most golems have the
word written upon them and wiping out
the offending letter is tricky, but not impossible. In this case, Benjamin went
the extra mile and embroidered the
letters on the golem – not so easy to remove (and the KwikUnpik©
wasn’t invented at this time – I checked!).
So
the party is in place to mount a two-pronged attack – while the spell-slingers
make with the magic mojo, the brawn of the party can get out on the streets to
try and take the beastie down by main force. This is not as easy as it sounds.
Unless
the letters are removed or the spell completed, the golem will re-appear
fully-healed and animate at the next sunset, no matter how much damage is
inflicted upon it. And damaging it isn’t that easy:
Impaling weapons don’t work
against it. This extra
damage will never happen against something made of cloth;
Falls don’t affect it. Pushing it off a ledge from a great
height or dropping it in a pit are pretty much useless;
It has Armour. Being made of insensate matter means
that most damage is dulled right down;
Acid and other chemicals
are useless. Corrosive
substances thrown at the golem inflict 1 point a round for 1D4 rounds;
It doesn’t breathe. Thus, gas weapons and noxious vapours
won’t work against it and it can’t be drowned;
Wool doesn’t burn that
easily. The golem can be
lit on fire, but wool is a natural fire-retardant, so fires do half the
standard damage. Even if it is burnt to ashes, it will still reappear the next
sunset, fully formed, if that letter isn’t removed or the spell completed;
Water, in sufficient
quantities, will slow it down.
Splashing water on it won’t do; it needs a good, solid soaking until it is
drenched. At that point its movement rate is reduced to half and it will no
longer be able to Climb.
Keep
in mind that the golem is almost completely silent. When it moves it makes only
the sound that cloth makes brushing against things: it doesn’t make footfalls,
and it can’t speak. It likes to attack from ambush, using the roofs and its Strangle attack (which can stretch up to
twenty feet away). And always remember that it can completely flatten itself to
slither up chimneys, under doors, through narrow windows and past barred
grilles. This will be especially frustrating for the party if they think that
they can trap it somewhere. Also keep in mind that in a locale like Petticoat
Lane, or any of the other secondhand clothes markets that populate the East
End, it can slump down to look just like the contents of a rummage sale. With
some careful thinking, the Keeper can provide the Investigators with perhaps
the most fiendish quarry they have ever encountered!
An
Extra Wrinkle...
The
foregoing material is probably enough to keep a relatively active group of
Investigators busy for a few nights of gaming. However, if the Keeper wants a
denser and more nuanced narrative, here is a little sub-plot which might
intrigue their players.
The
golem is a product of the community to which it ‘belongs’. Its attitude
depends on the state of that community: if the people are fractious and
divided, the golem becomes ropable; if the people are unified in their aims,
then the golem becomes more helpful and dependable. This ‘gestalt-mind’ effect is a way to flag what’s going on to
Investigators with an eye for detail.
Upon
discovering Abraham van der Vat’s death, some may wonder what happened to the
contents of his strongbox (which he was counting just before he was attacked).
There are many prosaic reasons for the gold’s absence: his widow cleared it
away, or the police trousered it during their investigation. But what if the
golem took it? The monster’s actions are affected by the community’s needs and
desires, so perhaps, in killing Abraham, the golem became fixated upon the gold
and decided to keep it. This leads to interesting places:
When
the body of Shlomo Carjaval is discovered, it will be seen to have gold
sovereigns scattered around it, and these will be identified as those missing
from Abraham’s office (his habit of biting gold coins gives this away). A Spot Hidden roll will determine that
Shlomo is wearing a broken gold chain around his neck and questioning will
reveal that he used to wear a gold locket containing a picture of his wife: it
can’t be found at the crime scene.
When
Tom Bamford is hanged, nothing from his personal effects goes astray, and
nothing of Shlomo’s is discovered upon his corpse. After Simeon Goldschmidt is
killed, his gold watch goes missing, and Shlomo’s locket, with its
daguerreotype of his wife and a lock of her hair, is found in his mouth.
Myron
de Witt’s corpse is discovered without its trademark gold-tasseled fez, but
Simeon’s watch is lying dropped nearby. When (if!) David Cohen is killed, the
fez covers his face. This signals the last victim on Benjamin’s “To Do” list,
assuming he hasn’t lost control of the creature by then. The Keeper will have
to devise other ‘clues’ to scatter around if other victims are required; note,
however, that the golem doesn’t lift items from Gentiles.
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