The Rudraprayag Leopard - Part 2

What Happens Next?

This of course depends upon whatever pretext the Keeper has constructed to get the party to this point. Against the backdrop of the Keeper’s machinations, several attacks by leopards take place while the party are in the region; they will have plenty of opportunities to investigate these events and to make certain deductions about the perpetrator(s). Of course, if they begin to unearth the activities of the secretive Leopard Cult, they will swiftly become targets for elimination by these madmen.

Meanwhile...

They say that Virtue is its own reward, but very few characters in Call of Cthulhu are completely virtuous. Since it’s going to become apparent that someone in the party is going to be abducted by savage cultists at some point, why not turn the exercise into an object lesson?

For this evil addition to the storyline, you need to focus on a character who constantly frets about their personal appearance, to the point of vanity if applicable. You know the type: Kate Capshaw’s character in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” immediately springs to mind. The character should be prone to excessive amounts of perfume, or pomade, given to bright colours or extravagant headgear, or neckwear. This piece of deviltry is especially potent if this character’s personal preparations cause the party to constantly be late, or losing good daylight for trekking and hunting.

The core of this exercise is a native superstition among the Indian peoples. Butterflies are attracted to strong floral scents and bright colours; butterflies are also considered to be sacred to the goddess Kali, bringer of destruction. A Thug belief that, if a butterfly landed on your head, you were chosen for death by the goddess herself, has passed into general superstition: if a butterfly lands on your head, you are going to die – so runs the common belief.

So, take your vain character, brightly-coloured and smelling of perfume or hair oil, and have a butterfly – or many butterflies - land on them in full public view. Watch the locals shy away in terror and begin to treat the character as one of the walking dead.

Of course, then it only becomes a matter of time before the cultists hear about the incident and decide to abduct the character and enact the goddess’s will. Although these monsters worship Shiva, Kali is an aspect of his consort, so the superstition translates nicely.

If they manage to survive, the character will probably spend less time preening in front of the mirror in future!

First Attack!

Whilst the party are engaged on other business in the village, an Indian youth will run into the town square screaming for help and will slump senseless to the ground. The Investigators can use their First Aid and Medicine Rolls to good effect here, winning the acceptance of the local villagers. Once the fellow has been revived, it will be discovered that he has run all the way from the nearby village of Ratura, on the outskirts of which he lives with his parents. He reveals that, last night, his younger sister went to a nearby spring to draw water; the family heard her scream then silence. His father told him and his mother to wait in the house until he returned and then he too, went out into the darkness. Morning came and he has still not come home. Recent rains have damaged the road in to Ratura, so the boy has come to Rudraprayag to seek aid.

The Investigators should note that the youth is terrified almost out of his wits. Exhaustion and anxiety for his mother, holed-up back at their home, have also taken their toll. Medicine and First Aid rolls will observe that any medical advice offered to aid the young man will be useless, until such time as the source of his concern is addressed and he can relax. Therefore a rescue must be launched and the attack upon the family investigated.

This scene is the baseline event against which those following will be measured. In this instance, the Rudraprayag Leopard is the culprit and the party will be able to learn how to read the site of a true animal attack. If the party has a robust array of Biology, Natural History, Spot Hidden and Tracking skills, the Keeper may wish for them to deal with the event on their own; otherwise, this is a good opportunity for the party to encounter Jim Corbett, who can talk them through the signs and indicators around them.

The family’s farm is situated northeast of Rudraprayag, a little more than half the distance between that town and the next village, Ratura. Any characters who choose to check will observe that heavy rain and subsequent landslips have badly affected the road leading from here to Ratura. The general trend of the land is a slope from north down to south; the small wattle-and-daub farmhouse has a thatched roof and sits on the northern side of the road, surrounded by animal pens and neat garden plots. A well-trod trail marks the approach to a small spring, across the road and about thirty feet downhill from the farmhouse. Dense forest surrounds the farm in all directions.

If it's 1925 and the Keeper is introducing Jim Corbett at this point, the party will encounter a small group of men of various ages, who watch Corbett with rapt attention; amongst them is the young man’s mother who will rush tearfully to embrace him. It transpires that Corbett was camped nearby and heard of the attack from a road repair crew sent from Ratura, bedded down for the night to the east and roused by the commotion. If Corbett is not here, the young man will rush to hammer on the farmhouse door, which will open to reveal that his mother is safe.

Jim Corbett – Proto-Environmentalist

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	13	POW	16	Age	50
CON	14	DEX	15	HP	13
SIZ	11	APP	12	Magic Points	16
INT	14	EDU	20	SAN	80

Damage Bonus: +/-0

Weapon:       Knife 60%; Pistol 85%; Rifle 100%; Shotgun 40%

Armour:        None

Skills:             Tracking 95%; Botany 55%; Natural History 95%; Wilderness Survival 85%

Spells             None

SAN Loss       It costs no SAN to see Jim Corbett

From this point onwards, the information will flow to the party in the form of successful skill rolls (which Corbett can supplement if the party’s rolls are less than stellar):

First, the farmhouse commands a good view of the entire area, with windows on all sides; the goat pen is situated just across from the main entrance and is in full view. The only remote and secluded part of the farm is the spring;

Second, the fence defining the goat pen is well-built and high; as well, the goats have an accessible shelter with a single narrow entrance and a solid wooden roof in which they can spend the night. Currently there are six female goats and no kids. Too, the billy goat that rules this herd is young, fit and feisty;

Third, a circuit of the farm’s perimeter in the edges of the surrounding forest will reveal several piles of scat - leopard faeces - indicating that the cat has been in the area for at least a week;

Leopard tracks will also be noted around the margins of the farm and following the trail to the spring. Along with these are occasional territorial markings on trees and in the hard earth, especially on the ground under the window closest to where the daughter of the family slept at night. These take the form of long scratches in the bark or dirt, a mark of five parallel lines sometimes overlapping.

From all this, the party can get a clear idea of what has transpired. The Leopard has scouted out the farmstead, noting its strengths and weaknesses. An attack near the house would meet a quick response from other members of the family while an assault upon the livestock would result in a similar outcome. Furthermore, the goats are large and well-defended by the young buck and have a secure hideout into which they can retreat for safety. The only place where an ambush would be effective is along the trail to the spring.

Furthermore, the leopard has taken its time with scouting and planning, most likely patrolling a wide range and returning here frequently to observe events. Having found the perfect locale for an attack, it then watched the family to determine their routine. Discovering that the youngest child had the task of drawing water from the spring, it then selected her as its preferred target. This is a normal result: leopards, like all other big cats, generally attack the young and infirm of any herd as this takes less energy. As well, leopards leave their kills hidden up in trees away from scavengers to rot awhile before eating: large kills are thus an exercise in waste as they are more difficult to hide. Therefore, since the body of an eight-year-old human is easier to deal with than any of the other available targets, she became the inevitable victim.

Once all of this evidence has been collected, the party can then decide what to do next. The daughter has almost certainly been killed, but there is a chance that she may yet be alive if the father’s efforts to save her were effective. The fate of the father is still an open question and his whereabouts should be discovered in order to give the family some closure. The party may wish to follow up on this; otherwise they might well leave the locals to sort out their own issues.

If the party decides to find the father, have them make an averaged Luck Roll as they set out into the jungle. A successful roll will discover the body of the man amongst some thick bushes at the base of a tree; if the roll was very successful, the man will still be alive. First Aid and Medicine rolls will be required to stabilise him and put him on the road to recovery. It will be noted that the man’s throat has been bitten, possibly in an attempt to crush his windpipe, but that the major damage was inflicted by claws to the front of his torso and legs.

If the farmer survives, he will definitively identify the assailant as a big spotted cat. Further searching by the party might (Luck Roll) discover some rags from the girl’s clothing, much stained by blood, but no tangible remains. This is due to the fact that the cat has taken to the trees with its meal to facilitate its escape.

Regardless of whether the party is successful in its efforts to aid the family or not, they now have a base-line of knowledge about the leopard’s M.O. to work with in future. Now they can tell the real cat from the ersatz ones

(Wait. “Fake leopards”? What the...?)

The Leopard Cult

Of course, one sick old leopard could not be responsible for such a large amount of carnage... unless it had some help. In this story, the leopard’s notoriety is perpetuated by an insidious cult of leopard worshippers, an import from Africa, which is benefiting from the hysteria brought on by the maneater’s exploits. More, the cult members see the presence of the Leopard as a sign that their activities are being looked upon favourably by the powers they worship.

How did an African leopard cult end up in the Punjab? At the end of the Nineteenth Century, with the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, many industries that traditionally used slave labour to accomplish their goals turned to other sectors of the community to make up shortfalls which technology couldn’t supplement. Chinese and Indian labour was considered efficient and cheap and many willing workers emigrated from those countries to win the cash incentives that were offered. These Chinese and Indian diasporas weren’t usually return trips – many individuals lost their lives in dangerous, backbreaking conditions – but a fair percentage of these workers went home to report what they had accomplished. Some of the things which they brought home with them were completely unexpected – as in this case.

In the early Twentieth Century, the British were fairly content with themselves and their rule. Sleeman had relatively recently broken the back of the Thugs, and Dacoity – the tradition of forest banditry – was considered a dwindling, mainly southern Indian, phenomenon. Against the growing threat of political manoeuvring from Nepal, China and Russia, religious fanaticism - even murderous fanaticism - was a minor issue.

Leopard cults are based around the concept that the leopard is a psychopomp, a herald and escort of the dead, in many African religions and these magical traditions date back to Ancient Egypt, when the leopard was a symbol of Osiris, god of the afterlife. The cultists believe that the spirit of the leopard is able to invade their bodies, guiding and directing them to fulfil its plans for humanity. They believe that the Leopard allows them to despatch those who are about to die and rewards its human agents accordingly. Cynically, there is a certain point of view which holds that the trappings of the cult are simply an excuse to enact petty revenge on those by whom the cultists feel they have been wronged; this was very much the case in the latter history of the Thuggee cults.

This sub-continental version of the African cult has a few differences to distinguish it. To begin with, the two-pronged claws used in Africa have been replaced by a more traditional Indian weapon, the Tiger Claws, or ‘bagh nakh’, of the northern districts (Base Chance: 20%; Damage: 1D6+db; Range: Touch; # of Attacks: 1 or 2; HPs: 10). These are well-made, steel-and-brass hand weapons utilised by certain tribes of the Punjab and surrounding areas. They are traditionally an assassin’s weapon, used to disembowel victims; making the attack look like an animal assault. Another unique feature is that the cult has become a vehicle of worship for the deity Shiva, who is often depicted wearing a leopard-skin pelt, and the nearby town of Kedarnath is an important pilgrim site dedicated to the god.

From this point on, the Investigators are going to have to pay attention to the details and learn to separate a real leopard attack from a fake one...

To Be Continued...