The Rudraprayag Leopard - Part 5

Hit the Books!

Once the connexion between cult activity and leopards has been hypothesized, the party may wish to do some research on the topic. If the party has encountered the writings of von Junzt - possibly through that dreaded tome Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten (aka, Unspeakable Cults or The Black Book) - they are entitled to make an Idea Roll on the issue. Alternatively, if they have read Nigel Blackwell’s Africa’s Dark Sects, Jermyn’s Observations on the Several Parts of Africa, or if they have travelled extensively in Western Africa (possibly in a past adventure), they may also make an Idea Roll.

Leopard Man cults were particularly active in West Africa during the period 1914 to 1918, when British attempts to unify northern and southern Nigeria were opposed by the native populace. Along with this, many tribal communities, freed from slavery during the abolition of the slave trade in the 1800s and who had been repatriated by the British to Sierra Leone, were agitating futilely for self-rule. A violent expression of this anti-colonial sentiment was the prevalence of these cults, trying to scare away the invaders and convince the local tribes of the cult’s superiority over the colonial administration. In other parts of Africa – Kenya and Tanganyika for example – the same sentiments gave rise to Lion Cults, which had a similar expression. A few articles concerning the phenomenon made the headlines in Europe and the US, and players who make their Idea Rolls may be given either (or both) of the following articles.

Another clue comes from that hideous tome, the Cthaat Aquadingen, the Hindi version of which makes an explicit reference to the town of Rudraprayag. If the party has had dealings with that version of this wicked tome at some point, a successful Idea Roll will help them recall the passage that deals with the current situation.

Delhi instituted India’s first university in 1922. Delhi University combined the libraries and faculties of three existing institutions: St. Stephen’s College (founded in 1881), Hindu College (1899) and Ramjas College (1917). The combined library resources of these three organisations created a truly eclectic range of informational material. A successful Library Use Roll here will turn up a battered old copy of the German edition of Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten with the relevant leopard Cult information; if the party cannot read the German text, translation services are available (see below).

“Im alten Ägypten wurde der Leopard als heilig erachtet und mit dem Gott Osiris verbunden, dem Richter der Toten. Für einige afrikanische Stämme ist der Leopard ein mächtiges Totem, welches nach ihrem Glauben die Geister der Toten zur Ruhe geleitet.

Viele Jahrhunderte lang existierte der Leoparden-Kult in Westafrika, besonders in Nigeria und Sierra Leone, wobei seine Anhänger töten wie der Leopard, indem sie ihre menschliche Beute mit Stahlklauen und Messern schneiden, schlitzen und zerreissen. Später, während abscheulicher Zeremonien, trinken sie das Blut und essen das Fleisch ihrer Menschenopfer. Jene Anwärter, die Mitglieder des Kultes werden wollen, müssen von der nächtlichen Jagd mit einer Flasche voll Blut ihres Opfers zurückkehren, und es in Anwesenheit der versammelten Anhängerschaft trinken. Die Kultisten glauben, dass ein magisches Elixier namens Borfima, welches aus den Innereien der Opfer gekocht wird, ihnen übermenschliche Kräfte verleiht und erlaubt, sich selbst in einen Leoparden zu verwandeln.

Die Mitglieder des Kultes töten aus dem geringsten Anlass. Vielleicht wurde ein Anhänger krank, oder seine Ernte verdarb. Solche Missgeschicke genügten, um ein Menschenopfer zu fordern. Ein geeignetes Opfer wurde ausgewählt, der Zeitpunkt der Tötung bestimmt, und der Henker, Bati Yeli genannt, wurde auserkoren. Der Bati Yeli trug die rituelle Leopardenmaske und eine Robe aus Leopardenfell. Vorzugsweise wurde die Opferung bei einem Dschungelschrein des Kultes vollzogen, doch wenn die Umstände nach unmittelbarem Blutvergiessen verlangten, konnte der Ritus mit den doppelläufigen Stahlklauen überall vonstatten gehen.”

(Many thanks to Sebastian Dietz for this translation!)

If the players make a critical Library Use Roll whilst researching here, they will unearth a commentary on the Cthaat Aquadingen and a transcript of the Rudraprayag prophecy; they will not find the actual text, however.

The following are books and other published works which may be of interest to the party:

The Cthaat Aquadingen

“...And then shall the gate be opened, as the Sun is blotted out. Thus the Small Crawler will awaken those who dwell beyond and bring them. The sea shall swallow them and spit them up and the leopard shall eat of the flesh of Rudraprayag in the Spring.”

-Larry DiTillio & Lynn Willis, Masks of Nyarlathotep: “Kenya”

The Cthaat Aquadingen is inextricably linked with three other texts, each of which may have been early abortive attempts to compile and write it. These other works are the Codex Dagonensis, the Codex Maleficium and the Codex Spitalski (also known as The Leprous Book). Scholars have theorised that the original sources for this work were composed in German, or the Gothic tongue, or by a speaker of one of those languages with a less-than-perfect facility in Latin. Whichever is the true state of affairs, the Cthaat Aquadingen contains much the same information as those other texts and is the most complete of any of them in this regard.

The origin of the title is unknown: “aquadingen” is a corrupt admixture of German, or the Gothic tongue, with Latin, translating roughly as “things of the water”; the word “cthaat” remains undeciphered, although some scholars have tentatively suggested that it may be a word in the language of R’lyeh.

While the original manuscript of the book has been lost forever, the first printing of the work took place around the 11^th or 12^th Centuries AD, and, of these, it is believed that only five copies remain. One of these was rumoured to have been bound in human skin and was in the possession of Titus Crow; if this is the case then it was probably destroyed along with his house and the rest of his library. A partial transcription and a translation reside in Oakdeene Sanatorium, while another copy is held at the Great Library of the Dreamlands. The British Museum has consistently denied having a copy despite persistently re-surfacing rumours.

The Cthaat Aquadingen, as does the Codex Dagonensis, concerns itself mainly with the Deep Ones and other Mythos phenomena and spells connected to the seas and oceans. In addition, it dwells at length upon those supernatural entities known as ‘the Drowners’ - Yibb-Tstll and Bugg-Shash - including the Third Sathlatta which offers protection from the latter. The text also covers Nyarlathotep in its avatar as the ‘Small Crawler’, the Nyhargo Dirge, certain rituals to do with the Great Old One Tsathoggua, invocations to foil summoning spells, and the Elder Sign.

Of the Sathlattae, created by the Ptetholites in eons passed, the Cthaat Aquadingen contains almost all of them including - along with the Third - the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Sathlattae. The effects of these incantations are mostly unknown although it is reported that the Ninth “no longer works” for some reason; perhaps the majority of the others are also similarly temporally, or dimensionally, restricted in some fashion. The Sixth Sathlatta has a variety of uses: if chanted before sleeping it allows the chanter to contact Yibb-Tstll in dreams; if chanted by a circle of thirteen ‘adepts’ at the beginning of any calendar year it will summon that entity to our reality; if inscribed upon a wafer and eaten by an intended victim, it will summon a phenomenon known as ‘The Black’ to destroy the target. This process also requires the Hoy-Dhin Chant, which is only found in the Necronomicon, in order to be successful.

A version of the Cthaat Aquadingen was translated into Hindi around the time of the Indian Mutiny. This version was enhanced with a plethora of mystical predictions and some new spells, interspersing the other material. This additional material is distributed randomly amongst the rest of the text, rendering any attempt at chronological arrangement (without hindsight) impossible. Many of the predictions involve Nyarlathotep in its various forms but this, as well, is of no use in trying to organise the material. In most other particulars, the book is the same as the English version of the Cthaat Aquadingen.

(Sources: Brian Lumley, “The Cyprus Shell”;

Larry DiTillio & Lynn Willis, “Masks of Nyarlathotep”)

Hindi, in the Devanagari Script; Unknown translator; c.1857; 1d4/2d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +6 percentiles; 29 weeks to study and comprehend

Spells: Affect Weather; Call Dagon; Call Mother Hydra; Call Tsathoggua; Contact Cthulhu; Contact Deep One; Contact Nyarlathotep (as The Small Crawler); Barrier of Naach-Tith; Elder Sign; Nyhargo Dirge; The Sixth Sathlatta (Contact Yibb-Tstll; Summon/Bind Yibb-Tstll; Call The Black); The Third Sathlatta (Banish Bugg-Shash); Hands of Kali; Strike Blind

Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten (aka, Unspeakable Cults or The Black Book)

“I happened to spy the title that day and bought the book for a ridiculously small sum. Certainly small compared to the price I’ve paid for reading it...”

-Robert M. Price, “Dope War of the Black Tong”

Friedrich Wilheim von Junzt wrote the manuscript of this work and left it with his friend, Gottfried Mülder the Düsseldorf publisher, before embarking upon a journey through Asia. He returned from an exploration in Mongolia only to lock himself in his study and begin writing another book: he was found strangled six months later inside the locked room with the manuscript torn and scattered about him. Von Junzt’s friend Alexis Ladeau worked to piece the document back together: once finished, he read it, burnt it and slashed his own throat with a straight razor. The contents of this second work are unknown although several pages were rumoured to have been buried with Ladeau. It was left to Mülder to publish the original manuscript in a limited edition, which he did in 1839 with illustrations by the troubled artist Gunther Hasse.

The circumstances surrounding the printing of the work and speculation as to what the supposed sequel may have contained, proved much too dark for the taste of its readers and many who bought the book burnt it after learning of the author’s fate. That might have been the end of the book but for the fact that a Jesuit priest, Pierre Sansrire, translated a copy into French and had it published in St. Malo, in 1843. Again, a short run edition, no known copies of this version have survived; however, it is known that unscrupulous bookseller, M.A.G. Bridewell, bought a copy in a London bookstore and found it so scandalous that he had it translated into English and published under his own imprint. This quarto volume was re-titled ‘Nameless Cults’ and was released in 1845. It was a poorly presented production, riddled with mistakes and errors and marred by the presence of lurid woodcut illustrations with little relevance to the text.

In 1909, the Golden Goblin Press of New York issued a translation from the German original complete with full-colour plates redrawn from the Hasse originals by Diego Vasquez. Unfortunately the editors saw fit to expurgate fully one quarter of the text and the final result was so expensive as to render it largely inaccessible to the general public. In the same year, the Starry Wisdom Press is said to have released its own translation but copies have never been located. The Miskatonic University Press has often come forward with plans to reissue the work in a scholarly edition complete with annotations and accompanying essays but the heirs of the von Junzt Estate have repeatedly refused to give permission for another printing.

The text deals with the traditions of cult patterns around the world and touches upon such well-known phenomena as the Thugs and the African Leopard cults. A weighty central section prefaced by an essay entitled ‘Narrative of the Elder World’, deals with the worldwide Cthulhu Cult, the Tcho-tcho peoples and their diaspora, the cults of Leng and Ghatanathoa and the People of the Black Stone. In places, von Junzt’s masterful, precise prose breaks down and he dwells ramblingly upon seemingly meaningless tangents such as the uses of unicorn horns and his supposed sojourn in Hell; the faithful reader will not let such meanderings distract them from the multitude of other useful insights to be found.

(Source: Children of the Night, Robert E. Howard)

For the purposes of this particular tale, only a German edition of this work is presented here. A copy of this work can be viewed in the University library in Delhi.

German: Das Buch von den Unaussprechlichen Kulten; Friedrich Wilheim von Junzt, illustrated by Gunther Hasse; Dusseldorf, 1839; Sanity Loss: 1d8/2d8; +15 percentiles to Cthulhu Mythos; average 52 weeks to study & comprehend

Spells: “Addresse Zhar” (Contact Deity: Zhar); “Annäherungs-Bruder” (Contact Ghoul); “Sperre von Naach-Tith” (Barrier of Naach-Tith); “Winken Sie dem großen zu” (Contact Dagon); “Anruf-Äther-Teufel” (Contact Mi-Go); “Benennen Sie weiter den Sun” (Call/Dismiss Azathoth); “Bennenen Sie weiter Cyaegha” (Call/Dismiss Cyaegha); “Rufen Sie weiter den gehörnten Mann an” (Call/Dismiss Nyarlathotep); “Benennen Sie weiter das, das nicht sein sollte” (Call/Dismiss Nyogtha); “Rufen Sie weiter die Waldgöttin an” (Call/Dismiss Shub-Niggurath); “Befehl Aeriereisende” (Summon/Bind Byakhee); “Befehlen Sie die Bäume” (Summon/Bind Dark Young); “Beherrschen Sie das Unbekannte” (Call/Dismiss Ghatanathoa); “In Verbindung treten Sie mit den Kindern vom tiefen” (Contact Deep Ones); “Wiederherstellung zum Leben” (Resurrection); “Nahrung des Lebens” (Food of Life)

Africa’s Dark Sects

“As the priestess whirled around the fire-lit circle, chanting dim words from an ancient spell, the cult executioners busied themselves with their screaming sacrifices. As the blood flowed, a chill wind sprang up and I felt a flash of fear: the wind had become visible, a black vapour against the gibbous, leering Moon, and slowly my terror grew as I comprehended the monstrous thing taking form. The corrosive stench of it hinted at vileness beyond evil. When I saw the great red appendage which alone constituted the face of the thing, my courage died and I fled unseeing into the night.”

-Nigel Blackwell

Nigel Blackwell wrote of his experiences travelling through Africa in the years 1916-1917; its publication was delayed by several years and it was not until 1922, three years after his death, that the text went into production. At the last minute, an injunction was obtained to halt publication, issued by the Blackwell Estate: a majority of the copies were seized and destroyed and the standing type broken down. Despite this, thirteen copies, which had been pre-purchased by subscribers, were sent out before the injunction came into effect. For the most part, these thirteen copies made their way into private collections; however, copies are on record at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the national Library of Haiti in Port-au-Prince.

The book concerns itself with many magical and religious practises of tribal African communities, many personally experienced by Blackwell himself. The largest and most complete section of the book focuses upon the barbaric rites of a cult dedicated to “the Bloody Tongue” in British East Africa (re-named Kenya in 1920) and contains some of the more disturbing elements of the text. Also included are references to a secretive pre-historic white race dwelling in lost cities along the Congo River, many voodoo-like religious observations held clandestinely in Rhodesia, a bloodthirsty Congolese cult dedicated to “the Spiralling Worm” and many references to Leopard and Lion Cults from Tanganyika through to Sierra Leone. The book also cites Jermyn’s Observation on the Several Parts of Africa as a source. This particular passage is of interest to party’s familiar with Blackwell’s work:

“I had heard many reports of attacks by leopard men – religious fanatics who imitated the big cats in order to spread terror and foment discord – throughout my travels in Africa. I never saw evidence of their depravity myself, but I spent some time in eastern Nigeria talking to a district officer there by the name of Stephen Cawthorne. He was directly involved in putting down the outbreak of the cult’s activity there.

“The first really serious outbreak of leopard cult murders in Sierra Leone and Nigeria occurred during the lead-up to the Great War. At that time, it was believed the cult was suppressed by the region's white administrators because a great many of its members were captured and executed. However, in actual fact, it appears that the leopard men simply went underground. In 1915, the leopard men became bold and there were 48 cases of murder and attempted murder committed by the leopard cult in that year alone. And it soon became obvious that the leopard men had begun directing many of their attacks against white men as if to convince the native population that the cult had no fear of the police, or of the white rulers. The trend continued during the first seven months of 1916, when there were 43 known ritual killings performed by the leopard cult.

“Stephen Cawthorne had been district officer of Adamawa province in eastern Nigeria for only six months when, early in 1916, he discovered that the leopard men had begun operating in his jurisdiction, claiming mainly young women as their victims. When Cawthorne raided the house of a local chief named Maduenu, his men found a leopard mask, a leopard-skin robe, and a steel claw. Acting on details provided by an informer, Cawthorne ordered his police officers to dig near the chief's house, where they found the remains of 13 victims. The chief was put in prison to await trial, and Cawthorne set out on a determined mission to put an end to the leopard men's reign of terror.

“But the local inhabitants were too terrified of the leopard cult to come forward. There were several more murders during the weeks that followed, including the wife and daughter of Maduenu, the imprisoned chieftain. A desperate Cawthorne hoped that the sight of the mutilated bodies of his family would anger Maduenu into betraying the cult members who had so obviously turned on him, but the shock proved too much for the chief. When he saw the bloodied corpses of his wife and daughter and realized how viciously his fellow leopard men had betrayed him, he collapsed and died of heart failure.

“Cawthorne called in reinforcements and received an additional 200 police officers; however, the leopard men became increasingly bold in their nocturnal attacks. One night they even sacrificed a female victim inside the police compound and managed to get away without being seen. After that cruelly defiant gesture, the cult committed several murders in broad daylight. The native inhabitants of the region lost all confidence in the police and their ability to stop the slashings and killings of the powerful leopard men. Even some of Cawthorne’s men began to believe that the cultists might truly have the ability to transform into leopards and to fade unseen into the shadows. Cawthorne himself was unequivocal about his disbelief of such magical feats, but many of his men with whom I spoke were less certain on the matter.

“One night in mid-August 1916, Cawthorne was awakened by the warning growl from his dog; when he rose to investigate, a four-foot-long, barbed arrow whistled by his head, narrowly missing him and embedding itself in the wall. The next morning at police headquarters, he learned that two of his officers had also barely escaped death that previous night.

“Cawthorne knew that his men were becoming unnerved. They were trying to stop an enemy who was essentially invisible. They struck without warning after preselecting their victims by a process that evaded all attempts to define it. There was no way for Cawthorne and his officers to determine who the cult's next victims would be or to guess where they might strike. And the natives were far too intimidated to inform on the leopard men — if, in fact, they did know anything of importance to tell the officers.

“The district officer decided to attempt to set a trap. On the path to a village where several slayings had already taken place, Cawthorne sent one of his best men, posing as the son of a native woman. The two walked side by side toward the village while Wilson and a dozen other officers concealed themselves in the bushes at the side of the path.

“Suddenly, issuing the blood-curdling shriek of an attacking leopard, a tall man in leopard robes charged headlong at the couple, swinging a large club. The young police officer struggled with the leopard man, but before Cawthorne and the other men could arrive on the scene, the cultist had smashed in the officer's skull with the club and fled into the bushes. Cawthorne had lost one of his best officers, but the knife that the young man still held in his hand was covered in blood. The police would now be able to search for a man with a severe knife wound.

“The district officer was about to have some men take the constable's body to the compound when he had a sudden flash of intuition that the leopard man might return to the scene of the crime. While the other officers searched the neighboring villages, Cawthorne hid himself behind some bushes overlooking the trail. Around midnight, just as Cawthorne was beginning to think about returning to the compound, a nightmarish figure crawling on all fours emerged from the jungle, pounced on the young officer's corpse, and began clawing at his face like a leopard. But rather than claws raking the body, Cawthorne caught the glint of a two-pronged steel claw in the moonlight. The killer had returned to complete the cult ritual of sacrifice. Cawthorne advanced on the leopard man, and the robed murderer snarled at him as if he were truly a big cat. When he came at him with the two-pronged claw, Cawthorne shot him in the chest.

“With Cawthorne’s act of courage, the natives of the region had been provided with proof that the leopard men were not supernatural beings that could not be stopped. The members of the cult did not have magic that could make them impervious to bullets. They were, after all, men of flesh and blood—savage, bestial, and vicious—but men, nonetheless. Once word had spread that the district officer had killed one of the leopard men, witnesses began to come forward in great numbers with clues to the identity of cult members and the possible location of a secret jungle shrine. This shrine was discovered deep in the jungle, cunningly hidden and protected by a large boulder. The cult's altar was a flat stone slab that was covered with dark bloodstains. Human bones were strewn over the ground. A grotesque effigy of a half-leopard, half-man towered above the gory altar.

“I learned subsequently that during February of 1917, 73 initiated members of the cult were arrested and sent to prison. Eventually, 39 of them were sentenced to death and hanged in Abak Prison, their executions witnessed by a number of local tribal chiefs who could testify to their villages that the leopard men were not immortal.

“Interestingly, on January 10, 1917, just a month before the leopard men were hanged in Nigeria, three women and four men were executed for their part in the lion men murders in the Singida district in Tanganyika. The lion people had dressed in lion skins and murdered more than 40 natives in ritual slayings that left wounds on their victims resembling the marks of a lion's claws...”

(For those interested, I have freely adapted an actual report of the Leopard Man attacks for this extract. Only the names and dates have been tweaked from the original.)

Copies of the work are hard to find and consequently are rarely allowed to leave the libraries which house them. The book contains a folding map showing the route taken by Blackwell in the course of his travels and a monochrome frontispiece showing the (un)holy symbol of the Bloody Tongue sect. This image has been cut out of the Oxford copy of the work by persons unknown.

(Source: Larry DiTillio & Lynn Willis, “Masks of Nyarlathotep”)

English; Nigel Blackwell; 1922; 1d5/1d10 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +6 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: Unwavering Servant (Create Zombie)

Observations on the Several Parts of Africa

“...Sir Wade Jermyn, was one of the earliest explorers of the Congo region, and had written eruditely of its tribes, animals, and supposed antiquities. Indeed, old Sir Wade had possessed an intellectual zeal amounting almost to a mania; his bizarre conjectures on a prehistoric white Congolese civilisation earning him much ridicule when his book, Observation on the Several Parts of Africa, was published. In 1756 this fearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at Huntingdon.”

-HPL, “[Facts Concerning the Family of the Late] Arthur Jermyn” aka “The White Ape”

Wade Jermyn travelled widely through Africa during his life and wrote about his experiences in this work. A self-taught naturalist and geologist, his observations are riddled with obscure terms which he devised himself and strange theories which came about from his discoveries.

Jermyn’s travels took him down the West coast of the continent through to Rhodesia (today’s South Africa). He travelled widely in the British Protectorates of Niger and the colony of Sierra Leone. He mentions local legends of monsters living in the jungles (including the Mokèlé-mbèmbé) and talks about witch-doctors, cults and sorcery among the tribal communities. However, when he begins to discuss the Congo regions, he begins to wax lyrical and his observations and theories become wild in the extreme.

Most of his Congo experience concerns the discovery of evidence indicating that the region was ruled by a prehistoric white race which raised great cities within the jungles and warred upon the black Congolese peoples. He details elements of tribal society, fauna and flora which flies in the face of what subsequent scientific research has discovered. Jermyn was ridiculed when the book was first published and, after his institutionalisation, the book became little more than a quaint fantasy, to the uninitiated.

(Source: H.P. Lovecraft, “Arthur Jermyn”)

English; Sir Wade Jermyn; 1753; 1/1d4 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +3 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: None

Don’t Get Mad; Get Educated!

Of course, these books contain more than simply a tonne of mind-blasting blasphemy; they also have loads to say about the regions they cover which is simply prosaic and ordinary. Von Junzt talks about tribal distributions and social structures; Blackwell’s book is full of journalistic references about travelling in Africa; Jermyn spends much time in cataloguing the regional plant and animal diversity. There is much more to be had from these books than simply spells and revelations as to the state of Cosmic Reality.

If the party has access to these books, and they require some specific, local, non-Mythos information about a particular subject, simply have them make a Library Use Roll while flipping through the work. This rule automatically supposes that the reader so doing has already read the work and lost Sanity by doing so (while increasing their Cthulhu Mythos knowledge). If the reader is a newcomer to the work, then they will incur penalties as per the usual scenario when reading a Mythos tome for the first time.

There are quite a few insights to be gained from these books, shedding light on the current situation. They are as follows:

Leopards:

These big cats hunt mainly at dusk and dawn; they are keenly-sighted with highly motion-sensitive vision. They often drag their kills up into trees and wedge them in place, to avoid scavengers making off with their hard-won meals. Throughout Africa, they are often mystically linked with notions of the Afterlife: in Ancient Egypt the Leopard was sacred to Osiris. In India the leopard is linked in a similar fashion to Shiva. As far as Leopards are concerned, humans are not a prime source of food: they are too easy to kill and therefore are not as interesting as other types of prey; as well the average human being yields far too much food at once, requiring that the leftovers be defended from scavengers (a waste of precious resources). Also, leopards are all too aware of the trouble that killing a human can produce.

Leopard Men:

These cults arose from opposition to Colonial rule. A hallmark of the cults was their daring and tendency to enact risky murders: the pay-off for these stunts was the fomenting of the notion among the tribal peoples that the cultists were immune to the abilities of the Colonial overlords and could bypass whatever barriers were placed between them and their victims. Thus, targets locked in buildings under armed guard were found to have been killed regardless, thereby impressing the locals with their power. Leopard cultists were thought to be immune to bullets, were able to transform into leopards and had great powers of movement, able to leap vast distances and scale impossible walls. The cult targeted those who informed against them, or who acted to support Colonial domination; they even killed their own associates if it served the cult to do so, or if a member seemed likely to break their vows to the cult. Leopard Man Cults proliferated in Sierra Leone and in Nigeria; in Tanganyika, Lion Man Cults have also been identified, with a similar modus operandi and aims.

To Be Concluded...