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 11th
or 12th 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...
