User:Norseman

Aquitaine Republic

BTW would this background work: General Aquitaine was a normal kingdom patched together from various principalities. Overall it was Empyrean and ruled by wise kings and good nobles, who generally didn't bother much with the petty heresies and superstitions of the peasants (aside from the odd witch-hunt etc if the travelling troubadours or local wise people got too out of hand). It was in the main a major agricultural state, which meant that it was to some degrees highly specialized, some areas didn't grow much grain at all and imported it from abroad or from other parts of the Kingdom. When the Chosen portals collapsed the peasants in these areas were often reduced to famine due to a lack of grain. Likewise it was very difficult to smash rebellions and such because it was hard to move troops from region to region.

It was now that the various Pure Ones began agitating for an uprising, no one is quite sure why, but codes and plans spread with lightning speed. At first it was hoped that the King would do something, that the Chosen would return, but as things went worse the heresy grew in power, simply due to pure desperation in many cases. Inspired by the Pure Ones the peasants declared that God wanted them to have the land and that the Chosen had been false messengers. This of course meant that they were now opposed to both the Empyrean Church and the King, which led to a series of persecutions and suppressions. Normally this wouldn't matter much, but the middle-classes were tired of the nobles lording it over them (including extracting taxes and forcing them to be part of military boondoggles), and so they too were ready to rise, especially as the economy collapsed all around them and formerly rich families were reduced to selling their silverware for bread. When the revolution began things got really messy, perhaps if the Royalist troops hadn't been spread out across the whole kingdom trying to stamp out little uprisings they would have been able to regroup and smash the revolution, but as it were they were destroyed in detail.

Almost without intending it they found themselves with the nobles routed and the land in their hands, but with the Empyrean prelates screaming anathemas, and nobles and royals going to neighbouring countries to ask for supporting putting down the uprising. Faced with the realisation that there was no good way of backing down a new radical republican faction was able to gain power. However the Republic is wavering, whether it will survive or not depends on its ability to resist the coming storm.

Ultimatum

The Great King, Beloved of the Lord, Blessed by the Lady’s Hand, Mighty in Arms, Abundant in Charity, Preserver of Justice, Fount of Honour, Lord of the Two Lands, Guardian of Hermopolis, Iskander Servant of Christ.

"Thus speak the Great King: We have been greatly distraught by the news of the overthrow of our faithful vassals in the city of Tripolis, and of the cruelty and wickedness with which the commoners have been bombed. Yet more so when we learned that no Noble Lord led this attack, there was no shoulders to bear the guilt, but rather it was done by leaderless sheep, a flock of wild bulls without a shepherd, a pack of wolves prowling in the wilds. Our hearts were then filled with great sorrow and great anger, that such wickedness could occur in the lands next to ours. At once we called for our armour and our arms, but mercy intervened, His Holiness the Patriarch clasped the King's knee and cried, 'they are but children, wicked by nature, but they know not what they do! Grant them the chance to seek your mercy and forgiveness!' And the Great King, ever forbearing, and respectful of Holy Mother Church conceeded and at once called for his Great Scribe to enter so that a missive might be sent to these leaderless ones.

Thus the Great King speaks onto you: You have wrought great wickedness, yet because you seem unaware of the teachings of the Church, be it from ignorance or from only receiving a corrupted and heretical version of the Faith, you cannot be wholly responsible. Therefore lay down your arms, surrender yourself, both your armies in Libya and such forces as you may have elsewhere. Such things as are your personal property shall be respected, though all the property you have taken from Libya must be returned. If you refuse to obey this command you will be stripped of your belongings and made to work the granite."

New Mercia idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_submarine <-- Inspired by this.

Alright the idea is basically that by the 2170s the Hyperboreans were starting to get nervous, the League was growing richer and more sophisticated. So they decided that they needed to buy technology and certain vital materials (possibly fabbers) from elsewhere.

Given that Hyperborea has some extremely valuable Cash Crops they hit upon the idea of loading a large merchantman whose FTL drives worked (either due to having Theta or some other reason) and sending it to Neue Silesia to trade for supplies. Naturally only very valuable and very small volume goods could be traded, but it gave the Hyperboreans an "in" with the EU comissariat.

The decision to support the NMLF was not a result of New Mercia being all that important for the war effort, but rather it and Neue Silesia were linked by catapults *and* the trade with the EU had left the Hyperboreans with a lot of surplus cash. Basically their shipping was not up to the task of bringing back to the homeworld all the resources and materials they were capable of buying.

So they decided on spending some time and effort to try to cause some mischief for New Mercia, it was really an afterthought nothing more.

Jedi Knight

Vital Statistics

Real Name:
Jedi Name:
Tradition: Jedi Order (Orphan)
Avatar: Questing
Demeanor:
Nature:
Arete: 3
Willpower: 10/10
Quint: 5
Paradox: 0
Chantry: None

Attributes

Physical (5)

Strength: 2

Dexterity: 4 (Lightning Reflexes)

Stamina: 2

Social (3)

Charisma: 2

Manipulation: 2

Appearance: 2

Mental (7)

Perception: 4 (Spot Ambush)

Intelligence: 2

Wits: 4 (One Step Ahead)

Abilities

Talents (13)

Alertness: 3

Athletics: 3

Awareness: 3

Brawl: 3

Dodge: 3

Intuition: 2

Skills (9)

Meditation: 3

Melee: 3

Stealth: 3

Knowledges (7)

Computer: 1

Cosmology: 1

Culture: 1

Enigmas: 1

Linguistics: 1 (Basic)

Lore (Jedi): 1

Occult: 1

Backgrounds

Avatar: 5

Talisman: 4

Spheres

Correspondence:
Entropy: 2
Forces: 2
Life:
Mind: 1
Matter:
Prime: 2
Spirit:
Time: 3

Foci

Jedi Meditation
The Force
Lightsabre

Merits and Flaws

Merit: Code of Honour (Jedi) – 1 BP
Merit: Concentration – 1 BP
Flaw: Obsession (Star Wars) - 2 BP
Flaw: Amnesia – 2 BP
Flaw: Strangeness – 1 BP
Flaw: Twisted Apprenticeship – 1BP

Magickal and Mundane Equipment

Lightsabre (details to be determined)

BP & XP Expenditure

Arete 3 – 8BP
Will 10 – 5BP
Avatar 5 – 5BP
Talisman – 8BP

Dodge 3 – 6XP
Intuition 2 – 5XP
Forces 2 – 8 XP
Entropy 2 – 8XP
Prime 2 – 8XP
Mind 1 – 10XP

NWO Defector

Vital Statistics

Name:
Tradition: Sons of Ether (ex-NWO)
Avatar: Dynamic
Demeanor:
Nature:
Arete: 4
Willpower: 10/10
Quint: 5
Paradox: 0
Chantry: None

Attributes

Physical (3)

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 4 (Nimble Fingers)

Stamina: 1

Social (5)

Charisma: 2

Manipulation: 5 (Persuasive)

Appearance: 1

Mental (7)

Perception: 3

Intelligence: 4 (Engineer)

Wits: 4 (One Step Ahead)

Abilities

Talents (13)

Alertness: 3

Awareness: 3

Dodge: 1

Intuition: 1

Intimidation: 3

Streetwise: 1

Subterfuge: 3

Skills (9)

Drive: 1

Etiquette: 1

Firearms: 3

Hypertech: 3

Meditation: 1

Research: 1

Stealth: 1

Technology: 3

Knowledges (7)

Cosmology: 1

Enigmas: 4 (Espionage)

Linguistics: 1 (German)

Lore (Technocracy): 3

Lore (Traditions): 3

Medicine: 3

Occult: 1

Backgrounds

Avatar: 5

Spheres

Correspondence: Entropy: 2 Forces: Life: Mind: 3 Matter: Prime: 2 Spirit: 3 Time: 3

Merits and Flaws

Merit: Concentration – 1 BP Merit: Mechanical Aptitude – 1 BP Flaw: Addiction (Cigarettes) – 1 BP Flaw: Nightmares – 1 BP Flaw: Vengeance – 2 BP Flaw: Strangeness – 1 BP Flaw: Echoes (MiB) – 2 BP Flaw: Probationary Member – 3 BP? Flaw: Asthma – 1 BP

BP & XP Expenditure

Arete 3 – 14BP Will 10 – 5BP Arete 4 – 24XP Perception 3 – 12 XP Spirit 3 – 34 XP Entropy 2 – 18 XP Prime 2 – 18 XP Drive 1 – 3 XP Etiquette 1 – 3 XP Meditation 1 – 3 XP Research 1 – 3 XP Stealth 1 – 3 XP Dodge 1 – 3 XP Intuition 1 – 3 XP Enigmas 4 – 6 XP Lore (Technocracy) – 3 XP Lore (Traditions) – 3 XP

Gloves of Pygmalion

From: Eamon Honan <Spire@Indigo.ie> Subject: The Gloves of Pygmalion System: Call of Cthulhu

The Gloves of Pygmalion: An Artifact for CoC

APPEARANCE

The gloves appear to be a pair of ordinary gloves, made out of some strange metallic fabric of a blueish, purple hue. The back of the gloves and the fingers are encrusted with strange iridescent lozenze shaped jewels. Any jeweler or geologist will be baffled as to the jewel's origin; they have obviously been cut, but apart from that bear no resemblance to any terrestrial jewel, looking somewhat like jewels found in meteorites and not of Earthly origin.

The gloves are connected by a thin cord of the same fabric. It stretches between the gloves for about a yard. However, should the wearer wish to spread their arms, the cord will stretch with surprising elasticity for over two and a half yards.

The gloves always appear to be just a little too small for the person viewing them, but if the are put on, they are just right, fitting the wearer like a second skin.

Once worn, the wearer quickly comes to like the feel of the glove's fabric moving over his (or her) hands and will be loath to remove them. The jewels make little clicking sounds when the gloves are worn, as they seem to move and slide past each other. Anybody studying the gloves for any period of time will notice that the jewels actually move, as if they were not really attached to the fabric. Careful study will see jewels move from finger to finger, around the glove and back again.

ABILITIES

The gloves allow the wearer to mould organic matter, including living tissue, as if it were clay. The wearer has no control over this; the gloves affect any material he touches (including himself) as if it were modeling clay. The material shaped does not change in any other way, apart from its malleability. A statue made out of a tree would still smell and feel like wood, it would still contain sap and grow leaves, it would just look like a statue. The material does not suffer any ill affects from the reshaping unless something vital was removed. For example a man who was reshaped into a table would retain stomach, kidneys, liver, etc and would continue to live, he just wouldn't be able to move. However if the shaper reached into somebody and removed their heart, they would obviously die instantly. The gloves also impart the wearer with an insatiable desire to shape, who or what does not matter. The gloves do not give the wearer any ability to sculpt, which is something the wearer must learn by himself.

The wearer will become obsessed by sculpture, making statues and "works of art" out of anything or anybody he can lay his hands on. He will dream of the ancient cities of the serpent people in the steamy jungles of Valusia and of a fellow sculptor to whom he is related to by art, if not by species. Eventually, the wearer will never be able to take the gloves off and will become obsessed by the idea of reshaping himself. This he will enevitably do with fatal conseqences.

All this is obviously sanity taxing. Here are the costs in SAN of that which is described above:

To see the gloves for the first time. 0/1 (from fascination)

To see something "reshaped". 0/1d2 To see someone "reshaped". 1/1d6 To be "reshaped". 1d6/1d20

To wear the gloves. 1 per day of wearing

To "reshape" something. 0/1 To "reshape" someone. 1/1d6 To "reshape" oneself. 1d4/1d10

To learn of the true history and origins of the gloves. 1/1d4

HISTORY

(The last entry in this history is in 1889 to allow Gaslight Keepers to use the gloves, 1920s Keepers such as myself can fill in the intervening 30 years pretty easily.)

The gloves were created by an unknown serpentman artist and sorcerer about 67 million years ago, during the decline of the serpent people. The creator wished to be able to sculpt like none ever had before. To do this, he created the gloves using powerful sorcery and unearthly materials. He created sculptures of inhuman beauty, sculptures that denied imagination and defied rationality. His sculptures became one of the few popular art objects of the serpent peoples culture. Attempts were made to make more gloves, but they all failed.

The gloves were lost to the serpent people when the owner (not the original one, but one of his distant descendants) was discovered by the soldiers of King Kull, and put to the sword. The gloves were kept by Gonar, the King's wizard. The wily old bird knew of their power, but also knew that it led to doom. So, he kept them safe until he lost them during the sinking of Atlantis (I assume that the date given for the sinking of Atlantis in the CoC rulebook is about 5000 years off, to allow for R.E. Howard's Hyborian Age).

They lay beneath the sea until 12,000 years ago, when a Zingaran fisherman dragged them up in his net. He exchanged them with an Iranistani merchant for a fine boat and a crew. They were then sold to a prince of Ophir. The prince experienced the powers of the gloves, went mad and sculpted the entire royal family into statues of serpent people. The throne (and the gloves) went to a Zamoran mercenery captain, who gave them as payment to a Stygian sorcerer for aid in a battle against another usurper. The sorcerer was later destroyed by the most powerful of his kind, Thoth-Amon. Toth-Amon recognised the power of the gloves and managed (a unique feat amongst the glove's human owners) to utilise them without being destroyed himself. The gloves were given as a reward to a junior member of the Black Ring, who was driven insane by their power and buried himself alive (with the gloves) in a Hyrkanian steppe.

Approximately 11,000 years after the passing of the Hyborian Age, the tomb was discovered by the shaman of a slavic tribe that lived in the area. The gloves were placed in one of the shaman's sacred drums, as they were considered to be a gift of the gods. Several generations later a group of Thracian merceneries wiped out the tribe and carried the gloves back as booty to Thrace. There the gloves went through a succession of owners (all of whom were destroyed by the glove's power), until the mother of the last owner sealed them up in one of her late son's statues. The statue was sold to an Ithican merchant and was bought and sold several times during the next sixty years.

The statue eventually made its way to Athens and from there to the Great Library of Alexandria. The statue remained there for two hundred years until the library was burnt to the ground by the Romans. The statue was taken to Rome by one of Caesar's centurions. There, the statue remained until the Centurian retired to Herculaneum. The statue remained in his family until the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD when it was buried under a thick layer of ash with the rest of the town.

It was not until 1709, during the Austrian occupation of Italy, that Herculaneum was dug up. That staue remained buried until 1713, when an Austrian nobleman named Wolfgang Von Bulow saw it in one of the newly excavated portions of the town. He bought it and transported it to his home in mountainous western Austria, near Schruns. Von Bulow lived in an ancient schloss in the alps, and the statue remained there until his death. The statue would have probably remained there until this very day, if not for an accident five years later.

Von Bulow's grand-daughter, Michelle (Von Bulow junior married a french woman, he was something of an oddity), aged twelve, was playing hide and seek with her little brother. He hid behind the statue, and when she caught him, he knocked it over, and it was smashed on the stone floor. Both children were given a stern ticking off by their father, but what he failed to notice was that Michelle had pocketed the gloves. She was fascinated by them and wore them in secret, experimenting with their "delightful" powers and losing her soul piece by piece at each wearing. Her spirit was strong and none since Thoth-Amon had worn the gloves for so long and with so little ill effect. However, the end came when the desire to sculpt overcame her and she ran amok in the castle, one dark and stormy winter's night.

After a month's silence, local villagers plucked up their courage and investigated the castle. What they found entered into village folklore forever: living statues, hideous fleshy parodies of the statue of David and The Kiss, strange cylindrical towers that were warm to the touch and babbled insane gibberings at the horrified investigators. Only Michelle's little brother survived, dirty and silent. He was found hiding under the bed in the master bedroom, beside the screaming obscenity that had once been his mother. Michelle, fled into the mountains. She wandered until she fell down a chimney high in the Alps, both her arms were broken, so she could not escape, and over a period of several days she starved to death.

Her bones and the gloves were found by a young Swissman in 1772 while he was climbing the mountains. He brought the gloves (and the bones) back to Santa Maria, his home town, where they were given a Christian burial by the town's priest. However Michelle's bones did not rest well that night, for the village's Doctor heard of the jeweled gloves, dug Michelle's grave up and fled with the gloves to France. Once in France, he attempted to sell them to a jeweller in Strasburg. The man, baffled by the jewels, said they were coloured glass and offered to take them of his hands for a derisory sum. The doctor whose name was Karl travelled around France trying to sell them until he died in Paris, a pauper.

The gloves languished in a Paris pawnshop, dismissed as clever fakes until 1787. A young English sculptor named Thomas Basildon bought them for a few francs, simply becuase he liked the colour of the "glass". They remained, unworn in his studio in the artists quarter of Paris until 1788, when drunk and penniless, his hopes destroyed, he decided to kill himself. Putting them on accidently, just before he was about to do the deed, he discovered their unique powers and began to sculpt like never before. He rocketed to fame, making more sculptures in a week, then most do in a year. He reshaped his mistress, Marie Dupont, to be the most beguiling beauty of Verailles. In 1789, a few days after the storming of the Bastilles, a mob broke into Basildon's house and dragged himself and his mistress out into the street, where they were hacked to death with knives and axes. The gloves were stolen as the house was looted and were sold a few days later to a pawnshop for the sum of 3 francs. It was Basildon that gave the gloves the name "The Gloves of Pygmalion"*.

The gloves stayed there until the daughter of a merchant, Simone Boulle, bought them and brought them to England, where she gave them to an admirer, an Irishman named Steven Kelly. Kelly, the youngest son of a prosperous Dublin merchant-venturer kept them as a keep sake. A few years later, disowned by his father, he fled to Chile. After spending ten years in Chile working for the Spainish, transporting gold to Spain from the mines in Chile, he left Spainish service and joined the British navy as a privateer, harrying Napoleon's navy and helping wipe out his fleet in "The Battle of the Nile". Steven died of liver failure brought on by the heat and years of heavy drinking. He was given a decent burial near Alexandria. The gloves were liquidated to pay one of his creditors, a tavern owner in Alexandria. The gloves went through several owners in the back streets of that exotic and ancient city, until the were bought by the wife of a visiting British naturalist in Eygpt in 1843. She lost them waving to people from the side of the ship, as it entered London, dropping them into the Thames.

There they remain until in 1889, a mudlark (a young boy who fishes in the Thames mud at low tide, looking for bits of scrap to sell) found the gloves and sold them for the sum of four schillings and sixpence to Lin-Tze, the owner of a opium den in the Limehouse district of London. What he uses them for, or if he knows of their power, is unknown.

Keepers can fiddle with the glove's recent history as they wish, for their own purposes. After covering the last sixty seven and a bit million years I doubt thirty or a hundred and six will prove much of a problem.

• For all those going "Eh, what's he on about?": Pygmalion was a

king in ancient Greece who created a beautiful statue of a woman and fell in love with it. He asked Aphrodite to bring her to life, which Aphrodite promptly did. Basildon was refering to the fact that Pygmalion brought dead stone to life, while he made living flesh (it was his preferred medium) into the deathly counterpart of stone. He was also trying to butter up his mistress by comparing her to Galetea, the beautiful statue, Pygmalion created.

PRIMARY SOURCES

The gloves are referred to in several books, both Mythos and non-Mythos. They represent the only realistic way most investigators will learn of the gloves. I have included a list of the books and a brief description of each, including in some cases a brief passage referring to the gloves.

The Book of Drad

San loss 1d4/2d4 Cthulhu Mythos +3 Atlantean +8 Spell Multiplier X 2 Spells: Consume Likeness

Main Topics: The Serpent People and their nameless evil, Atlantis, the reign of King Kull.

Description: A scroll of papyrus rolled on two willow rods and bound with a black ribbon. It is surprisingly fresh despite its age.

The journal of a young Atlantean scholar during the time of King Kull. It chronicles the period in the King's reign where the extent of the of the serpent people's hidden presence in his kingdom was realised. It mentions in passing the discovery of a serpent man who had taken the form of one of the king's guard and how the king found him out because of his ophidian shadow. It also describes how the serpentman disguised himself using sorcery and managed to evade detection for several years by clever use of sorcery and drugs. It also mentions a pair of gloves that the creature possessed.

"...once the beast had been slain by the King's guard, it was found that it wore a pair of gloves of most unusual aspect. They were about as large as my hand and were covered with strange jewels that seemed to writhe on the gloves themselves. Gonar, the King's adviser, bade no man touch them and was quite insistent that they be handed over to him. It was whispered later, that Gonar was in league with the monster, but the hushed tones and guarded tongues of those that spoke such, pointed to the untruth of such a lie. A soldier sent to search the creatures chambers, lest more of its kind lurk there, returned white faced and shaking, speaking of blasphemous horrors not men and yet disturbingly like men that were found there. The King had them all burned. The stench was unbelievable and the yard stunk for days afterward."

Location: The book is currently in Carcosa, abandoned in one of the cities many twisting streets and alleyways. How it came to be there is a mystery.

The Notebook of Thomas Basildon

San Loss 1d4/1d8 Cthulhu Mythos +2 English +3 No Spells

Main Topics: The Serpent people and the creation of inhuman and abhorrent sculpture.

Description: A worn brown leather A4 note/sketch book, with the initials TB embossed on the front.

A well thumbed sketch book filled with pencil and charcoal drawings, designs for statues, concept drawings, and other similar things. It also acts as a diary, with pages of pencilled script filling in between drawings. The first few pages are all fairly normal drawings of Greek style statues, nymphs and Aphrodite feature prominently. Later on, the book is filled with pages of frantically scribbled descriptions of dreams and deeds of a strange and unwholesome nature. Pictures of snakes and snake men predominate in the last few pages of the book, with one of the last pictures being a large (two page) pastel of a gleaming many towered city nestled in a deep jungle valley. The inhabitants of the city are not present, but the garish and disturbingly real colours unsettle the observer nonetheless. the gloves are pictured only once, but the hastily pencilled drawing still gives a very clear picture of the gloves. There would be no doubt in the mind of anyone who had seen the original as to whether the two are one and the same. The last written part of the book (dated two days before Basildon's death) reads as follows:

"... (obliterated word) Marie, dear God Marie, why did you cry last night? Why? I made you beautiful! More beautiful then words can say! You are the darling of Versailles and you cried in my arms, I changed you beautifully, why aren't you grateful?"

Location: A second-hand book shop on the rue sacre coeur in Paris. It lies tightly wedged between a book on anatomy and a walking stick in an elephant's foot hallstand.

SECONDARY SOURCES

The gloves are mentioned indirectly in several books the most important being mentioned here.

• The Book of Dyzan includes a second-hand report of the incident

described in the Book of Drad.

• An clay tablet by an unknown scribe, from Trace describes the

death of one of the gloves' Thracian owners and how "gem fingered death plucked his life away".

• The Pnakotic manuscripts contains several mentions of the

sculptures the original owner of the gloves created. It does not name the owner or reveal anything about him apart from his species. However the description of the sculptures describe the style so accurately, that anyone who had studied a recent creation could say with authority that there were definite similarities between the two pieces.

• My Years as a Clergyman, is a the self published memoirs of the

Austrian priest, Gotfreid Braun, who took over the parish where Von Bulov lived. An avid amateur historian, he details several local legends, including one that refers to the demise of the Von Bulov. The legend labels Michelle's mother a witch and describes how she made a pact with the devil and how it led to the destruction of the entire family.

OTHER RESEARCH

Should the investigators think to test the physical composition of the gloves, they will have to spend a great deal of time and money. Research in all eras shows that the gloves are not from any known human culture due to their design and composition. The jewels are unidentifiable in any era. The nearest anybody can come to a definite answer is that they bear some resemblance to quartz crystal, but that's about it.

Tests of the fabric in the 1890s will show high concentrations of aluminium (aluminum), mercury (which is not liquid for unknown reasons), silver, thorium (not actually emitting radiation, for some strange reason) and two unknown elements, one of which is similar to a known compound*.

In the 1920s, the vaguely identifiable element will be titanium, but the remaining element will remain as inexplicable as ever.

In the 1990s, the mystery element will remain a mystery, but under a powerful (very, very powerful) electron microscope, it will be shown to be incredibly dense and to have a very complex molecular shape like a sort of lattice. In the 1990s, it will be possible to date the gloves, but it will be very hard and expensive to do so. The gloves will need to be bombarded by a high powered molecular stream to dislodge the remains oldest of the oldest organic material that it has come into contact with (these of course will be only a few molecules). Once they have the organic material, they can try and carbon date it, giving the obviously "impossible" answer. (I am a little uncertain as to the validity of this method, I saw it on Tomorrow's World and it's the only way I can think of that dating would be possible, bar the use of magic.)

• There was one titanium-oxygen compound known in 1824, but pure

titanium was not tracked down until 1910.

SCENARIO IDEAS

I think the gloves should be used as a campaign thread, with little bits of information being discovered every so often. I would allow the investigators to find the gloves farely early on in a campaign, with the various references to them being unearthed as well as the main plot of the campaign.

My favourite way of introducing the gloves is the "doomed artist" idea. A penniless, destitute and desperate sculptor finds the gloves and is suddenly catapulted to fame only to have the effects of the gloves destroy him. The investigators coming upon the ruins of his studio find him warped and inhuman on the floor (a nasty idea involving cats has come to mind, but I think I will save it until a later date).

Alternatively the investigators could find them in the back of a old and decrepit pawnshop to be sold them for a suspiciously low price. Along with the gloves, they could find a book warning of the dire conseqences of donning the gloves. If they choose not to buy it, that's their affair...

I hope you enjoy the Gloves of Pygmalion. Feel free to use them as you wish, and I hope you enjoy using them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Till R'lyeh rises,

Eamon Honan