Dark Tales: Introducing the Players

From now on, the tag Dark Tales in the title will point out that the post will be about the Call of Cthulhu game I'm acting Keeper for. Thus, if you are uninterested or otherwise unwilling to read and learn about the darker stories of horror and gamers' delvings to the human psyche, it will from now on be a tilte to stay away from. If it is not so, read on, brave adventurer.

Today, you shall meet the players, the braver and more cowardly souls that shall, through chance, consequence and machinations of fate be thrown together to become the protagonists of our little play - investigators, as they are named, due to their innate curiosity and, in the end, uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right (or perhaps more often the very, very wrong) time. The faces behind these masks shall not be shown, but you will meet the participants of the story today.

We'll get to the place a bit more later, but we must set the mood. So grab your fedora and saxophone and think of the year 1910. If the mood you are in is chipper and light, dim down the lights and put on some Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrH-7URvpc) to make it darker. Now envision Belfast, but with darker undercurrents: an almost permanent winter fog hanging over it, bleaching color. A damp, drizzly weather, grumpy people, fights and whatnot breaking out. People on the edge, with even the people a bit unsure of why. We will talk mood and location more later, but this is the place you're stepping into to observe.

Our first dramatis personae is Xavier Devaux, 29, a french immigrant come to Belfast some years ago. Born in Toulouse, Xavier was orphaned when he was rather young, and has been living largely off his heritage since then. Not intent in staying in one place for long, Xavier came to Bristol to study medicine. There he found a new, rather theoretical field to his liking: that of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and psychology. A smart and educated man, Xavier graduated with honors and some knowledge in both pharmacy and medicine and, discontent to simply return to the land of his birth, ended up in Belfast to start a small doctor's shop there, near the dockside. Xavier is an honest man, if sometimes a bit at odds with the system of the law, with a penchant towards wines, people and sometimes women.

Next, we meet Huang Rin, more commonly known as Hong Kong Harry. At age 33, Huang owns a small bookstore in Belfast called Portobello Second Hand Books and Restoration Equipment and Accessories. If he knows where the name originates from, he doesn't tell. Huang, while being a salesman is also a collector and hobbyist, with a vast knowledge of history and a lot of tidbits in many other fields as well. Trained in martial arts as a child, Huang is rather clumsy and never made it very far. Somewhat of an egoist and opportunist, Huang's biggest vice is probably absinthe.

Looming in the back like an eclipse waiting to happen is a man larger than life: Solomon Grundy. A 25-year-old englishman, Solomon knows nothing of his parents or much of his origins other than having born on a monday, and when the Red Horse Circus and Animal Show picked him up as a small lad they named him after the nursery rhyme. Traveling and living with the circus most of his years Solomon picked up a bit of everything, but when he finally grew up to fill boots quite a bit larger, he became the strongman of the Red Horse. The circus is in Belfast for the winter, as often before, and so is Solomon. He can be seen as a bit dishonest, but Solomon is in the end a moral man.

Finally, behind the bar we find Jack Flannagan, a Belfast-born-and-raised irishman. Jack is the owner of an establishment called the Four Winds Bar, a place to rent a room or eat a bit as well as wet ones throat. Hearing many things from behind his polished wood bar, Jack is not an educated man, but he is smart. He has a knack for listening and knows quite a bit of local lore and legend. A well-liked and respected man, Jack is known as an honest deal that sells his rooms clean and whiskey uncut. At 34, he is a man known to keep an establishment as clean and respectable as himself.

These are the main players in the drama about to unfold. Unwittingly, all of these men have stepped into the middle of events larger and quite a bit more dreadful than any of them might have guessed. The familiar world is about to take a lurch towards the unsavory for all of them.