Dealing from the Taroticum: Court of Fools, 1994

22/4/2025

Taroticum Session Report 3

I've written about rediscovering Kult 1st ed. and updating the classic Taroticum scenario on a previous blog. You can read the first and second session reports of our all-day Kult session; here's the third, which picks up the action when we reconvened in the evening.

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First, a couple of reflections. Taroticum is structured in a heavy-handed way. The PCs are drawn to Sandburn Hospital to rescue Mary Langsbury, but 24 hours later the evil Barkley returns from Hell. The original scenario states:

"Regardless of where Mary is, he will find her after he has returned to Sandburn. If the PCs refused to take her with them, she is still in the hospital, in which case Barkley finds her the very same night ... When Barkley has found Mary, he brutally cuts the foetus from her womb and puts it in a fluid-filled jar. He leaves Mary to bleed to death on the floor. She will die, regardless of what the PCs do. She cannot be saved; the PCs can only stave it off for a while."

The authors also say: "The only way he can miss her is if she is in a place with a high magical aura that it pains him to visit - for example a cathedral." The idea that creatures of Inferno are pained when they visit Christian holy places is a novel addition to Kult's lore and, I must confess, rather at odds with its antinomian themes. Yet this is from the pen of Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersen themselves. It's not a concept I'll be adopting (except perhaps for the sacred geometry in some of those Nicholas Hawksmoor London churches).

The main point, though, is the railroad-y structure of the plot: Mary "cannot be saved" and "will die, regardless of what the PCs do." This imposes a frustrating restriction on the PCs' autonomy and a burden on the GM, who must come up with a way for Barkley to kill Mary that succeeds come-what-may, even if the PCs are armed with bazookas.

... and the PCs will arm themselves with bazookas

Taroticum Unbound takes some liberties with this plot twist, by ruling that the PCs are still under Barkley's control, despite being reincarnated. It is the PCs who must abduct Mary and bring her to Barkley; it is the PCs (along with Leonore Carver the necromancer) who cut the foetus from her body and present it to Barkley. Only when they come back into contact with the Taroticum is his control over them broken.

This gives the PCs existential horror: they must secure their own free will, before they can start getting concerned about the Child of Magick. They also have a powerfully personal reason to hate and fear Barkley.

Christmas, 1994 [continued]

Desperate for help, the PCs seek out Rupert Faraday. They recall him from their previous lives as prison guards, when he visited Sandburn Gaol and Barkley had a prisoner flogged for his entertainment; they recognised his photograph in Barkley's old office and know his name. Finally, Tabitha Kreel's notes show him alive and un-aged a century later, living as a high society philanthropist with a townhouse in Mayfair.

Faraday is a 'nosferatu' (Kult's term for vampires generally, not necessarily the bald, blue, sewer-dwelling sort). He greets the PCs with languid charm, expresses concern that Barkley has returned, advises them to give Barkley whatever he demands of them, but takes a more acute interest when they reveal they possess the Taroticum.

Faraday explains that, for the Child of Magick to be born, the foetus must be given a soul - not a tired old soul, reincarnated from many previous lifetimes, but a brand new soul. Such a soul can be created out of Achlys, 'the abyss that was before Chaos,' but he does not know how to reach Achlys. He recognises Mary's references to the "fools on the Isle of Dogs" as the 'Court of Fools' which is somewhere in London's Docklands. He advises that, if the PCs go among the fools, they wear a third eye painted on their foreheads.

Faraday predicts that Barkley will send his agent Leonore Carver to seize the cards and advises the PCs to parley with her: she is not as loyal to Barkley as she appears.

The PCs go to Hyde Park to await the arrival of Leonore Carver. She arrives with two dark-suited gentlemen that the PCs recognise with dread as Razides. They offer to parley with Carver and, as a show of goodwill, she demands the card that depicts her, XVIII. TOGARINI. She then shows the PCs how to blood-bind themselves to their own cards. Once bound to a card, they are immune to further control from Barkley and can remove the card from the deck.

Carver demands they hand over the (now incomplete) Taroticum to her. She intends to present it to Barkley and blame the PCs for the missing cards. Nonetheless, this will afford the PCs time to seek the Child of Magick.

Christmas At The Court Of Fools

The Taroticum Unbound encounter tables generate some pleasing weirdness. Sir Phillip witnesses riot police brutally dealing with peaceful protesters but finds his government contacts utterly indifferent: he senses the influence of the Taroticum strengthening over London. Mike Batton looks into a Goth band called Subhuman Channel whose lyrics reference Achlys. In his work at the prison, he deals with prisoners who seem to be disappearing as they become 'forgotten.'

Sam Jones work as a paramedic, but his ambulance becomes lost as the London streets warp and change. HIs driver disappears and the ambulance is stranded in Metropolis; his dead patient reanimates and joins a hooded and masked procession that winds through the empty streets, ringing a rusty bell. When Sam returns to the streets of London, he is miles away from the hospital. Unable to account for the disappearance of his driver and patient, he is given time off to recover. The police will be in touch.

The PCs gather in the Docklands to search for the Court of Fools. They find camps of homeless people in the abandoned buildings. In one such camps, mysterious men handing out blankets and liquor have a sinister agenda: the blankets are infected and the liquor is poisoned. When one tramp dies, Sam Jones watches the dead man walk away, in search of the 'cemetery of tramps.' After his experience in the ambulance, he does not follow the dead man.

Following rumours, the PCs arrive at nightfall at the abandoned factory where the fools gather: a huge urban encampment of mad people. They are led to the King of Fools, who communicates only in inchoate screams.

A young boy translates: a woman called Waya can help them, she is a Madness Conjurer who knows 'the Way' but she has been captured by men in blue and his being held somewhere.

Madness on Christmas Eve

Sir Phillip's contacts reveal that there is a secret government policy to get homeless people and mentally ill rough sleepers off the streets. Those rounded up in the Isle of Dogs are being kept at a detention centre in a former school in Richmond, a leafy suburb in south west London.

The PCs arrive at Eddings School, pretending to be an official visit from the Ministry. They make contact with Waya, but Waya will not leave without the other thirty-or-so fools being detained in the classrooms. The PCs arrange for the detainees to pose for a crowd photograph with their Christmas dinners, then incite a riot. In the confusion, they overpower all the guards.

How to get thirty maniacs back to the Isle of Dogs on the last shopping day before Christmas? Mike Batton commandeers a London bus using the handgun he found at Sandburn. Sam takes the wheel. A chase follows, with police cars closing in.

Waya teaches Mike (who has some aptitude in the Lore of Madness now) how to part the Illusion and the bus drives straight into the Living City in Metropolis.

The PCs interact with the weird Bazaar in Metropolis. Mike purchases a Bible that belonged to a past life from the English Civil War, in exchange for a year of his own life. When demonic Erinyaes attack, Sam has to drive through the crowd. The Illusion seals behind them and the bus crashes in an abandoned car park in the Isle of Dogs. They have rescued Waya, her two dozen mad fools, and escaped.

What follows is the extended passage where Waya directs the PCs on a mystical journey to integrate their hundreds of past lives - which she then tattoos onto their flesh while they sleep. These tattoos will protect them when they travel beyond the Illusion and enable them to journey to the very edge of Achlys, where being is consumed by nothingness. But that is in the future.

For my group of gamers, it is 9.30pm, the end of a solid day of roleplaying in the world of Kult. For the PCs, they awaken, covered in magical tattoos but entirely naked, in an empty Docklands car park, in the small hours of Christmas morning. It starts to rain.

Reflections

Well, everyone had a great time. We will resume on the next day when we can all be free, hopefully early in May.

Taroticum has certainly shown the main features of Kult in a good light. I take these to be: a setting where ordinary reality can melt away at any moment and be replaced by a terrifying and perilous true reality, humans who are really monsters, madness as a tool for understanding reality and having power over it, Mental Balance getting more extreme the longer you play, and a sense of unremitting menace right from the very beginning.

The scenario also introduced a nice blend of detective work, exploration, incidents of action and violence, and occasion black humour (the final bus chase verged on knockabout comedy, but the supernatural danger kept everyone focused).

Some features need altering. I've already discussed the changes made with Barkley controlling the PCs and Leonore Carver as an unlikely ally. Carver is too good a NPC to waste on the story's final chapter. By bringing her in early, she can be a useful patron, instigator of disturbing quests, and source of information.

Likewise, Tabitha Kreel is a useful addition. If the PCs have to do too much of their own detective work, the pace slackens. The published scenario gives little thought to this. For example, after Barkley murders Mary and seizes the foetus and the cards, there is then a good week or fortnight delay until Rupert Faraday writes his expose in The Times. Once the PCs read this, they are supposed to seek Faraday out and receive his guidance. What are they supposed to be doing in the meantime?

In the original scenario, it's proposed that they go questing to retrieve the foetus, but, frankly, that's a big ask. The PCs have just had the asses handed to them by Barkley and witnessed Mary's murder; are they really going to go straight back to Sandburn? Hardly!

In my telling, the PCs knew to seek Faraday out straight away, because they had seen him at Sandburn Gaol in their previous life, found his photograph at the Old Gaol in 1994, and discovered who he was from Tabitha Kreel's notes. Approaching Faraday was at their own instigation: much needed autonomy in a scenario where passivity and helplessness are too common.

Speaking of which ...

The 'Way of Waya,' in which the mad sorcereress leads the PCs on a baffling journey into ... well, who can say? ... is an uninterrupted GM-driven narrative where the only role for players is to nod. I've added a few occasions for dice rolls, just to generate some mechanistic drama, but there's definitely too much of this in Taroticum. It's only a partial solution, but Taroticum Unbound leavens this material with opportunities for PCs to explore and instigate change. I wonder, is there a way of going further with this and radically reinterpreting the frequent 'dream voyage' sequences in the scenario?

Finally, I have a concern about roleplaying which is, to be fair, a common problem with horror RPGs. Kult invites players to create PCs with provocative and troubled back stories - especially, compared to, say, Call of Cthulhu, where you are just another dusty academic, gumshoe, or dilettante. My players certainly embraced the opportunity to create some very rich characters, with lots of potential for interpersonal, emotional, and psychological conflict.

However, Taroticum doesn't really offer opportunities for any of this to matter. Indeed, it rather assumes the PCs are rootless loners who can disappear for days on end, or devote themselves to spying on a mental hospital with a bunch of people they only just met. Once the action kicks in, the PCs are on the run or out of their minds. The promise of a personal horror experience goes unfulfilled.

But perhaps it doesn't have to. I have some ideas for how the story can develop in a way that draws in the PCs' relationships, past histories, and personal crises. Can't wait to see how that works out!

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