The Somerset Files: Eldritch Horror in the English Countryside

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Chip The 3rd

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The English countryside and its rural towns are often seen as quiet and quaint. This is not always the case, however, as people in these towns are prone to joining evil cults, devoted to the Elder Gods, ferocious monsters from beyond the sun whose mere appearance blasts at the minds of men. Characters will learn horrifying truths, the likes of which will gnaw at their minds and hearts, driving them to madness... If they don't die in the process.

The premise is simple, to start. People are vanishing, and a group of wannabe investigators decide to investigate. However, things are not always as easy as they appear...

CHARACTER SHEET:
NAME: (Self Explanatory)
AGE: (Also self explanatory)
BIOGRAPHY: (What makes you into you?)
SKILLS: (What do you contribute?)

[RULES]

Yes, the part everyone dislikes... First off, please do not create an "Old Man Henderson" style action hero who survives everything. This kind of character is banned from appearing. Secondly, this is a slow RP. Don't quit just because people aren't immediately eaten by tentacle-beasts from Mars minutes into the RP. Third, even if it does immediately solve the encounter, please don't play John McRamboSuperMan with his magic infinite-ammo rocket launcher machine gun. This isn't that kind of RP. Thank you all for listening...
 
I absolutely love the stores of Lovecraft, so I would love to join.
Name: Howard Bernardson

Age: 29

Bio: His wife recently left him due to his overwhelming fascination with the arcana of the other realms and after the initial shock of the divorce, he dedicated more of his life to his research.

Skills: He knows more than he probably should about the forces at work in the other realms of existence, and is quite familiar with the work of the Mad Arab Alhazred.

(If any of this doesn't comply with what you want for the RP, I will gladly change it)

Edit: fixed to comply.
 
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Well, already-insane PCs clashes with what I had in mind. Apart from that, is good.
 
Quick question: What are the age groups? I'd like to reserve a spot and possibly recycle an old character I had from a previous Lovecraftian RP.
 
Any age is fine, except for single-digits. We're not putting kids in mortal peril, or we'll be rated NC-17!
 
I enjoy Lovecraft's works, so I might get involved with this. I'll probably recycle a character from a Call of Cthulhu adventure my group did recently, or something. A librarian should be way more effective in this type of story than someone good with a gun, anyway.
 
NAME: Erin Blackwood
AGE: 28
BIOGRAPHY: Erin is a librarian at the local university and a dabbler in the occult. Although she is a fairly attractive woman, she is still single and her romantic endeavors never seem to last very long. She has gotten involved with the recent disappearances when a friend and fellow dabbler was listed among those who had gone missing.

SKILLS: Erin is a librarian and is great at finding her way around libraries, sifting through references and documents old and new, and otherwise finding useful information, if it's in print. She is something of an occult hobbyist and dabbles in the more common forms, but is largely ignorant of the Mythos or anything connected to it.

I'm not sure how detailed you want things, but I can try and add onto them as needed.
 
That should be okay. One more person, then my character and then we can start, I think.
 
So do you have to know about the Lovecraft show/game/book to play? If not, I'd love to join!
 
Name: 'Archie' Augustine Agstrom II.
​
Age: 17.

Occupation/Skill: Future Cartographer In Training-- but an inventor on the side.

Physical Description: Slender, at best. Tight hipbones and a skinny frame work-- if you hugged him, you'd hug a skeleton. He stands a tall 6'5", with no meat on his bones--he weighs in at a small 110 pounds. He wouldn't know what physical labor was unless it hit him on the side of the head. He's always been healthy, despite his weight. His father is a doctor, of course. Archie's only muscle mass comes from holding a pencil. He spends most of his time alone, in his father's study, which is why he's so sickly pale. He has mossy green eyes, often adorned with bags underneath.

Greatest Fear: Hodophobia-- fear of traveling, and that doesn't just mean by a car. Oh no, he fears traveling by land, by sea, or by flight. He can't remember the last time he's left his house, let alone his workplace in the basement. But what he finds odd is that he fears traveling in his dreams, aswell. He stays up days on end, only to crash in the worst possible way. When he wakes up, he checks himself and panics. Horribly. He can barely leave to go to the restroom upstairs, and when he does, he tries to hold back the nervousness.

History: He was born in Roma, to a humble doctor and his lovely history-buff for a wife. Archie was named after his father, which makes him the second person in his family to be named Archibald. He lived inside the city for six years of his life, and it was the best six years he could have every asked for. With the convenience store right around the corner, and the school precisely placed near the park, it was heaven on earth for a six year old. A history teacher for a mother, and a doctor for a father, Archie lived the good life. Well, he did.

On his seventh birthday, his parents announced that they were moving. To where, he asked. They were to move from the city to the outskirts of some foreign village, but as much as Archie didn't quite care for the idea, he had to agree with it. As soon as he arrived, a series of events occurred to make him a complete hermit. He didn't like to dwell on the events, but they are the reasons why he hadn't left his room in almost ten years.
 
((I know you said no Old Man Henderson, but I figured the team would need a little muscle for variety. Here's a middle aged, out of shape soldier with chronic muscle pain. Hope he's okay.))

NAME: Sergeant Major (Ret.) James Newton
AGE: 38
BIOGRAPHY: James "Jimmy" Newton comes from West Yorkshire, where he was the son of a local builder and a hairdresser. He didn't have a great family background and didn't do that well in school, but the army did the boy right. After an adolescence of petty misdemeanors, the discipline it provided him gave him a new purpose. He got skills, structure. A trade. One he was good at, too.

He served in the trenches of France almost from day one of the war and up until the pull-out began. Over several battles, James began to see that things weren't right. He was at Ypres when the Germans deployed chlorine gas and he saw the shapes moving in the choking green mist - it wasn't poison that killed men in that fog, but the things inside the fog. Then at the Battle of Paschendale, he received an injury that knocked him cold and the hospital doctors tell him was shrapnel from an artillery shell.

James isn't entirely sure what happens to him, but he knows it wasn't shrapnel. Shrapnel doesn't carve runes.

He was shipped back to the UK in 1918 and has tried to adjust to life outside the military, find a trade. Variously he's been a bricklayer, a gentleman's driver, a dockhand, even a brief stint doing security for the Peaky Blinders up in Birmingham. He's been working as a bartender at a pub lately, but it's probably not going to keep. He's okay for money with his pension but he gets the feeling he was promoted so that he'd get a nicer pension - so that he wouldn't talk about what happened to him in Paschendale.

Then people started vanishing and his shrapnel scars started itching more often. And he knew that whatever was going on was connected to what happened to him in Paschendale, or the things in the chlorine.

SKILLS:
James is a retired soldier, discharged for medical reasons. He's also pushing forty and this combined with his chronic pain means he's not quite as athletic or powerfully strong as he used to be. But he's a big man and the scars across his face make him pretty hard-looking. Still a pretty good shot though and he managed to keep a hold of his service Webley.
He also acts as a kind of 'proximity alarm' for Mythos phenomena - his scars become painful and inflamed when in proximity. He doesn't know much about the Mythos itself, just when things are going "wrong" in the vicinity.
 
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Wait wait wait, what time period is this in!?
 
In the absence of any specified time period, I assumed modern-day. It can change if he wants it to be something more period.
 
Oh, I sure do hope it's in the Lovecraftian time period...
 
All accepted, originally my idea was going to be something from one of the sourcebooks I have.

Oh, and the time period is 1920s.
 
CHARACTER SHEET:
NAME: Miles Etharius Lorne
AGE: 21
BIOGRAPHY: Miles was born into a rich but, old family, his mother and father forty and forty one respectively at the time of his birth. Against all odds the previously lonely entrepreneur had finally managed to gain a child, and amazingly so, a boy! He was over the moon, naturally, gently dancing with his son in the ward as a heart monitor went silent. His steps moving to the long, drawn out tone. He cared little for his 'wife' to be, but his son, his prodigy, his only future. That was what would hold more worth in the world than...most, of his collections.

You see, returning to the house with a far more young life in his arms and the money to feed the child far more than his decrepit mother could have ever provided, the inside revealed the man to be some sort of collector, perhaps an artificer. He owned many businesses and many rising, the man formed industries with a wave of his finger as his hand caressed the smooth glow of a newly bought relic.

And his newest addition, his son, named Miles Etharius after the man's father, as was the tradition in the Lorne household. The young boy grew to know wealth, to get everything he wanted and needed and unknowing to the troubles of those in the streets. He was raised within the house with a private tutor and only seeing the other people walking to and from places with his father. He simply thought they were like them, his father calling the less well dressed or kept simply actors, comedians or modern artists.

Soon the boy found pleasure in the relics just as his father did, but took a far greater interest to those of an eldritch nature. Soon finding himself engulfed in these dusty books, swirling artefacts and seemingly useless tools. He wanted to know how they worked, and in his free time, he spent it trying to work out how they did. Even when he was sent to university he found no comfort in socialising with the other students. No, he used his time to research and research, delving further and further into what others deemed unknowable. His father's untimely death effected him little, his mind knew no more than the use of these...things, death was all part of a cycle, and now, the money, the industries, the relics. All his.
SKILLS:
Miles' father was one to encourage the behaviour of always being prepared. His son now knows how to defend himself with small firearms, pistols mainly, but could easily figure out how to use other ones.
Knowledge: The boy's life long research into these arcane devices gave him a knack when it came to figuring out how to use them. Although knowing exactly what they did is nigh impossible, Miles might recognise some eldrich relics or soon be able to identify and perhaps even use them.
Miles is, well, he's rather apathetic when it comes to some things. Should a 'friend' of his die, it would effect him the least out of most, and should one need a quick death at the hand of their allies, Miles would most likely be the best choice to do the deed, he's also more likely to throw his allies under a bus should it serve him well enough.
Puzzlesolving is a speciality in the boy's mind. Researching objects when little is known of them means you must construct solutions from what you know, and Miles has done that over and over again.
 
Edited James so that he fits in with the time period - he received his injuries and first exposure to the Mythos during the Great War.
 
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