On the Night at the Opera discord server, the album cover for the Dukes of Al-Hazred from the band the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets was posted.
As a result of this discussion, I had two thoughts.
I was imagining a heist/racing game, where tricking out your Eldrich car is a thing and you have to decide how much Space Mead you mix in with your ethanol, gasoline, rocket fuel and blood so you can go on a Mythos road trip.
Then I thought of the wargame Gaslands Refuelled by Mike Hutchinson in a Mythos crossover, using the Gaslands rules but with every servitor race of the Mythos specialized with a different vehicle in a racing/demolition derby.
The following faction splats are a result of that unspeakable rumination:
Mi-go – In slick black Lexus RX Hybrids, LX SUVs and police cruisers the Mi-go let their Grey drones pilot the wheel while they hang out in the back seat trying to frost their competitors with Mist Projectors that spew freezing air into their opposing racer’s way. Throwing Mi-go brain cases at an opponent is considered a rude, but acceptable last resort!
Dark Young – Cultists of the Black Goat and Her progeny hit the tract with stripped down moonshine racers with NASCAR symbols. Tommy guns and banjos are considered a must.
Shan – Thanks to their PICESE contacts, well dressed Shan piloted humans drive equally immaculate Aston Martins and blast Goldfinger and other vintage 007 tracks as they swerve and cut across the raceway. Just don’t ask whom those bloodstains belong to in the back seat!
Ghouls – They rock PT Cruisers because they sort of look like hearses. They get the choice to stock extra bodies in the back for roadtrip snacks or to feed into the corpse-eating engine to fuel it. Opening the windows so they can put their head out the window and let their tongue loll in the wind is mandatory.
Nightgaunts – Since they are servitors of Nodens, they pilot amphibious cars such as the Gibbs Aquada, clearly a vehicle that only came about through vivid and deep dreaming. These are always convertibles so the Nightgaunts can stretch their wings and catch the breeze with their black, rubbery, faceless heads.
Innsmouthers; Deep One Hybrids/Deep Ones – Built Ford tough, March’s Fisheries has an exclusively American motorpool of delivery trucks. Powered by the F-150, March’s trucks can carry a whole family of Esoteric Order of Dagon worshipers, plus granddad in the aquarium. Armed with shotguns, clubs and Molotov cocktails made from Zadok Allen’s Best (locally brewed), Innsmouthers provide a formidable opponent on the road to victory.
Elder Things- Competing in Teslas powered by the Shoggoth Engine (TM), Elder Things have to manage their electricity as their electric-Shoggoth prods are their only way to speed up…or slow down! Running out of power may make the Shoggoth keep accelerating to ludicrous speed or rebel and envelop the racer for a quick snack. Elder Things can recharge their prods at EV stations all over the USA.
Yithians – Modified Jalopies. Similar in style to Yithian lightning guns and temporal communicators, this vehicle looks like junk combined with strange lenses, bits of metal and wire and a central crystal that protrudes through the shaker hood of the car, that glows like a disco ball. Since the racers are possessed by the Great Race, they take more risks than the human (or quasi-human) competition!
Apart from factions I was thinking there could be a “build your own Mythos car” minigame where you trick out your car with occult and squamous artifacts. Just imagine the possibilities.
Examples include: Shining Trapezohedrons hanging like dice in the mirror. A gilt Haunter of the Dark as a hood ornament giving extra speed if you are in pitch darkness. Elder Sign spinners. Whistles that say Ia Ia or attract Flying Polyps.
Maybe it’s drag racing down the Plateau of Leng. Or drifting down the streets of Carcosa. It’s always exciting at Top Mythos!
I ran something kind of like this as a PBEM a while ago - you might like the vehicle designs/might enjoy the setup: https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/carcosa-wacky-races-signup/
ReplyDeletehttps://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/carcosa-wacky-races-all-the-rules-you-need-to-know/
Hi Richard. Thanks for the comment. One of the things I like in your posts is the What makes it go? table of your Carcosa Wacky Races. I also have ideas for mechanically distinct “engines” that power each of the Mythos faction’s vehicles. Although I mentioned the Mi-go may throw brain cases at an opponent (I was channeling Mario Kart and the idea of throwing shells at an adversary), I think the Mi-go vehicle would be better served with a brain case engine and have some sort of unique mechanism to manage that.
DeleteWith the Elder Things faction, I am toying with the idea that you have a maximum amount of fuel (electricity) but the Shoggoth Engine (TM) can only be made to accelerate or decelerate, depending on if the driver spends electricity to power their Shoggoth prods. In contrast, with the Ghoul faction, there could be a hunger meter for the ghouls in the vehicle and the engine itself. You would have a finite amount of space for corpses in the back, and once one of the two hunger bars gets critical, the ghouls have to make a “pit stop” to refill on corpses from your local graveyard or something. If the driver ghouls’ hunger bar becomes critical, you could push them to continue, but take penalties on attacks (throwing skulls) or something like that.
Speaking of ghouls, I was thinking of a DeMonte clan faction with old cars (more mechanical say 70’s and previous) out of Louisiana with the benefit of a cult of ghoul mechanics. This of course is directly inspired by Delta Green lore.
I like your take on a Mad Max-like world based on the vehicles you described as rides for the Wacky Races, Richard. To me it feels like a gonzo mix between the Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG), Dark Sun and the Mythos. I also hope readers of this post take a look at your Carcosa Wacky Races rules. They are certainly inspiring.
I have occasionally run a gelatinous cubes and shoggoths game, where both are servitors of the Elder Things and the PCs (cubes) have the job of cleaning up the base during a human raid.
DeleteBut I don't tell them they're gelatinous cubes up front, I just start with "your alarm goes off and it's a mess around here."
The reason I mention this is, both cubes and shoggoths have the same movement rules - every round they can adjust their movement rate by 5mph/walking speed, or leave it. If they keep going in a straight line they can go very fast indeed (I've never set an upper limit, just let the map take care of it) but then they take a long spacetime to turn or slow down. If they ram into something solid, they generally are just shocked for speed/10mph rounds, but may take damage. Turning is just handled as a vector on top of whatever they were already doing, so e.g. 60 forwards, 5 right.
(this vector-based speed idea is, I guess, stolen from classic Traveller ship combat, but I didn't realize that for decades)
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