[After Sundown] Origin Story in Vichy France

[Avoraciopoctules]

Some of my players have asked me to run a game of After Sundown starting in german-occupied Paris. Though they started with the idea of having some PCs be nazi-collaborator police and others being terrorists working for the Resistance, debate has ended with a resolution that the PCs will be people more capable of working together.

What are some good reference texts for this time period? I'm going to want to do more research than just watching a Let's Play of The Saboteur.

Is any interesting supernatural phenomena going on in the area then? Anything I could spin into an eldritch plot or something? I'm still looking for scenario ideas.

[erik]

Indiana Jones offers eldritch WWII plot inspiration.

I don't know if WW II should be taken as humanity running amok and the supernaturals going "Oh shit, what the fuck is happening?!" or if supernaturals should be having a larger, controlling role. I tend to prefer putting the ball in humanity's court.

Various boats and u-boats are being sunk in the oceans. Leviathan cities could be involved. Humanity is researching shit like atomic bombs, chemical weapons, and creating firestorms where there were once heavily populated cities. It would not be unlikely that various other worlds are being stirred up in a frenzy and also that supernatural weapons are being sought or devised.

[Prak]

Hellboy uses this a lot too (because Mike Mignola's loves are "Monsters," Chiaroscuro, and "Characters beating the shit out of nazis").

Other than that, there's the whole Nazi Occultism thing, with legends of Hitler searching for the Spear of Destiny, the Thule Society, this and this should be helpful. There's also the big fuck all occult sun symbol in the center of Wewelsburg castle which was used as an SS base of operations.

Beyond that, Germany should be full of Dark Reflection and Gloom bleeds and portals just due to the Holocaust, and portals to Maya could be seeded around the world, perhaps in areas of highly focused weapons research.

Finally, I personally still like my idea that Hitler gets pulled through a rip between the mortal realm and the Dark Reflection created by the bombing of Berlin. This may mean that Hitler is actually a decoy towards the end, a similar faced soldier who was put in place to not show weakness to the world, while Himmler assumed more direct control.

[Blade]

If you read French the graphic novel "La Brigade Chimérique" might be an excellent inspiration.

It explains why and how the European superheroes disappeared just before WW2 and it has many good ideas of paranormal phenonmenons that would fit right into such a campaign.

[Username17]

Early twentieth century French occultism is weird stuff. You could bust out with Waking Sleep. Or you could browse wikipedia for French Occultists.

I'm fond of the University of High Studies in Paris, which was founded by the Durville family of sorcerers who specialized in Magnetism. Seriously.

Edit: This is one of their medals:



You get that for being a part of the Eudiaque Order. Which in turn teaches you secrets of hypnosis and animal magnetism. It's crazy all the way down.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

I don't know if WW II should be taken as humanity running amok and the supernaturals going "Oh shit, what the fuck is happening?!" or if supernaturals should be having a larger, controlling role. I tend to prefer putting the ball in humanity's court.

I'd have the humans largely running the show and setting the agenda but would also have groups like the Black Hand actively preventing assassinations on the grounds that this about as close to optimum strife as you can get.

[name_here]

WWII was also where Gremlins and Foo Fighters came from, but both of those were mostly US air force things, not French.

[Prak]

If I recall correctly, gremlins are actual Russian urban legend, or popped up there too, at least. They could easily be mirror goblins sabotaging planes to transport pilots to The dark reflections through portals formed by the inevitable fiery crashes.

[Username17]

You are probably thinking of the Warner Brother's Cartoon "Gremlins From the Kremlin", about Russian Gremlins breaking Nazi equipment. Still, totally usable. Gremlins appear to be a British thing from the colonial air forces in the 1920s. But during WWII they became widely known and thought about. To the point that Warner Brothers made a children's cartoon about Russian Gremlins.



-Username17

[Prak]

It's also possible that my occasionally shitty memory somehow turned "RAF" into "Russia"...

[sabs]

Paris is in Occupied France. This is REALLY different from Vichy France in innumerable ways. The Germans don't even pretend, and they have to deal with La Resistance all the time. German soldiers who walk alone in the streets often end up found dead. Which then causes the Germans to retaliate against the population.

Occult wise, French Mysticism from the 1920's and 30's is as Frank said, all sorts of batshit.

It's always better for WWII to not belittle it by having it all being supernatural's fault. I always feel it's better if it's all humanity driven, and the supernaturals are all like, "WTF" You've got Pro-Nazi werewolves and Vampires relishing in the blood shed. You have French Werewolves in the resistance. American Warlocks joining the Fight.

If you want to avoid the whole, "Saboteur" thing, and depending on the type of supernaturals your players want to play. They could be trying to save occult/supernatural caches of information and art from the Nazis. The nazi's are looting everything in sight, and shipping it back. It's actually quite the nightmare. They are searching for Occult answers to winning the war. A Chalice that creates super soldiers makes a good mcguffin.

[Chamomile]

The Nazis make for a surprisingly good common enemy if Hitler and company are all non-supernatural, because Hitler was way interested in the occult. If there's no supernatural secretly pulling the Third Reich's strings from the shadows (and I agree there shouldn't be, setting up all the worst of humanity's deprivations as being the result of a secret conspiracy of monsters is a weird message to send), it means that Hitler is actively seeking to dismantle the Masquerade for political gain. I really doubt that any major faction is going to be on board with that.

[Nath]

Though they started with the idea of having some PCs be nazi-collaborator police and others being terrorists working for the Resistance, debate has ended with a resolution that the PCs will be people more capable of working together.

If you really want intra team conflict, the reality was much more complicated (it always is) than "Allies versus Nazis".

The Vichy Regime actually maintained an intelligence service, originally called the Bureau des Menées Antinationales (BMA). It was operating inside the "Zone Libre" in southern France, and hunted both the resistants, communists and the likes who were opposed to Vichy, sometimes handing them to the German, and German spies. It also ran a clandestine network inside the Occupied Zone to spy on German forces, "just in case" (as any good intelligence service would do) the government should decide to break the armistice and restart the war. They even transmitted information to their British counterparts (though Churchill quickly recognized De Gaulle as the leader of the Free French Forces, it seems MI-6 preferred for some time to work with a service it knew and with whom it had a long-established relationship, than with a bunch of amateurs led by a rogue general in exile). The German required the French to shut down the BMA in August 1942. They head of BMA immediately switched to another cover, the Service de Securité Militaire. However, the British intelligence warned them the German were about to invade the Zone Libre, allowing the head of French intelligence to leave for Algiers in November 1942, where it fully embraced the Allied side, until it was merged with the Gaullist services in October 1943.

Another grey area is the French communist party, who obeyed Moscow orders to not oppose the German occupation as long as the Nazi-Soviet pact was in effect. They only started taking on the German after 1941.

The Resistance also had its share of anti-semitic nationalists, who were strongly opposed to the German occupation because, as nationalists, they couldn't not bear the presence of foreign anti-semitic nationalists.

So really, depending on the period, "resistants" could be at each other throat, and people from Vichy and London can cooperate.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Gurdjieff suffered a second car accident in 1948, but again made an unexpected recovery.

"I was looking at a dying man. Even this is not enough to express it. It was a dead man, a corpse, that came out of the car; and yet it walked. I was shivering like someone who sees a ghost.” With iron-like tenacity Gurdjieff managed to gain his room, where he sat down and said: “Now all organs are destroyed. Must make new.” Then he turned to Bennett, smiling: “Tonight you come dinner. I must make body work.” As he spoke a great spasm of pain shook his body and blood gushed from an ear. Bennett thought: “He has a cerebral haemorrhage. He will kill himself if he continues to force his body to move.” But then he reflected: “He has to do all this. If he allows his body to stop moving, he will die. He has power over his body.”

Wow. Yeah, it's pretty amazing just how much of this can be used as-is.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Okay, I've done some perfunctory research and thought about people's feedback. Here's a few ideas.

1. The Arc de Triomphe is haunted. After a particularly gruesome massacre of civilians that happened when a saboteur from the Resistance tried disappearing into foot traffic, people who go near the monument at night tend to disappear. Entire patrols of nazis have vanished, and it's got the rank-and-file spooked enough to stay away. The Resistance is interested in figuring out what's up, so they can know if the incidents are caused by another organization they can ally with and if it would be viable to build a safehouse.

2. Gremlins hijacked a British plane bearing supply drops meant for rebels out in the countryside. When people move in to rescue survivors and salvage supplies at the crash site, the fairies react viciously to this interference with their victims.

3. A cabal of French necromancers view the occupation as an opportunity to easily obtain bodies for their experiments and personal armies. There's nothing personal. But that changes when an ill-fated bombing aimed at some officers dining in a parisian cafe ends up killing one of their number. Suddenly the resistance cell has attracted a vendetta from unknown supernaturals whose murderous plots grow less subtle at every setback.

4. George Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man is, as always, hungry for more money. Recently, certain of their number have stumbled upon a copy of The King In Yellow. Several are now dead or in padded cells, but the survivors are using the book's magic to manipulate people into making large "donations" or join the cult outright.

5. Nazi occultists are paying George Gurdjieff to provide them with his magnetized-radium-water super serum. To test it, they kidnap people off the street. The few survivors must use their powers to escape and find out just what their "second awakening" means. Does even Gurdjieff understand what he has done to them?

6. After a near-fatal mauling by a mysterious white tiger, the head of an ultranationalist resistance cell has recovered with unnatural speed. Now he/she is driven by uncontrollable rage, and even lashes out at people in other cells for being "cowardly", "traitorous", or Jewish.

For each of these, something will threaten a masquerade breach. The involvement of the PCs will draw them into the larger supernatural world.

[Avoraciopoctules]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manouchian_Group

One player specifically wants to be part of this group, which could certainly aid plots involving internecine conflict within the Resistance.