Kult Gaia.pdf

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gaia

by Jason Thompson

The Abyss presents Gaia: by Jason Thompson. This electronic version of Gaia may be used provided you charge no

fee and do not alter its contents or layout. If you wish to distribute this in a webpage or copies in any other format

please contact Jason Thompson for written permission.

The following material developed for the contemporary horror roleplaying game, Kult (Target Games), are created

by Jason Thompson and made available in this format by The Abyss, and are not authorized or endorsed in any

way by Target Games or any other publisher of Kult. Neither Target Games or any other publisher of Kult is in

All images and design © Jason Just. Images may be used provided no fee is charged and or modified or removed

from this format.

Contact just.faction@clear.net.nz

Reccommended for Mature audiences.

www.kult-rpg.org

Jason Thompson

Gaia

Author: Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson likes pre-'90s horror movies, Japanese and underground

comics, and obscure fantasy and science fiction. He is a self-publisher

("http://www.sonic.net/~jason/"), and had drawn a comic book adaptation of

H.P. Lovecraft's THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. He has at various times

worked as a video game magazine writer, comic editor, and freelance artist.

As of 1999, he is typing up THE NEST, a KULT game set in Kosovo and

influenced by Heironymus Bosch, and CLOSE TO HOME, a 1930s CALL OF CTHULHU

adventure where horror writers get caught up in an improbably bloody plot

out of an Italian _giallo_. He is currently working on a comic about

zombies.

Design/Layout/Graphics: Jason Just

www.geocities.com/~baalreshef/

A Publication from The Abyss

Made for the Kult Roleplaying Game

For Mature Readers

"The Abyss is a not-for-profit worldwide corporation whose aim is to

encourage a new publishing company to buy the rights to the Kult role-playing

game and bring it back into print. We run an extensive outreach campaign to

attract new gamers, and we produce high-quality new material and distribute

it for free on the Internet in order to keep gamers interested."

~ www.kult-rpg.org ~

Jason Thompson

Gaia

KULT places most of its scenarios in cities, but in LEGIONS OF DARKNESS an alternative appears; Gaia, the

unexplored wilderness, the green and unpleasant land. Although some may find it a compromise of the unforgivingly

artificial horrors of Metropolis, Gaia shows another sort of dark universe. In Metropolis, the corruption is a result of

urban decadence, of the dark side of knowledge and civilization. In Gaia, Nature turns out to be just as pessimistic, and

eat-or-be-eaten is the rule. Identity is lost; time has no meaning; and gates open up to it in places far from the city,

places where veteran KULT players expect to be safe (just _let_ them move to the country!). The converse to urban

horror -- gangs and brutality, mechanical monsters and the indifference of strangers -- is pastoral horror -- degenerate

backwoods people and brutality, animal terrors and the isolation of being miles from where anyone can hear you

scream. What could be a better change of pace?

Sources drawn on for this brief article include Italian jungle cannibal movies; Robert Holstock's MYTHAGO WOOD;

assorted fairy tales; Harry Harrison's DEATHWORLD; Pliny's INVENTORUM NATURAE; and many other books

and films. When in doubt, for Gaia the best source material is real books on nature, such as those published by

National Geographic and Eyewitness Books. Short horror stories should provide many ideas as well.

Whether it is spoken of and never visited, whether it becomes central, or whether it is merely the setting for fast-paced

races against time in a deadly environment, Gaia -- the rival and mirror image of Metropolis -- can be a useful part of a

KULT campaign.

Summarizing Legions of Darkness…

Gaia was once our Garden of Eden, but like Metropolis, is now a forbidding and overpowering place to us. Gates to

Gaia open in the unpeopled parts of the world; not only in forests and grasslands, but deserts (such as the Sahara),

mountains (such as the Himalayas), and in the uncharted oceans (such as around the Bermuda Triangle, leading to an

area of Gaia known as the Ancient Sea). In Gaia, nothing is certain except change: landscapes alter and change

constantly, the very ground is alive, and everything fights, breeds, and eats. A billion kinds of crossbreeds and monsters,

of which the beasts of the Illusion are timid descendants, sport and ruthlessly hunt. The civilized pretensions of

Metropolis, indeed of any will or intelligence which thinks it can control Nature, break down just as steel and plastic do

in the influence of Gaia. Nature as we know it in the Illusion exists only through the efforts of Malkuth -- efforts she

has recently abandoned -- to make it seem rational and controllable.

When brought to Gaia, the human mind and body are overwhelmed by wildness. Our memories our lost in weeks or

months, followed by the shapes we think of as our evolutionary peak, or as the Human Form Divine. De-evolving and

degenerating, in a variable amount of time we return to our basic protoplasm, which then struggles back to human

form, encapsulating the Circle of Life. The physical effect takes years; but as a basic rule of thumb, for every week in

Gaia, one point of EDU is permanently lost.

Gaia In Human History

The original Illusion -- the world we live in, thinking it to be real -- was modelled after Gaia. The Demiurge knew that

Metropolis would remind us too much of our mighty origins, and wanted to forbid us ever from constructing cities. But

the Demiurge knew also that the true Gaia would be too inhospitable to our pitiable new forms, and worse still, might

itself cause us to Awaken.

Thus Malkuth was conscripted to embody Nature. 'Nature' as humans think of it is a mental construct, an idea of

~1~

Jason Thompson

Gaia

harmony and peace, which has little in common with the true Gaia. Chesed, the Archon of satisfaction and bounty

worked with Malkuth to create an appealing face for Nature — the myths of the Garden of Eden, the Happy Hunting

Grounds. When the lictor Rousseau spoke of the Noble Savage in the 18th century, he was describing Malkuth's

version of Nature. By putting this face on Nature, humans could be tempted away from Metropolis. With

preconceptions of orderly farmlands and 'natural' human dominion over 'lesser' animals, humans were unable to see

the true Gaia before them. However, cities were built anyway; though the first few were destroyed and those who

looked back on them turned to salt, humans continued to inch towards the model city they had known.

~2~

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