Forgotten Lore

by Sam Handley The envelope was neat, charcoal- coloured, and it arrived at the hotel’s front desk with black ink addressed to her name. Her legal name, the one she’d dreamt up and deed-polled especially for bank accounts and official papers. The one she kept quiet to avoid clashes between her semi-public persona and her vulnerable, human reality. Sacha took the delivery from the receptionist, clutching it close until she reached the security of her locked room and tore into its contents. Admit One Only (VIP Room)—- 15/05/2011, 20.00-22.00 The Circle Club. She knew the venue by rumour. Just off Deansgate, a private members’ club ...

By Travis Wilson “If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.” - Margaret Atwood Empty Spaces Canada, a nation with vast stretches of sub-arctic land stretching across the continent, contains cities of millions, with an international presence that takes in as much as it exports. Canada still contains the empty spaces and primordial forests of North America, but most people dwell in urban environs of tightly packed industry and technology. The Patchwork Canada is a nation bred from hundreds of years of continuous migration. It is a nation without identity, finding strength ...

By Michael Andryuk Introduction Vampire: the Masquerade is an industry changing roleplaying game first released by White Wolf Publishing in 1991. Central to its impact on the roleplaying industry was a focus on story gaming, creating a complex setting for players and storytellers to explore. In particular, Vampire: the Masquerade and the spin off games that followed included the idea that the World of Darkness, the game’s dark reflection of our own world, was on the brink of apocalypse. In Vampire: the Masquerade this was represented by Gehenna, an apocalyptic end time when Caine, the brother of Abel and progenitor of Vampire, would retu...

Editorial Welcome back to Forgotten Lore! Darker Days Radio’s very own World of Darkness ezine. Bringing you fan created content like short stories, essays, rules and more. It’s been a long time since the last issue, and for that we are sorry, as members of the Rogue Council have moved onto other projects and Darker Days Radio has been revamping itself, both visually with our new logo and look, a new host, and also with hosting all previous episodes of Darker Days Radio on our YouTube channel . Since the last issue, Chris has been running some other rpgs in order to allow his brain to refresh, ready for his next WoD chronicle, Mike has b...

The city was still in the summer breeze, hues of orange and violet filled the evening sky over head, jet contrails crisscrossing the heavens, carving through the nimbus clouds. The buildings of the city loomed overhead like dark brooding priests, tired from gasping in the carbon thick air of the streets. Their vermillion brick faces were stained by the years of smog and acerb rain. Windows, dusty filters to the world, dragonfly arrays of lenses held in place by peeling acrylic, looked down and dour. In this twilight of greenhouse chemicals and ammonia-clouded skies, Ryan marched home. His noir polymer boots stomping on cracked and crushed...

By The King’s Raven and LOOK Hedge Witch On her way to an unhappy betrothal a young woman shares a crust of bread with a disfigured beggar woman. The beggar promises to repay her kindness with tutelage in the woman's arts: Home-making, childbearing, cooking, witchcraft. A valiant knight spends three days locked in battle with a terrible dragon. Finally on the eve of defeat the dragon offers its greatest treasure in exchange for its life. Following cryptic hints a scholar calls up the devil at the crossroads, and sells his soul for power. The magic of Faerie isn't unique to the grey neighbours, the most powerful faeries can grant ...

By Travis Wilson The following are examples of hunters alive today. Some are famous in their own right among Kindred. Others are new to the Hunt. These represent four rewrites of the six example hunters featured in the original The Hunters Hunted. They have been updated to make them V20 compatible as well as altered to better fit the gameline as it exists today. The other two hunters listed aren't actually human: Kanglor, a vengeful Lupine intent on slaying the Kindred who killed his mate, and Walker Grimes, a Nosferatu looking to end the Sire that cursed him with an eternity of disfigurement. It’s also worth noting that Arctos was c...

Editorial Welcome back to another issue of Forgotten Lore! It’s the New Year (OK, we’re a little late on that) and in the Darker Days Radio cave we have been furiously reading Mummy the Curse. So expect some content for that game in the near future. Meanwhile, in this issue Travis Wilson provides some updated backgrounds and stats for a collection of hunters that were briefly mentioned in the original ‘Hunters Hunted’ for Vampire the Masquerade. The King’s Raven and LOOK provide us with new rules for Hedge Witches and their sorcery – based upon the rules presented in ‘Blood Sorcery’ for Vampire the Requiem, but here applied to Changeling...

Background The Map of the Thousand Roads of Xibalba is not a normal map, and takes the form of an ornately carved jade mask. The map is partly on the mask, and partly seen while wearing the mask. The carvings of the mask are said to depict a number of things. For some it is a map of the night sky, and of the Milky Way and the constellations that represent the celestial beings of the tales of the Maya. The carvings also appear more like tendrils of a tree, and so is representative of the tree of life. But the carvings could also represent the corridors and passages ways of the underworld, Xibalba, the ‘place of fear’. Of course the term X...

The legacy of Irem, the Nameless Empire, lingers in the culture of the Ancient Egyptians, and other similar funerary cultures. These memories and ancient magics live on in the artifacts and tomes across the world. Geist: the Sin-Eaters: Ceremony The Amduat (*****) Amduat literally means ‘That Which is in the Afterworld’. This legendary Ancient Egyptian text was reserved for the walls of the tombs of Pharaohs. The Amduat tells the story of Ra’s journey through the Underworld in the hours between sunset and dawn. Pharaohs, it was believed, would take the same journey, becoming immortal and one with the gods. The Amduat aided a Pharaoh in th...