'' At three o'clock on the afternoon of the second of March a powerful Earth Plexus begins to move across London from East to West. It crosses Greenwich at ten past three and earth tremors are felt for the first time in the old Royal Observatory's history. At four-twenty Tower Bridge jams, half open, as some ancient machinery seizes; it will take weeks to repair. Ten minutes later, strange apparitions are seen to cross the floor of the old Mithraic temple in the City, and the Central tube line suffers a complete power failure, stranding hundreds of people underground. At a quarter to five the effect reaches the British Museum and begins to fill the stases in the Hetherington Collection; at around five o'clock the Nephilim there are awakened. By five-twenty the Plexus is being felt in Hyde Park, where the Serpentine drops two feet, leaving huge swathes of mud along the banks and stranding a half dozen hire boats. By five-thirty the power of the Plexus is subsiding and electricity is restored to the tube line. People begin to make their way home from work, unaware of the newly-awakened Nephilim blinking in the light of their Ka-vision. ''
This article maps out a loose background for a Nephilim 'Initiation' set in and around Holborn in the city of London. The adventure begins with the awakening of the player Nephilim in the British Museum Hall of Antiquities, their stases having inadvertently been moved there from the security of a private collection. The Museum will be familiar to any who have incarnated in the last century and contains many relics of Egyptian and Babylonian cultures that date back to the great compromise. It's late in the day; foreign exchange students wander around, occasionally taking photographs. This will all be strange and confusing to the players until they ''simm'' what they're doing. Before allowing the innocents abroad in modern-day London, they are contacted by one of the very few Nephilim living in the city and passed information on where they might find sanctuary.
Of course, things are never this simple. Unknown to the established London Nephilim, the sanctuary offered by the Nephilim organisation called the 'Arcus Arcanum' has been attacked by the secret Knights of the Solar Temple, and the neophytes' contact has been kidnapped. Worse yet, their Stases have been sold to these same Knights after they targeted a smaller secret organisation, the Ambrosians, in their quest for greater power.
The situation revolves around the conflict between these three groups and how it affects the player Nephilim. The following is an account of the background to this conflict, looking in turn at each of the organisations.
The Arcus Arcanum is a British organisation made up of Nephilim from each of the Arcana. It puts Nephilim in touch with each other through an extended network of contacts which includes some human pawns. In London it's fronted by CORWIN, an Air Nephilim who has taken the role of ''Father Edwin'', an unconventional priest who runs the High Holborn Spiritualist Chapel.
The way the Chapel usually operates is that Nephilim (who notice the Enochian inscriptions worked into the chapel's decorations) will join the small, human congregation for a service or a meeting (spiritualist meetings can include such wonders as voices from the beyond, mediums, channelling of angels and dolphins, and other mumbo-jumbo). During the meeting Father Edwin will make Enochian contact with the Nephilim, who he then invites to stay behind when the service has wound down. Father Edwin employs an aging human church warden, John Goodbody, to maintain the chapel and grounds.
Unfortunately for the newly awakened player Nephilim, Father Edwin has recently disappeared, taking a suitcase of clothes and the Chapel funds with him. John Goodbody doesn't know where he's gone, but he is naturally reluctant to accuse such an obviously good man of theft.
The Ambrosians are an ancient British branch of the Carbonari who long ago settled into a complacent belief that unstoppable divine forces are at work which will bring the worlds of humans and Nephilim together in harmony. By the late Twentieth Century the order has all but died out. Now it exists only in the records kept by its last initiate, John Carter Hetherington, at his country house, Broxton Manor in Suffolk.
John Hetherington had spent much of his life using the last of the Ambrosians' resources to pay for the collection of artifacts from the ancient world. John would test these items for occult powers and catalogue them in the cyphers set out in the order's records. He had two sons, Cornelius and Richard Hetherington, but neglected to introduce either of them to his work as the last Ambrosian. Cornelius, the elder, led a bachelor life in West London, whereas Richard moved to New York with his son John.
Late in 1994, John Hetherington Sr. tripped on the main staircase in Broxton Manor and broke his neck. The disaster was compounded when his heir, Cornelius, was killed in a 'hit and run' incident on West Brompton Road the next Wednesday. When the solicitors tried to contact Richard Hetherington they found that he too was dead, the victim of a random mugging attempt. John Hetherington Jr. is finally found and forced to return from his job at a New York theatre to look after his recently acquired estate.
The Knights of the Solar Temple are a relatively recent offshoot of the Order of the Solar Temple. A small but growing group with powerful connections and resources, they believe their role is to defend human society and their initiates from the alien Nephilim whom they believe wish to steal their life energy, ie. their Solar-Ka. Prosecuting an extreme plan based on the belief that the best form of defence is attack, they have been responsible for attacking and using Nephilim in the very same way they believe they might themselves be used.
The Knight Commander of their British coterie keeps his identity a secret and is known to the Knights only as 'K'. He is, in fact, Sir James Templeman, director of the Thames Development Agency and the Sun Security firm. Through these covers, Sir James has recruited disaffected police to his security firm, and from there into the Coterie itself. As Commander, James Templeman has set a precedent for greed and acquisitiveness and under him the Knights will now consider any action to increase their power.
Among the Knights' other purchases (mainly weapons and other security equipment - again through Sun Security) has been an abandoned Napoleonic sea fort, which has recently replaced their central London office block as a centre of the Knights' operations. Communications to and from 'Fort Scarlet' (as it is now known) are maintained by cellular phone link and the use of a private helicopter from London City Airport.
Earlier in the year Sir James discovered records of an old British cult known as the Ambrosians. The cult was all but defunct, so Templeman launched a plan to acquire the artifacts held by the remaining Ambrosian, John Carter Hetherington, for the Knights of the Solar Temple.
First, he arranged for the three eldest Hetheringtons to be murdered. The nonagenarian John Hetherington Senior had 'an accidental fall' at Broxton Manor, his stately home in Suffolk. Then his son, Cornelius Hetherington, was run down 'by a drunk' in streets around Earl's Court, and a week later, Richard Hetherington, John's other son, was brutally stabbed on the streets of New York.
Facing financial ruin from three sets of death duties, John Hetherington Junior is forced to sell the contents of Broxton Manor, including Grandfather's collection of ancient artifacts, and Sir James Templeman (through ''Sun Investments'') is amongst those who make an early bid for the collection. However, before they are sold at Sotheby's, John Hetherington has arranged for the collection to be seen as a special exhibition at the British Museum.
The flyers and posters for the event have a picture of one of the player Nephilim's Stasis objects, and read:
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It was then that the Chief Warlock of the Knights discovered that in early 1995 an Earth Plexus would cross London. As soon as this news reached ''K'' he realised that the Stases would have to be acquired quickly if the Knights were to prevent their activation. Quickly, he increased his offer for the collection to £1.8 million - on the condition that it was delivered immediately to Fort Scarlet
Frustatingly, John Hetherington decided to play for time, hoping for an even better offer. In the meantime, selected items of the collection were being transferred to the British Museum and prepared for display.
At the same time, other Knights were busy removing what had become a thorn in the side of their operations. They had traced the existence of a sanctuary for Nephilim in the very centre of London.
The sanctuary used as a cover the High Holborn Spiritualist Chapel at the end of Dane Street on Red Lion Square. The priest there, one Father Edwin, was providing shelter to Nephilim before moving them out of the capital to secret sites in safer parts of the country.
On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of February, the Knights made their move. They broke into the vicarage attached to the chapel and after a brief struggle captured Father Edwin, whom they rapidly discovered to be a Nephilim. They took his books, packed a bag with clothes (which they dumped in a nearby dustbin), and also took the box containing the chapel funds. Lastly they locked the door behind them.
In the struggle one Knight lost a small talisman. It's a badge of the Knights of the Solar Temple which bears a marked similarity to the Sun Security logo. It has a tiny orichalka needle (1 Ka) set to swing like a compass in a central hole in the design. The talisman can thus indicate the presence of any Nephilim within a ten yard range.
On the first of March John Hetherington finally accepted an offer of £2 million for the collection (about twice its real value) and first refusal of any other artifacts Templeman might find at Broxton Manor - swayed by James Templeman's promise to keep the collection in the U.K. Hetherington arranged with the British Museum for the exhibition to be cancelled (which costs him a cancellation fee of thirty thousand pounds) and asked for the artifacts to be returned.
While the artifacts are being packed and prepared to be sent to Broxton Manor the Plexus sweeps across London and the Nephilim awake.
An old and powerful Elf-Metamorphosis Earth Nephilim called EJANDIR lives and works in the British Library where he has access to the many esoteric books that have made their way into the collection. He knows about the Plexus and will be expecting Nephilim to visit the museum during this time. Disguised as a Security Guard, he will drop a note with Arcanum recognition codes into one of the player Nephilim's bags as he searches it. The note directs the Nephilim to seek out the Holborn Spiritualist Chapel.
Any attempt to contact Ejandir will be frustrated, he is incredibly antisocial, and will disappear through a door marked PRIVATE - STAFF ONLY into a world of twisting passages between book stacks.
Also known as Mystic Maureen, a Tarot Reader at ''Enigmas'' which is a shop specialising in New Age books and equipment in Holborn. The Earth Nephilim MORRYN is a rare example of a female Satyr metamorphosis; she is obese, earthy, and covered in fine dark hair. Despite her looks, men find her unbelievably attractive; women find her uniquely repulsive. Under the guise of a Tarot reading she might also direct the player Nephilim to the Arcus Arcanum.
Morryn is as chummy as Ejandir is aloof, but occasionally the two might be found discussing ancient politics at a vegetarian street cafe called the Purple Onion.
Much fun may be had by Nephilim game writers looking for real life examples of secret societies, organisations and conspiracies. Spookily, while I was writing this last year, the real Order of the Solar Temple began burning its lodges (and members) in Canada and Switzerland. When I visited the location at which I had randomly placed the High Holborn Spiritualist Chapel, I found myself in the shadow of London Electricity's ''Templar House''. And my players just insisted on testing the wards that protect Freemason's Hall in Covent Garden.