PART TWO Lootable Themes.
The idea for this occasional series of articles came from listening to the excellent Fictoplasm podcast by Ralph Lovegrove. Fictoplasm is about “dissecting fiction for roleplaying inspiration”. More specifically, while Fictoplasm was on hiatus, (as it currently is again), I started writing the first of these articles to help fill the Fictoplasm-shaped hole in my life. Appendix N Book Club was another big influence on this series. (Sadly, they’re now down one host and I’m not sure where they’ll go next.)
Expect spoilers. Read the book first if you’re worried about them.
I’ve split this Ramble into three parts for better digestibility. But I won’t be focusing on the novels one at a time, I’ll talk about both of them interchangeably throughout all three parts.
Please check out Part One for
Let’s look at some of Gormenghast’s key features. (And by key, I mean ripe for stealing for RPGs.)
Unusual or extreme appearances, physical characteristics, mannerisms and mental illnesses are the norm amongst the castle’s inhabitants.
A castle so vast and old it’s a world unto itself. A place where people can be lost and forgotten without ever going outside.
The inhabitants follow a class system and power structure so ancient that almost no one can imagine defying it.
The inhabitants, particularly their rulers, engage in ridiculously complex and seemingly pointless rituals.
The manhunt across a flooded castle.
(I’ve explored some of these ideas in my longest running homebrew game, The City of Reave, which draws on a lot of influences, but particularly the New Weird and Cosmic Horror.)
Physical and Mental Extremes
Immense bulk, gargoylish features, red eyes, pointed ears, weak chins, poor personal hygiene, advanced decrepitude, missing limbs, dwarfism, joints that pop like gunfire, obsession, anxiety, laughter like nails on a blackboard, pathological laziness, delusions, sociopathy – Peake’s characters are studies in the unusual and the extreme.
As noted in my previous post, I’m wary of gamifying disabilities or mental illnesses. (Though I have explored some related themes in my current WIP, Our Last Sad Days on Land.) But I think it’s still possible to draw inspiration from Peake’s strange characters.
What if the physical extremes of the castle’s inhabitants weren’t fixed? What if they could mutate, slowly over years or suddenly if they hit a crisis point? This wouldn’t be an inherited trait, or radiation or anything like that. The human form in this setting is simply mutable, in response to environment, upbringing, mental health. Stray too far from the baseline and you may be called a monster. (This is what happens in my homebrew game, the City of Reave, though mutation in that does owe as much to weird radiation and exposure to eldritch forces as it does to mental trauma.)
We could speculate that Nanny Slagg shrank into a smaller shape because she feared embarrassment and wished to avoid notice. Or that Countess Gertrude gained her great stature after being invested as the wife of the Earl and therefore becoming perhaps the second most important person in the castle. Steerpike’s red eyes could imply a predatory instinct. Most interesting is the possibility that Earl Sepulchrave, falling into despair and losing touch with reality, actually did begin to turn into a death owl. (I used that idea in a Gormenghast inspired D&D session I ran at my local RPG club. Not knowing this, the Druid turned into a mouse to sneak up on the rapidly mutating Earl, it was brilliant.)
This would provide a rich vein of monsters and encounters for PCs to face, and either fight or negotiate with. It would also add a new kind of danger to adventures – the danger of becoming something so far from humanity that you can’t return to society. You could read that eldritch tome, or face off against the blood-spattered vampire, but will the extremes of emotion you’ll experience change you in unexpected and unwanted ways?
The RPG Dungeon Bitches explores somewhat similar ideas – PCs often become monsters after rejecting the society that hates them. The Persona series of video games has this idea too, in a different form. There’s a Netflix show as well, (based on a comic book), called Sweet Home, where people transform into monsters related to their most powerful drives. Allegorical monsters are fairly well established in speculative fiction. Though I wouldn’t want the metaphors to be too obvious, that would make the transformations less scary.
This idea does need to be handled sensitively. I do not want to go down the well-worn route of ugliness or deformity implying evil. Or the even more dangerous path of suggesting that some peoples or bloodlines are purer or better than others. Anyone can ‘mutate’ in the right, (wrong), circumstances. Claws for the fierce, big eyes or bat-like ears for the paranoid, extra mass for the confident, (or those full of bluster).
Not all these changes have to be related to mental illness as such. And mental illness itself would need to be carefully handled. Emphasising the uniqueness of each person would help with that, I think. As would underlining the hypocrisy of any societal rules which divide the acceptably human from the monstrous.
(In the City of Reave, I made the label ‘human’ explicitly political and clearly hypocritical. The spidery humanoids of the Chitaran Empire and the hairy, near boneless Voormis tribes are considered human by Reavans because they are allied to the city. The blue-skinned Alcatani who live on the jungle-covered rooftops of Reave are not considered human, because they don’t bow to the city’s government or participate in its caste system. Although my players have managed to enfranchise them now.)
Alternatively, one could go down an Alice in Wonderland route and simply have a “we’re all mad here” setting. Make the extreme the norm. Every character is physically unusual and mentally eccentric. That could get tiring, or triggering, but with the right group and/or campaign you could have a lot of fun with a setting built around weird and wonderful characters.
Less extreme – maybe just give yourself permission to break the physical norms of our world in your fantasy worlds. Maybe humans can grow to be 12 feet tall or become as strong as ogres. There doesn’t need to be an explanation for this, even a magical one; this is just what humans are like in your world.
A Castle So Vast and Old it’s a World Unto Itself.
Imagine, the castle is both your home and the dungeon you must explore, safe zones wrapped around dangerous areas. This is a brilliant setting for fantasy. Instead of seeking adventure by setting out into the wilderness, or daring to go to the old, abandoned manor on the hill, you have an adventure by climbing the Forbidden Stairwell, searching for artefacts in the Hall of Spiders, or venturing to the half-collapsed North Wing. Ancient, lost spaces lurk around every door, in the floorspaces beneath your feet, in secret passages behind false walls, in cursed attics and dusty lofts where the undead prisoners of past ages still tug hopelessly against the rusty chains that hold them. I love the idea of the castle as both the characters’ home and the wilderness that besets it!
Special shout out to rooftops as an environment. I’ve used them extensively in The Bats of Saint Abbans, and in Reave with its roof-dwelling monsters and tribes. Steerpike’s epic escape across Gormenghast’s vast wilderness of rooftops is ripe for roleplaying opportunities – he finds only grand architecture and the mysterious Poet, but might there not have been dragons, living gargoyles, lost civilisations, window-raiding roof-pirates, or stranger things?
(See the Dark Souls games for the potential of rooftops as fantasy environments.)
Wherever you look in Gormenghast, the potential for plot hooks is vast, go out and find – lost rooms, stolen or abandoned artefacts or ritual objects, or reclusive characters like Rottcod.
Perhaps it isn’t even individuals who have been forgotten or abandoned in the quiet corners of the castle. Imagine a lost tribe which inhabits the lower basement or parts of the abandoned South East Wing. They are descended from a handful of scullery maids who were sent to recover some obscure item of furniture and either got lost or failed to find the item and were too scared to return without it. (How a group of lost maids managed to have children might present its own mystery, presuming that in our setting maids were always physically female.) Would they still weave replicas of their ancestors’ maid costumes out of fungus and spiderwebs? Even though they don’t remember the true significance of such uniforms? Would they worship a vanished group of gods called “The Mistresses and Masters”? Would they propitiate these lost beings with ritual sweepings and tea ceremonies? How would they react to outsiders who come clumping through their sacred corridors, knocking over the rattraps and dirtying up the sacred floors?
Weirder things could lurk in distant wings. A nation of sentient spiders that work together to animate old suits of clothes or armour and ape the lumbering motions of long dead humans. Or spiders that have grown as big as dogs or even horses, and having devoured all the vermin in their own territory, have now been driven into the inhabited areas of the castle by their own hunger.
Then there are those who have mutated beyond the acceptable norms, (if such ideas are enforced in this world), and been banished to forbidden rooms or lost attics. There could be whole colonies formed from escapees from disappointment rooms. (Cursed Cainhurst Castle from Bloodborne is another great source of inspiration for this kind of thing.)
In a fine gothic tradition, the castle could shift and change according to the trials and tribulations of its inhabitants. In the final climactic battle scene whole towers could collapse, lower levels could flood, fire could ravage the ancient hallways.
The rise of rats and other vermin throughout the structure could represent the rising powers of evil, chaos and decay.
The castle istelf could have a rudimentary intelligence and/or will. Actions which annoy it could be punished with floors collapsing beneath PCs, old statues falling off walls onto them, doors jamming shut and so on.
If the player characters are slowly improving the world of the castle, this could be reflected in cleaner, safer, cheerier areas of the old pile. You could even award XP or advancements for areas of the castle which have been fixed, made safe or taken over by the PCs.
(Vaesen does this to a certain extent. Your base is a castle, and you can make improvements to it as your campaign goes on, adding armouries, shrines etc.)
The Many Rituals of Gormenghast and Groan
The inhabitants of Gormenghast, particularly the Earl of Groan, are slaves to an unending calendar of rituals, ceremonies and weird practices. This accumulated law has achieved quasi-religious significance.
The most elegant and intellectually satisfying explanation for these rituals is the one implicit in the books – this family has existed for so long they have simply accumulated an incredible number of rituals and ceremonies, and the weight of tradition behind those ceremonies has become crushing, even if their original significance may have been lost to time. (One could get great mileage out of holding this up as a dark mirror to Britain and its many institutions which have been made sacred simply by their antiquity, such as the royal family.)
The crushing weight of tradition isn’t a lot of fun to roleplay, but there are a couple of possibilities. Perhaps, performing rituals could be a way to clear stress, gain FATE Points, or otherwise heal or power up a character. Perhaps you could gain or heal meta-currencies by inventing a new ritual and adding it to the setting, now everyone has to do that ritual at the appointed times. (In setting terms, the ritual has always existed of course.) Neglecting rituals on the other hand might damage the character or set off consequences, social or otherwise. Ritualism could be a social skill – the ability to navigate rituals, or even invent them or twist them to your will.
You could make the rituals into a mini game. Ask questions of different players – What is the ritual called? Who performs it? What happens? Where does it happen? By spending meta-currencies or making meta-rolls the players might be able to turn the rituals to their advantage e.g. getting the GM to ask, “How does this ritual benefit you?”
Answers could include –
- Servants who participate in this ritual are rewarded with silver.
- The ritual involves quaffing magical blood-wyne, which boosts stamina and pain resistance to inhuman levels for a limited time.
- Most of the NPCs are distracted, allowing the PCs to commit some crime or secret act.
- The ritual involves certain clothing, such as coverings of sackcloth, allowing a PC to disguise themself or move anonymously for a time.
(In a Powered by the Apocalypse game you could have a Perform a Ritual Move – any PC could perform the move and gain benefits on a hit, but all characters have to join in with the ritual, apart from outcasts and outsiders.)
Certain areas of the castle could become accessible due to certain rituals, e.g. the Ritual of the Castigation of the Moon requires the Great Brass Door of Unendurable Dusk to be opened so the Earl may proceed to the top spire of the Tower of Stars and scream ritual imprecations at the Moon. What treasures, or ageless prisoners, might be trapped in that tower, just waiting for the player characters to rescue them?
If leaning into horror, you could have the rituals be a means of holding back dark or eldritch forces. (Or, more insidiously, keeping those forces hidden from the unsuspecting human inhabitants of the castle.) Neglecting the rituals leads to attacks by monsters great and small, wild bursts of mutation amongst the castle’s denizens, the rise of cults and so on.
Perhaps the rituals maintain the integrity of the world, or whatever sub-dimension Gormenghast inhabits. If the rituals aren’t kept up the castle could begin to crumble, or reality itself could begin to crack apart. Other dimensions or worlds might leak into the castle. (This might actually be a good thing for certain characters, as it would offer an escape from Gormenghast.)
For more optimistic or high fantasy, the rituals could create supernatural effects – transforming the PCs into mice, granting them blessings, fixing damaged areas of the castle or opening up lost rooms.
There are other ancient laws which clearly benefit certain characters in the books. When Steerpike’s murderous nature is discovered and the whole castle turns out to hunt him, they do not use guns or bows. This is because the law says that a murderer should be killed in the same way they killed their victim, if possible, so Steerpike’s pursuers carry only knives. Again a meta-currency like FATE points could be used to create advantageous laws e.g. if a person saves the Earl’s cat from drowning he must grant them a pardon for one crime.
Immensely Stratified Class Structure
The reverence of the family of Groan reads like a mixture of extreme patriotism and quasi-religious devotion. The Master of Rituals is potentially more powerful than the Earl himself. High servants lord it over lesser and castle-folk may boss the Dwellers around as they please, at least in theory. The Grey Scrubbers spend their entire lives scrubbing floors, as did their ancestors before them for countless generations. (They have also been deafened by a life spent amongst the cacophony of the kitchens.)
This class structure provides plenty of opportunities for roleplaying. PCs might be the only people who actually go out and do things because they’re the only ones who can see through the class structure and dare to defy it. Perhaps, like Steerpike, the PCs shared goal could be to overthrow or replace the class structure of the castle. If taking the Steerpike route, the PCs would either be acting as villains or facing a hierarchy which, unlike the cast of the novels, has no redeeming features or benevolent characters. This would be a careful game of social and political intrigue in the closed system of the castle, sort of sneaky murder-chess, if you will.
For example, there could be an old brass statue in the third banquet hall which legend and tradition grant the power of prophecy. The party might have discovered the secret mechanism which lets them speak through the statue in a booming voice and so influence the members of the court. But an isolated scholar knows the secret of the statue from her own researches. Should the players seek to suborn her? Hope she stays in her tower and doesn’t find out about their plots? Or bump her off? But more murders mean more suspicion in the castle. And what has this poor scholar ever done wrong? And what if she knows some vital piece of information the party might need later on?
Alternatively, there might be conflict within the class structure. Highly trusted servants battling against the professors and minor gentry who technically outrank them but functionally hold much less power. A war between the Grey Scrubbers and the Pale Washers over the precise parts of the castle each group is tasked with cleaning. A battle to become heir to the childless Master of Rituals. A growing hatred between two high ranking servants, as with Swelter and Flay.
The hierarchy itself would provide some unique backgrounds, where profession and place of birth are conflated. You might have been born in the kitchens, naturally learning skills to do with cooking, butchery and dodging blasts of steam or splatters of sizzling oil. You might have grown up in the dusty confines of the university library, fed on little more than dry bread and old stories for your entire childhood. What would a character who has never seen the sky or slept in a bed before be like? How would they react to these strange new experiences?
If you were using D&D, you could play up the ridiculous, satirical elements and replace “races” or ancestries with these backgrounds. Library-born characters gain darkvision because candles and even lanterns are forbidden in the deep stacks. The masons who maintain the castle have stone-sense. Maids and Scrubbers gain a bonus to Constitution due to the backbreaking labour of cleaning so vast a structure.
This hierarchy, and the weight of tradition, could serve as a campaign structure in itself. Instead of conventional treasure, PCs could be rewarded with social status or exceptions to the social rules, though still bound up with ridiculous traditions. Satisfying or evading the traditions would be the focus of adventures.
For example, perhaps a PC wishes to gain a certain position, or licence to leave the castle or permission to wed. These things can only be granted by the Earl. But one must ask the Earl directly for such favours, which requires an audience. And one must perform a bizarre series of actions in order to be granted an audience, or cash in favours from various higher servants and dignitaries.
“But why must I wear the Grey Hat of Unfathomable Melancholy and carry the Ragged Staff of St. Bimberthistle when begging an audience with the Earl?”
“Because you are a footman, and footmen have always worn the Grey Hat of Unfathomable Melancholy and carried the Ragged Staff of St. Bimberthistle when begging an audience with the Earl.”
“But the Ragged Staff of St Bimberthistle was carried off by death owls two hundred years ago! And the Grey Hat of Unfathomable Sadness is laced with a poison whose antidote can only be found in the ghost-haunted third attic of the Purple Tower, which the 19th Earl filled with death traps!”
“That’s your misfortune, and no reflection upon the sanctity of the traditions.”
And even when you assemble all the artefacts you need, perhaps the party have three different favours to ask the Earl but only one of them is permitted an audience. And in this audience the supplicant is only allowed to say nineteen words, no more and no less and this includes greeting the Earl as “My lord”.
Social status could come with other rewards besides access. Perhaps gaining a particular post e.g. clerk or professor, comes with ceremonial, (magic), robes, odd weapons, even scrolls which contain spells. Perhaps the third under-butler is granted a poison gas spell because it’s their duty to kill any rats which get into the ducal apartments, that sort of thing.
Keys would be a good reward as well, allowing access to stores and treasures and safe pathways through the castle. Or just better rooms or suites of rooms. Even your own servants. This doesn’t have to a be a formal reward; Steerpike often simply helps himself to items and rooms. Several characters find secret passages and hidden areas over the course of the books.
Meanwhile the odd cast of characters would present obstacles and opportunities. You’ve brought something back to fulfil a family member’s demand, but the cook is out for your blood. A disgraced professor has gone running off onto the rooftops and you have to find them before they die of exposure.
One exchange between the Countess and Doctor Prunesquallor could form the basis of a great little class-based adventure. The Countess turns up to speak to Prunesquallor late at night. He offers her a wide array of wines and liquors; she scandalises him by asking for a jug of goat’s milk. The annoyed doctor summons a servant and tells him to go and fetch a goat. The servant somehow manages to track down a goat, in the middle of the night, while in a castle. Prunesquallor didn’t specify a nanny goat however, the servant returns with a male goat, and is immediately sent off again to find a female goat, and then again to get a jug to milk her into.
We don’t see what the servant goes through to get the goats. But it could easily form a little adventure. Tracking down a goat or someone who knows where to find one. Leading a recalcitrant nanny goat out of her pasture while evading the angry charges of her mate. Getting a goat up multiple flights of stairs. Or worse, perhaps the goats are stabled in a rooftop garden, and the PCs have to get a goat down from the roof, or across to the next building where the doctor has his apartments. Or maybe they just temporarily turn someone into a goat, depending on the magic level of the game you’re playing. (For higher level characters, perhaps substitute a chimera or other monster for the goat.)
Part of the quest reward would be getting to eavesdrop on a little of The Countess and Prunesquallor’s conversation while bringing in the goat.
The Great Flood
Towards the end of the second book a biblical flood ravages the lands of Gormenghast. Perhaps this is a response by some god or spirit to the various blasphemies and rebellions of this cast. Perhaps it is a response to the storm of emotions within young Titus, who is, possibly, the only person who really matters in this world. Very probably it just happens.
The flood covers all the land around the castle and keeps on rising. The lower floors are flooded, one by one. The inhabitants evacuate themselves, their animals and any useful goods, floor by floor. Countless years of history and many ancient treasures are abandoned to the hungry waters.
Meanwhile, as the storm clouds roil above and an endless rain hammers down, the hunt for the murderer Steerpike goes on.
It’s a very arresting image. Towers standing like islands in the water. A castle remade into a landscape, (waterscape), quite foreign to its inhabitants. Furniture and fixtures broken down to make boats. Hunting parties canoeing between buildings and along half-drowned corridors.
There’s scope for some cool challenges in a hunt or battle scene for an RPG. Hiding beneath the water while boats go past. Concealing a boat amongst roofbeams or under sodden tapestries. Diving for treasures covered by the flood. Fighting off the sharks, crocodiles or aquatic monsters that have been carried into this alien environment.
A dungeon that’s actually a flooded castle would be a great place to explore. The sodden, slippery towers, the drowned depths, it would offer a lot of variety and verticality in its rooms and areas.
I’d also love to run a battle on small boats that are floating around and through flooded ruins. Will the PCs keep their distance, using magic and missiles to cut their foes down? Will they board their enemies’ boats? Or try to sink them?
Content
A write up of the tribe of lost maids I set on my D&D players.
Cultists of the Ancestral Maids
Many years ago a group of maids was dispatched to the Lost Wing of the castle, to prepare it to serve as the new residence for the Earl’s estranged wife. As punishment for some, (probably imagined), slight to the ruling family, they had been forbidden from going outside into the grounds of the castle. So when the last remaining corridor to the Lost Wing collapsed, they were effectively trapped inside, too scared or too obedient to return.
Generations later, the descendants of these lost maids know only that they must clean and maintain their crumbling home to an impossibly high standard, or else the shadowy gods known as The Lords and Ladies will never return to bless them and free them from darkness.
Dust and dirt must be utterly banished, even to tread upon the sacred floors is blasphemy. Any invaders who besmirch the sacred corridors must be driven out and slain.
(A retreating foe is preferable to a dead one, as this requires less tidying.)
They move along walls and ceilings like spiders, scuttling along on handheld hooks, eyes shining in the dusty gloom like tiny captive moons. When they want to move faster, they use a wild tangle of ropes, lines and wall-hangings to swing, scramble and climb around the upper reaches of chambers and corridors.
Dressed in rough approximations of maid outfits, cobbled together from rat-skins and rolled up cobwebs. They wield shards of broken vases or candlesticks beaten into blades. Long dusters made from broomhandles and pigeon feathers are ruthlessly employed against dust spots and dirty intruders alike. If outnumbered or afraid, the Maids will retreat up to the ceiling and pelt their foes with sharpened table-ware.
AC 13. 3 HD. 20 HP.
Strength 10 (+0). Dexterity 16 (+3) Intelligence 10 (+0). Charisma 10 (+0). Wisdom 12 (+1). Constitution 12 (+1).
Nature +3. Stealth +4. Survival +3.
Attacks. Improvised Blade: +4 to hit. D6+3 damage. Duster: +1 to hit. Special – on a hit the target has Disadvantage on their attacks and saves until the end of their next round. Ballistic Cutlery: +4 to hit. Range 20 feet. D3+3 damage.
Low-light vision to 60 feet.
Climb speed 20 feet.
Wall climbing gear: An array of hooks, ropes and odd tools crafted from household objects, used to hook, climb and swing along walls and ceilings. Can move through the air up to 30 feet per round, as long as there are walls or ceilings to manoeuvre around. Can Disengage as a bonus action if they retreat straight upwards or swing past.
Obsessive: If a character points out a mess, the Maid must make a Wisdom Saving Throw DC 10 + that character’s Charisma bonus. On a failure the Maid spends their next round frantically cleaning that spot.
Wandering Fantasy 