History Lecture Ideas

Topics for the Lecture and Slice of Life series.
Discussion about historical events, people, items, etc. that can add to the flavor to any historical game setting.
Discussion and sharing of links and resources.
Dr. Gerard
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Dr. Gerard » Tue Sep 23, 2014 1:45 am

Mmmm. Tasty murder tales!
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Graham » Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:55 pm

A psychadelic song of unknown origins with some highly suggestive lyrics....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_ ... ndle_Burns

An mp3 (No one has copyrighted the song, or claimed responsibility for it...) can be found at:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/07/f ... es--2.html
"If you do good, you'll live forever, if you do bad, you'll die hearing a single note for I am the one true sound...", Fragment found in a cult hideout.

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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Timon » Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:54 am

How did this get to 11 pages without Brother Twelve!?!?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_XII
The BC based Cult leader active in the 20s-30s who's cult beliefs revolved around a bastardized version of Egyptian Mythology with everything else thrown in for good measure!
Who claimed to have killed people who displeased him with his "powers," and even after his cult dissolved with his mysterious disappearance some of his former followers insisted that the people were dead and that the things walking around claiming to be them were in fact some kind of doppelgangers.
He had a crazed mistress who went around in full black leather with a bullwhip for crying out loud!
The only person who claimed to see him after his nighttime escape from his Island compound by boat was the young son of his lawyer.
They tried him in absentia and the only way they got some of his followers to take the stand was by convincing them that so long as they were in BC local First Nations magic was more powerful than Egyptian magic, and had talisman made by local "witch doctors" which would protect them from XII's curses.
At least one wore hers till she died!
And this is just the Cliff notes!
People still go out looking for his lost treasure, assuming he did die in an attempt to flee justice by rowing to his Tug in the middle of the night during a storm with his mistress and all the gold they could carry sealed in Mason Jars. I've never been able to find out why he converted as much money as he could into gold coins then sealed them in mason jars, but he did apparently.
God I have more, you must have pissed off some BC deity to now be cursed with two British Colombian History nuts, more to come, possibly tonight, too many plot hooks in BC all flooding into my head.
PS. I too have never played Call of Cthulhu, or even read any of the stories for that matter.
PPS. found better article including a woodcut of him using "Black Magic" http://livinglibraryblog.com/?p=1896

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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Timon » Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:40 am

OK, going through my early recollections to the First Nations myths I was told that scared me beyond belief.
Its rather surprising I was exposed to so many being whiter than snow, I'm mainly Irish actually
Oh man Irish Folk tales! No this first those latter. (sorry going on about two hours sleep total for the last two days, so I'm rather disjointed)
Mosquito Man (or men) http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legen ... Haida.html
Human Looking thing with a hidden proboscis that comes out the back of its throat, it "drinks" the brain and, in some stories I heard, spinal column of unsuspecting people, going all "And Then There Were None" usually picking people off one at a time and leaving them in positions to make it look like they just have fallen asleep.
When caught though stealth goes out the window and it goes full on rampage on whoever is there.
Ripping them apart with its hands and feasting with its proboscis. Its usually said (in the versions I heard) to have skin harder than iron or steel to go along with its super-strength. And like in the story I linked above ^ the only real way to kill it is to trap it and burn it, but, again like in the story above, its ashes turn to mosquitoes and fly away.
In the above version and some I heard there was only one Mosquito Man and it was the origin of mosquitoes, but in others I heard there were more than one and you had to watch visitors in case one was one of the things in disguise.
Right this next one works best with images so prepare for a deluge of links, http://p1.la-img.com/704/23254/8206551_2_l.jpg
http://p2.la-img.com/704/23254/8206551_1_l.jpg
http://p2.la-img.com/704/23254/8206551_3_l.jpg
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/874 ... F92A226B70
http://brucebyfield.files.wordpress.com ... bukwus.png
http://p2.la-img.com/704/23254/8206568_1_l.jpg http://p2.la-img.com/704/25530/9408631_1_l.jpg
http://lelooska.org/th_gallery/bukwus/
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/948 ... C25F5455B0

These Very Good Reasons to follow my example and forgo sleep are masks of the Bukwus
http://thedemoniacal.blogspot.ca/2011/08/bukwus.html
Undead things that look like the drowned bloated rotting corpses of the people they use to be the Bukwus along with the typical undead evil thing pastimes of drowning people and kidnapping children try to get people to Eat some of their food. Which is, like in pretty much all folklore, a bad idea, as it will Turn You in To One of Them. Like ghouls, wendigo etc. moving on
Note: I'm just gonna assume everyone is familiar with the Wendigo
actually speaking of the Wendigo, the storys of Fort Kent in 1921 should make anyone wanting to use the spirit dance with joy
Short (extremely dubious) version, Doctor has his whole family die, goes nuts and/or gets possessed by Wendigo, starts killing/torturing/eating transients, goes fully over the edge one night and kills everyone he can get to, somewhere between 11 people and EVERYONE IN TOWN, runs off into the woods, never found. I'm sure just using google with Fort Kent 1921 and maybe Wendigo will get at least a dozen versions of the story. Here's the first I found http://www.littlemissrisk.ca/blood-bath ... of-canada/
Gonna try and focus more on lesser known horrors though. Actually as a "quick" aside
Sasquatch is evil
"no he's a gentle blah blah blah" no he's evil, Sasquatch are giant hairy Ogers who are only interested in either eating people, or raping people, still places where the old folk (first nations & others, I knew a white rancher who did this) wont let women on their period go anywhere near the forest without an armed escort, because a Sasquatch will smell you're fertile and drag you off to its cave to breed. Sasquatch = Evil horrible monster. Having grown up meeting people who FERVENTLY believed these legends, I get real sick of the 'Gentle Giant of the Forrest' stick.
Bugger, cant remember the names of the others. There was a story about these fishman looking things that lived in the Saltchuck (Ocean essentially) that would ambush people who were out on the water to drag them under, I remember seeing the Masks representing them.
Ugh, cant seem to remember any others that haven't already been mentioned, Basket Woman etc.
Instead I'll just supply some links I came across trying to refresh my memory.
http://www.native-languages.org/monsters.htm
http://www.robirda.com/legends/oluk.html
more soon proably

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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Timon » Wed Dec 10, 2014 9:09 am

I just made one of the worst decisions in my life because of this thread.
I google image searched "Inuit Mythology"


These images should probably not disturb me as much as they do.
After all described they're not all that horrific
kinda

https://m1.behance.net/rendition/module ... f6ec30.jpg
smiling man with long nails and hair, not that bad, I think
The cheery fellow above is
http://www.inuitmyths.com/mahaha.htm
Mahaha, he's a happy fellow who enjoys nothing more than "tickling" people with his long nails
when they're found the corpses have big grins on their faces, so, Inuit Joker I guess?

http://www.inuitmyths.com/images/stories_qua.jpg
http://40.media.tumblr.com/605db126bddc ... o1_500.jpg
Given the fondness for aquatic horror, everyone should appreciate the
http://www.inuitmyths.com/qallupilluk.htm
Qallupilluk
Childnaping fishpeople who smell of sulfur. Maybe they keep warm by living near the hydrothermal vents at the ocean floor?

http://www.inuitmyths.com/images/BK_Ijirak.jpg
http://www.inuitmyths.com/images/MA_Ijiraitmuskox.jpg
http://www.inuitmyths.com/ijirait.htm
Inuit shape-shifters, the Ijirait are rather conventional but deserve a mention for those pictures alone.
Oh and no I have no idea about http://www.inuitmyths.com/images/ijirait.jpg <this, and I'm not sure I want to.

This http://41.media.tumblr.com/6773fb0dc896 ... 1_1280.png may be Mahaha again, but I can think of like a half dozen other mythological beings from the North it could be. Kinda. Lotta repressed memory's of the Inuit mythology I was taught as a kid.

Lets round this off with something not terrible
http://www.inuitmyths.com/tuniit.htm
The Tuniit were the people who lived in the north before the Inuit *cough*hyperboreans*cough*

and because I now need to go roll up in a ball in the corner and re-suppress a bunch of memories I leave you once again with a link I found looking things up.

Tonnes of stuff on this site http://fuckyeahstrangemythology.tumblr.com/

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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Keeper Jon » Wed Dec 10, 2014 3:17 pm

That is a damn great idea. There are some great published adventures set in cold climates that creatures and mythology similar (or exactly) like Inuit Mythology could be woven into. Great resources, man.

Graham
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Graham » Fri Dec 19, 2014 7:07 am

An interesting piece of 19th C American History, the making of fake artifacts to prove that Native Americans were not responsible for the various mounds and whatnot across the US.

The Wikipedia page below links to an exhibit of faked artifacts held in Michigan back in 2004:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_relics

The 'Newberry Tablet' was found in Michigan during the late 1890s and is thus roughly contemporous (sic) with the 'relics' covered in the above link however it is not known if it was made by the same people, the first link below covers the basic history of the artifact (as far as it is known) and has a picture of it c.1898, the second link has a front on shot of the artifact which shows it looks a little like a Magic Square, using unknown glyphs (Hmm, I wonder what happens if you put the right symbols in the empty squares... :cthulhu1: )

http://archyfantasies.com/2014/12/09/th ... ry-tablet/

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/revie ... pper-heist
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Dr. Gerard
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Dr. Gerard » Mon Dec 22, 2014 5:18 pm

awesome stuff again, Graham. I'm liking the idea of an artefact forger who gets sucked in to a Mythos vortex while trying to help a client - maybe they stumble on Aklo and unwittingly use it to decorate a fake item.
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Graham » Wed Dec 24, 2014 11:00 am

Dr. Gerard wrote:awesome stuff again, Graham. I'm liking the idea of an artefact forger who gets sucked in to a Mythos vortex while trying to help a client - maybe they stumble on Aklo and unwittingly use it to decorate a fake item.
Great minds think alike, that was my second thought, after the magic square idea, the third was to have the villain hunt for an artifact and for him to find out too late that it's a fake with the PCs having to deal with the consequences.
"If you do good, you'll live forever, if you do bad, you'll die hearing a single note for I am the one true sound...", Fragment found in a cult hideout.

Dr. Gerard
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Re: History Lecture Ideas

Post by Dr. Gerard » Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:41 pm

Graham wrote:
Dr. Gerard wrote:awesome stuff again, Graham. I'm liking the idea of an artefact forger who gets sucked in to a Mythos vortex while trying to help a client - maybe they stumble on Aklo and unwittingly use it to decorate a fake item.
Great minds think alike, that was my second thought, after the magic square idea, the third was to have the villain hunt for an artifact and for him to find out too late that it's a fake with the PCs having to deal with the consequences.
oh, that's good, too.
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