Preliminary Remarks about the Darkmanse Culture

The Wasted Land 

"The misfortune which has fallen upon the country is that of a prolonged drought, which has destroyed vegetation, and left the land Waste; the effect of the hero's question is to restore the waters to their channel, and render the land once more fertile."

This quotation is taken from Jessie Weston's introduction to her book From Ritual to Romance, which is best known as the book that inspired the Grail symbolism in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. Weston's book explores such archetypes from the Grail legend as the Fisher King, the Chapel Perilous, and, of course, the Wasted Land. In addition to Weston's book, Eliot's many sources include Frazer's Golden Bough, St. Augustine's Confessions, Baudelaire's Satanic hymns in Flowers of Evil, the Upanishads, Aldous Huxley, Herman Hesse, and the King James Bible.

The Darkmanse campaign draws inspiration from Eliot (and from Eliot's inspirations). The Waste Land—its Grail theme, yes, but also the many layers of reference it is constructed from—is our point of departure. As one critic remarked, "Mr Eliot has written a puzzle rather than a poem."

The campaign is a puzzle, too. Here, there are clues hidden in plain sight—even in the very words I am writing now.

Welcome to the Darkmanse, where the land is waste, where the waters must be restored to their channel, and where the elusive answer to the hero's question lies deep below, in the subterranean darkness of the Chapel Perilous.

Unreal City 

The story so far: a great and mighty civilization has risen and abruptly fallen, leaving behind a blighted land and dim traces of its former glory. From the ruins, a new civilization has arisen—that of the Darkmanse, which takes its name from the vast underground necropolis that serves as the most important site of pilgrimage for the faithful.

The catacombs of the Darkmanse—which descend deep into the earth and occupy almost the entirety of a large island to the east of the known world—are the cultic center of the Darkmanse religion, which venerates death.

The Darkmanse is Mecca, Vatican City, and the Temple Mount all rolled into one. It is called by many names, such as the Sunless Lands, the Noble Sanctuary, and other names that only the priesthood knows. Every inhabitant makes the pilgrimage to the Darkmanse at least once in their lifetime, and that is when they die and are taken there to be interred.

Most end up in a loculus, or burial niche, in one of the countless funerary chambers, family shrines, mausoleums, crypts, and reliquaries of the Darkmanse, deep under the ground, in the dark.

For the people of this death-obsessed culture, the Darkmanse is their final destination.

For players who embark on this campaign, it is the mysterious Chapel, where a strange and terrifying adventure awaits them.

Like the number of stars that comprise the Big Dipper, the Darkmanse is comprised of seven levels—seven houses for seven stars—which is how the Incunabula Builders designed it. As it is written:

“All things have their origins in the darkness. Birth arises from it. Death carries us back to it. The Darkmanse preserves it forever.”