The motivations and associations of Hours

[Name Lips]

Hours are powerful immortals/gods who dwell in the Mansus. They seem to have motivations and associations. Sometimes they are involved in human conflict, up to and including taking sides in wars. Sometimes they grant humans favors, or promote followers to Long or Name status. Sometimes they conflict with, cavort with, or even destroy, other Hours.

I am in the early phases of using the Lore of Cultist Simulator as a backdrop for a tabletop role playing game -- mostly because its lore I'm very familiar with, and which none of my players have heard about. A couple of them are Lovecraft fanatics -- so imagine the confusion and delight when they are invited to what they think is a Call of Cthlulu one-shot, which turns out to have lore and phrases with which they are unfamiliar. What is this? What is going on? They'll actually be encouraged to explore and discover new things. While Cultist Simulator doesn't have a "horror" feel to those of us familiar with its mechanics, imagine what everyday CS events would be like to an ignorant mortal who has no clue what's going on. With the right phrasing, keeping the right things mysterious, and focusing on the impact of the cultists on the lives of regular humans, there is some ripe tabletop rpg horror fodder waiting to be explored.

Right now, in my pre-pre-pre production phase, I'm starting to outline a plot. I want the Hours to have consistent motivations and desires -- but never explain them to the players. What exactly are they trying to accomplish? Why not simply withdraw from the real world, ignoring human supplicants, and enjoy their immortality in the Mansus forever? Are they like D&D gods, gaining power through worship? What does it mean that they are called Hours -- clearly their association with earthly hours is incredibly important, since that's what they choose to be called. But what does it mean? Why are they associated with particular Hours? When the old Hours were destroyed, how was it decided which Hours would be associated with which hours? What is the nature and limitation of their powers? It is said that the Worms from Nowhere are a threat to the Mansus and the real world -- do the Hours see themselves as protectors of reality, guarding against the horrors of Nowhere?

These are the sorts of things I need to work out in my own head -- they're way to explicit for the CS developers/writers to just write down in simple question-and-answer form. It would ruin the mystery for the fans of the game. Part of the fun of the Lore is that there are so many deep, unanswered questions.

But to some extent I need to sort it out in my own head, even if it's not canon, to help me create a plot that is coherent. There are obvious threads I could follow -- like the reforming of the Sun-in-Splendor, or the Watchman's Pilgrimage, which could turn into pretty easy plotlines. Or I could come up with some on my own, like a new wave of Adepts/Long/Names fighting the Hours to steal their power, like they themselves did to the Hours of Stone.

And then I need to resolve the role of the players in the story. I don't want them to be cultists, though they might need to dabble in forbidden secrets to solve certain scenarios. "A team working for the Suppression Bureau" seems trite. But in a good tabletop game, the player characters are the most important people, the ones whose decisions drive the story. I do want to keep it centered on them, and use CS Lore as the backdrop/setting.

Thoughts?

[Nathan Pascal]

Disclaimer: I've only ever finished one Minor Victory Playthrough, so I am no expert in the Lore. But I am quite familiar with writing my own Pen&Paper-Adventures (although not in English, mind you)

First, my impression of the Hours: I would not pay too much attention to their desires or actions. They are Old Far-Off Unhappy Things (or does this just refer to the Moth? Still, I like this phrase) and because they are immortal and old, they should not meddle to much with everyday people. They are in the background, always present, but never tangible. The more they interfere, the more you destroy the feeling of wonder. For me, they are dwelling on their immortal joys and pains most of the time, and whole human lives begin and end, without them changing their ways. If you present a mayor event, which would change the world forever, and all of it happens in a course of time and scale, which your characters can even perceive, then it would be a very small event, I suppose. That, or your characters can do nothing about it, which is rather unusual for a Pen&Paper session.
Probably I am wrong about the Hours, but this is how I imagined them.
Changing and moving over timeless times. Their stories are metaphor and all you can ever see is a tiny, tiny spark of their presence, even if it seems like so much more to you. It is still only a spark. But again, probably I am wrong. In this case, I should be right anyway. I like my fictional gods this way, thank you.

As far as I know, they actually spend a lot of time weaving reality out of the many branches of history, whatever that is supposed to mean.

So, instead of focusing on the Hours, just let them be self-absorbed with their aspects and dwelling on their joys and pains (All Nights Must End - All Nights Must End - All Nights Must Must End - wait, is the Forge of Days an Hour? A place in the Mansus? An Aspect? Both? I mean, all three things? Why do I even pretend to know anything of the Lore?).

Focus on the human aspect instead. Not in the sense of an Aspect, you know. Something small, something personal, this is how every Cult in the game starts, not? The Bright Young Thing, whose father takes his own life. The doctor, who hears a patients last wisper of fascination and dread. And from there, everything spirals downwards.

It is hard to come up with a scenario, since I don't know your style of gamemastering (this is a word, right? Gamemastering?), the system you are playing or your players and the kind of characters they play. If you want to go all out, world-changing god-slaying, then I am no help anyway. Nothing wrong with godslaying, just not my prefered cup of tea.

So, my take on it: I would not try to tell a story/construct a plot around the Lore, but rather come up with a mundane (worldy? profane? My English fails me here...) plot or event or inccident and then slowly twisting it around under the influence of an Hour:

The strange desires and obsessions.
How the air is so thick with the smell of blood, you could nearly cut und make it bleed.
Wounds that become doors.

I would concentrate on the feel of an Hour, not the actions of them.

One Hour. Imagine your players spending a session (or ten) to solve a mystery around the Grail, just to realize in the end, that there might be so much more. Usually this is the point, where they buy out their friendly local neighborhood occult librabry and go insane.

Some Edits Later:
Now I know. Paintings. Paintings! Everyone loves strange, cursed paintings, not? Someone wants them to collect a certain painting from a certain, reclusive artist, who just died recently under completly unsuspicous circumstances.
Or maybe he didn't die, and just refuses to sell it? No one would expect the paint to be the actual blood of an actual immortal being, that is honor-bound to eat your skin, when you watch the painting in moonlight, would they?
Whatever. Paintings. Is it a cliché? Maybe. But it is a cliché because everyone loves strange, cursed paintings.

[Lantantan]

I'm doing the same thing! So I've been wresling with the same issues. In particular I'm trying to merge the cultist lore with Blades in the Dark tabletop setting.

Who?
So Hours were mostly humans who are now more than gods. Their ascenscion through whatever means caused their personality/aspect to warp reality. When the Forge of Days ascended it seems to have coincided with the start of the bronze age. When the Sun was divided, the dark ages soon followed. The industrial revolution mirrored the Forge's temporary dominance over the other hours. I also see a parallel in the ascencion of the Great Mother and the birth of the biblical first sin. War might not even have been a thing before the Colonel ascended.

Why?
So thats how the hours fortunes are linked with and cause of changes in our world, but what motivates them? Sure, there's power. The hours and names seek to prevent the rise of others whom they'd have to share power with, or else recruit them as followers. But their conflicts are more fundamental than that. It is in the nature of the Forge of Days to change things, she not just compelled, it is her very essence. Similarly the Edge hours must strive with eachother, even if they share a mutual enemy in the worms.

How?
The beauty of merging cultist sim and tabletop RP is that it's such a natural fit. Players can do as they please and (unwittingly) atract the influences of the hours as they sneak, desire, backstab or murder. They'll naturally align themselves with some of the hours as through play. Significant acts generate influences that can gives them moderate bonuses to related actions. Or they can engage with the lore to learn about hour's lives. Reenacting critical moments in the hour's lives to use the influences to do even greater things. Those rituals might even arise naturally from play as they discard some cursed artifact into the ocean.

What do you think? have you settled on a specific tabletop yet? Any idea on the scope of your story? Anything else I can speculate about?