The World of Madness​

The World of Madness is a major fusion of three fictional universes: H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk, and WhiteWolf's One World of Darkness.​

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"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - Call of Cthulhu.

"The sky ... was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Neuromancer.

"You're a big bad vampire. Hey, great, congrats. Now keep it to yourself." - Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

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The human world and our role in it are an illusion.

Humanity is living inside a fragile bubble of perception, unaware of what lies behind the curtains or even of the curtains themselves, and our seeming dominance over the world is illusory and ephemeral.

Compared to the larger scheme of things, we aren't even worms, but rather part of the landscape, completely irrelevant and not worth attention. Our existence is most definitely either an accident, or perhaps a joke. The universe is purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring and human beings can never fully understand it with their limited faculties.

Now and then, individuals can, by accident or carelessness, catch a glimpse of, or even confront the ancient extraterrestrial entities or alien non-euclidean geometries. Because of the limitations of the human mind, these sights are so overwhelming that they can often drive a person insane.

The human society itself is not without problems either.

Apathy and isolation define the outlook. The dichotomy between rich and poor, influential and weak, powerful and powerless, is much more pronounced than in the real world. Decadence, cynicism and corruption are common.

Humanity seems less human every year, with body parts replaced by machines. Clothing and even skin are rented to advertisers to afford the basic standard of living.

Architecture is dominated by Gothic styling and fashion and personal style embrace Goth, Punk and fetishistic elements.

Innovation is both constant and absent - every new idea is gamed out before even the patents are registered. Diversity is everywhere, making it homogeneous. Crime is everywhere, making it publicly acceptable and even expected. It's a global culture of mass consumerism without context fueled by mega-corporations.

Of course, this is just as our hidden masters have planned.

Humans are unwitting victims or pawns of vast secret organizations of supernatural creatures. They have long ago dominated our governments and are behind all giant corporations.

Vampires, werewolves and wraiths (among others) struggle with internal factionalism and against other species in secret wars of intrigue for control of reality. The battles in these wars may last centuries, beyond the realization or comprehension of ordinary humans.

The societies of these dark beings are however ruled by some unwritten rules, which the clear majority obeys and forces upon others. The most important one is the Masquerade, that is the absolute prohibition against revealing supernatural occurrences to ordinary human beings.

Of course, there are factions, which don't like these rules very much. Among vampires there some who call for abolishing the Masquerade and openly ruling over mortal humans.

The highest authority in the vampire society is the Camarilla, a sect which calls itself the rightful government of all bloodsuckers. It enforces the Masquerade and severely punishes those who break the rules. For example, turning a human into a vampire without permission is punishable with death by decapitation.

However, despite their secret rule over the world, all these dark beings and creatures are nothing compared to the real state of affairs in the universe.

Ancient beings, older than our solar system, are waiting for the right moment to once more rise and rule over reality. Sleeping dead gods, extra-dimensional beings or other illogical things await their moment.

Among vampires and even ordinary humans there are secret cults and sects which await the return of these eldritch titans with impatience. They conduct strange rituals and rites supposed to speed up the destruction of the current life on Earth when from the skies descend horrifying gods and the lands will be bathed with blood.

There are of course organizations combating these cults, trying to prevent the end of the world. Dark Inquisitions, brutally murdering every cultist or devotee of forbidden beings.

The World of Madness is no place for heroes, but sometimes the villains cancel each other out.

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Some notes on the "Present" of the world.​

In 2043 a large group of Mages has achieved Ascension, which led to the arrival of something truly terrible in Chicago. The entire city was nuked immediately by other members of the Technocracy. Efforts to Ascend have weakened significantly after that.

In 2065 some Mages have learned that Vampires exist, this has led to Nuclear World War. Eventually the war ended with Mages agreeing to maintain the Masquerade in exchange for some benefits.

In 2070 a certain Cult was successful in summoning an Outer Being. A large part of South America is now the Forbidden Zone where reality has crumbled and unspeakable things walk the Earth.

In 2075 came the Yith Incident, where almost the entire population of Australia was mentally replaced by members of the Great Race. To maintain the Masquerade the continent was cut off from the rest of the world and only certain governments and Mega-Corps can communicate with it. The official version is that a plague killed everyone there.

It is now the year 2077. The world is ruled by a shaky alliance between Vampires and Mages. It is sometimes difficult to tell where the cybernetic ends and supernatural begins.

Vampires use cybernetic implants too. Tzimisce especially like to tinker with combining their flesh-shaping with cybernetics. Nosferatu heavily modify their bodies to look less monstrous. Malkavians sometimes go overboard, those wacky bastards. Vampire Mega-Corps have secret blood-draining farms.

The Deep Ones have gained a lot more power in the last few decades. They live in nuclear-powered cities at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. They interbreed with humans and are preparing for something. Only powerful and influential Vampires and Mages know they exist.

The Virtual Internet, or Cyberspace, has some places where few go. Seemingly corrupted for no reason, they can twist the minds of those who dare enter them. Sometimes nothing bad happens, but sometimes the people who leave these places come back changed. Not really insane, but not really all there. Their habits change, they act strangely or whisper words in strange languages. And a few weeks later the Dark Inquisition firebombs their homes.

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Any and all suggestions regarding this setting are appreciated.
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Consistent setting. Appropriate themes.
Quotation 1) what kind of story do you want to tell with this setting?
It's set up so that even a hero will find that they were yet another pawn in the great game. Which is a great WoD story, but I don't see the Chthulu or Neuromancer story elements.
Question 2) but what about my group of snarky vampires who act like superheroes with trenchcoats and katanas?

Also, completely love it.

 

@Shouldabeenadog

Here's an example:

A notorious hacker has been hired by a big corporation to retrieve sensitive information from a rival organization.

He likes the idea of easy money so he agrees and breaks into the servers and looks for the desired data.

He discovers that the rival corporation is run by vampires and their secret project is about an underground prison for humans to drain them of blood.

He contacts some of his peers with these wild revelations and finds that they themselves are vampires.

He starts being hunted by several groups who wish to protect the Masquerade.

Eventually he's caught and it is decided that instead of being killed he will be Embraced as his skills are too useful to discard.

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Or perhaps, one of the MegaCorps manages (with great difficulty) to capture a Shoggoth. They experiment on it and chaos ensues as it mutates into something even more terrible in their underground lab. The story would be about the scientists as they try to survive Alien-style.

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Or how about the work of one of the Dark Inquisitions as they hunt down members of a Shub-Niggurath cult. You can have your vampires with katanas here fighting against Cultists with hidden spells and tricks.

 

So here's a question, who controls the Catholic Church?
What is the most powerful mortal organization that knows of the masquerade?
And what is the most powerful mortal organization that knows of the Old Ones?

I really want Golconda to exist in this setting, but I want to tie it to the Neuromancer side in some way.

 

There are none. Unless you count WoD Mages as mortals.

Only scattered various Cults. And these are regularly hunted by various Dark Inquisitions.

Funny you should say that.

The Origin of Kindred AKA "Cainites."​

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The Believers among the Vampire kind believe that they are descendants of Caine (the Biblical Cain), the "Third Mortal" and supposedly First Vampire.

The Camarilla officially does not recognize Caine as having existed at all, believing the origin of Kindred is purely natural, an effect of some sort of magical mutation.

Truth be told, neither group is entirely wrong.

In the World of Madness, the Abrahamic Bible is nothing more than a collection of fictitious tales created to control the masses.

Caine was not the son of Adam and Eve. Though he certainly would like everyone to think that. He was indeed the first vampire, but not because he was cursed by God.

Instead, Caine was a Cultist living in Neolithic times, a worshiper of Chaugnar Faugn. Through certain rituals he managed to gain some of the Old One's power, at a terrible price.

While his strengths and instincts improved dramatically, he felt the urge to feed on blood of his fellow humans. The sun in the skies above him gave him pain, so he shied away from it and only moved about at night.

While initially Caine killed those he fed upon, eventually he started feeling a sense of crushing loneliness. And so he began Embracing others to be Vampires like him. Together they spun the tale of a powerful "God" (in reality Chaugnar Faugn) who created the world and everything in it.

They started using the tale to attract followers and then in secrecy Embraced those they deemed worthy.

In the following centuries, Caine eventually abandoned this organization as the number of human followers far exceeded the number of Kindred. And so the Kindred left the Abrahamic faith to humans while themselves creating their hidden communities.

The rest, of course, is gruesome history.

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