Cockroach the Barbarian

The old world had killed itself with mighty weapons, or great and terrible plagues had been unleashed, or a meteor had struck the Earth, or something something aliens. The important points are, almost everyone is dead, everyone who lives is a mutant, and I had been granted eternal life and was enjoying every second of it.

Except this one.

The woman was as beautiful as they said. Limbs in all the right places (not something you can take for granted), eyes that shone (figuratively, not radioactively or hunts-in-the-dark-ly), and skin that was merely splotchy (instead of pock-marked, a bit green, or coming off).

And it turned out she was a laser-witch.

“Why?” I attempted to growl past the gag.

“Because it’s the right thing to do..”

“So?” I managed.

“So you could change the world for the better. Why wouldn’t you want that?” I should have known. I threw her across the room, dove out the window, and began running.

I could judge how close she was by the brightness of the blue light following me.

At some point her skin had turned translucent and what was beneath had a sickly glow. Perhaps her eyes had been shining radioactively after all.

“EARTH HANGS IN THE BALANCE!” she yelled, right in my face.

Her second mistake. I headbutted her.

Then the street collapsed, and I was face-to-eyestalk with a man-shrimp.

Scholomance Class Catalog

The Scholomance was founded by the devil, and has been Europe's premier school of magic for millennia. The school teaches through attrition. The only way to fail is to die, and the only way to graduate is to be the sole survivor (although you can withdraw by fleeing). Even in class death is possible, although the professors have a low tolerance for interruptions.

Classes are practical. Each class focuses on a secret technique. Most professors will sprinkle in theory, philosophy, or history as the mood strikes them. You may take as few or as many classes as you think you can handle.

Its campus is a hidden valley in the southern Carpathian Mountains, containing a town, several villages, small farms, a lake, and thick forest. The valley is littered with dangers, from monsters to artifacts to mysterious phenomena, not to mention the students.

Cannibalism

An old but youthful woman who lives in a hollow log deep in the forest teaches students to take the strengths of those they eat. Her students are feared for their habit of literally poaching talent.

Breeding

Taught by a sphinx, an ancient hybrid created by the originator of the method. Students are taught to breed in strength, speed, and cunning, to combine species, and finally to mix and match traits as they please. Students of the sphinx often build sanctums are usually at the center of labyrinths, patrolled by their pet monsters.

Runes

Both living and non-living things can be augmented by inscribing special signs into them. Taught by a heavily tattooed man who doesn't always bother to dress. This is a popular class, as use of runes is an in-demand skill with many applications.

Dreaming

Students of this man will learn to sneak into the minds of others through dreams. There are few ways to defend yourself from this technique, and its practitioners are distrusted. If you have potential, you will find the teacher in your dreams.

Skinchanging

A talking owl demonstrates the means of becoming animals by wearing ritually prepared skins. As useful for spying as for combat.

Languages

An old, soft-spoken woman teaches the principles of universal language that will allow them to speak to all things. They make good diplomats, although their intense anthropomorphising is off-putting to many.

Possession

Taught by a man in the garb of a monk, covered in prison tattoos. Students allow themselves to be possessed, granting them uncanny powers and exaggerated personalities. Practitioners tend to be unpredictable.

Names

Does your dog know his name, or does he know you want his attention? Does he actually identify himself with "Rex", or has he learned a sound which means you want his attention?

Think, why would an ancient, unknowable being would have a name at all?

Their names don't define them, their names don't give us power over them. Their names are the words we've discovered that draw their attention, and you must be very cautious about drawing their attention.

Magic

Science is the best way to understand a world ruled by unintelligent, perfectly predictable forces. What is the best way to understand a world that is alive and filled with life, in which everything has its own will, and in which reality is a constraint imposed by beings of infinite power? In such a world you must be both a shepherd and a parasite, taking nourishment from the weak, stealing power from the strong, and devising new tricks to use against competitors.

Controlling the weak, attracting the patronage of the strong, and competing always with rivals? These are the behaviors of witches and wizards.

The Oracle

The room is dim, only the dull red of neon through the window and pinprick lights blinking on racks of computers. In the center, a corpse, too thoroughly mummified to make out identifying features, in a meditation posture. In the top of its head, a precise hole. A thin bundle of cables emerges through the top of the skull and rises into the ceiling, holding the corpse upright. A tattoo of a small lizard encircles its left wrist.

Behind the teeth sits a small speaker. Ask it a question, and it will answer. The answers given will always be smart, but will not always be right. At least you'll be making a better class of mistake.

Recquisition Request, Accepted

I must have men who are accustomed not only to maintaining electrics and mechanics, but to living in service to a machine, working by its uncompromising schedule and seeing to its unrelenting needs. I am making this request of you because you are a Navy man. My understanding is that the Navy employs many such men, for in the Navy men do not often fight for themselves, but serve great machines which fight.

A bureaucracy is made of parts that follow rules and contribute to the greater whole like a machine, so let us make our bureaucracy a machine. An economy is made of parts that follow rules and contribute to the greater whole like a machine, so let us make our economy a machine. Our society is made of parts that do not follow rules and do not contribute to the greater whole, but they could be made to, so I am going to make our society a machine.

Britain is a garden, every square yard adjusted by and for its people. Utopia, if its potential is realized. All of the world must become Britain, so that all the world shall become a utopia.

CIA

The CIA is a mystery cult. Not explicitly, of course, but its organization of successive inner circles possessing increasingly more important secrets mimics the form perfectly. There are even "initiation rites", designed to test candidates for their ability to keep secrets, commonly including gaslighting, imprisonment, interrogations, and even false executions.

The uninitiated maintain mundane intelligence analysis duties. This is the public face of the agency, doing the sorts of work an intelligence agency is expected to do. Their primary concern is suppressing dissidents at home while supporting them abroad, especially in the USSR.

Members of the agency-within-the-agency are self-selected. Especially talented analysts, who, noticing the ways in which official narratives are insufficient, go hunting for their own explanations, and, crucially, find them. These people must be either initiated or killed. This inner circle is concerned with the secret war against the deep ones, know of the Elder Things held by the USSR, and have suspicions about the existence of the Mi-go. They have transcripts of Soviet/Elder Thing interviews, shoggoth samples, and numerous uncategorized anomalies.

The agency goes one level deeper. Inside the inner circle are the true masters, a group of transplants, seeking a Yithian archive, from which they can learn the true and secret history of the world.