Outsider: The Calling

The Cthulhu mythos is famed for its darkness and horror. Alien entities roam the world's forbidden places, turning men into monsters, entire villages into strongholds for their cults. Intelligence so foreign we cannot even understand why they act the way they do. Then picture in it the World of Darkness.

In Outsider: The Calling, this is the struggle of the protagonists: Surviving in a reality that denies their very existence. Still very human in form, they are still alien, whether through birth or...anything. To the Outsider, our reality is a dangerous thing, one they cannot understand. Whether or not they fully give to their strange abilities is only up to them. The two splats of the suppliment are an Outsider's Sect and Creed. The working PDF can be found here, while the blog showing updates (which itself has not been updated since 2013) can be found here

SECTS

  • Starspawned Savants - Servants of big green himself, the "Wakeners" are called to his home of R'lyeh, where they are brought into his service. Charismatic, the Savants are able to shift reality to their will, though they keep getting dreams from R'lyeh even after they answer the call.
  • Shepherds of the Silver Key - Followers of Yog-Sothoth, seekers of knowledge. "Encompassers" gain access to jump through time and space, as well as their ability to access the minds of other beings.
  • Young of the Thousand - Shub-Niggurath's "children", the "Goatspawn" possess multiple genetic mutations able to withstand even the toughest onslaughts.
  • Scions of the Yellow Sign - Cult of Hastur, those who realize he is a god of truths, not madness. Frequently, they are able to use their abilities to turn the truth to their own ends, even the truths of the universe.
  • Courtiers of the Black Pharaoh - Under the sign of Nyarlathotep, the "Favored Ones" are those who directly contact their chosen deity the most, not forced to rely on vague dreams and voices, as well as becoming rather consummate liars.

CREEDS

  • Servants - Blind followers of the gods, servants do as they must, whether out of loyalty of fear.
  • Masters - Leaders of the gods cults, they are usually found using their powers for their own gains.
  • Rebels - Utterly rejecting their "gifts", they instead fight the things that changed them.
  • Deniers - They still see themselves as human, bodily changes be damned-it's obviously a curable disease.
  • Dreamers - They know the truth, and seek to protect the balance between the world we know, and the Outer Realms.

While the gameline follows the Lovecraftian mythos like Pathogen: The Infected, it focuses more on the willing servants of the elder gods, as opposed to those infected by the old evils.

Tropes used in Outsider: The Calling include:
  • Artifact of Doom: Subverted with the Silver Keys, the devices that catalyze a human's ascent into an Encompasser-to even come into the possession of one, you have to be the kind of person that would be receptive of the idea of becoming an demi-avatar of Yog-Sothoth in the first place.
  • Alien Geometries: Some followers can jump between them.
  • City of Adventure: Baltimore.
  • Crossover: Miskatonic University becomes a Outsider-hunting conspiracy.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Subverting this is what usually catalyzes metamorphosis into an Outsider: Wakeners and Encompassers both beheld their patrons personally and simply regarded it as a profound religious experience, and Scions read The King in Yellow, but had the Heroic Willpower and curiosity to pull through the resultant visions long enough to realize Hastur is a god of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, not madness. All came out with their sanity intact (if...different), though not their mortality.
  • Human Sacrifice: Par for the course in the mythos.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Besides any Outsider with a trace of the Karma Meter intact, a quirk of the Goatspawn means their mutations take the form of biological grafts to their original bodies-cut open the skin, and you'll find the original human form, unblemished.
  • Lovecraft Lite: An interesting blend of a true Cosmic Horror Story and this. Yes, it's the Cthulhu Mythos, yes that means a bunch of alien gods with either contempt or complete disregard of humanity...except the game also makes clear that their schemes aren't coming to fruition canonically (without player assistance, at least), and their representatives on Earth can go down like any other supernatural template. Oh yeah, and you're playing them.
  • Villain Protagonist: Outsiders are actually nicer on average then say, Kindred, and while they're certainly arrogant and have somewhat of a disregard for mortals, that's nothing new for greater supernatural templates and the patrons won't mind if you're nice. That being said, vampires are a pretty low bar to clear, and the game makes perfectly clear that to an Outsider does not care about humans in the slightest, except for their cults and as regents.
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