Short version:
Zoogs – Plague Rats Breeders - Mercenaries - anti-king pamphleteers
Leader: Sean Devlin (an Irish anti-napoleon activist turned plague-saboteur in ungodly experiment) – experiment transformed him into a zoog – want to take revenge against the crown
Goal: Revenge – Search for Skavenblight – Summon Malal „the horned rat“ into London
Allied with: Committee of Secret Correspondence (US spy ring)
Dramatis Personae: Oroku Nagi (Japanese Shinobi teaching stealth and assassination)
Peculiarities: Know the underground of the city well
Modus Operandi: Hunt cats and give bounty for dead cats – Infect water cisterns and wells
Secret: Breed lots of rats. Some they turn in for bounty to pay for the food of the waves of infected rats they let loose on the city.
Long version:
Zoogs are evil. The transformation into a zoog is very destructive for a human mind and those that survive the change loose most of their social skills. Most become functional sociopaths with a whole lot of hatred for society. They tend to find a sense of usefulness while bonding with communities of other zoogs, the only other being that seem to understand them. Only kids minds tend to stay mostly unharmed by the transformation/infection process. That is the reason why the transformed Catacomb Runners and the Sons of the Piper don’t mingle much.
Their society is build around the number 5, which each cell in a cluster having 5 members, each cluster 5 cells and so on, up to Sean Devlin and his entourage. Each group has an alpha, a beta, a neutral, a worker and a scapegoat. Scapegoats tend to be changed a lot in groups, and each time, all members need to redefine their place in the group, in a nearly constant power fight, or better said competitive stance.
Sean Devlin was born in Ireland and adopted quite early an anti-Napoleonic stance. After a wound during the battle of Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe - 1809), he was sent back to England. By then, his sentiment toward napoleon was very extreme and he accepted to be part in an experiment “That would save the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” and “make the french bastards drown in their own bodily fluids”.
There, doctors experimented with Tuberculosis, pest and cholera, and how to contain the spread of the infections, to use the diseases as weapons on the continent.
They have found a way to make people resistant to the affliction, while still carry the plague with them and spread it… For that, they used an odd discovery: a creature from another time and space that spoke of his home town of Skavenblight and his God and Master, Malal „the horned rat“. Long time, Sean Devlin and Zoog (that was his name) were in contact and the only person they had contact with was each other.
When Sean was “rescued” by his old comrades, they killed the “Abomination”. Sean now hates the crown for what he has become and wants to destroy all warmongers and all human society…
Sean has build up some relations with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, an U.S. diplomats and spies ring. His willingness to harm the crown is much welcome and they help him as good as secrecy allows. Sean’s plan is to continue his destruction of society in the united states once Britain and the continent are plagued. He wants to send some well adjusted cells to “the colonies”
At the same time, he uses a lot of his resources to discover the path to Skavenblight that Zoog had taken to come to Hopesend, before he was captured and brought to 28 Leicester Square, the research center located under a pub in Soho.
The Sons of the Piper offer a bounty of one Shilling for the head of each cat and spread the rumour that the “filthy cats” spread “diseases, curses, and plagues”. At the same time, they swarm the boroughs where they have a presence. Those boroughs are hit badly by epidemics. They work as mercenaries, letting cells accept contracts. They use the metings with their employers to infect them (spoiling their drinks for example)
Typical member:
Zoogs:
DEX 9, Will 7, HP 3,
Claws 1d6 -> a player hit by the claws is infected until he makes a STR save - One save per day, each unsuccessful save does 1 STR and DEX damage that can only be cured after the sickness is cured
Takes back it's human form once over ground
Can swim and run very quickly
Oroku Nagi:
STR 12 - DEX 13
Katana, wakisashi and 2 tonto
old and strange looking Asian armour (armour 2)
Turns into a Zoog underground but keeps his stats.
Can swim and run very quickly
Oroku Nagi:
STR 12 - DEX 13
Katana, wakisashi and 2 tonto
old and strange looking Asian armour (armour 2)
Turns into a Zoog underground but keeps his stats.
Sources:
- Zoogs are present in the French translation of Into the ODD (in the supplemental material developed for the kickstarter) but first appeared in "Everyday is Halloween" (same editorial team). I took the liberty to give them a warhammer-ish Skaven feel. They are also more intelligent than their french and old-world counterparts
- Oroku Nagi is an evil and twisted mirrored version of Splinter, the ninja turtles' Sensei
- Sean Devlin is the main character of the game "The saboteur". Apart from the name and the concept, nothing was taken over.
- the Committee of Secret Correspondence is historically not supposed to exist anymore in 1814, but since they exist in Taboo, I decided to include them. The war between England and the US is a good source for intrigues.
- Hopesend is described in the Into the Odd main rulebook
- Hopesend is described in the Into the Odd main rulebook