Asphodel Nights: An Introduction

You awaken to the buzzing of a bee. It has landed on your floral face, crawling like a whisper over the stamen of your yawning mouth of leaves and the pistil in your beaming floral eyes as you gazelovingly up at the dim orange star glowing in the dark sky, all alone. 

As the bee pollinates you, you become once again human. The bee whispers to you as it crawls, crawls across your face as the flowers of your eyes and the leaves of your chin and the vines of your hair become sweet flesh and strong bone. 

The bee whispers, “Our wisdom flows so sweet--taste and see.” Its voice is strangely mechanical, not at all any language you can speak, but you understand anyway, reading it in the dancing and shaking the bee does on your face as it crawls, the meaning emerging in the mind as if remembering a long-forgotten thought. “TRANSMIT - initiate the Soul Flower signal - RECEIVE - initiate the Raw Deal frequency - DOWNLOAD - The Resurrection syntax - WITNESS - The Buzzing."

“LISTEN. You have heard our voice before. We were in the wind, whispering in the oak leaves and pine bows on your seventh birthday party. Our murmuring in the whistle and tweet of the birds in spring, in the flutter of bats in the autumn. Our cries siphon through the scream of the therianthrope in the night. REMEMBER. You witnessed our geomancy in the patterns of traffic on the highway, in the white behind your eyes after your concussion. You’ve seen our work in the patterns of starling flocks swirling and tumbling. 

“You see, Sweetling, when once we spoke so subtly, we can now scream. We know that what happened to you was unfair. Our power flows so sweetly, and if you will work for The Buzzing/Hive of the <Great Tree/Yggdrasil/Ashvattha/Ağaç Ana/Jianmu/Great Oak) / Mountain(/Olympus/Kilimanjaro/Fuji/Everest) / Pillar(Of The World/Sky) / Tower(/Dark/Rose/Crown/Obelisk/Pyramid) / Atlas(/Fossil/Corpse/Bones)> you may TASTE of our power. If you will work for The Board you may drink your fill, and when you drink you will return to the world of the living, greater than you ever could have been before.”

You stand, a glowing honey bee-like insect that, on closer examination, is the most fucked up bee you’ve ever seen crawling all over your face. What is going on? you ask, or want to ask, but your voice doesn’t work right. Surrounding you, stretching out in every direction, are little patches of plants and flowers; each patch of vegetation seems to fit together to form a face. 

Still, the bee seems to understand. “You are dead, Sweetling. You have grown in the garden of Asphodel, where the spirits of the dead grow as flowers eternally under the Echoing Spark, in the shadow of the Onyx Obelisk, the Ebony Pillar, until they are ready to bloom once again into flesh. Now follow.” 

Where are you taking us? you desire to know. 

“To the Dark Pyramid, the Tip of the Obelisk, sweetling,” the bee replies. “To visit The Hive and stand before The Board, and taste the royal Wisdoms if you should choose to join us.”

You have no idea how long it takes, as time isn’t really the same. You seem to go very far, because as you follow the bee, the flowers gradually become sparser, and more thorny and twisted and tough. The fog starts creeping in, slowly at first, but as the last of the flowers disappeared, the sky and the horizon start closing in too. The fog darkens. Everything darkens. It is so slow you only notice it in retrospect. 

You’ll always remember when you first saw your destination. It is when you see something in the distance, as it materializes out of the gloom that you realize the truth; you’ve been following the bee into an unimaginably massive cave, and what you’ve taken to be fog was actually distant grey walls, fading in on themselves in the vague overlight. Now, out of the darkness of the cave, finally taking shape against the shadowed distance ahead, something hangs from the ceiling. An enormous stalactite?

It is not. It is an obelisk of black or dark, dark grey stone, it’s tip all but scraping the floor, or seeming to from the distance you are at. From its tip hangs something, probably large, but minuscule compared to the obelisk. It is not quite ovular, of a dark yellow-brownish color that still seems bright against the dark grey of the obelisk and the gloom behind it. 

You don’t seem to get any closer for a time, despite your steady pace. Then, gradually, it grows even larger, and you can see a glowing orange cloud pour out of it and swirl toward you. It takes them some time to reach you. When they do, the swarm promptly lands on you, half-covering you with glowing not-bees. You can feel them crawling around in your hair.

Bizarrely, this feels comforting rather than horrifying. You do not and will not understand it, but the bees feel right. Honey bees are kinda cute anyway, you know? And while these are huge, they are more or less weird honey bees that glow with a pleasant orange-yellow light, almost sunlight like. And they feel like they are realer, more important, more right, than anything you’ve ever experienced in the real world. It’s nice. You find yourself wondering whether it would be the same in the real world, and if so, whether some of them will just live in your hair. 

The bees whisper to you. Mostly nonsense you can only dimly guess at the true meaning of. Stuff like what they told you before, about how they were the “Education Protocol,” how they hide in the background of the world and try to promote knowledge--maybe, it is confusing--how they will grant you the power to rend the tiger and eat its honeyed heart and what not, how dark days are here or ahead or something. You can’t remember it all as it flows over you. Nothing to do about it. It is less comforting, but interesting, that of it you can remember. 

You walk for a while longer, and the hive and the obelisk grow. The obelisk is just Fucking Enormous, and even the hive is actually pretty big. It’s bottom hung less than five feet from the floor, you realize when you reach it, and the obelisk’s giant tip from which it hung has to be at least 30 feet up. 

You stare up at the obelisk, still maybe forty feet away, when the new voice speaks, high pitched like the Bees. It sounds like a malfunctioning android attempting mumblecore rap over a bad phone connection and it speaks an utterly different unintelligible language that sounded like nothing you’ve ever heard, including the Buzzing’s language. But it’s meaning rises in your head in the same way. “Excellent/fortuitous! The Buzzing/Resurrection Bees have found us a new Agent/Helper/Tool.”  

Then another, deeper voice, in the same language and with the same android doing mumblecore vibe, says, “Have you understood our offer/restrictions?”

The bees all buzz, “Restrictions may apply!” 

“Not really,” you say. “What are you? What is this? I… I died, right?” 

“You died/malfunctioned, yes,” one of the voices says. Each sentence following is added by a different voice, all of them mumbling vocaloids transmitting from Mars in Martian. “The Buzzing will repair/resurrect you if you will act as our representative/employee/ally in the material/literal realms of our Earth planet/cosmic mote, for the safety of all living/responsible Earthoids/ideas. You will be authority/responsible for securing/controlling locations/sites of power/magic/anima/EVE, and protecting/containing these sites. Your cities experience hostilities/invasion and a counterattack/extermination must be made. You are willing/eager to live again and face threats/opposing forces? We expect independence/dependence from our agents/allies, and grant benefits/tools.”

It may take you some time. You might need convincing, I don’t know you, but in the end, you say yes. The only other choice seems to be to go back to being a flower. 

The strange grey ground… shifts, on your acceptance, sections sliding down into the ground where no sections had been before; the sound of stone grinding on stone like the purr of a huge cat, the buzz of the bees; and a column of black, marble-like stone with gold flecks rises through the gaps in the grey marble-like stone around it. On top of this is a gun. A strange, cuboid gun made of some sort of dark-grey metal. Very dark in color, in this cave particularly. 

“Claim the Service/Vassel Weapon/Tool,” one says. You are pretty sure they were repeating individuals, but they mix up their speaking order constantly. You still are unsure about how many there are. They continue. “It is your badge/identification/scepter. It will return to you if lost or stolen. You will use/change it with your wisdom/instinct. You will improve/upgrade it with control of the Power Sites. You tap/bond and The Buzzing and The Board channel the power/anima site/well though you and your Service/Vassel Weapon/Tool. You must take it for the deal/pledge/oath to complete/engage.”

You pick up the gun, and immediately knew how to use it. It seems really well balanced. Then you look back up at you bizarre benefactors, just as an enormous bee, it’s thorax pulsating and gleaming with some sort of slime climbs out of a nook in the giant hive. 

“Final step/signing: you will eat the Royal Jelly and be reborn/remade,” The Board says.

The bees, the enormous one the loudest, sounding almost like an American doing an impression of the Queen of England transformed into a bee, say, “We give you the power to crush the beasts that prey on your species, cleanse The Rot, silence The Chant, fumigate The Mold. You will rust the cogs of the Hungry Machine and burn The Flesh.” You can hear the capitals. “You will keep the <World Tree/Yggdrasil/Ashvattha/Ağaç Ana/Jianmu/Final Oak) / Mountain(/Olympus/Kilimanjaro/Fuji/Everest) / Pillar(Of The World/Sky) / Tower(/Dark/Rose/Crown/Obelisk/Pyramid) / Atlas(/Fossil/Corpse/Bones)> from collapsing and corruption. You will help save the Everything. Dark days are here.” 

There was a pause, and the… Queen(?) seems to look at you expectantly. You say, “Okay.” 

Then the Queen(?) flies down at you, faster than you can react to, and latches onto your face, her thorax, covered with the jelly, slapped over your mouth, the jelly flows in (it is, in fact, very sweet), and everything blinks into darkness. 
_______

You wake in a too-warm concrete room, a pair of men hovering over you and peering down at you curiously. One of them, the bigger one, huge in fact, smiles on seeing that you’re awake. “Oh good,” he says, “You’re awake. A cliche phrase, I know, but almost necessary if you’re not sure someone’s going to. I’m Small Paul, and this,” and here he motions to the man, smaller than you, beside him, “and this is Tall Paul. Welcome to the Agency. You’re a Bee like I am, and we’re glad to have you on-board.”

_________________________________________________

The Buzzing and the Board

In this campaign for Esoteric Enterprises, the PCs are agents of The Board, a mysterious group of paranatural entities that, for unknown reasons (that, if asked, they assure are positive for humanity), want to take control of Places of Power in the undercity of an unknown number of cities. At the direction of The Board, their agents tend to work as marshalls of the Occult Underground, putting agents up against both human and supernatural predators, and larger supernatural threats, that would rather like to destroy, control, or feed on humanity, so on the whole the Agents tend to view themselves as forces for good, if often more practical than idealistic. 

The Board works with extra-dimensional apian paranatural entities that refer to themselves as The Yggdrasil Buzzing, which grant agents extraordinary preternatural powers, and can even resurrect the dead. (Actually, whatever occult translation effect that allows for agents to understand The Buzzing, and for that matter The Board, translates their title as “The Buzzing/Hive of the Great Tree(/Yggdrasil/Ashvattha/Ağaç Ana/Jianmu/Great Oak) / Mountain(/Olympus/Kilimanjaro/Fuji/Everest) / Pillar(Of The World/Sky) / Tower(/Dark/Rose/Crown) / Atlas(/Fossil/Corpse/Bones)” and The Buzzing gets cranky when you try to say Hive and not Buzzing, so they’re The Yggdrasil Buzzing to most agents. Or usually just The Buzzing.) 

The Buzzing contacts the souls of those who have died and offers them a second chance, most often at the price of becoming an agent of The Board; the Buzzing are capable of resurrecting dead souls, both newly and long dead. They will also contact living humans and offer them power at the price of becoming an agent. Those granted power by the Buzzing are often referred to as Bees, both among themselves and by other members of the occult underworld. 

Every agent of The Board is granted a shape-changing, preternatural Service Weapon, which requires some sort of paranormal ability, most often that granted by The Buzzing, to bond with. It also helps enhance preternatural powers, particularly those granted them by The Buzzing--the most common among these the ability to dash short distances nearly instantly using telekinesis (or possibly gravity manipulation), being able to telekinetically lift and Fling objects at high enough speeds to injure or kill, and being able to cause objects in an area to interpose themselves between the agent and physical attacks. 

Primarily inspired by and drawing from the video games Control and The Secret World, and the SCP Foundation wiki, The Buzzing and The Board reinterprets the base Esoteric Enterprise system into a high-powered action game layered on top of the exploration and faction-based gameplay of EE. While it incorporates many ideas from the OSR field of game design, it is probably not something that could be called OSR anymore; of course, many of the rules changes could be dropped while keeping the spirit of the campaign, which is as much the fiction as the rules. Any or all of the survivability boosts below can be dropped, for instance. 

Bee Rules:

• Bees begin with an extra die each of Flesh and Grit. They only roll the normal ones, though, maximizing the “extra” dice when generating initial hit points.
• Bees add their Charisma modifier, if any, to all their saves; a high Charisma is appealing to the Buzzing and the petty spirits of the world, and this bonus represents the favor both. Bees may burn energy until they sleep for at least eight hours to heal 1 point of flesh damage (not grit) per energy burnt. 
• Bees seldom die. The Buzzing use their power to resurrect their Bees at the nearest Board controlled Place of Power. However, this is hard on the body and mind. Every time an agent is resurrected, they must Save vs. Poison or Stunning (player’s choice) or lose one maximum Flesh and Grit each. Die too much and eventually they’ll be too infirm to play anymore.
• The Bee must also make a Save vs. Machines or their memory leading up their death becomes pretty fuzzy, and they gain no experience for anything done the previous 24 hours.
• If they pass the Save vs. Machines, the agent must make a Save vs. Magic. On a success, they only take trauma equal to 3 - Wisdom modifier. Otherwise they take Trauma equal to their Level plus their Constitution and Charisma modifiers (unless 3 - Wisdom is worse). Dying is traumatic, and the tougher and more confident you are, the more traumatic it is when it happens to you.
• The Board may fine their agents financially (reduces Resources by 1 until leveling up), depending on whether they think it was reasonable for the agent to risk death in the situation that caused it
• Returns and Escapes: Finally, as a ten minute (1 exploration segment) ritual, a Bee may warp back to the nearest Place of Power only, riding the leylines back to the intersection. When an Bee takes Flesh damage and their remaining flesh is lower than the Spell Slots column, they may do so as well, as a reaction, or anytime after as an action. This means Bees need to be cautious when the nearest bound PoP is low in magnitude.
• Bees MUST roll on Table 19: Social Class and Table 22: Tragic Flaws, or something comparable must be chosen to be part of the agent’s background. If they were dead previously, also roll on Table 29: What Killed an Undead Spook (though Risen are Not spooks). If they’re not dead, they must roll on Table 20: Relationship to the PC on Your Left for each other non-resurrected Bee that’s part of The Branch, Table 21: First Contact with the Occult, and Table 23: Criminal Record. If the player wishes, they may roll on Table 28, Favored Weapons to choose a form that replaces the default Knife option for what forms are available to their Service Weapon initially. It's not entirely known why The Buzzing seems to choose criminals and fuck-ups so much for their minions, but they do. (A game of The Buzzing and The Board is not meant to be entirely serious. The survivability options are partially there to allow sub-optimal decision making that will be fun and in-character. )