Risus Elizabethulhu

I never played RE as I thought it should be. All the gamers gave a pass on the Elizabethan political landscape and the dire Cthulhu mythos. It started as a joke when I was in the only real Cthulhu game I ever played. A haunted manse in Cthulhu by Gaslight. The joke was Gaslight for Victorian, Candlelight for Renaissance, Torchlight for Medieval, and Lamplight for Antiquity.

The Elizabethulhu World

The problem began with Pius V's papal bull giving a clean slate hall pass to Heaven to anyone who ganks Good Queen Bess. He issued the bull and set up the foundations for The Roman Inquisition to be a dark weapon to crush the Protestants. The Inquisition had public show trials, but when they found real heretics or witches or sorcerers, they bound them to the service of the Pope's ""Obscura Martis". What the priests didn't know was that they imprisoned cultists among the mundane satanist rabble. So amid the usual Hell-rising, a much darker force was awoken.

Into this darkening world, Elizabeth's spy master, Walsingham, recruits the younger sons of the lesser nobility to travel Europe, gather intelligence, and establish communication networks in Catholic lands. John Dee is the man who instructs some of the young nobles in occult ways.

These bands of cavaliers soon discover that with along with the Papal threat there are new, strange beast loose in the lands.

The world is a 'legend/lore' version of history, everything is true (except for kissing vampires); with the crack in the veil to cthulhu giving the creatures of darkness a power boost.

The Calvinist have their own version of occult R&D, not as well organized as the Pope's.

And there is a well established black-market in the dark arts.

There are no end to adventure seeds. Religious/Political intrigue, Huguenots/Calvinist and Papists having at each other, in Europe, The Thirty's Years War, and wars of empire in every corner of the known world.

Elizabethulhu Magic

S. John Ross's take on 'folk magic' Hedge Magic,
Herbalism and Apothecary have magic like effects
Students of John Dee can learn
Alchemy
Hebrew/Islamic Kabalism: summon, bind, invoke, ward, banish
Celtic/Viking runes

Elizabethulhu Characters

The Rank is important in this milieu and will define character knowledge and abilities; military rank, a patron, education, fencing, literacy, at creation.

Nobs
Squirearchy
Merchants
Yeomanry
Rabble

Elizabethulhu Movie List

Brotherhood of the Wolf
Sleepy Hollow
Captain Cronos - Vampire Hunter
Fearless Vampire Hunters
The Brothers Grimm
Van Helsing

Elizabethulhu Links

These are the games I looted to form the basis of Risus Elizabethulhu.