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* EatTheDog: During the Siege of Paris, the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes sacrificed its exhibits to nourish the well-connected. César Ritz may tell the [=PCs=] of his time when, as young chef of the Restaurant Voisin, his menu items included spaniel and elephant trunk with sauce chasseur.
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* ReptilianConspiracy: Devourers are human-sized mutant serpents who can pass for human at a quick glance and wear clothes taken from past victims. Keen observers notice the greenish, reptilian tint to their skin, almond-shaped pupils and fangs instead of teeth. They used to serve the Castaigne regime to assassinate political rivals and enemies of the state. Three types of people believe they exist: revolutionary spies who've seen regime records on Operation Ophidian, survivors who've narrowly escaped their wrath, and conspiracy theorists who believe lizard people are real.
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* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Despite their mutation, devourers remain snakes by instinct and are deathly afraid of birds of prey.
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* DeadPersonImpersonation: After eating a victim, a botanihive hacks into their personal accounts, manufactures images of them and continues on with their online presence. Some messages serve to lure more prey towards the botanihive.
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* EmotionEater: The midnight mare feeds on negative emotions and is magnetically attracted to humans who are constantly stressed.
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* JackTheRipoff: Curios, which come from murder scenes and carry immense Carcosan energy, drive potential copycat killers to become obsessed with historical murders and to carry them out.
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* ManEatingPlant: Botanihives are predators that take on the form of startlingly beautiful flowers or shrubbery, luring victims by tempting them to pose for photos next to them. They then brush their foliage against victims, releasing soothing chemicals and lulling them into complacency. As their prey loses the capacity to notice danger, the botanihive wraps them completely in its leaves, concealing them from view, then feasts for a few days.
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* CosmicRetcon: One suggestion for how to run this era. Everything is normal up until, abruptly, the world's ''always'' been dealing with Ravager attacks.
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* MagicIsEvil: All magic derives from the hostile alien world of Carcosa and taxes human users mentally, physically and morally. Even incantations created by people on Earth, whether they understand this or not, gain their energy from ambient Carcosan radiation.
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* VancianMagic: After becoming aware of a spell's existence and acquiring the instructions, the next step is to learn them, gaining the spell. A few spells leave the user's mind when cast; others remain resident and can be used multiple times until some other condition is met. An investigator who can still access a spell can attempt to regain it, but it gets harder each time.
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* VancianMagic: After becoming aware of a spell's existence and acquiring the instructions, the next step is to learn them, gaining the spell. A few spells leave the user's mind when cast; others remain resident and can be used multiple times until some other condition is met. An investigator who can still access a spell can attempt to regain it, but it gets harder each time. In keeping with the weird horror tradition, investigators never become experienced wizards capable of drawing a wide array of effects from an ever-growing spell list.
* CharmPerson: The Unknown of the Seine operates by using Carcosan psychic influence to persuade a GMC to don a mask of herself. The mask then takes control of the victim's body and uses it to carry out its unwholesome mission.
* DropDeadGorgeous: In the final years of the 1880s, Paris found a new sex symbol: the enigmatic face of ''l'Inconnue de la Seine'', the corpse of an anonymous young woman found on the riverbank. A plaster cast of the apparent suicide victim became the new epitome of feminine beauty.
* MuckMonster: The suffering of the soldiers of the Continental War leaves a residue, which is stirred into something almost likelife by the Carcosan conflict taking place across Europe. A supernatural whirlwind picks up all the muck and waste and infection until it has become the rot, a great shambling, hulking beast that leaves behind a trail of ooze and putrefaction that remains noxious for several days.
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* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: The physicists, philologists, historians and occultists working at the Centre d'Expériences Occulte Militaires join together to establish a discipline they call Science Jaune, which involves the development of equations allowing them to extrapolate heretofore unknown magical effects from grimoires and texts recovered from Belle Époque Theosophists, Martinists and Synarchists. CEOM researchers do their best to portray their activities as scientific, rational and reliable.
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* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: The physicists, philologists, historians and occultists working at the Centre d'Expériences Occulte Occultes Militaires join together to establish a discipline they call Science Jaune, which involves the development of equations allowing them to extrapolate heretofore unknown magical effects from grimoires and texts recovered from Belle Époque Theosophists, Martinists and Synarchists. CEOM researchers do their best to portray their activities as scientific, rational and reliable.
* TheyWouldCutYouUp: The medical researchers at CEOM's Département de Neurologie aren't above a vivisection or two as they attempt to identify the brain structures separating a spell-caster from an also-ran.
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* ToServeMan: Larval gravegrinders prefer to drink the blood of humans, but any large mammal will suffice.
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* ToServeMan: ToServeMan:
** Larval gravegrinders prefer to drink the blood of humans, but any large mammal willsuffice.suffice.
** Gut gobblers gain occult sustenance by devouring the entrails of sapient beings.
** Larval gravegrinders prefer to drink the blood of humans, but any large mammal will
** Gut gobblers gain occult sustenance by devouring the entrails of sapient beings.
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* EvilSorcerer: In this sequence, parageometry practitioners cracked one problem the Europeans had never quite explicated: they learned to turn out sorcerers by the hundreds. Sociopaths, it turned out, didn't crack under the strain of blackstar working.
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* PowerNullifier: The spell 'Shut the Front Door', created by a rogue parageometrist who defected to the rebels, changed history by making it impossible to cast the Hermetic-era spell 'Past the Hyades', which permitted impromptu travel to Carcosa. Without this, the physical demolition of the permanent gates would not have permanently defeated the regime. 'Past the Hyades' remains impossible in the Aftermath reality.
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* RabidCop: Secret police recruitment processes targeted sociopaths, who do not break under the stress of working magic, to be turned into sorcerers. Parageometrical thinking shattered their minds, and in their posts as oppressors and torturers, their depravity masqueraded as calm calculation.
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* BioweaponBeast: In the Castaigne regime's early days, the Bronx Park Zoological Society developed the sersinger in a program to create intelligent animals that could be weaponised against suspected insurgents. The idea was to create animals able to communicate with humans and follow orders but not so smart enough to rebel against their masters.
* BlobMonster: The ooze is a bright yellow, sentient fluid that fuses with and takes over organic materials on contact. When deployed for its original homicidal purpose, it encases and absorbs human limbs, then uses the biomass to self-replicate.
* BlobMonster: The ooze is a bright yellow, sentient fluid that fuses with and takes over organic materials on contact. When deployed for its original homicidal purpose, it encases and absorbs human limbs, then uses the biomass to self-replicate.
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* EnfantTerrible: Black-eyed kids are Carcosan children orphaned by the closure of the Carcosan gates, and seek out families to look after them for a while. Since humans cannot provide the twisted, alien love that they need, their malicious instincts inevitably take over, leading them to psychically dominate and torment their 'benefactors'. When they inevitably grow bored, or at the slightest provocation from the family, the black-eyed kids torture and kill their new families before moving on to find a new household.
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* HumanDisguise: Devourers can pass for human at a quick glance and wear clothes taken from past victims. Keen observers notice their greenish, reptilian skin, almond-shaped pupils and fangs in place of teeth.
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* NonHumanUndead: Ectoflies are the vengeful ghosts of Carcosans who died in the human world.
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* SignatureHeadgear: All rouge berets wear their namesake red hats.
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* TakeAwayTheirName: Namesake's name was destroyed, leaving it obsessed with finding a new moniker to fill the gaping hole left behind in the universe. Namesake can cause a victim's name to detach from its owner and transmigrate to a sorcerous hiding place, erasing that name from everyone's memory.
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* HealingFactor: Wounded catfish can regenerate, regrowing limbs or even heads, provided the torso remains more or less intact.
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* TheBluebeard: Over the years, one by one, Sebastian Beaumont's lovers have all died suddenly and tragically, which only adds to his deepest depressions. The most tragic thing is that he doesn't know he's the one killing them. Though many have suspected Sebastian's been murdering his ex-lovers, no one has been able to prove it. His mind pushes awareness of the killings below his conscious awareness. Believing himself innocent, he exasperatingly tries to solve the murder along with the Sûreté, as his unconscious guides him to skillfully hide the evidence.
* DoesNotLikeMen: Silver sirens accumulate a hatred in their hearts for men. The man might have killed a fish or a woman once, or not, but the sirens believe that a man is always capable of this violence. To them, this is enough of a reason to tear flesh from bone.
* FakeMemories: According to French Catholics, Our Lady of Bones is a lesser-known saint whose likeness is memorialised in Notre-Dame de Paris. The faithful gladly volunteer that she raised Lazarus from the dead or saved Saint Peter from his crucifixion. In their minds, she has always been an important part of the Catholic faith, and many humans venerate her greyas God's left hand. In truth, the only textual references to her are a pamphlet or two printed only this year--since belief in this saint began only months ago.
* AGodAmI: Our Lady of Bones is a gifted and clever Carcosan illusionist who weaves lies and manipulates people's emotions to further her goal: to be worshipped as a god.
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* NonMaliciousMonster: Dames blanches seek only respite from the loneliness of the grave, but their touch ages the objects of their longing.
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* NonMaliciousMonster: NonMaliciousMonster:
** Dames blanches seek only respite from the loneliness of the grave, but their touch ages the objects of theirlonging.longing.
** A marble dancer, who drains the life force of its lovers until they die, genuinely doesn't wish malice upon anyone and has some deep-seated trauma related to how many humans it's fallen in love with and who have died a few years later. Despite the harm it keeps doing to its lovers, a desire to become human and live and be in love is the fire that drives its actions. Its heart may break a hundred more times, but it doesn't care as long as it gets to be alive again.
** Dames blanches seek only respite from the loneliness of the grave, but their touch ages the objects of their
** A marble dancer, who drains the life force of its lovers until they die, genuinely doesn't wish malice upon anyone and has some deep-seated trauma related to how many humans it's fallen in love with and who have died a few years later. Despite the harm it keeps doing to its lovers, a desire to become human and live and be in love is the fire that drives its actions. Its heart may break a hundred more times, but it doesn't care as long as it gets to be alive again.
* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: Silver sirens are fish by day and women by night. They transform during twilight hours, during which they are physically women on the top half and have fish tails instead of legs. They spend the rest of the time as either full fish in the water or full women on land.
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* RapidAging: The dame blanche's touch ages the objects of their longing. A kiss steals a month; an embrace, a year; and a night, decades.
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* RapidAging: RapidAging:
** The dame blanche's touch ages the objects of their longing. A kiss steals a month; an embrace, a year; and a night,decades.decades.
** Over many nights, a marble dancer drains its lover's life force, prematurely aging them.
* RefugeeFromTVLand: In Myth/ClassicalMythology, the god Pan lusts for the nymph Syrinx. The reality-twisting energies of Carcosa have conjured Syrinx and her unwanted lover into physical being.
** The dame blanche's touch ages the objects of their longing. A kiss steals a month; an embrace, a year; and a night,
** Over many nights, a marble dancer drains its lover's life force, prematurely aging them.
* RefugeeFromTVLand: In Myth/ClassicalMythology, the god Pan lusts for the nymph Syrinx. The reality-twisting energies of Carcosa have conjured Syrinx and her unwanted lover into physical being.
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* ClockworkCreature: Soft machines are reanimated clockwork soldiers built by Carcosan scientific units.
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* MasterForger: Each letter writen by Commander Dupuis is meticulously penned, signed and sealed as though it were in the hand of the person it says it's from (never Dupuis himself). Not naturally a skilled forger, Dupuis relies on a paranormal effect to transform his document to perfectly match the desired handwriting, paper stock and letterhead.
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* WalkingWasteland: The drought lord is a Carcosan that manifests in farmlands, draining water from the soils and rendering vast swaths of land barren. It starts with land in an otherwise fertile and moist region abruptly desiccating; next comes the livestock, drained of all fluid, with no visible wounds. To allow a drought lord to flourish and feed would spell disaster for not only the war effort but humanity in general.
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* TomeOfEldritchLore: The Shock cards Hermetic Grimoire (Paris), Folio Jaune (The Wars), Parageometrical Notebook (Aftermath) and Dark Web Download (This Is Normal Now) represent the mind-shattering spellbook, a staple in weird horror. In the game world, the character takes physical possession of the tome when receiving the card (or downloads, in case of the Dark Web Download). Merely owning one of these unwholesome documents, punctuated throughout with scribbled Yellow Signs, gnaws at one's identity.
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* ApocalypseCult: The Doombringers, a secret group within the gendarmes, have fixed their loyalties on the King in Yellow, a living god. They pursue his goal, as they understand it: the end of reality.
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* DemBones: Neglected human remains carelessly shunted to the Catacombs and animated by practitioners of Carcosan magic become bonepiles, prowling underneath Paris in roaming masses.
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* DirtyCop: The Doombringers, a secret group within Parisian gendarmes, aid beings or events driven by alien Carcosa, turning a blind eye to these creatures' lawbreaking whenever it occurs. They lose key evidence, mislead witnesses and victims, and impede interfering investigators like the art students.
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* LivingDrawing: Among the new artworks hanging in the 6th arrondissement's Luxembourg Gallery is a post-impressionist painting. It takes a little while of gazing at the painting to see a leopard, which returns the viewer's gaze as soon as it notices it's being looked at. Over the next few days, the victim begins to see the leopard where it shouldn't be until it jumps into the prey's reality and tears them to shreds.
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* MindControlDevice: Claudia Martin's dresses infect their wearers, making them susceptible to her suggestions. In her dreams, she imagines them acting like her puppets on strings. In reality, the next day, they follow these commands. Over time, Claudia has learned to take advantage of this, gaining personal wealth and revenge on those who've harmed her in the past.
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* PerpetuallyProtean: In their true form, green fairies' skin constantly ripples and oozes, like a tumultuous sea.
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* SkullForAHead: The defining feature of a Carcosan-influenced wanderer is a skull mask beneath a top hat.
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* ToServeMan: The nokk feeds on human flesh, luring its victims to a watery death.
* TrackingSpell: Bonepiles seek to reassemble all of the disparate bones of the skeletons they contain. A subtle psychic sense allows a bonepile to locate the missing bones, regardless of what might block its path.
* TrackingSpell: Bonepiles seek to reassemble all of the disparate bones of the skeletons they contain. A subtle psychic sense allows a bonepile to locate the missing bones, regardless of what might block its path.
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* WasOnceAMan: If a person or animal gets lost in the Catacombs, the absolute darkness seeps into them over the course of several days, leaving them forever transformed. Dark dwellers don't return to their past life; they have lost too much of themselves to even know what that is.
* WeakenedByTheLight: Having been transformed by the dark, dark dwellers are pained by the light. If they're attacking victims on the streets of Paris, there's likely something much worse lurking in the belly of the city, driving dark dwellers upwards like rats before a flood.
* WillingChanneler: Madame Verlaque's ritual may seem to those uninitiated like a séance, but it's a summoning, connecting to extra-dimensional beings in Carcosa and inviting them to inhabit her. Then, they speak through her mouth to haunt the séance's attendees, haunting their subconscious minds, compelling them to commit murder, cheat on their loved ones, or end their suffering through suicide.
* WeakenedByTheLight: Having been transformed by the dark, dark dwellers are pained by the light. If they're attacking victims on the streets of Paris, there's likely something much worse lurking in the belly of the city, driving dark dwellers upwards like rats before a flood.
* WillingChanneler: Madame Verlaque's ritual may seem to those uninitiated like a séance, but it's a summoning, connecting to extra-dimensional beings in Carcosa and inviting them to inhabit her. Then, they speak through her mouth to haunt the séance's attendees, haunting their subconscious minds, compelling them to commit murder, cheat on their loved ones, or end their suffering through suicide.
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* YourSoulIsMine: When Evelyn completes one of her dolls, the person it models suffers a Carcosan curse. Their spirit is trapped inside the doll, leaving their body empty but still living in the real world. Destroying the dolls will release the people imprisoned.
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* ArmsDealer: Paul Daste was a successful weapons maker before the Continental War. As the war expanded, so did his small business grow into large-scale arms manufacturing. Daste's lack of ethics suited him well to making weapons. Soon he had a factory mass-producing from mundane pistols to weapons designed to fulfil strange and unusual requests for particular Carcosan problems, and shipping them to any military that could afford his prices.
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* EyeScream: Once a cyt is inside a human body, it makes its way up to the optical centre and eats away an eye, replacing it with its body. It maintains the visual signals to the brain but every so often alters the perception so that the victim regularly experiences hallucinations of horrific creatures.
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** Little ones are shapeshifters posing as children whose parents have been killed. Upon the soldiers' arrival, little ones beg for aid, appealing to the soldiers' empathy. If the soldiers take a little one with them, it impersonates the various people in the group when the risk of detection is minimal to spread discord. When the weapons come out, the little one slips away.
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* {{Oculothorax}}: Red Eyes manifests as disembodied pairs of glowing, scarlet eyes hovering over the battlefield.
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* ThatsNoMoon: Carnivorous, sapient Carcosan beings known as blood sanctums hunt by posing as churches or chapels. Once victims step inside it, a blood sanctum manipulates them, demanding them to spill blood, theirs or someone else's, inside it. When a blood sanctum senses an arson attempt, it gives up its ruse and attacks.
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* CastFromHitPoints: Since the insurgency shattered the gates to Carcosa, parageometrical magic has grown progressively draining to its users. In this sequence, any spell from the older Hermetic Occultism or Science Jaune traditions costs an additional 2 Health points or forces the user to make Difficulty 4 Composure tests to avoid Injuries—Major and Minor: Parageometrical Exhaustion/Parageometrical Debilitation.
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* CastFromSanity: Magic taxes its human users mentally, physically and morally. Simply knowing a spell stresses the human mind, bringing it one step closer to a catastrophic breakdown. To represent this, spells appear in the game as Shock cards.
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* VancianMagic: After becoming aware of a spell's existence and acquiring the instructions, the next step is to learn them, gaining the spell. A few spells leave the user's mind when cast; others remain resident and can be used multiple times until some other condition is met. An investigator who can still access a spell can attempt to regain it, but it gets harder each time.
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* HermeticMagic: In this sequence, magic derives from the occult scene of the Symbolist era. Practitioners require the trappings of ritual practice: wearing robes, chanting in Latin and drawing magic circles. Specific incantations and accoutrements derive from the earthly tradition the sorcerer started out--Theosophy, Martinism, Synarchy or Catharism. As sorcerers progress, they incorporate key motifs of the King in Yellow's conspiracy. Those fully aware that they are serving the Hyades abandon the symbology of the traditions they started with.
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* MassSuperEmpoweringEvent: Hermetic sorcerers may have been occultists for many decades, but only since the publication of ''The King in Yellow'' have they been able to manifest objectively measurable effects.
