TICKETS FOR A PRAYER WHEEL
THE FIRST TICKET
First Encounters

The game proper opens in the red dust of a large American airbase outside Saigon, where the investigators become aware that horribly mutilated corpses are charred by American fire-when already dead.  These actions hide the even more horrible wounds inflicted by a cannibal witch cult in the hills.  The pilot John Redmond lies in a Saigon opium den, drugging himself to forget his own central role.  This section introduces two important settings for the game-the airbase, a "safe" place to rest and recuperate, and Green Flower Street in Cholon, a lowlife locus of dives, dens, and whorehouses, where old hands such as Lucy Chin and Monsieur Wu may have useful information, in return for certain considerations. 
 

The Base

Personnel at an American base in Vietnam (the newspaper reporter) discover that military officials, high ones, are ordering the cremation of corpses with napalm before the ashen bones are sent home in body bags.  There is a reason for this, but only Johnny Redmond, a pilot, knows that it is to hide the horribly mutilated bodies that MedEvac removed from certain lost jungle patrols and overrun VC bases.  The bodies had the eyes, genitals, and large muscle tissue removed, in that specific order; not all bodies had completed the course of mutilation.  A very few (less than 5%) of bodies were reduced to burnt and scraped bones, marked by metal implements, before Americans recovered them.  A total of fifty-one bodies have been discovered, thirty-two having the muscle tissue removed, the rest lacking only genitals and eyes.  Redmond is found at Madame Chin's, a singsong house on Green Flower Street in Cholon.  He will give the foregoing information in return for opiates, to which he is addicted.  The medic can easily remove said drugs from stores to satisfy the need. 

THE OPIUM DEN

The place where the investigators find Redmond could be of some interest.  Green Flower Street is part of the vice district of Cholon, Saigon's Chinatown,  and is short and obscure.  A priest beats a wooden fish with a hammer before a Buddhist temple; a springroll man hawks his wares loudly into the night, and small  boys run everywhere offering soldiers pleasures no guidebook lists. 

Chin's place is done in  Chinese style, a bit rundown.  Paintings of mountain landscapes adorn the walls, and on busy nights a girl plays the classics on the lute or zither.  Americans here are greeted in poor English, but the food, drink, opium, and women are much cheaper here than elsewhere, even by Vietnamese standards.  If the Keeper wants a graphic introduction for the investigators into the drug trade, have Johnny die here, killed by his girl when he gave her hammer that had been mistakenly packaged as heroin. 

Opium is the main concern of the place across the way.  Louis Wu's is a fumeur, a smoking den left from the days of the French government monopoly.  Louis, the host and owner, greets the guests in Chinese robes.  As many come merely for the excellent food in the dining room, he asks where his guest would prefer to sit.  If they answer "In the back", he leads them to the dens, where lacquered screens hide alcoves of couches and cushions.  Little tray-tables are brought holding teapots, cups, rice wine, sweets, and  several pipes of opium, replenished as the smoker requires them.  Louis has the usual smoker's opium as well as the pure oil, but the latter is more costly.  He does not serve heroin, although some bring their own.  One must also provide one's own intimate company; Louis is no pimp. 

Zimbabwe's Palace is the one business on the Street that is not Chinese.  It's a bar frequented mostly by blacks.  The owner, Muhammad al-Hallaq, is a huge Wolof from Senegal who married a Saigonese under the French regime and saw no reason to leave later.  He speaks good English, albeit accented, and can tell the players a lot. His ritual scarifications cover most of his cheeks. 

Muhammad knows Johnny.   John got drunk one night and told about the mutilations, and that they occurred at Firebase HI25 near the border.  Muhammad has also serviced a tall blond man who cared little for his bar, Capt. Schwärmer.  Müller likes the place.  The drinks are cheap, and the women oddly tattooed.  Muhammad can direct the interested to the best tattoo places in Saigon (Van's Tattoo Shop), the best whores (Hall of Mirrors), the best dope (Tu Do Street) and the most elegant dope (Louis Wu's). 

At some point in the first ticket, the players should see or even meet Captain Jacob Schwärmer.  He is vitally interested in their investigations into the mutilations, as he is responsible for them.  He was not able to remove the pictures completely, but having them damaged was not so hard.  He will follow them, and is a good tracker in both urban and rural settings, but is not perfect, especially in town.  He can be seen frequenting Louis Wu's and Zimbabwe's Palace on Green Flower Street, the first for the boys that Louis can provide and the second for the connections of the Africans there with the Bloody Tongue Cult and the Cthulhu worshippers.  For more about him, see the section on him. 
 

THE MAD CAPTAIN SCHWÄRMER

This section gives in one lump all the information that the referee will need to portray the major villain, Captain Jacob Schwärmer.  An outline of his life, including his various romances, adventures, and Mythos escapades, precedes a detailed description of what he can and will do to conceal the great evil plan that he serves and how he will try to deceive and destroy the players' investigation. 

The referee's characters in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel are more fully developed than is usual.  The Keeper may decide for himself the depth of reality that he wishes to give them: they can be used as villains, heroes, allies, enemies, and sources of information in the manner of ordinary role-playing, or he can devote time to making them more. 

Captain Jacob Francis Schwärmer serves a variety of roles, being both an officer in the US Special Forces and an associate of Nyarlathotep.  He has done much evil in the service of love. He was born April 30, 1927 to Rudolf Otto Schwärmer and Maria Kunegonde St. Pauli Schwärmer of Brussels, Belgium.  In 1930, they emigrated to Charleston, SC.  Rudolf Schwärmer, a veteran of the Belgian Army became an advisor to the US Marines on unconventional warfare, and raised his son in the strictest European manner.  Jake was bright and serious, speaking  English, German, French, and Flemish.  The family joined Fritz Kuhn's Amerika-Deutscher Volksbund and sent Jacob to the German-language summer camps so popular in North America during the Thirties. 

At thirteen he went to Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia.  Schwärmer found a protector in Terence Alexander Baldwin, a cadet from Charleston, South Carolina.  His affection for Baldwin would have been merely personal friendship anywhere that there were women, but Baldwin was overcome.  The referee can decide for himself and his players how much to emphasize the physical aspect of the relationship; that such things happen is obvious to anyone.  In playtest, the players were at a loss as to whether the boys had ever consummated the love affair. 

The two were inseparable all through school.  They enrolled in The Citadel together in 1944.  Alec Baldwin died one night in what looked like an accident.  Schwärmer knew otherwise.  He exposed his friend's death as a hazing murder.  The cadets involved were tried, convicted, and given laughably light sentences.  Later, one broke his neck in a vehicle crash and strangled on blood unable to move in the hours before the vehicle was found.  The second suffered third-degree burns over eighty-three percent of his body surface in a gasoline explosion and was hospitalized.  The next day he crawled from his bed and hanged himself from a pipe, taking quite some time to choke to death.  The third (this is all in military records, but has never attracted attention, so far as the players can tell) ate a broken light bulb in a suicide attempt after he found lethal doses of poison in candy sent to him through the mail.  When he was prevented from dying in this manner, he grabbed a needle from an orderly, wounding him, and then when straitjacketed chewed through his own ankles and bled to death.  These horrible events were never traced to Captain Schwärmer, but he was responsible, operating in the weird and sinister way that has characterized his life ever since.  He influenced the men to commit suicide through the Send Vision spell, the first spell he learned. 

After he graduated cum laude with a BA in languages and political science, he enrolled in the US Army.  During the Fifties, he served at a number of US bases but was longest in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, and South Africa.  If the referee's game includes other centers of world Mythos activity, or of other worldwide evil cults, tie them in here.  He met members of the cults of the Old Ones, but did not become a follower until he found out that the Mythos cults promise contact with the dead.  He searched library after library and ritual after ritual, and by 1968 had his goal--the return of Alec from the dead in the body of his son. 

Schwärmer picked Aryans to form a Special Forces team.  This won't be obvious, unless the characters are unusually perceptive.  It might be best to wait until the players are sure that Schwärmer is a villain before letting them see that he is also a Nazi. 

Schwärmer acts as the Special Forces liaison with the Tcho-Tchos, supposedly US allies in the war.  He wears the brass bracelet that marks him as a member of the tribe.  Actually, he uses the liaison to funnel arms and equipment to the tribe so that they can capture soldiers to sacrifice and eat.  He is always sending Tcho-Tchos on suicide missions, but they are all insane and don't care. 

Schwärmer takes his men on leave to Hong Kong, for the libraries, Melbourne, likewise, and Bangkok and Singapore for the billy girls.   They are trained killing machines and are all insane.  Of them, Muller is the hardest to ignore; his habits of taking trophy parts from human corpses and his blatant sadism mark him as a madman, though Schwärmer has been able to keep him quiet.  Himmelgart is new to the team.  Himmelgart is a potential avenue of approach for the players, as when the game begins he has not yet fallen entirely under the spell of his captain. 

Schwärmer is a devout believer in coincidence (he is a devout believer in a lot of things) and found out at age ten that his name, in addition to meaning fanatic in German, meant the hawkmoth, or sphinx moth.  He has not neglected the symbol; investigators will find the hawkmoth tattooed on the left breast of Borg and Brandt, and on Himmelgart's rump.  These men are Schwärmer's regular partners, and he has had them decorated thus to mark them as his.  All the team bear the brand of Odin's O-rune on the left thigh, and Müller has many other tattoos. 

Ernst Müller

This man would aver that there is nothing special about him.  He is a soldier, his creed a soldier's, his loyalty to his Captain, his nation, and his race.  In fact he is the right-hand man of Schwärmer, who is of course one of the most dangerous and evil living human beings.  Raised by nationalist German parents in Wisconsin, Muller grew up hearing the Holocaust denied and Adolf Hitler extolled as a racial hero.  Naturally his playmates disagreed, but Muller knew he and his father were right about these things, and when he met Captain Schwärmer in Germany in 1961, he knew himself vindicated.  The two men became very close, though Muller's boozing and pedophilia went ill with the Captain's emphasis on study, monastic discipline, and clean living. 

Muller's value to the Captain is that he is a dumb slab of beef who will do anything he's told to for the greater glory of the race.  His general bestiality can provide the Keeper with a little gallows humor.  Muller is heavyset and muscular, with hair the color of wet sand and close-set piggy blue eyes.  He is tattooed with the hawkmoth on his breast over where most people think their heart is, and also has a screaming eagle on one bicep, an anchor on the other, and a snake around his waist. 

James König

König's mother was a whore in Richmond, VA. in the forties.  She was raped one night by two men in fatigues.  They were Schwärmer and Baldwin; he is Baldwin's son.  If the Keeper has designated another, such as a player, as the man, then König's family are dull Virginia German military. 

Frank Binh

François Cao Binh is a métis or Eurasian.  His father was a French soldier and his mother a prostitute whose village shunned them both.  He stole a bottle of her hair dye and ran away into the jungle.  A large snake was attracted to him and gave the small boy a rough time.  Captain Schwärmer was in the area, and killed the snake with an iron spear in an Odinist ritual.  The Captain found that no one wanted Frank, and so took him in.  Rumors exist that he is the captain's slave or that he is the Captain's bastard son.  He has no magical or occult powers and is poor at fighting, as he is twelve.  He's a good cook and sweeper and speaks fairly good English.  Frank is 4'11" tall with slanted hazel eyes and  orange hair with black roots. 

THE  FINAL PLAN

The Captain is a part of a larger plan dedicated to the return of Great Cthulhu and the Old Ones.  Other participants in this plan include the Starry Wisdom cult, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight, the sinister "Full Wilderness" group, the ancient cult of Cthulhu, such nonhumans as the Mi-Go and Deep Ones, and a few oddities such as the "Mr. Shiny" from  At Your Door, who as of 1969 is a drop-in at the opium fortress of Hei-Ren-Tze, or Patty Holeran, or Nyarlathotep. 

The goal of the great and disorganized conspiracy is the return of the Great Old Ones to the planetary surface of Earth, the eradication of the human species being incidental to the matter.  The Captain participates, like most human cultists, with limited understanding.  As a devout follower of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, he believes in the inherent worth of strength and the contemptibility of weakness.  He sees a world in which the human species, deprived of a suitable opponent by its mastery of nature, strives with itself and is divided, with the least desirable elements (the inferior races) choking the Earth with their numbers and filth.  The Great Old Ones came here from the stars, and then withdrew, leaving humankind to grow and multiply.  But the signs of their return are many and imminent. 

The Great Race and others have revealed that the human race becomes extinct in a finite timespan of the future.  Schwärmer wants to see the blessed event, or to know its nearness.  Nothing is too bad for the species three of whose members killed his friend Alec.  But not all humans will die--the Brown University professor Cornford, called Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee by H. P. Lovecraft, met and spoke to members of a future race in his journey into that mysterious and mocking shadow out of time.  Schwärmer counts on a handful of superior humans, a master race, to survive the cataclysm, made greater by their struggle against the Great Old Ones, and found a new and more marvelous human world upon the slimy ruins of the old. 

MAGIC

The Captain is a worshipper of the Norse gods.  He is not a member of any neo-pagan sect unless the Keeper would like to have him be so; he merely uses Odin as a focus for his racist and magical beliefs.  He is not capable of "rune magic" or other Norse witchcraft unless the Keeper wants him to be even more powerful than he already is. 

New Spells

Divert Attention
This is a Wiccan or neopagan spell, used to prevent rites of the faith from attracting unwanted notice.  The caster spills water and salt and says magic words, whereupon all involved expend a  number of magic points.  The spell lasts an amount of time proportional to the number of magic points available. If one is spent, then the spell lasts fifteen minutes, each point spent doubles the duration.  The spell also costs 1d6 SAN.  The effect is limited: anyone near the caster(s) does not think about them unless they cross his path or are mentioned.  To break through the spell one must be mentioned or cross the path of the caster and must match his POW against the  number of magic points expended in order to concentrate his attention on the subject.  The spell is kept going by the team whenever they are on base and even when they are off.  It prevents the base commander from seeing their evil and the high command from remembering their atrocities.  This spell does not make them invisible or all-powerful, though, and the Keeper should tailor its effects to fit the plot.  It does not do to have evil exposed too soon. 

Transfer Attribute
This spell enables a magician to temporarily give another person one of his attributes.  The caster spends 3 magic points  and 1d4 SAN, and performs the ritual.  The target has the ability until sunset, until the campfire burns low, or for 1d6 hours.  A skill, spell, or characteristic may be so transferred.  For example, Schwärmer uses this spell to empower the Tcho-Tcho snipers and to give three of his men the ability to walk through fire, which he himself got through Transfer Attribute from the elder things.  The ritual as the Captain learned it involves an exchange of bodily fluids; often he uses blood.  There may be other ways to perform the spell. 

Bonding Ritual
This is a further development of the Transfer Attribute spell, used only by a few cultists.  Two or more can use this spell.  The lesser of the two loses one point of POW, then available to the greater. If one is injured or killed, the other will know.  Within a range of a hundred yards the linked characters can see through each other's eyes and use each others' spells.  The Captain is so linked to all his men.  The spell costs 5 Magic Points and 1d6 SAN. He can see through their eyes, but they are not so gifted.  They cannot cast his spells, but can use his skills if they wish.  The Captain casts the spell through an exchange of body fluids.  There may be other ways to cast it. 

Send Vision
The spell enables the caster to send a dream or vision to another person.  If the person resists, then make a POW Vs POW roll on the Resistance Table.  The vision can last 1 hour each time the spell is cast.  The spell costs 15 Magic Points to cast, and is thus rarely used.  The disadvantage of this spell is that one may cast it involuntarily.  This happens about 1% of the time.  If this happens, the caster loses 10 Magic points involuntarily, usually during sleep, and a dream of the Keeper's choice strikes a random target.  This is a good way to distribute information in a Call of Cthulhu game.  Note that this spell does not enable one to enter the Dreamlands, or to cause another to enter them. 

THREE NEW FORMS OF INSANITY

XENOPHOBIA
This phobia is already familiar to readers of Call of Cthulhu, but manifests in Tickets in a more sinister form.  A xenophobe who acquires the phobia in Vietnam, or some other strange place, may express his fear as hatred.  In this case, the phobiac will have to check SAN whenever confronted with stress generated by Vietnamese characters.  Examples of this might be bargaining in a crowded market, arguments with villagers during a search, or attack by the Viet Cong.  In the case of failure, the character with the phobia will be unable to function.  In the case of a fumble, he may, at the KeeperŽs discretion, attack any Vietnamese uncontrollably.   This phobia may also manifest in other settings, especially ones with severe racial or ethnic problems. 

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Not a phobia, but a full-fledged mental illness in itself, PTSD troubled many Vietnam veterans.  It is a mental disorder in which stress received is internalized until released explosively all at once.  To simulate it, the Keeper should assign PTSD to the player when he loses SAN, and assign another mental illness or set of phobias, but keep them hidden.  The loss of SAN will not manifest immediately, and the player can play his character normally for a while.  But at a certain time, the accumulated stress will release, and the mental illness that the player acquired will appear.  The results can be deadly.  The game effect of this is not simply to delay inevitable mental collapse.  The Keeper should employ the threat of collapse subtly, to heighten the suspense inherent in the Call of Cthulhu game. 

SADISM
Sadism is a mental illness familiar from many sources.  It should be used carefully in a game setting, as it lends itself easily to parody and abuse.  A sadist derives pleasure (especially sexual pleasure) from (or exclusively from) hurting others.  The more SAN the sadist has lost, the more cruel he will become and  the more likely he will be to derive pleasure only from causing suffering.  The Keeper should assign this insanity only to a skilled role-player, as a lesser player would have trouble articulating the change in character necessary to play the role.  A sadist is not only cruel and is not cruel to everyone.  Many cases of  sadism in Tickets will be coupled with Xenophobia and will manifest when the madman meets Vietnamese . 

STATISTICS

Captain Jacob Francis Schwärmer, US Special Forces 
STR 18   DEX 19  INT 18 
CON 17  APP 16  POW 21 
SIZ  19  SAN 0   EDU 18 
HP 18 
MP 20 
Any modern thrown or fired weapon 95%, Sword 60%, Spear 70%, Dagger 50%, Fist 90%, Kick 85%, other weapons as needed. 
Skills:  Flemish 70%, German 90%, English 80%, French 40%, Latin 85%, Old Norse 40%, Swedish 20%, Icelandic 40%, Mandarin 40%, Cantonese 30%, Vietnamese 50%, Spanish 30%, Greek 25%, Arabic 5%, Thai 5%, Aklo 30%, Tcho-Tcho 30%, Rhade 10%, Anthropology 40%, Archaeology 10%, Botany 5%, Camouflage 90%, Chemistry 50%, Climb 70%, Debate 40%, Cthulhu Mythos 15%, Dodge 40%, Drive Auto 40%, Hide 20%, History 50%, Occult 80%, Oratory 80%, Pharmacy 20%, Pilot Aircraft 10%, Sneak 50%, Track 80%, Seduce 30%, Perform Odinist Ritual 50%, Vietnam 29% 
Spells: Divert Attention, Transfer Attribute, Voorish Sign, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Fungi from Yuggoth, Contact Old One(Elder Thing), Bonding Ritual, Send Vision 
Attributes: Cap acts as 4pt armor.  Schwärmer is also invulnerable to flame, although he can be hurt by flaming weapons. 

Henry Pernell, Captain, US Army 
STR 13  DEX 12   INT 13 
CON 11   APP 10  POW 11 
SIZ  11 SAN 50  EDU 17 
HP 11 
Rifle 40%, Pistol 45%, Dagger 15%, Credit Rating 55%. Drive Automobile 60%, Law(Military) 60%, Make Maps 25%, Oratory 45%, Psychoanalysis 10%, Military 30% 

John Redmond, Pilot, US Army 
STR 12   DEX 14  INT   11 
CON 11  APP 13  POW 12 
SIZ  12 SAN  30  EDU 11 
HP 12 
Rifle 30%, Pistol 10%, Pilot Aircraft 69%, Pharmacy 20%, Drive Automobile 50%, Speak Vietnamese 10% 
Opium addict 

Louis Wu, Owner, Louis Wu's, Age 65 
STR 8  DEX  15 INT   16 
CON 13  APP 15   POW 17 
SIZ 8  SAN 70  EDU 12 
HP 11 
Pistol 50%, Dagger 40%, Cantonese 80%, Vietnamese 75%, French 60%, English 50%, Accounting 50%, Anthropology 15%, Bargain 45%, Credit Rating(Vietnam) 90%, Cthulhu Mythos 1%, Fast Talk 50%, Linguist 15%, Pharmacy 15%, Pick Pocket 20%, Psychoanalysis 50%, Psychology 45%, Sneak 20%, Treat Poison 25%, Spot Hidden 30%, Massage 50%, Etiquette 50% 
Opium addict 

Chin Wu-Tzi ("Lucy Chin") Mama-san, Madam & Maîtresse, Age 50 
STR 5   DEX 15 INT  16 
CON  12 APP 15   POW 12 
SIZ 7  SAN 50  EDU 9 
HP 10 
Dagger 10%, Pistol 30%, Cantonese 70%, Vietnamese 75%,  English 12%, French 25%, Bargain 70%, Credit Rating(Vietnam) 60%, Diagnose Disease 5%, Fast Talk 70%, Listen 35%, Pick Pocket 35%, Psychoanalysis 55%, Sing 50%, Massage 55%, Etiquette 50% 

Ma Yin Ti ("Patsy"),  Typical Singsong Girl, age 16 
STR  5 DEX  16 INT   11 
CON 10  APP 18  POW 11 
SIZ 7  SAN 55  EDU 6 
HP 9 
Massage 70%, Seduce 55%, Cantonese 80%, Vietnamese 70%, English 25% 

Ernst Müller, Lieutenant, US Special Forces, age 43 
STR  17   DEX 14  INT 8 
CON  17 APP 11  POW 15 
SIZ   17  SAN  0 EDU 13 
HP 17 
Skills: Speak German 80%, Speak English 70%, Speak Vietnamese 60%, Speak Tcho-Tcho 20%, Speak Chinese 25%, Rifle Attack 50%, Knife Attack 60%, Pistol Attack 60%, Martial Arts 40%, Crossbow Attack 30%, Occult 50%, Cthulhu Mythos 10%, Camouflage 50%, Climb 40%, First Aid 50%, Jump 40%, Linguist 40%, Heavy Equipment 50%, Pilot Aircraft 5%, Spot Hidden 50%, Swim 50%, Throw 60%, Track 80%, Vietnam 50% 

Jim Koenig, Sergeant, US Special Forces, Age 25 
STR 14    DEX 12  INT 17 
CON 15  APP 16  POW 12 
SIZ  14   SAN 0  EDU 16 
HP 15 
Skills: Speak English 90%, Speak Chinese 50%, Speak German 50%, Speak Vietnamese 60%, Speak Hmong 60%, Speak Tcho-Tcho 40%, Speak Yunnanese 30%, Speak Lao 30%, Speak Tai 30%, Speak Yao 20%, Speak Khmer 20%, Speak Pacoh 10%, Speak Phnong 20%, Speak French 60%, Speak Bru 20%, Speak Rhadé 25%, Speak Burmese 10%, Speak Tibetan 10%, Rifle Attack 50%, Anthropology 20%, Climb 45%, Drive Automobile 50%, First Aid 50%, Hide 45%, History 30%, Library Use 40%, Linguist 80%, Oratory 10%, Spot Hidden 30%, Throw 40%, Track 50%, Swim 40% 

NEW SKILL  Vietnam [Lore] 

Knowledge of a country, its people and ways, can be an important accomplishment, especially for a stranger.  Vietnam skill is one that will likely manifest only in Tickets itself.  It connotes knowledge of the customs, geography, and heritage of the dragon-phoenix people themselves and all those who share their land.  Upon completion of the first ticket, give each investigator 5% Vietnamese skill, and allow checks after any ticket in which interaction with the Vietnamese played a major part.  Differing levels of this skill produce different results.  For example, a character with 5% Vietnam skill knows about the stinky fish sauce that the locals put on their food.  40% skill confers knowledge of its use and nature, but an 85% score means that the character looks for the choice vintage from Phu Quoc Island.