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Ceremony of Innocence – Belanger
Ceremony of
Innocence
A Night of Occult Intrigue set in Victorian London
by M. Belanger
michellebelanger.com
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Ceremony of Innocence – Belanger
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand …
from “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats
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Ceremony of Innocence – Belanger
About This Game:
Ceremony of Innocence
is a one-shot parlor LARP written in 1996 for a
Halloween party hosted at my home. The game was based on the
Vampire:
the Masquerade Mind’s Eye Theater Second Edition
ruleset with a hefty
amount of homebrew. The stat blocks for the character sheets have since
been lost, but the story, goals, and character histories remain. In practice,
the game never reached a point where players had to initiate challenges (I
think maybe there was one to check someone’s aura?): this one-shot is
written to be rules-light, no combat, conversation-driven, with a heavy
emphasis on character.
Set in 1896 Victorian London,
Ceremony of Innocence
is a game of
social intrigue between rival occult groups. Historical figures like Bram
Stoker, Aleister Crowley, and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky are dropped
together at a lavish social event and encouraged to schmooze, manipulate,
and out-maneuver one another for fun and profit. The majority of characters
in this game are drawn directly from history, and their biographies,
motivations, and influences are heavily informed by records of their lives
(I’ve taken liberties in the name of a good story, as you’ll see). The same
goes for the occult organizations. The Golden Dawn actually existed. The
Theosophical Society actually existed. Both still influence occult practices to
this day.
In order to get everyone in the same room together, this game exists in
a slightly altered timeline than ours. Wilde has yet to go to prison for his
homosexual trysts. Westcott has yet to leave the Golden Dawn. Maud
Gonne and John MacBride are involved years earlier, allowing me to indulge
a messy triangle with W.B. Yeats.
Additionally, a couple of characters in this game are pure fiction. One is
historical only in that he was himself a creation of a living person depicted in
this game: if you recognize Lord Henry Wotton’s name, that’s because it
comes from the
Picture of Dorian Grey,
written by Oscar Wilde. I think Sean
McMurrough was based on someone, but I cannot for the life of me find the
research that inspired his character.
The other twist:
Ceremony of Innocence
is a
Vampire: the Masquerade
game. Hiding among the mortal occultists are several vampires. These
vampires have their own agendas for the mortals around them. As the
occultists play at being wizards, how many of them are ready to become part
of something truly supernatural?
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Ceremony of Innocence – Belanger
Content Warning
Set in 1890s England, this game explores some of the more troublesome
aspects of Victorian society including racism, colonialism, antisemitism,
misogyny, homophobia, and abuse of sex workers. These traumatic social
issues impact several of the characters’ stories directly and will be
impossible to avoid.
It is important to note that many of these issues continue to impact occult
organizations influenced by these groups in the present day.
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Ceremony of Innocence – Belanger
The Stage Is Set…
Victorian London:
The year is 1896 and Victoria is Queen. A scant seven years ago, the city
of London was rocked by a series of grisly murders in the district of
Whitechapel. The predations of the Jack the Ripper remain emblematic of
the worm at the heart of the rose. The seat of the British Empire is a realm
of stark dichotomies: conservative yet corrupt, prudish yet profligate,
superficially rational while seeking spirits around every bend. At court, P.T.
Barnum’s living curiosities are celebrated for their “exoticism” while, at the
same time, the colonized people of the empire are exploited or slaughtered
in the name of civilization.
You inhabit this world where the English upper classes maintain their
illusion of a prosperous, deserving, and advanced society only by preying
upon everyone they’ve kept beneath their boots.
Chasing Shadows:
In the past few decades, an overwhelming fascination with the occult has
gripped the monied classes who now flock to the séance parlors of table-
tippers as they convey messages from the Otherside – for a price. Others
seek wilder, deeper, and more forbidden mysteries, delving into magick and
mystical practices believed to stem from lost and ancient cultures.
Several secret orders and mystical lodges have established themselves
in London. In 1888, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded
by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Dr. Wynn Westcott (among
others). Before that, the Theosophical Society, headed by the clairvoyant
Madame Blavatsky and her close friend, Henry Steel Olcott, came on the
scene (note: the date for the Theosophical Society was actually 1875, but
for the purposes of the game, I've changed the timeline so we can get them
all in the same room!).
The Theosophical Society originated in America, eventually moving to
India. After a bit of scandal (and some allegations of espionage), the Society
finally settled in Britain, specifically London. There (in this slightly altered
timeline) it met with mystical competition from the Golden Dawn.
The views of the two groups are surprisingly similar. Both reject
mainstream religion in favor of deeper, mystical truths which, by their
reckoning, humanity at one time understood. Both shamelessly mine the
mystical traditions of other cultures for the bulk of their techniques. And both
claim their deepest secrets are revelations passed down by mysterious
“ascended masters.”
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