The Moloch: a setting sourcebook for KULT

Chapter 3: Meeting the Professor

Kurt and Peter sleep underground (fitfully). The next day Herr Schmitt takes them to meet the Professor. They climb up some iron stairs from the sewers and find themselves inside a walled-up toilet with thick, blind but intact glass windows. Almost all the fixtures have been taken out and replaced by a jumble of discarded furniture. Here they meet the Professor: a man past sixty whose head shows the scars of multiple injuries. One eye looks down, the jaw is irregular, scars cover the throat and a cap conceals a cavity at the back of his skull. Spittle is running from his mouth and his speech is slurred.

There is a girl of about 14 years here as well, she is called Kassandra. She wears layers of threadbare clothes in various sizes and is chewing on a big wad of bubblegum. She is apparently taking notes; she is surrounded by a huge number of notebooks, collections of sheets of paper etc. in various stages of disintegration.

The Professor tells the PCs a strange tale. Twenty years ago he was a teacher at university in the history department. His specialty was local history. In a document from the dark ages he found mention of a Dortburg (Castle of Dort) in the vicinity of the city of Dortmund. He followed a trail of sparse evidence for that castle which was unknown to history. His research did not go unnoticed by the Management (which he didn't know anything about back then) and they kidnapped him (a rat-faced guy did the drugging and preparing). He was obviously brought to the Dortburg, a real castle with a medieval village surrounding it. There he was sold to a certain Freifrau von Wälsung (Lady of Wälsung) on a slave market.

All prospective slaves were first subjected to the following: their jaws were unhinged and a ball the size of a billard ball was forced into their heads. This device springs six iron thorns of half an arm's length if activated by uttering a certain word keyed to it, no matter the distance. It was demonstrated on the auction - all slaves then knew better than to try anything funny.

Nevertheless after some time of utter depravity in the possession of the Freifrau the Professor escaped. The device was sprung but somehow he managed to survive. He awoke in a clinic which offers free service, no questions asked, to the homeless. His most grievous injury was to his brain: the connection between short term and long term memory was severed, forever keeping the last days fresh in his mind while it was impossible for him to learn anything new. Kassandra is now in the position held by a number of youths before her: chronicler and reminder of necessary facts.

The perpetually fresh memory of his enslavement makes the Professor an eternal and untiring enemy of the Management. He knows it is an association comparable to organized crime at utmost efficiency, but with an added twist of supernatural involvement - the movers and shakers of the Management as well as their most trusted retainers are not human by a far shot.