Hey all. I'm looking for some thought provoking ideas of a Beast of Solomon story. I'm not so interested in making it a ravening alien/demonic horror, as the Calixis sector is stocked full of those already. I like Solomon a lot, little though we know about it. I've envisioned Solomon in my game as a hellish, 10'000 meter-tall version of victorian London, complete with black eveningwear, tall hats, serpent-headed canes,imposing victorian architecture stained black with soot and polution and a massive underprivilaged class. I would classify it as a dark steam-punk setting, complete with creaking airships, and redolent with decadence and architectural decay. I imagine it as an endless hive painted with Tim Burton's color palatte from Sweeny Todd, with a steady stream of grey ash-snow rendering everything in an eternal coal-age Dickensian london winter of black wrought-iron and ages-old sector secrets...

I'm thinking about turning the beast of Solomon into a kind of a Jack the Ripper Tale, or Sherlock Holmes for that matter.

The beast, if its ever unveiled, (or even exists) needs to be far more frightening than any mere monster. There must be a very human element.

Any ideas? Has anyone here used the beast as a story-hook?

Are you planning on keeping the ritual sacrifice that the down-trodden members of Solomon's underclass make to the Beast to appaise it's hunger and keep it from actively seeking out fresh meat? If not then the Jack the Ripper angle could definatly work. Let's say that particularly shady nobles visit the lower levels of the hive in disguise to sample more "raw and direct pleasures" that the commoners enjoy and suddenly finds his or hers entrails and other assorted organs layed out around the body and not a single witness to be found.

Indeed, that's a good way to open the tale, actually. Although I'd loose the gore angle, and work on the fear of the dark. The creepiest thing in the beast of Solomon fluff is some kind of comment that the sacrificers would take captives down into the depths, and tie them up in the dark "where the pipes are at their thickest." What happens to them then is anyone's guess, but I think its probably scarier to leave it at that.

Just imagine being locked in vast, abandoned boiler-room, in the very basement of the world...Waiting in the pitch black for something to come for you that may or may not exist. In either event, you won't be missed.

Creepy, huh?

I do actually really like the underhivers leaving innocent people in dark and terrible places, thinking that doing so might appease the phantom. Its wonderfully primitive, especially if contrasted with the genteel and sophisticated life of the hive's upper crust.

I'd like to tell a tale with a couple of twists. What starts out as a search for the beast of Solomon turns into a campaign agaist the misbegotten folks who's 'cult' is sacrificing to the beast. At this point, it will become a standard hunt the cult deal, with a bit of investigation and the capture of a 'red herring' villain.It will become obvious that there is no beast of Solomon...Only on odd sensation of being watched...

That is, until the 'beast' itself makes an unexpected and horrifying appearance for the climax of the story.

I'm looking for an atmosphere of crawling, lurking horror - socio-economic alienation, and fear of dark, basement-like places.

Nullius, that is fantastic. I have been wanting to do a beast of solomon campaign for ages but could never come up with the best solution, and a steampunk-esque sounds awsome.

Although I think that should the acolytes go exploring the depths, they will find the odd fragment of skeleton here and there and maybe half a carcass, but it would point towards murder rather than eating (it ate most of everything). Then they will acuse the underhivers for cultism and then at the last possible moment, they will have a sighting (but it should get away or something).

I tik I'll go further, and have the PC's presume they've solved the case. There will also be a kidnapped child, involved, I think. The'll send the poor misbegotten cult ringleader to the Emperor, hopefully save the child from the bottomless depths of Solomon, and prepare to go home. That's when all of their nightmares spring to life and the beast shows its true face at last. But I still don't know what the beast, itself, is going to be. I want to steer away from the usual suspects. Warp-thing. Lost Tyranid. Etc...

Any ideas?

My approach to the pass you want to go would be a larger group (not only one) of powerfull Astral Specters somehow "embedded" to certain places in Solomon. The reason is so far back, it might never be found out at all.

The Specters are not that much about the actual killing... what they strive for is the constant fear and misery they feed on. So, the "offerings" indeed do "pacify" the beast. In fact, the constant sublime fear created by this custome is much more "sustaining" the Specters then a single kill could... but they do them still, since if there isn´t a kill from time to time, the people would start to disregard the custome.

In fact, most of the victims aren´t taken by the specters. Other humans or "underurban predators" take them. The pc might start to investigate and find out that a group of the BeastHouse fetches a lot of the victims as "cheap raw material" for faciliting murder gholams ...or simply feeding them. Since said group employs such Gholams, the pc could well run into some of them "out to scare/maim of passer-bys" and start to believe that THIS is the "Beast of Solomon" (since this Beast is "Amalgam", ForbiddenLores will have have a HARD time puzzeling things out).

After your group dealed with the whole affair, making them retreat from "deep down in the shadows" with a captive for interrogation. Then, make the "Real Beast" appear. Use the powers to bestow fear and phenomena...and then allow the Specter to take material form for a short moment... forming itself out of shadow, only seen in some mere secounds, a half formed made up of tangible darkness and hushing by the capitive, disembowling him in the process.

NOW your pc now the "Beast of Solomon".

Why has a psyker never managed to identify one of them?
Me suspects that most of the time, they "work" through possesing dregs doing there work. Lending them unnatural strenght (2x), agility & toughness in the process. Afterwards, they drive the dregs back into the rusty wastes to use them later...or use someone else. In fact, some of the "offerings" could simply "vanish" since a specter is using them as new host.
Of course, this is based on the assumption that a "simple posession" is "masking" most of the warp taint, so a psyker can´t read a "print" in the place as long as the possed isn´t there at the moment.

An angle that was hinted at in DotDG always fascinated me: it's the fearful populace itself that has 'created' the monster. Their terror of the dark somehow has taken form in some kind of monster that may or may not exist in a conventional way. Maybe fear itself kills the sacrificees, or those who become lost at night....

I'd say that the Beast does exist in a conventional sense, but that it's kept placated by a murder cult sacrificing their own husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers,wives,sons and daughters to keep it entombed. Once the PC's break up the murder cult, the beast is released. As for what it is, think perhaps of death/suffering incarnate, a beefed up alley reaper or similar. A spirit that, in most locales, would be infinitely weaker, but still scary, but in this locale, it feeds from the misery and hopelessness of Solomon's populace. It walks through walls, destroying at will. It often kills or mutilates only one or two members of any household struck, to maximise the anguish and suffering of the populace. If destroyed, it coalesces once again (after how long? a day? a week? a month? a year?) and the only way to truly defeat it is to liberate solomon from its hoplessness: run propaganda campaigns, strongarm governers into helping the populace, rejuvenating this city, making it better. That or just melta-torpedo the city from orbit until the plascrete melts together and fuses the entire thing into a tomb.

The Beast is man or rather men. Predators that stalk the tangled, anonymous industrial hell that is Solomon, taking victims where they find them. The Beast is the callousness, alienation, and predatory socioeconomic structure of Solomon itself and the sacrificial victims are just the easiest prey. You can kill one predator or a dozen, but as long as the people of Solomon exploit and sacrifice those weaker than themselves there can be no end to the beast.

Cynical Cat said:

Well put. This is just exactly the interpretation that I favor. It feels to me that the above-mentioned motifs form the foundation for the Whole "Beast of Solomon" concept. I just want a final, horrifying twist ending. I want the beast to be embodied and revealed for what it is. Inevitable. Inescapable. And very, very human.

But I want to reveal this in some kind of embodied form which the acolytes can subsequently riddle with bolter-fire

: )

This is Dark Heresy, after all.

Hmmmm. Perhaps the sacrificial victims themselves somehow become "the beast." (A society is often haunted by the atrocities it performs against its most helpless victims)

Perhaps, down in the blackest pit of Solomon, the victims hang chained and weeping and terrified...Perhaps, if they really and truly give up hope of ever seing the light again, something speaks to them in the dark. Its voice speaks no words, but it cannot be ignored...Not for very long, anyway...

Because there is no "beast" as such, the victims might eventually free themselves. But they are somehow...changed by the experience. They will never again seek the light of day. The will forsake all joy and feeling and hope...They have become the lost...The Waiting ones...The beast of Solomon...

They are the walkers under a black sun, and they wait in the deep places until the pale Sun of Solomon trundles on rusty tracks across the smog-chocked sky for the very last time. They are Watchful, they are patient, and they are hungry...

Behold! The Black Sun RIses!

(something like that, in any event)

I always thought of the Beast as something like out of the film "Brotherhood of the Wolf"...

Its a normal creature (like a hexalid) which has been "modified" by arcane techno-gear. It can be controlled by someone or something. Whoever controls it likes the "fear-cult" that has emerged and perpetuates this for thier own ends.

S.K.

I'd go with the whole Brotherhood of the Wolf / Beast of Gevaudan angle - but keep to the theme that the Beast is just a weapon in someone else's hands. That way, you can start the adventure(s) off as an "Inquisitorial bug hunt" until the players realize that there's someone controlling the Beast.

Except that the 'beast' phenomena is older than anyone can remember. Perhaps as old as Solomon itself.

Which does not necessarily discount some nobles using the "pathetic" faith of the Underhivers and the old legends as inspiration for their own Beast... never suspecting that there is indeed something else stalking the shadows...

That's true. I guess I just favor an eldritch and mysterious explanation. I just ran across a cool quote in the Inq Handbook.

"Rest you well, my pretty one, and keep you safe the long night through

Stray you not from the light nor crocked stair and darkened door,

For the sleepers wait there, empty-eyed, my child

With a clockwork kiss to still your heart."

---------Lullaby fragment translated from local dialect.

Hive Glorianna, Solomon

I like this flavor of grim-darkness. This is the beast of Solomon kind of tone that I like. Solomon is, to my mind, a very haunted world.

Nullius said:

Perhaps the "Beast" in this incarnation was something that existed thousands of years ago (how old is Solomon -2500 years?) but has long been extinct, just the legends thereof remain?

Perhaps the ancient machinery to reconstruct a monster again lies dormant miles underground and only needs re-activating and a subject inserting into it to start the creature off again.

And maybe the techno-machinery sounds/looks like clockwork to the untrained eye?....

S.K.

Solomon Kane said:

Much, much older. Everything in the Calixis Sector is older then the Calixis Sector. After all, the Angivian Crusade wasn't launched to create brand-spanking new worlds but to conquer a whole swath of worlds that were already in existence. Granted, a good chunk of them ad their populations wiped out and were resettled by proper imperial citizens, they were still settling worlds that already ad a long and now expunged history. Some were simply brought into the imperial fold population and all which means they have a human history that stretches back to the disporia or at least the DAoT.

However, as far as Solomon goes, if it was founded by Solomon Haarlock, then it has born the name Solomon for something closer to 4,500 years and it seems like there was a population on Solomon before that as well. The planets of the Calixis sector all have a long history that has been buried by the crusade but a history that on many of them is still quite active even if forgotten.