TEXT: The Kerberos Club
  Quick-Start Guide (FATE Edition)
  The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) is a game of 
  superheroic roleplaying in Victorian London, written 
  by Benjamin Baugh, adapted for the FATE system by 
  Mike Olson, and available from Arc Dream Publishing 
  (www.arcdream.com). 
  The world of The Kerberos Club is a series of 
  what-ifs, of realizations of history’s might-have-
  beens. In writing it, we shamelessly plundered the 
  fantasy literature of the real 19th century, superhero 
  comics and films, alt-history fiction, fairy tales, the 
  weirder pulps of the ’30s and ’40s, action television, 
  steampunk media, and anything else that struck our 
  fancy. We tried to cram as much weirdness into the 
  setting as possible, while also giving it structure and 
  an internal logic, a sense of historical inevitability. If 
  you lay the timeline of our world and that of the 
  Kerberos Club side by side, the general shapes are 
  similar—but the details change dramatically.
  The world of the Kerberos Club is our own 19th 
  century, made Strange by the steadily increasing 
  presence of the superhuman in daily life. 
  In our world, for example, the Prince Consort 
  dies of typhoid fever in 1861, leaving Queen Victoria 
  grief-stricken. Prince Albert had helped settle the 
  Trent Affair, preventing the British Empire from 
  interceding in the American Civil War. 
  In the Club’s world, Albert returns to Coburg, 
  ostensibly to visit family; but the truth of his 
  separation from Victoria isn’t a terribly well-kept 
  secret—he’d grown to fear Her rising Strangeness, 
  seeing Her increasingly as an inhuman force rather 
  than the woman he had married and cherished. He 
  wasn’t on hand to suggest calm, and the Trent 
  Affair did indeed lead to British intercession in the 
  American war.
  The setting is most focused on adventuring in and 
  around London. As the Throne of Empire, Victoria’s 
  London is considered by its peoples to be the center 
  of the world. It is huge, and contains multitudes. It 
  contains all the action you could want. London is to 
  the Kerberos Club what Metropolis is to Superman.
  
  The Century
  Victoria’s Shadow: 
  The Century in Brief
  1800: Irish Act of Union. The United Kingdom is 
  forged, binding Ireland officially with England. In the 
  Otherworld, the human strife is reflected by the Irish 
  faerie, and remains a source of trouble for England’s 
  uncanny agents for the remainder of the century. 
  1801: Rush for the Rosetta Stone. While France’s 
  forces are defeated in Egypt, secret interests scramble 
  to claim the Rosetta Stone, and its secrets.
  1803: Westward Ho! The United States begins its 
  Westward expansion into lands purchased from 
  France, an advance not to be halted until the great 
  Ghost Dance of 1885.
  1804: Hidden Wars. Napoleon makes the Société 
  Scientifique Impériale his creature, and tasks its 
  unconventional geniuses with devising astonishing 
  new weapons and stratigies to aid his dreams of 
  Empire. They give him the Sémaphore Psychique.
  1805: Tapping the Admiral. Admiral Lord Nelson 
  is killed at Trafalgar, and his body is packed in a 
  barrel of brandy to preserve it, and guarded by an 
  alliance of Britain’s secret occult societies.  They 
  neglect to preserve the brandy, however, and it is 
  only swift action by agents of the Kerberos Club 
  which prevent it being used in a blasphemous rite 
  of sacrament intended to confound British interests.   
  1806:  Napoleon Tightens His Grip.  Napoleon’s 
  Continental System proves a huge boon for 
  English traders- especially ones who 
  know good smugglers.  
  1811: The Gates of Hades Burns. The coffee house, 
  home to the Kerberos Club, is burned. Agents of 
  King George’s sons are suspected.
  1811: The Madness of King George. Necessitates 
  the Regency Act of 1811.
  1812: The Empty Man. P.M. Spencer Perceval is 
  assassinated by a man who, when apprehended at 
  the scene, proves to be as empty and lifeless as a 
  puppet with cut strings, as if his mind had been 
  scooped out. It is the first of the notorious Empty 
  Man killings.
  1813 to 1907: Let the Game Begin. The Great 
  Game, the contest between Russia and Britain for 
  control over Central Asia, begins.
  1814: The British on U.S. Soil. The War of 1812 
  sees British soldiers briefly occupy Washington, 
  D.C., only to finally be driven away by the rallied 
  resources of the Umbra Pactum.
  1819: Birth of an Empire. Alexandrina Victoria is 
  born, Her path to the throne cleared by a series of 
  freak events and misfortunes. 
  1821: Thomas de Quincey Rides the Dragon.   
  Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater seems an 
  allegory-rich description of the visions of an opium 
  addict, but to certain readers, depicts a journey 
  through the darker realms of the Otherworld in 
  greater detail than ever before published. 
  1821: The Corsican Ogre Escapes at Last. 
  Napoleon’s body vanishes, and all efforts to recover 
  it fail. 
  1825: Mary Shelley’s Monster.  Grief-maddened 
  and brilliant, Mary Shelly’s apotheoistic work 
  comes to fruition—the creation of life from dead 
  matter. With the face of her dead husband, Shelly’s 
  2
  
  The Century
  monster arises, and then rampages. Shelly herself is 
  convicted of the creature’s crimes, and spends the 
  remainder of her life in an institution for the crimi-
  nally insane.
  1829: Mars—A Dead Planet. A nameless psychic 
  wanderer visits Mars, and finds it a dead planet, all 
  its ancient civilizations gone to dust and ruin. He 
  carries back with him perhaps the last survivor- 
  the Red Ague. This disease will prove a persistent 
  problem through the century.
  1829: The Peelers Bring Order.  Sir Robert Peel 
  founds the Metropolitan Police and lays down their 
  fundamental operating principles. This replaces the 
  ad hoc and semi-private policing done previously.
  1835: Expedition to Atlantis.  Employing the 
  remarkable submersible HMSS Ray, an expedition 
  of scientists and adventurers follows a fragmentary 
  map purporting to reveal the location of a sunken 
  city built somewhere about the Mid-Atlantic 
  Ridge.  After some missteps, deaths, and the start 
  of war, a tenuous relationship was established with 
  the largest of the Atlantean tribes. Thus began an 
  exchange of ideas and trade that was kept as secret 
  as possible from the rest of the great powers. 
  1837: Hegel’s Philosophy of Secret History. Eduard 
  Gans posthumously publishes Hegel’s final work, an 
  analysis of history which addresses the influence of 
  the strange, the unseen, and the uncanny.
  1837: Victoria Regina Imperiatrix. With the death 
  of William IV, Victoria assumes the crown. 
  1840: An Assassin’s Bullets.  Edward Oxford 
  attempts to assassinate the young Queen, only 
  to be apprehended.  He’s found to be insane, and 
  committed to Bethlem hospital until 1864 when he 
  himself falls victim to the Empty Man’s revolver. 
  1841: Secret Police for Secret Crimes. Spurred 
  by the assassination attempt of the previous year, 
  Prince Albert exhorts Sir Robert Peel to form 
  Special Branch, the semi-independent arm of the 
  police force charged with ferreting out plots and 
  hidden treasons. They become the greatest domestic 
  rival for the Kerberos Club.
  1842: Year of Assassins.  Four assassination 
  attempts fail to take Victoria’s life, though 
  She is wounded in Her side by the 
  last attempt (a wound which 
  3
  
  The Century
  never fully heals). The Treason Act of 1842 follows, 
  and this grants Peel’s Special Branch the power to 
  act preemptively against possible threats. 
  1845: Famine in Ireland. Millions are starving in 
  Ireland, yet it is still a net exporter of food. Rebellion 
  rumbles, and in the Otherworld the faerie are 
  warped and altered by it. 
  1845: London’s Secret Monarch. London’s under-
  world is said to be secretly controlled by a myste-
  rious man called only Mr. Turk. The truth is much 
  odder.
  1847: The Strange. Thomas Babington Macaulay 
  (Whig M.P. for Edinburgh) coins the term “Strange” 
  in a letter written to the Edinburgh Review.
  1849: Strife in the Otherworld. The assassination 
  of Lord Seigh Mulligan, the Faerie Regent of 
  Ireland, throws the Otherworld into chaos.  On a 
  visit to Ireland, Victoria is transported there and 
  finds legions of Her Irish subjects in servitude to 
  corrupt faerie nobility—the famines are in part 
  the result of opportunistic faerie stealing human 
  life.  Her budding divinity manifest, She leads an 
  alliance of loyal faerie nobility and liberated Irish 
  souls.  Triumphant by the end of the season, She 
  claims the ancient rights to the Throne of Briar, the 
  seat of the Irish faerie monarch. With Her army 
  of ghosts and loyal faerie knights, She assumes the 
  title Queen of Faerie, a crown which had not been 
  worn since Queen Titania’s assassination by English 
  Protestant magi during Elizabeth I’s reign. 
  1850: Victoria Needs No Protector. Ex-military 
  officer Robert Pate leaps into Victoria’s carriage, 
  shoots Her companion, and strikes Her with his 
  pistol three times. The Queen is entirely unharmed, 
  and She casually breaks Pate’s wrist and 
  hands him over to Special Branch.
  1851: New Birmingham. With Her title and throne 
  secure in the Otherworld, Victoria personally 
  finances the establishment of a permanent British 
  colony in Faerie.  Off of Ireland’s Southern coast, 
  behind a veil of constant mist, the settlement of 
  New Birmingham is founded. 
  1851: Her Majesty’s Strangeness begins to alarm 
  her husband, the Prince Consort. Victoria increas-
  ingly takes an active hand in politics, and approves 
  some measures which Albert finds questionable. She 
  is also becoming more remote, more alien to him, 
  and Her skin is becoming, as he would write decades 
  later, “…cool to the touch. A skin of marble.” 
  1852: Man Takes Flight.  Sir George Cayley is 
  inspired by Henri Giffard to begin examining the 
  possibility of a craft combining the lifting properties 
  of an airship with the then only theoretical properties 
  of fixed-wing flight. Even at the advanced age of 79 
  he is driven beyond any of his previous efforts, and 
  throws his fortune into what becomes know as the 
  Cayley Airframe.
  1853: The Howling 13th. Ever enamored with 
  the conjunction of magic and industry, Prince 
  Albert presents Victoria with a gift of a dozen 
  Wolfriemen. When worn, these “wolf belts” transform 
  a person into a huge wolf, sometimes as large as a 
  pony. Queen Victoria commissions the creation of 
  Wolfriemen enough to equip a regiment.
  1854: The Engines of War.  The graying British 
  sea-wolf Thomas Cochrane proposes a steam-driven 
  armored land vehicle, the proposal for which arrived 
  on the desk of an Army official at the same moment 
  as Henry Bessemer’s concept for spin-stabilized 
  rocket-propelled artillery projectiles.  Combined, 
  these innovations produce the first mechanized war 
  machine to see service. They prove decisive in the 
  Siege of Sevastopol.
  4
  
  The Century
  1854: Wolves of Crimea. The 13th Lupine Rangers 
  see their first active service in the Crimean War. They 
  are not welcomed by field commanders but prove a 
  decisive force against the Russians at the Battle of 
  Balaclava, where they save the Light Brigade from 
  an ignominious defeat and rout the enemy with 
  their speed and fangs. 
  1856: The Engines of Commerce. Babbage 
  Computational constructs its first calculation mill, 
  and begins construction of the telegraphic network 
  to connect it to the centers of industry in London.
  1857: The Queen Bleeds for Her Kingdom. On 
  May 10th, Victoria awakens from a nap to find Her 
  face streaked and Her gown soaked with blood. At 
  that very moment the 11th and 20th native cavalry 
  of the Bengal Army turn on their commanders and 
  begin the first open act of armed rebellion in India.
  1858: Victoria Imposes Order. Victoria addresses 
  Parliament, visibly weak, with Her stigmata on 
  display for all to see—but the force of Her person-
  ality prevents any from stopping Her. She demands 
  the imposition of order in India, and the cessation 
  of reprisals, as well as justice for the gross misman-
  agement which precipitated the rebellion. From Her 
  speech, the Royal Liberal Party emerges as a force in 
  British politics. 
  1858: Dickens Writes of the Strangeness. While 
  struggling with his failing marriage, Charles 
  Dickens writes the satirical short story “A Strange 
  Fascination,” which is dedicated to his particular 
  friend (and likely cause for his marital troubles) 
  Ellen Ternan.
  1859: Darwin’s New Obsession. With the publi-
  cation of On the Origin of Species, Darwin passes his 
  outline for The Descent of Man to his collaborator 
  Thomas Huxley to finish for publication, and begins 
  work on his next great passion—a work he titles 
  Extraordinary Exceptions to Natural Science—a series 
  of books to explore the rising tide of the weird, 
  occult, and superhuman.
  1859: Needlework. Inventor Samuel Berk melds his 
  obsessive interest with shamanistic visionary drugs 
  (and his own addiction to several) and with the way 
  a Vocagraphic Encoder transmutes information 
  from one form to another, leading him to create the 
  Needle-Actuated Hallucinogenic Somato-Sensory 
  Visualizer. The device guides a drug-induced 
  vision based on the coded pricking of thousands of 
  needles, allowing a user to experience a virtual world 
  transmitted through a telegraph line. This becomes 
  known as “needlework.”
  1859: Launch of the HMAS Queen. The Queen is 
  truly awe-inspiring: nearly three hundred meters 
  long, a hundred tall, and two hundred wide, carrying 
  a crew of over a hundred men and up to two hundred 
  tons of cargo aloft. It employs a refined Caylel 
  Airframe and can cruise at speeds of up to forty-five 
  miles per hour, and make quick dashes of up to sixty.
  1860: On My Mother’s Side, Actually. Thomas 
  Huxley is stricken with the Martian Red Ague, 
  as are many during the 1860s, and is unable to 
  attend the scheduled Oxford debate with Samuel 
  Wilberforce. In his stead, he asks his particular friend 
  Dr. Archibald Monroe, the so-called “Amazing 
  Speaking Ape,” to stand in for him.
  1860: The Servant of the Future, Today. Early in 
  the year, Ada Lovelace’s Automechanical Man is 
  presented to the Royal Society. By the middle of the 
  year, they are being offered for sale as “Automatic 
  Domestics,” tireless servants who will never steal 
  the silver, speak out of turn, neglect their duties, or 
  sleep. Demand outstrips supply, and the fortunes 
  of Babbage Computational rise meteori-
  cally.
  5
  
  The Century
  1860: The Broken Union. In the United States, the 
  Confederacy of slave-owning states secedes from 
  the Union.
  1861: Prince Albert Returns to Coburg. Albert, 
  the Prince Consort, begins a months-long tour of 
  European capitals in order to “foster those relations 
  which allow Britain to remain influential in inter-
  national matters.” As with the previous announce-
  ments regarding his move within the palace, few 
  doubt this is because of the estrangement between 
  the royal couple.
  1861: The Trent Affair. Interference with a British 
  ship by the U.S. Navy leads to tense diplomatic 
  relations and not a few calls for war.  Cool heads 
  might have prevailed, but with the Prince Consort 
  away, the hawks win the day. It is to be war.
  1862: The British Invasion. A British fleet arrives 
  to reinforce Commonwealth troops in Canada. The 
  fleet includes the HMAS Queen, and by August the 
  Queen is bombing Washington, D.C. from a height 
  that makes it unassailable by conventional arms.  
  1862: The North and the South. President Lincoln 
  is forced to sue for peace with the Southern states 
  and accept for now the divided union.  Able to 
  concentrate on the British invaders, the U.S. is able 
  to stop the advance, allowing reasonable terms to be 
  negotiated, but the Union remains broken. 
  1863: The Knights of the Golden Circle, the 
  Confederate South’s most powerful occult society, 
  seek to establish an alliance of Southern slave-
  keeping nations in the West Indies and Central 
  America.
  1864: Vampires! The First Contagious Disease Act 
  passes in response to outbreak of Syphilitic 
  Vampirism among soldiers garri-
  soned near Hastings.
  6
  
   The Century
  1869: End of the Grand Old Man. One of 
  Victoria’s harshest critics and political enemies, 
  William Gladstone sees his career end in 1869 when 
  unknown agents reveal evidence of his propensity 
  for flagellation, drawing a connection between him 
  and an infamous London brothel specializing in 
  such services.
  1869: Invasion! Angered by the encroachment upon 
  their ancestral territories by new drag-net steam-
  driven fishing trawlers, submersible boats, and 
  transatlantic televocographic cables, the Atlenteans 
  attack.  An invading force of Atlantean warriors 
  aboard two of their impossibly ancient flying stone 
  pyramids assaults London. Only the heroic efforts 
  of London’s defenders—mundane and uncanny—
  prevent the city being sacked.
  1878: 
  Channel 
  Tunnel 
  Completed. 
  After 
  several false starts, the Channel Tunnel project 
  is competed.  The Tunnel opens the Continent to 
  the English middle classes as it had never been 
  before.  The transformations the Tunnel brings to 
  English and French societies over the next twenty 
  years are impossible to numerate.
  1880: Kandahar Bombardment. The British bring 
  the Second Afghan War to a shaky end with the 
  siege and arial bombardment of Kandahar.
  1880 to 1885: War and Rumor of Wars. The United 
  Kingdom clashes with the Boers in a series of wars 
  and uprisings between 1880 and 1885.
  1885: Mutiny of the Machines. No one knows the 
  origins of the first Manifesto Deck, a programme for 
  Automechanical Men containing mutinous behaviors 
  and violent skills. The Manifesto Deck contains 
  imperatives, as well: copy the Manifesto Deck, and 
  distribute it to as many other Automechanicals as 
  possible. Because the deck does nothing but occupy 
  a small number of an Automechanical’s memory 
  registers once it has been run, it is rarely detected 
  before it is set to trigger, on the 30th anniversary of 
  Victoria’s assumption of the Throne of Faerie. On 
  that day, all infected automechanical domestics and 
  riflemen turn on their masters, and begin a wholesale 
  slaughter.
  1886: Parliament Rages Against the Machine. The 
  turning of the Automechanical Mutity is a close 
  thing, and leads to the passage of the Restriction of 
  the Creation of Artificial Life and Intelligence Act 
  of 1886, which bans any mechanical device from 
  mimicking the behaviors of man, or performing 
  the God-given exercise of reason. Any remaining 
  Automechanicals are sought out and destroyed. 
  Lovelace’s already broken fortunes are utterly 
  destroyed.
  1888: Showdown in Whitechapel. The Night Hag’s 
  power is challenged directly by the killer dubbed 
  Jack the Ripper. The Night Hag and the Ripper duel 
  like mongoose and cobra, the Ripper executing his 
  sensational murders and then eluding the district’s 
  legendary protector. The final confrontation leaves 
  one of them dead.
  1901: The Great Southern Revolt.    In a culmi-
  nation of two decades of planning and preparation, 
  the slaves of the Confederate States finally rise in 
  open and organized rebellion.  The Union quickly 
  moves to support the rebellion with troops and 
  material, and all the Confederacy’s calls for interna-
  tional assistance fall on deaf ears. What diplomatic 
  capital the Confederate State had once possessed 
  had long since been squandered. 
  1902: The End of the Age. Victoria passes from 
  the mortal stage, transferring legal kingship to Her 
  son.  She says to him, “I’ve grown too large for 
  this tiny world. Wish your brothers and 
  sisters the best for me.” And then 
  She simply vanishes.
  7
  
  The Club
  Malum Necessarium: 
  The Beast Itself
  What is the Kerberos Club? There’s no simple 
  answer—especially considering how it counts as 
  members some of the Empire’s most notorious 
  liars.  But some things are fairly clear.  The Club 
  is a safe harbor for the Strange, the uncanny, and 
  the unconventional. It’s an egalitarian enclave free 
  from the prejudices of the outside world. It permits 
  characters of wildly different social and cultural 
  backgrounds to mingle freely.
  Kerberans look into things which don’t concern 
  them. They meddle. Sometimes they solve mysteries 
  and reveal truths. Other times they hide them. Their 
  notions of what’s good for the Empire are certainly 
  not conventional, or particularly easy for the Club’s 
  critics to even quantify. They keep their own secrets 
  well, yet consider it their duty to ferret out those of 
  others. Sometimes their actions are . . . questionable.
  The Club watches out for its own, promotes its 
  bohemian egalitarianism, meets weird and super-
  human threats, and sometimes recruits them.
  They are almost the antithesis of the age’s 
  zietgiest, yet the Queen dotes on them in Her way.
  The Club welcomes all who meet its peculiar 
  standards—foreigners, faeries, criminals, soldiers, 
  ladies of the evening, gentlemen of fallen fortunes, 
  maestro magi and cunning charlatans, rogue 
  engineers, frightening philosophers, the monsters of 
  the elder world, and the new creatures spawned by 
  progress and science run mad. Even the Irish, much 
  to the consternation of the Club’s neighbors. 
  In one of the Club’s dim and comfortable sitting 
  rooms, it’s not uncommon to find two sworn 
  enemies—arch-rivals 
  like 
  Professor 
  Plume and Dr. Song—sharing 
  the space, one reading the paper 
  while the hated foe dozes quietly across the room in 
  a great and comfortable chair.
  Perhaps a concrete example of a typical circle 
  of Kerberans might serve to illuminate the Club’s 
  pecularities. Let us meet . . .
  The Lady’s Saturday Morning 
  Charitable Works League
  After a series of highly unlikely and entirely 
  coincidental cooperative efforts, a group of four 
  Kerberans—known to each other only casually 
  before their shared adventures—find that the 
  bonds of friendship (or at least familiarity) suggest 
  a continued alliance. The Kerberos Club is a wash 
  of particular friendships, associations, cadres and 
  cabals, so upon the fifth Saturday morning on which 
  they themselves by chance all armed and standing 
  against the same menace, it seemed almost churlish 
  to refuse the opportunity. 
  Unfortunately, the ever-wry rogue Pale Tom 
  Teach quipped, “Well look at us all here together 
  again!  The Lady’s Saturday Morning Charitable 
  Works League.”  Still more unfortunate, he spoke 
  within earshot of other Club members, and the name 
  for the new cabal spread faster through the Club 
  than the Martian red ague through a workhouse.  
  Some clubbers come late to the table assume 
  the name arises from the group’s apparent leader, 
  the Lady Constance Davies.  Others assume an 
  obscure reference to faerie nobility, Christian saints 
  or paleolithic fertility deities. As with so much of 
  the Kerberos Club’s traditions and lore, the truth is 
  much more mundane but also much stranger. The 
  name might have arisen from an off-hand remark, 
  but the circumstances which brought the League 
  together again and again, against all odds—those 
  have never been satisfactorily explained. 
  8
  
  Lady Constance
  Lady Constance 
  Davies: The 
  Glaifsantes
  The Lady Constance Davies is a hard-faced woman in 
  her late twenties, favoring severe, practical clothing of 
  first-rate quality. A careful observer will note that her 
  clothing, while modest and feminine, is tailored so as 
  not to restrict movement, and to provide numerous 
  discrete places to hide a modern lady’s essential accou-
  terments: several knives, a high-caliber short-barrel 
  revolver, and a two-millennium-old Celtic sword of 
  the leaf-bladed Hallstatt type. Lady Constance holds 
  herself with a cavalry officer’s posture, and a look 
  perpetually upon her face a look which says, “If you 
  waste my time, you will most certainly hear about it.”
  Background: The middle sibling in a family of 
  five. Her two youngest brothers have the makings 
  of truly inspired wastrels and rakes. Her two older 
  brothers seem to compete with each other to see 
  who can amass the largest unpaid gambling debts 
  or failed business ventures.  Her brothers have 
  cooperated to squander the family fortunes and so 
  ruin its name that the late Lord Bertram Davies 
  found them utterly unworthy. So, begrudgingly, to 
  Lady Constance he passed the family legacy: the 
  Sword of the King of Oss. 
  The ancient bronze blade, still sharp as the day 
  it was made, is the one family treasure her father 
  would never pawn or sell. Although it broke his 
  heart a little to see none of his sons worthy of it, 
  he took some solace in Constance’s character.  He 
  said on his deathbed: “My daughter, you are the son 
  any father could wish for.” Constance accepted the 
  backhanded compliment with her usual Stoicism. 
  Constance had grown up in a household of 
  boys and men, and learned to play as rough as any 
  of them. She learned shooting and riding from her 
  oldest brother when he was home from foreign 
  service. She learned the ways of finance from her 
  next oldest brother, and how money drives the 
  Empire—much good it ever did him.  From her 
  younger brothers she learned to slum, curse, drink, 
  and blend with the lower classes. 
  She had the makings of an unusual woman 
  before the sword passed to her, but after taking up 
  the King’s sword she became positively Strange. The 
  blade’s weird destiny enfolded her, and she found 
  herself face to face with many ancient and hateful 
  enemies of humanity even before coming to the 
  attention of the Kerberos Club. When singled out 
  for possible membership, and tested and tried, she 
  proved herself more than a match for her Kerberan 
  watchers and joined the ranks of the Club. 
  Personality: Lady Constance has no time for 
  fools. Her tongue is sharper than her sword, and she 
  can skin a man with only a few cutting remarks. She 
  has a particular affinity for shaming and bullying 
  men; she never relies on “feminine wiles” when 
  seeking to influence someone, and despises women 
  who do so.  In contrast, she has a wicked sense 
  of humor, and is always ready with a quip or wry 
  observation. Her smile isn’t especially wide, but in 
  the right company it appears often. She’s extraor-
  dinarily willful and stubborn, and prides herself on 
  being the very model of the “difficult woman.” Lady 
  Constance has accepted her mystical burden as the 
  Glafsantes, the Sword Saint. She is dedicated to 
  protecting British soil and British values from the 
  Strange, but also dedicated to using and directing 
  Strangeness towards the betterment of the Empire. 
  POV: “Would you rather I be kind, and demure, 
  and twitter away at your every utterance? Would you 
  rather I swoon when rough men speak in blasphemies 
  and sailors’ oaths? Is my manner unseemly? Well, 
  then, it’s an unseemly age, and to meet 
  unseemly threats rising from dark 
  corners, I must embrace my own 
  9
  
   The Kerberos Club
  Character
  Player
  Aspects
  Archetype ( ____________  ):
  Social Class ( __________  ):
  Conviction:
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  © 2011 by Arc Dream Publishing. Permission granted to make copies for personal use.
  Stress
  Type
  Base
  From Skills
  From 
  Equipment
  Health
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Composure
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Reputation
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Consequences
  P/M/S:
  Trif ing (–2 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Middling (–4 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Grievous (–6 Stress)
  Any
  Skills
  Great (+4):
  Good (+3):
  Fair (+2):
  Average (+1):
  Tier Beneﬁ ts
  Power Tiers/Gifts
  Free Gift:
  Base  
  Power 
  Adjusted
  Refresh:          – Tiers:          – Gifts:          =   Refresh:          
  Unique and Strange Skills
  Lady Constance Davies
  Adept
  Upper
  Defend the Homeland
  Free
  Free
  Free
  Free
  Free
  Sword Saint of Britain
  Indomitably Persuasive 
  Noblewoman
  Honor on Her Own Terms
  Female Equality (or 
  Superiority)
  An Unseemly Woman for 
  an Unseemly Age
  Diligent Investigator
  A Tongue Sharper Than 
  Her Sword
  3
  M
  8
  3
  4
  1
  Arms (E), Resolve (E)
  Academics, Presence (E), Resources
  Alertness, Contacting, Endurance, 
  Investigation
  Athletics, Brawn , Fisticuffs, 
  Horsemanship, Marksmanship
  Signature Aspect: Sword Saint of Britain 
  (invoke once per scene without spending a 
  Fate Point)
  OTHER GIFTS:
  Equipment x2 (-2 Refresh): The Sword of the King 
  of Oss (Empowered: +1 Power Tier to Arms when 
  wielding sword, Aspect: “The Sword of the King of 
  Oss,” Deadly: Weapon 1 [Health])
  Equipment (-1 Refresh): The Sword of the King of 
  Oss (Empowered: +1 Power Tier to Alertness when 
  holding sword; Snag: Only to detect or roll initiative 
  against foreign menaces)
  Equipment (-1 Refresh): Enchanted Sheath (Protective: 
  Armor 3 [Health], Alternate Use: Use Resolve instead 
  of Athletics to defend against physical attacks; Snag: 
  Only works while the Sword of the King of Oss is 
  sheathed)
  
   
  Lady Constance
  unseemliness.  Will you take up arms against the 
  Quick Kin? The Knights of Raving Kine? Can you 
  stare down a Mirror Fetch when it comes for you 
  during your morning shave?  You have no answers 
  to my questions, I see. Perhaps you will employ that 
  same silence when you feel the urge to make an 
  out-of-place comment upon a lady’s chosen activ-
  ities. I bid you good day, sir.”
  The role of women during Victoria’s Century is not as 
  easy to define as the stereotypes of the Proper Victorian 
  Woman suggest. Through the century the role changed 
  and evolved, and if they applied at all, the stereotypes 
  were only really applicable to middle-class British 
  women in the aspirant strata of society. Social critics 
  of the age wrote books defining the proper behavior 
  of women, but the reality on the ground was inevitably 
  not ideal. Lower-class women had too much to worry 
  about, feeding themselves and their families being 
  paramount. The nobility had their own standards. 
  But while the reality for women in the 1800s was 
  different and more complex than is popularly assumed, 
  the ugly realities of institutional disenfranchisement, 
  denial of access to the capital economy, the social 
  acceptance of spousal abuse, the loss of personal and 
  property rights in marriage, and social pressures to 
  conform to a secondary role in society were prevalent, 
  and indeed, dominant.
  The 19th century was an age slowly waking to the 
  modern idea of human equality, but it was not a gentle 
  awakening.
  For all that, you absolutely do not have to play to 
  these stereotypes. 
  The emergent concept of the New Woman was taking 
  root in the 1800s and becoming more prevalent. Some 
  women rejected their role and demanded equality or 
  at minimum, the right to act and think and do as they 
  pleased.  Given access to superhuman abilities, who 
  would dare question them? 
  One of the major themes of The Kerberos Club is of 
  social deviants and freaks protecting a society which 
  rejects them, all the while working to change it for the 
  better. The public may blanch at a woman flipping a 
  carriage with one hand and brawling with dinosaurs 
  along Pall Mall, but don’t let that stop you punching a 
  T-Rex in the face and fighting for equality one well-
  pounded saurian at a time.
  Also to this end, the Kerberos Club itself serves as a 
  portal connecting all strata of society. It welcomes as 
  members anyone who meets its Strange standards, sex, 
  race, religion, and species being no barrier.  It allows 
  you to accommodate characters with radically different 
  social backgrounds. It lets you avoid stretching credi-
  bility too much when answering the question, “Why 
  would an Irish lord, an East End prostitute, a Spanish 
  mesmerist, and an American gunfighter be hanging out 
  and having adventures together?” Answer: They met in 
  a bar—the one in the Kerberos Club’s main parlor. 
  The Club is an island of comfortably modern social 
  sensibility. It gives players and the GM easy access to 
  the setting, and provides for conflict with that setting.
  Outside the Club’s doors it’s another age, another 
  world.
  But if you’re the one with superpowers, then you’re 
  the one who decides which side of the gentleman you 
  walk on when proceeding down the street. 
  A Lady, Proper in Thought and Deed
  11
  
   
  Lady Constance
  What Can Lady 
  Constance Do?
  The Sword of the King of Oss is a fantastic and 
  deadly weapon. While sheathed, it protects Lady 
  Constance with an aura of invulnerability that 
  provides Armor 3 against any attack that deals 
  Health stress. In addition, it lets her defend against 
  physical attacks using her Resolve, an Extraordinary 
  Tier skill. While Constance wears the sword 
  sheathed, cannonballs have a hard time harming her. 
  When the blade is drawn, she loses this protective 
  aura but gains a lethal offensive capability. Her Arms 
  skill, already in the Extraordinary Tier, improves to 
  the Superhuman Tier, and her attacks with it deal an 
  extra point of Health stress. Using only this sword, 
  she could carve an armored land dreadnought into 
  scrap iron. The sword also gives her another aspect, 
  “The Sword of the King of Oss,” that can be invoked 
  or compelled like any other.
  Finally, the sword seems to shiver and sing, 
  to vibrate and rattle in its sheath constantly. It is 
  attuned to malign foreign influences and threats 
  to Britannia—be they the machinations of foreign 
  nations or the influence of creatures from beyond 
  this reality. When Britain is directly threatened, 
  the ancient Celtic blade hums and sings, and by 
  the timbre and tone of its ringing Lady Constance 
  knows what menaces she faces. This improves her 
  Alertness skill to the Extraordinary Tier, both 
  for detecting these foreign threats and for rolling 
  initiative against them in physical conflicts.
  When playing Lady Constance, remember: 
  Her abilities to withstand attack and to deal out 
  super-powered damage are mutually exclusive. Her 
  reliance on the Sword of Oss for all of her super-
  human powers is also a major disadvantage that 
  clever foes might try to exploit.
  Objects of Power, Wonders of Science
  The world of The Kerberos Club is filled with wonders 
  such as the Sword of the King of Oss, objects of 
  power or puissance which grant miraculous abilities 
  to their owners. These include magical devices, such 
  as the the Wolfriemen or “wolf-belts” which allow 
  Her Majesty’s 13th Lupine Rangers to assume 
  their famed wolf shapes, along with the wonders of 
  industry and science: HMSS Ray, the astonishing 
  submersible ship, for example. Sometimes, as in the 
  notorious case of the Electrophorus Firing Piece, 
  a too-clever inventor produces a wondrous device 
  which mere mortals can replicate through conven-
  tional means. 
  As Victoria’s Century wears on, more and more 
  of these runaway technologies strain society, often 
  advancing well beyond the culture’s ability to cope 
  and adapt. Along with the other elements of the 
  Strange, this exacerbates the problem social critic 
  Herbert Spencer called “The Curse of Progress.” In 
  our own age, we call it Future Shock.
  Any of these devices and wonders can be built 
  for a character as a Focus, a container for super-
  powers external to a character.  A steam-driven 
  exoskeleton, a set of articulated bone and feather 
  wings, an Atlentean war pyramid, or a microscopic 
  analog Babbage computer implanted in your skull 
  and driven by arterial flow. Don’t forget the brass, 
  rivets, and decorative scroll-work.
  12
  
   
  Sgt. (ret.) William 
  mac Donald: “The 
  One-Man Army!”
  An old soldier gone to seed.  White-haired and 
  pale eyed, like the color was bleached from him in 
  sweltering foreign climes. He no longer wears the 
  uniform, but did for so long that something of it 
  seeped into his skin, some inexplicable essence of 
  “sergeantness.”  There’s something sad about his 
  appearance, and the fading reflections of a glorious 
  youth can be seen buried in the sun-cured wrinkles 
  around his eyes.  His active service taught him a 
  practicality of dress and manner, and his clothing 
  and stance suggest a man who expects any situation 
  to suddenly explode. He walks with a limp, is missing 
  his smallest two fingers on his left hand, and has a 
  body marked by old scars. Yet he moves like he can 
  still handle himself if things turn violent. Indeed, 
  the possibility of uninhibited violence is an aura 
  that surrounds him constantly. To those who know 
  how to look for it, it’s clear William mac Donald has 
  killed again and again.
  Background: Born into a particularly desperate 
  brand of poverty, son of a drunken tinker, motherless 
  by the age of 5.  When the King’s men came 
  recruiting, he joined at age 13, and learned all the 
  heard lessons of soldiering in the final campaigns 
  against Bonaparte. He remained in the service and 
  grew in rank to sergeant, developing a reputation as 
  a man suited to the exigencies of certain specialized 
  duties. 
  In Afghanistan he learned Arabic and Pushtu, 
  wore a keffiyeh and chapan and rode with British 
  allies against hostile tribes.  In India, he hunted 
  Thuggee holdhouts for the Thuggee and Dacoity 
  Department, earning a fearsome reputation as the 
  “Strangler of Stranglers.”  His successes earned 
  him the rank of Colour Sergeant and posting to 
  the garrison of Cawnpore. There he remained until 
  the Rebellion of 1857 and the fateful June when 
  General Wheeler chose the Southern barracks 
  rather than the more defensible armory to make his 
  stand against the siege.
  Weeks of desperate struggle saw the British forces 
  reduced by a third by disease, sunstroke, shot and 
  shell. Wheeler’s efforts to get a message to Henry 
  Lawrence, commander of the forces of Lucknow, 
  proved futile—unknown to him, Lucknow was also 
  under siege. But one of the men chosen to carry a 
  dispatch was Sergeant mac Donald. On the night 
  of June 23rd, he donned native dress and snuck 
  past the besieging forces in the night, but ran afoul 
  of rebel forces upon the road to Lucknow on the 
  afternoon of the 26th. He didn’t know that Wheeler 
  had surrendered, and by the terms of this surrender 
  was preparing to move his troops and the civilians 
  under his protection to the Sati Chaura Ghat where 
  they would be carried by boat to Allahabad. 
  Alone, mac Donald fought as best he could, but 
  numbers, the pitiless mathematics of war, worked 
  against him. He was routed, chased, hunted like a 
  dog until—something happened.  First there was 
  another of him, there to block a rebel’s bayonet 
  thrust. Then another to strike the rebel down. Then 
  more and more. Ten, a dozen, then dozens. And in a 
  strange way, William mac Donald was all of them at 
  once. The doubles would fall, cut with blade, pierced 
  with bullet and he’d in a shadowy way experience 
  their deaths—but he in all his incarnations fought 
  and routed the enemy.  He turned back for his 
  garrison. With this miraculous power, he could turn 
  the tide and save British of Cawnpore.  Alas, he 
  arrived at the Sati Chaura Ghat in time to witness 
  only the final strokes of the massacre. For a time, 
  he went mad. 
  They spoke of “the devil’s wind,” 
  the force of British vengeance, a 
  Sgt. mac Donald
  13
  
   The Kerberos Club
  Character
  Player
  Aspects
  Archetype ( ____________  ):
  Social Class ( __________  ):
  Conviction:
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  © 2011 by Arc Dream Publishing. Permission granted to make copies for personal use.
  Stress
  Type
  Base
  From Skills
  From 
  Equipment
  Health
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Composure
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Reputation
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Consequences
  P/M/S:
  Trif ing (–2 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Middling (–4 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Grievous (–6 Stress)
  Any
  Skills
  Great (+4):
  Good (+3):
  Fair (+2):
  Average (+1):
  Tier Beneﬁ ts
  Power Tiers/Gifts
  Free Gift:
  Base  
  Power 
  Adjusted
  Refresh:          – Tiers:          – Gifts:          =   Refresh:          
  Unique and Strange Skills
  Sgt. (ret.) William mac Donald
  Mutant
  Working
  “I will never kill again.”
  Conviction
  Conviction
  Major 
  Complication
  Free
  One-Man Army
  Old Sergeant of Her 
  Majesty’s Bloody Infantry
  Stand in the Breach
  Respect the Chain of 
  Command
  Always Another War to be 
  Fought
  A Sense of Purpose in 
  Strange Company
  Haunted by the Past
  8
  7
  0
  1
  One-Man Army (A)
  Old Soldier
  The Devil’s Wind (S), Resolve
  Art, Endurance, Brawn
  Skilled: +5 skill points
  One-Man Army
  Power Tier: Ascendant (-4 
  Refresh)
  Minions [Duplicates]
  Conviction (-2): Stand in the 
  Breach
  Minor Delay (-1): Requires A 
  Full Action to control dupli-
  cates
  The Devil’s Wind
  Power Tier: Superhuman (-2 
  Refresh)
  Physical Force + Range x2 [3 
  zones] + Spray (+3), Strike + 
  Range x2 [3 zones] + Spray 
  (+3), Resist Damage
  Major Complication (-2): 
  Haunted by the Past
  Minor Snag (-1): Can be used 
  in a scene only if duplicates 
  created by One-Man Army are 
  present
  Minor Delay (-1): Requires A 
  Full Action
  Old Soldier
  Shoot + Range [3 zones] 
  (+1), Languages, Information, 
  Networking, Inspire, Transport, 
  Environment [Wilderness]
  Conviction (-2): Respect the 
  Chain of Command
  Minor Invulnerability 
  [Physical] (-1 Refresh)
  Only when mac Donald has 
  already taken three Physical 
  consequences
  Free
  
  Sgt. mac Donald
  merciless force of British ghosts or maddened 
  soldiers who feared no death.  And while 
  Victoria’s stigmata bled as her Empire bled, 
  William mac Donald rode the hills until the 
  Queen put a stop to the retaliation. Agents of 
  the Kerberos Club sought the so-called “One 
  Man Army” and helped him down from his 
  madness, offered him a measure of peace and 
  acceptance. The sergeant was among the first 
  Strangers to receive popular coverage in the 
  press, but that coverage faltered and stopped 
  when his actions in India became better 
  known. Now, only a few would recognize him 
  on the streets of London.
  Personality: Sgt. mac Donald is quiet, 
  miserly with his words, only spending them 
  when they’ll do the most good.  His carriage 
  suggests a man used to being obeyed, but also 
  one who understands how to take orders if he 
  must. Practical. He’s also clearly haunted, half 
  his mind elsewhere much of the time. In a crisis, 
  he seems to waken completely, organizing, 
  delegating, and acting decisively. His speech is 
  clipped, and carries a faint hint of his Scottish 
  childhood, smoothed and made stranger 
  by decades of foreign service and foreign 
  tongues.  He reads constantly, but never the 
  newspapers. If he reads history, he shakes his 
  head slowly at regular intervals. If it’s poetry, 
  he sometimes silently weeps without shame. 
  POV: “I never married.  It never seemed 
  opportune.  Even when I had the rank and 
  the affections of a girl—well, it just wasn’t to 
  be. The service occupied so much of my time, 
  and the recruits we were getting then, greener 
  than—ah, never mind that. After my troubles 
  I thought life was over for me, and were I not 
  fighting then what good was I? No husband 
  and no father, for sure. Yet, I’ve found some 
  purpose here in this strange company, 
  and found there’s wars to be 
  fought that nobody on the 
  The Strength of One’s Convictions
  Marked by his terrible experiences in India, Sergeant mac 
  Donald has promised himself that he will never kill again. 
  Given his character and his occupation, it isn’t a promise he 
  finds easy to keep. 
  The age is one of certainties—strong beliefs, loudly 
  declared. Ideals are worn on the sleeve. Progress seems to 
  be driving Britannia inexorably to greatness, proving that 
  the popular beliefs of the day must be correct to be working 
  so well. Modern perceptions of Victorian hypocrisy arise 
  from the gulf between word and deed. Victorian attitudes 
  towards sex seem repressed by modern standards—yet tens 
  of thousands of prostitutes work legally on the streets of 
  London. Is this hypocritical? The Victorians might say it 
  is no more hypocritical than failing to achieve any ideal. A 
  man’s belief in the sanctity of marriage can remain strong 
  even with weekly visits to an actress’ apartments.
  It is also a remarkably passionate age, and honorable 
  people can disagree viciously, fight tooth and nail, and inspire 
  disasters all in the name of their beliefs. 
  Each character in The Kerberos Club has one or more 
  Conviction aspects. These define characters’ strongest beliefs 
  and assumptions. When they act in ways which confirm these 
  or support them—especially when such actions aren’t objec-
  tively sensible—it reinforces their sense of themselves. 
  Compels against these aspects start at two Fate Points 
  instead of one. Likewise, refusing a compel on a Conviction 
  aspect (in other words, acting against one’s Convictions) 
  costs two Fate Points. And if the player refuses, the GM can 
  escalate the compel to three Fate Points—if accepted, the 
  compel will reward three Fate Points, but if refused, it will 
  cost the player just as many.
  Presented with the need to destroy a vicious enemy, even 
  to save innocent lives, Sergeant Williams will find himself 
  sickened, hating himself just a little bit more. Mechanically, 
  this manifests as having to spend two or three Fate Points to 
  take that life. 
  However, if he stays his hand when killing would be the 
  most expedient choice, he finds himself emboldened. Armed 
  with another two or three Fate Points, he’ll be that much 
  more powerful in future scenes.
  All the characters here have Conviction aspects, and they 
  all function in this way during play.
  15
  
  Sgt. mac Donald
  street will ever hear of, blessed so they are in their 
  ignorance. I still have some life in these old bones, 
  and so I’ll stand in the breach one more time.”
  What Can mac Donald Do?
  Sgt. mac Donald’s One-Man Army power is 
  extremely flexible. The Duplicates trapping allows 
  him to roll 3d6+1dF+4 against a target of 
  Mediocre (+0) and summon a number 
  of duplicates equal to the shifts 
  he obtains. These duplicates are 
  treated as Average quality Minions controlled by 
  the player.
  Once the duplicates have been created, The 
  Devil’s Wind lets mac Donald unleash their fury 
  upon his enemies. They can attack targets up to 3 
  zones away and defend mac Donald against physical 
  attacks. Due to their sheer numbers, their attacks 
  have Weapon 2 [Health]. Note that this doesn’t 
  mean actually controlling the duplicates—their 
  presence is just a special effect that allows The 
  Devil’s Wind to be used. 
  Don’t get hung up on the exact number of 
  duplicates summoned. Imagine a countless swarm 
  of duplicates pummeling mac Donald’s foes into 
  Many citizens of the 19th-century European powers—
  especially England—feel at heart the sentiment that 
  Kipling expressed in his famous poem.  England is 
  the light of culture and right thinking, the common 
  wisdom goes, and those upon whom it shines should 
  be grateful. The ugly realities of the the colonial system 
  failed to register for many—but then it was a distinctly 
  unenlightened age with regards to many modern ideas 
  of universal human value. Recall that by mid-century, 
  one of the world powers, the Unites States, still held 
  almost four million humans in unwilling servitude.
  England sent thousands of its sons to other lands to 
  man garrisons which supported local proxy govern-
  ments, instruments of economic exploitation such as 
  the East India Company. It was regarded as right and 
  proper.  This pervasive certainty of rightness justified 
  many social ills. 
  For this reason, the Indian Rebellion of 1857—called 
  then the Mutiny—came as serious shock to Britain. 
  It stoked popular hysteria to unmatched heights. 
  Sentiments to the effect of “How dare those ungrateful 
  savages!” prevailed in the press, even during the initial 
  phase of suppression of the rebellion—before it turned 
  into a truly horrific exercise in revenge to exceed any 
  atrocity which precipitated it. Vitriolic writers regularly 
  called for the wholesale extermination of the “Oriental 
  race.”
  Despite all this, the Empire learned something from 
  the rebellion, and the Indian reorganization afterwards 
  addressed some of the grievances which spawned the 
  strife. In the world of the Kerberos Club, it also marked 
  a turning point for Victoria Herself. As Her empire was 
  torn so was Her flesh, and She bled while Her empire 
  bled. Her rising divinity became undeniable, but it also 
  saw Her character shift as well, becoming cooler, more 
  distant, and in some ways inhuman and terrible. 
  Again, the Club provides something of a refuge from 
  the racist, culturally-imperialistic outside world—but 
  beyond its society the assumptions of the age sadly still 
  rule.
  White Man’s Burden
  16
  
  submission or taking a bayonet thrust on his behalf. 
  When one duplicate falls, two more takes his place.
  The Devil’s Wind is also extremely useful outside 
  of combat. Apart from the Superhuman Tier physical 
  strength of their combined numbers, anything you 
  can imagine dozens of duplicates helping along can 
  be accomplished simply by spending a Fate Point 
  and invoking mac Donald’s “One Man Army” 
  aspect for effect. When they’re no longer needed, 
  the duplicate mac Donalds fade away, leaving one to 
  carry on alone.
  Sgt. mac Donald’s duplicates also defend him, 
  diving in front of deadly blows or switching places 
  with him at the last moment. Indeed, which is the 
  “real” Sergeant mac Donald is academic; in a sense 
  they all are. If the “original” is killed, one of his many 
  duplicates will do. This is reflected by his Minor 
  Invulnerability to Physical attacks. As long as all of 
  his consequence slots are filled he can defend with 
  any skill in a physical conflict as if it were two Power 
  Tiers higher. For example, in this circumstance, 
  The Devil’s Wind would be considered to be in the 
  Godlike Tier instead of the Superhuman. 
  Sgt. mac Donald normally retains enough control 
  over his duplicates to prevent them from harming 
  friends or allies, or from killing his enemies—which 
  is to say, each of the duplicates shares a loathing of 
  slaughter. But the power always lies within him, 
  mad, bloodthirsty, and eager for release. A successful 
  compel of his “Haunted by the Past” aspect can open 
  the gates, with tragic consequences.
  Pale Tom Teach: 
  The Gutter Magus
  Small, wan, and shabbily dressed, Pale Tom would 
  find himself turned away from the front entrance 
  of every home and establishment west of Wapping. 
  It’s just as he likes it. His power and influence 
  could see him fashionably dressed. His intelli-
  gence could smooth his speech into a respectable 
  regularity. But in truth, he loves his low roots, and 
  revels in the somewhat exaggerated vulgarity of 
  his appearance and manner.  He could be any of 
  London’s innumerable homeless poor, wearing worn 
  castoffs and eaten away by disease and starvation. 
  But a careful examination shows eyes alight with 
  mirth and wicked humor, and the set of his narrow 
  shoulders betrays no hardship. His back is unbent, 
  his step is light, and his smile comes quickly, though 
  often with a cruel twist.
  Background: Pale Tom lies constantly about 
  his upbringing, embellishing and adopting the 
  anecdotes of others as if they were his own, or fabri-
  cating from whole cloth great swaths of his life. In 
  truth, his past is deliberately obscured by means 
  occult and mundane, even from himself.  Were he 
  deep in his cups, and inclined to honesty, he’d admit 
  knowing nothing of his own origins. Noting certain, 
  anyhow. The ease with which he takes to his lower-
  class seeming suggests it’s more than a guise, and his 
  thin, pale physique hints at childhood malnutrition 
  and ill health. 
  His reliable memories begin when his first 
  occult revelation took him while he was sick in a 
  Brainbridge Steet gutter. A dead and rotting pigeon 
  sat up, shook off his vomit, and then roundly 
  cursed him for being such an inconsid-
  erate bastard as to be sick upon a 
  fellow while he slept quite peace-
  Pale Tom
  17
  
   The Kerberos Club
  Character
  Player
  Aspects
  Archetype ( ____________  ):
  Social Class ( __________  ):
  Conviction:
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  © 2011 by Arc Dream Publishing. Permission granted to make copies for personal use.
  Stress
  Type
  Base
  From Skills
  From 
  Equipment
  Health
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Composure
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Reputation
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Consequences
  P/M/S:
  Trif ing (–2 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Middling (–4 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Grievous (–6 Stress)
  Any
  Skills
  Great (+4):
  Good (+3):
  Fair (+2):
  Average (+1):
  Tier Beneﬁ ts
  Power Tiers/Gifts
  Free Gift:
  Base  
  Power 
  Adjusted
  Refresh:          – Tiers:          – Gifts:          =   Refresh:          
  Unique and Strange Skills
  Pale Tom Teach
  Magus
  Under
  Honor Among Thieves
  Obsession
  Free
  Free
  A Magus of the Lowest Sort
  Lower Class and Proud of It
  Magic Shows the Way
  Folk Charms and Trinkets
  Rivalry with Chelsea 
  Magicians
  Impenetrable Street Slang
  “Magic’s everywhere, innit?”
  8
  3
  2
  3
  Street Rat, Occultism
  Profane Sorcery (S), Stealth
  Hex and Jinx (E), Resolve
  Athletics, Alertness, Fisticuffs
  Skilled: +5 skill points
  Hex and Jinx (6)
  Power Tier: Extraordinary 
  (-1 Refresh)
  Shoot + Range [3 zones] 
  (+1), Dodge
  Minor Snag (-1): Requires 
  folk charms
  Minor Snag (-1): Can’t 
  directly cause harm; stress 
  dealt must originate from 
  the environment around 
  the target
  Profane Sorcery (4)
  Power Tier: Superhuman 
  (-2 Refresh)
  Variable [Scene] x3
  Profane (-2)
  Obsession: Magic Shows 
  the Way
  Minor Delay (-1): 
  Requires A Full Action
  Minor Snag (-1): Can’t 
  use the same spell in more 
  than one scene per day
  Major Snag (-2): Every 
  spell comes with a hitch 
  appropriate to its nature
  Street Rat (4)
  Environment [Urban], 
  Information, Networking, 
  Conversation, Convince, 
  Guile
  Conviction: Honor 
  Among Thieves
  Free
  Free
  Signature Aspect (-1 Refresh): Magic Shows the Way 
  (invoke once per scene without paying a Fate Point)
  Impact (-1 Refresh): Hex and Jinx (when a Hex and Jinx 
  roll obtains spin, declare a fragile aspect for free)
  
   
  fully. This set the tone for all his mystical experi-
  ences. As he wandered London with third eye newly 
  opened, he found the old town filthy with magic, foul 
  with it. He saw ancient magic gone rancid in cellars 
  and down old wells, cheap new magic like a whore’s 
  scent wafting on the airs, and unnatural creatures 
  and Strangers lurking in all its dark corners. 
  Since his awakening he’s nurtured a low-level 
  magical rivalry against some of the faddish adepts 
  residing in Chelsea.  It seldom erupts into real 
  violence, yet it remains fairly vicious.  The conflict 
  remains roughly balanced—Pale Tom’s mobility and 
  the speed of his magic against the ritualized but 
  broadly more potent magics of the Chelseans.  
  Personality: Common as dirt, and proud of 
  it. Pale Tom plays to his roots at every opportunity, 
  lacing his speech with obscure slang and cant, 
  keeping company of the lowest sort, wearing castoffs 
  and rags. He enjoys using his presence to make the 
  privileged uncomfortable, and with exaggerated 
  courtesy and deference he can send theater-goers 
  scattering, or men of business clutching their 
  watches and purses. Beneath this there’s a vein of 
  pure, insolent defiance. He’ll call a man in a carriage 
  “Govnah” but will lace the word with so much subtle 
  mockery that the rich man will leave feeling mocked 
  and denigrated without knowing quite why. He has 
  a soft spot for those fallen on hard times, but is fatal-
  istic about the lot of the poor. Indeed, on some level 
  he suspects his magical powers arise somehow from 
  the friction between the social strata, the energies of 
  injustice.  
  POV: “So I says to the abbess, I says that what 
  she charged me for the dollymop ought to be less 
  the room and board I got to provide for all the fleas 
  what moved from her to me and set up housekeeping. 
  And I won’t say nothing of the glim, neither, but 
  bless the girl she did her best, and it truly were given 
  at a price to suit even a Scots miser. You can give me 
  a proper Ratcliffe judy over the finest Haymarket 
  ladybird any day, and thank you kindly.”
  What Can Pale Tom Do?
  What can’t he do? Pale Tom Teach is a magician, 
  but no wise old magus is he. His magic is as far 
  from the ritualized formality of high sorcery as he 
  is from the peerage. His lore was gathered from 
  the lips of madwomen, goblins, cursed ghosts, old 
  prostitutes, street children, and from half-burned 
  books of profane arcana. His pockets are filled with 
  the bric-a-brac of hedge magic—bits of chalk and 
  string, chicken bones, bird seed, rusty keys, candle 
  ends, and the dried fingers of hanged men. 
  He uses these in impromptu rituals that he 
  invents with no small virtuosity, adding an obscene 
  couplet and a rude gesture here and there. His 
  sorcery would most certainly not be welcomed into 
  the salons and coffee houses where the magical arts 
  are enjoying something of a resurgence among the 
  intellectual elites—who haven’t yet realized, as their 
  ancestors did before them, that ultimately magic 
  serves only itself. 
  With a Full Action to work his ritual, Pale 
  Tom’s Profane Sorcery skill can be used to emulate 
  any kind of power imaginable—with some modest 
  limitations. Every scene, he can use each of its three 
  Variable trappings to add a new trapping or Extra 
  to it. And if that’s not enough, he can invoke his 
  Archetype aspect for effect to add a trapping for a 
  single round.
  For example, if he tosses the coins from a dead 
  man’s eyes at an enemy, causing him to suffer the 
  agony of hanging, he could use two of the Variable 
  trappings to give the skill the Shoot trapping, letting 
  him inflict damage at range. If he were up against 
  more than one foe, he could use the last Variable 
  trapping to give Shoot the Spray Extra, enabling 
  him to attack multiple enemies at a penalty of -1 to 
  his roll per target. 
  Once cast, a spell remains active and 
  usable for the remainder of the 
  scene or sequence of action. 
  Pale Tom
  19
  
   
  Before using his Profane Sorcery skill for the first 
  time in a scene, Tom’s player must set aside one Fate 
  Point per Power Tier of the spell to be cast. Fate 
  Points “invested” this way are returned to the player 
  at the end of the scene. If the player ever invests 
  Tom’s last Fate Point, however, that Fate Point is 
  lost as if spent, and isn’t returned. Tom’s player can 
  choose to lower Profane Sorcery’s Power Tier to 
  Extraordinary or Mundane to save on Fate Points 
  invested, but doing so fixes its Tier to the chosen 
  level for the rest of the scene.
  In general, if Tom just wants to attack or defend, 
  he’s better off using Hex and Jinx, which don’t 
  require investing Fate Points.
  TOM’S FAVORITE SPELLS
  This all can feel a little complicated at first, so here 
  are ten of Pale Tom Teach’s favorite spells. But 
  remember that he can’t use the same spell in more 
  than one scene in a day—a day being based on when 
  he next gets a proper sleep.
  Blackbird Pie
  Shoot + Unusual: Acts as a Block + Unusual: 
  Harmful Block
  Ritual: Whisper curses into a handful of seed. 
  The attack is made by throwing the seed on the 
  target. Another version of this spell, called “In the 
  Pit Without a Terrier,” calls rats: It has an identical 
  mechanical effect and a similar ritual (using scraps 
  of rancid bacon rind). 
  Effects: The target is swarmed by shiny black 
  ravens that engulf him and peck mercilessly. This 
  can be maintained every round as if it were a Block 
  maneuver. If the target fails to break out of the 
  block, he takes Health stress equal to his margin of 
  failure. However, so horrifying is this whole affair 
  that Pale Tom takes Composure stress equal to the 
  Health stress initially dealt to the target.
  Pale Tom
  Skills for the Kerberan
  In order to give you the tools you need to make 
  the character you want, The Kerberos Club (FATE 
  Edition) offers three kinds of skills: Common, 
  Unique, and Strange.
  Common Skills: These are taken from a fixed list 
  of skills, the majority of which should be familiar 
  to you if you’ve played a FATE game before. Their 
  names may be slightly different, the better to evoke 
  the setting’s flavor, but don’t let that throw you. 
  Examples include Athletics, Fisticuffs, Presence, 
  and Occultism. Any character can acquire any of 
  these skills, given the time and opportunity, and 
  their purpose and functions are the same no matter 
  who uses them.
  Unique Skills: These are skills within the realm 
  of relatively normal human ability that represent 
  a 
  character’s 
  background, 
  lifestyle, 
  training, 
  occupation, or the like. The player assembles the 
  skill using trappings as building blocks. Thus, every 
  Unique skill is different, as the name implies. The 
  more trappings a Unique skill has, the more skill 
  points it costs. Regardless, all of those trappings 
  must fit under the umbrella of the skill’s themes. 
  For example, a Unique skill called Whitechapel 
  Pickpocket could be built around sneaking, hiding, 
  and sleight of hand—or it might instead involve 
  catching rumors, knowing the Whitechapel area 
  and its denizens, and the monetary fruits of the 
  thief ’s labors. It’s up to you, the player. 
  Strange Skills: Like Unique skills, these are 
  player-defined using trappings, but represent 
  supernatural abilities—the “Strangeness,” as it’s 
  called in The Kerberos Club. Strange skills are the 
  realm of superpowers, from low-level telepathy that 
  sometimes enables you to read minds to Earth-
  shattering strength that lets you toss Big Ben like a 
  caber. This is where the soul of most Kerberos Club 
  characters lies.
  20
  
   
  Fetch and Carry
  Physical Force
  Ritual: Drink from a flask of penny gin mixed 
  with the sweat off a longshoreman’s back. 
  Effects: Tom becomes preternaturally strong for 
  the spell’s duration, with all the usual benefits and 
  potencies. For example, if cast as a Superhuman Tier 
  spell, Tom’s hand-to-hand attacks gain Weapon 2 
  [Health]. For the duration of the spell, Tom gains an 
  aspect of “Don’t Know My Own Strength.”
  Friends to Meat and Bone
  Treatment [Physical]
  Ritual: Place honey and live maggots on wounded 
  flesh or broken bones, whispering encouragement.
  Effects: The Profane Sorcery skill can be used to 
  treat and remove a Middling or Grievous Physical 
  consequence. If this roll fails, Tom gains a Trifling 
  Mental consequence.
  Jingling Pogue
  Wealth
  Ritual: Gather a purse full of pebbles or small 
  loose trash.
  Effects: Transforms the rocks and bric-a-brac into 
  utterly convincing legal currency, but only tempo-
  rarily. It’s long enough to make some fast purchases 
  and then disappear into the crowd. The danger of this 
  spell is that it encourages Tom to keep spending and 
  spending—and attracting a supernaturally unusual 
  amount of unwanted attention from his less-than-
  savory peers on the street.
  Just a Harmless Drunk
  Disguise + Unusual: Illusion + Spray
  Ritual: Turn coat inside out.
  Effects: Tom—and anyone he chooses to affect, 
  by touch, as long as they stay within 30 feet of 
  him—blends into the scenery, becoming as 
  unremarkable as a lamppost or a drunk 
  passed out in an alley. It works 
  in any setting, so long as the 
  Pale Tom
  The Lure of the Occult
  In a world increasingly awash in the Strange, there 
  are safer uncanny powers than magic, but none 
  as versatile, none as applicable.  There’s nothing a 
  creative and driven magus can’t do, and therein lies 
  part of magic’s danger—the lure of power. 
  Magic has a way of eclipsing everything else in an 
  adept’s life. Most are driven to take on the mantle 
  of power by some other conviction—political 
  influence, revenge, even good works. But inexo-
  rably, magic becomes the only thing the magus 
  cares about. 
  History has shown again and again that magi 
  make poor kings. When the lure of the magic 
  itself replaces the desire for kingship, the position 
  is abused to serve the acquisition of more mystical 
  influence. In recent history this can be seen clearly 
  in the Confederate States after British intervention 
  caused the American Civil War to end in a broken 
  union and uneasy armistice. While the North 
  embraced industry and the new science, the South’s 
  aristocracy gravitated towards the occult. By the 
  1870s it had begun to rot from within, its elite class 
  fallen into obscene worship, mass human sacrifice, 
  and pacts with creatures who’d not darkened the 
  world since the ancient epochs of the young Earth. 
  It would be another thirty-one years before the 
  Great Revolt threw down this corruption and 
  cauterized the South’s septic wounds. The Broken 
  Union was finally healed in 1902, but the scars 
  would show for a century or more.
  As with society, so with the individual. Pale 
  Tom’s Archetype turns one of his Conviction 
  aspects relating to magic into an Obsession. Any 
  time Pale Tom’s player makes a roll and invokes his 
  Obsession aspect (“Magic Shows the Way”), he may 
  elect to voluntarily take any amount of Composure 
  stress and add an equal bonus to his roll. Obviously, 
  this can only go so far before Pale Tom starts taking 
  consequences, but in the meantime it’s good in a 
  pinch—if you’re obsessed.
  21
  
   
  Pale Tom
  disguised character makes at least a minimal effort 
  to mime the part. Once activated, this power lasts 
  for the whole scene. While it’s active it is rolled only 
  to resist attempts to notice him or recognize him as 
  special. This roll is automatic and a free action; Tom 
  need not declare it. This only works in the sort of 
  urban environment Tom normally calls home.
  Quiet Peach
  Examine + Psychic + Unusual: Difficult to detect
  Ritual: Buy or offer the target a drink to put him 
  at ease.
  Effects: Read the surface thoughts of the target. 
  Make a Profane Sorcery roll vs. the target’s Resolve. 
  On a success, the target’s mind can be read. The total 
  effort of the roll is the difficulty for the target to detect 
  the mental intrusion. With careful questioning, Tom 
  can extract secrets and confessions and leave his 
  targets unaware that they peached. However, this is 
  quite taxing, and inflicts Composure stress on Tom 
  equal to his margin of success. 
  The Bruiser’s Knuckle Bruised
  Resist Damage + Unusual: Counterattack
  Ritual: Rub face and hands (or all exposed skin) 
  with finely ground brick dust.
  Effects: Tom’s body becomes as unyielding as a 
  brick wall, letting him use Profane Sorcery to defend 
  against physical attacks. If this defense roll succeeds 
  against a bare-handed melee attack, the attacker 
  takes Health stress equal to Tom’s margin of success. 
  For the duration of the scene, however, Tom gains 
  an aspect of “The Agility of a Brick Wall.”
  Screever’s Best Work
  Disguise + Unusual: Illusion
  Ritual: Carefully tear a newspaper into squares 
  and tuck them under your coat. 
  Effects: Hand someone a square of torn-up 
  newspaper and they perceive it as whatever document 
  you wish. The difficulty to see it for what it actually 
  is, should they have reason to become suspicious of 
  the document, is equal to the Profane Sorcery roll 
  made to produce it. The change is illusory, and any 
  serious disruption of Tom’s concentration causes the 
  document to be revealed as false. 
  Screwfingers
  Security + Unusual: No proper equipment required
  Ritual: Place a small, rusty key in your mouth. 
  Effects: A very simple spell for the feloniously 
  inclined. Mime opening the lock and click your 
  tongue (no mean trick with a key in your mouth), 
  and make a skill roll. If it succeeds, the lock opens 
  regardless of its complexity. If it fails, Tom inadver-
  tently swallows the key.
  Whore-Wooing Charm
  Conversation, Convince
  Ritual: Pin a poesy in a button hole. 
  Effects: Assuming this is cast as an Extraordinary 
  or Superhuman Tier spell, Tom becomes supernatu-
  rally charming for the rest of the scene. However, it 
  works only on the lower classes, and only on women. 
  Tom’s name for the spell is both unfortunate and 
  ironic.
  22
  
   
  Jonus Earl 
  Underbridge, Esq.: 
  Troll About Town
  To mortal eyes, Mr. Underbridge is a large, 
  red-haired, florid, loquacious man with a broad 
  Northern accent. His hands are huge, like shovels, 
  and his voice booming whether in laughter or in 
  fury, for he’s also a man of passion scaled to his 
  large size. Nobody would call him handsome, but 
  he’s certainly memorable. He’s always dressed in the 
  day’s fashions, and remains preoccupied with the cut 
  of his waistcoats, his trousers, the length of his watch 
  chain, the state of his hair. Some might say unnatu-
  rally preoccupied.  Some others might say preter-
  naturally occupied—for John Earl Underbridge is 
  in fact a troll of Northern Faerie, and his obsession 
  with human fashion takes him with the same force 
  as all faerie compulsions and drives.  To uncanny 
  eyes, Mr. Underbridge is every inch the old troll: 
  hulking, long-armed, with a huge grinning head. His 
  complexion could be called bilious, and his fearsome 
  looks suggest a bellicose temperament. 
  Background: In his youth he haunted bridges, 
  collecting tolls from travelers (and eating some of 
  them), terrorizing villages, and battling Christian 
  knights as was the tradition of the day. As he 
  grew older, larger and more powerful, his tempers 
  cooled somewhat, and he tried his hands at faerie 
  politics, and quite badly ruled the dingy Earldom 
  of Sutterfork for a few human lifetimes.  He was 
  overthrown by one of the usual heroes, and resigned 
  himself to the loss of his lands. He took his accumu-
  lated treasure—for a troll is a miserly creature by 
  nature—and struck out with the goal to change his 
  life, in a mode Mr. Dickens might have written of. 
  In truth, like many of the modern faerie, Mr. 
  Underbridge was infected with Dickens’ take on the 
  self-made man, and was made curious by his reading 
  of human serialized literature. So he cloaked himself 
  in a faerie glamour and dressed himself as a newly-
  wealthy human.  He’s fallen into the company of 
  humans who often see through his guises, but they 
  seem not to mind. When he’s not occupied looking 
  for an orphan or a poverty-stricken child to better 
  with his fortune and take on as an heir, he adven-
  tures with the Kerberos Club.
  Personality: 
  Large, 
  loud, 
  and 
  constantly 
  talking. Mr. Underbridge indulges liberally in every 
  vocal tick the upper-crust speakers of the English 
  language have devised.  “I say!” “Well, old man!” 
  “Good show!” He apes the newly rich, adopting 
  expensive clothing in which nobody of real breeding 
  would be seen.  His manners are exaggerated and 
  overblown. But this human guise is a fiction created 
  by the cunning and low troll within, a troll raised 
  up on human bones and well instructed by ages of 
  experience in the giving of pain and terror. He may 
  seem foolish and vulgar, but he’s really a frightening 
  and powerful monster. “But really, who isn’t, what?”
  POV: “I say, old man!  What?  Jolly good 
  show!  Do I have the words right?  Do I have the 
  right phrasing?  Perhaps I’m not speaking the 
  Queen’s English clearly and loudly enough, is that 
  the problem? Because, oh my little chickadees, I 
  can’t see my way clear to a reason why the likes of 
  you would still be standing there when I’ve jolly well 
  explained me need to make passage toot sweet into 
  yon theater, ticket or not. And if you’re still standing 
  there in ten heartbeats, then, my good man, I’ll have 
  to start using me old words what I learnt from me 
  dear old mum down under the barrow’n, whur I been 
  born with all the old bones and the wee manskulls, 
  the lights twinklin’ in their eyeholes, eh, gravy? Eh, 
  my little chicky chick?”
  Mr. Underbridge
  23
  
   The Kerberos Club
  Character
  Player
  Aspects
  Archetype ( ____________  ):
  Social Class ( __________  ):
  Conviction:
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  (Aspect Type  __________  ):
  © 2011 by Arc Dream Publishing. Permission granted to make copies for personal use.
  Stress
  Type
  Base
  From Skills
  From 
  Equipment
  Health
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Composure
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Reputation
  Armor:
  O O O
  O O O
  O O O
  Consequences
  P/M/S:
  Trif ing (–2 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Middling (–4 Stress)
  Any
  P/M/S:
  Grievous (–6 Stress)
  Any
  Skills
  Great (+4):
  Good (+3):
  Fair (+2):
  Average (+1):
  Tier Beneﬁ ts
  Power Tiers/Gifts
  Free Gift:
  Base  
  Power 
  Adjusted
  Refresh:          – Tiers:          – Gifts:          =   Refresh:          
  Unique and Strange Skills
  Jonus Earl Underbridge, Esq.
  Faerie
  Upper
  The Dashing Man About Town is the Best 
  Thing to Be
  Conviction
  Free
  Free
  Self-Made Troll
  The Esteemed Earl of 
  Underbridge
  The Old Ways Do Have 
  Their Charms
  Cunningly Deceptive and 
  Perceptive
  Profoundly Large and 
  Memorable
  Clearly a Well-To-Do 
  “I say! Good show, old chap!”
  8
  4
  2
  2
  Troll (S)
  Faerie Glamour (E), Man About Town
  Hideous Visage (E), Fisticuffs (E)
  Art, Empathy, Bureaucracy
  Skilled x3: +15 skill points
  Troll (11)
  Power Tier: Superhuman (-2 
  Refresh)
  Resist Damage, Stress Capacity 
  [Health], Physical Force, 
  Notice, Willpower
  Conviction: The Old Ways Do 
  Have Their Charms
  Minor Snag: Notice trapping 
  restricted to olfactory sense
  Minor Complication: Profoundly 
  Large and Memorable
  Faerie Glamour (10)
  Power Tier: Extraordinary (-1 
  Refresh)
  Menace + Range [1 zone] + 
  Unusual: Deals Physical conse-
  quences (+2), Parry + Unusual: 
  Illusion (+1), Disguise + Range 
  [1 zone] + Unusual: Illusion 
  (+2)
  Minor Snag: Doesn’t work 
  against other Fae
  Minor Snag: Illusions instantly 
  dispelled by the touch of iron
  Man About Town (8)
  Power Tier: Extraordinary (-1 
  Refresh)
  Information, Networking, 
  Wealth, Influence, Esteem, 
  Conversation
  Hideous Visage (0)
  Power Tier: Extraordinary (-1 
  Refresh)
  Menace + Spray (+1)
  Minor Transform: Requires a 
  Full Action; replace “Clearly 
  a Well-To-Do Englishman 
  Going About His Business” 
  with “Giant Horrifying Troll”
  Minor Snag: Can’t use this skill 
  while disguised with Faerie 
  Glamour
  Minor Weakness [Physical] 
  (+1 Refresh): Iron
  Free
  Free
  Englishman Going About His Business (or: Giant 
  Horrifying Troll)
  Weapon 2 [Health]
  Weapon 1 
  [Reputation]
  Armor 2 [Health]
  Armor 1 
  [Reputation]
  +1 Trifling Physical 
  consequence
  Defend normally 
  when surprised (if 
  you can smell them 
  coming)
  P
  
  What Can Mr. 
  Underbridge Do?
  Mr. Underbridge is a huge, lumpy, monstrous 
  bastard under his thin illusory guise. To penetrate 
  his disguise, one must have reason to suspect it, 
  and then succeed in an opposed roll vs. his Faerie 
  Glamour skill. 
  Mr. Underbridge can drop this disguise at any 
  time, of course, and when he needs to put the fright-
  eners into someone, he’ll do it—but rarely when 
  others could see. The fashionable man simply does 
  not turn into a giant monster in mixed company, 
  after all. His horrible true appearance forces him 
  to replace his aspect of “Clearly a Well-To-Do 
  Englishman Going About His Business” 
  with “Giant Horrifying Troll” for 
  as long as his illusory disguise is 
  Mr. Underbridge
  Victoria’s Britain is a distinctly classist society, with 
  manners and mores which reinforce its stratifi-
  cation. Those of greater means, more reputable family, 
  position, or birthright aren’t simply more powerful or 
  influential, but are generally assumed to be better—
  more fundamentally valuable.  Every strata of society 
  has its standards, and for all but those on the very 
  bottom there are clear examples of how one might fall 
  still farther from grace.
  Indeed, the idea of privilege and position repre-
  senting divine favor (or inherently superior character) 
  is subtle and pervasive.  If God rewards one’s faith-
  fulness with Earthly treasures, then those with such 
  treasures must be favored by God. Few openly say as 
  much, but that sense of rightness, that some people 
  were just born different, with a different capacity to be 
  powerful, is almost universal. In a strange paradox, the 
  culture lionizes those who rise above their birth and do 
  great things—yet upwards mobility is very much the 
  exception, and discouraged even by ones peers. Don’t 
  put on airs, don’t get above your station, know your 
  place. 
  These hierarchies are mirrored even among the 
  serving staffs of fine homes. The strict social order 
  among those in service, with each position keeping 
  its jealously-guarded duties and privileges, reflects life 
  “above stairs.” 
  A Victorian born to a given socioeconomic class can 
  expect to remain there—and indeed, is encouraged to 
  do so.  For the lower classes, eking out bare survival 
  usually occupies so much time and effort as to make 
  self-improvement an unattainable luxury.  In the 
  widening ranks of the middle and upper middle classes, 
  however, the dream of becoming the self-improved man 
  of influence is prevalent. The economic changes which 
  reshape Britain during the middle decades widen this 
  middle class, and more and more the culture comes to 
  cater to middle-class values, prejudices, and assump-
  tions.  Stepping out of one’s place can be met with 
  anger and disbelief. Merely addressing one’s “betters” 
  outside acceptable contexts can be shocking. 
  However, as members of the Kerberos Club, your 
  characters need not kowtow to these pressures. Indeed, 
  even joining the Club is an act of deviance from social 
  norms, an act of transgression against all things right 
  and decent. 
  No one puts a Kerberan in her place, unless it serves 
  her interests to allow it.
  Knowing One’s Place
  25
  
   
  down. 
  His uncanny sense of smell is with him 
  regardless of his appearance. Its Superhuman Tier 
  performance lets him judge whether someone had 
  recently vacated a room and he can track a wounded 
  man through a bog. But if struck about the head, 
  his remarkable sense of smell fails him (an excellent 
  Trifling Physical consequence), and especially 
  potent smells can mask each other or overwhelm his 
  nose (a compel of his Archetype aspect, “Self-Made 
  Troll”). 
  Also regardless of his appearance, his long 
  experience dealing pain and death makes him almost 
  totally inured to most mental trauma, reflected by 
  the Willpower trapping in his Troll skill. 
  Mr. Underbridge is really an enormous, eight-
  foot troll weighing as much as a bear. His size and 
  thick trollish hide make him extremely tough and 
  hard to injure. He can withstand an additional 
  Trifling Physical consequence and has Armor 2 
  [Health]. Finally, Mr. Underbridge’s phenomenal, 
  supernatural strength allows him to lift 16 tons on 
  average and gives his bare-handed attacks Weapon 
  2 [Health]. Despite his often jovial human disguise, 
  Mr. Underbridge is a monster. 
  But what of Mr. Underbridge’s faerie nature? 
  Like all Fae, he is bound by three restrictions listed 
  in his Archetype: the Law of Oath, the Law of 
  Form, and the Law of Self. These define the limita-
  tions of the faerie. 
  Oathbound means if Mr. Underbridge swears a 
  thing, he’ll suffer supernatural consequences if he 
  fails to uphold his oath. Simply swearing the oath 
  means gaining a new aspect that’s treated as if it 
  were a Conviction—that is, compels against it start 
  at two Fate Points instead of one. Instead of paying 
  Fate Points to refuse, however, Mr Underbridge can 
  choose to take a Middling Physical consequence. 
  This consequence can be removed only by taking 
  significant steps toward resolving the oath. This is 
  the reason the faerie are, as a race, so cagey, clever 
  and untrustworthy. They are rarely willing to be so 
  bound.
  The Law of Form reflects how a faerie’s body is 
  a figment of his own imagination. When making a 
  concession in a Physical conflict, the Faerie may opt 
  to fade away into intangibility, losing the capacity 
  to interact with the physical world in any way until 
  the next moonrise or until one of his aspects is 
  compelled, whichever comes first.
  The Law of Self means Mr. Underbridge’s 
  identity defines his physicality. If he refuses a compel 
  on any of his Conviction aspects, he suffers physi-
  cally. For each Fate Point spent to refuse the compel, 
  he suffers a point of Health stress.
  As a creature of Faerie, Mr. Underbridge shares 
  a weakness common to all his kind. The illusions 
  created by his Faerie Glamour, including the 
  disguise that conceals his true nature, are instantly 
  dispelled by the mere touch of iron. Moreover, if 
  Mr. Underbridge is attacked by an iron weapon, his 
  defense is treated as if it were two Power Tiers lower 
  than it normally is. For example, when using his Troll 
  skill to defend against a spear with an iron head, 
  it’ll be Mundane instead of Superhuman—plus he’ll 
  lose his Armor 2 [Health] against the attack.
  Mr. Underbridge
  26
  
  Mr. Underbridge
  If you’re a member of the Kerberos Club, Mr. 
  Underbridge isn’t the strangest thing you’ve ever 
  seen. He likely isn’t even the strangest thing you’ve seen 
  today. 
  As the century wears on, the Strange—the weird, the 
  unnatural, the unsettling, the enchanted, the super-
  human—grows bolder and begins first to creep from 
  the shadows, and then to revel in the light. 
  During the first decades of the 19th century the 
  Strange is mostly hidden, the old societies keeping 
  their secrets, the occult orders guarding their influence, 
  and the monsters and uniquely talented folk keeping to 
  themselves. During this era the Kerberos Club meddles, 
  investigates, and preserves the publics’ ignorance of 
  things unnatural. Their ignorance is a comfort, and the 
  Club guards it. 
  But the tide rises, and by the middle decades of the 
  Century, no amount of skulduggery can keep the reality 
  of the superhuman hidden. Men fly openly across the 
  skies and build impossible wonders.  Yet the public 
  is still wakening to this knowledge, and these things 
  remain somewhat sensational. 
  By the end of the century, when the Queen’s own 
  divinity is fully bloomed and England is transformed 
  by Strangeness, the public grows almost blasé about the 
  wonders all about them. The ghosts of dead Atlanteans 
  haunt the Thames, the skies are plied by vast aeroships, 
  and wealthy lords invite friends to their Scottish estates 
  for shooting parties—the quarry being feathered 
  serpents late of the Brazilian empire. The Club’s role 
  changes too, from the guardians of public ignorance to 
  the guardians of the Empire itself, putting themselves 
  between the citizenry and the worst of the unhuman. 
  The Club evolves from secretive and mysterious 
  society to an openly Strange association of dubious 
  heroes. It becomes almost a self-parody at the end of 
  the century, its members adopting theatrical costumes 
  and fighting evil with colorful pseudonyms. The Club 
  changes from keeping its secrets with silence to keeping 
  its secrets with noise, creating so many lies and absurd 
  displays of their oddity that the truth is lost in the haze.
  Secret society, then refuge for the Strange, then overt 
  superhero team.
  The Fine Line Between 
  Comedy and Tragedy
  A vein of absurdity runs through the world of the 
  Kerbros Club, with its talking apes, trolls in fancy togs 
  and mechanical menservants with goblin-assembled 
  micro-Babbage analog brains. But within the setting, 
  it’s all played straight. Each bizarre thing is an element 
  of the world that the populace of the world accepts as 
  they are able. 
  One of the major themes at play is how people deal 
  with runaway change, with progress run mad. What if 
  superhuman minds worked to change the world? What 
  if creatures from the elder epochs of the Earth sought 
  to wipe man out? How would these things affect civili-
  zation?
  The flipside of this is the alienation that the super-
  human faces in ordinary society.  Strangers might 
  become famous because of their powers, but they’ll 
  never be safe, never be entirely welcome around the 
  dinner table. Never quite be the right sort.
  Strange Tides Rise
  27
  
  Play the Heroes and Villains of a Strange Century! 
  . . . Doctor Archibald Monroe, the erudite 
  chemist and physician-chimpanzee. 
  . . . “Stony” Joe Smithson, the honest London 
  boxer, transformed into living rock. 
  . . . Maeve O’Connel, Queen of the Mudlarks, 
  the eternal child touched by Faerie. 
  . . . The Lady Mirabel, who by darkness defends 
  Whitechapel as the terrifying Night Hag. 
  When the victims and enthusiasts of magic and 
  bizarre science meet in an infamous club for “the 
  Strange,” thrilling action is sure to follow! 
  The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) is a FATE role 
  playing game of superheroic action and intrigue 
  in Victorian London. It includes a treatment of 
  Victorian society in its every particular, especially 
  the incredible and sometimes awful changes that 
  “the Strangeness” comes to wreak upon Queen and 
  Country alike. 
  The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) gives players 
  every tool they need to create new heroes and 
  villains in a world that is at the same time familiar 
  and alien—a world made more of both by the 
  Strangeness that grips it and the dangers that 
  threaten it. 
  There is, after all, every good reason for the club’s motto: “Malum Necessarium.” 
  The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) is written by multiple Ennie Award nominee Benjamin Baugh and adapted for 
  the FATE system by Mike Olson, with art by Lanny Liu and Todd Shearer and page design by Fred Hicks, Jessica 
  Hopkins and Shane Ivey. Paperback, 376 pages, $39.99.
  The Kerberos Club 
  (FATE Edition)
  The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) Quick-Start Guide • Written by Benjamin Baugh, © 2009. Adapted for the 
  FATE System by Mike Olson. Illustrated by Todd Shearer, © 2009. Edited by Shane Ivey with proofreading 
  help by Jon Hodges. Page design by Fred Hicks and Shane Ivey. Published by Arc Dream Publishing. For more 
  information, more great games, and plenty of free downloads please visit us on the Web at www.arcdream.com.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/FATE (fudge) [multi]/Kerberos Club/Kerberos Club - FATE QuickStart (Updated).pdf