Release and System Suggestions

Hi, everyone! This has been my weird little passion project for the last month or so: whenever I can't sleep, I've been digging around into academic and ancient sources on the Spanish city of Cadiz, a place I knew nothing about a few weeks ago. My parents both have a fascination with Southern Spain, its history and its architecture, and I figured there was nowhere better than the island with a cool name to start learning. I expected to find some tidbits and curiosities, not a place touched by Heracles, Hannibal, and Caesar. The more I dug, the more fascinating things became, and the more sinister little patterns began to appear in whatever I read.

I hope you enjoy the fruits of my obsession! I'm sorry it's not cleaned up visually, but Trajan's Cadiz is so niche that it almost feels like a waste.

When I started putting this project together, I didn't have a particular system in mind, but a few old historical gaming favorites demanded suggestions from me. Steal some or any of these hooks if they catch your eye!

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Cthulhu Invictus requires relatively few notes, as the broad shape of that game lends itself naturally to any extent of the empire. Despite the coastal location of Gades, the Mythos makes itself known from almost every angle but the sea; indeed, many Roman investigators clutch protective icons of the Egyptian goddess Isis as they clash with all manner of horrors. 

Ghouls thrive under the sprawling Roman necropolis on Cotinussa, feasting on the dead since Phoenician times. The Yellow King themes countless decadent parties behind closed doors, and would prove disastrous if performed for the full 10,000 that the public theater in Gades Nova can seat. Mi-Go mining operations date back in the region to the half-remembered age of Tartessos, but the Fungi from Yuggoth have not seen the region since the coming of the Roman Empire and will likely react with hostility to the changes. The sunset herd are practically begging to be Dark Young of Shub Niggurath, ‘cattle’ only to alien gods. Anywhere with this much history is bound to attract at least a few Yithians, curious to document Cadiz as the city changes hands so many times - often appearing right before a time of terrible cataclysm to salvage what knowledge they can. 

It would be a fitting cosmic joke if Hercules Gaditanus were one of Nyaralthotep’s thousand masks, the Sunset Hero who brings about the ending of all things. Oaths backed by blood are his greatest joy, always twisted to wound those who swear them; rather than a man’s head, an oversized, red, minotaur-like visage sits uncomfortably on a bulging neck.

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Eagle Eyes doesn’t need any help to be set out here other than the note that it doesn’t assume any supernatural factors - however, as a game of noir in the late Roman Republic (45 BC), it’s too good to pass up. The Sinistram prefers to focus on Rome herself, but might dispatch a team of Eagles to Gades in pursuit of mundane corruption. Lucius Cornelius Balbus (an actual historical figure!) famously enriched himself during his ‘service’ to the province of Hispania Baetica in 44; where better than his hometown of Gades to find evidence of such misdeeds?

Fabius Antonius could be a mundane sadist, his parties and wealth a smokescreen for violent crimes. In a game where magic and monsters don’t exist, Evandrus becomes a killer for a mystery cult, Geta is probably smuggling all sorts of contraband, and Leherreno might be incorrectly blamed for any manner of crime (on account of his foreign-ness and poor Latin).

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In the Chronicles of Darkness games, the Requiem for Rome setting (Vampire: the Requiem) and various other Dark Eras can make excellent use of Cadiz. None of the five Clans in can agree on the precise truth, but most offer that the mythic Geryon and Hercules Gaditanus were sire and childe, the three-headed horror offering the Embrace to a mortal hero under scarlet trees. Neither have been seen in centuries (if they ever existed to begin with), but Propinqui and later Kindred have claimed descent from both for centuries in an attempt to bolster their own legends. 

• The Julii rarely claim Hercules Gaditanus as one of their own, instead fearing that the entire legend points to pre-Roman dead of prodigious age beneath their feet. Undead Romans have no more fondness for the hated Carthaginians than their still-living kin, and so any rumors of non-Propinqui elders are swiftly investigated by subtle agents.
• The Mekhet note that some histories place an older hero than Hercules in Gades: Melqart, who Greek writers often dubbed Hercules the Egyptian - or sometimes, Osiris. A cabal of Gaditani Mekhet sages have advanced a theory that this individual was a ‘middle generation’ between Geryon and Hercules Gaditanus, though they’ve stopped short of stating that the entire lineage is of their own blood.
• The Nosferatu point to the descriptions of Geryon as a three-headed inhuman monstrosity as absolute proof that these isles have always belonged to their kind. Many among them cleave to odd chthonic cults that predate the coming of the Romans, spilling blood to frightening deities that blend Celtic, Greek, and Punic characteristics.

Archaelus could be an elder of some dead Clan or Bloodline, or even one of the fearsome Arisen from Mummy: the Curse. The latter also fits the Lady of Cadiz quite well, whose cultists listen well for the commands of their entombed master, but she may also be a hidden Angel of the God-Machine. Fabius Antonius works as a Daeva or Julii with a hidden bestial side, but especially thrives as one of the Ivory Claws from Werewolf: the Forsaken. Menoites wears many masks well: a death spirit, one of the Strix, or even an Exile (Demon: the Descent). Evandrus could be a mortal Hunter, a martially-minded Guardian of the Veil (Mage: the Awakening), or even the former ensnared in the plans of the latter. Relics are all over the place, but the real prizes are kept in the ancient Temple of Hercules Gaditanus.

Continually inhabited since at least 1000 BCE, Cadiz works well for generational chronicles of both Vampire and Mummy. It may well be that Geryon, Melqart, and Hercules are how mortals remember the past deeds of a few legendary elders and Deathless; indeed, casting the Arisen as the doomed backers of Punic forces against the Roman Propinqui could make for fun crossover!

…why not go further? Fuck the vague and the suggested, let’s get specific. Roman Cadiz best hosts a Vampire chronicle with Mummy crossover elements.

Deeply pious Nosferatu of the Cult of Augurs are ascendant in the domain, as they have been since long before the coming of the Camarilla. They still call themselves ‘Geryones’ when they believe no others can hear, and everyone knows them to be the power behind bacchanal Julii exile Fabius Antonius, whatever his official Senex title - an arrangement that suits him just fine, freeing him up to focus on decadent hunt-orgies at his villa. After the Augurs are the Legio Mortuum, fiercely loyal due to the many veterans of the Punic Wars in their ranks; they mostly work to keep the growing Peregrine Collegia down. Menoites is one of the dread Strix, reliably sought by fools for desperate pacts. 

Archaelus is one of the Arisen, a Su-Menent whose Memory is ruined, leading him to fully believe he’s an immortal Carthaginian champion of Melqart. The ‘Lady of Cadiz’ sarcophagus contains another Arisen, a Mesen-Nebu who calls herself Elishat (after Carthage’s mythic queen); she believes herself, Archaelus, and a missing third (she suspects them to be of the Tef-Aabhi) came as a menet around 1000 BCE, and aims to reassemble that union today.

The mystery of whether Hercules Gaditanus is a powerful vampire elder or the ‘missing’ third Arisen drives shadow conflicts in Gades between the Roman Camarilla and the Punic cults of the Deathless.

In later nights, the 1,001 Nightmares setting (from Dark Eras 2) offers a valuable stepping stone between the Camarilla of Roman times and Covenants of modern nights. Jazirat Qadis serves the mortal lord Abd al-Rahman III from 921 AD onward, joining the prosperous Caliphate of Cordoba - and with it, the pinnacle of Islamic civilization in Al-Andalus. 

Three Covenants uneasily share the city: the Fir’awn, who pry endlessly into ancient pagan legends and sites in Qadis, the devout furies of Ahl al-Mumit who oppose those ‘reckless idolaters,’ and the strained few al-Amin faithful trying to keep the peace. This far south, the European covenants are still mostly the stuff of rumor, but the few Christian Kindred in the city dream of linking up with their brothers in the Lancea et Sanctum somehow.

Most of the fuming Ventrue in the city consider themselves to be from the line of an undead Spanish Hercules, aligned with the Christian Mozarabic communities among the living. By contrast, the Gangrel (including the Taifa Bloodline from V:tR - Bloodlines: The Chosen) came to power alongside the Amazigh ‘Moors,’ joined by a few curious Daeva and Mekhet from further east, and have enjoyed centuries of ascendancy. The few Nosferatu are given a wide berth, as most are elders from Roman or pre-Roman times and their potent childer.