JIM CULVER AND THE BAND OF THE DEAD: An Orchestra in D Minor of Cosmic Madness

"The music that Jim played was not of this world. Or rather, yes it was, but from a part that no sane cartographer would dare to map, and that certainly does not appear on Google Maps, although it does in the Necronomicon, page 347, right after the discount coupon for group sacrifices".

SYNOPSIS

This deck leads Jim Culver to do what he does best: play for the dead and charge them admission. With Level 0 and no pretensions of grandeur yet, Jim presents himself before the horrors of the cosmos armed with his trumpet, two ritual candles, and a philosophy of life taken directly from the inhabitants of R'lyeh: if you are already dead submerged at the bottom of the Pacific waiting for the stars to align, what does it matter to lose a point of sanity?

The central mechanic revolves around the Skulls. Every time the skull-like chaos works in your favor, you are converting cosmic chance into personal willpower. Like Nyarlathotep, but with more jazz and without the hassle of having to adopt a thousand different shapes to terrorize humanity. Jim does it with a single sustained note.

THE BAND

The Instruments of Destruction:

Jim's Trumpet is the soul of the deck. Every Skull that comes out of the chaos is not a failure: it is Jim playing a sustained note for the nearby dead and politely begging them to lend a hand, please, I know you have been waiting centuries for Cthulhu to wake up but this is urgent.The ancient dwellers of Arkham have been dead for so long that they almost feel insulted if they are not called. The Trumpet is the direct line. The Ritual Candles are the answering machine in case the dead are busy.

The .35 Winchester acts as a bodyguard for when the entities decide that musical diplomacy has come to an end. Because there are monsters that do not appreciate jazz. They are, evidently, the most dangerous. A Byakhee with bad musical taste is an existential threat.

The Chthonian Stone (2 copies) is perhaps the most disturbing piece of inventory. A stone from the Chthonians themselves, those subterranean creatures that make an earthquake look like someone has slammed a door too hard. Lovecraft described the Chthonians as beings of insandable antiquity. Jim describes them as "the ones from the neighborhood below." He uses them as support while it lasts and when they are no longer useful, he discards them with the indifference of someone returning a book to the library. A library that screams.

The Arcane Department

Sixth Sense and Shrivelling do the dirty mystical work.

The Sixth Sense in the Lovecraftian universe is not a gift: it is a curse that comes with the pack of "having read too much". Seeing what others do not see also means seeing what others do not see for their own mental good. Jim has been seeing it for years. It no longer bothers him. That in itself is worrying.

Shrivelling feeds the engine of the deck: resources that flow like the Miskatonic river, that perfectly normal tributary that by no means connects with nameless underground caverns. Nameless because those who tried to name them did not end the sentence well.

Wither an open gate. In the Lovecraftian universe this should cause an immediate panic attack. Abdul Alhazred wrote half the Necronomicon about doors that should not be open. Jim uses it with the serenity of someone who has already seen too much and has decided that fear consumes too many actions per turn.

The Allies (or: Jim's Support Group, which in Arkham is the closest thing to group therapy)

The Arcane Initiates are exactly the kind of people one finds in an interdimensional jam session: technically competent, morally ambiguous, with a disturbing knowledge about things they should not know, and with the look of someone who has read the Cultes des Goules in the original version and has underlined the funny parts.

Olive McBride deserves her own paragraph, her own chapter, and possibly her own secret cult in a basement in Innsmouth. This lady allows to take three tokens from the chaos, use one and return two, turning each action of Jim into a small statistical ritual of quasi-primordial precision. With Jim already empowering Skulls, Olive is the equivalent of hiring a second drummer who also knows how to talk to the dead and has good discounts on cursed scrolls. The inhabitants of Innsmouth know her. They say no more. They smile in that particular way that those from Innsmouth have.

The Holy Rosary protects Jim from his own decisions, which in this deck are frequent, brave, and often questionable from any conventional theological perspective. The priest of the local church has already stopped asking what he needs it for.

The Cat Mask: Randolph Carter traveled to the Dreamlands with the help of cats, those creatures that move between worlds with the arrogance of someone who knows that no Primordial is going to tell them anything. The cats of Ulthar are sacred. This deck has a cat mask. The mathematics work alone.

The Events (or: Rational Responses to Completely Irrational Situations)

Ward of Protection: in the universe of the Mythos, a ward of protection has the approximate efficacy of an umbrella in Kadath. But psychologically it works wonders.

Deny Existence: the most Lovecraftian answer of all. The protagonist of The Call of Cthulhu denies existence. The one of The Dunwich Horror denies existence. The one of At the Mountains of Madness denies existence until he literally cannot continue denying it because he has it on top of him. Here it becomes a game mechanic. Lovecraft would be proud and terrified in equal measure.

Spectral Razor: a weapon made of pure concept, of immaterial substance, of the same matter with which Azathoth weaves his nightmares in the center of the universe while the flute of an idiot plays non-stop. Lovecraft would have written four paragraphs about the color of its edge. We simply play it and add a success.

Dark Prophecy: in the Arkham universe, all prophecy is dark. There are catastrophic-dark ones, inevitably-dark ones, and those of the type "I told you so but you did not listen"-dark ones. The optimistic ones do not survive playtesting. Nor the lore.

Uncage the Soul: Herbert West would say that that is not a problem but an opportunity for research. Jim uses it with more elegance and fewer preservation jars.

The Skills

Defiance (x2): Because sometimes you have to look a Shoggoth in its countless protoplasmic eyes —which are not exactly eyes, rather condensations of amorphous will in the form of an ephemeral visual organ— and tell it no. Technically the Shoggoth does not understand the concept of "no". But the attitude counts. Especially when you carry a Winchester.

GENERAL STRATEGY

The deck plays at two speeds: the cadence of jazz and the tempo of cosmic panic. In the first turns, you establish your arsenal and let Olive and the Initiates turn the board into your stage. From then on, every Skull that appears is an applause from beyond the grave.

The key synergy: Jim + Olive + Skull tokens = constant advantage. It is the non-Euclidean Trinity of this deck. The angles do not square from any conventional geometric perspective, but they work anyway, which is exactly how all things work in Arkham.

CONCLUSION

This deck does not shout power! from the first turn. It whispers. Like the wind in the ruins of Dunwich. Like the footsteps on the threshold of a door that should be closed. Like the incessant murmur of Azathoth that echoes in the center of the universe and that we all pretend not to hear because if we really heard it we could not continue doing the grocery shopping normally.

Jim Culver does not defeat the Mythos with brute force. He convinces them that there is something worse waiting for them if they do not cooperate. And the most terrible thing is that he is probably right.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Culver New Orleans wgah'nagl fhtagn.(Approximate translation from the deep language: "Give it five stars before the stars align themselves and there is no one left to rate decks.")

Difficulty: 3/5 — Requires knowing your tokens, respecting the chaos, and having made peace with the idea that the universe is indifferent to your suffering, which in Arkham is simply called Tuesday.

Fun: 4/5 — Seeing Olive McBride convert three tokens of darkness into two Skulls and a resource while Jim plays his trumpet for the dead is one of the purest joys this game can offer. May Yog-Sothoth, guardian of all doors and knower of all times, be our witness.