The year is 1889. Europe is colonising the entire world to its heart’s content, building highly polluting factories everywhere and laying the civilisational foundations for everything we fight against today. Allan Quatermain, the hero of Haggard’s novels, amuses himself by killing buffalo by the hundred in Africa just for fun. In England, children are working in factories. Eugenics is regarded as a science with a logical and promising future. We in the twenty-first century may loathe that era, but it was the era of our great-great-grandparents, and they believed they were doing good.
In this dreadful world that fancies itself humane, monster hunters are the extension of this ethnocentric view: they eradicate monsters simply because they are not human. In their eyes, they are making the world safer, at the cost of destroying fantastical species. To the general public, satyrs or werewolves are simply other forms of dodo birds or white rhinos.
What you’ll be playing:
The Hydra was founded by Heracles during the second of his labours, when he realised that the Lernaean Hydra would be reborn in a cyclical pattern… Struck by the realisation that mortals could never completely annihilate belligerent fantastical creatures, Heracles decided to gather the knowledge and strength of the heroes of his generation to ease the task for their descendants.
Even today, the Hydra Hunters’ Club watches over the world, preventing the return of these terrible creatures. Your characters belong to this club and are the last guardians of the world’s salvation.
In Hydra – Monster Hunters, you play in a world that is both historical and fantastical. Events are depicted according to the knowledge and technologies available in 1889, but within this world, the fantastical creatures of various folklore traditions exist.
Most of the population is unaware of their existence, but to protect mortals and ensure that myths remain just that – stories – humans and non-humans have set up secret organisations to safeguard their peoples.
You are agents of the Hydra. Logistics and equipment will never be a problem for you. At your mere request, the Club will charter locomotives, submarines and zeppelins. In every major city in every country, you’ll have access to black markets run by marvellous creatures who’ll barter with you for artefacts of all kinds… This vast array of resources won’t be a luxury, for every day you’ll have to return a Sumerian god to the prison from which he has escaped…
The book we are offering is ‘ready to play’, meaning it contains everything you need to run a complete campaign for your players (around thirty hours of adventures). You’ll therefore find a description of the setting, an explanation of the rules, detailed instructions for creating your characters, and all the scenarios needed to play the campaign—set in Lyon, Rome, Greece, Turkey and Iraq (as well as the adventures encountered whilst travelling).
As for the game system, it is a home-made creation, inspired by Chaosium’s Basic System, based on percentages indicating the chances of success for an action. It is played with a D100 and is easy to get to grips with. It has been specifically designed to ensure a smooth flow of storytelling and combat.
