Lost England: A Setting for Pulp ttRPGs

The Year is 1896, and England is Lost.

The cities are overrun with undead, clans of simians, giant rats, lycanthropes, and vaguely Egyptian-themed cults. The government has fled to Canada. The countryside is marginally less dangerous, with some rural districts, parishes, and walled townships holding out, and a few odd individuals somehow making due in individual homes and huts.

Expeditions into the Blighted Counties are undertaken for numerous reasons. Some seek to understand how things got so bad here, as opposed to anywhere else in the world. Others seek to rescue family or friends, recover heirlooms or lab notes, take back artifacts looted by various English authorities from other countries over the centuries, or even try to carve out independent territories.

Official expeditions are launched from Scotland, but nearly anyone can set out from France or Independent Ireland to explore Lost England… though those nations are more cautious about who they allow back in after being exposed to the English Problem. But with little to no regulation in England itself, and a thriving black market for English relics and lab notes, individuals who aren’t able to live the lives they want anywhere else find they are accepted by the Anglo-Expedition community. The biggest gathering places for those freelancers who dare to set foot on English soil are Camp Gris-Nez in France, and Greystones in Ireland (where the best explorers often gain patronage from Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed, better known as Lizzie Le Blond).

Adventurers, explorers, occultists, and looters from all over the world flood to these places in preparation for delving into Lost England.

(Art by Jeshields)

A Timeline

1726 — Serbian soldier Arnold Paole becomes a vampire after death, killing at least 16 people. Numerous European scholars and doctors investigate this case, and it is even written up in the London Journal, firmly establishing vampires as real, but something that “only happens in the East.”

1798 — The British army seizes Egyptian artifacts from Napoleon after his defeat at the Battle of the Nile. rather than return any of these artifacts to their native cultures, they are handed over to the British Museum. These artifacts include the mummy and Queen Nytocris, and a cult of Engish zealots begins to worship her.

1819 — Lady Aubry Mercer exposes and kills the vampire Lord Ruthven in London, proving vampires are not just a foreign phenomenon anymore, if they ever were.

1831 — British Naval officer and explorer Sir James Clark Ross plants a British flag at the magnetic North Pole. Rumors persist that during this trip an icelocked ship was found that contained the lost Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, and all his notes.

1840 — An orangutan commits murders in the Rue Morgue. The simian is traced back to an expedition to Africa funded by Lord Greystoke, where numerous animals were caged and brought back. Over the next decades, more and more highly-intelligent simians are brought from Africa by Greystoke, and many escape and manage to avoid capture. The traveling lord’s ship wrecks off the coast of Africa in the decades to follow, and his whole family is killed. Larger and larger groups of apes, chimpanzees, and orangutans begin to

1845 — Varney the Vampire carries on an extensive campaign of terror in Bath, England. He is the first confirmed case of a native Englishman contracting (and perpetuating) vampirism.

1851 — At the Great London Exhibition, numerous reanimated corpses of animals and Irishmen are presented as proof that Doctor Victor Frankenstein’s research was completed, and that the British Government has mastered it. Numerous cases of mysterious creatures and unexplained murder over the following decades are attributed to rogue Reanimated escaping government control, though none of the accusations are proven, and the government vigorously denies them.

1853 — Numerous “Strange Disturbances” begin to be documented in Ireland, the most famous of which was a ghostly haunting in Dublin on Aungier Street. Spiritual contacts become increasingly common in Ireland, and then the Isle of Man and Scotland.

1860 — Doctors investigating a plague in rural Cornwall discover it is caused by zombies that have been raised by a local squire to serve as cheap and uncomplaining mining labor. though the government claims all the zombies were destroyed, numerous other landlords and captains of industry take up the practice of using mindless animate dead in place of living workers, and in several cases the animate dead break lose and begin to multiple in back country regions.

1863 — “Brag Madness” sweeps England, as apparently at random people dress up as specific playing cards (sometimes forming gangs), and then go about beheading people while committing other violent crimes, in a process they call “taking tricks.” No origin of Brag madness is found, though most of the afflicted seem to have close contact with cats and/or rabbits in their daily lives.

1871 — ‘Spirit-medium’ Mademoiselle Odin, who claims to have studied at the Paris Conservatoire, appears in Stratford with a show that includes her unlocking boxes without touching them, juggling balls of fire, and floating her body from the stage to the balcony. Conjurors, illusionists, and mediums grow increasingly accepted, as the Paris Conservatoire undertakes to train them, as do Trinity College Dublin and the University of Glasgow (the later famously training middle-class students to learn “practical conjuring,” resulting in magicians-for-hire known as “Hillhead Sorcerors.”).

1885 — King Soloman’s Mines are discovered, and extensively looted for artifacts which are taken to the British Museum. Many of the artifacts are rumored to be cursed, contain trapped demons, or both. The mortality rate at the British Museum increases every year that follows, and by 1889 it is the most deadly job in Great Britain.

1887 — A new drug, “Jackal,” begins to significantly rise in popularity in England. The effects are similar to laudanum, with two important differences. First, while inebriated, the subject feels a strong compunction to engage in and promote ethical and modest behavior, Secondly, when an addict used to high does is denied them, they become a licentious, angry, criminally-minded individual with great strength and agility. “Wild Jackals” begin to run rampant through major English cities.

1888 — Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel through to 1891. When the killings stoop after a massive military operation, it becomes commonly believed that the Ripper was a member of royalty, possibly infect by zombism or suffer Jackal withdrawal. When similar killings spread to dozens of neighborhoods in major cities throughout England in 1892, riots become a weekly occurrence as people demand the royal family prove they are not responsible.

1889 — The ship Matilda Briggs comes to the Royal Albert Dock in Liverpool with no sign of living crew. An investigation reveals a Giant Rat of Sumatra was onboard, bred a massive brood of up-to-5-foot-long rats, and ate anything else living on the ship. Though the Matilda Briggs is burned, giant rats take over Liverpool within months, and the city is abandoned, and walled off.

1891 — A minor nobleman in Llanwelly, Wales is exposed as a lycanthrope. Though he is eventually killed, it is not before he infects numerous members of Scotland Yard, who then pass the infection far and wide.

1893 — Amid the growing chaos, and some claim in an effort to break some of the curses that seem to have attached to nobles in all levels of the British Government, the Irish Second Home Rule Bill passes. Ireland develops a government for all domestic issues.

Also in 1893, Count Dracula arrives in Whitby, North Yorkshire. Though the Count is eventually driven off, Whitby is overrun by wolves, rats, and zombies, and is abandoned.

1894 — The Cult of Nytocris attempts to kidnap Princess Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, in order to sacrifice her to resurrect Queen Nytocris. Buckingham Palace falls. London is overrun by ghouls, though whether these “blighters” are in league with the Cult, or a vampire, or are part of an evolved zombie outbreak is unclear. Queen Victoria is evacuated, and for safety taken to Canada. Military expeditions are sent in to reclaim London, but the major cities of England continue to fall, to clans of militant simians, various English diabolist and necromancer cults, packs of giant rats, lycanthropes, and vampire warlords.

1895 — It is clear the United Kingdom lacks the forces needed to reclaim England. Sea water seems to hold most of the various creatures stalking the big cities and much of the open lands at bay. A 76-mile long military quarantine and forbidden zone is set up along Hadrian’s Wall, and though Scotland suffers incursions and incidents, they are limited compared to the total collapse in England.

1896 — Lost England setting.

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