Not since the long out-of-print Green and Pleasant Land has there been a Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for campaigns set in Britain. Though we saw the release of Ramsey Campbell's Goatswood and Less Pleasant Places last year, that book is more rightly a collection of scenarios than a sourcebook. While the first issue of The Black Seal magazine also cannot be called a sourcebook, its theme of "Strange Britain, Secret Country" brings the fanzine closest to that mark, providing an invaluable resource for investigations into the Cthulhu Mythos in modern-day Britain.
A magazine of "modern horror gaming," The Black Seal offers articles for modern-day Call of Cthulhu and the Delta Green campaign setting. Out of the nineteen articles in the eighty-three page magazine, six deal specifically with Delta Green, one touches on elements of the setting, and the rest are all Call of Cthulhu. With the exception of those six articles, most of the material in The Black Seal provides strong background for any kind of horror campaign set in modern-day Britain, as they deal with subjects like the British mental health system and how to obtain illegal firearms in the UK. Those five articles concentrating on Delta Green can also be easily modified for use in a Spycraft, Conspiracy X, or Dark Matter campaign.
That said, this focus on the Delta Green setting means that The Black Seal deals heavily with one of its products, a British government agency that has been investigating the Mythos since its creation during the Second World War: PISCES, the Paranormal Intelligence Section for Counter-intelligence, Espionage and Sabotage. All this makes it seem like there isn't much here for someone interested in Call of Cthulhu who is turned off by the deus ex machina that Delta Green can become in the wrong hands, there to bail out hapless Investigators and offer comfort and solidarity in what should be a hopelessly lonely struggle. However, by focusing on PISCES, The Black Seal neatly side-steps these issues.
WARNING: Spoilers for the book Delta Green: Countdown!
PISCES does not share in this perceived failing of Delta Green because, while PISCES agents bear authority and resources on a much greater scale than the illegal underground of Delta Green, every successful investigation leads those in PISCES deeper into the dark heart of the agency, where their leadership has been possessed by the alien Shan of the Severn Valley. PISCES amps up the paranoia that Pagan Publishing brought in adding conspiracy to Call of Cthulhu with the Delta Green book and its sequel Delta Green: Countdown, creating a subtext of betrayal and corruption. PISCES and its portrayal in The Black Seal add a very British take on the genre, setting a feel of such classics as The Prisoner and Edge of Darkness. If Delta Green is Tom Clancy, PISCES is John le Carre.
End of Spoilers
The six articles in the magazine involving PISCES and the rest of the Delta Green setting include: a description of PISCES' archaeological intelligence (ARCHINT) branch; PISCES' "Jaguar" special operations groups; an overview and a first scenario of the "ZODIAC Clearance" campaign which introduces Delta Green PC's to the world of PISCES; an "Unusual Suspects" entry on a businessman associated with the corporate dealings of the Shan of Severn Valley; and, a code used by the Army of the Third Eye, a British terrorist group fighting the Shan. The ARCHINT and Jaguar pieces are written in the same style and quality as that of Pagan Publishing's Delta Green books, and the ZODIAC Clearance campaign is an excellent follow-up to the introduction of PISCES in Delta Green: Countdown. However, here lies the rub with The Black Seal and PISCES. Without the description of the agency given in the sometimes hard-to-find Countdown, readers can be left scratching their heads in trying to figure out what all this stuff means.
Nevertheless, the majority of The Black Seal is not specific to PISCES or even Delta Green, and there is a plethora of scenario ideas, NPCs, and background in the other twelve articles (the nineteenth is a rather unnecessary review of Unseen Masters and Goatswood). An article on ley lines brings geomancy into the Mythos (with a how-to manual for Keepers to build their own megalithic site - a nice touch for those tired of the usual subterranean cultist temple) and leads to the first fully fleshed-out work on the Lloigor I've ever seen. Another "Unusual Suspects" item deals with an antiquarian that can hook the investigators into the occult underground in Britain, while an entry in the "Dangerous Places" series describes a Bronze Age monument connected with Cthugha. The reports from Prof. Grant Emerson, a pathologist affiliated with Delta Green, continue out of the pages of Countdown to detail the autopsy of a cadaver found in the Adirondack Mountains which suspiciously reads like it might be related to an inhabitant of a lake in Britain. Like the other Emerson reports in Countdown, this is a hard science appraisal of the Mythos that would make Lovecraft proud and offers an incredible handout to build a scenario out of. It seems almost obligatory than a supplement on Britain includes a run-down of the strict UK firearms laws; but, while those in Countdown and Goatswood simply stated the laws themselves, the article in The Black Seal gives a great deal more attention on ways to get around those laws. It reads of weapons-of-choice for Brit gangsters like the Brocock Magnum, an air pistol that can be converted fire .22 and .38 rounds, all written in a tone that brings to mind the original Get Carter or a Guy Ritchie flick. A companion to this article is a listing and full stats for the firearms issued to UK and Irish police and military forces, a nice touch that would've been handy for the US agencies in the Delta Green book. Another nice touch is an updating of the gazetteer of the Mythos in Britain like that published in the fifteen-year-old Green and Pleasant Land. Some Tales of Terror (short scenario ideas), Investigator Templates for British military and civilian occupations, a couple of pages on new gear for modern-day PC's (the GPS watch is most sweet), and a description of just what the Black Seal could be (everything from a seal of Nephren-Ka to the Black Stone of Stregoicavar) round out the contents.
All is not golden in The Black Seal though. The layout is unexceptional, and the binding seems fragile. The black-&-white interior artwork ranges from average to surprisingly good for what is essentially a fanzine. The cover art might have also been fine in black-&-white but is weak in color, as is the magazine's icon (why is the Black Seal properly "black" on the magazine's website yet is yellow on the magazine's cover?). There's nothing wrong with the reviews section, but there's nothing particularly useful about it either. And the articles on the Army of the Third Eye's cipher and the "Unusual Suspects" entry on the Shan-connected businessman are rather too esoteric, even for detail-hogs like myself.
Still, I have to say that no product for Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green has given me so much to work with since Countdown came out in 1999. Since it's also been that long since Pagan Publishing put out a major release for Delta Green (the hopelessly out-of-print Project Rainbow chapbook notwithstanding), this issue of The Black Seal offers the first real material for Delta Green fans since Countdown. It helps to know what PISCES is (though the next issue promises to provide a complete depiction of the agency), and it would be nice if there were more material for non-Delta Green campaigns (the third issue will hopefully expand beyond this in their coverage of the Mythos and Vietnam). Nevertheless, The Black Seal is worth its weight in gold for any Keeper running modern-day UK campaigns, regardless of the setting. Reading The Black Seal makes me want to run a UK campaign immediately, something I had no interest in beforehand. I can think of no better test of quality than that.
The Black Seal is available in UK gaming shops and through mail order at their website: www.theblackseal.org.
Note: My copy was free from the publisher, and I do hope to write some articles for later issues of The Black Seal. I was not involved with the production of this issue, and have tried to stay as objective as possible in this review.
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