The Ghost Circle

As its name indicates, this qabal is the late 19th century revival of the lost qabal known as the Circle. Though the original was founded in London, most of its leading members were deeply devout religious scholars who migrated west with the Puritans and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As well-versed in classical scholarship as the teachings of the Bible, these learned magical adepts used the same secret protocols practiced by other qabals to keep their activities hidden from their superstitious neighbors in the colony.

One of the Circle’s primary pursuits in the New World was seeking to meet with practitioners of magic from various subgroups of the nearby indigenous coastal peoples, such as the Wampanoag, Massachusett, and Abenaki. Individual tribes among these First Nations had suffered great losses from colonization, disease, and warfare. The Circle qabalists worked hard to earn the trust of as many of the remaining practitioners of magic as they could. The colonists’ arrival had heralded a great growth in the Red Death’ s influence in this region, and members of the Circle were only able to combat the great Evil’s minions with the aid of native allies.

Some early successes may have made the Circle too ambitious. By means much like those which brought the Red Death to Gothic Earth, a new and powerful entity now called Zemlak the Destroyer arrived in our world. The adepts of the Circle attempted to banish this entity, but Zemlak was far too powerful. It defeated the qabalists, revealing the identities of those who survived its wrath to its minions among the Puritans. The Salem Witch Trials were more than mere mass hysteria; they were an orchestrated attempt to use Puritan fears and superstitions to eliminate the remaining members of the Circle.

This attempt was almost completely successful. The Circle ceased to exist as an organized qabal, and the few members who were not killed survived only by fleeing back to England or seeking sanctuary with the same indigenous allies who had tried to warn them of their foolish hubris.

Only a few successors of the version of the qabal that met its end in New England are active today. A single cell recently relocated to Boston. In the Circle’s original home of London, however, a larger resurgence has taken place. This group consists primarily of younger occult researchers who came together in the 1880s after discovering a trove of the Circle’s lost literature. The name “the Ghost Circle” came from the notion that the Circle was rising from its own death to take action in the world once more. The leaders are a trio of women who each operate their own cells, frequently changing locations and identities as necessary.

Members of the Ghost Circle bring a vast array of scientific weapons to bear in their activities. Their primary approach is always observation and investigation, and it is only in rare cases that they choose to take direct action. However, by combining the powers of modern physics, engineering, medicine, and psychology with a broad knowledge of the occult, they have had a number of notable victories in their war against the horrors of the supernatural.

The cell that keeps the legacy of the ancient Circle alive in New England only recently connected with the British cells, thanks to the efforts of a young qabalist named Theresa O’Neill. Drawn to Boston with her allies in 1889, she became aware of visiting agents of the Ghost Circle through divination magic. Sister to a Boston police detective who does not believe in the supernatural at all, Miss O’Neill is only a neophyte spellcaster, but her investigative skills are well-honed. She carefully tracks the Red Death’s rising American influence in coded reports she shares with the leadership in London. She knows the being called Zemlak is still active, and that it is now one of the Red Death’s leading lieutenants.

Another notable new recruit is a young man (born in 1872) by the name of Thomas Carnacki, who has already had several successful adventures against the occult despite his relative lack of experience. Whether his efforts will bring him fame and fortune or only an untimely death remains to be seen.