First of, a not to my Players:
Marquel, Crimson Dragon, Redfairy, Woodlife, haltet euch aus diesem Thread raus! Ihr verderbt euch nur den eigenen Spaß!

Ok, now that this is taken care off, here is my quest, spoilered so that my players don't have an excuse for reading it "by accident":

there are details in T:Wastelands, in the Antarctica section, that are reminiscent of At the Mountains of Madness.

Hm, yea I heard of that. However, since I'm pretty short on money and some of these books like T:W aren't easily available around here I would prefer something that doesn't require me to buy new books.
It doesn't even have to be "canon" Cthulhu, I just want to get that type of a campaign with that certain athmosphere and feeling. Of course, using direct Lovecraft references lends itself for this kind of venture but isn't mandatory.

Greetings, or should I say:

'Ph'nglui mglw-nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn.'

That phrases says it all. 'In his house at R'yeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.'

Acquire some of the books if you're able. Fred Pelton has a 'Guide to the Cthulhu Cult' which could prove helpful, as is Daniel harm's 'Encyclopedia Cthulhiana'. No disrespect to FASA or FanPro intended, but there are some excellent Chaosium 'Call of Cthulhu' books that are worth picking up, if you have the cash.

I'd say that you're on the right track with the onion-layer approach. Cthulhu could/should be the Big Bad at the bottom of the Pacific, a dual natured alien monstrosity, beaming insane telepathic dreams to his followers and enemies alike. Lots of races serve him, and the Cult of Cthulhu could use them as muscle or worship them. ANY encounter should touch on that key-phrase I mentioned at some point, or at least show an Elder Sign (a star with either a flame column of an eye at the center). It will help bind elements together, theme-atically.

Some adventure ideas:

A single Young of Shub-Niggurath terrorizes a park (or arboretum of an arcology) and the Team investigates. It was summoned by a Toxic Shaman-maybe a toxic dryad-you'd have to decide on a totem.

A team of scientists at a lone research outpost have had their heads pulled off, and any security sent in to investigate and recover the research data suffers the same fate. The bodies are covered with slime-poor souls managed to create a Shoggoth (use the Protean as a template and have fun-hope that it doesn't reproduce).

The Runners are called in to find the group that's been acquiring certain artifacts-the group is part of the Cult-OR, the group has been hired by a Corp run by the Cult, their ultimate purpose-to bring the Old Ones to Earth (Aztechnology/Horrors works well for this).

The X-files formula works-a Johnson hires them to investigate strange goings on-an oil rig offshore is plagued by 'accidents'. The Team heads out, finds some off beat clues and red herrings. Finally, after some plot twists and betrayals, a glimpse of the Real Monster is had-one of the managers or a disgruntled ex-employee is sabotaging the rig, but an enclave of Deep Ones are checking out what their human neighbors are doing).

I wouldn't have EVERY encounter be a Cthulhoid Monster, nor would I stage many pitched, toe to toe battles with them. If you DO like that sort of thing, ALien and Deep Rising are good movies to use as a basis. But, Dagon, if you can find the un-edited version-is pretty much spot-on HPL and a great inspiration.

Cthulhu Fhtagn! (Cthulhu Waits!)

R

A good public library should have Lovecraft in the fiction section.

We've done runs like this. The trick with Cthulhu is the element of the unknown. Once you see the baddie/creature it loses it's fearfull element and just start blazing away. To be a real Cthulhu type run your players should realize they are taking on some sort of occult adventure, maybe hired for a run against a petro hougun, but it should be the sort of thing that they don't know what's going on. Is this gutter punk well protected? Maybe connected to a high level corper? Why are Cross sec troops here? Is the corp trying to exploit the hougun or is the corp exec a secret follower using corp resources for his own use. etc

There are elements of horror to maintain, but keep the players off balance-a person completely changes personality from one encounter ot the next or is too fearful to talk to someone
"But we talked about this yesterday"
"No we didn't! OK I never talked to you about it. So ka?"
"What's wrong?"
"NOTHING NOW GET OUTTA HERE!"

Cool, thanks for the suggestions so far!

I do have the Chaosium's Keepers Handbook (and Cthulhu 1000 A.D., but I don't think that'll help me with this, being set in the middle-ages and all...). It gives some great insight into the myth, the cults and the different races. It also gives a lot of great advice on how to lead a horror campaign, how to create the right atmosphere, etc.
All I need is ideas on how to structure the campaign. All I have right now are these vague ideas that I have outlined in my initial post.
rlemansky gave some good ideas, however what I'm lacking is the skeleton of the campaign, the overarching motives of the NPCs, the contingencies and such.

Why was that Young of Shub-Nigurrath in the park? Monsters like that never act in the public without a specific goal.
What is causing mayhem on the oil rig and why? What could possible distractions from the "real" truth be? Who has planted those clues and why or do they just happen to be convenient answers?
How does the cult intend to bring the Great Old Ones to the earth?

I'm having lot's of vague ideas but no idea how to fill them with concrete details. I know the types of runs I want to pull and vaguely how I want to reveal the myth but I have no clue as to how to actually do it.

I know this is asking a lot but could you help me develop an actual campaign with actors and plot and stuff? At least until I get the hang of it and can go on on my own. I would really appreciate it.

Here's a possible start I've come up with:
Some old suit hires the runners to find his daughter who has not returned from a party two days ago. He doesn't want to contact the Star because he believes they would take too long and wouldn't be willing to use certain "amoral" means to get his daughter back but he wants her back alive ASAP by any means necessary! The players conduct their research and start digging around in her private life. They find out that she's been hanging around with a guy who's supposedly the member of a cult that worships some obscure god or Great Old One (not sure which one yet) and they need a human sacrifice to perform a certain ritual. The players need to rescue her before she is sacrificed. Since the ritual has to take place during a certain timeframe they still have a few days left to conduct research and develop a plan.
Problems with this: What do they want to achieve with this ritual and why? Will the players even bother to find out the background of the cult or the ritual (doesn't really matter. they will remember later). How do I go on from there?
I could be a little evil and let the ritual succeed so that they have to deal with a botched run and the consequences of the ritual (whatever that may be).

If it's a new set of PC's I wouldn't set 'em up on a botched run to start with. The players have to do a lot of figuring out who they're playing as well as how the group dynamics shake out without adding the extra stressors of a botched run (but if they prove inept enough to qualify for the CLUE files, let the chips fall where they may).

Also, I've always liked starting off slow, especially about these sorts of things. Don't hit them with the supernatural until they're sure something's up. Longer they think it's a normal SR, the better. Build on the sense of the unknown.

I think it would be better for the inital run... instead of her being a sacrifice, just let her join "some cult"

As it wouldn't technically be legal to remove her without her consent, and the media exposure of this cults "practices" would be a detriment, it'd be logical the Johnson would go to the Shadows for this.

Leave the cult's practices mundane, and legal, but fairly out of the ordinary- for now. Just make sure to make the mooks no real threat to the PCs. We're talking wageslaves who need an excuse out of their crummy lives, not even the level of gangers.

Also, a old Sr novelist wrote a great Chthuleesque story in a couple of books: Prince among Men, Knight among Knaves.
Sadly both are currently out of print, but should be available at a good public library or through various online bookstores though you'll pay through the nose for them.
Covered Mountains of Madness nicely

PS: Could always work the Horrors Metaplot into this as the Chtulu stuff. Shedim, etc, all work nicely as well.

There was a book put out for Cyberpunk 2020 that had Lovecraftian Crossovers in it. It wasn't published by R.T, but it has some nice plotlines and freaky cyberware... Cyber-Tentecles, and what not... I'll try to dig it up tonight when I get home. I seem to remember the plotline revolving around a company that basically flat-lined people then brought them back, in the same sort of way that health conscious people would go get enimas...

So, can someone give me a little more detail about The Call of Cthulhu? I get the general idea (Old Ones, Big Bad, Wold in ruin, bla, bla, bla). It sounds like the move "The Gate" and "Cast A Deadly Spell"

Someone hook a fellow DSer up?

Without going into specifics... and to over simplify things abit. Lovecraft is all about "Cosmic Horror." Through strange and bizarre things, man/men (your PCs) come to realize that not only are we not in control of our reality, but we are completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and that all that we know hangs upon the knife's edge of utter oblivion and destruction... and the truth of reality is far far more alien than anyone can truly comprehend.. (thus the sanity issues)

Buy this book

And this one

I know you said you may not have the ability to buy books, but if you want to add Cthulu to SR, you NEED them. These two books taken together present about 600 pages of info that bring the Cthulu mythos up into the year 2000. They're well-written and immensly enjoyable. If you're serious, they're the resources you need.

Here's a plot idea that you can use once a major antagonist has been established. They stumble, seemingly almost by accident, upon the time and location of a major ritual that is to take place. They show up, loaded for bear, and don't have too difficult of a time slaughtering the numerous but lightly-armed cultists. Unfortunately, this was the major antagonist's plan all along. The cultists are meant to be sacrificed. By killing all of these people, the PCs help to power a major blood magic ritual, letting the bad guy unleash something really nasty.

Cuthulu: *to the runner team* Sell your soul for a cookie?

If you're seeing Cthulhu, up close and personal, you pretty much do what he says. He can take what he wants, so the cookie's a bonus-be grateful.

Seriously, though...

The Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath in the arcology park/arboretum would be an agent of a toxic dryad-an avenger, to use the old term. She's outraged at the abuse of the natural state, yadda, yadda-her 'tree' may be in the park, cut off from the rest of nature-whatever. Of course, the poor dear has been corrupted by the Elder Gods, and the Earth Mother she used to be a Shaman for has Twisted into Shub-Niggurath, the Mythos's fertility force. You could play up the horror angle, or the tragedy angle-or combine for real fun.

You've got a pretty good Cthulhu campaign basis if you follow the meta-plot in regards to Aztechnology and the horrors-the horrors are the Elder Gods, trying to come through to our world. Mr. Darke and Roxborough (How HPL can you get? Amorphous guy in a tube-gotta love it) would make excellent nemeses for the runners.

Depending on how long a campaign you'd want to run, you COULD even have the runner working for Aztechnology the first few times out-taking care of the Dark Young may clear up a minor inconvenience and prove the runners' mettle. I LOVE the idea that slaughtering the cultists could be the whole point (kudos, you devil you). Eventually, the players could uncover the truth-from a target or prior victim of their well intended misdeeds. I'd play the Johnson straight for a good while-let the runners THINK that they're doing 'good deeds'™, then lay into them-I proposed a similar idea on a X-Men based SR thread a while back (classic SR-the Johnson ALWAYS screws you). THEN, it would be a matter of trying to undo the events that their actions have caused to come to pass-opening a gate for an Elder Thing.

Other plot ideas:

Investigate then eliminate teams/corps trying to stop the arrival of the Old Ones (love fighting the good guys, especially when you don't know that you're on the wrong team-amazing how quickly rebel can become freedom fighter, eh?).

Investigating then destroying/capturing minor Cthulhu Mythos entities for enslavement or ritual use (You want us to capture that thing ALIVE?).

Acquiring weird old tomes-Cultes De Ghules, Liber Ibon, Inaussplichible Culten, and of course, the Necronomicon-or artifacts. Great infiltration and extraction opportunities, and owners, cultists, and horrors can make life difficult for the runners.

There IS a Cthulhu Collectible Card Game called 'Mythos'. The Adventure cards outline HPL storylines and plots, so it'd be rather easy to slot in runners and develop a story using those, if you can find them. There may even be an online card viewer somewhere...

As someone mentioned before, maintaining the right air can be difficult-once the monster's revealed, then it's merely a target with stats. Setting things up so that the players don't know who they can trust or when they can trust them will definately add to the experience.

Hope that helps.

R

Thry this link:

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/%7Ed2agby/TEXT...T/long_type.txt

The Adventure cards (the first part of the list) will give you lots of plot ideas. The All-caps parts indicate different types of cards, but generally, you can just put in the Runners instead of Investigators and use NPCs to round out the cast. The Locations can be any you choose-whatever city you play in, or you could eventually have the Runners globe-hopping (or even hitting Outer Realms).

It's a LONG list, but if you pick and chose, you can lay out a whole camapign rather easily.

R

Thanks for the good suggestions so far. I feel there's something forming somewhere deep in the back of my head!

Could someone please outline that whole Aztec/Mr.Darke metaplot for me? I somehow missed that in the books and a quick search here on the boards didn't reveal anything too enlightening.

I think I got the general idea of how to structure a single run pretty much down. The Cthulhu Keepers Handbook gives some great advice on that. Most of the fear comes what you don't see or don't know.
My problems aren't the single runs but more the overarching campaign plot. What I'd idealy aiming to have (through your help) is a short rundown in a form like this:

That sounds like a good way to do it. In my opinion, the most important aspect of a Lovecraftian story (or shadowrun) is the atmosphere. Like some one said, its about the fear of the unknown. In his stories, the characters see a lot of seemingly unrelated events, then one thing will happen to link them all together, revealing a horrible plot or conspiracy. In some stories, the protagonists didn't really even see the monster, only heard it or read about sightings of it. The most important part though, again in my opinion, is the inscutable goals of the things in his stories. In most cases, it is obvious that there is some motivation, but it is never fully revealed. That leaves it up to the reader (or PC) to try to imagine what terrible things the unknown thing had in mind. Basicly, I think the key would be to really control what the PC's know. Give them enough to know that they are messing with That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know, and let them try to fill in the rest.

Start describing their nightmares. Make sure about 90% are just their imagination but keep a theme to keep them off-guard. Better yet is to have a rival 'old one' influence one person's dreams. The rest are just having nightmares because of what they have seen, this one is having nightmares about what is still to come.

There are lot of fan sites dedicated to CoC on the net. Most of the older modules (which are excellen BTW) are also available from places like ebay and stiggybaby.com. You could also run it like an SR version of Hellboy, too.

Pretty much all of H. P. Lovecraft's work is in the public domain. Although there are two, count them two different claims of ownership to his works they are as yet unproven.

Also, if you're a Roger Zelazny fan, you could adapt bits of A Night In the Lonesome October. That could be rather entertaining. Jack as your Johnson, hiring you to recover one of the Wands, or something along those lines.

Blakkie, if you were a woman, I would kiss you.

Cool, I didn't know Lovecraft's work is public domain! I'm currently trying to read through some of his stuff.

The Delta Green books would probably be very much worth the money, however, I don't think I will be able to get them. For one I simply don't have any money left right now and in addition these books aren't exactly easily available here in Germany. The one Delta Green book that is available on Amazon.de is a second-hand book for 75$, which is not acceptable. A search on ebay didn't yield anything usefull...

Anyways, back to the main topic:
SnowFox sent me a good idea of how to start and I'm still trying to figure out some specifics and especially how to adapt this to my gaming group. This sunday we had a first meeting and therefore I now know what kind of characters they'll be playing and what backgrounds they have.

To give you a short rundown, we have:
a dwarfen sam: he's an ex-mafia goon, straight out of Sicilly (spelling?). He's been trying to keep a low profile and evade the mafia mobsters who are now coming after him and so far he's been pretty succesfull but he's getting tired of the quiet life and low-profile-runs and is now searching for a few more fun things to do.

an (elven?) decker: he's been born and raised in a corp and ran through a special educational support program for those especially gifted in the use of the matrix. He's got excellent education and equipment out of this but is basically a spoiled brat who's out for some exitement. He left the corp (cleaning all traces behind him) for he felt life in the corp to be too dull and restraining and is now working for a small business as SysOp during the day. At night he's the thrill-seeking runner. He's in for the fun, not the money or some higher goal.

a human sniper/negotiator: The stress is on negotiator here. He too grew up in a corp but had enough trouble to keep him busy, unlike the decker. He was born in Germany and when his family moved to Seattle because of inner-corp transfers at the age of 12 his then 18 year old brother ran away and was never seen again. He's probably still in Germany or touring the world, no one knows for sure (great plot hook, not sure what to do with that yet). His parents "died" when he was about 16 or so, in a car crash, he was told. All he knows is that they didn't come back from a conference one night and he never saw them again (another great hook that I'm not sure how to use yet)

a human shaman: She'll probably be following Gecko but I'm trying to talk her into playing a Seductress follower. Her dad was abusing her badly and also killed her mother in a fight, which was the reason for her to run away from home when she was about 12 years of age. Her little sister, three years old back then, was left behind. Her ultimate goal is to find revenge for the abuse and the killing of her mother and to "save" her little sister.

Well, so far so good...

The idea that was proposed by SnowFox was to disguise it all as a mob run. I'll heavily abuse and strip down SnowFox's idea now in order to clarify and leave out points that I don't believe to be fitting for the kind of game I'm running.
This is what I made of the idea:
The players are hired by someone (doesn't matter who right now) to retrive a set of 'objects' (no clear idea what these objects could be, maybe crates or canisters or whatnot) from a wharehouse. Supposedly these objects are stolen by a gang/the mob and shall be returned. They arrive at the warehouse and find it to be a pretty busy place. They should somehow manage to get to the desired objects, maybe overhearing some chatter here and there, but they find at least one object missing. In the office will be some data as to where the object has been taken and some other hints that could work as plothooks later in the game, like a contact list or video tapes or something. The location where the object has been taken doesn't really matter but it should be hard to get to, secluded and possibly full of false leads. SnowFox proposed Fort Lewis and I tend to agree.
Once there they find that the specified location is a ritual site with some really hideous ritual currently running. The runners can now:
- walk away, accepting the fact that the run is not completed and deal with the consequences (hit on the reputation, less money for the run)
- interrupt the ritual and deal with the hostile cultists
- wait for the ritual to end and then deal with the cultists.
Either way, they find the 'object' at the site, still intact and probably reserved for later use. There could be a little hut or cellar or whatever where the object is stored, together with some other stuff and more hints and plothooks.
questions that aren't answered yet (some simply because I haven't bothered yet and some because I have no clue):
Who was the Johnson? Did he know about what was really going on?
What where the stolen objects? Should the runners now what they are delivering or is it just "closed containers"? Should they find the one container opened at the ritual site? What is in it?
Who stole the objects? A local gang or syndicate who was paid by the cult to do so or the cult directly? I kinda like the idea of it being a gang in order to keep the cult smaller.
What was the ritual supposed to do? Summon a monster? Remote-kill someone? Nothing at all?
Who are the cultists and what are their ultimate goals? SnowFox was suggesting they could be trying to infiltrate Cross Applied Technologies in order to gain some influence in Seattle.
Should all cultists be killed in the encounter or should some key-persons survive to be met later? (probably yes, following the onion-layer principle: create an antagonist early on, let the runners kill him/her a few runs later only to let someone slightly more powerfull step onto the stage)

I also like the idea of going the UB route in order to get them on a false track.

This still doesn't really give me a good metaplot but it's a very good start and a metaplot could possibly be developed from here.
And feel free to post details and concrete ideas, my players aren't really frequenting the boards and they've been warned not to read this thread. If they do read it anyways it's their own loss and I will beat them over the head with something large and heavy.

Call of Chtulu elements are pretty easy to incorporate into a campaign. The Call 'feel,' however, is very much harder to do in a Shadowrun game. The idea is ordinary people encountering extraordinary things, a feeling of being in over your head, hopelessness, despair...and that's pretty hard to cultivate when you're dealing with a trained team of killing machines i.e. shadowrunners.

It all depends on the players I guess. If they exhibit the typical "trained and hardened killing machine" attitude it's almost impossible to convey a cthulhu atmosphere. Luckily my players and their characters are still pretty "normal" (well, as normal as Shadowrunners get, at least).
Still, it's generally very hard to get this cthulhu horror across in an RPG where you can not - unlike in a novell - tell the main characters how they feel and what they think. You can not work with the well defined characters either, you have to really touch the players. There are many ways to do this. Generally players do tend to identify well with their characters and getting the characters into some serious danger usually helps a lot. And then there is always the fear of the unknown. If the players know (or believe to know) that there's something dangerous around and they don't know what it is, they'll be twice as scared. There are several tricks one can use to do this: never give names but use descriptions instead. Don't describe in great detail, only describe a rough outline and let the player's imagination fill the rest. Describe using all senses (vision, sound, smell, etc...), but only the two or three most predominant ones.
However, all of this stuff has sufficiently been discussed in one of the many "how to scare my players" threads (and I may very well open another one some time soon)

I, too, think that implementing cthulhuesque elements into shadowrun isn't really a hard task. I have no problems coming up with single, unconnected runs. The big problem that I have is the great scheme in the background. The intrigues and plots that no one really knows about. The stuff the players are supposed to find out only very late into the campaign.
I'm sorry if I'm repetitively repeating myself and if I start repeating myself I really feel sorry that I repeat myself and such but the reason I keep repeating this is that among all this really great advice no one has really adressed my main concern: the over-arching plot behind the campaign, the stuff that connects the runs, that which will be revealed in a great showdown at the end of the campaign.

The bottom line i keep stressing for a Lovecraftian feel is not to tell the players what they're seeing directly. Once they're told "oh look deep ones" instead of "sdhambling humanoids, maybe a meta type of orks" it becomes a bug hunt and loses it's mystery.

Glad I could help.

Hm... I'm still working on this. At least I'm not as clueless as I was before, thanks to SnowFox' suggestiong, but I'm still having some problems getting anything real done...

This is my idea sofar:
During a run the players unsuspectently discover a relatively new but fast-growing cult which is slowly gaining members in infuential positions all over seattle. The discovery of this cult will be done in one, maybe two runs and mainly by accident. This will be mainly SnowFox' run. (Retrieve some stolen goods - parts of the goods can be tracked to the cult, the runners whitness a ghastly ritual as they come by to get what they where told)
They probably dismiss it as a minor event but every few runs they will stumble about the same cult (e.g. the cult sponsors gangs to do some dirty work for them). The cult will probably note that these runners are on their heels and will start to actively make the runner's lifes hell or generaly make the runner's lifes end. The runners will eventually start some investigations on their own since the cult starts to become a real threat for them (if everything works well they'll start investigating even earlier).
From this point on my ideas become extremely sketchy. I'm having somewhat of a problem to add the next lair. I'm thinking of maybe having a "rival" cult who will destroy this relatively minor cult with some mythic event or so.

What I'm trying to get here is one of those dumpshock-braistorming-sessions that have helped me so many times before. I'd like everyone to toss in ideas. Ideas how to extend the plot or some evil ideas on how to make the existing plot more interesting. Just post away. I'll post anything I can come up with. If you have completely new ideas or are just extending on things that have already been stated doesn't matter. Even if you just illustrate some of the already mentioned ideas with a few nice examples or narration that's very welcome.
However, I'm focusing on plot here, not on style. I think I got the cthulhu rpg style down pretty well.

Thanks a lot in advance, guys and gals!

I think this would count for a Deed...

Deed? Sorry for seeming ignorant but what do you mean? Am I breaking some sort of DSF law that I"m not aware off?

MITS has info on doing a Deed for an ordeal.

I saw the Matrix 3 this weekend-blah. But, it did give me an idea. How about doing an HPL Mythos world?

What I mean is, the stars are finally right. The Great Old Ones awaken/come to Earth and are HUNGRY. Hordes of Deep Ones bubble from the see. R'yleh rises. Cthonian herds level cities. Swarms of flying polyps, old ones and byakhee infest the sky. Mega corps and mankind have to band together to fight the arrival of the Horrors.

Pre-Scourge EarthDawn would be a good inspiration. The SR Meta-Plot seems to be headed in this direction at some point (THEY are coming, maybe we can slow them down, but we can't stop them.)

Aztechnology succeeds in bringing their Masters over, and it's up to the players to use magik and tech to stop them-or at the least, try to survive.

R

So you mean making the destruction of the Cult a Deed? Hm, might work out... at least as a motivation for the players. I'll keep it in mind.

As for the "awakened" (not in that sense) HPL World, I don't know... Doesn't seem to me like one would have a particularly realistic chance to survive in that kinda setting. I mean, most if not all people would either die, go insane or become minions of the Great Old Ones. Seriously, there is a reason why everybody who knows about them is trying to prevent the great old ones from re-awakening (not that they would have any chance at all). Cthulhu's horror is meant to be beyond humanity. Humans go mad by the shear suggestion of what is to come. The dreams of a single Great Old One (Cthulhu) is enough to drive some people mad, now imagine ALL of the great old ones literally walking the world.
Now, a foreshadowing of this and some feeble signs of it (like portraied in HPL's stories) works pretty well to create a certain kind of horror, especially in a dark and gritty cyberpunk setting.

A little atmosphere killer for which I haven't found a way to counter it yet is senseware. A shadowy park in which a Young of Shub-Niggurath is lurking just isn't half as scary with Night Vision, Infrared, Spatial Recognizer, Sound Amplifier and Olfactory booster... And now enter Magic: in the astral the Young of Shub-Niggurath would glow like a fully lit christmas tree (or be a gaping black hole or something utterly twisted, either way it would be well visible and identifyable).

A Deed isn't a very good motivation for players since it explicitly states that if a run fulfills a Deed and the PC uses it as such he forfeits the karma for the run, damn near never a good idea, especially on a high threat high karma run.

Well, it's ultimately up to the player anyways. We have one Shaman as the single magic user in the group. If she wants to initiate at some point I could tell her that exterminating the cult would count as a Deed (though I'm not so sure how this could be a deed for a Seductress shaman). If she chooses not to use it... well, fine. It's just an option I'll keep in mind.
Anyways, mostly I'm still hunting for plot fragments and ideas...

Sounds good. I never really viewed the Youngs as that incredibly powerfull or magically gifted but now that I reread some of the stuff about them... Yes, they do seem quite powerfull. I guess their inhuman looks and them being calld "(higher) servant race" kinda diluted me...
But still remember, they are not old ones and they are not even connected to some old one that is known for folding time and space. But I think some creative licence can be applied here...