“The last island between Japan and Siberian Russia. Unpopulated because of its nature as a political
football. Legally, this island is a nowhere thing.”
-Master Storyteller, Warren Ellis’ Planetary Project GILGAMESH began three days after the Japanese surrender, the first United States project begun as MacArthur’s occupation forces
rolled into Japan. Following rumors whispered by children driven mad by hellish dreams of an enormous monster entombed under miles of black ice, a small US Marine Corps detachment landed on Onekotan, the northern most of the Kuril Islands, just a stones throw from Russia. The USMC detachment found a collection of crude stone
houses, all empty, and all marked by pools of frozen blood.
A long tunnel disappeared beneath the tundra, leading miles into the Earth. Over the course of a single hellish night, the Marine recon team descended into the tunnels; most went mad; the lucky ones died. The handful of survivors brought back a tale of a great dragon, a demonic, suarian turtle slumbering but obviously alive buried under a three mile deep ice shelf. Inexplicably, the slumbering beast’s cavern was littered with recent newspapers from around the
world, all reporting on the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It took the Pentagon only a few days to deduce the truth. A small USMC detachment had found the infamous Genbu, a creature of Japanese myth so horrible that even the gods trembled at its passing. Soon, the foundations for Project GILGAMESH had been laid. The project’s mandate: do everything in its power to ensure the beast never awakened; find a way to kill it, and if not, find a way to control it.
Over the decades, GILGAMESH’s mandate evolved and it ceased to be a solely American project. Even during the height of the Cold War, a detachment of Russian scientists was allowed to study the beast, in the hopes of finding some way of keeping it in deep coma. Likewise, the United States quickly opened the project to several ancient Ainu clans, whose bloodline had been tasked with containing the demon since the Edo period.
Today, Project GILGAMESH is an under-funded side project, a forgotten ‘legacy mission’ high in the Arctic Circle. The current administration sees little point in spending billions each year keeping a slumbering giant contained, especially since that giant has never actually awoken in all of human history. That the genbu’s mere presence drives psychic sensitive’s to suicide and can break the minds of diviners who try to understand its purpose is a fact lost on 21st century Washington DC.
Outwardly, Oneketon appears as it has for centuries, a handful of crumbling huts littering a
blasted snow-scape. Project GILGAMESH’s base of operations is buried deep beneath the Kurils, and stretches several miles into Russian territory. GILGAMESH Base was state of the art throughout most of the 80s, but is falling into ruin.
Outdated mainframes and green-screen computers are slaved to recently bought Dells, and system failures are expected and common. Paint is peeling and the base’s lime green concrete walls are cracked by ice and dribble frozen tears. Half the base’s florescent lights are blown out on any given day. For all the importance of its mandate, GILGAMESH Base is a dying military secret.
For the last few years, GILGAMESH has been a dumping ground for disgraced US officers, a final command while they wait out retirement. As a result, the Japanese and Russian factions within the project have grown more influential.
Campaign Use:
Project Gilgamesh can be used in several ways. The Project can provide the initial backing and investigatory mandate for a group of government sponsored heroes. Players wishing to play non- Japanese heroes or who want to ‘import’ existing characters to the Black Tokyo could easily be part of the project. A crew of US military misfits and brig- scum might be deployed to Japan and stationed with the Project.
Since Project GILGAMESH is a discredited and under-funded organization, it can be an effective benefactor for the PCs, keeping them equipped and slightly above the law, but lacking such campaign breaking potency that the PCs can always just run to their superiors for more guns and advice at the first sign of trouble. GILGAMESH characters are brutally efficient, capable thieves, blackmailers and jury riggers who know how to keep their operation running on a shoestring: they’re tough, smart, lean and hungry.
A recent rash of demonic incursions might be the harbingers of the Genbu’s long prophesied awakening. A campaign that spans the length and breadth of Japan, hunting one monster after another might climax in a desperate struggle against an awakened Genbu.
Long term exposure to the Genbu can be a source of great power, or supernatural corruption. Soldiers stationed on Onekotan might notice the taint first in dark dreams; indulge in rape fantasies that finally play out bloodily in Russian whorehouses during shore leave. Body and mind might warp in the Genbu’s shadow. The Genbu’s dreams might disorder reality, opening portals to the world beyond. Gates to the Tatakama and the Black Else might be found, in deep recesses in the twisting ice caverns.
The player characters may have to storm a crumbling military base, battling through oni-tainted soldiers and hungry ghosts before confronting evil’s darkest dreams. Both the 2005 videogame F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon), and the Marvel comics graphic novel Ultimate Nightmare offer great inspiration for a doomed mission into a military base that has somehow become a portal to hell itself.
Project GILGAMESH also shares many similarities with Neon Genesis Evangelion’s NERV, most of which are intentional. Adding bio-tech mecha born from the Genbu’s own flesh makes for
an interesting variant Black Tokyo campaign. Since
Neon Genesis Evangelion uses the brutality and sexual tension of the best horror hentai to tell its epic psychology meets mecha tale, its fair game as source material for a dark hentai game.