The Top of Your Class

Players of the art student investigators from Yellow King: Paris might wonder which of their fellow classmates are headed for later fame. Their characters could even discover this, should you feature them in a flash forward scenario set after the Belle Époque period, or if they glimpse the future, as those in Carcosa’s penumbra sometimes do.

The name destined for greatest later fame is that of Henri Matisse. Slightly older than most students, he has edged his way into the École des Beaux-Arts after a previous career as a provincial bureaucrat working in the court system. His work follows the academic style taught at the school, his path as an inventor of modernism still ahead of him.

Another young painter at the school, Georges Rouault, overshadows him, as he does the player characters. After a time studying the decorative arts, particularly stained glass, he has risen to star pupil status at the Beaux-Arts. His main painting teacher, Gustave Moreau, clearly favors him. In the morning painting studio, students array themselves in three bands. At the outer band of easels, including those nearest the door, stand the rowdier, less motivated students. In a middle ring those who are neither troublemakers nor favorites dab at their canvasses. As Americans, and wealthy ones at that, the player characters are considered odd ducks and have gravitated here, if not to the raucous outer zone.

In the inner ring, at Moreau’s elbow, stands his devoted protege, Rouault. At this time he follows his tutor’s example, painting Biblical and mythological scenes infused with a sense of moody dread.

Like Matisse’s his style later veers to the modern. He becomes one of the Fauves, or Wild Beasts, whose work uses broad regions of unexpected, realism-defying color.

In 1895 — or by some accounts a few years later, so let’s say 1895 — he suffers a mental breakdown. Rouault’s recovery deepens his Catholic faith, an unusual trait for artists of his generation. It is not so odd though for Paris’ occultists, many of whom lean toward Martinism, a fusion of conservative Catholicism with ritual magical practice.

Rouault maintains a friendship with the tortured novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans (YKRPG Paris p. 119), author of the Decadent novel Against the Grain. A couple of years ago Huysmans, in a more exciting than usual instance of feuding between mystical seekers, accused fellow Rosicrucians Stanislas de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan of trying to murder him with spellcraft. Huysmans also blames them for killing defrocked priest and cultist Joseph-Antoine Boullan, who he liked and others rightly detested. Whether Georges dismisses all of this or has seen things he can’t explain depends on the needs of the scenario you’ve brought him into. The author’s recent drift to conservative Catholicism may explain his bond with Rouault.

Yet at the same time Rouault also draws nearer to Péladan, whose artistic salon he will soon exhibit at. Péladan (p. 130) titles himself a Sar, or Assyrian king, dresses outlandishly, and has written a book called How to Become a Magus.

Rouault can therefore serve as the group’s introduction to the city’s occult scene, if they can overcome his reserve, for example with Art History, Reassurance, or Inspiration. He might start by taking them to Edmond Bailly’s bookshop, the Librairie de L’Art Indépendant, a hub of both avant garde culture and the esoteric arts, in the 9th arrondissement. From there they can meet all manner of Parisian gnostics, questers, and eccentrics.

However, if they lean on him too hard for assistance, they might be the ones who draw him into the incident that triggers his mental break. So be careful, Americans in Paris. Art history depends on you, in more ways than one.

The Yellow King Roleplaying Game takes you on a brain-bending spiral through multiple selves and timelines, pitting characters against the reality-altering horror of The King in Yellow. When read, this suppressed play invites madness, and remolds our world into a colony of the alien planet Carcosa. Four core books, served up together in a beautiful slipcase, confront layers with an epic journey into horror in four alternate-reality settings: Belle Epoque Paris, The Wars, Aftermath, and This Is Normal Now. Purchase The Yellow King Roleplaying Game in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.