The World of the Rippers

All that stands between them and the helpless masses of the Victorian Age are the Rippers: a secret society of scholars, warriors, sages, and heroes who battle legendary creatures around the globe.

The Rippers are a secretive group operating all over the world. At the top of the Rippers’ hierarchy is the imposing, almost legendary figure of Abraham Van Helsing. Below him are members of the Grand Council—heroic Rippers in their own rights—each of whom battles the darkness in their own corner of the globe and in their own way. Beneath these leaders are the Rippers themselves who each night take the fight to the enemy, laying down their lives in the battle for mankind’s future.

First you must believe that evil is not a moral concept. It is a reality – it walks the earth. Vampires, werewolves, ancient mummies from the deserts, the blasphemous walking dead – trust me when I say that I have seen them all with my own eyes. God – the things these eyes have seen.

Suffice to say, the penny dreadfuls you buy in the street are not as fanciful as people suspect. These "works of fiction" are closer to the truth than you may expect. Monsters are out there, prowling in the night. We find them and kill them. And when we do…well, I'll come to that.

Rippers operate in small teams or cells, usually numbering fewer than ten people and, for reasons of secrecy, having only a few contacts within the organization. Teams are largely free to pursue their own agendas as long as they work toward the common goal of eradicating supernatural evil. Each team is required to submit regular progress reports to its lodge.

Each Ripper team operates out of one of the organization’s secret bases known as “lodges”. Lodges can be actual houses, or they can be hidden rooms in sewers, catacombs, caves, or similar remote places. The lodge is where the team receives its missions, conducts research, and collects its monthly stipend. Powerful Rippers may choose to start their own lodge.

Arrayed against the Rippers are the forces of darkness—the Cabal. This loose alliance of monsters and madmen is now dedicated to the eradication of the Rippers. Numerous factions have allied themselves with the Cabal, from zombie lords to vampires and werewolves.

The servants of darkness are fast and they are strong. You will learn only too quickly how dangerous even the weakest of them can be. You and I are only human, and to face such horrors we must be so much more.

There is something we can do. Steps we can take to give ourselves a fighting chance (and it so often comes to that). Over the generations a secret elite of scientific minds has developed medical procedures the like of which the world has never seen. These advances allow some brave souls to graft the tissues of the dead monsters into their own bodies!

In doing so they take some measure of the creature's power for their own, ripping the strength of the servants of evil and using it against them. Be warned, it is not without danger. Those who take such measures walk the razor's edge of insanity and too many pay a terrible price for becoming one with evil.