Where & When
The story is set in the Himalayan Mountains of southern Tibet. No specific date is given in the serial, but The Web of Fear later states that it took place in 1935. The animation has plenty of snow on the ground, which may suggest either winter or spring, depending on the altitude.
Setting
One of the first questions is where exactly we are. The Himalayas are an immense mountain chain, about 2,500 km (1,500 miles) in length, so saying that the story is set within that range is rather like saying it’s set in eastern North America, ‘somewhere between Miami and Quebec’. While there’s nothing definitive to narrow this down, we could take a lead from some of the names.
Padmasambhava is a historical, or at least semi-legendary, person. Moreover, he founded the first-ever Tibetan monastery during the reign of the equally real King Detsen. Assuming the monastery in the story is located in the general area where the real Padmasambhava was active, it would most likely be situated towards the eastern end of the Himalayas, north of Assam and Bhutan, and reasonably close to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. This is also supported by the spin-off audio The Secrets of Det-Sen, which gives Padmasambhava’s hometown as Shigatse, a real city in this part of the Himalayas.
Having said that, it’s clear that the Padmasambhava in the story isn’t intended to be the historical figure, even if the monastery is surely named after his royal patron. He could, however, be named after him, especially as it’s an honorific title, not a birth name; in the audio, he is stated to be a reincarnation of the original.
Of course, none of this is binding, and, since the monastery is fictional, we could place it anywhere on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas that fits a given campaign. But, if we do pick this general area – and it is the religious heartland of Tibet – we could also locate the monastery more precisely if we need to. It lies on the lower slopes of a large snowbound mountain and, unsurprisingly, there are plenty of options in this part of the world. Noijin Kangsang is just one example, a relatively isolated 7,206 metre (23,642 feet) peak southwest of Lhasa and about 100 km (60 miles) north of the present-day Bhutanese border.
The landscape in the story shows that the monastery is located above the treeline, but below the snowline. This is tundra, where the deeper parts of the soil never thaw even in summer, and grasses and occasional bushes are the only vegetation. The terrain is carpeted in flowers during the spring, but otherwise looks quite barren. Being so far inland, Tibet receives little rain, and that which does fall is mainly in the summer, so the PCs can at least look forward to clear skies.
On the other hand, temperatures are subzero at night for seven or eight months of the year, and regularly stay there through the day in winter – so when the snow does fall, it takes a long time to melt. Depending on the altitude, things may be more extreme. Whatever the time of year is intended to be, both the animation and the surviving stills of the original indicate that there is still snow around, so it is obviously cold, even ignoring the effects of wind chill.
A plausible altitude for the monastery, based on the pass nearest Noijin Kangsang, is around 4,600 metres (15,000 feet). This is easily high enough to cause altitude sickness in those suddenly exposed to it, although it is perfectly habitable for anyone who has time to acclimatise – there are small villages and Buddhist shrines in the area to prove the point. On the subject of which, it’s worth noting that the monastery, as shown in the serial, has no attached farmland or gardens, so they must import their food from a village nearby that we never see. Presumably, much of this is stored over winter, reducing the need for lengthy treks… or else, we could ignore the visuals in the original, and add some gardens for crops.
Large animals are relatively rare this high up, but, as the animation shows, there are some goat-like animals (serows, takin, bharals) on grassy slopes alongside marmots and species of pheasant and partridge. We’re too far south for wild yak, although the local villagers may have some domesticated ones. Snow leopards are the only large predators.
In 1935, Tibet was officially a part of China, as it is today. In practice, however, the latter was far too busy with its own internal problems to pay any attention to its western reaches, and 1930s Tibet was effectively an independent country. Supposedly, it should have been ruled by the Dalai Lama, but the previous one had died in 1934, and his reincarnation (the current one) had yet to be discovered, so the country was in an interregnum.
If we’re using the setting as is, there is a strong chance that many of the PCs will come from outside the region. In which case, we can note that George V is King of the United Kingdom, with Ramsay Macdonald as Prime Minister, while FDR is the President of the United States. Much of Europe is not in a good place at the time – Mussolini is ruling Italy, Stalin the Soviet Union, and we all know who is in charge in Germany.
Tibetan monasteries can be huge, with hundreds, or even thousands, of monks, but Det-Sen is clearly one of the many smaller ones. It is laid out as a central courtyard with a statue of the Buddha, flanked by a wall and entrance gate on one side and by two-story buildings on the others, with towers at the corners rising for a further story. The building to the right of the entrance is larger than the others and appears to contain the shrines and Padmasambhava’s quarters, as well as possibly other key religious locations, such as the scroll library.
The remaining buildings contain living quarters for the other inhabitants, including the cell where the characters spend some time locked up. This is secured by a stout wooden door and a wooden frame over the window, but it probably isn’t designed as a place to keep people captive, and has no security measures beyond the door being sealable from the outside. The window, however, opens out onto a hundred-foot (30 metre) drop down a sheer cliff face, so, for most PCs, going out the way they came in is likely the better option.
The inhabitants of the monastery include not just the monks, but a cadre of warriors armed with quarterstaffs. Their leader, who also carries a shortsword (at least in the animation), answers to the Abbot, who also, of course, has charge of the monks. The latter wears a tall yellow hat, marking him as a member of one of the larger, mainstream, branches of Tibetan Buddhism. (Here, we can note that the historical Padmasambhava founded the Nyingma school, which employs red hats, not yellow).
Officially, the Abbot has charge of the monastery and, under the usual Tibetan system for small monasteries, he would most likely own it outright, perhaps having inherited it from an uncle. In practice, of course, he answers to Padmasambhava, the revered master who lives in isolation from the rest of the community.
We are told that Padmasambhava has lived at the monastery for at least three hundred years, having been present during a “time of trouble” in 1630, during which he gave the holy ghanta to the Doctor for safekeeping. This fits with real history, since 1630 is in the middle of the Tibetan Civil War during which the last of the hereditary kings fought, and lost to, the forces of the Dalai Lama, allowing the latter to establish religious rule over the country. (This is also referred to in the audio, which explores what happened on the Doctor’s first visit).
Assuming that this is all there is, we can note the lack of a bedroom. Padmasambhava may not sleep, and it’s possible that he doesn’t drink or eat, either, or at least consumes very little. After all, only the abbot would be able to bring food in, and, as an enlightened master, this won’t necessarily seem odd to the monks.
The setting of the story would require significant adaptation to use with a purely tech-based science fiction setting, such as that of Traveller. However, many SF settings include mystical or religious elements that make a remote monastery entirely fitting. In Star Trek, for example, it’s almost trivial to place Det-Sen on Bajor. Vulcans also have similar institutions, albeit dedicated to logic rather than worship, and one can easily imagine a community of Andorian warrior-monks.
In Star Wars, Jedi are the obvious candidates, although this might be implausible in a campaign set after The Revenge of the Sith. An alternative may be to have a colony or isolated community, probably on a mountain-world, dedicated to religious endeavours, but without the understanding of the Force that the Jedi have, and thus without protection against the Dark Side. Here, the Padmasambhava stand-in is the only one with Force powers, which he has gained unwittingly and doesn’t fully understand. In this situation, it may make sense for the monks to belong to an alien race that is only vaguely aware of the real Jedi.
The Third Horizon of Coriolis is another SF setting where remote monasteries fit right into the setting. A fantasy world is also a good fit, although the majority of the monks wouldn’t fit the class that goes by that name in D&D, so you might have to use a different word.
In most of these settings, the monastery would be, as in its Buddhist inspiration, single-sex; avoidance of worldly temptation, and all that. But it might not necessarily be the case, and there’s always the option to put a twist on the original by making it a nunnery instead (rare, but not non-existent, in Buddhism, but likely common in fictional religions).
The monks, however, don’t seem disturbed by Victoria being among them, so the same should be true for female PCs. Realistically, there would be places they would be asked to stay out of, although in the serial, this only comes into play when Victoria decides to go visit Padmasambhava, and the monks aren’t allowed to do that, either, so her gender has nothing to do with it. But, yes, they will want her to stay out of their dormitories and probably their shrines as well. Fictional religions may, or may not, take a similar approach.
The only other location in the story is the lair of the Yeti, further up the mountain. This is a short tunnel into the rock, shored up with wood and therefore evidently artificial. The robot yeti have been around for about two centuries, so it’s likely that old, since there is no other reason for its existence. It goes far enough into the rock for the rear chamber not to be visible from the entrance, but that’s about it, and it has no side passages or other exits that we know of (nor would it need any).
Scenario
There are several reasons a PC group might find themselves visiting Det-Sen. In the story, although his arrival in the area is random, the Doctor wants to go there to hand back the holy ghanta. While the circumstances of acquiring it would have to be different, the same principle could be used in a game. For instance, it may have been stolen, passed through various hands down the centuries, and then recently been bought at auction. Or perhaps somebody has inherited it from a descendant of the original collector and has only just found out where it came from and how it was obtained. Either way, the owner hires the PCs to take it back in an attack of conscience – perhaps they are dying, explaining why they aren’t travelling to Tibet themselves.
A second possibility is that the PCs are accompanying, are rivals to, or simply take the place of, Travers. They aren’t specifically interested in the monastery, just in finding the yeti, but end up there anyway as the only haven in the area. This is likely to include a more extended section on the mountainside before they reach Det-Sen, and may provide further complications, as the PCs don’t have the ghanta to demonstrate their goodwill and so may have a harder time proving that they are not the ones who have been killing the occasional monk.
It’s also possible that the PCs are just passing through on the way to somewhere else. This probably works best in a fantasy game, where long treks through remote bits of countryside are a staple of the genre. Or they may have an unrelated reason for visiting, such as wanting to check out rumours of non-Jedi force users in Star Wars. In Star Trek, a Bajoran crew member may have lost contact with a relative at the monastery, and, on arrival, discover he was an early victim of the yeti – or, if we want him to take the role of Thonmi, that the abbot has deliberately cut off communication with the outside world.
In the serial, a fair portion of the action is taken up by attempts to triangulate the signal controlling the yeti. This requires that the yeti be controlled by radio waves, or at least something similar that can be traced and that the PCs have access to the equipment to do so. In a science fiction game where the PCs travel in a spaceship, this latter part should not be an issue. Ideally, they will have had to land the ship some distance from the monastery so that they have to trek back to it, as Jamie and Doctor do in the serial. Things likely become too easy if they can simply pinpoint the location from orbit (as would make sense in, say, Star Trek), so here we may need to provide some reason why that wouldn’t work, or at least not with enough accuracy to say that the source is literally inside the monastery rather than somewhere in the general area.
On the other hand, in some settings, the triangulation won’t make sense at all (e.g. fantasy) or it’s simply implausible that the PCs would have the relevant equipment with them. If so, then since the only real reason for this section is to get them wandering about in the countryside and put themselves at risk, we simply need some other reason for them to do that. For example, perhaps one of the monks knows of the cave and believes it to be a yeti lair, so that the PCs want to go in search of it. Or somebody disappears while out scouting or collecting supplies, and a rescue party is put together to find them.
One question that will arise if we move the scenario to a different setting is what we replace the yeti and the Great Intelligence with. Call of Cthulhu is a natural fit, not least because of the date. Indeed, the tie-in novels for Doctor Who in the early ‘90s explicitly identified the Great Intelligence as Yog-Sothoth, tying the setting in with the Mythos. In this instance, we might want the yeti to be organic monsters of some sort, such as gnoph-keh or ghasts, although something robotic and animated by extraterrestrial spheres isn’t out of the question.
Many science fiction settings are at least open to the possibility of incorporeal beings. Traveller isn’t really one of them, which is one reason it makes a poor fit, but it’s almost an outlier in this respect. In a Star Trek game using Bajor as the site of our monastery, for example, the Great Intelligence is obviously a pah-wraith, or a small group of pah-wraiths, and we need no further adaptation. Otherwise… well, Q might be overdoing it, but other examples exist.
Star Wars, while having the mystical background, doesn’t go in quite so much for “beings of pure thought” in the same way. The closest we can get are the Force Ghosts, and they are benevolent, since the Sith are unable to learn that particular trick. However, perhaps they can do something similar for a temporary period, explaining why the stand-in for the Intelligence wants to become physical again – he’ll dissipate if he doesn’t, or it’s just a really unpleasant experience for him in a way it isn’t for Obi-Wan et al. Alternatively, the Sith equivalent of ‘Force Ghost’ might only be able to exist so long as it is possessing somebody, even if they are an unwilling host, and whatever it’s up to with the spheres and the pyramid is an attempt to get around that and be restored to physical form.
Equivalent concepts may work in other science fiction settings. In fantasy, it’s even easier, and there’s no reason that, in D&D terms, the fake yeti can’t be constructs.
The plot itself is relatively straightforward. The PCs, perhaps after exploring the surrounding countryside, encounter the monks, have to prove that they aren’t the ones killing off some of their fellows, and then get the opportunity to try and track down the yeti and ultimately defend the monastery from their attack. In the original, some of what happens is due to Jamie and Victoria bringing the sphere with them from the cave, but we don’t need to stick with this if we don’t think any of the PCs are likely to do that. One of the monks could have found it, or Padmasambhava might have arranged for it to be there anyway as a beacon for the yeti to home in on, and the PCs may only find the cave later on.
There’s also a good chance that some or all of the PCs will, like Victoria, try to sneak into Padmasambhava’s quarters despite being told that it’s disrespectful to their hosts’ religion. Since he has moments of peaceful lucidity, if they succeed in doing this, how villainous you have him act on their first meeting may depend on how far advanced the story is by that point and whether you want to draw it out further. If it’s only one PC on their own, he could implant a post-hypnotic suggestion on them, as he does on Victoria, but that may be something better employed on an NPC (depending on your gaming style).
The remote setting also lends itself to other stories of the base-under-siege type, with the religious aspect of the community as a twist on the original. In the Secrets of Det-Sen audio, the threat comes from bandits preying on the monks and incidentally enraging the real yeti, but other possibilities present themselves. For instance, the PCs might have to acquire something the monks are reluctant to give up and have to choose between theft and negotiation. In a fantasy or pulp game, this might be the ghanta, imbued with magical power that they need to defeat a dragon or just to keep out of the hands of the Nazis.
Real, non-robot, yeti appear briefly at the end of the serial. Such creatures aren’t plausible in the real world, but the same isn’t true of most RPG universes, even before we get into outright fantasy settings. As such, they could also serve as the objective of a PC expedition, whether as a side-quest, an incidental motivation, or the main focus of the plot. In the latter case, we would have to add further elements, such as dangers from the harsh mountainous landscape, or other wildlife, as well as rivals trying to beat the PCs to the punch. (In pulp games sticking to the 1935 date, Nazis are once again an option here).
Rules
The tech level is 6 in GURPS, 5 in Traveller, and 4 in Doctors & Daleks. Of course, the monks have access to very little of this technology, and may as well be medieval in terms of the equipment at their disposal. Visiting PCs, however, will likely be, like Travers, a different matter. It may also be worth noting that we probably don’t want to make the warriors too effective, or the PCs won’t get much chance to be heroic.
Aside from the stats for the robot yeti – and possibly the real ones – the main rules issues in this story are the psychic powers. Most science fiction RPGs have rules for these, often calling them “psionics” – a briefly fashionable SF term from the ‘50s that now survives only in games. Jedi mind tricks also fall under the same category, but, in fantasy games, the regular magic rules may work perfectly well for what’s required here, even if more specific ones also exist.
In Padmasambhava’s case, his powers include projecting his thoughts to others, wiping memories, implanting suggestions, and telekinesis. He may also be clairvoyant and able to read surface thoughts, although it could just be that the Great Intelligence is providing him with information instead. He can even project himself into the astral plane, although this is only mentioned in his backstory, so we probably don’t have to worry about that one. Plus, he’s over 300 years old, but this doesn’t require any specific rules.
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