The Tangled

Among those who study the afflictions caused by contact with the Eldritch beings of Beyond, few inspire more sympathy than those who have become one of the Tangled. Like Cultists, the Tangled have had their minds warped by their interactions with Beyond, but they do not appear to have been infiltrated by a particular entity, as is common among those who form Cults. Instead, they suffer from a strange kind of delusion that imparts vast significance to irrelevant details around them, causing them to concoct wild theories about how these otherwise insignificant facts are markers of immense and hidden conspiracies - usually focused upon the Tangled themselves in some way. They received their nickname from a scholar at the University of Carbury who once remarked that they seemed to have wrapped their thinking in a great knot of string, dyed red in the blood of the innocent.

Most people who meet one of the Tangled assume they are harmless - they tend to scurry from place to place and project the image of a reclusive academic. But in truth, each one is a ticking bomb. As their theories develop, they become convinced that the world hides terrible villains, frequently claiming that the visible powers are merely the puppets of horrible monsters who dwell out of sight - perhaps in vast underground cities, beneath the sea, or somewhere beyond the sky. If their courage does not fail them, they will eventually begin to work against these unseen enemies in increasingly violent ways. Most famously, the Tangled genius Robert Rook nearly destroyed Parliament with home-brewed alkahest in 1705: he hid jars of the powerful solvent within the ceiling of the main chamber and was prepared to shatter all of them in a single great burst, which would have dissolved the body permanently, rendering the ministers into a clear and unrecognizable sludge. He was only stopped by a stroke of luck when one of the jars proved incapable of holding the concoction, and the resulting leak caused an early evacuation and his subsequent discovery.

Eldritch Patterns

While some have suggested that the Tangled are simply madmen, experts claim that there is more to the condition than meets the eye. Although there are many madmen in the Empire, only a few are truly Tangled, and all of them are victims of exposure to Eldritch forces. Such exposure imparts a strange form of hyper–pattern recognition. All people possess this instinct to some degree; it is what allows one to see a face in a tree or an animal in a cloud. But in the mind of the Tangled, this faculty is warped and mapped against an inhuman geometry. They begin to associate things in ways sane people do not and to place great importance on these connections.

In the early stages, they often do uncover genuine relationships that are otherwise difficult to perceive, leading to discoveries in a variety of fields. But over time, their ability to perceive this deeper reality decays into a kind of paranoia, and they begin to draw impossible connections - often turning their suspicions against the institutions of civilization. A startling number of the Tangled go on to commit, or attempt, high treason, and there is a madhouse in Alba that houses seven different patients who each accuse Empress Charlotte of plotting the end of the world in one manner or another.

Some people, convinced by the Tangled's early successes, attempt to substantiate their wilder claims, but typically fail - or become Tangled themselves.