THE ROSENBERGERS

When Mats passed away, Tine Rasmussen’s views on

As the ringing of the church bell grew louder, and the
dealing with vaesen in an academic fashion prevailed, much to
chanting of the black-robed priest grew more intense, the
the dismay of the loyal Rosenbergers. Still, a few loyalists
forest troll shut her eyes and tried to block the sound out.
continued the work of Mats Rosenberg, seeking out and slaying
Through teary eyes, she looked up towards the nun who had
vaesen indiscriminately despite the Council’s order.
her crossbow raised against her. “Please,” she said. “I have
not hurt anyone here in the village. All I wanted was to find

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The Rosenbergers concluded that every time they killed a
a friend.”
nisse or hunted down a troll, more appeared elsewhere. As with
“You ARE an abomination,” the priest spat at her.
other vermin, there must be some way to take them down for
“There is no room for you in the kingdom of God, OR in
good. Therefore, Rosenberger scientists and academics actively
this village.”

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searched for ways to exterminate the vaesen en masse.
The nun fired.

Their activities were eventually discovered, and the Order

Introduction expelled their leaders and every known member. Some

remained, their covers not blown, working in utmost
The information on p. 82 of the Vaesen Core Book
secrecy to continue their work as the Rosenbergers as
about the Rosenbergers is not much, but piqued my
the group tried to establish themselves as a separate
interest and made me want to delve deeper into them as
organization.
a group of antagonists or possible allies in my own Vaesen
campaign.

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Throughout these pages I will elaborate on their
history, how they are organized and present
some plot hooks to bring the Rosenbergers
The charismatic Finnish priest Juhana
Paananen claimed in the early 1700s that
vaesen were created by Satan to tempt,
corrupt and ultimately ruin mankind. It
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is Paananen’s teachings that have been
into your game. I also mention how you
central to the Rosenbergers’ world view
can mix up your normal Vaesen game by
ever since.
having PCs be members of the
Rosenbergers instead.
After the Carl von Linnaeus scandal later
History
in the 17th century, many of the Society’s
Already in the early days of the
members who were sympathetic to the
Society, when it was called Order of
m

Rosenberger ideals, were outrageous.

Artemis, the term Rosenberger was
Outrageous that this man, this impostor had
coined for someone who adhered to
managed to influence the Society into doing his
co-founder Mats Rosenberg’s view on
work for him.
vaesen.
Membership in the Rosenbergers soared at
this time. At the same time, some continued to
Mats Rosenberg wanted to focus
work from the Society’s headquarters in
Sa

the Society’s effort on locating and

Uppsala, drawing upon the castle’s resources
banishing vaesen, and harbored little to
(including the library) to further study how to
no interest in studying them further to
best find and eliminate vaesen.
find out what they really were, what they
wanted or if there were any
At the Oulu Massacre in the late
chances of humans and vaesen
18th century (see Vaesen p. 82),
coexisting peacefully. While their
several of the participants at Oulu
relationship was otherwise very good,
Castle were in fact Rosenbergers.
Tine Rasmussen could never sway her older partner to see
To increase their numbers, the Society reached out for a
things her way. Still, as a compromise, Mats persuaded Tine to
temporary alliance against the giants. What the Rosenbergers
include the second-to-last sentence in the Society’s creed - “For
weren’t prepared for, was a drawn-out debate on strategy.
the battle against vaesen and the protection of Mankind”.

·3·
 THE ROSENBERGERS
While the Rosenbergers were under the impression that they
were going to war, many of the Society’s leaders felt that they
should pursue a diplomatic solution. None of the Rosenbergers
in Oulu survived, and to this day, the Rosenbergers feel that the
disaster could have been averted if a swift resolution had come
to pass.
After the Society closed its door in Uppsala, a local
Rosenberger (maybe Olaus Klint) has been keeping tabs on
Castle Gyllencreutz, picking up the mail and forwarding any
interesting leads to their current leader, Johanna Lampinen.
Then, one day he picked up an interesting letter from a woman
named Michaela Hansdotter. She was a reclusive member of the
Society who apparently had been working on a secret study
alone for some years. For some reason, she had not been told
that the Society had been disbanded. Hansdotter’s studies
concluded that vaesen were a product of mankind’s
imagination. Meaning, yes, they do actually exist, but it is our
belief that creates them.
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Johanna, through Olaus, continued to communicate with
Michaela, who had traveled all over Scandinavia for over a
decade already. The reopening of the Society poses a challenge
for Johanna, who wants to continue her communication with
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Michaela. This is one of the main reasons she wants Olaus to
infiltrate the Society.
Organization
The Rosenbergers have a strict cell structure, with a leader who
reports to the current leader, Johanna Lampinen. The members
m
are expected to follow up on rumors and local legends
themselves, but are sometimes assigned missions directly from
Lampinen. Through designated dead drops, they can request
assistance from Lampinen, who has a few extremely loyal
henchmen close by to do her bidding. Her current whereabouts
is unknown, but it is likely she is situated in Sweden, as she can
reach all other Nordic countries more easily from there.
Sa
Each cell traditionally consisted of 3-6 members, and the cells
were scattered all over Scandinavia. However, like the Society,
their members have dwindled drastically over the last 40-50
years. Many perished in the Oulu Massacre, and secularism and
enlightenment have made it more difficult to recruit and keep
members. As one of their major sources of recruitment was the
Society itself, a decrease in their membership also affected the
Rosenbergers. When the Society closed up ten years ago,
Lampinen lost an important recruitment arena for new
Rosenbergers. Still, active Rosenbergers are always searching
·4·
for potential members. Survivors after vaesen related tragedies,
witch hunters and fanatical priests are among the most popular
objects of recruitment.
The Rosenbergers have no central headquarters. Instead, the
members of each cell meet in each other’s homes, in empty
warehouses or other suitable locations. When the Society was a
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much larger organization, some Rosenbergers were tasked with
infiltrating the Society to recruit more members. The Society
has always been split on its view on vaesen, and many have
changed sides throughout the years.
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If your game contains the official NPC Olaus Klint from A Dance
of Dreams, he might try to infiltrate the Society. See also Hooks
below.
Creed
Historically, Rosenbergers were under the impression that
vaesen were created by Satan. This was true for all vaesen, from
revenants and werewolves to trolls and vaettir. Each of the
vaesen had their role to play in Satan’s plan to corrupt and
enslave mankind. The undead were of course abominations,
created by the Dark One to prevent them from entering God’s
holy kingdom. Trolls and giants, linnorms and sea serpents and
the more corporeal of the beasts were the creatures Satan
wanted to rule the earth when all God-fearing humans were
under the thrall of these spawns of Satan. The less mighty
vaesen such as faeries, nissar and vaettir were mischievous
critters meant to disrupt the faith in God and keep the people
from abandoning all pagan customs and rites.
When Johanna Lampinen finally started to believe Michaela
Hansdotter’s theories, she was devastated. Satan had nothing
to do with vaesen. Maybe Satan didn’t even exist? Maybe God
himself did not exist? Since most of the Rosenbergers are rather
religious, she has kept the truth to herself and a select few. She
still lets her witch hunters and vaesen slayers go on the hunt,
but she realizes it doesn’t help much. Instead, she has
concluded that time itself will take care of vaesen.
Enlightenment, technology, globalization and the spread of
civilization would be slow, but effective measures.
The Rosenbergers have gathered much knowledge and
information about the vaesen as well, but without a central
library such as the one in Uppsala, information sharing is more
difficult and the various cells are more dependent on vague
recollections and folk tales.
 THE ROSENBERGERS

Vaesen are under no circumstances to be negotiated with. They
should be dealt with decisively, and collateral damage is
accepted. Many Rosenbergers are not shy about silencing
witnesses.
Cast of characters
The following pages describe three of the most important
• TALENTS: Holy symbol, Deceptive, Suffer not the witch
(see Satanic Witchcraft), Agitator and Something in
common (see New talents for Vaesen)
Normally, NPCs in Vaesen do not have talents. Johanna and
Gabriella are two very experienced Vaesen hunters, and any
conflict with them should reflect their extreme competence.

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characters in a Rosenberger campaign. Their leader, Johanna
Lampinen, the enforcer, Nun Gabriella, and Michaela
Hansdottir, a Society member who never got the message that Sister Gabriella
they had closed down.

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“….”
Johanna Lampinen

“You exist solely because of us. You die because of us.”

The daughter of a Finnish priest, Johanna was traumatized
at an early age when she witnessed a church grim attack a grave
robber in the cemetery of her father’s church. When she got
older, she met her first Rosenbergers, when two agents came to
her village to vanquish the beast. While Johanna objected to it

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at first, claiming the creature did God’s bidding, they argued
that God would never allow such a creature to exist. Convinced,
Johanna aided them in their quest. This was the beginning of her
career in the Rosenbergers. Later, she learned that she was a
pl
direct descendant of Paananen, the founder of the
Rosenbergers.

Throughout the years, Johanna became an experienced and

powerful member within the Rosenbergers. She learned rituals
and rites of exorcisms from mystics and priests all over Europe,
and was elected leader when the former one died of old age.
m

Johanna is now in her early 50s. She has taken up more of

an administrative role, but as events are unfolding with the re-
opening of the Society, she might take a more active role in their
activities. Through the revelations of Michaela Hansdottir, her
faith has been severely compromised. She now knows that time While investigating the hauntings of a myling, Johanna rescued
Sa

itself will take care of vaesen, but she is unlikely to live to see it.
In order to advance the extermination of vaesen, she has taken
up politics (so far on a local level) in order to work politically for
a more rapid advancement of technology and enlightenment.
• Physique 3 Precision 4
• Logic 5 Empathy 4
• MEDICINE 2 RANGED COMBAT 2 INVESTIGATION 2
LEARNING 5 VIGILANCE 3 MANIPULATION 4
OBSERVATION 3 INSPIRATION 4
• Mental Toughness 3 Physical Toughness 3
• EQUIPMENT: Pistol, bible, crucifix (see Satanic
Witchcraft). Johanna probably has access to other items
of power as well.
a newborn girl from being killed by her mother. Gabriella’s
mother had killed Gabriella’s twin as she did not believe herself
to be able to take care of twins. A few weeks later, she decided
to kill her other child as well. Watching Johanna skewer her
mother with a crossbow bolt changed her, and she has never
spoken a word. Johanna took care of Gabriella and raised her as
her own daughter. She was trained in combat and learned of
vaesen and the Rosenbergers.
When she got older, she joined a convent and became a nun.
The bishop is a loyal Rosenberger, and accepted that Gabriella
needed to help Johanna on occasions.

·5·
 THE ROSENBERGERS
Gabriella is a woman in her late 20s with short-cropped blonde
hair and a somewhat featureless face. She rarely smiles or
shows facial expressions, and she never speaks. Gabriella is
armed with the same crossbow that killed her mother, and has
bolts of silver, a cross and several items of power at her disposal.
On secret missions she doffs the nun habit in order to wear
more practical clothing.
• Physique 4 Precision 5
• Logic 3 Empathy 3
AGILITY 4 RANGED COMBAT 5 FORCE 3
• Norwegian county of Finnmark. 13 years ago, she had helped
LEARNING 3 VIGILANCE 2 CLOSE COMBAT 3
OBSERVATION 2 STEALTH 3
• Mental Toughness 3 Physical Toughness 3
• EQUIPMENT: Crossbow, silvered dagger, silver bolts,
communion wafer (see p. 13)
• TALENTS: Blessing, Marksman, Vaesen slayer (see p.
12)
Michaela Hansdottir
did I put it?”
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“I have some interesting observations on that topic. Now where
Michaela is an eccentric woman in her late fifties who
pl
gained the Sight when she saw the Neck one beautiful summer
morning in her early teens. Labelled mentally ill by her family,
she was eventually contacted by the Society and brought into
their fold. Michaela was a quiet and introverted adolescent who
spent many hours in the Society’s library, trying to piece
together what vaesen really were. She even disguised herself as
a man and managed to become enrolled at the Uppsala
m
university for a semester, before being discovered. Twenty-five
years ago, she informed the Society that she would be traveling
all over the Nordic region in order to study the vaesen up close,
an immensely more detailed study than the one Carl von
Linnaeus had conducted a hundred years ago. She refused any
offers of help, saying that she needed solitude to complete her
life’s work. In the beginning, she regularly sent letters back to
Sa
the Society, but as the years went by, they became more and
more infrequent.
Her studies were thorough. She visited rural villages and remote
places where the Society knew vaesen existed. She gathered
testimonies from locals and vaesen alike. She spent over 10
years travelling through Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark
and even some parts of Russia.
Then she did it all over again. And it was now she started seeing
patterns. 8 years earlier, she had traveled in the mountains of
·6·
northern Sweden. Not a village or a settlement within many,
many miles. Her initial theory was that these remote places
must be a haven for vaesen. But she found nothing. On her
second trip through these mountains, small farms and logging
settlements had popped up at the foot of the mountains. She
noticed, to her surprise, the telltale signs of mountain trolls. An
old farmer told her that the trolls had been there since the dawn
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of time, but that they lived in peace with the humans as long as
they never built a church.
Another revelation came to Michaela on her second visit to the
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the local sami population fend off the attacks of a stallo, a large,
brutish creature from sami mythology, who objected to the
nomadic sami traveling through its domain. Now, the sami
population had been forcefully removed by the Norwegian
government, and a village had been built where the nomadic
sami people used to stay. The villagers had problems again, but
this time it was a wood wife who had always lived in the nearby
forest, and who stole men from the village from time to time.
These are just two of the examples Michaela found which have
led her to formulate a theory.
Vaesen is a creation of mankind’s imagination, given life by
some mysterious magic emanating from our joint
consciousness. The nature of the vaesen is altered to match the
local culture.
She has no idea how mankind can create creatures with their
imagination, but has started to read Buddhist texts about
tulpas, thoughtforms created by spiritual or mental powers.
Michaela has also started to correspond with some
acquaintances who have traveled to America. If her theory is
correct, there will most certainly pop up nissar, trolls and vaettir
in Scandinavian settlements in America as well.
Michaela has also noted several times that vaesen seems to
decrease in number, and that they are more numerous in rural
areas than in towns, cities and urban centres. While she has
quite a lot of statistical material, she has not organized this
material into a meaningful study.
While quite brilliant, Michaela is shy and reserved, and her
immaculate studies suffer from a lack of disorganization. She
travels with a trunk full of notebooks, and has placed hundreds
of notebooks with allies and acquaintances all over Scandinavia.
 THE ROSENBERGERS

Organizing and structuring her notes into a coherent volume • Intercept mail. The Rosenbergers have intercepted mail
from Mikaela Hansdottir (see above) for a few years now,
would take years.
and the re-opening of the Society made things difficult for
them. Having an agent on the inside makes things easier.
• Physique 2 Precision 2 • Pass on information. One or more of the PCs might regularly
• Logic 5 Empathy 3 meet up with Linnea Elfeklint, and any information she can
• MEDICINE 2 STEALTH 2 INVESTIGATION 3 give, will be passed along to Johanna Lampinen.
LEARNING 5 VIGILANCE 3
OBSERVATION 2

• Mental Toughness 3 Physical Toughness 2
• EQUIPMENT: Books. More books. Lots of books. Fairy
cross.
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• Find the secret laboratory. There is a secret Rosenberger
laboratory in the basement, built early on in the Castle’s
history. To find the secret door, one needs to move the
hands of several statues in the right order. The infiltrator’s
goal is to retrieve any notes from the laboratory and deliver

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them to Lampinen.

• The assassination. The Norwegian folklorist Peter Christen

Asbjørnsen starts to communicate with the Society. He is
Hooks writing fairy tales and legends of Norwegian origin, and has
heard about the Society and its vast and old library of
stories. Whether or not Asbjørnsen has the Sight or not is
Here are some hooks to bring the Rosenbergers into play. up to the GM. He might just be a writer. If the PCs welcome
him to visit their library, and the infiltrator learns of this, he
The infiltrator will be ordered to kill Asbjørnsen. Since the Rosenbergers
are aware of the truth behind vaesen, anything that will

e
A Rosenberger, perhaps Olaus Klint from A Dance of
Dreams, tries to infiltrate the Society. The Rosenberger will
initially be very helpful, and will quickly reveal to the PCs that he
has the Sight. He will be wary of tipping his hand early on, in
•
keep the belief alive in people, is a threat. The infiltrator
may hire a hitman to avoid breaking her cover.

Find something of value. The Rosenberger might be looking

for Homo Ferus or Carl von Linnaeus’ lost notes from
Dalecarlia, an item of power or a magic item the infiltrator
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order to gain the PCs’ trust. One of their goals in re-establishing or Lampinen believes is hidden in the Castle.
the Society is to expand it, so they should be eager to accept
him as a member. Maybe the Rosenberger isn’t the first to join The vaesen hunter
either, and they already have recruited a few trustworthy
members/servants with or without the Sight? The PCs come across a zealous vaesen killer. This
Rosenberger kills vaesen indiscriminately. She might not have
In my home game, they accepted Olaus eventually, but he’s
m

authorization from Lampinen to do this (Lampinen understands

delegated to an “apprentice” role. He is not allowed to go on that the vaesen are practically infinite in numbers and killing
missions, yet. This suits Olaus fine, as he has goals to accomplish them one by one solves nothing). She probably works alone.
in the Castle.

Below are some specific goals to

accomplish for the infiltrator.
Sa

• He wants to recruit one or more PCs to

the Rosenbergers. He will be looking for
those who really detest vaesen and who
might have a “shoot first, ask later”
attitude. Since he is blowing his cover
by attempting to recruit the PC, the
infiltrator must be close to 100 %
certain he will turn the PC and he must
also have accomplished all other goals
(if any).

·7·