**Caelwyn:** They knew.
Stacy looks across the archive table.
Cigarette advertisements.
Medical reports.
Beauty products.
Diet pills.
Household chemicals.
Cars.
Perfect families.
Perfect bodies.
Perfect lives.
**Stacy:** Eventually, yes.
Caelwyn picks up an advertisement.
A rugged man stands beneath an open sky.
Healthy.
Independent.
Confident.
A cigarette between his fingers.
**Caelwyn:** And people still bought them.
**Stacy:** They weren’t buying cigarettes.
Caelwyn looks at her.
**Caelwyn:** They quite literally were.
**Stacy:** They were buying this.
She points at the man.
**Stacy:** Freedom.
Strength.
Status.
Belonging.
The possibility of becoming someone else.
Caelwyn studies the advertisement again.
**Caelwyn:** Mind.
**Stacy:** The promise.
**Caelwyn:** Body.
**Stacy:** The pleasure.
**Caelwyn:** Spirit.
Stacy looks at the smiling man.
**Stacy:** The person you’re promised you might become.
A projector clicks.
Another advertisement appears.
Different product.
Different people.
Younger.
More movement.
More individuality.
**Caelwyn:** So the old model stopped working.
**Stacy:** No.
She changes the slide.
**Stacy:** It learnt.
Caelwyn looks from one advertisement to the next.
**Caelwyn:** Different product.
**Stacy:** Different promise.
**Caelwyn:** Same weakness.
Stacy shakes her head.
**Stacy:** Vulnerability.
There’s a difference.
Wanting pleasure isn’t a weakness.
Wanting health isn’t a weakness.
Wanting love, freedom, beauty or belonging isn’t a weakness.
Caelwyn closes the investigation folder.
**Caelwyn:** Until someone discovers how to sell them to you.
**Stacy:** Exactly.
Outside the archive window, a new illuminated advertisement glows across the street.
Nothing sinister.
Nothing obviously dangerous.
Just another beautiful promise.
Caelwyn watches it.
**Caelwyn:** We know better now.
Stacy follows his gaze.
**Stacy:** About that product.
Silence.
**Caelwyn:** Ah.
**Stacy:** That’s the problem.
We keep mistaking the product for the mechanism.
The product changes.
The culture changes.
The promise changes.
And so do we.
But we still want.
We still fear.
We still compare ourselves to others.
We still want to belong.
We still want someone to tell us that one choice might make us healthier, happier, freer, more desirable or complete.
Caelwyn looks once more at the old advertisement.
Then at the new one outside.
Different decade.
Different product.
Different promise.
Same human being standing in front of it.
### CTA — Campaign
In **Pulp Cthulhu Noir**, yesterday’s monsters rarely survive unchanged.
They adapt.
They learn what people desire, what they fear and what they desperately want to believe about themselves.
Enter a world where recognising the old monster may be useless once it has learnt to wear a new face.
https://startplaying.games/gm/dunchan
### CTA — Patreon
Go deeper into **Inner Fire** and the historical, psychological and narrative research behind Mythveil’s 1950s noir.
Body wants.
Mind explains.
Spirit gives meaning.
None of them is evil.
But all three can be understood, influenced and sold to.
https://www.patreon.com/c/mythveilchronicles_bydunchanhuntergames
### Question for the audience
**Which things do we condemn our grandparents for believing — while remaining completely certain that nobody is selling us the same promise in a different package?**