You can't tell me about a drunk trash panda and not expect me to use that material.
Besides, it's December, which is basically silly season.
Tricky Taxonomy
Written as Bookhounds but could easily be transposed to a different setting.
Your Hounds open the shop one day to find the place an absolute mess. Liquor's all over the floor; someone got into someone's booze supply. The devastation does at least make it easy to trace the culprit, passed out in one of the offices (or lavatory): a small, hairy creature unlike anything anyone's ever seen. Possibly some rare breed of fox? Or an animal escaped from someone's private collection of exotics?
Physically the thing is about the size of a smallish housecat, with very prominent and evocative eyes. Its brown hairy body is somewhat ratlike, and its mouth is full of razor-sharp teeth. It could be mistaken for a raccoon by someone who has never seen a raccoon in real life which, if this is Bookhounds, is entirely possible; Londoners don't have much opportunity to see North American wildlife. Even zoos don't keep anything as common as a raccoon, not when there are penguins and tigers to entertain the public.
The liquor, if (for plot or character reasons) it doesn't belong to the Hounds, belongs to one of the staff. They've been hiding it and drinking on the sly during working hours. This staff member is very determined to ensure the Hounds don't figure out whose booze it is.
The creature, when it wakens, has a hideous hangover and will not want to move anywhere for a while. However, it is wild and will lash out if provoked. If forced off the premises, it hangs round, because it has nowhere else to go. This may mean it takes up residence on the roof, probably somewhere near the chimney or in the attic since it's cold outside. If encouraged to stay it is relatively tame, has tidy toilet habits and eats meat with the voracious enthusiasm of a starving weasel. It will bite if given the opportunity, or cause.
Identifying the creature is a problem. Consulting texts in the shop (Biology, History, Outdoorsman) identifies several possibilities, none of which are native to the UK. Maybe it escaped from someone's collection?
Consulting Mythos texts will find descriptions of a similar creature: the Zoog, an inhabitant of the Dreamlands. A relatively intelligent inhabitant ...
Option One: Dreams Made Real Someone connected with the shop - either a Hound or someone who's there regularly, like a customer or a staff member - is a Dreamer. They may not know it. Their dream life may be entirely separate from their waking existence. However, their dreams are beginning to break through into the waking world and this Zoog is merely the first sign of a weakening membrane. The focal point is that comfortable armchair tucked away in a corner of the shop, where they stop to slumber for a minute or two now and again. That chair, and its immediate environs, is becoming a little too close to the Enchanted Wood where the Zoogs live. The Hounds can find this out if they notice the fresh shoots and plants springing up on and around the chair.
Option Two:Moving Right Along The Zoog is from a collection of exotics. This is the star attraction of Professor Phlogiston's Palace of Delights. The Professor, aka Morton Polk, is a Boston native who's brought his collection across the water and, as luck would have it, he's taken up residence not that far from the Hound's shop. His landlady is at her wit's end trying to keep her house in some semblance of order, with all these creatures roaming the place. Polk wants his star attraction back at almost any cost, but he's allergic to spending money. Breaking and entering is more his cup of tea.
Option Three: The Perils of Publication The Zoog escaped from the Dreamlands via a text that the Hounds recently acquired. This text is sitting in the back room while the Hounds work out how much it's worth, and the Zoog is actually one of the illustrations. The Hounds can work out which illustration because now there's just a blank space where it used to be. However, the Zoog isn't the only illustration in that book; there's all sorts of peculiar creatures described, and the Zoog is bright enough to know how to get the others off the page and into reality - if given half a chance ...
This week's post is inspired by this article over at the Guardian. (Fair warning: it's nasty stuff.)
For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down ...
This has all been done before. Written down, part of the historical record.
Ethyl - and Methyl! Like Ike and Mike Strangely you look alike Like sisters I have met You're very hard to tell apart - and yet The one consoles more gently that a wife The other turns and cripples you for life.
---
Sits the plumber, man of metal Joining Gas pipes to a kettle Neath the bed his wife is lying Rather silent - she is dying From some gin her husband gave her Too busy now to save her, 'Things,' he sings, 'Are looking upward; I am making stills Soon we'll cook the stuff by wholesale Running twenty mills; What we make and how we make it Doesn't cut no ice. Anything we sell in bottles Brings the standard price.'
Wallace Irwin, Owed to Volstead, from the 1922 Nosenseorship collection
During Prohibition there was no legal means of supplying alcohol. The people doing the supplying didn't care so much what happened to the buyer, so long as whatever was in their bottles had some kind of kick.
If you, as the buyer, wanted some kind of reassurance you could buy right off the boat, newly smuggled in. But there was no guarantee that what you bought was, in fact, the real deal. From the seller's perspective, it was just as easy to sell fake liquor in a real-seeming bottle. Easier, in fact. Which might explain the Guardian's report on gin sold in Brazil:
... a number of recent outbreaks have also been linked to contaminated official alcohol supply chains, where methanol is being added to sealed bottles of spirits and finding its way on to the mass market ...
Ideally, you should test before you drink. God knows how you manage that when you're at a beach bar in Indonesia. To my mind, you can't beat the test proposed by H.I. Phillips in the March 1926 Collier's article, The Book Of Bootlegging Etiquette:
Take a rabbit (which should always be part of the complete kitchen equipment in the modern home) and drop ten drops of the liquor down its throat. If the rabbit dies, it is bad liquor. If the rabbit lives, it is a bad rabbit.
Methanol toxicity (also methanol poisoning) is poisoning from methanol, characteristically via ingestion. Symptoms may include an altered/decreased level of consciousness, poor or no coordination, vomiting, abdominal pain, and a specific smell on the breath. Decreased vision may start as early as twelve hours after exposure. Long-term outcomes may include blindness and kidney failure. Ingestion of as little as 3.16 grams of methanol can cause irreversible optic nerve damage, and the oral LD50 for humans is estimated to be 56.2 grams ... Early treatment increases the chance of a good outcome. Treatment consists of stabilizing the person and using an antidote. The preferred antidote is fomepizole, with ethanol used if this is not available.
During Prohibition, since alcohol is used in a number of industrial processes there was still a need for significant quantities of the stuff, which the Federal Government produced by denaturing (that is, adding poisonous methyl) to the ethanol supplies destined for manufacturing uses. Except, people being what they are, some of that denatured alcohol was diverted for illicit booze manufacturing. Since the Feds hadn't told anyone about their denaturing program, nobody had reason to believe this was a bad idea until the first poisoning cases surfaced.
This caused a scandal, made worse by Prohibition mouthpieces blithering that people shouldn't be drinking alcohol anyway, and those who did deserved everything they got.
Let's talk RPG usage.
Prohibition is a fact of life both in Trail and Call of Cthulhu, since between them the two RPG settings cover the US during the 1920s and 30s. However, I'm just going to focus on Trail today.
In Trail terms, Prohibition runs up till repeal on December 5, 1933. However, Prohibition's been an unpopular policy since inception, made worse by the Depression which started October 1929. People could stomach an unpopular domestic policy so long as everything else, particularly the economy, was more or less okay. The minute the country faced unfavorable economic headwinds, unpopular domestic policies became untenable.
Prohibition became an easy target, made even easier because rich people hoped that making liquor legal, with all the sales tax benefits that implied, would reduce the need for an income tax, letting them off the hook. They bankrolled the popular movement favoring repeal. As luck would have it sales taxes didn't wipe out the income tax burden, but the country was wet again.
Bad Rabbits In Arkham
The Arkham Prohibition Bureau is a standing joke. It wasn't very successful before 1929, but since the Depression its activities became deeply unpopular, made even worse when it raided a high-end restaurant the Mayor favored. Now it's reduced to a couple of agents working out of cheap offices on the corner of College and Peabody streets. These two, Leroy Washburn (a local boy happy to hang off the federal tit) and Martin Keys (an out-of-towner with blunted and disappointed ambition) are all that's left of a much larger unit, dispersed after the Anton's Restaurant incident.
Keys approaches the University with a problem. The investigators may become involved as members of Miskatonic's staff or student body, or they may be hired by the University to assist.
Keys' problem is an outbreak of what looks like Methyl poisoning in some of the cheaper places in Arkham. Several people have been permanently injured and two have died. However, a small number of those poisoned report unusual side effects that don't match the usual toxicity profile, and Keys wants to know if this is something to do with the methyl or if there's something else at work.
Streetwise, Cop Talk or similar Interpersonal, 0 point, indicates the poisoning outbreaks largely affect Lower Southside. 1 point finds a local contact, Dr. Malkowski, who occasionally skirts the law but who can point out four or five gin mills or cheap speaks where the stuff, colloquially called Smoke, is sold.
Pharmacy, 0 point, indicates quantities of Methyl in the stuff sold as Smoke. 1 point spend isolates something else in the mix, a substance commonly seen in embalming fluid. 2 points identify it as Rectifol Corrective, an embalming fluid not manufactured or sold for over 20 years.
Biology or similar Investigative indicates that, in a small percentage of the imbibers, the subject loses their sight for at least 24 hours and, when sight returns, they begin seeing things which aren't there. This causes panic, erratic behavior, and in at least one case, suicidal behavior.
Option One: Funeral Blues. The Depression didn't decrease demand for alcohol but did ensure few in Lower Southside could pay for it. Enter funeral director Jaspar Elizar, who got hold of some bottles, a cheap label maker, and churned out Smoke in convincing gin form. What Elizar didn't realize is his preferred booze substitute contains chemicals best not imbibed, because the visions they induce cause the subject to gain 1 Cthulhu Mythos. This Mythos gain affects people in different ways and causes insanity in particularly sensitive subjects.
Option Two: Occult Blues. The Smoke epidemic is the brainchild of occultist Jason Gaspard, who stole the substances he's been using to make Smoke from funeral director Elizar. Gaspard's goal is to create a visionary. He knows, through his studies, that he can scry into the future so long as he can induce someone of sufficiently sensitive nature to hallucinate under the right conditions. Gaspard, having released Smoke into the 'wild', is now waiting to see which of his unwitting test subjects is best suited to become a mystic future-seer. Once he knows which is the best subject, he'll draw that person into the fold with promises of a cure.
Option Three: They Are There. The Smoke epidemic is just another crime spree, put together by a bunch of low-effort goons desperate for a buck or two. They stole what they needed to make Smoke and are running a cheap gin mill in Lower Southside. What they don't realize is the visions that a small portion of those who drink it (eg. those with In The Blood) see aren't visions at all; those are real creatures which exist and aren't happy about being perceived. These inter-dimensional creatures dimly perceive those Smoke drinkers who can (temporarily) see them and will attack, leaving behind drained and hideous husks of their victims. This will come to an end once the last Smoke drinker dies but perhaps the investigators can come up with a way to save the unfortunate victim(s) before that happens.
This week's post is inspired by this article over at the Guardian. It's a photographic spread featuring actors/military portraying OPFOR in military exercises.
Once upon a time I wrote about Hush-Hush Houses and described two possible locations, Glen Eagles and Brinkley/Piccadilly.
Glen Eagles is the code name for Pitfour House, a hunting lodge in the Grampians. Built in the Scottish Baronial style, this property was requisitioned by the SOE early in the 1939-45 war and has remained in Government hands ever since. The property is remote and inaccessible; the best way in is by air, via helicopter. In its day it was a training ground first for Polish commandos and bag and burn experts, until Edom acquired it in 1940. There's plenty of evidence of the former occupants, from graffiti on the walls to the marks of hobnail boots on the floors, as well as the old explosive ordinance testing grounds.
Brinkley is a 1970s urban brutalist build on the outskirts of Manchester. It's always been government owned but has housed a variety of government offices and schemes; currently its main tenant is MoneyForce, an organization whose purpose is to help armed forces members with money management. Anyone with Architectural or Military Science knowledge will wonder about those preternaturally thick walls and peculiar sightlines; its almost as if an iceberg settled in a suburban district, its deepest secrets hidden deep below the earth.
The original article assumed both locations were Cool or Warm, as per the Dossier's usual formula. The Guardian photoshoot kinda pushes things towards Warm; it's difficult to imagine someone trying to pull off a complicated test case like this without a pre-established testing location.
However, it could be interesting to imagine a Cool site becoming Warm.
Suppose that there was an Incident. It doesn't really matter what, except that Incidents usually come with body counts and embarrassing headlines. Fine, say the Princes; lessons learned. We need more field testing before anything like that happens again. Don't we have some old field test sites on the books? Let's reactivate those, shall we?
It could even be a good starter scenario for beginning Agents. In this campaign frame the Incident, whatever it was, has already happened. In fact, the players' Agents may have been on the periphery of the Incident. Not directly involved; they'd be dead. But they saw the bodies first-hand. They helped clean up the mess.
Now, their first task: reactivate Glen Eagles and repopulate it with actual NPCs, so Edom's finest can start live testing again. [I could do both Glen Eagles and Brinkley, but I think Glen Eagles has more potential as a large-scale live fire testing zone.]
A reminder:
Cool: While still on Edom's books officially, nobody's paid attention to Glen Eagles since the 1970s. This quietly crumbling edifice is home to bats, birds and rats now, keeping lonely watch over a forgotten part of Edom's history. Potential clues to the 1940 mission or a series of 1970s interrogations can be found here, but any important files have long since been transferred elsewhere. The fake French street built adjacent to Glen Eagles, with its wonky wire-operated targets, are all that's left of the Kill House. Some old remnants of Edom weapons tech circa 1940 are rotting away here, possibly even a live round or two for those who like playing with out-of-date potentially lethal explosives. Poachers sometimes come here but are put off by the poor quality of the game; it's almost as if something's blighted the land.
I like starting with action, so in this case I'd start in the immediate aftermath of the Incident. The Agents are carting out bodies or attending forensic examination of the recently deceased. They get to see first hand what happens when things go tits up.
[a good hook] poses a problem that the players have to solve.
In this instance the problem is how to set up a testing base, preferably a live fire base, at short notice and in an inaccessible location?
Well, there are several optional scenes involving potential Edom support. They could:
Go to the Archivist to find out more about Glen Eagles.
0 point: get plans of Glen Eagles to help the rebuild effort
1 point: find after-action reports, diaries and other records concerning Glen Eagles in its last days of operation.
Go to Tinman or Fort for supplies to rebuild.
0 point: get supplies.
1 point: get some kind of personal input into the rebuild, eg. the Prince lends their personal support staff or some other kind of valuable assistance.
Go to E Squadron to find out more about their operational needs from a Hush-Hush House.
0 point: get insights that help efficiently develop Glen Eagles.
1 point: an E-Squadron assistant (eg. Veteran Rating) is assigned to the project as an advisor.
However, ultimately the Agents will be getting into a chopper and flying out to the depths of the Grampians to see Glen Eagles for themselves.
As we already know there are several potential plot points to be discovered, among them:
Potential clues to the 1940 mission
Potential clues to the 1970s interrogations
Remnants of Edom weapons tech circa 1940
As Keeper you could add something else, like a Sealed Coffin, but ultimately you should pick one and stick with it, not sprinkle in all three or four. Given kittens three possible toys to play with and they will try to play with all three at once. Give them one. Then, if they don't like that one, you can always add another.
Whatever that one thing is, it should probably tie directly to that 1 point spend they made earlier. If, say, the Archivist's 1-point (the after-action reports and diaries) leads directly to the potential plot point at Glen Eagles, that only reinforces the value of point spends and you want the players to be spending points all the time. The more reward you offer for point spends, the more likely it is there will be future plot spends.
Then there will be something along the lines of a training montage, in which the Agents rebuild Glen Eagles. In game, this is best represented by Thrilling dialogue (provided by the Agents, natch) and some point spends. These point spends build up Glen Eagles, effectively providing a Preparedness pool for the firing range. Exactly what that looks like in play is up to you and your table. Do they hire roleplayers to fill roles within the defence team, as the Guardian article suggests? Do they go more high-tech with screens and electronic gunplay? Do they go old-school with wires and moving targets?
Eventually the montage concludes. By this stage we're at the Midpoint. The questions posed by the Hook have been asked and answered. What questions are being asked at the Midpoint? Probably something along the lines of 'is this new Hush Hush House fit for purpose.' Also, 'where does this plot point lead?'
That second question I'll leave floating, as it can only be answered by Rome, and it's not part of this exercise to tell you where Rome is. Only that there has to be a Rome. There has to be a final destination of some kind.
If, say, your final destination is Betrayal (eg. one of the Princes is a rogue agent and the reasons for their betrayal are linked, somehow, to the 1970s mole hunt) then you can start to lay the groundwork now by having that Prince subtly undermine the agents' efforts to rebuild Glen Eagles. Your final destination will vary. But whatever that final destination is, this is where you start to drop hints.
However, that first question (is this new Hush Hush House fit for purpose) can only be answered by a field test.
Sounds like the perfect opportunity for a Thrilling [fill in the blank, probably Sneak, Hunt, Hit or Destroy]. The veterans of E-Squadron are the ones on the attack, the Agents, working through the new toys at Glen Eagles, are the ones on defence. If the Agents hold up E-Squadron long enough, or if they prevent E-Squadron from achieving their objective, then the Agents win. If E-Squadron busts through with ease, then the Agents have failed.
Failure or success in this instance does not mean It's All Over or We Are The Champions. It means bureaucratic failure or success, which can be just as lethal. After all, in future scenarios the Agents are going to rely on support from their bosses and the higher-ups to get the job done. That's going to be difficult if the very first thing they did was embarrass themselves in a live-fire demo at Edom's hush-hush house.
Frankly, half the plane was coughing, spitting and imitating the soon-to-be-deceased so I expect any minute now I'll start imitating the Exorcist.
[brief follow-up: I did indeed catch the flibble or whatever it was flying across the friendly skies and spent the week following my return coughing, sniveling and otherwise illing. Che sera, sera. But I did play Dispatch three times, soo ...]
While I have the energy to type, let me tell you about books, and about the one that got away.
Bought at World Fantasy Con 2025, Brighton, from various vendors:
The Dagon Collection: An Auction Catalogue of Items Recovered in the Federal Raid on Innsmouth, Mass (ed. Nate Pedersen.2024 PS Publishing)
The Starry Wisdom Library: the Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time (ed. Nate Pedersen, 2014 PS Publishing).
No prizes for guessing why these two appealed to me. I haven't read either yet and expect to data mine these for interesting ideas rather than fall prone in ecstasy at the prose, but you never know your luck. I look forward to having items from both catalogues appear in subsequent campaigns I might run.
You can't beat the gothics, and while Leiber's more of a modern I can't help but think of him in the gothic class. There's something about his word choice, his stylfgfsdse, that makes me put him in that group. I look forward to reading them both; I tried to get into Uncle Silas on the plane but that was a mistake. You can't concentrate on a long haul flight. I watched Mr. Vampire: Vampire vs Vampire instead.
Both bought on a whim and I haven't read either yet, though I have started Go-To Guy. It's a laugh, but I don't take it seriously, which is probably why I haven't finished it yet.
Bought on a whim, and I haven't started it yet. I like the idea, but by God the vendor made it difficult to spend money. I think the Americans were hoping that the buyers at a World conference were all going to be English and planned accordingly. That was silly of them.
A very pretty little thing. K-Pop Demon Hunters made me realize I don't know as much about Korean folklore as I ought, so I figured I'd rectify that omission.
Cold Steel: Book II Fire Heart (Joyce Ch'ng, 2025 Snowy Wings).
Bought from the author. Again, I haven't had chance to more than glance at it. I look forward to it.
Now, for a few things I didn't buy at the con, some of which I've actually read:
Strange Houses(Uketsu, translated Jim Rion, 2025 Pushkin Press)
The Samurai Detectives(Shotaro Ikenami, translated Yui Kajita, originally 1973, Penguin 2025).
Both bought at Waterstones. Samurai Detectives is vol 1; vol 2 isn't due until Feb 2026. This is the first time Ikenami-san's work has appeared in English. I've read both and highly recommend them to anyone who likes action, swordplay, historical drama (Samurai Detectives) and peculiar, terrible horrors (Strange Houses).
Soldiers Three/Under the Deodars/Phantom Rickshaw (Rudyard Kipling, publisher unknown, publication date unknown, hardback rebound edition of works originally published at the turn of the century).
I don't know what to make of this one. It must be a reproduction but I've no idea who put it together or when. The only clue I have is a notation on the inner cover: bound by W.J. Askew, Plymouth. It's a hardbound version collecting three shorter paperbound volumes. Each paperbound is a faithful copy of books that would have been sold for One Rupee via the Indian Railway Library. I can't help but think this must be one volume from a larger Kipling repro collection of some kind, though it's not labeled as such and there's no indication on the frontispiece or back pages. It's a completely faithful copy right down to the advertisements, so if ever you wanted to know what was on offer back in 1890-whatsit, now you can. Probably very useful for those of you who like to mock-up props; a scanner and better Photoshop skills than mine will serve you well. Not sure when the reproduction was issued. Guessing by quality of hardcover, paper and spotting I'd say probably 1970s, but honestly it's a complete guess. Bought at Oxfam, Greenwich.
Classic science fiction which means there shall be all sorts of unintended comedy, but I look forward to it. Various authors, of course. Bought at Just Vintage, Greenwich Market.
A brief word on the one that got away.
Just Vintage has in its collection a first edition of an M.R. James publication, 1911, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Selling for a little under 700 quid. Now, I'm a huge fan, as you know. I was greatly tempted. But our climate is death to books of that sort, never mind the roaches, and I'd be heartbroken if I was indirectly responsible for destroying such a thing as this, after a hundred years. So I left it on the shelf and am still gnashing teeth.
Murder at the Black Cat Cafeincludes Why Did The Well Wheel Creak (Seishi Yokomizo, translation Brian Karetnyk, 2025 Pushkin Press)
Tour de Force (Christianna Brand, Library edition 2024, first published 1955)
All bought at Foyles.
I've a lot of respect for Brand as a plotter of mysteries. She plays fair. You know going in that you've as much information as you need to identify the culprit. You also know that your odds of doing so are next to nil. I've read both and can recommend to period mystery lovers. No, I didn't solve the crimes.
Yokomizo-san is someone I've read before and enjoyed. He's basically pulp mystery; strange corpses, lashings of blood, peculiar and horrific events. Like Brand, Yokomiso-san plays fair. Also like Brand, odds are you won't work out who did it. Read this in the airport going home, can thoroughly recommend.
I haven't had time to more than glance at Sutra, but from what little I've seen it's exactly the kind of campaign I'd enjoy. The Yellow King is one of those entities that deserves an artistic touch and by the looks of things that's exactly what it gets. I particularly like Chapter 4: the Pallid Masks of Tokyo - such an interesting idea!
What did I think of the convention? I liked it a lot. It lacks the go-to and busyiness of an American convention. It's less focused, less well organized. But it has a heart that some American conventions lack. I confess to a little bias in that I like Brighton very much and thoroughly enjoy visiting there. I had a little time to wander round and, if you find yourself in Brighton, I think you should visit Snoopers Paradise, the all-for-all flea market. Also, Coho is a great way to start the day with coffee and danish.
Would I go again? I'm thinking about it. I'm told the 2027 con is in Canada and that's a hell of a lot easier to get to, from my perspective. I am in absolutely no hurry to make it to California in 2026. Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening. But Canada? Canada's doable.
Finally, uncle Kevin.
I stopped by Raining Books. It's as I remember. Shut up, of course. Lord knows what's going to happen to the place and I dread to think what the condition of the books in there is now. Never mind that leaky roof. It's been nearly a year, and I doubt the builders have been in to patch anything up. But I was grateful to have the chance to stop by and say farewell. His ex-wife left a lovely tribute to his memory up on the door, and there were other posts as well.
OK, I fly off to the Brighton UK World Fantasy thingummygig tomorrow and will be incommunicado for two weeks! If anyone needs to keep in touch for that period best bet is Bluesky, and if you're not already aware you can get me at @karloff0734.bsky.social. I will try to post a couple Skies while there but otherwise will be enjoying the time off and dealing with family stuff.
I'll drop by what used to be Raining Books, my uncle's Brighton bookshop, but only to say farewell. I know a couple of you used to visit the shop and by now you'll be aware he died earlier this year. I'm not sure what state the building's in; I expect it will be passing into new hands by now, if it hasn't already.
Question for the hivemind! If someone like me were to dip their toes into online, what virtual tabletop best suits Cthulhu or modern gaming? Roll20 is the obvious one. It does pretty much everything, and Kickstarter promises all kinds of other virtual TT experiences. Which, in your opinion, is the best of the bunch? Looking at user friendly as much as options available; I want to use my time wisely.
Now, let's dabble in travel and suppose that your Bookhounds are travelling from London to Brighton in search of whatever they may find. They may have a definite object or they may just be on the knock, trying to source some rarities by knocking on doors to see what can be had.
One route to Brighton, as The Brighton Road (Charles G Harper) helpfully illustrates, takes the Hounds through Horley, where they might find the Six Bells Inn:
The nearest neighbour to the church is the almost equally ancient “Six Bells” inn, which took its title from the ring of bells in the church tower. Since 1839, however, when two bells were added, there have been eight in the belfry.
The stranger, foregathering with the rustics at the “Six Bells,” and missing the old houses that once stood near the church and have been replaced by new, very quickly has his regrets for them cut short by those matter-of-fact villagers, who declare that “ye wooden tark so ef ye had to live in un.” A typical rustic had “comic brown-titus” acquired in one of those damp old cottages, and has “felt funny” ever since. One with difficulty resisted the suggestion that, if he could be as funny as he felt, he should set up for a humorist, and oust some of the dull dogs who pose as jesters.
The Six Bells still exists today. Judging by the image, its exterior has barely changed in a hundred years. If it was called Six Bells in 1839 the suggestion is that it's been on that spot for many years prior. From the Hounds' POV, the Six Bells is at least a hundred years old and probably older. The rumor of a passage underneath the inn that leads to the church is an old tale; there isn't an inn pub in existence that hasn't had that story told about it.
Church Inns aren't uncommon, particularly in the UK.
This is the third edition of Brighton Road, published 1922, so most of the facts (or purported facts at least) will be relevant to 1930s Hounds. Though the book doesn't say, I'm guessing those houses close to the Church were owned by the Church. If the author misses them in 1922 then presumably they existed in 1892, when the book was first published.
In any case, fiction can do as it pleases.
Brown-Titus
The Hounds are on their way to Brighton for reasons of their own and have stopped in Horley for a bit to have a pint and pie at the Six Bells before pressing on.
While there, one of the locals presents them with a scrap of a larger manuscript hoping to sell it to them. The man, John Henry Bristow, is an old resident who lives on charity and a small pension. The Hounds don't know if he realizes what he has, or whether there's more out there.
Four things about the manuscript:
It dates to the 1830s and tells a story about something that happened in the 1750s.
It's not clear what the something is, but it might be a witch trial that took place locally. There's not enough of it here to be certain about it.
The paper and printing are genuine enough. There are peculiar brown stains on the paper which might be mold.
ROME. Whatever that may mean in your narrative.
Four things about John Henry:
He says he's more than four score and ten and judging by appearances he's in his eighties.
There's something hypnotic about his eyes.
Nobody at the Six Bells likes him much. If anything, they're scared of him.
For someone his age, he moves well and has an iron grip handshake.
John Henry says the rest of the manuscript is at his cottage and will take the Hounds to see it, if they are interested. His cottage isn't far from the Six Bells, but he won't take them there till after dark. He'll want a few pints at the pub first.
Option One:Hideous Cravings. John Henry found this manuscript stuffed under the floorboards of his cottage. It tells the story of a 17th century trial in which the accused claimed to be a werewolf, and to have suffered this curse after meeting a mysterious dark figure at a nearby crossroads. Anyone with Mythos realizes that this is actually an account of someone becoming a ghoul after encountering another ghoul. While John Henry isn't a ghoul, he's becoming very interested in some ghoulish practices after reading the manuscript and is hoping for a taste of Hound flesh.
Option Two:Hideous Hijinks. John Henry isn't local. He's a plant. One of the Hounds' rivals knew they were on their way to Brighton and is hoping to hold them up long enough so the rival can get to Brighton before they do and scoop the prize, whatever that is. John Henry is a minor Magick user with hypnotic abilities, who will use those abilities to keep the Hounds busy for as long as he can manage it. The manuscript doesn't exist and never did. John Henry Bristow is an assumed name; the Hounds might recognize him as Lewis Ackerman, a Book Scout with some acting talent.
Option Three:Hideous Mold. There is no John Henry Bristow. What passes as him is actually a mold colony that grows in one of the last remaining old cottages clustered near the Church. The Colony uses the John Henry illusion to collect new building material - like the Hounds. Think of it like a vampire but made of fungi. It knows better than to attack the locals, who might decide to destroy it; but outsiders are fair game. The mold keeps Horley people in check by clouding their minds with its spores; the Hounds may realize the locals are under what amounts to mass hypnosis, which may be their only warning that John Henry is not what he appears to be.
Remember that the encounter, not the adventure, is the fundamental unit of play. If you design your whole dungeon expecting characters to follow a certain path or explore it in a certain way, you will always be let down. Consider your dungeon a collection of encounters, not a story in itself. The story will emerge organically, as characters pursue their goals and adapt to overcome the encounters you've designed.
You can tell the Fishels came from a Dungeons and Dragons background, and that's not just because they use the word dungeon. It's because they see encounters as things to be overcome. That follows the basic D&D principle that even live action play follows, to an extent: the things you find in front of you are obstacles, not parts of the narrative, and they are to be beaten, not navigated past, negotiated or otherwise engaged with. When you are in a 10 by 10 room, everything looks like an orc guarding a chest.
However, the advice is sound. You can't expect players to navigate the space the way it's drawn. One of the reasons why I've never liked drawing maps isn't my lack of artistic ability - though that definitely helps - it's the realization that the map does the players no good. They don't want to tap-tap-tap their way down the corridor checking for traps with their 10ft pole. Or chickens.
But if you present the characters with an elaborate map, they explore the map. Or try to. Before they get bored and start to make their own fun.
In my experience the best maps are the ones like the train in Orient Express: not a dungeon so much as a convenient way of illustrating the surroundings, so the characters can say 'while such-and-such is in the dining car, being distracted by Charlie's scintillating conversation, I shall be in the baggage car, going through their trunk and belongings.'
Still! A series of encounters. OK. Let's game that out.
Assume this is a Facility. The characters have discovered it and want to investigate it. It doesn't really matter which setting this is, but for the purpose of example I'm going to assume it's Night's Black Agents. Modern day spycraft, in other words, and this is a Manufacturing Facility with Medium Security and Medium Monitoring. That means Difficulty 4 for most tests, and any investigative point spends to find out information start at 1 point for the basics. Medium Monitoring suggests that any enemy response will be relatively quick, something like 5-10 minutes armed response for any blatant oopsie, and Medium Security suggests that there are guards and cameras on-site as this is a reasonably important installation.
OK, fine. There are locks on the doors and people paying attention to what's going on. It doesn't matter, in this example, what the Facility is manufacturing. Assume it's narrative-important. It makes MacGuffins.
So if this is a series of encounters, not a set of rooms to explore, what are those encounters?
Well, let's take a step back and talk a little bit about the Building.
This is, after all, a mini-Building. It's the narrative space in which you expect players to meet people, creating plot. We already know it's a Manufacturing Facility. That suggests semi-industrial at least, possibly biological or chemical depending on the nature of the MacGuffin. A Supernatural setting might be different; a funeral home could be a Manufacturing Facility, if you assume they're making zombies or torturing souls. However, let's keep it simple and assume that it's semi-industrial.
That implies there's not much in the way of residential or commercial nearby. There might be a caff for local trade, somewhere that sells fish and chips, say. There won't be a high street stuffed full of shoppers. The traffic on the roads is more likely to be trucks than Ferraris. Not many tourists, if any at all. The people here have a purpose for being here; they're transporting, lifting, carrying, on their way to A from B, not noodling around looking for entertainment. If there are thieves or neer-do-wells lurking about, they're not muggers or pickpockets. There's slim pickings for that type. Car thieves or burglars might do well here.
Most important to note, unless the enemy have a good relationship with the local law, there probably aren't any police nearby. After all, what they're doing is illegal, or at best borderline-legal. They don't want straight law enforcement breathing down their necks. Thus, if there are coppers nearby, they're working hand-in-hand with the folks running the Facility.
OK, that's a decent thumbnail. Encounters?
Well, there are several points to consider. Let's start outside and work our way in.
Assume the characters are standing outside the Facility looking for a way in. They're looking at a semi-industrial area. If this is London, or most places in Europe that haven't been bombed flat in wartime, then the area is a mix of 1900s red brick, 1960s concrete and 2000s cheap industrial, all glass and metal. The first encounter area is external security. Locked doors and cameras. There might be a bloke on the main door, or if there is a loading dock area then there may be security there, and workers loading/unloading lorries as well.
There is the Direct and the Indirect approach.
The Direct approach is obvious, and it's the one a lot of players opt for: smash your way in. Tackle the bloke on the main door, or the ones at the loading dock. That means you need combat stats for them and anyone else in the immediate area. You also need response times for backup, since unless the characters are very quick and clever someone's going to ring the alarm right about now.
The Indirect approach involves going round the back, looking for covert ways in. Or going over the roof of a nearby building to see if you can sneak in. If you have a hacker on the payroll, they might be using this time to take over the enemy's cameras. If you know there's an underground passage or sewer, now's the time to crawl up from below, that sort of thing. This part might not involve a physical challenge but it will want a technical one. Disguises or covert identities may come into play at this point. Remember, you already know that the base Difficulty for most tests is 4. That should help you decide how difficult any particular encounter is.
OK, now they're in. The question now becomes, what Encounters do they find inside?
Well, let's stick with the Rule of 4. This is a relatively simple Facility, after all. It's not one you designed specifically for this campaign. It's one you had to come up with on the fly. That means you have four potential encounters in this Facility, one of which must be Rome. That translates to three ordinary encounter types and one special. The Boss.
Thus:
Flunkies. Low level civilian types, admin, people doing data entry or monitoring cameras. Unarmed, with no combat rating. If the entry was Indirect and no alarm has been triggered then they go about their jobs assuming all is as it should be. Any who encounter the characters assume they have a right to be there, unless they obviously pose a threat. After all, if they didn't have a right to be there, why would they be there? Possible clue to the nature of the Facility found by interrogating the flunky or looking at whatever it is the flunky is doing.
Self-Aware Flunky. Civilian types, but with seniority. They may have combat skills. More importantly, they know the characters aren't supposed to be there and will raise the alarm if given the chance. They definitely possess clues to the nature of the Facility and might have a MacGuffin on them, assuming the MacGuffin is transportable and not unique. There is a chance that one of the self-aware flunkies is actually someone important to the Conspiracy as a whole, eg. a top scientist, necromancer or named NPC of some kind.
Security. These may or may not be armed. If armed, they will use lethal force. If unarmed, they use nonlethal (tasers, pepper spray) and attempt to capture. If armed, well ... If the alarm has not been raised then security does not automatically assume everyone they encounter is a threat. If the alarm has been raised, then security treats everyone they meet as a threat, unless there's reason to behave otherwise. So, eg, if the characters disguise themselves as flunkies, they might not automatically trigger an armed response.
Rome. This might be a thing, rather than a person. In Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, for instance, the strange canister at the heart of the church crypt is Rome. I'm not going to go into great detail here since your Rome may be very different, but the point is, this is the heart of the Facility. Whether it's a vampire on the prowl, a portal to another dimension, a smelting pot for souls or something else altogether, is up to you. The broader point is this: whatever Rome is, it is dangerous, and it is the reason why the Facility exists/functions.
Those are the basic encounters. Do you need more?
Sure, you can have more. Whether you need them or not is up to you. However, for the sake of this example let's assume that there are other factions out there interested in what the enemy is up to. Let's assume the Mysterious Monseigneur and his Vatican friends take an interest in the Facility. They may be watching it from afar. They haven't decided to take action against it, not yet. They want to know more about where the Facility fits into the overall network, so they're just monitoring it for now.
However, now the players decide to move in, and the MM needs to decide what to do about that.
The MM isn't necessarily opposed to the characters. The Vatican's involvement might be simply to watch what happens when the characters poke the hornet's nest. Or it might be to swoop in like the cavalry should the characters want a rescue. Or the characters might notice the MM's people hanging around the Facility and decide to strike up a short-term alliance. Any of these options are on the table, which means the Director needs a rough idea what the MM has to play with. Are his people armed special ops types? Researchers? Occultists? Something else?
Let's further assume that the local authorities are not in the enemy's pocket. That means if the police, firefighters, emergency response or what-have-you show up, their arrival might stop whatever armed response the enemy had in mind. Time for a chase scene, perhaps?
Finally, let's assume some non-aligned media types are lurking nearby. It might be actual media from an honest-to-God news outlet, or it might be random bloggers with drones and cameras. They're here for other reasons, but they might be attracted to the Facility if something eye-catching happens. Like an explosion. Or the beginnings of a chase scene. Again, not a combat encounter, but it is something which complicates the narrative. Sometimes the narrative needs a good complication now and again.
The great thing about encounters like these is that you don't need them for just this moment. You need yes-and contingencies for all kinds of moments. That means you can re-use, say, the police encounter you designed, or the media encounter, in other scenes.
So there you have it. A series of encounters, rather than a set of dungeon tiles. A Facility with a little flesh on its bones.
Amen Court is entered from the junction of Warwick Lane and Paternoster Row ... Of the old houses NOs 1-3, No 1 is interesting as R.H. Barham, then a minor canon, lived here from 1839 - 1845 and wrote The Ingoldsby Legends during his occupation. ... [the pre-Reformation processions allegedly] began with the Lord's Prayer in Paternoster Row and got in their Amen at Amen Corner. They said their Hail Mary in Ava Maria Lane, then their Credo in Creed Lane, and heard their exhortation in Sermon Lane ...
London Cameos by A.H. Blake, 1930
I have a copy of Legends, picked up on a whim in Guernsey. Well worth your time. When I posted about them before I said:
The Ingoldsby Legends. Picked up at Curiosities, an antiquarian shop in Guernsey. It’s often worth your while poking your nose in that sort of place, particularly in somewhere not often frequented like Guernsey. You never know what might be hanging around. This is the 1898 Richard Bentley edition, with illustrations, and is a collection of all three books. The originals would have been published in the 1840s as single volumes. Comic ghost stories and verse. I'm not a huge fan of comic verse - it goes on a little long and I find it wearisome - but the stories are entertaining Gothic and might give you inspiration for your own tales.
One other landmark that would have been close by is Newgate Prison. A portion of the old prison wall still exists at Amen Court. It's slightly surprising Blake didn't mention it; the prison was still there well up until his period, finally being demolished in the early 1900s. In its day it was notorious both as a prison and as a place of execution; the Newgate Hornpipe, ie. hanging, is immortalized in song.
Odd side note. The iron gallows door that led to the place of execution allegedly found its way to Buffalo New York and is now at Canisius University. At least, so says Wikipedia and the internet is never wrong. Not sure how it got across the water, or why; it sounds like the sort of thing that ought to have been put up outside a speakeasy. There was a Newgate Prison in Buffalo, but it was contemporaneous with the existing one in London.
The Legends first appeared in Bentley's Miscalleny, a monthly that boasts Charles Dickens among others as its editor, though Dickens soon fell out with Bentley over editorial control concerns.
With that we get:
Legendary Correspondence
A book scout, Elliott Parker, claims to have discovered some as-yet unknown correspondence written by Dickens to Bentley and approaches the Hounds hoping for a quick sale. The two pages Parker proffers are clearly part of a larger collection, written to Bentley while Dickens was still associated with Bentley's Miscalleny. Parker claims to be acting on behalf of an unnamed seller, and further investigation (eg. tracking Parker's movements) discovers that this seller lives at Amen Court, though it's not clear who the seller is or where, exactly, on Amen Court they live.
The Hounds can determine that the papers are genuine and, if there are more of them, could be sold for a tidy sum.
At one point in the small portion the Hounds have in their possession, Dickens talks about a draft of 'a horrible, gothic little tale' he's working on. It seems to be an early version of his tale, The Haunted House, but if so then it's a version that never saw print. Finding that could be a real boost to the shop.
Spending 1 point of any relevant investigative pool discovers that Parker, when he visits his unnamed seller, always goes to that part of Amen Court closest to the old Newgate Prison.
Option One: Liar. Parker has discovered some Dickens but it's incomplete and has faked up the rest to encourage gullible buyers. He used the good stuff as bait and is relying on the fakes to seal the deal. He's using a false front at Amen Court to sell the story, relying on Rough Magick to get him from his Amen Court false front to his actual hideaway, not far from there, traveling by shadow and subterfuge. However, this repeated use of Magick is making for some very peculiar side effects at Amen Court, and the canons who live there are starting to get worried.
Option Two: The Real Deal. Parker has a genuine seller at Amen Court. The seller discovered these papers during a home refurbishment and thought they would be able to sell these for a small amount. Parker knows their true value and is hoping to fleece the seller. What neither the seller nor Parker appreciate is that the papers are part of a larger stash of lost and found items, hoarded by a supernatural collector. The collector is very unhappy that their stash was found, and is attempting to reclaim the papers.
Option Three: The Newgate Hornpipe. Parker didn't get those papers from Amen Court. He got them from the shadowy remnants of Newgate, gone these many years, which Parker gets to via a magickal door in the wall of Newgate Prison located at Amen Court. Once there he steals the items from the Newgate Hangman, who still exists in that death-touched world beyond. Theoretically the Hounds could copy Parker's technique, get into Newgate and take the papers from their keeper. So long as they're willing to risk a grisly end in the execution cell ...
