The Dark Side of the Neighborhood (Bookhounds, RPG All, Campaign Design)

Last time it was the Shop; this time, the Street - or more accurately, the Neighborhood. Why?

Because conflict breeds plot, first and foremost, and the Dark Side is all about plot. 

However, this is also about the Building. 

The Building, if you've forgotten, is that part of the game world where you, the Keeper/Director/Idiot Who Agreed To Write Something expect action to happen. It is where people meet the players, creating plot. You need to have a firm grasp of the Building's scale and what's in it. You do this because the Building is one of the foundational building blocks of the narrative. You need to know where the campaign is going. You need to know where the action is set. Once you have those two things, you can Keeper with confidence.

The Neighborhood is a fundamental part of the Building. This is a part of the game world which the players are expected to inhabit every single session. It might only be for a scene. It might only provide window dressing. Nevertheless, this is the one thing in the game world, apart from the Shop itself, which is a constant. The players will know their Neighborhood backwards and forwards. This applies to all characters. Even the clueless head-in-the-clouds type of character will know where the coffee shop is. The ones who are paying attention will know a lot more than that.

As with the Shop, the players are expected to pitch in and help construct the Neighborhood, at least in rough outline. Each player at the table should contribute one thing. It might be a laundry, it might be a pub, a corner store, a shortcut, a memorial. Whatever that this is, it's theirs. It should come up in play. 

The Dark Side is the Keeper's creation, and it's the one part of the Neighborhood that gets built without the players' input. As before, make sure that the Dark Side you design remains true to Rome and the basic principles of the setting, whatever those may be. That way, you can retro-engineer your Dark Side to fit whatever ideas the players come up with.  

But with those caveats aside, you already know a ton about the setting that you can factor in. You know what Rome is. You know the basic principles of the setting. You know what the East End is like. You have a pretty good idea of what Cartwright Street is like, and you also know that this is your version of Cartwright Street so it doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the real-world version. It can be anything.

Anything at all. 

It may happen that, thanks to decisions made about the Dark Side of the Shop, you already have an idea of what the Dark Side of the Neighborhood looks like. Or at least, an idea of what part of it looks like. Fine. You can expand on that. 

For instance, there's the Dark Side Gang Activity (Cartridge Street).and The Gun public house on the corner. It stands to reason that The Gun is a part of the Dark Side of the Neighborhood. It makes sense to expand on that. 

There's also those quarry pits next door. A few children drown in the pools there in the 1920s. It must have been a desolate, forbidding place. Those pools of water, deceptively deep, freezing cold. Nobody around to hear anything, see anything. If I were the Rough Lads operating out of the Gun and wanted somewhere to hide, say, a body, this would be the place I'd come. 

Added to all that are the Rumors. These are mentioned in the main book; they're clues which may lead to a resource, an item, or something else that the Hounds are interested in. One of these ought to be on the list. After all, the East End is bigger than Cartwright Street. The Hounds ought to have a reason to leave the shop and explore the world around them.

All that said:

The Neighborhood (Bare Bones)

Immediate area: Residential, with Industrial nearby (disused gravel pits).

Wider Area: Mix of industrial and commercial with some residential, mostly low-end. Dock work is one of the main economic drivers. Industries tend to be noxious, poisonous, and not conducive to healthy living. This is reflected in the general health of the people who live and work here. Slum clearance is a government priority, resisted by those who want to keep their homes.

Local Landmarks (Cartwright Street): The Gun public house. The Gravel Pits opposite the shop. The Majestic Music Hall, at the far end of the street. Bomb Damage caused by zeppelin raids, Great War, various buildings up and down the street.

Local Landmarks (East End/Whitechapel): The Crown and Dolphin, where the skull of Ratcliffe Murderer John Williams is kept; Bow Cemetery aka The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery; Execution Dock in Wapping, last used a century ago; Whitechapel Gallery, a public art gallery opened 1901; St George in the East Church; Traitor's Gate, a water gate in the Tower.

In-game, as Keeper, you'd have more information on all of these. However, this is all the information the players get - for now. 

As with any part of the Building, the players decide which parts they want to interact with. If they show no interest in the Gun, say, then the Four Things you have on file will never see use at the table. That's why you don't put a ton of work into any aspect of the Building; it may never pay off. But you need to know enough so that, if the players show interest, you can come back to it later and build on that foundation.

Some of this may see use in a background moment but never be developed. That public art gallery in Whitechapel, for example, might get used in a scene where the players meet an important NPC for the first time. The Gun is bound to be used in a couple throwaway moments involving Rough Lads. So you, as Keeper, need to know that these things exist and can be used for moments like this.

Sometimes things exist just for style points. Traitor's Gate is the obvious standout. There's little chance the Hounds will spend a lot of time hanging around Traitor's Gate. There's even a novel by Edgar Wallace with that title which might see more use, in a game about books and book-buying, than the actual Gate itself. It's unlikely to ever become an important part of the campaign and probably isn't even a big tourist attraction, in the 1930s. But it's undeniably British, undeniably London, If ever you were to put together a montage of London Stuff as some kind of video introduction to the setting, it would be part of that montage. Along with some grimy back alley, a Tube Station, the Shop, and probably an auction in some otherwise unremarkable back room, with peculiar looking bidders all in a sweat over some grimoire or other.

Besides, you never know; the Hounds might fall in love with the Gate as a location, perhaps for Magickal reasons. It's always handy to have a kind of Portentous Location in your pocket. Execution Dock down in Wapping has a similar function. There isn't even anything there to look at, not in the 1930s, but the aura, the vibe, the Magickal potential is crucial in a supernatural/horror game.

There are going to be some things you prep about the Neighborhood that will not be given to the players in advance. Example: the area is a mix of residential and industrial. It stands to reason that, at some point, the Hounds will visit someone's house, someone's business. You may not even have a scene prepped for that moment, but the players decided, and you had to Yes, And. You need to have at least a sketch idea of what someone's house looks like, someone's business. Equally, the police are bound to be involved in your game at some point. Criminals too. You need a rough idea what the inside of a police station looks like, what the criminals' hideout looks like. You may never need to know this in play. But, if you don't sketch something in, it's dollars to doughnuts it will come up at the worst possible time and you won't know what to do. Better to have at least a sketch outline handy.

All that said, let's add the Dark Side.

The Neighborhood (Dark Side)

The Gun (Public House, Cartwright Street) Local Rough Lads use this as an unofficial base of operations but anyone with a sense of History or The Knowledge knows that this pub has had a bad reputation for over a century. The landlord, Henry Crowther, is a fence of stolen goods and was, in his day, a backer of prizefighters. One of the prizefighters he backed, Dan 'Lightning' Jones, is the pub's security and doorman. In any scene involving The Gun, at least 1D6 Rough Lads are on hand. Some of the area's best Forgers pay Crowther tribute and can be found at the Gun by those who need Forgers. If anyone needs a body hidden Crowther can take care of it - for a price. Dark Side Pool: 2

 [What is that pool, I hear you ask? Simple. It's a Pool from which I can draw Stability Affects. Stabiliy can be affected by, say, witnessing violence or being attacked by someone intending to do serious harm. This Pool means that, in any interaction involving the Gun, I have the option of drawing on that Pool to create affects which might cause a Stability check. Not a large one; after all, at the Gun, human opponents are the most likely.]

Gravel Pits (Industrial Waste Site, Cartwright Street) Back when this was still a working site piles of spoil and rubble ended up here, and huge holes were dug. Nobody's used this in a long time but nobody's paid it any attention either. There are rats as big as cats out here; in fact, cats stay far away. On a lonely moonlit night the moonbeams playing on the still waters of the pools in the pits is almost beautiful. On any other night it is a forbidding spot. Rough Lads sometimes come here on their own business, and children make it their playground during the day. Who knows what's hidden out here? Dark Side Pool: 3. Potential Magick: 1

[See Supernatural Creature at a distance is a potential 3 point check and it makes sense that something like that might happen here. Ghosts of dead children, rat things, possibly ghouls ...  Also, Magick is a resource in the game that sorcerers can draw on. Usually it's part of a magician's personal pool but, this being Bookhounds, one of the central conceits of the premise is that Megapolisomancy, the magic of the city, is a thing. It makes sense that parts of the city can be drawn on to create magical levers, or magical affects. Thus in any scene involving this location there's 1 pool of Magick which can be drawn on, by those who know how.] 

Bomb Damage (Zeppelin Raids, various locations) This reminder of past sufferings marks several buildings in the area. Some wear the marks as a badge of honor but there's something not quite right about the places where the bombs landed. Something hideous, like a wound which never heals and oozes blood. You've seen some very peculiar people fetishize these marks, some of whom you know to be magical practitioners. It's not clear what it all means, but it can't be anything good. Dark Side Pool: 4. Potential Magick: 1

[This is something which can be tied directly to Rome, if the characters taken an interest. Even if they ignore this potential plot point, since the Damage is on several buildings in the East End you can have them pop up in different scenes at different times. It's not like, say, The Gun, which can only be found at a particular point on Cartwright Street. The Damage can be anywhere. There were raids up to 1917 and it's quite likely that witnesses to those raids are still alive and living nearby, so if the Hounds want to start using those social skills now's the time to do it. As Keeper, you can invent a raid rather than use a historic one, but it's your shout.]

The Majestic Music Hall (East End) This home to variety acts of all kinds has been here since forever ago, in one form or another. Those with the Knowledge say they used to bait bears and host plays at the tavern that was here, back when Elizabeth was on the throne. The theatre that stands here now was built in 1859 and has hosted pretty much every famous name you can think of. There was a nasty fire back in the 1880s and several deaths, but the place recovered - some would say, thrived - and even the advent of cinema hasn't quite killed it off. It looks a little moth-eaten these days and there are all sorts of unsavory rumors, but you could say that about so many places ... Dark Side Pool: 6, Potential Mythos Encounter (Yellow King related), Potential Grimoire (Yellow King); Potential Magick 2

[It's always handy to have at least one location in your pocket which can turn into a mini scenario at the drop of a hat. You never know when you may need to drop that hat. Sometimes the campaign doesn't go according to plan and you need a distraction for the players while you reorient yourself. Or sometimes you haven't prepped anything and need an emergency backup. That's what locations like the Majestic are for. I see it as a kind of puppeteer location where you can introduce a potential adversary, or as a kind of abandoned tomb (ish) which can be looted by the greedy. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!
  

Henry Virkula of Minnesota

I had something else planned but, given events, I thought it would be useful to bring Henry Virkula to your attention.

LIQUOR GUARDS KILL A MINNESOTA MAN; Merchant Was Driving Home With Family in Automobile Near the International Border. [NYT June 1929]

INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn., June 2.—Henry Virkula, a 41- year-old merchant of Big Falls, Minn., was shot and killed by border patrolmen near here last night while riding home in an automobile with his wife and two children.

The merchant failed to stop, at the command of the patrolmen, who were assigned to liquor smuggling duty.

Virkula, a family man and well-known community leader, had taken his wife Selma and children, Bernice Elaine (8) and Marice Alice (10) on a jaunt. They were to spend a week on holiday in a cottage at Lake Kabetocama in Canada. The Virkulas headed up in their Packard tourer to see the place and make final arrangements. This was an age before phone lines, never mind the internet; arrangements of this kind had to be done face to face, and the Virkulas decided to make a virtue of a necessity. They returned home because Selma had a ton of laundry to do before they started their vacation.

They were on their way home when the Customs agents, E. J. White and E. V. Servine, intercepted Virkula's vehicle. It was a lonely road; a nearby farm was the closest habitation, and the farmer became witness to the shooting.

The agents challenged Virkula shortly before midnight, while his daughters were asleep in the back of the car. The stop took place close to the Canadian border, at Little Fork, near a spot where liquor smugglers were known to cross into the United States. It was about 15 miles south of the border.

When Virkula failed to stop immediately on being challenged, the agents opened fire. They used shotguns. Servine shot to incapacitate the car, while White aimed higher. Virkula's car was peppered with shot, and one of White's rounds took the back of Virkula's head off. 

According to Virkula's wife, the car travelled less than a car length between the time of the challenge and the first shot being fired. 

Emmet J. White was a little over a month on the job at the time of the shooting, having joined the service on 1 May. He went to trial for the killing a year later, in February 1930.

THERE was nothing in the least facetious or insincere in the prophecies that have appeared in these pages  [the Houston Gargoyle] more than once to the effect that the attempt to impose upon a free people such an unpopular and unwise law as Prohibition, especially in its Volsteadian form, might eventually result in armed rebellion, and it would not require many more "incidents" of the kind we are talking about to prove us correct. Let a few more Virkulas be slain in such cowardly and unjust fashion, particularly if on the next occasions a miracle does not save the wives and children, and consider the possible consequences. Angry reprisals by the citizens of the affected community are countered by the government with an attempt to seize and punish those who had taken vengeance on its officers, and that in turn results in an even greater flare-up of popular indignation against "oppression" It might be necessary to send troops to quell the disturbance, when the disturbance might spread, bringing neighboring communities to the aid of the original one, until the startling picture might confront us of an entire state up in arms against the federal government. 

Accounts vary as to what White said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. At trial, it was alleged that he said to Virkula's wife, 'Don't cry, lady; I didn't mean to do that.' Other versions include 'I have a wife and children and it makes me feel bad' and 'I done my duty.'

Virkula's wife Selma testified that Virkula was hard of hearing and didn't have his glasses on when the agents challenged him.

White was acquitted of the killing.

The Atlanta Constitution has a portion of the testimony given by White's partner Servine, as follows:

The officers had received orders to shoot at cars that failed to stop at their command. 

Q. Are these orders printed? 

A. I don't know. 

Q. Where did you get your orders?

A. I never received them. Other Patrolmen Got Verbal Orders. 

Q. The firing of a gun at an automobile is a matter assumed by the patrolmen themselves?

 A. The other patrolmen have received these verbal orders. 

Q. Would you give an instance? 

A. Both the new men, White and Ammerman, have received them, 

Q. From whom? 

A. Deputy Collector of Customs N. A. Linderberg. 

Q. Have you ever carried a gun in connection with your patrol work? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Would it be your opinion that in cases similar to this you would be justified in shooting at the car? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Are you trained in the use of firearms in connection with your work? 

A. One of the regulations of the service is that men shall have six months' experience in a combat unit of the army or experience in police work, or as a sheriff, Texas Rangers, or State Constabulary of Pennsylvania.

Q. Are the officers of your department instructed relative to methods of shooting. at a car? 

A. Yes. 

Q. What are the general instructions given you? 

A. A car refusing to stop when the signal is given, we are to shoot with an effort to dismantle the car, the tires, gas tank, or radiator, We are authorized to shoot to injure a person in case he is attempting to injure us, if we assume he is trying to injure us. 

Q. Was any injury attempted by Virkkula? 

A. Well, he attempted to run over us, at least I interpret it that way.

I did a quick Google for Emmet White, Minnesota and found this photograph. I do not know if it is the same Emmet White. Judging by the photo White was working for Ewart's Golden Guernsey, a popular Minnesota dairy. Judging by the comments he did so for most of his adult life.

The Prohibition Bureau received little, if any, firearms training. It was assumed that those brought on board already had sufficient knowledge of firearms to be issued armament. 

It was the first Federal agency to ever carry guns and have arrest powers, as well as the power to search and seize. The FBI - then known as the Bureau of Investigation, and the senior service by twelve years - did not initially have arrest powers. Their role was to Investigate, not police. Nor was there a standard armament policy. BOI agents appear to have been allowed to use their own judgement when it came to weapons. Until 1934, when the BOI adopted its official policy. It's been said that this was a deliberate strategy by J. Edgar Hoover, to avoid any public comparison between his BOI and the Prohibition Bureau.

The Prohibition Bureau's weakness for gunplay became its besetting sin. It was known as a shoot first and ask questions later agency. According to historian John Kobler the Bureau admitted to killing 137 persons but were probably responsible for well over a thousand deaths, and the total does not include those wounded or otherwise injured as nobody at the time bothered to keep count. 

After Prohibition's end the Bureau became the genesis for what is now the ATF. It's my understanding that no official record of the Bureau's activity exists, and that the Bureau's records were ordered destroyed a little over a decade after the end of Prohibition.  

Speaking as someone with an interest in history, I've often wondered why nobody's ever tried to write a history of the Bureau. The closest we have is a book published in 1929, which I've read, but nothing subsequent to that. Nor, to my knowledge, has any historian explored the career of Wayne Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League, which is remarkable given the influence it had over the government and presidency of the United States. It literally drove the United States government to adopt and keep a policy which was incredibly unpopular and, despite all evidence of its failure, kept the experiment going for over a decade.

Over a decade of federal bloodshed.

The Dark Side of the Shop (RPG All, Bookhounds, Campaign Design)

Hello! Happy New Year!

I'm going to start the year off by noodling with some campaign design notions and I thought I'd start with the Shop. 

I'm using Bookhounds as the primary example, but this concept can be used in any RPG setting where the characters have a home base of some description. It might be a clubhouse. It might be the police precinct they all work at. It might be a railway carriage on the Orient Express, speeding through the night, but whatever it is, it's home to the characters. It's the place they retreat to, the place they store stuff, the place they go to when they want to make plans or brainstorm their way to success. 

It's Home.

It has its dark side. 

In a previous post on campaign design I said:

Let's say you intend to start with a small shop at the edge of the City, in the East End but trying to pretend it isn't East End, not really. Nobody drops their haitches in this establishment. You'd want to leave a fair amount of shop design up to the players but that doesn't mean you leave everything else alone. What's on the same street? Who's the main rival? What's the trade like? Is there a secret hidden under the floorboards or up in the attic? Do the drains work and, if not, what makes up the fatberg that's blocking them?

I'm going to use this East End shop as an example, and this is where we start talking about secrets hidden under floorboards and blocked drains.

The home base is something I expect the players to help design. Each person at the table should contribute at least one thing. Think of it like an ideas potluck. That means, among other things, that you can never be sure what will be in the home base. Which suggests that the dark side, whatever it ends up being, will start life disconnected from the home base's main concepts. After all, you can't establish links to something that just doesn't exist yet. 

No, But what you can do is make sure that the dark side you design remains true to Rome and the basic principles of the setting, whatever those may be. That way, you can retro-engineer your Dark Side to fit whatever ideas the players come up with. 

I mention the basic principles of the setting because it's important to remember that all settings have their quirks. We're using Bookhounds as an example. That means we're talking about shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. It's a completely different vibe to, say, Night's Black Agents, or Cyberpunk. Even if your NBA game is still set in London - at the Bull, for instance - it's a very different vibe from a Bookhounds London. A Cyberpunk campaign can still begin in London - it can even begin at the Bull - and yet be totally different from both Bookhounds and Night's Black Agents. This will determine the basic principles of the setting, which you need to establish in the opening arc of the campaign.

OK. In this example it's Bookhounds, which means basic principles are shops, trade, auctions, customers, London. We're using the East End as a location, which in the main book is the Abyss:

Since mediaeval times, the East End has been where London put its blood, its stenches, and its death: tanneries, slaughterhouses, and fulling-yards. The docks and canals brought steady work, along with injury and ague; the ships brought crowds of foreign sailors and workmen, and crowds of British whores and thieves. Gin-houses and music-halls sprang up, as did radical politics and dissenting cults. Homes were small and streets were narrow even in Elizabethan times; with factories, gasworks, and workhouses rising in the Victorian era, things got even worse. The East End became “the Abyss.”

Further, we already know that this shop is near the divide between the East End and the City, and that it's trying to pretend to greater status than it deserves. All these things feed into basic principles, which will help you design the dark side. 

That being established, we're probably looking at something in East Smithfield near St. Katherine's Docks. Something like Tower Ward, or near as dammit to it. In fact, we're looking at Stepney, within spitting distance of Whitechapel. 

Ahh, Already I can see plot beginning to form. 

A quick look at the vicinity and at St Katherine's tells me it was ridden with plague back in the day, that thanks to its connection with the wharves and trade there's all kinds of overseas influences, immigration, new ideas, and that the construction of the Docks back in the early 19th century destroyed a historic part of London and forced a lot of people to move on.

Sometimes the plot fairy just hits you over the head with a great big stick.

OK, pick a street. Any street, really. Somewhere in Stepney not far from the Docks. Roundabout the border of Whitechapel South and St George in the East South.  That's where the shop is. As Keeper you could invent a street and that would be fine. God knows London has created and lost many little alleys, avenues, Mews and Courts over the years. However, it can also be handy to use a pre-existing location since that location will have a history and sometimes that can be useful for plot purposes.

Cartwright Street is right opposite Swan Lane Open Space, which in the 1920s was a disused gravel pit. Formerly Churchyard Alley, apparently. Or Cartridge Street in Rosemary Lane, presumably depending on which end of Cartwright you were standing in. The whole shebang gets reorganized in the later 1800s when London rebuilds to benefit industry and put up housing for workers. Cartwright sounds much nicer than Churchyard or Cartridge, which presumably is why someone picked it. But with all this stewing it sounds like the perfect place for the shop. Cartwright, aka Cartridge, with the gravel pits just opposite. Disused, of course. Filled with water, in some places. 

The plot fairy's stick, again.

OK, that's more than enough to be getting on with. Let's Dark Side this.

The Shop (Bare Bones)

Location: Cartwright Street, aka Cartridge Street, Stepney, East End, near Whitechapel.

Immediate area: Residential, with Industrial nearby (disused gravel pits).

Age of Building: Georgian (George III) built c 1800 as the town house of a well-to-do merchant. Somehow avoided being knocked down in the 1880s. Used as a boarding house from c. 1870 until 1908, when it fell derelict. The Hounds bought it cheap. 

Style of Building: 3 storey residential, with cellars and attic. 

This is all information the players should be given immediately. They will be expected to add to the bare bones. Name the shop. All that sort of thing. But they need something to build their hopes and dreams on. 

If you really wanted to add to the bare bones, you could include a sketch plan of the town house. I'm bad at drawing, so I shan't be doing that. At best, I'd steal something from the internet. As far as internal walls and rearrangements go, I'd keep them where they are and let the players decide which room gets used for what.

The next bit is something the Hounds don't know about their new home. It's the Dark Side of the building. 

Now, there's a temptation to make the Dark Side all Mythos and supernatural. This is a horror game, after all. I'd resist that temptation. The supernatural ought to be rare, unusual, out of the ordinary. That's what makes it interesting. If it becomes ordinary or, worse yet, mundane, that's a problem for the game as a whole. 

The Shop (Dark Side)

Bad Reputation (Murder). In the early 1900s the boarding house which is now the shop was the site of a grisly murder, which gave the place a bad reputation. This is why the boarding house eventually shut its doors in 1908. Some of the older residents in the area still remember the killing, and the story has only grown in the telling. Details of the killing can be left up to the players. Treat this as a 2-point pool Bad Reputation, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts Credit Rating or similar spends.

Gang Activity (Cartridge Street). Originally called Cartridge Street because of the gun manufacturing industries in the area, it's now called that because of the Rough Lads that hang around causing trouble. They mostly gather at The Gun public house on the corner, but at any time their actions can impact the shop. Treat as a 3-point pool Rough Lads, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that impacts the shop or its customers as they come and go.

Unpleasant Smells (cellars). There's something down there that stinks to high heaven. It isn't always evident. You can go for days, weeks, and not notice a thing. Then it creeps into your nose and will not go away. It's especially strong in the summer months, when sometimes the smell hangs round for days, even weeks. Treat as a 1-point pool Stink, which can be invoked by the Keeper at any time to create an effect that causes a Financial Reverse or prevents a Windfall.

Plague Pits (cellars, Mythos). Before the town house was built this was, during the time of the Great Plague, a spot where many of the dead were quickly buried. In the early 1700s it became notorious as a 'damned spot inhabited by the lost and Satan's servants' and in 1752 there was an exorcism that supposedly put an end to whatever it was that was troubling the place. When the town house was built, steps were taken to ensure that 'the holy place' was kept intact, marked with a magical symbol that Mythos experts know to be an Elder Sign. All this can be found with the appropriate Investigative spends, looking at old records or documents associated with the house. However, at some point since then the Sign was damaged, which is why, among other things, there is the Unpleasant Smell. There's just enough juice left in the damaged Sign to prevent the worst from happening, but if something should make the damage worse, well ... 

Now, of those four things, three can be dealt with. The Hounds can come up with clever ways to reduce the 2-point Bad Reputation pool, or the 3-point Rough Lads pool. That provides conflict and conflict breeds plot.

The Unpleasant Smell is more difficult and the Hounds will probably try various means to get past it. However, the effect can be nullified by point spends, if the Hounds prefer to ignore the problem.

That last one, though? That's a scenario's worth of adventure, right there. Waiting to be discovered.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Last of 2025 - A Witch's Ride

Well, it's been twelve months. 

Boy howdy.

Anyhow, I'm going to take the weekends up to the New Year off, so be aware: no post next weekend. Service resumes in 2026.

I'm giving serious consideration to going to the Chaosium event in May 2026, in the UK, so if anyone wants to be the tipping point and persuade me to attend now's the time to say.

A brief story snippet based on an item found in Funk & Wagnall's Folklore: the Gandreið, aka witch's ride, which in some versions of the tradition took place at the Epiphany. Briefly, this is a feast of the dead which, if the dead attend in great numbers, signifies good fortune in the year to come. 

It can be customary to remove Christmas decorations at the Ephiphany; at the Museum of the Home in London it was customary to have a public event for exactly this purpose, though I don't know if they still do it. I liked to attend, when I was living in London. The cards, wreaths and other decorations, which would be this point be looking a little ragged, are taken out and burnt. The ceremony is accompanied by singing and festive drinking. At the Museum, of course, they didn't burn the actual decorations - those are historic - but there was a mimicry that did the same thing round an open outdoor fire.

This Bookhounds short assumes that the shop had Christmas decorations on display and are now getting rid of them, at the Epiphany. Whether or not they have a full ceremonial fire or just sweep everything in the bin on Twelfth Night is up to the players.

The Gandreið

It's an especially cold and breezy Twelfth Night this year. All the news is full of it, and people joke about another Frost Fair. A little nervously, perhaps, but they still joke. The last time the Thames froze over was over a hundred years ago, but this year seems destined to be a record-breaker so who knows? Perhaps this will be the year the Thames freezes. 

Most of the shop's regulars are out of London. The well-heeled ones are enjoying comfortable Christmases in the country, or abroad. The less fortunate are huddled at home, not wanting to risk frostbite even for a first edition. Most, bar a few die-hards, and Eliza Gatewell, who either doesn't feel the cold or doesn't let it bother her. 

Eliza is convinced there's a copy of an 1835 first edition (German, naturally) of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie out there, and she wants it. Wants it so badly she can taste it. This is the book that, among other things, first described the witches' ride - the Gandreið. Eliza has a bit of a reputation for witchery herself; perhaps deserved, perhaps not. Perhaps that's why she wants it.

The Hounds have heard rumors of a private collection about to go up for sale which may have the elusive volume. A Bright Young Thing in need of readies to fund her Christmas drinking is dying to liquidate her late uncle's stash. The collection is in Belgravia, Westminster, as is the Bright Young Thing - temporarily, anyway, until she can clear the place and relocate somewhere a little less stuffy. The Bright Young Thing might be approachable; her Cleaner is supposed to be bribable, if the Hounds prefer a different approach. 

The question is, does the collection include Grimm's work and, if it does, can it be had for a bargain?

Option One: Bright Lights The Bright Young Thing, Melody, has her own witchery ambitions. She doesn't mind selling Grimm's work but she wants to know who she's selling to, and Eliza is keen that her name not be associated with the purchase. Melody has her own means of finding out secrets and if the Hounds aren't careful she'll find out who the buyer is. That could go poorly for Eliza; Melody and her Nightgaunt allies could come calling on Epiphany. Melody doesn't mind a good deal, but she shan't tolerate a witch rival.

Option Two: Twelfth Night. The Bright Young Thing is clueless as to the book's true value. Eliza could pick the thing up for a mere nothing. However, the cleaner, Mrs. Karswell, worked all her life for that miserly uncle and all she got out of it was a small legacy. Mrs. Karswell was hoping to liquidate the uncle's collection herself, or at least the best bits of it. After all, the Bright Young Thing's clueless as to the true value of the collection, or even what's in it. This would be the easiest fraud ever, were it not for the Hounds and their client. Now Mrs. Karswell and her Rough Lad friends need to tread carefully and snatch the thing before the sale, or that pretty little Christmas bonus she was counting on will vanish like a witch's promise.

Option Three: The Gandreið. The dead uncle isn't as dead as he's supposed to be. In fact, the old fellow, a longtime amateur practitioner of witchcraft, became a Ghoul, aided and abetted in the deception by his devoted servant Mrs. Karswell. The uncle, Stephen Norwich, expected to be able to carry on as before, only with a little more subterfuge, after his ghoulish transformation. He wasn't expecting to be declared dead by a rapacious niece, nor was he expecting his collection to be sold off to pay for the niece's Christmas hullaballoo. Now he wants his books back, and he doesn't much care how he does it. He'll need new digs, too; his Belgravia apartments are off limits. Perhaps he can kill two birds with one stone and occupy the Hounds' shop? New management, that's the ticket. After all, reasons Norwich, even if my bank account's been pilfered by relatives and my apartment's being lived in by a regrettably high-profile Bright Young Thing who can't be murdered quietly, I still have Magick on my side, as well as a ghoul's appetite. What Hound could resist a little light extortion? Especially at Christmas?

That's it for this year! Enjoy!   

Christmas Clippings (Bookhounds of London)

 

Extra History

Big fan of that channel. Loved it ever since the Extra Credits early days at the Escapist.

This week's post is inspired be the bit at about 6.50 in, where the conversation turns to clippings from magazines preserved by eager children. 

The magazines would have been 1850-60ish. Fast forward about 70 years and those children are in their dotage, fondly remembering Christmas Past and looking forward, with some uncertainty, to Christmas Future. Probably very near future, in some cases.

Lest Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

There's a sudden uptick in demand for magazines published c. 1850-ish. Heavy on the ish. The magazines need to be in pristine condition to get the real money, but there's a demand even for the indifferent stuff. Given that the magazines in question weren't made to last, indifferent is the standard rather than the exception. 

The Hounds soon discover that this demand comes from the four grandchildren of Oliver Packer, a noted occultist and enquirer into the uncanny. The Hounds may even have relied on Oliver's expertise from time to time. While he doesn't go on adventures anymore, (not with his lumbago), in his day he was quite the active rogue. 

Technicolor: Oliver spent several seasons exploring Egypt's mysteries and his house is practically a museum, filled with peculiar antiquities.

 

Arabesque: Oliver is (and was) an explorer of the ghostly byways of old London and knows more about the hidden side of the city than any two other people.

Sordid: It's said Oliver bargained for his longevity with hideous creatures that dwell beneath the Thames, making who knows what kind of sacrifice.

The grandchildren, Thomas, Alice, Quentin and Prunella (aka the Prune), are jockeying for position. Each of them thinks they might be the one to inherit Oliver's fortune and are sucking up to the old boy. One of them hit on the idea of presenting him with a collection of his favorite magazines from his childhood, and are using an old bound collection of Christmas clippings as a means of identifying the magazines he read as a child. Once one of them had the idea the other three copied it, and now they're all chasing after Oliver's past in hope of presenting him with the perfect Christmas present. 

However, while they can identify most of the magazines (and have bought up reams of the stuff) the one thing they can't identify is something called the Barchester Sampler, apparently published between 1848 and 1853. The illustrations purloined from the Sampler are among the most evocative, and the grandchildren are keen to complete the set. Can the Hounds help?

Option One: Barchester Bull. There's no such town as Barchester. It's a creation of Anthony Trollope, who used it in his Chronicles. However, what the grandchildren don't realize is that Oliver's father, Roger, was an amateur artist and printer who created the fictional Sampler for his son. Oliver, who is no fool, knows full well what his grandchildren are up to, and encourages this snipe hunt as a means of teaching them a lesson. However, there are plenty of unscrupulous people out there - possibly including the Hounds - willing to forge a magazine or two if it will get them easy money.

Option Two: Barchester Dreams. While Trollope created Barchester, young Oliver extended it. In his youth he was a Dreamer and made regular forages into the imaginary landscape of England, including Barchester. Oliver brought back the magazine scraps in his wanderings. Oliver has been trapped on the mortal side of the Gate of Dreams for some time, thanks to a ward put up by his enemies in Dreamland. However, if someone else can make the trip across the veil they might be able to bring back a complete set of the Sampler. Or even get Oliver back into Dreamland again ...

Option Three: Barchester Nightmares. There is no such place as Barchester. Not unless you're prepared to make certain sacrifices while travelling in Somerset, where Trollope drew much of his inspiration. Oliver learned the trick years ago; it was one of the first magickal rituals he created, in his younger days when he was full of vinegar and willing to take all sorts of chances. Oliver learned it was possible to cross from mortal realm to fictional one, but the fictional world isn't the kind of place you want to spend a lot of time in. Shadows gather there. Things which ought not be hide between the pages. Oliver soon abandoned this particular ritual but it can be recreated, by someone reckless and willing to try any kind of blasphemy. It will be even easier if they have that bound volume of Christmas clippings ...  

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Drunken Zoogs (Bookhounds/Trail of Cthulhu)

 

Sourced from NBC News

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 ... 

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Ethyl and Methyl (Trail of Cthulhu)

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. 

Taken from Wikipedia: 

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. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!