This is going to be my last post for the year. Happy holidays to all, and I hope you have a great New Year!
Let's talk Christmas in New England, that jolly time of year when eating a mince pie can get your ears cut off.
When the Puritans settled in New England they brought their customs with them, and being a joyless bunch of asshats one of their most beloved customs was a hatred of all things cheerful. That included Christmas. The holiday season was a complete anathema to those stern Yankees, so much so that in 1647 laws were passed to ensure nobody kept Christmas, or any saint's day, and certainly didn't make mince pies, attend Christmas masques or dramas, dance, or play any musical instrument. Decoration was also banned, which meant no holly or mistletoe; that might encourage kissing, God forbid!
The first Puritans arranged things as they liked, but were constantly threatened by those among them who weren't Puritans and who enjoyed festive cheer. One such was Thomas Morton, who was caught by Miles Standish having a good time in his own home, and promptly banished from Plymouth Colony.
Thomas Morton was playing the Lord of Misrule, which was a particular grievance to good Puritans. The Lord of Misrule was a traditional Yule figure in English folklore, now not often seen in its Christmas role. Each year the Lord, usually a peasant or of low birth, would be appointed and go around the neighborhood dressed in green and orange, with bells at his ankles, dancing with his celebrants, leading the crowd in games and singing. The band would make a nuisance of themselves until given money, at which point they'd go off and find some other householder to torment. Often the merry pranksters would invade the church and interrupt the solstice sermon, which is why the Puritans so disliked the Lord. The tradition may have come from the Roman Saturnalia, but its origins are obscure, and in any case people usually don't need much excuse to get drunk and go round in a group making a nuisance of themselves. The 'getting drunk' part of the ceremony encourages any kind of bad behavior.
Being Puritans, the colonists' treatment of those caught in the act were severe. Morton was lucky to get away with banishment; cash fines, time in the stocks, branding, or having your ears or nose cut off were typical punishments. This was all intended to bring people to Salvation, for on the Day of Doom the Lord would judge impartial, but stern, and woe betide the sinners who passed on Christ's left hand side.
This worked so long as the colonies were made up entirely, or at least in the majority, of Puritans. However as time went by more Catholics, Episcopalians and Universalists arrived in New England, and public opinion changed. By 1681 the laws banning Christmas were repealed. It took time for people to become used to the idea - a small entertainment, called 'educational', here, a modest party there - but over time even the Puritans came to accept some Christmas frivolity.
However even after the law was repealed good Puritans, of whom there were many, treated Christmas like any other day. They did not close their shops or schools; as far as they were concerned, Christmas was a day of work, not play. It wasn't until 1797 that a churchman felt safe enough to call for a celebration of the holiday, and up to the 1870s schools kept on teaching right through the holiday period. It wasn't until after the Civil War, when Christmas became a Federal holiday, that New England really embraced Christmas. By that point the season was becoming commercialized; a time to work so you can buy and give presents, not to play games or dance around with bells on your ankles.
Now, to gamify:
Crack Nouts and Cry Yule
The Hook
The weather this Christmas is particularly harsh, and Arkhamites nervously joke about a return of the great 1921 ice storm that blanketed the town and nearly froze the Miskatonic. People don't hang around on the streets after dark; they hurry home, where there's warmth and cheer.
There's a story going round that a gang of carol singers are making a nuisance of themselves in East-town, the seedy and decaying residential section once so beloved of Arkham's upper class. Rumor has it that they use the singing as a distraction to burgle the houses they visit, and there have been several letters to the paper about it. Where are the police, they ask, and why can't more be done to stop these thieves?
However those with History, Occult or possibly Library Use notice a pattern. The lead figure of these criminal characters is dressed as the Lord of Misrule. The Lord never removes his mask or participates in the thievery, but it's clear from the accounts of those who've seen him that the Lord is the most menacing of the group. The attacks seem to radiate out in a circle from a central point: the First Unitarian Church of Arkham, on Federal Street. Further, every location where the carolers have been is visited by another mysterious figure with a much more violent MO. This character, whoever he is, attacks and brutally injures people outside after dark. Four attacks have been recorded, and in each case the victim lost extremities - noses, ears, always due to frostbite. Those who go into this further notice that, according to the hospitals and doctors (Charm, with a bonus die for those with Medicine above base), six people with that kind of injury have been treated by local hospitals or doctors.
The Awful Truth
The Minister of First Unitarian, Doctor Spencer, recently hired a professional archivist, Norton Deane, to help bring the church archive into some kind of order. This was more a question of charity than need; poor Norton recently had a great shock that required a stay in a sanitarium, and this job was meant to put him back on his feet.
Unfortunately for Deane some of the earlier documents in the archive, related to early Christmas traditions in Arkham, contained Mythos knowledge. The revelations Deane encountered, in his weakened mental state, drove him over the edge. He became the Lord of Misrule, visiting nearby houses to spread Christmas insanity.
His first two visits were solo affairs, as the investigators will discover if they talk to newspaper reporters or cops. However a bunch of criminals joined in, seeing an opportunity. These might be young Arkham hoods (the Finns, the Rocks), or more experienced bottom-feeders. Deane doesn't object to them following in his wake, so long as they dance and sing. He insists on that, and they're too frightened of him to object. The level of violence has increased since they joined in, but the Lord of Misrule doesn't mind that; violence is part of Christmas.
However something else has joined in the celebration. Icy Cold Ones are closing in on the Lord of Misrule, determined to put an end to him. They wouldn't be able to do it without the freezing weather, but so long as ice storms threaten they can roam the streets at night. The Mythos texts that Deane found draw these Cold Ones in, so they too congregate around or near First Unitarian. The church at night is a very hazardous place to be.
The two injured men who aren't part of the official tally are part of the gang of crooks that follow Deane, and if they're interrogated they can tell the investigators about the Cold One attacks and the Lord of Misrule.
Defeating the Lord of Misrule, or burning the Mythos texts, drives off the Cold Ones and end the threat.
There is a time limit on this. The longer the Lord of Misrule, and by extension the Cold Ones, are allowed to do their work, the more likely it is that the gathering Cold Ones will cause an ice storm more dangerous than the 1921 event. Should that happen, the weak and vulnerable of Arkham will die off, frozen to death in their own homes. Assume there is a 10% chance, cumulative, per week, that this will happen. This deadly storm causes a SAN penalty of 1/1D6+1.
Enjoy!
Sunday, 23 December 2018
Sunday, 16 December 2018
Vampire 5th Edition
I played Vampire in the 90s. I had that book with the green marble cover and the o-so-evocative red rose. My heart belonged to Wraith, but I couldn't always get players for that haunted setting. Vampire was always the more popular game, because it fed into the power fantasies that the players enjoyed.
I don't know where my old books are now. In the basement, probably. Or given away. I still have the Wraith stuff. I have a new gaming group now, and some of them remember Vampire fondly, so I picked up a copy when I was last in the UK, shortly after its general release. Ken Hite's name attached to the project lured me in. I see Neil Gaiman's in there as well, not sure where. Some of the background material, presumably.
This thing's huge, and it doesn't waste a page. Even the endpapers are covered with 50 vampire victims for the characters to snack on. Hardback, full colour, a thing of beauty. I found it difficult to read at times and I'm not sure why; I compared it to the old Wraith books and there doesn't seem to be a huge difference, except in line thickness and colour plates. The new book's thinner font may be the problem, or perhaps it's just the difference between colour and black and white. One's prettier, the other clearer.
Rules-wise, while there have been changes, seasoned veterans will soon wrap their heads round them. It's still the old d10 mechanic at core. You have a dice pool, you roll your pool against a target number, the more times you make or exceed the target number the more spectacularly you succeed. Botches and critical successes are possible. There's more to it than that, but if you can understand that base concept you're laughing.
The old game had backgrounds, blood-powered Disciplines, and so does this. It's all basically the same as before. There's just a lot more than there used to be. This wealth of information is bound to be intimidating to neophyte and veteran with poor memory alike, so be prepared for lots of hand-holding if you're the Storyguide. For that matter, if you are the Storyguide, read the main book at least six times. You'll thank me later.
Is this a horror game? Yes. In fact that may be its greatest weakness, because the original wasn't.
Back in the before times, Vampire aspired to be Gothic with two Gs and extra Vathek. Yes, you played Vampires, tragic figures cursed with a lust for … something, it's on the tip of my tongue. Gaze not into the abyss, lest it steal your credit card information and run up a whopping bill on Amazon. Play pretty people power gamers controlling things behind the scenes.
But horror? Nooo, never heard of that. You must be thinking of some other Vampires.
This was a game that, more than most, was guided by its fans, and what the fans wanted was a power trip dosed with a hefty slug of Anne Rice - which, again, was pretty vampires doing Gothic things, often in a historic setting, without serious consequences for the main character. Humans? They were your toys, but in practice what this meant was you controlled things behind the scenes - local government, state, the cops, the Feds. For someone in their teens, being able to tell the Mayor of New York where to get off, or the cops to go screw, was heady stuff.
Yes, there was a Humanity mechanic, and going into Frenzy was a pain in the ass - but that could be contained, and there was always the promise of Redemption, where you went up to Nirvana on a big pink cloud so long as you filled in all the squares on your celestial Bingo card.
People, meanwhile, were handy-dandy blood tacos you consumed to power up your Bejeezus Stick. Few players gave serious thought to the mechanics of hunting, or what it might mean for the faceless, nameless prey. Humans were a means of recharging Disciplines, which you then used on the more important stuff, like Dominating the Mayor of New York.
One Hunt stands out in my memory. I thought it might be interesting to play through rather than just handwave it, and God, was that a mistake. The player hadn't the least idea what to do. It was like watching Inspector Clouseau chasing a guy in a gorilla costume round a roundabout. In the end the prey got away. The player thought I was in the wrong for making him go through it. He just wanted a good time, and this wasn't it.
The designers, poor lambs, expected people to get deeply involved in the lore, the political intrigue, the social cut-and-thrust. That was doomed from the start. You don't give a player a Bejeezus Stick and expect her not to smack some fools with it. Often quite a lot of fools.
Maybe somewhere out in Neverland where the flying fishes play there was a group that played the political game, but it soon became clear to everyone, including the designers, that what the gamers wanted was More Power, Please and Thank You. That led to a deluge of books. Camarilla, Sabbat, setting books, Clan books, more Clan books, special Sabbat Clan books, each with upgrades to the Bejeezuz Stick, till the thing resembled a nuclear powered Christmas tree with extra smiting. If you were a Gothically inclined Munchkin, this was the game for you.
I referenced the Nietzsche bit earlier about staring into the abyss. That got quoted frequently in Vampire circles; it was heady stuff for those greasy teens. It sounds good, sure. Nietzsche gives quotable stuff, but if you're a self-obsessed 15 to 23 year-old, to you, the abyss is old hat. You're already convinced you're dark and tragic, and have a poetry diary to prove it. This is the kind of thing Vampire gamers flocked to; that pop psychology 'yes, I am both interesting and tragically flawed, even doomed' reinforcement of an idea you're already convinced is the Ultimate Truth. All that, and power too - the power you didn't have in real life. Very attractive message.
This thing, though? Vampire 5th Edition? It's horror through and through, in one large package.
There's absolutely no question what you are, in this game, and it's not a tragic antihero. You are the enemy, touched with Evil, hunted, slaughtered on sight - and this is because you hunt, and slaughter. You don't run things. Your Bejeezus Stick is pretty nifty, but it won't save you if the Second Inquisition comes calling. Humanity is monitored the same way someone with life-threatening allergies checks each and every thing they come into contact with. Frenzy can be character-ending. The Hunt is real. All too real.
You're no longer the baddest man in the whole damn town, friend. You're meat, and if you want to keep on … whatever it is you're doing … you'd better get with the program.
The clearest indicator of this is the Thin-Blooded, who've come to the end of the bloodline and now know how much it sucks to be undead. The central conceit of Vampire is that, back in the days of Caine, there was a first generation of Vampires. Each generation sires another, and each generation is weaker than the last. Vampire 5E goes one step further and gives you the Vampire without a clan, because there wasn't enough of the clan left to go around. Like mules, they're sterile. Unlike their kin, they haven't the dubious comfort of a working Bejeezus Stick; since the warranty expired on their bloodline, they don't have access to the full set of Disciplines. They can fake it till they make it, eating a stronger Vampire to join an actual clan, but until then they're the lowest of the low.
All the old institutions have been destroyed. The Tremere Chantry is gone, the Nosferatu hacker network blown away. There's a new player in the game, the Second Inquisition, and it's here because Somebody, naming no names, let the Masquerade slip once too often. Now governments know what Vampires are, where they can be found, and how to kill them. As you might expect, the 'how to kill them' bit is what really fires them up. There were Hunters in the old game, Buffy-esque Scooby Gangs of civilians and witchy folk who pounded stakes into corpses on weekends. Now they're out of the picture, replaced by Langley spooks and NSA watchers with drone squadrons at their command. So don't say anything on the internet or your cell phone you don't want Uncle Sugar to hear, or you might find yourself on the wrong end of a well-equipped government sponsored kill team.
As a Vampire, you have to do some horrible things to keep going. So the game goes into detail about your style of hunting. Do you engage in Consensual vampirism? Cleave to your old mortal family, only ever drinking from your own people? Are you a Farmer, drinking only from animals, or a Bagger, taking only cold, bagged blood? Victim types, when described in the text, are precisely that - Victims. There is no romantic pretext that you're doing anything other than killing people. You might have been Compelled to do it by your lack of blood, but that's still a corpse on the ground.
Not just any faceless corpse, either. Remember those 50 Victims on the endpapers? That's Kevin, he was stuck in a dead-end job but wanted to be a poet. That's Faye, who wanted to fix the system. That's Maddie, who was trying to start her own business.
Not just any faceless corpse, either. Remember those 50 Victims on the endpapers? That's Kevin, he was stuck in a dead-end job but wanted to be a poet. That's Faye, who wanted to fix the system. That's Maddie, who was trying to start her own business.
Then consider some of the gruesome aspects of your chosen path. Cleavers feed covertly from their mortal family, which can include children. The most extreme Cleavers adopt children, marry a human, and try to maintain a family life for as long as they can [p176]. The Sandman attacks sleeping victims. The Siren feigns sex to get what he wants. Child abuse, sexual assault, stalking - it's all there, bubbling under the surface.
If what you are looking for is a horror game, then this is what you're looking for. Ken Hite's on record as saying that if it were up to me nobody would ever get to play the good vampire ever again in any medium [NBA p126] and these most definitely are not the good vampires. These are the bloodsuckers, the killers, the villains, and if that is the game you are looking for - the game where you sink as low as you can go, and then sink further - rush to your friendly local game store and buy this now.
Think very carefully about that for a second.
By now I'm sure you've heard that White Wolf no longer calls the shots for this franchise. Paradox, the parent, absorbed the White Wolf team into the company. Sections of the Camarilla book have been retconned, and by now I suspect unaltered versions of the Camarilla and Anarch .pdfs are very popular downloads on shadier parts of the internet. This is in response to a specific section of the Camarilla book, which puts vampires in effective charge of state-level butchery in Chechnya.
I've not read the Chechen section of the Camarilla book. I have read sections of it reprinted on various websites. I will say that if your RPG supplement ends up being blasted by Russian crime news sites then things have gone badly wrong. According to the author of the Chechnya bit it was an editing error more than anything else. Judging by some of the customer commentary there are certainly plenty of those.
[Side note: does nobody attribute, anymore? I've spent the last however-long trying to find out who wrote the Camarilla book. It might have been Winnie the Pooh for all I know. Nobody refers to the author by name; even the site linked above just refers to whoever it is as 'the author.' Mark Rein-Hagen and Matthew Dawkins provided 'insights and perspectives' which isn't the same as saying they wrote it, but I suppose that's as close as I'm going to get to solving that mystery. Vampire 5E has ten different people listed as writers or contributing writers, so I'm guessing that Rein-Hagen and Dawkins weren't the only two involved in Camarilla, but you'd probably have to own the book to know who the others are.
Mind you, there's no Vampire 5E author info at White Wolf or Modiphius either; for all I could prove to the contrary, Vampire 5E might have been written by that talented polymath, Fartknockers McGee. If I'd talked Neil Gaiman into writing for my RPG setting I'd be shouting that from the rooftops, even if all he did was add an extra comma to paragraph 3, page 56. The only reason I know about it is I looked at Vampire 5E's front page. Until I did that, I had idea he was involved, and I've been following the progress of this book for a while.]
In this version of the game, those greasy teens and their power fantasies wrapped up in Gothic romanticism get a nasty shock. There's no disguising what you are, not even with a handy-dandy Nietzsche tag-line. In fact, I'm not even sure Nietzsche gets name-checked in the 5E book, though my memory could be faulty. You don't have the authority you used to, and forget about Dominating the Mayor of New York, lick. Stick your head up above the parapet, and a government assassin will blow it off. The moving hand has writ, and not one word or quote from your poetry diary can lure it back to cancel even half a line. You aren't the vampire you thought you were. You're the bloodsucker of the 21st century, a thin-blooded, bottom-feeding, treacherous asshole.
Therein lies the problem.
In this version of the game, those greasy teens and their power fantasies wrapped up in Gothic romanticism get a nasty shock. There's no disguising what you are, not even with a handy-dandy Nietzsche tag-line. In fact, I'm not even sure Nietzsche gets name-checked in the 5E book, though my memory could be faulty. You don't have the authority you used to, and forget about Dominating the Mayor of New York, lick. Stick your head up above the parapet, and a government assassin will blow it off. The moving hand has writ, and not one word or quote from your poetry diary can lure it back to cancel even half a line. You aren't the vampire you thought you were. You're the bloodsucker of the 21st century, a thin-blooded, bottom-feeding, treacherous asshole.
Therein lies the problem.
Maybe the audience doesn't want a horror game where they're the monster. Romantic, doomed antihero, yes. However this time you have no redeeming features. You can pretend you have redeeming features, if you're into self-delusion. You can pretend to have a moral code.
Kevin, the wannabe poet, might challenge your world view.
If you're feeding off your family - including the kids - sneaking into people's homes at night to attack them while they sleep, tricking the gullible lovelorn into giving up all they have, there's no pretending you're anything other than evil. That's what makes this work, as horror. If horror is what you're looking for.
Like Charlie Hall over at Polygon, you may find this game isn't for you. Frankly, played straight, I'm not sure I'd want to play a full campaign of this. Some one-shots, sure. I don't know how my new gaming group will react to it either. The ones who played Vampire back in the day may be into it, or they may not. I can think of at least one player who won't want anything to do with it.
Charlie Hall brings up one more good point: how to do this so you don't squick out, weird out or emotionally scar the group. A White Wolf representative tells him the company wants to put out a series of essays about caring for the folks at the table, but it wasn't going to be available right away.
“We saw it as a separate product, as a separate SKU,” [Jason] Carl said. “I think the timing is inconvenient because we wanted to have it ready for Gen Con [when V5 will first be available for purchase] and I don’t know that it will be ready for Gen Con.”
Maybe a Gen Con release date without the essays wasn't wise, in hindsight; maybe releasing those at the same time would have blunted some of the criticism. Yes, a Gen Con release is good for sales, but this is going to be a tough one to find an audience for, which is all the more important because a quality production like this needs good sales to make its nut. One reason why, back in the day, black and white was preferable - less expensive means a lower break-even.
It's good stuff, well written, excellent production values. It's a mass-market book looking for players who want to be evil. Not murder hoboes, not doomed and tragic, not Gothic with two Gs and extra Vathek. Evil.
Charlie Hall brings up one more good point: how to do this so you don't squick out, weird out or emotionally scar the group. A White Wolf representative tells him the company wants to put out a series of essays about caring for the folks at the table, but it wasn't going to be available right away.
“We saw it as a separate product, as a separate SKU,” [Jason] Carl said. “I think the timing is inconvenient because we wanted to have it ready for Gen Con [when V5 will first be available for purchase] and I don’t know that it will be ready for Gen Con.”
Maybe a Gen Con release date without the essays wasn't wise, in hindsight; maybe releasing those at the same time would have blunted some of the criticism. Yes, a Gen Con release is good for sales, but this is going to be a tough one to find an audience for, which is all the more important because a quality production like this needs good sales to make its nut. One reason why, back in the day, black and white was preferable - less expensive means a lower break-even.
It's good stuff, well written, excellent production values. It's a mass-market book looking for players who want to be evil. Not murder hoboes, not doomed and tragic, not Gothic with two Gs and extra Vathek. Evil.
One tough sell.
Now, since I complained about attribution a while ago it's only fair I attribute:
Vampire 5E
Developed by: Ken Hite, Karim Muammar
System Design: Ken Hite, Karim Muammar, Karl Bergstrom
Story & Creative Direction: Martin Ericsson
Written by: Ken Hite, Martin Ericsson, Matthew Dawkins, Karim Muammar, Juhana Petterson
Additional Writing: Mark Rein-Hagen, Karl Bergstrom, Jason Andrew, Freja Gyldenstrom, Neil Gaiman
Edited by: Freja Gyldenstrom, Karim Muammar, Jennifer Smith-Pulsipher
Now, since I complained about attribution a while ago it's only fair I attribute:
Vampire 5E
Developed by: Ken Hite, Karim Muammar
System Design: Ken Hite, Karim Muammar, Karl Bergstrom
Story & Creative Direction: Martin Ericsson
Written by: Ken Hite, Martin Ericsson, Matthew Dawkins, Karim Muammar, Juhana Petterson
Additional Writing: Mark Rein-Hagen, Karl Bergstrom, Jason Andrew, Freja Gyldenstrom, Neil Gaiman
Edited by: Freja Gyldenstrom, Karim Muammar, Jennifer Smith-Pulsipher
Sunday, 9 December 2018
Separation (Esoterrorists)
Inspiration for this post comes from Victorian and Edwardian Prisons, by Trevor May.
In the Victorian period two competing theories met head-to-head, in an effort to reform criminals. One, the silence system, proposed that all prisoners be kept in absolute silence. They could work together, congregate, exercise, but never talk. As you can imagine this did not work well.
The other method was the separate system, and while this didn't work either it enjoyed a slightly longer period of popularity. The description's deceptively simple: no prisoner shall have any contact with other prisoners. It's the lengths the prison went to make that happen that makes the separate system horrifying.
HM Prison Pentonville is Britain's first modern prison, designed and built in 1842 with the separation system in mind. The central hall has five radiating wings, designed to hold 520 prisoners total, each in their separate cell. The cells had their own toilets, though those frequently blocked, and the prisoners would spend much of their lives in those cells. The idea was to put them to work, but they couldn't do anything useful because that would put them in competition with free men. So they picked oakum by hand - undoing lengths of rope into individual strands into loose hemp, which would then be used as a short-term sealant for broken pipes, or a packing material.
There were times when they had to leave their cells, to go to chapel or to exercise. Each time they left they dressed in heavy leather, with thick caps covering their entire face. When they got to a communal area, like the chapel, each pew was separated into small sections by wooden panels. They could sit by their neighbor, but never see him. They could walk past a man in the corridor, and not know who he was.
The idea was to foster meditation and, with it, remorse. The evangelical Christians who came up with it believed in what they called the Inner Light, but a person needed to be in close communion with the eternal to access it. Complete separation from any distraction was thought to be essential. The chaplain was the only man they'd ever see, the only visitor they'd receive. Even the guards didn't know who they were guarding. A man was just a number, without any distinguishing features, living day in, day out in what amounted to specially designed solitary confinement.
They called it the maniac-making system.
The suicide rate jumped, and many more went insane. The few successes, the ones who claimed to have seen the light, usually went back to their old ways the moment they left prison. There were practical problems with the separate system as well; because it required separate cells for each prisoner, a prison could neither be converted nor expanded. Each had to be purpose-built, like Pentonville, and could only hold a set number of prisoners. Innovations designed to help separation, like the toilets, soon became problematic because the prisons seldom bothered to unclog them or replace burst pipes. The system could be subverted by the inmates, who came up with ingenious ways to communicate - say, by tapping on those clogged and broken drain pipes.
In the end it wasn't the system's flaws that brought it down. The powers that be lost their faith in the reformative powers of imprisonment; more emphasis on punishment was called for. By the early 20th century solitary confinement was unpopular, though the radial architectural system of prison design remains influential on modern prisons.
Let's put that into Esoterror context. What kind of cell would work with this material to create an ODE effect, and what kind of ODE shall it be?
The cell structure is going to look like a prison gang, and since we started with HM Pentonville it might as well be a British gang, though the separate system was used all over the Western world and got its start in America, so this could as easily be set elsewhere.
Right now British prison gangs are violent, territorial and fractious. Assaults and gang conflicts are at an all-time high, helped in part by reduced investment in prisons. Efforts to hire more guards have fallen flat, and austerity cuts mean no cash for anything like rehabilitation, reform, or even upkeep. Where there is a vacuum something will fill it, and in this case gangs are taking over HM Prison Kingstead, a fictional category A prison intended to house those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security.
Kingstead, built in 1858 with the separate system in mind, has known its share of strife. In 1892 it hit the news with a series of inmate murders, and in 1978 IRA prisoners staged a very public dirty protest. However its current suicide and self-harm rate is seriously alarming the OV, as it may indicate ODE influence. What really concerns the OV is that, if there's an Esoterror cell in the prison population, it's very likely to spread to other prisons when inmates, or possibly guards, get transferred.
The OV isn't wrong. An Esoterror cell has self-generated around a Sadist, with a small compliment of Attention-Seekers, Exofetishists and Cyphers. Group numbers fluctuate, but there's a hard core of eight, with a further ten or more hangers-on at any one time. This group calls itself the SB8, or Separate Brotherhood 8. Unusually for a prison gang this group doesn't break down on ethnic lines, but does have one rule: gang members don't talk to outsiders, ever. When they have to, they communicate in writing - often text message. They control the supply of mobile phones in and out of HM Kingstead, through prison guard proxies.
Thanks to this group the prison population is terrorized by nightmares, with a recurring element: the Separate Man.
Game Statistics
Abilities: Athletics 9, Disguise 6, Scuffling 8, Weapons 6
Hit Threshold: 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +2
Weapon: Knife +0, Dream Attack
Armour: +2
The Separate Man can briefly (no longer than a few rounds) look like anyone - an inmate, a guard, the chaplain - but in its true form it's a leather-clad humanoid with a flesh-coloured hood over its head. In this form it does not speak, but whenever it moves it rustles, and there's a strong scent of damp, rotten leather. It cannot be confined so long as it's in a prison, so prison doors mean nothing to it, but a car door, out in the prison parking lot, can be an effective barrier. As a special attack it can invade the dreams of an inmate and take them back to a nightmare version of HM Kingstead as it was in 1858, imprisoning them under the separate system for what feels like forever. To do that the Separate Man has to be in physical contact with the dreamer, and if interrupted and forced to flee the dreamer must make a level 4 Stability check; NPCs nearly always go insane. If, after repeated visits, the target is reduced to 0 Stability, they become catatonic. The only thing they do, all day, every day, is make motions with their hands and legs, as though forever unravelling oakum by rolling it on their knees and thighs. A Separate Man can create another Separate Man by bringing a willing Esoterrorist to catatonia, which is why SB8 is always willing to take on new members.
A Separate Man's special mode of dispatch is having its hood removed, but this is harder than it looks as the hood is grafted onto the face. A hard Athletics test is required, and success subjects the victor to a 4-point Stability test, as they stare into the Inner Light.
Enjoy!
In the Victorian period two competing theories met head-to-head, in an effort to reform criminals. One, the silence system, proposed that all prisoners be kept in absolute silence. They could work together, congregate, exercise, but never talk. As you can imagine this did not work well.
The other method was the separate system, and while this didn't work either it enjoyed a slightly longer period of popularity. The description's deceptively simple: no prisoner shall have any contact with other prisoners. It's the lengths the prison went to make that happen that makes the separate system horrifying.
HM Prison Pentonville is Britain's first modern prison, designed and built in 1842 with the separation system in mind. The central hall has five radiating wings, designed to hold 520 prisoners total, each in their separate cell. The cells had their own toilets, though those frequently blocked, and the prisoners would spend much of their lives in those cells. The idea was to put them to work, but they couldn't do anything useful because that would put them in competition with free men. So they picked oakum by hand - undoing lengths of rope into individual strands into loose hemp, which would then be used as a short-term sealant for broken pipes, or a packing material.
There were times when they had to leave their cells, to go to chapel or to exercise. Each time they left they dressed in heavy leather, with thick caps covering their entire face. When they got to a communal area, like the chapel, each pew was separated into small sections by wooden panels. They could sit by their neighbor, but never see him. They could walk past a man in the corridor, and not know who he was.
The idea was to foster meditation and, with it, remorse. The evangelical Christians who came up with it believed in what they called the Inner Light, but a person needed to be in close communion with the eternal to access it. Complete separation from any distraction was thought to be essential. The chaplain was the only man they'd ever see, the only visitor they'd receive. Even the guards didn't know who they were guarding. A man was just a number, without any distinguishing features, living day in, day out in what amounted to specially designed solitary confinement.
They called it the maniac-making system.
The suicide rate jumped, and many more went insane. The few successes, the ones who claimed to have seen the light, usually went back to their old ways the moment they left prison. There were practical problems with the separate system as well; because it required separate cells for each prisoner, a prison could neither be converted nor expanded. Each had to be purpose-built, like Pentonville, and could only hold a set number of prisoners. Innovations designed to help separation, like the toilets, soon became problematic because the prisons seldom bothered to unclog them or replace burst pipes. The system could be subverted by the inmates, who came up with ingenious ways to communicate - say, by tapping on those clogged and broken drain pipes.
In the end it wasn't the system's flaws that brought it down. The powers that be lost their faith in the reformative powers of imprisonment; more emphasis on punishment was called for. By the early 20th century solitary confinement was unpopular, though the radial architectural system of prison design remains influential on modern prisons.
Let's put that into Esoterror context. What kind of cell would work with this material to create an ODE effect, and what kind of ODE shall it be?
The cell structure is going to look like a prison gang, and since we started with HM Pentonville it might as well be a British gang, though the separate system was used all over the Western world and got its start in America, so this could as easily be set elsewhere.
Right now British prison gangs are violent, territorial and fractious. Assaults and gang conflicts are at an all-time high, helped in part by reduced investment in prisons. Efforts to hire more guards have fallen flat, and austerity cuts mean no cash for anything like rehabilitation, reform, or even upkeep. Where there is a vacuum something will fill it, and in this case gangs are taking over HM Prison Kingstead, a fictional category A prison intended to house those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security.
Kingstead, built in 1858 with the separate system in mind, has known its share of strife. In 1892 it hit the news with a series of inmate murders, and in 1978 IRA prisoners staged a very public dirty protest. However its current suicide and self-harm rate is seriously alarming the OV, as it may indicate ODE influence. What really concerns the OV is that, if there's an Esoterror cell in the prison population, it's very likely to spread to other prisons when inmates, or possibly guards, get transferred.
The OV isn't wrong. An Esoterror cell has self-generated around a Sadist, with a small compliment of Attention-Seekers, Exofetishists and Cyphers. Group numbers fluctuate, but there's a hard core of eight, with a further ten or more hangers-on at any one time. This group calls itself the SB8, or Separate Brotherhood 8. Unusually for a prison gang this group doesn't break down on ethnic lines, but does have one rule: gang members don't talk to outsiders, ever. When they have to, they communicate in writing - often text message. They control the supply of mobile phones in and out of HM Kingstead, through prison guard proxies.
Thanks to this group the prison population is terrorized by nightmares, with a recurring element: the Separate Man.
Game Statistics
Abilities: Athletics 9, Disguise 6, Scuffling 8, Weapons 6
Hit Threshold: 4
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +2
Weapon: Knife +0, Dream Attack
Armour: +2
The Separate Man can briefly (no longer than a few rounds) look like anyone - an inmate, a guard, the chaplain - but in its true form it's a leather-clad humanoid with a flesh-coloured hood over its head. In this form it does not speak, but whenever it moves it rustles, and there's a strong scent of damp, rotten leather. It cannot be confined so long as it's in a prison, so prison doors mean nothing to it, but a car door, out in the prison parking lot, can be an effective barrier. As a special attack it can invade the dreams of an inmate and take them back to a nightmare version of HM Kingstead as it was in 1858, imprisoning them under the separate system for what feels like forever. To do that the Separate Man has to be in physical contact with the dreamer, and if interrupted and forced to flee the dreamer must make a level 4 Stability check; NPCs nearly always go insane. If, after repeated visits, the target is reduced to 0 Stability, they become catatonic. The only thing they do, all day, every day, is make motions with their hands and legs, as though forever unravelling oakum by rolling it on their knees and thighs. A Separate Man can create another Separate Man by bringing a willing Esoterrorist to catatonia, which is why SB8 is always willing to take on new members.
A Separate Man's special mode of dispatch is having its hood removed, but this is harder than it looks as the hood is grafted onto the face. A hard Athletics test is required, and success subjects the victor to a 4-point Stability test, as they stare into the Inner Light.
Enjoy!
Sunday, 2 December 2018
Killer Cream (Bookhounds, Dracula Dossier)
Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, one of the many possible candidates for the true Jack the Ripper - allegedly he yelled "I am Jack the -" just as the hangman pulled the lever - was, in his day, one of the most famous, if not the most famous, multiple murderers. Today he barely rates a mention. Keepers, ask yourselves: what would your players do if an anonymous letter accused them of a terrible crime? That was Cream's preferred tactic: poison someone, then accuse someone else, blackmail, rinse, repeat.
Born in Glasgow in 1850, he went to Canada with his family in 1854. He grew up in Quebec City, went to McGill to study medicine in the 1870s, and eventually passed, after some scholastic hiccups, in 1876. He took postgraduate qualifications in London and Edinburgh, before returning to Ontario to begin his career.
He became a criminal not long after, in 1879. A pregnant woman was found chloroformed to death behind his office, and it was believed Cream was the child's father. When the truth threatened to come out he fled across the border to the United States where he took up medicine again, with a sideline in abortion. A patient died in 1880 and he was almost charged, but due to lack of evidence the case fell apart.
Then came the first of what can be called the true Cream killings. In December 1880 a patient died, and Cream immediately attempted to blackmail the pharmacist who issued her drugs. This blackmail attempt came to nothing, but it established the pattern: kill, then immediately blame someone else. It would happen again in 1881, with the death of Daniel Stott, an elderly married man with a pretty young wife. Again, Cream tried to blackmail a pharmacist, and again it came to nothing. Cream very nearly spent life in prison as a consequence, but thanks to a generous inheritance from his father, and good behavior, he was set free in 1891.
The United States and Canada having played out, Doctor Cream went to London again. He settled in Lambeth, near a notorious red-light district, and perfected his method, which was hardly very complex to begin with. He would meet with prostitutes and either give them a spiked drink, or pills. They took the offered poison, died, and Cream would blame someone else for their death and attempt blackmail. Once, he even posed as a detective and offered to solve the crime for three hundred thousand pounds. He blackmailed the heir of the W.H. Smith bookselling chain, Frederick, who later became 2nd Viscount Hambleden. He blackmailed medical students, pharmacists, hotel clerks - really, anyone he could think of.
There's no reason to think Cream enjoyed any sexual satisfaction from his murders., nor did he care much whether he killed men or women, though the crimes he's famous for were all against women. He boasted of his sexual prowess, claiming he bedded three a night, but his method of killing could hardly be called subtle or prolonged. He killed with chloroform or, later, strychnine, in large quantities, often administered with the victim's consent, as they thought they were taking medicine. He sometimes wasn't even present when the victim died. This is hardly a well-played game of chess. Nor does he profit from his blackmail schemes, and by the amounts he asked for it's no wonder. Three hundred thousand pounds? Why not ask for a million?
No, for Cream the fun part came later.
I am writing to say that if you and your satellites fail to find the murderer of Ellen Dunsworth, alias Ellen Linnell … I am willing to give you such assistance as will bring the murderer to justice, provided your Government is willing to pay me three hundred thousand pounds for my services ...
I hereby notify you that the person who poisoned Ellen Dunsworth on the 13th October last is today in the employ of the Metropole Hotel, and that your lives are in danger so long as you remain in this hotel …
I am writing to inform you that one of my operators has indisputable evidence that your son, W.J. Harper, a medical student at St Thomas' Hospital, poisoned two girls named Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell …
Note how it always begins with I. Cream wanted to be the center of attention, the hero. He is the one who knows, the one who can indisputably prove, who did the deed. Either the detective or the one in charge of detectives - 'one of my operatives.' He usually wrote the letters himself, which meant he was easily traced by his handwriting. Only once did he have someone else do it for him - his respectable fiancée, Laura Sabatini, who when the time came gave evidence against him. Again, hardly surprising. After all, she knew what she'd written.
The Victorians were obsessed with crime, and with genius detectives: Jonathan Whicher, John Haynes the chemist, Stephen Thornton, Richard Tanner, Jerome Caminada, disguise expert Maurice Moser, polymath Edmund Reid, and many others. Charles Dickens was a big fan, and wrote about these new masters of the criminal underworld. This all really kicks off in the 1840s, as the Detective Bureau is founded; someone Cream's age would have grown up with hero detective stories.
If you can't detect a crime, the next best thing is to commit one - and to say you know who did it. Cream reveled in the celebrity, once going so far as to give a visiting New York detective a tour of the killing grounds of the Lambeth Poisoner. Often he attracted attention to his murders with his blackmail letters, when the crimes themselves might have gone unnoticed. To the very end he encouraged speculation that he wasn't just the Lambeth Poisoner, but Jack the Ripper - adding fame to fame, and a much bloodier kind of fame too. What a treat it must have been for the man who only ever poisoned his victims and wasn't brave enough to watch them die, to be thought capable of the kind of butchery Jack took for granted.
He was convinced of his own genius. He never thought he'd be convicted, and, if charged, thought he could prove insanity and avoid the hangman. He sang and danced in his cell after the counsel's closing speeches, so convinced was he of acquittal. The jury took twelve minutes to convict, and on November 15th, 1892, he swung at Newgate. The executioner, James Billington, swore afterward that Cream uttered the words "I am Jack the -" just as he went down, but as Cream is known to have been behind bars in Chicago when the Ripper killings took place, this is unlikely. His body was buried same day in an unmarked Newgate grave.
It's a very rare kind of psychosis, but there have been other examples. When the Morro Castle burned off the coast of New Jersey in 1934, a lot of attention focused on the radio operator, George White Rogers. In the immediate aftermath he was hailed as a hero both by the passengers and by the public at large, and he basked in the attention. However this unlikely hero was also a suspected arsonist, possibly also a poisoner and rapist. After the Morro Castle incident he was arrested for another crime, attempted murder of a co-worker with an incendiary device. The co-worker suspected Rogers of being involved in the Morro Castle arson, and that, allegedly, was the motive for the incendiary device attack. Rogers died in prison.
From a gaming point of view Cream has two obvious uses: in Bookhounds, and the Dracula Dossier. Both use the Ripper killings in one way or another: in Whitechapel Black-Letter the Ripper is supposed to have been conducting a megapolisamantic ritual, while the Dracula Dossier has the Ripper's knife set as a potential artefact and Red Jack as a possible foe.
In WBL there is an Optional Monster, Jack's Shadow. Described as "a living ghost haunting his own past," this tulpa stalks the major antagonists and Whitechapel inhabitants alike, possibly racking up a body count and certainly complicating the Book Hounds' lives. However if Jack shows up then his most devoted fanboy is sure to follow, even if he has to come back from the grave to do it. There's an obvious conduit: the executioner James Billington who, as luck would have it, kept diaries. His son William, also an executioner, continued those diaries, and though William lost his job in 1905 he lived until 1951. So from that comes this optional scene:
I Am Writing To Inform You
This is triggered only if Jack's tulpa possesses someone, either a Book Hound or prominent NPC. Letters are sent to the Book Hounds, saying that the writer knows all the details about a particular crime, and offers to tell all for money. If the characters don't pay up, the writer threatens to go to the police. The handwriting (1 point Cop Talk, Evidence Collection or Textual Analysis, and Cop Talk assumes the character goes to a police contact for the information) is eerily similar to Cream's. Following up on this, possibly via Streetwise, Document Analysis or just offering to pay, discovers that the letter writer is disgraced former executioner William Billington, but he's not himself; Cream, either as a ghost or via a Dust-Thing living off the diaries, has control over him. The remnant has a special kind of insight into Jack's tulpa, which can help the Book Hounds trace it. However to do so they will have to reach some kind of bargain with Doctor Cream, who's just loving all the attention.
In Dracula Dossier, Red Jack appears both as a potential antagonist and as a spirit connected with one of two possible knife artefacts. Where Red Jack leads Cream is sure to follow, which brings us to the following potential artefact:
Thomas Cream's Travelling Medical Case
This late Victorian tooled leather medical case has seen better days, and would cause the Antiques Roadshow crowd to tut audibly. Damp and neglect have damaged its exterior, and some of the contents aren't original. However the bits that are demonstrate the full range of late Victorian pharmacopoeia in odd little bottles and jars, as well as a collection of pornographic photographs, letters, and a set of false whiskers with decayed gum arabic fastening. Some of the contents, particularly the strychnine, retain their potency and must be carefully handled. A label, carefully removed, suggests that this might have been part of some kind of collection, though without the label itself this is impossible to prove.
This is Cream's case, which went from Newgate to London's Black Museum after Cream's 1892 execution. According to the Museum's files the case went missing in the 1980s during the move from its original home to New Scotland Yard; unofficially it was believed to have been stolen, possibly by the movers, but no charges were filed. Agents who follow up find that the case changed hands at least twice, both times bought by specialist Murderabilia collectors, each of whom died under suspicious circumstances.
This might be found in the possession of the Smuggler, Online Mystic, Madman, Art Forecaster (soon to be part of a conversation piece), Psychic, or as an unexpected find by the Church Scavenger.
Major Item: Cream enjoyed a unique relationship with Dracula through Red Jack, and either became a Renfield or longed to be one, committing murders to draw in his beloved Master in much the same way that Edom tried to use Jack. His blackmail letters were cries for help; in a small part of his mind he resisted, and tried to bring destruction on himself and his patron by giving away what he thought were their most important secrets. Owning the case establishes a psychic link between the owner and Cream, who forces the owner to write incriminating letters and send them to the police - but since Cream still thinks the police live at the Norman Shaw Buildings the letters will vanish into Government bureaucracy, or be scooped up by Edom, unless the agents intervene. The letters, when studied, prove to be in Cream's handwriting, and detail any of the Conspiracy's operations that are linked with Red Jack. So if Red Jack is linked to the Satanic Cult, then the letters will be about the Cult's current activities. The letters answer any three questions about Red Jack's link to the Conspyramid.
Minor Item: The case is Cream's, and is of some small value on the Murderabilia market. It can be sold or exchanged for an item of minor importance, and since the kind of crazies who collect Murderabilia have unusual tastes this can include illegal items. Guns, in the United Kingdom, or drugs, or a data dump of phone numbers, credit card numbers and similar. It can also include information on a Level One node, equivalent to 1 point Streetwise.
Fake: It's a period doctor's travelling case filled with powders and pills, but expert analysis proves most of the stuff in here is 60s tat made up to look old. The LSD's still good, more or less, but the mushrooms and Mary Jane are well past sell-by. This was formerly owned by a roadie who worked as psychedelic consultant for many iconic London 60s venues, and afterward was sold to idiot Murderabilia collectors as a genuine antique. Fun fact: under the Misuse of Drugs Act, LSD is Class A and attracts the harshest penalties for possession. Or potentially life in prison, if the charge is intent to supply.
Enjoy!
Born in Glasgow in 1850, he went to Canada with his family in 1854. He grew up in Quebec City, went to McGill to study medicine in the 1870s, and eventually passed, after some scholastic hiccups, in 1876. He took postgraduate qualifications in London and Edinburgh, before returning to Ontario to begin his career.
He became a criminal not long after, in 1879. A pregnant woman was found chloroformed to death behind his office, and it was believed Cream was the child's father. When the truth threatened to come out he fled across the border to the United States where he took up medicine again, with a sideline in abortion. A patient died in 1880 and he was almost charged, but due to lack of evidence the case fell apart.
Then came the first of what can be called the true Cream killings. In December 1880 a patient died, and Cream immediately attempted to blackmail the pharmacist who issued her drugs. This blackmail attempt came to nothing, but it established the pattern: kill, then immediately blame someone else. It would happen again in 1881, with the death of Daniel Stott, an elderly married man with a pretty young wife. Again, Cream tried to blackmail a pharmacist, and again it came to nothing. Cream very nearly spent life in prison as a consequence, but thanks to a generous inheritance from his father, and good behavior, he was set free in 1891.
The United States and Canada having played out, Doctor Cream went to London again. He settled in Lambeth, near a notorious red-light district, and perfected his method, which was hardly very complex to begin with. He would meet with prostitutes and either give them a spiked drink, or pills. They took the offered poison, died, and Cream would blame someone else for their death and attempt blackmail. Once, he even posed as a detective and offered to solve the crime for three hundred thousand pounds. He blackmailed the heir of the W.H. Smith bookselling chain, Frederick, who later became 2nd Viscount Hambleden. He blackmailed medical students, pharmacists, hotel clerks - really, anyone he could think of.
There's no reason to think Cream enjoyed any sexual satisfaction from his murders., nor did he care much whether he killed men or women, though the crimes he's famous for were all against women. He boasted of his sexual prowess, claiming he bedded three a night, but his method of killing could hardly be called subtle or prolonged. He killed with chloroform or, later, strychnine, in large quantities, often administered with the victim's consent, as they thought they were taking medicine. He sometimes wasn't even present when the victim died. This is hardly a well-played game of chess. Nor does he profit from his blackmail schemes, and by the amounts he asked for it's no wonder. Three hundred thousand pounds? Why not ask for a million?
No, for Cream the fun part came later.
I am writing to say that if you and your satellites fail to find the murderer of Ellen Dunsworth, alias Ellen Linnell … I am willing to give you such assistance as will bring the murderer to justice, provided your Government is willing to pay me three hundred thousand pounds for my services ...
I hereby notify you that the person who poisoned Ellen Dunsworth on the 13th October last is today in the employ of the Metropole Hotel, and that your lives are in danger so long as you remain in this hotel …
I am writing to inform you that one of my operators has indisputable evidence that your son, W.J. Harper, a medical student at St Thomas' Hospital, poisoned two girls named Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell …
Note how it always begins with I. Cream wanted to be the center of attention, the hero. He is the one who knows, the one who can indisputably prove, who did the deed. Either the detective or the one in charge of detectives - 'one of my operatives.' He usually wrote the letters himself, which meant he was easily traced by his handwriting. Only once did he have someone else do it for him - his respectable fiancée, Laura Sabatini, who when the time came gave evidence against him. Again, hardly surprising. After all, she knew what she'd written.
The Victorians were obsessed with crime, and with genius detectives: Jonathan Whicher, John Haynes the chemist, Stephen Thornton, Richard Tanner, Jerome Caminada, disguise expert Maurice Moser, polymath Edmund Reid, and many others. Charles Dickens was a big fan, and wrote about these new masters of the criminal underworld. This all really kicks off in the 1840s, as the Detective Bureau is founded; someone Cream's age would have grown up with hero detective stories.
If you can't detect a crime, the next best thing is to commit one - and to say you know who did it. Cream reveled in the celebrity, once going so far as to give a visiting New York detective a tour of the killing grounds of the Lambeth Poisoner. Often he attracted attention to his murders with his blackmail letters, when the crimes themselves might have gone unnoticed. To the very end he encouraged speculation that he wasn't just the Lambeth Poisoner, but Jack the Ripper - adding fame to fame, and a much bloodier kind of fame too. What a treat it must have been for the man who only ever poisoned his victims and wasn't brave enough to watch them die, to be thought capable of the kind of butchery Jack took for granted.
He was convinced of his own genius. He never thought he'd be convicted, and, if charged, thought he could prove insanity and avoid the hangman. He sang and danced in his cell after the counsel's closing speeches, so convinced was he of acquittal. The jury took twelve minutes to convict, and on November 15th, 1892, he swung at Newgate. The executioner, James Billington, swore afterward that Cream uttered the words "I am Jack the -" just as he went down, but as Cream is known to have been behind bars in Chicago when the Ripper killings took place, this is unlikely. His body was buried same day in an unmarked Newgate grave.
It's a very rare kind of psychosis, but there have been other examples. When the Morro Castle burned off the coast of New Jersey in 1934, a lot of attention focused on the radio operator, George White Rogers. In the immediate aftermath he was hailed as a hero both by the passengers and by the public at large, and he basked in the attention. However this unlikely hero was also a suspected arsonist, possibly also a poisoner and rapist. After the Morro Castle incident he was arrested for another crime, attempted murder of a co-worker with an incendiary device. The co-worker suspected Rogers of being involved in the Morro Castle arson, and that, allegedly, was the motive for the incendiary device attack. Rogers died in prison.
From a gaming point of view Cream has two obvious uses: in Bookhounds, and the Dracula Dossier. Both use the Ripper killings in one way or another: in Whitechapel Black-Letter the Ripper is supposed to have been conducting a megapolisamantic ritual, while the Dracula Dossier has the Ripper's knife set as a potential artefact and Red Jack as a possible foe.
In WBL there is an Optional Monster, Jack's Shadow. Described as "a living ghost haunting his own past," this tulpa stalks the major antagonists and Whitechapel inhabitants alike, possibly racking up a body count and certainly complicating the Book Hounds' lives. However if Jack shows up then his most devoted fanboy is sure to follow, even if he has to come back from the grave to do it. There's an obvious conduit: the executioner James Billington who, as luck would have it, kept diaries. His son William, also an executioner, continued those diaries, and though William lost his job in 1905 he lived until 1951. So from that comes this optional scene:
I Am Writing To Inform You
This is triggered only if Jack's tulpa possesses someone, either a Book Hound or prominent NPC. Letters are sent to the Book Hounds, saying that the writer knows all the details about a particular crime, and offers to tell all for money. If the characters don't pay up, the writer threatens to go to the police. The handwriting (1 point Cop Talk, Evidence Collection or Textual Analysis, and Cop Talk assumes the character goes to a police contact for the information) is eerily similar to Cream's. Following up on this, possibly via Streetwise, Document Analysis or just offering to pay, discovers that the letter writer is disgraced former executioner William Billington, but he's not himself; Cream, either as a ghost or via a Dust-Thing living off the diaries, has control over him. The remnant has a special kind of insight into Jack's tulpa, which can help the Book Hounds trace it. However to do so they will have to reach some kind of bargain with Doctor Cream, who's just loving all the attention.
In Dracula Dossier, Red Jack appears both as a potential antagonist and as a spirit connected with one of two possible knife artefacts. Where Red Jack leads Cream is sure to follow, which brings us to the following potential artefact:
Thomas Cream's Travelling Medical Case
This late Victorian tooled leather medical case has seen better days, and would cause the Antiques Roadshow crowd to tut audibly. Damp and neglect have damaged its exterior, and some of the contents aren't original. However the bits that are demonstrate the full range of late Victorian pharmacopoeia in odd little bottles and jars, as well as a collection of pornographic photographs, letters, and a set of false whiskers with decayed gum arabic fastening. Some of the contents, particularly the strychnine, retain their potency and must be carefully handled. A label, carefully removed, suggests that this might have been part of some kind of collection, though without the label itself this is impossible to prove.
This is Cream's case, which went from Newgate to London's Black Museum after Cream's 1892 execution. According to the Museum's files the case went missing in the 1980s during the move from its original home to New Scotland Yard; unofficially it was believed to have been stolen, possibly by the movers, but no charges were filed. Agents who follow up find that the case changed hands at least twice, both times bought by specialist Murderabilia collectors, each of whom died under suspicious circumstances.
This might be found in the possession of the Smuggler, Online Mystic, Madman, Art Forecaster (soon to be part of a conversation piece), Psychic, or as an unexpected find by the Church Scavenger.
Major Item: Cream enjoyed a unique relationship with Dracula through Red Jack, and either became a Renfield or longed to be one, committing murders to draw in his beloved Master in much the same way that Edom tried to use Jack. His blackmail letters were cries for help; in a small part of his mind he resisted, and tried to bring destruction on himself and his patron by giving away what he thought were their most important secrets. Owning the case establishes a psychic link between the owner and Cream, who forces the owner to write incriminating letters and send them to the police - but since Cream still thinks the police live at the Norman Shaw Buildings the letters will vanish into Government bureaucracy, or be scooped up by Edom, unless the agents intervene. The letters, when studied, prove to be in Cream's handwriting, and detail any of the Conspiracy's operations that are linked with Red Jack. So if Red Jack is linked to the Satanic Cult, then the letters will be about the Cult's current activities. The letters answer any three questions about Red Jack's link to the Conspyramid.
Minor Item: The case is Cream's, and is of some small value on the Murderabilia market. It can be sold or exchanged for an item of minor importance, and since the kind of crazies who collect Murderabilia have unusual tastes this can include illegal items. Guns, in the United Kingdom, or drugs, or a data dump of phone numbers, credit card numbers and similar. It can also include information on a Level One node, equivalent to 1 point Streetwise.
Fake: It's a period doctor's travelling case filled with powders and pills, but expert analysis proves most of the stuff in here is 60s tat made up to look old. The LSD's still good, more or less, but the mushrooms and Mary Jane are well past sell-by. This was formerly owned by a roadie who worked as psychedelic consultant for many iconic London 60s venues, and afterward was sold to idiot Murderabilia collectors as a genuine antique. Fun fact: under the Misuse of Drugs Act, LSD is Class A and attracts the harshest penalties for possession. Or potentially life in prison, if the charge is intent to supply.
Enjoy!
Sunday, 25 November 2018
Quick Change: Disguise (Night's Black Agents)
This post is inspired by one of Wired's videos, featuring a former CIA boss talking about disguises.
Disguise is one of the most useful tools in a Night's Black Agent's character's kit, but the main book doesn't describe its use in Thrilling Chases. Double Tap does mention the quick change, but doesn't go into detail. Yet the quick change, as described here, is perfect for chases.
So let's talk about three ways in which a quick change can be used.
Swerve. A swerve is a single maneuver that has the potential to change the chase all at once … if either the pursuer or the runner has the higher Maneuver, or if both Maneuver ratings are the same, he can spend 3 points of the chase ability to force a high-risk swerve; all changes in Lead in the the Swerve round are double normal.
Suggested change: he can spend 3 points of the chase ability or 3 points Disguise. If the latter, the Director may ask for a Preparedness check, but is not obliged to.
So in this version the pursuer or runner - more likely runner - opts for a quick change to throw the other party off. This increases Lead, if it works. The typical Lead change in a foot chase is 1 or 2; now it might be 2 or 4.
The Director is within rights to limit this kind of Swerve to agents with 8 or more in their Disguise pool.
Sudden Escape. If the runner has a lead of 7 or better, and wins the exchange of chase ability tests, she can attempt a Sudden Escape instead of changing the Lead. This is something completely outside the parameters of the chase … [and] requires a successful ability test of some kind. The Difficulty of the Sudden Escape test is always 1 higher than the previous Difficulty in the chase.
So in this version the runner uses Disguise as the ability in the Sudden Escape test.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a Disguise has to be elaborate. Often the best disguise is something that changes the profile of the runner quickly. Were you last seen bare-headed? Grab a hat, or pull up the hoodie. Last seen in red? Switch to brown, or black. No glasses? Then put on glasses, or sunglasses. Change tops. Baggy sports jackets are perfect for this kind of chase; not only are they memorable, you can wear something completely different underneath. Even changing your gait can help - remember what the Wired video had to say about American vs European stances.
As for new gear, if you have a chance to grab a wig, or new jacket, then by all means do - and this is one of the reasons why the runner always ought to have one eye on her surroundings. If ever there was a moment to dive into a clothes shop, now's the time.
Take this sequence from Baby Driver as your cue:
At about 1.40 he's dashing into the mall, which means two things: plenty of civilians to cloud the issue, and plenty of shops. By 1.50 he's in his first store, and grabbing a new jacket and hat comes soon after. The broken glasses are gone by 2.02. By 2.12 he has a whole new look and is out the door, and it works. That Lead bonus gets him to a car, which since he has the Grand Theft Auto perk is an easy steal, particularly since he used Thrilling Dialogue to grab a useful tool (refresh) on the way out of the electronics store. Several spectacularly failed Driving rolls later he's on foot again, but thanks to a gun-toting partner in crime there's a chance for a Sudden Escape.
I mentioned three ways to use the Disguise ability in a Chase. The Forsythe classic thriller Day of the Jackal has the nameless assassin changing disguises several times - the entire novel is one long Hot Lead chase sequence. One of my favorites comes towards the end, and is remarkably simple. They're looking for an able-bodied man, so the Jackal loses a leg. He also chews on cordite to make himself look ill, an old army trick. That, and a simple costume change plus the appropriate paperwork, gets him through the barricade to his chosen sniper position.
In some cases, agents can test other abilities to increase their Hot Lead … The Director must agree that such a test (possibly run as a full contest against a pool equal to 12 minus the current Hot Lead) might plausibly aid in the evasion of hot pursuit … Agents can also spend Hot Lead to … [do] things that aren't directly related to fleeing the country. (main book p91). Examples given include shopping, research and healing. Once Hot Lead is reduced to 0 the agents risk immediate confrontation with a serious threat - which is exactly what happens in Forsythe's story.
So what's the Jackal doing here? First, he's using Disguise to buy himself some Hot Lead. He immediately spends that Hot Lead to get a chance at the target, and takes his shot. As his Hot Lead is now 0, he faces that immediate confrontation.
Usually it's the agents dealing with Hot Lead, but it doesn't have to be that way. A chase of this sort could be very interesting to play out in an Edom game, with the agents as the pursuers just as Claude Lebel pursues the Jackal. The Conspiracy asset works his way to the target, using Disguises and tricks to throw off pursuit, hiding in plain sight. Then comes that fatal moment - it might be outside Number 10, or in Westminster Abbey - when the agents either snuff out the threat, or watch helplessly as the Conspiracy claims another victory.
Enjoy!
Disguise is one of the most useful tools in a Night's Black Agent's character's kit, but the main book doesn't describe its use in Thrilling Chases. Double Tap does mention the quick change, but doesn't go into detail. Yet the quick change, as described here, is perfect for chases.
So let's talk about three ways in which a quick change can be used.
Swerve. A swerve is a single maneuver that has the potential to change the chase all at once … if either the pursuer or the runner has the higher Maneuver, or if both Maneuver ratings are the same, he can spend 3 points of the chase ability to force a high-risk swerve; all changes in Lead in the the Swerve round are double normal.
Suggested change: he can spend 3 points of the chase ability or 3 points Disguise. If the latter, the Director may ask for a Preparedness check, but is not obliged to.
So in this version the pursuer or runner - more likely runner - opts for a quick change to throw the other party off. This increases Lead, if it works. The typical Lead change in a foot chase is 1 or 2; now it might be 2 or 4.
The Director is within rights to limit this kind of Swerve to agents with 8 or more in their Disguise pool.
Sudden Escape. If the runner has a lead of 7 or better, and wins the exchange of chase ability tests, she can attempt a Sudden Escape instead of changing the Lead. This is something completely outside the parameters of the chase … [and] requires a successful ability test of some kind. The Difficulty of the Sudden Escape test is always 1 higher than the previous Difficulty in the chase.
So in this version the runner uses Disguise as the ability in the Sudden Escape test.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a Disguise has to be elaborate. Often the best disguise is something that changes the profile of the runner quickly. Were you last seen bare-headed? Grab a hat, or pull up the hoodie. Last seen in red? Switch to brown, or black. No glasses? Then put on glasses, or sunglasses. Change tops. Baggy sports jackets are perfect for this kind of chase; not only are they memorable, you can wear something completely different underneath. Even changing your gait can help - remember what the Wired video had to say about American vs European stances.
As for new gear, if you have a chance to grab a wig, or new jacket, then by all means do - and this is one of the reasons why the runner always ought to have one eye on her surroundings. If ever there was a moment to dive into a clothes shop, now's the time.
Take this sequence from Baby Driver as your cue:
At about 1.40 he's dashing into the mall, which means two things: plenty of civilians to cloud the issue, and plenty of shops. By 1.50 he's in his first store, and grabbing a new jacket and hat comes soon after. The broken glasses are gone by 2.02. By 2.12 he has a whole new look and is out the door, and it works. That Lead bonus gets him to a car, which since he has the Grand Theft Auto perk is an easy steal, particularly since he used Thrilling Dialogue to grab a useful tool (refresh) on the way out of the electronics store. Several spectacularly failed Driving rolls later he's on foot again, but thanks to a gun-toting partner in crime there's a chance for a Sudden Escape.
I mentioned three ways to use the Disguise ability in a Chase. The Forsythe classic thriller Day of the Jackal has the nameless assassin changing disguises several times - the entire novel is one long Hot Lead chase sequence. One of my favorites comes towards the end, and is remarkably simple. They're looking for an able-bodied man, so the Jackal loses a leg. He also chews on cordite to make himself look ill, an old army trick. That, and a simple costume change plus the appropriate paperwork, gets him through the barricade to his chosen sniper position.
So what's the Jackal doing here? First, he's using Disguise to buy himself some Hot Lead. He immediately spends that Hot Lead to get a chance at the target, and takes his shot. As his Hot Lead is now 0, he faces that immediate confrontation.
Usually it's the agents dealing with Hot Lead, but it doesn't have to be that way. A chase of this sort could be very interesting to play out in an Edom game, with the agents as the pursuers just as Claude Lebel pursues the Jackal. The Conspiracy asset works his way to the target, using Disguises and tricks to throw off pursuit, hiding in plain sight. Then comes that fatal moment - it might be outside Number 10, or in Westminster Abbey - when the agents either snuff out the threat, or watch helplessly as the Conspiracy claims another victory.
Enjoy!
Sunday, 18 November 2018
Forgotten London: The Devil Tavern (Bookhounds of London)
I talked about my purchases last week and now it's time to make use of one: London Cameos, by A.H. Blake, F.R. Hist.S., F.R.G.S.
The entry shows a bust of Apollo, but given the condition of the book I'm not going to reproduce that here. In any case you'd get very little from the photo - ultimately one bust looks very much like another, storied history or not.
The text is as follows:
A BEN JONSON RELIC IN FLEET STREET
Child's Bank, No. 1 Fleet Street, is old in history and rich in treasure. Here is one - the Head of Apollo, which was at the back end of the Jonson Room in the Devil Tavern, afterwards taken over and incorporated into the Bank [in 1787].
At this tavern the Royal Society used to hold its meetings, and Jonson collected together congenial spirits to those festive gatherings that Herrick, the one-time clergyman, celebrated in his well-known verse:
Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo.
There is no doubt that here, as on Bankside, the wit combats took place between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as we might say, in the presence of this bust.
Others who loved the tavern were Swift and Addison, and even Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Johnson's memorable visit was to honour the occasion of the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, and he gave her a crown of laurel leaves and they kept it up till eight in the morning drinking cups of tea.
The full sign of the inn was 'The Devil and St Dunstan' and the host was the well-known Simon Wadloe, King of the Skinkers as Jonson called him.
Simon was succeeded by his widow, and then by his son John, and Pepys was mightily struck by the company of young men all in white which young Wadloe organized to greet Charles II on his entry into London at the Restoration.
**
The bust still exists, as does Child's Bank, and a plaque honouring the old Devil Tavern can be seen at Fleet Street. The blog Exploring London has more information, and mentions that among other notorious Londoners the Devil is linked to highwayman John Cottington, aka the Mull Sack.
Cottington, called the Mull Sack after his favorite tipple, robbed both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II in exile in his day. One of nineteen children of a bankrupt haberdasher who was so ruined he had to be buried by the parish, Mull Sack apprenticed as a chimney sweep before turning to a life of crime. Early in his career he married a transvestite by mistake, thinking her to be a young woman who wouldn't give up the goods before marriage. Apparently this turned his head, for soon after this he fell in with a group of fearful women calling themselves the women-shavers, whose idea of fun was to strip girls naked, shave every hair wheresoever it might be, and whip them soundly. This couldn't last forever, and the women-shavers had to flee the country, several of whom went to Barbados. [Having met some Bajans, I can well believe it.]
Mull Sack turned to a life of crime, first playing gigolo with the wife of a merchant, then when she died and the money ran out, turning pickpocket. This went reasonably well, but a botched attempt on Oliver Cromwell's purse persuaded him the time had come to take to the open road, which he did with aplomb. Sometimes solo, sometimes in company with another rogue or two, Mull Sack made the highways hot, and when not robbing carriages passed himself off as a well-to-do merchant. This is when he becomes associated with the Tavern.
He was briefly arrested and put on trial at Reading after a successful six thousand pound score, but managed through tricks and bribery to avoid penalty. Shortly after that he fled across the water with the help of his married lover, and made the acquaintance of Charles II, who he also robbed. However he obtained such secret information from this that he hoped to buy a pardon from Cromwell, and went back to England to tell all.
Unfortunately for Mull Sack the Protector was not favourably inclined, and the notorious bandit went to the gallows at Smithfield Rounds in 1655, at the age of 45.
A Skinker, incidentally, is someone who serves drink.
The name Devil Tavern is supposed to come from the pub's old sign, which showed the Saint pulling the Devil's nose with a pair of tongs. The precise origin is unclear; it may have come from St Dunstan-in-the-West, the nearby medieval church. If you've been following me for a while then you may remember me mentioning St Dunstan's in a different context - Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber. The murdering scoundrel hid the remains of his victims in the crypts of St Dunstan's, accessed by underground tunnel. Saint Dunstan is also the patron of goldsmiths, and at one time the area was full of them. It may be the pub's sign was designed to flatter them, and encourage trade.
Saint Dunstan himself is supposed to have taken his turn at the forge, tongs in hand, which is why he uses them to pull the Devil's nose. According to legend the Saint was asked to make a chalice, and agreed, but during the work realized that his client was the Devil himself. Dunstan took his tongs and put them in the fire, waiting till they were red-hot. Then he turned on the Devil and caught Satan's nose in his tongs, holding tight till he felt the Devil was vanquished. "These are the tricks of Devils, who try to trap us with their snares whenever they can. But if we remain firm in the service of Christ, we can easily defeat them with his help, and they will flee from us in confusion."
So with all that in mind, let's put together a Bookhounds scenario seed:
Teachings of Apollo
One of the Bookstore's regulars is a Shakespeare obsessive, whose dream it is to track down the lost play Cardenio. Though the regular is willing to pay any price - creating a Windfall for the shop and increasing its Credit Rating - to date the characters have not been able to obtain the item.
However according to a book scout (either NPC or character) a very disreputable character claims to know "how to make Apollo speak." This peculiar gentleman says he can conjure up spirits and make them talk, and proposes to use the bust of Apollo, now kept at Child's Bank, as a focus for his ritual. All he needs are some Comte d'Erlette pamphlets as payment, and blood soaked by a hanged man's blood as a material component, and he'll get Shakespeare's ghost to give up the goods.
Though peculiar, this wizard does know the ritual and can perform it as a demonstration should the characters wish. Going through this kind of ritual first-hand is fairly traumatic (3-point Stability check), but it is convincing, and the necromancer can produce other forgeries to show he's done this sort of thing before. Besides, he points out, is it really a forgery if it's Shakespeare's own play recounted by the man himself?
The characters will need to obtain the blood-soaked earth. This is more difficult than it used to be in the days when public hangings were held at Tyburn or Smithfield. However some investigative work, and possibly a bargain with ghouls, finds a suicide's hanged corpse that nobody else has discovered yet. It's another 3-point Stability check to gather the raw materials.
They also need those pamphlets. This bit's best left to the Keeper, but a raid on some private archive or, better yet, an auction in a particularly seedy establishment - some Soho den of vice, perhaps - solves that problem.
Then they need to get into the Bank where the bust of Apollo is kept. It's the oldest bank in England and holds the accounts of the great and good, so it's reasonably secure. Difficulty 5 tests needed either to sneak or bluff past security. They can either carry off the bust or conduct the ritual in the Bank. The latter might be the easier option; Difficulty 6 tests needed to get out of the building with a life-size head-and-shoulders marble bust. There may also be megapolisomantic benefits to leaving the bust where it is; it's current location is as close as it's possible to be to the old Devil Tavern, where Shakespeare and Jonson had those famous battles of wit.
The ritual begins (5-point Stability test) and all goes well at first. Whoever's on note-taking duty gets some golden material, not just from Shakespeare but from Jonson, Swift, Dr Johnson and other guests of The Devil. It all goes wrong halfway through when the shade of Mull Sack interferes. The desperate robber doesn't like the afterlife or being ignored in favour of some scribbling buffoon, and attempts to possess one of the group. The necromancer suffers a heart attack and drops dead, leaving the Bookhounds with a partial Shakespeare script, a ritual rapidly getting out of hand, and a vengeful highwayman who will not stay in the grave if he can help it. Using the blood-soaked earth as a weapon against Mull Sack will get rid of him, but also waste some of the ritual component that the Bookhounds need to keep Shakespeare talking. Just how greedy are the Bookhounds? Will they risk all to get a complete Cardenio?
Enjoy!
The entry shows a bust of Apollo, but given the condition of the book I'm not going to reproduce that here. In any case you'd get very little from the photo - ultimately one bust looks very much like another, storied history or not.
The text is as follows:
A BEN JONSON RELIC IN FLEET STREET
Child's Bank, No. 1 Fleet Street, is old in history and rich in treasure. Here is one - the Head of Apollo, which was at the back end of the Jonson Room in the Devil Tavern, afterwards taken over and incorporated into the Bank [in 1787].
At this tavern the Royal Society used to hold its meetings, and Jonson collected together congenial spirits to those festive gatherings that Herrick, the one-time clergyman, celebrated in his well-known verse:
Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo.
There is no doubt that here, as on Bankside, the wit combats took place between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as we might say, in the presence of this bust.
Others who loved the tavern were Swift and Addison, and even Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Johnson's memorable visit was to honour the occasion of the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, and he gave her a crown of laurel leaves and they kept it up till eight in the morning drinking cups of tea.
The full sign of the inn was 'The Devil and St Dunstan' and the host was the well-known Simon Wadloe, King of the Skinkers as Jonson called him.
Simon was succeeded by his widow, and then by his son John, and Pepys was mightily struck by the company of young men all in white which young Wadloe organized to greet Charles II on his entry into London at the Restoration.
**
The bust still exists, as does Child's Bank, and a plaque honouring the old Devil Tavern can be seen at Fleet Street. The blog Exploring London has more information, and mentions that among other notorious Londoners the Devil is linked to highwayman John Cottington, aka the Mull Sack.
Cottington, called the Mull Sack after his favorite tipple, robbed both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II in exile in his day. One of nineteen children of a bankrupt haberdasher who was so ruined he had to be buried by the parish, Mull Sack apprenticed as a chimney sweep before turning to a life of crime. Early in his career he married a transvestite by mistake, thinking her to be a young woman who wouldn't give up the goods before marriage. Apparently this turned his head, for soon after this he fell in with a group of fearful women calling themselves the women-shavers, whose idea of fun was to strip girls naked, shave every hair wheresoever it might be, and whip them soundly. This couldn't last forever, and the women-shavers had to flee the country, several of whom went to Barbados. [Having met some Bajans, I can well believe it.]
Mull Sack turned to a life of crime, first playing gigolo with the wife of a merchant, then when she died and the money ran out, turning pickpocket. This went reasonably well, but a botched attempt on Oliver Cromwell's purse persuaded him the time had come to take to the open road, which he did with aplomb. Sometimes solo, sometimes in company with another rogue or two, Mull Sack made the highways hot, and when not robbing carriages passed himself off as a well-to-do merchant. This is when he becomes associated with the Tavern.
He was briefly arrested and put on trial at Reading after a successful six thousand pound score, but managed through tricks and bribery to avoid penalty. Shortly after that he fled across the water with the help of his married lover, and made the acquaintance of Charles II, who he also robbed. However he obtained such secret information from this that he hoped to buy a pardon from Cromwell, and went back to England to tell all.
Unfortunately for Mull Sack the Protector was not favourably inclined, and the notorious bandit went to the gallows at Smithfield Rounds in 1655, at the age of 45.
A Skinker, incidentally, is someone who serves drink.
The name Devil Tavern is supposed to come from the pub's old sign, which showed the Saint pulling the Devil's nose with a pair of tongs. The precise origin is unclear; it may have come from St Dunstan-in-the-West, the nearby medieval church. If you've been following me for a while then you may remember me mentioning St Dunstan's in a different context - Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber. The murdering scoundrel hid the remains of his victims in the crypts of St Dunstan's, accessed by underground tunnel. Saint Dunstan is also the patron of goldsmiths, and at one time the area was full of them. It may be the pub's sign was designed to flatter them, and encourage trade.
Saint Dunstan himself is supposed to have taken his turn at the forge, tongs in hand, which is why he uses them to pull the Devil's nose. According to legend the Saint was asked to make a chalice, and agreed, but during the work realized that his client was the Devil himself. Dunstan took his tongs and put them in the fire, waiting till they were red-hot. Then he turned on the Devil and caught Satan's nose in his tongs, holding tight till he felt the Devil was vanquished. "These are the tricks of Devils, who try to trap us with their snares whenever they can. But if we remain firm in the service of Christ, we can easily defeat them with his help, and they will flee from us in confusion."
So with all that in mind, let's put together a Bookhounds scenario seed:
Teachings of Apollo
One of the Bookstore's regulars is a Shakespeare obsessive, whose dream it is to track down the lost play Cardenio. Though the regular is willing to pay any price - creating a Windfall for the shop and increasing its Credit Rating - to date the characters have not been able to obtain the item.
However according to a book scout (either NPC or character) a very disreputable character claims to know "how to make Apollo speak." This peculiar gentleman says he can conjure up spirits and make them talk, and proposes to use the bust of Apollo, now kept at Child's Bank, as a focus for his ritual. All he needs are some Comte d'Erlette pamphlets as payment, and blood soaked by a hanged man's blood as a material component, and he'll get Shakespeare's ghost to give up the goods.
Though peculiar, this wizard does know the ritual and can perform it as a demonstration should the characters wish. Going through this kind of ritual first-hand is fairly traumatic (3-point Stability check), but it is convincing, and the necromancer can produce other forgeries to show he's done this sort of thing before. Besides, he points out, is it really a forgery if it's Shakespeare's own play recounted by the man himself?
The characters will need to obtain the blood-soaked earth. This is more difficult than it used to be in the days when public hangings were held at Tyburn or Smithfield. However some investigative work, and possibly a bargain with ghouls, finds a suicide's hanged corpse that nobody else has discovered yet. It's another 3-point Stability check to gather the raw materials.
They also need those pamphlets. This bit's best left to the Keeper, but a raid on some private archive or, better yet, an auction in a particularly seedy establishment - some Soho den of vice, perhaps - solves that problem.
Then they need to get into the Bank where the bust of Apollo is kept. It's the oldest bank in England and holds the accounts of the great and good, so it's reasonably secure. Difficulty 5 tests needed either to sneak or bluff past security. They can either carry off the bust or conduct the ritual in the Bank. The latter might be the easier option; Difficulty 6 tests needed to get out of the building with a life-size head-and-shoulders marble bust. There may also be megapolisomantic benefits to leaving the bust where it is; it's current location is as close as it's possible to be to the old Devil Tavern, where Shakespeare and Jonson had those famous battles of wit.
The ritual begins (5-point Stability test) and all goes well at first. Whoever's on note-taking duty gets some golden material, not just from Shakespeare but from Jonson, Swift, Dr Johnson and other guests of The Devil. It all goes wrong halfway through when the shade of Mull Sack interferes. The desperate robber doesn't like the afterlife or being ignored in favour of some scribbling buffoon, and attempts to possess one of the group. The necromancer suffers a heart attack and drops dead, leaving the Bookhounds with a partial Shakespeare script, a ritual rapidly getting out of hand, and a vengeful highwayman who will not stay in the grave if he can help it. Using the blood-soaked earth as a weapon against Mull Sack will get rid of him, but also waste some of the ritual component that the Bookhounds need to keep Shakespeare talking. Just how greedy are the Bookhounds? Will they risk all to get a complete Cardenio?
Enjoy!
Sunday, 11 November 2018
London Booty
I'm back!
For the first time in my life I have jet lag. I can't blame the climate, as I had the same problem flying over as I did flying home. I have no idea how this happened. I've always been lag-free. I suppose this is one of those things that goes wrong with age, he says clutching a shawl around his shoulders and sipping tepid tea for fear of excess excitement.
This time out I thought I'd talk about the haul of books and DVDs brought home from faraway places. For those of you wondering what peculiar artifact this Digital Video Disc might be, it's a cinema format I find very useful, for two reasons. First, it's still the most reliable way to find odd, old, and cult cinema, and there are some temples where they might be found. Like Fopp in London within striking distance of the Orc's Nest, Music & Goods Exchange in Greenwich, and Timeslip on Trafalgar Road in Brighton. Second, it avoids the Foreigner Problem.
For those of you who don't have to put up with the Foreigner Problem, allow me to elucidate.
If you happen to live in a place like Bermuda, overseas vendors don't know what to do with you, but as you're a Foreigner they treat you like a peculiar, simple-headed soul. Someone who doesn't appreciate the good stuff. Someone whose first language probably isn't English. Someone you can overcharge for postage.
So if you're, say, an American service provider offering online movies, you certainly don't offer the full rate of programs to Foreigners. You short the bill, and if the series happens to be, say, Japanese anime, you offer subtitles in Spanish. Only Spanish. Because Spanish is what they speak in Foreign Parts. Portuguese would be better, but quel dommage! It's improved over the years, but this is what put me off online services for a very long time, and even now I'm dubious about a so-called service that can be withdrawn at the vendor's discretion. If I buy a movie, it's mine. It's not some peculiar form of rental.
So despite the climate being ruinous to discs, I still purchase DVDs. How ruinous, you ask? Our humid salt-laden air often kills DVDs within months. The outer skin of the disc separates ever so slightly, leaving the smallest of cavities, something you can't see with the naked eye. Then condensation builds up, the tiniest beads of water. Mold loves water. All it wants is water and darkness, and there's not much light inside a DVD case. When it's not mold, it's rust. I remember tape decks being much the same - you could see the rot spread, little greyish fingers of death. I've seen DVDs practically transparent, patched like a pinto pony. The lifespan of a disc depends on its quality. Your average HBO box set, manufactured by the lowest bidder, might die within a few months, maybe a year. A BFI high quality issue might last decades.
There are ways of solving the problem but I shan't go into them here. This isn't Technology Corner.
The list of books is short, but that only means I'm not including books bought as Christmas presents for other people. I'm not some animal.
London Cameos by A.H. Blake, Herbert Jenkins publisher, 1930. Purchased at Greenwich market.
Markets are very hit and miss. You can find treasures; more often you find junk. It's like prospecting for gold, with about the same success rate. "Surely there is no city in Europe that is as rapidly obliterating all the footsteps of the past as London," writes Blake. Just a moment there, Blake, old son, there's a Herman Goering on the line for you. Blake's done a brilliant job of collecting what amounts to a ton of scenario hooks - A Picturesque Inn, The Bell of Doom, to name but two of several score. I look forward to devouring them at my leisure.
Victorian and Edwardian Prisons by Trevor May, Shire Library, 2006. Purchased at the Museum of London Docklands.
I'm not going to spend much time describing this one. You can work it out from the title. However if you ever want source material for a UK game I highly recommend anything Shire publishes. It's always informative, packed with useful detail and evocative illustrations. Writers take note.
Folklore of Guernsey by Marie De Garis, originally published 1975, reprinted 2014 by La Societe Guernsesiaise. Bought in Guernsey.
You'd be forgiven for thinking, as you peruse the bookshelves, that nothing much happened in Guernsey until Hitler invaded. There's a few tomes on fishing and forts, then Whallop! Germany calling, and suddenly there's books by the dozen. Guernsey was the only part of Britain ever to be captured by the Nazis, and they left behind some calling cards, the odd gun emplacement, a well-stocked Occupation Museum. However I was surprised not to see more books about this dolmen-haunted island's history and folklore. The island's seen human habitation since before the birth of Christ and its archaeology is fascinating - yet so much of it has been dug up, used for building material or just thrown away to clear a farmer's field. I love books like this Folklore, and ate it up while waiting for Aurigny to wind up the rubber bands that power its aircraft's engines. I shall have to do something with this material.
Guernsey as it used to be, a tour of the town in Victorian times by George Hugo, originally published 1933, reprint 2017 Blue Ormer.
Yes, I shall definitely have to do something with this material.
Vampire the Masquerade by Ken Hite and others, World of Darkness. Bought at Orc's Nest, London.
I went over with one eye on this and another on The Fall of Delta Green, which no doubt made for a peculiar facial expression on my part, but thankfully I didn't have to see it myself. There was no way I was buying both. Leaving aside the cost - this one item makes up about a fifth of my book budget - there was no way both would fit in the suitcase, not with everything else that had to go in. Read it on the plane, need to read it again. Mechanically it's not a million miles away from the version I played at Uni, but there are significant differences. Culturally it's a whole other universe away. This is Vampire for the 21st Century, and it looks hellishly entertaining.
The Vampire, by Nick Groom, Yale Uni Press 2018.
Yes, it's a new history of your friend and mine. Yes, it's very, very good. Highly recommended. Am still reading. Go away. Shoo! Still reading … Depending on my Shoggee I might have to get someone this for Christmas.
Dogs of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, first published 2017, this edition 2018 Head of Zeus.
Adrian's been a mate since university, and he kindly gave me this. It's a near future dystopian sci-fi in which bioform weapons are used in place of robots, because the robots can't be trusted. Rex is a Good Dog, leader of his squad, but he's beginning to wonder whether he's really such a Good Dog after all, and if he's not, what to do about it. What fascinates me is that it's as much about international, human rights and war crimes law as it is Big Guns Go Bang; it takes a lawyer's mind to pull that one off.
The DVD list includes:
Lucky Luke 2009, French. I loved this Western gunslinger comedy comic when I was young. Can't wait to see the big screen adaptation.
A Private Function 1984, a British comedy of manners about a roast pig dinner gone awry.
Thief 1981, in which expert bandit James Caan wants to settle down, but the mob prefer him out on the streets working for them.
Arsenic and Old Lace 1944, and if you don't know what this is you should be ashamed of yourself. Fun fact - this is based on a 1941 stage play in which Boris Karloff played the monstrous Brewster played in the film by Roger Massey. The film was being shot at the same time Karloff thrilled audiences on Broadway.
Watership Down 1978, animated. I remember watching this when I was a kid. I have young nieces. I see no reason why their childhood shouldn't be blighted too. ;)
Big Trouble in Little China 1986, and how could any sane soul resist this film? I won't ask if you know it - but when was the last time you saw it?
The Monster Club 1981, a horror triple bill with Vincent Price, Donald Pleasance and John Carradine.
Ray Harryhausen, the Special Effects Titan 2011, documentary about the man who made stop motion movie magic possible, from Jason and his Argonauts to tentacled horrors tearing apart the Golden Gate bridge.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
For the first time in my life I have jet lag. I can't blame the climate, as I had the same problem flying over as I did flying home. I have no idea how this happened. I've always been lag-free. I suppose this is one of those things that goes wrong with age, he says clutching a shawl around his shoulders and sipping tepid tea for fear of excess excitement.
This time out I thought I'd talk about the haul of books and DVDs brought home from faraway places. For those of you wondering what peculiar artifact this Digital Video Disc might be, it's a cinema format I find very useful, for two reasons. First, it's still the most reliable way to find odd, old, and cult cinema, and there are some temples where they might be found. Like Fopp in London within striking distance of the Orc's Nest, Music & Goods Exchange in Greenwich, and Timeslip on Trafalgar Road in Brighton. Second, it avoids the Foreigner Problem.
For those of you who don't have to put up with the Foreigner Problem, allow me to elucidate.
If you happen to live in a place like Bermuda, overseas vendors don't know what to do with you, but as you're a Foreigner they treat you like a peculiar, simple-headed soul. Someone who doesn't appreciate the good stuff. Someone whose first language probably isn't English. Someone you can overcharge for postage.
So if you're, say, an American service provider offering online movies, you certainly don't offer the full rate of programs to Foreigners. You short the bill, and if the series happens to be, say, Japanese anime, you offer subtitles in Spanish. Only Spanish. Because Spanish is what they speak in Foreign Parts. Portuguese would be better, but quel dommage! It's improved over the years, but this is what put me off online services for a very long time, and even now I'm dubious about a so-called service that can be withdrawn at the vendor's discretion. If I buy a movie, it's mine. It's not some peculiar form of rental.
So despite the climate being ruinous to discs, I still purchase DVDs. How ruinous, you ask? Our humid salt-laden air often kills DVDs within months. The outer skin of the disc separates ever so slightly, leaving the smallest of cavities, something you can't see with the naked eye. Then condensation builds up, the tiniest beads of water. Mold loves water. All it wants is water and darkness, and there's not much light inside a DVD case. When it's not mold, it's rust. I remember tape decks being much the same - you could see the rot spread, little greyish fingers of death. I've seen DVDs practically transparent, patched like a pinto pony. The lifespan of a disc depends on its quality. Your average HBO box set, manufactured by the lowest bidder, might die within a few months, maybe a year. A BFI high quality issue might last decades.
There are ways of solving the problem but I shan't go into them here. This isn't Technology Corner.
The list of books is short, but that only means I'm not including books bought as Christmas presents for other people. I'm not some animal.
London Cameos by A.H. Blake, Herbert Jenkins publisher, 1930. Purchased at Greenwich market.
Markets are very hit and miss. You can find treasures; more often you find junk. It's like prospecting for gold, with about the same success rate. "Surely there is no city in Europe that is as rapidly obliterating all the footsteps of the past as London," writes Blake. Just a moment there, Blake, old son, there's a Herman Goering on the line for you. Blake's done a brilliant job of collecting what amounts to a ton of scenario hooks - A Picturesque Inn, The Bell of Doom, to name but two of several score. I look forward to devouring them at my leisure.
Victorian and Edwardian Prisons by Trevor May, Shire Library, 2006. Purchased at the Museum of London Docklands.
I'm not going to spend much time describing this one. You can work it out from the title. However if you ever want source material for a UK game I highly recommend anything Shire publishes. It's always informative, packed with useful detail and evocative illustrations. Writers take note.
Folklore of Guernsey by Marie De Garis, originally published 1975, reprinted 2014 by La Societe Guernsesiaise. Bought in Guernsey.
You'd be forgiven for thinking, as you peruse the bookshelves, that nothing much happened in Guernsey until Hitler invaded. There's a few tomes on fishing and forts, then Whallop! Germany calling, and suddenly there's books by the dozen. Guernsey was the only part of Britain ever to be captured by the Nazis, and they left behind some calling cards, the odd gun emplacement, a well-stocked Occupation Museum. However I was surprised not to see more books about this dolmen-haunted island's history and folklore. The island's seen human habitation since before the birth of Christ and its archaeology is fascinating - yet so much of it has been dug up, used for building material or just thrown away to clear a farmer's field. I love books like this Folklore, and ate it up while waiting for Aurigny to wind up the rubber bands that power its aircraft's engines. I shall have to do something with this material.
Guernsey as it used to be, a tour of the town in Victorian times by George Hugo, originally published 1933, reprint 2017 Blue Ormer.
Yes, I shall definitely have to do something with this material.
Vampire the Masquerade by Ken Hite and others, World of Darkness. Bought at Orc's Nest, London.
I went over with one eye on this and another on The Fall of Delta Green, which no doubt made for a peculiar facial expression on my part, but thankfully I didn't have to see it myself. There was no way I was buying both. Leaving aside the cost - this one item makes up about a fifth of my book budget - there was no way both would fit in the suitcase, not with everything else that had to go in. Read it on the plane, need to read it again. Mechanically it's not a million miles away from the version I played at Uni, but there are significant differences. Culturally it's a whole other universe away. This is Vampire for the 21st Century, and it looks hellishly entertaining.
The Vampire, by Nick Groom, Yale Uni Press 2018.
Yes, it's a new history of your friend and mine. Yes, it's very, very good. Highly recommended. Am still reading. Go away. Shoo! Still reading … Depending on my Shoggee I might have to get someone this for Christmas.
Dogs of War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, first published 2017, this edition 2018 Head of Zeus.
Adrian's been a mate since university, and he kindly gave me this. It's a near future dystopian sci-fi in which bioform weapons are used in place of robots, because the robots can't be trusted. Rex is a Good Dog, leader of his squad, but he's beginning to wonder whether he's really such a Good Dog after all, and if he's not, what to do about it. What fascinates me is that it's as much about international, human rights and war crimes law as it is Big Guns Go Bang; it takes a lawyer's mind to pull that one off.
The DVD list includes:
Lucky Luke 2009, French. I loved this Western gunslinger comedy comic when I was young. Can't wait to see the big screen adaptation.
A Private Function 1984, a British comedy of manners about a roast pig dinner gone awry.
Thief 1981, in which expert bandit James Caan wants to settle down, but the mob prefer him out on the streets working for them.
Arsenic and Old Lace 1944, and if you don't know what this is you should be ashamed of yourself. Fun fact - this is based on a 1941 stage play in which Boris Karloff played the monstrous Brewster played in the film by Roger Massey. The film was being shot at the same time Karloff thrilled audiences on Broadway.
Watership Down 1978, animated. I remember watching this when I was a kid. I have young nieces. I see no reason why their childhood shouldn't be blighted too. ;)
Big Trouble in Little China 1986, and how could any sane soul resist this film? I won't ask if you know it - but when was the last time you saw it?
The Monster Club 1981, a horror triple bill with Vincent Price, Donald Pleasance and John Carradine.
Ray Harryhausen, the Special Effects Titan 2011, documentary about the man who made stop motion movie magic possible, from Jason and his Argonauts to tentacled horrors tearing apart the Golden Gate bridge.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
Sunday, 21 October 2018
A Very British Coup (Night's Black Agents)
This post is inspired by Tilar Mazzeo's history of Paris' Ritz, The Hotel on the Place Vendome, a story of the hotel between the Wars and during the Occupation. I enjoyed it but don't recommend it as a purchase, which is ironic since not only did I snag this as a freebie from the 'take me' shelf of my local charity, it's a version with the author's signature plate on the flyleaf. So someone else felt the same way.
I don't recommend it as a purchase because it sells itself as more than it is. Life, death, betrayal at the Hotel Ritz! The questions you are asking are more treacherous than you think. This book about the Hotel Ritz and the story of the occupation, you should not write it … Yet what's between the covers is a mannered and at times pleasant history of a famous hotel. Rich people doing rich things and pretending to be more interesting than they are, as though money can buy you a personality. There's little to quicken the pulse or excite the imagination. It's useful as a history, if you plan to set a session there, and worth borrowing from the library or buying second hand, but don't rush out to get it.
However there is one incident after the War that intrigues me enough to borrow for a Dracula Dossier story seed.
In 1936 Edward Windsor abdicated so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. During the war the two royal Nazi sympathizers went to live in Bermuda (gee, thanks ever so, gosh what an honor). After the War they returned to Europe and settled in Paris for a time, because Edward had his sights on the throne again and wanted to be close enough to London to dash over whenever necessary.
His brother George IV was sickly, and his successor Elizabeth was barely 18, saddled with a Greek princeling husband that none of the British establishment cared for, not least because they suspected he might be a Greek bearing gifts, in the form of ne'er-do-well relatives. Under ordinary circumstances Edward didn't have a chance at the throne, but these were not ordinary circumstances. It was felt in certain circles that Edward had a shot, so long as he behaved himself.
Edward had a reputation for sexual adventures. His liaison with Wallis was only the last in a string of unfortunate dalliances. If Edward hoped to replace Elizabeth when her father died, on no account could he be linked with any kind of scandal, particularly sexual scandal.
In steps Wallis. The great love affair had cooled by this point. She didn't precisely hate him, but the marriage was more a convenience than anything else. In 1951 when Edward rushed to his dying brother's bedside, she embarked on a romance that sank Edward's chances altogether.
American socialite Jimmy Donahue, close friend of the Windsors, Woolworth heir and flamboyant homosexual, was the one who drove the wedge in. His friend Barbara Hutton, herself a Woolworth heir, frequent divorcee and, at the time, Princess Troubetzkoy, provided the safe haven at her grand suite at the Ritz. While Edward was in Paris Jimmy and Wallis were discreet, but once Edward left …
That weekend, when the Duke was in London, things in the nightclubs on Montmarte escalated at last into some very public dirty dancing - and into a weeklong fling that took Wallis and Jimmy from one hot spot or another across the capital by night and found them in the afternoons cavorting in delicto at the Ritz, in the lavish suite lent to him for the purpose of some privacy by his millionaire cousin. "I knew it was physical," Barbara Hutton's personal secretary, Mona Eldridge, later admitted … And once the affair was out in the open anyhow, the Duchess made a display of it.
By the time the Duke returned to Paris on June 9, 1951, he stood no chance of usurping Elizabeth. When her father died on February 6, 1952, the princess became Queen Elizabeth II.
All that's the history, However if you're running a Dracula Dossier game then you have the option of giving history some fangs. Where did Edom stand in the succession debate? Did Dracula have any interest? What about personalities like the Legacies, particularly Lord Godalming - did the then heir have a dog in that fight? What exactly is Jimmy's role in this - what was it about Wallis that persuaded him to change preference?
Option 1: Edom Skullduggery. There are powerful interests in London that want to see Edward on the throne, but Edom sees this as an unmitigated disaster. Those same London interests are in bed with Dracula's Satanic Cult, and see Edward as their chance for the ultimate advancement. With his patronage, the Satanic Cult will put its catspaws into positions of utmost sensitivity and importance. Edom can't permit that, so it sends a team - possibly including an SBA - with one goal in mind: sink Edward's chances, but don't kill anyone or do anything that might reveal Edom's hand in this. Edom plays Cupid, using Dracula's own weapons of seduction to do it.
Option 2: Dracula's Spite. Edom wants Edward on the throne. It knows Edward is biddable, and can be persuaded to double Edom's budget, advance its Dukes to high positions in the establishment, and generally make Edom a force to be reckoned with. Dracula, or possibly the remnants of his Conspiracy if the great bloodsucker is indisposed, does not like this idea one bit. Moreover George IV is going in and out of his sickbed like an indecisive corpse - will he or won't he finally die? As it turns out the Conspiracy has two agendas: first, keep George alive until his brother can be dealt with. Second, sink Edward - and the best way to do that is through Wallis.
Option 3: Outside Influences. Jimmy Donahue is the dark horse in this scenario. Erzabet Bathory is the catalyst. This could also work as a sequel to the Carmilla Sanction from Edom Files, assuming Carmilla got away. It would need to be quick work; as written the Carmilla Sanction takes place in 1948, and Wallis' big romance is in 1951. Bathory is fascinated by Jimmy, and Jimmy's money. A liaison with him could refresh her empty coffers, and he is a pretty little thing. Such a pity he's gay, but under Erzabet's influence anything is possible. Trouble is, Erzabet's tinkering sets Jimmy along an entirely different path, and things spiral out of control when a sexually liberated and vampire-influenced Woolworth heir goes on a mad Dionysian spree across Paris. A suspicious Edom sends some minders over, just in case this turns out to be one of Dracula's ploys. The remnants of Dracula's war-torn Conspiracy is also interested in what's going on, because they know vampire activity when they see it but they don't know who's behind it all. Cue a Pink Panther-esque romp across Paris, as everyone joins in the chase from nightspot to hotspot to bedroom, all trying to find out what's going on.
Enjoy!
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