Nights Black Agents - Hauntings

It's that ghostly time of year, when the subconscious dwells uneasily in shadowy corners and obsesses over things which should not be.

I've discussed Hauntings before in connection with Bookhounds, and I've mentioned them in connection with NBA too. At that time I said:

I gave these guidelines for Bookhounds ghosts, or spirits of place:

• The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.
• It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.
• It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

I'd modify them for Night's Black Agents, as follows:

• The truth of the haunting must be linked to the Vampire background. If vampires in your game are mutant creations of science, then ghosts should have a scientific background as well. A Satanic vampire game has Satanic ghosts, and so on.
• It cannot be dealt with in the same way as an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls can be shot or bargained with, but ghosts don't have the same weaknesses. Bargaining may be possible, but difficult.
• It has power behind it, but that power is going to depend on the method of its creation. It ought never to be as powerful as, say, a Renfield, let alone a vampire. This isn't a major player; it's a mood piece, possibly even a booby trap.
• These ghosts can be defeated but probably not destroyed, in the same sense that vampires can be defeated, but can come back from the grave. 

In NBA vampires come in four delicious favors: mutant, supernatural, damned, alien. What kind of ghost stories can be told with the same premise?

So with all that in mind, let's talk about some concrete examples.

Before I do, I just want to briefly talk about a phenomenon that first appears in the 1900s: the techno ghost.

A techno ghost is something that mirrors or borrows technology but is not necessarily defined by it. A ghost that only exists when heard over the wireless or telephone. The ghost of a car, or plane, or train. A ghost that appears on television, or a film screen. 

When technology is first introduced and is unfamiliar to the general reading public, authors tend to borrow them for spooky background. So, for instance, when the telephone is first introduced but there isn't a telephone in every home, you'll find a few period authors sneaking in phone calls from beyond the grave. Even Stephen King uses a party line in one of his short stories, because he's old enough to remember the last surviving party line telephone systems way wayyy out in the piney woods. 

Similarly when moving pictures were new and most cinemas were basically large tents or village halls repurposed for the night, you'll find short story writers using cinemas as settings. These share the same advantage as that spooky little antique store where you bought that monkey's paw; you'll never find that mobile cinema again, no matter how hard you look. 

A similar mechanic plays out in Japanese horror The Ring.

Sourced from MotelX

I've often wondered just how common VCR tapes were in Japan in the late 1990s. I'm guessing not very; DVD must have taken over by then. It was a very clever move on someone's part. The ghost in that story is fairly traditional, but the method of delivery gives it that special edge. 

The key point being that, like the mobile cinema, you have to have the tape to make the thing work, and tapes are mobile things. You never know where they'll crop up next ...

Anyway, after that brief diversion, the meat of the matter:

Damned: Their markers are holy symbols and spiritualism, their emphasis is seduction.

Roadside Shrine. You probably drive past a few of these on any long car journey. Someone's last moment on earth before the smash, memorialized in fading flowers and drifting plastic. Whoever they are, someone loved them. Still, it's impossible to tell from that blurred photograph who they were or what they were like.

Aberrance 7, Health 8. Alertness +2. Stealth +3 in shadows, +1 in bright light. Free Powers: Unearthly Tread (+2 difficulty to evade), Reflection Only (can only be seen in a reflective surface, like a rear view mirror). Other Powers: Mesmerism (only works if makes eye contact), Drain Heat.

The Shrine spirit is a twisted remnant of a roadside fatality. It might only exist as some faded police tape and chalk marks, or it might be a collection of dying flowers and heartfelt remembrances. The vampires have taken the essence of this death and made it their own, creating a kind of spiritual IED that attaches itself either to the next person to see the shrine, or a specified target (say, via blood and fingernail parings). The spirit attaches itself to its victim at the earliest opportunity and tries to force them, through Mesmerism, into a fatal accident, preferably a road accident. The spirit appears to its victim in a reflective surface, perhaps a mirror or shop window, to make the eye connection. It has no intelligence and very little memory left, but can be persuaded to return to its shrine if fresh blood is spilt at that location.

Alien: Their markers are various uncanny effects; their emphasis is invasion.

Floating Lights. What's that up in the sky? Probably a satellite passing overhead - but those lights are remarkably bright for a satellite. A plane, maybe? Pretty quiet, if it is. A drone, that's it - has to be. 

Aberrance 10, Firearms (light ray) 8, Health 8. Alertness +1. Stealth +4. Free Powers: Infravision, Regeneration (2 points per round). Other Powers: Cloud Men's Minds, Vampiric Speed, Tracking.

Though these can be mistaken for UFOs in fact they are unexpected byproducts of alien infestation. They only appear in places where the vampires have been, and then only for a brief time - perhaps a week, never longer than a month and then only in cases where the vampires have lingered for some time or gathered in great numbers. The jury's out as to whether they're intelligent, parasites or some kind of mobile portal to other dimensions. One thing's for certain: Renfields hate and fear these things. Only Renfields know why, and they're not talking.

Supernatural: Their markers are strange superstitions, their emphasis hunger. 

Mr. Smiles. Doomscroll through your social media feed, and you'll find him. Those peculiar private messages and videos from someone you don't know or recognize. Funny how they only seem to come after an encounter with ... those things. Don't look at the images. Don't listen to the messages. That's how Mr. Smiles gets in.

Aberrance 7, Hand to Hand 10, Health 10. Alertness +3, Stealth +2. Free Powers: Strength, Unfeeling, Spider Climb. Other Powers: Heat Drain, Vampiric Speed.

Mr. Smiles is something the vampires cooked up. It takes a death to summon it, preferably the death of a friend or Network contact. Then those peculiar messages and images start showing up in the target's social media feed. Threatening messages, unpleasant pictures, and even if you scrub your feed obsessively somehow Mr. Smiles, all teeth and gore like a modern-day Raw Head and Bloody Bones, follows you, tracks you down. If he finds you, he'll crawl out from whichever device he's tracked you down on and kill you - dragging whatever's left back into the device. Then Mr. Smiles will make you just like him, and set you after your friends.

Mutant: Their markers are medical symptoms; their emphasis is infection.

Green Oil. Be careful what you step in. Don't let it get on you. If even the slightest drop gets on you it sticks there, propagates, eating away at your shoes, your clothes, turning whatever it can into more of itself. It doesn't like fire, but it's preternaturally clever; it might let you think it's burnt away, and then it slips into your bed at night. 

Aberrance 7, Hand to Hand 10, Health 4. Alertness +2, Stealth +4. Free Powers: Regeneration (2/round), Track by Smell (+2 difficulty evade). Other Powers: Heat Drain (gains points drained as health, effectively creating more of it from whatever it eats)

The oil is a byproduct of vampire kills. A little of it is left behind wherever a vampire feeds, and usually it dies off within a day or two. However if someone picks it up, even the tiniest speck on the sole of someone's shoe, it can use the heat from whatever it's attached to as a food source. That lets it create more of itself, and more, and more. It can grow too large; if it manages to eat a person it generally can't keep its form together and dissipates, but not before infecting the room it dissipates in. This doesn't create more oil, but does create a very unpleasant atmosphere - effectively a 3-point Stability loss for anyone who spends time (longer than 10 minutes) in that area.

That's it for me. Enjoy!

Montague James and the Hounds (Bookhounds of London)

I did say we'd be back to normal this week.

I expect most of you have heard of M.R. James, academic, antiquarian and author of some of the finest ghost stories ever published. For those who haven't, there's plenty of chances to rectify that deficiency; you can even get the books for free on Gutenberg, and there are any number of people doing readings of his work on podcasts and YouTube. OutsideXbox's Luke Westaway is quite good at it, if you have an hour or so to spare. Christopher Lee is even better, but his stuff can be difficult to find.

M.R. James originally created these stories as live performances for his friends at Christmas, a tradition that goes back a long, long way but is probably best remembered through Dickens' Christmas Carol. James then published them to great acclaim, and enjoys the best distinction a writer could hope for; his work is still in print almost a century after his death.

This time out I want to focus on two of his stories and talk about their Bookhounds implications. I shan't spoil. If you haven't read these stories please seek them out.

The first is Martin's Close, first published in 1911's More Ghost Stories.

Some few years back I was staying with the rector of a parish in the West, where the society to which I belong owns property. I was to go over some of this land: and, on the first morning of my visit, soon after breakfast, the estate carpenter and general handyman, John Hill, was announced as in readiness to accompany us. The rector asked which part of the parish we were to visit that morning. The estate map was produced, and when we had showed him our round, he put his finger on a particular spot. 'Don't forget,' he said, 'to ask John Hill about Martin's Close when you get there. I should like to hear what he tells you.' 'What ought he to tell us?' I said. 'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the rector, 'or, if that is not exactly true, it will do till lunch-time.' And here he was called away ...

It transpires there's not just a story, there's a criminal trial.

I made search in the more obvious places. The trial seemed to be nowhere reported. A newspaper of the time, and one or more news-letters, however, had some short notices, from which I learnt that, on the ground of local prejudice against the prisoner (he was described as a young gentleman of a good estate), the venue had been moved from Exeter to London; that Jeffreys had been the judge, and death the sentence, and that there had been some 'singular passages' in the evidence. Nothing further transpired till September of this year. A friend who knew me to be interested in Jeffreys then sent me a leaf torn out of a second-hand bookseller's catalogue with the entry: JEFFREYS, JUDGE: Interesting old MS. trial for murder, and so forth, from which I gathered, to my delight, that I could become possessed, for a very few shillings, of what seemed to be a verbatim report, in shorthand, of the Martin trial.

OK, let's talk about this.

Bookhounds - and horror games in general - sometimes treat manuscripts as though every single one of them's a Necronomicon, bound in human skin and dripping with evil. That's far from being so. People publish anything and everything. Most of it is rubbish. That's why the Hounds are always on the lookout for some unmemorable 18th century tat that they can rip apart and use the binding and papers for something more valuable. However, one man's rubbish is another man's gold. 

Here we have someone who's looking for the transcript of a trial. They can't find a copy anywhere, and it seems there may not be one. Yet by chance a transcript turns up in a second-hand bookseller's shop. It might have been that simple, but James adds an extra hurdle: the text is in the court reporter's shorthand, and not only that but a 17th century version of shorthand. The narrator has to find someone who can translate it so the narrator can have a copy typed out. It's a very neat touch that lends authenticity to the story, and doesn't take more than a sentence to describe.

The second piece is from Two Doctors, which first appears in A Thin Ghost And Others (1920).

It is a very common thing, in my experience, to find papers shut up in old books; but one of the rarest things to come across any such that are at all interesting. Still it does happen, and one should never destroy them unlooked at. Now it was a practice of mine before the war occasionally to buy old ledgers of which the paper was good, and which possessed a good many blank leaves, and to extract these and use them for my own notes and writings. One such I purchased for a small sum in 1911. It was tightly clasped, and its boards were warped by having for years been obliged to embrace a number of extraneous sheets. Three-quarters of this inserted matter had lost all vestige of importance for any living human being: one bundle had not. That it belonged to a lawyer is certain, for it is endorsed: The strangest case I have yet met, and bears initials, and an address in Gray's Inn. It is only materials for a case, and consists of statements by possible witnesses. The man who would have been the defendant or prisoner seems never to have appeared. The dossier is not complete, but, such as it is, it furnishes a riddle in which the supernatural appears to play a part. You must see what you can make of it.

Again, legal papers are the focus of the narrative, but look at how they're introduced. Not even as a manuscript; they're shoved into a ledger and forgotten about, until the narrator picks the ledger up for next to nothing. Three quarters of the inserted matter is useless, which is what's going to happen to the Hounds more often than not; all those bits and bobs they pick up in estate sales and so on, and most of it rubbish. Yet every so often there is something interesting 'and one should never destroy them unlooked at.'

So what can we extract from this?

1) Occult and by extension Mythos lore can appear anywhere.

2) Since Occult and Mythos lore is inextricably interwound with human history, it will appear everywhere, and that includes the most mundane of places. 

3) People publish all sorts of things, and while most of it is uninteresting rubbish you never know where you might find that next scrap of useful material.

4) In the 1930s and previous, people saved damn near everything. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw, never mind bought, a second-hand writing ledger in an antiquarian shop. Most of them barely had space for the books, never mind the not-quite-books. I doubt I'd find one at the Spreadeagle, and frankly if you can't find one there you can't find one anywhere.

With all that in mind:

A Peculiar Gazette

Back issues of old newspapers are often of interest to collectors; you never know when you'll find someone potty on the subject of , say, Huddersfield and desperate for new material. 

The Hounds find a bound collection of early 1800s publication The Star Gazette, best remembered for its series on the London Poor; they had a discount Mayhew on staff who liked writing social commentary but lacked academic rigor. The paper's been defunct since 1868, and the collection's a potential squiz.

There's a section towards the beginning of the collection that has some extra papers interspersed, and it becomes clear to anyone who examines the papers that they're about a scandal that was big in the 1830s: the Thevenot Abduction. 

A fortune-hunting 30-year-old bankrupt, Eustace Thevenot, wanted to marry into money, and did so by abducting 15-year-old textile heiress Devony Walker. He managed to spirit her away from her boarding school and then got her alone at the Thevenot family castle in Scotland, where he persuaded her that her father had consented to the marriage. The pair went from Scotland to Calais, but her outraged family tracked them down and prosecuted. Thevenot went to prison and died there. Devony, released from her marriage, had a short and unhappy life. She married again, and died in childbirth in her early 20s. 

Oral History, Occult or similar, 1 point spend: Devony's story has a peculiar postscript. She was never buried. There is no body in the family crypt; someone stole it. This was hushed up at the time, but became part of local ghost lore after her death. Nobody knows where Eustace Thevenot is buried. Presumably in an unmarked prison grave.

[Loosely based on the real-world Shrigley abduction.]

The Star Gazette has the bare-bones account of the abduction and trial. 

The interspersed papers are an unpublished statement from Devony Walker about her experiences at Thevenot Castle, on a tidal islet up in the Highlands. The statement was collected as part of trial prep, but never introduced at the actual trial. 

In game terms the Walker Papers have the following stats:

1 pool point Occult (skim) or +1 Occult (pore over), no Mythos, no spells. Effectively a short treatise on Geomancy, as understood by Walker who was the subject of various Geomantic rituals that Thevenot tried to cast on her while the two of them were alone at the Castle. 

To anyone without a Mythos pool these rituals seem nonsensical. Thevenot was trying to gain the attention of a water horse or kelpie, and get the creature to bless the marriage.

To anyone with a Mythos pool Thevenot was clearly trying to evoke the spirit of (or essence, or gain the approval of - it's not clear from the text) a sacred dragon, or Lloligor, that in times past had guided the Thevenot family.  

Whether the reader has a Mythos pool or not, it's clear from the papers that Thevenot had a library of occult texts at the Castle, some of which were scarce and valuable even at the time and will be much more valuable in the 1930s. 

Moreover a quick study of History, Library Use or similar (no point spend needed) soon realizes that Thevenot Castle's last occupant, Dacre Thevenot, died in 1916 at the Battle of Ginchy. There's no mention of an estate sale. Those books could be sitting all alone up there in Scotland, waiting to be pinched ...

So long as the Hounds are willing to risk the wrath of the kelpie, of course. But who believes in kelpies?

That's it for me this week. Enjoy!

God Save The What Now? (Politics - Barbados)

This week's post is partly inspired by recent events in Barbados, as encapsulated in this TL/DR video:

Now, this isn't the only bit of media I've seen bewailing the fate of the Monarchy and wondering what will happen when the Queen finally goes to her well-deserved rest. However as someone born in a colony and who's lived in the Commonwealth nearly all of his life, I thought it might be time to lay some myths to rest.

1) Never forget, she is who she is. Nobody swears allegiance to the Monarchy in the abstract. Yes, Queen Elizabeth II is popular but that's because she takes service to the nation seriously and people respect her for it. If she'd been a different kind of monarch we wouldn't be having this discussion and probably there'd be no Commonwealth. There's a reason why PM Owen Arthur (c. 7.54) said he'd struggle to swear allegiance to Harry; this is it.

2) She came here, and we remember. Early in her reign she travelled the Commonwealth and there are plenty of plaques all over the place to mark the spots she's visited, which is another mark in her favor for those who remember the visits. Problem being, the ones who do are in their eighties, so the public memory's fading. The rest of the family don't seem to travel as much; Charles does, but he's no spring chicken. See also: the Pope. There's a reason why His Holiness gets on a plane and jets off to wherever-it-may-be, and it's not because he's racking up frequent flier miles for that dream holiday to Aruba. The personal touch matters. It keeps people engaged.

3) We don't read the Sun. The British have a very different view of the Monarchy than the Commonwealth does, and that's because the average Englishman's concept of the Crown's been shaped by God alone knows how many newspaper articles, paparazzi shots, TV shorts and a thousand other things besides - most of which we never saw. The big change in the Crown's popularity in the UK came in the 1980s and 1990s, when the media became far less deferential and Spitting Image clowned around. As far as the Commonwealth's concerned, none of that ever happened; it wasn't on our TV or in our papers. We don't even get the BBC, for crying out loud, and that seems a missed opportunity. We'd probably pay a license fee for it, if asked. [possible exceptions: Canada and Australia, which both seem to get more UK media than the rest of us.] In fact until the Internet became everyone's media source of choice we only ever got the Crown's highlight reel, and that rarely. Now we get YouTube vids every time Meghan Markle farts. That changes things, but it still means the Commonwealth doesn't share the same perspective the British do.

4) We need a loud voice. The Commonwealth is made up of small nations, for the most part. When small nations try to strike a bargain with larger powers - and everyone's a larger power - we get squeezed. So there's a very useful benefit to being part of a larger Commonwealth of Nations with the Crown at its head, one worth preserving. However, see also Brexit; the less relevant the UK becomes, the less useful our relationship with the Crown. See also see also CARICOM. If the Crown isn't our voice of choice, we'll invent our own. Bermuda's an associate member, and frankly that's only because we're still a dependent territory of the UK which means all our foreign policy is controlled by London. If we ever vote for independence I expect our full membership of CARICOM will follow five minutes after we formally go independent.

5) The prosperous middle classes. Stop me if you've heard these acronyms before: RICS. ICSA (now the CGI). CIOB. CIPD. CIAT. RIBA. RIN (remember, we're surrounded by lots and lots of ocean). And so on ad infinitum. If you're a lawyer, accountant, administrator, architect, engineer and so forth, and you live and work in the Commonwealth, odds are you belong to one of the many Royal or Chartered Institutes, not least because our legal systems are based on the UK's. That means you probably spent several years in the UK or at the very least went there for a crammer course to pass your exams. Your Chartered Body's HQ is almost certainly in London. If you have legal training, odds are good you've eaten at least one dinner at the Inns of Court. The Institutes have done more to keep the Commonwealth a Commonwealth than anything the Queen could manage if she lives to be two hundred, because they provide shared experiences, shared standards, and most importantly drive tens of thousands of students to that sodden, pestilent isle every year.  Even if a Commonwealth nation decides to throw off the yoke and completely reshape the government, the people who do the reshaping will have been trained in the UK to a UK standard - there's no escaping that influence.

And finally:

6) Brexit and Racists. There are plenty of reasons why a Commonwealth made up largely of non-white citizens might not be madly in love with the UK right now, and they have nothing to do with the Queen. Remember earlier when I mentioned the Internet as a news source? Yeah, turns out we know all about Bojo's racism. We notice when former English Defense League head honcho Tommy Robinson gets BBC coverage. When I was a kid having an English passport meant a gateway to a world of possibilities; post-Brexit, an English passport means a narrow lane to a grey failed state where frothing fisherman and mountains of slaughtered pigs are the new symbols of sovereignty. The Queen's death might provide a convenient excuse to cut formal ties, but let's not kid ourselves; those ties have been fraying for a long, long time and most of the reasons why have nothing to do with the Monarchy. 

Anyway, that's it for me. Normal service will resume next week!

Mr. Plot Hook (RPG All)

This week's post  is dedicated to Rent-A-Hitman, the only professional killer service with a HIPPA (Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964) guarantee.

The site, operated by Californian repo-man Bob Innes and not Guido Fanelli, alleged owner of a family business that's been in operation since the 1920s, has been in operation since Innes came up with the joke company back in 2005. Some people take it very seriously. Wendy Wein of Michigan hired Guido to off her husband, only to discover that Rent-A-Hitman was, alas, a fake site. You can't really call it a scam, since the intent was never to defraud. Innes keeps the site going as a modern version of the big store, with all serious enquiries passed to law enforcement for follow-up.

Wendy pled guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced in January. She's looking at a potential 9-year bit, possibly more. 

"I really didn’t think that people were gonna be that stupid," Innes told Rolling Stone. "Boy, did they show me." 

In RPG terms, Guido/Innes is a variation on Mister Johnson. He's the middleman who sets you - that is, you the characters - up with a job. Nobody ever sees his face. He's the voice on the other end of the phone, the admin behind the website. Except in this instance there is no Mr. Johnson; there's just a dude setting you up for a fall. 

Mr. Johnsons are often seen as shady types setting the characters up for a fall. It happens so often, in fact, that some systems go out of their way to explicitly say their Mr. Johnson is a stand-up fella who would never lie. The Esoterrorists, for instance, says outright that Mr. or Ms. Verity does not tell lies. They may not know the whole truth, but they won't stab you in the back. 

Whereas the handlers in Delta Green might well withhold information if it suits them, or set agents up for something nasty - particularly if this is Fall Of, where the agency is on shaky ground from the get-go. Meanwhile Shadowrun's iconic Mr. Johnsons are about as reliable as a chocolate teapot, and the less said about the fixers and bullshit artists of Cyberpunk, the better. 

Which got me thinking: how best to play with the Mr. Johnson concept?

The mysterious employer who turns up mysteriously dead has been used once or twice before. Perhaps the most notorious version is Our Good Friend Jackson Elias from Call of Cthulhu's Masks of Nyarlathotep, though the Dracula Dossier pulls a similar stunt with Hawkins. Call of Cthulhu also has Professor Smith from Horror on the Orient Express, who brings the characters together, funds them, sets them on their way and then keels over dead at the appropriate moment.  

The mysterious employer who turns out to be a bad-ass is less widely used, but not uncommon. Again, going back to Shadowrun, the Great Western Dragon Lofwyr occasionally masquerades as a Johnson, or in this instance a Herr Brackhaus. Dracula Dossier also plays on this a little bit, in that any of their Legacies or more esoteric Johnsons could turn out to be a master spy or supernatural entity playing at being human. 

The mysterious employer who turns out to be a puppet of sinister forces is perhaps a little too mechanically similar to the mysterious employer who turns out to be an evil back-stabber, or the main villain. Still, you could get some play out of that, particularly if 'puppet' in this instance is literal - that the Johnson is just skin, or a mask, with nothing organic underneath. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, says the Great and Powerful Oz ...

One possible alternative to the puppet scenario is a Mr. Johnson who's being squeezed, maybe because they owe someone money. This version will not have the characters' best interests at heart, but that doesn't mean they actually want to betray the characters. No, what Mr. Johnson wants is to be free of the complicating factor that's making his life a living hell. That makes him unreliable, but not automatically evil. If the complicating factor can be dealt with, Mr. Johnson's reliability improves dramatically.

Hitman the video game series makes good use of a Mr. Johnson - in this case, a Ms. Burnwood - who works with the titular Hitman to bring down the system from within. They both have their reasons for wanting to destroy the agency they work for, the International Contract Agency (ICA). While they marshal their forces they carry out a series of assassinations for ICA's clients, waiting for the day when they can turn ICA inside out and gut it. In that instance Ms. Burnwood is 100% (or, well, 99% at least) trustworthy, but the agency they both work for definitely is not.

E3 2015 Trailer

In Dracula Dossier terms, a similar arrangement could easily be had with Edom, the spy agency that brought Dracula in from the cold. The agents could be loyal servants of the Crown, at least outwardly, while their Mr. Johnson helps them take Edom apart from within.

Alternatively in DD Damned campaigns, or anything with a strong supernatural element, your Mr. Johnson could, quite literally, be working for God. The Mysterious Monseigneur is a DD classic, but really any setting with clerics who serve a particular deity would fit. In such a situation your characters aren't just trying to fulfil a contract or obligation; they're trying to please a supernatural sugar daddy. 

Again, Mr. Johnson can be exactly as they seem to be and yet not. So for example the Mysterious Monseigneur could have all the trappings and outward appearance of a man of God, and yet be serving Satan - which would be a magnificent third act twist.

That's enough for this week. Enjoy!

 

The Room Where It Happens (Dracula Dossier)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (BBC)

Standing, Sam sank his hands in his pockets, shook his head, and, rather as Jerry Westerby might have done, began meandering about the room, peering at the odd gloomy things that hung on the wall: group war photographs of dons in uniform; a framed and handwritten letter from a dead Prime Minister; Karla's portrait again, which this time he studied from very close, on and on.

John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy.

Portrait of Dracula (Dracula Dossier Item)

appearance: An oil painting on cheap canvas. Painted by the artist Francis Aytown, this painting depicts the faces of two men, one old and one young. The features of the two men are extremely similar, and might be father and son, or possibly even the same man at different stages of his life.

The elder has a strong, aquiline nose with oddly arched nostrils, a high forehead, thick white-gray hair and a white mustache. His heavy eyebrows and teeth are emphasized by the artist, and his dark eyes seem to follow the observer around the room. He has a livid red scar on his forehead. 

The younger figure has dark hair and a mustache, and appears full of youth and vitality. In contrast to the paleness of the elder, his face is ruddy. The artist appears to have been indecisive over whether or not the subject had a beard - the younger figure’s chin appears muddy and was painted over several times (Photography: X-ray analysis shows that the figure was originally bearded). The same scar is present, but much less noticeable due to the change in complexion. 

The neck and shoulders of both figures are merely hinted at. In both cases, the portrait is oddly unsettling, as the proportions and perspectives are subtly off ...

The Honourable Schoolboy is the second in le Carré's Karla trilogy. In the first, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Soviet spymaster Karla recruits a British agent who rises to the very top of the British spy establishment. Thanks to the efforts of George Smiley, Karla's man is knocked out of the Circus and the Soviet intrusion largely dismantled. 

In this second novel Smiley is now the Circus ringmaster, but the old place has fallen on hard times. Nobody knows who to trust; the networks and agents promoted by Karla's man were deliberately chosen to be ineffective, and the Americans - the Cousins - have no faith in the Circus now its lead performer has been exposed as a fraud. 

The Circus rebuilds - or at least it tries to. Thus begins The Honourable Schoolboy.

One of the recurring elements in that novel is Karla's portrait, which Smiley has deliberately placed at the heart of the Circus so everyone who visits Smiley in his offices can see it. The portrait is a slightly ghoulish reminder of the Circus' recent failings, and it appears again and again in the opening chapters. 

Which made me think of that mysterious portrait of Dracula, listed as one of the items the agents might find in the Dracula Dossier. As with all such items it might be Major, Minor or Fraudulent - that is, really useful, moderately useful, or bogus.

However the point le Carré makes is that the portrait on its own isn't worth a damn. What matters is how you display it, and where. 

Karla's photograph might have been put anywhere. It might have been on Smiley's desk, where only he could see it. It might have been in some secure vault, or hung in the lavatory. Smiley deliberately gives it prominence front and center, where everyone can see it. What's more, by hanging it in the same room as those wartime photographs of the old crew and the congratulatory letter from a dead Prime Minister (presumably Churchill, though it might as easily have been Clement Attlee) Smiley links Karla with the glorious past. It's a reminder to everyone who visits the Circus that the past is tainted, and hints that the Circus needs to redeem itself.

Which brings me back to that portrait of Dracula. Again, what matters isn't so much the portrait itself - though the portrait is important, and might be very important. What matters is where it is displayed, and by whom. A portrait doesn't exist simply to exist. Like all art it exists to be seen, and how it is seen determines its effect and thus its value to the onlooker. 

Dracula's portrait hung in a pub corridor that leads to the Gents is worth little. It might have been picked up as a job lot with half a dozen ink sketches of hounds at bay and a few ill-conceived bits of taxidermy. Dracula's portrait hung in the corridors of Edom has a completely different kind of significance, even if those corridors happen to be moldering and forgotten. 

Dracula's portrait hung in the ultra-modern offices of the new and improved Edom has a different significance again. 

So as an exercise in gamification, consider: what is that room like? What significance does it hold?

I'm going to assume for the purpose of this exercise that the room has the same significance as the portrait and might have similar, or related, characteristics. As you know, there are several different flavors of vampire chronicle: damned, supernatural, alien, mutant. I'm not going to delve into that here since exactly how that factors into your room will depend entirely on you. I'm simply going to say that it naturally will have an influence on the room. A Damned chronicle bears Damned fruit, after all.

I'm also going to assume three kinds of room: modern Edom, decayed Edom, other non-Edom. The other non-Edom could be anything from a superyacht's stateroom to a Legacy's apartments in Rome to a museum or art gallery. The precise location is up to you as Director.

With all that in mind:

Major    

In his obsession, Aytown captured something more — he caught some psychic essence or echo of the Count ...

Modern Edom (eg. the map room at HMS Proserpine, the conference rooms at Seward's Asylum). 

This portrait is among a collection of valued trophies, diagrams, schematics and satellite photographs of recent areas of operation. It is deliberately placed there by D as a reminder to the modern Edom of the kind of asset they are dealing with - cruel, implacable, and dangerous. Fort and Tinman have rigged its glass case with explosives as an anti-theft measure; if anyone tries to remove the painting the detonation should destroy the painting but leave the rest of the room more or less intact.

Decayed Edom (eg. some forgotten offices near Whitehall, an abandoned military installation, Ring). 

These dusty offices had some importance back in the 1970s, which is probably the last time any of the Dukes visited this place. The place stinks of mold and rats. Old filing cabinets long emptied of their secrets loll like hanged men, their tongues - the cabinets - swinging free. Photographs from the Second World War and old silver trophies and cups from some regiment still shine in their cabinets, but that regiment was amalgamated and forgotten back in the 1960s and not even the most dedicated military historian bothers to remember the regiment once had its home here.

Other Non-Edom

This is a peculiar collection put together by someone with an amusing mind. The portrait is in a place of honour where everyone who enters by the main hall can see it, but it is matched with Surrealist masterpieces and a rather nasty-looking portrait of the inmates of a a lunatic asylum, either a Goya or someone heavily influenced by the old Spaniard. The effect is dizzying; there is no corner of the room any observer can look at, and find comfort. 

Minor

Aytown’s portrait can be used to recognize the Count, but it has no other supernatural powers.

Modern Edom

This hangs in the offices of the commandant, perhaps D or the officer in charge of E Squadron. These are spartan rooms, and the portrait is the only art in the place; there isn't even a photo of the commandant's family on their imposing desk. It hangs there sullen and silent, like a child summoned to the Headmaster's office. All meaning seems to have been surgically removed, as if so many uncaring eyes having stared at it for over a century has sapped the painting's will - always assuming it had one in the first place.

Decayed Edom

At some point some forgotten bureaucrat thought it would be a good idea to strip the place of its valuables and put them in storage, but the plan never got quite so far as 'storage.' The portrait is in a back room along with a score of other items, carefully labeled back in the 1980s, and there are packing crates here in which the job lot was clearly meant to be sealed up. Whether money dried up, the bureaucrat lost interest or some other minor disaster happened, who can say? It's all a bit King Tut's Tomb, though if there is a curse it probably hit its expiration date long ago.

Other Non-Edom

The white patches on the wall indicate what happened to the actually valuable art. What's left are the dregs of a collection, some moderately interesting modernists, some Scots Baronial stuff, and a rather odd collection of statuary all jumbled together with no sense of order or style. Whoever acquired this portrait mislabeled it at Jacobethan, and (if this is an art gallery) is trying to sell it for at least twice its actual value.

Fraud

The portrait was actually painted by Viv Aytown-Baptiste, in an attempt to copy her great-grandfather’s style.

Modern Edom

This hangs in the offices of an Edom underling and was bought as a joke that didn't quite come off. It shares space with two Gantt charts and a dartboard, and has acquired several unfortunate holes in consequence. The dartboard has a photo of one of the Edom princes at its center; who can say why?

Decayed Edom

Once upon a time someone thought this was the real deal, and paid rather a lot of government money to purchase it. Embarrassment followed on swift and noisy stamping feet, and the prize was hurriedly moved somewhere where nobody important had to look at it. The typists in the pool, who have to look at it every day, sometimes wonder what happened to that high-flier who thought he was on to something good. Rumor has it he occupied that office at the end of the hall, the one that's now used for storage, until his dismissal in the middle 1990s. Or perhaps he was moved to the offices in Edinburgh. Or perhaps shame killed him. 

Other Non-Edom

It's odd what some people think ought to hang in the second lavatory, the one used by guests. Maybe it was meant to be a joke. It looks more valuable than, perhaps, its owner thinks it is. 

Enjoy!

At the Crossroads (RPG All)

Our knowledge of London is increased by the buried dead. The suicides of the city were, until 1823, buried at a particular crossroads that still exists at the junction of Grovesnor Place and Hobart Place; it may therefore be deemed to be an unlucky spot. Peter Ackroyd, London Under: The Secret History Beneath The Streets

 

Faust, directed by F.W. Murnau of Nosferatu fame 

What is a crossroads? Why is it significant?

From Bullfinch's Mythology: The place where two or more roads intersect. Something sinister about crossroads has made such conjunction of highways a matter of interest for superstitions, beliefs and customs connected with this particular spot. Crossroads superstition was prevalent generally throughout Europe, in India, Japan, Greece, among the Mongols and the American Indians. Here were to be found demons, evil spirits, ghosts and witches, sprites, kobolds and faeries. It was the burial place of suicides and murderers, a dump-heap for parricides, and a rendezvous for witches who frequently used this uncanny place for their sabbat revels. Anything might plainly happen here. People feared and avoided this meeting of the ways. 

Divinities were sometimes associated with the crossroads, perhaps to repel or neutralize the evil influences attached to the locality. In Greek mythology, both Hermes and Hecate were connected with the crossroads. Such ceremonies were practiced at this spot as sacrifice, offerings, divination and many magic rites.   

So this is a spot where the influences of the normal world are weakest, where strange things lurk and occasionally peep through the cracks. In Esoterror terms, the Membrane is weak here.

It's also a psychic dumping ground. If you bury your unwanted or evil dead all in one spot, you have to expect some kind of spiritual leakage from all those unclean corpses.

As can be seen from the Murnau clip, the best - that is, the most evocative - crossroads are far from any sign of human life. So far distant from light, warmth and all things comforting, it is easy to see how such a fell and lonely spot might loom large in popular imagination. 

Of course, things change. New York's Times Square Broadway is a crossroads. It's difficult to imagine a less lonely spot on the planet; at any time of day you're bound to meet someone there. Whether you want to meet them or not is something else again. That, and there would have been a time when what is now Times Square was just a collection of dirt tracks separating farmsteads, just as lonely and desolate as you like. Cities grow, and swallow the lonely places.

Ackroyd mentioned a particular spot in London:

As you can see from the map the crossroads he cites are right on what is now Grosvenor Gardens, among other things. Some very high-end houses, hotels and businesses round that way, which presumably haven't been put off by the miasma from the suicides buried beneath their businesses and cafes. Clearly it can't be that unlucky a spot.

Although you do have to wonder what it's like at midnight.

Gamification:

Assignation at a Crossroads

Your contact has agreed to meet you at a crossroads at midnight. Whether this is a bustling metropolis or a lonely roadside cafe (or perhaps just a collection of scrubby trees and badly maintained street lamps) you can't help but feel a frisson of nervous anticipation. What information do they have? Why meet here, of all places?

• Psychic Dead Spot. The contact chose it because a crossroads is a kind of protection against psychic intrusion and spiritual eavesdroppers. A conversation held here can't be overheard by the dead, or those who rely on ghosties and ghoulies as their eyes and ears. However, the contact is being followed by the dead so as soon as the characters leave that spot they will be picked up on, perhaps pursued. Is there a safe way of leaving a crossroads?
• Meeting of the Damned. The contact doesn't realize that this is where a particularly dangerous group of undead lurk - perhaps strigoi, perhaps even vampires. The contact doesn't realize this because the contact has been suborned, and is working with the enemy. This is a lure, a trap to get the character to meet somewhere their protections are weakest. If this is a savings throw or advantage-style game like D&D, then all saves and combat rolls are at disadvantage while the characters are within a certain distance of the crossroads. Those who can see spirits see the unhallowed dead all around them, hampering the characters' every move.
• Crossing Signals. The contact is trying to find out whether the characters are in league with the enemy. He wants to see how they behave around a crossroads, whether they're affected in any way by their proximity to the unhallowed dead. If the characters pass the test then he has valuable information for them. If they don't, he has something considerably more lethal in mind. Occult spends may be very helpful here, convincing him that he has nothing to fear.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

   

Not Quite First Impressions: The Troubleshooters (Helmgast RPG)

 

The Troubleshooters

I've been looking forward to this.

When I was a kid my folks used to get me Tintin every year for Christmas; I've still got most of them, in less than pristine condition. Trained early on in the ways of evil I soon found myself in Belgium, agog at the one shrine that should be on every comic-lovers itinerary: the Comics Art Museum. So when I discovered that some mad genius was designing an RPG based on the comics I remembered so fondly, I did what I almost never do: I backed the Kickstarter to physical reward level.

See, I know the pain of international shipping. I've known it all my life, so I almost never have anything shipped to me if I can possibly avoid it. When in doubt, I fly to the States or the UK and buy from the store, and I don't often do that. Usually I get the .pdf. 

So picture my joy when, having backed to physical, the world's shipping lanes crashed to a halt, Brexit kicked the UK's shipping timetable in the Boris Johnsons, and COVID kept us all indoors forever. I consoled myself: it will arrive eventually. One day. One far-off day.

It's here! It's finally here!

Is it fun?

Yes!

How fun?

Well, put it to you this way: it's a moderately crunchy light-hearted fantasy tourism RPG in which you, as the hero of a ligne claire style narrative, go forth and do daring deeds. This week, you're hunting a long-lost sunken U-Boat and the treasures it is said to contain. Next week, it's hunting Minoan antiquities while avoiding the minions of a mysterious group known as the Octopus. The week after that, who knows? The world is your oyster!

Speaking of, yes, it is the world, as in the world you know and have been living in for however many years. There are some minor differences, and super science lurks in the shadows with all the mutant octopi and peculiar lights in the sky that entails. Feel free to slip in some references to Atlantis or the Seven Cities of Gold - it's that kind of setting. 

However, world history is broadly the same as it is in our world. Nobody dropped an H-bomb on Berlin, and Martians have yet to land on Golders Green. Kennedy (or possibly Lyndon Johnson) is in the White House. Khrushchev (or possibly Brezhnev) is in the Kremlin. 

Light-hearted means exactly that. Tintin never went to Vietnam, so neither will you. The Cold War might be turning Africa into a blood-soaked pin map and the Belgian Congo might be a nightmare's nightmare, but you're more interested in King Solomon's Mines. Heroes might get knocked cold, but they probably won't have their guts splattered over the landscape. This is a world for Studio Ghibli, not Heavy Metal. 

The rules are moderately crunchy. If crunch-lite is something like Honey Heist, modest crunch is BRP Call of Cthulhu, and major crunch is an Avalon Hill wargame, then The Troubleshooters is probably a notch above CoC but not quite D&D 3.5, in the crunch stakes. Percentile dice, lots of d6s, and a functionally ... odd ... combat system. 

Whoever on the team best loves miniatures combat was put in charge of fight scenes. When planning one of these your first task as Director of Operations is to sketch out the scene of combat and divide it up into zones, which have a tactical impact on gameplay. A street, a sidewalk, fountain, benches, cars parked nearby, all are zones, and some are made up of more than one zone. A car, for instance, is effectively two zones: car interior, and car exterior. If you wanted to make it more complicated you could divide car interior into more than one zone, such as passenger side, driver side, back seats, effectively turning the car into five separate zones. As the game suggests, "if the terrain is boring, add more zones!" 

Eeek!

OK, maybe I'm a psychopath, but when designing a scenario I don't sit down and plan out combat moments because those usually happen without my input. A player character punches a mook, and we're off to the races. Maybe every once in a while I set up, say, a casino floor, in anticipation of a John Woo style gunfight, but that seldom happens. The last time I went to the trouble of sketching out battlemaps, never mind elaborate battlemaps, I was in Uni, and had all the time in the world. Now I have maybe an hour to scribble some notes. Damned if I'm going to pretend to be a draughtsman for the sake of a donnybrook that might last less than 10 minutes at the table.

Moreover it will have to be a sketch most of the time, since zones affect character movement and a host of other tactical considerations, so the players are going to want to see what's going on. If you're not good at sketching quickly, Hergé help you. Nothing kills the mood like ten to fifteen minutes of impromptu drawing while the players twiddle their thumbs.

But you can ignore this, if you like. 

In the combat example given in the main book using the map I described zones do come into it, but only for the first few seconds of gameplay. After that, it's a pretty straightforward smackfest. In fact, zones only become an issue in the first few seconds because the Director is a stickler when it comes to a driver leaping to the rescue over the passenger side of the car (changing zones). If the Director weren't such a stick-in-the-mud, it wouldn't be a problem. There's a brief mention of a zone later in the example, but otherwise zones don't affect the outcome at all. 

In fact the entire map, with all its zones, is completely ignored except for the little bit in between the two cars. So all that sketching went for nothing. In the example, mind you, which is meant to show off every aspect of gameplay.

Which suggests to me that you, as Director, could probably ignore sketches and zones altogether and still have a perfectly satisfactory fight scene.

There are a few odd touches like this. An entire page is devoted to the techniques of kodokan judo, both those allowed in competition and those that are not, which I thought was interesting until I realized that it had no practical effect on gameplay. It's essentially a page of flavor text.

There's a moment where the text discusses Roles Within the Team (Doer, Muscle, Investigator, Fixer, Specialist) and on the page opposite the example character Elektra shows off an eye-catching drawing of her apartment in Paris, which is the team's base of operations. Under Doer, which is the first item on the Roles list and is specifically mentioned as a team leader type, it says among other things '[the Doer] frequently controls some key asset for the team, such as their base of operations.' OK, I think, so Elektra's the Doer. Nope. On the page following, she's listed as the Muscle; Frida, an example character who doesn't get as much screen time as Elektra, is the Doer. 

That's the kind of thing that causes a head-scratching moment; it's not wrong, but it contradicts the text for no good reason, and at this point I'm hoping that everything in the examples reinforces the text. After all, why wasn't it Frida's apartment? Why isn't Elektra, the one who gets most of the screen time, the team leader character?

Then there are Plot Hooks, which are specific to a character and hook the character into a scenario. Say, Do-Gooder (You can't help it! You just have to help others.). The text says 'There are only 11 Plot Hooks. It may seem like too few, but the low number is intentional: to make sure there is guaranteed overlap between the Plot Hooks of the characters and the startup handouts in the adventure books.'

Which is a reason, but not a good reason. Again, perhaps I'm a psychopath (whoops! where's my cleaver?) but I intend to write my own scenarios most of the time. I could care less about the startup handouts in the adventure books; those are optional anyway. So why not stuff in as many Plot Hooks as you like? 

Later in the text, in the Director's section, it talks about Other Genres. 'Bande dessinée are broad and span over several genres and styles, from fantasy and history to present day to science fiction, from drama and romance to action and adventure, and yes, erotic stories too. We have focused on international mysteries and adventures in the modern era, but there's nothing stopping you from experimenting with other genres and eras.'

Shoot, why not devote a couple pages to different eras and genres? It would have been at least as interesting as a page devoted to kodokan judo. Or earlier in the text when it talks about different styles of story (curious adventurers, sleuths, agents, heists) - why not devote a page to each style, rather than a column?  

OK, I've spent enough time babbling. What do I think?

I think it's great! 

I think the overall aesthetic of the book matches the desired flavor and theme. I particularly liked the little touches, like the character portraits at the frontispiece (reminds me of Tintin) or the use of expressive symbols rather than swearing - though I also appreciated the list of period-specific curse words in the appendix. Nom d'une pipe! Cornegidouille! 

Character design is clean and well-presented, and I love the idea of having passports as character sheets - though if you think I'm ordering new ones from my friendly local game store, Helmgast, you must be off your Swedish trolley. My friendly local game store is several thousand miles across the ocean; I shall use the .pdf, thanks all the same. ;) 

I think the rules could perhaps have spent a little longer in the oven, but they do the job they're intended to do which is all that can be asked for. I particularly appreciate the use of Story Points, handing control of the narrative to the players. There are some problems with the examples given in the text, but nothing that breaks the game. For those who fear crunch, it's only slightly al dente.

I think the loving care expended on the background, replete with Weird Locations, is delightful - and yes, Helmgast, I did notice 'Skull Island, Bermuda: an island hidden in the mist, where an abandoned British destroyer from the Second World War is anchored in the lagoon.' Cheeky sods!  Bon sang de bois! Cuistre!

I like the idea of the Octopus, a villain group designed to be a source of adventures. Apart from anything else it does the same job SPECTRE did for Bond; it gave him a target to punch that wasn't the Soviet Union or any real-world government. I also like the nod to queer-coded villains in the Director's section.

The accompanying scenario, The U-Boat Mystery, is solid and gives the adventurers some globe-trotting and Nazi punching to do, which is always a good thing. I did get a chuckle when I recognized the source material, but there's nothing wrong with borrowing inspiration from anime or manga. 

Would I recommend it? Sure! It's not a bad purchase for beginning Directors and fans of the source material. I look forward to more stuff from the creators - so long as they don't expect me to draw anything!

Ripped from the Headlines: Wine Heist

This week's post is inspired by a Guardian article about a daring wine heist in which two thieves with plausible faces suckered a Spanish establishment and walked out with priceless wines.

The TL/DR: the seemingly respectable pair booked a suite at Atrio in the city of Cáceres, which has a 2-star Michelin restaurant attached. While the front desk (and thus the security camera system) was unattended one of them crept into the cellar and made off with 45 bottles, including 'a valuable 1806 Château d’Yquem and at least six other 19th-century bottles' (from the article). The hotel owner alleges that the pair must have been stealing for a collector, since the bottles are easily identifiable and could not be sold on the open market.

My take: whoever it is must have an excellent understanding of the hotel's infrastructure, and further, that this probably only happened because of Covid. It's difficult to imagine an establishment as prestigious as this so under-occupied as to allow easy access to the wine cellar unless there weren't as many staff and customers as usual. Even one more pair of eyes could have prevented this. 

You have to wonder what the thieves' Plan B was if the staff member at reception returned before the person swiping the wine got out of the cellar.

We've talked about wine before. We've even talked about Château d’Yquem, three bottles of which were among the hoard found under the floorboards of a Czech castle. 

From James Cleur

Let's gamify this.

The Double Tap ruleset introduces Cameos: "The Director can set scenes in these instant locations, run the thriller action montage right through them, or just sprinkle them into her subconscious. 

Each Establishing Shot includes a quick “stock footage” description, followed by the extras (and any Cameos) you might run into there, three clues, and any sensible rules effects."

So:

Michelin Starred Restaurant. 

A holy temple of cuisine. Many spend all their lives trying to book a table here. Others, the apostles of gastronomy, consider this place home. Those who have the privilege of dining here do so in hushed reverence. It takes passion and talent to obtain even one Michelin star, never mind more than one. There are only 13 restaurants with 3 Michelin stars in the whole United States.

No muzak here; even the architecture is a cut above, a blend of modernist fantasy with elements of ancient splendor. Though every possible pain is taken to ensure the guest's comfort, those with some Tradecraft experience notice the security cameras thoughtfully placed here, there and everywhere. The architecture may be a cut above, but the designer planned for every eventuality.  

Attentive staff bustle back and forth between tables, each highly trained and experienced; you have to be the best of the best to work here. Those fortunate enough to find a place may stay for years, perhaps decades, becoming a fixture of the establishment. The chefs are world-renowned and many who come here make the pilgrimage specifically to sample that particular chef's version of a favorite dish, which shall be different from any other version of that dish they may have sampled before. 

It's not unusual to see the great and famous, perhaps playing at Gordon Gekko, preferring to be seen to be here rather than seen to eat here. Nevertheless those who find their way through the front door are often simply the wealthy, for whom fine dining is less important than expensive and famous dining. Those at that table over there - the one being attended to personally by the chef - are those who came here to eat. When all is said and done, a Michelin restaurant prefers those who prefer food. Money's important, fame important, but fine living trumps both. 

extras and cameos: A VIP and their entourage, including bodyguards sat at the next table trying not to look like a bunch of thugs. A well-placed NPC or Cameo, like an Edom Legacy or Duke. A Russian plutocrat conspicuously out of place, trying to look as if they belong. A couple enjoying their Diamond Anniversary. A day trader with money to burn wondering what all the fuss is about, making loud and inappropriate telephone calls to the displeasure of all. A highly placed government official, Conspiracy asset or similar ranking apparatchik. An agent's Familiar Foe (p 52, Double Tap). 

clues: Though the staff are as attentive as you'd expect, for some reason they're avoiding that table over there. The fellow in the expensive suit seems particularly pale and sickly. Those with Occult notice peculiar sigils worked into the architecture, as if set up as a means of warding off evil - or inviting it. That painting - isn't it a [INSERT USEUFL NAME HERE eg Francis Aytown from the Dracula Dossier]? How peculiar to see one of those in this establishment; it seems out of place.

rules effects: due to the proliferation of security cameras any Infiltration attempt is at +1 Difficulty. Any overt violence increases Heat by +1, in addition to any other Heat increases that might normally accrue. Agents with Excessive Funds or High Society pools of 2 or more are fawned on by the staff, and possibly also the chef. A successful Theft here (the artwork, the contents of the wine cellar, similar) gives the agents Excessive Funds for one scene only.

in a fight: Horrors! That such a thing could happen here! Alcohol and fire - try not to clock someone with the 1806 Château d’Yquem. The VIP's bodyguards are probably armed. That chef's knife could be very useful but so could the steak knives, in a pinch. Why not use a table cloth like a cloak, for cloak-and-dagger fighting?

in a chase: Terrain varies between cramped and open and the architecture isn't helpful; damn difficult vaulting a modernist masterpiece. A restaurant whose main structure dates back to the Nth century might have old secret doors and passages known only to a favored few. Even more modern restaurants might have a 21-Club style secret door hiding the wine cellar. Running through the kitchen isn't going to win you any friends but might get you out the back way through the deliveries door. A quick Disguise as staff might work, if the staff are already friendly (on account of that High Society pool of 2 points or more) - the staff knows how difficult it is to keep the paparazzi at bay. On the other hand the staff all know each other very well so that same Disguise may be your doom, if the staff aren't friendly.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Naughty German, Burning Crystal Palaces (Bookhounds)

Thanks to a random post on Twitter I discovered the art of Heinrich Lossow, a 19th century German artist who specialized in pornography and erotic drawings. Probably not safe for work even though it is Wikipedia; bear that in mind. 

Lossow was a remarkable talent who, among other things, illustrated other people's manuscripts. Several of the items listed on his Wikipedia page are given the heading Glaspalast München - these tend to be the more artistic, classical works. 

Glaspalast München refers to Munich's Crystal Palace, built 1854 and modeled after London's Crystal Palace which I've mentioned before in the Forgotten London series. Like London's Palace, Munich's tribute also burnt to the ground, this time in 1931. All indications at the time was that it was an accident that started in a carpentry shop, but it was later shown to be arson. 

Taken from Wikipedia

From about 1889 onwards Munich's Palace was primarily an artistic venue, hosting exhibitions and festivals yearly. Hence Lossow's contributions. At the time of the fire more than 1,000 modern German works were on display; most of them were destroyed.

At this point in Munich's history the town is still basically medieval, but it's showing significant signs of growth. Aircraft and automobile factories, radio, film - new industries are emerging. Many know Munich best for its beer-soaked Oktoberfest celebrations. but it's also famous for its artistic connections. 

 Taken from Karl Hoeffkes

As a side note, while Hitler's rise to power is well under way by the time the Palace burns, he's not there yet. The Nazis don't formally consolidate their power and take effective control until the elections of 1933. However Munich is the Nazi's main base of operations, the site of the Beer Hall Putsch, and is rife with political intrigue. Anyone who goes to Munich can't help but see Nazis, hear Nazis, and talk to Nazis wherever they go - the Palace included.

Time to gamify. So what are we working with?

• A well-known German artist famous for his erotic works, who exhibited in:
• Munich's Crystal Palace, a beautiful monument destined to burn in
• 6 June 1931, which is well within a Bookhounds timeframe.

Who in Bookhounds lore would be interested in erotic art? That would be the Keirecheires, those fun-loving Y’golonac cultists who have branches in London, Paris, New York - but not Germany. How very careless of them.

With all that:

The Banquet

The Hounds are hired to purchase a rare, elusive work, about to be sold at private auction in Munich. Known informally as The Banquet (it has no title engraved either on its expensive tooled leather binding or its frontispiece) this peculiar piece of erotic poetry is said to have been illustrated by Heinrich Lossow in 1881. The author is unknown, and rumor is rife. Some of the madder theories claim the author is actually Ludwig II of Bavaria, or that it was commissioned by Ludwig. 

The title, The Banquet, refers to an infamous bit of Catholic lore that claims Cesare Borgia once hosted an orgy at the Papal Palace. Lossow is known to have painted a scene from that Banquet; the book goes much further, describing the action in a blow-by-blow account.

Whoever wrote it, the book is filthy beyond description and was only released in a limited edition of 100, of which at least 40 are known to have been destroyed and a further 20-odd thought to have been destroyed. The rest? Who can say?

Apparently one man can say: assistant director Baumbach of the Glaspalast München. Baumbach is willing to sell a copy, and a very private auction is being arranged at the Glaspalast. The Hounds' patron is keen to get The Banquet, but there are others just as eager, and some who will stop at nothing.

On the list of those who will stop at nothing is Ortsgruppenleiter Baumbach - the assistant director's son. The Nazi is mortified that his father is willing to trade in such filth, and concerned that, if word were to get out, his career in the party would be ruined. The Ortsgruppenleiter doesn't know precisely when or where the auction is to take place, but he does have violent mooks at his disposal, which is usually a guarantee of fun times for player characters.

The bigger problem (if there can be a bigger problem than rampaging Nazis) is the Keirecheires. That secretive organization has decided that their best and brightest Sons, desirous of promotion within the cult, shall prove their worth by acquiring The Banquet. Representatives from Paris, New York and London are converging on Munich to win the prize. They include:

Paris: Frieda Sorel, a ragged gothic artist's model and would-be Surrealist who has peculiar power over dreams.

New York: Ewan Dabney Macpherson, a bloated plutocrat whose pockets are bulging with loot from his robber baron grandfather's railway stocks.

London: Solomon Doom, aka Graham Micklethwaite, a charming blonde curate's son who turned to the occult to find meaning in life. He has Idosyncratic Magic at his disposal. Not many people know that.

As the group converges on the Glaspalast they find themselves at a disadvantage. What none of them realizes is the Glaspalast is not a solitary building in Munich. There are many Glaspalast - London, Montreal, Madrid, New York - most of which will burn, or have already burnt. They share an animating spirit, a gestalt manes that allows communication between places, and contact with a separate, unnamed place which can only be reached through a Crystal Palace. The Munich entity knows it is about to burn as Montreal and New York did before it, and desperately seeks someone - anyone - who can save it from destruction. 

Enter those poor unfortunate Hounds, who only want to buy some antique porn and who, when they go back to London, will have to deal not only with the Keirecheires, who have become aware of their shop, but also the Crystal Palace itself, which still stands in South London. The Palace remembers ... and reaches out. 

Enjoy!

Welcome to the Mansion (RPG All, Disney)

Once upon a time I wrote about Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, and said:

I do wonder what Disney does if someone decides to join the Mansion, perhaps by having their ashes scattered over the ride. Human nature being what it is, someone must have tried by now. If I were Disney, I'd be tempted to offer it as an ultra-private perk only available to special guests, say, members of Club 33. There will be people out there willing to pay over the odds for those bragging rights. 'Come visit me when I'm gone, I'll be in the Graveyard with the Grim Grinning Ghosts!'

Bloomberg's been kind enough to answer that question. I shan't link the article as it's hidden behind a paywall (author Brandon Presser again, and I'm beginning to think that's a pseudonym), but the important bits are:

Even death finds room for celebration, particularly at the Haunted Mansion. “I’d venture to say, if the Haunted Mansion is temporarily closed, it means someone tried to spread grandma’s ashes and we’ve had to bio-vac the entire place,” a former cast member says. The ritual happens often—at least once a month. And you thought the hologram ghosts were spooky ...

Christine Fougère, a cleaning-support manager, says hazardous spills command code names—which I luckily never heard in the line of duty. And yet, they’re not uncommon. Code V is for vomit, and Code H is for human waste. (Sometimes kids—and even a few adults—have trouble holding it in when they’re waiting in line.) Code Winnies are called when resort pools turn slightly yellow; oddly enough, it’s not used for the Pooh ...

Sourced from Disneyland Paris

So let's try some Halloween gamification.

What's different about Disneyland Paris' Mansion?

For starters, Disney Paris isn't California. It hasn't got the history. Someone's grandma didn't visit the place for the first time back in 1969. It opened its doors in 1992, along with the rest of the resort. So you're probably not going to get the same sentimental attraction that drives people to dump granny's ashes over the Grinning Ghosts.

Second, Paris' Mansion hasn't had extensive renovations. It had one big revamp in 2019, which among other things added some new Vincent Price dialogue to the introductory speech.

Third, the plot's different. Not a whole lot different, and the plot's just an excuse for ghoulish nonsense anyway, but worth bearing in mind if anyone's a Disney nut who thinks they can sing along with the animatronics.

Added to all that, there's been a death. In 2016 a worker was found dead inside the attraction, possibly electrocuted. It's one of several incidents that have happened at the Paris attraction.

Sooo ...

Once There Was, And Once There Wasn't 

The characters are all visiting Euro Disney, whether as a group or individually. They might be young, old, whichever it may be. YouTube microcelebrity or ordinary schlub, they all want to go to the Haunted Mansion but the first time they show up, it's closed. The staff won't say why.

So they go off to other attractions for a while and see what is to be seen, but after a time they gravitate back to the Mansion to discover that it's open again. Nobody else has realized this so the queue is short - only the player characters are in it.

Or at least that's how it seems at first. As they pack themselves into the elevator and queue for the ride there seems to be an extra body. If the characters count up carefully, there are only player characters in the group. Yet they cannot shake the feeling there's another person in the room.

At first the ride seems to be as advertised, with the grim grinning ghosts telling the tragic tale of the abandoned bride, Melanie Ravenswood. Yet as the carriages get to the narrator (about 9.09 in the video) the carriages melt away and the player characters find themselves abandoned inside the mansion.

The extra person in the group is a youngster who died of a wasting illness two weeks ago. Their grieving mother knew that the child wanted to see the Mansion, had them cremated, and scattered the ashes inside the Mansion. That's why the Mansion was shut down; the whole thing had to be deep cleaned. 

Inactivity didn't suit the Outer Dark. This was a command performance, one night only. As for the ride itself, well, children don't know from rides. As far as they're concerned, the experience is a real experience. 

A fatal experience. After all, who escapes alive from the Manor? The whole point of the story is everyone dies, and Melanie's trapped here forever.

On the other hand there is that dead electrician, who might be persuaded to help importunate characters lost in the Mansion. Otherwise there aren't many allies to be had. That child is especially difficult to deal with; anyone who threatens its good time will be dealt with severely.

There are several ways out for enterprising characters:

• Death. It's a bit permanent, but it works.
• Successfully romancing Melanie and ending the curse.
• Preventing Henry from killing Melanie's intended, Jake. 
• Somehow restoring the buggies and riding them out of the Mansion.

If they can't achieve any of these objectives before an hour is up, then the Mansion will have several new attractions ...

Enjoy!

Ripped from the Headlines: Pandora's Monaco (Night's Black Agents)

Washington Post

By now most of you will have heard of the Pandora Papers, the latest version of a series of well-constructed exposes into the financial dealings of the rich and ultra-rich.

This week I want to concentrate on the Russian angle, and in particular how that impacts on a topic I've discussed before: Monaco. 

The wealthy gambling microstate once again hit the headlines thanks to wealthy Russians, and although Putin's alleged girlfriend Svetlana Krivonogikh is given prominent mention in the video, news articles make clear she's far from being the only Russian in Putin's circle who has made their way to Monaco. 

Those who do are probably interested in passports as much as they are in swanky property and a place to dock their yacht. Provide proof of residency (property deeds plus a term of years) and proof of self-sufficiency, and you too can have a passport that grants you visa-free access to Brazil, Japan, United Kingdom, United States and the entire European Union. 

Ironically, Monaco passport holders do need a visa to travel to Russia but I suspect that isn't a significant problem for Putin's friends.

There's a reason why Putin's chums might want a passport above all else.

Bill Browder, TEDx

It's thanks to Browder's efforts that we have the Magnitsky Act, the intent of which is to authorize the U.S. government to sanction those it sees as human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.. The Act is named after Browder's lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in a Moscow prison after investigating a $230 million fraud involving Russian tax officials.  

Browder's argument for sanctions has always been that Russia's kleptocrats don't want to spend their time and money in Russia if they can help it. They'd far rather relax in more comfortable surroundings in the West. Therefore sanctions which limit their ability to travel and settle outside Russia are punishing those same kleptocrats that, Browder argues, make Putin's Russia the kind of country that it is today - one where friends of Putin can amass huge illicit gains and salt it away in trusts and shell companies.

Monaco celebrates its close relationship with Russia. A perhaps ill-timed article in the Monaco Tribune admits as much. The Tribune's a daily e-paper which publishes in French, English, Italian and Russian, and it had this to say about the Monaco Loves Russia initiative: 

The first diplomatic relations between the Principality and Russia go back to the end of the 19th cenutry [sic] with the signing of trade and political agreements. However, it was only in 2006, with Vladimir Putin, that an official diplomatic relationship began.

Today, Monaco has over 800 Russian residents, as well as a Russian consulate, located on Monaco’s rock. Given their high purchasing power, Russians also represent an important asset to the local tourism sector. 

A proud history of cooperation and mutual benefit, to be sure.

The media salivated over Putin's alleged mistress' Monaco apartment but with over 800 Russian residents and a consulate it's easy to see how she mightn't be the only Putin chum with a Monaco connection. Given their high purchasing power, and all that.

A follow-up in the Guardian makes much of a Monaco-based go-between, Moores Rowland. A professional accountancy and tax firm, it is connected to a network of law companies and offshore service providers around the world. There is little to be seen from outside other than a pleasant roof garden. Nice little touch of le Carré there. According to the article Moores Rowland creates and manages the network of companies and trusts that manage Russian wealth. 

In short, it's not unlike the role that the Dracula Dossiers' Billington and Sons plays in that Night's Black Agents campaign setting: a go-between. Whether an Edom friendly or a Conspiracy asset, Billington's job is to sit there and look innocent, even nondescript, while dark deeds are done with its assistance.

It's perhaps a little over-the-top to imagine that Billington has an outpost in Monaco, but it's not going too far to wonder if a Monaco firm might have an interest in a shabby little law office in some nondescript British town. Particularly if that law office has a lot to do with wills, property and trusts.

Let's gamify this, and suppose that there is a Level 3 Node (provincial power) linked with Billington (at best a Level 2) as Billington holds some of the Level 3's assets.

Let's further suppose that the Level 3 is an accountancy and tax firm, Addison Boland, founded by an Englishman and a Frenchman in the 1970s. Addison Boland has since become a significant power behind the scenes thanks to an influx of Russian cash. The original Addison, Samuel, is related by marriage to the Billingtons of Whitby, and in the old days Samuel used to push a lot of business Billington's way. It was sometimes convenient to have a holding company or trust incorporate under British law, and Billington and Sons was the perfect British go-between.

From the Conspiracy's POV, it was a reverse infection. Billington's was already a Conspiracy asset and had been for many years before Samuel Addison reached out. Through its connection with Billington, Addison Boland became aware of and then corrupted by the Conspiracy. The Conspiracy then used Addison Boland to hide its assets through a web of shell companies and trusts. 

That was all fine and dandy in the 1980s and 90s, when Addison Boland was an up-and-coming power. Then came the 2000s, and all that Russian money. So much Russian money, even Addison Boland couldn't keep track of it all.

The present-day Addison Boland is split into two factions.

Faction A, the Addison faction, wants to keep things as they are. The company's Conspiracy connections have served it well for decades. Added to that, the Addison faction are uncomfortably aware that their masters expect unquestioning obedience unto death - beyond death, preferably. Horace Addison, Samuel's 50-year-old son, is the de facto leader of this faction.

Faction B, the Boland faction, is dazzled by Russian money and Russian power. Many of their clients have direct links to the former KGB, or its successor the FSB. The Bolands have seen the future, and if ever there was a time to cut ties with their vampiric benefactors and sidle up to Moscow's elite, it's now. If the FSB or GRU have an anti-vampire program the Bolands are reaching out to it. After all, even vampire hunters have to hide their ill-gotten gains somehow, and the Bolands are happy to oblige. This faction is led by Alice Boland, the 30-year old granddaughter of the founding Boland. 

Scenario Seed: Rats, Rats, Rats As Big As Blooming Cats

A former KGB asset turned high-end bagman, Gennady Balabanov, is arrested in France with large quantities of illegal pesticide. The authorities were monitoring him for various money laundering offences and didn't want to pull him in, hoping instead to tie him to more important crimes. Unfortunately, Balabanov blew a traffic stop and was arrested by local law in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a medieval township on the Riviera not far from Monaco. Balabanov immediately screamed for assistance from the Russian government, but he died in jail before anything could be done. 

The pesticide is banned because it's far too lethal. Its toxicity is acute and chronic (mutagenic), and it's banned under the Stockholm Convention. Nobody understands why Balabanov had it. According to official records it's still in a police lockup, but if the agents follow this line of investigation they discover the pesticide was stolen about a week after Balabanov's arrest. Nobody knows where it is now.

The official reason for Balabanov's death is heart failure, but examination of the body (which the agents will have to carry out themselves) indicate exsanguination. Which begs a few questions, not least why the authorities in a quiet little town in France are so keen to obscure the cause of death.

Turns out the pesticide was intended for Addison Boland, specifically Alice Boland, as emails between her and Balabanov indicate. Addison Boland has a rat problem. A big one. The rats which infest Billington's made their way to Monaco long ago, and the two rat colonies communicate with each other. Alice hopes to sever communications, permanently. It's all part of her ongoing alliance with the Russians; she helps hide their money, they help her with her infighting. If Alice gets control of Addison Boland, then Addison Boland becomes an all-Russian shop. If Horace Addison retains control, then he'll probably kick the Russians to the kerb for helping Alice.

The Yojimbo Option, but with extra rats.

Enjoy!