Pennies and Dimes (Bookhounds of London)

The Dime Novel and Penny Dreadful are two terms that mean the same thing: cheap, mass-produced books. 

Often lurid, usually in poor taste, the whole point of the genre was to get as much cash as possible as cheaply as possible. Reprints were common. Exciting subjects - gunslingers, highwaymen, vampires, range wars, cannibal murderers - were standard. The whole point was to draw the purchaser in, get their dime or penny, and vamoose - because next month, next week even, there'd be another penny dreadful, another dime novel.

As might be expected these were not books built to last. Much like the broadsheets of previous centuries, they were mass-produced as cheaply as possible and started falling apart soon after purchase.

The first thing you see is the cover illustration, typically of some awful crime, a gunfight, or supernatural scene. That's the draw. It's what gets you to fork over your cash; you have to know what happens to that poor unfortunate, or what hideous crimes that black-a-vised villain is about to commit. Then there's the sordid events themselves, and there are many of them, piled high in a hideous bonfire. 

As Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a successful penny dreadful author, put it, the amount of crime, treachery, murder and slow poisoning, & general infamy required [by my readers] ... is something terrible.

That's what keeps you reading, and what keeps you coming back for more. It's the 19th-century equivalent of clickbait. Give the audience a picture of something titillating, then follow up with cheap, exciting trash. You'll never go poor when your business model relies on taking advantage of the gullible.

Pawn Stars, s17

These books are valuable now as collector's items. However, Bookhounds is set in the 1930s when it probably wasn't that difficult to find a moldering collection of cheap books from, say, the 1890s. Also, collectors weren't as interested in cheap ephemera. Fine copies of incunabula from the 1800s, yes please. Fine copies of Sweeny Todd's adventures, aka The String of Pearls, not so much.

So it's quite likely that penny dreadfuls and dime novels would find their way into the 1930s equivalent of the bargain bin. Or on one of the shelves outside, under canvas. Those outdoor shelving sections were ideal, from a bookseller's perspective. People would stop there to browse, perhaps because they got caught in a sudden downpour, and before long they came inside.

Alternatively the penny dreadful might find its way to the store's lending library. From Orwell:

It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who ‘went out’ the best was – Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. [two romance novelists and a historical romance novelist] Dell’s novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don’t read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel – the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel – seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific. 

It's easy to imagine Sweeny Todd or Spring-Heel Jack finding a comfortable home in the lending library. Easier still for the highwaymen, musketeers and pirates to find a home next to the detectives and crime novels, and especially those o-so-popular historical romances. If it has frills, curly beards and blushing maidens, it's practically gold - very cheap gold, but still.

How does this find your way into a Bookhounds game?

First, and most obvious, the comedy scene.

When I worked in a gaming store, Magic the Gathering was still on its first wave and the CCG market was exploding. Print a CCG and you were printing money. A lot of people with more money than sense bought full runs of obscure CCGs as an investment, and sure, some cards from back in the day are worth money, but the vast majority aren't worth the cardstock they were printed on. 

Every so often someone would come in with a sack-full of cards, jumbled together. They expected me to pay out vast sums, in cash, for their trash. Imagine their shock when I turned them away.

Now imagine someone walking through the Bookhounds' front door with a sack-full of penny dreadfuls, expecting a fortune. Sure, they're worth beer money, but ... The argument starts. Voices are raised. Someone throws something. Pandemonium and chaos!

Then there's the titles themselves, like Sweeny Todd, which might inspire their own scenario ideas. I've discussed that before so I shan't delve deeply into it now, except to say that there's all kinds of horror ideas lurking in penny dreadfuls. Half the point of those books was to splatter as much blood as possible.

Take a look at the images from Wild Will, another penny dreadful. There's inspiration there for three or four scenarios at least!

Finally, let's use penny dreadfuls as part of the Battleground of the Mind. This is an idea I floated back in 2016 and will return to now. 

The short version: mental combat can be described as a series of attacks against the Ego, Superego and Id. First described by Ken Hite in KWAS Mind Control, the central idea is to make mental attacks Thrilling, much as Chases are Thrilling in Night's Black Agents. You do this by changing the combat from a single win/lose die roll to a series of RP scenes in which the player fends off the attackers in what amounts to a mental dreamscape.

I said:

To look at, each layer of the target's mind exactly resembles the Bookstore ... Except different somehow, in odd little ways. A level 1 might be slightly unusual, feature NPCs who no longer exist - because they died - or have doors that will not open. A level 2 has doors which do open, and the protagonists may devoutly wish that they did not. Strange and terrible creatures may stalk the halls. Odd landscapes may be seen out the windows. A level 3 is completely beyond the bounds of reality. There is no outside world in this scenario, and you cannot trust any door to lead where you think it ought to.

Movement from reality to the mental realm may be as easy as stepping from one room to the next. The target simply discovers that, when she emerges from the stockroom laden with books that a customer asked for, not only is the customer not there but neither is anyone else. That signals the start of a mental attack, but as to when it ends ... ah, there's the rub ...

Now picture the same concept - except the landscape is the penny dreadful, not the bookstore.

Sweeny Todd's London. Varney the Vampire's adventures across Europe. The school from the Lambs of Littlecote, slowly becoming twisted and wrong. 

Every time the character awakes from their 'dream' the penny dreadful is close by. Perhaps with a bookmark in the appropriate page. Were they reading it? Was it ... influencing them?

Above all, why is this happening?

Well, as to that last there are all kinds of options but I prefer Mythos influence. The target has become aware of the Mythos - perhaps they even suffered SAN loss as a consequence. This is especially likely if they've had direct contact with one of the big names, like Nyarlathotep. That Mythos contact is corrupting the character's psyche, and this attack on their mental facilities is one result of this. It might be deliberate, or it might be just one of those things. 

Think of it this way: the dream state begins in the Bookstore, but soon unravels - and does so in the style and setting of the penny dreadful. Their main opposition is the main antagonist in the penny dreadful. Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, whoever it may be. The attack's resolved in the Zoom's style. Fail, and, well ...  alas, alack the day. ;) 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

GenCon 2021

 Now it's all over and I have a chance to take stock, I want to give a shout out to all the players at GenCon2021.

I was a virtual Pelgrane GM again this year, and loved every minute of it. I ran three games - Excess Baggage, the Van Helsing Letter and Metal Ox. Two of those are Pelgrane products (modified) and one, Metal Ox, was my own work.

Three games straight is pretty tiring, even if it is only one game a day! I had tons of fun and I hope the players did too.

One of these days I shall have to get up to GenCon in person, but at the moment cost (and COVID) make it impossible. Still, there's always next year! Or the year after that ... ;) 

The Midway Point (RPG All)

Here, in the heart of the forest, the character embraces their new self. Knowledge is gained which can never be lost; where they have sought, here they find, and they can never go back. John Yorke, Into the Woods

I've talked a lot about campaign design. Core Concept Trees bear Core Concept Fruit, Where To Begin, the Arc. Now I want to talk about what happens midway through the campaign - or the one-shot.

The Midway point. Conflict and Drama.

Oedipus Rex, Chorus

As Director you should have a midway point in view, but may not know how to get there. This is because your players drive the narrative, and players have a tendency to go chasing moonbeams as it suits them. 

That said, as Director you already know that all this shooty bang-bang is going somewhere. Stanley David Fentiman's treachery is revealed. Bankhaus Klingemann's scandals come to light. Grand schemes are seen in all their malevolent glory - and the time has come to put an end to them.

So you know what the Middle looks like, even if you're not certain how to get there.

I'm going to suggest to you that the Middle is where you resolve plot, and establish new plot. It's also where the main direction of the narrative is established, and the characters progress from this point forward knowing what that direction is - whether or not they follow it themselves.

Let's say this is a Night's Black Agents game and the agents have been following the activities of the Conspiracy, and by extension Bankhaus Klingemann, throughout the plot to date. The agents have chased up some plot threads and have a vague idea of what's going on, but don't know what the end game is. Hints have dropped, and there have been some red herrings. The overall vision is still fuzzy.

The Midpoint does several things:

• It clarifies the plot stream. From this point forward there's no question what the enemy wants to achieve, and probably no question about how they want to achieve it.
• It resolves some or all of the outstanding character threads. Say the Bang-and-Burner has wanted to know what happened to her son from session one. Well, now she does - and it probably isn't good news. From this point forward, her goal is probably Revenge. In any case, whatever it is her new goal arises from the resolution of that plot thread.
• It resolves the Bankhaus Klingemann narrative, whatever it may have been. Its assets are scattered, its main actors dead, imprisoned or otherwise neutralized. One or two survivors might lurk in the shadows to strike back at a later date, but the main threat is dealt with.

Why do all this, you may ask. You do this because the Midpoint is also a Mini-Conclusion. 

• It resolves minor narrative threads, so they don't get in the way of the main narrative.
• It establishes the main narrative. If there was doubt before, now there is none.
• It gives the characters a little hit of victory, providing them with the energy they need to go on.

So now the agents know that all those diamonds they've been chasing are going to be used to make a deadly space laser, which the Conspiracy will use to blackmail the governments of the world. Or that the unusual secret government manufacturing facilities are actually being used to manufacture food for aliens. The question is, how do they stop it?

  Quatermass 2, Hammer Horror

Bankhaus Klingemann or its equivalent has to go, because it's exhausted its role in the narrative. It was financing peculiar research laboratories all over Europe. Now the focus has to switch to those research laboratories, and by extension the main plot of the narrative.

After all, Bankhaus Klingemann isn't the main event. The main event is the top tier of the Pyramid, the Vampires themselves. They're what's hiding behind all this smoke & mirrors, and they're who the agents have to ultimately defeat. Their big plan is what the agents have to stop. If their big plan is to grow devil plants, then finding those plants and destroying them is the focus of the final chapters. 

Defeating Bankhaus Klingemann sets the stage for the main event, whatever that may be. That doesn't mean it's gone for good. Crazy Uncle Albert might have survived the wreckage and now plots his revenge from some bunker in Switzerland, surrounded by zombie Lisle-a-likes. That could make a fun session, or perhaps just an action scene in the middle of a session. But the whole of the plot doesn't have to be about Uncle Albert.

How do you, as Director, know when the agents are approaching the Midpoint? After all, this is meant to be a player-facing, free-floating narrative. 

Well, apart from anything else you know the Midpoint approaches when it's clear the agents have gone about as far as they can with the opening chapters. They know what Lisle wants. They've foiled her plans a time or two. They've all but destroyed Bankhaus Klingemann as a financial institution, and sown the ground with salty social media posts. Stick a fork in it; it's done.

Remember, Bankhaus Klingemann was only ever intended as an insertion point. It was the first thing the agents encountered. The next few sessions were probably about exploring the Klingemann narrative, identifying the main actors (Lisle and Albert), probably getting into a few gunfights or Thrilling scenes - meat and potatoes.  

But there's only so far you can go. 

World of Warcraft, which I played to death back in vanilla, has many faults but also many strengths, or it would never have lasted as long as it has. One of those strengths is its willingness to push the narrative forward, through quest completion. At the start it's all 'find me six wolf tails' or whatever it may be, but as you progress you become wrapped up in intrigue. What happened to the Angamand family? What's going on in the Scarlet Monastery? 

Then you find yourself pushed into other zones - the Silverpine Forest, say - looking for answers, only to discover that those zones have things for you to do so you get wrapped up in its drama. Then someone asks you to take a message to Ogrimmar ... 

The game knows that there's only so much you can do in the starting zone. It might lure you back there now and again for big events, but that's just a fleeting visit. Eventually you'll have to leave that zone if you want to progress the narrative, and the game gently pushes you out there. 

Once the players find out what happened to the Angamands, what's going on at the Monastery, and have explored those threads as far as they can go, you - as Director - establish new threads. 

That's what the Midway Point is for.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Treasure Maps (Bookhounds of London)

I've been re-reading Dorothy Sayers, particularly her short stories where she occasionally gets experimental and decided that her detective Lord Peter Wimsey will, this episode, look for buried treasure rather than unburied corpses. Usually the beak-nosed sleuth is asked to do so by some reluctant socialist (Uncle Meleager's Will) or similar hanger-on who wants the loot to do good with; sometimes Lord Peter stumbles onto it while rooting about in an antiquarian book store (The Dragon's Head), though even in those instances there's some helpless do-gooder in the background waiting to turn the loot into a cure for cancer. Heaven forfend people get the money so they can spend it and have fun. However it happens, soon Lord Peter is off solving crossword puzzles or doing something similarly useful in search of a fortune in ... whatever it may be.

Sayers isn't alone in this. M.R. James often had his protagonist out looking for buried treasure of one kind or another (Abbot Thomas) and E.G. Swain had his priestly Mr. Batchel out looking for Stoneground loot about one episode in three, more or less, often to be thwarted by his ghosts. 

Sayers is possibly a little unique in that Lord Peter regularly finds important clues in antiquarian books, or libraries. In The Bone of Contention, which features not one but two ghosts, the all-important will of Dead Rich Man is found in an edition of The Nuremberg Chronicle kept in the dead man's library, sadly neglected. It's because the book is stained with damp, but the will is not, that Lord Peter smells a rat. In The Dragon's Head, Lord Peter and his nephew Gherkins find clues to the location of pirate treasure in Munster's Cosmographica Universalis.  

M.R. James also hid wills or other important clues to cash in antiquarian volumes (Tractate Middoth) but tended to be less obscure; a biblical quote or two, certainly, but actual treasure maps, no. 

Consider: most people go looking for Mythos texts because they contain knowledge . Things Man Was Not Meant To Know (Or Spell. Or Smell, For That Matter). Which is all well and good, but what happens when someone who couldn't care less about occult knowledge happens to pick a Mythos text in which to hide the clues to the loot?  What if that book is a treasure map?

Sayers had one advantage over the rest of us. Her audience was keen to solve mysteries, which is why she could devote chunks of her narrative to, say, solving an actual crossword puzzle. I suspect if you, the Keeper, were to present the players with an actual crossword puzzle to solve before they could advance the narrative, there'd be a revolt. It might be perfectly in keeping to present the characters with a Latin Squares puzzle to solve - first invented in 1783, apparently - but you'd be unwise to present one unless you'd like the game to come to a crashing halt. 

Dungeons and Dragons is particularly fond of presenting players with abstruse trap-puzzles to solve lest the player-characters be perforated by pitchforks. Some DMs seem to find great pleasure in designing peculiar puzzle palaces. I often wonder how happy their players are to find these encounters.

No, while the average player likes putting together clues to advance plot nobody wants some kind of quasi-Resident-Evil hunt for the Rooster Key before they can go through the Rooster Door to find the Oyster which contains the Pearl which when combined with the Ruby and the Emerald will ... and so on. Besides, while the character might be an analytical genius capable of solving sixteen impossible challenges before breakfast there's no guarantee the player is. 

Hence the Clue system in Gumshoe, both Core and Optional.

Figuring out the puzzle is hard enough for a group of armchair detectives, without someone withholding half the pieces from them. GUMSHOE, therefore, makes the finding of clues all but automatic, as long as you get to the right place in the story and have the right ability. That’s when the fun part begins, when the players try to put the components of the puzzle together. 

Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:

1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,

2.Have the right ability to discover the clue, and

3.Tell the Keeper that you’re using it. [Trail, p.51]

To expand on this, I'm going to rely on point 1., Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered, and suggest to you that the Core Clue scene can be layered with other scenes to create a treasure map.

Example: in Sayers' Dragon's Head Lord Peter, through the innocent purchase of an antiquarian book by his nephew Gherkins, discovers that the book contains information that will lead to loot. However, he cannot understand it. He knows the information's there, but doesn't know what it is. 

To completely understand what's going on, Lord Peter has to do two things. First, he has to learn more about the book's previous owner. He can do this anywhere; he doesn't need to be in a particular location or scene. Second, he has to go to the place where the loot is hidden and use the book in a particular way. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm trying to avoid story spoilers as much as possible; hopefully this doesn't make my point obscure. 

In short, he has the Clue and knows it is a Clue, but needs more information before he can completely appreciate the Clue. It is a layered Clue. It has multiple meanings leading to a final result, and that final result can only be obtained by going to a scene where relevant information can be gathered.

In game, Keepers sometimes express this layered Clue in terms of Pool Points. Reading this text, for instance, gives the player 2 pool points in Uncovering The Treasure. However, in order to use those pool points the character has to get to the scene where those pool points become relevant.

A Keeper in this situation is free to rule that spending one of those points allows the investigator to work out where (ie. in what scene) the Clue can be used. It saves time, is a viable use of the pool, and allows the investigator spotlight time. 

It's what I like to think of as a By Jove! moment. The Great Detective, thanks to an info revelation, suddenly knows who did it or what really happened. Often it's the Detective's Watson saying something apparently trivial that sparks this intuitive leap, but it can as easily be the Detective poring over some text or other looking for inconsistences. 

In this case By Jove! basically means the character works out, from the information in front of them, where they have to go next. It does not necessarily tell the character how to get there, or what's in the way. There may be sinister cultists waiting in ambush, or lethal traps at the story location. There may be logistic reasons why the characters can't just easily transition from one place to another; perhaps the place they need to get to is in the middle of a civil war, for example. All it does is tell them where, not how, or whether there will be problems along the way.

Let's put all this into practice. For the sake of example this is going to be a Bookhounds seed, but a Treasure Map could be used to fit many different situations and settings.

For this example I'm going to use one of the Ripley Scrolls as my Treasure Map. Alchemist George Ripley (c. 1415–1490) is alleged to be the creator of these scrolls, which are transcriptions or variations on a lost 15th century original text. Nobody knows whether this is so, but occasionally some of Ripley's poetry is found in the text so the scrolls became known as Ripley scrolls. These are examples of emblematic symbolism, less physical chemistry and more esoteric philosophy, perfect for my purposes.

Of course, it's a scroll, not a book. That doesn't have to be a problem but I'd prefer it was a book, since that muddies the waters even further by obscuring the true nature of the original text. 

I'm going to say that in this example the scroll has actually been cut up and tipped into a larger alchemical work compiled by an unknown academic at some point in the 17th century. Using the Shelfware and Foxing section of Bookhounds I shall also say that:

• At some point in the 19th century the cheap paper wrapper collection was rebound in morocco leather;
• That it is infested with alien insects (of which more later);
• That part of it is in code, a variant of Alphabetum Kaldeorum ("alphabet of the Chaldeans") 
• That it has no name or title, but is known as ex libris August Strindberg, after its most famous owner.

So here we have a text of dubious origin allegedly owned by a famous playwright and occultist, which has clearly gone through several hands since its creation in the 15th century. Always assuming it wasn't a fake to begin with.  

To add that Mythos tinge, let's go one step further and say that the Scrolls were created by someone - Ripley, or another - under the domination of the Great Race. That's why it is always infested with those strange insects; it is a point in space/time permanently linked with Pnakotus, and while not quite a functioning Gate it is just enough of a portal to allow small things through. This works both ways, so on the other side of the connection is a small pile of mouse bones, roaches, and other oddments from Earth. Nothing larger than a signet ring can pass, in either direction. 

This also means that destroying the book causes the portal to explosively decompress, allowing whoever destroyed it a close-up look at Pnakotus. Mythos shock, stability Loss +3, Sanity Loss +2, damage as pipe bomb (p 67 main text) which means everyone within 30 to 40 yards is in danger, and anyone who dies as a result is sucked into Pnakotus. In theory, if the Keeper is feeling particularly unkind, something from Pnakotus could be sucked through. Perhaps one of the Great Race, dazed and bleeding from transit, could spend a few rounds being unpleasant to everything nearby until it works out how to return to Pnakotus.

Skimming gets the reader 2 pool points Uncovering The Treasure. Poring over it gets +2 Mythos, no spells, and +1 Occult.

The Treasure is something completely unrelated to the Mythos text. It has to do with Strindberg, when he was going through his Inferno (1869 – 92) period.

Strindberg allegedly suffered temporary insanity, at least according to his contemporaries. A self-proclaimed  "socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath," he switched completely and became a mystic Catholic. He claimed an outside force, The Powers, had forced this on him, causing physical and mental suffering as part of their revenge on humankind for their wrongdoings. 

One of the results of this period was his semi-autobiographical work, Inferno. The other, allegedly, was the Golden Fleece, which Strindberg accidentally discovered during his Parisian sojourn. Experts are divided as to whether this is a philosophical construct (as hinted at in Strindberg's letters to Nietzsche) or a physical artefact which, for whatever reason, Strindberg couldn't bring himself to sell to solve his money problems.   

Those who say the Fleece is a physical object claim that Strindberg hid the location of the Fleece in ex libris Strindberg. Wild-eyed literary wackos and get-rich-quick chancers from all over the world would give anything to obtain it, though whether they could understand its literary allusions is another matter. 

So there are plenty of people who want this book who have no idea what the Mythos is, and could care less. Given the treasure's alleged location, Paris, it could be interesting to mix this with Dreamhounds and say that some of those trying to understand ex libris Strindberg are surrealists who want ex libris for its philosophical underpinnings, not the Fleece. However, surrealists are poor as dirt and couldn't afford to be in the same room as ex libris, much less purchase it, so they're quite likely to want to 'liberate' (steal) it.

OK, we have a book, a treasure, and a potential locale, Paris. What next?

Divide up the sequence into the appropriate scenes.

The Opening Scene is the acquisition of the book. Maybe in a house clearance, an auction, or however, but the Hounds get ex libris. As a result of that acquisition they get their first Core Clue: The Map. They understand that the information leads to treasure, and they may even know what the treasure is, but they don't know how to interpret it.

Optional lines of investigation include translating the Chaldean code, finding out more about Strindberg, finding out more about the source of the book (who sold it and why), finding out more about the provenance of the book (is it what it claims to be?) Meanwhile there are other things going on. The alien insects make their presence felt. Maybe someone picks up on all that Mythos knowledge and makes some bad assumptions about the nature of the problem.

Play it all out, but remember the key point: while they have the information, they are not in the right scene to make full use of it. The Hounds are in London. To make full use of the Clue, they need to be in Paris.

The easiest kind of transition is geographic. To be in the right scene, the Hounds need to change location. It's not the only way to handle the problem. The Hobbit did exactly the same thing with hidden lettering on Thorin's map, making it so the map's secrets could only be read at a particular time of year, under certain conditions. So in that situation the transition is time, not location. In a related Hobbit scene, the transition is expertise. Only one person, Elrond, could translate and understand the map. Finally, the information the map provided could only be acted on at a specific time of year, in a particular location. 

Transition in time, in geography, in expertise - all in one map.

But for our purposes in ex libris, the transition is purely geographic. The Hounds have to get to Paris. this allows the Keeper a chance for transit shenanigans Orient Express style, with mysterious strangers on the train perambulating around like little red herrings - until one of them makes a play for ex libris. Whether for its Mythos importance or its value as a map. After all, the Great Race might be very interested in this little travelling portal to their time/space dimension and yet have no interest  in the Golden Fleece. Whereas your average treasure nut has little interest in the Mythos but really wants the Fleece.

Once in Paris the Hounds can use the Core Clues to their fullest, working out precisely where the Golden Fleece is from the information in ex libris. What they do with this information is up to them. As an artifact the Golden Fleece is incredibly valuable, but surely there's a reason why Strindberg didn't try to sell it. Is there some curse? Does it have magical properties? Is there a guardian - ghouls, perhaps, or a serpent?

All that's for you and your players to determine. 

That's a Layered Clue. Obtained in one scene, but can only be properly understood in another, the two scenes being divided by geography. 

This is a relatively simple example with only two layers; it's easy to imagine a Layered Clue with multiple layers, divided not just by geography but also time, and possibly other factors as well. A Layered Clue that can only be properly understood by someone with the In The Blood drive. Or someone with 1 or more Magic pool, That only gives its secret up when the right stars shine overhead, or when the moon is full. A complicated Layered Clue could be the centerpiece of an entire campaign, depending on just how complicated the Keeper wants to make it.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Chilling Locales: Leviathan

 

Leviathan, thou noble ship,
Thou mighty monarch of the seas,
May thy stalwart form and mighty force
War’s desolating horrors ease.
We view the grandeur of thy bulk,
And gaze with wonder and with awe
At thy great magnitude and might
Which surpass visions we foresaw.

Adele M. Marshall, from the History of the USS Leviathan

Vaterland, the pride of Germany's Hamburg-America Line, arrived in New York harbour in late June, 1914. She did not leave.

Vaterland was, at that time, the largest ship afloat. A three-stack luxury liner too powerful for her own good; when trying to berth at New York, she accidently swamped a tugboat in her wake, killing one of its crew. Vaterland boasted everything a luxury craft of her day was expected to, from swimming pool to fancy barber, and was decorated in grand German style, up to and including a statue of the Kaiser.

With the outbreak of war in Europe America, determined to remain neutral, didn't want to let a German liner make the run back home, particularly with British warships guarding the oceans. A small cadre of British diplomats based in New York with an excellent view of the Hudson from the consul's office were watching the comings and goings, and those Germans brave enough to try to run were often caught thanks to their vigilance. 

Hamburg-America's Graccia was one of those who tried, in 1914, and the British snapped her up off the coast of Gibraltar. She was sent to Liverpool for refit, named the Pollockshields, and promptly hit a reef off Bermuda and sank on her first voyage, laden with munitions. Not willing to risk their pride and joy on a similar run, Hamburg-America ordered the Vaterland to remain in port, along with her crew.

The Vaterland appears in a scenario in my Dulce et Decorum Est Great War book, available through Pelgrane. That scenario's set in its New York period, when the marooned crew - unable to leave the ship for any reason - whiled away the carefree hours by holding after-dark parties. The band would play, beer would flow, and everyone had a good time raising money for the German war effort. 

This was all before the Lusitania was torpedoed, killing more than a thousand American civilians including women and children, after which American popular opinion turned against Germany. The Vaterland was effectively quarantined by US troops until America joined the War. Some of its crew tried to escape and go to Germany to fight, but most remained captive until the end.

When the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917 one of the first things that happened was the blockading troops, who'd been sitting on the Vaterland's doorstep since the Lusitania sank, captured the German liner. 

All her German influences were stripped out. Her more luxurious scrap was sold at silly prices, right on New York's docks. By then she was a broken ship anyway; years of neglect sitting at anchor saw to that. She was refit, renamed the Leviathan, and went to war as a troop carrier. 

By now the Spanish Flu epidemic had taken hold of America, and the world. 

In the rush to get 9,000 soldiers to the Front the authorities had little time to worry about how many of those soldiers might be infected. Many were. About 700 fell ill within 24 hours of departure, and within a week over 2,000 were stricken. Many of them lay on the Leviathan's decks, gasping for air and spewing blood. 

Due to the U-Boat menace the Leviathan couldn't stop for funerals, and in any case there were too many of them - 91 in all. Over the side they went, a muttered prayer their only funeral. 

After the War the US Government found itself the proud possessor of a German white elephant. Leviathan was all but broken, a groaning old lady of the seas, and each of her captains complained she was too difficult to handle. At one point, in a relatively modest storm, she split, the bolts holding her plating together having sheared off. She was, with difficulty, repaired and made seaworthy again. It wouldn't matter. Her time had come and gone.

The era of grand cruise liners was fading, thanks to restrictions on immigration that cut demand for tickets. Her steerage section, meant for immigrants, became 'tourist class' - always assuming there were tourists willing to make the trip. At her best she shipped 1,300 passengers; her capacity was 3,000.

If that wasn't bad enough, Prohibition meant no booze aboard a US vessel, which put paid to the only other reason Americans went abroad - to drink. The Leviathan, once the largest and most luxurious ship afloat, spent the rest of its career a third-rate liner. 

Then came the Great Depression, which further cut into the luxury trade, and the Leviathan ran out of lives. The decision was eventually made to break her up for scrap and she was sent to Rosyth, Scotland in 1937.  It was a far more difficult passage than it needed to be, what with weather troubles, an angry crew demanding their wages and bust machinery. "She was a hoodoo ship, all right," her last captain wrote to a friend. "I was glad when we docked."

To ensure she didn't slip chain and drift in Rosyth's strong winter winds they flooded her No 1 hold, sinking her in the mud. As she was so massive, and as the outbreak of another world war diverted resources, she was left to rot until war's end. They finally destroyed Leviathan in 1946.

As a Chilling Locale, the Leviathan's practically a ghost ship from 1914 onwards. Captured before it had a career, soaked in the blood of American soldiers, half-empty on almost every run - all it wants are a few mysterious shadows and you're good to go.

Plus there are those moments in New York, and later in Rosyth, when the Leviathan's basically locked up tight for years. Particularly at Rosyth, less so in New York when at least there are people watching her and some crew still aboard. Haunted. Disgraced. In Limbo. 

Rosyth, for those interested, is a small town in Scotland best known for its dockyard, which would have been a Royal Naval Dockyard when the Leviathan arrived. The Dockyard, built for battleships, was brand new when World War One broke out, but closed in 1925. It reopened in the late 1930s when relations with Germany began to deteriorate - about the same time Leviathan arrived for its slaughter. During World War 2 it was a refit station, repairing and rearming over 3,000 warships. Imagine bringing your destroyer into port and berthing it next to Leviathan's rotting corpse.

So let's have some story seeds:

Missing Crewman: One of the Vaterland's crew is supposed to have accidentally murdered himself while attempting to sabotage the ship, when she was docked at New York. After her refit, the Leviathan crew tell tales of the 'extra hand' - someone who's only ever seen when trouble's about to start. He's dressed in Vaterland's uniform, but those who see him say he doesn't have a face. When one of the player characters sees him, what kind of disaster does this presage?

Hoodoo Ship: Is this old liner trying to kill itself? There's those who say they can hear the ship muttering after dark, planning its self-destruction in some terrible act of immolation - but will it be satisfied killing only itself, or does it plan on taking other ships with her when she goes?

Rosyth Haunts: Dock workers at the port are going to go on strike unless something's done about the Leviathan. Strange noises are heard and there are lights after dark, the sound of music and laughter. It's all nonsense of course, but the commander in charge of the docks decides to send a search party aboard. Maybe deserters are hiding in there. Maybe something else ...