London's Vauxhall (RPG All)

This week has been particularly busy as I've been writing/editing a Pelgrane project, so I haven't had as much time to think about Ephemera.

So this time it's going to be a short one (plus a book recommendation).

I've mentioned Liza Picard before.  She describes herself as 'not a properly trained historian. I am a lawyer by trade, and an inquisitive, practical woman by character.' Properly trained or otherwise, she's a far better historical writer than many who spent their whole lives buried in history's detritus. Born 1927, called to the bar when she was 21 (just after the war), she worked for Inland Revenue until 1987 when she retired and took up London as a hobby. Her book on Restoration London was published ten years later, and she's since come out with several more: Dr. Johnson's London, Elizabeth's London and Victorian London. 

So if you were looking for material to use, say, in Ken Hite's School of Night or Robin Laws' Bookhounds of London then Picard's your best source of plot hooks. I'd also recommend Picard to anyone looking for Swords of the Serpentine inspiration, particularly her Elizabethan history.

Picard's also one of those authors who doesn't believe in social media or giving interviews. Ordinarily I'd try to find a video or at least a newspaper article, but there really isn't much and as far as I know she hasn't a web page. Not that she needs one. I get the impression she's one of the few who writes to please herself and nobody else.

What I'm going to do now is flick to a random page in Dr. Johnson's London (1740-70) and invent a scenario seed based on whatever I find there.

As luck would have it I landed on the opening page of Chapter 22: Parties of Pleasure.

Vauxhall

In 1732 Jonathan Tyers, 'the master builder of delight,' took over a 12-acre site in the fields across the river, and transformed it. Throughout the summer months, May to August, anyone looking respectable (known whores were barred) could come for the price of a shilling ticket. Paved paths through trees ran the length of the site, with cross alleys at right angles, and space near the entrance for a music room, 50 supper boxes adorned with paintings by Hogarth and others, Chinese pavilions and a round bandstand. Vistas were designed to show off a succession of triumphal arches, and some newly built Italian ruins and a statue of Handel by Roubiliac valued at a thousand guineas. There was a Turkish tent with doric pillars, and a famous 'tin cascade' at the end of one of the avenues, made of strips of tin and complete with miller's house. At nine o'clock each evening, a bell rang, a watchman shouted 'Take care of your pockets' and concealed lighting played on the shimmering strips ...

Known whores might have been barred, but there was plenty of sex to be had in the gardens. Vauxhall became notorious for it. 'The most experienced mothers have often lost themselves in looking for their daughters,' as a contemporary writer put it. The Gardens lasted for quite a while, until 1859 when the site finally closed. In the early years the Gardens were only accessible by boat but after Vauxhall Bridge was erected in 1810 the Gardens slowly became part of the Metropolis. There's still a Vauxhall Gardens today, but it's a modern London inner city park, very different from its previous incarnation.

Obtained via Wikipedia

Now to gamify.

Bookhounds of London

The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with cuts vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the cuts at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.

The Hounds pick up a 1741 book, The Mysteries of Nature and Art, as part of a miscellany in an auction. The author is unknown, which was a fairly common practice in the eighteenth century. Some of the engravings are reminiscent of William Hogarth, so the Hounds might try to pass it off as a Hogarth for a little extra cash. 

Among other things the book describes how to make a zoetrope and provides a series of images to help the amateur toymaker make their own zoetrope. The images show a young woman in a very fancy garden, pursued by an amorous rakehell. The images are titled A Walk In Vauxhall and the pages are slightly damaged; the rakehell's face is almost completely obscured by bookworm bores. 

After the Hounds acquire the book they have peculiar dreams about an apparently infinite pleasure garden, and the strange people they almost-but-not-quite see in the shadows. The dreams get worse and worse, until the Hounds start taking Stability losses.

Option 1: Build And They Will Come. The dreams can be stopped if someone constructs and uses the zoetrope. If that happens one room in the Shop will become permanently infested by the Gardens, such that anyone who steps through that door finds themselves wandering in this hideous playground. So long as the Hounds keep the door shut they need never worry about what's hiding in the Gardens. No, they never have to worry at all ...

Option 2: Worm In The Apple The Rakehell's face didn't vanish because it was eaten by a bookworm. The Rakehell is in fact a Crawling One, and is hiding on the other side of Dream waiting for a chance to get out. The dreams are a series of mental attacks intended to force one of the dreamers to become a host for the reborn Crawling One, willingly or otherwise.

Option 3: A Yellow Garden The zoetrope is actually a window into Carcosa, and if anyone's foolish enough to actually construct it then a copy of the King In Yellow, 1741 edition, will appear in the shop. Nobody knows where it came from. Destroying the zoetrope will destroy the 1741 edition, but not before someone comes face-to-face with the Mythos, with the additional Stability and Sanity loss than implies.

Enjoy!