The Three Impostors (Machen)

The three passed out, leaving the hall door, cracked and riven with frost and wet, half open, and they stood silent for a moment under the ruinous shelter of the porch.

"Well," said the girl, "it is done at last. I shall hurry no more on the track of the young man with spectacles."

"We owe a great deal to you," said Mr. Davies politely; "the doctor said so before he left. But have we not all three some farewells to make? I, for my part, propose to say good-by, here, before this picturesque but mouldy residence …

I mentioned Arthur Machen last week and time has come to tell the tale.

Machen’s Three Impostors – which you can get on Gutenberg if you like free stuff – is something I’d recommend to any lover of the grotesque and Gothic, but I particularly recommend it to GUMSHOE directors and players for this reason: it is an episodic sandbox campaign in literary form.

If you read any synopsis, you might be forgiven for thinking this novel has a plot. It does not. What it has is a central premise: a group of casual acquaintances, thrust together by circumstance, are involved in a series of peculiar adventures. The McGuffin is a gold coin allegedly minted by the Emperor Tiberius which is worth several fortunes, but in practice it’s all about that mysterious young man with the spectacles. This unnamed gent is the central figure around whom all plot revolves. He is the villain, the scoundrel, the bandit, the occult mastermind. Or perhaps he’s just a mysterious figure. 

The gold Tiberius gets a fairly detailed description, in the style of the Maltese Falcon. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hammett had this in mind when he was writing the Falcon. It goes like this:

It is one of the comparatively few historical objects in existence; it is all storied like those jewels we have read of. A whole cycle of legend has gathered round the thing; the tale goes that it formed part of an issue struck by Tiberius to commemorate an infamous excess. You see the legend on the reverse: 'Victoria.' It is said that by an extraordinary accident the whole issue was thrown into the melting pot, and that only this one coin escaped. It glints through history and legend, appearing and disappearing, with intervals of a hundred years in time and continents in place. It was discovered by an Italian humanist, and lost and rediscovered. It has not been heard of since 1727, when Sir Joshua Byrde, a Turkey merchant, brought it home from Aleppo, and vanished with it a month after he had shown it to the virtuosi, no man knew or knows where. And here it is!

Everyone’s after this coin and will commit any atrocity to get it. It’s introduced to the narrative when it’s flung aside by some unfortunate who’s fleeing one step ahead of a knife-wielding assassin. The fellow with the spectacles is first in the queue and it’s because he’s after the Tiberius that the three Impostors get dragged into the plot. 

However, that’s not why I want to talk about this novel. I want to talk about it because it does something I don’t think I’ve ever seen a novel do: it starts at the end and goes on from there.

I’m sure you can think of half-a-dozen examples where the narrator (usually unreliable) starts at the end, but that isn’t what’s happening here. This is one where the group, such as it is, starts by saying goodbye on the steps of the peculiar house where they have their last adventure. It’s one of a series of improbable tales – you can tell how improbable by the list of chapter titles – which the book then unfolds, event by event. 

Titles:

Prologue

Adventure of the Gold Tiberius

The Encounter of the Pavement

Novel of the Dark Valley

Adventure of the Missing Brother

Novel of the Black Seal

Incident of the Private Bar

The Decorative Imagination

Novel of the Iron Maid

The Recluse of Bayswater

Novel of the White Powder

Strange Occurrence in Clerkenwell

History of the Young Man with Spectacles

Adventure of the Deserted Residence

It begins at the end by dropping a number of names and situations, most of which make absolutely no sense to the reader because they haven’t read the rest of the novel yet. You don’t know what happened to the man with the spectacles. You have a feeling it can’t be anything good, not in that dank and evil house, but you don’t know. You haven’t the least clue what a gold Tiberius is, never mind what significance it has to the plot, but it must be significant because it’s all anyone wants to talk about.

Finally, two other people enter the scene, after everyone else has departed. They are struck by the singular, sinister appearance of the house. 

I look at that deep glow on the panes, and the house lies all enchanted; that very room, I tell you, is within all blood and fire ...

With that line, the novel begins in earnest, and will end when those two newcomers explore the deserted residence, with its room within all blood and fire. Everything that came before, led to that picturesque (but mouldy) residence and the thing those two newcomers discover inside.

A lot is said by gamers about session zero. About how it sets expectations, house rules, table etiquette. Much is said about consent. All these are useful topics.

But here is a session zero where the players, in advance of any plot, lay out specific guidelines for what is to happen next. They name their adversary. They name their McGuffin. They lay out some basic outlines for the kind of adventures they had (intend to have) and an abbreviated checklist of where they are to happen. Nothing too specific. Nobody says ‘ah, Ms. Lally, what about that time in the flooded cellar with the deadly serpent?’ 

But there’s enough detail there for the Director/Keeper – assuming one is in the wings – to pick up on and run with it. To know that, whatever else may happen, the chief adversary is that sinister young man in spectacles. That the McGuffin is the gold Tiberius. At this point you don’t even know that the Tiberius is a coin. It might be anything, so long as it’s gold. But you know it exists and has plot significance. 

That kind of information is incredibly useful to the Keeper. It can be easily accommodated no matter what the Keeper intends to run. It wouldn’t be at all difficult, say, to run the Horror on the Orient Express with a sinister fellow in spectacles leading the enemy’s charge. Very little would need to change. Nor would it be difficult to insert such a character into the Armitage Files, or the Dracula Dossier. 

It’s basically a blue book in miniature, a brief in-character dialogue whose purpose isn’t to describe what is happening but to tell the Keeper what happened, so they can incorporate that information into future scenarios.

This could be incredibly useful for open world games in particular. Say this was Armitage Files, where you as Keeper know that there are any number of options, but the players have to pick which they like best. With this kind of session zero blue book at the very start, the Keeper already has a reasonable idea where to go, or at least what kind of villain the players will find when they get there. 

That could be vital. 

So next time you’re planning something sinister, give some thought to this idea: start at the end. Let the players narrate themselves the kind of ending they want to get to.

Then spend the next however many sessions finding out how they get there.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!