Held In Pawn (RPG All)

There comes a time in any hero's life when they find themselves in need of easy credit.

Traditionally this role has been filled by the humble pawnbroker, who lends on collateral. 

The Pawnbroker

The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker’s shop is three balls hung a little bit like an inverse Club. Nobody knows why. There are all kinds of theories some of which may have some validity; it almost certainly comes from heraldry, but its actual origin is obscure.

There’s the slight possibility that the image originates from the tale of St. Nicholas, who once gave three bags of gold to three impoverished women, daughters of a pious man who had been brought to penury by Satan. If Saint Nicholas hadn’t stepped in, the daughters would have been forced into sex work. Because of this legend St. Nick is supposed to be the patron saint of pawnbrokers.

In order to know how much to lend you first have to know what the item is worth, which means you have to know a little about a lot. If you’re unscrupulous you can lowball the value to reduce the risk you’re carrying; the less you pay out the better, since so many of your clients default on payment. If that wasn’t a risk, they probably wouldn’t be knocking on your door to begin with.

If the client doesn’t pay up, then the item is sold to recoup the loan cost and hopefully provide a little profit on the transaction. From a buyer’s perspective that means you can find almost anything at a pawnbroker’s, and it’s usually better quality than you’d find at a junk shop – though possibly not by much.

There are other means of forcing payment. According to this Gutenberg text Chinese creditors had the option of taking their cause to the magistrate but preferred not to, as the magistrate’s love of bribes (gifts) was notorious. Instead, some of them went to the debtor’s place of business and camped out there, giving the hairy eyeball to all and sundry until they got paid.

Of course, if your setting happens to be magical (Swords of the Serpentine, eg) you have even more options at your disposal. Sorcery is the obvious route; lay curses on your debtor’s head until they pay up. In a game where social combat (Sway) is just as important as physical, you could also hire a professional slanderer to do your dirty work. They follow the target wherever they go, repeatedly sniping with Sway attacks.

Say:

Chatter Pappa is a well-known Derogatory. Short, slim and trim as a pirate’s sloop, they offer their services to the highest bidder. They don’t attack with their rapier (though they’re no slouch in that department - think Haughty Duelist, with a tongue that wags even more often than usual). Instead, they follow their target about Eversink, repeatedly targeting them with vicious barbs and slanders. If the target barricades themselves behind closed doors Chatter Pappa takes up their vigil outside, their tongue ceaselessly wagging so all passers-by know what kind of lowlife is hiding inside. Like all Derogatories, Chatter Pappa wears the silver badge of their trade. Guardsmen and city officials know better than to interrupt a Derogatory on their mission; while not technically approved by the courts, a Derogatory is a dangerous person to quarrel with. Chatter Pappa often works for the loan shark Vido the Rock, and it’s rumored that Chatter Pappa works for free, possibly because of some debt Vido holds over Chatter Pappa.

Having said all that let’s go to London and put a pawnbroker into the Bookhounds mix.

Howard and Thripps, Oxford Street

Mr. Howard, a former pugilist, and Mr. Thripps, a mousy little accountant, went into partnership ten years ago when Howard retired from the ring. Physically they closely resemble the comic characters Mutt and Jeff, and they have several strips clipped and pinned in the shop.

Four Things:

Howard is a prodigious drinker and when not at the shop he can usually be found at his favorite boozer, The Hanged Man, just around the corner. Thripps despairs whenever Howard drinks; Thripps is teetotal.

The shop has several rooms and a large elaborately decorated safe from John Croft & Sons, engineers. Nobody knows who John Croft is; the business probably expired years ago. The safe came with the shop. Thripps is the only one who reliably remembers the combination; Howard says he does, but often forgets.

Thripps is an enthusiastic investor in odd inventions. If you want to raise money for your latest Heath Robinson farrago, he’s the man to see. However, so many of these businesses fail that the shop has an impressive selection of oddball inventions in its inventory.

Fourth Thing Arabesque: one of the discarded inventions in the shop window is a prototype television set of peculiar design. According to the brass plate it’s the brainchild of Theo. Muswell of Croydon, whoever he is. It turns itself on and apparently has no power source; the fuzzy images it shows are hypnotic and threatening.

Fourth Thing Technicolor: cultists of the vampire priest often pawn their religious artefacts to raise funds for their projects, or to cover an emergency deficit. They always recover the items they pawn, but sometimes it’s a close-run thing.

Fourth Thing Sordid: A collection of photographs piled in a miscellany in a box on the counter includes several candid shots of the SS Princess Alice, post-sinking, its remains beached on the Thames. Those who pay the shots too close attention hear unsettling whispers from the drowned dead.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

The Grey Man of Berlin (Night's Black Agents)

I'm going to draw on some information from the Dracula Dossier, Double Tap (ekimmu, the Babylonian possessing spirit p107-8) and this article about Beckett's Head, Berlin.

What came before: the German Vampire Project, pre-war, experimented with various necromantic techniques to create their supernatural crew and one of the less successful projects was Rattenfänger, which created one successful prototype but was unable to replicate its work. 

Its prototype, the Ekimmu that came to be known as Herr Flint, escaped the lab in the hectic last months of the Nazi regime. It survived the immediate inter-war years by making itself useful as a freelance operative serving the Americans, British and Russians; Herr Flint knew where the bodies were buried, literally and figuratively. It passed itself off as a low-level research assistant who just happened to know where the good stuff was kept, swapping information for security. Twice its cover was penetrated, and twice it faked its own death only to pop up again months or years later as an informant. 

When the Berlin Wall shot up Herr Flint saw an opportunity and, using the contacts it had made in the inter-war years, became an independent information broker between the living and the dead, whether Conspiracy dead or just regular. It wore out several bodies but accumulated a small fortune, as well as a significant amount of favors - currency, in the Cold War.

Recently Herr Flint decided to retire, after a close brush with permanent death thanks to the Mysterious Monseigneur. However, it's under pressure from a Conspiracy node, the Bankhaus Klingemann. Lisle wants Herr Flint to do one last favor for her, and as a substantial portion of Herr Flint's assets are held by the Bankhaus the Ekimmu finds Lisle's blandishments difficult to resist.

However, Herr Flint doesn't want to have anything to do with Lisle's schemes and has hit upon a solution: the Yojimbo option.

Enter the agents.

From the Guardian:

Beckett's Head is unmarked save for an eerily glowing photograph of Samuel Beckett in the window, so you'll need to ring a doorbell to gain access to this Prenzlauer Berg bar. Inside are two elegant, dimly lit rooms (one reserved for smokers) with low tables and chesterfield sofas. The comprehensive drinks list – ensconced between the pages of a Beckett tome – is divided into sections such as fresh and funky, and herbal and floral, and always features seasonal specials. The ice is hand-cut, and staff are happy to tailor-make drinks for the undecided. Absinthe fans may wish to sample the bar's take on the classic Monkey's Gland, made with English marmalade.

From Double Tap:

The ekimmu was a spirit of an unburied (or improperly buried) man that wanders the earth (or the underworld) bringing bad luck, disease, or a supernatural curse to its victims. Most often, the ekimmu possesses or attaches itself to a living victim, but some ekimmu animate corpses ... the ekimmu spends most of its time attached to or possessing a human or corpse, not least because (barring necromancy) it requires a human voice to interact with its Conspiracy colleagues. If it remains in the corpse too long, the skin shrinks over the bones and becomes pale or gray ... 

A Quiet Night Out

Information through the grapevine (tradecraft, streetwise or similar) suggests that important information concerning a Conspiracy operative is going to be traded in Berlin. One half of the deal is the infamous Grey Man of Berlin, but nobody knows who the buyer is. It might be interesting to find out ...

Opening

The agents pick up the Grey Man on the underground or U-Bahn, on his way to the meet. Surveillance is needed to avoid being spotted, and Sense Trouble notices a pair of disguised Bodyguards (p69 main book) following his every move. Herr Flint pretends not to notice these two, but he makes sure that they're never far away. 

The bodyguards look like a pair of students on a night out. Herr Flint looks like a bag of bones wrapped in an expensive suit. People on the U-Bahn avoid sitting near him if they can help it; he seems unwell. He has an expensive-seeming leather suitcase chained to his wrist. Anyone who pays him close attention also notices the gun he has in a concealed holster under his armpit. Agents with Law know that guns are heavily regulated in Germany; he's taking a big risk carrying something like that.

If the agents are spotted, Herr Flint tries to lose them by switching trains repeatedly on the U-Bahn (Difficulty 4 to keep up). It's a busy night and there are plenty of people trying to get home or to go out for a good time; a big crowd scene. If the bodyguards get an opportunity, they try to block the agents' path without seeming to do so deliberately.  

However, Herr Flint wants the agents to keep up with him so, if it looks like his attempt is successful, he'll deliberately sabotage it with an act of seeming carelessness. Clever agents with Sense Trouble may pick up on this deception and wonder why.

Agents who make a Sense Trouble Difficulty 5 notice that they're not the only suspicious characters on the U-Bahn tonight. A duo with special forces training (the agents may recognize them as members of the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State) are trailing Herr Flint and have identified the agents as potential threats. If the agents recognize them, it raises a question: what are the Vatican's people doing quite so far from their turf?

Agents who pay close attention to the Vatican's people see them conferring every so often with what can only be surveillance assistance somewhere off-site. So there are more of them out there somewhere.

Arrival at Beckett's Head.

This cosy high-end cocktail bar is the sort of place anyone with High Society might start an entertaining evening, and tonight a group of execs from Bankhaus Klingemann are enjoying the finer things in life. Among the group is Lisle, the queen bee, holding court. They're in the smoking section, which (tonight only) is marked off for a private party.

Agents with Vampirology or Occult may notice that Herr Flint reacts badly to Lisle's bright red dress; the color red is a Dread for his kind.

Herr Flint takes up a spot at one end of the non-smoking section, enjoying a herbal cocktail. His bodyguards, who saunter in after him if they're still in it, are not far away. 

The Vatican group take up observation outside the Beckett's Head. The agents may notice a nondescript van parked not far away; the Mysterious Monseigneur or one of his senior henchmen is paying close attention from that observation post. Meanwhile the two special ops types the agents may have seen from before work their way around to a back entrance; they expect Herr Flint to make his way there and are planning to hit him when he does. 

Herr Flint is toying with a chess problem and using a board in the bar to play it out. He's paying it close attention. What he's not paying attention to is his leather case, which is by his side, unchained. 

Lisle saunters over and pretends to be interested in the problem as well, as is one of her inebriated colleagues. Though Herr Flint isn't too happy about her choice of costume he accepts her interest with polite decorum.

The inebriated colleague wanders off in search of the bathroom, but not before picking up the leather case. His instructions are to check the goods and, if satisfactory, leave Beckett's Head. If unsatisfactory, he rejoins the party.

That's what Herr Flint was hoping for. As an Ekimmu he has a special ability: when wounded his blood becomes an aerosol phantom that takes the shape of a predatory bird or storm cloud. He booby-trapped the case with a blood bomb; the colleague sets it off as soon as he opens the case. Herr Flint used 5 of his Health to make the phantom, which is one of the reasons why he looked so unhealthy tonight.

The first the agents may know about this is when the blood bomb goes off and the Bankhaus Klingemann exec comes stumbling out, drained dry by the blood phantom and breathing his last. While this distraction is going on, Herr Flint collapses. 

Except not really. Herr Flint has decided the time has come for a change of body. He had intended to take Lisle but she protected herself by wearing red. Now he has to choose someone else.

His options, in descending order: the agents, the Vatican agents, a Bankhaus employee at the party, some random civilian.

Meanwhile his bodyguards, not realizing his deception, leap to the defense of their principal. 

Thus starts a three-way melee. Herr Flint's bodyguards are almost innocent bystanders in all this and are armed with non-lethal weaponry, but they are a complicating factor. The blood phantom is immaterial and is partly controlled by Herr Flint, but it lacks a motivating force and is basically draining everything it can. The Vatican's people will intervene as soon as they realize what's going on, but that will take a few combat rounds. Meanwhile Lisle, who has a bodyguard of her own at the party who doesn't believe in non-lethal weaponry, will first try to get hold of the briefcase and then, when she realizes it's a scam, make her exit.

Herr Flint's objective is to find a new body and get out.

The Vatican's objective is to put an end to Herr Flint once and for all, and they have the Banes to do it but lack a target - at least until they find out which body Herr Flint now operates from. 

Lisle and Bankhaus' objective was to get hold of the data Herr Flint promised them. Once they realize the data is a sham, their next objective is to get hold of Herr Flint.

Once Herr Flint has a new body he'll move outside, where he has a fast motorcycle stashed not far from Beckett's Head. This may provoke a Chase scene, as Herr Flint makes his getaway. 

Herr Flint has a safe house luxury apartment in Berlin where he'll stay the night and, if he isn't tracked down, he'll leave Berlin soon after in his new body. The Grey Man lives to fight another day ...

Interesting footnote: Prenzlauer Berg has been a center of youth counterculture and squats that, today, is undergoing gentrification. The old hippies are being squeezed out, but it's still a youth-trending neighborhood. Added to that, there are any number of WWII era bunkers under Berlin, including Prenzlauer Berg. You're spoilt for choice: that safe house could be in one of the few bits of Prenzlauer Berg that hasn't succumbed to gentrification, daubed with Cold-War era graffiti, or it could be in a lost Nazi bunker beneath Prenzlauer Berg. Either way, an excellent and evocative spot for a final showdown!

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

   

The Small God of Belluccia Bridge (Swords of the Serpentine)

The phrase small gods make a lot of people think of the Pratchett novel of the same name. I first encountered the idea in the Fritz Leiber short story Lean Times in Lankhmar, where barbarian Fafhrd becomes the shaven-headed devotee of a very peculiar God and his long-time companion Mouser tries to drink him out of it. 

In our world probably the closest equivalent is Mecca, pre-Muhammad. Before the Prophet captured Mecca and turned it into the heart of Islam Mecca was a hotbed of paganism, home to all sorts of since-forgotten gods. This was probably a relic of Mecca's trading post past; where the world's peoples gather and worship, peculiar practices become the norm. You might walk down any street - in Lankhmar it would have been the Street of the Gods where deities rise and fall by their position on that ill-destined thoroughfare - and find a divine who predates Rome and is now all but erased from history.

Mind you, as Leiber put it:

... the gods have very sharp ears for boasts, or for declarations of happiness and self-satisfaction, or for assertions of a firm intention to do this or that, or for statements that this or that must surely happen, or any other words hinting that a man is in the slightest control of his own destiny. And the gods are jealous, easily angered, perverse, and swift to thwart ...

With all that in mind: 

The Small God of Belluccia Bridge

Location: under the shadow of the Well of Tears, Ironcross. Some prisoners can see Belluccia Bridge from their cells. It's some distance from the Bridge of Tears, though those unfamiliar with Ironcross sometimes mistake the two.

Description (day): A crossing point between two busy streets and a narrow alley, used mainly by bureaucrats, lawyers, and relatives of those who might find themselves in the Well of Tears. A trick of architecture encourages chill breezes at unexpected moments, threatening the security of wigs and hats. A statue of some unnamed person looks out from the bridge across the waters, their face and features long worn smooth by the touch of unnumbered hands. Those who bother to notice it at all call it the Cheese, and there is a persistent rumor that the Cheese is a nickname of a long-forgotten judge in whose honor the statue was made. Legend has it that if the Cheese favors your case you cannot fail, which is why so many lawyers have caressed its worn face over the years.

Description (night): A lonely and unremembered stretch that seems longer, somehow, and narrower than it does during the day. There is no breeze at night, and the air is, if anything, unnaturally still. Without the bustle of lawyers and clerks Belluccia Bridge echoes at every footfall, and when there's no-one around the gentle lap-lap of the water below becomes oppressive, as if each watery caress is the tick of an eternal clock slowly winding down to nothing. There is a statue of a sharp-faced man here whose staring eyes seem to follow every visitor. In one hand he holds a dirk, in the other a key. The key, a symbol of knowledge, is in the left hand which some consider a sign of sorcery - knowledge of sorcerous techniques is called the left-hand path. The dirk, in art and sculpture, is sometimes called the martyr's point.

Rumor: if you seek knowledge or success in a legal cause, you must make your appeal to the Judge at the dead of night at Belluccia Bridge. If your appeal is heard and granted, your action cannot fail. If the Judge can be bribed, as so many earthly judges can, nobody knows what offering would find favor in his eyes.

Danger: At least three people claim to have met a shadowy duelist on Belluccia Bridge. Of those three, only one escaped without injury and there have been seven corpses found in the waters underneath the bridge, all run through the heart, that might be victims of this unknown assailant.

The Small God

all want to learn, but no one is willing to pay the price ...

It calls itself the Balance. When the Well of Tears was first built (and few remember when that was) it came here as the last resort of the unfortunate, the one who put its thumb on the scales of justice to release souls from confinement. 

Not bodies. Souls.

The Balance considers itself a God of Law. However, it's not blind justice. This is the kind of law which, with a nudge and a wink, adjusts the scales in favor of one side or the other. The kind that uses rules of procedure and precedent to get what it wants.

The very first lawyers who came to the Well to see their clients were the first devotees of the Balance and they learned a great deal about their profession from the God. However, despite its blandishments it could never persuade any of these clerks and scriveners to become its champion, its proselytizer.  They took; they did not give back.

In time the Balance soured.  It forgot why it settled beneath the Well of Tears and began to obsess about the lost and damned inside the jail, the ones who never saw trial, who vanished inside its innards. It forgot the law. It forgot precedent and justice. It wanted revenge. 

It whispered at night to the duelist Lorenzo Vasari, betrayed by his employer and left to rot in jail for an assassination disguised as a legitimate duel. Vasari wanted out; his lawyer kept promising freedom but never delivered. Lorenzo came to believe that the statue he could see from his cell was speaking to him at night, that it knew a way out of the Well and would help him - for a price. 

It did know a way out. Now Lorenzo is the skeletal duelist, strong right hand of the Small God who will take vengeance on those who displease it. At its urging Lorenzo comes out of the water below, slime oozing from its ruined finery, its sword still gleaming bright.

The Balance still offers legal advice to those who know how to ask for it, and it will lend its supernatural support to those willing to work in its service. It can get souls out of the Well. It may even be able to get bodies out too; nobody can say for sure.

If it is displeased, it has its strong right hand. Vasari has the stats of a duelist (p47) and the weakness of a skeletal giant (p197). Vasari cannot be defeated unless its Health and Morale are both at 0, and Morale regenerates at the end of every round. Vasari cannot die so long as the Small God remains at Belluccia Bridge, but he can be defeated and if that happens he sinks beneath the water. He will be able to return the next night. 

There is one special condition that will rid Eversink of Vasari for good. If it can be proven to the duelist that both its lawyer and its former employer are dead, Vasari will be released from the Balance's service and never be seen again.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Hook (GUMSHOE All)

 

Casablanca Opening Scene

What makes a good hook?

In GUMSHOE and in most investigative games the hook, or opening scene, is used to lure the characters into the plot. It alerts them that something is going on; it gives them a rough (and possibly misleading) idea of what is to come; it may even give a hint (again, possibly misleading) of the kind of opposition they will face. 

Take a look at the opening scene of Casablanca. In less than two and a half minutes, you know where you are, when you are, how serious the situation is, and the broad strokes of the kind of narrative you're about to witness. You even know the name of one of the main characters, M. Renault, the prefect of police. 

But you don't see M. Renault, nor do you see any other main character. You see two minor characters, and one recurring character, briefly. NPCs, all. You see the signage for Rick's Café Américain, but you don't see Rick. 

In any RPG setting some of this heavy lifting is done for you. You always know when you are: Cyberpunk is a game of the dark future, not 1890s London. Trail is a 1930s setting, Call a 1920s setting (for the most part) and so on. The rest of it is up to you.

But that gives a clear indication of the nature of a good hook. It tells you how serious the situation is, and the broad strokes of the kind of narrative you're about to experience. It should also give you a clear indication of where to go next since, unlike Rick and M. Renault, your players don't have a script to work with.  

I'm going to borrow the example I used last week for Night's Black Agents:

An apartment in a Wandsworth council house exploded thanks to a mistimed suicide vest, which the powers that be are covering up under DORA as a gas leak. There's an official investigation; the agents are parachuted in as 'experts' by whichever agency sponsors them. Edom, why not.

As Director you already know that this is a modern spy game set in London with supernatural opposition as the major players in the shadowy underbelly of Europe. You know where you want the agents to go. The question is how to get there.

Some of an opening scene is setting rather than information: you set the tone. 

Rain spits from grey skies as you pass the police tape line. Nobody looks you in the eye. Not the plod, not the people. They don't know who you are, but they know what you are. Only the CCTV, sprouting like fungal growths off every wall and corner, doesn't look away. The electronic eye sees all. 

Inside, the apartment is meat feast mixed with brimstone. Forensics in their noddy suits are going over every inch and you watch their progress as you get into noddy suits of your own. At least three people lived here, according to the police report. Two of them accounted for; that would be the pile over there, and the plonker who set off the bomb by accident whose constituent parts now decorate the walls. Nobody knows where the third, the brother, Marcus, is.

The scene lead, Inspector Dawkins, is conferring with one of the forensic techs. He pretends not to notice you.    

You could add more but that's enough to be getting on with. That's the tone set. The Casablanca moment.

The next thing to think about is the clue trail. You want the agents to find clues that lead to the next scene, or at least lead to a scene which is interesting. 

Key point, that. You can have as many red herring trails as you like but they all have to be interesting. Either they lead to an action moment of some kind, or they introduce something unique to the plot. 

For example: brother Marcus might not be involved in the main plot at all. He might have taken to his heels when he saw the bombs go off. Following him doesn't lead to main plot. But he almost certainly knows something useful and the OPFOR know he knows something useful, so chasing that lead gets to either:

• an action moment where Marcus has to be saved from certain death, or,
• a horror moment when the agents find out what hideous atrocities the OPFOR inflicted on Marcus. Eaten by ghouls, say, or turned into a zombie, or used as a ritual sacrifice.

The next question is, what clues to leave? Where do they go?

It's useful for any hook to have at least one Clue per specialty, and one Clue for Rome. 

In Night's Black Agents there are three specialty pools: Technical, Academic, Interpersonal. The geek skills, the scholar skills, the talky skills. Other systems follow similar lines. If we were talking about D&D, for example, it would be STR based, WIS based, CHA based and so on. All GUMSHOE systems follow broadly the same Technical, Academic and Interpersonal principles. 

In this particular setting there are also Network contacts that the agents can call on if there's a skill pool that they lack. So even if none of the agents have significant Technical pools, say, they can call on someone who does.

Now, in each heading there are various different possibilities. Technical, for example, includes Astronomy, Forgery and Pharmacy, among others. Does that mean you have to have a Clue for all three? For all Technical possibilities?

Of course not. If you know the agents' capabilities from the start you can tailor the Clue trail to those capabilities but assume for the sake of this example that you don't know what the agents are capable of. In that case, just assign an Academic, a Technical and an Interpersonal skill, and let the player choose how they got there. They can use any Academic pool they like to get the Academic Clue, and so on.

There are two advantages to this. One is that it allows creative players to make use of pools that don't often see play. Astronomy is my personal bugbear; I can't imagine a use for it outside of a particularly restricted set of circumstances. However, a creative player might come up with an idea I haven't thought of, and if it's not completely Scooby Doo and fits the narrative, why not use it?

The second is that it allows easy jump-off to the next scene. If, say, you planned it so that only Forensic Science would work, and nobody has Forensic Science, nobody thinks of a way to use it in the scene, or nobody uses the magic words 'I'd like to use Forensic Science, please, Director,' then the Clue trail stops dead. Which is the very last thing you want to happen, especially in the opening scene of the scenario.

Understand, I'm not suggesting that you do this in any other scene but this one. Nor am I suggesting that you only have four clues in the opening scene. What I'm saying is that, in order to guarantee smooth passage from here to the next moment, have at least four clues and don't worry about assigning particular pools for these clues. Just make sure there's one each for Technical, Academic, and Interpersonal, and one for Rome so the agents get a sniff of what they're dealing with.

Put it this way: James Bond fails all the time. He never fails in the opening scene. Later on, sure, he might be captured, bungle a rescue, whatever. But in the first ten minutes Bond does nothing but shine. Occasionally he wears a seagull on his head. But he shines.

OK, so let's put this to work.

We already have the opening moment. We know what Casablanca looks like. The agents are on the bomb site poking through the debris. We need at least four clues to propel them from here to somewhere else. 

• Academic: there's information here about someone's medical history over the past two years; their last appointment was four months ago, for a consultation at London Bridge Hospital - the Shard, where they keep their fertility clinic. How did this lot afford it, and why were they keen to see a fertility specialist?
• Point spend: the doctor at the Shard, Felicity Pocock, is a suspected Conspiracy asset, but it's never been clear whether she has any status or is just a cog in the machine.
• Technical: the explosive vest is fairly low-level tech; even so, it's beyond this mug's technical capability. It must have been put together somewhere else and brought here.
• Point spend: there's a terrorist group, Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain or Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, known to have 'acquired' C-4 exactly like this from USAG Benelux. The GICM have links with a London coke and hash smuggling group, the Fassih Collective. Is that how the C-4 got from Belgium to London? 
• Interpersonal: Inspector Dawkins is a known face, and a dogged investigator. However, his career has taken some pretty serious alcohol-related dings in the last few years. There are other candidates just as skilled as he; why is he assigned to this case?
• Point spend: Dawkins has an angel in his corner. Someone high up the chain has taken an interest in his career and is pushing him forward, which means Dawkins has politics on his side. Someone at Assistant Commissioner level in the Met, at least. 
• Rome: the people who lived here went to a lot of trouble to protect their electronics against EMP damage. It didn't work; there's a pile of discarded watches and portable electronics, completely fried. 
• Point spend: damage to electronics is a possible indication of supernatural or vampiric activity. There have been a few other crime scenes with similar markers, and three out of the five were in the Greenwich area. There's an informant down that way, runs a phone shop on Powis Street; Babichev, aka Fat Bob. Links to Russian criminals, Turkish - a very popular lad, is Bob. 

There you go.

You can have more clues, of course. I encourage that. But with this little trail the agents have two defined places to go (the Shard, Fat Bob) and two potential lines of enquiry (the Fassih Collective, Dawkin's angel in the Met). Plenty to be getting on with. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!