Happy New Year!

Lest old acquaintances be eaten by gruesome gribblies, and all that.

According to Funk & Wagnalls the New Year, as in 1st January, is a relatively recent innovation adopted at various times by various nations. You wouldn't see general acceptance in the West until (roughly) the mid-1700s. 

There's a school of thought that says the drunkenness, debauchery and let-the-good-times-roll atmosphere is a hangover from the Roman Saturnalia, but this probably isn't so. When Julius Caesar made January the first month, way back in the before times, that meant the first month fell directly after the Saturnalia, and nearly every Christian of the day (and later) deplored this as irreligious. You just don't celebrate a new year after getting bladdered in the last days of the old one, was their point. It verged on Satanism. The Council of Tours, to name but one, insisted that the New Year begin with fasts, expiation, the banning of dances and frivolity, and so on. Most Christian communities of the day had similar views: you might get toasted at Christmas (grrr, how very Satanic) but God help you if you tried the same at New Year.

Funk & Wagnalls goes on to point out that many cultures celebrate the New Year with parties and jollity, not just the West, which suggests that the celebration's joie de vivre isn't based on one cultures' idea of what is proper. Everyone thinks the new year should begin with celebration, so it does. The form that celebration takes is determined by the culture. It can be as relatively benign as first-footing (being the first to walk over the threshold of the house in the new year) or as robust as flinging balls of fire about the place.

Sourced from Steve Marsh's feed

Let's gamify this.

The NBA Resource Guide has this to say about markets:

A crowded market on the streets of an old city. Is the market themed – a Christmas fair, stalls full of antiques and old books, local crafts, or mass-produced plastic junk? Is it a seasonal event or a fixture of the city? Old European cities often have warrens of narrow streets and alleyways full of small shops; North African cities have a similar medina quarter. Push through the crowds, grab a snack from a food cart, and follow your target as they browse the bazaar. A street market’s a good place to meet a contact or pick up rumors and intel from the streets – and that fishmonger deals in black-market weapons if you know the right passwords ...

We've already established that this particular 'market' is in fact a New Year's event. You won't see that many stalls; plenty of food & drink stalls, mind, less so the antiques and plasticky tourist crap. Nobody will be selling fresh fish. While there will be stores, they'll be shut and shuttered. There will be an increased Police presence, which in game terms means Heat goes up by an extra point for any dodgy dealings, and up by two extra points for anything involving overt violence. So, punching out that mook out in the open earns you 2 extra Heat on top of the usual 1 point you'd get for what amounts to a mugging. On the other hand if you lure that mook down a dark, deserted alley before you give him a thumping that only earns you 1 extra point. Better for you, really, to find some other means of dealing with the pesky little fellow. 

I'd argue that one of the better 'quiet violence' options is to wait until there's a suitable distraction. A bunch of bagpipers and some firey balls ought to do it. Then you could bounce the little weasel's head down a dark alley without gaining extra Heat. Time it right and you could get away with no Heat at all. Say, if you dinged him and then covered it with 1 point Reassurance, Cop Talk or similar. 

Bond, Thunderball

All that said:

Rescue/Hunt the software expert, aka Candles Go Out.

Erika Donnadieu, Kube Group's star, has broken from her dubious employers and tried to alert France's Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure (DSGI) but, due to Conspiracy influence within that organization, her alert only brought more Heat on her. Now she needs to get out of the country but the Conspiracy is hot on her trail. She's made it as far as Lille, on New Year's; she just needs to get out of France. In this scene the action takes place at the Grand Place, at the height of the celebration.

The Grand Place is where the Christmas Market traditionally sets up, complete with Ferris Wheel and other carnival rides. During the New Year's celebration it will be absolutely packed with locals and tourists. 

sourced from Wikipedia

Personally, I enjoyed going to Lille over Christmas while I was in the UK, which is why I picked it. Plus, thanks to the Eurostar you can get pretty much anywhere from Lille, which is a bonus from Erika's perspective. 

Erika's booked a room at Couvent de Minimes, a former convent turned four-star hotel, under an assumed name (effective 2 points Cover) and has disguised herself as a postgraduate arts student. Little does she know, her cover has been blown and the Conspiracy knows where (and who) she is. A snatch team made up of a half-dozen mooks, a Renfield team leader and local supernatural talent, a Strix left over from the 1630s witch hysteria outbreak, are in place to grab her. Their plan is to do it while disguised as an ambulance team; Erika will just be another poor unfortunate who got a little too merry and had to be taken to hospital during the celebrations.

It's the agents' job to get to her and get her out before the Conspiracy spirit her away.

The agents are acting as third parties; their employer is an anti-vampire organization (or individual, eg. the Mysterious Monseigneur) who knows about Erika and wants to get her out of harm's way, probably for their own nefarious reasons. 

Possible variations:

• In a Satanic campaign the Couvent is a natural Bane to vampires as it maintains an air of sanctity despite its modernization.
• The Stryx is all that's left of headmistress Antoinette Bourignon who started the witch hysteria. She still runs a school of sorts: a school of cultists. Thank heaven for little girls, as they say ...
• Perhaps Erika takes refuge in the Ferris Wheel, which mysteriously breaks down at the perfect moment. Time for an aerial rescue?
• There is a famous Lille ghost story set at Place du Lion d’Or, not far from the Cathedral, in which a small boy is said to have been tortured to death by his schoolmaster. He haunts the room where he died, trapped in an iron cage. Dickens used it for his A Christmas Tree collection, in which he transposed the legend to England and made the boy's tomb a wardrobe rather that Lille's iron cage. In real life Place du Lion d’Or is some distance from the Couvent, but why rely on real life? A ghostly child emerging from a wardrobe (iron cages are so last century) whether at someone's command or by pure accident (to add to the chaos) has to be worth your time. In a Supernatural game perhaps Erika knows the story and uses the ghostly wardrobe as part of her getaway plan ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

NYC Book Loot

Still a bit on the stuffy side but I have returned with spoils, so it's only fitting I talk about those spoils. I'm not going to discuss anything bought as a present; this is just for me. 

Head-Hunting in the Solomon Islands Caroline Mytinger, 1942, McMillan. Bought at the Argosy.

... we were unencumbered by the usual equipment of expeditions: by endowments funds, by precedents, doubts, supplies, an expedition yacht or airplane, by even the blessings or belief of our friends and families, who said we couldn't do it. We especially lacked that 'body of persons' listed for expeditions by the dictionary. We were a staff of two rather young women: myself, the portrait painter, and Margaret Warner, the bedeviled handyman, who was expected to cope with situations like God - if machinery was lacking, then by levitation. Her expedition equipment was a ukelele.

If that opening sentence does not tell you why I bought this book you have no soul. 

I'll only add that, once upon a time I was part of a team that worked on Pelgrane's Expeditions book. We spent such a lot of time calculating what an expedition might need, how best to simulate that in play.

Two middle class white kids and a ukelele. Jaysus H. 

They'd stop in a place for a while, earn a crust by painting portraits, and when they had enough in their pocket they set out for the next stop. Eventually they reached their destination, which they only knew about from books. It's pretty Trail-friendly; it covers an interesting part of the world in the right time period. But seriously, how could I pass this up?

The Pyrates George MacDonald Fraser, 1983, Knopf. Bought at the Argosy.

MacDonald Fraser is best known for his Flashman series, and those never seem to go out of print. His other books have vanished into the ether, for the most part. I got a copy of Black Ajax and Mr. American while I was in the UK, and I strongly suspect that those two remain in print only because Flashman or his antecedents appear briefly in them. His MacAuslan wartime comedy stories are still in print, but his own war memoir is more difficult to find. Pyrates, and his Hollywood memoirs, have eluded me. Now I have Pyrates. Can the memoirs be far behind?

Murder at the Manor, Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries, Death on the Down Beat, all British Library Crime Classics, bought at the Mysterious Book Shop. 

Again, how could I not? Death on the Down Beat has a particularly interesting premise: a conductor is shot dead, and the shot can only have come from the orchestra. But which player could it have been? This one's a bit gimmicky but it's saved by brilliant writing, and the location - fictional UK town Maningpool - is worth stealing for your campaign, if only for its eponymous Lumps. 

Scandinavian Ghost Stories, edited by Joanne Asala, 1995 Penfield Press, bought at the Strand.

The Strand's mythology section isn't up to much but occasionally you find gold. Bought and read in the same day, which should tell you how much fun I found it. 

Dictionary of City of London Street Names Al Smith, 1970 Arco Publishing, bought at the Argosy

Well, that's the budget blown, I thought. I honestly wanted to only spend about a hundred at the Argosy. Silly me and my haughty airs. It is literally what you think it is: the title does not lie. Every so often there's a gem, and even if there isn't one on every page it's packed with information about Baghdad-on-the-Thames.

The Mafia is not an Equal Opportunity Employer, Nicholas Gage, 1971 McGraw-Hill, bought at the Argosy.

A useful little bridge between Prohibition and the 1960s, which means it's Noir Country. Based on investigative reporting by the author, who I presume is the same Nicholas Gage who was involved in Watergate's reporting though this book isn't listed among his published works. Which may mean Wikipedia got it wrong. 

Forgotten News: The Crime of the Century, Jack Finney, 1983, Doubleday, bought at the Argosy.

An investigation - more of a histori-fiction retelling, really - into the 1857 murder of Harvey Burdell in New York, and a half-dozen other 1800s-era misdeeds. Finney, the mind behind the Bodysnatchers, has a talent for this kind of work. 

The World And The 20s: The Best From New York's Legendary Newspaper, edited by James Boylan, published Dial Books 1973, bought at the Argosy. 

I mentioned this last week, but it's worth repeating: if you want to write historical fiction it is useful to know what they thought, said and worried about. You can't do better than by reading their news.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

2022

I have returned from New York and, while my journey was trouble free, not long after returning home some doorknob-licker passed on their head cold. I'm not dead but I'm a little stuffy so, rather than do a whole post on the loot - that will be a later post - I want to talk about one purchase:

The World And The 20s: The Best From New York's Legendary Newspaper, edited by James Boylan, published Dial Books 1973, bought at the Argosy. 

I trust you can work out why I bought this one. For a CoC & ToC enthusiast this is a no-brainer. History as talked about by the folks who were there to witness it, and to publish same in the New York World, Joe Pulitzer's paper. At this point in its run Joseph's sons Ralph, Joseph and Herbert run the show, with famed Herbert Bayard Swope as its editor. 

I shan't do a potted history - again, head cold - but at one point the boys in the print room decided to pontificate. What would life be like, they wondered, a hundred years hence? What would the United States be like in the year of our Lord 2022?

Well.

Shame to pass that up, really.

To begin: 

David Wark Griffith (yes, the fella who directed The Birth of a Nation) thinks we'll do our reading on the screen. Talking pictures will have been perfected (remember, this is published early 1923) and perhaps have been forgotten again. For the world will have become picture-trained, so that words are not as important as they are now. All pictures will be in natural colors, the theatres will have special audiences, that is, there will be specialty theatres. 

Absolutely spot on so far as it goes. However, he goes on to say that I do not foresee the possibility of instantaneous transmission of living action to the screen within 100 years. There must be a medium upon which the dramatic coherence can be worked out and the perfected result set firmly ...

He didn't anticipate reality TV, streaming or news broadcasts, and he has a writer's eye for content. Writers aren't always the best judge of what makes a good performance. Otherwise, very perspicacious.

Henry L. Mencken thinks the United States will become a British colony. Its chief function will be to supply imbeciles to read the current British novels and docile cannon fodder for the British army. Mind you, he also thinks that Woodrow Wilson will be a talking point in 2022. Sarcasm detected.

William H. Anderson thinks that Prohibition will still be in place. The beverage use of [alcohol] will be utterly unknown except among the abnormal, subnormal, vicious and depraved, which classes will largely have been bred out of the race in America.

Oops. 

Mind, this is the fella who did two years in Sing Sing for fraud, over the Anti Saloon League's bogus financials. That would happen about two years after this article was published.

Cordell Hull thinks that The principles of democracy being eternal, they will necessarily exist a hundred years from now, and the achievements of government through the application of those principles to changing conditions will logically be greater than they have been in the last 100 years. That there will be two political parties then as now seems almost inevitable ...

He's not wrong, exactly, but recent events seem about to make him a liar.  

Margaret Sanger thinks that Birth control will have become part of education in health and hygiene. Women especially will be keen in demanding it. They will realize that it is a foundation of freedom and intellectual development for them. Women cannot make real progress today so long as they are haunted by the fear of undesired pregnancy. The results, in much shorter time than four or five generations, will be happier homes, greater mutual respect between husband and wife, honeymoons lasting two to three years before children arrive, with husband and wife thoroughly equilibriated to each other, because there has been time for mutual understanding ...

Another one with their finger on the pulse. Ms. Sanger is a bit more optimistic about the end result than perhaps she ought to have been, but she nailed the details.

Mary Garrett Hay thinks that Women's drudgery in the household will be eliminated, her care of the family will be lessened, as new inventions come in and new methods of work. Broadly true. Keeping house is certainly easier than it would have been in 1922. Politically, women will be powerful. They will share with men the real constructive work of government. Many will hold office. If there is not a woman President, the thought of one will shock no-one. That last bit isn't 100% accurate but it's getting closer to 90%. Co-operation will be the magic word in 2022.  Oh dear. The thought bubble burst. Still, it was a good run.

John S. Sumner thinks there will be no censorship. I do not foresee a censorship over books in this country, nor any official censorship of the stage. Um. I mean, compared to the censorship that existed in 1922 he's not wrong, but ...

James Weldon Johnson thinks there will be no lynching or racial antagonism. The Negro problem will probably be reduced to a thin and wavering line of opposition to social recognition and intercourse. Long before 2022 such a primitive manifestation of racial antagonism as lynching will be unknown, for the reason that the Negro will be in a position not to tolerate it and the country will be sufficiently civilized not to want to indulge in it.

Again, compared to the situation as it existed in 1922 he's not wrong. He's a bit starry-eyed and optimistic, but he's not wrong.

What strikes me about all of these articles is how optimistic they are. Admittedly, the World wouldn't have printed doom & gloom. The bits here are only a selection of what was actually printed in 1923 but I suspect, for example, that anything which predicted a second world war or some kind of jeremiad against the future would have been toned down or cut.

The only exception is Mencken, and I wish he'd taken the assignment seriously. It would have been more interesting, even if he was flat wrong, to read his actual thoughts, not his scattershot attempt at humor. 

That said, consider: these are people who just came out of a catastrophic military conflict. Who just survived a global pandemic. Economic conditions aren't exactly rosy, not in 1923 at least (it would get better). Yet they are full of optimism about the future a hundred years hence. Not one of them predicts disaster, yet it won't be long before a global depression seems to threaten global anarchy, and fascism at home and abroad threatens the roots of democratic government. 

They think they can survive. Thrive.

It would be interesting to see a similar article written today. I wonder what thought leaders would say about the United States, and the future, a hundred years from now?

The Gambler (Bookhounds of London)

First, housekeeping: I shall be in New York for a few days and so will not post on Sunday. It’s my Christmas trip. I’m hoping to see the Boy & the Heron while I’m there. 

On to the subject!  

Taken from Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Guido Bruno, published 1922. 

The Gambler 

On Thirty-fourth, near Lexington Avenue, Jerome Duke has opened a bookshop of a peculiar sort. It is not exactly a book shop because there are antiques and curiosities all over the place. The books are thrown together topsy-turvy, Latin authors, modern novelists, theological books, old French tomes and German philosophers. I asked the proprietor about his books and his answer was: 

“I don’t know anything about them. I never read books and would not be bothered with them. I buy them at a certain price and I try to sell them at a profit. In fact, I intend to buy anything I can get cheap enough, no matter what it is. I went into the book game in order to gamble and I am going to gamble on anything that people bring in here. 

“There is one thing I have just refused to buy because the man wanted too much for it. He said that he had recently returned from Europe, had been a soldier, and wanted to sell me the embalmed finger of a German general. I forget the name of the general, but the man said that it was authentic and that he would sign a document before a notary public, swearing that he had been present at the time the finger was cut off of the general’s hand. Now, if he had asked fifty cents or a dollar, I would have been willing to take a chance, because it would make a good window display in this time of war; but he wanted five dollars, and I couldn’t see my way clear. That’s too much of a chance, to stake a five-spot on an embalmed finger of a German general. So I bought a slipper instead. It belonged to a Madame Jumel, and she is supposed to have worn it on the day that she got her divorce from Aaron Burr. I paid a dollar for it and I consider it a pretty sound gamble.” 

“How so?” I asked. 

“Well,” he answered, “because Aaron Burr was the second Vice-President of the United States.” Of course that argument was final, and I wished him luck with his purchase. 

Gutenberg can be a useful source of inspiration.  

They’re not all winners, but you can find some historical oddments and useful architectural drawings. The great thing is, even if it’s nonsense, it’s period nonsense told by the folks who were there, in their own words.  

Take that German general’s finger. I have absolutely no idea if any World War One generals lost a finger. Or, for that matter, two fingers. I couldn’t tell you which generals fought in the war. Not even Wikipedia can tell you that, though it does have a list of colonel generals if you’re at all interested. 

As a rule generals don’t die on the battlefield; they tend to succumb of some disease or other, safely behind the lines. At least, that’s the case for modern generals, and World War One is sufficiently modern for death by ouchie to be less of a risk. Lord alone knows how that finger came to be severed. Odds are pretty decent that it belonged to someone of less consequence than a general officer.  

However, as a period souvenir it ticks all the boxes. War plunder? Sure, why not. There might even be a little testimonial from someone who was there when the finger took flight. Trench art flourished during the war; I have a couple ashtrays made of artillery shells, for instance. People did make trench art out of body parts, and it’s within the realm of reason that someone might have made a reliquary out of bits of shrapnel. 

Plus, there’s the enterprising Jerome, who strikes me as a perfectly good foil for any Bookhounds game.

With all that in mind: 

The Duke’s Mess. 

Duke’s Head is the informal name for a bookshop in [pick a district] recently opened and getting a reputation. It’s a bit of a catch-all place; you can find anything there. About one step above a junk shop, really. No organization, no method. Some book scouts favor it as a hunting ground because the owner, Jerome Duke, apparently has no head for books – though some scouts say this is all a ruse, and Jerome knows more than he’s telling. 

Jerome Duke is an American, a former serviceman settled in London after the war. He says his people used to be Cockneys and he’s just reclaiming his roots, but his Noo Yawk accent is as thick as boot leather. He’s a manic gambler, card sharp and risk-taker. Cop Talk knows his shop is a well-known gambler’s house, with all kinds of illicit games in the back room after hours. It’s a regular shebeen, but so far Duke has avoided any consequences.  

Duke’s Head is best known for its collection of History, foreign Languages, and Craft. He does have some Occult texts but he doesn’t specialize in that stuff. He just picks up whatever’s on offer.  

The other thing Duke’s is famous for is trench art. He brought in a few things from his time in the trenches but after a while his collection grew and grew. If you want some odd bit from the war made of bullet casings and shrapnel, Duke is the fellow to see. He’s also the fellow to see if you want to offload trench art, and even ten years after the war there’s a plenitude of the stuff to get rid of. 

Duke’s collection includes an odd reliquary with a crucifix made entirely out of bullet casings. Inside the home-made reliquary is a mummified finger. Duke made this one himself and he won’t tell a soul how he got the finger, or why he thought it was a good idea to seal it up in this peculiar little artwork. 

Option One: Ghoulish Tendencies. Duke is a ghoul, made such by his experiences in the war. His American persona is one he adopted early on, and it stuck with him. He has other disguises, but Duke is the one he comes back to again and again – out of habit more than anything else. The finger is a memorial to his first official meal as a ghoul. 

Option Two: Megapolisomantic Guru. Duke speaks the language of cities and listens to their secrets. He settled in London because this is the best place to practice his craft. He may be willing to teach the art, or other Magick techniques, to people willing to devote themselves to London and its story. The finger is an artefact he’s crafted, which holds 4 points of Magick he can call on to help his castings. The pool can be refreshed every full moon, if he leaves the reliquary out in the moonlight. 

Option Three: Things Just Happen. Duke is one of those people who attracts problems. Occult problems. Mysterious problems. Maybe he just has one of those faces, or maybe he has a Drive that points him in the wrong direction. Take that finger, for instance. He cut it off himself, from a monster he says he encountered in the trenches. The monster – a vampire – would like it back but, so far, the vampire hasn’t been able to track Duke down. So far … 

Jerome Duke: Health 6, Scuffling 6, Fleeing 8, Firearms 4. Honest face, complete with Abraham Lincoln chinstrap beard; does not like loud noises; a friend to horses everywhere.