The Doom Bell (Forgotten London, Bookhounds)

From London Cameos, A.H. Blake:

Just a simple hand-bell on a shelf in a City church, yet it rang out the doom of hundreds of victims about to die a horrible death within a few hours at Tyburn tree.

The church in question is St. Sepulcher's, aka Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate, which stands on the north side of Holborn Viaduct across a crossroads from the Old Bailey, and its parish takes in Smithfield Market. During medieval times, the site lay outside ("without") the city wall, west of the Newgate. 

The bell was paid for by a tailor, Robert Dowe, who stipulated in his will that the bell be rung for each condemned man outside the cell on midnight on the day of execution. A midnight prayer was recited, and a bouquet of flowers would be presented before the last journey, all paid for by Dowe's endowment. This little flower ceremony took place on the porch of the church, after which the condemned went marching off to Tyburn tree. 

The recitation was:

All you that in the condemned hold do lie,

Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die;

Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near

That you before the Almighty must appear;

Examine well yourselves, in time repent,

That you may not to eternal flames be sent.

And when St Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,

The Lord above have mercy on your souls.

Past twelve o'clock! 

It gave the condemned a few hours warning (not that they needed it, most like) so they had time for a last prayer. Dowe made this arrangement in 1605, and the bell was in use up to the 19th century, so three centuries or so worth of dead men were led off by the ringing of the Doom Bell.

It's not the only 17th Century antiquity at St. Sepulcher's. The church organ dates to 1670 and, in a Bookhounds game, has been recently rebuilt (1932). The Doom Bell in the present day sits in a glass case but, judging by Blake's description, in the 1930s it would have been resting on a shelf. Anyone who wanted to could touch it.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

A well-known musician, Benjamin Pettiman, is looking for whatever the Bookhounds have on their shelves about curses, and Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate. According to Pettiman, two have died by hanging and he doesn't intend to be the third.

Pettiman is one of a group of musicians who regularly practice at the Musicians' Chapel, part of St. Sepulcher's. They were all trained from childhood at the church and learned their love of music playing on the church organ. However, ever since the organ was rebuilt there's been a spate of small calamities at St. Sepulcher's, and of the group of musicians two have hung themselves. At least, that's the official verdict; death by suicide. 

Pettiman isn't convinced. According to him the two were plagued by peculiar dreams. Each dreamed they were in the condemned cell at Tyburn; each dreamed they heard the ringing of the Doom Bell. This happened for three nights before the final night, and each died on the fourth night. 

Pettiman heard the bell ringing last night. That means he has two nights to go before the end.

Option One: Bad Pipe. As part of the organ repair pipes were salvaged from a peculiar organ discovered at an abandoned chapel. Research shows that the chapel was used by the Church of Starry Wisdom and its organ supposedly had peculiar properties, though nobody living remembers what those properties were. The pipes ring in horrid sympathy with the dead spirits that cling to the bell, and those dead spirits demand their pound of flesh.

Option Two: Dead Man Walking. A talented musician, thwarted in his ambitions, is using the Bell to clear the path. This musician, Joshua Fowle, knows he'll never get the recognition he craves while his rivals still breathe, so he's found a magical means of doing them in. He can summon up the spirit of the bell by playing a particular tune on the organ, a dirge that he found in a collection of manuscripts bought at the Hound's own shop. What he doesn't understand is, the more times he summons up the spirit of the Doom Bell, the more likely it is to break free.

Option Three: Self-Inflicted. Pettiman himself is the source of the problem. He walks in his sleep and it's he who rings the Doom Bell for his colleagues and, eventually, himself. He has no idea he's doing this and he does not know why. The Hounds may discover that he's been possessed by an antique spirit, a hanged man from the 1700s who wants more to join him in death. Once Pettiman is dead the possessing spirit will need someone else to inhabit - perhaps one of the Hounds.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Enemy Action (We All Met At An Inn)

The Bull

East End boozer near Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and on the edge of Limehouse, West India Docks, narrowly missed by Nazi bombs during the war and now a hangout for peculiar characters of all kinds.

Owned by: Ex-IRA (silent partner).

Publican of record: Charlie Brown (not the Charlie Brown), someone who everybody knows. The police may or may not realize he's a front for the Ex-IRA. Edom certainly knows.

The Brewer: Bowman Brewery, vans coming and going at odd hours.

Watched by EDOM via Maggie Canter, Church Scavenger (p96 Field Manual).

Let’s talk Rival Groups.

In a situation like this there are at least three potential groups fighting for control over the Bull. The Ex-IRA, then Edom via Maggie Canter, then the Conspiracy. Potentially also a fourth group, being the Feral Vampire, depending on whether or not that creature is part of the Conspiracy. Fine.

But what does that mean?

Once upon a time in the Many Mansions series I posited:

The Antagonists come in all shapes and sizes. Small and creepy, large and squamous, impossible to comprehend and so on. The chief thing to bear in mind whenever designing OPFOR, no matter what the setting, is that they have:

• Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.

Power, in context, doesn't necessarily mean POWER. It means they have some means, preferably a thematic means, to affect the course of the plot.

OK, so that’s what the Ex-IRA has. It’s what Edom has, and the Conspiracy. Power, Goals, Assets. Say the Ex-IRA is using the Bull to run guns (perhaps from Leutner Fabrichen) and Maggie Canter’s using her reports to leverage favors from Edom, and so on down the line. Each actor has Power and Assets relevant to those Goals, and they shall use them as they see fit. That’s a topic I’ve covered before and shan’t cover again.

But.

What about the Bull itself?

After all, that’s the hub, isn’t it? That’s where all the action’s happening. Each of these Rival Groups with their Power, Goals and Assets have a definite reason to concentrate their attentions on the Bull, which is where the characters are.

What does that suggest about the Bull?

It suggests that the Bull is valuable to each of those actors. It suggests that the Bull is something that they’re going to fight over. It suggests that the Bull will evolve in play, because it cannot be put under pressure by all of those groups and somehow stay the same.

It also suggests that the Bull will reflect the nature of the group that currently has control over it. When the Ex-IRA is in charge, the Bull reflects his Power, Goals and Assets. When Maggie Canter has control, it reflects her Power, Goals and Assets, and so on.

Finally, it suggests that when X has control over the Bull, the characters do not. The more someone else controls this asset, the more they get squeezed.

OK, so what is this thing that everyone’s fighting over?

Delta Green has a concept called the Green Box. In loosest possible terms the Green Box is a cache, a source of stuff. Maybe some other agent hid something important, or tinged with the Mythos, in that box. Maybe there are guns in there, or explosives. Maybe it’s just a box of chocolates. You don’t know until you crack it open. Sometimes you don’t know even after you crack it open.

My suggestion: the Bull, and any central important location in any RPG campaign, is a Green Box. It contains stuff. Stuff the players want; stuff that complicates the characters’ lives. They can get valuable things from that Green Box. They can get trash. By its nature it’s unpredictable and can be a threat to the characters’ lives and sanity.

Even so, they want that Box. They want what’s in it.

It's a MacGuffin generator, plain and simple. A Green Box contains MacGuffins which are then used in plot. The Bull is exactly the same. The Bull generates MacGuffins which can be used in plot, and the only question that remains is what kind of MacGuffins you want the Bull to generate.

In this instance we've already decided that the Fourth Thing is Supernatural, and therefore the MacGuffins should be Supernatural. All those Rival Groups know this. They want those MacGuffins so they'll fight to get them. Meanwhile the player characters don't know this, at the start. So their first course of action must be to find out. 

The players define the goal, the asset, the power they want as a consequence of reaching into the Box. Point being, it has to be valuable enough to tempt the players but there has to be a level of risk involved, and that level of risk will depend on the value of the reward they expect. If they expect Excessive Funds because they found where the Ex-IRA hid his emergency stash, then the risk should be commensurate with that kind of reward.

The Rival Groups complicate the process by opposing the characters. If it’s Maggie Canter then she uses her Power and Assets; the Ex-IRA has his own Power and Assets, and so on. This determines the theme of the response. If the Ex-IRA has goons at his disposal then the theme will probably be goons. If Maggie Canter is a surveillance type with hidden cameras and microphones at her disposal, then the theme will be hidden spy gear. The Feral Vampire probably has supernatural Powers and Assets, which means a supernatural response. You get the picture, I trust.

How is this opposition manifest?

In GUMSHOE and in NBA generally there are two possibilities: an antagonist reaction, and an increase in difficulty.

An antagonist reaction is an active response to character interference. The Ex-IRA has goons? Then those goons show up to beat someone up. Maggie Canter has cameras? Then the characters’ Heat goes up as she feeds all that information to the authorities. Or maybe the characters find some of her spy gear. Supernatural activity spikes as the Vampire starts interfering. That sort of thing.

The increase in difficulty comes when the players attempt tests. Think of it like the Trust mechanic from the main book. Each of the Rival Groups has the option of throwing a monkey wrench in the works and it will depend on the player characters as to how much of a wrench they can throw. If the player characters distrust the Feral Vampire then the Feral hasn't much leverage. If they trust the Ex-IRA, then the damage the Ex-IRA can do is huge, and so on. Meanwhile each of the Rival Groups is using their Powers and Assets to build that trust, which they can then use in later scenes.

Anyway, I've babbled on enough about this and I'm sure you get the point by now. Next week? 

Something completely different!

Enjoy!