Brown Finger (Bookhounds of London)

Today, friends of his sell sexy French and American magazines. These are nearly all second-hand. Customers who buy such a magazine can sell it back at half-price. 

This way Johnny meets potential customers. Scribbled inside many of the second-hand magazines are pencilled messages using a Monomark or similar box number, and inviting an exchange of letters with the previous reader. 

Anybody foolish enough to follow up on this pen-pal invitation will find himself - or herself - tempted deeper and deeper into obscenities.

Then comes the invitation to the Blue Show! But not until the victim is utterly committed by his own letters ... London After Dark, Fabian of the Yard.

This is a Sordid plot thread. 

The Hounds may or may not sell second-hand sexy magazines. However, even if they don't, they'll know a shop that does. They may find a collection of such magazines in the next auction job lot, or some house clearance or other.

They may find themselves enmeshed by Brown Finger Johnny. 

'He smokes endlessly,' says Fabian. 'His plump crinkled fingers are caked with nicotine. His fingers are also brown with photographic chemicals. It is from both these that he gets his nickname. Johnny began as a commercial photographer, attending weddings and twenty-first parties. He had his own darkroom and made spare-time pin money by developing and printing at cut rates for amateurs. One such roll was of nudes. Johnny developed it. With amazing rapidity the news spread. Soon Johnny found dozens of similar films sent to him to be treated. Commercial firms will never develop any film showing any kind of nude, even if it is supposedly 'artistic.' ... Johnny put up his prices ...' 

From Bookhounds: The Keirecheires are the largest Y’golonac cult in human history … so far. They have nearly 40 active cultists in Brichester, London, Cambridge, New York, and Paris, all involved in academia or the arts. Each branch has perhaps 20 or 30 debauchees (usually called Sons), in addition to the actual cultists in charge.

In this narrative Brown Finger isn't a Cultist or even a Son. He's a convenient middleman for the Keirecheires. He's the one the Hand turns to for new recruits, indoctrinated as Sons at the Blue Show, but not before they're led down hideous paths thanks to those second-hand magazines and the correspondence they provoke. All handled by Brown Finger, who maintains a stable of letter-writers scattered across London to lure the insufficiently cautious in. 

Hounds may notice a pattern in these second-hand magazines, or the correspondence, if they get hold of some. Relatively harmless in and of themselves, closer study shows Mythos-themed subliminal suggestion, just enough to confer 1 point Mythos if 4 or more separate sources are consulted. 

Once that point of Mythos is conferred, and the subject follows up asking for more material, then and only then are they invited to one of the Blue Shows. These are hosted by the Keirecheires and may have a Son in attendance but not a full-fledged Cult member. It's at this point that the Cult starts looking for potential recruits, gauging their susceptibility.  

Meanwhile Brown Finger gets his cut day in, day out. He provides the magazines and the letters, and he provides the venue for the Blue Shows. He knows just enough to know it's better for him to keep his mouth shut and keep taking the Cult's money. That's all he needs to know.

A Curious Pastime.

One of the shop's regulars drops off the radar for a few weeks, to a point that the Hounds may become concerned they've lost them for good. Then the regular shows up again, shaken, a little frightened. 

They ask for help. They're reluctant to say why at first, and Reassurance may be needed. 

It turns out that they were lured away by letters, correspondence with a mysterious figure calling herself Ms. Bloomsbury. The regular claims to have gotten her mailing address from a magazine they bought second-hand. 

It will take the Hounds a scene or two to work out that Ms. Bloomsbury is one of Brown Finger's regulars. Brown Finger doesn't mind losing the shop customer's business; not everyone can be a Son of the Keirecheires after all. However, blabbing cult secrets is a problem that Brown Finger may not be able to deal with easily.

Option One: Brown Finger Intervenes. The middleman is forced to use force. At first this is intimidation courtesy of some Rough Lads, directed mainly at the errant shop customer but also at the Hounds, just to make sure nobody's tempted to do anything they shouldn't. This may limit itself to bruises and broken bones. Brown Finger isn't a violent man by nature, but he knows what will happen if the Cult decides to get involved. A little persuasion now beats a lot of pain later. 

Option Two: Brown Demotion. The Cult finds out about this little discrepancy before Brown Finger can do anything about it, and the Cult is not pleased. Brown Finger becomes a Rat Thing in short order, and his first task as rodent overlord is to deal with the Hounds and their shop. Cue rat packs galore, as Brown Finger starts to get into his new role as Mythos henchman to darker forces. However, the Hounds may be able to turn to Brown Finger's network, and the elusive Ms. Bloomsbury, for assistance. Brown Finger's network is terrified of ending up on the Cult blacklist and is willing to help anyone who can keep them off the Rat Thing's menu.

Option Three: The Fat Man Returns. It gets worse. The shop regular didn't just correspond with Ms. Bloomsbury and say a few indiscreet things. They went to a Blue Show, with disastrous results. It turns out that the regular is absolutely the last person who ought to go to a Blue Show and see its subliminal imagery. The regular's innate Magickal skill, such as it is, plus the Son's ability, plus the Mythos in the Show all adds up to a very bad night, and it hastened the Son's conversion to an Avatar of Y'Golonac. This wasn't something the Keirecheires wanted. Now it has a missing Son to deal with, an unwelcome breach of secrecy, and a particularly messy event to cover up. If only there was some convenient scapegoat to blame all this on ...

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

The Tin Man (Bookhounds of London)

Newmarket has over fifty horse training stables, two large racetracks, the Rowley Mile and the July Course, and one of the most extensive and prestigious horse training grounds in the world.[4] The town is home to over 3,500 racehorses, and it is estimated that one in every three local jobs is related to horse racing ...

Hamilton Stud Lane, on the Exening Road, is the haunt of Fred Archer, the great jockey, who died in 1886 aged 29. He is also thought to ride on the race-course, and to have caused several horses to shy or stumble during a race ... Haunted Britain, Antony D. Hippisley Coxe 

The next day, Monday 8 November 1886, he was at his residence, Falmouth House, Newmarket, under medical supervision. About 2.25pm his sister, Mrs Colman, visited him in his room and he asked her to send the nurse away. Colman was looking out of the window when Archer got out of bed. She then heard him say "Are they coming?" and saw he had the gun in his hand. She sprang towards him, and while she was struggling with him, he put the gun in his mouth and fired the revolver. He died bleeding in her arms, the bullet having passed out of the back of his neck. The doctor was on the scene very quickly and pronounced him dead ... He was buried in Newmarket cemetery on 12 November ... Some of his effects are now on display at the National Horseracing Museum, including the gun with which he shot himself ... News of Archer's death reached far beyond racing. In London, special editions of the evening newspapers were issued, with crowds queuing in Fleet Street to buy them, and omnibuses stopped to allow commuters to read the billboards. ... 

In which an unscrupulous gambler uses a dead jockey to win Newmarket and unwittingly unleashes horror.

Newmarket in Suffolk is horseracing's Vatican. Its jockeys and horses are worshipped, and Fred Archer's name still rings out long after his suicide. The Classics - 2000 Guineas Stakes, 1000 Guineas Stakes, the Oaks, the Derby, the St Leger - are world-renowned, and have been going for decades, in some cases centuries. Someone wins that, and their name is made. Leaving aside the bountiful financial rewards, of course. 

Fred Archer took them all.

He was known to be rich and reputed to be a miser - hence the name Tin Man, as in Tin, slang for money. Not, say, slang for lacking empathy, although it might be fair to say Archer had a bit of that problem. 

Nobody knows what Archer meant by 'are they coming?' though there are plenty of theories. In this scenario, the assumption is that there's some kind of Mythos context, though the exact meaning is left deliberately vague.

For purpose of this storyline, I'm going to use a fictional version of The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, a sister publication to the Illustrated London News. The Sporting and Dramatic was first published in 1874. Archer would have read it and there would have been a special edition published upon his death.

The Tin Man

One of the Hounds' regulars is pursuing copies of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic, with intensity. It's not clear why. Nor is it entirely clear which one they want. It's as if they don't know themselves, but they're willing to pay almost any price. 

In its day it was a weekly paper. As might be guessed from the title it isn't always about sports; even Agatha Christie appeared in it, back in 1929. This means copies can be had from those interested in the theatre and dramatic arts as well as racing enthusiasts. The British Library is also known to have a complete set. 

Judging by the regular's buying habits, it seems they're only interested in editions published in 1885 or prior, and they're not interested in anything published before 1880. That leaves a five-year window. Further investigation (Oral History, Reassurance, Flattery, Art History, History) indicates the regular is only interested in those papers in which Fred Archer appears. Given Archer's talents, he appears in multiple editions. Archer won the Derby, the Oaks, 1000 Guineas, 2000 Guineas and St. Leger in that period. Not counting overseas victories at the Grand Prix de Paris or the Prix du Jockey Club. 

In fact, riding the horse Melton, he took both the Derby and the St. Leger in the same year, 1885. Melton went to stud eventually and died in 1910, at the ripe old age of 28. By that point Melton had outlived Archer by 14 years. They both died in November; Archer in November 1886, Melton in November 1910.

If the Hounds pursue this line, they discover that the regular has discovered there's a racing cheat using Mythos Magick to make a gambling fortune and relying on Archer's ghost to do it. The regular wants in on the deal and enlists the Hounds to help them. All the regular knows for sure is that the cheat, a fellow named Auburn Salt, is using the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic to do it, but the regular doesn't know which edition, which is why the regular's chasing up any and all copies they can get their hands on.

Option One: Idle Hands. Salt is a member in good standing of the Devouring Hands, or Keirecheires. Technically he's not a full-fledged member; he's a Son, following one of the cultists based in Doncaster. However, the expenses of being a Son are catching up with Salt and Salt thinks he's found a foolproof means of guaranteeing income. Salt is using techniques borrowed from his Father and copies of the Sporting and Dramatic as well as a horse sired by Melton to assure himself of winnings at those same races Archer triumphed in back in 1885. What Salt doesn't appreciate is that unsanctioned use of Keirecheires techniques will earn him the ire of his Father, and the stern, punishing hands of the Cult.

Option Two: Dead Horse. Salt is Archer, reincarnate. He has the same look, same lean, tall build, and would be a rider himself, were it not for the fact that horses are terrified of him. Salt doesn't understand whether he's actually Archer back from the dead or simply bears a resemblance, and he doesn't care. What he does care about is money. He's cultivated his appearance and adapted his personality to be as much like Archer as possible and has gathered together a small group of like-minded occult types with one goal in mind: take the Derby and the St. Leger. What Salt doesn't appreciate is that his actions have raised the actual Archer, whose ghost is now causing havoc. Or perhaps he does know and doesn't care.

Option Three: Melton Resurgent. Once, long ago, the jockey Archer found himself indebted to the kind of Mythos forces you don't want in your life. It was thanks to this influence that he was so successful, relying on a totem he kept near him at all times to win the day. At least, so says the horse breeder Auburn Salt, who has a colt spawned by Melton in his stables. Salt is doing everything in his power to ensure that his colt, Balfour, performs just as well as Melton did, but for that to happen Salt needs to recreate the totem Archer made. Salt isn't entirely sure how to do that, and his attempts are only causing problems for anyone and everyone near Salt's stables. Not that Salt cares, so long as he races a reincarnate Melton.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Dungeons and Dragons DMG, Monster Manual 2025

A while back I posted my thoughts on the new PHB release, and I wasn’t thrilled. I said at the time that it “feels as if there's not as much there” and that in spite of its increased length there didn’t seem to be as much going on under the hood.

I also said I would have to reserve judgement until I saw the DMG.

Well, that proved prophetic, because I didn’t see the DMG for months after my initial purchase. There was a shipping delay followed by an unexpected cancellation followed by … I’m not sure what, actually. But it meant more delay. I picked up the Monster Manual before I saw the DMG. Not entirely by choice, but I figured since it was on offer I ought to give it a go.

What do I think?

Ehhhhhhh … pass.

As with the PHB, there’s more stuff on offer. Pages of it. The previous edition clocked in at 320 pages, more or less. This one has 60 extra pages of new material. About 20 pages of that is devoted to Bastions, a new concept for this edition, and another 20 pages or so are maps of various generic areas - Barrow Crypt, Crossroads Village, Spooky House, that sort of thing. No monster lists or anything like that. Those are for the Monster Manual, which is packed full of everything that walks, crawls and flies. 

Factor in the various trackers, each with their own page, and you've got the bulk of the new material in the DMG.

Very little of it intrigues me.

The only bit that I find genuinely useful is the collection of trackers. I don’t care which edition of Dungeons and Dragons I play, I’m swiping those. But I don’t think I paid north of $60 per book for a set of trackers I could pick up for free from teh internets. Or create on my own with a modicum of artistic skill, come to that.

The bit about Bastions seems a little over-the-top. Apart from anything else, the whole point of adventuring is to go on an adventure. To leave the comforts of home behind and defy dragons, or cleave goblin chieftains in twain, befuddle ogres till they turn to stone by dawn's early light, that kind of thing. Not to spend however many hours in the day keeping track of all the things going on at the hobbit hole I left behind. I don’t mind the concept so much as the execution. This starts at what level, now? 5th? Really? For why? At 5th they've just this minute become heroes, not homebodies!

The Monster Manual is by far the best item in the bunch. Its reorganization of everything alphabetically is a nice touch, and for once the mantra ‘more stuff!’ pays off with, well, more stuff. All sorts of monster entries packed in like happy little sardines, and the stat blocks are sufficiently generic that you could probably mix & match these creatures with the previous edition and suffer no pain. There are probably some changes that might affect CR. Nothing I choose to worry about.

Besides, when in doubt I can always just dip into Mordekainen’s or Volo’s or any of the other books and use their stuff instead.

I mentioned the art last time so I suppose I should go into it again. Worth repeating: not an artist, not trained to appreciate art. But as with the PHB there isn't much here that doesn't seem generic, and the bits that don't seem generic feel as if they were lifted bodily from previous products. Little of it feels inspiring, or interesting enough to be worth more than a glance. Including a hexmap of what I think must be the Forgotten Realms is a nice touch. I'd have to tear it out of the book to be certain that's what it is. A handy resource, if so.

I’m going to be playing the game with some new gamers soon. I think I mentioned the play I’m performing? Tonight's the last night, as I write this; by the time I publish the cast party will have come and gone, leaving me exhausted. I shall break legs. Well, two of the cast are keen to play and I said I’d be happy to run a game for them. There’s a local venue where space can be rented for a fee, so we’ve booked a spot. One of them is so keen to play that she had already grabbed a copy of the previous PHB, not realizing that there was a new one. She and her husband are busy devising schemes and PCs as I type this.

When I mentioned that there was a new edition, she wanted to look at it.

Seldom have I seen a more sour expression. 

She criticized the art right away. It didn’t look anything like the art in the previous edition. Nothing like as inspiring, as heroic, or as interesting. Next it was the rules. Too many rules, too confusing. She put it aside after half an hour; not interested.

We’ll be using the previous edition in our game. 

For me, I’m not in any rush to pick up any other book in the new version. Not that I was ever going to be in a hurry to grab up, say, the Forgotten Realms material. But still. I said a while back now that the only reason I got back into this game was because of Ravenloft. That creaky old Gothic mansion was my inspiration, my guiding star.

I can play Ravenloft in the old edition.

I will. 

Insects (Bookhounds)

 

Behold its antique glory.

First purchased in the early 1900s by a retiring Military officer who was coming to Bermuda to take up a Colonial job, later to live out his days in the subtropics, it has been in the same family ever since. Until now. The owners are going to the UK to be closer to their kids, the cost of shipping was exorbitant, the kids didn't want it, and I said that if their choice was between taking it to the dump or giving it to me, give it to me.

They did.

See, down here, antiques are not prized. Ironically, we have too many of them. Not that the island's a hotbed of things that would make the antiques roadshow crew weep with joy, no no. These are the midlevel items. The decent repair stuff, the slightly dinged, the much-loved. The local National Trust, which looks after old homes and heritage, is always overwhelmed with 'gifts' from people who can't bear to see granny's old whatsit go to the great furniture repository in the sky but who don't want to keep it themselves. The Trust hasn't the heart to tell them that granny's old whatsit is a fairly mediocre example of the brand.

However, I've wanted one of these for a while, because of our insect problem.

I like books. I think you know that by now. I do not like cockroaches, but I have them anyway - not by choice, mark you. Other insects too, for that matter. Some of whom are really far too fond of antiquated binding. Many's the time I've brought home something from the Argosy, put it down somewhere for a day or two, and found a hole chewed in it. See, the little beggars love them some leathery or leather-adjacent goodness, particularly if it's seasoned with dried-out bookbinding glue or old sinews.

There's a couple ways of combating this. A dedicated extermination campaign, for example. More difficult than you'd think, even with the off-brand and probably illegal insecticides you can get in the islands. Some form of internal climate control to reduce humidity and discourage insect activity, which does work but tends only to be available to the ungodly rich, since electricity on that scale costs a bundle.

Or one of these bad boys. 

Removing the books to a place where the insects can't get at them is great. Traditionally I've moved books that might be vulnerable to a place in the house I don't use for anything else; roaches tend to prefer living close to humans, probably because we leave crumbs and other goodies lying around. Now I can start putting the vulnerable items behind a thick glass door. 

It's not a perfect system. There's still risk involved. But it does work, or at least it works better than leaving things out in the open on an uncovered shelf.

There are all kinds of insects that eat books. I'm personally fond of the deathwatch beetle, that beloved staple of old homes and old ghost stories. Their distinctive tapping or ticking noise used to attract mates is what gives them their name. Ghost tradition has it that the knocking is a harbinger of death, and in old books like Bluenose Ghosts you can find ghastly tales of soft knocking on the door from hands that aren't hands - three of those, and you're sure to die within the year. 

Ironically there is biological precedent. The deathwatch beetle has a three-tap rhythm. Males usually tap first, and females tap only in response to males. A female responds within 2 seconds of a male tap. After the female responds, a male will tap again from 2 to 30 seconds later. 

Three ghost knocks.

When I was still in the building surveying trade I was assured that the deathwatch was on its way down the dodo's path, due to lack of available foodstuff. They like wooden wainscoting and similar things, which were prevalent in housing before the second world war but which died out with the modern building boom. Whether that's true or not I couldn't tell you, but that's what we were told.

Bookhounds touches on the subject of insect attacks but doesn't go that far. However, if worms which gnaw on wizards' corpses grow to become wizard themselves, it stands to reason that insects which gnaw on Mythos texts grow to be something hidjeous and vile. 

From which:

Deathwatch

Your store's staff are about to go on strike.

They claim to be terrified of the ghost knocks. Some maleficent entity must have come in the shop after the last big book-buying spree, they say, and ever since it's been haunting the place. Its knocking noise is causing a furor. 

That's not all it's causing. The Hounds notice that some of their most important texts are suffering insect damage. It's getting pretty bad, enough that the shop may suffer a Reverse. You can't advertise a copy of the King In Yellow as calf-bound first edition excellent condition if some little swine has nibbled chunks out of that binding. That brings it down to Reading Copy level pretty damn quick, with consequent knock-on to the price. 

Something Must Be Done.

What?

Option One: Crawling Chaos. It's not deathwatch, though it certainly sounds like deathwatch. It's actually Brood of Ehiort, which came in on the back of a house clearance in which texts beloved of the Severn Valley Cult were purchased. There aren't enough of them to constitute a simulacrum but more and more are breeding all the time. Left unchecked, eventually a pale man will form. Once that pale man forms it will start constructing a Fane in some forgotten part of the shop or basement, and soon after that it will start to contact other Brood in the area. A vast swarm could eventually gather ...

Option Two: Roach Swarm. A peculiar kind of revenant haunts the shop. It can only act through roaches, and it attracts roaches by the dozen. There are only a few of them for now, but they're forming peculiar patterns when they're on the march, and their blood leaves stains on the walls that are uncomfortable to look on. Time to start scrubbing the walls down and getting out the Blast-It bug repellent. Otherwise those roaches will take over the place, and that peculiar chant the staff are repeating will become more than just an earworm ...

Option Three: Enemy Action. This isn't an insect problem. It's a rival bookstore problem. Someone from a competing shop is dealing with its insect issues by making them march across to the Hound's shop. Every so often a staff member from the rival comes to the Hound's place and discreetly disgorges another batch. Perhaps they do this Great-Escape style by having the bugs hid up their trouser cuffs, or perhaps they leave a tainted book on the shelf like a calf-bound Trojan Horse. Either way, that shop's problem will soon become the Hound's problem, unless they take action.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Many Mansions - Miskatonic Repository

This week's post comes to you from a state of exhaustion.

I've been working on a play for the past (I have forgotten how many) weeks and we unexpectedly lost a cast member this Thursday gone, so we're starting off on the back foot. Her replacement's working out but it's still a slog at the end and I shall not be sorry when opening night has come and gone.

However!

I've been working on a Many Mansions series to be published via the Miskatonic Repository and thought it time to boost the signal by posting about it.

There are three scenarios:

In Memoriam - In which the investigators may attend a funeral in a church that does not yet exist.

When Tides Are Right - In which the investigators may find themselves adrift on Pilot Island.

Your Number, Please - In which our protagonists chase up rumors of a fault on the telephone line.

All of these stories take place in Kingsport, South Shore, in the 1920s. It's part ghost story, part Dreamlands, with a dash of Jacob's Ladder thrown in for fun - and if you recognize that film reference then you know where this is all going.

Part of this will be recognizable to those of you who followed the Many Mansions posts a while back. This is an extension of that concept. It's written for Call, not Trail. 

I don't want to beat you down with references and trivia since the whole point of a teaser post is to, well, tease (you naughty thing, you). However, since we're here, let me tell you a bit about South Shore and the Underwood Park cemetery, where the action takes place.

South Shore

The Many Mansions scenarios all take place in Kingsport and are focused on Kingsport’s South Shore neighbourhood.

South Shore is mostly residential with a smattering of tourist businesses. Some of Kingsport’s oldest, most historically significant places are in South Shore. 

The oldest part of South Shore is that section which is closest to the sea proper. Merchants and families of merchants used to sit atop their houses’ sea-facing walks and cupolas, watching activity in the harbour. 

The most modern sections, built in the mid-1800s or later, are towards the south of South Shore. These are often large, with walled gardens, and are some of the more expensive pieces of real estate in Kingsport. 

It’s very rare to find a house in South Shore built later than 1900.

As this is a section popular with tourists, street lighting is more common and better maintained here that other sections of Kingsport. The roads tend to be paved and in good repair, often with modern sidewalks. Cars are often seen here, and there are plenty of places where interested persons can rent pedal cycles.

The public wharves and Coast Guard station are in South Shore, as is the rather exclusive Stratton Yacht Club. While there are some fishers that operate out of South Shore most of them are in Harbourside, along the Water Street wharves. The boats that call South Shore home tend to be more expensive, delicate creatures, not workhorse fishing vessels. 

1. You’ll find more out-of-towners in South Shore than anywhere else in Kingsport. It’s not uncommon to hear refined French, Russian or German spoken; refugees from war-torn Europe with money in their pockets.
2. There are plenty of ghost stories in South Shore but most of them are gaudied up for the tourists. The most gruesome centre on Underwood Park cemetery, though that’s probably because most of the graves and tombs there are the over-elaborate and evocative kind favoured by wealthy, lachrymose mourners. 
3. Lawyer Charles Bompas has his offices in a grand-looking building on Beach Street, not far from the Coast Guard station. He deals mainly in real estate disputes and wills and is well-regarded, if not well-liked.
4. Rome: nearly every house in South Shore has a witch ball hanging in the window. These small glass balls are supposed to ward off evil. At night, at about one in the morning, they glow with a peculiar greenish light and it is difficult to avoid the feeling that something inside the ball is peering out. SAN 0/1 penalty.

Underwood Park

This is one of the most recent cemeteries in Kingsport; the others are much older, but for the most part are no longer used. Underwood is practically the only cemetery in town with empty plots.

The cemetery is unfenced and well-maintained. Its groundskeeper and stonecutter is old George Cotton, who lives in a cottage nearby. Old George knows almost everything there is to know about Underwood; he was born the year the cemetery was founded and grew up alongside it. His father Hepson Cotton was the first groundskeeper. 

Underwood Park was created by the Underwood family back in the mid-1800s. The Underwood family vault is one of the grandest in the cemetery and was the first ever built. One of the very earliest photographs of Kingsport features the Underwood vault, mid-construction.

The Underwoods wanted a cemetery befitting them and made sure it would be sizeable, verdant, and visible. They took land from the Read House to build it, making sure that Thomas Read would have to look out over their cemetery, at their vault, for as long as he lived. 

Thomas Read is not buried at Underwood. Nobody knows where his corpse lies.

1. Underwood is overstuffed with gaudy memorials. Weeping angels, somnolent cherubs, elaborate masonry and saccharine epitaphs prevail.
2. Underwood’s trails are well-marked and wide, but it’s still possible to get lost in them. Old George has to rescue tourists now and again, who find themselves at a loss how to get out of Underwood. 
3. Underwood has plenty of ghost stories and Old George knows them all. Once a year at all-Hallow’s Eve, Old George hosts a nighttime storytelling session out at the Underwood vault. Invitation only, and Old George is quite particular. Money doesn’t buy you entrance; Old George has to like you.
4. Rome: Those who go into Underwood at night say that the cemetery is much larger then than it appears during the day. Those who go there when the moon is full say that, if you stand at the Underwood Vault and look out over South Shore, you see a completely different, alien Kingsport. SAN 0/1D2 penalty at night, rising to 1/1D4 at a full moon.

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

Heath Robinson Redux (Night's Black Agents, Dracula Dossier)

Once upon I time I talked about Heath Robinson Assassination, using reporting on the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as an example.

I based my discussion on a Guardian newspaper article which said:

“The operation was very complex and took place using electronic devices, and no one was present at the scene,” [Ali Shamkhani, secretary for Iran's supreme national security council] told Iranian media ...

A [Fars news agency] report said Fakhrizadeh and his wife were travelling in a bulletproof car along with three vehicles for bodyguards when gunfire hit his car. Fakhrizadeh exited the car to check the damage, the report said, speculating that he may have thought he had hit something.

“At this moment, from a Nissan car that was stopped 150 metres away from the martyr’s car, several shots were fired at the martyr from an automatic remote-controlled machine gun,” the [Fars] report said, adding that one bullet hit his back.

“Moments later, the same stopped Nissan exploded,” it said, adding that the owner of the car, which it did not identify, had left the country a month ago. It said the weapons may have been controlled by satellite.

The Iranian state-owned broadcaster Press TV cited unidentified “informed sources” as saying remnants from the attack showed Israeli arms had been used to kill Fakhrizadeh.

Turns out, some of this was a load of old hooey.

I’ve been listening to The Rest Is Classified podcast, part of the Goalhanger family of podcasts, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in spycraft. Night’s Black Agents players and Directors should binge this, but their recent MKUltra discussion will interest Delta Green folks too.

From the Classified discussion, I discovered a few interesting facts.  

Among them:

• Fakhrizadeh was not driving a bulletproof car. He was in his own car which was, in fact, the Nissan mentioned in the article. It wasn’t protected in any way; it was a bog-standard, run-of-the-mill, please-shoot-me-full-of-holes Nissan.
• Fakhrizadeh did not get out of the car. He was shot while driving, and fell out of the car, possibly trying to take cover. At that point he was seriously injured but not dead; the killing shots came directly afterward.
• The explosion that destroyed the Israeli vehicle, which was intended to destroy all the evidence, didn’t work as intended. The machine gun survived more or less intact, or at least intact enough to be identified as a Belgian FN MAG general purpose machine gun – an old warhorse. That puppy’s been around, in one form or another, since the late 1950s.
• The Heath Robinson machinery was smuggled in over a lengthy period, probably by people who didn’t know what they were carrying. Classified alleges that several people had been charged with smuggling in relation to this attack. 

Officially, nobody knows who did it, though judging by the comments made on Classified there doesn’t seem to be much doubt as to who did what to whom.

Honestly? A lot of this reminded me of the preamble in the Forsythe novel The Day of the Jackal, which describes an attempt on the life of General de Gaulle. Particularly the description of the kill point, with one car out in advance spying on approaching vehicles to see if Fakhrizadeh was coming, while the kill team lies in wait further down the road. 

The de Gaulle shooting was the Petit-Clamart attack of 22 August 1962, where the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) signaler was supposed to give the alert by waving a newspaper. At which point the gunmen further down the road were to take action. However, the whole thing went wrong when fading daylight made seeing the newspaper difficult. This delayed the shooting by a vital few seconds, allowing de Gaulle’s vehicle to slip past – though not unscathed.

It turns out, if Classified is to be believed, that the Fakhrizadeh shooting nearly came undone thanks to a similar problem, though this time it was distance, not fading light, that proved problematic. Thanks to the distance between the shooter and the kill site, the remote shooter faced a time lag of a few fractions of a second between the signal to shoot and the shot itself, which in turn affected accuracy. AI had to be used to solve the computational problem, allowing the instruction and the shot to happen simultaneously.

Still, consider: Petit-Clamart involved at least 12 people on the day, not including support staff and sympathizers, of whom 15 total were arrested. This includes the leader Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, who was the only one whose sentence of death was carried out. This was a devastating blow to the OAS, which didn't survive past 1963.

This is a significant difference from the Fakhrizadeh killing. In that attack, there were no operatives on the ground, either at the spotter car or the shooter. The whole thing was done remotely. We don't even know who was at the trigger, who the spotters were.

However, to my mind the biggest difference by far between the two assassinations was that de Gaulle was driven by a professional, Gendarme Francis Marroux, whose skills made the difference on the day. Fakhrizadeh insisted on driving himself. That may have been a fatal mistake.  

So! Some of my comments in the previous article are comprehensively disproved. Though I did rely rather too much on one source, which was my error. Turns out the source was talking out of his hat. 

Does any of this change the game advice I gave concerning Heath Robinson Assassination, Distance Shooter and Difficulty assessment? Not really. The advice stands. 

However, since we're here:

Uncover the Shooter

An important target (eg. Edom Duke) has been assassinated, by someone using a specially built, remote-targeted rifle. The target's organization is in an uproar, and the agents are brought in to find out who it was that carried out the attack.

For complete success, the agents need to discover both the organization that sponsored the attack, and the shooter. Partial success means uncovering the organization, but not the shooter. 

The assassination took place in public in a major European public place (eg. on the steps of Westminster Abbey, or in St. Mark's Square, Venice) and was witnessed by several people, including the target's bodyguards. An explosion took place seconds later which eliminated much of the evidence. 

Tradecraft indicates there are perhaps half-a-dozen freelancers, world-wide, capable of carrying out the attack, all of them Wire Rats. Assuming, of course, that the attack was carried out by a freelancer.

Military Science identifies the type of rifle used, despite the explosion. It's a Russian SVD which, in combination with the Tradecraft clue, narrows down the suspect list to two, assuming it's a freelancer. Most Wire Rats would use different tech.

Notice or Forensic Pathology indicates that the target was chemically dosed with an agent that created what amounts to a glowing bullseye, invisible to the human eye, to assist targeting. Occult knows that the substance used to create this target is an alchemical substance favored by some Russian Satanic groups. This narrows the freelancer list to one.

It was:

Option One: CIA. The killing was orchestrated by Find Forever, who mimicked the kill style of a particular Russian asset to throw shade on the Litsky Brava Russian criminal group. Find Forever is playing a Yojimbo Option; it wants the targeted side to start fighting with the Litsky Brava, at which point Find Forever will offer its services against the Russian threat.

Option Two: Alraune/Unternehmen Braun The killing was orchestrated by a German-based group, either the German vampire program or the deathless Alraune, and whoever it was used an old Rote Armee Fraktion asset to do it. The Red Army shooter has been around since the 1960s but is forever updating their methods; back in the day, its codename was Trapdoor Spider. The killing was an attempt to remove what the targeting organization sees as a nuisance. 

Option Three: Edom. The killing was orchestrated by Britain's vampire program, to take out an important Conspiracy target - though the agents may not know that the target was, secretly or otherwise, in the Conspiracy's pay. Edom hired an outsider to pull off the hit as it didn't want anything left behind that might allow the target's organization to work out who did it. The shooter is a former Turkish asset who wants enough money to retire, and who doesn't realize that Edom's bank accounts aren't as bottomless as they've been led to believe. This lack of funding may tempt the Wire Rat to betray his paymasters, at a crucial juncture.

That's it from me! Enjoy.

RPG All (NBA) - Plot Blocks & Pacing

 

Deutschland 89 Trailer via Sundance

I just finished the final episode, End of History.

My God.

OK, I've mentioned Deutschland 83 before, and recommended it. I waited till I could get hold of the blu-ray sets before seeing the rest of the series. Now I'm recommending the entire series, without caveat or cavil. It is by far the best espionage story I have ever seen, from the very first moment to the last.

But! It made me realize something very important about pacing.

See, this is a remarkably fast-paced series. It runs entirely on plot from start to finish and never wastes a shot, or a scene. This is all meat, all the time. There's never a moment when you feel bored, or think that things are going too long, or wish that the characters would just shut up and get on with business. 

Yet there's plenty of character development. You never feel as if you don't know these people, don't know what makes them tick. There's no exposition, no 'you remember that time in season one when we did the thing?' Nothing wasted. 

[There are some brilliant characters, by the way. Gary Banks? A villain's villain. Annett Schneider? Ice Queen. Nina Rudow? Stone Cold Killer. Steal these for your game. You will not regret it.]

So, what was the important thing about pacing?

Combat. Combat kills pacing.

Probably also Chases. 

See, there's combat and chases in Deutschland, but they're used sparingly. If this were, say, Justified, there'd be at least one gunfight and one chase scene per episode, probably more than one. There would be showdowns prior to those gunfights and chase scenes, moments where Our Hero is allowed to quip a bit, hogging the spotlight before the big finish.

In Deutschland, whichever series, while there are gunfights and fistfights they don't crop up once an episode, necessarily. Chase scenes too, but not every episode.

This means two things.

First: when those scenes do show up, they have impact. It's never certain who will win or who will lose. Nobody quips (praise be!). This means that, whenever they happen, you, the viewer, are on the edge of your seat.

Second, it means you, the viewer, don't waste time with unnecessary moments when Plot could be happening.

Think about it. You've probably seen any number of YouTube wafflers bibble on about Combat In D&D Sucks! This is How To Run Combat! Improve The Size Of Your Quarterstaff With These Combat Tricks! So on, and on, and on.

None of them ever ask the question, Do You Need This Combat Scene?

They all assume you need it.

Do you, though? Really? Because every combat and chase scene, however Thrilling it may seem at the time, is perhaps half an hour or more of game time that you will not get back. Combat diverts attention from plot. The crunchier the setting, the more time the combat scene will take up, which means less plot. 

This is even more the case if we're talking about a TV episode, like Deutschland, where the runtime is maybe 50 minutes. If you kill 5 or 10 minutes in combat and chases, that leaves you only 40 minutes for the rest of it. Probably less than that, when you realize that every one of those fast-paced action scenes will want a downbeat moment directly after, when the characters lick their wounds and the audience recovers from the events on screen. Do that kind of thing too often and you'll only have 30 minutes for the actual episode.

Or in your gaming session, when you have perhaps 2 hours at best, accounting for late arrivals and pizza interludes. Can you really afford to kill off even 20 minutes of that 2 hours dealing with an orc in a 10x10 room, guarding a chest?

Put it this way. Everyone remembers that moment when they faced down Dracula, or some other Big Bad that they've been chasing for however many episodes. Nobody remembers Mook #3 in that place with the thing. But Mook #3 in the place with the thing took up the same 20-40 minutes game time that the Dracula moment did. Possibly longer, depending on circumstances. 

Does that seem reasonable to you?

With that in mind, consider this Dicta:

1. Never have a meaningless combat moment if you can avoid it. All combats should be, or aspire to be, Thrilling.

2. In situations where a combat with minor foes, ie. mooks, is an option, make that combat Thrilling by introducing elements that raise the stakes. Is there a bomb that will go off if the combat doesn't end quickly? An abduction that will take place if the agents don't intervene quickly?

3. Reduce combat scenes to one per episode, or even one every other episode. 

4. Always remember, combat raises stakes. Make sure everyone understands the stakes, and that there will be real loss should the agents lose. 

5. Never let the agents feel that success is guaranteed. Loss is always possible, and there should be consequences for that loss.

6. Where there is combat, make it cinematic as possible, and as quick as possible. 

Deutschland 86

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

PS! I've been working on some DriveThru scenarios, expanding on the Many Mansions concept. I've written one so far, Your Number, Please, and am on the verge of completing a second, When Tides Are Right. Once that's done, I'll start on the third. 

Once all three are written I'll move to art & layout and then publish all three at the same time.

I'll keep you posted!

Boots - Night's Black Agents

Putin noted that Russian societal unity is critical for Russian victory in Ukraine.[2] Putin alluded to the Russian Revolution, noted that Russian society collapsed during the First World War, and urged Russians to maintain support and unity as the war continues. Putin stated that Russia "will not give up" its "own" territory in future peace negotiations — likely referring to illegally annexed territory in occupied Ukraine.[3] The Kremlin launched the Defenders of the Fatherland State Fund in April 2023 to oversee social support for veterans, elevate veterans within Russian society, and monopolize control over veterans activities in Russia. 

Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day 

Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before -- 

(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) 

There's no discharge in the war! 

Kipling, Boots.

There’s an interesting narrative percolating about Russia and Ukraine, which goes like this: Putin’s at a point where he cannot afford peace because, if there’s a ceasefire, the troops come home. With all their military skills, their anger, and their stories about life on the front.  

This is a narrative that pokes its head up every time there’s a significant military action, no matter who’s at war or what they fought for. The soldiers come home. They can’t handle peace. They don’t like the government. They know how to take direct action; direct action is all they’re fit for. 

After the Great War British misfits came home to farm chickens, because they couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office building, liked to work outdoors, and were attracted to rural life. You see this plotline pop up in Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie.  

Christie uses the war and its disruption as a background for her soft-edged detectives Tommy and Tuppence, both of whom served in the war. Sayers uses the war as a background for her detective Lord Peter, but she also uses it to good effect in her detective story The Bellona Club, where the action is set in a member's club for military men, should you wish to steal it for Bookhounds or Trail. 

Meanwhile in modern drama, Peaky Blinders makes much of Tommy Shelby’s time at the front, how it made him the criminal genius he is today.  

There was a time when the villain of choice for an American thriller was an ex-Vietnam vet looking for a little action. Whether it’s something like First Blood or Taxi Driver, where the psychological damage comes out in misanthropic physical action, or something more direct like Dead Presidents, if you went to Vietnam you were one bad day away from being Public Enemy Number One.

Dead Presidents trailer

Really, the only difference in that evolving narrative is the war, and the strength of society to deal with the consequences of that war. It probably hasn’t taken you ten seconds to think of a movie drama with broadly the same text as Dead Presidents, only this time it’s about the Iraq War.    

Even the so-called ‘good’ wars, like World War Two with its Greatest Generation, has its examples. After all it’s that same Greatest Generation that gave us Hell’s Angels, and with it any number of biker rebel narratives.  

The Wild One

Ultimately it comes down to the strength of civil society. A weak civil society can't handle returning soldiers. A strong one can. There will be unrest, some disorder, a few thrilling moments and a shaky narrative, but the society will survive. Changed, probably. Change will come whether asked for or not. There's an argument for saying that returning soldiers accelerate the process, but it is an acceleration not a causation.

Russia has particular concerns. 

The original Revolution was kicked off by troubles on the Western Front. Russia wasn't the only nation that struggled; France and England both worried that slaughter on the battlefield would cause revolution at home. In Germany the Nazis came to power, in part, on the back of this fear that revolution was in the air. Yet it was Russia that fell to revolution, though there's a case to be made that, had Germany somehow lasted longer than it did, England and France would both have endured protracted revolutionary action.

Meanwhile, in modern times, the collapse of the Soviet regime came after the destruction of the Red Army in the Afghan debacle. The Wall came down, Yeltsin went out the door, and with him went the Soviet Union.

Russia’s modern history can be summed up as ‘troops come home, disaster follows.' Which suggests a strong reason for keeping troops in the field, but the problem with that is, no army can stay in the field forever. At some point, all wars end. 

Sometimes they end with an angry army attacking the leadership. That was what scared Putin half to death when Prigozhin took his Wagner mercenaries home. Sometimes they end with reverses on the battlefield or a protracted stalemate that turns into a peace agreement because nobody can force anybody to a different conclusion. That seems to be what might happen in Ukraine. 

In-game, groups like Edom have their own issues with returning soldiers. Specifically, their Jacks of E-Squadron. 

Here we have a group of heavily armed, well-trained troops up to their eyeballs on peculiar substances who go out, do unspeakable things, and come home again. 

Intact in body, perhaps. Longer lived, perhaps; the Seward serum does strange things to a man. But intact in mind? That's debatable.

You'd want to keep an eye on people like that. 

Psych Eval

Social Worker Neela Chaudri (Edom Field Manual) has been tasked with carrying out wellness checks on former E-Squadron personnel, of which there are perhaps a dozen, all-told. Rotated out, retired, living the civilian life. 

Some of them date back to the Second World War and aren't in the best of health. Most are 1970s-80s recruits, one is a 1990s man with artificial legs. All of them are psychologically scarred by their time in the trenches. 

Edom picked Chaudri for this job because she's already got the clearances, thanks to her work with Chain Home Deep. She just doesn't know it. Edom didn't care whether or not this overloaded Chaudri or caused her any problems. From Edom's perspective, the fewer people with their eyes on Edom's business, the better, and Chaudri is already a known face.

The problem with this darn fine scheme is, just as with Chain Home Deep, nobody at Edom is paying close attention to Chaudri's reports. After all, why should they? The point was to get a report, not to read the damn thing. Let alone take action based on that report.

Pity. Because, if someone did read them, they might notice disturbing similarities between the experiences endured by some of Chain Home Deep's crew and the veterans of E-Squadron. Particularly in the dreams they experience ...

Option One: A 70's Kid: The trooper, David Allenby, served during the time of the Mole Hunt and was there at the death, when the mole was run to ground. Allenby suffered a traumatic encounter with several SBAs in the final months of the Hunt and this left him with scars both mental and physical. However, it also left him a peculiar gift: he can spot Renfields. It takes him maybe 30 seconds, and his success rate is 100%. The thing is, he's convinced there's a Renfield near him now. At all times. Who can it be?

Option Two: A 40's Veteran:  This might be Van Sloan. It's certainly someone of similar vintage, who was there during Edom's assault on Schloss Karnstein. He remembers everything. He goes back there at night, in his dreams. Something is calling him there. Something in his dreams wants to get out. This could be an entry vector to the Carmilla Sanction in the Edom Files, or a postscript dream-sequence to that operation in which one of the entities killed during the assault on the Schloss wants to come back to life and is using the Veteran's mind and body to do it.

Option Three: The 1980's: The trooper, Simon Yellern, went through any number of peculiar operations back in the day but the one that sticks in his mind is the incident in Afghanistan during the Soviet's Operation Curtain. While attempting to extract Yellern and his team were caught up in a Soviet special forces raid against the mujahideen they were working with, and those forces were very special indeed. Yellern was the only survivor from his unit. Thing is, he swears he saw one of those Soviet troopers in England. Chaudri has it down as a nightmare due to carelessness with medication, but Yellern's convinced the man he saw was real - and died during that 1980s raid. Yellern should know. Yellern killed him.

That's it for this week!

 

The Floater (NBA, Dracula Dossier)

Floater: Person used for a one-time or occasional intelligence operation. Generally a floater is a low-level person, sometimes used unwittingly. A floater might be a waiter sent to a hotel room with a bottle of champagne allegedly from the management - in order to see who is in the hotel room.

Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Polmar & Allen, Random House 1998.

Retired KGB Agent Dmitri Lobanov. Lobanov was one of the KGB’s field hands during the late 1970s and ’80s, until he was burned by a former colleague and arrested in England — for assault and grievous bodily harm, not espionage. Ten years in Long Lartin prison followed; MI5 discovered Lobanov was a spy and debriefed him while he was incarcerated. These days, he’s a plumber doing odd jobs around North London. Dracula Dossier p97

Archives/Library Establishing Shot: Endless rows of metal racks hold dusty case files (or civil archives, or Securitate surveillance reports, or dissertations on medieval Romania). Strata of labels, each one stuck over its predecessor, trace the development of the filing system, from handwritten notes to typewritten ones to bar codes. Dracula Dossier p254

A North London archive of importance to Edom, the Conspiracy or a significant third party is penetrated by a Floater - the retired KGB agent. The agents are alerted to this after the fact through security camera footage, or perhaps they were conducting surveillance of the archive only to find Lobanov already on-site. Lobanov's a face, a known quantity. That he was even seen near the archive is a problem for the higher-ups. The higher-ups hate problems. 

The question that needs answering: is Lobanov a Floater, and if so to whom does he report? Or is something else going on?

After all, there are any number of legitimate reasons why a plumber might be on-site. It might just be bad luck for Lobanov that he was called out to this particular location. Or someone may have paid Lobanov to go to the archive to see what happens next. If the agents overreact, this might tip off whoever Lobanov's employers are that there's something interesting in the archive. 

They can't afford to be too gung-ho, nor can they ignore the situation altogether. This calls for delicate handling.

Additional complication: Lobanov isn't alone. He has a youngster with him. The kid might be an apprentice. A quick background check shows that Lobanov recently took his nephew into the family business. Is this the nephew? Or did whoever sent Lobanov think he needed additional support? 

Potential Thrilling Surveillance: the agents covertly pursue Lobanov and his apprentice across North London, to job sites, pubs and finally Lobanov's main gaff in Hammersmith. If Lobanov spots the tail and is innocent, he may assume that the agents are working for some leg-breakers he has reason to know all too well; he has gambling debts. If Lobanov spots the tail and is a Floater, then he reacts badly. It's been years and years since he was in the field, and the last thing he wants is to go back to Long Lartin - or worse.  This could turn the Thrilling Surveillance into a Thrilling Chase.

Potential Thrilling Interrogation: the agents corner Lobanov and try to get him to talk. If innocent, he assumes that the agents are working with Edom and are really here about the mole hunt, despite whatever they may say about archives. He went through all that years ago. He hates going through it again. If a Floater, then Lobanov assumes the worst and goes straight to combat, if he can. He had his suspicions about this job, and now they're confirmed. He doesn't know anything useful, but he doesn't think he can convince his captors he's just a pigeon.

Potential complication: The kid. He's maybe sixteen, but he has a mouth on him like a sewer and he's a little too handy with his fists. Treat as gym rat for stat purposes. 

As an innocent, he's actually the son of an influential Russian oligarch. The oligarch remembers Lobanov from the old KGB days, back when the two of them were in the same line of work. The oligarch is sick of his no-good, layabout son drinking all the time and getting into trouble. He figured a few months working a real job with his old buddy Lobanov would straighten the little turd out. However, just because the oligarch wants his son on a diet of bread and skilly for a while doesn't mean he wants him dead or up on charges. 

As a Floater, the kid's actually a Renfield and while he still has the mouth and the gym rat stats, he's considerably more dangerous. As are the rat swarms he can call on as backup, should the need arise.

Short one this week! Enjoy!

PS - I'm headed to Toronto later this year and am putting together a list of bookshops to visit. Any shop you'd care to add to the list?

Idiots In Charge (Night's Black Agents)

When you put idiots in charge, expect stupidity.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, there’s a quote that has been attributed to several different people and which may be apocryphal, about German officers and their qualities. It goes like this:

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

This particular paradigm has put the stupid and industrious in charge.

You can make a career out of stupidity. Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels makes the bedrock assumption that a bunch of people with high security clearances had unprotected intercourse with the pooch and are now shitcanned to a dead letter office for spies. However, it’s not a career that allows for much upward growth. Which is the whole point of Slough House.

As vices go, though, you generally don’t expect people with high security clearances to demonstrate a great deal of incompetence. Ideally, if they were ever in the running for the top job, they would be competent and demonstrate that competence during their working career.

However, it sometimes happens that people, extremely stupid and incompetent people, are promoted to the top job. Perhaps it’s the old school tie. Perhaps it’s because they look good on television. The alcoholism or the bumbling is ignored for reasons that don’t really bear close scrutiny. Now the idiot has the corner office with the good view, and everyone has to wonder: when will this come to its logical end?

Let’s gamify this from two perspectives.

Let’s assume that Edom’s old CIA pals at Find Forever are led by an idiot.

Then let’s assume that someone in the Conspiracy is an idiot.

Remember what I said a while back about assets, powers and goals? Birds got ‘em, bee’s got ‘em, even educated fleas got em, and NPCs, nodes, are no different. That also applies to idiots, but let’s not think about idiots right now.

Let’s think about the people who work for idiots.

Each and every moron has a staff. Depending on the importance of the moron, they may have quite a substantial staff. This is important because staff counts toward the assets of the moron and bolster the moron’s power. 

However, the staff have something in common with the people of Czechoslovakia.

When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets in 1968, the newspaper Večerní Praha published “10 commandments”, writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know 2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to 6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do nothing.”

It's basic noncompliance. I bring this up because the staff of a moron are likely to be one of two types:

• Equally moronic, and therefore likely to follow the party line to the best of their ability.
• Noncompliant.

This will affect the capability of the moron in charge.

First let’s assume that the CIA Station Chief in London is a moron, in charge of the CIA’s assets and operations, and that Station Chief is briefed on Find Forever. Technically the CIA isn't supposed to be conducting active spying operations within a friendly nation like, say, running vampire assets in London. But technicalities have never stopped anyone before, and here we have someone who’s both stupid and industrious.

Someone who’s tasked with assisting Find Forever in their operations, by working with (or against) Edom to get access to their vampire, or the fabled Dossier.

It probably won’t take Edom long to work this out. Perhaps someone they know or someone in the public eye - the Journalist, let's say - is invited to the group chat, or perhaps someone leaves a laptop in the pub. There are all sorts of ways this can happen.

The question then becomes, what to do about it?

The most reasonable course of action, bearing in mind Edom can’t afford to antagonize the Americans, is to Flip someone or Reverse Trace something. That is, subvert someone on the moron’s staff, or cover up (Reverse Trace) the location of the Dossier, perhaps by creating a fake for the moron to go after. Edom doesn’t want to kill anyone. They just want the problem to go away.

However, this carries its own risks. If the moron decides to take things a little too far, people could die. Or operations could be blown.

Let’s say for the sake of this narrative that the CIA station chief becomes aware of something that Edom would rather not have general knowledge. The location of Ring, say, or the true identity of whoever-it-may-be currently kept at Proserpine. Then the CIA station chief promptly spills their guts and, in the process, alerts the Conspiracy to this vital knowledge.

Well, darn. Now the agents have to Defend that asset. All because the Find Forever guy is a thundering idiot.

This could turn into a miniseries worth of scenarios. What did Barney Fife of the CIA do this week? How will it make our lives worse?

Now let’s assume that someone high up in the Conspiracy is a thundering idiot.

Let’s say for the sake of it that the someone in question is dear old Uncle Albert of Bankhaus Klingemann.

Now, Albert is presumably good at his day job, or he wouldn’t have it. However, his day job is being a banker. That doesn’t mean he’s any good at anything else. He might be a complete idiot when it comes to, say, tradecraft, or interpersonal relationships, or any one of a dozen other things. Or he might be relatively sensible when sober but isn’t often sober. Dealer’s choice as to his particular issue.

However, if he has an issue, then he’s a threat to the Node in two ways.

First, he might authorize an Antagonist Reaction that’s completely inappropriate, or which gives away important information that the Conspiracy would prefer remain a mystery. Say, by using the zombie virus which the Conspiracy was saving for deployment a few months from now, thus giving the game away and giving the forces of Justice information with which they can invent a zombie vaccine. That kind of thing.

Second, his staff might become a little too ambitious when they realize they’re working for a cretin, because they want the cretin’s job. They might not know his job comes with Conspiracy strings attached. All they know is it comes with a corner office and a healthy pay bump, thank you very much.

This is where Czechoslovakia comes in, because staff like that are going to be very noncompliant to the higher-ups, but remarkably willing to cooperate with anyone who can get rid of the moron in charge. This lets the agents in on some of the Conspiracy’s best secrets.

Noncompliance means that the Node’s effectiveness is threatened.

Meanwhile, cooperation with the enemy comes with its own hazards. In this thought experiment the enemy doesn’t have to be the agents; there are any number of third-party agencies out there willing to do Bankhaus Klingemann a dirty turn. Say, Find Forever, or the Alraune. Or Carmilla. Again, dealer's choice as to who gets involved but somebody's bound to, once blood's in the water. 

Say that staff member reaches out to someone they think is reliable and that someone turns out to be the Alraune, who's been waiting for this opportunity. All of a sudden, the agents face a complication they didn't know existed, and all because dear old Uncle Albert is a cretin. 

Remember that old saw about having someone walk through the door with a gun in their hand. This opens up possibilities. Normally the door-walking so and so is a known quantity, but not this time. It could be absolutely anyone with a gun in their hand. All sorts of new clues can be sprinkled about the place in that situation. Which breeds plot, and plot is always to be encouraged.

Clue

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Autographs (Bookhounds)

 “Genuine autograph collecting has nothing to do with autograph fiends and their collecting of signatures. A large collection of signatures well arranged and illustrated with portraits and clippings, is a good thing—but albums of miscellaneous signatures with no system, and begged from annoyed celebrities, are little better than trash. When I buy such a collection I break it up at once. Notes responding to requests for autographs are no better than signatures. They are out of place in a good collection. A letter should contain some of the original thought of the writer, and, if possible refer to incidents of his life or to his writings.

“My regular customers, people who buy constantly whenever I have something to offer them in their special line, are not the movie millionaires you can meet in the art shops and book shops on Fifth Avenue. They are usually retired business men, and physicians, well-to-do or of moderate means, university professors who have to save in order to be able to buy autographs. Every one of them has made a study of some literary or political celebrity, or is interested in some period of our own history. All documents or letters needed to complete their collections are welcome. But I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures.

“Some people are greatly interested in minor literary men of bygone days, whose autographs were never thought worth saving. I have a search department for such cases, and I am often curiously successful.

“You would be surprised to find how almost anything you may want can be found if you do not tire in looking for it and if you know how and where to advertise.

“I advertise everywhere, and constantly. The smallest country paper sometimes means more to my business than the big city paper.

“I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir, who read my advertisement in the paper and who preferred to sell the literary remains of his grandfather to me rather than to the ragman!

“And here is the secret of success in this business: constant and wise advertising …

Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms, Guido Bruno, originally published 1922. Source: Gutenberg.

Let’s play with this idea.

I’m going to use two parts of this narrative, being:

• I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures …
• I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir …

Let’s have two scenario seeds this time.

Before we go down those roads, though, let’s establish the weenie in this narrative. 

Scholar Raymond Begbie was a literary lion of the middle 1800s. He wrote plays, novels, (his Indiscretion is still performed, and De Roquefort is well regarded), and histories, the most famous of which is his history of the Glencoe Massacre, A Bloody Scandal.

Begbie’s scholarship includes studies of various Jacobite activists who published pamphlets in the later 1690s, among them occultist Charles De Wit who published a number of scurrilous tracts linking the assaults at Glencoe to various Mythos sacrificial activities. De Wit alleges that the acts of the Argyll’s at Glencoe were cover for a much more sinister act of sacrifice intended to please dark and hideous Gods.

Begbie had a considerable quantity of De Wit’s papers in his possession, not just the pamphlets he published. Among them are letters written by De Wit to Reinhardt Von Juntz, ancestor of the more notorious Friedrich, whose library (which Friedrich inherited) supposedly set the German eccentric down the path that led to his eventual destruction.

In effect, early drafts/sources which Von Juntz later used in Nameless Cults.

So, the weenie: papers and pamphlets owned by scholar Begbie, written by De Wit, autographed by De Wit, and including letters written to and from an ancestor of Von Juntz in which the two discuss Mythos and cult matters.

Poor Man’s Treasure 

Book scout Allan Chessover (main text) clues the Hounds in on an important development.

An old fellow who lives on an East End scow berthed permanently at East India Docks is very ill and likely to die. Sad, really. The soon-to-be-expired collector has, in his possession, a number of items from Begbie's papers. He's supposed to have got them from Begbie's estate sale in 1903. Nobody's entirely sure what the geriatric collector has. However, rumors abound.

The collector, Samuel Hoskins, is known to be a fly fellow when it comes to the Magickal arts. The last time someone tried to rob him, it's said, Hoskins sent them packing in a sorcerous manner. Tales suggest he has strange beasts or spirits at his command, but whether he's a modern Prospero or a two-bit charlatan has yet to be determined.

Hoskins won't part with his collection while he's alive. But he won't be alive for much longer. The question is, will his protective spirits - or whatever they are - die with him? Or is something going to keep watch over that ship of his, whether Hoskins is alive or not?

Option One: Not So Dead As He Seems. Hoskins is putting this story around to attract young, vigorous souls. He needs a new body. However, the last time he tried this - the time when someone tried to rob him - it didn't go as planned. Now he's trying a more subtle approach.

Option Two: A Ghastly Dilemma. Hoskins' unseen confederate is a Ghoul. In fact, it's Begbie himself, who was tempted to human flesh through his researches into De Wit. Ever since, Begbie has tried to continue his researches, hoping to find a cure for his condition - or at least, some way to mitigate his unending hunger.

Option Three: De Wit Returns The collector, Hoskins, is in fact a Crawling One: De Wit himself, who came back from beyond long ago and recovered his possessions in Begbie's estate sale. However, even Crawling Ones can fall to peculiar malaise, and De Wit is discovering that immortality comes at a price. He needs to relocate to the Dreamlands but he's unwilling to do that without taking his collection with him. He needs someone to help him move house from one realm of reality to another. Enter the Hounds.

Hidden Secrets

The Hounds are contacted by a fellow living in Preston who says he has some of Begbie's work. 

Begbie was, among other things, an enthusiastic temperance advocate and was a member of the Preston Temperance Society. A leading light of the Society, Sidney Livsey, used to give Begbie a place to stay when he was in Preston delivering lectures, performing plays or otherwise in town for periods of a month or more. It's thanks to this association that Livsey ended up with some of Begbie's papers.

Now Livsey's grandson, Charles, wants to dispose of the lot.  However, there's a time constraint. If the Hounds don't make the pickup within two weeks, the whole lot goes off to the papermill to be reconstituted.

Option One: Dusty Books Charles Livsey didn't write to the Hounds. The books and papers did, or rather, the Dust Thing associated with those papers did. The papers know that Charles is going to pack them off to the paper mill, which will destroy the Dust Thing. They have only a limited time before that happens, and they need a savior. Enter the Hounds.

Option Two: A Collector of Juntz.When the Hounds arrive in Preston they discover they aren't the only ones after this collection. A very impatient and choleric gent, Jacob D'Aster, is also after the papers and he's offering a ton of cash. Whether or not he can deliver the spondulicks is beside the point: he's making the offer, and Livsey is tempted.

Option Three: Who's Your Father? The vendor isn't Charles Livsey. There's no such person. The vendor is Begbie himself, who's been living an extended (and unhappy) life thanks to his researches into De Wit's ravings. However, Begbie's at his wit's end (no pun intended) and wants to get rid of the lot, every scrap and tittle, in hope that this will end his suffering. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won't, but in one respect Begbie isn't wrong. There's something very horrible hiding in those pamphlets, and now it's the Hounds' problem.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Secret Triumverate (NBA: Dracula Dossier)

Here, the PCs are brought together by a mysterious scholar or spymaster who has a copy of the Dossier. For some reason, the spymaster can’t go into the field himself (he’s too old/too frail/has to avoid cameras because of facial recognition programs – the government’s searching for him/has to maintain his public persona), so he gives the player characters assignments to carry out based on annotations in Dracula Unredacted.

“Go here,” he says, “and find out everything you can about Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers”

Dracula Dossier Cuttings and Additions, p41.

Let’s play with this idea and put together a Secret Triumvirate.

ANTONY.: These many then shall die; their names are prick’d.

OCTAVIUS.: Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?

LEPIDUS.: I do consent,—

OCTAVIUS.: Prick him down, Antony.

LEPIDUS.: Upon condition Publius shall not live,

Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.

ANTONY.: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.

Let us suppose a conspiracy within Edom, assisted by China’s Room 452, represented in this drama by the Chinese Agent (p110 DD).

Antony, a senior agent within Edom, (Hopkins? perhaps) wants promotion. Antony's deep in the counsels of one of the Princes (it doesn't matter which, for the sake of this narrative) and expected advancement as soon as one of the Prince slots became available. Antony's been told that's not going to happen.

Antony turns to the Chinese Agent to help him shake up Edom, in the course of which Edom will lose a Prince or two (so sad) and enable ambitious juniors to get what they deserve. Lepidus, the Archivist, is brought in because Lepidus has the Dossier in his possession. Antony needs that as bait for Octavian; Octavian won't make a move unless there's sufficient reward on the table.

What the Antony of this piece does not know is that China's Octavian has, on his payroll, the Assassin. The intent being to clear the road of both Anthony and Lepidus as soon as the two have outlived their usefulness and provided that all-important Dossier.

Why do this?

Well, it’s fun. Which should always be the first point.

Second, if you’re going to have a Mysterious Scholar or secret spymaster of some kind handing out the missions it’s helpful if you have a defined endpoint in mind. After all, this game is meant to be about the player characters. If you have a Mysterious Scholar pulling the strings with no defined endpoint in mind, then there’s a risk that the narrative becomes about the Scholar and not the agents.

In this case the defined endpoint is the dissolution of the Triumvirate, quite possibly courtesy of an Assassin’s bullet. Because Octavian suffers no fools and has his own agenda.

Third, if there’s more than one figure in the mix then that gives the agents a mystery to unravel. Unravelling mysteries is what this game is all about. In this case the mystery is ‘who’s really pulling the strings here? Octavian, Anthony, Lepidus? Are we doing this for King and Country, or is there another player on the board?’

This works for Edom characters in the obvious way: Antony, the new Edom mole, brings them in to help him chase up Dossier leads. He's doing this because he has to prove provenance to Octavian's satisfaction. If he does this, Octavian helps him shake up Edom thus providing the impetus needed to push Antony to great heights within Edom. 

If non-Edom, then the characters are brought in by Octavian. The Chinese Agent needs a useful bunch of go-betweens to help him bring the Dossier out of storage and into the light. That's not going to happen unless Antony gets what he wants. So the Agents are brought in by China to do Antony's bidding, rushing about the place looking for clues sourced from the Dossier. Once Antony's happy, Lepidus brings the Dossier out of storage at which point Octavian snatches it. Octavian has no reason to care what happens to the Agents after that, leaving them in the traditional Burned status that all good games start in.

Essentially the Triumvirate acts as a Conspyramid in miniature. Its narrative purpose is to give the agents a small conspiracy to deal with, in preparation for the larger conspiracies to come. With the added bonus that this particular conspiracy puts them in direct contact with the all-important Dracula Dossier, which is the big McGuffin of the piece.

Think of this as the first act of the campaign.

When I discussed the first act a long, long time ago, for Bookhounds, I said:

The whole point of the first act, in any campaign, is to establish mood and setting … They don't even have to encounter the Mythos, or anything supernatural, in the opening act, so long as the opening act is true to the overall mood … What you as Keeper ought to be doing is getting the players to concentrate on the things that matter (at least in the short term): the setting and the starting location.

The same thing applies here.

When it comes right down to tacks, Night’s Black Agents is about spy stuff with vampires, and Dracula Dossier is about spy stuff with vampires and added Dracula hot sauce. In Bookhounds, you had the shop to concentrate on in the opening act. In NBA, you have the spy stuff.

You can add the hot sauce later. In Act Two. 

By all means hint at the hot sauce in Act One, have some mithering Renfields or old Conspiracy hotbeds like Whitby or Hillingham show up. But let these serve as hints of what’s to come, once the agents get their feet wet.

The big advantage is a wider canvas. Bookhounds is ultimately a one-city setting, but in NBA you can send the agents literally anywhere. Probably anywhere in Europe, bearing in mind the Dracula Dossier, but still, this week France, next week Romania, week after that, who knows? 

Don't feel limited. Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers, is a worldwide enterprise, after all. Maybe this week it’s the Board of Directors meeting in Dubai? Or a clandestine rendezvous with that activist investor in Montana?

The point to concentrate on is the spy stuff. The surveillance, the suborning, the gathering of intelligence, the car chases and showdowns. This does two important things: it keeps the agents on their toes, and it introduces them to the mechanics and tropes of the world they inhabit. Is it Dust? Mirror? Something else? What’s its history, its forward momentum? These are things the players will need to understand in order to portray their characters.

All of which is driven by the Mysterious Scholar who starts off as an unknown quantity and is revealed to be an Edom insider, perhaps mere moments before bullet meets grey matter.

At which point the Triumvirate dissolves, Octavian makes his getaway (or tries to), Lepidus is dead or in the wind, and that precious artifact, the Dossier, is in play.

Add hot sauce. In large quantities. It’s time to start Act Two.

Enjoy!

Playing With Real Toys: Battleship Kate (Bookhounds)

 

Sourced from MFA Boston

Battleship Kate is a piece of American modern art - an accidental piece. 

Physically, she's a paper-mâché knock-off of a more famous work, Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. 

Knock-offs of this type would have been very, very common in the later 1800s and early 1900s. They would have appeared pretty much anywhere, for any purpose. In this case she was intended as a storefront display, one of many, many thousands made at about the same time.

This particular one fell into the hands of August “Cap” Coleman, the most celebrated tattoo artist in U.S. history. He used it as a practice dummy and later an advertising piece, showing off his work in miniature and displaying it in his store front. 

The great thing about a piece like this is that, while Coleman's is unique, the many, many 'Greek Slaves' out there means that there must be hundreds of statues like this still in existence even now, some of which would have been used as Coleman did his Battleship. Not to the same level of success, mind, or the same level of artistry. 

But there would have been some tattoo artists who followed Coleman's example. 

They might have gone almost anywhere. 

London, let's say.  

The Tattoo

An American tattoo artist is dead.

Sam 'Pacific' Quatrell's body was found in his East End shop three days ago. The door was smashed and the place ransacked but, given the way he kept it, you'd be hard pressed to work out whether anything was stolen. The one thing everyone can agree is definitely gone is his model, the paper mâché doll he used as an example piece. 

Now there's a host of less than reputable cultist types who are very interested in finding his book of tattoos. It's said that some of his work has magickal qualities, and the buyers are keen to carry on his tradition. 

Robin Lea, who the Hounds may know well, is especially keen to track it down. He says it's to make sure nobody with evil intent gets hold of it. Whether Robin has any skill whatsoever in artistry, never mind tattooing, is an open question. Still, for once in a way Robin has money. Actual cash. In gold, not notes. 

Perhaps it will be worth the Hounds' while to find this tattoo book - or the paper mâché doll Pacific was so fond of. But who killed him, and where is the stuff now?

Option One: Cock Robin. For once in a way, Robin Lea is to blame. Not entirely by choice, but his typical accidental flailings brought about Pacific's death. However, it also brought to life Pacific's paper mâché doll, and it's the doll who stole the tattoo book. Now the doll is looking for a new home, a new master, but once it gets those things it wants revenge on Robin Lea for causing all this fuss. Whoever it picks as master will be given a task to prove their worth: kill Robin Lea, and anyone helping him.

Option Two: Atlantis Resurgent. Pacific was a member of the Hseih-Tzu Fan, led by Atlantean sorceror Kathulos. Like so many, Pacific angered his cult masters, and met the fate reserved for all traitors. However, before his untimely passing Pacific hid his secrets in his tattoo book and used his paper mâché doll-servant to hide the book. Now the Fan want it, and Robin Lea wants to keep it out of their hands. Meanwhile the doll is looking for a place to hide, and the Hounds' shop might be the very spot. So many shadowy little corners to hide in; what more could a heavily tattooed near-nude ask for?

Option Three: Malevolent Thing. The paper mâché doll is actually a Jenglot (Dracula Dossier), a vampiric entity that, until recently, was living off of Pacific. He picked the thing up in his travels and it's been dominating him ever since, supping his blood as the need arises. However, Pacific got a little too independent for its tastes and so the sailor had to go. Now this busybody Lea fellow might be a reasonable replacement, but if Lea proves to be unsuitable there are these Hound people ... perhaps one of them would like a touch of Magickal power in exchange for a little blood, now and again ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!