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! 

The Bookseller of Crémieu (Night's Black Agents)

I had something else in mind this week, but I've been sick as a dog (woof woof) so ... 

Recently I had an article posted in Pelgrane's Page XX, Nosferatu. The medieval village of Crémieu features as a backdrop; let's play with that idea a little.

Crémieu is tiny, perhaps a few thousand souls, with a long and somewhat glorious history. Its heyday was long, long ago; it played host to a royal castle, monasteries and nunneries, a coin mint, and was an important trade hub. In more recent times its glory faded, but it still appeals to tourists, artists and lovers of history. 

In Nosferatu, Crémieu is the closest township to the tech startup Nosferatu, which makes a specialist kind of security system that apparently is designed with vampires in mind.

Pelgrane's Resource Guide gives several new creature types, among them the Fetch:

Fetches are the embodied ghosts of those killed by vampires. When a vampire drains and murders a living human, it can trap the victim’s consciousness in the dead body. The result is a fetch. Fetches look much like they did in life, only greyer and somehow diminished ... 

From all that:

The Bookseller of Crémieu

When Nosferatu first relocated to France, it attracted attention both international and local. 

One of those in Crémieu who paid it more than a little mind was the bookseller Adolphe Monteux. His shop La Librarie Antique on the Rue Saint-Jean is a decayed little fixture of the town, established by Adolphe's father soon after the War. It has a reasonable reputation as an antiquarian bookshop but has struggled in recent years, and anyone who looks at it can see why. The place is shabby, its collections disorganized, and the place stinks of damp. 

Adolphe is a local character. A perennial candidate for local offices who never once wins a race, a blogger on local history, a scandal-monger who manages to sniff out some of his neighbor's most guarded secrets, and a lover of conspiracy theories. Particularly if those theories involve aliens, alien technology, or alien infiltration of the government. He's the kind of local irritant who never quite hits what he aims at, but who throws enough shots to occasionally be embarrassing.

He has self-published a few pamphlets on local topics, ghost stories, witches and the like. He's also contributed to the Association for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Isle Crémieu (E.P.I.C), though his contributions to EPIC aren't always warmly received. Adolphe tends to let his passions guide him which doesn't always sit well with EPIC's editors. 

What happens to Adolphe depends on whether Nosferatu is Innocent, an Asset or a Minion.

If Innocent: Adolphe attempted to dig up some dirt on Nosferatu's partnership. He concentrated on Sue Choi; he'd heard about her peculiar experiences in San Francisco and speculated that she was being puppeted by alien masters. While none of this is true it did attract the attention of a French Conspiracy node. The node was curious about Nosferatu's intentions and background, and while it didn't see Nosferatu as a threat it did want to keep an eye on Nosferatu just in case its status changed. Adolphe became a Fetch soon after, installed to keep an eye on the tech startup. Sue Choi is aware of Adolphe's actions but not of his current status; to her, Adolphe is an annoying little man who tried to poke around in her private life.

If Asset:  Adolphe is being run by the other side. Before the War, Crémieu was host to a Conspiracy Node that, as luck would have it, was wiped out by the Germans who mistook it for a Communist resistance cell. Adolphe is the sole survivor of that Node; he's had to remake his identity as his own son to keep the pretense up. He was re-absorbed into the Conspiracy in the 1960s, but the Conspiracy hadn't much use for him until recently. The relocation of Nosferatu was a lucky break for this creaky antique; now the Conspiracy expects him to keep close tabs on the tech startup. His spy skills are dusty, rusty, and antique. However, his money spends as well as anyone else's, and he's been able to bribe a few Nosferatu workers who supply him with intel. He knows what Vermillion workers are and his superiors are becoming interested. Whether they become interested enough to send a strike team is, as yet, an undecided question.

If Minion: Adolphe has been a Fetch since the 1890s. Up until that point he was an investigative journalist in Paris, but his researches earned him a little too much attention. The vampire who created him kept him around for a while but forgot to keep an eye on Adolphe. The former journalist scarpered and made a home for himself in Crémieu, where he hoped to fade into the background forever and ever. After all, so long as his creator lived, so would he. Neither Adolphe nor his creator anticipated Nosferatu. As luck would have it, Adolphe's creator is one of those vampires sent to Nosferatu on punishment detail, expected to eventually succumb to one of the tech startup's test programs. This poses an impossible dilemma for Adolphe. After all, if the vampire dies, so does he. The former journalist turned bookseller has to decide whether he wants to risk it all to rescue his creator, knowing that if he's successful he'll be returning to a life of bondage. Or whether he wants to tip the scales and make sure the vampire dies, ensuring his own death in the process. What luck some Agents have arrived to complicate the situation; Adolphe may be able to manipulate them to his advantage.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Troy Town (RPG All)

A delightful air of romance and mystery surrounds the whole subject of Labyrinths and Mazes.

MAZES AND LABYRINTHS, W.H. Matthews, 1922 Longmans

I was recently reminded of this and thought it would repay a revisit.

Most of you know what hedge mazes are. They can be used to good effect in horror. Stephen King famously used one in the Shining, with Torrance stalking through it in search of his boy Danny. King has his version patrolled by peculiar hedge creatures, but in the film it's just an evocative location - probably the better fit, TBH, though I doubt King would agree.

However, that's not the kind of maze I'm talking about.

A Troy is a turf maze. There are no walls. The pattern twists in upon itself, straight to its center like Ouroboros. There is only one way forward. Nobody knows why they were made, but at one time there were Troys across Europe and some still exist, in forgotten little places. 

There are several examples in England. Most of the survivors are on private property.

A true Troy is cut to what's called a Greek, or sometimes Knossos, pattern, after the markings found on Greek coinage. It's possible those old coins were used as a direct reference, or perhaps the design survived in books, but however it came to be the people who made the mazes tended to follow that pattern. 

Nobody knows for certain why these mazes came to be. It's said that the original patterns were used for horsemanship games practiced by the Greeks and revived by the Romans. There are any number of folkloric reasons for the mazes; fishermen in Sweden, for example, used to march the Troy to throw off wicked spirits who might otherwise follow and bedevil them. Or they might have been fertility rituals, or tied to the legends of Ariadne, Fair Rosamund, St. Julian of the Hospice, Theseus' crane dance or any of a dozen other tales and legend-bearers.

From Mazes & Labyrinths

However, they exist and have done since memory forgot, and only the dead now know how they came to be. 

They were in use for a considerable period. Right up until the Great War, more or less, there would have been seasonal rituals, fetes, or more private marchings of the Troy. Like so many other bits of lore, the Troys tended to die out with the great withering on the Western Front.  

From an RPG perspective the great thing about a Troy is, because nobody knows why they were made or how they came to be, you as Keeper (or whatever the term may be) can use them absolutely anywhere.

The most logical-seeming fit is in a fantasy setting, of course. Serpentine, Ravenloft, any one of a host of others: any and all can benefit from peculiar rituals practiced in the dead of night or in the heart of some forgotten moor, with creatures or entities flitting the Troy in a dance that seems deceptively simple and in fact is tied to the soul of the universe. Or summons Cthulhu. Or whatever the case may be.

Night's Black Agents and similar supernatural settings could make good use of the Troy. In Night's the obvious uses are Damned or Supernatural but the thing about a hypnotic pattern is it could as easily be used in Mutant or Alien games. 

Quatermass and the Pit

But it could as easily be Cyberpunk, or Mutant City Blues. A neo-pagan movement captures the imagination of Night City and the desperate, the helpless, homeless, forlorn, dance the Troy. Why? Nobody knows. Or a bunch of bangers and gangers devise Troys as a non-combat means of settling disputes, with each side (or sides) nominating a team to dance the Troy, winner take all. The Troy becomes a modern dance movement. The Troy is a means of contacting alien life.

The Troy is, and is, and is. 

I've made frequent references to Rome and its Fourth Thing. A Troy is a pretty good match for that Fourth Thing. It's sufficiently mysterious and alien-seeming that it could be a stand-in for almost anything from fairyland to Leng. It's easily created by one person, cutting turf, but it could as easily be graffiti, or a complex of patterned lights, or a dozen other things besides. 

There's something about a maze that calls the eye and mind. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Playing With Real Toys: Pod Hotels (RPG All)

… it did give any blog idea for the springtime. A search for news articles about trending pod hotels, similar to the article you did for the techno train or novelty hotels. I was also considering working in threat profiles too …

Well now.

A pod hotel, or kapuseru hoteru (capsule hotel), is basically a collection of very small sleeping pods intended as cheap, overnight accommodation. Maybe you can’t afford anything better, or maybe you only want to be there for a night and can’t be bothered with all the extras you aren’t going to have time to enjoy anyway.

They vary. I see the NYC chain Pod Pads offers quite nice accommodation, assuming you intend to stay a month. Their one bed (aircon, kitchen, sitting area, amenities) goes for a little under $200/night but you need to book for 30 nights. So you’re spending roughly $6000 for a month’s accommodation in NYC. That’s honestly not too awful, for NY prices.

However, if you go for the standard pod for a couple nights then you get a bed, possibly a workspace, and shared bathroom, for roughly the same price per night. Less time = less comfort, but you still get the same location which may be all you want. I know I’ve stayed in places that are less than ideal, comfort wise, knowing that the location is all that matters to me.

After all, Midtown West, just blocks from tranquil Hudson River Park and steps to 8 subway lines is an attractive offer. Plus gym on-site? Tempting indeed, even if the bed is about the size of a modest toolbox.

Incidentally the shared bathroom is probably what will put many people off pod hotels and cheap hotels in general. People will put up with a lot for the sake of a private en-suite.

In RPG fiction this is typical Cyberpunk accommodation, but isn’t often seen outside Cyberpunk. I’m not sure why. Particularly in fantasy settings the average tavern or inn always has remarkably roomy, middle-class accommodation. If there’s a shared bedroom area, it’s still pretty nice by comparison to a pod hotel.

Nothing like the fourpenny coffin, say. Or the conditions described by Orwell in Down & Out. 

I’ve been reading a chunk of World of Darkness stuff recently, for example, and I don’t recall coming across anything that isn’t resolutely comfortable. Your Brujah, Nosferatu et al have their expenses handwaved as points in a pool, without anyone going into detail about whether they sleep in a bed or a cardboard box. Or what it means to sleep in a cardboard box.

It’s almost as if the intended audience are nice middle class kids looking for a few illicit thrills.

After all, pod hotels in the West, intended for tourists, are almost nothing like the capsule hotels of Japan, intended for salarymen, which in turn bear very little resemblance to the coffin homes of Hong Kong. Intended for those who have no other options. Literally named after cheap, charitable mortuaries. 

Compare that to Berlin’s Space Night Hotel, for instance. Or the Hosho chain. 

It’s all very quirky. TBH if I want quirky I’ll find myself a fun place, not a box that tries to sell itself as a fun place. Still, takes all sorts.

From an RPG standpoint, which game does this suit?

Probably not Night’s Black Agents. Even the Dust version is trying to be a Spy game, not a Tourist game. It’s difficult to picture, say, James Bond checking into a pod hotel. I can’t think of that many spy stories that feature the hotel as part of the plot, not unless the hotel also includes a casino.

Of course, if the pod hotel was an enemy asset, that’s a different story. Perhaps the whole complex is a massive brain-sucking entity or draining psychic energy for future use. Maybe that antenna on top of the building is actually some kind of focusing device for the mind laser.

Pod Hotels work really well in settings that depend on sci-fi or dystopian future elements. Cyberpunk’s the obvious one here; City of Mist spin-off Otherscape would probably also work quite well. I can see pod hotels popping up in Mutant City Blues as a scene location, but probably not a full-scale plot element.

A dream or nightmare-inspired scenario would do very well in a pod hotel location. Delta Green once did something very like with the King In Yellow scenario Night Floors; the characters had to investigate an apartment building where someone had vanished into the King In Yellow’s mysterious domain. Normal during the day, nightmare scenario after hours. A pod hotel that presented itself as resolutely normal and small on the outside, only to become luxurious and vast once you cross the threshold, could be very interesting. 

That said, the whole point of a pod hotel as a location is that it is a pod hotel; to immediately negate that quality seems pointless. It’s a plot twist that could play out at almost any location. You don’t need a special one.

Oddly, the problem reminds me of a scenario I wrote some time back: Sisters of Sorrow, set aboard a Great War U-Boat.

I said at the time:

But I had a problem: there was no way the complicated haunted-house story I had in mind could play out on a tiny little thing barely fifty foot long. If every single crewman stood up at once - assuming they could - they'd fill the boat from end to end. The very idea that someone could get lost in one was silly; it'd be simpler to imagine someone not being able to find their way out of a public toilet … However the problem presented me with its own solution. A situation in which people are crammed together in a stifling, small space, helpless in the face of danger; that breeds paranoia and fear.

A similar solution for the pod hotel, perhaps. You’d need to introduce the characters to their neighbors, somehow. Maybe down in that on-site gym? Or a nearby bar? Then, once they’re all inside and snuggled up in their beds … 

OK, all that said, let's gamify this.

A Place With Many Doors

The characters are in town for a completely separate reason and it does not matter, for plot purposes, what that reason is. Let's say they've been asked to go to X to find a missing person, who for this example will be Sarah Lovett, a lawyer from Chicago who likes to explore places on the cheap. According to her social media profile, her last posts came from a pod hotel in X: The Happiness Quotient.

The Happiness Quotient is a resolutely cheerful place in one of the more expensive parts of town. It has its own bar, its own gym, and is very close to public transport and other amenities. Its color scheme is very, very bright, and frequently features the hotel mascot, a jolly, grinning panda named Frank. The Quotient's user reviews are nearly all ecstatic, and many of them feature photos of the gym, the bar, and the penthouse apartments, all of which have fantastic views of X. 

Lovett's last few posts were all made from the Quotient. According to her profile (and her bank account) she paid for a month's stay in one of the penthouses. 

Investigators who pay close attention to the social media posts notice that some of the penthouse suite pictures show a view that actually doesn't exist at all. According to these shots, the hotel has a view of a park that doesn't exist, yet it can be clearly seen in photographs. AI generated art at work, perhaps?

Option 1: Devil's Idle Hands. The hotel is the preferred hunting grounds of a solo killer or an entity like Fear Itself's Blood Corpse, something that isn't particularly intelligent but whose actions are being covered up by the hotel's owners and its manager, Theo Salter. They can't afford the scandal. They can't afford the killings. But they keep hiding the evidence and denying the problem, and Salter's dwindling resources will eventually be insufficient to cover up the losses. Meanwhile the solo killer flits from room to room, taking what it needs and going dark for a night or two, until it needs to kill again.

Option 2: Frank's Forest. He may look like a happy little mascot but there's something very nasty hiding behind that relentlessly cheerful smile. Those who pay attention to Frank notice that his posture and demeanor changes the closer it gets to nightfall. After nightfall Frank gets positively shifty and mean-looking. Come midnight, Frank vanishes altogether, from all the walls of the hotel. When that happens it's best to stay tucked up in bed and try not to think about going to that shared bathroom or the 24-hour gym. When Frank's playing games, nobody's safe; and God forbid you should somehow find yourself in that hidden park outside the hotel. You may never find your way back in, if that happens.

Option 3: Penthouse Problems. This issue only affects people who rent the penthouse apartments, and not all of them. However, for those of a sensitive or psychic disposition, it's possible you'll find yourself in the House With Many Doors. You're perfectly safe, so long as you never try to leave the penthouse. After all, why would you? Look at that view. You can see the whole city from here. You can see the park. You can watch people playing in the park, walking their dogs, having a fine old time. They can see you, too. They wave at you. They seem to know exactly where you are, what you're doing. Just never try to leave the penthouse. There are many, many doors in this hotel, and none of them go outside.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Clue Trail - Dead, Dead, Deadski (GUMSHOE All)

Beetlejuice

Once upon a time I discussed the Clue Trail and recommended, among other things:

Rule of Four. There are Four ways in: Academic, Technical, Interpersonal, General. What you need is one clue for each of the ways in, so one Academic, one Technical, one Interpersonal, one General. 

Why do it this way? Well, apart from the usual benefits that come with the Rule of Four, you get one extra: split four ways among the four Ability lists, someone in the group will have at least one of those Abilities with points to spend. That means no matter how Scooby Doo it gets one of your dream team will find their way to the mystery. 

I went further and pointed out that this works best when dealing with the unexpected. You didn't think the characters would go to Berlin, say, this week, but here they are, scarfing up the curried bratwurst. What to do when they go looking for trouble?

Now, let's say that this wasn't an accident. Let's say this was planned. Let's say that Berlin was always on the menu and that you had time to design something more in-depth.

Does that change anything?

Not really - but it does allow you to play with the spine.  

The spine, for those of you shaky on the concept, is that part of the scenario structure which holds everything together. It's the bit that connects the dots. The clues characters find along the way are the nerve endings, the capillaries, that wrap around that skeletal structure and put some meat on its bones. Some of these clues lead to valuable information that draws the characters further down the spine. Some are dead ends. Some go unhelpful places. But, in the end, they all lead to the End. The question is, which End?

Let's talk about unhelpful places and dead ends.

Now, in RPGs generally and in GUMSHOE in particular, there should be no such thing as a completely dead end. By which I mean, there should be no such thing as a dead end with nothing fun to do, or nothing interesting to be had. A dead end does not lead any further into the plot. That does not mean it's a complete waste of everybody's time. 

In that sense a dead end is very similar to capture scenes, which I've written about before. The same principle applies: as Director it is your job to make sure the characters have something to do if they find themselves in a dead end scene.

A dead end, strictly speaking, is a position with no hope of progress; a blind alley. Your players thought this clue led somewhere, but it doesn’t. Or that this network contact, this McGuffin, this whatever-it-may-be would have a result, but it doesn’t.

Or – and this is the one to keep an eye on – they ignore a clue that could have led somewhere and, because they did that, now it leads nowhere.

Let’s say for the sake of this example that their network contact Anton was working on [X] and said ‘I’ll have more information for you tomorrow.’ The agents then wander off and commit their usual misdeeds, only remembering about a month later (in game time) that their dear old pal Anton was supposed to be working on [X]. Whatever happened about that? Well, nothing happened. Maybe Anton’s information is out of date. Maybe Anton’s dead. Maybe he’s a vampire now because he got too close to the Conspiracy.

In all those cases what could have been a promising spine trail now is not, because there’s nothing more to be gained by going down that path.

However, just because it’s a blind alley doesn’t mean there’s nothing whatsoever to be gained by going down there. It won’t advance the plot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with the notion.

Here’s some ways you can do that.

• Antagonist Reaction. There are bad things down that blind alley and they want to twist your head right off its delicate little neck. This can be a useful moment to kick off a fight scene, a chase scene, or some version of the Thrilling moment.
• The Nature of the Beast. You don’t get any useful plot clues but you do find out a little bit more about the nature of the things you’re chasing. Maybe they twist time and there’s some evidence of that down the blind alley, or maybe they have necromantic powers and you discover some of their revivified victims. Oh look! Zombies!
• The Nature of the Plot. Just because that laboratory burned down, taking all of its research experiments with it, doesn’t mean you can’t gain something by sifting through the ashes. Or maybe you notice that there’s things missing from the debris that ought to be there. If that safe was empty when the building burnt down, that tells you the records are still out there somewhere, even if you can’t find them at this location anymore.
• The Nature of the Game, aka Rome. There may be nothing down that blind alley, but if it’s an evocative nothing, if it chills the blood and quickens the pulse, then it’s not a complete waste of everyone’s time. This is the moment most likely to cause a Stability check. It’s also the most likely to contain squick. Or, as Stephen King famously said, “if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
• The Location of the Plot. This is probably the most useful blind alley, though it may be useful by default. Let’s say that the players had three choices as to where to go next. They went for option A, and it turned out to be a dud. That means the plot’s got to be in B or C, and now they’ve wasted valuable time on A they have less time to deal with whatever’s in store at B or C.

This last option is also the option most likely to frustrate the players so it should be used sparingly. However, there’s juice to be had from building up tension. If the players know it’s a race against time and they realize they’ve wasted some of that precious time following up a bad lead, then their natural reaction is going to be increased motivation spiced with panic.

OK, let's head back to Berlin.

In that example there were the following Clues:

• Academic – History. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus the idea that the NSA left behind some interesting artefacts, buried in the rubble. 
• Interpersonal – Tradecraft. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some old NSA files, slipped to the agent by a friendly at the local CIA station.
• Technical – Urban Survival. One point gets the agent a general history of Teufelsberg plus some maps and design schematics from back in the day, giving the agent a free Architecture bonus should they want it.
• General – Sense Trouble. One point gets the agent a general recent history of Teufelsberg plus some spooky extras (unexplained deaths, criminal activity, ghost activity, whatever suits best). 

Now, for whatever reason, Teufelsberg is a dead end. Doesn't matter why; it just is. In that case you still have to slip something in there for the players to chew on. It might be an Antagonist Reaction, a clue to the Nature of the Beast, Plot, or Game, or it might be the Location of the Plot. 

For this particular location I favor an Antagonist Reaction. There are enemies at that location, and they will do the characters harm, or try to. 

Now, the players spend their one point of History, Tradecraft or whatever it may be. That means they get to Teufelsberg. 

What if they spend two points? That usually gets them extra bennies, right? What kind of extra benny can be had in a dead end situation?

Answer: advance warning that it is a dead end, or advance warning of what's waiting for them up there. In this case, the creatures lurking up that dead end give themselves away somehow. Maybe the characters notice peculiar shadows or get a warning of supernatural activity. It's quiet. Too quiet. That kind of thing. 

This gives them the opportunity to avoid the antagonist reaction or play into it. Point being, it gives them a choice. 

It gives them something interesting to do, even if this is a dead end.

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

Not Quite Review Corner: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: the untold story of the academics who became the Spies, invented modern spycraft and helped turn the tide of the war. 2024, Elyse Graham, Harper Collins

I still don't know what to make of this one. 

It's proven harder to read than I thought. I didn't take to it right away. I found it too easy-going, a little facile. I'm still not sure why the text rubs off on me the way it does. Maybe it's just writing style. If that's the case, then your milage will definitely vary.

However, the story it's telling is remarkable (though I question the 'untold' bit). Well worth your time, particularly if you ever intend to run or play Bookhounds of London, or Delta Green. This is the story of how the intelligence services in the West became true intelligence services. How they picked up those peculiar skills that would become the obsession of spy novelists in the decades to come. 

How the booksellers and academics turned into spies.

Most importantly it tells you who they were and what they got up to. I like to think I know a little bit about the subject matter, but I'd not heard of Adele Kibre before, for example. It's one of those times when you're reminded that actual spy work is not like a Bond novel. That John Le Carre had a point. Here's someone who did very important work, but who did it by talking, by finagling, by paying attention and taking notes. Not for Kibre the daring car chases and escapes across rooftops. She bought or acquired books. Lots and lots of books, and papers, and news. 

Judging by what is known of her she seems to be the kind of researcher who would have driven Barbara Tuchman to distraction; the kind that accumulated a wealth of knowledge but seldom put anything down on paper. There was always one more scrap to be had, one missing piece, and Kibre, by the looks of it, would rather have squirreled away that academic nut than published a single word.  

Kibre isn't the only character, of course. Graham covers a wide range, focusing mainly on American sources. Her subjects are recruited from their dusty academies, set to training with the likes of Fairbairn and Colonel Applegate, and then off they go to the war, which might be in Spain or Switzerland or France or a dozen other places. There they hoover up knowledge both academic and military, funneling it back to their shadowy bosses. 

From a Mythos perspective, or anyone with interest in running a supernaturalist spy campaign, this is definitely something you want to be looking at. This is Bookhounds taken to its logical extreme, where instead of the profit motive the squirrely bookish types are driven by loyalty to country and cause. Who knows what peculiar secrets they might uncover in that library collection?

I just wish I liked it better than I do. I've gone headlong into the likes of Barbara Tuchman and Liza Picard, and those are far more academically rigorous works. I rank Tuchman's March of Folly as one of the finest works of scholarship in the English language, and that covers about as broad a topic as you could wish for, with as much imagination - far more, I'd argue - than Graham displays here.

I suppose it could be writing style, or it could be a lurking suspicion that Graham's attention to detail is a little off. Never anything major, but several minor clangers that threw me out of the narrative. 

There's a bit in the section about breaking codes where Graham imagines a conversation between two bigwigs shortly after a successful North African campaign. One asks the other whether the academics figured out how to read Hitler's plans from the flutter of ribbons in little girl's pigtails.

"No," the other responds. "They thought they'd break U.N. custom and actually apply intelligence to their intelligence."

Which works as a comeback, just barely, but all I could think was 'U.N.? As in United Nations? But they don't exist yet, surely? Or is this meant to be U.S.N. as in U.S. Navy - presumably Naval Intelligence?'

It's things like that which throw me off. The minute I start wondering whether the author can be trusted to tell the story straight - the author, mind, not the narrator - I lose interest in the work. 

Part of the problem is Graham's use of fictionalized narrative to fill in the gaps, where historical information is lacking. It's a handy device in moderation. However, there's a lot of gaps, so moderation flies out the window.  You're never entirely sure which bit is backed by some kind of record (any kind, please our lord Herodotus) or whether it's emerging full-formed like a Greek God from a historian's head. You have to have a lot of trust in the author before you can easily swallow that kind of thing. 

It's a bit like the rant at the end of Murder by Death: 'You've all been so clever for so long, you've forgotten to be humble. You tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now the tables are turned ...'

Murder By Death (1976)

Which brings me back to the likes of Tuchman and Picard. I trust those authors, but they earned their trust by being academically rigorous from the start. Graham never did. She starts with fictitious narrative and carries on in that vein. 

Do I recommend it? Yes. After all, I've recommended far worse works, both fiction and non-fiction, precisely because even the bad stuff can be a source of inspiration. The Book of Spies and Army of Thieves, to name but two, are absolute stinkers. They can still be mined for useful ideas. 

The same applies here. I do not consider this a serious work of history. It's the historical equivalent of a summertime beach read. But it does have some interesting features and has enough of relevance to Keepers and Directors to warrant a read. 

Tho maybe not buy the expensive hardback version? Borrow it from the library; that's the better option by far.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Bar Billiards (Bookhounds)

 

Video sourced from Michael Chartres

My father has a bar billiards table. He got his from an American family. The old fella had been big in Hollywood back in the day and had worked on several films set in England; I believe American Werewolf in London was one of them. He picked up the bug for the game while he was in the UK and, as he had the money, he brought a table to his Bermuda home. However, all things pass and so did he, and the family wasn't interested in lugging what is quite a heavy object back to [wherever they may have been then]. So we picked it up. 

The big thing to bear in mind, as Wikipedia helpfully reminds us, is that:

The play is time-limited. A coin will usually give around 17 minutes of play, dependent on region. After this time a bar drops inside the table stopping any potted balls from returning, leading to a steady decrease in the number of balls in play. The last ball can only be potted into either the 100 or 200 hole having been played off either side cushion. 

Which lends itself to pub play and is probably why the coin slot was invented in the first place. You can't be at the table all day. Someone else has to have a go. 

The table we have used to have a coin slot but someone deactivated it at some stage, presumably because it became too much of a faff to find old British coinage. Even if you can open up the slot and get it back again, at some point someone will lose your only two-half-groat-a-billibong, and then the table's shot. 

The game is practically built for gambling. You bet on whether or not the player will make the shot, you bet on who will win, you bet on how much by, you bet on any number of things. 

Which is interesting, because Bookhounds doesn't include a gambling mechanic. Never mind the Thrilling mechanic that Night's Black Agents uses. More than that, the game (in its current form) is new in the 1930s, which means all those pubs the Hounds go to probably have a bar billiards table. It's the modern fashion. The coming thing.

In Millionaire's Special I faced the same problem with Trail, and I'm going to adapt that solution to this problem as follows:

1. Use Athletics as the General ability if you're playing honestly and Filch if you're cheating.
2. If plot does not depend on the outcome of the game, then whoever has the highest Athletics or Filch wins.
3. If plot matters, then use dice. It can either be a lengthy competition (mechanically, like an Auction scene) or a one-roll game, depending on how important the result is.

With an additional rule if there are books involved:

1. If this game is determinative in an Auction, for whatever reason, then Auction can be used in addition to Athletics or Filch.

What do I mean by that? Well, this is gambling. I can foresee times when a book scout might want to wager, say, some nice 18th century German pamphlets on vampirism on the outcome of the match. That makes the match a species of Auction, which is what the Auction ability is all about. When someone wants to spend from the Auction pool they do that instead of spending Athletics or Filch.

Why do it this way? Well, as Storage Wars reminds us, an auction isn't about meekly standing in a row making bids. It's about showmanship, finagling, angling for an advantage, screwing over the competition. Sounds a lot like a game of chance to me. But as a mechanic it's only worth using if there's a book as the prize. The game is Bookhounds of London, after all, not Poolhounds. 

All that said, let's talk about a scenario seed. To do that, I'm going to set this in a location I've discussed before: The Three Bucks pub. 

This elaborate Edwardian building resembles an Italian palace gone slightly awry, complete with statues of saints and a copper-clad cupola roof. It was built on the site of an old Georgian traveler's inn, as a speculative venture by Gregory Harris in 1908 ... [the pub is haunted by a spirit] obsessed with blood and violence, particularly cutting ... 

Snookered

Book Scout Allan Chessover (main text p85) is known to be a billiards fiend, and the Three Bucks has installed a new table. He’s there every Thursday night without fail, for a round or two with the lads.

The Three Bucks has an unusual reputation as it stands, but ever since the table came in the rumors have been flying thick and fast. People see lights where there oughtn’t be lights, hear the sound of billiard balls clicking when there cannot be players. Not least because Paddy Green and his sons don’t let anyone on the premises after midnight, not for any reason or for any inducement.

The Hounds want something from Chessover. It doesn’t matter what that something is, but for the sake of this example it’s a lead on a book they desperately want to acquire.

Right-o, says Chessover. I’ll do that little thing. If, and only if, you beat me at bar billiards at the Three Bucks. After midnight.

Option One: Action Room. It’s all a bluff. Chessover has no intention of showing up at the Three Bucks, whether after midnight or at any other time. He pays a group of Rough Lads to attend in his stead. The Rough Lads having a sense of humor, they propose a little game of their own: play billiards, and every ball you pot is a bone I don’t break. Miss the pot … well … What none of them appreciate is that the restless spirit of Gregory Harris, the pub’s former owner, will want in on the fun.

Option Two: Dirty Pool. Chessover has his own troubles. He’s been on a losing streak for weeks and is deep in the hole, financially. He owes a remarkable sum to the ghost hunters who frequent the Three Bucks looking for Captain Kidd’s revenant; one of them is a talented billiards player. The ghost hunters have been wanting to visit the Three Bucks after midnight for ages. Chessover can sneak them in but doesn’t want to be blamed for letting them in. Not if he can rig it so the Hounds get blamed instead …

Option Three: Silent Partner. Mike Green, Paddy’s eldest son and a fellow who never wastes a penny, lets a select group into the Three Bucks after hours to play the billiards table. Chessover is one of the lucky few. If Paddy knew about this he’d be furious. There’s just one odd little stipulation. Rather than pay cash for the table, you have to put a few drops of blood down the coin slot instead. Otherwise the table seems normal … just don’t go looking too long at any of the shadows …

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Magical Battle of Britain (UK, RPG All, Bookhounds, Dreamhounds, Trail)

 Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.

When war breaks out and the Phoney War becomes all too real, as the Germans push through Belgium in May 1940, as the Battle of France begins and ends in a heartbeat, Dion Fortune does her bit to save England from the Germans.

She organizes the Magical Battle of Britain, with a cycle of rites beginning July 1940.

Bear in mind, that’s a busy month. You’ve got bombing raids on mainland Britain, the Cardiff Blitz; the Germans are chewing up the RAF in the Kanalkampf in preparation for Unternehmen Seelöwe; Vichy is the new French government, allied with its conqueror Germany; the country’s plunging into debt to fight a war in which it seems it will soon be the sole Allied combatant, with Churchill telling the country they’d fight on alone, seeking no terms or parley; the buying and selling of new cars is banned, the first of a series of stringency measures; everyone thinks the German invasion is imminent, including the Germans. It’s one of those times when you daren’t read the newspaper because you know what the headlines will be. It’s enough to scare someone into spiraling depression.

In all this, Fortune marshals the occultists of Britain to … actually, it isn’t entirely clear what the point is.

With a title like ‘Battle of Britain’ you expect, well, combat. Of some kind. Lonely duels high in the sky, where life and death is seen as a scattering of contrails punctuated by crashing aircraft. Explosions. Derring-do, that kind of thing.

What actually happens is a little less exciting.

Fortune gathers together a number of people, not all of them occultists but all known to her personally. She persuades them to meditate on a particular subject at a particular time and write to her with the results of their meditations. She then wrote back, instructing her correspondents that they weren’t to open or read the letters until just before the next session, at which point the cycle begins anew.

Fortune openly admits that what she’s attempting is more about morale building than anything practical. Victory, if it is to be had, must be fought for and won in the physical realm. What she’s after is more of a spiritual victory.

You know what that reminds me of?

ITV News

Again, bear in mind when this is happening. This is the bleakest point in the war, for the English. The news isn’t going to get better any time soon; the actual Battle of Britain is about to see some of the heaviest casualties, the most significant engagements. The Hardest Day is coming in August. Everyone knows a family where someone’s died, or is that family mourning a loss. Food is running short. Meanwhile Charles Lindberg the celebrated American aviator is telling his fellow Americans not to get involved; that so long as America is strong, none will dare invade her, and she need not intervene on another’s behalf.

People need to feel as though they’re doing something, even if it’s a gesture of defiance.

Foreign Correspondent (1940, Hitchock)

I have to wonder whether Fortune was drawing on her own war experiences in the Women's Land Army during the First World War. That was all about rallying round and doing your bit, even if it was less than spectacular and didn’t require a lot of derring-do. It’s also where she allegedly had her first serious spiritual experience and began her communications with the Ascended Masters. Was she intending some kind of mass recruitment to the esoteric cause? Introducing her followers to the Ascended Masters that first intrigued her so long ago, during another war?

As the war news improves, Fortune loses interest in the effort. It becomes more about what will happen after the war, when peace returns to the green and pleasant land. She begins developing ‘the Arthurian Formula’ where Arthur and his knights become dim and distant reflections of Atlantean forebears. Not that she has long; leukemia will claim her by 1946.

OK, that’s what actually happens.

How to gamify?

Probably the simplest method is to assume that Fortune embarks on the Arthurian/Atlantaen bit a good deal earlier than she does. The occultists she recruits - the player characters - are all Knights in her Arthurian army, and there are dragons on the horizon attacking the very soul of Britain itself. Their job is to use scavenged Atlantaen rituals (and later, technology) to establish a perimeter - castles, in her vernacular - first on the coast and, later, when those are bombed in the Battle of Britain alongside the coastal airfields, further within. From these castles the Knights defend the realm against foreign psychic incursion. The intent is to provide aid at first, when the country's need is greatest, and later, when the tide turns, a base for assault across the Channel against those same foreign dragons who were ravaging the countryside a few short months prior.

All Arthurian stories need a Mordred figure and in this instance there's one ready-made: occultist Aleister Crowley. He seems friendly enough to Fortune, but his smiles hide evil intent. He may present as an ally at first, but someone's working with the dragons, and it may well be the wickedest man alive. 

Now, some options:

Option One: Yithian Malice Fortune isn't a free agent. She's been corrupted by the Yithians, who see the outbreak of war as their last chance to scoop up as much Pnakotic material and lost technology as they can before the war ravages what's left of their network. The Yithians intend to gather all this at their Oxford Camelot, a secret base where they'll hide all of their secrets until some future date when they can re-establish their network. The Yithians see this as a rescue mission - shades of Three Damsels of the Fountain - but the player characters may disagree, particularly since the Yithians follow an old human maxim: no witnesses. In this version, Crowley is Mordred, but Mordred isn't the real enemy of mankind.

Option Two: Dragons of Dream Fortune is facing real threats, but these are threats to the English Dream. The Dragons ravage the nightmares of all who listen to Haw-Haw's broadcasts and it's up to the player characters to perform miracles of resistance. They may be assisted in this effort by whatever's left of the Dreamhounds of Paris who may be trying similar methods of resistance in occupied France. In time the characters may become a kind of psychic Special Operations Executive; entirely unofficial, but there were many such unofficial, undocumented operations. A supernatural Small Back Room, with Fortune as the lead brain and Crowley as the greasy politico.

Small Back Room

Option Three: Accidental Arthur This borrows from Pagan Publishing's Golden Dawn and Pelgrane's Dracula Dossier, but neither are required reading. In the dying days of the last century Golden Dawn occultist Randolph Northcote attempted to bring back King Arthur to save Britain, but his attempts ended in disaster and Arthur's plans to reestablish his Shub-Niggurath cult were thwarted. Temporarily, at least, though some of Arthur's ideas and forbidden texts he and Northcote consulted found their way into the archives of a secretive supernaturalist organization within Military Intelligence. Now that same obscure branch of Military Intelligence is drawing on those old ideas to create a new Arthurian cycle, and in the process bringing back Arthur's Shub-Niggurath cult. Fortune the Golden Dawn inheritor, in this version, may be the heroic resistance, or may be a willing catspaw of British Intelligence; if the latter, then Crowley/Mordred is what little's left of the heroic resistance. The ultimate goal is to bring back Arthur the same way Northcote did, but Northcote didn't realize what he was bringing back, and neither does Military Intelligence. 

That's all for this week! Next week, something completely different.  

Violet Firth aka Dion Fortune

 Last week I talked about ritual magic and this week it's Dion Fortune. Some of the material I'm going to discuss comes from Francis King's The Rites of Modern Occult Magic. 

Violet Firth (born 6 December 1890 died 6 or 8 January 1946) was introduced to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1919, when she would have been in her late 20s. MacGregor Mathers, the founder of the Golden Dawn, had died the year before during the influenza epidemic and the Golden Dawn was under the occasionally shaky leadership of his widow Moina Mathers, working in partnership with an ageing J.W. Brodie-Innes. Brodie-Innes was himself not long for this world and would pass in 1923. 

Firth came from a wealthy background and was well educated. Her father, anxious not to be seen as a money-grubbing parvenu, adopted the motto God, not Luck - Deo, non Fortuna - from which she would derive the pseudonym by which she is best known. Though in her view Dion Fortune wasn't so much a pseudonym as Violet Firth was her deadname. 

Fortune had a long-standing interest in occultism before being introduced as a neophyte in Alpha et Omega in 1919. She was well versed in psychotherapy, the works of Freud and Jung, and had experience as a medium and psychic sensitive. She'd also served in the War in the Woman's Land Army but had never been posted overseas. 

King says something interesting, though it's a bit of a non sequitur. He describes Fortune as a 'slim young girl' in 1919 and goes on to add that 'later she was to become very fat; for some reason most mediums seem to do this - probably there is some relationship between mediumship and the glandular balance of the metabolism.' Which, frankly, sounds like utter garbage, but in a game world where Y'Golonac exists there is something to be said for a fictional universe where mediums become enormous under psychic influences.

Fortune soon becomes disenchanted with the Golden Dawn's mismanagement and its lack of a rigorous training program. It doesn't help that Mathers is milking it for every spare dollar, pushing Alpha et Omega as if mystical learning is a self-help experience. Initially Fortune counters this by trying to bring in new blood, with Mathers' blessing. New recruits were a good thing for Mathers the Empire-builder. This creates the Fraternity of the Inner Light, a sub-group within Alpha et Omega, in which Fortune is a leading player. Mathers hates that idea; in Alpha et Omega, Mathers is Imperatrix, the only leading player.

Fortune and Mathers soon fall out, and Fortune alleges that Mathers engages her in psychic assault. This takes the form of a plague of cats. "I suddenly saw, coming down the stairs towards me, a gigantic tabby cat, twice the size of a tiger. It appeared absolutely solid and tangible. I stared at it petrified for a second, and then it vanished. I instantly realized that it was a simulacrum, or thought-form that was being projected by someone with occult powers." Fortune beats off this attack with her own occult powers but not without cost; when she goes to bed, she sees she has been scored as if by claws. 

Again, going back to gaming, this can be significant in a game world in which dreams, mystic cats, and Bast worship exist. Was Mathers secretly a worshipper of the cat god, or had she, by chance, discovered a means of using Bast's powers? Was Mathers a Dreamer?

This becomes even more important later, when Ms. Netta Fornario, a member of Alpha et Omega, dies under very mysterious circumstances. She travelled to Scotland in 1929, evidently engaged in some kind of ritual exercise on the Isle of Iona, and was later found dead there. Possibly her death was the result of exposure to the elements, but there were deep score marks on the body and, before her death, Netta claimed she was being attacked psychically. Fornario and Fortune were friends. Fortune believed Mathers was responsible for Fornario's death.  

By this time Mathers was dead; in fact, she died the year before Fornario's trip to Iona. Any further breach between Fortune and Mathers was irrelevant, at least in the physical realm, though Mathers' psychic influences may have remained.

Again, going back to gaming, this could also become in-game relevant if Mathers was a Dreamer, and if her Dream-self survived. Particularly if you, as Keeper, intend this to run contemporaneously with Dreamhounds of Paris, since Mathers will be in the Dream fomenting occult dissent just at the time the Dreamhounds are sculpting the Dreamlands in their own image. What would Mathers do if her Egyptian, Bast-centric artistic vision is interrupted by French Surrealists while she, at the same time, is continuing her feud with Fortune?  

By this point Fortune is utterly disenchanted with Alpha et Omega. Fortune has effective control over her own Fraternity, and she's more interested in personal development than getting bogged down in psychic attacks and the day-to-day bother of running an esoteric society. She begins corresponding with other occultists across Europe, expanding her horizons and generally making a name for herself. Not just living occultists either; through meditation she contacts Madame Blavatsky, and more esoteric entities. Her career as a writer begins to flourish, and her most well-regarded book, The Mystical Qabalah, is published in 1935. 

Ultimately, she approaches paganism, abandoning her former Christian beliefs. She begins to develop a mystical practice entirely her own, based on rituals of her own devising.

War approaches. The mystical Battle of Britain is about to begin ...

Ritual Magic (RPG All)

In the old year (feh! Fooey!) someone asked if I would write about Dion Fortune and the magical Battle of Britain. 

Happy to oblige. Before I do, let's set the scene a little and talk about ritual magic. 

Ritual magic, in Western traditions, is all about the big favors. You use it when you want to achieve a major result. In fiction this is sometimes with machines and modern (or at least modernist) technology. The Electric Pentacle and peculiar devices of Thomas Carnacki are an example of this type. You never know exactly what makes those devices hum. That isn't the point; the point is that they work. 

Same with rituals. If you really want to, you can find out how they're supposed to work. I have proof of this: academic tome after academic tome, Histories of Magic, long lists of names and attributes. All wordy, windy, esoteric. Filled with forbidden knowledge and tempting illustrations. 

However, from the point of view of the observer, how ritual magic works isn't the point. How impressive rituals are, is the point. 

Faust 1926, Murnau

The peculiar technology used by Doctor Frankenstein in the early films (and later, in Young Frankenstein) are in this tradition. Again, the desired result is something spectacular: the creation of new life, from dead clay. To achieve it an appeal is made to the heavens, and peculiar technology is used to make that appeal heard.

 Frankenstein, 1932

Early cinema, and plays like Marlowe's Faustus, latch on to this scene-play. They have those central dramatic moments when someone goes out to the crossroads on a dark night and evokes the weird. There's a suggestion that Faust and the rest are completing an esoteric ritual, but the details of that ritual are, at best, sketched in. So long as the visual is suggestive the means of getting there can slide a little bit. 

Video games pull much the same tactic. Whether it's the Rite of Thorns in Baldur's Gate 3 or any one of a dozen summoning rites in World of Warcraft, the implication is that so long as you get enough people chanting faux Latin and standing in something approximating a circle, you've got yourself some ritual goodness and can expect great results. 

In the historical record this often causes religious qualms. Appealing to forces beyond reality? Clearly diabolic. Burn those books. However, even the religious are not beyond a little magical temptation, so up springs a series of tomes that promise power from angels instead. Know the right angel, make the right appeal (in the Lord's name, of course) and you too can have whatever it is you desire. Or, if you're into slightly less work for slightly less reward, you can practice simple bibliomancy. Take out your bible, flip to a random page, and take the advice offered.  A very simple ritual designed to produce a simple result. 

But the key to ritual, whether religious or otherwise, is to know your terminology. You need to know the proper name of the angel (or whatever it may be) you're appealing to. You need to know the offerings that being wants, or the tools you'll need to make the appeal. You need to be able to recite the prayers exactly right each time, in the right order each time, as often as the ritual requires. You need to be able to do this while fasting, or while only drinking or eating the right things, or by only consuming the holy spirit, or whatever it may be. You need to get everything exactly right, possibly over a period of several days or even weeks. 

Get one little thing wrong, and the whole effort is for naught. Or, in the case of devils, get one little thing wrong and put your body and soul in peril.

The interesting thing about a ritual, I think, is that it doesn't rely on the magician, or the magician's innate power. This is the magician asking for a favor. Commanding a favor, really. They know the cheat codes, they press the correct button sequence, and boom! Magical gifts. Angels, demons, deities of the hearth or saints in charge of who-knows-what, beings that have existed before Man and which will exist after him, beings that have seen the face of God and tasted the eternal joys, suddenly bow down to some clown from Croydon, so long as that clown pronounces their name correctly and chants in the appropriate tempo.

In RPG terms, naturally the Bookhounds (or whoever it may be) aren't really appealing to angelic or devilish forces. They're relying on the Mythos to power their Megapolisomancy, their Rough Magick, or whatever else it may be. The ritual found in that collection of scrolls may reference Thoth, but to those who know it's really talking about [insert Mythos here].

Which raises a question. Most Mythos forces aren't interested in humanity and certainly aren't interested in anything humanity wants. Cthulhu could care less. Nyarlathotep is probably interested to a degree but isn't about to fetch and carry for any mortal sorcerer.

There are at least two ways to answer that question. 

The first is manipulation. Humanity isn't drawing directly on Mythos forces. Rituals are ways of channeling power, leeching power that would otherwise go to waste or be used for something else. This may be deliberate manipulation, or it may be an accidental effect, something that's survived from the days of Mu and which some mortal lucked into. When a sorcerer uses a ritual to achieve an effect that sorcerer is accessing Mythos forces that exist around us all the time, in the same way that we might dam a river or redirect a stream to irrigate cropland. We didn't create the river. We merely adapted it to our use. 

The other is natural tendencies at work. Humanity is Mythos. There's some lurking corruption at the heart of us all, and when we manipulate forces to create a ritual result we're drawing on the Mythos inside us to do it. We bring ourselves closer to Cthulhu, or whichever Old One it may be. Perhaps that's what is meant by 'the stars are right' - not that some anticipated conjunction of heavenly bodies will bring about a result, but that we are the stars spoken of in prophesy, and when our devotions over however many millennia finally bear fruit, we will be the reason why Ry'leh rises and why the Old Ones return. Like ants building a mountain, we strive in our own cause, but build something beyond our scope or our ability to understand. 

Now, next time - Dion Fortune!