Brown Finger (Bookhounds of London)

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

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

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

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

This is a Sordid plot thread. 

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

They may find themselves enmeshed by Brown Finger Johnny. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Curious Pastime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

The Blue Film Racket (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)

I thought I'd go back to Bookhounds of London this week and its Sordid side in particular, borrowing from Fabian of the Yard to fashion a scenario idea.

"Vice is like mustard," says Fabian, "The more you eat of it, the more you need before you can taste anything at all. And for such clientele, there are the Secret Cinemas, and the particular, peculiar, plush-seated and dimly lit underworld ... The patrons pay five pounds. The room is dimly lit. Free drinks tinkle on a tray. Then the lights go out and a film show begins that would turn the censor purple if he knew. But he doesn't know. Usually the film is a 16-mm, smuggled in from the Continent, or photographed behind locked doors, to be shown in London's underworld cinemas. There are at least a dozen such secret studios in London today where films of this type can be seen."

Then moving to Fabian's jeremiad on Satanic practices:

"If sinful cinemas are not enough, there are practitioners of evil who will arrange to raise the Devil himself to be your sulphurous nocturnal playmate! The practice of Black Magic - of diabolical religious rites in the heart of London - is spreading steadily. There is more active Satan worship today than ever since the Dark Ages, when witches were publicly burned on Tower Hill ... Some firmly believe the world is a battleground between God and Satan, and if they declare themselves with the Devil, he will aid their success in life, and even a certain amount of comfort in Hell, with the chance of being reborn periodically as leaders of worldly wickedness. Others - perhaps the majority - attend a Black Mass to see a cheap thrill. They have heard of obscene ceremonies - naked girl priestesses - blood sacrifices of cats and goats - lewd flagellation and evil drums."

Now here's something interesting about a Temple of Satanism that Fabian alleges operated in his London:

"There is a house in Lancaster Gate that consists of one-room flatlets. The landlord and his wife occupy the ground floor and basement. Each room has a covered wash-bowl, a rather dispirited bed, a slot-meter gas fire, rickety table and two wooden chairs. The landlord's wife dabbles in spiritualism, sometimes holds private séances. Her husband is an amateur herbalist. Their flatlets are seldom taken for more than a few days. They are too dingy and untended to be comfortable. Guests come and go. Among them come and go the Satanists. Down in the cellar is a small doorway - probably at one time it was a fireplace. It leads through to the house whose walls adjoin it. The front door of this house faces onto an entirely different street. It is privately owned, and, from its cellar, stairs go up to an old-fashioned service lift-shaft, up which a spiral metal staircase ascends and stops at a sliding door, padded wit black felt. Beyond this door is a private Temple of Satanism!"

When I discussed Fabian before I mentioned I was unhappy with him as a factual source. I still am. There's just too much sensation-stirring here for Fabian to be believable. That said, an unreliable source has its uses so long as that source is of the era. I wouldn't touch Fabian if he'd been writing in the 1970s about the 1920s, but he wasn't. He was writing in the 1950s about the 1940s and 1930s. He talks in the voice of his time about the concerns of his time. If you write period fiction you need to capture that voice, and if that means reading a load of old whallop that's fine, so long as it's period whallop.

In Bookhounds of London there are at least two syndicates or societies that would get involved in the blue film trade: the Hsieh-Tzu Fan with its Soho stronghold, and Keirechires with its interest in sexual crime and pornography. I'm going to write this from the perspective of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan, and start with Brown Finger Johnny.

John Draper, aka Brown-Finger.
Athletics 4, Conceal 6, Electrical Repair 3, Fleeing 8, Health 5, Mechanical Repair 3
Academic specialty: Photography
Description: disheveled, always wears brown overcoat, persistent shaving cuts, fingers stained brown from film development chemicals and nicotine.
Notes: low-level subordinate of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan in charge of production and distribution of blue films.

Brown-Finger replaced Queenie Sutton as head of Soho's blue film racket a few years ago, when Queenie's place was raided by the police. Brown-Finger's supposed to be fantastically wealthy but you wouldn't know it to look at him. They say his continued success is due to friends on the Vice Squad, but he certainly has friends somewhere or one of the other racketeers would have claimed his territory long ago.

In the opening scene Brown-Finger approaches the protagonists with a proposition. He needs a new location for one of his secret cinemas. This is a completely new line for him, because the films he'll show aren't just porn; it's Satanic themed blue films. In the Devil's Bondage, New Flesh to the Altar, Her First Time, and more. All he needs is space. He'll provide the rest.

The protagonists either say yes or no at this point.

If they say no, then Brown-Finger gets his friends on the Vice Squad to pay the protagonists a visit. The Vice Squad cops search the place from top to bottom, making a mess and a lot of noise, scaring off customers. If by some chance the protagonists have anything in the shop worthy of the Vice Squad's attention then they may find themselves in gaol. Otherwise this is just a strong-arm attempt, and after the Vice Squad's paid the shop a visit Brown-Finger shows up. He's very sorry this happened, but he can offer a solution. Work with him, let him set up a cinema, and the Vice Squad problem will go away.

If they keep saying no then the Vice Squad start turning up at their homes as well, or stopping them in the street or in public. A few incidents like this and the shop will suffer a Reversal. Once the shop suffers a Reversal, assuming the protagonists still say no Brown-Finger will leave them alone. He has other prospects.

Should the protagonists still say no and follow up on Brown Finger's schemes, everything happens as per Yes except it happens to a rival book store. The protagonists can opt to help or hurt this store as they see fit.

If they say yes then Brown-Finger shows up with a van full of furniture - mostly leather chairs - some bottles of booze, and the film projector. The idea is to show these films for a small paying audience, maybe eight to ten at a time, three times a week. Brown-Finger pockets the cash, paying a small amount to the protagonists "for your trouble." Brown-Finger takes the lion's share. Brown-Finger doesn't need a lot of space to set this up. He could easily work in an attic or cellar, but if that isn't suitable then he's happy to draw the curtains in the main room and work there. He just needs privacy. Most of the time Brown-Finger won't be there; he sends an assistant, Sneery Harry, to run the projector, collect the cash and serve the drinks.

The clients are a mixed bag. They all have money; Brown-Finger wouldn't be interested if they didn't. Some are respectable middle-class types, whose reputations would be ruined if word of this were to get out. Some are much less respectable, but none of them are out-and-out criminals. A tight group of hard-core customers, the ones who come back week after week, want to become Satanists and think this is one way in.

The films are nasty stuff, and showcase plenty of S&M, gore and occultism. However there's a strong Mythos element too, and protagonists with Cthulhu Mythos may recognize some of the 'demons' as Mythos entities. Ghouls and Deep Ones make frequent appearances. At the Keeper's discretion these films may grant Cthulhu Mythos gains.

The films are all shot at the same location. The Knowledge and repeated viewing can work out where it could be, judging by clues left in the prints by careless editors and cameramen. However this only determines in which district - North, West, East, South, the City - the films were shot. Streetwise and Occult are needed after that to work out exactly where the temple is, and this phase of the investigation involves several visits to the seedier sides of London. Informants are likely to be Rough Lads, Prostitutes, Loungers, Beggars and Bright Young Things. Sneery Harry, if the protagonists lean on him, resists Intimidation - he knows Brown-Finger can hurt him far more than a bunch of booksellers ever could - but Flattery works wonders and Shadowing is Difficulty 4, or 3 if he's been drinking. This phase of the investigation will almost certainly involve an Antagonist Reaction from those 'demons' seen earlier, unless the protagonists are exceptionally discreet.

The final showdown is at the temple, which proves to be a well-disguised stronghold in the City. As described above, the actual entrance is via a block of 'flats' though the temple itself is in the building next door. The Satanists who stay in the flats are all cultists keeping watch over the place, and the two rooming house owners are senior members of the Satanist ring who may know some Mythos magic. Brown-Finger doesn't get involved in this side of the business; it's far above his pay grade. He shoots the films and makes sure they get an audience, but anything other than that is for actual members of Hsieh-Tzu Fan. Combat here is mostly with mooks, but if the protagonists want to avoid getting their heads kicked in they can get the police involved instead, as long as they can bypass the crooked members of the Vice Squad and get hard evidence about the porn ring. (He says with no double-entendre intended.)

If the protagonists do anything to seriously jeopardize this source of income, Hsieh-Tzu Fan will mark them down as enemies to be destroyed. Thus kicking off a whole new series of scenarios, I suspect.

That's it for this week! Talk soon.

Trail of Cthulhu Sordid London: Fabian of the Yard

Detective Inspector Robert Fabian, ex-Scotland Yard, author, and TV personality, is one of those sources you have to treat with caution. His book, London After Dark, is in my collection, and it's an entertaining read.  The difficulty is, Fabian's a relentless self-publicist intent on creating his own mythology, and you have to be cautious about taking his word as gospel. That said, anyone seeking source material for a Bookhounds of London game would do well to seek out a copy, particularly if they want to create a Sordid London setting. Endless data mining can be had, provided you're prepared to hold your nose when Fabian goes off on another tangent.

Bob Fabian started his police career in the early 1920s, and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Detective Superintendent, and head of the Vice Squad. He's the eponymous pipe-smoking British hero, the kind of brains-and-brawn policeman that wouldn't have been out of place in an Agatha Christie novel. If he ever failed, you wouldn't know it by London After Dark; time after time, he collars the crook he's after, often in spectacular fashion. After retirement he turned his career into a television series, Fabian of the Yard, drawn from episodes of his career, bookended by appearances by Fabian himself, describing what happened in the real-life case. And what a career it must have been; everything from dope king Eddie Manning right through to Satanist enclaves and perverts in the 1950s. Fabian's the sort of detective who'll casually describe blacks as having the "brains of children" while at the same time displaying pictures of himself having a pint with his "colored" friends; who'll describe marihuana and cocaine in the most lurid terms imaginable; who'll casually link homosexuality with perversion and child molestation. He's a man of his times, no error, and very fond of the spotlight to boot. It's not as if he was the only one publishing his memoirs - Edward Greeno's War On The Underworld's well worth looking at, among others - but there's something slightly off-putting about Fabian's eagerness to be in the center of things. As a reader, you're left with the impression he'd let nothing stand in the way of a good story, which can be very worrying if you're relying on your source for factual accuracy.

As this is Trail of Cthulhu we're talking about, factual accuracy is the least of our worries. Let's get down to cases, and talk about two useful things to be drawn from Fabian's reminisces: night clubs, and young criminals.

"There are 295 registered clubs within one mile of Eros Statue in Piccadilly," says Fabian, "where music, dancing drinks and companions await the well-filled wallet. The job is to empty that wallet - whether they do it with pink champagne and satin-quilted walls; or by meth-and-ginger ale, marijuana cigarettes and tope-jumpy teenage girls who, for two pounds, would cuddle a baboon." Of course, if there are 295 registered clubs, there are bound to be plenty of unregistered ones too - Fabian claims to know of fifteen - none of them very expensive to set up or run. A single room, a few tables, some chairs, and girls; that's all a clubman needs. Then, much as now, a club could shut up in a week crushed by debt, or run for years with the efficiency and morals of a rat trap. Some were very inventive. "The Hell Club ... was installed with hidden lighting that changed color slowly, at a time when this was quite a novelty, and sank from pink to deep red and ghastly purple, and with various effects to make flickering shadows. I have no doubt that some of the patrons must have thought they had actually arrived!" Or there were the American clubs, like the 21 and the Be-Bop, with the exotic appeal of the foreign and unfamiliar. It was a toss-up which approach worked better, the no-expense-spared or the budget option; a club's appeal is ephemeral, and often depends as much on the mood of the moment as the decor or the head waiter.

From a Bookhounds point of view, the typical Club is in Westminster, and the contacts most often met there are barmen, bright young things, inspectors and bobbies (during a raid), prostitutes and gamblers. Gambling is illegal in London, as is prostitution, which - according to Fabian - led to a novel defense against the income tax brigade. Fabian alleged that, when asked, notorious women would declare without shame "I am a prostitute of London," at which point the income tax inspectors backed hurriedly away. The last thing they wanted to do was get involved. Gamblers had a different problem; when they lost, they were expected to pay up. Sometimes gamblers relied on the Gaming Act, which essentially said that debts arising from gambling were unenforceable. They hoped to brazen it out. But if their creditor has criminal connections, they might sell the debt on to a gang, which has its own means of debt collection.

 Now let's talk about criminals.

"'Pity you wasn't here last night, Mr. Fabian,' said the barman. 'You never seen such a mess as those villains made of that girl!'" They suspected her of being a nark, a police informant. The three walked into the bar, ordered three pints, and a bottle of brandy. They drank their beer, then poured the brandy into an empty pint pot. "'He goes across to this girl. Have a drink, Rabbit, he says, and tips it all over her. Face, hair, clothes - the lot! Ever get neat brandy in your eyes, Mr. Fabian? Well, she starts to scream, claws at her eyeballs. He just grins. He takes out his cigarette lighter and calmly sets her off like a Christmas pudding!"

 It's well known that the police and the criminals they chase, in period, seldom carry firearms. That doesn't stop violence; if anything, it becomes more inventive. Some of the worst offenders are children. They might wear makeshift armor, metal shields under their shirts that cover them from wrist to elbow, intended to protect their arms and wrists from knives, razors and chains. They always have some kind of sharp weapon, whether it's a set of rings with hooks embossed, or fish hooks sewn into their jacket sleeves and hat brims. If that sounds like something trivial, imagine having half a dozen fish hooks embedded in your face, then pulled out in one long scraping motion, just by a seeming casual brush-by. There isn't a criminal in London that goes unarmed, and the Keeper should assume each has the equivalent of a knife (-1) at the least. The only saving grace, when dealing with a professional crook, is that the pro is usually too careful to get mixed up in violence. They don't like prison, but it's never difficult to find an amateur - again, often children, or teens - willing to do something drastic for a nominal fee. "There are crazy young hoodlums of the underworld, hungry to make a reputation for being tough, who will slash your face for twenty five pounds, though they know they will be arrested within a very short time of doing it!"

But there are gunmen. "The true gunman is always slender, with agitated appearance, like a man who has been kept waiting. He is solitary. Also, he loves his gun. He cleans it frequently. When I arrested the gunman who did London's first daylight armed robbery of a jeweler's in Oxford Street, he was busy loading his gun in his bedroom. He had polished every cartridge until it glittered. If he hadn't been so particular his gun might have been loaded when we burst in." The true gunman always has grey eyes, according to Fabian; make of it what you will. The gunman knows that his natural prey - cashiers and clerks, perhaps carrying payroll - is also armed, but they couldn't hit a doorway at ten paces, and frequently don't bother to take care of their weapons. The true gunman doesn't fear them, but he'll be wary of shooting a policeman, not because he has a conscience but because he knows that, as soon as the deed's done, every single patrolman and officer - 16,000 men - will be after him, day and night. And after arrest, the hangman. 

I hope you found this useful! I may return to Fabian later; he's a fund of odd trivia, even if I wonder about his reliability as a source.