a ghost town is more than just a few forms. I think of it in these terms: first a town loses its ability, then its vitality, and shortly after that it becomes a ghost
Here's another practical example, inspired by various internet posts but particularly this one.
Goussainville, Val-d'Oise is close to Paris and was at one time an ordinary place. Then someone built an airport next door. Air and noise pollution was bad enough, but then a Russian aircraft crashed during a show killing several residents, all the air crew, and destroying a portion of the town. What was already a steady decrease in population became a flood, and the old town emptied out.
An architectural wrinkle prevents significant regeneration. The 14th century church of St Paul and St Peter at the heart of Goussainville is protected by the state. Neither it nor any building within 500 meters can be altered in any significant way. While parts of Goussainville are thriving, the old town is a graffiti-pocked shell of its former self.
I think of ghost towns in small sandbox terms. There may or may not be a convenient central hub - a general store, an inn, a church - but the town's story is scattered roundabout, which means there will be different kinds of experiences to be had.
That's what we're looking at here. There is a central hub - the church, the abandoned mansion, the old supermarket - but the ghost town's story is scattered across several locations. If they want to follow up on certain angles (the Russian plane crash, eg) they might have to leave the town altogether and go hunting in old archives. Perhaps they'll find old television footage:
Perhaps they'll find first responders or former government employees, now long retired to [somewhere far away from here] who have vivid memories of the event. Perhaps this, perhaps that, but the central point is that the story is large and will be found in several locations, not all of which are obvious.
Let's give this an Esoterror angle.
To The Devil A Daughter: Bundyclub, France
Bundyclub, from the Esoterrorists main book, is a group of otherwise unconnected people who become serial killers under the direction of John Michael Loehr, a ringleader figure who communicates with all of them online. The group began as killer fans, and later, under Loehr's direction, become killers.
Bundyclub acquires an international dimension when Loehr contacts a Frenchman, Gabin Bazin, through the same internet forum.
Bazin's fascinated by killer Marcel Barbeault, aka The Shadow, who Bazin believes committed at least one murder in Goussainville: Bazin's mother, Esme. Bazin believes the murder was never solved, at least in part, because of the plane crash which interrupted the investigation.
Loher's corpsejabber controller 'Maria' perked up when Bazin's dead mother was mentioned in chat. Could Bazin be tempted down the same path as Loehr, becoming the center of a French Esoterror daughter cell?
It's been two years since that initial contact. Now Bazin has a corpse on his back and a murder basement in one of the abandoned buildings in Goussainville. Like Loher, Bazin has been gathering like-minded individuals online. They plan their first killing soon. A target in Paris has been picked out.
However, unlike Loher Bazin hasn't quite mastered the dark arts of internet security, and the French authorities have picked up his trail. The OV is dropped a hint: somewhere in Goussainville a dark secret is hid, but where exactly - and what?
Recently someone discovered desiccated human remains in a garage in Ohio, but you'll be pleased to hear that, just this once, it wasn't a gruesome murder.
The tip-off came when a neighbor heard what's been described as 'youthful voices' coming from a detached garage in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Further investigation uncovered no suspicious youths (I firmly believe it was four meddling kids and a dog) but did find the bones of what proved to be a very long dead gent.
Turns out the garage was formerly a different building altogether, and was used by the Odd Fellows as a lodge. The bones were kept there for ritual purposes. Time passes, lodge changes hands, lodge is torn down to be turned into a garage, and lo and behold here's our pal Bonesy.
What do you do when you find a corpse in your new garage? Why, you keep it, of course. The new owner didn't seem inclined to, I don't know, bury the dead, but he wasn't going to turf the poor thing out with the trash. He boxed it and forgot it. Then someone else found it.
The Odd Fellows is a very old masonic organization. The first lodges date back to the 18th century, and nobody really knows what they got up to; its traditions are shrouded in antiquity and, as any historian will tell you, the absolute best way to make everything clear as mud is to shroud the historical record in antiquity. Broadly speaking it's a charitable, philanthropic organization with a penchant for fraternalism and benevolence. Sounds very nice, I'm sure.
Hot Fuzz, second in the Cornetto Trilogy
The Catholics didn't like 'em much, but then the Catholic Church in its day has condemned everything that isn't Catholic and some things that are, so it's not that difficult to see why the Church might have had a downer on the Odd Fellows.
If you want to know more about the Odd Fellows there is an interesting book over on Gutenberg, first published 1901, about the American branch of the Odd Fellows.
On Jericho Road is about as gnomic and mystical as you could possibly hope for. It poses the obvious question: "If," it is demanded, "the aims and purposes of the order be legitimate and praiseworthy, why shroud them in mystery rather than give them the broad sunlight of publicity." only to answer it with the most banal retort possible. "But if the preference of Odd-Fellowship be for quieter and less obtrusive methods, pray who shall fairly contest its right of choice?"
If it specifically mentions bones and peculiar rituals, I didn't notice. That said, I couldn't read it cover to cover and I shall be surprised if you manage it. If you wanted some bland yet useful text to make a mystic, or even Mythos, tome out of, you certainly couldn't do any worse.
We travel from star to star, from system to system, until we reach yon lonely star that appears to be performing the Guardian's task, upon the verge of unmeasured and immeasurable space. We may descry and describe the form and outlines of those heavenly bodies, detect their movements and approximately determine their distances and dimensions. But what more? Little that is satisfying ...
OK, let's talk gamification. This could be a purist Trail of Cthulhu scenario. In that event the Lodge gets knocked down, say, in the 1890s and replaced with [insert building here - something modern and industrial]. There's a fair amount of junk left over from the old Lodge and the building's new owner can't be bothered to throw it out, so it ends up in the spare room. You know the type. Every office has one. Nobody remembers what its original use was; now it's a place you put things you don't want to have to think about.
It could also be Fear Itself, or Esoterrorists, or any one of a dozen different modernist settings. Given the Youthful Voices, it could also make a fun BubbleGumshoe scenario. It might be a little tricky to turn it into Night's Black Agents since, in that setting, finding human remains in an unexpected place is just another Tuesday, and not a very exiting one at that. However if you replace the human remains with, say, any of the relics from Dracula Dossier, or some similar McGuffin, you're off to the races.
Let's round out with a few story seeds.
The premise: someone finds human remains in a [mundane setting] and it turns out that these bones are older than expected and came from the building that used to be on this spot, but which was torn down forty years ago to make room for this one. What happened, and what will happen next?
What happened: the old building used to be an occult lodge, and the bones were kept for ritual purposes.
What will happen next: The new lodge, located somewhere else in town, is startled to discover its old ritual artefacts hidden away in some forgotten spot, and will do its best to get them back - using magic, if they have to.
What happened: the old building used to be a funeral home, and was put out of business because it was breaking all sorts of laws regarding the disposal of human remains. The new owner found these bones, decided they didn't need the negative publicity, and put them somewhere forgettable.
What will happen next: The former owner of those bones wants to be buried properly, and will haunt the finders until they do that.
What happened: the old building was someone's home, back in the 1840s or thereabouts, and they wanted to be buried on the old homestead. So they were. The bones were excavated as part of the new build and the developer didn't want the headaches that come with admitting you've found human remains on the property. So they hid the bones.
What will happen next: The bones become the focal point for a peculiar kind of time dilation. The psychic powers of the dead person were such time doesn't really exist for them: it's always 1840, where they are. Now they've been disturbed the bones will start rebuilding reality to fit its internal vision: first the bedroom where they spent their final hours, then the rest of the house, hall by hall. Soon people in the new building will find themselves walking into the old, by accident, and there's no telling when or how they'll get out again ...
Most of you will have noticed that the world will soon come to an end thanks to a Japanese rock and an ancient curse, as attested by pretty much every newspaper in the Western Hemisphere. Possibly the writers were looking for a distraction from current events.
The rock in question is the Killing Stone or Sessho-seki, which until last week contained the corpse of Tamamo-no-Mae, a beautiful woman who had been part of a secret plot hatched by a feudal warlord to kill Emperor Toba. Tamamo-no-Mae was actually a nine-tail fox - a trickster spirit - and when caught in the act the Emperor had her remains imprisoned forever. Or so he believed.
Original Theatrical Poster
Most newspaper accounts mention that her story inspired an anime film, but none that I've seen went into any depth. Which is a pity, as the anime makes for a good story.
Incidentally I owe my information to the kindness of Ian Horner of Loadingreadyrun fame, a gentlemen whose Twitter feed and many comedy videos I highly recommend.
Once upon a time in 1960s Japan there was a man named Gentaro Nakajima who wanted nothing more than to make his magnum opus, Kyubi no Kitsune to Tobimaru, a horror(ish) fantasy anime. He switched to anime because nobody was willing to back his original idea, a live-action film. As it turns out there weren't many people willing to back his anime version either, and it proved to be a box-office dud which only showed in one cinema for a very limited period in 1968.
Crushed, the disappointed filmmaker retired from showbusiness and gave the original print of the film to one of his sons. That gentlemen speculated unwisely, and committed suicide in the aftermath of a bribery scandal. The original print - the only version thought at that time to exist - vanished altogether, and for many years was considered a lost film.
Not so. A print was found, and is currently in the vaults of the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. It has never seen a commercial release of any kind since 1968, though the Library has shown it several times.
So, in one breath we have: a curse. A broken sacred stone. A luckless anime that ruined the life of its creator, potentially also his son, and currently lives in a library vault like some scorpion lurking in a shadow. Or a nine-tail fox spirit hiding in a rock, come to that.
Given that one of the characteristics of a nine-tail fox is its desire to consume the flesh and/or souls of men this is a story that fits nicely into Nights Black Agents, but it could as easily be an Esoterrorists plot, Fear Itself, Delta Green or any modern-day horror setting. With a bit of finagling it could be a Cyberpunk plot; lost mysterious anime lurks on the Net, allegedly killing any runner foolish enough to seek it out. Is it some crazed AI, an urban legend, something else? Or, depending on the nature of Japan in your RED world, what really happened to the Killing Stone way back in the dim and distant past of 2022, and why is Arasaka so concerned about it? Is it because one of Gentaro Nakajima's heirs is now a senior figure in Arasaka who'd rather nobody remembered the past, or is there some other reason?
OK, all that said, let's gamify.
Lost But Not Forgotten
The original print of Kyubi no Kitsune to Tobimaru turns up at a minor auction or flea market, perhaps in Japan, perhaps somewhere else. The person who buys it has no idea what they have, but they do know it's anime, so they offer it up for viewing at a minor anime convention in [choose location now].
All twenty of the people who watch it are found dead over the next few days, brutally butchered and partially eaten.
If this is a Fear Itself game or a similar setting, where the characters are ordinary people who are unwitting victims of unearthly forces, then they were among the audience that day and recognized the film for what it was, but they aren't dead - yet.
The viewing takes place shortly before Monday 7th March; the cracking of the Killing Stone is when the murders start.
Options:
The killer is the alleged 'discoverer' of the anime, who actually faked it in order to lure in victims. This person believes, perhaps incorrectly, that they're a fox spirit on the verge of achieving the unthinkable: ascension to Heaven, after a thousand-year cycle. To complete that cycle and achieve the ascendance they deserve, they need a *lot* of energy - hence the killings. The victims are sacrificial, and the whole point of getting them to watch the anime is to make them understand, even on a subconscious level, their place in the grand scheme of things.
The 'original print' was faked by Esoterrorists (or a similar cult-style group) who added a special scene not found in the version held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. That scene is the true killer; the monster hides in it like a vampire in its coffin, but once it's exposed to an audience it lives in their minds - until it can creep out and kill them. It might emerge from a painting, a mirror, or a television screen, but it's really coming from inside the victim's memory. The intent is to spread fear, but also to generate interest in the 'psychic killer' anime. If enough interest is generated more people will seek it out, creating more mind monsters ...
The problem isn't the film. The problem is the mold growing on the film reel. It's pretty toxic stuff. It does damage the film a little, but not so that it makes it unwatchable - though the effect is clearly visible, and anyone with knowledge of old film knows what's causing it. However, if you breathe that stuff in it can warp your mind in very unpleasant ways. The original discoverer is the most dramatically affected; they're living in a very dark closet trying to keep the mind weasels at bay. Meanwhile some of the audience, less dramatically afflicted, are seeking out the other audience members to 'commune' - that is, to kill and eat - their fellow sufferers. They see it as further exploring their shared experience. One of them has the film reel, and will do anything to show it to others - bringing more people into the shared experience.
I've recently read Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain's Cold War Spy Master by Paddy Hayes. I'll talk more about this on a YSDC Bookshelf, so look out for that, but today I'm going to borrow an anecdote from Park's experiences as a neophyte intelligence operative in Moscow, in the 1950s.
Park and a colleague decided to visit Kalinin, now known by its old name Tver, a medieval township not far from Moscow. The idea was to get a first-hand glimpse of the nearby air base, but they were out for whatever they could get. They arrived at the train station, wandered around and discovered
... what looked like an interesting building - interesting in that the dozen or so ground floor windows were barred. As they passed the entrance they glanced in. There was no one around but in the gloom they could make out a bank of telephones. Beside the phones were instructions telling people how to use them to denounce their neighbors. Citizens were to pick up the handset, wait for an official and then dictate their denunciation, remembering to provide full details of the guilty party. Park and Deverill stared at one another; telephones were unknown in ordinary Soviet households, so the solution was to provide a bank of phones to allow people to drop in and inform on their fellows. It must be the local KGB office, they decided ... There was no one guarding the entrance so they stepped in for a closer look ...
Things got a bit sticky from that point on.
It's relatively easy to get a Soviet-era telephone from the 1950s, but given the scarcity of such phones at the time it's likely any phone from that period comes either from a well-to-do household or from a situation like this. Banks of phones in a KGB office, with only one purpose: to help people inform on their neighbors. Whispering evil down the phone line, at any hour of the day or night.
Sympathetic magic is a process in which an otherwise inanimate object is imbued with power. It's based on the idea that one can influence something based on its relationship or resemblance to another thing, which is why so many herbal remedies involve plants that physically resemble a part of the human body. It's most often seen in fiction as the voodoo doll; stick a pin in it and watch the victim dance.
Scooby Doo, Where Are You?
However you don't need intent to create a powerful totem out of an inanimate object. The yokai entity tsukumogami, from Japanese folklore, is essentially an item of clothing or tool that, over time, has come to life, developing a spirit (if not a soul) of its own. Anything that has long associations with people can develop a personality all its own.
Here you have an antique telephone, a battered old bakelite, that's been around for who knows how long. It's something you might find in an antique shop or just some weird kitsch collectables store. Or maybe it's sitting in some abandoned offices, a government facility, or maybe stacked up in a warehouse somewhere. The example I'm using is inspired by Park's story, but it could as easily have come from, say, a prison, or a military bunker. Anywhere, really.
What happens if you pick up the phone and listen?
What happens if the phone starts to ring?
I'm going to use Night's Black Agents as a base for gamification, but this is an idea that can as easily be used in Esoterrorists, Delta Green - any horror game.
All you need is a phone with a nasty history.
Supernatural: vampires are the result of magical or other supernatural activities on Earth; spirits, ghosts, witchcraft and the like. Want to talk with the dead? This can help, but it's a party line so expect frequent interruptions from Heaven only knows who. Think of it as a medium's planchette, except you need a generous helping of blood to make it work. Sinner's blood, for preference. The blacker the sins, the better the result. Vampires sometimes use these phones to communicate with others in the network, since this is one telephone line mortal investigators can't tap. As vampires are effectively 'dead' as far as the telephone's concerned a vampire can easily talk to another vampire, but it's completely useless for talking with anyone else in the network - a Renfield, say.
Damned: Vampires are the work of Satan or other explicitly demonic creatures opposed to mankind and God. Those who know how can use these hideous reminders of times best forgotten as a means of enhanced interrogation. The remorseless voice on the other end of the line keeps probing, probing. It knows what you have done. You can't save yourself. The only way to earn mercy is to confess ... Treat this as +1 Maneuver in a Thrilling Interrogation challenge, boosted to +2 if the voice on the other end of the line is a dead friend. Agents can use this device if they know how, but doing so is a 5 Difficulty Stability check.
Alien: Vampires are alien beings, or earthly beings who nevertheless follow different laws of physics. It looks like a telephone. It acts like a telephone. It seems so normal. And yet ... and yet ... The chief advantage of a device like this is, if you know how, it can talk to the past. It can't talk to anyone before its creation date, so a phone made in 1952 can't talk to someone in 1951. Nor can it talk to anyone after its disconnection date, so a phone disconnected in 1978 can't talk to anyone from 1980. However, within those constraints it can talk to anyone you like - so long as you know what their phone number would have been. Of course, sometimes the past calls you, for reasons best not to think about.
Mutant: Vampires are earthly beings infected or changed by (or into) some freak of nature. It might look like a telephone but that's clearly organic material in there. It's some kind of hybrid, patchwork relic, and it might be capable of thought. Probably not any more intelligent than a baby, which does raise the unsettling question of where the vampires got that organic material from. Used by Nodes to talk to other Nodes, and is capable of interfacing with computer networks, though the results are unpredictable.
This week's post is dedicated to Rent-A-Hitman, the only professional killer service with a HIPPA (Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964) guarantee.
The site, operated by Californian repo-man Bob Innes and not Guido Fanelli, alleged owner of a family business that's been in operation since the 1920s, has been in operation since Innes came up with the joke company back in 2005. Some people take it very seriously. Wendy Wein of Michigan hired Guido to off her husband, only to discover that Rent-A-Hitman was, alas, a fake site. You can't really call it a scam, since the intent was never to defraud. Innes keeps the site going as a modern version of the big store, with all serious enquiries passed to law enforcement for follow-up.
Wendy pled guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced in January. She's looking at a potential 9-year bit, possibly more.
"I really didn’t think that people were gonna be that stupid," Innes told Rolling Stone. "Boy, did they show me."
In RPG terms, Guido/Innes is a variation on Mister Johnson. He's the middleman who sets you - that is, you the characters - up with a job. Nobody ever sees his face. He's the voice on the other end of the phone, the admin behind the website. Except in this instance there is no Mr. Johnson; there's just a dude setting you up for a fall.
Mr. Johnsons are often seen as shady types setting the characters up for a fall. It happens so often, in fact, that some systems go out of their way to explicitly say their Mr. Johnson is a stand-up fella who would never lie. The Esoterrorists, for instance, says outright that Mr. or Ms. Verity does not tell lies. They may not know the whole truth, but they won't stab you in the back.
Whereas the handlers in Delta Green might well withhold information if it suits them, or set agents up for something nasty - particularly if this is Fall Of, where the agency is on shaky ground from the get-go. Meanwhile Shadowrun's iconic Mr. Johnsons are about as reliable as a chocolate teapot, and the less said about the fixers and bullshit artists of Cyberpunk, the better.
Which got me thinking: how best to play with the Mr. Johnson concept?
The mysterious employer who turns up mysteriously dead has been used once or twice before. Perhaps the most notorious version is Our Good Friend Jackson Elias from Call of Cthulhu's Masks of Nyarlathotep, though the Dracula Dossier pulls a similar stunt with Hawkins. Call of Cthulhu also has Professor Smith from Horror on the Orient Express, who brings the characters together, funds them, sets them on their way and then keels over dead at the appropriate moment.
The mysterious employer who turns out to be a bad-ass is less widely used, but not uncommon. Again, going back to Shadowrun, the Great Western Dragon Lofwyr occasionally masquerades as a Johnson, or in this instance a Herr Brackhaus. Dracula Dossier also plays on this a little bit, in that any of their Legacies or more esoteric Johnsons could turn out to be a master spy or supernatural entity playing at being human.
The mysterious employer who turns out to be a puppet of sinister forces is perhaps a little too mechanically similar to the mysterious employer who turns out to be an evil back-stabber, or the main villain. Still, you could get some play out of that, particularly if 'puppet' in this instance is literal - that the Johnson is just skin, or a mask, with nothing organic underneath. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, says the Great and Powerful Oz ...
One possible alternative to the puppet scenario is a Mr. Johnson who's being squeezed, maybe because they owe someone money. This version will not have the characters' best interests at heart, but that doesn't mean they actually want to betray the characters. No, what Mr. Johnson wants is to be free of the complicating factor that's making his life a living hell. That makes him unreliable, but not automatically evil. If the complicating factor can be dealt with, Mr. Johnson's reliability improves dramatically.
Hitman the video game series makes good use of a Mr. Johnson - in this case, a Ms. Burnwood - who works with the titular Hitman to bring down the system from within. They both have their reasons for wanting to destroy the agency they work for, the International Contract Agency (ICA). While they marshal their forces they carry out a series of assassinations for ICA's clients, waiting for the day when they can turn ICA inside out and gut it. In that instance Ms. Burnwood is 100% (or, well, 99% at least) trustworthy, but the agency they both work for definitely is not.
E3 2015 Trailer
In Dracula Dossier terms, a similar arrangement could easily be had with Edom, the spy agency that brought Dracula in from the cold. The agents could be loyal servants of the Crown, at least outwardly, while their Mr. Johnson helps them take Edom apart from within.
Alternatively in DD Damned campaigns, or anything with a strong supernatural element, your Mr. Johnson could, quite literally, be working for God. The Mysterious Monseigneur is a DD classic, but really any setting with clerics who serve a particular deity would fit. In such a situation your characters aren't just trying to fulfil a contract or obligation; they're trying to please a supernatural sugar daddy.
Again, Mr. Johnson can be exactly as they seem to be and yet not. So for example the Mysterious Monseigneur could have all the trappings and outward appearance of a man of God, and yet be serving Satan - which would be a magnificent third act twist.
In Medias Res: A narrative work beginning in medias res (Classical Latin: [ɪn ˈmɛdɪ.aːs ˈreːs], lit. "into the middle of things") opens in the midst of the plot. Often, exposition is bypassed and filled in gradually, through dialogue, flashbacks or description of past events. For example, Hamlet begins after the death of Hamlet's father. Characters make reference to the King's death without the plot's first establishment of said fact. [Wikipedia]
RPG scenarios tend to start with a prologue. Delta Green, Esoterrorists and similar often begin with the agents' handler - Ms. Green, let's say - explaining the basic plot, location and suspected opposition forces in a briefing. That briefing might take place in some nondescript government offices, a cheap motel room, an airport conference room - bland, inoffensive, non-threatening.
In fantasy settings the trope is 'we all meet at a tavern.' There is a brief moment when the group is not a Group. They meet. In a tavern. Awkwardness ensues, introductions are made, then off to fight the whatever-it-may-be.
This made a certain amount of sense before session zero became standard. Players often created their characters on their own and brought them to the table. The tavern was the first moment the other players got to meet Humphrey Gobbletoes, Halfling Rogue and fetishist. However, if everyone made their characters together in session zero then most of the players should have an idea who their fellow characters are.
When possible, I prefer starting with action.
Touch of Evil, Orson Welles
Starting with action in a TTRPG context has special challenges. In a film, there's usually only one or two main characters so the focus can be on them from the moment the film starts. In a TTRPG setting there can be six or more main characters, so the focus has to be split six ways.
Consider Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog(1949), a crime thriller set in post-war Tokyo (or, as Kurosawa would have put it, modern day). It tells the story of green recruit Homicide Detective Murakami, whose police-issue Colt has been stolen by a pickpocket while Murakami was on a crowded bus. The plot opens with shamed and fearful Murakami admitting to his boss that his gun has been stolen, and he has no excuse for what happened.
You couldn't do the same thing with a group of six. Either five characters stand off to one side while one of them admits the deed, or all six have their Colts stolen - which might work in Toon, but not elsewhere.
No, whatever the situation is all the players have to be in it up to their necks. That means they share the scene, whatever it is, and it has equal weight for all of them.
Equal weight is key. If there is a physical threat, it hurts all of them. If there is a problem, it affects all of them. Otherwise some players begin the plot less invested than others, and if they start that way they will probably stay that way.
They don't have to have the same goals. A zombie scenario can start with a bunch of cops chasing a bunch of bad guys into the cemetery, abandoned warehouse or what-have-you. The cops and bad guys start with diametrically opposed goals and might end the scenario trying to meet those same goals. But the problem is the zombies, and it affects all of them equally.
Let's talk about some possibilities and map them to GUMSHOE titles.
Night's Black Agents (Vanilla). Opening Location: Airport. Task: Snatch Job. The agents are tasked with bringing in, alive, a person of interest to their employer. Opening Moment: the Snatch went ahead as planned and they have the person of interest. Unfortunately whatever means they had in mind to subdue or render the target unconscious didn't work (let the players say why that happened) so the target is very much alive and kicking. Starting Heat: 4, increasing to 6 if the target gets a chance to yell.
Night's Black Agents (Dracula Dossier) Opening Location: Abandoned Castle, possibly even Castle Dracula. Task: Recovery. The agents are tasked with obtaining an item of importance to Edom and returning it to their employer, whoever that may be. Opening Moment: the agents are precisely one room away from their prize when they realize heavily armed OPFOR got to the castle first and are searching the place. The OPFOR may be a rival agency (Edom, Israel's Sayeret Aluka, the US' Find Forever team, similar) or may be a vampiric Node, but either way a head-to-head is inadvisable. First because it's dangerous, and second because even if it works the armed forces of whichever nation the Castle is in will descend on the place guns blazing if large portions of the Castle go up like a C4-inspired volcano.
In both instances the key thing is to give the agents a job to do and an immediate threat to deal with. Sure, there's an employer. We don't need to know who that is in the opening scene. It may already have been covered in session zero; the agents are all working for, say, the Mysterious Monseigneur. Or it may be left undefined, to be determined later in a flashback. The point of this scene isn't to dump a few tons of exposition. The point is to get them into the action by getting them into the core activity of the game. Since the core activity is thrilling spy stuff, hit them with thrilling spy stuff.
Bookhounds of London. Opening Location: small village outside London.This allows a fish-out-of-water comedy element. Task: looking for rarities at a house sale. Opening Moment: The Hounds are out of their element in a village on market day and have just spotted a rarity - Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (Religion of a Physician, unauthorized edition 1642 with additions not sponsored by the author) using scientific imagery to illustrate religious truths. The village doctor had a copy, somewhat foxed but well worth repairing. Apparently the old fellow recently keeled over and his replacement is clearing out his belongings. Some seedy looking oik also eyes the manuscript, for unknown reasons. How to get the book from the new doctor without running foul of the oik? There's the rub.
Again, giving the characters something to do but this time there's no potential combat (unless someone punches the oik). There is a prize on offer and if they're successful they take away the prize - though they may earn themselves an enemy. The oik could be a nobody, a necromancer, or anything in between. It pays the Hounds to be a little cautious, but too cautious and they'll lose the prize.
Mutant City Blues (PI) Opening Location: the local precinct. Task: bailing the client out of the drunk tank. Opening Moment: when the PIs realize they have to get their client out of the precinct with as little fuss as possible. It's not often you have to bail your client out of the drunk tank but so far this case is a real winner, all right. You endure the cops' jeers and throw a few back of your own, as you lead the Long Journey's bassist out the back to avoid the press. Turns out that wasn't such a smart call, as the girlfriend's lying in wait with her new toy on hand to film the whole thing. What's a struggling PI to do?
The characters have something to do, and it's not immediately about Mutant Powers - but depending on the skill set the girl friend, her new toy, or any of the media out front might have superpowered ways and means of making this even more complicated than it already is. We haven't discussed why the PI is working for the bassist because we don't need to - not yet, anyway.
One last pitch.
Esoterrorists. Six people on a subway train. A house husband. A teenager. A retiree. A cop. A cheating girlfriend. A thug. The train stops ten minutes out from the next station. The Train Operator's announcement is a garble of static. The lights go off.
Short, simple and to-the-point. Some of these six are going to end up recruited into the Ordo Veritatis. Some may end up dead. The next few hours will be make or break - and unforgettable.
West Midlands police thought they were raiding a cannabis farm when they bust into an industrial storage unit in Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell, on 18 May this year. All the signs were there: a drone they'd sent for a fly-by spotted massive amounts of heat gain, almost certainly caused by the lamps needed to grow all those valuable plants, and surveillance noticed people coming and going at all times of day and night, again indicative of nogoodniks up to shenanigans. If all that wasn't enough the unit bristled with surplus wiring ducts and new vent systems, suggesting massive energy use and a need to throw off heat as efficiently and quickly as possible.
So in they went, and found a bitcoin farm instead. One that was stealing power from the local grid to the tune of £16,000 a month. While mining isn't illegal, theft from the power grid definitely is. Birmingham Mail seems to think 'three English nerds' are the mastermind behind this scheme, which ... I mean, it probably was computer geeks, well spotted, glad to see we've got journalists of that calibre working in British media today.
The Mail also alleges that the value of the electricity stolen was twice that of the bitcoin mined. Which just goes to show that crime doesn't pay, or at least doesn't pay as much as the criminals thought it might.
Whether or not you think bitcoin is a scam, bitcoin mining is a big operation. Gone are the days when your PC humming away in the corner could earn you retirement money. The Sandwell operation, though one of the largest in the area, was a few hundred units altogether, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the massive setups that exist elsewhere.
Which looks remarkably like a Night's Black Agents scenario in the making.
I've discussed Facilities before. The Sandwell operation looks like a Low Security, Medium Monitoring Manufacturing facility. The miners clearly had no idea how to keep their operation away from prying eyes, beyond 'stick it in a shed and hope for the best.' They needed to monitor it often, to make sure its systems were working properly. Overheating must have been a major concern.
The bitcoin mines mentioned in the Top 5 are clearly Medium Security, High Monitoring Manufacturing facilities. They have their special needs, cooling being critical, along with access to uninterrupted electricity supplies, and a compliant political environment. If your facility mines, say, 20 bitcoin a day, then at current prices it's earning something like $780,000 each day, easily billions of dollars each month. Well worth going to all that effort, even if as manager of the facility all you get is a cut of the net.
Of course, that assumes those units are actually mining bitcoin. In game worlds where pseudo-science rules apply, all that computing power could be going towards ... almost anything. Uncovering all the secret names of God to collapse the universe. Mapping Satan's DNA and tracing His Satanic Majesty's lineage on earth. Creating a virtual reality environment powerful enough to store human minds. Creating a race of obedient AIs capable of - you get the idea.
Let's say this is Esoterrorists. That setting is all about weakening the Membrane so strange entities can creep through into the mundane world, and the Terrorists of the title are the ones who want that to happen. Then the so-called Bitcoin Mine is actually some kind of esoteric device that either is deliberately intended to weaken the membrane, or which does so accidentally while in pursuit of other goals.
One potential side effect is that smaller, less important entities may creep through just by accident, perhaps as a symptom of a larger problem. Like roaches round a garbage spill, these entities aren't main-plot relevant but the fact that they're here at all is evidence that things are going badly wrong.
An interesting twist could be that the 'bitcoin miners' are actually trying to repair the membrane with their esoteric device. They see something wrong in the immediate area and, since they don't have a Commissioner Gordon-style phone to call in the ghostbusters of OV, they do their best with what they've got. So destroying or disabling the device could actually make things much worse.
Or it's intended as a remote working device. There are some entities which, when they burst through the membrane, destroy everything in the immediate vicinity. The casters know this, so rather than do the dirty work themselves - and get killed - they set up the bitcoin mine to remotely activate the ritual. Perhaps when the cops burst in, so the summoned entity has something to munch on.
Let's say this is Night's Black Agents. In that setting, the 'bitcoin mine' is either the creation of a vampire Node, or someone who wants to get the Node's attention. So whatever it's intended to do will depend on the kind of setting you, as Director, are shooting for.
Supernatural: vampires are the result of magical or other supernatural activities on Earth; spirits, ghosts, witchcraft and the like. The bitcoin mine is one part of a larger ritual. Just as standing stones once established nodes on a network of ley lines, channeling supernatural power, so too do these new 'standing stones' establish connective points on a new network of supernatural energy. Their calculations are but a part of a larger ritual mystery, perhaps intended to bring forward the date of the apocalypse.
Damned:Vampires are the work of Satan or other explicitly demonic creatures opposed to mankind and God. That isn't a bitcoin mine, it's a demon summoned forth from Hell to serve at its master's pleasure. Maybe it's some kind of footsoldier awaiting command, or maybe it's an independent contractor scheming to its own ends. It undoubtedly has control over the internet in some fashion, perhaps just in its local area - for now. Or maybe the bitcoin it creates are themselves Satanic in some way, a corruptive influence to bring more people under the sway of His Satanic Majesty.
Alien: Vampires are alien beings, or earthly beings who nevertheless follow different laws of physics. The aliens either want to go home or to make Earth more like home. For that to happen requires significant mathematical calculations, of a sort that just weren't possible till now. Sure, a mathematician working with an abacus in a cave could manage it eventually, but eventually takes a really long time. Now the aliens are able to significantly advance their plans, with borrowed technology. Even the mines' affect on climate change - all that heat - could be part of the aliens' ultimate goal. After all, they need Earth to be just like home ... whatever that is.
Mutant:Vampires are earthly beings infected or changed by (or into) some freak of nature. Even freaks of nature need funding. Up till now the vampires have had to rely on conventional means to make a dollar, but now they can generate cash literally out of thin air. This was just an experiment, to see what they could get away with. The next stage in the project is an even bigger mine, and now they know what mistakes to avoid to reduce the chance of detection.
Inspired by this Guardian article about an 18-foot fiberglass boat that washed up on the Marshall Islands, stuffed to the gunwales with cocaine, an $80 million haul. The Maritime Executive has a slightly longer version, with photographs.
I've talked about ghost ships before. From North Korea's fishing boats to the Mary Celeste, pausing briefly to admire cruise ships stuffed with cannibal rats, derelicts infest the ocean blue. This one's a bit of a head-scratcher. You just don't take an 18-foot putt-putt far from shore. Not if you value your life and cargo, and someone must have valued this cargo if not the life of whichever shmuck was paid to pilot. Presumably it wasn't piracy, or the cargo would have vanished.
So it was probably a coastal storm of some description, bad enough to wash the pilot overboard but not bad enough to sink the boat. Fiberglass is difficult to sink, but every other year here in Bermuda hurricanes prove that difficult is not the same thing as impossible. You regularly see boats sunk at their anchorage, perhaps a bit of the bimini sticking above the surface. The pilot almost certainly drowned, and if he didn't he must have wished he had. Explaining that sort of thing to the bosses is not an easy task.
The bit I like is at the end of the Guardian article:
University of Hawaii researchers conducted 16 computer simulations of drift patterns from the Mexico coast and found nearly all eventually arrived in the Marshall Islands.
The Maritime Executive has an interesting addition:
Some of these lost-and-found narcotics re-enter the supply chain: earlier this year, a resident of remote Ailuk was caught and arrested after trying to board an airplane with three kilos of cocaine in his possession. The source, he told investigators, was from a different batch of lost "bricks."
The Marshalls have been independent since 1986; before that it was part of the American-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and before that it bounced from pillar to post in the usual that-colony's-mine-until-I-don't-want-it way that was so popular from the 1500s onwards. Before that it was one of the many islands settled by Micronesians, well before the birth of Christ. These days it's a parliamentary republic with an interest in fishing, selling flags of convenience to shipping companies, and bitcoin, not necessarily in that order. There's not a lot of ways to make money if you're the Marshall Islands.
A little under 78,000 people live there, the vast majority being Marshallese. The islanders have their own language, but English is widely spoken. Median age is (roughly) 23, and the population mostly lives on the atolls of Majuro and Ebeye. The US takes care of defense and the Marshallese police take care of internal issues.
Past nuclear tests nearby have left a toxic legacy. While compensation has been granted it has not been paid, and some of the atolls are completely uninhabitable due to radiation poisoning.
According to the CIA, no TV broadcast station; a cable network is available on Majuro with programming via videotape replay and satellite relays; 4 radio broadcast stations; American Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) provides satellite radio and television service to Kwajalein Atoll (2019).
Roughly 40% of the island has internet access.
With all that in mind:
Lost and Gone (Fear Itself, Esoterrorists)
It ought to have been simple. When the boat drifted ashore with its load of cocaine at Ailuk, a remote and lightly-inhabited coral atoll about 200 nautical miles to the north of Majuro, the plan was to burn most of it and turn over a few bricks for the DEA to analyze. A couple agents were given the onerous task of flying over to collect - never let a chance for a visit to a semi-tropical paradise pass you by, must be the company motto. The bricks were supposed to be kept secure at the air base at Bucholtz, on Kwajalein Island.
Nobody knows where those bricks are. As for the ones that were supposed to be destroyed ... rumor has it that not all of those found their way into the incinerator. Each one's practically a pension for whoever has them. Bucholtz is being torn apart in the search for the two that were supposed to be there, and the cops who had possession of the rest are under intense scrutiny.
Meanwhile rumors are flying, strange lights are seen out at sea, and some fishermen say a new boat's been seen out on the water at night - one without a pilot, yet it seems to be getting about just fine.
Free Meal. The original pilot was attacked by a Skitch (Unremitting Horror) and killed, but that left the insect-like meat eater with a problem. Once the boat was out at sea, there were no ways to spread its eggs. The Skitch was at the very end of its life cycle when the boat drifted up to Ailuk, its carcass smeared across the deck. Some of it was snatched up by birds, some by rats and crabs, before the boat was discovered. These have slowly found their way back into the human food chain, through cats (who eat the rats and birds) or other means. The bit about the missing cocaine is a red herring; the real problem is the skitch eggs which are now spreading rapidly through the local population.
Bad Trip. That wasn't cocaine. Perhaps it was Liao, perhaps something else, but whatever occult substance is in those bricks someone at Bucholtz knows what it really is. That person isn't a cultist nor yet trained in mystic arts but they know just enough to know how insanely valuable the stuff is. Far too valuable to go up in an incinerator. So this person arranged for the cops to hand over their supply and made sure the two bricks kept for the DEA went missing. Meanwhile they sent out feelers to people they knew in Hong Kong and Macau: does anyone want to take this stuff off my hands? Now the problem is how to keep everyone bribed and compliant long enough for someone who actually knows how to handle the drug to show up and take it away.
Bright Lights. The boat was targeted off the coast of Mexico by Something - say, Greys from Delta Green. Those same Greys tracked the boat all the way across the ocean, wanting to carry out an ocean drift patterns experiment of their own. Where would it end up? Now the Greys know, but evidently that wasn't the end of the experiment. Whatever it is, it's still hanging around in the skies above the Marshalls, dogging whoever came into contact with the boat or its cargo. The cops who stole a pension, the army guys who 'lost' a couple bricks of cocaine, they're all being tracked, abducted, experimented on, and returned to their ordinary lives - perhaps a little traumatized, otherwise fine. The question is, what do the Greys really want - and what will it take to persuade them to go away?
Enjoy, and Happy Holidays! I'm going to take a break for one week, so no Ephemera next Sunday. After that, we'll kick off the New Year - and may it be better than 2020!
This post is inspired by a recent Reuters photo montage about the declining cruise ship industry. Faced with a tourism product that's basically dead and stuck with some very expensive white elephants, cruise lines are sending their ships to the breaker's yard. The images are very evocative, and Reuters had them courtesy of Turkish photojournalist Umit Betkas.
You can see the cruise line's POV. Even assuming a vaccine is developed within, say, the next six months and rolled out planet-wide, people aren't going to be booking all-in cruises anytime soon. Confidence is shaken, the economy's in tatters, banks are calling in their loans, dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. So unless they have bottomless pockets - and they really, really don't - the company's got to look at its stock and consider which can be mothballed for the future and which ought to go to the knacker's yard now, while there's still some value in their carcasses.
An awful lot of them are going now.
Look at that picture. So many of these ships seem designed to a pattern, don't they? The same services offered, the same entertainment; the only things different, really, are the routes they take, and the total capacity of a particular liner. Some have been rotting for years, and others might have arrived yesterday. The staterooms probably still have some of their old furnishings and fittings, the stuff the line couldn't get rid of quickly enough. There's probably still a little fuel, definitely some contaminants of some description - nobody's ever quite that careful when throwing rubbish in someone else's bin, which is effectively what's happening here.
Once upon a time I wrote an Esoterrorists article for Page XX about a cruise ship stricken with Glistening, and now seems as good a time as any for an update. The article can be found here.
Briefly: the Glistening is an Outer Dark entity that spreads like a disease, infecting humans and controlling their actions. One, the Sessile, becomes the home base; this is a former human whose transformation is complete. The Sessile can't move or do much of anything, but it can act through its kinda-not-really human subordinates. It spreads like a disease but it behaves a bit like a beehive, with the Sessile as queen. The Sessile has a limited lifespan so the Glistening is always looking for potential replacements, which is what kicked off the Page XX scenario.
As an aside, Glistening infestation markers - a slightly elevated temperature and occasional nausea - could be interpreted as COVID symptoms, which would provoke an immediate medical intervention, followed by contact tracing. This is a problem for the Glistening. Its whole shtick is that it passes unnoticed. That's not possible if, at the first sign of nausea and a temperature, the person infected rushes off to the emergency room. Ordo Veritatis definitely has medical informants in place for just such an occasion, though by now those teams will be stretched very thin. One of the few benefits of COVID, in an Esoterrorists universe, is that it really cuts down on the Outer Dark infections.
In the (pre-COVID) scenario a Sessile established itself near the HVAC system supply of Nautilus Cruise Lines' Festival Allure, and Ordo Veritatis became involved when a whistleblower sent compromising security footage to Ordo. That was the kick-off for Operation VENICE BEACH, but in the course of the scenario the agents had the chance to discover that the Sessile was a refugee from a previous Operation, QUEEN PAWN.
Now Ms. Verity wants you for follow-up: Operation YELLOW DOG.
Whatever happened in the previous scenario or its veil-out, Festival Allure went on its merry way. Its reputation may have been tarnished, it may even have suffered structural damage depending on how gung-ho the agents were. However the ship survived, and Ordo's never been entirely happy about the situation. Sure, everything that could have been done was done, but what if the Glistening or one of its Slaves got away? Hid itself somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship?
Festival Allure's career since the incident has been much less profitable - bad news tends to sink careers. For that reason when the time came to decide which ship to keep, Nautilus sent Festival Allure to the breaker's yard in Turkey with scarcely a second thought.
In stepped Ordo Veritatis. This time they'll make sure the Glistening's dead.
The action takes place in Aliaga, Turkey. Aliaga has an ancient heritage; the Aeolian city Myrina once stood very near Aliaga, and another ancient city, Gryneum, is also very close.. These days Aliaga gets much of its cash from shipbreaking and oil refining, with a bit of tourism thrown in. The town's quite small, barely 60,000 people - significantly smaller than Woodbridge, New Jersey, which is the smallest city on Wikipedia's handy list of American cities by size. It has some nice beaches, the seafood's good, and just across the way - the shipbreaker yard, with its spotty occupational health & safety record, pollutants, and diseases. To attract European business the breakers are improving, but it's a slow process. Turkey has a significant terrorist problem and no doubt even a place as small as Aliaga has a few al-Qai'ida sympathizers.
Which could be a darn good excuse for an Ordo Veritatis incursion force.
This follow-up scenario is a mix between Investigation and Counter-Ops Response. Ordo strongly suspects enemy action, but doesn't have the best relationship with Turkey and would rather not go toe-to-toe with Turkey's government. The agents use EU cover stories to get in, acting as advisors for one or more environmental investigation entities. However if it turns out that Ordo's worst fears are coming true then the heavy mob will show up looking for "al-Qai'ida." At that point the authorities will be on board - so long as the civilian body count's low.
Options:
No Sessile, but ... The Glistening outbreak was pretty well contained the first time around, and there's no threat from that quarter. However, all is not well in the breakers yards; that lackadaisical attitude to health & safety gives rise to all sorts of peculiar things. Blood Corpses hide in dead ships during the day, sneaking out at night to prey on unwary tourists and urban poor. The authorities have noticed, but think it's more likely low-level crime or, at worst, a very small wannabe terrorist cell than anything more sinister. More worryingly there are a few Scourgers hanging around as well. Does their presence mean something more dangerous has its eye on Aliaga?
Festival No More. Ordo was right; there were some remnants left behind after VENICE BEACH. Shattered, caught on the back foot, but something did survive. A Sessile's hiding in the bowels of the broken ship, sucking in shipyard workers. It wants out; it's terrified of Festival Allure, after what happened last time, and is working towards relocating somewhere safer.
Long Legged Beasties. Well, the Festival's not really the problem any more. The bigger issue by far is that many of the ships brought to Aliaga had Glistening outbreaks of one kind or another, and now they're all in one place ... It's gone way beyond Sessile now. One ship in particular is host to a massive entity that's busily spreading its essence far beyond Aliaga. Those tourists who come to play on the beach or visit historic sites are fodder for its overall plan. Not that Sessiles really plan, per se, but something that large and alien, who knows what it's capable of? Counter-Ops Response incoming!
For those who don't want the full story, the short version of Kee Bird goes thusly: in 1947 a B-29 Superfortress spy plane flying a photoreconnaissance operation over the Arctic came down in the snow-packed tundra close to Thule, Greenland. The crew survived and were rescued along with all their camera equipment and film. The plane was left where it lay until 1994, when a privately funded rescue attempt almost succeeded in repairing the aircraft and flying it to Thule for a complete restoration. Unfortunately the fuel line ruptured, a fire broke out and the fuselage burnt beyond salvage. What little is left of Kee Bird still sits out there, all but a memory.
The Arctic has been a popular destination for surveillance aircraft since the early days of the Cold War. Even today aerial espionage is an ongoing pursuit as the Russian border is close to Alaska, and then there's the invaluable natural resources to be had. Oil is everyone's concern. That's one of the reasons why the Arctic is littered with old spy craft, and both sides have lost planes and people (warning: footage, Tu-22 plane crash 2019). Russian pilots lack the survival gear American crews enjoy; Kee Bird's people could survive for two weeks in 1947 with the food and clothing they carried on board, but Russian flight crew carry only life jackets. If rescue's following on swift wings, fine, but two weeks is two weeks. Even Russians find it difficult to survive on a diet of snow.
A Tu-22, operational from 1962 in various incarnations, carries a crew of 3: pilot, gunner, and technical officer. She has two turbojet engines and is roughly 41 meters long. Her max range is just shy of 5,000 km. The Americans call her Blinder, while to the Russians she is Awl, after the pointed leatherworking tool.
With all that in mind:
Comrades
American tech billionaire turned aviation enthusiast Peter Bell is looking for experts to help him rescue a Cold War era Soviet spy plane. According to his research, the Tu-22 went down in the Arctic tundra in 1968 while on a spy mission, and its location wasn't known to either side until 1974. Thought to be sunk in a frozen lake, recent satellite footage shows she's actually above ground and in remarkable condition given the circumstances. Bell thinks she can be repaired and flown out, at least as far as the nearest friendly airstrip where she can be properly seen to. Bell doesn't think she has any secrets to spill; he believes Soviet special forces stripped her of her surveillance equipment and film back in the 1970s. That doesn't explain why the Russians didn't destroy the airplane, to ensure it didn't fall into American hands. Bell waves off this objection as mere quibbling. He wants this bird; it's the ultimate prize, the crowning jewel of his collection.
Either the characters are experts hired by Bell, or they're special agents (Ordo Veritatis, Edom, your esoteric agency of choice) inserted into Bell's team for reasons best known to the higher-ups. The sponsor agency is convinced there's [McGuffin] in that old plane, and wants the agents to secure it before Bell stumbles onto it.
Whether there is or isn't, it soon becomes clear that the sponsor agency isn't the only one sniffing around. A smooth, bland, Harvard-and-Sorbonne academic and a former military Swede both show interest, but while the characters may rightly suspect both of them of being spies it's difficult to tell which agencies they represent. Is the freewheeling Swede a Russian agent, or a CIA front man? Is the academic getting instructions from Moscow, or the Farm? They each have money to burn, and can call on some serious hitters should the need arise.
Then the characters go to the crash site, far out in the frozen wasteland. Except crash is perhaps the wrong word; this Tu-22 is in such good condition it might have landed at an airstrip. There's nothing to show what happened to the crew. There isn't any surveillance equipment, but what comes as a surprise is there's no indication there ever was any surveillance equipment. This is some kind of modified cargo flight, and the container has Soviet biohazard markings. Why didn't the Soviets try to recover it, or at least destroy it? Why did the Americans just leave it out here, when they've known where it is since the 1970s?
Bell's Betrayal: This isn't about a Cold War era spy plane. This is about Bell. The whole point is to lure him out to the wastelands so, back home, his business interests can be strip-mined for cash and data. His closest associates/spouse/deadbeat brother has sold out to [Esoterrorists/the Conspiracy/someone equally sinister] and this situation is a set-up, a fake designed to leave him stranded in the back of beyond. The so-called spy plane was dumped here a year ago, and there are clues aboard the Tu-22 that prove it. Maybe those biohazard markings are non-standard, or the parts date to the 2010s not the 1960s. However the sinister agency isn't satisfied with an Arctic boondoggle. The Swede/Academic paid off one or more of the team to sabotage the effort, destroying communications equipment, survival gear, and using special mind-control drugs to bend Bell to their will. The characters need to realize this and get the heck out before the traitor leaves them to rot in the Arctic wastes.
Doublefake. This has nothing to do with the Arctic. The characters aren't even in the Arctic; this is a clever simulation, a psychological interrogation. They've been captured by [Esoterrorists/the Conspiracy/sinister forces] but the information in their heads is just too valuable to risk physically damaging them to get it. So their interrogators designed the ultimate mind-game: let the characters think they're in the Arctic, while the drugs/psi-leeches/magicians get to work stripping them clean. Think of this as Thrilling Interrogation, Night's Black Agents style. The closer the interrogators get to their goal, the more the characters sink into the simulation. However if the characters resist then the simulation breaks down: Bell forgets his lines, the plane starts to look like a cardboard prop, and why isn't it really cold up here? Isn't this supposed to be the Arctic?
The Thing. The Russians don't know what was aboard this Tu-22; all records relating to the crash were destroyed and anyone connected with the mission executed back in Brezhnev's day. Putin would really like to know, which is why he dispatched the Academic/Swede. The Americans think they know, but were never able to confirm their hypothesis and all records relating to its salvage attempt went missing about the same time Richard Helms destroyed the MKUltra records. In spook circles this old Tu-22 is a folktale nobody takes seriously any more, but now Bell's stirred up some bad memories. The powers that be want to be reassured. The McGuffin's lost for good, yes? The cargo destroyed? Things get stranger when the characters find a survivor: Technical Officer Adrik Lebedev, who has absolutely no business being alive forty-odd years after the crash landing yet is apparently asleep at the controls. He's as surprised as anyone to find himself alive; the last thing he remembers is the pilot, Vadim Orlov, saying they were going through heavy turbulence. He won't talk to Westerners; he's a good soldier. But who is he, really? What is he?
This week's post is inspired by a news item about hotel thefts, and loosely based on the Breidenbacher Hof in Dusseldorf, Germany.
You've really got to feel sorry for the owners of five star boutique hotels. They attract a different kind of criminal. Where most of us are content to steal the soap and possibly a bathrobe, the folks who steal from the wealthy chisel out their marble fireplaces, package up their flat screens and framed art, and cart off the Steinway piano.
According to the article there's a fellow in South America who poses as an artist come to do a show, and who brings with him large packaging crates stuffed full of 'art.' Of course, it's stuffed full of nothing when he arrives, but when he leaves the crates are suspiciously heavier than they were before. In short, this is a job for the professional, your thief with an eye for high value, someone who can pull off a quick change and swindle like a veteran grifter.
In Germany it's easier than you might think, as there isn't the proliferation of security cameras you might find in an equivalent hotel elsewhere. Privacy laws specify where you can and cannot place cameras, such as public spaces like the drive in front of the hotel.
Which naturally made me go looking for a boutique hotel in Germany, which is how I found Briedenbacher Hof. Built in 1806 as a luxury resort for the rich and famous, in its day it's hosted royalty and the impossibly wealthy. It was bombed extensively during the War, and rebuilt in the 1950s. In the later 1990s it was torn down again by its Kuwait-based owners, and rebuilt to their exacting standards. During construction a section of Dusseldorf's medieval city wall was discovered in the basement, and that archaeological find is now permanently on display from the retail level of the hotel.
Dusseldorf is the second largest city in Germany, and has been an urban settlement since the Romans moved in. Its strategic position on the Rhine strengthened its importance as a trade-and-tax town, and it officially became a city in 1288 when the Counts of Berg defeated the forces of the Archbishop of Cologne and granted Dusseldorf town privileges. It built a market square surrounded by thick city walls, those same walls which lie under the foundations of the Briedenbacher Hof. Bombed extensively during the Second World War, what was a medieval town became a modern one in the 20th century, after extensive rebuilding and reconstruction. With all that: Hotel Hell The characters are professional thieves. They may be funded by an outside group, like the Esoterrorists' Ordo Veritatis, or Dracula Dosssier's Edom, but if they are then it's through cut-outs and Mr. Johnsons. The characters only know their patrons as shadowy figures in the criminal community. They have been hired to steal a certain artwork from the Richter Hof, a newly reopened hotel with an illustrious past. Its Dubai-based owners intend it to be the jewel in their hospitality crown, and it has everything the high-end traveler could want, including a gaming room where well-heeled visitors lose their shirts at vingt-et-un and poker. Gambling licenses are very difficult to get in Germany, but the Richter has its license from before the War when it was (and still is) a destination for the wealthy and famous. Their job is to get in, get the goods, and get out without being stopped by hotel staff. Piece of cake, they may think. That rather depends on how much they like cake … The artwork they're told to steal is an abstract sculpture installed in the penthouse suite. Physically, it's slightly smaller than man-size and weighs over 250 lbs, so the characters will need to find some way to get it out and to the main elevator. That elevator goes all the way down to the basement car park level, so they should be able to get out without wheeling it through the lobby at least. Of course, to do that they'll need to get it out the penthouse and down a corridor which might at any time have guests or hotel staff. Plus the penthouse has a dedicated butler who spends much of his day going in and out of the penthouse, even if it's vacant, as he has to make sure the penthouse is ready at any time for one of the Richter Hof's high-end guests. The hotel's Dubai owners' extended family often drop by the hotel for a little shopping spree, and when they do they expect to be accommodated in the penthouse suite. If the characters do some advance scouting and try to find out more information about the sculpture, they discover something odd. No two sources agree on when it was made, or who by. Some claim it's a Picasso from 1912, others an 1889 Rodin, still others a 1980s bronze by Stephen De Staebler. Everyone says it's a masterpiece worth hundreds of thousands of dollars/euro/marks - which is a little peculiar, since why would anyone value anything in Deutsche Marks, a dead currency since 2002? It's large, it's metal, and it will be hard to lift without special equipment, which is probably going to be the characters' main concern. The trouble really begins when the characters begin the lift. Time is soft within Richter Hof. At one moment it might be 2020, at another it might be 1943 and the Battle of the Ruhr, at still another it might be 1806 and the Hof's grand opening. So long as the investigators have possession of the statue, any door - including the elevator doors - can open to any era. The statue's inert (or as inert as it ever gets) as long as it's in position in the penthouse. The minute it moves, the fun begins. The elevator doors are an especial problem, since at most points in the hotel's history it didn't have an elevator. It certainly didn't have one that went to the basement. So the elevator doors literally lead to anywhen, anywhere, while the other doors lead to the equivalent space in [time period]. At least if the characters move from the corridor to a hotel room, they end up in a hotel room. It might be a hotel room in 1980 or 1880, occupied or empty, but at least it's predictably a hotel room. There's no telling where they end up, if they take the elevator. Among the events the characters could walk into:
Ruritanian Assassination. It's 1848, the age of Revolution, and the Crown Prince / Duke / [insert title here] of a small country or principality that no longer exists in 2020 has relocated to the Richter Hof to avoid talking to the Revolutionaries. Anarchists have infiltrated the hotel staff, and are planning to plant a bomb in the royal's apartments. Of course, bombs don't care who they blow up, and the characters could easily find themselves on the receiving end of a poorly planned assassination attempt.
Firebugs. It's June 1943, and British bombers are scattering their load all over Dusseldorf. The hotel's ablaze, but so is much of Dusseldorf, so the fire brigade isn't going to be available any time soon. The hotel's part-evacuated but there are still some staff and guests in the hotel itself, either because they didn't want to go to bomb shelters or because they're trying to rescue their belongings from their burning rooms.
Songbirds. It's 2011, and Dusseldorf's hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. There's no escaping it; every room, bar, and screen is blaring Europop. If people aren't singing Wadde hadde dudde da (singer/comedian Stefan Raab's 2000 hit; he's one of the 2011 judges), they're singing Lena's Taken by a Stranger, the current German entry. No immediate danger, but the hotel is absolutely rammed, and it's very difficult to sneak past the crowds while toting a 250 lbs bronze.
This post is inspired by isolation booths as used in schools in England to which I can only reply, if Orwell were alive today, imagine the novels he would write.
The principle is understandable. There needs to be a penalty for disruptive behavior in the classroom. In this instance, the penalty is to be shoved into isolation for hours, perhaps days at a time. In some cases, allegedly, weeks. No social interaction whatsoever. Just sit and do work - or sleep, or whatever, so long as it's quiet.
Image taken from the Guardian
Problem being that disruptive behavior can mean anything. It can mean mental health issues, learning disabilities, not wearing the right shoes, talking out of turn. In a BBC study, one student was put in isolation after contracting fibromyalgia. Given that schools are graded by academic performance, there must be a strong temptation to put underperforming students in isolation, as a first step to easing them out of the school altogether.
There's enough demand for booths to inspire its own cottage industry, at £175 a throw. It's the numbers that enthrall me. Imagine the school that needs a hundred units worth of isolation booths. How many disruptive pupils can any one school have? How many isolation rooms - not booths, rooms - can any school need?
There's a short step from this to Esoterror.
The Summer of the Kooks
The OV's attention is drawn to the problem by a whistleblower in the school system, or a member of a pressure group like Lose the Booths.
Pupils across the UK are vanishing. There are always runaways, always heartbreaking little mysteries, but this seems different. The numbers are higher than usual but, more than that, the kids who vanish share similar symptoms - dizziness, lethargy, unwillingness to communicate, except on one topic. They all seem fascinated by someone they call Little Man, who makes all kinds of promises - happiness, sunshine, play, all the best things. Anything's better than the dark little isolation booth they regularly get shoved into at school.
At the same time, there's also a sharp uptick in unexplained deaths. Messy, gory deaths. A few teachers, a PCSO, some parents of missing children, some children. Not enough in any one place to draw official suspicion, but always the same small details. It happens in or near school. There are no witnesses, electronic or otherwise - cameras always seem to be broken, or recordings wiped. There's always something missing, usually noses, ears, in one case bearded cheeks and chin. Bitten off, it looks like.
In one case a victim, before she died, sent a text to her sister that said Picture for yourselves a little man, broader than he is tall, tender and
greasy like a ball of butter, with a rosy face, a small, constantly
laughing mouth and a thin, adorable voice of a cat wishing all the best
to its master. Which is a quote from Pinocchio, in the original Italian, about the Coachman who whisks naughty children off and turns them into donkeys, to be sold. The Coachman in the story had a habit of disciplining his donkeys by biting their ears off - some distance from Disney's round-faced unctuous Cockney.
Odd coincidence, as it happens, since the schools affected all have isolation booths with colorful murals on the walls, scenes out of Pinocchio's Land of Toys. There, at the back of the picture, sits a cheerful little butterball with a cat's grin.
For the Kooks aren't coming out of the woods this time. They're coming out of those pretty murals, and there are so very many of them now …
