Funereal (GUMSHOE all, Swords of the Serpentine)

Many funeral customs arise from a fear of the newly dead.

For example: People wear black ribbons after a death, not out of respect, but because if you wear black you escape the ghost's notice. In the past, some people went to great lengths to ensure this, tying black ribbon on everything from people to poultry - particularly if there's been more than a few deaths recently.

When people throw mementoes into a fresh grave before it's filled, this too is to discourage the angry dead. The Fox North American Native group believed that you had to throw something in, even a bit of faded cloth or small bit of food. If you didn't, the dead would notice, and come back to claim its gift. This probably also explains the custom of throwing dirt, or ash, into the open grave before filling it.

The Scots used to believe that, if you met a funeral procession, you had to join it. If the mourners happened to be carrying the coffin, you had to take the place of one of them, and carry it for at least a short distance. Once you'd done that, you could let the funeral continue without you. If you didn't do this, then you were likely to die within a year.

It was also bad luck to meet a funeral procession head-on. If that happened, even if you were in a car, you had to turn around and look in the same direction as the procession, until it had passed.

If there's been a death in the house, you mustn't wear anything new. If you did, the dead would see, and envy you - with appalling consequences to follow. For the same reason sackcloth, ashes, and black clothes were the proscribed attire, though in the fashion-obsessed Victorian era there was a relaxation on the 'nothing new' dictat. Victorian ladies took great pleasure in arranging their funeral attire, to their satisfaction. Again, it's all black because that makes the mourners inconspicuous. The people closest to the corpse mustn't attract the attention of the corpse.

These are mostly European folktales, of course, with the exception of the Fox belief. Go across the planet, and you'll find plenty of examples of similar beliefs. Not all that long ago I talked about hungry ghosts, Luck Ambassadors, and Chinese festivals in honor of the dead. A similar philosophy's at work there: pay tribute to the dead, or be punished by the dead.

In a horror game - in any action game, really - death is a likely consequence of heroics. It isn't always the characters who die, of course, but sometimes it is. Suppose, for a moment, this meant a player character - or their shadowy double - could return, for a session.

I was fortunate enough to playtest Swords of the Serpentine earlier this year, and I'm looking forward to its release. Whenever it does release … *twitch* I don't want to drift into spoiler territory, but suppose for a moment we talk about a completely invented custom, based loosely on something I noticed in All Around The Town by Herbert Asbury. Let's see what can be done to make it Serpentine.

Important and picturesque functionaries of New York during the early days of Dutch and English rule were the Comforters of the Sick and the Inviters to Funerals … There were two Comforters, and two Inviters. They wore identical uniforms - tall black hats, solid black coats, and black mantles - and each carried a Bible and a long staff. When a man fell ill, the Comforters, their fees having been guaranteed by [family/friends] sat at his bedside during the long hours of the night … preparing him for a possible journey to Kingdom Come. When the patient died … the Comforters retired and the Inviters … took charge. Attaching to their tall hats long streamers of crepe which reached to their heels, and bearing elaborate scrolls, the Inviters went from house to house reciting the virtues of the deceased and inviting his friends and relatives to the funeral. As they marched solemnly through the town, one tolled a bell, and the other struck his staff heavily against the ground, while he cried the tidings of death in a loud and doleful voice …

At the end of it all the Comforters and Inviters gave away cheap geegaws, memento mori, to the pallbearers and attendees. Brooches, rings, carved or perhaps wrapped around with the hair of the deceased. The pallbearers got a special treat. Each received a carved spoon with a figure at the end intended to represent one of the Twelve Apostles, but these were often so crudely carved that they more resembled monkeys than saints. Hence the spoons became known as monkey spoons.

Note the copious use of black: top hats, coats, mantles, and that long twist of crepe for the Inviters. Again, those closest to the dead need protection from the dead, and nobody gets closer than a Comforter or Inviter.

All this ceremony presumes a few things. First, it presumes that the only effective way to communicate is by going door to door. Second, it presumes that a handful of people can do this effectively - so we're talking about a time when New York was much, much smaller than it is today. Imagine trying to walk all over modern New York to tell people Bob had breathed his last; you'd be in Manhattan all day, and never mind the Bronx or Brooklyn.

Now, I don't think I'm allowed to say anything about Serpentine beyond what's already out there on Pelgrane's site. However there's a fair bit already out there, so:

A rhythmic, solid clack of staves against stones echoes against towering walls, each blow followed by a high, mournful wail. Someone's passed, and whoever they were, they had money - enough to pay the Inviters, at least. A funeral! An unveiling ceremony for someone's statue. Free food, free drink, perhaps a chance for a little harmless larceny. What could go wrong?

The deceased was an important member of [Faction] and members of [Faction] are encouraged to attend. The party's held in one of [Faction]'s traditional banquet halls, teeming with statues of every description. However, wandering its halls reveals a shocking secret; someone smashed a statue to fit this new statue in. But who did it? Who would be so callous?

Was it the Inviters, or the Comforters, too eager to make a profit? Was it an accident? Or was it deliberate, a spiteful act from a faction within [Faction}, determined to elevate one of their own at the expense of some forgotten old fuddy-duddy?

Moreover, what does it really mean to destroy a statue? In-game, statues are described in much the same way as I've described, say, black hats and ashes. It's a means of keeping the unquiet dead under control - pulling their fangs, metaphorically speaking. But in your game, who knows? This is a player-driven experience, after all. In your session, statues could be something entirely different.

Better make your mind up soon, though. This banquet hall is dark, shadowy. Anything could be out there in the dark. Absolutely anything …

Enjoy!

The Jonestown Dead: Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents, Delta Green

This post is part inspired by the recent revelation that several cremated bodies from the Jonestown massacre have turned up, 35 years after the fact, in an abandoned Delaware funeral home.

Jonestown, for those not familiar with the event, refers to the 1978 mass suicide of more than 900 members of the religious group Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, run by James Warren 'Jim' Jones. The People's Temple had gone to Guyana to find utopia, only to be subjected to full-time agricultural labor and incessant Soviet propaganda. Meanwhile Jones was raking off the American welfare checks that were being sent to his devoted followers; he's supposed to have collected almost $26 million before the end.

That end came when California congressman Leo Ryan decided to fly to the the Guyana camp, prompted by calls from his constituents to find out what had happened to their family members.  He arrived with a delegation of eighteen people, including representatives of the press as well as a Guyanese politician and concerned relatives. Though initially things went well, the situation soon deteriorated, and a violent shoot-out on the airstrip left Ryan and several other delegation members dead. Jones and his followers committed suicide soon afterward, leaving behind several high-ranking members tasked with delivering the Jonestown treasury to the Soviets, as well as a handful of other survivors who, by luck, managed to avoid poisoning. Everyone else died.

When the bodies were returned to the United States the military asked local funeral homes to help relatives deal with the interments, but there were several hundreds - including many children - and it seems that the funeral homes, and probably also the relatives, were completely overwhelmed. The particular funeral home mentioned in the AP report kept the cremated remains of nine people, presumably because the relatives didn't claim the ashes. Time passed, and the home fell into receivership when its owner died, so the bank took it over. Someone from the bank had to go to the home and take stock of what was left, and that was when the remains were discovered.

Many funeral directors admitted, after the fact, that it was not uncommon for a home to have several unclaimed dead on its hands; relatives often lack the money to reclaim their loved ones. "I'm going to say most all funeral establishments have cremains in storage that people have not come to collect," says Harvey Smith, secretary of the Delaware State Funeral Directors Association.

Sad though this is, it does provide some interesting possibilities for roleplay. Given the nature of the universe posited in Trail of Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu, and modern games like Night's Black Agents or Pagan Publishing's Delta Green, there are plenty of other reasons why cremains might go unclaimed. A funeral home that has fallen into disuse because the owner has died is a very nice touch, and could happen in any of the game's eras. Cremation as a means of disposing of the dead has been around for donkey's years, but in London the concept was never really popular until the 1870s, when the Cremation Society of Great Britain was founded. Take all that into consideration, and we have the following possibilities:

J.S. Salt, Mortician: Established London, 1873, operating one of the country's early crematoriums in 1908, recently abandoned after the death of its owner and proprietor, Jonas Salt, at an advanced age. Mr Salt's immediate family predeceased him; his only son and daughter-in-law, along with his grandchild, perished in the Lusitania disaster. In recent years Mr Salt conducted a reduced business, only accepting commissions from established clients, among them the members of a London psychical society, the Fulham Theosophical Order. The Order has refused to seek new members since 1901, and the three remaining members are in their declining years. Each are very keen to have their arrangements made by Jonas Salt, death be damned; and as for what's in Salt's mortuary, not even the bank that owns the property knows for certain.

Hoffman, Bestattungs-Meister: Established Berlin, 1980, known to have been an asset that at times worked for the CIA as well as the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND). In its day, Hoffman's was an excellent cobbler with a sideline in cleaning; it specialized in dealing with unorthodox death scenes, and was known to provide excellent quality false identity documents. However in the 1990s it became less useful; unable to keep up with advances in technology, its documentation was no longer considered superior. The end came in 2001 when a scandal involving two misplaced corpses, both of which were later found, naked, in a garbage dump, was traced to Hoffman's. Though the funeral home's owners escaped prosecution, largely thanks to favors owed it over the years, its usefulness as an intelligence asset was finished. Except, according to rumor, perhaps it isn't as dead as previously thought; allegedly it has become active again recently, its work apparently having improved markedly. However nobody has seen Mr and Mrs Hoffman in some time, and the financial institution that holds the funeral home's mortgage is becoming concerned at the lack of contact. Several important papers need to be signed, and even though payments are coming in every month on schedule there are enough irregularities that the bank is beginning to wonder if it isn't participating in an illegal enterprise.

Heavenly Rest Funeral Home: Established 1974 by Horace and Wanda Miller, this business has come into contact with Delta Green's Cell T on four separate occasions, and is considered a Friendly. The Millers are not aware of the conspiracy as a conspiracy; they believe they have assisted agents of the Federal Government, in arranging for the quiet disposal of several decedents, both human and non-human. However recent events within Cell T have resulted in the temporary disbanding of that cell; group leader Tricia is under close psychiatric observation, agent Thomas' whereabouts are unknown, and only agent Tina remains on the active duty list. As a result several things have been overlooked, including half a dozen urgent phone messages sent to Tricia by the Millers concerning a recent consignment. There have been no further messages in the last six months, and Heavenly Rest is now the property of Delaware State Bank, after the disappearance of the Millers. It's believed that Horace and Wanda skipped town when the mortgage payments got too much for them; Delaware State has yet to conduct a survey of its new acquisition.