Nights Black Agents - Hauntings

It's that ghostly time of year, when the subconscious dwells uneasily in shadowy corners and obsesses over things which should not be.

I've discussed Hauntings before in connection with Bookhounds, and I've mentioned them in connection with NBA too. At that time I said:

I gave these guidelines for Bookhounds ghosts, or spirits of place:

• The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.
• It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.
• It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

I'd modify them for Night's Black Agents, as follows:

• The truth of the haunting must be linked to the Vampire background. If vampires in your game are mutant creations of science, then ghosts should have a scientific background as well. A Satanic vampire game has Satanic ghosts, and so on.
• It cannot be dealt with in the same way as an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls can be shot or bargained with, but ghosts don't have the same weaknesses. Bargaining may be possible, but difficult.
• It has power behind it, but that power is going to depend on the method of its creation. It ought never to be as powerful as, say, a Renfield, let alone a vampire. This isn't a major player; it's a mood piece, possibly even a booby trap.
• These ghosts can be defeated but probably not destroyed, in the same sense that vampires can be defeated, but can come back from the grave. 

In NBA vampires come in four delicious favors: mutant, supernatural, damned, alien. What kind of ghost stories can be told with the same premise?

So with all that in mind, let's talk about some concrete examples.

Before I do, I just want to briefly talk about a phenomenon that first appears in the 1900s: the techno ghost.

A techno ghost is something that mirrors or borrows technology but is not necessarily defined by it. A ghost that only exists when heard over the wireless or telephone. The ghost of a car, or plane, or train. A ghost that appears on television, or a film screen. 

When technology is first introduced and is unfamiliar to the general reading public, authors tend to borrow them for spooky background. So, for instance, when the telephone is first introduced but there isn't a telephone in every home, you'll find a few period authors sneaking in phone calls from beyond the grave. Even Stephen King uses a party line in one of his short stories, because he's old enough to remember the last surviving party line telephone systems way wayyy out in the piney woods. 

Similarly when moving pictures were new and most cinemas were basically large tents or village halls repurposed for the night, you'll find short story writers using cinemas as settings. These share the same advantage as that spooky little antique store where you bought that monkey's paw; you'll never find that mobile cinema again, no matter how hard you look. 

A similar mechanic plays out in Japanese horror The Ring.

Sourced from MotelX

I've often wondered just how common VCR tapes were in Japan in the late 1990s. I'm guessing not very; DVD must have taken over by then. It was a very clever move on someone's part. The ghost in that story is fairly traditional, but the method of delivery gives it that special edge. 

The key point being that, like the mobile cinema, you have to have the tape to make the thing work, and tapes are mobile things. You never know where they'll crop up next ...

Anyway, after that brief diversion, the meat of the matter:

Damned: Their markers are holy symbols and spiritualism, their emphasis is seduction.

Roadside Shrine. You probably drive past a few of these on any long car journey. Someone's last moment on earth before the smash, memorialized in fading flowers and drifting plastic. Whoever they are, someone loved them. Still, it's impossible to tell from that blurred photograph who they were or what they were like.

Aberrance 7, Health 8. Alertness +2. Stealth +3 in shadows, +1 in bright light. Free Powers: Unearthly Tread (+2 difficulty to evade), Reflection Only (can only be seen in a reflective surface, like a rear view mirror). Other Powers: Mesmerism (only works if makes eye contact), Drain Heat.

The Shrine spirit is a twisted remnant of a roadside fatality. It might only exist as some faded police tape and chalk marks, or it might be a collection of dying flowers and heartfelt remembrances. The vampires have taken the essence of this death and made it their own, creating a kind of spiritual IED that attaches itself either to the next person to see the shrine, or a specified target (say, via blood and fingernail parings). The spirit attaches itself to its victim at the earliest opportunity and tries to force them, through Mesmerism, into a fatal accident, preferably a road accident. The spirit appears to its victim in a reflective surface, perhaps a mirror or shop window, to make the eye connection. It has no intelligence and very little memory left, but can be persuaded to return to its shrine if fresh blood is spilt at that location.

Alien: Their markers are various uncanny effects; their emphasis is invasion.

Floating Lights. What's that up in the sky? Probably a satellite passing overhead - but those lights are remarkably bright for a satellite. A plane, maybe? Pretty quiet, if it is. A drone, that's it - has to be. 

Aberrance 10, Firearms (light ray) 8, Health 8. Alertness +1. Stealth +4. Free Powers: Infravision, Regeneration (2 points per round). Other Powers: Cloud Men's Minds, Vampiric Speed, Tracking.

Though these can be mistaken for UFOs in fact they are unexpected byproducts of alien infestation. They only appear in places where the vampires have been, and then only for a brief time - perhaps a week, never longer than a month and then only in cases where the vampires have lingered for some time or gathered in great numbers. The jury's out as to whether they're intelligent, parasites or some kind of mobile portal to other dimensions. One thing's for certain: Renfields hate and fear these things. Only Renfields know why, and they're not talking.

Supernatural: Their markers are strange superstitions, their emphasis hunger. 

Mr. Smiles. Doomscroll through your social media feed, and you'll find him. Those peculiar private messages and videos from someone you don't know or recognize. Funny how they only seem to come after an encounter with ... those things. Don't look at the images. Don't listen to the messages. That's how Mr. Smiles gets in.

Aberrance 7, Hand to Hand 10, Health 10. Alertness +3, Stealth +2. Free Powers: Strength, Unfeeling, Spider Climb. Other Powers: Heat Drain, Vampiric Speed.

Mr. Smiles is something the vampires cooked up. It takes a death to summon it, preferably the death of a friend or Network contact. Then those peculiar messages and images start showing up in the target's social media feed. Threatening messages, unpleasant pictures, and even if you scrub your feed obsessively somehow Mr. Smiles, all teeth and gore like a modern-day Raw Head and Bloody Bones, follows you, tracks you down. If he finds you, he'll crawl out from whichever device he's tracked you down on and kill you - dragging whatever's left back into the device. Then Mr. Smiles will make you just like him, and set you after your friends.

Mutant: Their markers are medical symptoms; their emphasis is infection.

Green Oil. Be careful what you step in. Don't let it get on you. If even the slightest drop gets on you it sticks there, propagates, eating away at your shoes, your clothes, turning whatever it can into more of itself. It doesn't like fire, but it's preternaturally clever; it might let you think it's burnt away, and then it slips into your bed at night. 

Aberrance 7, Hand to Hand 10, Health 4. Alertness +2, Stealth +4. Free Powers: Regeneration (2/round), Track by Smell (+2 difficulty evade). Other Powers: Heat Drain (gains points drained as health, effectively creating more of it from whatever it eats)

The oil is a byproduct of vampire kills. A little of it is left behind wherever a vampire feeds, and usually it dies off within a day or two. However if someone picks it up, even the tiniest speck on the sole of someone's shoe, it can use the heat from whatever it's attached to as a food source. That lets it create more of itself, and more, and more. It can grow too large; if it manages to eat a person it generally can't keep its form together and dissipates, but not before infecting the room it dissipates in. This doesn't create more oil, but does create a very unpleasant atmosphere - effectively a 3-point Stability loss for anyone who spends time (longer than 10 minutes) in that area.

That's it for me. Enjoy!

Montague James and the Hounds (Bookhounds of London)

I did say we'd be back to normal this week.

I expect most of you have heard of M.R. James, academic, antiquarian and author of some of the finest ghost stories ever published. For those who haven't, there's plenty of chances to rectify that deficiency; you can even get the books for free on Gutenberg, and there are any number of people doing readings of his work on podcasts and YouTube. OutsideXbox's Luke Westaway is quite good at it, if you have an hour or so to spare. Christopher Lee is even better, but his stuff can be difficult to find.

M.R. James originally created these stories as live performances for his friends at Christmas, a tradition that goes back a long, long way but is probably best remembered through Dickens' Christmas Carol. James then published them to great acclaim, and enjoys the best distinction a writer could hope for; his work is still in print almost a century after his death.

This time out I want to focus on two of his stories and talk about their Bookhounds implications. I shan't spoil. If you haven't read these stories please seek them out.

The first is Martin's Close, first published in 1911's More Ghost Stories.

Some few years back I was staying with the rector of a parish in the West, where the society to which I belong owns property. I was to go over some of this land: and, on the first morning of my visit, soon after breakfast, the estate carpenter and general handyman, John Hill, was announced as in readiness to accompany us. The rector asked which part of the parish we were to visit that morning. The estate map was produced, and when we had showed him our round, he put his finger on a particular spot. 'Don't forget,' he said, 'to ask John Hill about Martin's Close when you get there. I should like to hear what he tells you.' 'What ought he to tell us?' I said. 'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the rector, 'or, if that is not exactly true, it will do till lunch-time.' And here he was called away ...

It transpires there's not just a story, there's a criminal trial.

I made search in the more obvious places. The trial seemed to be nowhere reported. A newspaper of the time, and one or more news-letters, however, had some short notices, from which I learnt that, on the ground of local prejudice against the prisoner (he was described as a young gentleman of a good estate), the venue had been moved from Exeter to London; that Jeffreys had been the judge, and death the sentence, and that there had been some 'singular passages' in the evidence. Nothing further transpired till September of this year. A friend who knew me to be interested in Jeffreys then sent me a leaf torn out of a second-hand bookseller's catalogue with the entry: JEFFREYS, JUDGE: Interesting old MS. trial for murder, and so forth, from which I gathered, to my delight, that I could become possessed, for a very few shillings, of what seemed to be a verbatim report, in shorthand, of the Martin trial.

OK, let's talk about this.

Bookhounds - and horror games in general - sometimes treat manuscripts as though every single one of them's a Necronomicon, bound in human skin and dripping with evil. That's far from being so. People publish anything and everything. Most of it is rubbish. That's why the Hounds are always on the lookout for some unmemorable 18th century tat that they can rip apart and use the binding and papers for something more valuable. However, one man's rubbish is another man's gold. 

Here we have someone who's looking for the transcript of a trial. They can't find a copy anywhere, and it seems there may not be one. Yet by chance a transcript turns up in a second-hand bookseller's shop. It might have been that simple, but James adds an extra hurdle: the text is in the court reporter's shorthand, and not only that but a 17th century version of shorthand. The narrator has to find someone who can translate it so the narrator can have a copy typed out. It's a very neat touch that lends authenticity to the story, and doesn't take more than a sentence to describe.

The second piece is from Two Doctors, which first appears in A Thin Ghost And Others (1920).

It is a very common thing, in my experience, to find papers shut up in old books; but one of the rarest things to come across any such that are at all interesting. Still it does happen, and one should never destroy them unlooked at. Now it was a practice of mine before the war occasionally to buy old ledgers of which the paper was good, and which possessed a good many blank leaves, and to extract these and use them for my own notes and writings. One such I purchased for a small sum in 1911. It was tightly clasped, and its boards were warped by having for years been obliged to embrace a number of extraneous sheets. Three-quarters of this inserted matter had lost all vestige of importance for any living human being: one bundle had not. That it belonged to a lawyer is certain, for it is endorsed: The strangest case I have yet met, and bears initials, and an address in Gray's Inn. It is only materials for a case, and consists of statements by possible witnesses. The man who would have been the defendant or prisoner seems never to have appeared. The dossier is not complete, but, such as it is, it furnishes a riddle in which the supernatural appears to play a part. You must see what you can make of it.

Again, legal papers are the focus of the narrative, but look at how they're introduced. Not even as a manuscript; they're shoved into a ledger and forgotten about, until the narrator picks the ledger up for next to nothing. Three quarters of the inserted matter is useless, which is what's going to happen to the Hounds more often than not; all those bits and bobs they pick up in estate sales and so on, and most of it rubbish. Yet every so often there is something interesting 'and one should never destroy them unlooked at.'

So what can we extract from this?

1) Occult and by extension Mythos lore can appear anywhere.

2) Since Occult and Mythos lore is inextricably interwound with human history, it will appear everywhere, and that includes the most mundane of places. 

3) People publish all sorts of things, and while most of it is uninteresting rubbish you never know where you might find that next scrap of useful material.

4) In the 1930s and previous, people saved damn near everything. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw, never mind bought, a second-hand writing ledger in an antiquarian shop. Most of them barely had space for the books, never mind the not-quite-books. I doubt I'd find one at the Spreadeagle, and frankly if you can't find one there you can't find one anywhere.

With all that in mind:

A Peculiar Gazette

Back issues of old newspapers are often of interest to collectors; you never know when you'll find someone potty on the subject of , say, Huddersfield and desperate for new material. 

The Hounds find a bound collection of early 1800s publication The Star Gazette, best remembered for its series on the London Poor; they had a discount Mayhew on staff who liked writing social commentary but lacked academic rigor. The paper's been defunct since 1868, and the collection's a potential squiz.

There's a section towards the beginning of the collection that has some extra papers interspersed, and it becomes clear to anyone who examines the papers that they're about a scandal that was big in the 1830s: the Thevenot Abduction. 

A fortune-hunting 30-year-old bankrupt, Eustace Thevenot, wanted to marry into money, and did so by abducting 15-year-old textile heiress Devony Walker. He managed to spirit her away from her boarding school and then got her alone at the Thevenot family castle in Scotland, where he persuaded her that her father had consented to the marriage. The pair went from Scotland to Calais, but her outraged family tracked them down and prosecuted. Thevenot went to prison and died there. Devony, released from her marriage, had a short and unhappy life. She married again, and died in childbirth in her early 20s. 

Oral History, Occult or similar, 1 point spend: Devony's story has a peculiar postscript. She was never buried. There is no body in the family crypt; someone stole it. This was hushed up at the time, but became part of local ghost lore after her death. Nobody knows where Eustace Thevenot is buried. Presumably in an unmarked prison grave.

[Loosely based on the real-world Shrigley abduction.]

The Star Gazette has the bare-bones account of the abduction and trial. 

The interspersed papers are an unpublished statement from Devony Walker about her experiences at Thevenot Castle, on a tidal islet up in the Highlands. The statement was collected as part of trial prep, but never introduced at the actual trial. 

In game terms the Walker Papers have the following stats:

1 pool point Occult (skim) or +1 Occult (pore over), no Mythos, no spells. Effectively a short treatise on Geomancy, as understood by Walker who was the subject of various Geomantic rituals that Thevenot tried to cast on her while the two of them were alone at the Castle. 

To anyone without a Mythos pool these rituals seem nonsensical. Thevenot was trying to gain the attention of a water horse or kelpie, and get the creature to bless the marriage.

To anyone with a Mythos pool Thevenot was clearly trying to evoke the spirit of (or essence, or gain the approval of - it's not clear from the text) a sacred dragon, or Lloligor, that in times past had guided the Thevenot family.  

Whether the reader has a Mythos pool or not, it's clear from the papers that Thevenot had a library of occult texts at the Castle, some of which were scarce and valuable even at the time and will be much more valuable in the 1930s. 

Moreover a quick study of History, Library Use or similar (no point spend needed) soon realizes that Thevenot Castle's last occupant, Dacre Thevenot, died in 1916 at the Battle of Ginchy. There's no mention of an estate sale. Those books could be sitting all alone up there in Scotland, waiting to be pinched ...

So long as the Hounds are willing to risk the wrath of the kelpie, of course. But who believes in kelpies?

That's it for me this week. Enjoy!

The Forerunner (RPG Horror)

It was Christmas Eve.

I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and the habit clings to me.

Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary to mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it was Christmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story ... Jerome K. Jerome, Told After Supper

I've been reading a lot of ghost stories over Christmas. I've a small collection of Ash-Tree Press books, any of which I'd recommend to a reader interested in older, more obscure ghastly tales. I'm not saying they're all winners - far from it. But when they work, they are brilliant. 

Christmas is a troubling holiday. In the early days of the Church the date varied; it might be celebrated in January, March, or December. However in pagan traditions, and in particular the Roman Saturnalia or observance of the birth of the Sun in Mithraic tradition, the proper celebration was in mid to late December (17th to 24th). Since the early Church depended on converting pagans it was felt prudent to shift the Christmas celebration to its current date. 

This, mind, is also the season of the Lord of Misrule. The dead return; in fact, in some traditions that's the whole point. In former days the entire house would be swept clean, the meal prepared, everything laid on - and then the family would go to church, leaving the house empty so the ghosts could visit, and feast. 

It's traditions like these which give birth to the old habit of telling ghost stories at Christmas.

One of the collections I've been reading is by David G. Rowlands: The Executor. Rowlands is a ghost story nut; he picked up the bug by reading M.R. James' work many years ago, and couldn't shake it. His style is similar to the Jamesian Circle, authors like Swain, Munby and Wakefield - in fact Rowlands is so fond of Swain's work he wrote several stories about Swain's clerical the Rev. Mr. Batchel and his Stoneground parish. I very much admire Rowlands' work, though he does have a habit I find annoying. He refers back to the old classics explicitly, by name, having his characters say things like "why, this is just like the events in Charles Dickens' The Signalman!" Do that once and you're forgiven; after the third or fourth repetition it becomes annoying.

For this post I want to develop an idea Rowlands uses in his very short piece, The Previous Train. I can't discuss this without spoilers, so be warned - but The Previous Train is only one small piece among many others, so I hope you'll forgive me for spoiling this one.

His long-running protagonist, Catholic priest Father O'Connor, is trying to catch a train. As with many of Rowlands' works the exact date is unclear, but judging by the circumstances it's probably 1930s-adjacent. He's in the Suffolk countryside, it's late at night, and there's nobody but O'Connor at the station. Even the station master has gone home, and there's little light; O'Connor has to read the train timetable by the glimmer of his bicycle lamp.

O'Connor hears an approaching train. It's not on the schedule, so he assumes it's not stopping and is probably a goods train, so he moves back from the track. However it is a passenger train and it does stop at the station. Thanking his lucky stars, he tries to put his bicycle in the goods wagon, after which he intends to board.

By the dim light within I saw the Guard. He was standing at the hand-break in the center of the floor. The feeble interior light came not from the lamp overhead, but seemed to emanate as cold phosphorescence from the very fabric of the compartment.

The Guard had not moved, and I was about to put my questions to him when I saw the cobwebs over his uniform, from his arms to the brake pillar; from the clutter of packages on the floor to his legs; across his face ... 

Fortunately O'Connor escapes, by luck more than judgment. It transpires that this ghost train isn't a relic from the past but a warning of things to come, for one year later exactly there is a wreck on that line and all aboard are killed.

Forerunners are supernatural warnings of approaching events says folklorist Helen Creighton, and are usually connected with impending death. They come in many forms, and are startling, as though the important thing is to get the hearer's attention.  

They share many characteristics with the German Doppelganger in that both phenomena can appear as warnings of tragedy soon to come. Or of tragedies just this minute playing out; Poe's William Wilson and the later short The Student of Prague play on this theme. An evil twin separates from the original - literally the protagonists' reflection, in Student - and goes off to create chaos.

Forerunners don't have to appear as a person; they can be an event, a sound, a recurring phenomena. A similar trick is often used in science fiction narratives, where the forerunner effect is often played off as some kind of time loop.

 

In The Previous Train the forerunner is a train, but it's not clear why it appears to O'Connor. After all, there's nothing the priest can do to stop the tragedy, even supposing he knew what the forerunner was trying to say. Nor is there any suggestion that this is a personal warning; there's no risk O'Connor will catch the train on the fatal day.

Moreover the forerunner in Previous Train is malevolent, potentially fatal. 

The jolt swung the figure of the Guard around like an awkward puppet and I looked into his dead face. I am convinced that my heart stopped for that instant, then I felt it pound away again. The skin was seamed and gray, blotched with decay and softly luminous. The last straw was to see a dim spark of light deep down in the eyes, behind the cobwebs. It was not the light of intelligence, but some infernal animation building up ... building up from the emotion and vitality that were draining out of me!

Using this in an RPG is a little tricky, in that the whole point of a forerunner is that it happens before the action happens. So where in your average scenario all the really gruesome, action-packed stuff happens towards the end of the narrative, in a forerunner story the supernatural unpleasantness happens in the first few moments of the narrative, and the players spend the rest of the session unravelling it.

For that reason I don't think a forerunner suits a one-shot session. A one-shot demands action in the final scenes, as a kind of pay-off or reward for a shorter narrative span. However it could be a really effective device in a long-running campaign, where there's a big event coming in the final chapter and you want to give the characters some advance warning. It has real potential as the inciting incident of a longer narrative, in which the characters' ordinary lives are violently interrupted by a blatantly supernatural warning, which they spend the rest of the story trying to understand.

It could be a very interesting trick if the forerunner creates duplicate versions of the characters, as with The Student of Prague. Then the GM has ready-made antagonists for the campaign, enemies who will advance in power as the characters advance and will oppose the characters at every opportunity. Always one step ahead, the doppelgangers ruin the characters' reputations, upend their triumphs, undermine their successes. No matter where they go, they can't escape. 

In any kind of horror setting the forerunner springs from the same source as magic. If magic happens because of demons, then the forerunner is demonic. If magic is the result of super-science beings meddling with the fundamental building blocks of the universe at the dawn of time, then dopplegangers are an after-effect of those same experiments; the universe's version of a bad acid flashback. If, as with Bookhounds, the energies of the city itself power magical effects, then those same energies can create forerunners.

A megapolisomantic working uses the city as a sorcerous engine to accomplish magical effects. Whether the city generates magical energies, or merely focuses pre-existing forces (astrological, geomantic, divine, Mythos, etc) is a metaphysical matter left up to the Keeper. Are all cities megapolisomantically significant? Bookhounds of London, p 76.

Let's say for the sake of this discussion that this is a Bookhounds game and you, the GM, want to use a forerunner event to set up a later, Mythos-relevant disaster. Let's also include Megapolisomancy, with the presumption that it's the innate power of the city that causes the event.

From that we get:

Shadow Train

This seed presumes the characters' book store is somewhere near an Underground Station. That's not difficult; there are plenty to choose from, including a long list of fictional stations. I'm going to call this station Hobb's End, after the station which plays a major role in Quatermass and the Pit. 

One or more of the characters are waiting for their train. It is the end of a long day, and they are exhausted. It is close to midnight, and there aren't many other people with them, down there in the dark.

It gets darker. The station lights flicker and dim, and characters with magical or megapolisomantic ability sense a disturbance, as if something powerful is gathering strength. There comes a pulsing of energy from the tube line, perhaps heralding an approaching train - but as the whatever-it-is emerges from the tunnel the station lights fail altogether, plunging the platform into darkness.

The characters can still see. Whatever-it-is coming out from the tunnel sheds its own ghastly light.

It's not a tube train, at least not as they know it. It is black, and its livery doesn't match any train line they're familiar with. It grinds to a stop but its doors do not open. 

Sitting in the train, so close the characters could touch them, are the characters. At least, in every possible way these creatures with their dead, luminous eyes resemble the characters. They gaze with indifference at their living counterparts. Try as they might, the characters won't be able to get on board the train or communicate with their doubles.

There's something else on the train. Large, motile, a mass that flows and bubbles.

With a sudden start the train begins to move again, and soon it eases down the tunnel. Once it's gone, the station lights come on again.

If the characters ask, the other people on the platform saw this happen but none of them know what it means. Station staff, if asked, disclaim all knowledge, though one or two of them might privately admit that 'odd things' have happened over the last few nights. Nothing on this scale, and as it never happens again station staff and other witnesses are all too keen to forget it ever happened.

Two things result from this experience.

First, any character who did not already have a Megapolisomancy pool has one dot now. They're attuned to the inner workings of the city, for good or ill. 

Second, any character present feels a persistent sense of impending doom. They don't know what it is. They don't know what it presages. They only know that it is coming and that right soon.

The rest of the campaign arc will be spent unravelling this sense of impending doom and discovering what it means. Exactly what it does mean is up to the players and Keeper. It could be a very personal event, like a disaster on the line. It could be a citywide event, or something of planetary significance, like England being destroyed by the awakening of an Old One. Whatever it is, is up to you.

Though the characters will not appreciate this at first, there is a third result. Their twins are busy. They, like the Student's reflection, are as like the characters as it is possible to be, down to mannerisms and dress - yet they are opposed to the characters in every way. They dog the characters' actions. If the character asks for a book to be reserved at the British Library, their opposite arrives and claims it before they do. If the character attends an auction, their double is there and bids for the prize.

These creatures are creations of pure Megapolisomancy. They cannot exist outside the city, and it's not clear whose bidding they follow - if they follow any creature's bidding at all. It may be they are figments of the city's imagination, as a dreamer populates her dream - but if so, does that mean the city is an entity unto itself? Is it dreaming?

Will it wake up?

Enjoy!

All-Hallows (Edom Files)

 Today is All-Hallows, also known as All Saints, a Christian replacement of an ancient tradition. That is, it's November 1st - October 31st being the day before the festival day. 

Originally this would have been celebrated in March, which means technically Halloween is a March tradition. Pope Boniface moved it to November in the way back when, and in the Catholic calendar All Saints is followed by All Souls on November 2nd. The idea being that one day is dedicated to the saints and martyrs, another to everyone else, and the everyone else in this instance are those still suffering in Purgatory rather than the blessed in Heaven. 

There's a very old tradition that says should you give clothes or shoes to a poor man you shall receive the same when you die, to ease your passage. It's part of a general injunction to do right by the poor, and you will be rewarded in the afterlife - but if you don't, expect torment and fire when you pass over.

There's a further tradition which says you shouldn't wear new shoes to a funeral, in case the dead see them and get jealous. They may try to steal them, and your luck will surely turn bad.

All Hallows is also a very popular name for a church. A quick Google will show you how popular. One in particular, All-Hallows-The-Great of London, was ancient when it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Christopher Wren rebuilt it, and it lasted until the later 1800s when the neighborhood became far too commercial. The space was needed for development, so the Church sold the land and used the money to build a new church elsewhere. It was the London Brewery for a while before Hitler put a stop to that, and eventually became Mondial House, the great telephone exchange. It was a massive white elephant even when it was being built; construction started in 1978 and although the building itself was finished it still needed equipment. By the time BT finished installing all its kit, in the 1980s, the equipment it had installed back in 1978 was already woefully obsolete. Mondial was demolished in the 2000s; an office block stands there now.  

In the Edom Field Manual there's a contact, Maggie Canter, of Canter Antiques & Salvage, "a large junk shop in East London. Over the years, the business has come to specialize in architecture and furniture salvaged from churches and other religious institutions. If you want to outfit your hipster bar with a few pews from a demolished church, or are looking to buy a load of old-fashioned bedsheets and tablecloths from a nunnery that ran out of nuns, Canter’s is the place to go. She jokes that she’s just finishing up what Henry the Eighth started with the destruction of the monasteries ..."

With all that in mind:

Maggie's Back Room

Even Maggie Canter comes across items she can't sell. She got a job lot of office furniture and other bits and bobs when they broke up Mondial House, the sort of thing she'd be able to turn over in a heartbeat under normal circumstances. There's always some dodgy little startup looking for cheap office furniture, and while it's not strictly in Canter Antiques' usual line a quick clearance like this is bread-and-butter.

If only she could sell it.  

She knew there was something off when she took possession. It was just a feeling, and she ignored it. More fool her. As it happened the day after she brought back the goods was All Hallows, and that very day she heard someone walking around in the warehouse after hours. Couldn't catch him, mind. Funny thing; her warehouse foreman, Larry, lost a pair of shoes that day. Christ knew where those got to.

When they didn't sell straight off she shoved the kit in the back of the warehouse, making a mental note to take it to the dump tomorrow. Except tomorrow never comes, does it? So it was all still in the back next All Hallows, and once again she heard someone stomping around in there. Once again, someone's shoes went missing. Hers, in fact.

It's been years, and every year on All Hallows someone marches about in the warehouse like some kind of night watchman. Every year someone's shoes go missing. She's started buying cheap trainers and boots to leave behind for whoever it is; better than letting the good stuff go.

If Edom's finest want to get on Maggie's good side, they could tell her what's going on and how to put a stop to it. 

• The Corpse Watchman. Back when the Church had to worry about bodysnatchers, All-Hallows-The-Great built a watch house and put a permanent watchman on staff. Except the Church put its faith in the wrong man, and several corpses ended up on the dissection table before the ring was put out of business. The Watchman barely escaped with his life; the mob wanted to tear him to shreds. Legend has it for years afterward you could hear the Watchman on patrol, forced to look after the dead he betrayed while he was alive.
• Weird Science. Edom had its fingers in Mondial House. Specifically the Boffin, (Dracula Dossier), who was forever experimenting to see if he could come up with a more efficient, scientific way to deal with the vampire problem. Mondial House already had a bit of a reputation among the frivolous; after all, it had been built on All-Hallows' churchyard, even if all the bodies had been moved before they built Mondial. The Boffin thought he'd create a vampire trap, but all he ended up doing was losing a perfectly good assistant. Nobody knows where Norman ended up. Rumor had it he never left Mondial ...
• Footsteps of the Damned. It's got nothing to do with the office furniture. Once upon a time Dracula's Node in London (the Satanic Cult, for instance, though it's up to the Director as to exactly what form the Node takes), found out about Maggie's links to Edom and decided to assign one of its more disposable assets to watch her. Trouble is, nobody rescinded the order, and when the Node got bored and forgot about Canter's, the asset kept coming back. Again. And Again. Almost as if it was compelled ...

  Enjoy!

Laying Ghosts (Night's Black Agents)

I've discussed ghosts before, in relation to Trail of Cthulhu and, to a lesser extent, Bookhounds. What about Night's Black Agents?

There's a long tradition of combating, even defeating, ghosts. Sometimes the combat can be brutal and spectacular; it took twelve ecclesiastics to beat Black Vaughan down, for instance. Generally in these tales the objective is not to force the spirit to move on to a different place. The idea is to imprison it here, on earth. As a spirit, it can't be killed, and as it's malevolent, it can't be sent to heaven. The only option, short of somehow sending it down below, is to keep it here, but in such a way as to render it harmless. Shove it into a grandfather clock, throw it down a well, put it in a room and seal the room - however you care to do it, do it, and then forget about it.

Much like vampires, really. Except that vampires have a specific list of banes where ghosts have only one recorded weakness: prayer, especially when delivered by sanctified holy men.

Night's Black Agents is a more active setting than Bookhounds. The agents are expected to be capable, combative people. It's less about arcane knowledge and more about how many rounds you can put downrange.

I gave these guidelines for Bookhounds ghosts, or spirits of place:

1. The truth of the haunting will probably never be known for certain, since most of the facts are unavailable.
2. It cannot be dealt with in the same way as, say, an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls, for example, can be shot, or bargained with. There is no way to communicate with a haunting of place, and probably no way to kill it.
3. It has a great deal of power behind it, possibly magical power. That means other people besides the protagonists are going to be interested in it. That also means it could be very dangerous.

I'd modify them for Night's Black Agents, as follows:

1. The truth of the haunting must be linked to the Vampire background. If vampires in your game are mutant creations of science, then ghosts should have a scientific background as well. A Satanic vampire game has Satanic ghosts, and so on.
2. It cannot be dealt with in the same way as an ordinary antagonist encounter. Ghouls can be shot or bargained with, but ghosts don't have the same weaknesses. Bargaining may be possible, but difficult.
3. It has power behind it, but that power is going to depend on the method of its creation. It ought never to be as powerful as, say, a Renfield, let alone a vampire. This isn't a major player; it's a mood piece, possibly even a booby trap.
4. These ghosts can be defeated but probably not destroyed, in the same sense that vampires can be defeated, but can come back from the grave. 

In NBA vampires come in four delicious favors: mutant, supernatural, damned, alien. What kind of ghost stories can be told with the same premise?

Mutant: Their markers are medical symptoms; their emphasis is infection. The ghost is a vampiric remnant, something that lingers in those areas where vampiric infection has occurred. Say the vampire attacks and kills someone; the ghost is what's left behind, and can be dealt with by cleansing the area in the same way crime scene cleaners deal with the aftermath of a bloody murder. It might be inhaled, or infects through contact with unprotected skin. It might be some fragment of memory from the victim - their daughter's first birthday party, say, which causes anyone infected by it to relive that day again, and again, and again. It might be something left behind by the killer, an eye infection that causes the victim to see, say, blood, whenever they look at, or are in the presence of, certain things. Say the murder victim was a blonde female teen. Now, every time the agent sees a blonde of about the same age and gender, the agent hallucinates blood. Dealt with by medicines, or injecting liquified Banes.

Supernatural: Their markers are strange superstitions, their emphasis hunger. This best fits the traditional ghost story, and is the best candidate for magical manipulation. If, through magic, an unruly ghost can be imprisoned in, say, a grandfather clock, then it can be used as a supernatural bomb. Send it to the target, and sit back and watch the fun. Casting the Runes is the prototype. It's never clear, in stories like these, whether the ghost is a human spirit or some kind of older, pagan thing. A semi or demi God, perhaps. Some remnant of, say, the Great God Pan. A ghost of this sort probably has limited intelligence and free will, and the older ones can be very dangerous. You don't survive several hundred, or thousand, years, without learning a trick or two. Dealt with through arcane rituals found in worm-eaten texts.

Damned: Their markers are holy symbols and spiritualism, their emphasis is seduction. These ghosts are the bargainers, the promise-makers, the succubi and incubi. They are likely to be demons in their own right, capable of possession. They have a great deal of power when they're linked with a mortal soul, much less so without a suitable host. The Exorcist is the best example. Hungry Ghosts work well in this paradigm too. Of course, exorcists come with their own baggage, and rising demand for their services probably indicates widespread despair; the world is burning, and it must be the Devil's fault. Dealt with through spiritual intervention.

Alien: Their markers are various uncanny effects; their emphasis is invasion. In this version ghosts might be the aftereffect of alien tech, or just the presence of aliens. Quatermass and the Pit is the best example. Deep beneath the earth the last Martians lie entombed, and wait for the day when they can take over, piggybacking on our minds to recreate Mars. Until their rocket is uncovered, they can only throw out psychic shocks and disturbances - which is why Hobbs Lane, the London street that is being dug up, has such a shocking reputation. The Devil lives there, they say. Sure enough, there have been strange sightings, eyewitness reports, and horrible scenes there since the beginning of recorded history. In this instance ghosts are almost a warning, the canary in the coal mine - for if you see them, you know this is a tainted place. Dealt with through avoidance, or some kind of prophylactic treatment. Tin foil hat, anyone? 

The big takeaway, and the difference between these and the Bookhounds ghosts, is that they can be understood, challenged and defeated. It may require magic, or some kind of chemical cleansing, rather than a Glock, but the end result is the same. 

Ghosts of this type should generally not be very powerful; that spot is reserved for the vampires. Their main function is to squick or mislead, not defeat or kill. Aberrance rating, except for particularly powerful entities like the Great God Pan, ought to be low; somewhere around 5. No Free powers, and some will be more common than others. Possession seems one of the most likely for Damned ghosts, for example. 

The other thing to remember is, these ghosts can't be killed easily, but they can be diverted, imprisoned. Which means the agents can also weaponize them, if they can work out how to do that without getting caught in the blast radius. That's a story in and of itself. Figuring out how to do it is one thing; pulling it off in the heat of the moment, quite another.

Enjoy!

Forgotten London: The Tyburn Tree (London)

This post inspired by the YouTube channel Plainly Difficult.

So how can this be gamified?

There are a few things that can be played with:

• The gallows themselves.
• The location of the gallows.
• The artifacts associated with the hangings eg broadsheets.
• The psychic impact of the event.

The gallows are a folkloric gold mine. Most people with any interest in horror folklore know about the Hand of Glory, and how it can be used by sorcerers. The condemned on the way to the gallows were especially prized for their curative hands, both before and after the event. There would always be a congregation of sufferers gathered at the three-legged tree hoping for a stroke from the soon-to-be departed, and the hangman could often be bribed to let the chronically ill have a few minutes with the corpse after its last jig was done.

However it wasn't just the hands that were valuable. The gallows themselves were magically potent. Plainly Difficult notes that the permanent gallows Tyburn is famous for were eventually taken down because of persistent vandalism. People were taking great chunks out of the gallows because they believed the wood itself was magical after being watered with the blood of the condemned, a theme that recurs again and again in ghost stories. The wood could cure ague, toothache, and bring luck at cards. 

So, a story seed:

John Rann's Chair A pub in East London claims to have an antique chair made from wood taken from the gallows that took the life of Sixteen String Jack, hung in 1774 for his many crimes. It's said the chair was originally made at the instruction of one of London's most prominent gamblers, Samuel William Rowlinson, a regular at notorious gambling club Brook's. Rowlinson is supposed to have died of a heart attack while playing Hazard at Brook's. Two nights ago a pub regular died sitting in that chair while playing cards, and there's been talk of a curse. What's going on? 

The location of Tyburn Tree is slightly in doubt. It's popularly supposed to be at the junction of Oxford Street, Edgeware Road and Bayswater Road, there's reason to think it might actually have been at Connaught Square.  This Georgian landmark is very exclusive, and has a private shared garden park in which a party is held each year. 

So, a story seed:

The Unwelcome Corpse Each year, the night before the party, the heads of each Connaught Square household gather for a quiet ritual at which they 'hang' a corpse - usually a dummy, though in the early days it's said they obtained their corpses from medical schools - with the intent of keeping Tyburn Tree quiet for another year. This ritual has been going on for longer than anyone can remember, and deadly secrecy is essential since some of the country's most important citizens live at Connaught Square. They couldn't afford the scandal. However this year Connaught Square was horrified to find an actual corpse strangled at the very spot their ritual was to be carried out. Nobody knows who did it, or who the body belongs to. Can this scandal be hushed up? How did this happen, and why?

Bookhounds of London characters will be interested in the broadsheets. Printed cheap and sold for peanuts, surviving copies of these scurrilous rags can be very valuable to collectors. Often the condemned sold her life story to the highest bidder, and had the satisfaction of seeing it sold at the same moment her limbs twitched for the last time. Or perhaps it was a poem, a song, some kind of political pamphlet - but whatever it was, there's bound to be a market for it. Even the lies are valuable, and Lord knows there were plenty of lies to go around. When in need of copy, broadsheet sellers plagiarized old sheets and added just enough new detail to make it seem as if the current condemned actually did all those things. Sex & violence always sells, particularly when mixed with a healthy dose of punishment for the wicked.

Provenance A book scout fallen on hard times and sodden with drink keeps coming up with vintage Tyburn broadsheets, which sell for just enough to keep the scout sozzled. In almost every respect the sheets seem genuine; the right paper, subject material, historical details, even the ink. The one thing wrong about them is they seem too good. Nothing that's been around for two to three hundred years has any business being in this condition. It's as if they were printed yesterday. Where is the scout finding these broadsheets? Why does the scout keep going back to Tyburn?

A Tyburn execution was a popular event. A famous one drew crowds to watch the condemned on his two mile procession to the Tyburn Tree. Wealthy spectators had their own stands built, or rented rooms along the route at one of the many inns or houses, while the poorer mob stood in the heat or rain - and in Britain rain is more likely. The trip to the gallows might take as long as three hours, as the condemned's passage was constantly interrupted. The prisoner often stopped at an inn to have one last drink - after all, a drunken prisoner was a compliant one, particularly if someone thought to slip drugs in his drink. Sometimes the prisoner would be pelted with rotten vegetables, eggs and other things, if they were unpopular or their crimes particularly heinous. More likable condemned would be better treated, but they all came to the same place in the end. 

Traffic Violations The church of St Giles has a traffic problem. Three times in the last three months there's been a serious accident in the street outside its gates, and each time the driver or passenger of the vehicle involved swore the accident happened because the road was slick with what seemed to be blood. Loose talk links the accidents with Tyburn dead buried in the churchyard, and some parishoners are getting hysterical. What's really causing these accidents? Is it to do with Tyburn, or something else? [Esoterrorists Keepers take note: this could be a scheme to weaken the Membrane.]

That's it for this week!

Halloween (RPG All)

Tis the season, so let's talk about ghosts - or at least, about the day on which ghosts are celebrated. What exactly is Halloween?

It's a holiday now remembered for its place in the Christian calendar. Formerly celebrated in May, Halloween is the day before All Saints, also known as All-Hallows or All-Hallowmas. All Saints is celebrated each November 1st, and is, as you might expect, dedicated to all saints and martyrs known and unknown - which conveniently covers those gallant souls who perished somewhere forsaken and alone, as well as those more spectacularly martyred where everyone could see it happen. The festival was introduced by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th Century, probably to supplant a pagan ritual dedicated to the dead. Boniface's saint day is in May, which, when he first invented the festival, was also when All Saints was celebrated - May 13th, to be exact.

The date was changed by Gregory III to November 1st and has remained so to this day. It's not clear why Gregory felt the need to change the date. Gregory's time in the Papal seat is only a century after Boniface's. He was a great opponent of iconoclasm - the destruction of religious relics, on the grounds that idolizing relics is anathema - and was an enthusiastic builder, or rebuilder, of churches, shrines, and holy places. His changing the date may have had something to do with the changing emphasis of the church; up till now, its focus had been on the East, and the former Empire, but in Gregory's day the focus shifts to Northern Europe, Germany, and really anywhere Gregory could get support to help him against rampaging Muslims and Lombards. Since All Saints is ultimately an end-of-year festival, it may be that this shift in Papal focus, and climates, meant a shift in dates was prudent.

All Saints is followed by All Souls, on November 2nd. All Souls is when everyone who isn't a saint gets a place at the table. Many cultures have a similar point in their spiritual calendar, a day, or perhaps a festival, set aside for remembering the dead. For the Japanese, it is the Feast of Lanterns. China's fifteenth day in the seventh month of its lunar calendar is its Ghost Day, when the gates of Hell open and the living offer sacrifices to the wandering dead. In each case the day of remembrance is usually towards the end of the year, when crops have been harvested, new fields sown, and there is nothing to do but wait.

So technically Halloween, which in the West is celebrated on October 31st, is only the start of a three-day festival of the dead, and probably the least important of the three, but it's the one that's been drummed into us by commercial interests as being the only day worth remembering. However if you're worried about ghosts returning, the day you want to pay attention to is November 2nd, All Souls. For those Keepers setting their games in the 1920s and 30s, this is also when Catholic traditionalists will set out food and presents for the returned dead; I doubt it's something many Catholics in the United States do nowadays, though south of the border on the Dia de Muertos the ritual is still remembered.

Incidentally, Dia de Muertos was originally a summertime ritual - but as often happened, when Catholic Christianity took over, the date was changed to better reflect Catholic tradition. On the 31st children build altars to persuade dead children to return; on the 1st, the adult dead come back; and on the 2nd the living visit the dead in their tombs.

The trick-or-treat part of the celebration is a 1920s invention. There's always been a tradition of mummery or going about in fancy dress - ceremonial dress, really -  but sending kids out in costume to get candy by threatening the neighbors isn't really a thing until the later 1920s, and then only in big cities. The idea caught on, and it should hardly be a surprise that it did - just then. We think of the 1920s as the Roaring Twenties, the Bootlegger Era, and tend to forget that it was also the decade of the booster, the advertiser, and the Boom. If it could be sold, you could bet your bottom dollar they'd sell it. For them, Halloween was a gift from Heaven. Postcards, costumes, decorations, accessories, and best of all, candy, candy, candy, all yours at never-to-be-beaten prices. Rather like Christmas, Halloween was heavily kid-oriented, the purpose being to get children on board so they would nag their parents to buy things for them.

Give me a child until he is seven and I shall show you the man, Aristotle is supposed to have said. If only Aristotle knew what he was letting the rest of us in for. Soon trick-or-treat becomes part of accepted tradition, accepted because adults who remember it fondly support their children's habit, who then grow up to do the same.

So what does all this mean from a gaming perspective?

Well, among other things it strongly suggests that if your game is set in the Victorian period or earlier, there really isn't a Halloween as you know it today. There may be an extra service on the 31st, but that's about it. On the other hand, come the 1st, or better yet the 2nd, sparks begin to fly. The Keeper may choose to use this as set dressing - food for the dead laid out on the table, that sort of thing - or may decide to dig a little deeper.

This is the point at which I turn to some very good advice in Trail's book Rough Magicks, where Ken Hite says the Keeper should decide ahead of time what Magic really is. It might be spare energy left over from the creation of the Universe, or genetic inheritance from the Old Ones, or any of a dozen other things. Whichever Magic it may be, will determine to a great extent what ghosts are, which in turn affects Halloween and its attendant rituals.

Let's say that magic requires blood sacrifice as a means of providing your 'public key' to the cosmos. delivering DNA to Yog-Sothoth, and that sacrificing something other than yourself - babies, cattle - is like hacking the universe using someone else's account. So it's all about blood - the ritual's less important than the claret.

In this instance, a ghost is created by blood. It may even crave it, in vampiric fashion, but probably lacks the intelligence to set traps for it or otherwise get it directly. An excess of blood spilt - like a battlefield, or a gruesome murder - creates excess energy, by hacking the building blocks of the universe and then not doing anything with the power that results. A ghost is spoilt magic. It has no real human characteristics, but since it was created by humans it mimics them to an extent - borrowing human form, creating sounds, and so on.

In this version of events, the All Souls rituals - the feasts, candles, and such - are humanity's response to this spoilt magic. In order to give ghosts something to do, other than cause mischief in their relentless search for blood, humanity creates a magical ritual, which varies from place to place but always has the same intent: pacify or get rid of the dangerous dead.

Of course, as time goes by people become less observant. All Souls stops being the important date in the calendar; now it's Halloween, the 31st and not the 2nd, and now it's not about the dead at all, but about the living. Which would be fine if people stopped shedding blood, but instead they gush gore more enthusiastically than ever. Moreover they do it just at a moment, after the Great War, when a massive excess of bloodletting creates more specters than has been seen before. Humanity hacked reality, and then left reality's doors wide open. The 20th Century becomes the Century of Ghosts, as blood-hungry creatures roam the earth seeking just that little bit more, that drop, that gusher, which will slake their thirst - for a while.

Say you're running a different game, Night's Black Agents perhaps, or anything with a modern setting. In this kind of game ritual is often de-emphasized; it's less about Latin and incense, and more about doing cool things and looking cool while doing them.

At that point Halloween becomes more set dressing than ceremony. It really is about the parties, the costumes, the laughter and the free-flowing bacchanal. Depending on where you are - Italy, say - there may not be a Halloween at all, and All Souls is still the important date. Some locations may really play up the ghosts and goblins side of things. Whitby, for instance, has a Goth Weekend in the final days of October, and that's all thanks to Stoker and his charming fiend. If you're playing Dracula Dossier, and your agents want to visit Whitby, you'd be nuts not to take advantage of the local color.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

The Haunted Doll's House (M.R. James)

I've been asked to contribute to a ghost story evening later this week and for inspiration I've turned to an old favorite: M.R. James' The Haunted Doll's House. It's been one of my favorites for so many years now I can't remember when or where I first read it, but I've read it many times since then.

It's not considered one of James' best. First published in 1923, it was intended as a gift of sorts for Queen Mary, to be added to her magnificent period doll's house built in the early 1920s and exhibited around the country as an example of superlative English craftsmanship. The house included a perfect replica library in 1:12 scale, with each book being an actual book, with a story, in miniature. James later included it in later collections of his work and it's been reprinted since elsewhere.

For me, what gives it juice is its combination of the peculiar with the mundane. There can be nothing so ordinary as a doll's house, yet this particular example is anything but ordinary. To my knowledge nobody's ever tried to replicate the haunted doll's house in fiction, though there are plenty of stories about ghastly toys, including dolls, of one kind or another. It's almost as unique as a story as it is an item.

I notice, as an aside, that more than a few people have built 'haunted doll's houses.' I approve!

There's a line early on that catches me every time, and if you haven't already read the story then I suggest you do so now as I'm about to enter into spoiler territory:

The curtains of the four-poster in the bedroom were closely drawn round all four sides of it, and he put his finger in between them and felt in the bed. He drew the finger back hastily, for it almost seemed to him as if something had – not stirred, perhaps, but yielded – in an odd live way as he pressed it. Then he put back the curtains, which ran on rods in the proper manner, and extracted from the bed a white-haired old gentleman in a long linen night-dress and cap, and laid him down by the rest. The tale was complete.

A lovely bit of sense-horror. There can be few people who haven't had something like that happen at some point in their lives: you reach out a hand, or it might be a foot, and come into contact with something you weren't expecting. In Bermuda, it's usually cockroaches. You might be sat in a chair at night, working on something, only to feel the faintest of touches, almost a brush, at your feet. Or you stretch half-asleep and your hand comes into contact with something furry. Not stirred, perhaps, but yielded - as in giving way, as though you were expecting to find something solid and instead met with something decidedly more fleshy.

There are aspects of that story which hook me yet, but puzzle me too. James repeats a motif again and again, of the clock striking one in the morning just before something dire happens. I don't think he picked that time at random. It can't be pure coincidence; no, James knew some bit of folklore tied to that hour. I don't know what it is and Funk & Wagnall's fails me this time. It may well have something to do with the death's watch beetle or some obscure piece of lore.

The idea of the story repeating itself, again and again, so that others can see it is one that appears in many ghost stories. James plays with it several times, most notably in the Mezzotint, but I've always had a soft spot for the Story of a Disappearance and a Reappearance, in which Punch and Judy play a prominent part. In that instance the repetition is meant as a message for a particular person, but in Doll's House the message, if there is one, is broadcast into the void.

I note that in that story too the one o'clock theme returns. One of these days I really must find out what James meant.

I've discussed hauntings here before, in the context of Trail and Bookhounds. I'm going to quote something from Seabrook's book on Haiti that I feel is relevant:

Obediently, like an animal, he slowly stood erect - and what I saw then, coupled with what I heard previously, or despite it, came as rather a sickening shock. The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it ... I remembered - and my mind seized the memory as a man sinking in water clutches a solid plank - the face of a dog I had once seen in the histological laboratory in Columbia. Its entire front brain had been removed in an experimental operation weeks before; it moved about, it was alive, but its eyes were like the eyes I now saw staring.

To my mind ghosts of this type are like the zombie, in that they lack anything like a motive force. They exist, and they go on existing, but without an animating will to direct it the ghost knocks about like a bull in a china shop, committing random acts of horror without the slightest redeeming element. In Disappearance the horrific Punch and Judy act is at least intended to warn a relative about the crime that saw his uncle killed. In Doll's House the specter is utterly without target or moral; the punishment, if punishment it is, was dealt with long ago and only the aftershocks remain, like the flash after a roll of titanic thunder.

When I discussed hauntings in Trail before, it was in the context of actual places. Yet this story shows that a Trail haunting could as easily be used with models, or toys. Some very beautiful working models, for example, were built as toys but architects use models too, as proof of concept. This applies to ships just as much as houses; the Queen's House in Greenwich, London, for example, has an excellent collection of period architectural ship models.

With all that in mind:

Doll's House (c.1778)

Strawberry Hill Gothic mansion house with attached chapel, and garden area in separate pull-out storage under the house. Includes period fixtures and fittings, and a dozen models including a man, a woman, a child, two grooms and several horses, among others. Slight damage to the roof and some scuff marks on the interior. No missing pieces. Model includes complete inventory of all fixtures, fittings and dolls, written by the original owner, a relative of General John Burgoyne. Projected value at auction: eighty pounds. 

An extra horse and carriage has been known to appear as part of the set, but only at night. Megapolisomancers often seek out models like these to use in their workings, but the only known attempt in this particular case to use the house as part of a ritual ended with the death of the participant. The last three owners of the house all sold it on at auction shortly after the death, or miscarriage, of a child. Interestingly, the extra horse and carriage has several models, all children, inside the carriage.

That's it for now!

Hello, Vicar (Bookhounds of London, Trail of Cthulhu)

I've been mainlining the Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant series by Phil Rickman. I've been a fan of his ever since discovering his horror novels, donkey's years ago, and I highly recommend them if you can find them. That may be difficult; I'm not sure any of them are in print any more. However the Watkins series is still going strong, and I now discover that ITV filmed a serial which will go worldwide release this year. That's a must-see for me, and I highly recommend it to you.

It occurred to me that, since for the last few weeks I've been discussing Bookhounds, it might be interesting to talk about the Church of England, particularly since those outside the UK may not fully appreciate its position within the social fabric.

Everyone knows this bit: once upon a time, King Henry VIII decided divorce was just the thing he needed, and since the Catholics weren't about to grant it he kicked them out of the country and invented what amounted to his own Church, with him at the head of it. That's the essential problem the Church was created to solve: not any complex theological issue, but instead who was in control. Was it to be the Pope, a foreign potentate who demanded loyalty both religious and, to an extent, secular, or the King, who would brook no equals, far less superiors?

This led to a series of conflicts, on several different fronts. Politically it brought the Kingdom into direct conflict with any Catholic monarch, such as when the King of Spain sent in the Armada when Elizabeth, Henry's daughter, was on the throne. The Protestant apostasy wasn't Spain's only reason for wanting to invade, but it certainly lent a piquant spice to the invasion. On the home front, the breakup of the Catholic estate and dispossession of its landholders, led to more than a few martyrdoms. Some of them were more dramatic than others, as with the visionary Holy Maid of Kent who became the only woman to have her head displayed on a spike on London Bridge. And then, of course, there were the traitors.

Guy Fawkes is by far the most famous, mainly because the celebration of his execution has become Bonfire Night, in which the fires and fireworks were originally meant to symbolize the infernal blazes, from which Papists came. Perhaps literally; one commentator warned of Papists tunneling 'from Oxford, Rome, Hell, to Westminster, and there to blow up, if possible, the better foundations of your houses, their liberties and privileges.'  Then of course there's the fictional Popish Plot, which saw 22 people executed, or the many other schemes both real and imagined, to burn down London, kill the monarch, and bring back Catholicism. This led in turn to legal persecution of Catholics, for as legal scholar William Blackstone pointed out, Catholics continued to put the Pope above the King. 'While they acknowledge a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects.' It's an attitude that, to a greatly modified extent, persists today; whenever the issue of a Catholic, or Catholic-friendly, monarch ascending to the throne is discussed, constitutional scholars crawl out of the woodwork to render their judgment on the issue.

By the 19th century this attitude had been much-modified. There was no question of martyrdom by that point, and nobody was expecting Catholic sappers to emerge triumphant from the bombed-out ruins of Westminster. But by that stage the Church was a worldwide institution, for wherever the Empire went, it went too. That legacy is also still with us today, for the C of E is an international Communion, which has led to problems within the faith. When the question of gay marriage arose, for example, even though the Church leaders in the UK adopted a liberal position, elements of the Communion outside the UK were, and remain, vigorously opposed.

Within the UK, the C of E operates on the parish structure.  Each church administers to a set parish within a set geographical region. Several parishes make a diocese, under the supervision of a Bishop. The Bishops make up the church leadership, and are ultimately under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and through him, the Crown.

These churches are social centers as much as they are religious institutions; particularly in rural areas, the church is the center of day to day life. This has led to some unusual problems, not the least of which is financial. The Church owns a tremendous estate: 16,000 buildings spread over 13,000 parishes, never mind the 43 cathedrals, with a remarkable number of them protected due to their architectural and historic significance. Over 43% of the Grade 1 listed buildings in the UK are churches, Grade 1 being the most important, don't-you-dare-modify-this-ever-ever-EVER classification. Imagine the kind of income you'd need to take care of an estate that size, and then reflect that it's done mostly by donations. You can begin to see why dwindling congregation size is such an important issue for the C of E.

In fiction of the Trail of Cthulhu period, whenever C of E churchmen are encountered it almost never seems to be in their capacity as vicar, dealing with a spiritual problem. They might be persecuted by supernatural entities in M R James, or a body might have turned up in the vicarage courtesy of Agatha Christie, or some muscular Christian might be presiding over a Wodehouse village fete. Whatever their role is, it's almost always a secular issue; even in the Stalls of Barchester, James' protagonist is in the soup because he murdered someone for their living. But it's left to Catholics like Father Brown to point out that someone "who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil," connecting his spiritual role with his role in the plot.

If you're looking for a free resource that may provide scenario inspiration, I recommend Sabine Baring-Gould. If you recognize the name it's almost certainly because of his book on werewolves, but Baring-Gould was a priest and antiquarian as well as a novelist, and his books on country life and the role of the village parson in the community are well worth a look.

Closing out, let's consider what role a C of E vicar might play in Bookhounds.

The church is almost certainly a relic of times past, updated more recently. There was a spate of church renovations in the Victorian and Edwardian period, tossing out many of the old pews, carvings and other relics in favor of a more open, modern church, and the characters are more likely to encounter this in London than they are in rural areas. The roof may leak and the bill for repairs may be heavy, but the congregation is likely to be enthusiastic and involved; this isn't yet the dwindling period of scanty congregations and empty donation platters.

The vicar is likely to be involved in many areas beyond what might be considered his spiritual remit. If the parish is populated mainly by the working class and the urban poor, for instance, the vicar will be at least interested in union politics and poor relief. However the vicar is very much of his class, and that is likely to mean middle or upper middle class. Consequently although he may sympathize with the working class, he is not of the working class, and that is likely to make a difference in the way he is treated as well as how he treats others.

The vicar is an educated man, and may even have been to Oxford. Though there are no female vicars in period there are plenty of female lay readers, some of whom may have led their churches in wartime, when the men were at the Front. Moreover C of E vicars are allowed to marry, and their spouses are often central figures in the local community. In period it's usually one vicar, one church; in the modern era, when pay packets are small as is the number of candidates, never mind the congregation, one vicar often serves multiple parishes.

However unless the vicar is very high church he's unlikely to be that interested in mysticism. C of E vicars tend towards practicality and liberalism, rather than ritual. In the typical Trail period the vicar is also likely to have served in the Commonwealth in some capacity, and that can mean anywhere from Africa to Asia and beyond. Perfect for picking up the odd bit of occult lore, or even texts and artifacts, particularly since many vicars tended towards antiquarianism.  

With all that in mind, consider:

The Church of St Clement, in East London, was originally built in 1088, burnt twice over the next few hundred years, and rebuilt each time. The current Church was built in 1789, and extensively modified in 1882. Bomb damage in the War scars the steeple, but the damage was never filled in. It's remarkable for its stained glass window depicting Clement's martyrdom, as well as a much more modern Wartime stained glass memorial dedicated to the RFC. During the war, the then lay reader, Winnifred Jones, was an enthusiastic backer of air power, and as a result of her fundraising and tireless effort the parish donated enough money and material to build five aircraft for No 59 Squadron RFC, now RAF. The current incumbent is Michael Cunliffe-Scott, a high churchman who wants to bring back many of the old rituals and near-Catholic practices, an attitude that puts him at odds with a substantial number of his congregation as well as his lay readers.

From a Megalapolisamantic point of view, St Clement is an interesting and potentially powerful lever. However the Bookhounds may be more interested in Cunliffe-Scott as a potential customer; he fancies himself an antiquarian and amateur ghost-hunter, in the style of Harry Price, and is a keen seeker after book bargains.

That's it for now! Enjoy.

As I Sailed: Captain Kidd's Treasure

My name was Captain Kidd, as I sailed
My name was Captain Kidd, as I sailed
My name was Captain Kidd, and much wickedness I did, 
And God's laws I did forbid, as I sailed.

Some of you may have noticed that a silver bar, allegedly part of Captain Kidd's lost treasure, has been found in Madagascar. Several reports have it as 'buried treasure,' which isn't entirely accurate, since the silver has been recovered from a sunken ship. The 55kg bar was recovered from the wreck of what is thought to be Kidd's ship, the Adventure Galley, a 34-gun square rigger bought fresh from its Deptford launching in 1695 by Kidd, in order to track down pirates in the far-off Indies. The silver is currently in the possession of the Madagascar government; no doubt it will find its way into a museum at some point.

Kidd is a product of the tail end of the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, and was one of its unluckiest specimens. He started his career in the Caribbean as an ordinary seaman, part of a pirate crew that mutinied, took control of the ship, and set sail for Nevis, where the governor promptly enlisted Kidd and his friends as protectors of the colony. As the colony had no money, Kidd got his wages by sacking the French colony at Marie-Galante, capturing French ships, and generally being a nuisance to enemies of the English crown. He was successful enough to earn a reputation as an adventurer in the Americas, and eventually married a wealthy New York widow; this marriage and his associations with New York are the reasons why so many American painters chose him as a subject of their craft. If he'd only stayed there, nobody would remember his name now, and he would have led a far happier life.

But Kidd was enlisted by the Governor of New York to track down pirates who were beginning to make a nuisance of themselves by sacking East Indiamen rather than enemies of the Crown. He purchased the Adventure Galley and made his way to what he must have thought was guaranteed success and fortune, only to find that there were no suitable targets in the Red Sea at all. Plagued by mishap - everything from cholera to mutiny - and desperate to avoid any appearance of piracy by attacking ships from nations not at war with England, Kidd tried at first to stick to the letter of the law. That didn't sit well with his crew, who were looking forward to a share of loot that, they soon realized, they were never going to see. Pushed to breaking point, Kidd tried to keep everyone happy by dabbling in piracy, hoping his investors back in London would protect him legally so long as he brought home the bacon. Even then Kidd had no luck, possibly because he was too timid a pirate, refusing easy, but illegal captures out of fear he'd swing at Tyburn.

His most successful venture was the capture of the Quedagh Merchant, an Armenian-owned vessel that technically was a legitimate prize, since its safe passage had been authorized by the French East India Company. However it was a very slim technicality, and Kidd worried that his explanations wouldn't hold water when he returned to London. It didn't help that, unbeknownst to Kidd, one of the major investors in the Merchant was a man who was on very good terms with the Grand Mogul, who could, and would, make things very hot for Kidd. 

Kidd took the Merchant as a prize, and together with that, another captured ship, and his Adventure Galley, made his way to St Mary's Island, where by chance he met with a much more successful pirate, Culliford, an old frenemy of Kidd who had robbed Kidd of his ship years before, when the two were privateers in the Caribbean. There's some dispute as to whether Kidd and Culliford discussed possible joint ventures, or whether Kidd wanted to capture Culliford but lacked the nerve to try it. Whichever way it went, the outcome is not in dispute: most of Kidd's crew mutinied, went over to Culliford, and left Kidd in the lurch with only two ships, the Galley and the Merchant.

Kidd, by this time thoroughly disheartened and pursued by an angry Mogul and his allies, decided to return to New York and discuss things with his friends there. He left the Galley behind, after stripping it of anything that might be useful to him, right down to the hinges. Then he burnt it.

For these reasons it seems unlikely that the silver bar found off Madagascar is actually Kidd's loot. He had plenty of time to search the Galley before he sank it, and it's not as if a 55kg bar is that easy to overlook. Accidents do happen - there's a recorded instance of a pirate crew throwing bar after bar of 'worthless tin' overboard not realizing it was actually silver, until someone who kept a bar as a souvenir found himself the luckiest man aboard  - but even someone with Kidd's luck oughtn't to have been quite as unfortunate as that.

His New York friends, while not precisely turning their backs on him, were less than welcoming. Not only was Kidd a fugitive from justice, he was poor; all the pirate gold he'd promised to bring back with him had turned out to be a fantasy. That kind of thing never goes down well in New York.  His most powerful ally, Governor Coote, Earl of Bellomont, an investor in the voyage, had every reason to betray Kidd; Bellomont was suspected of being involved in Kidd's turn to piracy, and could have faced a trial himself unless he found a scapegoat. That goat was the perennially unfortunate Kidd, who Bellomont arrested. Kidd's trial in London went about as well as could be expected, particularly since Kidd made one last attempt to prove his loyalty to his investors by not testifying against them at trial. His investors did not intercede on his behalf, and Kidd swung at Execution Dock as a pirate and murderer.

Kidd's lost treasure is one of those tales that grows in the telling. He's known to have left a cache of loot on Gardiner's Island, intended to be used as bribes to keep him clear of the hangman, but which Bellomont used as evidence against Kidd at trial. However this relatively modest pile is nothing compared to the vast sums he's supposed to have buried, here there and everywhere, across the wide, wide sea. Kidd's also the inspiration for at least two ghost stories, both fundamentally the same, in which a ragged seaman, soaked in salt water, wanders the roads, either in New England or old England, trying to make his way to his friends. He's spotted at roadside inns, where he pays his way in antique gold coins.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, you'd have to be simple to believe in Kidd's treasure. Leaving aside that he is, almost without question, the unluckiest brigand in the history of piracy, and never had the chance to amass a fortune, the vast majority of his loot from the Quedagh Merchant must have been taken from him when his crew mutinied and joined Culliford. He would have had very little left of the eight thousand pounds he's supposed to have taken from the Armenian merchant ship, and what little there was probably ended up in his Gardiner's Island cache, which Bellomont stole. However logic has little say in the matter when pirate gold is at stake, which is why fools have been digging holes at Oak Island for time out of mind.

From a Keeper's perspective, what can be done with the tragic tale of Captain Kidd?

As a Trail scenario he could make an excellent ghost, whether wandering the old roads of New England or standing guard over some forgotten cache of gold and silver. In a Bookhounds game he could be found at Execution Dock, whose location is now uncertain, but one possible spot is the Underground Station on the High Street. That could make for an interesting mix of modern and ancient, Kidd's lonely phantom looking on as the trains rush past. Or possibly Kidd decided to make one last confession before he swung, and that confession's found amongst a pile of worm-eaten papers, perhaps with a handy treasure map attached.

Buried treasure is a lure that's sucked in many an otherwise intelligent soul, who ought to have known better. Kidd's loot has a luster that defies description; people have ruined themselves looking for that chimera, digging up dirt from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond, looking for something that was never there to begin with. An interesting scenario could begin in much the same way, with the characters searching for Kidd's lost loot, only to find something more horrible and outre. The great thing about a scenario of this type is that it can take place almost anywhere; you could even make a case for some of it being hidden in New York City by Bellomont. Gardiner's Island is another fun spot for a scenario, particularly given its associations with piracy, the Revolution, and wealth. But you could also take a Kidd story to Madagascar, which as a location is filled with opportunity for sinister doings, violence, and other fun things.

Not having read Timewatch I can't be certain where a sad sack like Kidd would fit in, but it's tempting to think that his awful, awful luck was artificially produced. Or that the spectral figure seen wandering the roads of old New England is actually a manifestation of someone caught out of time.

That's it for me for now. Enjoy!

Bookhounds, Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists: Forgotten London, Crystal Palace

I'm going to kick the new year off with a discussion of one of London's long-forgotten landmarks. This material should be useful to any Keeper setting up a London-based campaign, and I'm also going to discuss its relevance to modern day gaming with Night's Black Agents and Esoterrorists. Night's Black Agents is something I've discussed before and should need no introduction. Esoterrorists, for those of you not familiar with the setting, is broadly the same kind of modern espionage-type RPG as NBA except that the main adversary is a terror group - the Esoterrorists of the title - whose goal is to break the membrane of modern life that protects us all, and make supernatural horror a reality. Not a million miles away, now I think on it, from the motivation that guides the Dreamhounds of Paris. But I digress.

The Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was only ever intended to last a few months. Part a demonstration of British talent, part an attempt to cock a snook at the French who were rather better at design, manufacture and sales than the British ever were, the Exhibition was born of a desire to show the world what the Empire could do, when it put its collective mind to it. Certainly there would be educational showpieces, of course there would be entertainment, but the real purpose of the Exhibition was to show off British design and inventive ingenuity, with over 100,000 exhibits provided by 17,000 exhibitors.

The Exhibition was divided into five types of display: raw materials, machinery, manufactures, fine arts, and miscellaneous. While British displays were naturally at the forefront, the Exhibition also housed displays from Russia, America, France, Italy, and Portugal, as well as examples from all over the colonies. "It is a marvelous, stirring, bewildering sight," Charlotte Bronte, a five time visitor, is supposed to have said. "A mixture of a genii palace and a mighty bazaar."

It was all housed rather at the last minute. Hyde Park was never the favorite destination, but as it turned out nothing else would do, so Hyde Park was chosen. Then there was a question of design, and though a competition was held to pick the best, none of the competitors really made the grade. With some creative fudging of the rules, the Committee finally decided on a glass design by Joseph Paxton, later Sir Joseph, head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire, who answered the objection that Hyde Park's trees would be damaged by extending the design so that the trees were completely enclosed. It is this monumental glass enclosure - 92,000 meters squared, 33 meters high at its tallest point, with 293,000 panes of glass -  that eventually gave the Crystal Palace its name.

The Exhibition closed in October, but it was felt that to demolish Paxton's Palace was a waste of a remarkable piece of design. The trouble was, what to do with it? It could hardly stay in Hyde Park. In 1852 the House of Commons finally decreed that it had to go, and shortly afterward the Crystal Palace Company formed, with Paxton's enthusiastic involvement, using subscriptions from investors to buy the Crystal Palace for 70,000 pounds cash in hand. It was moved to Sydenham Hill in Norwood, south London; a prodigious effort, when you consider all the panes of glass that had to be carefully removed and transported by teams of horses, unbroken, to their new home. Construction began in August 1852, and took two years to complete. This version of the Palace was considerably larger and taller - three storeys at its highest point - than the original, containing nearly twice as much space, using twice as much glass. Probably also twice as many leaks; no technology available at the time could make this massive greenhouse totally waterproof.

This time the intent was educational. The Palace's Illustrated Encyclopedia included ten Architectural Courts, each an elaborate reconstruction of ancient buildings and figures, designed according to the most modern - in 1854 - archaeological studies. Visit Pompei, or the Alhambra, the gorgeously decorated Temple of Karnac, or gothic Medieval splendor. When you're tired of that, see 33 examples of extinct animals, displayed as they would have been in life; but not dinosaurs, as they hadn't been discovered yet. Or visit the tropical animal display, with its jolly hippopotamus. Then of course there are Paxton's magnificent gardens. Any illustration of the Palace you care to look at is ablaze with greenery, hanging from every possible protrusion, or extending overhead. When you're tired of that buy a shawl, a memento, or even a piano, from one of the Palace's many vendors. Or admire some of the nude statues that the Church is in such an uproar about, panicked lest the public be ruined forever by seeing genitals on display. Visit one of Paxton's artificial lakes, reservoirs, rivers, cascades or fountains, all elaborately designed and operated via his Grand System, so elaborate and consuming it needed two massive water towers to function.

The biggest problem the Palace had was how to turn a profit. It was intended to be educational, but there's no money in that, and a building as large and elaborate as the Palace eats money morning, noon and night. Soon the Palace became known more for its special attractions and displays, like the Forester's Fetes that brought in tens of thousands to play at being Robin Hood's merry band, or conjurers, Punch and Judy, tightrope walkers, balloonists, cat shows, dog shows, wild menageries, and of course, music. This is an age before the Albert Hall, and the Palace became the preeminent venue for the largest concerts imaginable: the first performances in England of composers like Schubert and Handel, Schiller and Mendelssohn.     

But even then the Palace could not recoup enough money from ticket sales to pay off its debts. One of its biggest problems when it began was that it could not open on the Sabbath; the Lord's Day Observance Society forbade it, though many working people were busy six days in the week and could only attend on Sunday. The Palace overcame this obstacle in 1861, but by then it was more of a downmarket attraction, and its appeal began to fade. In 1911 its management finally declared bankruptcy. In 1914 the Earl of Plymouth bought it, to save it from developers, and it was eventually bought from the Earl by subscription, to save it for the nation. From 1920 onwards it was run by a board of trustees who restored it as best they could and opened it to the public again, with fireworks displays each Thursday. The Palace began to make a modest profit.

Then, in 1936, it caught fire. This had happened once before in 1866, destroying some of the architectural displays and the display of tropical animals; the hippo shrank like a well-roasted sausage. Insurance had been insufficient to cover the loss then, and that was only a relatively small portion of the Palace. In November 1936 the efforts of 400 firemen weren't enough to save the building; it was stuffed full of flammable materials, including old, dry wooden floors, and went up like the largest Bonfire Night in British history. Over 100,000 people came to watch. There was never any prospect of rebuilding it; it was grossly under-insured.

One of the enduring ghost stories that grew up around the Palace was the haunted train, full of long-dead passengers. The original is based on the pneumatic railway, built in 1864 as an experiment to prove the utility of an air-powered rail system. The pneumatic rail ran about 600 yards through the Park and cost  sixpence per journey. It was only in operation for a few months in 1864 before it shut down; remnants of the tunnel were found in 1992. In the 1930s a popular urban legend grew up around a woman's claim that she'd seen an abandoned carriage in the by then long-lost pneumatic tunnels, full of dessicated skeletons dressed in Victorian clothing. This ghost train later relocated, in popular imagination, to the Crystal Palace (High Level) railway station. This station opened in 1865 to service Crystal Palace traffic, but when the Palace burnt down people stopped using it. It was bombed during the war and temporarily closed, but didn't finally shut down until 1954. The ghost carriage was initially supposed to be Victorian, but local retelling now has it that the train was entombed there, with its passengers, during a tunnel collapse.     

Now, what does this mean for the Keepers out there?

The Bookhounds potential is easy to spot. The Palace is still there until 1936; the protagonists can visit it, explore it, wander in its gardens and gawp at its displays. Keepers using Megapolisomancy might make the architectural displays Megapolisomantic instruction manuals, models built in plaster by Victorian savants to instruct the sorcerers of the future how best to attune themselves to the workings of the city. The Palace itself might be one gigantic Megapolisomantic lever, or be inhabited by a paramental entity. Or perhaps one of the many different festivals and fetes might have something of interest to a bookseller, perhaps even be a book festival, like the famous Frankfurt Fair. Or the Palace could be the venue for a chase scene or similar; imagine running for your life through the gloomy Palace at night, with the Thursday fireworks outside going off like cannons. The great 1936 Fire could be the climax to the adventure, with the characters desperately trying to survive or pull something from the rubble while the impotent firefighters try their best to contain the blaze.

Night's Black Agents has at least two possible ways in. The first is via the Dracula Dossier, since it covers the period; it might even be good to stage a flashback scenario set while the Palace is still standing. Perhaps Dracula hid something at the Palace in the 1890s that he now wants to retrieve in the 1970s. The BBC stages an unsuccessful archaeological dig to find the pneumatic train tunnel in the 1970s; maybe it was getting too close to the truth, until Dracula threw a spanner in the works. However even without the Dossier there's still another obvious way in, and that's via the tunnels beneath the Palace.

Nobody really knows what happened to the pneumatic railway tunnel; it was probably destroyed by subsequent building works, but suppose for a moment that it survived. During the Second World War Crystal Palace became a hub for the manufacture of high tech equipment, while the underground tunnels nearby were used as bomb shelters. Suppose the pneumatic rail tunnel was requisitioned by the War Ministry for secret works, perhaps an underground manufacturing plant, a mission planning hub, or storage facility. The Government rarely gives things back once it takes them, and the intelligence services might have found an underground bolt-hole in South London useful after the war, again as a storage facility or manufacturing plant. Fast forward to the present day and it might as easily be abandoned as in use, but even if it has been abandoned Cold Warriors will remember it's there, and perhaps convert it for their own purposes.

Assuming it's a cold locale, then the tunnels are stuffed full of old tech and files from the war and beyond, up to about 1970-something when the project was abandoned for good. Among the aging machinery might be some Second World War era vampire hunting tools, or records of some very peculiar SOE missions. It might even be home to a deranged vampire or Renfield, who still thinks the war's on and is doing his best to bash the Boche from what he believes is the last bolthole in an occupied, bombed-out London.

A hot locale might be a privately run Tiger team, using it as a base of operations to monitor communications traffic, or to defend important installations at Canary Wharf, or even to infiltrate those same installations. Who knows who's really paying those hackers, and what the hackers' mission might be? Or it could be an off-the-books interrogation zone, with facilities fit to hold even the most difficult supernatural 'clients'. 'Sixpence to see the Palace' could become intel slang for the last trip a bloodsucker will ever take; but who's funding this little deathtrap, and for what purpose?

The Esoterrorists would go straight for that haunted train. It's the perfect excuse for all kinds of horror plots; for instance, the schemers could set it up so that schoolchildren's tales make it real, or that the dead aboard the train are coming back to seek the blood, or flesh, of the living. Though the High Level shut down the subway's still there, and is a Grade II listed structure, only occasionally open to visitors. It could be the perfect breeding ground for an Esoterrorist scheme. Maybe the terrorists are trying to create a new kind of monster, using the train as a template, which they'll send off into the underground network via the tunnels. Or the plot could have something to do with the parkland above, left vacant since the 1936 fire. All kinds of developers have stepped forward over the years with one scheme or another. Maybe the Esoterrorists see this as the perfect opportunity to build a Crystal Palace of their own, designed to collect and store the psychic energy they need to carry on their work.    

That's it for now! I hope you find this useful. Enjoy!