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!

Welcome to the Mansion (RPG All, Disney)

Once upon a time I wrote about Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, and said:

I do wonder what Disney does if someone decides to join the Mansion, perhaps by having their ashes scattered over the ride. Human nature being what it is, someone must have tried by now. If I were Disney, I'd be tempted to offer it as an ultra-private perk only available to special guests, say, members of Club 33. There will be people out there willing to pay over the odds for those bragging rights. 'Come visit me when I'm gone, I'll be in the Graveyard with the Grim Grinning Ghosts!'

Bloomberg's been kind enough to answer that question. I shan't link the article as it's hidden behind a paywall (author Brandon Presser again, and I'm beginning to think that's a pseudonym), but the important bits are:

Even death finds room for celebration, particularly at the Haunted Mansion. “I’d venture to say, if the Haunted Mansion is temporarily closed, it means someone tried to spread grandma’s ashes and we’ve had to bio-vac the entire place,” a former cast member says. The ritual happens often—at least once a month. And you thought the hologram ghosts were spooky ...

Christine Fougère, a cleaning-support manager, says hazardous spills command code names—which I luckily never heard in the line of duty. And yet, they’re not uncommon. Code V is for vomit, and Code H is for human waste. (Sometimes kids—and even a few adults—have trouble holding it in when they’re waiting in line.) Code Winnies are called when resort pools turn slightly yellow; oddly enough, it’s not used for the Pooh ...

Sourced from Disneyland Paris

So let's try some Halloween gamification.

What's different about Disneyland Paris' Mansion?

For starters, Disney Paris isn't California. It hasn't got the history. Someone's grandma didn't visit the place for the first time back in 1969. It opened its doors in 1992, along with the rest of the resort. So you're probably not going to get the same sentimental attraction that drives people to dump granny's ashes over the Grinning Ghosts.

Second, Paris' Mansion hasn't had extensive renovations. It had one big revamp in 2019, which among other things added some new Vincent Price dialogue to the introductory speech.

Third, the plot's different. Not a whole lot different, and the plot's just an excuse for ghoulish nonsense anyway, but worth bearing in mind if anyone's a Disney nut who thinks they can sing along with the animatronics.

Added to all that, there's been a death. In 2016 a worker was found dead inside the attraction, possibly electrocuted. It's one of several incidents that have happened at the Paris attraction.

Sooo ...

Once There Was, And Once There Wasn't 

The characters are all visiting Euro Disney, whether as a group or individually. They might be young, old, whichever it may be. YouTube microcelebrity or ordinary schlub, they all want to go to the Haunted Mansion but the first time they show up, it's closed. The staff won't say why.

So they go off to other attractions for a while and see what is to be seen, but after a time they gravitate back to the Mansion to discover that it's open again. Nobody else has realized this so the queue is short - only the player characters are in it.

Or at least that's how it seems at first. As they pack themselves into the elevator and queue for the ride there seems to be an extra body. If the characters count up carefully, there are only player characters in the group. Yet they cannot shake the feeling there's another person in the room.

At first the ride seems to be as advertised, with the grim grinning ghosts telling the tragic tale of the abandoned bride, Melanie Ravenswood. Yet as the carriages get to the narrator (about 9.09 in the video) the carriages melt away and the player characters find themselves abandoned inside the mansion.

The extra person in the group is a youngster who died of a wasting illness two weeks ago. Their grieving mother knew that the child wanted to see the Mansion, had them cremated, and scattered the ashes inside the Mansion. That's why the Mansion was shut down; the whole thing had to be deep cleaned. 

Inactivity didn't suit the Outer Dark. This was a command performance, one night only. As for the ride itself, well, children don't know from rides. As far as they're concerned, the experience is a real experience. 

A fatal experience. After all, who escapes alive from the Manor? The whole point of the story is everyone dies, and Melanie's trapped here forever.

On the other hand there is that dead electrician, who might be persuaded to help importunate characters lost in the Mansion. Otherwise there aren't many allies to be had. That child is especially difficult to deal with; anyone who threatens its good time will be dealt with severely.

There are several ways out for enterprising characters:

• Death. It's a bit permanent, but it works.
• Successfully romancing Melanie and ending the curse.
• Preventing Henry from killing Melanie's intended, Jake. 
• Somehow restoring the buggies and riding them out of the Mansion.

If they can't achieve any of these objectives before an hour is up, then the Mansion will have several new attractions ...

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!

Hauntings - The Final Word

In my previous posts I've described potential hauntings as spirits of place, half-forgotten memories of the past, and as creations of possession and obsession. This time I want to talk about a third potential haunting scenario: the otherworldly. As with the previous posts, examples are going to use the Gumshoe format, with the Bookhounds setting.

M.R. James is a literary exemplar I come back to again and again. His creations are my ideal when it comes to ghostly scenarios, mainly because he managed to combine the mundane world in which we all live with an otherworldly, menacing, half-glimpsed terror. In most of those instances the terror evoked was ultimately linked to some human event or tragedy; one of my favourite stores is The Haunted Doll's House, which is probably the most frightening example of that type. However those aren't the only ghosts M.R. James had to offer. Canon Alberic's Scrapbook features something completely other, something with eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them -- intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.

In other words, a demon.

Cthulhu Mythos gaming has a love-hate relationship with more mundane belief systems. The feeling generally seems to be that if things like Cthulhu and the Old Ones exist then they clearly take precedence over anything else, and while this can lead to attempts to shoehorn the Mythos into human iconography (so Nyarlathotep, for one, is both Baron Samedi of Voudon fame and also Set and Thoth of the Egyptians, never mind the Green Man or witchcraft's Black Man or a host of other avatars) these attempts seem to leave a bad taste in many peoples' mouths. The Old Ones are the great alien unknowables, and their more human-friendly avatars are knowable by definition. The two concepts don't mix well.

At the same time, Mythos gaming also has a problem with magic. In a sense, it's the same problem. If the forces of the Mythos take precedence then presumably the rituals of so-called shamans and occultists have little or no effect. Either that, or they're somehow leeching power from Mythos sources. Otherwise humanity can, in theory, rival the entities of the Mythos, by accumulating power of their own to oppose the likes of Cthulhu. The odds are a bit low, since humanity clearly lacks the resources to be a real threat, but smuggling in the magical equivalent of a suitcase nuke is possible. The existential hopelessness is lessened somewhat by the knowledge that something can, in fact, be done to change things.

In the Rough Magicks suppliment Kenneth Hite discusses Lovecraftian magic, and says in part:

Attempting to fully define Lovecraftian magic would seem to be a simpler task. Indeed, we make just such an attempt later on in this book . . . But really, we’re all better off not knowing.

Which is perfectly reasonable, from a gaming perspective. A certain granularity is fine and fair do, but codifying everything such that each detail has its own defined remit is neither possible nor desirable. Even Dungeons and Dragons, a far more rules-heavy system, never achieved that; why, then, should Gumshoe? Better not to know. The lack of knowledge lends mystery which can only help make the incredible seem credible.

However he goes on to suggest several possible scenarios to describe magic: toxic pollution, Elder Thing technology gone wrong, a gift from Nyarlathotep or Yog-Sothoth, trans-dimensional energy manipulation, an aspect of Dreaming - take your pick. The intent being to allow the Keeper to decide what definition best fits their game, so that they can then explain magical influences and effects.

I'm going to go one step further and suggest that, when demons exist at all, they are creatures created by magic or from the same stuff that magic is made of. So if magic is toxic pollution, the after-effects of the energetic collision of the great elemental gods. Where their overwhelming forces meet their impenetrable fields, pieces of space-time come unstuck. Where this dimensional fallout lands, reality weakens and magic becomes possible then demons are also aspects of this toxic pollution. If magic is something else, then so too are demons.

Humans tend to like to see patterns so we codify things as much as possible. That's why we construct elaborate demonologies and try to force these entities to fit into our view of what the world, both seen and unseen, is. However for the purpose of this discussion that view is essentially wrong; there is no pattern here, and a demonology is as useless as a cotton candy slingshot. Demons don't need an Asmodeus figure in order to function; they don't have to be fallen angels, or any other human myth-construct. They exist because magic exists, and if somehow magic were to cease to exist then so too would they. They are as much part of the Mythos as Cthulhu is; they come from the same star-stuff.

Certain settings create magical systems unique to that environment, and Bookhounds is one of those. Bookhounds borrows a touch from Leiber and proposes Megapolisomancy, in which ritualists use the city as a sorcerous engine to accomplish magical effects. They draw on the polis itself to harm their enemies, or create an effect of their own devising. In a system of that sort it follows that demons are also creations of the city, unique to the city. In some cases they may be completely unique, while in others they may be modified versions of a pre-existing concept. Or to put it another way: the Yaoguai that exist in Chinatown may be rooted in Chinese mythology, but they are creations of the London megapolis and cannot be encountered outside of that environment. Something very like them might be found in Macao, but only very like, not precisely the same entities.

The question then becomes are these things created independently of human interference, or are they aspects of the city that arise as a consequence of ritual activity? Ultimately that decision has to be up to the Keeper, and will depend on the needs of the game. The paramental entities discussed in Bookhounds seem to be creatures created by the ritualists who raise them, but it doesn't follow that all such entities are raised by ritualists. Each city has its own soul, created almost unwittingly by the hundreds of millions of people who live, have lived and will live there. It is likely that this soul has many thousands of aspects, most of which go unnoticed by most people. Those few who have noticed that the Euston Underground tunnel has teeth or that the cracks in the pavement near St Pauls have a tendency to whisper odd fragments of lore probably are wise to keep that knowledge to themselves.

With that in mind, here's an example:

The King of the Cats

There is a folk-tale that always has the same ending, no matter how it begins: the self-proclaimed King of the Cats takes his kingdom from his recently deceased predecessor. Aarne-Thompson type 6070B is how it's known to folklorists, a neat classification that fails to encompass a megapolistic truth: there is a kind of Kingship, and it changes hands on an irregular basis.

Those who chronicle the City claim that in the past thirty years there have been four Kings. That is as far as modern chroniclers will go; no doubt there were Kings before the year 1890, but nobody can say with certainty what they were, or where. Most agree that they are cats, or at least look like cats. The first of the four was in North London, somewhere near Islington. Then the Kingship passed to an entity in East London, somewhere near the docks, circa 1912. Suddenly in 1915, possibly the result of an air raid, the Kingship passed to another North London creature, and after about ten years the Kingship passed once more, this time to a West End entity, somewhere near Soho.

There demonic creatures generally have little to do with people. They may be indifferent or cautious; few have been able to communicate with them, and of those who have managed it few are what anyone would call reliable witnesses. However when they have dealt with humans it usually ends badly for the human. They dislike wizards it would seem, possibly because rival megalopolisamancers disrupt the patterns that the Kings rely on.

They have been known to 'adopt' megapolisamancers. Or at least, there's one known example of a wizard who benefitted from a relationship with the East End King, and who for a time became first among his peers. However that individual didn't live more than a month after the Kingship passed in 1915, and whatever his secrets may have been, they apparently died with him. It seems that no bargain outlasts the Kingship, and when a new King takes the throne not only are all previous treaties moot but also the former friend becomes a hated foe. 

Game Statistics: Athletics 12, Health 9, Scuffling 9
Magic: 8-12 (this seems to vary, and may be linked to the phases of the moon)
Hit Threshold: 6 (small and fast)
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +2
Damage: +2 (claws)
Special: can only be harmed by a weapon made for the purpose in the area it haunts, from materials found in that area, and then enhanced by a megapolisamantic working in that area. So a knife made in Soho from metals scavenged in Soho and then enchanted in Soho could injure the current King, but wouldn't work on his successor. Of course, the current King would view attempting to make such a weapon as an act of war. Alternatively an event that significantly disrupts megalopolisomantic energies, such as a fire that engulfs an entire district or a zeppelin bombing raid that burns the docks, might do the trick, but an event of that magnitude is difficult to arrange.
Notes: Kings ignore humans most of the time, except when they engage in megalopolisomancy. Any attempt undertaken on their turf can attract their attention, and retribution, unless efforts are taken to mollify them beforehand.
Stability Modifier: +0
Description: While they may seem to be cats at first glance, Kings are physically marked out from their fellows. The King of 1890 had what appeared to be wings. The 1915 King was a split-foot. The 1925 King had extra ears, and the current King is supposed to have a vestigial second tail. Though mutations can occur naturally in an ordinary feline, care must be taken by any megalopolisamancer in case the mutation is more significant than it seems.   
  

Bookhounds Books

I know I said I was going to talk about hauntings. In fact, I said I was going to do it a short while ago. However I was ambushed by a lot of work and one emergency project, which delayed things. The nice part is you should find out what the emergency project is by the end of this month; it's very April-specific. It does mean that you'll have to wait a little longer for the Hauntings post, as I can't devote my full attention to it just yet.

I thought I'd talk about books in Trail instead.

Bookhounds of London is one of those settings that wants a lot of input from the Keeper to make it really flow, if for no other reason than the Keeper doesn't have enough books available. Think about it: the characters track down and sell books for a living, and unless it's a very one-note game they can't be after the Necronomicon every week. The Trail main book has about seventeen Mythos tomes, and Bookhounds includes ten more occult tomes, seven Mythos books and guidelines for making more. No matter what style of game you run you're going to need some home-brewed books for your Hounds to chase after. Plus, unless you're the sort that only ever wants to play Arabesque, you're probably going to want to at least consider the various play styles each time you create a book, or an NPC. That means a little more effort on your part.

When faced with problems like these, I always go back to history for answers. There have been any number of odd beliefs, rituals, purges and persecutions in the few thousand years we've been recording our time on this planet. These can be mined for scenario information, and the big advanatage is it avoids repetition. I recently bought a copy of Gary Myers' House of the Worm, which I enjoyed, but it does repeat itself again and again. You could summarise most of the tales in that book: 'dude gets in over his head, dude dies or goes missing in weird and mysterious way.' Fun, but one-note, and the thing to bear in mind is we all have a one-note tendency. I know I use dream sequences a lot in my work. I tend to like spook stories as well, and use Gothic effects more often than not. It would be so very easy to rely on those same elements again and again, never experimenting, never going outside of my comfort zone. History forces the writer to look outside his front door, to see the world in all its varied glories. It forces experimentation with new settings, ideas, adversaries and conflicts.

In this instance I used some facts culled from Montague Summers and got translation help from Babelfish. This is what I came up with:

Ein Konto der Hexeraserei im Lindheim

An early modern Mysterious Manuscript for Trail of Cthulhu.

Edit: as luck would have it, this item is to be printed in the Unspeakable Oath, issue #21. I don't think that edition is out on general release yet, but I have received a .pdf contributor's copy. It would be unfair to Pagan to have this item here on the blog, and after discussion with the Oath's editorial staff I have agreed to remove the description. Once issue #21 is out I will link to it from here; for now, I hope you don't mind the inconvenience!

Summers is one of those authors who can be relied on for the weird and wonderful. I don't think I would rely on him as a historian, but I respect his mastery of the source material. In this particular instance I was using his book on witchcraft which tends to be easy to come by. In fact most of his books drift in and out of print, and while you're unlikely to find them in Barnes and Noble they're worth tracking down, as he's always good for a quote or two. Probably a foaming-at-the-mouth sort of quote, but nevertheless he's good value for money.

Witchcraft is a phenomena that, in Europe, seems to peak at about the same time as the major wars of religion are being fought, which probably isn't coincidental. Any number of firebrands and nutjobs are roaming around looking for a fight; these are people who, in their day, would have been the equivalent of a Bin Laden, but whose names and lives have been almost forgotten. The world was teetering on the brink of disaster (again), powerful kingdoms were busy toppling their neighbours' regimes (again) and innocents were being massacred in their thousands (again). There would have been many people like Geiss using the situation for their own benefit, taking advantage of the fact that what passed for central authority was weak and constant warfare had everyone on edge. He wouldn't have had to do much talking to convince his neighbours that the enemy walked among them; after all, panics, plagues and strife had been all they'd known since the days of their grandfather's grandfather. In conditions like those it was very easy to believe that they weren't safe yet, that there were those who followed heretical religions or who were plotting to do them harm.

Once you have that central idea, everything else is window dressing. I freely admit that Wikipedia has been good to me; it's allowed me to check names, places, and dates. But knowing what to look for is critical; knowing that the Great War of 1914-18 knocked out a lot of the old Grand Dutchies, that there is such a thing as an octavo, that people used maker's marks, all adds to the feeling of legitimacy. Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez managed something with Club Dumas that Lovecraft never did: he made the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows seem as if it were real, not by adding extra bookworms gnawing at the pages or more elaborate olde Englishe script, but by adding enough real data to the description of the Nine Gates and its all-important illustrations that it didn't strike a wrong note once. That's the kind of thing to aim for!

Now, I've talked too much. Next time I will discuss hauntings, I promise!

Trail of Cthulhu - The Haunting 2

In my previous post on hauntings, I talked about spirits of place, and suggested that these reflected the half-hidden history of a locale. This version of the haunting represents the weight of years, the accumulated burden of history that, like a mound of wet and heavy snow on a crumbling roof, leaks its way through, eating at the supports until finally the whole thing gives way. This time I want to talk about another type of haunting and explain how it could be represented in-game. As before, I'm going to be using Bookhounds of London as a setting.

Possession stories drift in and out of fashion. Currently J and K Horror, as represented by films like The Grudge and The Red Shoes are exploring this kind of tale and doing it very well, but it has been represented in the past by gothics like Stoker's The Judge's House and Jackson's Haunting of Hill House. In these narratives the protagonist - perhaps a social worker (Grudge), student (Judge's House), recent divorcee (Red Shoes) or an impulsive romantic (Hill House) - leaves their comfort zone, and trespasses somewhere they shouldn't. They fall under the influence of malign forces, often far too powerful for them to handle, which then either back them into a metaphorical corner or force them to do harm to themselves. Suicide is a recurring theme. In western stories this is often death by hanging, and The Judge's House is fairly typical of the type. In all probability this is because hanging was a common form of punishment, not just throughout the United Kingdom but also in Europe and America. It also helps that hanging is something that can be done by an individual without too many complicated props; death by guillotine would be a more technically challenging way to go. Whereas in, say, The Grudge or Red Shoes, the final moments are much less clear-cut, and usually extract the maximum of isolation and terror before the end.

However the Japanese stories have a very traditional background. Lafcadio Hearn recorded many of these tales in his collection Kwaidan, and in the story Diplomacy he writes:

If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance on the killer.

Whereas the opening title sequence for Ju-On states:

Ju-on is a curse of those who die in the grip of a powerful rage.

The main difference being in Hearn's version the ghost resents only his killer, whereas Ju-On assumes that the spirit is lashing out at anyone who comes near. In each case the story has it that those who die while in the throes of wrath will gain supernatural ability, and seek to harm the living.

Western stories aren't quite as traditional, and it would be difficult to imagine a modern filmmaker trying to recreate The Judge's House, or anything like it. Apart from anything else there's no real reason given for the haunting in Stoker's tale, except that the Judge was a bad man and that sort tend to cause trouble even after death.

As to what there was against the house she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could inform her, but there was a general feeling that there was something, and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself.

Even the old prejudice against suicides, that led to their bodies being buried at cross-roads, being denied the solace of Christian burial, or interred just outside the churchyard wall, has been forgotten, and the sorrow of the Yew Tree, so often found in churchyards, is of interest only to folklorists.

Broadly speaking, there are several themes here that are useful in roleplaying scenarios.

The protagonists in these tales are often either weak-willed, or whatever willpower they possess is no match for the thing they face. Red Shoes also hints that one character may deserve what's coming to them, because they have committed crimes (murder, in that instance) that warrant punishment. Weakness is the key here. Perhaps there is something that the haunting exploits; something in the character's past, or even guilt over a crime they committed. A possession story is perfect for a game in which the character has something in their backstory that they really don't want to be made public. The story almost writes itself: the haunting's history mirrors the protagonist's own crimes.

Another key point to take away is that the haunting entity can be extremely powerful, under a certain narrow set of circumstances. In The Judge's House, the victim had to actually stay in the house; perhaps if he had left it there would have been no harm done. Whereas in Ju-On the sequence of events affects anyone who has ever been inside the house, even people like Hitomi who was only there for a few minutes and who is later attacked in her own apartment building. Not unlike radiation poisoning, even a brief exposure has long-lasting effects.

Possession hauntings work by turning the victim against themselves, usually so that they do themselves harm. Though the victim may well see things differently, as with the student in the Judge's House, the way the haunting operates is by forcing the victim to become part of the ongoing cycle of violence.

The thing that the victims face is caught in its own obsessions. The Judge in Stoker's tale doesn't want anything other than a hanging; the creatures in Ju-On are tied forever to the murder-suicide that spawned them, just as the Red Shoes is all about the footwear. There is no mind here, no guiding force, no elaborate plan. Only death. The presumption is that it has to be a certain kind of death; the Judge probably wouldn't get the same satisfaction out of someone breaking their neck on the stairs, any more than the Red Shoes would have ended with Sun-jae jumping from a rooftop.

There may be a way to break the cycle of death, but if there is the means of doing so is obscure and can be misunderstood. The Red Shoes has Sun-jae discover the secret history of the shoes and attempt to resolve the tragedy in her own way, but this attempt isn't completely successful. In game the characters ought to be presented with at least one potential resolution, but it shouldn't be as easy as 'rebury the unquiet dead and all shall be well.'

With all that in mind, an example using the Bookhounds setting is called for.

The Three Bucks, Stepney Green

This elaborate Edwardian building resembles an Italian palace gone slightly awry, complete with statues of saints and a copper-clad cupola roof. It was built on the site of an old Georgian traveller's inn, as a speculative venture by Gregory Harris in 1908. The big breweries were on the lookout for pubs to buy, and many pub owners, Harris among them, sunk their fortunes into making the building as elaborate as possible to attract the brewers' attention. The Three Bucks has three stories, one of which is devoted entirely to a massive ballroom dancing floor, while the very upper and smallest story is where the landlord has his rooms. The Three Bucks takes its name from the heraldic device of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, though the pub has no connection with that livery company now, if it ever did in the past. The Three Bucks is currently owned by Ploughman Brewers, Shepway, in Kent.

The landlord of the Three Bucks doesn't live on the premises and nobody has ever tried to. According to popular rumour the upper rooms are unlivable, possibly because the building was poorly constructed. In winter it is very expensive to heat, and on the coldest days the pub is an icebox no matter how much coal is loaded into the fireplaces. On very rainy days buckets have to be put out on the ballroom floor to catch the drips, which suggests that the landlord's rooms above must be in pretty poor shape.

Ploughman's does not encourage speculation of any kind about the upper rooms, and the landlord is under strict instruction not to let anyone into the top floor apartment.

• Cop Talk: There are more fights in the Three Bucks on a Friday night than any two other pubs in Stepney. Maybe the brew's too strong, but it doesn't help that the ones who start all the trouble always seem to be fond of knives and razors. There have been times when the public rooms resemble abbatoirs, and more than one missing ear or severed nose has been found the next morning outside the Bucks' front door. The landlord, Paddy Green, does his best to keep order and his son Mike is one of the toughest brawlers in the district, so keeping the peace oughtn't to be a problem. Yet time and again there's a call-out to the Bucks, with some poor sod in a welter of blood on the floor.
• The Knowledge: The old travelling inn that used to be on this site before Harris knocked it down wasn't particularly famous for anything. Popular legend had it that the pirate Captain Kidd stayed there when he was sent back to England for trial, and there were even those who believed that Kidd's treasure map was hidden somewhere on the premises. The fact that Kidd swung for his crimes a good eighty years before the traveller's inn was built, or that he spent his time in London incarcerated at Newgate, never put a stop to that legend. Nobody ever found a treasure map either, when the inn was knocked down, and the old gold coin that had been nailed into the joist just above the public bar allegedly because Kidd had used it to pay for his last meal has long since vanished. However there's an odd bunch of thrill-seekers and ghost story lovers who still turn up to the Bucks now and again, on the trail of the old Captain. They say that on cold winter nights a seafaring man, drenched in salt water from head to foot, can be seen in the upper rooms, by anyone brave enough to spend the night there. That said, they've never been able to bribe Paddy Green sufficiently to let them try the experiment.
• Architecture: The Bucks has a surprising number of faults, for a bulding not thirty years old. The leaks in the roof must be pretty serious if they keep dripping through to the second floor ballroom. Looking from the outside it's clear that the guttering hasn't been cleared in years, if ever, so perhaps that's the cause of the problem. Yet the Bucks makes enough money, and the other rooms are in fairly good shape, so you'd think that sending someone up on the roof to clean out the gutters wouldn't be a problem. To get to the roof you'd have to go through the landlord's apartments on the upper floor, or put up scaffolding or a ladder outside.
• Assess Honesty/Oral History: Paddy Green reacts like a bear with a sore head if anyone asks him about the upper rooms. No, they're not to be used. No, nobody's allowed up there, for any reason. No, he doesn't know why. Persistent questions get the questioner thrown out, courtesy of Mike's strong arm. Paddy's scared of something, that's plain; but what? It's interesting that, of all the pubs in the district, this one keeps closing time sacred. There are no lock-ins at the Bucks, nor are late drinkers given time to finish up. As soon as the clock strikes eleven, it's pints down and everyone out. Paddy locks up the Bucks himself at midnight, and the place is completely uninhabited until eight in the morning the next day.

Antagonist: Gregory Harris.
Abilities: Scuffling 12, Weapons 12
Magic: 10
Weapon: -1 (knife)
Arnour: special; cannot be harmed by physical attacks.
Stability: +1
Special: Uses Domination, as per Rough Magicks p. 19.
Description: Either a man in his 40s, wearing vest and braces, dripping blood from a slashed throat, or an impenetrable blackness that absorbs and extinguishes all light sources.
Notes: Harris was cheated in the Ploughmans buy-out, and lost all the money he'd invested as well as what little was left of his savings. The shock of his downfall may have deranged him. He took his own life, and his body was found in the upper apartment on an exceptionally cold December evening, 1908. After a nasty incident that resulted in serious injury to his replacement, Ploughmans instructed that nobody be allowed to stay in the upper apartments, and for the sake of the business any rumours about Harris have been hushed up. Paddy Green has taken these instructions a few steps further, which is why nobody is ever allowed in the upper rooms even for a short time, nor is anyone allowed to stay on the premises after midnight. This haunting is obsessed with blood and violence, particularly cutting. While its main attack is Domination, causing the victim to cut themselves, the target sees this as Harris coming at him with a knife or straight razor, which is why the haunting has Scuffling and Weapons pools. Typically the haunting softens up a victim by reducing Stability either with hallucinations (2 loss) involving blood and cutting, or by recreating the suicide scene (3 loss) before attempting Domination. Each hallucination costs 1 Magic point, and Harris' Domination has a difficulty of 4 normally, or 3 if a target has lost 2 or more points of Stability as a result of hallucinations. When the Domination takes place, the victim seems to observers to be swallowed up in unnatural darkness; only the victim will ever see Harris in human form. Once a target has been Dominated he can't hope to beat Harris, but he can be saved if he's carried out of the upper apartments. The haunting is much weaker in the ballroom and the ground floor and cannot Dominate there, though it can still cause hallucinations. Very weak-willed people can be provoked to violence and attack others if they fail a Stabilty-versus-Magic contest, which is why the Bucks gets so rowdy on a Friday night.

Though this haunting is restricted to the upper floor of the Bucks, it can be encountered off the premises. Harris' personal belongings, in particular his shaving mirror, razor and leather strop, carry the taint, and anyone who owns these can encounter the haunting. These were disposed of soon after the body was found, and nobody knows where they are now. Occult may suggest that if these items are brought back to the Bucks and a ritual of cleansing performed, the haunting could be destroyed.

Trail of Cthulhu: Hauntings

On a completely different note, let's talk ghosts.

Ghost stories are a fiction staple. Writers like M.R. James turned the short haunting tale into an art form, and there's an argument for saying that ghost stories work best in short form rather than long. The short sharp shock is often what's needed here; carry on for too long, and the story gets stale. That said, when the ghost story works in longer form, it works really really well, and that happens at least in part because the authors of those stories never try to explain too much. The best ghost story is one with an irresolvable mystery at the bottom of it, so that the audience goes away with residual chills that will worry their sleep. It's not like a monster movie, where the dynamic almost demands a dramatic climax. A ghost story doesn't need resolution in order to work its magic.

In role playing games, ghosts often take the antagonist role, and usually only for a scene or two. They're an obstacle, sometimes a warning, and that's pretty much it. To my mind that's a pity, since they could be so much more atmospheric. I'm going to kick off this particular mini-discussion with ghosts of place, and I'm going to use Bookhounds of London as a setting.

Ghosts are often considered singular entities, and usually human, or at least linked to humanity. The murdered soul of dear old Auntie Doris, come to tell her doting relatives just where the will is hidden, for instance. There are several human links in that. First the crime of murder, which is something that humans do to other humans. Then there's Auntie Doris herself, and her relations. Finally there's the will, which represents a human desire to pass on an inheritance and accumulate wealth. For some reason the Auntie Dorises of the otherworld never tell their nearest and dearest to go stick it where the sun doesn't shine on account of that cheap casket she was buried in, and what happened to her dear old cat Mittens, eh? Down the river in a sack before Auntie's body was cold, no doubt.

However there have been other ghosts; trains, ships, battlefields, buildings; spirits of place, linked to the material world only by the most tenuous of chains. I particularly like the idea of a ghost building. The NY Times article linked to is talking about structures that never actually existed, of course, but to my way of thinking that makes the best kind of ghost story. An entire skyscraper, designed, planned down to the last rivet, yet never was built. Imagine what might be inside something like that. Who (what?) would work there, live there? Where would it get its heat, its power? What vistas could you see from its upper stories?

In Bookhounds, the protagonists are adrift in London, a tangled and bloated metropolis that has forgotten more about its own history than almost any other location on earth. It has reached out and swallowed villages whole, like Cronos devouring his children. It has seen out the Romans, witnessed the executions of Kings and the murder of princes, been the obsession of a long-dead multitude of men and women, been bombed by airships in the Great War, and in the early watches of the night it dreams about everything it has ever been.

A spirit of place, in a location like London, ought to reflect that half-hidden history. The ghost in this kind of tale isn't something that can be met, or neatly resolved by producing hidden wills. It is a memory trying to recreate itself, but some of its bones are missing and the rest are scattered. There may be great power at the back of it, but that power was squandered years ago, and now only a small residual current remains. Perhaps the memory is of recent vintage, say of a zeppelin raid, or perhaps some buried temple is trying to break free. Maybe the docks are trying to recall their Napoleonic glory days, or a hunting lodge still can't quite forget its past.

There are any number of tales that could be told, but there are some things the Keeper should bear in mind:

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.

With that in mind, consider the following example:

Jerusalem Lane

This haunting is located in ramshackle early Victorian house overlooking a narrow lane, that runs between two rows of houses, with a long-neglected churchyard at one end and a busy shopping street at the other.

In the early hours of the morning, at any point between two and four o’clock, music can be heard from the upper window of the house, but this music can only be heard by someone standing in the alley. It sounds as though someone were playing scales on a piano, with a young boy or girl singing accompaniment.

At the same time this happens, those in the lane cannot find their way out again. It is as if the lane were impossibly long, and shrouded in shadow at the shopping street end. Some who experience this claim to have seen lights at the churchyard, but nobody has ever tried to investigate them.

The experience is said to last between one and ten minutes, no longer; potential Stability 3 loss.

·    Architecture The house from which the music sounds probably was built in the early 1830s, and would have been part of a larger development. James Camberwell, a prominent architect, was the developer. Camberwell is known to have battled in the courts for the use of the land, as there was some dispute over who owned it: the Church, or the man who sold it to Camberwell. The Church also objected to the height and scale of Camberwell’s development, claiming that it blocked their ancient lights. Camberwell eventually won his case.

·    The Knowledge The churchyard, in common with many other spots in London, is supposed to be a mass grave dating back to the Black Death, but this is probably more rumour than fact. It is supposed to have been dug out in 1873 when the church was deconsecrated and demolished. The bones were removed to a different parish, but the stones (some of them, at least) were left behind. In 1896 the bodies of two young boys were found in the long grass. Each had their throats cut, but otherwise the bodies were unmolested. In the present day the churchyard has a reputation as a lover’s lane, and a gang hangout. It’s not uncommon to find a group of men gambling there, or drinking, during the day, and youngsters sparking with their girls in the evening.

·    Streetwise and/or Magick The spot is thought to have had megapolisomantic significance before the church was demolished, as it stood on a ley path. However the destruction of the church and construction of the housing development has polluted the track, and it no longer provides the magickal power that once it did. However there are still one or two street magicians who try, every so often, to reconnect to the place’s dissipated essence. Strange creatures are thought to haunt the old churchyard, and it might be a place to meet a lone rat-thing or ghoul.

• Credit Rating or Bureaucracy The house in question has been owned by Erasmus Phillipson, an ex-patriot living in Boston, since 1902, and it is rented through the estate agents Dawson & Dawes. It is frequently untenanted for months at a time. The inhabitants never claim to have seen anything themselves, but the place has such an uncanny reputation that it puts off the better class of tenant. The last one was jailed on assault and indecency charges, and the place has been vacant for ten months since then. Before Phillipson there were two owners, a Mr James Copper (died 1900) and Miss Elizabeth Bowden (died 1864). Neither of them had children. Miss Bowden was the first owner of the house, and lived there with her sister for most of her life. Mr Copper did not die in the house and neither did Miss Bowden, though her sister Emily did.