Treasure Maps (Bookhounds of London)

I've been re-reading Dorothy Sayers, particularly her short stories where she occasionally gets experimental and decided that her detective Lord Peter Wimsey will, this episode, look for buried treasure rather than unburied corpses. Usually the beak-nosed sleuth is asked to do so by some reluctant socialist (Uncle Meleager's Will) or similar hanger-on who wants the loot to do good with; sometimes Lord Peter stumbles onto it while rooting about in an antiquarian book store (The Dragon's Head), though even in those instances there's some helpless do-gooder in the background waiting to turn the loot into a cure for cancer. Heaven forfend people get the money so they can spend it and have fun. However it happens, soon Lord Peter is off solving crossword puzzles or doing something similarly useful in search of a fortune in ... whatever it may be.

Sayers isn't alone in this. M.R. James often had his protagonist out looking for buried treasure of one kind or another (Abbot Thomas) and E.G. Swain had his priestly Mr. Batchel out looking for Stoneground loot about one episode in three, more or less, often to be thwarted by his ghosts. 

Sayers is possibly a little unique in that Lord Peter regularly finds important clues in antiquarian books, or libraries. In The Bone of Contention, which features not one but two ghosts, the all-important will of Dead Rich Man is found in an edition of The Nuremberg Chronicle kept in the dead man's library, sadly neglected. It's because the book is stained with damp, but the will is not, that Lord Peter smells a rat. In The Dragon's Head, Lord Peter and his nephew Gherkins find clues to the location of pirate treasure in Munster's Cosmographica Universalis.  

M.R. James also hid wills or other important clues to cash in antiquarian volumes (Tractate Middoth) but tended to be less obscure; a biblical quote or two, certainly, but actual treasure maps, no. 

Consider: most people go looking for Mythos texts because they contain knowledge . Things Man Was Not Meant To Know (Or Spell. Or Smell, For That Matter). Which is all well and good, but what happens when someone who couldn't care less about occult knowledge happens to pick a Mythos text in which to hide the clues to the loot?  What if that book is a treasure map?

Sayers had one advantage over the rest of us. Her audience was keen to solve mysteries, which is why she could devote chunks of her narrative to, say, solving an actual crossword puzzle. I suspect if you, the Keeper, were to present the players with an actual crossword puzzle to solve before they could advance the narrative, there'd be a revolt. It might be perfectly in keeping to present the characters with a Latin Squares puzzle to solve - first invented in 1783, apparently - but you'd be unwise to present one unless you'd like the game to come to a crashing halt. 

Dungeons and Dragons is particularly fond of presenting players with abstruse trap-puzzles to solve lest the player-characters be perforated by pitchforks. Some DMs seem to find great pleasure in designing peculiar puzzle palaces. I often wonder how happy their players are to find these encounters.

No, while the average player likes putting together clues to advance plot nobody wants some kind of quasi-Resident-Evil hunt for the Rooster Key before they can go through the Rooster Door to find the Oyster which contains the Pearl which when combined with the Ruby and the Emerald will ... and so on. Besides, while the character might be an analytical genius capable of solving sixteen impossible challenges before breakfast there's no guarantee the player is. 

Hence the Clue system in Gumshoe, both Core and Optional.

Figuring out the puzzle is hard enough for a group of armchair detectives, without someone withholding half the pieces from them. GUMSHOE, therefore, makes the finding of clues all but automatic, as long as you get to the right place in the story and have the right ability. That’s when the fun part begins, when the players try to put the components of the puzzle together. 

Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:

1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,

2.Have the right ability to discover the clue, and

3.Tell the Keeper that you’re using it. [Trail, p.51]

To expand on this, I'm going to rely on point 1., Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered, and suggest to you that the Core Clue scene can be layered with other scenes to create a treasure map.

Example: in Sayers' Dragon's Head Lord Peter, through the innocent purchase of an antiquarian book by his nephew Gherkins, discovers that the book contains information that will lead to loot. However, he cannot understand it. He knows the information's there, but doesn't know what it is. 

To completely understand what's going on, Lord Peter has to do two things. First, he has to learn more about the book's previous owner. He can do this anywhere; he doesn't need to be in a particular location or scene. Second, he has to go to the place where the loot is hidden and use the book in a particular way. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm trying to avoid story spoilers as much as possible; hopefully this doesn't make my point obscure. 

In short, he has the Clue and knows it is a Clue, but needs more information before he can completely appreciate the Clue. It is a layered Clue. It has multiple meanings leading to a final result, and that final result can only be obtained by going to a scene where relevant information can be gathered.

In game, Keepers sometimes express this layered Clue in terms of Pool Points. Reading this text, for instance, gives the player 2 pool points in Uncovering The Treasure. However, in order to use those pool points the character has to get to the scene where those pool points become relevant.

A Keeper in this situation is free to rule that spending one of those points allows the investigator to work out where (ie. in what scene) the Clue can be used. It saves time, is a viable use of the pool, and allows the investigator spotlight time. 

It's what I like to think of as a By Jove! moment. The Great Detective, thanks to an info revelation, suddenly knows who did it or what really happened. Often it's the Detective's Watson saying something apparently trivial that sparks this intuitive leap, but it can as easily be the Detective poring over some text or other looking for inconsistences. 

In this case By Jove! basically means the character works out, from the information in front of them, where they have to go next. It does not necessarily tell the character how to get there, or what's in the way. There may be sinister cultists waiting in ambush, or lethal traps at the story location. There may be logistic reasons why the characters can't just easily transition from one place to another; perhaps the place they need to get to is in the middle of a civil war, for example. All it does is tell them where, not how, or whether there will be problems along the way.

Let's put all this into practice. For the sake of example this is going to be a Bookhounds seed, but a Treasure Map could be used to fit many different situations and settings.

For this example I'm going to use one of the Ripley Scrolls as my Treasure Map. Alchemist George Ripley (c. 1415–1490) is alleged to be the creator of these scrolls, which are transcriptions or variations on a lost 15th century original text. Nobody knows whether this is so, but occasionally some of Ripley's poetry is found in the text so the scrolls became known as Ripley scrolls. These are examples of emblematic symbolism, less physical chemistry and more esoteric philosophy, perfect for my purposes.

Of course, it's a scroll, not a book. That doesn't have to be a problem but I'd prefer it was a book, since that muddies the waters even further by obscuring the true nature of the original text. 

I'm going to say that in this example the scroll has actually been cut up and tipped into a larger alchemical work compiled by an unknown academic at some point in the 17th century. Using the Shelfware and Foxing section of Bookhounds I shall also say that:

• At some point in the 19th century the cheap paper wrapper collection was rebound in morocco leather;
• That it is infested with alien insects (of which more later);
• That part of it is in code, a variant of Alphabetum Kaldeorum ("alphabet of the Chaldeans") 
• That it has no name or title, but is known as ex libris August Strindberg, after its most famous owner.

So here we have a text of dubious origin allegedly owned by a famous playwright and occultist, which has clearly gone through several hands since its creation in the 15th century. Always assuming it wasn't a fake to begin with.  

To add that Mythos tinge, let's go one step further and say that the Scrolls were created by someone - Ripley, or another - under the domination of the Great Race. That's why it is always infested with those strange insects; it is a point in space/time permanently linked with Pnakotus, and while not quite a functioning Gate it is just enough of a portal to allow small things through. This works both ways, so on the other side of the connection is a small pile of mouse bones, roaches, and other oddments from Earth. Nothing larger than a signet ring can pass, in either direction. 

This also means that destroying the book causes the portal to explosively decompress, allowing whoever destroyed it a close-up look at Pnakotus. Mythos shock, stability Loss +3, Sanity Loss +2, damage as pipe bomb (p 67 main text) which means everyone within 30 to 40 yards is in danger, and anyone who dies as a result is sucked into Pnakotus. In theory, if the Keeper is feeling particularly unkind, something from Pnakotus could be sucked through. Perhaps one of the Great Race, dazed and bleeding from transit, could spend a few rounds being unpleasant to everything nearby until it works out how to return to Pnakotus.

Skimming gets the reader 2 pool points Uncovering The Treasure. Poring over it gets +2 Mythos, no spells, and +1 Occult.

The Treasure is something completely unrelated to the Mythos text. It has to do with Strindberg, when he was going through his Inferno (1869 – 92) period.

Strindberg allegedly suffered temporary insanity, at least according to his contemporaries. A self-proclaimed  "socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath," he switched completely and became a mystic Catholic. He claimed an outside force, The Powers, had forced this on him, causing physical and mental suffering as part of their revenge on humankind for their wrongdoings. 

One of the results of this period was his semi-autobiographical work, Inferno. The other, allegedly, was the Golden Fleece, which Strindberg accidentally discovered during his Parisian sojourn. Experts are divided as to whether this is a philosophical construct (as hinted at in Strindberg's letters to Nietzsche) or a physical artefact which, for whatever reason, Strindberg couldn't bring himself to sell to solve his money problems.   

Those who say the Fleece is a physical object claim that Strindberg hid the location of the Fleece in ex libris Strindberg. Wild-eyed literary wackos and get-rich-quick chancers from all over the world would give anything to obtain it, though whether they could understand its literary allusions is another matter. 

So there are plenty of people who want this book who have no idea what the Mythos is, and could care less. Given the treasure's alleged location, Paris, it could be interesting to mix this with Dreamhounds and say that some of those trying to understand ex libris Strindberg are surrealists who want ex libris for its philosophical underpinnings, not the Fleece. However, surrealists are poor as dirt and couldn't afford to be in the same room as ex libris, much less purchase it, so they're quite likely to want to 'liberate' (steal) it.

OK, we have a book, a treasure, and a potential locale, Paris. What next?

Divide up the sequence into the appropriate scenes.

The Opening Scene is the acquisition of the book. Maybe in a house clearance, an auction, or however, but the Hounds get ex libris. As a result of that acquisition they get their first Core Clue: The Map. They understand that the information leads to treasure, and they may even know what the treasure is, but they don't know how to interpret it.

Optional lines of investigation include translating the Chaldean code, finding out more about Strindberg, finding out more about the source of the book (who sold it and why), finding out more about the provenance of the book (is it what it claims to be?) Meanwhile there are other things going on. The alien insects make their presence felt. Maybe someone picks up on all that Mythos knowledge and makes some bad assumptions about the nature of the problem.

Play it all out, but remember the key point: while they have the information, they are not in the right scene to make full use of it. The Hounds are in London. To make full use of the Clue, they need to be in Paris.

The easiest kind of transition is geographic. To be in the right scene, the Hounds need to change location. It's not the only way to handle the problem. The Hobbit did exactly the same thing with hidden lettering on Thorin's map, making it so the map's secrets could only be read at a particular time of year, under certain conditions. So in that situation the transition is time, not location. In a related Hobbit scene, the transition is expertise. Only one person, Elrond, could translate and understand the map. Finally, the information the map provided could only be acted on at a specific time of year, in a particular location. 

Transition in time, in geography, in expertise - all in one map.

But for our purposes in ex libris, the transition is purely geographic. The Hounds have to get to Paris. this allows the Keeper a chance for transit shenanigans Orient Express style, with mysterious strangers on the train perambulating around like little red herrings - until one of them makes a play for ex libris. Whether for its Mythos importance or its value as a map. After all, the Great Race might be very interested in this little travelling portal to their time/space dimension and yet have no interest  in the Golden Fleece. Whereas your average treasure nut has little interest in the Mythos but really wants the Fleece.

Once in Paris the Hounds can use the Core Clues to their fullest, working out precisely where the Golden Fleece is from the information in ex libris. What they do with this information is up to them. As an artifact the Golden Fleece is incredibly valuable, but surely there's a reason why Strindberg didn't try to sell it. Is there some curse? Does it have magical properties? Is there a guardian - ghouls, perhaps, or a serpent?

All that's for you and your players to determine. 

That's a Layered Clue. Obtained in one scene, but can only be properly understood in another, the two scenes being divided by geography. 

This is a relatively simple example with only two layers; it's easy to imagine a Layered Clue with multiple layers, divided not just by geography but also time, and possibly other factors as well. A Layered Clue that can only be properly understood by someone with the In The Blood drive. Or someone with 1 or more Magic pool, That only gives its secret up when the right stars shine overhead, or when the moon is full. A complicated Layered Clue could be the centerpiece of an entire campaign, depending on just how complicated the Keeper wants to make it.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Universal Aunts (Trail, Call of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents)

This post is inspired by Lucy Lethbridge's book Servants, which I'm reading for research purposes. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting period information on the Victorian era, the 1920s and 30s.

Lady-help is a catchall term for an unmarried woman without financial resources, who works as a kind of servant but isn't really from the same social class as a servant. Consequently they balance precariously between the group they feel they belong to, the middle classes, while at the same time not having the same claim to membership of that group as the people they work for. Lethbridge describes this as 'living on a social mezzanine floor, between one world and another.'

Often they do not, or cannot, perform the same tasks as a servant, having not been taught the necessary skills. Nor did they want to be taught. That's the whole point of being a lady; you don't have to do manual or domestic labor. So in practice the lady-help is a paid companion or quasi-governess, someone who can be set administrative tasks, like managing a diary or arranging train tickets and hotel stays, but who has no practical function, like laundry or cooking. Agatha Christie often makes use of the lady-help. Hildegarde Schmidt and Mary Debenham, who appear in her novel Murder on the Orient Express, are examples of the type.

In the Victorian and early Edwardian period, the lady-help's a bit vulnerable, particularly since they lack the money and the opportunity to save that guarantees a modest comfort in retirement. Again, going back to Agatha Christie, this is why legacies gifted in the master or mistress' will are so important. However for those not lucky enough to get a legacy, the best they can hope for is to live on charity - or, more likely, slowly starve on charity.

Things change in the 1920s. There are fewer men, thus fewer opportunities for marriage. Moreover the declining economy means families need cash, however they can get it. Unmarried daughters must work. At the same time, there's an innate horror in letting social standards slip. The middle class must remain the middle class; there can be no question of blurring the line between servant and master. Then there is the war, which among other things taught a whole generation of middle class women new skills, and confidence.

Enter new temporary employment agencies, like Universal Aunts.

'Britain's first personal service bureau' opened in 1921, on Sloane Street. Its founder, Gertie Maclean, wanted to create a venture "which will, I hope, fulfil my search for an opportunity to use my time and intelligence. I would hope too, that other like-minded ladies can become involved." They did, and soon Universal Aunts had a full catalogue of women capable of performing any task. Women with Zoological Society certificates, expert researchers fluent in many languages, women who knew about physics, spiritualism and foreign missions, who were qualified car and boat mechanics, and pilots.

Women who would make excellent investigators in any period horror game, especially Trail and Call of Cthulhu.

These kinds of agencies turn up in fiction now and again. Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey owned and operated an agency like this, with Joan Murchison, former secretary with a background in stock broking, as its founder member. However it wasn't until Servants that I realized this was an actual, historical event, not some backstory invented by a mystery writer. It opens up a range of options for the Keeper, or even the Night's Black Agents director. Consider:

• The agency can be a source of information. You can justify any skill set you care to name - Archaeology, Accounting, History, Library Use, Bureaucracy, High Society, Surveillance - and the agency can meet that need. So if the investigators pick up an interesting doodad, and don't know what it is or what it does, ask Universal Aunts to look into the problem. Or need someone followed, or something looked into.
• The agency can be an employer or patron, for female investigators. That former Dilettante who lost all her family money in the great Crash can find a new sense of purpose, and employment, with Universal Aunts. It might work even better with a group of all female investigators.
• It can be a clue dispenser. Are the investigators getting bogged down in minutiae, or lost in the weeds? Universal Aunts might point them in the right direction, albeit indirectly. Say the investigators are having trouble tracking down Stanley Fentiman, or they want to know why he was kicked out of his old College, or what he's been up to recently. Universal Aunts may know, because one of its members knows Fentiman, or used to work with him, or has connections with the College that chucked him out. Or Universal Aunts may come to the investigators and ask their help with Fentiman, thus giving the investigators a clue as to his whereabouts or plans. 
• It can be a training facility. If the investigator needs to brush up on her Latin, History, Vampirology, or whatever it may be, there's bound to be an Aunt who knows all about it, and can help.
• It can be an occult investigative agency. This is similar to the employer or patron option, above, except that it exists to combat occult threats. It hides this mission under some discreet front, but imagine a Universal Aunts founded, not by Gertie Maclean, but by Wilhemina Murray. Or Dion Fortune, or anyone with occult interests. Universal Aunts wouldn't be up there with Delta Green, sending out hit squads to eliminate threats, but there's all kinds of trouble it could get up to. That mysterious Count, for example, with his business interests in Whitby - no doubt the Aunts have crossed swords with him before. 

The best thing about Universal Aunts, of course, is that it still exists. Anything For Anyone At Any Time is one heck of a motto to live up to for over a hundred years, but Universal Aunts has managed it. 'Universal Aunts still endeavors to rise to any challenge.' I bet it does! This means it can be a resource in Call, Trail, and Night's Black Agents; plausible in any era. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Ring

One of the difficulties with a setting as unique as Trail of Cthulhu is that some of the terms are going to be so unfamiliar as to deserve an in-depth explanation. Yet there's only so much space in the book, and some things are bound to be truncated to make room for other, more important elements. One such is the Ring, described as a cabal of book-buyers whose cooperation allows them to pull off the Knock; to cheat by agreeing to gang up on the competition, knocking them out early so that members of the Ring can then pick up the good stuff at bargain prices.

There's a story in Dorothy Sayers' collection of short stories, Lord Peter Views the Body, that features the Ring in all its glory. The tale is The Stolen Stomach and its hero, amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, is helping a friend in Scotland. However there happens to be an auction in London that Lord Peter is particularly anxious to attend, so rather than immediately dash off to the Highlands he sends a telegram and then goes off to the auction, with the result that he's not on-hand to deal with the problem in Scotland at a critical moment. Sayers describes the auction in some detail, which I will quote here:

[Lord Peter] had great fun at the sale the next day. He found a ring of dealers in possession, happily engaged in conducting a knock-out. Having lain low for an hour in a retired position behind a large piece of statuary, he emerged, just as the hammer was falling upon the Catullus for a price representing the tenth part of its value, with an overbid so large, prompt and sonorous that the ring gasped with a sense of outrage. Skrymes - a dealer who had sworn eternal enmity to Wimsey, on account of a previous little encounter over a Justinian - pulled himself together and offered a fifty-pound advance. Wimsey promptly doubled his bid. Skrymes overbid him fifty again. Wimsey instantly jumped another hundred, in the tones of a man prepared to go on till Doomsday. Skrymes scowled and was silent. Someone raised it fifty more; Wimsey made it guineas and the hammer fell. Encouraged by his success, Wimsey, feeling that his hand was in, romped happily into the bidding for the next lot, a Hypernotomachia which he already possessed, and for which he felt no desire whatever. Skrymes, annoyed by his defeat, set his teeth, determining that, if Wimsey was in the bidding mood, he should pay through the nose for his rashness. Wimsey, entering into the spirit of the thing, skied the bidding with enthusiasm. The dealers, knowing his reputation as a collector, and fancying that there must be some special excellence about the book which they had failed to observe, joined in whole-heartedly, and the fun became fast and furious. Eventually they all dropped out again, leaving Skrymes and Wimsey in together. At which point Wimsey, observing a note of hesitation in the dealer's voice, neatly extricated himself and left Mr Skrymes with the baby. After this disaster, the ring became sulky and demoralized and refused to bid at all, and a timid little outsider, suddenly flinging himself into the arena, became the owner of a fine fourteenth-century missal at bargain price. Crimson with exitement and surprise, he paid for his purchase and ran out of the room like a rabbit, hugging his missal as though he expected to have it snatched from him. Wimsey thereupon set himself seriously to acquire a few fine early printed books, and, having accomplished this, retired, covered with laurels and hatred.

Clearly Sayers knew a great deal about auctions, which given her academic interests is not surprising, but there are several elements here which will be useful to Bookhounds.

First, it makes clear that the Auction ability has little - if anything - to do with money. This is a mental trap that even my own players sometimes fall into, thinking that the person with the most money always wins. The above extract makes it clear that a bidding war is more about intimidation, psychology and deceit than it is about cash. You know how to handle yourself in an auction is the very first line of the ability description, and at no point does it even mention cash.

Second, it's a reminder that other abilities will come in handy in an auction setting. Clearly Lord Peter doesn't depend on his Auction score; either Stealth, Disguise or Conceal could cover the incident with the large piece of statuary, a fair amount of Intimidation was going on, and Sense Trouble could account for the a note of hesitation in the dealer's voice which tells Lord Peter that the time has come to jump ship. 

Third, it's a pretty clear indication that the Ring isn't just a shadowy cabal, but made up of people with their own goals and desires. If Skrymes had kept his head he and his partners might have carried off the knock even with Lord Peter's interference, but because he didn't the whole thing fell flat. Once Skrymes had been dealt with the Ring lost all hope, and Lord Peter was able to do as he pleased; even the little rabbit got away with his missal. 

To begin at the beginning: a Ring is an informal term for a collection of people acting together to fix the bidding. In its simplest form, members of the Ring viciously go after anyone not in the group while refusing to compete against Ring members. This keeps outsiders intimidated, and allows the Ring to pick up what it pleases at bargain rates. Members of the Ring are usually dealers who want to sell on their purchases for a profit, so the cheaper they can get their merchandise the better they like it.

However that isn't the only thing a Ring can do. Where the owner of the item being auctioned is a member of the Ring, one possible cheat is to bid up the article in question and then drop out once other bidders have joined in. That pumps up the initial price, which in turn means that the item's owner will probably walk away with more than he would otherwise have done. This is particularly likely to happen where the Ring is made up, not of dealers, but of owners; it may also happen that the Ring is made up of people trying to pass off fake goods, upping the bidding to make the item seem worth more than it actually is. Remember the auctioneers in the above description, who fancied that there must be some special excellence about the book which they had failed to observe. People in the auction room simply don't know what an item really is worth, and they can be persuaded - through psychological manipulation - that the stuff they're dealing with is worth much more, or much less, than it actually is. They're guessing, and so they can be bullied or tricked into guessing incorrectly.

It's all about psychology and intimidation, as anyone who's ever watched Storage Wars will know. That A&E show features a regular character, Dave Hester, whose 'YUUUUP' catchphrase is his trademark. Yes, it's about being heard, but it's also about letting the competition know who they're dealing with; not unlike Lord Peter's tones of a man prepared to go on till Doomsday. Money is certainly part of the equation, but in many ways its the least part of it; a flashy roll attracts the eye and makes the competition think twice, but whether it's all bills or bills plus newspaper clippings is impossible to tell at a glance.

In game terms, a Ring is clearly Cooperating, as described on page 58 of the main book. Several people pool their Auction scores together in order to achieve a common goal, which means that for purposes of gameplay the Ring's Auction ability is going to be very high. The Keeper should consider either designing several different cabal members, so that each has an individual Auction pool, or assigning a joint Auction pool for the group. That pool is going to be fairly high, whichever route the Keeper goes; scores of 15+ should be common for a Ring.

That probably puts them in a power position when dealing with an individual player character, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Intimidation can shave a few points off that total, and the players will probably come up with other ways to bluff the Ring into losing even more from their pool. Moreover as Skrymes shows individual Ring members can be split off from the pack - another reason for designing individual Ring members rather than assigning a pool - and defeating one of these on their own could be enough to break the Ring altogether. Remember, these aren't shadowy criminal masterminds; they're just bidders who happen to have formed a temporary alliance, perhaps over tea that morning. They don't have hordes of minions to do their every bidding; at best they may have suborned the auctioneer, or someone else working for the auction house, but dacoit assassins are well beyond their remit.

That said, they might know people who know people. Strong-arm men, forgers, burglars and con artists are just the sort of shady characters members of a Ring might know. In theory someone desperate to get their own back on an interfering player character could call on these resources, if they really wanted to. Again, this doesn't mean hordes of minions to fling into combat; at best it's two blokes willing to rough someone up in a back alley. Still, it's better than nothing, and a likely consequence of offending someone with shady friends.

One final word for the Keeper: remember that bidding in an auction has nothing - or very little - to do with money. It's about power, and who has it, which is why the Ring does very well for itself. They know the importance of power, and are willing to cooperate - temporarily at least - to achieve a common goal. If the player character wants to go up against the Ring he'd better be very sure of himself, otherwise he could be left - like Skrymes - holding the baby.