Ripped from the Headlines: Wine Heist

This week's post is inspired by a Guardian article about a daring wine heist in which two thieves with plausible faces suckered a Spanish establishment and walked out with priceless wines.

The TL/DR: the seemingly respectable pair booked a suite at Atrio in the city of Cáceres, which has a 2-star Michelin restaurant attached. While the front desk (and thus the security camera system) was unattended one of them crept into the cellar and made off with 45 bottles, including 'a valuable 1806 Château d’Yquem and at least six other 19th-century bottles' (from the article). The hotel owner alleges that the pair must have been stealing for a collector, since the bottles are easily identifiable and could not be sold on the open market.

My take: whoever it is must have an excellent understanding of the hotel's infrastructure, and further, that this probably only happened because of Covid. It's difficult to imagine an establishment as prestigious as this so under-occupied as to allow easy access to the wine cellar unless there weren't as many staff and customers as usual. Even one more pair of eyes could have prevented this. 

You have to wonder what the thieves' Plan B was if the staff member at reception returned before the person swiping the wine got out of the cellar.

We've talked about wine before. We've even talked about Château d’Yquem, three bottles of which were among the hoard found under the floorboards of a Czech castle. 

From James Cleur

Let's gamify this.

The Double Tap ruleset introduces Cameos: "The Director can set scenes in these instant locations, run the thriller action montage right through them, or just sprinkle them into her subconscious. 

Each Establishing Shot includes a quick “stock footage” description, followed by the extras (and any Cameos) you might run into there, three clues, and any sensible rules effects."

So:

Michelin Starred Restaurant. 

A holy temple of cuisine. Many spend all their lives trying to book a table here. Others, the apostles of gastronomy, consider this place home. Those who have the privilege of dining here do so in hushed reverence. It takes passion and talent to obtain even one Michelin star, never mind more than one. There are only 13 restaurants with 3 Michelin stars in the whole United States.

No muzak here; even the architecture is a cut above, a blend of modernist fantasy with elements of ancient splendor. Though every possible pain is taken to ensure the guest's comfort, those with some Tradecraft experience notice the security cameras thoughtfully placed here, there and everywhere. The architecture may be a cut above, but the designer planned for every eventuality.  

Attentive staff bustle back and forth between tables, each highly trained and experienced; you have to be the best of the best to work here. Those fortunate enough to find a place may stay for years, perhaps decades, becoming a fixture of the establishment. The chefs are world-renowned and many who come here make the pilgrimage specifically to sample that particular chef's version of a favorite dish, which shall be different from any other version of that dish they may have sampled before. 

It's not unusual to see the great and famous, perhaps playing at Gordon Gekko, preferring to be seen to be here rather than seen to eat here. Nevertheless those who find their way through the front door are often simply the wealthy, for whom fine dining is less important than expensive and famous dining. Those at that table over there - the one being attended to personally by the chef - are those who came here to eat. When all is said and done, a Michelin restaurant prefers those who prefer food. Money's important, fame important, but fine living trumps both. 

extras and cameos: A VIP and their entourage, including bodyguards sat at the next table trying not to look like a bunch of thugs. A well-placed NPC or Cameo, like an Edom Legacy or Duke. A Russian plutocrat conspicuously out of place, trying to look as if they belong. A couple enjoying their Diamond Anniversary. A day trader with money to burn wondering what all the fuss is about, making loud and inappropriate telephone calls to the displeasure of all. A highly placed government official, Conspiracy asset or similar ranking apparatchik. An agent's Familiar Foe (p 52, Double Tap). 

clues: Though the staff are as attentive as you'd expect, for some reason they're avoiding that table over there. The fellow in the expensive suit seems particularly pale and sickly. Those with Occult notice peculiar sigils worked into the architecture, as if set up as a means of warding off evil - or inviting it. That painting - isn't it a [INSERT USEUFL NAME HERE eg Francis Aytown from the Dracula Dossier]? How peculiar to see one of those in this establishment; it seems out of place.

rules effects: due to the proliferation of security cameras any Infiltration attempt is at +1 Difficulty. Any overt violence increases Heat by +1, in addition to any other Heat increases that might normally accrue. Agents with Excessive Funds or High Society pools of 2 or more are fawned on by the staff, and possibly also the chef. A successful Theft here (the artwork, the contents of the wine cellar, similar) gives the agents Excessive Funds for one scene only.

in a fight: Horrors! That such a thing could happen here! Alcohol and fire - try not to clock someone with the 1806 Château d’Yquem. The VIP's bodyguards are probably armed. That chef's knife could be very useful but so could the steak knives, in a pinch. Why not use a table cloth like a cloak, for cloak-and-dagger fighting?

in a chase: Terrain varies between cramped and open and the architecture isn't helpful; damn difficult vaulting a modernist masterpiece. A restaurant whose main structure dates back to the Nth century might have old secret doors and passages known only to a favored few. Even more modern restaurants might have a 21-Club style secret door hiding the wine cellar. Running through the kitchen isn't going to win you any friends but might get you out the back way through the deliveries door. A quick Disguise as staff might work, if the staff are already friendly (on account of that High Society pool of 2 points or more) - the staff knows how difficult it is to keep the paparazzi at bay. On the other hand the staff all know each other very well so that same Disguise may be your doom, if the staff aren't friendly.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

Go See This Now - Crime, Ghosts, and Enormous Balls

OK, you know the drill: this is where I recommend stuff for you to watch. So you're not as locked down as you were before; so you can go to the pub if you want. Will you? Methinks not. I suspect you're still in the market for entertainment, so have a shot at these. 

Assume this is on Netflix, unless I say otherwise.

Time To Hunt

2020, Korea, crime, action, thriller 

Small-time criminal Jun-seok leaves prison only to find that the loot he spent three year incarcerated over is effectively gone, as South Korea is economically devastated and it's now illegal to exchange the all-but-worthless Won for any other currency. He and his pals Jang-ho and Ki-hoon resolve to escape South Korea by knocking over a gambling house, since the house has stacks of US$ in its safe which they can use to relocate somewhere sunny and economically viable. So far so good, but they make a huge mistake; they steal the hard drives that contain the house's security footage, as a safety precaution Unfortunately for them the house could care less about the cash, but it cares a great deal about that footage as it contains evidence of their illicit doings. So psychopathic and extremely well-connected hitman Han is sent to kill them all. 

The Hunt Is On. 

Why see this? If you're a Night's Black Agents Director looking for inspiration, this is it. The Heist, followed by the extended Thrilling Chase. Plus some excellent gunfight and stuntwork moments, especially in the final crimsoned scenes on a deserted stretch of wasteland near the sea.

Betaal

2020, India, action, horror, zombies, TV show

 

An Indian army detachment nominally sent to disperse terrorists, but actually there to wipe out some inconvenient protestors on behalf of a corrupt land developer, finds more than they bargain for when zombies start chasing them down. The risen dead are all members of an East India Company regiment whose commanding officer led them to damnation in search of loot. Now the living soldiers have to hide out in the old fort the dead soldiers used to occupy, hoping to hold out till dawn.  Zombies with guns? It's not going to go well for our heroes ...

A little cheesy but there are some great action scenes, and it's fun to see zombies used in a more imaginative way. Suchitra Pillai as Commander Tyagi is a standout.

The 9th Precinct 

2019, Taiwan, film, action, cop drama, undead

Street cop Chen Chia-Hao finds himself inducted into the 9th Precinct when his partner is shot dead in front of him, only to discover that dead isn't as dead as he thought. The 9th Precinct exists to police ghosts, and to resolve their situation as best as possible so they can move on or at least stop bothering the living. It's a nice mix between Beetlejuice's dark humor and a conventional cop drama, as the Precinct cops realize that the increased undead activity they're dealing with is actually linked to a vampiric entity that's manipulating them all to its own ends.

Great action scenes, unexpectedly funny in places, and the lead actors are very charismatic and fun to watch.  

Ladda Land

2011, Thai, film, ghosts, horror

Businessman Thee gets a promotion and decides it's time to move the family out to the suburbs. He has his eye on a magnificent detached house in Ladda Land, where everything is as perfect as can be. Except he soon discovers the neighbors are less than friendly, and his economic situation takes an unexpected downturn when his boss runs off with the company's funds. Economically trapped in a house he can't afford, Thee soon finds that his neighbors had good reason to be unfriendly - and that there was a lot about Ladda Land he didn't know before he bought a house there.

Remarkably chilling, and it has an elegant answer to the two classic questions: why don't you move away? and, given all the evidence, why do you think this place isn't haunted? Keepers need to watch this; some really brilliant scares, jump and otherwise.

Below Zero

2021, Spanish, film, crime, thriller

Cop and family man Martin has been transferred, and his first job at his new posting is to assist in a prisoner transport. Some of the cons in his truck are high-ranking mafia types, so the idea is to keep the whole process below the radar as much as possible. The truck and its escort will be moving through desolate, snowbound terrain at the crack of dawn, to avoid attention as well as traffic. Except someone knows, and that someone *really* wants to get his hands on one of the prisoners. Trouble begins when the escort is knocked out and the truck ambushed in the middle of nowhere, but things get much, much worse ...

Tense, but not a chase movie. Most of the action takes place inside the stalled transport truck, and if you'd told me ahead of time that this would be the perfect setting for what amounts to a locked room mystery I don't think I would have believed you. It almost makes me want to set a one-shot in one of those vans myself.

Pom Poko

1994, animated, film, Studio Ghibli

1960s Tokyo is expanding rapidly to meet the demand for suburban housing. This spells disaster for the tanuki, intelligent and supernaturally gifted raccoons who, up till now, have led peaceful lives in what was the countryside. Now their homes are under threat, either because those hills and fields are slated for development or because construction companies are illegally dumping construction waste onto whatever green spaces are left. It's time for all good tanuki to band together to fend off the humans, scaring the dickens out of those pesky construction workers with their shapeshifting powers.

OK, it's a Studio Ghibli, which means many of you will have heard of this one already. But have you watched it? Or is this something in your to-watch list, while more eye-catching fare like Porco Rosso and Spirited Away grab all the attention? If the latter, time to move this up in the queue. Brilliant ghost action; my favorite's the nupperibo scene, but there's plenty of options to pick from.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Go See This Now - Heists, Crime, Horror, Food & Booze (Netflix)

I've been bingeing these, and you should too.

La Casa de Papel is brilliant, intelligent, meticulously plotted, with some incredible set pieces and a climax to set your teeth on edge. Eight small-time crooks break into the Royal Mint of Spain, but they get caught halfway through the heist and are besieged for over a week. Except it wasn't really a heist, and the siege is all part of the plan. Night's Black Agents directors and players need to have this in their lives. Why am I singing its praises again? Because Season Three is coming soon, and it would be a terrible, terrible shame not to see the first two seasons before Three's July debut.

The Bar, another Spanish shocker from cult director Alejandro de la Iglesia, is a much more claustrophobic comic horror piece. A group of strangers are trapped in a small hole-in-the-wall boozer, when a mad gunman opens fire. One customer's dropped with a headshot, and everyone wonders who's next to get got. But wait! Why are the streets completely deserted? Was it really some crazed sniper, or is this all part of some government plot? Standout performance award goes to Jaime Ordonez as Israel, who spends the entire film chewing the scenery and spitting chunks of it all over the floor.

Unit 42 is a Belgian cop drama, about cyber crimes. Widower and father of three Sam Leroy is parachuted in as the new head of the unit, and must find his feet while keeping his fractious team focused on their job. For once, a police procedural that doesn't treat computer crime like some alien sci-fi looney bin, though it does wear its sci-fi credentials proudly. Hence 42, as in the Meaning of Life. I like that it remembers corpses stink, and aren't pleasant to look at. The first season touches on Anonymous, ISIS and other topics ripped from the headlines, but never buries itself in bullshit. YouTube only has an English dub trailer and several non-subbed French trailers, and I shan't inflict the English dub on you.

I like it best for its subtle character details. Example: the boss' boss, a character who only appears occasionally, keeps goldfish and plants in her office. She's absolutely fatal, black thumb personified, and everything she touches dies. In another series there'd be long speeches about her inability. In this, we just see her harried expression as she brings another container of dead goldfish to the toilet for a solemn burial.

Again, highly recommended to Night's Black Agents Directors and players alike.

Charite At War is a second world war epic, about the Charite Hospital in Berlin. The doctors, nurses and patients have to survive a city under siege, threatened by aerial bombardment, Russians at the door, and cornered Nazis making a final stand. The narrative starts in 1943 and goes to the end of the war, all in six episodes. Fair warning: eugenics and experimentation on children both feature significantly.

I like it best for its characters, but I was struck by its intelligent use of wartime footage to flesh out its world. Every so often you'd see brief glimpses of Berlin as it was, then Berlin as it became, after the bombs dropped. It made the narrative much larger, even compelling.

Tokyo Stories: Midnight Diner is my chillax series. When the day's gone on too long, it's always a pleasure to sink back into this cheerful, slice-of-life narrative. Each day, after midnight, the Diner opens, for people who can't bear to go home. The Master has a limited menu, but offers to cook anything his customers want, so long as he has the ingredients. The Diner becomes a story hub, as each of the customers take it in turn to have some kind of crisis, which can only be solved at the Diner's counter. Slightly saccharine and very Japanese, in the same way that Studio Ghibli films are very Japanese; nostalgic, elegiac, sentimental.

Plus, free recipe with every episode. Can't beat that!

Finally, Office, a Korean horror film from 2015. Family man Kim Byong-gook goes to the office day in, day out, never deviating, never relaxing. One day he murders his entire family, then disappears. Where did he go? Why did he do it? Why do security cameras record him going back to the office one more time, but there's no footage of him leaving?

Freaky as hell, very psychological. Winner of the 2015 Camera d'Or at Cannes. I'm not saying much about it because I don't want to spoil, but trust me when I say, it delivers the goods in the craziest way imaginable.

Enjoy!

Money Heist - Flashbacks (Night's Black Agents)

I've been on a Spanish kick recently after watching the brilliant series Ministry of Time. One of the shows I've been watching is a heist series I recommend to anyone interested in Night's Black Agents: Money Heist, aka La Casa de Papel.

La Casa tells the story of a gang of clever and sophisticated thieves who engineer a takeover of the Royal Mint of Spain, planning to print millions upon millions of Euro and walk out scot free after a 12 day siege. It's gorgeously shot and intricately plotted, with slick twists and turns to astound the viewer. I'm on season 1 episode 10 at time of writing; every episode I've watched these characters pull off moments of sheer genius, none of which I'm going to share with you because it would be a shame to spoil.

This is a must-watch for Night's Black Agents players and directors. Not just for its clever ideas, but because it demonstrates effective use of investigative and general abilities in ways that you haven't thought of. You can go through an episode and say for each moment in a scene, Disguise, Infiltration, Flirting, Cop Talk, Bureaucracy, High Society - and on and on. Dust gamers should take particular note; this is as Dusty as an eight mile stretch of bad road.

It's also a Lewton's Bus master class, except without the supernatural element. The number of times I've watched this thing spike the tension, SPIKE the tension, SPIKE THE TENSION and then release … and you, the viewer, know it could easily have gone a different way, but here we are now.

However I do want to talk about a mechanic that Money Heist uses at least once per episode: the Flashback.

It works like this: a problem or situation arises unexpectedly. The viewer can't see a way out, or a way forward. Then there is a switch to a previous moment, almost always kicked off by narration from Tokyo, the audience viewpoint character and one of the most significant members of the heist crew. The events that take place in that flashback show how or why the present situation isn't what the viewer thought; that what looked like a crisis is an opportunity, or what seemed victory is defeat.

Night's Black Agents often suggests using flashbacks in-game, but doesn't go much further than 'narrate a brief flashback sequence.' Money Heist goes one further, and I think it can be co-opted into NBA using the Achievements mechanic in Double Tap.

Double Tap proposes a simple mechanic for General Ability refreshes in the middle of a scene. Engineer an Achievement moment - say, by running through a working kitchen during a chase or shootout scene, thus winning the Chef de Partie achievement - and you get a 3 point refresh of whichever General Ability seems most appropriate. The point being that the agent has to create the moment, has to find that kitchen and run through it. If there's no reasonable way of creating the moment, say if it's well after closing time and no kitchens are open, then the achievement cannot be won.

I propose something like this:

La Casa de Papel: Invoke and play through a flashback moment that has direct relevance to the situation you are currently in. This may involve other agents, or opposition forces. Gain a 3-point refresh, and pay for that refresh by gaining 2 points Heat, or by losing 2 points Stability, or by imposing a story problem on another agent that the other agent has to solve. Whichever payment method is used, it must flow directly from the events of the flashback - so, eg, the Heat gain comes from something that happened in the flashback.

In Money Heist a flashback always raises the stakes in some way. It's often used to, in game terms, pay for a Preparedness refresh so the characters can accomplish some cool thing that the viewer didn't think the characters would pull off. However there are always story consequences, and La Casa is very much a Dust game, with all the Trust and lack of same that implies. There are inevitably serious consequences every time Tokyo calls for a flashback, and the only question is who suffers. It might be Berlin, or the Professor, Helsinki, Nairobi, one of the hostages, one of the cops, but someone gets burnt.

That's why each time you call for this achievement, you have to pay for it with some kind of penalty. Heat affects the entire team. Stability losses affect the agent in a way that make future tests more difficult. Imposing a story problem harms a team member, whose contributions may be vital to future success or failure.

Say one of the team suffers from an addiction and is hiding it from the group. The story problem might threaten to reveal that addiction, or to remove the substance the addicted agent needs, or lets the opposition know the agent is addicted to [whatever] which in turn allows them to manipulate the addicted agent. Or something else, but whatever it is the story complication ought to be serious. It can't be something the targeted agent can overcome easily. It might even require them to spend pool points of their own - Infiltration, Disguise, Athletics, something else - to engineer a solution. Which means it works great in a Dust game, but it would still work whether your game's Dusty or not.

For that reason this works best as an Achievement. Thrilling Narration can be used by anyone at any time; two agents with the Shooting cherry can both use narration to refresh points. However Achievements can be gained once and once only, so there's a definite benefit to invoking La Casa before anyone else does. Sure it screws everyone else, but at least you're okay - you got your refresh, and now there's no risk someone's going to screw you by calling for their own La Casa and imposing a story penalty on you. Of course, if they can think of a different way to screw you ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Believe In Magic (Night's Black Agents, Trail of Cthulhu, Esoterrorists)

You probably noticed an article that's been floating around these past few days about skeletons in Spain. For those who haven't: divers discovered a bag of human remains off the coast of Alicante, and when the police got involved several other dump sites were discovered. All contained skeletal remains, some contained personal items as well, and DNA tests showed that the weathered bones from the first bundle had been buried in soil for decades before being disinterred and dumped at sea.

Naturally this sparked lurid theories about Santeria, because when you find bones in peculiar places naturally your first thought is 'witchcraft!' Oddly if you Google search skeleton and Alicante one of the first hits is Skeleton International, Removals and Storage but this has got to be someone's idea of a joke.

Also found with the remains were letters and photographs, including official documents from the Tax Authority. All three bags were found close together on the sea bed, and contained bones from several different people.

If the website Think Spain is to be believed - and I'm not sure it is - also found, but not mentioned by other news sources, is "a type of wooden pole, split down the middle which signifies the end of the road in certain areas of witchcraft, and a closed basket containing laurel leaves and a hermetically sealed container filled with a yellow-colored liquid."

All of which sounds a little lurid, which makes me suspicious; my usual attitude is 'if it sounds too good to be true, somebody's lying their arse clean off.'

That said, in folklore laurel's well known particularly in the Mediterranean for its purgative and purification properties. Sacred to Apollo, laurel "was believed to endow prophets with visions, and is associated with poetry partly because, as evergreen, it symbolizes immortality, and largely because its intoxicating properties are associated with poetic inspiration." (Funk and Wagnalls Folklore, Mythology and Legend). It can be used as a love charm, and has been used in tales to induce forgetfulness.

Funk and Wagnalls has this to say about bones: "the use of bones in divination is world-wide. Astragalomancy, divining by means of small bones, has given rise to several series of games: board games like pachisi [sic], dice games, jacks, etc." So you can thank diviners for your favorite RPG.

It also says "The Chinese have elaborate ceremonies to keep the physical soul out of their houses and contentedly in the tomb or sealed up in it. If the animal soul [which resides in the bones] has sufficient vitality, it will animate the skeleton or skull and commit horrid and revolting crimes - cannibalism, rape, etc - in the countryside." Bear that in mind next time you watch Mr Vampire.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying it doesn't have to be Santeria to be witchcraft of some kind. Laurel's forgetfulness combined with the tax returns and photographs could indicate someone's trying a novel way of managing their income tax burden. Or this is some kind of love charm, but personally I'm rooting for tax fraud. Love charms are so 14th Century.

It's difficult to judge this kind of thing from several thousand miles away and through another language; I doubt that the English-speaking sources have the whole story. I have some sympathy for the Santeria worshipper who says that this kind of thing doesn't happen in his religion. It must be wearing to know that every time a non-believer sees something vaguely like an episode of Buffy the non-believer turns to your religion, points a finger and calls it crazy.

That said, it does seem like a ritual attempt. It's the tax returns that really pique my interest. If it were organized crime or a serial killer trying to move evidence from an insecure body dump site to a more secure one, you'd think the only thing found would be the bones. Maybe some clothes or shoes. Paper, though, after thirty or forty years in the ground with a corpse and then an indeterminate time unprotected in the ocean; all due respect to CSI but you wouldn't be able to tell if it was tax returns or a Disneyland brochure. Which argues that the paperwork was a more recent addition to the dump, and tax returns are too easily traced for this to be an attempt to hide evidence. Criminals are often stupid, but you'd have to be an award-winning idiot to do something like that.

I'll offer one other supposition: whoever did this has access to a boat, but isn't an experienced boater. Someone who knew what they were doing wouldn't have dumped the bones anywhere near a spot where they'd be easily found. Someone who regularly went out to sea would know where divers congregated. It's not as if they roam like migrants across the ocean waves; if you're a dive school and you know a safe spot for lessons, you keep going back to that safe spot. It's only sense. You've got enough unknown variables with the students without adding to your troubles by going somewhere you don't know well.

With all that in mind, let's try some gamification:

• Night's Black Agents: Some of the documents found with the bones can be traced to a low-level Conspiracy asset. The asset, a property developer, was riding high before the 2008 crash but suffered catastrophic losses when the market tanked. That's when the Conspiracy moved in; it needed a safe haven in this port town to cover its smuggling operation, and hid its money, equipment and special-build vampire havens among the property developers' asset list. The property developer has never liked this arrangement and has turned to witchcraft in hope of getting the bloodsuckers off its back. The witchcraft may or may not be genuine, but the fuss this discovery raises is about the blow the lid off the whole shebang.
• Trail of Cthulhu: Transposing the action to the 1930s, the bones were put to rest during the Rif War as an attempt to use witchcraft to guarantee the safety of the witch's relatives, sent to Morocco as conscripts. This attracted the attention of a Deep One colony off the coast, which interpreted this as a ritual sacrifice intended to placate the Deep Ones. Now the fish-men are leaning on the witch's family like a kind of Mythos protection racket: keep providing the sacrifices and we'll keep your relatives safe with our magic powers.
• Esoterrorists: The bones were put there by an Esoterrorist cell which is trying to provoke conflict between the authorities and worshippers of Santeria. The cell thinks that stirring up controversy with provocative headlines will make people fearful of witch-cults next door, which in turn will lead to a weakening of the Membrane. The bags of bones were just the start; the cell intends to stage a fake Santeria terror strike, perhaps some kind of ritual sacrifice gone wrong. The cell disguises itself as a reality TV show, and its camera crew always being in the right place at the right time is the first clue that something's up.

That's it for me. Enjoy!

Plot Points!

In case you haven't already found it, the Plot Points podcasters interviewed me a short while ago, and are putting it out on their feed. The first episode posted last week, and the second will post later this week. Enjoy!

Trail of Cthulhu: Soldiers of Pen and Ink

As Simon Rogers over at Pelgrane has been kind enough to Tweet about the cover art, I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk a little about an upcoming project: Soldiers of Pen and Ink, a mammoth Trail of Cthulhu scenario set during the Spanish Civil War. Let me give you the official precis:


The protagonists, sponsored by the Paris-based political organisation BNVS, have come to Spain to shoot a documentary on the war, and find themselves marooned in Madrid. One of their team goes missing, and their literary colleagues say it’s pointless – even dangerous – to ask what happened to him. In a war of competing ideologies, unorthodoxy can merit the death penalty, but is this Communist oppression or something more sinister?

The thing's huge - more than 43,000 words - and includes, among other things, four new character archetypes: the Extremist, Volunteer, Black Marketeer and Spy. For those of you who picked up Dulce et Decorum Est and liked the lists of tanks and aircraft, there's new stats here for even more military equipment. There's also a new Ability, Politics, and a new take on Hastur the Unspeakable and his terrifying Byakhee: The Hastur Mneme.

I really don't want to give away any plot details here, but I will say this: I loved writing it, am thrilled to see it come to completion at long last, and hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did writing it!

It is the duty of every citizen to defend Carcosa to the last drop of his blood!