Ripped from the Headlines: Behind A Wall (Night's Black Agents)

This week's post comes to you courtesy of an article in the Washington Post: China cultivated high-rolling crime families before turning on them by Shibani Mahtani, Christian Shepherd and Pei-Lin Wu.

For the scion of a crime family linked to human trafficking and enslavement, money laundering and global cyberscams, Wei Qingtao was brazenly public. His Douyin account, the Chinese-language version of TikTok, flaunted the excesses of his life in a remote corner of Myanmar by the border with China: Bentleys and Lamborghinis, rare cigars and private jets.

When the 27-year-old partied at the multistory, glass-walled nightclub he owned in a region called Kokang, he’d throw crisp Chinese yuan bills into the crowd as international techno DJs, chauffeured in along dirt roads, performed their sets.

In November, the good times rolled to a stop. Wei’s social media presence vanished. He soon appeared in a different kind of video: reading a scripted confession while in Chinese custody

The article's behind a paywall but I highly recommend it, if you can get to a copy. 

However, the bit that caught my attention talked about the Crouching Tiger compound, where hackers and scammers were corralled into a villa and kept there by force, the better to direct their efforts against victims of the syndicate. 

Clans also hired foreign security personnel to protect their interests. Alex Klisevits, a former Estonian navy officer, was among a team of 11 who arrived in Kokang after responding to a job ad seeking close protection officers for a “Chinese businessman.” Klisevits said he was smuggled in and soon realized he was not free to leave. The first day on the job, Klisevits said he saw a chained man beaten unconscious.

“When I saw how they punished people … I thought, ‘where the hell am I?’” Klisevits said.

If ever there was a Night's Black Agents plotline ripped from the headlines, this is it.  

Consider: when Stoker wrote Dracula he set the action in the Carpathians, which had the advantage from a writer's perspective of being difficult to get to and shrouded in mystery. That is no longer so. When you can buy tickets for the castle tour, the Count's lair loses its dangerous edge. 

The same can't be said of a remote crime fiefdom in Kokang. 

Kokang is a region within the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, aka Burma until fairly recently, the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia. Myanmar shares a border with China, and Kokang is on that border. Kokang was part of China until it was ceded to Britain in the late 19th century, and there's significant crossover between China and Kokang. It's a self-administered zone within Myanmar, which is probably for the best as it's infested with warlords and poppy smugglers. 

Image sourced from WP which got it from Google Earth

They're big on casinos in Kokang which is one of the main attractions for Chinese citizens. Like Macao, Kokang relies on Chinese tourists who can't gamble at home. Also like Macao, Kokang relies on extra-legal debt collectors, since gambling debts are unenforceable in China. Of course, these extra-legal groups don't stop at gambling debts, any more than a wolf stops at one sheep.

In the WP article a source describes the relationship between the two as “a Frankenstein monster that it [China] now can’t control.”

The Crouching Tiger villa was a hotbed of internet scams. The operators were kept at it 24/7, communicating with their Chinese targets and scraping off whatever they could get. Hence the guards; the actors and keyboard artists didn't want to be there and had to be threatened with violence to stay at their posts. Also, hence the raid, allegedly anyway; China got tired of the scams.

From the WP:

Many of the compounds for running scam operations were hosted in the same hotels and casino complexes long established by the clans. Others were purpose built, but had telltale signs like barred windows, high walls and even Myanmar military snipers on the rooftops, witnesses said.

This could be the setting for a very interesting introductory scenario. The characters are brought together by a mysterious Mr. Johnson in the usual way and sent off after an objective. The scenario in the main book, (S)entries, is exactly this sort of scenario. 

Except in (S)entries the agents are sent into a NATO base to retrieve a laptop. This time, the agents are sent into Kokang to retrieve a person.

Darkest Before The Dawn

Your mission: go to Kokang and retrieve Estonian operative Andrus Tamm, former First Infantry Scouts Battalion rapid response soldier turned bodyguard. Tamm has been swept up in a Myanmar military operation in Kokang intended to clear out a crime-infested region. He's currently in jail. It's believed that, if the agents don't intervene, Tamm will be spirited across the Chinese border and wind up in some quiet, remote prison, never to be seen again. 

Once successful, the agents are to get Tamm across the Indian border to a safe house in Mumbai, where Mr. Johnson will take possession.

All the agents are told about the target in the briefing is that Tamm was working for a crime syndicate, that he was brought in under false pretenses as bodyguard for an important official, and that until the sweep he was actually working as a guard at a cyberscam facility in Kokang called Black Tiger. 

Investigative point spends show that Myanmar would never have carried out a raid like this without Chinese backing and support. Tradecraft or similar indicate that China's secretive state agency Room 452 played a part in the raid. Further spends (Occult or similar) note that, in Chinese imagery, a Black Tiger is thought to ward off evil. However, at the compound, where there are graphic images of black tigers, none of them have the symbol of three horizontal lines connected by a central vertical line 王 (wang) meaning 'king', which normally decorate mythological black tiger imagery.

Enter the agents.

Option One: Hopping Mad. This raid was a proof of concept. Room 452 knows that Edom wants to use Dracula as an agent of the Crown, but Room 452 hasn't a hope of recruiting the great vampire. Instead, it has some tame (ish) jin-gui on the payroll, and this was its first outing. The ultimate intent is to create an anti-Dracula; China's fear is that Edom succeeds and, when it does, Dracula will give the UK an edge. Tamm is a witness to the hopping vampire's ravages, and Edom wants to debrief him. Mr. Johnson is on Edom's payroll, but he's had a change of heart - the Americans are offering more money. Crossing over into Mumbai will put the agents squarely in the crosshairs of Edom, Room 452 and some shadowy American intelligence types.

Option Two: Shaw Brothers. The raid was an attempt to put a vampire problem down for good. The Kokang crime syndicate was a Conspiracy node engaged in research on human subjects, and Tamm was one of the subjects. The Conspiracy was attempting to create a different kind of Renfield, one whose mental state isn't so ... fluid. Chinese forces were there to put down a crime syndicate; Room 452 hitched a ride hoping to gather up any loose intel the Conspiracy left lying around. Mr. Johnson is working on behalf of Tamm's relatives, who just want him back safe and sound. The relatives haven't got nearly as much money as they promised but they do have connections within the Estonian government, which is how they had the ability to arrange all this.  

Option Three: Encounters of the Spooky Kind. The raid, and the agents' involvement, was orchestrated by Room 452. They know that the Kokang crime syndicate stumbled onto supernatural powers; one of their new casinos happened to be built on top of an ancient tomb, and something crawled out during construction. Room 452 sees this as the perfect opportunity to get those supernatural powers for themselves, but they don't want to tip their hand. If they were seen to be directly involved in a snatch-and-grab in Kokang, that might alert Edom and every other vampire agency on the planet. If, on the other hand, some useful foreign pawns "snatch" the asset and take it to Mumbai, well ... it's so easy to lose inconvenient corpses in Mumbai ... Tamm is human but he's carrying the prize, and if he or someone else breaks the seal on that peculiar antique he's lugging around that will be problematic for everyone in a five-mile radius. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

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! 

Ripped from the Headlines: Pandora's Monaco (Night's Black Agents)

Washington Post

By now most of you will have heard of the Pandora Papers, the latest version of a series of well-constructed exposes into the financial dealings of the rich and ultra-rich.

This week I want to concentrate on the Russian angle, and in particular how that impacts on a topic I've discussed before: Monaco. 

The wealthy gambling microstate once again hit the headlines thanks to wealthy Russians, and although Putin's alleged girlfriend Svetlana Krivonogikh is given prominent mention in the video, news articles make clear she's far from being the only Russian in Putin's circle who has made their way to Monaco. 

Those who do are probably interested in passports as much as they are in swanky property and a place to dock their yacht. Provide proof of residency (property deeds plus a term of years) and proof of self-sufficiency, and you too can have a passport that grants you visa-free access to Brazil, Japan, United Kingdom, United States and the entire European Union. 

Ironically, Monaco passport holders do need a visa to travel to Russia but I suspect that isn't a significant problem for Putin's friends.

There's a reason why Putin's chums might want a passport above all else.

Bill Browder, TEDx

It's thanks to Browder's efforts that we have the Magnitsky Act, the intent of which is to authorize the U.S. government to sanction those it sees as human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.. The Act is named after Browder's lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in a Moscow prison after investigating a $230 million fraud involving Russian tax officials.  

Browder's argument for sanctions has always been that Russia's kleptocrats don't want to spend their time and money in Russia if they can help it. They'd far rather relax in more comfortable surroundings in the West. Therefore sanctions which limit their ability to travel and settle outside Russia are punishing those same kleptocrats that, Browder argues, make Putin's Russia the kind of country that it is today - one where friends of Putin can amass huge illicit gains and salt it away in trusts and shell companies.

Monaco celebrates its close relationship with Russia. A perhaps ill-timed article in the Monaco Tribune admits as much. The Tribune's a daily e-paper which publishes in French, English, Italian and Russian, and it had this to say about the Monaco Loves Russia initiative: 

The first diplomatic relations between the Principality and Russia go back to the end of the 19th cenutry [sic] with the signing of trade and political agreements. However, it was only in 2006, with Vladimir Putin, that an official diplomatic relationship began.

Today, Monaco has over 800 Russian residents, as well as a Russian consulate, located on Monaco’s rock. Given their high purchasing power, Russians also represent an important asset to the local tourism sector. 

A proud history of cooperation and mutual benefit, to be sure.

The media salivated over Putin's alleged mistress' Monaco apartment but with over 800 Russian residents and a consulate it's easy to see how she mightn't be the only Putin chum with a Monaco connection. Given their high purchasing power, and all that.

A follow-up in the Guardian makes much of a Monaco-based go-between, Moores Rowland. A professional accountancy and tax firm, it is connected to a network of law companies and offshore service providers around the world. There is little to be seen from outside other than a pleasant roof garden. Nice little touch of le Carré there. According to the article Moores Rowland creates and manages the network of companies and trusts that manage Russian wealth. 

In short, it's not unlike the role that the Dracula Dossiers' Billington and Sons plays in that Night's Black Agents campaign setting: a go-between. Whether an Edom friendly or a Conspiracy asset, Billington's job is to sit there and look innocent, even nondescript, while dark deeds are done with its assistance.

It's perhaps a little over-the-top to imagine that Billington has an outpost in Monaco, but it's not going too far to wonder if a Monaco firm might have an interest in a shabby little law office in some nondescript British town. Particularly if that law office has a lot to do with wills, property and trusts.

Let's gamify this, and suppose that there is a Level 3 Node (provincial power) linked with Billington (at best a Level 2) as Billington holds some of the Level 3's assets.

Let's further suppose that the Level 3 is an accountancy and tax firm, Addison Boland, founded by an Englishman and a Frenchman in the 1970s. Addison Boland has since become a significant power behind the scenes thanks to an influx of Russian cash. The original Addison, Samuel, is related by marriage to the Billingtons of Whitby, and in the old days Samuel used to push a lot of business Billington's way. It was sometimes convenient to have a holding company or trust incorporate under British law, and Billington and Sons was the perfect British go-between.

From the Conspiracy's POV, it was a reverse infection. Billington's was already a Conspiracy asset and had been for many years before Samuel Addison reached out. Through its connection with Billington, Addison Boland became aware of and then corrupted by the Conspiracy. The Conspiracy then used Addison Boland to hide its assets through a web of shell companies and trusts. 

That was all fine and dandy in the 1980s and 90s, when Addison Boland was an up-and-coming power. Then came the 2000s, and all that Russian money. So much Russian money, even Addison Boland couldn't keep track of it all.

The present-day Addison Boland is split into two factions.

Faction A, the Addison faction, wants to keep things as they are. The company's Conspiracy connections have served it well for decades. Added to that, the Addison faction are uncomfortably aware that their masters expect unquestioning obedience unto death - beyond death, preferably. Horace Addison, Samuel's 50-year-old son, is the de facto leader of this faction.

Faction B, the Boland faction, is dazzled by Russian money and Russian power. Many of their clients have direct links to the former KGB, or its successor the FSB. The Bolands have seen the future, and if ever there was a time to cut ties with their vampiric benefactors and sidle up to Moscow's elite, it's now. If the FSB or GRU have an anti-vampire program the Bolands are reaching out to it. After all, even vampire hunters have to hide their ill-gotten gains somehow, and the Bolands are happy to oblige. This faction is led by Alice Boland, the 30-year old granddaughter of the founding Boland. 

Scenario Seed: Rats, Rats, Rats As Big As Blooming Cats

A former KGB asset turned high-end bagman, Gennady Balabanov, is arrested in France with large quantities of illegal pesticide. The authorities were monitoring him for various money laundering offences and didn't want to pull him in, hoping instead to tie him to more important crimes. Unfortunately, Balabanov blew a traffic stop and was arrested by local law in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a medieval township on the Riviera not far from Monaco. Balabanov immediately screamed for assistance from the Russian government, but he died in jail before anything could be done. 

The pesticide is banned because it's far too lethal. Its toxicity is acute and chronic (mutagenic), and it's banned under the Stockholm Convention. Nobody understands why Balabanov had it. According to official records it's still in a police lockup, but if the agents follow this line of investigation they discover the pesticide was stolen about a week after Balabanov's arrest. Nobody knows where it is now.

The official reason for Balabanov's death is heart failure, but examination of the body (which the agents will have to carry out themselves) indicate exsanguination. Which begs a few questions, not least why the authorities in a quiet little town in France are so keen to obscure the cause of death.

Turns out the pesticide was intended for Addison Boland, specifically Alice Boland, as emails between her and Balabanov indicate. Addison Boland has a rat problem. A big one. The rats which infest Billington's made their way to Monaco long ago, and the two rat colonies communicate with each other. Alice hopes to sever communications, permanently. It's all part of her ongoing alliance with the Russians; she helps hide their money, they help her with her infighting. If Alice gets control of Addison Boland, then Addison Boland becomes an all-Russian shop. If Horace Addison retains control, then he'll probably kick the Russians to the kerb for helping Alice.

The Yojimbo Option, but with extra rats.

Enjoy!

Vampire Trolls (NBA)

Does Dracula need an African troll factory?

Probably not … but ...

If you've been following the news, then you may have noticed Russian troll factories popping up again, as Facebook has closed down accounts linked to inauthentic Russian accounts across central Africa. These accounts were being used to influence leadership and political contests, and allegedly are linked to Russian troll magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, who includes involvement with a PMC, Wagner Group, among his many hobbies. Wagner may, or may not, be a deniable branch of Russia's Ministry of Defense; the MoD and agencies like GRU have been very helpful to Wagner in the past. Prigozhin himself is a good friend of Vladimir Putin - so far as anyone can be said to be friends with Putin.

Troll factories are part of modern political and social life, now. Anything that pops up in your social media feed could be bait, or chum spread by those anonymous thousands of workers who get paid to tell lies.

At about the same time the Facebook story broke, a Polish journalist came out with their own version of life on the troll farm, and the kind of people who work in those misinformation factories:

'A majority of Cat@Net’s employees are understood to be disabled, allowing the company to derive substantial public subsidies from Poland’s National Disabled Rehabilitation Fund. According to the Reporters Foundation, the company has received about 1.5 million zloty (£300,000) from the fund since November 2015.

“Many of them are really good people – they are compassionate, they do charity work and engage in social activism in their spare time, but their disabilities mean that their employment opportunities are limited,” Pruszkiewicz told the Guardian. “For them it was just work and that’s it.”'

So, what would the Conspiracy do with a troll factory? What would Dracula want with one?

The answer's twofold, and part of it's obvious. The Conspiracy, and Dracula, need troll farms because they operate in the real world, and need to get influence over public figures, even governments. They're in it for the same reason Putin is - they want to make sure the right people are in power, and those opposed to them are publicly crushed. Is that journalist or political figure getting too close to the truth?  Is this government getting a little too bolshy, or is that President displaying an unwelcome independent streak? Time to unleash the dogs of social war.

That's the level of operation which won't really affect the agents, at least not directly. It does affect their bosses, though. Any Network ally or agency contact could get badly bruised or broken by the factories. Imagine what might happen if the Mr. Johnson the agents have been working with up till now suddenly has to deal with troll-inspired internet outrage!

But what about the agents, I hear you ask? How can I, a mere Director, get them with trolls?

Well, consider this: the agents work in the real world too. The high-level bring-down-governments stuff isn't for them, but there's plenty of other ways to troll people into submission, as the internet proves on a daily, even hourly basis. Ask yourself: what does it really mean to have pool points in Law, Occult Studies, Research, and especially High Society?

Ahh, High Society … that entrée into James Bond's shaken-not-stirred world. Anyone with points in High Society exists within High Society. At the very least, they have a milliWheaton's worth of followers on social media accounts. They are seen. Maybe they don't merit a full-color spread in the red tops, or an interview in Vogue, but if some Instagrammer's snapping candids at the club opening, there's a decent chance the agent will be in the background. Or even be the one taking the candids.

A similar but not identical case can be made for those with points in many of the academic abilities. Research is a small world. Anyone with points in that pool probably knows people in that world; they may even have been published in obscure academic journals. Military Science implies military experience, possibly at rank. Law suggests a former career as a lawyer, maybe even in an institution like the JAG or Crown Court. Remember how everyone seems to know James Bond, no matter where he goes? This is why.

If the agents have status, however they have it, that means they have something to lose.

As gamification, consider having Troll Attack as one of the Row One responses on the Conspyramid response sheet. It could be very applicable in Dust games in particular, where the emphasis is on nitty-gritty realism. As an effect, convert the characters' pool in the applicable Investigative ability into the equivalent in Heat gain. So an agent with 2 points High Society immediately gains 2 points Heat, which will remain so long as the internet furor is active. Putting a stop to the attack could provide the agent with Cherry-level Digital Intrusion a chance to shine!

As per p88 of the main book, the Director has the option of increasing this Heat gain depending on circumstances. Is the troll attack the equivalent of informing on the agents with the local law? That's a +1 gain. Did it reach the attention of the equivalent of the national media - ie. is it trending on Twitter or Facebook? That's a further +1 heat - and so on.

The troll attack could also be a very useful clue trail to somewhere the Director wants the agents to go next. 'Funny how all those troll attacks came from Wroclaw, Poland … I wonder if we should check into that.'

So, does the Conspiracy have a troll factory as a full-fledged Node? Eh … probably not. That's too much expensive talent to keep on the payroll for only occasional use. However troll factories are notoriously mercenary, and if there's one thing the Conspiracy's got a lot of, it's cash. It's not like the trolls will be asking questions either. The Poles looking to boost their income rather than survive on disability benefit definitely aren't asking questions.

Plus, the troll factory could link in nicely with the Conspiracy's ultimate goals. Does Dracula intend to gain control over Vladimir Putin, for instance? Then Dracula might choose to get at Putin through his dear friend Prigozhin ...

Enjoy!

Ripped from the Headlines - Crossbows, China's CIA Man, Huawei

Several people in Germany have committed self-murder in what appears to be a quasi-medieval suicide pact led by a man named in the press as Torsten W. Torsten and two women were found dead in a hotel room, each having been shot with a crossbow. Two other women, one a nineteen-year-old, were also found dead in a house in Wittigen.

According to @thelocalgermany, Torsten W. "owned a shop that sold medieval-style weapons and flags, offered sword-fighting classes and featured a bizarre female mannequin wearing suspenders, tied with ropes and chains, and smeared with blood-like red paint."

In the same article, Torsten is described as the leader of "a kind of sex circle with a focus on the Middle Ages."

There's been a small resurgence in cult stories In the last five years alone we've had five documentaries on Charlie Manson, four of them in 2017, the year Manson died, and there's a film coming up, Charlie Says, with Doctor Who alumnus Matt Smith in the leading role.

Part of this is because it's been fifty years since Manson. There's two or three more documentaries and films due in 2019, to go along with the Manson Family musical, the South Park episode, and the indie comedy film.

Part of this is because, right now, we're obsessed with this kind of mass lunacy, for some reason. Can't think why.

Gamifying this is surprisingly difficult, since most of the compelling scenes take place within the group, impenetrable to outsiders. Viewed from the outside, the Manson Family's just another bunch of cult mooks with a big bad boss, and whether said boss plays guitar or conducts orgies in a medieval dungeon is almost irrelevant. A nice character detail, possibly, but it doesn't add to plot. Put it another way: knowing that the Beach Boys once recorded a tune Manson composed doesn't really add to the Bullitt-style Thrilling Chase scene down the California highway in the third act.

There are ways in. The quasi-medieval cult, in NBA, could be a rival band of vampire hunters, woefully short on Tradecraft but effective in close-up combat. However given their backstory they may fit better in an Esoterrorists or Fear Itself session. Charlie Manson and his followers definitely fit the Fear Itself formula.

In other news, former CIA man turned double agent for China, Kevin Mallory, was sentenced to 20 years in prison this week. He only received $25,000 from China for his efforts, so that's $1,250 per year; not the world's greatest paycheck. Particularly when, at 62, he's likely to die in prison, or emerge a doddering octogenarian.

Mallory's one of several former intelligence assets suborned by China, but what strikes me about this story is how little money's at stake. I wrote last year about Brian Regan, the spy who couldn't spell. He too did it for the money.

I have been in the CIA for over 20 years and will be retiring in two years, Regan wrote in his letter to Libya. I feel that I deserve more than the small pension I will receive for all the years of service at the CIA … Considering the risk I am about to take I will require a minimum payment of thirteen million US dollars wire transferred in Swiss francs, the exact amount, before I will risk my life …

In fiction, we place an extraordinary value on secrets. I'm fond of the game Hitman, which is all about secrets and assassination. The first real scenario in Hitman, Showstopper, features a spy organization named IAGO which makes its living selling secrets to the highest bidder.

Outside Xbox created the vid. If you enjoy that kind of thing, I heartily recommend 'em. They also do fun RPG videos, for those who like cats, explosions, Eldritch Blast, and wacky pirates.

We fill out NDAs, convinced of the mystical value of all those trade secrets. We believe corporate espionage is some kind of James Bond world of spies and counterspies, that mysterious Illuminati-esque figures grow fat on the flow of information, that all-powerful hackers can destroy the world at the click of a keyboard, sending our secrets hither and yon.

What cases like Mallory's ought to show us is that our secrets aren't worth a bucket of horse manure. Hell, at least you can grow something with horse manure. China - China! - couldn't be bothered to scrape up chump change for top level classified information. $25K? If you want to sit in the driver's seat of a 2019 Porsche Boxter, say, you've got to cough up $59K, minimum. A flat in Manhattan, even a dump in Greenwich, costs around half a million. Hell, a lousy Fabergé egg sells for several millions, though if you're lucky you might find one at an LA flea market for a mere $14K.

Finally, let's look back at the Huawei scandal and current fears about surveillance tech inserted into Chinese-manufactured smartphones. It's widely supposed that Canada's detainment of a senior Huawei exec for breaking sanctions against Iran is cover for a more in-depth effort to prevent the Chinese from gaining an unbreakable hold over 5G wireless networks. It's thought China would attempt to insert malware and spyware, using Huawei as a stalking horse.

This is worrying news, but what interests me is, China's been manufacturing high-end electronic goods for decades now. China makes pretty much everything from PS4 and Xbox consoles to desktop PCs. Odds are pretty good you're using a Chinese-made machine to read this post. Chinese surveillance tech is almost certainly a big part of the electronic ecosystem already.

Gamification … remember a while back when I talked about casinos in Macau, and hungry ghosts? I posited that a casino might use hungry ghosts as so-called luck ambassadors, slaving the ghost to a cloud-based slot machine system and using it to monitor player activity.

So here you have a slot machine that knows exactly who you are, I posted. It's tracked you from the moment you checked in at the hotel, and can continue to track you via the courtesy smartphone that the hotel gave you, or through your guest card, or any number of different ways. It can switch up the odds as it sees fit, to keep you playing. It can judge your tolerance for loss, and keep you pumped up for as long as your money holds out.

Now imagine if that machine was haunted - say, by hungry ghosts.

If you've followed gaming at all, you'll have seen anguished articles about gambling, and how some games use casino-style tactics to drain cash from underage players, and their parents. Take that a step further. Imagine a Chinese manufacturer who deliberately slips hungry ghosts into gaming consoles, ships them out to naïve Westerners, and lets the ghost handle the rest. A microtransaction or micropayment system, managed by the dead, whose purpose is to skim a little off the top and send it back to the manufacturer. Even if all they got was a fraction of a penny on every transaction, there are so many transactions it all adds up to one great big fortune.

Imagine what might happen if those ghosts get too ambitious …

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Ripped from the Headlines: Fishtanks, Yachts, Bankers and Cuba

Ever wonder what it takes to hack into a casino? Or whether those wealthy tourists disembarking from that yacht are all they seem to be? Wonder no more! Searching for something new for your Night's Black Agents game, or looking for a special new toy for the opposition to play with? Read on!

Recently someone cracked a North American casino - name and location carefully withheld, according to the Washington Post - by way of its fish tank. The tank's systems were connected in order to monitor temperature, food, cleanliness; after all, it had to look its best. Since it was connected, hackers got into the casino's systems and stole 10GB of data, sending it all to a device in Finland, and from there God, and possibly the NSA, alone knows where. Nobody's saying what the data was. Best guess is guest information, credit cards, that sort of thing.

I've discussed this topic before, but it bears repeating. If your players are wondering how best to hack into a facility, the easiest route is via the weak point that is the Internet of Things.

Every single thing in that facility is connected to something. The fish tank needs food. Vending machines need to tell home base when they are empty. Lights and cameras need to sense activity. Projectors connect, as do thermostats, HVAC, plumbing, lavatories. Complex equipment, like tractors, may have multiple processes, some of which may have been modified by the owner, some of which may be set by the manufacturer to only accept its brand of maintenance. Every single thing needs to be managed, and that means it is vulnerable.

The facility owner may not even have full control over its systems. Recently there's been a ton of internet hate directed at the entrepreneurs behind the Bodega vending machine, because apparently they have no idea how marketing works and thought saying they wanted to destroy corner store bodegas would be a good idea. However my first thought wasn't 'oh no, my bodega,' because my nearest bodega is a few thousand miles away and I can't swim that far. No, my first thought was, 'here's a device that's technically managed by an outside agency, but you can bet your sweet bippy it'll be connected to the host's network.' Probably for no good reason either, but that's never stopped anyone in the history of anything. Which means that if the Bodega has a system vulnerability, then its host has a system vulnerability - and the same applies to every single outside agency device you care to name. The device might even have malware built right in.

In fact, there's a genius idea right there. Say your characters notice that the vending machine is supplied and maintained by XYZ Corp. Oh, no, it broke. Darn shame. Oh look, here's a new one - wow, that's fast service. Is anyone going to check and see whether the soda machine delivered actually is from XYZ Corp? Are they hell - so long as it supplies frosty beverages, the host's never going to question it. XYZ Corp will, so you need a workaround there, but apart from that you've an actual Trojan horse wheeled in and installed, dispensing all kinds of goodness, sweetness and light. Plus malware. Yummy. In Night's Black Agents terms, it's a job for the Wire Rat rather than the Hacker - but think of the benefits!

The next one's from this Guardian article about people smuggling. Many hundreds of thousands are fleeing Syria, some with much more money than the rest. For those with the cash, there's a better quality of service. Professionals, entrepreneurs and other wealthy migrants who couldn't get out by other means were paying a Turkish crime syndicate hundreds of thousands at a time to get them and their families out, on cruises best described as luxury desperation.

According to one Italian prosecutor, some smugglers were behaving like travel agencies, offering first, second and third-class accommodation. "It depends how much money you can pay."

We often talk about people smuggling in terms of desperation, hardship, and despair. The route to Italy has been described as the most lethal. Yet at the same time the rich buy their way out of that problem, and make the same crossing in Port Out, Starboard Home style.

As gamification, consider: this is the perfect route for an abandoned Conspiracy asset, Esoterrorist or other well-heeled undesirable to make their way out of a hot zone to somewhere more appealing. Dracula himself once used much the same tactic to get to Whitby, although he definitely travelled closer to third class than first. Finding an abandoned luxury yacht afloat in the Mediterranean is a good hook for a scenario, and this one has an added bonus: the crime syndicate that financed the cruise will be just as interested as the characters in finding out what went wrong, which makes them perfect second-string antagonists for the scenario.

An old one from Monaco: HSBC's banker to the rich and famous was arrested and charged over allegations that he siphoned close to $10 million from his clients' accounts. The banker, Stephen Troth, fought back by claiming his employers were the ones to blame, not him. That didn't work, and he was later arrested again in Monaco for kiting cheques. Before all this happened, Troth worked with Edmond J Safra, a banker who was burnt to death in an arson attack. The fire was set by Safra's bodyguard and nurse Ted Maher, who wanted to impress his boss by rescuing him from a blazing inferno, but only got the inferno bit right. Troth was part of Safra's old banking operation, and when HSBC took that over Troth went to work for HSBC.

Ordinarily I wouldn't delve too deeply in yet another banking scandal, were it not for the fact that it happened in Monaco, the microstate that's home to the rich and eccentric. All sorts of people can claim Monaco as their home, so long as they pay a hefty fee. Moreover, as you can see from the above truth defies fiction; if I'd tried to write that plot I'd be laughed out of every publishers from here to Hong Kong. It's got everything: the rich, lunatics, mysterious arson attacks, a disgraced money man claiming his trial is a cover-up for high level corruption, plus all the lavish trappings of wealth in the ritziest microstate in the world.

I've argued before that when designing supernatural threats the Keeper ought to make liberal use of history and folklore. People have been dreaming this sort of thing up for millennia; it's a cinch there's gold in there for Keepers, if only they sift for it. The case of Stephen Troth goes to show that the same applies to less supernatural plotlines. With just the information above I could come up with two or three Night's Black Agents plots without having to do much work; the same goes for you, Director.

Finally, news from Cuba: Canadian and American diplomats posted to Cuba are falling ill, and report a bewildering variety of symptoms, from speech loss and headaches to balancing problems and nervous system damage. Initial reports suggest some kind of sonic weapon is to blame, but nobody's sure what that weapon is - or even if such a weapon is feasible. Infrasound is supposed to have unusual effect on the human body, causing fatigue, panic attacks and, in extreme cases, hallucination. However an effect at this level is more akin to some kind of mad scientist's death ray than anything known to be in development.

The reports came in before Hurricane Irma, which caused considerable damage to Cuba. It would be interesting to know if the effect continues post-Irma.

Frankly, it's tempting to call this a psychosomatic illness. Even if you assume that such a weapon is possible, it's incredible to think the Cubans developed one - and what would be the purpose? A few diplomats sent home ill? Even if you call it a test run, perhaps conducted by the Russians rather than Cuba, there's less high-profile targets you could be testing it on. Nobody would give a damn if this was happening, say, in the Ukraine, except the Ukrainians, and frankly if the West isn't going to pay attention to actual missiles then it wouldn't blink at whatever this sound gun is - assuming it exists at all.

Israel's supposed to have something called The Scream and there have been attempts to make less-than-lethal sonic devices, but the known examples of those toys are very, very obvious when they go off. It wouldn't just be a few diplomats complaining of headaches; half Havana would hear it. Or, as with the Active Denial System, a device that acts on nerve receptors, it's large enough to be seen by pretty much anyone. However this whatever-it-may-be is portable and small enough to avoid immediate detection.

Psychosomatic effects can spread. Sick building syndrome is a bane of facility maintenance people and building surveyors alike as there's no agreed cause, yet, when it starts, an entire building's population may be affected - or at least say they are. Often there is no real cause, no mold or HVAC malfunction you can point to. People just get ill, and as soon as one person says they're suffering it's a sure bet half a dozen others will too - whether they actually are, or not. SBS can be caused by poor work/life balance and stress, factors that don't involve the building in any way, but once people get it into their heads that the building's at fault, nothing will persuade them otherwise. In many ways it's similar to hauntings; all it takes is one or two people spreading the tale, and before you know it everyone's chattering about cold spots and poltergeists.

Edit 12 October: I see I'm not the only one who thinks the whole thing might be psychosomatic.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Down Among The Dead Men (Esoterrorists)

Another short scenario, this time for the Esoterrorists.

The scenario is loosely based on this news item. A family discovers an SUV, wrapped in plastic, buried in the back yard. It seems to be in excellent condition, and not - as first feared - a body dump. The vehicle was reported stolen, and at time of writing the most likely scenario seems to be insurance fraud, though it seems a convoluted way of going about it.

Word count: 2433.

***

The Briefing

Lead-out: Sheriff Berry, Fool's Gold, The Previous Owner

Ms Verity summons the agents to Shawnee, the capital of Pottawatomie County, Oaklahoma.

[Pottawatomie: mostly white with sizable Native American population, land originally given to Creek and Seminole after their forced removal from Georgia and Florida, main income retail sales & manufacturing, with agriculture a significant earner, cotton, potato, peach. Shawnee: competed with nearby Tecumsah for county seat designation, finally won in 1930, former railroad hub, current agriculture and industry hub.]

She explains:

• A week ago local media station KFOR reported the discovery of a buried, brand-new SUV on the property of Lucas Earley.
• The SUV was discovered as Lucas was digging a new track for ATV racing. He rents out part of his property to weekend joy-riders, and was improving the track.
• The SUV is a 2003 model and apart from being buried is in reasonable condition, given the circumstances. No bodies were found.
• Local sheriff Shandra Berry has told reporters an investigation is ongoing, with insurance fraud the likely cause of the incident. The previous owner of the property is the most reasonable suspect.
• According to Ordo records the previous owner of the property, Rick Parsons, is a known Esoterror asset who escaped Ordo surveillance during operation ROCK DAWN in 2004. Current whereabouts unknown; may have died in 2005 mass immolation Bowie, Texas, but insufficient physical evidence to confirm. 

The agents are tasked with investigating the SUV and confirming whether or not it has any Esoterror connections. Their cover for the operation is that they are acting on behalf of the insurance company, GEICO.

Sheriff Berry
Lead-In: The Briefing

Lead-Out: Fool's Gold, The Previous Owner, Parasites.

If the agents follow up with Sheriff Berry, preferably using some kind of official channel - Bureaucracy or Cop Talk, 0 point spend - she confirms Ms Verity's account and says that forensic examination has shown the vehicle was modified, presumably by the former owner, removing the steering wheel airbag to create a hidden compartment. This was almost overlooked, as the 2003 model had an airbag problem, so the non-standard cover was taken to be a recall/replace issue. The compartment had small traces of what the Sheriff is guessing will turn out to be narcotics. If the agents don't use Bureaucracy or Cop Talk then they still get the clue, since it's a 0 point, but Sheriff Berry checks up on them with their presumed bosses at GEICO, which will cause trouble down the line. See also Official Business.

However agents who spend 1 point Pathology or 2 points Evidence Collection notice that a significant number of the Sheriff's staff have come down with a viral infection - coughing, red/runny eyes, sore throat, blood-flecked phlegm - which mainly affects those who've had first-hand contact with the SUV. The Sheriff thinks this isn't relevant, beyond making her job that much more difficult with a quarter of the department off sick, including all of her forensic support and the mechanics she had looking at the SUV.

In fact the infectious agent, if studied, most closely resembles a variant of the Dependoparvovirus genus, not normally associated with infectious diseases. These don't usually trigger an immune response, and are often used in gene therapy. In this instance someone has modified it for use as a bioweapon. See also Parasites.

Parasites (alternate)

Lead-In: Sheriff Berry

Lead-Out: The Previous Owner, Official Business

The virus discovered in Sheriff Berry is one of the Esoterrorists' failed attempts to modify an Outer Dark entity, in this case the Glistening (main book, p57). 

The intent was to cultivate a much more biddable version of the Glistening and introduce the infection via contaminated cocaine, which is why the SUV was modified with a hidden compartment. However the experiment was not a success, and instead of creating a Glistening the Esoterrorist cell merely made an obnoxious infectious disease. It knocks the host out for a few days, and it can be fatal in a very small portion of the population - less than .001% - but the spores are nothing like the Glistening and do not create sessiles or drones.

However they are enough like the Glistening to give false positives for Evidence Collection and Forensic Entomology. A 0 point spend with either of those indicates that the Glistening is present; only spending points demonstrates that there is no real infection.

This may make the agents panic, possibly even call in FEMA-level backup. This moves the action to Official Business.

Official Business (alternate, reaction)

Lead-In: Parasites, Sheriff Berry

This scene assumes that the agents do something to provoke a hostile reaction from official channels. This means either they aroused Sheriff Berry's suspicions, or they over-reacted to what they thought was a potential Glistening outbreak.

If the former, Sheriff Berry starts surveilling them, gathering evidence for what she believes may turn into serious, even Federal, charges. A lot of her people are off sick, so she's doing this solo and on her own time. Treat this as an increase of 2 Difficulty to any General test involving criminal or semi-criminal activity, eg Infiltration to break into someone's house. Failure in this instance means that she's watching the agents when they attempt the criminal activity, and interrupts them at a psychological moment - like when they're making what they think is a clean getaway. Fortunately the agents can get around her with generous (2 point minimum) point spends of abilities like Cop Talk. Intimidation is a very bad idea, and may lead to shooting.

If the latter, then Federal agencies have become involved. Now the agents have to worry about being picked up by the FBI, which means point spends for Interpersonal abilities (Bureaucracy, eg) increase by 1 point and Difficulty for General tests involving criminal or semi-criminal activity increases by 2. The Feds are watching. Phones are tapped, electronic communications are being monitored, rooms are bugged, nondescript surveillance vans are in position across the street, and so on. This probably isn't going to look good on anyone's final report. Point spends will not get around the Feds.

The Previous Owner

Lead-in: The Briefing

Lead-out: Solitary Confinement, Psychobomb

If the agents chase up the Rick Parsons angle, then they discover (core clue Cop Talk, Fingerprinting, Bureaucracy) that according to state and local records Rick Parsons fled the state back in 2003, one step ahead of an assortment of charges of which the most important are an assortment of federal firearms beefs. The ATF would very much like to know his current whereabouts. Ordo records suggest but cannot confirm his death in 2005; however at about the same time, a Robert Peters was arrested in Maryland for assault, and thanks to a less-than-spotless prison record he's still in an Maryalnd lockup. Fingerprint evidence and Evidence Collection strongly suggest that Peters is Parsons, operating under an alias.

He's also become one of the more important members - a lieutenant - in the prison's Dead Man Incorporated gang. His specialty is contract killing and he has a reputation for being impossible to kill thanks to his unique tattoos (-2 armor, magical ritual). He's been spreading the Esoterror message throughout the system since his incarceration, and he won't be happy to see the investigators.

Assuming the investigators get to see him (Law 0 point) then Interrogation (0 point) or similar shows he's surprised to hear his old SUV turned up. He thought that thing was gone for good. It was involved in some kind of Esoterror stunt, but he's not about to say what. Interrogation or Bullshit Detector (1 point) indicates he thinks he can work an angle, maybe use this information in some way, but it's not clear how. He does let slip that his brother will help him, but records show he has no brother. Perhaps he means a gang brother.

Paying attention to the other prisoners (1 point Streetwise or similar) notices that many of them refer to 'Loco' or 'Loco Man' in terms of reverent awe. Loco, they say, is an inmate, but he's not just any inmate: he's special.  He looks like a heavily tattooed George Raft, is an expert brawler and killer, and wears correctional clothing so perfectly clean and pressed you'd think he had a personal valet. He runs the DMI in this prison, and thanks to Peters he's well on the way to becoming an Esoterror asset. Upsetting him, or challenging him in any way, could lead to a riot. However judging by the artwork in his cell - drawn by Loco Man himself - he's a few steps away from summoning a particularly unpleasant Outer Dark entity - a Brutalizer. If the agents leave him alone, they're going to hear from this prison again soon. Antagonizing Loco Man leads to Psychobomb.

Investigating Peters' cell finds his carefully hidden (0 point Evidence Collection) ritual diary, in which his plans for this prison, and the plan to become a Discarnate, are carefully encoded (1 point Cryptography or Occult Studies), buried among a lot of uncoded stuff about his nightmares and other psychobabble. Information found here can help uncover his dig sites (cf Fool's Gold).

Ordo influence (Bureaucracy 0 point) can get Peters transferred to an Ordo facility, but before that happens he shanks a guard and gets himself put in solitary. See further Solitary Confinement.

Psychobomb (alternate)

Lead-in: The Previous Owner

The Loco Man runs the DMI in this prison, which means that he runs the narcotics and smuggling rackets. Upsetting him leads him to start a riot, with the aim of shanking one or more investigators.

It starts with a fight between two inmates unconnected with DMI, in a room or corridor close to the investigators' current location. They're drug addicts acting under orders. The fight quickly escalates, and when guards intervene with chemical agents, baton and hard foam rounds, the prison erupts. Two guards are quickly taken prisoner, and the fighting gets totally out of control. The riot lasts for forty minutes, and only ends after the guards start using live rounds.

In the confusion, Loco Man and N=P number of DMI hard men seek out the investigators, attacking with razor blades, shivs, metal pipes and a four-shot homemade pistol. They want the investigators dead. If possible, Loco Man will capture one for a blood sacrifice, a made-up ritual he's basing on the things Peters has told him. The sacrifice won't do anything except weaken the local Membrane.

Solitary Confinement (alternate)

Lead-in: The Previous Owner

Lead-out: Fool's Gold

This scene occurs if Peters knows the Ordo has caught up with him.

Peters figures he's going to end up in an Ordo cell, and doesn't like the prospect. He immediately attacks another inmate, hoping to be put in solitary. This plan succeeds, and the prison warden isn't about to let him out again without Federal level clearance, which means 2 points Bureaucracy or 1 point Law.

However Peters has other plans. As soon as the door slammed shut behind him he began pouring accelerant, and by the time the investigators catch up with him his cell is ablaze. Nobody knows how he got the accelerant or a source of ignition in the cell, though Bullshit Detector or Interrogation 0 point tracks down the guard who helped Peters pull it off.

Peters' charred body is almost unrecognizable. In fact, an autopsy shows that the dental work isn't Peters', and 1 point Forensic Pathology discovers that his fingerprints have changed as well. It shouldn't be possible, but Peters somehow switched his body for someone else's - another prisoner. Peters is nowhere to be found, certainly not in the prison. Investigators who remember the briefing note about the mass immolation in Bowie, Texas may wonder if this is the same trick.

Fool's Gold

Lead-in: Solitary Confinement, Parasites, Sheriff Berry

Lead-out: Endgame

This scene assumes the investigators either go to the place where the car was found, investigate the car while it's at the impound, or both.

The 2003 model SUV is in remarkable condition, given that it's been buried for almost a decade. It doesn't run, but with cleaning and some very minor restoration it could be made usable. It's a standard model, with some modification (cf Sheriff Berry). However there's something about it that makes people very nervous; Stability 3 test to work on it or be near it for longer than a half hour. This is because, before he buried it, Peters/Parsons went to a great deal of trouble to make it suitable for use as a Discarnate host (cf main book p55-6). He just didn't go that final step, because before he could get started the Ordo closed in and he had to make a break for it.

This is also why Peters/Parsons went to such lengths to bury it. Investigating the dig site (core Occult Studies) notices that, at the bottom of the hole, there's a space in which the ritualist is meant to commit suicide, providing the spirit to power the Discarnate.

In theory the investigators can short-circuit this plan by having the SUV crushed or otherwise destroyed. However if Peters/Parsons realizes that the SUV has been uncovered, then he escaped - Solitary Confinement - and quickly made his way to another suicide spot, hidden on the vast extent of his former property. There he completed the ritual, and the Discarnate is now active.

Endgame

Lead-in: Fool's Gold

Either the investigators alerted Peters/Parsons, and therefore the Discarnate is active, or they did not.

If they did, then the house Peters/Parsons lived in is now a Discarnate killing machine, and its first victim is either Sheriff Berry or the people who now live on what was Peters/Parsons' property. It then targets the investigators. In this version of events, the SUV is almost as important to the Discarnate as the cultist's corpse, and destroying the SUV reduces the damage done by traps. Where a discarnate normally does (13-N) damage to a victim, it now does (9-N).

If they did not, then shortly after dealing with the SUV - presumably destroying it - Peters becomes aware of what they've done. He stages a prison break with (N= 0.5P) DMI goons, and tracks the investigators down if they're still in Pottawatomie County. His first victim, as above, is Sheriff Berry or the people on his property, but he'll definitely want revenge on the players. As an ordinary cultist Peters/Parsons is much less dangerous, but he will have had time to steal a shotgun and a couple pistols or knives for his DMI buddies. In this version Peters/Parson still has his damage reduction, but no other magical abilities.

Ripped from the Headlines: The Iron Toothed Vampire (Night's Black Agents, Dracula Dossier, Esoterrorists)

Hundreds of Glasgow schoolchildren gather at the Necropolis each night. Two kids have been murdered, and eaten, by a vampire, and they're determined to bring the monster to justice. Their weapons may be feeble - a collection of sticks and knives - but their fervor is very real.

A cry goes up: "There's the vampire!" The schoolchildren scatter, screaming.

Thus a legend is born: the Iron Toothed Vampire of the Gorbals.

It gets its genesis from a comic book, Dark Mysteries. Comics like these were rarer than hen's teeth in Glasgow in the 1950s, and whoever had it must have enjoyed bragging rights. For whatever reason, that particular tale caught hold. It probably started small, with a couple kids chatting. Then more took up the tale, and more. Then the rumor goes round that, not only does it exist, it's killed.

It's one small step from that to patrolling the cemetery looking for the thing.

I can bear personal witness to this. Not that long ago, a tsunami swamped Bermuda. You won't have heard of it, but it's true. No, it didn't come from the Triangle. It came from Thailand.

In 2004 a terrible disaster took the lives of a quarter million people, most of them in Thailand. A year later, there was a documentary about the event. Bermudians watched it. Two of them sat outside, near Salt Rock Grill in Somerset, and idly commented that the gleam of water on the horizon looked just a little like what they thought a tsunami-created water wall might look like.

A few hours later our neighbors from Dockyard were deposited on our doorstep by the local police, convinced beyond reason that water would swamp everything at low level. Since we are on a hill, the police figured people would be safe.

Oddly enough, there was no ocean wave of death.

Nobody thought to ask how long it took a tsunami wave to hit, once it's sighted from shore. The police never called the weather service, or any other agency tasked with monitoring this kind of thing. They just scooped people up and dropped them somewhere that might be safe.

I suppose I should be grateful most of them aren't armed.

When the Esoterrorists talks about how the Membrane can be shattered by people spreading cryptorumors to create what amounts to a supernatural effect, the Iron Toothed Vampire is what it's talking about.

To add a little bit of gamification, with all the above in mind:

In 1954 Edom has a problem. It's self-inflicted: the Glasgow site at which it has been holding a biological test subject proves less secure than hoped, and the test subject escapes.

It's spotted by local children when it tries to hide in the Southern Necropolis, and then something interesting happens.

Edom still isn't sure of the proximate cause, but for whatever reason children by the dozens - the hundreds - join the hunt. At the same time the psychic listening posts set up to monitor activity - and by extension, Dracula - go off like klaxons. This causes an inordinate amount of public concern, outcry, and attention-grabbing media.

By the time the dust settles, the entity is contained, and the children given sound spankings and sent to bed, the Dukes are in conference. After all, it was just one minor outbreak, the sort of thing that has happened often enough before without this kind of reaction. What caused the psychic trauma? Will it happen again? Can it be created - can Dracula fake out the listening post system with false reports?

To begin with, the Glasgow operation is shut down. Clearly security is too lax; somewhere else shall be found for these experiments.

However the next few decades see an unprecedented interest in child psychology, as investigators from Edom monitor the children who participated in the Iron Toothed Vampire hunt. The initial theory is that one or more of them is, or was, a psychic sensitive, and the excitement caused by the vampire story caused a sudden burst of psychic energy, which in turn affected and influenced all the others.

In spite of this attractive theory the investigators are never able to narrow down the patient zero of this outbreak. Instead they have what come to be called the Gorbals Ten: children, now grandparents, who might or might not have had sufficient ability to create the effect. In some cases, whatever they may have had is thought to have dissipated with puberty. In others, the jury is still out. In any case those ten, and their offspring, are still monitored closely, just to be sure.

So when Ronald Morrison dies by his own hand in a very suggestive manner - he apparently stakes himself to death, using the remains of a wooden chair - Edom is quick to respond. The agents go up to Glasgow in sunny January - average rainfall 148.2 inches - to see what's what.

Did Morrison kill himself? If so, did he choose that particular method for a reason? What of the remaining Nine - are they at risk?

Are children gathering at the Southern Necropolis again, and if so, why?

Enjoy!

Israel's Flying Horses (Dracula Dossier, Edom)

Mexico's in the news for something other than border walls, as the government's use of Pegasus malware against opposition politicians and media personalities comes to light.

The malware was used to infect the smartphones of anti-corruption crusaders, journalists criticizing the President, and senior members of the opposition National Action Party, the intent presumably being to track their movements, emails, and private messages.

Pegasus is supplied by Israeli cyberarms dealer NSO Group. Based near Tel Aviv, this company 'provides technology to help authorized governments battle terror and crime,' according to Forbes. Its founder Omri Lavie, allegedly a former member of Israel's Unit 8200 signals intelligence group, seldom speaks to the press, and details about the group are thin on the ground.

It specializes in iOS hacks, and deals strictly with governments, not individuals. However as Mexico has shown, governments are by no  means above abusing their position. You have to wonder what NSO intends to do about customers who ignore the provision in the purchase agreement that says the software can only be used to combat crime.

Pegasus uses malicious links in innocuous-seeming messages to install malware which jailbreaks the iOS device it's installed on. The jailbroken device then feeds data from text messages, password entry, email, location and so on, back to home base.

The points to take home here are, first, that it's an iOS device, and Apple has a reputation for security. Not as polished or as impregnable as previously thought, but still, compared to Android, it's practically Fort Knox.

Second, that the messages sent were relatively sophisticated compared to the usual stuff that ends up in the junk file. Targeted messages from trusted senders, on subjects that the recipient would have no reason to think are bogus.

NSO isn't the only company in the cyberwarfare business by any stretch, but it's gained notoriety recently thanks to the Mexico reveal. Presumably Apple intends to patch the specific vulnerabilities revealed thanks to the scandal, but NSO will find a workaround, if it hasn't already got one.

Which brings me to Edom, because if you think Her Majesty's Government hasn't already got a deal in place either with NSO or with one of the other outfits, you must be living in a very nice imaginary world, and I wish it were the real one.

So what would Edom target with Pegasus?

To begin with, Prince is the one most likely to be doing the targeting, and given her backgrouns in Israeli intelligence she may already have links with NSO. But Prince can't do everything herself. She's a Duke of Edom, not the IT bod fixing every downed server and workstation complaint. There'll be a team handling the day-to-day stuff, the routine monitoring, the cyber surveillance. Which means there'll be relatively junior personnel in charge of remarkably powerful equipment, particularly since Prince's condition means she can't be on site during the working day. And how likely is it, really, that the other Dukes completely understand the technology used by those staffers?

It's a situation ripe with potential for abuse.

Picture this:

OPERATION IRISH GIANT is bringing in great intel on a London-based Node. It might be the Satanic Order, or some well-placed patsy on Her Majesty's payroll - perhaps even a Government minister. All of this intel is coming from jacked smartphones, which Edom has cracked thanks to software provided by a well-known cybersecurity firm.

However the congratulations that echo through the halls at Ring soon go silent when it's discovered that a very important person - perhaps the Journalist, or Lord Godalming - is tracking down a story about hackers on the Government payroll who've been jailbreaking iOS phones in order to pursue private vendettas. This person broke phones belonging to his ex-wife, kids, and the ex-wife's new girlfriend, all as part of a messy divorce and custody battle, and they used the IRISH GIANT code to do it.

Now the very important person is about to go public with the story, whether it's a front page expose or embarrassing questions in the House. However if they do, then the good results from IRISH GIANT will be drowned out by the scandal.

The subjects will almost certainly discover the hack and change phones, but worse, the shroud of secrecy that protects Edom will be penetrated. The Dukes might find themselves the focus of the investigation, as journalists chasing the first story get sucked into the second, and ask very embarrassing questions about a secretive Government outfit that spends its time - and the taxpayers' money - on what appear to be pointless errands.

That leaves Edom with two problems to deal with. First, somehow silence the important person before this thing goes public. Second, track down whoever it is who abused IRISH GIANT resources. Was it mere incompetence or Conspiracy-inspired?

With a possible third option: perhaps it wasn't an internal problem. Perhaps it was the cybersecurity firm itself, using its software to bait Edom, and then hook it with a fictitious scandal. Why? Perhaps the firm's a Conspiracy asset. or perhaps it's in the employ of its home nation's vampire project. After all, crippling the competition is the name of the game.

That's it for this week! 

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, It's a Pirate's Life For Me (Night's Black Agents)

Spare a thought for former sniper Ray Tindall and his mates, arrested by the Indian authorities and currently spending what could be a very long while in jail. Tindall is one of six Britons working on behalf of anti-piracy organization AdvanFort, of a total of 35 crewmen of various nationalities sentenced on illegal weapons charges to five years hard time, in the MV Seaman Guard Ohio incident.

AdvanFort describes itself as "a leader in providing comprehensive maritime shipping solutions for the commercial shipping industry." There really is something about corporate speak that sucks the fun out of everything, up to and including adventure on the high seas. However its Frontline Tales from the High Seas is worth a look, even if the writing sometimes descends to Wascally Wabbit High Pulp.

The MV Seaman Guard Ohio is a private security ship. Operating off the African coast, an October 2013 storm brought the Ohio into Indian territorial waters. When the authorities searched Ohio, they found cashes of prohibited weapons that, according to the Indian government, the crew had no permits for. There is considerable dispute about this, and at one point the Madras High Court dropped all charges. However that doesn't seem to have satisfied the powers that be.

The crew spent nine months in jail before being bailed, and have been unable to leave India. It seems that their current dilemma is the result of some kind of legal gymnastics. After the High Court quashed the charges in 2015, it asked the sessions court to determine whether or not the weapons were part of the normal armament of the vessel. If they were, then the Ohio was exempt from India's Arms Act. Things seem to have gone south rather swiftly after that, and now the Ohio's crew face jail time again as a result of the sessions court ruling.

"The [court] ignored every one of their own Indian laws, every one of the international laws, and decided to prosecute and jail us," Tindall said. "There's no grounds for what they have done."

You might almost think that someone with influence in the Indian government was very upset with AdvanFort for some reason.

The area Tindall and his mates were supposed to be patrolling is  sometimes referred to as Pirate Alley, but more commonly known as the Gulf of Aden. It's not cheap to hire a company like AdvanFort to help keep your oil shipments safe; one source has it at $50,000 per journey. That's aside from incidental costs, like the increase in your insurance premiums for starters. India has a vested interest in the Gulf, as it gets $50 billion worth of imports and sends $60 billion worth of exports through the Gulf annually, quite apart from the massive oil tankers that go through the Gulf each month.

Although hiring outside security contractors is a generally accepted practice, it's not a practice everyone's happy with. Many of the people these contractors hire are ex military or special forces, and while they certainly know what to do when it all kicks off, some of them may not be as well behaved in port, which is why many port cities refuse to allow them to disembark with weapons.

Incidentally for those ships too small or insignificant to merit a personal bodyguard - private yachts, small freighters and the like - but also too foolhardy to do the easy thing and just not go to the Gulf,  standard practice is to ship with weapons aboard, often hidden so the customs people don't see them. And that's how you get a very cheap holiday in Somalia, the country you will never be able to leave. Not unless someone pays the ransom, anyway.

It used to be said that Soviet ships were bad news for pirates, because their crews tended not to give a tinker's cuss about customs regulations, or international law, and were often armed with AK-47s which make a very nasty mess out of your average pirate skiff. However this was in the bad old pre-Putin days; no doubt peace and love prevails now.

Piracy doesn't stop with kidnapping and ransom. To illustrate this, consider a very nasty case from China back in the late '90s. A 17,000 ton freighter, on its owners books as the Hai Sin, was sold to a scrapyard in Guangdong. The breakers searched the ship before taking her apart, and found a locked refrigeration cabinet in the hold that nobody had touched in years. When they cracked it open, the stench was like nothing on earth. Eventually, after searching through the slurry on the floor, they found ten skulls, but no personal effects of any kind. Forensic examination showed that the remains were Caucasian, with no signs of violence. Presumably the men had been herded into the refrigeration unit and left to die. The remains were never identified.

In this instance, the target was the ship itself. Whoever had taken it, whenever they'd taken it, had forged a completely new identity for her. Probably the paintwork had been changed and some minor work done to alter its appearance, while the paperwork was diligently forged. Then she was passed on from one syndicate to another, each of whom used her for whatever purpose they saw fit. All the while the original crew were still in the hold, long forgotten, until her last owner decided to make a few bucks by scrapping the Hai Sin.

Often the final fate of a ghost ship like this is some complicated insurance fraud. The rusty old bucket is loaded up with 'valuable' cargo and wrecked somewhere. When the Mary Celeste was still afloat, that crime was called barratry.

Or you could try a bit of sanctions-busting. When South Africa was still under apartheid, for example, one popular pastime was to smuggle South African crude in ships that did not legally exist. It reduces the risk to all concerned if the ship isn't really a ship, since if some interfering busybody does detain her in a foreign port the syndicate behind it all can cut its losses and let the law try to work out which clue, among the vast array of forged paperwork and shell companies, actually points to the ship's true owner.

What about human trafficking? With your own ship, you can deliver bodies anywhere they're needed. Chinese snakeheads have been known to use this technique very successfully. One of the more notorious escapades in this line is the Golden Venture, which wrecked off of Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, in June 1993. A total of 286 immigrants were rescued, detained, and mostly deported over the next few years. It wasn't until 1997 that President Clinton finally released the remaining 52. The Venture, renamed United Caribbean, ended up an artificial reef off the coast of Florida.


So what does all this mean for a Night's Black Agents Director?

For starters, it's an excellent backstory for a player character. I prefer not going into a lot of detail when it comes to character backstory, as it tends to get in the way. However I do have a section called In One Sentence, where the character's life so far is described in, wait for it ... one sentence. So in this instance it might be something like 'Ex Special Forces who worked for an anti-pirate security company in the Gulf, until his last mission aboard a ghost ship, which ended with the deaths of all his mates.' Blessedly simple, plus there's a touch of Alien crossed with Residential Evil, which has its points.

It's not a bad way to involve extra-governmental organizations, like Dracula Dossier's Edom. Many of the places that are currently affected by piracy, or involved in the piracy fight, are former British colonies, or places where terrorism festers. Edom might have many reasons either for having been there in the past, or for wanting to be there now.

It's an atmospheric means of introducing new clues, in interesting locales. Take the Hai Sin as an example: soon-to-be-scrapped freighter turns up in a foreign port, perhaps somewhere inaccessible to Western intelligence agencies, with a hold full of corpses. Except this time rather than have the bodies completely unidentifiable, leave something useful behind; the Edom flash, for example, or perhaps some other insignia. Now Edom's got to be curious: if it doesn't have any missing people on its books, who are these poor souls? Alternatively, is this all that's left of the team sent out on Operation Ulysses many years ago? What happened, who owns the ship, and where's the Conspiracy's hand in all of this? 

Here's another: Retrieve the Jack. A former Edom hard man, member of A Squadron, takes up with a marine security agency after leaving Edom. The agency may even be a very-off-the-books Edom asset in its own right, perhaps a means of keeping an eye on China's Room 452, or its jin-gui program. Then things go wrong when the Jack, along with his crewmates, is pitched into an Indian prison on trumped-up charges. It soon becomes clear that the Jack is undergoing special interrogation, and the Indian authorities are either cooperating willingly or being coerced. How to get the Jack back, without permanently souring relations with India?

That's all for now. Enjoy!