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!
Sunday, 17 January 2016
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Forgotten London: The Pub (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, Night's Black Agents)
'"What do you mean, forgotten?" I hear you ask. "There are pubs all over the place! Why only last night I drank myself stupid at the Dog and Phuc, the new Vietnamese gastropub on the corner. Surely you're mistaken!"
Yes, there are pubs in London. Quite a few of them in fact, but most if not all of them aren't pubs as someone drinking during the 1930s would have known the breed. Let's talk about some of the differences.
Most of the information I have on this subject comes from The English Pub, by Peter Haydon.
Before the 1890s the pub was a very different animal. Each public house was an independent, owned by the same person who operated it. Each owner could buy beer from whoever he or she liked, and it was very common for pubs to brew their own beer on the premises. Each pub had its own character, no two being quite alike. The owner decided the style, and that meant a riot of differences, of color, of idiosyncrasy. There were also many more breweries active then than there are now, ensuring that there was plenty of choice in what you drank.
However by 1890 the economy was getting softer, and breweries were finding it much more difficult to make a living. In 1899 the bottom dropped out of the market altogether. Breweries went to the knacker's yard, selling their stock and property at bargain rates. People stopped building pubs. What was the point, after all? Nobody was going to invest money in a failing venture.
In 1890, for instance, there were 11,322 independent breweries operating throughout England. By 1900, there were only 6,420. The number of pubs that brewed on the premises also sharply reduced over the same period, from 12,417 in 1880 to 1,447 in 1914.
This didn't just mean financial ruin. It also meant that, if you intended to survive these apocalyptic times, you had to be smarter, more ruthless, and more efficient than your competition. You had to dominate your market. Northern breweries were the first to realize this, and they began buying up pubs left and right, claiming the market by claiming the supply chain. Then everyone else wanted to get in on the act, and before long the breweries went into a pub-buying frenzy.
This led in turn to a sudden spike in pub construction. Not so much in new pubs - those were still a drug on the market - but in refurbishing the existing ones. Look at it from the owner's point of view. You know the brewers are going to be knocking on everyone's door. Unless you're addicted to independence, and poverty, you want to sell, and for the best possible price. You need to convince the brewers that your pub is the very best in the locality, with plenty of thirsty customers. Which pub is the best? Why, the largest pub, of course. Does your pub really need a ballroom that can seat two hundred? Who the hell cares; the brewer's some damn silly Northerner who doesn't know the London market, and if you have that ballroom, the brewer will think you have the drinkers to go with it.
This is when we start seeing innovations like the Saloon Bar, the Public Bar, and a separate tap room. It's all space, and the fancier a place looks, the more likely it is that the buyer will pay top dollar. Do you have snugs, little hole-in-the-wall spots sealed off by frosted glass and wooden walls, so your drinkers can enjoy themselves in privacy? That's money in the bank. Do you have a cheaply furnished public bar for the plebs to get drunk in, and a more elegantly appointed saloon bar for those prepared to pay a little extra? That's money in the bank.
So down come the brewers and buy the publicans out. By the 1920s there are very few independents left, still fewer by the 1930s. However the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Those publicans within the brewery system are living in what amounts to indentured servitude. They owe everything to the brewer, from the beer in the cellars to the carpets on the floor, and the brewers make very sure the landlords will never get out from under that mountain of debt. After all, if they did, they might want their independence again, and that would never do.
George Orwell says as much in his essay The Clink, about an unsuccessful attempt to get thrown in prison. He spends a short time in a police court cell, where he meets, among others, a disgraced 'guv'nor.'
The florid, smart man was, it appeared, a public house guv'nor (it is a sign of how utterly the London publicans are in the claw of the brewers that they are always referred to as guv'nors, not landlords, being, in fact, no better than employees), & had embezzled the Christmas Club money. As usual, he was head over heels in debt to the brewers, and no doubt had taken some of the money in hopes of backing a winner ... the magistrates are hard on these cases - he did in fact, get four months later in the day. He was ruined for life, of course. The brewers would file bankruptcy proceedings and sell his stock and furniture, and he would never be given a pub license again.
Because the brewers own the pub, they can order things as they like. By the 1930s, this becomes a damage limitation exercise. The powers that be, which in the 1930s meant the educated middle to upper classes, have a down on pubs. They promote vice, distract the workers from their jobs, and generally are a haven for criminals. All those private little snugs, saloon bars and so forth; how is a constable supposed to police a place, if he can't see everything that's going on as soon as he walks in the door?
So the brewers bring in their in-house architects for yet another round of pub refurbishments. This time it isn't about money. It's about what we would now call branding, throwing out the old and replacing it with new. The same old new every time, in fact. After all, why go to all the trouble of coming up with a different design for each location, when you can use the same design for all of them?
However since this was very much the governing classes dictating to the governed, the 1930s designs were about creating pubs that the governing classes would like to drink in. Not that they ever would, of course. "It is all to the good that some of England's public houses should be reformed, reconditioned or improved, and made fit and decent places for refreshment and recreation of the people," said a Temperance advocate.
This led to, among other things, an increase in the number of workingmen's clubs. In 1905 there were less than 7,000 clubs altogether; by 1935 there were well over 15,000, with a combined membership of half a million. The pubs were no longer independent, but the clubs were. They could buy whatever beer they liked, and decorate the place as they pleased. But while this may have been wonderful for the working classes, it meant that the pubs started losing customers, further contributing to an already weakened pub market.
It also led to an interesting innovation: the death of pub signs. In days gone by each pub needed an innovative and eye-catching sign, not just because its customers probably couldn't read, but also because a good sign is a form of advertising. People can say "go to the Swan, you'll never get a better pint," and everyone will know what and more importantly where the Swan is, by the lovingly decorated signage which may or may not actually be a carved Swan. However that only advertises the pub. It does not advertise the brewer, and by the 1930s it had become very important that people know the Swan, for example, is part of Fuller's, or Adnam's, or Theakston's. So the elaborate signage went on the scrapheap, replaced by signboards on the side of the building that said not only what the pub was called, but also which brewer owned it. So the drinker knows that, if he likes Fuller's or can't stand Adnam's, that he'd better go to or avoid the pubs that brewer owns.
Meanwhile the brewers began eating themselves alive. The last time the market went downhill, the brewers that survived did so because they bought up the pubs. Now there were no more pubs to buy, and the only way to stay competitive in a vicious market was to make sure there was as little competition as possible. In previous years brewery takeovers had fueled expansion, but by the 1930s they were the only way to keep the remaining breweries alive.
So in your game, what does this mean?
It means the pub is always changing. If there's a rickety Victorian glamour palace at the corner, complete with snugs and saloon bars, it's under threat. If there's an actual independent pub in the neighborhood, it's practically the alcoholic equivalent of a unicorn, on the brink of utter extinction. No doubt the owner is being besieged by the brewers night and day, but old Charlie would never sell out. His thieving son Archie, on the other hand ... Meanwhile the dear old pub of yesteryear, with its original features and Victorian touches, could be gutted at any moment, to be replaced by fake Victoriana and horse brasses. The brewer's in complete control, until the brewer collapses under a mountain of debt, leaving confusion and chaos in its wake.
Remember, the pub is the center of the community's life. There's a reason why so many people have tried to control it over the years, from the brewers to the coppers to the blue-nosed temperance advocates who want everything to be clean-cut, British and manly. This is, after the church, the place where everyone goes. Think what it means, for example, to operate a Christmas Club, as Orwell's guv'nor did. It means you have hundreds of people coming in all the year round, contributing their pennies and shillings to the fund. It means you have regulars.
From your characters' perspective, it may be all about class. Are your Bookhounds hoping to claw their way to the upper reaches of the class system? Then you'll never see them in the public bar; rubbing shoulders with the ho-polloi is the last thing they'd want to do. Except if there's money in it, of course. At the same time the shop workers are either in the public bar or the workingmen's club on the corner, breathing fire and revolution, and voting Labour. Drinking in the right place shows where you consider yourself to be, in the scheme of things. Or where you would like to be.
Moreover people tend to congregate in the same pub, often for generations. If your pub happens to be on Fleet Street, as the Cheshire Cheese is, then it has been a newsman's haunt for many, many years, well known to literary men. So if your characters want to find a particular author, or newspaper editor, their best bet is to haunt the Cheese and wait for that person to come in. It'd be a Streetwise spend to work out which pub the person they want to see is most likely to go to. Where do the Radicals hang out? The Toshers? The medical men, the lawyers, the banker's clerks? Each group has a pub that it prefers to go to, and if the characters want to catch up with a particular person, they need to know which pub they go to.
Or say you want to play on a place's historic links. Going back to the Cheese again - an excellent pub, by the way, well worth a visit for the atmosphere alone, and Samuel Smith's does a good bitter too - there's its links with important figures like Dickens, its potential history as a brothel, and the alleged bones of murdered babies on display, all to play with.
This is a history that could be repeated again and again, in a time-spanning campaign. Something like the Dracula Dossier, for example, could feature repeated visits to the same pub over many decades, if not generations of spies. Say for the sake of discussion that the Cheshire Cheese is a meeting place for Edom in the 1890s. There's no reason why it couldn't have hosted many such meetings over the years, and feature in stories set in the 1940s, 1970s or current day. After all, the pub's still there, almost unchanging, over all that time.
As a closer, here's a brief scenario idea, suitable for Trail or Bookhounds.
The Unicorn is a pub of long standing in Blackfriar's, on Queen Victoria's Street, not far from the church of St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and Blackfriar's Train and Tube station. It has links of long standing with the Worshipful Society of Apocatheries, one of the twelve great livery companies of London. Opiferque Per Orbem Dicor and a golden unicorn has been its signage for as long as anyone can remember; both the motto - throughout the world I am called the bringer of help - and the unicorn are used by the Worshipful Society. Medical men and members of the Society frequently call on the Unicorn; you can often find the best surgeons and doctors in London enjoying a pint in the saloon.
One of its prize possession is a poem alleged to be the work of John Keats, though its authorship is disputed. Keats is known to have been an Apocathery, and it's thought that the poem was a gift to the daughter of the pub's then owner. Signed only with a K, the framed original, To A Friend, hangs in the saloon bar.
The Unicorn is owned by the Brocklebury Brewery, Yorks, and the owners are contemplating a complete refurb. Out with the old, in with the new, and that includes the ancient signage and the alleged Keats. Then the accidents start happening; the architect, the architect's business partner, and two builders die, one after the other, each after visiting the Unicorn. Meanwhile the guv'nor's losing sleep; something's haunting the place, he claims, something that glistens black as midnight, and the strange tittering noise it makes is more than he can stand ...
Enjoy!
Yes, there are pubs in London. Quite a few of them in fact, but most if not all of them aren't pubs as someone drinking during the 1930s would have known the breed. Let's talk about some of the differences.
Most of the information I have on this subject comes from The English Pub, by Peter Haydon.
Before the 1890s the pub was a very different animal. Each public house was an independent, owned by the same person who operated it. Each owner could buy beer from whoever he or she liked, and it was very common for pubs to brew their own beer on the premises. Each pub had its own character, no two being quite alike. The owner decided the style, and that meant a riot of differences, of color, of idiosyncrasy. There were also many more breweries active then than there are now, ensuring that there was plenty of choice in what you drank.
However by 1890 the economy was getting softer, and breweries were finding it much more difficult to make a living. In 1899 the bottom dropped out of the market altogether. Breweries went to the knacker's yard, selling their stock and property at bargain rates. People stopped building pubs. What was the point, after all? Nobody was going to invest money in a failing venture.
In 1890, for instance, there were 11,322 independent breweries operating throughout England. By 1900, there were only 6,420. The number of pubs that brewed on the premises also sharply reduced over the same period, from 12,417 in 1880 to 1,447 in 1914.
This didn't just mean financial ruin. It also meant that, if you intended to survive these apocalyptic times, you had to be smarter, more ruthless, and more efficient than your competition. You had to dominate your market. Northern breweries were the first to realize this, and they began buying up pubs left and right, claiming the market by claiming the supply chain. Then everyone else wanted to get in on the act, and before long the breweries went into a pub-buying frenzy.
This led in turn to a sudden spike in pub construction. Not so much in new pubs - those were still a drug on the market - but in refurbishing the existing ones. Look at it from the owner's point of view. You know the brewers are going to be knocking on everyone's door. Unless you're addicted to independence, and poverty, you want to sell, and for the best possible price. You need to convince the brewers that your pub is the very best in the locality, with plenty of thirsty customers. Which pub is the best? Why, the largest pub, of course. Does your pub really need a ballroom that can seat two hundred? Who the hell cares; the brewer's some damn silly Northerner who doesn't know the London market, and if you have that ballroom, the brewer will think you have the drinkers to go with it.
This is when we start seeing innovations like the Saloon Bar, the Public Bar, and a separate tap room. It's all space, and the fancier a place looks, the more likely it is that the buyer will pay top dollar. Do you have snugs, little hole-in-the-wall spots sealed off by frosted glass and wooden walls, so your drinkers can enjoy themselves in privacy? That's money in the bank. Do you have a cheaply furnished public bar for the plebs to get drunk in, and a more elegantly appointed saloon bar for those prepared to pay a little extra? That's money in the bank.
So down come the brewers and buy the publicans out. By the 1920s there are very few independents left, still fewer by the 1930s. However the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Those publicans within the brewery system are living in what amounts to indentured servitude. They owe everything to the brewer, from the beer in the cellars to the carpets on the floor, and the brewers make very sure the landlords will never get out from under that mountain of debt. After all, if they did, they might want their independence again, and that would never do.
George Orwell says as much in his essay The Clink, about an unsuccessful attempt to get thrown in prison. He spends a short time in a police court cell, where he meets, among others, a disgraced 'guv'nor.'
The florid, smart man was, it appeared, a public house guv'nor (it is a sign of how utterly the London publicans are in the claw of the brewers that they are always referred to as guv'nors, not landlords, being, in fact, no better than employees), & had embezzled the Christmas Club money. As usual, he was head over heels in debt to the brewers, and no doubt had taken some of the money in hopes of backing a winner ... the magistrates are hard on these cases - he did in fact, get four months later in the day. He was ruined for life, of course. The brewers would file bankruptcy proceedings and sell his stock and furniture, and he would never be given a pub license again.
Because the brewers own the pub, they can order things as they like. By the 1930s, this becomes a damage limitation exercise. The powers that be, which in the 1930s meant the educated middle to upper classes, have a down on pubs. They promote vice, distract the workers from their jobs, and generally are a haven for criminals. All those private little snugs, saloon bars and so forth; how is a constable supposed to police a place, if he can't see everything that's going on as soon as he walks in the door?
So the brewers bring in their in-house architects for yet another round of pub refurbishments. This time it isn't about money. It's about what we would now call branding, throwing out the old and replacing it with new. The same old new every time, in fact. After all, why go to all the trouble of coming up with a different design for each location, when you can use the same design for all of them?
However since this was very much the governing classes dictating to the governed, the 1930s designs were about creating pubs that the governing classes would like to drink in. Not that they ever would, of course. "It is all to the good that some of England's public houses should be reformed, reconditioned or improved, and made fit and decent places for refreshment and recreation of the people," said a Temperance advocate.
This led to, among other things, an increase in the number of workingmen's clubs. In 1905 there were less than 7,000 clubs altogether; by 1935 there were well over 15,000, with a combined membership of half a million. The pubs were no longer independent, but the clubs were. They could buy whatever beer they liked, and decorate the place as they pleased. But while this may have been wonderful for the working classes, it meant that the pubs started losing customers, further contributing to an already weakened pub market.
It also led to an interesting innovation: the death of pub signs. In days gone by each pub needed an innovative and eye-catching sign, not just because its customers probably couldn't read, but also because a good sign is a form of advertising. People can say "go to the Swan, you'll never get a better pint," and everyone will know what and more importantly where the Swan is, by the lovingly decorated signage which may or may not actually be a carved Swan. However that only advertises the pub. It does not advertise the brewer, and by the 1930s it had become very important that people know the Swan, for example, is part of Fuller's, or Adnam's, or Theakston's. So the elaborate signage went on the scrapheap, replaced by signboards on the side of the building that said not only what the pub was called, but also which brewer owned it. So the drinker knows that, if he likes Fuller's or can't stand Adnam's, that he'd better go to or avoid the pubs that brewer owns.
Meanwhile the brewers began eating themselves alive. The last time the market went downhill, the brewers that survived did so because they bought up the pubs. Now there were no more pubs to buy, and the only way to stay competitive in a vicious market was to make sure there was as little competition as possible. In previous years brewery takeovers had fueled expansion, but by the 1930s they were the only way to keep the remaining breweries alive.
So in your game, what does this mean?
It means the pub is always changing. If there's a rickety Victorian glamour palace at the corner, complete with snugs and saloon bars, it's under threat. If there's an actual independent pub in the neighborhood, it's practically the alcoholic equivalent of a unicorn, on the brink of utter extinction. No doubt the owner is being besieged by the brewers night and day, but old Charlie would never sell out. His thieving son Archie, on the other hand ... Meanwhile the dear old pub of yesteryear, with its original features and Victorian touches, could be gutted at any moment, to be replaced by fake Victoriana and horse brasses. The brewer's in complete control, until the brewer collapses under a mountain of debt, leaving confusion and chaos in its wake.
Remember, the pub is the center of the community's life. There's a reason why so many people have tried to control it over the years, from the brewers to the coppers to the blue-nosed temperance advocates who want everything to be clean-cut, British and manly. This is, after the church, the place where everyone goes. Think what it means, for example, to operate a Christmas Club, as Orwell's guv'nor did. It means you have hundreds of people coming in all the year round, contributing their pennies and shillings to the fund. It means you have regulars.
From your characters' perspective, it may be all about class. Are your Bookhounds hoping to claw their way to the upper reaches of the class system? Then you'll never see them in the public bar; rubbing shoulders with the ho-polloi is the last thing they'd want to do. Except if there's money in it, of course. At the same time the shop workers are either in the public bar or the workingmen's club on the corner, breathing fire and revolution, and voting Labour. Drinking in the right place shows where you consider yourself to be, in the scheme of things. Or where you would like to be.
Moreover people tend to congregate in the same pub, often for generations. If your pub happens to be on Fleet Street, as the Cheshire Cheese is, then it has been a newsman's haunt for many, many years, well known to literary men. So if your characters want to find a particular author, or newspaper editor, their best bet is to haunt the Cheese and wait for that person to come in. It'd be a Streetwise spend to work out which pub the person they want to see is most likely to go to. Where do the Radicals hang out? The Toshers? The medical men, the lawyers, the banker's clerks? Each group has a pub that it prefers to go to, and if the characters want to catch up with a particular person, they need to know which pub they go to.
Or say you want to play on a place's historic links. Going back to the Cheese again - an excellent pub, by the way, well worth a visit for the atmosphere alone, and Samuel Smith's does a good bitter too - there's its links with important figures like Dickens, its potential history as a brothel, and the alleged bones of murdered babies on display, all to play with.
This is a history that could be repeated again and again, in a time-spanning campaign. Something like the Dracula Dossier, for example, could feature repeated visits to the same pub over many decades, if not generations of spies. Say for the sake of discussion that the Cheshire Cheese is a meeting place for Edom in the 1890s. There's no reason why it couldn't have hosted many such meetings over the years, and feature in stories set in the 1940s, 1970s or current day. After all, the pub's still there, almost unchanging, over all that time.
As a closer, here's a brief scenario idea, suitable for Trail or Bookhounds.
The Unicorn is a pub of long standing in Blackfriar's, on Queen Victoria's Street, not far from the church of St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and Blackfriar's Train and Tube station. It has links of long standing with the Worshipful Society of Apocatheries, one of the twelve great livery companies of London. Opiferque Per Orbem Dicor and a golden unicorn has been its signage for as long as anyone can remember; both the motto - throughout the world I am called the bringer of help - and the unicorn are used by the Worshipful Society. Medical men and members of the Society frequently call on the Unicorn; you can often find the best surgeons and doctors in London enjoying a pint in the saloon.
One of its prize possession is a poem alleged to be the work of John Keats, though its authorship is disputed. Keats is known to have been an Apocathery, and it's thought that the poem was a gift to the daughter of the pub's then owner. Signed only with a K, the framed original, To A Friend, hangs in the saloon bar.
The Unicorn is owned by the Brocklebury Brewery, Yorks, and the owners are contemplating a complete refurb. Out with the old, in with the new, and that includes the ancient signage and the alleged Keats. Then the accidents start happening; the architect, the architect's business partner, and two builders die, one after the other, each after visiting the Unicorn. Meanwhile the guv'nor's losing sleep; something's haunting the place, he claims, something that glistens black as midnight, and the strange tittering noise it makes is more than he can stand ...
Enjoy!
Sunday, 3 January 2016
Tally O: Fox Hunting (Bookhounds of London, Trail of Cthulhu)
If your campaign is set in the British Isles you're probably mainlining television programs like Downton Abbey, seeking inspiration. What did people look like, think like, want to be like? What sets a British location apart from, say, a French one, or a German? What habits, sports, hobbies are quintessentially British?
In that spirit, this time I'm going to talk about fox hunting. Most of the information I have comes from D.W.E. Brock's 1936 book, The ABC of Fox Hunting. He's writing at a time when the hunt, as he knew it, is already on its way into the history books. You can tell by the way he gnashes his teeth that he's well aware of this, and bitterly resents the influx of City men and other London fools who barely know how to ride, let alone what to do on the field.
In his day the hunts are organized by the Masters of Foxhounds Association, which lays down the boundaries of the hunt. The Edwardians would have run the hunt themselves, with the Master owning and funding the hounds; indeed, the whole shebang. In Brock's time the hunt is run more along Club lines, with Secretaries and Committees. The Master is appointed by the Club, and runs the pack accordingly. That, in fact, is one of the Club's chief troubles; it's no joke housing and feeding all those hounds, and finding a suitable Master is no easy task. If you, as an ordinary person, intend to ride with the hunt, you pay for your membership; or, if you're a guest, you pay a daily fee, sometimes called a cap. Collecting that cap is the bane of the Master's life, as it's very easy to ride off and not pay, a tactic that may appeal to some Bookhounds.
The size of the hunt depends on how often it intends to hunt. The fewer the days in the week that the hunt meets, the smaller the hunt, so there can be two, three, or four day hunts. Any one hunt is strictly forbidden from drawing a fox in any territory other than its own.
The character of the hunt will depend on its territory. A grassland hunt, pleasant to ride over, is the kind that most people are familiar with from books and television. There are also hunts on the moors, which involve smaller packs because of the difficulty of the ground. Hilly or mountainous terrain means no horses, but there's still a pack of hounds, with the huntsmen following on foot.
A hunt is something that requires a great deal of preparation. A hunt doesn't just blindly ride out and hope for the best; instead, over the course of the year, the Master and his people look for where the foxes are, and mark out their earths. There's a Damage Fund set aside for farmers, to bribe them and hopefully prevent them from shooting or poisoning animals who might raid their farms. In fact, farmers are encouraged to leave food out for foxes, when their holes are spotted.
'Anyone knowing of the the existence of a litter of cubs,' says Brock, 'will be doing the vixen a kindness by leaving food, such as rabbits, rats or the cleanings of poultry, somewhere about a hundred yards from her earth. On no account should butchers' meat be given, for, though the cubs will eat it readily enough, it is very liable to give them mange.'
Come the day, the huntsmen set out the night before to find the fox's earth, and any other hole it might use as a hiding place. Foxes are nocturnal, and prefer to be underground during the day, so by stopping up their holes at night the huntsmen are forcing the fox to remain above ground during the hunt. Then the business begins in earnest.
The hounds are carefully looked after, in preparation for this moment; indeed, a hound's age is expressed from the first time hound meets fox. So a 1932 dog wasn't born in 1932; it first hunted in that year . The hounds are all tattooed in the ear with a simple cypher, say BV VI. The first letters refer to the hunt, so BV might be Blackmore Vale. The numbers refer to the litter, so VI means that this dog is from litter number 6. Each hound will have a name based on its litter, so that litter 6 might have dogs called Whirligig, Whale, Walpole, Wrale and so on, all beginning with W.
These most definitely are not indoor pets, and want nothing more than to run like a brainless maniac all the live-long day. They love to eat raw meat, and are typically fed an entire carcass, which the pack devours whole. 'In a very short time the whole pack is covered from head to stern with blood.' The pack size is expressed in couples, each couple being two hounds, so a pack size of 30 is actually 60 animals. Imagine having to care for that many crazy, hyper-energetic, bloodthirsty hounds. It's no wonder Clubs had difficulty finding Masters.
The hunt has a very idiosyncratic dress, which you may think you're familiar with, even if you're not. The typical Ratcatcher style used by ordinary members of most Clubs includes a bowler hat, strengthened for resisting blows to the head, a white hunting stock or neckerchief, a tweet sports coat (the Ratcatcher of the title), and breeches of almost any color except white. The overall aesthetic is plain and sober.
There are variations on that theme. The Black Coat is much like the Ratcatcher, except you wear a top hat, a black or dark grey cloth coat, and white or colored breeches. The Scarlet Coat, which is the style everyone recognizes, is much as the Ratcatcher, except the coat is red cloth, with brass buttons. Depending on the Hunt, these variant costumes may be insignia of rank.
You address a professional huntsman by their last name, so Harry Flashman would be just Flashman. If, on the other hand, you're addressing a whipper-in, you use their Christian name, so in this case, Harry. The whipper-in is the huntsman's assistant and has two very specific tasks. The first whipper-in opens gates, removes slip rails, stops road traffic and generally ensures that nothing interferes with the pack. The second whipper-in keeps track of the pack, hunts down strays, and when otherwise not needed will keep an eye out for that tricky fox.
When out in the field, the Master always goes first. The Master directs the hunt, so he has to be in a position to see everything that's going on. For everyone else, there's an etiquette system. When in with the field, you're never to ride too close behind someone else. You're supposed to shout Ware Hole! if you see something a horse might stumble over. You take your time at a fence or gap in the hedge, and on no account make the attempt if there's someone ahead of you; wait until that person is clear before trying the jump.
Most importantly, you have a duty to farmers. 'Always remember you are a guest of every single farmer whose land you cross. Do not willfully damage crops or ride over greens, cricket pitches, football grounds. Do not frighten their stock. Do not leave fences open.' This is the point at which, I strongly suspect, Brock was writing with gritted teeth, and breaking the point of his pen on every second word.
So what's likely to happen during a hunt? Here's some examples to lend flavor to a scene:
In a GUMSHOE game, a hunt is probably best expressed as a Thrilling Chase, as per Night's Black Agents. However if you're not comfortable with that, a simple Fleeing vs Athletics or Riding contest will do as well. The Fox should get a large Fleeing pool, representing not so much its natural athletic ability as its raw cunning and trickery. Its stats ought to be based on the Wolf, so:
Abilities: Athletics 9, Fleeing 14/18/12 (young/mature/old) Health 3, Scuffling 8
Hit Threshold: 5 (Athletics plus small and fast)
Alertness: +3
Weapon: -1 (bite)
So why will your players get involved in a hunt? Well, in Bookhounds, it's most likely to be a social class issue. The characters are always scheming to increase their Credit Rating, to get more patrons, to rise up in the world. How better to express their social importance than by riding to hounds with the Blankshires? Plus, it's an excellent way to toady to your social betters, thus worming your way into the confidence of future patrons. London is remarkably close to the countryside at time of writing; in the 1930s country lanes and open fields would have been almost on the protagonists' doorstep. (That was the whole point of Metro-Land, after all). One quick road or rail journey, and they can be riding to hounds over the weekend.
In Trail, a hunt is an excellent way to set the scene. It gives the characters a grand overview of the area they're in, and also offers a brilliant chance to get the characters lost in some kind of ancient and long-forgotten wood, or near some evocative, haunting ruins. If the characters have somehow annoyed the local cultists, it's also a good way to maneuver them into an ambush. Finally it can be a dramatic means of introducing some kind of challenge or event, say, if the hunt were to encounter a mangled body, or signs of otherworldly activity. Imagine a hunt, for example, that finds itself within the sphere of influence of a Color Out Of Space.Wandering into that blighted landscape unexpected could lead to all sorts of complications ...
To close out, a bit of hunting slang to add flavor to a scene:
Babbler: A dog who 'talks' too much.
Blind (country): Before winter; that is, with the leaves still on the trees. This is a dangerous time to hunt, as accidents are more likely with decreased visibility.
Blow Away: The horn sounds to get the hounds out on the trail. This is a quick, pulsating noise.
Blow Out: The horn sounds to call the hounds back. This is a long and mournful call.
Check: The hounds are said to check when they temporarily lose the scent.
Covert: Woods.
Drag: The line of the fox, leading to his lair.
Feather: The dog raises stern and shows tail, suggesting it is on the scent.
Huic Holloa: A cheer.
Tally O!: I have seen the fox.
Tally Over!: I have seen the fox cross this ride.
I hope this was useful! Enjoy.
In that spirit, this time I'm going to talk about fox hunting. Most of the information I have comes from D.W.E. Brock's 1936 book, The ABC of Fox Hunting. He's writing at a time when the hunt, as he knew it, is already on its way into the history books. You can tell by the way he gnashes his teeth that he's well aware of this, and bitterly resents the influx of City men and other London fools who barely know how to ride, let alone what to do on the field.
In his day the hunts are organized by the Masters of Foxhounds Association, which lays down the boundaries of the hunt. The Edwardians would have run the hunt themselves, with the Master owning and funding the hounds; indeed, the whole shebang. In Brock's time the hunt is run more along Club lines, with Secretaries and Committees. The Master is appointed by the Club, and runs the pack accordingly. That, in fact, is one of the Club's chief troubles; it's no joke housing and feeding all those hounds, and finding a suitable Master is no easy task. If you, as an ordinary person, intend to ride with the hunt, you pay for your membership; or, if you're a guest, you pay a daily fee, sometimes called a cap. Collecting that cap is the bane of the Master's life, as it's very easy to ride off and not pay, a tactic that may appeal to some Bookhounds.
The size of the hunt depends on how often it intends to hunt. The fewer the days in the week that the hunt meets, the smaller the hunt, so there can be two, three, or four day hunts. Any one hunt is strictly forbidden from drawing a fox in any territory other than its own.
The character of the hunt will depend on its territory. A grassland hunt, pleasant to ride over, is the kind that most people are familiar with from books and television. There are also hunts on the moors, which involve smaller packs because of the difficulty of the ground. Hilly or mountainous terrain means no horses, but there's still a pack of hounds, with the huntsmen following on foot.
A hunt is something that requires a great deal of preparation. A hunt doesn't just blindly ride out and hope for the best; instead, over the course of the year, the Master and his people look for where the foxes are, and mark out their earths. There's a Damage Fund set aside for farmers, to bribe them and hopefully prevent them from shooting or poisoning animals who might raid their farms. In fact, farmers are encouraged to leave food out for foxes, when their holes are spotted.
'Anyone knowing of the the existence of a litter of cubs,' says Brock, 'will be doing the vixen a kindness by leaving food, such as rabbits, rats or the cleanings of poultry, somewhere about a hundred yards from her earth. On no account should butchers' meat be given, for, though the cubs will eat it readily enough, it is very liable to give them mange.'
Come the day, the huntsmen set out the night before to find the fox's earth, and any other hole it might use as a hiding place. Foxes are nocturnal, and prefer to be underground during the day, so by stopping up their holes at night the huntsmen are forcing the fox to remain above ground during the hunt. Then the business begins in earnest.
The hounds are carefully looked after, in preparation for this moment; indeed, a hound's age is expressed from the first time hound meets fox. So a 1932 dog wasn't born in 1932; it first hunted in that year . The hounds are all tattooed in the ear with a simple cypher, say BV VI. The first letters refer to the hunt, so BV might be Blackmore Vale. The numbers refer to the litter, so VI means that this dog is from litter number 6. Each hound will have a name based on its litter, so that litter 6 might have dogs called Whirligig, Whale, Walpole, Wrale and so on, all beginning with W.
These most definitely are not indoor pets, and want nothing more than to run like a brainless maniac all the live-long day. They love to eat raw meat, and are typically fed an entire carcass, which the pack devours whole. 'In a very short time the whole pack is covered from head to stern with blood.' The pack size is expressed in couples, each couple being two hounds, so a pack size of 30 is actually 60 animals. Imagine having to care for that many crazy, hyper-energetic, bloodthirsty hounds. It's no wonder Clubs had difficulty finding Masters.
The hunt has a very idiosyncratic dress, which you may think you're familiar with, even if you're not. The typical Ratcatcher style used by ordinary members of most Clubs includes a bowler hat, strengthened for resisting blows to the head, a white hunting stock or neckerchief, a tweet sports coat (the Ratcatcher of the title), and breeches of almost any color except white. The overall aesthetic is plain and sober.
There are variations on that theme. The Black Coat is much like the Ratcatcher, except you wear a top hat, a black or dark grey cloth coat, and white or colored breeches. The Scarlet Coat, which is the style everyone recognizes, is much as the Ratcatcher, except the coat is red cloth, with brass buttons. Depending on the Hunt, these variant costumes may be insignia of rank.
You address a professional huntsman by their last name, so Harry Flashman would be just Flashman. If, on the other hand, you're addressing a whipper-in, you use their Christian name, so in this case, Harry. The whipper-in is the huntsman's assistant and has two very specific tasks. The first whipper-in opens gates, removes slip rails, stops road traffic and generally ensures that nothing interferes with the pack. The second whipper-in keeps track of the pack, hunts down strays, and when otherwise not needed will keep an eye out for that tricky fox.
When out in the field, the Master always goes first. The Master directs the hunt, so he has to be in a position to see everything that's going on. For everyone else, there's an etiquette system. When in with the field, you're never to ride too close behind someone else. You're supposed to shout Ware Hole! if you see something a horse might stumble over. You take your time at a fence or gap in the hedge, and on no account make the attempt if there's someone ahead of you; wait until that person is clear before trying the jump.
Most importantly, you have a duty to farmers. 'Always remember you are a guest of every single farmer whose land you cross. Do not willfully damage crops or ride over greens, cricket pitches, football grounds. Do not frighten their stock. Do not leave fences open.' This is the point at which, I strongly suspect, Brock was writing with gritted teeth, and breaking the point of his pen on every second word.
So what's likely to happen during a hunt? Here's some examples to lend flavor to a scene:
- A dog may be kicked and killed by an inexperienced horse, or rider.
- The hounds may find another fox and set out on a false line, or kill the fox too early.
- The hunt takes too long without result, and the hunters get bored.
- The field (riders) scatters or gets in the way of the hounds.
- The fox hides in unstopped ground.
- The fox takes the hunt near a scent spoiler (eg cattle) or near road, or rail.
- The hunt encounters a wire fence.
- A horse falls, or encounters a difficult ditch.
- The pack splits into two or more groups, or is lost from the Huntsman.
- The fox hides up a tree, curled on a branch, or somewhere else high, like a rooftop.
- The fox hides under a haystack. Remember, you're not supposed to inconvenience farmers.
- The fox hides in the furrow of a ploughed field.
- The fox hides in exposed drains, especially in a dry season.
- Fox hides in marsh or bog, knowing that the hounds don't like going near water.
- The fox puts the hounds on the scent of another fox.
- The fox doubles back, and dodges straight through the hounds.
In a GUMSHOE game, a hunt is probably best expressed as a Thrilling Chase, as per Night's Black Agents. However if you're not comfortable with that, a simple Fleeing vs Athletics or Riding contest will do as well. The Fox should get a large Fleeing pool, representing not so much its natural athletic ability as its raw cunning and trickery. Its stats ought to be based on the Wolf, so:
Abilities: Athletics 9, Fleeing 14/18/12 (young/mature/old) Health 3, Scuffling 8
Hit Threshold: 5 (Athletics plus small and fast)
Alertness: +3
Weapon: -1 (bite)
So why will your players get involved in a hunt? Well, in Bookhounds, it's most likely to be a social class issue. The characters are always scheming to increase their Credit Rating, to get more patrons, to rise up in the world. How better to express their social importance than by riding to hounds with the Blankshires? Plus, it's an excellent way to toady to your social betters, thus worming your way into the confidence of future patrons. London is remarkably close to the countryside at time of writing; in the 1930s country lanes and open fields would have been almost on the protagonists' doorstep. (That was the whole point of Metro-Land, after all). One quick road or rail journey, and they can be riding to hounds over the weekend.
In Trail, a hunt is an excellent way to set the scene. It gives the characters a grand overview of the area they're in, and also offers a brilliant chance to get the characters lost in some kind of ancient and long-forgotten wood, or near some evocative, haunting ruins. If the characters have somehow annoyed the local cultists, it's also a good way to maneuver them into an ambush. Finally it can be a dramatic means of introducing some kind of challenge or event, say, if the hunt were to encounter a mangled body, or signs of otherworldly activity. Imagine a hunt, for example, that finds itself within the sphere of influence of a Color Out Of Space.Wandering into that blighted landscape unexpected could lead to all sorts of complications ...
To close out, a bit of hunting slang to add flavor to a scene:
Babbler: A dog who 'talks' too much.
Blind (country): Before winter; that is, with the leaves still on the trees. This is a dangerous time to hunt, as accidents are more likely with decreased visibility.
Blow Away: The horn sounds to get the hounds out on the trail. This is a quick, pulsating noise.
Blow Out: The horn sounds to call the hounds back. This is a long and mournful call.
Check: The hounds are said to check when they temporarily lose the scent.
Covert: Woods.
Drag: The line of the fox, leading to his lair.
Feather: The dog raises stern and shows tail, suggesting it is on the scent.
Huic Holloa: A cheer.
Tally O!: I have seen the fox.
Tally Over!: I have seen the fox cross this ride.
I hope this was useful! Enjoy.
Sunday, 27 December 2015
Auction Houses of London (Bookhounds)
So you want to run a Bookhounds of London campaign, and need to arrange an auction scene. Where's this taking place? Your players will want to know. If you're the kind of silver-tongued devil who can make this stuff up on the fly, no problem. However for those of you desperate for some historical examples, consider the following auction houses:
Puttick and Simpson. Not much is left online about this venerable auction house, first opened in 1794, closed in 1971. The scene shown in the engraving is its Leicester Square location, a wide open space, no permanent seating, lined with books of all kinds. At one end, close to the door, there's a podium. One wonders whether its proximity to the only exit was important for the auctioneer. In the middle of the room there's a wide section of boards set on two tables, presumably for display, which could be easily moved if needed. At the far end of the room there's a piano. Puttick and Simpson was famous for its sale of musical scores, so it's possible the piano was there in the spirit of try, before you buy. The internet also tells me that there was a Puttick and Simpson Limited at Montpelier Street London, since dissolved. It might not be the same one, of course, but let's say that it is, for the sake of discussion. That suggests that Puttick and Simpson moved from Leicester Square at some point. Judging by the list of old catalogs available for sale online, it seems to have moved more than once. In 1851 it was at 191 Piccadilly, while in 1897 it was at Leicester Square. My source, The Book-Hunter in London (1895, via Project Gutenberg), says that, after Sothebys, Puttick and Simpson was one of the premier book auction houses in London. It also says that the Leicester Square location was formerly the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds - in fact, he died there - and goes on to proclaim, 'in this age of iconoclasm it is pleasant to wander in the passages and rooms where all the wit, beauty and intellect of the latter part of the last century congregated; where Johnson and Boswell, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and Malone met in good fellowship.' Of course, it might have moved before the 1930s, but for the sake of your game it might be more interesting if it stays in Leicester Square.
Hodgson's. The source I have for this auction house is the 1895 book mentioned above, but the internet tells me there's a house clearance specialist operating out of Bristol with the same name, that first opened in 1918. The 1918 Hodgson's says it covers West London, which opens the situation up to all kinds of amusing slapstick scenes. I'm reasonably certain that the auctioneer Hodgson's mentioned by my source no longer exists, but the difficulty with a name like Hodgson is that it's one of the more common surnames in the UK, so searching for it is troublesome. The Book-Hunter in London says that Hodgson's Chancery Lane location 'was specially erected for the peculiar requirements of a book-auction house.' Whatever those may have been. Among other things, Hodgson used to host what were called trade dinner sales, where those in the trade would meet, enjoy a pleasant meal, and sell or buy as they saw fit. Apparently Hodgson used to clear fifty thousand pounds a time at these dinners, but the habit had died out by 1895, so presumably in the 1930s it's a distant memory. It does suggest possibilities, though, rather in the same style as a certain Burnt Auction. In 1895 the head of the firm was the founder's son, but by 1930 this may have changed. Incidentally, in the present day 115 Chancery Lane is occupied by a cocktail bar, Baranis. It describes itself as a Provencal-style cellar bar with a petanque court. It'd be interesting to see how much, if anything, of that Victorian structure 'specially erected' for a book auction house survives. Judging by Google, the frontage looks more or less original, but it's anyone's guess what's inside.
The Dorotheum. This is a Vienna-based auction house rather than a London firm, but it's the oldest in the world, so it deserves mention. The protagonists no doubt dream of one day going to something as prestigious as a Dorotheum auction. First established in 1707 by the Emperor Joseph I, it occupied its current premises in 1777, and has remained there ever since. Impossibly Baroque, immensely expensive; no doubt the protagonists are stealing its catalogs and forging its provenance in hope of boosting the price of their stock.
Phillip's, briefly Phillips de Pury, though that sad chapter in the firm's history post-dates the average Bookhounds game. First established in 1796 by one of Christie's clerks, this auction house puttered along until 1999, when it changed hands several times, engaged in disastrous business decisions, and was bought out by Bonham's. At the time of the average Bookhounds game, Phillip's is known as Phillips, Son and Neale. According to its website, Phillips had a 'reputation for strong regional sales rooms dotted about the British Isles,' which suggests that, if you as Keeper want an excuse for finding some obscure tome in, say, Scotland or Ireland, it could come into the game via Phillips, Son and Neale.
Sotheby's will be a familiar name to anyone who has a copy of the Dracula Dossier. Established in 1744, it began as a bookseller's but has since branched out into every conceivable art form. In the 1930s its principal lines, apart from books, would have been prints, coins, and medals, with a sideline in fine art. Its main rooms are at 34-35 New Bond Street, where it has lived since 1917. Though in the present day it has branches all over the world, in the 1930s its only location would have been London. It often arranges private sales when the seller wants to conduct business with the utmost discretion, as often happens when the seller would prefer the outside world not know how hard up for cash he is. One of its 1930s highlights is the sale of Baron Rothschild's paintings at one of the Rothschild residences in Piccadilly. This 1937 sale reached over £125,000, and was broadcast live by the BBC.
Taverns and Pubs. Many of the businesses mentioned here got their start by running auctions at their local pub. Though a much less common practice in the 1930s as it would have been in the 18th Century, it's still quite possible, particularly for auctions taking place outside London. Without a dedicated auction house, any large sale taking place in the counties, say, has to locate itself in the largest and most convenient spot, and that will often be the local tavern.
Book Fairs. The London Book Fair does not exist in the 1930s, but other Fairs do, most notably the Frankfurt Book Fair. The protagonists who operate a small book stall in, say, Spitalfields, probably won't be going to Frankfurt, but any book store owner with a Credit Rating of 3 or better will definitely want to be represented there. The Frankfurt event is a trade fair, where all kinds of innovations, new products, and other things of interest to booksellers are put on display. Exactly the kind of event that a Forger might want to attend, for example.
That's it for the moment! It's also the last post this year. May 2016 be good to you, and best wishes to you all!
Puttick and Simpson. Not much is left online about this venerable auction house, first opened in 1794, closed in 1971. The scene shown in the engraving is its Leicester Square location, a wide open space, no permanent seating, lined with books of all kinds. At one end, close to the door, there's a podium. One wonders whether its proximity to the only exit was important for the auctioneer. In the middle of the room there's a wide section of boards set on two tables, presumably for display, which could be easily moved if needed. At the far end of the room there's a piano. Puttick and Simpson was famous for its sale of musical scores, so it's possible the piano was there in the spirit of try, before you buy. The internet also tells me that there was a Puttick and Simpson Limited at Montpelier Street London, since dissolved. It might not be the same one, of course, but let's say that it is, for the sake of discussion. That suggests that Puttick and Simpson moved from Leicester Square at some point. Judging by the list of old catalogs available for sale online, it seems to have moved more than once. In 1851 it was at 191 Piccadilly, while in 1897 it was at Leicester Square. My source, The Book-Hunter in London (1895, via Project Gutenberg), says that, after Sothebys, Puttick and Simpson was one of the premier book auction houses in London. It also says that the Leicester Square location was formerly the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds - in fact, he died there - and goes on to proclaim, 'in this age of iconoclasm it is pleasant to wander in the passages and rooms where all the wit, beauty and intellect of the latter part of the last century congregated; where Johnson and Boswell, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and Malone met in good fellowship.' Of course, it might have moved before the 1930s, but for the sake of your game it might be more interesting if it stays in Leicester Square.
Hodgson's. The source I have for this auction house is the 1895 book mentioned above, but the internet tells me there's a house clearance specialist operating out of Bristol with the same name, that first opened in 1918. The 1918 Hodgson's says it covers West London, which opens the situation up to all kinds of amusing slapstick scenes. I'm reasonably certain that the auctioneer Hodgson's mentioned by my source no longer exists, but the difficulty with a name like Hodgson is that it's one of the more common surnames in the UK, so searching for it is troublesome. The Book-Hunter in London says that Hodgson's Chancery Lane location 'was specially erected for the peculiar requirements of a book-auction house.' Whatever those may have been. Among other things, Hodgson used to host what were called trade dinner sales, where those in the trade would meet, enjoy a pleasant meal, and sell or buy as they saw fit. Apparently Hodgson used to clear fifty thousand pounds a time at these dinners, but the habit had died out by 1895, so presumably in the 1930s it's a distant memory. It does suggest possibilities, though, rather in the same style as a certain Burnt Auction. In 1895 the head of the firm was the founder's son, but by 1930 this may have changed. Incidentally, in the present day 115 Chancery Lane is occupied by a cocktail bar, Baranis. It describes itself as a Provencal-style cellar bar with a petanque court. It'd be interesting to see how much, if anything, of that Victorian structure 'specially erected' for a book auction house survives. Judging by Google, the frontage looks more or less original, but it's anyone's guess what's inside.
The Dorotheum. This is a Vienna-based auction house rather than a London firm, but it's the oldest in the world, so it deserves mention. The protagonists no doubt dream of one day going to something as prestigious as a Dorotheum auction. First established in 1707 by the Emperor Joseph I, it occupied its current premises in 1777, and has remained there ever since. Impossibly Baroque, immensely expensive; no doubt the protagonists are stealing its catalogs and forging its provenance in hope of boosting the price of their stock.
Phillip's, briefly Phillips de Pury, though that sad chapter in the firm's history post-dates the average Bookhounds game. First established in 1796 by one of Christie's clerks, this auction house puttered along until 1999, when it changed hands several times, engaged in disastrous business decisions, and was bought out by Bonham's. At the time of the average Bookhounds game, Phillip's is known as Phillips, Son and Neale. According to its website, Phillips had a 'reputation for strong regional sales rooms dotted about the British Isles,' which suggests that, if you as Keeper want an excuse for finding some obscure tome in, say, Scotland or Ireland, it could come into the game via Phillips, Son and Neale.
Sotheby's will be a familiar name to anyone who has a copy of the Dracula Dossier. Established in 1744, it began as a bookseller's but has since branched out into every conceivable art form. In the 1930s its principal lines, apart from books, would have been prints, coins, and medals, with a sideline in fine art. Its main rooms are at 34-35 New Bond Street, where it has lived since 1917. Though in the present day it has branches all over the world, in the 1930s its only location would have been London. It often arranges private sales when the seller wants to conduct business with the utmost discretion, as often happens when the seller would prefer the outside world not know how hard up for cash he is. One of its 1930s highlights is the sale of Baron Rothschild's paintings at one of the Rothschild residences in Piccadilly. This 1937 sale reached over £125,000, and was broadcast live by the BBC.
Taverns and Pubs. Many of the businesses mentioned here got their start by running auctions at their local pub. Though a much less common practice in the 1930s as it would have been in the 18th Century, it's still quite possible, particularly for auctions taking place outside London. Without a dedicated auction house, any large sale taking place in the counties, say, has to locate itself in the largest and most convenient spot, and that will often be the local tavern.
Book Fairs. The London Book Fair does not exist in the 1930s, but other Fairs do, most notably the Frankfurt Book Fair. The protagonists who operate a small book stall in, say, Spitalfields, probably won't be going to Frankfurt, but any book store owner with a Credit Rating of 3 or better will definitely want to be represented there. The Frankfurt event is a trade fair, where all kinds of innovations, new products, and other things of interest to booksellers are put on display. Exactly the kind of event that a Forger might want to attend, for example.
That's it for the moment! It's also the last post this year. May 2016 be good to you, and best wishes to you all!
Sunday, 20 December 2015
Not Quite Book Review Corner: Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff
I've been reading Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, a relative newcomer to the scene. He's been writing for a while, but keeps dropping off the map, and so his publication list isn't that long. First published in 1988, then nothing until 1997, then a gap, then a gap, everywhere a gap gap, old Matt Ruff he had a farm, and so forth. My copy is an uncorrected proof. When published, it will be via Harper Collins, and is expected to be a February 2016 release.
The central idea is fascinating. Ruff takes the tropes of Lovecraft's Mythos, and re-imagines the stories with African American protagonists. The setting is 1950s America, heartland of noir fiction, and the collection of short, interconnected stories opens with the tale of Atticus Turner, off to Chicago with a copy of the Safe Negro Travel Guide in his pocket, hoping to find his father. Except his father's gone missing, and all the clues suggest that he's gone to Arkham, Massachusetts, home of Lovecraftian horror. It soon develops that Montrose Turner is mixed up with a peculiar Order of the Ancient Dawn, who are themselves very interested in Atticus since he might be a direct descendant of the founder of their Order.
Things, as you might expect, get very complicated from that point forward.
I mentioned interconnected stories earlier. It wouldn't be entirely fair to call this a short story collection, even though it is a collection of several short-ish stories. There is a common long-term plot, however, and the characters are all related either by blood or by bonds of friendship. So in the first story Montrose is a relatively minor support character, but in a later story he becomes the main protagonist. Childhood friends, cousins, Brothers from the local Lodge, may all appear as fleeting glimpses in one story, only to reappear later as main characters. The Braithwaite clan and its magical machinations make up the main antagonists, along with its allies and rivals in the alchemical Orders that seem to spring up like weeds across America.
In and of itself the concept would be intriguing, but by combining it with Lovecraft Ruff manages to hit a very particular and sensitive nerve. After all, this is Howard Phillips we're talking about, the man who gave us Cthulhu but also gave us the comic verse On The Creation of Niggers, as Ruff reminds us very early on.
Recently the World Fantasy Awards statuette hit the news again. It's been pointed out, particularly in recent years, that having an award of this type made in Lovecraft's image is sending, at best, a mixed message to the world at large, and fandom in particular. "This is something people of color, women, minorities, must deal with more often than most when striving to be the greatest they can possibly be in the arts," said award winner Nnedi Okorafor, on discovering Lovecraft's reputation after receiving her award. "The fact that many of the Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us."
It's been announced that future awards will not bear Lovecraft's image. Noted Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi has been particularly outspoken in his disgust at this decision. "Evidently this move was to placate the shrill whining of a handful of social justice warriors who believe that a 'vicious racist' like Lovecraft has no business being honored by such an award."
I lost a great deal of respect for S.T. Joshi after reading that piece.
There's no denying Lovecraft's hatred, of women, of African Americans, of pretty much everything and everyone except white Anglo Saxons and Gothic Revival architecture. He has created some very compelling art, worthy of study, worthy of approbation. That does not excuse the rest of it.
Perhaps it's time to admit that having his face on an award is exclusionary. That it sends a message, intentionally or not, and that message is an unpleasant one.
Having touched on that nerve, however, Ruff lacks follow-through. There are many dark and complex scenes in these stories, but at the same time there's an undercurrent of light-heartedness that is at odds with horror. Frankly, there's more angst and despair in The Hobbit than there is in this book, and the main character of The Hobbit is a jolly little fellow whose sole ambition in life is to eat more dinners.
That's not to say the stories are bad. They're very cleverly done, and as a counterpoint to pure Lovecraft there's pleasure to be had in re imagining those stories with these protagonists. Even so, you have to go into this expecting that it won't be horror, as horror is usually understood. There's the suggestion of shoggoths off in the darkness, and weird things do happen, but these shoggoths have a low-fat label on the side with an encouraging nutritional message from the FDA.
An example, hopefully avoiding as many spoilers as possible: in one story, a character is told to choose whether or not to accept a benefit. That benefit, we discover, comes at someone else's expense, and that someone else is kept inside a large machine, apparently unconscious. We're told by the antagonist that this person is in a permanent coma thanks to a head injury, and feels no pain. What would make this really work would be if we didn't know whether the antagonist is telling the truth. Perhaps there is no coma, no head injury. Except as the reader we know that the antagonist is telling the truth. We saw that head injury in a previous episode, and from that we can infer the coma. Trouble is, knowing that undercuts the horror by removing the uncertainty.
So would I recommend Lovecraft Country to Lovecraft fans, when it finally debuts? Yes. Just bear in mind, as I've said, that this is not a frightening collection. It has horrific scenes, and its depiction of historical events is all the more shocking because we know the truth of the matter. We also know that it didn't happen very long ago, in the grand scheme of things. For that alone it's worth reading.
Even if it doesn't keep you awake at night, captivated by existential bleakness and despair.
The central idea is fascinating. Ruff takes the tropes of Lovecraft's Mythos, and re-imagines the stories with African American protagonists. The setting is 1950s America, heartland of noir fiction, and the collection of short, interconnected stories opens with the tale of Atticus Turner, off to Chicago with a copy of the Safe Negro Travel Guide in his pocket, hoping to find his father. Except his father's gone missing, and all the clues suggest that he's gone to Arkham, Massachusetts, home of Lovecraftian horror. It soon develops that Montrose Turner is mixed up with a peculiar Order of the Ancient Dawn, who are themselves very interested in Atticus since he might be a direct descendant of the founder of their Order.
Things, as you might expect, get very complicated from that point forward.
I mentioned interconnected stories earlier. It wouldn't be entirely fair to call this a short story collection, even though it is a collection of several short-ish stories. There is a common long-term plot, however, and the characters are all related either by blood or by bonds of friendship. So in the first story Montrose is a relatively minor support character, but in a later story he becomes the main protagonist. Childhood friends, cousins, Brothers from the local Lodge, may all appear as fleeting glimpses in one story, only to reappear later as main characters. The Braithwaite clan and its magical machinations make up the main antagonists, along with its allies and rivals in the alchemical Orders that seem to spring up like weeds across America.
In and of itself the concept would be intriguing, but by combining it with Lovecraft Ruff manages to hit a very particular and sensitive nerve. After all, this is Howard Phillips we're talking about, the man who gave us Cthulhu but also gave us the comic verse On The Creation of Niggers, as Ruff reminds us very early on.
Recently the World Fantasy Awards statuette hit the news again. It's been pointed out, particularly in recent years, that having an award of this type made in Lovecraft's image is sending, at best, a mixed message to the world at large, and fandom in particular. "This is something people of color, women, minorities, must deal with more often than most when striving to be the greatest they can possibly be in the arts," said award winner Nnedi Okorafor, on discovering Lovecraft's reputation after receiving her award. "The fact that many of the Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us."
It's been announced that future awards will not bear Lovecraft's image. Noted Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi has been particularly outspoken in his disgust at this decision. "Evidently this move was to placate the shrill whining of a handful of social justice warriors who believe that a 'vicious racist' like Lovecraft has no business being honored by such an award."
I lost a great deal of respect for S.T. Joshi after reading that piece.
There's no denying Lovecraft's hatred, of women, of African Americans, of pretty much everything and everyone except white Anglo Saxons and Gothic Revival architecture. He has created some very compelling art, worthy of study, worthy of approbation. That does not excuse the rest of it.
Perhaps it's time to admit that having his face on an award is exclusionary. That it sends a message, intentionally or not, and that message is an unpleasant one.
Having touched on that nerve, however, Ruff lacks follow-through. There are many dark and complex scenes in these stories, but at the same time there's an undercurrent of light-heartedness that is at odds with horror. Frankly, there's more angst and despair in The Hobbit than there is in this book, and the main character of The Hobbit is a jolly little fellow whose sole ambition in life is to eat more dinners.
That's not to say the stories are bad. They're very cleverly done, and as a counterpoint to pure Lovecraft there's pleasure to be had in re imagining those stories with these protagonists. Even so, you have to go into this expecting that it won't be horror, as horror is usually understood. There's the suggestion of shoggoths off in the darkness, and weird things do happen, but these shoggoths have a low-fat label on the side with an encouraging nutritional message from the FDA.
An example, hopefully avoiding as many spoilers as possible: in one story, a character is told to choose whether or not to accept a benefit. That benefit, we discover, comes at someone else's expense, and that someone else is kept inside a large machine, apparently unconscious. We're told by the antagonist that this person is in a permanent coma thanks to a head injury, and feels no pain. What would make this really work would be if we didn't know whether the antagonist is telling the truth. Perhaps there is no coma, no head injury. Except as the reader we know that the antagonist is telling the truth. We saw that head injury in a previous episode, and from that we can infer the coma. Trouble is, knowing that undercuts the horror by removing the uncertainty.
So would I recommend Lovecraft Country to Lovecraft fans, when it finally debuts? Yes. Just bear in mind, as I've said, that this is not a frightening collection. It has horrific scenes, and its depiction of historical events is all the more shocking because we know the truth of the matter. We also know that it didn't happen very long ago, in the grand scheme of things. For that alone it's worth reading.
Even if it doesn't keep you awake at night, captivated by existential bleakness and despair.
Sunday, 13 December 2015
Forgotten London: Egyptian Hall (Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London)
England once had a Home of Mystery, founded by one of the premier family businesses in all of entertainment history: the Maskelynes. Forgotten London has touched on the Crystal Palace and Tussauds Museum. Now it's time to turn our attention to the history of magic, and with it, the Egyptian Hall.
Built by Mr William Bullock in 1812 to house his extensive collection of curiosities, the Egyptian Hall covered numbers 170 to 172, Piccadilly, Westminster. Egyptology being the prevailing obsession, it was designed in a broadly Egyptian style, with a frontage reminiscent of Karnak or Luxor. However it was a multi-purpose building. The Musical Repository had shops there, where it manufactured sheet music. A grocer's, Jacksons, remained there until its destruction in 1910, and even after the Hall was gone Jacksons still maintained a shop at its old location for many decades afterward. There were other shops, and an art gallery, but from Bullock's point of view the main purpose of the Hall was to house his museum, originally called the London Museum of Natural History. It went through several other name changes before finally becoming the Egyptian Hall, sometime between 1819 and 1821.
It was an odd collection. One moment the Hall might be home to Egyptologist Belzoni's collection of artifacts, and then next week it might house fresh exhibits Bullock had brought home from Mexico. Then again it might be home to Eng and Chang Bunker, the original Siamese twins. Or P.T. Barnum, or Tom Thumb, or the Mysterious Lady, or magicians, hatchet throwers and other entertainers. This was the age of spectacle, and the Egyptian Hall excelled at spectacle.
The Maskeylnes were not the first magicians at Egyptian Hall by any means, but they were the first to realize the possible benefits of having a theatre of their own. Up till that time a typical magician's career was peripatetic, and one of the consequences was that he had to rely on the theatre having what he needed to carry off the performance. It meant that he had to be versatile, but it also meant that he had to accept the misfortunes of travel. Sometimes this meant disaster; imagine being the magician who, on unpacking his expensive and carefully crafted props and devices after a long sea voyage, discovered that his life's work had been eaten by termites. The Maskelynes were no strangers to this kind of life, and when J Nevil Maskelyne signed up for a three month stay at the Hall in 1873, he probably had no intention of staying longer than that.
Bullock, by this point, was out of the picture, having died in 1849. Before his death the Hall had been bought by lifelong bookseller George Lackington, who rented it mainly for art exhibits and entertainments. It's difficult to find out who owned it after Lackington's death in 1844; presumably either the Lackington bookselling firm owned it outright, or it was held in trust for Lackington's heirs.
J. Nevil Maskelyne soon discovered the benefits of being master of his own theatre, even if, in the Hall, he was merely a tenant. It became his home base. He could travel to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and rest assured that, on his return, he had a space, and his tools of the trade, waiting for him in London, the grandest city of the Empire. His son Nevil followed in his footsteps, spending the first nineteen years of his performing life at the Egyptian Hall. Yet nothing lasts forever. Its owners decided there was more profit in office blocks than magic, and in 1905 the Egyptian Hall was demolished.
As a side note, its dissolution was captured by the artist Muirhead Bone, who later went on to become a famous war painter. The best version I've been able to find is here, and isn't all that clear, but you may have better luck.
The Maskelynes, father and son, went on to St George's Hall, which J Nevil significantly adapted for their work. J Nevil died in 1917 leaving the business to his son Nevil, and Nevil's children, including grandson Jasper who, at the time of J Nevil's death, was only fifteen years old. Jasper's father Nevil died in 1924, when Jasper was barely in his twenties. Nevil had the benefit of nineteen years at the Hall and a further twelve at St George's before inheriting the family business. Jasper had less than a decade. Jasper must have felt bereft, and perhaps a little unsteady on his professional feet, which may help to explain his later erratic behavior.
Jasper was one of five Maskelynes to inherit the magical Maskelyne empire. He had three older brothers. Captain Clive fought in the War and won the Military Cross, despite a heart murmur, and later became a stage magician. John Nevil had no interest in working the stage, and handled the business side of things. Noel also became a magician and maker of illusions, along with Jasper, who was the most adept of the brothers on stage. Their sister Mary, a talented performer, completed the Maskelyne menage.
Before his death, J Nevil attended the inaugural meeting of the Magic Circle at the Green Man pub in Soho, and St George's Hall later became a regular meeting place for the Circle. The Magic Circle eventually established itself at Euston, where it remains to this day. For a time Captain Clive was president of the Circle, but that heart murmur proved to be the death of him at a tragically early age, in 1928. Jasper would have been twenty six years old at that point, when the last strong connection with the Maskelynes of old was severed.
That was the start of the Maskelyne family feuds. Jasper proved to be a difficult sibling to work with, and Clive the war hero seems to have been the glue that held the family together. Jasper was dismissed from the family business in 1933, which coincided with the loss of St George's Hall. It was taken up by the BBC, and the Maskelyne's permanent home for magic ceased to be. The Maskelynes briefly tried to keep the dream alive at a different location, but by the end of 1934 the family business was kaput. St George's itself was demolished in 1966, and a hotel stands where the Maskelynes used to entertain all of London.
Jasper's life never really lived up to his early promise. Though he had an interesting wartime career, how interesting it actually was depends on how much you're willing to suspend disbelief and take Jasper's word for it. "You are not actually under oath when writing your own memoirs," as one historian put it. He chucked it all in and went to Kenya to start a new life as a farmer which, in hindsight, was one of the worst things he could possibly have done. He would have been there post-1960 and during the age of Mau Mau, when independence made things very difficult for those white settlers who'd chosen to believe, in their folly, that the sun would never set on the Empire. Jasper died in 1974, an embittered drunk.
With all that in mind, let's talk about what this might mean for a Bookhounds game.
Both the Egyptian Hall and St George's Hall offer strong possibilities. By the 1930s the Egyptian Hall no longer exists, but the grocer's, Jacksons, does. In fact it may still exist, as Jacksons of Piccadilly, though I can't be certain that the modern Jacksons still occupies its old Egyptian Hall address. Be that as it may, Megapolisomancers may wish to take advantage of this long-standing lever by using Jacksons to keep in contact with the Egyptian Hall of former days.
It may even be possible, if you walk through the right door at Jacksons, to get to whatever's left of the memory of the Egyptian Hall, though what you'd find in that hidden space between worlds is anybody's guess. It once housed anything and everything, from a family of Laplanders plus reindeer to relics from the tomb of Seti I. Who knows what might still lurk in the shadowy, somehow dustless corridors of that Hall which is still a prisoner of time? Possibly spending the night there, or investigating the Hall further, would confer 1 potential Magic point.
Alternatively Jacksons' records might prove very interesting, to students of history. After all, the firm's been there since the Hall was first built. The account books, photographs, and other memorabilia hidden away in Jacksons' offices would prove very interesting, if they could be accessed. Of course, they might be very dusty, the perfect environment for Dust Things.
Or perhaps something else is still living there. A Rat Thing that's been hiding in Jacksons all this while would know everything about the old Hall. It could be that the oldest employee at Jacksons has been there much longer than even his or her employers know; did one of the many mummies housed at the Hall over the years decide to sneak to safety when the Hall was demolished?
St George's Hall is slightly different. It's still home to the Masklynes until 1933, which means it's also home to the Magic Circle. Getting involved with any of the Masklynes, especially Jasper, could be interesting. They're all going to want to collect books on magical practice, mechanical engineering, and other topics related to their craft. J Nevil, like many magicians, was a confirmed skeptic, and founded the Occult Committee to investigate strange claims. By the 1930s J Nevil is long gone, but perhaps Jasper, in his ongoing feud with his siblings, is reviving the Committee out of spite, spending family money on its endeavors. Or perhaps the protagonists, desperate for a bump in the shop's profit margin, is courting members of the Magic Circle in hope they'll become patrons. It's also possible that one of the characters is a practicing stage magician, in which case they might be members of the Circle, or be hoping to join.
Of course, when St George's Hall is taken by the BBC in 1933, the Maskelynes would have to downsize. Even if each of them took some of their props and properties with them, there would probably have been plenty of items left over that Nevil's heirs either wouldn't or couldn't take. That sounds like an excellent opportunity for an auction.
Alternatively among the many bits of props, papers and other ephemera carted over to St George's Hall in 1905 may be something that the characters really want. It might be something owned by the Maskelynes, or something accidentally moved over from the Egyptian Hall. Perhaps an occult artifact, or book, or something more substantial. Maybe something in old J. Nevil's notes holds the key to the protagonists' current dilemma. Or it could be that the stuff in St George's Hall, while not useful in itself, could be used to make a squiz, or be material for a forgery.
That's enough for the moment. Enjoy!
Built by Mr William Bullock in 1812 to house his extensive collection of curiosities, the Egyptian Hall covered numbers 170 to 172, Piccadilly, Westminster. Egyptology being the prevailing obsession, it was designed in a broadly Egyptian style, with a frontage reminiscent of Karnak or Luxor. However it was a multi-purpose building. The Musical Repository had shops there, where it manufactured sheet music. A grocer's, Jacksons, remained there until its destruction in 1910, and even after the Hall was gone Jacksons still maintained a shop at its old location for many decades afterward. There were other shops, and an art gallery, but from Bullock's point of view the main purpose of the Hall was to house his museum, originally called the London Museum of Natural History. It went through several other name changes before finally becoming the Egyptian Hall, sometime between 1819 and 1821.
It was an odd collection. One moment the Hall might be home to Egyptologist Belzoni's collection of artifacts, and then next week it might house fresh exhibits Bullock had brought home from Mexico. Then again it might be home to Eng and Chang Bunker, the original Siamese twins. Or P.T. Barnum, or Tom Thumb, or the Mysterious Lady, or magicians, hatchet throwers and other entertainers. This was the age of spectacle, and the Egyptian Hall excelled at spectacle.
The Maskeylnes were not the first magicians at Egyptian Hall by any means, but they were the first to realize the possible benefits of having a theatre of their own. Up till that time a typical magician's career was peripatetic, and one of the consequences was that he had to rely on the theatre having what he needed to carry off the performance. It meant that he had to be versatile, but it also meant that he had to accept the misfortunes of travel. Sometimes this meant disaster; imagine being the magician who, on unpacking his expensive and carefully crafted props and devices after a long sea voyage, discovered that his life's work had been eaten by termites. The Maskelynes were no strangers to this kind of life, and when J Nevil Maskelyne signed up for a three month stay at the Hall in 1873, he probably had no intention of staying longer than that.
Bullock, by this point, was out of the picture, having died in 1849. Before his death the Hall had been bought by lifelong bookseller George Lackington, who rented it mainly for art exhibits and entertainments. It's difficult to find out who owned it after Lackington's death in 1844; presumably either the Lackington bookselling firm owned it outright, or it was held in trust for Lackington's heirs.
J. Nevil Maskelyne soon discovered the benefits of being master of his own theatre, even if, in the Hall, he was merely a tenant. It became his home base. He could travel to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and rest assured that, on his return, he had a space, and his tools of the trade, waiting for him in London, the grandest city of the Empire. His son Nevil followed in his footsteps, spending the first nineteen years of his performing life at the Egyptian Hall. Yet nothing lasts forever. Its owners decided there was more profit in office blocks than magic, and in 1905 the Egyptian Hall was demolished.
As a side note, its dissolution was captured by the artist Muirhead Bone, who later went on to become a famous war painter. The best version I've been able to find is here, and isn't all that clear, but you may have better luck.
The Maskelynes, father and son, went on to St George's Hall, which J Nevil significantly adapted for their work. J Nevil died in 1917 leaving the business to his son Nevil, and Nevil's children, including grandson Jasper who, at the time of J Nevil's death, was only fifteen years old. Jasper's father Nevil died in 1924, when Jasper was barely in his twenties. Nevil had the benefit of nineteen years at the Hall and a further twelve at St George's before inheriting the family business. Jasper had less than a decade. Jasper must have felt bereft, and perhaps a little unsteady on his professional feet, which may help to explain his later erratic behavior.
Jasper was one of five Maskelynes to inherit the magical Maskelyne empire. He had three older brothers. Captain Clive fought in the War and won the Military Cross, despite a heart murmur, and later became a stage magician. John Nevil had no interest in working the stage, and handled the business side of things. Noel also became a magician and maker of illusions, along with Jasper, who was the most adept of the brothers on stage. Their sister Mary, a talented performer, completed the Maskelyne menage.
Before his death, J Nevil attended the inaugural meeting of the Magic Circle at the Green Man pub in Soho, and St George's Hall later became a regular meeting place for the Circle. The Magic Circle eventually established itself at Euston, where it remains to this day. For a time Captain Clive was president of the Circle, but that heart murmur proved to be the death of him at a tragically early age, in 1928. Jasper would have been twenty six years old at that point, when the last strong connection with the Maskelynes of old was severed.
That was the start of the Maskelyne family feuds. Jasper proved to be a difficult sibling to work with, and Clive the war hero seems to have been the glue that held the family together. Jasper was dismissed from the family business in 1933, which coincided with the loss of St George's Hall. It was taken up by the BBC, and the Maskelyne's permanent home for magic ceased to be. The Maskelynes briefly tried to keep the dream alive at a different location, but by the end of 1934 the family business was kaput. St George's itself was demolished in 1966, and a hotel stands where the Maskelynes used to entertain all of London.
Jasper's life never really lived up to his early promise. Though he had an interesting wartime career, how interesting it actually was depends on how much you're willing to suspend disbelief and take Jasper's word for it. "You are not actually under oath when writing your own memoirs," as one historian put it. He chucked it all in and went to Kenya to start a new life as a farmer which, in hindsight, was one of the worst things he could possibly have done. He would have been there post-1960 and during the age of Mau Mau, when independence made things very difficult for those white settlers who'd chosen to believe, in their folly, that the sun would never set on the Empire. Jasper died in 1974, an embittered drunk.
With all that in mind, let's talk about what this might mean for a Bookhounds game.
Both the Egyptian Hall and St George's Hall offer strong possibilities. By the 1930s the Egyptian Hall no longer exists, but the grocer's, Jacksons, does. In fact it may still exist, as Jacksons of Piccadilly, though I can't be certain that the modern Jacksons still occupies its old Egyptian Hall address. Be that as it may, Megapolisomancers may wish to take advantage of this long-standing lever by using Jacksons to keep in contact with the Egyptian Hall of former days.
It may even be possible, if you walk through the right door at Jacksons, to get to whatever's left of the memory of the Egyptian Hall, though what you'd find in that hidden space between worlds is anybody's guess. It once housed anything and everything, from a family of Laplanders plus reindeer to relics from the tomb of Seti I. Who knows what might still lurk in the shadowy, somehow dustless corridors of that Hall which is still a prisoner of time? Possibly spending the night there, or investigating the Hall further, would confer 1 potential Magic point.
Alternatively Jacksons' records might prove very interesting, to students of history. After all, the firm's been there since the Hall was first built. The account books, photographs, and other memorabilia hidden away in Jacksons' offices would prove very interesting, if they could be accessed. Of course, they might be very dusty, the perfect environment for Dust Things.
Or perhaps something else is still living there. A Rat Thing that's been hiding in Jacksons all this while would know everything about the old Hall. It could be that the oldest employee at Jacksons has been there much longer than even his or her employers know; did one of the many mummies housed at the Hall over the years decide to sneak to safety when the Hall was demolished?
St George's Hall is slightly different. It's still home to the Masklynes until 1933, which means it's also home to the Magic Circle. Getting involved with any of the Masklynes, especially Jasper, could be interesting. They're all going to want to collect books on magical practice, mechanical engineering, and other topics related to their craft. J Nevil, like many magicians, was a confirmed skeptic, and founded the Occult Committee to investigate strange claims. By the 1930s J Nevil is long gone, but perhaps Jasper, in his ongoing feud with his siblings, is reviving the Committee out of spite, spending family money on its endeavors. Or perhaps the protagonists, desperate for a bump in the shop's profit margin, is courting members of the Magic Circle in hope they'll become patrons. It's also possible that one of the characters is a practicing stage magician, in which case they might be members of the Circle, or be hoping to join.
Of course, when St George's Hall is taken by the BBC in 1933, the Maskelynes would have to downsize. Even if each of them took some of their props and properties with them, there would probably have been plenty of items left over that Nevil's heirs either wouldn't or couldn't take. That sounds like an excellent opportunity for an auction.
Alternatively among the many bits of props, papers and other ephemera carted over to St George's Hall in 1905 may be something that the characters really want. It might be something owned by the Maskelynes, or something accidentally moved over from the Egyptian Hall. Perhaps an occult artifact, or book, or something more substantial. Maybe something in old J. Nevil's notes holds the key to the protagonists' current dilemma. Or it could be that the stuff in St George's Hall, while not useful in itself, could be used to make a squiz, or be material for a forgery.
That's enough for the moment. Enjoy!
Sunday, 6 December 2015
Messing with the Protagonists (Night's Black Agents, Dracula Dossier)
I'm playing through the Dracula Dossier with some friends of mine, and I thought that the Directors out there might like to know about a surprise I recently pulled on their unsuspecting IT expert.
This is a fella who does IT in real life, at a fairly high level, so he's up to date on most technical issues. His character has a very high Digital Intrusion pool, and is the one everyone turns to when Electronic Surveillance is needed. His standard response to data management is to back everything up, as often as possible, on as many devices as possible.
Now, to kick things off we started with the scenario in the main book, (S)Entries, which asks the protagonists to recover a laptop belonging to an important NATO officer. This they did, without a hitch. They proceeded to search through the data before handing it over to their contact, and the IT bod also cloned and copied it everywhere. He wanted as many copies as possible, on as many devices as possible.
Among the files on the laptop were four scanned pages of the Dracula Dossier. I let the players pick which four pages. The presumption was that someone (they hadn't met Harker yet) had passed on the Dossier pages to the NATO officer, as part of a scheme to enlist the NATO man's help. The Dossier pages were presumed to be Harker's bona-fides. That scenario led them on to several unconnected adventures which I shan't detail here.
Eventually they recovered the original Dossier, and the IT bod promptly started copying it, scanning it, whatever he could think of, so long as he had an electronic version of it somewhere. No doubt, as a canny player, he was expecting me to try to steal the Dossier at some point. However no matter what he tried he couldn't get a scan. I pointed him to page 200 of the Unredacted Dracula, and that explanation seemed to satisfy him. He believed he couldn't scan the Dossier, so he stopped trying. I think he'd forgotten about the scans in the NATO packet.
Then when things were a bit quieter he settled in with his laptop to see if he could find out what had gone wrong, and at that point with his extensive IT abilities it wasn't long before he discovered the truth.
Now, at this point I have to confess that my background is not IT, and what little I do know about hacking and viruses is at the layman level. I'm interested, certainly, and I pay attention to developments, but I couldn't write a worm to save my life. Not that I'd have to, I suppose; I could always just buy one, off of that dark net everyone's babbling about these days.
The scans in the NATO officer's folders weren't your standard .pdfs. They were .exe files, their purpose being to release a memory-resident virus onto the home system. It is encrypted with polymorphic code, making it very difficult to detect. However the mutating engine can, if the virus is traced, betray its GCHQ origins to a knowledgeable hacktivist like our IT friend.
The virus has two functions. First, if ever someone tries to scan and read Dossier files on an infected machine, those files immediately become unreadable. Second, it alerts the virus originator that a scan has been attempted, and advises the originator of the infected machine's location, current IP address, the works.
Remember, he'd been copying the NATO files everywhere, to any device the protagonists had that would take the data.
Oh dear.
The virus can be removed with a Difficulty 7 Digital Intrusion check. A success of 5 or better, but not 7, makes the protagonist think that the virus has been removed, when it really hasn't. The scan-destroying function is eliminated, but unfortunately for the protagonist the routine that lets the virus contact home is still active, and is now permanently switched on.
Failure on the DI check means that the virus' last act is to destroy the infected hard drive.
The protagonist spent so many DI pool points that success was pretty much guaranteed, and his next act - to be dealt with in an upcoming session - is to have a go at the PNC, to see if he can find out who did this to him. This should be interesting! Time for a Thriller Digital Intrusion contest, methinks ...
More later!
This is a fella who does IT in real life, at a fairly high level, so he's up to date on most technical issues. His character has a very high Digital Intrusion pool, and is the one everyone turns to when Electronic Surveillance is needed. His standard response to data management is to back everything up, as often as possible, on as many devices as possible.
Now, to kick things off we started with the scenario in the main book, (S)Entries, which asks the protagonists to recover a laptop belonging to an important NATO officer. This they did, without a hitch. They proceeded to search through the data before handing it over to their contact, and the IT bod also cloned and copied it everywhere. He wanted as many copies as possible, on as many devices as possible.
Among the files on the laptop were four scanned pages of the Dracula Dossier. I let the players pick which four pages. The presumption was that someone (they hadn't met Harker yet) had passed on the Dossier pages to the NATO officer, as part of a scheme to enlist the NATO man's help. The Dossier pages were presumed to be Harker's bona-fides. That scenario led them on to several unconnected adventures which I shan't detail here.
Eventually they recovered the original Dossier, and the IT bod promptly started copying it, scanning it, whatever he could think of, so long as he had an electronic version of it somewhere. No doubt, as a canny player, he was expecting me to try to steal the Dossier at some point. However no matter what he tried he couldn't get a scan. I pointed him to page 200 of the Unredacted Dracula, and that explanation seemed to satisfy him. He believed he couldn't scan the Dossier, so he stopped trying. I think he'd forgotten about the scans in the NATO packet.
Then when things were a bit quieter he settled in with his laptop to see if he could find out what had gone wrong, and at that point with his extensive IT abilities it wasn't long before he discovered the truth.
Now, at this point I have to confess that my background is not IT, and what little I do know about hacking and viruses is at the layman level. I'm interested, certainly, and I pay attention to developments, but I couldn't write a worm to save my life. Not that I'd have to, I suppose; I could always just buy one, off of that dark net everyone's babbling about these days.
The scans in the NATO officer's folders weren't your standard .pdfs. They were .exe files, their purpose being to release a memory-resident virus onto the home system. It is encrypted with polymorphic code, making it very difficult to detect. However the mutating engine can, if the virus is traced, betray its GCHQ origins to a knowledgeable hacktivist like our IT friend.
The virus has two functions. First, if ever someone tries to scan and read Dossier files on an infected machine, those files immediately become unreadable. Second, it alerts the virus originator that a scan has been attempted, and advises the originator of the infected machine's location, current IP address, the works.
Remember, he'd been copying the NATO files everywhere, to any device the protagonists had that would take the data.
Oh dear.
The virus can be removed with a Difficulty 7 Digital Intrusion check. A success of 5 or better, but not 7, makes the protagonist think that the virus has been removed, when it really hasn't. The scan-destroying function is eliminated, but unfortunately for the protagonist the routine that lets the virus contact home is still active, and is now permanently switched on.
Failure on the DI check means that the virus' last act is to destroy the infected hard drive.
The protagonist spent so many DI pool points that success was pretty much guaranteed, and his next act - to be dealt with in an upcoming session - is to have a go at the PNC, to see if he can find out who did this to him. This should be interesting! Time for a Thriller Digital Intrusion contest, methinks ...
More later!
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