This post is inspired by a recent Reuters photo montage about the declining cruise ship industry. Faced with a tourism product that's basically dead and stuck with some very expensive white elephants, cruise lines are sending their ships to the breaker's yard. The images are very evocative, and Reuters had them courtesy of Turkish photojournalist Umit Betkas.
You can see the cruise line's POV. Even assuming a vaccine is developed within, say, the next six months and rolled out planet-wide, people aren't going to be booking all-in cruises anytime soon. Confidence is shaken, the economy's in tatters, banks are calling in their loans, dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. So unless they have bottomless pockets - and they really, really don't - the company's got to look at its stock and consider which can be mothballed for the future and which ought to go to the knacker's yard now, while there's still some value in their carcasses.
An awful lot of them are going now.
Look at that picture. So many of these ships seem designed to a pattern, don't they? The same services offered, the same entertainment; the only things different, really, are the routes they take, and the total capacity of a particular liner. Some have been rotting for years, and others might have arrived yesterday. The staterooms probably still have some of their old furnishings and fittings, the stuff the line couldn't get rid of quickly enough. There's probably still a little fuel, definitely some contaminants of some description - nobody's ever quite that careful when throwing rubbish in someone else's bin, which is effectively what's happening here.
Once upon a time I wrote an Esoterrorists article for Page XX about a cruise ship stricken with Glistening, and now seems as good a time as any for an update. The article can be found here.
Briefly: the Glistening is an Outer Dark entity that spreads like a disease, infecting humans and controlling their actions. One, the Sessile, becomes the home base; this is a former human whose transformation is complete. The Sessile can't move or do much of anything, but it can act through its kinda-not-really human subordinates. It spreads like a disease but it behaves a bit like a beehive, with the Sessile as queen. The Sessile has a limited lifespan so the Glistening is always looking for potential replacements, which is what kicked off the Page XX scenario.
As an aside, Glistening infestation markers - a slightly elevated temperature and occasional nausea - could be interpreted as COVID symptoms, which would provoke an immediate medical intervention, followed by contact tracing. This is a problem for the Glistening. Its whole shtick is that it passes unnoticed. That's not possible if, at the first sign of nausea and a temperature, the person infected rushes off to the emergency room. Ordo Veritatis definitely has medical informants in place for just such an occasion, though by now those teams will be stretched very thin. One of the few benefits of COVID, in an Esoterrorists universe, is that it really cuts down on the Outer Dark infections.
In the (pre-COVID) scenario a Sessile established itself near the HVAC system supply of Nautilus Cruise Lines' Festival Allure, and Ordo Veritatis became involved when a whistleblower sent compromising security footage to Ordo. That was the kick-off for Operation VENICE BEACH, but in the course of the scenario the agents had the chance to discover that the Sessile was a refugee from a previous Operation, QUEEN PAWN.
Now Ms. Verity wants you for follow-up: Operation YELLOW DOG.
Whatever happened in the previous scenario or its veil-out, Festival Allure went on its merry way. Its reputation may have been tarnished, it may even have suffered structural damage depending on how gung-ho the agents were. However the ship survived, and Ordo's never been entirely happy about the situation. Sure, everything that could have been done was done, but what if the Glistening or one of its Slaves got away? Hid itself somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship?
Festival Allure's career since the incident has been much less profitable - bad news tends to sink careers. For that reason when the time came to decide which ship to keep, Nautilus sent Festival Allure to the breaker's yard in Turkey with scarcely a second thought.
In stepped Ordo Veritatis. This time they'll make sure the Glistening's dead.
The action takes place in Aliaga, Turkey. Aliaga has an ancient heritage; the Aeolian city Myrina once stood very near Aliaga, and another ancient city, Gryneum, is also very close.. These days Aliaga gets much of its cash from shipbreaking and oil refining, with a bit of tourism thrown in. The town's quite small, barely 60,000 people - significantly smaller than Woodbridge, New Jersey, which is the smallest city on Wikipedia's handy list of American cities by size. It has some nice beaches, the seafood's good, and just across the way - the shipbreaker yard, with its spotty occupational health & safety record, pollutants, and diseases. To attract European business the breakers are improving, but it's a slow process. Turkey has a significant terrorist problem and no doubt even a place as small as Aliaga has a few al-Qai'ida sympathizers.
Which could be a darn good excuse for an Ordo Veritatis incursion force.
This follow-up scenario is a mix between Investigation and Counter-Ops Response. Ordo strongly suspects enemy action, but doesn't have the best relationship with Turkey and would rather not go toe-to-toe with Turkey's government. The agents use EU cover stories to get in, acting as advisors for one or more environmental investigation entities. However if it turns out that Ordo's worst fears are coming true then the heavy mob will show up looking for "al-Qai'ida." At that point the authorities will be on board - so long as the civilian body count's low.
Options:
- No Sessile, but ... The Glistening outbreak was pretty well contained the first time around, and there's no threat from that quarter. However, all is not well in the breakers yards; that lackadaisical attitude to health & safety gives rise to all sorts of peculiar things. Blood Corpses hide in dead ships during the day, sneaking out at night to prey on unwary tourists and urban poor. The authorities have noticed, but think it's more likely low-level crime or, at worst, a very small wannabe terrorist cell than anything more sinister. More worryingly there are a few Scourgers hanging around as well. Does their presence mean something more dangerous has its eye on Aliaga?
- Festival No More. Ordo was right; there were some remnants left behind after VENICE BEACH. Shattered, caught on the back foot, but something did survive. A Sessile's hiding in the bowels of the broken ship, sucking in shipyard workers. It wants out; it's terrified of Festival Allure, after what happened last time, and is working towards relocating somewhere safer.
- Long Legged Beasties. Well, the Festival's not really the problem any more. The bigger issue by far is that many of the ships brought to Aliaga had Glistening outbreaks of one kind or another, and now they're all in one place ... It's gone way beyond Sessile now. One ship in particular is host to a massive entity that's busily spreading its essence far beyond Aliaga. Those tourists who come to play on the beach or visit historic sites are fodder for its overall plan. Not that Sessiles really plan, per se, but something that large and alien, who knows what it's capable of? Counter-Ops Response incoming!
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