Sayers isn't alone in this. M.R. James often had his protagonist out looking for buried treasure of one kind or another (Abbot Thomas) and E.G. Swain had his priestly Mr. Batchel out looking for Stoneground loot about one episode in three, more or less, often to be thwarted by his ghosts.
Sayers is possibly a little unique in that Lord Peter regularly finds important clues in antiquarian books, or libraries. In The Bone of Contention, which features not one but two ghosts, the all-important will of Dead Rich Man is found in an edition of The Nuremberg Chronicle kept in the dead man's library, sadly neglected. It's because the book is stained with damp, but the will is not, that Lord Peter smells a rat. In The Dragon's Head, Lord Peter and his nephew Gherkins find clues to the location of pirate treasure in Munster's Cosmographica Universalis.
M.R. James also hid wills or other important clues to cash in antiquarian volumes (Tractate Middoth) but tended to be less obscure; a biblical quote or two, certainly, but actual treasure maps, no.
Consider: most people go looking for Mythos texts because they contain knowledge . Things Man Was Not Meant To Know (Or Spell. Or Smell, For That Matter). Which is all well and good, but what happens when someone who couldn't care less about occult knowledge happens to pick a Mythos text in which to hide the clues to the loot? What if that book is a treasure map?
Sayers had one advantage over the rest of us. Her audience was keen to solve mysteries, which is why she could devote chunks of her narrative to, say, solving an actual crossword puzzle. I suspect if you, the Keeper, were to present the players with an actual crossword puzzle to solve before they could advance the narrative, there'd be a revolt. It might be perfectly in keeping to present the characters with a Latin Squares puzzle to solve - first invented in 1783, apparently - but you'd be unwise to present one unless you'd like the game to come to a crashing halt.
Dungeons and Dragons is particularly fond of presenting players with abstruse trap-puzzles to solve lest the player-characters be perforated by pitchforks. Some DMs seem to find great pleasure in designing peculiar puzzle palaces. I often wonder how happy their players are to find these encounters.
No, while the average player likes putting together clues to advance plot nobody wants some kind of quasi-Resident-Evil hunt for the Rooster Key before they can go through the Rooster Door to find the Oyster which contains the Pearl which when combined with the Ruby and the Emerald will ... and so on. Besides, while the character might be an analytical genius capable of solving sixteen impossible challenges before breakfast there's no guarantee the player is.
Hence the Clue system in Gumshoe, both Core and Optional.
Figuring out the puzzle is hard enough for a group of armchair detectives, without someone withholding half the pieces from them. GUMSHOE, therefore, makes the finding of clues all but automatic, as long as you get to the right place in the story and have the right ability. That’s when the fun part begins, when the players try to put the components of the puzzle together.
Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:
1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,
2.Have the right ability to discover the clue, and
3.Tell the Keeper that you’re using it. [Trail, p.51]
To expand on this, I'm going to rely on point 1., Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered, and suggest to you that the Core Clue scene can be layered with other scenes to create a treasure map.
Example: in Sayers' Dragon's Head Lord Peter, through the innocent purchase of an antiquarian book by his nephew Gherkins, discovers that the book contains information that will lead to loot. However, he cannot understand it. He knows the information's there, but doesn't know what it is.
To completely understand what's going on, Lord Peter has to do two things. First, he has to learn more about the book's previous owner. He can do this anywhere; he doesn't need to be in a particular location or scene. Second, he has to go to the place where the loot is hidden and use the book in a particular way. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm trying to avoid story spoilers as much as possible; hopefully this doesn't make my point obscure.
In short, he has the Clue and knows it is a Clue, but needs more information before he can completely appreciate the Clue. It is a layered Clue. It has multiple meanings leading to a final result, and that final result can only be obtained by going to a scene where relevant information can be gathered.
In game, Keepers sometimes express this layered Clue in terms of Pool Points. Reading this text, for instance, gives the player 2 pool points in Uncovering The Treasure. However, in order to use those pool points the character has to get to the scene where those pool points become relevant.
A Keeper in this situation is free to rule that spending one of those points allows the investigator to work out where (ie. in what scene) the Clue can be used. It saves time, is a viable use of the pool, and allows the investigator spotlight time.
It's what I like to think of as a By Jove! moment. The Great Detective, thanks to an info revelation, suddenly knows who did it or what really happened. Often it's the Detective's Watson saying something apparently trivial that sparks this intuitive leap, but it can as easily be the Detective poring over some text or other looking for inconsistences.
In this case By Jove! basically means the character works out, from the information in front of them, where they have to go next. It does not necessarily tell the character how to get there, or what's in the way. There may be sinister cultists waiting in ambush, or lethal traps at the story location. There may be logistic reasons why the characters can't just easily transition from one place to another; perhaps the place they need to get to is in the middle of a civil war, for example. All it does is tell them where, not how, or whether there will be problems along the way.
Let's put all this into practice. For the sake of example this is going to be a Bookhounds seed, but a Treasure Map could be used to fit many different situations and settings.
For this example I'm going to use one of the Ripley Scrolls as my Treasure Map. Alchemist George Ripley (c. 1415–1490) is alleged to be the creator of these scrolls, which are transcriptions or variations on a lost 15th century original text. Nobody knows whether this is so, but occasionally some of Ripley's poetry is found in the text so the scrolls became known as Ripley scrolls. These are examples of emblematic symbolism, less physical chemistry and more esoteric philosophy, perfect for my purposes.
Of course, it's a scroll, not a book. That doesn't have to be a problem but I'd prefer it was a book, since that muddies the waters even further by obscuring the true nature of the original text.
I'm going to say that in this example the scroll has actually been cut up and tipped into a larger alchemical work compiled by an unknown academic at some point in the 17th century. Using the Shelfware and Foxing section of Bookhounds I shall also say that:
- At some point in the 19th century the cheap paper wrapper collection was rebound in morocco leather;
- That it is infested with alien insects (of which more later);
- That part of it is in code, a variant of Alphabetum Kaldeorum ("alphabet of the Chaldeans")
- That it has no name or title, but is known as ex libris August Strindberg, after its most famous owner.
To add that Mythos tinge, let's go one step further and say that the Scrolls were created by someone - Ripley, or another - under the domination of the Great Race. That's why it is always infested with those strange insects; it is a point in space/time permanently linked with Pnakotus, and while not quite a functioning Gate it is just enough of a portal to allow small things through. This works both ways, so on the other side of the connection is a small pile of mouse bones, roaches, and other oddments from Earth. Nothing larger than a signet ring can pass, in either direction.
This also means that destroying the book causes the portal to explosively decompress, allowing whoever destroyed it a close-up look at Pnakotus. Mythos shock, stability Loss +3, Sanity Loss +2, damage as pipe bomb (p 67 main text) which means everyone within 30 to 40 yards is in danger, and anyone who dies as a result is sucked into Pnakotus. In theory, if the Keeper is feeling particularly unkind, something from Pnakotus could be sucked through. Perhaps one of the Great Race, dazed and bleeding from transit, could spend a few rounds being unpleasant to everything nearby until it works out how to return to Pnakotus.
Skimming gets the reader 2 pool points Uncovering The Treasure. Poring over it gets +2 Mythos, no spells, and +1 Occult.
The Treasure is something completely unrelated to the Mythos text. It has to do with Strindberg, when he was going through his Inferno (1869 – 92) period.
Strindberg allegedly suffered temporary insanity, at least according to his contemporaries. A self-proclaimed "socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath," he switched completely and became a mystic Catholic. He claimed an outside force, The Powers, had forced this on him, causing physical and mental suffering as part of their revenge on humankind for their wrongdoings.
One of the results of this period was his semi-autobiographical work, Inferno. The other, allegedly, was the Golden Fleece, which Strindberg accidentally discovered during his Parisian sojourn. Experts are divided as to whether this is a philosophical construct (as hinted at in Strindberg's letters to Nietzsche) or a physical artefact which, for whatever reason, Strindberg couldn't bring himself to sell to solve his money problems.
Those who say the Fleece is a physical object claim that Strindberg hid the location of the Fleece in ex libris Strindberg. Wild-eyed literary wackos and get-rich-quick chancers from all over the world would give anything to obtain it, though whether they could understand its literary allusions is another matter.
So there are plenty of people who want this book who have no idea what the Mythos is, and could care less. Given the treasure's alleged location, Paris, it could be interesting to mix this with Dreamhounds and say that some of those trying to understand ex libris Strindberg are surrealists who want ex libris for its philosophical underpinnings, not the Fleece. However, surrealists are poor as dirt and couldn't afford to be in the same room as ex libris, much less purchase it, so they're quite likely to want to 'liberate' (steal) it.
OK, we have a book, a treasure, and a potential locale, Paris. What next?
Divide up the sequence into the appropriate scenes.
The Opening Scene is the acquisition of the book. Maybe in a house clearance, an auction, or however, but the Hounds get ex libris. As a result of that acquisition they get their first Core Clue: The Map. They understand that the information leads to treasure, and they may even know what the treasure is, but they don't know how to interpret it.
Optional lines of investigation include translating the Chaldean code, finding out more about Strindberg, finding out more about the source of the book (who sold it and why), finding out more about the provenance of the book (is it what it claims to be?) Meanwhile there are other things going on. The alien insects make their presence felt. Maybe someone picks up on all that Mythos knowledge and makes some bad assumptions about the nature of the problem.
Play it all out, but remember the key point: while they have the information, they are not in the right scene to make full use of it. The Hounds are in London. To make full use of the Clue, they need to be in Paris.
The easiest kind of transition is geographic. To be in the right scene, the Hounds need to change location. It's not the only way to handle the problem. The Hobbit did exactly the same thing with hidden lettering on Thorin's map, making it so the map's secrets could only be read at a particular time of year, under certain conditions. So in that situation the transition is time, not location. In a related Hobbit scene, the transition is expertise. Only one person, Elrond, could translate and understand the map. Finally, the information the map provided could only be acted on at a specific time of year, in a particular location.
Transition in time, in geography, in expertise - all in one map.
But for our purposes in ex libris, the transition is purely geographic. The Hounds have to get to Paris. this allows the Keeper a chance for transit shenanigans Orient Express style, with mysterious strangers on the train perambulating around like little red herrings - until one of them makes a play for ex libris. Whether for its Mythos importance or its value as a map. After all, the Great Race might be very interested in this little travelling portal to their time/space dimension and yet have no interest in the Golden Fleece. Whereas your average treasure nut has little interest in the Mythos but really wants the Fleece.
Once in Paris the Hounds can use the Core Clues to their fullest, working out precisely where the Golden Fleece is from the information in ex libris. What they do with this information is up to them. As an artifact the Golden Fleece is incredibly valuable, but surely there's a reason why Strindberg didn't try to sell it. Is there some curse? Does it have magical properties? Is there a guardian - ghouls, perhaps, or a serpent?
All that's for you and your players to determine.
That's a Layered Clue. Obtained in one scene, but can only be properly understood in another, the two scenes being divided by geography.
This is a relatively simple example with only two layers; it's easy to imagine a Layered Clue with multiple layers, divided not just by geography but also time, and possibly other factors as well. A Layered Clue that can only be properly understood by someone with the In The Blood drive. Or someone with 1 or more Magic pool, That only gives its secret up when the right stars shine overhead, or when the moon is full. A complicated Layered Clue could be the centerpiece of an entire campaign, depending on just how complicated the Keeper wants to make it.
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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