When you put idiots in charge, expect stupidity.
As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, there’s a quote that has been attributed to several different people and which may be apocryphal, about German officers and their qualities. It goes like this:
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
This particular paradigm has put the stupid and industrious in charge.
You can make a career out of stupidity. Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels makes the bedrock assumption that a bunch of people with high security clearances had unprotected intercourse with the pooch and are now shitcanned to a dead letter office for spies. However, it’s not a career that allows for much upward growth. Which is the whole point of Slough House.
As vices go, though, you generally don’t expect people with high security clearances to demonstrate a great deal of incompetence. Ideally, if they were ever in the running for the top job, they would be competent and demonstrate that competence during their working career.
However, it sometimes happens that people, extremely stupid and incompetent people, are promoted to the top job. Perhaps it’s the old school tie. Perhaps it’s because they look good on television. The alcoholism or the bumbling is ignored for reasons that don’t really bear close scrutiny. Now the idiot has the corner office with the good view, and everyone has to wonder: when will this come to its logical end?
Let’s gamify this from two perspectives.
Let’s assume that Edom’s old CIA pals at Find Forever are led by an idiot.
Then let’s assume that someone in the Conspiracy is an idiot.
Remember what I said a while back about assets, powers and goals? Birds got ‘em, bee’s got ‘em, even educated fleas got em, and NPCs, nodes, are no different. That also applies to idiots, but let’s not think about idiots right now.
Let’s think about the people who work for idiots.
Each and every moron has a staff. Depending on the importance of the moron, they may have quite a substantial staff. This is important because staff counts toward the assets of the moron and bolster the moron’s power.
However, the staff have something in common with the people of Czechoslovakia.
When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets in 1968, the newspaper Večerní Praha published “10 commandments”, writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know 2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to 6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do nothing.”
It's basic noncompliance. I bring this up because the staff of a moron are likely to be one of two types:
- Equally moronic, and therefore likely to follow the party line to the best of their ability.
- Noncompliant.
This will affect the capability of the moron in charge.
First let’s assume that the CIA Station Chief in London is a moron, in charge of the CIA’s assets and operations, and that Station Chief is briefed on Find Forever. Technically the CIA isn't supposed to be conducting active spying operations within a friendly nation like, say, running vampire assets in London. But technicalities have never stopped anyone before, and here we have someone who’s both stupid and industrious.
Someone who’s tasked with assisting Find Forever in their operations, by working with (or against) Edom to get access to their vampire, or the fabled Dossier.
It probably won’t take Edom long to work this out. Perhaps someone they know or someone in the public eye - the Journalist, let's say - is invited to the group chat, or perhaps someone leaves a laptop in the pub. There are all sorts of ways this can happen.
The question then becomes, what to do about it?
The most reasonable course of action, bearing in mind Edom can’t afford to antagonize the Americans, is to Flip someone or Reverse Trace something. That is, subvert someone on the moron’s staff, or cover up (Reverse Trace) the location of the Dossier, perhaps by creating a fake for the moron to go after. Edom doesn’t want to kill anyone. They just want the problem to go away.
However, this carries its own risks. If the moron decides to take things a little too far, people could die. Or operations could be blown.
Let’s say for the sake of this narrative that the CIA station chief becomes aware of something that Edom would rather not have general knowledge. The location of Ring, say, or the true identity of whoever-it-may-be currently kept at Proserpine. Then the CIA station chief promptly spills their guts and, in the process, alerts the Conspiracy to this vital knowledge.
Well, darn. Now the agents have to Defend that asset. All because the Find Forever guy is a thundering idiot.
This could turn into a miniseries worth of scenarios. What did Barney Fife of the CIA do this week? How will it make our lives worse?
Now let’s assume that someone high up in the Conspiracy is a thundering idiot.
Let’s say for the sake of it that the someone in question is dear old Uncle Albert of Bankhaus Klingemann.
Now, Albert is presumably good at his day job, or he wouldn’t have it. However, his day job is being a banker. That doesn’t mean he’s any good at anything else. He might be a complete idiot when it comes to, say, tradecraft, or interpersonal relationships, or any one of a dozen other things. Or he might be relatively sensible when sober but isn’t often sober. Dealer’s choice as to his particular issue.
However, if he has an issue, then he’s a threat to the Node in two ways.
First, he might authorize an Antagonist Reaction that’s completely inappropriate, or which gives away important information that the Conspiracy would prefer remain a mystery. Say, by using the zombie virus which the Conspiracy was saving for deployment a few months from now, thus giving the game away and giving the forces of Justice information with which they can invent a zombie vaccine. That kind of thing.
Second, his staff might become a little too ambitious when they realize they’re working for a cretin, because they want the cretin’s job. They might not know his job comes with Conspiracy strings attached. All they know is it comes with a corner office and a healthy pay bump, thank you very much.
This is where Czechoslovakia comes in, because staff like that are going to be very noncompliant to the higher-ups, but remarkably willing to cooperate with anyone who can get rid of the moron in charge. This lets the agents in on some of the Conspiracy’s best secrets.
Noncompliance means that the Node’s effectiveness is threatened.
Meanwhile, cooperation with the enemy comes with its own hazards. In this thought experiment the enemy doesn’t have to be the agents; there are any number of third-party agencies out there willing to do Bankhaus Klingemann a dirty turn. Say, Find Forever, or the Alraune. Or Carmilla. Again, dealer's choice as to who gets involved but somebody's bound to, once blood's in the water.
Say that staff member reaches out to someone they think is reliable and that someone turns out to be the Alraune, who's been waiting for this opportunity. All of a sudden, the agents face a complication they didn't know existed, and all because dear old Uncle Albert is a cretin.
Remember that old saw about having someone walk through the door with a gun in their hand. This opens up possibilities. Normally the door-walking so and so is a known quantity, but not this time. It could be absolutely anyone with a gun in their hand. All sorts of new clues can be sprinkled about the place in that situation. Which breeds plot, and plot is always to be encouraged.
Clue
That's it for this week. Enjoy!
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