Vampire Rats (Night's Black Agents)

I'm a big fan of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series and its hero, PC Peter Grant. However, living where I do means I can't always pick the latest up on release. I recently devoured Lies Sleeping, in which Peter and his two nemeses, former colleague Leslie and the Faceless Man, have their Good, the Bad and the Ugly showdown. I'm not going to talk about that, except to say go read the damn thing already what the hell are you waiting for? What I'd like to talk about is a very brief non-spoilery throwaway gag.

Nightingale and Frank Caffrey dealt with a vampire nest in Neasden. Curiously these turned out to be infected rats …

That's such a good idea it deserves to be stolen. There's even a small precedent:

"I heard a commotion one day in the yard,” he said, “and there was a young turkey thrashing about the yard with two rats hanging to its neck. I ran into the yard and drove them away and found that they had sunk their teeth into the back of the turkey’s neck and had been sucking the blood. The turkey was strong, but the wounds poisoned it, and swelled its head and I had to kill it. The worst of it is, these rats won’t be poisoned, for they refuse to eat raw meat or cheese that has been fixed for them."

Also, a very fun movie, Mulberry Street. I had a DVD copy but it rotted. I shall have to get another one somehow.

In Night's Black Agents rats get group stats, which increase in stacks of 10. For every 10 rats added to the horde, its Health, Athletics and Damage all go up. Otherwise its ability pools and damage are fairly unremarkable. It works best in large numbers, which is why Steven King wanted to use them in Salem's Lot, but was persuaded against it because it was felt the scene was too gruesome. "I had them swarming all over him like a writhing, furry carpet," says King, "Biting and chewing, and when he tries to scream a warning to his companions upstairs, one of them scurries into his open mouth and squirms as it gnaws out his tongue." King was drawing on a similar moment in Stoker's Dracula, where a horde of flesh-chewing rats are neatly disposed of by Godalming's dogs.

To make this work in-game, the Director needs to answer an important question. Did this happen by accident or design?

If accident, then there must be something that caused this. Perhaps the strange pathogen that created vampires first came from rats, and some of the breed still carry the strain. Or the chemicals got out of the vat, the rats ate a vampire in its coffin and gained some of its powers, what have you. The key thing here is that to understand, and beat, the pack, the agents will need to discover what the accident was, which itself is at least one or two scenes' worth of investigative work. If they don't do this, then the likelihood is they won't exterminate the threat. No matter how much damage they do, one or two of the infected will escape, to carry the infection to another pack.

Once the agents understand the accident, they can devise some kind of cure, perhaps by introducing an antigen of some kind to the wider population. Then the rats solve the problem themselves, by passing the McGuffin on to the rest of the pack. Or perhaps they just spray holy water on anything that moves and most things that don't.

If it was by design, then there has to have been a purpose. Perhaps the vampires intended to use the rats as emergency blood packs, spies, assassins, saboteurs. A magical strain of vampires might give these rat packs to favored human servants as animal familiars; after all, the whole point behind the fabled witch's mark is that the familiar sucked blood from its master at that point. Whatever that purpose may be, the agents need to understand it so they can beat the rats, or work up some kind of defense. If you know that rat saboteurs might come after the cables and wiring in your safehouse, put down lots of rat poison laced with vampire banes. If you know that these rats are magical familiars, then you also know that blooding the witch will cause them to run away in terror.

Next question: how powerful are these meant to be? Answer being, not very. These are minor antagonists at best, not boss monsters. I'd recommend treating them like inferior Renfields, so where Renfields get 12 points to add to abilities, vampire rats get only 4, no  bonus to alertness, +1 melee damage, no free powers, one other power, aberrance starts at 3 and goes up by 1 for every 10 extra rats in the pack. Feats of Strength probably aren't an option, but otherwise pick the one you like the look of. Vulnerable to the same banes and blocks as the vampire that created them, and if that means they explode in daylight, well, now you have kamikaze exploding vampire rats to worry about.

Lucky you!

Forgotten London: The Tyburn Tree (London)

This post inspired by the YouTube channel Plainly Difficult.

So how can this be gamified?

There are a few things that can be played with:

• The gallows themselves.
• The location of the gallows.
• The artifacts associated with the hangings eg broadsheets.
• The psychic impact of the event.

The gallows are a folkloric gold mine. Most people with any interest in horror folklore know about the Hand of Glory, and how it can be used by sorcerers. The condemned on the way to the gallows were especially prized for their curative hands, both before and after the event. There would always be a congregation of sufferers gathered at the three-legged tree hoping for a stroke from the soon-to-be departed, and the hangman could often be bribed to let the chronically ill have a few minutes with the corpse after its last jig was done.

However it wasn't just the hands that were valuable. The gallows themselves were magically potent. Plainly Difficult notes that the permanent gallows Tyburn is famous for were eventually taken down because of persistent vandalism. People were taking great chunks out of the gallows because they believed the wood itself was magical after being watered with the blood of the condemned, a theme that recurs again and again in ghost stories. The wood could cure ague, toothache, and bring luck at cards. 

So, a story seed:

John Rann's Chair A pub in East London claims to have an antique chair made from wood taken from the gallows that took the life of Sixteen String Jack, hung in 1774 for his many crimes. It's said the chair was originally made at the instruction of one of London's most prominent gamblers, Samuel William Rowlinson, a regular at notorious gambling club Brook's. Rowlinson is supposed to have died of a heart attack while playing Hazard at Brook's. Two nights ago a pub regular died sitting in that chair while playing cards, and there's been talk of a curse. What's going on? 

The location of Tyburn Tree is slightly in doubt. It's popularly supposed to be at the junction of Oxford Street, Edgeware Road and Bayswater Road, there's reason to think it might actually have been at Connaught Square.  This Georgian landmark is very exclusive, and has a private shared garden park in which a party is held each year. 

So, a story seed:

The Unwelcome Corpse Each year, the night before the party, the heads of each Connaught Square household gather for a quiet ritual at which they 'hang' a corpse - usually a dummy, though in the early days it's said they obtained their corpses from medical schools - with the intent of keeping Tyburn Tree quiet for another year. This ritual has been going on for longer than anyone can remember, and deadly secrecy is essential since some of the country's most important citizens live at Connaught Square. They couldn't afford the scandal. However this year Connaught Square was horrified to find an actual corpse strangled at the very spot their ritual was to be carried out. Nobody knows who did it, or who the body belongs to. Can this scandal be hushed up? How did this happen, and why?

Bookhounds of London characters will be interested in the broadsheets. Printed cheap and sold for peanuts, surviving copies of these scurrilous rags can be very valuable to collectors. Often the condemned sold her life story to the highest bidder, and had the satisfaction of seeing it sold at the same moment her limbs twitched for the last time. Or perhaps it was a poem, a song, some kind of political pamphlet - but whatever it was, there's bound to be a market for it. Even the lies are valuable, and Lord knows there were plenty of lies to go around. When in need of copy, broadsheet sellers plagiarized old sheets and added just enough new detail to make it seem as if the current condemned actually did all those things. Sex & violence always sells, particularly when mixed with a healthy dose of punishment for the wicked.

Provenance A book scout fallen on hard times and sodden with drink keeps coming up with vintage Tyburn broadsheets, which sell for just enough to keep the scout sozzled. In almost every respect the sheets seem genuine; the right paper, subject material, historical details, even the ink. The one thing wrong about them is they seem too good. Nothing that's been around for two to three hundred years has any business being in this condition. It's as if they were printed yesterday. Where is the scout finding these broadsheets? Why does the scout keep going back to Tyburn?

A Tyburn execution was a popular event. A famous one drew crowds to watch the condemned on his two mile procession to the Tyburn Tree. Wealthy spectators had their own stands built, or rented rooms along the route at one of the many inns or houses, while the poorer mob stood in the heat or rain - and in Britain rain is more likely. The trip to the gallows might take as long as three hours, as the condemned's passage was constantly interrupted. The prisoner often stopped at an inn to have one last drink - after all, a drunken prisoner was a compliant one, particularly if someone thought to slip drugs in his drink. Sometimes the prisoner would be pelted with rotten vegetables, eggs and other things, if they were unpopular or their crimes particularly heinous. More likable condemned would be better treated, but they all came to the same place in the end. 

Traffic Violations The church of St Giles has a traffic problem. Three times in the last three months there's been a serious accident in the street outside its gates, and each time the driver or passenger of the vehicle involved swore the accident happened because the road was slick with what seemed to be blood. Loose talk links the accidents with Tyburn dead buried in the churchyard, and some parishoners are getting hysterical. What's really causing these accidents? Is it to do with Tyburn, or something else? [Esoterrorists Keepers take note: this could be a scheme to weaken the Membrane.]

That's it for this week!

Akkat, Mother of the Sunrise: Part 2, City Builder

Last time I discussed the basics of this city build: what kind of place is it, what is it famous for, where (roughly) is it located? Now the time has come to go into a little more detail. What, exactly, is this city like?

When I've discussed character design before, it's always been in the form of question-and-answer.  Exactly the same process can be followed here, slightly altered. So where I might ask about the character's name, age, ethnicity and gender, I now ask about the city's name, age, ethnic makeup, and landmarks.

To give you some examples:

Name: Akkat, Mother of the Sunrise. The title Mother of the Sunrise derives in part from the city's most valuable find: the Sunrise star gem, currently held by the Lugal, or ruler, of Akkat.

Age: People have been living here for uncounted generations. However the current rule of the guilds is less than a century old; in the time of grandfather's father, Akkat was ruled by the Lugal, who in turn owed his fealty to the great Raj of the Northern Kingdoms. The Northern Kingdoms in their mountain fastness have ceased to be a concern ever since the great rebellions, and the Lugal hasn't been a serious force in local politics for many decades.

Ethnic Makeup: Akkat is majority human. There is a much higher proportion of Tieflings here than anywhere else in human lands; about a fifth of the city are Tieflings, including many of its most important guildsmen. Though there aren't many half-orc citizens, nearly all the guild guard are half-orcs, with human officers - though the officers are largely for show, the guard being commanded in practice by its non-coms. Halflings and Elves are uncommon but not unheard of; many of the riverboat captains and crew are members of these races. Dwarves, gnomes and dragonborn are among the least common, and dragonborn are especially distrusted, since the old Raj of the Northern Kingdoms was led by dragon-kin.

Three Landmarks:

• The Thousand Window Palace, where the Lugal traditionally holds court, is an architectural wonder, and its stained glass windows are a superlative example of the glassblower's art. The scenes depicted there show the great moments of the Lugal, and the Raj. Though the Palace is meticulously preserved, no new windows have been added for a hundred years. The Palace Guard is headquartered here, and the Lugal's Court is open daily, so the Lugal can hear the concerns of his people. The Palace Guard, as distinct from the city guard, is entirely human, and ceremonial. In days long gone, it was often the case that a new Lugal achieved power thanks to the quick and stealthy blade of an influential Guardsman. As a result, these days the Guard aren't allowed anything sharper than a wooden staff. They even eat their food with wooden utensils.
• Destiny Quarter, the ghetto where most of the Tieflings live, is alive morning, noon and night. When Tieflings began coming here, at first they were confined to a small section of the city that nobody else wanted. Over time, as more of them arrived, their political power increased. Now some of the richest citizens of Akkat live here, side by side with the finest merchant mansions, the most expensive and famous inns and eating houses. The one thing that hasn't changed in all that time is Destiny Gate, that used to mark the way in and out of the walled ghetto. The Tieflings prefer it that way, as a reminder; the ghetto walls may have come down, but if you seek your Destiny, you go through that gate. 
• The Permit House is where you have to go if you want permission to build anything. Since the very rocks of Akkat are impregnated with magical materials, and since merely digging a foundation might uncover priceless wealth, building rights are very strictly controlled. There are only three licensed building contractors in the entire city, each of them richer than a king. Building without a license, or hiring yourself out as an independent contractor, is  brutally punished; the hands of those who try are cut off and nailed up above the Permit House door. Applications for new build, or to repair existing buildings, often vanish within the labyrinthine corridors of the Permit House, never to be seen again. Of course, grumble ordinary citizens, Tieflings never seem to have any trouble getting permission ...

Economy: Akkat's most famous, and lucrative, export, is the star gems from which it gets its name and reputation. These highly magical items are sought after by wizards, sorcerers, liches, kings and princes. There are only a handful of official mining operations, and unofficial diggings are harshly punished - hence the Permit House. This increases the scarcity of an already rare commodity. Moreover the wizards and Tiefling jewelers of Akkat are supposed to have an especial affinity for these gems; a magical device incorporating a star gem shaped and polished by their cunning hands is said to be especially powerful, and valuable.

However it does not stop at gems. The forges of Akkat, incorporating that same magically potent stone, are supposed to be capable of producing the finest magical blades. The very best swordsmiths are, it is said, working on sentient items to rival the creations of mythic wonder-workers of times past. Whether or not this is true is besides the point; a magical blade from Akkat, with the mark of one of the Guild's swordsmiths, is worth twice as much as any other of its type, whether or not it has any kind of extra potency. 

Finally there are the glassblowers. This is a relatively recent innovation for Akkat; the first master glassblowers relocated here forty years ago. However in that brief time they have become renowned for their skill and delicate craftsmanship; alchemists and lovers of art alike swear by Akkat glass, which, so it is said, captures sunlight like nothing else on this earth. The thing that puzzles visitors to Akkat is, why do these glassblowers not add new windows to the Thousand Window Palace? Yet, to date, none have.

There is one other branch of the economy that the Guilds and the lords of Akkat prefer did not exist: poppies. Again, thanks to the magical qualities of the city, its people are themselves slightly magical. You can't live all your life surrounded by material from the far-flung stars, and not pick up a tiny amount of background radiation. Even the animals are a touch fey. What this means is, the night-soil of the city - excellent manure - is the perfect food for a particularly delicate flowering plant, commonly called the Sunset Poppy. The seeds of this plant, properly processed, produce an addictive narcotic, sold throughout the Southern lands as Sunset, Moonglow, or Journey's End. The Thieves' Guild makes a very tidy profit from cultivation of these poppies; most, if not all, of the night soil collectors of Akkat are on the payroll. It's safer that way. Those who resist meet unfortunate accidents. The fields, and processing facilities, are outside the city proper, high up in the hills; it makes it that much easier for the lords of Akkat to ignore a problem on its doorstep.

***

What I'm getting at is this: as a designer of worlds, you can create cities and characters in exactly the same way. If you want to design a character, you ask how old they are, how they make their money, what they look like, what they value, what they want, what they dream of, what their secrets are. For a city, you ask exactly the same questions. The difference is merely scale. A city needs more, makes more money, has grander vistas, and outlives even its oldest citizen. But the questions remain the same.

Don't think this just applies to fantasy cities. The same technique can be used to design your version of London, or Macau, or wherever it might be. Sure, a lot of that information can be found in Wikipedia, but you're after the stuff that's not in Wikipedia. Say you're building a version of London much like that Ben Aaronovitch uses for his Rivers of London series. It's very like the London of today - but not exactly like. For the bits that don't fit established modern London, you ask exactly those questions I've asked here - and design your version of London around that.

Which brings me to adventures. Once you design a city, the kind of adventures that happen there should flow from that design. Such as:

A swordsmith has crafted a particularly fine longsword, that he wishes to sell to a nobleman far away. However he needs someone to guard the weapon on its journey South. The swordsmith's rivals are very jealous of his work, and one of them will stop at nothing to prevent the sale - but which of them paid off the bandits that attacked the adventurers?

A Tiefling, on coming of age, or marking a particular life triumph, walks through the Destiny Gate as part of a ceremony that usually involves days, sometimes weeks of feasting, masquerade, and song. The masquerade balls are particularly famous; the grander the masquerade, the more important - and wealthy - the Tiefling host. However this particular Tiefling, on walking through the Destiny Gate, somehow opens up a small, personal connection to the Abyss. Nothing so dramatic as a flaming portal through which can be heard the wailing of the damned; rather, unexpected and swift corrosion, say of furnishings, clothing, or food, or a brief plague of Abyssal small fry, like Dretch, or Manes. Each time this happens, it's centered on the unfortunate Tiefling who walked through the Gate. Naturally this complicates the masquerade somewhat, but it also provokes a human backlash. Can the adventurers defuse the situation, before an angry mob tears through Destiny Quarter?

An innkeeper has, through accident or design, dug a very small pit in the cellar of her inn. Only the tiniest of scrapings, but if the authorities ever hear about it, her hand will be nailed up above the Permit House door. However, if she were somehow to obtain retroactive permission for her illegal excavation, all will be well. Can the adventurers forge, or otherwise obtain, that all-important permit?

That's enough for now. Next week, something completely different!

The Cop Shop (Trail of Cthulhu / Night's Black Agents)

At some point the player characters are going to run afoul of the law, even if they are the law. The things they get up to - breaking and entering is often where it starts, but never where it stops - almost guarantees that, at some point, the local plods are going to want to have a quiet word. Or possibly a loud one, depending on the jurisdiction, but in either case you, as Keeper, need to have some idea what to do next.

First, let's set the scene. It doesn't matter what era the game's taking place in, for this purpose, as the scene's broadly the same. The characters have done something blatantly illegal, and evidence remains that might indicate who did it, and how. Moreover there's always the chance that the police know more than they ought about the occult aspects of the campaign, whether it's infested with bloodsuckers, or a mere bubble of fragile humanity lodged in a sea of unthinking chaos. Then what happens, and what ought the characters to do about it?

The Keeper needs to bear in mind that:

1. The cops don't know everything. Outside of television and Agatha Christie, there really isn't a master detective out there who, having taken only a cursory look at the crime scene, understands exactly how it was done and who did it. To the players, what happened may seem painfully obvious. To the first responders, it's a pool of blood, some expended rounds, and maybe some body parts or a corpse. 
2. Finding out what happened takes time. Investigating the scene, making drawings or taking photographs, collecting evidence, the canvass, interviews;all these things take hours, days, maybe even months before any kind of resolution is achieved.
3. There are always other suspects. That cult leader or necromancer the characters put down like a rabid dog undoubtedly had plenty of enemies, and the police are going to go through that list name by name. It only gets more complicated if anything screwy's on the scene, like a burial pit with a dozen or more other dead bodies in it, or physical evidence that suggests the decedent is someone, or thing, completely out of the ordinary.
4. There are always other cases. To the protagonists, this is the only crime in town, but to the cops this is maybe the third shooting tonight. It could just go cold, as so many cases do, or  something much more urgent - a terror threat, a spectacular burglary - may come up to distract the law.  

That said, if the characters make it easy for them, the cops might be knocking on their door sooner rather than later. Did they leave fingerprints everywhere? Or, worse yet, business cards? Were they seen talking with the decedent shortly before the incident? Did the dead person or crime scene have any kind of record of them, say in an appointments book, CCTV, or a collection of blackmail photographs? Then the characters ought to take care, or they'll find themselves in serious trouble.

But what happens when the police know more than the characters would like them to? Some fantasy novels - Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, for instance - assume that there are organizations, or people, within the police who understand the spooky stuff, and who can take action against it. What happens then? 

A great deal will depend on the setting. Trail of Cthulhu posits two types of game, Purist, and Pulp. Bookhounds of London further divides into Arabesque, Technicolor, and Sordid. A Pulp or Technicolor game is probably best suited to a campaign setting in which the police have a Peter Grant style organization within it, dedicated to dealing with occult threats and capable of using arcane powers. In that kind of setting the police could be very useful allies, but even more dangerous enemies. If the Occult Sciences secret division of whatever passes for Military Intelligence decides that the player characters know too much, it has all the resources of a vengeful Government to bring to bear on them. At that point the characters had better leave the area as soon as they're able.

A Purist setting allows for more nuance. There probably are policemen who've seen too much; there may even be one or two who've begun putting the pieces together. But those are lone wolves, disbelieved - even mocked - by their fellow officers. Promotion doesn't come easily to them. In some situations - an Arabesque campaign, for instance - these policemen may have other resources to bring to bear. Imagine a setting in which the constable who always seemed to have that certain something about him, is actually a Knight of the City, protected by London itself; though he, oblivious, may not realize it, the City is helping him each day, keeping him from harm, helping him in his work. Or one in which, being a seventh son of a seventh son, he has the gift of second sight.

Sordid has its own complications. There may be police who know a little about the occult, or even the Mythos, but nothing's free in a Sordid world, and everyone's on the take. Expecting someone like that to be a faithful ally is expecting far too much. On the other hand, a cop with that kind of knowledge may throw their weight around, leaning on the characters when they need to, even blackmailing them if the opportunity arises. 

Night's Black Agents is a different situation. In those games, the police exist mainly as roadblocks or barriers, to be thrown in whenever Heat gets a little too much for the characters. Exciting chase scenes can be had, maybe even a gun battle or two, but the characters generally aren't expected to do much interacting with the local law on a face-to-face basis, particularly since the agents probably aren't going to be in one place long enough. Athens tonight, Paris tomorrow, and if they happen to leave two bodies behind in their travels, they're too far away from the scene to care.

In those situations, it may be worth the Keeper making a note of where the characters have been, in case they go back. Say they made a mess in Athens, went to Paris, had several more adventures, and then, after the Athens debacle has long since faded in the players' memories, they go back to Greece - Heraklion, why not - for another piece of the puzzle. The characters may have forgotten, but the Greek police won't, and old sins may come back to haunt the agents. Sure, they've changed covers since then, but it only takes one careless moment for Heat to suddenly skyrocket, as the cops realize the doofus they caught taking photographs of a military base is actually the same person involved in multiple homicides a year ago.