Bone Ash - RPG All

This week's post is inspired by this Guardian article:

[Chinese] Practice of using apartments to store relatives’ ashes has risen as rapid urbanisation and ageing population increases competition for cemetery plots

It is difficult to picture a world in which space in cemeteries costs more than space in apartment buildings. Or that you can rent an apartment for more than three times longer than you can space in the grave. I have to wonder what happens to cemetery remains when your time runs out and there's no more money. Presumably the grave is emptied but I have a hard time believing the remains are just flung into a midden. Yet ... what else could happen?

Picture being the person who lives in the same building as one of these Bone Ash Apartments. You know what that quiet door on the same corridor as you hides. You recognize some of those who come and go. You can smell the incense. There may be peculiar deliveries. Perhaps priests come to visit. Or you hear ceremonies. But you can't intrude, you can't comment. That is their grief. One day it may be yours. 

There must be someone from the family who comes round on a regular basis. Someone has to make sure the proper observances are made, that the apartment is kept in good order. That person has to take time off work to do it, or perhaps they don't work, or perhaps they come round after work. They would be the public face of the family, the one the neighbors see. But there would be a family, perhaps dozens of people scattered all over, all of whom have an interest in what goes on in that apartment.

I wonder what effect this has on a person's social credit. It can't be misconduct, not precisely, and yet ... like any system there must be grey areas, the neither-this-nor-that, and operating a bone ash apartment feels very much a neither-this-nor-that. Someone's name has to be on the lease. Someone pays utilities. Whoever that person is, they're removing an apartment from the pool that might otherwise be occupied by the living. Does this count as 'other non-life and non-work essential consumption behavior'? If that person passes on the lease to someone else in the family - which presumably they must do at some point, since nobody lives forever and a seventy-year lease could easily go through multiple owners - what impact will that have on the inheritor? 

All that said, let's consider the RPG impact. 

Systems like D&D don't go much into religion or funerary behavior. Despite the number of scenarios taking place in crypts or graveyards. The role of the Gods is to grant spells to player characters and occasionally Smite things, not to actually have Views and Opinions as to what mortals should be doing with their time. When funerals come up, if they come up at all, there's the general (rather confused) view that funerals are a bit like the Judeo-Christian-but-not-really plop 'em in the ground and call it a day. Assuming there is a ground. Finding space for cemeteries is a problem that fantasy cities don't seem to have, in contrast to real-life London or Paris for whom cemetery space has been a constant headache. It's just assumed there's a nice spot round here somewhere to plonk your most recent player character, who tragically fell in the fight against Monster-of-the-Week syndrome.

Swords of the Serpentine goes out of its way to mention statues, and hints at an involved funerary practice.

Hundreds of thousands of statues. They’re in canals, on roofs, filling homes and staring out from niches in walls. It’s illegal to destroy a funerary statue, because that could destroy a soul, so families put the statues of their dead anywhere they can find space. A surprising number of crimes in Eversink involve funerary statues ... 

I don't think Cyberpunk RED mentions funerals, funeral homes or cemeteries at all. The impression the main text gives indicates Night City is desperate for space, so there seems to be no room for, say, a Père Lachaise or a Forest Lawn. Maybe a bone ash apartment would have a place in Night City but given how apartments are also at a premium that seems counterintuitive. 

Night's Black Agents mirrors the real world and Dracula Dossier makes time for Asian vampires so it seems reasonable that a scenario set in China, or somewhere influenced by China, would have a Bone Ash apartment. Theoretically they might exist outside China, anywhere there's a significant Chinese diaspora. I wonder, for instance, what the situation is in Macao. Or hell, Puerto Rico, or anywhere else there's been a significant modern Chinese presence. 

Let's establish some baselines.

• This is a public hidden space. It looks like an apartment, a business, a whatever-it-may-be, but it's not.
• It has deep significance for the people who maintain it, who regularly hold rituals here.
• It is owned/operated/maintained by a group of people who may or may not be related by blood but are definitely working towards the same end result.
• If there is a supernatural component, that component is more significant than a single ghost or haunting. In a world where, say, Aberrance pools exist, the site's pools might be higher than expected.

Dungeons & Dragons (or Similar)

The Guildhall

This space is within territory claimed by the Beggar's Guild, who may or may not be closely aligned with the Thieves' Guild. To look at, the building the space is in has been abandoned for years. However, there is a section protected by hidden walls and doors (makeshift, but surprisingly well constructed) where the beggars venerate their dead. Each soul memorialized here is represented by something they valued in life. It might be a cane, a scrap of clothing, a sketch. Whatever this thing is, it is up on a series of shelves put there by the beggars. At first it would have been a few items, nothing much, but over time the space has grown into a small library of the city's forgotten. These are the ones who couldn't afford anything better. Their successors remember them.

Swords of the Serpentine

City Watch Pub

From the outside, this is no different from any one of a dozen other cheap alehouses in the district. However, each of these is marked with Lady Swan somewhere on or near the door. This is where the Constables and Sergeants gather. Technically Inspectors and above are still considered Constables, but they aren't exactly welcome in the Pubs, though they are sometimes seen there. Each of the Pubs has a memorial board of some description. They vary from Pub to Pub, and some are much more elaborate than others. The Boards tell the stories behind the statues, remembering the deeds of Constable such-and-such who fell in the line of duty. The Constable's statue will be somewhere in the Pub. It is tradition for new Constables to 'buy a round for the house' after their first big arrest, and that includes the statues who get alcohol poured over them. It's said that Sorcerers covet the power that gathers in these places, or are afraid of these places, or that Sorcery works differently there. It's not clear whether this is so, or just something the City Watch tells themselves at night, when their fears hang on their shoulders.

Cyberpunk RED

The Wall

Every district has one. The taggers' Wall, covered in signs and graffito. Under all that paint there's a memorial for every joker who thought they'd make a name for themselves in Night City. Under all that paint, because every night there's more jokers adding their tags, making their names. The cops don't even think about touching the Wall. Every so often there's some Corporate who makes a big stink about quality of life, cleaning up the city, who promises big investments if only someone will take care of the Wall. It never happens. What's more likely to happen is that the Corporate in question is run out on a rail, sometimes literally. The last one got out buck naked in a corp limo so liberally covered in tags that, the stories say, the Corporation had to burn it and did their best to wipe the screams clean of all images. The most elaborate Wall, they say, is in Little China, which has a braindance studio attached. There, for a fee, you can jack in and listen to all the messages left behind by the dead. A kind of 'only after my death' message in the metaphorical bottle.  

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Quick and Dirty: Macau (Night's Black Agents)

I enjoyed the Kabul piece, so I thought I'd return to the theme and talk about a city that has fascinated me for years: Macau.

Macau (also Macao)

The first European settlement in the Far East, former Portuguese colony Macau has been an autonomous territory under China's one territory, two systems policy since 20 December 1999.

Macau is famous - or possibly notorious - as a gambler's paradise. Over 40% of its GDP comes from casinos and games of chance, and close to 70% of government tax revenue. Macau is the preeminent gambling center in the world, with its 33 casinos bringing in somewhere near $30 billion annually. Vegas, by contrast, earns closer to $10 billion annually from over 120 casinos.

Its gaming history goes back to the 1850s, when the Portuguese legalized gambling. Macau's colonial masters needed a source of revenue; its preeminence as a trading port had declined considerably since the Portuguese took over in the 1500s. Chinese gamers flocked to Macau's fantan houses, but Macau's popularity as a gaming destination didn't really take off until the 1960s when the government, always a little leery of gambling and the crime that went with it, finally embraced gaming as a source of revenue and began promoting Macau as the Monte Carlo of the East.

In the 1960s casinos were operated by a monopoly, the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau (STDM), not unlike Monte Carlo's Societe des bains de mer de Monaco. However unlike Monaco's state-owned Societe, the STDM is owned by one family headed by Stanley Ho, or Ho Hung Sen, the 95-year-old King of Gambling. Stanley, with his financial backers Henry Fok and gambler Yip Hon, bid for Macau franchises when they were put out to public tender, and won the bid for Macau's gambling monopoly for a little under half a million dollars. Stanley Ho parlayed his stake into political power, and had an important role in the handover negotiations in the 1990s. It has also been alleged that he has links with the Kung Lok (Mutual Happiness) Triad.

In 2002 this monopoly system was broken up and Macau's casinos are now run by a handful of concession and subconcession syndicates, though the STDM still has 16 casinos of its own. Stanley Ho has made few public appearances since a fall at his home in 2009, and has fallen out with members of his family over business concerns.

In recent years Macau's economy, though still booming, hasn't been as robust as formerly. In part this is due to changes in China. Chinese anti-corruption laws are having an effect, but the larger issue is a change in tourism. Previously Macau was the preeminent destination for Chinese tourists, but with the expanding Chinese economy people have more options, and travel world-wide. This hasn't broken Macau by any means, but its gambling revenue has flattened since 2014, and the government has said it is looking for other sources of revenue.

Image sourced from Wikipedia under Creative Commons.

Macau is 60 kilometers southwest of Hong Kong. It has 41 km of coastline, and a vanishingly small land border with mainland China. It consists of the Macau Peninsula, the islands of Taipa and Coloane, and the recently constructed landfill Cotai that connects the islands.

The entirety of Macau is only 30 sq km.

There are eight parishes in total, and a significant portion of Macau's land mass is reclaimed from the ocean. The northernmost parish Nossa Senhora de Fatima, for example, which borders the Chinese city of Zuhai to the north, is made of land reclaimed in the 1960s and 70s. The Cotai Strip, where many of Macau's casinos are located, is reclaimed, as is Santo Antonio on the western portion of the peninsula.

Local currency is the MOP or Macanese pataca, but Chinese renmibi and the Hong Kong dollar is accepted everywhere.

Population

Just shy of 600,000 people, or about the size of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The median age is 39, and over 50% of the population is between the age of 25 and 50. Unemployment is very low, at about 5% for those between 15 to 24 years old, and in addition the government pays a subsidy to its citizens, amounting to a little over a month's minimum wage income. Literacy is over 95%.

The official languages are Portuguese and Chinese; only a little over 2% of the population speak English. Cantonese is by far the most wide spread language, but there's a good sampling of all the Chinese dialects as well as other regional languages such as the Philippines dialect Tagalog.  Portuguese is spoken by less than 1% of the population.

Formerly Catholic during Portuguese rule, and boasting the first Western Christian school in the far east, Macau is majority Buddhist.

Conflict

As a special administrative region Macau is overshadowed by China, but the relationship is complex.

Traditionally Macau has been a hub; goods, services and people flow to and from China via Macau. Today what this means is Macau supplies opiates, amphetamines and other narcotics to China, while at the same time stripping Chinese tourists of their cash at the casinos. Meanwhile poor Chinese flee the mainland via Macau, and often find themselves stuck in dead-end jobs cleaning, cooking and otherwise serving the rich who flock to Macau.

About a third of the population are migrants, and close to 10% live in poverty. The working poor find it all but impossible to live in modern, hyper-expensive Macau, and many have chosen to relocate to the mainland and commute to work. This leads to an odd situation where Macau natives have to move to China for economic reasons, while China's poor move to Macau, also for economic reasons.

In China, gambling is illegal. While Macau is tolerated, China sometimes lashes out. China believes gambling leads to or facilitates government corruption, particularly by local government officials who ought not to have the kind of cash Macau demands. Clearly they could only afford their gambling habits thanks to bribes or embezzlement.

These crackdowns cause a serious problem for Macau's economy, which is one of the reasons why Macau's government is traditionally very pro-Beijing. Macau is often thought of as China's filial child, while Hong Kong is considered more rebellious and wayward. Macau believes the best defense is to cause no offence.

Where Monaco, which relies on France for its external security, still has several hundred troops and police, Macau, which relies on China, has no troops of its own. It does have a police force, the Public Security Police, armed with Smith & Wesson Model 10 handguns, shotguns, MP5s and gas launchers.

China has an armed presence in Macau, the People's Liberation Army Macau Garrison, a little under 2,000 strong, about 600 of which are actually in Macau while the rest are just across the border in Zuhai. Its main base in Macau is on the Cotai Strip, among all the glittering casinos. Its soldiers tend to keep a low profile, and wear civilian clothes when off-base.

This may be part of the reason why, unlike Hong Kong, there is almost no pro-Democracy or independence movement in Macau.

Because Macau enjoys a unique relationship with China, foreign intelligence services have used it as a base point for operations. Bejing has long suspected that agencies like the CIA use US-owned casinos to tempt wealthy Chinese into foolish behavior, which the CIA then uses to blackmail them.

Triad crime is a significant concern. However as a result of the breakup of the casino monopoly, allowing foreign interests to invest in Macau, triads in the present day tend to work more cooperatively together and to spread their influence beyond Macau's borders, to China in particular. This requires diplomatic skills the triads never needed before. In the past, competition was dealt with directly. Now, in order to avoid anti-corruption purges and official displeasure, the triads adopt a softly-softly approach.

Beijing's concern about Macau corruption is not misplaced:

According to a member of the 14K Triad also interviewed for the study, most VIP-room contractors 'are triads or businessmen with a triad background ... The casino management would select the most powerful triads, based on a couple of factors including money, triad, reputation and ability to mobilize manpower.' ... VIP rooms are described in the study as 'bank-like' business enterprises. A junket must provide hotels, transport, loans and sex services. High rollers are expected to spend at least HK$500,000 per trip in a room.

That half-million dollars has to come from somewhere; bribes and embezzlement's probably the least of it.

Triads are also involved in casino security. In 2010 four men were arrested on conspiracy to commit bodily harm charges and a fifth on murder charges, as part of a retributive strike on a Macau casino employee suspected of cheating. Initially the men were supposed to break his arms and legs but, when the order came down to kill the dealer instead, one of the thugs balked and talked to the cops.

It turned out that the one who ordered the hit was a Wo Hop To triad boss, the person in charge of the casino's VIP rooms. Not only that, his company Jumbo Boom owned the junket concession; he got his both from those booking the holidays, and later from their expenditure while at the casino.

Most VIP gambling in Macau is leveraged, Reuters points out. Gamblers usually bet more than their cash on hand. This is particularly true of mainland Chinese high-rollers who, because of Beijing's strict capital  controls, aer limited to carrying the equivalent of US$5,000 in renminbi per trip when they leave China. Macau's six publicly listed casino operators lend to only a small minority of their patrons, according to company filings. This is because collection of gambling debt is illegal in China and Macau forbids casinos from writing off their bad or uncollectable debts.

Which begs the obvious question: if you can't legally collect on gambling debts in China, who do you turn to when a debtor in China refuses to pay?

This has proved a problem for US casino owners who can't or won't do business the Macau way. Either they get in bed with the triads - the only people who can collect on debts - or they don't do business at all.

Backdrops

Hac Sa Beach in Coalone, a black sand or volcanic beach. Due to erosion the government has shored up the beach with yellow sand. This is the largest natural beach in Macau, and is part of Hac Sa Bay Park. The Park includes a large barbecue area, mini golf, tennis courts, basketball and baseball fields, and there are many fast food stands if you don't care to make your own BBQ. The Beach is a popular spot for young lovers.

Mong-Ha Fort, built in the mid-19th Century to defend against Chinese attack after the First Opium War. The Fort was deactivated in the 1960s when the Portuguese military moved out, and this hilly area has since become one of Macau's green lungs. It's a public space with good views of Macau, though there isn't much left of the fort itself, and there are several walking trails. Mong Ha Hill also is home to the Lin Fung Temple, a restaurant and an art gallery.

Altira Macau Casino, formerly known as Crown Macau, opened in 2007 and boasts 216 guest rooms in its 38 floor complex. It's one of the tallest buildings in Macau, owned by a joint partnership between Hong Kong's Melco International and Australia's Crown Limited. There are 220 gaming tables, over 500 slot machines, a spa, fitness center, indoor pool, and seven different restaurants and bars. Its Yi Pavilion 5 star dining area overlooks all of Macau, and has only one table, seating up to 15. Rooms start at HK$1,500, or just a touch over US$192/night. Its website mentions its casino in the most tactful way possible, without even a picture of the gaming tables. 'Unlock a dazzling world of privileges! ... Terms and conditions apply. Participants must be 21 years or above. Gamble responsibly.' 

Three Hooks

The CIA has lost an asset. China, in another of its reprisals, arrested a half-dozen Western employees working in mainland China as publicists/junket bookers for a Macau casino, alleging that they are part of a criminal syndicate. However one of them is actually a CIA asset, though it's not clear whether the Chinese have figured this out yet. The CIA can't afford to make the snatch; if the agents do it, they can name their own price. What nobody's yet realized is that the whole thing's the brainchild of a Chinese government official who doesn't want to pay his gambling debts, and has engineered this crisis to bully the casino into backing off.

One of the People's Liberation Army non-coms enjoys a modest fortune acting as a broker for mid-ranking Chinese officials. He can arrange for pretty much anything, up to and including money laundering and lending at modest rates. As he's PLA the officials feel comfortable dealing with him, but in the grand scheme of things he's a bit player in a much larger, Triad dominated drama. Now he's provoked some very serious people, and wants out of Macau. He's willing to trade his contact list for safe passage - and he knows some very interesting people.

A would-be God of Gamblers has come from mainland China to strike it lucky. He wears red underwear, yells Deng! (eight, lucky numerology) at every turn of the card, and obeys all of the folklore rules except one: he deliberately cultivates bad feng shui. This is because he's actually a necromantic corpse, revived by a Jin-Gui who can't resist Macau's tables but who dares not come down to play in person. The Jin-Gui stays in the gambler's room; he says 'she's' his hot date, but you can't have sex before you play - it would drain the luck right out of him. The Jin-Gui controls the corpse telepathically and gets its thrills second-hand, but if anyone gets a good look at its dead pawn in an octagonal mirror, the truth will be revealed.

Thrilling Elements

These are unique to Macau:

• Street vendors serving up Macau's signature chee par pau, or pork bun; hungry customers cluster, and the delicious smells tempt the most jaded palate.
• Taipa, formerly a fishing village, now a laid-back tangle of shops and restaurants. Easy to get lost in its maze of streets.
• A flock of scooters breeze past, narrowly missing someone's expensive limo.
• Tourists cluster round the ruins of St Paul in the historical district, snapping photos.
• Glittering casinos with all the fakery and glamor you'd expect of a high profile resort, from Vegas-style Venetian mashups to T-Rex displays.
• Security guards on call at all times, ensuring that the gaming rooms are kept private; only guests of the hotel and gamblers allowed in.
• The Macau-Hong Kong Turbo Jet ferry shooting back and forth from the two former colonies, packed with tourists and workers.
• Night scene with neon signs and lights aplenty, dazzling the eye and screaming for attention: shop here, gamble here, come here and spend!
• Street signs on every corner, in both Chinese and Portuguese.
• Yet another extravagant fireworks display or huge event at one or more of the casinos.
• Police on an anti-subversion raid forcibly clear out a house or business, hauling away the occupants for vigorous interrogation.
• Hotel staff fawn over a visiting Chinese high-roller.
• Long queues, everywhere, for everything. Crowds everywhere, particularly on weekends and holidays.

Enjoy!

Person of Interest: Anna May Wong (GUMSHOE Trail, Bookhounds, One to One)

I first saw Anna May Wong in the silent British classic Piccadilly, where she plays the doomed love interest of the man who later is accused of her murder.

It's a brilliant performance, and a remarkably fun movie. At its heart it's nothing but a potboiler, set in seedy Soho clubland. Wong plays Shosho, a Chinese dishwasher in the Club kitchens who unexpectedly rockets to stardom thanks to her dancing skills, only to fall in love with the Club's owner, Wilmot. Wilmot's former lover Mabel confronts her rival in Shosho's apartment, and later the next day Shosho is found shot to death. Was it Wilmot, Mabel or someone else who killed the dancing star?

As a movie I highly recommend it first and foremost because it's a good film, and second because it's one of the few times Wong was allowed to act in a sympathetic role. As a Chinese American, she often played villain roles, and the rules of the day prevented her from ever having an on-screen kiss from a white actor, which meant she'd little chance of playing the romantic female lead.

Wong's family arrived in California in the 1850s. Her father was a prosperous laundry owner, and Wong was the second of his seven children, born in 1905 and raised in Los Angeles. It was just the right time; the moving picture business was taking its baby steps, and you couldn't walk two feet in Los Angeles at that time without seeing some poverty row film unit shooting reel for a knockabout comedy or crime drama. Wong soon became hooked on movies, spending lunch money on cinema tickets and following every film shoot she could, practicing the actors' moves when she went home.

Her parents were less than thrilled. Her father wanted her to marry a good Cantonese man and help with the family business, but Wong wanted to be a film star, and even as early as 9 years old she begged directors working in her neighborhood for film parts. Soon she was a jobbing extra, landing her first role in 1919's The Red Lantern.

By 1921 she'd dropped out of high school to pursue the dream, allowing herself ten years to make it big, or bust out.  In 1922 she landed her first film lead role, and never looked back.

However she never really fit in either. She wanted to be an American, a jazz baby, a flapper. She talked the talk and danced up a storm, but to her white contemporaries she would always be Chinese. That limited the roles she'd be offered, and it only got worse as the decade went on. Early cinema was an unregulated wonderland, but in the aftermath of the Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal Hollywood became more prudish - outwardly, anyway. This meant, among other things, not even the slightest hint of miscegenation. This cost Wong several lead parts, demoting her to gangster's moll or Dragon Lady instead.

If an Asian role was the lead, it wouldn't go to Wong; it would go to a white actress, as happened later in the 1930s with Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. Wong was bitterly disappointed to see the meaty star role go to someone who could legally kiss white lead Paul Muni, who was playing Asian character Wang Lung. Instead Wong, the only actual Asian in the cast, was offered the part of Lotus - the only unsympathetic role in a plot stuffed with Asian characters.

Incidentally for those of you shaking their head and muttering, 'God, they were so racist back then,' bear in mind that far too little has changed in the years since. We're still talking about whitewashing today, almost a century later. Asian actors working in Western film and television still have to fit a certain stereotype if they want to get parts. The only real difference is the stereotype has changed.

"We're the information givers," said Yale School of Acting graduate Pun Bandu in a 2017 article. "We're the geeks. We're the prostitutes. We're so tired of seeing ourselves in these roles."

Meanwhile back in the 1920s things weren't any better for Wong on the other side of the ocean. Chinese audiences resented her American behavior, and seethed at her public persona. Affairs with white men, like director Tod Browning - and he thirty nine years old to her tender sixteen? This wasn't the behavior of a good Chinese girl.

Frustrated at the lack of opportunity in her native California she upped sticks in the middle 1920s and went to Europe seeking her fortune. She did well in Germany with Schmutziges Geld and Pavement Butterfly, rubbing elbows with the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. When she went across the water to England she starred on stage with Lawrence Olivier, and made Piccadilly, her last silent drama. Her first talkie was a British film, The Flame of Love (also known as Road to Dishonor) in which she finally got to kiss a white man on screen - only to have the scene cut for non-British audiences.

When Hollywood started poaching European talent in the early 1930s Wong came back to Los Angeles, only to find that things hadn't changed all that much while she'd been away. After playing a couple Dragon Lady roles she went back to Europe, only to find herself drawn to Los Angeles again at the prospect of a role in the 1937 adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer-winning novel about life in China prior to the Great War.

That ended in disappointment for Wong, who went to China on an extended tour only to discover that her Chinese critics were no more favorable than the American variety. To the Chinese Wong was a disgrace, a sexually charged scandal on legs. Friends with Dietrich? Then Wong must be a lesbian. Linked with older men? Then she must be a prostitute. The real problem was she was too American for Chinese audiences, and they let her know it. She eventually won over the Chinese press, but it was hard going - not that Wong was intimidated by hard going.

The war intervened, and Wong found herself in a string of patriotic B-pictures, always a heroine bashing the Japanese. She devoted herself, when not working, to war relief, sending as much money and support as possible to benefit Chinese refugees.

Later, the war over, Wong invested in real estate, and lived quietly with her surviving family. She had a minor post-war film role, in the 1949 noir B-picture Impact, and the lead in a TV detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, which was cancelled after a single season and sadly no longer exists in any format. She appeared in some documentary work and some TV roles in the 1950s, but no leads and no film work. Her last film appearance was in 1960's Portrait in Black in which she plays the maid, Tawny. She got a star on the Boardwalk in 1960, and died of a heart attack in 1961, at the age of 56.

So let's talk about gamification.

As a walk-on NPC Wong could appear in Call of Cthulhu, Trail, or any of the 1930s era settings. As she travels extensively she could as easily be part of a Dreamhounds game as Bookhounds, or be encountered en route to some exotic location, say on a cruise liner or a very famous train. She's equally at home in modest as well as luxurious circumstances, and speaks many languages.

Her main attraction to the Keeper is that she knows almost everyone, in the States and abroad. She's on first name terms with a wide variety of people, from media moguls and film directors to dancers, composers, stage managers, restauranteurs, and many more. She can be a very useful link between the player characters and the local Chinese community, which might not otherwise open its doors to interfering investigator types. She can introduce them to artists, directors, powerful men. She's hobnobbed with everyone from the Los Angeles elite to the rising stars of Hitler's Germany. She's worked with the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as innumerable forgotten B-actors and directors. You name it, she's done it, or been there and loved every minute.

Perhaps the most obvious setting for her to appear in is the One-to-One Dex Raymond adventures, set in 1930s Los Angeles. Wong could drift in and out of Dex's life, always on her way somewhere else hoping for her big role, always frustrated at her lack of opportunities.

There's nothing to indicate any occult or outré connections, but she took great pride in her Chinese origins and would be very knowledgeable about anything to do with Chinese history, particularly its theatrical traditions.

As a One-to-One Source her skills favor performance, language, dance and high society. She can open many doors for other people, even doors that would remain frustratingly closed to her. However she's also got a strong business sense, which means she could be helpful in Bargain tests, and her extensive knowledge of Chinese culture and history gives her some Art History or History bonuses when dealing with Chinese culture.

For that matter there are few who know the film business quite like she does; she was there, on the spot, when it was being born. Any scuttlebutt or juicy bit of gossip relating to times long past - who was sleeping with who, who made shady deals to get financing, who worked in Poverty Row but likes to pretend they didn't now they've made it - is grist to her mill.

That's it for now! Enjoy.