What Odd Fellows (RPG All)

Recently someone discovered desiccated human remains in a garage in Ohio, but you'll be pleased to hear that, just this once, it wasn't a gruesome murder.

The tip-off came when a neighbor heard what's been described as 'youthful voices' coming from a detached garage in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Further investigation uncovered no suspicious youths (I firmly believe it was four meddling kids and a dog) but did find the bones of what proved to be a very long dead gent.

Turns out the garage was formerly a different building altogether, and was used by the Odd Fellows as a lodge. The bones were kept there for ritual purposes. Time passes, lodge changes hands, lodge is torn down to be turned into a garage, and lo and behold here's our pal Bonesy. 

What do you do when you find a corpse in your new garage? Why, you keep it, of course. The new owner didn't seem inclined to, I don't know, bury the dead, but he wasn't going to turf the poor thing out with the trash. He boxed it and forgot it. Then someone else found it.

The Odd Fellows is a very old masonic organization. The first lodges date back to the 18th century, and nobody really knows what they got up to; its traditions are shrouded in antiquity and, as any historian will tell you, the absolute best way to make everything clear as mud is to shroud the historical record in antiquity. Broadly speaking it's a charitable, philanthropic organization with a penchant for fraternalism and benevolence. Sounds very nice, I'm sure. 

Hot Fuzz, second in the Cornetto Trilogy

The Catholics didn't like 'em much, but then the Catholic Church in its day has condemned everything that isn't Catholic and some things that are, so it's not that difficult to see why the Church might have had a downer on the Odd Fellows.

If you want to know more about the Odd Fellows there is an interesting book over on Gutenberg, first published 1901, about the American branch of the Odd Fellows. 

On Jericho Road is about as gnomic and mystical as you could possibly hope for.  It poses the obvious question: "If," it is demanded, "the aims and purposes of the order be legitimate and praiseworthy, why shroud them in mystery rather than give them the broad sunlight of publicity." only to answer it with the most banal retort possible. "But if the preference of Odd-Fellowship be for quieter and less obtrusive methods, pray who shall fairly contest its right of choice?"

If it specifically mentions bones and peculiar rituals, I didn't notice. That said, I couldn't read it cover to cover and I shall be surprised if you manage it. If you wanted some bland yet useful text to make a mystic, or even Mythos, tome out of, you certainly couldn't do any worse. 

We travel from star to star, from system to system, until we reach yon lonely star that appears to be performing the Guardian's task, upon the verge of unmeasured and immeasurable space. We may descry and describe the form and outlines of those heavenly bodies, detect their movements and approximately determine their distances and dimensions. But what more? Little that is satisfying ...

OK, let's talk gamification. This could be a purist Trail of Cthulhu scenario. In that event the Lodge gets knocked down, say, in the 1890s and replaced with [insert building here - something modern and industrial]. There's a fair amount of junk left over from the old Lodge and the building's new owner can't be bothered to throw it out, so it ends up in the spare room. You know the type. Every office has one. Nobody remembers what its original use was; now it's a place you put things you don't want to have to think about. 

It could also be Fear Itself, or Esoterrorists, or any one of a dozen different modernist settings. Given the Youthful Voices, it could also make a fun BubbleGumshoe scenario. It might be a little tricky to turn it into Night's Black Agents since, in that setting, finding human remains in an unexpected place is just another Tuesday, and not a very exiting one at that. However if you replace the human remains with, say, any of the relics from Dracula Dossier, or some similar McGuffin, you're off to the races. 

Let's round out with a few story seeds. 

The premise: someone finds human remains in a [mundane setting] and it turns out that these bones are older than expected and came from the building that used to be on this spot, but which was torn down forty years ago to make room for this one. What happened, and what will happen next?

• What happened: the old building used to be an occult lodge, and the bones were kept for ritual purposes. 
• What will happen next: The new lodge, located somewhere else in town, is startled to discover its old ritual artefacts hidden away in some forgotten spot, and will do its best to get them back - using magic, if they have to.
• What happened: the old building used to be a funeral home, and was put out of business because it was breaking all sorts of laws regarding the disposal of human remains. The new owner found these bones, decided they didn't need the negative publicity, and put them somewhere forgettable.
• What will happen next: The former owner of those bones wants to be buried properly, and will haunt the finders until they do that.
• What happened:  the old building was someone's home, back in the 1840s or thereabouts, and they wanted to be buried on the old homestead. So they were. The bones were excavated as part of the new build and the developer didn't want the headaches that come with admitting you've found human remains on the property. So they hid the bones.
• What will happen next: The bones become the focal point for a peculiar kind of time dilation. The psychic powers of the dead person were such time doesn't really exist for them: it's always 1840, where they are. Now they've been disturbed the bones will start rebuilding reality to fit its internal vision: first the bedroom where they spent their final hours, then the rest of the house, hall by hall. Soon people in the new building will find themselves walking into the old, by accident, and there's no telling when or how they'll get out again ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Lost But Not Forgotten (RPG Modern)

Most of you will have noticed that the world will soon come to an end thanks to a Japanese rock and an ancient curse, as attested by pretty much every newspaper in the Western Hemisphere. Possibly the writers were looking for a distraction from current events.

The rock in question is the Killing Stone or Sessho-seki, which until last week contained the corpse of Tamamo-no-Mae, a beautiful woman who had been part of a secret plot hatched by a feudal warlord to kill Emperor Toba. Tamamo-no-Mae was actually a nine-tail fox - a trickster spirit - and when caught in the act the Emperor had her remains imprisoned forever. Or so he believed. 

Original Theatrical Poster

Most newspaper accounts mention that her story inspired an anime film, but none that I've seen went into any depth. Which is a pity, as the anime makes for a good story.

Incidentally I owe my information to the kindness of Ian Horner of Loadingreadyrun fame, a gentlemen whose Twitter feed and many comedy videos I highly recommend.

Once upon a time in 1960s Japan there was a man named Gentaro Nakajima who wanted nothing more than to make his magnum opus, Kyubi no Kitsune to Tobimaru, a horror(ish) fantasy anime. He switched to anime because nobody was willing to back his original idea, a live-action film. As it turns out there weren't many people willing to back his anime version either, and it proved to be a box-office dud which only showed in one cinema for a very limited period in 1968. 

Crushed, the disappointed filmmaker retired from showbusiness and gave the original print of the film to one of his sons. That gentlemen speculated unwisely, and committed suicide in the aftermath of a bribery scandal. The original print - the only version thought at that time to exist - vanished altogether, and for many years was considered a lost film.

Not so. A print was found, and is currently in the vaults of the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. It has never seen a commercial release of any kind since 1968, though the Library has shown it several times.

So, in one breath we have: a curse. A broken sacred stone. A luckless anime that ruined the life of its creator, potentially also his son, and currently lives in a library vault like some scorpion lurking in a shadow. Or a nine-tail fox spirit hiding in a rock, come to that.

Given that one of the characteristics of a nine-tail fox is its desire to consume the flesh and/or souls of men this is a story that fits nicely into Nights Black Agents, but it could as easily be an Esoterrorists plot, Fear Itself, Delta Green or any modern-day horror setting. With a bit of finagling it could be a Cyberpunk plot; lost mysterious anime lurks on the Net, allegedly killing any runner foolish enough to seek it out. Is it some crazed AI, an urban legend, something else? Or, depending on the nature of Japan in your RED world, what really happened to the Killing Stone way back in the dim and distant past of 2022, and why is Arasaka so concerned about it? Is it because one of Gentaro Nakajima's heirs is now a senior figure in Arasaka who'd rather nobody remembered the past, or is there some other reason?

OK, all that said, let's gamify.

Lost But Not Forgotten

The original print of Kyubi no Kitsune to Tobimaru turns up at a minor auction or flea market, perhaps in Japan, perhaps somewhere else. The person who buys it has no idea what they have, but they do know it's anime, so they offer it up for viewing at a minor anime convention in [choose location now]. 

All twenty of the people who watch it are found dead over the next few days, brutally butchered and partially eaten.

If this is a Fear Itself game or a similar setting, where the characters are ordinary people who are unwitting victims of unearthly forces, then they were among the audience that day and recognized the film for what it was, but they aren't dead - yet.

The viewing takes place shortly before Monday 7th March; the cracking of the Killing Stone is when the murders start.

Options:

• The killer is the alleged 'discoverer' of the anime, who actually faked it in order to lure in victims. This person believes, perhaps incorrectly, that they're a fox spirit on the verge of achieving the unthinkable: ascension to Heaven, after a thousand-year cycle. To complete that cycle and achieve the ascendance they deserve, they need a *lot* of energy - hence the killings. The victims are sacrificial, and the whole point of getting them to watch the anime is to make them understand, even on a subconscious level, their place in the grand scheme of things.
• The 'original print' was faked by Esoterrorists (or a similar cult-style group) who added a special scene not found in the version held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. That scene is the true killer; the monster hides in it like a vampire in its coffin, but once it's exposed to an audience it lives in their minds - until it can creep out and kill them. It might emerge from a painting, a mirror, or a television screen, but it's really coming from inside the victim's memory. The intent is to spread fear, but also to generate interest in the 'psychic killer' anime. If enough interest is generated more people will seek it out, creating more mind monsters ...
• The problem isn't the film. The problem is the mold growing on the film reel. It's pretty toxic stuff. It does damage the film a little, but not so that it makes it unwatchable - though the effect is clearly visible, and anyone with knowledge of old film knows what's causing it. However, if you breathe that stuff in it can warp your mind in very unpleasant ways. The original discoverer is the most dramatically affected; they're living in a very dark closet trying to keep the mind weasels at bay. Meanwhile some of the audience, less dramatically afflicted, are seeking out the other audience members to 'commune' - that is, to kill and eat - their fellow sufferers. They see it as further exploring their shared experience. One of them has the film reel, and will do anything to show it to others - bringing more people into the shared experience.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Mansion (RPG All, Disney)

Once upon a time I wrote about Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, and said:

I do wonder what Disney does if someone decides to join the Mansion, perhaps by having their ashes scattered over the ride. Human nature being what it is, someone must have tried by now. If I were Disney, I'd be tempted to offer it as an ultra-private perk only available to special guests, say, members of Club 33. There will be people out there willing to pay over the odds for those bragging rights. 'Come visit me when I'm gone, I'll be in the Graveyard with the Grim Grinning Ghosts!'

Bloomberg's been kind enough to answer that question. I shan't link the article as it's hidden behind a paywall (author Brandon Presser again, and I'm beginning to think that's a pseudonym), but the important bits are:

Even death finds room for celebration, particularly at the Haunted Mansion. “I’d venture to say, if the Haunted Mansion is temporarily closed, it means someone tried to spread grandma’s ashes and we’ve had to bio-vac the entire place,” a former cast member says. The ritual happens often—at least once a month. And you thought the hologram ghosts were spooky ...

Christine Fougère, a cleaning-support manager, says hazardous spills command code names—which I luckily never heard in the line of duty. And yet, they’re not uncommon. Code V is for vomit, and Code H is for human waste. (Sometimes kids—and even a few adults—have trouble holding it in when they’re waiting in line.) Code Winnies are called when resort pools turn slightly yellow; oddly enough, it’s not used for the Pooh ...

Sourced from Disneyland Paris

So let's try some Halloween gamification.

What's different about Disneyland Paris' Mansion?

For starters, Disney Paris isn't California. It hasn't got the history. Someone's grandma didn't visit the place for the first time back in 1969. It opened its doors in 1992, along with the rest of the resort. So you're probably not going to get the same sentimental attraction that drives people to dump granny's ashes over the Grinning Ghosts.

Second, Paris' Mansion hasn't had extensive renovations. It had one big revamp in 2019, which among other things added some new Vincent Price dialogue to the introductory speech.

Third, the plot's different. Not a whole lot different, and the plot's just an excuse for ghoulish nonsense anyway, but worth bearing in mind if anyone's a Disney nut who thinks they can sing along with the animatronics.

Added to all that, there's been a death. In 2016 a worker was found dead inside the attraction, possibly electrocuted. It's one of several incidents that have happened at the Paris attraction.

Sooo ...

Once There Was, And Once There Wasn't 

The characters are all visiting Euro Disney, whether as a group or individually. They might be young, old, whichever it may be. YouTube microcelebrity or ordinary schlub, they all want to go to the Haunted Mansion but the first time they show up, it's closed. The staff won't say why.

So they go off to other attractions for a while and see what is to be seen, but after a time they gravitate back to the Mansion to discover that it's open again. Nobody else has realized this so the queue is short - only the player characters are in it.

Or at least that's how it seems at first. As they pack themselves into the elevator and queue for the ride there seems to be an extra body. If the characters count up carefully, there are only player characters in the group. Yet they cannot shake the feeling there's another person in the room.

At first the ride seems to be as advertised, with the grim grinning ghosts telling the tragic tale of the abandoned bride, Melanie Ravenswood. Yet as the carriages get to the narrator (about 9.09 in the video) the carriages melt away and the player characters find themselves abandoned inside the mansion.

The extra person in the group is a youngster who died of a wasting illness two weeks ago. Their grieving mother knew that the child wanted to see the Mansion, had them cremated, and scattered the ashes inside the Mansion. That's why the Mansion was shut down; the whole thing had to be deep cleaned. 

Inactivity didn't suit the Outer Dark. This was a command performance, one night only. As for the ride itself, well, children don't know from rides. As far as they're concerned, the experience is a real experience. 

A fatal experience. After all, who escapes alive from the Manor? The whole point of the story is everyone dies, and Melanie's trapped here forever.

On the other hand there is that dead electrician, who might be persuaded to help importunate characters lost in the Mansion. Otherwise there aren't many allies to be had. That child is especially difficult to deal with; anyone who threatens its good time will be dealt with severely.

There are several ways out for enterprising characters:

• Death. It's a bit permanent, but it works.
• Successfully romancing Melanie and ending the curse.
• Preventing Henry from killing Melanie's intended, Jake. 
• Somehow restoring the buggies and riding them out of the Mansion.

If they can't achieve any of these objectives before an hour is up, then the Mansion will have several new attractions ...

Enjoy!

Ripped from the Headlines: Ghost Boat Cocaine

Inspired by this Guardian article about an 18-foot fiberglass boat that washed up on the Marshall Islands, stuffed to the gunwales with cocaine, an $80 million haul. The Maritime Executive has a slightly longer version, with photographs.

Sourced from CNN via jonastur68

I've talked about ghost ships before. From North Korea's fishing boats to the Mary Celeste, pausing briefly to admire cruise ships stuffed with cannibal rats, derelicts infest the ocean blue. This one's a bit of a head-scratcher. You just don't take an 18-foot putt-putt far from shore. Not if you value your life and cargo, and someone must have valued this cargo if not the life of whichever shmuck was paid to pilot. Presumably it wasn't piracy, or the cargo would have vanished. 

So it was probably a coastal storm of some description, bad enough to wash the pilot overboard but not bad enough to sink the boat. Fiberglass is difficult to sink, but every other year here in Bermuda hurricanes prove that difficult is not the same thing as impossible. You regularly see boats sunk at their anchorage, perhaps a bit of the bimini sticking above the surface. The pilot almost certainly drowned, and if he didn't he must have wished he had. Explaining that sort of thing to the bosses is not an easy task.

The bit I like is at the end of the Guardian article:

University of Hawaii researchers conducted 16 computer simulations of drift patterns from the Mexico coast and found nearly all eventually arrived in the Marshall Islands.

The Maritime Executive has an interesting addition:

Some of these lost-and-found narcotics re-enter the supply chain: earlier this year, a resident of  remote Ailuk was caught and arrested after trying to board an airplane with three kilos of cocaine in his possession. The source, he told investigators, was from a different batch of lost "bricks." 

The Marshalls have been independent since 1986; before that it was part of the American-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and before that it bounced from pillar to post in the usual that-colony's-mine-until-I-don't-want-it way that was so popular from the 1500s onwards. Before that it was one of the many islands settled by Micronesians, well before the birth of Christ. These days it's a parliamentary republic with an interest in fishing, selling flags of convenience to shipping companies, and bitcoin, not necessarily in that order. There's not a lot of ways to make money if you're the Marshall Islands. 

A little under 78,000 people live there, the vast majority being Marshallese. The islanders have their own language, but English is widely spoken. Median age is (roughly) 23, and the population mostly lives on the atolls of Majuro and Ebeye. The US takes care of defense and the Marshallese police take care of internal issues.

Past nuclear tests nearby have left a toxic legacy. While compensation has been granted it has not been paid, and some of the atolls are completely uninhabitable due to radiation poisoning. 

According to the CIA, no TV broadcast station; a cable network is available on Majuro with programming via videotape replay and satellite relays; 4 radio broadcast stations; American Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) provides satellite radio and television service to Kwajalein Atoll (2019). 

Roughly 40% of the island has internet access.

With all that in mind:

Lost and Gone (Fear Itself, Esoterrorists)

It ought to have been simple. When the boat drifted ashore with its load of cocaine at Ailuk, a remote and lightly-inhabited coral atoll about 200 nautical miles to the north of Majuro, the plan was to burn most of it and turn over a few bricks for the DEA to analyze. A couple agents were given the onerous task of flying over to collect - never let a chance for a visit to a semi-tropical paradise pass you by, must be the company motto. The bricks were supposed to be kept secure at the air base at Bucholtz, on  Kwajalein Island. 

Nobody knows where those bricks are. As for the ones that were supposed to be destroyed ... rumor has it that not all of those found their way into the incinerator. Each one's practically a pension for whoever has them. Bucholtz is being torn apart in the search for the two that were supposed to be there, and the cops who had possession of the rest are under intense scrutiny.

Meanwhile rumors are flying, strange lights are seen out at sea, and some fishermen say a new boat's been seen out on the water at night - one without a pilot, yet it seems to be getting about just fine.

• Free Meal. The original pilot was attacked by a Skitch (Unremitting Horror) and killed, but that left the insect-like meat eater with a problem. Once the boat was out at sea, there were no ways to spread its eggs. The Skitch was at the very end of its life cycle when the boat drifted up to Ailuk, its carcass smeared across the deck. Some of it was snatched up by birds, some by rats and crabs, before the boat was discovered. These have slowly found their way back into the human food chain, through cats (who eat the rats and birds) or other means. The bit about the missing cocaine is a red herring; the real problem is the skitch eggs which are now spreading rapidly through the local population. 
• Bad Trip. That wasn't cocaine. Perhaps it was Liao, perhaps something else, but whatever occult substance is in those bricks someone at Bucholtz knows what it really is. That person isn't a cultist nor yet trained in mystic arts but they know just enough to know how insanely valuable the stuff is. Far too valuable to go up in an incinerator. So this person arranged for the cops to hand over their supply and made sure the two bricks kept for the DEA went missing. Meanwhile they sent out feelers to people they knew in Hong Kong and Macau: does anyone want to take this stuff off my hands? Now the problem is how to keep everyone bribed and compliant long enough for someone who actually knows how to handle the drug to show up and take it away.
• Bright Lights. The boat was targeted off the coast of Mexico by Something - say, Greys from Delta Green. Those same Greys tracked the boat all the way across the ocean, wanting to carry out an ocean drift patterns experiment of their own. Where would it end up? Now the Greys know, but evidently that wasn't the end of the experiment. Whatever it is, it's still hanging around in the skies above the Marshalls, dogging whoever came into contact with the boat or its cargo. The cops who stole a pension, the army guys who 'lost' a couple bricks of cocaine, they're all being tracked, abducted, experimented on, and returned to their ordinary lives - perhaps a little traumatized, otherwise fine. The question is, what do the Greys really want - and what will it take to persuade them to go away?

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays! I'm going to take a break for one week, so no Ephemera next Sunday. After that, we'll kick off the New Year - and may it be better than 2020! 

The Combat Wheelchair - Vampire Style!

If you've been paying attention to RPG news (and really, who doesn't gobble up every least crumb?) you'll have noticed a lot of fuss over Combat Wheelchairs in D&D. In brief, Sara Thompson, a writer for R Talsorian, thought it would be fun to design a D&D wheelchair. Idiots objected. There was fuss. 

The chair itself looks like tons of fun. Sara obviously put a great deal of thought into it. In broadest possible terms it's a Sports Wheelchair design with extra bits, and to be honest until this post came up I  knew sports chairs existed, but not in such variety. If you want to know more about Sara's design the documents are posted in her Google drive and Sara can be found on Twitter over here. I follow her; I think some of you would enjoy following her too.

It made me think about wheelchairs in Pelgrane's game worlds. I'm not going to talk about Swords of the Serpentine as Sara's pretty much covered that ground already. If you wanted to use that design in Swords it would want some tweaks since it's for a different game system, but fantasy is fantasy and even if you have to rationalize some of its abilities differently there's no reason why you couldn't rationalize them.

In Trail, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself or Night's Black Agents a wheelchair-bound character is entirely plausible. Possibly a bit too plausible; after all, characters do put themselves in remarkably dangerous situations. Accidents happen.

A Trail (or for that matter Call) character lives in a world that's very wheelchair-unfriendly, but on the flip side she shares that world with a lot of people who have physical issues of one kind or another. The Great War generated a truly staggering number of permanently impaired people - over one million life-debilitating wounds, according to Yale University's research. They'd be very common in Europe, but over 2.8 million Americans served on the Front Lines overseas - that figure presumably doesn't count the Americans who served in foreign armies like Eugene Bullard - and many of them would have come back with permanent injuries of one kind or another. So the world around her is used to people like her, which may come in handy.

Sara's design presupposes a combat use but Trail, like Fear Itself, really isn't a combat system. Frankly if you get into combat in Trail you've probably made a serious mistake. This is why Fleeing is such an important ability. However as Sara notes the combat wheelchair is Swift, particularly downhill. I'd be inclined to give a character going downhill an additional 3 points to their Fleeing pool, so long as the character doesn't mind the risk of ending up in a crash at the bottom. I'd probably ignore most of the upgrades since they aren't really meant for this game world nor are they necessarily beneficial. However the armor plates (extra 2 Health) and mounted pistol look handy, and putting a permanent pack on the frame for books, cameras and scientific equipment is reasonable. As far as Tripping opponents goes, I'd make it a straight Athletics check difficulty 4, or difficulty 5 if you want to delay the target for more than  one round. I see this more as delaying a chase scene opponent than a combat trick, but the player may see it differently.

Esoterrorists and Night's Black Agents both suppose a much more dangerous world. The combat aspects of the chair become increasingly important. On the other hand those spider legs look sweet, and totally in keeping with a Stakes style NBA game. Q Branch would be proud, and so would Dracula Dossier's Tinman. Besides if Douglas Bader can become an air ace after losing both his legs there's no reason why your Muscle can't be a vampire-hunting hero in a wheelchair.

Added to the chair's usual add-ons is the Conceal option. Frederick Forsythe leads the way in Day of the Jackal, where the assassin out to snipe De Gaulle hides the parts of his weapon in a disabled veteran's crutch and finagles his way into a veterans-only celebration. 

It can be very useful to appear weak. People underestimate you to their detriment, particularly if you have a sniper rifle hidden away. This probably wouldn't work if your chair was being electronically scanned, but there's bound to be a way to spoof the simpler scanners out there. Besides a scan might not pick up garlic or crucifixes hidden away, and that could be more important than a mercury-tipped rifle round.

Gadgets ... anything that allows you to apply Blocks or Banes is a definite plus. Exactly what that entails depends on the vampire type, and there are so many versions it's pointless going over them all. Still, there are some all-purpose gadgets. A simple GPS function, perhaps designed to trace Surveillance targets. If Bond can follow a GPS tracer in Goldfinger (a film that's nearly 60 years old now) then surely someone can come up with a chair attachment that does the same thing. Small one-shot Flamethrower for those moments when Intimidation just doesn't cut it? Taser? Ooo! What if the entire chair was effectively a taser and the user was insulated by the seat, but anyone touching the chair got zapped? 

This is beginning to sound like a Wire Rat's dream come true, and it's probably a good build for that kind of character. However any or all of the agent builds can make use of the chair option. You'd need to finagle it for your table and some of Sara's ideas are a non-starter in a modern (ish) game with no blatant magical effects. Looking at you, Beacon Stone. That said, the modern world is much more chair-friendly than the 1930s and there's really no reason why a chair-bound character shouldn't go wherever they like. 

There are even adaptive chairs for skiing, and apparently there have been versions since the 1940s. Cue the Bond-style ski chase! Bonus points if Propellerheads is playing in the background.

Anyway I hope this gives the Directors, Keepers and players out there something to think about. There's all kinds of ways to play this - pick the version you like and have fun with it.

Enjoy!

Playing with Real Toys: Abandoned Orient Express Trains, Belgium (GUMSHOE Modern)

There was a time when Orient Express meant luxury, mystery, and romance. Those days aren't quite gone, but the train in these pictures has seen better days. Abandoned somewhere in a Belgian train yard, these old carriages and locomotive have been quietly rusting away for many years. Lost and forgotten things have many stories to tell - so what can we do with this one?

A quick note on ownership: the photos shown here were obtained via Urban Ghosts and the blog Rebecca Bathory. I understand Urban Ghosts obtained at least some of its images from another user, blogging at PreciousDecay. To my knowledge, those are the original sources of the images.

For those who aren't familiar with Georges Nagelmackers' pride and joy, a brief history.

The state of train travel in Europe during the Victorian era was lamentable. Functional, yes, but where was the style? The panache? Meanwhile, across the water, American George Mortimer Pullman was showing how it could be done: luxury travel, in a carriage fit for a king, not the knock-crack-smash in a wooden box that everyone had become used to. 

This inspired many innovators, including Belgian Georges Nagelmackers, who founded the Wagons-Lits Company in 1867. His dream was to create a train empire, luxury that traveled across the continent, and he was successful. You could start in London, end in Constantinople, and never lack for anything, whether it be fine dining, comfortable sleeping compartments, or congenial companionship. Each carriage had its own name, its own personality, decorated and fitted to the highest standards of the day. Every need was anticipated, and catered for, down to the least detail.

Image taken from Wikipedia, Plan de vaisselle CIWL

If you had any pretense to importance, you wanted to be seen on that train, and that went for fictional characters as well as the more mundane sort. Dracula's hunters went by Orient Express from Paris to Varna, beating their quarry to the punch. English hero Harry Flashman went with his journalist friend Blowitz on the train's maiden voyage. James Bond nearly lost his life on that train, and Agatha Christie uses it twice, once in a short story, and again in her novel Murder on the Orient Express - probably the most famous novel about the Orient Express.

Image taken from Wikipedia.

The Great War knocked back the Express, and for the first time in its history it was unable to traverse its entire route. At war's end, armistice papers were signed aboard one of the train's luxury carriages; when Hitler kicked off World War Two, he made sure that the French surrender documents were signed aboard that same carriage, and later, when defeat seemed imminent, he blew it up. After World War Two the train revived again, but with a dramatically altered route; some of its traditional stops were now behind the Iron Curtain. However in the end it wasn't history but technology that killed it off; in the jet set age, there was no demand for train travel, however luxurious. For a brief time there was no train at all. Then in 1982 enthusiasts revived the brand, restoring some of the old carriages and building others. Now the London to Venice luxury run is purely for well-heeled sightseers, not for travelers on their own mysterious passage from wherever to whenever.

The train and carriages seen in the photographs are 1930s vintage, probably left there in the 1970s. If the 1980s enthusiasts looked at them at all, presumably they believed what was left wasn't economically viable - they may have been too far gone to be restored.

With all that in mind, some scenario seeds for Night's Black Agents, Fear Itself, and Esoterrorists.

Night's Black Agents: the opposition proposes a midnight meeting at the train yards; whether to exchange hostages or for some other reason is immaterial to the seed. The exchange is to take place aboard one of the abandoned Orient Express cars. As might be expected, it's a trap: two snipers have the train carriage covered, and there's a bomb inside.

Thrilling Elements: 

• A chilled bottle of champagne and an appropriate number of glasses rest on one of the abandoned carriage's seats. [the bomb, on remote detonation, is under the seat.]
• A goods train comes to an unexpected stop some distance away, and the screech can be heard throughout the yards.
• The faint glow of cigarettes can be seen, perhaps some fifty yards away - train staff on a crafty break, or something else?
• Train cars loom ominously in the darkness; every shadow could hide a potential threat.
• A tapped-out, blood-starved Renfield [the Conspiracy think she's a traitor, and this is as good a way as any of dealing with her], captured ally or other defenseless, twitching body is tied up on the carriage floor.
• A train unexpectedly switches to the track the agents are on.

Fear Itself: Urban Explorers say the Orient Express cars have a completely different personality at night, and the latest dare is to go there after midnight and leave some sign that you've been there - a card, a mark, anything. However some of those who do never return, and some who do return say they hear odd noises, a voice speaking in German. In fact, one is the train car Hitler ordered destroyed, but not because he thought it would be used as a war trophy. The demon inside Hitler transferred its consciousness to a special phylactery shortly before war's end, and arranged for it to be hidden inside the train car, for later retrieval by dedicated followers. The dazed and reeling Fuhrer, free of its influence, tried to have the car destroyed, but the demon's followers prevented this. However the last few months of the war saw all the Nazi occultists killed or captured, which meant nobody was able to retrieve the phylactery. There it sits to this day, waiting to be rediscovered - and in the meantime causing all kinds of mayhem to those unwise enough to disturb it without using the proper ritual.

Esoterrorists:  Several Esoterror cells across Europe have united with a singular purpose: to place copies of the abandoned Orient Express cars in every train stop that the original Express visited, before the Great War. Urban explorers from Paris to Istanbul report seeing these train cars, apparently copied to the last detail from the Belgian originals, left in depots and apparently forgotten. Are the Esoterrorists trying to create some kind of spirit copy of the original Orient Express, and if so, is this to weaken the Membrane, or have the Esoterrorists some other purpose in mind? Could this be an attempt to resurrect someone, or something, that rode aboard the Orient Express? Does this have anything to do with a string of murders, also from Paris to Istanbul, with one thing in common: an antique train ticket from 1892 found in the pockets of the dead?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

Silent Hill 2: How to Design Survival Horror (Fear Itself)

Last time I talked about designing Silent Hill for Pelgrane's Fear Itself. Now I'd like to spend some time discussing what makes Silent Hill tick, and to do that I'm going to talk about survival horror as a genre.

Survival horror, appropriately enough, is a subgenre of horror in which the survival of the protagonist is what drives the narrative and provides the scares. It isn't about external threat - though there are plenty of those - but about the internal, as the vulnerable, easily killed protagonist tries desperately to exist in a world inimical not just to all life but to the protagonist's life specifically. There's a healthy dose of paranoia here, but then, is it really paranoia if the world is out to get you?

What in Silent Hill makes this apparent?

1. Even the normal is a little weird. There's a moment in Silent Hill 2 where James Sunderland explores Neely's Bar. Like everything else in Silent Hill, Neely's is deserted. However there's an odd note painted roughly on the window: There Was A HOLE Here. Now It's Gone. The meaning of this note is unexplained, leaving it up to the player to decide just how to interpret it. However the mere fact that it exists begs all kinds of questions, the most obvious being, who wrote it? Who's supposed to read it? Is it like graffiti, a message for anyone, or was it intended for James specifically? There's nothing more normal than a bar, but adding that extra touch makes it seem somehow other, perhaps even tied specifically into the threat that may yet engulf James. This crops up again and again, perhaps best in the town itself, where you can wander the streets only to find that your path is cut off by a vast chasm. How did that happen? What kind of tectonic event can cause a rift like that, and yet leave the buildings roundabout still standing? Or what about the fog that swallows the town whole, or the way everyone else you meet seems either to accept the situation or to perceive things very differently than you ...
2. The weird is very weird. If you play the game more than once, the characters get the chance to pick up and use different items in different ways. Often this means getting a better weapon, perhaps a chainsaw or a flamethrower. However in Silent Hill 2 James has the option of picking up a peculiar star stone which, if he uses it in exactly the right way in exactly the right places, opens up the true meaning of reality. Again, as with point 1, there's a strong presentment that these things are set here specifically for James to find, to use, to explore, further establishing the central concept that nothing happens by chance. The strange, twisted creatures James encounters are designed especially for him; they play on his frustrated sexuality, his darker side. But who or what did this? Or was it James himself ...
3. Sure, you can find weapons, but don't expect them to help. Stick with a nail in it, pistol, shotgun, rifle; all are useful tools, but when the chips are down it won't matter what you're armed with. The real threat here is from within. That's why Silent Hill often has a suicide option as one of the alternate endings. In Gumshoe terms your dwindling Stability is the problem you'll have to manage, or die trying. 
1. Using Night of the Living Dead as an example, although zombies are clawing at the walls the real threat is that posed by your fellow survivors. They all fight like cats in a sack, convinced beyond reason that their plan is the best plan. They have a rifle, a defensible position, molotov cocktails, and what happens? Chaos and blood, that's what happens. In survival horror if you depend on guns to see you through, you might as well climb into your grave and beat the rush.
4. Supplies are limited. In Silent Hill the protagonist eats health packs and drug ampules like they were candy. There's never enough. You wander the streets half dead, because you only have one or two health packs left and you know, just know that you need to save health packs more than you need to actually be healthy right now. In Gumshoe, items like these might count as free Medic pools, perhaps 1 point for Health Drinks, 3 for Health Packs and 5 for ampules. Funny thing about those pools; in my experience players either consume them early and then regret it later, when they've got nothing, or they save them and save them and save them, waiting against the time when they're desperate. Which, oddly enough, is exactly how players of survival horror video games behave. 
5. The enemy is very dangerous. The external threats the player faces are always real. There are no Mooks in survival horror. Some may hit harder than others, but they all hit hard, and you misjudge the threat at your peril. The same applies to traps and other potentially harmful situations. Stick your hand in the wrong place and you may lose a few fingers. Not that this ever stopped James Sunderland, but still ...  
6. Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is usually bad for you. As in you specifically, not you, the abstract. This goes back to the Neely's Bar note. When something happens, when you go to a location, when you encounter a Shadow, these places, people and incidents exist because of you. They are linked to you, and often are a reflection of your mental state. As in, your rapidly deteriorating mental state. This is the polar opposite of Lovecraftian horror, in which the whole point is how powerless we are, how insignificant, in the face of cosmic forces. Nothing could be further from the truth here. In Silent Hill, and to a great degree in survival horror as a genre, the protagonist is the most important person in the entire universe. Without that person, none of this could happen. In fact, in Silent Hill there's good reason for thinking that the entire mess is the protagonist's own making.
1. The cavalry isn't coming, by the way. If you stick yourself in a cupboard somewhere and huddle up, crying softly, waiting for the police or the army to rescue you, good luck and God bless. Just remember what happened when the survivors in Return of the Living Dead called the telephone number printed on the side of the can of toxic waste.

It's a good idea for the Keeper to discuss things with the players beforehand. Much of what's about to happen will depend on their characters, that Worst Thing they did, their state of mind, fears, and goals. For that to really be effective the Keeper needs to at least sketch out some scenes and ideas in advance. Even in a landscape as malleable as Silent Hill, it's helpful to set a few boundaries. Not unlike massive chasms in an otherwise pristine street, these boundaries funnel the character towards the desired destination.

Always bear in mind that the two most important aspects of survival horror are these:

First, it is always about the character, not the situation. Nobody cares about a zombie apocalypse if there are no brains to munch on, nobody cares about dinosaurs on the rampage if all the humans have already escaped via helicopter, and nobody, but nobody, cares about a spooky castle on a desolate peak if the protagonists skip past it and go on vacation in Monaco instead.  This isn't about sinister plots or grand Illuminati-style machinations. This is about what happens to ordinary people when plunged into extraordinary circumstances.

Second, not only is the threat real, it will almost certainly be fatal for someone. Probably several someones, in group-style play. When six co-eds vacation in that charming little cottage in the woods by the lake, it's practically guaranteed that only one or two, at the very most, will come back to tell the tale. Or to take the Silent Hill route, it's perfectly possible for James Sunderland to survive every single threat the town has to throw at him, and still have his life ruined.

Now, enough of that, I think. Next time, something completely different!

Silent Hill (Fear Itself)

Over the New Year's I tried to play Silent Hill 2 all the way through to the end. I had no choice; my copy is an aged PC version that, among its many bugs, wouldn't let me save, so it was play through till death or not play at all. I've seldom enjoyed a horror title more, and even half-bust as my copy is, that old corpse didn't disappoint.

For those who never had the pleasure, Silent Hill is a survival horror video game series originally developed by Japanese studio Konami. It's set in the one horse town that is Silent Hill, populated only by shadows and the damned. There's a map of the surrounding area, but you can't rely on it. There were other people here, some of whom are dead. The others? Well, you probably want to avoid them if you possibly can ...

People who come here seldom find what they wanted to find, and are lucky if they get out alive at all. Sometimes they stumble in, like Harry Mason, who just wanted to find his missing daughter. Some of them deliberately make their way there, like James Sunderland, who wants to track down his supposedly dead wife, or Heather Mason, who'd leave Silent Hill alone if only it would do her the same courtesy. Or you could be like Harry Townsend, who just wakes up one day and finds that he's trapped in his apartment, with no real idea why or how.

Silent Hill 2 is the best of the series. The rest? Eh, they have their moments, but none of them are as consistently frightening as James Sunderland's trip into nightmare. It's one of the most effective horror games of all time, and for good reason. No other game, and certainly none of the other Silent Hill titles, is as good at reaching into your mind and making you think; and once you do that, the shadows can get into your brain. After which, there's no chance at all.

This game partly inspired the hot mess that is the Silent Hill movie, with Sean Bean playing a Sunderland-esque role. Bean's a reasonable physical match, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it. The terrible thing is, there are times when it becomes a really good movie, only to disappoint the viewer in the very next scene.

What makes Silent Hill work? Ultimately its character. You believe in James, Harry, Heather and the rest. You understand what they want, and why they're in the situation that they're in. Those strong characters then get to bounce off the weirdness that is the town, which will explore and exploit all of their flaws, until they break.

Silent Hill the town is a very odd place, even more so than it seems at first glance; and at first glance it's pretty damn odd. It's shrouded in mist and darkness, so you can't see all of it, and it's easy to get lost. Your initial impression is that it's a one horse burg, the kind of place that hasn't many young people because they all move off to the big city as soon as they can. Maybe it had a past, but it definitely doesn't have a future.

Then you begin to explore, and to wonder. How many one horse towns have apartment buildings? A fully functioning hospital and a separate medical clinic? A prison, a Civil War museum, a Historical Society, a lakefront Hotel, a funfair, a park? Suddenly it seems much bigger than before. But where are all the people? Yes, there are abandoned cars here and there, and signs that something cataclysmic happened. But there are far fewer corpses than you'd expect if there was a natural disaster, and far fewer survivors.

One of the first living people James Sunderland meets is Angela, whose importance you only really understand when you see her for the last time, at the end. Without wishing to spoil, it becomes clear that the Silent Hill she experiences is a completely different kind of Silent Hill to the one James has had to fight through. Here's her final scene. "You see it too? For me, it's always like this."

This demonstrates two very important truths: first, that Silent Hill is different for everyone. Second, that everyone in Silent Hill gets the experience that they think they deserve.

Ultimately, this is about Hell. But this isn't about scales being balanced or some kind of judgement. This is about the punishment we make for ourselves.

Angela sees the things she sees not simply because she's being punished, but because she thinks she deserves to be punished, and in that particular way. Taking that example, James too must see the things he sees for the same reasons. Which suggests that Silent Hill, the town, bends its appearance, its essential being, to the expectations of people like James and Angela. There's a Hotel, yes, but perhaps it only exists because James needs it to exist. For Angela, there may be no Hotel. She's clearly somewhere, in that final scene, but it might not be the same somewhere that James thinks he's in.

In that case, Silent Hill is just a set, a dreamscape. For James, the Hospital is clearly designed as a insane asylum. For someone else it might be an ordinary hospital, or a school, or some other building. Two people can be in the same place, the same room, and yet have completely different experiences.

Moreover this malleability doesn't stop at the streets and buildings. As James proves in his relationship with Mary not all the people are really people. But as with the environments, these phantoms aren't created by a god or devil figure. It's people like James who invent them out of nothing at all. Ultimately all they are is a reflection of the protagonist's mental state. Nor are they there to be helpful; after all, this is about punishment, not salvation.

So taking all that on board, how can you, as Keeper, simulate Silent Hill with a ruleset such as Fear Itself? 

Fear Itself has at its core the idea that ordinary people, without special abilities, magic or some kind of overarching Destiny (with that all-important capital D), can be plunged into terror beyond their imagining or control. This works nicely with Silent Hill's insistence that its protagonists be ordinary people, without powers or indeed weapons beyond the sticks and items they can scavenge. Often its scenarios are designed to be one-shots, which is perfect for a Silent Hill session. Also, in its character creation mechanic the players are encouraged to identify and describe The Worst Thing You Ever Did, which fits perfectly into the Silent Hill punishment trope. 

Finally, the characters are encouraged to develop a goal, and again, this is perfect for Silent Hill, since its protagonists are usually very goal-oriented. James' goal is to find out what's going on with his supposedly dead wife, for example. Heather's is to find out what Silent Hill wants from her, and incidentally to avenge her dead father figure Harry Mason, so that's both a goal and a Drive in one easy package.

My suggestion would be that, in addition to developing a character, each player also develop something that the Wraith RPG would call a Shadow. Don't worry about Stats for these creatures; the main points are the archetype, Drive and Goal, which work in just the same way as they would for an ordinary character. Except, as with Wraith, the Shadow's goal is to oppose the player's character, to drag them further down into the abyss. So their archetype, drive and goal ought to be a polar opposite to the player's character. 

A Jock player type might have a Brain Shadow, for example. That Brain's Goal might be to show up the Jock in front of his girlfriend, if the Jock's Goal is to rescue his girlfriend, and so on. An alternate Shadow for a Jock, assuming that his goal is to rescue his girlfriend, is to have a substitute girlfriend whose personality is the polar opposite of the Jock's actual girlfriend. So if his original girlfriend is a Good Girl, the Shadow is a Sexy Girl.

Instead of abilities, a Shadow has an Aberrance pool. That pool can only be spent to help, or frustrate, the character. Helping in this instance means adding points to a character's Pool, to help with tests or to uncover clues. Say a character wants to interrogate an NPC. The Shadow can contribute Flirting, Intimidation or Interrogation to assist, by using Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis. If an important door is locked, blocking progress, the Shadow has the key, or knows how to bypass it, on a 1 Aberrance spend. Or say an Athletics test is needed to overcome an obstacle; the Shadow can contribute points to the test. 

Frustration is the same thing, in reverse. Though the Shadow can never willfully obscure clues, it can contribute pool points to increase the difficulty of a test. I suspect this will often be used to increase the difficulty of Stability tests, but not always.

This pool should be two points less than the Investigative build points used to create the character. Assuming 16 build points, then the Aberrance pool is 14, and so on. Aberrance can be refreshed whenever the character loses Stability. For each point lost, the Shadow regains Aberrance on a 1 for 1 basis, up to a cap of the Shadow's original Aberrance pool.

Shadows have no General abilities. They piggyback on the characters. So in a Fleeing contest, for example, if the character successfully flees, then so does the Shadow. Shadows also have minimal Health, and no Stability. However they can never truly die. If killed in a scene, perhaps by a monster, a Shadow can reappear, apparently unharmed, a few scenes later. Ultimately as a reflection of the character that created it, a Shadow cannot die unless and until the character that created it dies. 

A Shadow is never played by the person who created it. A Shadow's role should always be taken by another player, whenever possible. If that isn't possible for whatever reason, then the Shadow should be played by the Keeper.

OK, that's it for the characters. What about the town of Silent Hill?

Well, the great thing is that there are plenty of online resources that can help you create it. One of the most useful is this fan-created map of the town, but there are plenty of map examples online. That part of the map used in Silent Hill 2 is marked as South Silent Hill, but really you can pick and choose as you see fit. Print out this map. That way the players can draw on it, just as happens in the games.

What, exactly, is in Silent Hill? Ultimately that will be up to the players, but I suspect that it will depend greatly on whether or not they have played any of the Silent Hill games. Those who have will almost certainly expect to be able to go to their favorite locations. Brookhaven Hospital is a recurring setting. Heaven's Night nightclub may turn out to be a fan favorite, as might Neely's Bar. If you have the time it would be a good idea to ask, preferably at least a week or two before the session, which locations the players want to visit, and then build scenes around them.

If the Keeper's uncertain about an area, there are plenty of online resources that describe them. Alternately, make it up out of whole cloth. So long as there's plenty of atmosphere and fog, you should be fine. Even within a Silent Hill location there were always plenty of fenced-off or gated areas the player could never get to. The bit of the Hospital the characters are currently in could easily be one of those. 

The creatures encountered in Silent Hill often depend on the protagonists themselves. So James Sunderland, for instance, first encountered Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head is intended as a play on his frustrated masculinity and libido, all gleaming muscle and huge weapon. Ideally, as with the locations, the Keeper should get a week or more worth of heads-up about the Worst Thing The Character Has Ever Done, which should give enough material to design the look and basic behavior of the creatures the character encounters. 

It may also be useful to ask if there are particular creatures the players want to encounter, or avoid. Some long term fans of the series may feel that a particular creature type is done to death and just not interesting any more. Others may really look forward to, say, the Nurses, or Robbie the Rabbit. 

However the key to monster design here is to take a hard look at the character and see what can be done. So in Silent Hill 3, for instance, where there's a strong undercurrent of sex, Heather is often attacked by creatures that resemble walking spermatozoa, or giant misshapen muscle-men, and in one section has to kill a giant purple worm that suddenly emerges from a huge hole in the wall. As I recall, I beat it to death with a stick. Paging Doctor Freud. But the point is that the enemies she faces are dependent on Heather herself, so you as Keeper need to know about the characters' goals and Worst Thing. 

Try to keep it simple. Dividing it up into the Seven Deadly Sins is a handy reference that may help you in a pinch. A creature motivated by Lust is bound to be different from one motivated by Gluttony, and so on. Also remember that the Sin will affect the environment as well. Angela sees Silent Hill in a completely different way from James, because her motivating sin - linked to her goal and Worst Thing - is different from his.

Once all that's done, send the characters off into Silent Hill. Each character will probably arrive on his or her own; this isn't a moment for the Mystery Machine to rock up and start disgorging plucky teens and their crazy dog. But after they arrive each character will probably encounter the other characters one by one, just as James first meets Angela in the graveyard and leaves her there, or finds Maria in the park and brings her along with him. 

You shouldn't be afraid to let the characters split up and explore the town on their own, because when not on stage a player can assume a Shadow role. If there are a lot of players this becomes tricky, so you may be better off doing this in a smaller group. 

Alternately if you don't mind things getting really complicated, you can assign off-stage players recurring monster roles of one kind or another. Robbie the Rabbit returns, or one of the Nurses takes on a more human intelligence. 

I'm going to leave it there for the moment, and come back to this in a Part 2. So long for now! See you in a bit.

Mystery of the Mary Celeste (Fear Itself, Trail of Cthulhu)

The story of the Mary Celeste is one of those useful spine tingling tales that ghost story writers have relied on for over a century, to add that extra chill to a mystery ship story. Imagine finding a derelict, adrift at sea, all sails set and a meal cooling on the table. There's no sign of captain or crew, and the ship's log indicates that the voyage was an uneventful as any captain could wish for, right up to the presumed moment when everyone vanished. What happened? Was it an ordinary, tragic disaster at sea, or did something otherwordly happen to this ship's crew?

In the case of the Mary Celeste, most of what people think they know is, in fact, false. There was no meal cooling on the table. Much of the ship's contents were soaked with sea water, indicating a sudden event, though what that event was remains a subject for debate. Waterspouts and seaquakes, as well as more ordinary incidents, have been cited as possible causes. Several items were missing, including the ship's papers and navigation equipment, and there's evidence that the ship's boat was launched. There was no indication of sudden violence, despite the best efforts of Frederick Solly Flood, attorney general of Gibraltar and one of the chief officers of the court of inquiry into the incident, to persuade the court otherwise. In all likelihood the crew of the Mary Celeste abandoned the ship in fear of their lives, only to perish on the open sea. The ship they abandoned went on drifting with the wind and currents, before being intercepted by the Dei Gratia and brought to Gibraltar.

The real mystery isn't so much what happened, as why. The captain, Benjamin Briggs, was a very experienced sailor from a family of experienced sailors. His wife and daughter were aboard, as well as a crew of seven; two mates, a steward and four seamen. All were veteran seamen, and had good characters; one, the first mate, had sailed with Briggs before. There seems to be no good reason why a captain and crew as well prepared and capable as they should decide to abandon an apparently seaworthy ship and risk their lives in a lifeboat.

This was Briggs' first voyage with the Mary Celeste, which he and his brother had bought as a joint investment.  Briggs took her down to New York to pick up cargo, a hold full of denatured alcohol, which he intended to ship to Genoa. He departed harbor on November 7, 1872. The Dei Gratia would later discover the abandoned Mary Celeste on December 4th. There's no clear indication of what happened to her between the 7th and the 4th; the ship's log was one of the things missing, though the daily slate - where notes would have been taken each day, later to be transferred to the log - was still aboard. The slate indicated nothing untoward.

The tragic Mary Celeste became a ghost story, rather than a maritime disaster story, thanks in part to the efforts of fiction writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote and published one of his first stories, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, about the disaster. Much to his astonishment, people began repeating that story - involving murder on the high seas by a man intent on race war - as true, and soon others began inventing spook tales which, in turn, became accepted as the 'true account' of the tragedy of the Mary Celeste. Nothing was too outrageous or outre. Perhaps the crew were devoured by a giant octopus, perhaps aliens got them, perhaps the captain, in a burst of religious mania, murdered everyone aboard ... and so on.

The truth is probably more prosaic. It's possible that Briggs became convinced that his cargo was about to explode, or that the ship was about to sink. Both events would justify abandoning ship, and there's at least some evidence to support either theory. The sounding rod - a bit of iron with rope attached, used in the same way you'd use a dipstick in your car - was found on deck, as if dropped there in a hurry, and the hatches were open, possibly to air the hold out. The crew may not have intended to completely abandon the ship; they may have been attached to the Mary Celeste with a rope, which subsequently snapped.

Even so, it's surprising that Briggs left the Mary Celeste completely unmanned. After all, the ship contains what amounts to his life savings and hopes for the future; he'd have to be pretty convinced all was lost to abandon it completely. It would have been more in character to send most of the crew, and his wife and child, out in the boat, particularly if it were tied to the Mary Celeste, and stay aboard himself. Brigantines like the Mary Celeste aren't complicated to operate; the Dei Gratia got her to Gibraltar with a four man crew, and it would have been possible to keep her going with one man only. It would have been incredibly difficult and exhausting, but it could have been done. 'She was so sound and stout,' said Oliver Deveau, the Dei Gratia's first mate and the man who sailed Mary Celeste to Gibraltar, 'That I cannot think that if I had been on board I should have abandoned her. I should have considered her safer than an open boat unless she was on the rocks.'

It would make more sense if Briggs stayed aboard, yet clearly he did not. It makes me wonder if he was out of commission at this point, perhaps having taken a blow to the head during the same incident that put the Mary Celeste in peril. The crew, lacking leadership and faced with what seemed to them to be extreme danger, might have launched the boat with him in it. Or perhaps he did stay aboard, only to see the ship's boat come adrift, or even capsize, taking his wife and daughter to the bottom. That might have been enough to make him throw himself overboard. Or that event, whatever it may have been, which put the Mary Celeste in jeopardy might have been so severe as to make staying aboard an impossibility. Threat of an exploding cargo would do that.

After the Mary Celeste was brought to Gibraltar, the inquiry into her abandonment very nearly became a one-man lynch mob. Flood, convinced that murder or mutiny was at the back of the mystery, was hell-bent on proving that the crew had met with foul play, and that the Dei Gratia's people were somehow behind it all. This theory met with a severe setback when scientific investigation proved beyond question that stains found on the ship, and on a sword discovered in Briggs' cabin, were not blood. Eventually the court decided to uphold the Dei Gratia's salvage claim, but awarded it a relative pittance of one-fifth the value of the Mary Celeste, including cargo. Probably this was because the court had made its own mind up and felt that there was still some merit in the piracy argument, though there was no evidence to support it. Just goes to show, when the judge hates you, you might as well stay as far away from the court as possible.

The Mary Celeste bounced from owner to owner for a while, before finally finding its way to Gilman C. Parker in 1884. She now had a reputation as an unlucky ship, and had regularly lost money on her cruises. Parker loaded her with a supposedly valuable cargo, insured that cargo with three different agencies, and took her down to Haiti, where she conveniently found her way onto a reef and went down. '[I] had no more intention of wrecking the vessel,' said Parker to a disbelieving New York court of inquiry, 'Than I did of cutting my own throat.'

Yet that valuable cargo proved, on inspection, to be dog collars, spoiled beer, and rotten fish, loaded by merchants who clearly expected a huge insurance payout. Parker was charged with barratry - damaging a vessel or its cargo through abandonment, illegal scuttling or theft - which carried the death penalty. In the end barratry was dropped, though other charges were brought against Parker and the merchants. In the one civil case that came to court the jury refused to deliver a verdict, as there were several counts pending against Parker and his accomplices, and it was unwilling to prejudice the case against Parker in those separate indictments by returning a guilty verdict, particularly since the barratry indictment might mean hanging. The insurers immediately requested a new trial, but the court, electing not to go through all that expensive mess again, persuaded all concerned to drop charges. The insurers wouldn't have to pay out, any money already paid would be returned with interest, and the accused would leave the court, free men.

In the aftermath, one of the accused went insane, another committed suicide, the rest went out of business, and Parker himself died within three months, destitute and with a ruined reputation. The Mary Celeste remains on that Haitian reef to this day.

If the aspiring Keeper wants to use this tale as a one-off, say for Fear Itself or Trail, and is looking for more information, I highly recommend Paul Begg's Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea. If you already know Begg's name, then you're probably a Jack the Ripper fan.

Here's some potential treatments:

You're all members of the Mary Celeste crew. One of you becomes possessed by an unclean spirit, or perhaps just goes mad, and starts killing off crewmates one by one. Who's behind it? Is it some kind of shapeshifting demon? A ghost? Some invisible Cthulhuoid entity, running the crewman like a puppet?

Or alternatively, the Mary Celeste comes under attack by something otherwordly, or just overwhelmingly powerful; a giant octopus, say. Then it becomes a survival horror narrative, with crewmen trapped below decks or in cabins, trying to keep the monster at bay, while its questing tentacles probe at every weak spot. 

A Trail 1930s scenario could have the characters go to Haiti, perhaps to investigate something else, or even to shoot a film about the Mary Celeste. Maybe they're led there by evidence discovered in New York; perhaps one of the merchants, the insane one or the suicide, left some document behind that strongly hints at an occult angle to the Mary Celeste's wrecking. There they discover that whatever curse struck down the crew of the Mary Celeste is still very much active, and claiming more lives. Sorcerers ashore are trying to put a stop to it with their own magic, but whatever it is, it's far too powerful for them. Or perhaps those sorcerers have been salvaging bits from the Mary Celeste to use in their own spirit magic, only to discover that, whatever it is, it's much too dangerous to handle.

Once TimeWatch becomes available, there are other options. After all, the Mary Celeste story has already been the subject of at least one time traveler's adventures. Mysterious disappearances ought to be meat and drink to aspiring time agents.

That's it for the moment! I hope you find this useful. Enjoy!

Island Paradise (Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself)

There's a great New York Times article over here on the buying habits of the very, very rich, which I recommend you look at. It caught my eye at first because Bermuda's number one of the list of places to buy property, and it's always nice to see your home make the number one spot on any list. [he says, as he contemplates a mortgage that will never be affordable if he lives to be a thousand.]

For those of you who don't fancy skimming it, the article talks about how great it can be to buy an island of your very own. Imagine living on, say, Buck Island in the BVI, with its protected bay, house that can accommodate twenty, and its helicopter pad, for those days when you can't be bothered to sail in. The BVI's only a few hours out from the East Coast - you need to fly somewhere else first, then fly from there to the Virgin Islands - so theoretically you could go out in the morning, have lunch at your island paradise, and be back in New York before night falls. All of which is probably much easier to do if you have your own private jet, and if you can afford Buck Island's $25 million asking price, a private jet shouldn't be a problem for you.

As a location for a scenario, or even just a scene in a larger piece, a private island is perfect. It's far enough away from the mainland that the protagonists can't expect backup. It may be so far away that ordinary cellphone communication is impossible. In some parts of the world, like Greece, a private island can have been inhabited for centuries, if not millennia; who knows what kind of terrifying rituals took place at that haunted monastery, or castle? Or, in a modern twist, who knows why that luxury hotel was abandoned twenty years ago? The only way to find out is to go there and investigate ...

Looking at this from an RPG perspective, why would, say, the vampire Conspyracy or the Esoterrorists want an island?

Well, for one thing an island is very private. You can do almost anything out there, and nobody's ever going to know. Esoteric rituals, sacrifices, clandestine meetings of the higher-ups in the conspyramid, strange scientific experiments; it's perfect for all your security needs. Plus whichever governmental authority controls the comings and goings - in BVI, for instance, the ultimate authority is the Crown, represented by the island's Governor, and there's also an elected government led by a Premier - is probably going to bend over backwards to keep you happy. You're fabulously wealthy, after all; the local economy may significantly benefit from your continued patronage. This means that any nosy foreigners asking questions may meet with considerable local resistance, further keeping your island secrets secure.

Traditionally, an island stronghold has also been useful for resupply and smuggling. If you manage a fleet of ships or planes that perhaps don't have enough operational range to get from the mainland to their appointed destination, having an island depot capable of resupplying, even repairing, those vessels can be very handy. This was more of a problem in the days of sail and coal than it is in the modern era, but it's still something to bear in mind.

Smuggling has always been a popular island pastime. In Bermuda, for example, we smuggled cotton and guns during the American Civil War, and booze during Prohibition. As we're protected by the British flag, the American government didn't want to come in mob-handed, as it might otherwise have done.

Smuggling doesn't have to stop at trade goods. People smuggling has been a popular occupation for time out of mind. In the Mediterranean, refugees flow through Libya to Italy, often via the island of Lampedusa. Since then, people smugglers have adopted the reprehensible tactic of taking their customers up to the coast of Italy by boat, then abandoning the boat, knowing that the coast guard will have no choice but to save the refugees on board. Australia has maintained several island detention centers, to dissuade ocean-going migrants.

From a Keeper's perspective, a private island is an excellent setting for a stand-alone game, say Fear Itself. The characters arrive as guests, perhaps of an unknown patron - shades of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Please Avoid Ethnic Stereotypes - and fall victim to, say, zombies. Or Nazi zombies, why not. Or prehistoric creatures, revived for your pleasure. Or anything else, but the point behind an island locale is that it automatically creates the things you need for horror: isolation, unfamiliarity, lack of resources. Isolation is fairly obvious, as is lack of resources. Unfamiliarity is a little different, but in this instance it refers to the landscape and the circumstances. Unless the players are very familiar with boats and the nomadic lifestyle, they've probably never been in an environment like this. It's all very well in the brochures, and places where there's a well-trained staff to cater for your least whim. It's a bit different when there's no other humans for God alone knows how many miles in any direction. when the generator dies and you don't know how to fix it, when the winds kick up and the roof sounds as if it's about to take flight.

That's it for now! Happy island hopping.

Retail Dinosaurs: The Shopping Mall (Night's Black Agents, Esoterrorists, Fear Itself)

Once upon a time you could guarantee that, come the zombie apocalypse, folks would naturally head to shopping malls. About five minutes after that, the survivors get remarkably good at shooting things in the head, which always surprises me; it's not an easy trick to pull off. However there may be a problem with that plan, if the apocalypse arrives right about now, as shopping malls are dying off.

The photographs in that link come from Seph Lawless' collection of urban decay artwork. The mall culture as we've come to know it, with its big boxes, anchor stores and chain outlets, got its start just after the Second World War. The concept really started catching on in the 1950s, when developers began making fully enclosed shopping spaces, rather than the open-air design that had been popular before the War. These behemoths took shopping to the suburbs; you didn't have to go all the way into the smoky, polluted city to scratch your retail itch any more. The mall became the new community hub, a place you'd go to just to hang out, or see friends. If you were a kid living out in the suburbs it started as an entertainment center, with its arcades and food court, then became a source of employment later on, when you needed cash for the summer. It was a part of everyday life.

But the retail environment has changed. Part of it is changing economic circumstances, with many of the mall's former customers being too cash-strapped to afford its goods, and many of the chains that serviced them - RadioShack, Blockbuster, Virgin - now out of business or on their way out. Particularly in America, where entire cities and suburbs can be dead on their feet, the mall has become a symbol of this overarching collapse of community narrative. Part of it is a change in retail habits, now that the internet has brought goods to everyone's doorstep, eliminating the need to get out of the house.

It can be a slow death. First just one or two shops shut, but the mall can't find replacement tenants, so they stay vacant. Then footfall patterns change, as people stop going to that section of the mall that housed those shops. Soon nearby stores or food outlets move on, seeking to avoid the blank spot, but it just expands. Nobody's taking care of those areas, so if the floor gets dirty, or windows broken, nobody fixes or cleans. Pretty soon the mall has a ratty, desperate look to it, and it will only get worse if, say, a serial murderer decides your now-quiet mall is the perfect place to stash a body or two. The slightest whiff of crime, and you might as well shutter the place now and save money.

This isn't a pattern unique to America. A mall I knew very well when I was a student in Reading offers a zombie experience now, and I don't doubt there are malls all over Europe - particularly in Spain and Greece, I'd bet - in similar straits, either dead or dying. When I posted the Escapist article, one of the commentators was kind enough to post a link to a dead Bangkok mall that's become a home for coy and exotic fish. Pick your country; there's bound to be at least one or two of these retail dinosaurs, still standing but dead on their feet.

What does this mean for Night's Black Agents, The Esoterrorists, and Fear Itself?

Well, both Night's Black Agents and The Esoterrorists rely on spycraft tropes, and an abandoned mall is perfect for a chase scene as well as a fun setting for an enemy base. Malls don't have to be centrally located; part of their charm, when the retail model still held sway, was that a developer could plant it out in the middle of the countryside and still expect people to drive there. That means an abandoned mall can be isolated, with any hope of rescue far, far away. If it's in the middle of a decaying suburb, then the Keeper has the option of a Silent Hill vibe, with the mall the centerpiece of an expanding network of dead buildings, the few humans left scurrying for cover when night falls.

Fear Itself has a slightly different aesthetic. It takes essentially the same game world as the Esoterrorists, but plunges ordinary people into the mincing machine rather than highly trained special agents. In that kind of setting the abandoned mall can be a kind of Castle Ravenloft, and the characters the equivalent of villagers huddled nervously in its shadow. In a one-off they'd head straight to the mall, but in a mini-campaign it may be better to have the characters skirt around its edges first, perhaps take on a few minor challenges in some of the houses roundabout before trying to penetrate to the heart of the mystery.

As far as mall design is concerned, the Keeper only needs to know the basics. There's usually a Food Court, a central location where several different fast food outlets serve everyone at once. Emphasis here is on 'everyone at once,' which means it needs to be cleaned easily and quickly. There's going to be a lot of tile and glass here, and probably a very bright, cheerful color scheme. The Food Court is likely to be central, in a large, open area.

The mall probably relied on one or more key tenants to provide revenue. These are the big boys, the nationwide chains, and they may occupy more than one floor of the mall, with internal connections via stairs, escalator and elevator. If there's more than one key tenant, the stores will be positioned as far apart as possible. That way people going to the mall have to walk from one anchor store to the other, which means they walk past the smaller stores and Food Court. Footfall is everything in retail.

Finally, there may be satellites. Technically these stores may not be an official part of the mall, but they're close enough for that not to matter to the customers. These standalone stores may or may not have their own parking areas, and may provide completely different, but complimentary, functions. I've noticed that gas stations are quite common in the UK; I don't know if the same applies in North America. Food outlets and cinemas are also likely.

So let's talk about Spring Creek Shopping Center.

Located in the suburbs surrounding a major city center, Spring Creek got its start as Indian Spring, an open-air mall built in 1947. As the city's industrial sector took off and people started relocating to the suburbs, the developers who owned Indian Spring soon discovered that their development was just too small to satisfy their expanding customer base. They started quietly buying up adjoining land, unveiling their new scheme, Spring Creek, in 1954. By 1957 it was a reality: a massive complex capable of satisfying pretty much any retail need a suburbanite could think of.

Problems began in 1961, when a partial collapse due to shoddy design caused the deaths of two people. Subsequent lawsuits and bad press were a significant knock on Spring Creek's profitability, and the original developers sold out to a management firm, Westbrook, in 1968. Westbrook decided significant renovations were needed, which finally completed in 1971.

During 1970, when the renovations were still ongoing and the mall part-shuttered, fledgeling horror director Bill O'Bannon shot his low-budget vampire movie, Scream Nocturna Scream, at Spring Creek. Many of its most memorable scenes were shot in one of Spring Creek's anchors, the department store retailer Von Moore. O'Bannon later went on to become a schlock horror icon, but died of a drug overdose while attending a horror convention, Fright Night Dallas, in 1981. 

Spring Creek's heyday came in the 1980s. There was money and lots of it, rolling in day by day. The mall expanded in 1982, and again in 1987, with the promised addition of a new anchor store and a dozen smaller outlets in its Galleria Wing. However the expansion was too large, even for the projected profits, and it didn't help that, in 1989, it was revealed that Westbrook's CFO had embezzled millions over the years before committing suicide - or possibly met death by misadventure during a sex act - on Christmas Eve, an event that became enshrined in local memory as Black Christmas.

It was all downhill from there. Lack of development money meant that the promised Galleria Wing was left unfinished, and the big box retailer decided not to move in after all. Spring Creek struggled through the 1990s hoping for a break, and never got one. The internet, and economic collapse in the 2000s, sealed its fate. Its customers were broke - the city's industrial sector was on its knees - and the ones that had money didn't need Spring Creek any more.

The defining event of the 2000s was the discovery, in 2006, that the serial killer who came to be known as the Hammer Killer had been stashing bodies in the abandoned Galleria Wing, relying on lack of maintenance to conceal his dump site. It was three months, and eight victims, before he was caught.

In 2008 Spring Creek shuttered for good. One or two of the satellite stores still operate, on reduced hours, but the main building has been locked up for years. There has been talk of knocking it down, perhaps replacing it with an open-air mall or park, but there's neither the money nor the will to get it done.

Now, Keeper: if you can't do something with that, there's no hope for you! Enjoy!