North Korea's Floating Hotel (Night's Black Agents)

Once again this video comes courtesy of Side Note.

This location combines the unusual locale of a cruise ship with the happy fun times any enterprising agent might have in North Korea. For those of you who don't want to watch the whole video, a brief precis:

Once upon a time a man with more money than sense thought it would be a spiffing idea to open a grand hotel floating on the Grand Barrier Reef in Australia. In theory this is a fantastic location for a boutique hotel. You have all the beauty of nature at your disposal coupled with the luxuries a top tier hotel can offer. In practice this rapidly fell apart. Hotels, like all other service industry enterprises, operate on the basis of low cost high return. Even the Ritz scrimps. However a floating hotel was always going to be an expensive proposition, particularly given the ecologically sensitive nature of the Grand Banks. There were expensive delays which meant it didn't open when it needed to. Added to that is the less obvious problem that once you plonk it out there, there's not a lot you can do with it. Any other hotel can offer excursions, change the look up, offer deals. Operating costs being what they were, deals were off the table: you paid through the nose. If you didn't really enjoy watersports or suffered from seasickness, you weren't going to have a good time. Any local problems, like starfish eating the coral or cyclones knocking out the pool, meant the site was less desirable. Then they found discarded WWII ammo - possibly live ammo - dumped nearby.

Ooops.

Incidentally if any of you are suffering from an advanced case of deja vu, then you've read Chris Brookmyre's One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night.  In that comic crime novel a developer puts all his eggs in one floating basket and opens a hotel in a converted oil rig off the coast of Scotland. A floating "Butlins meets ethnic cleansing", with "every modern British urban leisure activity, but without the British urban clouds and rain. A resort where all the staff didn't merely speak English, but spoke it in comfortably familiar accents … And crucially, a resort where you could be guaranteed never to see the front page of Bild staring back at you from your desired poolside spot." As a kind of fuck-you to his past he arranges a class reunion aboard his pride and joy, so he can flaunt his success in front of the people he wants most to acknowledge his greatness: the kids he knew at Catholic school St Michael's, Auchinlea. Then terrorists show up, shoot the place up, and plant a bomb in the oil rig.

Ooops.

Australia's pride and joy migrated to North Korea via Vietnam, and was used for a brief period as a kind of way station for reunited Koreans when NK flirted with reconciliation. The idea being that those who'd been on one side of the Bamboo Curtain could meet their relatives from the South on what seemed more or less neutral ground. As with all things designed by man this too fell apart, and for now the empty hotel floats off Mount Kumgang. Allegedly it's slated for redevelopment, a project temporarily delayed by COVID quarantine. In practice given the idiosyncrasies of NK's current government it is likely to be mothballed till it sinks.

Its timeline is:

• Inception and late opening 1988, as the John Brewer Floating Hotel off Australia's Barrier Reef. It was very briefly also known as the Four Seasons Floating Hotel, when some addled philanthropist bought it from Brewer. If further proof were needed that the average rich man's brain consists entirely of warmed-over pudding ...
• Relocated 1989 (oh dear) to Vietnam, where it had a home on the Saigon River near the Tran Hung Dao Statue. 
• Relocated 1998 to North Korea.
• Closed 2008 after a shooting incident in which a NK soldier shot a South Korean visitor dead. Allegedly the tourist was entering a militarily sensitive zone and did not heed warnings. Remains closed to this day.

There is a free Night's Black Agents RPG based aboard a cruise ship, Pleasures of the Flesh, written by Alasdair Sinclair and available in Pelgrane's downloads section. With some small modification it could as easily take place aboard Brewer's seven story luxury floating hotel. Given it was only at the Barrier Reef for a year, unless you want to set the game in the 1980s - which is perfectly doable - you're better off having it a 1990s scenario, or even a North Korean getaway. What sinister secrets lurk inside North Korea's luxury resort, and why do so many NK officials want to stay there?  If it's a Vietnam scenario you have other options, not least returning veterans of the Vietnam war trying to recapture their lost youth in a sparkling high-end nightclub playground. Dance the night away in the Downunder Bar, then restore your strength with one of the management's special tonics …

To close out, here's a scenario seed:

Dead Drop

A North Korean source claims to have what Edom would describe as a Special Biological Asset - a vampire. The source wants to smuggle it out of North Korea, allegedly because the powers that be want to use it as part of a North Korean eternal life program and the source fears what might happen if Kim Jong-un lives forever. Terms include a fat payoff for the source, to be routed via casinos in the Philippines. A fixer in Macao is arranging the deal, negotiating with interested parties which include every known vampire program - so America's Find Forever, whatever's left of Germany's Unternehmen Braun, the Vatican's St Lazarus - only China's Room 452 isn't on the bidder list. That may or may not be a warning signal that something dodgy's going on, given North Korea's historic ties to China.

The deal is, pay through the nose via the casino and the buyer collects the asset at the floating Hotel Haegumgang. How the buyer gets to the hotel and retrieves the asset is entirely up to the buyer. The seller only promises to deliver the asset, as securely bound up as possible. This offer's only open for a  limited time - buy now, beat the rush.

Verifying the vendor's bona fides is a chancy proposition. The only contact is the Macau fixer, Wan Kuok-koi, aka Broken Tooth, a notorious gangster affiliated with the 14K Triad. Recently released from jail and enjoying millions earned from a cryptocurrency scheme, Broken Tooth isn't the sort to cave under intimidation tactics and he knows how to keep his mouth shut. However someone able to do him political favors or wipe out a few outstanding warrants for friends of his will get him to talk. The vendor is an elder statesman, ally to Kim Jong's father and now out in the cold, politically speaking. 

The asset will be in one of the hotel's most expensive suites, in five day's time. Either the agents represent the buyers, or they represent a disappointed bidder who wants to snatch the asset before the buyer takes possession. All they have to do is sneak into North Korea, take possession, and get out without being arrested and thrown into a North Korean re-education camp. Assuming the vendor's trustworthy. Assuming the asset's as securely bound as the vendor says it is. Assuming this isn't all some double-bluff on someone's part to capture a foreign vampire hunter and use that person's knowledge to kick-start North Korea's vampire program.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy ...

Hotel Hell (Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, Night's Black Agents, Timewatch)

This week's post is inspired by a news item about hotel thefts, and loosely based on the Breidenbacher Hof in Dusseldorf, Germany.

You've really got to feel sorry for the owners of five star boutique hotels. They attract a different kind of criminal. Where most of us are content to steal the soap and possibly a bathrobe, the folks who steal from the wealthy chisel out their marble fireplaces, package up their flat screens and framed art, and cart off the Steinway piano.

According to the article there's a fellow in South America who poses as an artist come to do a show, and who brings with him large packaging crates stuffed full of 'art.' Of course, it's stuffed full of nothing when he arrives, but when he leaves the crates are suspiciously heavier than they were before. In short, this is a job for the professional, your thief with an eye for high value, someone who can pull off a quick change and swindle like a veteran grifter.

In Germany it's easier than you might think, as there isn't the proliferation of security cameras you might find in an equivalent hotel elsewhere. Privacy laws specify where you can and cannot place cameras, such as public spaces like the drive in front of the hotel.

Which naturally made me go looking for a boutique hotel in Germany, which is how I found Briedenbacher Hof. Built in 1806 as a luxury resort for the rich and famous, in its day it's hosted royalty and the impossibly wealthy. It was bombed extensively during the War, and rebuilt in the 1950s. In the later 1990s it was torn down again by its Kuwait-based owners, and rebuilt to their exacting standards. During construction a section of Dusseldorf's medieval city wall was discovered in the basement, and that archaeological find is now permanently on display from the retail level of the hotel.

Dusseldorf is the second largest city in Germany, and has been an urban settlement since the Romans moved in. Its strategic position on the Rhine strengthened its importance as a trade-and-tax town, and it officially became a city in 1288 when the Counts of Berg defeated the forces of the Archbishop of Cologne and granted Dusseldorf town privileges. It built a market square surrounded by thick city walls, those same walls which lie under the foundations of the Briedenbacher Hof. Bombed extensively during the Second World War, what was a medieval town became a modern one in the 20th century, after extensive rebuilding and reconstruction. 

With all that:

Hotel Hell

The characters are professional thieves. They may be funded by an outside group, like the Esoterrorists' Ordo Veritatis, or Dracula Dosssier's Edom, but if they are then it's through cut-outs and Mr. Johnsons. The characters only know their patrons as shadowy figures in the criminal community.

They have been hired to steal a certain artwork from the Richter Hof, a newly reopened hotel with an illustrious past. Its Dubai-based owners intend it to be the jewel in their hospitality crown, and it has everything the high-end traveler could want, including a gaming room where well-heeled visitors lose their shirts at vingt-et-un and poker. Gambling licenses are very difficult to get in Germany, but the Richter has its license from before the War when it was (and still is) a destination for the wealthy and famous. 

Their job is to get in, get the goods, and get out without being stopped by hotel staff. Piece of cake, they may think. 

That rather depends on how much they like cake … 

The artwork they're told to steal is an abstract sculpture installed in the penthouse suite. Physically, it's slightly smaller than man-size and weighs over 250 lbs, so the characters will need to find some way to get it out and to the main elevator. That elevator goes all the way down to the basement car park level, so they should be able to get out without wheeling it through the lobby at least. Of course, to do that they'll need to get it out the penthouse and down a corridor which might at any time have guests or hotel staff. Plus the penthouse has a dedicated butler who spends much of his day going in and out of the penthouse, even if it's vacant, as he has to make sure the penthouse is ready at any time for one of the Richter Hof's high-end guests. The hotel's Dubai owners' extended family often drop by the hotel for a little shopping spree, and when they do they expect to be accommodated in the penthouse suite.

If the characters do some advance scouting and try to find out more information about the sculpture, they discover something odd. No two sources agree on when it was made, or who by. Some claim it's a Picasso from 1912, others an 1889 Rodin, still others a 1980s bronze by Stephen De Staebler. Everyone says it's a masterpiece worth hundreds of thousands of dollars/euro/marks - which is a little peculiar, since why would anyone value anything in Deutsche Marks, a dead currency since 2002? It's large, it's metal, and it will be hard to lift without special equipment, which is probably going to be the characters' main concern.

The trouble really begins when the characters begin the lift. Time is soft within Richter Hof. At one moment it might be 2020, at another it might be 1943 and the Battle of the Ruhr, at still another it might be 1806 and the Hof's grand opening. So long as the investigators have possession of the statue, any door - including the elevator doors - can open to any era. The statue's inert (or as inert as it ever gets) as long as it's in position in the penthouse. The minute it moves, the fun begins.

The elevator doors are an especial problem, since at most points in the hotel's history it didn't have an elevator. It certainly didn't have one that went to the basement. So the elevator doors literally lead to anywhen, anywhere, while the other doors lead to the equivalent space in [time period]. At least if the characters move from the corridor to a hotel room, they end up in a hotel room. It might be a hotel room in 1980 or 1880, occupied or empty, but at least it's predictably a hotel room. There's no telling where they end up, if they take the elevator.

Among the events the characters could walk into:

• Ruritanian Assassination. It's 1848, the age of Revolution, and the Crown Prince / Duke / [insert title here] of a small country or principality that no longer exists in 2020 has relocated to the Richter Hof to avoid talking to the Revolutionaries. Anarchists have infiltrated the hotel staff, and are planning to plant a bomb in the royal's apartments. Of course, bombs don't care who they blow up, and the characters could easily find themselves on the receiving end of a poorly planned assassination attempt.
• Firebugs. It's June 1943, and British bombers are scattering their load all over Dusseldorf. The hotel's ablaze, but so is much of Dusseldorf, so the fire brigade isn't going to be available any time soon. The hotel's part-evacuated but there are still some staff and guests in the hotel itself, either because they didn't want to go to bomb shelters or because they're trying to rescue their belongings from their burning rooms. 
• Songbirds. It's 2011, and Dusseldorf's hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. There's no escaping it; every room, bar, and screen is blaring Europop. If people aren't singing Wadde hadde dudde da  (singer/comedian Stefan Raab's 2000 hit; he's one of the 2011 judges), they're singing Lena's Taken by a Stranger, the current German entry. No immediate danger, but the hotel is absolutely rammed, and it's very difficult to sneak past the crowds while toting a 250 lbs bronze.  

Enjoy!

Hotel Wi-Fi Horror (Night's Black Agents)

Inspired by this article in the Guardian.

Short version: hotel wi-fi is incredibly insecure. This is partly because the people charged with protecting it are hotel people, who put service before security.

“Hospitality companies,” writes Bloomberg's Patrick Clark, “long saw technology as antithetical to the human touch that represented good service. The industry’s admirable habit of promoting from the bottom up means it’s not uncommon to find IT executives who started their careers toting luggage. Former bellboys might understand how a hotel works better than a software engineer, but that doesn’t mean they understand network architecture.”

Hackers love hotels because that's where people spend money. That means everything's vulnerable,  including their credit cards, passport numbers, personal details - pretty much everything guests might have wanted kept secret. Moreover it doesn't stop at one hotel. Hack, say, Marriott in Ohio, and you probably have access to every Marriott in the chain.

The aftershock can be brutal. When Marriott did get hacked, it put at risk 383 million guest records, as well as more than 5 million unencrypted passport numbers and more than 9 million encrypted payment cards.

I imagine most of you reading this have been to at least one sci fi or fantasy convention in your lives. Perhaps you go to several each year. Consider this a warning: you, too, could become a sad statistic in some future article about identity theft. You do have a Virtual Private Network, right?

It doesn't help that most hotels, anxious to keep expenses low, don't bother to upgrade out-of-date systems. Nor do their staff get trained on the best way to avoid trouble. If a customer asks to charge his phone, does the server plug it into the wall, or into the office computer? Are there unsecured, unwatched ports - say, in the bar?

With all that in mind, a scenario seed:

Puttin' On The Ritz

The agents are hired to infiltrate a high-profile hotel IT system, say one of the hotels in the Ritz-Carlton chain. That gives the Director plenty of options, from Washington DC to Tokyo. The client wants any and all data  that can be retrieved about guests arriving and departing between a set of dates. Nothing's too trivial; if the hotel records how the guest likes her eggs, then the client wants to know about it.

The agents may believe they're being hired as deniable cut-outs for a major intelligence service, or by a mafia don on the make. If the target is somewhere high-profile, like the Ritz-Carlton Macau, then the agents may be able to work up full profiles about the guests' gambling habits as well.

The job ought to be simple, but there are two problems:

First, there's a guest in the penthouse suite who's very paranoid about security. Her machines are VPN protected, and she takes care not to let her guard down. Her personal assistant seems to be the one in charge; perhaps if the PA could be dealt with, it would be easier to get the data.

Second, Heat jumps through the roof shortly before the hack ends. The agents gain 3 points Heat, with no idea why. Turns out there's a VIP, a Saudi royal, who recently arrived at the hotel, and the VIP's complaining about everything from the olives in his martini to the laughable internet security. The VIP's particularly hot on internet security, because six months ago his identity was stolen and large purchases made with his credit card. The hotel's jumping like a flea on a hot griddle, which is why Heat spiked. If the VIP could be satisfied, things would go back to normal.

One of these two - the penthouse guest or the Saudi royal - has Conspiracy links, but the agents won't find that out until their plotlines have been dealt with. The question is, which?

Or are the agents' mysterious paymasters the ones with Conspiracy links?

Enjoy!

Night's Black Agents: Chilling Locales

Victory Games' James Bond RPG, one of the best spy games of its era, knew that if it was to capture the imaginations of the players it had to present itself as the perfect Bond experience. One of the ways it did that was by immersing itself in real world detail. The iconic Bond travels all over the planet, stays in the best hotels, is seen aboard the most luxurious ships, planes and trains; the players expected no less for their characters. The Thrilling Locations supplement did exactly that, and while I can't hope to achieve the same thing here, I thought it would be good fun to start the conversation by talking about hotels.

The best hotels offer sterling service, excellent kitchens, comfortable rooms, and convenient access to the best that the area has to offer. Some hotels have a gimmick, some have a reputation, but the key thing, from a Keeper's perspective, is that they stand out. The players need to capture an image of the place in their heads, to really get into the game. The best way to do that is to make the place memorable right from the start.

With that in mind, let's start with Hotel Castel Dracula. Located atop the craggy heights of Tihuţa Pass - which Stoker fans will know is the real name of the Borgo Pass - its views are second to none. Built in 1974 in a pseudo-medieval style, Castel Dracula was created with one object in mind: vampire tourism. Guests can visit Dracula's tomb, deep in the basement, and then adjourn upstairs to the restaurant, sampling local food washed down with Dracula's elixir. The Tihuţa Pass is perfect hiking for those who enjoy wandering in beautiful countryside, and for those who enjoy more lively festivities, there's annual Witches Parties and Halloween get-togethers. What more could a vampire ask for?

Yes, it's kitschy as hell, and definitely one for the younger crowd. But consider: if ever there was a place where a vampire could get his or her freak on, and not be noticed, it's somewhere like this. Supernatural or Damned bloodsuckers could be partying in the hidden basement, the one underneath Dracula's tomb. Or perhaps the place has deeper significance; maybe the location wasn't just picked for its connection to Stoker's novel. It could be hiding something genuinely evil behind a plastic facade. What was there before the hotel was built? Who owns it? Are there significant political or criminal connections? After all, Romania is the 9th most corrupt country in the EU; is the Hotel a front for some other organization, and if so, what?

For obvious reasons, a location like this best suits a Supernatural or Damned game, but Aliens and Mutants have their place too. Either group could be using the Hotel as a convenient base of operations. Romania's EU membership gives it a surprising amount of political reach, and its troops served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also part of the missile shield being put together by the US and the West. A group which wanted a voice in world affairs without appearing too obvious about it would do well to be on good terms with a government like Romania's.

Passing from the shadow of Dracula's castle, take a trip aboard the Orient Express. The name is synonymous with luxury, and the Orient Express Group has some of the finest hotels in the world. But it's best known for its very famous train, which still runs each week to Budapest, Istanbul, London, Paris, Prague, Venice and Vienna. In its heyday it was the train of spies and crime, as well as luxury travel, but now there are much faster trains, never mind planes, to get people where they want to go. It's more for the tourist than the traveler these days, and it's doubtful spies wander the train carriage corridors.

That said, vampires are nothing if not nostalgic. An entity that's been around for a hundred years or more might have been on the train for its original incarnation's inaugural run in 1883. Perhaps one ride a year, just to recapture the magic, is a habit the players will make a particular entity regret. But there could be a more practical reason for riding the train, particularly for a bagman or a fixer. A bagman knows that sometimes the best way to stay out of sight is to be visible. Walk as if you own the place; millionaires seldom get asked impertinent questions. A ride on the train could be the best way to get to Paris without being made, or it could also be a good spot for handing off the goods. A fixer who wants to hold a clandestine auction, say of some sensitive data with a very limited life span, might like the idea of holding a private auction aboard the Express. Its publicity is its own security; few will be willing to risk the notoriety that comes with an overt assault on the most famous train in the world. Picture a scene in that famous dining car, with the fixer sat in magnificent solitude at his own table, occasionally getting a text bid from one of the interested parties, perhaps in their own cabin, perhaps in the dining car, or perhaps somewhere else altogether. 

Or perhaps, since this is a train as famous for murder as it is for luxury travel, the Keeper could go the Polonium Cocktail route. Say an important contact - perhaps that fixer - walks off the train gravely ill, and checks himself into a hospital soon after. It's pretty clear he got a bad dose, and it was probably given him aboard the train, as several Orient Express staff are also sick, although none nearly as bad as the fixer. But who handed him the dose, and what happened to the goods he supposedly had on him? The mini flash drive's not at the hospital; could it be still on the train?

That's it for the moment, but I will return to this theme later. There are plenty of places out there perfect for a Night's Black Agents moment and, after all, your players deserve nothing but the best.

Scenario Ideas, Bookhounds of London

This time out I'm going to talk about scenario seeds. Most Keepers, whatever the system, are going to need at least a scattering of these to keep their players occupied in between major events. Some Keepers opt for a more freestyle form of play and provide nothing but seeds, allowing the players to pick and choose the ones they want to follow up. Others prefer more scripted campaigns, but still need to keep some unscripted events in their arsenal for those times when the players go off-book. Perhaps a key player couldn't make the session, or perhaps they need to account for a period of downtime while someone heals or reads the all-important grimoire. After all, the other characters don't just sit on their backsides while Protagonist X rests in bed eating grapes.

Scenario seeds are very useful. They allow the players a chance to indulge their personal whimsies, without departing too much from whatever the Keeper has planned as the overarching story. They also provide the protagonists a chance to gain new skills, abilities, items or even just an amusing anecdote or two. Finally, they help establish the consistent reality of the game world by introducing the characters to new and interesting bits of it.

There's no set length for this sort of thing, but I find that if I've gone on for longer than a page A4, I've gone too far. After all, this is meant to be a seed, not a full-blown story.

With that in mind, let's talk about the Midland Grand Hotel, at St Pancras, London, and its mysterious room 113.

This room does not officially exist. It is not on any hotel layout map, and none of the servants acknowledge its existence. Inquirers after it are told that Room 113 is ‘booked’; ‘for the foreseeable future’ is added for the benefit of those persistent enough to enquire further. The only official record of it can be found amongst the plans and papers of Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect. The plans don’t seem to indicate anything unusual about 113; it’s a midsize East Wing room, not particularly luxurious, but with all the standard accoutrements of the Midland Grand, including a fireplace. It also lacks a bathroom and toilet, in common with the rest of the hotel. Chamber pots and copper baths are carried to and from all the rooms by a small army of servants, without whom the Midland Grand would not function.

Tracking down room 113 is a difficult task, almost as if the room itself doesn’t want to be found. Naturally seekers after it will not be encouraged by the hotel staff, and as there are so very many of them circulating at all times throughout the hotel, those with low Credit Rating may find it difficult to pass unnoticed. Those determined enough to wander the halls armed with a map of some sort soon discover that 113 simply does not exist during the day, though it can be found at night. It is much easier to find when the moon is waxing crescent, and more difficult when the moon is waning crescent.

Room 113 is, like the rest of the Midland Grand, the absolute last word in Victorian comfort, including gold leaf walls, elaborately carved wainscoting, and expensive furnishings and artwork, none of which have so much as a speck of dust. The main reception room has as its centrepiece a fascinating and somewhat disturbing pre-Raphaelite painting of a medieval hawking scene. The subject is conventional enough, but the brilliant and somewhat over-vivid colouring gives it a feverish quality, as though the viewer were seeing the scene through a heat haze.

Unlike the other rooms of the Midland Grand, 113 has a copper tub permanently installed; or at least, it is there, and nobody has ever tried to take it away. During a waxing crescent the tub is filled with a liquid very like blood, while when waning crescent there is only a very shallow pool of the same substance.

Staying the night there may awaken Magic potential in susceptible persons, or grant an increased Magic pool, though nobody is on record as having slept there or, braver still, having a bath. That might grant further power, of course, but the price might be more than most are willing to pay.

Now, let's talk about this from a Keeper's perspective.

First, the section is rules-lite. Only one investigative ability, Credit Rating, is mentioned, and even then there's no question of Difficulty numbers or potential tests. That sort of detail ought to be left up to the Keeper, to be elaborated at the the time the detail becomes relevant. There's no point scattering dozens of potential tests in a seed when the players may only ever use two or three of them. This isn't meant to be a dungeon, with traps around every corner. This is a hotel. People live and work there. A general description is useful, a sense of who might be there is handy, but anything beyond that is a waste of your time.

It does help that the Midland Grand is wiki-able, as is its architect. You can't expect the players not to look up historical background. Some of them may have iPads or laptops at the ready during the game session. This way, they'll naturally gravitate to information that might be as useful to you as it will be to them, and the pictures provided with the description is an added bonus.

Second, there's just enough creepy here to keep the players intrigued, and not so much that they avoid the place altogether. You don't want them thinking that this is beyond their ability. There's an obvious mystery here, but it's solveable. Also, it's not a dragon's cave: there are no bones scattered everywhere, warning them that a very painful death awaits. True, the seed might be fatal. There are facts the players don't know. That said, there's no need to hang a sign over the seed that reads Abandon Hope All Who Enter Here. The players ought to believe, at least to begin with, that the place isn't a deathtrap.

Third, there's a reward; the potential Magic increase. Magic is an ability introduced in Rough Magicks, a sourcebook that I personally find indispensible. Magic is a pool that would-be occultists use to power spells; in the main book, this function is covered by Stability. A Keeper who didn't use Rough Magicks would have to find another reward, but that shouldn't be too difficult. There's always something the players want badly enough to put themselves at risk, so long as the risk is survivable.

Now I'm going to elaborate a little further on the seed:

Potential clues:   Architecture, Art History. While strolling through the halls, an experienced architect may be able to deduce the whereabouts of 113 by noting where things have not happened. Everything suffers wear and tear, particularly over fifty-odd years (the Grand opened in 1876), yet there are portions of the Grand that seem as fresh as the day they were built. A student of art history may notice the same thing, or work out the approximate position by the odd lack of proportion that a particular corridor has, when compared with other corridors in the same wing.

                                Library Use, Occult. Sir George Gilbert Scott wrote his Personal and Professional Recollections, published 1879 by Sampson Low & Co. Though there isn’t a great deal on the Midland Grand, there’s supposed to be a mention of room 113 in the very first printing, which was cut from all subsequent editions. Occultists claim that a few drops of blood, smeared on the cover during a waxing crescent moon, can reveal the missing section in all extant copies of the Recollections. According to Sir George, ‘demands occasioned by the cemetery works forced an unpleasant compromise, which I solved by dedicating one of the rooms to private use. Naturally this meant that the room in question had to be kept effectively in quarantine, since to allow it to be used by an unsuspecting guest would be callous in the extreme. Fortunately soon after construction completed the room in question solved the problem in its own way, since which time I have not been made aware of any difficulties. Nodens will have his due.’ There is a sketch of a Green Man next to this paragraph, which sketch has also been cut from all but the very first printing.

Potential antagonist: Nightgaunt, which is only present during a waxing crescent. It tries to carry intruders out through the window and drop them to their deaths several hundred feet below. It can be dissuaded by occultists who can somehow prove their fealty to Nodens. Abilities: Athletics 6/12, Health 7, Scuffling 10. Hit Threshold: 4. Alertness: +1. Stealth: +2 (flying) +3 (flying in darkness). Weapon: success in Scuffling contest means victim is immobilized by unpleasant tickling attack. Armour: +2 vs Any (skin). Stability: +0

A Keeper is never going to be able to cover all the bases, particularly in a seed. The players will always have more ideas than the Keeper can account for. Many of those ideas will stink, but that's the nature of the beast: players are inventive, but not always sensible.

That said, there's no excuse for not covering some of the bases. The Keeper ought to have a few clues pre-written, if only to account for the most obvious contingencies. The above lists four potential abilities: Architecture, Art History, Occult and Library Use, as well as introducing a book, written by the architect. Now, the book is deliberately included; this is Bookhounds of London, after all. The protagonists are expected to be looking for books. It wouldn't be in the spirit of the campaign setting to not have the characters bury themselves in antiquarian bookshops seeking clues. The other abilities are more general, things that anyone might do in order to plumb the depths of the mystery. Architecture and Art History cover the two most obvious bases. Yes, there are other abilities that could be used, but some are more likely than others. Very few players are going to want to use Law or Chemistry to solve this one. Naturally if I knew in advance the skill list that the players had access to, I'd write the seed with them in mind. However it's probably more useful to talk in generalities at this point. Apart from anything else I might use a seed like this again and again, with several different groups of players. I can't know which skills they'll all have.

The antagonist is included to throw a little danger into the mix. Nightgaunts are creatures of Nodens, and that particular entity has been mentioned in the clue list. The protagonists ought to be taking some precautions anyway; there's been enough hints that this mystery might have an element of danger in it. If they choose not to, that's their look-out. A nightgaunt is a fairly scary antagonist, but it's not a lethal killing machine, and it won't necessarily be encountered all of the time. Moreover as noted in the text this one is special. The protagonists may be able to talk themselves out of trouble by proving their fealty to Nodens. This could be bluff or it could be the real deal. That's up to the player and the Keeper at the moment of truth.

Note that, even now, the section is rules-lite. I haven't included a list of potential Stability tests, or elaborated on the potential benefits. Those are things that ought to be determined during play, not written in stone beforehand. After all, the players may surprise you. Rather than take a bath in that fluid, they may drink it, or try to take it with them out of the room. Or they may fixate on that painting as the important item. Or they may try to move in to room 113 permanently, using it as a base of operations. Or, or, or . . . and so on. Best to leave that sort of thing up to chance. You could try to list every possibility and its consequences, but that would be a backbreaking labour, and nobody would thank you for it, or even know that you'd ever done it. Better to spend your time on the things your players will appreciate, than waste it on long lists that nobody will ever read.

I hope you've found this useful! Best of luck to all you Keepers out there.