Bertie's Dross & Cast-Offs (Night's Black Agents)

 

Sourced from The Guardian

The heirs of Silvio Berlusconi inherited billions from his empire but now they are faced with a dilemma: what to do with his vast collection of mostly worthless artwork, including paintings of nude women and the Madonna, stored in a warehouse opposite his home near Milan.

The former prime minister, who died in June at the age of 86, reportedly amassed the 25,000 works during the final years of his life, buying the majority from late-night shopping channels in his quest to become a top collector.

Vittorio Sgarbi, an undersecretary at the culture ministry, art critic and close friend of Berlusconi, said the compulsion for buying art sold through TV auctions began in earnest in 2018 as a result of “sleepless nights”.

He told Report, the investigative series broadcast on Rai, that Berlusconi spent an estimated €20m on what Sgarbi described as a collection of “crusts”, and the focus appeared to be on quantity rather than quality.

Oh dear. 

Well, billionaires have their little quirks. Berlusconi's heirs will probably burn or otherwise get rid of the vast majority - they'll go to 'the most appropriate destination' according to the latest from the heirs - as it costs close to a million Euro to fund the warehouse where his collection's stored. Given than the average piece probably isn't worth $2, with frame, that cost must be eating away at their souls as well as their wallets. 

After all, a billion - one measly billion - would only fund about a hundred year's worth of storage. 

However, let's step back from the schadenfreude and gamify this. 

Let's say that there's a deceased billionaire. Accidents happen. Let's further say that they have an extensive collection of 'art' hidden away in ... oh, their mansion on the Côte d'Azur and a warehouse near Nice, why not. The news caught the silly season and there are some amusing TikToks and YouTube diatribes, but there the matter rests. 

Or does it?

The agents' Network hints at other developments. Someone connected with the Conspiracy is taking an interest. Who is this mysterious art speculator and why are they interested in Bertie's soon-to-be bonfire material? 

A point's worth of investigative pools finds out the identity of the buyer, but perhaps the real question is, who's put them up to it?

The Buyer

Options: 

• The Art Forecaster (p103 DD), and rumor has it that they're after a particular piece but don't want to say which of the many, many bits of tat they're after.
• The Online Mystic (p126), who claims that forces beyond the veil have directed them to make the buy.
• Van Sloan (p87) and not even his closest friends know why, but his catspaws are already on their way to the Riviera. 

But why do this?

The Art Forecaster wants to cover up two unfortunate facts. One is that the Forecaster was the billionaire's art expert who curated the collection; it's time to burn the receipts. The other is that some of the collection was actually an esoteric effort at mind control; it's not the bad art but the sigils on the canvases, obscured by the art, which are the key. Sure, if they're burned that solves a problem, but only if all the affected canvases are destroyed and the Forecaster wants to make sure of that. The billionaire was supposed to live for at least another decade to further the Conspiracy's goals, but cocaine and sex parties wore him out before his time.

The Online Mystic really has been directed by forces beyond the veil, but those forces are actually trying to lure the agents into a trap. The warehouse near Nice is the real target; the intent is to draw the agents into a killing zone and burn the place down, with them in it. If the agents dig a little deeper into the Mystic's social media posts they may discover clues that suggest the Mystic's talking to the Human Trafficker (p119) with the goal of hiring fascist thugs to carry out the ambush.

Van Sloan wants closure. The billionaire isn't just any old billionaire; he's the son of one of Van Sloan's wartime contacts in Italy. Van Sloan is the boy's godfather. Van Sloan left an artefact in his safekeeping: the Portrait of Dracula. It's this portrait (whether major artefact, minor, or fake) that started the billionaire on his art buying spree; he wanted to get the Portrait out of his head and tried to do that by drowning it in bad art. Van Sloan feels guilty. He feels he poisoned the boy's life. He wants the portrait back or proof of its destruction.

That's it for this week! Enjoy. 

The Cat Man (Bookhounds, Dreamhounds)

Foujita was another painter who left us when his exquisite Japanese drawings attained a great vogue. But he came back to build a house and studio near the Parc Montsouris and to begin the nucleus of a new artists' colony ... Foujita was a lank-haired Japanese with gold-rimmed glasses. He brought an exotic note to the Quarter, and a whole school of Foujitas, their black hair carefully brushed smooth over their foreheads to their eyes, made their appearance. Sisley Huddleston, Bohemian Literary and Social Life in Paris.

Tsuguharu Foujita is mentioned in passing in Dreamhounds of London. Never a surrealist but a friend and colleague of surrealists, he drifts through Montparnasse like a benevolent, celebrated, cat-loving specter, before leaving France for Japan in 1933 where he became a minor celebrity and creator of war propaganda. He was, at root, the son of an aristocratic, militaristic father, whom he revered; his sympathies were naturally imperialist. Perhaps it's telling that he returned to France after the war and eventually obtained French citizenship; retreating from one failed imperial dream to De Gaulle's strong-state, French exceptionalism. Foujita died of cancer in 1968 and was eventually interred in Foujita Chapel, designed, decorated and built by him shortly before his death.

If there was one quality that disbarred him from membership of the surrealist circle, it was his financial success. His Modernist works were, and are, very popular. His collected art prints, the Book of Cats, published 1931, remains one of the most sought-after rare books in the world.

I never look at men, only at women - they have, each one such marvelous possibilities of beauty. But unfortunately most of them have not developed these possibilities because they have not learned the lessons cats can teach ... Cats never give anything away. They are out for what they can get. They have tigerish passions when aroused. They have grace, beauty of movement, intriguing languor ... Clever women live with cats ... They study the animal's movements, habits and emotional reactions ...

Dreamhounds are anathema to Dreamlands cats (p 116). Aggressive Dreamhounds are avoided even by earthly cats. Given that Foujita has a great love for cats (and that cats love him) either he cannot be a Dreamhound or, if he is, he spends all his time seeking out Dreamlands cats but never finding them. I lean towards Foujita being a dreamer in the usual sense - that is, he has a dream persona and it is not linked to his earthly form in the same way that the Dreamhounds can slip from waking world to dream without losing themselves.

Which brings me to a double-header, a Bookhounds/Dreamhounds scenario combination.

Since the scenario will be located in part in the Parc Montsouris, a brief description:

The Parc is one of Paris' four imperial parks created by Napoleon III, and inaugurated in 1875. There is a lake, wide, sloping lawns and a variety of trees. Allegedly the site was once home to a windmill, hence the name Montsouris, as in Moque-Souris (mocks the mice), a common nickname for windmills. The name may alternately derive from Ysore, a giant allegedly buried there; the burial story derives from a Roman cemetery, disused since the 4th century, that was on the spot.

Among its many features are an artificial lake, the malfunction of which allegedly caused the park's chief engineer to commit suicide; a wood-and-terracotta replica of the Palais du Bardo, a replica of the palace of the Bey of Tunis; a stone monument indicating the Meridian; a bronze statue memorializing the Revolution sculpted by Auguste Paris, to be melted down by the Germans in 1942. The Petite Ceinture railway runs through the park, and will continue to operate as a passenger service until 1934; it will run freight after 1934 for a time, but eventually the line that passes through the park will be altogether abandoned.

The site was previously a quarry and ossuary, devoid of greenery. Before work began, hundreds of skeletons had to be removed from the tunnels beneath the proposed park. 

Hook: the Dreamhounds become aware that a strange new group of  entities are appearing in the Dreamlands. Humanoid, conservatively dressed, always with black hair brushed smoothly over their foreheads, but otherwise featureless - their egg-smooth faces and mechanical movements betraying no emotion whatsoever. These creatures are most often seen in dream-Paris, in that section of the city where the Parc Montsouris can be found. They seem particularly fixated on the Palais du Bardo, which in dreams is a much larger and more forbidding edifice, guarded by One-Off Beasts who closely resemble armed hookahs, bristling with odd arms and glittering eyes. These Beasts do not allow anyone in, but the black-hair men take every opportunity to sneak across the threshold.

 Truth: Foujita has established an art school near the Parc, but it is getting away from him. Many would-be followers are copying his personal style and character in hope of inspiration, rather than listening to what he has to say about the craft. This results in an outbreak of quasi-Orientalism, as Foujita's would-be disciples produce plenty of Japanese-inspired kitsch, none of which is any good.

Enter Pierre Beres of the Librarie Incidences. Foujita can't seem to get a grip on his would-be followers, but Beres knows how such incoherent energy can be channeled. Beres gets them creating Foujita prints, to be sold only to Americans and similarly clueless tourists. Beres regularly meets his clueless painters at the Parc near the Palais to make the exchange.

Complicating the issue is a persistent rumor that Foujita's famous Book of Cats exists in two forms: the book that everyone knows about, and a special, very limited series of ten with extra prints based on the artist's oneiric experiences. This may pique the Dreamhounds' interest, since Foujita is not known to be a dreamer.

In fact not only in Foujita a dreamer, his dream form is being drawn to the Parc as so much dream-energy is concentrating there. The black-haired men want to establish a shrine at the Palais, but the hookah-creatures are preventing them. If the hookahs can be dealt with the black-hairs soon infest the place like termites, forever creating a dark and unsettling edifice whose purpose must surely be malign.

In fact what they build is a kind of press, and their intent ultimately is to feed Foijita's dream form into it in order to create the variant Book of Cats. If this succeeds then the black-hair men vanish as mysteriously as they appeared, but a new artifact is created that can be taken into the waking world, and perhaps sold there.

Meanwhile Bookhounds across the water in London hear intriguing rumors about a new, valuable - extraordinarily valuable, in fact - book, and only Beres of the Librarie Incidences knows where it can be found. Or perhaps an unscrupulous Bookhounds might join forces with Beres to ensure it is "found" - and sold immediately to some unfortunate rube. Unfortunately for those poor Bookhounds powerful Dreamlands forces have taken an interest in this Book of Casts. Bast herself is rumored to be deeply interested in it, but there are other entities who claim to be as keen on obtaining it as the Goddess - for whatever reason they may have. The goblins, or Gobs, seem particularly interested, which is odd of itself. Surely those persistent grifters only deal in opium? Does that mean the Book possesses some kind of addictive quality, similar to opium?

Enjoy!

Dropbox Downtime

I recently did a bit of mental cleansing and wiped my Dropbox account clean.

DB's terms and conditions changed, and the price was due to go up. I realized most of the stuff crammed in there was junk, and certainly not worth $12 a month storage fees. So I saved what I wanted and axed the rest.

In doing so, I found a ton of notes for projects that never quite made it off the ground. As I'm in a hurry today, rather than a full post, I'll give you a sampler from the grab bag:

A Pleasant Afternoon. The character is invited to a private showing at an art gallery. It is the tail end of the season, when invitations of this type are thin on the ground. 

If they inquire, they discover that the gallery (Pyke’s, of Chapel Street) is supposed to be in murky financial straits. The owner of the gallery, Montague Pyke, is slightly known to the investigator as an acquaintance from years before, but they have not spoken in some time. 

Should the characters attend, they find that most of the gallery’s work is of the usual Victorian type; herds of Highland cattle, crofter’s cottages, still life with grouse, hunting scenes, views of the Thames and so on. None of them are worth much more than £20, though the asking price is a good £30-40 above that figure. 

Pyke is not present himself at the viewing; his assistant, Mary Hope, is in charge of the evening. There is a private viewing room separate from the rest of the gallery, which is only available by invitation, but as luck would have it Pyke has left their invitations at the door. 

The pictures in this gallery are more interesting, in the pre-Raphaelite semi Medieval style, and all are by the same artist, who signs himself as Schablone [German: Mask]. Each depicts a scene from some kind of morality play, with a character who very much resembles Pyke in the role of Everyman. Everyman, in each painting, is being abused by various figures who represent stock characters such as Popular Fashion, Ignorance, Folly, Greed, Envy, and so on. 

In the final portrait, Everyman is nowhere to be seen, while all the other characters are celebrating some kind of victory. In the background, easily missed, is Everyman, hanging from the rafters of a house. When the characters emerge from this private room, the gallery is completely vacant. The other attendees have vanished, as has Hope, and the walls are completely bare. A sign tacked to the front door advises that the previous occupant has been evicted for non-payment of rent. The canvases in the private room, meanwhile, are now blank. 

I originally intended this as a Victoriana flavor text moment. It was never supposed to be a full scenario. The idea was, the characters would encounter these minor notes in the larger plot every so often. There was no mystery to solve, really, but the mood of the piece and the overall weirdness of it was meant to cement the overall pattern of the campaign.

That said, there's no reason it should stay Victoriana. It could as easily appear in a Bookhounds, Dreamhouds, Esoterrorists or modern game. It's perhaps a little too quiet for Night's Black Agents, though it could fit an NBA Dust or Mirror game. You'd need to update the art style, but that's all. 

I suppose the larger point I was getting at when I first wrote this bit - many moons ago, now - is that in any campaign you need a few downtime moments. When players provide you with opportunities to use those moments, take them. However players won't always do that, nor will they necessarily provide them at the right time. 

So you, as Director/Keeper/Insert Shiny Hat Here, need to prep for that. Create a downtime moment to be used as needed. It doesn't have to be anything major. There are no stats in this example, no clue spends. No victory condition either, nor is there a reward, though it could be a kicking-off point for something more. Who is Schabone, for example? Is it Pyke's pseudonym, some supernatural force, something else? Is this a manifestation of Carcosa? Is Pyke dead? 

What would happen if you stared at one of those Everyman portraits, trying to drink it all in? Would the figures begin to move? 

Enjoy!