I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. Saw the original when it came out, loved the first three films, and after that just dropped off the rock. Gameplay-wise, I've never enjoyed shooters and flight sims only interest me if it's Great War biplanes stuff, so the Star Wars franchise never caught my attention.
However, I am an X-Com fan.
When people started describing Zero Company as X-Com but in the Star Wars universe, I was on board.
This isn't Not Quite Review Corner so I shan't go into the bits and bobs, except to say that there isn't as much X-Com here as I'd hoped and the game overall feels as if they had a lot of ideas and not much execution. Plus, for a hero-based game, no romance options, which seems a little boneheaded. Even X-Com's Chimera Squad, which this closely resembles, hinted at relationships between the characters. The closest Zero Company gets to this is Bennic's puppy dog eyes.
The problem with villains is, too often they exist only to do one thing: be foiled by the player characters. Villains are punching bags, paper Nazis, colorful targets that sit on the far end of the shooting range and never shoot back, or at least not accurately. There’s nothing unique about them, nothing that makes the players think ‘I want to know more about this guy.’ If the players don’t feel engaged by the villain, they won’t respect him, and at that point the whole thing falls flat ... Consider this tactic, when designing your own villains. Find out what they want, what they fear people will find out about them, what they’re prepared to kill for.
Zero Company has this problem in spades.
Star Wars in general has a villain problem, to be honest. The setting doesn't have that many honest-to-God villains and, when it finds one, it re-uses that character again and again till whatever personality they once had has lost all meaning.
Fathom is the worst example of this. The definition of a punching bag. I have no idea what she wants or why she wants it. I know she's doing Bad Things and, as the hero of the series, I have a vested interest in stopping Bad Things.
She has subordinates, Cultists. I have no idea what they want. Or why they let themselves get infected with this plague that seems to be the McGuffin of the narrative. It gives them cool powers and cool powers make the world go round, so here we are.
Cults recruit on broadly the same principles as spies. They go MICE - money, ideology, coercion, ego.
Cults, like OPFOR, have the same important characteristics:
Power, appropriate to their function within the narrative.
Goals.
Assets, to be used to achieve their goals.
Let's say for the sake of it that this particular cult got its start in a card game during the Great War.
Six young men sat in a bunker playing cards, waiting for orders. The game intensified. All eyes were on it. The stakes went as high as they possibly could. Then, at the moment of revelation, enemy shelling obliterated the bunker, and only one of those men survives.
That man is convinced that providence spared him only because the game wasn't over, and if it ever ended somehow, at that moment he'd die.
He collected all the playing cards used in the game. The only one missing was one of the aces; he has no idea what happened to it, but he's convinced it's still out there.
That man became the nucleus of a peculiar cult: the Players.
It started within his unit. Just a few listeners to his crazy stories. They didn't take him too seriously, but it was a fun story and he told it well. Then they saw what happened next, how he dodged every bullet, bit of shrapnel or bomb. It was uncanny. Risks that would have killed a normal person, he survived. He started collecting medals, getting promotions. Soon he was in command of the company, and those few listeners stuck to him like glue, certain that whatever luck had attached to him would benefit them too, if they were loyal.
If.
Living can go to your head. A man can be awarded medals, do remarkable deeds, but if there's no moral compass, no center - and in this case whatever was there before soon eroded to nothing - a man can be convinced the world exists to benefit him and him alone.
After the war the hero went home again, followed by a few true believers. Old soldiers convinced their commander could do no wrong, utterly certain that the same luck which dogged his heels in wartime would follow him devotedly in peace.
They were the first Players.
Now the former commander has set up a gambling operation in [select big city]. The Players are part of that operation, all sharing the same Ideology. Others drawn into the cult come in because of Money or Ego. Either they want what the cult seems to have (financial success) or they think they have what it takes to be winners (ego).
The commander has set up a household god totem somewhere in the gambling operation. It might be in his offices or somewhere close by, but it can't be outside the gambling house/casino. The body of this household god is trench art, made of old shell casings and bits of bone. Cordite stench clings to it.
The commander believes he is becoming a vampiric entity and is pondering the utility of blood sacrifice. It's appealing. He has his eye on a couple luscious young things who might do. His reasoning is, it was blood sacrifice that got him this far, but those deaths can only power so much. If there is a way of living forever by consuming the lives of others, well ...
He thinks he has five lives' worth of immortality juice right now: the five who died before that card game ended. But he doesn't know what five lives' worth is, really. Can it be measured in decades, years? Months? Does that mean he can be killed five times before the end and, if so, how many lives did he use up during the War?
The two recruitment vectors are the signature features of the cult: Money, and Ego. In any encounter with the cult or its supporters, those two factors are always evident. They show off all the trappings of wealth, or they inflate the ego of their victims.
The cult's Power comes from money and all that it will buy. It doesn't have legions of soldiers (though its core membership have military experience) and any expertise (safecrackers, pickpockets, card sharps and so on) are hired help. The experts might be seduced into the cult, but they don't start off as recruits nor are they loyal to the commander.
It has a private Goal and a public one.
The private goal is to find a way to turn the commander into a vampire. Not all the Players are briefed on this goal; the commander is keeping it close to the chest. Thefts, research, the hiring of occult experts are all geared towards this private goal.
The public goal is to increase the status of the commander and, by extension, the Players. Political and economic power, mostly. If that means aligning with certain groups (eg. the Fascists) then that's what they will do. This power feeds the household totem, which in turn gives its benefits to the Players, increasing their luck, their ability.
The cult's assets include the gambling house/casino, a host of civilian gamblers and other low-level fodder, the Players (the main core of whom are ex-military) and any experts they might hire with the money the casino generates.
Now, the commander. What does he want, what does he fear people will find out about him, what is he prepared to kill for?
The commander wants immortality. Life is sweet: the War taught him that. He wants it all, every last drop. He likes being in charge of a casino, having loyal followers, and the Players are his friends. He would dispose of it all, including the Players, in a heartbeat if it meant he got to live.
He fears that missing card. It's out there, somewhere. Constant appeals to the household totem have not told him where it is. He fears that someone will find out his weakness, uncover that missing card, and put an end to him by finishing the game. He keeps all the other cards locked away in a safe, and if someone were to steal those cards he would become frantic.
He's prepared to kill for immortality. It doesn't matter who he kills. It could be a baby in the cradle, but if killing that baby would give him even another decade of guaranteed life, he'd slaughter it without a second thought.
I've deliberately not mentioned locations or settings. Obviously, this would work well in a setting after the Great War, so Trail of Cthulhu, Call, Bookhounds and so on, but it could as easily be made to work in a setting outside Earth - Eversink, say. You'd need to change little. Fireballs rather than shellfire, that kind of thing. Or Paris, rather than London, if you'd rather make this Dreamhounds than Bookhounds. Cairo, and make the commander a seeker into Egyptian promises of immortality, for a Tombhounds take.
It's your Cult.
Vitaï Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
It has been compared with being reborn. Once a person experiences casino life, the rest of experience pales. People entering a luxurious casino for the first time have noted physical and psychological changes taking place in themselves. They shed their mundane lives, like butterflies emerging from cocoons, and leave their worries and troubles at the door. Once inside, they are insulated from the ravages of the world by the cloak of the casino ...
The jangling crash of slot machines fills the air. You’re surrounded by mass market elegance, a vast honey trap designed to separate tourists from their money in a thousand little ways. Gorgeous couples saunter past towards the high-stakes tables, and tourists wearing Hawaiian shirts sit at slot machines and mechanically press the buttons to the sound of bells and chimes. Gossip in a dozen languages hangs as thick as the cigarette smoke ...
Particularly in Stakes games, which tend more towards high-octane action than John le Carré-esque multiple layers of deceit, a scenario set in a casino sets expectations. Yes, it could be the kind of Vegas strip let's-all-gawk mass market theatre, with pirate ships gunning down frigates every hour on the hour. Vegas shares that kind of showmanship with Macau, but there are plenty of examples of the opposite approach. Monaco built its reputation on high-end gambling, the kind that wouldn't be caught dead in a Hawaiian shirt. Moreover casino architecture design can be a gorgeous flight of fancy, the kind of thing that excites the senses just by being there - even if the point is to maximize the amount of time the average customer spends in their chair.
People go to casinos to stop being themselves for a while. They want to be successful, risk-takers, the sophisticated elite. Whether they are or not is neither here nor there, but the casino's job is to indulge this fantasy. To cocoon the gambler in a comfortable environment, one in which they feel free to do as they please - and spend money for that privilege. To feel like the big winners they know they are.
For the purpose of this post I'm going to use the Casino La Seyne of La Seyne-sur-Mer, France, as an example. My attention was drawn by this blog post by Archute, and further information has been taken from this architectural document by Archdaily. The Archdaily document is particularly useful for Directors, as it includes floorplans.
Image by Javier Callejas, found via Archute.
La Seyne-sur-Mer has been an industrial, shipbuilding commune; it also built Iraq's nuclear reactors, destroyed by Israel back in 1981. It is part of Toulon, itself a major naval port, home base to the Mediterranean fleet; La Seyne-sur-Mer is to Toulon's west.
In recent years La Seyne-sur-Mer became more of a tourist destination, exchanging its shipbuilding docks for hotels and parks - not a million miles away from the changes that turned London's Canary Wharf from a maritime hub to a high-tech commercial hub. It's part of the Riviera, the famous Côte d'Azur, with its brilliant blue ocean.
According to Archute: Visually it is a wide, relatively low, and geometrically simple building, said to resemble a great, docked ship from certain angles. It is only up close that you notice some of its sleek, glass-walled sides. The casino is also situated beautifully, in between an active marina and a new public park, as well as near a newly opened hotel.
It's relatively small as casinos go, if its Companies page is to be believed. It has less than a hundred staff, and earns less than $10 million revenue per annum. As a very rough comparison, the Hotel Ritz Paris employs over 400 people, while the Société des Bains de Mer of Monaco employs over 4,000 casino staff spread across several different installations - though with COVID those numbers have fluctuated.
On the other hand it is very new; the build completed in 2016. That implies everything is as modern as can be managed. It also implies there may be snags that can be exploited; there are always problems with new build.
According to Archdaily: The newly completed complex is bordered to the east by a great leisure craft marina and to the west by a recently landscaped public park, at the end of which, just by the old drawbridge, stands a new three star hotel. The casino is thus at the heart of a series of large existing and future installations in the centre of a cultural and commercial hub which will breathe life into the old brick buildings, docks and the marina extension, along a privileged and autonomous beachfront.
Image by Javier Callejas, found via Archdaily.
Image by Javier Callejas, found via Archdaily.
Now we've gone this far, let's talk about some scenario seeds that might use this location.
Data Tap. A hacker team set up a data leak to steal the personal information of the casino's high rollers, and everything was going according to plan - when the guy who was supposed to be extracting the data dropped dead of an overdose. Nobody else on the team knows how to remotely extract the data, and time is a factor, so somebody's going to have to go into the casino and take out the device manually. That means bluffing your way past security, getting into the theatre (seats 500), cracking open the cooling system and taking out the data collection device by hand. Sounds like a job for professionals - but why did that fella drop dead, anyway? Was it really an overdose, or did something else happen to him?
Beautiful Foil. An asset of interest who happens to be very close to a Conspiracy Node bigwig is currently enjoying the casino's hospitality. They particularly enjoy Texas Hold'em, and the casino boasts precisely one Hold'em table. If the agents want to find out more about the Node bigwig they're going to have to talk to the Foil, but that means getting into the Casino and staging a showdown at the poker table. Or perhaps inveigling the Foil to a dinner at one of the Casino's luxury restaurants, or maybe just cocktails at the bar overlooking the marina. Better find some way of neutralizing the Foil's personal security, or Fido's liable to tear the interfering agent a new one.
Hollow Triumph. A former Cospiracy asset, now a desperate freelancer trying to stay one step ahead of his former comrades, has hit upon the perfect retirement scheme - rob the Conspiracy, which owns the casino, of hundreds of thousands in Euro it has in its vaults. This asset has inveigled his way into the casino as a croupier under a false identity, and is bringing in experienced professionals to help him stage the robbery now he's been able to case the joint. However those professionals don't realize they're being conned; he doesn't want money, he wants revenge. He's staging this robbery the same night his former master - his tormentor - is meant to be visiting the casino aboard her superyacht, docked at the marina next door. The casino vault isn't a vault; it's a vampire safehouse, where Conspiracy bigwigs come to meet face-to-face. He figures his heist buddies are useful scapegoats, and by the time the Conspiracy finishes chasing them down he'll have got what he wanted. [Potential Initiation scene for new characters.]
This week's post is based on two versions of fraud, as outlined here:
This video about the recent Wirecard scandal is from Tom Nash.
This video about money laundering via casinos, particularly in Macau, is from Economies Explained.
The Wirecard fraud is deceptively simple. It is alleged that the top brass at Wirecard lied about their source of income. About $2 billion on their books had no basis in reality. The bank accounts where the money was held didn't exist, neither did their so-called business partners. So far, so Enron, but the part I especially like is at 12.22, where the hack-for-hire group Dark Basin enters the picture. According to the video, Dark Basin swiped journalists' emails (among many other things) and posted them, carefully edited, publicly on a leaks website. The intent was to make it look as if those journalists were blackguarding Wirecard to benefit short sellers of Wirecard stock - turning an accounting scandal into an insider trading scandal.
What puzzles me are the actions of the regulator and auditor, both of which did their best to enable Wirecard. Which isn't completely unheard of - auditors and regulators can be dazzled by massive profits and smiling, spreadsheet-wielding execs. It's just so bizarre that it's Germany's regulator doing it, that it's EY - Ernst and frocking Young - caught in the middle. The Germans are the original Sober Business Brains. How did they get it so wrong? EY ought to have learned from its dealings with Lehmans - but I suppose the idea of an auditor learning from its mistakes is a bit utopian sci-fi.
The Economies Explained video details what, on its face, is also a simple fraud. China wants its money kept in China. That's why it doesn't allow tourists to leave the country with more than a paltry sum. So Chinese billionaires buy travel packages to Macau for ludicrously expensive prices, which include an eye-watering sum in poker chips. The gamblers play a little at the tables, maybe they win, maybe they lose. It doesn't matter, because when they stop they still have most of their chips, which they then exchange for US$. Bingo, cash smuggled out of China.
Incidentally if you're a long-term reader then you'll remember an important point about those travel agencies: they're Triads. They operate what amounts to a loan sharking service masquerading as a travel agency. Debts don't cross borders, and it's impossible for a Macau casino to collect on gambling losses when the gamblers are tucked away in China. Macau's Triads cooperate with mainland Triads to recover debts that would otherwise vanish along with the debtor. However in this instance what's happening is the Triad travel agency stands in the middle as a kind of financial broker, no doubt collecting a very nice commission for letting Chinese billionaires change their Renminbi for dollars.
What does all this mean for Night's Black Agents?
Well for one thing it puts the bagman in a whole new light. Traditionally that lonely figure is imagined as a sneak with a briefcase full of cash, shuttling from one mysterious rendezvous to another. Sure, maybe in the 1970s, or when the amounts concerned can be counted in the thousands - chicken feed, really. But in this happy-go-lucky modern world in which we live billions are in play and electronic currency is the order of the day, which means a bagman is much more likely to be sat behind a computer as creeping across the border. In the main book Data Recovery is listed as an alternate investigative ability; I'd be inclined to make it a starting ability, with Intimidation as the alternate. I'd also be inclined to swap the Digital Intrusion and Sense Trouble starting loadout, so Digital Intrusion starts at 6 and Sense Trouble at 3.
For another it gives us several new potential plots and Nodes. Dark Basin alone is a Node unto itself, potentially a freelance one at that. Not officially part of the Conspiracy, but brought in for dirty tricks campaigns and discarded as expendables. Maybe it ranks at the International level, given its reach, but its resources are paltry.
Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall at a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.
Just the sort of thing you want on your work machine. In a spy thriller the agents often have to infiltrate heavily-armed compounds to get what they're after. Imagine breaking into a stuffy little office above a decommissioned tea stall. It's a pretty good excuse to dig out Looking Glass Mumbai, at that.
Closing out, let's have a story seed.
A Three Hour Tour
A Macau Triad boss, Tong Sang-koi, is on the run. Tong, formerly a big noise in the 14K Triad, ran a travel agency at the Casino Babylon where until recently he regularly sold incredibly expensive tour packages to mainland Chinese gamblers. However something went wrong, and nobody's entirely sure what - at least, nobody outside the insular world of Macau organized crime. China wants Tong badly, and if that wasn't bad enough the CIA would also like a quiet word with the former 14K big shot. The investigators pick up on this when gossip suggests that Tong was attempting to sell important vampire-related intel to China's Room 452. Nobody knows where Tong is now, but everybody wants his data.
Not just his data. Digging a little deeper (Streetwise, Tradecraft or similar) discovers that Tong went missing shortly after a Chinese high-roller bought one of his $100 million special packages. This high-roller, Robin Yonghau, was later found insensible in his Macau hotel room with no coherent explanation for his condition. Nobody knows where the $100 million went either.
The investigators will need to find out where Tong Sang-koi is, what's his connection with Room 452, and what Robin Yonghau has to do with any of this. This will mean going to Macau in the first instance, but Tong could easily have run to pretty much anywhere after that, so if as Director you'd prefer to reset the action to, say, Vancouver, feel free.
Possible answers:
Tong Sang-koi found himself in the middle of a dangerous deal. The Conspiracy wanted to move a billion dollars out of China and found itself a willing mule, Robin Yonghau. Tong discovered the vampire connection, and as luck would have it knew enough about vampires to have means of contacting Room 452. However the USA's Find Forever got wind of it, and muscled in at the 11th hour to snatch the prize - one Chinese Jin-Gui, acting as Robin Yonghai's controller. Things got messy, the Jin-Gui got dusted, and nobody but Tong knows where the money went. That paints a very bright and glowing target on Tong's back, so he's keeping his head as far down as possible.
Tong Sang-koi is a CIA asset. The CIA put the bite on him back in 2009, when he tried to relocate his ill-gotten gains outside of Macau. Ever since the CIA has been using him to monitor Chinese organized crime, and to encourage Chinese billionaires to relocate their cash out of China. After all, every Renminbi that leaves via Macau is a Renminbi the Chinese government can't use to prop up its economy. However Tong got tired of this arrangement and wanted out, so he made a deal with the Conspiracy: if I help you get $100 million, get me out of this. The Conspiracy obliged ... but it's an open question as to whether Tong Sang-koi is living the high life or down at the bottom of the harbour.
Tong Sang-koi is a Chinese asset. He let himself be 'recruited' by the CIA so he could feed false intel to the Americans, but he's been working with Room 452. The Chinese want to get their hands on the CIA's home-grown vampire, so they dangled a very tempting $100 million target knowing that in order to grab it the CIA would deploy its prize possession. It did, Room 452 moved in - and then things went South. Nobody's sure where the money went, where Tong is, and most importantly where the American Vampire ended up. Was this all an elaborate bluff somehow orchestrated by the American Vampire to escape with $100 million in stolen, untraceable cash?
