I bought Arkham City when it came out, and played it to death. I didn't go as far as Perfect Knight; that seemed far too fiddly, but I did want to get all the Riddler challenges done and that I managed. Grinding his smug face in the dirt was very satisfying! Plus, unlike the previous game Arkham Asylum, there was a good reason to get the Riddler, since he kidnapped several innocent civilians and threatens to kill them unless you solve his puzzles. Along the way you, as Batman, have to figure out several hundred riddles, beat individual challenge rooms, and finally confront the green weasel in his lair. It's one of several potential side missions in which you track down leads to solve the mystery before it's too late, and while some of those (like Zsasz) are more acrobatic, the Riddler missions are about 50/50 brain power to gadget use.
I spent a chunk of Sunday playing it again, since an Xbox blowout reset the game. All the Riddler challenges reappeared, giving me a second chance to knock them down again. Tracking down those clues was a big part of the fun for me the first time around, and it's been just as enjoyable the second time running.
However it made me think about clues in detective-style settings. The classic of course is Holmes' inductive reasoning, as follows:
My eyes tell me that on the inside of [Watson's] left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but it relies on two assumptions. First, that the parallel cuts can only have been caused by a boot-scraper. That's something the modern reader has to take on faith, since few people now living really know what a Victorian era boot-scraper is or why it would cause parallel cuts as opposed to any other kind. However if there is any other way that parallel cuts of that type could have been caused, the boot-scraper theory is in danger of falling flat, which may mean the vile weather theory is flawed. Second, it assumes that a Doctor's boots can only have been scraped by his servant. That's likely, of course, but it's also possible they were scraped by the Doctor, his wife, or a third party - particularly since as a Doctor he's likely to be visiting other people's houses, and dealing with other people's servants. As it happens Holmes is right on the money, but it could easily have gone the other way.
Which is the big problem with fictional detectives. Agatha Christie alludes to this more than once, using her character Ariadne Oliver as a mouthpiece. Oliver is a detective story novelist, and frequently grouses at how stupid she was to make her main character a Finn when she knew almost nothing about them, but she also has a lot to say about the perils of clue creation. A novelist can make a blowpipe one foot long even though it really ought to be four and a half foot. A novelist can tell lies to help the plot along, by insisting that a clue is a clue when in fact it means nothing, or the opposite of its apparent meaning. Dorothy Sayers does much the same thing with her character Harriet Vane, particularly in Have His Carcase. In that novel Harriet is supposed to be working out a plot for her own mystery novel when she stumbles across an actual murder, and Harriet spends a lot of her writing time grumbling about getting the timetable right for the trains in her novel, for fear that any mistake will be picked up on by nitpicking readers.
The bigger problem is this: the reader expects a Clue to be a Clue, to have a definite meaning in and of itself. There can be no shades of grey. It's all part of a larger puzzle, and if the pieces are put together in the correct order then the puzzle can be solved. It's a genre convention that's wide open to parody since it assumes a kind of story structure that's almost impossible to envisage in real life. Real life is messy. Trains don't run on time. Blowpipes can be novelty sized. Mysteries can't be puzzled out through inductive reasoning alone, though inductive reasoning may certainly help.
In the Death Investigator's Handbook, it's all about procedure. Evaluating the crime scene isn't even the first point on the checklist; it's under section C, where A is about establishing the perimeter and B is about contacting the necessary responders. Examining the body doesn't happen until way, way down the checklist, where in a novel it would be the very first thing the detective looks at. I'm not even sure the word Clue is ever used in that book; I can't be certain since there isn't an index in my 1993 edition. It's all Evidence, and one piece of evidence in itself means nothing. It's the totality that means everything.
'What were the victim's activities, how was the victim selected as a target, and what was done to the victim are three areas of consideration. The significance of the scene, how it was selected and the evidence it has provided are other courses whch need to be developed . . .'
It's nice to pretend to be Batman for a while, but Batman is fiction, and the puzzles he faces aren't tied to reality in any meaningful way. That's not why they're there. They exist to provide an intellectual challenge in an artificial world. All Clues are like that. They provide a challenge, but they oughtn't to be taken too seriously.
After all, they're only make-believe.
Monday, 30 April 2012
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Hauntings - The Final Word
In my previous posts I've described potential hauntings as spirits of place, half-forgotten memories of the past, and as creations of possession and obsession. This time I want to talk about a third potential haunting scenario: the otherworldly. As with the previous posts, examples are going to use the Gumshoe format, with the Bookhounds setting.
M.R. James is a literary exemplar I come back to again and again. His creations are my ideal when it comes to ghostly scenarios, mainly because he managed to combine the mundane world in which we all live with an otherworldly, menacing, half-glimpsed terror. In most of those instances the terror evoked was ultimately linked to some human event or tragedy; one of my favourite stores is The Haunted Doll's House, which is probably the most frightening example of that type. However those aren't the only ghosts M.R. James had to offer. Canon Alberic's Scrapbook features something completely other, something with eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them -- intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.
In other words, a demon.
Cthulhu Mythos gaming has a love-hate relationship with more mundane belief systems. The feeling generally seems to be that if things like Cthulhu and the Old Ones exist then they clearly take precedence over anything else, and while this can lead to attempts to shoehorn the Mythos into human iconography (so Nyarlathotep, for one, is both Baron Samedi of Voudon fame and also Set and Thoth of the Egyptians, never mind the Green Man or witchcraft's Black Man or a host of other avatars) these attempts seem to leave a bad taste in many peoples' mouths. The Old Ones are the great alien unknowables, and their more human-friendly avatars are knowable by definition. The two concepts don't mix well.
At the same time, Mythos gaming also has a problem with magic. In a sense, it's the same problem. If the forces of the Mythos take precedence then presumably the rituals of so-called shamans and occultists have little or no effect. Either that, or they're somehow leeching power from Mythos sources. Otherwise humanity can, in theory, rival the entities of the Mythos, by accumulating power of their own to oppose the likes of Cthulhu. The odds are a bit low, since humanity clearly lacks the resources to be a real threat, but smuggling in the magical equivalent of a suitcase nuke is possible. The existential hopelessness is lessened somewhat by the knowledge that something can, in fact, be done to change things.
In the Rough Magicks suppliment Kenneth Hite discusses Lovecraftian magic, and says in part:
Attempting to fully define Lovecraftian magic would seem to be a simpler task. Indeed, we make just such an attempt later on in this book . . . But really, we’re all better off not knowing.
Which is perfectly reasonable, from a gaming perspective. A certain granularity is fine and fair do, but codifying everything such that each detail has its own defined remit is neither possible nor desirable. Even Dungeons and Dragons, a far more rules-heavy system, never achieved that; why, then, should Gumshoe? Better not to know. The lack of knowledge lends mystery which can only help make the incredible seem credible.
However he goes on to suggest several possible scenarios to describe magic: toxic pollution, Elder Thing technology gone wrong, a gift from Nyarlathotep or Yog-Sothoth, trans-dimensional energy manipulation, an aspect of Dreaming - take your pick. The intent being to allow the Keeper to decide what definition best fits their game, so that they can then explain magical influences and effects.
I'm going to go one step further and suggest that, when demons exist at all, they are creatures created by magic or from the same stuff that magic is made of. So if magic is toxic pollution, the after-effects of the energetic collision of the great elemental gods. Where their overwhelming forces meet their impenetrable fields, pieces of space-time come unstuck. Where this dimensional fallout lands, reality weakens and magic becomes possible then demons are also aspects of this toxic pollution. If magic is something else, then so too are demons.
Humans tend to like to see patterns so we codify things as much as possible. That's why we construct elaborate demonologies and try to force these entities to fit into our view of what the world, both seen and unseen, is. However for the purpose of this discussion that view is essentially wrong; there is no pattern here, and a demonology is as useless as a cotton candy slingshot. Demons don't need an Asmodeus figure in order to function; they don't have to be fallen angels, or any other human myth-construct. They exist because magic exists, and if somehow magic were to cease to exist then so too would they. They are as much part of the Mythos as Cthulhu is; they come from the same star-stuff.
Certain settings create magical systems unique to that environment, and Bookhounds is one of those. Bookhounds borrows a touch from Leiber and proposes Megapolisomancy, in which ritualists use the city as a sorcerous engine to accomplish magical effects. They draw on the polis itself to harm their enemies, or create an effect of their own devising. In a system of that sort it follows that demons are also creations of the city, unique to the city. In some cases they may be completely unique, while in others they may be modified versions of a pre-existing concept. Or to put it another way: the Yaoguai that exist in Chinatown may be rooted in Chinese mythology, but they are creations of the London megapolis and cannot be encountered outside of that environment. Something very like them might be found in Macao, but only very like, not precisely the same entities.
The question then becomes are these things created independently of human interference, or are they aspects of the city that arise as a consequence of ritual activity? Ultimately that decision has to be up to the Keeper, and will depend on the needs of the game. The paramental entities discussed in Bookhounds seem to be creatures created by the ritualists who raise them, but it doesn't follow that all such entities are raised by ritualists. Each city has its own soul, created almost unwittingly by the hundreds of millions of people who live, have lived and will live there. It is likely that this soul has many thousands of aspects, most of which go unnoticed by most people. Those few who have noticed that the Euston Underground tunnel has teeth or that the cracks in the pavement near St Pauls have a tendency to whisper odd fragments of lore probably are wise to keep that knowledge to themselves.
With that in mind, here's an example:
The King of the Cats
There is a folk-tale that always has the same ending, no matter how it begins: the self-proclaimed King of the Cats takes his kingdom from his recently deceased predecessor. Aarne-Thompson type 6070B is how it's known to folklorists, a neat classification that fails to encompass a megapolistic truth: there is a kind of Kingship, and it changes hands on an irregular basis.
Those who chronicle the City claim that in the past thirty years there have been four Kings. That is as far as modern chroniclers will go; no doubt there were Kings before the year 1890, but nobody can say with certainty what they were, or where. Most agree that they are cats, or at least look like cats. The first of the four was in North London, somewhere near Islington. Then the Kingship passed to an entity in East London, somewhere near the docks, circa 1912. Suddenly in 1915, possibly the result of an air raid, the Kingship passed to another North London creature, and after about ten years the Kingship passed once more, this time to a West End entity, somewhere near Soho.
There demonic creatures generally have little to do with people. They may be indifferent or cautious; few have been able to communicate with them, and of those who have managed it few are what anyone would call reliable witnesses. However when they have dealt with humans it usually ends badly for the human. They dislike wizards it would seem, possibly because rival megalopolisamancers disrupt the patterns that the Kings rely on.
They have been known to 'adopt' megapolisamancers. Or at least, there's one known example of a wizard who benefitted from a relationship with the East End King, and who for a time became first among his peers. However that individual didn't live more than a month after the Kingship passed in 1915, and whatever his secrets may have been, they apparently died with him. It seems that no bargain outlasts the Kingship, and when a new King takes the throne not only are all previous treaties moot but also the former friend becomes a hated foe.
Game Statistics: Athletics 12, Health 9, Scuffling 9
Magic: 8-12 (this seems to vary, and may be linked to the phases of the moon)
Hit Threshold: 6 (small and fast)
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +2
Damage: +2 (claws)
Special: can only be harmed by a weapon made for the purpose in the area it haunts, from materials found in that area, and then enhanced by a megapolisamantic working in that area. So a knife made in Soho from metals scavenged in Soho and then enchanted in Soho could injure the current King, but wouldn't work on his successor. Of course, the current King would view attempting to make such a weapon as an act of war. Alternatively an event that significantly disrupts megalopolisomantic energies, such as a fire that engulfs an entire district or a zeppelin bombing raid that burns the docks, might do the trick, but an event of that magnitude is difficult to arrange.
Notes: Kings ignore humans most of the time, except when they engage in megalopolisomancy. Any attempt undertaken on their turf can attract their attention, and retribution, unless efforts are taken to mollify them beforehand.
Stability Modifier: +0
Description: While they may seem to be cats at first glance, Kings are physically marked out from their fellows. The King of 1890 had what appeared to be wings. The 1915 King was a split-foot. The 1925 King had extra ears, and the current King is supposed to have a vestigial second tail. Though mutations can occur naturally in an ordinary feline, care must be taken by any megalopolisamancer in case the mutation is more significant than it seems.
M.R. James is a literary exemplar I come back to again and again. His creations are my ideal when it comes to ghostly scenarios, mainly because he managed to combine the mundane world in which we all live with an otherworldly, menacing, half-glimpsed terror. In most of those instances the terror evoked was ultimately linked to some human event or tragedy; one of my favourite stores is The Haunted Doll's House, which is probably the most frightening example of that type. However those aren't the only ghosts M.R. James had to offer. Canon Alberic's Scrapbook features something completely other, something with eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them -- intelligence beyond that of a beast, below that of a man.
In other words, a demon.
Cthulhu Mythos gaming has a love-hate relationship with more mundane belief systems. The feeling generally seems to be that if things like Cthulhu and the Old Ones exist then they clearly take precedence over anything else, and while this can lead to attempts to shoehorn the Mythos into human iconography (so Nyarlathotep, for one, is both Baron Samedi of Voudon fame and also Set and Thoth of the Egyptians, never mind the Green Man or witchcraft's Black Man or a host of other avatars) these attempts seem to leave a bad taste in many peoples' mouths. The Old Ones are the great alien unknowables, and their more human-friendly avatars are knowable by definition. The two concepts don't mix well.
At the same time, Mythos gaming also has a problem with magic. In a sense, it's the same problem. If the forces of the Mythos take precedence then presumably the rituals of so-called shamans and occultists have little or no effect. Either that, or they're somehow leeching power from Mythos sources. Otherwise humanity can, in theory, rival the entities of the Mythos, by accumulating power of their own to oppose the likes of Cthulhu. The odds are a bit low, since humanity clearly lacks the resources to be a real threat, but smuggling in the magical equivalent of a suitcase nuke is possible. The existential hopelessness is lessened somewhat by the knowledge that something can, in fact, be done to change things.
In the Rough Magicks suppliment Kenneth Hite discusses Lovecraftian magic, and says in part:
Attempting to fully define Lovecraftian magic would seem to be a simpler task. Indeed, we make just such an attempt later on in this book . . . But really, we’re all better off not knowing.
Which is perfectly reasonable, from a gaming perspective. A certain granularity is fine and fair do, but codifying everything such that each detail has its own defined remit is neither possible nor desirable. Even Dungeons and Dragons, a far more rules-heavy system, never achieved that; why, then, should Gumshoe? Better not to know. The lack of knowledge lends mystery which can only help make the incredible seem credible.
However he goes on to suggest several possible scenarios to describe magic: toxic pollution, Elder Thing technology gone wrong, a gift from Nyarlathotep or Yog-Sothoth, trans-dimensional energy manipulation, an aspect of Dreaming - take your pick. The intent being to allow the Keeper to decide what definition best fits their game, so that they can then explain magical influences and effects.
I'm going to go one step further and suggest that, when demons exist at all, they are creatures created by magic or from the same stuff that magic is made of. So if magic is toxic pollution, the after-effects of the energetic collision of the great elemental gods. Where their overwhelming forces meet their impenetrable fields, pieces of space-time come unstuck. Where this dimensional fallout lands, reality weakens and magic becomes possible then demons are also aspects of this toxic pollution. If magic is something else, then so too are demons.
Humans tend to like to see patterns so we codify things as much as possible. That's why we construct elaborate demonologies and try to force these entities to fit into our view of what the world, both seen and unseen, is. However for the purpose of this discussion that view is essentially wrong; there is no pattern here, and a demonology is as useless as a cotton candy slingshot. Demons don't need an Asmodeus figure in order to function; they don't have to be fallen angels, or any other human myth-construct. They exist because magic exists, and if somehow magic were to cease to exist then so too would they. They are as much part of the Mythos as Cthulhu is; they come from the same star-stuff.
Certain settings create magical systems unique to that environment, and Bookhounds is one of those. Bookhounds borrows a touch from Leiber and proposes Megapolisomancy, in which ritualists use the city as a sorcerous engine to accomplish magical effects. They draw on the polis itself to harm their enemies, or create an effect of their own devising. In a system of that sort it follows that demons are also creations of the city, unique to the city. In some cases they may be completely unique, while in others they may be modified versions of a pre-existing concept. Or to put it another way: the Yaoguai that exist in Chinatown may be rooted in Chinese mythology, but they are creations of the London megapolis and cannot be encountered outside of that environment. Something very like them might be found in Macao, but only very like, not precisely the same entities.
The question then becomes are these things created independently of human interference, or are they aspects of the city that arise as a consequence of ritual activity? Ultimately that decision has to be up to the Keeper, and will depend on the needs of the game. The paramental entities discussed in Bookhounds seem to be creatures created by the ritualists who raise them, but it doesn't follow that all such entities are raised by ritualists. Each city has its own soul, created almost unwittingly by the hundreds of millions of people who live, have lived and will live there. It is likely that this soul has many thousands of aspects, most of which go unnoticed by most people. Those few who have noticed that the Euston Underground tunnel has teeth or that the cracks in the pavement near St Pauls have a tendency to whisper odd fragments of lore probably are wise to keep that knowledge to themselves.
With that in mind, here's an example:
The King of the Cats
There is a folk-tale that always has the same ending, no matter how it begins: the self-proclaimed King of the Cats takes his kingdom from his recently deceased predecessor. Aarne-Thompson type 6070B is how it's known to folklorists, a neat classification that fails to encompass a megapolistic truth: there is a kind of Kingship, and it changes hands on an irregular basis.
Those who chronicle the City claim that in the past thirty years there have been four Kings. That is as far as modern chroniclers will go; no doubt there were Kings before the year 1890, but nobody can say with certainty what they were, or where. Most agree that they are cats, or at least look like cats. The first of the four was in North London, somewhere near Islington. Then the Kingship passed to an entity in East London, somewhere near the docks, circa 1912. Suddenly in 1915, possibly the result of an air raid, the Kingship passed to another North London creature, and after about ten years the Kingship passed once more, this time to a West End entity, somewhere near Soho.
There demonic creatures generally have little to do with people. They may be indifferent or cautious; few have been able to communicate with them, and of those who have managed it few are what anyone would call reliable witnesses. However when they have dealt with humans it usually ends badly for the human. They dislike wizards it would seem, possibly because rival megalopolisamancers disrupt the patterns that the Kings rely on.
They have been known to 'adopt' megapolisamancers. Or at least, there's one known example of a wizard who benefitted from a relationship with the East End King, and who for a time became first among his peers. However that individual didn't live more than a month after the Kingship passed in 1915, and whatever his secrets may have been, they apparently died with him. It seems that no bargain outlasts the Kingship, and when a new King takes the throne not only are all previous treaties moot but also the former friend becomes a hated foe.
Game Statistics: Athletics 12, Health 9, Scuffling 9
Magic: 8-12 (this seems to vary, and may be linked to the phases of the moon)
Hit Threshold: 6 (small and fast)
Alertness Modifier: +0
Stealth Modifier: +2
Damage: +2 (claws)
Special: can only be harmed by a weapon made for the purpose in the area it haunts, from materials found in that area, and then enhanced by a megapolisamantic working in that area. So a knife made in Soho from metals scavenged in Soho and then enchanted in Soho could injure the current King, but wouldn't work on his successor. Of course, the current King would view attempting to make such a weapon as an act of war. Alternatively an event that significantly disrupts megalopolisomantic energies, such as a fire that engulfs an entire district or a zeppelin bombing raid that burns the docks, might do the trick, but an event of that magnitude is difficult to arrange.
Notes: Kings ignore humans most of the time, except when they engage in megalopolisomancy. Any attempt undertaken on their turf can attract their attention, and retribution, unless efforts are taken to mollify them beforehand.
Stability Modifier: +0
Description: While they may seem to be cats at first glance, Kings are physically marked out from their fellows. The King of 1890 had what appeared to be wings. The 1915 King was a split-foot. The 1925 King had extra ears, and the current King is supposed to have a vestigial second tail. Though mutations can occur naturally in an ordinary feline, care must be taken by any megalopolisamancer in case the mutation is more significant than it seems.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
The Cost of Doing Business
This isn't going to be a long post. I wanted to point you in this direction. It's from Mark Waid's ongoing blog, and he's talking about the cost of printing comic books.
Now, I don't read comics, and haven't for a while. However I find Waid's point particularly interesting because it ties in with arguments I've made in the past about ebooks. In particular this section:
"But here’s the big bite: at those print-run levels, that comic is costing you around a dollar a copy just to print. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What’s that? You’ve decided to forego expensive color for cheaper black and white? You’d be surprised how little that lowers the cost. Printing, shipping, and various related charges--that’s where you’re spending more than half your income. More than half. Not on creative, not on marketing, not on advertising, not on all of that put together. On printing the damn thing.
And...and...as the printing industry continues to contract, the per-unit costs will--basic law of supply and demand--continue to escalate."
Now there are factors in comic book publishing that don't apply elsewhere in the book business, like the market being controlled by one distributor. That said, the cost of doing business is an issue that bedevils publishing generally, and ought to motivate small publishers - like the Unspeakable Oath people, like Rich Burlew - to switch to electronic. As Waid points out, when the printing industry contracts, as is happening now, the escalating costs will only push more small publishers out of the physical format market and into ebooks. Pelgrane puts most of its stuff out in .pdf format now; personally I give it two or three years before Miskatonic River does the same. I don't claim to have any inside knowledge there, but it's a prediction based on the state of the market and the likelihood that costs will only increase.
Now, I don't read comics, and haven't for a while. However I find Waid's point particularly interesting because it ties in with arguments I've made in the past about ebooks. In particular this section:
"But here’s the big bite: at those print-run levels, that comic is costing you around a dollar a copy just to print. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What’s that? You’ve decided to forego expensive color for cheaper black and white? You’d be surprised how little that lowers the cost. Printing, shipping, and various related charges--that’s where you’re spending more than half your income. More than half. Not on creative, not on marketing, not on advertising, not on all of that put together. On printing the damn thing.
And...and...as the printing industry continues to contract, the per-unit costs will--basic law of supply and demand--continue to escalate."
Now there are factors in comic book publishing that don't apply elsewhere in the book business, like the market being controlled by one distributor. That said, the cost of doing business is an issue that bedevils publishing generally, and ought to motivate small publishers - like the Unspeakable Oath people, like Rich Burlew - to switch to electronic. As Waid points out, when the printing industry contracts, as is happening now, the escalating costs will only push more small publishers out of the physical format market and into ebooks. Pelgrane puts most of its stuff out in .pdf format now; personally I give it two or three years before Miskatonic River does the same. I don't claim to have any inside knowledge there, but it's a prediction based on the state of the market and the likelihood that costs will only increase.
Monday, 2 April 2012
Bookhounds Books
I know I said I was going to talk about hauntings. In fact, I said I was going to do it a short while ago. However I was ambushed by a lot of work and one emergency project, which delayed things. The nice part is you should find out what the emergency project is by the end of this month; it's very April-specific. It does mean that you'll have to wait a little longer for the Hauntings post, as I can't devote my full attention to it just yet.
I thought I'd talk about books in Trail instead.
Bookhounds of London is one of those settings that wants a lot of input from the Keeper to make it really flow, if for no other reason than the Keeper doesn't have enough books available. Think about it: the characters track down and sell books for a living, and unless it's a very one-note game they can't be after the Necronomicon every week. The Trail main book has about seventeen Mythos tomes, and Bookhounds includes ten more occult tomes, seven Mythos books and guidelines for making more. No matter what style of game you run you're going to need some home-brewed books for your Hounds to chase after. Plus, unless you're the sort that only ever wants to play Arabesque, you're probably going to want to at least consider the various play styles each time you create a book, or an NPC. That means a little more effort on your part.
When faced with problems like these, I always go back to history for answers. There have been any number of odd beliefs, rituals, purges and persecutions in the few thousand years we've been recording our time on this planet. These can be mined for scenario information, and the big advanatage is it avoids repetition. I recently bought a copy of Gary Myers' House of the Worm, which I enjoyed, but it does repeat itself again and again. You could summarise most of the tales in that book: 'dude gets in over his head, dude dies or goes missing in weird and mysterious way.' Fun, but one-note, and the thing to bear in mind is we all have a one-note tendency. I know I use dream sequences a lot in my work. I tend to like spook stories as well, and use Gothic effects more often than not. It would be so very easy to rely on those same elements again and again, never experimenting, never going outside of my comfort zone. History forces the writer to look outside his front door, to see the world in all its varied glories. It forces experimentation with new settings, ideas, adversaries and conflicts.
In this instance I used some facts culled from Montague Summers and got translation help from Babelfish. This is what I came up with:
Edit: as luck would have it, this item is to be printed in the Unspeakable Oath, issue #21. I don't think that edition is out on general release yet, but I have received a .pdf contributor's copy. It would be unfair to Pagan to have this item here on the blog, and after discussion with the Oath's editorial staff I have agreed to remove the description. Once issue #21 is out I will link to it from here; for now, I hope you don't mind the inconvenience!
Summers is one of those authors who can be relied on for the weird and wonderful. I don't think I would rely on him as a historian, but I respect his mastery of the source material. In this particular instance I was using his book on witchcraft which tends to be easy to come by. In fact most of his books drift in and out of print, and while you're unlikely to find them in Barnes and Noble they're worth tracking down, as he's always good for a quote or two. Probably a foaming-at-the-mouth sort of quote, but nevertheless he's good value for money.
Witchcraft is a phenomena that, in Europe, seems to peak at about the same time as the major wars of religion are being fought, which probably isn't coincidental. Any number of firebrands and nutjobs are roaming around looking for a fight; these are people who, in their day, would have been the equivalent of a Bin Laden, but whose names and lives have been almost forgotten. The world was teetering on the brink of disaster (again), powerful kingdoms were busy toppling their neighbours' regimes (again) and innocents were being massacred in their thousands (again). There would have been many people like Geiss using the situation for their own benefit, taking advantage of the fact that what passed for central authority was weak and constant warfare had everyone on edge. He wouldn't have had to do much talking to convince his neighbours that the enemy walked among them; after all, panics, plagues and strife had been all they'd known since the days of their grandfather's grandfather. In conditions like those it was very easy to believe that they weren't safe yet, that there were those who followed heretical religions or who were plotting to do them harm.
Once you have that central idea, everything else is window dressing. I freely admit that Wikipedia has been good to me; it's allowed me to check names, places, and dates. But knowing what to look for is critical; knowing that the Great War of 1914-18 knocked out a lot of the old Grand Dutchies, that there is such a thing as an octavo, that people used maker's marks, all adds to the feeling of legitimacy. Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez managed something with Club Dumas that Lovecraft never did: he made the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows seem as if it were real, not by adding extra bookworms gnawing at the pages or more elaborate olde Englishe script, but by adding enough real data to the description of the Nine Gates and its all-important illustrations that it didn't strike a wrong note once. That's the kind of thing to aim for!
Now, I've talked too much. Next time I will discuss hauntings, I promise!
I thought I'd talk about books in Trail instead.
Bookhounds of London is one of those settings that wants a lot of input from the Keeper to make it really flow, if for no other reason than the Keeper doesn't have enough books available. Think about it: the characters track down and sell books for a living, and unless it's a very one-note game they can't be after the Necronomicon every week. The Trail main book has about seventeen Mythos tomes, and Bookhounds includes ten more occult tomes, seven Mythos books and guidelines for making more. No matter what style of game you run you're going to need some home-brewed books for your Hounds to chase after. Plus, unless you're the sort that only ever wants to play Arabesque, you're probably going to want to at least consider the various play styles each time you create a book, or an NPC. That means a little more effort on your part.
When faced with problems like these, I always go back to history for answers. There have been any number of odd beliefs, rituals, purges and persecutions in the few thousand years we've been recording our time on this planet. These can be mined for scenario information, and the big advanatage is it avoids repetition. I recently bought a copy of Gary Myers' House of the Worm, which I enjoyed, but it does repeat itself again and again. You could summarise most of the tales in that book: 'dude gets in over his head, dude dies or goes missing in weird and mysterious way.' Fun, but one-note, and the thing to bear in mind is we all have a one-note tendency. I know I use dream sequences a lot in my work. I tend to like spook stories as well, and use Gothic effects more often than not. It would be so very easy to rely on those same elements again and again, never experimenting, never going outside of my comfort zone. History forces the writer to look outside his front door, to see the world in all its varied glories. It forces experimentation with new settings, ideas, adversaries and conflicts.
In this instance I used some facts culled from Montague Summers and got translation help from Babelfish. This is what I came up with:
Ein Konto der Hexeraserei im Lindheim
An early modern Mysterious Manuscript for Trail of Cthulhu.
Edit: as luck would have it, this item is to be printed in the Unspeakable Oath, issue #21. I don't think that edition is out on general release yet, but I have received a .pdf contributor's copy. It would be unfair to Pagan to have this item here on the blog, and after discussion with the Oath's editorial staff I have agreed to remove the description. Once issue #21 is out I will link to it from here; for now, I hope you don't mind the inconvenience!
Summers is one of those authors who can be relied on for the weird and wonderful. I don't think I would rely on him as a historian, but I respect his mastery of the source material. In this particular instance I was using his book on witchcraft which tends to be easy to come by. In fact most of his books drift in and out of print, and while you're unlikely to find them in Barnes and Noble they're worth tracking down, as he's always good for a quote or two. Probably a foaming-at-the-mouth sort of quote, but nevertheless he's good value for money.
Witchcraft is a phenomena that, in Europe, seems to peak at about the same time as the major wars of religion are being fought, which probably isn't coincidental. Any number of firebrands and nutjobs are roaming around looking for a fight; these are people who, in their day, would have been the equivalent of a Bin Laden, but whose names and lives have been almost forgotten. The world was teetering on the brink of disaster (again), powerful kingdoms were busy toppling their neighbours' regimes (again) and innocents were being massacred in their thousands (again). There would have been many people like Geiss using the situation for their own benefit, taking advantage of the fact that what passed for central authority was weak and constant warfare had everyone on edge. He wouldn't have had to do much talking to convince his neighbours that the enemy walked among them; after all, panics, plagues and strife had been all they'd known since the days of their grandfather's grandfather. In conditions like those it was very easy to believe that they weren't safe yet, that there were those who followed heretical religions or who were plotting to do them harm.
Once you have that central idea, everything else is window dressing. I freely admit that Wikipedia has been good to me; it's allowed me to check names, places, and dates. But knowing what to look for is critical; knowing that the Great War of 1914-18 knocked out a lot of the old Grand Dutchies, that there is such a thing as an octavo, that people used maker's marks, all adds to the feeling of legitimacy. Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez managed something with Club Dumas that Lovecraft never did: he made the Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows seem as if it were real, not by adding extra bookworms gnawing at the pages or more elaborate olde Englishe script, but by adding enough real data to the description of the Nine Gates and its all-important illustrations that it didn't strike a wrong note once. That's the kind of thing to aim for!
Now, I've talked too much. Next time I will discuss hauntings, I promise!
Monday, 19 March 2012
Bookhounds - The Ongoing Saga
I've been posting ongoing commentary about my Bookhounds campaign over at YSDC, and it occurred to me that I ought also to post them here. I'm also going to talk a little bit about campaign developments. Later this week I intend to return to Hauntings, so watch this space!
The YSDC postings will be in red.
In which our heroes discover a use for peppermints, and enjoy a bracing trip to Brighton.
Elliot, James and Percy had two problems. Their latest venture, Whytes, was due to open in three days, but they had no stock, and no capital. The storage company they had hired to keep their stock while they arranged the fine details was padlocked by order of the bailiffs, and their bank manager was refusing to extend their credit.
Careful surveillance showed that the padlocked premises were being guarded, and the guards had a nasty looking dog, Satan. As luck would have it, the Satanic mastiff was rather fond of peppermints. Elliot and James risked life, limb and the seat of their trousers dealing with the dog, while Percy kept the guard talking. Fortunately the love of sweets prevailed; the light-fingered Bookhounds were able to load up their borrowed car with their stock and make a clean getaway.
The bank manager proved a tougher nut to crack. Or rather, his secretary was; Miss Eames, breathing fire and slaughter, guarded her employer's appointment book. The arrival of the Bookhounds did nothing for her temper. Purveyors of filth they were, and worse - for had they not sold her young cousin a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover? Admitting nothing and swearing up and down that they meant no harm, they managed to charm an important clue out of her: their bank manager was missing. Down he'd gone to Brighton for a pleasant weekend, and not returned by Wednesday. So they too went for a bracing seaside trip, and discovered that the bank manager, the owner of the bed an breakfast and all the other guests were sound asleep, and had been so since Saturday. Open on Mr Featherby's plump lap was his latest purchase: Galland’s Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français. Then, as if from a great distance, they heard the muezzin call the faithful to prayer . . .
I like Brighton. I've an uncle there, who runs a bookstore coincidentally enough. Technically a Bookhounds of London campaign ought to focus on London, but to my mind that doesn't mean the characters can't ever leave the city. There will be times when leaving is positively advantageous, particularly when they're on the run from someone (or something), or want access to an item or resource they can't get elsewhere. As far as the scenario seed is concerned, I like the idea of tailoring a concept to the characters. Rescuing a princess would be out of character; rescuing their bank manager, not so much.
Percy Briers ignored the comatose body of his friend and employee, Elliot Parker, as he had more pressing things on his mind. The twelve volume collection of Galland's Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français, to be exact - and such splendid copies they were! The binding in excellent condition, the pages not even slightly foxed, and the illustrations! Beautiful beyond compare. He gathered them up in his arms, and made for the door.
Which was where James Fidler found him, stretched headlong, the books still clasped in his arms.
Meanwhile Elliot was having problems of his own. Who were all these strange foreign folk? Why were they speaking French? Was he somehow lost in the Brighton Pavillion, that everything looked so Arab-ish? Finding no answers to his dilemma, and having no French, he made his way to the Bazaar. There, in the crowd, he spotted another two English people, a man and a woman, apparently trying to get away from a very sinister looking gentleman and not making a good job of it. 'This is a job for British steel', thought Elliot, and he promptly purchased a Damascene dagger from a vendor, offering some of the gold coins he found fortituously in his wallet.
James dragged his unconscious employer down the stairs, convinced that a gas escape was suffocating them all. He managed through heroic effort to get them as far as the kitchen, and had his hand on the door knob when everything went off.
Percy was most perplexed. This didn't look like Brighton at all. Fortunately having a bit of French at his disposal he was able to determine his true location - Baghdad! At least, that was what the vendor said. Moreover he still had the books, or at least he thought he did; he could no longer see them, but could feel their weight in his arms. He wandered aimlessly, and found himself standing outside a very odd looking place. It wasn't at all like the other buildings. More modern, it looked like, and was that concrete?
James, terrified half out of his wits and utterly lost, ran whooping through the crowded alleyways of this strange city, and as luck would have it ran headlong into Percy Briers, scattering invisible books everywhere.
Elliot managed to rescue the couple - Mr Pinks, and Ethel, whose last name probably wasn't Pinks. Dressed in night attire (Ethel's was very frilly), they claimed to have gone to bed only moments before, though Ethel seemed to think it had been longer than that, somehow. Elliot's attention was drawn to another sinister figure, a man impossibly tall and improbably thin, wrapped from head to foot in flowing yellow robes. This newcomer seemed to be interested in them. Elliot thought it prudent not to dilly-dally, and led his new charges out of the bazaar.
'Mister Briers, I don't know where you think we are,' said James, 'But I bet you anything you like they don't all speak French in Baghdad. They speak foreign. And what is this strange building here? Is that writing above the door? I can't read it.'
'Neither can I,' replied Percy. 'Here, hold these; they're valuable. Now, let's have a look in here, shall we?'
They went inside, and found themselves in a chamber that seemed to stretch on forever. Something that shimmered like silk was being woven on looms as large as tree trunks, the fragile glimmering cloth falling down from the ceiling like waterfalls. At the bottom of each silken explosion lay a human figure, peacefully asleep. One of them was their erstwhile bank manager, Mr Ffolkes-Featherby, and he didn't seem to be enjoying himself at all. His belly was fearfully distended, as though stretched beyond bursting, and yet more and more bolts of cloth were being forced down his throat.
'Mister Briers,' James quavered, 'What are those things a-weaving of that cloth? They look like crabs, but that's too many legs, surely. And since when have crabs been that size?'
By good fortune Elliot found himself outside that self-same odd building, with the impossibly tall figure in close pursuit. He too noticed the writing above the lintel, and having been a bit of a dabbler (reading about the Golden Dawn, and suchlike), he recognized some of the Enochian symbols and was able to work out what they meant.
'The Dream Factory,' he read aloud. 'Rum sounding name.'
However the thin man was close on their heels, and he heard what sounded like James and Percy inside the Factory, so in he stepped, and he shut the doors behind him.
'Open up!' screamed James. 'The crab-thing's almost on us!'
'You don't want to go out there,' Elliot told him. 'There's worse than crabs out that door.' Though, as Elliot said it, he did notice that there were rather a lot of the crab-like things.
Meanwhile Percy had caught their bank manager by the heels and was dragging him off, but too slowly. The weaver was descending on its silken trail, and was close enough to reach out to him with one thin leg-or-feeler. He felt it tear the back of his jacket.
In desperation, he began pulling silk out of Mr Ffolkes-Featherby by the handful, and that seemed to do him some good. James threw invisible books at the thing, which did it no apparent harm but did distract it. Elliot, seeing his chance, leapt in with his new-bought dagger, and cut the silk away. At that same moment the weaver scored him across the face, tearing off a slice of flesh the size of half a pound note.
Their surroundings faded away, and they found themselves standing in the kitchen of the Oriental Bed and Breakfast, Brighton.
Percy Briers was aghast. Twelve volumes! In near-perfect condition! Now there were only six.
'Mister Briers,' said Elliot, as he staunched his bleeding wound, 'I want a raise.'
This is a classic example of incidental information achieving unexpected importance. I never thought the Thousand and One Nights would become a thing. Yet when the players took an interest, I ran with it. Now they're an important item in the ongoing story.
After their bracing trip, Percy, Elliot and James set about getting their business, Whytes Books, ready for its opening day. James copied out several engravings, and arranged for the pawnshop beneath their store to rent them some window space for display, so people walking by had something to attract their attention. Percy set about finalizing their loan with Mr Featherby, while Elliot, at a bit of a loose end, made the rounds of the auction houses and gossiped with his contacts.
Some of the tidbits he picked up were less than encouraging. There was an antiquarian book store not far from their shopfront, Lisiewicz Rare Books; in fact, it was ten minutes walk away. Elliot, on the rationale that there was no such thing as useless information, decided to pay Lisiewicz a visit and see what the competition was up to. He discovered many things that weren't entirely to his liking. Lisiewicz was doing cracking business; there didn't seem to be a moment in the day when trade slackened. Their shopfront was considerably more decorative and tastefully arranged than Whytes. Their stock was considerable, including several rather valuable eighteenth century travel memoirs and maps. There was also a restricted section with rather more intriguing looking volumes, which he was unable to get near.
It was worth a visit after hours, he decided. So later than evening, after Lisiewicz had locked up for the night, Elliot, after making sure nobody was watching, carefully undid the lock on the front door. He jumped out of his skin when the alarm went off. Its loud bell yammered and hammered while he stood mute, stunned and immobile. Recovering his wits, he scuttled off fast as a scalded cat.
Later on, when he thought things might have settled down, he returned to the scene of his crime to see what had developed. A crowd of interested nobodies was gathered around the shop door, and several policemen were standing guard. The alarm was still blaring, and Elliot discovered from one of the onlookers that the shop manager had yet to arrive to turn it off. Elliot waited, and soon afterward saw the manager, a man named Egan, arrive, somewhat the worse for wear, with several drinking companions. After some discussion with the police sergeant, Egan switched off the alarm and re-set the device. Elliot waited to see what Egan would do next, and after about half an hour's work Egan eventually went back with his chums to whatever drinking hole they'd crawled out of.
Elliot followed, and after several hours in Soho trailed Egan and a fellow drunkard to a teaching hospital. The drunk let Egan in by a side door, and stood outside, shivering in the early morning chill. After waiting some minutes, Elliot decided to see if he'd be let in too, so he approached the door only to be blocked by the drunkard.
'Bill says no,' said he, swaying in a dead-eyed stupor.
'But I'm allowed,' said Elliot in his most reassuring manner.
'Bill says no,' the drunkard stubbornly repeated, and though he showed no sign of fight he blocked the way. Elliot might have pressed the issue, but at that moment he heard someone on the other side of the door. He stepped away smartly, and Egan came out. He didn't notice Elliot. Egan had a smirk on his face, and his clothes were dishevelled. The two of them wandered off, and Elliot decided there wasn't much point in following them further.
Early that morning he met Jimmy Fidler for a pint and some bacon sandwiches at the Bull's Heart, and Elliot told Jimmy what he'd been up to. They agreed it was all very odd, and worth keeping an eye on, but there was little they could do about it right then and there. Having finished their early morning meal they went back to Whytes, hoping to get some work done before Briers came in.
'Hullo,' said Fidler, 'Who's that?'
Elliot looked in the direction Jimmy was pointing. Up on the second floor, at one of the windows of their shop, they both saw a figure. They could not make out his face, for he wore a hood or robe of some description, and at the same moment they saw him he vanished back inside. Elliot and Fidler crept up the stairs as quietly as they could, hoping to surprise whoever it was, but when they burst in the room they discovered to their consternation that nobody was there at all.
Jimmy, a sour expression on his face, looked at the shelf closest to where they'd last seen the figure. On that same shelf their most recent acquisition, the twelve volume edition of the Thousand and One Nights, rested awaiting more prominent placement.
'The sooner we're rid of those things the better,' he said.
This was a filler session. One of the players unexpectedly dropped out, so I had to carry on with two. This meant a shorter session, but it did allow me to play with some concepts that may become important later in the game. It also introduces a rival, Lisiewicz Rare Books, of whom more later.
It wasn't so easy to convince Briers that the books had to go.
'I'm sure it's nothing,' said he, his mind still fixed on wine and cheese, 'A trick of the light. Someone was standing opposite, and their reflection happened to be caught in the window for a moment, that's all. There's no need for concern.' With that, Jimmy Fidler had to be satisfied.
The wine and cheese was spread over two trestle tables covered with white cloth. Today was the very first day of their new enterprise, and a celebratory evening had been planned. Percy Briers was far more concerned about that than he was about anything else. He needn't have been. On the day, Whytes was packed with old friends and new customers, and Jimmy, who manned the till, was kept very busy.
Percy was buttonholed by Professor Fife, of Oxford. She was easily several inches taller than he, and her eyesight was not good, which she refused to admit. She blinked mistily at him, as though seeing Briers from a considerable distance.
'I do so hope you can help me get it,' she said. 'It would add considerably to my collection.'
They were discussing Dekker's Parliament of Bees, an important piece of Elizabethan drama. A copy ex libris John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, was due to come up for auction at McKinnon's, who were disposing of many of the personal effects and properties beloninging to Durrant, known as the Wizard of the North. His most recent tour of the antipodes had not been a profitable as he had hoped, and this sale was intended to revitalize his fortunes. In addition to Durrant's collection of Elizabethan dramatical works, he was also selling many of the props, costumes and devices that had made his performances famous throughout the world, and some of his own books.
'We shall do our best for you, Professor,' Briers oozed, as he deftly hid a mouse that had crawled out onto a shelf and was eyeing Fife, its whiskers a-quiver. 'Would you excuse me a moment?'
He dashed around to the other side of the shelf, just in time to catch Charlie Pettimore in the act of earwigging. Charlie was unsuccessfully covering his activities by pretending deep interest in the travel section. Determined that Charlie wouldn't spoil his sale, Briers shepherded him somewhere further away.
'It would be so wonderful if you could help me buy the Confectioner,' said Quincy Riddle to Elliot. 'McKinnon's prices are likely to be high, and I'm a duffer at this sort of thing. But it would look so wonderful at the Rep!'
'I'm sure,' Elliot replied, deftly flicking a mouse away from the cheese board.
'Can I help you, sir?' asked Jimmy, putting on his best impersonation of someone with money and no criminal record. This gent looked a bit posher than the usual, very country, in his tweeds and well-worn shoes.
'I do hope so,' replied the man, who introduced himself as Styles. 'I'm on the lookout for, now let me see, I have it written down here . . .' He consulted his notes. 'Ah! Yes, here it is. Something called the Un-asspikkliken - is that the word? - Coolties. Also known as the Black Book, it says here. By someone called Won Yoon, I think.'
Jimmy Fidler looked at the notation. 'Unaussprechlichen Kulten,' he read aloud, 'The Bridewell edition, by Von Juntz. A very difficult piece to obtain, if I may say so.' In point of fact, he didn't know; he knew very little about that sort of thing, relying on the more encyclopediac knowledge of Percy Briers.
'Oh, well,' said Styles, and promptly named an asking price that was, in Jimmy's estimation, about a hundred pounds more than the book was worth - in fact, triple what Whytes had made in a day's brisk trade.
Later, after the day's trade was done and they had time to discuss matters, they ruminated on the possibilities. They had several interesting leads to chase up, with McKinnon's being the next event on their horizon. There were several useful things to be obtained there, and Jimmy could get materials for his own work. They wondered about Styles, and whether he might be fobbed off with something less than original.
'I reckon he's buying for some posh bloke with a place in the country,' said Fidler. 'Some gent wot knows a bit more than his man, if you follow me. Whoever made those notes knew exactly what he wanted, right down to notes about the binding.'
They decided to visit McKinnon's in advance of the sale, to get a better idea of what was on offer.
McKinnon's cavernous interior was filled with all the bright colours of carnival. Elliot was particularly drawn to the Confectioner and the other automata, including the Tree of Life, the Dancing Clowns and the Miraculous Fountain. Briers was more interested in the Mechanical Turk, and wondered whether it would look good in the front of their shop. 'It would bring in the customers,' said he.
Elliot wasn't convinced. He could see many nights of sleeplessness in his future, with something like that dead-eyed wooden-face lurking in the dark, waiting for him to come in of a morning.
Jimmy, after tearing himself away from the collection of playbills and memorabilia, drew their attention to the book collection. 'The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, John Day, 1662, beautiful, just look at the binding there. The Devil is In It, Dekker, 1640; Mustafa, a closet drama by Fulke Greville, 1640. Honest, boss, I reckon we could pick some of these up for a song. Most of the blokes here are after the magician's stuff,' he pointed at a curiously waxen-faced man who was eyeing the Confectioner covetously, 'They don't know what this is worth.'
Percy Briers was more interested in what one item in particular was worth. 'Is that what I think it is?'
One of the books, lying as if tossed atop a collection marked in the catalouge as Elizabethan Fragment, Unknown Author was remarkably familiar to him, right down to a new dent in the binding, as though someone had thrown it at something. He riffled through the pages. There could be no mistaking; it was one of the missing six from his collection of twelve volumes of the Thousand and One Nights, last seen (or possibly not) when Jimmy Fidler had flung it at the thing in the Dream Factory.
Fidler consulted McKinnon's catalogue. 'It's not down as a sale item,' he said, and Briers promptly stuffed it inside his jacket, hoping to make a quiet getaway.
'What was that it was resting on?' he wondered aloud, and took a closer look. His pulse quickened. There was no way to be certain without closer analysis, but it looked remarkably like examples he had seen of Christopeher Marlowe's handwriting. If so, it could be a heretofore unknown fragment of one of his plays, quite possibly the Massacre at Paris. There was something else bundled in with the document, not in the same hand as the rest of the script. It read like a legal paper, and was signed under seal. 'It says here that the weapon described herein, being a dagger . . . it gives details about the length of blade, maker and so on . . . that this weapon is that same which did take the life of one Marlowe at the hands of Frizier, his sign attached herewith by order of the coroner. My word!'
'Um . . .' said Fidler, nervously, 'A knife, boss? Like this one here on the catalogue, marked Dagger, Unknown Origin?'
Here's where I introduce the players to the Auctions concept. They're all experienced gamers, but the Auction mechanic has them a little intimidated. So I thought it sensible to introduce them with an auction that has no significant story consequence in and of itself, but does have some interesting items up for grabs. They have rivals to bid against, items to purchase, and have discovered that some manuscripts can hide some intriguing secrets. Plus, the Thousand and One Nights returns to plague them, and there's that dagger, unknown origin, to worry about.
The YSDC postings will be in red.
In which our heroes discover a use for peppermints, and enjoy a bracing trip to Brighton.
Elliot, James and Percy had two problems. Their latest venture, Whytes, was due to open in three days, but they had no stock, and no capital. The storage company they had hired to keep their stock while they arranged the fine details was padlocked by order of the bailiffs, and their bank manager was refusing to extend their credit.
Careful surveillance showed that the padlocked premises were being guarded, and the guards had a nasty looking dog, Satan. As luck would have it, the Satanic mastiff was rather fond of peppermints. Elliot and James risked life, limb and the seat of their trousers dealing with the dog, while Percy kept the guard talking. Fortunately the love of sweets prevailed; the light-fingered Bookhounds were able to load up their borrowed car with their stock and make a clean getaway.
The bank manager proved a tougher nut to crack. Or rather, his secretary was; Miss Eames, breathing fire and slaughter, guarded her employer's appointment book. The arrival of the Bookhounds did nothing for her temper. Purveyors of filth they were, and worse - for had they not sold her young cousin a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover? Admitting nothing and swearing up and down that they meant no harm, they managed to charm an important clue out of her: their bank manager was missing. Down he'd gone to Brighton for a pleasant weekend, and not returned by Wednesday. So they too went for a bracing seaside trip, and discovered that the bank manager, the owner of the bed an breakfast and all the other guests were sound asleep, and had been so since Saturday. Open on Mr Featherby's plump lap was his latest purchase: Galland’s Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français. Then, as if from a great distance, they heard the muezzin call the faithful to prayer . . .
I like Brighton. I've an uncle there, who runs a bookstore coincidentally enough. Technically a Bookhounds of London campaign ought to focus on London, but to my mind that doesn't mean the characters can't ever leave the city. There will be times when leaving is positively advantageous, particularly when they're on the run from someone (or something), or want access to an item or resource they can't get elsewhere. As far as the scenario seed is concerned, I like the idea of tailoring a concept to the characters. Rescuing a princess would be out of character; rescuing their bank manager, not so much.
Percy Briers ignored the comatose body of his friend and employee, Elliot Parker, as he had more pressing things on his mind. The twelve volume collection of Galland's Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français, to be exact - and such splendid copies they were! The binding in excellent condition, the pages not even slightly foxed, and the illustrations! Beautiful beyond compare. He gathered them up in his arms, and made for the door.
Which was where James Fidler found him, stretched headlong, the books still clasped in his arms.
Meanwhile Elliot was having problems of his own. Who were all these strange foreign folk? Why were they speaking French? Was he somehow lost in the Brighton Pavillion, that everything looked so Arab-ish? Finding no answers to his dilemma, and having no French, he made his way to the Bazaar. There, in the crowd, he spotted another two English people, a man and a woman, apparently trying to get away from a very sinister looking gentleman and not making a good job of it. 'This is a job for British steel', thought Elliot, and he promptly purchased a Damascene dagger from a vendor, offering some of the gold coins he found fortituously in his wallet.
James dragged his unconscious employer down the stairs, convinced that a gas escape was suffocating them all. He managed through heroic effort to get them as far as the kitchen, and had his hand on the door knob when everything went off.
Percy was most perplexed. This didn't look like Brighton at all. Fortunately having a bit of French at his disposal he was able to determine his true location - Baghdad! At least, that was what the vendor said. Moreover he still had the books, or at least he thought he did; he could no longer see them, but could feel their weight in his arms. He wandered aimlessly, and found himself standing outside a very odd looking place. It wasn't at all like the other buildings. More modern, it looked like, and was that concrete?
James, terrified half out of his wits and utterly lost, ran whooping through the crowded alleyways of this strange city, and as luck would have it ran headlong into Percy Briers, scattering invisible books everywhere.
Elliot managed to rescue the couple - Mr Pinks, and Ethel, whose last name probably wasn't Pinks. Dressed in night attire (Ethel's was very frilly), they claimed to have gone to bed only moments before, though Ethel seemed to think it had been longer than that, somehow. Elliot's attention was drawn to another sinister figure, a man impossibly tall and improbably thin, wrapped from head to foot in flowing yellow robes. This newcomer seemed to be interested in them. Elliot thought it prudent not to dilly-dally, and led his new charges out of the bazaar.
'Mister Briers, I don't know where you think we are,' said James, 'But I bet you anything you like they don't all speak French in Baghdad. They speak foreign. And what is this strange building here? Is that writing above the door? I can't read it.'
'Neither can I,' replied Percy. 'Here, hold these; they're valuable. Now, let's have a look in here, shall we?'
They went inside, and found themselves in a chamber that seemed to stretch on forever. Something that shimmered like silk was being woven on looms as large as tree trunks, the fragile glimmering cloth falling down from the ceiling like waterfalls. At the bottom of each silken explosion lay a human figure, peacefully asleep. One of them was their erstwhile bank manager, Mr Ffolkes-Featherby, and he didn't seem to be enjoying himself at all. His belly was fearfully distended, as though stretched beyond bursting, and yet more and more bolts of cloth were being forced down his throat.
'Mister Briers,' James quavered, 'What are those things a-weaving of that cloth? They look like crabs, but that's too many legs, surely. And since when have crabs been that size?'
By good fortune Elliot found himself outside that self-same odd building, with the impossibly tall figure in close pursuit. He too noticed the writing above the lintel, and having been a bit of a dabbler (reading about the Golden Dawn, and suchlike), he recognized some of the Enochian symbols and was able to work out what they meant.
'The Dream Factory,' he read aloud. 'Rum sounding name.'
However the thin man was close on their heels, and he heard what sounded like James and Percy inside the Factory, so in he stepped, and he shut the doors behind him.
'Open up!' screamed James. 'The crab-thing's almost on us!'
'You don't want to go out there,' Elliot told him. 'There's worse than crabs out that door.' Though, as Elliot said it, he did notice that there were rather a lot of the crab-like things.
Meanwhile Percy had caught their bank manager by the heels and was dragging him off, but too slowly. The weaver was descending on its silken trail, and was close enough to reach out to him with one thin leg-or-feeler. He felt it tear the back of his jacket.
In desperation, he began pulling silk out of Mr Ffolkes-Featherby by the handful, and that seemed to do him some good. James threw invisible books at the thing, which did it no apparent harm but did distract it. Elliot, seeing his chance, leapt in with his new-bought dagger, and cut the silk away. At that same moment the weaver scored him across the face, tearing off a slice of flesh the size of half a pound note.
Their surroundings faded away, and they found themselves standing in the kitchen of the Oriental Bed and Breakfast, Brighton.
Percy Briers was aghast. Twelve volumes! In near-perfect condition! Now there were only six.
'Mister Briers,' said Elliot, as he staunched his bleeding wound, 'I want a raise.'
This is a classic example of incidental information achieving unexpected importance. I never thought the Thousand and One Nights would become a thing. Yet when the players took an interest, I ran with it. Now they're an important item in the ongoing story.
After their bracing trip, Percy, Elliot and James set about getting their business, Whytes Books, ready for its opening day. James copied out several engravings, and arranged for the pawnshop beneath their store to rent them some window space for display, so people walking by had something to attract their attention. Percy set about finalizing their loan with Mr Featherby, while Elliot, at a bit of a loose end, made the rounds of the auction houses and gossiped with his contacts.
Some of the tidbits he picked up were less than encouraging. There was an antiquarian book store not far from their shopfront, Lisiewicz Rare Books; in fact, it was ten minutes walk away. Elliot, on the rationale that there was no such thing as useless information, decided to pay Lisiewicz a visit and see what the competition was up to. He discovered many things that weren't entirely to his liking. Lisiewicz was doing cracking business; there didn't seem to be a moment in the day when trade slackened. Their shopfront was considerably more decorative and tastefully arranged than Whytes. Their stock was considerable, including several rather valuable eighteenth century travel memoirs and maps. There was also a restricted section with rather more intriguing looking volumes, which he was unable to get near.
It was worth a visit after hours, he decided. So later than evening, after Lisiewicz had locked up for the night, Elliot, after making sure nobody was watching, carefully undid the lock on the front door. He jumped out of his skin when the alarm went off. Its loud bell yammered and hammered while he stood mute, stunned and immobile. Recovering his wits, he scuttled off fast as a scalded cat.
Later on, when he thought things might have settled down, he returned to the scene of his crime to see what had developed. A crowd of interested nobodies was gathered around the shop door, and several policemen were standing guard. The alarm was still blaring, and Elliot discovered from one of the onlookers that the shop manager had yet to arrive to turn it off. Elliot waited, and soon afterward saw the manager, a man named Egan, arrive, somewhat the worse for wear, with several drinking companions. After some discussion with the police sergeant, Egan switched off the alarm and re-set the device. Elliot waited to see what Egan would do next, and after about half an hour's work Egan eventually went back with his chums to whatever drinking hole they'd crawled out of.
Elliot followed, and after several hours in Soho trailed Egan and a fellow drunkard to a teaching hospital. The drunk let Egan in by a side door, and stood outside, shivering in the early morning chill. After waiting some minutes, Elliot decided to see if he'd be let in too, so he approached the door only to be blocked by the drunkard.
'Bill says no,' said he, swaying in a dead-eyed stupor.
'But I'm allowed,' said Elliot in his most reassuring manner.
'Bill says no,' the drunkard stubbornly repeated, and though he showed no sign of fight he blocked the way. Elliot might have pressed the issue, but at that moment he heard someone on the other side of the door. He stepped away smartly, and Egan came out. He didn't notice Elliot. Egan had a smirk on his face, and his clothes were dishevelled. The two of them wandered off, and Elliot decided there wasn't much point in following them further.
Early that morning he met Jimmy Fidler for a pint and some bacon sandwiches at the Bull's Heart, and Elliot told Jimmy what he'd been up to. They agreed it was all very odd, and worth keeping an eye on, but there was little they could do about it right then and there. Having finished their early morning meal they went back to Whytes, hoping to get some work done before Briers came in.
'Hullo,' said Fidler, 'Who's that?'
Elliot looked in the direction Jimmy was pointing. Up on the second floor, at one of the windows of their shop, they both saw a figure. They could not make out his face, for he wore a hood or robe of some description, and at the same moment they saw him he vanished back inside. Elliot and Fidler crept up the stairs as quietly as they could, hoping to surprise whoever it was, but when they burst in the room they discovered to their consternation that nobody was there at all.
Jimmy, a sour expression on his face, looked at the shelf closest to where they'd last seen the figure. On that same shelf their most recent acquisition, the twelve volume edition of the Thousand and One Nights, rested awaiting more prominent placement.
'The sooner we're rid of those things the better,' he said.
This was a filler session. One of the players unexpectedly dropped out, so I had to carry on with two. This meant a shorter session, but it did allow me to play with some concepts that may become important later in the game. It also introduces a rival, Lisiewicz Rare Books, of whom more later.
It wasn't so easy to convince Briers that the books had to go.
'I'm sure it's nothing,' said he, his mind still fixed on wine and cheese, 'A trick of the light. Someone was standing opposite, and their reflection happened to be caught in the window for a moment, that's all. There's no need for concern.' With that, Jimmy Fidler had to be satisfied.
The wine and cheese was spread over two trestle tables covered with white cloth. Today was the very first day of their new enterprise, and a celebratory evening had been planned. Percy Briers was far more concerned about that than he was about anything else. He needn't have been. On the day, Whytes was packed with old friends and new customers, and Jimmy, who manned the till, was kept very busy.
Percy was buttonholed by Professor Fife, of Oxford. She was easily several inches taller than he, and her eyesight was not good, which she refused to admit. She blinked mistily at him, as though seeing Briers from a considerable distance.
'I do so hope you can help me get it,' she said. 'It would add considerably to my collection.'
They were discussing Dekker's Parliament of Bees, an important piece of Elizabethan drama. A copy ex libris John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, was due to come up for auction at McKinnon's, who were disposing of many of the personal effects and properties beloninging to Durrant, known as the Wizard of the North. His most recent tour of the antipodes had not been a profitable as he had hoped, and this sale was intended to revitalize his fortunes. In addition to Durrant's collection of Elizabethan dramatical works, he was also selling many of the props, costumes and devices that had made his performances famous throughout the world, and some of his own books.
'We shall do our best for you, Professor,' Briers oozed, as he deftly hid a mouse that had crawled out onto a shelf and was eyeing Fife, its whiskers a-quiver. 'Would you excuse me a moment?'
He dashed around to the other side of the shelf, just in time to catch Charlie Pettimore in the act of earwigging. Charlie was unsuccessfully covering his activities by pretending deep interest in the travel section. Determined that Charlie wouldn't spoil his sale, Briers shepherded him somewhere further away.
'It would be so wonderful if you could help me buy the Confectioner,' said Quincy Riddle to Elliot. 'McKinnon's prices are likely to be high, and I'm a duffer at this sort of thing. But it would look so wonderful at the Rep!'
'I'm sure,' Elliot replied, deftly flicking a mouse away from the cheese board.
'Can I help you, sir?' asked Jimmy, putting on his best impersonation of someone with money and no criminal record. This gent looked a bit posher than the usual, very country, in his tweeds and well-worn shoes.
'I do hope so,' replied the man, who introduced himself as Styles. 'I'm on the lookout for, now let me see, I have it written down here . . .' He consulted his notes. 'Ah! Yes, here it is. Something called the Un-asspikkliken - is that the word? - Coolties. Also known as the Black Book, it says here. By someone called Won Yoon, I think.'
Jimmy Fidler looked at the notation. 'Unaussprechlichen Kulten,' he read aloud, 'The Bridewell edition, by Von Juntz. A very difficult piece to obtain, if I may say so.' In point of fact, he didn't know; he knew very little about that sort of thing, relying on the more encyclopediac knowledge of Percy Briers.
'Oh, well,' said Styles, and promptly named an asking price that was, in Jimmy's estimation, about a hundred pounds more than the book was worth - in fact, triple what Whytes had made in a day's brisk trade.
Later, after the day's trade was done and they had time to discuss matters, they ruminated on the possibilities. They had several interesting leads to chase up, with McKinnon's being the next event on their horizon. There were several useful things to be obtained there, and Jimmy could get materials for his own work. They wondered about Styles, and whether he might be fobbed off with something less than original.
'I reckon he's buying for some posh bloke with a place in the country,' said Fidler. 'Some gent wot knows a bit more than his man, if you follow me. Whoever made those notes knew exactly what he wanted, right down to notes about the binding.'
They decided to visit McKinnon's in advance of the sale, to get a better idea of what was on offer.
McKinnon's cavernous interior was filled with all the bright colours of carnival. Elliot was particularly drawn to the Confectioner and the other automata, including the Tree of Life, the Dancing Clowns and the Miraculous Fountain. Briers was more interested in the Mechanical Turk, and wondered whether it would look good in the front of their shop. 'It would bring in the customers,' said he.
Elliot wasn't convinced. He could see many nights of sleeplessness in his future, with something like that dead-eyed wooden-face lurking in the dark, waiting for him to come in of a morning.
Jimmy, after tearing himself away from the collection of playbills and memorabilia, drew their attention to the book collection. 'The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, John Day, 1662, beautiful, just look at the binding there. The Devil is In It, Dekker, 1640; Mustafa, a closet drama by Fulke Greville, 1640. Honest, boss, I reckon we could pick some of these up for a song. Most of the blokes here are after the magician's stuff,' he pointed at a curiously waxen-faced man who was eyeing the Confectioner covetously, 'They don't know what this is worth.'
Percy Briers was more interested in what one item in particular was worth. 'Is that what I think it is?'
One of the books, lying as if tossed atop a collection marked in the catalouge as Elizabethan Fragment, Unknown Author was remarkably familiar to him, right down to a new dent in the binding, as though someone had thrown it at something. He riffled through the pages. There could be no mistaking; it was one of the missing six from his collection of twelve volumes of the Thousand and One Nights, last seen (or possibly not) when Jimmy Fidler had flung it at the thing in the Dream Factory.
Fidler consulted McKinnon's catalogue. 'It's not down as a sale item,' he said, and Briers promptly stuffed it inside his jacket, hoping to make a quiet getaway.
'What was that it was resting on?' he wondered aloud, and took a closer look. His pulse quickened. There was no way to be certain without closer analysis, but it looked remarkably like examples he had seen of Christopeher Marlowe's handwriting. If so, it could be a heretofore unknown fragment of one of his plays, quite possibly the Massacre at Paris. There was something else bundled in with the document, not in the same hand as the rest of the script. It read like a legal paper, and was signed under seal. 'It says here that the weapon described herein, being a dagger . . . it gives details about the length of blade, maker and so on . . . that this weapon is that same which did take the life of one Marlowe at the hands of Frizier, his sign attached herewith by order of the coroner. My word!'
'Um . . .' said Fidler, nervously, 'A knife, boss? Like this one here on the catalogue, marked Dagger, Unknown Origin?'
Here's where I introduce the players to the Auctions concept. They're all experienced gamers, but the Auction mechanic has them a little intimidated. So I thought it sensible to introduce them with an auction that has no significant story consequence in and of itself, but does have some interesting items up for grabs. They have rivals to bid against, items to purchase, and have discovered that some manuscripts can hide some intriguing secrets. Plus, the Thousand and One Nights returns to plague them, and there's that dagger, unknown origin, to worry about.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Trail of Cthulhu - The Haunting 2
In my previous post on hauntings, I talked about spirits of place, and suggested that these reflected the half-hidden history of a locale. This version of the haunting represents the weight of years, the accumulated burden of history that, like a mound of wet and heavy snow on a crumbling roof, leaks its way through, eating at the supports until finally the whole thing gives way. This time I want to talk about another type of haunting and explain how it could be represented in-game. As before, I'm going to be using Bookhounds of London as a setting.
Possession stories drift in and out of fashion. Currently J and K Horror, as represented by films like The Grudge and The Red Shoes are exploring this kind of tale and doing it very well, but it has been represented in the past by gothics like Stoker's The Judge's House and Jackson's Haunting of Hill House. In these narratives the protagonist - perhaps a social worker (Grudge), student (Judge's House), recent divorcee (Red Shoes) or an impulsive romantic (Hill House) - leaves their comfort zone, and trespasses somewhere they shouldn't. They fall under the influence of malign forces, often far too powerful for them to handle, which then either back them into a metaphorical corner or force them to do harm to themselves. Suicide is a recurring theme. In western stories this is often death by hanging, and The Judge's House is fairly typical of the type. In all probability this is because hanging was a common form of punishment, not just throughout the United Kingdom but also in Europe and America. It also helps that hanging is something that can be done by an individual without too many complicated props; death by guillotine would be a more technically challenging way to go. Whereas in, say, The Grudge or Red Shoes, the final moments are much less clear-cut, and usually extract the maximum of isolation and terror before the end.
However the Japanese stories have a very traditional background. Lafcadio Hearn recorded many of these tales in his collection Kwaidan, and in the story Diplomacy he writes:
If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance on the killer.
Whereas the opening title sequence for Ju-On states:
Ju-on is a curse of those who die in the grip of a powerful rage.
The main difference being in Hearn's version the ghost resents only his killer, whereas Ju-On assumes that the spirit is lashing out at anyone who comes near. In each case the story has it that those who die while in the throes of wrath will gain supernatural ability, and seek to harm the living.
Western stories aren't quite as traditional, and it would be difficult to imagine a modern filmmaker trying to recreate The Judge's House, or anything like it. Apart from anything else there's no real reason given for the haunting in Stoker's tale, except that the Judge was a bad man and that sort tend to cause trouble even after death.
As to what there was against the house she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could inform her, but there was a general feeling that there was something, and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself.
Even the old prejudice against suicides, that led to their bodies being buried at cross-roads, being denied the solace of Christian burial, or interred just outside the churchyard wall, has been forgotten, and the sorrow of the Yew Tree, so often found in churchyards, is of interest only to folklorists.
Broadly speaking, there are several themes here that are useful in roleplaying scenarios.
The protagonists in these tales are often either weak-willed, or whatever willpower they possess is no match for the thing they face. Red Shoes also hints that one character may deserve what's coming to them, because they have committed crimes (murder, in that instance) that warrant punishment. Weakness is the key here. Perhaps there is something that the haunting exploits; something in the character's past, or even guilt over a crime they committed. A possession story is perfect for a game in which the character has something in their backstory that they really don't want to be made public. The story almost writes itself: the haunting's history mirrors the protagonist's own crimes.
Another key point to take away is that the haunting entity can be extremely powerful, under a certain narrow set of circumstances. In The Judge's House, the victim had to actually stay in the house; perhaps if he had left it there would have been no harm done. Whereas in Ju-On the sequence of events affects anyone who has ever been inside the house, even people like Hitomi who was only there for a few minutes and who is later attacked in her own apartment building. Not unlike radiation poisoning, even a brief exposure has long-lasting effects.
Possession hauntings work by turning the victim against themselves, usually so that they do themselves harm. Though the victim may well see things differently, as with the student in the Judge's House, the way the haunting operates is by forcing the victim to become part of the ongoing cycle of violence.
The thing that the victims face is caught in its own obsessions. The Judge in Stoker's tale doesn't want anything other than a hanging; the creatures in Ju-On are tied forever to the murder-suicide that spawned them, just as the Red Shoes is all about the footwear. There is no mind here, no guiding force, no elaborate plan. Only death. The presumption is that it has to be a certain kind of death; the Judge probably wouldn't get the same satisfaction out of someone breaking their neck on the stairs, any more than the Red Shoes would have ended with Sun-jae jumping from a rooftop.
There may be a way to break the cycle of death, but if there is the means of doing so is obscure and can be misunderstood. The Red Shoes has Sun-jae discover the secret history of the shoes and attempt to resolve the tragedy in her own way, but this attempt isn't completely successful. In game the characters ought to be presented with at least one potential resolution, but it shouldn't be as easy as 'rebury the unquiet dead and all shall be well.'
With all that in mind, an example using the Bookhounds setting is called for.
The Three Bucks, Stepney Green
This elaborate Edwardian building resembles an Italian palace gone slightly awry, complete with statues of saints and a copper-clad cupola roof. It was built on the site of an old Georgian traveller's inn, as a speculative venture by Gregory Harris in 1908. The big breweries were on the lookout for pubs to buy, and many pub owners, Harris among them, sunk their fortunes into making the building as elaborate as possible to attract the brewers' attention. The Three Bucks has three stories, one of which is devoted entirely to a massive ballroom dancing floor, while the very upper and smallest story is where the landlord has his rooms. The Three Bucks takes its name from the heraldic device of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, though the pub has no connection with that livery company now, if it ever did in the past. The Three Bucks is currently owned by Ploughman Brewers, Shepway, in Kent.
The landlord of the Three Bucks doesn't live on the premises and nobody has ever tried to. According to popular rumour the upper rooms are unlivable, possibly because the building was poorly constructed. In winter it is very expensive to heat, and on the coldest days the pub is an icebox no matter how much coal is loaded into the fireplaces. On very rainy days buckets have to be put out on the ballroom floor to catch the drips, which suggests that the landlord's rooms above must be in pretty poor shape.
Ploughman's does not encourage speculation of any kind about the upper rooms, and the landlord is under strict instruction not to let anyone into the top floor apartment.
Abilities: Scuffling 12, Weapons 12
Magic: 10
Weapon: -1 (knife)
Arnour: special; cannot be harmed by physical attacks.
Stability: +1
Special: Uses Domination, as per Rough Magicks p. 19.
Description: Either a man in his 40s, wearing vest and braces, dripping blood from a slashed throat, or an impenetrable blackness that absorbs and extinguishes all light sources.
Notes: Harris was cheated in the Ploughmans buy-out, and lost all the money he'd invested as well as what little was left of his savings. The shock of his downfall may have deranged him. He took his own life, and his body was found in the upper apartment on an exceptionally cold December evening, 1908. After a nasty incident that resulted in serious injury to his replacement, Ploughmans instructed that nobody be allowed to stay in the upper apartments, and for the sake of the business any rumours about Harris have been hushed up. Paddy Green has taken these instructions a few steps further, which is why nobody is ever allowed in the upper rooms even for a short time, nor is anyone allowed to stay on the premises after midnight. This haunting is obsessed with blood and violence, particularly cutting. While its main attack is Domination, causing the victim to cut themselves, the target sees this as Harris coming at him with a knife or straight razor, which is why the haunting has Scuffling and Weapons pools. Typically the haunting softens up a victim by reducing Stability either with hallucinations (2 loss) involving blood and cutting, or by recreating the suicide scene (3 loss) before attempting Domination. Each hallucination costs 1 Magic point, and Harris' Domination has a difficulty of 4 normally, or 3 if a target has lost 2 or more points of Stability as a result of hallucinations. When the Domination takes place, the victim seems to observers to be swallowed up in unnatural darkness; only the victim will ever see Harris in human form. Once a target has been Dominated he can't hope to beat Harris, but he can be saved if he's carried out of the upper apartments. The haunting is much weaker in the ballroom and the ground floor and cannot Dominate there, though it can still cause hallucinations. Very weak-willed people can be provoked to violence and attack others if they fail a Stabilty-versus-Magic contest, which is why the Bucks gets so rowdy on a Friday night.
Though this haunting is restricted to the upper floor of the Bucks, it can be encountered off the premises. Harris' personal belongings, in particular his shaving mirror, razor and leather strop, carry the taint, and anyone who owns these can encounter the haunting. These were disposed of soon after the body was found, and nobody knows where they are now. Occult may suggest that if these items are brought back to the Bucks and a ritual of cleansing performed, the haunting could be destroyed.
Possession stories drift in and out of fashion. Currently J and K Horror, as represented by films like The Grudge and The Red Shoes are exploring this kind of tale and doing it very well, but it has been represented in the past by gothics like Stoker's The Judge's House and Jackson's Haunting of Hill House. In these narratives the protagonist - perhaps a social worker (Grudge), student (Judge's House), recent divorcee (Red Shoes) or an impulsive romantic (Hill House) - leaves their comfort zone, and trespasses somewhere they shouldn't. They fall under the influence of malign forces, often far too powerful for them to handle, which then either back them into a metaphorical corner or force them to do harm to themselves. Suicide is a recurring theme. In western stories this is often death by hanging, and The Judge's House is fairly typical of the type. In all probability this is because hanging was a common form of punishment, not just throughout the United Kingdom but also in Europe and America. It also helps that hanging is something that can be done by an individual without too many complicated props; death by guillotine would be a more technically challenging way to go. Whereas in, say, The Grudge or Red Shoes, the final moments are much less clear-cut, and usually extract the maximum of isolation and terror before the end.
However the Japanese stories have a very traditional background. Lafcadio Hearn recorded many of these tales in his collection Kwaidan, and in the story Diplomacy he writes:
If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance on the killer.
Whereas the opening title sequence for Ju-On states:
Ju-on is a curse of those who die in the grip of a powerful rage.
The main difference being in Hearn's version the ghost resents only his killer, whereas Ju-On assumes that the spirit is lashing out at anyone who comes near. In each case the story has it that those who die while in the throes of wrath will gain supernatural ability, and seek to harm the living.
Western stories aren't quite as traditional, and it would be difficult to imagine a modern filmmaker trying to recreate The Judge's House, or anything like it. Apart from anything else there's no real reason given for the haunting in Stoker's tale, except that the Judge was a bad man and that sort tend to cause trouble even after death.
As to what there was against the house she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could inform her, but there was a general feeling that there was something, and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself.
Even the old prejudice against suicides, that led to their bodies being buried at cross-roads, being denied the solace of Christian burial, or interred just outside the churchyard wall, has been forgotten, and the sorrow of the Yew Tree, so often found in churchyards, is of interest only to folklorists.
Broadly speaking, there are several themes here that are useful in roleplaying scenarios.
The protagonists in these tales are often either weak-willed, or whatever willpower they possess is no match for the thing they face. Red Shoes also hints that one character may deserve what's coming to them, because they have committed crimes (murder, in that instance) that warrant punishment. Weakness is the key here. Perhaps there is something that the haunting exploits; something in the character's past, or even guilt over a crime they committed. A possession story is perfect for a game in which the character has something in their backstory that they really don't want to be made public. The story almost writes itself: the haunting's history mirrors the protagonist's own crimes.
Another key point to take away is that the haunting entity can be extremely powerful, under a certain narrow set of circumstances. In The Judge's House, the victim had to actually stay in the house; perhaps if he had left it there would have been no harm done. Whereas in Ju-On the sequence of events affects anyone who has ever been inside the house, even people like Hitomi who was only there for a few minutes and who is later attacked in her own apartment building. Not unlike radiation poisoning, even a brief exposure has long-lasting effects.
Possession hauntings work by turning the victim against themselves, usually so that they do themselves harm. Though the victim may well see things differently, as with the student in the Judge's House, the way the haunting operates is by forcing the victim to become part of the ongoing cycle of violence.
The thing that the victims face is caught in its own obsessions. The Judge in Stoker's tale doesn't want anything other than a hanging; the creatures in Ju-On are tied forever to the murder-suicide that spawned them, just as the Red Shoes is all about the footwear. There is no mind here, no guiding force, no elaborate plan. Only death. The presumption is that it has to be a certain kind of death; the Judge probably wouldn't get the same satisfaction out of someone breaking their neck on the stairs, any more than the Red Shoes would have ended with Sun-jae jumping from a rooftop.
There may be a way to break the cycle of death, but if there is the means of doing so is obscure and can be misunderstood. The Red Shoes has Sun-jae discover the secret history of the shoes and attempt to resolve the tragedy in her own way, but this attempt isn't completely successful. In game the characters ought to be presented with at least one potential resolution, but it shouldn't be as easy as 'rebury the unquiet dead and all shall be well.'
With all that in mind, an example using the Bookhounds setting is called for.
The Three Bucks, Stepney Green
This elaborate Edwardian building resembles an Italian palace gone slightly awry, complete with statues of saints and a copper-clad cupola roof. It was built on the site of an old Georgian traveller's inn, as a speculative venture by Gregory Harris in 1908. The big breweries were on the lookout for pubs to buy, and many pub owners, Harris among them, sunk their fortunes into making the building as elaborate as possible to attract the brewers' attention. The Three Bucks has three stories, one of which is devoted entirely to a massive ballroom dancing floor, while the very upper and smallest story is where the landlord has his rooms. The Three Bucks takes its name from the heraldic device of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, though the pub has no connection with that livery company now, if it ever did in the past. The Three Bucks is currently owned by Ploughman Brewers, Shepway, in Kent.
The landlord of the Three Bucks doesn't live on the premises and nobody has ever tried to. According to popular rumour the upper rooms are unlivable, possibly because the building was poorly constructed. In winter it is very expensive to heat, and on the coldest days the pub is an icebox no matter how much coal is loaded into the fireplaces. On very rainy days buckets have to be put out on the ballroom floor to catch the drips, which suggests that the landlord's rooms above must be in pretty poor shape.
Ploughman's does not encourage speculation of any kind about the upper rooms, and the landlord is under strict instruction not to let anyone into the top floor apartment.
- Cop Talk: There are more fights in the Three Bucks on a Friday night than any two other pubs in Stepney. Maybe the brew's too strong, but it doesn't help that the ones who start all the trouble always seem to be fond of knives and razors. There have been times when the public rooms resemble abbatoirs, and more than one missing ear or severed nose has been found the next morning outside the Bucks' front door. The landlord, Paddy Green, does his best to keep order and his son Mike is one of the toughest brawlers in the district, so keeping the peace oughtn't to be a problem. Yet time and again there's a call-out to the Bucks, with some poor sod in a welter of blood on the floor.
- The Knowledge: The old travelling inn that used to be on this site before Harris knocked it down wasn't particularly famous for anything. Popular legend had it that the pirate Captain Kidd stayed there when he was sent back to England for trial, and there were even those who believed that Kidd's treasure map was hidden somewhere on the premises. The fact that Kidd swung for his crimes a good eighty years before the traveller's inn was built, or that he spent his time in London incarcerated at Newgate, never put a stop to that legend. Nobody ever found a treasure map either, when the inn was knocked down, and the old gold coin that had been nailed into the joist just above the public bar allegedly because Kidd had used it to pay for his last meal has long since vanished. However there's an odd bunch of thrill-seekers and ghost story lovers who still turn up to the Bucks now and again, on the trail of the old Captain. They say that on cold winter nights a seafaring man, drenched in salt water from head to foot, can be seen in the upper rooms, by anyone brave enough to spend the night there. That said, they've never been able to bribe Paddy Green sufficiently to let them try the experiment.
- Architecture: The Bucks has a surprising number of faults, for a bulding not thirty years old. The leaks in the roof must be pretty serious if they keep dripping through to the second floor ballroom. Looking from the outside it's clear that the guttering hasn't been cleared in years, if ever, so perhaps that's the cause of the problem. Yet the Bucks makes enough money, and the other rooms are in fairly good shape, so you'd think that sending someone up on the roof to clean out the gutters wouldn't be a problem. To get to the roof you'd have to go through the landlord's apartments on the upper floor, or put up scaffolding or a ladder outside.
- Assess Honesty/Oral History: Paddy Green reacts like a bear with a sore head if anyone asks him about the upper rooms. No, they're not to be used. No, nobody's allowed up there, for any reason. No, he doesn't know why. Persistent questions get the questioner thrown out, courtesy of Mike's strong arm. Paddy's scared of something, that's plain; but what? It's interesting that, of all the pubs in the district, this one keeps closing time sacred. There are no lock-ins at the Bucks, nor are late drinkers given time to finish up. As soon as the clock strikes eleven, it's pints down and everyone out. Paddy locks up the Bucks himself at midnight, and the place is completely uninhabited until eight in the morning the next day.
Abilities: Scuffling 12, Weapons 12
Magic: 10
Weapon: -1 (knife)
Arnour: special; cannot be harmed by physical attacks.
Stability: +1
Special: Uses Domination, as per Rough Magicks p. 19.
Description: Either a man in his 40s, wearing vest and braces, dripping blood from a slashed throat, or an impenetrable blackness that absorbs and extinguishes all light sources.
Notes: Harris was cheated in the Ploughmans buy-out, and lost all the money he'd invested as well as what little was left of his savings. The shock of his downfall may have deranged him. He took his own life, and his body was found in the upper apartment on an exceptionally cold December evening, 1908. After a nasty incident that resulted in serious injury to his replacement, Ploughmans instructed that nobody be allowed to stay in the upper apartments, and for the sake of the business any rumours about Harris have been hushed up. Paddy Green has taken these instructions a few steps further, which is why nobody is ever allowed in the upper rooms even for a short time, nor is anyone allowed to stay on the premises after midnight. This haunting is obsessed with blood and violence, particularly cutting. While its main attack is Domination, causing the victim to cut themselves, the target sees this as Harris coming at him with a knife or straight razor, which is why the haunting has Scuffling and Weapons pools. Typically the haunting softens up a victim by reducing Stability either with hallucinations (2 loss) involving blood and cutting, or by recreating the suicide scene (3 loss) before attempting Domination. Each hallucination costs 1 Magic point, and Harris' Domination has a difficulty of 4 normally, or 3 if a target has lost 2 or more points of Stability as a result of hallucinations. When the Domination takes place, the victim seems to observers to be swallowed up in unnatural darkness; only the victim will ever see Harris in human form. Once a target has been Dominated he can't hope to beat Harris, but he can be saved if he's carried out of the upper apartments. The haunting is much weaker in the ballroom and the ground floor and cannot Dominate there, though it can still cause hallucinations. Very weak-willed people can be provoked to violence and attack others if they fail a Stabilty-versus-Magic contest, which is why the Bucks gets so rowdy on a Friday night.
Though this haunting is restricted to the upper floor of the Bucks, it can be encountered off the premises. Harris' personal belongings, in particular his shaving mirror, razor and leather strop, carry the taint, and anyone who owns these can encounter the haunting. These were disposed of soon after the body was found, and nobody knows where they are now. Occult may suggest that if these items are brought back to the Bucks and a ritual of cleansing performed, the haunting could be destroyed.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land
Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land is the brainchild of Red Wasp Design, a UK-based game studio. It’s a turn-based strategic skirmish wargame based loosely on the writings of H.P Lovecraft, though its gameplay reminds me more of the X-Com series than it does Call of Cthulhu. I’ve had a lot of fun with it this week!
The year is 1915. The Schlieffen Plan hasn’t worked, and Germany’s advance on Paris has stalled. The trenches that are to become symbolic of the Great War have just been dug, and your main protagonist, Captain Hill, is an ordinary soldier fighting on the Front. A mysterious branch of military intelligence sends a boffin, Professor Brightmeer, to help him root out and destroy a particularly insidious foe: Kaul, a nominal ally of the Germans who is using the carnage for his own ends. Brightmeer is joined soon afterwards by Carl Green, martial arts expert, and Emma Gold, a student of Freud, and they join forces with Hill’s platoon to rid the world of Cthulhoid horrors. Together they advance through No-Man’s-Land, at first gathering clues, trying to fathom Kraul’s plan, and later penetrating the villain’s lair to confront him once and for all.
Wasted Land is a strategy game. Your units (Hill, Brightmeer and their allies) have a certain number of Action Points, which they spend moving from place to place, shooting, or performing other actions. When their turn is done, the enemy have a go, and then the cycle repeats. The victory condition for the scenario changes each time; your goal could be to survive, or to shepherd Brightmeer to the objective so he can study it or blow it up. Win one scenario and you move to the next, until the end is reached. It’s a pulp-action plot complete with moustache-twirling villain but the writing is entertaining with some nice asides from Cornishman Sid Brown, the artillery spotter whose pigeons helped me out of more than one scrape.
Cthulhu tabletop gamers are known for their love of historical accuracy, and Wasted Land does an excellent job. I only caught one duff note, a reference to Salvador Dali’s artwork when, at the time of the scenario, Dali would have been eleven years old. Otherwise Red Wasp did a good job of tying together their timeline.
Veteran tabletop players may be a little surprised by the emphasis on combat. Generally speaking Call of Cthulhu teaches you to run away from, say, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath as they’re extremely dangerous and nigh-on impossible to kill. When three of them turned up at once, my immediate reaction was to order my units to flee. What I ought to have done, as I soon discovered, was order my sniper to shoot holes in the lead monster while bringing my martial artist into close range for a few bayonet-hacks. By the time the campaign is over you’ll have depopulated an entire regiment of Dark Young, as well as many other Mythos beasties.
Sanity is another famous Call of Cthulhu mechanic, mental hit points that run out very quickly when your character faces off against horrors from beyond. In Wasted Land you lose Sanity for encountering horrors, but you also lose them each time you attack one, which means if one unit attacks a zombie three times they lose three doses of Sanity, and then they’ll lose more when the zombie attacks them. When Sanity runs out either the unit is paralyzed for a turn and loses all their Action Points, or goes manic. Mania gives them a double dose of Action Points, but at the end of their manic period they’ll fall unconscious and die unless someone helps them. Mania can be a godsend, but when your sniper, heavy weapons guy and martial arts expert all go manic in the same round you do start to feel sorry for the enemy, who’ll be on the receiving end of all that rage.
Sanity can recover naturally after a period of mania or paralysis, but if you want to keep your units in fighting trim then Psychoanalysis will plug those holes in their brains. Gold and Brightmeer start off with this skill, but anyone can learn it. This tends to result in a front line of hardened killers with a support character or two standing directly behind them muttering ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother’ as the undead close in, but needs must!
As a skirmish wargame it has a few flaws, chief among them lack of a Fog of War mechanic. The player always gets to see where everyone is, which does detract from the horror of what is meant to be a horror game. X-Com had this nailed, and it’s a bit puzzling when a series that’s nearly twenty years old has chops that an app released in 2012 doesn’t. The AI sometimes spawns new enemies in inconvenient places, so you can be attacked from the rear while facing off against something nasty, but as a general rule you’ll have plenty of warning of any attack. Most of your opponents are close combat specialists, so your sniper will have a field day as they charge in and your martial artist will enjoy ripping up whatever’s left. This is where Sanity really starts to make a difference, as the last thing you need is a unit in a vital strategic role suddenly lapsing into paralysis.
Another minor gripe is the battlefield itself. It’s beautifully laid out and there are plenty of obstacles, like poison gas or muddy ground, which either slow your units or injure them. However it can be difficult to tell the difference between open ground, which you can shoot over or move through, and an obstacle blocking your line of sight and movement. Level design is also occasionally uninspired, so that what could have been an interesting tangle of barbed wire and poison gas through which you have to choose one of several paths to your objective, becomes instead a linear route the boundaries of which are very clearly marked.
That said, there were enough challenges here to keep me occupied and I soon learned to tell the difference between terrain types, so my sniper never ended up in a useless location. Though the enemy started to feel slightly outclassed towards the end, the final showdown was appropriately climactic, and were I Field Marshal Haig I’d not have been stingy with the medals afterward!
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being near-perfect, I’d rate Wasted Land as a solid 3. A Fog of War mechanic would have made this a really great game, but it wasn’t to be. Even so, as a tactical skirmish horror game it works very well, and the atmospheric art design really drives home the feel of being on a Great War battlefield. Here’s hoping Red Wasp come out with a sequel sometime soon!
The year is 1915. The Schlieffen Plan hasn’t worked, and Germany’s advance on Paris has stalled. The trenches that are to become symbolic of the Great War have just been dug, and your main protagonist, Captain Hill, is an ordinary soldier fighting on the Front. A mysterious branch of military intelligence sends a boffin, Professor Brightmeer, to help him root out and destroy a particularly insidious foe: Kaul, a nominal ally of the Germans who is using the carnage for his own ends. Brightmeer is joined soon afterwards by Carl Green, martial arts expert, and Emma Gold, a student of Freud, and they join forces with Hill’s platoon to rid the world of Cthulhoid horrors. Together they advance through No-Man’s-Land, at first gathering clues, trying to fathom Kraul’s plan, and later penetrating the villain’s lair to confront him once and for all.
Wasted Land is a strategy game. Your units (Hill, Brightmeer and their allies) have a certain number of Action Points, which they spend moving from place to place, shooting, or performing other actions. When their turn is done, the enemy have a go, and then the cycle repeats. The victory condition for the scenario changes each time; your goal could be to survive, or to shepherd Brightmeer to the objective so he can study it or blow it up. Win one scenario and you move to the next, until the end is reached. It’s a pulp-action plot complete with moustache-twirling villain but the writing is entertaining with some nice asides from Cornishman Sid Brown, the artillery spotter whose pigeons helped me out of more than one scrape.
Cthulhu tabletop gamers are known for their love of historical accuracy, and Wasted Land does an excellent job. I only caught one duff note, a reference to Salvador Dali’s artwork when, at the time of the scenario, Dali would have been eleven years old. Otherwise Red Wasp did a good job of tying together their timeline.
Veteran tabletop players may be a little surprised by the emphasis on combat. Generally speaking Call of Cthulhu teaches you to run away from, say, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath as they’re extremely dangerous and nigh-on impossible to kill. When three of them turned up at once, my immediate reaction was to order my units to flee. What I ought to have done, as I soon discovered, was order my sniper to shoot holes in the lead monster while bringing my martial artist into close range for a few bayonet-hacks. By the time the campaign is over you’ll have depopulated an entire regiment of Dark Young, as well as many other Mythos beasties.
Sanity is another famous Call of Cthulhu mechanic, mental hit points that run out very quickly when your character faces off against horrors from beyond. In Wasted Land you lose Sanity for encountering horrors, but you also lose them each time you attack one, which means if one unit attacks a zombie three times they lose three doses of Sanity, and then they’ll lose more when the zombie attacks them. When Sanity runs out either the unit is paralyzed for a turn and loses all their Action Points, or goes manic. Mania gives them a double dose of Action Points, but at the end of their manic period they’ll fall unconscious and die unless someone helps them. Mania can be a godsend, but when your sniper, heavy weapons guy and martial arts expert all go manic in the same round you do start to feel sorry for the enemy, who’ll be on the receiving end of all that rage.
Sanity can recover naturally after a period of mania or paralysis, but if you want to keep your units in fighting trim then Psychoanalysis will plug those holes in their brains. Gold and Brightmeer start off with this skill, but anyone can learn it. This tends to result in a front line of hardened killers with a support character or two standing directly behind them muttering ‘tell me about your relationship with your mother’ as the undead close in, but needs must!
As a skirmish wargame it has a few flaws, chief among them lack of a Fog of War mechanic. The player always gets to see where everyone is, which does detract from the horror of what is meant to be a horror game. X-Com had this nailed, and it’s a bit puzzling when a series that’s nearly twenty years old has chops that an app released in 2012 doesn’t. The AI sometimes spawns new enemies in inconvenient places, so you can be attacked from the rear while facing off against something nasty, but as a general rule you’ll have plenty of warning of any attack. Most of your opponents are close combat specialists, so your sniper will have a field day as they charge in and your martial artist will enjoy ripping up whatever’s left. This is where Sanity really starts to make a difference, as the last thing you need is a unit in a vital strategic role suddenly lapsing into paralysis.
Another minor gripe is the battlefield itself. It’s beautifully laid out and there are plenty of obstacles, like poison gas or muddy ground, which either slow your units or injure them. However it can be difficult to tell the difference between open ground, which you can shoot over or move through, and an obstacle blocking your line of sight and movement. Level design is also occasionally uninspired, so that what could have been an interesting tangle of barbed wire and poison gas through which you have to choose one of several paths to your objective, becomes instead a linear route the boundaries of which are very clearly marked.
That said, there were enough challenges here to keep me occupied and I soon learned to tell the difference between terrain types, so my sniper never ended up in a useless location. Though the enemy started to feel slightly outclassed towards the end, the final showdown was appropriately climactic, and were I Field Marshal Haig I’d not have been stingy with the medals afterward!
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being near-perfect, I’d rate Wasted Land as a solid 3. A Fog of War mechanic would have made this a really great game, but it wasn’t to be. Even so, as a tactical skirmish horror game it works very well, and the atmospheric art design really drives home the feel of being on a Great War battlefield. Here’s hoping Red Wasp come out with a sequel sometime soon!
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