Boots - Night's Black Agents

Putin noted that Russian societal unity is critical for Russian victory in Ukraine.[2] Putin alluded to the Russian Revolution, noted that Russian society collapsed during the First World War, and urged Russians to maintain support and unity as the war continues. Putin stated that Russia "will not give up" its "own" territory in future peace negotiations — likely referring to illegally annexed territory in occupied Ukraine.[3] The Kremlin launched the Defenders of the Fatherland State Fund in April 2023 to oversee social support for veterans, elevate veterans within Russian society, and monopolize control over veterans activities in Russia. 

Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day 

Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before -- 

(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!) 

There's no discharge in the war! 

Kipling, Boots.

There’s an interesting narrative percolating about Russia and Ukraine, which goes like this: Putin’s at a point where he cannot afford peace because, if there’s a ceasefire, the troops come home. With all their military skills, their anger, and their stories about life on the front.  

This is a narrative that pokes its head up every time there’s a significant military action, no matter who’s at war or what they fought for. The soldiers come home. They can’t handle peace. They don’t like the government. They know how to take direct action; direct action is all they’re fit for. 

After the Great War British misfits came home to farm chickens, because they couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office building, liked to work outdoors, and were attracted to rural life. You see this plotline pop up in Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie.  

Christie uses the war and its disruption as a background for her soft-edged detectives Tommy and Tuppence, both of whom served in the war. Sayers uses the war as a background for her detective Lord Peter, but she also uses it to good effect in her detective story The Bellona Club, where the action is set in a member's club for military men, should you wish to steal it for Bookhounds or Trail. 

Meanwhile in modern drama, Peaky Blinders makes much of Tommy Shelby’s time at the front, how it made him the criminal genius he is today.  

There was a time when the villain of choice for an American thriller was an ex-Vietnam vet looking for a little action. Whether it’s something like First Blood or Taxi Driver, where the psychological damage comes out in misanthropic physical action, or something more direct like Dead Presidents, if you went to Vietnam you were one bad day away from being Public Enemy Number One.

Dead Presidents trailer

Really, the only difference in that evolving narrative is the war, and the strength of society to deal with the consequences of that war. It probably hasn’t taken you ten seconds to think of a movie drama with broadly the same text as Dead Presidents, only this time it’s about the Iraq War.    

Even the so-called ‘good’ wars, like World War Two with its Greatest Generation, has its examples. After all it’s that same Greatest Generation that gave us Hell’s Angels, and with it any number of biker rebel narratives.  

The Wild One

Ultimately it comes down to the strength of civil society. A weak civil society can't handle returning soldiers. A strong one can. There will be unrest, some disorder, a few thrilling moments and a shaky narrative, but the society will survive. Changed, probably. Change will come whether asked for or not. There's an argument for saying that returning soldiers accelerate the process, but it is an acceleration not a causation.

Russia has particular concerns. 

The original Revolution was kicked off by troubles on the Western Front. Russia wasn't the only nation that struggled; France and England both worried that slaughter on the battlefield would cause revolution at home. In Germany the Nazis came to power, in part, on the back of this fear that revolution was in the air. Yet it was Russia that fell to revolution, though there's a case to be made that, had Germany somehow lasted longer than it did, England and France would both have endured protracted revolutionary action.

Meanwhile, in modern times, the collapse of the Soviet regime came after the destruction of the Red Army in the Afghan debacle. The Wall came down, Yeltsin went out the door, and with him went the Soviet Union.

Russia’s modern history can be summed up as ‘troops come home, disaster follows.' Which suggests a strong reason for keeping troops in the field, but the problem with that is, no army can stay in the field forever. At some point, all wars end. 

Sometimes they end with an angry army attacking the leadership. That was what scared Putin half to death when Prigozhin took his Wagner mercenaries home. Sometimes they end with reverses on the battlefield or a protracted stalemate that turns into a peace agreement because nobody can force anybody to a different conclusion. That seems to be what might happen in Ukraine. 

In-game, groups like Edom have their own issues with returning soldiers. Specifically, their Jacks of E-Squadron. 

Here we have a group of heavily armed, well-trained troops up to their eyeballs on peculiar substances who go out, do unspeakable things, and come home again. 

Intact in body, perhaps. Longer lived, perhaps; the Seward serum does strange things to a man. But intact in mind? That's debatable.

You'd want to keep an eye on people like that. 

Psych Eval

Social Worker Neela Chaudri (Edom Field Manual) has been tasked with carrying out wellness checks on former E-Squadron personnel, of which there are perhaps a dozen, all-told. Rotated out, retired, living the civilian life. 

Some of them date back to the Second World War and aren't in the best of health. Most are 1970s-80s recruits, one is a 1990s man with artificial legs. All of them are psychologically scarred by their time in the trenches. 

Edom picked Chaudri for this job because she's already got the clearances, thanks to her work with Chain Home Deep. She just doesn't know it. Edom didn't care whether or not this overloaded Chaudri or caused her any problems. From Edom's perspective, the fewer people with their eyes on Edom's business, the better, and Chaudri is already a known face.

The problem with this darn fine scheme is, just as with Chain Home Deep, nobody at Edom is paying close attention to Chaudri's reports. After all, why should they? The point was to get a report, not to read the damn thing. Let alone take action based on that report.

Pity. Because, if someone did read them, they might notice disturbing similarities between the experiences endured by some of Chain Home Deep's crew and the veterans of E-Squadron. Particularly in the dreams they experience ...

Option One: A 70's Kid: The trooper, David Allenby, served during the time of the Mole Hunt and was there at the death, when the mole was run to ground. Allenby suffered a traumatic encounter with several SBAs in the final months of the Hunt and this left him with scars both mental and physical. However, it also left him a peculiar gift: he can spot Renfields. It takes him maybe 30 seconds, and his success rate is 100%. The thing is, he's convinced there's a Renfield near him now. At all times. Who can it be?

Option Two: A 40's Veteran:  This might be Van Sloan. It's certainly someone of similar vintage, who was there during Edom's assault on Schloss Karnstein. He remembers everything. He goes back there at night, in his dreams. Something is calling him there. Something in his dreams wants to get out. This could be an entry vector to the Carmilla Sanction in the Edom Files, or a postscript dream-sequence to that operation in which one of the entities killed during the assault on the Schloss wants to come back to life and is using the Veteran's mind and body to do it.

Option Three: The 1980's: The trooper, Simon Yellern, went through any number of peculiar operations back in the day but the one that sticks in his mind is the incident in Afghanistan during the Soviet's Operation Curtain. While attempting to extract Yellern and his team were caught up in a Soviet special forces raid against the mujahideen they were working with, and those forces were very special indeed. Yellern was the only survivor from his unit. Thing is, he swears he saw one of those Soviet troopers in England. Chaudri has it down as a nightmare due to carelessness with medication, but Yellern's convinced the man he saw was real - and died during that 1980s raid. Yellern should know. Yellern killed him.

That's it for this week!

 

The Floater (NBA, Dracula Dossier)

Floater: Person used for a one-time or occasional intelligence operation. Generally a floater is a low-level person, sometimes used unwittingly. A floater might be a waiter sent to a hotel room with a bottle of champagne allegedly from the management - in order to see who is in the hotel room.

Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Polmar & Allen, Random House 1998.

Retired KGB Agent Dmitri Lobanov. Lobanov was one of the KGB’s field hands during the late 1970s and ’80s, until he was burned by a former colleague and arrested in England — for assault and grievous bodily harm, not espionage. Ten years in Long Lartin prison followed; MI5 discovered Lobanov was a spy and debriefed him while he was incarcerated. These days, he’s a plumber doing odd jobs around North London. Dracula Dossier p97

Archives/Library Establishing Shot: Endless rows of metal racks hold dusty case files (or civil archives, or Securitate surveillance reports, or dissertations on medieval Romania). Strata of labels, each one stuck over its predecessor, trace the development of the filing system, from handwritten notes to typewritten ones to bar codes. Dracula Dossier p254

A North London archive of importance to Edom, the Conspiracy or a significant third party is penetrated by a Floater - the retired KGB agent. The agents are alerted to this after the fact through security camera footage, or perhaps they were conducting surveillance of the archive only to find Lobanov already on-site. Lobanov's a face, a known quantity. That he was even seen near the archive is a problem for the higher-ups. The higher-ups hate problems. 

The question that needs answering: is Lobanov a Floater, and if so to whom does he report? Or is something else going on?

After all, there are any number of legitimate reasons why a plumber might be on-site. It might just be bad luck for Lobanov that he was called out to this particular location. Or someone may have paid Lobanov to go to the archive to see what happens next. If the agents overreact, this might tip off whoever Lobanov's employers are that there's something interesting in the archive. 

They can't afford to be too gung-ho, nor can they ignore the situation altogether. This calls for delicate handling.

Additional complication: Lobanov isn't alone. He has a youngster with him. The kid might be an apprentice. A quick background check shows that Lobanov recently took his nephew into the family business. Is this the nephew? Or did whoever sent Lobanov think he needed additional support? 

Potential Thrilling Surveillance: the agents covertly pursue Lobanov and his apprentice across North London, to job sites, pubs and finally Lobanov's main gaff in Hammersmith. If Lobanov spots the tail and is innocent, he may assume that the agents are working for some leg-breakers he has reason to know all too well; he has gambling debts. If Lobanov spots the tail and is a Floater, then he reacts badly. It's been years and years since he was in the field, and the last thing he wants is to go back to Long Lartin - or worse.  This could turn the Thrilling Surveillance into a Thrilling Chase.

Potential Thrilling Interrogation: the agents corner Lobanov and try to get him to talk. If innocent, he assumes that the agents are working with Edom and are really here about the mole hunt, despite whatever they may say about archives. He went through all that years ago. He hates going through it again. If a Floater, then Lobanov assumes the worst and goes straight to combat, if he can. He had his suspicions about this job, and now they're confirmed. He doesn't know anything useful, but he doesn't think he can convince his captors he's just a pigeon.

Potential complication: The kid. He's maybe sixteen, but he has a mouth on him like a sewer and he's a little too handy with his fists. Treat as gym rat for stat purposes. 

As an innocent, he's actually the son of an influential Russian oligarch. The oligarch remembers Lobanov from the old KGB days, back when the two of them were in the same line of work. The oligarch is sick of his no-good, layabout son drinking all the time and getting into trouble. He figured a few months working a real job with his old buddy Lobanov would straighten the little turd out. However, just because the oligarch wants his son on a diet of bread and skilly for a while doesn't mean he wants him dead or up on charges. 

As a Floater, the kid's actually a Renfield and while he still has the mouth and the gym rat stats, he's considerably more dangerous. As are the rat swarms he can call on as backup, should the need arise.

Short one this week! Enjoy!

PS - I'm headed to Toronto later this year and am putting together a list of bookshops to visit. Any shop you'd care to add to the list?

Idiots In Charge (Night's Black Agents)

When you put idiots in charge, expect stupidity.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, there’s a quote that has been attributed to several different people and which may be apocryphal, about German officers and their qualities. It goes like this:

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

This particular paradigm has put the stupid and industrious in charge.

You can make a career out of stupidity. Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels makes the bedrock assumption that a bunch of people with high security clearances had unprotected intercourse with the pooch and are now shitcanned to a dead letter office for spies. However, it’s not a career that allows for much upward growth. Which is the whole point of Slough House.

As vices go, though, you generally don’t expect people with high security clearances to demonstrate a great deal of incompetence. Ideally, if they were ever in the running for the top job, they would be competent and demonstrate that competence during their working career.

However, it sometimes happens that people, extremely stupid and incompetent people, are promoted to the top job. Perhaps it’s the old school tie. Perhaps it’s because they look good on television. The alcoholism or the bumbling is ignored for reasons that don’t really bear close scrutiny. Now the idiot has the corner office with the good view, and everyone has to wonder: when will this come to its logical end?

Let’s gamify this from two perspectives.

Let’s assume that Edom’s old CIA pals at Find Forever are led by an idiot.

Then let’s assume that someone in the Conspiracy is an idiot.

Remember what I said a while back about assets, powers and goals? Birds got ‘em, bee’s got ‘em, even educated fleas got em, and NPCs, nodes, are no different. That also applies to idiots, but let’s not think about idiots right now.

Let’s think about the people who work for idiots.

Each and every moron has a staff. Depending on the importance of the moron, they may have quite a substantial staff. This is important because staff counts toward the assets of the moron and bolster the moron’s power. 

However, the staff have something in common with the people of Czechoslovakia.

When Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets in 1968, the newspaper Večerní Praha published “10 commandments”, writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know 2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to 6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do nothing.”

It's basic noncompliance. I bring this up because the staff of a moron are likely to be one of two types:

• Equally moronic, and therefore likely to follow the party line to the best of their ability.
• Noncompliant.

This will affect the capability of the moron in charge.

First let’s assume that the CIA Station Chief in London is a moron, in charge of the CIA’s assets and operations, and that Station Chief is briefed on Find Forever. Technically the CIA isn't supposed to be conducting active spying operations within a friendly nation like, say, running vampire assets in London. But technicalities have never stopped anyone before, and here we have someone who’s both stupid and industrious.

Someone who’s tasked with assisting Find Forever in their operations, by working with (or against) Edom to get access to their vampire, or the fabled Dossier.

It probably won’t take Edom long to work this out. Perhaps someone they know or someone in the public eye - the Journalist, let's say - is invited to the group chat, or perhaps someone leaves a laptop in the pub. There are all sorts of ways this can happen.

The question then becomes, what to do about it?

The most reasonable course of action, bearing in mind Edom can’t afford to antagonize the Americans, is to Flip someone or Reverse Trace something. That is, subvert someone on the moron’s staff, or cover up (Reverse Trace) the location of the Dossier, perhaps by creating a fake for the moron to go after. Edom doesn’t want to kill anyone. They just want the problem to go away.

However, this carries its own risks. If the moron decides to take things a little too far, people could die. Or operations could be blown.

Let’s say for the sake of this narrative that the CIA station chief becomes aware of something that Edom would rather not have general knowledge. The location of Ring, say, or the true identity of whoever-it-may-be currently kept at Proserpine. Then the CIA station chief promptly spills their guts and, in the process, alerts the Conspiracy to this vital knowledge.

Well, darn. Now the agents have to Defend that asset. All because the Find Forever guy is a thundering idiot.

This could turn into a miniseries worth of scenarios. What did Barney Fife of the CIA do this week? How will it make our lives worse?

Now let’s assume that someone high up in the Conspiracy is a thundering idiot.

Let’s say for the sake of it that the someone in question is dear old Uncle Albert of Bankhaus Klingemann.

Now, Albert is presumably good at his day job, or he wouldn’t have it. However, his day job is being a banker. That doesn’t mean he’s any good at anything else. He might be a complete idiot when it comes to, say, tradecraft, or interpersonal relationships, or any one of a dozen other things. Or he might be relatively sensible when sober but isn’t often sober. Dealer’s choice as to his particular issue.

However, if he has an issue, then he’s a threat to the Node in two ways.

First, he might authorize an Antagonist Reaction that’s completely inappropriate, or which gives away important information that the Conspiracy would prefer remain a mystery. Say, by using the zombie virus which the Conspiracy was saving for deployment a few months from now, thus giving the game away and giving the forces of Justice information with which they can invent a zombie vaccine. That kind of thing.

Second, his staff might become a little too ambitious when they realize they’re working for a cretin, because they want the cretin’s job. They might not know his job comes with Conspiracy strings attached. All they know is it comes with a corner office and a healthy pay bump, thank you very much.

This is where Czechoslovakia comes in, because staff like that are going to be very noncompliant to the higher-ups, but remarkably willing to cooperate with anyone who can get rid of the moron in charge. This lets the agents in on some of the Conspiracy’s best secrets.

Noncompliance means that the Node’s effectiveness is threatened.

Meanwhile, cooperation with the enemy comes with its own hazards. In this thought experiment the enemy doesn’t have to be the agents; there are any number of third-party agencies out there willing to do Bankhaus Klingemann a dirty turn. Say, Find Forever, or the Alraune. Or Carmilla. Again, dealer's choice as to who gets involved but somebody's bound to, once blood's in the water. 

Say that staff member reaches out to someone they think is reliable and that someone turns out to be the Alraune, who's been waiting for this opportunity. All of a sudden, the agents face a complication they didn't know existed, and all because dear old Uncle Albert is a cretin. 

Remember that old saw about having someone walk through the door with a gun in their hand. This opens up possibilities. Normally the door-walking so and so is a known quantity, but not this time. It could be absolutely anyone with a gun in their hand. All sorts of new clues can be sprinkled about the place in that situation. Which breeds plot, and plot is always to be encouraged.

Clue

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Autographs (Bookhounds)

 “Genuine autograph collecting has nothing to do with autograph fiends and their collecting of signatures. A large collection of signatures well arranged and illustrated with portraits and clippings, is a good thing—but albums of miscellaneous signatures with no system, and begged from annoyed celebrities, are little better than trash. When I buy such a collection I break it up at once. Notes responding to requests for autographs are no better than signatures. They are out of place in a good collection. A letter should contain some of the original thought of the writer, and, if possible refer to incidents of his life or to his writings.

“My regular customers, people who buy constantly whenever I have something to offer them in their special line, are not the movie millionaires you can meet in the art shops and book shops on Fifth Avenue. They are usually retired business men, and physicians, well-to-do or of moderate means, university professors who have to save in order to be able to buy autographs. Every one of them has made a study of some literary or political celebrity, or is interested in some period of our own history. All documents or letters needed to complete their collections are welcome. But I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures.

“Some people are greatly interested in minor literary men of bygone days, whose autographs were never thought worth saving. I have a search department for such cases, and I am often curiously successful.

“You would be surprised to find how almost anything you may want can be found if you do not tire in looking for it and if you know how and where to advertise.

“I advertise everywhere, and constantly. The smallest country paper sometimes means more to my business than the big city paper.

“I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir, who read my advertisement in the paper and who preferred to sell the literary remains of his grandfather to me rather than to the ragman!

“And here is the secret of success in this business: constant and wise advertising …

Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms, Guido Bruno, originally published 1922. Source: Gutenberg.

Let’s play with this idea.

I’m going to use two parts of this narrative, being:

• I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures …
• I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir …

Let’s have two scenario seeds this time.

Before we go down those roads, though, let’s establish the weenie in this narrative. 

Scholar Raymond Begbie was a literary lion of the middle 1800s. He wrote plays, novels, (his Indiscretion is still performed, and De Roquefort is well regarded), and histories, the most famous of which is his history of the Glencoe Massacre, A Bloody Scandal.

Begbie’s scholarship includes studies of various Jacobite activists who published pamphlets in the later 1690s, among them occultist Charles De Wit who published a number of scurrilous tracts linking the assaults at Glencoe to various Mythos sacrificial activities. De Wit alleges that the acts of the Argyll’s at Glencoe were cover for a much more sinister act of sacrifice intended to please dark and hideous Gods.

Begbie had a considerable quantity of De Wit’s papers in his possession, not just the pamphlets he published. Among them are letters written by De Wit to Reinhardt Von Juntz, ancestor of the more notorious Friedrich, whose library (which Friedrich inherited) supposedly set the German eccentric down the path that led to his eventual destruction.

In effect, early drafts/sources which Von Juntz later used in Nameless Cults.

So, the weenie: papers and pamphlets owned by scholar Begbie, written by De Wit, autographed by De Wit, and including letters written to and from an ancestor of Von Juntz in which the two discuss Mythos and cult matters.

Poor Man’s Treasure 

Book scout Allan Chessover (main text) clues the Hounds in on an important development.

An old fellow who lives on an East End scow berthed permanently at East India Docks is very ill and likely to die. Sad, really. The soon-to-be-expired collector has, in his possession, a number of items from Begbie's papers. He's supposed to have got them from Begbie's estate sale in 1903. Nobody's entirely sure what the geriatric collector has. However, rumors abound.

The collector, Samuel Hoskins, is known to be a fly fellow when it comes to the Magickal arts. The last time someone tried to rob him, it's said, Hoskins sent them packing in a sorcerous manner. Tales suggest he has strange beasts or spirits at his command, but whether he's a modern Prospero or a two-bit charlatan has yet to be determined.

Hoskins won't part with his collection while he's alive. But he won't be alive for much longer. The question is, will his protective spirits - or whatever they are - die with him? Or is something going to keep watch over that ship of his, whether Hoskins is alive or not?

Option One: Not So Dead As He Seems. Hoskins is putting this story around to attract young, vigorous souls. He needs a new body. However, the last time he tried this - the time when someone tried to rob him - it didn't go as planned. Now he's trying a more subtle approach.

Option Two: A Ghastly Dilemma. Hoskins' unseen confederate is a Ghoul. In fact, it's Begbie himself, who was tempted to human flesh through his researches into De Wit. Ever since, Begbie has tried to continue his researches, hoping to find a cure for his condition - or at least, some way to mitigate his unending hunger.

Option Three: De Wit Returns The collector, Hoskins, is in fact a Crawling One: De Wit himself, who came back from beyond long ago and recovered his possessions in Begbie's estate sale. However, even Crawling Ones can fall to peculiar malaise, and De Wit is discovering that immortality comes at a price. He needs to relocate to the Dreamlands but he's unwilling to do that without taking his collection with him. He needs someone to help him move house from one realm of reality to another. Enter the Hounds.

Hidden Secrets

The Hounds are contacted by a fellow living in Preston who says he has some of Begbie's work. 

Begbie was, among other things, an enthusiastic temperance advocate and was a member of the Preston Temperance Society. A leading light of the Society, Sidney Livsey, used to give Begbie a place to stay when he was in Preston delivering lectures, performing plays or otherwise in town for periods of a month or more. It's thanks to this association that Livsey ended up with some of Begbie's papers.

Now Livsey's grandson, Charles, wants to dispose of the lot.  However, there's a time constraint. If the Hounds don't make the pickup within two weeks, the whole lot goes off to the papermill to be reconstituted.

Option One: Dusty Books Charles Livsey didn't write to the Hounds. The books and papers did, or rather, the Dust Thing associated with those papers did. The papers know that Charles is going to pack them off to the paper mill, which will destroy the Dust Thing. They have only a limited time before that happens, and they need a savior. Enter the Hounds.

Option Two: A Collector of Juntz.When the Hounds arrive in Preston they discover they aren't the only ones after this collection. A very impatient and choleric gent, Jacob D'Aster, is also after the papers and he's offering a ton of cash. Whether or not he can deliver the spondulicks is beside the point: he's making the offer, and Livsey is tempted.

Option Three: Who's Your Father? The vendor isn't Charles Livsey. There's no such person. The vendor is Begbie himself, who's been living an extended (and unhappy) life thanks to his researches into De Wit's ravings. However, Begbie's at his wit's end (no pun intended) and wants to get rid of the lot, every scrap and tittle, in hope that this will end his suffering. Perhaps it will, perhaps it won't, but in one respect Begbie isn't wrong. There's something very horrible hiding in those pamphlets, and now it's the Hounds' problem.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

The Secret Triumverate (NBA: Dracula Dossier)

Here, the PCs are brought together by a mysterious scholar or spymaster who has a copy of the Dossier. For some reason, the spymaster can’t go into the field himself (he’s too old/too frail/has to avoid cameras because of facial recognition programs – the government’s searching for him/has to maintain his public persona), so he gives the player characters assignments to carry out based on annotations in Dracula Unredacted.

“Go here,” he says, “and find out everything you can about Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers”

Dracula Dossier Cuttings and Additions, p41.

Let’s play with this idea and put together a Secret Triumvirate.

ANTONY.: These many then shall die; their names are prick’d.

OCTAVIUS.: Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?

LEPIDUS.: I do consent,—

OCTAVIUS.: Prick him down, Antony.

LEPIDUS.: Upon condition Publius shall not live,

Who is your sister’s son, Mark Antony.

ANTONY.: He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.

Let us suppose a conspiracy within Edom, assisted by China’s Room 452, represented in this drama by the Chinese Agent (p110 DD).

Antony, a senior agent within Edom, (Hopkins? perhaps) wants promotion. Antony's deep in the counsels of one of the Princes (it doesn't matter which, for the sake of this narrative) and expected advancement as soon as one of the Prince slots became available. Antony's been told that's not going to happen.

Antony turns to the Chinese Agent to help him shake up Edom, in the course of which Edom will lose a Prince or two (so sad) and enable ambitious juniors to get what they deserve. Lepidus, the Archivist, is brought in because Lepidus has the Dossier in his possession. Antony needs that as bait for Octavian; Octavian won't make a move unless there's sufficient reward on the table.

What the Antony of this piece does not know is that China's Octavian has, on his payroll, the Assassin. The intent being to clear the road of both Anthony and Lepidus as soon as the two have outlived their usefulness and provided that all-important Dossier.

Why do this?

Well, it’s fun. Which should always be the first point.

Second, if you’re going to have a Mysterious Scholar or secret spymaster of some kind handing out the missions it’s helpful if you have a defined endpoint in mind. After all, this game is meant to be about the player characters. If you have a Mysterious Scholar pulling the strings with no defined endpoint in mind, then there’s a risk that the narrative becomes about the Scholar and not the agents.

In this case the defined endpoint is the dissolution of the Triumvirate, quite possibly courtesy of an Assassin’s bullet. Because Octavian suffers no fools and has his own agenda.

Third, if there’s more than one figure in the mix then that gives the agents a mystery to unravel. Unravelling mysteries is what this game is all about. In this case the mystery is ‘who’s really pulling the strings here? Octavian, Anthony, Lepidus? Are we doing this for King and Country, or is there another player on the board?’

This works for Edom characters in the obvious way: Antony, the new Edom mole, brings them in to help him chase up Dossier leads. He's doing this because he has to prove provenance to Octavian's satisfaction. If he does this, Octavian helps him shake up Edom thus providing the impetus needed to push Antony to great heights within Edom. 

If non-Edom, then the characters are brought in by Octavian. The Chinese Agent needs a useful bunch of go-betweens to help him bring the Dossier out of storage and into the light. That's not going to happen unless Antony gets what he wants. So the Agents are brought in by China to do Antony's bidding, rushing about the place looking for clues sourced from the Dossier. Once Antony's happy, Lepidus brings the Dossier out of storage at which point Octavian snatches it. Octavian has no reason to care what happens to the Agents after that, leaving them in the traditional Burned status that all good games start in.

Essentially the Triumvirate acts as a Conspyramid in miniature. Its narrative purpose is to give the agents a small conspiracy to deal with, in preparation for the larger conspiracies to come. With the added bonus that this particular conspiracy puts them in direct contact with the all-important Dracula Dossier, which is the big McGuffin of the piece.

Think of this as the first act of the campaign.

When I discussed the first act a long, long time ago, for Bookhounds, I said:

The whole point of the first act, in any campaign, is to establish mood and setting … They don't even have to encounter the Mythos, or anything supernatural, in the opening act, so long as the opening act is true to the overall mood … What you as Keeper ought to be doing is getting the players to concentrate on the things that matter (at least in the short term): the setting and the starting location.

The same thing applies here.

When it comes right down to tacks, Night’s Black Agents is about spy stuff with vampires, and Dracula Dossier is about spy stuff with vampires and added Dracula hot sauce. In Bookhounds, you had the shop to concentrate on in the opening act. In NBA, you have the spy stuff.

You can add the hot sauce later. In Act Two. 

By all means hint at the hot sauce in Act One, have some mithering Renfields or old Conspiracy hotbeds like Whitby or Hillingham show up. But let these serve as hints of what’s to come, once the agents get their feet wet.

The big advantage is a wider canvas. Bookhounds is ultimately a one-city setting, but in NBA you can send the agents literally anywhere. Probably anywhere in Europe, bearing in mind the Dracula Dossier, but still, this week France, next week Romania, week after that, who knows? 

Don't feel limited. Klopstock and Bayreuth, Bankers, is a worldwide enterprise, after all. Maybe this week it’s the Board of Directors meeting in Dubai? Or a clandestine rendezvous with that activist investor in Montana?

The point to concentrate on is the spy stuff. The surveillance, the suborning, the gathering of intelligence, the car chases and showdowns. This does two important things: it keeps the agents on their toes, and it introduces them to the mechanics and tropes of the world they inhabit. Is it Dust? Mirror? Something else? What’s its history, its forward momentum? These are things the players will need to understand in order to portray their characters.

All of which is driven by the Mysterious Scholar who starts off as an unknown quantity and is revealed to be an Edom insider, perhaps mere moments before bullet meets grey matter.

At which point the Triumvirate dissolves, Octavian makes his getaway (or tries to), Lepidus is dead or in the wind, and that precious artifact, the Dossier, is in play.

Add hot sauce. In large quantities. It’s time to start Act Two.

Enjoy!

Playing With Real Toys: Battleship Kate (Bookhounds)

 

Sourced from MFA Boston

Battleship Kate is a piece of American modern art - an accidental piece. 

Physically, she's a paper-mâché knock-off of a more famous work, Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. 

Knock-offs of this type would have been very, very common in the later 1800s and early 1900s. They would have appeared pretty much anywhere, for any purpose. In this case she was intended as a storefront display, one of many, many thousands made at about the same time.

This particular one fell into the hands of August “Cap” Coleman, the most celebrated tattoo artist in U.S. history. He used it as a practice dummy and later an advertising piece, showing off his work in miniature and displaying it in his store front. 

The great thing about a piece like this is that, while Coleman's is unique, the many, many 'Greek Slaves' out there means that there must be hundreds of statues like this still in existence even now, some of which would have been used as Coleman did his Battleship. Not to the same level of success, mind, or the same level of artistry. 

But there would have been some tattoo artists who followed Coleman's example. 

They might have gone almost anywhere. 

London, let's say.  

The Tattoo

An American tattoo artist is dead.

Sam 'Pacific' Quatrell's body was found in his East End shop three days ago. The door was smashed and the place ransacked but, given the way he kept it, you'd be hard pressed to work out whether anything was stolen. The one thing everyone can agree is definitely gone is his model, the paper mâché doll he used as an example piece. 

Now there's a host of less than reputable cultist types who are very interested in finding his book of tattoos. It's said that some of his work has magickal qualities, and the buyers are keen to carry on his tradition. 

Robin Lea, who the Hounds may know well, is especially keen to track it down. He says it's to make sure nobody with evil intent gets hold of it. Whether Robin has any skill whatsoever in artistry, never mind tattooing, is an open question. Still, for once in a way Robin has money. Actual cash. In gold, not notes. 

Perhaps it will be worth the Hounds' while to find this tattoo book - or the paper mâché doll Pacific was so fond of. But who killed him, and where is the stuff now?

Option One: Cock Robin. For once in a way, Robin Lea is to blame. Not entirely by choice, but his typical accidental flailings brought about Pacific's death. However, it also brought to life Pacific's paper mâché doll, and it's the doll who stole the tattoo book. Now the doll is looking for a new home, a new master, but once it gets those things it wants revenge on Robin Lea for causing all this fuss. Whoever it picks as master will be given a task to prove their worth: kill Robin Lea, and anyone helping him.

Option Two: Atlantis Resurgent. Pacific was a member of the Hseih-Tzu Fan, led by Atlantean sorceror Kathulos. Like so many, Pacific angered his cult masters, and met the fate reserved for all traitors. However, before his untimely passing Pacific hid his secrets in his tattoo book and used his paper mâché doll-servant to hide the book. Now the Fan want it, and Robin Lea wants to keep it out of their hands. Meanwhile the doll is looking for a place to hide, and the Hounds' shop might be the very spot. So many shadowy little corners to hide in; what more could a heavily tattooed near-nude ask for?

Option Three: Malevolent Thing. The paper mâché doll is actually a Jenglot (Dracula Dossier), a vampiric entity that, until recently, was living off of Pacific. He picked the thing up in his travels and it's been dominating him ever since, supping his blood as the need arises. However, Pacific got a little too independent for its tastes and so the sailor had to go. Now this busybody Lea fellow might be a reasonable replacement, but if Lea proves to be unsuitable there are these Hound people ... perhaps one of them would like a touch of Magickal power in exchange for a little blood, now and again ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

The Bookseller of Crémieu (Night's Black Agents)

I had something else in mind this week, but I've been sick as a dog (woof woof) so ... 

Recently I had an article posted in Pelgrane's Page XX, Nosferatu. The medieval village of Crémieu features as a backdrop; let's play with that idea a little.

Crémieu is tiny, perhaps a few thousand souls, with a long and somewhat glorious history. Its heyday was long, long ago; it played host to a royal castle, monasteries and nunneries, a coin mint, and was an important trade hub. In more recent times its glory faded, but it still appeals to tourists, artists and lovers of history. 

In Nosferatu, Crémieu is the closest township to the tech startup Nosferatu, which makes a specialist kind of security system that apparently is designed with vampires in mind.

Pelgrane's Resource Guide gives several new creature types, among them the Fetch:

Fetches are the embodied ghosts of those killed by vampires. When a vampire drains and murders a living human, it can trap the victim’s consciousness in the dead body. The result is a fetch. Fetches look much like they did in life, only greyer and somehow diminished ... 

From all that:

The Bookseller of Crémieu

When Nosferatu first relocated to France, it attracted attention both international and local. 

One of those in Crémieu who paid it more than a little mind was the bookseller Adolphe Monteux. His shop La Librarie Antique on the Rue Saint-Jean is a decayed little fixture of the town, established by Adolphe's father soon after the War. It has a reasonable reputation as an antiquarian bookshop but has struggled in recent years, and anyone who looks at it can see why. The place is shabby, its collections disorganized, and the place stinks of damp. 

Adolphe is a local character. A perennial candidate for local offices who never once wins a race, a blogger on local history, a scandal-monger who manages to sniff out some of his neighbor's most guarded secrets, and a lover of conspiracy theories. Particularly if those theories involve aliens, alien technology, or alien infiltration of the government. He's the kind of local irritant who never quite hits what he aims at, but who throws enough shots to occasionally be embarrassing.

He has self-published a few pamphlets on local topics, ghost stories, witches and the like. He's also contributed to the Association for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Isle Crémieu (E.P.I.C), though his contributions to EPIC aren't always warmly received. Adolphe tends to let his passions guide him which doesn't always sit well with EPIC's editors. 

What happens to Adolphe depends on whether Nosferatu is Innocent, an Asset or a Minion.

If Innocent: Adolphe attempted to dig up some dirt on Nosferatu's partnership. He concentrated on Sue Choi; he'd heard about her peculiar experiences in San Francisco and speculated that she was being puppeted by alien masters. While none of this is true it did attract the attention of a French Conspiracy node. The node was curious about Nosferatu's intentions and background, and while it didn't see Nosferatu as a threat it did want to keep an eye on Nosferatu just in case its status changed. Adolphe became a Fetch soon after, installed to keep an eye on the tech startup. Sue Choi is aware of Adolphe's actions but not of his current status; to her, Adolphe is an annoying little man who tried to poke around in her private life.

If Asset:  Adolphe is being run by the other side. Before the War, Crémieu was host to a Conspiracy Node that, as luck would have it, was wiped out by the Germans who mistook it for a Communist resistance cell. Adolphe is the sole survivor of that Node; he's had to remake his identity as his own son to keep the pretense up. He was re-absorbed into the Conspiracy in the 1960s, but the Conspiracy hadn't much use for him until recently. The relocation of Nosferatu was a lucky break for this creaky antique; now the Conspiracy expects him to keep close tabs on the tech startup. His spy skills are dusty, rusty, and antique. However, his money spends as well as anyone else's, and he's been able to bribe a few Nosferatu workers who supply him with intel. He knows what Vermillion workers are and his superiors are becoming interested. Whether they become interested enough to send a strike team is, as yet, an undecided question.

If Minion: Adolphe has been a Fetch since the 1890s. Up until that point he was an investigative journalist in Paris, but his researches earned him a little too much attention. The vampire who created him kept him around for a while but forgot to keep an eye on Adolphe. The former journalist scarpered and made a home for himself in Crémieu, where he hoped to fade into the background forever and ever. After all, so long as his creator lived, so would he. Neither Adolphe nor his creator anticipated Nosferatu. As luck would have it, Adolphe's creator is one of those vampires sent to Nosferatu on punishment detail, expected to eventually succumb to one of the tech startup's test programs. This poses an impossible dilemma for Adolphe. After all, if the vampire dies, so does he. The former journalist turned bookseller has to decide whether he wants to risk it all to rescue his creator, knowing that if he's successful he'll be returning to a life of bondage. Or whether he wants to tip the scales and make sure the vampire dies, ensuring his own death in the process. What luck some Agents have arrived to complicate the situation; Adolphe may be able to manipulate them to his advantage.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.