Constant but Unhappy (Bookhounds of London)

The Constant but Unhappy Lovers, chapbook, published Ludgate 1707, by E.B. Bumped, woodcut (extra-illustrated), crozier chariot device. No reserve price.

The chapbook tells the story of two lovers, prevented from marrying by her obdurate father, Mr Butler. Broken-hearted, the gentleman, Henry Perpoint, signs up for a soldier and is shot while on duty in Spain. He survives for several days, and writes a letter to her in his own blood, which he sends with a lock of her hair, kept as a memento, and the ashes of his heart. Butler, meanwhile, marries his daughter to a Mr Harvey, a rich but jealous man. When the packet arrives Harvey intercepts it, and sprinkles the ashes in her tea. When he tells her what he has done, she bursts into tears, proclaims that the tea is "a draught so precious that no meat or drink shall ever come upon it." She retires to her room, cuts her finger for ink, and writes a poem in her own blood. She is found dead the next morning.

The author claims to be telling a true story of events that took place the same year the chapbook was published. In fact the subject dates at least to the Medieval period, and probably further, though the details have been updated to the 1700s.

Keeper's note: bumped means the cover is damaged, through careless shelving. Woodcut (extra-illustrated) means that the chapbook contains a woodcut illustration that was not in the original, and is probably an addition by one of the book's owners. Crozier chariot device means the book has a mark by its publisher, a crozier and chariot, most likely a reference to St Erkenwald of London, whose symbol is a chariot and who served as Bishop of St Paul's. This most likely means the publisher's shop was in or near St Paul's. No reserve price means the auctioneer will accept any bid, which is unsurprising for an otherwise unremarkable 18th century chapbook. All of this can be a 0 point clue for Book Scouts, Booksellers and Catalogue Agents, or anyone with a Bibliography pool.

This item is one of a longish list of interesting but not spectacular items, come out of a house sale. The Bookhounds probably attended to see if they can scarf up some material for the group's Forger, or purchase something cheap but interesting for the shop.

However things become heated when the bids for this item surpass all expectations, and a bidding war develops between two people unknown to the characters, or the resident Ring. One, a foreign gentleman with a German accent, (Eugen Grosche, grandmaster of the Berlin magical order Fraternitas Saturni), is bidding remarkable sums, but is being outbid by a shabby woman in tweeds with a Home County accent.  She is Lillian Lewis, an Oxford academic and one of the steamboat ladies who got their degrees via the University of Dublin, at a time when Oxford didn't grant academic qualifications to women. This information can be had by 1 point spends of Occult, Credit Rating or History (Lewis is a renowned historian). Otherwise all the characters know is that one is clearly German, while the other is a redoubtable lady.

The characters can engage in the bidding war if they wish. Grosche has Auction 8 (he has the resources of his own bookstore to draw on) while Lewis has 10. However the bidding is brought to an unexpected end when, at the conclusion, Lewis drops dead of an apparent heart attack.

It later transpires - and the investigators can learn this immediately with Medicine, Forensics or Evidence Collection spends, otherwise they must wait for the official inquiry, which will take days - that Lewis was poisoned. Whoever did it must have injected Lewis with a fatal dose as she was bidding, so they must have been standing close to her. It would take a cool head and steady hand to do that, given the circumstances.

So, what happened to Lillian Lewis, why, and what does this all have to do with an otherwise unremarkable 18th century chapbook?

Facts to be uncovered by the investigators: The chapbook supposedly was once the property of occultist and artist Pamela Coleman Smith, co-creator of the Waite-Smith Tarot deck, though she denies all knowledge of the chapbook. Grosche believes it was hers, and also that the woodcut (extra-illustrated) is her work. That's why he wants it; he thought it an interesting early example of her art, and wonders if the woodcut is a precursor to her Tarot designs. He doesn't know that she denies it. Lewis, so far as anyone knows, had no interest in the occult or Pamela Smith, nor did she have anything like the financial resources to back up her frenzied bidding. Other Bookhounds and occultists believe the chapbook and its famous woodcut really is Pamela Smith's work, and claim she indulged in a bit of forgery to earn some extra cash back in the 1920s, when she was living in bohemian London. The woodcut shows a grieving woman writing a poem, and is similar in composition to the second trump of Major Arcana in the Waite-Smith deck, the High Priestess. Though intended to look as if it is an 18th century original, the woodcut is a modern addition, as 1 point Forgery or Art can realize. The poison that killed Lewis is a derivative of Gelsemium elegans, sometimes called heartbreak grass, a flowering shrub native to India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and China. It is popular among suicides, hence the name, and causes seizures, convulsions, paralysis and death.

Possible Conclusions:

• The killer is a high-ranking member of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan. The chapbook is part of a book code, and the woodcut is a sign to those who understand it that this particular chapbook is part of a two-book cypher set. It ought never to have come to auction; an enemy of the Hsieh-Tzu Fan stole it, and it was sold by his landlord to cover his debts when he turned up mysteriously dead in a back alley. The dead man was Lewis' brother, and she found out about his death too late to prevent the sale. That's why she bid so frenziedly; she knows, through her brother, that something important is hidden inside the chapbook, and is determined to uncover the identity of her brother's killer. Grosche is a red herring, in this version.
• The killer is one of Grosche's Berlin rivals, a potential successor to his position in the Order of Saturn. This Mythos-inspired madman wants to turn the Order to Mythos worship, but Grosche bars his way. The killer spread the word about the auction, knowing Grosche would hear about it. He also sent notice to Lewis, who he knew was a secret occultist who had clashed with Grosche before, in academic battles over literary scholarship  The killer knew that the two would bid furiously, to spite the other. He killed Lewis with an obscure poison, intends to plant evidence that implicates Grosche, and alert the authorities. With any luck Grosche will hang, and the killer will take over the Order.
• The killer is Lewis herself. She met Grosche in Berlin in the 1920s, and became besotted - but Grosche did not return her affection. She threw herself into her work, but a brush with the Mythos fractured her mind, and she began to obsess about Grosche. He, she felt, was the anchor she needed, to bring her back to reality - but he stubbornly refused to accept that. So she manufactured the chapbook, made sure Grosche knew about it, and set up the whole incident at the auction. She used a Mythos variant of heartbreak grass, as grown by the Tcho-Tcho, which only incapacitates, not kills. She bribed the coroner and the funeral parlor with the last of her life savings, to keep them quiet, and then arranged her own funeral. Surely, she thinks, when Grosche attends the funeral ceremony, weeping over lost love and missed chances, he'll fall on his knees in gratitude when she reveals, from the coffin, that she's not dead after all? However if he doesn't show - as is quite likely - then the tantrum this Mythos-knowledgeable scholar falls into is likely to destroy the church, and kill several dozen innocent bystanders.   

Enjoy!

Forgotten London: Rat Queen (GUMSHOE, Bookhounds of London, Night's Black Agents)

From Westwood & Simpsons' The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England's Legends:

The tradition concerns a mysterious, luck-bringing Queen Rat. This was a supernatural creature whose true appearance was that of a rat; she would follow the toshers [sewer workers] about invisibly, as they worked, and when she saw one that she fancied she would turn into a sexy-looking woman and accost him. If he gave her a night to remember she would give him good luck in his work; he would be sure to find plenty of money and valuables [among the garbage that ends up in the sewer] He would not necessarily guess who she was, for though the Queen Rat did have certain peculiarities in her human form (her eyes reflected light like an animal's, and she had claws on her toes), he probably would not notice them while making love in some dark corner. But if he did suspect, and talked about her, his luck would change at once; he might well drown, or meet with some horrible accident.

In Bookhounds, the Flusher (Contacts in the East End) is the theme-specific descendant of the tosher. Flushers know what's been found in the sewers, and who's been lost there, and they know the tangled labyrinth of tunnels beneath all London. The flushers will not talk to those they know despise them … although their sergeant, the Ganger, might unbend for a good reason. Especially if they've seen something Down There that you can show you know something about.

As with most things to do with the Victorian poor, Henry Mayhew is the most useful source.

Were it not a notorious fact, it might perhaps be thought impossible, that men could be found who, for the chance of obtaining a living of some sort or other, would, day after day, and year after year, continue to travel through these underground tunnels for the offscouring of the city; but such is the case even at the present moment … Many wonderous tales are still told among the people of men having lost their way in the sewers, and of having wandered among the filthy passages - their lights extinguished by the noisome vapours - till, faint and overpowered, they dropped down and died on the spot. Other stories are told of sewer-hunters beset by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things overpowered them, and in a few days afterwards their skeletons were discovered picked clean to the bones …

They carry a bag on their back, and in their hand a pole seven or eight feet long, on one end of which there is a large iron hoe. The uses of this instrument are various; with it they try the ground wherever it appears unsafe … Should they, as often happens, even to the most experienced, sink in some quagmire, they immediately throw out their long pole armed with the hoe, which is always held uppermost for this purpose, and with it seizing hold of any object within their reach … without the pole, however, their danger would be greater, for the more they struggled to extricate themselves from such places, the deeper they would sink … in addition to the long hoe already described [they equip themselves] with a canvas apron, which they tie around them, and a dark lantern similar to a policeman's [with a lens that could be restricted] this they strap round them on their right breast, in such a manner that on removing the shade, the bull's-eye throws the light straight forward when they are in an erect position, and enables them to see everything in advance of them for some distance; but when they stoop, it throws the light directly under them, so that they can then see any object at their feet.

Rat Queen

Athletics 9, Health 5, Scuffling 10

Hit Threshold: 6 (small and nimble) or 4 (human form)

Alertness Modifier: +1

Stealth Modifier +3 (rat form) or 1 (human)

Weapon: -2 (bite, rat form), -1 (bite, human form), claws +0 (human form)

Special: a bite from a Rat Queen does not heal. In game terms, the Health damage heals but the wound still seems recent and will not scar or scab over. This is because the Queen uses these bites to mark her prey, either so she can give her victim good luck, or so she can track the ones she hates. Any bitten victim can be tracked unerringly by the Queen, and her Alertness and Stealth modifiers increase by 2 against those victims.

Armor: none. However a Rat Queen killed, or buried, in London's sewers or the river Thames will re-form one month to the day after being killed. To ensure she doesn't come back, it's best to bury a Rat Queen far from London, or at least to burn the remains and scatter them to the winds.

Stability: +1 in rat form, none in human form unless the person seeing her knows what she really is, in which case loss is +1.

Magic: 8, refreshed each day at sunset.

Spells: Rat Queens are often friendly with ghouls, and many know how to Call/Dismiss Mordiggian. Rat Queens of this type can also summon ghouls, on a 4-point spend per ghoul summoned.

Create Hypertime Gate is also a common Queen trick. All of them know Dominate, and are very familiar with Idiosyncratic Magic. This last is why so many would-be sorcerers seek them out, often at their peril.

A 2 point Magic spend summons one Rat Thing, or a 20-strong rat swarm. Up to 6 points can be spent this way in one scene.

While in the sewers, a Rat Queen can summon dead toshers from the muck where their forgotten bones sank. Treat as zombies for combat purposes, and for each 1 Magic point spent the Queen gets a tosher. They all have weapons, their hoes, which strike for +1.

Rat Queens know where all kinds of peculiar things are hidden, lost, or abandoned. Seekers after treasure, or just a back way in to some well-guarded sanctum, can bargain with the Queen, but her price is usually very high indeed.

Some Bookhounds claim a Rat Queen can, if she wishes, give their store good luck. A Windfall can be had, if the Bookhounds meet her terms. Of course, her enmity works the other way, and any Bookhound store on the Queen's bad side suffers a Reverse. This is why some nervous Bookhounds frequent East End and riverside pubs; they hope to catch the Queen's roving eye.

Killing and properly disposing of the body of a Rat Queen dispels all of her magical effects, for good or ill. So Windfalls vanish, as well as Reverses. However if it ever becomes known who did it, other Rat Queens, Rat Things and ghoulish allies will take vengeance against the killers.

While Rat Queens don't lead cults, they have many friends in the East End and sewer Flushers, and can call on these friends for any aid short of actual combat. Many of these friends have been the Queen's lover in the past, and bear her bite mark; a useful identification aid for Bookhounds trying to work out who to trust.

Night's Black Agents Variation: though Rat Queens can still be found in the East End, and particularly Docklands, the area has transformed since Mayhew's day, and so have the Queens. Now they can often be found in gastropubs, or the latest two-or-three star restaurant, or some banker's multimillion pound den overlooking the shining City and the Thames. They move among the elite, and have become power players in their own right. Their ability to confer Luck makes them very popular creatures, and they trade on this, changing lovers every other week or so. Rats ride high, in this new London. In a Dracula Dossier game, Dracula long ago learned about the Rat Queens, but whether they became his Minions or remain a neutral supernatural power is an open question. If they did not become minions, they surely resent this foreign parvenu and can be persuaded to become temporary, fickle allies, with the right inducement. If they did, a Queen will be in charge of a London-based Node, perhaps a Satanic temple; they accept nothing less than dominance inside their territory, but aren't interested in anything outside London. In a NBA game without Cthulhu or related magic, assign two free and one other Renfield power to a Queen, and Aberrance 10.

Enjoy!

Espionage FUBAR (GUMSHOE, Night's Black Agents).

This week's post is inspired by recent events in Florida, at the President's member's club Mar-a-Lago.

You've almost certainly seen the reports by now, but a brief recap: a Chinese national was caught by Secret Service agents on Sat 30th March, as she attempted to infiltrate the club with two passports, four cell phones, malware on a data stick, and a laptop with an external hard drive. It's not clear why she was there. The theory being passed around in the papers is that she wanted to infiltrate an event organized by a "spa owner" (alleged whorehouse madam and human trafficker) which was to take place that evening.

It seems remarkably amateurish, especially for China. Given that Mar-a-Lago probably isn't the most secure installation in the world, I'd have thought it'd be much, much easier to suborn a senior staff member at the resort, and keep them on permanent payroll for moments like this. Or even get one of China's people hired as full-time staff. Heck, if all you want to do is put malware on the system, given that Mar-a-Lago's cyber security is probably even shakier than its front door policy, sneaking malware in via someone's Facebook page seems the better bet. Frankly, it sounds more like something North Korea would indulge in, given its penchant for wacky schemes and ambitious hacking.

Gamification coming right up.

Compromised

The Night's Black Agents hear, via Network - so before the media gets it, but only just - that a security breach at a Conspiracy-friendly government locale was foiled by alert security, and that the person responsible was captured, along with a quantity of suspicious items. Director's choice as to what, exactly, was on the agent when they were captured, but suggested kit includes assassination tools (particularly those known to work on vampires), data sticks chock-full of malware, mini cameras and similar surveillance tools. There's enough information for the agents, particularly anyone with Vampirology, to realize that, whoever it was, they knew enough about vampires to take effective countermeasures against them.

The precise location is going to depend on your campaign, but suggested locales are the House of Parliament in London, a high-profile event venue like the British Museum, the Berlaymont Building in Brussels, the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, or the Victoria Palace in Romania.

This raises two red flags for the agents. First: does this mean there's a Node of the Conspiracy operating at that location? Second: who is this luckless infiltrator, and what do they know about the Conspiracy?

To answer that question, the agents are going to have to rescue the infiltrator, or at least take possession of any notes taken from the infiltrator's interrogation. Both will involve sneaking into a National-level installation at the very least, with all the chicanery that implies. However there's a potential big reward on offer, because apart from anything else, whoever sent that infiltrator in will want them back. That means the agents could earn themselves Excessive Funds, or at least one big, fat, favor from a Vampire program like China's Room 452. The agents will need to move very quickly to pull this off, since it's only a matter of time before the infiltrator is put somewhere even the agents can't break into.

For a Dracula Dossier variant, the agent is from Edom, and might even be a Prince. Pearl is the obvious choice, but Tyler and Elvis are strong contenders. If this happened, then Edom will be very eager to get them back. However it raises a third red flag: was the Prince betrayed by a mole within Edom, or is this an elaborate attempt to defect?

Enjoy!

Hacking Vampire Healthcare (Night's Black Agents)

This week's post is inspired by Verge's article, Health Care's Huge Cybersecurity Problem.

The article's pretty scary. It boils down to this: there are multiple vulnerabilities that can lead to catastrophic breach, hospital cybersecurity is almost nonexistent, and the consequences vary, from bitcoin highwaymen to purpose-built government malware designed to create false diagnoses. Hospital tech is basically a big, expensive black box to the people who rely on it every day, for everything. It can't be replaced easily, it can't be upgraded easily, and to date the focus has been on protecting client personal information, rather than protecting the tech itself. After all, you can be fined for a data security breach. For now, at least, nobody's tried to sue a hospital because its cybersecurity negligence caused permanent health injury - or worse.

How to gamify this?

Consider Night's Black Agents. There are several vampire types - Damned, Supernatural, Alien, Mutant. It's reasonable to presume that Damned and Supernatural types don't interact at all with hospital tech. There's no real biology there - it's all beyond the reach of modern science. However Alien and Mutant types must have some kind of biology, different though it may be. Renfields and other human cut-outs would definitely be affected. Then, of course, there's the Nodes.

With that in mind, some story ideas:

Primary Caregiver: The Beacon Institute is a national, potentially international, Conspiracy Node which poses as a scientific research organization, run by a charity, whose mission is to investigate and cure obscure blood disorders. It keeps a hack team on the books, whose purpose is to spread malware throughout all the hospitals in the country. That malware 'identifies' obscure blood disorders, feeding false diagnoses to selected patients. Those patients can only be treated with drugs issued by a Beacon cutout, but the drugs make the patient seem as if they have symptoms. Patients suffering from these symptoms eventually come knocking on Beacon's door - at which point they vanish. All this is done to secure blood donors for the Conspyramid, either as some sort of long-term scheme involving blood type McGuffins, or for some other reason. Perhaps particular blood types are tastier, or perhaps the vampires have a pressing need for blood in large quantities on demand. Perhaps the vampires use this to lure important targets into the Node's clutches, where they can be Renfielded.

Enemy Of My Enemy: Rogue vampire-hunters have seeded hospitals throughout the country with malware, to identify Renfields, and possibly also vampires, if their biology can be analyzed by human technology. The vampire hunters then track the targets, capture them, interrogate them, and kill them. The problem is, this system throws up a number of false positives, people who have nothing to do with the Conspyracy but whose quirky biology make them seem to have the taint. The agents are alerted when someone close to them turns up dead, apparently the victim of a medical 'accident.' Dracula Dossier Variant: as above, except the system is more sophisticated, and run by Prince. She's using malware developed by friends in Israel to carry out the con. If the agents are Edom, then she's using them to distribute the malware and further investigate the targets after they've been identified by the malware.

Caught in the Middle: Third party hackers based in Ukraine get more than they bargained for, when malware the group uses on hospitals turns up at a Node caregiver facility. The hack group just wanted bitcoin, but it ended up with several GB worth of Conspiracy data and a hit squad. The data's out there on the net, nested in a neutral hospital database. The hack team wanted to sell it to the highest bidder, but now most of them are dead and the rest in hiding. Which hospital has the data? Can the agents get to it before the Conspyracy does? Maybe if the agents can track down the surviving hackers they might get a jump on the vampires, but that means a trip to Luhansk, currently held by the People's Republic.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.

Moving the Mona Lisa (Night's Black Agents, GUMSHOE)

This week's post is based on this article in the Guardian. I highly recommend it.

Night's Black Agents characters frequently have to steal high value items, like artwork. Sometimes we forget how difficult that sort of thing can be. Leaving aside the practicalities of size and weight - a Van Gogh's never going to weigh as much as Michelangelo's David - there's a whole host of issues the agents may not have considered.

Somewhere along a puzzle of corridors inside the V&A [Victoria and Albert Museum, London] is a silent passageway lined by fireproof security doors and guarded by fingerprint-sensitive locks … Shipping museum-grade art is a specialist business; only a handful of top-flight firms, among them the London-based Momart and Constantine, are trusted by major institutions. Even so, most museums also insist the art on loan travels at all times with a courier, ideally a conservator. This is known as 'nail to nail'; one person stays with one work from the moment it is taken down in room 38A of the V&A to the moment it goes on to the wall in a museum in Shanghai … the object will need its own first-class seat [on the plane] … "If you have a lorry with three Matisses stuck in snow in Latvia, that's stressful" … In most European countries, works travel by road with armed guards either in the truck or following in a chase car … Some handlers I interviewed referred to their craft as an art; many, indeed, are artists, working as handlers to pay the bills … 

Some things to take away:

• Art handler sounds like an excellent background or cover identity for almost any agent, but especially one with artistic skills. Bagmen should give it serious consideration. It explains so much - odd itineraries, specialist transportation needs, peculiar cargo … "You can't open that crate. I don't care what you think is inside. My manifest says it's a priceless Titian that could be irreparably damaged if exposed to direct sunlight and this damp atmosphere. I promise you, I shall make a detailed complaint to the Ministry of Culture …"
• If you want to steal art in transit, nobble the courier - or be the courier. 
• Try not to get into a gunfight while standing on or near the crate with the Cezanne in it.
• When trying to steal art, it's a good idea to crack the servers of any of the following: the insurer, the courier firm, the museum (either lender or recipient), any applicable government agency (eg the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), the private donor. Any of these will have the transport information you need, and may be useful in other ways as well. Imagine arranging the theft of an artefact by posing as the V&A Conservator in charge of an exhibit asking for an artwork!
• If you absolutely have to break into a museum, bring along someone who knows what they're doing. Those fingerprint-sensitive locks are going to be trouble.

With all that in mind, I give you The Italian Job.

Hook: The Agents are tasked with recovering a life-size bronze, The Flayed Man, by neoclassic artist Gino Jerich. It's held by the Museo delle Culture in Milan, and is the property of a private donor. The sponsor suggests that the bronze be taken while in transit from Milan to London, where it is scheduled to become part of a retrospective of Jerich's work at the Tate Gallery.

Truth: The sponsor is a vampire hunter, and can even be a government agency, like Dracula Dossier's Edom, working through cut-outs. The reason they want the bronze is because its subject and its current owner are one and the same - a vampire. This bloodsucker thought it would be amusing to have a self-portrait unlike any other, and skinned itself so as to be able to pose appropriately for the artist. The skin grew back, over time, and the statue's owner fell in love with it. The sponsor wants it either because the sponsor thinks it can be used as a weapon, can be used to discover some hidden vampire secret, or to extort the owner into giving up something else the sponsor wants. 

Potential Scenes: Deep in the heart of the converted factory labyrinth that is MUDEC, trying to break past sophisticated electronic locks to get into the secure vaults. Eavesdropping on the security detachment as they eat coffee and donuts in a Milanese café. Chasing after the van and its pursuit car along the highway, as you and they try to navigate the highway hell that is Milan's permanently-under-construction road network. On the ferry across to England, in high seas weather - is this normal, or is some supernatural element involved? Making the exchange in an old corn mill turned guesthouse that failed two years ago when the owner defaulted on bank loans. Or faking a handover at the Tate, bluffing conservators, security, and buttinski art experts. An angry vampire/disappointed buyer chases the agents out of the city, into the countryside, to a final showdown in some desolate backwater.  

Enjoy!

Everybody Dies (GUMSHOE All)

It's rare for an RPG game to end in complete failure. It's almost as rare, in fiction. Blake's Seven infamously finishes a four season run with the entire cast gunned down. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid doesn't show you precisely what happens to Butch and Sundance, but it's made plain by the context of the scene. The Wild Bunch go out in a hail of bullets, and Cross of Iron ends on a similar note - but that's Sam Peckinpah for you.

However there are few Peckinpahs out there. The audience prefers victory, or at least a Pyrrhic Victory, a Maltese Falcon where the hero walks away scarred but victorious. I've discussed fail states before, and suggested that failure should not always equal extreme penalty.

What happens when the campaign ends in a fail state?

Cthulhu-style horror games have a word for that: Purist. In that style of game death is considered the desirable end, because it best encapsulates the kind of horror the game strives for. A final diary entry, a message on a phone machine, perhaps a few scratches on the wall are all that's left of the intrepid soul who went out into the dark to find out what was bringing chaos into this ordinary world.

However if you're not running Purist Cthulhu, you might not want to end the game with a splat. Yet your Night's Black Agents crew might find themselves on the wrong end of the Kalashnikovs, or helpless and unarmed in the vampire's lair. Or your Bookhounds might suffer one reverse too many, and lose the store to the bank. Or your Parisian surrealists may never escape the dream. Whichever your fail state is, that's where you end up.

What then?

The trickiest thing about this kind of failure is, it often comes unexpectedly and quickly. The scene that ought to have been a breeze turns out to be a complete disaster. The mook gets off one lucky shot. The police arrive at the worst possible moment. The absinthe went moldy. Whatever it may be, it happened, and now you have to deal with it.

My advice would be to throw it open to the players. Put the facts plainly, and ask if that's how they want the game to end. They have to say yes or no; there's no maybe on the table.

If no, then as Keeper/Director/what-have-you, it's your job to find a way out. The players can offer suggestions, but you're the one in the chair.

The most likely solutions include:

Cavalry to the Rescue: Some third party arrives in time to pull the characters' fat out of the fire. This doesn't mean they're friendly; they can be rivals, even enemies. They might throw the characters in jail, or interrogate them, or whatever it may be. The important thing is, they don't kill the characters, and the characters probably get to keep some or all of their equipment.

Left 4 Dead: The characters are presumed dead, probably stripped of any valuables and gear, and abandoned. Any McGuffins are either taken, or overlooked by the attackers and can be recovered. Characters with abilities like NBA's Preparedness can have items stashed somewhere safe, so it's not a total loss. Otherwise it's time to crawl off the battlefield and lick wounds.

Morale Failure: The opposition get scared and run away, presumably because something more dangerous is nearby. The ghouls pause in their ghastly buffet, then scatter - because a shoggoth is too close for comfort. The mooks hear police sirens and run for cover. The characters are probably just as threatened by this new development as the opposition are, but at least now they have a chance to run.

Environmental Change: This is the trickiest to pull off, because it depends on specific circumstances. Say the mooks ambush the agents as they fly to some forgotten hellhole on a Douglas DC-3. In their eagerness to overwhelm the agents, the mooks accidentally shoot the pilot and now the plane's about to crash with everyone on board. The mooks bail out with the only parachutes, or panic, leaving the agents to save the day. Or the ghouls, in their eagerness to devour the investigators, don't notice that flood waters are about to sweep the sewers. Those fuel tanks are about to blow. The swarms of rats someone summoned up are now uncontrolled and don't care who they eat.

The point behind all these solutions is, they don't let the characters off the hook. They lose, and that means they suffer consequences. Maybe it's straightforward Health or Sanity/Stability loss, or maybe some gear's gone, or maybe they have to get the McGuffin back. Whatever that loss is, it's the price they pay for rescue. It's important to get player buy-in; if they just give up when the McGuffin goes missing, then it's probably better to let them keep the McGuffin, or at least have a reasonable chance of getting a new one. However once you have that buy-in, let the good times roll.

The players might say Yes, this is how it ends. What then?

Consider Blake's 7. In that climactic scene, two things are achieved. First, everyone dies on-screen, but in such a way that, if necessary, their survival could be justified. Injured, apparently dead, but not actually dead. The only exception to that is Blake himself, and that because the actor playing Blake really didn't want to do it any more and insisted on a death scene that left nothing to chance, so Blake gets shot multiple times.

Second, the most important plot question - whether or not Blake was a traitor - is answered.

Readers, filmgoers and players have this in common: they can live with an unhappy ending, but not an unsatisfactory one. There has to be an answer to the questions raised by the plot. Blake is not a traitor, but Avon kills him anyway because, in that moment, Avon thinks he is. Avon, and the audience, have their answer - and then guns go off.

Say this is a Dracula Dossier game in which the 1970s agents are trying to find out who the Edom mole is. Guns blaze, bodies drop, and in the last few moments before death the mole's identity is revealed. Maybe the agent's mentor leans over their bleeding body and whispers, "it was me." Or maybe they see the mole accepting a pay-off from the leader of the opposition.

Again, this is a situation where the players should have input. If they really want the mole to be X, then let it be X. Give them proof, or allow them to justify their suspicions. If the Dreamhounds want to know their art lives on, allow a final coda in which their paintings hang in the Musée d'Art Moderne, perhaps in the act of being stolen by Vjeran Tomic. Or Nyarlathotep gathers up their souls and whispers ghastly truths, before scattering them into the endless void.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

An Unusual Butcher (Trail of Cthulhu)

… it is held that, if necessary, a zombi can be turned into an animal, slaughtered, and the meat sold in the market, whence drives the assertion often met with among Haitian peasants in documenting belief that they have not only seen zombi but have bought their flesh. This, it is thought, can be distinguished by the fact that such meat will spoil much more readily than ordinary meat. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore.

… the word is American-commercial-synthetic, like Nabisco, Delco, Socony. It stands for the Haitian-American Sugar Company - an immense factory plant, dominated by a huge chimney, with clanging machinery, steam whistles, freight cars. It is like a chunk of Hoboken. William Seabrook, The Magic Island.

Historically, to be a cook, to prepare food for others, was always to identify oneself with the degraded and debauched. Antony Bourdain, Typhoid Mary.

In 1928 Charles Souther, from Skowhegan, Maine, was appointed manager of the Hasco plant in Haiti. It was a new adventure for him. The American occupation was in full swing, and Haiti was under the control of the USMC, but there were still echoes of rebellion up in the hills. Souther, never a courageous man, stuck with his own in Port-a-Prince as much as he could. He was afraid of the Haitians, even the sophisticated men and women who had lived in France, and preferred the company of fellow Americans. He did not expect to stay long in Haiti. Ambition drove him, and this post would be a step up the ladder to success. He hoped, if he did well, to secure a better post Stateside.

One of the problems he encountered was how best to staff his house. His wife was not up to the task, and they suffered for months, especially with food. No cook could satisfy them, and burnt, cold, ruined dinners thoroughly spoilt the Souther's digestions for the first few months of their stay. They tried to bring someone over from Maine, but couldn't find anyone willing to make the trip.

Then they found Antoine Baussan, an answer to a prayer. Classically educated in the Escoffier school, he could also turn out respectable American fare, like corn chowder and baked beans. It was love at first bite.

They ignored warnings from their Haitian neighbors. What did it matter to the Southers that Baussan had a bad reputation? When it came to lobster rolls and brown bread, Charles didn't care if it was prepared by the Devil himself. Moreover he was coming to love some of Baussan's Haitian dishes, particularly a curried stew that he called Chevre de Montagne a la Toussel, or Mountain Goat prepared as Baussan had done for a particularly famous wedding feast. Souther couldn't get enough of it, and his wife was growing fat.

When time came for Souther to move on, he found it impossible to part with Baussan. He arranged for the Haitian to come with him back to Maine, and Baussan was happy to oblige. In fact, he said he was looking forward to it.

Unfortunately Mrs. Souther was struck down by a devastating malady soon after their return. Charles was thrown into depression, relieved only by the devoted attentions of Antoine, who cooked up all his wife's favorite dishes to ease her pain. The doctors could do nothing for her; at least Baussan was trying to help.

When his wife passed, Souther was thrown into a frenzy of despair. He stopped seeing his friends, stopped going to his clubs, gave up work almost completely. After several weeks without word or sign of him, his friends and work colleagues finally descended on his house, alarmed at lack of contact.

Souther was not there. Nobody could say where, or when, he went. His devoted cook Baussan had vanished too. However alarm reached new heights when it was discovered that the family vault had been desecrated, and that Mrs. Souther's body was missing. What was more, it seemed as if the vault had been broken open from the inside.

As it had the hallmarks of a kidnapping case, the Federal authorities were called in. Bureau of Investigation agents began to suspect Baussan's involvement; the man's background was, at best, suspect, and it was thought he might be a Socialist agitator, inspired by European radicals. It was suggested that German Haitians had drawn Baussan into their conspiracies during the War, and that Baussan was on some kind of one-man revenge crusade.

Reports from Haiti that suggested Baussan was a devotee of sinister cults were discounted as fantasy.

Tracking Down Baussan

The investigators can be brought in independently by Souther's family and friends, as experts hired by the Bureau, or some other excuse as the Keeper desires.

The question for the investigators is, where did Baussan go next?

• Historic Maine. Baussan went to the Watch Hill Inn, Rhode Island, beloved of Hollywood stars and well-heeled industrialists. He's become an institution, training several intelligent men and women in his particular style. Moreover he's attained spiritual guru status, and become increasingly attached to Douglas Fairbanks, who relies on Baussan's advice to kick-start his failing film career. There's talk Fairbanks might persuade Baussan to come with him to California.
• High Seas. Baussan is one of the senior chefs aboard the USS Leviathan, formerly Germany's Vaterland, a luxury liner that cruises between New York and Europe, carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers but never making a cent's profit. It couldn't sell alcohol during Prohibition, and by the time it got permission the Great Depression knocked the guts out of the cruise market. More often than not she sails at half capacity, at best. For whatever reason she has great difficulty keeping crew; people just seem to vanish. Sailors are notorious for jumping ship in foreign ports, but this is becoming a serious problem.
• East Coast Hotspots. Baussan goes up and down the East Coast, working for wealthy families and hotels, but never staying long in any one place. Bad luck haunts him. There was that nasty incident in Florida where the son of the house went instantly insane, on getting a peek inside the walk-in freezer. Or that time in New York, where all the family died in a matter of hours, except the youngest daughter, who was bedridden with some kind of intestinal parasite for weeks. Where Baussan goes, trouble follows, and only his habit of continually crossing state lines looking for work has kept him out of the reach of the authorities - so far.  

That's it for this week. Enjoy!