This week's post is inspired by a report from the Guardian about a display currently on show at the V&A in London. Theatre lover Gabrielle Enthoven is getting the recognition she deserves.
Sourced from Wikipedia
Short version: Gabrielle Enthoven fell in love with the theatre at a young age and continued her obsession till the day she died, in 1950. She married but it doesn’t seem to have been a happy arrangement, and after her husband died she never remarried. A child of privilege, she had connections to royalty and spent her life among high society.
She never missed a show.
I don’t know if any of you work in theatre or are theatre fans, but if you are, you know Gabrielle’s type. Someone who’s always there. Seats booked, opening night. Knows the cast on a first name basis. Can’t be kept away from the theatre door. If she breaks her leg then she’s there the next day on crutches – or in her sedan chair, more likely.
Her obsession led her to become a collector’s collector. She wants everything from playbills to scripts to tickets to costume designs. Her home was stuffed full of theatrical ephemera which she did her best to pass on to a museum for curation and safekeeping, a self-appointed task that proved surprisingly difficult. It eventually went to the Victoria and Albert and formed the basis for that institution’s theatrical collection.
In the 1930s she would have been in her early sixties, a fixture of the London theatrical scene. By that point she was working daily at the V&A cataloguing the museum’s collection – her collection - and was paying for three staff to assist her. Anything and everything to do with the theatre, past and present, was meat and drink to her.
From a Bookhounds perspective, she’s a perfect Patron. Assuming the Hounds can attract her attention. Any number of theatre mavens, Bright Young Things and other moths drawn to her flame might come to the Hounds for material. Actors on the rise, or trying to avoid the fall, might seek her help, and therefore the Hounds’ help in finding material she’d deem suitable. In 1933 she becomes Vice President of the Passing Theatres Association, a group dedicated to seeking out ephemera related to old, dead theatres. Which sounds a lot like Plot Hook Central for Hounds and has the added advantage that the Hounds themselves can be members of the Association.
People likely to know her or want to know her: Scribblers (p42 main book), Artists (p48), Bright Young Things (p45), Boffins (p48, particularly if connected to the V&A or a similar institution). Possibly Solicitors of the older generation, particularly if they spent some time in the Colonial Service; her father was Judge Advocate General in the Crimea and India, a renowned legal brain.
Her parties are famous and she's well-travelled, so she's likely to know all sorts of people. She spent some time in New York and knows that city's theatrical establishment well, and her connections to royalty mean she has links with the highest levels of society both here and on the Continent. Once she gets her museum collection, she spends a lot of time cataloging material at the V&A, so if the Hounds want to ambush her at her place of work, they'd best stake out the museum, which she visits every day at 10am on the dot.
All that said:
A Most Exclusive Gathering
Lounger Harvey Walters, fresh off the boat from America, wants in to Gabrielle Enthoven's inner circle. He's desperate to find something to win her favor and to get him into the Passing Theatres Association.
He haunts all the bookstores looking for prizes, and the Hounds can earn a few spondulicks selling him whatever they can scrape up. Walters appears to be minted, but it's always difficult to tell with loungers. Maybe he has it in the bank, maybe he doesn't.
He becomes obsessed with the Corinthian Hall, a rather grand establishment in North Finchley that was built in 1850 and expired in 1910, briefly becoming a picture house before burning in a fire. The original building's been knocked down but there's been arguments over how best to use the site, so nothing's been built there since.
If the Hounds can get him something from the Corinthian Hall that impresses Gabrielle Enthoven enough to let him into one of her exclusive parties, Walters offers the world on a plate. Money is no object.
Option One: Dreaming, Dreaming. There is still a Corinthian Hall in North Finchley. Every night six dreamers will it into existence again, to remind themselves of past glories. If the Hounds can track them down, using Magick or Megapolisomancy, they can enter the dream, find the Hall, and take what they like from it. However, they need to be careful. Nightgaunts circle the Hall, guarding it from intrusion. Should the Hounds attract their attention they may find themselves on an unscheduled flight, high above London.
Option Two: Gabrielle's Dilemma. Gabrielle Enthoven knows Harvey Walters all too well. When she was in New York the fellow was an absolute pest, wittering on about Mythos forces lurking in every shadow while committing every sort of faux pas imaginable at her New York parties. She dispatches agents of her own to make sure that the Hounds fail in their mission. If the Hounds ally with Gabrielle and secretly sabotage Harvey, those Mythos forces he blithers on about may become all too real. There is no wrath like a Mythos stalker scorned.
Option Three: Corinthian Shadows. The ruins of the old Hall are very dangerous to the unwary. Anyone who gets too close finds themselves obsessed with the former Theatre, and eventually sacrifices their lives in an attempt to get close to it. This is because the Hall is home to a kind of psychic vampire that exists by draining life energy; the vampire's physical body was destroyed in the fire, and it's building another out of bits of its victims. Gabrielle Enthoven knows about it which is why she and her friends in the Passing Theatres Association never try to get anything from the Corinthian Hall. They've warned Harvey but he won't listen. Will the Hounds?
I run a small cinema group down here. We watch films on the big screen in the drama society bar. I supply the film every Monday night. October is on its way and I'm putting together the cinema list: Yokai: 100 Monsters, The Haunting, probably Night of the Demon and then I'm a bit torn. I have options. I could go for Kurokeno. I could go for Kwaidan. Both are solid choices.
Then I reminded myself that House exists.
So of course I had to watch it again.
Have you seen it? Once seen, never forgotten. I don't know that I'd recommend it, exactly. You have to have a love of surrealist imagery and a tolerance for nonsense. If you have both those traits, then, by golly and by Gadfrey, this is a film you'll love.
Gorgeous, a headstrong teen, is surprised when her film composer dad comes back home from a shoot with a new bride in tow, replacing her beloved dead mother. Consumed by angst and mommy issues, Gorgeous decides to run off to the countryside for a while to see her aunt, her mother's sister. She gathers up her friends Kung Fu, Professor, Sweet, Fantasy, Melody, and Mac, and brings them all to a nice place in the country. It will be a summer vacation to remember.
For the rest of their lives.
Director and producer Nobuhiko Obayashi would go on to have a long and successful film career, but this was one of his earliest outings and a big risk for Toho Studios. They wanted him to make Jaws, the Japanese version. He wanted ... well ... this. Which was a tough sell. All Toho's usual people refused to direct it, thinking it would end their careers. To be fair, it probably would have. This is the kind of thing that can only be made by someone who truly believes in the material.
Obayashi believed.
This is one of those times when the belief shines through.
The aunt turns out to be a Hidgeous Fiend In Human Form. That's not me spoiling; the movie makes it very clear from the moment she shows up on screen, early in the runtime. She's a vampire, and she's not at all well, since all the young people are dead or moved away and she has nobody to eat. Now here's the niece with her six friends. begging to be devoured. Yum!
Special shout-out to Mac, the one who goes first. Before she does, she turns her head and gives a smiling farewell to her dear friends, not realizing she's about to become vampire chow. But the way that moment happens ensures the Audience (with a capital A) knows what's about to happen.
It's not the last time Mac appears on screen. It's just the last time she's seen alive.
Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite films, and that's not just because it's a classic. It's because you can see, on screen, everyone's enthusiasm for the project. It was made by a bunch of crazy cinema fanatics sleeping in bunkbeds in an old house that was going to be torn down once the shoot ended, so they could do what they wanted to it. Furnished by Goodwill. The car in the opening sequences belonged to the director's mother. Made on a shoestring, crafted with care. That sort of thing.
That's how I feel about House. It's ropey as hell. The special effects are certainly ... special. But it has that quality, the raw enthusiasm bleeding off of every scene. Crafted with care.
There's really nothing else like it.
If I had to drag one fact off the screen and use it in every TTRGP from now until the end of time it would be this: enthusiasm sells. Your game is not perfect. I guarantee you will make mistakes. But you are the best (and often only) salesman for this product. If you go all-in, if you make sure everyone sees how much care you invested, if you show your enthusiasm, you will get players onboard.
Not all players, mind. Not everyone loves House. But you will get players, and you can't game without them.
It is not made of air at all, but of ghost - the substance of quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls blended into one immense translucency ... Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan
Yokai: 100 Monsters, via Shudder
Got to see this courtesy of a box set from Terracotta, which I highly recommend.
Bad people do bad things, upset the local spirits, and the expected results result. So far, so plot, but what makes it work is its use of the traditional storytelling game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai as a plot device, allowing the narrative to be broken up into shorter chunks.
Briefly, the idea is to gather your friends in a shadowy room, at night. Preferably during the Festival of the Dead, for maximum effect. 100 lamps or candles are lit and provide the only light in the room (or rooms - there are different ways of playing the game). As a ghost story reaches its conclusion, a light is snuffed. With each story, the spirits - the yokai - come ever closer to the gathering, and with the last candle gone, they are in the room with the participants.
For that reason, it was common for the last story to remain untold, keeping the last candle lit. Or, as in 100 Monsters, you could have a cleansing ritual after the last tale to achieve the same effect.
You've probably seen versions of this in other films or may have played one of the many games inspired by it - Ten Candles, say.
In 100 Monsters the effect is heightened by a series of special folding partition screens, each with their own image of horror, provided especially for the evening's entertainment by the storyteller. As the light dims, the images begin to seem as if they glow in the dark, or at least move of their own accord. Prints were made of the stories which could, theoretically, be used in similar fashion. Many books were printed to help participants come up with their own stories; Lafcadio Hearn used them in his own Kwaidan, which inspired many a film.
How to Bookhounds this? Or to RPG in general?
The obvious route is to hold a Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai in-game.
Some settings - Swords of the Serpentine, say - have explicit rules for non-physical combat. In Swords, Sway is the technique used where the intent is to damage morale rather than someone's physical form. A Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai could be an extended Sway challenge.
Or, in Night's Black Agents, this could be a means of arranging a Thrilling Stability challenge. Stability isn't usually thought of as an ability pool, and Thrilling challenges are reserved for, say, Gambling, or Driving. But there's an undeniable attraction to gathering all of these badasses in a dark, shadowy place, and getting them to compete for the McGuffin through telling ghost stories. Particularly when there are actual ghosts and monsters in the wings, waiting for their chance to intervene.
Dungeons and Dragons has a whole character class, the Bard, devoted to performances, and any other character class can have a performer background. [I'm aware there's a new PHB due to drop, I haven't seen it yet so can't comment on specifics.] Often in Dungeons and Dragons where there's a bard contest, it's a singing challenge. It would be fun to have a ghost story telling challenge instead, and just like in NBA, there are probably actual ghosts and goblins waiting in the wings. Plus, as DM you could have those folding panels and story books become actual magical items, in-game.
Bookhounds is about buying and selling books. A Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai needs kaidan. It makes sense, in a Bookhounds game, for the end goal to be one of those kaidan.
From that:
An Evening in Chelsea
West of the Park are Kensington (still acceptable to the quality), Notting Hill (which offers what the middle class no doubt consider gracious living), and Chelsea, of which the less said in polite society, the better ...
The late ghost-breaker Thomas Carnacki lived at No. 472 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Saiitii emanations haunt his house; his copy of the Sigsand Manuscript has never been found ... [Bookhounds main text]
Ghostly dinner parties are the new big thing.
It started in a Chelsea place - nobody can say for sure precisely where, probably an artist's squat - and the evening was so spectacular that the vibe caught on. Now everyone wants to do one. The best (the most fashionable) want copies of Kaidan, preferably in the actual Japanese, and there's a sudden rush among booksellers to source these ghostly tales. Even the most battered versions, with stamps proclaiming them property of the ship's library off of some Orient Steam Navigation Company's boat, are worth far more than they should be. Not that the buyers can read Japanese; just pretending you can while holding the book in your hands is good enough for an evening's entertainment.
Larry Gore, one of the biggest names in Chelsea, (sculptor, darling, the one who made those precious primitivist thingummies that were all the rage last summer), is determined to make the biggest splash. His party will be the talk of the year. He's rented 472 Cheyne Walk (well, rent is such a strong word; Larry hates handling anything so mundane as money) for one night only and is out to get the best party favors, including among other things a series of prints made by Tadashi, an artist based in Paris who visits London regularly, to enhance the event, and a special kaidan Gore's heard about. The one used at the first ghost party in Chelsea. With the woodblock pictures. Surely the Hounds will be good enough to find him that book?
Option One: Something In Your Eye. Dust Things are at the bottom of this rabbit hole. They inspired the first Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai in Chelsea, and there was enough energy in that event that they fed well for weeks. Now they want more, more, even more. It was they who gave Gore the idea of holding one of these events at Carnacki's old shop and it was they who inspired him to look for Tadashi (actually a creation of theirs) and the special kaidan. What with all the energy already penned up at 472 Cheyne Walk, and Gore's blundering 'seance', if Gore gets to hold his party Chelsea's in for a very bad night. Potential link to the Long Con.
Option Two: Book Thieves. The kaidan Gore wants belongs to a collector, Quentin Dalgleish, Quentin won't sell but he will trade; if the Hounds can get him into Gore's party, he'll let them have the book for one night only. Gore isn't having it; he and Quentin are on the outs ever since Quentin did [insert ridiculous nonsense here]. Quentin has ulterior motives. He wants to get into 472 Cheyne Walk so he can search the place for the Sigsand Manuscript, and he doesn't care what kind of damage he does - or what he might accidentally summon - along the way.
Option Three: Unimaginable Power. You don't do what Carnacki did in that house all these years and not taint the place. There's Magickal energy leaking out the walls, and the kind of ghost party Gore wants to have is exactly the kind of focused ritual to let it all out. Effectively this is a Create Hypertime Gate (This version of Create Hyperspace Gate creates a gate joining two points in time at a single point in space. It uses the same rules as Create Hyperspace Gate. Once created, the duration between its ends remains constant, both ends moving “forward” in time together) ritual with all the Power necessary to cast it supplied by the house. There are two issues with this casting. First, while one point in time - the party - is fixed, the other is not. It can link to any moment in the House's past or future, including the moment in 1943 when it's obliterated by Nazi bombs. Second, there's a not insignificant risk of encountering Carnacki himself, and his mysterious Sigsand Manuscript. That's what Quentin Dalgleish is hoping; it's why he gatecrashes the party. Gore is an oblivious bystander, but this is the kind of party that puts a man's name on the map forever and ever, amen. So the stranger it gets, the better, as far as he's concerned.
Includes text from the Petit Albert, Grand Grimoire and Key of Solomon, purports to contain healing magic and means of finding hidden treasure.
Any Hound who gets an opportunity to look at this piece immediately notices something odd. The book is said to be rebacked; that means its spine was damaged beyond repair and it had to be completely made new. If so, the repair was remarkable in its fidelity to the original. The embroidered binding, which resembles tiny eyes woven into the design, is without flaw. It is impossible to see the repair at all.
The book is fairly typical for its type. Allegedly the wisdom of St. Cyprian, a pagan, passed down by Sulphury Jonas - clearly a devilish pseudonym - this is the usual mishmash of occult 'wisdom' seen in any of a dozen similar texts. Its claims to fame are the binding and those grangerized mezzotints, depicting occult ceremonies and demon summonings, which lend it flair. It looks more valuable than it ought to be, and is definitely eye-catching.
The Grandes de España Abrantes, if anyone thinks to check, is not the Duke of Abrantes. Pity, as the Dukedom has the blood of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II in its lineage, which would lend the book a certain gravitas. This Grandes is in fact a much more obscure line of nobility.
If anyone really digs, and spends points digging, they discover that the Grandes is one Harry Wicklow, a notorious scam artist whose specialty is obscure foreign nobility. If the Hounds track him down and make him talk, he says he picked the Book of St. Cyprian up at a French auction house, which claimed to have bought it from a Spanish owner. It was rebacked when he bought it, and the embroidered binding was, when he had it, extensively damaged. He doesn't know when it was repaired. He knows he didn't do it, and neither did the French.
Those who skim it pick up two dedicated points towards divination magic and talisman making. Those who study it, and who make a point of cracking the obscure alchemical code in the marginalia, pick up 1 point Mythos.
Students who go that far claim to discover references to hidden treasure somewhere in Abrantes and dream nightly of an obscure tumbledown monastery in Bemposta where this treasure is supposedly buried. The monastery is featured in the mezzotints grangerized into the book. According to the alchemical marginalia there is a means of directly transporting a scholar to the monastery from anywhere in the world; they brew a potion according to the book's direction, drink it, and are flown to the monastery by demons.
Anyone with Mythos who makes a point of investigating this claim realizes that the potion is in fact Create Dream Gate, a one-time-only transportation of the person who consumes the potion to a location in the Dreamlands, actual destination unknown.
If anyone does complete this ritual they are never seen again. However, when this happens the book's condition improves. The embroidered binding is already near-perfect and the rebacking almost impossible to spot. If someone completes the ritual again then the book improves from Good to Very Good condition, increasing its value.
"I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.” Robert W. Chambers
This strange and hideous text appears in many Cthulhu tales but, given that it's a play and therefore a text - or even a collection of texts - it is very likely to turn up in Bookhounds, where book collecting is the whole premise.
What might that look like?
[incidentally Hurricane Ernesto darn near knocked out the internet for the weekend but I kept power, so yay for electricity. I even made a curry. I still have a roof. So, yay for roofs too.]
When I touched on this in Terms Of The Trade, I laid out a potential professional description of this hideous text and I'm going to draw on that description in this post:
Released in Paris without author attribution. Play in three acts, concerning the tragedy of Carcosa, following the arrival of a Masked Stranger.
The [] around [Kistemaeckers] indicates it's attributed to, not that his name is definitely attached. Printed in translation means this is in English translation from another language (French), and First Edition Thus means this is the first English edition. Pinkham is the illustrator's name. Association copy is a term meaning that this particular book is associated with someone of interest, in this case Sir Herbert, a very famous theatrical impresario.
That's the description which will be in the catalogue.
Let's think about what that description means.
It's the first English edition, which means there's a version in a different language out there somewhere. More to the point, it suggests that this English edition isn't that uncommon. Hard to find, perhaps. Limited print run. But it's not like the Necronomicon, or the Book of Iod. There will be copies of this on shelves, particularly in shops that specialize in literature, scripts, or things to do with the theatre. Or in collections kept by those interested in the theatre.
There are several names associated with this title. The illustrator, Pinckham; the stage set designed by Boyle; Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the previous owner. These are what make this particular book interesting to collectors. Other versions may not have the Boyle throwout plate or lack the illustrations by Pinckham. That's what grangerized means; someone added extra content to this book. The term comes from clergyman James Granger, and grangerization was very popular in the later 1800s. It usually refers to extra drawings, prints and other visual materials, so those Pinckhams and that Boyle may not be original to the book.
But Sir Herbert owned this in the later 1800s. Did he grangerize it? Was the impresario planning a stage performance? It would be in keeping; he was fond of adapting foreign plays. If that stage design and those illustrations are there because Sir Herbert was planning a show (that never took place) it would only add to the value of the book if the Hounds could prove that. Or if the Hounds can convincingly forge proof of that ...
The best way to do that would be to track down letters, contracts, bills of sale. That means finding out what happened to Sir Herbert's correspondence, or Pinckham's, or Boyle's. Or at least finding out enough about all three to convincingly fake that correspondence.
A 0-point clue discovers that Sir Herbert was a prolific father as well as an actor and has several illegitimate children. What if one of those, or a fake one of those, were to step forward and tell the world all about this edition, and why Sir Herbert chose not to perform it? Perhaps in a series of articles in literary magazines that the Hounds promote?
All this to say, as Keeper you start with a plain book - something worth X, whatever X may be - but there are ways to make that book more interesting to the buying public, and therefore the Hounds.
Whenever you create anything in-game your first thought ought to be 'how do the players access the fun?' Here, there's something for the Forger to do. Something for the one who likes to talk to do. Something for the one who likes investigating mysteries, and something for the one who likes scams.
Finally, there's room for extra bits. For example:
The Costume Department
After acquiring the Beerbohm King In Yellow, the Hounds discover that, in the run-up to what would eventually be his failed project, Sir Herbert got one of his favorite costume designers, Claudine Bell, to work on designs for his King. The play never got to the stage; Sir Herbert gave up on the project after a bad rehearsal. But if those designs still exist in Ms. Bell's sketch books ... After all, anyone can Grangerize a book. Even the Hounds.
Ms. Bell is no longer among the living; she died of Spanish Flu just after the war. Her nieces, who live in Fulham, are supposed to have all of her work. They're pack rats, seemingly; they've thrown nothing away.
When the Hounds track down the nieces they find the Bell twins living in a rackety old place not far from Putney Bridge. It didn't look too large on the outside, but on the inside ...
Why do the twins call themselves Camilla and Cassilda? Who is this Stranger they await?
Option One: Shared Delusion. The Bell sisters (not quite identical, but very close twins), remember hearing stories about the Beerbohm play from their aunt. These tales made such a deep impression on them that, to this day, they enact scenes from the half-remembered play, some of which exist word-for-word in the text and some of which do not. If the Hounds play along with this mild delusion they'll get access to the sketchbooks.
Option Two: The Stranger. As Option One, but the delusion is more significant. They believe themselves Camilla and Cassilda, awaiting the Stranger. If the Hounds, using the play as a guide, act as the Stranger then they'll get access to the sketchbook and, as a special reward, also get access to the only completed costume: the Stranger's, which sits in pride of place in the attic.
Option Three: We Are All Born Mad. Camilla and Cassilda await the Stranger in their palace and expect the deference due to royalty. The completed costume in the attic has a nasty habit of walking about the house and can be found in various different rooms. Camilla and Cassilda have an exaggerated fear of it and will not willingly stay in any room where the costume is present. According to them the rehearsal is still going on, in this house. Behind this door ...
That's it for this week. More tomes next week! Enjoy!
In Midpoint, I said that you didn't need to know where this scene is taking place. The important thing is that it does take place, so you need to plan for it.
That's not the case this time. You absolutely do need to know where this scene is taking place. You can give yourself more than one option, if the plot demands it, but you need to know all your options. This is the Big Reveal; this, more than anything else in the game, is Rome.
That means you need to be as true to the concept, and Rome, as you possibly can in the End. If this is an Arabesque Bookhounds game, it needs to be as Arabesque as possible. If Rome is Cthugha, you need to emphasize Cthugha as much as possible. Theoretically, if this is the End not just of the scenario but also the campaign, you need to have Rome appear in the final scene. In this example, that could mean burning London to a crisp as the Witch-Cult's schemes finally come to fruition. Or it could mean the characters bearding the remains of the Cult in its den and squashing their plot once and for all.
Which brings me to the first important point: you need at least two Ends. One for if the characters succeed, and one for if they fail. That means you need a clear idea of what success and failure looks like, in context.
OK, so we already know from the Opening that there's a Hound-Lich menacing the population and that the Witch-Cult is after the Religio Medici because it thinks there's information in it that can be used to create one of their Books of Shadow. Failure for the characters means success for the enemy, so in this instance failure means the Hound-Lich gets what it wants and the Cult gets what it wants. Success means either the Lich or the Cult are thwarted - preferably both, but sometimes you just can't have everything.
Given that the Hound-Lich's tomb-lair is in Kingshill, it follows that a good End scene for the Lich would be in that tomb-lair. The Witch-Cult is represented by Alexis Waddell (and opposed by Jane Russell and Wilson Davies-Gore, aka the Baron of Blackheath) so it follows that a good End scene for Waddell would be in his house, or his magical sanctum where he carries out ritual magic. Theoretically the End scene could be in any number of places up to and including London Bridge Tube Station (because few things are more thrilling than a speeding train bearing down on someone) but you want this to be as Rome as possible, and what could be more Rome than a facedown with the main opposition in their place of power?
Look at it this way. Pretend this is Shakespeare, and you're putting on Julius Caesar. In that play, Caesar gets stabbed. That stabbing could happen anywhere up to and including the public lavatory. It's a stage play; you set the stage. But it's more impressive, more impactful, if it happens at the Forum, the legal and spiritual heart of Rome.
Frankly, it didn't matter to Shakespeare whether the real-life Caesar died in that way and in that place; Shakespeare knew good drama when he saw it. The same principles apply to your End scene.
So: you need an End scene in Kingshill graveyard, and an End scene in Waddell's home/magical sanctum. That's what happens if the Hounds win.
What if they lose?
Well, in that case the End scene is in their place of power - the shop. The shop's fortunes were at risk, and now you know the scale of damage done. Note that the End doesn't have to mean character death. Damage, yes, probably both financial and social. But if the enemy has what it wants and has retreated to its corner, there's no need for a big fight scene when a moment of existential angst will do just fine.
Three Ends, this time, not Two.
I mentioned damages. This is the kind of thing you want to specify in advance. It's Cthulhu tradition to have that block of text at the conclusion of the scenario that specifies what everyone gets. Such-and-such Stability reward if such-and-such happens, or a Windfall or Reversal for the shop depending on X, that kind of thing. This can be handled in an Epilogue rather than the End scene, if you like.
Do all three Ends have to happen in different locations?
No. They have to happen in thematically appropriate locations. That thematically appropriate location can be the same place for all, if it fits the narrative.
Take the Many Deaths Of Edward Bigsby. I had a lot of fun with that one. There are quite a few moving parts. Without wishing to spoil, the characters wander through Soho looking for X, and if along the way they happen to complete a number of subobjectives then their odds of survival in the End scene are greatly improved. If, on the other hand, they did not complete those subobjectives, then a Terrible Entity is present in the scene.
Oops.
Point being, the number of subobjectives, the location of those subobjectives, did not affect the goals of the OPFOR. Those remained the same, which meant that the End scene could take place in one location as it fit the narrative demands of those satisfied goals.
However, in Buyer's Remorse you have two very different opposing factions with very different goals. It makes sense for there to be a separate End scene for each.
Finally: this is your Reichenbach Falls moment. It ought to be impressive.
It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a screaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamor. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss. Doyle, The Final Problem
But! Do you have to play out every single moment? Do the players have to see everything?
Not necessarily. Remember, in the Final Problem you, the reader, never see that confrontation between titans on the waterfall's lip. The reader knows it happened because Watson sees the end result and infers the confrontation. But we never see the struggle, or that plunge into the waterfall's depths.
Let's say for the sake of discussion that the Hounds beat the Hound-Lich and there's an exciting climax scene at Kingshill but, for whatever reason, a climax scene with Waddell is inappropriate. Maybe the Hounds don't have enough on Waddell to force a victory, or maybe after the fight with the Hound-Lich they haven't got the stuffing for another armed confrontation.
It would be perfectly appropriate in that case for them to find, when they come to deal with Waddell, that he's no longer there. The place is cleared out. The remains of the ritual circle hint at what he was up to, but the man himself is long gone.
The same applies if they beat Waddell but find they can't deal with the Hound-Lich. The tomb is empty. Perhaps the malign force is still present, costing Stability and perhaps even Sanity depending on what's there, but the Hound-Lich itself is gone.
Or: the Hound-Lich marked one or more characters for death in the Midpoint, and by the endgame those characters haven't thought of a way to deal with it. If the players are willing, it could be interesting to have them narrate the final moments of their lives. That frozen second when they came face-to-face with the abyss. Remember, this is a player-facing game. What better way to have it end, at least for those characters, by having them tell the others how it came to pass?
It could even be a setup for a Reichenbach Falls moment. After all, Holmes did return from the Falls. Perhaps the characters do as well. No doubt irrevocably changed by their experiences, perhaps with hidden scars mental or physical (or both) - but they might return ...
This is a three-part series and in the first part I discussed the Opening Scene: what makes it work, and what you'd need to have on hand to run one.
This time I'm going to discuss the Midpoint. What can the players expect? What should you prepare for?
The Midpoint is usually a Core scene. What that means is, no matter how they get there, the players eventually get there. They may not get there in one piece, or with all their brain cells intact. But they will get there.
What will they find, when they do?
Before I delve deeply into that Mine of Moria, let's take a step back and talk about the opposing forces. The enemy. The villains.
When discussing this before I drew your attention to the villain's trifecta. They have:
Power appropriate to their function.
Goals, which may be personal or professional.
Assets, which they use to reach their Goals.
They are active participants in the narrative, working towards a Goal, deploying assets to achieve those Goals, and using their Power to do that.
This means that, in each previous scene, they will have been making their mark. If their Power involves killing, then people (preferably NPCs) are dead by now. If their Power involves stealing things, then something's been stolen or at least there's been a serious attempt to steal things by now. If their Assets include bribed cops, then those cops have been deployed and probably been encountered in a previous scene.
If we were talking about the monomyth or Campbell's Hero's Journey, this is where the Trial happens. The Initiation.
I'm not going to go that far, but I will say that, by the midpoint, the characters ought to have a clear idea of the Powers and Assets arrayed against them and have some notion of the Goal. That doesn't mean the characters are right. Twist endings exist for a reason.
Robot Chicken
It does mean that the Hounds ought to think they know what's going on, whether or not they actually do.
That's not all they should know. Let's say for the sake of this post that you have some greater conspiracy in mind, some mover and shaker behind the scenes that will be the main big bad in the campaign as a whole. Bookhounds has several options.
Let's say that the Big Bad this time around is a Witch-Cult with connections to an older tradition that venerates Cthugha. They're collecting Books of Shadows - handwritten magical grimoires - and they believe that the annotated Religio Medici was owned by someone who knew of their work (Doctor Hargrove) who was in turn following in the footsteps of his antiquarian ancestor, the one who built the tomb in which the Tomb-Hound now lurks. For that reason, the Witch-Cult wants the Religio Medici.
By the end of the Midpoint the characters ought to have picked up some indications that the Big Bad exists. They may have met some of their minions, or been attacked by them, or found some clue as to their intentions. Perhaps book scout Samuel Penman spilled some tea. Perhaps the cult has sent some agents of their own into the fray.
It might be anything, but the larger point is this: the Big Bad has powers, assets and goals just like all the other OPFOR, and by the end of the Midpoint the players should have some indication as to one of those things. They should have picked up clues that allow them to guess at the powers, assets or goals of the Big Bad. Ideally the goals, since this may motivate the characters in a way that other information wouldn't. If the Hounds know, for instance, that the Cult intends to start another Great Fire of London as part of their scheme then the Hounds may be motivated to prevent it, lest they become charcoal briquettes. Still, the Cult is offering a lot of money ...
Do you need to know where this scene is taking place?
No, not necessarily. You want a degree of flexibility here, because the Hounds may go a completely different way to the one you planned out. You know, because you wrote this thing, that there are several different potential locations mentioned in the script, but the Hounds didn’t read your script. This isn’t a Baldur’s Gate situation where the programmers can specify exactly when and where, say, Raphael appears.
All you know for certain is the when, not the where.
You know the when because you specified the triggers for when this will happen. The vital clue, the event, the whatever-it-may-be.
It’s a basic if-then. If they meet all the conditions, then …
Now, there will be times when you do know the where because the trigger is linked to the where. If the trigger is linked to a particular auction taking place at a particular auction house, then you do need to know about that auction house. However, you could as easily have the trigger be something that isn’t linked to the where. The auction doesn’t have to happen at that particular auction house; it could happen anywhere, and if the players have reasons of their own for it to happen at such-and-such a place, (and points to spend to make that happen), let them. This is a player-facing game. Anything that brings the players into the decision-making process is to be encouraged.
No, the only thing you absolutely have to know is the trigger. That ‘black ash of a Trichinopoly’ moment where suspicion becomes certainty. That’s the moment when the players have all they need to go on to the next beat in the narrative.
The sentence I use in situations like these is a simple reminder: ‘By this point in the narrative the players should have … [whatever it may be].’
What next?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand – or, since this is Bookhounds, a grimoire.
By which I mean:
Keep the specifics of the scene concentrated on action.
Remind the players what’s at stake.
Give them a clear idea of what will happen next if they don’t intervene.
OK, all that said:
Buyer's Remorse - Midpoint
By this point in the narrative the Hounds should either have the copy of Religio Medici or know who has it. They should know that Crowley's former student at the Abbey of Thelema, Jane Russell, wants the Religio Medici but hasn't the money to pay for it, and that book scout Samuel Penman is devoted to Russell. They should also have had an offer for the book from collector Alexis Waddell. They may or may not not know that Waddell represents the Witch Cult. They may or may not have the peculiar amulet found in the Orientalist mausoleum at Kingshill, but if they didn't get it then Penman did.
This scene may take place at the Hounds' shop but can take place anywhere.
Either the Hounds have the amulet or Penman does.
If Penman does, then he has an imperfect idea of what entity is linked to the amulet; he's had some bad experiences that nearly cost him his life, but he doesn't know the true nature of the amulet. He went to Russell for help, but she cast him out, fearful of what was following him. Penman decided to seek out the only other people he knows who might help: the Hounds.
If the Hounds have the amulet, then the following omens will take place before the midpoint scene:
a man is brutally murdered close to the Hounds' shop, at night. It's up to the players/Keeper whether any Hounds were at the shop when this happens. The victim is either Penman or Rough Lad Mickey MacFarlane, whichever is more convenient for plot purposes.
The dead man was casing the shop for a burglary and had burglary tools on them when they were torn apart.
The dead man was violently butchered, as if by a wild animal, but whatever it was didn't eat the dead man's flesh. Why not?
It must have taken seconds; the dead man didn't even have time to cry out, and though there are some minor defensive wounds it's clear the dead man didn't have time to put up more than a token effort before dying.
A witness - a reeling drunkard - says the attacker was 'a giant dog-bat! bat-dog! well, it flew on bat wings!'
All the reflective surfaces in the shop went dark one day and stayed dark for an hour. After the hour passed - right to the second - they cleared again. Occult 1 point: a powerful supernatural entity must have been near. The effect centered on that peculiar amulet.
The scene begins either when Penman approaches the Hounds or after the Hounds experience the omens.
The Hound-Lich manifests and attempts to retrieve its amulet.
The first sign of its approach is that all reflective surfaces within a 5-meter area of the amulet go dark. This happens 2 rounds before the Hound manifests, and a 0-point Mythos or a Difficulty 4 Sense Trouble realizes what's about to happen.
A 1-point Mythos allows the Hound to improvise a magical barrier that is not permanent but will last for long enough for the Hounds to protect themselves during this scene, so long as they don't step outside the magical circle. This is a Magick roll of 10+, and can be boosted through Cooperation, Megapolisomancy, or spending Sanity.on a 1 for 1 basis. Any Sanity spent is gone forever.
The Hound-Lich manifestation is a 5-point Stability for anyone near, and if there is protection up and the main caster goes temporarily insane as a result of this test, then the protection barrier immediately fails. If there is a secondary caster available that caster can try to reestablish the barrier before the Hound attacks; the test is 10+, as before.
Other options include Fleeing with the amulet. Successful Fleeing for 3 rounds after the Hound manifests causes it to demanifest.
If this scene happens at the shop, then there are customers at the shop and unless the Hounds can come up with a play that prevents it, the Hound-Lich will kill at least one customer in the action round it manifests. This prevents it attacking a player character in the opening round but causes a Reversal for the shop, as the surviving customers spread all kinds of lurid rumors, some of which actually resemble the truth - for once.
If the players come up with a different idea play it out, on the understanding that after 3 rounds the Hound-Lich will demanifest if it has not achieved its objective.
Descriptors:
a malevolent cloud of inky blackness that absorbs - devours? - anything it touches
a wolf-pack howling
whispers of arcane knowledge that seem to embed themselves in your flesh, leaving bruises behind that never entirely fade
jaws with a thousand thousand teeth, a shark's grimace
empty, passionless doll's eyes
a hound's lean body, the essence of hunger that can never be sated
an unmarked corpse, its flesh withered but undamaged
If the Hound-Lich gets close enough to the amulet to retrieve it, it will, and will take that amulet back to its tomb in Kingshill. It will also mark one or more of the people present in this scene for future torment. If the Religio Medici is present in the scene it will take that as well, but the amulet is its main objective.
If it does not get the amulet within 3 turns of manifesting it lets out a soul-chilling scream (3 point Stability) and demanifests. On demanifestation it returns to its tomb in Kingshill.
After this moment the following Clues are available:
0 point Occult: this was a powerful demonic attack from the Beyond, and will have left psychic residue behind,
1-point: that residue can be used to trace the entity back to wherever its lair is.
0 point Archaeology: some of the manifestation's characteristics remind you of archetypes seen in ancient artefacts and Eastern mythological accounts.
1-point Archaeology: allows you to create a Contact at the British Museum who knows all about this sort of thing and may have useful advice.
0-point The Knowledge: you've seen signs all over London - architectural fol-de-rols, old gargoyles on churches and similar - very like this entity. How long has it, or its kind, been haunting London?
1-point The Knowledge: you can spend a night and a day tracing these symbols and gain 1 potential point Megapolisomancy - or, if not using Megapolisomancy in the game, then Magick.
0-point Craft: the contours of that peculiar amulet are burned into your brain and cannot be forgotten. Perhaps it was those whispers of arcane knowledge, but for whatever reason you will never be able to forget that amulet as long as you live.
1-point Craft: you can fake a copy of that amulet. Probably not well enough to fool the Hound-Lich, but humans will not be able to tell the difference.
The following Core clues will also become available:
After the manifestation collector Alexis Waddell redoubles his efforts to obtain the Religio Medici. Price was no object before; now, lives are nothing to him so long as he gets what he wants. That may mean sending hired thugs after whoever has it, and he won't believe the Bookhounds have lost it unless his thugs turn over the shop first. See further A Collector Scorned.
After the manifestation occultist Jane Russell redoubles her efforts to get the Religio Medici and the amulet, using Megapolisomancy to do it. The Bookhounds will encounter her psychic projections in future scenes. See further Tantric Echoes.
After the manifestations the Bookhounds are contacted by mysterious antiquarian and book collector Wilson Davies-Gore, aka the Baron of Blackheath. He offers the Hounds a potential way out of their current dilemma - if they'll agree to his terms. See further All Saints, All Sinners.
Future Torment. If the Hound-Lich marked one of the player characters for future torment, the Hound will realize they are marked deep in their soul. If the character had no Mythos, they gain 1 Mythos. See further Damned.
That's the Midpoint. The characters have had their brush with death; now it's up to them to grasp at straws and claw their way out of death's embrace. Hopefully making a profit along the way ...
