If you tried out last year's Victorian roleplaying scenario “Murder Your Darlings” then you might like to give this much simpler and more
traditional adventure a go. It’s also set in
Oxford but a few years earlier, in 1884. Incidentally, in our campaign there is
no magic as such, as it’s a science-fictional universe which has room for
Cthulhu, time travel and even Victor Frankenstein, but not sorcery. All the same,
psionic abilities are real (if rare) and are usually accepted as magic by those
who possess them.
Teddy Trittfield has
recently gone up to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read Literae Humaniores. Teddy
has always been a dutiful child and a hard worker, but in his first term he has
not been in touch with his parents and reports suggest that his studies are
slipping. His mother (who could be one of the player-characters) is
worried that Teddy is neglecting his studies, running up some whopping debts,
and falling under the spell of some pretty unsavoury types.
On investigation, it soon turns out Teddy has fallen
in with a group of friends who have a dining club called the Procrusteans. They
are:
- James Orpington-Soames (Christ
Church, English)
- The Hon Reginald Wincanton (Christ Church,
History)
- Count Konradin (“Konnie”)
von Hegel und Vasserkind (Magdalen, postgrad Music)
- Basil Hinge (Keble,
Chemistry)
The Procrusteans at Christ Church are in the circle of
the senior History tutor, Sir Nicholas
Tollens, who is said to be a member of a club called the Five-Sided Table (motto: Tuta petant alii – “let others seek security”) itself a remnant of
the once-notorious Hell Fire Club.
Sir Nicholas has a fellow Five-Sider staying with him,
the Spanish spiritualist Jose Lunares.
Sir Nicholas’s coachman is Jollyback and his valet is Chifton.
They have some handy skills and can find a half dozen ruffians if needed.
If the player-characters visit Telbeck & Sons in
the High Street, who supply hunting equipment to Sir Nicholas, then a bribe of
a few pounds will reveal that Sir Nicholas has his bullets engraved with a
special symbol. An Occultism roll identifies this as a Satanic rune.
They might also want to buy some firearms of their own:
If the characters search Teddy’s room they will find a
burnt scrap of paper in the hearth with part of the Lord’s Prayer written
backwards.
Other notable NPCs
The President of Magdalen is Dr Frederick Bulley (73 years old, distinguished, tall, white-haired; quite
infirm now).
Teddy’s tutor at Magdalen is Dr William Cove.
The Senior Dean of Arts is Dr Waverly Bamfield.
The Dean of Divinity is the Rev Dr John Joyce.
The Head Porter is Dannock.
The SCR Butler is Carndyce.
What’s going on
Lt-General Augustus
Pitt Rivers is relocating his famous collection of obscure ethnographic artefacts to the University Museum. The majority of the collection will not be moved
until an new annexe is built to the Musuem in two years’ time, but a few items
are already on display. Sir Nicholas and Jose Lunares have a plan to break in,
get the mask of Saaga the Devil Doctor, and perform a ritual that will make
them both immortal.
To complete the ritual, they intend to sacrifice
Teddy, whom the Procrusteans have had doing a bunch of initiation tasks that
are actually components of an old spell. So far he's completed the first two of these. The recital of the Lord's Prayer will take place on the final day of Michaelmas term:
- Taking the sacrament while wearing an inverted crucifix
- Climbing the Martyrs’ Memorial to put kindling around
their feet
- Reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards on Advent Sunday
Teddy is important to the ritual because he has some
Haida blood – his great-great-grandfather had a child by a native woman in
British Columbia in the 1770s. The ritual is actually irrelevant, as is Teddy’s
ancestry, but Lunares and the others believe these to be important components
of a spell. The truth (at least in our campaign) is that it is all a psionic
effect and the mask and Satanic elements are just window-dressing.
“Spells” (psionic
effects) to which Lunares has access:
- To enrage dogs and turn them upon their masters.
- To call a fog: 10 yards visibility in which Lunares
has a lantern that shines clearly (a mental effect, but one that covers a very
wide area).
- To cause people to become drowsy (WL roll) or, if
asleep, to remain so.
- To incite paranoia (EQ or argue with friends, to the
death if EQ failed again).
- To foresee elements of the future by means of
automatic writing.
What the players might
do to stymie the ritual:
- Prevent Teddy being
abducted. The Five-Siders will use Basil Hinge instead. The
ritual can still go ahead but less successfully.
- Prevent Teddy doing
the third task. The ritual can still go ahead but less successfully.
- Save Teddy before
the sacrifice. The ritual will feed off Lunares’s own essence.
Fully successful
ritual:
Both Sir Nicholas and Jose Lunares become immortals.
Saaga’s spirit (actually an aspect of Lunares’s own personality) “awakens” in the
mask which will float in the air.
Less successful ritual:
Saaga’s spirit (see above) will be available for the
Five-Siders to consult and get a “spell” from once each new moon.
Using Lunares’s own
essence:
Lunares dies horribly and Sir Nicholas, driven quite mad,
insists that he is the reincarnated Saaga.
Background: the year is 1884
The British prime minister is William Gladstone
The American president is Chester A Arthur
The Poet Laureate is Lord Tennyson (until this year just plain Alfred Tennyson)
What
you might be talking about:
The electric street lighting starting to appear in
London
The first automobiles (early models reaching 10 mph)
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show now touring the USA
The eruption of Krakatoa last year (still said to
be affecting the weather)
The ongoing siege of Khartoum by the Mad Mahdi
The invention of the machine gun (not yet in
production)
The opening of the first Underground stations (parts
of the Metropolitan & District lines)
The first commercially available fountain pens (1884’s
iPod?)
Scotland Yard’s dismissal of the concept of
fingerprinting identification
The patenting of linotype earlier this year
Construction of the Cresta Run
Laying of the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty
The architecture of Gaudi
The banking crisis that is threatening an economic
depression
The terrorist attack by the Irish Republican Brigade
on Scotland Yard
What
you might be reading:
Stevenson (Treasure
Island)
Twain (Huckleberry
Finn)
Edwin Abbott Abbott (Flatland)
Tolstoy (The
Death of Ivan Ilyich)
Das
Kapital volume two in early pre-publication pamphlet form
Works by Wilkie Collins, Ambrose Bierce, Jules Verne,
Mrs Oliphant, Henry James
Where
you might be seen of an evening:
Plays by Oscar Wilde (just starting his career) and
Ibsen
Operas by Gilbert & Sullivan (at the height of
their success) or Puccini
Concert works by Bruckner and Wolf
What
you might be whistling:
“Oh my darling Clementine”
Who
you might know:
George Bernard Shaw, 28 years old, unsuccessful
novelist (a Fabian)
Oscar Wilde, 30 years old
Richard Burton, explorer, 63 years old but
mysteriously left London 12 years ago for Trieste
Lewis Carroll, 52 years old, still resident at Christ
Church but no longer teaching
Richard D’Oyly Carte, impresario, 40 years old
Henry Irving, actor, 46 years old.
Sir William Kelvin, scientist, 60 years old
Rudyard Kipling, journalist, 19 years old
Arthur Machen, editor and private tutor, 21 years old
Robert Louis Stevenson, author, 34 years old
Bram Stoker, literary critic, 39 years old
Ellen Terry, actress, 37 years old
Beatrice Potter, sociologist and Fabian, 26 years old
Charles Booth, sociologist, 44 years old, currently
compiling London Labour & the London
Poor
Lieutenant-General Augustus Pitt Rivers, ethnologist
and collector, 57 years old
Thomas Neumark-Jones, occultist, 43 years old
Naturally these or other prominent figures would need
to be paid for as Contacts.
WEALTH
Average -10 points
You have a job and are dependent on it for living expenses. Income £100 a year.
Comfortable no points
You have lodgings in a respectable part of town (if that’s where you want to
be) and income of £200 a year.
Wealthy 10 points
You have a townhouse or pleasant home out-of-town and the use of your club.
Income £400 a year.
Very Wealthy 20 points
You have a country estate and a townhouse, each with its own staff, plus a
coachman and valet who travel with you. Income £1000 a year.
You can live quite well on £400 a year (roughly
£60,000 in today’s terms).
Adventure seed
The following incident has nothing to do with this
scenario, but is a real newspaper report from 1884 that might provide the seed
for a follow-up adventure:
Aftermath
Lastly a few notes about how it panned out in our game. Lord Eidolon (Tim Savin) opened the luggage of one of the other characters, Teddy's father, and was affected by a paranoia rune left there by Lunares. This was a powerful hypnotic influence that caused him to distrust the others, which of course soon led to nobody trusting anybody very much. Sensing trouble, Henry Morton Stanley (Paul Gilham) moved from the Randolph Hotel to the Eastgate. That saved him when Eidolon burst into the Randolph lounge and opened fire with a shotgun, crippling a couple of characters before leaping through the window and disappearing into the fog. A city-wide manhunt ensued. The others learned that Eidolon could be cured by burning the rune and giving him the ashes to drink mixed in wine, but that if he failed to do so by midnight the paranoia would be permanent. (Merely a matter of belief, of course, not real magic, but it was the only way to break the hypnotic suggestion.) There seemed little hope of catching him before midnight, or of convincing the police to let them in with a goblet of wine if he was apprehended. As for the fate of Eidolon himself, my write-up of the session ends with this note of finality: "Even his dog now fears him."
Oh, and it's free too. Just dim the lights (easy if you have your Echo hooked up) and say, "Alexa, start Fright Tonight."
