October 28, 2015
Fifth Meeting: 28 October 2015
Agenda: 1894 Session #3
The PCs were:
Liesl Rosenzweig: Middle Class Jewish Austrio-Hungarian doctor, a neurologist with an interest in psychology. 26 in 1894.
Herman August Sager: An actual historic figure, a chemist who created a clay and glaze formula. Middle class. Also, Roxana's half-brother. 53 in 1894.
The Honorable Sebastian Wimsey: An upper class consulting detective. 27 in 1894. This eccentric nobleman is the person on whom Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was based. Sebastian's Player is also drawing on Dorothy Sayers's Peter Wimsey.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, aka Beatrice Stellatamer, aka Mrs. Pat: An actual historic figure, the actress for whom George Bernard Shaw wrote the role of Eliza Doolittle. 29 in 1894.
Much of this session was recaping the campaign for Beatrice's player and helping her create the character. We decided that she knew Sebastian, but not who he was, and vice versa. Sebastian spend some time acting, incognito, of course, so that he could learn enough about make up and other aids to Disguise. He knew Beatrice as Beatrice Stella Tanner, iirc, and did not know that she was now Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She did not know that he was The Hon. Sebastian Wimsey, private investiagor, although she had heard of Wimsey. She just didn't know there was a connection, as he was a teenager calling himself Samuel Willoughby at the time.
At least, I think that's what we had. My notes say that Beatrice married in '84 and had her stage debut 4 years later. I believe checking wikipedia turned up the fact that in 1894, she was in the play The Masqueraders.
Archibald Craven burst into a late night party of the artistic / bohemian circle, which of course included Mrs. Pat. The photographer explained to her that he had nearly had his throat ripped out by one Count De Ville, and he needed to hide. Intrigued, she agreed to help him, and decided to contact Sebastian, either because she thought an aristocratic detective might be helpful or because Archibald suggested it, as Sebastian had been working to find out what was going on with oddities in Archibald's photography.
Sebastian himself was at Whitby, where he'd seen similar anomalies, learned that Liesl and Herman believed in vampires, and attempted to photograph the faeries that Lady Roxana Renfield said that her son had seen. Liesl, Herman, and Sebastian had learned that Roxana's husband, Earnest, and his brother, Owen, were involved with a secret plan of the Naval Intelligence Division to bring a vampire to England. Owen had used a fake identity, Peter Hawkins, sending one Jonathan Harker to fetch Count Dracula, little realizing that Harker was actually Liesl's cousin, Immanuel Hildescheim, working for a German group known as MINA.
Owen, having had second thoughts about the whole business as things started to go wrong and people for whom he felt responsible kept turning up dead, left for Bucharest, to make sure that Hildescheim was safe. Lord Earnest Renfield discovered that his pregnant wife, Roxana, had rediscovered the faeries, along with their son, Edgar. Roxana had gone off with them, leaving Edgar and a note.
-- -- --
Dear Earnest,
Edgar was right -- there are fairies here and they seem to want me to come with them. Please do not panic if I'm not back by tomorrow morning, though I can't imagine I'll be gone for too long (if I am, I'll send you another message -- my apologies, I don't think the timing of this could have been worse). At any rate, please know that I do not intend to be gone for long -- but this is real, Earnest, and I am not insane.
With love,
Roxana
OOC Note: On second thought, I don't think she would bring Edgar with her -- she thinks she's going to be able to come back soon, poor sap.
-- -- --
This meant that one NPC who knew things was off to Bucharest, and the other was distracted because his pregnant wife had just vanished. This meant that the PCs were on their own, which was very much what we needed after last session.
That left the question of what to do about Roxana's younger sister, Ruthie, and one of the maids, both of whom had been bitten by Carmilla, aka Countess Mircalla Karnstein. Ruthie's parents knew nothing of this, but intended to take her to London so that Lt. Geoffrey Bridgewater could continue to court her. Liesl managed to convince Ruthie's parents that Ruthie and the maid were suffering from a condition better cured by keeping the two of them in one of the rooms in the secret area under Misselthwaite Manor, an area that Lord Renfield had had built. The room in question had garlic and wild roses outside the door, so the two women should be safe. Thus reasoned Liesl, Herman, and Sebastian.
Out of character, the players knew that there was a very good chance that the women would wind up dead and / or undead, but their PCs had at least been intelligent. Indeed, there were factors they had no reason to know they needed to consider, such as Lord Renfield's distraction and determination to find his pregnant wife, some of the powers of a vampire that were not detailed in Herman's book, and the ways in which the Craven family might be very foolish indeed, even if their actions made perfect sense to people who knew nothing about vampires.
Liesl's player made an Intimidation Spend, I think, so that the parents would be genuinely concerned about Ruthie's life and follow her instructions.
Liesl: It's a windowless room. It's _completely_ safe.
Sebastian made a Cop Talk Spend, I think so that the Whitby authorities would know wnat to look out for.
There was plenty of in character banter / discussion of what had been learned.
Liesl: Let's be scientific about this. How do we know this? We know it from my friend right here -- and scientific documents. The Rosenzweig sign.
Herman: What is this fetish?
(I think he was referring to biting.)
Liesl: Please, there is a lady in the room!
Sebastian: Oh, is that you?
Liesl: I'll remember this, Wimsey.
Liesl (some time later): This is why we have peer review.
Sebastian had set up cameras to try to photograph the faeries of Misselthwaite Manor. The camera lenses had been coated in jam.
Sebastian (to young Edgar): Tell them I'm sorry about the cameras.
Either he or Edgar came up with the idea of leaving cheese out for the faeries as an apology.
When Liesl, Herman, and Sebastian reached London, Sebastian found a message waiting for him from Mrs. Pat.
-- -- --
Mr. Craven may not be able to meet you at his studio tonight because he is worried about certain things. He may be found at the home of my husband.
-- -- --
Meanwhile, Liesl pulled out a pair of opera glasses given to her by Mahler, figuring Herman and Sebastian could modify them with mirrors. My notes say something about Mechanical Repair and Preparedness, with Spends and with totals of 8 each. The players and PCs are missing one vital fact, but once they get it, they've done the necessary earlier work. Someone mentioned something about "idiopathic activity".
Sebastian, Liesl, and Herman went to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Campbell.
Sebastian: Beatrice?
Heman (I think): Wait, I thought we were visiting Archibald.
Sebastian: Who is staying with this lady. Who I have never met before.
Beatrice: Sam! I wasn't expecting to see you here -- I haven't seen you in years!
Sebastian: Obviously, Sam is an alias.
Folks started bringing each other up to date.
Beatrice (as explanations begin to get complicated): This seems like a British Theater.
Sebastian: Do you wish the opera hall version or the skeptical version?
Beatrice: I'll take the skeptical version first.
Archibald explained that, as Lady Carradine had demanded, he returned all the photographs and plates from the party she hosted where Count De Ville had appeared. Well, all but one of them, but he had taken so many it seemed odd that she had realized one was missing, assuming that she had. Nevertheless, the Count De Ville had been in the studio Archibald shared with ***, and the count had tried to rip out Archibald's throat!
Liesl noted that Archibald was the brother of Ruthie and Roxana, both of whom were also mixed up in this Count De Ville business.
Liesl: Sager, why is he focusing so much on this one family?
Either Herman (who is part of that family, thanks to an indiscretion on the part of the siblings' father) or GM: That's a really good question.
Someone: Can we not have a discussion of narrative?
As matters got explained, Liesl's cousin, Immanuel Hildescheim's role came up.
Beatrice (I think): Your cousin -- what kind of character does he have?
Liesl: He doesn't have any at all.
As we wrapped, the PCs obligingly split four ways to do investigation. Herman decided to investigate the oddly timed earthquakes and the area around Hermanstadt, which Count Dracula had required Edom to agree to withdraw from. He also decided, to my delight, to go to a public bath house.
Sebastian learned from Archibald that Juliette Parton, Sebastian's ex-fiance, was ill, and that photographs of her had the same distortion as the ones of Ruthie and the maid. Also, apparently, the police had been summoned to the Parton household a few times. In addition, there was the murder of Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield, one of Owen Renfield / Peter Hawkins's agents. Sebastian decided that he needed to talk to his source, Inspector Cotford.
Liesl decided to research the real estate transactions. Just what properties did Count Dracula or Count De Ville have in England, and where?
Beatrice decided to talk to her writer friends. These included Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. Liesl's player noted that Henry James wanted to be a playwright.
And there we broke, with me planning a) what information each PC would learn between sessions, b) what skills and Spends (if any) would be used to learn it, and c) what would menace them at the beginning of the next session.
