May 11, 2016

Agenda: 1940 Character Creation and Same Page Calibration

Calibration went fairly quickly, as five of us have done this before, and the other two were fine with the options we chose, which were pretty much the same as the ones from 1894. Dracula and Carmilla will survive 1940; Carmilla loses her script immunity when we play "The Carmilla Sanction", which is set in 1948.

The player of Roxana and Gabriel from the 1894 leg helped me playtest Dexter Raymond and the scenario "The Fathomless Sleep" for Gumshoe One-2-One. She enjoyed the character and wanted to play him now. We finished up the playtest the afternoon of this session, and she rebuilt Dexter for NBA and as part of a group. Dexter was in Romania because, while his mother was Italian and moved to America, his father, who'd left early on, was Romanian and had somehow managed to leave a Romanian castle to his son as an inheritance.

Liesl Rosenzweig's player, as I knew she would, decided to play Joyce Summers, whom she's played in someone else's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign and in my Eternal Lies campaign.

Another player had planned to play his Night Witches character, as I was using the rule forbidding players to play descendents of their own PCs, and he thought that his original PC from my Tatters of the King and Eternal Lies campaign with the Crescent City coda of "Asylum" had finished his arc. However, when he learned that there was an Italian-American private eye who'd lived in Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles, he decided that he couldn't resist playing his old character, Vito de Genarra, mobster with a hook replaceing one forearm and hand.

So, we have a pilot and a mobster who already know each other, and a PI who knows the mobster and is in Romania on account of a Weird Inheritance.

The person who played Sebastian Wimsey decided that his character would be the granddaughter of Immanuel Hildescheim, making her a cousin of Liesl Rosenzweig. She was working with Edom at the moment, and she had recruited Dexter. She was also Jewish and in Romania in 1940.

The person who played Herman Sager considered playing a battle weary vampire hunter, but decided instead to play an Edom agent who disbelieves in the supernatural. Clearly, the mission was to stir up the political situation by making it look like there's a vampire around. His agent was Qumiby Pocket, of the Lincolnshire Pockets.

The person who played Beatrice Patrick was playing Hedy Lamarr. Hedy had done some white hat hacking. That is, she had accidentally tapped into Edom's radio communication about the plan to recruit Dracula to fight the Nazis in Romania. Hedy contacted Edom to explain what she had learned and how Edom might patch the holes in its security, and to tell Edom that she was joining the mission.

We discussed the status of the old PCs.

Roxana Renfield was still traveling with the faeries. That is, she and her husband had had their brains removed and placed into Mi-Go cannisters, but believed they were going to live under their manor with the faeries.

Gabriel Osborne's fate is being left deliberately ambiguous, so none of us yet know what happened, including me.

Herman Sager become a pupil to Abraham Van Helsing / Edward Kelly and a mentor to Edgar, the son of Roxana and Earnest Renfield. He's probably not still alive in 1940, having been in his 50s in 1894. Probably not.

Liesl Rosenzweig married and moved to Palestine where, while she did not commit terrorist acts herself, she patched up people from a Zionist movement who did. She also founded a circle of Jewish scholars who compiled information on the supernatural. The group was called Anachnu Zochrim, which is Hebrew for "We Remember". She was still alive.

Sebastian Wimsey joined Edom, intending to take over and reform the organization from within. The player discussed what he was and was not willing to do -- at least, when he joined the organization in 1894, ideals intact. He's well aware that Sebastian may become a big villain NPC in later sessions. He said Sebastian wouldn't want to become a vampire, but is aware that other ways of achieving immortality exist and is naive to believe that those are probably fine and do not involve compromising on morality or ethics.

Beatrice Campbell recovered after the death of Count de Ville, scion of Carmilla. She thought about what she wanted, and then went to Carmilla, pointing out that the vampire now had a gap for a new lieutenant. Between Beatrice and Sebastian, my players are likely to create the modern Conspyramids for me, or at least substantial portions of them.

And by now, Liesl's player had annotated _Dracula_ in French, adding post-it notes with the translations. As of the third session, Gabriel's and Beatrice's players had annotated it as well, while Isabella's player added a 1940 note or two.

I still needed to figure out where Dexter's castle was, but we had the characters nailed down:

• Dexter Raymond: MOS: Infiltration. Drive: Mystery. Symbol: Mother's cross. Solace: Renata Raymond (Mom). Safety: Inherited castle.

• Hedy Lamarr: MOS: Mechanics. Drive: Revenge (Axis). Symbol: Music box. Solace: Gertrude Keisler (Mom). Safety: Childhood home (Vienna).

• Isabella Hildescheim: MOS: Preparedness. Drive: Patriotism (Zionism). Symbol: The Dracula Dossier. Solace: Liesl Rosenzweig (cousin). Safety: Safehouse in Bucharest.

• Joyce Summers: MOS: Shooting. Drive: Thrill Seeker. Symbol: 1894 Winchester Lever Action Rifle. Solace: Martin Locksley. Safety: A Different Safehouse in Bucharest.

• Quimby Pocket: MOS: Filching. Drive: Patriotism (Britain). Symbol: Uncle Cecil's lighter. Solace: Sebastian Wimsey. Safety: The White Stag Gentleman's Club, London.

• Vito de Genarra: MOS: Driving (having a hook in place of one of his hands notwithstanding). Drive: Slayer. Symbol: Sketch book. Solace: Martin Locksley (fostering his daughter). Safety: Maltese temple.