Sessions 1-2 Clues

From RPGS surrounding the Labcats

Let me know if this is useful:

The Demeter, account in Dailygraph, paper, 4 March 1894

  • Carried 50 boxes of dirt (mould, earth)
  • Did not carry passengers or animals, or at least, none were listed
  • The entire crew, except for the captain, vanished before the ship made port in Whitby
  • The first mate jumped overboard
  • The captain tied himself to the rail, using his crucifix
  • He was dead by the time the ship reached port, and he received a hero's funeral
  • A large dog jumped off the ship and ran off.
  • It may have killed another dog.
  • Old Mr. Swales was found dead in the graveyard, where he often sat with his contemporaries. His neck was broken.
  • EDOM agents included the ship's owners and some of the crew
  • An EDOM agent was supposed to meet Count Dracula at Whitby, but he never arrived, so far as EDOM could tell -- or, if he did, he did not make contact with him. He likely went on to London.

7 November 1889 Letter from Arthur Browne of Madigan Browne Chartered Architects to Lord Earnest Renfield

  • Secret work done
  • Specific instructions issued not to anger the Good Neighbors

1891 Letter from Reykjavik

  • One fragment of a meteor found
  • Widmanstatten Lines
  • Monster legends, Greenland, Icelend
  • Reyhjavik's archives
  • Captain: E. Austin Ommanney

1892 Ablemarle Hotel, London

  • Benefits of recruiting a vampire
  • Dr. Stoker
  • Mr. Vamberry
  • J.D. Hooker, M.D., FRS, KCSI, Secretary to the advisory committee

29 August 1893 Letter to Count Dracula

  • Recruitment Attempt
  • Offering alliance against Ottoman Emprire

29 IX 1893 Letter from Varna, written by Herr Felix Leutner, co-signed by Count Dracula, setting down his conditions

  • Not to harm or hinder him, he promising the same
  • Accommodations must be
    • large
    • old
    • near fresh, still water
    • holy ground nearby
    • sturdy and in good repair
    • "Harker" journal mentions Carfax Abbey
  • Transport, letting Count Dracula bring as much or as little as he desires
  • Send details with a messenger who has
    • Very good English
    • Very good Latin
    • No German
    • No tongue common East of the Rhine
  • Account at Burdett's Bank for 5,000 pounds
  • Cease trespass in Count Dracula's lands and no further explorations in the mountains around Hermanstadt

31 October 1893 Letter from "Peter Hawkins" to "Sir"

  • Recent earthquakes in area recommended by Vamberry
  • Vergil, book VI, line 590
  • Further divine sanction yields a (biblical, from Isaiah) quote referencing Lilith
  • He has selected a "Caleb" to "go up into the mountains" ("Jonathan Harker")

1 December 1893 Letter from "Peter Hawkins" to Count Dracula

  • Agent meeting required conditions sent
  • Transport = Demeter. Owners and certain crew members "in our employ"
  • Date of transport is Count's choice, but for obvious reasons, please before April 23 / May 5
  • Ship will arrive at Whitby, where agents will be standing by

20 March 1894 Letter from "Peter Hawkins" to "Sir"

  • Whitby not useful
  • Count Dracula likely in London
  • Virgil book II, lines 363 and 369
  • Requesting 3 men from Special Branch
  • Alerting Friends in Fleet Street
  • Could be "worse than Cornwall"

1 March 1894 Westminister Gazetter (might be a typo for 1 April 1894)

  • Sotheby's Auction House
  • Jeweled dagger
    • 16th Century design
    • Crest of House of Basarab

13 April 1894 Letter from Sister Agatha to "Peter Hawkins"

  • Mina bit likely in there because it would be expected
  • If "Hawkins" deliberately sent "Harker" to "Him", knowing what "He" is, that is unforgivable, though she will pray for him.

9 April 1894 Letter from "Peter Hawkins" to "Sir"

  • FUBAR and de facto resignation
  • Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield, wealthy occultist living in London, lost
  • Crew of Demeter lost
  • Fears "Caleb" lost as well
  • Closing Exeter House, but "Gertrude" and "Hogarth" have the keys

This is everything EXCEPT the oddities at the Borgo Pass itself.

The "Harker" Journal, Translated by E. Rosenzweig from Yiddish into German and English

  • Odd event in the Munich Dead House: Vanished Corpse
  • Bistritz
    • Count Dracula wanted "Harker" to stay in the Golden Krone Hotel
    • The landlord's wife gave "Harker" a cross from MINA
  • St. Andrew's Day
    • The Guarding of the Garlic preceded St. Andrew's Day
    • St. Andrew's Day is 11 December
    • Blue Flames: Dracula says "On the eve of St. George, they flare up without calling, but on the night before St. Andrews they burn where the dead travel."
  • Plaistow: Carfax Abbey
    • Quatre Face
    • Near private lunatic asylum
  • Count Dracula does not appear in mirror
  • Count Dracula recoils from Harker's crucifix
  • There are also superstitions about garlic, wild rose, and mountain ash
  • Count Dracula's letters
    • Samuel F. Billington, No. 7, The Crescent, Whitby
    • Herr Felix Leutner (lawyer), Varna
    • Burdett's & Co., London
    • Herren Klopstock & Billreuth, bankers, Buda-Pesth
  • Count Dracula crawls down the side of his castle
  • At least once does so dressed as "Harker", in Harker's clothes
  • Old heap of treasure in what Harker assumes is Count Dracula's room
  • Room with three "women"
    • Invisible at first
    • Constant, intolerable, tingling laughter
    • Foul, cold, unbearable stench
    • talon like nails feeling as if lips and teeth on the throat
    • baby = meal
    • Room not there next day: hall dead ends
  • Three ghostly infants, same laughing as women, materializing outside Harker's window
  • Final night: Laughter of invisible beings
  • Count Dracula's apparent control of wolves
  • "Harker" finds Count Dracula in a box of earth
  • "Harker" tries to attack sleeping Count Dracula with a shovel wrapped with the crucifix he received from "Mina"

Lead Sheet: "Harker" and the "Coachman"

  • "Harker" thinks the carriage seems to be going over and over the same ground in the Borgo Pass.
  • Dogs start howling at or close to midnight, this being the eve of St. Andrew's Day, when, according to an innkeeper's wife and agent of MINA, "the wolves speak with the voices of men and all the evil things in the world will have full sway... night the dead walk, and their passage kindles hell-fire."
  • The coachman takes some time and trouble to calm the horses, at least somewhat.
  • Then, the road changes: "after going to the far side of the Pass, [the coachman] suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right."
  • As the wolves seem to close in, "Harker" sees a "faint flickering blue flame" on the left.
  • The driver sees it too and dismounts. He departs and then returns.
  • This seems to happen several times -- or "Harker" falls asleep and keeps dreaming it happening.
  • Once, the flame appears near enough to the road that "Harker" can see more of what the "coachman" does:

He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose—it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all—and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device. Once there appeared a strange optical effect; when he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness.

  • After a time of no flame, a flame is apparently so far afield that while the "coachman" is gone, the wolves close in and howl, terrifying "Harker" and the horses.
  • "Harker" calls for the "coachman", fearing for both their lives.
  • The "coachman" seems to command the wolves, who fall back and depart.
  • After more driving, "Harker" is "suddenly" "conscious of the fact" that they're now in "the courtyard of a vast ruined castle".