Kerberos 10/19/2011

Title: Dragon in the Smoke, Part I

I'm watching the street gangs in the alley below. It's an interesting microcosm of society played out before me in --

DIVEBOMB!

Oh, Alice is at it again?

Yes, and I don't think she'll believe either of us are investigators, so make yourself useful.

What time of year is it? Autumn

Alice, 8 disguise as an extremely green youth who has never been in this sort of establishment before.

Alec Campion

You know, while I am sure your cousin wouldn't believe me, I am happy that I am not contributing to your delinquency.

You most certainly are!

• Strength +5 glamour
• Strength +7 glamour ne're do well

GM's Timeline Notes

• Almacks
• Mrs. Doyle
• The Leak (the PCs avoided this)
• The Ransom Note
• The 2nd Ransom Note

Write Up

I believe our story opened at Almacks, some time during the autumn of 1837. There was a ball in progress. Alice's Martian psychic power revealed to her that Mrs. Doyle was in great distress, worrying about her children. She tried to comfort the woman, who was surprised, but worried enough to want someone to talk to.

Alice's cousin, Winston, disapproved. Indeed, that was his function in the game, to be an Adversary who Disapproves and must be overcome. But, this got modified over time as we realized a few things.

First, Winston needs to be a mental powerhouse, not just a social powerhouse. He can't get into an ugly social conflict with Alice unless he wants to ruin her socially, and what he _wants_ is for her to toe the line and be socially respectable, not ruined. Social conflicts are about how one appears to society. Mental conflicts are about backing down or holding ground in arguments.

Second, though it never came up, Josh noted that Winston needs to be immune to Alice's psychic power.

Third, Winston actually can make an interesting form of social attack. He can spread rumors that Alice is doing something he wants her to do, like marry someone he approves of as his cousin's husband. There's now a lot of societal pressure on Alice to marry the chosen spouse.

Fourth, it's something of a problem that PCs can walk all over normal folk mentally and socially if they choose the appropriate elements to buy at high tiers. Normal people can only get up to Extraordinary. We do NOT want

• Everyone the PCs interact with to have high tiers of social abilities
• The PCs to walk all over society and remold it as they see fit

We both knew that the Winston-Alice relationship should not be boring. Winston trying to keep Alice from her rightful fortune, either because he wants it for himself or because he spent it all, is boring. No, I decided Winston was absolutely doing the best job he could to make her fortune grow. Sadly, he is supporting the wrong side in the upcoming Opium War.

Regardless, Alice managed to convince Winston that she was obligated to help Lady Doyle, discreetly, of course. And, Sophronia was quite happy to help out as well, charming conversation piece that she is. Both agreed that Victor should be recruited. Lady Doyle had heard of Victor Knight, as he is Known to Many if Friend to Few, and asked if he were discreet. Alice assured her that Victor was.

Sophronia found Victor and tried to get his attention.

Victor: I'm watching the street gangs in the alley below. It's an interesting microcosm of society played out before me in --

DIVEBOMB!

That was Sophronia, divebombing him, of course. This got his attention, and she told Victor about Lady Doyle's distress.

Victor: Oh, Alice is at it again?

Sophronia: Yes, and I don't think she'll [Lady Doyle] believe either of us [Sophronia and Alice] are investigators, so make yourself useful.

Our Heroes met with Lady Doyle the next morning, learning that her children had disappeared. Like many aristocrats (so sayeth the scenario), she had relatively little contact with her children, seeing them a few times a day, and leaving them in the care of a maid. Nevertheless, she did genuinely love them, and she was distraught and worried. Henrietta was 15, and Michael was 13. (Her husband was Lord Henry Michael Doyle, and I'm not sure what it says about him that both children are named after him.)

For some reason, the published scenario has the default way of introducing the PCs be having them rescue the actual detective Lady Doyle hired from someone involved in the disappearance of the children, a someone who then eludes the PCs No Matter What. Ick. The scenario also allows having Lady Doyle hire them because the detective she hired originally did not report back. Better, but it's better still to cut out the unnecessary (at least, in my run) extra detective.

It was relatively easy to redistribute the information the PCs might have gotten from him. Carolyn, the maid in charge of the children, could give them their first lead. In the scenario, she's afraid to speak out, for fear of losing her job, but wants to help the children, so she goes to her boyfriend, who is a journalist. This isn't good for the PCs, as the disappearance, which is supposed to be kept discreet, then becomes public, angering the PCs' employer.

Carolyn's skill at Bluff is reasonably good in Victoriana. But, this is Kerberos Club, and the group lacked the original infodump. Carolyn is an ordinary person, and Victor is a master detective. I statted her out as follows in Kerberos Fate:

Relevant Aspects

• Afraid for the Children
• Afraid for My Position
• I Don't Want to Be An Old Maid

Relevant skill: Resolve at +1: Willpower, Stress Capacity: Mental (Composure), Initiative: Mental

I want the information to get out, so I don't make her too hard a nut to crack. I probably could have given her a full +4 Willpower, even a +4 Extraordinary Willpower, as there are Aspects the players could invoke here. But, honestly, it didn't make sense for her to have that high a score. Possibly I should have given her Guile. But, the end result would have been the same, given the PCs' resources.

Carolyn had been seeing a young man. She wanted to marry him and get out of the service life, something she kept a secret from her employers, as they didn't tend to like their servants having "too much of a social life". The children, however, found out about her beau and did not scruple to blackmail her with the threat of going to their parents. They demanded her help in sneaking out of the house at night, and once she gave it, she couldn't stop helping them, as they now had even more blackmail material on her. After all, if they got caught, she would be caught for helping them.

So, she was afraid to lose her job, but also afraid that something dreadful had happened to her charges. She told Victor that the children had visited their older cousin, Robert Doyle, at Ten Bell's Pub. Our Heroes departed for the place.

Victor, of course, would fit in well enough. Sophronia would stand out, but she was, after all, a Charming Novelty. But Alice knew her duty, and so she asked Sophronia to use magic to disguise her.

Alice, 8 disguise as an extremely green youth who has never been in this sort of establishment before. With the aid of Sophronia's fae magic and perhaps Alice's own more mundane Disguise abilities (I think a trapping under Guile), Lady Alice Beauchamp was disguised as "an extremely green youth who has never been in this sort of establishment before". He used the name Alec Campion.

Either Victor or Sophronia: You know, while I am sure your cousin wouldn't believe me, I am happy that I am not contributing to your delinquency.

Alice: You most certainly are!

Robert Doyle was a black sheep of the family, a gambler, a drinker, and a bad poet. He was also friendly to everyone and willing to help, especially as he had a nagging suspicion that he might perhaps be a teeny bit responsible for whatever had happened to his cousins. He said that, in addition to visiting Ten Bells with him, his cousins had visited a Mr. Harrington, a Martin Croyle, and Dylan at the Pavillion.

Our Heroes also met the Lady Miriam, a powerful fae who enjoyed Robert Doyle's antics. When they left the pub, Alice had a vision about the children being in peril and waking a dragon. The adventure gives this to a NPC, but since I had a PC psychic, I used her.

Our Heroes spoke with Mr. Harrington at the Bearded Wench tavern. He said that he'd taken the children to see the Reverend Matheson, which had been very amusing, although the Reverend had been very angry. He also warned that the children might have fallen into the clutches of Martin Croyle.

Our Heroes visited the reverend and either learned or confirmed (I forget whether Mr. Harrington told them) that the reason Matheson had been so furious was that the children were loudly calling attention to the trickery Matheson used to fake miracles in his tiny church.

The group then went to the Pavillion, where they met Dylan, an attractive woman dressed in male clothing. She wrote plays, and just now, she was rather distracted as one of her actors, Mr. Talbot, had wandered off and not yet returned. Our Heroes offered to collect him, and she accepted, saying that he was probably at Ten Bells. (The actors were already in costume, so she couldn't really send them.)

At Ten Bells, they were told that Mr. Talbot had just left, with a woman. They found him in a nearby alley, with his pants down, trying to defend himself. The woman had lured him into an alley not to sell her services as a prostitute, as he'd thought, but so that her pimp and his gang could beat and rob him.

Our Heroes quickly dealt with the thugs, especially when Sophronia created illusory wolves. Fae glamour is a mental attack, but deals physical damage, a powerful combination for mundane thugs who don't tend to be especially strong of will.

Once they returned with Mr. Talbot, Dylan was happy to help out. She said that the children had watched one of her plays. They had been followed on the night they disappeared by a rat faced man, one who worked for Mr. Harrington. I think the group knew who the man worked for at this point, but I'm not sure.

Victor set up meetings with Mr. Harrington and Martin Croyle, figuring that one of the two were almost certainly behind the children's disappearance. He later decided, correctly, that it was Mr. Harrington, and didn't bother to show up for the meeting he arranged with Croyle. In the scenario, Croyle "is a violent revolutionary with a bent towards the teachings of Mikhail Bakunin", but that didn't work for the year 1837. I decided that he could be a Chartist without stretching things too far. He had started out neutral-but-suspicious of Victor Knight, but when Victor blew off the meeting, that turned to non-active hostility. Croyle has an interesting backstory, and I plugged in a couple of my own NPCs, including Winston Beauchamp. I later attached one of his supporters to Sophronia's family, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out just what this group of revolutionaries or anarchists or Chartists would actually _do_ to come into conflict with the PCs.

I think I was going about that the wrong way. At least some of the PCs are at least somewhat sympathetic to the group's aims. Three of them consider at least one member of the group to be kin to them. I need to have the group clash with the authorities, and to have the PCs decide what to do and whom to support.

Meanwhile, the Doyles received a note. It was a polite and elegant note, apologizing for the family's distress and saying that the Doyle children would be returned when a sculpture of a dragon was brought to a public place and given to a representative to bring elsewhere. Mr. Doyle was warned against contacting the authorities or betraying "us again".

Our Heroes had seen the sculpture before, in Mr. Doyle's Chinese Room, a room filled with items he had brought back from various business trips to China. And, Alice realized that it was no sculpture, but a magically bound dragon spirit.

As the group made its plans, a second note was delivered, much less eloquent, polite, and neat. Mr. Doyle was now instructed to bring the dragon to the public place at 3 am that very night. Our Heroes correctly guessed that Mr. Harrington had written the note.

We broke there for the evening, and picked up next time, with Abraham Lincoln rejoining the rest of the group.