October 7, 2015
Third Meeting: Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Agenda: 1894 Session #1
The PCs were:
Liesl Rosenzweig: Middle Class Jewish Austrio-Hungarian doctor, a neurologist with an interest in psychology. 26 in 1894.
Lady Roxana Maria Renfield: The third of four daughters of a high society family. She has two brothers. She has one 4-year-old son, Edgar, and she is pregnant. We also changed her age so that she's 24 in 1894, and her husband is still alive.
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.
This was a somewhat stumbling session, as I tried to get things clicking. Folks worked with me, but it's worth noting that the Unto the Fourth Generation frame means a lot of work for the GM, even if you're not additionally handicapping yourself, as I am, by also adding The Abhorrent Truth frame AND fidelity to previous campaigns.
So, you want to do Unto the Fourth Generation? Do read all of Dracula Unredacted. I almost didn't, but fortunately, I decided to see where it differed from Dracula itself. This suggested more NPCs and connections, which are crucial.
See, the Director's Handbook presumes a 21st century campaign, maybe with flashbacks to one-shot adventures. This means that the various pyramids and cells and links and so on are firmly rooted in the 21st century.
But, you're running a late 19th century campaign. The world is vastly different. I'm not even talking about technology (despite a two minute discussion of whether a 19th century Kodak would have plates or film or what); I'm talking about what countries existed, how strong or weak they were, and who they were officially allied with.
Look at the location descriptions -- cold and hot. Notice how they're all 21st century? Yep, any of these you want to use, you need to do some work on. And you need to do it either on the fly or in advance.
I recommend doing what you can in advance. You can always ditch your prep work; you can never retroactively have done it (unless Ken Hite plans to convince Time Incorporated to give us all time machines). I fell down on this in some areas, and it showed to me, and likely to everyone else.
You've also got the Conspyramid. It won't look like a 21st Century pyramid. And, if you're going with a newly risen Dracula, still catching up to the 19th Century, it may not be complete.
I've said I want an Edompyramid. You might, too. Then, there are the reaction pyramids. I suspect most, possibly all, of these can be kept as they are in essence -- but the specifics will be different. You may want to review that.
And all of this is before we get to how vampires work. I spent a lot of time compiling my Dracula. Now, some of this is because I want all of the crunchy details in writing -- my handwriting, in this case -- in front of me. If you just want the names of his powers and weaknesses, not the details, you can probably keep this down to a page. Compiling the base Dracula with [ REDACTED ] Dracula and modifying him for 1894, as I did, will still require you to gather all of the information in one place.
So, I did a lot of reading, and could have done more. I created a mini-monster manual, which can use a bit more, but is fairly solid (even if I do rewrite it for a third draft). I created one pyramid for Dracula atop an inverted pyramid for Edom, filled in about 2/3 of the top and 1/4 of the bottom -- and stopped. Oh, I put names down the sides for consideration, but frankly, at that point, my pyramid preparation was done.
-- -- --
The previous session was the Fiasco backstory, a fairly lightheared romp that got the PCs acquainted with each other and with an NPC named Immanuel Hildescheim. I did a bit of retweaking things because Roxana's player is going to be out of town for a few months. We also made Roxana over a decade younger.
Liesl had been receiving money from her cousin, Immanuel Hildescheim, rather than sending money to him, at intervals since he started his new job in 1889. However, she now received a letter from a nun, Sister Agatha, in Budapest, saying that Immanuel had arrived, somewhat ill, and that perhaps Liesl, as his wife (which she was not), might come to Budapest to retrieve him and perhaps pay for the remainder of his care. Liesl sighed, as this sounded much more like Immanuel from before the exhibition. She headed to Budapest.
Roxana's oldest brother, Archibald, was a hunchback, and Everyone Knew he wouldn't amount to much even before the family sold the ancestral home. So, he went to London and became a painter, rooming with a fellow artist. He paid a visit on Sebastian, asking if the aristocratic detective could tell him if his camera or the plate were broken. He had taken pictures of the guests at a party, and most of the pictures had come out fine. However, the ones he took of a recently arrived foreigner, Mr. de Ville, were flawed, as if there were some kind of stain over the face or something. One photograph looked like the man had a death's head skull where his head ought to be.
Sebastian wondered whether Archibald's roommate might be playing tricks on him, but agreed to come to a ball that evening where Mr. de Ville was expected. Roxana and her husband, Lord Earnest Renfield, agreed to take Roxana's younger sister, Ruthie, to the same ball. Ruthie was hoping to find a husband so that she might move out of her sister's home. Well, actually, it was a little more complicated than that.
Misselthwaite Manor, in Whitby, belonged to the Cravens, and Roxana and Ruthie were the youngest children of the Craven parents. However, years ago, the manor had been sold to Lord Renfield, and the family had moved to London, a city Roxana loathed. She decided that she would marry Lord Renfield, and the two of them discovered that they had a great deal in common and were quite compatible -- and perhaps even loved each other.
And so, Roxana got her family home back. There was, shall we say, some resentment from her siblings, particularly her brother Neville, the destined-until-it-was-sold heir to Misselthwaite. His older brother, Archibald, who was never going to inherit it, was quite happy to be a painter in London and got on well with Roxana and her husband. Roxana's parents occasionally descended on Misselthwaite. Well, more than occasionally, and it got trying. Very trying. The last five years had been even more trying, as her father had confessed to fathering Herman while on what he thought was his deathbed. Happily, he'd only had indigestion of some kind, but the strain on his marriage was keenly felt by Roxana whenever her parents thought to favor her with a visit.
Ruthie was another matter. Roxana and Ruthie liked each other well enough, but Ruthie's continued presence was wearing, and, no doubt, Ruthie felt the need for gratitude somewhat wearing as well. Both sisters wanted Ruthie to wed soon, and Lord Renfield was willing, indeed eager, to assist. And so, Roxana left young Edgar, her son, with a nanny (who probably should have a name), and set out for London with her sister and her husband, attending the same ball that Sebastian attended and Archibald was admitted to via the servants' entrance so that he could take his photos.
Mr. de Ville was not in attendance after all, as some matter requiring his presence had come up. However, a Lieutenant Geoffrey Bridgewater was present, and he and Ruthie seemed quite taken with each other. His father, sadly deceased, had been a general, and he himself was quite well off, even if not amazingly wealthy. True, it was possible the only attraction the two young people felt for each other was surface and superficial, but even if that were true, this wasn't actually a strike against it.
And, Ruthie made a friend, a young lady named Carmilla. Carmilla was staying in a big, empty hotel suite. Her mother had had to leave on urgent, but secret business. And Ruthie looked pleadingly at Roxana who agreed that Carmilla could join them at Misselthwaite, assuring Carmilla that it would be no trouble at all.
Herman had traveled with Buffalo Bill's circus after the Great Exhibition, and had spent some time in America, where, when drunk, he had talked about the odd journal of Johann Jakob Ringler, who had sold the secret of porcelain in the early 1700s to fund his vampire hunting. Herman had never seen a vampire, but he spun a great yarn about it over drinks.
Some weeks or months later, Robert Roosevelt came to Buffalo Bill's show and stayed for the after party. He got to talking about vampire bats, and Herman got to talking about vampires, and the two had a drunken conversation that didn't say much specific, but did end in an agreement that if there were such foul creatures as vampires, they definitely should be destroyed.
Herman returned home Berlin after his tour with Buffalo Bill. In the spring of 1894, he was enjoying a happy retirement with his family when Robert Roosevelt came to pay him a visit. Herman took him to a restaurant, along with the family, and after the family had retired, he and Robert had a talk about hypothetical vampires and how, if they existed, hypothetically, there might be misguided men who sought to control, rather than to destroy them.
Herman, realizing that this was no longer a conversation about hypotheticals, agreed that such men were very foolish and asked to know everything. Robert said that all he knew was that a group of concerned people in Germany had become aware that a group of people in England were trying to do this and had sent a man of their own, albeit one who had not been told exactly what was going on. They had lost touch with this man and did not know if a vampire had been located or brought to England.
Liesl found her cousin looking terrible in the nuns' care in Budapest -- and wearing a crucifix.
Liesl: So you've converted now? You're going to marry a Christian girl and break your parents' hearts? You couldn't marry a nice Czech girl? (to a nun) And what's with all this garlic? And open these windows -- get a breeze in!
Nun: The closed window protects again ill airs.
Liesl: You do know that this is the nineteenth century, yes?
She questioned Immanuel, who told her that he wasn't sure whether or not he was going crazy and wanted her to tell him. He got agitated, and she gave him a shot of morphine to calm him down. Then, she found his journal, written in Yiddish, which, as the player reminded me, uses the Hebrew alphabet. Of course, the author identified himself as Jonathan Harker.
This was the first four chapters of Dracula Unredacted, minus the annotations -- and with parts re-written for this campaign. Harker in the novel is an outsider, looking somewhat patronizingly at the strange culture and people of the lands through which he is passing. Hildescheim is a Jewish man who's done a fair bit of traveling throughout Europe. So, I tried to cut some of Harker's "and I saw this quaint, if faintly disturbing, thing", and to rewrite some of it, as well as to rewrite certain sections.
The player, quite understandably, skimmed it rather than read all 30+ pages on the spot. She missed a couple of details-by-omission.
For example, when Immanuel awoke, Liesl demanded to know who "Wilhemina Murray" was -- a nice trick, given that Harker ONLY refers to her as "Mina" in my version -- and, so far as I know, in the redacted and unredacted version of the first four chapters. The player also thought that Harker / Hildescheim had been bitten. This is not the case as far as the text of either version of the novel or my revision go. It is the case in at least a couple of movie versions, including, of course, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. And, of course, it's alway possible to add that, but I didn't, as I'd changed the nature of the creatures Hildescheim / Harker sees in the castle.
Hildescheim explained that "Mina" was actually "MINA" and stood for "Militarisch NachrichtenAbteilung", his employer. He was spying on England for Germany.
Liesl: You're working for the Germans, now?
Her cousin protested that they were the ones a) paying him and b) blackmailing him about certain indiscretions in his past, and after all, didn't she like the money flowing from him to her, rather than the other way around?
Liesl: Like the money you bilked me of in Paris?
Immanuel: I paid that back!
Liesl: Less ten francs, and you had me take you out to dinner!
Immanuel: I paid it all back, and _I_ took _you_ out to dinner!
Liesl: ... We remember things differently.
Immanuel: I think we are going to remember Budapest very differently.
That last was a nod to the Avengers movie. But, indeed, I suspect player and GM may also remember things differently. I recall specifying at the end of the Fiasco session that Immanuel paid back all of the money he owed Liesl.
In any case, Liesl now understood a few important things.
Liesl: So, that's why you shaved your beard.
She thought about having her colleague Sigmund Freud take the case, but Immanuel wasn't sure that was a good idea. He'd placed himself in Liesl's hands because she was family.
Liesl: Sigmund _is_ family. Sort of.
But, she agreed to change tactics, and got her cousin's permission to hypnotise him. Have I mentioned that Hypnosis is Liesl's MOS?
Now, it didn't make sense to me that she'd uncover any proof of the supernatural per se, or any post-hypnotic commands. It was a bit too early for the first, and the second didn't exist. Still, I noted that, while Immanuel absolutely believed what he'd written, there were some very odd things in his journal. For example, Dracula's coach rides back and forth along the Borgo Pass several times, and then suddenly takes a sidepath of which Immanuel had been unaware of until that moment. Sidepaths don't usually appear out of nowhere. Also, when he returned to the part of Dracula's castle where he'd been threatened by the three creatures, that door wasn't there -- the hallway simply dead-ended.
Liesl decided that consulting Sebastian would be a good idea. Hildesheim wasn't so sure. After all, Sebastian was English, and he'd been spying on the English!
Liesl wrote to Sebastian anyway, but was vague on details, and left out any mention of her cousin being a spy, I believe.
Sebastian, meanwhile, watched Archibald develop his photos. Logically, with de Ville absent, if the oddity were de Ville, all the photos should be normal. But, the photos of Camilla had a lesser version of the same stain or discoloration -- nothing as bad as the death's head, but bad enough.
Intrigued, Sebastian wrote to Herman. Sure, Sebastian knew Photography and Chemistry, but Herman knew Mechanics. This might be more up Herman's alley.
Roxana got her new houseguest settled. Carmilla tended to sleep in and eat little. Lieutenant Bridgwater paid a social call on Ruthie.
And young Edgar tugged at his mother's skirts and whispered in her ear that he had seen faeries. This, understandably, blew all lesser matters out of Roxana's head.
That is, it is understandable when one realizes that Roxana saw faeries when she was a child. At her brother Archibald's suggestion, she left food out for the faeries. But, one day, her other brother, Neville, spoiled all the food and the areas where she'd seen the faeries, and she had never been able to see them since that day.
She'd spoken of this to her husband early on in their courtship. She wanted to believe in faeries and the supernatural. Lord Earnest was certainly prepared to believe in the supernatural. But, both of them were intelligent enough to want actual proof; neither wanted a clever hoax.
Edgar took his mother to a part of the garden where a small toadstool ring stood. The toadstools were normal to Whitby, but they had not been there the day before. Delighted, Roxana picked the boy up and spun him around in the air.
Edgar (also delighted): Whee!
Roxana showed the ring to her husband and wrote at once to Sebastian.
Sebastian had, at this point, two mysteries: Archibald's photos and Roxana's faeries. He had not yet received Liesl's letter. Well, Archibald's mystery was clearly a mundane mystery with a technical solution, and he had already sent for Herr Sager. Lady Roxana's mystery was clearly a supposed supernatural event that needed to be debunked. He purchased a train ticket for Whitby, writing a second letter to Herman to advice him that he had gone on to Whitby and to give Herman the address of Misselthwaite Manor. Naturally, Sebastian received Liesl's letter the day he left for Misselthwaite.
He listened to Roxana's account with interest and looked at the toadstool ring. His priorities were clear.
Sebastian: It's Science that must be the judge.
Roxana (not without a sense of humor): Ah, my earstwhile enemy.
Sebastian then spoke to Edgar, asking the child if he understood the difference between what he saw and what he wanted to see. After a few moments of conversation, we agreed that Sebastian was using the Interrogation skill on the 4 year old. This was oddly charming.
Herman arrived in London, as Sebastian's letter gave him a convenient excuse to look into the matter that worried Robert Roosevelt. Herman's first order of business was to pay a visit to Archibald's studio and confirm (via Bullshit Detector) that the artist was not himself playing a practical joke. But, Archibald was entirely honest, and worried that his camera was broken, as he could not afford to purchase another.
Indeed, Archibald, like many artists, had the art vs money dilemma. Many people wanted him to photograph or paint wedding pictures, which was lucrative and hence useful, but this kept him from creating pictures for art galleries and salons. Herman was a bit blunt in his lack of understanding of Archibald's "modern" style of art. He set out for Misselthwaite manor, where he and Sebastian discussed a way to set up time-delay photography.
Meanwhile, Liesl decided to do some research. The player asked how far the Borgo Pass is from Budapest, and I made a mental note that I need to be better prepared with maps and distances. But, we all figured that this was something that wasn't an easy daytrip, so Liesl did not go there.
Instead, she first telegraphed and then went to see Herr Leutner in Varna, confirming, several times, that this Count Dracula fellow sent only fifty boxes of dirt to England. This seemed really weird to her.
She tried to discover whether Dracula himself had gone to England, but Herr Leutner knew only that he himself had made no arrangements for the Count's travels.
Still, the boxes of dirt had traveled on the Demeter. Liesl did research, looking for proof that the ship had gone to England. I hadn't prepared this, but I turned on my tablet and read choice excerpts from the article about the mystery ship and from the captain's logbook. Liesl was not impressed by the article.
Liesl: I think the author uses too many words, and _I'm_ Austrian!
She may have written a second letter or telegram to Sebastian. He wrote to her, saying that he was at the Renfields' home of Misselthwaite, and invited her there. He neglected to mention this to the Renfields, of course.
Unaware of Sebastian's lapse in manners and common sense, though I doubt she'd have been surprised at this, Liesl told Immanuel to stay put and not panic. She left for England, taking his journal with her, and translating it into German.
Why German and not English? On the meta level, because she gave it to Herman to read first, and the player decided to make a Preparedness roll to do this. Well, more accurately, the player was willing to do so; the GM saw no reason to charge for "I want to specify Herman gets the crucial infodump." On the narrative level, given that Liesl knew she would be seeing Sebastian and Roxana, but not that she would be seeing Herman, I'm not quite sure why she translated it into German. Maybe it was because she knew German better than English. Actually, that would make sense. And I'm pretty sure that German is closer to Yiddish than English.
Liesl's Player read a draft of this write up and wrote:
-- -- --
So, why German? It's actually a good question, since she was visiting Sebastian, so maybe that needs to be reconned...Liesl has, basically, two native languages: German, her father's language, and French, her mother's native language (she was a Yiddish- and French-speaking Jew from Paris who Jakob met during the 1871 occupation of Paris while in the Red cross.) Liesl keeps her journal in French, but her everyday correspondence is in German and damned if I know which one she thinks in.
So her first instinct in translating anything would probably be to put it in German, and it is closer to Yiddish. From that, she'd probably make a version in English, which is only a second language for her. Probably the easiest thing to do is assume she made two copies, one in German for herself, one in English for Sebastian.
-- -- --
At Misselthwaite Manor, Ruthie was very tired and complained of nightmares. The toadstool ring was growing remarkably fast -- expanding in diameter. Sebastian tested the soil and confirmed that it was somehow supercharged with nutrients. He also took pictures of everyone in the manor except for Carmilla, whose hours seemed to mean they kept missing each other. But Ruthie promised to tell Carmilla that Sebastian wanted to photograph her. After all, that would please Carmilla, and Sebastian was still unattached and quite eligible.
Edgar took Roxana to the fairy ring. When Sebastian had arrived, it was about 9 inches in diameter. It was now nearly 12 inches in diameter -- and Roxana saw that it had opened onto a cave in the ground, with steps leading down. Tears of joy poured down her face, even though it was too small for her to enter. Her son explained that Roxana was the queen of the faeries. He thought that this was why they could see it, but he didn't think anyone else would be able to. He wasn't sure about his father. He loved his father very much, but he understood, at least vaguely, that his father wasn't close enough blood kin to his mother. But, he said, the new baby would be able to see the faeries and the cave. Roxana picked Edgar up and spun him around again.
Returning to Sebastian and Herman, Roxana found the men discussing animatedly how they would do time delay photography.
Roxana: What are you doing?
Herman: Preparing a big explosion! (realizing how that sounds) To cause a big light. Sebastian's come up with an amazing plan --
Roxana: To cause a big light?
Naturally, it was at this moment that Roxana's parents arrived. After all, they reasoned, Lieutenant Bridgewater was going to propose to Ruthie, and it would make things ever so much easier if he didn't have to go back and forth between London, where they lived, and Misselthwaite in Whitby, where Ruthie was staying. Naturally, Roxana would agree to put them up.
Roxana and Earnest had their usual silent conversation on the matter with the usual silent resigned agreement to allow the Craven parents to stay at the manor. I believe somewhere around here, Herman realized that Ruthie had all the symptoms of a vampire attack as described in the journal of Johann Jakob Ringler. Ringler spent some time trying to track down a vampire who was called Countess Mircalla Karnstein.
Things were getting more than a little chaotic at this point.
Liesl's Player: This is the moment when the butler announces, "Madam, there is a Jewess here to see you."
That sounded good to me. Herman had started examining, or at least questioning, Ruthie, but was happy to turn things over to Liesl.
Roxana: You're the closest thing to a doctor I have.
Liesl asked Ruthie in French if she might be pregnant.
Ruthie (in bad French): Not unless you can get pregnant from just kissing.
Herman asked Liesl to check Ruthie's body for bite marks. Liesl took Ruthie off to check. The others asked Carmilla if she had been having trouble sleeping, and she said that she had.
Ruthie had two bite marks on her breast and a very fast pulse. She had dreamed about a needle puncturing her about three nights ago, and Liesl muttered about Englishwomen too stupid to notice bitemarks on themselves. She also said that the bitemarks should have healed more by now. She did not understand how Ruthie could be anemic, how she could have lost so much blood -- it wasn't from menstruation or a miscarriage -- but she did recommend a diet change including leafy vegetables, but no schmaltz.
Herman and Sebastian then sent Liesl to Carmilla. Carmilla said she'd been sleeping badly, but had not felt or dreamed any bites or needles or other sharp piercings. She remembered dark shapes, finding herself in Ruthie's bedroom, and, oddly, off having dreamed of Ruthie, as Ruthie was now, but a dozen years ago.
Liesl was skeptical, thinking it more likely that Carmilla had revised her memory. She examined Carmilla's mouth with a small mirror. Carmilla's breath was foul. Carmilla did have a regular pulse. But, the mirror did not fog from her breath -- and did not show any of her mouth!
Liesl's Player: I'll just roll for Stability loss.
Actually, I was using the Fixed Stability Loss table Liesl's Player had created, and we agreed that this felt like a 2 point loss. Well, a 2 or 3 point loss, and it was early in the campaign, so I figured two points made more sense.
Carmilla fainted. Liesl left the room, closing the door behind her and went to get the others. She returned to the room with Herman and Roxana -- only to find the room empty of occupants.
Liesl's Player: I'll take that third point of Stability loss now.
Roxana watched in annoyance as Liesl, who had, in the past, accused Roxana of being overly excitable, moved around the room, frantically searching for the missing Carmilla.
Roxana: Under no circumstances are you to destroy any part of my house!
Ruthie arrived to say that Carmilla's mother had just sent a coach for her. Yes, right that very moment!
Liesl found an actual secret passage. In retrospect, I should have had a character sheet or my spread sheet in front of me, as none of us remembered whether or not Architecture was a skill in NBA (it is), but having it cost a point of Notice won't break anything.
Sebastian joined the group, having developed his photographs. While Archibald's photos of Ruthie and Roxana had turned out just fine, Sebastian's photos showed the same irregularities, although to nowhere near as great a degree as Archibald's photographs of Carmilla. Photographs of Ruthie showed far more sign of the irregularities than photographs of Roxana. Photographs of the 4-year-old Edgar also showed such irregularities.
Roxana was even more annoyed that Liesl had _found_ a secret passage -- and in Roxana's own home! Roxana should have been the one to discover it!.
As I hadn't made up what was on the other side of the door, folks agreed that this was a fine place for a cliffhanger ending. We scheduled a session for the following week, so I shall have to figure this out quickly!
-- -- --
Liesl's Player suggested these dates, which I think will work well:
The entries in the journal, purely conjectural at this point, have:
3 April 1894: Liesl arrives in Budapest
4-6 April: Liesl treats Immanuel.
10 April: Liesl in Varna, telegraphs Sebastian for the second time.
The Orient Express, which actually ran from Budapest to Varna (!) took four days to go from Paris to Istanbul; so that seems about right
~15-20 April: Liesl arrives at Misslewaithe
