UK Books! Brighton World Fantasy Convention 2025

I have returned! 

Frankly, half the plane was coughing, spitting and imitating the soon-to-be-deceased so I expect any minute now I'll start imitating the Exorcist.

[brief follow-up: I did indeed catch the flibble or whatever it was flying across the friendly skies and spent the week following my return coughing, sniveling and otherwise illing. Che sera, sera. But I did play Dispatch three times, soo ...] 

While I have the energy to type, let me tell you about books, and about the one that got away.

Bought at World Fantasy Con 2025, Brighton, from various vendors:

The Dagon Collection: An Auction Catalogue of Items Recovered in the Federal Raid on Innsmouth, Mass (ed. Nate Pedersen.2024 PS Publishing)

The Starry Wisdom Library: the Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time (ed. Nate Pedersen, 2014 PS Publishing).

No prizes for guessing why these two appealed to me. I haven't read either yet and expect to data mine these for interesting ideas rather than fall prone in ecstasy at the prose, but you never know your luck. I look forward to having items from both catalogues appear in subsequent campaigns I might run.

Night's Black Agents, (Fritz Leiber short story collection, Sphere 1977)

Uncle Silas (Sheridan LeFanu, Transworld 1966). 

You can't beat the gothics, and while Leiber's more of a modern I can't help but think of him in the gothic class. There's something about his word choice, his stylfgfsdse, that makes me put him in that group. I look forward to reading them both; I tried to get into Uncle Silas on the plane but that was a mistake. You can't concentrate on a long haul flight. I watched Mr. Vampire: Vampire vs Vampire instead.

The Pirate Queen: an almost-true story about Grace O'Malley (Charlie Hill, 2022 Stairwell Books)

The Go-To Guy (Neal Hardin, 2018 Stairwell Books)

Both bought on a whim and I haven't read either yet, though I have started Go-To Guy. It's a laugh, but I don't take it seriously, which is probably why I haven't finished it yet.

Audition for the Fox (Martin Cahill, 2025 Tachyon). 

Bought on a whim, and I haven't started it yet. I like the idea, but by God the vendor made it difficult to spend money. I think the Americans were hoping that the buyers at a World conference were all going to be English and planned accordingly. That was silly of them.

Korean Folk & Fairy Tales (ed. JK Jackston, 2025 Flame Tree).

A very pretty little thing. K-Pop Demon Hunters made me realize I don't know as much about Korean folklore as I ought, so I figured I'd rectify that omission. 

Cold Steel: Book II Fire Heart (Joyce Ch'ng, 2025 Snowy Wings).

Bought from the author. Again, I haven't had chance to more than glance at it. I look forward to it.

Now, for a few things I didn't buy at the con, some of which I've actually read:

Strange Houses (Uketsu, translated Jim Rion, 2025 Pushkin Press)

The Samurai Detectives (Shotaro Ikenami, translated Yui Kajita, originally 1973, Penguin 2025).

Both bought at Waterstones. Samurai Detectives is vol 1; vol 2 isn't due until Feb 2026. This is the first time Ikenami-san's work has appeared in English. I've read both and highly recommend them to anyone who likes action, swordplay, historical drama (Samurai Detectives) and peculiar, terrible horrors (Strange Houses). 

Soldiers Three/Under the Deodars/Phantom Rickshaw (Rudyard Kipling, publisher unknown, publication date unknown, hardback rebound edition of works originally published at the turn of the century).

I don't know what to make of this one. It must be a reproduction but I've no idea who put it together or when. The only clue I have is a notation on the inner cover: bound by W.J. Askew, Plymouth. It's a hardbound version collecting three shorter paperbound volumes. Each paperbound is a faithful copy of books that would have been sold for One Rupee via the Indian Railway Library. I can't help but think this must be one volume from a larger Kipling repro collection of some kind, though it's not labeled as such and there's no indication on the frontispiece or back pages. It's a completely faithful copy right down to the advertisements, so if ever you wanted to know what was on offer back in 1890-whatsit, now you can. Probably very useful for those of you who like to mock-up props; a scanner and better Photoshop skills than mine will serve you well. Not sure when the reproduction was issued. Guessing by quality of hardcover, paper and spotting I'd say probably 1970s, but honestly it's a complete guess. Bought at Oxfam, Greenwich.

More Penguin Science Fiction; Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (ed. Brian Aldiss, Penguin 1964 & 1966).

Classic science fiction which means there shall be all sorts of unintended comedy, but I look forward to it. Various authors, of course. Bought at Just Vintage, Greenwich Market.

A brief word on the one that got away. 

Just Vintage has in its collection a first edition of an M.R. James publication, 1911, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Selling for a little under 700 quid. Now, I'm a huge fan, as you know. I was greatly tempted. But our climate is death to books of that sort, never mind the roaches, and I'd be heartbroken if I was indirectly responsible for destroying such a thing as this, after a hundred years. So I left it on the shelf and am still gnashing teeth. 

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe includes Why Did The Well Wheel Creak (Seishi Yokomizo, translation Brian Karetnyk, 2025 Pushkin Press)

Suddenly At His Residence (Christianna Brand, British Library edition 2023, first published 1946)

Tour de Force (Christianna Brand, Library edition 2024, first published 1955)

All bought at Foyles.

I've a lot of respect for Brand as a plotter of mysteries. She plays fair. You know going in that you've as much information as you need to identify the culprit. You also know that your odds of doing so are next to nil. I've read both and can recommend to period mystery lovers. No, I didn't solve the crimes. 

Yokomizo-san is someone I've read before and enjoyed. He's basically pulp mystery; strange corpses, lashings of blood, peculiar and horrific events. Like Brand, Yokomiso-san plays fair. Also like Brand, odds are you won't work out who did it. Read this in the airport going home, can thoroughly recommend. 

The Sutra of Pale Leaves, (various authors/artists, Chaosium 2025)

Alien Clay, (Adrian Tchaikovsky, Subterranean Press 2025)

Both gifts, and I'm incredibly grateful.

I haven't had time to more than glance at Sutra, but from what little I've seen it's exactly the kind of campaign I'd enjoy. The Yellow King is one of those entities that deserves an artistic touch and by the looks of things that's exactly what it gets. I particularly like Chapter 4: the Pallid Masks of Tokyo - such an interesting idea!

What did I think of the convention? I liked it a lot. It lacks the go-to and busyiness of an American convention. It's less focused, less well organized. But it has a heart that some American conventions lack. I confess to a little bias in that I like Brighton very much and thoroughly enjoy visiting there. I had a little time to wander round and, if you find yourself in Brighton, I think you should visit Snoopers Paradise, the all-for-all flea market. Also, Coho is a great way to start the day with coffee and danish. 

Would I go again? I'm thinking about it. I'm told the 2027 con is in Canada and that's a hell of a lot easier to get to, from my perspective. I am in absolutely no hurry to make it to California in 2026. Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening. But Canada? Canada's doable. 

Finally, uncle Kevin.

I stopped by Raining Books. It's as I remember. Shut up, of course. Lord knows what's going to happen to the place and I dread to think what the condition of the books in there is now. Never mind that leaky roof.  It's been nearly a year, and I doubt the builders have been in to patch anything up. But I was grateful to have the chance to stop by and say farewell. His ex-wife left a lovely tribute to his memory up on the door, and there were other posts as well.

See you later, mate.   

 

 

November Madness!

OK, I fly off to the Brighton UK World Fantasy thingummygig tomorrow and will be incommunicado for two weeks! If anyone needs to keep in touch for that period best bet is Bluesky, and if you're not already aware you can get me at @karloff0734.bsky.social. I will try to post a couple Skies while there but otherwise will be enjoying the time off and dealing with family stuff.

I'll drop by what used to be Raining Books, my uncle's Brighton bookshop, but only to say farewell. I know a couple of you used to visit the shop and by now you'll be aware he died earlier this year. I'm not sure what state the building's in; I expect it will be passing into new hands by now, if it hasn't already.

Question for the hivemind! If someone like me were to dip their toes into online, what virtual tabletop best suits Cthulhu or modern gaming? Roll20 is the obvious one. It does pretty much everything, and Kickstarter promises all kinds of other virtual TT experiences. Which, in your opinion, is the best of the bunch? Looking at user friendly as much as options available; I want to use my time wisely. 

Now, let's dabble in travel and suppose that your Bookhounds are travelling from London to Brighton in search of whatever they may find. They may have a definite object or they may just be on the knock, trying to source some rarities by knocking on doors to see what can be had.

One route to Brighton, as The Brighton Road (Charles G Harper) helpfully illustrates, takes the Hounds through Horley, where they might find the Six Bells Inn:

The nearest neighbour to the church is the almost equally ancient “Six Bells” inn, which took its title from the ring of bells in the church tower. Since 1839, however, when two bells were added, there have been eight in the belfry.

The stranger, foregathering with the rustics at the “Six Bells,” and missing the old houses that once stood near the church and have been replaced by new, very quickly has his regrets for them cut short by those matter-of-fact villagers, who declare that “ye wooden tark so ef ye had to live in un.” A typical rustic had “comic brown-titus” acquired in one of those damp old cottages, and has “felt funny” ever since. One with difficulty resisted the suggestion that, if he could be as funny as he felt, he should set up for a humorist, and oust some of the dull dogs who pose as jesters.

The Six Bells still exists today. Judging by the image, its exterior has barely changed in a hundred years. If it was called Six Bells in 1839 the suggestion is that it's been on that spot for many years prior. From the Hounds' POV, the Six Bells is at least a hundred years old and probably older. The rumor of a passage underneath the inn that leads to the church is an old tale; there isn't an inn pub in existence that hasn't had that story told about it.

Church Inns aren't uncommon, particularly in the UK. 

This is the third edition of Brighton Road, published 1922, so most of the facts (or purported facts at least) will be relevant to 1930s Hounds. Though the book doesn't say, I'm guessing those houses close to the Church were owned by the Church. If the author misses them in 1922 then presumably they existed in 1892, when the book was first published.

In any case, fiction can do as it pleases.

Brown-Titus

The Hounds are on their way to Brighton for reasons of their own and have stopped in Horley for a bit to have a pint and pie at the Six Bells before pressing on. 

While there, one of the locals presents them with a scrap of a larger manuscript hoping to sell it to them. The man, John Henry Bristow, is an old resident who lives on charity and a small pension. The Hounds don't know if he realizes what he has, or whether there's more out there.

Four things about the manuscript:

1. It dates to the 1830s and tells a story about something that happened in the 1750s.
2. It's not clear what the something is, but it might be a witch trial that took place locally. There's not enough of it here to be certain about it.
3. The paper and printing are genuine enough. There are peculiar brown stains on the paper which might be mold.
4. ROME. Whatever that may mean in your narrative.

Four things about John Henry:

1. He says he's more than four score and ten and judging by appearances he's in his eighties.
2. There's something hypnotic about his eyes.
3. Nobody at the Six Bells likes him much. If anything, they're scared of him.
4. For someone his age, he moves well and has an iron grip handshake.

John Henry says the rest of the manuscript is at his cottage and will take the Hounds to see it, if they are interested. His cottage isn't far from the Six Bells, but he won't take them there till after dark. He'll want a few pints at the pub first.

Option One: Hideous Cravings.  John Henry found this manuscript stuffed under the floorboards of his cottage. It tells the story of a 17th century trial in which the accused claimed to be a werewolf, and to have suffered this curse after meeting a mysterious dark figure at a nearby crossroads. Anyone with Mythos realizes that this is actually an account of someone becoming a ghoul after encountering another ghoul. While John Henry isn't a ghoul, he's becoming very interested in some ghoulish practices after reading the manuscript and is hoping for a taste of Hound flesh.

Option Two: Hideous Hijinks. John Henry isn't local. He's a plant. One of the Hounds' rivals knew they were on their way to Brighton and is hoping to hold them up long enough so the rival can get to Brighton before they do and scoop the prize, whatever that is. John Henry is a minor Magick user with hypnotic abilities, who will use those abilities to keep the Hounds busy for as long as he can manage it. The manuscript doesn't exist and never did. John Henry Bristow is an assumed name; the Hounds might recognize him as Lewis Ackerman, a Book Scout with some acting talent.

Option Three: Hideous Mold. There is no John Henry Bristow. What passes as him is actually a mold colony that grows in one of the last remaining old cottages clustered near the Church. The Colony uses the John Henry illusion to collect new building material - like the Hounds. Think of it like a vampire but made of fungi. It knows better than to attack the locals, who might decide to destroy it; but outsiders are fair game. The mold keeps Horley people in check by clouding their minds with its spores; the Hounds may realize the locals are under what amounts to mass hypnosis, which may be their only warning that John Henry is not what he appears to be.

That's it for this week! Enjoy!

The Big Bad City (RPG All)

Once again, inspired by Baldur's Gate 3. 

After over 200 hours noodling on other playthroughs (got to see how Gale does it, nearly had a Dark Urge moment - but that's for a different discussion) I've finally reached the city proper. No, the nice auntie was not able to homeopath me back to health but I have had some refreshingly direct discussions with my Githyanki physician. I'm sure the psychological trauma will wear off. Eventually. 

Now I get to see how the dev team handled city building. It's interesting, certainly. You are kinda left with the impression that the city exists for player characters to experience, but I suppose the same argument could be made for, say, New York. Every tourist thinks that New York was built for them alone because they only ever see those bits of New York that were built with tourists in mind. Students at CUNY probably feel the same way, at least in their first year, before they start stepping out of their comfort zone. When in a curated environment everything seems built for you, until you start looking for the things that aren't.

When designing an urban environment of the fictional variety it's usually a good idea to look at how it's been done before and by that I do not mean 'how did Tolkein do it?' No, I mean how did we do it, and the answer can be found in the oddest of places. 

It depends on what kind of fiction you intend to write. For Keepers and Trail GMs, I always recommend Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen, followed by Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, and then, if you're really ambitious, Big Change: America transforms itself, 1900-1950. There is no better coverage of the period. If you really want to go gonzo nuts then Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd is worth your time but it's a bit of a brain-breaker. 

The point being that you do not know what tools you have to play with until you look into the box and see those tools for what they are. There are always ideas you haven't thought of. Concepts that never occurred to you, worries that you never knew anyone had, and you won't have the slightest idea until you go looking for them. Or to put it another way, until you start looking for the things that aren't built for you, you don't know what's really out there.

Let's say this is a fantasy setting. What resources exist?

Well, Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a damn good start. If you, as an author, can read that without blushing and confessing, perhaps through gritted teeth, that you too have been to Fantasyland, then you're a better author than I.

However, if you're looking for a fantasy city (or possibly a fantasy village) then I highly recommend Joseph & Frances Gies' Life In A Medieval City, or Life In A Medieval Village. Perhaps followed by a dessert course of Myddle by Richard Gough, if you enjoy period pieces. Life in a burgher's household, big business, small business, the church, the condition of the streets, books and authors, disasters, fairs - it's all here. A moveable feast of material. 

What kind of feast? 

Well, taking a look at Life In A Medieval Village: 'One holiday, Wake Day, the feast of the local parish saint, varied from place to place. Probably in the 13th century, as later, the villages kept vigil all night, in the morning heard Mass in honor of their patron saint, then spent the day in sports. Often the churchyard was turned into a sports arena, a usage deplored by the clergy ...'[p102]

Let's say this is Ravenloft. In that setting there is the Church of Ezra. 'Pious souls in various domains pray to Ezra, an aloof god who embodies the Mists ... With no domain-spanning organization, the church serves largely as a formalization of local superstitions ...' 

It's reasonable to think that, in at least some of the Ravenloft realms, Ezra may have local saint figures or provincial heroes who fill the same role. Or that Ezra has different aspects, just as in, say, Greek mythology where Zeus has many aspects:  Zeus Agoreus, Zeus Xenus, and so on.

Let's say that this is Mordent. Ravenloft's equivalent of Hammer Horror Cornwall/Kent/Sussex. Mist-shrouded coastline with a ghostly secret.

Captain Clegg (1962, Peter Cushing)

Now we have:

The Demon Fiddler

The characters arrive in Oxney, which overlooks Lazarette Rock, just before its annual feast. The Chapel, the only building in Oxney made of stone, plays unwilling host to the feast; the priest, Berriman, does their best not to intrude, as the last priest who did was run out of town. By tradition the villagers gather in the churchyard for the celebration, eating specially prepared cakes over the graves of their forebears, telling stories of ships at sea and the fabled Lazarette Rock, where the long-term contagious are, by tradition, left, so as not to spread their sickness to healthy folk. In the morning, again by tradition, there is a service, followed by sports, games and a ritual dance, again all in the churchyard for the benefit of the dead. This ritual, it's said, keeps the dead quiet in their graves. Not walking about or harming honest folk.

This year the service is attended by a Tiefling Bard (College of Spirits) who has never visited Oxney before. Nobody knows where the bard, Ariala, came from. Some claim she arrived all alone, by boat, from Lazarette Rock. Whether she came from there or somewhere else, she has unsettling tales to tell about the people of Oxney and the priest, Berriman. 

In the morning Ariala is found dead. How did she die? 

Option One: Unfriendly Dead. In Mordent nobody ever rests. The dead linger, and in Oxley the dead don't like having their stories told. It was the grasping hands of Oxley's ghosts that did for the bard but, in so doing, presented themselves with a problem. Now Ariala is one of the dead and, so long as she stays in Oxley, it will forever be feast night, where the villagers must appease the Demon Fiddler all night long ...

Option Two: Wicked Priest. The Bard dropped too many hints that she knew about Berriman's dealings with those out on Lazarette Rock. The priest slips the long-term sick shipments of luxuries to make their interment more pleasant, but each trip back and forth increases the risk of spreading diseases to the parishioners of Oxley. Now that dead Bard's ghost haunts the churchyard where she died, and Berriman's not about to reward adventurers who start asking why that should be.

Option Three: Ezra's Burden. There never was a Bard. There was a servant of Ezra, sent to warn the people of Oxley that their transgressions were going too far. When the people of Oxley turned their back on the Bard, Ezra turned her back on the people of Oxley. Now the church cannot protect the village, Oxley will soon know what it's like when its dead are no longer confined to the churchyard by yearly rituals of cake and storytelling ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

The Small God of Belluccia Bridge (Swords of the Serpentine)

The phrase small gods make a lot of people think of the Pratchett novel of the same name. I first encountered the idea in the Fritz Leiber short story Lean Times in Lankhmar, where barbarian Fafhrd becomes the shaven-headed devotee of a very peculiar God and his long-time companion Mouser tries to drink him out of it. 

In our world probably the closest equivalent is Mecca, pre-Muhammad. Before the Prophet captured Mecca and turned it into the heart of Islam Mecca was a hotbed of paganism, home to all sorts of since-forgotten gods. This was probably a relic of Mecca's trading post past; where the world's peoples gather and worship, peculiar practices become the norm. You might walk down any street - in Lankhmar it would have been the Street of the Gods where deities rise and fall by their position on that ill-destined thoroughfare - and find a divine who predates Rome and is now all but erased from history.

Mind you, as Leiber put it:

... the gods have very sharp ears for boasts, or for declarations of happiness and self-satisfaction, or for assertions of a firm intention to do this or that, or for statements that this or that must surely happen, or any other words hinting that a man is in the slightest control of his own destiny. And the gods are jealous, easily angered, perverse, and swift to thwart ...

With all that in mind: 

The Small God of Belluccia Bridge

Location: under the shadow of the Well of Tears, Ironcross. Some prisoners can see Belluccia Bridge from their cells. It's some distance from the Bridge of Tears, though those unfamiliar with Ironcross sometimes mistake the two.

Description (day): A crossing point between two busy streets and a narrow alley, used mainly by bureaucrats, lawyers, and relatives of those who might find themselves in the Well of Tears. A trick of architecture encourages chill breezes at unexpected moments, threatening the security of wigs and hats. A statue of some unnamed person looks out from the bridge across the waters, their face and features long worn smooth by the touch of unnumbered hands. Those who bother to notice it at all call it the Cheese, and there is a persistent rumor that the Cheese is a nickname of a long-forgotten judge in whose honor the statue was made. Legend has it that if the Cheese favors your case you cannot fail, which is why so many lawyers have caressed its worn face over the years.

Description (night): A lonely and unremembered stretch that seems longer, somehow, and narrower than it does during the day. There is no breeze at night, and the air is, if anything, unnaturally still. Without the bustle of lawyers and clerks Belluccia Bridge echoes at every footfall, and when there's no-one around the gentle lap-lap of the water below becomes oppressive, as if each watery caress is the tick of an eternal clock slowly winding down to nothing. There is a statue of a sharp-faced man here whose staring eyes seem to follow every visitor. In one hand he holds a dirk, in the other a key. The key, a symbol of knowledge, is in the left hand which some consider a sign of sorcery - knowledge of sorcerous techniques is called the left-hand path. The dirk, in art and sculpture, is sometimes called the martyr's point.

Rumor: if you seek knowledge or success in a legal cause, you must make your appeal to the Judge at the dead of night at Belluccia Bridge. If your appeal is heard and granted, your action cannot fail. If the Judge can be bribed, as so many earthly judges can, nobody knows what offering would find favor in his eyes.

Danger: At least three people claim to have met a shadowy duelist on Belluccia Bridge. Of those three, only one escaped without injury and there have been seven corpses found in the waters underneath the bridge, all run through the heart, that might be victims of this unknown assailant.

The Small God

all want to learn, but no one is willing to pay the price ...

It calls itself the Balance. When the Well of Tears was first built (and few remember when that was) it came here as the last resort of the unfortunate, the one who put its thumb on the scales of justice to release souls from confinement. 

Not bodies. Souls.

The Balance considers itself a God of Law. However, it's not blind justice. This is the kind of law which, with a nudge and a wink, adjusts the scales in favor of one side or the other. The kind that uses rules of procedure and precedent to get what it wants.

The very first lawyers who came to the Well to see their clients were the first devotees of the Balance and they learned a great deal about their profession from the God. However, despite its blandishments it could never persuade any of these clerks and scriveners to become its champion, its proselytizer.  They took; they did not give back.

In time the Balance soured.  It forgot why it settled beneath the Well of Tears and began to obsess about the lost and damned inside the jail, the ones who never saw trial, who vanished inside its innards. It forgot the law. It forgot precedent and justice. It wanted revenge. 

It whispered at night to the duelist Lorenzo Vasari, betrayed by his employer and left to rot in jail for an assassination disguised as a legitimate duel. Vasari wanted out; his lawyer kept promising freedom but never delivered. Lorenzo came to believe that the statue he could see from his cell was speaking to him at night, that it knew a way out of the Well and would help him - for a price. 

It did know a way out. Now Lorenzo is the skeletal duelist, strong right hand of the Small God who will take vengeance on those who displease it. At its urging Lorenzo comes out of the water below, slime oozing from its ruined finery, its sword still gleaming bright.

The Balance still offers legal advice to those who know how to ask for it, and it will lend its supernatural support to those willing to work in its service. It can get souls out of the Well. It may even be able to get bodies out too; nobody can say for sure.

If it is displeased, it has its strong right hand. Vasari has the stats of a duelist (p47) and the weakness of a skeletal giant (p197). Vasari cannot be defeated unless its Health and Morale are both at 0, and Morale regenerates at the end of every round. Vasari cannot die so long as the Small God remains at Belluccia Bridge, but he can be defeated and if that happens he sinks beneath the water. He will be able to return the next night. 

There is one special condition that will rid Eversink of Vasari for good. If it can be proven to the duelist that both its lawyer and its former employer are dead, Vasari will be released from the Balance's service and never be seen again.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Floating Dragon Bar (Swords of the Serpentine)

Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Black Lagoon

Let's take some of the principles we've used for Bookhounds and plant them in Serpentine soil.

Assumptions I'm making: this is a Family Business chronicle set in Sag Harbor, the least salubrious part of Eversink. There's no useful law, no second chances. If you fail here, it's a shallow (or watery) grave for you. 

The Family Business runs a night market stall that sells beers of all kinds, brewed by the family in hidden breweries. Given it's Sag Harbor I'm assuming the local water sources are mostly hard (full of minerals) and better suited for stouts than pilsners. The players, as the owners of the business, get to decide what kinds of stout they make, how they sell it, and all the other things that go with running a successful business.

Finally, of the many possible OPFOR I'm assuming that the Monstrosities are the main villains. Other factions powerful in Sag Harbor are Commoners, Sorcerous Cabals and Thieves Guilds. There are plenty of other options of course, but I don't want to get bogged down in the fantasy version of feature creep. Those four will do. 

I'm calling the Family Business the Floating Dragon purely for illustrative purposes. I'd expect the players to actually name it and come up with its features but this is an example, not a full-fledged chronicle. The Floating Dragon sells beer. That means they need a stall, a place to set out their equipment, advertising, servers, security, maybe a barker. All these are roles the players can take, or they can invent new ones. 

So, where does that leave us? In the Night Market - at least to begin with. That's where the action happens. That's the Building, in this narrative.

A night market is where you go to find cheap, small things, easily portable. You don't go there to buy a grand piano. Street food, yes. Illegal stuff, yes. Drugs, books, toys, ornaments, cloth, jugglers, performers of all kinds. Minor sorceries, perhaps. Peculiar carnivals. Freak shows ...

In Eversink everyone knows about Night Markets (or think they do) and even the wealthy and privileged might sneak out of their walled mansions to wander round a Night Market, perhaps in disguise. More often the people you see there are the poor, the desperate, the ones out for a bargain who don't care how they get it.

The Night Market is the focus of the game, Sag Harbor is the outlying district (ie. the place where things not part of the focus happen) and the rest of Eversink is, from the characters' POV, terra nova. They've never been. They know it exists; they've heard all kinds of stories. But from the chronicle's perspective Eversink is London and the characters are on Great Junction Street, Edinburgh. They might as well be on the moon.

For that reason the Night Market gets four markers, Sag Harbor one, and Eversink one. That is, the Night Market gets four detailed areas of interest, Sag Harbor one, Eversink one. Each of those markers gets four descriptive features, one of which has to relate back to the main opposition - the Monstrosities, in this instance. Like the Brotherhood of the Pharoah in the Bookhounds example, the Monstrosities are where all this is going. All roads lead to Monsters.

The Night Market

The Strazzaruola are the other family business, the rivals, the no-goods. If a Strazzaruola did it, it must be wrong. Worse than wrong. You never met a Strazzaruola you didn't hate.

Four things:

1. The Strazzaruola run loan sharking in the Night Market and there are few stalls that don't owe them money or favors - often both.
2. Isabetta Strazzaruola is a sorceror, or at least everyone says she is. Dripping with corruption, no doubt.
3. Baldo Strazzaruola is a notorious duelist, when he's not drunk off his ass. Dangerous, certainly - but unpredictable when drunk.
4. Monstrosity: Several Strazzaruola are Drowned.

Zavatera's Marvels is a carnival show with fire-eaters, sword swallowers and the Halls of Mystery. They came from nothing and one day they'll go back to nothing. 

Four Things:

1. Stefano the carnival barker is a truly remarkable public speaker (Firebrand) with a novel line in insults. 
2. Everyone knows you can get sucked, fondled and fingered in the Halls of Mystery - but the price can be more than you may be willing to pay. Stefano keeps a little black book full of potential blackmail victims.
3. Paulina the sword-swallower has a thing going with Baldo Strazzaruola. If you want Baldo and he's not in his usual drinking hole, he's probably in Paulina's hole. If so, he won't be moved.
4. Monstrosity: several of the rattakan-fighting orphans (p 264 main book) have found refuge at the Marvels, but only Paulina believes their stories (and she not very much).

Rocco the Scrivener is a bookseller and letter-writer. He's the one you go to if you want a romantic poem for someone you have your eye on, or a nasty letter sent to a reluctant debtor. He's also the Night Market judge; everyone goes to him to settle disputes.

Four Things:

1. Rocco is in deep with the Sorcerous Cabals, though few know this. He'd do a lot to keep that quiet.
2. Rocco is an accomplished forger who can manage almost anyone's signature. They say at least three aristocratic families owe some very favorable wills to his talented pen.
3. Rocco is an art collector and his house, it's said, is wall-to-wall sculptures, paintings and valuable antiques.
4. Monstrosity: Rocco is a front. A Vampire is using Rocco as a go-between. This bloodsucker lives in Rocco's house and is the one who really likes art; Rocco can't be bothered with the stuff.

Galeazzo's is the light show. If you want candles, lanterns, candelabra, fireworks, illuminations mundane and magical, you go to Galeazzo's stall.

Four Things:

1. Galeazzo has a sideline in narcotics. She calls them Denari's Holly, little pills that make the cares of the world easier to bear. She says she gets them from a private underground stash which in this case is the truth; the fungus she uses comes from the sewers.
2. Her sky lanterns are her biggest sellers; even nobles come to purchase them. Legend has it if you write a wish on one of her lanterns and let it float up to the sky, the wish comes true. 
3. She owes the Strazzaruola a remarkable amount of money and, while she always pays on time, nobody knows what she spends the money on.
4. Monstrosity: Galeazzo thinks she's working as a spy for the Inquisition and uses the money she borrows to pay off informants. In fact, she's working for the Rattakan, and would be horrified if she knew.

That's enough about the Night Market for the moment, and more than enough to kickstart a few plots.

What about Sag Harbor?

This is where you put the small stuff. Remember what was said in the Building:

When designing a setting, think about how people live and what they have to do in order to live well. Not just the big stuff, like which Camarilla faction holds political sway after dark, or whether ghosts are secretly controlling the police force. I mean the small stuff. What do people do for fun? How do they get their food? Do they have light when night falls, and if so how is that managed? What happens when it's hot? What happens in the rainy season?

Four Things:

1. The waters around Sag Harbor are polluted and stinking, and sometimes catch fire. This sudden exhalation is preceded by a peculiar sound, like whales sneezing. Those caught in the blast usually don't last long enough to regret their mistake.
2. The only time Sag Harbor feels clean is when it rains. In downpours people come out to stand in the rain as if it were a crystal-clear waterfall, filling whatever containers they have with rain water. It's the only way to guarantee freshwater supply.
3. There's always barges and carters carrying things to and fro. Night soil, dyes, leathers, meats fresh and not-so-fresh, day in, day out. The best way to get in and out of Sag Harbor without being noticed is by one of these barges, and all the Guilds - Thieves and others - know this. So do the law, but you don't see them poking their noses where it doesn't belong.
4. Monstrosity: the Drowned and the Rattakan are jostling for position in Sag Harbor and while this underground war goes unnoticed by those above, its aftereffects do not. Whole buildings collapse and their demise is blamed on some shifting under-structure; yet those who know the hidden currents understand what really happened.

I could add more about Eversink in general, but hopefully you see the pattern by now. There's enough information to paint a picture, not so much information that the players feel they have no place in the narrative. After all, this picture is about their characters and their stories; it isn't a canvas for you alone.

In each case there are Four Things, one of which is Monstrous since this is a game that ultimately leads to Monsters. So for the Commoners, Sorcerous Cabals and Thieves Guilds - the major factions in Sag Harbor - there will be Four Things. All of them play a part in the narrative too, like cogs in a larger machine. The interaction between these cogs - the Commoners and the Night Market, the Sorcerous Cabals and Sag Harbor, the Commoners and the Thieves Guild and so on - is what provides plot.

Next week I'll start putting some scenario ideas in this Building and see what pops.

Enjoy!

Thank Heaven For That (RPG All)

I've been thinking about the unintended consequences of the absence of God.

There was a time when we took God, or Gods, for Granted. That mountain? God did it. The burning bush over there? God - it's a sign of things to come. A magical King who can cure scrofula just by touching you? God's holy power manifest in His human servant.

We don't do that any more, and one of the unintended consequences of this is that we don't think too much about how having an actual God that does actual Things upon this actual Earth affects plot, in any RPG setting.

For purposes of this post I'm going to assume a Pantheon of fantasy Gods each with their own area of expertise, but your campaign may do things differently.

Point The First: Divine Right of Kings 

It's never entirely clear, in any fantasy setting, how the King got to be first in line at the shiny, pointy hat giveaway. It's just assumed the King is the King, and therefore. 

However, there was a point when in order to be King you had to prove your worth, and more often than not this meant proving your lineage. Perhaps you were a demi-god, the offspring of Zeus or Poseidon. Perhaps you were the son of a demi-god. Perhaps you got the nearest religious authority to crown you, thus showing that God approves of your ascension to the throne. Perhaps you have to perform a miracle, such as curing someone of disease by the touch of your divinely inspired hand.

Whatever your proofs may be, you needed proof of some kind to show that you weren't just a Johnny-come-lately with a sharp knife and a winning smile. Otherwise some Johnny-come-even-more-lately might take your place some day.

The flip side to this is that, if you defy the Gods and take the crown anyway through nefarious means, your Kingdom might be punished for your misdeeds. That's essentially the story of Oedipus Rex.

Overly Sarcastic Productions, Red

How does this affect gameplay? Let me count the ways:

• If your King is the Daughter of Zeus, then another offspring of Zeus might contest them for the Throne by showing off their divine qualifications. The bigger thunderbolt wins.
• Before you can take the Throne you need to visit the Oracle and get its blessing, and that means Side Quest! Plus Festival! Plus possible shenanigans if all is not well at the Oracle ...
• In order to become King you had to create a Divine Something - a well, let's say, that cures all who drink its water. This becomes a pilgrimage site. Then the well stops working, or falls into the hands of some hideous evil. Does this mean you have to stop being King?

Whether or not your adventuring band of misfits are Kings-in-Waiting or just the hired help, they can easily become embroiled in these shenanigans. That Divine Well, for instance, could become a quest site. Do the adventurers want to go there in order to cure, or even resurrect, a companion? Are they hired to go find out why the well ran dry?

In a modern(ish) setting there are far fewer Kings and therefore far fewer reasons to explore this trope, but even then there are ways into the mystery.

Let's say this is Night's Black Agents, with a Damned or Supernatural backstory. For there to be Damnation, there must also be Heaven. It might be a Heaven Denied situation where Lucifer's armies are constantly besieging the Pearly Gates and on the brink of victory, but nevertheless there's a Heaven. Often agents try to brew up Holy Water, if that's a bane, or acquire some divine relic like Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. 

However, that assumes that the agents are worthy of God's favor. Suppose they have to prove their worth before they can wield the powers of Kings? What does that look like?

Fright Night

Point the Second: Pilgrimage and Relics

Kings aren't the only ones touched by God. There are many places, many people, which once were ordinary but now are lumined with Divine favor. Or Satanic, for that matter - Dungeons and Dragons' Ravenloft setting, for instance, is based around the concept of a land irredeemably tainted by evil powers.

It might be an abbey where a Holy Avatar once rested, and left behind a relic. It might be a sinister crossroads where Strahd once committed some hideous act of depravity. Whatever may have happened, it left behind physical evidence and as a consequence became a place where pilgrims gather to pay tribute, or gain unholy powers. 

In history, people went to great lengths to steal relics.  Bishop Hugh of Lincoln once went to France to pay homage to a holy relic of Mary Magdalene, and bit off her fingers in front of the entire congregation so he could carry them back to Lincoln. He would have snapped off her arm, but lacked the strength. 

Some relic vendors made their career, and fortune, out of selling, say, nails from the Holy Cross, or the finger-bones of saints. The wood and nails of the True Cross seem to act on Ship of Theseus principles and there are enough bits of saint scattered about to put together an undead Ziegfeld Follies, but the fact remains that if your church has a bit of saint or scrap of cross then your church is a very very very fine church.

A vendor gets their cash up front but pilgrimage sites made their money after they obtained the relic. Once you have, say, the skull of St. Foy, you can demand golden tribute from every citizen in the locality, and use that gold to make elaborate artefacts for your abbey. It's essentially the same trick the Mafia uses, but with less leg-breaking and property damage. Nice soul you have there. Shame if something were to ... happen to it.

Again, how does this affect gameplay?

• The land is decimated, but not by plague or war; the clerics at the temple have scooped up every available gold piece, leaving nothing behind. They say their relic needs to be properly honored - but is their relic a true relic? Or is Mammon up to its usual trickery?
• The relic dealer says they have a genuine holy item of glorious memory, and if true then your knightly patron wants it - but is it genuine? That's what you have to find out. Potential added moral dilemma: the item is genuine, but the relic dealer stole it from its resting place. 
• In order to cleanse the land of some hideous curse you have to find the artefact that's at the root of it all and carry it to a holy site for cleansing. The skull of the vampire king, say, must be drowned in the Well of St. Dunstan, or the vampire may rise again. Alternatively, the cursed item you just picked up might demand to be taken to an Unholy ritual site, where it can finally fulfil its purpose.

If this is a modern(ish) setting like, say, Trail of Cthulhu, there are all kinds of artefacts you can pick up, but they're usually cursed. The whole point behind Horror on the Orient Express, to name but one, is that you have to go to various unholy sites and pick up dangerous artefacts so you can dispose of them. 

Point the Third: Animals Are Evil

First, thanks to YouTuber Ginny Di whose video about pets inspired this bit, and therefore the entire post. When I heard the age-old cry, 'The DM hates your pets!' my response was 'well, you could always accuse them of murder like in them there olden days - that sounds like an inciting incident if ever I heard one.' The rest of this post followed.

Incidentally if you're keen I highly recommend Hour of the Pig, also known as the Advocate, if you want to see this plotline in action. Also, young Colin Firth. Nudity, and so forth. Fun times.

There was a time when it was considered quite lawful, normal even, to accuse animals of crimes and punish or even execute them. Perhaps your rooster laid an egg, thus proving it was the spawn of Satan. Perhaps your pig committed murder. Perhaps that monkey really is a French spy - better hang him just to be certain.

In some instances the animal trial was a kind of trial-by-proxy. Say a nobleman commits sexual assault, or some other heinous crime. You might not be in a position to accuse, let alone convict, that nobleman. His horse, on the other hand, can be accused - even castrated. By such means are people theoretically above the law punished by the law.

These days we don't believe animals have moral agency and so cannot be held criminally responsible for whatever they may do. However, most RPG settings allow animals elevated rights of one kind or another, or human-level intelligence. Which begs the question, if your horse is so clever it can talk, is it capable of committing crimes - and can it be put on trial?

The anonymous author of Malefactio Animalium argued for two types of animals: those that were beneficial to man, and those that were not. Those which were beneficial had been designated as such by God, and that meant that Satan could work his wicked way on them, much as Satan could do to man. So those animals designated by God to be beneficial could be tempted, could commit evil acts, and thus be punished by law much as humans who committed evil acts were punished. The divine hand of God had effectively intervened, marking some creatures out as capable of doing wrong and therefore capable of being punished for their actions.

Which is an argument that we might consider nonsensical today, but then we don't have an actual God overtly intervening in mortal affairs on a daily basis. Whereas in Dungeons and Dragons and similar fantasy settings there are any number of Gods wandering around intervening in mortal affairs on a daily basis. If not an hourly basis.

It's not unreasonable to think that some of those Gods may have designated certain animals as beneficial to their followers. Elhonna, for example, might have sent a flock of geese to aid her worshippers, perhaps to act as some kind of honking Oracle. Erythnul might have sent some other creature to kill those geese, or corrupted the geese themselves somehow.

Whichever way it goes, it follows that as a God has marked these geese out as being distinct from other animals, the geese can do things other animals can't and shouldn't be treated the same way a so-called ordinary animal is treated. If one of them commits theft or destroys property, should they be put on trial? If a cat kills one, should the cat be accused of murder?

Having considered all that, now let's go further: in cases where the animal has an explicit bond with a person - a spellcaster and their familiar - it's very reasonable to assume that anything the familiar does is explicitly sanctioned by its spellcaster, if not actually an order from the spellcaster. In turn this suggests the spellcaster ought to be held accountable for their familiar's actions. 

Depending on the setting there may be explicit rules for this within the society the spellcaster operates. 

For example, within the Catholic church there's a concept called the ecclesiastical court. For much of the medieval period it was basically impossible to hold any priest accountable for anything, and 'priest' in context often meant 'I speak Latin.' The accused immediately claimed that an ordinary court, even a Royal Justice, had no authority over them; only a priest could judge a priest. 

Within a magical society, where there are actual schools dedicated to teaching magic, I can picture a system in which wizards, say, demand the right to judge other wizards. No ordinary court of justice for them; only their peers have authority. Which in turn would mean that if a wizard's familiar committed a crime and someone tried to punish them for it, the wizard could claim that the court had no authority to act; the familiar would have to be tried by a conclave of wizards. 

So how does this affect gameplay?

• The characters are drafted in to act as legal counsel. A horse trampled a farmer to death, and is put on trial for murder. The local lord is the prosecution. The characters are the horse's defenders. If the characters play their cards right they could walk away from this with a lot of local fame, possibly a boon or two; but if they anger the local lord they could find themselves in very hot water.
• The wizard's familiar is accused of theft, and embarrassingly the jewelry in question is found in the wizard's possession. The familiar swears blind they didn't do it. In fact, the crime was committed by someone else who faked it - perhaps a shapeshifter or druid who was able to make it look as if the familiar did it.
• A holy shrine, well or similar location is polluted and it looks as if animals are to blame; a herd of swine did what swine usually do. The question is, did the pigs act of their own accord or did some supernatural entity push the pigs into action?

As for modern(ish), there tends to be fewer legal consequences for evil animals, but on the other hand there are often more evil animals. Packs of Satanically inspired rats, for instance, or a strange tree with peculiar creatures living in it. Quite often they're used as scouts or intelligence gatherers, occasionally as killers. It can be very useful to give the characters an advance warning of things to come by showing them animals behaving strangely, or flocking where they shouldn't.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Start With Action (Swords of the Serpentine)

 I've been looking forward to talking about Swords of the Serpentine for a very long time. It's on pre-order now; I participated in the playtest and have the Adventurer's Edition; I really want to see the final version.

I thought I'd talk about one-shot design this time out and use Swords as an example. 

A One-Shot is a simple adventure that theoretically can be slotted into any campaign or played as a one-off with disposable characters. It has no significance in a campaign's ongoing plot but can be modified to fit. An ideal one-off is short and simple enough to be played in one session of about 4 hours, more or less. Often the point of a one-off is to teach new players the rules, but it could as easily be used as a filler or special occasion scenario. In Night's Black Agents, The Van Helsing Letter is a one-off. 

Serpentine's Main Rules talk about one-shot construction and offers considerable advice, including:

• Strong Premise: Pick an exciting and adventurous plot hook for the adventure.
• Start with Action: Starting with a short action sequence immediately helps new players focus, and teaches them combat rules in just a few moments.
• Clear Goals: Give the Heroes specific goals for the adventure. Whether that’s “find the idol,” “blackmail the noble,” “uncover the Sorcerer,” or “rob the treasury,” starting with a clear goal gives a one-shot momentum.

Going back to Van Helsing for a moment, and without spoiling too many plot points, that scenario begins with the agents going to a place to do a thing, only to be immediately interrupted by mooks who steal the McGuffin and run away, possibly setting the scene location on fire in the process. That is action. When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand, as Raymond Chandler would say. 

So what makes a premise strong? A premise is strong when it compels action. A knock on the door compels action, a gunshot is more compelling, and the building you're in going up in a blazing inferno is more compelling still. The premise has to make the players want to get up and do something immediately, because that thing, whatever it may be, is important enough to grab their attention and get them moving. 

The old first edition DMG said something about loot that's relevant here:

While it is possible to reduce treasure in these areas to some extent so as to prolong the period of lower costs, what kind of dragon hoard, for example, doesn't have gold and gems? It is simply more heroic for players to have their characters swaggering around with pouches full of gems and tossing out gold pieces than it is for them to have coppers. Heroic fantasy is made of fortunes and king's ransoms in loot gained most cleverly and bravely and lost in a twinkling by various means - thievery, gambling, debauchery, gift-giving, bribes, and so forth. The reality AD&D seeks to create through role-playing is that of the mythical heroes such as Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Kothar, Elric and their ilk. When treasure is spoken of, it is more stirring when participants know it to be TREASURE!

You should apply the same philosophy to your Premise. It's got to be Big. It's got to be Four-Color. This is swords and sorcery, after all. If ever there was a genre where everything is larger than life, it's this one.

Whichever Goal your characters are trying to achieve, it ought to be no more than once sentence long. Devoting paragraphs to backstory and intricate diplomacy is not encouraged. Find the idol is great. Twenty paragraphs describing the idol, those who've sought it over the years, why it's important to an obscure sect of Outlander sorcerers and so on is an appalling waste of time and effort.

Finally, a one-shot needs only one major adversary, and at most one minor adversary. This isn't the time for complicating the narrative with side-plots. The minor adversary doesn't have to be daggers drawn with the characters; it could be a rival, or some troublesome incorruptible City Watchman. This character is there to be the irritant, the foil. not the nemesis. The Villain, on the other hand, is there to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and as bubblegum hasn't been invented yet he's a bit of a monomaniac.

Incidentally for those GMs looking for Serpentine setting-specific NPC naming conventions, I recommend this resource. 

With all that in mind:

Doting Mother

Premise: a Giant Scorpion brought into Eversink to guard sorcerer Tranquilo's tower escaped and is living somewhere in the Tangle, the poorest part of the Goddess Denari's eternal city. Rumor has it that when the scorpion did a bunk it carried off Tranquilo and the wizard's famous Grimoire, and there are plenty of would-be sorcerers who'd pay good money for that book. Besides, Tranquilo won't need it any more ...

Complication: a barbarian, Bloody-Ax Kang, is also after the scorpion, to prove his power and to make a trophy shield out of its carapace. Kang isn't much of a reader and will probably destroy the Grimoire if he finds it first. 

Goal: Recover the Grimoire.

Complication to be uncovered during play: the Scorpion's pregnant, which is why it ran off; it wants somewhere peaceful to give birth and raise its brood. It's carrying a number of juveniles on its back right now, some of which might be old enough to wander around on their own.

From wikipedia: The size of a brood varies by species, from three to over 100. Before giving birth, the female elevates the front of her body and positions her pedipalps and front legs under her to catch the young. The young emerge one by one from the genital opercula, expel the embryonic membrane, if any, and are placed on the mother's back where they remain until they have gone though at least one molt. The period before the first molt is called the pro-juvenile stage; the young are unable to feed or sting, but have suckers on their tarsi, used to hold on to their mother. This period lasts 5 to 25 days, depending on the species.

Secondary Goal to be uncovered during play: kill or otherwise deal with the Scorpion's brood, before they grow and become a real threat to the Tangle.

Start with Action: the characters hear screams and see something large and black scuttling over the highest points of the Tangle. Chase scene! Bloody-Ax also saw the whatever-it-was and is in hot pursuit. 

Ultimate Location? Well, that's up to the Game Master. I see it as some tumbledown slum near the Hospital (and all those tasty sick citizens) but the Tangle's a big place. She could be anywhere ...

Enjoy!

  

Have Fun Storming the Castle (RPG All)

In fantasy and in other genres the castle is something armies attack. Occasionally a band of plucky heroes sneak in before the army arrives, but as a general rule if it has crenellations and a porter its purpose in life is to be besieged and preferably beaten in some great battle.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

A castle has two jobs: to exert authority, and survive. To exert authority it needs to have a minimum compliment of troops and a significant compliment of administrators. To survive it needs more castles and a bit of luck.

When William the Conqueror swept England after the great battles of 1066 one of his first priorities was to ensure motte and bailey castles went up as quickly as the Normans could build them, wherever they could build them. There wasn't a central planning bureau picking out exactly where things should be placed; put walls up, put archers on those walls, and send out the tax collectors, was the sum of the Conqueror's plan.

When Rome sent its soldiers out into the world and beat seven bells out of whoever it might be this week, its armies built fortresses or castrum as quickly as possible. Some permanent, some temporary, but all with the same purpose: plant the standard and provide a headquarters for the administrators. Possibly also a marketplace to do business with the locals, if circumstances warranted, but that wasn't its main purpose. Its reach extended further than its walls; it controlled a vast swathe of territory.

Look from culture to culture, from Sengoku Japan to the American frontier or the Aztec empire, and you'll find the same. First there is the period of conquest, where simple forts are flung up as quickly as possible. Not all of them will be built in good locations, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that they fulfil their first purpose: to exert authority. In time the castles that no longer matter or which were built in poor locations will be abandoned. Sometimes this means they'll be destroyed so someone else can't use them, and at other times or in less organized societies old forts will be left to decay. Meanwhile the better designed or situated castles will be improved upon. Each surviving castle will carry out its intended purpose: to provide a base of operations for administrators to collect taxes and organize civil operations, say a court of justice.

However survival depends not on defenses but on your neighbors, and that's why castles need more castles.

Back in the day if you were standing at the top of a decent-sized tower and looked in any direction, odds were you'd see another castle off in the distance. It might only be a speck on the horizon, but it's there. The reason why it's there is very simple: an attacker might get one, but not all.

If you're attempting to invade a country your job is to get from the entry point to the main target as quickly as possible. This is even more true in situations where your army has to move on foot through difficult terrain, as has been the case for most of human history. There are only so many months in the year. Some are rainy, some are frozen, some are too hot. Your army might only have three or four months before it has to dig in and wait out the weather. That assumes you have a cohesive, professional army that is paid and trained to fight. For much of history that simply wasn't so. Generals and Kings had to make do with what they could scrape together, but that meant conscripting farmers and other people whose absence was keenly felt at home. Farmers have a nasty habit of deserting when the harvest and planting seasons come. Sailors don't want to work in dangerous conditions for little pay when they could earn much more in the merchant marine.

Even in the present it's ruinously expensive to keep a professional army in the field for longer than a few months. Remember a while back when I talked about the Muscle in Night's Black Agents? I quoted an article posted in the Guardian which said child soldiers fresh from conflicts in Africa were being hired by mercenary companies like Aegis - formerly Sandline - to do duty in Iraq.

"You probably would have a better force if you recruited entirely from the Midlands of England," [James] Ellery, a former brigadier in the British Army [and former director of Aegis], told the Guardian. "But it can't be afforded. So you go from the Midlands of England to Nepalese etc etc, Asians, and then at some point you say I'm afraid all we can afford now is Africans."

The point being that if your job is to get to and conquer the main target, anything that delays this advance is a threat to your economy as well as your campaign. If there are twenty castles in your way then there are twenty threats, and there are only so many options open to you.

You can attack. Congratulations, you just lost the war. A siege takes weeks, perhaps months, and may require specialized equipment you don't have. One siege is doable, maybe, if you're lucky. Twenty is not an option. Even if you capture one or two by quick movement and surprise attack, the others will be waiting for you.

You can ignore them. Congratulations, you just lost the war. Each of those castles has a defensive force and now that defensive force is free to attack your supply lines, your stragglers, and anything else it can get its grubby little hands on.

You can devote a small portion of your force to keep each castle's defenders under siege while moving your main force to the primary objective. Congratulations, you just made things much, much harder for yourself and may have lost the war. Your army is only so large. There's only so much it can do, and if you send one force off here and another off there and a third to God alone knows where, by the time you get to the thing you actually want to attack you may not have enough troops to knock it over.

This is why some of the most successful military escapades in medieval history were hit-and-run raids. The Hundred Years War and Omar's relentless attacks on Marlo Stansfield have this in common: it's not about territory, it's about making the other side bleed. Send the Black Prince and a band of thugs on Chevauchee, pillage everything in sight and run away before the enemy can get an army together. Do that often enough and you put the enemy on the defensive, forcing them to meet you on terms of your choosing.

This is also why when castles fall it typically isn't to an attacking enemy. When castles fall, it's because someone betrayed them. It might be that the defenders reached an accommodation with the attackers before the fight even began, or it might be that one or two people inside the castle let the enemy in. There's many a ballad and ghost story about a foolish lover who let her paramour into the castle, only to be stabbed and left in the ruins as the besiegers take the fortress.

All that said, what does this mean to your RPG campaign?

It means that when you design a castle in your game you need to think about its jobs. It has to exert authority and survive.  Authority doesn't mean knights and heroes, it means soldiers and administrators. Someone has to collect the taxes, administer justice, and do all the pesky things that need doing if the country's going to run smoothly.

It's great if the guy in charge is a hero, but it's not about the heroism nor is it about the noble lineage. When William divided up England he didn't give out manors to the most blue-blooded Normans he could find - he was William the Bastard, after all. He gave out manors to successful soldiers, and if, as time went on, those soldiers proved unworthy or died childless the manor would be handed out to someone else. Manors change hands all the time. That's what makes them so useful; the more manors you have in your gift, the more loyalty you can purchase from would-be manor holders.

In a fantasy setting, or in any setting where mundane power - swords, guns - can be outclassed by magical or supernatural power, this does not change the castle's first job. Its first job is still to exert authority. However it does change the castle's second job, because survival in a magical world is tricky business.

The point behind having a lot of castles is that it eats up an attacker's time. An army can't afford to lose even a day, never mind several weeks or months. However if an army has a dragon on its side then a castle might fall in a day. In fact, a dragon might fly ahead of an army and take castles by surprise, forcing their immediate capitulation. An undead army might march more quickly than a living one - no need to worry about fatigue - and doesn't care whether it's winter or summer. The list goes on.

So castles will need some form of defense against the threats that face it, and that may change the way castles are designed. When the threat was that someone might mine under the square corner of a wall to cause it to collapse, castle builders started using round towers which were much less vulnerable to that technique. When cannons made tall walls obsolete forts lowered their profile, eschewing tall walls for long, low palisades with interlocking fields of fire, to keep the enemy from getting too close.

If the castle designers know that dragons are going to be a threat, they'll start putting in anti-dragon measures. If they know undead armies are a thing, they'll start putting out anti-undead measures. Exactly what those are will depend on the enemies' characteristics and power set.

Say this is the typical kind of undead we're talking about, that can be defeated by holy power. In that case every castle has a picket line of shrines, each with its own minor holy relic - something blessed by a high-ranking official, a saint's finger-bone, what-have-you. The point being to keep the undead from getting too close, as well as providing a kind of early warning system. There will be at least one person at the castle whose sensitivity to the ebbs and flows of magic warns them when one of those shrines is interfered with. Equally it will be someone's job to make sure all those shrines are well maintained.

Moreover it will be someone else's job to steal the holy relics, because every castle needs them and there aren't enough to go around. There will be a secondary market in relics, many fake, because when demand is high and supply low, or restricted, black markets spring up like mushrooms. So it will be someone else's job to detect fakes, and prosecute the people stealing holy relics. Or just kill them. Whichever works.

This applies across the board. Castles aren't just for fantasy systems after all; every setting, from science fiction to gritty noir, has its equivalent.

Say we weren't talking about castles. Say we were talking about Facilities in a modern day game. Does anything change?

Not really. Whether a Facility is dedicated to Manufacture, Collection, Distribution, or Analysis, it still has those two basic functions. It has to exert authority and it has to survive. Exactly how it goes about those two functions will change depending on the setting.

Let's say this is an extra-legal facility in a setting like Night's Black Agents. Lets say that its job is to distribute McGuffins, and that it has to do that job within a developed, moderately policed environment. Anywhere in Europe, really; somewhere there's plenty of communication links, transport links, free movement, and enough cops to keep the peace. Not where movement is restricted or there's a significant number of secret police or armed forces checking everyone's papers.

So here is your castle: it's one distribution facility. It has to exert authority, and it has to survive. It has to do those things in an environment that is innately hostile: if the cops knew it existed, they'd shut it down, because it's an extra-legal facility.

So how does it exert authority and survive?

Castles exert authority by providing a base for administrators and tax collectors. The same applies here. The collection authority is a base for, say, vampire Conspiracy types. Since it's a distribution facility it probably doesn't have troops and bosses; it has trucks, drivers, and a bunch of goons. As D'Angelo points out in the Wire, the drug stash never moves without soldiers to protect it.

The exact nature of that authority will depend on the nature of the facility. A low-level, unimportant facility probably doesn't have powerful soldiers, and so on. But powerful or not, someone at that facility is in charge of making sure everything works smoothly, that the McGuffins get to where they need to go when they need to get there, and that the police or whoever is nominally in charge doesn't interfere with the facility's operation. Those are the administrators.

It also has to survive. Castles survive because there are lots of castles. The more of them there are, the less likely it is that any attacker will be able to take them all on. Sure, one or two may fall, but there are always other castles. The sheer number of them may be enough to persuade enemies not to attack at all.

Facilities can use the same trick. There's never just one distribution facility. There are dozens, hundreds. The larger the organization, or Conspiracy, the more likely it is that it will have many facilities at its disposal, some more important than others. If one gets destroyed, move operations to another.

There can be alternate means of survival depending on the nature of the threat, just as the best defense against an undead army isn't necessarily a large number of castles. If the threat comes from a bunch of unaligned burnt spies, then one way to ensure survival is to turn the Heat up as soon as the agents show their faces. Squeal loudly and often; let the cops know that crazy gun-toting madmen are on the prowl. Or, if the facility can't afford to get the authorities involved, tell other criminals. The agents aren't the only one with the Yojimbo option. "You know that shipment you were supposed to get, but which was intercepted by the cops? Yeah, it was these guys." For 'intercepted by the cops' read 'we deliberately didn't sent it' or 'we set it up to look like an ambush.' Whichever best suits the situation.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Akkat, Mother of the Sunrise: Part 2, City Builder

Last time I discussed the basics of this city build: what kind of place is it, what is it famous for, where (roughly) is it located? Now the time has come to go into a little more detail. What, exactly, is this city like?

When I've discussed character design before, it's always been in the form of question-and-answer.  Exactly the same process can be followed here, slightly altered. So where I might ask about the character's name, age, ethnicity and gender, I now ask about the city's name, age, ethnic makeup, and landmarks.

To give you some examples:

Name: Akkat, Mother of the Sunrise. The title Mother of the Sunrise derives in part from the city's most valuable find: the Sunrise star gem, currently held by the Lugal, or ruler, of Akkat.

Age: People have been living here for uncounted generations. However the current rule of the guilds is less than a century old; in the time of grandfather's father, Akkat was ruled by the Lugal, who in turn owed his fealty to the great Raj of the Northern Kingdoms. The Northern Kingdoms in their mountain fastness have ceased to be a concern ever since the great rebellions, and the Lugal hasn't been a serious force in local politics for many decades.

Ethnic Makeup: Akkat is majority human. There is a much higher proportion of Tieflings here than anywhere else in human lands; about a fifth of the city are Tieflings, including many of its most important guildsmen. Though there aren't many half-orc citizens, nearly all the guild guard are half-orcs, with human officers - though the officers are largely for show, the guard being commanded in practice by its non-coms. Halflings and Elves are uncommon but not unheard of; many of the riverboat captains and crew are members of these races. Dwarves, gnomes and dragonborn are among the least common, and dragonborn are especially distrusted, since the old Raj of the Northern Kingdoms was led by dragon-kin.

Three Landmarks:

• The Thousand Window Palace, where the Lugal traditionally holds court, is an architectural wonder, and its stained glass windows are a superlative example of the glassblower's art. The scenes depicted there show the great moments of the Lugal, and the Raj. Though the Palace is meticulously preserved, no new windows have been added for a hundred years. The Palace Guard is headquartered here, and the Lugal's Court is open daily, so the Lugal can hear the concerns of his people. The Palace Guard, as distinct from the city guard, is entirely human, and ceremonial. In days long gone, it was often the case that a new Lugal achieved power thanks to the quick and stealthy blade of an influential Guardsman. As a result, these days the Guard aren't allowed anything sharper than a wooden staff. They even eat their food with wooden utensils.
• Destiny Quarter, the ghetto where most of the Tieflings live, is alive morning, noon and night. When Tieflings began coming here, at first they were confined to a small section of the city that nobody else wanted. Over time, as more of them arrived, their political power increased. Now some of the richest citizens of Akkat live here, side by side with the finest merchant mansions, the most expensive and famous inns and eating houses. The one thing that hasn't changed in all that time is Destiny Gate, that used to mark the way in and out of the walled ghetto. The Tieflings prefer it that way, as a reminder; the ghetto walls may have come down, but if you seek your Destiny, you go through that gate. 
• The Permit House is where you have to go if you want permission to build anything. Since the very rocks of Akkat are impregnated with magical materials, and since merely digging a foundation might uncover priceless wealth, building rights are very strictly controlled. There are only three licensed building contractors in the entire city, each of them richer than a king. Building without a license, or hiring yourself out as an independent contractor, is  brutally punished; the hands of those who try are cut off and nailed up above the Permit House door. Applications for new build, or to repair existing buildings, often vanish within the labyrinthine corridors of the Permit House, never to be seen again. Of course, grumble ordinary citizens, Tieflings never seem to have any trouble getting permission ...

Economy: Akkat's most famous, and lucrative, export, is the star gems from which it gets its name and reputation. These highly magical items are sought after by wizards, sorcerers, liches, kings and princes. There are only a handful of official mining operations, and unofficial diggings are harshly punished - hence the Permit House. This increases the scarcity of an already rare commodity. Moreover the wizards and Tiefling jewelers of Akkat are supposed to have an especial affinity for these gems; a magical device incorporating a star gem shaped and polished by their cunning hands is said to be especially powerful, and valuable.

However it does not stop at gems. The forges of Akkat, incorporating that same magically potent stone, are supposed to be capable of producing the finest magical blades. The very best swordsmiths are, it is said, working on sentient items to rival the creations of mythic wonder-workers of times past. Whether or not this is true is besides the point; a magical blade from Akkat, with the mark of one of the Guild's swordsmiths, is worth twice as much as any other of its type, whether or not it has any kind of extra potency. 

Finally there are the glassblowers. This is a relatively recent innovation for Akkat; the first master glassblowers relocated here forty years ago. However in that brief time they have become renowned for their skill and delicate craftsmanship; alchemists and lovers of art alike swear by Akkat glass, which, so it is said, captures sunlight like nothing else on this earth. The thing that puzzles visitors to Akkat is, why do these glassblowers not add new windows to the Thousand Window Palace? Yet, to date, none have.

There is one other branch of the economy that the Guilds and the lords of Akkat prefer did not exist: poppies. Again, thanks to the magical qualities of the city, its people are themselves slightly magical. You can't live all your life surrounded by material from the far-flung stars, and not pick up a tiny amount of background radiation. Even the animals are a touch fey. What this means is, the night-soil of the city - excellent manure - is the perfect food for a particularly delicate flowering plant, commonly called the Sunset Poppy. The seeds of this plant, properly processed, produce an addictive narcotic, sold throughout the Southern lands as Sunset, Moonglow, or Journey's End. The Thieves' Guild makes a very tidy profit from cultivation of these poppies; most, if not all, of the night soil collectors of Akkat are on the payroll. It's safer that way. Those who resist meet unfortunate accidents. The fields, and processing facilities, are outside the city proper, high up in the hills; it makes it that much easier for the lords of Akkat to ignore a problem on its doorstep.

***

What I'm getting at is this: as a designer of worlds, you can create cities and characters in exactly the same way. If you want to design a character, you ask how old they are, how they make their money, what they look like, what they value, what they want, what they dream of, what their secrets are. For a city, you ask exactly the same questions. The difference is merely scale. A city needs more, makes more money, has grander vistas, and outlives even its oldest citizen. But the questions remain the same.

Don't think this just applies to fantasy cities. The same technique can be used to design your version of London, or Macau, or wherever it might be. Sure, a lot of that information can be found in Wikipedia, but you're after the stuff that's not in Wikipedia. Say you're building a version of London much like that Ben Aaronovitch uses for his Rivers of London series. It's very like the London of today - but not exactly like. For the bits that don't fit established modern London, you ask exactly those questions I've asked here - and design your version of London around that.

Which brings me to adventures. Once you design a city, the kind of adventures that happen there should flow from that design. Such as:

A swordsmith has crafted a particularly fine longsword, that he wishes to sell to a nobleman far away. However he needs someone to guard the weapon on its journey South. The swordsmith's rivals are very jealous of his work, and one of them will stop at nothing to prevent the sale - but which of them paid off the bandits that attacked the adventurers?

A Tiefling, on coming of age, or marking a particular life triumph, walks through the Destiny Gate as part of a ceremony that usually involves days, sometimes weeks of feasting, masquerade, and song. The masquerade balls are particularly famous; the grander the masquerade, the more important - and wealthy - the Tiefling host. However this particular Tiefling, on walking through the Destiny Gate, somehow opens up a small, personal connection to the Abyss. Nothing so dramatic as a flaming portal through which can be heard the wailing of the damned; rather, unexpected and swift corrosion, say of furnishings, clothing, or food, or a brief plague of Abyssal small fry, like Dretch, or Manes. Each time this happens, it's centered on the unfortunate Tiefling who walked through the Gate. Naturally this complicates the masquerade somewhat, but it also provokes a human backlash. Can the adventurers defuse the situation, before an angry mob tears through Destiny Quarter?

An innkeeper has, through accident or design, dug a very small pit in the cellar of her inn. Only the tiniest of scrapings, but if the authorities ever hear about it, her hand will be nailed up above the Permit House door. However, if she were somehow to obtain retroactive permission for her illegal excavation, all will be well. Can the adventurers forge, or otherwise obtain, that all-important permit?

That's enough for now. Next week, something completely different!