RPG All (NBA) - Plot Blocks & Pacing

 

Deutschland 89 Trailer via Sundance

I just finished the final episode, End of History.

My God.

OK, I've mentioned Deutschland 83 before, and recommended it. I waited till I could get hold of the blu-ray sets before seeing the rest of the series. Now I'm recommending the entire series, without caveat or cavil. It is by far the best espionage story I have ever seen, from the very first moment to the last.

But! It made me realize something very important about pacing.

See, this is a remarkably fast-paced series. It runs entirely on plot from start to finish and never wastes a shot, or a scene. This is all meat, all the time. There's never a moment when you feel bored, or think that things are going too long, or wish that the characters would just shut up and get on with business. 

Yet there's plenty of character development. You never feel as if you don't know these people, don't know what makes them tick. There's no exposition, no 'you remember that time in season one when we did the thing?' Nothing wasted. 

[There are some brilliant characters, by the way. Gary Banks? A villain's villain. Annett Schneider? Ice Queen. Nina Rudow? Stone Cold Killer. Steal these for your game. You will not regret it.]

So, what was the important thing about pacing?

Combat. Combat kills pacing.

Probably also Chases. 

See, there's combat and chases in Deutschland, but they're used sparingly. If this were, say, Justified, there'd be at least one gunfight and one chase scene per episode, probably more than one. There would be showdowns prior to those gunfights and chase scenes, moments where Our Hero is allowed to quip a bit, hogging the spotlight before the big finish.

In Deutschland, whichever series, while there are gunfights and fistfights they don't crop up once an episode, necessarily. Chase scenes too, but not every episode.

This means two things.

First: when those scenes do show up, they have impact. It's never certain who will win or who will lose. Nobody quips (praise be!). This means that, whenever they happen, you, the viewer, are on the edge of your seat.

Second, it means you, the viewer, don't waste time with unnecessary moments when Plot could be happening.

Think about it. You've probably seen any number of YouTube wafflers bibble on about Combat In D&D Sucks! This is How To Run Combat! Improve The Size Of Your Quarterstaff With These Combat Tricks! So on, and on, and on.

None of them ever ask the question, Do You Need This Combat Scene?

They all assume you need it.

Do you, though? Really? Because every combat and chase scene, however Thrilling it may seem at the time, is perhaps half an hour or more of game time that you will not get back. Combat diverts attention from plot. The crunchier the setting, the more time the combat scene will take up, which means less plot. 

This is even more the case if we're talking about a TV episode, like Deutschland, where the runtime is maybe 50 minutes. If you kill 5 or 10 minutes in combat and chases, that leaves you only 40 minutes for the rest of it. Probably less than that, when you realize that every one of those fast-paced action scenes will want a downbeat moment directly after, when the characters lick their wounds and the audience recovers from the events on screen. Do that kind of thing too often and you'll only have 30 minutes for the actual episode.

Or in your gaming session, when you have perhaps 2 hours at best, accounting for late arrivals and pizza interludes. Can you really afford to kill off even 20 minutes of that 2 hours dealing with an orc in a 10x10 room, guarding a chest?

Put it this way. Everyone remembers that moment when they faced down Dracula, or some other Big Bad that they've been chasing for however many episodes. Nobody remembers Mook #3 in that place with the thing. But Mook #3 in the place with the thing took up the same 20-40 minutes game time that the Dracula moment did. Possibly longer, depending on circumstances. 

Does that seem reasonable to you?

With that in mind, consider this Dicta:

1. Never have a meaningless combat moment if you can avoid it. All combats should be, or aspire to be, Thrilling.

2. In situations where a combat with minor foes, ie. mooks, is an option, make that combat Thrilling by introducing elements that raise the stakes. Is there a bomb that will go off if the combat doesn't end quickly? An abduction that will take place if the agents don't intervene quickly?

3. Reduce combat scenes to one per episode, or even one every other episode. 

4. Always remember, combat raises stakes. Make sure everyone understands the stakes, and that there will be real loss should the agents lose. 

5. Never let the agents feel that success is guaranteed. Loss is always possible, and there should be consequences for that loss.

6. Where there is combat, make it cinematic as possible, and as quick as possible. 

Deutschland 86

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

PS! I've been working on some DriveThru scenarios, expanding on the Many Mansions concept. I've written one so far, Your Number, Please, and am on the verge of completing a second, When Tides Are Right. Once that's done, I'll start on the third. 

Once all three are written I'll move to art & layout and then publish all three at the same time.

I'll keep you posted!

All Aboard The Techno Train (Night's Black Agents)

This week’s post is inspired by a recent Guardian article about Germany’s techno train running from Nuremberg’s Frankenstadion station to Nuremberg Central Station by a roundabout circuit. Each of its 25 cars is packed with DJs, dance spaces and happy party people. The whole thing runs twice yearly and is organized by nightclub Hauss 33. A kind of techno warp through the mountainsides of Bavaria, with the added advantage that you never have to leave; if you don’t want what’s happening in this carriage, you can always move to the next.

Sourced from Bilder.events

I’m no techno fan. Put me in one of those cars and I would have a very unhappy time. Even so, the idea of a scene taking place on the techno train is weirdly attractive!

Almost any of the NBA plot prods would do, but this strikes me as an excellent opportunity for any of the following:

• Flip. The agents must flip an asset to their side.
• Heist. The agents must steal something
• Hit. The agents must kill someone
• Hunt. The agents must find someone.
• Rescue. The agents must rescue someone.

The enclosed space, the remote environment, the probability that phones won’t work as well as expected or that the police/Edom/your aunty Mabel will not be able to intervene when needed – all those things add spice to the narrative.

Oddly enough this kind of thing has been done before in fiction, but not often. 

Jaime Lee Curtis’ Terror Train had a very similar premise. “You’re always walking out of my parties,” says the rich kid who booked a party train for his graduating class, “But this time you can’t.” The train doesn’t stop. It can’t stop. No matter how many pretty young things get carved up by the madman on board. You can’t really call it a techno train but all the German elements are there – dancing, live performances, private little nooks that you can be pulled into for ... fun times ...

As a scene location it’s evocative and has the advantage of being drenched in shadow and light, which means you can play with the players’ senses. In more ways than one; as the article points out it gets hot as hell on that techno train and the toilets will become a nightmare’s nightmare before the run’s over. God alone knows what the cleaners find when they go through the train after the run. Hercules and the Augean Stables aren’t in the same league. The smell! All that sweat boxed up in a small space …

You probably couldn’t set a whole scenario on the techno train; there just isn’t enough space, not enough stuff to do. But as a scene or a capstone moment, it works very well.

With all that in mind:

Uncle Albert's Pain Train

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests.

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons ...

Albert wants to keep Lisle happy, but it's possible that her continued mental domination has awakened certain desires in him that, until now, he's been able to suppress. He may have a collection of Lisle-a-likes kept at private apartments, or be a familiar figure at local BDSM establishments ... 

The Agents become aware that Albert Ahrens is after another Lisle-a-like, who happens to be a DJ on the techno train. They also become aware that Albert's current Lisle-a-like is also aware, and none too pleased. Moreover, thanks to repeated injections of something unpleasant she has Renfield characteristics and a broken psyche. 

That's all without considering that Lisle, and the Conspiracy, know nothing about Albert's habits and would have a not-so-tiny fit if they found out. The Conspiracy would react violently; Lisle would rather cover everything up for the good of ... oh, the cause, why not. That's as good an excuse as any.

Option One: Flip It. The agents need to get to the DJ and convince her of the danger, thereby flipping her to the cause. She knows just enough about Albert's safe houses to get the agents in, allowing them a chance to confront Albert in one of his dens. Trouble is, that Lisle-a-like is also on the techno train and not only is she enough like the DJ to be mistaken for her (what with the flashing lights and all, though she lacks the tattoos so that might give her away) she has enough blood in her to power two tigers.

Option Two: Hit It. The agents don't need the DJ; they need the Lisle-a-like, and they know that the techno train is the best way to get to her. Try and ambush the Lisle-a-like anywhere else and she'll be dug in and ready to fight, but this is unfamiliar territory for her. Once dead, they can use clues found on the body to break into a Conspiracy facility.

Option Three: Rescue (?) The DJ is the target and, if the agents want the information in her head, they need to get her off the train. They think the Lisle-a-like is the threat and yes, she is in the area. That's not the problem. The problem is the Conspiracy is already on the hunt and the first sign may come when the agents find the Lisle-alike beheaded in one of the toilets. The Conspiracy wants to make a show to discourage anyone else from going rogue, and they don't mind if a few bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Note to the crowd: I will be in NYC for a week so there will be no post on the 17th June. Happy birthday to me and all that; I'll try not to spend too much on books (jk).

On A Liar's Orders (Night's Black Agents)

This week’s post is inspired by a news article floating round the net recently about a pair of German ex-soldiers who tried to form a paramilitary outfit on the urging of a psychic. 

Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Graess, 60, tried to set up a group of 100-150 ex-special forces to fight in Yemen. Their stated goal was to bring peace to the region, but they accepted there would have to be bloodshed and civilian deaths. All this because of ‘messages from a fortune teller that they understood as binding instructions for action.’ 

Which …  

I mean … 

Even accepting people are weird, how does this come up in any kind of conversation, polite or otherwise? 

You should have the benefit of remarkable energy; learn how to concentrate your efforts on a specified objective and pursue it through to the end. Be cooperative but not too easy-going with your family circle. Don't let anyone meddle in your private life, oh, and by the way, Yemen. 

They tried to peddle this scheme to the Saudis, thinking that if they had the Saudi bankroll they could afford to pay the troopers 40000 Euro a month. The Saudi government did not respond. 

The plan didn’t get very far and the two were arrested last year. This is hitting the news now because they’re going on trial.  

Which brings me round to Night’s Black Agents. 

If ever there was a setting where a psychic could somehow persuade ex-soldiers to form a paramilitary outfit, and be in any way successful, it’s Night’s Black Agents. If this were Dracula Dossier there’s even a handy-dandy candidate: Singleton, the Psychic. 

Imagine if you will a situation in which Singleton persuades former members of Edom’s E-Squadron that now’s the time to form a paramilitary squad ostensibly to help out in [insert war-torn hellhole here] but actually to hunt vampires. If you figure these ex-members are in their 60s now, then they were active in the 1980s, which is a good excuse to use some of the Edom Files scenarios as a kind of flashback moment. 

Edom must keep at least one eye on its former associates, not least because they might be going coo-coo for Coco-Puffs thanks to not getting regular supplies of serum any more. However, Edom’s alertness level probably depends on how powerful Edom is right now. If it’s just a handful of ageing spooks operating out of a decayed Ring, then maybe Edom’s eagle eye is just some geezer watching the obit columns. On the other hand if Edom is a power player then there’s probably a section of an office somewhere with half-a-dozen luckless saps watching every news feed they can get their hands on, praying for the day when the Boffin finally pops his clogs so they’ll have something interesting to report. 

In fact, it might be cool plot action if this was a punishment detail for spooks who got a bit too hands-on with the subject material. Like your player characters, for instance. ‘Until you learn how to conduct yourself in the field, you’re on the graveyard shift.’ 

Then the graveyard shift gets interesting … 

The Eagle has Landed And Is A Gooney Bird 

Through diligent Data Recovery/Human Terrain/Military Science/Research/something else, your agents discover that a pair of holdovers from Edom’s past are putting together a mercenary company. These two were among Edom’s finest back in the day; they’re Edom’s creakiest warriors now. Yet they’re not alone; someone’s giving them marching orders, but who? Does this new player have a supply of serum, and is that how this mysterious Mr. X is persuading these two soldiers back into the field? To which government are they appealing for funds, and why? 

Options: 

• It’s the Psychic, working on his own. He thinks he has solid intel on a new, dangerous Conspiracy threat which nobody’s paying attention to. He’s managed to persuade the ex-soldiers to follow his lead by posing as a genuine psychic – or perhaps he really is a genuine psychic. Who can say? 
• It’s the Conspiracy, working through a handy go-between. It might be the Psychic or it might be someone else, but the point from the Conspiracy’s perspective is to set up a bunch of useful throwaways that the Conspiracy can send on a one-time-only job. Perhaps the idea is to embarrass Edom, or the British Government, or whichever Government the mercs are reaching out to for funding. Or perhaps there’s a more specific target in mind. In this version the mercs have access to serum; no prizes for guessing how. 
• It’s a rogue faction of Edom, or one of the other vampire-hunting organizations out there. They have intel on a specific and very real threat, and they want Government assistance to deal with it. However they can’t afford to be seen to be involved themselves, as it would embarrass their own Government. As luck would have it there are two useful stooges willing to suit up for one last rodeo if it means plunging a stake in Dracula’s heart. If this is rogue faction of Edom then whoever it is doesn’t agree with the direction mainstream Edom is taking, and want to throw a monkey-wrench in the works before things get out of hand. In this version the two ex-soldiers may become mentors for the PC agents, assuming the PCs are the sort who like derring-do, adventure, and things that go off bang! in the night. After all, who doesn’t love explosions?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Lies, Damn Lies, and Missing Billions (Night's Black Agents)

This week's post is based on two versions of fraud, as outlined here:

This video about the recent Wirecard scandal is from Tom Nash.

This video about money laundering via casinos, particularly in Macau, is from Economies Explained.

The Wirecard fraud is deceptively simple. It is alleged that the top brass at Wirecard lied about their source of income. About $2 billion on their books had no basis in reality. The bank accounts where the money was held didn't exist, neither did their so-called business partners. So far, so Enron, but the part I especially like is at 12.22, where the hack-for-hire group Dark Basin enters the picture. According to the video, Dark Basin swiped journalists' emails (among many other things) and posted them, carefully edited, publicly on a leaks website. The intent was to make it look as if those journalists were blackguarding Wirecard to benefit short sellers of Wirecard stock - turning an accounting scandal into an insider trading scandal.

What puzzles me are the actions of the regulator and auditor, both of which did their best to enable Wirecard. Which isn't completely unheard of - auditors and regulators can be dazzled by massive profits and smiling, spreadsheet-wielding execs. It's just so bizarre that it's Germany's regulator doing it, that it's EY - Ernst and frocking Young - caught in the middle. The Germans are the original Sober Business Brains. How did they get it so wrong? EY ought to have learned from its dealings with Lehmans - but I suppose the idea of an auditor learning from its mistakes is a bit utopian sci-fi.

The Economies Explained video details what, on its face, is also a simple fraud. China wants its money kept in China. That's why it doesn't allow tourists to leave the country with more than a paltry sum. So Chinese billionaires buy travel packages to Macau for ludicrously expensive prices, which include an eye-watering sum in poker chips. The gamblers play a little at the tables, maybe they win, maybe they lose. It doesn't matter, because when they stop they still have most of their chips, which they then exchange for US$. Bingo, cash smuggled out of China.

Incidentally if you're a long-term reader then you'll remember an important point about those travel agencies: they're Triads. They operate what amounts to a loan sharking service masquerading as a travel agency. Debts don't cross borders, and it's impossible for a Macau casino to collect on gambling losses when the gamblers are tucked away in China. Macau's Triads cooperate with mainland Triads to recover debts that would otherwise vanish along with the debtor. However in this instance what's happening is the Triad travel agency stands in the middle as a kind of financial broker, no doubt collecting a very nice commission for letting Chinese billionaires change their Renminbi for dollars.

What does all this mean for Night's Black Agents?

Well for one thing it puts the bagman in a whole new light. Traditionally that lonely figure is imagined as a sneak with a briefcase full of cash, shuttling from one mysterious rendezvous to another. Sure, maybe in the 1970s, or when the amounts concerned can be counted in the thousands - chicken feed, really.  But in this happy-go-lucky modern world in which we live billions are in play and electronic currency is the order of the day, which means a bagman is much more likely to be sat behind a computer as creeping across the border. In the main book Data Recovery is listed as an alternate investigative ability; I'd be inclined to make it a starting ability, with Intimidation as the alternate. I'd also be inclined to swap the Digital Intrusion and Sense Trouble starting loadout, so Digital Intrusion starts at 6 and Sense Trouble at 3.

For another it gives us several new potential plots and Nodes. Dark Basin alone is a Node unto itself, potentially a freelance one at that. Not officially part of the Conspiracy, but brought in for dirty tricks campaigns and discarded as expendables. Maybe it ranks at the International level, given its reach, but its resources are paltry.

Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall at a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites. 

Just the sort of thing you want on your work machine. In a spy thriller the agents often have to infiltrate heavily-armed compounds to get what they're after. Imagine breaking into a stuffy little office above a decommissioned tea stall. It's a pretty good excuse to dig out Looking Glass Mumbai, at that.

Closing out, let's have a story seed.

A Three Hour Tour

A Macau Triad boss, Tong Sang-koi, is on the run. Tong, formerly a big noise in the 14K Triad, ran a travel agency at the Casino Babylon where until recently he regularly sold incredibly expensive tour packages to mainland Chinese gamblers. However something went wrong, and nobody's entirely sure what - at least, nobody outside the insular world of Macau organized crime. China wants Tong badly, and if that wasn't bad enough the CIA would also like a quiet word with the former 14K big shot. The investigators pick up on this when gossip suggests that Tong was attempting to sell important vampire-related intel to China's Room 452. Nobody knows where Tong is now, but everybody wants his data.

Not just his data. Digging a little deeper (Streetwise, Tradecraft or similar) discovers that Tong went missing shortly after a Chinese high-roller bought one of his $100 million special packages. This high-roller, Robin Yonghau, was later found insensible in his Macau hotel room with no coherent explanation for his condition. Nobody knows where the $100 million went either.

The investigators will need to find out where Tong Sang-koi is, what's his connection with Room 452, and what Robin Yonghau has to do with any of this. This will mean going to Macau in the first instance, but Tong could easily have run to pretty much anywhere after that, so if as Director you'd prefer to reset the action to, say, Vancouver, feel free.

Possible answers:

• Tong Sang-koi found himself in the middle of a dangerous deal. The Conspiracy wanted to move a billion dollars out of China and found itself a willing mule, Robin Yonghau. Tong discovered the vampire connection, and as luck would have it knew enough about vampires to have means of contacting Room 452. However the USA's Find Forever got wind of it, and muscled in at the 11th hour to snatch the prize - one Chinese Jin-Gui, acting as Robin Yonghai's controller. Things got messy, the Jin-Gui got dusted, and nobody but Tong knows where the money went. That paints a very bright and glowing target on Tong's back, so he's keeping his head as far down as possible.
• Tong Sang-koi is a CIA asset. The CIA put the bite on him back in 2009, when he tried to relocate his ill-gotten gains outside of Macau. Ever since the CIA has been using him to monitor Chinese organized crime, and to encourage Chinese billionaires to relocate their cash out of China. After all, every Renminbi that leaves via Macau is a Renminbi the Chinese government can't use to prop up its economy. However Tong got tired of this arrangement and wanted out, so he made a deal with the Conspiracy: if I help you get $100 million, get me out of this. The Conspiracy obliged ... but it's an open question as to whether Tong Sang-koi is living the high life or down at the bottom of the harbour.
• Tong Sang-koi is a Chinese asset. He let himself be 'recruited' by the CIA so he could feed false intel to the Americans, but he's been working with Room 452. The Chinese want to get their hands on the CIA's home-grown vampire, so they dangled a very tempting $100 million target knowing that in order to grab it the CIA would deploy its prize possession. It did, Room 452 moved in - and then things went South. Nobody's sure where the money went, where Tong is, and most importantly where the American Vampire ended up. Was this all an elaborate bluff somehow orchestrated by the American Vampire to escape with $100 million in stolen, untraceable cash?

Enjoy!

Hotel Hell (Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, Night's Black Agents, Timewatch)

This week's post is inspired by a news item about hotel thefts, and loosely based on the Breidenbacher Hof in Dusseldorf, Germany.

You've really got to feel sorry for the owners of five star boutique hotels. They attract a different kind of criminal. Where most of us are content to steal the soap and possibly a bathrobe, the folks who steal from the wealthy chisel out their marble fireplaces, package up their flat screens and framed art, and cart off the Steinway piano.

According to the article there's a fellow in South America who poses as an artist come to do a show, and who brings with him large packaging crates stuffed full of 'art.' Of course, it's stuffed full of nothing when he arrives, but when he leaves the crates are suspiciously heavier than they were before. In short, this is a job for the professional, your thief with an eye for high value, someone who can pull off a quick change and swindle like a veteran grifter.

In Germany it's easier than you might think, as there isn't the proliferation of security cameras you might find in an equivalent hotel elsewhere. Privacy laws specify where you can and cannot place cameras, such as public spaces like the drive in front of the hotel.

Which naturally made me go looking for a boutique hotel in Germany, which is how I found Briedenbacher Hof. Built in 1806 as a luxury resort for the rich and famous, in its day it's hosted royalty and the impossibly wealthy. It was bombed extensively during the War, and rebuilt in the 1950s. In the later 1990s it was torn down again by its Kuwait-based owners, and rebuilt to their exacting standards. During construction a section of Dusseldorf's medieval city wall was discovered in the basement, and that archaeological find is now permanently on display from the retail level of the hotel.

Dusseldorf is the second largest city in Germany, and has been an urban settlement since the Romans moved in. Its strategic position on the Rhine strengthened its importance as a trade-and-tax town, and it officially became a city in 1288 when the Counts of Berg defeated the forces of the Archbishop of Cologne and granted Dusseldorf town privileges. It built a market square surrounded by thick city walls, those same walls which lie under the foundations of the Briedenbacher Hof. Bombed extensively during the Second World War, what was a medieval town became a modern one in the 20th century, after extensive rebuilding and reconstruction. 

With all that:

Hotel Hell

The characters are professional thieves. They may be funded by an outside group, like the Esoterrorists' Ordo Veritatis, or Dracula Dosssier's Edom, but if they are then it's through cut-outs and Mr. Johnsons. The characters only know their patrons as shadowy figures in the criminal community.

They have been hired to steal a certain artwork from the Richter Hof, a newly reopened hotel with an illustrious past. Its Dubai-based owners intend it to be the jewel in their hospitality crown, and it has everything the high-end traveler could want, including a gaming room where well-heeled visitors lose their shirts at vingt-et-un and poker. Gambling licenses are very difficult to get in Germany, but the Richter has its license from before the War when it was (and still is) a destination for the wealthy and famous. 

Their job is to get in, get the goods, and get out without being stopped by hotel staff. Piece of cake, they may think. 

That rather depends on how much they like cake … 

The artwork they're told to steal is an abstract sculpture installed in the penthouse suite. Physically, it's slightly smaller than man-size and weighs over 250 lbs, so the characters will need to find some way to get it out and to the main elevator. That elevator goes all the way down to the basement car park level, so they should be able to get out without wheeling it through the lobby at least. Of course, to do that they'll need to get it out the penthouse and down a corridor which might at any time have guests or hotel staff. Plus the penthouse has a dedicated butler who spends much of his day going in and out of the penthouse, even if it's vacant, as he has to make sure the penthouse is ready at any time for one of the Richter Hof's high-end guests. The hotel's Dubai owners' extended family often drop by the hotel for a little shopping spree, and when they do they expect to be accommodated in the penthouse suite.

If the characters do some advance scouting and try to find out more information about the sculpture, they discover something odd. No two sources agree on when it was made, or who by. Some claim it's a Picasso from 1912, others an 1889 Rodin, still others a 1980s bronze by Stephen De Staebler. Everyone says it's a masterpiece worth hundreds of thousands of dollars/euro/marks - which is a little peculiar, since why would anyone value anything in Deutsche Marks, a dead currency since 2002? It's large, it's metal, and it will be hard to lift without special equipment, which is probably going to be the characters' main concern.

The trouble really begins when the characters begin the lift. Time is soft within Richter Hof. At one moment it might be 2020, at another it might be 1943 and the Battle of the Ruhr, at still another it might be 1806 and the Hof's grand opening. So long as the investigators have possession of the statue, any door - including the elevator doors - can open to any era. The statue's inert (or as inert as it ever gets) as long as it's in position in the penthouse. The minute it moves, the fun begins.

The elevator doors are an especial problem, since at most points in the hotel's history it didn't have an elevator. It certainly didn't have one that went to the basement. So the elevator doors literally lead to anywhen, anywhere, while the other doors lead to the equivalent space in [time period]. At least if the characters move from the corridor to a hotel room, they end up in a hotel room. It might be a hotel room in 1980 or 1880, occupied or empty, but at least it's predictably a hotel room. There's no telling where they end up, if they take the elevator.

Among the events the characters could walk into:

• Ruritanian Assassination. It's 1848, the age of Revolution, and the Crown Prince / Duke / [insert title here] of a small country or principality that no longer exists in 2020 has relocated to the Richter Hof to avoid talking to the Revolutionaries. Anarchists have infiltrated the hotel staff, and are planning to plant a bomb in the royal's apartments. Of course, bombs don't care who they blow up, and the characters could easily find themselves on the receiving end of a poorly planned assassination attempt.
• Firebugs. It's June 1943, and British bombers are scattering their load all over Dusseldorf. The hotel's ablaze, but so is much of Dusseldorf, so the fire brigade isn't going to be available any time soon. The hotel's part-evacuated but there are still some staff and guests in the hotel itself, either because they didn't want to go to bomb shelters or because they're trying to rescue their belongings from their burning rooms. 
• Songbirds. It's 2011, and Dusseldorf's hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. There's no escaping it; every room, bar, and screen is blaring Europop. If people aren't singing Wadde hadde dudde da  (singer/comedian Stefan Raab's 2000 hit; he's one of the 2011 judges), they're singing Lena's Taken by a Stranger, the current German entry. No immediate danger, but the hotel is absolutely rammed, and it's very difficult to sneak past the crowds while toting a 250 lbs bronze.  

Enjoy!

Eyes and Ears: Stasi (Night's Black Agents)

There's a new coffee-table book out for lovers of spy lore: Der Blick der Staatssicherheit (The Gaze of State Security). It's German, but as it's mainly photographs those who can't read German will still get something out of it.

The Stasi were East Germany's version of the secret police. Whether or not you think it was effective probably depends on whether you were born in East Germany and had to live under its regime. Certainly there were a lot of them. Their job was to root out the class enemy, the traitors who betrayed the People's Republic. One of their tools was the humble camera.

As the book points out, camera technology was still relatively new in the 1950s. It took a certain specialist knowledge to use one. However, as time went by and the technology went mainstream the Stasi's cache of surveillance photos increased exponentially. Photos were great. They documented everything. You could prove you were doing a good job if you had a picture of it, whatever it was. It might be a picture of a lightbulb, the same type and manufacture as one which had been thrown onto the roof of a passing car. It might be the faces of three children who kicked their football over the Berlin Wall into East Germany.

It might be absolutely anything.

I would have sworn I'd written about Deutschland 83 before, but apparently not - which is criminal of me. There's meant to be a sequel, Deutschland 86, but I haven't seen it yet. There is a trailer on YouTube but without subtitles it'd only be interesting to the German speakers out there.

I highly and without reservation recommend Deutschland 83 to Night's Black Agents players and Directors, particularly those who enjoy Dust games and who aren't afraid of a little Burn. Just don't get too attached to any of the characters.

When the East German government fell the Stasi did its level best to shred all the records, but the obvious problem was obvious: they had just too many things to shred and not enough shredders. All that paperwork, all those photographs; there was never any chance it'd get done before protestors stormed the gates and took control. It's said that some of the protestors were actually ex-Stasi determined to get hold of their own records and destroy them before anyone could find out about their many crimes. Regardless, in the decades since much of the Stasi's records have been saved, catalogued and made available for research, which is how we end up with books like The Gaze of State Security.

Which brings me to a scenario in two parts:

The State's Last Gasp

The scenario takes place in two different time periods. The first, an extended Thrilling Scene, takes place outside the Stasi Headquarters on 15th January, 1990. This will most likely involve pre-generated characters, possibly based on existing NPCs within your campaign. Any agents' Network Contact, mentor, or nemesis could be involved. An agent can also be involved, provided they're of an age to be a spy in 1990. Their task is to get inside the building and recover the McGuffin - the files.

Precisely what these files are is up to the Director. Perhaps the Stasi had their own version of the Dracula Dossier; not nearly as complete or all-encompassing as Edom's files, but useful nonetheless. Perhaps it's information about Stasi cooperation with agents of the Conspiracy. Blackmail material, photographs of sites which may or may not have been Dracula's castle, personal files of former Stasi who now occupy trusted positions in unified Germany, or whose children are politically or economically significant. It's a McGuffin. It can be whatever you like.

The modern day scenario involves retrieving those files from whoever took them from Stasi Headquarters - assuming they were taken, of course. The files may have been digitized and put on a hard drive, or they may still be in crumbling paper form.

The intent is to play out the Thrilling Scene alongside the main game, so that at the start of the main game none of the players know whether the McGuffin they're chasing was actually taken from Stasi HQ. It might be completely worthless, but there's no way to be sure until after the conclusion of the Thrilling scene.

In a Thrilling chase the stakes are usually life & death, or at least capture or freedom. This time it's different. This time the victory condition is whether or not the players get to decide what happens to the McGuffin. If the 1990s characters succeed in their Thrilling section, then the players do get to decide. If not, then the Director does.

So the start moment would be outside Stasi HQ on 15th January. The protestors are getting out of control, and the guards outside HQ are beginning to panic. Appeals for calm aren't working. Historically the protestors first infiltrated the building at 5pm with tens of thousands getting in through police security. Success in this scene means the players get into the building without anyone getting hurt; failure means they still get in, but there's a scuffle with security and all the characters take -1 damage from the melee.

The target is still 10 - if the characters can build up their Lead to that point, they get the McGuffin. The start point is 3, and the Ability being tested is Infiltration. Unlike the usual Infiltration test this isn't about getting in quietly, unseen - it's more about blending into the crowd, and maneuvering so you can get to where you want to be without being stopped. Potential maneuvers include Intimidation (Death to the Stasi!) Negotiation (appeals for calm and non-violence), even Cop Talk (for dealing with the cops and soldiers).

Then, after the initial Thrilling scene, action moves to the present day. The agents are briefed: their sponsor wants to retrieve the McGuffin from its current hiding place in Germany. A historian claims to have found important files within the Stasi archives, including never-before-seen information about [whatever the McGuffin is about]. Unfortunately, the historian's apartment was burgled and the historian battered into a coma. The agents are to find out who did it, and what happened to the McGuffin.

In order to do it the agents will need to find and talk to X, who is/are, of course, the character(s) in the Thrilling scene. They may also be established NPCs within the campaign; they may even be Network Contacts or mentors. Even if they're usually friendly, this time they aren't. They don't like being reminded of what happened in the bad old days, and especially of what happened back in January 1990.

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters are in the building now. They need to get past the crowds of rubbernecking protestors, dodging actual spies (did you think the CIA would pass up a chance like this? The Russians? Former Stasi?) and get to the records room. Failure in a test here leads either to a mook Hand-to-Hand combat, (where mooks = P+2, and have Thug stats) or a straight +1 damage to all characters in the scene, players choice as to which. Of course, if the players choose the mook combat they might actually lose the fight, which would terminate the Thrilling scene - which is why they have the option of taking straight damage. The Director is free to rule that losing the mook combat = a capture moment, which has the advantage of keeping the Thrilling action going.

Action moves back to the present day. The agents know a little more than they did before, and they have leads that indicate where the McGuffin is, or alternately, who the opposition are. X, it turns out, is just as interested in the McGuffin as the agents are, and is actively looking for it. Is this is double-bluff? Is X looking for the McGuffin because it's actually lost, or because X is pretending to look for it to confuse the issue? This would be a good time for an Antagonist Reaction, or possibly a straight-up vampire moment, as in 'someone got eaten by vampires! They must be closing in!'

Action moves back to the Thrilling scene. The characters, if they're still free, are on their way to the records room. If caught, they're being dragged to the records room by their captors, who don't dare let them out of sight. The final test is to get in there, get the stuff, and out again.

However, a lot now depends on where they are in the Thrilling moment. If the agents are close to 10, which means they're close to winning, then they're one step ahead of the opposition and have unfettered access to the records. So the only people between them and the McGuffin are a few frightened soon-to-be-ex Stasi spies in the records who are frantically shredding everything they can get their hands on. Treat these as mooks (Thugs) as above, except that any show of force (Intimidation) cows them. They'll beat feet if challenged.

If, on the other hand, the agents have been losing badly and have no hope of getting to 10 or pulling off some game-changing Maneuver, then the opposition in the records room is much tougher. Whoever's their main competition (the CIA? the Russians? Vampires?) got there first. Now the agents have to either brace themselves for a fight, or make a really difficult Infiltration check. If, in previous scenes, they took a lot of damage then fighting isn't going to appeal. Let's hope their Infiltration pools are up to it.

This is the capstone moment of the Thrilling scene, so play it for all its worth. If the Director's really feeling cruel, characters in the Thrilling scene could even be mesmerized or vampirized, which retrospectively means that Network contact or important NPC was always working with the enemy, either as a Renfield, or …

Cue the final scene in the present day. The agents close in on the McGuffin. Maybe they retrieve it or maybe they don't, but this is where everyone decides whether the McGuffin is real or not. If the Thrilling scene was a success, then the 1990 characters retained control of the McGuffin so the players can decide whether it's real or not. Their decision may depend on who has it now; if the agents have it they might prefer it to be real, but if the opposition carried it off then the players may rather it was fake. If the Director decides whether it's real, presumably because the Thrilling scene did not go well for the players, then pick whichever option hoses them the most.

Enjoy!

Ripped from the Headlines - Crossbows, China's CIA Man, Huawei

Several people in Germany have committed self-murder in what appears to be a quasi-medieval suicide pact led by a man named in the press as Torsten W. Torsten and two women were found dead in a hotel room, each having been shot with a crossbow. Two other women, one a nineteen-year-old, were also found dead in a house in Wittigen.

According to @thelocalgermany, Torsten W. "owned a shop that sold medieval-style weapons and flags, offered sword-fighting classes and featured a bizarre female mannequin wearing suspenders, tied with ropes and chains, and smeared with blood-like red paint."

In the same article, Torsten is described as the leader of "a kind of sex circle with a focus on the Middle Ages."

There's been a small resurgence in cult stories In the last five years alone we've had five documentaries on Charlie Manson, four of them in 2017, the year Manson died, and there's a film coming up, Charlie Says, with Doctor Who alumnus Matt Smith in the leading role.

Part of this is because it's been fifty years since Manson. There's two or three more documentaries and films due in 2019, to go along with the Manson Family musical, the South Park episode, and the indie comedy film.

Part of this is because, right now, we're obsessed with this kind of mass lunacy, for some reason. Can't think why.

Gamifying this is surprisingly difficult, since most of the compelling scenes take place within the group, impenetrable to outsiders. Viewed from the outside, the Manson Family's just another bunch of cult mooks with a big bad boss, and whether said boss plays guitar or conducts orgies in a medieval dungeon is almost irrelevant. A nice character detail, possibly, but it doesn't add to plot. Put it another way: knowing that the Beach Boys once recorded a tune Manson composed doesn't really add to the Bullitt-style Thrilling Chase scene down the California highway in the third act.

There are ways in. The quasi-medieval cult, in NBA, could be a rival band of vampire hunters, woefully short on Tradecraft but effective in close-up combat. However given their backstory they may fit better in an Esoterrorists or Fear Itself session. Charlie Manson and his followers definitely fit the Fear Itself formula.

In other news, former CIA man turned double agent for China, Kevin Mallory, was sentenced to 20 years in prison this week. He only received $25,000 from China for his efforts, so that's $1,250 per year; not the world's greatest paycheck. Particularly when, at 62, he's likely to die in prison, or emerge a doddering octogenarian.

Mallory's one of several former intelligence assets suborned by China, but what strikes me about this story is how little money's at stake. I wrote last year about Brian Regan, the spy who couldn't spell. He too did it for the money.

I have been in the CIA for over 20 years and will be retiring in two years, Regan wrote in his letter to Libya. I feel that I deserve more than the small pension I will receive for all the years of service at the CIA … Considering the risk I am about to take I will require a minimum payment of thirteen million US dollars wire transferred in Swiss francs, the exact amount, before I will risk my life …

In fiction, we place an extraordinary value on secrets. I'm fond of the game Hitman, which is all about secrets and assassination. The first real scenario in Hitman, Showstopper, features a spy organization named IAGO which makes its living selling secrets to the highest bidder.

Outside Xbox created the vid. If you enjoy that kind of thing, I heartily recommend 'em. They also do fun RPG videos, for those who like cats, explosions, Eldritch Blast, and wacky pirates.

We fill out NDAs, convinced of the mystical value of all those trade secrets. We believe corporate espionage is some kind of James Bond world of spies and counterspies, that mysterious Illuminati-esque figures grow fat on the flow of information, that all-powerful hackers can destroy the world at the click of a keyboard, sending our secrets hither and yon.

What cases like Mallory's ought to show us is that our secrets aren't worth a bucket of horse manure. Hell, at least you can grow something with horse manure. China - China! - couldn't be bothered to scrape up chump change for top level classified information. $25K? If you want to sit in the driver's seat of a 2019 Porsche Boxter, say, you've got to cough up $59K, minimum. A flat in Manhattan, even a dump in Greenwich, costs around half a million. Hell, a lousy Fabergé egg sells for several millions, though if you're lucky you might find one at an LA flea market for a mere $14K.

Finally, let's look back at the Huawei scandal and current fears about surveillance tech inserted into Chinese-manufactured smartphones. It's widely supposed that Canada's detainment of a senior Huawei exec for breaking sanctions against Iran is cover for a more in-depth effort to prevent the Chinese from gaining an unbreakable hold over 5G wireless networks. It's thought China would attempt to insert malware and spyware, using Huawei as a stalking horse.

This is worrying news, but what interests me is, China's been manufacturing high-end electronic goods for decades now. China makes pretty much everything from PS4 and Xbox consoles to desktop PCs. Odds are pretty good you're using a Chinese-made machine to read this post. Chinese surveillance tech is almost certainly a big part of the electronic ecosystem already.

Gamification … remember a while back when I talked about casinos in Macau, and hungry ghosts? I posited that a casino might use hungry ghosts as so-called luck ambassadors, slaving the ghost to a cloud-based slot machine system and using it to monitor player activity.

So here you have a slot machine that knows exactly who you are, I posted. It's tracked you from the moment you checked in at the hotel, and can continue to track you via the courtesy smartphone that the hotel gave you, or through your guest card, or any number of different ways. It can switch up the odds as it sees fit, to keep you playing. It can judge your tolerance for loss, and keep you pumped up for as long as your money holds out.

Now imagine if that machine was haunted - say, by hungry ghosts.

If you've followed gaming at all, you'll have seen anguished articles about gambling, and how some games use casino-style tactics to drain cash from underage players, and their parents. Take that a step further. Imagine a Chinese manufacturer who deliberately slips hungry ghosts into gaming consoles, ships them out to naïve Westerners, and lets the ghost handle the rest. A microtransaction or micropayment system, managed by the dead, whose purpose is to skim a little off the top and send it back to the manufacturer. Even if all they got was a fraction of a penny on every transaction, there are so many transactions it all adds up to one great big fortune.

Imagine what might happen if those ghosts get too ambitious …

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Person of Interest: Institution M (Night's Black Agents)

Earlier this week the story of Werner Mauss' tax evasion conviction, and two hundred thousand euro fine, broke, and brought the shadowy Institution M back into the international spotlight again. Since he's exactly the sort of person your Night's Black Agents players are going to want to meet, he's this week's Person of Interest.

Mauss, born in Essen in 1940, became a private investigator in the 1960s, and soon started working with the German police and intelligence services exclusively. It's not clear how this happened. His website claims he was trained by a former member of the intelligence services, and that may have given him the contacts he needed to start working with the authorities. Otherwise it's difficult to fathom how an otherwise undistinguished former agronomist and vacuum cleaner salesman in his twenties got the attention of the powers that be. He'd enjoyed success working for insurance companies, but presumably he wasn't the only private investigator in Germany with a decent success record. Reading the site gives the impression that here is a man who is neither shy nor lacking in self-promotion skills, so a certain amount of bluff may have been involved.

He began as a police spy, infiltrating criminal gangs and filtering their secrets back to the police. He claims over 2,000 arrests all told thanks to his evidence, over a forty year career, everything from diamond thieves and tracking down barrels of stolen toxic waste, to the arrest of Red Army Faction fugitives and alleged police murderer Alfred Lecki, in Spain. However from the 1980s he began his South American work, and it is at this point that things get murky.

He started by helping Mannesmann AG in Columbia with troubles it was having over an oil pipeline, but Mann soon found himself negotiating the return of hostages from the ELN. The National Liberation Army -  Ejército de Liberación Nacional - has been fighting the Columbian government since 1964. Its more famous fraternal organization FARC gets all the attention, but the ELN is also a Communist group - Marxist, as distinct from FARC's brand of Marxist-Leninism - and the ELN is no laughing matter. It engages in attacks on infrastructure, like the pipeline, as well as extortion and kidnapping. At this moment it is estimated to have over two hundred people in captivity. The ELN calls it war taxes and retentions; the retentions - kidnappings - are used to encourage payment of the war taxes, or extortion.

Mauss successfully recovered retentions, which got the attention of the German government, at that time Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrat/Liberal coalition. Kohl needed a way to get German civilians back from the ELN, and Mauss was perfectly positioned to play intermediary. Soon Mauss became involved in a more ambitious project, aimed at brokering peace between the ELN and the government. From Germany's perspective this could be nothing but good news; finally the kidnappings and damage to German businesses would end.

The negotiations went reasonably well, but didn't prove as successful as everyone hoped. Moreover the Columbian government was becoming suspicious; was Mauss actually collaborating with the ELN to drive up ransoms, collecting his cut from the kidnappers for this service? He was arrested and jailed for nine months, before being cleared of all charges in 1998.

If he was being paid by the ELN, it was just one of a long list of clients. Mauss' personal fortune grew. His 40,000 acre estate, bought in the 1960s when land was probably a lot cheaper, has been built up into a fenced-off Disney World castle according to the German papers, complete with its own zoo, exotic animals, and the largest private riding hall in Germany. All of which seems reminiscent of a certain film, or possibly more than one.

The Panama Papers leak threw a little more light onto Mauss' world. He had been a busy man, helping the rich and powerful in their business dealings, and in the process built up substantial accounts in Luxembourg and the Bahamas, for which he paid no tax. Mauss claims this is because the funds were actually given him by Western intelligence agencies to help his fight against terrorism and organized crime, even Isis. He also promised a string of star witnesses at his trial, none of whom showed up - and one of whom had died five years prior. Even had all of them materialized, it would have been difficult to explain a slush fund in excess of $50 million whose stated purpose was to fund a Werner Mauss memorial museum after Institution M's demise.

Mauss claims his defense was hampered because so much of his work has to remain secret, covered in a blizzard of non disclosure agreements. All this may be so, but NDAs can also be used to cover up a mountain of bullshit, and in Mauss' case it's difficult to separate the man from the legend. Given the amounts discussed at his trial, his two year suspended sentence and fine seem remarkably lenient. The trial judge said Mauss' lifetime achievement was the reason why his sentence was so light. Clearly the judge couldn't tell the difference between Mauss, the man with $50 million in unexplained funds, and Institution M, the tireless crusader against crime.

So from a gamification perspective, what do we have?

A Night's Black Agents character, clearly. Possibly a mentor; Institution M seems an unlikely Solace. There's a certain murkiness about his whole career that just screams plant - but whose? After all, he buys that 40,000 acre estate in the 1960s, when he's just starting his private investigative career. Even in the 1960s, it's difficult to believe land was quite that cheap. A fictionalized version would have Institution M backed by some shadowy force - but whether it's Dracula or the KGB is an open question. It's easy to see why the Soviets, for example, might want an independent private investigator deeply embedded in the German intelligence apparat, particularly in the 1960s when the Cold War might get hot at any minute. Or the Americans. Or any number of foreign governments, but the Soviets or the Americans are the two most likely to have the funds and the hutzpah.

As a Node he's clearly at the National level at the very least. All those government contacts, in several different jurisdictions; all that foreign travel. He's not what you'd call a bruiser - his legend claims he's only ever fired a gun once in his entire career - but as an information gatherer he's unsurpassed. He's spent his entire career persuading people he can be trusted; someone like that can be more dangerous than an entire tank battalion, in the right circumstances. A Grima Wormtongue with significantly more panache.

It's tempting to write him into any number of stories. For example, Helmut Kohl's legacy has been tainted by the CDU donations scandal, in which cash donations to the party were swept under the rug. It's never been shown that Kohl actually took bribes or benefitted financially in any way, but it paved the way for Angela Merkel's rise. Someone had to be the go-between in the whole unsavory affair; it's not as if Kohl could attend to the matter himself. Suppose for a moment it was Mauss, a man who Kohl had come to know well at least by reputation, and perhaps personally. Or suppose that Mauss was a go-between for Karlheinz Schreiber, the arms dealer at the heart of the scandal, and that Mauss leaked the whole thing for reasons of his own, possibly to avoid prosecution, or to settle some kind of grudge. He could be fictionalized in all sorts of ways, is the point; the man who knows everybody's secrets, but who ensures nobody knows his. Did he use his go-between status to act as Kingmaker, and is now the man behind Merkel - or better yet, the Renfield behind Merkel? Did Germany's pre-war vampire project information find its way into his hands? What awful secrets does his German estate conceal? After all, 40,000 acres is a lot of ground - plenty of space to bury bodies if need be ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Baader-Meinhof (Night's Black Agents)

Unfortunately I've had to end my Dracula Dossier game early due to the sudden departure of two out of four players. As the group hadn't progressed that far, it seemed more fitting to end that campaign and begin a new one with the two remaining players, than it did to struggle on with the two remaining characters. It would have been a different thing had they encountered any Node above the lowest rank, or been involved in the underlying plot.

I thought that I'd take advantage of the recent Field Manual release - I believe it's only for Kickstarter backers in .pdf form now, but the rest of you will see it soon - to switch viewpoints and have them play Edom field agents. For their first mission the characters will be off to Poland to investigate a certain Nazi ghost train. However that's not the focus of this post.

As one of the minor obstacles the characters will have to overcome before digging into the main meat of the narrative, I intend to pit them against Alraune and a few of her friends. Alraune is interested in the ghost train because she believes some records, perhaps even physical samples, relating to her old project is aboard. As for what she's been up to since the war, I intend to get the old Baader-Meinhof gang involved.

Baader-Meinhof is an early form of what became the German terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF),  and I'm taking inspiration from the film Baader-Meinhof Komplex based on the novel by journalist and former Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust.

Having watched it, I came away saddened by the colossal waste, of energy, lives and hope. None of the principals seem inspiring, particularly miserable whiner Andreas Baader, and I found it curious that Bruno Ganz played the intelligence service chief set to capture or eliminate the group. Not that Ganz did a poor job - his performance is, as always, excellent - but I could not forget that four years prior he had captivated the world with his performance as Hitler.  Given that the RAF was driven in no small part by anti-Nazi sentiment, Ganz's performance seemed to verge on stunt casting.

The RAF was - or perhaps is, since there are rumors that it is active again - a far-left group determined to resist the authoritarian German state, controlled at that time by the Hitler generation, if not actual ex-Nazis. "The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it," says Aust. "You see your action as the resistance that your parents did not put up."

It had a hard-core Marxist tinge to its ideology, and its members trained with Palestinian liberation groups. Dividing itself into Commandos, each group knew very little about the other groups, allowing it freedom of operation without having to worry about its secrets being betrayed by its members, or its organization threatened when its leadership is captured. Even when the founding members Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof were captured, the RAF was able to continue operations almost without interruption.

All told, the RAF lasted until the 1990s, by which time it was in its third generation. By that point the original team had committed suicide - or been murdered, depending on which story you believe - and the second generation had bathed in blood during the German Autumn of kidnappings and murders, only to sputter out by 1980. The third generation carried the torch, but this lacked glamour after the collapse of Soviet Russia. It's hard to convince yourself that Leninism is the way forward when the USSR dissolves.

Though the third generation is supposed to have declared itself kaput in 1998, recent bank robberies seem to suggest that the spirit of revolution is not yet dead. Though it's probably reaching for the Viagra right about now, since at best its active members must be in their late fifties if not early sixties.

Alraune, being a semi-immortal with every reason to dislike the German authorities, would fit right in with Baader-Meinhof. So here's where things get fictional.

Alraune joins the group in the 1970s. It accepts her unquestioningly, at least in part because she ingratiates herself with Baader and his girlfriend Ensslin. In return, she uses the RAF to help track down anything and everything the Nazis may have collected or uncovered about her past as a  Abteilung IIIb experiment. She's confident she recovered most of that data back in 1911, but her abiding paranoia is that she missed something, or that some other group was able to replicate the experiment.

One advantage Alraune has is that she can die, and be reborn. On at least two occasions with the RAF she arranged for her current persona to be shot dead in an encounter with the German authorities, only to reappear a short while later as a grieving relative or friend. The great thing about the RAF's decision to divide into Commandos, from her perspective, is that the group finds it difficult to compare notes. This allows her to infiltrate Commando after Commando without arousing too much suspicion, and she uses her own innate abilities to make up the shortfall.

Her current group is the (fictional) Kevin Lynch Commando, named after a dead Irish hunger striker, and she's playing the daughter of a previous incarnation. The Lynch is responsible for two sniper attacks, three kidnappings and one attempted kidnapping, and two bombings. Its last known action took place in 1997, when it was involved in a botched bank robbery that led to the deaths of two of its members. The two dead included Alraune's then-current incarnation, and the robbery failed because Alraune tipped off the authorities. She could see which way the wind was blowing, and thought it was time to bow out.

Though she believes the current German authorities know little or nothing about her, that isn't entirely true. DNA profiling wasn't even on the horizon when she first took up arms in 1970, but things have changed since then, and several samples of her unique biology were retrieved from crime scenes. Also, although in the early days she was careful to ensure that the records concerning autopsies of her dead personas were removed from the record, in 1997 she got a little sloppy. Some biological samples and computerized records escaped the purge. 

Hearing about the Polish Nazi ghost train, and worried that she might have missed something when she first investigated Project Giant in 1946, she decides to go after the train. However she feels she needs muscle so she reactivates her old comrades, claiming to be the daughter of her 1997 persona. Persuading them that there really is Nazi gold in them thar hills isn't too difficult; as former terrorists they're all living hand to mouth and desperate for money. It seems almost poetic justice to them that Nazi gold should pay for their golden years.

And that's where complications ensue ...

Enjoy!