Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 9, 2016 10:31:53 GMT
I'm creating this thread as a home for historical events, places and people that could be used as game inspiration (directly or as background) but don't really justify a thread to themselves. If anyone has any ideas to contribute, either more incidents or methods to include them in a game, please go ahead.
Here's my first contributions.
Jane Fawcett Jane Fawcett (no relation to Percy as far as I can determine) died on 21MAY2016 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95. She had an interesting career as an opera singer and thorn in the side of institutions such as British Rail (who described her as “the furious Mrs. Fawcett” after a skirmish over the preservation of London's St. Pancras station). Oh, and she played a significant part in sinking the German battleship Bismark in World War 2.
She was born (Janet Caroline Hughes) on 04MAR1921 in Cambridge to George Ravensworth Hughes (solicitor for the Goldsmiths’ Company in London) and Peggy Hughes (nee Graham) a housewife and prison visitor. She trained as a ballet dancer (spending a year training at Sadler’s Wells) but was rejected in 1938 as being to tall; her parents sent her to Switzerland, where she spent six months studying German (this would be rather important later). Her mother called her back for the 1939 debutante season, insisting it was time for her to 'come out' in society. This she did, reluctantly, but a letter from a school friend caused her to apply for work at a place called Bletchley Park, where "something interesting" was going on. At 18 she was assigned to Hut 6, decoding German communications and looking for valid messages in German as different keys were tried.
On 25MAY1941 Ms. Fawcett was among those in Hut 6 briefed on the search for the Bismarck. During her shift she typed in an intercepted Luftwaffe message, from a Luftwaffe general whose son was on the Bismarck and who'd sought to find out if he was all right. The reply informed him that the ship, damaged in the previous battle, was on its way to Brest for repair. The message was escalated instantly up the chain of command and was instrumental in finding the Bismarck, which was located from the air, damaged by torpedo bombers and swarmed by Royal Navy ships, being finally sunk in the Atlantic west of Brest on 27MAY1941. More.
Uses: the PCs could meet Ms. Fawcett while infiltrating Bletchley Park for some reason and inadvertently prevent her from noticing the clue to the Bismark's location. After the realise their mistake they've got to fix it.
The Prince of Wales. During the coronation of George IV (less mad but rather fatter than III and also addicted to laudanum) on 19JUL1819 in Westminster Abbey the entry of his (legal) wife (the even fatter Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel) was blocked by a group of prizefighters (dressed as pageboys) led by "Gentleman" John Jackson. Then the doors were slammed in her face. Not until much more recent times has a Prince of Wales experienced such marital difficulties...
- The marriage was forced on the prince by his father in 1795; the couple detested each other and the prince/king had a string of mistresses and probably a few illegitimate children.
Caroline suddenly became ill on the day after the Westminster Abbey incident, and died three weeks later, which relieved George of this problem for the rest of his reign. There are stories that she was pricked by a dirty bayonet (she was stopped by at bayonet point by soldiers at the West Cloister) and this led to her death. Or that she was poisoned on her husband's orders. The removal of her body from Hammersmith to Harwich, to be shipped home, was equally farcical with rioting and fatalities. Link.
Uses: this could be background filler, with the PCs involved in some other business in London and witnessing the events, or perhaps they try to solve the mystery of Caroline'd death. A PC with a chivalric side may attempt to intervene, and alter history.
They Stole Lincoln’s Body! Why is it the duty of the US Secret Service, created to fight counterfeiting, to protect the President of the United States? Well there are several reasons that Congress allocated them the duty in 1901. But one of the odder reasons was the USSS had done the job in 1876 when an attempt was made to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. Eleven years after this death...
The story of The Plot to Kidnap Lincoln's Corpse starts with the conviction of one Benjamin Boyd for counterfeiting. Boyd was a skilled engraver who worked for 'Big Jim' Kennally the leader of a group of Chicago based counterfeiters and was sent to Joliet for ten years. Kennally had the brilliant(?) idea of stealing Lincoln's body and demanding a ransom and a pardon for Boyd.
- At the time Lincoln's body lay in in white marble sarcophagus in a tomb on the grounds of Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery. The only security was a padlock on the tomb's door as the cemetery had no watchman or groundskeeper and was several kilometres outside of the town.
Kennally and two members of his gang, Terence Mullen and Jack Hughes, developed the plan and recruited an experienced grave-robber named Lewis Swegles to assist. Alas for them Swegles was an informant of the Secret Service. He reported every detail of the plot to his boss, Patrick Tyrrell the chief of the Chicago office.
On the night of 7 November (with people distracted by the election) the group headed Oak Ridge Cemetery to do the deed. Tyrrell and a team of agents were waiting for them, to witness the crime. The plot didn't go well, none of the men could open the padlock, so they wasted time filing through the shackle, and inside the bomb they found they couldn't lift Lincoln's heavy cedar and lead coffin. While trying to figure out what to do the accidental discharge of a Secret Service agent's revolver outside alerted them. Fleeing, they were arrested within a few days.
Back in Springfield John Power, the custodian of the tomb was panicked by the thought of another attempt. So he decided to hide the body. Recruiting a group of friends another nocturnal visit was paid to the tomb and Lincoln's body was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, where it remained until 1901 when a new tomb was constructed and the body interred. More.
Uses: might the PCs also be lurking around a graveyard at night? The perfect opportunity to embroil them in a criminal plot. Or was there something buried with Lincoln that they desperately need?
Don't Call Me Shirley! Actually until the mid nineteenth century 'Shirley' was a boy's name... Why did this change? Well it's all down to Charlotte Bronte and a novel she wrote, set during the industrial unrest in Yorkshire in 1811-12. One of the principal characters was a girl who dressed in men's clothes and calls herself Shirley. The book was so popular that it led to 'Shirley' becoming a popular girls' name.
Uses: Perhaps a PC from the future doesn't realise the gender of someone until they meet?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 11, 2016 11:38:47 GMT
Batch II. Comments, ideas, contributions and suggestions are welcome.
Albert Göring He started as a dilettante film-maker, was married four times (the last a week before his death), once scrubbed a street, annoyed his older brother greatly (often forging his signature), sabotaged his country's war-effort and might yet end up in the garden of the Yad Vashem.
He was younger brother, and general annoyance, to the more famous Hermann. In his youth Albert was described as a bon viveur and dilettante who enjoyed the good life, living in baronial splendour, and dabbled in filmmaking. This seems to have ended when the Nazi party, with Hermann as second only to Adolph Hitler, achieved power in Germany in 1933 and set about implementing it's racial policies; Albert Göring despised Nazism and it's brutality. Albert used his family name and the threat of his brother's displeasure to engage in numerous acts against the Nazi party; aiding dissidents like Oskar Pilzer to escape from Germany and becoming was quite expert at forging his brother's signature on documents authorising travel. When banished to Czechoslovakia (as export director at the Škoda Works) he developed contacts with the Czech resistance and encouraged acts of sabotage against the war machine. He would acquire truckloads of slave workers from concentration camps, who'd mysteriously escape in transit... After the war he was left nearly penniless and lived modestly in Münich, marrying his longtime housekeeper just prior to his death in 1961 in order to pass on his pension, the only legacy he had.
Uses: a handy man to remember if a party is stuck in Nazi Germany without transport. Or the PCs could become embroiled in Albert's activities completely unaware of his part.
The Grafton Affair. A century or so ago two nations were at war, let's call them A and B. The war wasn't going too well for B but they knew that A had a restive province (C) with an active nationalist movement seeking independence. Seeking a distraction they dispatched an agent to foment revolution in B's backyard. Off he sailed on an old ship loaded with with rifles, ammunition, explosives and other stores. Plus quite a lot of booze. The mission failed, down to the one of the leading revolutionaries on the ship having run out of cigarettes and almost being arrested after being put ashore, while attempting to burglarise a tobacconist, the ship's crew getting drunk, and the arrival of B's navy....
- I should now reveal that C was not Ireland.
- A was Russia, B was Japan and C was Finland.
It happened in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese war and is known, to those who collect such trivia, as the Grafton Affair, after the ship used for the attempted arms smuggling (the SS John Grafton). It was purchased by a Japanese army intelligence officer, Akashi Motojiro, to supply arms to a planned armed uprising in Finland. The purchase was nominally done by a Japanese supporting English wine merchant in London. The ship sailed to Flushing in the Netherlands and was renamed (Luna) and sold on 28JUL1905.
- Motojiro is a fascinating character, a noted poet and painter as well as a spy. He recruited the (in)famous agent Sidney Reilly and evaded the Ochrana on many occasions while travelling around Europe and inside the Russian Empire. He was a highly successful later Governor-General of Taiwan, and is the only Japanese Governor-General buried there. He's considered the Japanese equivalent of James Bond in media.
The Japanese organised and financed the purchase of around fifteen thousand rifles (somewhat obsolete Swiss Vetterli black-powder repeaters), two-and-a-half million rounds, thousands of revolvers and a few tonnes of explosives. Originally some of the arms were to be supplied to Russian revolutionaries but that aspect of the plan was dropped. The scheme was partially successful, some arms were landed at Kemi and more at Jakobstad but when the ship left Jakobstad she ran aground.
- The presence of a large quantity of wine on the ship, part of it's original disguise, was greatly responsible for the grounding.
The crew salvaged some of the weapons and the captain decided to scuttle the vessel with the remaining explosives. It's still there. None of the rifles were ever used against the Russian authorities, though some were used for moose hunting. More. Ref: Griffiths; Clandestine Japanese activity in the Baltic during the Russo-Japanese war.
Uses: what better place for a TARDIS to materialise than the hold of a ship loaded with arms, explosives, revolutionaries and wine? Or perhaps the encounter Motojiro about his business?
Multi-classing. Only one person in history is documented as being both a dwarf (<1.47m) and giant (>2.15m), Adam Rainer. Rainer was born in Graz (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1899. In 1917 he was rejected from military service due to his height, 1.38m (4 feet 6.3 inches). Rainer developed a medical condition in the 1920s, probably a pituitary tumor, and experienced rapid and extreme growth. In 1930 he was measured, after medical treatment, at 2.06m (6 feet 9.1 inches) with severe spinal curvature. He died in 1950 having reached the height of 2.34m (7 feet, 8 inches).
Uses: an interesting person for the PCs to encounter in both phases of his life. And was his sudden growth in his twenties really natural?
Floating Bombs. While the Japanese use of balloon bombs (Fu-Go) against the USA during World War 2 is well known they weren't the only ones to use such devices.
- Interestingly the Japanese programme was the byproduct of a scientific experiment; Japan was attempting to map air currents by launching balloons (with instruments attached) from the western side of Japan and picking them up on the East. This led to the discovery of a powerful trans-Pacific air currant at around 9km altitude.
The Japanese balloon bombs still occasionally turn up; one was found in British Columbia in 2014.
Operation Outward was a British programme that launched nearly 100,000 hydrogen filled balloons (surplus Royal Navy weather balloons) towards Germany and Occupied Europe. Some carried incendiary payloads, though most carried 200m of trailing wires designed to damage power lines. The programme was hampered by inter-service rivalries but was surprisingly successful with damage to the German electrical grid, several forest fires and considerable waste of resources stopping the attacks. Link.
After the war the United States developed the last serious programme of weaponised balloons; the US E77 developed in the 1950s and intended as a strategic weapon to deploy biological weapon payloads. At one stage about 15% of the US bio-weapons stock was to be deployed in this way, mainly agents useful against food crops.
Uses: the facilities for Operation Outward, and the accompanying secrecy, could be a red herring for PCs looking for a different secret project. Or perhaps they encounter USAF tests of it's new secret weapon in the 1950s.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 12, 2016 11:45:12 GMT
And some more.
The Last Battle. Actually the Battle for Castle Itter wasn’t the last battle of World War 2 in Europe (that’s considered to be the Battle of Odžak) but it was certainly one of the strangest. It took place around a castle in the Austrian North Tyrol village of Itter on 05MAY194 and was (as far as is known) the only occasion where Allied and German forces fought on the same side.
- Unless a GM has plans for them to team to to fight an alien threat that endangers both sides of the war, of course.
The castle was first constructed in the thirteenth century but remodeiled many times over the centuries; in 1940 it was commandeered and used for various administrative purposes.
- Including the obscure ‘German Association for Combating the Dangers of Tobacco’. Which was probably a perfectly harmless organisation and not the cover for something very strange…
In 1943 it was converted for use as a prison, intended to house VIP prisoners, under the control of the Dachau camp (about 145km SE of the castle). Twenty of the guest rooms were converted as cells. In May 1945 all the prisoners were French; Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud (former prime ministers); Léon Jouhaux (trade union leader), Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin (both generals), Jean Borotra (a former tennis star and Vichy politician), François de La Rocque (former leader of the fascist Croix-de-Feu), Michel Clemenceau (politician and son of Georges Clemenceau), Alfred Cailliau (politician and brother-in-law of Charles de Gaulle) and his wife Marie-Agnes and her sister Marie-Agnès de Gaulle, Christiane Mabire (Reynaud’s secretary, mistress and future wife), Marcel Granger (related to Free French general Henri Giraud), André François-Poncet (former ambassador), and others.
- There was little unity among the prisoners; Reynaud and Daladier cordially hated each others, and both detested Weygand, who disliked his predecessor as French supreme commander, Gamelin. Jouhaux and de La Rocque were polar opposites politically.
Conditions for the prisoners weren’t particularly bad (especially compared to the horrors of the main Dachau complex) with comfortable rooms, reasonable food, access to an excellent library, daily exercise in the interior courtyard and a clandestine radio.
As the war wound down and German defeat seemed inevitable the castle became a waypoint for groups of fleeing German officers and their accumulated loot. These included Eduard Weiter, the last commandant of Dachau, who shot himself in the castle on 02MAY. Before leaving Dachau he'd ordered the killing of about two thousand inmates remaining there.
- He shot himself twice in fact, once in the heart and once in the brain...
That day Sebastian Wimmer, the commanding officer of the castle, also fled with his wife, leaving a wounded officer named Schrader in charge. What happened to Wimmer is unknown.
On the morning of 04MAY the prisoners found themselves alone in the castle apart from Schrader, the guards having fled. After equipping themselves from the castle armoury the decided to seek aid from the approaching American forces. A Yugoslav prisoner and handman Zoonimir "André" Cuckovic volunteered to go find the nearest Allied unit and get help. To speed him on his way he "borrowed" a bicycle from a shopkeeper in the village of Itter. Despite the area being infested with remnants of SS units he stumbled over a small Wehrmacht force led by Major Josef Gangel, who'd been in contact with Austrian anti-Nazi elements and was minded to surrender.
- Saving the French prisoners would also reflect well on him of course.
Gangel sent Cuckovic in the direction of Innsbruck (about 60km SW) which had been liberated by US Army forces. Gangel himself, in a Kübelwagen with a large white flag and a truck loaded with Wehrmacht infantry, set off NE towards Kufstein. Both groups encountered Americans; Cuckovic met elements of the 103rd Infantry Division and, after some discussions, a small force of four M10 tank destroyers, three jeeps, a truck load of infantrymen from the 411th Infantry Regiment and a pair of war correspondents (Meyer Levin and Eric Schwab). Gangel had found the US 23rd Tank Battalion in Kufstein and a small force was dispatched to accompany him, with two M4 Sherman medium tanks and a handful of 'tank rider' infantry from the (black) 17th Armored Infantry Battalion under the command of a First Lieutenant named Jack Lee. Another platoon of five Shermans were also dispatched but these wouldn't arrived at the castle, remaining to block SS reinforcements at Wörgl. Pausing at a mined bridge about 7km from the castle for the Wehrmacht troops to remove the explosives, Lee posted one of his two tanks there and continued to the castle. Approaching, they came under small arms fire from SS troops, but made it to the castle at dusk. The prisoners, expecting a large US force were unimpressed by a single tank, seven US soldiers and a truckload of Germans. Lee took command and decided to 'fort up' and await reinforcements rather than run the gauntlet of the woods in the dark.
- Reynaud appears to lieutenant Lee rather annoying; his memoirs describe him as "crude in both looks and manners". He also commented that "If Lee is a reflection of America’s policies, Europe is in for a hard time".
At about 11PM the caste was attacked by SS forces, repulsed by the strange mix of defenders, though small arms and sniper fire continued all night. At dawn the fighting intensifed with heavy machine-gun fire directed at the castle and an 88mm anti-tank gun shelling it (destroying the lone Sherman and also Gamelin’s (empty) room. After the tank was destroyed the SS troops attacked from the east (towards the main gate) and west (to the lowest section of the walls). Several casualties (all German) were suffered including Major Gangel, who was killed by a sniper while on the roof.
Luckily reinforcement weren't far away; the US force from Innsbruck (under Major John Kramers) had reached the bridge and could see the battle. Likewise a reconnaissance element from the 142nd Infantry Regiment. Aided by an Austrian partisan (who knew what parts of the local telephone network still operated) they contacted the castle and spoke to Lee, who was taking heavy fire, though the SS hadn't breached the walls.
- Why exactly the SS pressed the attack isn't known. They may have intended to kill the prisoners or simply to destroy the Allied force.
At around 3PM the battle reached it's climax; SS reinforcements had brought anti-tank rockets and were preparing to breach the gate, the defenders were low on ammunition and Jean Borotra had been dispatched to the guide the relief force, but was presumed dead. Lee was preparing to pull his small force back into the castle keep as the force of tanks, half-tracks, trucks and jeeps arrived. His greeting to Major Elliot was "What kept you?".
Uses: it's the perfect spot for a party of time travellers to arrive, stuck in the middle of a battle small enough for even a few people to effect, and with the motivation of possibly catastrophic changes to post-War Europe if the prisoners are killed. Of course the castle might have been used for Nazi Mad Science experiments, and there could be something nasty still around.
The Missing Submarines of 1968. It's probably a weird coincidence but in 1968 four submarines sank, one American, one Soviet, one French and one Israeli.
The French Minerve (a smallish diesel-electric boat) was lost on 27JAN1968 somewhere around 50km from Toulon while heading back to that harbour; 52 crew were on-board. The cause is unknown and the boat has never been found (water in the suspected area is 1-2km deep).
The INS Dakar was a modified British T-class submarine, one of three operated by the Israeli Sea Corps. She departed Portsmouth for Israel on 09JAN1968 and was lost en-route, between Cyprus and Crete (her last known position was about 180km west of Cyprus, to causes unknown. The wreck was located in 1999 and a limited salvage operation was conducted.
The Soviet submarine K-129 (a Golf-II type diesel-electric sub carrying ballistic missiles) departed on patrol on 24FEB1968 and failed to carry out routine radio communications. My the middle of March Soviet naval authorities were worried about the submarine (and the nuclear weapons on board) and began a search. It was formally declared missing in late March but the Soviet navy never located the sub.
- The cause of the sinking isn't known but there was (and is) speculation about a collision with a US submarine.
However the US Navy did, having detected an underwater explosion on 08MAR using the SOSUS underwater sonar network, and found the wreck northwest of Oahu, under nearly 5km of water. In 1974 the USN and CIA launched one of the largest, most complex and most expensive clandestine projects of the Col War: Project Azorian was an attempt to salvage the K-129
Finally, on 22MAY1968, the nuclear powered USS Scorpion was lost near the Azores while surveiling a Soviet naval task group. The cause of her sinking is unknown, with different investigations suggesting an accidental torpedo explosion, mechanical failure (there were ongoing problems and a much needed refit had been delayed), collision with a Soviet submarine, deliberate attack (a Soviet supply had supplied details of the Scorpions mission and course) or detonation of hydrogen gas from auxiliary batteries. Two nuclear weapons remain on-board.
Uses: materialising on-board a doomed submarine perhaps? Or were the subs actually sunk by deliberate action, either alien (Sea Devils perhaps?) or human (Mad Scientist). Were the world's navies operating together against a threat to humanity?
The Silversmith. He was a silversmith by trade, though most of his work was in copper or iron, but also the first forensic dentist in the USA; he fought with his father over religion and was one of the ringleaders in the Boston Tea Party; he introduced new methods of labour organisation and industrial practice that revolutionised metalworking in the new United States. Twice he rode to rouse the colonial militia against British attacks, though the first (in December 1774) was a false alarm, and many of the hundreds of church bells he cast are still in use. His engraving of the Boston Massacre was accepted as being such an accurate depiction of the incident it was used in court. Politically he was a fervent Federalist. He was Paul Revere.
Uses: a visit to revolutionary Boston would allow a party to meet many of the leaders of the nascent colonial independence movement and potentially meddle in a dangerous and vulnerable era of time.
No Man's Land Fort. Built in the Solent between 1867 and 1880 (one of the so-called "Palmerston Forts") No Man's Land Fort formed part of the defenses of Portsmouth; a 75m diameter circular mass of rock and concrete, covered in iron armour plating. Originally it mounted 22 cannon and accommodated eighty soldiers in three floors. It was operated until 1957 and passed into private hands (a certain science fiction television series used it once). It's now a hotel. More.
Uses: a suitable location to re-run The Horror of Fang Rock with more soldiers, or a murder mystery, cut off from assistance by bad weather.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
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Post by senko on Jul 12, 2016 15:03:59 GMT
The world is a strange place. Here's a few little tidbits I like, please be aware these are not verified and may be utterly false stories but I do like them (part in brackets is plot ideas that occured to me).
1) On his first voyage Abel Tasman discovered Fiji, New Zealand and Tasmania but not the main Australian contient. Pretty big thing to miss considering you found countries on 3 sides of it (Did it not exist when he sailed through? If not how did it get here?).
2) Erastothene's using sticks and shadows in 300 BC calculated the circumference of the earth to within 25,000 miles (Or did he have something else to guide him?).
3) The shortest war in history lasted 45 minutes (Someones trying to change its outcome by evacuating the rightful Sultan to safety).
4) The longest official war in history lasted over 300 years and boosted not a single casualty (popular time traveller vacation spot as its safe).
5) Nero married at least 2 gay couples in ancient Rome (Jack Harkness wants a lift for him and Ianto).
6) King Richard II was the inventor of the handkerchief (Did someone leave one behind?).
7) The very first bomb dropped on Berlin in WW2 killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo (An environmental organization is offering a reward for its retrieval).
8) General Joshua Milton Blahyi lead his troops wearing nothing but shoes and a gun as the devil phoned him when he was 11 to tell him this would protect him, he was survived the war and became a preacher (Who made that phonecall?).
That assault on the prison by the SS reminds me of a horror story about a castle that was a prison for a vampire and the germans stationed there let him out because the cross sealing him in was a gold sword hilt (blade was with the guy who did the sealing) and they wanted the gold. Still I digress I can easily see German experiments in the occult being used by an alien race to alter earth's history indirectly. Time travel, germany wins the war as their puppets. The SS are attacking to retrieve the prototype which pulls the PC's off course and dumps them there. They have to disable the device to leave but they also need to ensure the SS don't win the battle and change the outcome of the war.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 13, 2016 11:45:15 GMT
Nice contributions senko! Here are mine for today.
The Mystery of San Francisco. When did San Francisco Bay come into existence? Geologists are reasonably sure that the bay and Golden Gate were formed slowly over millions of years by water flowing down to the sea. But what if they were wrong? Gertrude Atherton (a novelist and historian, and a fascinating character in her own right, ripe for inclusion in a SF centred scenario) was one of the first to speculate in writing about the possibility that the bay formed suddenly and recently (within the last half millennium, between 1609 and 1769). One of her main points was simple: "Why had Drake and the Spanish explorers sailed along the coast in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and anchored as close as Point Reyes and the Farallones without ever seeing this auspicious portal to the Bay?".
- The obvious reason is the fog that commonly obscures the gate even today. But that's rather mundane for Doctor Who.
Further there's the Costanoan Indian legend that says that the bay was formed by a catastrophic crash when a god stumbled with the body of a mortal whom he thought to marry. The god’s arm crushed the ridge connecting the peninsula with the Marin headlands, and the water of the ocean rushed in to fill the valley, forming the bay.
Is there some truth to this? Was Atherton right in her insistence that where the gate now provides a break through the Coast Range, there was only a solid wall of mountains in Drake’s time? And if so, what ruptured this wall of rock in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries (between 1609, when Sebastian Vizcaino failed to spot the Golden Gate, and 1769, when Gaspar de Portolá i Rovira did spot it).
- And did de Portolá have some help? What caused his to overshoot his intended destination of Monterey and stumble on San Francisco?
There is one other piece of supporting evidence for Atherton theory; several nineteenth-century geologists also believed that the Gate formed in recent history. For example, in 1853 a geologist named William Phipps Blake wrote of the shoreline of the bay: "It is a curious fact that the sand beach between Fort Point and Point San Jose has been thrown up by the surf upon an extensive alluvial deposit, which has the characteristics of a peat bog or swamp. The sand and loose boulders rest on a foundation of peat which can easily be examined at low tide. A continuation of the peat layer is found in the flat meadowland inside the belt of sand. Traces of the bog can also be found between the sand belt and the sandstone hills nearby. It is difficult to account for the swamp under conditions like those at present. The constant action of the surf is destructive and the swamp could not possibly have formed while the Golden Gate was open as we now find it".
- Blake is also a possible character to insert into a nineteenth century scenario; he spent a lot of time in the wilderness searching out geological and mineral samples.
Uses: if the SF bay did indeed come into sudden existence what caused it? A natural earthquake, the impact of a spacecraft, rupture in the fabric of space-time, stray missile from a battle in near-Earth space or deliberate act? Who was involved? Why? What traces might be found under the bay or in the surrounding waters?
Automats. Automats were (and, on a small scale, still are) a type of self-service restaurant using coin-operated cabinets. Within the cabinets are a variety of different foods, room temperature, chilled or heated but usually fairly plain fare. A diner inserts coins (almost always nickels [5c] in the US sites) and open the small door to remove your item and bring it to a table. Behind the wall of cabinets is a kitchen, hidden from the patrons, from where a staff replenish the food items. Most also had a cashier ("Change Girl") who'd break larger coins and notes into nickels (and later dimes). The first automats were opened in Berlin in 1897 but the idea rapidly spread to the United States where Horn & Hardart (the best known chain) opened their first restaurant in 1902. The idea was popular in the 1920s and 1930s (perfect for the Pulp era, even without Who) and persisted into the late 1950 where more conventional fast-food purveyors replaced them. In their heyday they were popular with the working masses in many US cities, especially the northern industrial cites like New York and Philadelphia.
- In 1932 both the Horn & Hardart and Bickford chain of automats in Manhattan came under repeated drive-by slingshot attack, shattering numerous windows. The police blamed members of the glaziers union (the chains had used non-union workers to install glass). Maybe the real reason was much stranger. Or maybe such an attack diverts the PCs at a crucial moment...
Uses: a suitable place for a quick meal, or an arranged meeting. Perfect to overhear some low rent thugs discussing their boss's plans. And who exactly are the never seen kitchen staff? Has an automat chain reduced costs by employing really alien labour? Are all the dishes suitable for humans, or are their some catering to a stranger clientele? What unusual additives might be found in the food? Time for Rory and Amy to investigate...
The Science Pirate. His name was William Dampier and he's probably unique in being the only known pirate scientist. He was born in England (Somerset) in 1651, went to sea in his teens, joined the Royal Navy (briefly) in 1873 and in 1674 voyaged to Jamaica to manage a sugar plantation. The job didn't agree with him so he joined the community of illegal English loggers in Campeche. In 1679 Dampier joined a crew of buccaneers (under Bartholomew Sharp) for a series of raids on Panama and the Pacific coast of South America, mainly what's now Peru. After this voyage he made his way to Virginia and in 1683 joined the crew of the privateer (i.e. state sponsored and supported pirate) John Cooke. They travelled to the Pacific around Cape Horn, spending a year raiding various Spanish possessions in Peru, the Galápagos Islands, and Mexico. The expedition grew, collecting men and ships as it went along; having at one time a strength of ten ships.
Dampier transferred to the privateer Cygnet, under Charles Swan's ship, and set out on a voyaage across the Pacific to raid the East Indies, planning to seize the Manila treasure galleon, and attempt that failed. After another failed raid (Santa Pecaque) food and stores were low and their were mutterings of cannibalism.
- Swan is said to have said that Dampier (a notably lean man) would have made a poor meal; Swan himself was rather fat...
At Guam Swan's men mutinied and he and 36 others were left on Mindanao in 1686. The voyage continued until 1690, though with little success. Dampier became captain of one of the Spanish prizes, taken at Manila, in 1687. In 1688 several ships anchored off the northwest coast of Australia, near King Sound. While his ship was being repaired Dampier made extensive notes on the fauna and flora and the indigenous peoples he found there. Later he and two other men were put ashore one one of the Nicobar Islands from where, after nearly dying in a storm, they sailed to Sumatra. Dampier returned to England in 1691 and published his dairies as a book, A New Voyage Round the World.
His book was widely praised and, based on it, Dampier obtained a commission from the Royal Navy to take HMS Roebuck to explore the south Pacific. They reached Australia and cruised widely around New Guinea and New Britain, but on the return voyage the Roebuck became so unsound she had to be abandoned at Ascension Island. Dampier was court-martialled on returning to England; he was acquitted of any fault in the loss of the ship, but complaints about his treatment of the ship's officers led to his removal from the Navy. He died sometime in early March 1715 in London, deeply in debt. Physically he was described as a lanky, melancholy-eyed Englishman with brown hair, usually dressed in worn sea officer's clothing.
His work influenced many other mariners, including James Cook, and Lemuel Gulliver may have been based on him. Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe) sailed with Dampier. He also influenced the ill-fated voyage of HMS Bounty and the settlement of Australia, as well as adding scores of new words to the English language.
Uses: given his wide travels Dampier could be encountered almost anywhere. He may well strike a rapport with scientifically inclined PCs, rescue them from trouble, or try and pirate they ship they're on.
The Disappearance of the Neustria The SS Neustria was a 110m, 3,000t, iron hulled steamship built in Rouen in 1884. For more than twenty years she operated as a passenger liner on the Marseille–New York route, carrying immigrants to the USA, stopping at a couple of other ports (typically Tarragona, Malaga and Cadiz) en-route.
On 22OCT1908 she departed New York on a seemingly routine voyage to Europe, with 3 passengers and 38 crew aboard, and disappeared. Interestingly she wasn't supposed to be carrying any passengers on the return trip (though she could carry 18 in First Class and more than 1,100 in steerage).
Uses: what happened to the ship? Accident? Storm? Deliberate sinking? Piracy? Victim of a rift in space-time?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 14, 2016 11:15:39 GMT
More from my notes.
Affair of the Poisons. The Affair of the Poisons (L'affaire des poisons) was a major murder scandal in seventeenth century France, mainly in the period 1677–82, during the reign of King Louis XIV. The case began in 1675 after the trial of Madame de Brinvilliers, who was accused of having conspired with her lover, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, to poison her father Antonine Dreux d'Aubray and two of her brothers, Antoine and François, in order to inherit their estates.
- De Brinvilliers (allegedly) used a poison known as Aqua Tofana, a mixture of arsenic, lead and belladonna. It was a popular tool to remove inconveniently living husbands and other relatives.
- White (powdered) arsenic was referred to “inheritance powder” due to it’s popularity in killing off rich relatives. This use led to the Marsh Test for arsenic (and the associated antimony) and the development of forensic toxicology as a distinct field of research.
Madame de Brinvilliers confessed under torture and was executed. Investigations of allegations and suspects unearthed during that enquiry including the arrest of Magdelaine de La Grange (in February of 1677) on charges of forgery and murder. La Grange claimed to have information about other murders and these claims made it as far as King Louis XIV, who ordered an enquiry. This was orchestrated by Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie (head of the Paris police) and spent three years investigating matters.
- De la Reynie is a fascinating individual, the first head of a police force that can be considered at all ‘modern’. He’s also the reason Paris became known as the ‘City of Light’ after he instituted street lighting as a crime prevention measure. He also developed the first systematic traffic regulations.
The enquiry made over three hundred arrests and publicised a huge underground network of fortune tellers, witches, professional and amateur poisoners, abortionists, sellers of purported aphrodisiacs, alchemists, and dabblers in séances and necromancy. 36 people were condemned to death and more were exiled.
- The most notorious of those was Catherine Monvoisin, 'La Voisin', a midwife who also sold aphrodisiacs, poisons and abortifacients and was an alleged sorceress. Her clients included several members of the French aristocracy and one of Louis's mistresses.
Eventually the affair ground to a halt, with further enquiries in private and people condemned to prison by lettre de cachet.
Uses: a paranoid time where strangers could be immediately suspected and arrested. The perfect place for a group of time travellers to arrive. Alternatively they might wish to(or be assigned to) research the affair.
Kruger's Millions. Everyone likes a story of buried treasure and the legend of the Kruger Millions is an interesting one. Supposedly it was hidden in South Africa by, or on behalf of, President Paul Kruger in Blyde River area to avoid it being captured by the British during the Boer War. According to various stories it was a horde of gold and diamonds valued at about two million pounds Sterling (or about half-a-billion Euro today). Supposedly it was hidden by a Boer commando the day before they encountered a British force and were killed. It's never been found, quite probably because it never existed in the first place.
Now the South African government did have access to a lot of gold, about twenty million Troy ounces had been mined in the period 1884-1902 (more than eighty million Sterling). In the run up to the war the Transvaal Government, headed by Kruger, seized gold that was about to be shipped to Europe and later took possession of gold held in banks. Much of this gold was used to mint local coins (nearly a million pounds worth). There's plenty of room for a treasure horde More.
Uses: it' wouldn't be the first time Doctor Who has visited the Boer War, perhaps a party encounter a group hiding the treasure, or observe where it was hidden. Do they loot it? AITAS isn't D&D but old habits die hard... Even in modern times rumours of the treasure have sparked chaos, so it might be a useful cover for other activities.
The Dog that Saved Football. OK, the title is rather hyperbolic. In January of 1902 a small English football club, Newton Heath FC, were in dire financial straits; in fact they were basically bankrupt, with debts of £2,670, and a winding up order had been issued. The club captain (Harry Stafford) organised four-day fundraising bazaar as a last ditch measure; one scheme of his was to attach a collection box to the collar of his dog, a St. Bernard named Major. The dog escaped the event ans was found by a local businessman and philanthropist, John Henry Davies, and his daughter who became smitten with the dog. Returning it to the bazaar Davies attempted to buy the dog, but Stafford declined. The men talked at length and Davies agreed to help the club financially, recruiting three other local business men and raising £2,000.
As part of the club's new start, in April the name and team colours were changed and Manchester United was born.
Uses: Do the PCs accidentally change history and eliminate ManU? What other effects does this change have?
The Game of Life. Probably the only board game to be created by Act of Parliament is the Game of Life (or just Life). It was originally The New Game of Human Life, published by Act of Parliament on 14 July 1790 it was created by leading London publishers John Wallis and Elizabeth Newbery, both active in the field of domestic amusements and games. This early version was a hand-colored engraving printed on sixteen separate pieces of paper, mounted on linen. It was intended to be morally uplifting and educational.
- The 84 spaces were illustrated by images from the period; 'The Poet' (41) was represented by Alexander Pope, 'The Patriot' (55) by William Pitt and 'The Glutton' (59) by a caricature of the Prince of Wales.
The game was immensely popular, and triggered a fad for similar games. In different forms it's been re-launched many times
More.
Uses: The game could be mere background fluff, perhaps played by a family the PCs encounter. Or a new version of the game could be selling, that's designed to spread a mimetic virus to change the views of the population. The Philip K. Dick story, War Game, is good background reading for this idea.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 15, 2016 11:11:29 GMT
Another batch.
The Popular Killer. It's surprising how many serial killers are described as "well-liked" by people who casually know them. The Hungarian mass murderer Béla Kiss is one of them, noted as being a pleasant and charming man, though the 24 (or more) women he killed may have disagreed. He was born around 1877, being "around forty" in 1912, when he and his wife Maria (in her early twenties) moved to the village of Czinkota. Kiss worked as a metal worker, though he was also an amateur astrologer and dabbled in the occult. Not long after they arrived his wife found a younger lover (one Paul Bikari) with whom he ran off in December 1912. At least that's what her saddened husband told his neighbors. It's not known if Kiss had killed before this incident, or if he killed his wife and her lover in a rage and this triggered some homicidal impulse. After his wife's disappearance Kiss hired an elderly woman named Jakubec to keep house for him. He was popular locally, an amiable, hard-working, self-educated man and a voracious reader, knowledgeable about on art, literature, history and the sciences. He had a penchant for throwing parties at a local hotel. He also corresponded with a number of young women, many of whom came to Czinkota to spend time with the newly-eligible bachelor (he claimed to have divorced his wife for desertion and adultery). Not all those women left the town alive.
Events seemed to be coming to a head in 1914; the authorities in Budapest were looking for two widows, named Schmeidak and Varga, who'd contacted no-one for several weeks and had been reported missing. Both women had been last seen with a man named Hoffmann, who supposedly lived near the Margaret Bridge in Budapest. But he'd also disappeared without trace. Kiss had begun collecting large metal drums which he said contained petrol; a not unreasonable claim given the wind of war that seemed to be blowing across Europe. Then, in December 1914 Kiss was conscripted to the Austro-Hungarian army and left Czinkota. It'd be about a year-and-a-half before events progressed further.
In the spring of 1916 there was the stench of death in the air all across Europe. But in the quiet village of Czinkota things seemed calm until June, when a squad of soldiers arrived looking for materiel needed for the war effort. The village constable remembered Kiss's stockpile of petrol and led them to the man's home. The drums didn't contain fuel, each of the seven drums held a naked female corpse, preserved in industrial alcohol and showing signs of strangulation. In his house was a locked room, that his housekeeper had been forbidden to enter; there the police found dozens of cards and letters from women who'd responded to newspaper advertisements from a man calling himself Hoffman and describing himself as a "lonely widower seeking female companionship". Further searches found seventeen more drums, each with a preserved corpse. All were female, except for Paul Bikari, his wife's lover.
The investigation was led by Dr. Charles Nagy, Chief Investigator of the Budapest Police, who contacted the military authorities demanding Kiss's immediate arrest. However there was confusion within the poorly organised Austro-Hungarian forces as to where Kiss was, and even if he was alive, dead or a prisoner-of-war. Nagy also arrested the housekeeper, Mrs Jakubec, believing her to be an accomplice (Kiss had left her money in his will) and arranged for the postal service to hold any letters to Kiss. More detailed examination of Kiss's house found correspondence with nearly two hundred women and a collection of books on forensic medicine, strangulation and poisons. Nagy's study of the letters (which dated from 1903) showed that Kiss had been systematically defrauding women who'd been looking for a husband. Two of the women (Julianne Paschak and Elizabeth Komeromi) had begun legal proceedings against him, which lapsed due to their disappearance.
- Forensic examination of the bodies found puncture marks on their necks and partial exsanguination; this triggered rumours that Kiss was a vampire though it's also likely this was a measure to aide in disposal of the corpses.
Finally on 04OCT19016 Dr. Nagy received word that the right Kiss had been found and was recuperating in a Serbian hospital. Unfortunately Nagy was too slow, by the time he arrived Kiss had fled, leaving the dead body of another soldier in his bed. And that's where the factual part of the story ends. There are lots of rumours and much supposition about what happened to Béla Kiss; he may have died in the Great War, or swapped identities with a dead soldier and moved on. There are alleged sightings of him all around the Balkans in the period after the war. In the spring of 1919 Kiss was supposedly seen on the Margaret Bridge in Budapest; in 1920 a former Hungarian soldier claimed that Kiss was imprisoned in Romania for burglary. Another man who'd known him in the war said he died of yellow fever in Turkey. In 1924 a member of the French Foreign Legion named Hoffman was accused of being Kiss, partially due to his skill with a garotte. But he deserted and disappeared before police could investigate. In 1932 he was supposedly in New York (had he arrived to see the completion of the Empire State Building?), having been seen by Henry "Camera Eye" Oswald, a homicide detective familiar with his case. He evaded capture in the crowds. Again, in 1936, he was supposedly seen in New York but the man departed before police could interview him. Kiss would have been around seventy then. It's a mystery.
Uses: What happened to Béla Kiss is a mystery, might the PCs want to solve it? And if he survived World War 1 and continued to kill can they stop him without damaging the fabric of history? Alternatively the might encounter Kiss accidentally in the pre-War period, will they see through his affable persona? Then there's the option to have Kiss be more than just a mundane, human, murderer; could he have been a vampire? Or possessed by an alien of some sort (remember Wolf in the Fold?). Finally Kiss could make a good minion for a certain kind of time meddler, one who isn't fazed by his murderous tendencies, but would find his intelligence and skills useful. More.
The Ghostbuster. Decades before a certain film remake stirred up interest a young woman was already investigating ghost and spiritualism. Her name was Rose Mackenberg, the "Spook Spy", and she was Harry Houdini's "Girl Detective". Houdini himself was a dedicated investigator, and debunker, or supposed paranormal phenomena and Mackenberg assisted him in his work. She was a fascinating woman, outspoken and accomplished woman who employed her curiousity and skills to frustrate fraudulent mediums and spiritualists in the period after teh Great War.
- The enormous death toll from war and the 'flu epidemic that followed had given a huge impetus to the spiritualist movement; many believers were sincere but others found the "ghost racket" profitable.
In the mid 1920 Mackenberg was working as a private investigator, on a case involving investment losses by a client who'd been advised by a psychic medium. Given his public campaign against fake mediums she sought out Houdini's assistance with the case. He instructed her on the tricks that mediums use to manipulate their victims and hired her (in 1925) for his own undercover investigator team.
- The team would carry out preliminary research and investigations for Houdini, who'd then use their information to publicly debunk the frauds. The team included Julia Sawyer (Houdini's niece), a former showgirl named Alberta Chapman and a number of others.
Mackenberg became an expert in disguise, though she didn't agree with Houdini's advice to go armed, despite the threats from those they exposed.
In 1926, the year Houdini died, Mackenberg testified to before the US Congress in support of an anti-fortune bill (the Copeland-Bloom bill) explaining in detail the techniques used to fool the gullible. Interestingly the episode exposed not just several frauds but a number of senators who had visited mediums for seances.
After World War 2 and another resurgence of popularity for spiritualism, Mackenberg worked with E. W. Williamson and the Chicago Tribune on a series of expose articles about the ghost racket in 1951. More.
Uses: in the Whoniverse ghost and psychics have some reality, how would Houdini and his team react to them? The PCs could encounter her investigation a "fake" who's got real powers, perhaps the Gelth are back, or someone's found some alien technology?
King John’s Treasure. The Fifth Doctor encountered King John ('Lackland') in 1215, or rather a shapeshifting android pretending to be him, during the period known as the First Barons' War. During that period, in 1216, John and his retinue were travelling from Spalding in Lincolnshire to Bishop's Lynn in Norfolk, when the king became ill and decided to return. He went via Wisbech but sent his baggage train, including the crown jewels, along the causeway and ford across the mouth of the Wellstream. Unfortunately, either by misjudgement of the tide or other error, the slow moving horse-drawn wagons were caught in the turn of the tide at Sutton Bridge, on the River Nene (or possibly the Welland Estuary at Fosdyke), and many were lost. Exactly what happened and how much was lost aren't known (but suitable research subjects for a time traveller) but may have been substantial.
- There's also a story that John himself faked the loss and deposited the jewels in Lynn as security for a loan.
The king stayed the following night, 12/13OCT1216, at Swineshead Abbey, travelled to Newark-on-Trent and died of his illness on 18/19 October, according to some from gluttony or poison.
Uses: A king's treasure waiting to be found? Or did someone 'already' steal it, perhaps using advanced technology, and the story was a cover-up (either by the survivors or the king). Or are the stories that local guides deliberately caused they loss true?
The Mystery of Celtic Wood. Celtic Wood (southeast of Broodseinde village) was the site of an attack by Australian troops on the morning of 09OCT1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele. 85 soldiers of the 10th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force (the 'Terrible Tenth') raided into the woods as part of a diversion for the larger attack to the north. The raid failed badly and only 14 unwounded men returned to the Australian lines and 48 more were later accounted for as dead. What happened to the others is a mystery.
- Interestingly some survivors claimed that men had simply walked into a mist and disappeared.
Now the explanation is probably mundane; clerical errors, soldiers killed and buried in unmarked graves. Unless it isn't.
Uses: Another interesting place for a time machine to arrive; what do the PCs do? How do the Australians and Germans react to their arrival? What did happen to the missing men? Was one side testing a new weapon there? Then again, that story about soldiers being "swallowed up by mist" does seem familiar.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Post by senko on Jul 15, 2016 11:46:52 GMT
"So that's why he never paid me back", glances at storage cabinet "guess I have some royal jewels I can do whatever I want with."
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 16, 2016 11:34:41 GMT
Another batch.
The Real Professor Moriarty. Adam Worth was born in Germany and lived for most of his life in the United States, but spent some time in Britain, mainly London. He was a professional criminal, described as "the Napoleon of the criminal world" and partially the inspiration for Doyle's Professor Moriarty (though Doyle 'upgraded' Worth's social class and gave him an academic background. He was born in 1844, immigrated to the USA in 1849 with his family, worked at various jobs in several cities until he joined the Union army during the American Civil War. After being wounded, and posted as dead, he deserted and started his criminal career as a 'bounty jumper' (someone who'd enlist in a regiment to gain the enlistment bonus and then desert). He pulled this off a number of times but was almost captured and fled to New York, where he established a pickpocket gang and began organising robberies (with a brief interruption when he was caught, imprisoned and escaped from Sing Sing). He worked with Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum, one of of the three major fences and organisers behind the New York underworld, and expanded his operations into larger robberies. One of his most notorious escapades was breaking the expert safecracker (and musician) Charley Bullard out of prison and the two men began to work together, with Worth planning robberies and Bullard opening safes. However the city soon became too hot for the pair and in 1869 they sailed for Liverpool.
There they men branched out into fraud and confidence trickstering and became involved in a ménage with a barmaid named Kitty Flynn, who'd marry Bullard and produce two children. In 1871 the chaos of Paris after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune attracted they group and they established the "American Bar" there; it was an elegant cafe with a restaurant, bar and gambling den. This became a centre for expatiate Americans and attracted people form all walks of life. It was also a centre for the Bullard/Worth gang, now including criminals like Max Sinburn (later a baron), George McDonald, the Bidwell brothers (Austin and George, who'd later swindle the Bank of England), Walter Sheridan and others. After police and Pinkerton harassment Worth and some of the others left for London in 1873. By this time Worth was a millionaire and owned a yacht (the Shamrock) on the proceeds of his quarter-share of the take from the operations he planned. He frequently sailed to various European ports, where his staff were committing crimes, to supervise. In England Worth and his associates were based in Western Lodge at Clapham Common, though he had other residences including a Mayfair flat.
Eventually the police of several countries began picking away at Worth's network, though they could prove nothing against him. Inspector John Shore of Scotland Yard made Worth's capture his personal mission. This is despite Worth personally committing a number of crimes, including (allegedly) an almost casual robbery of a pawnbroker's safe (using keys made from impressions he's made while visiting), the robbery of the Cape Town Post Office of diamonds worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and the theft of the Gainsborough painting of the Duchess of Devonshire from a London gallery in 1876.
- It should be noted that Worth abhorred violence and insisted that his minions didn't engage in it. His thefts wee almost always bloodless.
Things began to unravel in the 1880s; several of his old associates were in jail, Bullard was an alcoholic and in Liège in 1892 a robbery Worth was personally involved in went wrong and he was arrested. He was tried in March 1893 and he was imprisoned for seven years. There his former associate Max Sinburn arranged for him to be beaten. His arrangements for his wife's care fell through and she was committed to an asylum, their children went to his brother in the USA. He was released in 1897 and returned to London, staging a number of robberies and headed home to the United States. There he visited his children (his son William later became a Pinkerton detective) and arranged a deal with the Pinkerton agency; they arranged the return of the Gainsborough to it's original owners (for $25,000) and Worth dictated his life story to William Pinkerton. Worth returned to London in 1901 and lived quietly there until his death in January 1902. More.
Uses: Worth might be a casual encounter for a party in Paris or London, a nemesis who's stolen something important (either not knowing what it is or for a third party who did), someone who'd be a very dangerous person to acquire advanced technology or knowledge or a useful contact in the underworld. Perhaps the PCs need assistance with a robbery?
Chuman. Technically a chuman is the offspring of a human mother and a chimpanzee father, while a humanzee has a human father. Either way that's what Gould was talking about; crossbreeding humans with apes. And it's been tried. Several times in fact...
The earliest dabbling in such dubious science was in 1906 when Elie Metchnikoff (the head of the Institut Pasteur) sponsored the Dutch zoologist Hermann Moens; he was planning to establish a faciility in Africa to inseminate humans with ape sperm. A few years later the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and Hermann Rohleder, began a pilot project in the Canary Islands; initially they were attempting to chimpanzees German and to raise them as human children, but hybrids were also planned. Probably the best known attempt was the work of Ilya Ivanov, a Soviet scientist who set up a lab in French Guinea in 1926 to breed chumans for Stalin. He'd been working on the idea since around 1910 and continued until 1929. Also in the 1920s the US primatologist Robert Yerkes was also supposedly breeding humanzees in a secret lab in Florida. However none of these attempts have succeeded (as far as is known anyway). There may be biological problems beyond the difference in the number of human and chimp chromosomes. But more advanced techniques involving gene modification might enable such hybrids.
Uses: a perfect chance to highlight the effects of unethical science, ideal for a classic era Doctor. With the added potential of a female companion being earmarked as breeding stock...
Sweden. During World War One Sweden was neutral. However they were almost brought into the war, on the side of Central Powers, thanks to the arrogance and stupidity of a Russian Admiral named Nikolai Essen. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Essen led part of his fleet (four battleships, six cruisers, eight destroyers) towards Gotland where he planned to demand the Swedish fleet return with him to Karlskrona to be interned. Such a demand would have been a gross violation of Swedish sovereignty and would have been refused, leading to Essen attacking Sweden. If the Swedes refused Essen planned for his main fleet to head to Fårösund, while a destroyer squadron attacked lighthouses, laid mines and destroyed pilot installations at the southern entrances into Stockholm. At this time the Swedish navy was engaged in manoeuvres and Fårösund would have been mostly bereft of warships, while the bulk of the Swedish fleet was around Stockholm. This would probably have ended rather badly for the Russians. Historically Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian commander-in-chief, ordered the Russian admiralty to recall Essen before he could enter Swedish waters.
Uses: A TARDIS might materialise aboard Essen's flagship the Rurik and the crew become entangled in the events. Or is someone pulling string to alter the course of the war?
The Blind Man of St. Martins... ...wasn't a man, and wasn't blind. It was an sectionwithin the UK Post Office in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that formed part of the Returned Letter Office, and handled seemingly undeliverable letters. Given the poor literacy of the period it wasn't uncommon for the Post Office to be entrusted with letters addressed to, for example, "Mr Owl O’Neill, At the post office". They were based in St Martin's le Grand sorting office and included Post Office staff and a host of irregular assistants.
- Those irregulars were the kind of people who considered solving cryptic crosswords and breaking German codes to be light entertainment
The Blind Men (as they were known) would attempt to determine the intended recipient of letters and ensure they were delivered. In one case a letter containing £5,000 in cash was successfully re-addressed. At least two naval cryptanalysts were part of the Blind Men in the twentieth century and earlier it was associated with the Secret Office and later the Secret Department, parts of the British espionage apparatus.
- The Secret Department was part of the Post Office and handled postal interception and later counter-espionage. The Secret Office handled foreign espionage and was sontrolled by the Secretary of State.
Other examples of rather vague addresses:
- E. R., a cook as lived temporary with a Mrs. L – or some such a name, a shoemaker in Castle-street about No. – Hobern in 1851. She is a Welsh person about 5 feet 1 stoutish. Livs in service someware in London or naboured.
London
- This is for her that 'raaks' dresses for ladies, that' livs' at tother side of rode to James Brocklip, Edensover, Chesterfield
- This is for the young girl who wears spectacles, who minds two babies, 30, Sherrif-street, Off prince Edwin-street, Liverpool.
All were successfully delivered.
There was even a fad, in response to occasional newspaper accounts of the Blind Man's prowess (like this one) of sending deliberately cryptically addressed letters to test their prowess. And "Mr Owl O’Neill"? That was in fact Sir Rowland Hill.
Uses: A package might go astray with vital contents, or be received by the PCs while the Secret Department is interested. The Blind Men could be a useful resource in tracking down someone (or something) in Britain.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 18, 2016 10:17:06 GMT
Walking sticks. From about 1750 to 1930 a walking stick (not 'cane' in Britain, that was an Americanism and therefore abhorrent to polite British society) was a vital part of any gentleman's dress; an accessory no proper gentleman (or lady) would leave the house without. Sticks were fashion items; one carried the appropriate stick for the outfit, so several would be required. And not just men, ladies carried them too.
- Sticks for women originated ~1730 in France and may be related to the popularisation of high heels at the time
The nineteenth century was the heyday of the walking stick; over fifteen hundred patents were registered in the UK alone on specialised gadgeted sticks, London had more than sixty shops specialising in walking sticks in 1885. One quarter to one third of sticks sold had some additional features, ranging from simple blades to elaborate tool kits. Sticks could be political statements or demonstrate affiliation to (say) the Freemasons. During L'affaire Dreyfus sticks with heads carved into anti-Semitic stereotypes were common in France. Leo Tolstoy carried a walking stick seat for stops during his perambulations. At least one London Rabbi had a similar stick. Balzac had over 100 sticks, Voltaire at least 121. These were uncommonly large collections but not extraordinary.
Sword sticks were common, most gentlemen would have one and probably have at least a modicum of still in using it; fencing and singlestick were commonly taught at schools and university. Unrelated historical trivia: Oliver Cromwell was an expert with the singlestick and a college champion. There were a number of attempts to formalise th use of sticks in self defense (I recommend a Victorian book called "The 'Walking Stick' Method of Self Defense", a fascinating insight into techniques of the period.
Blades were usually flat or X shaped, and drawn from the shaft of the stick, which acted as a sheath (and occasionally a secondary weapon). The 'flick', incorporating a short (15-25cm) stiletto blade that extended when a spring was triggered were common in France and were popular during street rioting political discourse in France in the 1870-95 period. In fact the French government prohibited the carrying of sticks in public meetings, and banned several designs outright.- One 'flick' I've seen appeared to be an innocuous solid wood stick with a metal ferrule (tip); when a hidden catch was pressed the tip hinged out of the way and a 25cm blade extended forcefully; triggering the catch again retracted it. Useful for stealthy murder on the boulevards...
- Another French stick had a silver Napoleon head grip, hinged to reveal an inkwell and dip pen in it, and 50cm triangular blade in the shaft; it demonstrated the owner's political affiliation and allowed him to defend it, one way or another...
- Sword umbrellas were far less common but did exist. They were mainly aimed at women (and proved popular with Suffragists who made use of steel shafted and spike tipped umbrellas); one was demonstrated at the Great Exhibition 1851 that incorporated a reinforced canopy and a spring loaded stiletto blade.
The 'duelling stick' was a uniquely French design; it had two swords, in case one inadventantly challenged an unarmed man to an impromptu affair of honour. Sword sticks intended for women were less common and usually had shorter blades.
Sticks with other weapons built into them were far less common. Firearms incorporated into sticks were usually single shot weapons and difficult to aim. Remington, manufacturer of the only mass produced model (restricted in the USA after 1934), sold several thousand from ~1860 onward. Briggs of London was noted for his sticks (and umbrellas) incorporating his patented detachable grip that incorporated a four or six shot pepperbox pistol, chambered for various low-powered cartridges, and a central spike blade. Blunt instruments concealed in a stick were rare, though some with flexible 'life preservers' are known. Whips were surprisingly popular, sometimes for sporting purposes though more commonly recreational.
- So called 'bordello sticks' (like this and this) were popular amongst prostitutes with a specialist clientèle. A few (at least few survive) include dildos. One lady's stick I've seen had both whip and dildo...
- One rather nice bordello stick I've handled was a souvenir of the famous Parisian brothel Le Sphinx (31 Bld. Edgar Quinet, opened 1930, closed 1946) it had a flexible, fibre-wrapped cane inside.
More exotic weapons (dart guns, flamethrowers, gas sprays) were possible, though more common in fiction than reality. Several airguns were commercially available.
I've mentioned 'gadget sticks' ('system canes' to Americans) which incorporate various devices and gadgets. Example included telescopes (moderately popular), cosmetic and perfume holders, coin/match holders, small clocks or sundials, picnic sets (utensils, condiments and more), flasks, rulers, barometers, maps, flare launchers, toolkits, writing implements, cigarette lighters, radio receivers (never common as they needed to be earthed). Even slide rules (helical), playable violins, small folding card tables, alcohol burners to produce hot drinks and a Geiger counter (that was a 1950's model though)... One fascinating stick I saw years ago dated from 1873 and incorporated a red electric light to flag down cabs; these were a fad at the time in London and emerged again about 1910 and finally (at the end of the stick era) in the early 1950s. There were some sticks that included entire medical or scientific toolsets. An accountant's stick from ~1776 with pen and inkwell This "drunkards' stick" has a doorkey, candle and matches. An Art Deco silver headed lady's stick with lipstick and mirror. An Austrian manicurist's gadget stick from around 1885. This artist's stick (~1885) contains a stencil set, paint bottles, matches water bottle and other supplies. A cab stick from around 1870 incorporating a red electric light. A British Victorian picnic stick with cups, salt & pepper container and other utensils. Draftsman's stick with pen, scribe, ruler and protractor. This explorer's stick has a compass set in the knob, and four screw-off sections olding a small telescope, plumb-bob and other tools. This entomologist's stick from around 1900 has a microscope, tweezers and other tools.
This folder has many more examples.
Even the Doctor has has been known to carry a stick; the First Doctor's stick doesn't seem to have incorporated any gadgets though the Eleventh had his "sonic cane".
More. A NY Times article from 1873 on walking sticks.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 19, 2016 10:58:53 GMT
After yesterday's rabological excursion here are a few more commonplace ideas.
The Real Charles Milverton. Another Sherlock Holmes villain Charles Augustus Milverton, the vile "king of blackmailers", was also based by Doyle on a real person; Charles Augustus Howell. Howell was an art dealer and (allegedly) a blackmailer on a large scale (though some historians disagree). Born in Portugal of an English father he came to Britain after a card scandal (he cheated and was caught). He didn’t stay long, departing in 1858, shortly before his friend Felice Orsini attempted to assassinate Napoleon III, and stayed away for five years. On his return in 1864 he established himself as part of the London art scene; he was secretary to John Ruskin and modelled for Dante Rossetti. He became a notorious ‘fixer’ in the Pre-Raphaelite circle; able to procure almost anything, and discretely handle sales of artworks. He was charming and witty, utterly unscrupulous and amoral, and embezzler and compulsive liar.
His most notorious action was his involvement in the midnight exhumation of Rossetti’s wife on the 5th of October 1869, to recover a book of poetry buried with her. This had been authorised by the Home Secretary, Henry Bruce who was a friend of Rossetti's, but was carried out secretively and at night.
- Howell spread the story that Siddal's body hadn't decomposed and her hair had continued to grow after her death. Neither was true but the story may have inspired Bram Stoker to a degree in the character of Lucy Westenra and his story The Secret of the Growing Gold.
When the news of the exhumation became public there was considerable repugnance towards Rossetti.
After Ruskin dismissed him (embezzlement), Howell worked for Algernon Swinburne; this ended after a number of intimate letters written by Swinburne were acquired by the publisher George Redway, who blackmailed Swinburne with their contents. His connection to Rossetti ended when he was found to be selling forged sketches which he claimed were by Rossetti. Howell died in 1890 of “natural causes” outside a Chelsea pub; this involved his throat being cut and a gold half-sovereign inserted in his mouth. Curiously there was neither inquest nor police investigation.
- Not so curious really when the large number of letters from persons "high in society" found in his home are considered.
More.
Game use: The sort of person most PCs don’t want to encounter, especially given their propensity for secrets. What was in those letters he accumulated? Don’t forget both Messrs Jago and Litefood and the Paternoster Gang were active in that period. And Vastra does have a direct way with people who annoy her...
Malaria Today malaria affects about 300 million people worldwide each year and kills about one percent of these, even with treatments and knowledge of preventative techniques. Malaria is a protozoic disease, caused by a tiny parasitic organism rather than a virus or bacterium, and is spread almost exclusively by mosquitoes (though anything that causes the exchange of blood can spread the disease). It has been a (literal) plague on humanity for thousands of years, ever since it spread from apes to humans as human settlements spread into new territory. There are descriptions of the disease as far back as human writings extend.
- The disease (then known as the ‘Roman fever’) may have contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.
In Victorian times malaria was an almost inevitable experience of European and American travellers to the tropics; not having contracted the disease was a sign that one had stayed at home.
Symptoms: Malaria typically takes 7-21 days to incubate (for gaming purposes say 1D6+6) before symptoms manifest, though longer periods are possible. These are initially generally "flu like" with fever, chills, coughing, headache, joint pains, et cetera; they can easily be mistaken for one of many another conditions. These progress to diarrhoea, respiratory problems, blood clotting problems, kidney and liver failure, fluid in the lungs, mental disorientation, convulsions, delirium, coma, and (rarely) death.
- The truly classic symptom of malaria is paroxysm; the patient cycles between sudden coldness and shivering, followed by a longer phase of fever and sweating,
Without anti-parasitic treatment malaria remains for life; the parasites remain dormant in the liver for years, and a later (usually milder) attack can happen year later. Modern treatment regimes usually eliminate this risk.
Treatment: Historically the classic malarial drug is quinine, still extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree (synthesis is extremely difficult), though modern regimes use artemisinin and anti-parasitic drugs plus other compounds. Quinine has a variety of side-effects such as tinnitus, nausea and occasional nerve damage.
- Synthesis is possible, but more expensive than extraction. A failed attempt to synthesise the drug in 1856 by William Perkin led to the discovery of mauveine, the first synthetic dye. This started the modern chemical industry.
Prevention: Don’t get bitten. Use mosquito netting and insecticides (if available). Avoid or eliminate stagnant water (a breeding ground for mosquitoes). More.
Game use: infecting a PC or important NPC might be a nasty trick, but it can give the players a new situation to handle, especially if they neglected to bring advanced medical supplies. An NPC they wish to contact may be incapacitated by a recurrence of an earlier malarial infection and hence unavailable for days.
The Liberty of the Savoy. The Liberty of the Savoy, was located in Middlesex between the Liberty of Westminster and the City of London, was originally the site of a thirteenth century palace of the Duke of Lancaster. When the Duchy of Lancaster was created a county palatine in 1351 the area acquired a special legal status that persisted partially into the nineteenth century, and it's own court. It was impossible for Royal (and City) officials to make arrests or serve writs there until 1697, and certain aspects survived into the 1860s.
- The Savoy Palace was the home of John of Gaunt, son of Richard III and patron to Geoffrey Chaucer, in the fourteenth century.
In the nineteenth century the Savoy was well inside the area of London, a patch of ground about a hundred metres square, between The Strand and the north bank of the Thames. To the east lay Somerset House, which housed the Navy Board and the Royal Society. More. Map.
Game use: while it won't provide much protection to a fleeing PC after parliament removed much of it's special status in 1697 before then a person could used the Savoy to avoid arrest. Alternatively, later a debtor still couldn't be arrested there (a point used by Peter O'Brien in his novel Post Captain). Perhaps the person the party need to speak with his staying there?
The Bottle Conjurer of 1749 'He' was John Montagu, . 2nd Duke of Montagu, and he was indeed a notorious trickster and practical joker. Often assisted by his friend the Duke of Richmond, Charles Lennox. His most notorious trick was the affair of the 'Bottle Conjuror'.
In January 1749 the General Advertiser carried a series of advertisements for a "most amazing magician" who would appear on stage at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane at 6.30pm on 16 January 1749. The conjuror would perform such feats as;
- giving the name of any member of the audience while masked
- play music on an ordinary walking stick, and sing in harmony
- draw the likeness of any person, dead or alive
- finally, he would climb into an ordinary wine bottle, in full view of the audience
By 7PM the theatre was packed, and crowds were still trying to get in. That's when the manager (Samuel Foote) said the magician hadn't appeared. The crowd grew unruly, and object were thrown at the stage. Even after the manager agreed to return the monies paid the unrest grew. While many of the audience left a core remain and soon a riot developed. The theatre was gutted, with seats and curtains torn out and fires ignited. Troops were sent for to quell the disturbance. And in the shadows, the Duke of Montagu looked on with amusement; he'd just won a bet with Lord Chesterfield that he could fill a theatre by promising the public the impossible. More.
Game use: Might the advert attract the attention of a time traveller? Especially one who doesn't know the actual story. Or might the party be innocently passing by (or shadowing or pursuing someone) and become caught up in the riot?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Post by senko on Jul 19, 2016 12:58:46 GMT
What popped into my head for the last is the opposite actually a time traveller who know's what's meant to have happened has their attention drawn by a magician who does everything promised before becoming advisor to nobility in order to "return magic to its proper place as an advisor to those with the right to rule the land" changing history and creating a world where Great Britain still rules large portions of the world with a feudal structure and its power maintained by the advice of its magicians.
Are they using "real magic"? Sure doctor who say's there's no such thing in its universe but we have the daemon powers, the carrington (think i've got the right race) powers, psychic beings able to alter reality (in the books admitedly), Adric creating an entire fake city with block computations and more. So who's to say there isn't a "magic" which is really some alternate means of manipulating the universe with its own rules and limits (maybe even one a time traveller might learn, Dr Who did this in one book by manipulating belief to control nannites to achieve what they considered magic)? Or if you don't want to veer that far away from the normal universe any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and if the magicians take cares to limit scientific advancement who'd know? If the wizard points a hand and cries "Fireburst" to create a ball of fire is that really any differnt from a scientist pointing a handblaster and activate's it by the command phrase?
It wouldn't even be beyond the bounds of what we see the TV series.
> giving the name of any member of the audience while masked > draw the likeness of any person, dead or alive
Simple Telepathy which many races and even a number of humans have or micro-camera's and temporal viewers.
> play music on an ordinary walking stick, and sing in harmony
Minature speakers and Lip synching.
> finally, he would climb into an ordinary wine bottle, in full view of the audience
In both the classic and modern series we've seen multiple examples of people being shrunk and enlarged most recently in the Dalek Asylum and that's ruling out holograms and the like.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 19, 2016 13:13:58 GMT
What popped into my head for the last is the opposite actually a time traveller who know's what's meant to have happened has their attention drawn by a magician who does everything promised before becoming advisor to nobility in order to "return magic to its proper place as an advisor to those with the right to rule the land" changing history and creating a world where Great Britain still rules large portions of the world with a feudal structure and its power maintained by the advice of its magicians. I like that, maybe a little hypnosis to make people think it was a hoax.Are they using "real magic"? Sure doctor who say's there's no such thing in its universe but we have the daemon powers, the carrington (think i've got the right race) powers, psychic beings able to alter reality (in the books admitedly), Adric creating an entire fake city with block computations and more. So who's to say there isn't a "magic" which is really some alternate means of manipulating the universe with its own rules and limits (maybe even one a time traveller might learn, Dr Who did this in one book by manipulating belief to control nannites to achieve what they considered magic)? Or if you don't want to veer that far away from the normal universe any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and if the magicians take cares to limit scientific advancement who'd know? If the wizard points a hand and cries "Fireburst" to create a ball of fire is that really any differnt from a scientist pointing a handblaster and activate's it by the command phrase? It wouldn't even be beyond the bounds of what we see the TV series. > giving the name of any member of the audience while masked > draw the likeness of any person, dead or alive Simple Telepathy which many races and even a number of humans have or micro-camera's and temporal viewers. > play music on an ordinary walking stick, and sing in harmony Minature speakers and Lip synching. > finally, he would climb into an ordinary wine bottle, in full view of the audience In both the classic and modern series we've seen multiple examples of people being shrunk and enlarged most recently in the Dalek Asylum and that's ruling out holograms and the like. Well there was some discussion here on faking magic using advanced tech, all possible it the right toys.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 22, 2016 10:31:32 GMT
A quickie this morning.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1973. Between March and May 1973 the lower Mississippi River experienced one of the worst bouts of flooding of the century. The 1972-1973 winter saw unusually high rain and snow falls which saturated much of the watershed of the Mississippi. More rain in March, added to the meltwater from the accumulated heavy snowfalls in the Rocky Mountains, added even more water which was barely contained by the Old River Control Structure. A number of factors could have made the effects far worse; more rain, errors in management of the flood or sabotage.
The results would have been catastrophic and, unlike Hurricane Katrina, not mostly limited to New Orleans and Louisiana. Morgan City, for example, would be destroyed (with more than a thousand fatalities), numerous road, rail, and pipeline links would be destroyed. Across the United States there’d soon be disruptions in natural gas supplies; this would lead to power shortages in the late summer and shortages of fertiliser (ammonia is produced from methane). The lack of cooling water (and later problems with salinity caused corrosion) would close refineries and chemical plants along the Old River channel, triggering shortages of petroleum and derivatives (everything from paints to plastics to insecticides). The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (at the Atchafalaya) and the Old River channel would be closed to barge traffic. Increased salinity in the Mississippi would effect drinking water supplies for more than two million people, as well as forcing the shutdown of fossil-fuel and nuclear generating plants. This would probably persist for at least a year. In the autumn of 1973, assuming the historical Soviet grain purchases happened, there’d be a massive spike in grain prices, leading to increases in retail food prices, and the associated unrest.
All these factors will destroy the Nixon Administration's attempts at wage and price controls to limit inflation. This will be exacerbated by the power shortages and economic instability, and will probably spark riots. This would especially be true in New Orleans, where a third of the workforce would be "temporarily" laid off and the effects of flooding would still be obvious (water rationing would be in effect, sanitation infrastructure damaged and disease outbreaks common).
More: If The Old River Control Structure Fails? A 1980 document outlining the problem and possible effects.
Game Use: Perhaps the catastrophe was 'meant to happen' and only the party's intervention prevented it? They may have changed the decisions made to better handle the floodwater. Alternatively it's an interesting opportunity for a Time Meddler to cause chaos. But why? Are they trying to force the evacuation of New Orleans for some reason? Are the Silurians/Zygons trying to create a base for their operations against a weakened United States?
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13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 28, 2016 11:09:47 GMT
Another batch.
Broadcasting the Barricades. Father Ronald Knox was an interesting character, ripe for an appearance in a Pulp era game. An ordained priest of both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, he was an accomplished classicist and translator who singlehandedly translated the bible from original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, wrote widely (being very fond of satire), tutored future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Knox would later stay in 10 Downing Street as Macmillan's guest a few times), wrote a number of detective mysteries (with a recurring character named Miles Bredon) and was a member of the Detection Club. (he wrote the famous ‘Ten Commandments of Detection for Writers’) He also caused a panic across Britain in 1926 when, as one of his regular BBC radio programmes, he broadcast a simulated live report of revolution sweeping across London. It was called Broadcasting from the Barricades and was transmitted at 7:40PM on 16JAN1926 (actually from an office in Edinburgh); starting with a report on the latest Cricket results, continuing with a news report and then switching suddenly into coverage of a massing crowd of anti-unemployment demonstrators in Trafalgar Square. After a musical interlude the hoax continued with a mix of news and weather and reports of the demonstrators now becoming threatening and pouring through Admiralty Arch. Knox continued to mix the faked reports with standard BBC radio fare; several officials were hanged from lampposts, the Savoy hotel was attacked with artillery as music was purportedly being transmitted from there, likewise the Houses of Parliament were attacked (with Big Ben being demolished). Finally Knox informed the listeners that rioters were gathering outside the BBC building, having lynched the Minister Of Traffic, and the broadcast ended with sounds of fighting in the studio. In 1926, two years before Welles would copy the idea, this was scary stuff. Only a few months earlier Britain had been rocked by the General Strike and people were still fearful of a revolution (the Zinoviev letter was published fifteen months earlier). The snowy weather didn't help as newspaper deliveries (the main source of news) were disrupted. Hundreds of people called the BBC offices (as well as police stations, the Savoy hotel and the Admiralty) to demand information on the revolution. Around the country upper class dinner parties erupted into panic, town mayors implemented emergency plans to deal with revolution and people fainted...
Game uses. What if the broadcast wasn't a fake, but a 'leak through' from a slightly alternate world where Britain was actually wracked by revolution? Alternatively such faked news or documentary programmes could be an interesting way to lead into a scenario, especially if the faked events are mixed with real one. The infamous BBC programme Ghostwatch used this idea brilliantly. Or perhaps the PCs used the panic as cover for some scheme of their own.
The Camden Catacombs Firstly they're not actually catacombs, they were constructed in the nineteenth century as underground stables and access tunnels for horses used to shunt railway wagons between the rail lines and the nearby canal. The network of tunnels run under the Euston mainline, the Primrose Hill depot, Camden Lock Market and a number of warehouses on the Regents Canal (there's an underground pool for canal boats operating on the canal). There was also a mass of steam-powered winding machinery that hauled trains up the hill from Euston Station, in a vast underground hall, and even a Horse Hospital. These days they're mostly abandoned, closed to the public and prone to flooding, though they might form part of the headquarters of a clandestine (inter)national agency or mad scientist. Of course in their heyday the vaults and tunnels would have been extremely busy, moving horses, people, wagons and goods around. Perfect cover for a slightly older clandestine organisation...
More. Also here and here.
Game uses. Well putting a Torchwood (or MIO) base there is pretty obvious. So maybe the reports of strange activities there are merely a red herring? But the tunnel network would also be an excellent hideout for a scared and desperate alien stranded in Victorian, Edwardian or Pulp era London. Or someone working with an alien scout force to help them in their Sinister Plans.
The Baal Shem of London He was Rabbi Dr. Hayyim Samuel Jacob Falk, born somewhere in Mitteleurope (Bavaria, the Ukraine, Moldova and Poland are favoured) in 1708. He studied the Talmud, the Kabbalah and beyond and reputedly possessed great supernatural powers. - Baal Shem is a Hebrew term meaning "Master of the Name" and is a term applied to rabbis skilled in kabbalistic mysticism,
who were able to use the names of God in Judaism for practical kabbalah magical effects including healing, miracles, exorcisms and blessings. After a run-in with the authorities in Westphalia in 1736 (where his public demonstration of his 'powers' had him condemed to death by burning for sorcery) he gained the protection of a minor nobleman, Count Alexander von Rantzau who enabled Falk to meet members of the German nobility and demonstrate his abilities. For unknown reasons he departed Germany rather hurridly and arrived in London in 1740. There his reputation as a miracle worker grew during the forty years he lived there (initially at 35 Prescott Street in Whitechapel and later at Wellclose Square)
- At the latter address he was a neighbour of another mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and there is evidence Falk was an influence on Swedenborg.
The powers attributed to Dr. Falk include the ability to survive several weeks with food or water, cause lighted candles to burn for days without diminishing, levitate objects and summon them from a distance. He and his wife arrived in London penniless but soon displayed great wealth (large house with private synagogue, many servants, extravagant coach, large collection of artworks et cetera). Supposedly when a fire threatened to destroy the Great Synagogue Falk stopped the fire by inscribing Hebrew characters on the door, he was also (allegedly) in the habit of burying caches of gold in Epping Forest and was also reputed to have constructed a Golem. He died (or maybe didn't) in 1782.
More.
Game uses. In the Whoniverse Falk might have had genuine powers, certainly he had charisma and charm. But where did he really come from? What interesting objected might his collection of art and artefacts contain? Are there really caches of gold in Epping Forest? What else might be buried? While his official diaries make no reference to fighting alien menaces might they have been censored?
The Toronto Clown/Fireman Riot of 1855. It started on the evening 12JUL1855 in Toronto, specifically in a house on King Street owned by Mary Ann Armstrong. Well actually it was a bordello. A number of men from the Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company (a private organisation) were patronising the establishment, as were a number of off-duty clowns from the S. B. Howes Star Troupe Menagerie and Circus. Exactly what happened isn't known but a fireman (named Fraser) knocked the hat from the head of a clown (named Meyers). Words were exchanged, then punches and soon a free-for-all fight had broken out with the fireman losing badly.
- This wasn't the Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company's first brawl, not by a long shot. Two weeks earlier (29JUN) they'd brawled with a rival fighfighting company at a blaze, and then teamed with them to fight the police when they'd arrived. They were members of the local Orange Order and well used to sectarian violence.
The next day (Friday the 13th) the fireman, along with a mob of reinforcements supplied by the Orange Order, arrived at the fairgrounds looking for trouble and revenge. The firemen set a number of fires, burned circus wagons and attempted to demolish the Big Top tent. The police (also mainly Orangemen) watched. The situation got worse as locals (a mix of Protestant and Catholic) arrived and took sides, rocks were thrown and many were injured.
More.
Game uses. A background event that the PCs could get entangled in. Were they also in the brothel? Why? (Other than the obvious... Perhaps they were trying to acquire something that one of the had.). Or were they at the circus ground as the battle began?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Post by senko on Jul 28, 2016 17:43:21 GMT
Brrrrrr clowns and police corruption a bad combination.
You know I'm sure there's an official sequence of events somewhere but I can see that radio broadcast being a leak through from the facist universe of the 3rd doctor's inferno episode.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 29, 2016 11:21:27 GMT
Another batch, the last for the moment.
Aberdeen's "Great Witch Hunt" of 1597. This was one of the five outbreaks of witch panic in the period of the Witchcraft Act of 1563 (when the Act made witchcraft and consulting a witch capital offenses) and 1736 (when the act was repealed after Union with England); 1590-1, 1597, 1628-30, 1649 and 1661-2. It’s the least well documented and most records don’t survive. It’s not known what sparked this particular bout of persecution; it may be linked to the publication of John Vi’s book Daemonologie that year.
- The king had become obsessed with witches after seeing witch hunts in Denmark during his visit in 1589 and believed that witches had summoned storms to sink his ship while returning to Scotland.
At the time witch hunting in Scotland wasn’t a matter of pitchfork and torch wielding mobs, but royal commissions operating at the orders of the king.
While the 1597 hunt started at Slains near Aberdeen, on 04MAR. Soon the city itself starting holding witch trials, most notably that of a group led by one Janet Wishart. She was accused of murder, raising storms an other offenses, and convicted. She was, unusually, burned alive. Most convicted witches were strangled before being burned. In April one Margaret Aiken (herself a convicted witch, the ‘Great Witch of Balwearie’ who couldn’t be executed as she was pregnant) was taken before a commission in Fife and offered to name others, in exchange for her life. For months she travelled around Scotland pointing out “witches”. She was eventually discredited when she accused people she’d previously cleared but by then over 200 people were dead. By April the city had ended it’s trials, though they persisted in the rest of the county (March to May) and neighbouring Fife (May through August), Perthshire (June and July), Glasgow (April to July) and Stirlingshire (August to October).
A tense and anxious period for strangers, unfamiliar with the country and culture, perhaps interfering with local matters.
Game uses: What would the reaction of a group of time travellers be to this situation? Would they keep their heads down or leave? Interfere and try and stop the trials (which did end rather abruptly after Aiken was discredited in August)? Help the accused escape? Could they blend in, or would they be likely to be accused also?
The Theft of the Mona Lisa. While the painting La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the best known works-of-art in the world today, this fame is actually fairly recent, really only beginning after the picture was stolen in 1911. Not a lot is known about the picture; it's believed that da Vinci began it (atop an earlier painting) around 1504 but didn't finish it until perhaps 1516 (or even later), after he'd moved to the Château du Clos Lucé in France. After his death in 1519 the painting was purchased by Francis I.
The event that raised he Mona Lisa to mythic status occurred in 1911. On 11 August an Italian decorator who'd previously worked in the Louvre named Vincenzo Peruggia, dressed as one of the workers and simply lifted the Mona Lisa off it's mounting pegs and smuggled it out under his arm, wrapped in a workman's smock. Paris was shocked and the newspapers played up the scandal. Exactly why Peruggia stole the painting isn't known; he didn't try and sell it for two years (and that effort, involving Florentine antique dealer Alfredo Geri, failed; Geri handed Peruggia over to the police). At his trial he claimed that the theft was an act of Italian nationalism, returning the painting to it's homeland. He was imprisoned for six months.
A more interesting possibility was published by journalist Karl Decker in the Saturday Evening Post in 1932; he claimed that an Argentine con man calling himself the Marquis of Valfiero hired Peruggia to steal the portrait so that he could sell forged copies (the work of a forger named Yves Chaudron) to a number of secretive and gullible American millionaires. The picture would be returned, but Valfiero planned to assure each mark that the portrait in the Louvre was the forgery, and they had the original.
- An interesting idea that would be borrowed, and given a science fictional twist, by a certain BBC television series in 1979...
Game uses: A group of strangers, behaving oddly, who visit the Louvre just before the picture is stolen and become suspects? The scenario practically writes itself. Of course things might not be that simple; perhaps the part accidentally frustrated the theft and now have to steal the painting themselves (the disappearance wasn't noticed until the following day so they have time). Or maybe the theft was more complicated; was Eduardo de Valfierno really involved? Or the Alexandrian Society? Was the real painting returned? A few further notes. City of Death had a number of inaccuracies regarding the painting. Firstly it wasn't completed in Florence but in France. Secondly it's actually painted on wood (white poplar to be exact) and thus cannot be rolled up. Finally the original version of the painting, should someone travel back to see it, may have been rather larger. Early depictions universally show two pillars flanking the subject. Though this may be a second painting, certainly Gian Paolo Lomazzo suggested there was and that one of them featured "beautiful eyebrows", not found on the picture in the Louvre.
- Or maybe there's a version from a slightly alternate universe, different in minor details.
The Straw Hat Riots of 1922. Fashion is a strange thing, even these days wearing the wrong clothes in the wrong place can lead to violence. But unlike the Zoot Suit the humble Panama hat doesn't appear likely to inspire rioting. But in New York in 1922 it did just that. At the time men would swap their summer hats, such as the Panama, for a cloth (felt or silk) hat at the end of summer, generally around September 15th. It was an unwritten social rule that straw hats (Panama or boater) would not be worn after this date. Any many who violated this rule would be ridiculed or even assaulted; there was a tradition for youths to knock straw hats off of wearers' heads and stomp on them.
In 1922 however the hat wearers responded. It started on the 13th of September, a couple of days before the "official" deadline, when a group of teenagers in Manhattan attacked men wearing straw hats; unfortunately some of those attacked were dockers, not men to back away from a fight. Punches were thrown and a brawl ensued, until police intervened and made arrests.
- The melee was so large traffic on Manhattan Bridge was forced to stop.
On the fourteenth fights again broke out, especially in the evening when gangs of teenagers, armed with sticks, prowled the streets looking for me wearing straw hats. Anyone who objected to having his hat destroyed was beaten. A mob of several hundred (perhaps a thousand) rampaged along Amsterdam Avenue. Several men were seriously injured and taken to hospitals while the police attempted to control the rioting.
More. New York Times. New York Tribune. Pictures of NYC in 1922.
Game Uses: Was the rioting a natural event, or the side-effect of some mental weapon or influence? It could just bea weird event to entangle the party in, especially if they're unaccustomed to the arcane social rules of the period. Maybe one of the PCs ends up in jail, or their efforts to follow someone are disrupted by the fighting. And didn't the Seventh Doctor wear a straw hat?. The Great Gatsby gives a useful picture of New York at the time.
The London Vampire of 1922. Across the water strange thing were happening, unrelated to choices in headgear. It started in the spring of 1922 in London, specifically around St. Martin's church in West Drayton, where an "enormous black bat-like creature" supposedly a wing span of six feet was seen on a number of occasions, the first being on 11APR (a full moon). A number of people see the creature, which dives into the graveyard. When two police constables, summoned by the terrified witnesses, attempt to corner it the creature emits loud screech, flaps it's wings, and soars away.
- One witness later claimed that he'd seen the "giant bat" thirty years previously; he maintained that it was a vampire who had murdered a woman to drink her blood in the 1890s.
- Interestingly there are actual records of a strange bird-like creature in the church before, in 1749, that are noted in the diaries of the rector.
A few days later, early on the morning of the 16th, an office clerk on his way to work was walking along Coventry Street (in the West End of London) when he's mysteriously attacked. He sees no attacked but is seized and falls unconscious. He recovers in Charing Cross Hospital a few hours later with wounds on his neck and notable blood loss but is unable to explain to the medical staff or police what exactly happened. The doctors believe he was stabbed with a thin tubular weapon. Around 9AM another man is brought to the hospital with similar injuries and a third is admitted that evening. All have notable, but not life threatening, blood loss and all were attacked at roughly the same part of Coventry Street.
Naturally the press have a field day, with the Daily Mail and Express playing up the vampire aspect. A police enquiry begins but peters out due to lack of evidence.
- Or, of course, a cover up while the business is actually investigated buy another agency.
Game use: What was going on? Local pranks fuelled by hysteria and sensational press coverage? Or an actual alien creature? A Krillitane or Reaper perhaps? And who, or what, was taking blood samples?
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 5, 2016 11:25:40 GMT
Another batch.
George Gordon, Lord Byron. Byron hasn't (yet) appeared in canonical Who though he's cropped up several times in the EU; there are three of him (Mad, Bad and Dangerous) in Europa in the novel Managra and the man himself crops up (along with the others present at the Villa Diodati during that fateful summer) in the audioplay Mary's Story. The real Byron was fascinating enough, and his life presents a number of opportunities for including in a Who game.
George Gordon Byron was born at 24 Holles Street in London in 1788 (22JAN) the only son of John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon.He was raised mainly in Aberdeen by his impoverished mother, his father having squandered their money and fled to France. When he was ten Byron inherited the Barony of Byron of Rochdale, and was hence styled "Lord Byron", from his great-uncle (known as the 'Wicked Lord') died. The inheritance paid for his education at Harrow; there he was a moderate student and reasonable athlete. His lack of academic interest continued at Cambridge, there he spent most of his time partying but became a noted athlete (studying fencing, single-stick, boxing and pistol-shooting). There he kept a pet bear, racked up serious debts, made a number of lifelong friends there, and had a few love affairs.
- In the early nineteenth century British tolerance of homosexuality was ebbing and homosexual faced serious consequences, including hanging.
In 1809 he left on the traditional Grand Tour, somewhat hampered by the fact that much of Europe was at war. This also allowed him to evade a couple of spurned lovers and his numerous creditors. During his travels he had a relationship with a fourteen year old boy in Italy and attempted to purchase a twelve year old girl in Greece.
- This is an ideal period to entangle Byron with a malign alien influence, have him encounter something or someone strange (perhaps le Comte de Saint-Germain) or obtain an artefact not of this Earth.
Byron returned to Britain in 1811 and rapidly ascended to the status of a celebrity in Regency London, with his presence sought after at every society event. This was his most productive literary period, though unprofitable; he was in debt still (and occasionally pressed by creditors) and decided to marry money, specially the heiress Annabella Millbanke. There were other reasons too, Byron had a number of lovers of both sexes (including Lady Caroline Lamb, who coined the description 'mad, bad and dangerous to know') and persistent rumours of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. In January 1816 Annabella left him, taking their daughter Ada, and instituted proceedings for a legal separation. The scandal would see Byron depart Britain for the final time in April.
The summer of 1816 was unpleasant, part of the Year Without A Summer caused by the explosion of Mount Tambora and kept the party at the Villa Diodati (by the shore of Lake Geneva, rented by Byron) inside much of the time. His guests included John Polidori, Percy and Mary Shelley and Byron's then mistress Claire Clairmont. Their discussions led to two modern classics; Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and The Vampyre, written by Polidori based on ideas and notes by Byron and published under his name (Byron was not happy).
- Not long after the publication of The Vampyre Polidori committed suicide at the age of 26.
From 1816 to 1823 Byron lived principally in Italy, but travelled much mainly around the Mediterranean. In 1823 he was living in Genoa when he impulsively accepted a request for his support from Greek nationalists, seeking independence from the Ottoman Empire. Expending much of his own funds to outfit a small fleet he planned to take part in the attack on Lepanto but fell ill. Poor medical treatment, including blood-letting with unsterilised instruments, caused Byron to develop a severe fever, probably from sepsis. He died on 17APR1824. Attempts to have his body interred in Westminster Abbey were rebuffed by the Church of England, who deemed him of "questionable morality". Likewise a statue commissioned by his friends was refused by many institutions.
Physically as an adult Byron is 1.74m tall (5' 8½") and od medium to slight build (about 65kg or 145lb) with pale skin, chestnut (dark red-brown) hair and blue-gray eyes. His right foot is malformed (from birth) and he generally wears a specially made boot to compensate but walks with a distinct limp. He has a slight Scottish accent.
Game uses; While an interesting figure Byron didn't have a significant impact on history, though a good orator he lacked the tact and diplomacy to become a influential figure in British politics. Such a path might have changed the course of his daughter's life greatly; might Lovelace and Babbage have obtained more support? What really happened at the Villa Diodati to cause such interest in the supernatural? Finally Byron kept detailed memoirs, which he'd left in the keeping of his friends John Murray and Thomas Moore; after his death Murray burned them, to prevent scandal. What secrets might they hold?
The Festival of the Cats. An innocuous name, but in medieval times the festival of 'Kattenstoet' involved hurling live cats from the belfry of the Cloth Hall in Ypres on the second Sunday of May. Exactly why this was done is obscure; it might be linked to a witch cult suppressed in the region by Baldwin III of Flanders around 961. The witches (allegedly) worshipped a cat goddess. Certainly cats were associated with witchcraft, as familiars, throughout the medieval period. Alternatively it may have started as a way to eliminate excess cats in the fifteenth century. The original cat hurling continued until 1817. Cat burning was also distressingly popular in parts of France.
Nowadays the cats are plush toys, caught by the crowd, and the witch burning is merely a game. Many of the thousands of participants dress as cats, mice or witches, or in historical costumes.
- Unless someone’s doing a spot of mind control…
Game uses: What if someone or something long buried (the Malus perhaps? Or the spirits of the murdered felines) is disturbed and the festival starts to resemble the real thing, complete with cat killing and witch burning. What exactly happened back in 961 to start the festival anyway? An interesting area for a historian to study.
The Sinking of the John Harvey The SS John Harvey was a Liberty ship constructed in 1943 as one of the numerous quickly built cargo ships needed during the Second World War. Like another seemingly innocuous cargo ship it'd probably have had an unspectacular career except for the confluence of circumstances; in this case a Luftwaffe air-raid while the ship was anchored in Bari harbour, a 'special' cargo and wartime secrecy.
On 26NOV1943 the vessel arrived in the Italian port of Bari carrying supplies for the Allied operations there. Bari was packed with ships waiting to be unloaded, and the John Harvey had to wait for several days. Captain Knowles wanted to tell the British port commander about his deadly cargo and request it be unloaded as soon as possible, but secrecy prevented him doing so. A week later, on 02DEC, more than a hundred German aircraft attacked the harbour with a deadly combination of surprise and accuracy. Seventeen ships would be destroyed or sunk, and more damaged, with over a thousand direct fatalities. Among those destroyed was the John Harvey which exploded, releasing her cargo. The ship carried about 66 tonnes of mustard gas.
The sulphur mustard, was released and spread rapidly. Much of the agent remained liquid and mixed with the oily seawater and burned the men in the water from the sunken and damaged ships. Some was vapourised by the explosion and mixed with the smoke from the burning ships and cargo, spreading over the town of Bari.
- Mustard gases (there are a number of types and mixes) aren't actually gases but are usually oily liquids.
Exactly how many casualties were caused isn't known; 628 military victims are known to have been hospitalised with mustard gas symptoms (83 died) but there were probably more. Civilian casualties are known to be higher, though most fled the town. The hospitals and clearing stations contributed to the chemical injuries, pprioritising those with obvious burns and other injuries, not knowing that the oil contained a vesicant. No-one was expecting poison gas to be used.
Several ships that took part in the rescue of men from the harbour were themselves effected by the poison gas; the USS Bistera was forced to return to Bari after her crew developed symptoms and Claude Holloway (who commanded the British torpedo boat MTB242) and members of his crew were badly burned.
After the raid, and the odd symptoms shown by the injured, a staff officer attached to Eisenhower's medical staff, Dr. Stewart Alexander, was sent to Bari. Despite not having information about the John Harvey's cargo he determined the cause of the injuries, and ensured the patients were treated for chemical burns. His actions saved many lives.
- And would subsequently save many more; observations of the effects of HS on white blood cells and samples from those injured would later lead to the development of chemotherapy agents for treating cancer.
The incident was rapidly covered up for fear that the Germans would think an Allied chemical warfare attack was probably and launch a preemptive attack of their own. However by 1944 this had fallen apart, though the details of the disaster weren't made public for many years.
More.
Game uses. Another interesting spot for a TARDIS or other time machine to arrive. Do the travellers know what happened there, and what do they do? If they arrive before the Luftwaffe attack to they try and warn the complacent authorities of an immanent raid? If they don't know how do they react? Will their actions cause the Allies to blame the Germans and possibly add chemical warfare into the horrors of World War 2?
The Wanderers of Romford. Romford is today a largish town, long part of the east of London, but sometimes claimed by the county of Essex. Back in 1920 it was far smaller, having a population of less than twenty thousand. But a few of those people didn't know how they got there... The first wanderer was found on 14JAN1920, walking down the street in a daze and not knowing where he was. Described as "mentally distraught" neither he, nor the five others to follow over four years, could explain who they were, where they were from or how they'd arrived in the town. Neither could police investigations determine their identity or origins. The last wanderer was found on 09DEC1923. All of them "were unable to tell how they got there, or anything else about themselves".
Game uses: While there may be a reasonable explanation the Whoniverse isn't so constrained. The wanderers could have been carried to the town through a rift in space, displaced backwards (or forwards) in time (though not very far as they seemed to blend in) or have dropped in though a portal to a parallel universe. Alternatively it's an interesting fate for a PC...
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 9, 2016 11:04:16 GMT
And a few more...
Roy Chapman Andrews. Andrews was another of the twentieth century explorers who might be encountered by a party of time travellers in the wilder parts of China in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Mongolia. He led a number of expeditions deep into the Gobi desert from 1922 to 1930, mainly in an attempt to find human remains to support the (incorrect) Out of Asia hypothesis for the origin of man.
- Unless he did find such evidence and it was suppressed of course. Maybe humanity wasn't ready to learn of it's true origin as the escaped pets of intelligent reptiles...
While he'd best known for his expeditions into Mongolia (he coined the term 'Outer Mongolia' as a synonym for a truly remote place) he also explored the Arctic (1913-14), Southeast Asia (1909-10), Southern China (1916-17, especially Yunnan province) Andrews’s expeditions to the Gobi remain significant even today; they found the first dinosaur eggs (1923, proving that at least some dinosaurs were egg-laying), several new species of dinosaurs and the fossils of early mammals that co-existed with dinosaurs. The focus of media and public attention on the egg find irritated Andrews, however he used the interest to raise funds for further expeditions; more than $50,000 was raised in donations and one of the eggs was auctioned off for a further $5,000.
- Assuming it was just a fossilised egg and not, for example, a Yeti control sphere that was encrusted in rock. Might the party have to carry out a little discreet burglary?
After 1930 the political situation made further expeditions impossible and most of Andrews's work was in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He became the institution's director in 1934 and retired in 1942. moving to California to write. Andrews was another of the influences on the character of Indiana Jones. Certainly the two share a dislike of snakes.
More.
Game uses. Andrews could be inserted into a scenario as a minor background character, perhaps encountered early in his life and inspired by contact with one of the PCs to explore the Earth. Or he could be a major character; perhaps the PCs meet him during one of the Mongolian expeditions and assist him, or prevent him from learning and publicising details of the true history of humanity. Or later in his life when he was president of the Explorers Club or the AMNH in New York they could meet because of a new find that's out of the ordinary.
Jimmy Garlick St. James Garlickhythe is a minor London church, one of those designed by Wren in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666. During work in its vaults in 1855 a minor mystery was unearthed; a preserved male human corpse, believed to date back to the seventeenth century, was found under the chancel. The body was found in an excellent state of preservation, having been embalmed, and was both a minor mystery and major attraction with visitors allowed, for a penny, to see and even touch the corpse.
- The name 'Garlickhythe' comes from the nearby medieval garlic market.
Not long after the body was found stories started spreading about a 'white figure' haunting the church, disappearing when challenged. Some attribute it's influence to the church surviving bomb hits in both World Wars. An early theory was that the dead man was Seagrave Chamberlain, the adolescent old son of a sugar planter, who died on his way from Barbados to London in 1675 but scientific analysis has shown the man to have been substantially older at the time of his death. He did have pierced ears and was probably a sailor.
More. A 360° panorama of the church interior. Photos of the corpse taken in the 1980s. Georgian London.
Game uses. For maximum GM freedom the preserved corpse could be relocated to another church; it might not even be human, a damaged Auton perhaps awaiting a control signal and confused by early human experiments with radio. Or is there something within the body that much be retrieved (or destroyed)?
They Saved Babbage’s Brain! Not only was his brain preserved, it was split in two... Charles Babbage is best known as the developer of the concepts around the automatic computer, his incomplete Difference Engine and his theoretical Analytic Engine. After his death his brain was preserved, and donated to the Hunterian Museum in London. In 1909 it was examined and detailed in a monograph by the distinguished physician Sir Victor Horsley, A Description of the Brain of Mr. Charles Babbage, FRS (link). This led to the brain being split into two; the left hemisphere is in the Science Museum in Kensington, while the right hemisphere is about 5 kilometers away, still in the Hunterian.
Game uses. Other than morbid curiousity was there a specific reason for the preservation? Did the post-mortem examination of Babbage discover the presence of strange alien technology within his brain? Hhad he perhaps been influenced by the Cybermen in his work on computers? Are the hemispheres on show actually the real thing, or are they fakes to divert attention from the real brain of Babbage, preserved by a sinister group within the Royal Society as part of a long term plan? Does Babbage actually still live, albeit as a disembodied brain in a (GM choice) alien brain case or tank of bubbling liquid? Who did it? Where did they acquire the technology? What is/was their plan? Why was the brain split? Are there more such preserved brains?
The Big Smoke. Not all 'natural disasters' are entirely natural; the Great Smog of 1952 was the result of two factors, the reliance on coal for heating in London (itself exacerbated by the cold weather) and uncommon weather. A high-pressure system over the city left the air stagnant, so the smoke wasn't dissipated as usual, but humidity was high. For four days in December 1952 (05DEC to 09DEC) London was covered in a thick blanket of choking fog, mixed with smoke particles, sulphur and carbon oxides, fluorides and hydrogen chloride.
- At the time most domestically burned coal was of relatively low quality, high in sulphur, as the less polluting anthracite coal was exported. This was also used in the numerous coal fuelled electric generating stations around the capital. Further, there had been an increase in diesel use as buses replaced the tram network.
The city was used to the 'pea soupers' or 'London particulars', they'd been part of life for decades, but this one was worse. The lack of wind left the city bathed in yellow-black a mix of thousands of tonnes of pollutants. Visibility was less than a metre, even in daytime. Most public transport ceased to run (apart from the London Underground), as did the ambulance service. Doctors and midwives couldn't visit patients. Many people wore smog masks (often utterly ineffective) or covered their faces with scarves or cloths. Most outdoor sports were impossible (Wembley Stadium and the White City both closing); even inside the fog was noticeable, with cinemas forced to close and concerts cancelled. The operations of the police (and the Met was seriously understaffed anyway) were also disrupted, with several injured by traffic, and responses to incidents being hampered by the visibility. Criminality, especially theft but also assaults and rape, initially increased. Though by Saturday even major crimes were rare.
- Sherlock Holmes was wrong, professional criminals need to make a quick getaway.
However the smog soon created more business for the police; after only a day or two deaths among the elderly and infirm were up sharply.
- There were a number of odd, and even bizarre, events; one police sergeant, confronted by a line of stalled cars, organised a series of convoys with constables or civilian volunteers (in white 'fog coats' and carrying burning flares) leading groups of cars in various directions.
- Even odder was the case of a man who set out from a hotel in Mayfair to drive the short distance to Battersea; a police constable found him sitting in his car in the middle of a cemetery, utterly unable to explain how he'd got there, especially without knocking down any of the tombstones. The officer couldn't explain it, either.
At night the streetlight was almost useless, light from the incandescent bulbs not reaching the base of the poles. Another common effect (which may startle inexperienced players) is the frequent detonation of 'fog detonators' on railway lines. These are simple percussion caps placed on the rails, usually near signals, and detonated the wheels of trains. More than twelve thousand people are now believed to have died because of the smog, with more than one hundred thousand more made ill with bronchitis, pneumonia and other respiratory problems. The government, eager to hide the policies that had contributed to the problem, minimised the effects and blamed them on an influenza outbreak.
More. Report in The Guardian. Pictures. The Killer Fog of '52. Met Office. History Today.
Game uses. A huge city grinding to a halt, the very air choking people? A perfect setting for a game. In fact the EU novel Amorality Tale uses it to great effect, mixing in East End gangsters and invading aliens armed with chemical weapons. A party could hampered by the smog, perhaps involved in a slow motion chase? Tasks that are usually simple would be far more difficult with limited transportation.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Contributions?
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Post by missyfan45 on Jul 31, 2020 13:51:25 GMT
lets resurrect this hmm Nellie bly and the sea devils?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 31, 2020 16:15:24 GMT
lets resurrect this hmm Nellie bly and the sea devils? Well OK, but for today the Laskhill Furnace.
The Furnace of Laskhill Today Laskill is a small village in Yorkshire, about 8 km north-west of Helmsley, on the road from Helmsley to Stokesley, within the North York Moors National Park. Up until they were forcibly evicted by Henry VIII in 1538 the village was basically an annexe of Rievaulx Abbey about 6km away; this was a wealthy Cistercian foundation which, in addition to wool (they kept around fifteen thousand sheep) and stone production, housed one of the most advanced iron works in England. In addition to producing iron tools for the monks own quarries, farms and shearing, the abbey sold iron tools and bulk iron to the outside world.
Rievaulx Abbey was a Cistercian abbey founded in 1132 and situated near Helmsley in what is now the North York Moors National Park. It was one of the great abbeys in England until it was seized under Henry VIII of England in 1538 during the dissolution of the monasteries.
- In case you're unfamiliar with the minutiae of the monastic orders, the Order of Cistercians is an off-shoot of the the Order of Saint Benedictines (and follow the same Rule of Saint Benedict) They were founded in 1098 by a group of monks who felt their fellows were overly loose in their adherence to the Rule. Th Benedictines had been founded some five centuries earlier. The Cistercians are known as White Monks due to their white robes (Benedictines were the Black Monks).
- The original emphasis of Cistercian life was on manual labour and self-sufficiency, as had the earlier Benedictine life. Many abbeys supported themselves through agriculture and brewing. Over the centuries, however, education and academic pursuits came to dominate the life of many monasteries.
At the time of the dissolution and confiscation there were approximately twenty three monks (some sources say 22) and about one hundred ‘lay’ brothers. The abbey’s annual income was about £360, 0.4% of Henry’s entire government income of ~£90,000.
- Lay brothers were members of the community but in a limited sense; they could not speak at chapter meetings but were required to take the vows of chastity and obedience but were not ordained religious. Most were effectively religious peasant wokers.
- The Mystery of the Twenty Third Monk has a nice ring to it; a certain monastic meddler comes to mind.
Just before Christmas 1538 the monks "voluntarily" surrendered the church and abbey to the king’s commissioners. Unusually compliant they were pensioned off and are rumoured to have preserved various artefacts and objects.
- Which is fodder for a few scenarios in itself...
The commissioners stripped the abbey of anything saleable, including tomb ornaments, altar slabs, timbers, metal, windows, cut stone et cetera; this destabilised the structure and caused the tower to collapse into the nave. The collapse buried much of the salvaged material (which had been stacked up for removal), and the stretch of medieval tile paving beneath it. The collapse caused no deaths and is believed to have occurred at night, probably the night before they were going to take it all away.
- A very convenient time for a collapse.
There were excavations on the site in the 1920s as well as more recently. A good opportunity for an archaeologist to stumble over something.
The interesting think about the Cistercians at Larkhill, who were known to have been skilled metallurgists, is their blast furnace for producing iron. This is the only example ever identified in Britain of such a furnace.
- Unlike the earlier 'stack' furnace a blast furnace can actually reach and sustain the 1,500°C temperature that can melt iron. The stack furnace has been used since the Iron Age began; it
was typically a two metre high, metre wide cylindrical stack of clay. Charcoal and iron ore were loaded into the top. Air, pumped in with hand or foot bellows, helped feed the fire that separated pasty lumps of iron from the ore. This crude iron was further heated and squeezed to remove mineral impurities called slag. It's a crude and inefficient process.
The furnace at Larkhill was about five metres high and constructed of stone with a channel for water, indicating it probably had a water-powered system for air circulation (far more efficient than hand bellows). Examination of the slag at Laskill reveals iron concentrations far greater than a conventional stack furnace, more typical of a blast furnace.
So was the furnace one of those simple oddities of history? A device slightly before it's time, the product of a monk with an inventive turn of mind? Or was someone meddling, attempting to start the Industrial Revolution a full two and a half centuries early... If so the Cistercians were an interesting choice; monastics moved between foundations, spreading knowledge and the Cistercians had a regular meeting of abbots every year. So there was a way to spread and share technological advances across Europe.
But it was not to be. The destruction of the abbey at Rievaulx by King Henry VIII during the Reformation put an end to this blast furnace and its advanced technology.
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Post by missyfan45 on Jul 31, 2020 16:53:53 GMT
hmmm good for some imposters to infiltrate
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Jul 31, 2020 21:22:11 GMT
hmmm good for some imposters to infiltrate Yes, stranded alien, time traveller (or temporally displaced person) or visitor from an adjacent universe if you don't want to use the Meddler/Monk/Mortimus. Who may seem a little obvious.
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Post by missyfan45 on Aug 1, 2020 0:00:06 GMT
i think cybermen is fine
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Post by missyfan45 on Aug 11, 2020 0:11:08 GMT
hmmm battle of jerusalem? could be a pure historical.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 11, 2020 13:40:42 GMT
hmmm battle of jerusalem? could be a pure historical. The 70CE one? There have been quite a few; 701 BCE, 597 BCE, 587 BCE, 134 BCE, 63 BCE, 37 BCE, 614CE, 636–637, 1073, 1099, 1187, 1244, 1834, 1917, 1948 and 1967. So far.
- Could be some fun with time slippage from one era to another; soldiers and civilians from the bronze age interacting with those from the sixties, Crusaders meeting ANZACs, legionaries meeting anti-Dalek guerrillas from 2150, insurgents from 1946 meeting Robomen, Assyrians fighting the horrors of World War Six....
A messy business. A pure historical means there's no real "enemy" to oppose and the players are rather constrained in their activities. Assuming the classic 'separated from their TARDIS' basis for the story they'll be trying to find it, under heavy time pressure (assuming they know some of the details of the siege) in an environment of, well 'siege mentality' covers it.
Shortages of food (the Zealots deliberately destroyed most of the city's stock; their are fairly credible stories of cannibalism), infighting between Jewish factions (they were killing each other during the siege), utter desperation (defeat is zooming, hope is mostly gone and everyone knows what happens during an intaking) conflicting with the unwillingness to accept the inevitable either because of actual belief (the "Gott mit uns" mentality) or inability to accept the horrors to come. Mix in black pained thirty kilo rocks dropping out of the sky.
Some players may have problems with this soft of scenario; it's a railroad, there's no objective (except escape), pretty much everyone they interact with is going to die or be enslaved and the atosphere will be fairly depressing. Then again, some will appreciate the historical accuracy.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 11, 2020 14:32:59 GMT
A quickie from my General Notes file.
During the American Civil War, specifically 17SEP1862, generals George McClellan (Union) and Robert Lee (Confederacy) battled to a standstill along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg in the state of Maryland. The battle is referred to by either of those place names and was part of Lee's attempted invasion of Maryland with the intent of threatening Washington DC.
After the battle, which was a Union tactical victory (McClellan had acquired a copy of Lee's orders to his subordinate commanders), Lee retreated back to Virginia and McClellan ignored Lincoln’s orders to pursue him. For the next six weeks the two US leaders exchanged angry messages, but McClellan stubbornly refused to march after Lee. It wasn't until late October that McClellan finally began moving his forces across the Potomac river in "pursuit" of Lee. Lincoln had had enough. Convinced that McClellan could never defeat Lee, Lincoln notified the general on 05NOV of his removal from command. Some days later Lincoln appointed General Ambrose Burnside to be the commander of the Army of the Potomac.
This is where things get interesting; historically McClellan seriously considered rejecting Lincoln's order to stand down and even thought about a march on Washington. It's entirely possible that his troops would have supported him at that time (he was extremely popular and a good organiser). Let's say someone interferes, deliberately or accidentally, and causes the 'Little Napoleon' to take this option. He leads the Army of the Potomac and deposes Lincoln and the civilian government of the USA. This is not a far-fetched as it might seem later. In JUL1861 McClellan wrote to his wife: Despite his earlier defeat, in the Peninsular Campaign, McClellan enjoyed very broad ranging support; with the army he had built up, with the public and with the press. He also was well supplied with political allies, who assisted him in blaming Secretary Stanton and the War Department for McClellan’s defeat.
What if McClellan went ahead with the plan and made himself Dictator of the United States?
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Post by missyfan45 on Aug 11, 2020 15:51:45 GMT
yeah maybe every slip leads to a different one ie 63 BCE, and 1917 one combine and distort to a hellish battle imagine legionnaires with guns
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 13, 2020 10:20:22 GMT
The Cardiff Giant. On 16OCT1869 two workmen, Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, hired by William "Stub" Newell in Cardiff (the one in New York state, a small place in Onondaga County, south of Syracuse) to to dig a well on his property discovered a giant petrified body buried there. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, "I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!"
The 'giant' was about 3m tall and appeared to be a large humanoid who'd been petrified at some point. The figure rapidly became a nine-days-wonder, and a profitable one. Newell erected a tent over the giant and initially charged 25 cents to people who wanted to see it. After two days the exhibit was still so popular that he doubled the price. People still came by the wagonload.
Doubt as to its authenticity started immediately; archaeologists and geologists rapidly pronounced the giant a fake. Tellingly there was no good reason to try to dig a well in the spot the giant had been found. The famous Yale paleontologist Othniel Marsh (he of the 'Bone Wars' fame) examined the statue and stated that it was made of gypsum which if it had actually been buried in damp earth for centuries would have partially dissolved. He also pointed out the fresh tool marks on the giant. He described it as "a most decided humbug".
However many theologians and preachers defended the authenticity of the giant, embracing it as proof of Biblical Genesis
Eventually Hull sold the giant for $23,000 to a syndicate headed by David Hannum who exhibited it in Syracuse, New York. The infamous showman P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for the giant and, when refused, created his own plaster fake. This led to legal action...
However on 10DEC10 Hull confessed to the press; the giant was a fake. The giant had been created by him and his cousin, a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull was an atheist and after being irritated by the argument put at a Methodist revival meeting about the literal truth of the Bible, and the references to 'giants' (actually 'Nephilim') in Genesis 6:4.
- Hull had taken the idea for a 'petrified man' from a bogus letter published in the newspaper Alta California, in 1858 claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode.
Hull had paid for the quarrying of a 3.2m block of gypsum in Iowa, supposedly for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. The block was shipped to Chicago, where Edward Burghardt (a German stonecutter) was paid to carve it into the likeness of a man. Hull 'aged' the statue and transported it to his cousin's farm to be discovered.
The giant was an aspect of the clash between religion and science in th period, when new discoveries by scientists demonstrated Biblical claims to be untrue.
The giant is an interesting historical oddity (one of several such in the period) and can be dropped into a scenario in several ways. Perhaps the PCs are searching for someone in New York, only to find he's gone to Cardiff to see the giant. It's entirely possible the PCs, and players, are aware of the story and know the giant is a fake.
Unless of course the giant isn't a fake after all. The Whoniverse has several species that are made or stone, or some analogue to it. The Kastrians and Ogri featured in the TV series and the former might well be adapted to such a scenario; a survivor the destruction of their home planet. Perhaps a better fit is the Grold, from The Eyes of the Giant; a fluorosilicone life form who were more like stone than flesh and required very high temperatures to function. Though they're also described as being much bigger (about 5.5m) and with six-fingered hands and a humped back. Then again the one unearthed in Cardiff might have been immature, or might have been that big.
In the novel the Grold find Earth, even in the tropics, to be dangerously cold hence falling dormant. Their brain analogue is a huge ruby, which also functions as an eye and a weapon; it could discharge energy pulses (a laser perhaps?) and they could use it to hypnotise humans.
So Newell unearths a real "giant" and it manages to control his mind, enough to warm it out of dormancy. It uses the 'exhibition' as a methods to gather human slaves, perhaps to dig out it's buried space-craft. Naturally the PCs discover this and must frustrate the plan; perhaps by offering a better way for the alien to survive and depart this frigid world. Then the need to orchestrate the historical cover up to remove the incident from the historical record, except as a fake. Simple....
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Aug 13, 2020 10:39:03 GMT
yeah maybe every slip leads to a different one ie 63 BCE, and 1917 one combine and distort to a hellish battle imagine legionnaires with guns The more I think about this the more I like it. After all if Cardiff can have a temporal rift, and Cleveland a Hellmouth1, why can't Jerusalem be another weak spot in reality?
It's an old city2, one that's seen a lot of humanity, a lot of belief and a lot of death.
The Earthbound Timelords scenario 'Keep the Piece' (PDF) could be a starting point: It's even got a suitable MacGuffin to trigger the temporal weirdness.
1. Which would come as a surprise to few people who've visited. 2. Though not actually that old; Athens, Beruit, Sidon, Acre, Damascus, Ankara, Aleppo, Hebron, Kirkuk, Tyre and other are older..
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