Mastodawn

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Apr 11, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER I
In which Dorothea Brooke, Ebenezer Scrooge and Estella Havisham visit the laboratory of Dr. Septimus Pretorius, where they find him under attack by a reanimated baboon and separated from his trusty Faraday pistol. As Scrooge shouts encouragements, Havisham and Brooke pump several bullets into the baboon, but it rises and continues fighting, and its severed arm joins the fray of its own volition! #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Apr 11, 2023

Finishing off the baboon and stabbing the arm with a dagger, Havisham asks Pretorius whether the baboon was a pet, a friend or an accomplice. Pretorius, laughing nervously, asks his rescuers inside and pours them each a tumbler of gin, inquiring into their purposes. Brooke extends an invitation to Pretorius to join the society, and upon being assured of remuneration, the man of learning agrees. Now the Society of Exceptional Personages awaits its first assignment.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Apr 26, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER II
In which the enigmatic "M" meets with Brooke, Scrooge, Havisham and Pretorius and asks them to look into a possible connection between the recent murder of Col. Arkady Dornovich of the Russian Imperial Police on a train from Berlin to St. Petersburg and the murder of Metropolitan Police Inspector Odell Ainsworth, six months before, both of whom were found with the letter T carved into their foreheads. #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Apr 26, 2023

The four personages visit the District No. 3 police station and take advantage of Scrooge's commanding demeanor to arrange a meeting with the superintendent. He is unwilling to break protocol and share information about the Met's cases but, when told of the possible connection between the murders, tells them where to find Ainsworth's widow—a plan that Scrooge believes may provide an opening to converse with the deceased himself.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm May 24, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER III
In which Brooke and Havisham drop in on the widow Ainsworth, claiming to be members of the "Constables' Bereavement Society." While the widow makes tea, Havisham steals upstairs—and steals a cigarette case that belonged to Inspector Ainsworth. They take the personal item to the street where Ainsworth was slain, and Scrooge lights one of the inspector's cigarettes, preparing to make contact with the spirit of the deceased. #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm May 24, 2023

The others see only smoke, but to Scrooge's eye, the wisps form into the visage of the late police inspector! Ainsworth's spirit discloses that he was killed by "those backstabbers, Simmons and Bancroft," after he took a £500 bribe from one Col. Martinov to manufacture evidence against a Russian national living in London, Max Alexeyev, in order to have him extradited.

"What happened to Alexeyev?" Brooke asks, and the personages plan to visit the offices of the Daily Telegraph to find out.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jun 7, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER IV
In which the four personages ply a newspaperman on the Telegraph's foreign desk with food and drink, and confirm that Alexeyev, a professor and translator, had in fact been charged with murder and subsequently deported; and also learn that Col. Martinov is rumored to be a member of the Russian secret police, while the murdered Col. Dornovich had been on a highly unusual mission to Berlin before he was slain. #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jun 7, 2023

What was Alexeyev working on that drew the interest of the Russian government—documents he was translating, perhaps? Was the criminal's confession to Ainsworth's murder forged? And where is Martinov now?

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jun 21, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER V
In which the personages pay a visit to King's College to inquire into Prof. Alexeyev's activities and learn that after his arrest, all his papers were cleared out of his office without the knowledge or permission of anyone at the college! Also, according to his colleagues, he was known to have socialist sympathies.

Might Inspector Ainsworth have been murdered by other radicals in retaliation for framing Alexeyev? #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jun 28, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER VI
In which the personages decide to investigate the train on which Col. Dornovich was murdered and travel to the continent on the Nord Express. En route from Ostend to Liège, an already intoxicated Pretorius learns from a waiter that when the murder occurred, the train had been subjected to a series of uncharacteristic delays while traveling through Germany, causing it to fall three hours behind schedule. #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jun 28, 2023

Pretorius has a fit of insight: The delays must have been deliberate, brought about to ensure that most passengers would be asleep at the time of the murder!

But was the ghastly killing the work of Dornovich's junior officer, Maj. Sergei Volkov? Of Alan Tremayne, Lord Alanmere, secretary of the British Embassy in St. Petersburg? Or did a cunning assassin somehow manage to board the train while it was in motion, then escape without a trace?

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jul 12, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER VII
In which the personages continue their journey on the Nord Express. While the London–Liège cars are added to the eastbound train from Paris, Scrooge utilizes his Demeanor of Command to gain access to the locomotive and speak to the engineer about the delays. Angrily, the engineer maintains that the "delays" were a charade—the German fettlers, pointsmen and signalmen were clearly feigning their supposed technical troubles! #CypherSystem #TTRPG

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jul 12, 2023

Once the express train is under way, the personages take dinner in the dining car. Havisham sits alone, hoping to attract interesting company—and indeed does! She's joined by a handsome young man, a beautiful young woman and a luxuriously dressed older woman who introduces herself as the Princess Anna Ornovskaya. They converse politely, Havisham and the princess doing most of the talking.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jul 12, 2023

Scrooge, spying on the other inhabitants of the restaurant car, leans too far into the aisle, into a dining cart! With his Terrifying Presence, he loudly upbraids the waiter for his clumsiness, while the mortified lad meekly apologizes. All eyes are on Scrooge; they'll remember his face!

Havisham, meanwhile, tells her dining companions that she suspects "that man"—Pretorius—of following her, hoping they'll grant her access to the VIP parlor car. They express concern, but no more.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Jul 12, 2023

After dinner, the personages retire for the night, wondering what the next day will bring—and how to gain access to the parlor car after the change of train at Wirballen.

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 2, 2023

THE SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL PERSONAGES
CHAPTER VIII
In which the personages continue their journey on the Nord Express for another day. Between Stendahl and Berlin, Scrooge goes to the dining car for a cup of tea and encounters the young man from the evening before, reading a newspaper. He strikes up a conversation and learns that the man is an engineer, traveling to St. Petersburg to offer his expert opinion on some kind of mechanical construction. #CypherSystem

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 2, 2023

Hoping to learn more, Scrooge invites the engineer, Richard Arnold, to lunch with him and Pretorius at noon. The three come together at the appointed time, and Pretorius engages Arnold in a discussion of scientific advancements. Trying to push the conversation into more daring territory, Pretorius leans forward, holds his hands apart, and causes electrical sparks to leap between them!

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 2, 2023

Arnold, fascinated, asks Pretorius's opinion on the uses to which such amazing discoveries might be put. Pretorius disappoints Arnold by extolling the advancement of science for its own sake over the use of science to advance mankind, but manages to rekindle Arnold's interest by describing Scrooge as a "recovering capitalist," repenting for the misery he caused in his former life as a moneylender. Arnold reveals that until recently, he himself was so poor as to be on the brink of starvation!

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 2, 2023

Scrooge asks whether the women in whose company Arnold travels were the ones who lifted him out of poverty, but he says they're merely acquaintances he met through a benefactor he encountered by happenstance. He says no more about them or the nature of his job in Russia.

Later, as the passengers change trains and go through customs at Wirballen, Brooke studies the transfer of baggage to determine whether an assassin could have slipped aboard the train in the process …

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 2, 2023

… coming to the conclusion that it would make much more sense for such an assassin to be on board the waiting train already, before the transfer of baggage.

Scrooge, Havisham and Brooke all smoothly lie their way past the strict Russian customs officer, but ironically, it's Pretorius, telling the unvarnished truth, whose answers trigger the officer's suspicion, and he's led away by soldiers to a side office. The train to St. Petersburg prepares to leave without him …

Ronan Aug 14, 2023

@KeithAmmann really enjoying these write ups! Sounds like good fun! Can I ask how you're handling cyphers? I have a similar game just starting set in an alternative 1920s Europe and would like to use #cyphersystem - currently thinking about how I would do cyphers...

Keith Ammann @ GameStorm Aug 15, 2023

@ronanchilvers So far, mostly, by giving out a few (all subtle) at character creation and then forgetting about them. There just aren't many good opportunities to hand them out in a so far slow-moving and mostly mundane mystery.

@KeithAmmann might do the same! 😁