Merry Christmas

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
-Ebenezer Scrooge

I hope you wanted Monsters for Christmas! -Owlbears and Gargoyles

It's the last week of the "Monsters for Christmas"  posts. It’s been fun converting some monsters I made for 2nd edition into 3rd and creating some new ones.
The two monsters  added to the Resources page are Owlbears and Gargoyles. One is a furry classic of fantasy role-playing and the other is neat bit of architectural magic with a thick stone hide.
Observant readers may notice that the Gargoyle description mentions the spells Turning and Animate Gargoyle repeatedly. A future blog post will feature both spells statted out.
I hope these monsters inspire and enliven your Victoriana games over the coming year.

Whoops- A Fixed Link

I was doing some checking and discovered the link to the Coaldust Pixie write-up was broken. No wonder there wasn't any activity! It's fixed now. If you ever notice a broken page on this blog, please send me a message so I can fix it quickly.

Another announcement: As Christmas falls on a Friday this year, I will not be writing content for  that week. I will probably say a little something about "Merry" and "Christmas" and a reference to "Being the Dickens" but nothing fancy.

I hope you wanted Monsters for Christmas! - Coaldust Pixies and The Knucker

Continuing the Monstrous Christmas Blessings, this week I am again adding two monsters the Resources page. All the monsters are stated for 2nd and 3rd edition Victoriana, and ready to add a little more fantasy to your adventures.
The two monster this week are The Knucker and Coal Dust Pixies. One is a legendary serpentine lake monster, and the other is an original industrial infernal imp. Enjoy.

I hope you wanted Monsters for Christmas! - Giant Spiders and the Shagfoal

This month, I’m bulking up the Resources page with some home-brew Victoriana Monsters. Every week in December I'll add two more monsters to the Bestiary to add some fur, fangs, and festivity to your sessions.
This week’s monsters are Giant Spiders and the Shagfoal. One is a creepy fantasy staple that will fit in rural and urban settings. The other is more spectral and will certainly be bothersome to an adventuring party even after its defeat. Enjoy.

What's in Its Pockets?- Pick-pocketing Odds and Ends Table

The single scenario on the blog's Resources page (formerly the Scenarios page) looks a bit sad, so I will be adding to it for the next few  Fridays. I'm starting with a table inspired by an article in Dragon magazine 104 called "Was it worth the risk?" by Bruce Barber. It's a fantastically flavorful piece full of  random items a pickpocket could steal from a stranger's pockets.
I loved it so much I made a version for the Victorian world. My player characters tend to have sticky fingers, so the this chart has seen a lot of use in my Victoriana games. The item are arranged by class in case a Gamemaster just needs a few random, period items for a specific person.You can find the chart here or on the Resources page.
Enjoy.

London’s Dungeons- Occupants

For six weeks, we’ve looked at prime locations in London large enough to hide lairs, laboratories, and secret headquarters for your Victoriana villains. This week I’m listing some secretive groups likely to use London’s dungeons, their agendas, and their henchmen.
Theses conspiracies don’t all have to be antagonistic to the players. While these dungeons are described to be infiltrated, explored, and house exciting battles (preferably with period specific monsters), they could instead house resting places, bolt holes, the headquarters of an allied organization or even a parties’ association.
Here are some ideas:

Very organized river pirates/smugglers store their hoard in a hidden place.
Hook: The River Police offer a substantial reward for the location of the Hideout/ Something important was stolen from a barge.
Plan: Keep stealing and avoid the law
Fight: Foreign nautical creatures infest the warehouse.

A group of anarchists fight against the status quo through detective work, research, and bombs
Hook: A number of public events have been canceled due to a wave of anarchist attacks/why are a number of influential men suddenly all dropping their support to an upper class contact?
Plan: The removal of key politicians by blackmail, kidnapping, public opinion, and murder.
Fight: Scrappy halfling newsies, printers, and typesetters, all with bizarre tattoos hidden under their clothes

A cadre of discharged army officers moonlights as thieves because of lost fortune, blackmail, revenge, or the thrill of stealing.
Hook: A rash of imaginative brilliantly planned crimes plague the precious stone exchanges of London.
Plan: To execute, through cunning and forethought, the crime of the century.
Fight: Loyal batmen (personal servants of commissioned officers) armed with stolen military prototypes.

Order of disgraced scientists and engineers has a secret laboratory for thaumaturgical experiments.
Hook: Some easily overlooked locals have gone missing after being hired by academic-looking gentlemen to do some light labor.
Plan: They explore dangerous and illegal magical practices to purify the polluted air of London
Fight: Fanatical but nonviolent civil servants armed with marvels guard their secrets.

A group of night beat constables have been possessed by the spirits of Roman soldiers.
Hook: A neighborhood’s criminal elements are being stabbed to death with alarming frequency while working at night. Historians say the wounds are caused by very old style short swords.
Plan: The soldier’s souls are trying to find their lost army and regain control of the Londinium settlement.
Fight: Disciplined and well trained policemen that do not succumb to wounds.

The Guild elite of London gather for what is known as “The Auction” where the most incredible magical items and most exotic thaumatergical ingredients can be bought. If you have to ask where it is, you’re not invited.
Hook: “The Auction” is the only place in London that has it.
Plan: Keep out the riffraff, and acquire or create valuable collections to be sold to the highest bidder.
Fight: A series of busts of famous magicians have been enchanted to talk and levitate. Answer their questions about thaumaturgical trivia and you can go in. Otherwise, they will berate and hurl themselves vigorously at intruders.

An ancient hibernating Dragon lies dormant under London.
Hook: Terrible smelling fires break out in the Square Mile. Each Fire is also the location of a daring daylight crime roughly a week earlier or a lecture by an ascetic criminologist.  
Plan: The dragon’s dreams physically manifest as a devious overlord taking over the London’s criminal underworld and as an observant genius detective determined to thwart the overlord.
Fight: Symbiotic magical birds that clean the Dragon’s scales of parasites.

The Empire’s worst criminals held in a secret prison.
Hook: You Need to Escape!/There’s only one person who can help but he’s disappeared
Plan: Keep all the prisoners under lock and key or are the lunatics running the asylum?  
Fight: The few remaining descendents of an ancient knightly order led by a rotting bodiless skull watch over the prison.

After weeks of research and report based posts, it was nice to just write some crazy ideas. I will definitely go back to some of these ideas (HIBERNATING DRAGON!?) soon.
There are many places in London that could hide a secret and provide a backdrop for a boss fight. I just chose a few that caught my eye. For more of London’s Dungeons check out Subterranea Britannica.

London’s Dungeons- Millbank Prison 2

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer is surrounded by an octagonal wall seventeen feet high.

For the roughly thousand prisoners in Millbank Penitentiary, life was simple, quiet, and regimented. At 6:30 the prisoners woke up, cleaned their cells, and ate breakfast (sweetened cocoa and bread). The prisoners worked until 10 when the warders let them out of their cells and escorted their charges to the prison’s chapel for a sermon and a hymn sing. Then back to the cells for more work until lunch (Beef, potatoes and bread) was served through the cell doors. An hour of walking and pumping water in the yard, a bit of schooling and supper (gruel sweetened with molasses and bread) broke up the afternoon’s work.

Convicts ate their meals and worked in their cells unless work required them to be elsewhere. Cell’s gaslights were even specially positioned for certain trades. Inmates skilled in detailed work (like tailoring) had gaslights low on the wall close to their projects.
 A prisoner’s labor helped recoup the considerable costs of housing and aided rehabilitation. If a prisoner worked a trade as a free man (such as cobblers, carpenters or tailors) they were assigned work familiar to them. Prisoners without training made hammocks and sacks or tore apart oakum.

Part of the reforming process envisioned by the penitentiaries’ designers was to guard the inmates from bad influences. In other words keep them from talking to each other. Many inmates were only allowed to talk after half of their sentence had been served. Small wooden booths separated the inmates during chapel, and prisoners spent almost all their time in their cells.
The prison even had a system for the prisoners to communicate silently with their guards. A small hole in the wall of the cell let prisoners poke a small wooden stick out to the hall. The stick was painted black on one end and red on the other. If the black end showed it meant the prisoner was ready for more work. Red meant he had a more personal need such as going to the bathroom or infirmary.

Reports of gross inefficiency and disease soured the reputation of Millbank. In 1843, Millbank’s role as the National Penitentiary shifted to a new prison in Pentonville. Millbank became a depot for convicts waiting to be transported to the Empire’s colonies.

With the practice of transporting prisoners fading in the 50s, Millbank became an ordinary jail then a military prison in 1870. Millbank closed down in 1890. Demolition of the prison continued occasionally until it was completely gone in 1903.

Millbank prison’s short life has been documented by many reporters and memoirs. There is no shortage of details to add to an adventure or use to snag a player hook. Here are a few interesting bits of Millbank’s history to color a campaign:  

Cholera Outbreak
The filtered (but filthy) Thames water drunk by Millbanks inmates brought an epidemic of cholera in 1849. Prisoners had to be transferred to other prisons around London. Dr. John Snow studied Millbank’s epidemic in his research on the causes of cholera.
Perhaps the disease sweeping through the inmates is part of a larger experiment. Could different wards could be separate control groups, or even separate experiments? Or is the disease a cover for the largest jailbreak the world has ever seen!?  

The Darks 
If an inmate persisted in troublemaking, the warders sent them to the “Darks”. The Darks were underground cells with no windows or sources of light except the warder’s candle. The inmates lived on bread and water. Guards checked the inmate every hour and a doctor visited once a day to make sure the prisoner didn’t harm themselves. Isolation in the Darks could last from two days to twenty-eight depending on the punishment’s effect.
Many inmates were unaffected by their time in the dark. Some took pleasure in annoying the warders sleeping in the nearby barracks by screaming and singing at the top of their lungs through the night.
Although inmates said they could spend a month in the darks without a sweat, a few of them must have been affected by their time in complete pitch black. What else is down there in the dark?

Map of Millbank Prison

 As wonderful as my description of Millbank Prison in the previous post is, I think a detailed map will be more useful.

Map of Millbank Prison

 One of the bonuses of using a real location in your games is having access to actual maps a google search away. Each of the dungeons I've written up have terrific maps that can be printed out if you are so inclined.

London’s Dungeons- Millbank Prison Part 1

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer is surrounded by an octagonal wall seventeen feet high.

This week we’re looking at a very interesting dungeon of London: Millbank Prison. There is so much to say and so much that can be plugged into a Victoriana Adventure, I am only going to cover the construction and basic layout of Millbank this week. Next week, I’ll focus on life in Millbank and the history of the prison.

The overwhelming need for prison reforms in England lead the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, to design a new kind of penitentiary. A place that could isolate inmates, busy them with hard work, and reform them back into society. Bentham invested and struggled to bring his idea to life, but it was only after his death the plans for Millbank prison became a reality.
Millbank’s construction started in 1812 and finished on 1821. The soggy plot of marsh land bought for the prison caused many delays and frustrations during construction. In 1816 part of the structure collapsed. Architect sand engineers cycled in and out of the project. The prison’s current architect, Smirke, solved the problem by laying a massive spread of concrete in the marsh to anchor the foundation. This solution allowed work to commence smoothly but it also doubled the prisons’ construction cost.

Millbank prison has a stunning geometric shape, like an industrial flower. The center of the flower is the prison’s circular chapel where prisoners came for service every morning. A small courtyard surrounds the chapel, separating it from the surrounding hexagonal three storey building. The hexagon contains all the administrative offices and workspaces necessary to run the prison, such as the chaplain’s office, the steward’s office, infirmary, manufacturing, laundries, bakery, and the governor’s office. 
Six pentagons radiate from the hexagon like petals, containing three stories of prison cells. The three outermost corners of each Pentagon end with towers, used to keep watch and house water closets for each floor. Each pentagon encloses a large exercise yard with a watchtower in the center. Walls radiate from the watchtower dividing the exercise yard into five smaller plots. Beyond the six pentagons is a seventeen foot high octagonal wall.

Everything in the pentagonal cell blocks is designed to isolate the inmates from each other, and allow the minimum amount of guards to keep watch. Each cell is lit by a single high window and a gaslight, and a coat of whitewash helped brighten the cell. The window opens into the exercise yard, where a tower guard could keep an eye on prisoner’s silhouettes at any moment. Two doors (a thick wooden door to be locked at night, and a metal grill to allow ventilation during the day) separate the small cells from the long hallway lined with outward facing windows.
Furnishings were meager. Each cell had a washing tub (which doubled as a chair when a wooden cover was placed over it), and small table flap for study and eating, a hammock (or wooden cot) and bedding,

For much of its life, Millbank was the largest prison in London, and considered to be the most advanced prison in the world, but the condition of life inside Millbank is worth its own post. The real meat and juice for adventuring in Millbank Prison comes next Friday, but till then here are couple odd inspirations from this prison’s construction:  

1 Philosopher, 1 Designer, 3 Architects 
Soon after the land was cleared Bentham’s original design for the Millbank prison (the “Panopticon”) was abandoned. The Drawing Master of the Royal Military College, William Williams, won the architectural contest to find a new design. His plan was adapted by architect Thomas Hardwick, who resigned shortly after construction started in 1813. Hardwick was replaced by John Harvey, who in turn was dismissed and replaced by Robert Smirke. Smirke lead the project to constructions end in 1821.
This all means there is plenty of room for secret passageways and gaps in the plans. Which architect designed the secret room the prisoners are using to escape? Are there tunnels in the concrete deep in the marsh around the prison? Was that concrete really that expensive?  

Magical Geometry
Hexagons Pentagons, and Octagons all working together to shut in London’s troubled masses. It all smells of hidden magic. In the world of Victoriana there could be any number of strange aetheric effects in a scientific prison. Jeremy Bentham himself said the Panopticon is "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example" . If that does not suggest some arcane effect at work, I don’t know what does.
Is it possible Bentham’s original idea of a single jailor watching the prisoners unwatched was carried to fruition? Are the inmates of a particular wing more docile at certain times of the day? Is all the living misery inside the prison generating an insidious power?

Still More Portraits

Due to a family vacation, I’m taking a break from London’s Dungeons. Instead, I’m posting five new Victoriana Portraits. Beastmen have been neglected far too long. The lack of usable period animal illustrations, the required blending of two pictures, and the simple lack of a vertical neck make Beastmen the most challenging portraits to make. Here are two more beastmen, a German Halfing, and a tough old Ogre for use in your games. Larger versions of these portraits and all the other portraits can be found here.

London’s Dungeons- Prison Hulks

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer floats on the river Thames.

In the 1700s, the growing population in the English prisons needed a solution. Convicts were shipped to America, until the Revolutionary War in 1776 stopped the flow of prisoners, causing a crisis. Parliament passed a temporary measure to turn decommissioned warships and merchant vessels into floating jails. The use of these “prison hulks” would last for 82 years.
A ship of the line could already house hundreds of men, making the conversions relatively simple. The masts and rudders were removed, taking away the ability to steer the ship. Below decks, iron-barred cells filled every foot of space. Passageways and ladders leading to the decks above and below divide the cells down the middle of the hulk.
Although the hulks were originally a temporary holding place for prisoners awaiting deportation, the Act creating the prison hulks was continually renewed causing many prisoners to serve their entire sentences aboard the ships.

The conditions aboard a hulk were worse than any British jail on land. The use of hammocks efficiently stacked the prisoners during sleep, which allowed more men to be crowded into the cells. The prisoners slept chained by their wrists and ankles.
Daily life on a hulk started at five in the morning when the prisoners awoke. After a meager breakfast, one deck was washed by the prisoners. The decks were washed in a rotation, so each deck was relatively clean for a few days. At seven the work parties left the hulk in boats, after having their restraints checked. a day of hard labor done (10 hours during the summer, 7 in the winter), they returned to supper and schooling or chapel in the evenings, before the prisoners were locked in their cells to sleep.
The hulks a cost cutting measure and the food served to the convicts is proof. Boiled ox-cheeks, peas and moldy bread were the entirety of their diet, unless the captain of the hulk allowed the prisoners to grow a garden on land.

The 1776 Act finally expired in 1857, putting the last of the hulks out of use. This could be ignored in a Victoriana Campaign taking place after the expiration (where better to seclude magical criminals), or embraced. All those ships are either going to be torn apart or sold. An entire ship full of prison cells could be just what some villain needs to get his plan started, and at these prices you’d be crazy not to. Here are a couple ideas of the mysteries a hulk could conceal:  

The Hulks of London 
The first of the hulks moored in the Thames near Woolwich marshes. Work crews from the hulks dug canals and built walls at the Arsenal, and labored to check the erosion of the river banks by driving posts into the muddy shores. Any job needing strong backs and little skill could be done by a work gang.
 Could the captain of the hulk be using his prisoner’s expertise to do other less mundane work? Are the prisoners just repairing the hulk’s hull or are they making more militaristic alterations? Why do so many of the new prisoner’s have sailing backgrounds?  

Disease 
Disease spread quickly to the confined crowds of the hulks. The sick were not given much medical attention and were not quarantined beyond being imprisoned on a ship. Typhus, cholera, and dysentery swept through the prisoners. A mortality rate of 30 percent was not uncommon aboard a hulk. Are the prisoners aboard the Hulk dying of a strange undiagnosed disease or is something far more foul afoot? Is it something in the water?

A Little Wood Work
The alterations transforming a ship of the Royal Navy into a hulk could hide covert activity. Are the lower decks of the ship’s hold just more cell blocks, or do they house something more sinister? Why do members of the Royal Academy of Science visits so often at night? And what’s with all the screaming?