Traditions of Death- Covered Mirrors

The Victorians had a number of superstitions and rituals around the death of a loved one. In a world where necromancers can raise the dead, magnetists can talk to the departed, and magicians can see ghosts, these taboos and procedures are doubly interesting. Here is a ghoulish tradition followed by a macabre scenario seed.

Superstitions about mirrors are abundant. Commonly, a mirror is believed to be a reflection of a viewer’s soul (which is why vampires don’t have a reflection), so care must be taken with mirrors after a body’s soul is gone.
In the homes of mourning Victorian families, every mirror in the house was covered with crepe (a non- reflective fabric often used in mourning dress). The mirrors were covered for fear the departed’s soul would get trapped in them. It’s hard to say how many Victorian’s believed this superstition and how many were following a custom. With the growth of spiritualism, this superstition could have had many believing adherents.
More overtly sinister is the belief that the falling and breaking of a mirror with no cause foretells the death of someone in the house. The two may be connected.

Moaning Mirrors
Shank and Sons Undertakers is a well respected funeral parlor. J. Shank’s duties to the bereaved are performed in a dignified manner. His sons are clean and helpful. It’s surprising their services come at such low cost. They must make up the difference somewhere.
 There is one oddity to their funerals: Shank’s sons carry large mirrors into the home and mount them in wooden frames near the departed. J. Shank explains this away when asked. The mirrors encourage the introspection appropriate for mourning and help the bereaved find peace in the presence of their fellow mourners wherever they look.
The mirrors are always installed the day before the wake. Some have complained of a low pitched hum that seems to come from the mirror. Tapping on the mirror (when a Shank is not looking) makes the hum louder and more organic. Like a moan.

The Traditions of Death- Postmortem Portraits

The Victorians had a number of superstitions and rituals around the death of a loved one. In a world where necromancers can raise the dead, magnetists can talk to the departed, and magicians can see ghosts, these taboos and procedures are doubly interesting. Here is a ghoulish tradition followed by a macabre scenario seed.

The high mortality rate in Victorian cities and the proliferation of photography combined to make a new tradition of mourning: post-mortem photography. Pictures were taken of the body before burial. Often the body was posed with objects representing their profession or sitting with their surviving family gathered around them. Efforts were made to make the body appear alive by propping them up supported by relative, keeping their eyes open, or drawing pupils on their closed eyelids after developing the picture. The effectiveness of their efforts varied.
These photographs were cherished by families as they were often the only pictures of the departed ever taken. Once copies could be made from a negative, prints of the portraits were sent to relatives and friends as memorials to the departed.
Looking at this practice today it’s seems very creepy, but to the Victorians it was better than never seeing their loved one’s face again.  

The Souls in the Portrait
Sarah and Abraham Hill have lived with their uncle Simon ever since their mother and father died from a mysterious illness. Of all the keepsakes from their old life, the picture taken of their parents before the funeral is the most loved. Mother and Father were placed in a loveseat together. Abraham stands by his father and Sarah by her mother.
 Lately the surviving Hills are seeing strange changes in their cherished picture. Objects around the family disappear or are swapped with older decorations. The curtains behind the Hills look more like a theatrical backdrop. The flowers on their mother’s lap change species. Even the departed Hills look more alive than the photographer remembers.
Yesterday, the jar father gave Abraham to save his money in appeared in the picture and he found three shillings in the street.
Do these changes carry a message? Are the Hills looking after their children even in the afterlife? Does it have anything to do with their mysterious death?

The Traditions of Death- The Mourning Gloves

The Victorians had a number of superstitions and rituals around the death of a loved one. In a world where necromancers can raise the dead, magnetists can talk to the departed, and magicians can see ghosts, these taboos and procedures are doubly interesting. Here is a ghoulish tradition followed by a macabre scenario seed.

In the 1700’s, invitations to a funeral were sometimes accompanied with gifts such as rings, black scarves, or black gloves to be worn during the mourning period. The quality of the materials used in these gifts depended on the wealth of the bereaved. Rings could be made of silver and engraved with skulls or caskets. Gloves could be made of calf skin, satin, lace, or cotton. Sometimes only one glove was sent to lower the cost of the funeral.
The tradition of wearing black gloves to a funeral continued into the Victorian age, but only some of the longer lived subraces, such as gnomes or elves, might remember to send a gift to announce the death of a loved one.  

The Mourning Gloves
In life, James “Jack” Hollip was a crude, bellowing, blaggard of an ogre. His success in diamond brokering is due only to the raw aggression that helped him muscled into a full partnership with timid men, and the rumored strangulations in South Africa that brought him back to London with a bag full of uncut diamonds.
In death, he was just another body in Highgate cemetery. Relieved at his passing, his partners claimed ownership of the diamonds over the objection of his widow and relieved their spite by the petty revenge of leaving her penniless.
A few weeks later, two of Hollip’s former partners were found strangled to death in their beds. No clues have been found, aside from the fact that a black pair of gloves was found at the scene of both crimes. The gloves seem to be made out of the same material: white sheet dyed black. Doors and windows were locked on the inside at both tragedies. Mutterings of the similar, but over- looked death of a grave robber can be heard in the rookery.
The remaining partners are scared. One tried to pay off the Widow Hollip, but she laughed in his face and told him to dress warmly.

Announcement
Today’s post is shorter than usual because I am working on another larger project for the blog. I am writing out the adventure “A Man of His Word” as a full scenario to be posted here. I have learned a lot but it is time consuming and I can’t just write about role-playing games all the time, can I?

Don’t Worry, I know a Guy- Contact Expertise Dice Optional Rule

One of my favorite parts of character creation in Victoriana is creating contacts. Contacts fill out the PC’s connection to the rich Victorian world around them (You’re a respectable country squire, how do you know so many criminals?), but players new to the idea of contacts may be hesitant to use them.
A contact is an NPC the player characters know and trust who can help in course of adventuring. A contact could loan money or equipment, give the word on the street, or drive the getaway coach. Aside from their place in London’s class structure, there are no stats for contacts. Making full stats for contacts at character creation would bog it down horribly, but it would be nice to have some sort of “how helpful can this contact be” number.  

Contact Expertise Dice 

Aside from asking for rumors, begging for equipment, and enlisting their help, players can also ask for advice. The advice’s helpfulness is dependent on the Contact’s Expertise Dice.

When a player creates his contacts, the player has a pool of Contact Expertise Dice equal to their Presence attribute times two. The player assigns a number of dice to his contacts in a single area of Expertise that each contact has. This is not a skill, but a broad job or hobby description.

Example: Rene Abattoir (ogre harpist) is making her contacts. She has four Contact Expertise Dice and three contacts, Timothy Panhandle (halfing beggar), Alistair Grub (dwarven reporter), and Karl Hoffman (human composter). She decided to give three dice to Timothy Panhandle, two to Alistair Grub, and zero to Karl Hoffman.
Timothy Panhandle’s dice are assigned to Burglary, and Alistair Grub’s to Journalism.

When a PC visits a contact, they can consult the contact about an obstacle they except to encounter. If the Gamemaster thinks the contact’s Expertise is appropriate to the situation, the PC adds the contact Expertise Dice to a single skill roll when trying to overcome the specified obstacle. If the roll fails, the Expertise Dice are lost to any subsequent attempts.

Example: Rene needs to quietly break into the warehouse storing the sets for the opera to see if the actor’s death was an accident. The door to the warehouse is padlocked. Rene is not very good at lock picking, so she visits Timothy Panhandle for advice. Because Timothy has three Expertise dice in burglary, he tells Rene about a gap in the constable’s beat, and a tip for dealing with that kind of lock.

Later when Rene tries to pick the lock, she rolls her 1 Dexterity Die + 2 Lock Picking dice + Panhandle’s 3 Expertise Dice.

With 2 successes, Rene unlocks the door, and sneaks behind a backdrop painted to look like an Italian villa.

Contact Expertise Dice cannot be added to a skill roll if the PC's skill dice (not attribute, just skill) exceed the contact’s dice. The PC already knows all the tricks, and could potentially advise their contact.