London’s Dungeons- The Catacombs of West Norwood Cemetery

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer lies right under our feet.

The high population of London inevitably led to many corpses in need of burying, but few available graves. The cemeteries were full and to over fill them would be insanitary. Parliament accepted proposals banning burials inside the city of London and to build cemeteries outside town. These cemeteries became known as the “Magnificent Seven”.
Workmen cleared many trees of Westnorwood in Lambeth to clear land for a graveyard. Iron fences and gates surround the enclosed cemetery, discouraging resurrection men and grave robbers. Architect William Tite designed the mausoleums, memorials, and landscaping in the new Gothic style. The Cemetery opened in 1837.

In the Southeast Corner of Westnorwood Cemetery sits a small Episcopal church. A stone stairwell behind the church and another inside wind underground to a brick lined passage full of large alcoves: the central hallway of the cemeteries’ catacombs. Eights smaller passages lead out from the central hallway ending with iron grate covered air vents. Each hall is lined with fourteen alcoves, some full of shelves. The shelves hold the many coffins housed in the catacombs.
Space in the catacombs could be bought by shelf space, by shelf or by alcove. Only the rich could afford an entire shelf, and only the very rich would be able to buy an entire alcove (along with a set of iron fencing to protect the collected departed). If every shelf were filled, the catacombs would hold more than 3,000 coffins.
In 1839, Bramah and Robinson designed and installed a coffin lift (or catafalque) to help bring the departed to their final resting place. The lift is powered by two hydraulic pumps. Each stroke of the pump lifts the elevator one inch, to a maximum height of 15 feet through a covered hole in the chapel floor.

I don’t need to tell you what to do with a creepy Gothic catacomb full of recently buried bodies in your Victoriana campaign. It’s a fantastic location with atmosphere and a great layout for a fight. Here are some ideas that could affect the dungeon’s use:  

The Great North Wood
Before the town of West Norword, the area was known as the “Great North Wood”. Certain very old trees were left alone when the cemetery was built. Their roots may entangle something secret in the ground or they could have been left alone at the orders of someone higher up.
 Are the catacombs an access point for an ancient power of nature, or are the trees protecting something?  

Lead Lined Coffins
By law all burials not actually interred in the ground must be lined with lead for the sake of public health. In the damp, musty catacombs some of the older coffins have rotted, exposing the protective metal casing. Lead has a history of use in defensive magic. Does the lead protect the outside from what’s inside, or what’s inside from the outside?  

Hidden Marvels
The coffin lift is an interesting, if mundane, piece of engineering. Did Bramah and Robinson install more fantastic clockwork marvels? Does the elevator go down below the catacombs, through the solid seeming flagstone floor?  

Little Storage Rooms 
Bodies in the catacombs are quite secure from grave robbers. The outside fence, the locked church, the catacomb entrance, and the locked gate of the full alcoves all work to keep grabbing hands out. It’s not a bad place to hide a human sized secret, or a bunch of smaller secrets in a lead lined coffin.

London’s Dungeons- Chislehurst Caves

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer lies right under our feet.
In the London borough of Bromley, twenty-two miles of tunnels crisscross the ground under the town of Chislehurst. The long interconnecting passages are actually three old mines, dug by miners searching for veins of chalk and flint. The cave’s depths range from 40 feet below the ground (near the entrance of what is known as the “Saxon” area) to 150 feet (in the deepest of the “Roman” area).

Although dubious legends of Druids and Romans using the mine date its start around 400 AD, a record from the 1200s is the first reference to the mine. After The Great Fire of London in 1666, new fireproof buildings needed lots of chalk for their mortar. The demand for chalk kept the mine lucrative and busy. In the 1830’s mining stopped and lime kilns were installed to make quicklime. Thirty years later, mushroom growers took over and turned the caves into a subterranean farm.

Interesting uses of the caves continues to this day (air raid shelter during the Blitz, a rock concert venue in the 60’s, LARPs), but any period of use could have been cover for an evil activity ready to be stuck in a Victoriana game.
The Chislehurst Caves are a ready made dungeon for an evil plot, a forgotten evil, or a monster’s lair. If you want an old school dungeon crawl to break up days of solving London society’s ills, this mine is a gold mine.
Here is some of the crazier lore of the Chislehurst Caves that could add texture to a dungeon crawl:

Druids 
In 1903, an archeologist, named William Nichols, claimed Chislehurst Caves was used by the Druids as a temple. Supposedly, there is a stone alter with the outline of a child imprinted on it. The alter was used for blood sacrifices in their ceremonies. Most historians dismiss Nichol’s claims (and this description of Druidism in general), but what’s better than an ancient temple so close to London?
The presence of a past druidic ceremony could have catastrophic effects on mushrooms grown there. Or was it intentional? 

Romans 
Nichols also believed the deepest shafts and wells of the mines were dug by Roman slaves. The Romans would have used the chalk in the mine to build roads and walls.
 Were all the lime kilns installed in 1830s real or was one a secret passage to a lower unexplored part of the tunnels? What did the Romans leave behind or what were they looking for?  

Ghosts 
Strange noises, footsteps, and shrieks have been heard deep in the caves. Most of these noises may be caused by the echoes and amplifications of the irregular cave walls, but it doesn’t have to be. Even if the spirits of druidic sacrifice or Roman slaves don’t wander the tunnels, cave-ins claimed the lives of many miners. Their ghosts may still haunt the passages that caused their deaths.

In the “Roman” section there is a reportedly haunted chamber, where a woman was killed in the early 1800s. She was pushed into pool of water and drowned. Supposedly, that chamber is the only place in the caves with no echoes following every sound.  

Special Rule- Echoes 
Down in the Chislehurst caves, sounds echo for miles and can last 30 seconds or more. This effect makes stealthy approaches unlikely, but it also makes searching by sound more difficult.
Any Hide and Sneak rolls while in the Chislehurst tunnels suffer a 3 black dice penalty. Attempts to find hidden persons using their echoes have a 5 black die penalty.

50th Post! – Self Congratulations and a Celebratory Scenario

We made it everyone! This is the 50^th post of Skullduggery in the Smoke! It’s been fantastic writing for this blog. I am very pleased with the number of views each week. Thanks so much to everyone who has looked, is looking, or is going to have looked-ing in the future at this blog.

In that same celebratory nature, I have added a new page to the blog for Victoriana Scenarios. On this page, you will find a scenario called “A Man of His Word”. It was the first adventure I ran for Victoriana and now you can read it and run it too. Session reports of my run through can be found here. 

A Man of His Word is designed for new adventurers needing to get their hands dirty in the criminal underworld of London. Most of the characters in the adventure can be used to introduce later criminal plot hooks (provided they survive contact with the players). 

I plan to write more adventures in the future, but in the meantime if you have any questions, comments, or criticisms I’d be happy hear them in the page’s comments section. I learned a lot writing it, but there is always room to improve.

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?