Hades Hotel p2- The Tunnel Under the Thames

During the first day Brunel’s “Eighth Wonder of the World” opened to the masses, over fifty thousand amazed pedestrians paid the one penny toll to walk through the Thames Tunnel. Visitors first enter the octagonal rotundas  covering the descending shafts on both the Wapping and Rotherhithe shores. Landscapes depicting scenes from all four seasons of the year brighten the rotunda’s interior. Within the doorway, a brass turnstile and a toll keeper bar anyone from entering the tunnel without payment. After crossing a floor decorated in blue and white tiles, visitors reached the edge of a great circular chasm eighty feet deep and fifty feet in diameter. Two marble stairwells crisscross down the stucco walls. Paintings and statues at the landings, divert visitors during their long descent. Music from an organ echoes up the length of the shaft.

At the bottom, those entering or leaving the tunnel pass by entertainers, buskers and fortune-tellers assembled to take advantage of the crowd. Two grand arches cut into the side of the shaft lead into the tunnel, for the tunnel itself divides into two parallel stone-lined passages, each fifteen feet high and thirteen feet wide. Arched corridors, some large enough for a carriage to pass through, connect the passages through the ten-foot thick partitioning wall. These arches allow for ventilation and for pedestrians to turn around on crowded days. The river rushes as close as fifteen feet over the pedestrian’s heads as they cross the one-thousand three hundred feet to the egress on the opposite shore. Everywhere gaslights illuminate the underworld.

Stalls and small shops along the passages and the arches of the dividing wall leave little more than three feet of pathway for visitors in the busiest marketplaces. During the Thames Tunnel’s first years, no visitor ascended back above ground without toys, glassware, and souvenirs to commemorate their visit purchased from cheerful shop girls at the subterranean stalls. Unfortunately, the public’s enthusiasm for the tunnel waned. The Thames Tunnel Company never raised enough funds to convert the tunnel’s entrances into spiraling ramps suitable for vehicular traffic. Without regular tolls for passing coaches and shipping goods through the tunnel, the company lost all hope of recouping their costs. The Thames Tunnel soon gained the name “Hades Hotel”, both as a dolorous portal through the underworld and for the lost souls spending their lives in its depths.

By 1855, the stalls sell novelties only of interest to the tourist or rubbish only good to the desperate, the drunk, or the devious. Stripped of glamorous novelty, darkness resettled into the gloomy gaslight. The girls keeping the stalls enter the tunnel before daylight and often close shop after dark, leaving them pale anemic looking retches. Pedestrians glance up at the disconcerting moisture dripping from the ceiling, and noisome smells sift into the chilly air. Small restaurants refreshing visitors with cakes and wine occupy the largest corridors connecting the two passages. Puppet shows and street musicians attempt to brighten the damp passages with entertainment. To most Londoner’s a descent into the Hades Hotel is a necessary but unpleasant trek by day and to be avoided at night.

The Thames Tunnel never closes. A single penny buys transit underground any time of day or night all week. After sunset, London’s night goers seek a haven of privacy safe from constabulary patrols.  Thieves, prostitutes, pickpockets, and other scoundrels gather in the tunnel to ply their trade and to practice their vocations. Countless masses of the poor and sick pay their penny for a night’s sleep in shelter and relative safety.  

Next week, we’ll put all this fact together and make up some fiction. This colorful history invokes all sorts of adventurous ideas.

Hades Hotel p1- The Excavation of Mr. Brunel

Awhile back, I wrote a series of posts highlighting real locations suitable for a secret lair or dungeon crawl in the heart of Victorian London.  Here’s another terrific subterranean space ready for an adventure.

The curves of the River Thames slither through London cutting the metropolis in half. The river is an essential waterway for shipping goods into the heart of Southern England. Unfortunately in the early 1800s, transporting cargo the short distance between London’s southern shore to the river Thames' northern shore was a chaotic mess. Additional bridges would help move foot traffic but also add obstacles in the water, worsening nautical congestion in the world's busiest port. To several inventive dreamers, the solution was not to cross over the river, but beneath it.

In 1821, the French expatriate engineer, Marc Isambard Brunel, left a debtors-prison in Southwark London, after the intervention of his influential patrons. They convinced the English government to pay the inventor’s debts on the condition that he use his inventing genius for England and not the Russian court. Brunel focused his keen but eccentric mind on the problems of tunneling under the river Thames. Both Ralf Dodd’s previous attempt in 1798 and Robert Vazie’s in 1802 ended disastrously when the excavations burrowed into banks of quicksand. Brunel devised an excavation method which reinforced the tunnel walls while his patented “tunnel shield” (an immensely heavy scaffold) braced the forward diggings from collapse. In 1824, Brunel raised enough money to begin this monumental project by selling shares in his Thames Tunnel Company for £50 each. He chose a narrow point in the Thames between Rotherhithe in the south and Wapping in the north. Construction started on March 2, 1825.

His crew began by assembling a massive 50 ft wide iron ring and constructing a 40ft tall circular brick wall atop the ring near the shore in Rotherhithe. As diggers removed the soil beneath the 1,000-ton tower, its weight drove it into the ground, transforming the tower into a shaft wall. When the ring reached its designated depth of 75 ft in January, the real terrors began.

A worker fell to his death down the shaft that July. This tragedy opened a flood of disease, death, and delirium plaguing the laborers in the tunnel. Work was hard and slow. Thirty-six miners dug out the earth from behind the relative safety of the 80 ton tunneling shield as another team of bricklayers behind them lined the newly exposed excavations with 2 feet of brick and concrete.  Once they had excavated a uniform 4 ½ inches across the shield’s face they pushed the mighty scaffold forward with jacks and began again. Men worked in eight-hour shifts, often wading up to their knees in brown and black river water tainted by every possible pollutant of 19th century London. Natural gasses sifted up through the ground, fouling the air and explosively igniting near open flames. Temperatures under the river fluctuated horribly, swinging 30 degrees in an hour. A host of maladies ranging from permanent blindness to diarrhea to nervous collapse destroyed the miners or sent them to lunatic asylums. In 1828, a flood halted all work on the tunnel with 549 feet finished. Although Brunel stopped the flow by dropping bags of clay into the Thames over the leak, the Thames Tunnel Company was now broke.

After seven years of lobbying, the Thames Tunnel Company convinced the British government to loan them £246,000, enough to build a new and improved tunnel shield and to finally reach Wapping’s shore four years later. Laborer’s sunk a second shaft into the dirt of the north shore. Thirteen months later, the Thames Tunnel Company completed the Thames Tunnel.

The Thames Tunnel opened to the public on March 25, 1843.  Sightseers and Londoners alike walked down its 1,300 feet length for one penny a head toll and praised it as “The Eighth Wonder of the World”.  Brunel’s wonder earned him a knighthood from Queen Victoria, but soon  his glorious achievement decayed into the gloomy cesspool known as the Hades Hotel.

Next week, we’ll look at the sad decline of the Thames Tunnel in the 1850s and the strange life of its denizens.

Yet More Portraits

When you make up a new type of Beastfolk, you’re going to have to make a portrait to go with it. It’s hard to stop at just one, so here are a few new and a couple old but never posted portraits. The gallery now features over ninety portraits, all of which you can find here in the Blog's Portrait Gallery!

Beasts of England- Batfolk

The essential Victoriana supplement “Darwin’s Catalogue: Beastmen of Britain “lists a plethora of beast folk options available for player characters. However, it excludes two famous mammals: Bats and Whales. These atypical creatures could still work in the world of Victoriana. For now, cetacean categorization has to wait. Today we look at Batfolk!

Batfolk-( May use the Attributes of Agile Beast folk  or +2 Dexterity, -1 Presence, -1 Strength)

Batfolk are unique among beastmen both for their ability to fly and their malevolent appearance.

Although only a few batfolk actually possess wings, their natural head for heights makes all batfolk valuable additions to the crews of sailing ships and build sites. Even if a batfolk is born without wings their fingers still extend a few inches longer than a human’s.

Whether winged or long-fingered, batfolk posses sinister visages with their tall pointed ears, slim bodies, and sharp teeth. Neighbors often ostracize batfolk until they look past their dour exterior. While batfolk enjoy the company of others and the bustling activity of city life, their nocturnal nature restricts many to socialize solely with other night-dwelling denizens of London.

Batfolk may choose Animal Traits or Complications from the following list along with those from the Victoriana Core rulebook.

Nocturnal Senses

Your senses explore the night world in ways others cannot understand. Your sense of smell, sight, and echolocation overcome all penalties for darkness, and reduce black dice penalties for being blindfolded, or other visual impairments by three.

Flight

You can fly! Your hands end with five elongated fingers connected by sails of leathery skin giving you wings. Whilst air born, actions requiring the use of a single hand suffer three Black Dice. Performing any two-handed actions incurs no penalty but sends you plummeting ten feet towards the ground immediately or at the end of a combat round. You have a flying speed of 5 + Dexterity x 4 yards per round.

Spooky

Bats carry a stigma across many cultures around the world both good and bad. Europeans and Americans associate bats with the macabre while other cultures revere the bat as a bodiless soul or a good omen.  As a batfolk, you carry the weight of superstition wherever you go.  Your Presence tests suffer +2 black dice when interacting with strangers or the prejudiced.

Wings in the Way

While your wings propel you to the skies, they do not make great hands. Nor do they help you move along the ground. Any skill tests using the Dexterity attribute suffer one Black Dice unless you are flying. This complication may still be taken even if you do not have wings.

Making Friends and Losing Them- Privileged Reputation Dice

During my years of running Victoriana, I’ve noticed my players prefer to invest in raw dice-power stats like attributes or skills. If they do take some of the other character options, they gravitate towards the special rules of Talents and the material resources of Assets. Privileges get very little use. I have also seen that Reputation dice (which are rolled to see if people have heard anything about you) don’t very often get to pull the story in interesting directions. It takes a long time to accumulate enough dice through adventuring to cause offended gasps at the mention of your name or grateful glances toward you in the street. I say let’s point these problems at each other and make a house rule.

Some of the Privileges and Complications give Reputation Dice to a player character. If you are using my house rules for Complications, those Reputation Dice are gone, making the problem worse. So, I’ve gone through the Privileges in the 3^rd Edition Victoriana Core Rulebook and assigned each a Propriety or Notoriety Reputation Dice. When a Player Character gets the Privilege, they get the Reputation Dice attached to it. This represents their “public face” based on their social circles, uniforms, and titles, as opposed to Reputation Dice gained by their actions through play. If a Privilege already gives Reputation Dice, that text can be ignored. Those dice have been factored in the following list:

Privileges

Artificer’s License-Propriety 1

Barrister- License- Propriety 1

Blackguard- Notoriety 2

Ear of the Street- Notoriety 1

Engineering License- Propriety 1

Friend of the Library- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Gang Member- Notoriety 2

Hero- Propriety 1

Higher Station-Propriety 1

Knighthood-Propriety 2

Livery Company-Propriety 1

Local Hero-Propriety 2

Maleficium- Notoriety 2

Medical Practitioner’s License- Propriety 1

Military Commission- Propriety 1

Museum Trustee- Propriety 1

Noble Tinkerer- Propriety 1

Notary Public- Propriety 1

Peer- Propriety 3

Police Officer- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Political Legacy- Propriety 1

Private Club Membership- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Private Club Membership Elite- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Pub Regular- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Public Carriage License- Propriety 1

Scrap Yard Source- Notoriety 1

Second Family- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Social Anomaly- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Society Friends- Propriety 1

Street Informant- Notoriety 1

Street Informant- Peeler’s Pet-Notoriety 1

Thaumaturgical Degree- Propriety 1

Theatre Box- Propriety 1

Theatrical Patron- Notoriety 1

Warrant Card- Either Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1

Certain Privileges listed come with the option of Propriety 1 or Notoriety 1. When a Player Character takes the Privilege, they choose whether this is seen in a notorious or proper light in society’s eyes. If a Private Club has a reputation for being full of Libertines with shocking vices, taking the Privilege gives your character a Notoriety die. Similarly, if polite society knows the Private Club for its charity work and stable political connections, the Privilege gives a Propriety Die.

Privileges aligned with Propriety heavily outnumber those with Notoriety dice, which is understandable. Most Privileges were built to fit upper-class characters, reflecting societal connections handy during an adventure. Only a handful could be considered scandalous enough to warrant a Notoriety point.

Remember, Notoriety is not a bad thing. It just means you get along better with the shadier or less accepted people in the Empire. A stage actor connected with revolutionaries won’t be keen to open up to a respectable citizen with close ties to the police. Of course, the respectable citizen won’t be pleased with it either. For the Rules for Reputation Dice see pages 190-193 in the Victoriana 3^rd Edition Core Rulebook. For the Rules for Privileges see pages 119-122.

More Portraits At Long Last

It’s been a while since we saw some adventurous faces on this blog. As we are between series at the moment, it’s time to expand the Portrait Gallery! This time I picked a few women whose portrait’s I’ve wanted to use, but required some very fiddly adjusting, editing, and stretching. While the ladies’ illustrations required some care, the bearded man was a complete gentleman and just needed some light cleaning.

These and many other portraits suitable for Victoriana games can be found in this blog’s Portrait Gallery.

Victorian Vice- Touts and Tipsters

If a wager contains no risk it’s no longer gambling. The search for a “sure thing” in Horseracing grew into an industry in Victorian England. Horse grooms, self-professed experts, mathematicians, fortunetellers, breeders, and charlatans all lined their pockets informing gamblers which horses to back for a price. Attentive customers eager for the name of a winner surround touts and tipsters at every racetrack and betting parlor in England. Enterprising touts purchase space in racing periodicals to advertise their tip mailing lists. Gamblers generally pay between 6 pence to 1 shilling for a tip, although prices rise for the biggest races (such as the Derby). An annual subscription by mail cost about 2 shillings, however, scam artists run most tip-by-mail operations.

Unfortunately, very few racing tipsters and touts have any better idea of what horse will win than their customers. If their information turns out to be useful through sheer luck, their customers return. If the horse loses, the customer already paid and touts never give refunds for faulty insights. They rely on patter, jargon, accomplices pretending to be satisfied customers, and plausible-sounding sources of inside information. Muddying the water further even touts with genuine information rely on these theatrics to bring in the customers.

Most tipsters lure in customers with promises of being “in the swim”, armed with genuine inside information.

These touts seem like regular working men and women with sharp ears and eyes, often claiming a connection to racing. The source of their information may be a friend working as a groom in the racing stable, an overheard conversation in a barbershop between members of a criminal syndicate, or a few hours spent perched in a tree outside the track. Their little known horses boast incredible practice lap times far outpacing the favorite. These “certainties” come with much longer odds and much higher potential payouts.

Some educated tipsters claim to possess an infallible system for predicting winning horses. Whether by advanced math, numerology, keen knowledge of horse anatomy, or just letting their 5-year-old child pick a horse, their customers follow the method all the way to the bookmaker. Tipsters alleging secret methods often act worldly-wise, honest, generous, mathematically gifted, or grandfatherly. Some might even assert their system earns thousands of pounds over the course of a racing season. The tipster merely charges a token fee to keep out the riffraff.

A few tipsters even profess to possess occult powers. They use their incredible gifts to pluck the names of winning horses out of the air. Such “Turf Prophets” appeal to superstitious gamblers with chants, nonsensical rituals, and esoteric auguries. They dress in exotic costumes or ritual robes. Many are foreign or try to appear foreign. Fortunetelling tricks, cold reading, and the occasional correct prediction keep the fakes employed, while genuine seers must be desperate for money to degrade their magical abilities.

Finally, the most genuine of tipsters are the lower-class men and women loitering around the track selling race cards. Once purchased, race cards furnish their owners with the horse’s names, weights, and coloration, along with key facts about their riders and saddlery. These key statistics arm their customers to make educated guesses for their wagers. Many card sellers leave their jobs as newspaper peddlers in the streets of London for a racing weekend. At 6 pence a card, they can easily make up to 10 shillings a weekend. Some card sellers earn extra money by working as a bookmaker. Others offer other more illicit products for sale.