I know I’ve got to talk about The Dracula Dossier, but I’m not sure what I can tell you. What’s the point of giving you a sneak peek when you can back the Kickstarter and see the whole Director’s Handbook, all 280+ pages of it, just like that? I could tell you where to click to hear or read me and Gar talk about our beautiful monster that drains our time like … like … like some sort of supernatural draining entity, probably with a noble title, I wonder what that would be. But the Update I linked to already did that. As does this one.

No, this time I think I’ll talk about a road not taken, about something I’ve deliberately stopped myself from putting into The Dracula Dossier. So far.

It turns out that The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the Hammer not-particularly-classic film from 1974, is in the public domain. In other words, I have at my disposal a story in which an MI6 agent named Hanson uncovers a Satanic cult in Britain led by a mysterious Chinese femme fatale, Chin Yang. It includes: an MP and government Minister, John Porter; a peer, Lord Carradine; General Sir Arthur Freeborne; and Julian Keeley, a prominent bacteriologist, who develops a super-plague at the behest of “D.D. Denham,” who is (of course) Count Dracula in disguise. We’ve got yet another MI6 agent (Edom, obviously), named Peter Torrance, and a possible Duke of Edom in Colonel Matthews, who deliberately keeps the case out of the main MI6 view. We’ve also got two superb Legacies: Lorrimer van Helsing and his granddaughter Jessica. (And maybe a third, if “Inspector Murray of the Yard” is descended from Mina.) We could have pictures of the fetching Joanna Lumley in our book and none could say us nay!

Except for two things. First, I’ll bet someone thinks they could say us nay. The laws of image rights and IP in general are murky enough without tying multi-national jurisdiction into it the way a book published in Britain and printed in America would wind up doing. And second, it sort of monkeys with our Operation Edom backstory enough that I couldn’t have slid it in seamlessly. The closest Romanian earthquake is November 1973 which could work except that The Satanic Rites of Dracula is a sequel to Dracula A.D. 1972 which aside from not being in the public domain (and there goes Dracula’s hip teen-appeal sidekick, Johnny Alucard, dammit) also takes place (as you might expect) in 1972. Now with enough work, you can make it fit: there are earthquakes in 1972 (in Yorkshire) and 1974 (in Wales) that can be called to service — Dracula’s in Britain, after all! — and you can move the dates around a bit (or back to a 1970 earthquake in Cumbria) and ascribe them to Hammer Films’ fudging of the actual Edom reports, which they found after some doubtless drug-fueled Soho orgy. (I am morally certain that if I had the time to do the research I could one-degree-of-separation personnel from Hammer Films and the British security state of the 1970s.) And when Edom put the clamps on in response to the leak, that’s what drove Hammer out of business in 1979. Very satisfying, all bows tied off.

But even that pales next to the other temptation that I have — so far! — resisted. Image rights would definitely trip us up here, especially in Britain which is not well known for easygoing libel laws either. (And it is a little over the top, and kind of a lot meta.) But in a blog post, I can speculate about what I might have done. And if you do it in the privacy of your own game, who’s to know? Anyhow, gather close. Edom runs its own unit within the SOE in 1940, sending a team including a commando named “Van Sloan” into Romania to re-awaken Dracula, the only survivor of that doomed mission. You know this by now. But guess what other hero was in the SOE, as it happens? Sir Christopher Lee, that’s who.

Now Lee officially joined the SOE in 1941 after washing out of RAF flight school in conveniently distant and hard-to-check South Africa. But we don’t officially know what Sir Christopher Lee was doing between leaving Finland in 1939 (!) and going into the RAF in 1941. A patriot, son of a soldier, and total badass like Christopher Lee wouldn’t just sit around, would he? No. He’d join a secret unit within a secret unit, he’d parachute into Romania to save it from the Nazis, and he’d be the only survivor of that operation, emerging with an almost supernatural understanding of … Count Dracula. And he’d stay in touch, a helpful tip here, a nod there, as he kept up the perfect cover of movie star — jet-setting around the world, lots of unaccountable free time and money, hob-nobbing with the rich and famous, not like a spy (or his fellow SOE comrade Ian Fleming) at all. There’d be no reason to suspect that Christopher Lee was once “Van Sloan,” the Man Who Lived — and less than no reason to suspect him of being “D” … the enigmatic head of Operation Edom to this very day.

Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.

Double Tap introduced the concept of video-game-style Achievements into Night’s Black Agents (Will Plant’s original is here, but Double Tap‘s list is bigger, better and has more bonuses for blowing things up.) As the Dracula Dossier consumes my every waking hour, and I start to see connections to the Mas… to Dracula everywhere, here’s a list of custom achievements for the upcoming campaign. As per the rules in Double Tap, the first player to qualify for an achievement gets a 3-point General Ability refresh on the spot.

I Am Dazzle, Dazzle With So Much Light: Read the entire Unredacted Dracula and all the annotations, and pick your next avenue of investigation from it.

Blood of my Blood: Identify a Legacy.

The Fighting Hellfish: Have a shootout in a retirement home.

Right At The Top Of The Circus: Infiltrate the SIS headquarters.

Epistolary Format: Communicate with another player character by letter, email or voicemail.

Victorian Technothriller: Use a photographic-plate camera or wax-cylinder phonograph to record vital information.

Done The Reading: Force an NPC to tell them what they know by leveraging information gleaned from the annotations.

Dr. Van Helsing, I presume: Find documents left by the original hunters.

Native Soil: Locate Dracula’s castle successfully (not as easy as it sounds…)

London’s Burning: Gain 6 or more Heat in a single session in London.

The Boxmen: Destroy one of Dracula’s boxes of earth.

Those You Love Are Mine: Rescue a contact or Solace from Dracula’s evil embrace.

Unclean, Unclean: Get bitten by Dracula or one of his Brides.

Was That Your Best Shot? Survive level 6 of the Edom Vampyramid.

Consequence To Make The Brave Shudder: Survive Level 6 of Dracula’s Vampyramid

It Was Worth It For This To Die! Die fighting Dracula himself.

For The Dead Travel Fast: Complete the campaign in six sessions or less.

The Longest Night: Start playing the Dracula Dossier. Find any of the connections to the Zalozhniy Quartet, follow that connection, play through the four adventures of the Quartet, foil the conspiracy there, then finally complete the Dracula Dossier campaign.

We’ve got a few more achievements, but they’re for Directors’ eyes only. Enter these semi-spoilers freely and of your own will.

In The Dracula Dossier, one of my favorite campaign frames — inserted at Simon’s insistence, and written mostly by Gareth — is “Unto the Fourth Generation,” in which you play the whole saga of Operation Edom from 1894 to 1940 to 1977 to now. That’s right, you begin as the original 1894 heroic band — the cast of Dracula. 

It looks like Mina has found some sort of dossier.

Sadly, space considerations prevent us from inserting full-on character sheets for the original 1894 band into the Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook. (It’s a quarter of a million words long, people.) But perhaps we’ll mock up some lovely Victorian Night’s Black Agents character sheets and put the following pre-gen stats into them as a freebie PDF for backers and buyers. Until then, here are the numbers raw, as Van Helsing might say.

N.B: These builds use the Victorian agent builds from Double Tap. They also feature 20 Investigative points per character (assuming a party of 5 or more agents) and 60 General build points per character (assuming mostly civilians, not yet trained badass vampire hunters). For the same reason, these pre-gens don’t receive free points in Streetwise, Tradecraft, Network, or Cover. They show “float points,” indicating build points unassigned at the start: assign those as you need them in play. Each character gets a dramatic 3 rating in their individual specialty; some character abilities are a tiny stretch (Mina’s skill at shorthand probably wouldn’t really convey Cryptography ability) in order to make sure all the abilities are covered.

Jonathan Harker, Solicitor and Free-Climber

Human Terrain 1, Languages 1 (German, Latin), Law 3, Research 1, Bullshit Detector 1, Bureaucracy 1, Middle Class 2, Interrogation 1, Negotiation 1, Reassurance 1, Notice 1, Outdoor Survival 2 (4 Investigative float points)

Athletics 8, Conceal 4, Driving 1, Health 6, Infiltration 2, Network 7, Riding 1, Sense Trouble 5, Stability 6, Weapons 5 (23 General float points)

Wilhelmina Murray, Instinctive Analyst with a Tasty Neck

Accounting 1, Criminology 1, Languages 1 (French), Research 2, Below Stairs 1, Bullshit Detector 2, Bureaucracy 1, Cryptography 1, Flattery 1, High Society 1, Middle Class 1, Reassurance 3, Notice 1, Traffic Analysis 2 (2 Investigative float points)

Athletics 5, Health 7, Medic 2, Network 8, Preparedness 6, Sense Trouble 8, Shrink 5, Stability 8, Surveillance 3 (16 General float points)

Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Polymathic Vampire Slayer

Art History 1, Criminology 1, Diagnosis 2, Human Terrain 1, Languages 3 (English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin), Law 1, Occult Studies 1, Research 1, Vampirology 3, Bullshit Detector 1, Middle Class 1, Astronomy 1, Forensic Pathology 1, Geology 1, Outdoor Survival 1, Pharmacy 1 (0 Investigative float points)

Athletics 4, Driving 1, Health 4, Hypnosis 8, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Medic 8, Network 10, Preparedness 6, Sense Trouble 6, Shrink 4, Stability 4, Weapons 4 (3 General float points)

Dr. Jack Seward, Mad Doctor and Fifth Wheel

Accounting 1, Criminology 1, Diagnosis 3, Languages 1 (Latin), Research 1, Bullshit Detector 2, Bureaucracy 1, Flirting 0, Middle Class 1, Reassurance 1, Working Class 1, Chemistry 1, Forensic Pathology 2, Outdoor Survival 1, Pharmacy 1, Urban Survival 1 (2 Investigative float points)

Athletics 6, Driving 1, Hand-to-Hand 5, Health 8, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 3, Medic 8, Network 5, Shrink 10, Stability 5, Weapons 4 (10 General float points)

The Hon. Arthur Holmwood, Wealthy Aristocrat and Steam-Engine Enthusiast

Architecture 1, Art History 1, History 1, Human Terrain 1, Languages 2 (French, Greek, Latin), Military Science 1, Cop Talk 1, Flattery 1, Flirting 2, High Society 3, Intimidation 2, Reassurance 1, Notice 1, Outdoor Survival 2 (1 Investigative float point)

Athletics 5, Driving 2, Gambling 3, Hand-to-Hand 5, Health 5, Infiltration 3, Mechanics 3, Network 9, Piloting 2, Preparedness 4, Riding 4, Sense Trouble 4, Shooting 6, Stability 5, Surveillance 3, Weapons 5 (0 General float points)

Quincey Morris, Texan Adventurer Who Brings Both a Gun and a Knife to a Knife-Fight

Human Terrain 1, Languages 1 (Spanish), Military Science 2, Bullshit Detector 1, Cop Talk 1, Flattery 1, Flirting 1, High Society 1, Intimidation 1, Middle Class 2, Reassurance 1, Tradecraft 1, Geology 1, Notice 2, Outdoor Survival 3 (1 Investigative float point)

Athletics 8, Driving 2, Explosive Devices 2, Gambling 2, Hand-to-Hand 4, Health 6, Infiltration 3, Mechanics 3, Medic 2, Preparedness 4, Riding 5, Sense Trouble 4, Shooting 8, Stability 5, Surveillance 4, Weapons 6 (0 General float points)

Kate Reed, Girl Reporter Not Appearing in this Novel

Accounting 1, Art History 1, Human Terrain 1, Languages 1 (French), Research 3, Bullshit Detector 3, Flattery 1, Flirting 1, High Society 1, Interrogation 1, Middle Class 1, Notice 2, Telegraphy 1, Urban Survival 1 (2 Investigative float points)

Athletics 5, Conceal 3, Cover 4, Disguise 4, Driving 2, Health 6, Infiltration 3, Network 7, Preparedness 4, Riding 2, Sense Trouble 6, Stability 7, Surveillance 8 (9 General float points)

Inspector George Cotford, Deleted Detective of Scotland Yard

Criminology 2, Human Terrain 1, Law 1, Bullshit Detector 2, Cop Talk 3, Interrogation 3, Intimidation 2, Middle Class 1, Streetwise 2, Working Class 1, Notice 2, Urban Survival 1 (0 Investigative float points)

Athletics 6, Conceal 4, Driving 2, Hand-to-Hand 4, Health 7, Preparedness 4, Sense Trouble 8, Shooting 4, Stability 8, Surveillance 6, Weapons 6 (9 General float points)

Francis Aytown, Sensitive Artist Airbrushed Out of the Picture

Archaeology 1, Art History 3, Languages 2 (French, German, Italian), Bullshit Detector 1, Flattery 1, High Society 1, Middle Class 1, Negotiation 1, Reassurance 1, Streetwise 1, Working Class 1, Chemistry 1, Forgery 2, Photography 2 (2 Investigative float points)

Art (Painting) 8, Athletics 5, Conceal 5, Disguise 6, Explosive Devices 2, Filch 2, Health 5, Mechanics 4, Network 5, Sense Trouble 8, Stability 5 (12 General float points)

In Bram Stoker’s original Notes for Dracula, we find the following cryptic line:

Lawyer – (Sortes Virgilianae) conveyance of body

Stoker originally thought perhaps the “lawyer” character Peter Hawkins, mostly written out of the book, would perform the sortes Virgilianae, literally the “Virgilian lots,” to find out how his new client would work out. Both pagan Romans (who thought poets divinely inspired) and medieval and early modern Christians (who found a prophecy of Jesus in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue) considered Virgil a prophet. The sortes Virgilianae thus refers to a form of bibliomancy in which the querent randomly opens a copy of Virgil’s Aeneid (or sometimes the complete works of Virgil) to receive prophetic guidance on some venture.

Sortes Virgilianae Virgilianae *INCEPTION sound*

The “conveyance of body” seems like Stoker’s legalistic joke on the dual meaning of “conveyance”: both transportation and transfer of property rights. Anyhow, the phrase points us at Book VI; line 530 of the Aeneid (Dryden’s translation):

“My boat conveys no living bodies o’er”

Which pretty neatly prefigures the doomed Demeter’s voyage from Whitby, which is why I put it right back in Dracula Unredacted.

Later on in the Notes, Stoker suggests maybe Harker performs sortes Virgilianae in Dracula’s library, or discovers that Dracula has been using this medieval magic system, or perhaps Seward does it while feeling blue and neurotic. Eventually Stoker tossed the whole idea. But you don’t have to!

The Bibliomancy Option

Either in your Dracula Dossier game or in a Bookhounds of London campaign it can be creepy fun to introduce a bibliomantic element. The trick, of course, is to pre-load the prophecy. Go to one of the many searchable Aeneids on the Internet and search for the thing you want to show up in the next session.

Gutenberg has the whole poem on one page, and you can search for word fragments (searching on “blood” finds “bloody”); Bartleby has line numbers if you value such things or want to add a numbers-code feeling, but the poem pages are broken up by books so you can use only whole-word searches from the main page.

Or genuinely randomize it: Roll a d12 to select the Book and then a d2000 (d20, d100) to pick the Line (count a 20 result on the d20 as 0). In Dryden’s translation, no Book is longer than 1400 lines, so prepare to re-roll that first die a lot. If you’re more digitally minded, John Clayton’s Two random lines from Virgil does just that, but does not yet support a search.

Then, when the characters decide to sort out a sortilege, you can spring the right creepy line on them. Or, you can read the whole poem looking for naturally awesome couplets like this (Book II; lines 212-213):

“Reveal the secrets of the guilty state,
And justly punish whom I justly hate!”

And then come up with a neat scene that tag can retrospectively be seen to have predicted. Characters that bring about or otherwise invoke that prophecy can claim an Achievement-style 3-point refresh, if you’re feeling generous.

The following perhaps-magic item can appear in either sort of campaign, but it’s written up for the Dracula Dossier.

Hawkins’ Aeneid

Appearance: An copy of Virgil’s Aeneid, in Latin and Dryden’s English translation, on facing pages, with numbered lines. Octavo, bound in pale yellow buckram, published by “Faelix Press, London, 1864.” It gives every appearance of heavy use; many pages are marked with pinpricks or brownish ink checks. It is autographed on the frontispiece, “From C. to ‘Mr. P.H., the onlie begetter.’”

Supposed History: This was the copy of the Aeneid used by Peter Hawkins to cast the sortes Virgilianae during the 1894 operation. Art History suggests the inscription is a literary joke, after the dedication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets to “Mr. W.H., the onlie begetter.” The inscription implies that “P.H.” created Edom, and hints that his real initials are W.H. “C.” might be “Cyprian” Bridge, Director of Naval Intelligence, or the not yet officially on the clandestine books Captain Mansfield Smith-Cumming, or someone else entirely.

Major Item: The book allows the accurate casting of sortes Virgilianae, with a proper knife (the Jeweled Dagger (p. XX) or something from the Knife Set (p. XX) perhaps). Riffling through the book and striking a page at random reveals a line or two of Virgil that provide prophetic insight or warning into (usually) the next session’s events. (This lets the Director think a little about how best to work the prophecy in.) During that session, each forewarned agent gains 1 pool point that can be assigned retroactively to either Sense Trouble or Preparedness.

Minor Item: This is indeed Hawkins’ desk copy of Virgil, but it only provides possible leads to Hawkins’ identity or that of his mysterious supervisors in the murky prehistory of British intelligence. Whether either clue points to the current “D” or anywhere else in Edom is up to the Director.

Fraudulent: It’s an authentic 1864 edition of Virgil, but has no connection to Hawkins or to Edom.

Connections: Could turn up in the library at Ring (p. XX) or the Korea Club (p. XX), in the Exeter house (p. XX), or if meant as a clue to the real “Hawkins,” on a dead GMC, with his finger pointing to lines 870-871 of Book II:

“Make haste to save the poor remaining crew,
And give this useless corpse a long adieu.”

“I think that Varna is not familiar to any of us …”

— Van Helsing

In my defense, not a lot of stuff happens in Varna. I mean, in the novel. Lots of stuff happens in Varna, including a disastrous Crusade in 1444 that killed the King of Poland and nearly killed Vlad Tepes’ brother Mircea.

But in the novel, Dracula ships his coffins to London via Herr Leutner of Varna, and then fakes out the hunters by booking a ship for Varna but going on to Galatz in Romania. Lord Godalming and co. arrive in Varna via the Orient Express, and stay at the Odessus Hotel, named after the original Greek settlement on the site. Although the hunters have identified another of Dracula’s agents in the city, a broker named Ristics, they leave him and Varna behind.

Which is what I did when I mapped out the Director’s Handbook for the Dracula Dossier. Although we put in Herr Leutner, we skipped Varna itself. I blame Dracula, master of the bait-and-switch-Black-Sea-ports. Here, in another of our continuing (and continuing) series “Things We Left Out of The Director’s Handbook for The Dracula Dossier,” is a Quick and Dirty look at Varna, the Summer Capital of Bulgaria.

Varna

Varna is Bulgaria’s third-largest city. Its Black Sea beaches and hot springs have made it a resort town since the 7th century BCE, and tourism keeps it one of the most prosperous cities in Eastern Europe. It sits below 350m terraces, at the mouth of Lake Varna, still a center of industry, shipbuilding, and chemical works. The 2 km long Asparuhov Bridge (a 46 m high suicide magnet) connects the rest of Varna with the Asparuhovo borough on the south side of the Lake.

Population

365,000 (about the size of Tampa), swells to 600,000 during summer vacation season (much like Tampa).

Conflict

Varna’s relative prosperity tends to mute its social conflicts; even the 2013 anti-austerity riots across Bulgaria remained peaceful protests in Varna. One major concern is Varna’s increasing population of undocumented foreigners, initially mostly Turks but recently Ukrainian refugees from the war. There are possibly as many as 300,000 such in the city (which would put the city’s size in summer at 900,000). About 1% of Varna’s population are Roma, almost entirely living in three impoverished ghettos (Maksuda, Rozova Dolina, and Chengene Kula).

A vigilante group of former Bulgarian marines, the Varna Seals, expelled foreign mafias in 2007-2009; some suggest this is merely to clear the lucrative tourist-and-waterfront ground for the Mutri, the Bulgarian mafia. Varna is a major transshipment point for traffickers in slaves and drugs, fueling a red-light district and party zone in resorts all along the Black Sea coast.

Backdrops

Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship: Towering 110 m above the northwestern part of the city, this 11,000-tonne brutalist concrete monstrosity resembles an immense extended wing, 11-meter high bas-reliefs of Red Army soldiers facing gigantic Bulgarian maidens across a wide 305-step staircase up the side of Turna Tepe. Abandoned since the fall of Communism, it remains a haunt of graffiti artists and urban explorers drawn by the rumors of a nuclear bunker deep within the hill.

Sea Garden: The oldest and largest landscaped park in Varna, begun in 1862 and expanded ever since. It currently hosts not just gardens, but fountains, greenhouses, a grove of trees planted by cosmonauts, the Varna Zoo, Varna Aquarium (including a dolphinarium), the Varna Naval Museum, a water park and amusement park, and casinos, promenades, nightclubs, and boardwalk attractions.

Varna Archaeological Museum: Just southeast of the city center in a Neo-Renaissance building, the Varna Archaeological Museum (est. 1888) holds exhibits from all periods of Bulgarian history: ancient Thracian weapons, Byzantine jewelry, and 19th century icons. Its pride and joy is the collection of pectorals, diadems, beads, and rings of the “Gold of Varna” excavated in 1972-1973 from the Varna Necropolis 4 km west of the city, and dated to ca. 4500 BCE.

Three Hooks

• In March 2015, Dr. Valeri Yotov of the Varna Archaeological Museum excavated a “giant skeleton” buried under the Roman fortress wall of Odessus, dating to the late 4th or early 5th century CE. This ongoing excavation began near the St. Nikolay Church when workers rehabilitating the sewer system uncovered an ancient Greek pot (5th century BCE). The dig along the Odessus wall expanded into the Varna Hole, a pit dug in 1984 for the excavation of a department store but abandoned in 1989, and now used for parking.
• In 1992, a group of karate enthusiasts from the elite “Tihina” Division of the Bulgarian marines founded the TIM Group, beginning as a “security company” doing debt recovery for Bulgarian banks, and rapidly expanding into (according to the US State Department) smuggling, auto theft, prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. Since then, TIM has expanded into a maze of secretive holding companies controlling grain, airlines, fishing, oil refineries, and (according to many) Varna’s mayor and politics.
• At the western end of Lake Varna, the industrial city of Devnya is home to a tradition of vampire slayers recorded in 1888 by the Czech historian and diplomat Constantin Jirecek. These vampirdzhiya, or dzhadzhiya (who were dhampirs and often valkodlatsi or werewolves as well), carried icons through graveyards, sheepfolds, and other suspicious locations, waiting for the image to tremble. Then, they would either dig up the vampire (if material) and stake it with hawthorn and burn it, or (if in spirit form) seal it into a bottle which could be burned at leisure.

Thirteen – each has a number. Each asked to tell something strange – order of numbers makes the story complete – at the end the Count comes in.

            — Bram Stoker, Notes for Dracula

For a change, this isn’t something we left out of the Dracula Dossier. No, instead it’s something you can put into the Dracula Dossier – 13 Icons, very much like the 13 Icons in that other excellent game. Refresh your memory of how we insert Icons and Relationship rolls into Night’s Black Agents, if you care to.

Rules

No agent can have (or should want) more than 1 Relationship point with Dracula. Defending a Positive relationship with Dracula is left as an exercise for the player and Director, but keep in mind that being loved by (or as he thinks of it, “property of”) Dracula is, if anything, perhaps even more dangerous than being hated by him.

Some of the Icons have possible factions: e.g., individual Dukes of Edom, or agencies of the Romanian government. When you take a Relationship with such an Icon, pick a faction if you wish. If that faction has an enemy within the Icon (the SRI and the SIE, for example) a Relationship Roll of 5 means your faction’s enemy shows up in the story: to do you dirt (but not actually whack you), try to get you to switch sides, get intel on its opponent, etc. Your relationship with your faction’s enemy is always Conflicted. However, balancing this potential irritation, your faction values your support more because it’s challenged more often: you can refresh 1 Relationship point in an Icon with a faction once per session.

Most large bureaucracies have plentiful factions, so feel free to introduce them where I haven’t: MI5, like the CIA, doubtless has its own bureaucratic siege warfare. Or even sub-factionalize the factions I do provide: the Vatican has rival cardinals, wayward bishops, and weird medieval bureaucracies that somehow no one can quite control.

Factions also make great nodes for a Conspyramid. Just saying.

All of the Icons are Ambiguous or Villainous, with the exception of Dracula (who is only Villainous) and the Slayer (who is Heroic or Ambiguous). In some campaigns (especially Stakes mode games) ECHELON, Five, The Circus, The Cross, The Company, or Der Reichsadler might also be Heroic.

A given Director might switch these around to suit her specific version of the Dracula Dossier, or switch her version of the Dracula Dossier around to emphasize the Icons her players pick as Relationships. Feel free, in other words, to swap in Icons like Queen Tera, Lilith, the Red Horse (the Turks), or any other key players in your game.

Edom

This is the original vampire project, nestled within MI6. You were marked for recruitment, or left under a cloud, or learned too much, or helped too little.

Factions: Individual Dukes, Dr. Drawes

The Bride

Like Quincey Morris in Munich, a Bride has gotten a special taste for you.

Factions: Individual Brides; perhaps Lilith, Alraune, or Elizabeth Báthory

The Octopus

You have a relationship with one of Europe’s mafias, perhaps even the Mafia or the Mafiya. You may be a fixer respected by all, or an ex-investigator hated by all; a former brother, or an escaped target.

Factions: Russian Mafiya bratva, Cosa Nostra, ’Ndrangheta, Camorra, a Triad, Chechen Obshina, Romanian mafia clan

ECHELON

You are inside the head of the folks who have eyes and ears everywhere. Were you a programmer or a monitor for the surveillance state, or do they have a special reason to follow your activities?

Factions: NSA, NRO, NGA, GCHQ, DIFC, ASD (Australia), CSE (Canada), GCSB (New Zealand)

Five

MI5, the Security Service of the United Kingdom, responsible for domestic intelligence, counter-terrorism, and counter-espionage. And in theory, responsible for uncovering rogue century-old operations within MI6.

The Circus

MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, responsible for foreign intelligence operations. Your relationship with the Service is not with Edom; you may not even know they exist – or the Circus may have burned you for insisting that Edom did exist.

Factions: Secretariat (military), Requirements and Production (analysis), Security and Public Affairs (internal affairs, mole hunting), Operations (clandestine service), Information Operations (psychological warfare, press manipulation), the Intrusives (DH, p. 293)

The Cross

You have a relationship with someone with a relationship with God. You may be able to get “Indulgences” and illicit sacramental Hosts, or you may be marked for martyrdom for the good of the flock.

Factions: The Vatican, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church

The Company

The Central Intelligence Agency, known as “the Cousins” to the Circus and Five, has plenty of hands out, and plenty of handouts, for anybody and everybody. You took a hand, once, or bit it.

Factions: Directorate of Analysis (“armchairs”), Directorate of Operations (“cowboys”), the CIA vampire program (“Find Forever”)

The Bear

British intelligence originally intended to aim its vampiric weapon at the Russians, its opponent in the Great Game – and the Russians haven’t forgotten it. The enemy of your enemy is your friend … or possibly your even worse enemy.

Factions: FSB, SVR, GRU, TE (“Special Expedition”) anti-vampire program surviving from 1801 (DH, p. 76)

The Lynx

The national animal of Romania is a small, solitary predator that somehow survives disasters that doom larger species. Sounds about right. You have a “guy in Bucharest” or a “contact in the Palace” or a bunch of signed Securitate pay stubs.

Factions: SIE, SRI, Romanian Armed Forces, Romanian Police, Control Body of the Prime Minister, individual cabinet ministries or oligarchs

Der Reichsadler

Officially called the “Bundesadler” now (except in Greece, and probably Spain and Portugal, and maybe Italy …) the black eagle has been the symbol of Germany for longer than Dracula has been alive. You have fallen under the eagle’s wings … or escaped its talons.

Factions: BND, BfV, Deutsche Bank, Projekt Draugr or other surviving Nazi vampire program (Villainous only)

The Slayer

This Icon hunts vampires, most likely more intensely and dangerously (or incorrectly) than you’d like. It’s an ideal placeholder Icon for a Legacy such as a dhampir Mina Harker, an undiscovered Van Helsing scion, or a badass Morris descendant like Carmilla Rojas. The Slayer may think of you as a protégé, as a weapon … or as bait.

Factions: Individual Legacies, Sayeret Aluka (DH, p. 75), Schola Allatio (DH, p. 77), Caldwell Foundation (DH, p. 160), Echipa Mortii (DH, p. 149; also Villainous)

Dracula

The King of Vampires knows who you are! Don’t you feel special?

Factions: None

Karloff reviewed the backer-PDF copy of the Dracula Dossier. You can find the full review here. Thanks, Karloff!

Karloff says,
“This improvisational Night’s Black Agents campaign setting, complete with the unredacted print copy of Stoker’s first edition Dracula and a massive Director’s Handbook, is beyond huge. It’s one thing to write up Stoker’s Dracula with little ‘Dracula’s a great big meanie’ notes in the margins; after all, Stoker’s done the heavy lifting there. It’s something else altogether to take that text, all those marginal notes, and a hundred other things besides, turning it all into a 364-page document complete with supporting characters, locations, rival agencies, and Dracula’s many possible conspyramids and plots. I’ll give you my conclusion right up front: if you have any interest in the Night’s Black Agents setting whatsoever, this is a must-buy.”

“Meanwhile, let me offer my personal thanks, not to the authors – though they deserve every plaudit – but to my fellow Kickstarter backers. Thanks to your funding, something wonderful has been created.”

Karloff goes on,
“If you’re any kind of student of Stoker, you’ll find layer upon layer of meaning here, and each layer translates to yet another node, or character, location, item, plot thread. Imagine trying to put all that together, yourself. Then be grateful someone else did it for you.”

“Should you go to Carfax, for example, there are several different ways the Director could play it, many different items or supporting characters you might find there, and many different consequences. What this means in play is that the characters can never be sure what they’re going to discover, nor can they take anything for granted. It also means that the Director can play this several times, maybe with the same group, and it will never play out the same way twice.”

Finally,
“I’d recommend a new Director buy this even if that Director never plays it as written. It’s a masterclass in how the game is constructed, and how it can be played.”

The original 1894 Operation Edom brief, key memos, secret military maps of Transylvania, précis of reports from Balkan battlefronts and German academies alike,  and plans for the next century’s battle for control of the Un-Dead — these are the Hawkins Papers.

The handouts that make up the Hawkins Papers are as improvisational as the rest of the Dracula Dossier campaign. Drop them into your game as needed, and let the players decide how to interpret them and what conclusions to draw. Maps, reports, private correspondence, newspaper columns, business cards, and period photographs add historic flavour, and modern-day realism, to your Dracula Dossier campaign.

The Hawkins Papers also includes The Hawkins Annex – for the Director’s eyes only, this invaluable reference lists a description of each of the more than 30 handouts. It suggests likely places for the Agents to find the handout, as well as a Director-friendly breakdown of what clues are available in the handout, pointers to entries in the Director’s Handbook, and other people or groups that could be associated with the document.

Status: In Development

by James Palmer

Dracula the Warlord – In life, Vlad Tepes was a man who would go to any end to win. In death, he’s worse. Being a vampire is only one part of his toolkit, and while he uses it, he’ll never become dependent on it. You pull a cross? He pulls a gun. You don’t invite him in? He blows your house up from outside. He loses his powers in day, when he is merely a centuries-old warlord who has mastered every weapon known to man, controls a small country, has his tendrils across Europe, and has a coterie of loyal-unto-death bodyguards around him.

Try making this explicit in game terms by giving him a Preparedness ability, like the Agents, ranked at 14-20 or so, and openly spending and rolling for it. That way Dracula always having a back-up plan or the right counter doesn’t feel so much like Director fiat, and Agents can plot multiple approaches, eventualities, and bluffs to try to outthink the master (by exhausting his pool.)

Showman – He’s watched every depiction of himself – his lair has a library of movies, TV, video games – and they’ve soaked into him. Sometimes he’s Bela Lugosi, sometimes he’s Gary Oldman, sometimes he’s Christopher Lee; you can never be sure what his real face is, or if he even has one anymore. Maybe he was Vlad Tepes in life, maybe he just liked his style, maybe he can’t remember anyway. He loves the grand speeches about his ancestry, regardless of whether they’re true or not.

He’s a giant ham, but he’s a ham like the Joker’s a ham. Everything amuses him, whether it’s making his minions shave their hair like a bat or laying out the corpses of an Agent’s family in an obscene tableau animated by necromancy. Life and death are jokes, and the punchline is always “The Aristocrats!”

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to get the average group of players riled up, it’s an NPC who laughs at them. Whether it’s in pre-recorded videos, dream visions, or scrawled messages in blood, the Showman will taunt and tease the Agents across Europe. He favors keeping his favorite foes alive, because after all, he needs a truly appreciative audience, but he’ll strip everything away from them so that in the end, it’s just him and them on a bare stage.

[mirror] The Showman is highly likely to follow the real life Vlad Tepes’ habit of disguising himself to travel among his enemies. He may disguise himself as a friendly NPC (especially if he’s indistinguishable from human during the day) to accompany the group, be their secret patron, or even kidnap and take the shape of an Agent (if you have a compliant player) for a session or two.
Stalker – He’s driven by love, you see. That’s what the world just doesn’t understand. When he crawled back from the dead, it was for love. When he killed that family, it was for love. When he terrorizes and coerces and forces a woman into letting him turn her, it’s for love. Until he realizes that they’re not the One, and they become a hungry Bride trapped behind his walls …

This is the Dracula who turns and abandons Lucy, then fixates on Mina. He probably doesn’t have a grand plot; EDOM is using him, not the other way round – his unlife is one long routine of repeating the same pattern.

The Stalker is a grim parody of the “romantic vampire” that’s become so popular, the centuries-old creature of the night who fixates on teenage girls. Maybe he’s looking for the “reincarnated spirit” of the wife he “lost” – because he killed her. Maybe he just has a type. Maybe he sparkles in sunlight, an otherworldly, terrible glare that rips the sanity or souls out of onlookers. Whichever it is, finding a suitable victim makes for great bait in the Agents’ trap – if they’re willing to risk an innocent.

The Executive Megalomaniac – Dracula wanted to go to England because it exemplified the modernity of 1897; the sweeping, new power that was carrying the world on its back. Now he doesn’t care about England. He wants to go to Silicon Valley. Or Guangzhou. A fading mid-ranked power – that’s just a stepping stone, through control of the City. Dracula wants to rule the world.

The Executive wears tailored suits, long ago shaved that mustache, and prefers mesmerism and persuasion to extreme violence, though that’s always an option in a pinch. He loves technology, though he’s more an end user than a hacker (he has people for that) – trace him by running through the Apple Watch pre-order list for Bucharest. He’s absurdly mega-rich, on the scale that only several lifetimes of Swiss bank accounts and the kind of insider trading you can do by reading people’s dreams can manage.

For the Executive, try swapping his Vampyramid reactions with that of EDOMs. Dracula becomes the one reaching out to and trying to coopt the Agents – after all, why waste talented assets? – while EDOM is the paranoid, ruthless organization striking back (with its suborned vampiric minions) at any possible threat.

The Director’s Handbook, together with Dracula Unredacted, comprises The Dracula Dossier — an epic improvised, collaborative campaign for Night’s Black Agents, our award-winning vampire spy thriller RPG. Pre-order it in our webstore now.

Many great nations and peoples have measured the passage of time through myriad methods, too numerous for me to list or spend the time trawling Wikipedia for information. I imagine few – if any – have ever ticked off the passage of time by gaming conventions. However, when you’re the wingman to a woman who has created a highly popular alternative to the common or garden dice bag, conventions become like the ominous ticking of a great clock.

In retrospect, I’ve struggled to pin down the exact moment that All Rolled Up got mixed up in Pelgrane Press’s highly successful Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. I have the feeling that it might have been somewhere in Milton Keynes at the thoroughly friendly twice-yearly event known as Concrete Cow. We have known Cat Tobin for a little while. It’s possible our acquaintance arose from my other reason for attending conventions – gamemastering. I’m pretty sure I’d offered to run games at one event or another, and then that led to Cat and Fil meeting. She was one of our earliest customers, at UK Games Expo in 2013 (and I wrote an article about where the idea came from published on this site in July 2013).

At Concrete Cow, in March 2014, All Rolled Up had been running for almost a year. We had sold hundreds and Fil was just getting into the swing of being her own boss, finding her way through the complexities of weekly quotas and taxes. Cat loved the product and I dare say we might have talked with her about doing something for one of Pelgrane Press’s games.

UK Games Expo swung around at the end of May. Expo that year felt a bit special as the All Rolled Up game roll was included in the event’s gaming awards as Best New Expansion or Accessory. I had the chance to meet Monte Cook and Shanna Germain, as well as Chris Barrie (AKA Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf) who presented our certificate when we won that award. There might have been some discussions at Expo, but I’m not sure. The event always has so much energy, so much going on.

Something must have happened at the Expo, because come November we were talking fabrics. Well, I wasn’t. I’m rarely trusted with making decisions about the finer details of mix and match textiles. I remember Fil having swatches upon which she and Cat talked at some length toward the end of the event. I think the Kickstarter had already started, but Cat was happy with the colours and the proposal of two different All Rolled Up – and soon after a bunch of new pledge levels appeared. And in fairly short order, those pledge levels sold out.

That took us by surprise.

We kept a keen watch on the Kickstarter throughout. Each day we’d count up the number of people pledging for levels with an All Rolled Up in. When they eventually sold out, it started to dawn how much work would be involved – not least the sourcing of such a large volume of fabric. Fil has prototypes ready for Dragonmeet – so Cat, Simon Rogers and Ken Hite could all have a look. I contributed the badge design for the outside – or at least the prototype version.

After the thrill of seeing the Kickstarter end so well and all the All Rolled Up claimed, the New Year meant we had to prepare and plan. The business has a regular supply of online orders, as well as necessary stocking up for big events. And fabric takes time from the suppliers.

By early Spring and the next Concrete Cow, we’d firmed up the supplies and I had a dozen alternate designs for the Dracula Dossier badge that would go with it. UK Games Expo in May absorbed all sewing efforts thereafter, so we didn’t get down to the nitty-gritty until summer.

In the following three months, Fil set to cutting, sorting, organizing and sewing the component parts of the two designs – with my assistance and our youngest son, David. Bit by bit they came together and I spent time finalising the badge design and getting it printed up. The time wasn’t without challenges, for when you rely upon machines they invariably let you down just to remind you how much you depend on them. However, as the pictures show, slowly and surely the game rolls came together.

BackerKit made life interesting. As the pledge levels didn’t commit to anything more than an All Rolled Up, we had to wait until completion of the BackerKit entries to discover the balance of black and red. We had early calls that provided a rough ratio – black winning over red – but only a couple of weeks back did we get the finalised figures. In addition, we had to make extra, because when you run a Kickstarter you need to allow for those unexpected eventualities.

Last weekend, we rooted through the garage and rooted out the biggest box. As it happens, with just enough padding, it holds all the All Rolled Up rather neatly. Once Fil completed the game rolls, I designed the labels for the packaging. Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and I came up with the names – The Black Archive and The Red Room, respectively. It seemed appropriate to get one of the game designers involved!

Next week, secured in individual plastic bags, labelled and pressed, they’ll all travel cross-country to Pelgrane Press in preparation for the final release. We’ll have done our bit and we hope you’ll make great use of the All Rolled Up when you get them.

You’ll find the pocket in the far side of the pen and pencil tidy has more than enough room to hold your favourite, seasoned wooden stake.

The macro level of a Dracula Dossier campaign emerges from the Conspyramid and Vampyramid charts, as well as the instructions in the opening section, How To Use This Book. Those charts are the framework for your story – as in any Night’s Black Agents game, the aim is to shoot your way up that Conspyramid, level by level, while dodging the antagonist reactions dictated by the matching level on the Vampyramid. Each conspiracy node points to another, and another, until everything closes in on Dracula. So, the players identify a Conspiracy node, or NPC, or location. That gets slotted into the Director’s Conspyramid on an empty slot at an appropriate Level (either the lowest available slot, or one connected to the previous node that gave the clue pointing to this one). They investigate that node, beat it up until another clue falls out, and follow that clue to the next node. Drop in an available Vampyramid response whenever the Conspiracy gets annoyed, and repeat until Dracula drops dead. Again.

Individual scenes require a little more improvisation. The first step – once the players have decided what clue they’re following up on, either from Dracula Unredacted or a previous scene – is to flip to the appropriate writeup in the Director’s Handbook and decide which variant to use. Is this NPC an Innocent, a spy agency Asset, or a Minion of Dracula? Is this location Hot or Cold?

As a rule of thumb, go for more innocents and red herrings early in the campaign, go for more Assets in England or when they’re closing in on Edom, and go for more Minions in the latter stages of the campaign or when in Romania. You could even mechanise if you were so inclined.

Roll

1-3: Innocent/Cold

4-5: Asset/Hot

6+: Minion/Hot

+1 if the PCs are following a strong lead

+1 if it’s the middle of the campaign/+2 if its the endgame

Each writeup lists one or more abilities that gets a clue, and that clue points to another NPC/Node/Object/Location. Use that structure as the spine, around which you improvise a scene.

For example, if the PCs are investigating the MI5 Deputy (DH p. 95). The Director decides that the Deputy is still an active Edom Asset; the listed abilities there are Diagnosis and Tradecraft (as well as Notice and Research, but those are for going the other way, pointing the players towards appropriate entries in Dracula Unredacted). Diagnosis sounds fun – maybe the Agents have to sneak into a hospital and question the Deputy while he’s undergoing an MRI scan. A fight scene around a giant magnet could be interesting if, say, a Conspiracy minion shows up…

If inspiration hasn’t struck, consider the following prompts for complications or intrigue:

For Innocent NPCs

• How do the Agents approach the NPC? (How would you react to half-a-dozen suspicious criminal types showing up on your doorstep?)
• Do the Agents meet the NPC at home, or work, or some other location? What’s the place like?
• What are the Agents interrupting when they arrive?
• Does the NPC have a reason to hide what he or she knows? Does the NPC know the value of the information?
• When did the NPC last talk about this topic? With whom?
• Do the players actually need to talk to the NPC, or is this a heist more than an interrogation?
• Have the NPC treat the PCs as heavily armed genies – what would you do if a bunch of heavily armed criminals offered you a favour in exchange for information?
• Who else is nearby? Who’s watching? What about animals?
• Does this scene need to be complicated? Is it better to just give the players the clue and zoom onto a more exciting encounter?
• Why hasn’t the NPC acted on the information? Why are they still innocent?
• How can I get this NPC into a fight with the Agents? A chase?
• What motifs or images can I work into this scene? Blood? Death, disease and decay? Immortality or unnatural youth? The burden of history? Terrorism and the surveillance state? Volcanoes and the secrets of the earth? Sunset or sunrise? Dreams? Diaries and letters? Brides? Bats?
• Is Dracula nearby?

For Asset NPCs

As above, plus…

• What’s the NPCs’ escape route from this situation?
• Public places make for safer meeting places. Pick an Establishing Shot location (p. 254) and have the PCs meet the NPC there. Look at that writeup for ideas.
• What usual item or precaution has the NPC got hidden around his or her home?
• Was the Asset briefed on how to deal with people asking about the Dracula Dossier? If so, what’s their standard operating procedure? Stall? Point the PCs to a trap? Turn the tables on them, and pump them for information? Lie and sell the PCs on a false story?
• What does the intelligence agency want from the PCs, if anything? Does the Asset NPC share that desire?
• Is the Asset recording the conversation? Is the location bugged?
• Who wants the Asset dead?
• How often is the NPC in contact with his or her intelligence agency? How do they communicate?
• How long will it take the Asset to report this contact with the player characters?
• What would it take to flip the Asset? Does the Asset want to be bought out?

For Minion NPCs

As above, plus…

• Is this Minion aware of the true nature of the Conspiracy, or do they think they’re working for something more mundanely malignant? Or is the NPC a lone madman, caught up in the psychic turbulence of the Count?
• Is the Minion planning on luring the PCs into a trap, in which case he or she meets them somewhere private or dangerous, or trying to deflect them away, in which case a public meeting place is more appropriate?
• Is this an action scene, where the PCs are threatened? Or is the goal to disturb or confuse them? (Am I planning on eating bugs, or eating them?)
• How will the NPC use the Agents to advance the Conspiracy’s goals, or curry favour with the Conspiracy?
• What’s the worst thing the NPC has done for Dracula?
• What omen or weirdness telegraphs the NPC’s corruption? Is the corruption physical or spiritual?

One final point – in any improvised campaign, especially a stupendously huge and complex one like the Dracula Dossier, it’s inevitable that you’re going to make mistakes. You’ll let the wrong information slip, or you’ll forget some telling detail. (It’s especially likely that you’ll contradict the Annotations at some point, as the players can cross-check those at their leisure after the game session). If you do make a mistake, you’ve got a get-out-of-jail free card you can use to solve almost any error: mind control.

The error that the players picked up on wasn’t a screw-up – it was a subtle clue to Dracula’s involvement, so you can congratulate them on picking up on it. Of course, now that they’ve seen through Dracula’s attempts to cover his tracks, you’re obliged to hit them with another antagonist reaction from the Vampyramid…

A Secret History Unearthed. A Legendary Horror Walks Again.

Presenting an epic improvised campaign for Night’s Black Agents Roleplaying Game. Do your Agents have what it takes to face the Lord of the Undead himself?

The Dracula Dossier follows in the fully improvisational path of the award-winning Armitage Files campaign. Players follow up leads in the margins of Dracula Unredacted, a rare edition of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece that reveals the terrifying truth behind the fiction. They’ll chase down the real characters from Stoker’s novel, their descendants in the present, and the British agents caught in the backblast.

Directors combine these leads and notes with pre-prepared elements in the Director’s Handbook, including:

• Conspiracy nodes, eerie locations and vampiric beasts
• More than 60 supporting characters in vampiric, heroic, or in-between versions
• Different versions of the real Mina Harker, Abraham van Helsing, and the other stars of Stoker’s novel — and their modern-day successors, descendants, and survivors — who can drive the story in any direction the players look.

Players choose which leads to track, which scarlet trail to follow. The Director, using the clear step-by-step techniques in this book, improvises a suitably blood-soaked thriller in response to their choices. Clear advice to players and Directors on improvisation, with extensive examples and guidelines, helps you set the scene. Together, you will read and write your own unique version of the Dracula Dossier.

Follow the clues to end the story once and for all, and close Project EDOM forever. You will find, hunt, and kill Dracula, the king of the vampires.

If you survive.

Pre-order now

Downloads

• Download the Night’s Black Agents Dracula Dossier character sheet here
• Download a Blank Conspyramid
• Download Perveniet Calix, a Dracula Dossier Series Pitch by Ryan Macklin
• Download the Dracula Dossier theme tune by James Semple

Articles

• Read the original 1894 Agents’ character stats here
• There’s a discussion on rpg.net about how to tackle running the campaign
• Ken explains how to use Icons and 13th Age Relationship rules in the DD
• Scenario writer Ruth Tillman wrote up her thoughts on the Dossier so far 
• Gar writes up prompts for Dracula NPCs
• Ken’s Quick and Dirty look at Varna

Interviews

• Ken & Gar interview each other on io9
• Ken & Gar answer questions on obskures.de
• Ken features on the Ideology of Madness and On RPG podcasts
• Ken is interviewed by the Blurry Photos podcast
• Ken ran a Night’s Black Agents game for the One Shot Podcast, and all four parts are now up. Bonus Intro * Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4
• Ken is interviewed by The Escapist and Saving The Game podcast
• Ken’s favourite Dracula Dossier interview, on the Plot Points podcast
• Gar joins The Adventuring Party podcast to talk about vampires

Free previews

• The Hungarian
• The Earthquake Machine
• Argentina

Social media resources

• Dracula Dossier Actual Play Facebook page
• @NBAgents on Twitter
• Night’s Black Agents Facebook page
• Night’s Black Agents on Google+

This Halloween, a legendary horror walks again – do your customers have what it takes to face the Lord of the Undead himself?

LIMITED-EDITION RETAIL BUNDLE: Act now to get the full Dracula Dossier kit with a bonus card deck—details below!

What Is The Dracula Dossier?

Dracula is not a novel. It’s the censored version of Bram Stoker’s after-action report of the failed British Intelligence attempt to recruit a vampire in 1894. Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan have restored the deleted sections, inserting annotations and clues left by three generations of MI6 analysts. This is Dracula Unredacted.

Follow those clues to the Director’s Handbook, containing hundreds of encounters: shady NPCs, dangerous locations, conspiratorial nodes, and mysterious objects. Together they comprise The Dracula Dossier — an epic improvised, collaborative campaign for Night’s Black Agents, our award-winning vampire spy thriller RPG. The Dracula Dossier follows in the fully improvisational path of the award-winning Armitage Files campaign, and provides the Director with everything she needs to run a fully improvised, sandbox campaign.

The mission: Hunt and kill Dracula now, once and for all, before Britain falls to him forever.

Limited-Edition “First 50” Retail Bundle

The 50 retailers to pre-order the Dracula Dossier bundle get:

1 x Director’s Handbook

A 368-page, full colour hardback book, packed with everything GMs need to run an improvisational Night’s Black Agents roleplaying campaign to hunt and kill Dracula:

• Conspiracy nodes, fully mapped locations, and horrific foes.
• More than 60 supporting characters, with vampiric, heroic, or ambigious versions.
• Alternate versions of Mina Harker, Abraham van Helsing, and the other characters in Stoker’s classic novel.

1 x Dracula Unredacted

This new edition of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula adds new letters and recordings, diary entries long thought lost, and documents suppressed by Her Majesty’s Government—until now. Discover the true events behind the legend, from the first tentative contact between British intelligence and the undead, to the werewolf of Walpurgisnacht, to the cataclysmic disappearance of Dracula in volcanic fire, read the story you’ve known for years … for the first time.

2 x Night’s Black Agents core rulebook

The award-winning Night’s Black Agents roleplaying game brings the GUMSHOE engine to the spy thriller genre, with a vampiric twist. Combining the propulsive paranoia of movies like The Bourne Identity and Mission: Impossible with supernatural horror, Night’s Black Agents is a thrilling game of investigation and high-octane action, with expanded options for bone-crunching combat, high-tech tradecraft, and adrenaline-fueled chases.

Exclusive to the First 50 retail bundle: 1 x Dracula Dossier card deck

Deal yourself into danger with the DRACULA DOSSIER Deck! These beautifully illustrated cards contain NPCs, Nodes, Locations, Objects, and Opponents. Pass them out as handouts, pin them to the Adversary Map, spread them like tarot cards, shuffle up random encounters, deal out a full Conspyramid, or draw for wandering foes — the DRACULA DOSSIER Deck adds still more improvisation to the game!

If you are signed up to the Bits and Mortar program, give your pre-order customers the PDFs now!

Retailers: pre-order through your distributor now!

Customers: tell your retailer to pre-order now!

A-HEM … oh all right, co-designer’s notes

It all started in 2011, even before Night’s Black Agents was published. Or perhaps it all started in 1890, when Bram Stoker began outlining the tale of “Count Wampyr” of Styria after a nightmare caused by eating “a surfeit of dressed crab,” according to his son. But I’m going to start it in 1956, when Rear Admiral Frederick R. Furth, Chief of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), received a package containing a paperback copy of The Case For the U.F.O., by Morris Jessup. This particular copy bore three sets of annotations in three different colors of ink; the annotations implied a great deal of insider knowledge about UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrial propulsion. (Or they implied a great deal of time on someone’s hands. You make the call.) Best of all, they contradicted each other, crossing out each other’s notes and leaving the ultimate meaning of any of it a bigger mystery than when it began. This was Nabokov come down to the grimy trailer parks of Saucerland! Captain Sidney Sherby of the ONR was interested enough to hire Varo Manufacturing, a sometime military contractor, to create a few stenciled copies of the “Annotated Edition” for him and his fellow UFO buffs in the military. This “Varo Edition” became something of a legend in UFOlogical circles, especially once it got out that Sherby was involved in satellite launches. For a while (before the Internet, anyhow) you couldn’t even find the 1970s reprint of the “Varo Edition” for love or money. It was a thing of some small obsession for my bibliophilic, UFO-loving 1970s self, my own personal Necronomicon in a way.

So naturally, when Simon asked me — either in the spring of 2011 while I was stopping off at Pelgrane House on my way to Gothcon in Sweden, or at the annual Pelgrane Summit at Dragonmeet that November — what I thought might be a good prestige release for Night’s Black Agents, I said “the Varo Edition, only with Dracula, as the handout for an Armitage Files-style improv campaign.” I wanted it to be an improv, sandbox campaign because the possibility of disagreement, of that cloud of story, would be better than any “real truth” I could come up with.

During that talk, or in the month or so leading up to it, I had already come up with the notion that the three annotators would represent three different generations of MI6 analysts, all confounded by Dracula and Dracula. And once I had three generations, they kind of had to be WWII, the Cold War, and the War on Terror. I’d already noticed the two devastating Romanian earthquakes in 1940 and 1977 that clearly set up the more specific dates, especially when I recalled that Stoker had cut the destruction of Castle Dracula by earthquake and volcano out of the novel at literally the last minute. Then I found two historical earthquakes in Transylvania almost exactly a year apart, in 1893 and 1894. That gave me the year of the novel’s true setting. Why are MI6 annotating Dracula? Because it’s actually an after-action report of an 1894 espionage operation gone wrong. That’s why Stoker cut so much out of the novel — he was redacting sources and methods.

Simon listened to all of the above, spilled out during a long walk around Clapham on some errand or other, and then quite rightly insisted from the first that we present the entire century-plus spectrum of action as a possible campaign frame in the book. Then he sent me off to finish Night’s Black Agents so I could write the thing.

There is that point in every project when, as Tim Powers says, you’re no longer researching a game (or novel, in his case) but uncovering the real secret history of the world. For me, that moment struck early, when I discovered that the Foreign Office had asked Bram Stoker to improve the propaganda value of his brother George Stoker’s book. (I don’t remember exactly where I discovered it; it might have been in Bram Stoker and Russophobia. I read a lot about the Stokers in 2012. And 2013.) And what was George Stoker’s book? With the Unspeakables, a memoir of George’s medical service in the Russo-Turkish War. In the Balkans. Suddenly the whole framework of what became “Operation Edom” was clear to me: Arminius Vámbery, who Stoker knew (and refers to obliquely in the novel) was also an English spy, and also in the Balkans in 1877. So was the geologist Andrew F. Crosse, who wrote a Transylvanian travelogue in 1878. They found vampires, connected them with earthquakes, sent them to British intelligence.

I know it will amaze you to learn this, but it’s darn hard to find anything more than a page or two on Victorian-era British intelligence, before the official founding of the SIS (a.k.a. MI6) in 1909. No matter how much you read. Fortunately, that gave me plenty of room to slot in Operation Edom. When I did find that two of Naval Intelligence’s directors died or suddenly resigned within a year of 1894 … well, there’s more secret history uncovered. It kept on going like that. The Romanian Iron Guard did, in fact, have a secret occult core that met in covens of 13. A league of brilliant scientific researchers did in fact meet in secret in a hotel that Stoker just happens to highlight in the novel, only to disband in … 1893. Actually, Gareth found that one. His constant Skype IRCs to me on the theme of “Omigod it’s all true” were one of my greatest delights during the whole project.

And we needed some delights. I lifted much of the basic framework — how to present multiple possibilities for a single encounter — from Robin’s Armitage Files, although I had to change things up a bit, as there might be two secret allegiances at play, not just one Mythos taint. I had to decide the basic framework of the campaign: the Default Dracula, the Default Dossier, the Default Edom, and so forth. Then set up the questions deliberately left open: Who was Dracula? What is Edom up to? How badly has Dracula penetrated MI6 and Britain in general? Do vampires work like Van Helsing said they did? (Gareth again hugely improved the campaign by coming up with the “telluric vampire” build that restored some of the mystery of Night’s Black Agents’ modular vampires.) After about 110,000 words give or take, Gareth and I had enough of a backdrop that we could open it up to other writers. And thanks to a mind-tumbling Kickstarter campaign more than superbly field-marshaled by Cat, we got 16 more writers. Many of whom caught me by surprise with their own evidences of secret history — I still cherish Phil Vecchione and Chris Sniezak pointing out that President Benjamin Harrison was mysteriously out of public view in 1892, when Quincey Morris was battling “vampires” in the Pampas and during the exact period (November) that the so-called “American Vampire” was being transferred to the National Asylum, and you’ve got to read the book (DH, p. 63) to find out the crazy spin they put on that one. Between their contributions, last-minute things I made Gareth do, and last-minute things Cat made me do, we wound up with 249,938 words of Director’s Handbook (Cat very intelligently changed the name from my confusing alpha version, Director’s Dossier) all on the broad theme “the Varo Edition, only with Dracula.” Except we weren’t done yet. We hadn’t unredacted Dracula.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Gareth and I had very carefully decided what would go into the unredactions. Gareth made two, or was it three, different calendars working out our shifted dates, as Stoker had inconsiderately not timed his volcano to the historical earthquake in Romania in 1894 (31 August). We filled those calendars with the crucial events we needed to highlight: Dracula’s Satanic cult (thanks to Hans de Roos translating the Icelandic edition of Dracula and giving us way more meat to chew on), and the missing characters like Kate Reed and the psychic Alfred Singleton, and Quincey Morris’ scouting trip to Transylvania that Stoker had in his initial Notes but redacted. We sent Harker into Transylvania on St. Andrew’s Eve, the other vampires-and-blue-fires night in Romanian lore, not St. George’s Eve. It looked like a lot. But oh the exultation when we discovered that our shifted new earthquake-compatible dates put Lucy Westenra’s death on the night of Friday the 13th! And oh the desperation when we discovered we had to match literary style with … well, with one of the seminal novels of the entire horror genre. Dracula the novel, and “Dracula’s Guest,” which I returned to its true place in the middle of the novel, total about 160,000 words. Bram, as I liked to say, had gotten his word count in well before deadline. I know Gareth did a great job, and I think I did pretty well if I say so myself, and no I will not tell you which parts are his and which parts are mine because I called dibs on being the Henry Irving of this project long ago. In 2011, in fact, if not in the 1970s.

Gareth and I wound up expanding — er, unredacting — Dracula by about 25%. Our Dracula Unredacted is almost 200,000 words long, not counting 10,000 words of annotations. In three colors of ink. Just like the Varo Edition. Only with Dracula.

And now you can pre-order it, and see almost a half-million words, over 800 pages, and many many colors of ink in The Dracula Dossier for yourself.

The upcoming Edom Files, yet another part of the I-can-justifiably-use-the-word-epic-at-this-point epic Dracula Dossier series, is an anthology of eight missions, ranging from 1877’s Stoker: First Blood to the present-day Harker Intrusion . These missions can be used as one-shots with or without reference to the larger Dossier series, or as Flashbacks within a regular Dossier campaign, or – for the truly heroic – as part of a century-spanning Unto the Fourth Generation or Fields of Edom game.

One of the nice things about having an anthology of historical scenarios in a game about immortal monsters is that you can play with horrors in the past and reasonably expect them to survive into the present, making those historical missions more than just backstory.  If Edom fails to kill Carmilla in 1948, during The Carmilla Sanction, then she’s still around in 2016 to menace your Agents. That hellish mountain lair in First Blood is still there in the present day. For each scenario, we’ve included an encounter – a person, place, object, node or ravening monster – that might survive into a contemporary campaign.

In fact, due to a slight miscommunication, we nearly included two for the Carmilla Sanction. Ken’s NPC works better in the book for sinister plot purposes, so here, rescued from the cutting room floor, is another encounter tied to that mission.

Object: The Vordenburg Diary

Appearance: A handwritten manuscript from the late 17^th century, written in a mix of Latin and German, that describes the occult research of a Baron Vordenburg, who was troubled by vampires when living in Moravia (present-day eastern Czech republic).

Supposed History: Baron Vordenburg – the younger baron, the one who shows up in Carmilla – described how his ancestor was a lover of Countess Karnstein, and when she became a vampire, he studied the curse and resolved to leave notes on how to find her tomb and destroy her when she rose again. The Baron’s notes may have been part of the bundle of papers in the possession of Le Fanu when he wrote his novel; Carmilla may have removed them to her new fortress, where they fell into the hands of Edom or the occupying Russian forces.

Major Item: The book contains detailed observations on vampire physiology by Vordenburg – observations that can only be the result of extensive experimentation on captured subjects. It discusses methods of dispatch, feeding cycles, the relationship between the vampire and its tomb, and lists several vampiric creatures destroyed by the Baron. For good measure, the Baron has also transcribed key sections of other texts (like Le Dragon Noir, DH p. 273, and reading it gives a 6-point pool that can be spent on Vampirology, Diagnosis or Occult Studies – or on general ability tests when fighting a vampire. Close reading with History also turns up links to other vampire hunters (possibly the Vatican, the Hospital of St. Joseph & Ste. Mary, DH p. 230, or the Fortified Monastery of St. Peter, DH p. 144).

One small downside – the book was written after Carmilla implanted post-hypnotic suggestions in the Baron’s mind and blood, and reading the original diary (but not a copy or scan) exposes the reader to the vampire’s influence. Call for a Difficulty 6 Stability test on reading the book; failing doesn’t cost the reader any Stability, but opens up a psychic connection. Cue dreams, nocturnal visitations, and an obsession with anagrams. If Carmilla’s still active, then she starts targeting the reader as her next victim. If she was destroyed, then she possesses the reader (if female and of a suitable age) or someone close at hand (a Solace, maybe), slowly conditioning her victim to seek out another vampire and return Carmilla to un-death in a new body. Diagnosis spots the signs of possession.

Minor Item: As above, but the Baron’s notes aren’t half so comprehensive, and there’s a lot more extraneous material about lesbianism. A cruel Director might make the notes on vampirism actively misleading or dangerous – maybe Carmilla deliberately had Vordenburg write the diary as misinformation, and it points towards some location or relic that Carmilla desires. A Vampirology spend spots the errors; if the players don’t make a spend, then give them a clue pointing to a trap laid by Carmilla.

Fraudulent: It’s a fake, written by Carmilla herself in the 1930s. The book contains no useful information, but it’s still got the hypnotic curse. She wrote it as a trap for Edom; optionally, it might be the key to the 1977 mole hunt, and the mole is some woman possessed by the spirit of Carmilla. Check out the library file on the book with Research to find out who read it last, and hence determine who’s secretly Carmilla – maybe the Balkans Specialist (DH p. 91) or the Sculptor (DH p. 100) or Lucy Blythe (DH p. 41). Perhaps there are several psychic doubles of Carmilla running around.

Connections: Doubtless Van Helsing (DH p. 31) and the Hungarian’s grandfather (DH p. 94) were contacts of one Vordenberg or another. The Former Gehlen Org (DH p. 82) might know what became of any Vordenberg Legacies that are still alive.

Night’s Black Agents by Kenneth Hite puts you in the role of a skilled intelligence operative fighting a shadow war against vampires in post-Cold War Europe. Play a dangerous human weapon, a sly charmer, an unstoppable transporter, a precise demolitions expert, or whatever fictional spy you’ve always dreamed of being — and start putting those bloodsuckers in the ground where they belong. Purchase Night’s Black Agents in the Pelgrane Shop.

Drakula Istanbul’da (1953)

Director: Mehmet Muhtar

Dracula: Atif Kaptan

The first direct identification of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Vlad the Impaler came (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) from the Turks, who after all were on the receiving end of Vlad’s hobby. In 1928, Ali Riza Seyfi wrote a novel called Kazikli Voyvoda, or Impaler Voivode, xeroxing Stoker’s novel with Turkish characters and moving the action to Istanbul rather than London. Drakula Istanbul’da (“Dracula in Istanbul”) adapts that book, and it is — modulo the terrible YouTube transfer, haphazard subtitles, and other unavoidable artifacts of time — not a bad flick, although it seldom rises to true horror. As a lens through which to examine Dracula, however, it’s vitally interesting. First and foremost, of course, our intrepid vampire hunters Azmi (“Harker,” an earnest and curious Bulent Oran), Turan (“Holmwood,” tempestuous Cahit Irgat), Dr. Nuri (“Van Helsing,” steady Kemal Emin Bara), and the forgettable Dr. Afif (“Seward” with no asylum, Munir Ceyhan) drive Drakula (politely menacing Atif Kaptan) back with garlic bulbs, not crosses. Azmi has a medallion of some sort, but it doesn’t protect him from the attacks of Dracula or his (one) Bride — instead, he befriends Drakula’s hunchbacked servant with a gift of cigarettes that pays off in rebellion.

There are many Stoker-ish touches throughout: we see Drakula speed-climb head-downward down the wall of his castle; Drakula’s canines grow into fangs when he senses blood; Azmi tries to kill Drakula with a shovel (and a revolver) in the crypt; Sadan (“Lucy,” a stolid Ayfer Feray) sleepwalks and later kills children as a vampire; Sadan’s mother dies of a heart attack during Drakula’s invasion of their home. And some less Stoker-ish: Drakula or his Bride put Azmi to sleep by pumping gas into the room through the eyes of a portrait (an effective touch, and a possible delivery system for vampire mist in your game); Güzin (“Mina,” the vivacious Annie Ball) is a nightclub singer, providing provocative item numbers throughout; Drakula depends on his cape to turn into a (really unconvincing) bat. But all in all, it’s remarkably faithful to the novel. Filmed at the height of Turkish secularism, it doesn’t code Drakula as a Christian menace (unless that’s why he only has one Bride) or invoke anything more sacred than garlic and folk wisdom to defeat him. Atif Kaptan’s Drakula has a nice line in appearing and disappearing, and is convincingly cruel in his castle. But he steps on his menace pretty thoroughly in the last act where he punches a stagehand, demands Güzin dance for him instead of biting her, loses his bat-shifting cape in a struggle with Azmi thus setting up a not remotely tense foot chase, and then hides in his coffin rather than using the “strength of twenty men” to finish off the sole vampire slayer in sight. Having slowly chased his wife’s vampiric stalker to the cemetery, Azmi finally stakes, beheads, and garlics Drakula, and we end on a lovely domestic scene of him and Güzin taking down the garlic from their windows. Dracula movies — even Drakula movies — live and die by the strength of their vampire, not of their garlic.

The 31 Days of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Expanded and enriched (with garlic and perhaps with your own thoughts and comments), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order hard copies (no shapeshifting cape required) of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Dracula (1938)

Director: Orson Welles

Dracula: Orson Welles

This premiere performance of Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air came about thanks to a re-release of the Browning/Lugosi Dracula in 1938. Seeing a seven-year-old film smash box office records, Welles rushed into writer John Houseman’s hotel room with only three days to go before their debut and told him “We’re doing Dracula!” To avoid trouble with Universal, Welles and Houseman went back to the novel and rescued plenty of material including (of course) stuff considered too racy for film by the Hollywood censors. Welles’ Dracula intoning “flesh of my flesh” when he preys upon Lucy (Elizabeth Fuller) then Mina (Agnes Moorehead) out-lurids Lugosi, and the “splorch” of the final staking sequence (Welles used a watermelon) contrasts dramatically with the off-screen film death of Dracula.

Welles and Houseman combined Seward and Holmwood into “Arthur Seward,” whose narrator role became so central that Welles took it for himself, adopting a mid-Atlantic accent, as well as playing Dracula, using more weird intonations than accent there. The accent prize goes to Martin Gabel, whose Van Helsing sounds more like Lugosi than it does a Dutchman! Unusually for adaptations, Welles and Houseman use the changes to drive the story — the question of Mina’s loyalty to Dracula becomes far more central in this version, for example. Radio also let Welles and Houseman recreate the multiple narrators of the novel, creating a hybrid of narration and drama that became a Mercury Theatre hallmark. (And one to consider when performing a similar audio-forward task as the GM.) In only an hour, driven by Bernard Herrmann’s score and Welles’ frantic narrations, the radio performance covers more of the novel more faithfully than almost any cinematic version.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a dramatic Dracula. Expanded and enriched (after listening intently to your own thoughts and comments), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can order resonant, echoing hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Count Dracula (1977)

Director: Philip Saville

Dracula: Louis Jourdan

Generally (and correctly) hailed as the most textually accurate of the major Dracula adaptations, this BBC TV production has the advantage of time (three TV episodes, 160 minutes) to stretch out in. Every character has a recognizable motive and occasionally even an arc, and the human moments are well-written by Gerald Savory and well-acted almost without exception (I’m looking at you, Bosco Hogan as Pouty Shouty Harker). Although the script combines Arthur and Quincey into “Quincey P. Holmwood,” an American consular official (played by Richard Barnes with a Stoker-authentic stage-Texan accent), and simply cuts the Czarina Catherine-hypnosis-railway stretch of the chase back into Transylvania, its worst crime is the seemingly sensible shift to making Mina (strong, noble Judi Bowker) and Lucy (sexy, giddy Susan Penhaligon) sisters. Although it sets up some great character bits between the two, since Mina doesn’t need to stay in the asylum now (she can stay in her own house next door) the story has to invent a weird reason for Renfield’s sacrifice. And since Jack Shepherd’s Renfield is perhaps the best ever cast, it’s a shame he has to play his noble scene senselessly.

But you didn’t tune in for Renfield, and neither did anybody in 1977, either. Louis Jourdan and Frank Finlay as Dracula and Van Helsing have the best on-screen chemistry of any pair except Lee and Cushing. Jourdan and Finlay both play their roles as ironic gamesters, manipulating and maneuvering their way through the world of mortals and simpletons — but Jourdan’s Dracula is an inhuman sociopath, and Finlay’s Van Helsing is a lonely hero. The trippy 1970s visual and animation effects are what they are (dated), the budget-driven alternation of film and video sadly breaks the mood, and the less said about the thin and over-obvious Kenyon Emrys-Roberts score the better. But this Dracula gives us both Dracula and Harker climbing down the castle wall, a great location shoot in Whitby, a real live bat and wolf, and a rambunctious gunfight with the “Slovaks” at the castle. Most of all, it gives us superb incarnations of the three main roles, and that is more than close enough for British government work.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Given a certain Continental air by your comments and responses, it will stalk my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order suave, cruel hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!

Blade: Trinity (2004)

Director: David S. Goyer

Dracula: Dominic Purcell

Well, they can’t all be gems. Aside from the midriffs of the “Night Stalkers” (there aren’t enough air quotes in the world) Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, and the bumping score by Ramin Djawadi and The RZA, there’s not a lot to say for this festival of pain. Blade himself began as part of the Dracula-hunting team in Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s classic, wonderful Tomb of Dracula comic from Marvel, but it took until the third film in the inexplicably successful Blade series for Dracula to show up. Here, he’s called “Drake,” but a helpful exposition by Patton Oswalt assures us he is Dracula, and that he began as Dagon (!!) in Sumerian times, secretly controlled history for centuries, then dropped out of sight. Drake himself refers to “Stoker’s fable” in the better of his two monologues (any dialogue with Wesley Snipes is a monologue), explaining why he’s a daywalker unlike the rest of the franchise’s Eurotrash vampires. Dracula is explicitly compared to a shark, a perfect predator, although Purcell plays him as (or maybe plays Dracula playing himself as, although that’s almost certainly reading too much into it) a cross between medieval knight and mafioso.

But mediocre movies often make for the best gaming fuel, from the tactical possibilities for vampires in modern all-concealing combat rig, to the vertiginous delights of the Syrian ziggurat and its office-building echoes, to the gambit of vampires framing their slayers for murder. All the Blade films are apopheniac exercises in spotting the literal concealed writing: the “familiars” and vampire clans have characteristic tattoos that show up in advertisements, graffiti, fashion, and other places; in this movie Goyer inexplicably decided to spangle the sets with Esperanto. Vampires as linguistic-symbolic viruses (to be battled by the laconic-to-a-fault Snipes?) pop to mind after a sufficiently open-minded viewing; that might even explain the film’s bizarre focus on Jessica Biel’s iPod-playlist-and-earbuds more interestingly than product placement or strange lifestyle signaling gone horribly wrong.

The 31 Nights of Dractober is a daily preview of a “first cut” essay on a cinematic Dracula. Expanded from its original monosyllabic affectlessness (perhaps with your comments and responses), it will appear in my upcoming book Thrill of Dracula, part of the Dracula Dossier Kickstarter. Speaking of which, you can pre-order the shark-like, perfectly evolved hard copies of The Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook and Dracula Unredacted from your Friendly Local (Bits & Mortar participating) Game Store or from the Pelgrane store and get the PDFs now!