The Butterfly Halls

This adventure centers around two of the doors in the Butterfly Halls and a scheme of Joe Lakono and the Insect Mesh to bring down a world and weaken the world-tree that holds all worlds together. These doors open into twentieth century America. This is a new world for the characters, and the boundaries of the adventure won’t be as obvious because of this. The players will need clear clues and guidance if they’re to avoid getting lost in this new world.

If you are using Highland as your game world, your players might not know the skin tones of their characters. In Highland no one cares. In Vegas and in San Francisco, skin color matters. In Las Vegas, any characters who can’t pass as white will be stuck on the Westside. In San Francisco, black is beautiful.

In San Francisco in the late sixties there are several cultural issues playing out that may confuse, intrigue, or completely pass by adventurers from Highland. Where in Highland all skin tones share the same culture, in 1968 San Francisco there are default cultures for each skin tone, white, black, brown, yellow, you name it, they have their own culture.

Further, there are cultures according to age. While even in Highland there are some behavioral differences between the old and the young based on experience and energy, this effect is far more pronounced in San Francisco 1968. To Highlanders watching replays of the 1968 Democratic Convention or just paying attention to the interactions between flower children and the town guard in San Francisco, it could easily look as if there’s a full-scale generational war, especially if the police let the Hell’s Angels through a cordon to oppose an anti-war march.

How much you want to play this up will depend on how interesting your players find it. Pay attention to them, and follow their lead. It is perfectly reasonable that they will completely ignore the strange culture; if we happened upon a culture in which hair color was moderately correlated with different (but similar) cultures, how long would it take for us to notice?

Within this adventure, Deanna Carmen is African-American. Joe Lakono is a Pacific Islander.

If they research the history of this world, they’ll realize that it’s like their own world but without the cataclysm of earth. Also, if they’ve been to Dead Rome at the Crossroads, they’ll recognize the buildings and the cars (although they may be surprised to see them moving). Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf may look like home, with bigger ships and buildings. What they won’t likely recognize are the light shows and light show-like posters; silver jets streaking across the sky; and amplified music. Rock music alone is pretty strange. Psychedelic rock while watching a light show the first time you’ve used LSD is a completely new trip.

I’ve also provided sketchy notes on one other door that may be used for effect, leading to the Jack the Ripper era of London.

You may also want to design some doors of your own that foreshadow or lead to future adventures.

Finally, Helter Skelter is not a historical reference. While I have researched the events experienced in this adventure, some rumors have been taken as fact, some facts have been altered to fit the timeline, and other facts have been manufactured to fill the needs of the adventure. These worlds are like our own, but they are not our own.

The doors

The door opens upon a long hallway. The wall is covered in butterflies. A flutter shudders down the hall as wings beat in a wave flowing to your right; but the butterflies do not move from their position on the wall.

To your right, on the same wall whose door you’ve just opened, are a series of six doors, each marked with a symbol.

The butterflies are pinned living to the wall, and contain the souls of people killed by Red Jack in his travels through these doors. Light from some of the butterflies dimly illuminates the hall.

If they’re chasing somebody who is trying to lead them into an ambush, that door (the crossroads door) will have a cherry pit just off to the side in front of it.

There are seven doors, including the one they came in on. The seventh leads to Red Jack’s Gambling House. The other six lead to various places and times. Each of the doors has a hand-drawn symbol.

1. Sun in a mountain pass: Hamokera slums;

2. Top hat and cane: London, 1888

3. Discordant Celtic-style crossroads: San Francisco, 1969

4. Stylized bird of paradise: Las Vegas, 1955

5. Eagle and fasces: Dead Rome at the Crossroads, Roman Year 2279

6. Two discordant playing cards with a heart and a diamond on them: Red Jack’s

7. Eliazu’s symbol (Illustrious Castle): Fork, the present time

Which door?

Only San Francisco and Vegas are important to this adventure. The other doors may be used for your purposes, replaced with other symbols. You’ll want to somehow let the player characters know that those symbols are interesting, preferably well before they enter Red Jack’s. Also, note that the symbol on Fork’s door assumes that Eliazu (from Illustrious Castle) is either free or otherwise powerful in Highland. You’ll want to use a symbol that points toward an adventuresome source of discord in your game.

For this adventure, I recommend that they go to San Francisco first, and then Las Vegas. if Joe Lakono (or some other enemy) is their reason for going through, give them some clue that their enemy has gone through the “crossroads” door--one probably left deliberately by their enemy to lead them into the ambush.

If they’re looking for the crossroads, they’re pretty likely to choose San Francisco first, as that door has the crossroads symbol on it. You can also just tell them if they ask: “The doors with the crossroads symbol and the bird symbol are the adventure; it doesn’t really matter, but it will probably be more fun if you go through the crossroads door first.”

Time and magic

Time beyond the doors is variable. When the characters return to Highland, there is a 50% chance that however long they spent behind the doors, divide by d20 for how long has passed in Highland; otherwise, multiply by d20 for how long has passed in Highland. Time spent within Red Jack’s gambling hall can take no time or it can take years.

If the characters have the world tree on their side, the tree will try to keep time held so that they arrive at the “right” time in Vegas and San Francisco. But once time slips forward, it never returns.

Magic is difficult in San Francisco, Vegas, and London. It costs half level of effect extra verve to cast for classical sorcerors, and an extra half spell level verve to memorize for mnemonic sorcerors. Ritual works normally, as do ritually-created magic items.

The characters are unique

If you’ve read the Highland book, you’ll notice lots of people from our world show up in different, but similar, roles in Highland. This adventure takes a lot of more recent people from our world and puts them into very similar roles and re-uses them. What about the player characters? Do different versions of them exist in other worlds? I recommend that the player characters be unique throughout the worlds they visit.

The player characters are the main characters. They’re not NPCs, not even in other worlds. Shane, the man with no name, and Roland Deschain are cool partially because they are one of a kind. If there’s a Shane policeman in one world, a Shane diplomat in another, and a Shane accountant in yet another, this dilutes the coolness of that character.

This isn’t to say that it can’t be done well. Michael Moorcock supposedly did a good job (I haven’t yet read any of those books). But it’s going to be difficult, and easy to make mistakes.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t bring players into the game. If some of your players happen to have been in San Francisco in 1969, it might be a great bit to meet that player.

Red Jack’s Gambling House

“Maria makes the mountains sound like folks was out there dyin’.”--Lerner and Lowe

Within Fork there is a door to a gambling room where the gambler may gamble the world. Red Jack’s House can be made part of another adventure, or used on its own.

Somehow, they must hear about the gambling house with many doors. Some sage, or ancient writing, or rambling old man, may provide the rumors.

A cherry tree marks the alley that leads to Red Jack’s. Anyone who eats a cherry from the tree will be able to pass into Red Jack’s House. Others will pass into an abandoned gambling house.

The doors of Red Jack’s hallway open in many slums and gambling centers. For example, besides Fork in the current era, in Highland it opens into Las Vegas in the late fifties, San Francisco in the mid to late sixties, and London’s East End in 1888. When Jack leaves through one of those doors, he takes a form appropriate to the time and place, perhaps even taking over a weak-willed evil person’s body.

Five yards around the door to Jack’s house in Fork is a level 2 Chaotic Evil place of power.

Legends of Red Jack

The Legend of Red Jack comes in many forms. They all share a strange lanky noble dressed like a dandy with a hat, a dark alley, and a sense of hopelessness. Few come unscathed from Red Jack’s gambling house. Within Red Jack’s you can lay odds against your wealth, your name, and your friends. You can play cards for your soul, and roll the wheel of fortune for good or ill.

1. A young noble stumbles drunk into an alley after a hard night of gambling. He is broke, and the cheap port he’s been drinking wants to regurgitate. But he’s also hungry. He is afraid to return to his wife and children, so he’s eating food off of the street. He sneaks into an apartment hoping to steal something, but inside he finds Red Jack, and Jack beckons him to the table. The nobleman loses every game. The next morning he awakes to find that he lost his fortune as a child, and has lived in the streets for his entire life. He has no wife, nor children, nor friends.

2. God plays cards with Red Jack for the fate of the world. Satan joins in the hand.

3. Red Jack holds regular games for demons, and men who stumble upon these games must play carefully.

4. Ghosts play at his table and fade away. Faeries play for butterflies and mushrooms.

5. A prostitute enters Red Jack’s and returns with a child to find a fortune awaiting--a fortune she already had, but didn’t know about.

Any city that opens into Red Jack’s will have tales like these in the underworld.

The requirement’s for Red Jack’s clothing will be a cape, cloak, or long coat; a hat; a weapon at his side. Whatever he wears, he goes overboard with style. If they come from Highland, he is the red jack from the deck of cards: a prince’s gaudy suit and white stockings, with an epée at his side and a long hat with a white feather.

If they came from San Francisco, he wears a tight-fitting lime green suit, a purple fedora, with a bright orange feather sticking out of the side, mirrored sunglasses, a gold chain and a dirk.

If they came from Vegas, he’ll wear a long black leather coat, tight leather leggings, black leather boots, a black pancake hat and green-tinted pince-nez glasses, and a huge sandalwood revolver by his side.

From London, they’ll see him wearing a long coat, a top hat, and carrying a heavy cane with a gold tip. From Hamokera, he’ll wear a white robe lined with gold, an orange turban, and wear a scimitar by his side tied on with an orange belt.

Words of power

Red Jack cannot leave the hall of doors, but he can ride along with other minds beyond the doors. This will include the player characters once they go through the doors. Red Jack doesn’t control the killers he rides along with, but he does talk to them, cajoling them and pushing them to murder in strange and frightening ways. Red Jack prefers victims with low willpower and low perception so that they are easily manipulated.

Jack can only take one mind at a time. He will make his victim see some other people as insects with the cross on their forehead. Later, he will make his victim think that the insects are looking back. Then, he’ll make his victim think that the sign of the crossroads on their forehead will ward off the insects. First drawn, then carved.

Finally, it’s time to start fighting back against the insects.

Ebeorie temet hpiti. Strange words for a nervous time. These are the words of power that call Red Jack. Speaking this phrase in a city where Red Jack has a door will give Jack the opportunity to latch onto the character’s mind, see what the character sees, and alter the character’s perceptions. If Jack wants to try, then the player must make a Willpower roll; a failed roll means that Jack has entered the character and can see what the character sees. Once Jack has latched onto a victim, it can leave and enter them at will.

Most people are strangely uneasy about those odd letters at the end a madman’s ravings, but enough of them will try to pronounce the Zodiac’s strange words that a few of them will successfully do so. Jack will have a wide pick of people to choose from, but will prefer people with power: a player character, or someone near a player character. If any of the player characters speak the words of power, Jack will try to ride their mind.

Red Jack and the Insect Mesh

What is the relationship between the mesh and Jack? Who controls which killers? Red Jack thrives on discord. The mesh desires to create discord--in the short term. For that reason, he’s happy to work with them. He’ll ride along in the minds of uninfected dupes, such as the Zodiac killer, and feed off of the discord they create.

The mesh needs charismatic leaders to convince followers to accept the insect infection.

San Francisco

“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”--Hunter S. Thompson

What are the seventies to you? Free love? Consciousness expansion? Lava lamps and bell bottoms? They all spread as a rainbow from San Francisco’s Summer of Love. But every light has its darkness, and the shadow of 1967 fell across California in 1969.

The world is at a crossroads. The Holy Land erupted into war in 1967. The continuing middle east conflict is, to some, a sign that Armageddon and anti-Christ are on the horizon. In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. At long last, there is nothing can be depended on. Many Americans even believe that their government is behind the wave of assassinations, and many others believe that assassination is a valid means of political expression. Civilization is unraveling. Police riots were televised to the world when they reached the gates of the Democratic National Convention. Sandbags surround the White House.

Now, in 1969, America fears race riots. From New York to Los Angeles, the cities of America have tasted again the flames of revolution. Home-grown terrorists attack across the country. Armed blacks march on the state assembly, occupy the ivied halls of the Ivy League. Gays and transvestites overturn police cars in the night. The police are amassing arms on a scale to fit an army, and while the police aren’t out to create disorder, they are clearly ready to preserve it. A red pall drops across the nation, and everywhere is the feeling of war.

For California, 1968 was the summer of assassination, 1969 the summer of murder, and both of them rose from the crossroads. For California, this is the summer of the Zodiac killer and the Manson family.

All empires crumble, and now may be the end for the United States. But the United States is in the grip of a cold war, and should the United States fall, the world falls with it. When the United States brings its might home, as Rome did when it fell, what will happen in Africa, in Asia, and Latin America? What happens in western Europe? Revolution will break out around the world, and simmering enmities will erupt into fire.

Some look to ensure that they hold power when the United States falls, and some work behind the scenes to ensure its failure. Others are resigned to its fall, for if the world does not fall quickly to revolution or nuclear conflict, it will be strangled slowly by overpopulation. The future is bleak, so why not avoid it altogether?

This world is one of the thicker roots of the tree. Should it snap, the tree is that much closer to tumbling, depending on how you want to go with this: how critical you want this adventure to be.

The guest list

There are a lot of people hanging out in this adventure. The most important are the mesh hosts, but there are a few historical figures and a few red-shirted mafia hirelings.

There are also several unnamed mesh hosts and free mesh.

People are strange

“Expand your consciousness and find ecstasy and revelation within.”--Timothy Leary

The hippie manifesto was described by Time in 1967 as “Do your own thing. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun.”

In 1969 San Francisco, especially the Haight-Ashbury and Tenderloin districts (and Berkeley if they get that far), there are stranger people than some guys running around in a robe, a pointed hat, or with a sword by their side. They’ll be panhandled just like everyone else, and asked if they want to sell or be turned on to marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms. They’ll be offered new religions and new politics. And they’ll be offered flowers, a place to stay, and free health care.

This was a period when people believed that a Yaqui shaman could turn into an eagle and hop across dimensions. Who knows? Perhaps Don Juan was a Gods & Monsters character.

The Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic may be a sight as well, and provide them with information and health care if they need it.

In 1969, the Mission district was still predominately Hispanic. Tongs still maintained control in Chinatown. The Tenderloin and the Castro both contained large gay communities. All of them met on Market Street.

Queen of the highway

“The policeman is not there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

The creatures of the insect mesh all bear a symbol somewhere on their bodies: the crossroads, its symbolism twisted and bloodied to their own purpose. This symbol has been taken by the Zodiac killer as well as by the Manson family.

The Insect Mesh’s plans in 1969 call for discrediting the growing Chaotic Good movement. They need to end this movement before it takes root in the world. Giving their acolytes a hippy veneer before dispersing them into the world is part of this plan.

Like Red Jack, the Insect Mesh prefers most of its victims to be of low charisma and low wisdom. But they do need a few victims of high charisma to lead the rest of its pawns. They will carefully nurture leaders such as Charles Manson who can motivate their cruel and less self-willed recruits.

The goal of the mesh is to bring down all order. In 1969 San Francisco, this means race riots. The counterculture movement is already on edge because of the Bloody Thursday People’s Park riots. The mesh’s infiltrators are keeping these groups anxious; all of the underground expects revolution soon.

The trigger will be the assassination of prominent black activist August Wey. Wey came to prominence as a neighborhood activist and youth organizer for the NAACP. While he succeeded at long-lasting improvements to recreational facilities for impoverished youth of all races in Oakland and San Francisco, Wey is most known for brokering a truce between the black, Hispanic, and Chinese gangs in the area. His death at the hands of a white soldier will cause riots in the black community--and beyond, if the mesh can work the factions well. If a bloody war can be engineered between the military and the rioters, the mesh will try to enter organized underground movements into the fight through bombings and direct confrontation.

Their plan also includes the assassination of other leaders and famous people. Sammy Davis Jr. (“father”) is on their list, as is governor Ronald Reagan.

The mesh have several hosts, including would-be assassin Jesse Hill, and a well-placed leader in the California National Guard. They also have a useful charismatic sheepdog named Charles Manson.

Alcatraz

The mesh hive in this world is in the dungeons of Alcatraz, a deserted prison island about a mile north of San Francisco. Alcatraz was a federal fort converted into a federal prison, but abandoned in 1963. The above-ground fort was destroyed to build the prison, but the dungeons from the original fort remain.

The dungeons are down a stairs at the front of cell block A (in the prison barracks), behind a large steel door. The stone corridors of the dungeons are always cold and damp, and pitiful ghosts wail in the distance. The dungeons are known for their maniacal suicides: an inmate who hacked his own hand off, another who slashed his own throat with his eyeglasses, another who managed to kill himself with a pencil sharpener.

Within the dungeons are the sounds of dripping water, rats, and footsteps high above. Unintelligible voices whisper in the damp air. A woman’s voice cries in the stone.

The cells of Alcatraz are four by eight feet. They contain stained toilets and a sink. The prison yard is a concrete area sunk into the hill and surrounded by concrete walls.

The two industries buildings are industrial work buildings where prisoners worked to earn money. The model industries building is five stories high. There are several caves beneath the model industries building, carved into the sandstone by wave action.

A tall smokestack rises from the power plant. The power plant’s roof says “Alcatraz” in large letters, visible by air.

The island is covered in plant life imported by its various occupiers, including roses and lilies once part of gardens maintained by military officers.

The water around Alcatraz is cold, making it very difficult to swim without dying from loss of heat.

From an organizational standpoint, the mesh hosts within the Alcatraz dungeons are interchangeable. They all know the same thing, because whenever the come near each other their knowledge is merged together. Even when a host is not near the other hosts, their death and its immediate circumstances will be felt by other hosts nearby.

Jesse Hill

Jesse Hill lived at 1139 Grant Avenue (between Pacific Avenue and Broadway Street) in the Sunset district when he first came to San Francisco. This number is in the phone book, along with his telephone number 673-1123. The number is disconnected. “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. The number has been disconnected.”

“Mr. Hill” moved out several months ago and the current residents (William and Ellen Browning) don’t know where he went. They do know that he was a Vietnam veteran, so maybe the army will know where he is. They can also provide a description, which can lead to the north docks or to Hill’s Steuart Street apartment. His current apartment at 77 Steuart Street (the Rose Field Apartments) Apartment 409 is south of Market looking towards the piers.

The military has his Steuart Street address. However, they’ll need to be tricked into giving it out. If they go to the army base at the Presidio, an easy Charisma roll will get his current address.

Jesse was found by Charles Manson, and recruited for Charly’s friends on Alcatraz. Once he became a part of Manson’s family, Jesse moved. He gets a check once a month from the army, mailed to his current address. He has become a mesh host, but only part time. The bug will not be controlling him when he performs the assassination.

Jesse was a sniper in the army. He has an M16 semi-automatic rifle with a military scope that negates three range penalties. He’ll be using this to assassinate August Wey. His run-down apartment has a near-perfect birds-eye view of the park at the end of Market Street.

Jesse’s apartment contains clippings of newspaper articles about August Wey scattered about the walls, with bulls-eyes drawn on his face. He also still has his army uniform, which he’ll be wearing during the assassination. There is a green beret in his closet, which is not part of his uniform but is there (like the uniform) to tie his action to the military, in this case special forces (which he was never a part of). He also has a matchbook from the Paradice Island Lounge.

His apartment does not have a phone; he uses a communal phone at the end of the hallway. Other residents will sometimes answer the phone when the mesh from Alcatraz call him to tell him they’re on Market Street and need to talk to him (and mesh their knowledge). This is a rundown hotel and the other residents are not talkative to anyone who remotely resembles law enforcement, but will be perfectly happy to chat with someone who gains their trust (or buys them a drink). Some of the things they’ll be able to pass on are that:

* The guy or guys calling Jesse had a strange, raspy voice.

* Jesse has a throat problem--sometimes he speaks in a diseased, high-pitched, maybe raspy too, voice. Sometimes he doesn’t.

* Jesse never made calls, he only received them.

* He once mentioned that he’s still in the military, then told them to forget he said it.

* Usually they meet at a coffeeshop on Market Street, the 49 Café, but a week ago he said back to them something about going to the island.

* They always ask for Private Hill.

* Jesse sometimes went for a ride in a black Cadillac sedan that would come pick him up after he got a phone call. Sweet vehicle. New or almost new deVille.

* He was a quiet man. Kept to himself mostly. Never drank or smoked.

* The apartment next to him goes through a lot of people, and a lot of them are women.

Some good names for other residents of his hall are Dan Westof, Ignacio Delgado, Franklin Gallia, and Sergio Morales. Lots of Blacks and Mexicans, and everyone is poor.

If they manage to capture Jesse alive (and without an insect inside him), he doesn’t know much. If they ask him about Charles Manson, he’ll claim to have known lots of Charlies in Vietnam (Viet Cong). In the aftermath of the bug leaving him, though, intimidating him into talking will be a very easy task. Jesse knows that:

* Charly brought him to Alcatraz to meet the bugs.

* Some of the bugs walk around as bugs, others live inside humans.

* The bugs use the doors beneath the Palace of Fine Arts to reach Paradice City.

* The symbol is the crossroads, and the crossroads are at the meeting of Highway 49 and 61 on the way to Paradice City.

Jesse’s mesh scar is on his lower back.

The Zodiac

The Zodiac sent an encoded message in a three-part cryptogram to three San Francisco-area newspapers: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald. Decoded, it reads:

“i like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangerous anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is that when i die i will be reborn in paradice and all the i have killed will become my slaves i will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife ebeorie temeth hpiti”

Deciphering this message is a difficult intelligence roll; it takes one day to try. Note that the words are all run together in the code. Without knowledge of the language, they’ll probably see this as ebeorie temethhpiti. Without knowledge of the demon’s name, they’ll see it as ebeorietemethhpiti.

Ebeorie temet hpiti means Ebeorie, Lord of Discord in the language of the underground. Depending on how well they translate it, it might come out as lord or king of unrest, chaos, or conflagration.

The letter that corresponds to the crossroads symbol is the letter “d”.

The Zodiac is one of Manson’s disciples. He was provided to the mesh by Manson so that they could provide him to Red Jack. They did this in return for Red Jack’s cooperation using the doors. The Zodiac enjoys killing and leaving strange messages to the world about his killings. He wants to cause discord and chaos.

The Zodiac lives in a run-down apartment in west San Francisco. Red Jack often rides along with the Zodiac and pushes him to murder.

Zodiac: (Human: 1; Survival: 5)

His name is David Stoley. He has short hair and glasses and is five feet eight inches tall.

Charles Manson

“I am the devil, and I have come to do the devil’s work. I have no mercy for you.”

“Death is the greatest form of love.”

“We have crossed ourselves out of this world.”

There were many prophets during the sixties and seventies. At this very moment, the Reverend Jim Jones is moving his congregation to Mendocino County several miles north, so that they can survive the coming nuclear war. Northern California is a nice place for that sort of thing, and he’ll be a big hit among the local politicians.

Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934, as Charles Milles Maddox) was leader of what came to be known as the Manson Family, a hippie cult that began to form around him in San Francisco in 1967. Manson believed that a Final War between Black and White in the summer of 1969 would destroy America. He and his Family would wait out the war in a secret city underneath Death Valley that they could reach through a hole in the ground. In this secret city they would live in splendor while the world above was drenched in blood.

When the Blacks didn’t seem to cooperate with his prophecy, he decided to trigger the war himself by committing murders and blaming them on black activist groups such as the Panthers and Muslim groups.

His Manson Family is an echo of the True Family.

It’s a bit of a stretch to put Charles Manson in San Francisco but there are reports that he was in Northern California in the summer of 1969. In the context of this adventure, Manson is a mesh recruit, a charismatic leader drawing in an army for the insect mesh, and creating a hit list for that army to kill. If the hit list is even half successful, there will be chaos. Manson is also influencing the Zodiac killer, a protégé of his if you will.

He doesn’t know about the insect mesh, only that the people he’s hooked up with have power.

Manson is 34 years old in August of 1969. It is likely that he has already killed several times. He uses a High-Standard 22 pistol. If they try to capture or kill Manson, his family will fight for him while he fires from the rear--or more likely runs away. If he runs, he’ll try to get to Alcatraz.

In 1970, Manson was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for instructing certain members of the group to carry out the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings in Los Angeles. During the trial, Manson and his followers courted media attention. Manson appeared at the trial with an ‘X’ he had carved into his forehead with a knife. This was copied by his followers the next day. The pattern was modified several times and copied by his followers each time. Eventually the pattern became a swastika, most likely for the publicity it would bring.

This is one of the places where you’ll need to be careful not to send the players off on a wild goose chase. If the player characters choose to go to Los Angeles, you’re pretty much on your own. Do a search on “Spahn’s Movie Ranch” to find out about the semi-abandoned Cielo Drive “hole in the earth” where the Manson family lived. If they do this after the Tate/LaBianca murders, remember that Hollywood was in a panic. Two nights, two brutal murders, and “pig” in blood on the front door of the Tate house. Some stars left town; others sent their children away. They had no idea who did it or why, until November when Susan Atkins confessed.

Death Angels

A black supremacist group, the Death Angels believe that white men are a created race inferior in all ways to true humans. They were created by grafting snakes to humans thousands of years ago by a wizard named Ya’akov. Already murderous, the Death Angels are destined to burst into San Francisco news in 1973 when they go on a killing frenzy starting with a machete killing.

In 1969, the Death Angels are one side in the True Family’s attempt to foment racial tension. They will probably not figure in this adventure unless Wey dies. If Wey dies, the Death Angels will be one of the groups the mesh uses to stoke racial violence.

If the player characters choose to find and question some Death Angels, they will find them polite and well-dressed, with short hair or shaved heads. They can be found at the Self-Help Moving and Storage warehouse on Market Street at Twelfth Avenue.

Convincing one to talk will be difficult. They will claim that they’re members of the Nation of Islam, but will refuse to talk about “Death Angels”. The following information is available from the Death Angels if they do talk:

* The grafted snakes are going to kill a prominent black man. When they do, it’s our time to act.

* They’re going to kill police officers, as many as they can. They know they’ll eventually get caught, but they need to inspire others to fight the snakes.

* They’ve been in contact with a black wizard named Mark. He can make time itself slow. He drives a late-model black Cadillac.

* Mark meets them in their warehouse or sometimes at the park by the Palace of Fine Arts. There is a door in the park that wizards can use, and the door leads to the magical crossroads, from which all crossroads and choices echo.

* Mark has taught them rituals that he performs at the Palace.

The Weathermen

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

On the white side of the racial divide, the mesh are priming a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society. The weathermen will, when they happen, speak approvingly of the Manson murders and set a deadly bomb at a San Francisco police station. The Weathermen prefer explosives to direct confrontation, however. If the August Wey assassination goes as planned, the Weathermen will begin bombing shopping areas, police stations, and municipal buildings.

The Weathermen have a couple of old houseboats in Sausalito, about a mile northeast of the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. They consist, currently, of a stable group of about five white men and women, and usually around ten to twenty more people who move in and out of the group. The unofficial leader of this cell is Bernardine Dohrn, a veteran of the 1968 Chicago riots outside of the Democratic national convention.

August Wey

August Wey is an amalgamation of many black revolutionaries of the late sixties. Many of these quotes are inspired by or taken almost straight from Eldridge Cleaver, for example. His story is influenced by the story of Bobby Seale and local community organizers.

Some possible quotes from August if they meet him personally:

“Sheathe your sword, brother. This is not yet that kind of war.”

(In response to “what can we do for you?”) “Can you feed these children?”

“We are pagans: all Americans today are pagans. We have killed all our gods excepting Ares, to whom we daily sacrifice.”

“We are a god-fearing nation. The god we fear is Ares, to whom we sacrifice daily. All our other gods are dead.”

August Wey: (Human: 1; Survival: 3; Defense: 0)

The Unknown Soldiers

“All right baby. Let’s hold ourselves. Let’s--your angry, your mad, man, let’s hold it now, and see if whitey’s gonna come up with it.”--Sammy Davis, Jr.

Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.’s Summit (the core of the Rat Pack) have been working behind the scenes against the Mesh, but in 1969 it doesn’t look like they’re being successful. Kennedy refused their assistance and the Mesh killed him. He had been forewarned enough that his death did not end in a coup, but the Mesh had more waiting for America a few years later.

Davis’s friend Martin Luther King, Jr. died despite their attempts to save him. The Summit knew that his message of non-violence and racial harmony was in direct conflict with the Mesh’s plans for racial violence and the undermining of the world.

The Summit’s representative in this adventure is twenty-two year old Deanna Carmen, a sharp-witted, gutsy broad who rose from the ashes of the Moulin Rouge and is the Summit’s most effective agent.

Assuming that the player characters follow the plan, they’ll be seeing Deanna as an adult before they see her as a child. This is a little tricky because there’s no guarantee the player characters will actually go through the Vegas door. You’ll have to work that out for yourself and with your players.

Deanna has read science fiction and knows that too much foreknowledge could damage the world, so there will be hints, but no outright references or specifics from her about what the characters did/will do in 1955.

Remember that there’s no need for the two adventures to be played sequentially. They can have other adventures in between each door. They may come back to Red Jack’s later, or they may find the door in a different place entirely. There are many doors beneath the Paradice Island Lounge.

The Palace of Fine Arts

The area near the door under the Palace is a Chaotic Good level 1 place of power.

The Paradice Island Lounge

“The great things in this universe are things that we never see.”--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Paradice Island Lounge burned down decades ago. The Mesh no longer use it as their headquarters.

“One of our first successes,” says Deanna. “No one even went to jail for it. The Chairman still had some power then.”

Someone still answers the phone number on the matchbook, however, if they call the operator and ask for Las Vegas 3-1416. If they call the Paradice, a carefully-modulated female voice will answer (if you remember the old AT&T recordings, try to emulate it). Because the mesh mind-meld doesn’t work over long distances, they might be able to fool the operator into giving them information about the assassination or the mesh in San Francisco.

Las Vegas

“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”--Hunter S. Thompson

In 1955, Las Vegas is at the crossroads.

The insect mesh is inserting itself into world politics. It is ensuring that the tools it needs will be available in the seventies to destroy the world. From the ashes of alcohol prohibition, a new prohibition is born to ensure that acolytes such as Charles Manson will be able to infiltrate to levels of power they otherwise would have no hope of reaching.

Racial tension was tightened. The cold war was heightened. The Korean war continued and the seeds were being planted for world war in Vietnam.

This is meant to be a short adventure: a running fight through the Moulin Rouge and then an attempt to get back into the Paradice Island Lounge.

The Moulin Rouge

“Somebody was always across the railroad tracks.”

The Moulin Rouge is one of the most famous hotels of the fifties. It is on the cover of Life magazine. It is a first-class hotel with first-class food, first-class entertainment, and state-of-the-art equipment. It advertises itself as “the first truly cosmopolitan hotel in this famous city”. Its doctrine of racial integration among its employees, clientele, and entertainment threatens the Insect Mesh’s plans for Vegas. For the first time in Vegas, whites and blacks can place their bets together.

It will exist for less than six months. Whether the Moulin Rouge’s creation or closing will have any effect on the future of this world is in the hands of the player characters.

The Moulin Rouge is at the edge of Westside, the black side of Vegas. Vegas was fully segregated, and the Westside contained the black casinos, businesses, and people. Black entertainers weren’t allowed to stay in the Strip hotels they played in; they weren’t allowed to roam the Strip casinos when their shows closed. They had to retreat to the Westside.

When the Moulin Rouge opened at 900 West Bonanza Road on Tuesday, May 24, 1955, it provided black entertainers with a place to stay and a place to go in the early hours after shows. White entertainers followed. The show-girls came, and the gamblers followed.

If you want to mingle with the cool crowd in 1955, the Moulin Rouge is the place to be. William Bailey, one of the producers at the Moulin Rouge, described it this way:

The African-American stars that worked on the Strip could not entertain and work with their white contemporaries in those establishments, so everybody came to the Moulin Rouge to do it. And after the working hours of the last show on the Strip, everyone gathered at the Moulin Rouge to have a ball. And it went on till seven, eight, nine o’clock in the morning. It was just something out of a storybook. You would have to have been there to really be able to properly articulate the kind of atmosphere, the kind of electricity that was generated at this hotel.

I stumble over myself verbally when I start thinking about the wonderful times that we used to have and the thrill I used to get when I’d walk out on the stage for a third show. They started at, I think, two o’clock in the morning. It would be nothing to walk out and see Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra. You name it and they were there. And it was so exciting to be able to entertain people at this level that had come over to the Westside to enjoy themselves and have a good time, let their hair down and just be people.

It was a glorious six months.

The Moulin Rouge appeared to be a great success. It attracted standing-room only crowds, opening a third show where Strip hotels had only two. But on Wednesday, October 19, 1955, employees came to work to discover the doors chained shut. Within a week, one of the partners moved to the mob-run Desert Inn casino. In the bankruptcy proceedings, it was alleged that the other hotels pressured financiers into bringing short-term notes due when they otherwise would have let the notes ride. And other money was simply disappearing. “Somebody was milking the pig.”

There was odd trouble in the Moulin Rouge from the start. On April 7, 1955, while still under construction, one wing was destroyed, supposedly when a construction worker’s torch started a fire which went out of control and took out the entire wing. Another fire is destined to destroy the abandoned Moulin Rouge in 2003.

Employees

Everyone who works at the Moulin Rouge is black. Most are dressed in some sort of costume. The doormen, waiters, dealers, and guards, for example, dress in the “gaudy colors” of the French Foreign Legion. The greeter replacing Joe Louis is dressed in a Foreign Legion uniform. (Louis himself wears an ordinary suit when he greets visitors.)

The Watusi Dancers

The floor show dance is billed as the Tropi Can Can; one of the dances they do is “the Watusi” in which the dancers come out “in feather tails to writhe through a violent sequence of jumps and contortions. At the climax of the dance a medicine man [comes] bounding out brandishing two live squawking chickens.”

Their signature number, of course, is the Can-Can.

There are twenty-three floor show dancers. In real life, some of the dancers’ names were Dee Dee Jasmine, Anna Bailey, Oberia Coleman, and Mary Louise Williams. The captain of the chorus line is Carrie Adams Pollard. The floor show is produced by Clarence Robinson, from New York, who also directed shows at the Paris Moulin Rouge.

Music

Backing up the special guests who stream into the Moulin Rouge is Benny Carter and his band, with Bob Bailey as master of ceremonies and stage manager Wally Ogle.

A feast of friends

Everyone shows up at the Moulin Rouge, so whoever you want your characters to meet or see can be here: Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Harry Belafonte, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tallulah Bankhead. Even a twelve-year-old Maurice and nine-year-old Gregory Hines will be there as one of the opening acts along with the Platters.

The partners

There are several partners behind the scenes, but the most visible partners in the day-to-day operation of this fictional Moulin Rouge are Joe Louis, Hadrian “Haddy” Reuben, and Phillippe “Biz the Boss” Bismeaux.

Haddy Reuben is a Harlem restaurateur who wants to expand his empire, and sees the integrated clientele of the Moulin Rouge as the future of entertainment. Reuben is a tough man, who started as a chef before becoming a restaurant owner and nightclub mogul. He’s basically honest, but is not above getting into a brawl when his future is at stake or he knows he’s right. Growing up black in the thirties, however, he also recognizes the need for discretion and the usefulness of appearing to back down in order to regroup and come back stronger. Reuben and Louis have hit it off very well and have become good friends.

Bismeaux has a checkered past, having come out of construction in New Orleans. If that sounds like he’s got mafia connections, there’s a reason: he does. He doesn’t know about the mafia’s connection with the insect mesh (and wouldn’t believe it even if he found out) but he does assist them in little ways. He creates bad shares of ownership in the Moulin Rouge, and sells them according to the mob’s instructions. He’ll move to the Desert Inn after the Moulin Rouge fails. Bismeaux is a great talker and con artist, the kind of man who can happily shake your hand and slip off your watch in the process.

Joe Louis

The Brown Bomber was 41 in 1955. He had retired from boxing, but by this time he had run into trouble with the IRS and had returned to boxing despite being out of shape. Harry Reuben offered him part ownership in the Moulin Rouge in return for his being a greeter at the hotel.

After the Moulin Rouge closes, and continually hounded by the IRS, Louis will go on to become a professional wrestler. He will remain friends, however, with Frank Sinatra.

That’s in our “real” world. During this period in 1955 in the game, Louis is aware that there are problems in the Moulin Rouge financial structure, although he doesn’t know exactly what they are. He knows that money is disappearing, and he knows that there’s a mafia connection with Bismeaux (although he’s also pragmatic enough to realize that just about every successful casino has some sort of mafia connection). He’s making contact with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. to see if they would like to take part ownership and use their influence to clean the place up.

If the player characters can block the mesh murder run and save Louis, Sinatra, and Davis from the mesh, the trio will form a far more important organization. Their “Summit” will try, and often fail, to oppose the mesh in this world. And hopefully they’ll learn enough from the player characters for Deanna to know where to be in 1969.

Frank Sinatra

“The highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual. Weigh everything that is proposed to you, everything in the line of government and law and economic theory, on this one scale: that it should at all times not offer you sanctuary or security in exchange for your right to fly as high and as far as your own strength and ability will take you. Plenty of room for a floor underneath so that no one should live in degradation, but reserve the right for yourself to be free.”

The Summit grew from the ruins of the Moulin Rouge. Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, assuming things go well in this adventure, will form a counterforce to the True Family and the Insect Mesh. They will work behind the scenes to end racism as well as alleviate the nuclear tensions of the cold war.

They will be more successful at the former than the latter. They will first support John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy will sever ties with the Summit once he takes office. He will escalate the cold war in South America and in Asia. He will also encourage Congressional harassment of Sinatra.

The Summit will then support Richard Nixon, who will campaign to end the Vietnam war. Nixon will maintain relations but will also extend the war into Cambodia at the same time as he tries to defuse tension between the United States, Russia, and China. Nixon eventually will end the Vietnam war in a manner that ensures at least another decade of cold war tension.

After Vietnam, the Summit’s behind-the-scenes power will wane along with their entertainment draw, and they will retire from fighting the Insect Mesh. In the end, however, Summit support in the sixties for Ronald Reagan in California will have paved the way to his successful White House bid in 1980 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Summit will be more successful in its support for integration. Sinatra and Davis will refuse to stay at hotels and perform at clubs that don’t accept black patrons. They will encourage their friends in the wider rat pack to do the same. Their activism will lead clubs and casinos throughout the United States to end their racist policies and usher in the integrated United States of the seventies.

Sinatra, while volatile, is loyal to his friends. He will remain friends with Joe Louis, paying Louis’s medical bills several times, and will similarly help Spiro Agnew after the Vice President’s disgrace.

While some of his best movies and his greatest performances involve people at odds with the mafia, Sinatra will be hounded by rumors of mafia connections throughout his life. Most of these rumors will be created by the mafia itself.

Sammy Davis, Jr.

“Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to get insulted.”

Of the Summit members who met at the Moulin Rouge, the crucial members will be Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. With the Moulin Rouge experience behind him, Davis will campaign against segregation, and be the first black actor to star in episodic television--a show which the Insect Mesh will fight to keep off the air. He will also marry a white actress in the sixties.

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, Davis will help defuse the race riots that sweep the nation. In 1969 he will be on the Manson Family’s hit list of blacks who need to be killed to usher in a new America.

When things become informal, he enjoys getting up on stage and taking over the drums for a bit.

Deanna Carmen

Deanna Carmen is eight years old in 1955, and is one of the opening acts at the Moulin Rouge along with tap dancers Maurice and Gregory Hines.

The Paradice Island Lounge

In Las Vegas, Red Jack’s Gambling House enters in the basement of the Paradice Island Lounge and Casino. The Paradice is located across the tracks from the Moulin Rouge at 111 North Main Street.

The Paradice Island Lounge is a Pacific Island-themed casino and nightclub. New York mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel founded the Paradice in 1946 backed by Meyer Lansky. Siegel opened the Paradice on December 26, 1946, closed it again, and re-opened it in March 1947. During the building of the casino, Siegel was prone to outbursts; after one tirade, noticing that his construction foreman was nervous about making a known mobster (and one of the founders of Murder, Inc) angry, Siegel said, “don’t worry, we only kill each other.” He should have listened to himself: Siegel was murdered by the mob in June 1947.

Siegel’s death, and the publicity around it, glamorized Las Vegas as a place of risk and ruthlessness.

The mafia continued running the Paradice through True Family managers throughout the fifties and up to at least 1967 (assuming it survives the player characters).

Backdoors

The basement of the Paradice Island Lounge is filled with doors, to anywhere you’d like. Doors to anywhere important will be locked, but since the mesh don’t have magic, they’ll be locked normally and easily bypassed using an “open” spell or a thief’s skill. The basement is an Ordered Evil place of power.

Other Places

These casinos and other places may play a part if the characters spend time in Vegas. More likely, they’ll be part of the background. Vegas in 1955 is not as bright and neon-covered as it is today, but it is pretty amazing compared to Highland.

Eldorado

The Eldorado (City of Gold) Club is just down the street from the Paradice, at 128 East Fremont Street. The owner, Benny Binion, is currently in jail for federal tax evasion. Eldorado is known as the first downtown club to install carpeting in the gambling hall. The restaurant serves a Texas chili recipe that Binion acquired in a Texas prison. The Eldorado serves free alcohol to gamblers and will accept any bet a player can put on the table.

“If you want to get rich, son, make little people feel like big people. Good food cheap, good whiskey cheap, and a good gamble. That’s all there is to it.”

Binion is as ruthless as anyone in Vegas. Vegas legend has it that he’ll hire hit men to kill anyone caught cheating at his casino.

Disneyland

In Anaheim, Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955. It probably won’t be a part of the adventure, but giant talking mice might be on the news. Ronald Reagan was there, but the current governor of California is Goodwin J. Knight. Sinatra, Davis, and much of the rest of the rat pack were also at the opening.

El Cortez

Bugsy Siegel’s first casino was at 600 Fremont Street. He sold it to finance his purchase of the Paradice.

The Riviera

The Riviera, a nine-story high rise, opened on April 20, 1955 on the south side of the strip. It was the first, but far from the last, Vegas high-rise. It will stand out, despite its distance from the Paradice and Moulin Rouge.

Hour for magic

What's real? What's fantasy? There really was a Moulin Rouge in Las Vegas in 1955. Part of the building is still there, though it's been through several starry-eyed owners and a massive fire. Yes, it really was the cool place to be after hours. And yes, employees really did arrive one unknown October morning to find the doors chained shut.

The people in this fantasy Moulin Rouge, however, are not the same people who worked in the real Moulin Rouge. With the exception of Joe Louis they’re all composites and outright new characters. Even Louis did not really become a secret warrior against an extra-dimensional insect hive. At least, as far as I know. When it comes to the Las Vegas Moulin Rouge, myth and reality are already meshed.

London

“Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder? Your days were born in blood and fire! Think not to be inured to history. Its black root succours you. Are you asleep to it, that you cannot feel its breath upon your neck, nor see what soaks its cuffs?”--Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper

London’s 1888 Whitechapel murders are not an integral part of this adventure, but a glimpse of the misty London streets may help set the mood for the adventure. If you want more details about the mood and scene of London in 1888, I recommend the graphic novel “From Hell”.

The murders were rituals as well. As the Ripper progressed through his victims, the mutilations became increasingly severe. Annie Chapman’s uterus was removed. Catherine Eddowes’s uterus and kidney were removed, and her face mutilated. Dismembered bodies were found throughout London during this period, including a torso in the basement of the Metropolitan Police headquarters.

A thick fog rolls through the doorway, bearing with it the smell of rotten eggs and the sour, rank smell of human waste and horse droppings. Beyond the fog you hear the sound of horses trotting on cobblestone, carriages clattering behind them on stone. Walls loom out of the fog on the other side of a cramped, dark alley.