Turn 5 Part 2: The Rat, the Racist, the Rogue, and the Robbery (Patreon)

[X] [Power of the Lounge] Play a Frame Card: I don't like any of these choices, I want to make my own.

-[X] [Rat piper] A man who has fallen on hard times drank his money away, going to the bar to drink and then to a random warehouse nearby to sleep. It was there at the warehouse, having used the last of his money on drinks from the bar, that he heard the rats speak to him. He spoke back. Through bits of insanity he would train the rats to steal food for himself, to find coins in the wastes, to survive. Who knows what he will do next.

[X][FAVOR] Zelda's concoctions had been shown to have mind-bending effects that were great at incapacitating people; she needed more funding for her work? Well, Arkham can do her a double-solid and test her more potent chemicals in a bank robbery. ("The Opaque Shadow" is a black-suited fellow in the vein of Roman Torchwick.)

[X][WAR] Use Arkham's connections to the newspapers to run a smear campaign against Chief Garret. (If we do the bank robbery, drive home on the papers that Garrett failed to stop it.)

[X][FRAME] Violet Hall: The median-most singer in Gotham. Sure, she was a woman, but she was a woman working in a integrated bar, one who was an anarchist.

[X][AMADEUS] Invite Amadeus and Zelda for a night of bar-hopping and dancing (idk, what do people do for fun in this time period?).

[X][FILM] Commission Gluck to help with refining the BARTOMATIC FILM DEVICE.

[X][ACT] Mysteries of Amohalko: Have Arkham spin a tale about a place of occultic lore and curses in the distant West (in the style of Nacirema) where the horizon stretches without change, lakes are conjured into existence by cryptic geomancers, and God himself blows down every fool that dares to tame its wilds.

[X][MANAGER] Renovate the St. Majeste

-[X] Set up a gambling hall within the St. Majestie

!!!!GOTHAM!!!!

Content Warning: Death of a child.

!!!!GOTHAM!!!!

Ah, back to hear more about that illustrious den of desegregated all american sin and classy-ish criminality the Lounge, I see. Our story continues with Garret making the worst decision of his life: he decided to hit Josiah where it hurt, and in the process earned the ire not of Professor Arkham the Magician, but the entirety of Josiah’s being and the full force of his influence, legal and otherwise.

It was the end of Spring. The Lounge had undergone renovations: a new and improved gambling lounge that was now open to the public, designed to part people from their money. Rich, poor, Josiah didn’t discriminate: he was a true egalitarian embodying the capitalist spirit of america, who would fleece you for however much you were willing to pay, regardless of if you lived in the opulent halls of a Heights mansion or under the damp protection of a Bowery manure cart. Josiah hired a few different employees to man the place: former criminals, like his old waiter, and much like the costumed criminal they had all been recommended to him by his old buddy Charlie Capers. Whatever else you might say about Josiah, he was perfectly willing to ignore a record, especially when each person brought in were sufficiently talented at separating people who walk in from their money.

Sure, it was more expenses to go on to an already heavy tab, but now the Lounge had its own fine tuned revenue extractor, one that drew massive crowds in the increasingly hot weather, the inebriating masses looking for a way to kill time on warm spring and summer days and cool off while having fun. Cards, slot machines, dice. Of course, as the saying goes, the house always won.

The downside to becoming a den of sin in full however is that it attracts a certain attention, and not the kind you want if you want to retain a reputation of being stand-up. Josiah’s policy for that, to help maintain at least a veneer of respectability was that he didn’t advertise the place as a gambling hall: no, it was a ‘gentlemans entertainment parlor’, only open a few hours a day, coincidentally when the ship was far from port. To lend legitimacy to this, Josiah would add a few games of skill and regularly hold tests of the Arkham Projectocorder, something he’d regularly advertise in the papers.

Of course, no such thing as a free lunch: cheap booze and gambling combined with desegregation meant that while there were a few high rollers that could eat a few thousand dollars without hurting their checkbook, most of the people that Josiah’s little parlor wound up taking for a ride were black people who had come to have a good time only to wind up losing their shirt. Years after, in his journal, Mark Jacobs would note this was the first time his distaste for Josiah morphed into outright anger: the young man wouldn’t confront his boss about it of course, but he could see the harm the Magician was doing to the community, the ravages of alcoholism and gambling merging into a singular monstrous chimera that helped to ruin lives and undo the work he was trying to do to help the city and his neighborhood.

No-one else exemplified the harm Josiah had accidentally caused in his greed and ignorance of consequence than Harold Brown, the man who would eventually become the Rat Piper. An East Ender who had made his living as a flute instructor for rich white people and their children, over the course of several months he would lose his home, his family, and his mind, his journey starting with him developing a gambling addiction: you see, our friend Harry had a predilection for the cards, especially after a few cups of Bowmans to help the nervous, anxiety ridden man deal with the stress of his job. Unable to afford rent because of his nightly expenditures, he and his wife and infant son would be kicked out onto the street.

It didn’t take long for little baby brown to take sick, and it was a short and tragic wait until little baby brown was no more, his parents having to build a tiny coffin. His wife leaving him, the man would descend into severe alcoholism, using an abandoned warehouse to sleep and spending what little money he made to purchase more booze, even going after the higher priced stuff like Witches Brew. After all, why not? Wasn’t like he had a home any more that cost rent to live in. Wasn’t like he had a family to provide for any more.

Wasn’t like he had anyone to care if he drank himself to death.

Now, you might be asking how he afforded this: the man’s life was self-destructing, but that didn’t change the fact he was good at what he did. He still had an income, he just wasn’t spending it on anything else but killing himself slowly, numbing the pain with drink and drugs like opium, and the absolute barest of necessities.

And maybe he would have, eventually, died. But he didn’t: instead the toxic blend of chemicals soaking into his brain had a chain reaction. It began with fights: more than one night the man would find himself escorted off the boat at the first opportunity because he had slugged another patron, his continued patronage only tolerated because of how much he spent on booze.

The funny thing is, he didn’t gamble any more: guess he had lost his taste for it. Of course, it was too little at that point: his world was already in freefall, and the fact he was no longer wasting money on poker meant he had more to spend on things like bottles of laudenam and ether.

Maybe that’s why he started hearing voices. Dunno when it started: hell, maybe Brown didn’t either, back then. Could be the transition between having irregular thoughts and giving those thoughts their own personality was one the guy never noticed. Regardless of anything though, we know the switch at least happened: people only noticed when he was found to have brought a rat aboard the boat, the flutist talking to the rodent like it was a person, engaging it in one-sided conversation.

Harold had found a friend, and thus was born the Rat Piper. Convinced that he could speak to and understand rodent-kind, Harold began training not just his right hand rat, whom he had named Willard, but also entire troops of vermin who lived in the warehouse with him, teaching them to perform various behaviors to the tune of his flute. Namely, theft. Food to help feed the rest of ‘The Marching Band’, money so the piper could construct himself a new home beneath the streets of Gotham, in one of the myriad damp and mazelike sewers of that flood prone city, and various other items the man desired.

Turns out there was a positive to going nutty: maybe it was the change of brain chemistry, maybe it was the fact he now had his rats to keep him company, but Harold was given new life, new purpose: to lead the rats of Gotham, serving as the originator of Gothams proud legacy of rattus norvegicus obsessed criminals as he attempted to create his great congregation of vermin.

Now, a pause here, because this is something we need to vote on. We have what is, in essence, a very archetypical batman villain. Tragic backstory, deleterious mental problems, weird and funky criminal gimmick.

The problem is experience. Over time, this character will expand their repertoire, developing skills, tools, assets, etc, until the point they have the means to, to put it lightly, cause problems, especially once their condition advances enough. Right now, they’re green though: all they can accomplish at the moment is petty theft with the rat brigade.

As a bit of a starting bonus, I’m gonna let you pick one skill or talent this fella is going to cultivate in the next few months: the rules are though it has to fit his theme in some way. Action code is [RATS].

[ ] The Sciences: An odd choice for a musician, some might argue, but it wasn’t because of Music that the man would send his rats to rob Gotham University, stealing books from it’s library and attending what lectures he could to educate himself in basic chemistry, anatomy, and biology. Rat Piper gains very basic understanding of various sciences and the ability to apply them. Note that he isn’t a scientist (though spending Frame cards can, potentially, get them there) and that this will not make him able to do scientist things on its own.

[ ] Instinct: Maybe it was a side effect of the brew, maybe it was simply their madness stimulating their subconscious analytical skills, maybe it was the result of a very, very smart and obsessed man applying themselves, but the Rat Piper would find their intuitive skills growing to the point that they would frequently anticipate things on their robberies before they happened. Rat Piper gains enhanced instinct and the ability to successfully predict things quicker or with greater accuracy. Note that this isn’t a superpower (yet) and will still be well in the realm of human capability, though he will objectively be very canny.

[ ] Combat: One day, the Rat Piper would find themselves mugged, stealing the money they had been planning to use to buy rat food. Incensed, the man would begin training his rats to help defend him, teaching them to swarm and attack to the sound of his flute. Rat Piper gains basic combat ability via offensive rat swarm. Not many notes here: what you see is what you get.

[ ] Write In.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

While Harold Brown was going insane from the Lounges beverage selection, Josiah commissioned Frau Gluck to help Mr. Bart improve the Bartomatic Projectocorder. The man had a goal: he wanted the Lounge to be at the forefront of cinema. Gluck wasn’t a film-maker, but she was a brilliant enough engineer that it didn’t matter. Together with the prototypes original creator, she spent the next several months working either directly or by mail depending on whether the Mystery Lodge was in town to upgrade the machine.

Across the board the device was upgraded, becoming smaller, lighter, and having wheels installed to help the device move during filming. The length of movies it could both record and play also increased, allowing it’s creator to film longer features of up to 19 minutes, longer than any other camera on the market, with the added benefit of a clearer, less flickery picture thanks to being able to play frames faster, quicker than any other competitor on the open market.

Using this technology, Mr. Bart created, using Vogel and Brown as actors, the film “Two Locksmiths and a Donkey.” The film was the first of its kind, both for its length, quality, and the fact it was designed from the ground up to appeal to african americans. Screened in the Entertainment Parlor, the short picture drew in enthusiasts first from Gotham, then from further abroad. They say George Melies himself made the time to visit once the french artist heard that there was a studio in America pioneering all new technology, the man purchasing his own Projectocorder for use.

It also drew the ire of Thomas Edison, who according to legend attempted to buy the patent to the machine, only to get blown off by Josiah, who apparently didn’t realize the man he thought of as a new york light-bulb salesman was also in the business of film.

This affronted the man, who would go to his grave hating Josiah’s guts. Not two months later he released his own Edison Projectocorder, designed to ape the design of Josiah’s. Unfortunately for the world renowned inventor, his version had all the same problems as the original prototype combined with worse quality as well as the bad tendency to catch fire. This meant it would never become a commercial success. Quite the opposite: the machine was too much of a disaster to find itself in the dustbin of history, instead serving as a very public example of Edisons failure, one that the man wound up pouring vast amounts of money into only to wind up with bupkiss.

Friends of Edison say the man would go on extremely public rants about the topic, lambasting the man he had deemed his rival, impugning Josiah to whoever listened. As far as Josiah was concerned however, a crank up in New York was, to use modern parlance, a nothing burger: when a reporter from the Metropolis Times questioned him to help write a paper on Edison, all Josiah said according to the article that followed was that “I don’t particularly care about the vitriol of a yankee nutbar who kills elephants and have better things to do than ruminate on their absurd envy.”

Edison did not take this well. Josiah had made yet another foe, albeit this one far away.

Alright, so we’ve covered the basic upgrades. However, you don’t hire the person who will eventually create the Kriegstaffebots for basic. You get to pick a unique upgrade to help differentiate the new and improved Arkham Projectocorder from it’s competitors. Action code [PROJECTOCORDER].

[ ] HIGH POWER: The Projectocorder would be upgraded with a(n optional) power cable. When plugged into a sufficiently powerful source of electricity, Gluck and Bart had designed it to go into high power mode, improving its performance across the board allowing for clearer, longer films and allowing a small on-board motor and control device to allow for smoother movement while filming.

[ ] EXPERIMENTAL COLOR TECHNOLOGY: The Projectocorder would be the first recorder that would record in color thanks to a series of improvements to its camera. The colors were washed out and lacking vibrancy, but it was something no one else could offer yet, and even when they did, it would be poor quality and labour intensive compared to what the Projectocorder could do.

[ ] PHONOGRAPH BASED SOUND UNIT: The Projectocorder wasn’t yet capable of recording sound on its own. However, Gluck and Mr. Bart would collaborate to create another machine, a special phonograph recorder that could be attached to the Projectocorder to give the movies a soundtrack, albeit one that was tinny and recorded separately.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

The main act of the season, by comparison, was less notable. A simple exercise in storytelling, resulting from a conversation Josiah had with a patron of his bar whose identity is to this day unknown other than their name: Michael Carter. Apparently, the man had been trying to get to Oklahoma to find someone only to somehow wind up stranded in Gotham somehow.

The performance that resulted, Tales of Amohalko, would consist of Josiah telling thinly veiled stories about Oklahoma, presenting them as things he had learned journeying to another nation. Vast fields of amber grain harvested to feed the inhabitants, stretching into the vast horizon as far as the eye can see. Manmade lakes created to help prevent drought and provide water for drinking and crops, a detail that was at the time wrong but would come to fruition AFTER the dust bowl. What made Amohalko special, however, was it’s weather: Josiah talked about storms so violent that the Amohalkoans had made the habit of adding basements to their homes to huddle in so that the twisters that would lift up and throw houses entire miles wouldn’t hurt them.

He also included a number of things not unique to the state, repackaged to make the place seem strange and foreign: the Amohalko use special sheafs of paper printed with strange designs and metal coins stamped with the visages of their culture heroes as currency, utilize roads made of boiled tar to walk upon, and make a point of performing before every meal rituals in which they invoked the name of their god and asked for their favor.

The act was one of the first instances of the Nacirema technique, something anthropologists studying America do to help create cognitive distance so they can be objective and (mostly, according to my research) to satirize how different cultures get othered. The term for this, dear reader, is defamiliarization, in which something common place is depicted as strange, unfamiliar, in this case by couching it in the language used to describe different cultures.

Now, this being the early 1900’s and Josiah being Josiah, this was done less than tastefully. I’ve seen a transcript of one of these stories, and lemme tell you, it ain’t pretty: the man might not have been a racist by his eras standard, but by our standards the act was 78% orientalism by weight. It was also strangely prescient in regards to the dust bowl, but that’s neither here nor there.

Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Garret would make a move, arresting Violet Hall for theft and violating anti-miscegenation laws. This was the last straw for Josiah: it was one thing to attack and harass him, but going after his employees was another matter. In the words of one Bugs Bunny, ‘you know this means war’.

First Josiah would start calling in favors, getting a smear campaign started by the newspapers of Gotham, who would start printing the worst articles they could without violating slander laws. Garret found every inch of his life under a microscope, including his failures. Sure, he tried to bully the papers into silence, but even with all the resources of his precinct, he was still one guy going up against the entire Gotham Press, and all his attempts to silence detractors accomplished was getting more of a spotlight put on him.

It was one thing to be a corrupt bastard when no one cared about who you were, it was another when you had the papers. The next few months would be hell for the cop as he found himself constantly fending off reporters, covering his tracks, and doing his best to look as squeaky clean as possible. Still, he wouldn’t relent, and after a few short weeks Violet had been convicted and sent to Old Blackgate. The courts, paid off by Garret, had been ‘lenient’: she was only getting six years.

Okay. Well, if that was the case, Josiah was going to have to up the ante. And here we get his transformation from simple bar-owner to supercriminal: if Garret was going to send his performers to the clink-house, Josiah was going to ruin his life.

It was around this time Zelda came knocking: she wanted money, more than Josiah could pay, not without bankrupting himself. Always one to kill two birds with one stone, the man wined and dined her, convincing the Chemist to help him rob the Bowery Park Bank by lending him concoctions he could use to disorient and discombobulate his foes. Not only would she get a third of whatever he took, she’d get the chance to see her formulas tested in the field. With great eagerness the scientist would agree: the paycheck Josiah was offering was more than ten times what she had come to ask for, at a minimum, and Zelda wasn’t the sort of woman to care about things like legality.

Josiah’s scheme was simple: he’d make Garret look like a failure. The news would report on it, using it as another nail to help hammer the man down. If corruption couldn’t sink him yet, ineptitude might. And even if it didn’t, it would be another dent in the mans armor.

All that was left was planning the particulars.

Alright, and now we reach our final vote. Dear reader, you have options here. No matter what, the Bank you’re hitting is going to be in Garrets jurisdiction, meaning his reputation is going to take a big hit (assuming you don’t get caught), and the amount of money you’re going to get will be enough to pay Zelda off.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t go the extra mile: if you sacrifice a chunk of your profits and take a bit more risk, you can make this hurt more. Alternatively, you can use this as a chance to send a message, but that’s going to put an even bigger spotlight on your back. All you have to do is decide which [VAULT] you’re going for.

[ ] Main Vault: Josiah was content giving his opponent a bloody nose if it meant he could make a big enough profit. The main vault had the lions share of treasure, so that was his target. He’d take every single bullion he could fit into his bags and scarper.

[ ] Kanes Personal Vault: The Kane family were the proud owners of a personal vault in the bank being robbed. By deliberately targeting it in luie of more profitable options, Josiah’s alter ego would be making an enemy of the Kanes and would tip his hand that this was more about revenge than money, but it would also screw over Garret’s current employers.

[ ] Klan Safe Deposit Boxes: Well, the paycheck would still be nice, but ultimately it was only (somewhat) about the money. Josiah wanted to send a message: one to every Klan Member of prominence in the city: their valuables and their valuables specifically were not safe.

[ ] Write In: I'm open to ideas. 

Alright, there we have it. The social action is gonna wait until next turn and we see the fallout of the Opaque Shadows choices. And congratulations, you’ve made another enemy: at this rate, I might need to start coming up with an idea for a new frame card. I’d say five or so probably would do it. Bonus points for having one of them be Thomas Edison, of course.