Turn 1 Pt 2: The Con-men and the Conjurers (Patreon)

[X][AD] The Ad brought attention from a particular demographic, who would begin frequenting his bar for various reasons: Mystics of all kinds have been drawn to the Lodge... "Mystics" the same as Josiah Arkham, who don't actually have a speck of magic.

[X][ACT] Stories of Smoke and Mirrors: Asking Zelda for advice with certain chemicals, Josiah would create ghosts of smoke and puppets of shadow, all for the telling of stories where he would play both the villain and the narrator. Switching them out from night to night, the stories always be slightly mystical and suitably scary.

[X][HOT] Activism: Support the creation of a public library/community center, donating his personal collection on conservationism.

[X][SHOW] Design a Prop: Angled lights, paper ghosts, and a smoke machine.

[X][BAR] Renovate the St. Majeste: Cold Room (for preserving perishables for longer periods in better conditions)

[X][ROTH] Gotham University Research: History of Witches with Gotham and, if possible, Abigail Roth specifically.

[X][PER] Investing: Crane Brews

!!!GOTHAM!!!

ATTENTION TO ALL OCCULTISTS, MYSTICS, AND SEEKERS OF THE STRANGE IN GOTHAM: The Gotham Lounge would like to announce that going forward, all Witches Brew drinks are now half price, thanks to the tireless work of it’s suppliers! BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! We are also announcing an expansion of the menu, owing to recent renovations and expansions to the Lounges kitchen! Enjoy fresh vegetables, steak, and more, purchased daily for your consumption from Gotham Market!

!!!GOTHAM!!!

So, our pal Josiah had a few new ideas for an act. Specifically, he wanted to try out his acting chops in another role: instead of just doing a trick or performing an illusion, instead he was going to tell stories with himself as the narrator.

Now, I’ll note that while he was a performer, he wasn’t exactly a storyteller or writer, so most of what he worked with to start were urban legends and various interesting stories he had heard elsewhere, reworked. Keep in mind, copyright in this age wasn’t as strict: the House of Mouse had not yet been born, and they hadn’t yet wrecked the system to keep their grubby mits on Michael Mouse. Sure, what Josiah did wouldn’t have flew under our legal systems, and hell he’d probably get a few social side-eyes for his almost-plagiarism, but it wasn’t like that in that era, especially since he went to the work of adding his own touch.

See, while he wasn’t a “proper” engineer and didn’t have any cast or crew to work with, Josiah knew enough of the trade that he could design all sorts of props. And he had seen and performed enough puppet-shows for the childrens matinee outside of Hermanns that he knew that one didn’t necessarily need such frivolous things as “actors”.

Instead, what he did was create a series of mirrors, kerosene angled lamps, and paper ghosts, while commissioning from Zelda Crane some means to create smoke and fog. This was the era before modern fog machines: instead, theaters had to rely on a lot of different tricks like burning wet straw to get stage smoke. Josiah though, he wanted something a bit more modern, and something a bit less spicy to use. He paired the commission with a generous investment in Crane Brews, allowing Zelda to begin upsizing, purchasing equipment and even hiring an assistant, eventually coming up with a solution to his problem at considerable expense to the Magician: dry ice.

This was before people could really make it commercially: it wouldn’t be 20 years until a man by the name of Thomas B. Slate would successfully produce a patent and subsequently proceed to start it’s history as a successful industry. Now, Zelda’s method wasn’t nearly as economic: I don’t recall the specifics, but it apparently required a lot of fancy equipment, like supposedly a giant distillation vat. Still, while she hadn’t perfected the process to industrially produce it, the amount she did manage was more than enough for the Lounges purpose.

With all these tools, Josiah performed his next big act: Stories of Smoke and Mirror, where he would play as both the narrator, villain, and use his (admittedly not particularly good) ventriloquism skills to voice the rest of his cast, which consisted of the paper ghosts rigged to wires hooked up to an extremely basic mechanism in the ceiling operated by the untrained Violet Hall, an unfortunate concession owing to the lack of any suitable candidates or assistants, all while their lights and fog helped the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, while the effects were good, the fact of the matter is you need more than that to wow a crowd: Josiah didn’t have much story other than what he had heard elsewhere, he was an only passable ventriloquist and actor, and he only had a single untrained assistant. He had invested a LOT of cold hard cash onto a dud of an act, and all he had to show for it was a few middling reviews.

Josiah didn’t take it well. The man was a notorious diva, and for as much trouble as he had gone through, he had NEVER, EVER had a dud act before, not as Professor Arkham, and so never developed the callus less successful performers develop against failure.

What’s the fallout for Josiah? Action category is [DIVA].

[ ] Alcoholism: The manager of the Lounge took to drink, and then drink took him. He remained (mostly) functional, but there was rarely a time of day where he wasn’t at least a little soused, and after every bad act he’d require a great deal of liquid stress relief. Of course, the thing about an addict of any stripe, they could only keep things under a lid so long.

[ ] Assault: The manager of the Lounge grew more and more angry, frustrated. He kept a lid on it as best he could…until Hermann decided to visit the lounge. Maybe it had been an attempt at reconciliation, maybe it had been an attempt to mock his student turned rival, but it had ended with the elder magician with a broken nose, though it would ultimately be Josiah’s reputation that would be bloodied.

[ ] Litigation: Frivolous lawsuits and other forms of legal harassment would become the managers weapon to silence his critics: papers that ran bad reviews would find themselves subject to a barrage by Professor Arkham, who would viciously prosecute his naysayers through any legal means he could.

[ ] Write in.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Of course, not everything went pears up. Even as his act got middling to bad reviews, the menu would get far more positive coverage. See, Josiah decided that serving just eggs and bacon wasn’t enough: he wanted the kitchen to be a significant draw, so he would pay to renovate a cold room, one designed to use the frigid chill of Gotham River and the immediate shoreline to help preserve perishables such as fruit and vegetables for Mr. Jacobs to serve to the guests.

Sure, it wasn’t proper refrigeration, but with the addition, they were able to branch out to things like steak, oyster, carrots, and other items. With the expansion to the menu, some people would actually seek out the Lounge for it’s food. It wasn’t a proper restaurant yet, but it was a hell of a lot closer, and even when the show wasn’t great, it was still entertainment to accompany your meal.

And hey, the booze was cheaper too, so why not? With more facilities available and his own influence as her primary business partner, Josiah was able to renegotiate his deal with Zelda, paying only a modest increase in price for considerably more stock. As a result, more people would begin attending the St. Majeste. It’s most prominent clientele: phony mystics, amateur occultists, and countless swindlers who used fake magic to con rubes.

Of course, a real mystic would never touch the place, not once they realized who it really catered to: sure, it might have presented itself as being an authentic house of the occult, but it didn’t take long to realize it was a facade thanks to the sleeze of countless fake psychics that congregated the place. Of course, that was just to those who knew enough to identify real magic versus deception and illusion designed to manipulate a mark. To most Gothamites, the abundance of ‘magic’ gave the place a sinister, almost alluring air: to those not in the know, it was a place of strange arcanism, where magicians congregated and the bar sold strange witches brews. To those with a more puritanical bent, it was a hotbed of satanism, drugs, and con-men, a place that acted as a stain on the cities good name.

Still, the place was definitely growing in stature, especially with one of Zelda’s newest creations.

What new product is Zelda now providing? Action category is [CRANE].

[ ] Cranes Finest Brews: Cranes assistant would be used as a guinea pig to produce a new batch of Crane Brews. Her ‘finest’, as it were: more potent, longer lasting, and with added sweetener to make it go down better, though it still tasted absolutely rancid. Too much apparently causes stomach cramps.

[ ] Crane Co. Dry Ice Manufacturing: Zelda would further hone her dry ice manufacturing capabilities, simplifying the process enough she was able to sell the Lounge enough to further cool their cold room and even chill drinks.

[ ] Cranes Rejuvenating Brews: Zelda Crane would work with a few volunteers to create a more rejuvenative drinks, pharmacological mixtures designed to use a mixture of chemicals to create drinks that instead of just intoxicating instead opted to invigorate.

[ ] Write In. Doesn’t have to be drink related, just something thats plausibly within Zelda’s skillset.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Of course, while his kitchen got a new addition, the duties of Mark Jacobs did not, and he would continue to both serve as a cook as well as a general laborer by the Lounge. Initially, the man used his pay to afford books on various topics: his favorite was animals, books on conservation, wildlife bestiaries, textbooks on zoology. His favourite two, however, consisted of hardbacked copies of On the Origin of Species, written by one Charles Darwin, and The Social Habits and Biology of Desmodus Gotham, a text written by Mathias Langstrom on the cities native vampire bat population, one that came complete with complex anatomical diagrams and extensive note-taking by the Zoologist, who had supposedly perished during the Great Gotham Rabies Epidemic of 1891, when a full thirty percent of the bats in the city were said to carry the disease, resulting in equally massive human outbreaks.

Mathias was ironically spared this sentence through a far more mundane means of death: according to historians, he died from food poisoning after he consumed raw fish.

These weren’t the only books he kept, of course, and eventually, his collection would grow so large it could no longer be stored in the small attic he called a room. Not wanting to destroy them, and also looking for a way to help his community, he began donating excess, along with copies of his favorites and the ones he preferred to keep, to a local library in his neighborhood, alongside both money and, when he could, spare time.

The place still stands today: Mark Jacobs Memorial Library. While he still wasn’t a wealthy man by any means, Mr. Jacobs donations still ensured the library for many years afterwards had a large catalog to offer it’s patrons, primarily the many black residents of the East End. Still, a library could only help people if they could read, and many african americans couldn’t, denied access to the resources needed to learn. Remember, dear reader, that it hadn’t been that many years since Civil War and Reconstruction: while there were many activists trying to fix the problem, fact of the matter was in a lot of places the best a lot could have hoped for was underfunded and segregated public schools.

So he taught them, deciding to become a teacher. Every monday and wednesday, his days off, he would hold public literacy classes for the residents of the East End, helping them learn how to read and write, both children just learning to read and adults who had been denied the opportunity to be literate. This wasn’t a replacement for public schooling, not nearly, but for many in East End it still proved better than the nothing they would receive.

It would also lead to other knock on effects.

Alrighty my dear reader. You decided to go for activism, and more specifically literacy. As a result, you get to pick another long term effect, one that will alter the general texture of Gotham as a city going forward, if only slightly. Action code is [LIBER]

[ ] Novelists: With many East Enders learning to read, more than a few had taken to writing as well: in the coming years, many of the residents of East End would begin publishing stories in their free time. A few of these would go on to be remembered as classic staples of african american literature such as Night in Gotham, the Cry of the Vampire Bat, and various memoires, though they would only receive mainstream recognition decades after their authors death. Still, these stories would help shape the landscape of American fiction for decades and help bring several black writers to early prominence, as well as influencing later authors and prominent figures.

[ ] Academics: It was still difficult for a black man to get into Gotham University, but with increased literacy came increased admittance, even if they were still stuck in the segregated classes that received half of the funding, if that, of white classes. Still, no matter your skin color or the era, having a degree opened doors, and in the coming decades it wouldn’t be unlikely for the neighborhood to enjoy an increase in prosperity, however modest.

[ ] Write In: Has to conceivably be an effect that can be produced by helping fund and establish a library and volunteering at it. Try to keep it confined to the neighborhood of East End as well.

!!!GOTHAM!!!

Meanwhile, his mind fraying from the stress of his show and the mortal terror of having damned his soul, they say that Professor Arkham went to the university, inquiring with it’s historians about the history of Witches in Gotham, trying to find information about Abigail Roth in the hopes he might still save his soul.

There, he learned of the various stories and tales of Gotham. Some were just the exact details and chronology about the more common urban legends of the era, many of which still persist to this day, such as how before Gotham existed it had been the home of a group of women who had fled Salem into the dark and noxious waters of Slaughter Swamp, each said to be witches attempting to escape their persecution, and how supposedly one of the earliest settlers to the region, Cyrus Gold, supposedly found themselves cursed.

The story goes that Cyrus Gold was a man who traded in human flesh, selling off his fellow human being in chains for money. He had come to what would eventually become Gotham to build himself a plantation in the heart of Slaughter Swamp. During the course of a year his home was built, countless slaves dying in the process from disease, exhaustion, and construction accidents. And yet Gold didn’t rest, merely buying new blood to feed into the gristle of the architecture, simply tossing the bodies into a particular mire that according to legend is haunted, tainted by the hundreds of corpses dumped into the waters.

Personally, I think that detail is a crock of shit: Cyrus Gold was an evil man, but there’s evil and then there’s a cartoon. But it isn’t impossible: the place supposedly IS a mass grave of some kind according to anthropologists in Gotham U, and the man accused was undeniably a piece of work. But I think there are probably more mundane, if likely more horrifying in some ways, reasons for there to be a stretch of swamp with a lot of bodies.

Anyways, according to the myths, Gold and the Coven would eventually come into conflict, his plantation building having intruded onto their spaces. They would cast all sorts of malevolent hexes at Gold, causing his crops to wither, his fortunes to sour as his ships suffered all manner of bad luck, and other catastrophes in the hopes of driving them off. Gold supposedly responded by attempting to massacre them: during the ensuing conflict, one of the coven supposedly stabbed the merchant in the gut, ending the slave trader sliding into the swamp and rotting, never to be recovered. They say his ghost still haunts the swamp, and that one can on some nights still see his ghost roaming about, skin pale, clothes tattered.

Of course, this is only one legend and myth hiding in Gotham’s closet. For instance, did you know that prior to the first european settlers arriving, this area was avoided by the local tribes? Not just Gotham, but also Slaughter Swamp to the east, Shadowcrest Forest to the north, and Blackgate Island to the south. Supposedly, the entire region surrounding the city was deemed a dark and evil place. And certainly, that tracks with some of the other historical details, such as the fact that until a few decades after the revolutionary war one in ten colonists in the region disappeared.

Of course, anything useful was gonna be a hard find: for all his looking, he couldn’t find much on Abigail Roth, beyond a few Roths popping up on census forms and passenger manifests here and there, except for an event ten years before, listed as a survivor of a flood in Riverside according to a newspaper in the archives of Gotham University.

His biggest discovery, though…

Alright boys, girls, and otherwise, you rolled a 93, meaning you can either pick something to help advance the Abigail Roth investigation, OR you can “luck” into finding something of interest related to the topic of witches in the University archives. This can, to be clear, be a lead to getting magic of your own. I’ll offer a few suggestions, of course, but in case you want to do a write in, just keep in mind that you get a lead, you don’t get access to magic immediately, nor can you just go “magic grimoire!!!!!!!!101!!!”. The code for this one is [WITCH]. It can also be other stuff so long as it’s on topic enough or relates back to any of the details I mentioned for this section in second frame.

[ ] The Descendent: A great grandchild of one of the Witches who had feuded with Gold, according to genealogical records. He lived in Gotham Village, working as a watchmaker. Maybe he’d have some information about his ancestor…

[ ] A Map: A map to the manor of Cyrus Gold, located in the middle of Gotham Swamp. Supposedly haunted by the ghosts of his victims, it was also said to contain the vast majority of his fortune.

[ ] A Location: Fifteen years ago, Abigail Roth lived at this location. It was the most recent lead on her Josiah had: if he investigated it, he might be able to learn more about the young woman, and thus progress his investigation.

[ ] Write In.