The Hesselius Letter

Scenario Overview

A mismatched group of Agents from various backgrounds and affiliations combat vast shadowy supernatural and vampiric conspiracies, unlocked by the cryptic clues of the Hesselius Letter.

Helpful Resources

• In Character Thread
• Out of Character Thread
• Recruitment Thread
• Pelgrane's official NBA character/reference sheets and rules summary
• Point use notepad

Characters

The London Outfit (Skill Matrix)

Player	Agent	Health	Stability	Network	Agency/Allegiance	Notes/Points Spent
Harlekin	Wolfgang Mueller	12	9 / 8	15	Former BND muscle/black bagger
EnigmaticOne	Edgar Klarfeld	10	10 / 9	16	Former CIA analyst/hacker
Regular Guy	Alistair "Ashcan" Quinn	12	6	17	Former IRA wheelman/explosives expert
kermitthepog	Arabella Bua	11	9	15	Former ROS agent

Important Places

Please note: While we're using real place names, the game takes place in an ahistorical past. Any resemblance is coincidental and/or for convenience.

London

Core kickoff location

(Zoomable street map here)

Edgar Klarfeld's Southwark apartment/safe house

Hillingham

Important People

• Thomas Deegan, landlord of The Coachman pub in Hammersmith, granted MI5's protection in exchange for keeping an open house and safe zone for useful assets.

• John Hawkins, initially described as a civil servant, died in an apparent case of allergic collapse in his apartment in West Hampstead. Hawkins was on secondment to MI6 HQ from GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping and communications security centre in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, reportedly advising MI6 on Eastern European organized crime networks.

• Aleister Singleton - media celebrity occultist. Has a mansion, Darkacres, in North London near Hillingham.

Investigative Leads

• Plastic tape from a Dymo label maker, stating IM GETTING OUT. ITS GONE TOO FAR. TAKE THIS, USE IT: ITS EVIDENCE. H - from Edgar's former MI6 analyst & Balkans/E. Europe specialist "Hopkins"?

• The Hesselius Papers - papers of Dr Martin Hesselius, “the German physician” and “medical philosopher,” a strange, semi-legendary 19th-century figure on the borderline between medical science and occultism. Some of his most celebrated and bizarre cases are associated with Britain. Hesselius's name started reappearing in press clippings with a recent date, following the rediscovery of his collected papers in an attic in a Georgian house in Dublin late last year. The Hesselius papers were then put up for auction at Sotheby's because of their interest for the English market. A well-known celebrity psychic, London society figure and self-styled occultist, Aleister Singleton, bought them a month ago “for the nation,” and has offered regular loan exhibitions at the British Library. There’s been some controversy because they were found in Ireland, but Dublin City Council decided to seek the best price at auction and sold them through Sotheby's Special Projects Department. A British Library exhibition of some of the Hesselius papers is scheduled for the coming weeks.

• Hillingham - abandoned and derelict mansion on the north-east side of Hampstead Heath. A search of HM Land Registry shows that the owner of the property is listed as "HM Government." Hillingham was originally built in the late 1860s, and sold soon after its completion to a "Mrs Dolmen." The house apparently remained in her possession until 1915, when she sold it to the Admiralty. Title passed within the year to the War Office, and then simply to "HM Government." There's no other indication at any point what the Government was using the house for. It's been effectively derelict for the past 30 years.

• Cross Angel Cold Storage - a cold storage facility in the East End, close to the old docks; apparently belonging to HGD Shipping. It's evidently a somewhat rundown, once high-security site, but still in regular use. It has a high-grade firewall, but its CCTV and other security monitoring equipment has seen better days.

• Darkacres - the North London mansion of celebrity psychic Aleister Singleton, venue for regular wild parties with a shady repute. Invitations for these parties are available for those with High Society connections.

• Graz - in Austria? Capital of the southern Austrian province of Styria, while Ingolstadt is a historic university town in Bavaria, chiefly famous for hosting the foundation of the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776 and, supposedly, the experiments of Victor Frankenstein a few decades later. However, the Bavarian capital, Munich, also holds a famous tomb to a "Countess Dolingen of Graz" in its Alter Nordfriedhof cemetery. The Counts of Dolingen were apparently a minor Styrian noble family which became extinct in the later 19th century.

• Map of clues[1]