Childhood Memories

This adventure uses Anton Teptov’s organisation that collects children for orphanages and youth camps - specifically a group run by one of Chagidiel’s minions from Inferno, a Razide named Dahzbog aiding in breaking down the Illusion. (See Dahzbog in Slaves of Will section)

Sergei’s brother Georgii has been trying to look for work, but with his deformity (three fingers on one hand) the only work he could get being labour was closed to him. Growing restless he found a gang of teenagers (skinheads) who he secretly began to hang out with and become influenced by. Violent and Sexually repressed the gang took their punk frustrations out on other youths until their attacks became noticed.

Not by the authorities, but by one of Teptov’s agents who himself hunted young children and he hit upon an idea: that these youth be used to torment children and since their brutality imprisoning them in torment as well it worked well to use them. Dahzbog agreed and the agent approached the gang with offers of money, drugs and girls. Once at the orphanage they were subject to the same humiliation and torture as others, but Dahzbog merged with them Maniphestos and altered their memories and made servantss out of them.

Sergei’s sister, Sophia becomes worried as her brother does not return one evening and the week following after a heated argument with his father. Georgii now works for the organisation, raping, and kidnapping young girls with aid and sometimes alone of Teptov’s agents.

From the last adventure it goes well to point out here that under the EVENTS section the characters met Gleb who will help them faithfully in this adventure which takes place two weeks after ‘A Snow’s Harvest’.

SCENE 1:
Sofia calls Sergei asking him if Georgii is with him. Naturally he won’t be and Sergei will not have seen his brother for at least a week. Sofia will break down into tears and say that she has not seen Georgii for a week, father and he had an argument and father accused him of being a slacker unlike his brother who supported them. Georgii packed a few of his personal possessions and left. Father believes that he is at Sergei’s to bludge off his elder brother. Sofia says she is worried. The last she heard of him he was going to the Rusalka.

Sofia knows a little more than she’s telling. Keeping secrets and blackmailing her brother is something she has done for a while and not telling him that Georgii has been hanging around with a gang of skinheads who mug and beat people…

No matter what investigation Sergei does at the Rusalka by himself there will be no one who can help him. Assuming Georgii went to the Rusalka, it was over a week ago and the bouncers do not keep track of everyone they see. At the SEXTON Fozd, another young underground club for punks no one has seen the skinheads at the bar for some time, although a few might recall seeing them around - no definite clues or hints.

Only by scouring the street (and hopefully trying to encourage him to at least part working with his crew - some might busy elsewhere) can Sergei uncover more information, and some of this information does rely on the contacts of the other characters.

Anichka and Petr know that children often disappear from the streets after the clubs close - there are many predators on the roads looking for easy prey. They might remember some community task force organised to try to deal with the many disappearances, rapes and murders. A little bit of hunting will uncover just that.

SCENE 2:
The Taganskaya Children’s Trust is a volunteer agency dedicated to uncovering lost children and trying to promote safety within Taganka - they know the children are a major target for abuse and try to prevent it as often as possible.

It is a small organisation of eight full-time workers who have invested money and time into the project with good will at heart. All are former Communist members who still reject the idea of Democracy and Capitalism - at least the children were safer when Communism ruled with an iron fist. If Gleb is with them the agency will be friendly and helpful.

Located at the rear of a seedy breakfast café down an alleyway littered with the café’s trash, the Taganskaya Children’s Trust is small. Snow covers most of the grime-smeared stone walls, tiny windows peek out from above the drift line and are half open.

The windowless door is covered in old posters in tatters the words… ‘protect our children…’ those only to be made out. Inside a desk serves as a counter, bare except for an old petition and piles of leaflets (a few communist) and posters about protecting children from the dangers of the street. There is a bad smell in the office and it is cold, the yellow paint peeling off to reveal cold grey stone underneath. The ceiling is stained in almost golden with nicotene. Beyond the desk several others, one of which hums with a computer, the terminal giving off a green light. The organisers dress casually but all bear a home-made patch with Taganskaya Children’s Trust embroidered over a cross on their clothes in visible sight. Any visitor will be greeted immediately by one of the members, Alexei Dolgurikey who is too old to investigate kidnappings, etc.

Alexei is grey-haired, but in his day was and still is a fierce Communist. However, his work little allows politics to come into it when dealing with people seeking their children. One of his eyes is milky but he is not ugly, rather stately in appearance for one of his advanced years. He asks the characters to sign the petition (to petition the council to arrange transport for children home after nightclubs) while he takes their notes. He is extremely sympathetic and the stream of disappearances since the fall of Communism rises with each year and he is concerned as much as the parents.

He will take details, should they care to give any. As for information about who might be doing crimes he merely states that there are many people out there who have no care for the young and use them for their own goals. However if Gleb is with them Alexei will feel the bond of brotherhood can be found with these men and says they should return tomorrow or the next day and they may have something. He is referring to a recent kidnapping by skinheads which members tracked back to an orphanage… which they now stake out.

SCENE 3:
This can be played out before Scene 2 and relies heavily upon the character Anichka or someone knowing the Lorelei Pavel Kilimenko in a friendship. Pavel and the other Lorelei know about the disappearing children as do most street kids, but to the Lorelei it was of more interest and their investigations several years back got them too close to Teptov’s minions than they would have liked. As a result they stay away from interferring for fear of losing their position.

Pavel will first warn the character, best they not know, and if pressed he will become agitated and slightly angry and tell them to go to the Taganskaya Metropolitan before it closes, wait until it is closed and then find The Lady.

Taganskaya Metropolitan.
At 1a.m. the last of those people still in the Metro finally escape before the entrance doors and interlinking passages close. As soon as they do those living in the Metro come to life more than they do during the day hours and remain so until 6a.m. in the morning.

This circle-line station’s decorations are themed on the Great Patriotic War. Marble archways bearing pale blue and white ceramic cameos of partisans, pilots, tank-drivers and munitions workers in tulip shaped frames are crumbling. Masonry from the walls where images of Stalin still press through the whitewash litter the steep steps and countless tunnels winding into darkness.

Defaced and destroyed statues set in niches serve as alternate rubbish bins, rotting food, used needles and condoms drape the once-grand sculptures like the fine robes and uniforms now chipped and marred. The tiled floor, once mosaic is covered in a black grime omnipotent in colour and not even the walls are safe.

The amount of apertures in the Metropolitan is numerous and no map exists giving a true plan of the underground rail system. Doors and tunnels sprout from nowhere and descend to places no one wants to go.

The characters will be locked down here, imprisoned (something Petr will not like at all) and will face the denizens of the underworld in their unholy glory. Create interesting characters to be encountered, deformed prostitutes, thieves, bums, etc. for the characters to interact with to gain information on the Lady. Most are unhelpful and it is by speaking her name that they will bring her attention upon them. Here are a few encounters as they move around asking for The Lady:

- An old woman, stinking of vomit and urine approaches the characters demanding food from them. If they refuse or ignore her she may attack them with her yellow and dirtied fingernails, scraping and raking a character’s face.
- In the shadows of a tunnel a boy cries meekly for help. He lies face down in a pool of his own blood, his head beaten to a pulp, so much he will not survive much longer. He cannot help the characters and just begs for help.
- An old man selling cockroaches in a jar. He claims they are fallen angels and asks for a thousand rubles each… or a good piece of food. If they ask him where their wings are. He smugly replies that the angels lost their wings when they were cast out of heaven. Don’t they know anything, he asks.

Eventually their enquiring will bring the attention of Mahj and his band of punks who serve The Lady in return for food and a safe place to sleep. The punks will take the characters by surprise and surround them on all sides… all exits and close in swinging chains and iron pipes. Mahj, a tall, long-haired punk dressed in denim and army surplus will circle them and with a wild look in his eye asking them why they want The Lady. If they answer he asks why he should take them to her. If pleased he demands drugs and their weapons as payment. He then has them put on blindfolds. No blindfolds. No Lady. He does this after arranging a deal. Then the punks surround them and push them down a corridor. At each intersection and in the middle of a tunnel the punks spin the characters around, laugh and jeer, then stop them and continue - for the interests of disorientating them. In time they reach the Lady. Anyone trying to escape will be bludgeoned and left for dead.

SCENE 4:
More information upon the Lady can be found in the Slaves of the Will section. Indeed The Lady has special information on the kidnappings and knows that they are part of a larger organisation. The information that will be gained after talking to her will show this - something the characters did not expect, considering they only look for Georgii.

Like a Queen The Lady observes the characters and speaks to Mahj, ‘Remove their blindfolds and give them back their weapons. They come here seeking answers not violence.’

Blindfolds removed the characters find themselves in an almost Baroque mansion, except that Baroque feel is conveyed with junk. They seem to be in a court of sorts. Musicians arranged in one corner wield steel and aluminium instruments of the most bizarre nature, dressed in elaborate rags decorated with Jewelery of metal and plastic. The court arranged on divans and chairs around the painted room are similarly dressed, their recliners twisted metal and plastic warped into gaudy ornamentation and decoration.

The walls are painted in the style of Baroque artists, cherubs dancing among Grecian scenes and are the only true Baroque theme here. The floor is mosaic, and remarkably clean, every little image resplendent in original colour.

The Lady, dressed in a long flowing ball gown of plastic can ties and sheeting, sits on a high steel chair wrapped in coils of copper. Her white hair is dressed high and her pale face elegant as her poise.

The Lady will listen to their questions and then recommend they travel with her courtier Orest. At her beckoning Orest makes his way across the floor, kneels at her feet and pledges his service is for her to command. Orest, she says, you will take them to the Shunned Castle and then return. Anything for you, My Lady, he replies.

Orest is a handsome youth, short bobbed black hair, if a little dirty and matted. He speaks politely and though dressed in a long red, tattered cloak over a large blue dressing gown tied at the waist where a wooden sword pokes would bring to mind poverty rather than the manner in which he acts.

Orest does not blindfold them and leads them out a tunnel into an area they are unfamiliar with and begins scaling vast flights of stairs upward (though the characters can not remember going down any except at the beginning).

At the foot of another tiresome flight of dirty stairs and poor light they see above a group of people looking down. Communual chuckling comes from above and Orest becomes worried and tells them to run and follow him and he flees down a different passage - those above give chase whooping and grunting unlike anything human.

If the characters follow Orest they may make it to safety. Should they try to find their own way the mob will descend upon them.

Again Time has been altered and the trains are to be running soon. Orest leads them through doors, which they try to barricade and down stairs and eventually to a train platform. Orest jumps down and runs just as the mob charges out after them. The characters flee following the dark tunnel and the metal tracks. They make good distance and then slowly let them hear the roar of the tunnel and a air pressure change - a train is coming. Orest picks up the pace and at an engineers door struggles with the handle. It seems to have jammed. The mob closes. The train is close. Maybe allow a few scuffles with the faster mob who look like demonic humans (just wild) while some open the door. Orest may aid in defending, his wooden sword slicing through flesh like it shouldn’t if a character should notice. Let the characters escape into the door as the train arrives. Orest then runs down the tunnel beyond the door. It is a stooped tunnel that leads to a wall of snow which they must dig. Once through dismal light trickles overhead and steam rises off the black waters of the Moskov River before them. Industrial pipes pump black smoke into the air on the other side of the river bank, drains leaking their foul effluence into the water.

Orest leads them to the Shunned Castle and once there bids them good luck and leaves.

SCENE 5:
The Shunned Castle is the name given to an old 1800 building left to rot and ruin which, during the Stalin years, housed priests and nuns in small cells for decades without freedom. The building was taken over after their release and used by Dantalian and Anton Teptov as a place where they could abuse and house children, but the building was falling apart and they shifted their operations elsewhere. Their taint still lingers, though, the Illusion already cracked with the imprisonment of priests and nuns.

Four stories tall, this U-shaped building has the ornaments of elegance but the present decay has raped any prestige and honour it once held. Black windows stare helplessly out like the priest and nuns once did. Steel bars clamp most windows. The place is deserted. To enter one must enter the mouth and descend the path with walls of dwelling looking down either side.

The building is in a precarious state and the first floor and above’s flooring and ceiling are weak with rot and can crumble with the slightest pressure. Only the ground floor is explorable to an extent.

Allow the characters to maneouver the long passages and sneak peaks into the strong wooden doors with tiny windows and slits for passing food where a tiny cubicles with beds still remain. As they explore they will receive visions (as is the nature of the Demon Dantalian’s presence he left here) which will grow in intensity and threaten to enscapulate them with the past.

NOTE: The following is Fiction. And only for the use of game purposes to show the horror of these actions. I don’t condone or support this.
- One of the characters looks in one cell and sees a small, naked girl inside crying on the bed. Her arms are soot-smeared and bloody. She cries pathetically, unable to stop the flow of blood pooling under her. As soon as the character open the door the scene is gone.
- Look out one of the cell windows to see old trucks with wooden slats and children being led up gangplanks to them. So tight are they pressed their hands hang limply through the slats blackened and blue.
- In a larger room where shadows are deep, where the organisation could enjoy their pleasures a character(s) watches a boy huddled in the middle of the room while someone in a white fur-cloak beats upon the young boy with wooden bat. Surrounding the boy a group of naked men masturbate over the child.
- Something man-sized and furry rushes past a doorway.
- In another large room several men work around screaming girls suspended from the ceiling on barbed wire threaded through their hands, arms and legs. They are currently sewing upon a victim now. One of the men turns to look at the character(s).
- In a cell a fat, naked sweating man sodomizes a young boy on his bed, smacking the boy’s head against the wall as he does so.
- In the darkness of a corner something white-faced and horned turns into the light, sneers with bloodied mouth and gums and then disappears back into shadow.
- In a large bathroom, in an old and large porcelain tub a young girl screams and struggles to get out of the bath while a man stands smiling near the rim with a straight razor which he uses to slice the girl as she tries to get out. The bath has the body of two young girls who bob in the depth of blood there.

If, by this point, the characters have not fled it is time to do extended scenes which will appear like reality (the place was a wreck when it was being used by the organisation, remember) and affect the characters directly. They may be drawn into some of these scenes and others. They should try to escape. Leaving the Shunned Castle ends all visions.

What the characters may have learned about those that kidnap the youth is that they are an organisation of sorts. That is a start.

SCENE 6:
Back at the Taganskaya Children’s Trust the characters find the door ajar and everything inside trashed. Six bodies lie rent and torn among the broken desks and scattered papers. The smell of meat and blood is strong… blood covers nearly everything. Alexei is barely alive in a corner, his chest ripped open and arms shredded. He may be able to mutter his last… report 296… hard drive and as he tries to point to the smashed computer he will die.

Why are they dead? The character’s investigations into the Shunned Castle alerted a Domovoi to their presence and as they were skulking in the Castle he fled to the Taganskaya Children’s Trust and killed everyone… This would have happened anyway and the other two members are dead in the basement of the orphanage where the organisation works. They were scoping the house and were caught by Domovoi and dragged to their deaths. The characters only sped up the process of covering up.

Inside the computer wreck the Harddrive is still in its casing and may be usable. They will have to contact someone with experience in that area and either rig it to a new computer or get that person to get the information they require.

The information contains the latest report that the Trust were investigating and on the day after the characters first went to their offices they uncovered a group kidnapping children but they were investigating further before contacting authorities.

This report matches up with an EVENT in the previous adventure ‘A Snow’s Harvest’.

REPORT 296. Filed. Alexei Dolgurikey

Taganskaya Children’s Trust members, Mladin and Nizhnii followed up report 291, the missing child Nadia Malevich who disappeared after leaving the nightclub Rusalka on Friday 16th January 1998.

Upon her insistence she walked home alone without company of friends and was never seen again.

She was drunk on the evening.

Mladin and Nizhnii uncovered her bloodied clothes (levi jeans, white shirt, underclothes) in an alleyway near the Rusalka, footprints, but little else.

Investigations uncovered that citizens near the scene saw a black sedan chased by two men leaving the alley speed off.

Before that a naked girl was bundled into the car unconscious but citizens believed her a prostitute.

One bright citizen, Khuzma Vagankov, noted the number plate: MKV2063 and with this information Mladin and Nizhnii traced the car.

The car was registered to a Konstantin Dantalian, a social care officer working for the council and responsible for the Baumanskiy Orphanage in Zayauze.

Tracking the car to the Baumanskiy Orphanage on 31st January Trust members, Mladin and Nizhnii observed no less than seven children dragged out of cars screaming into the Orphanage.
Mladin and Nizhnii have returned to the Orphanage with surveillance equipment to further investigate.

31/1/98

SCENE 7:
The characters may wish to investigate the Baumanskiy Orphanage. If they should want to seige the place skip ahead to a later scene that details the interior a little more, but the detail here is only cursory. The Baumanskiy Orphanage is one of the many organised by Aleksandr Sokolov (See Dahzbog under Slaves of the Will section). The Orphanage fills the site of an old Government Apartment block near the Taganskaya Ploschad.

Proud urns and wheatsheaves crown Corinthian pillars leading to darkly stained doors at the zenith of the worn and hard steps. Snow encrusts the stone ballustrades which the pillars balance, supporting a lee jutting from the facade of the building, simple in elegance, uniform in a early 50’s communist style. Windows stare through the metal sheaths hopeless.

Alleyways down both sides of the building end in a communual parking lot for those visiting and working, a back door access available to a winding corridor that leads to the front desk if one does not stray from the halls (most of the doors off this hall are locked). Inside everything appears normal, although bleak. The foyer is spacious, illuminated only by striated light beaming through caged windows set in the second floor.

Behind a desk a tired looking, middle-aged man dressed simply in a brown suit struggles with a computer (he doesn’t know how to work it that well). He cannot let anyone into the orphanage to talk to children as most are violent and/or busy, but mostly out of respect for the children he lies. This orphanage functions as a last-home for the mentally-insane or troubling child. He will look on the computer for their missing ‘friend’ if asked, but nothing. Should the characters prove troubling security in the form of aged ex-army soldiers come to escort the characters out.

Once they get their information and leave I had the characters bump into Aleksandr himself who took a publicity photograph with him in front of the buildings as the doors opened and the characters exited. Then with the camera man they passed the characters, Aleksandr stopping just beyond them and saying to one of them (anyone since they all met with Dahzbog in the past - a future adventure), ‘Haven’t we met?’ shrugs it off and leaves. Later when the photographs are developed he makes out the characters and now he becomes interested and looks into them.

EVENTS

From here on the adventure could not be contained within a partly-linear fashion. So the following are encounters I used to propel the characters forward, backward, etc.

Georgii and the skinhead gang are finally sent out by Aleksandr to hunt for more subjects. They leave wild freed demons in the black sedans and begin prowling for women. They will rape and capture girls and boys and take some in the trunks back to the orphanage unless stopped. The skinheads are in the thrawl of Maniphestos and also due to their limited intelligence they will not think too much of being tailed - all they care about is the hunt turned primal by their lack of intelligence. The characters could capture Georgii back (hopefully [not] shooting him).

Get in contact with the Manager of the Orphanage, Konstantin Dantalian, who listens to their pleas but rudely fobs them off.

Georgii, if rescued, is reluctant at first and then thankful. He is infected with a Maniphestos. If returned he will rape girls, maybe family and friends - see later events for how it was used in gameplay. In his states of possession he is not himself, and his brother, Sergei may think of other less-rational explanations. If returned to his family he will rape his sister and beat his father, who will contact Sergei about the scum Georgii, disowning him.

Getting rid of the Maniphestos, or a psychological exorcism through faith & belief. This is one of two examples of gitting Georgii free of the parasite. Christian doctrines will shut their doors at the sight of the characters, those few that are open (a symbolic sign of how Binah treats her minions, wants them to convert and then be forgotten in their belief - no help for them). Not knowing anything different they will probably try a Synagogue.
The Synagogue is squashed between bleak, prosaic stone of industrial looking apartment tenements. The snow is thick across the ground, the stone pathway leading up to the door broken and icy. Low and circular, the buildings walls are black and windowless, with a low sweeping roof of white, the lee of which around the entrance young Jews discourse the Gemarra.
The Jews will prevent the characters from entering the synagogue. No gentiles here. If they ask about a rabbi, the students ask what their questions are, since a Gentile’s question would not be of importance to bother a rabbi with. These young Jews are almost militant in their faith and in their strength of surviving through persecution in a communist Russia. If the characters mention an exorcism the Jews tell them, laughing, to go to a Christian.
As they leave beyond sight one of the Jewish boys, Jospeh, goes to the characters, excusing company with his comrades to get home. He asks if the characters were serious. If so he can take them to a Cabbalist trained in the matters of the soul - he and other Jews often taken lessons from the Cabbalist. The boy is beginning to gestate his magical intuition and could better read the reactions of the characters when they questioned. He will take them to see Gamliel Rosen.
The cabbalist lives in a row of failed tenement structures from pre-wwarII times. He lives on the second floor of the roach infested and rat hived building, in a sealed room, hermetically and physically with windows boarded from the inside. The dwellings around him are disused and coldly empty… snow drifts in the hallway, bereft of furniture, save old stoves and broken windows lament their fall.
Joseph takes them to one door, closed and knocks. A belated voice asks who it is and after hearing it is Jospeh with some friends he opens the door, many padlocks and a door bar, and moves back to his comfortable chair draped in many blankets. An iron stove he sits beside, huddling to the meager warmth it effuses that fills the rooms. Around the room bookcases regail scrolls and books, the walls covered in old cloth and rugs, not even the windows can be seen. A menorah burns in one corner and many other candles are lit around the room.
Joseph tells Gamliel that these men came to the synagogue wanting exorcism (they wouldn’t be here unless they mentioned to the young Jews). Gamliel wishes to view the possessed before saying anything and will have them bring Georgii to him. If they do return, Gamliel studies Georgii for nearly an hour before he says there is nothing he can do - go see a Christian. Not true, though because the lore of passion is known to him, but forgotten. If pressed he will agree but he wants something in return (he wants a specific book, but this will be accomplished in another adventure), though he won’t say what, although he says that by him doing this they are asking something he does not do on a whim. What he wants will be important. Georgii will be then given a sleep-inducement in dissolved drug. Gamliel tells them to return in four days and Georgii will be cured. When they return he gives them the cured Georgii and ushers them as quickly as possible away.

They could contact the Lady, although finding her will prove difficult. Chances are Orest, or another court member will hear of them and find them (remember the Lady is not a storehouse of knowledge or help - her aid is double edged) and ask them what they are doing. Orest may give them the information they require about curing Georgii. He may tell them to go to see the lover of Pagan Dancer, known as Adrianna in the peasant’s bar (Orest and the Lady’s madness existing at another time).
Adrianna Chernetskii, the Lorelei, indeed has a part-time lover, among her many, although Ivan, her passion conjurer is her more stable one. Enamoured with Adrianna, the passion mage easily entered unto the relationship and realised greater potential with a skilled lover in rituals, as well as a supply of discarded partners Adrianna grew tired of.
Contacting Adrianna may prove difficult. She dances nearly every night at the Rusalka, and will be loathe to leave the dance floor. Force will be required and that will bring Anastasia to investigate brutally. Waiting for her afterwards would be more appropriate when she is in the mood for many lovers and takes them home. Or they could get in contact with her through Pavel.
She lives just a short distance from the Kotelnicheskaya apartments, a grey towering eddifice of balconies and large windows. Cramped elevators gurgle to floors of linoeluem and light green paint. Her apartment is small, walls covered in pictures of ballerinas interspersed with Tantric Sex illustrations. The scent of Pachoutli incense in incredibly strong and smoke drifts like a drug addict around the room. Beads hang between doorways and in the lounge/main area pillow litter the floor like pebbles. The room is warm, lit with subdued candles.
Ivan is a handsome and muscular man (ala Greek Demi-god) dressed in body hugging shorts wearing a variety of Jewellery around his neck. Short hair, contented look, very George Michael in his neatness of light facial hair. If drunk Adrianna just wants to fuck and will seduce characters or anyone she brought along (she does this in her bedroom in private - although the sounds are soon heard).
Ivan will be surprised (of who knows his skill in lore), subtlely inquire about who told them about him. Ivan is naïve in the major sense of magic. His skill, though quite high was learnt while he was in India for six years and his knowledge has been his own since. If asked about exorcism he laughs until they make it quite clear they are serious. He will take money, a lot of it - 80 million rubles (about $20,00 US) and after he has Georgii he will tell them to return in four to five days.
The ending of this adventure starts to break up and will be continued in an Events - adventure section of major happenings and strangeness.