Zone Rouge - Intelligence and the Mythos: Agencies nobody wants, doing work nobody understands.

The British Secret Intelligence Service is a real thing - now popularly known as MI6 - and it was a real thing in 1920's Europe, the setting of my "Zone Rouge" prelude to Horror on the Orient Express. Unlike modern day MI6, however, the most you could say about the organization in the early 20's is that it managed not to be completely de-funded.

After the Great War, there was less of an apparent need for the various intelligence services floating around in the UK, and the SIS was no exception. Funding was drastically reduced, and the remaining resources were large devoted to attempting to keep tabs on communist activities. In the real world, this obsession with communism led the SIS to engage in an information-sharing partnership with the up-and-coming Nazi government in Germany. In my game, the communist mania will conceal a blindness towards a different enemy: the sorcerers, cultists and monsters of the world of Call of Cthulhu.

SIS Leadership and the Occult

Of course, not everyone in the organization is ignorant of the esoteric and occult. In the interest of providing a framework for the prelude and campaign, I wanted to have a couple of regular contacts in the high levels of the SIS that my group would interact with, and be variously supported or stymied by. Here I begin to make liberal use of historical figures in ways that, I'm sure, would displease them to no end.

The historical head of the group is Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming, who will be referenced by the code name "C." In my version of history, he is the source of the focus on communism, and is completely, violently disinterested in any theories regarding the paranormal or supernatural. He holds the purse strings of SIS, and will only release funds for projects that serve his own ends. In real history, "C" died unexpectedly in his home in 1923, to be replaced by Hugh Sinclair (more on him in a moment). In my history, I've reserved this fate for Sinclair.

Sir Hugh "Quex" Sinclair is 2nd-in-command in 1920, and is the figure the Vienna Club's Investigators will hear from most often in the Prelude. Before we go on, let's acknowledge that 1) "Quex" is an awesome nickname, and 2) If we follow the "initial-as-code name" precedent, he would be known as "Q". Q, of MI6.

In the framework of the Zone Rouge prelude scenarios, Quex is an intelligent, driven man with a hobbyist's passion for the occult. He is well read on both ancient and modern occultist and alchemical writings, and within the SIS his function is to point the Vienna Club towards scenarios with briefing packets that obliquely allude to strange goings-on. He is loyal to the organization, and does want to support the broader mission, but in the grand tradition of right-hand-men throughout history he's not afraid to to bend the rules to support a vision of the greater good that doesn't quite align with his boss' vision.

And, importantly for the Horror on the Orient Express campaign, Quex also fills the role of Professor Smith as the older acquaintance with deep ties to the occult community. Of course, in the campaign...

{SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST HotOE SCENARIO}

...he is ultimately killed and replaced by Makryat, would-be leader of the Brothers of the Skin. I really like the additional layers of intrigue this offers for the narrative: with a Cultist potentially able to pose as the Number 2 in the SIS, all kinds of interesting misinformation and back-channel intrigue is possible. Should the Investigators survive all the way to make it back to London, they may find conditions in the UK have changed dramatically due to this infiltration.

Finally, Quex's own assistant is one Claude Dansey (code name "Z"), who really became more famous in WWII when he created and activated his own network to replace the "official" SIS apparatus in Europe which had been compromised by German agents.

In the next post, I'll talk about some handouts I use,  in the form of Intelligence Briefings delivered to the Investigators, to help provide important information between sessions and keep things moving along.


----------------------
Want more of what I do? I have a number of best-selling Adventures and GM guides for the 7th Sea system available via DriveThruRPG! They are reasonably popular and shockingly inexpensive, so check them out!

I'll soon be working on writing my first-ever CoC scenario for publication, giving it the same "behind-the-scenes development" treatment you've seen so far - so watch this space for future posts on that topic!