Love the Theme, Hate the Execution: Fixing Marcel Delacourte

[DeepShadow of FoS]

In my neverending campaign to flip the canon damsels-in-distress into heroes, one of my players has chosen Marie Delacourte as a PC, and we are leading up into her adventure with her father and fiancee plotting to kill her (Suffer the Child: CotN Ghosts).

And reviewing this adventure...I'm suddenly plagued by severe doubts about how to pull this off. Here's my breakdown:

LOVE IT:
* The theme of heir-as-resource: Marcel is disappointed in his daughter being a do-gooder, so he plans to "fix" her to make her what he wants, and hand her off to his apprentice to continue doing the same.
* The theme of child labor in a workhouse as a monstrous cruelty that can be symbolized by living death.

SO-SO:
* The fiancee as conspirator. I've pulled off plot-required romantic entanglements before. I'm prepared to make this work with LOTS of communication with the player.
* Zombie powder to turn Marie into an undead-but-faking-it puppet. It begs some questions, all of which have answers, but I may just come up with something else.
* Stefan Dyreth connections. So, I get that it's good business, but is this becoming a franchise of necro-weavers?

HATE IT:
* How has no one noticed that this guy *murders children by the truckload?!* The adventure says he pays off the families for a year of their service, and then...the kid never comes back after a year?! And no one questions, no one cares? C'mon, I know that this is suppose to be symbolic of the uncaring forces that grind upon the poor, but...it's just too much.
* How long has Marie lived in this house, in this family, and her father hasn't tried to turn her to the dark side? Or if he has, she's still blind to his evil?

POSSIBLE FIXES:
* If we have zombie children, why not get them from paupers graves? No one's looking for those. No muss, no fuss. It's less villainous, but still in keeping with the theme, just by highlighting that there's a near-limitless supply of poor children's corpses.
* Switch the zombie powder for that stuff from To Honor and Obey (DTDL) that turns people into living slaves. Also Souragnian, which the zombie powder appears to be inspired by. If that matters to anyone.
* Skip the powder and all and just say that Marcel is a lebendtod, and he's been pulling a Graben and waiting for Marie to get old enough to turn. This explains the neglect, because never intended for her to have free will as an adult. There's no need to turn her to the dark side. He just advances the timetable because she's becoming inconvenient.

Any other suggestions? Anyone else run this, and care to comment on these issue?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

More on the central "zombie children" issue. So...Marie is worried about the fate of the factory workers, which is what gets her into trouble. So...are there living children in the factories, too? If yes, why are none of them freaked out by the presence of zombie kids working alongside them? If not, what draws her attention about these workers who are keeping so low a profile as to never warrant attention?

This makes me lean more toward the lebendtod solution, but that has its own baggage: if the zombie kids are lebendtod, they must be created from living kids, or from the original ritual. If from living kids, this still leads to a variation of the original problem where they go back to their families...and never age. That's exactly why the Grabens wait until their kids become adults before turning them.

If he's reanimating lebentod children from already deceased corpses, that's more workable, except the ritual to do so is rare and costly...but I suppose it's the least problematic option. That would allow for living children to work alongside lebendtod without realizing something is amiss, and then she can be concerned about their plight...maybe?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

OK, so I ran it, and loved it, and did it pretty much as written (other than converting to 3e), without hitting any of the issues you mentioned. BUT it was 16 years ago, and I probably didn't dig too deeply into the implications. For what it's worth, neither did my players. Journal here if you're interested, but it really was pretty straightforward: http://themistway.com/Ravenloft-Session1.html

I also wasn't trying to avoid the damsel in distress trope, and in fact later put Marie in more distress by using her in place of Louise Chantelle in the Francois de Penible adventure. Also, turning Marie into a PC changes a lot, and is the source of a lot of your trouble here. (not that it's a bad idea, it's really cool! It's just not how the module was designed, so it requires adaptation.)

The one major change I made was structural, not thematic. I had the final confrontation take place at the mill, not Marcel's house, moving the secret lab there. I made a (poorly drawn) map for the mill here, http://themistway.com/mill.html

With that in mind....

SO-SO:
* The fiancee as conspirator. I've pulled off plot-required romantic entanglements before. I'm prepared to make this work with LOTS of communication with the player.

In the module as written, this is mainly to get the PCs involved, and to show Nikolai is dangerous even if he has good-ish motivations. Jean's death brings them into the story and serves as the initial mystery. With Marie as PC, she's already involved, but what of the rest of the party? Even with Marie involved, she needs an impetus to investigate her father. Have you introduced Nikolai yet? He should seem malevolent to her at first, trying to scare her into fleeing her father, then ultimately becoming dangerous to Marcel and Jean. Figuring out that the ghost is actually protecting her should be the first part of the adventure, I imagine.

Also, it doesn't have to be romance. It could be a marriage arranged by her father.

* Zombie powder to turn Marie into an undead-but-faking-it puppet. It begs some questions, all of which have answers, but I may just come up with something else.

questions such as?

* Stefan Dyreth connections. So, I get that it's good business, but is this becoming a franchise of necro-weavers?

Heh.. so I never noticed that Dyreth predates Delacourte. I always thought the reference in Gaz II odd, as if someone remembered Delacourte but got the details and location wrong. Turns out Dyreth was in Bleak House doing this scam first, and Gaz II was referencing that. Presumably he had no nosy daughter to ruin things. (And CotN:G even mentions the connection.) Anyway, it's a detail easily dropped if you don't like it, but can also serve as a hook for future adventure.

HATE IT:
* How has no one noticed that this guy *murders children by the truckload?!* The adventure says he pays off the families for a year of their service, and then...the kid never comes back after a year?! And no one questions, no one cares? C'mon, I know that this is suppose to be symbolic of the uncaring forces that grind upon the poor, but...it's just too much.

The module says that when Marie presses her father on this he says he sends them off into the world with some money to help in their new lives. Not too much of a stretch to apply that lie to anyone else who asks. "I'm sorry your son decided not to come home, but rest assured he has learned useful skills here and is surely equipped for a new life. Perhaps he is saving up for a triumphant return in a few years? He was a model worker in his time here, you raised him very well." or come up with other lies "I'm sorry to inform you that your daughter was caught in cotton thresher and tragically died. here is some gold for your loss."

Honestly, I don't think it's all that suspicious, sadly. How many children are needed to run the mill? 50? (I think I had 25 zombies or so in that map of the mill) out of the population of Port-a-lucine? (Officially 5400, but come on, I'm sure we all increase that by a lot). Given the time period emulated here, I don't think even 50 poor children would be noticed. The gendarmes mainly would concern themselves with crimes against the nobility, keeping the peace among the poor only to the extent of quelling any large scale riots.

There's also the question of how long he's been doing this? Has the "year of service" only recently ended for his first subjects?

* How long has Marie lived in this house, in this family, and her father hasn't tried to turn her to the dark side? Or if he has, she's still blind to his evil?

In the final confrontation, Marcel says he "pampered" Marie. I expect he sheltered her from his business, let alone his secret business. If you're willing to put in a dash of period-appropriate chauvinism, why would he want to involve his daughter when he can work with her fiance instead? She can just stay home and reap the benefits of their wealth, as a lady "should." Moving the lab from the house the mill also solves the issue of her stumbling on something at home.
An evil man who leaves his daughter sheltered from his evil is nothing new. (cf. Nazis, BTK, etc.)

POSSIBLE FIXES:
* If we have zombie children, why not get them from paupers graves? No one's looking for those. No muss, no fuss. It's less villainous, but still in keeping with the theme, just by highlighting that there's a near-limitless supply of poor children's corpses.

maybe he started that way, but found that fresh zombies work better. (less decay, more obedient, etc.)

* Switch the zombie powder for that stuff from To Honor and Obey (DTDL) that turns people into living slaves. Also Souragnian, which the zombie powder appears to be inspired by. If that matters to anyone.

Eh? what's the goal, to make him less despicable? (It only slightly does that)

* Skip the powder and all and just say that Marcel is a lebendtod, and he's been pulling a Graben and waiting for Marie to get old enough to turn. This explains the neglect, because never intended for her to have free will as an adult. There's no need to turn her to the dark side. He just advances the timetable because she's becoming inconvenient.

I don't love this. Prefer to keep him an awful human, but it's up to you.

More on the central "zombie children" issue. So...Marie is worried about the fate of the factory workers, which is what gets her into trouble. So...are there living children in the factories, too? If yes, why are none of them freaked out by the presence of zombie kids working alongside them? If not, what draws her attention about these workers who are keeping so low a profile as to never warrant attention?

Up to you whether there are living kids. If there are, and they are freaked out, so what? What will they do, try to escape? With zombie guards to stop them? But I'd lean toward no. The only reason there would be any living kids would be if Marcel was limited in how quickly he can zombify them. He has no reason not to do so as soon as possible to save on feeding them.

How did Marie find out? It says through her increase focus on charity work. Maybe she was down in the slums handing out bread or whatever and heard some woman's tale about her son that never returned from the Mill. she overhears her own last name and goes to talk to the lady, starting down the road to investigation. She's the first person with any sort of power to take the woman seriously, and the adventure begins. No need for living children in that scenario.


Most of the issues you raise can be chalked up to timing. This doesn't have to be an ongoing perfect scheme. The adventure starts in the thick of it, or just as it's about to spiral out of Marcel's control. He doesn't have to be a mastermind. He could just be a petty man over his head.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I also wasn't trying to avoid the damsel in distress trope, and in fact later put Marie in more distress by using her in place of Louise Chantelle in the Francois de Penible adventure. Also, turning Marie into a PC changes a lot, and is the source of a lot of your trouble here. (not that it's a bad idea, it's really cool! It's just not how the module was designed, so it requires adaptation.)

Yeah, I know that's part of the issue. They can be in distress, but I'm basically treating that as the origin story of a hero.

I had the final confrontation take place at the mill, not Marcel's house, moving the secret lab there. I made a (poorly drawn) map for the mill here, http://themistway.com/mill.html

Love it! Moving it to the mill makes sense.

With Marie as PC, she's already involved, but what of the rest of the party? Even with Marie involved, she needs an impetus to investigate her father. Have you introduced Nikolai yet?

Okay, I see your points here. FWIW, I am planning to introduce Nikolai soon as a living child that she will be kind to, and then have him die. She's not due to return home for another week or so, and then the fun will start.

He should seem malevolent to her at first, trying to scare her into fleeing her father, then ultimately becoming dangerous to Marcel and Jean. Figuring out that the ghost is actually protecting her should be the first part of the adventure, I imagine.

Yeah, I guess the fiancee isn't really necessary to how I'm planning it. I may just drop him.

Also, it doesn't have to be romance. It could be a marriage arranged by her father.

That's how I'll play it if we have a fiancee at all.

* Zombie powder to turn Marie into an undead-but-faking-it puppet. It begs some questions, all of which have answers, but I may just come up with something else.

questions such as?

Well, at the very least she'd stop aging, even if the powder is so good that she looks and acts totally natural, which I find very hard to believe. It's hardly an ideal solution. If he wanted her to be obedient and stop asking questions, there are solutions that would make her obedient and stop asking questions, full stop.

The module says that when Marie presses her father on this he says he sends them off into the world with some money to help in their new lives. Not too much of a stretch to apply that lie to anyone else who asks. "I'm sorry your son decided not to come home, but rest assured he has learned useful skills here and is surely equipped for a new life. Perhaps he is saving up for a triumphant return in a few years? He was a model worker in his time here, you raised him very well." or come up with other lies "I'm sorry to inform you that your daughter was caught in cotton thresher and tragically died. here is some gold for your loss."

Hmmm...I guess that helps a little. I guess it comes down to how long he's been doing this.

Given the time period emulated here, I don't think even 50 poor children would be noticed.

By anyone other than their own families, I would agree. But I guess that's another thing to emphasize--maybe he preys on homeless kids, and cuts a deal with orphanages and children's homes. If there's no family in the picture, it's much more believable.

There's also the question of how long he's been doing this? Has the "year of service" only recently ended for his first subjects?

Well, I guess I was prepping for the "where all your money comes from" speech, but that has a lot less clout if this is a recent development.

In the final confrontation, Marcel says he "pampered" Marie. I expect he sheltered her from his business, let alone his secret business.

Sure, that's the way we've been playing it, it's just...did he never expect her to wonder?

An evil man who leaves his daughter sheltered from his evil is nothing new. (cf. Nazis, BTK, etc.)

Yes, except this man expresses disappointment that she turned out the way she did, which suggests he intended her to accept these evils into her life despite her pampering.

* If we have zombie children, why not get them from paupers graves?

maybe he started that way, but found that fresh zombies work better. (less decay, more obedient, etc.)

Yeah, I can see that. He starts out there and then has to selectively hire out children that no one will miss (see above)

Eh? what's the goal, to make him less despicable? (It only slightly does that)

No, the goal is to give him what he wants without creating more issues. She'd be a lot harder to marry off if she's room temperature and infertile.

* Skip the powder and all and just say that Marcel is a lebendtod,

I don't love this. Prefer to keep him an awful human, but it's up to you.

Well, yeah, that's basically the biggest argument against it. It strongly suggests living humans aren't capable of this, which they certainly are. It also suggests he's a puppet himself, which is itself a complication. I'll try harder to incorporate some of your suggestions instead.

The adventure starts in the thick of it, or just as it's about to spiral out of Marcel's control. He doesn't have to be a mastermind. He could just be a petty man over his head.

I like it. I'll give it some more thought.

[Epically]

Gonz, how did you go about the level of Marcel? Considering he's level 9 and the adventure is meant for level 6-8. What did you change about him? Spells, level, abilities, magic items, etc...

Also, anyone else have a giggle at Jean and Marcel being in cahoots with each other? A throwback to NotWD? A million other names to come up with and just happens to be these two lol.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Gonz, how did you go about the level of Marcel? Considering he's level 9 and the adventure is meant for level 6-8. What did you change about him? Spells, level, abilities, magic items, etc...

Good questions. My party is going to be about level 6.

Also, anyone else have a giggle at Jean and Marcel being in cahoots with each other? A throwback to NotWD? A million other names to come up with and just happens to be these two lol.

Ugh, just another example of the limited imaginations of game authors. I lost it when we had Angelique the golem, Angelique Moliere, and Angel Panjaro in one part of my campaign, and Vlad Drakov, Vlad II, Vladimir Ludzig, and Vladimir Nobriskov in the other.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Gonz, how did you go about the level of Marcel? Considering he's level 9 and the adventure is meant for level 6-8. What did you change about him? Spells, level, abilities, magic items, etc...

Well, I had to rebuild him anyway, as I was running it in 3.0 instead of 2nd, so I was free to make him whatever level necessary, and scaled him to fit my party of 1st level(-ish) PCs.

VIEW CONTENT:

I say "ish" because I had one actual first level Spiritualist (effectively Nec1), and the others were technically 2nd level, but each with an NPC class level. (A War1/Rgr1 and a Exp1/Rog1). It was an experiment on my part to add backstory by allowing those who wanted it an extra NPC class level if it represented what they were before adventuring.

I honestly don't remember what level I actually made him. Probably no more than 3rd or 4th. The real challenge for the PCs was the swarm of zombies at the mill, not Marcel himself. (and they had Nikolai to help against Marcel). And if anyone wants to point out any rules issue that would result from making him so low level, that would preclude him from making/controlling all those zombies, or crafting the zombie powder, I handwaved all that, giving him a patron who could feed him whatever power needed to make the plot work. (It was the Gentleman Caller, though his identity didn't matter).

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Okay, this is going to work out. I'm fleshing out some greater context within the campaign to place Marcel Delacourte, here goes:

I'm taking a page from history, with the textile mills developed by Richard Arkwright. These were revolutionary inventions, and the engineering design had to be protected from people looking to make their own. Those mills were huge buildings designed to keep the machines inside secret.

Well, if that's normal for a mill, and if there's all this arms race of design secrets being stolen from each other, then we have an interesting scenario here. Normally it's the technological innovator who gets to be the villain in these scenarios--Ravenloft actually has Creighton Arkwright, who presumably went on to build golems after perfecting his textile mills.

Delacourte is the guy who can't keep up with the competition, so he cheats. Arkwright tech is a few generations old, but tiny innovations have keep building among his competitors. So, instead of going forward into the brave new world with them, he goes back to the old. Digs up the arcana, reanimates his work force, and that's how he stays in the game. It's standard for an Arkwright-type mill to be super-high security, no one can see inside. None of his competitors can figure out how he's beating them.

This is especially interesting because, at this point, we're seeing the introduction of the Eccentrics, a secret society of science advocates who want engineering to conquer arcana in the hearts and minds of the people. They are actually in bed with the Syndicate of Enlightened Citizens, the Lamordian secret society dedicated to exterminating all nonhumans and the supernatural. So we have an ideological conflict where Marcel Delacourte's methods could be denounced by other textile magnates, not because he was murdering people, but because he was using arcane means to cheat at manufacturing! He could very easily frame himself as the lesser evil, pointing out how the alternative to his method still kills dozens of men, women and children every year, possibly more than he does.

I think the key for me is that he's getting the kids that won't be missed. Before I was thinking that he was murdering children sent by loving families, who expected them back. Taking in kids that won't be missed, a few at a time, allows for this system to work for me.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Okay, we're about to move into this adventure, and I'm pretty well set on the big issues: Marcel lost interest in his daughter a long time ago, and allowed her to go away to boarding school in part because he was prepared to use a "final solution" when she returned: the bondage potion from DTDL, which keeps her viable marriage potential while eliminating all that icky free will stuff. That's also partly why he's anxious for her return, because the potion needs to be used by her intended master, and that would be her husband, not her father. Jean has risen above any other prospects, so Marcel deems him the perfect match, and that means it's time to use the potion.

Meanwhile, as I said above, Marcel has had to cope with the pressure of the industry, he's got his mills securely locked just like all the others, but he doesn't have all those technological advantages. His mills are mechanical turks writ large: where the others are full of machines doing things the new way, his are full of zombies cranking everything out the old way, like humans but with no need to sleep or eat or take breaks or breathe.

And as crazy as it sounds, I'm going to try and make Marcel sound reasonable. I want him to almost sell it. His normal means of recruiting is wards of state: kids with no family who go from the streets to the poorhouse to the workhouse to the prisons as if it was just another day at the park. He prefers children who are beyond saving, the ones at the very bottom of the refuse pile, hoodlums with multiple violent crimes to their names at just eleven years old, incorrigible, etc. What's that? Marcine poisoned her foster family with strychnine? Jean-Paul stabbed a grocer with a knife? Tut tut, everyone deserves a second chance, just give them to me.

What kind of life will those children lead? Their lives have already been torture, he is relieving them of that. The have no hope of being productive members of society, he gives them that. And in the process, he makes his mills infinitely safer than his competitors who see children maimed and killed day after day.

I hope I get the chance to give that speech. The best villains see themselves as heroes.

[Mistmaster]

A true enlightened. (sarcasm mode on)

[Cromstar]

I hope I get the chance to give that speech. The best villains see themselves as heroes.

Quote of the year, right here.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I hope I get the chance to give that speech. The best villains see themselves as heroes.

Quote of the year, right here.

:applause!:

[Starscream]

I have this adventure in my list of "want to use" adventures, also because:

1) I like the fact the two villains have the same neame as Nigth of the Living Dead. Since my players started with NotLD, I would like to make them laugh to find another Marcel/Jean duo. They laugh less whern they will find the both duos are machinations of the Gentleman Caller

2) I admit to want to copy Gonzoron solution, using Marie Delacourte to replace Louis Chantelle in the DePenible adventures. Because I want to give to the NPC and PC a sort of bond, and the Gonzoron's idea is what I like. The PC will save Marie, maybe build a friendship with her and then they will have to save her again


in my idea, the powder will be a gift of the Gentleman Caller (to explain a necromancer who has this powerful powder and only runs a mill) and to explain the "children never return home" I will go with the idea of Marcel using the worst orphan in the town (it would be Chateaunoir and not Port-a-Lucine), orphans no one would look for, execpt Marie, after a while