The Emperor Of Crime

An adventure for PCs based in London, possibly working for the Phantasmological Society.

Fantômas is dead.

A few short months have passed since the Chief Torturer, the Master of Fear, the notorious Emperor of Crime, was taken from his VIP cell in France’s famous La Santé Prison to a place on the pavement along the Boulevard Arago, and there publicly guillotined.

The crowd watched in superstitious awe. Many had lost friends or family to Fantômas’ depredations. Multiple doctors and independent experts were on hand to confirm that it was not a ruse, a trick or a scheme. There were no last-minute substitutions or cheap rubber masks. Fantômas is really dead.

His widow, bizarrely, claimed his body. Nobody knew that he was even married. Six masked pallbearers lowered his body into his grave in the Montparnasse Cemetery, next to Proudhon and Baudelaire. After a decent interval had elapsed the police dug up his body, confirmed that it was actually him in there and buried him again.

Two nights ago there was a mass breakout at La Santé.

Inspector Juve, recently promoted to Prefect of the Paris Police, as reward for his hard work in capturing the legendary criminal, is baffled. Five hundred of the most dangerous men in France - arsonists and poisoners, baby eaters and granny stranglers - have been released on an unsuspecting public.

The night guards did it themselves.

They got up from the table in their break room, where they’d been listening to a boxing match, and went through every cell block, releasing the most fiendish killers and handing over the keys. Then they were mauled to death, along with the prison warden and almost every normal person working there.

In every prison there’s a few inmates who don’t need to be there. One guy who’s actually innocent, two or three who really were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Specifically and only those people remain locked up in La Santé Prison. Everyone else escaped.

The police are run off their feet trying to track all the killers down. That’s where you come in.

Track them to their holes, the damp cellars where the roulette wheels clatter day and night, the dingy bistros by the river where small glasses of colourless absinthe are served to hideous men. Rat warrens in the slums where artists dwell side by side with prostitutes and exiled Russian princes, all of them at the landlord’s mercy.

Something’s going on in the French underworld. Shipments of experimental weaponry. Specialised commissions from the artisans of crime. Firebombs, pocket guns, smallpox vials stolen from disease labs and crates of live white mice.

Talent scouts in all the pubs. Killers are being recruited. Only the most evil need apply.

Six masked pallbearers attended the funeral of Fantômas. Six of the most diabolical criminals in Europe.

Fantômas left a will.

His fortune and his empire will go to the man or woman who commits, by the turn of the new year, the most obscene and blasphemous crime. His widow - a veiled woman in mourning black whose face is never shown - will be the only judge.

The lords of crime plan to take turns. They are, in order:

Dr. Mabuse. The Man with the Automatic Eyes. Gambling addict. Master of hypnotism. Plots to make himself a king in Brazil. His crime has already happened, and was the prison breakout - he mind-controlled the guards by hacking the boxing match broadcast.

Irma Fangora. Sleek gamine beauty marred by rodent snarl. Commands Apache gang known as the Vampires. Plans to unleash a swarm of trained face-biting plague rats on the annual Bal des Quat’z’Arts, at the Moulin Rouge. The theme this year is “Carthage” and the dance hall will be full of sexy naked art students in extravagant costumes.

Madame U. A quarter tcho-tcho on her mother’s side. Controls the flow of black lotus powder from Indochina. Obsessed with unlocking the secrets of the atom. Wears silk. In her fifties. Plans to abduct the Pope, when he visits Notre-Dame de Paris in a few weeks’ time, and feed him to a nine-metre-long reticulated python.

Arsène Lupin. Gentleman thief. Heart not really in it. Doesn’t get his kicks from hurting people but feels he has to submit something. Sends the cops a letter announcing that he plans to steal the Mona Lisa. Already replaced it with an automatically dissolving fake. Hangs around the Louvre in a janitor’s costume to see what people do.

Rocambole. Flamboyant con man. Top hat, sideburns, reddish-blonde beard. Claims to be just a humble orphan, the King of Transylvania and the Count of Saint Germain. Plans to set the Palais Garnier on fire during a performance of Faust, with goons dressed as ballet demons, then lock the doors and escape via the catacombs.

Zenith the Albino. Pink eyes. Impeccable evening dress. Opium addict. Swordstick. Terminally bored. A genius in every field. Plans to take over the Eiffel Tower with the aid of his death squad of trained white apes and broadcast an ennui signal to make all of Paris as suicidally depressed as he is.

The crime lords are competing with each other for resources and men. They’re not above sabotaging each other’s schemes, but understand the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the benefits of cooperation.

Rocambole, quietly, will send notes to the players signed “A Friend”, alerting them to upcoming atrocities. If pressed he claims to be Fantômas’ illegitimate son, Vladimir, trying to make up for his father’s evil. When it’s his turn he gets the players out of the way by directing them to a fictional spider outbreak at the Panthéon by a guy named Monsieur X.

Who escaped La Santé?

Paul Gorguloff. “The Scythian.” Believes in an ideal Russian state ruled by a Green Army peasant dictator modelled on the culture of the ancient steppe. Hates Jews. Involved with les Camelots du Roi and other far-right movements. Amateur abortionist. Took a knife to a socialist leader and will try again.

Jean Dubois. “The Mammoth.” Anarchist bank robber. Seven feet tall. Drives cars through jeweller’s windows. Famous for picking two cops up and banging their heads together until their skulls cracked open. Believes in the supremacy of the ego and the total overthrow of the state. Gorguloff’s cellmate and friend.

Maurice Segret. “The Bluebeard of Calais.” Avuncular middle-aged man. Replied to lonely hearts ads, claiming to be the newly appointed Consul-General to Australia, in need of a wife to host diplomatic receptions. Thirteen strangled bodies found behind his cottage in the woods. Oddly charismatic. Looks just like the Pope.

Giuseppe Sasia. “The Draguignan Shepherd Killer.” Diminutive. Doesn’t meet your eye. Takes off his shapeless cloth cap and fondles it as he talks to you. Poacher. Stealthy. Claims a spectre gave him an ointment that allows him to turn into a wolf. Lived in a hut on the mountainside full of stolen watches and bits of people’s kidneys.

Victor Prévost. “The Handsome Man.” Cavalry officer. Speaks in louchébem - Lyonnaise butchers’ slang. Eats raw meat and vomits it back up. Naturally kind and considerate. Appetite of an ogre. Ladies’ man. Skins, bones and joints his victims, then wraps their parts in brown paper for later consumption.

“Pierrot Le Fou.” Real name not known. Evil jester. Autocoprophage. Dressed in tattered red and yellow silks. Juggles knives. Second-story man who slit the throats of old ladies and drowned a whole family one by one in the bathtub for the sake of fifteen francs they didn’t have. Fantômas’ second in command.

They’ve gotten to know each other in prison. Traded tips. The crime lords are competing for their services. Fantômas’ underground network makes it easy for them to disappear. It’s supposed to be open-ended - there’s a dozen ways you could track them down.

On auction, at the Hotel Napoleon - the secret diaries of the Marquis de Sade.

They were stolen from Fantômas’ private collection by his henchwoman, Mère Toulouche, while he was in jail, and sold for a tidy sum to the art dealer Paul Guillame. Two attempts have been made to steal them already. Salvador Dali is said to have put in a bid.

They speak of a woman in black, a widow, who de Sade spent most of his life trying and failing to impress. She advised Gilles de Rais, and Conomor the Cursed. She spoke to de Sade of many things, urging him on to greater heights of infamy - but in the end he simply couldn’t manage to be vile enough for her.

All the crime lords want them. Reading them is sufficiently unpleasant that it requires a Sanity check. If you please the widow she will brew you an elixir that grants you domination over your fellow man, and endless life.

Only at the end does the name Nyarlathotep get a mention.

An invitation to a masked ball. Hosted by Pierrot le Fou. In the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. John D. Rockefeller Jr., the American millionaire, who has contributed a fortune to Versailles’ restoration, is being blackmailed to open up the space.

All the crime lords are in attendance, along with their goons. Fantômas’ whole gang, and the dregs of the Paris underworld. Lucky Luciano sends a representative and there are Peaky Blinders smoking cigarettes out the back.

On stage, bound, gagged, stripped to his underwear and suspended in a giant birdcage, is Inspector Juve, who was kidnapped earlier in the day. (Unless you stopped it, I guess.)

At the stroke of midnight, Pierrot will open up a blood-red envelope, and announce a winner. The name is already written but if you steal the envelope in advance, you could change it. By default the pick is Rocambole (although Zenith is certain he was robbed).

Pierrot presents the winner with a goblet of oily green liqueur. Distilled cruelty. The Elixir of Crime. The winner proposes a toast.

“Gentlemen - to evil!”

He drinks it down. His (or her) flesh becomes waxy and grey, bubbles, melts. Like a guttering candle. His body becomes formless, sexless. He rips off his clothes. He stands before the crowd.

Fantômas, the Emperor of Crime, has returned.

And, as everyone watches, he carefully and methodically flays Inspector Juve alive. Finally he peels off Juve’s face, and dons it as a mask. Transforming himself into a perfect duplicate of the Prefect of the Paris Police.

He will now proceed to turn Paris into the world capital of evil. A paradise of crime.

His widow stands silently by his side, watching. Do not attempt to remove her veil. It’s just a bunch of worms and a Sanity check under there.

Of course, this is just one way the mystery could go. Anything could happen! As soon as you get involved it’s supposed to spin wildly out of control. You can read this post for more suggestions on how to run it.

Some great photos here of the Bal des Quat-z-Arts. Might have used less blackface myself but all the nudity gets my approval.

coolfrenchcomics.com was invaluable in figuring out all the villains. Don’t be afraid to use public domain characters, or go for low-hanging fruit in terms of the locations. A complicated story gets easier to tell if the players already understand the component pieces.

I didn’t even use Joseph Vacher, the French Ripper, who has a white fur hat and a paralysed face and talks to Joan of Arc. Maybe next time! I hope you can save Inspector Juve, he seems nice.