The Black Bazaar

An adventure for Istanbul PCs, working for the Manzikert Hotel.

A priceless relic has been stolen from the Topkapi Palace. Halil Ethem, chairman of the Istanbul Directorate of Antiquities, wants it back before anyone finds out.

The Prophets’ Sword. Taken by King David from Goliath. Acquired by the Prophet Muhammad from the Banu Qaynuqa. Inscribed with the names of nine Islamic prophets and a mysterious inscription in Nabatean. Said to be the blade that Jesus Christ will wield against the Dajjal on the Day of Judgment.

Halil’s at a loss. He wants to enter Parliament and can’t have the theft of a relic on his conscience. Nothing else was touched - not the staff of Moses, not the tooth Muhammad lost in battle, not the Spoonmaker’s Diamond or the emerald-studded dagger of Mahmud I.

The sword did not look three thousand years old to him, and he has long assumed it’s fake. But there must have been a reason someone wanted it.

In the cisterns underneath the city - the Black Bazaar.

Founded in the time of the Emperor Constantine. Dedicated to the mother goddess Cybele - her eunuch priesthood guards the gates. Columns rise from the neck-deep water. Customers hire silent ferrymen to pole them through the lamplit darkness, where the bazaar boats wait.

Held once a year, during Cybele’s holy week. There’s secret gates under the Grand Bazaar, and in the basements of many of the city’s oldest houses. Not even the eunuchs know how deep the tunnels go. You hear rats, and other fouler things. You need the password to get in - you have to do somebody a favour for it.

From all across the world the occultists converge. Mad French counts and English warlocks crammed aboard the Orient Express. Grim Russian ascetics from the Caucasus. Hollow-eyed Yemenis with squirming presences beneath their robes. They’re here to buy and sell.

Rare books. Homunculi. Caged extraterrestrials. Holy relics. Children’s souls. Many of the shopkeepers go masked - some are wrapped in bandages, draped in veils or cloaked in furs, with shapes underneath that don’t seem like they quite conform to any human body plan. From Carcosa, Yuggoth, Celeano. Wander off into the tunnels and you’ll emerge in a fog-shrouded city, lit by too many suns.

Pallid sharklike figures in the water, squirming away from your lantern, banging on the boats and the makeshift wooden walkways. Don’t fall in.

This is where Basil Zaharoff intends to auction off the Prophets’ Sword.

Once a mere brothel tout. Arsonist for the Constantinople Fire Brigade, burning down mansions to get paid by the owners for pulling their valuables from the wreckage. Moved west, changed his name, passed himself off as a count.

Got a sales job for Hiram Maxim, flogging machine guns and experimental submarines. Become the world’s most notorious arms dealer. Overthrew King Constantine, brought Greece into the Great War, pushed Eleftherios Venizelos to invade Smyrna after the Peace of Versailles.

Lost a huge sum of money when all his wars wound up. Now runs the Monte Carlo Casino. Making decent money, but bored. Wife has recently died. Wants to get back into the arms game - burn down Europe one last time.

Whoever wields the Prophets’ Sword is said to be unstoppable in battle. They could lead an army into Hell, and triumph over Satan. Zaharoff doesn’t know if this is true. He just wants someone to start a war with it so he can sell them lots of pretty bullets.

He’s guarded by soldiers of fortune. Ivan Skaramanga, a Don River Cossack notorious for dragging Reds and Jews behind his horse. Alexei von Krupp, of the Belgian Congo, greasy and blond and a dogged collector of dried hands. Ferdinand Reilly, the Donegal Weasel, kicked out of the IRA for using prisoners to test machine guns.

He has friends in the CHP - Mustafa Kemal’s republican party, currently running Turkey. He’s always played both sides. He’s a silent partner in quite a few well-known Istanbul brothels, and has a juicy file of compromising photographs that keeps the law off his back. The police don’t want to touch him - they think he’s a very respectable man.

He bribed Boran Parlak, the Topkapi’s chief of security, a huge sleepy Great War veteran with a nagging wife and missing hand, to look the other way as Skaramanga broke into the palace. Boran, a devout Muslim, thought they were just going to steal a few jewels, and is wracked with guilt over his role in desecrating a relic of the Prophet.

He lives in a private yacht on the Bosphorus, guarded at all times. Strange sounds are heard from it at night. He needs to test the sword before he sells it - by summoning demons, liberating them to attack him and making sure it can cut off their heads. His private occult consultant, Martha Bibescu, a sloe-eyed witch from the Carpathians, is in charge of making sure they don’t get out of hand.

All his sidekicks get drunk together sometimes, in little tavernas in the city, and complain about him behind his back. Sometimes they go to hammams together - good way to catch them naked and off guard.

Who’s bidding for the sword?

Anatoly Lunacharsky. Representing Proletkult, the Bolshevik occult research agency. Detachment of OGPU secret policemen follow him everywhere, badly impersonating normal people, looking for White assassins. Keeps a pet albino monkey, Tasha - has improved her intellect through tantric experiments. Trying to teach her Marx.

T. E. Lawrence. Representing the British Museum, which is a front for the Black Pyramid Cult. Fey. Masochistic. Likes to hold his palm over open flames. Secretly far tougher than he looks. Friends with all Arabs - always turns out to have saved their lives in the war. Operates alone but has always secretly paid off someone in the room to be on his side.

Maria Orsic. Representing the Thule Society. Croatian mystic whose All-German Society for Metaphysics made contact with the star Aldebaran at Berchtesgaden in 1919. Wears her hair long. Believes the Teutons are heirs to Hyperborea - plans to empower Nazi flying machines with the mystic power of the Black Sun.

P. D. Ouspensky. Representing George Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Chalks nine-pointed signs everywhere. Always shows up where you don’t expect him. Can step through the fourth dimension, using the sacred dances of the Sarmoung Brotherhood. Seems harmless enough.

Faisal al-Saud. Representing his father, Abdulaziz al-Saud, currently the King of Hejaz and Nejd, and in the process of consolidating Saudi Arabia. Bodyguard of looming Ikhwan Bedouins in white turbans, their faces covered, toting huge scimitars, who resent this idolatrous country and say the word “infidel” a lot.

Ganesh Savarkar. Representing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Wants to build an army of sadhus to free India from British rule and establish a Hindu nation. Believes the Vedic texts originated at the North Pole. Owns a flame wand, discovered in the Himalayas, that he thinks is an ancient Aryan superweapon.

All these guys are staying at the Golden Palace Hotel. They’ll assemble in the Black Bazaar at midnight and watch as Zaharoff demonstrates the power of the Sword by decapitating a chimera from the depths of Hell. Then he’ll start the bidding.

Faisal probably has the deepest pockets. But if a fight breaks out, all bets are off. Zaharoff doesn’t really need the money, though it’s nice to have. He just wants to be sure that the Sword gets to whoever wants it most.