Non-Player Characters

These are characters who will be written and controlled by the GM or (in some cases) by players (who may choose to have a personal servant, for example, or a small but infinitely annoying little dog).

These are the main Non-Player Characters; this list will be updated before the game starts.

 

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Chetwyn Glyde

Chetwyn Glyde is a wealthy and notoriously ruthless American media owner in his early sixties. He has fingers thrust into many pies and his enemies – of whom there are many – say that any meat in those pies soon starts to smell rotten.

Despite being rumoured to be on the edges of organised crime, he has friends in high places, which has seen him awarded government contracts. Exposure of his investment in a leaky oil pipeline, along with reports of fraudulent tax returns, have seen him taking an extended holiday in Europe, accompanied by one of his sons and his beautiful mistress. His love of chemin de fer at the gambling tables might also be another reason.

Glyde has been married twice: an early marriage that ended in divorce and the subsequent death of his wife, leaving him free to marry the lovely (and fragile) heiress Annalisa Dunwoody of Maryland (yes, one of THE Maryland Dunwoodys) in 1903. Three children later, Mrs Glyde had a nervous breakdown and, since 1920, has resided in a nursing home. Her family refuse to countenance a divorce.

Shortly before the collapse of his marriage, at a point where Glyde had become a well-known figure in New York society on account of his vast fortune (accrued through profiteering in the Great War), he met a young chorus girl called Nellie Nolan. She has been his mistress for the last fifteen years.

His two sons by Annalisa are employed in the business – and are, like Glyde, under investigation by the FBI, although those in the know have suggested that they are as likely to have been duped by their father as his unfortunate investors. He is said to treat them worse than the average employees, keeping them short of cash and working long hours. He also has a daughter who is rumoured to have some of her mother’s fragility.

 

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Nellie Nolan

Born Hedwig Pumpenfeldt in 1897, she originally came from a small village on the German/Czech border. She arrived in New York in 1912, aged fifteen, and shortly thereafter began to make a career for herself as Nellie Nolan in the kind of musical theatre where prettiness and lavish charms were more highly regarded than musical talent.

She attracted attention, particularly a young admirer called Nathan Beauregard Rees, who was regarded as an up and coming young architect, a scion of a wealthy Bostonian family. However, he was killed in an automobile accident in 1920; it was very soon after his death that Nellie Nolan became known in society as the mistress of Chetwyn Glyde.

She subsequently played a number of roles in a series of Hollywood movies, but without the recognition that she and Chetwyn Glyde (who has invested heavily in these movies) feels that she deserves.

She is known to have an uncertain temper (which some have attributed to reliance on alcohol) and is known not to be on good terms with Chetwyn’s daughter.

 

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David Olson

Glyde’s saturnine right hand man and fixer.

It’s said that Olson is a man who knows where the bodies are buried. More than that – he helped dig the graves. And … he was reportedly responsible for some of the deaths too.

No-one knows where David Olson comes from, or who is family is. There’s stories of his being adopted and brought up by a Norwegian family in Brooklyn. Others say he was a street kid running the numbers when he stumbled into Chetwyn Glyde’s path. Still others say he comes from a Boston Brahman family but – as a result of a scandal at Yale – was forced to conceal his identity.

Whatever the truth, it is clear he is coldly efficient in all he undertakes, and strikingly loyal to Chetwyn Glyde.

 

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Frau Gutrun Blauer

Owner of the Hotel de Saxe

Frau Blauer was widowed in the Great War. Her husband, Fritzel Blauer, was considerably older than her and had run the inn for twenty years before taking a wife. Their marriage was rumoured to be unhappy but, shortly before his demise, they had a son, also called Fritzel.

It was expected that once the war was over, Frau Blauer would sell up and move to Zittau, if not Dresden, where she could live comfortably on the proceeds. However, she made the decision (a fortunate one, when one thinks what German inflation would have done to her savings) to continue running the inn as a legacy in trust for her son Fritzel.

Various decisions she made in support of this, including developing connections with the local skiing areas and running a small, select casino on the premises, have ensured that the inn has become extremely successful.

Her only regret is that her son Fritzel shows little interest in the business, preferring instead to pursue studies in physics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. In the last two years, however, he has spent more time at home.

(NB – players can choose to play Fritzel the younger; if no players wants him, more information will be supplied about him as an NPC).

 

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Count Vasily Dolgorukov

The Count is a Russian exile. Fabulously wealthy in Imperial Russia (by his own account), all that was left behind when, as a young army officer, he was forced to flee from the Communists.

His adventures in the intervening years have seen him in Paris, Monte Carlo, Kenya, Macau and Shanghai. There are rumours about his activities – he is said to have fought two duels (and emerged the winner each time), seduced women (and, according to some, men too) in four different continents, ruled an Indian kingdom, crossed the Himalayas to the hidden land of Tibet, acted as a consultant on Russian Imperial culture to several major Hollywood directors, won and lost three fortunes in as many nights on the gaming tables … to be on first name terms with princes and dictators … and with the leading gangsters in five American cities. He is an inveterate gambler.

What he is doing in this comparative backwater in the Zittau mountains is less clear … although it may have something to do with those lost fortunes.

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Franz von Essen

Franz von Essen is the young scion of a noble German family, who have a long tradition of service in the diplomatic service. Von Essen is something of a protege of Joachim von Ribbentrop. Originally under the protection of Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, Director of the Policy Department at the Foreign Office, von Essen has become associated with the more aggressive foreign policy being pursued by von Robbentrop, who is understood to be in line for promotion to Foreign Minister of the Reich.

Franz von Essen is young, charming and cosmopolitan. He spent some years at school in England, and travelled in the United States, for which he holds considerable affection, before returning and settling down to work in the Foreign Ministry, with frequent trips abroad on diplomatic missions.

Another thing that interrupts his working life is the fact that he is an Olympic level skiier; in the winter he is frequently to be seen on the slopes at major competitions. He competed in the Alpine skiing at the 1936 Winter Olympic Games, held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany, where he narrowly missed winning a bronze medal.

 

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Miranda Glyde

Miranda is the only daughter of Chetwyn Glyde by his second wife, Annalisa Dunwoody. Miranda was just eight years old when her mother had a nervous breakdown and took up residence in a nursing home, where she remains. As a child, Miranda was not permitted to visit her mother; as an adult her visits have been rare, and largely controlled by her father.

Thereafter Miranda was raised by a succession of nannies and governesses until, when she was thirteen, she was sent to an exclusive and expensive boarding school (it was rumoured that the price of Miranda’s admittance to this prestigious institution was a new wing on the library). After that she completed her education at Vasser, graduating in 1933. Among her peer group, she was known as “The Kid” because of a certain vulnerability in her character that made those in her group inclined to baby her.

That vulnerability has led to rumours that she takes a little too closely after her mother.

Yet to her friends, Miranda has always seemed a bright, happy and friendly young woman, in awe and some fear of her father, but devoted and loyal to her two brothers. She dislikes her father’s mistress, Nellie Nolan, and seems to detest his assistant, David Olson.

 

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Fritzel Blauer

The son of Frau Gutrun Blauer, the owner of Hotel de Saxe. As a young boy he showed considerable talent as a student of Mathematics and Physics, and, encouraged by his proud mother, he became a student at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. She had, however, expected him to return home after he qualified and to take part in running the hotel. This he chose not to do, instead prolonging his studies into quantum mechanics.

Two years ago, however, he began spending more time at the Hotel de Saxe and taking a more active part in the running of the inn. To his mother he has said little about his reasons for his abrupt change of course. He still corresponds with erstwhile colleagues and mentors, as frequent letters arrive with postmarks from Berlin and Munich – and even Copenhagen, and his mother has found papers containing obscure calculations on his desk from time to time.

Fritzel has been a key skier since boyhood. He gives instructions to guests wishing to learn about cross country skiing, leading expeditions into the Zittau mountains.

 

Guests and Servants in the Hotel

Once the players have chosen their characters, further NPCS will be described.