Sample Characters – Calcutta

Sample characters for a Calcutta game – working for the Great Detective Chatterjee. Game rules here.

Sanjay Sengupta, freelance journalist. Always looking out for bits of gossip. Addicted to jumping to conclusions. Dogged critic of both Congress and the British Raj. Constantly bugging Arthur Moore, assistant editor of the Statesman, to publish his theories about how Subhas Chandra Bose is an opium addict and the Swaraj Party works for the Japanese. Generous and funny. Hands out cigarettes.

STR 0 – DEX 0 – ACA 2 – TEC 0 – CHA 2 – CNC 3

Specialties – politics, asking questions.

Declan Callahan, ex-cop. Scotsman with a big red beard. Gone to seed. Fired for taking bribes. Bleary-eyed and sinful. Calvinist. Drinks appalling whiskey in cheap riverside bars and bemoans his own inevitable damnation. Works security – oversees night patrols at warehouses along the Kidderpore docks. Spends half his wages on bright-eyed boys in Chinatown opium dens. Secretly a decent chap.

STR 3 – DEX 2 – ACA 0 – TEC 0 – CHA 0 – CNC 2

Specialties – grappling, law enforcement.

Mohan Singh, revolutionary. Gassed at Flanders in 1915. Lungs still mildly scarred. Radicalised by the Amritsar Massacre. Wanted in the Punjab for a bomb set off outside a British Army outpost, which killed two soldiers and removed a water-carrier’s hand. Slower than he used to be. Master of disguise – can pass as a Travancore raja or Nepali monk. Brother serving time in the Andamans for robbing a bank.

STR 2 – DEX 2 – ACA 0 – TEC 3 – CHA 0 – CNC 0

Specialties – disguise, explosives.

Tin Shwe, acrobat and mahout. Left Moulmein after a policeman shot his elephant. Turned to second-story burglary. Excellent with dogs – whispers quietly to them until they get close, then feeds them bits of drugged fish. Steals exotic animals and sells them to pet dealers in Hogg Market. Moves quietly. Falls like a cat. Saving up to buy a new elephant. Wants to settle down in Burma – get a block of land and raise five kids.

STR 0 – DEX 3 – ACA 0 – TEC 2 – CHA 2 – CNC 0

Specialties – animal handling, acrobatics.

Nasim Khan, doctor. Former scientific advisor to a Maratha princely state. Set the raja’s daughter’s broken leg after a riding accident. Falsely accused of seducing her. Left under a cloud. Aware that the whole incident was contrived by British officers to replace him with a more pliable advisor – can’t do much about it. Works in the Pilkhana slum one day a week, for a Christian mission. Nuns keep trying to convert him.

STR 0 – DEX 0 – ACA 3 – TEC 2 – CHA 0 – CNC 2

Specialties – medicine, the upper classes.

Om Roopchand, yogi and street magician. Claims to have mastered the Indian Rope Trick. Will not demonstrate. Raises one arm into the air and pretends, for gullible tourists, to have kept it in that position for the last twenty years. Not as poor or simple-minded as he pretends to be. Owns a tame hamadryad cobra. Studied as a youth with the aghori necromancers – couldn’t handle it, dropped out.

STR 0 – DEX 2 – ACA 2 – TEC 0 – CHA 3 – CNC 0

Specialties – the occult, sleight of hand.