Luke Carse
Player: Caerlan
Catalogue Agent (Booklegger)
Luke grew up in the docklands of Severnford, an industrial area making ships for Bristol port. His Da is a welder, also a communist, and a drunk. He has 4 younger sisters, two of whom still live with Da and Ma on account of being unable to find husbands after WWI killed all the young men.
Luke joined the army to get away from home. He is a WWI veteran of the 1917-19 campaigns, who made a few American friends from the wrong side of the tracks during the North Russia Intervention and Operation Polar Bear. That campaign completed his disenchantment with his Da's politics, and also with Britain's class system and the donkeys it promoted, leaving him believing in very little. His eyes were opened to the possibilities of the book world after seeing the handsome profits realised by some comrades who looted a Russian Orthodox monastery for its codices.
After the war he started to move up in the world, and was able to access a scholarship scheme for WWI veterans to gain entrance to the University of Brichester, where he began to study law and literature; however, the "Geddes Axe" budget cuts of 1922 saw his scholarship and studies cut short. He later bribed a university clerk to obtain a fake B.A. degree, which hangs on the wall of his place of employment.
Luke is based in London if anywhere, but is usually on the move. He travels between Paris, London and New York, smuggling rare, collectable, banned and censored books. It's not always appreciated that liquor was far from the only thing banned during Prohibition by the cousins across the pond. Thanks to organisations like the New England Watch and Ward Society and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the related Comstock Laws, the US's east coast states could neither buy nor mail order vast swathes of publications; not just pornography and erotica, but also controversial modernist and jazz age literature such as Joyce's Ulysses, the works of Oscar Wilde, Cabell's Jurgen, etc. These publications have often been banned in Britain as well, although their printing in France tends to circumvent such bans quite quickly.
This has created a thriving underground market, in which East Coast quality will pay premium prices for discretely sold, unbowdlerised European editions of these books and other, more explicit, (and sometimes occult) works. More generally, the American rich and bourgeoisie are still aping J.P. Morgan and attempting to become known as collectors of great and historic literature, creating a further market for antique European literature - or at least, things that look like antique European literature.
Luke’s freethinking politics, British literary education, and War Veteran tough-guy poise have enabled him to carve out a niche in this odd market: high culture at one end, low pornography at the other, and a profit to be made between. He works to ensure that his American clients - upper class, lower class and outright criminal - get what they want, without getting their names in the papers or any undue problems with the Customs authorities. He is motivated by a sense of adventure, also by his libertarian and nihilistic beliefs, and not least by greed, or at least survival.
Despite having moved to the Smoke, he still maintains some connection to Brichester: Brichester's seedy Ultimate Press provides him with some of the more lurid publications requested by the American market, and the books he brings back on the return trip he occasionally sells to American Books Bought and Sold, a Brichester bookshop specialising in American literature. In his personal literary tastes, Luke is something of a fan of Black Mask Magazine, police procedurals, "true crime" books, books on forensic science, etc. Reads the Illustrated Police News. Daydreams about being Sam Spade. Keeps an eye on Ripperology. Collects early pamphlets of highwayman tales, assizes, etc.
Drive: Adventure.
Pillars of Sanity:
Pride: A hard man with brains can deal with anything;
There's always a way: Seize the day, make your own luck;
Family: Support dear old Ma and my sisters back in Severnford (not so much Da).
Health 10, Sanity 9, Stability 9
Investigative Abilities:
Bookshop Stock 1
Academic:
Bibliography* 4 (Banned and censored books a speciality); Languages 1 (Probably french); Law 1 (incomplete university studies); Library Use* 1 (ditto); Occult 1 (I don't believe it, I just sell it)
Interpersonal: Assess honesty* 3 (Can I bribe this guy?); Bargain*! 3 (How much should I offer?); Cop Talk 1 (He's bent - wonder if his guvnor is, too?); Credit Rating 3 (Not more than a tenner) including 1 free point from Occupation; Flattery* 1 (Yes, I agree, the customs service are dreadfully underpaid); Intimidation 2 (Maybe I'll just lean on him instead) Streetwise*! 2 (Then again, that's a Docklands Tong sign; I'll pay peacable like) (personal speciality)
Technical: Forensics 1 (You don't go through the trenches without learning a thing or two about death)
General Abilities:
Athletics@ 8 (ex military): Hit threshold is 4; Auction* 5 (my client wants this one); Conceal*@ 5 (search my bags as much as you like, officer); Disguise* 2 (Msieu, I am a respectable french businessman); Driving@ 3 (If it's got wheels, I'll drive it); Electrical Repair 1 (get that radio working, Corporal Carse!); Explosives 1 (Fire in the Hole!); Filch 1 (No, lieutenant, I don't know where your boots went); Firearms@ 3 (ex military); First Aid 2 (Yup. He's bleeding); Health 10 (1+9) (Wirey); Preparedness 2 (Be Prepared); Sanity 9 (5+4) (Is it worse than an army of starving bolsheviks?); Stability 9 (1 + 8) (Level headed); Scuffling@! 6 (Don't mess me about, sonny); Sense Trouble! 5 (Why's it so bloody quiet?); Shadowing! 3 (Let's see where he's keeping the stash); Stealth!@ 2 (Keep still unless you want a bullet in the head)
*Catalogue Agent (Occupation)
@ Military soldier.
! Criminal.
Involvement in Grant's Bookstore
Luke heaved a sigh as he swung off the omnibus in front of Grant's. The two suitcases full of Obelisk Press' finest from Paris were feeling as heavy as lead, and the customs officer had demanded twice the customary gratuity. Still, they'd be out of his hands soon - Grant's eccentric customers were always partial to a good book about flogging. With luck, Llewellyn would have a commission, or Harwood would have unearthed something that made another trip across the Atlantic worthwhile. Variant illuminated psalters, from ancient monasteries so far from Rome that they generated their own peculiar theologies without being really aware of it, had been trending up; someone in New York was building a collection.
Grant's looked just the same. The same light layer of dust settled over everything, including, Luke could swear, Mr Grant. "He's got to stop reading them and start selling them", Luke thought to himself. Sometimes it occurred to him that he could knock the whole shop over, walk out with all the good stuff and Grant would never notice - but there were limits. If you started knocking over other men from the Service you were heading down a road of no return. Besides, Mrs Grant would certainly spot it.
Contacts
Jack Kahane, owner of Obelisk Press in Paris, publishers of avante-garde literature and fine smut for the gentry. Something of a role model for Luke (real historical character).
Mr Baginelli; seemingly a not-very-prosperous soliciter in a shabby office a fair distance from the Temple, Baginelli is actually a London "agent" of the Commission of Five Families of New York, and a very useful man to know if you want to get something into or out of America without any undue hassles or unexpected accidents occurring to it. Occassionally passes on commissions when someone in NYC suddenly wants to look cultured.
Alfred O'Dwyer-Douglas, 14th Earl of Cirinchester on the Severn; Your classic eccentric (not to say dangerous) English aristocrat, "O'Doggy" (as he is called behind his back) is active in J.F.C. Fuller's right-wing political circles, and also building a large collection of Germanic and Old English witchcraft-related literature. Luke secretly despises him, but has played up their shared connection to the West country to become one of his preferred agents for sourcing those hard-to-find pieces.
