The Moika Society

You happened to catch sight, late one night, of three tall, statuesque beauties supporting a stooped, pained figure shrouded in the ragged and deteriorated remains of a suit. Worrying they were part of an unknown criminal group, you shadowed them – but staying out of sight in that part of town was always tricky and you realised, much later, that they must have been aware of you for some time, that they let you follow them into their lair.

He called himself Mr. Novykh, an obvious pseudonym. He sat and talked with you for a long time. Somewhere in there, you seemed to go to sleep; you remember the other half of the conversation, but you remember it in the way we remember dreams. The words that were spoken seem to change every time…

Using the Moika

The Moika Society is designed for use in two primary ways:

• An additional secret society operating within your setting, using mental manipulation and hypnosis to seed its agents and wield its power.

• A twist for players who offer you a blank slate for their background, who might be Moika operatives under it all, with a surface persona in place that the rest of the party first meet. If used in this fashion, I wholeheartedly recommend speaking to the player ahead of time and checking that they wouldn’t mind being a double agent of some kind. You will probably also want to make their purpose less directly malign in this version – perhaps developing the power struggle within the setting for that. (A fuller guide to running ‘sleeper agent’ PCs will probably be released later on.)

Translating the Moika to Your Game

Moika was the name of the summer palace owned by the Russian Royal Family, and it was at Moika that Rasputin is said to have first developed his influence over the Tsarina and her family. The Society is inspired by the legends around the ‘Black Monk’, mixed with the character of Mister Negative in Spider-Man comics and, of course, a healthy dose of hypnotic titillation.

The Society could happily be placed in a fantasy setting including most Dungeons & Dragons worlds, and Moika is an obscure enough term that you could comfortably leave the name as it stands. Rasputin could be renamed, and his murder and the later Soviet uprising substituted for equivalent events in your campaign setting. Perhaps your Mr (or Madam) Novykh – the Russian for Novice - was a Big Bad for your setting, and the power struggle may determine whether another rises or not. (The shadow of the ‘last war’ in 5^th Edition Eberron is particularly useful for this.)

Iliodor, likewise, works as a great name for his former disciple and rival – perhaps Iliodor is the PCs’ way into the story. (Perhaps they don’t even recall this, as the investigation starts in full flow and they only realise afterwards that someone’s hypnotic influence sent them on the way – a very different opening to the traditional tavern hire).

Written as it stands, the Moika Society fits neatly into the Call of Cthulhu 1920s era (what does Rasputin know about the entities of the Mythos? What artefacts might they seek out, or try to keep contained?) or into pulp adventure games including those run in Spirit of the Century or the up-and-coming Adventure! 2^nd Edition from Onyx Path.

Espionage-based RPGs including Spycraft and Night’s Black Agents could comfortably accommodate the Moika Society in events moving forward through World War II and into the Cold War.

Games with hidden, occult worlds – World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness, Conspiracy-X, Unknown Armies, etc. – all have plenty of room for a shadowy Rasputin figure. The Moika’s penchant for mental manipulation could make a fascinating alternative origin for the Sleepers in Unknown Armies, with a cliomancer or two within their ranks.

Lastly, superhero games absolutely love this kind of grouping. The timeline would have to be advanced, but in these games it’s entirely reasonable for Rasputin to have survived a little longer. Perhaps the primary leadership candidates in this version of the Moika’s power struggle are his daughters. And perhaps one of them wants to be a heroine, or one of their agents believes herself to be one.

I’ve written the Moika as being one man’s harem now left to its own devices. There is no reason not to introduce male agents, and if this had originally been sketched up for some other concept, I already would have.

The Moika Society

The official, internal history of the Moika is a little unclear as to when the society officially begins, but this appears to be a dispute over what denotes the start rather than anything else. Mr. Novykh, as its founder was usually known, seems to have been developing his beautiful cadre twenty years ago, a full four year before the ‘death’ of his public persona. One might date things from there.

Or one might date things from the acquisition of a second mesmerised assistant the following year, and Novykh’s use of this to consolidate the political power wielded by his better known alter ego. Lastly, you might consider it to have started with the apparent death of Novykh’s public persona, when the Moika went from a luxury to a tool. At any rate they take their name, originally, from the initial dwelling place of the group – the Moika Palace.

Popularly, however, the Moika date their formation from the time Rasputin had three such women under his spell, and popularly, they claim their first action as a covert unit to be the manipulation of Khioniya Guseva, a former prostitute sent to kill Rasputin by his ex-disciple, the monk Iliodor, into capture by the police, with a little leverage applied later to have her committed to an asylum. Seeing trouble coming, Iliodor fled to Norway, returning only when the Great War was over and Soviet power was certain.

(By this stage, some suggest, Guseva was within the Moika herself. If so, her new identity is unknown, but it is certainly the case that the Black Monk had two years in which he could have visited her within her asylum, and she would go on to be implicated in an attempt on the life of another powerful Russian, after the Revolution.)

By that time, however, Rasputin had lost his political power. He had survived two assassination attempts, though both had left him injured. His thoughts had turned to the preservation of his life as well as the acquisition of worldly comforts, and the Moika was gradually overhauled to become an agency capable of both things. They smuggled him first out of St. Petersburg to where he could be safe, and then, when Soviet control began to truly take hold elsewhere in the country, they spirited him away also.

Settling in London, the Moika pooled its money, leasing a good building in the heart of the city. They masqueraded as a rare distaff variant of a gentleman's club, but on the inside, Rasputin lay, enjoying the fruits of his servants' labours. And staying alive.

As this began, the Moika started to put out feelers into British society. Blackmail elements. Financial windfalls. Medical research. All these things were felt to be urgently needed, and Novykh, in collusion with his closest harem, masterminded who would go where, how they were to be inserted, and what they were to do. They need a wider pool of operatives, and they need just as strongly to avoid public scrutiny.

New recruits are accordingly granted new personalities below ‘sleeper’ identities. These sleeper identities may be the person’s old identity, or may be crafted to make it easier for the recruit to gain access to a new space.

A PC with an uncertain background fits this situation perfectly. If a player is interested, their entire persona may be a misleading disguise covering someone who has orders to follow. Or their best friend may prove to have manipulated them all this time at the urging of their ‘true’ persona, buried beneath.

At some point, Rasputin has to die. Desperate medical research can take anyone only so far. If, in your game, he has a dark patron, he will eventually be beyond even that patron’s capacity to keep alive.

The most interesting moment to introduce this society to your game sees the Moika in crisis. Novykh does not have long to live, and the prospect of a power struggle is clear. Some members of the inner council have been putting their mentor's mesmeric tricks to use, arranging power blocs in the future.

Novykh’s control has always been through persuading those around him that their interests align with his. Sometimes that involves changing their interests; at other times it involves changing their understanding. As his inner circle realise that he will soon be dead, the more perceptive among them also see that they have nothing in common.

So what happens to that network of agents? And if someone in the inner circle finds that their compulsive desire to keep Novykh alive is now less important than the self-interest telling them: hey, if he dies before anything changes, your group will win the power struggle… well, they might want to tip the balance.

Do they bring in PCs to kill Novykh, or to keep him alive? And what might this group believe the PCs can provide that their agents (or other agents) can’t?