The Abyss: Vices

If you want some vices, drinking, whoring, and gambling are the big ones, although drug use is also possible. Depending on your social station and how controlled your vice is, it may or may not be an issue. For example, the fact that Lord Basingstoke drinks heavily is an eccentricity, but the fact that one of his servants is very often drunk is likely grounds for dismissal.

Whoring is pretty broadly socially accepted, but never talked about except among rather racy young men, regular men amongst themselves and not in public (not in pubs, for example), and of course some disgusting old holdovers from Regency days (the Victorians were reacting against something in particular, you know).

Gambling is quite ordinary, and unless you get deeply in debt or are so addicted that you don’t show up for work, it’s no big deal; cheating is a social crime of extreme proportions, in just about every circle, and will get you killed in ways ranging from the social (complete ostracism) to the literal, depending on the sorts of people you play with.

Drug use is rather like drinking, but rarer. The only drug available to the poor is opium, which turns up in Limehouse (Chinatown); opium is considered a real vice by the more elevated classes, but mainly because it takes you into unmentionable parts of town. Classier alternatives include cocaine, hashish, etc.

One of the few absolute vices is homosexuality, which is pretty much unacceptable to everyone. Some circles form, of course (e.g. Wilde’s circle), and there are even brothels which serve them. So long as things are kept very quiet and unobtrusive, most people seem to figure it’s not their problem; when it becomes public, the results are rather like cheating at cards: social or literal death is likely. Note that female homosexuality is far less of an issue, and of course it’s a big part of pornographic fantasy. Established lesbian couples are not at all uncommon, although it probably would not cross the mind of a Dr. Watson, for example, that those two charming thirty-something spinsters living together are anything other than friends sharing the rent. In a similar vein, it wouldn’t occur to most people that Holmes and Watson are anything other than friends.

{Money <--> Group Creation Session}

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 23 Dec 2004