ARCHINT: Helen's Dress
Helen's Dress
History
The Fall of Troy was first conceived in 1928 by Wolfgang Koenig, a wealthy socialite whose father had worked with Heinrich Schliemann on the Hissalrik dig. Koenig grew up among plundered relics of the classical world and obsessive pseudo-archaeologists, and became somewhat of an amateur historian himself. His 1928 concept of the film was a relatively faithful retelling of the Iliad, a task already accomplished four years prior by Manfred Noa's epic Helena. That didn't stop Koenig from trying to make something even grander, an unrealistic prospect even with the obscene amount of money he was willing to throw at it.
Koenig realized a script and a few early props extremely derivative of Noa's version of the movie. In the summer of 1929, however, he hit a turning point: he met Arnaud Girard. The elderly frenchman had worked as an apprentice on the props and costumes for a controversial play banned across France after its first showing in 1895, Le Roi En Jaune. The Deuxieme Bureau had tried to suppress all evidence of its existence and silence people involved in its creation, but Girard survived the purge and shortly thereafter fled his home country.
After Girard started working with Koenig on The Fall of Troy, the film took a turn for the bizarre. The props and costumes were anachronistic reimaginigs of various eras of the past mixed with futuristic aesthetics reminiscent of Metropolis, and a mysterious figure known as X would often show up to make drastic and bizarre changes to the script that no one dared to reverse. This continued until filming began in December 1930, when the weirdness seemed to temporarily die down and the movie was unrecognizable from the original Iliad.
A few odd occurrences happened on set, but nothing significant until August 1931. Filming for one of the final scenes, the destruction of Troy (absent in the Iliad itself) had begun. The young actress Eva Bittner, in the role of Helen, pronounced the desperate plea to her husband's father King Priam, before vanishing from the stage. The dress she was wearing, designed by Girard himself, reappered shortly thereafter in the changing rooms, but Bittner herself was never seen again. At that point, filming for the movie had to cease indefinitely.
In the months following the failure of his "masterpiece", Koenig was wracked by guilt and descended into drink and drugs, eventually leading to his death in 1933. Girard disappeared in 1932, leaving many questions unanswered, and most of the people involved in the movie (actors, set designers, technicians) died or vanished in similar fashion over the following year. A few minor figures instead moved to Hollywood in the diaspora of the German film industry. Among them, most notable was Klaus Schwarz, who lived to the respectable age of 98 and died in 2001 in his Beverly Hills home.
The film reel itself, containing the first half of the movie and the dreaded scene, was destroyed by Koenig himself in the aftermath. Some of the props and costumes, including the dress, survived, and became highly desired by occult collectors as the film's infamy grew.
Connected Items
All surviving items related to the filming of The Fall of Troy have become incredibly valuable to a certain subset of collector. They may all have ended up in the property of a single eccentric or be scattered across the globe in the collections of a variety of oddball millionaires: their history becomes nebulous after Girard's disappearance in 1932, and all that is known is that Koenig sold them off discreetly to finance his drug habit.
Here is a (perhaps incomplete) account of other weird items that may have survived from the set of The Fall of Troy. The Handler should feel free to add new items or remove existing ones to better fit this content into their own campaign.
- Priam's Crown: a wooden mask painted gold, depicting the face of an elderly bearded man, twisted in a grimace of utter despair. Above it is a crown, also painted gold and depicting the Sun Chariot of Helios. The mask's jaw is hinged like a puppet's, and may sometime click open or closed on its own.
- Shield of Achilles: this is a shard of the Shield of Achilles prop from the film, with the rest being likely lost forever. As in the Iliad, the Shield depicts a complex and intricate scene. Unlike the one in the original poem, however, this version shows a city full of skyscrapers, all bending and pointing towards a central spherical object, likely the sun or moon.
- Astyanax Doll: the doll that stood in for Astyanax, Helen and Hector's child. This uncomfortably lifelike wooden baby seems to contain a smaller object inside, like a Russian Nesting Doll.
- Horse Head Fragment: fragment of the head of the infamous wooden horse statue that brought forth the Fall of Troy. It is oddly squared, about the size of an average human torso, hinting at the huge proportions of the original prop, likely lost now.
- Assorted Armors: various armors, shield and javelins from both sides of the conflict. Bronze-Age embellishments are mixed with futuristic tubes and wires. Part of Hector's armor, particularly bizarre, has survived with the rest of the props, but Achilles' costume is nowhere to be found.
- Watchtower: this enormous set depicting a watchtower on the walls of Troy was used for several scenes of the film. It looks more like an art deco skyscraper than an ancient Mediterranean building.
- Handmaiden Costumes: a set of seven pale yellow cloths to be wrapped around the bodies of the actresses playing Helen's handmaidens. Each of the costumes is accompanied by a porcelain white mask, most of which are cracked or missing small pieces.
- Script: the script for the film is mostly lost. A few collectors have managed to locate copies of it up to the end of the First Act, relatively mundane, but the second half of the film is impossible to find apart from a few scattered pages, held on to dearly by their tight-lipped owners.
Unnatural Properties
To those who have seen the yellow sign, the particular patterns inlaid into the dress may appear familiar, almost compelling them to put it on, but it has no such effect on people who haven't been exposed to the King in Yellow. The dress and other items may also be used in a particular ritual that has the effect of transporting the operators to Carcosa, like the Swirl of the Pallid Dancers described in Delta Green: Countdown. This ritual may be obtained from a variety of sources, from experts of the occult (such as members of the Fate) to Gnostic manuscripts from medieval Carcassonne. It transcends The Fall of Troy and may be used with any other version of the King in Yellow.
Farce
Elaborate Ritual. Study time: days; 1D4 SAN. Activation: several minutes, varying WP, 1D6 SAN.
This ritual involves the reenactment of any scene from the Second Act by one or multiple actors. The WP cost is determined by the number of "actors" who will be transported to Carcosa, with 10 points as a base and an additional 6 for every actor after the first. The SAN cost is applied to all involved parties (and 0/1 to witnesses), while the WP can be split amongst multiple operators. Instead of the usual Ritual Activation roll, the chance of success for this ritual is determined by the items used in the casting: +10% for every actively used prop or costume from the original film. This ritual may also be used with other versions of The King in Yellow, of course requiring items related to the chosen interpretation of the original play.
Image Credits:
1- French Poster for Manfred Noa's 1924 film Helena.
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