Nosferatu

by Adam Gauntlett

This little Night’s Black Agents gem is inspired by Sauron, the home defense system marketed by Kevin Hartz and Jack Abraham, written up by the Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/05/tech-ceos-elites-home-security-silicon-valley/

Premise

The bad people, they know they’re being watched. Nosferatu co-founder Eduardo Parker.

There’s a new home security tech startup and it seems to be marketing its services to vampire-knowledgeable clients.

The startup promises a comprehensive security solution for those with the cash to buy. Its actual service offer is a little fluid; those who visit the company website see a notice which cheerfully proclaims Our team is led by veteran entrepreneurs and roboticists, alumni of [half a dozen company names only the technically inclined elite will recognize] and a further hint that To join our waitlist, make an inquiry at hello@nosferatu.industry. However, there is no actual product list. Merely glowing PR articles in various international outlets.

The agents are tasked with finding out more about the startup, and whether it can deliver on its promises or accidentally lucked into a suggestive tech profile for the vampirically inclined.

Corporate HQ

Nosferatu is based in Grenoble, France’s Silicon Valley. There’s a significant expat community in the region and English is relatively common, thanks to the high number of American and British workers.

Nosferatu’s main offices are close to the medieval village of Crémieu, with a little over 3,000 inhabitants and a storied history.

To look at, Nosferatu is a relatively typical small tech concern: everything’s behind closed doors, there’s tight, mostly automated, security, and most of the workers aren’t local. The few locals who do work at Nosferatu are support staff: admin, cleaners, maintenance. You can’t get in or out without a special badge, which pings the system every time someone comes or goes.

Nosferatu’s biggest investor is a German entity, Bankhaus Klingemann, of Bonn. The entity that owns Nosferatu is a Guernsey company, Galeen Group. The partnership is two people: Eduardo Parker, formerly of San Franciso, and Choi Si-U, aka Sue Choi, a South Korean who emigrated to the States back in the 1980s and spent a lot of time in San Francisco.

The Partners

Eduardo Parker is the business brain. He made his bones in tech startups and is known to be a phenomenal dealmaker who rarely sleeps. High Society suggests he may be romantically linked with one of Bankhaus Klingemann’s higher-ups, Lisle Klingemann. The two have been seen living it up in Monaco.

Sue Choi is the technical mind. She can build absolutely anything but is a drone and robotics enthusiast. Rumour has it she does sleep, unlike her partner, but only in very brief and unpredictable intervals. Staff are under strict instruction not to wake her when she does nap. Research indicates a bad security incident back when she lived in San Francisco inspired Nosferatu; details of the incident are sketchy. This incident is the cause of her sleep problems.

The Product

Judging by tech demos and YouTube, Nosferatu uses face recognition technology coupled with automated defenses, drones and robots to create what Parker calls ‘a supercharged burglar alarm.’ All of this is managed by a virtual concierge, which can deal with visitors automatically under defined protocols or be controlled directly by the homeowner. Parker calls the concierge Herr Knock and gives it an elderly male persona but says its personality can be modified to suit any customer requirement.

Vampirology or similar notices, in the tech demos and videos, several references to vampire blocks and banes, but it’s not clear whether these are deliberate references or accidental. Further, if vampires in your game can get around facial recognition by virtue of not appearing on camera, the design of the Nosferatu cameras seems to indicate special precautions to deal with this issue. Whether or not those precautions work is unknown.

If this system does as it claims, then anyone purchasing it can rest assured the Conspiracy can’t get onto the premises. Or at least not without considerable effort.

All of which argues the Conspiracy isn’t as secretive as it would like to pretend. Unless this is a peculiar Conspiracy double-bluff, and Nosferatu is actually a honeytrap for spies.

Innocent

Nosferatu is exactly what it appears: a tech startup with big ideas and pretty presentations, but lacking substance. Like so many before it, Nosferatu functions thanks to complacent investors willing to bankroll almost anything. The minute the investors get bored, or lose enough money, they’ll stop the gravy train. At which point Nosferatu loses momentum, then ceases to exist.

Its vampiric qualities are mostly imaginary. Parker uses the name Nosferatu and vampire references because vampires are scary and they’re in the home security business, so scary is the goal.

It helps that Sue Choi did have a brush with vampires back in San Francisco. She’s buried most of the details in a trauma response (her therapist deserves all the money she’s getting) but some of that influences the design choices she’s making. However, this isn’t applied Vampirology; this is a victim of violence doing whatever she can to exorcise old demons. Demons of the metaphorical rather than literal sort.

Parker has no Vampirology ability but does like to play the expert, so he might drop an occasional reference or two just to see if anyone bites. He has no practical skill, so anyone who knows what they’re doing can see through his act.

Asset

Nosferatu is being backed by one of the vampire-curious intelligence (or financial) entities out there. It’s very secretive backing. The agency in question has ideas – lots of ideas – but doesn’t get many chances to put those ideas into action. Nosferatu is their opportunity to test some of their more esoteric theories without putting their name to the project.

Depending on the agency, its location (France) may also be attractive. There are all sorts of reasons why a Chinese intelligence operation, say, might not be welcome in Grenoble, or anywhere else in Europe. A tech startup can do as it pleases.

Deniability is key. Any agency asset working with Nosferatu is doing so under so many pseudonyms they might as well be a fictional character at this point. None of them appear on the corporate org chart; officially they’re peons, lowest of the low. Not for them the fancy titles or the bloated paychecks.

However, Tradecraft or similar notices some very familiar faces walking through the door with the cleaners and receptionists. All these workers carry badges that look like support staff badges and are only supposed to get them into certain parts of the compound, but for practical purposes they are access all areas. The actual support staff call these Vermillion Workers. All the other badges have a color code; theirs is Vermillion.

Whether or not the company is a success, the intelligence agency backing its play are very pleased with the end result. Whether they’re pleased enough to stick around when the money runs out is an open question.

Minion

Bankhaus Klingemann is a Conspiracy asset and, through its money and influence, so too is Nosferatu.

This is a honeytrap for spies but it’s also a means of testing anti-vampire technology. There are two reasons. One, it’s always useful to retro-engineer anti-vampire technology so you know how to beat or break it. Two, there can be very good reasons why a vampire Conspiracy might want to kill off some out-of-network vampires who don’t want to, or can’t, get with the program.

As with Asset there are Vermillion workers, but these workers are Conspiracy technologists not intelligence operatives. Their goal is to test equipment under field conditions to see whether it works, and once they have an answer, to find ways to break that equipment (if it does work). Any weapon or device captured by the Conspiracy is likely to find its way to Nosferatu for the testing process. If a McGuffin recently went missing, this is where it’s likely to be.

This does mean that, for a Conspiracy asset, there are fewer vampires here than might be expected. The ones that are, are here on punishment detail. They aren’t expected to leave. Ever.

The village of Crémieu has an annual Halloween festival. Nosferatu’s contribution to the festivities has been mind blowing. This is, ironically, probably the best time for interested agents to break into the facility to see what’s what.

A bientôt!