Thaliastrasse 12 Safehouse

Overview

A modest townhouse at Thaliastraße 12 in the Josefstadt district, west of Vienna’s inner city, established as the Order of St. Aelfric’s Vienna safehouse and provided to the party by Major Thurner at the Grand Masquerade in Session 8. It is owned through a chain of nominees that ultimately leads back to the Order’s Vienna funding line; the house itself has no current resident and its furnishings are deliberately spare.

Contents (Weapons Cache)

The cache is small but real:

• Two cavalry pistols (period-appropriate flintlock, .65 calibre, with shot bag and powder horn each)
• Forty rounds of ammunition (mixed ball)
• One sabre (Austrian pattern, well-balanced)
• Coil of rope (~30 feet, hemp)
• Three lanterns (oil, with reservoirs full)

This is enough to outfit a small assault team or to support an extended infiltration. It is not enough for a sustained engagement.

Operational Constraints

The constraints are real:

• Counter-surveillance is the responsibility of whoever uses it. The Order will not provide an escort.
• A single tail brought to the door ends the asset’s usefulness. The Brotherhood, Vogel, or Kaunitz only need to identify the house once for it to become a trap.
• No staff, no cover identity for visitors. The party are intruders if they cannot account for themselves to neighbours.
• No food, no fuel, no bedding beyond what’s left from the last operative. This is a cache, not a hotel.

Physical Description

A narrow three-storey townhouse on a quiet residential street in Josefstadt — the kind of district where minor officials, retired military, and aspiring professionals live. The frontage is modest: plastered facade, painted shutters, a single brass knocker. The ground floor is a parlour and small kitchen. The first floor has two bedrooms. The top floor is a garret under the eaves that Varrio claimed in Session 9 as an observation post — a single dormer window with a clear line of sight down Thaliastraße in both directions, and a small rooftop hatch that opens onto a shared run of tiled roofs connecting four neighbouring buildings (useful for exfiltration, useful for watchers). The cellar is where the cache is hidden — behind a section of false brick that requires foreknowledge to find. The cellar is also where a prisoner can be held quietly; as of dawn 9 August 1814, it is where Adler is bound.

The street is busy in the morning (workers heading into the inner city), quiet in the afternoon, and quiet again after dark. It is the kind of street where strangers are noticed but not necessarily reported.

THIRD FLOOR: A single long garret room running the length of the townhouse, under a sloped tiled roof with three dormer windows (one front, two rear). Whitewashed walls, bare floorboards, no furniture except a small writing desk pushed against the wall and a single narrow cot under the rear eaves.

What’s in it that matters:

• Observation position. The front dormer has a clear sightline over Thaliastrasse and roughly two blocks down toward the Josefstadt proper. An operative stationed here can see anyone approaching the door for a full minute before they arrive. This is exactly where Thurner would have a watcher if the house were active.
• Rooftop hatch. A wooden trapdoor in the ceiling of the garret, concealed beneath loose floorboards and accessible by standing on the desk. Opens onto the tiled roofline of the Josefstadt terrace block — a PC on the roof can travel three houses east or west before needing to descend. This is the safehouse’s emergency exit. Critical if the house is compromised.
• A smaller cache. Inside a false panel at the back of the writing desk: a sealed leather portfolio containing three forged identity papers (blank, awaiting names), two letters of introduction on British embassy letterhead (Harcourt’s signature forged but plausible), a coded cipher key, and ~200 florins in small notes. Intended for an operative who needs to vanish.
• One small additional weapon. A loaded percussion pistol (period-rare but plausible for a British intelligence asset in 1814) in a drawer of the desk, alongside a small set of lockpicks.
• A bed for one. The cot. Implies the garret is set up for a single operative to take shelter or observation duty overnight — not for a party.

Approach

• From Palais Kinsky: ~25 minutes on foot via the Burgring; ~10 minutes by carriage if one is available
• From Café Frauenhuber: ~20 minutes on foot
• From the University of Vienna: ~20 minutes on foot
• Surveillance risk on approach: Moderate during the day; the route is direct and obvious. The Order recommends taking circuitous routes and walking the last few blocks.

Connections

• William Thurner — Order operative who established the asset at the Session 8 masquerade
• Order of St Aelfric — Owns and supplies the safehouse
• Cafe Frauenhuber — The Order’s other Vienna asset; the café is for contact, the safehouse is for shelter
• Vienna Overview — Parent location

Session 9 Activation — The Asset Is Burning (Night of 8 August into Dawn of 9 August 1814)

The safehouse was activated in Session 9, under desperate conditions (per Thurner’s standing order). The party arrived pre-dawn with:

• Adler — hamstrung, bound, taken to the cellar for interrogation
• Anna — sedated (laudanum + brandy), placed in a first-floor bedroom
• Vladimir (one of Nikolai’s officers) — wounded, needing field dressing
• The full party arriving in Adrien’s carriage driven by Charles; Varrio taking the garret as lookout; Emma nursing a knife wound under the arm

Who now knows the address: Nikolai Volkonsky and both surviving Russian officers (Sasha intact, Vladimir wounded) — they rode in the carriage and saw the destination. That is three new pairs of eyes beyond the Order itself. Thurner has not yet been informed.

The cache has been partially consumed (rope used to bind Adler; lanterns lit for interrogation; one pistol now in Katherine’s belt).

Operational State at Dawn 9 August

• Occupied. The party is in it. So are Nikolai and the surviving officers.
• Hot. Thurner’s standing order against “visiting unless desperate” has been broken for a reason the Order will accept — but the location is now known to Russian military intelligence.
• Compromised probability: Low to moderate. The party took counter-surveillance precautions on the journey. The fork was carried inside a coat. No Geheimpolizei tail has been spotted yet, but dawn traffic on Thaliastraße will start within the hour, and the presence of Adrien’s carriage in the narrow street is not invisible.
• Decision pending: How long the party can stay. Thurner must be informed. Adler must be moved, released, or killed. Anna must wake somewhere.