The Napoleon of Crime

He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it, he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.

 But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers.

"Dark rumors gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city . . ." Mr. Sherlock Holmes from The Final Problem.


Professor James Moriarty is the Master Criminal of the late 19th Century. Here are his game stats for In Her Majesty's Name:

Pluck: 4+
Fighting Value: 0
Shooting Value: 0
Speed: +0
Cost: 67 points
Talents: Leadership +3, Erudite Wit, Intuitive, Immortal, Meticulous Planning

The Professor's apparent Immortality comes from the fact that each time he is killed or captured it turns out to have been a double . . . one wonders what will happen when he comes face to face with Mr. Sherlock Holmes!

Moriarty meets Dr. Theodore Nemor at his remote country lab.

 

Meticulous Planning.  When the Professor is involved everything seems to unfold according to his plan. Each turn he can choose to move a single figure, from either side a second time at the end of the Movement phase. The normal rules for movement apply but he cannot move them into immediate mortal danger or off the table. He can move the figure into base to base contact with another figure. As this is not a mental attack the figure concerned does not get a Pluck roll to resist.

Rules for the Professor Copyright by Craig Cartmell & Charles Murton, May 2013.

The Professor discussing the crime of the century with the evil inventor Dr. Theodore Nemor.

"But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every devilry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that’s the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foulmouthed doctor and slandered professor—such would be your respective roles! That’s genius, Watson."

— Holmes, The Valley of Fear