The first session only had an hour's play time, after character gen for
that lot was finally done. In this hour, the group was summoned to UNIT
headquarters by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart, where a task was requested
of them.
Much of the group has some connection with what has passed into history
as 'the Syrtis Major incident'. The others include Alvin, recruited as
muscle and defence for the ladies, the two Inspectors of the
Metropolitan Police, whose job will test their investigatory skills to
the limit, and two of UNIT's resident experts; Doctor Herman, who will
advise on the scientific front, and Mr Thompson, whose occult knowledge
is renowned throughout the isle.
The reason the group is assembled? The meteors are falling again, on
Earth this time. And, suddenly, the French have invaded Cornwall.
Using the green-metal energy weapons.
Weapons the British had believed themselves to have a monopoly on.
UNIT has requested the group investigate what is happening in Cornwall,
form a theory, and report back to London.
Accordingly, the group made it's way down to Truro (if memory serves)
at the beginning of the second session. Gathering in Lord Marlborough's
advanced Black Zeppellin the Brigantia, they formulated a careful plan;
capture a French officer and obtain what information they can from him.
A team was organised for the intrusion mission; Julian Verne, Gabrielle
Pelham, Emony McGraw, Colonel Smythe-Holmes, Mr Thompson, and one of Dr
Herman's research assistants (whose job was to carry the backpack
walkie-talkie). The Syrtis Major team's flare code was broken out
again, and under cover of darkness and the Brigantia's stealth
facilities (a cloud of steam) the team was landed, and the Brigantia
stood off to offer what help it could.
All but Smythe-Holmes penetrated the first barrier of sentries;
meanwhile, on the ship Inspector Stevens attempted to turn a passing
familiarity with explosives into a distraction. This failed miserably,
injuring his hand.
Smythe-Holmes attempted to bluff his way past the sentries, but they
recognised he was not a French general.
At the second hurdle, Mr Verne and the research assistant were
captured. As they were escorted to the Securite tent, Mr Thompson
managed to coax a French officer from their mess with an inspired burst
of patter and sleight-of-hand, whereupon Gabrielle rendered him
unconscious with a mighty strike from her boomstick. Emony and
Gabrielle tucked him cheerily into a bag, and the three headed back to
the rendezvous point, firing the green flare.
Smythe-Holmes drew his Thompson, but the Frenchman got there first,
unleashing green energy into the Colonel's gut.
Which withstood the barrage utterly intact.
The Colonel's revenge was swift and bloody. Firing the blue flare (for
'bombard this position in a few moments) the Colonel retreated.
Gabrielle took the prisoner up to the Brigantia and returned for Emony
as Lord Marlborough put his plans into action. The bombardment was
prepared.
And unleashed.
Under cover of the chaos, Mr Thompson and Colonel Smythe-Holmes moved
in, killed the guards on the Securite tent, and rescued their cohorts.
James Pelham set about interrogating the captive, thrashing the man
unconscious with his swordstick. He was promptly revived by Emony's
grasp of the mystic arts, while uproar broke out about who had the
privilege of conducting the interrogation. The Colonel tried to hold
the Pelhams back at gunpoint; James' sword bit into his arm. Lord
Marlborough finally intervened, and allowed the Colonel to attempt
interrogation.
It was, to put it bluntly, appalling. So Inspector Stevens (opening
line: "Do you like your fingernails?") was sent in, and succeeded in
eliciting all the man knew.
Whereupon he began the torture.
Sadly, the following week
week we lost
three players, one to the feeling that the group was too large
(Inspector Adam) and two to the demands of student workload (the
Pelham siblings). On the other hand, we also regained Alvin and Jasqu
Thoth, who began play aboard the airship to make my life easier.
Dropping off the
Pelhams and Inspector Adam in Truro to make a preliminary report to
the Admiralty (with the recommendation that the Fleet bombard the
crafts and disrupt the advance as much as possible from a safe
distance), the Brigantia set out to backtrack the
landing-craft invasion to it’s home port, with Lord Marlborough
dragging Inspector Stevens off the captive captain as they did so.
They followed the crafts back to Brest. Jacqui returned to the room
at exactly the wrong point. Much hilarity ensued.
Mr Thompson’s keen
eyesight detected one or two very interesting things about Brest;
namely, two new structures; over the sea itself, a large, covered
structure that was presumably a shipyard for these landing craft, and
at the southern end of town, a new railway station, with a large
marshalling grounds around it. His ability to detect telluric
resonances pointed up the existence of the eldritch energies found
around the magical, the superhuman, and the mysterious green metal
devices known as ‘boomsticks’ in quantity around the marshalling
yard.
A landing party assembled,
consisting of the party, with the exception of Lord Marlborough. The
initial plan had been for Jasqu, using Emony as an intermediary who
spoke the language, to distract the guards with a little card play.
Unfortunately, the guards were ready for this; the ladies beat a
retreat in short order.
A new plan was made;
Thompson worked a magic that would allow him to track Mr Verne, no
matter where on this planet Verne might go. Verne then activated his
own finely-honed psychic abilities, reaching out to the minds of the
guards ahead and blotting out their awareness of his presence. He
made his way into the compound, stowing away in one of the freight
trucks, and there relaxed, ready to wait as long as was necessary –
a habit his forebear and his forebear’s most famous pupil, Mr
Holmes, had made a trademark. At the same time, he obtained for
himself a boomstick from the case within the compartment.
The rest of the
group beat a hasty retreat to the Brigantia, which reinforced
its stealth cloud, and waited. In the evening the train began to
move; as the group slumbered, Mr Thompson, fuelled by the delicate
concoction of snuffs designed by his man Fortescue, stayed awake,
poring over maps and directing the pilot of the Brigantia.
Verne’s trail led them
ultimately to a new-looking, large train depot somewhere in central
France. This depot was roofed, and evidently connected to a second
huge structure from which Mr Thompson detected yet more eldritch
energies. He deduced, therefore, that it was surely some manner of
warehouse for the green sticks.
Still cloaked by his
amazing power, Mr Verne knocked out the French agent who had begun
loading his truck, removed a pistol from his belt and some papers
from his pocket, just in case, and made his way into the building.
Mr Thompson began this week’s activity by advancing toward the eldritch
entity, while Lord Marlborough and the Marines worked frantically to
free the lift cage. Thompson attempted to communicate with the entity,
but it ignored him, simply advancing toward the sound. After a few more
efforts to interact with it, Thompson was enveloped in the oily
substance. He found himself wandering the streets of a darkened
Victorian London – though everywhere he looked, his eldritch senses
detected something wrong. And at his waist, his guns seemed vanished –
the costume was no longer the Camden wilderness gear but rather an
elegant frock coat with the traditional trappings.
At this point, Lord Marlborough freed the cage, and the party piled
into it and away, regrouping at the top of the minehead and
consolidating.
Meanwhile, in the London-construct, Camden made his way through the
city, discovering via a helpful rapscallion and a newspaper that the
date was approximately a month after the Syrtis Major incident finished
and witnessing the harsh execution of Oliver Twist by Fagin. Upon
entering his home, however, he emerged from the construct in an exact
replica of the study his ancestor had confronted the nefarious Baron
Hasso von Gruber at the culmination of the Syrtis Major incident; same
layout, same artwork, same massive bookcases. But out of the window was
a fine view of a Bavarian mountain valley, with a suspiciously new
train station outside… and he could once more detect Mr Verne, which
meant that he had to be back in our time.
The black entity disappeared up the chimney before Thompson could
react, leaving him locked in the room. He went first to the
bookshelves, but was chiefly defeated by the fact they were in German.
He located, however, some blueprints, which he swiftly copied and
replaced. Then he wrote a note reading: ‘I assume this to be the
headquarters behind the French invasion of Cornwall. I have information
you might wish to know’ and slid it under the door.
Meanwhile, at the train station, the rest of the group decided to mosey
on up to that thar castle and see what they had to do with everything.
Inspector Stevens suggested returning to the Brigantia and laying it
waste, but the others pointed out the green-metal artillery piece in
one tower, which put paid to that idea. There followed fifteen minutes
or so discussion of how best to con their way past the guards in the
truck, during which time Thompson met the study’s owner; one Herr Karl
von Gruber; it appeared that the von Gruber family had been stripped of
their title following the destruction of Venus being laid at their
door, in order to forestall a Russian invasion of Germany. But now he
had his father’s green metal stocks, and the meteors were falling again.
He refused Thompson’s offer of information, smilingly informing him
that he had this information already and that England would fall. He
then set about undermining the party; returning Thompson to his
bickering colleagues, one of Gruber’s aides passed Colonel
Smythe-Holmes a note, which read ‘I believe this Thompson to be of low
birth and a homosexual. Possibly Jewish. Von Gruber.’
There followed a great deal of debate in which Thompson denied
emphatically the latter two charges and let slip that his ancestors had
been Camdens.
Which, of course, was about the last thing Jasqu Thoth wanted to hear.
As they returned to the Brigantia – coming under fire from a machine
gun nest, which Alvin, Lord Marlborough, Doctor Herman, and the Colonel
swiftly despatched – it fired a number of warning flares. And then they
beheld two Black Zeppelins emerging from beyond the mountains…
It was a race to get onto the ship, and then they set course for French
airspace, where they’d actually be able to enter combat engagements
under the rules of war.
Then the company moved on to lunch – except for Jasqu, who was in her
room chanting and sharpening a ceremonial dagger.
And then on from there to the War Room, directly outside of which Jasqu
encountered Thompson. She made her obeisances, then tried to stab him,
failing chiefly due to dismal dice rolls and the intervention of
Inspector Stevens and Lord Marlborough. Lord Marlborough asked Mr Verne
to see if he could deal with this Camden obsession, but even Verne’s
mighty psychic abilities couldn’t clear the determination from Miss
Thoth’s mind.
So Lord Marlborough and Doctor Herman looked up from their study of the
retrieved blueprints – plans for a massive green metal artillery piece
Lord Marlborough immediately nicknamed Big Bertha – and together they
knocked together an ECT machine. The treatment was unsuccessful, though
Miss Thoth managed to convince the observers that it had indeed been
successful…
Sailing the skies above France, the group – lessened this week by the
absence of Jasqu and Lord Marlborough – decided that the important
thing would be to make sure the mysterious blueprints for Big Bertha
made it to UNIT headquarters, where they would be useful. En route, in
the stealthed Brigantia, they encountered five more of her forebears;
the legendary Black Zeppelins of Syrtis Major, engaged in bombing the
Royal Navy ships below. Inspector Stevens descended to the gun decks to
help in the battle, discovering along the way a lust for artillery.
The long and short of it is, with the two boomstick artillery pieces
and the advantage of surprise, victory belonged in no great length of
time to the Brigantia. They noted, however, that these Zeppelins’
artillery pieces were rusted such that they could not deploy easily
from the ship’s undercarriage – an indication if any were needed, of
the less-than-ideal storage conditions in the mineshafts below von
Gruber’s castle.
Proceeding to London, the group once more descended to UNIT’s shadowy
headquarters below the Thames, handing over a copy of the translated
blueprints to the Major on duty and discovering that the Brigadier is
up in Yorkshire, investigating the British meteor impacts with a team…
in a sleepy hamlet called Holmfirth.
Travelling up to see him and report, they watch as the UNIT team
surrounds the meteor, carefully staying out of reach. A team of our
heroes, however, go down to investigate, linked telepathically via
Emony’s newfound synergistic abilities. When the Colonel accidentally
activates the meteor, they beat a retreat quickly, watching as four
metallic legs raise it out of the ground then retract into the
spheroid, leaving it hovering in mid-air.
The team retreat to the Brigantia. The Brigadier’s men set up a mortar
and loft a shell neatly onto the spheroid, which immolates them with a
flame burst into the ammunition crates on the truck. The Brigadier and
his men are blown screaming into the air, thrown around like confetti.
The spheroid then floats into the burning truck. When it emerges, it’s
a good three feet wider in circumference, taking it to nine feet
across. One of the party – Mr Verne, I think – hypothesises that this
indicates an affinity with heat. Emony tries blasting it with cold, but
this has no discernible effect. Inspector Stevens therefore turns the
blue metal cannon on it and makes it explode with one shot.
Descending to examine the wreckage and look for survivors, they quickly
realise that the Brigadier – somehow – survived the explosion. Emony
heals him with a touch, but at this point Mr Thompson makes a stunning
realisation – viewed through his eldritch senses, the Brigadier now
seems alien, in much the same way as the Colonel, but less strongly.
And the Colonel is an alien-human amalgam…
They explain to him that under the circumstances they feel he should be
taken out of the chain of command, and he nods; under the
circumstances, command defaults to Colonel Wilkes.
They get Wilkes on the field telephone; stunned to hear the news, he
tells them he’s working on Operation Retrieval. The Brigadier informs
them he’s ten miles to the west, and they decide, intrigued, to check
in on Wilkes in person. Colonel Smythe-Holmes makes his report again,
and observes as they transport one of the black goo-like aliens in a
sealed container to a truck, which will take it to Glasgow. There’s a
facility there, Wilkes tells them, left over from the 1850s fiasco.
At this point the team’s official mission is over; Wilkes gives them a
choice. Service during the war on UNIT stipend, or they can go their
own ways. The team splits; Thompson to London to investigate the
meteorite hieroglyphs – which turn out to be written in Enochian,
Doctor Herman and Mr Verne to Herman’s Cambridge lab to build Big
Bertha, and the rest of the team go to Devon to observe the drawing of
the battle lines – Cornwall has fallen now.
Thankfully, Herman’s scientific ability and Verne’s engineering genius
produce a Bertha prototype with all speed; mounted on a train, this
weapon becomes Inspector Stevens’ new favourite thing. It is capable of
devastating an area the size of the Houses of Parliament, and once
properly oriented turns the tide in Cornwall. Britain appears safe and
the UNIT boys take possession of Doctor Herman’s invention,
recompensing him well (Jo, I forgot – take a free point of Resources
for this one).
And then word gets out of a total information shutout and military
lockdown in Glasgow.
Never ones to shirk their duty, or what they see as their duty, the
team set out, uniting once more on the outskirts…