Taking the Brigantia deeper into German airspace, the party ultimately
decided that even their mighty airship wasn't ready for a battle with
whatever aerial defences the capital city might have. Thus, they came
about and headed full north – for the naval base. Arriving above it,
they observed two or three ships in port only, non-enhanced in Mr
Thompson's estimation.
They decided not to bombard them, and instead assembled a landing
party, to consist of Mr Thompson, Mr Verne, Inspector Stevens, Colonel
Smythe-Holmes, Captain Willdrake, and a disguised Lord Marlborough,
fetchingly attired as a Konteradmiral, the group linked by Emony's
psychic synergy.
What followed involved most of the group sneaking up to the base' radio
building, while Konteradmiral Marlborough and his assistant Willdrake
marched cheerfully up to the door and rapped on it.
Marlborough obtained the fleet transmissions log, which, with the aid
of his own nautical background allowed him to place where the fleet had
gone; the Thames. Last report had them holding position with cloaking
field active.
Thinking quickly, he sent a radio communication to the fleet ordering
them to decloak and bombard the Isle of Sheffey. Sadly, the party left
again before the reply questioning the order came in.
Alerting the Admiralty to the presence of the German Fleet, the party
instead chose to pursue another lead entirely...
On the wall of the broadcast hut had been a map of the other radio
stations used by the Fleet, one of which was based in Paris. As this
was clearly the new addition to the Kaiser's armoury, the party decided
that it had to be Ops for the campaign.
So on to Paris they went.
Over Paris, they triangulated, and managed to pin the broadcast station
down; it appeared to be housed in a delicatessen.
Setting down, the party split up; Emony went shopping, and the rest of
the party went to investigate the shop, Marlborough camouflaged once
more in the garb of a German importer. Arriving there first, Thompson,
Verne and the Colonel slipped into the shop's backyard and found a
rotary washing line. With no clothes hanging from it.
Thompson touched it, and was instantly jolted back by an electric
shock. Verne went invisible and reentered the shop from the front.
The proprietor offered him a foodstuff he'd just been thinking about.
Verne froze in his tracks.
At roughly this point, the rest of the group came in. The shopkeeper
sold Thompson some pork sausages.
Emony arrived, and detected a faint mumbling in the background of her
psychic communication.
Having concluded the man was psychic, Willdrake punched him out and
Inspector Stevens secured him. The group proceeded downstairs to the
radio operation area, looking for notes and other logs. None were
found, sadly, but they did also discover a brazier which, by the feel,
had been in operation recently.
They returned to the shop, however, a little late; just in time to make
a customer suspicious. She ran out into the street and summoned the
police, who the Colonel promptly shot.
During the pursuit is where things start to get more than a little odd.
Mr Thompson and Emony left for Montmartre, where Thompson had occult
friends. The rest of the group took the shopkeeper with them, making
their way through the city, watched as the Brigantia was shot down by
artillery fire, its form smashing into the Eiffel Tower on the way
down, shortly before its ammunition reserves detonated.
Lord Marlborough let out a cry of shock. Instantly, Captain Willdrake
and the Colonel leapt into action helping rescue those hit by the
blast, and Willdrake found the Brigantia's nameplate.
Marlborough bought a wreath and went to the impact zone to place it by
the nameplate. Standing back, he gave a short eulogy for the gallant
vessel's spirit, and the team reassembled, taking the captive
shopkeeper to be interrogated by Mr Thompson's friends, who found the
following:
- He isn't afraid of death
- Something about 'The Terror'. Thompson decided this was odd; he
didn't, telluricly, resemble the Friedrichs.
Thompson took him out into his friend's back garden and shot him
through the head.
Perhaps half an hour later, back with the rest of the group, Thompson
and Emony both felt a psychic disturbance emanating from Montmartre.
The entire party doubled up there quickly, to find all Thompsons'
friends dead, one missing, and the proprietor's skin lying discarded.
Thompson sneaked into the occult library and attempted to remove those
items on Enochian writings, remembering an earlier revelation
concerning the meteors.
Sadly, they – and all other books connected with angelic contact, and,
surprisingly, the Tunguska section – had vanished. Thompson instead
simply filled some of the holes in his own collection and the party
repaired to the embassy to complain about the loss of the Brigantia.
It transpired that, since occupation, Paris had put in motion an aerial
defence system; when ships fail to identify themselves, they are fired
upon. The embassy's own radio expert demonstrated that nothing had been
logged in reply from the Brigantia, but something had happened after
each demand that might well have been some form of 'jamming' the radio
signal.
Lord Marlborough, Willdrake, and Thompson went to settle up with the
Brigantia's destroyers, killing them and firing one of Thompson's green
metal bullets into the artillery pieces, detonating them and wiping out
the evidence.
Except, of course, for the fugitive witnesses.
The party convinced UNIT to fly them back to London.
DIR="LTR">
The session began with a briefing in
UNIT headquarters, back beneath the Thames. The group discovered that
Colonel Wilkes' efforts to penetrate the cloaking device had been
unsuccessful, but that he had a secondary plan; take Thompson up in
the air above their suspected location and see just how much his
eldritch senses could truly perceive.
They agreed to this, and as they did an
aide summoned Colonel Smythe-Holmes away to deal with another
problem.
Mr Thompson took to the air, and as
they overflew the fleet position he made out – just barely – the
eldritch footprint of some bizarre machine. From above, it looked
like a dish turned upward...
The pilot and Thompson returned to UNIT
HQ swiftly, and reported what they had seen. The device quickly
became known as the Wok, and plans proceeded apace to deal with the
Wok.
Lord Marlborough asked to requisition a
ramship, a torpedo boat, and a monitor, just in case, and the group
divided amongst the ships to investigate; Marlborough, Thompson,
Verne, and Captain Willdrake on the ramship, Inspector Stevens
(unsurprisingly) on the monitor, and Emony on the torpedo boat.
Arriving in the vicinity of the fleet,
Thompson directed the ramship in toward what he now perceived –
dimly – to be some kind of mechanical grail, charged with eldritch
energy – which appeared to hang twenty feet above the water.
Then the ramship struck something they
were unable to perceive. Inspector Stevens joined the group on the
ramship. Captain Willdrake took up a cutting torch, made his way out
on the prow, and began cutting at what he couldn't see. Having made a
gap, he proceeded to widen it with his own pneumatic might – and
was shot in the head by something they couldn't perceive.
Until Lord Marlborough focused on where
the green-ray blast had come from. His will burned through the
psychic cloak, revealing the ship to him – and, through Emony's
psychic link, to everyone but Thompson, who would take a little
longer.
Inspector Stevens, Lord Marlborough,
and Mr Verne opened up on the man holding the pistol – a man
strongly resembling the Iron Chancellor. Somehow, he withstood the
power of their boomstick blasts – but Captain Willdrake leaped onto
the deck, revealing the ship to Mr Thompson, and dived onto Bismarck.
Sadly, the Iron Chancellor managed to
black out Willdrake's mechanical mind and, lowered to the deck,
escape unseen as the party entered the ship.
Willdrake began investigating the
grail. Thompson made his way around the lower decks of the ships,
discovering directly below the grail device a number of unconscious
and restrained Friedrichs. Remarkably, he decided to enter the world
contained within them.
Lord Marlborough, Mr Verne, and
Inspector Stevens fought their way to the brig, overcoming a
machine-gun trap to get there, and took Bismarck captive.
At this point, a number of things
happened at once.
First, the golden flying saucers
Colonel Smythe-Holmes had been investigating appeared, heading
straight for the bridge of the ship they were on (the Burgundia).
Weapons glinted on their underbellies.
Captain Willdrake pulled the 'Warm Up'
lever.
Thompson felt the Friedrich world begin
to be drained away, and exerted all his will to hold it together.
The rest of the fleet dropped cloaking
shields.
Bismarck, coolly, informed the
interlopers that, under his orders, the saucers would strafe the
bridge, and he requested the crewmen be allowed to leave, to which
Marlborough acquiesced.
They then dragged Bismarck from the
bridge – oddly, he didn't seem to want to leave – and got out
just before the saucers' salvo tore the bridge apart.
Regathering, save for Emony and Mr
Thompson, on the bridge, they questioned Bismarck.
He spoke of 'ushering in the overmind',
'preparing humanity' and the keyword 'destroying Britain'. As near as
they could make out, the grail was designed to channel the energies
of the Friedrich's alien power and the magic of Albion's leylines,
unleashing a tempest upon the world that would change humanity
forever.
And then the Activation lever started
inexorably moving downward...
Willdrake put all his energy into
holding the lever back. Lord Marlborough and Mr Verne turned their
attention to the inner workings of Bismarck's Grail, seeking to
disable it in some way. Inspector Stevens, for his part, held
Bismarck back.
Marlborough and Verne came up with
something.
Detaching his hand to hold the lever
back, Willdrake gave the party those few extra moments, and they ran
for it, making it off the ship as it exploded. Bismarck, trying to
repair the device, caught the brunt of the blast.
Thompson felt the Friedrich realm
sucked away and destroyed, leaving him floating alone in a white void
– except for one thing; something tugging him in one direction.
Ever the explorer, he followed it – and was launched back into
reality at Emony's feet.
The group stood unsteadily on the
torpedo boat, looking cautiously at the fleet around them.
And then UNIT's black zeppelin fleet
arrived above...
END
Rex vivat.