Peril in the Skies
(A Jack Darcy Adventure)
--------------------------------------

**Disclaimer**
"Peril in the Skies" is a TADS AIF (adult interactive fiction) game
concerning one of the adventures of heroic/notorious 1930s action hero
Jack Darcy. Given that it contains adult themes and sexual content it is
only suitable for players over the legal age of consent for their own
nation/state.


**Background**
Jack Darcy was an English adventurer active from the early 1930s onward,
involved in a variety of complex and outrageous intrigues and adventures
against various enemies of freedom and the British empire
(not that the two sets of enemies are always identical!).

Although a rather minor figure from the official point of view,
recently discovered memoirs purporting to have been written by Darcy himself
have revealed some of the more exotic details of his past and stirred up
considerable controversy in official circles.  It seems that his freelance
activities of the early 1930s segued almost effortlessly into more officially
sanctioned escapades in the years leading up to (and including) World War II.
Although no official validation has been made of the claims in
the Darcy Memoirs it seems that he was active in Berlin for a while during
the closing stages of the war acting as a spy/assassin- claims the British
government have strongly denied.

This particular adventure took place in 1936 and was to prove pivotal in
Darcy's career at least insofar as it touched upon the activities of the
German anarchist Lorelei Kessler who seems to have dropped from the public
eye shortly after these events.

During the later months of 1935 and the early months of 1936, Darcy had been
investigating the existence of an ancient Egyptian temple relic known as the
Mask of Sebek.  Like most treasure seekers of the period he was pursuing this
relic (quite naturally) in Egypt.  However a breakthrough discovery by the
OGPU backed Russian archaeologist Oleg Pencherjevsky revealed that the sect
in possession of the Mask had been driven from their homeland following a
period of religious persecution and had settled thousands of miles from
Egypt on an island in the South Seas.

Trailing Pencherjevsky to the South Seas, Darcy (accompanied reluctantly by
Times journalist Sally Richmond who had been covering the Jones dig in Cairo)
discovered the ruins of the city of Ptarek- built by these religious refugees.

Following some sort of conflict in and under Ptarek, Darcy and Miss Richmond
managed to escape on board a tramp steamer "The Elspeth."  Sources differ as
to what happened next...


**Credits**

For a full list of credits please type "Credits" at any point
during the game itself.

Thanks for taking the time to read these notes.  Future releases from
the Darcy Memoirs may be made if public interest is sufficient.*

Adam Hendine
(adamhendine@hotmail.com)


*Although I haven't yet catalogued all the records in the Darcy Memoirs,
it does seem that Mr Darcy went on to become the mysterious "Mr D"- the
secret service chief of 1960s MI6 agent Candy Dashwood, whose racy
autobiography "Suck it and See" scandalised the intelligence community when
released on the first anniversary of her death.  If this is in fact the case
it seems that "Mr D" had changed little from his more active days of
adventuring.

Excerpts from "Suck it and See" may also appear.
