Operation Heckler & Koch
Summary
Adventure:Operation: Heckler & Koch
GM: Jim Arona
Season: Winter 826 WK
Night: Sunday
Online: Discord
Level: Mediumish
- Party
- Black - A knight of House Douglas - played by Ed Douglas
- Kel - A dream-weaver elf - played by Terry Spencer
- Tulip - An earth mage and animal keeper - played by Trish
- Jedburgh - Triune Namer - played by Ross Alexander
- Dross - A human New Age occultist - played by Klaude
- Time on adventure
- 1 Frost 826 WK to ??? 826 WK
- Employer
- Rear Admiral Rolland, CB
- Mission
- Operation: Heckler & Koch involves a period of training in the wintry north, insertion into Provence, a rescue and desperate exfiltration to Sant Marti d'Empuries, and such investigation as the party is capable if they are not dead.
- Pay
- The knowledge that you have made the world a better place.
Scribe Notes
Party (in alphabetical order)
- Black
Black, also called Sir Archibald — Knight of the Void, noble of Alusia, in service to the Seagate Adventurers' Guild — writes.
Chapter 1: A Chessboard, Not a Battlefield
I have learned to distrust a commission that begins with a man asking whether one is from Alusia.
The Company Assembled
We were gathered at the Guild that morning without much notion of what we were gathered for, which is the usual way of it, and so we did what strangers do and made our introductions. Kel I have kept company with before, and needed no introduction, though she gave one anyway for the benefit of the others: an elf transformed into a drow and then wrapped in an illusion of an ordinary human woman, average in height, average in weight, entirely unmemorable. A dream weaver. She works upon the mind — illusions, silent speech between us, and a talent for persuasion that I would call binding if I were being honest and she were not listening. She told the room plainly that she does not fight. She stands at the back and directs.
Tulip I knew a little, and know better now. An earth mage, black-skinned with hair the colour of a lit fire, though we were shortly to hide all of that. She travels with animals and cares more for them than she does for most people, which is a defensible position. She let slip, in the way one lets slip a thing one wants noticed, that the Archangel Michael is presently displeased with her. She did not elaborate. I did not ask.
The other two were new to me. Dross is a human man of middle build, dusty, so nondescript that describing him is a labour — the only thing that catches the eye is a badly scarred left hand. He named himself a warlock of the homely sort: unborn children, crops, livestock. He said he is not much interested in killing people, though he does not mind hurting them where hurting is called for. He carries a familiar called Tabitha, plays music, and understands bureaucracy, which in my experience is the rarer of the two gifts. Jedburgh is not human, is somewhere in his late fifties, and is built like a brick outhouse without moving like one; he is faster and more agile than a man that size has any right to be. He carries a glaive and wears grey leather armour that he cheerfully calls an elephant's scrotum. He is a good ranger, a decent spy, and by his own admission an absolute crap namer.
For my own part I gave them Black, or Sir Archibald, whichever they preferred. Human enough to look at, six feet, well made, skin the colour of chocolate with an amber undertone beneath it — a souvenir of a drink I once took and very nearly did not survive. I told them I was a good-hearted little fellow, which is how I like to sell myself. Kel observed that I am very likely the only person who would describe me that way. She may be right. She usually is, and it is one of her less endearing habits.
A Jimmy Comes Recruiting
Then the recruiter arrived, and I recognised the breed at once. "This is a Jimmy, is it?" I said, and it was. He was not the Guild's man; he served a doctor, and he had come looking specifically for Alusians and specifically for those of us who could work magic, because where we were going magic is a rarity and the few who possess it are, as he put it, very odd and usually Nazis. The last such fellow he had heard of managed to blow himself up by standing too close to an airship, and took the airship with him. There would also be occultists who do peculiar things with rituals, and worse, the Transuranians — five-limbed, five-armed things with a five-sided torso and a head that can be made into a crown, and powerful minds.
The destination was a version of Reich: our own war-torn Earth of the middle years of that century, but a duplicate of it, thrown off by some recent meddling with time. Late in 1942, after Dunkirk, after the Battle of Britain. I have walked in a great many places and I still felt a small cold thing turn over in my chest at the phrase a duplicate of it. Planes are not supposed to breed.
Spending the Advance
The Guild set aside a purse for the five of us as a group and advanced us a portion of it up front to equip ourselves, which is the Guild's way of saying it expects a return. We spent most of the advance on the deepest enchantments Uzi would lay on us, since there would be nothing of the kind to buy on the far side. Kel and I paid for our own out of our own pockets, so the party's money stretched to three others.
I then spent a good deal more of my own than I was ever likely to see again. From Callas I took three draughts to thicken my hide to a troll's, and Jedburgh made the sound point that the troll draughts are worth their price because they can be cast at range and shared about. I brewed three philtres against mind-work myself; that sort of thing is my own trade and I would rather trust my own hand than another's. From the Bishop I took five restoratives and a pair of potions against a broken mind, and I laid in five waters of healing, and from Sebastian two sets of shadow wings, already bound and waiting only on a word. It came to rather more than my fifth share of the purse. It always does. I have long since made peace with being the one the others borrow from.
The rest of them shopped with more restraint. Dross bought himself a crystal of vision and an amulet of chalcedony, which keeps the undead from coming close and seemed a prudent purchase given who else is coming through to that plane. Tulip bought a luck amulet, which most of us have carried since our first season. Dross, Jedburgh and Tulip took waters of healing from Rommel. Wind walking and feather falling were bought from Ty, though I did not note who ended up holding what, and there was some idle talk of a carpet that renders a legal opinion on whether one has committed a crime — one goes to sleep on it and judges by the quality of one's rest. Killing a German soldier in a war, we established, is not a crime. It is very nearly the opposite of one.
Dross Lays Out the Cards
Before we left, Dross laid out the cards for us. The reading came clean and strong, which I have learned is not the same thing as good. He turned the Devil, and the Five of Swords, and the Star reversed, and then all four face cards of the sword suit together. He read it himself, and read it well: entanglement, a conflict from which nobody walks away a winner, a loss of clarity or of trust, and — his own phrase, and it has stayed with me — a chessboard rather than a battlefield. Mental conflict, manipulation, matters strategic and interpersonal rather than of the heart or the sword arm. I said that was what the potions against a broken mind were for. Kel said she would only control our minds with our consent. I said she would have that consent shortly after she had controlled our minds. She did not deny it.
Departure, and Novodom
We purified ourselves, and Kel put an illusion on the whole party to make us into average-looking humans. I habitually change my face where Nazis are involved. I would rather not be recognised on a plane where I have never yet been. Then Callas took us through the earth itself to Novodom, on the first Moonday of Vintage.
Novodom surprised me. It is a walled metropolis of the old style, thriving, well-fed, the people healthy, not one shambling corpse anywhere on its streets — I looked. But there are so many people packed inside those walls that magic runs thin there, and by daylight Dross found his craft dragging at him like a wet cloak. What amused me was the Jimmy. He counted the spellcasters in the crowd and grew genuinely alarmed. Where he comes from, one such person in a city would be a national emergency.
He took us to the Inn of Santa Maria, in the expensive quarter, which is not an inn at all but a hospitium kept by monks who charge like wounded bulls — the better, no doubt, to distribute alms to the poor. An acolyte led us up to our employer's suite: panelled in wood, oil lamps not yet lit because it was daylight, a series of rooms rather than a room.
Dr Wormwood's Commission
Dr Wormwood is a woman with dark hair wound into a bun and horn-rimmed spectacles, in a robe cut as a man's would be and a white coat over the top of it, and riding boots without buckle or lace that fit her perfectly well. She ordered tea, sat us down, and explained the shape of the thing.
The Germans and the undead both come out of a third plane. The undead came in vast swathes — walking corpses spreading plague, and greater things behind them that she declined to describe in detail. The Germans are not fighting that horde. They are running from it, and their invasion of the plane she calls Cataclysm Earth is a flight dressed up as a conquest. To buy themselves room they have made an alliance with the Transuranians, who are meddling with the passage of the undead into Cataclysm Earth and holding the door for a while.
I asked her directly whether she was certain the Nazis on Reich and those coming through into Cataclysm Earth were the same body of men. She admitted the difficulty: the shift in time may have made a copy, and a copy is a hard thing to be certain of from the outside. Her analysis of the temporal grain finds the duplicate of Reich well enough. What she cannot do is be there herself. That is what we are for.
The commission has two halves, and she was refreshingly candid about which is which. We are to rescue a British agent in the south of France and get them over the border into Spain, which is neutral, and whose ruler leans towards Berlin but whose treasury leans towards American money. Then, and this is the part that matters to her, we are to investigate a ruin in Spain not far from where the agent will be set down. She believes that ruin holds information about the interference with time — possibly measurements taken by Phoenician astrologers before the birth of Christ. The rescue is the story she has sold to British High Command to explain why they are being given an untraceable team from nowhere. The investigation is the reason she is paying for us.
Dross wanted to know which took priority if the two pulled apart. The answer was the investigation. I said that stopping the agent from handing over what they know would itself count as a rescue of a sort, and nobody argued the point, which is a bleak thing to be right about before one has even met the man.
Six Through the Abyss
Then came the arithmetic of the crossing. One does not walk more than six through the Abyss without attracting the sort of attention that ends adventures — it is not a hard wall, Jedburgh explained, so much as a threshold past which the local residents begin to take an interest. There were five of us. I said that Hordling would count, and was sorry to say it. Dross at once offered to banish Tabitha and call her back with a ritual on the far side, which solved his end of it neatly.
Mine was not so neat. We turned over the options with all the seriousness of men discussing an artillery placement: change Hordling into a mouse and cage him — no help, we were told, and he would sulk for a season; leave him with Arnulf, who can be trusted, though not to the extent of preventing what Hordling would do to an alchemist's laboratory left unattended; hire a troll to mind him. Tulip suggested we give whoever minded him some means of sending word if he broke loose. I told her that was a terrible idea, that they would be sending word every five minutes, and that it would be kinder to everyone if I simply came back afterwards and dealt with the consequences. Dr Wormwood, who had been listening to all of this with a rising expression, said before anybody could ask that we were not leaving him with her. I told her it had never been the plan. I knew she would not be keen.
It was Kel who unpicked it in the end. If neither Dr Wormwood nor the Jimmy counted against our number — and the Jimmy was only guiding us, not travelling as one of the party — then five of us and Hordling made six exactly, and we were within our limit. Hordling came with us after all. He looked, for the record, extremely pleased with himself, and I am fairly sure he understood every word of the debate.
Dr Wormwood offered us one more thing before we went: syringes of hers that put knowledge into a man, though not all at once. The stuff unfolds over weeks, so that one wakes up gradually knowing French, or German, or how to drive a motor vehicle. Kel asked whether she could put in geography as well as tongues, and she could. I already have a serviceable measure of the language we will need, so I asked after the driving instead, which struck me as the most useful of the lot. She could copy a weapon skill from a sample if one of us already had it; Tulip wanted the trident, and I told her I had some competence with the trident already and she was welcome to copy off me, but that I would take nothing for myself on that score. I can teach myself a weapon. It is the one thing I have never had to buy. Tulip then enquired whether anybody had the whip, on account of a balrog-tail whip she owns and cannot use, and I said the whip seemed to me a dishonourable weapon. Kel said she has no need of one. People do what she says. She whips minds, not bodies. I have decided not to think about that too closely.
We took a night at the hospitium, and Kel produced a cigarette case of remarkably fresh cigarettes and handed them round with a straight face, on the grounds that a relaxing smoke is good for the lungs. Jedburgh declined. Loudly.
The Rune Portal and the Descent
The rune portal stands a little outside the town, and it does not look like anything at all — a rock, with the runes hidden in the ground about it and gems set into the stone, every gem smeared thickly over with bound earth. Tulip spotted the earthwork at a glance. I said aloud that it was to stop people prying the stones out with crowbars, and observed that Dross could hardly have been expected to notice it, being so busy prying the stones out with a crowbar. He took it well.
We would have used the Pattern, which is faster, but somebody else had used it lately and it was still filling itself up again. So we touched the rock, and waited half an hour, and passed through.
I have gone through such portals often enough to know the price and still not to enjoy it. It empties a man. Whatever a body keeps in reserve against a long day, the crossing takes all of it, and one arrives on the other side hollowed out and heavy-limbed, wanting nothing so much as to sit down in the mist and not get up. The Astral obliged with the mist. It is a vague plane, features half-suggested, bushes and slopes fading out into grey at a hundred yards, and we walked an hour through it on legs that did not want to walk before we came to the edge and stood looking down into the Abyss.
A mile of climb, straight down. The Jimmy began to clamber. Dross woke his carpet instead, and the weaving took better than he had any right to expect — it held for hours beyond what he had promised us, and he ferried us down in stages. Jedburgh turned himself into starlings and flew down under his own power, though everything he carried transformed along with him and was no use to him at all until he was a man again. Dross asked, of nowhere in particular, whether we ought to be watching our strength closely at this point, and then answered himself: perhaps we are in a peaceful place where nothing bad can happen. He is an optimist. In the Abyss.
Moonlight Sleeping on a Midnight Lake
We spent two or three days crossing it, and slowly the strength came back into us, since we were walking and not fighting. Then we came to a river a mile wide, and beside it stood a figure leaning on a staff, whose features were so utterly black that all one could make out was the profile, an outline cut from nothing.
I brought up my black sight and saw him properly, and then I was glad. "My lord," I said. "My lord indeed."
Moonlight Sleeping on a Midnight Lake is a demon lord, and I have the honour of his acquaintance. He had heard that we were bound for the recent manifestation of Reich, and it had occurred to him that he might come along and be of use — as an interested party, he was careful to say, not as an employer. I told him I understood entirely. I know how it is.
Tulip asked me who on earth this was, and I made a hash of it — I called him Midnight Sleeping on a Moonlit Lake, which is a different demon lord altogether, and I have always got the two of them mixed up. He corrected me with more patience than I deserved. Kel asked whether he could be trusted. Completely, I said, as much as one trusts anyone. He is one of the good guys, I think, and I am aware how that sentence looks written down. The party has met Jade Rain before, and if they could stomach her they can stomach him. He is married, and his wife is called de Winter, a fact I had to be reminded of in front of him, which was not my finest hour. According to her letters, he said, she is well. He was travelling. When one is a demon lord one must get out among one's people and show one's face.
Speaking of showing, he said, and reached into the staff itself and drew out a monkey-shaped demon about the size of a hobbit. Short Fuse. He is, we were told, a bit on the dangerous side, and he throws around a great deal of black powder. I asked whether he was the sort one fires and forgets. On reflection: fire, and do not forget, and run.
I had a couple of Mills and Boon novels about me, and I gave them to Moonlight for his wife. He was genuinely delighted. He said he could go home at last, after this. It cost me nothing and I would do it again; there is a great deal to be said for being the one person in the Abyss who remembers that a demon lord's wife likes a love story.
Then he struck his staff and three more staves peeled away from it and took up a triangle around us, and we walked on.
The Staves Do the Work
I should like to be able to write that we fought our way across the Abyss. We did not. Waves of demons came at us and tried to roll straight over the top of the party, and the staves simply mowed them down — dragon flame from one, some fury of unseen force from another, other kinds of devastation I could not name and did not much want to. It went on like that for days. What would have been the death of all five of us, three sticks of wood handled without hurry while their owner strolled beside us discussing his correspondence. I have been at this a long time and I still found it instructive to be reminded how far above me the ladder goes.
We collected what was left afterwards, at Moonlight's suggestion — the remains make excellent material for a working alchemist, and I am one. Dross asked whether the stuff would serve for sleeping dust or poison dust. The poison, we were told, works exactly as it should. The sleeping dust made this way still forces a man to resist it, but if he fails he sleeps for the barest fraction of the time he ought to, which is a very short nap indeed, and I would not stake a plan on it. Hordling was in his element. Anything poisonous went into him, and he burped his opinions at us so continuously that nobody could follow a word.
Tulip, meanwhile, tried to make friends with one of the demons attacking us. She leaned out and made the noises one makes at a cat. The creature regarded her with a flat and specific loathing, and did not come any closer, and did not attack either, and I decided the safest thing I could do was look elsewhere and claim to have seen nothing.
Ten days or so more, and another river, and this time Moonlight simply made a bridge out of nothing across it and we walked over. On the far side we came out at the new version of Reich.
The Black Castle
The approach is unlike any plane I have entered. There is one roadway, climbing the flank of a mountain — it does not feel like climbing, one only walks and arrives — and at the top of it stands a castle of black stone, walled and towered. It is not manned. Nothing lives inside it. There is no way onward except through it. I asked Moonlight what it was for and he said he did not know, that he had not been able to find out, and that investigating those fortifications is one of his own tasks. I have rarely found a thing more unsettling than a demon lord admitting he has not managed to work something out.
Before we went through, Kel got a description of the local dress out of the Jimmy, and it is a curious world we were walking into. The men wear high-waisted trousers with a crease ironed sharp enough to cut, grey or brown, blue if they work in the city; narrow ties; white or pale blue shirts; hats. The women wear hats almost always, often with a veil, and dresses to mid-calf with a jacket, colour-coordinated or deliberately clashing, but always thought about. Nobody except the very poorest wears anything casually. Kel put grey suits on all of us, and at Tulip's request dressed her as a man — she was not, she said, wearing that skirt thing. Jedburgh made the sensible observation that a uniform would be safer still, but we did not yet know what any uniform there looked like, so we agreed to sort that out once we were on the plane.
Victoria Station, October 1942
Then through the castle, and into that plane's own Astral, and out — into a tunnel at Victoria Underground Station, London, walking up into the crowd like anyone else.
Moonlight took one look at the press of people, remarked that he had best go home before he frightened the locals, struck his staff on the ground, and was consumed in a burst of fire. Not one soul in that station noticed. A few of them stepped around the space where he had been without knowing why they had done it, and then closed up again over the gap and went on with their day.
A man in military uniform and a peaked cap was waiting: Captain Glendinning, whose English is the sort one can only acquire at Eton, all cut glass and clipped edges. Jedburgh could not follow a word of it. I could. He had been instructed, for some reason he did not understand, to give us the date, and so he did. Monday, the nineteenth of October, 1942.
He then indicated a specially secured military vehicle, which was a van in an advanced state of collapse, and invited us into the back of it. I offered to drive. I told him I had been practising. He was, he said, keen enough to be spared the job, but I did not have clearance, so into the back I went, having established for the record that whatever happened next was not my fault. The thing lurched off making a noise like a foundry, banging and reeking, and after less than five minutes he put us out at a railway station, told us to look for a brown train, and left. He was going to Burma to fight the Japanese. He said it the way another man might mention a change of lodgings.
The brown train came after about five minutes, one carriage, empty. It was one of ours who noticed that the men driving it were wearing blindfolds. Kel quietly opened her silent speech between the five of us after that, so that we could say what wanted saying without any of it reaching the air. There was a picnic hamper waiting in the compartment, wine and food, laid on for us by somebody who knew we were coming and would never be told who we were.
Achnacarry
Nine hours of that, arriving just before midnight. We knew our station because the sign had not been painted out, and carried no red diagonal band across the corner to mark it secret: Achnacarry.
An elderly Scot was waiting with a horse and a dog cart. His accent was thick enough that the others struggled with him and I heard him clear as a bell — it is one of the few advantages of having been about as long as I have. He is the house's dogsbody, and will run us to and from the station and fetch what we want from the village. Achnacarry lies on the western side of Scotland, it is the seat of Clan Cameron, and it is where the commandos come to be trained. Kel asked him who was in charge. He took a long breath and told her, with feeling, that he had no idea, that everyone seemed to be, and that when somebody told him to do a thing he did it.
I asked him for mercury. It is very nearly the only thing I want from that village and I want a great deal of it. He said mercury comes in thermometers, which I know, and which is a tedious way to get at it. Then it turned out there is not a single thermometer in the whole of Achnacarry. Not one. Worth a try. Never mind — I shall find something.
The house took us in through the front door. The butler is called Macavity, Scots as well but far more cultured and perfectly clear to everyone, and he told us the admiral had asked that we refresh ourselves first and that he would wait until we were ready. Footmen took us up — one room for the women, one for the men — unpacked our gear, and ran baths. After a fortnight in the Abyss I will confess that the bath did as much for my morale as the enchantments did for my hide.
Admiral Rolland and Operation Torch
The library has an enormous wooden globe in it, a yard across, and a conference table ringed with green velvet chairs, and Admiral Rolland sitting at it in dress uniform with a brandy at his elbow. He has the face of a basset hound, the saddest-looking man I have met in a long while. I read his insignia while he was pouring us drinks, and found a decoration on it that had been added very recently — not a promotion, an honour. A man who has just been given an honour and looks like that has usually been given it for something he would rather not have done.
It was the very early morning of the twentieth by then. He laid it out for us plainly.
In the coming weeks the Allies will begin an operation in North Africa to drive the Germans and Italians out of it — Operation Torch. It is to be seen as an American affair, first because they want the American public brought fully into the war, and second because although there are British units in the area it is important that they are not seen to deliver the win. There is dissension to be discouraged. I have served princes long enough to recognise the shape of that reasoning and I did not much like hearing it in a war this size.
The difficulty is that one of their most productive escape lines — Heckler — is believed compromised. A whole sweep of the lines have suddenly been rolled up: one in Belgium, one in the north of France, one in Brittany. Jedburgh asked whether it was internal or external, and Rolland said there must be a double agent; too many have gone at once for anything else. Heckler is still running, and has survived longest only because the agent who runs it is extremely paranoid. Not, as Jedburgh observed, without reason. Not a bad way to be, I said, and meant it.
Heckler runs out of Lyon, which is also where the Gestapo have their headquarters, and there is a new man of theirs called Klaus Barbie who is presently in Switzerland and expected to take charge of that area soon. Our task is to get the leader of that line out before it is rolled up. Going into Lyon ourselves would draw more attention than we could survive.
Their escape route runs over the Pyrenees to a small coastal town, where a farmhouse and a landing field have been hired through another agent, and from which an aeroplane can lift the man out. Crossing the mountains, Rolland said, is a cakewalk. Moving him from Perpignan to that coast is not. Going by sea is out: the Germans expect a build-up of shipping across the Atlantic and have put submarines and warships all along that coast, Gibraltar to Malta, so anything on the water is liable to be stopped.
No Way Down but Out of the Aeroplane
Which brings us to how we get in. There is to be training here first, and then they mean to fly us down and fling us out of the aeroplane.
"That sounds like fun," I said, and Rolland did not smile.
They cannot land us. As one approaches Perpignan one comes into range of naval gunnery and anti-aircraft barrages, and the place is thick with fighter craft. They will give us parachutes if we want them, but their honest estimate is that we are dead the moment the canopy opens — a man under a chute is a sitting duck, and Dross corrected him: a falling duck. The aeroplane is to be a Vickers Wellesley, which Jedburgh named before Rolland could, and which is a Barnes Wallis design. They looked for a German aircraft with the range and could not find one, and in any case they would rather like the pilot back.
Dross asked whether it might be better to fly ourselves over the mountains and go through one of the passes, and asked for a terrain map. They produced photographic topographical maps of the Pyrenees, clear enough for anyone who has flown to read at a glance, and Tulip made the sound point that we should plan a route overland as a fallback even if we intend to fly. Kel suggested painting the underside of Dross's carpet black. Dross said it is a lovely embroidered thing and he is not painting the bottom of it black, and only relented on the promise of a replacement.
There was another carpet spoken of at some point — rhomboid rather than square, decorated round the edge, a tapestry really, with iridescent dark green starlings worked into a background of blue. It must keep moving or it drops out of the sky, though it can be slowed almost to a hover. It is not Dross's. I did not establish whose it is, and I have written it down here precisely because I did not.
The Final Five
I should record, out of order, a thing that happened before we ever went down to the library. Dross had used his ring after his bath, wanting a private moment, and Short Fuse appeared to him. The creature spoke with great care, choosing his words like a man reciting something he has been made to memorise — almost, Dross said, as though somebody else's words were in his mouth. The message was this: the last of the goetic demons, the seventy-second, is involved in this affair, and he is one of five, and the five are a cabal who call themselves the Final Five. Dross passed it to the rest of us and it went down about as well as one would expect. Kel said we ought to ask for a rise in our fee, and I agreed and named a figure that would have made the Guild swallow its tongue. Jedburgh went looking up which of the seventy-two the last one is. Dross observed that there are five of them and five of us, and that this was almost too tidy. I said the tidy ones should be running for the hills.
Two Weeks, If We Get Them
Over the following days various people came to brief us on various things. One of those who came for Jedburgh was a woman with dusky skin and quite extraordinary beauty: the Princess Noor Inayat Khan, here at Achnacarry for commando training, and here for the second time. She speaks French as a native and German besides, and by all accounts she is a formidable radio operator. She gave Jedburgh an object that had been brought to her by a Hindu mystic, who told her that whoever held it would know who to give it to. It is of no use to anyone at present, so far as we can tell. She also told us that if we ever have to come out overland, we can find safety for a short while at Suresnes, in Paris.
There are two weeks set aside for training before any of this begins in earnest, and they may not be two weeks we get to keep — the moment the information they are waiting on arrives, we go, whether we are finished or not.
Which leaves us with one problem, and Kel put it as plainly as it can be put: between now and the day they fling us out of that aeroplane, we had better work out how to get from the aeroplane to the ground without dying. Jedburgh says he can carry everybody. Dross intends to use his carpet, and it depends on how well the weaving takes. For my own part I can step out of the thing and come to the ground without hurting myself, which the others found harder to believe than I expected.
I keep coming back to those cards. A chessboard, not a battlefield. Mental conflict and manipulation rather than the honest kind. All four sword court cards, and the Star reversed.
I have crossed the Abyss with a demon lord at my shoulder and watched three walking sticks kill more things than I could count. And what waits for us is a paranoid man in Lyon, a traitor somewhere in a chain of frightened people, and a fall out of an aeroplane onto a coast bristling with guns.
I find I would rather have the demons.
OOC DetailsItems AcquiredKel:
Black:
Dross:
Jedburgh:
Tulip:
Party (shared resources):
Session Summary The party — Kel, Tulip, Dross, Jedburgh and Black — was recruited at the Seagate Guild by an agent of Dr Wormwood for a mission to Reich, a temporally duplicated version of wartime Earth in late 1942. They spent the Guild's advance and a good deal of their own money on enchantments and consumables, and Dross's card reading turned up the Devil, the Five of Swords, the Star reversed and all four face cards of the sword suit — a chessboard rather than a battlefield. Callas then took them through the earth to Novodom on 3 Vintage, where Dr Wormwood laid out the commission: the Germans are fleeing an undead horde into Cataclysm Earth with Transuranian help, and the real objective is a Phoenician-era ruin in Spain rather than the British agent they are ostensibly rescuing. Keeping the crossing party to six took some argument before Hordling was allowed to come, and Wormwood supplied syringes that impart language, geography, driving and copied weapon skills over several weeks. The rune portal outside Novodom put them into the Astral and then over the edge into the Abyss, a mile of climb down. At the first river they met the demon lord Moonlight Sleeping on a Midnight Lake, who joined them as an interested party and lent them Short Fuse; for the rest of the fortnight-long crossing his staves destroyed every demon wave without the party fighting, and Black harvested the remains for alchemy. They left the Abyss through an unmanned castle of black stone that Moonlight admitted he had not been able to explain, and emerged at Victoria Underground Station in London on 19 October 1942. A train north brought them to Achnacarry House in Scotland, where Admiral Rolland briefed them on Operation Torch and on the compromised Heckler escape line running out of Gestapo-held Lyon. The insertion plan has no landing — a Vickers Wellesley is to fly them near Perpignan and put them out over a coast thick with anti-aircraft fire. Short Fuse separately delivered a warning that the seventy-second goetic demon is involved and belongs to a cabal calling itself the Final Five. The session ended with two weeks of commando training beginning at Achnacarry, a first briefing from Princess Noor Inayat Khan, and the party still without a survivable way to get from the aeroplane to the ground. Chronological Timeline
|
Buffs & Mil Sci
Buffs
Long Term (assumed always on)
| Magic (caster) | Rk | Effects | Duration | Bk | Jd | Kl | Tp | TBA | TBA | TBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBA) |
Self Only
| Magic (caster) | Rk | Effects | Duration | Bk | Jd | Kl | Tp | Bk | JB | Dr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) |
Short Term (cast when needed)
| Magic (caster) | Rk | Effects | Dur | Bk | Jd | Kl | Tp | TBA | TBA | TBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) | ||||||||||
| TBA (TBA) |
Cast by minions and retainers
| Magic (caster) | Rk | Effects | Dur | Location | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBA (TBA ) | |||||||||||
| TBA (TBA ) | |||||||||||
| TBA (TBA ) | |||||||||||
| TBA (TBA ) | |||||||||||
| TBA (TBA ) |
Senses and other stuff
| TBA | Rk | Effects | Dur | Bk | Jd | Kl | Tp | TBA | TBA | TBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sense Danger (%) | ||||||||||
| Detect Ambush (%) | Ranger (-5/rank of opposition) | |||||||||
| TBA | ||||||||||
| See Invis (Rk) | Effective rank for seeing invisible | |||||||||
| Stealth (%) | Standard / Ranger Outdoors |
Misc
- Greater Enchantment
- (TBA ) rank ??
- Enhance Enchantment
- (TBA ) rank ??:, ?? seconds
- Remove Curse
- (TBA ) MA ??
- Herbalist Lunch/Broth
- ?? rk ?, Meal ? FT or Broth ? FT
Loot
Consumables
Potions
Potion of Reason Restored x 5
This potion will restore the imbiber’s reason if they succeed in a roll of 4 x MA. The potion weighs ½ lb and is considered Rank 20 with an MA of 30. The imbiber will glow brightly while their sanity is repaired.
If the contents are poured into a grenade, it may be thrown at a hex, where will burst, shedding Rank 20 light in an area 25 ft across. Any creature that is considered an Aberration (e.g. Calimari) may be forced out of the current mundane plane, or slain. An entity who is insane but not an Aberration will be rendered catatonic.
Rank 10 Restorative x 11
This potion weighs 4 oz. The Endurance of whoever drinks it is reduced by 12 and their Fatigue is restored by 24. This may Stun.
Rank 10 Soul Shroud
This vial weighs 4 oz. Whoever drinks it creates a shroud around their mind and soul for 21 hours. Aside from preventing their thoughts from being detected or read, the Adept always appears unpacted to those that can determine such things. This spell does not prevent the Adept’s presence or emotions from being detected, but their mind will simply not appear to be there when an attempt is made to “read” it.
The Adept’s Resistance versus abilities that Charm, Compel, Bind or Control is increased by 30 but does not block ESP or Empathy. The Adept can receive Mind Speech at their choice.
Rank 6 Potion of Solar Protection
This vial weighs 4 oz. Whoever drinks it gains +8 to the chance of resisting magical, light-based attacks for 70 minutes. This includes Flash of Light, Wall of Starlight, Bolt of Starfire, Web of Light, Solar Flare and Whitefire. They will also become fully protected from damage caused by non-magical light (E.g. sunburn, snow-blindness), with the exception that it will not protect Greater Undead from sunlight. The protection also allows vision in a Rank 20 Light Spell and reduces damage from any light or solar based attack by 1.
Miscellany
| Remnants | Number | Remnants | Number | Remnants | Number | Remnants | Number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afterglow [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Anchor [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
6 | Apple [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Book [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
10 |
| Bridge [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 | Castle [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
2 | Chaos [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
10 | City [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 |
| Confusion [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Dog [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Drum [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Eagle [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
11 |
| Echo [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
6 | Engine [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
9 | Equilibrium [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Euphoria [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
15 |
| Facade [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
11 | Feather [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
6 | Footprint [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Forest [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
11 |
| Garden [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 | Glimmer [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
10 | Helm [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 | House [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 |
| Island [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
13 | Kite [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
6 | Lemon [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
13 | Mirage [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 |
| Mountain [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
2 | Needle [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
13 | Ocean [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 | Panic [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 |
| Queen [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
15 | Resonance [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
3 | River [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Serenity [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
18 |
| Silhouette [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
10 | Sleep [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
6 | Solitude [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 | Stagnation [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
7 |
| Star [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Train [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
5 | Vestige [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
14 | Window [Bk:0, Dr:0, Jd:0, Kl:0, Tp:0] |
11 |
The Murmuration of Starlings
This heavily-knotted woollen wall hanging has been woven in the shape of a rhombus that is 3 feet long by 9 feet wide and weighs 9 lbs 11 oz. The background is blue and hundreds of tiny starlings are picked out in an iridescent, metallic, dark green thread. The starlings give the appearance of moving on their own.
It is a legal target for the Instilling Flight spell, increasing the Base Chance by 10. The Warlock can increase the area of the carpet at the time of Casting up to a maximum of 5 feet 11 inches long and 17 feet 9 inches wide, so long as the ratio is maintained.
At 3 ft x 9 ft, the textile would be too small for anyone else other than the Warlock. At 5 ft 11 in x 17 ft 9 in, the textile has sufficient area to hold 18 sizes of humanoids with comfort.
The Warlock can dynamically increase or decrease the speed of flight up to its maximum, but must move at least 1 TMR of airspeed or they will plummet.
When the spell is Rank 10 or higher, and the Professional Skill Navigator is known, then a starling can be drawn from the textile and given a course. This reduces the level flight speed to half (+ 5% per Rank in Navigator), but obviating any need for the Warlock to maintain concentration. Indeed, they may even sleep if they trust their flight plans to a starling made out of wool.
True Names
Wheel of Fire
The Individual True Name of this unique entity is Jagat Chakra. There are only 21 Ranks available. In other words, every Rank this Name is raised by one reduces the maximum Rank that the name can be advanced by anyone else..
If the Spell of Name Change is known, and their Rank in the Generic True Name Wheel of Fire is Ranked to 10 or higher, then they may assume this shape:
The Wheel of Fire
The Namer rises about a foot above the ground, encircled by a vertically aligned ring of barely visible white and blue flames. The Namer gains a Flywheel pool holding 1 Moment (+1 for every 5 Ranks in the Generic True Name). Momenti convert 1:1 to hexes, and can be added to TMR in any direction. Movement that terminates with them unattached to the ground is generally followed by aggressive acceleration toward the nearest surface below them. The pool refreshes 1 Moment at a time at the beginning of the Pulse. If the Namer is not in combat, they may increase their movement rate over five minutes to 30 mph (+1 mph / Rank). They gain a bonus of twice the Rank of the Generic True Name to any acrobatic or speed based manoeuvre with the wheel. Their Defence is increased by 2 (+3 for every even Rank in the Generic True Name). At Rank 20, they may perform an additional Defensive Withdraw, Retreat or Non-Magical Pass Action except when Stunned. The actions are resolved consecutively, in either order. The figure’s total movement may not exceed their TMR.
The Battle Form
The Namer may take a Pass Action and assume a Battle Form, their equipment also growing to match them. This changes the duration of the spell from Concentration Max: 30 minutes (+30 minutes / Rank) to a standard duration of 1 minute (+ 1 minute / Rank) (not requiring Concentration), so must be Counterspelled to end it before duration expires. Based on their Rank in the Individual True Name, the change increases their
- Size to 9, a 2 hex creature @ Rank 15, 3 @ Rank 20
- PS by 7 (+ 1 for every even Rank)
- EN by 8 (+ 1 for every even Rank)
- TMR by 1 (+ 1 @ Rank 10 & 20)
- Reduces each application of damage by 1 (+1 @ Rank 10 & 20)
Bonuses to PS and EN from Strength of Stone or Waters of Strength and the like do not stack, instead, the greatest effect applies. They gain a pool which holds 1 (+1 @ Rank 10 & 20) Fireheals. Fireheal causes the Namer's wounds to burst into flame, curing 1 (+1 for every 5 Ranks in this Individual True Name) DP so long as healing occurs within a minute of receiving it. It requires a Pass Action, and at Rank 20, either a Pass Action or a Free Act but not both. At Rank 10 in the Individual True Name and for each Rank thereafter, the Namer can take a Free Act to ignite with white and blue flames which inflict 1 point of magical fire damage to anything within 5 feet of them (so 10 magical fire damage @ Rank 20).
Allies
Shortfuze
- Description
Shortfuze is an Abysmal demon in the employ of Moonlight Sleeping on a Midnight Lake, the demon lord of House Winter Moon. He resembles a monkey about 2 ft 6 in tall, weighing around 30 lbs. His tail is nearly a yard long, and the right hand of a human has been grafted on to the end. His fur is as black as soot. He is size 3 by the merest skerrick, and can wear gear and clothing that would fit a hobbit, so long as adjustments are made for his tail. His forepaws have fully opposable thumbs and are, in all the important ways, hands, lacking only fingerprints.
- Comments
Shortfuze carries a leather cartridge case on a strap that crosses his chest and goes over the opposite shoulder. It is also secured with a belt at the waist.
| PS: | 13 | MD: | 18 | AG: | 22 | MA: | 8 | EN: | 17 | FT: | 22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP: | 16 | PC: | 10 | PB: | 6/6 | TMR: | 10 | NA: | Hide absorbs 3 DP | ||
| Weapon | BC | DM | Range | Class | Use | Max. Rank |
| Claw | 30% | D10 | P | B | MC | Ranks as Unarmed Combat |
| Tail Punch | 44% | D10 - 4 | P | C | MC | Ranks as Unarmed Combat |
| Dagger | 40% | D10 | 8 | A | RMC | Ranks as Dagger |
| Hand dragon | 55 | Step Up D5 | 12 | C | R | Ranks as Crossbow |
| Grenado | 45 | Step Up D5 | 12 | C | R | Ranks as Grenado |
Watch Order
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ||||||
Marching Order
| Skirmish Formations (Front) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Default
|
Double File
|
Single File
??? |
Calendar
Autumn | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moonday | Duesday | W'ansday | Th'rsday | Frysday | Reapsday | Sunday | ||||||||
|
Lugnasad | |||||||||||||
| Vintage (6) | ||||||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | |||||||||||||
|
3 | Guild commission; Novodom; Wormwood's briefing | 4 | Rune Portal; descent into the Abyss | 5 | Abyss crossing | 6 | Abyss crossing | 7 | Moonlight Sleeping joins at the river | 8 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 9 | Demon waves; remains harvested |
|
10 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 11 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 12 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 13 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 14 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 15 | Demon waves; remains harvested | 16 | Demon waves; remains harvested |
|
17 | Blood Moon (Hunter's Moon) Force Bridge; Reich; London; train north |
18 | Admiral Rollins briefs; training begins | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | |||||
