Slain by Elf

We're heading to Scotland. Knowing the kind of investigations we get involved with, there is discussion about whether to the take the assault rifles brought back from the future with us. Taking any kind of weapon on a transatlantic liner to another country may be frowned upon, but rather deadly looking and quite unfamiliar weapons surely wouldn't be wise.

The following day comes and we head to board the Atlantic liner Ceres. 'Are you trying to smuggle the assault rifles through customs?', we are asked.

There is some murmuring between us, wondering if one of us actually tried, one way or another, and pondering if it would be worth the risk. 'Can I just point out', I say, 'that this is a trick question?' Turning to the GM, I add 'The answer, Mr customs officer, is 'no''.

Our investigations in New York draw to a close and we return to Boston, where a letter awaits Madame Za Za. An archaeologist appears to be in some distress, and the family asks if we could make the trip to Scotland, financed by them, to investigate. Of course we can.

There is talk about how exotic it will be to travel abroad, although I find it not quite as exciting as the others. After all, 'I am from Europe. Brighton, England, in fact.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'What planet are you from?', asks the GM, sensing the pattern.

'Fenksworld', comes the immediate reply, much to my astonishment.

'How did you remember that?! You couldn't even remember it when we were playing the adventure and it was your cover story.'

Half of us manage to get in to the depths of the bunker, smashing through a sewer wall to get inside. The other half are upstairs, watching for guard reactions and preparing to cut the power if necessary. And by 'if necessary', I apparently take that to mean, 'when I get the tiniest bit twitchy'.

The confusion of no light in the basement affects the guards more than our two investigators, Richard Castle and Harry Herpderp, not his real surname, as our pair have a lantern to help them spot guards and cut them down in cold blood. It's either them or us, and as they have assault rifles and we don't, and we've seen what those rifles can do, our morals don't suffer too much. And we gain an assault rifle or three to even the odds more in our favour.

Despite the power being cut, some weak lights come on within a minute or so. Working their way towards an inner chamber, our investigators think they see the source of the power, although they can't quite believe it. Or don't want to.

A glass tank stands in the middle of a room, with all kinds of cabling coming out of it. But it's what's in the tank that is disturbing, being a nightmarish ooze covered in myriad eyes and... well, it's hard to describe, and no one really wants to examine it too much. Richard Castle copes with the sight rather well, considering, and wonders if this being will react to a name he has heard in our investigation. 'Neil? Neil Arthur Tepp?'

No reaction. But no matter. Castle rips out the wires coming from the tank, and thinks better of pumping bullets in to it, just in case whatever it holds will spill free. The guards are dead, the curious electro-mechanical devices in another room have been destroyed. It looks like we may have significantly hampered this sinister operation. Castle and Herpderp hightail it out of the basement, back through the sewers.

We can't get gas or grenades from the black market, not even knowing that it exists, but that's not stopping Harry Herpderp, not his real surname, from arming himself.

'I've bought a perfectly legal shotgun, and a perfectly legal hacksaw', he says, before taking one to the other.

'Do you know what you're doing?' At first blush it looks like he does, ending up not with a shot-up hacksaw but a sawn-off shotgun.

'I could make a mechanical repair check to see if I do a good job.' The GM agrees, and Herpderp makes the roll. He fails. 'How did I do?'

'I imagine you'll find out when you decide to use it.'

New plan: gas the bunker. We need to get in to the depths of the bunker where the meetings are held, to see what mysteries lurk below, but we can't afford to go in without being prepared in some way. And if being prepared means neutralising the guards then so be it.

Even so, mustard gas is probably not the best way to gain access. Not to say that it wouldn't be effective, but we'd need gas masks ourselves, and the fallout of whatever we did would be somewhat undesirable. Besides, we're not even connected enough to find a black market for grenades, our next choice of getting past the guards.

Indirect weapons to counteract the futuristic, lets call them 'assault', rifles sounds better than putting ourselves in the line of fire. But despite our best efforts at trying to get some grenades, we simply don't know and can't find out where to buy them.

Back to gassing, but in a way that won't arouse as much suspicion and, although deadly, won't provoke discussions about new human rights treaties once discovered. Nitrogen is the obvious choice. Cold nitrogen is heavier than air, so we could spill a load and have it fill the basement, where the guards are. It is colourless and odourless, and will be entirely unnoticed as a threat. The guards will simply pass out and painlessly asphyxiate when the nitrogen displaces the oxygen in the air. Don't ask me how I know all this.

Harry Herpderp, not his real surname, has a concern. 'I don't think nitrogen existed in the 1920s.'

'Oh, I think it did.'

'...sold in gas canisters! You could have let me finish my sentence.'

'I think we both know that was never going to happen with that straight line.' But he's right, so we have to come up with a proper plan.

It feels like, once again, we don't accomplish a great deal in the session. At least not until someone points out that we made Bert spit out his drink, and got his character to lose 2 sanity points.

Yeah. That'll do.

Our Madame bumps in to a paranormal investigator, who learns of our mystery and, with the death of the professor, finds a place in our little team. When we get to meet Harry Herpderp, maybe not his real surname, we learn that one of his interests is playing the jazz banjo.

'We haven't heard it, though', thank goodness, 'and he looks more like a gangster than an investigator. I bet it's not a banjo in the case'.

I think we'd all be okay with that. To keep his hands otherwise busy, Herpderp heads up to Albany with dick Richard Castle. They are hoping to find out a little more about someone who died under curious circumstances after blabbing about the cult we're investigating. Maybe the man's widow has some details we would find enlightening, if only we could locate her.

Looking through records in city hall shows three marriages matching the name of Michaels in the past twenty years in the area. That's a good start. 'Are there details about any births?', wonders Herpderp, perhaps making narrowing down a mighty list of three potentials a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

Castle thinks so too, offering an easy method of finding the right person. 'Go to each of them in alphabetical order.'

So we see Mrs Michaels first, then on to Mrs Michaels if that doesn't work out, and if we're really unlucky we end with Mrs Michaels? 'I knew what I meant', he says, and so did we. It was still funny.

A player missing from last week's session naturally means we start this week's with an extended update on what we achieved. Not a great deal, apparently, at least not when distilled down to what actually happened. '...and that's about it. Put that way, it doesn't sound like much.'

'Yes, but with D&D it was mostly, 'we entered the room and killed the monsters', so it's not much different.'

'True, it's just that now we don't have the monsters, so it's just 'we entered the room'.'

The suspicious character we've tracked from Boston is running a secretive club in New York City. Weekly meetings, a friend informed us, have people turn up to buy mysterious items and artefacts supposedly brought back from the future. They are outlandish claims, even if the friend is amazed by a frying pan which nothing sticks to.

We go along to a couple of meetings, in order to validate these claims of items being brought back in time. It seems like bunk, although the obvious prototype materials and exotic items clearly warrant the high prices asked. Punters are impressed enough to pay those prices too.

Our aim is to get not to a weekly meeting but one of the monthly meets, where even stranger happenings unfold. So that we seem legitimately interested, we decide to buy something at the next weekly meeting. On turning up, the table of futuristic merchandise has curious wheeled plates that attach to your shoes, which has many a prospect quite excited.

Us, we're not so impressed, not considering that roller skates were invented in the 18th Century, and popularised in Massachusetts in the mid-19th Century. Future artefacts? Bunk, I say.

The debacle of the blue dust coming to life when the incantation is read strangely continues. It really shouldn't, because we should have learnt what happens and certainly not want it to happen again. The professor, however, is apparently absent of mind, and wants to 'read the other bit'.

'There is no other bit', I say, fairly confident in my assertion, having spent well over an hour trying to translate the few words on the paper.

'Yes there is. The other part is written in pen, instead of the part written in pencil.'

'The part written in pen is what you wrote. It's in your handwriting. It's also what you just said.' Professor, my arse. 'Give me the bit of paper.'

'Okay. Just let me write down what's on it first', says the professor, taking out his pen.

I go to slap the pen out of his hand and try to grab the paper. 'No! I want it precisely so that you won't have a copy of those words. I just know you're going to want to say them again.' Which, of course, is why he tried to make a copy.

We wrestle and, because he's an old man, I manage to take the paper away from him to keep it, and all of us, safe. At least, for now.