Past Tavistock Expeditions I

This was the first of The Tavistock Expeditions, a dieselpunk game run by Sir Tifyable. The latest adventure can be found at The Current Tavistock Expedition. Others will be added under the adventure names: a list can be found on the Tavistock Expeditions page.
==Adventure 1: The Monster of the Minch==
===Session 0===
The party decided to take their two cars up to Ullapool to investigate the Kraken of the Minch. They have been briefed to investigate the story in the West Highland News:
Trawler taken by sea monster
The loss of the trawler Bonny Jenny has been reported off Ullapool. According to local reports, it was sunk by the Kraken of the Minch, a sea monster.
The trawler was overturned in the early morning as she was sailing out for a day’s fishing. Ross Myhill, skipper of the Maid of Muldoon, saw the sinking. Bonny Jenny ‘suddenly jumped out of the water, apparently rammed from below. I saw two of her crew falling off the deck into the water’, Mr Myhill said.
At first Mr Myhill thought she had accidentally collided with a whale, but when Maid of Muldoon closed in on the upturned Bonny Jenny he saw the beast sinking into the deep, and described it as ‘a hundred foot long, with eyes the size of a man glowing with a hellish red glare’ and before the Jenny sank he saw that her side had been caved in. No survivors were in the water, and his crew insisted that Mr Myhill should not linger in case the Kraken attacked them. They could, they said, still see the glowing red eyes down below the surface.
Other boats searched the area as soon as they felt it prudent. Though extensive wreckage was seen, the bodies of the five crew were not recovered.
The Kraken has been seen in the Minch for centuries. Local folk believe that it is related to the more famous Loch Ness Monster, or they may indeed be the same beast, travelling between the two through the Caledonian Canal.
It will take three days to drive there over more than 600 miles of twisty, bumpy roads rather than 24 hours of reasonable comfort on a sleeper to Edinburgh, rural branch lines, and finally the bus or a taxi out to Ullapool. Perhaps they haven't quite grasped the 1934 technology yet…
===Session 1===
May 1934: Our Heroes introduced themselves at the Tavistock Foundation's base in Bristol, and were briefed by Professor Dalgetty. Their first mission is to investigate the Kraken of the Minch, a reputed sea-monster which recently sank a fishing trawler. Though another trawler was on the scene very quickly, and the wreckage washed up on the shore the next day, there was no trace of the five crew. The mission: investigate and deal with the monster. Ideally, capture it and store it in some small sea-loch to be unleashed into Britain's next naval opponent's sea-lanes next time the country is at war. More realistically: kill it to protect the Scots coastline.
The party decided that although the train would be quicker and more comfortable, there was no urgency about this investigation and it would be useful to have cars available during the investigation. Longer travel time would also give them time to get to know each other on the journey, so they decided to take four days to get there so they didn't arrive too tired and would have plenty of time to bond.
Before setting out, they asked the Marine Institute in Bristol about methods of stunning or capturing giant squid. They were not too helpful: external poisons are out because of the difficulty of administering them through the water, getting a syringe close enough to administer an injection into a Kraken would be hazardous to say the least - also they don't know enough about squid biology to suggest a suitable anaesthetic; netting would be a useful technique except for the bit about the Kraken ramming and sinking trawlers and eating their crews; their best suggestion is that, like most creatures in the water, squid can be stunned by pulses of electricity passing through the water. The party considered the option of mounting large generators on two trawlers with electrodes down into the water, but consider that an unlikely option. They are inclined to the 'kill' option.
They also checked on the reality or mythological status of Krakens. Scientifically speaking, Kraken is a generic term for ‘stocky’ giant squid, defined as any squid species which when full-grown is more than fifty feet long overall with a body diameter of at least one-eighth of its length. The human-friendly Merfolk (whom Albert has met in various ports around the world) report that the hostile Fish-Men use Krakens as devastating weapons in their attacks, herded towards the target by Fish-Men cavalry riding barracuda or sharks. It is thought that the Krakens are herded by cephalopod-controlling magic spells from their shamen. (Mermen cavalry use dolphins or porpoises, and if they have sufficiently strong shamen they use killer whales for their Kraken-equivalents. Mermen tend to live in warmer waters: few live around the British Isles despite the Gulf Stream, so the chances of finding aquatic allies are small.)
First night's stop was in Chester, and Donald, Isadora, and Albert decided to go out dancing since their hotel suggested a respectable dance-hall nearby. Sadly, Albert is Shy and has no dancing skill, so sat out most of the evening till he felt self-conscious about not dancing and brave enough (possibly fuelled by a little Dutch courage) to ask Isadora for a dance.
The consequences were possibly predictable, but made worse by unlucky dice rolls: Albert failed the Savoir-Faire default (penalised by his Shyness and the drink) which would have allowed him to dance credibly, Isadora helpfully tried to lead when she felt him going wrong, but fumbled her roll, there was struggling, crashing into other couples, and stepping on feet before they wrestled each other to the side of the floor halfway through the number and gave it up as a bad job. Albert could not speak to Mrs. Stanley for the remaining three days of the journey.
The last night of the journey was spent at Donald's Grandfather's estate outside Kirkintilloch, where they came up with the plan for the investigation. Rather than blunder in openly investigating the Kraken, they decided to pose as academic researchers collecting folklore of the region.
They arrived in Ullapool, checked into the Harbour Hotel, and spent the first day picking up the gossip. Willie and Haggart went to the wharves, helping with net repair and chatting to the retired fishermen doing the work; Isadora and Donald went shopping and talked to the shopkeepers and market traders, Kohath talked to the police and then the newspapermen. Most of them made good Streetwise or Diplomacy rolls and brought the subject around quite neatly to the most recent event. They all picked up basically the same story - the townsfolk are divided between those who think that there is a Kraken out there, and those who don't. On the positive side, this is not the first report of a similar sinking, and fishermen (including one Willie spoke to) have occasionally seen torn-up body-parts of marine mammals or large fish floating or caught in their nets which don't bear the tooth-marks of normal predators but seem to have been torn apart by some blunt but powerful ripping force.
Against that is the fact that boat sinkings and mauled seals are few and far between, so not enough to feed a beast of that size, and the possibility of other explanations - one trawler was sunk a few years ago, for example, when a Royal Navy submarine ran into its nets and dragged it under - on that occasion the sub surfaced and saved the crew. And everyone knows of the tale of Moby Dick, a great white whale with a grudge against whalers which rams ships and eats anyone who falls off. Big whales like that are migratory so wouldn't stay around long, which would explain the few reports and long time-gaps.
===Session 2===
Reassembling at the Harbour Hotel for dinner after their first day’s investigations, the party realised their ‘cover’ was blown. Despite telling everyone that they were here to investigate folklore and the legends of the area, the landlady’s first question was how their investigation into the sinking was going.
It turned out that both their main lines of investigation were carried out by pairs of characters, one of whom has the Easy To Read disadvantage, so their partners’ smooth blending of queries about the Bonny Jenny in with conversation about folklore were thoroughly given away. So their interest is the gossip all over town.
Still, Isadora’s explanation that they didn’t want to seem insensitive by barging in and openly asking about a recent tragedy saved the day, as the landlady accepted it as an expression of sensitivity to the community’s grief, and became quite forthcoming.
Donald’s idea of using selkie help in the search bore some fruit – there is a selkie colony at Little Loch Broom, but they are quite hostile to humans. Apart from the accidental shooting of selkies in seal form (fishermen can’t tell the difference beyond a very close range, so they shoot them because good-quality sealskins are a lucrative bonus for fishermen), there are often disputes over fishing grounds and the destruction of fishing gear. However, there is one local human who has regular contacts with them – Niall Wilder, a trader who takes his ‘shop in a boat’ to isolated coastal villages as well as odd customers like the selkies. He may be willing to take them with him, which will help them get close enough to talk to the selkies, but they’ll have to wait a few days till he gets back from his current rounds.
Another day of research around Ullapool heard of the first ‘kraken’ attack, back in 1867. A fishing-boat (the Skrae Guithguine) was found drifting in Loch Canaird, intact but the crew missing. They also heard more about the ‘mutilated animals’ stories – it seems they are not common, perhaps even years apart, and once again they seem to be concentrated around Loch Canaird.
Next day the party decided to split up. Willie spent the day going around the families of Bonny Jenny’s crew inviting them to attend a séance that evening, getting their permission to hold it in the skipper’s house, at one of the foci of his life to make contact easier. The others went out to ask people living around Loch Canaird for more details. In the village of Ardmair and the surrounding farms they had little success, but getting off the road and walking up the peninsula they had more success – not only meeting a grandson of a crewmember lost on the Skrae Guithguine and hearing more about how infrequent the mutilated sea-animals drifting ashore is, but also hearing rumours that Laird McKennechie’s mother was a selkie. They visited the Laird’s ‘big Hoose’ on the coast east of Ardmair on their way back.
The Laird appears to be in his 70s, and lives with his son Andrew and his wife Susan, and their two sons Andrew (21) and Billy (19 – their younger children are currently away at boarding school). The Laird’s elder and youngest sons are both lawyers in Edinburgh. He responded well to their polite enquiries, since they avoided the subject of selkies, having been warned that he was sensitive about the rumours. However, he seemed to get a bit twitchy when they mentioned the date 1867 and the Skrae Guithguine, but Donald covered nicely and the Laird was in a good humour by the end of the meeting. As they left, they noted that the House’s boathouse was larger than they would expect – solidly built in stone, it will probably take two 50- or even 60-foot yachts, twice what would be kept for leisure sailing on such sheltered waters. Boats that size would not normally be kept in boathouses.
They arrived back in Ullapool to scenes of mourning. Another fishing-boat, Margery’s Smile, was found drifting without its crew, close to the westerly entrance of Loch Canaird. Kohath managed to talk his way aboard her thanks to getting to know the police previously, but found no signs of anything suspicious. He took blood samples from the decks for microscopic examination, though he expected most of them to be fish-blood. The lifejackets and Very pistol were in their usual places, the nets had been down when the boat was found, and they were not damaged. (Margery’s Smile was checking several lobster-pot sites, and just trailed a small net as they ran between sites, she was not deep-water fishing.)
The séance was a flop – Willie did not manage to contact any spirits, despite Kohath deliberately taking himself off to a pub to look for more news or gossip. (Kohath knew from his previous studies into the occult that séances don’t work with him present.)
They spent another day doing research around town while they waited for Niall Wilder. The main finding of the day was that Laird McKennechie’s marriage was in the same issue of the newspaper as the sinking of the Skrae Guithguine. In the photograph published in the West Highland News his wife is small and dark-complexioned. The text says that she is French, and the Laird met her on his sea-voyages. Many of the guests were also French, the crew of the Laird’s most recent ship. The loss of Skrae Guithguine’s crew happened just two days after the wedding.
===Session 3===
The group came up with a plan to explore Loch Canaird in a medium-sized sailing boat, and Willie found a man who agreed to rent them his 18’ lobsterboat, which has enough room for all six party members. But as Thursday dawned the weather was appalling – all thoughts of going out on the sea was abandoned and they retreated to indoor research and making more contacts amongst the locals.
Kohath continued to pursue his theory that the Germans are testing forbidden U-boats in the loch, and looked for more evidence that Laird McKennechie has German sympathies. Researching in the archives of the West Highland News, he discovered that the Laird served in the Royal Navy1889-1902. He married a woman from Edinburgh who during his service. He left the Navy on the death of his father, when he took up his place in the House of Lords (the Laird is actually the fifth Baronet Broom), then commanded the local squadron of the Royal Naval Reserve until the end of the Great War (when his middle son took over). He speaks fluent French, the native tongue of his mother (unless the rumours of her being a selkie were correct), and the party even discovered that the housemaid who comes to collect the household supplies from Ullapool speaks French – she was the old Lady’s last handmaiden. The Laird speaks to the housemaid in French to keep in practice. By this point, even Kohath was beginning to doubt his U-boat theory.
Helping the locals to clear out the dead men’s possessions from Margery’s Smile, Willie noticed some scratches on her gunwales which looked wrong to him. Kohath had previously looked over the boat but not noticed anything significant, but with a sailor’s eye Willie could tell the difference. The other members of the party took advantage of a brief break in the worst of the weather to take a look at the scratches, and agreed that they were clearly the signs of something a bit bigger than man-sized, with claws, pulling themselves aboard. Below the waterline, similar scratches indicated that they also had clawed feet. Working through the list of marine species they knew about, they concluded that these were fishmen raiders.
Locals confirmed that there are known to be lairs of fishmen off the eastern coasts of the Uists. They last became ‘troublesome’ some twenty years ago when operational requirements in the North Sea reduced the Naval presence on the west coast. They raided inland as well as taking boat-crews. The Navy brought in a psychic to locate their lairs and a destroyer made a depth-charge pass over them. Since then, they have been more restrained. It is possible that vessels sunk without trace may have been taken and sunk by them, but there are so many hazards of the sea that it can rarely be certain.
Kohath asked about getting a general depth-charge run over Loch Canaird, only to be told that it would devastate the fishery for a year or more, and the lobster population for many years.
As they headed back to the hotel, Niall Wilder’s boat Cornucopia battled through the storm. Wilder is the man who trades with the local selkies, so Donald and Willie helped him tie up and promptly took him aside to talk about the situation. Coincidentally, Wilder’s last call was in the selkie colony in Little Loch Broom, and they are quite worried about a group of their hunters which has gone missing in the area – one of their more experienced hunters leading three young trainees on a long-distance familiarisation trip. They had been away about three weeks, and now are a week overdue.
In view of their suspicions that there are fishmen involved, Wilder agreed to turn-around as soon as possible – first tide in the morning if the weather forecast of an improvement turns out to be right. The party agreed to split themselves: Donald, Willie and Isadora would visit the selkies, while the rather less diplomatic Kohath, Haggart and Albert would hire ponies and ride along the shore of Loch Canaird looking for other clues. The idea of the small boat expedition suddenly became less attractive when the party expected a fishman raiding party!
The latter group found nothing to advance the investigations, but with Wilder as their interpreter (the selkies only speak Scots Gaelic) the others did learn a lot. One of the selkie search-parties returned early – in the neck of Loch Canaird they encountered a pair of fishmen – luckily they met in open water and can swim much faster, because the fishmen are much bigger and stronger than selkies. Usually they have to strike from ambush – they have good spearguns as well as hand-to-hand spears.
Another thing accidentally learned from the discussion is that the Laird’s big boathouse has an underwater tunnel going ashore. The selkies haven’t explored it – they tend to be claustrophobic – but it looks as if it is headed for the Big Hoose. That suddenly swung the PCs’ suspicions back at the Laird. The tunnel is about 12’ wide and has no free airspace at the loch end.
The party now has a new theory. The fishmen are looking for a new lair, and have chosen Loch Canaird as a fairly sheltered environment thanks to Isle Martin. Fishmen like enclosed lairs – they like to retreat and let their enemies come at them if they are attacked. They seem to have found an ideal site – whatever is at the far end of the Big House’s boathouse tunnel. In order to make this safe, they have come into the House and kidnapped one of the Laird’s family to force him to cooperate. For their initial scouting, they had a Kraken or some other powerful backup, which rammed and sank the Bonny Jenny, but they no longer have it, which is why Margery’s Smile was attacked without it. Perhaps the Kraken and his controlling shaman went back to the main lair.
So now the plan is to return to the Big Hoose and re-interview the Laird, this time with the specific intent of seeing whether they can spring some kind of clue from him – how does he react to the mention of fishmen, can we meet the rest of the family, etc? The more socially acceptable party members will do that – Donald and Isadora, while the other four take up a position up on the hillside from which they can watch the house, and run away to their car to raise the alarm if the interview goes badly. If Donald and Isadora do not emerge from the house within an hour, the others will retreat to the phone box at Strathcanaird and phone the House. They will ask to speak to Donald and exchange codes to indicate whether things are going well, badly, or possibly catastrophically.
===Session 4===
The party decided that the best approach was to reveal the full truth. The Laird received them despite their unannounced visit, and Donald briefed him about their investigations so far. He reacted with dismay to the news that there was a fishman group apparently setting up a new colony in the loch, and offered whatever help he could give.
The Laird told them about the time he’d had to deal with the fishmen during the Great War: it took the Navy four months to find a psychic who could find their lairs off the Uists so that the Laird’s Naval Reserve squadron could guide in a destroyer to do a depth-charge run over them.
Donald mentioned that they needed a boat bigger than the 18-footer they had been planning to use, but not wanting to take a trawler away from its business. No problem, the Laird immediately offered, I have a 50’ yacht in the boathouse, and my grandsons can sail it. Unprompted, he led them down to the mysterious boathouse to show them the yacht.
The boathouse was big enough to take two 60’ boats, but the second berth was occupied by jut two dinghies. Canoes hung on the wall. “My grandsons prefer racing with the dinghies and canoes,” the Laird told them, “The yacht only gets used when my sons are here from Edinburgh with their families.” Free to look around, Donald and Isadora could tell that the water in the boathouse was deep, but not how deep. To take the keel of a 60’ boat at low tide, it would have to be pretty deep, they realised – no chance that you could see the bottom even if there wasn’t a submerged tunnel.
Big though it was, there was no way the boathouse could take a full-sized U-Boat, but a mini-sub could possibly be sunk below the surface – though if it was shallow enough to swim down to and use an airlock on one lungful of air, the conning-tower would show by disturbing the water-flow at low tide. The party reluctantly decided there was no submarine in the boathouse.
Donald asked permission to take a look at the yacht’s engine, which the Laird was happy to give, while Isadora looked around and mentioned the tunnel. They’d heard rumours, she said, that there was a secret tunnel from this boathouse to the house. The Laird laughed at the idea, and said that people always had odd ideas about what the nobility had. What would be the point of a secret tunnel in such a deserted place? They might well have smugglers’ tunnels like that in big houses in Devon and Cornwall, but there was nowhere to smuggle stuff from, and no-one watching even if stuff was worth smuggling.
The Laird waved them off, as comfortably as they could expect a man who’d just learned of hostile non-humans moving in just offshore, with the promise that he’d send his grandsons to see them in Ullapool to discuss when they wanted to use the boat.
Up in the overwatch position, the rest of the party saw them leave and three left. Still suspicious, Kohath stayed behind, continuing to watch till he had to leave or risk being on the road in the dark. About an hour later, a small party came off the hills, strolling at a casual pace. They looked like the grandsons and a couple of ghillies. A servant emerged from the house and hurried up to them. After a very brief conversation, the boys handed their shotguns to the ghillies and walked briskly into the house.
Nothing further happened of interest, so Kohath walked back to Ullapool, where the party discussed their findings. The Laird had seemed open and co-operative, with apparently nothing to hide, but still they were suspicious. Whatever was happening, if there was human collaboration it had to involve the Laird – there was no-one else in the area with the money or resources to help in any significant covert operations. They had no reason to think the selkies were lying about the tunnel – what motive would they have? Isadora was still firmly wedded to the theory that the tunnel was to allow the Laird’s selkie mother to move from house to sea unobserved, and therefore the tunnel only needed to be quite a small one.
Bright and early next morning, the Laird’s grandsons Andrew and Billy turned up to their hotel and joined them for breakfast. They were looking forward to the adventure. The party first decided to talk to the crofters on Isle Martin, to see whether they had seen anything odd. Isolated and sheltering Loch Canaird, the island was a significant feature they hadn’t yet investigated.
They all drove out to the boathouse and took the yacht over to the island. The first crofter they talked to was concerned about one of their neighbours: she hadn’t seen any of the family for five days. They came to a party at her house on Monday, and now it was Sunday. Some of the week had been stormy weather when she wouldn’t expect to see them, but they’d had a couple of decent days since. Even though they lived on the remotest croft on the island, her husband would normally see him or his boys out checking on the animals. The party trudged across the island – hard going, even though it was quite a short distance – and discovered the croft deserted, but their possessions intact. The door was open, but the family and the chickens were missing. Drag-marks were found, but the storm had washed away most traces.
Worried now, the party checked out the next most-remote croft. Their guide had seen them on Friday, and wasn’t worried, but there too the family and chickens were missing – apart from one chicken which had been ripped apart and eaten raw by something with big teeth.
The party and the grandsons agreed – it was time to evacuate the island. Although the remaining six crofts were closer together on the low neck of land across a stretch of the island, they could only be mutually supporting against fishmen raids if properly equipped and alert. They got the remaining six families moving and returned to the Big House to inform the Laird, then on to Ullapool and called a town meeting. This was controversial on a Sunday, but the local minister agreed to it in the circumstances. The Laird’s son, commander of the local RN Reserve squadron since his father’s retirement, called up the Reserves to patrol Loch Canaird armed, and asked for volunteers to stake out the remaining crofts on Isle Martin. If the fishmen come back, they are in for a rude surprise…
Then the Laird invited the party over to his townhouse. “I have something to tell you, and I don’t want the local gossips overhearing it…”
===Session 5===
The Laird confesses that he did mislead the party earlier: there is a tunnel from his boathouse to the cellars of the Big House. It was built after his parents' marriage. At the time, his father was an officer on a privately-owned French submersible and his mother was the Captain's daughter. The sub's officers all attended the wedding, parking the sub under Loch Canaird and coming to the boathouse in her pinnace, Conque II (a mini-sub).
During the celebrations, the crew mutinied and took over the sub. They emerged and attacked the fishing boat Skrae Guithguine, killing the crew. The Captain and his other officers returned to the sub and despite losing two dead, managed to activate some unspecified defences. This neutralised the threat from the mutinous crew, but did not remove them. The Captain and his two surviving officers left to fetch something that would return control to them, but in the meanwhile everyone was to stay out of the big sub. The Captain was never heard of again, though the Laird later read many of Father's stories in Mr Jules Verne's book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Father never mentioned the name of the sub, but the Laird would not be surprised to hear that it was the Nautile (Nautilus).
Since then, the family has used Conque II as a submarine runabout to explore the loch. It has a range of about a mile from the big sub, and apparently self-powered engines: they never need refuelling. On hearing about the fishmen, the Laird confronted his grandsons, who confessed that despite his warnings they had actually entered the big submersible, managed to open one door and explored a short way, before they heard the sound of someone or something moving around and retreated to the mini-sub.
The Laird considered that there is a good chance that this disturbance was what revived the fishmen crew and caused the current crisis, and will let the party go in and sort it out. He has instructed his grandsons to pilot the party to the sub in the Conque and tell them the combination of switches they used to open the doors.
So the party armed themselves with extra pistols from the Royal Naval Reserve Armoury that the Laird's son controlled and went into the sub. The docking made a loud clang – they knew there was no chance of achieving surprise. Willie volunteered to be first down the ladder from the docking hatch. As he did so, a red beam lanced out and struck him in the legs, giving him a minor burn and imparting an electrical charge that stunned him and set him off twitching.
The others hauled him back up and handed him over to Kohath for treatment. Albert decided to be next down, ignoring the ladder for a jump down the 15' to the solid steel deck. He sprawled, landing inelegantly and as a perfect target for two fish-men with ray-guns!
Donald took advantage of their distraction shooting at Albert, taking the ladder down to just above where Willie had been shot at and reducing the drop to about 8'. In quick succession, the party dropped into the airlock chamber and shot it out with the fishmen, taking many stunning shots but eventually downing one of them and causing the other to run, severely wounded.
Waiting till the remaining stunned people recovered and Kohath had cured the burns, they chose to go forward towards the bridge rather than sternwards to the engine-room the grandsons had explored earlier. But the fish-men were ready. Three of them had upturned solid wooden tables and were prepared to shoot over them as the party emerged. A duel resulted, with PCs popping out to snap-shoot, or even just blind-fired their pistols around the edge of the hatch. Albert, Willie, and Haggart kept up the pressure there while Kohath, Donald and Isabella worked their way around, hoping that they would not run into another ambush, and entered the other end of the large wardroom where the fight was going on. A fourth fishman popped up from the opposite hatch and was able to shoot at them while they exposed themselves to shoot at those behind the tables.
The fishmen's rayguns did not seem to have any need for reloading, giving them an advantage over the party's Webley revolvers, but the stuns wore off, which .455 calibre bullet-wounds don't. One fishman grabbed his spear and ran to take the party attacking from behind with a lethal weapon – they managed to put him down before he could use it on them.
Eventually all fell silent. The fishman outside the room retreated. The three inside were down and swiftly finished off. The party now has four of their rayguns, but at least two wounded ones are out there...
===Session 6===
The party used crowbars to secure their rear by jamming the hatch-mechanisms behind them as they continued to search. Unexpectedly, this just turned out to be a mopping-up session. The first wounded fishman had fainted just after closing the hatch behind him – the party eventually found him and finished him off. The second had escaped through one of the airlocks into the water, though the party couldn’t be sure of this as they couldn’t explore the flooded lower deck where the fishmen’s quarters were. The party now had full possession of the submersible, which did turn out to be Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. 
Unfortunately, Nemo had instituted a shutdown procedure which prevented any but the registered crew from using the sub’s controls. Most of the 24-strong fishmen crew were in their flooded level, where a superscience stasis field still kept them frozen in time. The Laird’s trespassing grandsons had managed to luck into the combination of button-pushes which cut the stasis field on the air-decks, reviving the six fishmen who had been on that deck at the time. Since then the fishmen had tried to pilot the sub to leave the area – so badly that they had collided with the Bonny Jenny and needed to put her back down on the loch bed for repairs, and since then had been using it as a base for raiding around the lochside.
The party roped in the Laird to cover up the existence of the sub, and to hand it over to the Tavistock Foundation for investigation. If any commercial applications come out of the discovery, the Laird will receive royalties, but he agreed to the deal because of the main aim of the Foundation: to discover potentially war-winning technologies for Britain – and the Nautilus’ superscience power system and advanced electric motors certainly look promising – if they can be duplicated.
In further experimentation, it turned out that the ship’s ray-guns worked off its broadcast power in the same way as the mini-sub. Within the sub, or a few dozen yards outside it, the rayguns effectively had unlimited shots. Outside that range, they could not receive power broadcasts. Battery packs were available, carrying 25 shots’-worth of power, but they could only be recharged within the sub’s armoury. The party have not acquired superscience weapons they could take away from their first adventure!
Category:Adventures
Category:Tavistock Expeditions