Sancta Henrietta della Cordoba

Fourth of The Tavistock Expeditions
=== Session 1 ===
The latest issue of The Word from Beyond came out while Our 
Heroes were in Italy, and was a bit of a shock to the party. Their 
exploits were heavily fictionalised in a very pulp style to conceal from
 the world that the Tavistock Foundation now has possession of the Nautilus.
 So the super-science submarine became a crude robot Kraken built by the
 evil Fish-Men, their use of the submarine’s own mini-sub pinnace to 
board her became them dropping home-made depth-charges from the Laird’s 
boat and the fishmen subsequently boarded their boat for the climactic 
fight. Though they weren’t actually asked to go along with this story, 
the party accepted that this is the Foundation’s official line and they 
kept to it when speaking to people throughout the new investigation. 
The new investigation sprang from the reader mail when the issue 
came out. There was a lively postbox in response to the story of the 
first investigation by the Foundation’s new expeditionary team, and Mrs 
Tavistock’s spirit guide guided her divining stick to the one most 
likely to produce a fruitful investigation. It came from Mrs Priscilla 
Bucksedge, who wrote to confirm that krakens are real, recounting a 
story from her spirit guide about the time his ship had picked up 
survivors from a shipwreck who had seen a captured Spanish treasure 
galleon ripped apart by one somewhere near Port Royal. 
Professor Dalgetty admitted that neither he nor Mrs Tavistock 
knew quite what he was sending them out to look for. A three 
hundred-year-old giant kraken unnoticed in the shallow Caribbean waters 
seemed unlikely, the treasure of the Santa Henrietta was probably
 beyond their grasp, but who knows where the trail may lead – all they 
have to go on was Mrs Tavistock’s spirit guide’s hunch.
Despite their scepticism, the party accepted the mission, 
possibly influenced by the hope of a month or two in the Caribbean. They
 decided to do their background research first. Kohath and Willie looked
 into Mrs Bucksedge herself, checking out her background in parish 
registers and local newspapers around he home in Somerset. They quickly 
established that she is a local ‘character’. Widow of the manager of a 
local engineering foundry, she is a frequent correspondent to the papers
 on local matters – very much a ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ type. Her
 local vicar described her as a cornerstone of the community – very much
 in the Good Works tradition as far as her limited income allows. She is
 living on her husband’s pension so cannot afford much money, but she is
 a stalwart of local organisations and gives her time generously. Apart 
from the difference in wealth, in fact, she seems very similar to the 
party’s sponsor, Mrs Tavistock.
Meanwhile, Donald headed for the Naval Records department at 
Greenwich to investigate her spirit guide’s background. Lt. Nathaniel 
Godbefeared appeared in the Navy List for many years, but left the 
Service as an overage lieutenant in 1659. It seemed that at the age of 
48 he had either finally accepted that he would not be progressing in 
the Service, or he was ousted by officers concerned about his abilities,
 and signed up to sail on merchant ships.
Mrs Stanley buried herself in the reading room of the British 
Museum to learn about krakens and piracy. It didn’t take her long to 
uncover the story of Sancta Henrietta della Cordoba, taken by 
pirates in 1664 but ripped apart by a Kraken as they approached an 
island when looking for shelter from an oncoming storm. The ship is 
apparently one of the ‘big ones’ on treasure hunters’ wish-lists, but 
the circumstances of her loss made it impossible to narrow down the area
 of her sinking within about a 150-mile radius of the southern coast of 
Jamaica. 
Hopeful of a chance to fly something in this next adventure, 
Albert headed off to a flying school which could give him training on 
seaplanes. He persuaded Prof. Dalgetty that in the scattered islands of 
the Caribbean, the aerial viewpoint may give them an advantage in 
whatever they were searching for, but he would need to practice landing 
and taking off from water. 
With a good impression of what they were dealing with, most of 
the party finally went to Umpleby Manor, in Umpleby Minor, Somerset, to 
meet Mrs Bucksedge. She turned out to be quite an ordinary widow, 
genteel and houseproud, and she was happy to arrange a séance so that 
the party could speak with Lt. Godbefeared. It added little to the 
information they already had, but confirmed that his testimony was not 
the imaginings of a madwoman – the party’s own medium Willie was able to
 chat to him direct. 
They returned to the village pub the Black Cock, where 
they had rooms, and noticed someone in the bar who was clearly a retired
 sailor – big beard, anchor tattoo peeping out from his shirt-sleeve, 
and a different accent to the locals. Stephen Lollard had no information
 about ‘old-time’ ships, though he had begun as a lad on sailing 
merchantmen and saw the merchant fleets change to steamships over his 
fifty years before the mast. But he was able to tell them that the local
 doctor, living in Umpleby Major, frequently asked him for nautical 
stories and had a collection of relics and souvenirs.
Dr James Marchmont did indeed have a collection of items, including the log of Lt. Godbefeared’s ship Bristol Dog, which had picked up survivors from the ships involved. As soon as the conversation turned to 17th-century
 ships in the Caribbean, he pegged them as treasure hunters and refused 
to co-operate until he had a deal for a share of anything they found. 
This caused a few days’ delay as the Tavistock Foundation’s lawyers 
became involved and Mrs Tavistock had to turn out in person to get 
involved in the discussions, but eventually Dr Marchmont handed over his
 collection. 
As well as the log of the Bristol Dog, it included the log of St. Mary’s Birch,
 the only survivor of the four ships involved in the action. Though the 
captain had kept detail down to the minimum, it had enough navigational 
details for Willie to use his navigational skills to locate the pirate 
fleet’s secret base by exception: readings stop within a certain area, 
which turned out to be the approximate radius of visibility of a certain
 island, and often resumed several days later going in a different 
direction. At the centre of the unrecorded space is a small isle, 
uninhabited in 1664: Foxbrush Island.
=== Session 2 ===
More research: it transpires that Foxbrush Island is part of Haiti, 
lying just five miles off its southern coast. Trouble is: Haiti is very 
hostile to outsiders, particularly English-speakers, after a long 
history of oppression and taking sides in their many internal wars and 
revolutions. And Foxbrush Island is no longer uninhabited, but is the 
site of some quite profitable plantations. 
The party’s initial plan is to take a good look at the island 
while flying from Jamaica to the Dominican Republic to confirm their 
feelings that it would be a good anchorage for a pirate base. 
The sailed on the new Queen Mary to Charleston, largest 
port in the Confederate States, from which they took to the rails to 
reach Miami. Donald and Mrs Stanley used their own money to buy an 
upgrade to First Class as befits their social station, while the others 
skulked around Second Class.
In Miami, they managed to hire an amphibian aeroplane – a 
Saunders-Roe A19 Cloud. Both their pilots had to demonstrate to the 
owners that they were competent to fly one. Thanks to his recent lessons
 Albert could do so competently, and although Mrs Stanley made a fairly 
rough landing, they accepted her as the second pilot as long as Albert 
took control for anything but landings on the smoothest seas. Of course,
 once out of sight of their owners they island-hopped with Mrs Stanley 
piloting to give her more practice taking off and landing, in case of 
emergencies. 
=== Session 3 ===
The fly-past of Foxbrush Island revealed a couple of interesting 
items. The only town on the island has a decent-sized deep-water wharf, 
at which a French-named freighter is currently tied up and loading 
sacks. Below the surface of the suspected pirates’ ‘safe harbour’ at the
 island’s northern end lies a large crater, which from the colour of the
 water is very deep. On looking at a local chart later, the ‘harbour’ is
 marked as ‘No Bottom’, though their contact assured them that this was 
simply for mooring purposes – a better-quality chart will mark its real 
depth. Looking at the configuration of the end of the island, the 
concave curve of the cliff-faces that abruptly end the island look a lot
 like they have been chopped away by an immense impact.
They landed safely in the harbour of Ciudad Trujillo (which everyone they encountered still referred to as Santo Domingo) and drove the amphibian up a slip
 to park it in the harbour area. Donald and Mrs Stanley went off to find
 a decent hotel and Kohath headed straight for the bookshops in town 
while the others stayed around the docks sorting out docking/parking 
charges, refuelling, and maintenance checks. 
Local fishermen (retired ships’ crewmen who spoke some English 
from their years afloat) let Willie know that the rich couple who 
arrived in a plane probably want to talk to Davey Casey if they’re 
looking for a boat to charter. He’s a Yankee who has a fine yacht for 
charter, as well as a working salvage boat. His yacht probably matches 
the expectations of someone with a private plane. (Willie didn’t correct
 their misapprehension about the hired plane.) By the time the party had
 dealt with all these preliminaries, it was time for dinner.
Meanwhile, Kohath was diverted from his search of the bookshops 
by a voodoo supplies shop. (Ven’s Internet search failed to find the 
proper name that Spanish has for a magic shop!) He learned that although
 the Catholic Church disapproves of voodoo practitioners (voudoun), the 
common folk embrace and follow them enthusiastically on the simple 
grounds that their spells and charms work. Although voodoo originally 
arose in Haiti and the French tradition, the practice spread across the 
border when the island was briefly united during the early 19th
 century, and there is now a strong independent Spanish-flavoured voodoo
 culture, though for historic reasons practitioners often take French 
names. 
Kohath was able to detect the aura of magic about some of the 
ingredients on sale in the shop. The shop-owner explained that voodoo 
uses a combination of communing with the spirits and ritual magic. Much 
of the output from the ritual magics comes in the form of potions, 
poultices, and burnables similar to the European alchemical tradition. 
(Ironically, alchemy is a psychic ability related to the spirit-side of 
voodoo while European ritual magic is magery-based.) He agreed to find a
 vodoun who would be willing to talk to Kohath, and Kohath gave him 
details of their hotel. 
Next morning Donald and Mrs Stanley went to see Casey, who 
regretfully informed them that his yacht was out on a charter at the 
moment, but he could recommend a friend, Phil, who has a slightly less 
plush yacht for hire. 
In conversation, as casually as they could manage it, they asked 
Casey about the crater at the end of Foxbrush Island. He made his 
perception roll well enough to see beyond the casualness, and let them 
know that by telling them more. He admitted that it’s not a place he’s 
familiar with – he wouldn’t want to put his fine yacht so close to 
Haitian soil, and he didn’t know about the crater. (He was the one who 
showed them the local chart.) He would be fascinated to see it from the 
air – he’s never been in a plane. They offered to take him up for the 
afternoon, and he agreed to fetch his ‘good’ charts. 
He also talked about the hire of his salvage boat, and naturally 
the subject turned to ancient shipwrecks. Although he makes his living 
from modern salvage work, treasure hunters investigating their pet 
theories about sunken wrecks are the icing on the cake, bringing him an 
extra income. In the twelve years he’s been running his business here, 
his clients have only found one ancient shipwreck, and that had been 
well-stripped centuries ago, probably by fishmen. The only wreckage they
 hadn’t cleared was the heavy stuff. Casey’s clients had to be satisfied
 with fourteen cannon and a pair of anchors – which they were quite 
happy with as a consolation prize, proving that their theories had been 
right and those cannon they sold paid off at least some of their 
expenses. The others now guard the doors of the treasure-hunters’ 
mansions – treasure hunting is not for poor people, he warned the party.
They all returned to the hotel for lunch, as they had 
pre-arranged, but surprisingly were greeted by a large black woman in 
multiple layers of floaty dresses, who announced solemnly that “de 
spirits done tell me to come an’ help you. I doan’ know why.” She turned
 out to be Mama duTonniere, a voudoun from up in the hills, who were 
visited by the spirits two days earlier with a vision of four of the 
party. Finding their hotel was easy with her powers of divination. 
She was mildly surprised to find out that there were six people 
in the party – Albert was away fishing, but Kohath had been missing from
 her vision, and when they met in person she could see why – she can’t 
detect his aura. He is one of those whose aura blocks the spirit world, 
which explained his lifelong habit of messing up séances. Although 
Kohath had been involved in enough occult matters to have deduced this 
and made himself scarce whenever one was planned, it turned out that he 
wasn’t the only one. Albert unknowingly had the same aura-deadening 
effect (Anti-Psi disadvantage), which is why every séance they 
have held so far in the campaign failed except for when they excluded 
Haggart and Albert from the séance at Mrs Bucksedge’s home to avoid 
overwhelming her small cottage. (Of course, Asha as Albert’s player knew
 that he had anti-psi, but Albert didn’t.)
They invited her to lunch with them, which she accepted but 
turned down the offer of the hotel restaurant and took them out to a 
local café for ‘good local food’. As they left the hotel, Kohath’s magic
 shop friend turned up with another voudoun, this one a specialist in 
voodoo healing. There was some confusion when they saw them with Mama 
duTonniere. They told Kohath that she is a very powerful voudoun. To 
avoid damaged egos, Kohath paid off the voudoun and arranged a time to 
visit him to talk about voodoo healing practices. 
Over lunch, Mama duT, as she is known, told the party that most 
of her work is as agricultural as her customers’: working to increase 
crop yields, animal fecundity (though she used a rather cruder term), 
water purity, etc. As a sideline she does a bit of healing, but her real
 strength is in divination – not that there is much call for it in her 
quiet rural valley. The occasional lost wedding ring or beast are all 
that call upon her abilities in that area.  
=== Session 4 ===
They started with a fly-by over the crater. Neither their diver nor 
Mama duT enjoyed flying! But Davey Casey did point out that the 
configuration of the cliffs at the end of Foxbrush Island, nearest to 
the crater, looked like they had been sheered off by impact. Once that 
was pointed out, everyone agreed that it looked like a big 
meteor-strike. 
Casey’s charts showed the point-depth of the crater at 150 
fathoms – far deeper than anyone could manage hard-hat diving. He does 
have a bathysphere, but its umbilicals are not strong enough to resist 
the water pressure at that depth: he would need an armoured tube to 
resist the water pressure so that he could pump air down to the sphere. 
While he looked into obtaining a longer cable and armoured 
umbilical, Davey arranged for his ‘fisherman’ friends to smuggle the 
party ashore on the edge of the crater to hold a séance. Mama duT and 
Willie worked their way through the crew list of the pirate ship Tempest and managed to contact the Sailing Master, Edward Handell, who had died as part of the prize crew on the Sancta Henrietta.
 He confirmed that they were running for the north end of Foxbrush 
Island, which they knew as a good shelter from southeasterly storm 
winds. But as they approached, they realised that the sea was running so
 fast that a whirlpool had appeared in the crater cove. 
As they sheered off, the ship was grasped by a Kraken. In 
response to questioning, he identified it positively as a Kraken rather 
than a sea-serpent by the dinner-plate sized suckers, with a ring of 
teeth in them, on each tentacle. Crew members were hacking at the 
tentacles with boarding axes, but the thick rubbery flesh meant that the
 wounds they made were superficial, and the Kraken succeeded in 
wrenching the damaged ship into two. 
Handell managed to grab some wreckage to keep himself afloat, but
 as they were on the edge of the whirlpool it was drawn in, with the 
massive pieces of ship and the Kraken drawing screaming bodies to its 
mouth. His last memories were of fighting for breath in the maelstrom. 
Back in the Dominican Republic, Casey reported that he couldn’t 
find armoured umbilicals rated to 150 fathoms, and it occurred to Mrs 
Stanley that magic may be able to solve the problem. Prompted by this, 
Kohath realised that all they would need was a magician who could cast 
Purify Air every time it got too stuffy, and another who could combine 
Divination (to search for metals) and Telekinesis (to lift whatever they
 found into a basket outside the sphere). Mrs Stanley wondered how that 
Purify Air would be manifested, and after a bit of reading Kohath was 
able to tell her that the CO2 buildup would be split into O2 and carbon 
dust. The sphere would need a good vacuuming after each trip to avoid 
annoying dust build-up. 
Kohath managed to find suitable magicians for hire – expensive, 
but worth it if a Spanish treasure ship was the prize – and Casey sent 
off to the US for a new 160-fathom cable for the bathysphere and a 
telephone cable of the same length. This would take a week or so to 
arrive, by which time Casey’s salvage boat should be back from its 
current mission. 
Then Mama duT’s niece Trianna arrived with bad news of her home 
valley. ‘Something bad’ had happened in the neighbouring valley and 
‘nasty things’ were coming over into the area around her home. Though 
Mama duT was cagey at first, the characters immediately jumped to the 
conclusion that ‘nasty things’ in conjunction with a voodoo priestess 
probably meant zombies. She confirmed it, and said that she now realised
 why the spirits had sent her to offer to help them – she would need 
their help with this incursion in return. 
Four sessions of adventure sorted out Mama duTonniere's problems - detailed in The Dominican Republic Zombie Adventure. 
=== Session 5 ===
When they returned to civilisation – in the form of
Ciudad Trujillo – they party found a cable from the Foundation confirming that
the magicians they had been asking for had been found, contracted, and were now
waiting in Miami for a lift. Being a cable, of course, it had minimal
information and there was concern over how much they had been briefed, and
whether the magicians were even English-speaking. They decided to split the
party, with Albert and Mrs Stanley piloting the plane and Donald coming along
as the diplomat and ‘face’ of the party. 
Meanwhile, the rest of the group checked on Davey
Casey’s progress. He had managed to find a supplier of the bathysphere cable
who could supply the amount he needed, and get it on a ship from Boston. It
would arrive in another ten days. To keep themselves occupied, Kohath
volunteered in a local hospital, Haggart went wildlife-watching, and Willie
went out on Casey’s boat (the Sassy Dame) doing its ‘in-between
jobs’ work of cartographically surveying the local waterways to update the
Harbourmaster and Pilots’ charts. 
Then they got a cable from Miami. Doing a regular
maintenance check of the engines, Albert had detected a problem that would
require a full strip-down which would take at least two days, perhaps more
depending on what spare parts they would need. 
After a couple of days, Willie noticed one of the
locals hanging around whenever the boat set sail or returned. Asking the crew
about it, they confirmed that they’d chatted to him in a bar a couple of nights
ago, asking about what the boat was doing and whether they had been hired by
some bunch of eccentric foreigners. They hadn’t told him anything –Casey
regularly works with treasure hunters and they are obsessively secretive about
their research. Even though almost all of the treasure hunts never come to
anything, Casey would sack anyone who blabbed about his customers’ intentions.
Willie got together with Kohath and Haggart. Their
initial intention was to follow the observer and find out what he was doing.
Then they realised that they really didn’t have the skills required to tail a
target through the streets of a foreign city, and failing would tip him off
that he’d been noticed. Instead they sent a message up to Mama duT, who agreed
to help. She too was hanging out at the docks next morning before the boat
sailed for the day, and set one of her pet spirits onto him. Soon she came back
with the answer: he’s Miguel di Josethe, a local private detective. 
Meanwhile, in Miami, the other half of the group
met their contract magicians. Ranulph Simnel is an Air Magician and
telekinetic, an upper-class Englishman in his early 20s with the air of an
aesthete. William Donoghue is a complete contrast: a fat, ill-mannered
lower-class Irish lout in his mid-50s who just happens to be stinking rich
because of his divining talent. He boasts that the Foundation couldn’t afford
to hire him at his usual rates, but he is a significant contributor to its
funds because he believes in its purpose. He served with the Magic Corps in the
Great War and saw the conditions on the Western Front. Though he is proudly
Irish, he has no problem with ‘helping out’ the English in civilising the rest
of the world. He is convinced that if the civilised Germans act like that, the
rest of the world must be even worse. But his experience of Simnel is beginning
to make him doubt that the British are the best rulers the world could have...
Even on the plane and train over, the two of them managed to rub each other up
the wrong way and they were not talking except in matters of business. Simnel
would not even acknowledge Donoghue’s presence.
In between stripping down the plane’s engine,
Donald did his best to repair the feud. Bonding with Simnel was relatively easy
– they were from the same class and had common social connections back in
Society in Britain. Donoghue was harder because he was automatically on his
guard, expecting Donald to side with Simnel because of that connection. After
chatting with each separately, Donald brought the two of them together and
basically gave them his most diplomatic ‘stop being childish’ dressing-down.
Donoghue was surprisingly the more amenable to that – taken off-guard by the
fact that Simnel was getting the same lecture, he accepted that he had been
wound up by Simnel’s attitude, then reacted by winding him up in turn. Simnel,
by comparison, was icily correct, only unbending so far as to assure Donald
that he would at all times be professional when required to work with Mr
Donoghue. Still, getting one of them on-side was a start. 
When the six of them were reunited they discussed
their private detective’s surveillance. They discussed breaking into di
Josethe’s office to look at his files, but as ever wrangled about how much they
would learn from that illegal act, especially given their non-existent Spanish
language abilities. Instead, they decided to fight fire with fire and hired a
private detective of their own, Gabriel Huerte, to find out what he could. 
Their detective reported back that di Josethe
watched the Sassy Dame sail each day, then left and apparently worked on
other cases till early evening, when he took his meal down to the docks to wait
for her return. Thereafter he went back to his office and made a telephone
call. 
They sent Huerte off to the local telephone
exchange with some bribe money. A regular call at 7.15pm should be easy to
check, and sure enough the operator was able to report that every evening at
that time she put a call through to the Hotel Bella Vista. 
The party decided that they could use this
information to solve two problems. Firstly, by taking rooms there they could
observe who was waiting in Reception for the phone call (room telephones are
not yet a feature of hotel rooms in Trujillo City), and identify their presumed
opposition. Secondly, they could break up the tension by keeping Simnel and
Donoghue in separate buildings till they had to be brought together on the
boat. 
They decided that Kohath and Willie would accompany
Donoghue to the Bella Vista, and during dinner the first night they noted that
as well as several people with clear Confederate States accents were present,
but of most interest were two Germans – one an urbane middle-aged gentleman,
the other younger and tough-looking, quite likely to be a bodyguard. Together,
Kohath and Donoghue did their best discreet scans and concluded that they were
carrying neither magical items nor firearms. At least, not while in the hotel
dining-room. 
After a day of speculation it was confirmed: the
younger German took the phone call in the guest phone booth the next day. The
party set Huerte onto their tail. Most of their time was spent talking to local
engineering firms – the Germans are agents for an industrial concern back in
Germany trying to sell machine tools. But during the second day they diverted
to a local football ground for a brief discussion with more well-built young
German men. These turned out to be a German football team recently arrived on
the island (since the PCs’ arrival). The team have so far played two local
teams in an acclimatisation build-up to games against the Republic’s best
sides. The thirteen players (including two reserves) stay with the players in
their next opponents’ team, while the manager and coach stay in hotels with the
kit. When required for training or a match, the Germans are collected by a
coach supplied by a local company. 
Naturally, the PCs decided that these were German
secret agents, and their kit would contain sub-machine guns. Talk drifted to
ways to sabotage them if the party could somehow get to the kit unnoticed.
Breaking or filing down the firing pins was rejected on the basis that it would
be noticed when the agents clean and maintain their guns. Sabotaging the
ammunition would take too long - at least if the intention was to let the
sabotage pass unnoticed. They dare not risk tipping their hand too soon – who
knows what resources they might be able to lay their hands on? Also, with their
previous experience of the Ahnenerbe’s readiness to involve local law
enforcement the party dared not risk any entanglements which would cut short
the recovery of the treasure they expect to be raising soon. 
The duration of the recovery operation is a
significant factor. Relying on just one telekinetic to dig through the 
silts of
centuries and drag up sunken treasure effectively by handfuls, it will 
take a
long time to recover the treasure of a whole galleon. They cannot keep 
that
much treasure aboard a small boat for months, nor take it back and drop 
it off
in hotel rooms to leave it unattended. They settled on Willie's idea of 
hiring a section of a bonded warehouse so that the Government is 
responsible for
security, and shipping it out in regular consignments so that there is 
never so
much that losing a batch to thieves would be a complete disaster. 
With the message from Mrs Tavistock’s spirits in
mind, the party had to take into account the possibility that they were
actually going for a McGuffin – perhaps a sacred relic, or an Item of Power
from the bloodsoaked rituals of the Aztecs. In that case, they came up with a
Cunning Plan. 
The recovery operation will run five days a week,
with the Sassy Dame returning to Ciudad Trujillo every weekend to give
the crew and magicians a break, and deposit the latest takings in the bonded
warehouse. In order to keep the plane airworthy, it needs to be regularly
maintained and test-flown, so each week, on returning to the dock, the pilots
will immediately check over and test-fly the plane. The test flight should not
take more than an hour. But on the week when they recover the McGuffin they
will smuggle it aboard and instead of a check-flight, they will fly straight
for an exit route – Miami, Jamaica or the Bahamas, depending on what they
assess the item to be. 
And now, the cable has arrived so they are ready to
start the recovery…
=== Session 6 ===
The bathysphere can take four people at a squeeze, three in
relative comfort, so for the first dive Kohath and their two consultant
magicians descended. By a stroke of luck, they dropped right next to the
‘McGuffin’ that they suspected would be there – an artefact of power of some
kind. In this case, a perfect mirror-like sphere twenty feet across, with a
‘cage’ of what looked like steel wrapped around it. 
The ‘cage’ was three hoops of metal aligned at 90 degrees to
each other in three dimensions and intersecting seamlessly, though the outsides
of the metal were covered by concretions so details could only be seen by
peering closely at the mirror-surface of the sphere behind it. The inside of
the cage was clear of concretions. The cage seemed a little big for the sphere:
the sphere rested on it at the base, but there was an inch-wide gap at the top.
The sphere rested on the silt, only the cage being sunk into it. 
They used the telephone to the surface (intended to direct
the boat in which direction to move the bathysphere) to brief everyone, and
tried to answer the multitude of questions which came down to them. But the
majority of their answers were “I don’t know – it’s just a mirror.”
The magicians had no chance of raising the sphere as it was,
so they dropped a marker buoy and moved off to explore the seabed for the Sancta Henrietta as planned. 
Donoghue’s strategy was firstly to scan for bronze – many
cannon of the period were bronze, and their massive size would hopefully make
them easier to find. And presumably, the rest of the ship’s treasure would be
in the same region as its cannon. Within the time of the first dive he had
detected a mass of bronze, directed the bathysphere to it, dropped a second
marker buoy, and shifted enough silt to haul it the cannon up to where he could
attach the lifting cable. 
The first dive session ended there, and they brought the
description of the sphere back to the surface to be met with wild speculations.
The first concern was whether the sphere itself would, when interfered with,
crack open and destroy the boat with tentacles which looked like a Kraken’s.
The sphere was too big to bring aboard Casey’s boat, and far too big to fly
back to England on any standard aeroplane (though it could be managed slung
under an airship) but it could well have been a prize from South America being
transported to Spain on the Sancta
Henrietta. They eventually reduced their estimate of the likelihood of this
happening by having a quick séance. Kohath and Albert were put into a rowboat
and sent off to do some fishing while the rest of them participated. Willie
used their proximity to where he died to contact the lieutenant who had been
placed in charge of the Henrietta’s
prize crew, who confirmed that they hadn’t seen any 20’ cubic crates in the
hold while patching the battle damage. And he was convinced that it was a real
Kraken that attacked the ship.
Day 2, and they decided on two short drops – short being a
relative term as it takes nearly three hours to wind the bathysphere down that
far and back up again. First down: Mama duTonniere, Mrs. Stanley, Donald, and
the essential Simnel. Quite a crowd, since Mama duT is not a small lady. Once
down close to the sphere, Mama duT reported that she felt a definite ’feel’
from it, a cry for help which was not human – felt a bit ‘fishy’, in fact. She
has encountered mermen and it isn’t quite the same as them, but has never met
fishmen. Donald was looking at it as an engineer, Mrs Stanley basically just
wanted to see it with her own eyes. 
Once they were back at the surface, Kohath and Donoghue
replaced the three of them and went, still with Simnel, to continue the
treasure hunt. Donoghue had taken a large scoop with him, with which he
telekinetically scooped out great loads of silt, dropping them high above the
bathysphere in the hope that the current would push away the light silt
particles while the heavy gold, silver, and other precious items would fall
straight down. Great plan, classic fail. In the narrow, steep-sided crater
there was no current to carry the silt away so all he achieved, after an
initial rain of small sea-creatures, was a thick silt cloud obscuring the whole
site. By the time it had settled enough for them to return to work, Simnel was
beginning to tire with the frequent casting of his air magic and Day 2’s
exploration was over. 
Mrs Stanley was the first to realise that there could be a
connection between the sphere, and the obvious crater at the end of Foxbrush
Island. Albert was set to working with his mathematical puzzles and worked out
the amount of energy it would take to blow that hole if it arrived at meteoroid
impact speed. He came up with an estimate of twenty tons of solid matter
striking at a very high angle through the atmosphere. This gave them an
estimate of the mass of the sphere – way beyond the capacity of the Sassy Dame’s crane. Albert also came up
with the solution, though: floatation devices. If they could acquire enough
oildrums and compressed air cylinders to make twenty tons of mass buoyant, it
would rise to the surface on its own and then towed behind the boat still
mostly submerged. It would take over a hundred oildrums though, and an enormous
quantity of compressed air. 
While the others pondered how to get sufficiently strong
cables to do the lifting through the 1” gap between sphere and cage, Albert
came through again with the point that they could simply wrap ropes or cables
around sphere and cage together, and attach the floatation devices to the
ropes, rather than faffing around with intricate work. Or rather – lay the
ropes down on the seabed and roll the assembly onto it. 
Donald improved on the suggestion by dropping Albert’s idea
of ropes tied around it in place to simply use a pre-made standard purse net,
with cables wrapped into it to strengthen it against the strain of the lifting
drums. 
Kohath mapped out an ambitious plan of action. They would
sail immediately for Jamaica, 24 hours away, and contact the British Consulate
for help. Explaining who they were and how the Tavistock Foundation would cover
the bills, they would enlist the Consul’s help in obtaining the gear they
needed while they sailed away, back to Ciudad Trujillo in time for their
expected return. Just one cannon from the first week’s prospecting would be a
major triumph for most treasure hunters, so they could move it into their
bonded warehouse and ‘look normal’ for the weekend, particularly allowing themselves
to be seen by the Germans as having nothing to hide. 
Week two, they plan to sail straight for Jamaica, pick up
the goods ordered, then back to the dive site. Raising the mystery sphere, they
would tow it over to Jamaica and leave it in the Consul’s care till the ship
arranged by the Foundation could collect it. They would then return to Ciudad
Trujillo downcast by their failure to find anything this week – though
observers would not be at all surprised by a fruitless week for treasure
hunters.  
In following weeks, they would keep up the work on the dive
site till they heard that the sphere was safe back in Britain, at which point
they might stay and keep digging for treasure, or leave their hirelings to do
it. 
Suddenly remembering that a Tarot card had been found on
their aeroplane while performing routine maintenance, they realised that the
Germans might also have marked the Sassy
Dame for magical surveillance.
They asked the crew to search the boat thoroughly, and sure enough, well-hidden
in the engine space, found another card. Like the one in the plane, they left
it in place to provide a focus for the hostile diviner to scry for until they
needed to ‘vanish’, at which point they’d attach it to a marker buoy left off
Foxbrush Island to make it look as if the boat was still there. 
At this point, a hard weekend caught up with half the
players and the rest of the scenario was postponed till next time…
=== Session 7 ===
Cruising to Jamaica, it occurred to various party members
that the job wasn’t as simple as they had first thought. They couldn’t drop the
buoyancy barrels “empty” (actually full of air at surface pressure) and fill
them at depth because they’d be crushed. They couldn’t pressurise them at the
surface and drop them because they’d explode when the pressure got too high.
They had to arrange a one-way valve on each barrel which would let the water in
to increase its pressure as the barrels sank, but wouldn’t let the air out. 
Then they realised that they had to let some of the air out,
otherwise the barrels would explode as they rose towards the surface. Albert
suggested a ball and spring type valve, which would let air out in a controlled
manner, maintaining the pressure differential as the barrels rose. 
With a hundred or more barrels to fill at great depth
through fiddly valve connections, a simple air hose wasn’t practical. Much time
was spent playing with ideas for alternatives till the simple realisation came
to them: they will have an Air Magician in the bathysphere anyway, so he can
use magic to transform Water to Air on the contents of each barrel in turn,
changing water at the bottom pressure into an equal volume of air at the same
pressure. With careful adjustment of the pressure valves, this could be the
easiest way out. 
Ranulph Simnel saw one problem. As an Air Magician,
manipulating water isn’t in his element (literally!), but he did have one idea.
Forcing one element to change to a relatively pure form of another is not
practical: it would be like trying to burn granite. But if he approached it as
a purification of a compound involving the element he controls, it may be
possible. You can burn rock. Coal is easy, limestone less so but done all the
time for lime-making. If he managed to approach water as compounded air it
might be possible, and the chemists and alchemists have shown the way. He could
force the oxygen out of its chemical bonds and make it to bond with itself,
just as he was doing with his Air Purification spell, which splits carbon
dioxide into oxygen and lampblack. 
The drawback of this approach is obvious: it will produce
drums full of an oxygen-hydrogen mixture in perfect proportions for an
explosive recombination into water if there is even a touch of a third element
– fire. And that mixture will be venting out of the barrels as they rise and
escaping to the surface around the boat…
He tried his theory out with a barrel-full of water at the
surface, and found it to be difficult, but practical.
In Jamaica, Albert took to the reference books and
calculated the required pressure differentials while Donald approached the
British Consulate. The consulate’s receptionist made an appointment with an
Industrial Attache, who responded that the Government would be interested in
helping obtain a sample of a new metal for a British company, but could
obviously not condone acquisition of that sample from some other sovereign
country’s territorial waters. It wouldn’t be worth a diplomatic incident. He
had judged the reason for Donald’s circumlocutions correctly – most treasure
hunters are looking close to coastlines, since that’s where ships run aground,
and if it wasn’t in a British territory he might have been a little more
forthcoming. 
They would have to look elsewhere for help, and Albert
turned to his contacts amongst the Freemasons. Through them he found a suitable
local engineering company which would be willing to work with them with no
questions asked about the geographical location of the unspecified ‘treasure’
they are raising. For a suitable price, of course. 
The job will take longer than the party expected, partly
because of the problems of designing, manufacturing, and then fitting the
necessary ball-spring valves. (The one-way valves, though they need to be more
robust than anything available locally, are standard parts which can be ordered
from a Clydeside engineering firm by cable – though it will still take a
significant amount of time to fit them to a hundred barrels.) Donald agreed to
stay in Jamaica and help with this side of the work in the hope of completing
it in under a month. 
Kohath pointed out that having him missing from the party
would be noted by the dockside spy and raise suspicions amongst the Germans, so
they came up with another plan to perform extra ‘check flights’ every Sunday
evening which would in fact take Donald to Jamaica, then use the currently
planned check flight for Friday evenings to fetch him back. The plan also
involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing around the dock in the hope that the spy
won’t notice that the people boarding and leaving the plane each time didn’t
quite match.
While this was going on, the rest of the group would
continue with the potentially lucrative job of raising the Sancta Henrietta’s treasure, which still requires more thought.
Donoghue’s divining of the direction to precious metals has helped them find
the area of the wreck, but the mechanism they have tried so far of recovering
them from under centuries of silt in still water has so far not proved
practical. It is practical to dig down through the silt to find part of a large
object – like the bronze cannon they recovered in Week 1 – and once Simnel the
telekinetic can see a part of it, he can drag it out of the silt. But small
items, such as gold and silver coins and bullion, require another method which
needs to be worked out. 
They decided to spend their weekend watching the Germans who
were watching them. They found out where they were playing that Saturday and
Kohath and Willie went to watch them taking on a local club side. It turned out
that Kohath basically didn’t know enough about football to judge them – the
Germans beat the locals, and seemed competent as far as he could tell. But
watching sport is a bit frivolous for him so he didn’t appreciate what he was
seeing. At least he could check them out for one thing: concentrating on it, he
could sense some kind of magic on the coach’s chest. He appears to be wearing
some magical amulet or similar under his shirt.
On the other hand, Willie is a football fan and decided that
on the performance he saw, these were not professional footballers. Fit young
men, certainly, but not up to the level of skill he’d expect from professionals
– and these Germans, claiming to be the second team of a league side, should be
professionals. Some of their dominance of the game seemed to be dependent on
their being prepared for a certain amount of rough play – hard tackles,
body-slamming opponents off the ball, etc. Willie kept mental notes on them
with an eye on which would be the greatest threat if it came to a brawl. 
After an otherwise relaxing weekend, they hopefully sneaked
Donald back to Jamaica, and returned to the treasure recovery. The next notable
incident came on the third day, at about mid-day. A ‘freak’ wave rushed at the
boat from the starboard side. Enough people saw it to raise a warning and warn
everyone to grab on. At the last moment, the wave broke as no natural one would
and crashed over the boat rather than raising and rocking it. Albert and one
crewman at the crane were swept overboard, and suddenly the starboard gunwales
were filled with Fishmen aiming crossbows. 
As those on deck drew their weapons, the three Fishmen
around the stern well loosed. Fortunately, they all either missed or were
dodged. Willie managed to fast-draw his pistol and snap-shot at the nearest
fish-man, wounding him. The others climbed aboard, crossbows still loaded, to
try and find a target. 
Below the water, Albert and the crewman realised that other
Fishmen were still in the water, swimming towards them with spears ready.
Albert struggled out of his jacket to use as a defence, and drew and opened his
pocket-knife. 
Third round, the Fishmen who had shot dropped their
crossbows, climbed aboard and rushed to the attack, relying on their superior
size, claws, and natural scaly armoured skin rather than take time to draw
their spears when faced by men with guns. The second crewman at the crane
turned out to be a wrestler: he ducked and used his opponent’s momentum to send
him over the other side of the boat, straight back into the water. 
Below decks, unseen by the Fishmen, Mrs Stanley had grabbed
her rifle and opened the companionway hatch, so she was able to snap-shoot at
the one crossing the deck to attack Willie. Her shot put him straight down,
Willie’s own pistol-shot a moment later adding insult to lethal injury.
Kohath, at point-blank range, shot the Fishman climbing over
the side at him and ducked the crossbow bolt of one further forward. 
Under the foredeck, Haggart opened the foredeck hatch, only
to be faced by a Fish-man with his crossbow at the ready. Not surprised,
Haggart promptly slammed it closed again. 
In the wheelhouse, Casey, who had been on watch, had now
taken the ship’s rifle from its cupboard and stepped around to meet another
Fishman coming up onto the top of the cabin. Casey dodged the Fishman’s
snapshot with the crossbow, and then took a moment to aim. 
Below the water, Albert managed to snag the Fish-man’s
incoming spear-thrust in his jacket, twisting it aside. Then in a spectacular
success (he has no Knife fighting skill) his first thrust put the small
pocket-knife blade exactly where he wanted it, straight through the Fishman’s
eye. The crewman dodged his attacker and swam as fast as he could for the boat.
Next round: the one who had shot at Kohath charged him.
Kohath’s shot wounded him, then Mrs Stanley popped up from the companionway and
blasted him over the rail with a bigger hole in him. The Fishman on the
foredeck opened the hatch and shot down at Haggart, but missed. Haggart blasted
off both barrels, but the Fishman dodged nimbly. 
With his opponent sinking away with a ruined eye and minor
brain injury (the three-inch pocketknife blade didn’t go deep enough to do
lethal damage), Albert swam frantically for the boat. As did the crewman, while
his opponent had to reverse his spear-charge momentum to catch up. 
Haggart reached up and slammed the hatch shut again, locking
it just before the Fishman leaped down on top of him. The Fishman by the
wheelhouse parried Casey’s rifle aside, sending his shot wide, then shouted a
command. Both survivors leapt over the side. 
The crewman got to the boat first, Albert just moments
behind him, and they were hauled out of the water. As suddenly as it started,
the action was over, the boat rocking as the magically-created wave reflected
off the near-vertical walls of the crater cliffs.
=== Session 8 ===
It took Mrs. Stanley a while to
understand the problems that faced them, both in the areas of raising the
sphere and of sifting for the treasure of the Sancta Henrietta. Eventually, she retired to her bunk with a couple
of hipflasks of rum and left the science to the men when she realised that her
questions were not really getting to the core of the problem. (“What shape is
the bathysphere?”). 
The initial discussion was around
Kohath’s idea that since oxygen is heavier than hydrogen, it would quickly
separate out. If they put the valves into the top of the barrels it would vent
the hydrogen, if the valve was in the bottom it would lose the oxygen. They
started work planning on that basis, before Simnel realised the outcome.
Regardless of which gas was vented as the barrels rose, the amount that they
would vent was more than the relative proportions of gas. For every two oxygen
atoms which were separated out and bonded together, there would be four
hydrogen atoms, so two-thirds of the barrel would contain hydrogen, one-third
oxygen. However, the pressure differential between deep-crater (28 atmospheres)
and surface (1 atmosphere) meant that about ninety-seven per cent of the gas
would be vented. It didn’t matter which was vented first, there would be a lot
of hydrogen coming out. 
Albert’s plan was fantastic in the
usual sense of his plans. If they spread a large enough cloth on the surface of
the sea, it would fill with hydrogen and rise up and away, safely clear of the
boat. That the boat would still have to be above the wreck to hold the
bathysphere at the working site didn’t worry him – he hadn’t realised that the
boat would then become the top gondola on a hydrogen-filled balloon…
However, the idea of collecting the
gas did set off a train of thought in Haggart’s mind. He realised that what
they needed was a pipe to the surface – being strong enough not to collapse
under the pressure wasn’t a problem since it would be receiving the venting gas
at the same pressure. If all the barrels vented into this pipe, when it reached
the surface it could be safely burned off. 
More design work followed to look
for problems with this design, which gave Kohath another idea. He knew the
winches on the salvage boat would not be able to raise the expected 20-ton
weight of the sphere, but they could shift the amount of weight represented by
the bathysphere – four tons. All they had to do was set up a single pulley and
cable with a breaking strain in excess of twenty tons, put the mystery sphere
on one end, run it over the pulley to the bathysphere, then add lead weights to
the bathysphere till it sank. That would pull the other sphere to the surface,
and once it was properly secured and buoyed up, the bathysphere could drop the
extra weights and return to its normal weight for winching up. 
This idea saved them at least six
weeks’ work designing, manufacturing, and fitting the spring valves and venting
pipe to a hundred or more oil barrels – once they had Donald back from Jamaica
and briefed him, he could change the whole work programme and do it in a week. 
Another weekend passed with them
back in Trujillo City trying to look like unsuccessful
treasure hunters. Kohath reminded them that this was important to divert the
attention of the German agents from the success they would soon be having. 
They managed to look unsuccessful
quite successfully, since they still hadn’t found any way of getting at the
treasure of the Sancta Henrietta.
Their latest week on the dive site had produced nothing but silt. They checked
out the German ‘footballers’ – still touring and playing local sides – and went
dancing in a local dance-hall. Despite the trauma of his first attempt, Albert
once again tried to summon the courage to ask Mrs. Stanley to dance. Or that
nice looking girl at that table, or anyone really…
To encourage him, Kohath took Albert
outside and hypnotised him – unsuccessfully at first as he tried to do it
without telling him what he was doing, and Albert got very defensive. When
Kohath explained that he was only trying to give Albert a bit of confidence,
Albert relaxed and let it happen. He was easy to get into the right suggestible
state of mind. It may have been something to do with all that rum he’d been
drinking to try and give himself Dutch courage…
So Albert went back into the bar
filled with rum and courage and confidence that he was a good dancer – Kohath
didn’t go for ‘great’, he wasn’t pushing it! – and asked Mrs Stanley to dance. 
Albert isn’t a good dancer. Albert
three-quarters drunk and overconfident of his ability is even worse. Mrs
Stanley had also been on the rum – she had been cutting down her daytime
drinking, but when she was free for the evening… This was not a good
combination. It was an evening to remember for the locals in the bar, but one
both Albert and Mrs Stanley would be glad to forget. 
After nursing their hangovers on Saturday and checking out
the Germans footballers on Sunday, they went back to the dive site for another
week. It was fairly uneventful, except that they managed to recover the ship’s
bell, which confirmed that they had found the Sancta Henrietta della Cordoba. By the end of the week, though,
Donald was able to return from Port Antonio and report that the cable, pulley,
and detachable weights would be ready to be picked up on Monday. 
They went via the dive site and once again left the ‘bugged’
Tarot card on the buoy marking the wreck before sailing on for Jamaica. Remarkably,
everything went according to plan and the mysterious sphere was raised without
a hitch. They had taken Mama du Tonniere along and she once she was able to
make physical contact she confirmed that the ‘cry for help’ she had sensed was
coming from the ‘cage’ around the sphere – the sphere itself was friction-free
and she couldn’t ‘feel’ anything from it – and repeated with the same sequence
of emotions, as if it was a gramophone record replaying its message endlessly. 
Dolphins frolicked around as they sailed for Jamaica again,
the sphere trailing behind the salvage boat just breaking the surface, held up
by its oil barrels. Whales blew close to the boat too, and the increase in
marine wildlife made the party nervous. They suspected that these creatures
could hear the ‘message’ too – and who knew what else could? They loaded their
guns and stood alert as they slowly cruised towards Port Antonio. 
Willie saw the disturbance in the water first – something a 
little ‘wrong’ swirling below the surface. Everyone donned lifejackets 
and
took the safety-catches off their guns. Suddenly the water at the stern,
between the boat and the sphere, erupted as a Kraken’s tentacles thrust
upwards. 
This wasn’t one of the monster ship-killers two hundred feet
long, but still a twenty-foot monster with fifteen-inch thick tentacles was
enough to make a real mess of their seventy-foot salvage boat. Some of the
tentacles wrapped around the sphere. Others came aboard and reached for Donald
and Willie, the stern sentries. The one going for Donald was temporarily
blocked by the crane, but the other wrapped neatly around Willie’s waist
despite his shot blasting through it. 
As the others raced to the rescue, Willie and Donald fought
for their lives. Willie managed to resist the tentacle’s pull and shoot it
again. The second tentacle found Donald once it had dismissed the crane as
‘not-prey’, and wrapped around him. Donald’s shot blasted through it, but like
Willie’s it seemed that the rubbery bulk was taking little damage from bullets
passing through it. 
Haggart and Mrs Stanley found shooting positions and joined
in blasting away at Willie’s tentacle. Four good hits was enough to make the
tentacle slacken off and let him go, but by that time a third tentacle had come
aboard and was reaching for him, and Donald was jerked off his feet and down into the water. 
On the boat, a veritable blaze of gunfire punched many holes
through the third tentacle, but their main concern was below the surface, where
Donald was being drawn to the creature’s vicious great beak. 
Yes, Donald. The one who likes big guns, Donald who manages
to carry a 17lb Browning Automatic Rifle, a machine-gun in all but name. And
though water blocks bullets effectively, the Kraken drew Donald in towards its
head until the Browning’s muzzle made contact, and its bullets were fired directly
into its flesh. Donald held the trigger down till firing underwater jammed the
gun up, and the Kraken was fleeing, leaving a great trail of blood. Surrounding
them in the clear water, Donald also saw the sharks who had answered the
sphere’s summons smelling the Kraken blood…
=== Session 9 ===
The party delivered the sphere to Albert’s
contact in Port Antonio – along with a warning about possible attacks by
denizens of the deep. Bob Mason, head of the company that had been doing the
work with Donald, decided that for the safety of the boats in harbour, he would
prefer it to be out of the water so, in the middle of the night to maintain as
much secrecy as possible, they hauled it up a slipway onto a boat trailer and
into his warehouse. 
Being attacked by a Kraken in mid-Caribbean, as
well as all the other large marine life they had seen, worried them. Now they
knew that the sphere definitely attracts hostile marine life, they didn’t want
to send it back discreetly on a normal small freighter. The risk of loss in mid-Atlantic
to a monster Kraken was too high. They decided to cancel the ship booked to
take the sphere back to England (via Savannah) until they could arrange more
serious security. 
They sailed back to Ciudad Trujillo again,
getting back just in time to look as if they had done their normal week’s work
on the dive site. This time, though, they came in looking as dejected as
possible as they hadn’t had time to raise even a single item apart from the
sphere. They noted that the Germans’ private detective was at the dock again,
so went to check on their own detective’s monitoring of the Germans. He
reported that two of them had ‘gone missing’ – by which he meant that he hadn’t
seen them, not that their teammates were searching – on Tuesday and hadn’t been
seen since. 
Albert went back to the dock and spread some
bribes around the shipping agents’ offices, and learned that two well-built
young German men had in fact been asking around after ships going to Jamaica,
and they had taken passage on a steamer that was going to Kingstown. 
They argued late into the night. On the one
hand, they wanted to act normally, continuing to dive, till the sphere arrived
in England, so that the Germans didn’t start looking for whatever they had
shipped back. On the other, they didn’t want to send the sphere back on a ship
with inadequate security. And now they couldn’t delay because if the Germans
did know something about their trips to Jamaica, the warehouse could be a
target.
None of the party had contacts who could loan
them a small but very heavily-armed mercenary company to put aboard the ship.
After long arguments, the consensus was finally reached: they would have to try
to get the authorities interested again. They had failed before because the
Colonial Office wallahs in Kingstown were not interested in getting involved in
what they suspected was stealing sunken treasure from someone else’s
territorial waters. It might trigger an international incident to benefit
private individuals. But now there was something definitely alien which might
benefit His Majesty’s realm, on British soil.
They finally decided it. On Saturday morning
they paid off Davey Casey and thanked the consultant magicians and Mama
duTonniere for their help, and flew direct to Port Antonio to check on the
sphere, before moving on to talk to the authorities in Kingston. And as they
walked from the seaplane wharf towards the warehouse, Willie spotted the two
missing Germans loitering around the wharf. 
Trying not to act as if they knew they were
spotted, the party walked right past their original destination so that the
Germans didn’t know which it was and went on to a bar Donald knew well from his
weeks in the port. From there they telephoned Bob Mason to warn him to keep the
door closed so the sphere couldn’t be seen from the street. 
Perhaps inspired by the Germans tipping off the
Italian police to get them arrested in their earlier adventure, they decided to
try the same trick. Donald would go to the local police and get them to take
the ‘footballers’ off the street while they dealt with the sphere. As backup,
he would take the respectable professional doctor of the party, Kohath. 
Unfortunately, this was very nearly their
downfall. When they managed to get an interview with the local police chief,
Kohath started making heavy-handed demands for action and accusing the police
chief of incompetence and idleness. Although he was unable to make any specific
accusations apart from ‘they’re following us’ Kohath demanded that the police
arrest the Germans and basically throw away the key while the party was able to
do whatever they wanted. 
Naturally, the police chief responded badly to
this, which surprised Kohath because he felt that as he and Donald represented
the almighty Tavistock Foundation, key to the security of the Empire, they
should be able to make any local officials do whatever they chose. The chief,
of course, had never heard of the Foundation and as the players know well it is
not universally respected amongst those who know about it. Its aims (finding
the Holy Grail and Excalibur, amongst other artefacts) and methods (sending the
party halfway across the world on the strength of a séance with a Batty Cat
Lady and an old treasure-ship story) cause non-sympathisers to hold it in
rather low esteem, in fact.
He overlooked the fact that their previous
experience of the police took place in a corrupt police state (Mussolini’s
Italy), where the German agents had held diplomatic papers from a very friendly
Government. The Germans were careful to make specific allegations about their easily-checked
suspicions about the party’s possession of heavy military hardware (Exhibit A:
Donald’s BAR, easily found by a search of his hotel room) and contacts with
‘Royalist conspirators’ (the Count), with the suspicion that they might be
involved in gun-running. Even then, the police only held them for a day or so
before the PCs’ documentation and willingness to send their guns away left them
nothing to back up the charges. By contrast, in Jamaica the party, a pair of private
individuals, made no statements about the Germans doing anything on Jamaica
except hanging around a wharf and following them, and when the police chief
pointed this out Kohath became abusive. Kohath was ordered to leave and it took
every bit of diplomatic effort Donald had to stay in the room and apologise
profusely for his wayward colleague. 
Because Donald had been working with one of the
town’s most prominent employers for a few weeks and bringing employment to the
town, the police chief had actually been well-disposed towards him till Kohath
started trying to throw his weight around. He was amenable to a small
compromise. Since Donald knew that the Germans were supposed to be in the
Dominican Republic, but then turned up here unexpectedly and were not acting like
tourists (Port Antonio does not have an attractive tourist-friendly wharfside)
he was prepared to have them picked up and their papers checked, which should keep
them out of the party’s way for a couple of hours while Donald flew to Kingston
to talk to the authorities about security for the Mason boatyard. 
With only two men, the Germans were in a
dilemma about who to follow. One had stayed to watch the rest of the party in
the bar, the other tailed Donald and Kohath to the police station. Now as
Kohath departed, clearly furious, he stormed off down the street, marched into
an alleyway, and waited for a chance to ambush the German if he was tailed. (Tackling
a fit young SS brawler might not have gone too well for Kohath…) Actually, the
German, having the information from their private detective, knew that Kohath
was a loose cannon and Donald the party’s effective leader so stayed waiting
for Donald to emerge. Which he eventually did, but he spotted the German at a
cafe table and came over to chat…
Disconcerted at being spotted like this, the
German’s excuse was a bit flustered. He was, he claimed, suffering from an
injury, so while he could neither play nor train he and a friend had come to
visit his cousin, a veterinarian. Unfortunately his cousin is out on a call
seeing to a sick sheep (yes, the party picked up on the lack of sheep on
Jamaica!) so he was resting here enjoying the local sights while his fit friend
was out for a walk. 
As Donald walked off, the German agent was in a
quandary. Kohath had marched off more than ten minutes ago, Donald had clearly
spotted him and would be aware if he was followed. He stayed where he was and
finished his coffee. 
Back at the bar, Donald took a look around and
also spotted the other German, and went over to chat to him too before entering
the bar. This one was clearly a more experienced operator and wasn’t flustered
by being ‘made’. He calmly backed up his friend’s story (proving that they had
agreed at least the outline in advance, though this one didn’t mention Jamaican
sheep). 
Leaving the agent in no doubt that he had been
spotted, Donald went into the bar and within minutes Donald & Mrs Stanley
sneaked out of the back door through the owner’s private quarters and made for
the plane, and were in the air on the way to Kingstown before the police
arrived to take the agent in for questioning – a phone call from the bar made
finding him easy. 
Not knowing what happened to the other agent,
the rest of the party went looking for somewhere to hide and found a cinema matinee.
Kohath also found the same place – a venue where it is easy to hide, and to
leave unnoticed in the dark.
Without the burden of Kohath, Donald found it
much easier to be diplomatic. He did get in to see the Royal Navy’s Attaché at
the Consulate, and persuade him that the alien artefact they had discovered
(without too much details of where it had been…) could be crucial to Britain’s
security – and the German agents sniffing around had to be thwarted quickly. 
Pausing only to call in a technical expert from
the ‘office’, the attaché returned to Port Antonio with Donald and Mrs Stanley.
Once they saw the sphere they agreed that, with the proviso that the Navy’s
scientists would be involved with the Foundation’s investigation, the Navy
would take responsibility for guarding it and sending it safely to Britain. 
Donald popped back to the police station to
thank the chief and confirm that he could release the Germans, as the ‘cargo’
was now safe. The chief revealed that the Germans had been released just a few
minutes earlier. They readily handed over their papers, which were in order,
and the police could only drag their feet checking them out with the
Immigration Department in Kingston for so long. They had arrived on Wednesday
morning without the right visas, and had taken all day to get them sorted out.
The party noticed that since it was Saturday now and the agents had apparently
only arrived in Port Antonio this morning, they had been elsewhere for two
days. Or, depending on your point of view, they had managed to track the PCs to
Port Antonio in only two days.
The party made a point of fuelling up heavily
and flying off to the north on their way back to Miami to return their rented
plane, hoping that the Germans would see them go and have no clues about what
to do next. Whatever they chose to do, it would be the Navy’s problem…
Category:Campaign Log
Category:Tavistock Expeditions