RQG 63 - Harrison Cambell!

## Content Warnings

Air travel, Danger of falling from airship, heights, bullying, stalking, exposure to elements, serious intra-party conflict, guns

## Summary

The party's journey to Prague aboard Amelia Earhart's ship continues. Bertie finally tracks down Cambell, Zolf meets his hero, Sasha gets athletic, and Hamid gets critical.

## Synopsis

Bertie is snooping throughout Cambell’s room; he finally
realizes that it’s the same guy who wrote the romance novels that Zolf loves. He
starts digging through Cambell’s stuff and finds a traveler’s trunk, full of
clothes and two smaller locked chests. Both of them look like safeboxes. He
also finds a few papers in a folder in the trunk; some of the letters describe Cambell’s
trip to Paris, and meeting Bertie, and Bertie gets annoyed when he realizes
that Cambell is mocking him. He starts trying to find Cambell, but isn’t
successful, and eventually gives up to go to sleep.

The party wakes up the next morning; Sasha sneaks up to the
front deck to find somewhere to stay so that Zolf and Bertie won’t be able to
find her. She finds someone in there already: a small, shivering gentleman (aka
Harrison Cambell) with normal clothes and a smoking jacket on. He pulls Sasha
into the nook and she sits down in the corner, out of the sight of staircases. They
start chatting for a while.

Bertie is still looking for Cambell. He’s already checked
the lounge, and isn’t able to find him. To him, it seems like everyone else
apart from Hamid has disappeared as well.

Zolf wants to pull everyone together for a team meeting
about what to do next. He goes looking for Sasha and finds her sitting in the
nook next to Cambell, but doesn’t recognize him at all. He pops his head in
and Zolf asks her to come out so they can have the meeting. Cambell pulls Zolf
into the nook as well, and Zolf expresses concern for how freezing he is. Cambell
asks where the meeting is going to be and Zolf asks why he’s so interested in what
they’re doing. Sasha tries to de-escalate the situation and mentions Bertie;
Cambell has a physical reaction, and Zolf asks if he’s Bertie’s ex-lover, and Cambell
says no. Sasha mentions that it’s not surprising for people to not want to interact
with Bertie, and Zolf says fair enough. They head down to Zolf and Hamid’s cabin,
grabbing Bertie and Hamid on the way.

They begin to discuss plans for what to do once they’re in
Prague. Bertie is mumbling something about Cambell, and Zolf and Hamid and
Sasha are trying to figure out where to go first, how to meet up with Wilde
again, and what they need to learn. While Hamid is speaking, Zolf heads over to
the door to his cabin and throws it open, spotting Harrison Cambell with frost
on his smoking jacket carrying a load of food. Cambell sees him as well, and
then heads up to the top deck. Bertie asks what’s outside, and Zolf says nothing.
They decide to go to the university.

Hamid and Sasha ask about Amelia offering help to Zolf, and
Zolf says he didn’t take anything from her because he doesn’t want to be in
debt to her or to the Harlequins. They both say that Zolf should have taken the
offer, and Hamid mentions that Zolf doesn’t seem to feel the cold, and then
immediately backtracks to say it’s because Zolf is a sailor, not because Zolf
is a dwarf. Bertie, who has barely been paying attention the entire time,
suddenly turns to Zolf and accuses him of being Harrison Cambell. Zolf is
incredibly confused and asks why Cambell would be on this ship, only for Sasha
to tell him that he is on the ship – Zolf starts shouting and Hamid asks who on
Earth Cambell is.

Bertie and Zolf get into an argument about Cambell, and Sasha
informs him that Zolf’s already met him as well – he was the shivering man in
the nook, who Zolf hadn’t recognized. Hamid asks, again, who Cambell is, and
Zolf says he’s the greatest romance novelist ever; Hamid does not seem to
agree.

Jump cut to the four of them on the ship, not speaking to
each other. Sasha is up on the crow’s nest, and the gnome crew member there gives
her a hot cocoa and a fur and is chatting with her about their travels. Hamid is
in the lounge as well, reading a copy of a Harrison Cambell novel with a
disgusted look on his face. Zolf is grumbling to himself in the lounge,
ignoring Hamid because he’s angry at him, and is internally debating whether or
not he should be looking for Cambell. Bertie has worked out that Cambell is
probably on the top deck and heads up to search for him. He searches the entire
top deck, looking everywhere.

Sasha, up in the crow’s nest, glances down and sees Cambell
peek out and spot Bertie, but Bertie hasn’t spotted him yet. At the last minute
she starts calling Bertie’s name; he completely fails to hear her, and Cambell
makes a dash for it – straight into Bertie’s armour as he falls. Bertie
immediately starts threatening Cambell, and then tosses Cambell over the side
of the ship. He’s still hooked in to the guideline, so he’s just hanging there
screaming, and Sasha quickly hops down from the crow’s nest and knocks Bertie
aside, heading down to pull on the rope closer to the edge of the ship.

All of a sudden, there’s a gunshot from behind them and they
both turn to see Amelia standing there with her gun trained on Bertie, asking him
what’s going on. Sasha is trying to pull Cambell up, and Bertie changes his
focus to Amelia. Sasha starts swinging Cambell left and right until he is able
to grab onto a porthole on the lower floor and crawls into the ship with the
help of someone from the crew. Bertie looks over the side and doesn’t see
Cambell, assumes he fell to his death. Amelia, who has seen the entire thing
happening, suggests that Bertie should make sure that Cambell really fell.

Bertie, taking her at her suggestion, also decides to jump
over the edge of the ship. Sasha, before he can, clips another guideline onto
Bertie to make sure he doesn’t die (because Hamid would be upset). He
takes his armour off before going over the edge. It’s much windier off the edge,
and Bertie climbs down as he tries to look for Cambell off the edge of the
ship. Amelia opens her door and looks at the situation, and then motions to a crew
member. They jog over, holding a vat of some kind, and shows it to Sasha – it looks
like cooking oil, and Sasha is sort of hesitant, saying that they need him, and
the crew shrugs and says that the guidelines are fine before pouring the grease
over the edge. Bertie is now covered in grease and the side of the ship above Bertie
is covered in grease. He tries to move to the side and immediately slips,
swinging back to his original position, and Sasha heads off to get a snack.

Zolf, having seen Cambell swinging from the guideline from
his seat in the lounge, runs up on deck. He starts panicking, asking what the
hell is going on and Amelia comes over to explain the situation to him. Zolf
runs over to the guideline and meets Sasha at the edge of the ship, who’s looking
over the edge and giggling as Bertie tries to get up. Zolf tries to undo the
guidelines as Sasha pulls him back, and then the crew comes up and pulls him
back, trying to tie him to the mast. They grab his legs and go straight through
the water, and run back to the edge. Sasha tries to stop him but Zolf gets around
her, starting to undo the guideline. Amelia, who now has a weird device in her
hands, rolls a ball between Zolf’s feet and it explodes in a ball of gas. It
doesn’t affect Zolf at all, and then Amelia steps forward, pulls her gun, and
levels it at Zolf’s head to get him to stop.

Sasha and Amelia both try to calm Zolf down, and Zolf starts
running down the list of all the stuff Bertie has done. Bertie is still swinging
below the ship. Sasha mentions that killing Bertie would make Hamid upset, and
Zolf agrees. Amelia says that Zolf can decide when Bertie gets back up, and Zolf
decides to step down and let Bertie swing under the ship.

Hamid, meanwhile, is sitting in the lounge after having read
the Harrison Cambell book, calling it a load of rubbish. He has no idea any of
the drama on the deck is even happening.

Fast forward an hour and a half. Bertie isn’t taking damage
from the cold, but he’s shivering and beginning to cramp from the cold. Amelia finally
peers over the edge and apologizes, then gets the crew to pull Bertie back up,
dumping him onto the ship.

## Quotes

"Well, there you, there you are, Zolf, that explains it. Someone would—I can imagine, a random member of the public would be totally willing to put themselves in physical harm's way to stay out of the area of Mr MacGuffingham."
―**Sasha**

**Bertie**: "J’accuse Harrison Cambell!"
**Zolf**: "What? Why would Harrison Cambell be on this ship?"
**Sasha**: "Well, I mean. He is."
**Zolf**: "What?"
**Hamid**: "Who’s Harrison Cambell?"
**Bertie**: "Where is Harrison Cambell?!"
**Zolf**: "You don’t know who Harrison Cambell is?!"
―Bertie accuses Zolf of being Harrison Cambell, inducing massive confusion.

**Zolf**: "When did you meet Harrison Cambell?!"
**Sasha**: "I mean, you met Harrison Cambell."
**Zolf**: "No I didn’t, I… "
**Sasha**: "He’s just a shivery man."
**Zolf**: "That was Harrison Cambell?!"
**Bertie**: "Shivery man?"
**Hamid**: "When? Who? What? Why? What is going on here?!"
―Zolf is shocked to learn he's already met his favorite author.

**Zolf**: "I think you’ll find With The Passion of the Sun is the greatest romance novel ever written!"
**Hamid**: "What?"
**Zolf**: "With the Passion of the Sun!"
**Lydia**: "There’s two of them actually, spelt both ways."
**Zolf**: "Yeah! Because one is about the, the sequel, right, is about the original couple’s son! And he’s very passionate, it’s a genius piece of work."
**Hamid**: "This doesn’t sound like literature, as such?"
**Zolf**: "What? Look, I’m not gonna have any of your gatekeeping here alright. It’s literature. It’s art. This is art."
**Hamid**: "I mean it’s not quite Shakespeare, is it?"
―Zolf explains Harrison Cambell to Hamid.

"I’m in the lounge behind Hamid, ignoring him because he obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about, debating with myself whether I should go and try to find Harrison Cambell. “Oh I really want to do it, but maybe, I’m gonna make an absolute fool of myself. But I could ask him about that sequel! But no, no, no, keep it cool. Don’t embarrass yourself.”"
―**Ben**

**Bertie**: "Ah, Mr Cambell... pleasure to see you again."
**Cambell**: "He-hello... and you..."
**Bertie**: "Now, a more paranoid man might think, hm, that he's being deliberately avoided. *(Alex rolls a die)* Yeah, you're right to drop that croissant."
―Harrison Cambell runs into Bertie on the deck of the airship.

**Zolf**: "I’ll murder the treacherous snake!"
**Earhart**: "He’s learning his lesson."
**Zolf**: "I don’t care! He deserves a more terminal one! I have had it with his constant endangering of the people that I like and love. I have had it with his arrogance and I have had it with all of his complete rubbish that he keeps doing!"
―Zolf learns that Bertie has thrown Cambell over the side of the ship.

**Earhart**: "Zolf, listen, you really don’t want to do this and I don’t want to have to have my crew literally knock you out."
**Sasha**: "Mate, mate, just calm it! He’s really useful, we’ve learned to manage him."
**Zolf**: "No. He’s not that useful."
**Sasha**: "Well, I mean…"
**Zolf**: "What’s on your back? What did he do to the dog? How has he been useful? Just explain to me!"
**Sasha**: "I mean he’s cut quite a lot of bad people in half."
**Zolf**: "I can get a brick wall with wheels on that would be more useful than he would"
**Sasha**: "I mean…yeah."
**Zolf**: "We cannot have him. Everywhere he goes, he tries to murder somebody. Well maybe he gets a bit of a taste of his own medicine!"
―Zolf attempts to untie Bertie's guideline from the ship.

**Sasha**: "Look, mate it would really upset Hamid, and Hamid’s a nice guy, right?"
**Zolf**: "It would upset Hamid."
―Zolf decides not to murder Bertie.

**Hamid**: "What a load of melodramatic, poorly written rubbish!"
**Ben *(unable to hear Hamid, but as Zolf)***: "Right, he's going over the side too!"
―Hamid finishes reading a Cambell novel.

## Dice rolls and Mechanics

Bertie makes a wisdom check to remember who Cambell is: 15.

Bertie makes a perception check to search Cambell’s room:

Bertie makes a perception check to find Cambell: 6.

Sasha makes a perception check to find somewhere to stay for
the day: 15.

Zolf makes a perception check to find Sasha: 22.

Bertie makes a perception check to find Cambell: 4.

Bertie makes a perception check to hear Sasha: nat 1.

Bertie and Sasha roll combat maneuver checks to pull
Cambell up: Sasha gets 18, Bertie gets 15.

Bertie makes a will save to not jump over the edge of the ship:

Bertie makes a climb check once he’s off the edge of the
ship: 12.

Bertie makes a fort save against cold: 16.

Bertie makes a climb check to get up the ship: 5.

Bertie makes a fort save against cold: 10.

Zolf and Sasha make combat maneuver rolls against each
other: Zolf gets 17, Sasha gets 10.

Zolf makes a fort save against the gas Amelia threw at him: