Chapter Nine

In the late nineteenth century British naval interests were threatened by an Indian national who survived the Indian Mutiny to continue his insurrection on, or rather beneath, the seas. Eschewing his caste and rank (of prince) he took the nom-de-guerre of Nemo ("No-one"). He developed an undersea vehicle of advanced design (which we would call a submarine these days) powered by a radioactive material through a process which we are only now coming to understand. This vessel, the Nautilus, caused considerable damage to shipping before it was eventually located and destroyed in a costly sea battle in 1892.

The Monster Hunters Club (see files MH#0001-8532) were instrumental in infiltrating and locating Nemo’s vessel, and appear to have gained access to some of its plans and technology. As early as 1924 the Club’s Greenwich Development Site was reconstructing a Nautilus shell, but was unable to utilise it for want of the atomic technology required to power the engines. In 1940 this shell was acquired in the national interest for the war effort and transported to H.M.S. Edrachillis for further investigation. At that time it was much admired for its elegance of design and ability to withstand barometric pressure but it proved unfeasible to develop as a weapon against the Axis powers.

With the development of new atomic technology since 1945 the first new Nautilus prototype (Prototype 1) was launched and tested in January 1949. Second and third generation versions were each more successful. Prototype 4 was expected to be the final version which could be used as template for a fleet of underwater, atomic-powered, long-range attack craft.

The Navy’s reasons for choosing Edrachillis Bay for the tests are unusual. The base has been used for weapons manufacture, design, and testing since 1905. Whilst it is a desolate and unpopulated stretch of water by an equally desolate stretch of land, the Navy has noted a markedly greater success rate in weapons testing from that base than elsewhere. Artillery yields are increased by around 19%, and targeting systems seem enhanced also.

Prototype 4 was lost at 2217 hours on 26-6-51. Attempts at locating and recovering the vessel have proved futile, despite the presence of naval surface vessels nearby and tracking the prototype with SONAR. No cavitation or breaking-up noises were detected. No unidentified SONAR signals were reported. No debris has been found.

The loss has been profound. Twenty-seven men, eight million pounds of equipment, a new and experimental generator of classified technology, and a series of classified missile weapons have disappeared without a trace.

Base commander Admiral Potter is hurrying to refit Prototype 3 to conduct a sea-bottom search for its sister vessel, and expects to have the vessel ready for duty within two days.

Two minor security alerts occurred on 27-6-51. At 0213 hours a perimeter sentry fired two shots at "a shadowy intruder by the gatehouse". Recovered bullets indicate that he did indeed hit something, but there is no sign of blood upon the casings. At 0251 hours a metallic clanging noise was heard within the prototype hanger bay but a thorough search revealed no cause for the sound.

Recommendation: Turn loose the Monster Hunters on this one.

Susan Slade, SRX Administrator

Dawn D’Aosta divides her team up as follows:

• To investigate HMS Edrachillis and the missing Prototype 4 – Revell, Redvers-Ainderbury, Radshaw, Crannog, Meridian
• To investigate Waterloo and the missing Angherad ap Griffeths – Flaxton, Genevieve, Selkirk, Dawn herself
• To investigate Finchley and the missing Miss Stankey – Qayrawun, Emmanuelle, Aveyard, Magda
• To check with leads to do with the Elemental plane of Water – Albrecht
• Back at base and keeping an eye on Edward Endelby - Zany

This leads to an interesting if inconclusive discussion which Dawn will put a stop to if she finds out about it. Dawn is worried that her twin sister, the Enchantress Aurora, might get ideas, and if either twin loses their qualification to be the maiden bit of the maiden-mother-crone trinity currently holding Faerie in balance nobody is sure what might happen. [Dawn and Aurora swap places each midnight at full moon, with one literally becoming part of the realm of Faerie and the other being on Earth.]

Evidence indicates that an adulterous liaison may have been going on for some time before the "Death House" evening.

Bonnington is aware of Emmanuelle’s war service. That’s why he doesn’t want so accomplished a spy anywhere within a hundred miles of a top-secret UK naval installation.

I’m assuming for the moment that he has been relocated by the MHC. Tell me if you disagree. Give any details you’d like to incorporate into any relocation package.

No.

They were indeed cleaned and neatly stacked on the draining board. There are no prints or spittle.

Forensic tests on the letters reveal a number of unidentified fingerprints. The tweed-suited man wore gloves however. The Scottish letter was opened by the base commander when he heard it had something to do with a security leak. He found the envelope empty.

The resealed envelope is sent back to Wales.

This could be a big job, and your best researcher vanished down a hole. Do you want to set your research assistant onto it?

Best bet here would be to set your legal advisors onto a land search, and to write to J. Teeromoyle Mallory, the Club’s occasional occult advisor in Ireland.

Yes.

It does, doesn’t it?

The Nautilus had windows.

The waters are theoretically open, but there seems a heavy naval presence just now. However, Albrecht may wish to review his actions in the light of the events described below, and thank Flaxton for dropping him in it.

And so to the next events…

Admiral George Potter briefs the arriving men on the investigation so far. He is out of his depth and admits it. His principal scientists, including team leader Dr Lionel Plantagenet, were in the missing vessel, which has damaged his ability to bring Prototype 3 back into service (certain key parts were cannibalised into Prototype 4, including a nuclear reactor).

Initial arcane detections on the base discover no dweomers to alarm the group. A close inspection of some of the weaponry built and stored here however discovers that they have effectively been blessed – the variant used to make a missile +1 on firing however long it is stored. Only those weapons which have been carried on vessels crossing the bay and returned unused are so enchanted.

Redvers-Ainderbury interviews the soldiers who were present at the alleged security breeches. The man who fired the shot is certain that he hit his intruder, but that the intruder then "vanished". Ballistic tests on the recovered cartridges indicate that it hit something soft and organic – the lab man wants to say necrotic tissue – but did not draw blood from a living creature.

Radshaw is already familiar with the Nautilus design and both shocks and impresses the remaining base scientists by immediately grasping what they are trying to do and improving upon it. Revell merely notes that the MHC are due some royalties from H.M. Govt. for their use of the Nautilus concept (the Club hold some key patents). Radshaw thinks that the "nuclear submarine" is intrinsically unsafe and unhealthy. He is looking forward to testing it out.

Meridian checks the SONAR logs and will have a report for the morning.

Crannog takes a walk along the shoreline and is surprised to find some sick crabs. The species is indigenous but should have migrated away by now. He notes they have a greenish mucous substance over them, which may be suppurations from sores or might be pollution.

Revell’s search of the camp records for Whitenecks, Hornes etc. proves fruitless. He will have time to check any local fishermen’s tales tomorrow.

With Radshaw’s help the Prototype 3 should be ready to dive tomorrow. What do the Club wish to do?

Interestingly, after spending a day searching the house and considering this, both Emmanuelle and Magda find their own hemlines have shortened by a couple of inches as well.

During the time that Magda tries to reconstruct whatever ritual has happened in the Finchley Death House Emmanuelle gets her to explain the nature of the Morrigan. The Monster Hunters know that the Morrigan is a triple-aspected female entity who possesses goddesses, and has at different times operated through the Celtic Morrigan, the Greek Hecate (and others), and a range of other mythological beings. She is immensely powerful and has her own agenda. She is still active in 1951 and until recently she was using Angherad as her herald in the world.

Magda’s reconstruction suggests that whoever forced the murders and final adulteries in the house was trying to get the power at work in the house to reveal itself. Effectively the enemy had the passion-play performed so as to goad the power that had been manifesting the poltergeist-type activities to show itself by replicating the triggers that had previously provoked it. This plan appears to have worked.

Maraud Qayrawun has finally got his Magic Mirror spell. The difficulty he has had in getting it is not atypical, since it is a relatively high-level spell which is unfamiliar to him. After performing the necessary ceremony he gats a momentary glance of the missing Deborah Stankey. He sees the girl tied naked between two trees in a dense forest. She has some unfamiliar blue characters pained upon her body. Before Qayrawun can check further the mirror explodes, and three fragments of the glass burrow into his flesh. Magda leaps forward with her Remove Curse ability and the three shard stop moving towards Qayrawun’s heart and can be painfully removed. [In game terms, Qayrawun takes 16 points of damage].

Aveyard and Emmanuelle track down the charity shop where Maureen Stankey bought the now-missing dress that didn’t fit her, that she discarded at the bottom of her wardrobe, that the cat liked to sleep on so much, and that had so many ‘guardians’ (according to the cat). The lady in the shop has read about Mrs Stankey, recognised her as one of her occasional customers, and is most distressed about it all. She remembers Mrs Stankey purchasing the yellow dress about ten months back, and she remembers her trying it on and how nice it looked on her. The charity lady has no idea where the dress came from.

It is just getting dark as Aveyard and Emmanuelle return to their car. Then four shambling figures stumble out of the dark, each wielding a carving knife and a bottle of acid and moving determinedly towards Miss StClair.

A little known fact is that the lake at the Monster Hunters Club’s Chillwater Street grounds is also the retirement home of a very senior water elemental who nowadays goes by the name of Harry. Since Albrecht Arnheim is an Elementalist, and the son of an Elementalist and a Water Nymph, and can breathe freely underwater, he and Harry tend to get on rather well.

Harry tends to stay away from the Courts of the Water Elementals these days, but he is happy to shunt Albrecht there to ask questions about Edrachillis Bay. Hence Albrecht finds himself in the green-blue waters of the Elemental Plane, literally fathoming the secrets he is searching for:

Of the waters of the bay:

Albrecht is much comforted by this visit to the Elemental plane of Water, especially when he finds he has surfaced from it at midnight in Edrachillis Bay.

Zany is keeping close tabs upon the vampire scholar. His craving for blood reawoken he does indeed struggle to resist his baser urges. Concerned for Endelby’s sanity and about her ability to restrain a level-draining creature if he does lose control, Zany sends for Endelby’s oldest remaining friend and fellow Endelby Library trustee, Dame Edith Chanterness.

Selkirk has a happy time looking at "the absolutely best intradimension networking I’ve ever seen," – i.e. the hole where Angherad disappeared, and from which the Pit Field body was dug, at Waterloo. Selkirk indicates that there are some fascinating passive micro-portals all around the place, and that they would not show up as magical unless used because "they’ve been here so long they’re effectively natural". He exchanges excited and expensive telegrams with Giles Meridian and concludes that there are also passive connections to Carcieri, the outer plane between Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil, the Realm of Chains, the place of Eternal Imprisonment.

Genevieve checks Angherad’s notes and discovers that the anthropologist was particularly researching the early mythological history of London. Angherad had a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings and Queens of Britain in her luggage.

Flaxton is becoming more and more convinced that whatever it was that took (Neutral Good tending to Neutral) Angherad was probably provoked by the presence of either Angherad’s evil-aligned necromantic staff or the link she still has to a Servitor of the Outer Gods which occasionally comes when she is injured. Using his technique to discern restless spirits Flaxton is about to proclaim no result when he realises he is using the wrong perspective. The biggest spirit he has ever sensed is around him, so pervasive that it IS the background.

Dawn suggests trying to communicate to this spirit. Selkirk mumbles happily, triggers a conduit, and the operating team disappears. Dawn may have to clarify things with Selkirk later.

The four Monster Hunters appear in what appears to be a magic diagram but which on second glance seems to be a subway map. They are at Waterloo on the plan. They occupy a small corner of a vast, candlelit cavern. Great tunnels run out in all directions. Hundreds of skeletons hang from chains from the high ceiling, many of them being used as chandeliers. A vast man sits on a two hundred foot high throne, and he is crowned with pale gold. Angherad hangs in chains before him.

The giant man turns his burning eyes upon the quartet. "Tell me why I shouldst not destroy thee?" he challenges.