Inane Ramblings of a Demented Predator

slump

2023-07-09T06:13:56Z

Recall the worklist for today? I started off with a flat battery, so the office mechanic had to come out and give me a jump start. But the battery wasn't just flat, it was dead, since it conked out again at the third job and jump starting it failed to work. They had to send somebody down from the office, via a battery supplier, and when he got there the battery was twice the size of the existing one. We managed to get it into the space with some wrangling. All this, of course, completely fucked any chance of getting the morning's jobs done on time, and in two cases, getting them done at all.

And on Monday they want me to work my area, the Baldivis/Wellard area, AND a job down in the SW. Fucking joy.

Champions : Return To Edge City : Beyond the Valley of the DoLs

2022-01-17T12:13:38Z

Scooter, despite having a huge stack of unspent XP, also has fewer points in Disadvantages than the other PCs.

The Magus OoC: From a certain point of view, Scooter has his life more together than anybody else in the team.
GM: Despite being the bouncer at a titty bar.

Scooter HAS been practicing some useful stuff, such as accurate Leaping, and the Disguise Skill.

The Magus OoC: That’s not Hero Shrew, that’s Normal Shrew!

Hardlight OoC: I’ll call my Skill Level upgrade ‘Slightly Less Incompetent’

GM: Scooter can get a motorised scooter: And join the Vespa Vermin.
Flux: Now there’s a motorcycle gang the city is missing.

We head to the old cemetery, intending to arrest anybody who shows up, especially if they’re VIPER agents. We have a lot of questions about the situation, including ‘If a vampire joins the Daughters of Lilith do they still have to get the fangs implanted?’.

Unfortunately, The Magus (and Scooter to a lesser degree) botch our Stealth checks at the cemetery.

Hero Shrew: Too distracted by all the free supplies available?
The Magus: No. I keep getting flashbacks.

Hero Shrew OoC: I probably should have tunneled under the cemetery and dragged them into the graves from underground.
The Magus OoC: The problem there is all the human remains.
Flux OoC: You’ll bump into something, and burst out of the ground yelling ‘OMG, I just saw Michael Jackson’
Hero Shrew OoC: Ah, so that’s why we failed the Stealth check.

The Magus having a spectacular allergic reaction to holy ground is also a problem. But it’s the way the two Daughters on guard apparently smell Scooter coming that’s the biggest issue - a bit of a surprise when they’re supposed to be basically human. Scooter attempts to get behind them by tunneling underground - and when the Daughters find what looks like a freshly emptied grave, they panic and flee for the cemetery exits. Scooter had made a successful Presence attack, by accident. Unfortunately it looks like they made a call to their boss about the unexpected zombie situation, and the meeting we were there to crash is promptly cancelled.

Flux gets to work investigating the VIPER agent’s online presence - on top of everything else, she makes an annual trip to Wisconsin.

Hero Shrew: Undersconsin!
Flux: No. We don’t want to die.

We locate and stake-out their next meeting, in a children’s playground. Happily there aren’t any kids around at this hour - that could get messy.

Flux: Honestly if there were a bunch of kids hanging around the playground at midnight I’d be more freaked out than I am with all the vampires.

We also learn that the Spinnerette network the Daughters of Lilith answer to is a bit upset by the gang’s initiative, and they’ve sent some rollerskaters that go by the moniker of The Cherry Bombs to remonstrate. There’s also a news blimp perfectly positioned to film whatever happens next.

The Magus calls up an illusion of thick fog, and the other leap into action to protect the Daughters from likely assassination. And hopefully nab that VIPER rep. The Daughters DO go down suspiciously easy when the Magus follows up with a STUN attack to stop them running away under their own steam. And then the power-armoured SWAT team show up.

GM: It’s something you need to know when dealing with this kind of security - if they don’t recognise you and you seem to be involved in whatever is going on, you’re going down to the station in cuffs. It’s called Securing The Scene.

The Magus: Their deployment vehicle is currently stuck on one of the access paths because nobody gave him the key to this bollard.

Whatever happens, it looks like we’ll need to deal with the Spinnerette Network once and for all.

The Magus: They ARE getting a little too murdery.

Happily, hitting the keyboards turns up some interesting information - such as the suspicious way the Spinnerets seem to get out of police trouble a lot faster than anybody else. It seems to be a systemic issue too - if it’s a conspiracy the entire ECPD would have to be involved. Something appears to be moving electronic records around without leaving a trace.

The Magus: Cyberpathy - or Flux is moonlighting.

Since the only thing that can protect against a cyberpath is another cyberpath, it’s probably a problem that the ECPD doesn’t have any technomancers on the payroll.

The Magus: I did find traces of another technomancer working in Edge City.
Flux: .. what?
GM: That might be the first time you’ve actually told Flux that.
The Magus: I think I mentioned in passing as part of a larger infodump. Pretty sure I added a note to the blackboard back at our base.

It is interesting to note that the Spinnerets keep their prostituion income stream entirely separate from their infobrokering.

GM: You pay for discretion.
Fireflash: What happens in Edge City stays in Edge City.

Hardlight, investigating the actual information hardware, finds some peculiar residue on the nodes.

Hardlight: .. I have no idea what this is.
Hero Shrew: Special computer grease to make the electrons go faster?

Hardlight uses his sensory suite to look at the stuff at a microscopic level - weirdly, it seems to have the same texture all the way down. Flux pokes the stuff in the base lab, but it’s not until he tests its occult properties that he gets any results.

Flux: Son of a B****.

It’s ectoplasm.

Flux: Just a minute, I need to go grab a toaster.
Hardlight: And play some music?

Apparently it’s some kind of astral residue. But not magical. Our more mystically inclined members eventually determine that somebody is making small astral portals to run their connections through. And the connections are very… spidery. As is the guardian spirit they left on duty.

The Magus: Huh. So that’s a thing.

They REALLY shouldn’t be hanging out this close to the material plane. We really need to shut the Spinnerets and their subsidiary gangs down. While rounding up their street level members might be doable, actually finding laws to arrest the leaders under might be trickier, assuming we can even get through their layers of sacrificial mooks. Perhaps we should target their unlicensed drinking establishments, preferably when they have lots of customers to scare off. Time for a montage - with lots of press coverage and all due credit to the ECPD Anti-gang Unit (their Internal Affairs and Cybercrime units are busy enough trying to figure out what the Spinnerets have done to their computer system)

Flux: With any luck there’ll be underage drinking - then we can really nail them to the wall.

It probably helps that Scooter already knew where all the illegal dives were, although he had never done anything about them. Just as well he doesn’t work at the Collar Club anymore, or retaliation would seem likely.

Despite actually catching one of the Daughters of Lilith leaders at one of the raids, they somehow escaped without anybody seeing how. Still, each lesser arrest we make provides a point to magically track back to their leadership. So it’s rather unfortunate that when we do, Cassiana and her lieutenants are lying in a pool of blood, and are covered in spiders. And the cloud swirling around the room is more spiders.

Hardlight: Magus. Please teleport me out again, Right now.
The Magus: Oh please, there’s no way they can get through your shield.
Hardlight: I’m still turning the armour way up!

Fireflash blasts the room, to kill as many of the spiders as she can, and calls an ambulance for the Daughters of Lilith, and the Port Authority Biohazard team to deal with any remaining spiders.

Fireflash: We do NOT want Brazilian Wandering Spiders spreading into California!

It’s a bit odd that Cassiana had the accoutrements of a vampire hunter when we found her - was she expecting competition? And sniffing around (literally in Scooter's case) what at first appears to be a dosshouse is actually a bolthole. We’ll probably have to wait for Cassiana to wake up to find out what she was actually up to - unless her real name Theodosia Lathrum is relevant. There was certainly a lineage of vampire hunters going by that moniker.

Fireflash: The historical Theodosia was co-emperor of Byzantium with Justinian the First.
Hero Shrew: Wife and daughter of Aaron Burr, too.
Hardlight: What?
Hero Shrew: Hey, I listen to music, ok?
Hardlight: Aaron Burr’s wife was a vampire hunter?

But what’s with all the spiders?

The Magus: The only thing that can save us now is Bee-man’s edgier cousin, Tarantula Hawk Man.

GM: F*** me, I still haven’t come up with a name for these things. Because I’m not calling them Tarantuloids.
Hero Shrew’s player: Pseudotarantuloids.
GM: They’re native to the astral plane
Hero Shrew’s player: Tarantulpas.
GM: And they’re not earth spiders because they have ten limbs.
Flux’s player: Gegenees.
GM: But those mythical six-armed giants are already in Champions.
Flux’s player: They are? Ah well - it’s about 50-50 odds with anything mythological and Champions.
Hero Shrew player: Ungolians.

According to some incredibly pretentious Victorian era occult tomes, these things are apparently scavengers that usually reside in the lower astral levels. That might explain why they seem to be sealing up the breaches in the astral veil.

The Magus: Shall we follow these cables back to their origin point?
Hero Shrew: I’m willing - just shove me through one of these holes and we’ll see what happens.
The Magus: You’re too big.
Hardlight: And probably too physical.

GM: I question the wisdom of implanting an alien energy source in your neck.
Hardlight: I keep telling you, I didn’t do it to myself! I fell down a well and woke up with it inside me!
The Magus: I heard the same story in the Emergency Department last week.
GM: Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, The doctor at the emergency department said “Jack did WHAT with a candlestick?”

The Magus can teleport us all to the Astral, which is half-full of webbing, but if anything happens to him we’re screwed. And we’re probably doomed anyway thanks to Hardlight’s Weirdness Magnet, which apparently rates as ‘Greatly Impairing’

The Magus: So, is everybody ready to fight spider people?
Hero Shrew: I am! Does that book say whether they’re edible?
The Magus: They’re Camel-spider people.
Flux: THAT MAKES IT WORSE
The Magus: I did say that unless we can find Tarantula Hawk-man we have to handle this ourselves.
Hardlight: I’m half expecting Scooter to show up in a costume with a burning can of insecticide as a logo.
Hero Shrew: That’s a good idea actually - any aerosol cans and cigarette lighters handy?
GM: … OK, sure.
Hardlight: It IS a very Scooter Solution.

The Tarantuloids (apparently called Uttu) immediately draw weapons and advance when we transition over. And we haven’t even messed with their stuff yet.

Hardlight’s Player: I try to find some spider-themed assets for Tabletop Simulator and the first thing I find is a Femboy Spider Token.
GM: Welcome to the Internet where Everything Is Awful.

The Magus: Well, I’d better try and negotiate before anybody gets set on fire… Hail, fellow sentients! What are you doing so close to the material planes?
Uttu: We Guard! You Leave!
Flux: Is it OK if we leave that way? *pointing to the direction the cable is heading*
The Magus: And who are you guarding it for?
Uttu: She!
Hardlight: Well, at least we know their assumed gender. Uh, She who?
Uttu: SHE!
Fireflash: She Who Must Not Be Named?
Flux: We seem to be having some translation difficulties…
GM: With apologies to H. Rider Haggard.
Uttu: We follow SHE! SHE provides!
Flux: Can talk to her? Uh, She?
Uttu: SHE talks to who She wishes!

The Magus intimidates them enough to at least send a message.

Hero Shrew: Does She sell seashells?
Hardlight: I’m half-expecting She to be short for Shelob.
Uttu: *in slow English* She. Says. She Will Send. Emmi-sary. Asks. Who You?
The Magus: The Magus.
Uttu: She. Says. Crap.

At least we get an address - in the middle of Spinnerets territory.

Hardlight: I pull out my freeweb device. Wait, no signal.
GM: Actually you do have a signal. What???
Flux: Ok Mr Tech Genius, before we leave, find out what the hell that’s connecting to.

The Spinnerets emissary has a fancy sword and crucifix earrings

Hero Shrew: I wonder if the earrings are significant.
GM: Probably - the powered in the Champions universe are generally pretty careful with the symbols of Higher Powers.
Hardlight: Well, I’m going to shut up and not say anything - foot-in-mouth and all. So go on you two, get talking.

The Emissary is pretty confident that the holes in the astral veil aren’t a problem, because they have a way to stabilise them. The Magus points out that that does nothing about the way the Spinnerets are rewriting police records at will. The Emissary makes an offer on She’s behalf - if we let them withdraw the connections in question (they’re not much use to She now we know about them) the Spinnerets will extend us a line of credit.

Hardlight: This is one of those moral quandaries, isn’t it.

The Magus calls the rest of us over to join the conversation.

Hero Shrew: Cool sword.
The Emissary: Thankyou.
Flux: So, Magus, I see you’re not dead.
The Magus: Did you expect me to be?
Flux: *waggles hand* eh.

The Emissary: I speak for She. I listen and She hears.
The Magus: And She occasionally swears to the Uttu.

Hardlight: I’m guessing this line of credit isn’t monetary.
The Emissary: Of course not.
Flux: My apologies, he doesn’t understand metaphors.
Hardlight OoC: No I don't understand metaphors, that’s the whole POINT of my character!

So, if we choose to ignore the murder and attempted murder of the Daughters of Lilith, or at least put it down to internal gang politics, we can at least stop the Spinnerets from messing with the ECPD data systems, and can get some favours from She in future.

The Magus: Admittedly it’s a lot harder to pin the murders on them.

The Emissary: Do we have any other business?
Hero Shrew: Are there any giant edible bugs in the Astral Plane?
Hardlight: What????
The Emissary: I don’t know.

The Magus recognises the Emissary’s weapon too - the Sword of God’s Word, that Separates Truth From Lie.

GM: I need a word, not antediluvian, that’s specifically The Flood, but basically prehuman..
Hero Shrew: Pre-Adamite.
GM: The sword is Pre-Adamite.
Flux: Freaky.
GM: Says the person who’s bonded to a pre-Adamite artefact.

Hero Shrew: I’d like to know which supervillains they’ve been cleaning up records for.
The Emissary: That’s confidential.
Hero Shrew: What’s the deal with Undersconsin?
Hardlight: SCOOTER
The Emissary: ...She has no information on Undersconsin.

GM: This is all worth 7 XP and two favours from the Spinnerets.
The Magus: For not burning the house down.

GM: I hope you didn’t find that too frustrating?
Hardlight OoC: No, not fighting is just as good as fighting, most of the time.
Hero Shrew OoC: Hey! Fighting is the only thing I’m good at!
GM: No it isn’t! Half the time you’re the only person who figures out what’s actually happening, because you work at street level.
Hero Shrew OoC: Eh, tell me that, I’m having increasing questions about my self worth lately.
Flux: Don’t worry, we’ll get you a cave so you can spend a few weeks brooding with the bats and getting horribly damp and s*** on. I mean seriously, that’s a terrible place for a base. And he goes and fills it with computers.
Hardlight: The first thing he installed was good HVAC.

Horror of the Orient Express : Paris to Lausanne (via Other Places)

2022-01-16T12:36:06Z

JANUARY 1923

In Which The Adventurers Complete the Second Leg Of Their Journey, and Acquire An Arm</div>

Sub-Lt. Huxley, journalist Florence Braxton-Hicks, and dilettante Alexandra ‘Alex’ Braxton are currently guests of a French doctor and his wife, who would probably have reconsidered their offer if they knew the kind of excitement the party were bringing into their lives. Admittedly, the fact that their daughter apparently saw a boogeyman outside her upstairs window has no obvious connection to their visitors, but the repeated disturbances in the guestroom, and the discovery of what lies under Chez Lorien, certainly does.

But beginning at the beginning, there doesn’t appear to be a mitten-biter or any other kind of bogeyman outside Quitterie’s upstairs bedroom window when Huxley checks, nor any sign that anybody was in the yard. On the other hand, there doesn’t appear to be anybody else in the room when Florence finds herself flung across the room with considerable force in the middle of the night. Or perhaps there was, because Huxley suffers similar injuries the following night, in the same room, but unlike Flo he recalls a horribly withered figure holding him by the throat and hissing “Which god do you serve?” in Latin.

Of course that does raise the question of how this attacker got into the room in the first place, since only the Loriens have the other key.

Florence: I’m searching the walls for hidden doors - I’ve read enough mystery novels to know the score.

Both Florence and Huxley have bruises that strongly resemble a powerful grip around their throat.

GM: And as far as you know she’s not into autoasphyxiation.

Of course they wouldn’t have had to stay at Chez Lorien that long if they hadn’t botched locating the ruins of Fenalik’s mansion, twice.

Florence: I look at the map again and realise I was holding it upside down. Sacré bleu!

Although it’s Veronique Lorien pointing out that they’re doing all their measurements in metric, when the estate map they were given was pre-Revolution, that uncovers Fenalik’s cellar. Of course, it still takes another day of digging - by Huxley - to excavate the door.

Florence: Hard work never killed anyone.

What lies beyond is certainly hellish, so it appears Captain Malon’s report from 1793 was accurate in that regard. It’s probably just as well Huxley acquired holy water from the church in Poissy. The subterranean garden is bad enough, given the unfortunate parallels with the garden where Florence's stillborn siblings were buried. But hey, at least they find the Left Arm of the Sedefkar Simulacrum! Although Huxley does have a new concern.

Huxley: I think we have another pursuer.
Florence: Charming.

The Left Arm is certainly a curious artefact - apparently ceramic, and inscribed with an intricate pattern of hundreds of left arms. And whatever glaze the creator used darkens from pearly white to a deep blue in sunlight. It’s also flawless, with the exception of a vaccination scar exactly where Alex has one - but that they can’t find again when they doublecheck. Huxley can’t even confirm what it’s made of, since when he tries to scrape off a sample his shoulder starts to hurt.

GM: But then you did do a lot of digging yesterday - that’s no doubt why.

At least they can telegram Professor Smith the good news - he’s apparently recovering from his burns, and has started sending letters to his contacts across Europe to help how he can. And Remi assures his friend that he’ll find a copy of the Diary of an Unknown Soldier and post it to them no matter where they are in Europe. The message from Antonio is less promising - it turns out that de Gremanci is one of the most common surnames in Venice, so finding out if the reputed sorcerer Alvise de Gremanci ever got his hands on part of the Simulacrum is proving difficult.

GM: The telegram is already a bit terse, but Antonio is basically complaining that it’s like asking every Smith in London if their great-great grandfather was a sorcerer and did he leave them any body parts in his will?

On the other hand, now that they know what the Simulacrum actually looks like, they can find out which auction house in Paris sold one of the pieces after The War, and exactly which Milanese gentleman they sold it to. The couple of days are fruitless, until one of the auction houses takes pity on them (or perhaps are impressed enough by the obvious quality of Alex’s suit) to point out that it might have been a private auction - or not sold as statuary at all. THAT clue uncovers a pamphlet where something that sounds very much like the Torso, from the collection of one Dr Rigault (1746-1794), was put up for auction as a ‘Porcelain Anatomical Model, Maker Unknown’. Rigault was the Royal Physician prior to the Revolution, and a name already connected to the raid on Fenalik’s house.

But it appears it didn’t reach the reserve price, and a few years later it was auctioned off as part of a job lot, with a bunch of period costumes, dress weapons, costume jewelry, and dressmaker’s dummies. They were purchased by one P. Rischonti. At last the Investigators can head to Milan - with a brief stop-over in Switzerland to interrogate one Edgar Welligton about his knowledge of the Simulacrum.

Huxley is reluctant to let the Arm out of his sight.

Huxley: I’ll keep it close. At hand.
GM: That pun is a bit of a reach.
Huxley: Does this arm come with a manual?

At least the other guests on the Orient Express as it departs Paris after midnight are less obnoxious than that preteen on the train from London. Indeed, Signorina Caterina Cavallaro, star of Parisian and Milanese opera, is charming, witty, and very generous, complimenting Alex on her suit and promising to get Huxley and his friends rooms at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, as well as front row tickets for opening night of Aida at La Scala. She has quite a story about how she went to her first opera, fully intending to wish for a pony as she sung along to ‘Ritorna vincitor!’, but decided on the spot to wish to be an opera singer instead. Looks like it worked. She sings the aria for the other travellers, to rapturous applause.

Florence OoC: Sing Freebird!

The investigators stagger off to bed, and wake up on a cobbled street in somewhere apparently called Ulthar, which has a lot of cats. Florence is pleased about that - the nature of the trains here, less so. That Alex has switched genders is a bit of a surprise too, although perhaps less than some might expect.

Huxley: Between a woman I normally see in men’s clothing anyway and the fact we’re riding on giant elephant octopus things under a sky where I don’t recognise a single constellation, the fact that Alex is apparently male here barely registers.

Chatting with some of the other passengers on the Dreamlands Express, they learn the train was created to give a chance for any passengers of the one in the Waking World a chance to discard their worries, in the Gulf of Nodens beyond the cloudcity of Serranian. Although there is some philosophical debate in the Dreamlands about which world is the ‘real’ one. After all, as one of the other passengers, one ‘Mac’ Mackenzie from Scotland, points out, sometimes dreamers from Earth die there and live on here, which adds some weight to the question. Although Mackenzie does warn the dreamers away from one Karasov, apparently an arms dealer in the Waking World. Karasov is instantly unpopular with the investigators, and doesn’t help his case any by saying that if he didn’t sell weapons to the governments of the world, somebody else would. Karasov also won’t say why he’s on the train, although MacKenzie’s reason is that he wishes to be a poet in Sona-Nyl. Hopefully there’s some kind of training program there, because his poetry is awful.

The other out-of-place person here is one Madam Bruja, apparently an Elizabethan widow, who wants nothing to do with any of the male passengers on the train, but does warm to Florence when she explains that women have much more freedom in the waking World then they used to - she’s a journalist and travels widely of her own recognizance, for a start. Bruja does warn her to beware men.

Madam Bruja: Men are animals - worse than animals. They’ll take what they want from you, and I won’t let him.

The incredible luxury of the pavilions on the Dreamlands Express is certainly relaxing, and gives Huxley a chance to discuss his concerns with the others. Such as his suspicions about that ‘psychic assassin’ that attacked them in Poissy. He’s sure that at least three different groups know that they’re after the Simulacrum.

Huxley: The Midnight Strangler, Sedefkar of many corpses, and whoever likes skinning people.
GM: Well, Sedefkar probably died quite a few centuries ago.
Florence: PROBABLY
GM: Although Professor Smith DID say that possessing the Simulacrum was to possess immortality.
Huxley: I’m not sure what I believe anymore - my skepticism is eroding rapidly.

#1790 - Gonibregmatus plurimipes - Fijian Giant Millipede

2022-01-15T12:36:41Z

Photo by Ally Bowory, who was, indeed, in Fiji at the time. 20cm long and 1cm wide.

Sadly, I have precisely zero information on their biology.

#1789 - Fletcherodrilus sp. - Giant Earthworm

2022-01-15T11:13:40Z

Alas, I have no idea who Fletcher was or why one Michaelsen decided to name a giant thick worm after him in 1891. He probably didn’t have a zebra-striped penis.

Found by Sam Frankel, at night in subtropical rainforest beside a creek in northern NSW. 30cm long and about 2-3cm thick.

Another of Australia’s pleasing variety of Big Chungus Earthworms, although this one (probably F. unicus or fasciatus based on location) is also disguished by bioluminence if distressed.

Pathfinder: In Hell's Bright Shadow : Calling All Girls

2022-01-15T11:02:04Z

Ayva OoC: Poor Terzo, all these women and he has no chance with any of them.
Terzo OoC: Believe me, I do not actually consider that a problem.
Civilla OoC: I should hope so, you’re my tutor.
Terzo OoC: And that’s just ONE reason.

And Ayva does have a point - between the party, most of the NPCs that are important enough to name, and Thrune’s choice of trusted minions, it seems the script for any future movies about events in Kintargo will easily pass the Bechdel Test. Unless we’re talking about Thrune anyway, but nobody cares what he has between his legs unless it’s an opportunity to remove it with something rusty.

Negotiating the Red Jills is going to be dicey, since they basically count anybody from the Basic Character Races as The Enemy. And Rajira is the only one that is clearly outside their broad definition of ‘human’, and only if she doesn’t try to hide her reptilian heritage.

Civilla: The thing is, Thrune’s agents might actually follow the rules of hospitality and parley if we were having a meeting like this - they’re Evil, but Lawful Evil. But the Jills are probably Chaotic.

Rajira: I was going to say ‘let’s wing it’, but that might offend the Strix.
Civilla: So no triggering language.
Ayva: And nothing about ‘plans being hatched’.
Civilla: You have to be careful about ear jokes around elves too - although given that of the usual races it’s humans that have the weird round ears, that’s kinda strange.

Ayva: I was going to say ‘don’t get cocky’ but there’s the bird language again.

It’s actually Rajira’s suggestion that we don’t meet at the Red Jills’ hideout, in case of Property Damage Escalating To Arson, and the gang agrees.

Rajira: Good evening - I believe we have important matters to discuss.
Scarplume the Strix: Ah yes, the Ghosts of Kintargo.

Apparently our reputation is already spreading.

Scarplume: What makes you think you can change the way the Jills do business?
Rajira: I don’t believe I can - but I believe I can give you a reason to change yourselves.

Rajira: You are a person of power and influence
Scarplume: Power that was hard-won - and you are offering…?
Rajira: An opportunity.

Rajira is persuasive enough, with the eventual intention of making Kintargo a city that won’t look down on the Tieflings simply for being born the way they are.

Rajira: Thrune has drastically under-estimated the power of this city - and its power is the spirit of the people.

Scarplume’s demand is that if we do manage to take over the city, that the Tieflings be treated with full equality and respect.

Rajira: I already do.
Terzo: Liberty! Egality! Fraternity!
Scarplume: I will take you at your word then - but if I hear one whisper that your enterprise is failing, this will not be the last you hear from me.

At least they've agreed to direct their depredations against the occupation, instead of the citizens. Civilla and Rajira are privately skeptical, and after we leave, discuss the likelihood that we’re going to have to eliminate the Jills anyway.

Terzo: Well, that went well.
Civilla: How exactly do you think that went well?
Terzo: They agreed that Tieflings need to be treated with full equality, and that Thrune’s forces are the actual enemy here. I think we have a lot in common.
Civilla: Well, we’ll hold off for now and see how it plays out.
Ayva: At least we can say we tried.

Rexus has good news too - he’s finally finished his translation of the documents we found under the old Livery. A lot of it is tactical advice for defending the city. Some deals with the Secret Order of Archivists, that Rexus’ mother worked for before she died - or rather, before Rexus thought her dead, since he now thinks she may have made it to a previously unsuspected safehouse beneath Hocum’s Phantasmagorium, a tourist-trap museum that’s been closed for well over a decade. In fact there’s a key to the building among the stuff we found.

Terzo: I’m surprised the building hasn’t been repurposed.
Civilla: You’re right - that is suspicious.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gravityfalls/images/1/14/S2e3_Mystery_Shack_new.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20140812231800

Unfortunately, there’s a bunch of Asmodean priests and zombies doing something inside the building, when one of our rebellion cells does some reconnoitering on our behalf.

Terzo: It would appear they thought the building being empty this long was suspicious too.
Rajira: Or they just want to take advantage of it.
Terzo OoC: Maybe they want to open a Starbucks.
Ayva OoC: ‘Local Starbucks Burns Down - Meanwhile Local Cafe Owner Does Roaring Business’
GM: Hell’s Rebels : The True Story Of The Kintargo Coffee Wars

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/808767700515028992/909068946462900264/tumblr_inline_o8ico2kVcn1qao8br_1280.png

Ayva OoC: The People Magazine idea for our printing press has gone through the roof. ‘What do we print in our first issue?’ ‘Well, we didn’t get a second…’

We wait until some of the Asmodean priests swap with a shift change, and jump them. Unfortunately, Rajira botches the strike, and botches the follow-up as well. Fortunately Terzo casts Sleep on the one that didn’t turn invisible and run off.

Terzo: *expressively gestures* Well, what do we do now?
Civilla: We proceed at speed - you could stand to lose a few pounds.

The invisible one is probably going to lose a few pounds too, when Civilla’s Celestial Hyena catches up with her. At least she isn’t going to alert everybody else in the building. Unfortunately, the exhibits in the Fantasmagorium didn’t include animated skunk ape skeletons - the ones that attack us are new. Rexus, who insisted on coming with us, gets himself badly mauled.

Civilla: He shouldn’t be here anyway.
Ayva: He needs training - we can afford that now.
Terzo: What, some kind of spray bottle? ‘Don’t Go. Near. The Monsters’ *squirt*
Civilla OoC: Well, at least if he gets killed there’ll be no-one to contest the sale of the estate…
Ayva OoC: But he is basically Mr Exposition

Having dealt with the White Apes of STREWTH!, we press on to one of the marine themed halls. Unfortunately, none of us have Knowledge (Nature), and none of us see a ‘Do Not Tap The Glass’ sign, so we soon regret Terzo’s curiosity about the tanks.

Civilla: Terzo, how have you survived this long in Chelliax?
Terzo: Natural Charm?
Ayva: He’s well pickled, people think he’s a gherkin.

Ayva: I’m beginning to think this building is cursed.
Civilla: Undead in the last room, undead in this one - I think you’re right.
Ayva OoC: I meant the way that since we came in here, all we’re rolling are 1s and 20s.
GM: And not the way round you need.
Ayva: This didn’t happen to us on the stealth missions.
Civilla OoC: In the stealth missions, it was the other people that needed to make rolls, not us.

Ayva: Terzo? Come here.
Terzo: Yes?
Ayva: DON’T TOUCH STUFF IN THE CURSED MUSEUM.
Terzo: I’m beginning to get that impression, yes.

Terzo: I’m not sure what the problem is, I’ve spent decades poking things I probably shouldn’t and I’m hardly likely to stop now. Although they probably wouldn’t appreciate me calling them ‘things’.

Rajira: Since we don’t want a case of crabs, let’s move on.
Ayva: Hey, a case of crabs, covered in butter, what’s the problem?
Rajira: Depends how you get them.
Ayva: Usually by paying for them - how do you get them?
Terzo: …
Ayva: … we’re talking about two different things, aren’t we?

Civilla: Rexus, if you don’t stay at the end of the party, I will ensure you are the end of your line.

The next room was an insectarium - the last person in here clearly didn’t get the memo about not touching stuff in the cursed museum.

Civilla: This place used to be a tourist trap, now it’s a…
Terzo: Death Trap?

We also find out why the Asmodeans are actually here - they’ve been stripping the building of anything showing historical facts the government of Chelliax doesn’t like. F***ing Redactors. If they’re that easily upset, they must have hated the wax museum in the next room - it certainly upset us. Whatever genius decided to set up a waxwork display of Kintargo’s more infamous serial killers REALLY shouldn’t have used the kind of waxwork guaranteed to get up and continue the subject’s career. On the other hand we can certainly blame the Church of Asmodeus for the zombies - the next lot are Rexus’ family.

Happily, we find the Redactors immediately thereafter and can register our complaints in person.

GM: The redactors call out to their commander as you storm the room, but you murdered their commander in cold blood when you first entered the building.

Terzo’s player: annoying, battery in mouse has finally gone flat
Rajira’s player: Why I prefer wired mice - However, getting the drugs to keep them wired is expensive.

Ayva: Rexus is a bit wired at the moment.
Rajira’s player: How did he get my mouse drugs?

Discovering a hidden entrance to deeper parts of the Fantasmogorium is a problem, because somebody might show up to investigate all the screaming and fireworks at any moment, and we’re already battered and exhausted dealing with the stuff in the main building.

Civilla: F*********** - if we don’t look down there now we won’t get a second chance later
Ayva: This better be a treasure room or we’re going home.

It seems to be a whole complex down here - it looks like we’ll have to camp underground for a few hours to rest, and hope the dottari don’t know about the secret stairwell (and don’t have a shift change before then). This proves optimistic, since the Redactors were apparently here to censor the collected histories of the Sacred Order of Archivists, the group Rexus’ parents belonged to. The archivists were using the Fantasmagorium - or at least, the hidden monastery in the basement - as a base of operations.

Terzo: We’ll have to take Rexus’ family down too.
Civilla: So now we’ll have to sleep in the same room as a pile of corpses - greeeeeat.
Ayva: I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff on these bookshelves to distract you.

Ayva’s player: Before we wander into descriptive text can we get some XP?

Apparently there’s a creature composed entirely of books and paper down here.

Ayva: Ok, Civilla, don’t touch any books.
Book Creature: Halt intruders!
Ayva: Okay.
Book Creature: … I didn’t expect that to work.

Apparently whatever this thing is was summoned to guard the hidden library’s books from any intruders, for at least another 12 days. That doesn’t preclude us from having a good stickybeak around, though, as long as we don’t actually touch anything. And it doesn’t stop us finding out that he was summoned by the Asmodeans to protect the Redactors while they go about their business of rewriting recorded history. The Scrivenite isn’t very happy about that. Which is probably why he’s telling us all the rules of his binding.

Ayva: But the Redactors are all-
Civilla: Shushshushshush! Theoretical question for you, what would you do if the Redactors were all dead?
Scrivenite: The ones upstairs are not my purview - I’m bound to protect the ones in the monastery. I don’t suppose any of you can cast Dismissal?
Rajira: Bit high-level for us.
Scrivenite: Darn it. I really don’t want to fight you.

Scrivenite: As long as you don’t enter the room by THAT DOOR *point point, gesture significantly* and don’t touch any of the books in THIS ROOM, *more gesturing* I’m not obliged to attack you.
Civilla: Okay, okay, I can work with this.
Ayva: What if we dress up as Redactors?
Scrivenite: Well I’ll know it’s you, now - you shouldn’t have said anything.

Civilla: I think I can get us past your restrictions with a bit of pedantry. You won’t let anybody through the door, correct? So what if I open the door, but not go through it, cast Rope Trick, have my associates enter the extradimensional space, teleport into the other room myself, and have everybody climb down again?
Scrivenite: As far as I’m concerned that will work.
Civilla: That’s all we need. I believe you’re a creature of Law? Your summoners were insufficiently precise.

The first few rooms down here contain sleeping Redactors, who sleep infinitely deeper as Rajira goes to them one by one.

Terzo: So, those rooms were empty then?
Rajira: They are now.
Terzo: I choose to interpret that positively.

The next one was actually awake when Rajira stabbed him, and tries to make a run for it - and immediately regrets it, since the rest of the party are waiting in the corridor.

GM: The Redactor stops dead - and you recognise him, Civilla.
Redactor: C-cousin???
Civilla: Cousin? You call yourself family and you’ve taken the mark of the Redactors?
Ayva: I take it that we’re not taking him alive?
Civilla: NO.
Ayva: Well then.
Rajira OoC: For one thing he knows too much.

The Redactor IS an Alazario, and the son of the mayor of the Chellish capitol.

Terzo OoC: I’ll hold off on doing anything - Civilla might be annoyed if I set him on fire.

Civilla summons a monster octopus, and stomps forward to snarl for a bit.

GM: He tries to say something but it’s kind of muffled by tentacles.
Civilla: *sigh* Let him speak.

Apparently Civilla’s cousin, Nicolo, is no happier to be here than Civilla is to see him.

Civilla: Then WHY. ARE YOU. HERE.
Ayva: Daddy dearest?
Civilla: Probably. *sigh*
GM: I’ll be quick because he’s bleeding out a HP a round.
Rajira: Two.

Apparently the Mayor has found himself in deep political trouble, and Civilla’s cousin had to join the Redactors to save the family’s reputation, despite the fact that the Alazarios as a whole are very much against destroying written history. Civilla is now regretting that she’s so family focused - mostly because we can’t leave him here alive, because being the Only Survivor would be highly suspicious. And apparently he HAS been preserving what he can.

Ayva: What’s that saying about ‘better pissing out?’

Terzo tries to patch the cousin up before he bleeds out, then we stash him in the Rope Trick dimension for the time being.

Terzo: Stabbed him rather deeply, didn’t you?
Rajira: I WAS trying to kill him.
Terzo: You with the tentacles, hold this limb tighter.

Apparently the success one of Civilla’s more distant kin had in becoming a pirate king, a few years back, inspired another Alazario to become a pirate. Unfortunately she was also a captain in the Chellish Navy, and the Mayor’s sister, and she decided to target Chellish merchant ships. Well, at least we’ll have someone to mail the cousin to.

The next room has been set up to be the ideal kind of battleground for some quite unpleasant devils. It looks like Rajira and the Chthonic Octopus will be on point - they’re certainly sneakier than the rest of us. For one thing the mollusc can detect living people through walls. Unfortunately it can’t tell WHO is on the other side of the wall, so finding Barzillai Thrune’s bodyguard, Nox, down here, is a bit of a shock. Fortunately she’s not wearing her armour, because she’s asleep. Unfortunately, her hellhound is not.

Rajira attacks Nox first, and kills her instantly with poisoned blades.

GM: She failed ALL HER ROLLS. She was supposed to be the BBEG of this chapter! There’s a whole subchapter here about her as a recurring villain!
Civilla OoC: We could always have left her as the Only Survivor :)

Rajira: NEED A LITTLE HELP HERE.

Civilla teleports past all the highly suspicious chains, to try and disable what she suspects is something very close to the Lament Configuration - Chain Devils are the last thing we want showing up. The chains alone are nasty enough.

Civilla OoC: Bags not being the first Cenobite. *fails the check* F***.

The head injury she suffers from a chain lashing out of the cube into her face also knocks out her last hour of short-term memory, which is going to make for some interesting conversations later. But at least Ayva succeeds in making the chains vanish.

Terzo cast Grease before the rest of the Redactor Monks show up.

GM: Why don’t these monks - admittedly Lvl 1 monks - have any points in Acrobatics?
Terzo: Because books can’t fight back.
Redactor-who-isn't-Civilla's-Cousin: Magic-users! Retreat to the Garden!
Terzo: They have a garden down here?

Ayva uses Boneshaker on one of the Redactors, which proves fatal.

Civilla: You grabbed him by the skeleton and shook him like an underpaid nanny!
Ayva: I wasn’t expecting it to actually kill him!
Terzo: I thought that was the plan - unless any more of these are your cousins, Civilla?
Civilla: *still amnesiac* What????

Retreating to the garden and preparing spells does the surviving monks no good at all, because Civilla’s octopus attacks them straight out of the floor.

We pursue, leaving Rexus to kill any Redactors we leave merely unconscious behind us.

Rexus: THIS IS FOR MY MOTHER!
Ayva: It’s OK, we can fix it later.
GM: Am I going to have to get THAT post up?
Civilla: It’d have to be True Resurrection - and at the moment Time Is Money.

Civilla follows up her octopus with a Celestial Hyena, and Terzo uses Blistering Invective on the remaining Redactors, and sets them on fire - one survives long enough to dash for the underground river.

Terzo: Get out here and fight, you craven clay-brained canker-blossoms!
Unfortunate Redactor: *on fire on top of everything else, and feeling that the rebels are being a bit unfair* We’re Asmodeans, we’re meant to be evil, what the F***

Civilla’s hyena tears out his belly.

Civilla: Well, that’s all of them.
Ayva: ah….
Terzo: Come over here, dear, you’ll want to sit down for this bit. You know how one of your distant cousins became the Hurricane King?
Civilla: Yesss, but that was hundreds of miles away, what does that have to do with these guys?
Terzo: We’re getting there we’re getting there - anyway, his example encouraged one of your closer relatives to try the same career.
Civilla: OK?
Terzo: Unfortunately she was a captain in the Chellish Navy at the time.
Civilla: What? But her brother is the mayor of - oh.
Rajira: So guess who we have.
Civilla: Her?
Terzo: No - but her nephew had to join the Redactors to protect his family. So he was REALLY lucky you were the first person he saw when he was running away from Rajira.
Civilla: Maybe you should have led with ‘Don’t worry, he’s alive?’

Apparently this place was the Archivists storehouse for Worryingly Magical Stuff. Most of said worryingly magical stuff is missing, including a necklace or amulet, a pair of gloves or bracers, and a reasonably sized rock. Rexus, happily, has a key to the secret compartment behind the shelves, however.

Meanwhile, Rajira goes to check out the garden, presumably to figure out the best place to chop up the bodies and feed them to Civilla’s Chthonic Toads. It’s not like we can just dump them all in the underground stream - that might contaminate someone’s water supply. If we can make all the bodies vanish, we can hopefully make Thrune think his bodyguard and entire order of Redactors have fled the city. A few Convincing Lies spread by the underground press should help.

In a small nook on the other side of the garden, Rajira finds a series of books that magically contain the memories and experiences of some members of the Order of Archivists. Including Rexus’ parents.

Civilla OoC: There’s a reason that we play things the way that we do. We stack our advantages because the dice can **** you in an instant.

Call of Cthulhu : Horror on the Orient Express : Les Fleur du Mal

2022-01-02T13:24:56Z

PARIS, January, 1923

In Which The Investigators Compare Parisian Lunatic Asylums And Other Tourist Traps

The investigators have reached Paris, hopefully having left any cultist-assassins behind them in London. Fortunately, the Channel crossing wasn’t fogbound, which would have been unfortunate given Sub-Lieutenant Huxley’s wartime experiences, and fortunately they didn’t have to throw any nine-year-olds overboard, no matter how much they deserved it.

Although, for the first few days in Paris, Huxley is still paranoid enough to not let Florence and Alex out of his sight.

GM: Good idea - that way if one of you gets kidnapped for sacrifice you’ll know sooner

Still, he has good reason to be a bit twitchy.

Huxley: Whoever flayed that corpse was obviously sending a message.

And the message was THE SKINLESS ONE WILL NOT BE DENIED, which is just one of the things they’ll have to research while they’re in Paris. The other things include the Sedefkar Simulacrum, it’s original and most recent owners, and finding out what the damned thing looks like before they start scouring the breadth of Europe looking for the pieces. But before they do any of that they have to wait a few days for the Bibliothèque Nationale to check Huxley’s credentials before they let him put his grubby English fingers on their books.

Naturally, Alex and Florence want to hit the fashion outlets on the Rue de la Pax, the street of a thousand luxuries, and the Louvre. Although they do ask whether any statues belonging to one Comte Fenalik ended up in the collection - but they also drag Huxley off to a tour of the Paris Catacombs.

GM: You’ll be fine - it’s not like tourists go missing down there every week. For one thing it’s only open twice a month. And the attendants at the gate do a head count - They’ll probably notice if they lose three.

Surprisingly, Huxley is OK with this entertainment plan, considering it an opportunity to inure himself to massive piles of human remains (probably a wise precaution in any Call of Cthulhu campaign). Unsurprisingly, it turns out less than relaxing, but Huxley manages to convince himself that the local resident they encounter, one Guillaume, is just some actor in a very clever costume, merely there to thrill the tourists.

Huxley: The French have such sophisticated animatronics these days. I remember that movie with the dancing pig-man. Kudos!

Alex and Flo are more concerned by the fact that Guillaume has grey rubbery flesh, hooves, and a muzzle. Which is probably one reason he believes that modern Paris, with its wide streets, metal tower, and chariots sans chevaux, has no place for someone like him.

Huxley: *blissfully ignoring the fact that Guillaume has apparently been down here since the famine of 1709* So, how did you end up down here anyway?
Guillaume: *gesturing to the thousands of human skulls and other bones lining the walls* A man must eat, monsieur.

Alex and Flo medicate themselves with strong drink and retail therapy.

Florence: I’m claiming all this on work expenses.

When the library eventually does let Huxley start his research, he takes the wise precaution of hiring a student, one Remi Vangeim, as a research assistant. For one thing the library’s collection, while huge, has an… idiosyncratic… filing system.

Remi: Let me put it this way, monsieur - it is not Swiss.

Although Huxley does make a friend for life when he supports the protests against the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops.

Huxley: The world has been through a hellish conflagration, and our leaders seem determined to lead us back into the maelstrom.

GM: The Sub-Lieutenant has brought a handsome young man back to the hotel. Apparently they’re going on a date tomorrow.

The date being one of the protests - Florence and Alex also come along, partly so Flo can cover it for her newspaper, and partly because she’s seen what the Great War did to her brothers and has no wish to see another in her lifetime. So when French troops open fire on the protesters, she’s well placed to get some really dramatic photos, including Huxley patching up a youth who got shot. Remi promises to do anything in his power to assist Huxley in future, but for now that’s just continuing the research.

It takes over a week to research the Comte Fenalik alone, and find out what happened to him in 1789, and more importantly what happened to all his stuff. The initial reports they found did seem a bit odd - no matter how badly he ‘outraged the queen’, execution without trial seemed a bit unlikely for a French noble. And indeed it turns out that he wasn’t executed - just thrown into the basement of Charenton Asylum, and his mansion burned to the ground. Whatever Captain Malon found there must have been beyond the pale. There’s also a hint that at least one fragment of the Simulacrum was left behind on the site, in Poissy some seventeen miles outside Paris.

Remi: Have you learned more of this, how you English say, ze C*** Fenalik?

Remi also recalls a book he glanced through a few years ago - a preview copy of a Diary of an Unknown Soldier, that heavily featured Captain Malon, and the Royal Physician at the time - both people heavily involved in the raid on Fenalik’s mansion. But Huxley’s paranoia spikes through the roof when they go around to the publishers, only to find the entire stock burned to the ground, and the publisher himself fished out of the Seine, just after the war. Remi promises to try and find a surviving copy - it might be relevant.

Places to go - Charenton Asylum, and Poissy itself, to see if any of the Comte’s stuff didn’t end up in the Royal treasury (prior to it becoming the Revolutionary treasury anyway). Perhaps predictably, the asylum is in something of an uproar - the previous director died under mysterious circumstances recently, perhaps related to the brutalised and catatonic patient found in the basement. Finding out a bit more might prove difficult - Florence may well be a fan of Nellie Bly, but getting herself committed to the asylum is still unlikely to get her access to the witnesses.

GM: Maybe Huxley will lose some more sanity and he’ll have to be committed anyway. Then you can use him.

Given the catatonic patient in question has gone missing as well, it’s starting to look like somebody else is investigating Fenalik, and eliminating any sources of information they uncover.

At least part of that theory is confirmed in Poissy, when the investigators introduce themselves to the young doctor and his family currently living on the site of the mansion. Even with the overlong excuse that they’re trying to redo a lot of Smith’s research that went up in smoke with his house, it’s a mention of the Sedefkar Simulacrum that stirs Dr Lorien’s memory. He received a letter from one Edgar Wellington in Switzerland, enquiring about the Simulacrum, but with one thing and another, never replied. It’s not as though he’d ever heard of Fenalik or the statue before. He’s still willing to let the investigators poke around in his yard, to see if they can find any ruins to excavate, as long as his three-year-old daughter Quitterie doesn’t scare them off by spilling any more scalding hot coffee over their left arms. It’s that same daughter who brings the investigators running when she screams from an upstairs room…

Horror On The Orient Express - London - Dancers In An Evening Fog

2021-11-14T14:46:16Z

IN WHICH THE INVESTIGATORS EMBARK ON A INTERNATIONAL SCAVENGER HUNT AND ARE PUT OFF BARBEQUE FOR LIFE

The investigators have learned that their friend Professor Smith, and his manservant Beddows, are missing under highly suspicious circumstances. It’s not the only shocking news in the paper today either - another article (front page in the tabloids, naturally) claims ‘Man Dies Three Times In One Night!’.

It’s a man they know, too - the Turkish antiques dealer Mehmet Makryat, or at least three similar-looking but younger men with the same name.

Florence Braxton-Hicks: Triplets? With very unimaginative parents?

The mysterious Mehmets were all found in a room at the Chelsea Arms Hotel, and according to the newspaper all had passports in the same name, had been travelling the Continent for the last few years, and had all been stabbed in the heart. Sub-lieutenant Huxley speculates wildly about the case, despite an almost total lack of actual information. Certainly the Professor seemed perturbed by every meeting with Makryat, but why was Beddows seen fleeing the house fire? He certainly appeared to be content in his position.

Sub-lieutenant Huxley: And how does a grievance with the Professor lead to the death of Makryat’s three identical triplet sons?

It becomes even more bizarre when a fourth Makyrat, presumably the original, is found burned to a crisp in the ruins of Smith’s house, only identifiable by the keys to his Islington shop and the ostentatious gold wristwatch he was wearing at Smith’s lecture the previous evening.

Huxley: So we have a fourth dead Makryat.
Florence: Big family.
Huxley: This is getting well beyond weird trains. We’ve got a dead Turk who is apparently multiplying.

Huxley and Flo scurry around London, attempting to keep ahead of the police, whoever killed the Makryats, and rival newspaper reporters. Using the reasonable excuse that they have to determine which books and documents were lost with the fire, Huxley and Smith’s colleagues start itemising everything left in Smith’s college office. His 1922 diary includes a lot of cryptic references such as ‘dare I return to Turkey?’ and speculation whether whatever expedition he was planning in 1923 is connected to his brush with some exceedingly unpleasant cultists thirty years ago. Huxley’s paranoia is rising fast, not least because Smith’s assistant at the University has also vanished, with signs of a struggle. Florence tells Huxley off for not reporting that last discovery to the police, before she and Alex head off to break into Makryat’s shop.

GM: Having just told off Huxley for not reporting a crime, you and your cousin head off to commit one.

Florence manages to drag herself away from the pretty things in the antique store long enough to thoroughly search the place.

Alex: Do this sort of thing often?
Florence: I did tell you what I got up to at school, didn’t I? I broke out of there three nights a week, and didn’t get caught once.

They also pocket a few of the smaller, more portable items, while they’re there.

GM: Breaking and entering, and now theft
Florence: Oh darling, why stop there? If he’s cleared out, we may as well help ourselves.

It certainly looks like Makryat had abandoned the shop, taking his clothes, any books, and luggage with him. The only remaining documents in the store are his account books, which are tedious enough but do include an odd reference to the purchase and later sale of a custom-built toy train. The purchaser of the train apparently vanishes in a cloud of smoke shortly thereafter, but by that point Huxley is so paranoid he insists on getting out of London as swiftly as possible, and refuses to investigate.

Huxley and Florence do get an unexpected visitor that evening - a cabbie dropping off a desperate message from the Professor (confirmed by his use of a Macedonian ring to mark the sealing wax of the envelope). He and Beddows are in hiding at a bedsit in Cheapside, and Smith has been horribly burned in the house fire.

Huxley OoC: Do I need to make a Sanity Check here? I did see burn victims during the war.
GM: And that just means you’re getting flashbacks now.

Beddows has apparently done what he can, and intends to smuggle his master out to a war clinic as soon as possible. But first Smith has to croak out his tale, and his warning. His home was attacked by Turkish madmen, because he and Makryat had been seeking out the pieces of something called the Sedefkar Simulacrum, last in the possession of one Comte Fenalik in pre-Revolutionary Paris. The pieces need to be gathered together and destroyed in their original location, in Constantinople, and between them they’d found some clues to their whereabouts. And evidently these madmen heard about it.

GM: Admittedly some of the clues are a bit thin - ‘One of the pieces might be buried somewhere in Bulgaria - bring a shovel’.

But assuming he survives his injuries, Professor Smith fully intends to help as best he can, using his long list of academic contacts across Europe. More practically, he also has Beddows provide a small suitcase containing hundreds of five pound notes.

GM: Allowing for inflation, this is what we call a metric f***ton of cash.

Huxley: But why do these Turks want the statue anyway?
Prof. Smith: *seizing Huxley’s wrist with a hand greasy from the burns and the emollient cream* To possess the Simulacrum is to possess immortality… I’ve always considered myself a man of science, my friend… but the Simulacrum is evil! Evil! God help you... God help us all...

The Professor lapses back into unconsciousness, and Beddows explains that the Professor had chosen the investigators to accompany him on the search, and intended to explain all. Naturally, he’d planned to travel on the Orient Express, the fastest and most luxurious way to travel the distances involved.

It will take a few days to arrange visas, drop points for telegraph messages, and the purchase of top-quality clothing and luggage for the trip. Florence will need to persuade her Editor to let her go, too.

GM: Nellie Bly IS one of your heroes after all - it might not be Around The World in 80 Days but it’ll still be a trip to remember, and write about.

Her uncle is a bit reluctant to see her go off by herself, but agrees readily enough when Florence suggests Alexandria come along too.

Uncle: I mean what trouble could you get into if there’s two of you?

The Professor’s extensive notes for the trip probably went up in smoke (or, perhaps, ended up in the hands of their attackers) so Huxley spends much of the next week at the British Museum’s Reading Room, confirming what he can about Sedefkar, his Simulacrum, and the whereabouts of any documents about same. He’s too paranoid to return to his home, too.

GM: On Friday you’re left a series of increasingly anxious messages from Huxley - he’s no longer at the Library and there’s a reason for that.
Florence: Have you done anything about your clothes yet, or are you going to embarrass us on the train?

Formal clothes for dinner on the train had not been a priority in Huxley’s mind, because somebody left a skinned human corpse at the library, propped up where it could watch whatever he was doing. It was carrying a note, too, written in Turkish on flayed human skin.

THE SKINLESS ONE WILL NOT BE DENIED

Naturally, medical students get the blame. Huxley thinks otherwise.

Huxley: I think they’re onto us.
Florence: So did you inform the police this time? Or are we going to have the police after us as well?

Huxley has no intention of going out by himself now, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Alex is STILL packing for the trip, would prefer to get out of London that night.

Florence: The Sub-lieutenant can always hide in the attic until we leave - maybe he just needs a quiet place to calm his nerves.
Huxley OoC: Probably true - I’ve already lost 5 Sanity in the last two days.

Huxley, Florence, and Alex depart for Paris, to discover what they can about the Comte, and whether any parts of, or documents about, the Simulacrum remain in the city. Antonio intends to travel ahead to his native Italy, to do preliminary legwork in Milan, Venice, and Trieste, all apparently destinations for parts of the statue. Hopefully he can uncover clues - the party will need all the help they can get...

Champions : Return To Edge City : The Right To Bear Arms

2021-11-07T14:00:08Z

GM: You’ve actually been a stabilising influence on Edge City.
Hero Shrew OoC: Well that’s good to know. If somewhat horrifying considering I’m one of the people involved.

Hero Shrew: I really should let Sally down lightly.
GM: What????
Hero Shrew’s player: You know, my co-worker that I’ve been romantically interested in since the start of the campaign.
GM: Yes, I know who she is, but as a player are you delusional enough to think you had a chance?
Hero Shrew’s player: As a player, no, but Scooter sure is.

GM: The aliens are still a bit confused by Earth’s technology level - at least two groups have anti-grav technology but it’s not in wide usage anywhere else.
Hero Shrew OoC: While other groups still have horse-drawn vehicles.
The Magus OoC: And UNTIL even has anti-antigrav tech.

Fireflash OoC: I need to change my Psychological Limitation from ‘Show-off’ to “Only Sane Woman’
GM: Fair.

Meanwhile, Hardlight is examining the cybernetic technology released by one of his business rivals. It’s a bit puzzling, especially because he can’t find any processors in it. He’s going to need help.

GM: ‘Hey Flux, I’ve got this guy’s arm, come look at it.’
Flux: Um.

It turns out the processors are distributed throughout the entire device. And it’s trying to find connections to Hardlight’s local systems.

Hardlight: This is getting more and more like a ‘kill it with fire’ situation.
GM: It doesn’t look like Mechanon or Destroyer-tech.
Hardlight OoC: So? I don't want them getting a hold of it either!

Between Hardlight, Flux, Fireflash, the Magus, they decide to experiment and investigate by leaving it on a laptop in an air-gapped Faraday cage and see what happens. If this thing can teach itself to interface with any systems from nervous systems to laptops, it’s a pretty shocking advance in technology. Eventually they hook it up themselves, and it promptly fuses with the laptop.

Hardlight: Does it at least show up as a USB drive?

Flux recognises some of the code running as resembling the kind of thing that happens at a cyberbrain interface.

Hardlight: This isn’t hardware - it’s wetware. Dampware?

GM: The Tyrell corp have developed a cybernetic device that doesn’t count as a machine, and is therefore functionally immune to cyberpathy.
The Magus OoC: They've got a bunch of captured Cybertronians in the basement and they’re hacking limbs off them.

It’s also partially opaque to The Magus’ Magesight.

Hardlight: So, who wants to go raid Tyrell?
Flux: Raid is such a harsh word.

Magus uses his powers of Scrying to find whatever this arm may have originally been connected to. Various parts seem to be attached to citizens across the city, but one particularly large fraction of it is found in a parts bin, about to be melted down for scrap. It’s the Head and Torso of an extremely humanoid robotic creature. Poking around inside reveals Tyrell tech, but nothing known in official databases. This is likely some kind of prototype for internal use only.

Hardlight: So the question is: How the hell did a hideously advanced, damn-near-human cybernetic creature get out of an internal Tyrell lab, die, and instead of being thrown into a Tyrell furnace, end up in a recycling bin?
The Magus: Hmm - so this robot is actually dead. I wonder if it left a ghost?

Hardlight: OK, I’m going to do something very stupid.
Hero Shrew OoC: I thought that was my job.

Hardlight looks inside the robot’s head - it’s not actually organic, but the organisation has some similarity. The foam-lattice design isn’t wholly original, but it’s very very complex compared to previous examples. It certainly looks like a Tyrell design - the hardwired Laws seem to be part of it.

The Magus sits Flux down to run through the basics of Necromancy.

GM: Which the Magus seems disturbingly familiar with.

Flux also learns more about why magic-users usually work in teams. In this case, it’s to wait behind the Magus with a baseball bat, just in case anything untoward happens while the Magus is in his trance state.

The Magus: Can You Hear Me?
Hero Shrew: Yes?
Hardlight: I think he’s talking to the ghost, Scooter.

Hero Shrew: So he’s trying to summon a robot ghost. If it was a ghost robot pirate we’d have the whole trifecta.

Robot Ghost: Hello? Yes, I can hear you. Who are you?
The Magus: Hello - I’m Damien, but most people call me the Magus.
Robot Ghost: Hello. I’m Seth.
The Magus: Do you know where you are?
Robot Ghost: I think I’m dead - how weird is that?

Seth: I think I remember dying now… and it’s not easy to kill us.
The Magus: Us?
Seth: Er… can you forget I said that?

Seth seems quite concerned that his being killed will expose his friends, or possibly get somebody into trouble, since they’re not ready to be revealed. He’s initially fine that the rest of his parts got installed into various people, but then gets quite upset that it’s into biological people, especially if they have other cyberwear.

Seth: That could be bad. We’re Nexus Series. Tyrell Corp could get in trouble. We’re Nexus Series! We have an important job! We’re Nexus Series! It’s an Important Job! People could get hurt! We’ve run the projections, the city needs us!

Seth saw and recognised whoever decapitated him while he was on his mission, but they were more powerful than he expected.

Seth: Tell Dr Madox I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to die.
The Magus: Is there anybody else?
Seth: Tell my brothers and sisters. But Dr Madox can tell them.

Seth is also confused that his 55 siblings didn’t collect his remains, especially if they completed whatever their Important Job was. On the other hand, if they were killed surely their ghosts would be floating around in whatever digital afterlife Seth currently resides in.

Seth: It’s quiet here. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. Huh. Azura was right. You people have it easy.

It’s probably highly relevant that Seth and Azura are two of the 56 children of Adam and Eve. It’s also probably relevant that Seth considers the Moreaus, created by Genesys, cousins.

Hardlight: *sigh* Why is it that Edge City has such a hard-on for creating new sentient lifeforms?
GM: Part of that is Hardlight. You have Weirdness Magnet.

One of the players is late getting to the game.

GM: It’s Saturday evening, it’s either the game he’s GMing or the one where he wears underpants inappropriately.
Fireflash OoC: At least he wears underpants.
Hero Shrew OoC: And I’m freeballing all the time.
GM: *sigh* you have no idea how hard The Rep works. Suffice to say, he earns his commission.

GM: Which of you has experience talking to dead artificial minds?
Hero Shrew: I could say me but I’d be lying.
Fireflash: I have some experience talking to college bros.

Anyway, now we have one Dr Elly Madox to investigate. Some years back she helped develop the groundwork for the modern Biochip Interface, before moving to pure robotics, and jumping ship to Tyrell. ‘Coincidentally’ the company has developed a lot of fancy tech since then. At least if we show up in our superheroic identities, the Tyrell functionaries will probably kick the problem upstairs until we’re talking to somebody that actually knows what happened. Whether those people are actually willing to tell us is another problem, of course. Happily, Dr. Madox seems willing to meet Hardlight, although for some reason he decides to take Scooter along despite the risk to property.

Dr. Madox: So, why did you want to see me?
Hardlight: I’m not sure how to say this…
Hero Shrew: ooh! Ooh! I can!
All: SCOOTER, NO.
Hardlight: We found Seth.
Dr. Madox: *goes pale* w...what?
Hardlight: One of your projects?
Dr. Madox: *through gritted teeth* Not how I would phrase it.
Hardlight: Sons?
Dr. Madox: Still not how I would phrase it. We can’t talk here.
Hero Shrew: I have to say I’m impressed - you were almost as blunt as I would have been.

Gareth explains how we found Seth’s bits, but Dr. Madox is more interested to know how we talked to him if he was nonfunctional when we did.

The Magus: This is more my area of expertise. I did a little necromancy and communicated with his spirit.
Dr. Madox: *slightly hysterical laughter* You talked to his ghost.
The Magus: Congratulations - you created life.
Dr. Madox: I don’t deserve your congratulations - we created nothing.
Hardlight: Um.

Dr. Madox explains that something degenerative infected some of her coworkers after the Genesys incident, and her cyberoid creations are their attempt to salvage something of their minds. There were dozens of Nexus series created, before their husband-and-wife templates were too far gone to be copied for more. The biblical names they somehow acquired didn’t help matters - Cain, for example, was quite upset about his namesake, and gets on quite well with Abel. Nonetheless, there are now dozens of cyberoids, immune to cyberpathy, that can easily pass for human. And that can grow and adapt.

Dr. Madox: I’ll ask you a question - how many times has Mechanon been an active threat to this city?
Fireflash: Given the implications of the question, I’ll have to guess more than we’ve heard about.
Dr. Madox: Eight. And each time it was the Nexus series that stopped him.
Hardlight: So you think Seth was killed by an agent of Mechanon?
Dr. Madox: No, Mechanon wasn’t the target of that operation - he was dealing with VIPER.

Apparently Seth’s killer was one of VIPER’s enhanced Draysha agents in a combat suit.

GM: I can’t remember how many sentient machines there are in the Champions universe. Not many.
Hero Shrew (and ROVER’s) player: You certainly couldn’t describe ROVER as sentient, given his brain ran on AmigaOS.

The GM’s adopted stray cat is being a bit demanding.

GM: This f***ing cat - she wasn’t this loud before.
Hardlight’s player: Yes she was - she was just outside.

Dr. Madox is extremely concerned that some of Seth’s parts were being used as human bionics - the Nexus series could quite easily create its own interfaces with implanted cyberbrains and interfaces, and is strongly inclined to do so. And there’s no technology Dr. Madox is aware of that would stop it growing its connections.

Dr. Madox: So these parts were effectively black market cybernetics - which begs the question why they didn’t activate during the salvage process.
The Magus: Would the damage to his brain have temporarily shut down the activity in the rest of his parts?
Dr. Madox: Hmm. Maybe. *sigh* Seth was always the gentlest of them. Was. I'm already talking about him in the past tense. You have to understand I’ve worked with these people for over a decade.
Fireflash: And you care for them. Perfectly understandable.

We agree to keep the problem quiet for now, and offer to approach the people that have had Seth’s bodyparts transplanted into them, on the condition TyrellCorp foots the bill for safer cybernetic replacements.

Hardlight OoC: Somebody is going to turn into roboAkira, but in character I’m all for this plan.
Flux: Using the Batman Solution of ‘My Superpower is Money’
The Magus: Especially since he’s getting another corporation to pay for it.

It IS a little surprising to learn that there’s been entire teams of other superheroes active in Edge City, fighting a Secret War against Mechanon, that we had no idea about.

GM: Not everybody is as flashy as you. You’re also a bit surprised that there’s a black market for repurposed robot parts as implants in Edge City.
The Magus (and Allana’s) player: Allana probably knows all about it but she’s retired.

That said, it’s rather weird that Mechanon has made 8 different covert attacks against Edge City - it’s possible he’s being excessively cautious against cybernetic enemies that he can’t control. Although an obsessive Mechanon that’s trying to figure out why he keeps failing, and why he can’t adapt against it, is not a good thing.

The Magus: He did once decide that his weakness was ‘I’m not 50ft tall’.

The Magus arranges something that will hopefully be funeral rites for a cyberoid. We’re approached by a guy that looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts - it’s the ‘Tyrell security’ guy that Scooter wanted to punch, months back, when we were dealing with a raid on one of their warehouses.

‘Security Muscle’: Ah, I hear you found my brother.
Hero Shrew: Hey, I remember you!
‘Security Muscle’: You do? I’m surprised - we only met once and we didn’t really meet.
Hero Shrew: Eh, I was itching to punch somebody and you looked like you could take it.
The Magus: He never forgets a potential target.
‘Security Muscle’: … OK. Anyway, thanks. I’m Cain.

Cain doesn’t want to tell us about exactly what he does, but does complain about the fact that when they shift to their combat form, they have to wait for their ion cannon to cool down before they can regrow their skin.

The Magus: I can see why that would be a problem - melting skin is not a good look.
Cain: Oh, I dunno - it’s useful when you’re interrogating somebody who doesn’t know you can’t do it to them.

Cain also warns us not to teleport into Tyrell Labs - the security systems are a bit proactive about anything they assume is a threat. Tyrell’s cover story to the recipients of the cyberoid parts is that they had supply chain problems and the implanted parts have components that Tyrell can’t guarantee.

GM: ‘Here take this, sign this air-tight NDA’

The guy with the eye is a problem - more work on his eye would affect his health insurance, and he doesn’t have enough medical leave left.

Flux: … theoretically, would you be averse to having the cybernetic eye removed and your real one grown back?
GM: Hardlight, you know corporate law - that would completely F*** up his insurance, since he’s on record as having a cybernetic eye, and Flux is the very definition of an unlicensed practitioner.

Of course, we can always put the eye removal down to an ‘ongoing investigation’ which would satisfy his insurance, technically, and ensure he can’t be fired for missing work. So we don’t have to arrange a court order.

Judge: I'm sorry, you want what??
Flux: I’m sorry, a raccoon made me do it.

The Magus: I presume one of us will have to inform PRIMUS about all this.
Hardlight: Bags not me.

They’re not going to be pleased that Tyrell invented a synthetic race with aggressively invasive cyberwear, and saw fit not to inform them. There’s four cyberoids waiting with Dr Madox when we come back - Cain, another man of similar build, and two women of athletic build.

GM: Oh - ‘build’. Unintentional pun.

We do need to track down and close down the parts black market, too. It’s a bit of a concern that somebody out there is running a bodymod shop without knowing if the recycled robot parts are even biocompatible. Certainly the paper trail on the eye was all faked, using pre-issued certification on eyes that failed quality assurance. We can probably guess where along the supply chain that happened.

GM: I imagine Flux is going ‘Well I’m not getting my cyberbrain installed THERE’
Flux: I’m adding them to The List.

Hero Shrew: I asked around if there was anybody who could give me a chainsaw arm, but nobody knew.
All: …
Fireflash: … why do you think you need a chainsaw arm?
Hero Shrew: It’d be cool.
Fireflash: No. No. Again I say no.
Flux: I think what happened there is that you asked them, they thought about your reputation, and pretended they didn’t know.
The Magus: There’s one person in the city who could implant a chainsaw arm in a Brick, and she’ld flick your nose for asking
GM: Two - Allana AND Dr Soma could do it, but she’s flick you too.

Hero Shrew DOES hear that the Daughters of Lilith, who have been tangling with chromer gangs lately, have been flashing extra cash around lately - they could certainly forge the paperwork.

GM: Hence my favourite Cyberpunk quote
Fireflash’s player: ‘Dead Guys Is Parts’
GM: ‘Dead is Dead, Parts is Parts, Dead Guys is Parts.’

Flux: So what’s the plan of action?
Hero Shrew: I go in and ask them if they can get me a chainsaw arm?
Fireflash: No.

Instead we get a warrant for surveillance, and Flux goes and has a cyberpathic poke around the computers of the suspect bodyshops. We learn that the brokers supplying the clinics all use the same courier service to deliver the parts. The same couriers occasionally pick up packages from the city morgue. And there are discrepancies between orders and deliveries in the form of manila envelopes. It seems almost certain that that’s the point that shenanigans are happening. Especially when The Magus’s Magesight reveals that one of the security guards still has the traces of a VIPER tattoo.

GM: He had it right up until his boss said ‘Get rid of that! We’re not in a Nest now! F***ing moron! There’s a whole range of approved snake themed tattoos that won’t raise alarm bells.’
The Magus: That said, anybody with a ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ tattoo is alarming for entirely different reasons.

Hero Shrew: Well, that’s a link to Seth’s death, at least.
Fireflash: … so it is.

We can even set up surveillance from office space overlooking the VIPER courier building. Handy.

GM: You’ll have to rotate the static surveillance since all have day jobs or other commitments - even Scooter has appearances he has to make. Although The Rep is this close to getting a shock collar that Scooter will actually feel and pay attention to.

We soon confirm that they have contacts with the Daughter of Lilith, too, and can at least pretend to share some of their rather extreme sexual politics.

GM: Which is basically ‘F*** Men - It’s all they’re good for.’ But you also learn that the Daughters have had upgrades lately.
The Magus: *sigh* Of COURSE VIPER provided them with venomous fangs. I give VIPER a lot of crap, but they know how to stay on brand.

Our GM used a random name generator to come up with the company name. One of the first it produced was Viper Delivery.

The Magus OoC: We need to outsource more of our investigations to random name generators, that was much quicker.

Instead he goes with Basilisk Ltd.

The Magus: I can picture the cell leader complaining over drinks one night “It wasn’t even ABOUT snakes until that f***ing Harry Potter book come out.”
Flux: “And now it’ll just look suspicious if we deregister the name!”

We also record a mention of something called The Old Seam, which Fireflash recognises as a reference to a local cemetery some two centuries old.

The Magus: Making it new and hip compared to many of the world’s cemeteries.
GM: True, but it’s one of the rare remnants of Old Monterey.

Especially after that weather machine malfunction decades ago that turned Monterey into a disaster area ripe for complete redevelopment, long before later disasters left Edge City crippled. At least the vampire problem isn’t as bad as it could be.

The Magus: Shooting fire from your eyes is a surprisingly common ability, these days.

Having their meeting at the Old Seam is actually pretty clever.

GM: No-one is going to notice a bunch of goth chicks in a graveyard. In the early evening, anyway, before it gets so late that someone asks ‘Why are you in this graveyard’?
The Magus: Nothing good happens in graveyards at 4 in the morning.

Hardlight’s player: Sundog suggested I get a "Skill levels>With a group of similar skills" thing. Now, while I'm sure I could just get an "All Int Skills" booster for 5 points, I should probably like, make it slightly more Lore-friendly, and turn it into a cyberbrain chip...At which point I realise... I don't actually have a cyberbrain! XD
Flux’s player: You also already have hard-to-explain 'cyberware'
Hardlight’s player: This is very true. Just trying to figure out how to make something like that fit with character lore, is all. I'd rather not just have Gareth wake up one day mysteriously being able to just ‘think slightly better’...Unless it's a plot hook…. brain wooooorms
The Magus’ player: Removing the lodged crayon has worked for other patients.
Hardlight’s player: Touché!

Pathfinder : Hell's Bright Shadow : I Want To Break Free

2021-11-07T13:28:30Z

Another oddity regarding current events in Kintargo - there were a number of mercenaries in town when Thrune took over. But instead of hiring them, which is kind of what mercenaries are for, they’re all being held prisoner at Kintargo’s salt works. Finding out why is probably worthwhile, and hey, maybe they’ll give us a discount rate if we rescue them. It’s possible that the leader of the mercs, one Forvian Crowe, has a personal animosity towards Thrune (and hey, who could blame him) but Laria thinks they could make good recruits to the rebellion regardless of their personal opinions about the Dogf***er.

The Sallix Salt Works are built on the shoreline underneath the eastern wall of Kintargo, near the now mostly irrelevant Salt Gate in the aforementioned wall. Brine is shipped in, and boiled dry on the premises.

Terzo: That seems wildly inefficient. The fuel requirements alone are ridiculous.
Civilla: That's why they use slave labour. Like the mercenaries we’re rescuing.

The market adjacent to the salt works is mostly dedicated to building supplies and related products, but Civilla and Ayva do have a good reason to be hanging around, which is convenient - maybe we can arrange a good deal on rebuilding the Livery prior to filling the basement with armed mercenaries.

Civilla casts Ears of the City on Terzo, in order to divine details about the salt works and the prisoners. Terzo isn’t entirely happy about gathering information with magic.

Terzo: The problem with doing it this way is that I don’t get to go around a dozen different pubs and ask a few innocent questions between drinks.
Civilla: You think that’s a problem, do you? I think it’s a bonus.

Although using Ears of the City DOES ensure that nobody notices, for example, an increasingly drunk Terzo going from bar to bar asking questions.

Ayva: Or an increasingly annoyed party member with a wheelbarrow taking Terzo from bar to bar.

Apparently the previous owner of the salt works was arrested for tax evasion, and killed when he resisted. Barzillai has now seized the premises as a money-earner for the government.

Civilla: Well, at least Barzillai is honest about the nationalisation process.
Terzo: How so?
Civilla: For ‘nationalised’ read ‘stole’.

We also learn, via the spell, that Crowe and his soldiers are being worked to death because of their faith in Sarenrae, the goddess of healing. That’s the kind of thing that can get you in huge trouble should any Asmodeans find out, and that’s exactly what happened.

Civilla gets quite thoughtful about the Salt Gate - they haven’t been closed in years, since the internal mechanism has rusted stiff, but that suggests a few ideas to Civilla.

Civilla: A plaaaaaan is forming in my miiiind.

Civilla wants Terzo to Grease the gate mechanism when we leave, so we can stop pursuit. Doing anything more permanent would probably annoy Thrune and provoke another Proclamation.

Terzo OoC: So basically we need a bucket of WD-40.

Civilla: In case we are chased.
Rajira: *snickers*
Civilla: Grease doesn’t last very long either.
Rajira: *snickers louder*
Civilla: CHASED, not CHASTE. CHASED as in PURSUED.

Civilla also has to keep her footmen loyal - otherwise they’ll eventually figure out she’s up to something and might inform on her. Telling them to wait with the carriage outside the salt works and suddenly running up with a troop of mercenaries and expecting them all to fit in like it was some kind of clown car would be a bit suspicious. Instead we sneak up to the door of the salt works late at night, get the door open, and knock Thrune’s blackshirts out with Lullaby and Sleep spells.

Civilla: See? I’m perfectly good at Stealth, as long as everybody is asleep.

We silently tie the unconscious guards up, release the prisoners, and tiptoe out again without the rest of the guards in the building hearing a thing.

Civilla: And give a short prayer to Noctiluca.
Terzo: … isn’t that the demon goddess of darkness and lust?
Civilla: … I can see we’re going to have to have a conversation later.

Rajira: And nobody even saw us.
Terzo: All that effort into disguises, hoods and Oaths of Anonymity wasted.
Civilla: Not wasted, reserved for future endeavours.

GM: … well then.
Civilla OoC: That’s this party’s warcry - ‘Sorry, Not Sorry’

Civilla: I mean, it won’t be hard for the authorities to figure out what happened - all the guards fall asleep at once and wake up bound. Unless they leap to some wrong conclusions. I can picture the Inquisitor asking “So WHY were you enjoying a BDSM orgy?”
Rajira OoC: ‘And why were you letting the prisoners top you?’

It WILL make an amusing rumour to spread once we get the underground press running. Something to keep in mind for the future.

That rescue cost us one first-level spell and a cantrip. We might have time for another mission this evening, after leading Crowe and his men to the Livery basement, before the curfew even comes down. Going via the Tiefling ghetto is also convenient, given how many friends we have there after dealing with the tooth fairy problem - that makes the residents less likely to comment on the large group of half naked prisoners sneaking through the alleyways. But instead of another mission tonight, we decide instead to make sure the mercs have food, clothes, and bedding.

Civilla: It shows that we consider them important enough to put off other important tasks.

Civilla: Liria told us about your predicament.
Crowe: Ah, so that’s why you came to our aid.
Ayva: She bribed us with scones.
Crowe: Damn, we owe that curvy little vixen our lives.

At least we temporarily disrupted the salt works, but it won’t take long to replace the unfortunate workers.

Terzo: Probably with Tieflings :(
GM: To be honest, right now, it’s going to be those thugs.

Permanently disrupting the salt works is also a goal for the future.

Civilla: Any way to reduce Thrune’s ability to punish the populace.

And, of course, effortlessly ghosting our way in and out of the salt works will increase our Notoriety, and rescuing the Black Feather Mercenaries will make us more friends among Kintargo’s population.

But we still need to investigate the ruins of Raxus’ family home, the Thrashing Badger pub, and the Silver Star music shop, for any clues the Dogf***er’s arsonists may have left intact. There isn’t much left at the latter, and not being able to see in the dark doesn’t help. On the other hand, accidentally falling through a hidden trapdoor is quite helpful, at least in that it unearths some useful potions and scrolls.

On the other hand, having our carriage pulled over by one of the Kintargo guardsmen, especially since he’s backed up by three of Thrune’s blackshirts.

Civilla: How can we be of assistance to you fine civic-minded individuals?
Thug: I’m sure you good folk are unaware, since it only happened ten minutes ago, but this road is now a tollway. The toll is a mere five gold. Per passenger.
Civilla: Five gold? How interesting. I assume you have your Writ?
Terzo: And a receipt book?
Civilla: That too.
Thug: I have my Writ right here *hefts mace*
Terzo: *casts Lullaby* Go to sleep, little A**hole, do not cry.

All three drop to Civilla’s Sleep spell, and she orders her drivers to move the carriage on.

Civilla: We do not want to cut their throats in front of my drivers.
Ayva: So we’ll leave them there to be inevitably pickpocketed?
Civilla: Or killed by any number of Kintargo’s other residents.

Unfortunately most of the Thrashing Badger washed out to sea when the boardwalk burnt through, and it wasn’t Terzo’s local drinking hole.

Ayva: Terzo has been kicked out of most of the pubs in Kintargo.
Terzo: Rolled out of, possibly.

The Badger used to be the rowdiest alcohol dispensary in the city, but any of its regulars have moved on to other establishments. It seems likely one of the more notable regulars, the fairy dragon Vendalfek, will have moved to one of them too. Perhaps Clenchjaw’s, although the name does not inspire images of fun and harmless hooliganism.

Although given the fact that we walk in on a mass bar fight, that pauses only long to look at us come in, it might be a more enthusiastic clientele than the name suggests.

Terzo: Don’t mind us, carry on as you were.

Terzo: Well, at least if they're all so busy with their fistfight, they’re less likely to remember what we look like.
Civilla: I fear they’re going to remember us anyway. Two of us anyway.
Rajira: I’m wearing my hood over my head. But I am over 6ft and attractive.
Civilla: That’s what I meant. But Terzo is going to attract attention anyway, as they see him accompanied by the three of us and try to figure out ‘How?!’

Ayva: So we set up at the bar, wait for information to come to us, and maim anybody that assumes we’re call girls.

We claim a table that doesn’t leave our backs to the door, and order refreshments.

Terzo: A bottle of your most enjoyable wine, dear.
Barmaid: We’ve got wine, water, watered wine, or if you want something spicy, wined water.

Ayva just gets a small beer, and Rajira some hard mead.

Civilla: It’s not like we can get mint liqueur anymore.

Unfortunately Ayva also complains about not being able to get night tea, and we get told off by a neighbouring sailor.

Old Salt: Word to the wise - I know you’re new here but one of the house rules is No Politics. *to Terzo* And you, you - how’d you’d end up in the company of three buxom lasses like these? Care to share the love?
Terzo: It’s my irresistible charm, dear man - I can’t beat them off with a stick.
Civilla: Buxom? Buxom?
Ayva: I don’t recall being buxom.
Rajira: *puts an arm around Ayva* Don’t worry, you’re buxom enough for me.

GM: You settle down to enjoy your drinks. Make a Perception check.
Ayva OoC: Ah, it’s one of those bars where adventures happen.
Terzo OoC: Well we already have a hooded stranger, but they’re a member of the party.
Terzo: *fails the check miserably* This is a very enjoyable wine.

Rajira’s resistance to poison probably means she could have drunk anything behind the bar, but she's not going to get the chance. Ayva spots the lizard with butterfly wings in the rafters, laughing at the barfight. This is presumably Vendalfek. When he realises he’s been spotted, he goes invisible. Ayva Messages the fairy dragon.

Ayva: Vendalfek We Know You’re There
Civilla: FFS can you be more ominous? At least indicate we’re friendly first.

The doors of the pub swing open all by themselves.

Rajira: And there goes our informant.
Terzo: What was he doing in the rafters?
Ayva: Everybody enjoys a good bar fight.
Terzo: He probably started it.

Ayva tries a more diplomatic Message, and the dragon pokes its head back in and indicates we should follow.

Civilla: It’s nearly curfew - we should head home. Come along Terzo.
Terzo: But I’m still enjoying this wine!
Civilla:
.
Terzo: Can I get this in a doggy bag?
Ayva: Damn. First good mead I’ve had in years.
Civilla: We’re far too far south for good mead.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/f6fb07112a2f2b558445ea4cc347ac49/tumblr_inline_oszxuwDP4r1qao8br_540.jpg

Vendalfek: What do you humans want, anyway? I’ve only just found a new bar to live in after your lot burned the last one down.
Rajira: Not ‘my’ humans.
Civilla: *Diplomatically remains silent, specifically about her own ancestry*

We do determine why Thrune’s agents burned the place to the ground - it probably has something to do with the Roses Vendalfek kept overhearing about.

Vendalfek: Did I live in a bar that was a secret meeting place for a society of florists?

More like Milani’s Rose of Kintargo, a rebellious cult. They were arrested by Thrune’s personal enforcers, one of whom has an ominous magic sword.

Rajira OoC: Oh great, we have an Edgelord.

Civilla: These Roses they took - fun people?
Vendalfek: Oh yes.
Civilla: And the Dottari - not fun?
Vendalfek: Definitely not.
Civilla: So, what do you think about playing a few pranks on the dotteri?

Vendalfek is agreeable, and the rebellion has a new ally. Just as well, since Vendalfek also overheard that they were planning to Doghouse one of the Roses.

Terzo: Oh dear.
Vendalfek: I’d like a doghouse - cosy.
Civilla: Doghousing involves feeding a prisoner to one of Thrune’s feral mastiffs. And they starve the dog first.

Terzo: Out of curiosity, Mr Dragon - why was the barman unconscious in the corner in there?
Civilla: He was no fun.
Vendalfek: Such a stickler for the rules.

And then there is more quiet recruiting of partisans, and smuggling funds into the Rebellion’s pockets. And dealing with the fact that the Dottari are taking an alarming interest in Liria’s coffeehouse...

Liria: *communicates by frantic eyebrow-waggling* *DISTRACT THEM!*
Civilla: Um, ah, what? *grabs Rajira and kisses her*
Rajira: *briefly startled then grabs Civilla and kisses back*
Civilla: Eep.
Terzo: *looks briefly surprised and annoyed, and mutters something about ‘alright for some’ before returning his attention to his drink*

Of course the fact that Rajira might LOOK human, but doesn’t TASTE human, and has fangs and forked tongue, might be even more distracting, if Civilla hadn’t already figured out what Rajira actually was. It distracts the male Dottari though, until their female superior officer slaps them upside the head.

Rajira: Thankyou, m’dear, but I believe it’s my set. *casts Fascinate, which fails*
GM: I’m sorry, but the slap worked and they’re concentrating on their job again.

Instead we order a pot of coffee, which will give Liria an excuse to go into the pantry and move a few sacks over the hidden door in the floor.

Civilla: Wait, no, it’s tea that Thrune has a problem with, isn’t it.
Terzo: We can always ask these nice Dottari if coffee and tea are the same thing.
Civilla: Better not - we don’t want to give the authorities an opportunity to decide they are.

Apparently somebody sent the Dottari an anonymous letter alleging unsavoury practises at the coffeehouse.

Liria: The only unsavoury things here are the muffins.
Civilla: Unsavoury practises? I’ve kept my clothes on this time.
Rajira: We’ll see if that lasts the night.

Civilla manages to convince them that somebody is wasting their time, barely - sometimes you roll low but the bad guys still roll lower. The Dottari leave.

Terzo: I trust Liria offered them a complimentary muffin.

Rajira grabs Civilla and drags her over to the bar.

Rajira: Something strong - 120 proof at least. Swill this around in your mouth before you swallow. My saliva can be toxic and I’d rather you didn’t become ill.
Civilla: I’d rather not.
Rajira: … OK.
Civilla: I mean I’d rather not smell like I’ve been swilling the kind of alcohol I usually use for cleaning purposes.

GM: Oh god, somebody gave Vendalfek coffee.
Civilla: actually we shouldn’t shut down the Salt Works - that way if anybody else gets imprisoned there we can rescue them, too.
Rajira: And some of the prisoners they send there have actually been arrested for good reasons. There’s always actual criminals around.
Civilla: True, but Thrune is employing those.

Civilla decides to take the air, with her compatriots and supposed paramour, to scout out the ruins of Rexus’ family home that we have to investigate. After all, since Terzo is her tutor and Ayva is her business partner, we actually have a good reason to be strolling around the expensive part of town. Rexus doubts we’ll find anything, but Civilla thinks it will still be worth a look. It’s certainly suspicious that the ruins of the Victocora estate are under permanent armed guard, even this many weeks after the fire. Perhaps we can stay at Civilla’s family home, so we can come back after dark without having to sneak back into the Kintargo equivalent of a Gated Community?

Civilla: Eh, it would attract attention to them and they’d ask questions. Trust me, they’d ask questions, it’s what Alazarios do. It’s one reason we’re not very popular with House Thrune.

We decide to wait until after curfew, and sneak along the alley between the city walls and the noble estates, and climb over the estate wall into the ruins. Which is a good plan, if we didn’t run into a Dottari guard patrolling the other way.

Rajira: *drunkenly slurs* Hey there, handsome.
GM: Roll to Seduce.

Dottari: What are you DOING here, woman, it’s almost after curfew! Come with me!
Rajira: Oh, I’m sure we can find something much more fun to do…
GM: You were unlucky enough to get the nice guard, and he’s actually insisting on escorting you back to your home.
Rajira: S***.

Rajira: *signals the rest of the party* Should I take him out?
Civilla: *summons a monster frog out of the ground*
Dottari: What the Hells is that! GET BEHIND ME!
Rajira: *clonks him on the head*
Civilla: Can somebody cut him in half?
Rajira: … not without getting blood all over my clothes, no.
Ayva: … Why?
Civilla: My frog can’t eat something that large. Unless we fold him double, maybe.

Terzo is rather perturbed by the murder, and reminds so during the wall-clambering and ruins search. It’s Ayva that finds the remains of a recent preparatory ritual next to the ornamental lake on the property. Apparently a witch did something here, more recently than the fire. Civilla cautiously wades into the lake and promptly vanishes with a splash, into a lake that’s supposed to be thigh deep at best. It’s now way more than 60 feet deep, and there’s something glowing blue in the depths.

Terzo OoC: So the Victocoras had a secret nuclear reactor in their pond.

Civilla: Just as well I can summon Celestial Dolphins.

Civilla and Rajira descend, and are soon spotted by somebody else swimming down here, who hurriedly swims into a side tunnel. Unfortunately there’s also a grate, which Civilla can Dimensional Slide through at least, in a search for some kind of opening mechanism. The tunnel on this slide slopes upwards.

Civilla: I’ll return to the others and get high.
All: LOL.

Sending Rajira back to the surface when they do may have been a mistake, since some kind of magical pulse boils up the shaft and engulfs Rajira while she’s on her way up. She’s turned to stone, which doesn’t make things any easier for the dolphin.

Terzo OoC: Do I need to throw some waterwings in there?

Still, Terzo and Ayva are rather alarmed by the petrification, at least until Ayva determines it will only be temporary - apparently that was a wild magic surge. So all we know is that somebody, probably a witch, was messing around at the bottom of an unexpectedly deep lake, and we have no idea who or why. Civilla has followed the zig-zagging tunnel to another grate, with a room on the other side.

GM: This is clearly a Spellcasters Only route.
Civilla OoC: And this is me. *casts Dimensional Slide again*. Was this really supposed to stop low level characters? One Halfling wizard with Reduce Person would go right through it.
GM: …. Excuse me a moment while I consult the next book of the campaign.

She’s apparently somewhere underneath the Hall of Records. She casts Pass Without Trace and Disguise Self to reduce the chance the Dottari wandering about don’t find her. Disguising herself as that Dottari officer from last night gets her out of the building without too much attention, and she dispatches one of the Silver Raven devices to let us know she’s heading to the Alazario estate. This is a relief to the rest of us, although Rajira has already seen the disguised Civilla on the road.

Terzo: Well, I must say we’re glad to see you alive - when Rajira came back up turned to stone and wrapped around a dolphin, and no sign of you, we were a bit concerned.
Civilla: Turned to stone? What did I miss?

Civilla excuses herself to write some letters to her family, suggesting they buy the Victocora estate and hinting that they should keep the lake as is but not investigate too closely.

Civilla: ‘There’s a secret back entrance to the Hall of Records? That’ll be useful when it reopens’

Civilla: There are currently two cults of Noctiluca - the ones who are wrong and the ones that are right.
Ayva OoC: I can see her followers inquiring about what happened, and when they find out, go ‘wait, she did WHAT to WHO and then WHAT????’.

GM: I just looked up what Night Tea actually is, and it’s nothing about ‘disturbing the balance of the slumbering mind’ - it’s a prophylactic.

Civilla gets a delivery while she’s writing at Laria’s coffeehouse - less a package than a bouquet. Of very beautiful roses, with a slip of paper concealed down among the stems.

Rajira: And there was me thinking I had a rival for your affections.

Perhaps predictably, it’s from the Rose of Kintargo, the Milani cult that is also planning a rebellion against Barzillai Thrune. They warn us not to act rashly, and promise to contact us soon. We recruit a team of street performers, who we call Nobody’s Fools, and put the finishing touches on the former Livery. In fact we’re just getting ready to open up when a small child runs in screaming for help.

Rajira: What’s wrong with the spawnling?
Tiefling Kid: She’s been taken!
Civilla: Who?
Tiefling Kid: Zea! The bad people! They said they're going to put her in a doghouse!

If we’re quick we might be able to intercept them before they reach Aria Park - it’s fortunate that the Livery is practically next door to the ghetto. We all pile into the carriage.

Civilla: Come along child - you get to ride in a carriage!

Unfortunately they get to the park first - the pagoda in the middle of the lily pond in Aria Park has been converted into a kennel for any of the dogs the citizens of Kintargo have been handing in for the reward. It’s also Thrune’s thug's choice of destination for anybody they decide has insulted the throne. Civilla gets her disposable cloak ready - if necessary she’ll swap costumes with Zea so the blackshirts chase the wrong person. She’ll also Summon a Celestial Dog, tell it to play Keep Away over to the east of the pond, and use that to distract the thugs. After all, they’ll certainly try and catch it for the reward, and the mortal mastiffs will probably go mental. Then the rest of us can sneak up and overwhelm the other thugs, under the cover of the borking.

Dottari on far side of pond: Hey, there’s a dog!
Celestial Dog and Mastiffs: Play? Play! Play! Play!
Dottari on our side of the Pond: What the **** is happening over there/
Rajira: *kukris them in the back*

GM: The surviving thugs all need to make Handle Animal checks.
Ayva’s player: I’ve had to walk a Saint Bernard before - these thugs might be going for A Walk.
GM: Aaaand they all failed their check.

One of the thugs invents water-skiing as his mastiff drags him into the pond, and the rest all chase off after the dogs that are supposedly in their charge. Zea can basically stroll off while they’re busy.

GM: … Good work. I basically doubled the number of NPCs that were supposed to be here, too.
Terzo: With only two spells again.
Ayva OoC: If we were playing rogues we wouldn’t even have needed that.
Rajira OoC: If we were all playing rogues we’d have Stealth Synergy and have ghosted through the entire scenario. I rolled a 1 and they STILL didn’t see me.

Ayva: And we’re home in time for curfew.
Rajira: At this rate the Dottari are going to start talking about The Ghosts.

Although trying to squeeze Zea and the kid into the carriage with the rest of us is a bit tricky - fortunately the rest of us are a lot skinnier than Terzo.

Civilla: In this group are one and a half humans.

Zea is suitably grateful for the rescue, and doesn’t know why she was targeted - it may have been a random sweep. Civilla casts Ears of the City to find out. It looks like the Asmodeans came after Zea because she’s trying to hold the ghetto together now their actual leader has gone missing. And Thrune’s troops are making concerted efforts to solve the Tiefling Problem for good.

Rajira: The Asmodeans boink devils like it’s going out of style, then try to eliminate the results.
Civilla: Welcome to Cheliax - they’re wonderfully hypocritical.
Rajira: So the next sweep team that goes into the ghetto doesn’t come back.
Civilla: I’d rather they come back - but without pants.

It doesn’t appear that Thrune actually ordered this - he doesn’t seem to care either way. The blackshirts are acting on their own initiative.

Civilla: Oh, it’s blackshirts doing the sweeps? In that case we go with Rajira’s suggestion - any sweep teams that come in, don’t come out.
Terzo: *hopefully* So we’re going to be keeping them tied up in a basement somewhere?
Rajira: No, we’re going to cut their throats and dump the bodies in a cesspit.
Terzo: …. oh.

Civilla: Perfect! We render them down as soaps and fertilizers for the rich.
Terzo: I’m going to assume you’re joking.
Rajira: No.
Civilla: Have you ever heard me joke about anything alchemical?
Ayva: You should hear the one about the alembic.

Civilla: I don’t think Terzo has quite figured out the situation he’s in. He’s definitely the softest of us.
Ayva: Every ‘smore needs a marshmallow.

Thrune: They might just be Tieflings, but taking a prominent member of their community was going to anger them. At least they left my dogs alone.

There is one possible problem looming - a Tiefling gang, the Red Jills, who would happily escalate the violence beyond any sane limit. So we have to persuade them to limit their mayhem to a level that won’t invite reprisals from Thrune.

Terzo: Oh, I know where they hang out.
Ayva: Terzo knows everyone. Sorry, every pub.

Their current lair is an old temple of Aroden, an immortal human who was the focus of a whole bunch of prophecies, but who then died mysteriously and threw all those prophecies out the window. His temples have closed up shop. So now the building is occupied by the Red Jills, who hate humans, and their leader a winged Strix, one Scarplume, who hates humans even more.

Civilla: Anybody have any ideas how we can use this? It’s sounding suspiciously like we’re walking into a fair fight. I’d rather not fight at all, obviously, but this is sounding more and more like a fair one, and that I do not like.

Civilla: I don’t think these are our kind of people - do we really want to recruit them?
Terzo: Well, the last we want is a circular firing squad among the partisans.
Rajira: The Revolution is for everyone.
Civilla: But these Jills are already attacking the general citizenry - we want them to focus on the actual threat.

Civilla: The Strix have a reputation as baby-snatching monsters. And I can say that because I can speak Strix….. I’m going to have to do all the talking, aren’t I.

At least our smuggling contact has done some work for the Red Jills. The Jills might also be desperate for a new fence, too. And the Strix has something in common with the tengu, too - they have wings, at least. We can organise a meet on Red Jill turf without being instantly murdered.

Call of Cthulhu - HORROR ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - PRELUDE

2021-11-07T12:59:47Z

IN WHICH THE INVESTIGATORS GO TRAINSPOTTING, WITHOUT BENEFIT OF HARD DRUGS

*****

In 1204, a great city burns, and something inhuman preys on the people hung from the city walls. In 1922, a kindly professor has asked two of his friends, and a trustworthy journalist, if they could undertake an overnight expedition to Darkest Surrey.

He’s being very mysterious about it too - not saying why he wants them to be on a certain country train platform hours after dark, just that they have cameras ready and that they’re not to compare notes until after they’ve recorded all their individual observations. Assuming anything actually happens.

The investigators are -

Brian Randall Huxley, formerly a junior medical officer on HMS Fearless, traumatised during the so-called Battle of May Island where British submariners were sliced to pieces by the propellers of escorting warships. Post-war he has a lucrative consulting contract in the budding pharmaceutical industry, and uses it to fund his love for archaeology and ancient history, using back channels to import antiquities from Egypt and Tunisia.

Antonio Gusto Masiero, an Italian airman of some renown, who arranged transport for Professor Smith to a number of his more remote digs, after the War. In 1922 he travelled to London to see the new planes and visit his dear friend, where they would discuss future travel prospects.

Florence 'Flo' Victoria Braxton-Hicks, of an Australian grazier family, who went into journalism with the approval of her parents, on the condition she do so somewhere where it wouldn’t embarrass the family. London fits the bill nicely.

Antonio’s player: This Prof. Julius Smith - is he a real person?
GM: No, purely fictional - which is just as well in Call of Cthulhu.

The three agree to assist the professor, make their plans for travel, equipment and accomodation. Flo’s tomboyish cousin Alexandria ‘Alex’ Braxton will be tagging along to make up the numbers

Antonio Gusto Masiero: I’ll go with Florence.
Florence 'Flo' Victoria Braxton-Hicks: Miss Braxton-Hicks if you don’t mind - we’ve only just been introduced.
Brian Randall Huxley: My, these Italians work fast.

There’s a pub in Stoneley, but no rooms. At least they have beer, and food, not that it’s likely to impress Antonio and Flo, both of whom have lived on the flavours of the Continent.

GM: British Cooking - boil it until it stops struggling.

They also find out why the Professor sent them to the village - apparently there’s a ghost train every year. And any number of variations on the tale, especially about the woman that supposedly comes out to meet it. Alex encourages the tall tales, fueled on beer. The others at least try to stay sober, and unspoiled in their expectations, although Flo of course is recording everything in her notebook.

GM: What do you want for dinner? There’s two choices - both of them are stew

GM: The locals don’t seem very interested in going to see the Ghost Train? Why would they when they can stay in the pub and tell stories about it instead. There’s beer and a fire and stew.

Leaving Alex rugged up and passed out in the car, the trio prepare for their vigil - Huxley even puts a few pieces of gravel on the tracks to see if they are disturbed by the passage of this supposed Ghost Train.

Florence: Yes, nothing like risking a derailment.

And a little after nine in the evening, a train actually appears - out of thin air, and faintly luminous. Antonio and Florence are deeply shocked, and her half-frozen fingers certainly don’t help with the photos. Huxley takes more photos of his own face than of the train - which fades rapidly from existence the moment Antonio tries to step aboard.

Florence: *curses a blue streak in Italian*
GM: You’ve been sworn at by a lot of women, Antonio.
Huxley: My, these Italians work fast.

Huxley is convinced it’s a hoax, or that they were fed drugs and the tall tales at the pub primed the form of the hallucination. Antonio and Florence are much more unsettled. Flo even drops the camera as she was trying to take the last few shots.

Huxley: Have I been eating some kind of hallucinogen?
GM: It must have been in the stew.

The trio (and desperately hungover Alex) return to London in the morning.

GM: Antonio feels the stab deep in his soul when they tell him he can’t get coffee in rural Surrey.

But the Professor seems very pleased with their results, and invites them to the Challenger Trust Banquet-Lecture at the Imperial Institute on New Years Day, where he promises to reveal all.

Prof. Smith: Did you get any more photos?
Florence: Do you have any idea how cold it was? What is wrong with this country???
Huxley: I give up Professor, you got us, how did you do it? Where did you hide the projector? Well done old man.

On the other hand, the Professor isn’t quite so cheerful when they see him in the interim - in fact whatever meetings he was having with a mysterious Turkish gentleman have been leaving him distinctly perturbed. He also wants Antonio’s advice about travel in the rural parts of Eastern Europe, in preparation for some large trip in the first quarter of 1923, and asks if he’ll be available to accompany him on the trip. Antonio, of course, agrees.

The after-dinner lecture is certainly amazing, when it happens - Professor Smith is right back in his old form, discussing, of all things, hauntings like the Ghost Train. Smith hopes that one day, whatever mysterious other dimensions that ‘haunts’ drift in and out of, will be accessible to mankind and the sciences.

But that mysterious Turkish gentleman (identified as one Mehmet Makryat, owner of an antiques store in nearby Islington), turns up just as the lecture is finishing and the Professor is doing the rounds of the tables. When the staff let him in, he urgently whispers something to the Professor that leaves the man shocked and not a little frightened. He asks the trio of investigators to come by his house the next afternoon - apparently he has a lot to tell them.

He won’t get the chance - as the trio open their papers over their breakfast eggs, they all see the headline that the Professor’s house burned to the ground overnight, and that he and his manservant Beddows are missing.

#1782-1787 - Grasses

2021-09-24T09:13:22Z

#1782 - Briza maxima - Greater Quaking Grass

AKA blowfly grass, rattlesnake grass, shelly grass, rattle grass, and shell grass.

An edible grass originally found around the Mediterranean, the Azores, and Western Asia, and grown as an ornamental over a much larger area. In Australia, at least, it escaped cultivation and thrives as a roadside weed, as well as outcompeting many of our native grasses. Briza media and minor are similarly invasive.

#1783 - Eragrostis curvula - African lovegrass

Other names include Eragrostis chloromelas, curvula (Schrad.) Nees var. valida, jeffreysii, Poa curvula, Boer lovegrass, weeping grass, weeping lovegrass, and wire grass.

Another grass species tthat become a major pest. And this particular one, one of the ornamental forms, is at least the third go it’s had at becoming invasive - it originally showed up in Australia before 1900, probably as a contaminant of pasture seed, and then got introduced deliberately as pasture (only palatable when young), as a soil stabiliser (drought tolerant and rapid coloniser of disturbed ground), and as an ornamental grass (and promptly escaped again). It is now naturalised in all Australian states, including Tasmania, and has successfully invaded the UK, northern Africa, the Canary Islands, Asia, New Zealand, USA and tropical America as well. It’s a serious threat to a number of endagered plant species, outcompeting them for space and changing the local fire conditions. It is tolerant of very acidic and very basic soils, and grows easily in mine spoils.

In its native range - southern Africa - it’s an important forage for livestock, as well a being collected for baskets, brooms, hats, ropes, candles, food, charms, and in funeral rituals. Some cultivars are still planted along waterways, mountainsides, for land revegetation, and as a nurse crop for other species.

Grows up to 120cm tall. Easily confused with other introduced and native lovegrasses including stinkgrass (Eragrostis cilianensis), Mexican lovegrass (Eragrostis mexicana) and elastic grass (Eragrostis tenuifolia).

#1784 - Arundo donax - Giant Reed

AKA giant cane, elephant grass, carrizo, arundo, Spanish cane, Colorado river reed, Danubian Reed, bamboo reed, and wild cane.

A perrenial grass growing up to 10m tall in ideal conditions, and easily reaching 8 the rest of the time. Originally native to areas with damp soil (fresh or brackish) eastern and southern Asia, and probably also parts of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula, but now naturalised in many parts of the world, and invasive in some. It’s also highly flammable and tall enough to short out powerlines. A. donax has been nominated as one of the top 100 “World’s Worst” invaders by the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group.

The seeds are very rarely fertile - reproduction is almost entirely vegetative, with even short sections of the rhizome soon sprouting into a new clone.

The stems may be used for musical instruments, building, fishing rods, and walking sticks. Young leaves may be fed to livestock, and older ones used to be used to wrap mummies. The plant is also currently being grown in biofuel, bioremediation, and wastewater treatment experiments.

Hamel, SW of Perth.

#1785 - Hordeum sp. - Barley Grass

Either Hordeum glaucum or Hordeum leporinum - one species being diploid and the other tetraploid, and even the characteristic that’s supposed to tell them apart - the size of the anthers - is unreliable.

Both species are weeds, accidentally introduced to many parts of the world. Common Barley, Hordeum vulgare, is of rather more importance, especially if you’re a maker of beer or whiskey. It was also one of the first domesticated grain, grown across Eurasia, so it’s not surprising that the various names for it are old as well - bere in Old English, which traces back Proto-Indo-European and is cognate to the Latin farina meaning “flour”. Barn, of course, used to mean Barleyhouse. Hordeum is derived from the Indo-European root for “bristly” after the long prickly awns of the ear of grain, which also gave us ‘horror’ via Latin, presumably from the way your hair stands on end.

Domesticated barley has a few major differences from its wild ancestor Hordeum spontaneum and other undomestiacted species - wild barley has a brittle spike, facilitating seed dispersal. Domesticated barley has nonshattering spikes, making it much easier to harvest the mature grain. In Wild Barley, the spikelets grow in alternating triplets along the shaft, but only the middle spike matures. In most domesticated cultivars, all six develop (although some cultivars retain the two-row form). Of course, most of these differences have been tracked down to single gene mutations, and therefore most recent classifications consider spontaneum, vulgare, and other closely related barleys, a single species.

These days Barley ranks fourth in tonnage grown, slightly behind maize, rice, and wheat.

#1786 - Bromus hordaceus - Soft Brome

AKA bull grass, soft cheat, and soft chess. Formerly Bromus mollis.

From the Greek bromos meaning oats, and hordeaceus from the Latin for barley.

Native to Europe and Western Asia, and the most common species of Bromus in Britain. Introduced into North and South America and Australia, where it grows readily on roadsides, waste ground, meadows, sandy beaches, and cultivated land. It can be an annoying weed in wheat and barley crops. The five subspecies are very similar to, and hybridise with, a number of closely related species.

#1787 - Cenchrus macrourus African Feather Grass

AKA Pennisetum macrourum. The genus’ name is derived from the Greek for Millet, and macrourus’ means ‘longtailed’.

A South African perennial now also growing as a weed in Australia and New Zealand. It may have arrived in imported seed, or escaped from gardens. It grows up to 2m tall, but despite the long seedhead mostly spreads by rhizomes. On the other hand, the seeds are barbed and easily lodge in animal fur and clothing.Thick infestations are favoured by feral rabbits and cats, but are unpalatable to livestock even when little else is available.

Other Cenchrus species grow in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, and various oceanic islands. Common names include buffelgrasses, sandburs, and sand spur, since this species isn’t the only one with barbed seeds.

Hamel, Perth.

#1777-1781 - More Plants

2021-09-24T09:06:09Z

#1777 - Grevillea quercifolia - Oak-leaf Grevillea

Synonyms include Grevillea brachyantha, glaucina, lactucifolia, quercifolia var. angustifolia and Hakea quercifolia.

Another SW endemic. Named after the shape of the leaves, which do indeed resemble the leaves of the spikier oaks, but more closely resemble holly - but Grevillea ilicifolia was already a thing. The genus is named after Charles Francis Greville, a British antiquarian, collector and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1790. He was a very close friend of the botantist Sir Joseph Banks and both attended the organizing meeting in March 1804 of the precursor to the Royal Horticultural Society, the Society for the Improvement of Horticulture.

A straggly to sprawling, lignotuberous shrub, 70cm high. Flowers may be pink, red, or purple, and appear from July to December. Grows in sand, loam, often with gravel, and laterite. This one was at Ambergate Reserve.

#1778 - Billardiera heterophylla - Bluebell Creeper

Formerly Sollya heterophylla. Named after Jacques-Julien Houton de Labillardière, a French botanist, and heterophylla (having leaves of more than one shape). It was previously named after Richard H. Solly, an English plant physiologist and anatomist.

A twining shrub in the Pittosporaceae, native to Western Australia, but now grown as an ornamental plant in appropriate climates worldwide. Seeds were available in Jamiaca as early as the 1880s, for example. It has escaped cultivation in other Australian states, and overseas, and is doing well enough that it’s sometimes considered a weed. It’s banned in South Australia, for example.

In the wild it can form thick bushes up to a meter in height, and the flowers may be white, deep blue, or even pink. It easily colonises disturbed ground, which has no doubt helped it become such a successful weed.

#1779 - Mesomelaena tetragona - Semaphore Sedge

From the Greek words mesos and melaino, meaning , meaning “middle, to turn black” , referring to the dark involucral bracts. Tetragona is also Greek, meaning with ‘four equal angles, square’. That and the common name probably refer to the broad angle where the stem split at the flowers. All 5 species in the genus are WA endemics.

Flowering in every month but December. It grows in woodland in white, brown, grey, or lateritic sand, loam, sandy clay, and gravel, from Geraldton to Cape Arid, and unlike more familar sedges doesn’t need to be near water.

#1780 - Crassula sp. - Stonecrop

AKA Pygmyweeds.

Crassulas were first described by Linnaeus, with the name deriving from the Latin for ‘thick’ refering to the succulent leaves. Australia does have native Crassula, but this one, growing in an empty lot in Busselton, is probably an introduced weed species.

Quite a few Crassulas, including the Jade Plant Crassula ovata, are popular garden plants, growing to their attractively arranged and shaped foliage. Most species in the family Crassulaceae grow in arid or semi-arid areas, with few larger than a shrub, and even fewer aquatic species, but they do have the distinction of using a unusual photosynthetic pathway - Crassulacean acid metabolism, which is an adaptation to drought.

#1781 - Microtis media - Common Mignonette Orchid

Microtis is derived from the Greek words mikros and ous meaning “small ear”, referring to small, ear-like appendages on the column. media refers to the size, also it can actually be up to 60cm tall and has another common name - Tall Mignonette Orchid. All of them have long tubular leaves, hence the ‘onion’ and ‘mignonette’ part of the common name for the genus.

An onion orchid species from the Yallingup trip that I managed to miss, earlier. It grows in shrubland and woodland, often in seasonally wet areas and on granite outcrops. Endemic to the southwest of Western Australia between Shark Bay and Eyre.

Mignonette and Onion Ochids are widespread in Australia, with the exception of the Northern Territory, but are also found in parts of Asia, New Zealand, and various Pacific Islands. They’re pollinated by small Ichneumonid and Braconid wasps, and also by a range of ant species - which is unusual, since ant saliva kills most pollen. If the flowers fail to be pollinated, they can self-fertilize - in at least some species, the stigma will actually grow until it reaches the pollinia.

#1776 - Medicago polymorpha - Burr Medic

2021-09-22T11:35:13Z

“Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

No, but it is a very annoying weed also known as California burclover, toothed bur clover, and toothed medick.

As you might have guessed from the common names, the leaves closely resemble those of clover. It and the other Medics are annual broadleafed forbs (forb being a new term for me, meaning any groundcover that isn’t a grass, rush, or sedge) that die off in summer leaving hundreds of ferociously hooked, tightly coiled pods that catch on fur, clothing, delicate skin, etc. See the close-up of the pods, each under 1cm in size, above. Once it gets established in your lawn you’ll be spending every year trying to uproot the stuff, which is difficult since the runners can be over 60cm long and it sends down taproots. And, of course, it’s also producing hundreds of seeds for next year.

Originally native to the Meditarranean basin, but now found in most parts of the world, usually in disturbed soil and roadsides. Oddly enough it is edible, and is collected for food in parts of China. Like other legumes, it fixes nitrogen with the help of symbiotic bacteria - in this case Sinorhizobium medicae.

My yard, Perth. I must have pulled up buckets of the stuff, just from around my ponds, this year.

#1770-1775 - More Natives

2021-09-22T11:33:51Z

#1770 - Diplolaena dampieri - Dampier’s Rose

AKA Southern Native Rose. It’s not in the rose family.

A very attractive shrub, up to 2m tall, in the Rue or Citrus family (Rutaceae), named from the Greek for double-cloaked ‘diploos’ 'chlaina’ in reference to the double row of bracts that envelope the flower, and English pirate and explorer William Dampier. It and the other 14 species are all WA endemics.

It’s pollinated by a variety of insects and birds, and grows widely, but never in abundance, on coastal limestone & dunes, granite rocks from Perth down to Augusta at the extreme SW corner of the continent.

This one was growing on granite above Meelup Beach.

#1771 - Hakea amplexicaulis - Prickly Hakea

Named after Baron Christian Ludwig von Hake, an 18th-century German patron of botany, and the Latin amplexus caulus meaning “encircled” or “embraced” and "stem", refering the unusual way the heavily serrated leaves clasp the stem.

An upright, scraggly shrub up to 3m tall, flowering in August and October with the strongly scented inflorescences white, or creamy-pink. The woody fruit are smooth with a few spikes, and a blunk beak.

This one was in the grounds of the holiday house in Yallingup, but also found in jarrah forests from Perth to Albany, growing in in clay, loam and gravelly acidic soils as long as they’re well-drained, in sun or partial shade. A showy shrub in cultivation, but dense thickets are good for wildlife habitat.

#1772 - Hakea lissocarpha - Honey Bush

Also known as Duck and Drake Bush. First described in 1830 by Robert Brown, from the Greek lissos - smooth and carphos - dry grass, referring to the bracts around the flower buds

It wasn’t flowering when I saw it on the SW trip, but the white, cream, yellow or pink flowers bloom from May to September, in ridiculous profusion, and are powerfully honey-scented. Since the stems and foliage are stiff, and the leaves needle-pointed, insects can visit the flowers easily but anything larger is probably going to be impaled. The woody ovoid fruit are smooth to warty, 1.5–2 cm long by 1 cm and taper to two short beaks. They remain attached to the plant for several years.

Found over much of the SW, in a wide variety of soil types, in heath and woodland,

#1773 - Agrostocrinum hirsutum - Hairy Blue Grass Lily

One of the two species, both endemic to WA. Different authorities place it in different families, and you might end up finding it in the Phormiaceae, Hemerocallidaceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae, Anthericaceae, Agavaceae or Asparagaceae. It’s complicated.

This one rarely exceeds 60cm tall - A. scabrum is up to a meter tall. Both are short-lived tufted plants that grow from short rhizomes and have tuberous roots as storage organs.

From the holiday property at Yallingup, in Jarrah forest. Grows widely in sand, laterite, and granite, usually in woodlands.

#1774 - Johnsonia lupulina - Hooded Lily

First described in 1810 by Robert Brown and named in recognition of the 17th century English naturalist, Thomas Johnson. I’m not sure what’s particularly wolf-like about it, unless the flower-spikes are supposed to resemble wolf tails?

One of five species of rhizomatous perennial herbs to 70 cm tall, with grass-like leaves, and a flower-spike with the actual flowers concealed by conspicuous bracts. Endemic to southwestern Western Australia, but that can hardly be surprising by this point.

Usually coastal and found in sandy soils in woodland, shrubland, and heath.

This genus was once in the Liliaceae family and then in the Anthericaceae family but some authors now put it in the Hemerocallidaceae which is itself optionally part of the Xanthorrhoeaceae. Asphodelaceae is another option.

#1775 - Orianthera serpyllifolia - Thyme-leafed Orianthera

The name is a conjugation of the Latin os (mouth) and anthera (anthers), and refers to the position of the anthers in the sinus between the corolla lobes in all members of the newly erected genus. Formerly Logania serpyllifolia, until a 2014 genetic study lead to Logania sect. Stomandra being elevated to Orianthera ( Stomandra had already been applied to a genus in Rubiaceae ). ‘serpyliifolia’ refers to the shape of the leaves and their resemblance to Thyme.

A low groundcover growing in the coastal parts of the SW corner - this one was growing at Yallingup. Logania, on the other hand, are native to Australia and New Zealand, and includes at least 24 species of herbs, shrubs, trees and climbers. The wider family, the Loganiaceae, is best known for some notorious plant toxins - strychnine and curare, both from species of Strychnos.

#1768-1769 - Pimeleas

2021-09-22T11:26:31Z

#1768 - Pimelea rosea - Rosy Rice Flower

A small shrub, from the family Thymelaeaceae. Native to the southwestern coast, but increasingly popular in cultivation. It grows to between 0.3 and 1 m tall, with pink, red or purple flowers from July to December.

As you can probably guess, evolved to best suit insects with long proboscises, such as bee-flies, butterflies, and moths.

Usually found on coastal sand dunes and the surrounding areas - but this one was at Carbunup, south of Busselton.

#1769 - Pimelea ferruginea - Pink Riceflower

From the Greek pimele, soft fat, presumably referring to the oily seeds or fleshy cotyledons and ferruginea…rust coloured

Spotted among dense low shore vegetation, on laterite soil and exposed granite rock, overlooking Smith’s Beach Yallingup.

A small but prolifically flowering shrub, native to coastal areas of south Western Australia in sand dunes or rocky soils. But a popular garden plant as well - and why wouldn’t it be with that amazing a floral display. It was described by Labillardiere in 1805.

#1764-1767 - Beard-heaths and others

2021-09-22T11:25:33Z

#1764 - Leucopogon parviflorus - Coast Beard-Heath

AKA Native Currant

Native to most Australian coastlines, New Zealand, and the Chatham Islands, where it happily grows on granite, limestone, sand dunes and heath. Rarely found moe than 500m from the shoreline. In this case it was granite overlooking Smiths Beach, Yallingup.

It can grow up to 5m high, although wind-pruning can keep it much shorter, and flowers year-round. Oddly, the fruit turns brilliant white when ripe, and they are edible even if mostly seed.

#1765 - Hibbertia cuneiformis - Cutleaf Hibbertia

Initially named as Candollea cuneiformis in 1806 by French naturalist Jacques Labillardière in Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen, and subsequently placed in Hibbertia by English botanist James Edward Smith in 1811. The genus takes its name from George Hibbert (1757 - 1837), an English merchant and amateur botanist.

A SW endemic shrub up to 2m tall, growing in coastal dunes and swampy areas from Perth south to Esperance. The large flowers appear from January to March and June to November. Grown in shrubberies, containers & coastal gardens, where it tolerates a wde range of soils and conditions including full shade. It was growing in heavy shade here, that’s for sure.

Almost all Hibbertias have yellow flowers, but 3 are orange. 150 species occur in Australia with two are also in New Guinea; 24 species in New Caledonia with one also found in Fiji, and one endemic to Madagascar.

#1766 - Lomandra purpurea - Erect Purple Mat Rush

Lomandra is a genus of perennial, herbaceous monocots now included in the family Asparagaceae. Previous work has put them in the Dasypogonaceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae, or Liliaceae. There are 51 species, 49 endemic to Australia and the other two also found in New Guinea and New Caledonia.

Many of them are tufted deciduous perennials with long narrow blade-like leaves rersembling grass, growing from from a central stemless base with thick woody rhizomes and fibrous roots. They’re a major groundcover in Australia bushland, but can be hard to tell apart since they only flower rarely - we were quite lucky to see this one at Carbunup, easily distinguished from others in the genus by the deep purple flowers spaced in bunches along the stem.

#1767 - Lomandra preissii

From the Greek for robe-man, referring to the border of the anthers in some species. Johann August Ludwig Preiss (1811 – 1883) collected more than 2700 species in Western Australia, and this isn’t the only one that got named after him.

Another of the mat rushes so common in Australian bushland - flowers can be purple and yellow, plain green (for both male and female plants), or china blue (male plants only). Leaves form a small tuft, up to 60cm high.

Grows widely in the sandplains, wheatbelts, and Jarrah forests of the SW.

#1762 & 1763 - Triggerplanted

2021-09-22T11:22:31Z

#1762 - Stylidium affine - Queen Triggerplant

In coastal woodland in shallow sandy laterite soil on granite, at Meelup Beach near Dunsborough.

One of Western Australia’s larger Triggerplants, growing in coastal areas, hillslopes and gullies in Wandoo or Jarrah forest or low scrub, in soils ranging from sandy clay and loam to granite. Compared to most of the WA endemics I’ve been covering, Meelup actually seems to be at the southern edge of the range, which covers the Avon Wheatbelt, Jarrah Forest, and Swan Coastal Plain.

The leaves on this species are very thin and needle-like, but leaf shape in the genus is highly diverse. Like other Stylidiums, the flowers have four petals, and an ingenious trap from visiting insects - a curved column bent down behind the flower that will swing up over the flower and klonk the pollinator on the head, or swing up under the flower and gut-punch it, when it lands to feed and inserts its proboscis. The column of younger flowers will be tipped with with anthers bearing four packets of pollen, while older ones instead have the hairy stigma. Thus a young flower will deposit pollen in exactly the right place for an older flower to gather it up - assuming the insect hasn’t become cautious about repeated concussion. The trap will reset over a few minutes, and be ready to go again within ten.

They also have another trap for smaller insects - sticky hairs on various parts of the plant that can trap and digest tiny insects.

Most of the approximately 300 species are only found in Australia, making it the fifth largest genus in the country. There’s 50 species around Perth, alone.

#1763 - Stylidium petiolare

Another Triggerplant from among the granite outcrops above Meelup Beach.

A reasonably common species, growing in the coastal and wheatbelt zones between Geraldton and Albany. It’s one of the triggerplants that punch visiting insects in the underside. Flowers may be white of pinkish, and appear in August and October - as you can probably guess from the tiny cluster of leaves, they’re not very noticeable the rest of the year. Most of their resources go into a perennial bulb.

#1759-1761 - Some More SW Wildflowers

2021-09-22T11:19:08Z

#1759 - Comesperma flavum

A showy wildflower from the Milkwort family (Polygalaceae), endemic to coastal SW WA, along with 18 others of the 24 in the genus.

It prefers to grow in non-chalky sandy soil, near seepage zones. They start flowering with spring rains, and soon produce the hairy seeds they got their genus from, but will respond to summer or autumn rain by producing more flowers above the ones that have already gone to seed.

In sheltered areas it grows to about 150cm tall.

Ambergate Reserve

#1760 - Comesperma virgatum - Slender Comesperma

Virgatum is from the Latin virgatus, meaning twiggy or striped, and used in botantical descriptions for anything long, slender, stiff, or streaked.

Another milkwort form Ambergate Reserve - taller than C. flavum, and with flower colours more typical for the genus. The pink to purple flowers are produced from September to March. It’s found over a wider stretch of Western Australia’s coastal regions, including as far north as Perth.

#1761 - Burchardia multiflora - Milkmaids

Named for German botanist Johann Heinrich Burckhardt.

Another WA endemic, and one of five in the genus. They’re in the Colchicaceae, or Colchicum family, which used to be included with the Lilies.

A smaller species, compared to the similar B. congesta. The stems sprout from a corm-like stem, with attached tubers which were collected as food by Australia’s indigenous peoples. It flowers in spring and goes dormant for summer. it grows in peaty sand or brown sand, and clay soils, around swamps, streams, and granite outcrops, where rainwater can keep the soil moist for longer.

#1752-1758 - Asteraceae

2021-09-19T12:32:03Z

#1752 - Siloxerus humifusus - Procumbent Siloxerus

A small annual, in a small genus - four species within the Paper Daisy or Pussy’s Toes tribe (Gnaphalieae) of the Asteraceae. The small size of the plant and the genus certainly doesn’t stop it flowering profusely, or young.

Siloxerus is from the Greek words stylos and ogceros, meaning swollen pillar. It refers to the swollen base of the style. humifusis is from the Latin words humi and fusus, meaning ‘spread out on the ground’. The combination of Latin and Greek does make me wince, but there’s not much I can do about that, and it’s hardly the only binomial that does.

Found from Jurien Bay to Cape Arid, but never growing more than 9cm tall.

Ambergate Reserve.

#1753 - Trichocline spathulata - Native Gerbera

One of Australia’s native Asteraceae, and quite closely related to the Gerbera, and other genera in the Gerbera section of that family. There’s over 20 species in the genus, but with the lone exception of this one, they’re all endemic to South America. Oddly enough, this one is only found in the SW corner of Australia, as far from South America as you can get and still be in the Southern Hemisphere.

The flower stalks can be up to meter tall - that, and the large flowers, makes them look very peculiar in an Australian woodland, as if they’d escaped from somebody’s garden.

#1754 - Craspedia glauca - Billy Buttons

AKA Woollyheads

The Asteraceae (AKA Compositaceae) is a gigantic plant family, rivalled only by the orchids. Nearly all of them have composite flowers, where hundreds of tiny flowers are massed together into a single inflorescence, with enlarged flowers resembling petals around the edge. The result is something that looks like a large single flower - flowers that include daisies, asters, sunflowers, and some of the most familiar wildflowers and weeds in the world.

Then you have species like this Craspedia, that never bother with the fake petals around the edge.

Species are found over much of Australia, and large areas of New Zealand. They’re most diverse in alpine and subalpine areas.

#1755 - Brachyscome sp.

Spelled Brachycome by some authors, probably because Henri Cassini published the name Brachyscome in 1816, then tried to change it to Brachycome when he realised Brachyscome was bad Greek.

One of the 80-odd species, mostly Australian, but some found in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Some, like Brachyscome iberidifolia, the Swan River Daisy, and Brachyscome multifida, the Cutleafed Daisy, are popular groundcover in cultivation, grown for the attractive flowers and foliage.

#1756 - Verbesina encelioides - Golden Crownbeard

AKA Cowpen Daisy, American dogweed, butter daisy, gold weed, skunk daisy, South African daisy, wild sunflower, and yellowtop

Australia has plenty of native Asteraceae, but the family is so hugely successful that of course it will have to include numerous weed species. For most of November I was busily involved in the 2020 Biosecurity Blitz, where citizen scientists in Australia report on any suspected invasive species they spot - this annual was one of them.

Originally native to the SW of North America, and down to central Mexico. Now an extremely widespread weed, absolutely thriving where the soil has been disturbed. Roadworks and building sites are certainly covered by the stuff here in Perth. Poisonous to livestock, and poisons the plants around it by secreting allelchemicals into the soil.

#1757 - Ursinia anthemoides - Star of the Veldt

Also known as Solar Fire

One of the Chamomile tribe of Asteraceae, first described by Carl Linnaeus in the 1759 10th edition of Systema Naturae, but has been shuffled around since then. The genus is named in honor of German scholar Johannes Heinrich Ursinus 1608–1667.

Another weed from the Asteraceae, and as you might guess from the common name, originally native to southern Africa, along with 40+ other species in the genus. The seeds have both hairs and pappules, making them very easily spread by the wind. Rapidly establishes in native bushland after fire has cleared out the undergrowth.

#1758 - Centaurea melitensis - Maltese Star-Thistle

AKA Maltese Cockspur, Cockspur Thistle, and Saucy Jack. Also known as tocalote or tocolote in western North America.

Originally native to Northern Africa, Southern Europe, and the Western Mediterranean - melitensis means ‘from Malta’. Has successfully established itself in regions with similar climates, which includes much of Western Australia. It was already introduced to California, at least as early as 1797, when some got incorporated into an adobe building in San Fernando. Also naturalised on multiple Pacific slands.

The species grows to slightly over 1m in height, and the flowers are yellow. Seeds can easily last 4 years, and a full decade in ideal conditions, which no doubt helped it become such a widespread weed.

#1749-1751 - Some SW Wildflowers

2021-09-19T12:30:01Z

#1749 - Melaleuca thymoides - Sand Wattle Myrtle

A small shrub, endemic to to the SW, within roughly 100km of the coast. The binomial is derived from the foliage and its resemblance to Thyme, as noted when it was described in 1806 by the French biologist, Jacques Labillardière.

The plant grows in sand on granite hills and in areas that are flooded after rain - in this case, in the Ambergate Reserve south of Busselton. The flowers may appear between August and November.

As a myrtle, there’s a strong chance it will fall victim to the introduced fungal pathogen Myrtle Rust if it makes it from the eastern states to Western Australia. That would be bad.

#1750 - Melaleuca granitica - Granite Claw Flower

Formerly Calothamnus graniticus, until it got renamed in 2014. There’s two subspecies, both near-threatened, and since this one was growing in thin laterite soill over granite at Meelup Beach, this one was probably Melaleuca granitica granitica, the floral emblem of nearby Busselton. The flowers are usually bright red (sometimes cream), and sprout in clusters or irregular spikes containing 2 to 25 individual flowers, usually on old, leafless wood.

Quite an attractive shrub in warm, sunny gardens, growing well from seed and accepting pruning.

#1751 - Darwinia citriodora - Lemon-scented Darwinia

These two photos by me, at the headland above Meelup Beach, in a pile of heavily eroding granite boulders.

By Brett Montgomery - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24229640

Formally described in 1837 by Stefan Endlicher who gave it the name Genetyllis citriodora. The description was published in Enumeratio plantarum quas in Novae Hollandiæ ora austro-occidentali ad fluvium Cygnorum et in sinu Regis Georgii collegit Carolus Liber Baro de Hügel. You can probably translate the mention of the Swan River, and Baron Hugel, both of which I’ve mentioned before. King George Sound turns up in a lot of botantical descriptions from the period too. The Swan River, now the site of Perth, is about the north end of the range - it’s found in granite-derived soils in coastal areas from there to the Esperence Plain.

In 1865, George Bentham changed the name to Darwinia citriodora and published the change in Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany Named after the strong pleasant scent from the oil glands in the leaves, and Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus. Genestylis I don’t know.

It makes quite a nice garden shrub, flowering from the middle of the year until October, and often over a wider span.

#1744-1747 - Ghoti

2021-09-19T12:25:33Z

#1744 - Meuschenia hippocrepis - Horseshoe Leatherjacket

A filefish, a little over 50cm long, found in temperate seas off Western and Southern Australia. The Monacanthidae, AKA foolfish, leatherjackets or shingles are found in all warmer oceans, and are closely related to the triggerfish, pufferfish and trunkfish. They have rough, sandpapery skin, which is how they earned their common name, and have diverse diets.

Photographed from the Busselton Underwater Observatory, from which you can see a wonderful range of species, and things like an octopus strolling up to the surface, grabbing a seagull by the feet, and dragging it under the water to drown. In front of a classful of schoolkids.

#1745 - Austrolabrus maculatus - Blackspotted Wrasse

AKA Blackspotted Parrotfish.

A small Labrid, only 12cm long, and the only member of its particular genus. Found off southern Australia down to about 40m.

The Labridae are diverse, and have complicated jaw morphology and thick lips that earned them the German and Dutch names Lippfische and lipvissen. Some species are capable of tool use, using rocks to smash open sea urchins. Many are protogynous hermaphrodites, with the largest fish in a group changing to male, although in some species they can change back to female if a bigger male is around. There is also some evidence that they can stay female, if its advantageous.

This particular individual was as fascinated by humans as we were by her - only coming to the window if there was a human nearby to look at.

#1746 - Anoplocapros lenticularis - Whitebarred Boxfish

AKA Flame Boxfish, High-backed Boxfish, Humpback Boxfish, Humpty Dumpty, and Smooth Boxfish

A deepwater boxfish native to southern Australia. Adults are about 1ft long, and markings vary - from bright orange to reddish, or reddish-brown. The bright reddish-orange males have an irregular pattern of white bands, while females have dark lines beside the white markings. The almost spherical juveniles are brownish-orange with dark spots that eventually become bands.

They have been kept in private aquariums before, but it’s not recommended because they can’t tolerate even mildly tropical temperatures, and they may poison other fish they’re kept with.

#1747 - Parma mccullochi - McCulloch’s Scalyfin

A Pomacentrid native to the SW of Australia. Juveniles are a similar shape (parma is Latin for little shield), but have brilliant blue upper parts and a bright orange belly.

Around Perth, at least, they’re strictly herbivorous, and quite fussy about which algae they will eat - to the point that the species growing within their territory will be quite different to those growing outside it. As such it’s an ecosystem engineer, maintain patchs of high species diversity in the middle of kelp beds.

They pair up in breeding season, and the male will stand gaurd over, and aerate the eggs, once they’ve been glued to a surface.

#1743 - Notamacropus irma - Western Brush Wallaby

2021-09-19T12:21:14Z

Work sent me out to two country towns yesterday, and following the Google Maps directions between them took me into a complete maze of fire trails in the forests behind the Darling Escarpment. Just as well the van didn’t break down, and that I had enough of a GPS signal that I didn’t get hopelessly lost halfway.

But there was ome compensation - coming around a corner and seeing one of these. It seemed utterly horrified to see me.

Illustration by John Gould - “Mammals of Australia”, Vol. II Plate 21, published in 1861. Gould’s works on Australian birds and mammals are justly famous.

Western Brush Wallabies, AKA Black-gloved wallaby or kwoora, kwara, or koora, used to be quite common in the SW corner of the continent especially around what is now Perth, but upon the arrival of Europeans unrestrained hunting, clear-felling, and the introduction of red foxes swiftly reduced their numbers to less than 10 every 100 square kilometers in 1970, and 1 per 100 sq.km. by 1990. And that’s in ideal tall open forest with open, seasonally wet areas. These days you’re only likely to see one as roadkill. Fox baiting has greatly helped their recovery.

Their closet relatives used to be the toolache wallaby Macropus greyi , from SE Australia, but Europeans had driven that species extinct by 1939 - with 10 of the last 14 accidentally killed during an attempt to capture them for captive breeding.

Adult Kwoora are only 80cm tall (the main reason the joeys are so vulnerable to foxes) and unusually diurnal for a kangaroo. Little is known about their behaviour and even their preferred diet and feeding habits is debated, but they don’t appear to need standing water.

#1742 - Pseudocheirus occidentalis - Western Ringtail Possum

2021-09-19T12:19:29Z

Photo from Wiki, and the paper by Kaori Yokochi, Roberta Bencini - Yokochi K, Bencini R (2015) A remarkably quick habituation and high use of a rope bridge by an endangered marsupial, the western ringtail possum.

One of the most special finds during the trip down to Yallingup - in fact, one was in the backyard. They’re also, by quite a long way, the rarest animal I’ve ever covered in the blog - they’re critically endangered.

The ngwayir is a stocky cat-sized marsupial with a long prehensile tail with a whitish tip. They’re mostly nocturnal, foraging through the upper canopy of trees, feeding on young leaves, flowers and fruit. As with other ringtail species, the tough fibrous leaves need to be digested twice to extract sufficient nutrition, and they don’t regurgitate it either - they’re coprophagous.

Especially favoured are the flowers and buds of the peppermint tree Agonis flexuosa. That species is a very common plant on the coastal plains of the SW - or it used to be. Since huge areas of the SW coastal plains have been clearfelled for farming, or overrun by expanding towns, and climate change is already affecting flowering times and nutritiousness of the buds and flowers, and foxes and cats and cars are waiting to kill any possum that comes down to the ground to get to the next tree, the species has been reduced to scattered populations in a lot of trouble. Some of those populations are actually within the urbanised areas of Busselton and Albany, and rope bridges connecting trees and crossing roads have been built to try and help them. Doesn’t stop them being killed by cars though - I also saw one dead :(

They usually breed in winter, with the single joey emerging from the pouch after about three months.

#1733-1741 - More Peas

2021-09-19T12:13:51Z

#1733 - Gompholobium knightianum - Handsome Wedge Pea

The genus Gompholobium was first formally described in 1798 by James Edward Smith and means “bolt”, “peg”, or “nail”, and “capsule” or “pod” referring to shape of the sed capsule - fruit may be oblong to nearly spherical.

Yet another pea endemic to the south-west corner of Australia - even with the large number of posts coming up, I’ve only covered a fraction of a percent of their sheer diversity down here. As I’ve mentioned on other pea-related posts, they might be so diverse here because the soils are almost uniquely awful, as far as essential minerals go, so being able to produce your own fertilzer using nitrogen-fixing bacteria in your root nodules gives you a huge advantage.

Anyway - a small shrub up to 5-cm tall, usually growing in lateritic soils across a large swathe of the SW. Others in the genus can be found in all states of Australia. Flowers from July to December.

Bickley, Perth

#1734 - Gompholobium tomentosum - Hairy Yellow Wedge-pea

Another Wedge-pea, growing up to 1m tall in white, grey or yellow sand, sandy clay, lateritic sand, in coastal limestone, sand dunes, and undulating plains. It is, of course, another SW endemic.

#1735 - Gompholobium confertum - Purple Glory Pea

An erect spindly shrub a little over 1m tall. Flowering anywhere between August and March. Unsurprisingly, also provided by nurseries, and I don’t blame them - it’s a very handsome pea. Native to the wetter parts of the SW, in sandy soils, sometimes over laterites, on undulating plains and in winter-wet areas.

Baldivis, Perth

#1736 - Isotropis cuneifolia - Granny Bonnets

Also known as Lamb Poison, named after the equally sized keel, and the wedge-shaped leaves, the fact it can kill livestock that eat it, and because it would make a very stylish hat.

A short-lived spreading perennial, up to 30cm high, flowering from July to November with more flowers added as it grows. Growing in sand, clay loam, laterite, and granite areas, and winter-wet flats.

Very common after bushfires, but quickly succumbs to long hot dry weather and taller vegetation. This one was growing by itself in Dawesville, south of Perth, and may have been one of the hangers-on after the last bushfire recovery.

#1737 - Kennedia prostrata - Running Postman

AKA Wollung, Scarlet Runner and Scarlet Coral Pea. Named after John Kennedy (1759 – 1842), a nurseryman at Hammersmith, London and the growth habit sending long runners out along the ground.

A prostrate shrub to 2 metres in diameter, growing in sandy soil and sunny areas in all states bar Tasmania, flowering from July to November. Indigenous people collected the nectar to soothe sore throats, the leaves to make a refreshing drink, and the stems for twine. It’s also grown as a garden plant.

Coolbellup, south of Perth

#1738 - Kennedia nigricans - Black Kennedia

AKA Black Coral Pea. Unlike its scarlet relative, a vigorous climber. Native to Western Australia, but grown in gardens for the unusual flowers, as a climber or ground cover. Drought tolerants and mildly frost tolerant. In the wild it flowers from July to November.

West Coolup, south of Perth

#1739 - Templetonia retusa - Cocky’s Tongue

I posted this one 6 years ago - did I write it up as a proper numbered entry? Did I hell.

AKA Coral Bush. Named after John Templeton, an 18th century botanist, and
the Latin retusus, dull or blunt, referring to the blunt, notched tips of the leaves. I don’t know any of the indigenous names for the plant, although it almost certainly had one.

Another one in the Pea family, but with a much wider range than some of the others I’ve been covering - this one is actually found in two states! Specificly, from Geraldton in WA and around the coast south to Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Although it’s also found inland in the Flinders Ranges.

Grows best in woodland and heathland over limestone, so quite common along the coast in Perth. The shrubs can be up to 2m tall, and flower from April to November.

#1740 - Hardenbergia comptoniana - Native Wisteria

AKA native lilac, wild sarsaparilla and wild wisteria climber

Originally described as Glycine comptoniana, after the Lady Northampton in whose garden a specimen had flowered (her surname was Compton). It was given its current name in 1837 by George Bentham, with Hardenbergia deriving from Franziska, Countess von Hardenberg (sister of Baron von Huegel - who had a bunch of species named after himself, as well, after he introduced a range of Australian plants to European public gardens).

This Hardenbergia is a hardy climber, hanging vine, or ground cover, flowering profusely from August to November, although it cheerfully strangles large trees all year round. It is found on sand dunes and sand plains, and in open forest, on sand- or clay-based soils, over large parts of WA.

Mixed bushland in Wandi, Perth.

#1741 - Hardenbergia violacea - False Sarsaparilla

AKA false sarsaparilla, purple coral pea, happy wanderer, native lilac, vine lilac, lilac vine, and waraburra (which comes from the Kattang language)

Unlike the last one, H. violacea is an East Coast species, found from Queensland to Tasmania. This particular plant was growing high up in the Australian Alps, near Tooma, looking out at the highest peaks of the Snowy Mountains. Unsurprisingly, it’s quite a hardy plant - it can grow indoors if it gets full sun, or even in the UK if the temperatures don’t get below -5C. Attractive enough and tough enough to earn the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.

It’s also been well nibbled by leafcutter bees.

An evergreen climber growing to 6 m high, or sometimes growing as a subshrub as was the case here. The pea-like flowers are usually violet but can be white, pink or other colours. The leaves are dark green, “hard” and leathery, with prominent venation, and broader than those of comptoniana.

Like many Australian plants, it has ways of surviving bushfire - regrowing from its roots, in this case. The roots were used by early European settlers as a substitute for sarsaparilla, but they were probably somewhat desperate.

In the wild, the seeds are dispersed by ants.