Chuck is bringing us something new today: an Adventure! game. Bruce is Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs, Paul is his faithful servant Kumar Singh, and Chris (currently only barely able to speak) is the daring pilot Michael Sangaree.
Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs is a genius and a scientific master. He has traveled all through Indochina and the East, his Faithful Servant(s) by his side, shining the light of British Science upon the savage native superstitions. And purchasing ravishingly good real estate in the Former Colonies. In the Hamptons. Where he owns an estate and a mansion. Fully-equipped: in addition to the tennis court and the polo field, he has a functional landing field and a hangar.
The start of the story finds him living on his estate in the Hamptons, working on his latest inventions: Silk-Steel armored clothing (2B/4L protection, with 0 encumbrance) and Superfuel.
Michael Sangaree keeps his airplane out in West Texas. His mechanic Bubba lives in a hut near the field. And his wolf Fenris guards his DC-3 cargo plane when he's not there. He looks very much the pilot, down to the jodhpurs and the scarf. He is tall, blonde, and well-muscled, with flowing long hair. He is nine feet tall and has muscles that could be used to bludgeon a moose.
Kumar Singh is constantly accompanied by his staggeringly clever trained monkey Dumaki. Or, in short, "Maki", as in "Go get the small fleshy fragment gun, Maki!" He is a Nepalese ranger ("savage"). He in turn accompanies Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs, who regards him as a Faithful Servant. He consoles himself with the knowledge that Pulfrey-Downs wouldn't be able to survive a day in the big city without him. He is less consoled by Pulfrey-Downs' inability to distinguish him from any one of a half-dozen other previous Faithful Servants, many of whom appear to have met gruesome ends in obscure parts of the world.
It is Monday, January 30th, 1933. A beautiful day, unless you happen to have been involved in stock speculation. On the plus side, Prohibition has been over since December 1932. Then again, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany today.
Each of the characters receives an invitation to join the Paragon Club, an international association of explorers and adventurers headquartered in New York City. The invitations are neatly handwritten in impeccable style, upon expensive linen paper.
Kumar Singh walks into Arthur Michael Vincent Pulfrey-Downs' study to tell him about the invitations. Pulfrey-Downs is crestfallen: "I don't understand, why did you get this invitation. I'm a world-famous scientist!... Perhaps you can tell me what the meetings are like." Kumar Singh falls over laughing. He reminds himself to tighten Pulfrey-Downs' cravat extra tight tomorrow morning. Once again, he wonders how he developed such a close friendship with this insane English aristocrat with piles of money.
Kumar Singh calms down and asks, "Do you think we should walk into this death-trap?" Pulfrey-Downs has no reservations, answering "Of course! I'll be wearing my off-black suit." Kumar muses, "I'm wondering if they'll let me through the front door loaded with weapons." Pulfrey-Downs finally decides to pay attention and asks, "You really think such precautions are necessary? If so, I'll bring my sword-cane." The two of them make arrangements to drive into the city from the Hamptons.
Pulfrey-Downs precedes Kumar into the building. He hands his hat and coat to the hat-check girl. He makes a point of handing her his sword-cane, mentioning, "Be careful with that - it' a sword-cane." Kumar looks disgusted as he retains his kukri. The two characters are met by O'Reilly the doorman, who guides them to one of the sitting rooms.
Michael Sangaree arrives a bit later. He is wearing his two pistols under his duster jacket and is quite glad that there were no gun laws worth mentioning in the 1930's. He is upset that the hat-check girl wants to take his duster jacket.
Pulfrey-Downs holds forth upon his various qualifications for membership, to nobody in particular: "I am a scientist! I have seen things you cannot imagine! I have been to the darkest depths of Indochina. I have dealt silver with the Mandarins and poppies with Afghan warlords. I have seen the dashedest things in the Hong Kong opium societies." Michael Sangaree responds, "I've slept with five French whores in one night." Kumar claps and shouts "The Texan wins!"
A dark, dour gentleman enters the room and introduces himself as Jeeves, the Majordomo. He apologizes that Dr. Wilde is not able to be here personally, and asks them to allow him to show them the club's facilities. He gives the characters the grand tour.
On the way to the second floor he asks, "Would you care to take the stairs, or the elevator?" Kumar answers instantly, "The stairs. I'm not fond of creaking metallic death traps." Pulfrey-Downs scolds his faithful servant: "Just because mine didn't work is no reason to bear a lasting grudge." Michael Sangaree offers, "Are you the doctor who put alligators in an elevator well...?" Pulfrey-Downs defends himself: "It was a nice, dark, damp pit. And the alligators seemed to like it fine!"
At the end of the tour, Jeeves gives each of the characters a business card. It features raised gold-leaf letters on a faintly off-bone shade of cardstock. He informs them that there is an informal dining party for the members on the second Tuesday of every month, plus a members-only formal dinner twice a year and an open formal dinner twice a year.
A tall, tanned American enters the bar. He is instantly obvious as "Tiger Jim" Dungaree. He walks in and starts up a conversation with Kumar, saying "Aha! Gobey, I believe!" in fluent Nepalese. Kumar asks Pulfrey-Downs sotto voce "Have you been telling people I'm Gobey again?" Pulfrey-Downs flatly denies any such thing, saying "Of course not, Gobey! Errr... Kumar."
Tiger Jim is happy to see the characters, and offers to show them some great places in New York. He also offers to take them on a great trip down to South America, to the Amazon. Pulfrey-Downs is enthusiastic: "Capital idea! What do you think, Gobey?" Kumar is less taken: "I think we'll all die of horrible tropical diseases." Pulfrey-Downs persists: "You always that that, and we've never all caught these diseases. Well, except for that poor bastard Wilkinson."
Tiger Jim arranges to meet the characters for lunch tomorrow. In the meantime, Sangaree offers to fly everyone back to the Hamptons for the evening.
Kumar heads towards the billiards table, hoping to meet as many people as he can so he can use them later on. Between the lounge and the library he meets:
Kumar Singh examines the bar. He is pleased to see that it has quite the extensive supply of liquers and whatnot. Kumar strikes up a conversation with Gorilla McGill, determining that the fellow knows how to make mixed drinks out of practically everything.
Meanwhile, Pulfrey-Downs has made his way up to the library. Kumar is deeply upset to be reminded when he shouts down the stairs, "Gobey! Can you believe it! They have that charlatan Doctor Gunderson's book! Can you believe this tripe!" Kumar (muttered): "That's what I said about your last book." Michael Sangaree joins in the fun, "Hey doc! Do they have the Kamasutra up there?" The librarian Phelina O'Rourke interrupts at this point, taking the book from Pulfrey-Downs' fingers and scolding him "Put that back where it came from, Dearie."
Jeeves finally puts the games to an end, reminding the characters that a certain amount of decorum is expected of club members.
Michael Sangaree flies the group into town early, so he can get a bit of pre-noon drinking done. He tries to ask Kumar several questions, starting with, "Are there any good brothels around here?" only to find that the little fellow is talking to his vodka bottle in Russian. Sangaree shakes his head and mourns, "These people ain't got no resistance to alcohol."
Tiger Jim turns out to be quite late. Sangaree remembers that Tiger Jim had said he was going to an International Expeditionary Foundation meeting the day before. He asks Gorilla where the place is ("Third and Main") and to top off his flask, because he thinks it's going to be a long day.
The characters head to the IEF. The Foundation turns out to have a large compound serving as a combination museum and headquarters, surrounded by a nice topiary garden. Kumar takes the lead, asking the desk help after the explorer Tiger Jim. The woman manning the desk reports with regret that he isn't in, and that she doesn't know where he is, and even if she did the club policy is to not give out information on club members.
The characters notice that there is some work in one side of the museum. Workmen are taking down an Egypt display, to make room for material from an expedition Tiger Jim Dungaree only just returned from. The desk clerk explains that he isn't here supervising the work because he was serving just as a local expert, not as a scientist.
The desk clerk gives the characters a press release describing the expedition, only recently returned from French Equatorial Africa. Tiger Jim was the guide. James Harper was primary archaeologist, and Nora Clark was his assistant.
The characters call back at the Paragon Club. Jeeves says there's still no sign of Tiger Jim. He expresses some surprise that he missed a lunch appointment, because he is normally quite punctual. He gives Kumar a card with Tiger Jim's address, an apartment house just off Central Park. The group drives there. Michael Sangaree drives, commenting that "In Texas, we regard driving as a privilege." Kumar thinks it's just nice to take a break.
Kumar notes that the lock on the apartment door is damaged. He turns to the rest of the group and says, "I suspect there are 38 assassins on the other side of this door. Sangaree, would you go first?" Sangaree: "Well, I have only 16 bullets..." They go through together to find signs of a struggle: the place has been completely ravaged.
The characters search the place. The only item that seems particularly unusual is a carved wooden cat's head with the eyes gouged out. Pulfrey-Downs instantly recognizes it as an example of Batanga carving (from French Equatorial Africa). He explains to the other characters that the eyes would normally be inlaid with gemstones.
Kumar thinks that the cat's-head was left to be found. Both he and Pulfrey-Downs reach the conclusion that speaking to Professor Harper would be a good idea. Sangaree looks up the fellow in the phone book and finds that Johnathan Harper is a surprisingly common name. Kumar simply calls up a friend of his at Columbia and gets Harper's address: a modest home out in Jersey. The characters drive there and find that the Professor's place has been tossed as well, even to the extent of leaving another wooden cat's head with the eyes gouged out. Nora Clark's ramshackle apartment is the third stop, and looks the same as the other two.
The characters now have three wooden cat's heads.
Pulfrey-Downs heads to the library to read about the Batanga people. He learns that the Batanga people associate cats with legends of an ancient empire in that region. The mythology includes several references to cat shapeshifters, and suggest that this is a racial memory of an otherwise-forgotten empire that stretched all through that part of Africa.
Kumar looks at the newspapers, interested in recent developments in French Equatorial Africa. There is brief mention of the expedition, saying only that it has brought back a number of artifacts. The French cultural attaché Jacques Renier is mentioned as a sponsor of the expedition. Kumar decides that Renier might be a good guy to talk to, especially since he's in New York at the French Consulate. Kumar talks to Renier's secretary and arranges an appointment at 19:00.
Pulfrey-Downs notices that Kumar is on the phone and asks him, "Gobey, while you're using the telephone could you arrange lodging for us at the Presidential Hotel?" Kumar: "Of course, if there is such a place." He finds that the Presidential Hotel is (as he tells Pulfrey-Downs) "a place is so swanky they want to charge by the hour." He recommends staying at the Waldorf-Astoria instead.
The characters arrive at the Consulate to find that there is complete chaos afoot. The confusion is so total that nobody even tries stopping the characters. Kumar grabs a woman out of the crowd and asks what is going on. She is hysterical, able only to get out the words, "Blood!" and "Monsieur Renier!"
Pulfrey-Downs becomes frustrated by the fact that he cannot get through the crowd. He bellows out, "Let me through! I am a scientist!" Rather to Kumar's surprise, people actually clear away from him.
The characters push their way through the crowd. They find that some of the staff are trying to calm things down. They gather that Renier has been attacked and his office has been reduced to a shambles. Pulfrey-Downs gets quite a bit of mileage out of claiming to be a doctor.
The room's décor is dominated by the savaged body of the Cultural Attaché. Beyond that, there is a line of pawprints (possibly left by a big cat) leading from the body to a tightly closed window, and a similar series of footprints from a puddle of spilled ink to the wrecked safe. A broken chair lies on the floor. Kumar notices that it looks like somebody picked it up and tore it apart.
Pulfrey-Downs effortlessly stabilizes the wounded cultural attaché. All he can tell about the cat prints and the bit of fur Kumar finds is that it was definitely some sort of big cat. And that he is quite allergic to cats.
Sangaree glances into the office and notices the ruined safe. He mentions that it looks like someone banged it open. Kumar comments, "Yes, but someone unlocked it first. They only ripped apart the door afterwards."
Kumar and Pulfrey-Downs escort the French cultural attaché to the Our Sister of the Futile Miracle hospital. Kumar stands guard over the man while Pulfrey-Downs intimidates his way into the pharmacy ("Let me through! I am a scientist!") to whip up some super-stimulant. It takes him two hours and one Inspiration point to make up a batch. The stuff needs to be injected through the ear.
Michael Sangaree feeds alcohol and Rapport to the secretary to calm her down. Even though she proves strangely immune to the techniques from One Thousand and One Guaranteed Chat-Up Lines, he is still able to get her into something of a conversation. She says that his last visitor that night was a large Negro. She didn't see his face: he had his collar turned up, wore a trenchcoat, and a hat. She didn't see him leave: he was in talking to Monsieur Renier when the disturbance started. She threw open the door only to see a huge cat savaging Renier. She doesn't know what sort of things Renier might have had in his safe, or why a large cat might have been interested in them.
Michael Sangaree arrives at the hospital in time to find Renier awake, thanks to Pulfrey-Downs' instant-stim ointment. Renier knows the black man only as "John Smith": he made an appointment, then turned into a big cat an attacked him. There weren't any artifacts in the safe, just the shipping schedule for them. He remembers that the ship should show up at 22:00 tonight, about a half-hour from now, on board the Batanga Queen.
"I'll drive" says Michael Sangaree. "Quite right!" says Pulfrey-Downs. They go like mad bastards.
At the docks, the characters can see that the Batanga Queen has already pulled up to the docks. They can smell the same strange chemical scent they smelled in the cultural attaché's office. Pulfrey-Downs draws out his Webley and walks up to the pier. He can see several men working up on the ship. Kumar can not only see them, but also the Thompsons they're carrying. Kumar runs up the pier, kukri in hand. Sangaree stays on his side of the car, draws out his guns, and starts blazing away.
The guys up on the Batanga Queen react immediately. One takes a shot at Pulfrey-Downs. Pulfrey-Downs shouts out, "Kumar! Be careful! They have firearms!" By this time, Kumar is closely-engaged with several goons, all of them firing at him with Thompsons. He shouts back, "No kidding!"
Michael Sangaree takes a hit from a Thompson burst, but is only barely bruised thanks to his silk-steel shirt. Kumar lashes out with the kukri, taking on two goons at once and knocking one of them down. And then another one. And so on.
Pulfrey-Downs, noticing that nobody is shooting at him anymore, moves back to fetch his Garand from the trunk. Beside him, Michael Sangaree continues blazing away at the same goon he's been shooting at all through the fight (five times, plus one shot more from Pulfrey-Downs), finally managing to hit the guy.
Once the characters feel they have gotten the situation pretty much under control, things wheel into chaos once again, as three African tribesmen in cat headdresses and cloaks, armed with clawlike weapons, appear (as if from nowhere). Two attack Michael Sangaree, who gets rather badly torn up. Pulfrey-Downs neatly evades the third. He yells out, "Kumar! Would you please finish up over there so you can help us here?" Kumar, currently fighting the last three goons, finishes off one of them and agrees to hurry. Sangaree pulls off a quick shot at one of the new goons and finds that for cat-skin-wearing savages they have quite a bit of armor.
Pulfrey-Downs pulls his Garand out of the car boot, spins it around, and shoots one cat man over his shoulder. He gets a bonus of +1 die for his stylish maneuver, and uses it to wound the guy. The tribesman absorbs the blow and inflicts four levels of damage upon Pulfrey-Downs in return. Gritting his teeth, Pulfrey-Downs shouts out, "Kumar! Now would be a good time!" Kumar, totally unruffled, responds, "Only two more, and they're attacking me at once, so this will go a lot faster!" The two goons try to run for it, but Kumar runs them down without any real trouble, then runs to Pulfrey-Downs' side.
For his part, Pulfrey-Downs drops to his knee, pushes the muzzle of the Garand into the savage's vitals, and sends the blighter flying. In the sudden calm, Pulfrey-Downs hears the sounds of a motor boat on the other side of the freighters. One of the cat-savages presses hard on Sangaree, who retreats to the edge of the pier and falls to crippled. The other notices that Pulfrey-Downs just shot his friend and rushes to the attack. Kumar stands before his master, blocking the force of the blow and then striking back with lethal power (using his Destructive facet to make sure the creature stays down).
Pulfrey-Downs backs up a step, leans backward around the car, and sends a bullet through the final cat-savage's ears. The characters recognize that if someone breathes upon the fellow he will fall over. Pulfrey-Downs calls out to Sangaree, "Breathe on him, man! For the love of God, breathe on him!" Sangaree punches him and knocks him down.
Dramatic silence ensues.
Pulfrey-Downs wipes the blood and cordite from his brow and sighs, "Oh, that was a tremendous fight. I think we need to sit down and rest for a moment. Kumar, could you bring us something cool to drink, something with opium in it perhaps." Sangaree goes to sit down in the car and bleed. He parks the front tire of the car on the torso of the unconscious tribesman.
Kumar runs up onto the Batanga Queen in time to see a motor boat driving off into the distance. The ship's captain and first officer are dead. The safe in the captain's cabin is open and empty.
Closer inspection of the three tribesmen reveals that they are wearing leather get-ups with attached claws. One goon is still alive, and one tribesman. Pulfrey-Downs administers his last dose of Instant-Awake to the tribesman, commenting, "I hope his heart can take it." The fellow immediately goes into convulsions. Pulfrey-Downs observes him carefully, and deduces that if he were under the effects of some other drug, there could be harmful interactions. Bloody spittle foams from the man's mouth. Yellow pus oozes from his eyes. He dies as Pulfrey-Downs is still busy taking notes on his symptoms. Sangaree puts a hand on Pulfrey-Downs' shoulder and reassures him, "I'll tell the cops that they were drinking antifreeze as they rushed us."
Pulfrey-Downs tries using normal medicine to wake up the other captive, the ordinary goon. This plan works much better than high-octane, poorly-tested superdrugs. Kumar interrogates the guy and quickly finds out that he is just a low-rent ($20) goon who was hired by "a voice on the phone." He doesn't know anything about his employer beyond the fact that he's "A big black guy." Apparently the big black guy killed the captain, took something from the safe and then left. The goon remembers the leader saying that they had everything they needed, and could leave now.
Michael Sangaree finds a security guard tied up in the warehouse. He is still bleeding profusely as he frees the fellow. He tells the man, "You are so very lucky you just got tied up."
Pulfrey-Downs sniffs at the air and comments, "I think that smell comes from the drug they take." Kumar smells one of the bodies, notices that the smell is coming from the man's skin, and says, surprised, "You know, you could be right!"
The cops eventually show up. The characters tell them everything. Including the way the black guys were all dressed in tiger outfits. The cops are curious as to why one of the dead is frothing at the mouth. Sangaree tells them he drank a pitcher of radiator fluid.
While Sangaree and Pulfrey-Downs head to the hospital, Kumar calls around to see if he can figure out who might have rented a boat to a group of big black tribesmen. Pulfrey-Downs heads back to the Hamptons to convalesce (and to research Fast-Healing Elixir, an invention whose time has come). Sangaree explains his wounds to the hospital staff by saying, "I was trying to teach a monkey to fly a plane."
Four days go by. Pulfrey-Downs comes up with Fast-Healing Elixir. He makes several doses of it. Sangaree sends Bubba out to buy a Winchester 97, some 45 shells for his new Tommy Gun, and a couple boxes of shotgun shells. He keeps all this in his hospital room and looks really mean. At this point, Pulfrey-Downs invites Sangaree to join him in the Hamptons, where he has a doctor who does house calls. It turns out that doctors aren't really necessary, as the Fast-Healing Elixir is enough to fix everyone up in just a couple of days. Michael Sangaree (who is Resilient) does even better: he heals up in only four hours. Pulfrey-Downs takes a full eight hours to recover.
Kumar learns that a servant at the French Consulate has gone missing. He cannot find out any useful regulations on charter planes and ships that have arrived or departed.
Each character gains three experience points. The group knows that their next stop will be French Equatorial Africa. Several of them make some preparations for the trip. Pulfrey-Downs adds seaplane landing gear and two concealed Lewis gun mounts on Michael Sangaree's airplane. This takes 12 hours of development time and 12 hours of construction time. Fast-Healing Elixir took 4 days of development and 4 hours of construction. Time for French Equatorial Africa!