Cur­ruth­ers is befogged; Pren­tiss is unchallenged.

Played

30^th June 2011.

Dramatis Personae

• Lady Ant­o­nia deVore – a Heav­ily-armed Aris­to­crat. *
• Cap­tain Ben­son Cur­ruth­ers – a Mil­it­ary Police­man.
• Miss April Sharpe – a Self-taught Invent­or.
• Jack Pren­tiss – a Dodgy Ped­es­tri­an.
• Pinky – a Low Youth.
• Agent Andrews – a Stal­wart Agent of the Min­istry.
• Miss Eliza­beth Montague – a Bereaved Fiancée.
• Mr Rooke – the Boss.
• A Help­ful Door­man.
• An Unfor­tu­nate Thug and his Deceased Companion.
• A Croy­don Aero­drome Stew­ard.
• An Air­ship Crew and Staff.
• The Inhab­it­ants of Cal­cutta and Myso­re.
• The Res­id­ence Guards at Myso­re.

* Play­er absent.

Plot

Look­ing around the wrecked apart­ment, Pren­tiss found a par­tially-burnt note in the fire place and, being unable to read very well, handed it to Miss Sharpe. She man­aged to decipher some of it and real­ised that Cur­ruth­ers had left of his own accord.

Mean­while, the crew were con­fron­ted with the prob­lem of remov­ing a corpse and an injured man from the lodgings without dis­turb­ing the door­man. Miss Sharpe and Lady Ant­o­nia dis­trac­ted him, while Pren­tiss and Pinky attemp­ted to smuggle the injured man out of the back door. Des­pite Pinky’s attempts to “acci­dent­ally” drop the thug on the way out, he sur­vived to be fer­ried back to the Min­istry, where he would be treated and inter­rog­ated. In the mean­time, the group split, Andrews, Lady Ant­o­nia and Pren­tiss going to the Min­istry to request a clean-up team, while Miss Sharpe and Pinky headed for Croy­don Aerodrome.

They arrived at the Aero­drome to find it blanketed in heavy fog. Enquir­ing of a stew­ard, they were dir­ec­ted to the mil­it­ary mess, where they found Cur­ruth­ers patiently wait­ing or the fog to lift. Con­vin­cing him that they might be able to help with his errand, the trio returned to the Min­istry where they found the oth­ers wait­ing for them. Cur­ruth­ers explained that an old Police part­ner of his, one Major Oswald Carew, had been killed in Myso­re. Although the loc­al police had decided it was the res­ult of a botched burg­lary, his fiancée, Miss Eliza­beth Montague, daugh­ter of the Brit­ish Res­id­ent, believed there was more to it and had reques­ted that Carew’s old friend should investigate.

Giv­en that things had been pretty quiet, the team decided to accom­pany him to India (although Pren­tiss took some per­suad­ing). Mr Rooke was happy to give the per­mis­sion to go, ask­ing them to take the time to look into a few minor Min­istry mat­ters while they did, so that the trip became an offi­cial Min­istry mat­ter, acquir­ing an expenses budget in the process.

They split up, packed their lug­gage and headed for Croy­don the next morn­ing, aim­ing to catch the first avail­able air­ship. The fog lif­ted promptly and they were soon on the two-week voy­age to India. Lady Ant­o­nia spent the trip in her state­room, suf­fer­ing from air­sick­ness, but Pren­tiss was largely bored and amused him­self by box­ing and racing mem­bers of the crew. This diver­sion only las­ted a long as vari­ous crew mem­bers real­ised they were outclassed.

Arriv­ing in Cal­cutta, they caught a cross-coun­try train, arriv­ing in Myso­re City a couple of days later. Call­ing at the Res­id­ence, they were imme­di­ately greeted by the fiancée of the dead man.

Notes

This was not the most excit­ing ses­sion, being primar­ily con­cerned with restor­ing Cur­ruth­ers to the group and get­ting them to Myso­re. The tim­ing got par­tic­u­larly con­fus­ing: I had ori­gin­ally inten­ded for them to catch up with Cur­ruth­ers at Aden, but revised the timeline in order to get him back into play as soon as possible.

Air­ship tech­no­logy in this ver­sion of the 19^th Cen­tury has been made prac­tic­al by a pat­en­ted chem­ic­al treat­ment of coal. Heat­ing the coal (but not burn­ing it) then cre­ates Aer­i­um gas (inspired by Patrick Wooding’s Retri­bu­tion Falls), which can then be used for lift in addi­tion to the main hydro­gen tanks. The coal is then used to power the engines in the nor­mal fashion.

It just seemed right for the aero­drome to be at Croydon.