Pren­tiss finds some foot­prints; Cur­ruth­ers carouses with the lower ranks.

Played

14^th July 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.
• Sir Archibald Montague – the Brit­ish Res­id­ent.
• Jemadar Khan of the Bengal Lan­cers.
• Major Hor­rocks of the Indi­an Army (retired).
• Cap­tain Kit­t­er­ick of the Indi­an Army.
• 3 Non­com­mis­sioned Officers of the Indi­an Army.
• The Inhab­it­ants of Myso­re.
• The Guards of the Brit­ish Res­id­ence at Myso­re.

Plot

Miss Montague invited them straight into the main recep­tion room of the Res­id­ence and offered them refresh­ments. Unfor­tu­nately, the Res­id­ent him­self was busy, but it took little coax­ing to per­suade her to enlight­en them regard­ing the full mys­tery. The group mem­bers were tired after their long jour­ney and with­drew to the Empire Hotel to rest fol­low­ing their din­ner. It shortly became appar­ent that Miss Sharpe was hav­ing a bad reac­tion to the food and she was forced to retire to her room.

Cur­ruth­ers decided to make a start on the invest­ig­a­tion and headed for the lounge bar, intend­ing to chat to three non-com­mis­sioned officers from the Indi­an Army who he had spot­ted earli­er. Over­com­ing their tra­di­tion­al reluct­ance to con­sort with officers through drink, he learned much about the loc­al situ­ation. The Indi­an Army was present in an advis­ory capa­city only, the loc­al pres­ence con­sist­ing of officers and staff oper­at­ing in police and dip­lo­mat­ic roles. The Maha­ra­jah was new to the throne and well-edu­cated, but seemed to pay too much atten­tion to the tra­di­tion­al­ist aris­to­cracy, reject­ing over­tures from the Res­id­ent. The loc­al police did not seem motiv­ated to invest­ig­ate the death of Major Carew, who was well-respec­ted by his men. Carew had been mostly involved in chas­ing down ban­dits from the hills to the north, who appear­ing to be death cult­ists, raided vil­lages and cara­vans. Under Carew’s replace­ment, Cap­tain Kit­t­er­ick, the police were now more involved with thwart­ing smugglers.

The next day, Cur­ruth­ers was late to break­fast as he was feel­ing a little the worse for wear.

Fol­low­ing their repast, the team headed back to the Res­id­ence to meet Miss Montague’s fath­er and invest­ig­ate the scene of the crime. Jemadar Khan, the lead­er of the Residence’s con­tin­gent of Bengal Lan­cers, led them to Carew’s room, which was on the second floor of the Res­id­ence. The room had been locked and pre­served since the murder (Miss Montague was famil­i­ar with some of the most recent ideas in police work). Their invest­ig­a­tion showed that there was little struggle: Carew had been stabbed in the chest from the front, but had had no time to react. The door had been found locked with the key inside. It appeared to be pos­sible, but dif­fi­cult, to leap from the top of the out­er wall of the Res­id­ence into the win­dow, about six feet high­er. Cur­ruth­ers began a detailed study of the blood­stains on the car­pet, but stumbled and ruined almost all the evidence.

Pren­tiss, mean­while, had found some bloody foot­prints near the win­dow, which appeared to be those of a very large cat, pos­sibly a tiger. Cur­ruth­ers rejec­ted this hypo­thes­is as they were too far south of tiger coun­try. There was also the small mat­ter that tigers were not exactly equipped to hold a knife! This promp­ted some dis­cus­sion of the exist­ence of tiger demons, known as rak­shasa, but Khan dis­missed this as superstition.

A meet­ing with the Res­id­ent revealed his approv­al of their invest­ig­a­tion, although he believed the offi­cial report of a murder of oppor­tun­ity arising from an inter­rup­ted burg­lary. He gave them a let­ter of intro­duc­tion to the new Cap­tain of Police, and then Miss Montague pro­duced the murder weapon, an elab­or­ately carved cere­mo­ni­al knife. Lady Ant­o­nia felt this had use­ful inform­a­tion in the form of the carvings on the hilt, which most of the team found very dis­turb­ing. Cap­tain Kit­t­er­ick proved to be of little help; respons­ible for the offi­cial report, he was dis­missive of their ideas, being much more con­cerned with loc­al smug­glers and the rebel­li­ous nature of the loc­al nobility.

Cur­ruth­ers man­aged to loc­ate and talk to a retired Indi­an Army officer, Major Hor­rocks, who had made extens­ive stud­ies of Hindoo myth­o­logy. He said that the carvings on the knife were asso­ci­ated with Kalarappa, a loc­al incarn­a­tion of Kali. The wor­ship of Kalarappa had been pop­u­lar in the area sev­er­al dec­ades ago, but the pre­vi­ous Maha­ra­jah had rooted out the cult. When asked about rak­sha­s­as, Hor­rocks was able to con­firm the descrip­tion of a shape-shift­ing tiger demon, but stated that it was a super­sti­tion of the NorthEast.

Notes

This was anoth­er mys­tery-solv­ing ses­sion and very talky, but the major­ity of the back­ground is now out there. I’m very pleased with the way the play­ers were able to get all the sali­ent points this time. I still want to get some fight­ing in, but there’s always next time!

I’m aware that much of the real-world myth­o­logy on rak­sha­s­as is very dif­fer­ent, but this is a set­ting where vam­pires and were­wolves are com­mon and Sir Chris­toph­er Wren used an archangel to keep the dome of St Paul’s Cathed­ral up… My ideas here are mostly inspired by Indi­ana Jones and the Kol­chak/D&D inter­pret­a­tion of the concept.

Prentiss’s dis­cov­ery of the foot prints were the first use of the Sav­age Worlds Adven­ture Deck, intro­duced last session.

(* – play­er not present.)