[To any readers who have not played Masks of Nyarlathotep, and hope to at some stage, please note that the below is a postscript about the final events of that campaign. As such, it is FULL OF SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk.]
Police Report provided by Captain Li Wei, from his hospital bed, on January 19, 1926
Gray Dragon Island is a small island amid an archipelago in the East China Sea, a few hundred miles East-South-East of Shanghai. It is comprised of a small, dormant volcano, and, to the North of that, a small forest. While it is uninhabited, it is not uninhabitable; something in the air just makes it uninviting. It does not welcome people.
Jack Brady, an American ex-pat residing in Shanghai, brought the activities at this island to our attention.
Brady is a severe man, ex-military. Prior to his arrival in Shanghai, he had been working as a bodyguard for a young American millionaire, Robert Carlysle. This same Robert Carlysle ran an ill-fated expedition that (according to various sources) was massacred by tribesmen in the hinterlands of Kenya. Brady tells a different story.
In summary, he states that while there was a massacre, it was a cover story so that the leaders of the group could disappear from media attention to enact some sinister plan. His employer was, by this time, no longer in control of his own mind; rather, the leadership of the group had fallen to Professor Aubrey Penhew.
Out of fear of what was coming, Brady made plans to flee. Out of honour, duty, and perhaps even love, he committed to bringing Carlysle with him. He spirited his employer away from the group and caught a trawler up the African coast, slipping away into the night.
He was not done with Penhew, however. He knew something of the man's plans (the stories are too fanciful to relay here), and was determined to do all he could to thwart them. As such, Brady determined that they would end their journeys in Shanghai; he knew Penhew would come there; he knew people there; and, it was a good base to try and organise broader resistance to Penhew's machinations.
He spent the subsequent two years tracking Penhew, and learning of vast networks of people all around the world working to Penhew's scheme. As well as tracking these people as best he could, and learning as much of their plans as possible, he also reached out to a journalist and author, Jackson Elias, to help with the investigation and with bringing these people from the shadows to the light. Though nothing came of contacting Elias, Brady was able to get detailed enough information that when he presented it to me, it was compelling. I was required to bring it to the attention of my superiors.
At dusk on January 14 1926, our expeditionary force had Gray Dragon Island in sight. Instead of a quiet, abandoned landmass, there was light everywhere - throughout the forest, on much of the beach, dotted all the way up the volcano - and even from a mile at sea, the queues of people in their thousands were obvious. Something was happening, and it was much larger than we anticipated.
We made landfall under a rocky outcropping, well hidden from the beach, and scrabbled up into the woods.
The sheer number of people meant that even the woods and undergrowth was not enough cover. We were spotted in moments by a rag-tag group in robes, with blank, large-eyed expressions. They started plucking our number from the undergrowth and dragging them away. I was the only one to make it back to the boat. From there, I rowed out as fast as I could and fired off the emergency flare. In its light, it was obvious the sea was not stopping my pursuit. I rowed as hard as I could, and these people pursued with a dolphin-like grace. I did not think I was going to escape, but just as suddenly as they discovered us, they turned back when I was about a hundred metres away from the coast.
I kept rowing as fast as I could, until I saw the aeroplanes flying overhead towards the island. I relaxed then, and blacked out. When I awoke I was being collected by a fishing boat.
End Report
No comments:
Post a Comment