Second Session Notes

I knew a day in advance that Pamela wouldn't be making it, as she had a seminar that she had to attend. Dan did not make it either, which is currently worrisome, as we've not heard from him. We've left messages on his mobile and via email.

EDIT: Dan is fine; he just slept 28 straight hours/

Before the session had started, I fetched a binder and plastic sheet protectors, and I organized the various handouts in sheets in the binder. This made sorting through them during the game a lot easier.

September 6, 1933

I started by turning to the handouts from Douglas' hotel room and the layout of the hotel. The group went into Room 21 as the police came up to catalog evidence in Room 23. The players thought that it was rather foolish of the police not to check Room 21, but were willing to let this pass. The characters had made copies of what information was there, and left all the original materials for the police to find.

There was a phone number for a Mr. Brackman. Julia dialed this.

Woman's voice: Brackman and Associates. How may I help you?

Julia: James?

Woman: This is Brackman and Associates.

Julia: Oh, I'm sorry. (hangs up)

She confirmed that Brackman and Associates was a law firm by having Alicia do a bit of research. She then called the number again and set up an appointment for the following day, September 7, with Mr. Gerald Brackman. St. John Pembroke offered to come along, and Julia accepted.

In Pamela's absence, Alicia spent much of the session researching various topics. Alicia confirmed that the three names written on a sheet of paper -- Wykes, Grimes, and Brewer -- were sailors from the Miskatonic University Expedition who had signed on with the Starkweather-Moore Expedition (SME). After the article about Douglas' murder was published, they quite the expedition.

On the same sheet as their names was written "The Purple Cup". Alicia did some more research and said that it was a sailor's dive. Everyone agreed that St. John Pembroke was the wrong person to send there to look for information. Julia Styles wanted to go, but both Professor St. John Pembroke and Damon Carlsson both thought that Damon should go. When Julia said that would both go, St. John suggested that she might attract a lot of attention in such a place.

Julia: Very well, we will arrive safely. You will ask questions, and I will attract attention.

She was talked out of doing this. Damon went by himself, and, knowing that sailors can be rather close-mouthed, had a plan.

Julian: It's a very simple plan. I'm going to say that I owe one of them money.

I thought this was an excellent plan. He learned that Brewer was with the captain and the other two sailors, that they mentioned those people mentioned in all the papers -- Starkweather and Lexington -- and that Douglas left the bar alone, while the three sailors went on a drinking binge. He wanted to find one of them, hoping to question someone who knew about the expedition.

I told Julian to make an idea roll, and he got 06. I pointed out that Professor Moore had presumably had opportunity to talk with Professor William Dyer. Damon mentioned this to the others.

Damon also discovered a note slipped under his door, the second warning note received by one of the PCs. They had Alicia make a clean copy of it, then handed it to the police. As it mentioned that Douglas was "only the first to die", the PCs thought that it might have come from Douglas' killer.

Julian: I think it's Dyer, but Damon has no clue.

September 7, 1933

Julia and St. John went to meet Gerald Brackman. He would not speak of the business that he had discussed with Captain Douglas, but he was willing to say that it did not involve the expedition nor that Douglas had seemed to expect to die soon, especially when he saw the copy of the warning note.

Alicia dug up several articles on Acacia Lexington, the woman whose planned expedition to Antarctica had enraged Captain Starkweather, prompting him to blame all the misfortunes of the expedition on her, to move up the departure date of his own expedition, and to accept Julia Stiles as a member of the SME.

Looking over an article about how Starkweather rescued Lexington and brought her safely home, Julia noted its slant. The bare facts of the case, she pointed out, were that Acacia Lexington was on Starkweather's expedition. She was not by herself in Deadly Peril when Starkweather had rescued her. She was at no time in any worse danger than any other member of the expedition. Starkweather, in leading the expedition safely home, had merely done his job, no more. Now, it was certainly good to hear that Starkweather did competently lead the expedition back home, but this was hardly rescuing a damsel in distress! It was doing his job.

Julia did admit that Miss Lexington's apparent animal empathy and ability to call a baby giraffe to her was actually "a bit creepy".

Julia tried to call Acacia Lexington. On percentile dice, the line is busy on a roll of 11-00. Julian was a bit impatient here, saying that, as Josh was obviously going to keep rolling, I should just cut to the chase.

Josh: But, this is fun!

Naturally, he did eventually roll under 11. He got a man who would not put him through to Lexington, possibly because she was on her ship. Julia left a message. She then had someone deliver the card.

GM: So, you drive over and --

Josh: No, I have people for that.

Later, Josh decided that Julia would have included a letter saying that she could call on Miss Lexington that evening, or she would call on Miss Lexington in the morning. That way, if she heard nothing, she could assume that Miss Lexington would be expecting her. This delighted me, as there was a section of the campaign that I had hoped to be able to present, but which I did not want to force.

The press continued to hound people. Seomeone asked Professor Pembroke about his service in the Great War. He was annoyed in an understated way.

Professor Pembroke: We shot them; they shot us. We shot them; they shot us. Then, we shot each other some more, and it got cold.

Press: So, you think your experiences in the Great War prepared you for Antarctica?

Pembroke: Only if I have to see someone's limbs get amputated.

Later:

Pembroke (dryly): Yes, we had a fabulous time on the Western Front.

Press: Mrs. Styles, how did your husband die? Was it on one of your expeditions?

Julia: No, as you would know if you had done your research. He died of a heart attack, shortly before we were to go on an expedition.

Press: A sort of second honeymoon?

Julia: No.

Headline: No Second Honeymoon for Famed Explorer!

Julia: I went on the expedition without him. It's what he would have wanted.

Headline: Her Husband Was Scarcely Cold, But She Carried On His Dream

Press: What do you think of your rival?

(Dave or Julian: You mean Captain Starkweather?)

Julia: I wish her all the best. After all, perhaps with four women going on expeditions on a regular basis, eventually the public will cease to be surprised taht women can take the rigors of such travel.

Later:

Julia: Yes, men are generally stronger than women, but there are things more important than strength: Intelligence, dexterity, skill, leadership, and, above all, courage. Women -- or, rather, people -- can accomplish nearly anything if they put their minds to it.

[Digression about the Philodoxians of Columbia University, who, Dave told us, had their bicentennial in 2002, and who concluded in the late 19th or early 20th centure that women were indeed capable of anything of which men were capble. They also put Alan Ginsburg on trial for being homosexual, and his defense was that he was not. I remember that a lot of Philodoxians died in a war, but not which one.]

Press: What do you think about the rivalry between Miss Lexington and your Captain Starkweather?

Julia: I think that, in general, it is a positive thing.

She went on to talk about how such rivalries could spur people to ever greater efforts and achievements, so long as it did not spur them to take foolish risks. It wasn't that risks were bad; taking risks for the sake of potential gain was fine. It was taking great risks for the sake of risk that was foolish.

Press: What is the difference between the two?

Julia: One you come home from!

Press: And, which do you think this is?

Julia: That remains to be seen. However, I am confident from what I have seen of Captain Starkweather that he is committed to the safety of his expedition and his crew.

(Josh: Translation: Oh God, am I not sure of that, but maybe the rest of us can Rein Him In!)

Julia: And, I am confident that his leadership will ensure that our expedition returns to share our discoveries with the rest of the world.

Later, on the Lexington / SME competing expeditions:

Julia: This is not a race!

(Julian: It's about Science! Really!)

Headline: Mrs. Stiles Urges Rivals to Play Nicely

That evening, St. John decided to talk with Moore.

GM: I presume it's all "Professor Pembroke" and "Professor Moore"?

Dave: Absolutely.

This was an infodump I had wanted to give, basically Professor Moore giving what little information he had about Danforth (institutionalized for a year, broke into the Miskatonic Geography Department, vanished) and Dyer (last heard of from Hawaii, sent a note that said only, "I am sorry"), and explaining that he had to know what had happened to hurt his mentor Dyer so badly. I thought that St. John, Moore's rival, was probably the best person to hear this.

I was correct, but I could not have predicted his reaction. St. John considered Moore's obsession ill-advised. Clearly, the men who went on the previous expedition had seen horrors, even if only the horrors of the weather and perhaps cannibalism. Wanting to understand this was, at best, morbid. It was like people trying to understand what had happened to the veterans of the Great War, in which both Professors Moore and Pembroke had served. Lovely, unpredicatable conversation.

We were actually both drinking hard stuff at the time. I had acqavit. I forget what Dave was drinking. As Moore, I mentioned the look one used to see in the eyes of the war veterans.

St. John: Still do.

Moore excused himself soon afterwards, and Pembroke was probably relieved.

September 8, 1933

St. John and Damon went to Douglas' funeral, while Julia went to Acacia Lexington's house, parked, and failed to get past the doorman, who told her that Lexington was on her ship.

Julia returned to her car, annoyed. She saw another car pull up. An older man with a briefcase got out and walked towards the Lexington house and out of Julia's sight. He returned almost immediately, with the briefcase, and accompanied by a younger man who kept his hand inside his coat. With his free hand, the younger man signaled to another car. It pulled up, and both men got inside.

Julia correctly pegged this as a kidnapping, the younger man no doubt having a gun inside his coat. She started up her car and drove after the kidnappers. I called for a Luck roll to keep the other car from noticing Julia following, as the scenario said. This delighted Josh, as Julia's luck is higher than her Drive skill. I wonder if that was the intent. I know that if the Drive skill had been higher, I would have let Josh use that instead.

I was trying to figure out how to cut back and forth between Julia's pursuit of the kidnappers and Damon and St. John's conversation with Douglas' brother. I didn't have to; both Julian and Dave said to stay with Julia, because they wanted to know what was going on.

Julia followed the kidnappers to a warehouse in Manhattan, found a fire escape, and a window that she could open to get inside. Oh, and she had her shotgun slung over a shoulder.

I had Josh roll randomly for which window Julia was using, and this resulted in her choosing the window around the L-bend in the corrider from the kidnappers -- and right over a pile of soft stuff that would break her fall and dampen noise nicely. Julia listened to a man with a German accent asking "Herr Roerich" about Dyer's whereabouts and Pym's manuscript, hitting the prisoner when his responses were not informative.

Julia stepped around the corner, shotgun leveled. There were three kidnappers plus Roerich. Julia recognized one of the kidnappers as fitting the description of "Southcott", the man who checked into the room next to Douglas', pestered him, and checked out the day after the murder. She told the other two men that they could go, but that she had some business with Southcott. Southcott addressed her as "Fraulein Stiles", as she is, after all, world famous, even in Germnay.

She released Roerich and had a brief conversation with Southcott. He was polite, but uninformative. She had Roerich tie him up, then helped Roerich to her car, driving him to a hospital and calling the police to tell them about Southcott.

Roerich was none other than the famous painter Nicholas Roerich. He asked what Julia wanted as a reward. She asked for information. He explained that he had met Dyer, who asked him to deliver a manuscript to the Starkweather-Moore expedition, but not to read it. When he could not get a meeting with Starkweather, he went to Acacia Lexington, having just learned that she, too, planned an expediton. Roerich had known Acacia and her father for years, and decided to deliver the manuscript to her. But, given both Acacia's ties to Germany's National Socialist party and that there weren't many people who knew where he would be and what he had, he feared that Acacia might have had something to do with his kidnapping. And, worse, one of the kidnappers had left the building before Julia arrived, departing in a motor boat with the manuscript.

As for the Pym manuscript, this referred to the Edgar Alan Poe novel. Acacia's father once had a version of this with five extra chapters. Indeed, there were rumors that the work was not fiction. However, Mr. Lexington died under mysterious circumstances. First, people said that it was a suicide. Then, Acacia vehemently denied this, saying that he'd been murdered for the Pym manuscript, which was missing. Later, she retracted this statement, but the manuscript remained missing.

Roerich asked for Julia to do what she could to help Acacia. Julia made a nice sounding, but utterly non-commital promise that Roerich could indeed place his hopes in her.

Damon and St. John spoke with Douglas' brother, who said that Douglas had vowed never to return to Antarctica. He'd had nightmares, yelling about Danforth's screaming. He also ranted about cold black stones, and his brother thought that this might have something to do with the frostbite that had claimed two of Douglas' fingers. Gradually, Douglas had fewer nightmares, and then, he got back to work. Despite his unfinished note saying that he had sent some papers to his brother, the brother had not, in fact, received anything.