Fifth Session Notes

Wow. Despite everything, including the weather and the service changes on the #7 line, this session ran with all players.

The Starkeweather-Moore Expedition had joined forces with the Lexington expedition, although the two expeditions had not thoroughly mingled. Lexington's people were convinced that the SME had been sabotaging their expedition and vice versa. The SME had found a saboteur, but had left him in custody of the authorities in Melbourne. Lexington's expedition showed definite signs of having a saboteur, which meant that now both expeditions had one.

If so, the saboteur has been laying low. Both expeditions sent planes back and forth until everyone had set up near the Lake campsite, the site where the scientist Lake had discovered a cave filled with fantastic fossils. The cave, Lake, the rest of his men, and the dogs had all been lost in a terrible storm. The rest of their expedition had buried everyone except for Gedney, who was never found, and had been very evasive about just what they had found.

But, the SME was determined to uncover everything. And, for a couple of days, the SME people made progress doing just that, while Starkeweather climbed some mountains far away. This made things more pleasant, as Acacia Lexington and James Starkeweather did not get along well at all.

Of course, proper British Professor St. John Pembroke nearly shot Acacia Lexington. Each evening, people would use a radio in a tent to send messages to the papers, and it was understood that people would be given some privacy. Nevertheless, when Lexington remained on the radio late into the night, St. John was curious. He heard what sounded like German, although he could not make out exactly what was being said, and Lexington's photographer, Priestly, stayed by the door.

Damon realized that it would be quite possible to listen in by using another radio. He, Julia, Erica, and Alicia gathered around the other radio and St. John. St. John heard Lexington negotiating with someone for tanks of fuel in return for letting that person's expedition, probably the German Barsemeir-Falken expedition, send people to go over the Miskatonic Mountains in her plane.

St. John, who had very unpleasant memories of the war, grabbed a rifle and strode toward the broadcasting tent. He knocked Priestly to the ground with the butt of the rifle, and went inside, as Alicia ran to get Professor Moore, unsure of what was going on, since St. John had stopped translating.

St. John pointed the rifle at Lexington, who asked if he had gone mad, but moved away from the radio, as instructed. She freely admitted -- well, admitted, anyway -- that she had been talking to the German expedition. She did not see anything wrong with that. The war had been over for years, and she did not like being dependent on Starkeweather's expedition. St. John pointing a rifle at her increased her determination to find other options.

Julia, Erica, and Damon entered the tent behind St. John, and so heard all of this. Moore and Alicia came soon after, and all agreed that, however much they disliked it, they couldn't very well forbid Lexington from working with the Germans or forbid the Germans from landing at Lake's campsite. They weren't happy, and Julia mentioned that someone German had had something to do with the kidnapping of Lexington's friend, Nicholas Roerich. Lexington noted that this could not have been anyone on the BFE expedition.

Got through chs 8 and 9. Pembroke down to 26 san.

As for tainted oxygen -- there is no practical means I can think of for the expeditioneers to "filter" the oxygen from their tanks. The tanks are filled with industrial oxygen, which just happens to have traces of other chemicals in it, like ammonia etc. There's a reason that "medical" oxygen is much more expensive than industrial oxy -- it takes effort and expensive equipment to refine it, usually by electrolysis... and it's much cheaper to make new oxy by electrolysis than it is to try to filter an existing supply. If it were easy, filtering would definitely be the preferred method, don't you think?

FIltering into a mask is slightly more likely -- people have worked with activated charcoal filters for a very long time. However, such filters do not do a very good job with gaseous ammonia, and for a man breathing would be very bulky. Most gaseous filters remove these things by passing the gas through the filter again and again and again many times, each time getting a little -- here, when the masks themselves are just "straws" to breathe through, there is no way to recycle the gas in any fashion. Even the German masks, which capture and re-use one breath at a time, are hopelessly inadequate for the purpose even if they do save on oxygen consumption.

If you wanted to reload the tanks, you have the problem of pumps. I'm willing to believe that someone -- especially in the BFE camp -- may be able to put together a pump that can repressurize a tank, but those tanks are under very high pressure and big nard-core machines were used to fill them. The kind of pump they might carry with them portably would probably take many hours to fully charge *one* of those big tanks -- let alone the 40 or so tanks they need to take along on the flight.

No, they're stuck with what they have. Checking in advance they can do, and if they do they're likely to find the taint early -- but unless they're gonna buy gas in massive quantities from someone else, *then* wait a couple days for it to be delivered, they're gonna go with what they have. Starkweather in particular will not be willing to wait. -- he might agree to such a trade/purchase to be used on future flights, but the first one needs to go *now*.

Given that the Germans want to go over the mountains, why don't they have planes capable of that?

The Germans didn't *plan* to go over the Mountains when they put their expedition together; they came to follow up the Pym tale, and to do general exploration. The Junkers are the best craft available for overall combination of range and carrying capacity; if you don't *know* you need to climb to 24,000 feet to cross a mountain pass, they're perfect.

The BFE's interest in Lake's Camp stared after Loemmler et al read the Dyer Text, which was in mid-late September after the SME had already sailed. By then all their equipment was already either in Antarctica or on its way, and there was no budget to buy more aircraft anyhow.

So they went to look for Lake's Camp and hooked up with those who *did* have the means, and were already in place.

And found Acacia already fairly ticked at having to rely on Starkweather.

The women of the SME served as the diplomatic delegathon to Acacia at least once this session, and to Meyer as well, asking how he'd gotten the Dyer text. They may or may not be satisfied with his answer, but were quite polite, thanked him for being straightforward, and said that he'd done the proper thing.

Oh yes, during tent set up, both Dan and Pamela rolled a 98, so Gunnar gave them a long lecture on how unforgiving the ice was. As both women knew by now that he'd give the same lecture to a man, they were not offended.

Oh yes -- we noted that the campaign doesn't describe what the odor of the Elder Things is like. We checked the Dyer test -- er, the Lovecraft, I mean -- to get that.

Dan and Pamela are the only ones who've not read the story, and each left with a copy of the story tonight.

Alicia lost 5 San and made her idea roll when H2 was excavated. I decided that, given that player and PC like dogs, she wandered in a daze and came to herself huddled in the middle of the expedition's dogs.

I really got a sense of how important is is that Starkweather not be here to interfere with the emotional tone of this section.

Yeah -- he can ruin it with his jolly-boy approach. Good job!