“...The chief virtue of
their strategy is extreme caution and love of craft, not without a large share
of perfidy and falsehood.”
-John Davis, c.1830
The blasted Plateau of Leng intersects
the Waking World at two points close to China: the Plateau of Sung in Burma and
the Plateau of Tsang in Tibet. The Tcho-tcho diaspora from these cursed locations inevitably draws them to
Shanghai where they hide as lower caste workers and pedlars of strange
knowledge, often connected to the Triads. The rising death rate in the city has
also seen the emergence of several restaurants specialising in ‘chaucha cuisine’...
The nature of the Tcho-tcho is to be
secretive and coercive: they are never overt in their machinations but tend to
play hidden hands. A Tcho-tcho would rather hold a background position in any
organisation and subtly manipulate from the shadows that such cover provides;
it is not in their nature to hog the limelight or become figureheads. The
Tcho-tcho always regard leaders as puppets, limbs that can be sacrificed if
things become desperate.
At all times the Tcho-tcho craves power
and acquisition. For this reason, they gravitate towards the secret societies
of China – the Triads, the Tongs and chiu-chee
Brotherhoods – steering them discreetly towards the nefarious ends of their
hidden masters. The trail of the Tcho-tcho diaspora
from the mountainous west can be tracked by the outbreaks of rebellions and
other instances of civil unrest from the Muslim
Uprisings in Yunnan, the Taiping
Rebellion, the Chinese Revolts of
1865, the Tientsin Massacre
through to the Boxer Rebellion. In
all these instances the hand of the insidious Tcho-tcho can be seen.
The Tcho-tcho are ostensibly loyal to their
chosen deity, the twin abomination Zhar and Lloigor; however, these loyalties
are notoriously fluid and are dispensed with at need. Many Tcho-tcho work
diligently for the Brotherhood of the White Peacock, the Hsi Fan and its monstrous god the Emerald Lama; their involvement
is almost certainly coerced and rigorously (and ruthlessly) policed. The only
being that a Tcho-tcho is really happy to work for is itself and its own
personal agendas.
The Tcho-tcho are not brave. Their lust
for power is never greater than their sense of self-preservation: they will
gladly cede the battle in order to win the war. Their memories are long
however, and a setback to their schemes will not be forgotten - or forgiven -
easily.
The
Margary Affair
Augustus Raymond Margary was a junior
British diplomat who was sent from Shanghai to discover an overland route
across China to British India. The plan was that he was to travel by foot,
horse and boat to Bhamo in British-controlled Burma with his personal staff,
there to meet with a Colonel Horace Browne. Margary was a sickly and not
particularly diligent traveller and his trip was protracted and slow. He
suffered from bouts of toothache, pleurisy, rheumatism and dysentery while
traversing the length of the Yangtsze and these illnesses slowed him down
considerably.
Margary was an amateur botanist and
linguist by vocation. He failed his examination to enter the diplomatic corps
three times before finally succeeding and served as a translator in Peking,
Formosa, Shanghai and Yantai. A dreamy and introspective individual, in
hindsight he was probably not the most fortunate choice for this particular
mission.
Following a route to the headwaters of
the Yangtzse, Margary took an unprecedented six months to make the 1800-mile
journey through Szechwan, Kweichow and Yunnan, finally meeting up with Browne
in the Burmese town of Bhamo in late 1874. In preparing for the return journey
in early 1875, Margary suddenly abandoned his proposed return route and instead
diverted his team to the town of Tengyue in southern Yunnan.
Arriving at Tengyue, Margary made
surprising arrangements for an extended stay. Soon afterwards, he was taken by
local guides to visit a series of caves and, after being separated from his
staff, was brutally murdered. His staff was killed shortly thereafter and all
the bodies disposed of.
Rumour of the incident reached Colonel
Horace Browne shortly afterwards. Setting off in pursuit of Margary’s team, he
established an investigation to determine what had happened to the diplomat and
his staff. After several weeks of searching and interrogating the locals,
Browne was able to compile a report of the incident along with such evidence as
he could put together to account for Margary’s disappearance. This material was
sent back to the British Legation in Peking.
Britain at once sued for reparation
against the Chinese Imperial Government. A tense process of negotiations was
embarked upon which was not concluded until 1876, with the ratification of the Chefoo Convention. This amounted to 700,000
taels of silver as compensation for Margary’s death, a mission of apology from
the Dowager Empress to Queen Victoria, the erection of a memorial in Shanghai
in Margary’s name and the opening of four more treaty ports in China. The tone
of this treaty, conducted by Thomas Francis Wade and Li Hung-chang, extended
much beyond the simple facts of a Briton’s death at the hands of Chinese
nationals and embraced a much wider rising tide of anti-foreign sentiment that
was sweeping China at the time.
The official report of Margary’s death
claims that he diverted to Tengyue on the strength of rumours of bandit activity along his chosen
route; Browne’s original notes however, indicate that Margary had decided to
strike off in that direction in search of a ‘revelation’ that local natives had
told him about. It’s possible that the official report neglected to include
this information in order to strengthen the case against the Chinese
government. Browne found many of Margary’s personal belongings distributed amongst
the natives of Tengyue, including Margary’s Journal:
after despatching them to Peking, these effects were sent on to Shanghai for
return to his family in Britain. Inexplicably, the parcel was stolen en route and considered lost.
That might have been the end of the story
except for the fact that the Journal
reappeared mysteriously. It showed up at an auction in Cefalù, Italy, and was
purchased as part of a bundle of old books and papers by the archive of the
University of Zurich. In later years a certain Prof. Hinterstoisser came across
it whilst writing his theory of magical practise, and included it in his
researches. It is not clearly understood what relevance to Hinterstoisser’s
work the Journal had, but then the
book was later presumed to have been lost in a fire that consumed the
Professor’s offices at the University and which destroyed all of his notes. The
Professor’s work - Prolegomena zu Einer
Geschichte der Magi – was destroyed by the Nazis before being released and
no known copy exists to enlighten the issue. Professor Hinterstoisser
considered (or was convinced) that the effort of reconstructing the work was
too onerous to embark upon and he turned to other things.
From what little is known about the
incident and the cause of Margary’s death, it can be assumed that Margary was
led astray by the promise of being shown something incredible, something which
would take him some time to analyse (given the fact that he made plans for an
extended stay at Tengyue in Yunnan). This isn’t the first time that such an
incident has occurred, given the existence of the Thirteenth Century scroll,
The Abduction of the Mandarin Hsu, which details the Tcho-tcho performing the
same routine that they carried out with Margary. The fact that Hinterstoisser
alluded to the document in his magnum opus confirms that, whatever was promised
to Mandarin Hsu and Raymond Margary, it fell under the heading of ‘magic’.
Further, the fact that the Nazis tried to eliminate all record of
Hinterstoisser’s work shows that they had knowledge of it and were concerned
enough about it to keep it hidden from other explorers.
Whether this thing is a force for good or
completely malevolent remains to be seen. The implication is however, that
there is something powerful to be discovered in the mountainous terrain of
western China...
*****
This is really for the Keeper to decide
as they see fit for their own campaign. The following two options are presented
for review, however there are other possibilities.
The
Black Lotus Revealed: Given
Margary’s predilection for strange flowers, this is an obvious option.
Tcho-tcho individuals let slip to the diplomat the whereabouts of the sacred
plant and lured Margary astray; when elders within the Tcho-tcho ranks learned
what was going on they ordered Margary’s execution as well as that of his
staff. The journal kept by the diplomat was not thought of by the cannibals
until afterwards and they struggled to prevent it falling into the hands of the
authorities with limited success. Now the Nazis covet the vile weed, seeing in
its propagation a means of combating the ‘racially impure’ with a range of
insidious weapons from the Liao Drug to the Flower of Silence.
The
Great White Space: What
Margary was led to was the gateway to Croth and beyond it the hidden
dimensional portal that allows the Old Ones to travel across trillions of miles
of space. A covert expedition in 1933 tried and failed to access this site
alerting the Ahnenerbe of its possibilities: they tracked down copies of the Ethics
of Ygor and the Trone Tables, eventually locating the Margary Journal and
preventing Hinterstoisser’s publication of its secrets. The Nazis are now keen
to control the dimensional rift and turn it to their own ends: their uneasy
truce with the Japanese in Shanghai will last only long enough for them to find
the lost city of Croth and access The Great White Space.
*****
Prolegomena
zu Einer Geschichte der Magie (‘Preliminary Remarks on the History of Magic’)
A problematic text. Shortly before being
released, the entire print-run of this work was seized and destroyed by the
Nazis. However, the standing type was left intact and it is presumed that a
handful of copies, maybe as few as one or two, were quickly printed and hurried
out of Europe. Hinterstoisser’s notes, drafts and galley-proofs were all
destroyed in a mysterious fire thus preventing him from resurrecting the work
after the War. Little is known of the book’s history apart from a reference to
it being sought by covert US forces at the end of World War Two; many believe however that certain passages shed
light on the Margary Affair of the
previous century.
(Source: Necronomicon: the Book of Dead Names, George Hay, Ed.)
German; Dr Stanislaus Hinterstoisser;
1943; No Sanity loss; Occult +8
percentiles
Spells: None
The Margary Journal
Augustus Raymond Margary was the touchpaper who lit
off an explosion of violence against the Chinese: his murder, in tandem with
the Tientsin Massacre of the missionaries there, caused a major outcry
against the Manchu courts by an, unusually unified, world court. Hundreds of
thousands of taels were paid to Britain in compensation for this death
and the Dowager Empress was forced to send an apologetic emissary to Queen
Victoria’s court. All this for a whiney, upper-class milksop with a flower
fetish.
In the end, Margary was just an excuse to let the
Foreign Legations put some stick about and remind the fractious Ching dynasty
who was boss. After the Chefoo Convention and the raising of a trite
little obelisk to his memory in a remote corner of Whangpu Park in Shanghai,
Augustus Margary was forgotten by pretty much everybody. Everybody that is, who
hadn’t had a look in his Journal...
Colonel Browne’s report on the murder officially
stated that Margary had been ambushed by bandits while attempting to return to
Shanghai; his personal notes and report state otherwise: Margary had detoured
from his route and followed some local guides to a remote location where he had
been set upon and killed. His attackers having almost certainly been
Tcho-tchos, he was probably still alive when they started feasting...
What, if anything, was recounted in the Journal,
has vanished into the ether and that’s probably just how the Mythos powers that
be like it. Margary kept an official Account of his travels that was
edited and published posthumously by Sir Rutherford Alcock, and the existence
of this volume has tended to muddy the waters in substantiating Col. Browne’s
account of the incident. Diligent readers should try to keep the two books
separate in their discussions and investigations.
English;
Augustus Raymond Margary; 1874-1875; 1d2/1d6 Sanity Loss; Cthulhu Mythos
+4 percentiles
Spells: None
English; Sir Rutherford
Alcock, KCB; 1876; 0/0 Sanity Loss; Cthulhu Mythos +0
Spells: None
*****
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