The Faceless Marauder – Part 4

Tracking the Crime Scenes

After correlating all the paper evidence and determining that there is some kind of villain at large, the players may wish to see the places where the atrocities took place. This is where your period map of London really comes into its own. Allow the Investigators to be as thorough as they want using whatever means they deem appropriate – even dowsing if your characters are that way inclined. After viewing several locales, have the players make Spot Hidden Rolls to notice that, at every location, there is some kind of access to the sewers below the streets, even if it seems hardly big enough to accommodate an average sized human being. If the party has spoken with Sergeant Enderby at his fencing school, have them also make Idea Rolls: if the attacker can leap a ten-foot tall fence with no run-up, then at every crime scene there are plenty of places to access the roofs above in order to proceed along the rooftops. Some poking about on the roofs of adjacent buildings will unearth old blood spatter, remnants of clothing and the occasional oyster shell, among the chimney pots. Should the party wish to examine the remains of the hansom cab in which the Pearsons were attacked, they will find an oyster shell lodged between the cushions of the passenger seats.

At this point in the investigation, the party should feel that they have a way of progressing forward.

Meanwhile, at the British Museum...

By this point, the party may some concrete reason to regard the Museum with some suspicion. If they’ve connected the dots correctly, they may decide that the institution is well-worth examining. Before they enter however, they should ensure that they have the right paperwork or accompanying NPCs to guarantee that they won’t be simply shown the door as a group of crackpots.

Enquiries about their missing night-watchman amongst the upper echelons of the Museum staff – that is, the directors - will be met with bemusement and confusion: “missing guard? Why no – our guard is not absent, and is always punctual in his attendance.” Of course, this kind of low-level functionary passes beneath the gaze of the Museum leaders and the party will have to speak with someone far lower down on the totem pole to receive confirmation that a guard went astray. If they ask to talk to the new nightwatchman, he will of course confirm that he was hired to replace a former guard who vanished for no reason.

While in the Museum, they might ask the curator’s opinion of the sketch which they may have received from interviewing Stuart Paley; with great excitement, the curator will lead the party to the new South American exhibits and reveal the many artefacts which Alfred Maudslay, the eminent explorer, brought back from the Honduras over the past ten years. Amongst the patterned deerskins which are on display, the party are shown images of very similar clubs being used by the ancient Aztecs.

Central to the display space is a large and ornately carved box made of stone about four feet long and three feet wide and tall, with a slab lid. If the party asks about its contents, they will be told that within lies the desiccated body of an ancient Aztec ruler, it is supposed, wrapped in a burial shroud. It was found in a cave close to the summit of a mountain called Cerro las Minas, 8,547 feet above Copán. The party are informed that the body is not like an Egyptian mummy – disembowelled and wrapped in prepared bandages – but was left to dry and mummify in the frigid, dry atmosphere of the high mountains where it was found.

Museum officials will be reluctant to let anyone view the mummy unless they can prove some pressing reason, or demonstrate that they have academic credentials worthy of giving them such an opportunity (obviously, saying that they think the dead creature is currently walking the streets of Holborn will get them nowhere, except out on those streets very sharply). Persuade, Fast Talk and all other such skills are worth trying here.

However they get into the stone box, once the lid is lifted, it’s obvious that the vessel is empty of whatever it used to hold, apart from the painted deerskin which once enshrouded the dead. This relic may now be freely examined by the party as can the myriad scratches - triple parallel lines – to the inside surfaces of the container. The Museum officials will be most embarrassed by this absence and will endeavour to entreat the party from talking to anyone about this discovery: let the party use this morsel of knowledge as they see fit.

Who is Alfred Maudslay?

Maudslay was an explorer and researcher famous for his discoveries concerning the ancient Mayans and other Central American peoples. A former diplomat stationed in the Pacific islands and later in the Sub-continent, he left that occupation to pursue discoveries in Central America. He explored Chichen Itza and Copan and was among the first researchers to begin mapping Tikal. He followed in the footsteps of two other explorers – John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood – who published a book entitled Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan in 1841. Maudslay travelled to Copán in 1881 and again in 1885, to take measurements and specimens of stonework for the British Museum collection. Those specimens were returned to London and duly installed.

Hitting the Books!

Once the connexion between the attacks and the missing mummy in the Museum has been made, the party may well wish to do some research concerning whatever it is that they have stumbled onto. The British Library will be able to furnish them with many texts regarding Central American peoples, beliefs and mythologies, including the works of Alfred Maudslay. The following is a representative list:

GODMAN, Frederick DuCane, & Osbert SALVIN, (Alfred MAUDSLAY, contributor), Biologia Centrali-Americana: Contributions to the Knowledge of the Fauna and Flora of Mexico and Central America, R.H. Porter & Dulau & Co., London, 1879-1915.

(NB: This work was published over many years, after Godman and Salvin’s return from a visit to Central America. Six or seven instalments were released each year until the beginning of the First World War, and included an archaeological section edited by Alfred Maudslay.)

PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H., The History of the Conquest of Mexico, Richard Bentley, London 1843.

STEPHENS, John Lloyd, & Frederick Catherwood, Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, John Murray Ltd., London, 1841.

From perusing these texts, the party will amass a fair degree of information regarding Aztec and other Central and South American cultures, including the fact that they were unfamiliar with the wheel and horses, and that they made suits out of other people’s skins. They will also discover things about their preferred weaponry:

Macuahuitl

Literally “hungry wood”, this sword-like weapon is shaped much like a cricket bat but with knapped obsidian blades lining its edges Francisco de Aguilar describes them thus:

“They used ... cudgels and swords and a great many bows and arrows ... One Indian at a single stroke cut open the whole neck of Cristóbal de Olid’s horse, killing the horse. The Indian on the other side slashed at the second horseman and the blow cut through the horse’s pastern, whereupon this horse also fell dead.

As soon as this sentry gave the alarm, they all ran out with their weapons to cut us off, following us with great fury, shooting arrows, spears and stones, and wounding us with their swords. Here many Spaniards fell, some dead and some wounded, and others without any injury who fainted away from fright.”

-The Conquistadors

Without access to obsidian in the requisite amounts, our Marauder is making do with oyster shells which, while nasty and sharp, do far less damage than volcanic glass.

Weapon	Base Chance	Damage	Range	Attacks / Round	HPs	Malfunction
Macuahuitl	20%	1D8+1+db	touch	1	15	00%

Of course our villain can also bodgy-together a complete range of his accustomed armaments, including bow and arrows, spears and atlatl, slings, daggers, tomahawks and clubs. Over ten years, you can imagine that he is well-stocked.

If things come to combat, there’s an interesting twist that the Keeper can play on the party of Investigators. Aztecs made armour out of heavy cotton wadding which they soaked in salt water and then allowed to dry, thus crystallizing the impregnated salt. This was sufficient in the day to stop the cutting action of a macuahuitl so it can be deemed quite useful against equivalent modern technology (8 points of Armour). As well, the Aztecs carved helmets from hardwood (6 Armour points) and used sturdy, buckler-style shields (6 points of Armour). A final confrontation with the Marauder is one you know he’ll be more than geared up for!

Mayan Glyphs

The Mayan writing form was developed from the alphabet of invading settlers from the continent of Mu after its destruction. The Muvian settlers taught their enslaved hosts to read the low form of their writing style – Naacal – and, in turn, it was used to signify the native tongue of those indigenous peoples – Mayan. (This isn't true in the Real World - what follows next is mostly correct, though.)

The Mayan language is called K’iche’ by modern scholars, or more commonly by its Spanish name Quiché. It was lost as a language after the invasion of Mayan territories by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th Centuries and the Spanish destruction of Mayan texts. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, only certain numbers and some astrological phenomena were able to be identified with any certainty.

Part of the problem was that many Mayan documents were not recognised as such until midway through the Twentieth Century. Many museums had texts, written on deerhide and rolled into scrolls, which they had acquired along with relics of seemingly greater importance, and these had been relegated to a lesser status. As they were identified, they became objects of intense academic focus and the work of translating Mayan glyphs came to the fore. Initially, researchers believed that the Mayan glyphs worked in the same way that Egyptian glyphs did and used the same translation processes on them; this approach yielded no fruitful developments but did progress the study of the language as a whole leading to several important breakthroughs in the 1950s and ‘60s. The 1970s saw great progress and the partial translation of many codices, as these texts became known. However, full translation did not happen until the 21st Century and most Mayan texts are easily translated nowadays.

Investigators dealing with Mayan texts before 1973 should have no chance of interpreting the material, unless assistance is gained from supernatural sources. Those who have a familiarity with Naacal, the language of Mu, will have standard chances of translating the material, if it is within their training to do so.

*****

Of course, as we all know, there are books and there are books. The Investigators may wish to explore volumes of a more ‘esoteric nature’ which will bring the following horrible information to light:

Ancient legends discuss the fact that the gods created an earlier race of people –the Xo Tl’mi-go - who were “made wrong”. They were given to cruelty and savage behaviour and, for their sins, were struck down with blindness and barrenness and taken from the earth, forced to live in caves and procreate using the women of better-made human races. They were known as the “Children of the Kingdom”, and the legends reveal that only certain spells or “the breath of the high mountains” could stop them.

Investigators can discover this information by examining any Mythos tomes which they have in their possession and making a Cthulhu Mythos Roll. This assumes, of course that the book in question is one that they have already read and from which they taken the requisite Sanity loss. With access to the British Museum, they may wish – if they have no other recourse – to examine the various Mythos tomes held there in the Restricted Section (for which they will need to present academic credentials to gain access):

De Vermis Mysteriis (German edition)

De Vermis Mysteriis (half of the Latin version)

Ilarnek Papyri

Necronomicon (15^th Century Latin version)

Othuum Omnicia

Reflections of ibn Schacabao

“Saracenic Rituals”

Tuscan Rituals

*****

What Next?

If the players manage to get all of this under their belts, they’ll need to formulate a plan of attack:

    1) Knowing that the Marauder is possibly lurking below ground, they may well decide to search below the streets. This should entail discussions with the proper authorities and they will be put in the care of two sewer cleaners who can lead them to the tunnel networks in the local area.

      2) Alternatively, they may well decide to set a trap, luring the Marauder out into the open for a frontal engagement. This is fraught with difficulty and may lead to peril.

        3) Investigators my well realise that Dr. Colfax has attracted the creature’s ire by destroying its misbegotten offspring. They might well choose to use him as the bait in a trap; or they may decide to simply follow him and see what happens.

     4) Another option is to try and find the latest victim of the Marauder (Daisy Hartnell) and see if they can determine if she is being watched by the monstrous stalker.

All these options are possibilities so we’ll take them one by one.

Entering the Sewers

If the party realises that the creature dwells underground they will need to make an application to the Police to gain access (of course they may just go down without permission, in which case they’re on their own!) The Authorities will assign two sewer workers to go with them as guides, and one or two police officers as muscle, if this is deemed necessary: these are cannon-fodder for the Keeper to chop down as they see fit.

The two sewer workers are rough and ready, but polite to ‘the gentry’. They are largely inured to the stench below but will warn any first-timers that the smell is ‘Gawd-orful!’.

Sewer Worker #1: George

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	14	POW	14	Age	65
CON	16	DEX	13	HP	14
SIZ	12	APP	9	Magic Points	14
INT	12	EDU	6	SAN	70%

Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapon:     Shovel 55%

Armour:      None

Skills:                       Navigate (Underground) 95%; Smell -95%;

Spells                        None

SAN Loss     It costs no SAN to see a sewer worker

Sewer Worker #2: Arthur

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	16	POW	12	Age	41
CON	16	DEX	15	HP	15
SIZ	14	APP	11	Magic Points	12
INT	10	EDU	8	SAN	60%

Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapon:     Shovel 75%; Pry Bar 50%

Armour:      None

Skills:                       Navigate (Underground) 80%; Smell -75%;

Spells                        None

SAN Loss     It costs no SAN to see a sewer worker

Random Police Officers

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	12, 13	POW	12, 10	Age	28, 30
CON	10, 12	DEX	13, 12	HP	11, 13
SIZ	11, 14	APP	12, 11	Magic Points	12, 10
INT	10, 11	EDU	14, 14	SAN	60%, 50%

Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapon:     Nightstick 70%

Armour:      None

Skills:                       Law 50%;

Spells                        None

SAN Loss     It costs no SAN to see a policeman

The tunnels beneath London – unlike those of Paris – are multi-layered and do not directly follow the streets above. Essentially, the Keeper can establish any kind of maze they like. Every now and then, the maze is cut by larger channels running towards the Thames: in time the party will enter one of these chutes and will discover a hole cut through the brickwork into a darker tunnel beyond: the sewer workers will categorically state that the opening is new and unknown to them, although they generally avoid the larger tunnels due to the danger of floods and the fact that “the good stuff” rarely gets caught up in the major throughways.

A Spot Hidden roll will detect a scored design decorating the wall across from the entrance to the new earthworks:

This is an image which Investigators will recognise from the deerskin shroud which used to enwrap the creature (Idea Roll, if necessary).

This is the entrance to the creature’s lair. During the Spring and Summer months, the Marauder will be in these digs only during daylight hours; at other times of the year it will be hibernating. If encountered at this time it will require a heavy shaking, or buffet, to rouse it into consciousness; after this it will be fully awake and will defend itself until it can find a new location in which to sleep.

The creature’s lair consists of a pantry in which it stores all of its rotting flesh and the sleeping room which is hung with the skins and skulls of its victims. Anyone who has seen the deerskin in which the Marauder was wrapped will identify the apparatus for skinning and tanning the hides of human beings (1D6/1D2 SAN).

*****

Setting a Trap

This is really dependent upon what the party thinks is happening and how much in tune with the creature’s activities they are. If they have things completely backwards, they can hear an actual attack several streets over and arrive in time to rescue yet another victim of the creature’s depredations.

Remembering that the Marauder makes excellent use of aerial assaults and can climb and skulk into dark, narrow apertures (think: Edgar Toombs of "X-Files" fame), the Keeper can use the trap as a climactic episode of revelation to expose the modus operandi of the monster.

A trap will be predicated upon three possible events: the anticipation of a random attack; the idea that Dr. John Colfax is being targeted for revenge; or the knowledge that Daisy Hartnell might have been impregnated by the Marauder and that it monitors her progress. The first of these premises will see the party roaming fruitlessly on the streets at night with only an averaged Luck Roll to ensure success (with perhaps a bonus if they dress one of their number up as a streetwalker as bait). The other two options are more likely to bear fruit.

Let the party set up their trap as well as they can, given their interpretation of the events: if they get it right, let it pay off; if they don’t have a clue, give them a chance to discover why they got it wrong.

*****

Conclusion

Once the creature has been detected and pursued to its lair, the adventure is really all over bar the shouting. Once brought to justice, the monster is quickly despatched and London is at last freed from its horrible curse. Encourage the party to be creative in its planning – if they determine that the beast is susceptible to cold, they may wish to lure it into an ice-works, for example. Of course there is a sting in the tail, if the Keeper so desires: is Daisy Hartnell pregnant or not? It’s up to the Keeper to decide and to possibly unleash a second menace at a later stage...

*****

I was reading some back-story material in preparing this adventure and a particularly chilling episode of Aztec history cropped up. A derivative of it may be used as a moment of horror when running this story.

*****

The Aztecs were originally a landless clan of mercenaries that wandered the Central American isthmus and worked as soldiers for whomsoever chose to pay them. Eventually, one ruler gave them a parcel of land – several small islands in a large lake – and they began to build a city there and put down roots. However, a neighbouring band of mercenaries was no recipe for peace and quiet and the ruler became uneasy.

One day the Aztecs sent an embassy asking that the ruler’s eldest and favourite daughter should come and visit and be mystically married to their Moon God. The ruler resisted, not completely trusting the Aztecs; however his advisors talked him around – it was only a ritual ceremony after all and his daughter could return afterwards; what harm could it bring? Eventually the ruler relented.

After much time had passed, the ruler’s daughter did not return. He enquired to the Aztec embassy as to when she would come back but they demurred and changed the subject. Finally, the ruler decided to visit the Aztec capital and see for himself what kept his daughter overlong there. The Aztecs made many excuses as to why this would be impossible, but finally agreed to let the visit take place.

After arriving at the Aztec capital the ruler was shown to a private chamber and left by himself. After awhile, a curtain was pushed aside and a figure entered. To his dismay it was an Aztec priest, dressed in the skin of his beloved daughter!

*****

Remember that, if your party gets split up in pursuing the Marauder, individuals may be targeted by the Marauder as a means of obtaining knowledge and power in the strange world in which it finds itself. Killed characters may later confront their former allies in the form of a snappy set of pyjamas worn by their murderer!