Where was I? oh yes.
Catherine Montgomery had used her strange card deck to obtain for us a map of the old house in the middle of a swamp. She returned with it to the "Shackled Pig" pub where we awaited her, and we decided to proceed back to the swamp immediately. We took a Hackney Cab to the Electrical Works at the edge of the Hackney marsh. We had no difficulty retracing our steps back to the abandoned wagon, and found no evidence that anybody had been near it since we had left the previous sunset.
We took the skiff and set off in the direction that the air spirit I had summoned the other day had indicated. I, of course, am Aleut, and Private Price also had skill with small boats, so between the two of us we handled the skiff well. Our only problem was navigating the twisty waterways. We knew we wanted to go East, but no path that we choose ran to the East for very long before it twisted off into some other direction. At one point our channel briefly narrowed and we got high centered on a mud bar. Chimney Jack got out of the skiff to push us over the bar, and was attacked by a marsh spirit. By now I know that these types of spirits are called "Water Horse", but back then almost nobody had ever encountered one. I just thought it was some sort of swamp monster, I did not know anything about the swamp monsters of England. I did not even recognize that it was a spirit, so I cast Entangle upon it rather than Spirit Hold. In retrospect it turns out that Entangle was the much better choice, since it held the spirit for much, must longer than Spirit Hold would have. Anyway, the others beat it up and shot it for a bit, then Chimney Jack hopped back into the skiff and I rowed us away from the wounded spirit.
Eventually we found the house. We noticed a faint wisp of smoke from the chimney, The house was decrepit and old. It was built on pilings above the water. We approached quietly, and did not see anybody. but we had used a gunshot just a hundred yards away just a few minutes ago, so I knew it was likely that anybody there was on high alert. We pulled around to a dock at the back of the house and quietly de-boated. We peered in the windows, oiled the hinges, and Cathryn walked into the kitchen to explore. After a few seconds I did as well, but mere seconds later the two outside whispered for us to come out. I returned outside, but Cathryn continued to explore the various rooms of the house. Outside I found Price and Jack talking to a man that they introduced as being from the government. He said that we needed to follow him along the walkway to the front dock so he could explain things. I made certain I was between him and the rest of the party, and cast Spiritual Defender on myself, just in case he was leading us into an ambush. It turns out he was leading us into an ambush, there were two people with Invisibility cast upon them waiting for us at the front dock. One tried to push me into the water, and on the 2nd attempt succeeded. I waded to a fairly good vantage point, used Astral Sight to spot targets, and attempted to cast Entangle. Upon my 2nd attempt I succeeded, catching the two foes remaining on the front dock. I then climbed into the skiff and from there to the dock.
In the meantime Private Price and Chimney Jack were in a rousing fight with the guy who had claimed to be a police inspector and the two invisible guys. They had made some progress, and everybody was injured in some way. I later learned that during this time, Cathryn had explored most of the downstairs rooms and climbed some rickety stairs and found a pug in a cage in the upstairs bedroom. She took the dog and continued looking for Absolom (our missing cardware designer). Back on the ground floor again, she approached the last room left unexplored, when the door opened and she encountered Absolom, a very large guard dog, and the invisible guy who had exited the fight on the front dock. She convinced Absolom that we were on his side, and got him to accompany her after she reunited him with his dog. She tried leading him back to the skiff. The very large guard dog barked at her menacingly, and discombobulated her cool a great deal.
The fight at the front dock was winding down, so Chimney Jack and I left Private Price to guard our two semi-subdued prisoners, and went in search of the other. I went around the house and back through the kitchen, while Jack went through the front room. I recast Spiritual Defender as I reentered the kitchen, which was a very good thing since I took some sort of blast that was quite painful. Between the various attacks I had suffered and all the strain I had taken, I was feeling very poorly, and since most of our adversaries were invisible, I could not guess whether they were wounded at all! Chimney Jack shot the guard dog, which caused it to quit it's very frightening barks. I cast Dispel Magic and was lucky enough to succeed against the invisibility spell, and thus a very strained looking mumper mage appeared, whom, when he attacked yet again, Jack shot into unconsciousness.
In the meantime, the water horse attacked the fake "inspector" and drug him off. Private Price bravely jumped into the marsh to face the marsh spirit on it's own terrain and rescue his prisoner. He did both of these things, but when he dragged his prisoner back onto the front dock, he found his other prisoner had slipped his entanglement and slipped away. this newly free bad guy attacked Jack and I with his hook. I succeeded in dispelling his invisibility, then summoned a spirit of fire to toast him a bit, telling the shrieking dodger that I would not release the spirit until he surrendered, which he finally did.
We got all the bad guys together and tied up. Absolom told us that the gang had kidnapped him, and with threats against his beloved pug Ada was making him give up company secrets. The gang had a portable micro-steam Analytical Engine that they were forcing him to do work on. We agreed that we would free him, and (in order do keep the kidnapping low-key and out of the press and police reports like the company wanted), that he would tell everybody that he had been called away to a sudden funeral, and that his telegram to that effect must have gone astray. Absolom erased all of his work from the Analitical Engine, and destroyed the outputs.
I rowed Absolom, his dog, the guard dog, and all of Absoloms meager possessions back to shore where we tied up the guard dog. I walked with the cardware designer to where he could catch a cab (which I paid for in advance) back to his apartment. While I was doing that, Cathryn loaded her mind reading program into the engine and they interrogated the prisoners who were awake. Little was learned about the gangs plans or operations. While Jack and Cathryn watched our captives Price and I made a few trips with both skiffs to get all the Engine stuff and everything else of value back to the shore. We made some final plans (edit note: what we planned to do is still up in the air) and hired a wagon to take Cathryn and all the Engine stuff away to her place.
I then made a last trip back to the house in the marsh to pick up Jack and our prisoners. (edit note: we are still not certain what we did with them, we ether took them to the police and charged them with theft of the Roper and Sons wagon, or we just let them go, in no circumstance do we mention kidnapping to the police).
I cast "Bathing in the Invisible River" to cleans the marsh mud from the scratches and wounds of everybody who had any. After the last one I was almost unconscious from the strain.
We then went to Roper and Sons, and told them exactly where to find their wagon. A few days later we stopped by again to pick up our 2 pounds reward, which we split up (10 shillings each).
Questions to be determined:
Do we want to bother getting the police involved in the wagon theft? (we do not want them involved in reports of kidnapping)
Do we want to attempt to adopt the guard dog? or do we give it back to the gang?
Can we in some way swing it such that our not turning them into the police for wagon theft is a favor that the three owe us?Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Wed Jul 03, 2019 3:47 am
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