Scene 1.5.1 - A Conversation with the Colonel

A WWII Cthulhu adventure run by Sadohara
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MacDougall
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MacDougall rises

Post by MacDougall »

Debillings!

Niles MacDougall felt a burning sensation on his right hand as the cigarette fell from his lips, spraying ashes on his dark grey suit. Damn it, he cursed softly to himself as he saw the rest of the group rise to their feet. Brushing off the last remainding embers, Niles clasped a hand on Langston's shoulder.

"It's Harry, isn't it?" Niles asked, his forehead furrowed and locks of dark hair covering his eyes. "We'd better follow this chap before we become permanent residents of this dark place."

Niles pushed ahead of Harry, trying to keep pace with the Colonel. The lightbulbs flickered above his head as he elbowed his way past the crowd.

What the hell does Debillings have to do with this, he mused. And what in the name of God am I getting myself into? I never asked for foreign service or going after the Fuhrer's wild goose chases. The last few messages I picked up hinted at this air strike... there was a reason I was staying in my flat, far away from here.

Niles nervously thumbed another cigarette. Slows down my pace... nasty habit...

If there is anything I can salvage from this about the last work of Prof. Debillings, then it is probably worth it to follow this natty Colonel. I'll be damned if I find myself in some God forsaken outpost at the edge of the world and away from Emma...

"Colonel, sir... wouldn't it be safer to send in armoured troops to recover the documents?"
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Scene 1.5.1 - A Conversation with the Colonel

Post by Sadohara »

Colonel Tenbridge strode briskly from the briefing room, expecting Langston and MacDougall to be close at his heels.
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Post by Langston »

"Troops? They'd do worse than the Krauts, I imagine. Let's hope Col. Tenbridge selected the cream of the crop with those enlisted lads, otherwise our little division will be as ineffectual as your average secret society."
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Post by MacDougall »

Niles brought the cigarette to his lips, unlit, and smoothed his hair back in place. The walls shook for an instant as another shell made it's mark outside.

Damnit, they're close! thought Niles. What could be so important in this library to justify staying out of the shelters?

"I hope that you're right Harry. Let's see what this Colonel has in store for us."
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Post by Sadohara »

"Damn you, MacDougall, they'll be no shuddering in Section P. Those payloads are hitting more than a mile from here."

Tenbridge's face was reddening as he turned on heel and shouted at the only civilian member of Section P.

"Besides," he said, calming as he continued down the dirt walled corridor beneath 21 Lambeth Ct., "Jerry hasn't been hitting us hard at all since the Battle last year. But even the RAF makes mistakes and sometimes a few planes get through."

The three men strode into a bare wardroom, clearly meant to be the Colonel's office. There was an old oak desk with burn scars on the surface, clearly salvaged from some bombed out home with a folding metal chair behind it. A stack of folded chairs leaned against the wall, to which Tenbridge gestured.

"Grab a chair, lads." The Colonel's frenetic pace had slowed and it seemed he more ambled that walked to the far side of the nearly 20 foot wide pocket of their Lambeth burrow. He lit a match and ignited a small propane burner in a hot plate. "Cuppa?" he asked as he set a small kettle to boil before returning to the desk.
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Post by Langston »

"Aye, Colonel. Please."

Langston surveyed his surroundings as he unfolded two of the metal chairs and settled easily into one of them.

"I must say, I'm glad that Section P respects the civilized necessities of her members. Good tea was hard to come by at my last half-dozen missions. Wonderful biscuits, though..."
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Post by MacDougall »

MacDougall took another chair, and produced a set of wire-rimmed glasses from his coat pocket.

"Thank you, Colonel. I'll take a cup as well, please."

"Now," Niles continued, fixing the the frames to his nose, "what can we do for King and country? I am sure you have very good reasons for bringing us away from our posts, and now that we have some privacy, you can drop this boogey-man nonsense. What are we really here for, sir?"
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Post by Sadohara »

The Colonel was silent for a number of moments. He fussed with the kettle, wiped the cups clean with a clean towel, and finally poured the final product. He served Langston and MacDougall their cups.

"No saucers, no milk, gentlemen. We all make our sacrifices." He smiled thinly. "Drink up."

Setting down his cup, he leaned on the desk.

"I wish I were making this all up, Mr. MacDougall. The tragedy is that I am not. Hitler is convinced that harnessing occult power will aid him in his ongoing conquest of Europe."

"Commander Langston, here, is an... analyst with MI-19. I don't suppose you've heard of it, MacDougall. Few have. MI-19 is responsible for the extraction of useful intelligence from German prisoners. On May 11, 1941, a single Messerschmit Bf-110 landed in a field in Renfrewshire, near Glasgow. It's only occupant was Rudolf Hess, a close friend and lieutenant to the Fuhrer. He came, ostensibly, to negotiate some kind of armistice to the war. The Nazis claimed no knowledge of Hess' mission and the war continued on. Since that time, Hess has been in the care of Commander Langston at the Cage."

Taking a sip of his tea, Colonel Tenbridge looked up at Langston. "Harry, perhaps you'd best continue this tale."
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Post by Langston »

"Thank you, Colonel." Langston crossed his legs and took a quick sip of his tea before continuing.

"At first we thought Hess was incredibly strong-willed. From the moment of his capture, he refused to speak, to make any noise at all. However, the fear in his eyes suggested... something else. It seemed to me at the time that he very much wanted to tell us everything, but could not. Over the following weeks, he became physically incapable of speaking when his mouth grew shut altogether. As if it never existed.

"Unfortunately, Hess is quite mad now and all attempts at written communication end with him scrawling the word 'crutcher' on whatever surface he can find. We had to move rooms twice."
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Post by MacDougall »

"Grown.... shut, you say? How in the name of God does that happen?"

Niles stared into his cup for a moment, as if looking for answers.

"I don't know if this has any relevance to your... case or not. While I was at Oxford I stumbled across the papers of a Dr. Timothy Crutcher while I was working on my thesis. I am a mathematician. I was studying a variance of non-Euclidean geometry when I came upon Dr. Crutcher's seminal writings on the subject. Higher dimensional mathematics, multiplicative manifolds... quite extraordinary... I've never read anything quite like it before. I decided that he was either a genius or that the men in white were destined to take him away."

Niles paused for a moment again, cleared his throat, and absent-mindedly brought out a well-worn pipe from his coat pocket.

"It wasn't until I found his work on geometric progressions, long forgotten by most academics, that I was convinced that he was brilliant. His work on Boolean algorithms and Fourier series expansions was ... astounding. At first he applied his methods to predicting mundane things like bird migrations... but it didn't take long for his work to take a bizarre turn. He became obsessed with esoteric calculations of astronomical events and identifying signs in the heavens from stars that our scientists can't even see. He began to see how the planets were arranged in certain ways, and how their orbits corresponded to his number theory. I admit that once I started down this path, I became lost in his babblings. I mean, what is a Telluric Current? I couldn't even pronounce many of the names of references he was using."

"But the glimpses I had into his mind were astounding. Revolutionary. Enough for a hack like me to write my thesis based on his work... with my own take on it, of course."

Niles cleaned out his pipe, and rubbed his eyes.

"It's a pity what happened to him. He died in 1909. I grew up at Oxford, so it was a bit of an old wives tale there. He was found completely exsanguinated in his tower study. No witnesses. No one ever solved the case. Officially, it has been classified as a suicide. The line between genius and insanity is a faint one, indeed. I hope that he knew where it crossed."

"Could this be the same Crutcher? Because if it is, there is more to tell."
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Post by Sadohara »

Tenbridge waited a good ten-count before lowering his raised eyebrow.

"Well, MacDougall, it seems I wasn't wrong to bring you in on this. As I've said before, rubbish or not, these sorts of things need to be investigated. Wartime brings with it desperation and a voracious appetite for anything that might provide an edge, however slight. There's an entire group at the RAF that are convinced they can make a prop-less aeroplane!"

He sipped from his teacup and continued.

"This research you mention sounds like just the stuff Hitler's occult lads might be after. You're a numbers man, MacDougall, and from our file, a damned good one. I want you to help Commander Langston work up some angles as to what Hess might be trying to tell us and what connection the late Professor Crutcher might have to this entire affair."

"We'll set you up in one of the anterooms here. We'll have all of Crutcher's original manuscripts rounded up and delivered to you and anything else you might need, as well as all of Hess' effects. Report as soon as you've learned anything, even if it is just speculation. This is intelligence, after all." The Colonel cracked a wry grin. "Dismissed, MacDougall. Harry, can you hold up a minute?"
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Post by MacDougall »

"All of Crutcher's documents? How extraordinary! Do you release what sort of discoveries lie within those pages? It will take me weeks, no months, to make some sense of them!"

Niles nervously smeared his hair back to his head.

"If you can tell me exactly what you are looking for, then I'll be in better shape. In the meantime I am going to be down the hall. I doubt that this Hess character will be mentioned, but I'll do my best. Crutcher wasn't known for his lucid comments about his personal relationships."

Niles refilled his cup, and then strode down the hall to the antechamber.
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Post by Sadohara »

"Harry, do us all a favour. Keep an eye on MacDougall for us. He's a civilian and a scholar. I am not certain what it is about their kind, but things never seem to work out well for the overly curious in this line of work."

Tenbridge turned to several reports on his desk.

"That'll be all, Commander."

"Oh," the colonel said without looking up, "see that the Professor gets all of Hess' effects, will you? We need to find out what his business in England was. If he can't tell us, perhaps his personal articles can."
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