Friday 5th May 1854 - Day 3

Mythical London shared universe.

Dramatis personae:
Kerryn - [Leece] - Adventurer who has lived among the Inuit.
Augustus Abelgoff - [Rob] - Antiquarian, surveyor and amateur mountaineer with experience in Scandinavia.
Sam (Samantha) Drydale - [Elaine] - Hunter and explorer with arctic experience.
Aseir - [Gary] - A young noble of the Winged Folk (a GURPS Fantasy race) with temperature tolerance and great ambition.
Chris Heyerdahl - [Richard] - Hunter and prospector with arctic experience.
??? - [Matt] - Mining engineer with arctic experience.

Today's foray was a quick trip up the "beach" to asses the condition of the glacier. The party set out accompanied (as usual) by a sergeant of marines and 8 men. The beach is an expanse of small rocks largely un-smoothed and mostly free of snow. With no time spent trudging through snow, progress was fast to about half a mile of the glacier. While the party was trudging along Aseir soared aloft and reconnoitred the glacier area. The glacier flows in two streams each a little less than one mile wide. Between the streams is a stagnant area with 3 sizeable islands. The final approach to the glacier was a tangle of ice blocks up to 4 meters high. The party would have to tread their way through these until they reached a point where they could transfer to the tops of the blocks. The party was not happy with this and comments about "ambush central" were aired so Aseir was sent aloft to find a better route. When he returned and reported the party decided to cross the snow and enter the city and head up through the city to the snow. FYI the map scale is 1 square is 1/3 of a mile and east is to the top of the map. The snow was slogged through until the city wall was reached. The wall is not much of a barrier as it has many breaches. Immediately outside the wall the snow piles deeply, up to 5 yards thick, while inside there is considerably less snow and many patches of low arctic bushes. Also on the inside there are many piles of rubble all of the black rock that gives the city it's name. Our geologist examined the rock and pronounced it perfectly ordinary dark basalt. This is quite at variance with the local rock for hundreds of miles around which uniformly has a high feldspar content as is pale coloured or stained reddish with iron.
It was decided to leave two soldiers at the entrance in case a retreat needed to be covered and to carry word back to camp if they should get into trouble. The party headed east until they neared the glacier edge. Near the start of the ice the party spotted a regular shape that appeared to be a building. Sketches were taken and two soldiers we detailed to take the sketches back to the entrance detail for safe keeping. While they waited for the runners return they idled around and chatted with Aseir about the best place to put their ladders. Suddenly shots rang out two and then two more. Aseir sprang into the air and the party grabbed their stuff and headed back at a run. Aesir spotted their four soldiers under attack by a band of half a dozen vikings. Our intrepid wingman swooped in and emptied 3 revolver shots into the back of one of the vikings but he was made of stern stuff and did not falter in his charge. This annoyed him enough that he conjured a fireball and started charging it up to full power. While this was happening the soldiers, who were fighting with cutlass and buckler against the long axes of the vikings, downed one and wounded 3 more. The fireball took the rear most viking in the back and he fell in a heap with his clothes burning. As Aseir circled around for another pass the soldiers finished off the rest of the vikings. All four soldiers were injured and losing blood but luckily there were no crippling blows. The party soon arrived and first aid and some healing magic was applied. Attention was turned to our fallen vikings who were not staining the snow with blood and it was found that they were skeletons dressed in viking clothes. It was thought prudent to smash the bones and a sample set of clothes armour and weapons was taken for later investigation. The skeletons were backtracked to a snowdrift where they had been covered so an aerial sweep was made and a humanoid figure was spotted lurking to the South East. The interloper spotted the Wingman and quickly ducked out of sight. At his point a retreat was called and the party retraced their steps back to the beach. As they did so there was a loud hooting call from the vicinity of the glacier margins.

Back at the camp the soldiers were hustled off to a healer and the party examined their loot. The clothes were well patched and somewhat threadbare. The axe heads were ordinary iron forged in perfectly respectable 13th C Norse style but the hafts were not wood. Instead they were of some hard compressed fibrous material. The cloak was not wool or linen but some mostly waterproof woven fibre. The biggest surprise was the penannular broach that pinned the cloak. The metal seemed unreasonably light and a chemist was summoned to investigate. His verdict was the new expensive metal Aluminium. The helmet was ordinary iron but the faceplate had been hammered out and patched at some point. If the repaired damage had been caused by a weapon then the blow had probably been fatal for the wearer. Finally the chainmail was in a sorry state with more holes filled with woven cord than solid patches of links. None of the material seemed old enough to date back to the time it's style suggested and the aluminium broach was a flat out impossibility. But as Augustus said "someone has gone to a lot of effort to make these skeletons look like vikings".

During the late afternoon another party that had gone to investigate yesterday's ruin returned with stories of carved rocks and platinum discs found among the piles of rubble.

Kerryn was an unhappy man after the encounter with the skeletons as he had been warned by his shaman that this was a forbidden place because things did not stay dead here.

Yesterday.
Day one.
#rpg #rpgplay #gurps #blackcity #hexcrawl