Monday, April 22, 2019

Episode 7: An Encounter With A Martian Scholar, And An Expedition To A Lost Temple

Wilhelm and Waldmont were enjoying rehabilitated reputations in Syrtis Major, and were wandering the more "authentic" byways of the town near the Royal Palace when they came upon two toughs roughing up an elderly Martian. Naturally they intervened and fought off the attackers, rescuing the old Martian, who claimed to be one Queeleek Thorshian, a scholar of Old Mars.

Queeleek spoke broken English by preference, and expressed his thanks to Wilhelm and Waldmont, telling them that he had discovered a great secret, something that would be very illuminating of Martian history, of great worth to scholars, and that he would very much like to show his new friends the proof over a cup of something that didn't make the translation but was hopefully the Martian tea that the Earthmen had found so palatable. The two adventurers accompanied the old man home, whereupon they discovered his megre hovel had been well and truly trashed. Clearly the work of someone looking for something valuable. It looked as though tea would have to wait.

Queeleek was distraught for a few minutes, then recovered himself and showed that he had the most valuable of his "proofs" on his person; pot shards and scraps of paper, all extremely timeworn and fragile, wrapped in a leather roll of ingenious design. Queeleek treated these almost with religious reverence as he explained that they described the "Hills of Kings" which he believed were a reference to the Aerian Hills, a well-known feature of the somewhat local Aerography1.

Clearly depicted on the scraps of material was a temple, which Queeleek called the "no-name temple". He went on to explain that the temple was depicted as above the water of the long-gone sea in which the Aerian Hills once sat as islands. He said he knew where this temple must be and asked for help getting there.

As the adventurers and Queeleek discussed matters, a bottle was tossed into the house and when it broke a terrible conflagration engulfed that part of the house. Seconds later the front door was engulfed in unpassable flames as it too became the target of an improvised terror weapon. Deciding that discretion was definitely the better part of valour in this case, Wilhelm and Waldmont used their mighty Earthman thews to break down the barricaded back door and effect escape for all into a back alley.

The adventurers decided that matters were such that they could not refuse to help the poor Martian scholar, and so they found him lodging at the Explorer's Club with only a few eyebrows raised, organized the loan of a steam launch, the Persephone, owned by Lord Ponsonby, a rich admirer of Esmerelda Bottoms and fellow member of the Explorer's Club, who was only too happy to step up and offer transport for a jolly good wheeze and the chance to spend some time with Miss Bottoms in a milieu in which she would have trouble avoiding him.

Miss Bottoms jumped at the chance of the expedition, firstly because as a scientist deeply concerned with archeological matters the notion of an ancient "lost" temple was too good to pass up, a literal once in a lifetime oportunity, and secondly because she found the attentions of Lord Ponsonby to be whatever the opposite of unwanted and unwelcome was. As she put it in her heliograph to her father: Daddy, the man has a steam launch at his beck and call and his so-called town house here in Syrtis Major is a positive mansion with a roof garden and a private reflecting pool in the atrium.

Lord Ponsonby's steam launch proved to be well up to the task at hand, having staterooms provisioned for exactly the number of travelers planned a small crew of well trained men who were in good spirits, and hidden under a plywood cover until out of sight of "meddlin' politicians and policemen", a steam-powered Gatling Gun mounted on the bow and able to commend a 180 degree sweep "if trouble came knocking at one's door".

Setting off the next day, they had an uneventful trip, arriving at the Aerian Hills with no trouble or interruption at all two days later. The novelty of a flight on a steam powered vessel soon wore off, and Ponsonby's attentions to Esmerelda were tiresome to at least one of our plucky team, but luckily Queeleek proved as good as his word and spotted the Dragon-Shaped outcropping he claimed would be there to guide them in once they arrived on station, and they were soon moored out of the strong winds that blew through the canyons in the escarpment.

There was a small delay while the team figured out the combination to the ancient entrance, then they were able to descend into a large cavern adorned with mosaics; pictures and hieroglyphs reminiscent of both Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Martian writing, though also unlike either. It took some time to make any sort of sense out of the story depicted on the walls but eventually they made out the story of a race rising from barbarous origins, building cities, engineering great technological wonders and then entering large, finned vessels, almost bomb-shaped. Throughout these tales were intervals of warfare, often of all-but total destruction of all parties, but always culminating in peace. It was amazing, Wilhelm and Waldmont agreed, what one could glean from a mosaic with just the right amount of incentive.

Speaking of incentive; all over the wall were studded tiny fragments of diamonds, and in the pictures toward the end of the story large rubies seemed to indicate power sources. Waldmont succumbed to temptation and prised out one ruby, only to discover that it was holding back a swarm of dreaded flesh-eating Tomb Beetles (an ever-present danger to looters of the dead on Mars)!

Once the initial horror and panic had subsided, the party discovered they could easily outpace one swarm while it concentrated on the unlucky Wilmot, and so they descended into the next vault, Wilmot finally winning free of the swarm and joining them. The new vault contained two rows of statues, each row facing the other. The statues appeared to be armoured warriors, and the only difference Wilhelm and Waldmont could see was that one side had purple gems for eyes and the other had emeralds. After the fiasco upstairs, it was decided not to mess with these sombre guardians of the stygian gloom of antiquity, and the party pressed on to a third, and final vault.

This proved to be a planetarium or orrery of sorts, with the planets represented by large globes floating and glowing next to a meandering causway. Below was a drop into the unseen chthonic depths of Mars. Each globe was coloured and decorated differently, with maps shown and important places depicted. The first globe was greenish, and had continents clearly shown with places marked with either green or purple markers. Queeleek opined that this was a depiction of Vulcan, the planet in Martian archeo-astronomy that broke up to form the asteroid belt. Mars was next, glowing red, with seas with ports and rivers depicted.

Queeleek spent only a short time one each globe, racing ahead of the party until he was standing by Mercury, when a deep, booming voice began speaking. Though none of the party recognised the language, it seemed to Wilhelm and Waldmont that it had elements of bith ancient Egyptian and High Martian, though neither had been exposed to those languages long enough to understand what was being said by the unseen locutor.

The party was just in the process of examining a curiously featureless earth bearing only one continent of no familiar shape, when in burst a large party of Martians, Kite sailors from the look of them, pirates from their demeanour. One individual of notable dress and bearing broke away from the pirates and seemed to be photographing first Vulcan, then Mars as a pitched battle began at long range, with the Earthmen and Martian pirates exchanging mostly ineffective fire while the unseen speaker droned on about God only knew what.

Finally, the pirates retreated at speed, taking their curious hooded friend with them. As the Party gave chase there was a terrible explosion and both Vulcan and Mars were badly damaged by what had looked like a time bomb. The lights in each orb began to extinguish and the voice changed in timbre. Then a terrible series of marsquakes began to shake the gallery to pieces. Queeleek, who had remained back by Mercury during the battle let out a shriek and fell from the causeway under a cascade of falling rock.

Wilhelm and Waldmont led the remains of the party out of the lowest vault and into the room of statues, which was empty, but the statues were rocking alarmingly and the ceiling was also threatening to give way under the terrible quaking. On they ran until they were back in the upper vault, where they saw that the remaining rubies were gone and the floor was scattered with dead pirates, still being eaten in some cases by the few remaining Tomb Beetles. A lesson for would-be robbers of the dead writ large. It looked as though the pirates had learned this lesson at greater cost than our friends.

Upon making the surface of Mars, our team discovered that their transport was absent, but were pleasantly surprised when it suddenly came chugging over the escarpment and dropped a boarding net, while the crew urged all to the utmost alacrity in availing themselves of their only means of escape.

As the Persephone fought for altitude against the winds kicked up by the marsquake, Lord Ponsonby rang for emergency power and maximum lift on the bridge telegraph, and then hurled himelf to the wheel where he joined the Helmsman wrestling for control of the ship against the elements in a world gone mad. As the ship swept toward certain collision with the cliffs, the escarpment collapsed, burying the site probably for all time. What a loss to the British Museum!

  1. Martian geography