Prequel: Assembling the team

Caleb Murphy, the sounds of Jelly Roll Morton flow down the back-step and into the back alley. You rub your swollen eyes and taste the acerbic mixture of bile and whiskey on your lips. Placing a hand on the damp ground, you attempt to stand upright, waver, and then vomit in the gutter. As you stare up at the night sky, the stars begin to spin, and your blinking slows. Something stirs you a minute (or was it an hour?) later, and you lift your head off the pavement to see several figures approaching. Their build and faces are masked by the blinding car lights behind them. Your head is hazy, but somehow you know you’ve seen them before, and they mean to harm you.

Morgan, having accompanied Jackson on more than a few expeditions, you believe you know the types of people he might be after. There are two in particular that come to mind: a gumshoe named Lucas Ellis, former NYPD turned PI, and in your opinion, one of the best investigators in the City; the second is a mystic that goes by the name Madame Natasha Koshkin - knowing Jackson's interest in the occult, she'll be invaluable.

January 13, 1925
Queens, New York
Helmsburg Rare Books
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Arthur Helmsburg, it's a Tuesday, but your shop is closed the next three days so you can attend the 14th Annual Conference on Antiquities and Anthropology, over in Manhattan. The conference is attracting a lot of big names - standards like Winters and Evans - but you're particularly excited to hear from Jackson Elias, the famed explorer. You've read most of his books - Sons of Death was a particularly revealing expose of modern-day Thuggees in India - and it's rumored he's returning from another expedition to the Kenya Colony with new findings on some of the local blood-cults there. Still, before you can enjoy that, you have presentation to give tomorrow. You grab your notes and throw them in your briefcase before glancing at your watch: it's currently 9AM, and the conference is down in lower Manhattan, probably an hour from here.

No, the note was just for squadfather44, so just sit tight :).

Caleb has never felt so bad since... well, he can't really remember, but right now it's like somebody is inflating a balloon inside his skull, threatening to burst it at any moment. He blinks slowly, once or twice, trying to clear his head, but without much success...

When he notices the shapes approaching, something primal kicks in, a self-preservation instinct he didn't know he possessed. He lets out a barely audible whimper, and tries to crawl backwards deeper into the alley, hoping to perhaps find a dumpster he can hide behind.

"It would seem that our dear friend needs us to form a team and meet with him on the 15th of this month.

As luck would have it there are two in particular that come to mind for this type of endeavor. A gumshoe named Lucas Ellis, who was a former NYPD turned private investigator, and in my opinion, one of the best investigators in the City.

The second is a mystic that goes by the name Madame Natasha Koshkin. Knowing Jackson's interest in the occult, she'll definitely be invaluable." Morgan says in reference to Kennedy's question.

It was just after noon on a Sunday when Natasha woke up, the sun had just begun to peek in through her windows and was shiningin her eyes. Laying face down on her bed in her favourite cream colored silk pyjamas she could feel each and every heartbeat as the blood slowly forced its way through her brain, her breasts ached from sleeping on them, her mouth tasted particularly foul and her right side of her abdomen burned like fire.

There had been a party the night before, or perhaps it had been two nights ago, at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sanderson, Sanderingham, something Sandy, Natasha had always been terrible with names. There had been music and dancing, costumes and jewelry, champagne and caviar.. Natasha sat up slowly holding her aching head, perhaps a bit to much champagne then again it might have been the whiskey. Everything felt askew, her hair, her brains, her pyjamas and her breasts.

"Iris," she rasped struggling to her feet, "Iris, little help."

As she made her way towards her bathroom she tugged on the front of her pyjama top trying to straighten it out. Pain lanced through her right side and she was forced to grab the edge of her bureau to keep from collapsing.

The door to the hall swung open and an irritated looking Iris Adler walked in carrying a polished silver tray with biscuits, a white bone china cup and saucer set emblazoned with the blue willow pattern and a miniature silver samovar filled with coffee. The look of irritation was replaced with one of concerned when she glanced over at Natasha.

"Dear god. Don’t you look a fright, are you alright my dear?" Iris spoke in a slow, deliberate cadence and a refined British accent that made Natasha weak in the knees.

She had wavey copper colored hair that she kept pulled to one side and pinned back behind her ears, her blue eyes sparkled with an inner light and a thin band of freckles ran across the bridge of her nose. She was 23 now but at 16 Iris had spent 11 months working as a nurse in Amiens during the Great War.

Natasha ran a hand down her side, to where the congealed ichor from her bayonet wound had soaked through her pajamas. "I does not feel so good." She spoke with a particularly thick Russian accent that worried Iris, Natasha was usually pretty good about hiding her accent.

She gestured towards the bed, "Is Fred, Frank, Felix, Francis?" Iris shook her head at every guess.

"Francisco," Iris said bitterly putting the tray down on the dresser, "and no, Mr. Butler and I took out the trash yesterday."

Iris knelt down next to her and slowly lifted the top of Natasha’s pyjamas up until she reached the point where it was attached to her abdomen. "Oh dear," she said quietly, "you’ve made a right mess of it this time. We’ll need to get you out of those pyjamas and clean this up."

A thin smirk crossed Natasha’s face, "Already you are wanting me undresses."

Iris held up a hand just as Natasha bent over to kiss the top of her head, "Stop! Right there just, stop. One: the word is undressed not undresses, two: I’m rather cross with you at this particular juncture and am not in a mood to be trifled with, three: we need to treat this before it goes septic again and four: I’m sorry but you smell like the north end of a south bound Clydesdale right now, I mean you’re really quite revoltingly pungent."

Natasha smiled weakly, "And you are always smelling so good." Her head swam for a moment as she straightened back up, darkness pushed in from the corners of her vision, "I thinks I am going to be fainting now." Her legs fell out from underneath her as she collapsed on the floor.

"Mr. Butler!" Iris’s voice called through the darkness, "Mr Butler!"

Kenneth nods as Morgan describes the other people that they'll need to gather. "Well, I must say that this will be the first time I join him on one of his excursions. The idea excites me. Where and when can we meet the others?" he asks the other man.

"Well, my guess is that the team itself needs to meet with Jackson on the 15th. So we have until then to recruit them and get there."

Morgan pauses in thought before proceeding with his next question. "The real question is who we should go talk to first. What do you say doctor, shall we be chivalrous and speak to Madame Koshkin first?"

Caleb manages to roll over onto all-fours and spots a dumpster about 10 yards behind him. It's unclear, at this point, if the darkened figures have seen him, but he scampers behind the dumpster and shuts his eyes tightly, silently mouthing the prayers from his youth to preserve him from the horrors at the end of the alley.

Stealth 50%

His breathing slowing, Caleb starts to believe, for the briefest of moments, that the figures hadn't noticed his escape, until he hears a thickly accented "There he is!" from the end of the alley. Despite the cover of darkness, the intense glare of the headlights and his own drunken stupor were apparently too much an obstacle to overcome. Looking behind him, the other end of the alley looks clear, at least for now, and there are, of course, several back doors within the alley itself he could try his luck with in order to escape.

Akila decided to visit the African exhibition first and paid close attention to the collection of Eqyptian origin. After about an hour he made his way to the Oriental exhibition hall but paid little attention to what was contained there. His mind was lost in the presentation he was to make that evening. His premise was the similarity between Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform. The were both thought to have come into use in the 32nd century BC. As the clocks around the halls struck the noon hour Akila made his way to the Conservatory. (assumes that lunch would be served there)

Caleb barely suppressed a curse when it was clear the shapes had spotted him. He tried to crawl further backwards into the alley, but his foot got caught in an empty discarded paint can. He tried to get up, tripped on the can, and fell back to the ground with the loudest possible clatter of metal on cobblestone.

Any hope for a safe retreat seemed to be completely lost...

Kenneth nods and gestures to the door, "As you have more experience in these matters, I will defer to your judgement. After you."

We'll make our way to the Brownstone.

Caleb and Kenneth hail a taxi just outside Antonio's and give the address for Ms. Koshkin. The cabbie wends his way northward through the streets of midtown Manhattan, into an an obviously well-to-do neighborhood just off Central Park. The Checker Cab delivers you to a 3-storied brownstone several minutes later, along with a $0.30 fee. Ringing the chime out front, the two of you see through the frosted windows the outline the front door the silhouette of an older lady ambling her way down the stairs to greet you. "May I help you?" she asks with Received Pronunciation.

Lifting your head off the ground, you see the oncoming figures brandish strange curved knives that glint menacingly in the moonlight.