Chapter six.
a swift sojourn to Belgium.
In which Our Merry Band are Hounded when they assist in the Liberation of a Kidnapped French Scientist from a Castle of Clockwork Servants!
Dramatis Personae:
Katerina, Grafin (Countess) von Ulmfeld from Bavaria
Leutnant Maximilian von Ström, of the Austro-Hungarian Lancers
Louis LeBrun - A French Inventor
Frau Elsa Berg - An Austrian Nursing Sister of the Order of Cassandra
After a little alcoholic and retail therapy, Our Protagonists were ready to return home but were interrupted when the Ritter asked them if they would stop off in Belgium on their return route to Bavaria. He had been contacted by an old friend who was concerned about the fate of a missing scientific colleague, Dr. Kristof Lambrechts. Who was last seen in the region of Saint-Léger.
Our Adventurers, arrived at Saint-Léger where they showed the locals a dagaurotype of the Mislaid Scientist. They are told that this man had been seen several times at the castle on a crag above the town. Posing as lost and weary travellers, they gained admission into to castle to stay the night.
Sneaking out of their rooms later that night, the Countess and Frau Berg head to one part of the castle whilst Von Ström and LeBrun investigated another. As they searched the area for the missing doctor, the Gentlemencame across the owner of the Castle, Margalise. LeBrun managed to quickly hide whilst Von Ström made up a story about insomnia and getting some air. The lady said she could cure his insomnia and after talking to her for a few minutes, he was utterly (and quite literally) bewitched and went off hand-in-hand to spend the night with the Lady in question.
LeBrun entered the Chapel and eventually felt a draught which on examination seemed to be coming from near the pulpit. There he located a Secret Passage! The Countess and Frau Berg returned after a fruitless search of their part of the building and met LeBrun who showed them what he had unearthed. The Brave Trio ventured down the darkened staircase and in the dimness of a Vast Underground Chamber glimpsed row upon row of Automaton Soldiers.
They found a locked workshop and, after picking the lock, came across Dr. Lambrechts exhausted on a small bed there. They ascertained that he had become enamoured of the Faerie shape-shifter, Margalise, from the French Province of Alsace, who was aligned with the Unseelie Court. She had brought him here.
The doctor was a great engineer working in the field of Automatonic Sciences. He had been designing and making Clockwork Servants with the aim of Removing Drudgery from the lives of the Lower Classes. In his Utopian Dream, this would Free Them to follow lives of Education and Creativity!
Unknown to Lambrechts, in caverns below the Faerie’s castle, his clockwork Servants were being converted to a Clockwork Army of Destruction!
When they returned to tell Von Ström what they had discovered, they had to break down his bedroom door. As they entered the room, a large German Shepherd dog ran out through their legs and off into the distance.
They felt that they could not deal with this number of Mechanical Opponents themselves and hastily returned to Brussels with Lambrechts and informed the Belgian Government that there were over Five Hundred of the Armed Clockwork Soldiers in the Subterranean ‘Barracks’ beneath the castle.
Two days later the French and Belgian Armies held a joint Military Exercise in the area and, apparently accidently, ignited an ancient, forgotten gunpowder store in the Castle. This sealed the passages under the building which Military Engineers then flooded in order to ‘make sure the fire caused by the explosion had been completely extinguished’.
Host’s Notes:
This Chapter ran in Autumn 1997.
Worthy of High Merit: Richard (Lt. Maximilian von Ström), just for the look on his face as it dawned on him that he had gone to bed with an Alsatian and woken up to find her lying on the bed and licking his face and wagging her tail!.
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