In a quiet backwater of Venice, in the shadow of the campanile of
S Lazzaro de Circovallazione Trio, far from the madding crowds of tourists and carnevale celebrants, a rusty tramp steamer arrived and deposited various cargoes on crumbling wharves, overlooked by the weathered façades of medieval warehouses and palazzi. Laden with cargo for other ports, it was docked, unloaded and sailed on the following tide.
As the crates sat on the wharf, uncollected, word got around that sealed inside one was a valuable tome - a treasure to any who could acquire it. With their eyes on this volume, from across Europe and further afield came the mysterious companies who fight a mysterious war: some for mere coin, some for knowledge of the darkest arts, and others In Her Majesty’s Name…
Our IHMN adventures last night took place on my brother Anthony’s newly minted Venice canals gaming setup - who among us has not dreamed of adventures among the waterways of Venice?!
The mission was to collect a treasure which lay randomly hidden under one of several piles of crates, and make off with it along any one of the four canals which formed the exits to the table. There were four demi-companies, each around 100 points:
Anthony: Royal Marines Rocket Landing Party - the latest technology of HM Admiralty;
Neil: Sgt Borrage’s Lads - a sturdy bunch of sharpshooters;
Lucas: Le Cabinet Noir - the sinister French conspiracy makes another appearance;
Graham: Professor Abir’s Cult - a band of deluded cultists lead by the eccentric Egyptian Professor in the service of Akhenaton;
***************
The companies crept forward from the four corners of the Venetian table, each with their eyes on one or two of the possible treasure points. Borrage posted a marksman in the campanile of S. Lazzaro, to pick off targets as they crept into the reticule of his finely ground brass rifle-scope. On the same side of the main canal, the Royal Marines deployed to cover the other corner. There were three possible treasure locations on this side, and a carbine-armed Marine took up a covering position on the bridge while his Lieutenant and a Marine crept forward to examine them.
Across the canal, a trio of top-hatted Frenchmen scuttled along the wharves, their long dark coats bulging with heavy revolvers. They ransacked crates looking for the book. Meanwhile a shuffling and a guttural incantation in some forgotten version of Egyptian heralded the arrival of Professor Abir and his red-cowled fanatics. Among them shambled a hideous, malformed corpse, swathed in rotting linen bandages.
As Borrage’s Private blasted away at them with his Martini-Henry Rifle, the Marines turned over one and then another pile of crates, curses sounding from under their full-face helms as each one yielded nothing but worthless trinkets and cheap imported crockery.
The Egyptians were advancing fast, aided by odd spells and chanting from Abir, who, invoking some ancient version of Dragon Wings, sent his minions forward across bridge and fluttering across the stinking green waters like sparrows flittering around a dusty Cairo souk.
Soon they clashed with the French, the cultists’ clubs no match for finely honed steel knives and heavy French bullets, and they were silently despatched left and right.
On the opposite bank, the Marine Lieutenant fell to Borrage’s accurate fire even as he split open another crate with his boarding cutlass. His comrade fired his rocket pack and, with a crackle and fizz and the smell of sulphur, dropped down into a barge, creaking at its tarry ropes in the slack tide of the main channel. There was one another intriguing pile of crates there - was it the one?
Our Marine let out a grunt of satisfaction as the shattered remnant of the case yielded the battered, leather-bound volume which all had come to search for:
“On The Steam Mechanical Adaptation of Animals: A Study of Steam Powered Enhancements to Gorilla Berengei in German East Africa” by Dr. Karl Darwin Dipl. Ing.
He stuffed the volume into his brigandine coat, and prepared to escape. At once there was a horrifying, bestial roar from a nearby crate, out of which erupted a hideous fusion of hissing brass pipes, steam, and 450 lbs of mountain gorilla! It was angry, had cabin fever and wanted its instruction manual back! A wild wall of muscle and pressurised steam, it leaped into the barge, even as the Marine slashed the forward mooring rope with a downward stroke of his sword. He scrambled for the rear of the barge, past the flailing gorilla, to unhook the at the rear.
Yards away, the Cabinet Noir agents vaulted backwards from their riverside fight with the denizens of the pyramids, and shoved a small flat-bottomed skiff out into the canal, setting course to intercept the barge which picked up speed as it entered the swirling current of a strengthening ebb tide. Will our Marine escape down the canal back to his waiting submarine? Can the French reverse the century old ignominy of Aboukir Bay and board the barge? Will Borrage’s lads win an all-England arm-wrestle? How does one bring down an infernal Gorilla without the crib notes?
The barge drifts faster, and two of Borrage’s men are aboard. A third leaps desperately into action, but plunges into the slopping detritus betwixt barge and wharf. The Gorilla swings a meaty fist at the Marine, shattering his skull even within his helm. The book disappears under the Gorilla’s bulk. The French veer their skiff into the canal, crunching against barge, blasting way at enraged cultists on the far shore. The third Marine waiting on the vast humpback bridge that crosses the canal hammers away with his Naval carbine at a Frenchman who runs up the bridge chased by red-cloaked minions.
Professor Abir utters some devilish words, and the mummified priest is picked up and hurled across to the barge landing up his feet amid coiled rope and barrels with a leathery thud. The French leap aboard the barge as their boat comes alongside and both sweep under the bridge. A rain of cultists descend flapping from the bridge at the same time, landing along the length of the barge to take up the fight with their cudgels and their swivel-eyed zeal.
Leaning over the stone rampart, the last of the Marine Landing Party aims his carbine at a shrieking brass pressure cylinder atop the Gorilla’s head even as it passed beneath him. Pausing momentary to assure his aim, he squeezes the trigger, and his weapon roars. Freed from its unholy work, the steam and some diabolical mix of chemicals that heat it explode in a tremendous scalding fireball, scattering Gorilla body parts and hoses and cogs hither and yon. Myriad fighters on the barge are enveloped by the blast. Some emerge miraculously unscathed, others are plucked up and hurled into the water and stone wharves in a storm of splintered deck planks.
A great rent is blasted in the hull of the barge, which lumbers onwards even as it starts to sag into the depths…the book, red leather cover singed, swirls almost lazily on the surface of the water that spouts and whirls into the barge. All aboard lunged for it, unheeding of the imminent danger, pistols blasting, swords slashing, clubs swinging….and the book was sucked into a mad liquid vortex - it’s terrible secrets claimed by the dark waters of the lagoon before any could hold it aloft…
*****************
How we laughed!
Great fun game of IHMN - thoroughly amusing japes all around. We adapted a home brew ’random treasure hunt’ scenario by adding the Steampunk Gorilla, which would emerge in one of the crate piles nearest the revealed treasure to complicate any swift attempt to escape by the player holding it. The fact that the treasure book was discovered on the barge was pure chance - there were six randomly deployed possible locations - but added a completely unforeseen and hilarious twist to the tale as the fight raged on and around it as it drifted down the canal…
The companies used were, again, the quick-play Demi-Companies pioneered by Tehet, which eminently suited the table and the number of players and the time available. They have become quite the preferred method of IHMN gaming in our group so far.
Only a couple of photos, the game rather quickly became all to engrossing...
A quiet backwater? Perhaps not.
Professor Abir's cultists break the the serenity
Welcome, Guest. Please 
April 29, 2024, 11:48:23 AM
August 14, 2010, 12:40:37 AM