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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9836496" data-attributes="member: 6999616">In fact, everyone in those boats had been hit. Four of the occupants of each boat were Africans, in fairly elaborate costumes. These made them look as if they had about two feet of hair all over them, with gloves and shoes that mounted large claws, and huge headpieces with wooden fronts in the form of large inhuman faces, and leather or cloth backs and straps to keep them attached. The final occupant in each boat was a creature that the others were dressed up as, humanoid but clearly inhuman. Two of the Africans were alive but unconscious. There was a wide selection of native weapons in the boats, but no guns. We gathered their boats and took the survivors and the inhumans (we later found out they are called "Poro") aboard our flying boat. We locked the Poro corpses in the forward cabin, finding out in the process that they imposed Fright Checks (GURPS' equivalent of CoC SAN rolls) when you first got a good look at them. None of us suffered very much from that.We rendered first aid to the survivors, who came round, although they were still fairly badly injured. They clearly understood English (as would be expected in Liberia) but refused to reply. When we tried Spanish, one answered, apologising for their failure. They had gone to a place whose name we didn't recognise, donned the outfits, summoned the Poro, taken them to the boats and rowed towards the flying boat. "Then there was lots of gunfire . . ."Our best guess was that they had been put up to this by the Spanish embassy, who we'd observed to be working very closely with the German embassy. We decided to hand over the prisoners and human corpses to the Munrovia police and take the Poro corpses to Ascension Island, our next destination, and the head of security at the British embassy concurred. Then we got some sleep, it being quite late.We did not panic and fire on the early morning fishermen putting to sea, and got the corpses ashore before the police turned up, then brought them the prisoners. We had kept some of the headpieces and weapons as trophies, but took the costumes ashore on the corpses. We'd have done better to keep the lot, because the costumes aroused considerable popular interest and questions as to what we'd done to upset the Leopard Men, which was apparently a local cult.  The crowd on the foreshore developed into a fiesta and then a carnival during the day. Almost everyone in town had heard the gunfire overnight, many had seen flashes from our photographing the Poro, and word soon got around that the old fishermen on the beach who'd seen us land the corpses and prisoners, and then the police surgeon inspect the corpses had a good story to tell. Then vendors started selling stuff to the crowd, and it all snowballed.In the morning, we completed our actual mission in Munrovia, which was collecting US currency from an American bank. By mid-afternoon, the carnival was still going strong, and there were people on the shore watching us. Our plan was to leave early the next morning, when the weather would be favourable and we'd be able to arrive at Ascension Island in daylight. We were going to take the Duke and Duchess aboard after dinner tonight. Given the watchers and the potential for another attack, I went ashore to invite the Embassy's head of security to spend the night on board, but encountered a couple from the American Colonial Society, the charity which helps Americans settle in Liberia.They knew a lot about the Leopard Men, so I told them what had happened. It became clear that some major sacrifices must have been made to allow summoning of two Poro. There were apparently always people trying to restart the slave trade, which provides material for such sacrifices. That put me in a quandary: as a human being, it's my duty to combat the slave trade, but I also have specific orders about transporting the Duke of Windsor. They reckoned that removing the focus of temptation was the best thing I could do.So I changed the plan to "leave ASAP", reckoning that if these people were misleading me, in the hope of getting the Duke killed in a flight through storms at night, the party are skilled enough at aviation (skill levels in the low 20s for a 3d6 roll-under system) to handle that, and it was preferable to trying to defend a rather fragile aircraft against supernatural attacks when none of our own magic is working.We got out of Munrovia safely, and through the storms without difficulty. We still have to find Ascension Island, on an overnight flight, but radio beacons make that practical.</blockquote>

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