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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9858166" data-attributes="member: 7041055">Saviors of the Lunatic LineBlack fever and grisly death were the cost of the Kenyan rail. Who would pay it?A cool June evening in Manhattan. East of the park, Rafael Lancaster is trying to enjoy a night at the movies with his girlfriend Lillian. He’s supposed to be supervising new ZSS member David Angler (an ex-Mountie, grizzled troubleshooter for Hudson's Bay Company), and his disappearing niece Anizah… but those problems solve each other, don’t they?Mounties have their own way to get their man, even if their man is Rafe’s brother’s daughter who hides in the lobby coffin promoting Boston Vampiyah.Uptown, Albertha Robinson and Bert Wilde are holding a fundraiser auction for a local gym; Clara is hanging outside as security. Ivo’s inside, looking at auction artifacts. Most are reproductions; one is actually ancient (a copper cat with ruby eyes). The Macedonian thief puts the real one into his jacket.Raymond “Jonesy” Jones shows up at the door, and tries to talk his way in, but Clara's having none of it. He spots Ivo leaving and asks him what's in the jacket. Ivo successfully diverts him, and lets him into the auction through the side door… where he’s caught and kicked out by Clara.***Mombasa, British East Africa, a few weeks later. The coastal city was the former capital of the colony, before the Brits decamped for the less swampy Nairobi. The ZSS is hired to investigate an incident. (A lion has been eating railroad workers, making a connection to British Central Africa impossible.)The town is nearly 1000 years old and extremely cosmopolitan, with a mixture of Arab, indigenous, and Indian influences. The group's met at the dock by Mothmar Patel, the “Mountie of Mombasa”, and David’s biggest fan. He offers a very affordable tour of the city, including the Lancaster Industries office and the prestigious Century Club of Africa!This piques Rafe’s interest, being a Centurion himself. He travels to the modest, two story building in the center of town, where the lobby features portraits of him and all his compatriots… Except they’re all black. The Gray Gargoyle, Max Silver, Aloria Midas, have beautiful portraits portraying them as African.—-There’s a brief interlude at the hotel, where Ivo is nearly nabbed by the League of Nations police force. Instead of answering for his crimes, he escapes out the window onto a rickety fire escape. As he stumbles down it, it collapses behind him. He rolls his ankle but successfully evades capture.***After dealing with colonial authorities, the group discovers an intense rural/urban tension. The shaman of the Digo tribe is losing social power as people leave the village to work on the railroad. He tries to declare the ZSS apostates and bar them from investigating, but the village children are easily bribed by Rafe’s clockwork tin toys.The Digo practice a mixture of Islam and folk magic, which supposedly leads them to be the least maimed of tribes working on the railroad.***The group travels to the farthest branch of the railroad, where work has stopped on a giant river bridge. David Angler, who’s been diligently tracking the lion like a Yukon fugitive, discovered there’s two of them! After a busy day of overland travel, the group head to bed… Waking to find out the lions have attacked and slain a half dozen Indian railway workers!Surveying the survivors, it seems the male lion is extremely canny, able to recognize (and avoid) the impromptu wooden walls and gun positions. The group creates a shooting blind on the bridge superstructure, and Rafe uses his engineering skills. He rigs a section of the cliff to collapse!The plan works. Clara shoots the lion with a .50 shell, and it stumbles off the cliff and dies before hitting the water. David, eager to prove himself to Mothmar and the rest of the camp, slays the lioness with his Hudson Bay utility axe.The group leaves the camp as heroes. Back in town, their Digo contact Thomas has some questions. Why was the village shaman found in his hut with a gaping bullet hole, flattened, with signs of postmortem drowning? Rafe points out, diplomatically, that whatever possession the man was committing was already responsible for dozens of murders. And furthermore, the group had to go, they had an invitation at the Black Century Club.<h3></h3></blockquote>

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