YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT...
The Timeshocked team arrive back in 1969 without the diamond and are debriefed and checked over. After some discussion the CHRONOS team conclude that the diamond has somehow been ‘locked’ – and can’t time travel, in much in the same way the Temporal Team couldn’t. The boffins seem fairly sure they can put together a short Tai Chi energy-based ritual to carry out on the diamond before trying to move it through time again – research also suggests another way to resolve this might be it travelling in a special container.
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1923 was a bust, but CHRONOS is picking up more anomalies – the next most powerful one is in 1942, where the research tells them Buckland House was an extremely top secret WW2 research base. After listening to some audio reports and recollections from the period, the team feel confident that the diamond was present at PROJECT KEEPSAKE, on the desk of someone called Devlin in a room described as 'ECHO section' and that a suitable travel container was also in the building, on the other side of the base in a weird pressurised room.
As a high security base, stealing a diamond and a container would be impossible... but the team have some significant advantages in very detailed records for a relevant day in 1942 that included an inspection team visit and an air raid. A lot of the material is heavily redacted, but they feel sure there won't be a problem in taking the place of the inspection team and then using the period of the air raid to sneak around, blowing open the door they need to when the sound will be masked by a bomb dropping nearby, or persuading this 'Devlin' chap to let them borrow the diamond, or simply incapacitating him and making a run for it. (Anyone who played the previous DE event Careless Talk Costs Lives, was having fairly serious concerns about this plan, but of course IC they couldn't know about the Specimen, ECHO section or any of the many horrors of PROJECT KEEPSAKE).
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The team get kitted up in 1940s uniforms and civilian outfits, get identity cards and weapons and enter CHRONOS to travel to 1942, hearing some strange and unsettling new sounds as they fly through the ether. They arrive just as everyone is going down to the air raid shelter and quickly split up – one team to go out front to head off the Inspection Team, one to work on the door to ECHO section, one to stand watch, one to go towards the 'Specimen Chamber' to get the box. They will have until the All Clear sounds to make it back into CHRONOS!
The plan almost immediately goes sideways when Captain DeRoy of the Inspection Team is oddly hard to drug... Devlin is waiting for Team 3 as they open ECHO section door and promptly locks them in with him and interrogates them, meanwhile Team 2 blowing open the specimen chamber door leads to a horrendous psychic attack rolling through the building as a hideous presence rifles through their memories, making them unsure when or where they are, trapped in the worst day of their life.
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Devlin is completely unbothered by air raids, but the explosion leads him to ask, "What on earth are your friends are doing down in the corridor?" "The esoteric transfer canister? –I’m just glad someone finally worked out a use for it... we had everything sent here and we still don’t know what half of it does... What do you mean they’re trying to blow open the door – you FOOLS! Now that damned creature is trying to get into my head again! Remain calm and use your spinners – oh, damn, you don’t have spinners, or mantras!... and the things you know! Oh god, now *it* can know them... You bloody fools! Right, all of you, group together… Listen to my voice!"
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Somehow, they all make it through the attack and back to relative sanity and end up with everyone back in the main hall as Devlin makes his decision. There is a last minute moment of resistance on his part as he cries that he does his best thinking with the diamond around…. Why shouldn’t he keep it? Which becomes a more alarmed: take it away! Take it away! I’m going to wipe my memory now.
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And his door slams shut leaving them just enough time to hurriedly focus their Chi, cram the diamond in the container and rush back through the doors into CHRONOS as the ALL CLEAR sounds.
TEAM 1 HEAD OFF THE INSPECTION PARTY
The CHRONOS boffins insisted the whole team came on this mission in case that was affecting temporal stability. Which means there are really far too many of them trying to sneak around the base and pretend to be PROJECT KEEPSAKE staff, while dealing with a visiting Inspection Team. They could try and impersonate the team, but in the end decide to simply engage them in conversation for as long as they can while denying an air raid is in progress and drugging their cups of tea. Commander Grace, Mrs Banks and Captain DeRoy are fairly easily distracted and drugged – although Captain DeRoy immediately wakes up and watches the team with interest...
TEAM 2 OPEN RED ZONE DOOR
The research pack explains the concept of the pressurised
chamber and the submarine doors including full technical drawings. Billy, Frank and Anne Marie work out they can use the pressurisation in their favour, with three very precisely-placed charges – one on each hinge – that will cause just enough of an explosion to break the door seal, but leave
the doors intact. The designers of the doors have mostly focused on something getting out from inside....
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Even with their careful placement of charges, their explosions will be quite loud, and there is an air raid shelter full of people just next to them at the bottom of the stairs. They need to time their smaller detonations to when the barn nearby is due to be hit in the air raid.
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The antechamber contains protective suits and googles,
safety posters, the door to the Specimen chamber and some cardboard boxes with various items in, including the Esoteric
Transport Cannister – if they can survive the psychic attack their detonation unleashes on them...
TEAM 3 GET THE DIAMOND FROM ECHO SECTION
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The magical lock on the door of ECHO section takes some serious skill, research in advance and the key from the Friday auction, but when they finally get in, to their horror they find Devlin waiting for them with the air of a tutor ready to speak with students. He has sufficient charisma and personal magical skill that his suggestion to come in and sit down is an irresistible compulsion and the door slams shut behind them.
"So.... you opened my door, rather well done that, actually –tell me your story… time travel? How intriguing… Not my field. How does it work?"
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The team then have to make it through a magical tutorial session during an air raid, while trying to obtain the Carcosa Diamond. The stone is indeed on Devlin's desk being used as a paperweight, but he's not entirely sure why he has it or where it came from. So much has been sent here that he’s slightly lost track of the inventories. When the team explain to him that it shouldn’t be there, that it has been inserted and concealed in this time by Stepanov he will be concerned,
and start to wonder if he *could* have been tampered with like that. He does really like having it on his desk....