We took a cab to the Limehouse area, and had the cabbie drive us past both the front and back of the place that had been described to us. The place was an old factory, that had been split up into shops, many of them since abandoned. The specific place was a boarded up shop. It had one armed guard out front on Garford Street, and 2 guards out back on Park Street.
We found a place where we could observe the front, and saw some sketchy characters coming and going. Noticing that one of the guards smoked a pipe, we devised a cunning plan to incapacitate him We went to a tobacconist and obtained a pouch of a posh type of tobacco. At a chemist, we obtained some opium, which we mixed into the tobacco. Lord Carnavon then walked past and, while fishing in his pocket, dropped the pouch right in front of the guard. Unfortunately a young urchin picked up the pouch, and Carnavon had to retrieve the poisoned pouch from him.
After sunset we decided to follow one a pair of toughs who had visited the boarded up shop. We got separated for a while, and only Lord Stark was there to see the toughs get rousted by a pair of Peelers. Carnavon and I arrived to find Stark examining some familiar vials the Peelers had taken from the toughs. One of the young men managed to bolt away. Stark told the Bobby that the vials contained Bang Snuff, and that PC Westly Campbell was investigating that, and that we knew the location the Bang Stuff was being made. I choked when he said that, because while he was addressing the Bobby, the one young tough was RIGHT THERE! So I jumped into the conversation and asked if the bobby could arrange it such that the arrested suspect could not be allowed to pass any messages on until a raid on the place could be arranged. The other Bobby then returned with the arrested tough that got away, which everybody felt was a major save of the situation, but that tough had not been present when Stark told everybody within earshot that the location of the drug lab was now known.
Anyway, the Bobbies who arrested the two toughs were very helpful, and agreed to undertake to keep the young men under wraps for a period of time, and gave us a note that allowed us to pass a message through official channels to PC Campbell. We got our message sent, but when we had not gotten a reply in an hour, we decided it was important that we raid the place ourselves now, rather than give them any more time to learn that their location was known and they move the lab.
We went back to Limehouse, and saw that the guards had been changed. We decided to invest a few minutes in the tobacco pouch ruse again, and this time it worked. Lord Stark dropped the Heroin laced pouch in front of the rear guards, who proceeded to smoke it. I assume they thought that the Heroin smoke was just how posh tobacco smelled. Anyway, they were pretty sluggish and moderately easier to subdue when we walked past and suddenly and silently fell upon them. It took a little while, but we knocked them both out without an alarm being raised. Then two of us went to the front of the house and double-teamed the guard there.
The plan was then for two of them to enter from the back of the house, while I entered from the front of the house, but there was some confusion, as I entered from the front, and went all the way to the back door, waking up the two sleeping in that back room, before the two lords finally entered, so since we were all gathered by the back door, we did not catch anybody by surprise from the rear. Fortunately our opponents were befuddled by sleep for a short while. In the fight downstairs, one of the men ran away, but the other was a tough Irishman, who took quite a licking to subdue. During the fight we saw a woman peeking down the stairs at us.
When we went upstairs, a crazy woman threw a lantern at some junk, which started a fire, she then attempted to go out the fire escape. I summoned a water spirit to fight the fire and we all attempted to capture the woman, which we eventually kind of did. She raved a bit about how we had no idea what sort of powerful forces were protecting her, and attempted to use some sort of magical amulet, which burned her hand almost to a cinder. I did an Astral Sense which told me that it was the amulet which was enchanted, the woman was not awakened. We relieved her of the amulet, and anything else that looked dangerous.
There had been gunshots fired in the fight downstairs, so the police were finally on their way. We had just a few minutes to search the house. The lab (upstairs) was very weird. Lord Stark, the chemist, said that their equipment was shaped weird, and there was no scientific reason for some of the shapes and processes, however I could tell that some of the glass-work and tubing and whatnot was in shapes that were very magically significant, and formed magical sigils. Among the workings was a skull. It was human sized, but was not human, as it had a long snout, such as a fish or reptile might have. Some of the notes appeared to be written in the same weird ancient language that had so far been unable to identify from professor nices notes.
Downstairs there was a metal lockbox, which I subverted by the simple method of summoning a Metal Elemental from the box itself. Inside it were some very detailed accounts of their sales,and the transfer of funds to something called the Hesperidin Society. It was nice of the criminals to provide the police such detailed records. There was also some coin and cash. I liberated 15 pounds as a bonus for ourselves.
When the police finally arrived, we preteneded not to know what was in the lockbox (which we had put all the papers back in, relocked, and dismissed the metal elemental. However we did volunteer to go over any papers that might be found within.
The next day I had Lord Stark sketch the skull for Gatsha back at my shaman lodge, a man who is very familiar with the Saurids of the Gruv. I also asked him to sketch what he could remember of the glasswork of the lab for the Alchemests of the Lodge, to see how alchemically significant the arrangement was. Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Mon Sep 23, 2019 10:32 pm
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