Fever Moon
An adventure for Mombasa PCs, working for Hassan’s Emporium.
Apollo Kagwa. Katikoro (prime minister) to King Daudi Chwa II of Uganda.
Court page under Mwanga II. Declined to fellate him. Almost burnt alive with the Uganda Martyrs. Spared due to his excellence as treasury assistant.
Head of Anglican faction against Catholics and Muslims in the 1880s religious wars. Expert rifleman. Brought to power as regent for infant prince in 1897 after Mwanga’s deposal. Cut deal to accept British rule while preserving power of hereditary Buganda kings.
Attends coronation of Edward VII in England in 1902. Establishes boarding schools. Provides yearly free bicycle to best student. Writes ethnographies. Oversees network of Buganda tax collectors and hereditary land-owning chiefs.
Grand Old Man of Uganda politics. Opposed by Bunyoros of Albert Nyanza who resent Buganda dominance, British officials who suspect him of corruption, new generation of educated young men who think it’s time they ran the show.
Broad solemn face. White kanzu robe. Gold-braided jacket. Fez.
Compound on Kampala’s Mengo Hill, close to king’s Lubiri Palace. Western-style redbrick house. Corrugated-iron roof. Wraparound verandah. European furniture. Writing desk in office. Photographs with dignitaries. Religious books. Imported grandfather clock.
Reed fences. Banana plantations. Coffee shrubs. Goat enclosure. Steady hum of visitors - missionaries, chiefs, Indian traders squabbling with cooks. Separate wattle-and-daub hut for each of his three wives. At least twenty kids scampering around.
Struck down by mysterious sleeping sickness. Lying in his bed, under cool white sheets, sweating, comatose, as his wives fuss over him and the clock ticks away. Unclear if he’ll wake up.
Ham Mukasa. Apollo’s private secretary. Known him for decades. Met him as page. Fought with him for Anglicans. Visited England with him - wrote a book about it. Preaches in hilltop cathedrals. Sincerely delighted by Western technology. Waistcoat over kanzu. Pocketwatch. Gold-headed walking cane. Drives rusty green Dodge that keeps breaking down.
Wants your help. Believes Apollo was poisoned. Knows just who to blame.
Assa Aatte. Herbalist to the Buganda royal family. Often found in palace women’s quarters. Sinuous. Intense. Has occasional seizures. Midwife to Queen Irene Drusilla Namaganda - helped her conceive after years of trying.
Priestess of Yakanje Order. Anti-colonial secret society from West Nile district. Founded by hermaphrodite priest Remje. Consults rainbow-coloured oracle - half water snake, half man. Ritually drinks “Allah water”, extracted from kamiojo lily - the hands of any European who tries to arrest a man under its influence will wither up.
Married to policeman Amin Dada. Newborn baby Idi Amin - suspected by everyone to be son of the King. Born during hailstorm in Shimoni police barracks. Abandoned for four days in jungle as paternity trial, on clan elders’ insistence - protected from wild beasts by Nakan, the legendary seven-headed snake. Assa carries him everywhere, slung over her back. Likes to talk about how strong he’ll be when he grows up.
Caged collection of mouse-sized flies. Bulging eyes. Ragged wings. Sickly iridescent green fur. Bite puts you into a coma - injects microscopic worms into your bloodstream. You don’t age or die as long as you’re asleep.
Klaus Allnut. German riverboat pilot. Unshaven. Unscrupulous. Addicted to Gordon’s Gin. Served on as engineer on screw steamer SMS Kingari during Battle for Lake Tanganyika in Great War. Sold intelligence to British. Charges never made to stick.
Israel Magombe. Klaus’ first mate and business partner. Abayudaya Jew from foot of Mount Elgon. Keeps kosher. Observes the sabbath. Zionist. Asks every foreigner he meets if they’re Jewish - hopes one day to meet a rabbi who can help him do it right.
Co-owners of Fat Duchess - Lake Victoria rustbucket. Thirty foot long. Unsteady in high winds. Boiler explodes if not kicked every four hours. Shallow draft enables navigation of papyrus swamps, hippo-haunted rivers that connect whole Great Lakes system.
Crocodiles. Fireflies. Waterbuck. Mangy hyenas. Bright-eyed shoebills eating lungfish. Once-populous islands emptied out by tsetse fly - haunted by sleepwalking ghosts. Hazy mistlike columns of gnats - caught on screens and turned into condiment paste.
Low-quality bicycles packed by turbaned traders onto Kisumu ferries. Patrolling police. Ornithologists. Arabs with business propositions. Hereditary cowherds bathing in butter and red mud. Reed causeways across marshes. Half-floating villages dug out of swampy coast.
Luo fishermen with reed baskets. Drunken feasts. Banana beer. Cackling madwomen nursing monkeys. Warriors’ upper arms ulcerated by tight coils of iron wire. Twelve-year-old girls smoking bhang and tobacco from long-stemmed copper-bound pipes.
War canoes. Blackwater fever. Fat-tailed sheep. Zebu cows. Boma - livestock enclosure - fenced by thorned euphorbia with sticky white poison sap. Chiefs in fez and leopard skin. Cramped smoke-filled huts. Tired missionaries dressing infected feet.
Green hills. Jungle valleys. Lianas. Dry lightning storms. Clay water pots. Milk in smoked vessels. Roasted sweet potatoes. Millet porridge flavoured with locusts and white ants. Monotonous tunes on elephant-grass flutes, antelope-horn trumpets, lizardskin drums.
Assa covertly meets the Duchess at bustling Entebbe docks. Strange cargo brought east from Fort Portal in Rwenzori foothills along Katonga River. Plague flies. Mist projectors. Clinging web armour. Black elixir bulbs - heal bullet wounds, impart a doughlike consistency to flesh. Porters tipped in Roman sesterces, strangely charred.
Coup planned against Daudi and British authority. Young Buganda Association, led by publicist Z. K. Sentongo, ready to strike. Demand modernisation of Uganda, freedom from oppressive power of customary chiefs and end to monopolisation of all best administrative jobs by old men.
Luigi Amedeo. Duke of the Abruzzi. Cousin to Italy’s King.
Explorer. Mountaineer. World traveller. Climbed Mount Saint Elias in search of the Silent City of Alaska. Lost two fingers to frostbite trying to reach the North Pole. Attempted K2 in the Himalayas. Honorary member of the New York Explorers’ Club.
Great War naval officer. Mussolini’s diplomat. Founder of experimental village north of Mogadishu. Smoothed path to Italo-Ethiopian Treaty by gifting Ras Tafari Makonnen with limousine and tank.
Bequeathed ancient Roman coin in will of journalist Henry Morton Stanley - said to be confiscated from Arab slave trader on shores of Lake Edward in 1889. Stages Rwenzori expedition in 1906. Discovers lost colony of Aquileia Nova, founded by legionaries from Nero’s Nile expedition of 61.
Entire Roman city in secluded mountain valley. Forum. Baths. Amphitheatre. Aqueducts channeling snowmelt. Chariot-racing circus. Insulae apartment blocks. Temples to Jupiter and Minerva. Bickering old senators in togas. Soothsayers. Vestal virgins. Fat merchants feasting on exotic delicacies. Arena where gladiators with nets and tridents fight lions, enraged mountain gorillas, bizarre alien beasts.
Moss. Cloud. Glaciers. Spongy bogs. Giant lobelias and groundsels. Trees draped in hanging lichen. Tropical rainforest gives way with remarkable speed to alpine meadows. Gigantic elephants. Chattering chimpanzees wearing stolen gladiator helmets. Colobus monkeys. Duiker. Mountain hyrax. Bone-eating bearded vultures.
Towering cliffs. Waterfalls streak rock faces. Bakonzo farms cling to hillsides. Howling winds drive mist through valleys. Most Africans keep clear - despise the cold and are baffled, though fascinated, by concept of snow.
Imperator Thrax. Mad emperor. Rules over Aquileia Nova with an iron fist. Caligula-style orgies. Masked guards serve his every whim. At least three gorilla senators. Condemns enemies to death in the arena vs. leopards, visored murmillones, ooze-dripping mollusc hydras, giant venomous fungal crustaceans from Planet X.
In league with Amedeo to extend Fascist control over Uganda, as preparatory step to reviving Roman empire. Zero effort required to persuade him to do this.
Under influence of Kronos. Sorcerer prince of the mi-go who inhabit Rwenzori’s highest peaks. Every previous member of his dynasty has made pilgrimage to cosmic wasp nest atop Mount Stanley, had eggs laid in brain, been eaten screamingly alive.
