The Deathless Ape

An adventure for New Orleans PCs, working for Belasco’s Rare Books.

A letter from a friend.

“I am QUITE ALRIGHT here in the Koreshan Unity and there is NO TROUBLE of any kind. The thrum of the universe beats ceaselessly down upon my head. Any notification you may have received of TROUBLE in my vicinity may be safely disregarded as the rantings of a NOXIOUS FOOL.

Yours in resurrection,

Douglas Teed.”

Postmarked Estero, Florida, where the Koreshans have a compound. They believe we exist inside a Hollow Earth and mankind can live forever through means of Cellular Cosmogony. Ruled by Seven Sisters from the Planetary Court. Dress in flower costumes, cultivate exotic plants.

Cyrus Teed, the founder of the cult, was beaten to death outside a train station by a county marshal in 1908. His followers buried him in a lead-lined coffin, and believe one day he will be resurrected.

Douglas was his son. An Impressionist painter, not well known. He grew up in an aunt’s house in New York, estranged from his crazy dad.

Last week he was shot to death, in Fort Myers, trying to break into the Edison/Ford winter estates on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River. Neither Thomas Edison nor Henry Ford could be reached for comment.

Three days later he was spotted by multiple witnesses, walking the streets of Bonita Springs, visibly shell-shocked, asking strangers where to find a post box. Two young women led him away to a car and he hasn’t been seen since.

John Ashley has died three times.

In 1911 he got drunk and killed Desoto Tiger, son of a Seminole chief, over a bundle of otter hides. The Seminole owl witches, led by Tiger’s uncle Jimmy Gopher, caught him on the way from Lake Okeechobee to Miami and took him to a certain location in the heart of Big Cypress Swamp.

1914 - he robbed a bank in Stuart. Lost an eye to friendly fire. Taken by the law. His brother Bob tried to spring him from Palm Beach Jail - starting a shootout that claimed two innocent lives. Furious citizens dragged Ashley from his cell - lynched him in the street. Hung him by his neck from a lamp-post and filled the body with holes.

After the Volstead Act he got into bootlegging. Figured out he could bring back piracy - raid the guys bringing in booze from Bimini. His gang mastered the intracoastal waterways of Florida - dozens of secluded bays to hide their swift little boats.

He raided West End on Grand Bahama - getting away with $8,000 from the bootlegger warehouses. He tried to go back for a second haul. Gertrude “Cleopatra” Lythgoe, rum queen of the Bahamas, in her purple turban and snake earrings, got her hands on him and fed him to the sharks.

You can see a picture. There’s blood in the water. You can look right at the hole where his glass eye has popped out.

Finally he was ambushed on the St. Sebastian Bridge by Sheriff George B. Baker, a kleagle in the local Ku Klux Klan. Baker took him alive, handcuffed him and shot him in the head while he was “trying to escape”. Shot most of his gang, too, for good measure. Doesn’t know what to make of the fact that he’s still going.

Ashley’s started taking prisoners.

Work crews on the Tamiami Trail, and the new planned communities springing from the swamps outside Miami. First there have been sightings of a skunk ape, crouching in the shade of the palmettos. Then, a raid - gunmen in airboats, home-made from WWI fighter planes. Sandbagging captives.

Glenn Curtis, aviation pioneer and property investor, is building new towns in the Moorish style. Selling them to gullible Northerners, who believe Florida is a paradise and haven’t yet thought about hurricanes. Last month the payroll of his Aladdin City development (a co-production with the Sovereign Brothers) was lost.

Two good security officers dead. One blackjacked and led away in chains.

His Italian workmen have sighted the skunk ape. Lurking around Opa-Locka, crawling over the plaster minarets of his half-finished Shahrazad Boulevard. Two nights from now he’s hosting an Arabian Nights Fantasy Ball to celebrate the town’s grand opening. Governor John Martin will be there.

He thinks Ashley plans to raid it. Kidnap the Governor. He’s right.

Ashley’s base.

A stone temple on a hardwood hammock, in the heart of Big Cypress. Nobody knows who built it. Used by Abiaka as a hideout during the Second Seminole War.

Palm-thatched huts built around it. Sinking into the swamp, half-buried in tropical jungle. Gators lurking in the mud. Mosquitos and cottonmouths waiting to bite.

Swamp rednecks hooting and hollering, sipping from moonshine jugs, playing banjo and wrestling in the mud. Twenty or thirty of them. Only Ashley’s core gang are permitted into the heart of the temple, where the Waters of Life lie.

A green murky pool. Submerge yourself in it. Die. Now the pool has your biomorphic signature. Die again, anywhere on Earth, and the pool will resurrect you.

For centuries it has been used as punishment by the Seminole Indians, and the Calusa before them. Whenever you die you come back a little more stunted, a little more degenerate. Your mind going, your senses dulling. There’s no way out.

Ashley is taking captives on behalf of Henry Ford, who is working with Thomas Edison on an army of mechanical super-soldiers that will defeat International Jewry and save the world. Ford’s bodyguard, Harry Bennett, is their go-between, and can often be found visiting the swamp. He’s a Northerner, and hates the heat.

Ford funds the Koresh Unity. The captives are kept in cells under the Planetary Hall, submerged in vats of green goo, killed with electricity and resurrected. Over and over again. Edison oversees the experiments. He wants pliable slaves, too stupefied to resist, that can be put to work in the gigafactories of the future.

He’s found a way to kill them permanently, distilled from the sap of the manchineel tree. A toxin that breaks the cycle. Ashley would do anything for a dose of it. There’s no other way he can die.

On Edison’s desk is the head of Osceola. Bought from a St. Augustine drug store. Preserved in alcohol, in a glass jar. Still more or less alive. Stirs sluggishly if you run an electric current through the fluid - Edison has a battery and wires attached to it for the purpose.

Osceola back in 1838 took a heavy dose of manchineel mixed with powdered glass - trying to free himself from the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. It didn’t quite work but Edison has perfected his technique.

Ashley’s gang - most of them immortal. Some of them are loving it. For others the reality has started to sink in.

Laura Upthegrove. Bonnie to Ashley’s Clyde. Gang lookout. Drinks Lysol as a party trick. No bounty on her head, not publicly associated with the gang, so they can send her into town as a spy.

“Bigamy” Bob Ives. Florida cracker. Huge red bushy beard. Philosophical. Hunts egrets to sell their plumes on the black market. Skins gators alive. Lays panther traps. Makes believe he can talk to snakes.

Ruben Velazquez. Former chiclero - convict who harvests sap in the Guatemalan jungle. Machete. Bent-brimmed hat. Fungal infection all down left arm that itches horribly - it’s just as immortal as he is.

Pedro Pirinelli. Tampa anarchist. Former lector in an Ybor City cigar factory. Fired for reading the Communist Manifesto to the workers. Believes all theft ultimately benefits the global proletariat.

“Angel Hands” Cabeza. Loves to poison cops. Murdered three Klansmen in Key West after they lynched her husband - made it look like a voodoo curse. Tests new poisons on Laura, consensually.

Thlocklo Tustenuggee. Seminole tracker and war-chief. 130 years old. Looks like twisted bark. Silent hunter. Ambush expert. Chose immortality so the white man could never make him leave the Glades.

Ponce de León. Conquistador. Came to Florida in 1521, seeking the Fountain of Youth. Taken captive by the horned devil-priests of the Calusa. Has died so many times his body has regressed to a stunted primate - like a colobus monkey. Stronger than he looks. Craves death - anyone’s death. Yours will do.