The Radio Detectives
An adventure for Lima PCs, working for Morris’ Bar.
The Miscelánea Antártica.
Compilation of pre-Inca lore by the 16th-century cleric Miguel Cabello de Balboa. Written for the Antarctic Academy, a loose group of historians, priests and poets who chronicled the secrets of viceregal Peru and produced such works as In Defense of Ladies, Araucania Conquered and The Antarctic Parnassus.
Friendly Quechua archaeologist Julio Tello discovers an unabridged edition in the San Marcos university archives. Manuscript expands on the myth of Taycanamo, legendary founder of the lost Chimu Kingdom and the ruined city of Chan Chan on the outskirts of Trujillo, who arrived from the Pacific on a golden raft. Alludes to forbidden valley of “las mujeres grandes rojas” in the cloud forests of the Cordillera Oriental.
Stores it in his office in the Magdalena Palace, which currently houses the ramshackle collection of his Museum of Peruvian Archaeology. Obelisk shards. Bits of mummy. Paracas mantles. Obscene Moche whistling pots with visible erections that give a new meaning to the phrase “blow it out your ass”. Trepanned skulls. Sipan funeral masks. Spondylus shells. Lapis lazuli birdman earrings. Golden tumi - sacrificial knives.
Triple-locked from the inside to deter thieves. Marranito, the museum cat, gets in through a skylight - too small to admit a man.
Rafael Larco Hoyle makes a special trip to Lima from his sugarcane plantation outside the northern city of Trujillo. Wealthy artefact collector. Building a private museum at Hacienda de Chiclin, his estate in the Chichama Valley. Makes Tello a bid for the manuscript. Is refused - it’s far too valuable as a historical artefact to let go.
Manuscript vanishes a few days later. Nothing else disturbed. Office door still locked.
Miniature human corpse on the carpet.
Copper-skinned barbarian warrior in golden loincloth. Few centimetres tall. Gleaming poison-tipped spear. Savaged by the cat - blinded it before he died.
Taycanamo.
Sorcerer of old Lemuria. Also known as Naylamp, Kathulos and B’Moth. Sarcophagus dislodged by earthquake from seafloor around 900 AD. Floated to surface.
Discovered by Moche fishermen off north Peru coast. Took over their culture. Led it into decadent new phase. Finally dislodged by betrayal and rebellion. Worked dark magic to artificially prolong his evil reign.
Yampallec. Squat cyclopean idol of pure gold. Halfway between fish and frog. Fist-sized emerald eye contains a world. City of miniature adobe pyramids. Warriors. Temple maidens. Fighting pits. Skeleton orgies. High priests throwing bloody sacrifices to deformed bacterial beasts.
Taycanamo’s paradise. But he can’t leave.
Locked away by Chan Chan rebels in Huaca de la Luna. Moche shrine to Ai Apaec - the Supreme Decapitator. Larco finds the hidden chamber. Peers into the Eye - enables Taycanamo to make contact with his mind.
Becomes his discipline. Committed to Decapitator worship.
Remaking Chiclin into a workers’ paradise - a eugenic utopia, populated by natural farm slaves whose only wish is to die in their master’s service. Model planned city for President Leguía’s New Peru. Opposed by APRA labour agitator Leopoldo Pita, embedded among the cane workers, and the courageous members of the Alfonso Ugarte football club.
Planning expedition to the Valle de las Mujeres Rojos. Balboa’s manuscript conceals clues to its location.
There is another copy. Tello received a letter from an old shepherd who lives in a shack in the Lomas de Lachey - fog oasis in the desert north of Lima, full of birds and rich wet grass. Claims to be a direct descendent of Balboa.
Old stone well in his backyard. Home to a fog vampire - glittering mist that shifts from grey to pink as it drains you of your blood. Warm, pleasant feeling. Victims left with a thousand tiny puncture wounds and a smile on their face.
Balboa’s notes in his basement. Larco’s boys watching you - could follow you there.
Alpheus Hyatt Verrill. Larco’s right-hand man.
Son of eminent marine biologist. Raised in museums. Scientific illustrator. Specimen collector - worked across Central America and the Caribbean. Dart gun. Butterfly net. Enthusiastic pursuit of nature’s latest wonders.
Author of well over a hundred boys’ adventure books. Shell Collector’s Handbook. Rivers And Their Mysteries. Harper’s Aircraft Book. The Boy’s Book Of Buccaneers. Devours every issue of Amazing Stories. Wife lives in New Haven. Rarely visits home.
Hired in 1915 by George Gustav Haye to collect for the Museum of the American Indian. Studied the Costa Rica petrospheres with Doris Zemurray. Hunted in Colombia for Muisca and Quimbaya gold. Fired in 1926 after his increasingly esoteric theories about the origins of civilisation in the Americas begin to affect the quality of his work.
Travels with two adopted boys.
Tom Verrill. Seventeen years old. Red hair. Freckles. Blue eyes. Always fiddling with his crystal radio set. Believes he can pick up transmissions from outer space. Says “gee willikers” and “shucks”. Lucky. Resourceful. Strong. Carries pocketknife, diary, revolver, X-ray spectacles that actually work. Explosive cigars. Invisible ink pen. Deck of cards for magic tricks. Will fight like a tiger in his brother’s defense.
Frank Verrill. Twelve. Vacant stare. Takes his chewing gum out of his mouth - looks at it, puts it back in. Doesn’t talk much. Listens to his brother - copies everything he says. Prone to sudden fits of rage. Likely to bite if left alone.
Pockets full of tiny Indian warriors from Taycanamo’s crystal world. Seems to like them. Will throw them at your face so they can stab your eyes.
Set fire to sleeping abusive stepfather in Corpus Christi, Texas. Helped by Tom to sneak aboard the first boat south. Jumped ship in the Panama Canal Zone, where they lived as petty thieves and street vagrants until Alpheus picked them up.
Dived for wrecked Spanish treasure ships. Fled Jivaro headhunters. Climbed the slopes of Huscaran. Escaped the Chavín de Huántar snake pits. Fought deadly duels with Eleodoro Benel’s populist bandits in the Inca hot springs at Cajamarca.
Pepper. Hairless street dog. Picked up in Ayacucho during an episode known as The 33 Demons Mystery. Chocolate brown with pink spots. Smooth to the touch. Loves the boys. Hates everyone else. Frank trying to work out if Taycanamo’s warriors can ride him.
El Valle de las Mujeres Rojos.
Somewhere near Chachapoyas in the Amazonian Andes. Enter through a cave above the Lagoon of the Condors. Vertical sarcophagi perched on cliffside ledges - carved bearded faces displaying vacant joy. Dense tropical forest. Toucans. Red howler monkeys. Bald uakari - skull-faced apes shrieking from high branches, demanding you turn back.
Bowl of mountains. Isolated from the outside world.
Scarlet reptile women. Naked. Thirty feet tall. White lacy reptilian crests adorning head and arms. Live in city of hundred-foot basalt spires that tower above the treetops. Balboa fell in love with one - returned to the valley after writing his manuscript, never seen again.
Love the taste of human flesh. Occasionally deploy magnetic super-ray to pluck ships from distant ocean. Eat the crew. Use wasp venom to preserve leftover captives in state of living death. Bodies stacked in central larder. Water wakes them up.
At war with both tribe of lost Vikings and giant intelligent ants. Uneasy stalemate. Queen Vorvula is married to Balboa - wears his almost-indestructable desiccated comatose body on a rope around her neck. Kisses him to sleep in her scrap-metal bed each night.
Only he knows the Lemurian chant that releases Taycanamo from his emerald prison. Must be spoken from inside the gem. Say it backwards and the Eye of Lampallec collapses to the size of a molecule, projecting all inside it to the subatomic realm.
