Zambezi Smoke
An adventure for Mombasa PCs, working for Hassan’s Emporium.
Plane crash on the Zambezi.
Downstream of Livingstone. Cowboy frontier town on Rhodesian plains. Relocated from the Old Drift on construction of Victoria Falls Bridge - old-timers still remember all-night saloon poker games, hippo hunts, gunfights, death in the mud.
Railway station. Chemist. Post office. Undertaker. General store. Pioneer cemetery. Agents of Bulawayo and Bechuanaland trading companies. Texans. Turks. Swiss missionary on bicycle preaching to the Makololo in loose village clusters outside town.
Neat little hospital with cases of blackwater fever - invariably fatal. Eccentric Kiwi doctor with dog-harassing pet marabou stork. Curly-haired Welshman drinking beer on stoop - addled in his brain by decades of unaccustomed sun.
Lozi elephant hunter Mobita - has theory that animals can’t see you if you wear black and white. Wears zebra-skin trousers, white shirt, black waistcoat, white ostrich feather in black cowboy hat. Plays piano and chess. Big smile. Huge elephant gun.
Griqua snake-oil salesman Dr. Bumpus camped in ox-drawn wagon outside of town. Sells old African remedies. Lion fat for courage. Vulture brains for wisdom. Herbs for menstrual problems and swollen feet. Battered top hat. Tells future with bones.
Prospector MacGregor. Gummy smile. Incredibly old and thin. Knobby hands. Undershirt. Suspenders. White beard reaches to the waist. Carried pea-sized rubies in blue medicine bottle marked “fever mix.” Found in a “zimbabwe” ruin - won’t say which one.
Bookseller Wilberforce. Trained as reverend in Kingston, Jamaica - grew bored of ministry, decided to see world. Gold spectacles. Brass watch-chain. Green umbrella. Loves Victorian nonsense fiction. Polysyllabic - addicted to ten-dollar words.
Station agent Patel. Neat. Punctual. Three daughters. Avid photographer. Backyard shed darkroom hung about with negatives of Falls, tourists, elephants, traditionally costumed African dancers. Dabbles in taxidermy. Unpromising results.
Victualler Joe Randall. Runs cheap restaurant and boarding house. Mutton hash, collard greens, potatoes, suet pudding, served on one plate at same time each day. Abuses toffs. Despises “airs and graces”. Toothbrush dangling from bathroom wall by piece of string as sole concession to fancy guests.
Upstream of Victoria Falls.
“The Smoke that Thunders”. Zambezi River plummets into perpendicular canyon - like great slash in the earth drawn by God to block its path. Roaring curtain of white water. Rocky islets at falls’ edge. Dr. Livingstone’s name carved into gigantic baobab. Bathing pool for tourists where current’s pull is gentle enough to resist.
Permanent rising mist bank - anyone standing too close gets soaked. Sparkling rainbows. Hippos. Crocodiles. Mokoro dugout canoes. Boathouses in canyon. The vast iron span of Rhodes’ bridge - vital link in his Cape-to-Cairo railway - above the boulder beaches of the Boiling Pot whirlpool, where anything swept over the Falls washes up.
Crash site on Long Island, above the Falls. Site of yearly regatta. Avro-Avian biplane painted friendly green belonging to “Flight of Angels” tourist aviation company.
Pilot Jock Cobham instantly deceased. Red toothbrush moustache. Graceful in air, clumsy on land. Avid tiger-fish angler. Used to buy everyone drinks. Widely mourned.
Co-pilot Kitso Dikgang brought into hospital with broken arm.
Tswana river guide turned small-scale cattle rancher. Slouch hat. Squint. Salt-and-pepper goatee. Stubborn. Inquisitive. Takes everything seriously - doesn’t get jokes.
Cobham’s oldest friend. Leasing land from him in complex legal arrangement designed to evade informal racial restrictions on property ownership. Frustrated entrepreneur. Paying for flying lessons - has idea for black-owned aerial postal service.
Confined to bed. Radiation burns across face and torso. Doctor baffled. Sometimes fairly lucid. Other times rants about the hell-blur of black wings crossing the radiant abyss. The tower in the dark. The three-lobed burning eye.
Frederick Russell Burnham. “King of Scouts.”
Born on Minnesota Sioux reservation. Western Union message rider. Tangles with Tiburcio Vasquez. Tracks Apaches. Hunts Geronimo. Scottish Rite Mason. Learns bushcraft from frontiersmen and Gettysburg survivors. Fights on losing side of Pleasant Valley War.
Fixated on Africa since he was a boy. Sails for Durban in 1893 with wife and child to join Cecil Rhodes’ Matabeleland pioneers. Recruited by Rhodes into Round Table cabal - elite secret society aimed at British world domination. Granted “Lancelot” codename.
Fights with Leander Starr Jameson in First Matabele War. Narrowly escapes slaughter of Shangani Patrol. Explores central African copperbelt. Loots stone birds and gold beads from Dhlo-Dhlo and Great Zimbabwe ruins - speculates on their possible Phoenician origin.
Prophet Mlimo starts Second Matabele War. Burnham’s infant daughter Nada kidnapped from besieged Bulawayo by soldiers of war witch Mbuya Nehanda. Tracks her to sacred cave in Matopos Hills. Misses her by hours. Assassinates Mlimo. Ends war.
Steals Mlimo’s most precious treasure.
The Shining Trapezohedron. Crazy-angled prism. Offers glimpse into mind of Yog-Sothoth, the Lurker at the Threshold, coterminous with all of space and time. Fashioned on distant planet by parties unknown.
Brought to Earth by Elder Things in Cambrian era. Handled by Yithians, Serpent Men, Atlanteans. Used in Egypt’s Old Kingdom to weaken interdimensional membranes by abhorred and forgotten pharaoh Nephren-Ka.
Traded south by Phoenicians to Ophir - southern African source of King Solomon’s gold. Held by lords of Mapungubwe. Sultans of Sofala and Kilwa. Nomad warlord Mzilikazi kaMashobane, Shaka Zulu’s deputy, founder of a great Matabele kingdom.
Burnham devotes life to unlocking its secrets.
Mines gold in Klondike. Fights in Boer War. Prospects for minerals in Upper Volta and Lake Turkana country. Builds dams in Sonora. Finds the Esperanza Stone in Yaqui River valley - meteorite etched with enigmatic spiral glyphs.
Saves President Taft from assassin. Lobbies in favour of American Hippo Bill alongside old Boer War nemesis Fritz Duquesne, seeking to import hippos to Louisiana as reliable “lake bacon” food supply. Tries and fails to volunteer for Great War.
Founds Boy Scouts with Robert Baden-Powell - front for Church of Starry Wisdom. Occult principles of cruelty and self-determination encoded in classic guidebook Scouting for Boys only perceptible to those under ten.
Strikes oil outside Los Angeles in early 1920s. Becomes millionaire.
Victoria Falls Hotel.
Last word in frontier elegance. Starched white tablecloths. Deferential waiters. Mosquito nets. Smoking lounge. Cheetah-skin rug. Framed pictures of grinning hunters standing on dead elephants. Hunting trophies over bar - rhino, eland, sable antelope. High tea on the lawn - cucumber sandwiches and scones.
Sam Ndima. Xhosa barman. Impeccably dressed. Serves perfect gin and tonics. Smoothly fields guest banter. Makes it his business to know everything that’s going on.
Clarence Cook. Manager. Paranoid. Bristly moustache. Takes potshots at baboons. Always seems to be juggling half a dozen catastrophes. Would be helpless without Sam.
Themistocles Papadopolous. Runs restaurant. Irascible. Screaming fits. Threatens to quit five times a day. Carries metre-long hippo-hide sjambok whip - thrashes anyone he suspects of leering at his beautiful Egyptian wife Laura, who spends a lot of time lounging by the pool in diaphanous gowns reading mystery novels. Serves best duck à l’orange and beef bourguignon south of Cairo.
Boris. Clarence’s nemesis. Gigantic bull hippo. Tramples flowerbeds. Knocks over sheds. Crashes garden parties. Ambushes maharajas in bathtubs. Has a special way of flicking feces with his tail over freshly-washed sheets.
Burnham camped out with entourage on hotel’s top floor. Been here six weeks. Neckerchief. Stetson campaign hat. Takes long river strolls. Leafs through occult books. Conducts strange experiments on captive monkeys. Frightens the staff.
Two maids have quit rather than dust his room.
Soapstone Zimbabwe bird once kept in Groot Schuur library - Rhodes’ Cape Town mansion. Mammoth-tusk tupilaqs dug from Yukon glaciers. Phoenician arrowheads. Katanga copper crosses. Apache rawhide playing cards. Cursed head of Congolese slaver king Msiri preserved in kerosene can. Obscene grimoires left half-open on bed.
The Trapezohedron locked in small portable safe. Never left alone. Addictive to look at. Provides brief glimpses of everything in entire universe, as seen from outside.
Green aurora flickers in sky above hotel - explained away by Clarence as just another side effect of the wonderful Falls. Deranges aviators who fly through it. Side-effect of Burnham’s tampering with substance of reality.
Blanche. Burnham’s wife. Completely loyal to him. Doesn’t blame him at all for dragging her into an war zone and getting her newborn daughter abducted. Fondly reminisces about the sweetest little orange grove they used to own. Crack shot with rifle. Coddles fox terrier Pip.
“Yank” Allen. Elderly lion hunter. Tendency to deafness. West Texas cowboy. Murdered man in gunfight - fled to Brazil. Hasn’t been home in forty years. Contemptuous of lions - always speaks of them as “dawgs”. Distrusts Africans. Only hunts alone.
Francis Buzzacott. Inventor. Scoutmaster. Polar explorer. Zulu War mess boy. Fought at Wounded Knee. Publisher of a dozen sportsman’s guides. Fascinated by hermaphrodites and bisexuals. Patent on wireless “thought indicator” - radio that reads minds.
Gwendolyn X. Spirit medium. Languorous. Veiled. Calls everyone “darling”. Kicked out of Psychical Research Society after plagiarising report on second sight in the Outer Hebrides. Taduki addict. Spends a lot of time in bed, reliving past life as Japanese shrine maiden.
Jacques Malan. Huguenot alchemist deported to Cape Town in 1688 after revocation of Edict of Nantes. Stays young forever by eating human hearts. Hooded eyes. Black beard. Loathes God and all his angels. Rhodes’ occult advisor - seeks destruction of France.
Burnham plans to “open” Trapezohedron with ancient Phoenician human-sacrifice ritual on Livingstone Island at top of falls. Feed the stone Blanche’s life-blood. Manifest Yog-Sothoth in towering plume of mist. Gain total knowledge of cosmos. Use it to ensure eternal British dominance. Only a few days until the stars align.
Nada.
Burnham’s daughter. Raised among Matabele as herald and avatar of Nyarlathotep. Tasked with eating soul of anyone who seeks to usurp the Trapezohedron’s power.
Has been stalking Burnham for last thirty years. Drowned her younger brother Bruce in the Thames in 1905. People around Burnham plagued with bizarre accidents - fed by him to Nada as substitutes whenever she gets close.
Married to Kaguvi. Son of the Mlimo. Speaker for Mwari, force behind Creation, author of all things, worshipped in Great Zimbabwe as the Supreme Presence. Tall. Grim. Tailored suits. Each word pregnant with divine authority - rarely speaks.
Commands the Haunter from the Dark. Buzzing creature from unknown stellar abyss. Only manifests in total darkness. Slightest gleam of light repels it. Spiritually obliterates victims - no marks on their body.
Hands blaze as if dipped in blue fire. Twin pet black leopards who lick blood from her fingers. Master of atomic science. Pale. Beautiful. Totally irredeemably insane.
