We meet Clayton Whittman, a “professional” adventurer who will be accompanying us since Goodwin is staying behind to help study the hammer. Clayton says that he is from Great Britain, although he was raised in the midwest of the United States and has a midwestern accent.
We are being debriefed by Westmore at von Keller’s lab. We need to go to Damascus to retrieve an object; in order to do this is we find a specific archaeologist. This item has given supernatural powers to peole through the generations that generates leadership ability. It is a large clear stone that has made its way to asia in the last few millennia. The Italians had found out some information about this object a few years ago. Our best chance is to capture one of the research assistants on the dig. His name is Pietro Romanelli, and he is currently in Damascus. We imagine that he is under guard. When we grab him we need to make it look like it was a Bedouin raid, so we need to use native blades. They have arranged a contact, named Abdula, at the hotel Beduin in Dasmascus. He will call on us the morning of the 24th to meet up with us.
Ducard checks his books and cannot seem to find any information on the object. It seems that there is very limited info.
We discuss how we are going to get to Damascus, and it is decided that we should go by boat. The safest way, we decide, is to hire a boat and bring our car with us. Goodwin helps us by building a hidden compartment in the car where we can hide our weapons.
We leave, and once we get to the border we are asked to get out of the car and show our papers, and they search the car. In order to distract the man who is searching the back of the car, Ducard chats him up about the model of car. It seems to work and we get by.
Continuing on, we get to the boat a day later and find a small freighter. We set out on our journey and after several days of seafaring and some sea-sickness by our group, we arrive in Beruit. We take the car north to Damascus and are greeted by sand, camels, shit, and lots of people. We notice that Maiura is not covered and find her a berka. We come to Hotel Europa and are greeted by stares from the locals. We check in with Clayton helping to translate. We get three rooms.
We carry our weapons up to the room and settle in. Slate goes down to the local market and looks around, getting some of his money changed over so he can buy some things at the market. While at the market he sees some Germans go by in a large half-track, and is taken by surprise. No one else seems to pay attention. He asks the merchant who he was buying from why there might be Germans around, and the guy says that the areas around the city are still very tribal and that the Germans and other people (British, French, Italians) around keep the tribal violence down and they trade and carouse with the locals.
The others are back at the hotel, chilling out. Ducard decides that he should go to a library to study up on the artifact if he can find any info. After a while he finds a strange reference to an artifact; info on a soldier named Longinus who was caught with a large clear stone in Jerusalem at some undetermined time. He was released from the Roman legion and was allowed to leave, which is certainly strange.
Maiura checks all of the equipment that we brought to make sure that it is ready for desert use. Soon afterwards Slate comes back with the fruit and other food, and the others partake. It is getting late, and finally Ducard and Clayton come back from the library. Ducard relates the information that he found.
The next day we go down to the main floor to find a large Bedouin man and his tribe. He is sitting at a table and asks us if we are ready to go on our tour. We agree and get our gear ready and ask the concierge at the front desk to take care of our vehicles. The man, Abdulah, speaks to him and tells us that our vehicles will be well taken care of.
Abdulah tells us that the encampment is about a day’s ride out into the desert and the archeology crew is another day past that. They have sent some scouts to the area and have seen Italian soldiers and heard a plane recently in the area. The scouts say that they have a very regimented perimiter and defense, it seems.
We come into the Beduin camp and they ask us how we would like to proceed. They say that generally they use hit and run tactics and scout them at night. We decide to head out there to scout ourselves, and then we will return to the Beduin camp to plan our attack.
We leave for the dig site and travel through the hot desert. All of us remember to drink enough so we don’t suffer too many ill effects, and are thankful when the sun goes down. We are given muskets and sabers for weapons, and 10 cartridges. We also get clothing that matches what the Beduins are wearing so we are indistinguishable except for our white skin.
Clayton, Slate and Maiura go the last mile or so with the Beduin’s best scouts. We inch our way to the encampment, and Slate accidentally causes some sand to slide, making the guards take slight notice. We scope the area and see two half-tracks and quite a few armaments. They seem like Italians, but Slate sees that their collar tabs look like the same ones we saw in Germany. There are mounted guns on both sides of the camp and on the half-tracks. Slate notices that the military personnel are staying away from one of the tents in the middle. This is probably where the archeologists are. The tent next to it seems to contain officers. Tailspin sees from afar that they have a landing strip about a half mile from the encampment with a plane, a troop transport, that we could use in our plan to provide a getaway. We decide to head back to formulate our strategy.
The first priority, we decide, is the plane. We will secure it, and then move on to the main encampment. Abdulah’s men will take the machine gun emplacements and the half-tracks with snipers. His other men will charge in and attack, and afterwards we will come with the second wave of snipers to take the archeologist.
We head to the airfield and attempt to stealth our way in. We are quickly found out, however, and have to resort to attacking straight out. They fire guns and perhaps have alerted the other soldiers at the camp, so we decide to wait and see if they are coming to attack. Tailspin does pre-flight on the airplane just in case. If all is quiet, we will move to the camp to attack.