The First Fantastic Feature!
THE SEED of MADNESS[edit]
- Part 1 - Prelude in Paris
Our story begins with action as Doctor Bermuda, Brendan Lewis Cook, Charles "Charlie" Desgrange and the Rabbit race to the top of the Jog Falls in India, their prize, the Naga Crown in their hands and The Marut Cult hot on their heels. Narrowly escaping the fanatical cultists, our heroes make their way to Paris and The Lazarus Trust where their section chief, S. Wilson Rosepere soon sends them off again, this time by train, to investigate strange happenings in Vienna.
Aboard the Orient Express, our heroes meet an array of travellers, including Turkish merchant Adem Sengul, Italian opera diva Amelita Galli-Curci and Romanian rocket scientist Henri Coanda. Dr. Bermuda strikes up an easy friendship with his fellow scientist while Charlie finds he shares a common interest with the Turk - cars. As the week-long journey hits its last night, however, the relative quiet it shattered by the piercing shriek of Sig.ra Galli-Curci. Despite the train's speed, a large bat had made its way inside and was flapping its way around the lady's hair. Thanks to the quick thinking of Cook and Dr. Coanda's daughter, Bethany, the bat is soon flushed out into the night air. The mystery, however, remained.
- Part 2 - The Viennese Expedition
Arriving in Vienna, our Intrepid Explorers say their goodbyes to their new friends and hello an old one, Wendell Harper. Although Cook is the only one of the team to have met him before Harper is, like they, an agent of the Lazarus Trust. As head of the Viennese chapter house, Harper guides them around the Austrian countryside as they conduct their investigation. Charlie and Cook interview Stefan Schlegel, a man committed to the Krugel asylum ever since he ran down from the black forest near the Alps, claiming that the trees spoke to him; meanwhile, Dr. Bermuda and the Rabbit interview Otto and Anna Rudolphe, two local farmers who found a strange skeleton on the ground near their farm one morning.
The group is together again by the time they speak to Fritz Gehrber, a banker in the nearby village of Heitzing who claims something was following him during a hunting expedition the month before. In Heitzing they also discover that local burgher, botanist and former baron, Doctor Joseph Dippel, is throwing a dinner party. When Charlie finds that Dippel also has soldiers on hand, the group contrives to attend his party.
- Part 3 - The Strange Events of Doctor Dippel's Party
As Dippel welcomes his many guests and invites them to take their seats, our heroes strike up conversations to lead them on in their investigation. Charlie discovers that one of the soldiers he encountered the night before is working as one of Dippel's waiters and Dr. Bermuda once again meets Dr. Coanda, who's present to provide the evening's end's entertainment. Cook, meanwhile, finds another ally of the Lazarus Trust, Lord John Stevens, who Dippel invited in an attempt to gain funding for his research.
These aren't the only people attending the party, though, and as Dr.s Bermuda and Coanda work on designs for a rocket plane Charlie has a brief exchange with his old enemy, German air ace Rheinholdt Dietrich. The Rabbit, meanwhile, is approached by Ruthven Vaneko, a Romanian noble convinced that Dippel is trying to have him assassinated. He offers Rabbit information on Dippel in exchange for protection. Dippel comes over before the discussion can go much further, though, and Vaneko says they'll continue later.
Dinner at an end, Dippel invites his guests outside to see Dr. Coanda's fireworks. The explorers, however, have other plans. Rabbit follows, but soon loses, Vaneko; Cook follows Dietrich to an underground hanger where the German quickly leaves in a biplane; and John Stevens speaks with the castle's rats in an attempt to uncover Dippel's secrets.
Soon the group gathers together again in Dippel's secret laboratory only to find themselves pinned down by gunfire from the doctor's soldiers. Taking a quick moment to grab Dippel's notes and journal from the lab table, our heroes plot their escape when a nine-foot tall monstrosity trundles out of an adjacent room, hurls a vat of acid at our heroes and bellows out in an inhuman voice - "grey and grizzly!" It's Dippel's creation!
- Part 4 - The Creature Revealed!
Nine feet tall, clothed in rags and with chalk-white skin, the Creature begins a mad rampage as the acid it had previously splashed around causes the wooden table and chairs to ignite. The fire lights up the entire room and burns through one of the ceiling's support beams, which falls, knocking Cook unconscious. Dr. Bermuda quickly slips out of a now-broken window and makes his slow, careful way to the hanger Cook had found earlier and the Rabbit, Cook in hand, leaps out the window to hang by the end of the table.
While John Stevens engages the Creature with only his bare fists, Charlie finds a hidden trap door built into the floor. Following the path down below, he discovers Dippel's motorpool. Though there are guards, he distracts them by weighing down the pedal on one truck and sending it crashing through the gate. Meanwhile, up above, Dr. Bermuda has returned from the hanger, piloting an autogyro! Rabbit sees Cook safely aboard and then jumps back into the fray. Though the Creature seems insensible to the fiercest blows and even gunshots, when John hurls a burning brand at the thing it quickly catches alight. On fire and panicking, the thing makes a last, desperate grab for Rabbit and then dives out the window, seemingly to its doom.
With the Creature gone, John follows Charlie down to the motorpool and the two escape the now burning castle in a military jeep. Although they're chased by more guards, John's quick arm and Charlie's quicker driving make short work of them. As they do, the Rabbit tracks Dippel to the top of the castle. The mad doctor, cornered, begins to espouse his ideas of a finer world, free of all but humanity's select, and before Rabbit can convince him that his path is lunacy, an autogyro with a mysterious pilot arrives and carries him off.
- Part 5 - Clues in the Ashes
The next morning, with the village abuzz over Dippel's castle, now in ruins, Dr. Bermuda brings Wendell Harper in for a meeting. Though the Rabbit is suspicious of Harper due to his mention in Dippel's diary, Harper is above-board with our heroes and relates an intriguing tale - he is much older than he appears and first encountered an ancestor of Dippel's over 200 years ago at Castle Frankenstein in Germany, where he was part of the military unit assigned to investigate local claims of corpse-stealing. Dippel's ancestor, who was attempting to raise the dead, was behind it and a mob saw justice done with pitchforks and torches. Harper called in an investigative team due to the similarities in circumstances
This new information in hand, the team begins the legwork of trying to find Dippel's lost creature. They comb the area on foot and by air, searching through barns, in the deepest woods and the ruins of Dippel's castle itself. Finally, in two seperate groups, the team finds a cave system running between a mountain valley in the Alps and a hidden passage under Dippel's castle. In the depths of that cave system they find the remains of the Creature; a dried up husk of plant life, one arm entirely missing, the thing is all but a mummy. They send it back to Paris, along with their other findings, for the Lazarus Trust's archives.
Terra Occulta[edit]
- The First Fantastic Feature! - THE SEED of MADNESS
- The Second Startling Story! - THE HAND of the DEMON
- The Third Terrific Tale! - THE SHADOW of INNSMOUTH
- The Fourth Fabulous Fiction! -
