From the Journals of Lord Horace Hattings with regards the treasure of Pharaoh Rahotep
Arrival in Egypt:
Well the country certainly is beastly hot but I refuse to remove both my hat and my suit, I must present myself as well dressed at all times. Still I have found my lodgings and will begin looking over the map of the supposed site of the Tomb of Rahotep later tonight.
Addendum: After looking over the map it appears the Tomb may well be out in the middle of the desert...a most dangerous and not to mention long journey. I am glad I decided to pack my shorts for this one.
2nd Addendum: I was awoken by the sound of glass breaking, it turned out to be my own window, I saw in the moonlight a thief making off with the map as they dived off the balcony.
I am most definitely sure the thief was a woman since she had 'ample tracts of land' as my father would say and was wearing a black skin tight body suit of somekind. While losing the map is a blow to both my confidence and the expedition, I have thankfully committed the map to top of my mind...by that I mean I hid a copy of it in my hat.
Day 4:
I am about to begin my journey, I'm sure the buxom lady thief will have atleast two days headstart of me, which is why I must go this alone, no time to wait around for the porters, handlers or guides this time. I have plenty of water and a good camel, I shall name him Lumphrey.
Day 24:
Running low on water but I am making good time, Lumphrey is one heck of a beast, a hardier Camel I could not have asked for, if I was one of those people to believe in reincarnation I would say he must have definitely been a British man in his former life, resolute of mind and of pace. I have a new found respect for him.
Day 32:
Having finally reached the spot I saw another Camel already tied up to a nearby palm tree. Leaving Lumphrey some water I decided I had to journey onward, it was getting dark outside so I had to be quick, finding the secret entrance by sheer accident (I fell down a pit...the hieroglyphs translated as 'watch out below'...very funny...). Using my hat, one of the many broken pieces of stone, the high strength alcohol in my hip flask and a single match I fashioned a torch.
It was true what they say about the traps in a place like this, one does have to wonder about whether there were ever accidents setting these things up. I mean one wrong move and that giant swinging blade would be the end of several stoneworkers, let alone a whole corridor of them.
So making my way past the corridor of swinging blades, through a room that filled with scorpions (how on earth did they survive down here?) a lot faster than I would have liked, one begun living in my suit breast pocket and I didn't have the heart to move him at the time, he seemed snug.
Then it was simply a matter of avoiding the poison dart traps (though I'm not sure if the poison would have lasted this long but being stuck with a load of dart would still be a rather poor end for a Gentleman) and I was into the main chamber.
Unlucky for me the buxom thief had made her way here too, though she appeared to have taken more time negotiating the traps on her end while I may have been a bit more...devil may care...on my approach.
She had spotted me as well and drew a gun on me, which I thought was rather unsporting frankly, I mean, a gun of all things!
Still she ushered me away from the door and proceed to place some kind of amulet in the pedestal, it turned out I would have needed it to open the big stone door behind which the treasure was hidden...that will teach me for not doing my research properly I can tell you!
Now while the treasure was quite resplendant, indeed there was more gold here than twelve men could carry (atleast by my rough calculations), I couldn't help but notice a small collection of mummified cats in the corner, complete with their own sarcophagi. It seems that wherever I go, mummified cats will appear. Perhaps Mr Stiffles was merely the first.
Enough of my ramblings on that matter, the woman claimed that she would need to 'off me' so I couldm't reveal this place to my organisation (at the time this left me very confused, I mean, the Gentlemans Club to which I belong is hardly an establishment which would try to take over the world) and that it should remain a secret. Thinking fast I quickly grabbed the Scorpion from my breast pocket and hurled it at her. A Scorpion surprise you could say, ha!
Of course I hadn't thrown a highly poisonous Scorpion at the woman (that would be incredibly ungentlemanlike), this one was merely very pinchy with the sting apparently equal to that of a european honey bee. However it was all the distraction I needed to disarm the woman and tie her hands using my own bow tie.
I learned her name was Elizabeth Dowling and that she was planning to take the treasure back to America, well, one in particular, it seems one of the artifacts has some occult power and that someone named Maggie would be better off looking after it. She had assumed I was working for some nefarious organisation to retrieve the artifact of power and not merely seeking to return it to a Museum for a nice finders fee.
After a long discussion I released Ms Dowling and agreed that she could have the 'Staff of Set' (rod of ivory and gold with a golden snakes head on the top) and do with it as she wished, I was allowed the more mundane treasures, of course I took only the most important artifacts and Pharaoh Rahmotep's sarcophagus, with the Pharaoh still inside naturally.
Myself and Ms Dowling decided to ride together back towards civilization and Lumphrey, while protesting all the way, managed to haul back everything like a true British beast of burden, remarkable camel he was. I learned that perhaps there would be work for one with talents such as myself in Paragon City but that would have to wait. First I must return home and to the British Museum, they will pay handsomely for such a thing as this AND be able to display it for all the schoolgoing children which will be marvellous!
Now I must stop writing, I have more questions to ask Ms Dowling about this Maggie person.
((and an added bonus, here is what Lord Horace Hattings looks like ingame
))
A Little note, Lord Horace is pretty much a 'beyond the impossible' type old English gentleman adventurer, so if you expected realism then you may need to look elsewhere, the adventures will also be very 'pulp adventure' in style
From the Journal of Lord Horace Hattings conscerning the quest for the treasure of Mom'bai'kai.
Day 1400:
Having spent over three years searching for this treasure, which has taken me the highest peaks to the lowest valleys, I have arrived in Africa. The stories say that the treasure is 'piled so high that it reaches from the deepest depths' and 'that a man would spend many hours just climbing from the bottom' while I have yet to work out what that means I can only assume that it refers to a large pile of golden coins.
Now a have hired a local guide, a very nice fellow, to show me up river, if my guesses are correct the former lost kingdom of Mom'bai'kai is located somewhere in the deepest darkest parts of the Congo, lost to both time and fellow man, it took me two years alone to decipher the text written in a tongue spoken nowhere else before or since.
While the accomidation is not up to the standard of that back home in sweet old England, it is a relief to be able to atleast have a bath.
Day 1420:
We had been sailing up river for some time now, unfortunately today we hit a rather large snag. The captain of the boat failed to spot a rock jutting out from the river in time, cracking a large hole in the side of our little wooden riverboat. As the boat begun to sink I noticed another large problem, the crocodiles were obviously sensing out plight (the blighters!) and were closing in.
I used a plank that had come lose, my hat and the what was left of the meat we had been storing onboard to create a dummy to throw them off, giving myself and the rest of the crew time to scramble to shore.
One of those pesky scaled fellows managed to follow me, naturally I had to stab it with the shattered glass from my monocle but the crew were both relieved and well fed on the crocodile meat that night.
Day 1440:
Unfortunately thanks to the tortures of the jungle we've lost quite a few of the porters and crew but my loyal guide Gasira and I continue on, along with what remains of the crew. According to the map we are quite a ways travel from the supposed site of Mom'bai'kai, I would think almost a month.
While I have been venturing into the river to keep ourselves stocked of Alligator meat, I have run out of the last few remaning shards of glass from my monocle and with another perfectly fine hat ruined during the wrecking of the ship I fear I can't take the beasts on in the gentlemanly art of pugilism.
Still we must trudge on, stiff upper lip and all that!
Day 1460:
While only myself and Gasira remain we have finally found what I was looking for. We have reached what remains of the palace of King Mom'bai'kai. With some caution I go in first, not wishing to risk the life of my last travelling companion, especially one who had survived all the ordeals alongside me.
I make a makeshift torch from some old vines, an old timber and using some of my moustache shavings as kindle. Using the old trick of rubbing two sticks together to start the fire, as I had been doing for much of the long trek through the jungle.
I descend down the stairs and come across the treasure...a truly impressive pile of what appears to be mummified cats.
I plunge into the depths and the pile was so deep it took me some half an hour to descend and several hours to climb back up, filling the two sacks I had bought with me as I went, perhaps the British Museum might find some use for them.
As I reached the surface and my fellow traveller, I exclaimed to my guide, "damn it man, it's cats all the way down!"
He was at first confused until I explained the situation.
Upon returning home:
It turns out the sentence I had translated suffered a bit of an old schoolboy error on my part, the king wasn't called Mom'bai'kai...it said "the King was Mom'bai'kai" in this very ancient script...after a few more nights of hard translation it turns out that in this incredibly old tongue Mom'bai'kai means 'fond of cats'. So what the lost city is actually called, well that still eludes me.
Still the British Museum paid a fairly well for the sack full of cats, myself and my travelling companion both kept one each. I plan to take him with me on my travels from now on, I have a good feeling about Stiffles (that's what I called him..because he is mummified you see).
Now where to go next, Paragon City will have to wait though...
((thoughts, comments, do you want to read more of these short stories?))