Adventure Seed: Operation FLOWERPOT WEDDING

Operation FLOWERPOT WEDDING

As you know, Agents, the island of Madagascar has been under an interlocking series of glamours and enchantments for the last sixty years, thus neatly obscuring the fact that it was conquered in 1963 by invaders from another dimension (known as the Purple-Green Eclipse Legion). These enchantments are equally for the Legion’s and our own benefit, as it turns out that the Legion’s sophonts are incapable of surviving long-term in our universe’s unique physics without the use of ongoing and sophisticated thaumatology. This odd wrinkle in space-time has stymied the Legion’s original plan of planetary conquest; apparently, their own superiors don’t want them coming back home, either. So they’re stuck here, and they don’t like it very much, and we don’t like them very much, either. But better strained relations, than a repeat of the 1964 Event.

Yesterday, a high-ranking official in the Legion attempted to defect. More accurately, it went through an elaborate suicide ritual which ended with it dead in the US Embassy in Gaborone, still clutching a satchel full of untranslated papers. The official neglected to tell us why it was ‘defecting,’ and no American official in Botswana can actually read the Legion’s language, so the satchel needs to be secured and brought to Washington, DC post-haste. You may now guess as to who has been tapped to do the securing, and bringing.

The good news is, Botswana is a developed country with a flourishing infrastructure, a functional government, and robust economy: you should be able to fly in, collect the satchel, and leave. The bad news is, every other group out there aware of the Legion and the satchel (which is probably all of the groups aware of the Legion, by now) will be likewise able to fly in, and try to intercept you. To add to the complexity of this situation: some of these groups are our actual or at least nominal allies, so there are upper limits to what they can safely do to you, or you to them. Some of their agents will want to make deals with your team, trading additional security in exchange for getting a good look at the satchel. Some of them will even voluntarily honor those deals.

One last wrinkle: this could all very easily be a disinformation exercise. The Purple-Green Eclipse Legion is in permanent exile on this planet. They cannot go home, and they cannot conquer, so they must make the best of the situation. That does not mean that they are friendly, in even the slightest degree. It is perfectly possible that the satchel contains nothing but disinformation, or even gibberish.

Then again: it might not.