Adventure Seed: Vengeance of the Weevil Empire.

Vengeance of the Weevil Empire

“Good morning, Agents. [Picture appears, of an elderly Caucasian male with glasses and a short beard]  This is a picture of Harvey Grisham of Tuttle, Kentucky.  On May 17, 1995 he opened his back door to discover that an alien colony ship had crash-landed in his very extensive and back yard.  The ship was from the Radiant Glorious Space Weevil Empire (their own name for themselves cannot be translated into a human language), and had been damaged while heading for an uninhabited colony world. Please note that the average Space Weevil [picture appears, of a beetle-like creature wearing a shiny jumpsuit, with a penny for scale] is about three quarters of an inch long, which meant that the entire colony ship – one rated for about 100,000 colonists – was about the length and volume of a mid-sized car.

“Mr. Grisham was both recently retired and a widower. He had no known children, or close friends.  For reasons best known to himself Grisham did not alert the mundane authorities to the crash; he instead rigged a tarp to cover the colony ship (protecting it from the elements) and provided water and cooked rice to the Space Weevils, on the grounds that if wild weevils ate uncooked rice then Space Weevils probably would be civilized enough to eat theirs cooked. The Space Weevils later confirmed that all of this most assuredly saved the colonists until they could get their own food production up and running; there was a two week period where all that they had to eat was the rice and vitamin supplements.

“Over the course of the next twenty years, Mr. Grisham and the Space Weevil colony developed a remarkably amiable relationship. Eventually the Space Weevils repaired their ship’s communications system, discovered the extremely medicinal (to them) properties of beard lichen, and sent word to the Empire of their survival on the Planet of Surprisingly Friendly Giants; the Shadow Government’s involvement in this matter began when the Weevil Empire sent a repair fleet.  After some consideration – and after some strained consultation with the parties involved – it was decided that Mr. Grisham was more or less doing everything that the Shadow Government would have directed a team of agents to do: to wit, keeping people away from an incredibly sensitive area without either arousing undue suspicions, or starting an interplanetary war. And he was doing it without pay: apparently, watching the Space Weevils get a lichen harvesting colony up and running was better than watching television. So arrangements were made.  Arrangements thought to be perfectly amiable for all involved.

“Only not, because last Friday Mr. Grisham was murdered at his house.  And the Space Weevils are livid.  Mr. Grisham is a beloved pop and cultural icon to them; they make children’s movies about his (imaginary) adventures.  More to the point, the Radiant Glorious Space Weevil Empire made him an honorary noble a decade ago, and was in the process of trying to figure out how to get him to make the Grand Tour of the Empire without people getting squashed in the process.  Fortunately, their Emperor believes us when we told him that the Shadow Government had no hand in Grisham’s death, but they expect us to find the murderer. Because if we don’t, they will. They’re already sending their top investigator to Earth to help with the case.

“So that’s your assignment.  Liaise with the Space Weevil investigator, go to rural Kentucky, and find out why somebody would want to murder a harmless old retiree – and how they managed to do it without us noticing, too. And do it quickly, before the Weevil Empire strikes back…”