The Lost City of Florida pt 1.

DC, June, 1925

Irina spent some time in New York, finding that The City was quite full of Russian ex-pats, so much so that she is able to purchase some treats from the Old Country.   Her mother offered her the sable stole, but it was too heartbreaking to take away.  Jack seemed all right for the most part - but that Wand was always around.  Even if he put it down, or in a desk drawer, the next time he checked his jacket, there it was.  Looking into subzero survival is rough, given all the accounts of deaths, frostbite injuries, and other horrors, and there is mention of a fourth traveller in Shackleford's South Georgia crossing that is strange, as only three men were there. There is probably more research somewhere in Trevor's laboratory.

Jack sat out in the perimeter during the Spell with Bitsie, Thorne and Fritz, who had organised a whole rota of perimeter checks so that by dawn, his feet were killing him.  The spell was done and the whole office went home, apart from some of the mice.   Nothing untoward had happened in the casting of the spell as far as he could determine.  His suggestion of a cornerless 'safe room' was met with approval.  Irina was his bastion of sanity.  The trials the Raiders had faced so far seemed to be nothing compared to what they would be getting into at the South Pole.

Spider looked into the whole Bureaucracy thing, seeing that it was already giving Ben headaches, though Edith was the one who was running the office with apparent ease.  The mission board for the Antarctic adventure was getting more and more added to it; the departure was now loosely set for August.  The mission itself is "find the lost city".  The hope was that something in that city might help the BPRD prevent the rising of Cthulhu.  The idea that they would face something as terrible, or possibly worse in the Antarctic was the stuff of nightmares.  And all Spider had was the tenuous promise of a future that involved thin black rectangles with glass fronts, an annoying Roman, and a time machine.  The time machine that for the moment, was still inert and resting in the deserted back corridors of the Grey Building.
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Pressure is brought to bear by the Florida Governor, John W. Martin, who was clearly concerned about the Everglades problem being a stumbling block in his quest to increase tourism and land speculation.  He wanted the Bureau to investigate the swamp disappearances and if that meant razing some forgotten city to the ground, so be it.  Since the launch of the icebreaker for the Antarctic expedition would be from Florida, it was politically expedient to send a team to investigate the Everglades and come to some conclusions about what was going on there.   With many concerns relating to the Antarctic, the agents accepted their assignments, and the large truck was supplied and sent to Florida.  The small truck went to Rhode Island, to deal with the most haunted place on the East Coast.
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GM:  Any actions you wish to do before heading to Florida, or if you wish to stay in DC and research the Antarctic expedition, please respond by Saturday, 16 January, next post Sunday.  Hope everyone is managing the pandemic.  Sorry to hear you're stuck, Richard.  Hope it improves or at least doesn't get worse. I'll email the post to Paul.
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