Casting Shadows

The entry this week for Serial Setting 1 for Ubiquity adds a pending reason to compel adventurers, explorers, and record-breakers to make the journey to the beautiful yet deadly Windlet Islands. The Serial Settings series of posts is intended to provide usable setting material for busy GMs. Series 1 is for those looking to run Daring Tales of Adventure or Hollow Earth Expedition.

39) 1st International Oceanic Endurance & Navigation Trials, Lysette Airstrip, Lysette Isle

A recent announcement around the islands, but a program that has been in the works since early ’32, the fledgling long-haul air freight logistics arm of the Company is planning a massive competitive review of fliers, machines, fuels, techniques, and performance limits the likes of which have not been seen since the early days of flight. Cash and Contract prizes for the top crews in both pilot and maintenance divisions, as well as orders for the best overall air freight platform demonstrated during the competition are a major lure for virtually anyone in the industry from crop-dusters through to major players like Boeing.

Set for the typhoon season of 1939, air crews are already beginning to appear to perform test runs, learn the quirks of the airstrip and local weather, and try to hobnob with Company Brass. Taking advantage of this hoped for event, planners are surreptitiously guiding an informal competition from the shadows, and using it as a dry run for the main event.

Usual Suspects: Bertram Rogers

A former salesman, Rogers – a permanently grounded pilot – is almost single-handedly responsible for coaxing the Administrator to try adding a unified and systematic global air-freight division to his family’s company. Already engaged in the many aspects of the aeronautical business, Ghast agreed to give the young go-getter the time and resources he needed to prove or disprove the Company’s ability to expand air operations in the Pacific, and then around the globe.

Just into his mid-thirties, Rogers, usually called Rogers as he despises the name Bertram and all nicknames derived from it, walks with a stiff gait stemming from severe injuries to his back and right leg in a terrible air crash almost 10 years ago when he was working in for a promotional air circus in the US. A fore of nature as  a very young man, the injuries could not keep him down, but they could – when coupled with fading eye sight, keep him out of the pilot’s seat.

Still in love with the air, the dark-haired, olive-skinned tough from the Bronx, grew from that accident and up into a refined, well-dressed, fast-talking former daredevil who could sell water to fish.

Rumours: Heard mostly among those who work in and around the airfield and A&R Centre

• He saves every cent he possibly can and wires it all back to the States
• He has a family, including a wife and child, but he never visits or talks about them
• The Administrator often has informal meetings with him at the airstrip diner over a plate of fries
• He once confided to Jim Berman that he was scouted for a certain NY ball team, but turned them down for planes
• He goes to bed at sunset, and is up before sunrise
• He knows everything about every plane
• He keeps meticulous files on all known fliers currently working anywhere in the world
• He built a glider of some kind and plans to fly it off the top of Mt. Cairn if the race pays off like he thinks it will

Truths:

Seek and thou shalt find!