A World Time Forgot (freeform, survival, Roaring 20s, Lost World, all welcome)

[IrishWolf]

The Bermuda Triangle, a place of myth and legend, just north of the Caribbean, in the Atlantic Ocean. For a long as ships have sailed those waters, there have been strange happens and disappearances. To count the number of ships and aircraft, which have gone missing, would be an impossible task. Of course, there are the even more sinister case of ships found devoid of crew, drifting at the mercy of the sea, their holds still full of cargo and without signs of struggle.

Theories abound to the reason for all of these occurrences. Many look for rational explanations, everything from magnetic anomalies, the weather, U-Boats, piracy, to pure human error or even columns of methane bubbles. Others claim more extraordinary means for the mysteries of the Triangle, citing alien encounters or technology of sunken Atlantis.

Perhaps all or none of this theories can explain such incidents as the disappearance of the USS Cyclops in 1918 with all hands and without trace. Although when one considers the fate of two of her sister ships, questions arise. USS Proteus, namesake of the class of 4 colliers, was lost with all hands and without trace, in 1941, also in the Bermuda Triangle. USS Nereus, while sailing the same route as Cyclops, was also lost in 1941, with all hands and no wreckage found. There are no U-Boat claims for these three vessels

The Ellen Austin found a derelict just north of the Triangle, boarded it with a prize crew, lost and found derelict again, missing the prize crew and placed a second prize aboard, only to lose the derelict again, for good this time.

Another famous case, the loss of Flight 19 and the PBM Mariner, sent to search for them, after radio contact was broken. The flight leader, a one Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor, an experienced combat pilot, somehow became confused and lost during a training mission. However, radio messages picked up by the base and other aircraft hint at something stranger going on. Messages like the rest of the pilots being lost and both of their compassess being out. Messages like their IFF transmitters being active, yet the ground based radar not being able to pick the signal. Or Lieutenant Taylor being unable to change his radio frequencies.

However the loss of SS Errant, in the summer 1927, can be explained by different means, although none of the crew or passengers could figure out what happened to them, nor could those that made the brief search for the tramp freighter, when she was listed as overdo. It was well known but never proven that Günter von Schricker, Captain of the Errant, was a rumrunner and it was assumed he, his crew and those unlucky enough to have taken passage on the ship, met with a bad end at the hand of criminals. 

However, those aboard the Errant could have attested to, had they been able to return, that such was not their fate.

The true fate of SS Errant is far stranger. While sailing through the Bermuda Triangle, on a voyage from New York to Havana, Cuba, the tramp freighter passed through a violent and unexpected squall. As the ship was tossed and pitched through the waves, she slipped through the boundaries between worlds, into one which might be described as lost to time. The great and terrible beasts of every era of Earth’s past roam, still very much alive. Great and terrible lizards mingle with megafauna, as the sea teems with monsters. All kinds of men, modern and primitive haunt the jungles and plains, even humans of our world, shipwrecked like those of the Errant.

It would be noticed, by those of scientific endeavors or learned in natural science, that many of the beasts and people, are not of our Earth’s past. It might be said, this Lost World, is not just of what was but perhaps is also of what could have been. Dinosaurs, some looking like giant lizards as we once thought them to be, mingle with those covered in protofeathers, as current theories suggest. Or maybe once such creatures were saved from extinction, evolution continued to run it’s course.

In this world, the crew and passengers, must try to survive.

Luckily for them, they are not defenseless. From 1920 until 1925, SS Errant had been sailing in the Far East, often smuggling weapons for Chinese Warlords. In such a dangerous line of work, it often pays to have protection and the steamer has a hidden armory aboard. Like the original crew, when she left Europe in 1920, her weapons are German in origin. Gewehr 98 rifles mostly, with some MP 18 submachine guns, along with an equal number of Mauser C96 pistols and P04 Naval Lugers, with plenty of ammunition, after all just because the United States and the Caribbean islands are not torn apart by civil war, doesn’t mean they're not dangerous. Mobsters and Prohibition agents can be just as quick to shoot, as as the soldiers of warlords. Of course, the passengers may have their own, American made weapons.

Alright, so this is going to be a freeform story inspired by the Lost World genre (work’s like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land Time Forgot, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth), centered around the survival the crew and passengers of the Errant, along with any natives beings, humans or not, who join them. Characters of any sexual orientation are welcome. Native characters are open to just about anything, from primitive humans, to modern man, to non-humans and intelligent beasties. Passenger characters are anyone who would fit into mid 1920s America. Crew characters are somewhat restricted, details in the next paragraph.

When Kapitänleutnant Günter von Schricker returned to Germany in 1919, after surrendering his U-Boat at Harwich, he found his beloved Kaiserliche Marine disbanded and replaced by the new Vorläufige Reichsmarine, a gutted navy, lacking submarines. Finding no place for him, Schricker was discharged with honor and left to find a new profession. Using his own personal finances and funds left to him by his Junker father, he purchased an old freighter and hired a crew of former U-Boat sailors, who like him, were out of a job. Knowing work would be hard to find in Europe or America, for the men of the U-Boat fleet, he sailed for Asia, where merchant ships had never known the terror of unrestricted submarine warfare. He has lost men in China and replaced from the sailors to be found there.


So anyone interested?

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[b]Name[/b]:
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Current Cast

Günter von Schricker

Name: Günter von Schricker
Age: 38
Nationality: German, specifically Prussian
Gender: male
Rank or Profession: Ship’s Captain
Sexuality: Straight and dominate
Appearance:
Günter is not a tall man, standing at five feet and nine inches but that had been to his advantage inside the cramped u-boats. Normally fair of skin, the past eight years skippering a surface ship around Asia and the Caribbean, has left him with modest tan on a weathered face, as well as darkening his short blonde hair somewhat. He looks older and sterner than he really is, from his service in the Great War. Proud but hard eyes, of a fierce light blue, dominate his face, which always seem to stare down his straight nose, even when he has to look up at someone. Athletic but not overly large, he’s more than strong enough to hold his own in a bar brawl. He can normally be found wearing muted tan or khaki shirts and trousers, with brown leather shoes and a battered looking and slightly strained white cap on his head. For cooler weather, he has a brown leather jacket.
Weapons: MP 18 and a P04 Naval Luger
Personal effects: Günter doesn’t own much, save for his ship but he does keep six special items, most of which was kept tucked away in his cabin. The first, which he wears is his Girard-Perregaux wristwatch, which was issued to him when he was commissioned in the Kaiserliche Marine. The second is his old commander’s cap and his Kaiserliche Marine uniform. Folded carefully and reverently, a Reichskriegsflagge is tucked under his mattress. The final two are his Iron Cross second class and his Pour le Mérite
Special talents: His ability to take charge and lead, highly skilled navigator and a very good poker face, decent shot with a pistol
History: Born in 1889, into a family of Junkers, although not overly wealthy or powerful as nobles go, in Wismar. His childhood was rather uneventful, although he always had a love of the Baltic. When he old enough, he enlisted in the Kaiserliche Marine, where he was serve aboard a Magdeburg class light cruiser, until he was moved to U-Bootschule, in the early days of 1914. In the first year or more of the war, he served as both the second and then first watch officer on U-20, under Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger and stood at his station when U-20 sank the RMS Lusitania. After U-20 was grounded by Schwieger in 1916, Günter was promoted and given command of U-51, which he would hold until the end of the war. Commanding his U-boat for fourteen patrols, he managed to sink 49 vessels, equalling just over 100,000 tons of cargo sent to the bottom, earning him both the Iron Cross and the Pour le Mérite.

When Kapitänleutnant Günter von Schricker returned to Germany in 1919, after surrendering his U-Boat at Harwich, he found his beloved Kaiserliche Marine disbanded and replaced by the new Vorläufige Reichsmarine, a gutted navy, lacking submarines. Finding no place for him, Schricker was discharged with honor and left to find a new profession. Using his own personal finances and funds left to him by his Junker father, he purchased an old freighter and hired a crew of former U-Boat sailors, who like him, were out of a job. Knowing work would be hard to find in Europe or America, for the men of the U-Boat fleet, he sailed for Asia, where merchant ships had never known the terror of unrestricted submarine warfare.

In 1925, he returned to the Atlantic, sailing to the Caribbean and loading up with rum. His sailors, being well seasoned smugglers, were able to sneak the cargo of illegal booze right into New York Harbor, in broad daylight and unload it without getting caught. From that voyage forth, he has moved booze across the East Coast for criminals of all sorts and sometime takes passengers along, although not in the greatest of comfort and style.