Moses Suspenderberg: Hard-Boiled Explorer

Moses Suspenderberg is not an explorer by trade, but he's had to take on stranger roles to solve a case before. Besides, being a snoop is kinda like being an explorer, except with real responsibility. Mose knows that on the other end of the line he tows is always some dame in need a blond hair's width away from calamity and he doesn't want to be the one gumming things up. Enough things are gummed up already in this crazy world.

It was almost a year ago that map showed up in his office, attached to an hour-glass knockout, a sob story and a whole lot of trouble. Karu Baru, he'd never heard of it, but there it was plotted out on a torn up old map. How a 3000 year old Egyptian golden mummy ends up with a tribe of giant pygmies is a story for someone else to tell, Suspenderberg just wants to get it back. Unfortunately there are some others folks who want to get the mummy back... some particularly trigger happy, stabby folks.

But you can't let those details rattle you. Suspenderberg doesn't even carry protection, unless you count nerves of cold steel and a hip flask of 100 proof Old Irascible. If you thought about the danger you were getting yourself in, you wouldn't get on the first puddle jumper to Bujumbura, pawn your cufflinks for a rusted jeep and head off for a place nobody's heard of.

Colonel Xap Ashmeade Explores a Hole in Yuno Wat

From a very young age, Colonel Xap Ashmead wanted to become an Astronaut. While he heart was set on this adventurous path, destiny was stunted by an insurmountable fear of heights. Just the thought of being set upon the moon or some other marvelous point in the cosmos, so high above the earth's surface, sent poor Ashmead into a swoon. But Ashmead inverted his ambitions and commited himself to bowels of the earth, seeking out subterranean escape from any confrontation with heights.

Tales of a bottomless pit in Cambodia's Yuno Wat jungle struck Colonel Ashemede as the perfect destination for his most recent spelunking excursion. There has yet to be a formal scientific inquiry into bottomlessness and its effects, and Xap Ashmeade's trials will be of great interest to the scientific community. On a personal level the Yuno Wat Bottomless Pit represented an anticlimactic paradise.

Funding for the copious lengths of rope needed for this exploration came from the Tweed Academy, where Ashmeade lectures. Admonishing the use of airplanes, Xap chartered the flattest barge he could find to Cambodia. There in the vine tangled jungles of Yuno Wat the Colonel said goodbye to the light of day and plunged into the earth's deepest secret.

Agustus Brunton's Field Report

From the Log of Agustus Brunton
Nov. 6 2008
N35 E-75
The Philadelphian Southlands

The best ethnographers are often sensible, yet sensitive people, with a well-developed appreciation of the absurd. These are particularly valuable traits for a field worker engaged in long-term research in an isolated area, far from the everyday amenities of Western life, among people who are very much ''the other.'' When the focus of study is the Mummers of Philadelphia, originally characterized by Napoleon Chagnon as ''the fierce harlequins,'' common sense, humour and a high level of empathy become, more than assets, central to survival.

It took grueling work hunkered over map and compass to pinpoint the tribe. But finding the mummers did not mean immediate access to their society. Many months of slight finesse finally ingratiated me to my hosts. I have found that donning my formal wear, usually reserved for Saturnalian Balls and Explorers Club roasts, had an easing effect on the tempers of the chiefs.

I've never felt more alive, nor more close to the satin covered hand of death.
-Agustus

Quentin Z. Beardmonger's Prized Game

If you are lucky enough to receive welcome at the Beardmonger manor, you may be get the chance to look upon a sporting room much talked about in explorers circles. You will have to step carefully where the rugs all have heads of snarling beasts. Above finely carved drawers of hand-drawn maps, and glided bookshelves, the walls are buttressed with gun barrels. The forest of blouderbusters and elephant guns give the room its tangy smell of black powder. There are framed pictures of Roosevelt, pictures of Quentin beside various fresh kills, a picture of Quentin arm-locked with Hemingway. You will feel the penetrating stares of hundreds of dead eyes from the prodigious wall mounted trophies. A rhino, a moose, a jaguar, a caribou–just their heads gleam with the light of a roaring fire. Sharks, sturgeon, sailfish, and tortoise; all lacquered and swimming through the air, are here. But you will notice between the great tusks of mammoth and elephant, above the fireplace, a conspicuous gap in the otherwise well decorated walls. The prominent place above the mantel is reserved, and the mission Quentin Z. Beardmonger is on right now, may indeed fill it.

Everest is too crowded these days for any respectable Yeti to still inhabit, thinks Beardmonger. Its a regular Disney world with oxygen tanks. You have to go quite off the map to be in the game. Mount Infinitude has a local reputation for the abominable snowman. The powerful winds coming down the slope often have a whiff of potent musk, that folks blame Yeti for. After several months at the basecamp at Infinitude, gathering journals full of stories about the monster, Beardmonger ventured up the rugged rocks and into the keep of the Abominable Snowman.

A Brief History of the Saturnalians

It is presumed that the readers of this blog are all vetted Saturnalians, having received invitation to our welcome home feast, so we can speak more freely of our rites and traditions. To the reader whose knowledge of Saturnalia is exhaustive, we beg your pardon, while we encourage the neophyte to build his or her understanding of our proud organization.

Saturnalians have their origins in old Rome during the erection of a temple dedicated to the god Saturn. History tells of a spontaneous feast that accompanied the initiation of the temple; a city wide feast that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and which lasted for a full week. The chefs responsible for this celebration were curiously clandestine. Their vigilante cuisine was prepared and provided without detection, eliciting the sensation that Saturn himself had designed the feast. Indeed, this was the work of the first Saturnalians, performing their sacred rite to celebrate!

Nowadays, of course, the Saturnalians are a global network of varied individuals gathering for secret pagentry to a shared love of life.

Comidore Manly Fellowcraft: Tenaciously Lost

Comidore Manly Fellowcraft is an expert on the ancient Nabataneans and his voyage to the ruins of Al Zoftar in the Sahara was the fruit of 15 years of research. Unfortunately a last moment gamble for prestige may have soured the mission. Wanting to impress his fellow explorers he expounded that he would make the voyage by balloon! In spite of the extensive planning for the trip to Al Zoftar, chancing his luck to the wind, Fellowcraft soon found himself soaring above the mighty amazon rainforests of Brazil. No worries though, a man of adventure is always at the ready, and Manly is just such a man. The expedition will continue as planned, though in a new continent, the Comidore has decreed.

Welcome to Compass-Saavy

Welcome to Compass-Saavy, the internet portal for the Explorers Club of Olde Bucks.
Share in the expeditions as correspondence from our intrepid teams makes its way back to civilization.

The Explorers Club of Olde Bucks is a proud arm of the Saturnalian Society. All funding for these expeditions is the humble pleasure of the Saturnalians and similarly all remarkable feats engaged by the Explorers club expeditions are assumed to be the honor of the Saturnalians.