The Seven Sisters and The Bull.

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Most people and secret societies in this story I have based loosely on historical events and historical people.
Following is the intro chapters/story set up for a little ditty I've been writing.
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Munich: November, 1924.

The moon was shining through the branches of the winter trees lining Sterneckerstraße, a side street off Tal. The woman climbed the 16 stone stairs to the side of the Nazi party meeting hall that led to the upper level apartment of Rudolph Hess. As she ascended the dark stairwell, her footsteps echoed, each incline made her feel colder and she tightened her cape around her. The smell of tobacco met her as the smoke curled from under the apartment door like gnarled skeleton fingers beckoning her to enter.

The door opened before she knocked by a man she knew with dark hair and hazel eyes. She stepped inside, looked around at the dimly lit apartment and saw another man she recognized only by reputation as Rudolph Hess sitting by a round table, covered in a black cloth with a single candle, new and unused, paper and writing pencil and a ashtray full of rolled cigarettes ends.

“Dobar Večer mein frauline” drawled the man sitting down.

“You speak my fathers native Croatian tongue Herr Hess?” She replied in Austrian as she stepped further into the room.

“Just ‘good evening’ and the swear words, please come in, I have heard much about you and am indeed honored to meet the Mistress of the Vril Gesellschaft”.

She loosened the knot of her midnight blue velvet cape from around her neck and lifted it’s hood from head. Thick long blonde hair cascaded down her back reaching below her posterior. The women of Europe in the 1920s wore their hair in the fashion of a cropped bob, so it was unusual yet striking to see such a young beautiful woman with such traditional long hair.

‘She is perfection’ Hess thought as he took a sharp intake of breath. He was taken aback by her delicate beauty that was illuminated by the crackling flames of the fire that seemed to dance higher in her presence. He rose and gestured her to sit at the table, carefully insuring she sit where the firelight licked her face her so that he could gaze upon her creamy complexion and violet eyes.

‘Our mutual friend here Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the founder of the Thule Gesellschaft society has told many fantastical tales of your channeling ability. How you scribed in trance an ancient German Templar script and some extraordinary plans for a flying bell or disc shaped machine. Astonishing and wild I say! Perhaps tonight you can simply provide contact with a spirit known to all of us, our dearly departed friend Dietrich Eckart” His disbelief was apparent in his slightly mocking tone.

The woman was quiet and held Hess’ gaze steadily. Silently she reached forward with petite arms and clasped both men’s hands to form a circle connection around the table. Hess’ hands were rough and as cold as a lifeless corpse, Von Sebottendorfs were hot and sweaty. She sensed both men become aroused by the simple touch of her. Sex magic provided her with the most powerful channel to the energy of the black sun, the universal energy of the ‘ Vril’ as they now called it. But tonight there was no need to open her legs to draw in magiks, she had already felt the fingers of the dead reach out to her as she ascended the stairs to Herr Hess’ apartment.

She breathed heavily and closed her eyes. Within moments Hess’ lustful thoughts turned to feeling unnerved and fearful as the beautiful Valkyrie before him slumped back into her chair, eyes flung open and turned all white, mouth agape and her golden hair glowed with static like a radio antennae.

Sebottendorff smiled in satisfaction as the actual voice of their dead fellow Thule society member Eckart started coming out of the small-framed golden haired medium.

“I am an oathbreaker, a pawn of the gods, here only to announce to you those from higher than me. “

After only 3 more breathes, an emasculated voice came forth from the gaping mouth of the medium.

“I am Sumi, dweller of a distant world, which orbits the star Aldebaran in the constellation you call Taurus the Bull, chaser of the Pleiades”

Releasing the hand of Hess, the Vrill mistress with eyes still white and mouth agape patted the table until she grasped the pencil, holding it in a vice with her hand and not using her fingers she started to scratch undecipherable lines over 3 sheaths of paper. The sound of the scratching pencil was accompanied only by a stench of rotten meat that hung over the table like a thick spring morning fog.
After 15 minutes that seemed to pass as no more than a few seconds to both the men, she lay down her pencil, blinked revealing her crystalline violet eyes and the smell of sweet summer jasmine flower then entered the room.

All three gazed upon the paper, Hess was the first to speak.

“Nonsense scratching’s, enough of this” he flicked the paper across the table to the blonde woman.

Sebottendorf, reached to his left and took the paper, then looked into the hypnotic gaze of the medium “Do you recognize these markings?”

She shook her head no.

“My dear, this is extraordinary, these ‘scratching’s’ as Hess calls them may be most important penning by a human since antiquity.”

Hess snatched another sheet of the paper with the Vrills markings. After peering at it he placed it back down and looked across to Sebottendorf and spoke;

“It is nonsensical lines, even a child could do better to imitate the written word”

Sebottendorf snorted and reached forward to place his hand on the shoulder of the Vrill.

“Maria Orsič, have you ever heard of an ancient writing known as cuneform?”

" I am Darius, the great king, the king of kings
The king of many countries and many people
The king of this expansive land,
The son of Wishtaspa of Achaemenid,
Persian, the son of a Persian,
'Aryan', from the Aryan race "

Museum of Antiques, Iraq. Thursday, July 7, 2011

A ferocious desert sun beat down on the pavement in the back of the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad. Two representatives from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were inside returning the more than 200 items to Iraqi Ambassador, pledging their departments’ continued commitment to restoring Iraq’s stolen cultural heritage after the lootings of 2003. A third team member remained outside from the meeting. Special Agent Zarafshan, know simply as Zed by those around her sat on the wall of the hexagonal fountain, trickling her finger through the water whilst she waited.

She accepted an offer to join the task force to recover stolen antiquities 2 years after joining the FBI and had been working with the team for 3 years. She entered the bureau after graduating from a degree in Near Eastern archaeology. She knew she had not much chance of working a day in in the field as there was no money and few jobs and she had to pay off her college debt. So she went to the government and got paid well. Her heritage was Perisan on her fathers side, who was an Iranian that came to the US in 1978 before the fall of the Shah, he married a Maronite Christian woman from northern Lebanon and together they raised 2 non denominational children, fluent in English, Arabic and Fahrsi. The bi lingual gift they gave her along with her useless near Eastern studies degree was the reason she was sure they moved her in to work with ICE Iraqi stolen artifacts task force.

Of the 15000 items looted that day during the taking of Baghdad by US troops her team had recovered only 1400 being sold in the black antiquities market, craiglist and ebay.
Her trip into the searing heat of Baghdad was simply to act as a final administrative-type escort, most of the field work had been done on the specifics of this case and she had arranged to take 2 weeks vacation after today before heading back to start on the another work project hunting for stolen items. She had booked the Hotel Melia Sinai in Sharm El Sheikh on the Red Sea, Egypt. She had her fill of “Rocks and Ruins” as she called the ancient antiquities world, but Egypt was close enough to her current gig and she planned on spending her vacation diving the coral wonders of the Red Sea, gorging on Mediterranean food like humus and pita bread and reading anything other than current affairs on the internet as she lay in the desert sun, and NO ancient wonders sight seeing!

She glanced at her watch and smiled thinking, ‘only 30 minutes to go and I am outa here’ then flicked the water more in delight.

Gazing down on the wall and floor of the fountain a shadow of a person come into view. She looked up. A woman stood before her. Fair headed with pale eyes just like some Persian members of her family had. The woman smiled and reached out her hand that held in it a shiny blue object. Zed looked at her hand and in Farsi asked
“ Are you Persian? “
The woman simply smiled and stepped forward with her hand still outstretched gesturing Zed to take the object that looked like a blue broach with intricate gold filigree florets surrounding the oval and a crown on top. In the blue lapis lazuli oval sparkled 7 stars, it was pinned to a white silk ribbon with a pale blue stripe on either side.

“Shookran “ Zed thanked her and continued in Arabic “ But I have no need to buy trinkets.”

The woman stepped forward again and lifted Zeds hand and placed the brooch on the ribbon on her palm. Zed looked down at the brooch and seeing it closer she recognized it immediately as the broach of the Order of the Pleiades, from the dynastic order and royal house of Pahlavi, whose sovereign and Grand Mistress was Empress Fawaz, the Dowager empress of Iran.

‘What a ludicrous knock off trinket to make and sell here in Iraq, not the best of friends with Iran’ she thought.

Zed stood to face the woman who had taken a few step back from her now, she stretched her hand out gesturing the stranger to take back the object, thinking she didn’t have a dinar on her anyway to give her money, and she wasn’t permitted to buy anything from the streets whilst working. Even simple street vendors in this part of the world sold stolen antiquities. A US marine in '04 bought a seal that he thought a pretty tourist trinket only to return home and find himself in hot water because his trinket was actually 4700 years old and stolen from the very museum she sat outside of. Since then a blanket policy of non-purchasing of antiquity like items or trinkets could be bought by US government staff or defense force troops deployed the region.

The fair headed, pale-eyed woman with tanned skin who Zed believed to be Persian, smiled and turned and walked away from her. Zed called out to her in English frustrated.

“Wait, I cant take this thing, please wait, argh come here!”

The woman kept walking towards away the end of the building and turned and looked at Zed and smiled. Zed started to walk towards her ready to throw the gaudy blue and gold broach at the damn woman thinking she doesn’t need this kind of trouble.

With the busy traffic made up of hundreds of old cars with unchanged oil filters, she thought she heard a backfire. As she looked at the smiling woman up ahead about to turn the corner she saw blood silently creep across the strange woman’s Shash scarf forming a red rosette as she crumpled to the large cobblestone floor dead. Zed hunched down and reached for her sidearm instinctively, which she was not permitted to carry on foreign soil.

“#!” she said out loud, then moved to hunker against the museum wall and looked around her to other building rooftops or windows for the source of the gun shot and waited for more to ring out. She shoved the broach into the pocket of her pants, then lay on her belly covering her head with her hands. No sound other than the relentless traffic of one of the oldest cities on earth and the call to prayer from a distant mosque tower reached her ears.

Antarctica, Neuschwabenland.1938

Captain Alfred Ritscher walked the deck of the ‘Schwabenland’; a German aircraft carrier that before 17th of December had been used for transatlantic mail deliveries by special flightboats, the famous 10 ton Dornier Super ‘Wals’ flights boats.
These ‘Wals’ were launched by catapult from the Schwabenland and had to be accelerated to 93mph before they could become airborne. At the end of each flight a crane on the ship lifted the aircraft back on board after they landed in the sea.

Ritscher ran his hand along the railing comforting his ship, whispering that her month long trip from Hamburg down through the harsh Antarctic waters would be over soon and she could rest whilst at anchor, now that they were on the edge of the southern frozen continent.

His crew called and hollered as they prepared to drop anchor at 4° 30' W and 69° 14' S on January 20th 1939. 
For the next three weeks they were to be based off Princess Astrid Coast and Princess Martha Coast off Queen Maud Land. Ritscher looked out to the frozen wasteland and wondered why he would be asked to claim this for Germany and name it Neuschwabenland.

The row boats were packed with supplies and the crew boarded to row to shore. The captain returned to his cabin and unlocked his table drawer. He withdrew a an envelope pressed with a round seal pressed with a swastika surrounded in a circle with the words “Vrill”. He fingered the wax and the edge of the thick paper envelope, thinking on how each day since he left Hamburg he had looked at the envelope but never dared to open it. He was commanded to take on this expedition by Himmler himself after successfully exploring the arctic years before. He did not want to come to this god forsaken place. The strangeness of his orders to not open the envelope until touching his feet on the ice intensified his unease. His ulcer complained to him angrily, protesting that he not go ashore. He knew there was no choice, even though he had promised his good wife Bertha that his days of frolicking in frozen lands were over.

He tucked the envelope into his coat pocket and turned to look at himself in his small misted mirror that hung on a beam behind him. His face was already covered in leathered lines from his years at sea, but now his nose and cheeks were burned red from the frigid winds that lashed his face with a fury during the last 10 days of his voyage. He left his cabin closing his door behind with a soft click then headed back to the deck and climbed on board the landing boats.

His men set off and it was hard to see a boat in front of him through the white frigid winds, though gentle for that time of year, they blinded and burned the men was if they were in a mountain blizzard. He faced forward towards the ice and reached his hand to his chest over his coat pocket, comforting himself that he had orders. Vril Orders from people he did not know, sealed with the word Vril, a word he had never before in his life even heard.