And now, the finale...
Three weeks passed and the investigators gleaned a few more nuggets of information during the hiatus. Luis completed his reading of the partial copy of Cultes des Goules. It provided him with a greater and more unsettling understanding of the forces that might very well be lurking in the dark corners of the world, as well as containing ancient incantations named “Draught of Dreams,” “Fortify the Mundane Blade,” “Call Forth the Forager of the Dead,” and “Draw the Voorish Sign,” but nothing that gave more insight into what Desmond was up to.
Jonathon and Wolfgang learned some historical facts about Newgrave and the Old Dutch Church. There was a Corbin Vickers, the patriarch of the Vickers whaling family who died very rich in 1710 and that it was he who constructed the mausoleum to house his and his family’s mortal remains. In a small monograph written by Alistair Philips and titled Folklore, Fables, and Frightful Tales of the Hudson Valley was a short account called “The Goblin in the Graveyard.” This three-paragraph tale told of a legend that there were once mysterious hoof-prints found in the snow around Newgrave during several days in December of 1712. A party of men tracked the prints back to the cemetery and staked out its grounds. They glimpsed a terrifying “hobgoblin cavorting amongst the stones” and fired at it with little effect. They eventually cornered it near a large mausoleum and stabbed it with bayonets before setting it alight and scattering its ashes in the Hudson River. After that, no more hoof-prints were seen.
Research about the church determined that it was founded in 1716 and it was the oldest church in Newgrave. However, there were also at least two references to the church standing on its current site prior to that date, making for a discrepancy in the historical record. They also learned that in 1883, the church took out a loan to make renovations on the building. As part of that process, an independent inspector examined the church to determine its structural integrity. During the inspection, a forgotten sub-cellar was found beneath the church. It was deemed not a threat to the church’s structural stability and no other mention of the subterranean space was given in the historic record.
Most disconcerting, however, was the discovery of a recent news article reporting the abduction of a young boy from his home on the night of October 13th. Freddy Cole was taken from his bedroom in an act that mimicked a similar kidnapping on September 28th, a date just prior to the investigators arrival in Newgrave. Something or someone was stealing children in Newgrave and the investigators had an idea of what if not who was responsible. Calls were made, telegrams were sent, and the four found themselves standing on the platform of Newgrave’s train station once again on the morning of October 26th, 1920. All three had acquired firearms in the previous weeks and now sported handguns and a single sawed-off shotgun between them. Venturing out to the parking lot, they found Desmond’s car parked in the lot (albeit covered in more leaves and debris than when they left it). They climbed in and returned to his home.
Gaining entry with their key, they found the place as they left it. The groceries left in the icebox had turned and it took a little time to clean the place out, but in short order they had a base of operations again. A trip down into the basement revealed that the earthen floor was undisturbed and that nothing had burrowed into the home in their absence.
Their plan was to return to Desmond’s apartment to see if he or another had returned to that place and then to scope out the Old Dutch Church, posing as individuals with interest in genealogy and historic architecture. They crossed their fingers that James would not be remembered by Reverend Mortensen as they were unwilling to split their numbers in light of their experiences from the weeks before.
The trip to the apartment showed that eldritch forces had not been idle since they departed Newgrave. Climbing the stairs to Apartment C, they found that the door had been broken open and that there was a definite cloven-hoof shaped mark in the wooden frame. A similar mark was found inside by the now-open floorboard that had covered the cavity in which the partial Cultes des Goules and bloodied knives were once secreted. The blood stains in the bathroom were gone, as if licked clean. Clearly at least one ghoul had discovered Desmond’s secret hideout.
The party stopped to check the apartment’s mailbox on the porch and question the downstairs neighbor, but the mailbox held only a note from Cook’s landlord reminding him that his rent was due and that the downstairs neighbor worked the nightshift at one of Newgrave’s many factories and slept most days. He hadn’t heard or seen anything unusual. The foursome headed for the church, aware that evil was afoot.
They discovered the Old Dutch Church open and heard Reverend Mortensen puttering around in the choir loft sorting hymnals. He came down to greet them and no look of recognition clouded his face when he saw James. It seemed the old minister was a little absent-minded. Sticking to their cover story, they asked the reverend some questions about the church, specifically the fact that there were references to the church prior to its construction. Reverend Mortensen said he was no scholar, but did state that it was common for the early Dutch settlers to meet in the home of a prominent citizen prior to the construction of a central place of worship, so it might have been those meeting that led to the discrepancy in the historic record. The existence of the sub-cellar was not spoken of by either side and the reverend graciously gave the investigators permission to look around the church while he sorted the worn out hymnals in the loft above.
When the clergyman returned to his labors, Luis slipped outside and gave the exterior of the church the once-over. The team wanted to get down into the basement and find the sub-cellar, but weren’t certain how to reach the lower level of the building. As Luis searched the outside, Wolfgang sauntered up to a door beside the altar and slipped into the sacristy when the reverend’s back was turned. In that space, he discovered not only a set of stairs to the basement, but a side door leading outside as well.
After Wolfgang slipped out, Luis returned and his arrival caught Reverend Mortensen’s attention. Looking down from the choir loft, the clergyman noticed that one of the four was missing, but a quick lie about him being in the washroom deflected the reverend’s suspicions. Meanwhile, Wolfgang had descended the stairs to find an unlocked office, a community room, and a robing room in the basement. All seemed ordinary, but there was a locked door at the end of the single hallway. He slipped back up the stairs while the three others left the church to see if they could find another way into the area where Wolfgang had vanished. As they rounded the corner, Wolfgang stepped outside, the door closing and locking behind him!
James once again proved to be more than a match for a lock and the four snuck back into the church and down the steps. Quietly inspecting the rooms below, they found nothing out of sorts and James got them access to the locked room—which was the boiler room. Old boxes of clothes and household goods destined for the church thrift store stood in heaps and a cobweb-covered oil burner kicked on in the gloomy, dusty space. As quietly as they could, the foursome looked about for a door leading to the supposed sub-cellar, but without avail. Hearing the reverend walking overhead, they determined to flee the building before being discovered and to come back later if need be. Luck was with them and they made it back to their car without being discovered.
As it was only early afternoon, the team decided that since they didn’t find the entrance to the sub-cellar, they might as well bite the bullet and go back to the mausoleum. So with much more firepower and light sources than last time, they pulled into the cemetery and made it back to the crypt. Inside, they discovered more cloven-hoof prints and saw that the stone slab to Nathaniel Vickers’ interment niche had been replaced by another stone. Knowing that Corbin Vickers was the family patriarch, they paused to defile his resting place, but found only bones and a collapsed, worm-eaten coffin.
They moved the stone to Nathaniel’s niche and made their way into the tunnels below. Both Jonathon’s and Wolfgang’s girth made their entrance a slow, grunting one, but eventually the four crouched in the low tunnel—Luis in the lead, Jonathon behind him, and Wolfgang and James in the rear ranks. Guided only by the downward slope of the tunnel and their torch beams, the investigators descended.
They came to the first of several side tunnels, each one being a mere 3’ in diameter and sloping upward at a greater angle. Luis shimmied up the first and came up through the bottom of an empty coffin, its contents sucked clean like the tasty nougat of some obscene candy bar. Once he recognized where he was, Luis shuddered and slid back down the shaft. As the team worked their way deeper into the warren, they encountered another side passage that Luis explored and found it terminated in a den filled with old bones that had been cracked and their marrow licked clean. Luis decided that they should stop exploring the side passages and continue straight down the main artery. The rest agreed and they forged ahead.
As they continued an unknown distance further into the earth, a glimpse of dim light was seen ahead, like the glow of many candles. Shutting off their lights, they crept forward to witness a ghastly sight. The tunnel terminated in a large earthen cavern. The walls were decorated with bones set in patterns both mundane and arcane. Candles stood everywhere. Several pillars adorned with bones rose up to support a gallery above their heads and three other tunnels exited the space. Upon the far wall hung a gruesome parody of "The Last Supper" wherein Christ and the Apostles dined on human flesh and drank blood.
But by far worse was that which squatted in the center of the room. A massive, bloated thing rising 15’ in the air with a body like a noisome grub and a human/dog head that was dwarfed by its giant girth occupied the room. Its massive gut roiled as if something within begged release and an obscene slurping sound emerged from its toothless maw. Standing before this beast was a ghoul, one that appeared far more human than the others they had seen. In fact, this ghoul still bore the familiar facial features of Desmond Cook!
Whether it was disgust or pity, the investigators wasted no time in bringing their weapons to bear and firing on both the beast and Desmond. Wolfgang drew his sword-cane and hoisted his girth up one of the pillars, waiting to drop down on Desmond once he rushed them. James fired directly at the beast, but his shot proved to be much less effective than anticipated. Luis and Jonathon also fired, but missed as the Desmond ghoul charged.
The fight that followed was rough. Wolfgang tried to set Desmond alight with a kerosene lamp and failed, while Jonathon and Luis battled their friend with both guns and a shovel. James’ shot caused a ripple to occur in the beast’s massive gut and a moment afterwards a small, child ghoul emerged from a vaginal-like opening that ruptured the creature’s stomach. The child ghoul rose from a pool of foul liquids, took unsteady steps like a newborn colt, and then rushed towards the four investigators looking to eat its first meal.
In the fight, the Desmond ghoul was slain, but the child ghoul worried Wolfgang’s flesh horribly and the giant German nearly died. James continued to pour bullets into the beast, aiming at the birth canal that now stood open in its belly. The child ghoul continued to fight Luis, and another ghoul appeared on the gallery above, staring down at the fight hungrily. Jonathon gripped the injured Wolfgang and made for the exit, but encountered a pair of ghouls coming down the tunnel. He readied his weapon and prepared to die fighting.
As all looked grim for the four, Luis’ next blow killed the child ghoul at the same time James’ final round slammed into the beast. With a horrendous shriek, the great, maggot-like thing died and the remaining ghouls began to wail and meep piteously. Their birth father slain, they vanished up the tunnels as the beast began its death throes. Flailing about as death claimed it, the beast slammed into the cavern walls and a shower of dirt and bones began to fall. The four investigators wasted no time in heading back up the tunnel and they climbed out just as a gout of dirt, stench, and debris blew out of the mausoleum and a large section of the Old Dutch Cemetery collapsed into the ground to leave a massive sink hole littered with ancient bones and decayed coffins. They limped back to their car and drove away from the scene before they could be stopped by authorities.
The four had learned the fate of Desmond Cook, if not necessarily all that led to his final state or what gave birth to the creatures beneath the earth. Their sanity shaken, but intact, and with wounds of their own to attend to, the foursome left Newgrave, NY with one less source of evil lurking in its shadows. It was a victory for the forces of light in that embattled place known as Wildwyck County.
Showing posts with label recap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recap. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Wildwyck County: The Case of the Wretched Writer, Part I
The following adventure was a play test for an investigation intended to introduce new players to the wonders and horrors of the Wildwyck County setting now being detailed in Fight On! magazine. Look for it in an upcoming issue. And for the record, the Wretched Writer is not me, despite what some might say.
As noted previously, I’m running Call of Cthulhu as the alternate game for my group, allowing me to take a break from straight fantasy and to better develop the setting I’m working on for Fight On! The last two Sundays saw four new investigators tackling a curious case in Wildwyck County, NY. What follows is a précis of that case.
The case began on the last day of September, 1920, when four men of diverse backgrounds were contacted by their mutual friend, Mr. Desmond Cook, a writer and bon vivant. The four men—Jonathon Fairchild, an English professor at Bishopsgate College; Wolfgang Heisenberg, a reconstruction aide (read “physical therapist”); Luis Johnson, a New York City book dealer; and James Stone, an art historian and sometimes fortune hunter—each received a telegram stating that Cook was on the verge of a great discovery, but that his life might be in danger. Having no one else to turn to, the telegram asked them to come to his home in Newgrave, NY, a small, historical city on the bank of the Hudson River. Although all four had previously lost contact with Cook following the deaths of his wife and child from the flu, they were not callous enough to turn their backs on a friend in need and departed for Newgrave the following morning.
The men arrived outside Cook’s rented home and became acquainted. After discovering their common reason for arriving, they knocked upon the door, eliciting no response from within. From the tone of the letter, this gave them concern and they quickly gained entry via a forced rear door and picked front one. Inside, the home showed signs of recent occupation and all evidence pointed to a single, bachelor resident. The fireplace held an inordinate amount of ash and charred wood as if a large blaze had been set in the near past and further examination of the home turned up other baffling and fearsome clues.
A bullet hole marred the wall near the cellar door and a search of the basement showed that a section of the earthen floor had been disturbed. The ground there was soft as if excavated and then filled in, but the group’s search turned up no buried bodies…which had been their initial concern. Ascending the steps, the group noticed an odd foot print on the lowest riser. To all eyes, it appears to be the mark of a cloven-hoofed animal, a large one at that. It was as if Cook had kept a billy goat under the house for unknown purposes.
Tossing the rest of the house uncover a fired revolver lying beneath the sofa and several clues amongst the drawers of Cook’s desk. A short journal indicated that he’d be engaged in certain research and experimentation, and that he was looking for something or someone in Newgrave. A particularly foreboding entry alluded to a “St. Carnivorous”—who or what that could be was open to much speculation. Furthermore, a note from a local book seller informed Mr. Cook that his purchase had arrived, while another letter from his landlady stated that the new locks he had requested had been installed. The apartment address given in that letter did not correspond to the house’s location, revealing that Cook had taken lodgings elsewhere in the city. A final clue was discovered when one of the investigators ran a pencil over the notepad they spotted on the desk. Someone had written a name on the pad and they were able to decipher the words “Na__h___el V_ck__s” impressed on the sheet below.
Climbing into Cook’s automobile (which stood parked at the curb, its keys in his desk) the foursome sped off to Aged Treasures, the book store mentioned in the note. Near the business district, they found the shop, a freestanding building with a green and gold sign declaring its name and purpose. The building’s interior was crammed with secondhand books and creaking shelves. The owner, a man who appeared more butcher than book seller, stood to great them.
Their initial attempts to clandestinely discover the title that Cook bought through the seller, Mr. Antoine Delacour, were unsuccessful as he prided himself on maintaining the anonymity of his clients. But when they produced the telegram Desmond had sent them and demonstrated that they already knew Cook had purchased a book through him, Delacour agreed to reveal the title of the book—provided they kept that fact to themselves. When they agreed, it was revealed that Cook had purchased a partial copy of the Comte d’Erlette’s Cultes Des Goules. Other than the title, Delacour could provide them with no other clue as to what Cook was involved in or where he was.
With nothing else to go on than the apartment address found on the other letter, the four piled back into Desmond’s Ford and headed towards the Dutch Hill section of town. A slight inconvenience occurred when they blew one of the car’s tires, but Luis was able to retain control of the automobile and guide it safely to the curb. A half-hour later, the men were back on the road.
At 16 Moss Stone Lane, they found a large Dutch Colonial home that had been partitioned into seven apartments. Cook’s rental occupied a section of the second floor and was accessed via exterior stairs in back of the building. The investigators climbed the staircase and once again entrance was achieved by picking the lock.
The apartment was small: an open living area, kitchenette, bath, and bedroom completed its layout. The space was almost completely unfurnished. A folding camp table stood in the living room and a cot and blanket was all that occupied the bedroom. A few canned goods lined the single shelf of the kitchenette. It was obvious that Desmond spent little time here.
In one corner of the living room was a spade and pick axe, and there were several dirty footprints on the aging floorboards. A search of the bathroom revealed blood stains around the drains of both sink and bathtub. Most compelling, however, were the three large, hand-drawn maps on the camp table. Each depicted one of the three cemeteries in Newgrave: Newgrave Rural, Our Lady of Souls, and Old Dutch. The maps were all done on butcher’s paper and were written in Cook’s tell-tale handwriting. Each bore short notes such as “No evidence,” “sealed mausoleums,” or “watchman’s route.” On the map of Old Dutch, one mausoleum was circled with an excited scrawl. It was obvious that Desmond was looking for something in one or more of Newgrave’s cemeteries, but what?
Gathering the maps, the four made to depart when James’ ears noticed a distinct difference in some of the floorboards in the room. Further investigations uncovered a cavity beneath one of the loose boards. Secreted inside it were a blood-stained butcher’s knife and cleaver, and a holographic book written in French. Two of the investigators spoke some French, and they were able to identify the book as being the partial copy of Cultes des Goules!
Although this was a major breakthrough for the investigators, they swiftly discovered that the cramped handwriting and archaic French proved to be more than a match for their translation skills. One of the four remembered that Newgrave was home to Vander Veer University, a well-respect institution of higher learning that boasted many fine academics in the “hard science” fields. They climbed back into the Ford and headed off to the university in hopes of finding a French professor or at least an English-French dictionary in the university library.
They had mixed results at the university. Asking around the Modern Languages department revealed that the university’s French professor, Pierre Britton, had neither classes or office hours that day and the secretary was loathe to reveal his home address or phone number to anyone not taking his course. The party headed to the library and was nearly stymied once again when they tried to borrow the library’s French dictionary from the Reference department. Only Jonathon Fairchild’s academic credentials at Bishopsgate College allowed them to walk out with book, and even then only after he signed a paper promising to return it in a week (He didn’t and I need to remember to charge him for a replacement copy). The foursome tried to dig up some more historical background regarding Old Dutch Cemetery, but they were informed that Town Hall or the local library might have more information than the university’s stacks.
The party decided that they should split up at this point. Luis would remain at Cook’s home to try and skim the partial Cultes des Goules for more information as to what they were up against. The other three would gather some supplies, visit the local library, and scope out the Old Dutch graveyard, and then return to the house to compare notes. After stopping at a local hardware store for shovels, ropes, electric torches, supplies to board up the doors and windows of Cook’s home, and a half-cord of wood to keep a large fire burning in the hearth, they dropped Luis off at the house, fortified it, and drove off to the library.
Hitting the historical records available at the library uncovered the fact that Old Dutch was the oldest cemetery in Newgrave. As its name suggested, it dated back to the original Dutch settlers. One legend spoke of witches’ sabbats being held in the cemetery during the 17th century and it was noted that the Old Dutch church was not located next to the boneyard, but three blocks over, indicating that the original structure had either been moved or destroyed at sometime in the past. Both the church and cemetery would be their next stop.
Driving past the cemetery, they dropped Wolfgang off to poke around while James and Jonathon visited the Old Dutch Church. Wolfgang discovered that the caretaker lived in a small cottage on the northeast corner of the graveyard and although initially easy-going, he became uncomfortable when asked about the oldest section of the cemetery. He cut the interview short soon after the topic was broached.
Over at the church, James and Jonathon weren’t having much luck. They got past Matilda, the hard-of-hearing cleaning woman, to speak with Reverend Caspar Mortensen, but when James started asking about their friend Desmond who “might be lurking around the church or cemetery, but don’t worry he’s not crazy or dangerous or anything; he just might be trying to dig up the dead for some reason” the poor Reverend gently but forcefully steered them towards the exit.
The trio reconvened and decided that, since dark was now falling, it would be the perfect time to examine the old section of the cemetery, the place where the caretaker didn’t want to go. They parked the car for a speedy getaway and headed towards the farthest portion of the graveyard. There, the lawn was unmowed, the bushes in badly need of pruning, and the stones themselves showed signs of neglect. Reading Desmond’s map by electric torch, they navigated their way to the circled mausoleum and discovered the name “Vickers” inscribed upon its lintel. This must be the place.
Jonathon and Wolfgang approached the crypt while James shone his light upon the façade of the structure. As Jonathon surveyed the door to the mausoleum, Wolfgang peered around its corner. And that when the walls of normality came crumbling down.
As Wolfie turned the corner, his light fell upon a leonine creature with a face that seemed to be a ghastly hybrid of human and Doberman Pincher. The creature crouched in the shadows, spittle and gore dripping from its jaws. As Wolfgang backpedaled away, James’ light revealed another such creature perched atop the mausoleum, staring down at the exposed back of the blissfully unaware Jonathon. James screamed, alerting the English professor and the trio made a mad dash back to the car as the creatures shied away from their torches’ light. As they ran through the old section of the cemetery, their bouncing torch beams fell upon at least two more of the creatures! They reached the car unharmed, threw themselves into it and raced back to Cook’s home.
Once reunited, the four brought themselves up to speed. James was very shaken by his encounter with the monsters and gripped his gun as well as his soup spoon as he nervously ate dinner. Jonathon was unconvinced that what he barely glimpsed in the torch-light was a “monster.” A local freak or “dog boy” from the carnival was a more likely explanation. Wolfgang, with a medical background, disagreed.
Luis, although not present at the cemetery, has his own sense of normalness challenged by the contents of the book he skimmed through. The book alleged that in days long past, witch cults called up the denizens of mouldering cemeteries to cavort with them. These creatures, these ghouls, were the caretakers of much occult lore, for when they ate the flesh of the dead they consumed their memories as well. Having dined on more than one self-proclaimed wizard, the ghouls would share their knowledge with the witches and warlocks in return for gruesome favors. Was this why Desmond was searching for a specific cemetery? To bargain with these “ghouls” for occult knowledge?
The four decided to return to the cemetery fully prepared in daylight to investigate the mausoleum. A nervous night passed without incident and the investigators headed off to the cemetery after consuming what could be their last meal.
Upon arrival, they discovered the caretaker mowing the lawn near the entrance and a generous bribe made him more willing to talk about the old section of the cemetery. He revealed that he too had heard stories of witches gathering there on dark nights in the 17th century and that his predecessor had told him tales of people coming to Old Dutch—foreigners mostly—who came in but were never seen leaving. Lastly, the caretaker admitted to seeing unusual footprints around the oldest part of the cemetery: footprints like a “big ol’ billy goat, like Old Scratch h’self might make!” He claimed that it’d take an explosion or an earthquake to leave his cottage and go into the grounds he was paid to care for after dark. He hinted that he’d pay no mind to the investigators so long as they didn’t drag him into their mess or get him fired. The four thanked him and headed deeper into the cemetery.
Arriving at the mausoleum, they noticed several hoof-mark tracks leading into and out of the crypt’s doorway. James discovered one set that paused within arm’s reach of his own from the previous night and shuddered at the thought of one of the ghouls standing right behind him. Entering the crypt, they found it to hold an empty bier and several interment niches with stone slabs. One was marked “Nathaniel Vickers” and a quick inspection determined that it could be moved. Wasting no time, Jonathon swung his pick axe at the slab and busted it into pieces.
Behind it was a niche large enough to contain a casket, but it was empty. A fetid, moist odor of loam and clay and rot blew out of the space and the four could see a hole at the back of the niche leading down into the earth. The cavity was small, but passable, and after a brief discussion, Luis volunteered to go into the niche and see what lay beyond it. With a rope tied around his waist and torch in hand, he shimmied into the niche and down the hole.
Beneath the mausoleum was a 5’ wide tunnel that led down on a 15° angle. Bits of wood and grey roots protruded from the damp burrow and Luis’ light determined that it ran thirty feet before meeting up with a smaller tunnel and then turning out of sight. The smell of moist death was thick here and Luis spent little time in the shaft. Tugging on the rope, he half-crawled and was half-yanked from the niche. The quartet exited the mausoleum to stand in the open air and sunlight and debated their next step.
They really, really didn’t want to go down into that tunnel and they argued as to whether they owed it to Desmond to do so. Some of the evidence they uncovered was somewhat damning to their old friend (blood stains, hidden knives, ancient tomes, evidence of grave robbing) and their brush with the unnatural was more than enough to dissuade them from getting themselves deeper in the circumstance surrounding Cook’s disappearance. In the end, a compromise was reached: Luis would try to decipher and comprehend the entire contents of the book they had found and see if it contained any more information that might shine more light on what was going on and what they faced. Jonathan and Wolfgang would do more research on Newgrave, the cemetery, and the old church to see if they were overlooking something. James would seek the help of an alienist for the next few weeks to help him deal with what he glimpsed in that night-shrouded cemetery. The four agreed to speak again in three weeks and decide where to go once they had more information. Parking Desmond’s car at the train station, they headed to their separate homes and left Cook to his own devices…for now.
As noted previously, I’m running Call of Cthulhu as the alternate game for my group, allowing me to take a break from straight fantasy and to better develop the setting I’m working on for Fight On! The last two Sundays saw four new investigators tackling a curious case in Wildwyck County, NY. What follows is a précis of that case.
The case began on the last day of September, 1920, when four men of diverse backgrounds were contacted by their mutual friend, Mr. Desmond Cook, a writer and bon vivant. The four men—Jonathon Fairchild, an English professor at Bishopsgate College; Wolfgang Heisenberg, a reconstruction aide (read “physical therapist”); Luis Johnson, a New York City book dealer; and James Stone, an art historian and sometimes fortune hunter—each received a telegram stating that Cook was on the verge of a great discovery, but that his life might be in danger. Having no one else to turn to, the telegram asked them to come to his home in Newgrave, NY, a small, historical city on the bank of the Hudson River. Although all four had previously lost contact with Cook following the deaths of his wife and child from the flu, they were not callous enough to turn their backs on a friend in need and departed for Newgrave the following morning.
The men arrived outside Cook’s rented home and became acquainted. After discovering their common reason for arriving, they knocked upon the door, eliciting no response from within. From the tone of the letter, this gave them concern and they quickly gained entry via a forced rear door and picked front one. Inside, the home showed signs of recent occupation and all evidence pointed to a single, bachelor resident. The fireplace held an inordinate amount of ash and charred wood as if a large blaze had been set in the near past and further examination of the home turned up other baffling and fearsome clues.
A bullet hole marred the wall near the cellar door and a search of the basement showed that a section of the earthen floor had been disturbed. The ground there was soft as if excavated and then filled in, but the group’s search turned up no buried bodies…which had been their initial concern. Ascending the steps, the group noticed an odd foot print on the lowest riser. To all eyes, it appears to be the mark of a cloven-hoofed animal, a large one at that. It was as if Cook had kept a billy goat under the house for unknown purposes.
Tossing the rest of the house uncover a fired revolver lying beneath the sofa and several clues amongst the drawers of Cook’s desk. A short journal indicated that he’d be engaged in certain research and experimentation, and that he was looking for something or someone in Newgrave. A particularly foreboding entry alluded to a “St. Carnivorous”—who or what that could be was open to much speculation. Furthermore, a note from a local book seller informed Mr. Cook that his purchase had arrived, while another letter from his landlady stated that the new locks he had requested had been installed. The apartment address given in that letter did not correspond to the house’s location, revealing that Cook had taken lodgings elsewhere in the city. A final clue was discovered when one of the investigators ran a pencil over the notepad they spotted on the desk. Someone had written a name on the pad and they were able to decipher the words “Na__h___el V_ck__s” impressed on the sheet below.
Climbing into Cook’s automobile (which stood parked at the curb, its keys in his desk) the foursome sped off to Aged Treasures, the book store mentioned in the note. Near the business district, they found the shop, a freestanding building with a green and gold sign declaring its name and purpose. The building’s interior was crammed with secondhand books and creaking shelves. The owner, a man who appeared more butcher than book seller, stood to great them.
Their initial attempts to clandestinely discover the title that Cook bought through the seller, Mr. Antoine Delacour, were unsuccessful as he prided himself on maintaining the anonymity of his clients. But when they produced the telegram Desmond had sent them and demonstrated that they already knew Cook had purchased a book through him, Delacour agreed to reveal the title of the book—provided they kept that fact to themselves. When they agreed, it was revealed that Cook had purchased a partial copy of the Comte d’Erlette’s Cultes Des Goules. Other than the title, Delacour could provide them with no other clue as to what Cook was involved in or where he was.
With nothing else to go on than the apartment address found on the other letter, the four piled back into Desmond’s Ford and headed towards the Dutch Hill section of town. A slight inconvenience occurred when they blew one of the car’s tires, but Luis was able to retain control of the automobile and guide it safely to the curb. A half-hour later, the men were back on the road.
At 16 Moss Stone Lane, they found a large Dutch Colonial home that had been partitioned into seven apartments. Cook’s rental occupied a section of the second floor and was accessed via exterior stairs in back of the building. The investigators climbed the staircase and once again entrance was achieved by picking the lock.
The apartment was small: an open living area, kitchenette, bath, and bedroom completed its layout. The space was almost completely unfurnished. A folding camp table stood in the living room and a cot and blanket was all that occupied the bedroom. A few canned goods lined the single shelf of the kitchenette. It was obvious that Desmond spent little time here.
In one corner of the living room was a spade and pick axe, and there were several dirty footprints on the aging floorboards. A search of the bathroom revealed blood stains around the drains of both sink and bathtub. Most compelling, however, were the three large, hand-drawn maps on the camp table. Each depicted one of the three cemeteries in Newgrave: Newgrave Rural, Our Lady of Souls, and Old Dutch. The maps were all done on butcher’s paper and were written in Cook’s tell-tale handwriting. Each bore short notes such as “No evidence,” “sealed mausoleums,” or “watchman’s route.” On the map of Old Dutch, one mausoleum was circled with an excited scrawl. It was obvious that Desmond was looking for something in one or more of Newgrave’s cemeteries, but what?
Gathering the maps, the four made to depart when James’ ears noticed a distinct difference in some of the floorboards in the room. Further investigations uncovered a cavity beneath one of the loose boards. Secreted inside it were a blood-stained butcher’s knife and cleaver, and a holographic book written in French. Two of the investigators spoke some French, and they were able to identify the book as being the partial copy of Cultes des Goules!
Although this was a major breakthrough for the investigators, they swiftly discovered that the cramped handwriting and archaic French proved to be more than a match for their translation skills. One of the four remembered that Newgrave was home to Vander Veer University, a well-respect institution of higher learning that boasted many fine academics in the “hard science” fields. They climbed back into the Ford and headed off to the university in hopes of finding a French professor or at least an English-French dictionary in the university library.
They had mixed results at the university. Asking around the Modern Languages department revealed that the university’s French professor, Pierre Britton, had neither classes or office hours that day and the secretary was loathe to reveal his home address or phone number to anyone not taking his course. The party headed to the library and was nearly stymied once again when they tried to borrow the library’s French dictionary from the Reference department. Only Jonathon Fairchild’s academic credentials at Bishopsgate College allowed them to walk out with book, and even then only after he signed a paper promising to return it in a week (He didn’t and I need to remember to charge him for a replacement copy). The foursome tried to dig up some more historical background regarding Old Dutch Cemetery, but they were informed that Town Hall or the local library might have more information than the university’s stacks.
The party decided that they should split up at this point. Luis would remain at Cook’s home to try and skim the partial Cultes des Goules for more information as to what they were up against. The other three would gather some supplies, visit the local library, and scope out the Old Dutch graveyard, and then return to the house to compare notes. After stopping at a local hardware store for shovels, ropes, electric torches, supplies to board up the doors and windows of Cook’s home, and a half-cord of wood to keep a large fire burning in the hearth, they dropped Luis off at the house, fortified it, and drove off to the library.
Hitting the historical records available at the library uncovered the fact that Old Dutch was the oldest cemetery in Newgrave. As its name suggested, it dated back to the original Dutch settlers. One legend spoke of witches’ sabbats being held in the cemetery during the 17th century and it was noted that the Old Dutch church was not located next to the boneyard, but three blocks over, indicating that the original structure had either been moved or destroyed at sometime in the past. Both the church and cemetery would be their next stop.
Driving past the cemetery, they dropped Wolfgang off to poke around while James and Jonathon visited the Old Dutch Church. Wolfgang discovered that the caretaker lived in a small cottage on the northeast corner of the graveyard and although initially easy-going, he became uncomfortable when asked about the oldest section of the cemetery. He cut the interview short soon after the topic was broached.
Over at the church, James and Jonathon weren’t having much luck. They got past Matilda, the hard-of-hearing cleaning woman, to speak with Reverend Caspar Mortensen, but when James started asking about their friend Desmond who “might be lurking around the church or cemetery, but don’t worry he’s not crazy or dangerous or anything; he just might be trying to dig up the dead for some reason” the poor Reverend gently but forcefully steered them towards the exit.
The trio reconvened and decided that, since dark was now falling, it would be the perfect time to examine the old section of the cemetery, the place where the caretaker didn’t want to go. They parked the car for a speedy getaway and headed towards the farthest portion of the graveyard. There, the lawn was unmowed, the bushes in badly need of pruning, and the stones themselves showed signs of neglect. Reading Desmond’s map by electric torch, they navigated their way to the circled mausoleum and discovered the name “Vickers” inscribed upon its lintel. This must be the place.
Jonathon and Wolfgang approached the crypt while James shone his light upon the façade of the structure. As Jonathon surveyed the door to the mausoleum, Wolfgang peered around its corner. And that when the walls of normality came crumbling down.
As Wolfie turned the corner, his light fell upon a leonine creature with a face that seemed to be a ghastly hybrid of human and Doberman Pincher. The creature crouched in the shadows, spittle and gore dripping from its jaws. As Wolfgang backpedaled away, James’ light revealed another such creature perched atop the mausoleum, staring down at the exposed back of the blissfully unaware Jonathon. James screamed, alerting the English professor and the trio made a mad dash back to the car as the creatures shied away from their torches’ light. As they ran through the old section of the cemetery, their bouncing torch beams fell upon at least two more of the creatures! They reached the car unharmed, threw themselves into it and raced back to Cook’s home.
Once reunited, the four brought themselves up to speed. James was very shaken by his encounter with the monsters and gripped his gun as well as his soup spoon as he nervously ate dinner. Jonathon was unconvinced that what he barely glimpsed in the torch-light was a “monster.” A local freak or “dog boy” from the carnival was a more likely explanation. Wolfgang, with a medical background, disagreed.
Luis, although not present at the cemetery, has his own sense of normalness challenged by the contents of the book he skimmed through. The book alleged that in days long past, witch cults called up the denizens of mouldering cemeteries to cavort with them. These creatures, these ghouls, were the caretakers of much occult lore, for when they ate the flesh of the dead they consumed their memories as well. Having dined on more than one self-proclaimed wizard, the ghouls would share their knowledge with the witches and warlocks in return for gruesome favors. Was this why Desmond was searching for a specific cemetery? To bargain with these “ghouls” for occult knowledge?
The four decided to return to the cemetery fully prepared in daylight to investigate the mausoleum. A nervous night passed without incident and the investigators headed off to the cemetery after consuming what could be their last meal.
Upon arrival, they discovered the caretaker mowing the lawn near the entrance and a generous bribe made him more willing to talk about the old section of the cemetery. He revealed that he too had heard stories of witches gathering there on dark nights in the 17th century and that his predecessor had told him tales of people coming to Old Dutch—foreigners mostly—who came in but were never seen leaving. Lastly, the caretaker admitted to seeing unusual footprints around the oldest part of the cemetery: footprints like a “big ol’ billy goat, like Old Scratch h’self might make!” He claimed that it’d take an explosion or an earthquake to leave his cottage and go into the grounds he was paid to care for after dark. He hinted that he’d pay no mind to the investigators so long as they didn’t drag him into their mess or get him fired. The four thanked him and headed deeper into the cemetery.
Arriving at the mausoleum, they noticed several hoof-mark tracks leading into and out of the crypt’s doorway. James discovered one set that paused within arm’s reach of his own from the previous night and shuddered at the thought of one of the ghouls standing right behind him. Entering the crypt, they found it to hold an empty bier and several interment niches with stone slabs. One was marked “Nathaniel Vickers” and a quick inspection determined that it could be moved. Wasting no time, Jonathon swung his pick axe at the slab and busted it into pieces.
Behind it was a niche large enough to contain a casket, but it was empty. A fetid, moist odor of loam and clay and rot blew out of the space and the four could see a hole at the back of the niche leading down into the earth. The cavity was small, but passable, and after a brief discussion, Luis volunteered to go into the niche and see what lay beyond it. With a rope tied around his waist and torch in hand, he shimmied into the niche and down the hole.
Beneath the mausoleum was a 5’ wide tunnel that led down on a 15° angle. Bits of wood and grey roots protruded from the damp burrow and Luis’ light determined that it ran thirty feet before meeting up with a smaller tunnel and then turning out of sight. The smell of moist death was thick here and Luis spent little time in the shaft. Tugging on the rope, he half-crawled and was half-yanked from the niche. The quartet exited the mausoleum to stand in the open air and sunlight and debated their next step.
They really, really didn’t want to go down into that tunnel and they argued as to whether they owed it to Desmond to do so. Some of the evidence they uncovered was somewhat damning to their old friend (blood stains, hidden knives, ancient tomes, evidence of grave robbing) and their brush with the unnatural was more than enough to dissuade them from getting themselves deeper in the circumstance surrounding Cook’s disappearance. In the end, a compromise was reached: Luis would try to decipher and comprehend the entire contents of the book they had found and see if it contained any more information that might shine more light on what was going on and what they faced. Jonathan and Wolfgang would do more research on Newgrave, the cemetery, and the old church to see if they were overlooking something. James would seek the help of an alienist for the next few weeks to help him deal with what he glimpsed in that night-shrouded cemetery. The four agreed to speak again in three weeks and decide where to go once they had more information. Parking Desmond’s car at the train station, they headed to their separate homes and left Cook to his own devices…for now.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Wildwyck County: The Case of the Haunted House: Part IV
Back at the farm, they took precautions against possible possession. Weapons were unloaded and locked away, and the three kept close watch on one another for uncharacteristic behavior. Charlie’s wounds, incurred when dragged through the glass, were dressed and Chuck began to read the three small books liberated from the closet.
One proved to be an out-of-print book dating from the late 1800s. It was a commercially-released treatise of demonology, available through special dealers and more liberal-minded book stores. Although the information within was unsettling, it was nothing that had not been covered in other texts before. One section of the book was dog-eared, however, and the phrase “Knights of the Silver Twilight” was underlined several times. The investigators tucked this tidbit away to follow up on at another date.
The other two books were personal journals, scrawled in the spiderlike hand of Walter Corbitt, himself. Deciphering the scribbles would take some doing, and Chuck proceeded to brew a pot of coffee before delving into the arcane memoirs.
Reading the journals took two days, but the information within opened Chuck’s mind up to frightening new vistas of reality. In addition to several unsettling implications about the nature of the cosmos, the books also explained the process required to “Summon the Shimmering Walker.” It would take some weeks to master that process, so the journals were put aside for safe keeping. The investigators had learned their lesson about revealing ownership of strange books to outsiders.
Speaking of which, during the period while Chuck decrypted the journals, Joseph and Charlie attempted to track down the whereabouts of Father Sullivan. Father Andrew revealed that he was quite concerned about the missing priest as he had himself learned from the church records that Father Sully was an only child. Although finding his excuse for his sudden disappearance false, Father Andrew was loath to allow the two investigators into the absent priest’s quarters. He was hoping that this disappearance was due to poor decision making rather than a criminal act. Having experience with Irish priests in the past, Father Andrew was fervently hoping Father Sullivan would return soon, bleary eyed and shameful, but in sound health.
With no new information learned and the journals completed, the three decided that they could hide from their inevitable task no longer and drove back to Ashton to confront the house and the forces that inhabited it once and for all. Arriving on site, they discovered the upstairs windows still smashed, but the doors closed and unlocked. Suspecting either the wind or a concerned neighbor to be responsible for the shut doors, they ventured into the house one last time, tense and alert.
They made their way to the cellar door without delay, throwing upon its locks and descending down the creaking, rotting stairs. At the bottom, they discovered a small cellar with oiled dirt floor, several cluttered workbenches, an old barrel, and a side room that once held coal and firewood. Three of the walls were brick; the fourth was closely fitted wooden boards. This irregularity led them to believe that the wooden boards concealed another chamber and Charlie and Joseph took to demolishing the timber with their pry bars. They opened a gap large enough to look through and shone their electric torch into the small space beyond. A fetid stench filled their nose and the chittering of rats—dozen and dozens of rats—arose from the junk-filled cavity beyond.
As they peered inside, Chuck gave out a scream behind them! Turning, they saw a bloody wound across Chuck’s back and a rusty knife floating in mid-air before him! The knife slashed again, barely missing him. Joseph leveled his shotgun at the knife and let loose a blast, hoping to strike the invisible force wielding the weapon, but to no avail.
The three battled the knife, grasping a wooden barrel lid and using it as a shield. Despite their best efforts, both Charlie and Chuck were gashed by the blade, Chuck bad enough to lose consciousness as blood ran from his myriad wounds. As Chuck tumbled to the earthen floor, so did the knife, inert once again. Joseph applied first aid to Chuck, while Charlie heaved the bloodied dagger into the open barrel and then nailed the wooden lid in place to seal up the peculiar poignard.
Despite Joseph’s best efforts, Chuck remained unconscious and the two alert investigators debated a full retreat. Thinking back upon the battle, however, the both realized that the blade stuck slower and slower as the fight dragged on, as if the eldritch forces behind the attack were growing weary. Rather than risk giving those unknown powers the chance to recuperate, they decided to press on and see what lay beyond the timber barrier.
The rats had fled during the fight, so it was without incident that the two cleared an entrance into the space beyond. There they discovered another wooden wall, this one bearing the phase “Chapel of Contemplation” carved into the aged boards. Some more hard labor later, an entrance had been made into the chamber beyond that final wall.
The space beyond was obviously the remainder of the cellar. The floor was earthen and the walls were brick. It held little, but what it did contain gave the two pause. A crude pallet lay in the center of the room. Atop it was the thin, almost feral-looking, form of a naked dead man. A small table holding papers stood in the far corner and cobwebs hung like streamer from the ceiling above. The investigators moved towards the table, thinking that the paper would shed light on this final conundrum.
As they approached, the dead man rose to his feet. A stench like rotting corn wafted from his wizened form and white, burning eyes glimpsed the two. Charlie raised his revolver and blasted away at the walking dead man. His first shot struck the corpse in the skull, blowing away a part of its skull but to no effect. His second shot took the body high in the chest, blowing another hole in the corpse and causing a spray of stinking, black blood to erupt from its back, painting the walls with gore.
The corpse closed on Charlie, swinging ghastly claws at the terrified shamus, but missed their target as he scrambled away. Joseph swung his shotgun like a club, striking the corpse to little discernable result other than to gain the attention of Corbitt’s corpse. As the undead sorcerer moved in for the kill, Charlie fired his last shot at the body, blowing away the rest of the dead man’s skull. A cry erupted from the corpse, the chittering of rats sounded in the walls, and the body collapsed to the floor. Moments later, the body crumbled to dust, revealing a black stone amulet and chain where the corpse had lain.
The two attempted to collect the papers from the table, but time had nearly destroyed them and they too turned to dust when touched. Gathering a Mason jar from the one of the worktables near the stairs, Joseph looped the chain of the amulet onto his pry bar and deposited the necklace inside the glass container, securing the lid once inside. The two gathered up the unconscious Chuck and departed the site with great alacrity.
The trio was successful in uncovering the forces responsible for the Willow St. house’s uncanny events and despite the wounds suffered, emerged victorious. Fletcher Dobbs paid them the promised $100 bonus, a sum that came in handily as both Charlie and Chuck were admitted into the care of the good doctors at Ashton Hospital with knife wounds allegedly incurred during a mugging attempt. They are currently resting and recuperating, leaving Joseph in possession with both Corbitt’s journals and the mysterious amulet at his farmstead.
One proved to be an out-of-print book dating from the late 1800s. It was a commercially-released treatise of demonology, available through special dealers and more liberal-minded book stores. Although the information within was unsettling, it was nothing that had not been covered in other texts before. One section of the book was dog-eared, however, and the phrase “Knights of the Silver Twilight” was underlined several times. The investigators tucked this tidbit away to follow up on at another date.
The other two books were personal journals, scrawled in the spiderlike hand of Walter Corbitt, himself. Deciphering the scribbles would take some doing, and Chuck proceeded to brew a pot of coffee before delving into the arcane memoirs.
Reading the journals took two days, but the information within opened Chuck’s mind up to frightening new vistas of reality. In addition to several unsettling implications about the nature of the cosmos, the books also explained the process required to “Summon the Shimmering Walker.” It would take some weeks to master that process, so the journals were put aside for safe keeping. The investigators had learned their lesson about revealing ownership of strange books to outsiders.
Speaking of which, during the period while Chuck decrypted the journals, Joseph and Charlie attempted to track down the whereabouts of Father Sullivan. Father Andrew revealed that he was quite concerned about the missing priest as he had himself learned from the church records that Father Sully was an only child. Although finding his excuse for his sudden disappearance false, Father Andrew was loath to allow the two investigators into the absent priest’s quarters. He was hoping that this disappearance was due to poor decision making rather than a criminal act. Having experience with Irish priests in the past, Father Andrew was fervently hoping Father Sullivan would return soon, bleary eyed and shameful, but in sound health.
With no new information learned and the journals completed, the three decided that they could hide from their inevitable task no longer and drove back to Ashton to confront the house and the forces that inhabited it once and for all. Arriving on site, they discovered the upstairs windows still smashed, but the doors closed and unlocked. Suspecting either the wind or a concerned neighbor to be responsible for the shut doors, they ventured into the house one last time, tense and alert.
They made their way to the cellar door without delay, throwing upon its locks and descending down the creaking, rotting stairs. At the bottom, they discovered a small cellar with oiled dirt floor, several cluttered workbenches, an old barrel, and a side room that once held coal and firewood. Three of the walls were brick; the fourth was closely fitted wooden boards. This irregularity led them to believe that the wooden boards concealed another chamber and Charlie and Joseph took to demolishing the timber with their pry bars. They opened a gap large enough to look through and shone their electric torch into the small space beyond. A fetid stench filled their nose and the chittering of rats—dozen and dozens of rats—arose from the junk-filled cavity beyond.
As they peered inside, Chuck gave out a scream behind them! Turning, they saw a bloody wound across Chuck’s back and a rusty knife floating in mid-air before him! The knife slashed again, barely missing him. Joseph leveled his shotgun at the knife and let loose a blast, hoping to strike the invisible force wielding the weapon, but to no avail.
The three battled the knife, grasping a wooden barrel lid and using it as a shield. Despite their best efforts, both Charlie and Chuck were gashed by the blade, Chuck bad enough to lose consciousness as blood ran from his myriad wounds. As Chuck tumbled to the earthen floor, so did the knife, inert once again. Joseph applied first aid to Chuck, while Charlie heaved the bloodied dagger into the open barrel and then nailed the wooden lid in place to seal up the peculiar poignard.
Despite Joseph’s best efforts, Chuck remained unconscious and the two alert investigators debated a full retreat. Thinking back upon the battle, however, the both realized that the blade stuck slower and slower as the fight dragged on, as if the eldritch forces behind the attack were growing weary. Rather than risk giving those unknown powers the chance to recuperate, they decided to press on and see what lay beyond the timber barrier.
The rats had fled during the fight, so it was without incident that the two cleared an entrance into the space beyond. There they discovered another wooden wall, this one bearing the phase “Chapel of Contemplation” carved into the aged boards. Some more hard labor later, an entrance had been made into the chamber beyond that final wall.
The space beyond was obviously the remainder of the cellar. The floor was earthen and the walls were brick. It held little, but what it did contain gave the two pause. A crude pallet lay in the center of the room. Atop it was the thin, almost feral-looking, form of a naked dead man. A small table holding papers stood in the far corner and cobwebs hung like streamer from the ceiling above. The investigators moved towards the table, thinking that the paper would shed light on this final conundrum.
As they approached, the dead man rose to his feet. A stench like rotting corn wafted from his wizened form and white, burning eyes glimpsed the two. Charlie raised his revolver and blasted away at the walking dead man. His first shot struck the corpse in the skull, blowing away a part of its skull but to no effect. His second shot took the body high in the chest, blowing another hole in the corpse and causing a spray of stinking, black blood to erupt from its back, painting the walls with gore.
The corpse closed on Charlie, swinging ghastly claws at the terrified shamus, but missed their target as he scrambled away. Joseph swung his shotgun like a club, striking the corpse to little discernable result other than to gain the attention of Corbitt’s corpse. As the undead sorcerer moved in for the kill, Charlie fired his last shot at the body, blowing away the rest of the dead man’s skull. A cry erupted from the corpse, the chittering of rats sounded in the walls, and the body collapsed to the floor. Moments later, the body crumbled to dust, revealing a black stone amulet and chain where the corpse had lain.
The two attempted to collect the papers from the table, but time had nearly destroyed them and they too turned to dust when touched. Gathering a Mason jar from the one of the worktables near the stairs, Joseph looped the chain of the amulet onto his pry bar and deposited the necklace inside the glass container, securing the lid once inside. The two gathered up the unconscious Chuck and departed the site with great alacrity.
The trio was successful in uncovering the forces responsible for the Willow St. house’s uncanny events and despite the wounds suffered, emerged victorious. Fletcher Dobbs paid them the promised $100 bonus, a sum that came in handily as both Charlie and Chuck were admitted into the care of the good doctors at Ashton Hospital with knife wounds allegedly incurred during a mugging attempt. They are currently resting and recuperating, leaving Joseph in possession with both Corbitt’s journals and the mysterious amulet at his farmstead.
Wildwyck County: The Case of the Haunted House: Part III
Despite this turn of events, the trio decided to venture into the house on Willow Street. Parking outside, they approached the home, its curtains drawn as if to protect its gruesome secrets. With the key Mr. Dobbs had given them, they entered to see a gloomy hallway stretching from the front door to the rear of the house. A pair of French doors stood on their right, open to reveal the living room beyond. A trio of doors stood along the left wall of the hallway, the portals shut tight to protect their contents. The air was stale and dusty, with a faint hint of rotting food beneath it.
The investigators began with the living room, discovering it to be filled with numerous crucifixes and Catholic icons—even more so than could be expected in the home of devout Italian immigrants. Seemingly out of place amongst the religious paraphernalia was an outré painting that hung on the far wall. The piece was an odd mixture of style. It depicted the unmistakable Catskill Mountains to the northwest, their profiles easily identifiable to residents of the area. However, beyond those picturesque peaks was an abstract image that gave the impression of being a city of glittering gossamer drifting amongst the mist-shrouded mountains. Checking the painting closely, the signature “Nelson Blakely” was discovered. Who was this gifted painter and why was his work both evocative and slightly unsettling?
Connected to the living room was a modest dining room, its mahogany table set for dinner for three. A soup tureen sat on its dusty surface and another door beyond led out of the room, presumably to the kitchen. The scent of rot was stronger here and the investigators chose to move deeper into the house, discovering the kitchen and signs that rats had been at the pantry.
Exiting the kitchen, they entered the main hall to find themselves at the far end of the house. A set of stairs led to the second floor, while another closed door stood across from them. This door was sealed tightly—someone had installed a lock and no less than three deadbolts on the door. Besides the stairs was another door that led into the house’s mudroom. Old coats, buckets of coal, and a door leading outside were within this room, and the investigators noted that the exterior door also bore three deadbolts and two locks. Some resident of the house was concerned about his or her safety to paranoid levels.
The two well-secured doors made the three realize they had never inspected the inside of the front door, and they returned to the front of the house to do so, finding four deadbolts—rather new ones—to have been installed there as well. As they were yet unwilling to ascend the stairs, the three started with the first closed door off of the main hall.
The room beyond was stacked with junk: old water tanks, broken bicycles, rusting pipes, and other bits of trash that had accumulated in the house since its construction. Against one wall was a set of cabinets, sealed tightly by 2x4s nailed across its doors. The investigators attacked the lumber with their pry bars, suspecting that something of value or interest lay concealed within.
As they did so, a loud, booming, pounding was heard from upstairs as if an angry fist was pummeling the floorboards above. Charlie cried out nervously, “We’re getting into your cabinets and there’s nothing you can do about it!” The thumping repeated itself.
Chuck continued to attack the cabinets while Charlie and Joseph watched. With the screech of rusted nails coming loose, the last piece of wood was pulled free and the cabinets opened. Inside were three small books, dusty and dropped askew on the bare shelves within. These tomes were gathered with some caution and the sounds above ceased.
Charlie inched down the hallway, drawing his .38 revolver and taking up position at the bottom of the stairs. Joseph and Chuck proceeded to check the next room, only to find more junk: smashed furniture, broken boards, and other detritus bound for the fireplace. Chuck grabbed a long board, hefting it in his hands.
As the three reached the bottom of the stairs, the sound of scratching, long nails dragged across a hard surface began from the floor above, causing Charlie to rush from the house in a panic. The remaining two stared up the flight of stairs before grimly making their ascent. Charlie hovered by the front door, watching his friends vanish from sight. At the top of the stairs, Chuck and Joseph discovered another long hallway running the length of the house. Four doors stood along the left side of the hall; the right side was pierced with three curtained windows that let only a trace of sunlight into the house. Advancing to the second door from the stairs, the one from which the scratching seemed to be coming from, they tentatively grasped the handle.
The sounds stopped.
Pausing to steel their nerves, they opened the door to find a Spartan room beyond. A large bed, lacking a mattress stood against one wall. A chest of drawers occupied a corner next to a closed window. From the ceiling dangled a single bare bulb, swaying gently at the end of its cord.
As they stood in the doorway, the sound of tapping was heard. It seemed to come from across the room, near the shut window. Chuck threw the light switch, but the house was without power. Joseph stepped into the room cautiously and approached the window while Chuck covered him. Reaching the window, Joseph gazed out the pane, looking for the source of the tapping.
The bed frame lurched across the room, carving long scratches in the dry floorboards as it sped towards Joseph like a locomotive. The surprised Pole threw himself out of its path, missing being hurled through the window to the grounds below by inches! The iron frame crashed into the plaster wall, creating a spider web of cracks throughout the plaster around the window. As Joseph climbed to his feet, blood began to flow in rivulets from the shattered plaster. The two rushed down the stairs, nearly crashing into Charlie who had crept back into the house after the sounds ceased. The three poured out the mudroom door and ran down the alleyway to take cover behind their parked vehicles.
After a long pause and several nervously smoked cigarettes, the trio resolved themselves to re-entering the house and searching the remaining upstairs rooms. They returned to the upstairs before fear could overwhelm them again.
In the second floor hallway, they began to open the curtains to allow more light in and it was then that they noticed that someone had nailed the windows shut. As they had to put the “haunted room” behind them in order to explore the rest of the second floor, there was concern about possible routes of escape. Charlie produced his pry bar and began to break each window, clearing the glass from the frame as Joseph and Chuck started with the far room.
That room turned out to be the master bedroom: a queen-sized bed, more religious statuary, a bible, and dressing table lay within. As the approached a bookshelf on one wall, the two noticed that the sound of breaking glass had stopped. Chuck turned in time to see Charlie put down his pry bar on the window sill, reach down and grip a handful of jagged glass. Slowly, as if sleepwalking, Charlie opened his mouth and started to raise the razor-sharp shards to his face, intending to eat the broken glass. Chuck launched himself across the hall, tackling Charlie to the ground before he could dine on his possibly fatal meal. Joseph came out of the bedroom at his heels just as the door to the haunted room began to rattle in its jam, shaking as if in the grip of hurricane winds. The two gripped the dazed private eye between them and dragged him towards the stairs. As they passed the thundering door, they glimpsed blood oozing from beneath it to pool in the hallway. That was enough for the intrepid investigators and they fled from the house, rousing Charlie from his inattentive state, and then driving out of town to seek sanctuary at Joseph’s farm…
The investigators began with the living room, discovering it to be filled with numerous crucifixes and Catholic icons—even more so than could be expected in the home of devout Italian immigrants. Seemingly out of place amongst the religious paraphernalia was an outré painting that hung on the far wall. The piece was an odd mixture of style. It depicted the unmistakable Catskill Mountains to the northwest, their profiles easily identifiable to residents of the area. However, beyond those picturesque peaks was an abstract image that gave the impression of being a city of glittering gossamer drifting amongst the mist-shrouded mountains. Checking the painting closely, the signature “Nelson Blakely” was discovered. Who was this gifted painter and why was his work both evocative and slightly unsettling?
Connected to the living room was a modest dining room, its mahogany table set for dinner for three. A soup tureen sat on its dusty surface and another door beyond led out of the room, presumably to the kitchen. The scent of rot was stronger here and the investigators chose to move deeper into the house, discovering the kitchen and signs that rats had been at the pantry.
Exiting the kitchen, they entered the main hall to find themselves at the far end of the house. A set of stairs led to the second floor, while another closed door stood across from them. This door was sealed tightly—someone had installed a lock and no less than three deadbolts on the door. Besides the stairs was another door that led into the house’s mudroom. Old coats, buckets of coal, and a door leading outside were within this room, and the investigators noted that the exterior door also bore three deadbolts and two locks. Some resident of the house was concerned about his or her safety to paranoid levels.
The two well-secured doors made the three realize they had never inspected the inside of the front door, and they returned to the front of the house to do so, finding four deadbolts—rather new ones—to have been installed there as well. As they were yet unwilling to ascend the stairs, the three started with the first closed door off of the main hall.
The room beyond was stacked with junk: old water tanks, broken bicycles, rusting pipes, and other bits of trash that had accumulated in the house since its construction. Against one wall was a set of cabinets, sealed tightly by 2x4s nailed across its doors. The investigators attacked the lumber with their pry bars, suspecting that something of value or interest lay concealed within.
As they did so, a loud, booming, pounding was heard from upstairs as if an angry fist was pummeling the floorboards above. Charlie cried out nervously, “We’re getting into your cabinets and there’s nothing you can do about it!” The thumping repeated itself.
Chuck continued to attack the cabinets while Charlie and Joseph watched. With the screech of rusted nails coming loose, the last piece of wood was pulled free and the cabinets opened. Inside were three small books, dusty and dropped askew on the bare shelves within. These tomes were gathered with some caution and the sounds above ceased.
Charlie inched down the hallway, drawing his .38 revolver and taking up position at the bottom of the stairs. Joseph and Chuck proceeded to check the next room, only to find more junk: smashed furniture, broken boards, and other detritus bound for the fireplace. Chuck grabbed a long board, hefting it in his hands.
As the three reached the bottom of the stairs, the sound of scratching, long nails dragged across a hard surface began from the floor above, causing Charlie to rush from the house in a panic. The remaining two stared up the flight of stairs before grimly making their ascent. Charlie hovered by the front door, watching his friends vanish from sight. At the top of the stairs, Chuck and Joseph discovered another long hallway running the length of the house. Four doors stood along the left side of the hall; the right side was pierced with three curtained windows that let only a trace of sunlight into the house. Advancing to the second door from the stairs, the one from which the scratching seemed to be coming from, they tentatively grasped the handle.
The sounds stopped.
Pausing to steel their nerves, they opened the door to find a Spartan room beyond. A large bed, lacking a mattress stood against one wall. A chest of drawers occupied a corner next to a closed window. From the ceiling dangled a single bare bulb, swaying gently at the end of its cord.
As they stood in the doorway, the sound of tapping was heard. It seemed to come from across the room, near the shut window. Chuck threw the light switch, but the house was without power. Joseph stepped into the room cautiously and approached the window while Chuck covered him. Reaching the window, Joseph gazed out the pane, looking for the source of the tapping.
The bed frame lurched across the room, carving long scratches in the dry floorboards as it sped towards Joseph like a locomotive. The surprised Pole threw himself out of its path, missing being hurled through the window to the grounds below by inches! The iron frame crashed into the plaster wall, creating a spider web of cracks throughout the plaster around the window. As Joseph climbed to his feet, blood began to flow in rivulets from the shattered plaster. The two rushed down the stairs, nearly crashing into Charlie who had crept back into the house after the sounds ceased. The three poured out the mudroom door and ran down the alleyway to take cover behind their parked vehicles.
After a long pause and several nervously smoked cigarettes, the trio resolved themselves to re-entering the house and searching the remaining upstairs rooms. They returned to the upstairs before fear could overwhelm them again.
In the second floor hallway, they began to open the curtains to allow more light in and it was then that they noticed that someone had nailed the windows shut. As they had to put the “haunted room” behind them in order to explore the rest of the second floor, there was concern about possible routes of escape. Charlie produced his pry bar and began to break each window, clearing the glass from the frame as Joseph and Chuck started with the far room.
That room turned out to be the master bedroom: a queen-sized bed, more religious statuary, a bible, and dressing table lay within. As the approached a bookshelf on one wall, the two noticed that the sound of breaking glass had stopped. Chuck turned in time to see Charlie put down his pry bar on the window sill, reach down and grip a handful of jagged glass. Slowly, as if sleepwalking, Charlie opened his mouth and started to raise the razor-sharp shards to his face, intending to eat the broken glass. Chuck launched himself across the hall, tackling Charlie to the ground before he could dine on his possibly fatal meal. Joseph came out of the bedroom at his heels just as the door to the haunted room began to rattle in its jam, shaking as if in the grip of hurricane winds. The two gripped the dazed private eye between them and dragged him towards the stairs. As they passed the thundering door, they glimpsed blood oozing from beneath it to pool in the hallway. That was enough for the intrepid investigators and they fled from the house, rousing Charlie from his inattentive state, and then driving out of town to seek sanctuary at Joseph’s farm…
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Wildwyck County: The Case of the Haunted House: Part II
On the morning of Thursday the 7th, the trio once again met at Joe’s Cup & Saucer to plan their day’s excursions. In light of the discovery beneath the ruined chapel, a descent was in order, but more research was warranted before they placed their lives on the line in that crumbling cellar. Charlie, having had dealings with Wesley Carroll at the Sentinel, knew that he was off on Thursdays and that the investigators might have better luck accessing the morgue with him away from the desk. Also, further information regarding the Chapel of Contemplation’s conflict with Ashton’s Finest was needed, which meant a trip down the local constabulary headquarters.
The three men arrived at the Sentinel and found that Carroll was nowhere in sight. In his place was Steven “Sparky” McDowell, the paper’s intern and would-be newshound. Enthusiastic to a fault and somewhat uninformed regarding the paper’s policy on restricted access, Sparky obligingly got the investigators to the dingy back room that contained the paper’s archives. There, the men found further confirmation of the stories that Jim Dooley had spun at his newsstand the previous day as well as another article that never saw print. This one told of a French family, the LeFevres, who occupied the house on Willow Street in 1880 only to move out when the parents died and three of the children became crippled in violent accidents. The house stood vacant from then until 1909.
Leaving the Sentinel’s offices before being discovered, the trio went to Ashton’s central police station to see if they could access the records concerning the 1912 raid. Luckily for them, the desk sergeant on duty was Sergeant Richard “Dickie” Schultz, a cop that Charlie had dealt with in the past, sharing information and sometimes money in exchange for leads in his private cases.
Dickie had been a cop in Ashton for several years, but had no knowledge of the 1912 raid—a fact which allowed the investigators to look at files that seemed to cover a minor event in a closed case. Pursuing the official records brought new light on the Chapel as well as unnerving implications.
In 1912, the police collected several affidavits from Drybog residents implicating the Chapel of Contemplation in a series of missing children cases. A raid was launched on the Chapel, during which three policemen were killed and seventeen cult members died in either gunplay or fire. Fifty-four church members were arrested, including Pastor Michael Thomas, but only eight were ever convicted and sentenced. Pastor Thomas was given 40 years in the Snake Hill Penitentiary on five counts of second-degree murder, but escaped in 1917. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Although this was all very surprising to the three long-term residents of the Ashton environs, even more disturbing was evidence that there had been a cover-up. The autopsy reports on the slain church members were all cursory, lacking common details usually found in such reports. This indicated that the medical examiner had not actually performed autopsies—he merely filled in the forms and swept the deaths under the rug. Other evidence in the official reports hinted that the entire raid had been silenced by a local official with some influence, explaining why the biggest criminal action in Ashton’s recent history was entirely unknown by its citizens. Who was involved and why they hid the raid was not clear. It might warrant more investigation at a later date.
In a related note, the file contained an aged news clipping going back to the previous century. The brief news item mentioned a similar raid conducted against the Congregational Church of Rotskill, NY in 1731; another lead or a further smokescreen?
Departing the police station with this knowledge, the investigators stopped at a local hardware store to acquire a coil of rope, pry bars, and a trio of electric torches. They piled into their vehicles and returned to the ruined chapel in Drybog. After ascertaining they were unobserved, Chuck and Joseph shimmied down a rope to explore the sodden cellar, leaving Charlie to keep an eye out for anyone seeking to stop them.
The cellar was damp and moldy. Ankle-deep water had seeped into the basement over the last eight years and the hole above let in scant illumination. Throwing their torch beams about, the duo perceived a blocky pair of filing cabinets in one corner and a massive, mold-covered desk in another. Near the writing table were two piles of rotted cloth, protruding from the stagnant water like mildewed islands.
The filing cabinets drew their attention first, and rifling through them uncovered a sheaf of decaying church records. Compiling all the partially-filled drawers into a single one, the two tied a rope to the drawer and Charlie hauled it out of the basement to be examined in detail later.
The desk proved empty, but chained to its surface was a massive folio bound in mildew-stained leather. The rusted restraint was easily broken and the tome carefully removed from the site. The two basement spelunkers then discovered that the piles of cloth contained the sodden bones of humans; perhaps church members who perished in the 1912 raid and whose remains lay undiscovered in the Chapel’s basement until now. Keeping a cautious eye on the bones, Joseph and Chuck scampered out of the basement and the three departed the site to sift through their finds.
Taking the records and book back to Joseph’s farm, the three quickly learned that the church records were precisely that: daily accounts pertaining to the operation of a religious institution. However, nestled amongst the mundane accounts was a small journal. Written partially in a cipher to hide the identities of various cult members, the investigators were nevertheless able to discern the name Corbitt amongst the alias. Specifically it was written that Walter Corbitt was buried in the basement of his home “in accordance with his wishes and with the wishes of that one who waits in the dark.” At last! A break in the case!
Elated to fine a possible cause of the house’s unsettling difficulties, the three turned their attentions to the large, leather-bound tome. Unfortunately for the three, none of whom graduated high school, the archaic Latin that the book was written in proved indecipherable. As it was beyond their own skills to decipher, the investigators decided to bring in an outsider to assist them.
Piling back into their cars, the three drove back to Ashton to pay a visit to St. Michael’s, the most prominent Catholic church in town. There they introduced themselves to Father Theodore Sullivan, a long-time resident and priest. Claiming that they were employed by a collector of rare books, the three told the good Father that they were hired to ascertain the authenticity of this particular book after their employer purchased it in an estate sale. Father Sullivan examined the book carefully before declaring it to be in Medieval Latin and seemed to contain certain instructions. It would take some work, but he could likely make heads or tails of the old book in a few days—at least enough to provide the three with a summary of its contents for their employer. The investigators agreed and left the book in Father Sullivan’s care.
With time to kill while the priest translated the ancient text, Joseph headed down to Ashton’s Templeton Price Memorial Library on Castle Ave. Within its quiet environs, Joseph found Miss Agatha Coleridge, the library’s foremost reference librarian. Producing his journal, Joseph showed Miss Coleridge the symbol he copied from the chapel’s crumbling walls. Together, the two consulted the library’s scant occult collection to no avail. Just as Joseph was about to give up hope, Miss Coleridge declared that she had an associate at one of Newgrave’s larger repositories of knowledge and that she’d be willing to forward the symbol to him and see if his library’s collection could shed more light on its origins. Unfortunately, the process would take a week or so. With no other options, Joseph agreed.
It was Saturday the 9th when the three finally decided to enter the house. Knowing that there were reported phenomenon on the second floor of the house and that Corbitt’s earthly remains were likely interred in the building’s basement, those two locations were deemed the most probable places to focus their investigation. To be safe, the trio staged a watch on the building from the late hours of Friday afternoon into Saturday morning. Working in shift to observe the house, they discovered that no one entered the place, nor were there signs of activity within its old brick walls.
Prior to their entrance, they reassembled at Joe’s Cup & Saucer to compose a missive to their employer, Mr. Dobbs, informing him that they had a break in the case and expected to have an answer soon. They finished breakfast and returned to St. Michael’s to see if Father Sullivan had completed his survey of the archaic text.
Arriving at the church, they were greeted by Father Andrew Dewey, the assistant priest at St. Michael’s. Father Dewey revealed to the three that Father Sullivan has departed the church abruptly the previous day, explaining that he received word that his sister was deathly ill and he was rushing to her bedside. Father Dewey expressed some surprise at this turn of advents, as Father Sully had never mentioned that he had siblings in the years the two had worked together. The investigators inquired about the book they had entrusted with the good Father, but Father Dewey could provide no information other than he knew nothing about such a text and that there was no such tome in Father Sullivan’s quarters in the rectory. Needless to say, this was very distressing to the three and they begged Father Dewey to alert them the instant he learned of Father Sullivan’s current whereabouts…
The three men arrived at the Sentinel and found that Carroll was nowhere in sight. In his place was Steven “Sparky” McDowell, the paper’s intern and would-be newshound. Enthusiastic to a fault and somewhat uninformed regarding the paper’s policy on restricted access, Sparky obligingly got the investigators to the dingy back room that contained the paper’s archives. There, the men found further confirmation of the stories that Jim Dooley had spun at his newsstand the previous day as well as another article that never saw print. This one told of a French family, the LeFevres, who occupied the house on Willow Street in 1880 only to move out when the parents died and three of the children became crippled in violent accidents. The house stood vacant from then until 1909.
Leaving the Sentinel’s offices before being discovered, the trio went to Ashton’s central police station to see if they could access the records concerning the 1912 raid. Luckily for them, the desk sergeant on duty was Sergeant Richard “Dickie” Schultz, a cop that Charlie had dealt with in the past, sharing information and sometimes money in exchange for leads in his private cases.
Dickie had been a cop in Ashton for several years, but had no knowledge of the 1912 raid—a fact which allowed the investigators to look at files that seemed to cover a minor event in a closed case. Pursuing the official records brought new light on the Chapel as well as unnerving implications.
In 1912, the police collected several affidavits from Drybog residents implicating the Chapel of Contemplation in a series of missing children cases. A raid was launched on the Chapel, during which three policemen were killed and seventeen cult members died in either gunplay or fire. Fifty-four church members were arrested, including Pastor Michael Thomas, but only eight were ever convicted and sentenced. Pastor Thomas was given 40 years in the Snake Hill Penitentiary on five counts of second-degree murder, but escaped in 1917. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Although this was all very surprising to the three long-term residents of the Ashton environs, even more disturbing was evidence that there had been a cover-up. The autopsy reports on the slain church members were all cursory, lacking common details usually found in such reports. This indicated that the medical examiner had not actually performed autopsies—he merely filled in the forms and swept the deaths under the rug. Other evidence in the official reports hinted that the entire raid had been silenced by a local official with some influence, explaining why the biggest criminal action in Ashton’s recent history was entirely unknown by its citizens. Who was involved and why they hid the raid was not clear. It might warrant more investigation at a later date.
In a related note, the file contained an aged news clipping going back to the previous century. The brief news item mentioned a similar raid conducted against the Congregational Church of Rotskill, NY in 1731; another lead or a further smokescreen?
Departing the police station with this knowledge, the investigators stopped at a local hardware store to acquire a coil of rope, pry bars, and a trio of electric torches. They piled into their vehicles and returned to the ruined chapel in Drybog. After ascertaining they were unobserved, Chuck and Joseph shimmied down a rope to explore the sodden cellar, leaving Charlie to keep an eye out for anyone seeking to stop them.
The cellar was damp and moldy. Ankle-deep water had seeped into the basement over the last eight years and the hole above let in scant illumination. Throwing their torch beams about, the duo perceived a blocky pair of filing cabinets in one corner and a massive, mold-covered desk in another. Near the writing table were two piles of rotted cloth, protruding from the stagnant water like mildewed islands.
The filing cabinets drew their attention first, and rifling through them uncovered a sheaf of decaying church records. Compiling all the partially-filled drawers into a single one, the two tied a rope to the drawer and Charlie hauled it out of the basement to be examined in detail later.
The desk proved empty, but chained to its surface was a massive folio bound in mildew-stained leather. The rusted restraint was easily broken and the tome carefully removed from the site. The two basement spelunkers then discovered that the piles of cloth contained the sodden bones of humans; perhaps church members who perished in the 1912 raid and whose remains lay undiscovered in the Chapel’s basement until now. Keeping a cautious eye on the bones, Joseph and Chuck scampered out of the basement and the three departed the site to sift through their finds.
Taking the records and book back to Joseph’s farm, the three quickly learned that the church records were precisely that: daily accounts pertaining to the operation of a religious institution. However, nestled amongst the mundane accounts was a small journal. Written partially in a cipher to hide the identities of various cult members, the investigators were nevertheless able to discern the name Corbitt amongst the alias. Specifically it was written that Walter Corbitt was buried in the basement of his home “in accordance with his wishes and with the wishes of that one who waits in the dark.” At last! A break in the case!
Elated to fine a possible cause of the house’s unsettling difficulties, the three turned their attentions to the large, leather-bound tome. Unfortunately for the three, none of whom graduated high school, the archaic Latin that the book was written in proved indecipherable. As it was beyond their own skills to decipher, the investigators decided to bring in an outsider to assist them.
Piling back into their cars, the three drove back to Ashton to pay a visit to St. Michael’s, the most prominent Catholic church in town. There they introduced themselves to Father Theodore Sullivan, a long-time resident and priest. Claiming that they were employed by a collector of rare books, the three told the good Father that they were hired to ascertain the authenticity of this particular book after their employer purchased it in an estate sale. Father Sullivan examined the book carefully before declaring it to be in Medieval Latin and seemed to contain certain instructions. It would take some work, but he could likely make heads or tails of the old book in a few days—at least enough to provide the three with a summary of its contents for their employer. The investigators agreed and left the book in Father Sullivan’s care.
With time to kill while the priest translated the ancient text, Joseph headed down to Ashton’s Templeton Price Memorial Library on Castle Ave. Within its quiet environs, Joseph found Miss Agatha Coleridge, the library’s foremost reference librarian. Producing his journal, Joseph showed Miss Coleridge the symbol he copied from the chapel’s crumbling walls. Together, the two consulted the library’s scant occult collection to no avail. Just as Joseph was about to give up hope, Miss Coleridge declared that she had an associate at one of Newgrave’s larger repositories of knowledge and that she’d be willing to forward the symbol to him and see if his library’s collection could shed more light on its origins. Unfortunately, the process would take a week or so. With no other options, Joseph agreed.
It was Saturday the 9th when the three finally decided to enter the house. Knowing that there were reported phenomenon on the second floor of the house and that Corbitt’s earthly remains were likely interred in the building’s basement, those two locations were deemed the most probable places to focus their investigation. To be safe, the trio staged a watch on the building from the late hours of Friday afternoon into Saturday morning. Working in shift to observe the house, they discovered that no one entered the place, nor were there signs of activity within its old brick walls.
Prior to their entrance, they reassembled at Joe’s Cup & Saucer to compose a missive to their employer, Mr. Dobbs, informing him that they had a break in the case and expected to have an answer soon. They finished breakfast and returned to St. Michael’s to see if Father Sullivan had completed his survey of the archaic text.
Arriving at the church, they were greeted by Father Andrew Dewey, the assistant priest at St. Michael’s. Father Dewey revealed to the three that Father Sullivan has departed the church abruptly the previous day, explaining that he received word that his sister was deathly ill and he was rushing to her bedside. Father Dewey expressed some surprise at this turn of advents, as Father Sully had never mentioned that he had siblings in the years the two had worked together. The investigators inquired about the book they had entrusted with the good Father, but Father Dewey could provide no information other than he knew nothing about such a text and that there was no such tome in Father Sullivan’s quarters in the rectory. Needless to say, this was very distressing to the three and they begged Father Dewey to alert them the instant he learned of Father Sullivan’s current whereabouts…
Wildwyck County: The Case of the Haunted House: Part I
The movement of posts from one blog to another continues. This is a recap of the events of a session of Call of Cthulhu set in Wildwyck County that occurred last summer. The tale plays out over several parts.
I haven’t mentioned it here, but I’ve been given the opportunity to run Call of Cthulhu as the backup game in my local group whenever the current referee needs a break. Our first session was on July 10th and I’ll be running it again on August 14th. This is giving me the opportunity to try out some of the material to be featured in the upcoming Fight On! article as well as scratch my itch for non-fantasy roleplaying—which is very, very nice.
I’m keeping things simple, allowing much of the campaign to develop based on the investigators’ actions and interactions with the surrounding environs. For our first session, we had three PCs and I used the Call of Cthulhu Quick Start to get things rolling. This gave me the chance to finally run “The Haunted House” scenario that had launched a thousand campaigns and appeared in every edition of CoC ever produced. I’ve always wanted to run it, but whenever I had the chance, the players were already familiar with it. At long last, with three neonates to Call of Cthulhu around the table, I finally got my wish.
The players loved it and what was intended to be a one-shot got the official go ahead to be the alternate game. I’m already looking forward to the next session. Since I’m letting the campaign develop organically, there is the need to document the events of the sessions in more detail than I’m used to. Any one of the NPCs, events, or items encountered can have great influence down the line. What follows is the first installment of my recollection of the inaugural session’s events. It quite long, so I’ve split it into several posts. If you are adverse to post game reports, you may want to skip the next few postings here at Secret Antiquities.
Also, be advised that many spoilers for “The Haunted House” scenario (later changed to “The Haunting”) appear below. If you’ve never played through that investigation, you may want to skip these posts as well. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy this recounting of a most successful gaming session…
The year was 1920. The Great War was over and the Spanish Flu was in its death throes. Faced with so many reminders of their own mortality, it is no wonder that humanity found itself caught up in the Spiritualism movement, convinced that the shroud that separated the living and the dead could be breached by the common man. Séances, salons, and orators expounding on the secrets of the dead drew great numbers, especially in the pastoral town of Ashton, NY.
Moving amongst this local Spiritualist scene were three simple men, different in background and standing, but brought into friendly acquaintance by a shared interest in supernatural matters. Having become familiar through the regular séances held at Madam Grace’s riverside home, Chuck Adams, Joseph Bronowski, and Charlie Kovelček demonstrated that Spiritualism was no elitist pursuit. They were not learned men: Mr. Adams was one of a dying breed, a hunter and trapper who eked out a living in the wooded Catskills much like the settlers of old, relying on his wits and outdoormanship to earn his keep. Mr. Bronowski was also a man of the common clay, a farmer whose small parcel of land outside of Ashton’s limits provided him with his livelihood. Only Mr. Kovelček dwelt full time in town, earning his daily bread as a private detective specializing in photographing citizens engaged in activities they’d prefer to keep out of the public eye.
The events that took place on and around the week of October 5th-12th, 1920 began with a phone call to Charlie Kovelček. The man on the other end was Mr. Fletcher Dobbs, a well-to-do local entrepreneur who owned and leased several properties around Ashton. Mr. Dobbs was a lodge brother to Charlie’s cousin, Adam, and that family member has suggested his shamus cousin after hearing of Mr. Dobbs’ recent troubles. Hesitant to speak in more detail over the phone, Mr. Dobbs arranged a meeting with Charlie the following day at Joe’s Cup & Saucer, a popular diner on Palisade Ave. Mr. Dobbs suggested that if Charlie had any associates knowledgeable about inexplicable events he might wish to bring them along.
At 1 PM the following day, Charlie, Chuck, and Joseph sat at a booth at Joe’s awaiting their would-be employer. Mr. Dobbs arrived precisely on time, sliding through the door at Joe’s like a predatory fish swimming amongst guppies. His suit was pressed, his hair immaculate, and his pencil-moustache as neat as a scalpel incision. He spotted the trio instantly and took a seat in the booth.
His problem was simple in theory: Misfortune had struck a young Eye-talian couple, the Macarios, renting one of his properties on 1735 Willow St. in the questionable neighborhood of Drybog. The husband had gone inexplicitly mad a year ago, leaving the young mother alone at home with two young boys. Then, one month ago and just as abruptly, the mother had tried to stab the children to death. The boys fled the house with minor injuries and the police arrested the woman immediately thereafter. Both she and her husband were now patients at the Frost Hollow Asylum some hours south of town.
Mr. Dobbs admitted that he had heard certain rumors about the property prior to his purchase of it three years ago, but the house’s price was simply too good to pass up. He had done some minor renovations before renting it to the unlucky Macarios two years ago. In the wake of the recent events, Dobbs stated that he had heard the neighbors say that Mrs. Macario wouldn’t go into a certain second floor bedroom and that each family member claimed to have glimpsed an indistinct humanoid form with burning eyes in the home on different occasions.
This left Dobbs in an unfortunate situation. Although dismissive of the tales that the home was haunted, he was nevertheless unwilling to rent the property out again without getting to bottom of things. When he had complained to his lodge brother, he was given Charlie’s number and told that he was reliable, discrete, and had some familiarity with unusual phenomenon. If Mr. Kovelček, Mr. Bronowski, and Mr. Adams were willing to investigate the building and determine what was going on (and, should it prove to be more than simple hallucinations, deal with the problem), they would be paid a princely sum of $20 a day plus a $100 bonus on settling the problem to Mr. Dobbs’ satisfaction. With money like that being offered, the trio could hardly pass on the offer and readily accepted.
As it was mid-afternoon by the time their meeting adjourned, the men decided that a quick trip to the Ashton Hall of Records was all they had time for and piled into Charlie’s Model T. Passing by the New Town Hall, an impressive Greek Revival edifice that was completed, but now the subject of an investigation on official misappropriation of funds, the men pulled up in front of Old Town Hall, a former river captain’s palatial home turned public building. Descending down to the basement, they waved to Cecile, the records clerk, and began requesting public documents pertaining to the property at 1735 Willow.
After four hours of requests and pouring over the public records (and a very kind records clerk keeping the office open after closing), they had discovered scant information regarding the property. It had been constructed in 1835 by a prosperous merchant named Meriwether, but he sold the property soon thereafter to a Mr. Walter Corbitt, esquire after falling ill. Corbitt seemed to have remained in the home until at least 1852 when his neighbors brought a lawsuit against him, seeking to evict him from the neighborhood “in consequence of his surious [sic] habits and unauspicious demeanor.” The trio was unable to learn the outcome of the lawsuit before Cecile insisted the Hall of Records was closed for the evening.
With a little daylight remaining, the investigators decided to drive past the Willow St. location to glimpse the house firsthand. The house stood in Drybog, a section of former swampland drained in the early 1800s to make room for the expanding town. It remained a lower class neighborhood despite attempts to gentrify the area. A pair of recently constructed office buildings flanked the saltbox Dutch Colonial building, making it seem like an old, angry dog lurking between towering oaks. The neighboring buildings were all large homes that had been partitioned into separate small apartments rented by immigrant families or the nearly destitute. The only sign of life was a small newspaper and cigar stand that was in the process of closing.
The three stopped to chat with the proprietor of the newsstand who introduced himself as Jim Dooley, a resident of Drybog for over twenty years. The amicable Mr. Dooley was able to provide more information on the house and its unlucky former residents. In 1909, three people died in the Sheehan family, the residents of the property at that time. In 1914, the Schulyers lived in the home. Tragedy struck when their oldest boy, Bill, went crazy and killed himself with a butcher’s knife. And in ’17 or ’18, a third family had took residency, but moved out almost immediately after. The investigators thanked the loquacious Mr. Dooley before heading to their separate residences with the intent to start the investigation anew on the morrow.
Wednesday saw them back at the Hall of Records, this time searching for more information on Corbitt and the lawsuit. To speed up their efforts, Chuck Adams decided to check the “morgue” at the Ashton Sentinel, the local daily newspaper, to see if he could uncover any additional information regarding the house during the years between 1852 and 1909. Unfortunately for Mr. Adams, the clerk at the Sentinel was Wesley Carroll, a notorious stick-in-the-mud who was unwilling to let anyone down into the paper’s morgue unless they bore a letter of reference from the Mayor or a phone call from the Sentinel’s editor. Even Mr. Adam’s generous offer of $5 to look the other way failed to alter the prissy clerk’s resolve. Chuck departed and rejoined his fellows back at the Hall of Records.
After being informed by Cecile that she would not be remaining open for one second after 5 PM, the three delved back into the public record. The search was long and painstaking, but fruitful. It was discovered that Corbitt won the lawsuit that attempted to drive him out of the area. In addition, they learned that he died in 1866 and that the executor of his will was a Reverend Michael Thomas, pastor of the Chapel of Contemplation & Church of Our Lord Granter of Secrets. Further research determined that the Chapel closed in 1912 after an unspecified police action against the church. As it was getting late (and Cecile was giving them an evil glare), the three decided to drive past the Church before calling it an night. They traveled once again to the Drybog section of town and found the Chapel’s address at 11 West Creek Street.
West Creek Street ran through an even gloomier and more deserted section of the neighborhood than Willow St. Boarded-up windows faced the leave-strewn road and the Chapel turned out to be nothing more than collapsing masonry walls in the middle of an overgrown lot. Parking their cars, the investigators cautiously approached the falling stone walls and spread out. A splash of white deep inside the former church caught their attention and they entered to discover what it was. As they crossed the decrepit floor, a portion of the rotten boards gave way beneath Chuck and nearly dropped him into the damp cellar beneath the former chapel. Only his quick wits and a nearby standing column saved him for a probable broken leg. Looking down into the hole, the investigators sighted ancient furnishings in a basement filled with shallow standing water. It was decided that the cellar could wait for daylight before being explored.
At the far side of the chapel, the splash of white turned out to be a freshly painted symbol. A trio of Y-shaped lines formed a pyramid with an eye painted in its center. And although Joseph knew that both the pyramid and eye were potent occult symbols, this particular arrangement was unknown to him. Charlie snapped a photograph of the symbol while Joseph copied it into a small journal he carried. Scouring the area for more evidence uncovered a single set of footprints leading to and away from the paint, but no other indications of who painted the sigil. The three departed, planning to return when daylight was on their side…
I haven’t mentioned it here, but I’ve been given the opportunity to run Call of Cthulhu as the backup game in my local group whenever the current referee needs a break. Our first session was on July 10th and I’ll be running it again on August 14th. This is giving me the opportunity to try out some of the material to be featured in the upcoming Fight On! article as well as scratch my itch for non-fantasy roleplaying—which is very, very nice.
I’m keeping things simple, allowing much of the campaign to develop based on the investigators’ actions and interactions with the surrounding environs. For our first session, we had three PCs and I used the Call of Cthulhu Quick Start to get things rolling. This gave me the chance to finally run “The Haunted House” scenario that had launched a thousand campaigns and appeared in every edition of CoC ever produced. I’ve always wanted to run it, but whenever I had the chance, the players were already familiar with it. At long last, with three neonates to Call of Cthulhu around the table, I finally got my wish.
The players loved it and what was intended to be a one-shot got the official go ahead to be the alternate game. I’m already looking forward to the next session. Since I’m letting the campaign develop organically, there is the need to document the events of the sessions in more detail than I’m used to. Any one of the NPCs, events, or items encountered can have great influence down the line. What follows is the first installment of my recollection of the inaugural session’s events. It quite long, so I’ve split it into several posts. If you are adverse to post game reports, you may want to skip the next few postings here at Secret Antiquities.
Also, be advised that many spoilers for “The Haunted House” scenario (later changed to “The Haunting”) appear below. If you’ve never played through that investigation, you may want to skip these posts as well. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy this recounting of a most successful gaming session…
The year was 1920. The Great War was over and the Spanish Flu was in its death throes. Faced with so many reminders of their own mortality, it is no wonder that humanity found itself caught up in the Spiritualism movement, convinced that the shroud that separated the living and the dead could be breached by the common man. Séances, salons, and orators expounding on the secrets of the dead drew great numbers, especially in the pastoral town of Ashton, NY.
Moving amongst this local Spiritualist scene were three simple men, different in background and standing, but brought into friendly acquaintance by a shared interest in supernatural matters. Having become familiar through the regular séances held at Madam Grace’s riverside home, Chuck Adams, Joseph Bronowski, and Charlie Kovelček demonstrated that Spiritualism was no elitist pursuit. They were not learned men: Mr. Adams was one of a dying breed, a hunter and trapper who eked out a living in the wooded Catskills much like the settlers of old, relying on his wits and outdoormanship to earn his keep. Mr. Bronowski was also a man of the common clay, a farmer whose small parcel of land outside of Ashton’s limits provided him with his livelihood. Only Mr. Kovelček dwelt full time in town, earning his daily bread as a private detective specializing in photographing citizens engaged in activities they’d prefer to keep out of the public eye.
The events that took place on and around the week of October 5th-12th, 1920 began with a phone call to Charlie Kovelček. The man on the other end was Mr. Fletcher Dobbs, a well-to-do local entrepreneur who owned and leased several properties around Ashton. Mr. Dobbs was a lodge brother to Charlie’s cousin, Adam, and that family member has suggested his shamus cousin after hearing of Mr. Dobbs’ recent troubles. Hesitant to speak in more detail over the phone, Mr. Dobbs arranged a meeting with Charlie the following day at Joe’s Cup & Saucer, a popular diner on Palisade Ave. Mr. Dobbs suggested that if Charlie had any associates knowledgeable about inexplicable events he might wish to bring them along.
At 1 PM the following day, Charlie, Chuck, and Joseph sat at a booth at Joe’s awaiting their would-be employer. Mr. Dobbs arrived precisely on time, sliding through the door at Joe’s like a predatory fish swimming amongst guppies. His suit was pressed, his hair immaculate, and his pencil-moustache as neat as a scalpel incision. He spotted the trio instantly and took a seat in the booth.
His problem was simple in theory: Misfortune had struck a young Eye-talian couple, the Macarios, renting one of his properties on 1735 Willow St. in the questionable neighborhood of Drybog. The husband had gone inexplicitly mad a year ago, leaving the young mother alone at home with two young boys. Then, one month ago and just as abruptly, the mother had tried to stab the children to death. The boys fled the house with minor injuries and the police arrested the woman immediately thereafter. Both she and her husband were now patients at the Frost Hollow Asylum some hours south of town.
Mr. Dobbs admitted that he had heard certain rumors about the property prior to his purchase of it three years ago, but the house’s price was simply too good to pass up. He had done some minor renovations before renting it to the unlucky Macarios two years ago. In the wake of the recent events, Dobbs stated that he had heard the neighbors say that Mrs. Macario wouldn’t go into a certain second floor bedroom and that each family member claimed to have glimpsed an indistinct humanoid form with burning eyes in the home on different occasions.
This left Dobbs in an unfortunate situation. Although dismissive of the tales that the home was haunted, he was nevertheless unwilling to rent the property out again without getting to bottom of things. When he had complained to his lodge brother, he was given Charlie’s number and told that he was reliable, discrete, and had some familiarity with unusual phenomenon. If Mr. Kovelček, Mr. Bronowski, and Mr. Adams were willing to investigate the building and determine what was going on (and, should it prove to be more than simple hallucinations, deal with the problem), they would be paid a princely sum of $20 a day plus a $100 bonus on settling the problem to Mr. Dobbs’ satisfaction. With money like that being offered, the trio could hardly pass on the offer and readily accepted.
As it was mid-afternoon by the time their meeting adjourned, the men decided that a quick trip to the Ashton Hall of Records was all they had time for and piled into Charlie’s Model T. Passing by the New Town Hall, an impressive Greek Revival edifice that was completed, but now the subject of an investigation on official misappropriation of funds, the men pulled up in front of Old Town Hall, a former river captain’s palatial home turned public building. Descending down to the basement, they waved to Cecile, the records clerk, and began requesting public documents pertaining to the property at 1735 Willow.
After four hours of requests and pouring over the public records (and a very kind records clerk keeping the office open after closing), they had discovered scant information regarding the property. It had been constructed in 1835 by a prosperous merchant named Meriwether, but he sold the property soon thereafter to a Mr. Walter Corbitt, esquire after falling ill. Corbitt seemed to have remained in the home until at least 1852 when his neighbors brought a lawsuit against him, seeking to evict him from the neighborhood “in consequence of his surious [sic] habits and unauspicious demeanor.” The trio was unable to learn the outcome of the lawsuit before Cecile insisted the Hall of Records was closed for the evening.
With a little daylight remaining, the investigators decided to drive past the Willow St. location to glimpse the house firsthand. The house stood in Drybog, a section of former swampland drained in the early 1800s to make room for the expanding town. It remained a lower class neighborhood despite attempts to gentrify the area. A pair of recently constructed office buildings flanked the saltbox Dutch Colonial building, making it seem like an old, angry dog lurking between towering oaks. The neighboring buildings were all large homes that had been partitioned into separate small apartments rented by immigrant families or the nearly destitute. The only sign of life was a small newspaper and cigar stand that was in the process of closing.
The three stopped to chat with the proprietor of the newsstand who introduced himself as Jim Dooley, a resident of Drybog for over twenty years. The amicable Mr. Dooley was able to provide more information on the house and its unlucky former residents. In 1909, three people died in the Sheehan family, the residents of the property at that time. In 1914, the Schulyers lived in the home. Tragedy struck when their oldest boy, Bill, went crazy and killed himself with a butcher’s knife. And in ’17 or ’18, a third family had took residency, but moved out almost immediately after. The investigators thanked the loquacious Mr. Dooley before heading to their separate residences with the intent to start the investigation anew on the morrow.
Wednesday saw them back at the Hall of Records, this time searching for more information on Corbitt and the lawsuit. To speed up their efforts, Chuck Adams decided to check the “morgue” at the Ashton Sentinel, the local daily newspaper, to see if he could uncover any additional information regarding the house during the years between 1852 and 1909. Unfortunately for Mr. Adams, the clerk at the Sentinel was Wesley Carroll, a notorious stick-in-the-mud who was unwilling to let anyone down into the paper’s morgue unless they bore a letter of reference from the Mayor or a phone call from the Sentinel’s editor. Even Mr. Adam’s generous offer of $5 to look the other way failed to alter the prissy clerk’s resolve. Chuck departed and rejoined his fellows back at the Hall of Records.
After being informed by Cecile that she would not be remaining open for one second after 5 PM, the three delved back into the public record. The search was long and painstaking, but fruitful. It was discovered that Corbitt won the lawsuit that attempted to drive him out of the area. In addition, they learned that he died in 1866 and that the executor of his will was a Reverend Michael Thomas, pastor of the Chapel of Contemplation & Church of Our Lord Granter of Secrets. Further research determined that the Chapel closed in 1912 after an unspecified police action against the church. As it was getting late (and Cecile was giving them an evil glare), the three decided to drive past the Church before calling it an night. They traveled once again to the Drybog section of town and found the Chapel’s address at 11 West Creek Street.
West Creek Street ran through an even gloomier and more deserted section of the neighborhood than Willow St. Boarded-up windows faced the leave-strewn road and the Chapel turned out to be nothing more than collapsing masonry walls in the middle of an overgrown lot. Parking their cars, the investigators cautiously approached the falling stone walls and spread out. A splash of white deep inside the former church caught their attention and they entered to discover what it was. As they crossed the decrepit floor, a portion of the rotten boards gave way beneath Chuck and nearly dropped him into the damp cellar beneath the former chapel. Only his quick wits and a nearby standing column saved him for a probable broken leg. Looking down into the hole, the investigators sighted ancient furnishings in a basement filled with shallow standing water. It was decided that the cellar could wait for daylight before being explored.
At the far side of the chapel, the splash of white turned out to be a freshly painted symbol. A trio of Y-shaped lines formed a pyramid with an eye painted in its center. And although Joseph knew that both the pyramid and eye were potent occult symbols, this particular arrangement was unknown to him. Charlie snapped a photograph of the symbol while Joseph copied it into a small journal he carried. Scouring the area for more evidence uncovered a single set of footprints leading to and away from the paint, but no other indications of who painted the sigil. The three departed, planning to return when daylight was on their side…
Monday, February 6, 2012
October Country Playtest
With my “to do” list of projects growing shorter, I had time
this weekend to return to the October Country, picking up the game where we
last left it some months ago. At that session, the PCs headed out to the Crow
Tree Asylum in search of agents of The Silence, a cabal dedicated to keeping
knowledge in the hands of those privileged enough to afford it. There, in the
crumbling brick hallway of the madhouse’s surviving wing, they encountered a
pair of humans and several Gell hired thugs engaging in a thaumaturgical rite
around Crow Tree’s surviving shock-treatment chair. Too late to stop the rite,
the party found themselves in a desperate battle with a writhing
madness. One of the PCs fell victim to a laughter enchantment cast by their
opponents, while another went near catatonic by the writhing madness’ touch. A
third was incapacitated by his wounds, leaving the party’s magician to flee
from the asylum before he too could be wounded or driven mad. That’s where
Sunday’s game picked up.
The magician fled back to the rickety dock at the base of
the hill upon which the gutted asylum stood. He leaped onto the hired skiff the
party employed to take them to the archaic madhouse, yelling at their boatman,
Te Mouse, to row the hell out of there. As they departed the dock, the shrill
howls of madness echoed down the hill, growing louder by the minute.
Despite his best efforts, it was clear that Te Mouse could
not row fast enough to escape the creature of Nightmare coming down the hill.
In desperation, the boatman edged the craft into the high weeds and witches’
beard moss that lined the shore. There, with the magician’s help, they camouflaged
the skiff as best they could and waited for the inevitable. Gazing over the
gunwales of the boat, the two watched as the madness reached the dock and then
drifted over the river, making a serpentine journey up the river towards the
City of Midnight. The spirit took no notice of the hidden boat and soon
disappeared around a bend in the river. With that puissant foe gone, an attempt
to rescue the rest of the party was considered, and Te Mouse knew just where
they could get some reinforcements…
Back inside the asylum, the three remaining PCs awoke to
find themselves hog-tied and placed in the mildewed and dilapidated cells that
once held the mad. From the hallway outside, they heard a gruff human voice
talking with a rumbling, crude one that spoke an unfamiliar tongue. They
deduced that the asylum was being abandoned and that they were being entrusted
into the not-so-delicate care of the Gell, possible to be sold into slavery or
simply drowned in the backwaters of the swamp. Things looked grim.
Meanwhile, Te Mouse rowed the boat to a small hunting camp
located along one of the myriad bayas that threaded their way through the
Snakewater. There, he introduced the party’s magician to his “dree brudders:
Claude, Maurice, and Skeeter.” The trio, always spoiling for a fight, was
willing to assist in the rescue for a bottle of liquor each and happily climbed
aboard the skiff. Prior to departing, the party wizard performed a divination
of future events and saw an image of his three compatriots bound and helpless
in the bow of a flat-bottomed swamp boat poled by a pair of Gell. It looked
like his friends were soon going to be transported from the asylum and with
this as an impellent, the rescue party labored hard at the oars to take them
back the way they came.
Inside the asylum, the three captive were roughly forced to
their feet and duck-marched outside and down towards a creek winding its way
past the asylum’s western edge. There, the Gell uncovered a secreted swamp boat
and herded the captives onto it. Loading the boat with provisions and captured
gear, the Gell shoved off into the twilight, they conveyance lit by a pair of
burning brands in the stern of the boat.
At the juncture of the creek and the river, the rescue party
saw the Gell’s torches heading towards them and scrambled out of the boat to
lay an ambuscade. As the hulking brutes’ skiff drew closer, the three swamp
hunters and the magician struck, firing crossbow bolts at the Gell’s arbalester
and leaping up out of the water to strike with knife and club. A pitched battle
erupted, but the Gell’s armor fended off the worst of the blows. In
desperation, the party’s magician leaped over the creek and landed behind the Gell
poling the boat. Before it could react, it was knocked unconscious by blackjack
and tumbled into the tea-colored water. With the odds now greatly against it,
the remaining Gell was swiftly dispatched and the captives freed.
The swamp brothers departed, loaded down with the Gell’s
arms and armor, as well as a sizeable portion of the coinage found in the boat.
They left on good terms with the PCs and may someday again cross their paths
should the krewe ever venture into the bayas of the Snakewater. Te Mouse was
willing to wait awhile longer before returning back to the City of Midnight,
allowing the PCs to explore the asylum. Unfortunately, night had fallen and, lacking
any means of illumination, they were only able to discern that the asylum was
indeed abandoned and that the shock treatment chair was unnaturally cold to the
touch. With one of their number acquainted with Nightmarish Lore, they deduced
that this coldness was the result of the seat being used as a conduit into the
Nightmare, drawing forth the writhing madness to serve the Silence’s malevolent
designs. The party climbed back into Te Mouse’s boat and returned to Midnight
some hours later.
Arriving back in the city, they discovered the nocturnal
metropolis alive with festivities and commerce. The party decided to spend some
of their hard-earned coin, visiting a hardware store, a disreputable
outdoorsman’s shop, and a tannery, acquiring equipment, armor, and illicit
armaments they expect will come in handy on future expeditions. Aside from
being shadowed by a trio of Midnight’s criminal element, who decided against
engaging in banditry on the party, their shopping trip was uneventful. After a
brief supper bought from one of the city’s roving vendors, the band returned to
their erstwhile employer’s book shop in the warehouse district.
They arrived to find the shop a burned ruin, its timbers and
ashes still smoking in the cool night. From a pair of homeless lushes, the
party learned that the shop was set alight not many hours ago, seemingly by its
owner, who howled that the books were stealing his thoughts before committing
arson and perishing in the fire. A trip to the local fire station confirmed
this and they learned the city militia had confiscated the shop owner’s body
for the duration of the investigation. Their efforts to view the body came to
naught at the militia post, and so they rented accommodations at a neighborhood
flophouse before deciding their next course of action.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
FLAILing Around in Stonehell
An account of last evening's FLAILSNAILS game with David of the Tower of the Archmage and run by Nicholas Mizer. You can read Nick the Pick's version here.
In the days following his journey to the wild coast of Cornwall, Lemmikäinen, that enigmatic elf who claimed Hyperborean descent, was seen visiting some of more wretched dives along the London waterfront, speaking in hushed conference with men and other races of low character and sinister morals. Having acquired a small sailing ship and its crew, Lemmikäinen’s monthly expenses had grown ten-fold and unpaid sailors are notoriously difficult to trust. If he wished to continue his ownership of the vessel, money—and large sums of it—would have to be acquired soon.
In the days following his journey to the wild coast of Cornwall, Lemmikäinen, that enigmatic elf who claimed Hyperborean descent, was seen visiting some of more wretched dives along the London waterfront, speaking in hushed conference with men and other races of low character and sinister morals. Having acquired a small sailing ship and its crew, Lemmikäinen’s monthly expenses had grown ten-fold and unpaid sailors are notoriously difficult to trust. If he wished to continue his ownership of the vessel, money—and large sums of it—would have to be acquired soon.
In the riverside taverns, Lemmikäinen heard tales of an
ancient and crumbling prison located in a distant realm. If the rumors were
true, great riches awaited those brave enough to face the former gaol’s
monstrous inhabitants. A clandestine meeting with a one-eyed mummy smuggler
from Cairo resulted in the northern elf’s acquisition of a faded map purportedly
showing the location of the Island of Doors, a small, rocky islet situated off
the southern coast.
The Island of Doors was legend for the many odd,
free-standing portals that stood along its landscape, each rumored to lead to a
foreign and oft-times alien shore. Gathering his crew, Lemmikäinen set sail for
the Island. Despite fog-shrouded waters and strange tides, the expedition
located the islet where the map claimed it lay. Landing upon the rocky strand, Lemmikäinen
consulted a small, crimson-bound book filled with weird sigils and signs,
seeking the proper one that would designate the door he sought. A brief survey
of the Island revealed the portal that would take him to the lands in which the
moldering prison—referred to in tales as “Stonehell”—was to be found. Stepping
through the weather-beaten door of unfamiliar wood, Lemmikäinen left this
world.
The elf found himself in a small town that showed all the
signs of a stagnant economy and lack of civilized comforts. Despite his unfamiliarity
with this new world, it was a small matter to locate a tavern where
professional fortune-hunters held court in a dank, stinking taproom. In that
place, Lemmikäinen met a human fighting-man with the unfortunate moniker of “Nick
the Pike,” undoubtedly earned by his acumen with a pole-ax. Nick was organizing
a venture into Stonehell to seek some talisman a local shaman or preacher had
tasked an acquaintance with recovering. Having little interest in such
backwater trinkets, but a great desire to fill his dwindling coffers, Lemmikäinen
agreed to accompany Nick and his band of hired men-at-arms and link boy into
the old prison. After acquiring some hounds from a bumpkin cult’s dog temple,
the party headed into the hills where the dungeon lay waiting.
Near the entrance, Lemmikäinen and cohorts detected a
returning band of adventurers, some bearing wounds from their own sojourn into
the dungeon. As they were unburdened with obvious treasure, Lemmikäinen’s party
chose to fade behind cover and allow them to pass without confrontation. After
they vanished around a trail bend, the elf, pike-man, and hirelings entered the
dungeon proper.
With Nick’s knowledge of the dungeon gained during a previous delve, the party swiftly found their destination: a place called the Quiet Halls. Prior to entrance into these corridors, they encountered a solitary orc, who Lemmikäinen pressed for information. The bestial creature warned them that the Quiet Halls were roamed by the un-dead and Lemmikäinen cursed their lack of clergy amongst the party’s ranks. After revealing that some feud existed between the orcs and Stonehell’s goblins, the orc was allowed to leave with a silver or two for his troubles.
Entering the Quite Halls, the band followed the trail Nick’s
previous party had blazed, avoiding a known pit trap and discovering an odd
hall that bore ominous scorch marks and a bovine statue of iron. Pressing past
this strange sculpture, the party found a large hall beyond. At least two
passages granted entrance to its dark interior and upon reaching the
southernmost one, the band hurled blazing brands into the darkness to reveal
its contents. From out of the gloom, poured un-dead: skeletons and zombies
numbering a score or more!
The party was forced to hack their way through an undead throng to avoid being surrounded by the stinking, clacking animations. They fought a running battle back north, Lemmikäinen firing shaft after shaft of keen-edged arrows into the horde until the party reached the pit trap they had passed. There, at the far side of the cavity’s edge, they stood, forming a shield wall against the dead.
The first few skeletons stumbled across the trap’s cover,
springing the pit and causing them to tumble into the darkness below. The
zombies in the horde’s rear ranks shuffled mindlessly ahead, plowing more
skeletons into the shaft. The party met each oncoming wave with spears,
halberds, and arrows, whittling their numbers down until only the zombies
remained. These creatures hungrily hurled themselves across the abyss, some
plummeting down the pit, while others collided with the shield wall and began
gnawing upon the hired men-at-arms. One hireling was pulled to his doom by the
shambling horror that consumed him, but with their superior position and
tactics, it was only a matter of time before they prevailed and the last zombie
laid low.
The horde defeated, the party returned to the great hall
from which the undead emerged, but found it empty but for bats and pillars.
Several corridors departed the room, and the band headed north, passing an iron
door and crossing an intersecting passage. A wooden door was opened and an
ancient embalming chamber was found beyond. Deciding to exit the dungeon while
their luck held, the party gathered anything of seeming value, loading down Lemmikäinen’s
magical conveyance to haul the items of questionable worth back to the surface.
Negotiations would be necessary with the local merchants before Lemmikäinen saw
any wealth from his venture, but he did acquire a set of oddly-shaped embalming
tools as a souvenir of his journey into the dungeon known as Stonehell. He
currently awaits his share of the booty, pondering whether to remain in the
place or seek out new realms in need of exploration and tomb-robbery.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Ka-Ching!
As a rule, I do not fall into the category of a Monty Haul-type referee. I can be downright stingy, in fact. My players can attest that they’ve gone into Stonehell and come back out with the pocket change that a pair of sentries had on them. Sometimes they’re even operating at a loss when they go delving.
Not today though. At our first session since the holiday break, the party found two of the largest treasure hordes on the second level of the dungeon. The amount of money and experience they hauled out was damn near obscene. Because of this, they actually ran into the rule that stipulates a PC can never advance more than a single level as a result of an adventure—something which has occurred only one or two times in my games in the three decades I’ve been playing.
Watching them deal with the logistical problem of getting the sheer amount of coinage they stumbled onto back to the surface was extremely entertaining. Rations went flying, coils of rope were discarded, torches jettisoned, and all that dungeon trash that adventurers tend to accumulate (“I take the orcs’ longswords! We can sell them back in town.”) got dumped without ceremony. When all was said and done, only two of the six PCs had a weapon in hand—the rest had their mitts filled with sacks.
They crawled back to the surface at the breakneck speed of 30’ a turn, were almost robbed by a gang of bugbears, dodged kobold javelins, crossed the Pit of Great Annoyance on a rickety ladder, and faced a mass of seven zombies that stood between them and the stairs to the surface, but they made it out alive and filthy rich. Of course, the next time they might not be so lucky, but this uncertainty is one of the more enjoyable factors about the old style of gaming. There are few attempts to balance risk or reward in the early editions, so any trip could end in a windfall or a wipeout. It is that uncertainty that makes me come back for more, both as a player and a referee. I wonder why anyone would want it otherwise, but it takes all types I suppose.
After all the PC deaths that have occurred and the near poverty the adventurers endured since the campaign began, it’s great to see them have a big win. The power level of the campaign is slowly growing, which not only adds to the survivability of the PCs, but also gives me greater leeway with what I can introduce into the campaign—and I have some interesting plans…
All in all, today was a good day for gaming and it was precisely what I needed to get me to refocus after the three weeks off. I’m looking forward to next week’s session. I see an overland journey on the horizon, something we haven’t done since the original campaign world. The sandbox is waiting for the PCs…and some hexes are hungry.
Not today though. At our first session since the holiday break, the party found two of the largest treasure hordes on the second level of the dungeon. The amount of money and experience they hauled out was damn near obscene. Because of this, they actually ran into the rule that stipulates a PC can never advance more than a single level as a result of an adventure—something which has occurred only one or two times in my games in the three decades I’ve been playing.
Watching them deal with the logistical problem of getting the sheer amount of coinage they stumbled onto back to the surface was extremely entertaining. Rations went flying, coils of rope were discarded, torches jettisoned, and all that dungeon trash that adventurers tend to accumulate (“I take the orcs’ longswords! We can sell them back in town.”) got dumped without ceremony. When all was said and done, only two of the six PCs had a weapon in hand—the rest had their mitts filled with sacks.
They crawled back to the surface at the breakneck speed of 30’ a turn, were almost robbed by a gang of bugbears, dodged kobold javelins, crossed the Pit of Great Annoyance on a rickety ladder, and faced a mass of seven zombies that stood between them and the stairs to the surface, but they made it out alive and filthy rich. Of course, the next time they might not be so lucky, but this uncertainty is one of the more enjoyable factors about the old style of gaming. There are few attempts to balance risk or reward in the early editions, so any trip could end in a windfall or a wipeout. It is that uncertainty that makes me come back for more, both as a player and a referee. I wonder why anyone would want it otherwise, but it takes all types I suppose.
After all the PC deaths that have occurred and the near poverty the adventurers endured since the campaign began, it’s great to see them have a big win. The power level of the campaign is slowly growing, which not only adds to the survivability of the PCs, but also gives me greater leeway with what I can introduce into the campaign—and I have some interesting plans…
All in all, today was a good day for gaming and it was precisely what I needed to get me to refocus after the three weeks off. I’m looking forward to next week’s session. I see an overland journey on the horizon, something we haven’t done since the original campaign world. The sandbox is waiting for the PCs…and some hexes are hungry.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Watchfires & Thrones Session #11
Although slightly covered in the video, the complete text recap of this week's shennanigans is up on the Archive of the Rotted Moon.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday's Game
The recap of yesterday's game is now live over on the Archive of the Rotted Moon. Looks like the Temple of the Goat wouldn't allow the party to leave without at least one more corpse to satiate it's unholy hunger.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Watchfires & Thrones Session #6
Obsidian Portal isn’t working out for me so I’m going to be switching to another format in order to organize and preserve all my Watchfires & Thrones-related materials. In the meanwhile, I’m posting the recap of Sunday’s game here so that the absent player can catch up for next week.
Leaving the Temple of the Black Goat behind them for the nonce, the party trudged back to Rhuun to recruit and reequip, pausing in the journey only long enough to bury the earthly remains of Reddannon and Yodahlla under low cairns in the Hills of Scowling Bones. After an uneventful trip, the walled settlement soon appeared out of the desert haze, with the blue, red, and bronze of the town’s guardsmen visible in the late morning’s heat.
Even before they reached the gate, the party heard the sounds of music, laughter, and happy chatter floating through the air. One of the guardsmen halted them at the entrance and informed the adventurers that the Feast of Erion was underway in Rhuun and a therefore a feast tax and arms peace were in effect. After paying eight silver smerduks each to enter (plus five copper groats to cover Gladys the mule) and acquiescing to having their weapons bound, the party stepped through the gate and onto the crowded Street of Cobras.
Amongst the crowd of celebrants, snake charmers, dancing girls, acrobats, mummers, and the like were other itinerant adventurers, each of whom had recently arrived in Rhuun: the fighting brothers Xander and Lyrax Tonn, the novice sorcerer, Tigir, and Kallen Doomsong, another fighting man (and apparently, a gambler and thief).
Once within the town wall, the party wanted to head directly to Seno the Jeweler in order to see what the necklaces they recovered from the fungal dead were worth. Before they could attempt to push through the crowded streets, however, the cry of “The procession is coming!” rang through the air. The street before them cleared swiftly as the crowd moved to either side of the avenue.
From around the corner came an odd parade. Four men dressed solely in loincloths, sandals, and brazen, full-headed dog masks appeared carrying a litter. Atop this sedan rode a woman dressed in vibrant white, her features hidden by gauzy veils. Behind them came numerous other men and women, each dressed in white and wearing half-face masks that also depicted the face and muzzle of dogs. A pair of draft lizards, each adorned with ribbons and bells, and ridden by a pair of men brought up the rear.
The party was prepared to wait for the procession to pass before venturing forth to take care of pecuniary business, but they soon found themselves in the midst of a conflict. Two men stepped from the crowd and halted the procession in the middle of the street. These two men confronted the lead litter bearer and insults were exchanged between the men and the bearer. As the crowd went silent, the adventurers could overhear the names “Bashari” and “Sulaj” mixed amongst the insult. Insults turned to pushing and shoving, and the threat of physical blows loomed nigh. It might have spilled over into violence had not two more men, each wearing a red turban, emerged from the crowd to try and broker a peace. Their efforts were initially rebuffed by the two instigators with words that they needed no help from “an Etar when it comes to dealing with Bashari filth!” Bannath, a cleric of Yg and enemy of Tarim, (whose church Erion is associated with) stepped close to the confrontation and did his best to stir the pot, hoping to incite a riot in which he could strike a blow against the Tarimites. Xander Tonn, a charismatic soul, attempted to calm the situation before it grew out of hand.
With things teetering on the edge of a knife, a scream arose from near the rear of the procession. Looking in that direction, the adventurers (and everyone else) saw that one of the draft lizards was now riderless: his master and handler, a man in his early sixties, lay on the dusty street after having fallen from the saddle. Whether overcome by the heat, the excitement, or perhaps his aging heart, the man lay unmoving on the ground.
The now-uncontrolled draft lizard—a beast the size of a rhino and looking like a cross between that animal and a Komodo dragon—began grunting and bellowing, shifting about nervously as the crowd backed away. Then, with a bass rumble from deep in its throat, the normally placid lizard charged the crowd, tossing bodies about like drop-me-sticks. The crowd screamed and ran—with the exception of the adventuring types who held their ground against the rampaging beast. In the rush to clear the crowded street, the four litter bearers dropped their passenger to the ground.
Between a barrage of arrows, sling stones, spears, and magic missiles, the party was able to bring down the large lizard before too many were injured and killed. In the aftermath, they discovered that they had saved the life of Shasira Bashari, who was the woman in white that had been dropped in the rush. She is apparently the wife of some powerful individual and promised to seek out the party at Qytuul’s caravansary later to offer them a proper reward for their actions.
The party departed the scene (after learning that the lizard’s rider was indeed dead) and paid a visit to Seno. There, despite efforts to convince me otherwise, they learned that the necklaces were of minor value. Multiplied by twelve, however, and with the much more valuable torc thrown in, the party walked out with a lot of jingle in their coin pouches.
Which led to the predictable purchasing of oil and animals—the two great combat upgrades of low-level adventurers everywhere. A guard dog, a rat, and a Mhyrakian watch lizard were all purchased, as was a barrel of oil to pour down into a certain fungus-filled crypt. Some armor upgrades were done and the party hired their comrades-in-arms from the street fight to fill out their ranks. I was busy stating up the dog and lizard during the hiring phase, but let me say that the terms of employment sounded pretty lousy to me. Had I not chimed in, I’m thinking that the party would have taken 25% of the newcomers’ experience point rewards as well!
Now that they were restocked and replenished in numbers, the party, after finding it most difficult to get lodging for the night in the festival-jammed town, decided to head straight back to the Temple of the Goat. They left a note behind, which told their would-be benefactress to leave their reward with Anwar (who remained behind to crack the code of the Brazen Tablets of the Viscous Mother).
On the return trip to the Temple, they ran across the path of SOMETHING in the desert night, but wisely chose to keep their nose out of strange monsters’ business unless imperiled by it. By 4 PM the following day, they had returned to the complex and were ready to finally venture into the pyramid itself.
After a quick side trip to pour 55 gallons of oil down a certain well and set it alight, the party approached the portal that granted entrance into the walled courtyard which held the stepped pyramid. A grotesque face adorned the iron doors and no keyhole was visible. After a quick once-over, they produced the symbol of Ishnigarrab and waved it before the values—which swung open with a groan. Beyond them lay a bricked courtyard and a few smaller statues of the hermaphroditic god. After learning that the gates don’t stay open long, the whole party ventured into the courtyard. A door on the side of the pyramid faced the courtyard’s entrance, and two gargoyles looked down on them from the corners of the stepped temple’s second tier. A loosed arrow failed to spur the gargoyles into action so the party prepared to enter the vulva-shaped doorway before them
That when the dogs came creeping around the sides of the pyramid and a fight broke out.
Although they managed to overcome the Hounds of the Great Mother, the sorcerer Tigir was brought to the edge of death when he waded into combat—perhaps unwisely—and Xander Tonn was slain when one of the Hounds landed a particularly nasty critical hit on the young fighter (12 points of damage!). After taking a break to bandage their wounds, quaff some wine, and wake up Hicks—err, Tigir—the party looted their dead and headed into the temple…
Leaving the Temple of the Black Goat behind them for the nonce, the party trudged back to Rhuun to recruit and reequip, pausing in the journey only long enough to bury the earthly remains of Reddannon and Yodahlla under low cairns in the Hills of Scowling Bones. After an uneventful trip, the walled settlement soon appeared out of the desert haze, with the blue, red, and bronze of the town’s guardsmen visible in the late morning’s heat.
Even before they reached the gate, the party heard the sounds of music, laughter, and happy chatter floating through the air. One of the guardsmen halted them at the entrance and informed the adventurers that the Feast of Erion was underway in Rhuun and a therefore a feast tax and arms peace were in effect. After paying eight silver smerduks each to enter (plus five copper groats to cover Gladys the mule) and acquiescing to having their weapons bound, the party stepped through the gate and onto the crowded Street of Cobras.
Amongst the crowd of celebrants, snake charmers, dancing girls, acrobats, mummers, and the like were other itinerant adventurers, each of whom had recently arrived in Rhuun: the fighting brothers Xander and Lyrax Tonn, the novice sorcerer, Tigir, and Kallen Doomsong, another fighting man (and apparently, a gambler and thief).
Once within the town wall, the party wanted to head directly to Seno the Jeweler in order to see what the necklaces they recovered from the fungal dead were worth. Before they could attempt to push through the crowded streets, however, the cry of “The procession is coming!” rang through the air. The street before them cleared swiftly as the crowd moved to either side of the avenue.
From around the corner came an odd parade. Four men dressed solely in loincloths, sandals, and brazen, full-headed dog masks appeared carrying a litter. Atop this sedan rode a woman dressed in vibrant white, her features hidden by gauzy veils. Behind them came numerous other men and women, each dressed in white and wearing half-face masks that also depicted the face and muzzle of dogs. A pair of draft lizards, each adorned with ribbons and bells, and ridden by a pair of men brought up the rear.
The party was prepared to wait for the procession to pass before venturing forth to take care of pecuniary business, but they soon found themselves in the midst of a conflict. Two men stepped from the crowd and halted the procession in the middle of the street. These two men confronted the lead litter bearer and insults were exchanged between the men and the bearer. As the crowd went silent, the adventurers could overhear the names “Bashari” and “Sulaj” mixed amongst the insult. Insults turned to pushing and shoving, and the threat of physical blows loomed nigh. It might have spilled over into violence had not two more men, each wearing a red turban, emerged from the crowd to try and broker a peace. Their efforts were initially rebuffed by the two instigators with words that they needed no help from “an Etar when it comes to dealing with Bashari filth!” Bannath, a cleric of Yg and enemy of Tarim, (whose church Erion is associated with) stepped close to the confrontation and did his best to stir the pot, hoping to incite a riot in which he could strike a blow against the Tarimites. Xander Tonn, a charismatic soul, attempted to calm the situation before it grew out of hand.
With things teetering on the edge of a knife, a scream arose from near the rear of the procession. Looking in that direction, the adventurers (and everyone else) saw that one of the draft lizards was now riderless: his master and handler, a man in his early sixties, lay on the dusty street after having fallen from the saddle. Whether overcome by the heat, the excitement, or perhaps his aging heart, the man lay unmoving on the ground.
The now-uncontrolled draft lizard—a beast the size of a rhino and looking like a cross between that animal and a Komodo dragon—began grunting and bellowing, shifting about nervously as the crowd backed away. Then, with a bass rumble from deep in its throat, the normally placid lizard charged the crowd, tossing bodies about like drop-me-sticks. The crowd screamed and ran—with the exception of the adventuring types who held their ground against the rampaging beast. In the rush to clear the crowded street, the four litter bearers dropped their passenger to the ground.
Between a barrage of arrows, sling stones, spears, and magic missiles, the party was able to bring down the large lizard before too many were injured and killed. In the aftermath, they discovered that they had saved the life of Shasira Bashari, who was the woman in white that had been dropped in the rush. She is apparently the wife of some powerful individual and promised to seek out the party at Qytuul’s caravansary later to offer them a proper reward for their actions.
The party departed the scene (after learning that the lizard’s rider was indeed dead) and paid a visit to Seno. There, despite efforts to convince me otherwise, they learned that the necklaces were of minor value. Multiplied by twelve, however, and with the much more valuable torc thrown in, the party walked out with a lot of jingle in their coin pouches.
Which led to the predictable purchasing of oil and animals—the two great combat upgrades of low-level adventurers everywhere. A guard dog, a rat, and a Mhyrakian watch lizard were all purchased, as was a barrel of oil to pour down into a certain fungus-filled crypt. Some armor upgrades were done and the party hired their comrades-in-arms from the street fight to fill out their ranks. I was busy stating up the dog and lizard during the hiring phase, but let me say that the terms of employment sounded pretty lousy to me. Had I not chimed in, I’m thinking that the party would have taken 25% of the newcomers’ experience point rewards as well!
Now that they were restocked and replenished in numbers, the party, after finding it most difficult to get lodging for the night in the festival-jammed town, decided to head straight back to the Temple of the Goat. They left a note behind, which told their would-be benefactress to leave their reward with Anwar (who remained behind to crack the code of the Brazen Tablets of the Viscous Mother).
On the return trip to the Temple, they ran across the path of SOMETHING in the desert night, but wisely chose to keep their nose out of strange monsters’ business unless imperiled by it. By 4 PM the following day, they had returned to the complex and were ready to finally venture into the pyramid itself.
After a quick side trip to pour 55 gallons of oil down a certain well and set it alight, the party approached the portal that granted entrance into the walled courtyard which held the stepped pyramid. A grotesque face adorned the iron doors and no keyhole was visible. After a quick once-over, they produced the symbol of Ishnigarrab and waved it before the values—which swung open with a groan. Beyond them lay a bricked courtyard and a few smaller statues of the hermaphroditic god. After learning that the gates don’t stay open long, the whole party ventured into the courtyard. A door on the side of the pyramid faced the courtyard’s entrance, and two gargoyles looked down on them from the corners of the stepped temple’s second tier. A loosed arrow failed to spur the gargoyles into action so the party prepared to enter the vulva-shaped doorway before them
That when the dogs came creeping around the sides of the pyramid and a fight broke out.
Although they managed to overcome the Hounds of the Great Mother, the sorcerer Tigir was brought to the edge of death when he waded into combat—perhaps unwisely—and Xander Tonn was slain when one of the Hounds landed a particularly nasty critical hit on the young fighter (12 points of damage!). After taking a break to bandage their wounds, quaff some wine, and wake up Hicks—err, Tigir—the party looted their dead and headed into the temple…
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Body Count Grows
I'll probaby have more to say about this session in the near future, but the recounting of Sunday's events is now up on the wiki's adventure log. Six party members died over the course of the day's explorations: four at the hands of the aforementioned Wrecking Crew and two underneath the tender caresses of animated statues.
I am not a referee who gets any pleasure from the deaths of characters. I really am the players' biggest cheerleader, but unfortunately characters do die, hopefully leaving the survivors a bit wiser in the process.
I am not a referee who gets any pleasure from the deaths of characters. I really am the players' biggest cheerleader, but unfortunately characters do die, hopefully leaving the survivors a bit wiser in the process.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
From Around the Watchfires: Session 4
We were down a player on Sunday when real life stepped in to intervene. As with the last recap, I had to write up an expanded version to make sure he's kept up to speed with the rest of the guys. Since I've been busy with spring and neglecting the blog, that recap will now follow so you loyal readers have something to peruse while I get the last bits of Spring Fever out of my system.
After a brief respite in the House of Altars and a hurried debate about whether to wait for more of their number to arrive from Rhuun or not, the party consisting of Bannath, Syl, Mars Markus, and Azerran returned to the slime- and moss-covered bunker-like building they had briefly reconnoitered, leaving Yodahlla and Gladys back at their newly-pitched camp. Not trusting the squat and slimy pile, Syl cautiously poked at its sandstone walls with his spear. His precaution was rewarded when a gray, viscous creature rose up from amongst the slimy moss and struck out like a desert asp. Its pseudopod was ill-aimed, however, and the party was easily able to enact a fighting withdrawal, peppering the gray ooze with missiles until it was slain.
Entering the building, the party discovered a simple room whose floor sloped slightly downwards towards a 10’ diameter shaft in the floor. A bas-relief carving of one of the temple’s ubiquitous tree-monsters adorned the wall behind the open shaft and a vine grew from out of that channel’s depths to wrap around one of the carving’s protruding tentacles. The party cautiously edged forward and quickly learned that the “vine” was actually a moss-encrusted and rusty chain. At the far end of the chain, 30’ down the shaft, a canvas-wrapped rectangular shape hung. Even in the dim torchlight, the party could discern that this item’s dimensions suggested it was a chest, perhaps one filled with booty!
A torch was dropped into the shaft and it briefly illuminated a ledge which ringed the shaft’s throat some forty or fifty feet down. As the torch flickered past, the party caught a glimpse of something lying atop the ledge, unmoving. After about 100’, the torch flickered out, but whether from hitting bottom, falling into water, or some other cause was unknown.
The party, although anxious to recover the supposed chest, grew uneasy with the setup and decided to take precautions against danger—which would have mixed results. After retrieving Gladys from the House of Altars, the party looped a coil of silk rope around the dangling chain and attached the other end to their trusty mule. Using Gladys as a—well, mule—they slowly started dragging the chain up from below, causing the wrapped chest to bang against the shaft’s unyielding stone sides as it rose. Unfortunately, the wet environment and age had weakened the wooden chest. A sharp crack was heard as the side of the box collided with the wall, followed quickly by the unmistakable sound of coins, lots of them, spilling out of the broken chest and into the void below. Despite their attempts to prevent the loss, the party watched in horror as a fountain of silver coins hemorrhaged from the ancient chest, gasping aloud when a glass bottle tumbled from the split chest and into the shaft as well. By the time the chest was safely in their hands, an estimated half of the chest’s contents had been lost.
Meanwhile, back at Rhuun, Reddannon and Mordakis had finished their duties at the shrine of Uun the Unknowable and returned to Qytuul’s caravanserai. There they encountered a bored Ravener, who was rethinking his decision to remain in town. He had made the acquaintance of an Old Blood warrior named Kliegeles and, as the two swapped tales in the caravanserai’s common room, grew antsy for adventure. After boldly suggesting that the Old Blood fighter accompany them on their expedition to the Temple of the Goat, Ravener, Reddannon, Mordakis, and now Kliegeles left town three hours behind the main group and headed north towards the Temple.
Speaking of the main party, they were determined to make the best of a bad situation and salvage as much wealth as they could. This meant someone had to go down into the shaft to investigate the ledge and what lay atop it. Mars Markus took this opportunity to sample from the effervescent puce-colored liquid that the bottle held and was pleased to discover a shaving nick he had incurred early in the day was suddenly healed. With the newly-found potion in his possession, Syl bravely stepped forward and volunteered to be lowered into the shaft. As Azerran covered him with a crossbow overhead, Syl slowly made his way down to the ledge below. After steadying himself, he discovered that the object they had briefly glimpsed as a rag-clad skeleton. A careful inspection of the corpse revealed an electrum ring of intricate geometric design, which Syl quickly acquired.
As the fighter was looting the dead, however, the air currents that had been whistling through the shaft suddenly increased. Throwing himself against the shaft’s wall to prevent being swept away should this breeze grow gale-like, Syl dropped his torch down into the shaft. As the rest of the party watched, they saw the flickering flames illuminate a writhing mass of albino tentacles rising quickly up the vertical tunnel. The torch suddenly vanished as a large parrot-like beak snapped it in half and consumed the burning morsel. Urged on by Syl’s commands to “get him out of here!”, Gladys and the rest of the party hauled up the warrior just ahead of the rising, alabaster-hued monstrosity. The party fled from the building as the mass of tentacles erupted from the pit, slamming the door behind them.
While the party ran screaming from the building, the smaller group of adventurers arrived at the edge of the foul lake that ringed the temple complex. In the bright moonlight, they could see a group of figures accompanied by a vaguely mule-shaped form exit one of the buildings. Rightfully guessing that this group was their comrades, the smaller party began making their way towards the building by walking the network of raised stone walkways that served as the complex’s “streets.”
Not far into the complex, the party found their way barred by three of the fanged and clawed frogs that had confronted the party previously. In the melee that erupted, Reddannon was almost slain and Mordakis and Kliegeles both took wounds before dispatching the beasts. Even the fortifying effects of wine and the binding of wounds were insufficient to restore the health of the adventurers, so, after rejoining their companions, the party decided to retire until daybreak.
The following day, the now-rested and recouped party decided to attempt to enter the large building they had previously tried to explore but were prevented from doing so by a seemingly-jammed door. Making their way around to the opposite side of the building, they first had to pass through a smaller L-shaped structure. Within that building, they discovered a single room which bore a large statue of a tree-monster and numerous obscene frescoes. Despite their efforts to uncover any of the building’s secrets, none were to be found.
Continuing onwards, they finally entered the largest of the outlying buildings. Inside, they discovered that the building was divided into three chambers. Each room told part of the temple’s history. In one room, they encountered painted bas-relief carvings that depicted the construction of the temple complex. Humans and tree-monsters worked side-by-side to raise massive stone blocks, overseen by a pair of red eyes which hovered in the sky overhead. Another room’s carvings showed the temple at its height of worship. Numerous humans intermixed with larger, less-defined forms knelt in obedience on the central plaza before the pyramid. The last room showed a scene that looked familiar to the party: The complex seemed abandoned, looking very much like it did at this time. Unsettling, however, a writhing mass of black-green tentacles were erupting from the entrance of the pyramid while Nihil, the Rotting Moon, hung in the night sky overhead, its face depicted in a skull-like visage. Grim portents, indeed.
Since nothing of monetary value had been unearthed, the party again debated the wisdom of venturing directly towards the pyramid and leaving the rest of the complex’s building for their anticipated exiting of the temple. Again, the majority argued that leaving unknown enemies at one’s back was ill planning, so the search of the outlying constructions continued.
As the party crossed the raised walkways towards the complex’s western end, they gasped as an enormous toad-like beast rose from the rank water’s near the stone path. Tentacles replaced the creature’s forelimbs and a sticky tongue wiggled in its gaping maw. It could only be a specimen of the legendary Toadhemoth! Despite their initial fears, the party quickly discovered that not all legends are true when a shower of missiles quickly slew the abomination before it got within striking distance (a mere 15 hit points was all the beast had, proving the Fates were again in the players’ favor).
The party pressed on and, despite being surprised by a sucker- and mouth-covered spider with a single baleful crimson eye in one of the complex’s ancillary buildings, they almost completed their survey of the complex. In one building, they discovered a floor that held four concentric rings which slowly turned in opposite directions to one another. Covered in alien sigils, the party could only suppose this device was perhaps a calendar, timer, or combination lock. Whatever it was, the wall carvings surrounding it depicted an otherworldly city being consumed by a thick, monster-filled mist, so the adventurers chose to leave the spinning rings alone for the moment.
At the very end of one section of pathway, the party entered a building whose walls bore images of slavering mouthed tree-monsters in the process of devouring helpless human meals. In the center of the single chamber was a capped well, its mouth covered by a simple stone plug with an iron pull-ring. Being adventurers, the party simply had to uncap it. Mordakis and Syl pulled the plug free and a vile, noxious odor pour out of the black pit below them. A series of hand holds were carved into the side of the well. A dropped torch revealed a bare stone floor some 30’ down and three ancient bones visible in the guttering flames. After tying a rope around himself and securing it to the plug’s iron ring, Mars Markus slowly made his way into the well…
After a brief respite in the House of Altars and a hurried debate about whether to wait for more of their number to arrive from Rhuun or not, the party consisting of Bannath, Syl, Mars Markus, and Azerran returned to the slime- and moss-covered bunker-like building they had briefly reconnoitered, leaving Yodahlla and Gladys back at their newly-pitched camp. Not trusting the squat and slimy pile, Syl cautiously poked at its sandstone walls with his spear. His precaution was rewarded when a gray, viscous creature rose up from amongst the slimy moss and struck out like a desert asp. Its pseudopod was ill-aimed, however, and the party was easily able to enact a fighting withdrawal, peppering the gray ooze with missiles until it was slain.
Entering the building, the party discovered a simple room whose floor sloped slightly downwards towards a 10’ diameter shaft in the floor. A bas-relief carving of one of the temple’s ubiquitous tree-monsters adorned the wall behind the open shaft and a vine grew from out of that channel’s depths to wrap around one of the carving’s protruding tentacles. The party cautiously edged forward and quickly learned that the “vine” was actually a moss-encrusted and rusty chain. At the far end of the chain, 30’ down the shaft, a canvas-wrapped rectangular shape hung. Even in the dim torchlight, the party could discern that this item’s dimensions suggested it was a chest, perhaps one filled with booty!
A torch was dropped into the shaft and it briefly illuminated a ledge which ringed the shaft’s throat some forty or fifty feet down. As the torch flickered past, the party caught a glimpse of something lying atop the ledge, unmoving. After about 100’, the torch flickered out, but whether from hitting bottom, falling into water, or some other cause was unknown.
The party, although anxious to recover the supposed chest, grew uneasy with the setup and decided to take precautions against danger—which would have mixed results. After retrieving Gladys from the House of Altars, the party looped a coil of silk rope around the dangling chain and attached the other end to their trusty mule. Using Gladys as a—well, mule—they slowly started dragging the chain up from below, causing the wrapped chest to bang against the shaft’s unyielding stone sides as it rose. Unfortunately, the wet environment and age had weakened the wooden chest. A sharp crack was heard as the side of the box collided with the wall, followed quickly by the unmistakable sound of coins, lots of them, spilling out of the broken chest and into the void below. Despite their attempts to prevent the loss, the party watched in horror as a fountain of silver coins hemorrhaged from the ancient chest, gasping aloud when a glass bottle tumbled from the split chest and into the shaft as well. By the time the chest was safely in their hands, an estimated half of the chest’s contents had been lost.
Meanwhile, back at Rhuun, Reddannon and Mordakis had finished their duties at the shrine of Uun the Unknowable and returned to Qytuul’s caravanserai. There they encountered a bored Ravener, who was rethinking his decision to remain in town. He had made the acquaintance of an Old Blood warrior named Kliegeles and, as the two swapped tales in the caravanserai’s common room, grew antsy for adventure. After boldly suggesting that the Old Blood fighter accompany them on their expedition to the Temple of the Goat, Ravener, Reddannon, Mordakis, and now Kliegeles left town three hours behind the main group and headed north towards the Temple.
Speaking of the main party, they were determined to make the best of a bad situation and salvage as much wealth as they could. This meant someone had to go down into the shaft to investigate the ledge and what lay atop it. Mars Markus took this opportunity to sample from the effervescent puce-colored liquid that the bottle held and was pleased to discover a shaving nick he had incurred early in the day was suddenly healed. With the newly-found potion in his possession, Syl bravely stepped forward and volunteered to be lowered into the shaft. As Azerran covered him with a crossbow overhead, Syl slowly made his way down to the ledge below. After steadying himself, he discovered that the object they had briefly glimpsed as a rag-clad skeleton. A careful inspection of the corpse revealed an electrum ring of intricate geometric design, which Syl quickly acquired.
As the fighter was looting the dead, however, the air currents that had been whistling through the shaft suddenly increased. Throwing himself against the shaft’s wall to prevent being swept away should this breeze grow gale-like, Syl dropped his torch down into the shaft. As the rest of the party watched, they saw the flickering flames illuminate a writhing mass of albino tentacles rising quickly up the vertical tunnel. The torch suddenly vanished as a large parrot-like beak snapped it in half and consumed the burning morsel. Urged on by Syl’s commands to “get him out of here!”, Gladys and the rest of the party hauled up the warrior just ahead of the rising, alabaster-hued monstrosity. The party fled from the building as the mass of tentacles erupted from the pit, slamming the door behind them.
While the party ran screaming from the building, the smaller group of adventurers arrived at the edge of the foul lake that ringed the temple complex. In the bright moonlight, they could see a group of figures accompanied by a vaguely mule-shaped form exit one of the buildings. Rightfully guessing that this group was their comrades, the smaller party began making their way towards the building by walking the network of raised stone walkways that served as the complex’s “streets.”
Not far into the complex, the party found their way barred by three of the fanged and clawed frogs that had confronted the party previously. In the melee that erupted, Reddannon was almost slain and Mordakis and Kliegeles both took wounds before dispatching the beasts. Even the fortifying effects of wine and the binding of wounds were insufficient to restore the health of the adventurers, so, after rejoining their companions, the party decided to retire until daybreak.
The following day, the now-rested and recouped party decided to attempt to enter the large building they had previously tried to explore but were prevented from doing so by a seemingly-jammed door. Making their way around to the opposite side of the building, they first had to pass through a smaller L-shaped structure. Within that building, they discovered a single room which bore a large statue of a tree-monster and numerous obscene frescoes. Despite their efforts to uncover any of the building’s secrets, none were to be found.
Continuing onwards, they finally entered the largest of the outlying buildings. Inside, they discovered that the building was divided into three chambers. Each room told part of the temple’s history. In one room, they encountered painted bas-relief carvings that depicted the construction of the temple complex. Humans and tree-monsters worked side-by-side to raise massive stone blocks, overseen by a pair of red eyes which hovered in the sky overhead. Another room’s carvings showed the temple at its height of worship. Numerous humans intermixed with larger, less-defined forms knelt in obedience on the central plaza before the pyramid. The last room showed a scene that looked familiar to the party: The complex seemed abandoned, looking very much like it did at this time. Unsettling, however, a writhing mass of black-green tentacles were erupting from the entrance of the pyramid while Nihil, the Rotting Moon, hung in the night sky overhead, its face depicted in a skull-like visage. Grim portents, indeed.
Since nothing of monetary value had been unearthed, the party again debated the wisdom of venturing directly towards the pyramid and leaving the rest of the complex’s building for their anticipated exiting of the temple. Again, the majority argued that leaving unknown enemies at one’s back was ill planning, so the search of the outlying constructions continued.
As the party crossed the raised walkways towards the complex’s western end, they gasped as an enormous toad-like beast rose from the rank water’s near the stone path. Tentacles replaced the creature’s forelimbs and a sticky tongue wiggled in its gaping maw. It could only be a specimen of the legendary Toadhemoth! Despite their initial fears, the party quickly discovered that not all legends are true when a shower of missiles quickly slew the abomination before it got within striking distance (a mere 15 hit points was all the beast had, proving the Fates were again in the players’ favor).
The party pressed on and, despite being surprised by a sucker- and mouth-covered spider with a single baleful crimson eye in one of the complex’s ancillary buildings, they almost completed their survey of the complex. In one building, they discovered a floor that held four concentric rings which slowly turned in opposite directions to one another. Covered in alien sigils, the party could only suppose this device was perhaps a calendar, timer, or combination lock. Whatever it was, the wall carvings surrounding it depicted an otherworldly city being consumed by a thick, monster-filled mist, so the adventurers chose to leave the spinning rings alone for the moment.
At the very end of one section of pathway, the party entered a building whose walls bore images of slavering mouthed tree-monsters in the process of devouring helpless human meals. In the center of the single chamber was a capped well, its mouth covered by a simple stone plug with an iron pull-ring. Being adventurers, the party simply had to uncap it. Mordakis and Syl pulled the plug free and a vile, noxious odor pour out of the black pit below them. A series of hand holds were carved into the side of the well. A dropped torch revealed a bare stone floor some 30’ down and three ancient bones visible in the guttering flames. After tying a rope around himself and securing it to the plug’s iron ring, Mars Markus slowly made his way into the well…
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