Mirror of the Ghost

It was the next day. Jacob (Chris), Hubert (Kevin), Gunter (Jeff), Mezmer (Shane), Cooper (Ian),  Gazala (Richard) were around. Fleur, Bernard, and Wonton marmaladed in their beds.

Jacob tended Mezmer's wounds after his dangerous exploits of the previous day. Gazala's wedding dress and the Mirror of the Ghost were placed in the party's bank vault (in Banque de Tunisie). 

Then Mezmer and Gazala headed off to the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie to do some research on the Mirror of the Ghost.

Cassandra la Belle, librarian
Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie

Cassandra, the librarian, recognized Mezmer as friend of that other chinetoque fellow (Wonton). She showed him the library's "Special Section", behind the half-metre thick steel doors. There were shelves of dusty tomes down here and five metal-bound books. The librarian told Mezmer the rumours that those books were not at all "safe", and it was alleged that they had driven other scholars mad with their unseemly knowledge. 

Mezmer spent the day researching everything he could on the Mirror of the Ghost. But there was very little.

That seemed to be a common case with mythos items - often unique, extremely deadly or did nothing, and no-one knows anything about them.

"Ce n'est pas un magasin de magie de donjons et dragons," said the librarian scathingly. "Et vous ne pouvez pas simplement lancer le sort 'Identify'." (You can't just cast the D&D "Identify" spell)

During that day, Dr Jacob went and spoke with Inspector Heroux about Tariq Nadir. Nadir didn't have a criminal record in Tunis. He was a landed noble from Algeria, and often visited Tunis. 

That evening, when Mezmer and Gazala got into the Mercedes, Gazala thought she saw a shadow, out of the corner of her eye, enter the car too. She got out her mythos knife (from Umar) and suddenly stabbed all around the back seat. She didn't see or feel anything, but could have sworn that she heard a distant scream. 

______________________

Mezmer and Gazala did several days of Bibliothèque visits. Each day Dr Jacob would tend Mezmer's wounds. He was eventually brought up to full health.

____________________________

Not making any progress, it was decided to retrieve the Mirror of the Ghost to do some "hands on" work. So it was collected from the vault and brought to their apartment (at the newspaper).

Tala

That night, during Second Watch (they had decided to post a watch every night since Gazala's shadow incident), someone heard a woman's singing. Then, they noticed movement in the mirror. There was a woman's face in there. She was shy at first, but eventually, over a few nights, she got braver. They managed to coax her to stay in the mirror, and not vanish when she saw any movement. 

She could speak, but it was a language no-one could understand. Reinhold thought it was ancient Greek. 

They kept talking to her and managed to teach her simple words of French. Everyone in each of the three night-time watches conversed with her, and her French got better and better. She was called Tala and had lived in ancient Sparta (480BC). She had been cursed and placed in the mirror by a "un méchant sorcier" (wicked wizard) because she had spurned his advances.

She was a bright girl, and after only a three nights, her French was good enough to handle participle subordinate clauses, gerunds and the subjunctive (Devrais-je être menacé, me sauverez-vous?).

She had heard of Baal but did not know anything about him. She could sort of "see" Mythos. She loudly proclaimed that both Mezmer and Wonton were "cursed".  And that their shadows did not match their bodies.

___________________

The next day, they all (sans the marmaladers) got into their Mercedes, and went for a trip south to the desert. They took the Ghost Mirror. 

That night, they camped in a ravine.

_____________________

Eskimo fetish

The next morning, they headed down a dry valley and passed the oasis that they recognized. This was the oasis where they camped on the first night of the hike with the Légion Étrangère. It was here that Mezmer had stolen the Eskimo fetish (that belonged to Sergent-Chef Branleur - who later died) and hid it in a cave. 

With Mezmer's eidetic memory, he soon located the same cave, and then he retrieved the soapstone Eskimo.

It hummed in the vicinity of the Ghost Mirror and Mezmer's Shoggoth Medallion and Gazala's knife, so Cooper held on to it.

_____________________________

They spent the next day walking back to to the car, and then stayed the night there.

_______________________________

On the way back to Tunis, they dropped in at "Bernard's Oasis" (the cursed oasis with the jiniri). There were now soldiers there, and there was recent construction - some huts and a canteen. And there was a Légion Étrangère flag flying over the place. They spoke to a Sergent-Chef Racoult. The Légion Étrangère had claimed this oasis under orders of Capitane le Beau.

Cooper was enjoying the Eskimo. It made him feel good, just holding it and stroking its smooth comforting surface. He did not want to put it down: "Mon précieux!"

______________________________

Back in Tunis, the next day, Mezmer wanted to take the Eskimo to the Bibliothèque to find out more about. Cooper point-blank refused to give it up. But they did manage to convince him to accompany  Mezmer and Gazala on the library trip today.  

As luck would have it, this was the first item that they had successfully managed to research at the Bibliothèque. It was a healing fetish. It bonds with the owner over a week, and then will do extra healing during the day, and cure toxins (like alcohol and drugs). But, on the down side, once it is fully bonded, if separated, the owner will die in a day or two.

It also hummed when near mythos things.

 

_____________________________

The next day at the Bibliothèque, Mezmer did some more forbidden-book work. 

That night, when Mezmer and Gazala got back to the apartment, Cooper said his Eskimo was vibrating when near Mezmer - more so than usual. Suspicious, Mezmer talked to Tala, and she peered out, then matter-of-factly commented "Il y a un petit homoncule perché sur ton épaule" - she could see an imp-like creature perched on Mezmer's shoulder, drinking blood from his ear. 

So, Gazala surreptitiously got out her mythos knife, and, using Tala to direct her, she suddenly stabbed at the spot where the imp sat. She felt nothing, and didn't harm Mezmer, but Tala reported that she had impaled it and it had fallen on the floor, now unmoving, in a pool of imp blood. Gazala, using Tala's directions, scraped the corpse into a jar (still invisible and still no feeling).

Cooper picked-up the newspaper's camera and photographed the jar, on the off-chance that the photograph would see something [yet to develop].

Later that evening, Cooper and Gunter went into the medina's twisty alley-ways and visited Miss Pelletier's in her candle souk. With the Eskimo, Cooper wandered around. He didn't feel any vibrating in the shop, except near the counter and on Miss Pelletier herself.

She was wearing the boots she won in the auction; perhaps they were mythos after all! Or she had another item on her person.

________________________________

Herschel's heads

The next day, in the Bibliothèque, Herschel (the German from the auction) was there. He also had the librarian's favour and he, too, was allowed in the Sealed Section.

Mezmer and Herschel got chatting. Herschel was very pleased. In Germany, Franz von Pfeffer had resigned from the leadership of S.A., and Adolph Hitler had taken command as Oberster SA-Führer. (As it was 1930, this was not significant world news at the time.)

Herschel wanted to do some research on the shrunken heads that he got in the auction. Mezmer was interested, so agreed to help him. They both searched through the tomes. But no luck; they could find nothing significant about the heads.

___________________________

On one of the trips to and fro Calomnie de Tunis, they spotted a suspicious car across the road, with two men in it. 

Hubert went to confront them. Gunter joined him but stayed hidden.  Hubert recognized them as some German soldiers that he knew. They recognized him back, and they slyly commented in bad French "Is sehr gut you haf embedded yourself mit ze group. Der boss vill be very pleased." 

Hubert saw Cooper approaching so he hissed to the two men "Ve must keep ze secret. I vill make a commotion and ihr pretend to be scared." Hubert waved his arms and made threatening gestures. The two occupants looked terrified and drove off in a screech of tyres.

"They won't be back," Hubert remarked to the impressed Cooper.

"Well done!" said Cooper.

__________________________________

They decided that it was time for Tala to examine the "big" items. So, they did a special trip to the vault and retrieved the four Baal items: The baby coffin, the skull with gem, the medallion, and the censer.

That night, when Tala appeared, they got  them out one at a time.

First was the medallion. That was pretty "meh". No more powerful or dangerous than Mezmer's Shoggoth medallion.

Next was the skull with the gem in it. Tala's eyes went wide and she muttered something in Spartan. Then French "C'est très puissant. Il remplit la pièce de son ombre." ( Very powerful. Fills the room with shadow).

Baal censer

Next, they got out the censer. Tala just screamed and vanished.

They put the censer away, and then worked to coax her back. When she finally returned, after a good hour of entreaties, she cried "Un nouveau monde courageux renaîtra de ses cendres. Et alors, sur une montagne géante, Baal projettera son ombre puissante sur le monde entier. Et il y aura des sanglots et des gémissements et la mort et le désespoir ! Armageddon !" (dreadful evil, powerful, end of the world, armageddon.)

Hook and Eye

Finally, they brought in the delicate baby coffin. Everyone vacated the room except for Gazala, Cooper and Gunter. Gazala opened the little bronze hook which held the lid closed (hooked into a little bronze eye). Then Cooper opened the lid. It was hinged with little bronze hinges.

Gunter stood guard with his machine gun, but well back from the other two.

.

Fascinated what was actually in here, all three peered into the little coffin, that had not been opened for thousands of years.

There was an ancient skeleton of a baby. But this was no normal baby. It had a large misshapen skull (woe betide the woman who gave birth to that), and it had a third eye in the middle. It's teeth were nasty long and spikey, so big that it could not close its mouth. And too-long limbs. With claws... 

Tala just started to scream and scream in a hysterical fit. Her keening wails filled the room. The three in the room were deafened. The rest of the group outside the room held their hands to their ears. Even the three marmaladers stirred in their haunted sleeps.  And then Tala suddenly went silent.

Cooper decided it might be a good idea to close the lid, which he managed, but the hook and eye no longer fitted. Almost as if the hook had grown or the eye had shrunk. Gazala tried to use a hairclip, but that failed.

Then, there was movement in the little coffin and scratching on the delicate lid.

Cooper quickly put the coffin back into the storage box, and then placed that box into the transport crate, and then he nailed it shut.

Something was moving around inside, scratching and jumping side to side, getting louder and faster. They were expecting the weight to change but that didn't happen.

"Get it outside!" someone screamed. So, they all clambered downstairs and out into the street and across the road to the park, angry scratching box in hand. 

They had some dynamite left. "Do we use that?"

The Auction

The group arrived back in Tunis in the Mercedes 770 staff car. Cooper was driving, but he began to marmalade, so Bernard [Jamie] quickly took the wheel. Dr Jacob [Chris] woke up on the roof rack, so he was put into the car, like a normal person. This turned out lucky because the roof-top space was needed for Mezmer [Shane] who was unconscious. The rest, Gunter [Jeff], Hubert [Kevin], Wonton [Darryl], Reinhold [Tim], And Gazala [Richard] rode in the car. Fleur was now marmalading too, so she just slumped in the back seat and drooled.

Hammon

Why was Mezmer unconscious? Let us go back in time a little, to the dig site.

Mezmer and Wonton had decided to deface the words of power down in the tunnels. With the rest of the group safely up the ladder in the marquee, Mezmer did a Sanctify on  the "Hammon" power word symbol in the altar room. 

There was a loud bang. Smoke and dust billowed ominously out of the shaft. Jacob and Gunter rushed back down the ladder, and into the altar room. Mezmer and Wonton were sitting, stunned, on the floor, blood running from their ears and noses. But they were otherwise unharmed.

After a few "there there's", Mezmer caught his breath and was up again. He then bravely decided to take a hammer & cold chisel to the now-sanctified "Hammon" symbol. Jacob and Gunter fled in terror. 

This time there was a fiery explosion. This time when Jacob and Gunter rushed back, they found Mezmer charred and unconscious, and at death's door. Wonton was lying charred and groaning nearby. [Mezmer was 1 hp away from death]. Jacob stabilized Mezmer. 

 

They both decided, wisely, to maybe leave the other Power words alone.

___________________

When the group arrived back in Tunis at the end of the long day of driving, they reported back to the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper.  The Editor wanted them to write up their exploits and adventures for the newspaper. With plenty of photographs, of course.

There was a card left for Wonton at the Calomnie Reception. It was written in Mandarin, from a Mr Fong. He requested Wonton's presence at the Hotel Plonger. Wonton had no idea who this was.

Unconscious Mezmer was checked in to the hospital Hopital Militaire. Dr Jacob got him a good room. His dreams were full of dark things, and tentacles, and death, but there was a kinder one about a soapstone carving of an Eskimo, hidden in a cave, in the desert.

______________________________

In the morning, Wonton went to Hotel Plonger.

The Chinese gentleman Mr Fong, out of Peking, wanted the party - he seemed to know all their (pre-desert trip) identities - to go to a private antiquities auction at a place called the Conservatoire on the Avenue de Paris. He was interested in a golden ring that was being auctioned in three night's time. "Obtain it in any way you can. Or else..."

[ Wonton did a Connections roll many (real) months ago which he failed badly with a 2 on 2D6. This was the chickens coming home to roost. ]

Mr Fong had one bully-boy and a young lady with him. He sent her, Miss Wu, to stick to the group. She had the "Rare Antiquities Private Auction" catalogue and some money:

1. Silver Dagger "of Venom"
2. Gold Ring "Ring of Wishes"
3. Shrunken Heads, 3
4. Bridal gown
5. Lady's Riding-Boots
6. Silver Mirror "of the Ghost"
7. Scold's Bridle
   

Bernard went to the Tunisia Lands Office and claimed the oasis (where they freed the jiniri) under his name. The clerk said that there may be a lien on the property, so the paperwork had to go back via Paris; this would take nine months. But the clerk granted Bernard a temporary occupation permit (after a substantial bribe).

Bernard and Gazala went to the Banque de Tunisie (on Rue de Turquie) with the boxes of looted grave goods from the tomb (the golden Baal censor, the delicate coffin found in the Annex, the gold medallion, and the skull with the gem). After the power word affair, no-one was brave enough to examine (or even touch) these things, and the group was happier to have them stored away somewhere safe. The items were well boxed-up and secure, until the group could find some "top men" to examine them. Top men.

They hired a miniature bank vault [$1K per year], under Bernard Lapin's name. And used the newspaper's address: c/o Calomnie de Tunis. The bank did not allow human remains to be stored in their vaults, of course, but the bank staff inspection was cursory at best, and Gazala distracted him at the right time, so the "baby" coffin and skull were successfully stowed in the vault without being noticed. Both Bernard and Gazala were given a key each. Both keys, plus a third from the bank, were needed to open the vault.

Inspector Heroux

Dr Jacob checked in with Inspector Heroux of the Gendarmes. Heroux had the Legal-Carry licences inked-up and ready for those party members who passed the training with the Légion Étrangère. Each licence would allow a pistol to be carried or concealed. And if an "Incident de Gendarmerie" was declared in a neighbourhood, they could carry a submachine gun or rifle too.  Hubert got Mario's licence - he would have to pose as such. Gunter took Miriam's licence and wondered if he could pass as a lady. (Transferral of firearms licences was forbidden; it was another capital crime).

Jacob asked Heroux about Mr Fong. There were not many Chinese in Tunis; Heroux could list them on the fingers of one hand. He knew of Fong and of a Mr Lee, and knew Fong was a Triad member.

Wonton & party researched up Fong. He was a member of the Peking Triad gangsters, and they had recent links into Tunis in order to kidnap French girls for a burgeoning white slavery market. 

Gazala quizzed Miss Wu about the Triad too. Miss Wu was an indentured servant and "paramour" herself, so her loyalty was forced ("they hurt my family if I stray"). She didn't mind talking and telling the group what she knew. Currently, Fong employed five dangerous liúmáng (流氓, gangsters) - three Fus and two Lees - in his "Le gang des coquins" here in Tunis. 

Mezmer in his
finery

___________________________

The auction was tonight.

Gazala and Miss Wu tarted up. Wonton bought himself an expensive and immaculate pristine white suit and hat. Gunther and Herbert put on their best. Bernard found a sharp jacket and plus fours. Mezmer got himself a turban, a colourful robe, and delightful red boots. And they all headed to the Conservatoire.

The place was decked out in finery, and had servants and no-neck security aplenty. The guests were served champagne and finger-food, vol-au-vents and pastries.

The seven auction items were brought out for inspection at 6pm, and the auction would begin at 10pm. 

There were several important groups of guests, and the party mingled with them. The organizers, the Moretzs allowed Bernard to use his Speed Graphics camera - but no flash. Hence, in the artificially-lit auction room, his exposures would need a full second. This was not a problem for the items, but it meant people had to keep very still.

Nevertheless, Bernard got photographs of all the figures of import.

• Austin and Chloe Moretz - the organizers of the auction. They didn't own the items (except for the wedding dress), but were selling them on behalf of others. They were very tight-lipped as to whom. 
• Mademoiselle Marie-Pierre Pelletier. Several of the group knew this lady already. She owned a souk in the Medina which sold antiques and occult things. She was alone.
• Herr Augustus Herschel - A German gentleman. He was dressed in a German military uniform and had a lady on his arm, Fraulein Blucher. Plus two batmen.
• Tariq Nadir - He was a landed Arab Berber, like Gazala, and spoke the same Berber dialect. He was accompanied by two veiled ladies in niqabs (his wives), two servants, and two no-necks. Gazala had a word with him, but the conversation went down-hill fast when Tariq asked how her husband (she pointed at Dr Jacob) would tolerate his unveiled wife dressing like a whore. The party had to physically keep her from stabbing him there and then. 
• Some other randos who were just for the scenery.

Wonton threw caution to the wind and cast a Detect Mythos on the items (bold is mythos-tainted). This involved him dancing around the table and shouting mythos words. To the uninformed, it looked like he was doing an interpretive dance crossed with having a grand mal epileptic seizure, as if he was possessed by demons with neural-tube defects and broken ankles. The party carefully scanned all the guests to see if anyone recognized the spell. Most of the faces showed expressions of disgust, distain, pity, and utter embarrassment. Any dignity or sophistication Wonton had with his smart white suit was lost in this display of socially-inept cringe. The shouted words didn't help either - mythos words are not nice; lots of harsh guttural consonants and voiceless uvular fricatives (c.f. swearing in Klingon), and whining high-pitched vowels.

Bernard was the only one who noticed two people in the crowd who were faking their emotions of utter disgust: Miss Pelletier (no surprises there) and Tariq Nadir. 

The auction began.

1. 

   Scold's Bridle

   The Dagger of Venom - Wonton encouraged aggressive bidding, so Miss Wu ended up paying 5K for it. Herschel was interested.
2. Ring of Wishes - Miss Wu got this in the end for 16K. She had exhausted her money so the group funds paid the rest. She had to fight with Tariq and Miss Pelletier. Gazala, Gunter, and Herbert did well-timed distractions to annoy the other bidders.
3. The three shrunken heads went to Herschel.
4. The bridal dress had little interest shown by anyone. Gazala bid for it (1K) as a joke, and got it.
5. The riding boots went to Miss Pelletier. She seemed very pleased. Maybe Wonton's spell missed them. 
6. Ghost Mirror - Bernard got this (8K) but that used up all the party funds. Tariq was not pleased that he lost.
7. Scold's Bridle - Tariq got this. That helped lessen his anger.
   

The group wanted Tariq followed. So, Mezmer went into a side room, undressed naked, and then said his little Invisibility poem taught to him by the jiniri.

Mezmer invisible

When all around intend me woe,

To shoot and stab and fight.

I pucker up my little mouth,

And vanish from their sight !

Then, invisible, he ran after Tariq and his entourage catching them up as they were getting into their car. Mezmer grabbed hold of it and stood on the running board, as it drove off into the night. He lasted half an hour. Tariq's chauffer was a rather enthusiastic driver, and during a particularly tight swerve, Mezmer fell off and rolled down the street, and got badly wounded and bleeding.

[ Mezmer took heavy damage down to 4 hp. ]

So, Mezmer limped back to the Calomnie to meet up with the rest of the group who had returned home.

Even though it was midnight, Miss Wu pestered Wonton to get the ring back to Fong this very evening. So they gave the ring to her to deliver him. The plan was for Mezmer to follow her invisibly.

So, the exhausted and wounded Mezmer went invisible again (note the spell lasts an hour), and followed Miss Wu to the Hotel Plonger.  Fong's room was on level five - no lift - so Mezmer carefully followed her up the stairs, keeping quiet. She knocked on the door, it opened, and she slipped inside. Mezmer tried to follow, but he was too slow and bashed into the door, then fell back in the corridor. He heard raised voices, in Chinese, inside, then the unmistakable words of a Detect Mythos.

Then there was a shout of alarm, followed immediately by the staccato blast of submachine gun fire, and bullets flew through the plywood door into the corridor.

Mezmer was hobbling away, but he was grazed by a shot.

[ Mezmer was on 4 hp. The bullets through the door still did 2D6, but lucky for him I rolled a 3 (public). His third close call with death that evening!  ] 

Mezmer limped home.

The Final Word

Reinhold Seelenfänger [Tim] announced boldly to the group, "I predict that the three words of power are Baal, Hammon and Tanit."

He further explained: "It's a standard Carthaginian religious formula, like 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost' in Christianity. Anyone who has studied Carthaginian religion would guess it at once. Wonton [Darryl], on the other hand, should go back to manning the cash register at his brother's takeaway stand."

The group, Fleur [Steven], Mezmer [Shane], Cooper [Ian], Hubert Gesäss [Kevin], Gazala [Richard], Gunter [Jeff], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton and Reinhold Seelenfänger were contemplating what to do next about the creature that was waiting down the tunnel.

Dr Jacob slumped into his bunk marmalading.

They had a plan. Cooper, Gunter, Gazala, Hubert each took a chau-chat submachine gun, and formed a semi-circle in the Blood room around the tunnel entrance. Bernard stayed slightly down the retreat tunnel with the Speed Graphic camera at the ready.

Mezmer, Wonton, Seelenfänger, and Fleur bravely stayed back upstairs, at the ladder.

Cooper carefully snuck down the tunnel and made a series of loud noises and sounds. Then he ran back to join the others. The enraged creature, with loud slapping of its feet, rushed headlong into the room.

All four fired, and the deafening sound of their submachine-guns filled the room.

Gunter and Cooper hit it well. But Hubert and Gazala, even at this close range, missed entirely.

ghoul

Although severely damaged, the creature, obvious to pain, rushed into Hubert, clawing and biting. He went down screaming. The other three kept up with their gun-fire, caring naught as half their bullets hit Hubert too. But this was enough, and the creature collapsed onto the unconscious Hubert.

Gazala pulled out her bejewelled knife (the one she retrieved from the Safar adventure) and cut its head off. This was the first time she had used this knife in anger. It sliced through the thing's neck like a hot knife through butter. Was this magic or a keen blade?

"Got you, ghoul!" she hissed.

While Gazala was dealing with the ghoul, Gunter bandaged Hubert to stop him bleeding out. He was still breathing, which was a small relief.

Fleur was summoned and she applied her medical skills on Hubert. He was soon up, but not feeling very well. 

The raucous gunfire woke something else, because on the other side of the slab-blocked door they could hear clawing and scrabbling.

Censer of Baal

But, with the stationing of guards on this slab, they could stop it from being forced open. That allowed them all - even the brave non-combatants from upstairs -  to safely work down in the tunnels. And thus they all dug out the sandy dirt from the chamber, and bucket-chained the waste up the shaft, and outside.

Eventually, they cleared enough to expose an altar, on which was sitting a small pristine gold item. Wonton and Seelenfänger identified it as a Baal censer. They both knew their Baal lore enough that to activate the censer, caraway and harissa herbs would be burned in the pipe during the ritual. 

"N'activons pas ...uh.. das Weihrauchfass von Baal ..uh.. le encensoir de Baal ... maintenant !" mused Seelenfänger in his strong German-tainted French ("Let's not activate Baal's censer now!"). 

No-one dared to touch it either. 

Mezmer did a Detect Mythos and, as predicted, it was certainly a powerful source. But then, this entire room gave a reading off the scale.

As night was approaching, they decided it would be safer to let sleeping dogs lie. And those dogs ought to sleep buried under piles of spoil. So, they brought back down a large load of dirt and sand, and covered up the the altar again, thus re-burying the censer. 

Then they all retreated upstairs and pulled up the ladder.

_____________

In the morning, Cooper bravely searched the tunnels. He noticed that the Blood room slab door was down again, and that there were now two ghouls in the Altar room. They were facing the altar (still covered by the pile of dirt as the group had left it) in mock praying positions. He quietly returned to the other passage (where he assumed the ghouls came from), and explored there. He rounded a corner and the passage was blocked up. But, he noticed that the blockage was fresh spoil and he identified it as the same spoil that they had been digging out yesterday. There was even one of Gazala's fake (cosmetic) fingernails in this dirt. This made no sense because it was no where near the Altar room. Unless someone had carried the dirt to here.

So, Cooper summoned the brave members - Gunter, Gazala, and the still-wounded Hubert - and they all carefully came down and quietly sealed the tunnel to the Altar room (and the ghouls) with the slab door trick. However, putting it in place, it made a solid "clunk", which echoed through the tunnels. Sure enough, there was soon an angry scrabbling on the back of that slab.

But with the slab door manned, this allowed everyone to come down and to work on this new (fresh) spoil with another bucket chain. They got enough clear that Cooper could climb to the top of the pile, just below the ceiling, and look through. 

He blinked and tried to understand what he was looking at. He was looking at the altar, but from behind it. This was definitely the same altar room that they were digging yesterday. He could see their foot-prints on the floor and one of the buckets they left. But, it made no sense direction-wise; some weird-arse non-Euclidian space warp. Looking north into the altar room, as he thought he was, was actually looking south in that same room.

Neither of the praying ghouls were there, of course, they were at the back of the slab trying to scrabble through. But ... this meant that the ghouls could technically come through this hole, and that the party could not block them off.

So, they backed carefully away and had a wee talk.

When Seelenfänger was told about the direction distortions, he started to rattle off an explanation of Baal Latitude Manifold (BLM) theory "In BLM geometry, an augmented affine connection can be defined without reference to a geodesic, and many additional concepts follow this; parallel transport, covariant derivatives, and non-Euclidian directions also do not require the concept of a geodesic. However, when a geodesic is available, these concepts can be directly tied to the 'shape' of the manifold itself; that shape is determined by how the tangent space is attached to the cotangent space by the geodesic tensor, provided that the invariant structure group of the orthonormal frame bundle is itself an orthogonal group."

Seelenfänger fully admitted he had never seen a physical real-world example of BLM theory. Well, not until today.

This exposition was cut short by the brave ones. Cooper, Gunter, Hubert and Gazala ventured back down into the tunnels. They managed to catch the attention of one of the ghouls, and managed to entice it through the crawl space behind the altar, and when it came through, all four of them dropped it with submachine-gun fire [ better rolls this time ]. Gazala used her special knife on the bullet-ridden ghoul's neck to decapitate it.

While this was going on, upstairs Bernard set himself up in the make-shift darkroom tent (that the Germans had built in a corner of the marquee), and used the Zeiss enlarger. He developed some of his older photographs. When the group had first met the ghoul that ended up killing Mario, Bernard had used the camera flash to try to scare it away. These flashes ended up as photographs, so Bernard developed one of these first. But as soon as he started to print the negative, he noticed that the ghoul in the image was ... uh... moving. He quickly tore the print up and burned it.

So, he then carefully printed all photographs that didn't have ghouls in. The photos of the slabs (that Wonton had already translated) didn't come out too well either. All the writing on them was hopelessly melted. But at least there was nothing moving on them.

There were five important slabs and Wonton had translated four of them, but he'd been having a lot of trouble with slab number three. He kept getting a 503 error. So, Seelenfänger had a look at it, and he pointed out some things that Wonton had missed and that closed the deal; they got it translated.

1. The Tomb of the Dark One
2. Censer of Karnaim - wielder of undead
3. Sacrifices required each time
4. To possess the censer would require a great price
5. Three "words of power" were required

"Karnaim" was, of course, an aspect of Baal - the nasty, blood-sacrificing, baby-eating aspect.

By the time they had finished all this work, night was on them.

_________________________

The next morning, Cooper and Gunter sneaked down to the tunnels. 

Unfortunately, the final ghoul had also scrabbled through the blocked tunnel. It attacked them both, by surprise.

They managed to blast it with their submachine guns, but it got to Cooper and clawed him down. Gazala and Hubert were right behind, hurrying down the ladder to help. Gunter had no choice but to shoot into the creature and Cooper, Hubert joined in with his chau-chat, and their shots dropped the creature, but severely wounded Cooper. Cooper was right on Death's door, but Gunter's bandaging saved his life.

Hammon

Gazala decapitated this ghoul, like the others.

With all the ghouls accounted for now, the whole party (now much braver) came down to the tunnels and spent the day cleaning out all the sand and dirt from the Altar room.

On the wall of this room was the third Word of Power. Wonton got to work on it. Sure enough, it was "Hammon". So, that agreed with Seelenfänger's prediction's: "Baal", "Hammon" and "Tanit".

Now that the Baal censer was cleared of the sand, Cooper decided to pick it up from the altar. It felt cool and tingly to the touch. While he was doing this, Bernard took some photographs. When developed, even in the photographs of just the censer, Cooper's ghostly image was still standing  by the altar.

Bernard took photographs of Gazala doing the same, with the same ghostly results.

So, Wonton picked the censer up with some tongs, wrapped it and placed it in a box. Then the box was placed inside another box. He did the same with the necklace, and the skull with the gem in it, that they had found in the annex.

They were planning to leave for Tunis tomorrow. The intent was to take the items to the Musée des Antiquités du Bardo museum, where they could be put in crates inside a big warehouse (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark) where top men could work on them; top men.

__________________________

The next day was spent defacing the three power words. See next week's entry for the results of this.

"Vandalizing a priceless World Heritage site" as Seelenfänger aptly put it.

______________________________

The next morning, the supply truck arrived from the Légion Étrangère fort. 

The group told the LE soldiers that the excavations were complete and that they were planning to leave today.

1930 Mercedes 770

The soldiers accepted this information in good grace, and they would see to it that Capitain Le Beau would inform the le Ministère Tunisien de L'Intérieur. And if LE had to contact the group, they could always use The Calomnie newspaper, or use Inspector Heroux of the Tunis Gendarmes.

The soldiers let the group keep the revolvers, rifles and submachine guns, but warned them to get licences and documentation off Heroux, and they asked for all the F1 grenades back.

Then the group began the trip back to Tunis in the German staff car. It was a bit of a squash. The Mercedes 770 (7.6L 150hp) had three rows of seats, so that would seat nine: driver Cooper, next to him Mezmer and Bernard, in the second row Fleur, Reinhold Seelenfänger, and Hubert Gesäss, and in the back Gazala, Wonton, and Gunter. The marmalading Jacob got a stretcher on the roof.

Searching the Annex

Mezmer (Shane), Gazala (Richard), Dr Jacob (Chris), Hubert (Kevin), Gunter (Jeff), Wonton (Darryl), Cooper (Ian) were at the eastern dig site. Bernard collapsed marmalading. Fleur was marmalading back at the main marquee.

Cooper had just retrieved an old skull from the tunnels. It had a large diamond inside it. But out here, in the direct sunlight, the bone of the skull began to smoke. He quickly put it in a sack, and placed it in Wonton's pup tent.

Cooper went back inside the site, crawled into the tight tunnel, and explored some more. The horizontal crawl opened into a small chamber. It was filled with sand and dust which had seeped through cracks in the ceiling. So, he cleared more of the debris out. Gazala, Hubert and Gunter joined him down in these cramped claustrophobic tunnels, and set up a bucket-chain to ferry the dirt outside. 

Cooper found and cleared a headless (dry) skeleton. It had a gold medallion. When carried outside in the sunlight, this medallion also smoked. They soon discovered that the skull, with the gem, always pointed at the medallion, like it was magnetic compass. They were very careful to keep the two items apart.

When this chamber had been cleared out, there were more of the slabs of hieroglyphs on the walls. Wonton came down and analysed them. They were the same as the slabs he had already examined back in the tunnels beneath the marquee, except they had the word "annex" added. They imparted the same information:

1. Annex to the Tomb of the Dark One
2. Censer of Karnaim - wielder of undead
3. 503 error
4. To possess the censer would require a great price
5. Three "words of power" were required

On the western wall of the chamber, there was a stone cylinder plug, about the size of a dinner plate. It had a pentagram carved on it. 

"Baal"

Cooper managed to pull it out. There was a small fridge-sized cavity behind it which contained a delicate wooden coffin - like the size you would either put ashes in or bury a baby. It was so old and dry that it was incredibly delicate - much akin to the strength of balsawood. 

Cooper managed to delicately remove it, and carefully placed it into a sturdy wooden newer box. But he never opened it.

Written on western wall of this fridge cavity was the a single glyph. Wonton read it silently: "Baal". The second Word of Power? Or the name of what was in the coffin?

As night was approaching, they left the Annex, and all headed back to Marquee with their retrieved items.

During the night, down the marquee shaft, they could hear the slap slap of the skinned creatures. The ladder was up, so Cooper decide to try to drop two grenades on them. The grenades went off, but he was not sure he damaged them.

___________________________________

Suspecting that there might be additional annexes on the other cardinal directions from the marquee, the group spent half the day searching out at the same distance (5 km) north, south and west. No results.

So, then, going on the theory that there might be annexes on the points of a giant pentagram, they tried spots at 72 degrees from the Annex, both north-east and south-east. No hits here either.

"Slappy feet"

That afternoon a supply truck arrived from the main Légion Étrangère fort to deliver some more food, water and diesel. The group deliberately reported none of their findings to the soldiers.

The night passed quietly - but they heard slappy feet below. The generator was left running all the time.

__________________________________________

The next morning, they decided to explore more of the main tunnels down the marquee shaft; after all there were to two unexplored slab doors off the so-called "Blood room" (this was the room where most of the deaths had occurred; it had dried blood all over the walls and floor). They were quite-rightly worried about more creatures, so were very careful. They were careful to ensure that there were always two or three armed watchers at all times.

Mezmer and Wonton stayed up top and pontificated on archeology, while everyone else did all the risky, dangerous and dirty work down in the tunnels.

Down in the Blood room, they decided not to touch the slab door from where the creatures always emerged (the one that Cooper threw the shoe at), and so opened the other door. Since nothing leapt out, Cooper carefully explored it with mirror. There was a short passage that terminated into a room that was full of dirt and dust.

Before they explored this further, they wanted to block the first slab door so that they wouldn't be surprised by a creature. Gunter and Cooper delicately used the stone slab from the opened door and propped it up, with wooden supports, to lean against the creature door.

Then they all spent the rest of that day cleaning out dirt from that passage and the blocked room. 

It was getting dark outside, so they returned back up the ladder to the marquee for the night. The creatures did seem to be more active at night. They withdrew the ladder too.

Sure enough, during the night they heard slappy feet below. How did they get past that blocked door?

_____________________

The next morning, in the Blood room, the creature door had been opened, despite having a slab blocking it. The slab had fallen down. So, they carefully reblocked it again, and tried to prop it up better.

Down at end of passage 2, the one they were clearing out yesterday, there was now one of the skinned creatures. Its back was to them, and it was crouching down in a squat, seemingly dozing, but swaying. They all quietly backed away and went upstairs to discuss what to do next.

One idea discussed was for four of them to form a semi-circle in the Blood room with chau-chat submachine guns, and then some brave soul would retrieve to the creature. Four chau-chats all firing would hopefully be enough. But they would only get one round of shooting, and if it didn't drop, they'd be in trouble.

"Qui est le plus courageux ?"

The Second Dig Site

Mourning the loss of Miriam [Jeff] and Mario {Kevin], the group Cooper [Ian], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton [Darryl], Dr Jacob [Chris] and Mezmer [Shane], respectfully lifted the decapitated bodies up the ladder into the marquee. Then the bodies, and their heads, were taken out into the desert and dutifully buried in shallow graves. In was just after noon.

Gazala & Fleur were coated

The other two party members, Gazala [Richard] and Fleur [Steven], were both lying on stretchers, next to the bunks in the marquee. They had been marmalading and were well-coated.  But they now awoke, both got up, and were told the sad news.

While they were chatting, they could hear outside the marquee, faintly at first over the noise of the generator, some lusty singing, several voices. It was getting louder as the men approached. The song was Die Fahne Hoch, a German marching song (Horst Wessel lieb sung by Sturmabteilungsmann - S.A., Brown Shirts). 

Die Fahne Hoch

The group went outside to investigate. The singers were a group of three men in Légion Étrangère uniforms, one an officer. They were all were carrying spades. They introduced themselves: Leutnant Reinhold Seelenfänger, his batman Private Hubert Gesäss, and Private Gunter Oelschig. [ Reinhold was Tim's new Antiquarian character (part NPC). Hubert was Kevin's new Soldier character. Gunter was Jeff's new Rogue character. ]

The group interrogated the three, with threatened force. They admitted they were working with the Germans and weren't true Légion Étrangère. But they were very quick to point out that the party was no more true Légion Étrangère than they were. Reinhold Seelenfänger was an archeologist from Alsace-Lorraine and was only a honorary Lieutenant. Gunter Oelschig was from South Africa, and Hubert Gesäss was from Schleswig-Holstein. 

From these three they got the full story of the German mission, adding further to the knowledge they had gleaned the day before. The whole exploratory trip was instigated by Sturm Abteilung, and by Martin Bormann (who was in the upper ranks). Bormann, librarian at the time, had a keen interest in the occult, and he firmly believed that there was some Carthaginian artifact buried out here in the desert that could help the Cause. Bormann managed to finagle financing from the SA supreme leader's fund, which was then Franz von Salomon.

  

The primary shaft, where the party had already visited, was in the marquee, but there was another site of interest out to the east, about five km. Lt Seelenfänger, Oelschig and Gesäss were working there until they returned just now. How they missed the "fireworks" of the previous night, we will never know. So, the party demanded the three to take them back to that site. 

When they arrived, it was a shallow gulch, dug into the dirt. The diggers had half exposed a vertical slab of carved stone with hieroglyphs on it. Wonton and Mezmer recognized mythos symbols straight away. 

Mezmer did his little dance and cast a Detect Mythos. There was a very strong source nearby - off the scale, in fact - but it wasn't the slab. It was on Wonton's person. It turned out to be a cursed piece of ginger*. Wonton tossed it away in disgust. Mezmer picked up the cursed ginger with some BBQ tongs, took it to one side, and did a Sanctify on it. [ * = Magic is fickle, mercurial and cussed. No spell is ever guaranteed to work. In this case, Mezmer/Shane failed his detect roll badly. ]

During the hour of the Sanctify, Wonton set to work analyzing the symbols on the slab

Sure enough, after the hour, the spell triggered and the cursed ginger exploded violently, left a two metre crater, and showered everyone with fourteen metrics tonnes of sand.

The writings on the slab here turned out to give the same information of the first slab that Wonton had analyzed (next to the ladder in the marquee shaft). "Annex to the Tomb of the Dark One."

With all of them working and digging, they cleared enough of dirt off the slab that it could be prised open. But they stopped because night was approaching. So all headed back to the marquee for the night.

The marquee had the yawning shaft down to the tunnels below, and they didn't fancy sleeping the night on the bunks here with that, so they lifted the ladder out of the shaft. The generator was left running all the time, so it maintained light down in the tunnels, to keep any creatures at bay.

The first half of the night went past quietly, but just after midnight, Mezmer heard slappy-feet noises down the shaft below. 

Gunter was on watch with him, so Mezmer taunted and mocked Gunter and told him to go down. Gunter refused, so Mezmer put the ladder down to emphasize Gunter's cowardice. Unfortunately, this back-fired; something grabbed the ladder immediately. Mezmer glanced down and shrieked. It was one of the creatures, skin removed, wet fascia glistening in the light, climbing up, black talons at the ready. Oh dear.

Chauchat-Ribeyrolles
submachine gun

Mezmer hurriedly grabbed his chauchat submachine gun and let rip down the ladder. The climber was certainly hit, but it kept climbing. 

Everyone woke up by the loud gunfire.

By now, the creature had got to the top of the ladder. Gunter took one look at the horrid thing, and fled off into the desert in terror. Mezmer, in desperation, let rip with another blast. Gazala had woken up and joined him with her own chauchat too. Luckily, this was just enough, and the creature fell, down the ladder.

By this time, Gunter was a shrieking thing outside [ he had failed his SAN roll ] fleeing in hysterical terror. Gazala was affected too.

The ladder was hurriedly withdrawn from the shaft. And Mezmer was hurriedly scolded for endangering them all. They sent a search party out to recover Gunter.

The rest of the night passed quietly.

__________________________

Next morning, they returned to the eastern dig site.

It took about ten minutes to dig the slab free. So they prised it open. 

There were two skeletons, clothing long-rotted, slumped in short passage. They were very old - hundreds of years. The floor slab was loose, and could be lifted. There was a vertical shaft downwards, about two metres, which then turned west at the bottom. West was the direction of the marquee, but that was five kilometres away; it would be an impressive tunnel if it went that far!

The shaft was not very large. A person could just squeeze down it, so brave Cooper was lowered, face down, rope on his ankles. He got to the bottom, did an awkward bend, and started following the shaft west. It was still a tight squeeze the whole time; this was not a place for claustrophobics.

Cooper's find

The shaft continued westwards up to the range of his torch (flashlight) - about six metres. But closer, just out of arm's reach, he noticed a glint in the torch-light. It was a skull with something shiny inside it. Cooper retrieved it. Looking close, there was a large gem inside the skull.

Cooper inched backwards up the shaft, with the group pulling the foot-ropes to help him out, skull and all.

Out in the sunlight, they had a good look at the skull. It was a very old and very dry, possibly hundreds of years old; just the skull part with no jaw bone. The gem inside it was clear, like a diamond, but it was too big to fit through any of the skull holes, so that raised the question as to how it actually got inside.

Mezmer straight away did a Detect Mythos, and there was indeed a huge source of mythos. But not from the skull. It was coming Wonton again. Must have been more of that damn cursed ginger.

The Outpost Ruins

The party, Mario [Kevin], Mezmer [Shane], Bernard [Jamie], Cooper [Ian], Wonton [Darryl], with the Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion) were licking their wounds after their victorious battle against the German LE impersonators. It was now about 4am.

The Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire, commander of this group, was pleased.

The Germans had suffered 26 dead, and 13 were prisoners (8 of whom were wounded). These prisoners were all sat down and guarded by the Légion Étrangère.  The LE had lost 15 men, and 10 were wounded. Bernard and Gazala were injured and unconscious too.

Miriam [Jeff] and Dr Jacob [Chris] woke up on the hand-cart. Dr Jacob sprang to action, and checked the bandaging of Bernard and Gazala. Gazala was right out of it, but she was marmalading, so the therapeutic effect of that would stave off any infection. Bernard would regain consciousness after an hour [on 1 hit point].

Private Schwarz

The marquee tent was shot full of holes, and now empty of living men. So, it was searched. There were lots of Légion Étrangère papers in French, probably fake, plus a sheaf of papers in German. The LE had a soldier, Private Schwarz, who could speak and read German. There were papers here from SA (Sturmabteilung),  and NSDAP (Nazi party) and was signed off by Martin Bormann. This was some archaeological extraction mission, looking for something "... von großer und mystischer Kraft" (of great and mystical power).

They cast their eyes on shaft in the floor. 

"I bet there are German's down there," someone said.

From Mezmer's earlier reconnaissance, they knew that down the vertical shaft there was a single tunnel heading north for about 10m. 

Cooper climbed down the ladder armed with a mirror (taken off the destroyed staff car). Down the passage, there were four armed Germans waiting.

F1 grenade

An F1 grenade dropped two of them, and the other two stumbled out and surrendered.

However, down the end of the 10m passage, there was a new side passage off to the left. Mezmer did not see this when he was down here twelve hours earlier. It was probably covered by a stone slab there.

Cooper and some LE troops moved down to the side passage, and the mirror revealed a short passage, maybe five paces long, which then opened into a room. There were some more Germans in that room, hiding behind some slabs on the floor which looked like tombstones.

A grenade was tossed in. It exploded, but the targets were in cover. The Germans replied with a hail of bullets. 

Suddenly, there was a hysterical screaming from that room. Two Germans came rushing out, faces white with terror, and surrendered meekly. From the room was a horrible wet tearing and ripping noise.

It then went quiet. Cooper waited five minutes and then snuck down, quiet as the grave. The walls here were spattered with blood and there were pieces of bodies scattered all about - enough to make up three men. There were two doors off this chamber.

sketched map

One of the hysterical ones, when he had calmed down, was happy to draw a map.

In the short corridor, Mezmer did a Detect Mythos (under the guise pretending to be a priest and blessing the place) and it revealed Mythos was ... well ... everywhere.

They needed more information, and the German officers were not saying much, so Mezmer and two bully-boys took a bound German officer down to the blood room. The theory was that thy could to scare him into talking. When he arrived with the captive, there were two other LE soldiers already guarding here at this stage, plus Miriam and Mario. 

Suddenly, the slab door on the southern wall fell down, and a creature, like a skinned man, thin and wiry, with long black talons for finger-nails, attacked. Everyone tried to flee, but they got stuck in the single-file narrow passage. In an attempt to buy some time, Mezmer rolled the bound guy towards the creature. It ripped him apart. He screamed and screamed until he stopped.

Chauchat-Ribeyrolles
submachine gun

While the thin creature was doing this, the log-jam began to clear, and the bully boys and LEs got out. Mezmer shot the creature with his Chauchat-Ribeyrolles (submachine gun).  Miriam was there too with her own Chauchat and she helped. With both of them firing, it eventually collapsed.

Then they investigated the room more thoroughly. The three torn bodies were all missing hearts. The dead officer's chest had been ripped open, but the creature obviously did not have enough time to get his heat.

They beat a retreat, not feeling too safe in this room.

Wonton went down to do some research on the wall mythos hieroglyphs. The first of these slabs was by the base of the ladder, so it was a long way from the blood room, so was considered safe. Plus, two LE troops, Miriam and Mario were stationed up at the passage to the blood room in case any more of these nasty thin creatures appeared.

Suddenly, the power went out, and it was pitch black. Almost immediately, in the small chamber, there was the ominous sound of wet barefoot slapping noises. Everyone down there was completely disoriented, so fled in panic trying to work out which way to go, by touch. One LE soldier ran the wrong way, toward the blood room.

In the pitch black, panicking, Miriam fired her rifle to use the muzzle flash as a form of light. She happened to be pointing towards the ladder. But there was a hapless LE soldier right in front of her. He went down. She turned and fired behind her, before she remembered that the second LE soldier might be there. Too late, he was shot too, but he was already screaming hysterically. In the flash, she could see another creature, like the one earlier, tearing at his back. Wonton got to the ladder, then Mario then Miriam. The creature stayed to tear and render the two bodies.

When they got to ground-level, they checked the generator. It had run out of diesel. So they filled it up and restarted it.

With power restored, all the lights came on again. They snuck down the ladder, using mirrors, and eventually got back into the blood room. The creature had retreated, and the south door of the blood room had its slab back in. They begin to think it didn't like light. With this in mind, they stationed two LE men to stay next to the generator and ensure it did not stop.

_________________________

It was now dawn.

The Adjutant-Chef Garnier took the intact staff car and a squad of men, and headed for the main LE fort to get help. This round trip would take four hours.

So, Wonton had plenty of time to read the Mythos writings on the wall slabs. He got a straight five hours to do this (no more creature attacks, luckily) and got four of the panels analyzed. In a nutshell:

• 

  Tanit

  This place was "Tomb of the Dark One".
• It allegedly contained "the Censer of Karnaim" which was a "wielder of undead".
• But to possess it would require "a great price".
• And "three words of power were needed to trigger it". One of the three was present here: Tanit.

After this time had passed, Capitain le Beau arrived, from the main LE fort (where the party did their fire-arms training), with trucks and two more platoons of LE troops, and Adjutant-Chef Garnier and the Mercedes staff car. 

He brought some news: Sergent-Chef Branleur (the one who Mezmer had stolen the mythos Eskimo statue from - which they had yet to recover) had died. His health had deteriorated over the last two days, and he had died just this morning.

Le Beau declared that this archaeological site now belonged to the French Republic. He would take the German prisoners away. He also ordered all his men out, and loaded them in to his own trucks plus the German heavy truck. Since the party's tour of duty with Légion Étrangère was considered over, this would be a good place to leave them.

Considering the group had professed so-called archeological skills and much-vaunted journalistic skills, he was happy to let them keep exploring and researching. Any valuable items must be turned over, and they would be searched. The party wasn't particularly forth-coming about the creature or danger down in the tunnels, so he didn't know about that. 

He would also send a truck with supplies each three days.

Among the German supplies, Bernard (now on 2 hp) found some photographic developing gear and an enlarger. This meant that Bernard could take pictures of the wall slabs below, print them, and that would mean that Wonton could safely work on the prints upstairs.

So Wonton, Mario, Bernard, Cooper, Miriam went below again to scout out the rooms.

Mezmer was upstairs, asleep on one of the bunks in the marquee.

In the blood room, Cooper threw a shoe (with foot still in it) at the south door. It teetered a bit, then fell down with a stony crunch. 

Then, quick as a cut snake, another creature rushed out. Like the first, it was a thin, wiry, skinned man with long black talons. 

They all fled, out of the room and down the passage to the ladder. Mario was at the back this time. The creature was supernaturally fast. It caught up to Mario and clawed at him. Bernard used the bright flash from the camera, and that slowed it for a bit.

Mario spun and tried to fight it. Miriam had her rifle too. And Cooper. Mario got a few hits into it, and Miriam fired. Firing into melee combat is not a good idea, so Mario took bullet damage too. It clawed again and he went down. Then it stayed with him, clawing and biting. Miriam shot at it, and eventually, after a lot of shooting, it was killed. But poor Mario was well-dead by now.

Miriam, Bernard, Cooper re-entered the blood room. 

The slab door was closed again (!)

But they needed photos of these slabs, so Bernard had his camera and took a pic of the hieroglyphs on every slab in this room (six). 

They then headed back to get Wonton who was still cowering up the ladder.

But as they approached the base of the ladder, something was amiss. Mario's horribly torn (and bullet-ridden) body had been left at the base of the ladder, awaiting removal. But, he was now sitting up. Oh dear.

His clawed head slowly turned to face them, dead eyes staring at them, then he slowly got to his feet, arms at his side. On his hands were ugly black talons. He suddenly sprang at them, half running, half crawling. 

A few shots got into him, but then he was on Miriam. Clawing and biting. Cooper shot. Miriam fought, Bernard helped. But the combined force of talons and shooting into combat, Miriam was ripped apart and she died. Cooper and Bernard kept shooting, and eventually, Mario fell.

This time they decapitated him. Then they decapitated Miriam just to be sure.

The Desert Hike

Gazala [Richard], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton [Darryl], Cooper [Ian], Mezmer [Shane], Mario [Kevin],

had just completed fire-arms training with the Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion), and began a three day hike through the rocky hills of the desert. Fleur was left back in camp marmalading. Also marmalading was Miriam and Jacob; they were brought along on in a hand-cart.

It was a solid day's travel, uneventful, and the weather wasn't too hot; 29. They made camp at an oasis.

After a Spartan dinner, Mezmer did a Detect Mythos. Sergent-Chef  Branleur showed up; it was him or his belongings.

Just after dark, Gazala called Branleur out of his tent, and distracted him with her winsome ways. While she was doing this, Mezmer undressed in the darkness, cast his new Invisibility poem ("When all around intend me woe, To shoot and stab and fight. I pucker up my little mouth, And vanish from their sight !"), and vanished.

Branleur's statue

Now invisible and naked, he searched Branleur's tent. He found a small stone statue hidden in the bed-roll. It was a weathered Eskimo carving about the size of a torch, made of soap-stone and cool to the touch. He snuck it out of the tent, but Branleur happened to glance over at the wrong time, and Mezmer forgot that objects he picks up don't become invisible too. Branleur saw the floating statue, shrieked and raced off after it, into the darkness.

But, out in the darkness, away from any light from the camp, it wasn't hard for an invisible Mezmer to hide the statue. He managed to shake off Branleur from following.

Sergent-Chef  Branleur raced back to camp and sounded a General Quarters, getting everyone up. Then they did a roll call. The party dithered and vacillated to try to stop it, but failed. Mezmer was marked as absent.

Mezmer found a cave, and tried a Sanctify on the statue. After the required hour, it flashed, but nothing else happened.

Back at camp, however, the Sergent-Chef suddenly clutched his chest ad collapsed coughing blood.

Just before morning, Mezmer hid the statue under a rock, and then snuck back to camp. He made himself known to the commanders with a "I was here all along, even during General Quarters" cock-and-bull story, and claimed, with fake embarrassment,  that he had spent the night with Gazala. Gazala reluctantly confirmed the lie.  They were both put on report.

________________________________

In the morning, Sergent-Chef  Branleur's health had not got any better, so Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire ordered a squad of men to head back to base with Branleur on a stretcher.

The rest of the troops continue the hike to the next oasis. They left the rough jagged hills and started to cross the dry flat wastes. Mezmer contemplated returning to pick up the statue, but then decided against it. He could get it some other day.

Empty fort by the oasis

In the distance, the troops spotted some suspicious vehicles, about ten kilometres away in the hazy distance. With binoculars, the party noted that there were three trucks which matched what they saw the other night with the German-speaking soldiers. They told Mâchoire and Adjutant-Chef Garnier who noted this down. 

By nightfall, they arrived at the Aimra'at Muflis oasis. There was an LE mini fort here - an empty one - so they would have barracks and walls for the night.

____________________________________

Next day,  Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire selected all the best sneakers - some party members fitted this criterion - and sent them out to investigate the suspicious trucks that they had spotted yesterday. Mezmer went too.

Légion Étrangère flag

There were three trucks and two Mercedes staff cars in a circle surrounding a sand-coloured marquee tent with a large Légion Étrangère flag flying over it. Outside the marquee was a diesel generator. There were four machines-gun nests dug in outside this circle, each with MG-15s (German-made guns). It was well-defended, so they dared not go too close.

While they were busy surveilling the place, Mezmer surreptitiously undressed and said the Invisibility poem. Then snuck inside.

There were about 50 troops, all in LE gear, but all speaking German. There was a phonograph with the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" being played again and again. On one of the desks was a bunch of papers with some writing in French but most in German.  

There was a hole in the floor of the marquee and a ladder going down, and power wires from the generator too. Mezmer climbed down, best he could, naked and invisible. 

Down here, there was a 10m tunnel, with the roof supported by shoring, and lit by electric bulbs.

Two guys were digging at the end. They were mostly clearing out dirt and sand rather than digging difficult rock.

There were stone slabs on both walls, some of which had hieroglyphs, and many of them looked mythos. This was very old tunnel. Carthaginian time, Mezmer guessed. Some tomb maybe.

Mezmer got back to the group, got dressed and reported his findings. The other sneakers were already suspicious of the party's activities, so they didn't ask too many questions as to how Mezmer could have found all this out.

"Je suis bon pour me faufiler." (I'm good at sneaking)

Then they all went back to the LE fort.

There was no communication from this fort (there was an old telephone line but it was long broken), but Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire, with much enthusiastic prodding (and chicken noises) from the group, decided that tonight would be a good time to attack the LE German impersonators. So, he gave the order. Maybe this is why he was a Sous-Lieutenant rather than a full Lieutenant or a Lieutenant-Chef.

First, a squad of no-names was sent off, with dispatches, back to the original LE fort, to tell Capitain le Beau. As this trip would take them 18 hours at best speed, no help was expected from that quarter.

Chauchat-Ribeyrolles
submachine gun

The LE whole force now numbered about 53 men including the party. Everyone was issued live rounds for their rifles, twelve were given Chauchat-Ribeyrolles submachine guns (with extra clips), and everyone got two grenades.

It was 2am when they left.

Four groups of three LEs were sent to each of the four machine-gun nests; the plan was to get close as possible, and to lob three grenades into each nest. The grenade explosions would be the trigger for the rest of the troops to advance. Nice and simple.

• Group 1: These three LEs took out their nest with professional aplomb.
• Group 2: These three turned out incompetent, and basically dropped two grenades at their own feet, and blew themselves up. This bright flash gave that MG-15 a clear target, so it shot them too for good measure.
• Group 3: Bernard, Mario and a soldier all superbly threw their grenades, and blew up their nest.
• Group 4: Gazala threw her grenade off to one side. Cooper's one was perfectly lobbed into the nest, and landed right at the base of the machine gun. But the numpty with them, dropped his grenade at Gazala's feet. Cooper and the numpty leapt away. Gazala tried to grab the dropped one, but just juggled it and it went off, blowing her up. She collapsed in a smoking heap, and Cooper rushed to check a for pulse. There was one, so he got out his sticky bandages and kept her from dying. [It's an abstract system.]

Bernard, Mario and soldier, sprinted the short distance, and occupied their nest - a fox-hole with the destroyed machine gun and bodies. Then they all took their second grenades to roll them under the nearby truck.

Mario and the soldier's rolls were superb, and the explosions set the truck on fire. But Bernard dropped his grenade at his feet, tried to leap out of the hole, but slipped and fell back in, right on top of it. It blew up, all but killing him. At least his body shielded the shrapnel from hitting Mario. Mario bandaged him.

Cooper's man did the rolling trick and blew up a second truck.

All the while this was happening, the rest of the LEs were advancing and spraying everything that moved with Chauchat-Ribeyrolles fire. Also, Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire had kept a bunch of sharp-shooters at the back with rifles who picked German soldiers off. But they got a bit too keen, and everyone was dressed the same, so shot some of their own. C'est la vie.

MG-15

One of the Mercedes staff cars tried to drive away, but Mâchoire had sent a group of 7 troops to stop this contingency. They successfully shot it to bits. But, because nest 2 was still active, the MG-15 there spoke its throaty song and shot them all down.

But before the MG-15 could be brought to bear on the camp and the invaders, another group of LE troops silenced it with a grenade.

The Germans surrendered and the fight was over. But the LEs had lost 15 men, with another 10 wounded - plus Gazala and Bernard.