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.

Resolution

The group, Mezmer [Shane], Cooper [Ian], Miriam [ Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Gazala [Richard] and Fleur [Steven] were stuck in the oasis with young Karima, the only tragic survivor of the doomed al-Hussain family.

Bernard [Jamie] on the stretcher, suddenly woke up. Dr Jacob and Mario collapsed, both marmalading.

There was an invisible barrier surrounding the rectangular compound that no one could pass, and they were trying to work out how to escape.

They all decided to search the entire place very thoroughly. The whole family, except Karima, were dead now, so it wasn't as if anyone was going to stop them.

Cooper went for a paddle inside the central tiled pool, which was filthy with sewerage and thick slime. He discovered, by touch, in the exact centre (the water was waist-deep here), that there was a raised pentagram shape, about the size of a car wheel.

In one of the cupboards, in the dilapidated bedroom, Wonton found an old crumpled piece of paper. It had some strange symbols on it, which looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Mezmer said they were  mythos symbols. With that in mind, Wonton was pretty sure that he knew how to voice the phonemes associated with each symbol. He held onto that for now.

Miriam found a rusty little kerosene stove, and she managed to get it running; there was plenty of petrol. So, she could boil the filthy pool water and at least get them all something potable to drink.

Mezmer attempts
a Sanctify

Wonton argued the case for Mezmer to cast to Sanctify on Karima, even though he knew it could kill her (it was not really designed for use on living souls), but this was resisted by the less evil among the group.

So, Wonton suggested that Karima should go and stand in the centre of the pool, on the pentagram. Karima was happy to comply. Nothing happened.

Then Mezmer tried a Sanctify on the snake head. No result.

Then a Sanctify was performed on the ram head. Again, no effect.

Then Mezmer went back and did the goat head again with another Sanctify. And that did nothing except make it glow again. Each use of this ritual takes an hour, so that used up most of the night.

_______________

Morning arrived. 

Mezmer finally decided to do a Sanctify on Karima, even though this might kill her or him. She refused, so Cooper grabbed her and managed to hold her down. Then Mezmer did his little dance and did the ritual on her. Karima thrashed and bucked about, and Cooper needed help to hold her down; Gazala and Miriam helped.  When the hour had passed, and the ritual completed, she screamed and passed out, unconscious and bleeding from her nose and tear ducts.

But ... the barriers were still intact.

Karima was still breathing, so they waited. After an hour and a bit, she sat up, a bit miffed.

Wonton took out the scroll he had found during the night, and read the hieroglyphs pronouncing the phonemes as best he could. There was a brief silence, and then suddenly, all four heads exploded simultaneously.

Immediately, Karima stood up and ran out through the entrance archway.

The party made a half-arsed attempt to follow; the barrier was gone for them too. But as soon as Karima got a few paces outside, she turned into a smear, which rocketed skywards and vanished. 

They looked around. Already the sewerage in the centre of the pool was starting to clear. It looked like fresh water was coming in through the centre jets.

About an hour later, the streak in the sky returned, and a female figure descended with a clap of thunder. It was Karima, but she was now glowing and fiery. She told them that she was a jiniri, a female jinn, imprisoned in the oasis by the cursed heads. And that she would grant a boon, as a reward, to one of the group.

Karima

They decided randomly, and Mezmer was, appropriately, the benefactor.

He chose Mythos Invisibility, hoping to get what Umar had. 

She smiled, and taught him a little rhyme.

When all around intend me woe,

To shoot and stab and fight.

I pucker up my little mouth,

And vanish from their sight !

After she had gone, Mezmer tried the rhyme. It made him invisible, yes, but only him, not his clothes. It lasted as long as he concentrated, but no more than an hour.

Later that afternoon, Abdul (their driver) arrived with the truck. He had been rescued by a passing car, and managed to get to a diesel station.

They stayed the night in the oasis.

Légion Étrangère fort

______________________________

In the morning, the oasis pool was practically clear.

They continued on their original mission to the Légion Étrangère fort. This trip only took a few hours of driving. A dusty side road left the main road and headed to an adobe fort, in the middle of the wastes.

A Capitane le Beau greeted them. He assigned all the males in the party to the fort barracks, to share with the rest of the company soldiers (about 120).  Gazala, Miriam and Fleur, being the only women there, were given le Beau's office; quite the gentleman was he.

They did remember to ask about the Germans of the other night, but Le Beau reported that none of the night sentries reported seeing anything. The desert road headed south, so he guessed they continued down there. But he would make a report in the next set of dispatches. The telephone line here was knocked by the sandstorm.

That night, in the barracks, china-man Wonton, stood out like a sore thumb. He was groped and molested and harangued by the other soldiers, but he stood resolute and maintained his ground with a knife.

____________________

Next morning.

Dr Jacob and Nurse Fleur were assigned to work in the infirmary.

The whole party did rifle, and pistol training. And that afternoon did sub-machine gun and grenade work.

______________________

The next morning, two platoons of soldiers, including the party, were sent on a three-day hike into the desert.  They were commanded by Sous-Lieutenant Mâchoire, Adjudant-Chef Garnier, and Sergent-Chef Branleur.

 

The Oasis

Shoggoth

Mezmer [Shane], Gazala [Richard], Cooper [Ian], Jacob [Chris], Fleur [Steven], Mario [Kevin] were at the Tunis quarry, at the site of the large explosion (from the dynamite bunker) that had destroyed the creature tracking Mezmer's goluz medallion. Mezmer had been wearing the amulet long enough now that he suddenly knew the name of this creature. It was a shoggoth [this is a cursed word].

Bernard had been concussed by the blast and was consequently (and narratively) marmalading.

Back in their apartment, on the top floor of Calomnie de Tunis, the two marmaladers, Miriam [Jeff] and Wonton [Darryl], awoke with a start from their restless haunted sleeps. They sat up in their beds and looked around.

 

Back at the quarry, Inspector Heroux, eight gendarmes and a squad of twelve Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion) had arrived. He assessed the situation and then congratulated everyone with glowing praise. And then mentioned that the firearms training he had arranged for them would begin tomorrow.

"A truck will pick you up at your newspaper at 8am tomorrow morning," he said.

________________________

The next morning, they bundled into the truck, suitably attired for desert action. Gazala and Fleur, the pretty ones, rode shotgun next to Abdul the Arab driver. Everyone else got the uncomfortable benches in the back of the truck under a canvas tarpaulin. There was a little connecting hatch between the driver's compartment and the back, so they could all chat to each other.

Not wanting to leave the marmalading Bernard back at the paper, they placed him on a stretcher and it rode on the floor between their feet.

The day was sunny and clear, and they headed out of Tunis towards the west. It was rich farmland at first as they travelled west. Then they turned south. It got drier and drier, and after three hours, they were travelling in the desert. The roads became less and less trafficked, and they ended up on a dusty shingle road.

Sandstorm

About noon, the driver pulled off the road and stopped the truck. There wasn't a breath of air, and it was completely quiet. He gestured forward. There was a ominous towering wave of brown roiling clouds which covered the whole horizon, creeping slowly towards them from the south, beautiful and dark. 

"Sand storm," he said in Arabic. "We can not drive in this."

Everyone got busy tying down the canvas extra tight and trying to block every little hole. Then they all secured themselves inside, and watched out through the windscreen, fascinated but nervous.

The storm hit like a hammer. The whole truck jolted on its suspension, and everyone got violently shaken about. The wind outside was literally screaming. Small streams of sand and grit made its way inside. 

The screaming and the shaking lasted for about half an hour, and then suddenly, as quick as it started, it was gone. And all was quiet and still outside. But the road was completely buried. 

"We must be careful to drive else we get bogged" said the driver. 

So, he sent out two on foot, Gazala and Cooper, with a pole each, so they could feel the road. He drove along slowly behind.

They didn't make much ground at this rate. Late afternoon, they passed a side road which headed to the right (west). Down this road, in the distance, there were a few white buildings and some trees.

They carried on until dark and then the truck pulled over, and they set a watch for the night.

About 1 am, they saw headlights down the road, from behind them. Three vehicles approached. Gazala was on watch with Miriam and Wonton. She snuck out into the darkness.

The convoy came close. It was a Mercedes car. Followed by two trucks. The commander of this convoy, flanked by some soldiers, came close. He spoke French but he had a strong German accent. He said the soldiers, a platoon (about 35), were Légion Étrangère but the party wasn't so sure. This convoy had used the tracks of the party's truck to navigate the sand-covered road.

Since the road ahead was not driveable, this convoy stopped just down the road from the party for the rest of the night.

________________________________________

There was a strong wind during the rest of the night, and in the morning it had conveniently cleared the road. While the party was having breakfast, the other group left and drove off.

Abdul tried to start the truck. The engine turned over a few times. Then he stopped trying and pointed to the dash. The fuel gauge was on "E". He got out and checked. There was a neat hole drilled in the tank and all the diesel had drained away. 

"Surely you have spare jerry-can?" someone said.

"Uh yes," said Abdul, looking guilty. "We have two."

Sure enough, there were two 20L jerry-cans under the truck deck. They hauled them out and unscrewed them. Yes they were full. But not diesel; full of water.

They guessed that someone, possibly Abdul, had stolen the diesel; weeks ago, no doubt.

[Today is the day for the big drive. We must fill our jerry-cans. The sergeant says to fill them with diesel, but you can fill yours with water. And he will never know.]

They now had a big decision. They were a large group of nine plus Abdul.  They had maybe four hours of water in this heat, which could be stretched to 8. (The 40L of water in the diesel cans was tainted with traces of poisonous diesel. Dr Jacob deliberately tipped them out to avoid temptation.) This road only had one or two cars a day tops. So:

• Pressing on to the fort on foot. Abdul guessed would take two days and nights of walking, so that option was right out. 
• Heading back to the oasis on foot would take three hours. 
• Alternatively they could risk waiting here (admittedly, in the shade of the truck) in the hope a vehicle would pass.

So, they left Abdul in the truck with half their water, and then all headed to the oasis, with Bernard (and his marmalade) on the stretcher. If Abdul got some help, he could head back and collect them.

They could see the oasis in the distance, and the ground wasn't too difficult, so they went direct, hoping it would shave some time off. In the end it did take three hours.

Date palm

As they approached the oasis, they saw it in its grandeur. It was a beautiful walled compound, 30 paces by 50, with an arched gateway entrance, many fruit trees around a large central tiled pool, and a pretty rock feature with water running down. All the walls were bright and white-washed.

There were goats and chickens running around. The nearby desert had been irrigated and grew olives, date palms and grass.

"Welcome welcome to my humble home. I am Afar al-Hussain," said a bearded man in white robes. 

They were welcomed inside by him, his wife Fatima, and three daughters (Safiya, Naseeba, and Karima), and served delicious drinks and food (no alcohol, of course).  The family rarely got visitors, so they were treated royally.

Afar had petrol here, but, sadly, no diesel. 

But he did have a son called Amer who had a car, a brand new Citroen Type A. He was in Tunis today, but he would be back this afternoon. So, they were all very welcome to stay here until then, and Amer could drive them anywhere they wished to go. 

Sure enough, just before dark, a red Citroen arrived and the son got out. The father spoke to the boy who went off to refuel the car. It was noticed that Amer walked very jerkily, like suffering cerebral palsy. Gazala thought he moved like a marionette puppet on strings.

Citroen Type A

The Citroen Type A only holds five. Amer drove. Mario, Mezmer, Miriam and Fleur sat inside. Bernard, on stretcher, was strapped long-ways to the roof. And Gazala, Wonton, Cooper and Jacob stood on the running boards. By the time this delicate loading had been completed, the sun had set. 

With all this added weight, the poor 18hp car drove very low on its suspension.  Amer drove slowly out the arched gate, careful not to shake off the outside passengers. It was a good thing he did.

Suddenly, Mario was dragged up out of his seat and pushed over into the back seat onto the surprised Mezmer, Miriam and Fleur's laps. They only had enough time to shriek before they, too, were all then pushed up the back seat and forcible squashed into the rear window compartment against the glass. They were all yelling and screaming, so Amer managed to slam on the car brakes at this point. Of those outside, Gazala and Cooper were at the front of the running board, they were pushed off backwards. Bernard, on the stretcher, was pushed off the back of the car. 

Amer carefully reversed back through the gateway. Mario & Co untangled themselves, and climbed out of the car. They picked up Bernard and put him safely to one side.

It seemed that there was an invisible barrier across the gateway. The barrier didn't affect the car, so Mario was pushed into the back-seat because the car was moving through the barrier. And the three in the back were likewise affected. They dreaded to think what would have happened had Amer not stopped. The barrier didn't affect Amer.

"Welcome welcome to my humble home. I am Afar al-Hussain," said a bearded man in white robes. 

Afar didn't recognize them. It was as if they never met.

"Oh! You are injured," he said. They were cut and bruised from their close shave. "Come come, we tend you."

Wonton frowned, and pushed against the invisible barrier. It felt like solid rubber

"Welcome welcome to my humble home. I am Afar al-Hussain," said a bearded man in white robes. "Oh! You are inj..."

Cooper pushed on it.

"Welcome welcome to my humble home. I am Afar al-Hussain," said a bearded man in white robes. "Oh! You are injured. Come come, we tend you."

It seemed every time they pushed the barrier, the place would "reset". No object or person or animal would actually change positions, just that the occupants' minds would reset, and they would forget everything that happened.

Bronze Goat Head

The barrier extended above the compound wall and followed the wall its entire length. There was a similar barrier on the other three walls of the compound square. So, it seemed the party was trapped.

Further investigation revealed a bronze goat head on top of the archway facing inwards. Mezmer cast a Detect Mythos and they were surrounded in mythos. No surprises there.

The archway entrance was on the east wall. On the west wall, mid wall, was a bronze snake head. On the north wall was a stone jackal head, and on the south a stone ram's head. All the heads faced inwards.

Mezmer tried a Sanctify ceremony targeting the goat head. After the hour, this only caused the goat head to shine, like a beacon, but from the back of it. The bright light only shone outward.

Mezmer noticed that, during the Sanctify, he briefly saw the pool turn dark and foul and the building walls drab. Just a short flash; he blinked and it was gone.

Hearing this, Cooper went for a swim in the pool, fully immersed underwater. When he lifted his head out of the water he recoiled in horror. He was swimming in sewage, and the compound and buildings were no longer pristine white and clean, but were instead dull weathered grey and dilapidated. The fountains that the party had used to fill their canteens and water bottles were dribbling green slime. And this filth was in their containers too. The family looked okay, except for Amer, who looked rather pale, skeletal and he was missing a jaw ... and both his arms. No-one else in the group could see any of this. No-one else was brave enough to swim - or they didn't believe Cooper.

Cooper found that if he then bounced off the barrier, the "reset" would reset the pool and the buildings too, back to clean water and newly white-washed buildings.

The Afar and his family retired for the night.

The party stayed up and kept experimenting and trying various things with the wall barriers and the pool. 

Mezmer performed a Sanctify on the central pool itself. Half way through the Sanctify's hour, the water started to bubble and then boil, and then became a rolling boil (yes, it was hot too). After the ceremony's hour, the boiling suddenly stopped and the whole thing turned to sludge (now, it was cool again). But the whole group could see the wasted effect now: the ruined buildings and dead trees and all.

Outside the arched gate, and down the road a short distance, Amer's car appeared. But it was old and rusted. It was on its side, and the back window was smashed out.

They rushed into Afar and his wife's bedroom. It was now a decrepit room with rotting furnishings and filled with decay and filth. The two were sleeping, in rags, on a pile of broken bricks under frayed sheets. They woke Afar up, and he looked around, eyes wide in terror, horror and despair.

"Who are you? What happened?" he cried, sobbing. "What have you done?! Was this you?"

Wailing, poor Afar stumbled outside. He got a few steps across the yard towards the gate when one of his legs just stopped. He tripped and collapsed, crawled a bit, then fell face forward, and died before their eyes. And then they watched in horror as his body wasted away, as if aging in rapid time, rotting quickly, down to a skeleton.

His wife Fatima arrived about then. She screamed a howl of anguish, and stumbled over to his body. But she, too, collapsed, and died before their eyes.

Next followed the two elder daughters, Safiya and Naseeba. They, too, suffered a similar fate, and died next to the parents. But Karima, the youngest daughter calmly walked over to the group. She was no longer seven years old, as before. She was now a woman, 18 or 19.

She seemed to take everything in with eyes too wise for her age. She calmly and sadly said in Arabic "Twelve years ago, the farm was failing and the oasis was drying up. A lady traveller visited one night who claimed she could do magic. Dad called her a jiniri. A bargain was agreed. In exchange for making the oasis fruitful, my father had to give me to the jiniri as payment after one year and one day. Dad naively accepted not believing it would happen. But, sure enough, the water came back, and the oasis flourished, rich and beautiful. Then we started to get worried as the time ran out."

"My father sought help from those in the know in Tunis, and they instructed him to placed the blessed animal heads on the four walls to ward the jiniri, but I do not think that it worked. On the very night that the deal expired, Amer was leaving in his brand new car. That barrier suddenly came up, and he died when he drove through it.  He was crushed and minced because his body was forced back through the car's back window. The car crashed and burned down the road a bit."

"We are all trapped by the barriers. We live our lives in a short loop which begins each day, unless the barrier is touched. I am trapped in the young body, but now 11 years older. But I do not reset - I think because I was the payment."

Gazala bounced off the barrier. There was no reset this time.

Stone Ram Head

"Your magic has stopped the loop, maybe?"

As Karima watched them, they tried to smash the stone ram head. There were a good set of tools at the oasis, even if a little rusty, so they got hammers and crowbars. But the stone was strong, and the tools made no impact even when wielded by the muscled Cooper. He did notice that the bangs sounded metallic (rather than metal on stone).

The group could unbolt the animal heads and prise them off, but they could not rotate them, nor move them outwards. They dug a hole in the ground at the base of the wall by the ram head. Then they put wood (from the ruined building frames) in the hole and ignited it with petrol to get a nice hot base of charcoal. They took the ram head off the wall, and dropped it in the pit, then got it glowing hot. Then Cooper tried shooting it. And banging it with the hammers. But even that didn't mark it.