The Visitation

Umar al-Ghaffari

It was early afternoon. 

Miriam [Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Gazala [Richard], Mezmer [Shane] and Cooper [Ian] were at Umar's apartment with Inspector Heroux, some gendarmes and some Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops. Since Bernard and Mario had slumped to the ground, marmalading, the others arranged for Heroux to please deliver them to Ahmed's Coffee House. Best not to leave marmaladers in this place!

Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim] were back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building. Fleur was there too, marmalading in the party's apartment. Toulouse was down in the darkroom with his lab assistant Selima. He had a theory. Are there any Friday the 13ths coming up? No. Today was September 7th. The only Friday 13th in 1930 was in June.

Miriam, Mezmer, Wonton, Gazala and Cooper left Umar's apartment and headed towards the "pentagram building" (place of the third murder).

They had to walk through the streets because their Citroen was left by the coffee house. Part way through the trip, Gazala noticed that they were being followed by someone, so she held back and intercepted him. It was on of the Deacons from the Saint Croix church. He was genuinely worried for the party's immortal souls and claimed that they reeked of evil. They didn't want him to follow, so Gazala distracted and diverted him enough with her feminine wiles, that he never did discover where they were headed.

A squad of soldiers were still guarding this building. The group entered. 

In the actual pentagram room, Miriam saw Umar standing in the corner. When she pointed him out to Mezmer, Mezmer could not see him. Nor could Gazala. Nor could the soldiers. He was somehow invisible. But Wonton could. It didn't take Umar long to twig that Miriam and Wonton could see him, so he hurriedly left the building. She tried to follow. He entered the Medina, and when he went down an alley, she was too scared to follow. So, she returned to the group.

They racked their brains trying to work out why only Miriam and Wonton could see him. No theories.

Cooper took twelve of the thirty sticks of stolen dynamite (from the box stored in the boot of the Citroen) and some fuse and detonators. Wonton took four sticks for himself.  Cooper then snuck them into the building's ground floor, and he started to place them into random holes in the floor, carefully avoiding the soldiers. Wonton helped him calculate the fuse lengths.

While they were doing this, Mezmer performed a Sanctify in the pentagram room above. After the ritual's hour, there was the usual mini quake and the whole building shook.

Cooper was still placing sticks of dynamite at this time, so he wet himself, thinking some had exploded. The soldiers were not very happy with the jolt either, and ran out into the street.

Back at the paper, Toulouse got the faecal samples (previously scraped off the ceiling of the Men's toilet by Jacob and Fleur). He watered them down, and placed them on a microscope slide. They were textbook samples of human faeces. And the man who deposited them had hook worm too.  

Round worm, vanilla worm,
hookworm

Later that day, Toulouse and Selima took the tram to the two asylums of Tunis. The first was the asylum for women L'Asile de Tunis pour les Putes Impudique (Tunis Fallen Women Asylum), but not being a doctor nor a woman (despite Selima's presence), Toulouse was denied entry by the gate guards. The second was the asylum for men L'Asile de Tunis pour les Encules Fous (Tunis Crazy Fools Asylum). Here, Toulouse mentioned Inspector Heroux's name and the Calomnie de Tunis paper name and they were happy to let him in ("Oh, that group") , wheelchair and all, but supervised.

After that foray, back at base, Toulouse took the negatives from Bernard's photographs of the crypt and enlarged some of the pictures of the alcoves. Some had inscriptions beneath. It was Latin, and they were early Christian saints. No surprises there.

Toulouse sent Selima to the St Vincent de Paul Cathedral (the main Catholic cathedral of Tunis) to get some holy water. She got back just before dark, with a jug of it.

It was now night.

__________________________________________________________

Toulouse took the (monochrome) negative of the crypt cylinder, still with the unusual 3D effect, and loaded it into the enlarger. He exposed it on to a large piece of photographic paper, big as the tray, big enough to get good details (like A3), zooming in to the dark cylinder, despite the image turning his stomach. He had used the holy water (instead of normal water) to make the batches of developing solution and fixer solution. The print slowly appeared on the photographic paper as he swirled it about, but was hard to see well in the gloomy red light of the darkroom, but it was still 3D. Next, he swirled the print through the stop bath. And finally into the tray of fixer solution. At this stage, it was safe to turn on the darkroom lights, so he did.

Peering close, he could swear the image was moving; not when he stared straight at it, but out of the corner of his eye. While he watched, fascinated, the black and white photo suddenly turned to colour, and the fixer solution suddenly drained away, as if it poured into the print. The 3D effect became even more spectacular when a tentacle, febrile yellow, glistening with pus, and thick as his arm, snaked out of the print, as if it was a window. 

Toulouse screamed.

_______________

Back at the pentagram building, some time later,  Heroux arrived with two gendarmes. He insisted that there was trouble at the newspaper building and that he had to take them; "actuellement!"

"Je vous expliquerai les détails pendant le voyage," he said. (I will explain on the trip.)

But the five were very suspicious and thought that Heroux was possessed or forced. So, they only sent Cooper and Mezmer (i.e. sacrificial lambs). Wonton, Gazala and Miriam stayed back. Wonton stayed in the courtyard where the fuse to the dynamites began, Gazala stayed in the observing room across the courtyard from the building, and Miriam stayed on rooftop.

Cooper and Mezmer took the Citroen and followed Heroux. At the Calomnie de Tunis building there were some police cars out front, two army trucks, a fire engine, and a large group of people. There was smoke coming out of a second floor window (the typing pool), and water was being hosed in there.

The soldiers were obviously waiting for Heroux and the party to arrive, and they crowded around the cars.

Just then there was a large angry bellow from within the building, loud enough to rattle the windows. It sounded like a bear or a tiger. Then a crashing noise, in the ground floor, as if heavy furniture was being moved around. People in the street backed away further. The firemen stepped back. The soldiers gripped their rifles

Inspector Heroux thrust Mezmer and Cooper forward. "Ces deux braves hommes vont montrer la voie. Ce sont des experts en ours!" (These two brave souls will lead the way. They are bear experts.)

Cooper facetiously asked for a rifle, and he was surprised when one of the soldiers actually gave him one. Then he entered the building with the squad of troops, a sergeant, Mezmer, Heroux, and four gendarmes. 

The heavy moving noise was up the stairs, so they ascended. There was a trail of thick pus-yellow slime coating the stairs. The power had gone off, so the noisy generator on the roof had started up, and the building lights dimmed and brightened as it came up to speed. This was normal; it always took a while to settle.

When the group got to the landing, the noise of heavy furniture was above them, on the top floor - the party's apartment. 

Then there was another roar. Like an angry bear in pain. The whole building shook, and pieces of plaster rained down from the ceiling onto them. But the brave soldiers, et al, continued upwards, following the slime path. 

There was the noise of breaking of glass above them, and the generator suddenly got noisier. They carried on creeping up, and got to the top floor. The slime trail went through the party's apartment's living room (every door was smashed) and out through the french doors, which were now matchwood and broken glass, and on to the roof.

They crept out onto the flat roof, guns at the ready. The air was stinking of diesel fumes from the rust holes in the muffler. The wide slime trail ended at the edge of the building. Cooper peered down the two storeys to the narrow street below, but there was no sign of the "bear". Mezmer looked into the sky. Did it have wings? Or maybe it jumped. It was 5 m across to another same-height building across Rue de Chekli.

The sergeant shouted down to some soldiers on the ground and ordered a truck be brought around to shine its headlights down the street. No sign of movement.

Two soldiers were left to guard up here while everyone went down ground level. Soldiers and gendarmes were ordered into adjacent buildings and streets. Some soldiers, Mezmer, Cooper and Heroux went down to the cellar level, following the slime trail backwards. At the base of the cellar stairs was a broken wheelchair. Through some splintered doors they came to the darkroom. There was a decapitated head lying on its side in the darkroom's broken doorway. Mezmer recognized Toulouse. A soldier vomitted. Pieces of Toulouse were all about the darkroom. He had been violently torn apart. Some bits had been chewed. His was the only body, and no sign of his assistant Selima. 

Mezmer had enough presence of mind to pick up the fallen enlarger, wipe off the spattered blood, and retrieve the negative from within it. Interestingly, it was no longer 3D, and the cylinder in the picture was just a plain black cylinder now.

The gendarmes and soldiers searching adjacent buildings and streets found no slime on any of their roofs. And no splats on the surrounding roads and alleys. So, the "bear" had vanished, or flown away.

Cooper and Mezmer got Heroux's permission to return to the others, so they drove back to the pentagram building. Cooper managed keep hold of his rifle through some clever subterfuge, and luck.

Back on the rooftop the reunited group spent the rest of night with soldiers. It was a peaceful night; no beams.

_________________________________

In the morning, the five took the Citroen to the Saint Croix church.

The priest & two deacons were there; one deacon was the same one who followed Gazala yesterday. But there was a second priest too, standing at the back by the altar. Miriam looked; it was Umar! She squealed. Like yesterday, only she and Wonton could see him.

He hurried to the main doors of the nave, down the aisle. Miriam beat him to the doors and slammed them. He drew a large knife and menaced her with it, while he pulled the bolts back.

Gazala gave Wonton her police Lebel revolver. His first few shots went wild. Cooper rushed down too. Wonton wounded Umar in the shoulder, but his next shot hit Cooper. Then Umar stabbed Cooper straight in his gut and he went down. But then Wonton shot again, and Umar dropped.

Worried about being caught in possession of a gun, Wonton, scurried off to hide in the surrounding streets. By now the priests had used the church telephone to call the gendarmes. 

Umar was dead. His body suddenly appeared to all, and his blood became visible on the floor by the church door. As did his large knife, which Miriam hid on her person. He also had a strange medallion around his neck. It was on a leather cord and had a strange ampule on the end with glass faces containing a thick red liquid. Mezmer took this.

Cooper was patched up to stop him bleeding out, but he was unconscious [when you hit 0hp, you are unconscious and need medical aid to regain consciousness]. He was gently placed on a pew.

Heroux and two gendarmes arrived. He summoned another car to take Umar's body away. Mezmer warned Heroux to have the body cremated as soon as he can; just in case. Heroux didn't pry too much on the use of the revolver; in normal times, Wonton would be executed for using one.

After Heroux was gone, Mezmer,  Miriam, and Gazala headed down to the undercroft, under the church's altar. There were four soldiers down here, still guarding (they had not heard any of Wonton's gun shots through the thick floors). The soldiers knew the group, so let them pass.

The three went down to the crypt. The black cylinder was now gone, and there was a greasy circle on the floor in the pentagram of the cylinder's size, and matching one on the ceiling. The five candles were still burning at each spike of the pentagram. 

They checked inside the sarcophagi. There was no movement; just an old dusty skeleton.

Gazala and Miriam asked Mezmer if they should extinguish the candles. Mezmer thought on this for a while, but then gave the same answer as last time. If it was a summoning, then yes. But if it was a summoned, then no. So, we do not know.

The two girls said they would blow them out anyway, so Mezmer vacated the crypt.

Miriam and Gazala blew the candles out one at a time. After each one, they felt a shudder go up their backs. Then there were two left. So they both knelt next to each, and blew. 

The room went dark... But only because those candles were the only source of light.

Back in the church above, one of the deacons had some medical knowledge and he had roused Cooper [on 2 hp]. And, Wonton had returned. It was now near noon, so they rested, intending to be awake for that night. Was the "bear" still out there?

Saint Croix

It was after nightfall. 

Umar al-Ghaffari

The party was split into three groups.  

1. Mezmer [Shane], Miriam [Jeff], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton [Darryl], and Cooper [Ian] who had woken from his marmalading. In Ahmed's Coffee House. 
2. Gazala [Richard] and Mario [Kevin]. On the roof of the pentagram house. 
3. Fleur [Steven], Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim]. Back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building.

Toulouse had done some research and had updated the party on his discoveries:

"

Toulouse suspected that the ancient Saint Croix church was at the centre of a pentagram demarcated by the three murder sites already found and a further two. 

His research determined that this church was built in 1837, but on the site of a much older pre-schism Christian church. The site was left abandoned after the Christian schism in AD 1054 and left for hundreds of years until 1837. Going back further before the schism, the Umayyad Muslim caliphate had invaded Tunis in the 700s. They allowed the local Christians and Jews to stay, but they stomped out other religions.

Before the caliphate, on this site, was a temple to Baal Hammon, which was itself preceded by a temple to Baal Karnaim in Carthaginian times. Baal Hammon was the "nice face" of Baal. Baal Karnaim expected the sacrifice of children burned alive.

"

On the rooftop of the place of the last murder, the derelict "pentagram house", Gazala and Mario waited. Miriam and Wonton joined them. This left Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper in the coffee house.

The four briefly thought about opening the trapdoor here (after all, it went straight into the pentagram room below), but it was bolted, and it was easier to use that as an excuse and not try, rather than risk any horrors that might be below.

While they were pontificating, a group of eight figures left the building, in a perfectly straight line, all walking in lock-step, escorted by one "normal-walking" figure. It was too dark to make out any features, and this could almost pass as a group of normal people, apart from the perfectly unison marching.

After this group had gone, Gazala snuck down to street level, snuck across the street, pulled out her police Lebel revolver, and fired three times at the doorway (there was no door to this building, just a doorway). She was hoping to get some shots inside to attract their attention.  But she missed, and only hit the side of the building. Despite being a quiet night, the shots were still quite loud, but no-one inside noticed. Not wanting to waste any more bullets, she stopped.

So, she plucked up some bravery, and she went inside. There was a man just inside the door. He was reading something. He looked up rather irritated, grabbed a piece of pipe, and strode over to her.

Gazala played the damsel in distress, and batted her big brown eyes at the man [and rolled an 11]. He was taken by her story, and took her to a side room. He identified himself as Abdul, and kept looking to the side and upwards, worried, and saying "هذا المنزل غير آمن للعاهرات الجميلات!" (You can not stay here, woman!) 

Niqab

Abdul took Gazala outside into the street, and walked in to the Medina with her, physically chaperoning her. After a short trip, he delivered her to a side building of the Zaytuna Mosque. This was the "lady entrance" where women were allowed to enter the mosque precincts. An elderly lady in a niqab took over from him and showed Gazala into a dormitory for stray women. She assured Gazala that she would be safe here for the night.

_________________________________

Back at the Calomnie de Tunis building, Fleur and Jacob carefully took a scraping off the ceiling of the toilet to get faecal sample. This was at Toulouse's request to analyze them. (The cleaners had cleaned the mess earlier in the day, and the ceiling residue was the only bits they had missed.) Toulouse had a microscope, so was planning to check them.

_________________________________

Back on the rooftop, Mario, Wonton and Miriam settled in to stay the night up here. Glancing over the side of the building, they could see light in the pentagram room. Flickering candle-light.

Ahmed's Coffee House was closing, so Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper had an idea. They asked Ahmed if there were any quarries out of town. He knew of one to the northwest, and gave directions.

They had the newspaper's Citroen, so they bundled into it, and headed off to the to the quarry. 

About now, back on the rooftop, Wonton, Mario and Miriam suddenly felt tinging in the backs of their necks. The air around them felt electric, but smelled of cloying sweetness; rotting dates and pomegranates. 

Suddenly, there was a beam of light shining through the concrete of the rooftop and into sky, perfectly vertical. It was a dirty febrile yellow, and not at all pleasant to look at. The beam was the width of a person's torso, and it had movement within, like strange extra-worldly ropes, or intestines, plaited and twisting in a slow random dance, but moving upwards. They watched in awe, but did not put their hand through the beam, nor stand on it. It gave off no heat. It was an overcast night and the beams went into the cloud.

Saint Croix marks the spot

Out over the city, in the distance, maybe half a kilometre away, were four other beams, also shining skyward. They guessed that two of them were at the site of the first two murders - Safar's house and the other unoccupied one. And they estimated that all five were neatly spaced on a circle.

So, they cast their eyes to the centre of that giant circle, to see a beam of similar coloured light, but thicker, come downwards, from the sky. At this spot was the Saint Croix ancient church, exactly as Toulouse predicted.

The beams lasted for half an hour. Not sure what to do now, the Miriam and Wonton headed back to the paper. Mario wanted to stay the night on the rooftop.

Two hours later, Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper arrived at the quarry. It was an easy matter to cut through the chain-link fence and sneak in to one of the sheds. Here, they took a box of dynamite, a box of fuses and a plunger thing. "We will work out how to use this stuff when the time comes" was the general theory. 

And then they returned into the city and to the newspaper building. 

___________________

At first light, the plan was to all meet up at the coffee house. Gazala had spent the night in the women's shelter, so she joined them. Mario was still on the pentagram building rooftop. In the light of day, he could see that there was a black circle on the roof in the spot where the beam was last night. It was a sticky substance as if it had been sprayed with tar. He didn't touch it.

Mezmer and Wonton were dropped off at the library.

When the rest of the party got to the coffee house, there was a platoon (about 40) of Légion Etrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops in the streets, plus their trucks. Inspector Heroux had recovered from yesterday's ordeal of terror, and he was back with a large group of gendarmes. Heroux was in charge of the whole operation; the FE troops' lieutenant took orders from him.

At the party's suggestion, Heroux ordered troops into the pentagram house. Mario was on the rooftop. The trigger-happy soldiers saw this suspicious figure on the roof, so they opened up with their rifles before Heroux could stop them. Mario was hit and he screamed, wounded. When the smoke had cleared, he limped down and rejoined the party. Jacob and Fleur tended him.

The building was empty inside. And all the candles out.

They went to the other two pentagram sites that they knew. These were empty, but the candles showed signs of being burned. They all tried to guess where the two new sites were. Wonton's navigational prowess came to the fore, and using his observations last night, and the map of Tunis and a pentagram shape, he worked out the rough locations of the two new sites. Some gendarmes and a squad of FE troops were dispatched to both. 

Everyone else went to the Saint Croix ancient church itself. At the church, the priest protested about weapons entering his church, but Heroux, the gendarmes and the soldiers ignored him. 

As expected, on the floor of the chancel, was a big circle, and a matching one on the ceiling, made of the same sticky tar-like substance that Mario had seen on the rooftop. This silenced the doubting priest and his two deacons somewhat. The crowd all went down to the undercroft and then down to the crypt, weapons drawn and army torches out. The undercroft level was lit by electric lights, but not the crypt. Down here was a pentagram, larger than the others they had encountered, with candles lit on each point. There were no figures and no movement, except for a column of swirling darkness in the centre of the pentagram.

"Best to not touch anything!" someone hissed. "And don't extinguish the candles."

The crypt had some sarcophagi and tombs, some very old. The walls were lined with small alcoves, each with a statue of an ancient pre-schism (1054) saint.

Bernard had his Speed Graphics camera out, and he started to take photographs.

Cooper thought he heard movement in a sarcophagus, so he opened the lid a crack. There was movement in the darkness. Then a skeletal hand poked out and a skull leered at the opening. He screamed, dropped the lid, and scurried away, whimpering [SAN loss].

Bernard came over and a gendarme with a chauchat submachine gun, just in case.

Bernard put the lens of the camera to the lid gap, angled the detachable flash bulb so that it would illuminate what was within, and took a photograph. In the brief bright flash there was a decayed dusty skeleton hunched over, its arms extended to the gap. Did it move? They slammed the lid.

Bernard and Cooper repeated this for a few more sarcophagi. The flash showed each had a decayed skeleton in a different pose.

The swirling column was about two metres wide, as wide as the crypt ceiling was tall. It was a perfect cylinder, and as looked like it was made of glass holding thick black oily smoke which danced and swirled. No one touched it, which was probably sensible.

Bernard took some photos of it. In the bright flash he was sure he saw a figure in the cylinder. And eyes. And mouths. And tentacles? Maybe it was a distortion of the light. Everyone felt sick.

They all left the place, up to the calm of the church's nave. Inspector Heroux asked the army to station some troops in the undercroft and not to let any one go to the crypt.

The priest agreed that St Croix would be closed today. So the group hung around in the church while Bernard returned to Calomnie de Tunis to develop the photographs.

Speed Graphics Camera
(note film cartridge pulled out)

Speed Graphics camera film is in cartridges - one cartridge per photograph. The negatives are the size of a cartridge; big as your palm.

Toulouse developed the crypt room-shots and alcove statue photographs first. The statues came out clear but they looked like they had skeleton bones superimposed upon them. Almost like some talented artist had painted skeleton bones on the actual stone statues, but more see-through.

The sarcophagus photographs each showed a fully formed skeletal creature with teeth and claws, and even some skin. It was much clearer and more formed than the dusty bones that were actually there.

But the central column photograph was something else entirely.  When Toulouse developed the negative, it looked three dimensional. In the red light of the darkroom they could see the side of the cylinder actually projecting out of the negative. When you turned the negative in your hand, the cylinder moved. Toulouse reached out and touched the projection. His finger passed through it, but he recoiled it in shock. "Ugh" 

Being a negative, the black-and-white image was reversed, of course, and this helped lessen the discomfort Bernard and Toulouse felt by looking at the many-eyed tentacled thing in that cylinder. Was it moving? Can't be.

Toulouse persevered, and he loaded the negative into the enlarger, and projected it onto the printing paper. In each step of this process, the image was 3D. So, he developed the print, and fixed it, avoiding looking too closely throughout, and only holding things by the edge of the paper. The print was 3D too.

"Maybe do not make another print, Toulouse" said Bernard.

Bernard returned to St Croix in the Citroen, with all the photographic prints. Mezmer and Wonton had finished their stint in the library, so he picked them up en route.

 

Mezmer commented that they did the right thing by NOT extinguishing the candles. If this was a summoning, then candles OUT will prevent the arrival. But if this was a summoned, then the candles may be what is maintaining its "cage", so candles must be ON. "We do not know which."

Wonton's research had established that the crypt of this place was indeed the Carthaginian Baal temple layer, and that there ought not to be any deeper layers.

Bernard passed around the prints. The group was intrigued, but they did not like the look of the 3D cylinder in the bright light of day, nor what it contained. In fact, it was enough to physically give Miriam a turn [SAN loss], and she sat in the corner whimpering and rocking. 

Mezmer snatched the print and burned it. "Not good."

They all summoned Heroux and some troops and revisited Umar's apartment. It was empty, but had been cleaned somewhat. The faecal mess was all gone.

The cold room door was closed. Rather than open it, Heroux put a padlock on it. "Nous attendons des armes de gros calibre avant d'ouvrir cette porte." (We'll await heavier weaponry for here.)

It was late afternoon.

Three goes Live

The group (Mezmer [Shane], Miriam [Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Dr Jacob [Chris], Bernard [Jamie], Mario [Kevin], Gazala [Richard] and Fleur [Steven] - Cooper was marmalading) was with Inspector Heroux (Tunis Police) and eight gendarmes at the derelict two-storey building on the corner of Rue Al Jazira and Rue de Epernay, (south-eastern corner of the Tunis Medina). There had been a murder here and Heroux was using the skills of the party, Calomnie de Tunis journalists, to help him with the strange occurrences.

Just then, a new journalist arrived. He was a French man in a wheelchair, named Toulouse [guest-star Tim Robinson], Science Correspondent for the Calomnie de Tunis.

Two beggars had found the murder victim, so Gazala and Miriam took them aside and questioned them, out of earshot of the gendarmes. One of them slipped up and said he saw the murdered guy with clothes covered in blood. But the corpse had been dressed in beggars' clothes that were clean, with no blood.

Realizing the game was up, one beggar ran away. Gazala tried to stop him by threatening him with her "borrowed" police revolver, but he was too quick and got away. However, the other one didn't manage to escape, and under Gazala's questioning, he broke, and told the story: His name was Mohammed. This abandoned building was a regular haunt for the homeless. He and the other beggar, Ahmed, had come upon a rich guy kneeling down doing something on the floor here. Ahmed stabbed the rich guy in the back, intending to rob him. He had valuable clothes, so they undressed him to steal them, and dressed him in beggar rags (which were lying around). But a passing gendarme spotted them from the street, so they quickly hid the rich clothes (covered in blood) and reported that they "had found" the body here. 

Further questioning confirmed that the two had not been into the pentagram room.

Gazala wanted to turn Mohammed over to the law, but Miriam instead paid him, and they let him go.

Mezmer and Toulouse joined Jacob and Fleur at the Morgue. The pathologist, by now, had taken photographs of the body, and he let the group have a print. The gendarmes had identified the body as Kabeer el-Banguin, of the Tunis mafia.

Umar al-Ghaffari

Mezmer, now carrying a photograph of Kabeer plus the names of his killers (Ahmed and Mohammed, the beggars), used his streetwise [Underworld Contacts skill] to locate a Tunis mafia address in the Medina, so he took Toulouse, Jacob and Fleur there. Mezmer's plan was to find more information on Hassan Khan (the "whittler"), or information on Umar al-Ghaffari, who they now suspected was the ring-leader. The contact was very interested to find out who had killed Kabeer. The names weren't good enough by themselves (chances are they were fake anyway), but Mezmer managed to sketch a good enough caricature of beggar Ahmed. He handed all this over in exchange for the identity of the Mafia’s employer in the various occult activities.

The contact was awkward about revealing too much information about Hassan Khan, and held him in too high regard to betray him. Mezmer walked a delicate line between getting information versus being killed for asking too many questions; his adroit and adept lines of questioning served him well.

 

The contact did admit that Hassan worked for Umar - but party knew that.

While this was happening Miriam and Bernard went to Mademoiselle Pelletier's Occult souk, and staked it out. (This was where they had previous found fat black candles, like the ones found at the corners of the pentagram stars). On the off-chance that more of the candles would be bought.

Wonton went looking throughout the huge Medina for other souks that sold the fat black candles. In those few hours he found one place.

Back at the murder site, the gendarmes finished their investigation. They surrounded the derelict building with police string. Then they left.

Mario and Gazala, and Gazala's two police bodyguards stayed behind. They found a second abandoned building, across the way from the site of the murder, and kept watch. They chose a location where they could see into the pentagram room (second storey) through a side window.

A couple of hours passed. They saw some movement in that room. At least two figures. No faces, just movements. Gazala's two gendarme bodyguards Armond and Maurice were having a nap, so they did nothing [the DM completely forgot about these two, but then so did Richard!]

Mario snuck up to the doorway of the surveilled building - no doors. He knocked on the edge of the door, then quickly ran away.

A face appeared; a Caucasian face. He looked around, concerned, then withdrew.

Mario did it again

The same guy appeared. Looking annoyed.

Mario did it again. This time the guy was waiting. He had a gun. He stepped out and fired immediately. Mario squealed and leapt away. Luckily, the shot went wild [Kevin threw a 10] and brave Mario got away - running down the road.

Gazala woke up her two bodyguards [remembered they existed] and updated them. They had a Lebel revolver each, and entered the building with guns drawn. 

Bang bang bang bang bang! Then silence. Oh dear.

"We need to tell the police," said Gazala.

Chauchat-Ribeyrolles
submachine gun
"show-shah RE-be-roll"

So she hurriedly grabbed a taxi, and went to the Commissariat de Police. Luckily Inspector Heroux was there. After hearing Gazala's pleas, he grabbed four gendarmes, and they all armed up with Chauchat-Ribeyrolles submachine guns. Then they took a police car to the building (with Gazala). This whole retrieval trip took more than an hour. 

All five, plus Gazala, rushed into the building. The gendarmes and Heroux ran up the stairs to the pentagram room, guns drawn. Gazala held back, and did not ascend the stairs herself.  

There was gunfire, a lot of gunfire as the submachine guns emptied their 16-round magazines in staccato blasts (10Hz). This was followed by wet tearing noises and hysterical screams.

Two gendarmes and Inspector Heroux, their faces white with terror, scrambled down the stairs, rushed past the stunned Gazala and sprinted outside, then fled down down the road. 

Gazala, now alone, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and she fled too.

Giving up on Heroux, and his fleeing men, Gazala slunk back to join Mario in the building across the way, and continued to surveille the target building. After quarter of an hour they saw Umar himself glance out the window. This was soon followed by a skinned-face walking corpse, who peered out, making over-exaggerated "looking around" moves. And then a third man (an Arab man, not the one who shot at Mario) looked out.

Like the Medina, the buildings around here were very close together, so it was possible for Gazala and Mario to skulk across the rooftops, and get onto the roof of the pentagram building. There was a trapdoor here, which opened into the actual pentagram room. They recalled a ladder on the end wall of the room. But they were not brave enough to open it.  

After half an hour, two men left the building - one them was Mario's shooter and the second was the Arab who looked out the window. They both headed off into the Medina. Gazala tried to track them from the rooftops, while Mario stayed on watch. But after ten minutes of tailing, she lost sight of them in the twisty alleys of the Medina.

The two returned half an hour later, shepherding a group of eight beggars. These unfortunates were marshalled into the building. There was some fitful screaming and hysterical sobbing, but it didn't last long, and soon all was silent.

 

Gazala and Mario waited on the roof top and considered their options. 

An hour passed, then two gendarmes (a regular patrol, maybe) walked by in the street. Gazala rushed down to them and updated them. The gendarmes looked at the building, wisely did not enter, then rushed down the road and found a tobacconist with a telephone. They rang for backup.

It was sunset and getting dark.

_______________________________.

As it was dark, the whole party had arrange to meet up at Ahmed's Coffee House. This, they did.

Wonton phoned the police and passed in a bomb threat at the pentagram building. But the police had reports from their own men, and were already sending in the gendarmes: "Nous avons déjà une escouade de gendarmes qui s'y rend. Espèce chinetoque de merde."

Battleship Bretagne

Bernard had a liaison in the French navy, Second-maître (Second Petty Officer) Francois Pienaar from the battleship Bretagne currently moored in the harbour. So, he telephoned this contact, who was currently stationed ashore in the naval base. Francois didn't seem too interested in Bernard's bluster but he said he would contact the gendarmes.