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.