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.