Revisit the Dig

The next morning Cooper [Ian], Gazala [Richard], Bernard [Jamie], Mezmer [Shane], Hubert [Kevin], Wonton [Darryl], Gunter [Jeff] and Fleur [Steven] dragged themselves out if bed, after an evening with the German Antiquarian Augustus Herschel at the posh Le Délicieux Lavement (the delicious enema).

Dr Jacob lay in his bed, marmalading.

Ring "of wishes" (to Triad)

The group spent the morning in their apartment and made a list of their loose ends :

1. Triad & ring ("of wishes")
2. Desert dig site and Annex
3. Crypt under church
4. Tariq and the Scolds' Bridle
5. Herschel's Compound
   

Wonton went off to the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie to do some research: Nyarlathotep is a "Mighty Messenger" of the insane elder gods. A lesser elder god himself, he/it can not be harmed.

Mezmer went to the Bibliothèque too, and he had a look at Wonton's research. His conclusion over the same material was a little different: Nyarlathotep can be harmed by molten silver. It should be poured on his head while certain incantations are voiced.

While the two were researching, Bernard, Gunter and Cooper went to the velodrome, across the road from Herschel's Compound, and spent the day watching the compound. There were lots of men dressed in SA brown shirts marching around accompanied by a jolly brass band. 

___________________________

The next morning, the group packed up the Mercedes, loaded up a trailer with supplies, and headed south to the desert, to the Baal dig site. The Mirror of the Ghost was put in the bank vault to keep it safe.

They went straight to the Annex. To their surprise, it had a Légion Étrangère flag flying above it, and there were trucks and vehicles there, as well as moving troops. 

They stopped the car well back. Mezmer got out and stepped behind a rock. He said his jiniri poem, and turned invisible. Then he headed to the Annex. 

Baal

The Légion Étrangère soldiers numbered about thirty (a platoon), and they had two trucks and two staff cars. But, these "LE" soldiers were speaking German. Mezmer made his way into the tunnels, deftly avoiding any soldiers.

Deep inside, the power symbol ("Baal") was being carefully cut from Annex tomb wall, and then man-handled outside. Here it was loaded onto a truck. Mezmer watched them work, and he could not help but notice that they were very careful not to touch the actual symbol. They seemed to know what they were doing, rather than gung-ho explorers throwing caution to the wind.

As the trucks and cars left the site, and headed down the dirt track to the main road, the party carefully hid their car (and trailer). The trucks then headed on the road back in the Tunis direction.

After the Germans were gone, the party drove to the main dig site to check that too. It was deserted, but there were signs of recent activity and recent truck and car tyre tracks all around. So, the group made their way carefully down the ladder, and checked down the tunnels. The two symbols of power  ("Tanit" & "Hammon") were gone. The entire wall sections where they had been, were cut out, like in the Annex.

Someone did some envelope calculations, and it was estimated that each of these slabs would weigh 200 kg.

So, the party headed back to Tunis, and arrived after dark. Assuming that the slabs would need to be shipped out by sea,  Bernard went to the Tunis docks to reconnoitre. There were two ships bound for Venice, one for Athens, one for Naples and one for Rotterdam.

The rest of the party went to check on Herschel's compound. As it was night, there were lots of electric lights illuminating the compound. Sure enough, the two trucks and staff cars were here. And many men.

Not sure what to do, the group went back to their apartment.

___________________________

Ju G31

Next morning, they visited Inspector Heroux.

They eventually managed to get him to phone the aerodrome. A Junkers G31 had taken off a few hours ago. Heroux was told what was on board, and it was suggested that maybe fighter aircraft from Corsica or Marseilles could be scrambled to shoot it down. But he would have none of this.

"Mais des rochers ? Antiquités? Ce n'est pas une excuse suffisante pour attaquer un avion !"

(Rocks? Antiquities? That's not enough excuse to attack a plane!)

When they got back at the apartment, they noticed a German staff car with two men across the road - now watching the Calomnie de Tunis (and probably the party) unabashedly.

Bernard and Gazala confronted them. 

Gazala tried to stab one of the car's tyres. One guy just stepped out of the car, in broad daylight, and shot her. Then they drove off. Gazala was unconscious. Bernard tended her.

Bernard recognized them as two gentlemen from the docks from last night. He even knew their names: Sinbad and Ahmed. [Ah, the joy of an appalling Perception roll. ] But now they were dressed in smart German dress uniforms.

But at least they did get the registration plates of the car.

They decided that they wanted to do some more experimenting with the items. So, Bernard and Gazala went to the bank vault and retrieved the skull, medallion and the Tala Mirror. 

Then they waited until dark

They all chatted, experimented and wheedled with Tala.

They played around with gem in the skull and the medallion. As usual, the gem would always point at the medallion.

Tala suggested for Wonton to try wearing the medallion and to pick up the skull at the same time. When he did this, the gem pointed in a different direction. What was it pointing at?

Streak of Fire

Gunter [Jeff], Cooper [Ian], Hubert [Kevin], Jacob [Chris], Gazala [Richard], and Mezmer [Shane] were rushing down the stairs with the crated baby creature, as it bounced violently off the insides of the box. Bernard [Jamie] and Wonton [Darryl], having woken from their marmalade dreams, joined them. Fleur kept marmalading peacefully.

They threw the crate into the boot of their Mercedes, and tied it down. Then Cooper and Bernard clambered into the front seat, Hubert the next row, and Gunter and Mezmer in the back, to watch the boot lid best they could.

Cooper floored the accelerator and the car tore off with a screech of tyres. It was around midnight, so the streets of Tunis were not too busy.

Wonton, Gazala and Jacob stayed behind and made their way back upstairs to the apartment.

The Mercedes reached country-side about 40 minutes later. Cooper and Bernard searched around for a reasonable spot; they found a deep ditch at the side of the road. The nearest farm house was about half a kilometer away.

The box by now was jerking side to side as the occupant whacked into each wall of the crate, and it was starting to splinter. So, they man-handled the bucking crate and wedged it into the ditch. They had four sticks of dynamite and six F1 grenades, so they made a pile with these under the shaking box. During the trip out here, on the stretches of straight road, Mezmer had deftly cored a stick of dynamite and put a detonator in it; an impressive feat in a moving car. It had a long blasting fuse

Since he had built it, Mezmer would light it. He yelled "Mettez-vous à l'abri !" (take cover!). Then he lit the fuse, and ran "Feu feu feu!" (fire in the hole).

Bernard had his camera at the ready, as he couched in his ditch, safe across the road and down some. Since it was night, he simply opened the shutter and let the light from the explosion illuminate the scene.

Sure enough, there was a mighty blast, and something glowing and fiery, the size of a cat, streaked skyward.

At the same time, there was a solid thump in the ditch right next to Bernard. He shone his torch on it. It was a grenade. 'Oh no, not again,' he thought miserably. And he scrabbled out of the ditch to get away from it. And, just like last time (in the fox-hole during the attack on the German marquee), he slipped badly and fell, literally, onto the grenade. He tensed up, waiting for the blast...

... which never came. The dynamite didn't detonate the grenades, and just blew them all out of the ditch. The same could not be said of the crate. It was blown to match-wood, and there was no sign of the inner box, the delicate coffin or the baby creature.

It was just after 1am.

Back in town, Wonton, Gazala and Jacob felt a shudder. It was a jolting spasm, like a myoclonic jerk ("sleep start": jerk as you fall asleep). They were too far away to see anything, of course.

The crate group spend the next hour searching the area for any signs of anything suspicious. They manage to retrieve all of their six grenades. All intact.

At 2am, Mezmer and Bernard took the car back into town; Bernard driving. 

Cooper, Gunter and Hubert volunteered to spend the rest of the night at the site. And then intended to search until noon the next day.

Gunter suggested they check out the local farmhouses for anything strange, but no one else though that was sensible.

Back at Calomnie de Tunis, Bernard took his Speed Graphic camera down to the dark room and developed the recent photograph negatives. 

The photograph of the imp (that Gazala took) showed a small man-like creature, stabbed and sliced, dead in the jar. There was no mystical movement of the image on the negative. 

The negative of the photograph of the explosion showed a streak of fire moving skyward from the explosion. If Bernard stared at the negative, the streaking flame would actually move, in an endless repeat, starting at the (stationary) explosion and moving upwards until it left the frame. Then it would reset again (like an animated GIF).

Censer

He showed the moving negative to Wonton, Gazala and Jacob, then he burned it.

_________________

At first light, Bernard and Gazala took all the "dangerous" items back to the bank vault: censer, gem skull, and medallion. They were happy with the mirror left in the apartment.

Wonton went with Mezmer to the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie so that he could have a go at the restricted books too. Mezmer convinced Cassandra the librarian that, though Wonton was a chinetoque, he was an honest one and not one of the white slavers. So, she authorized access to the Sealed section.

Skull (with gem)

He tried book ONE, but didn't make any progress with that one. 

About noon, Cooper, Gunter and Hubert made their own way back into to Tunis and to the Calomnie de Tunis.

In the afternoon, Wonton took on book TWO. He made progress on this one. This book covered the Elder gods - which were powerful beings in another dimension, that made their way occasionally to this world to cause strife and destruction. Wonton found an old passage mentioning that Baal was an "aspect" (sometimes "avatar") of one of these elder gods. And it mentioned that Baal had three "daughters" (or "assistants")  Pidray, Tallay and Arsay in the human tongue.

____________________

The next day, Wonton returned and tackled book THREE, but made no progress.

Medallion

After noon, he managed book FOUR. Baal's daughter Tallay had another name which was "Nyarlathotep". And the baby skeleton may have been a "resting spore" of such.

While Wonton was at the Bibliothèque the others returned to the Saint Croix ancient church to check it out.

They spoke to the priest and deacons there, whom they knew quite well from the previous visit many weeks ago (during Umar adventure). 

The clerics said, yes, that they had heard noises down in the undercroft and crypt. These began two nights ago - about the night of the crate explosion. They had telephoned the Gendarmes and got through to Inspector Heroux. He told them to lock the door. Maybe the busy Inspector had not yet got around to telling the group. [Or maybe the DM just forgot.]

So, with torches out, the group went down to the crypt. Nothing had changed here since they were here weeks ago. Cooper's Eskimo buzzed intensely. They poked around a bit, but found nothing else. Someone opened a sarcophagus and peered inside; it looked normal. There were no noises.

"Peut-être devriez-vous être ici la nuit, n'est pas?" (you ought to be here at night, no?) mused the priest wryly.

No-one was game.

________________

The next day, Wonton took on book FIVE, but didn't make any progress.

After lunch, Wonton looked back at book ONE wistfully. The way the mythos worked, he could technically try the books he failed, but with extra risk. He would have to "put a bit of himself" into the research. Failure at this level meant annihilation of the soul.

So, he set to it [and rolled lucky]. 

This time he found out about the resting spore. Rather than summon an elder god, a piece or aspect or "inferior avatar" of one could be summoned. This was a spore. After (or before) use, it could be imprisoned or contained in an item or area with mythos. Some spores could not be unsummoned, or destroyed, so containment was the best solution.

Bernard arranged for the group to meet up, for a meal that night, with the souk-owner Mademoiselle Marie-Pierre Pelletier and librarian Cassandra le Belle. He chose one of the posher Tunis restaurants Le Délicieux Lavement. 

Both ladies turned up, and seemed to know each other. They both reported that they, too, had felt the myoclonic jerk of the explosion.

After a bit of small talk [and confirmation from the DM], the party decided to lay their cards on the table and told the two women everything. After that session, there was nothing that the party knew that the ladies did not know. 

The women expressed big concerns about the ancient baby. 

After Wonton's research, the group knew more about Nyarlathotep than the ladies. Cassandra knew of that name, but not Marie-Pierre. Cassandra warned that one should not say that word out loud; the dreaded N-word.

Mademoiselle Pelletier commented that maybe the items that the group already had could be used. Maybe they were linked. For example, the skull gem, medallion and the delicate coffin were found in the Annex. But the censor was in the central part of the complex - completely separate.

Cassandra added that she didn't think there would be anything useful in the library to help here. 

"Ce que je vous ai dit aux experts la dernière fois n'a pas changé," she said. "Les objets mythiques dangereux sont uniques. Il n'y aura pas d'indices dans la bibliothèque."

__________________________

The next day, Bernard arranged a meeting with Augustus Herschel. They had his telephone number on a card from the auction, so he used that. He was very gracious and was happy to meet up with them that evening, also at the Le Délicieux Lavement. 

Half an hour before the meeting, Mezmer tried to go invisible. He undressed, said his little jiniri poem, and then proudly walked in to the group's living room, naked. But he was just naked and not invisible. 

They raucously laughed him out of the kitchen. So, he sulked and refused to go to the meeting [Shane had to leave early].

At the restaurant, Herschel turned up with his lady and three bodyguards. The guards stood quietly behind his chair.

He was very chatty about the political situation back in Germany. War-hero, vegetarian, philanthropist and artist Herr Hitler was an excellent leader and better than that wet-eared pepper chap.

Herschel didn't mention the myoclonic jerk.

 

They got the feeling that Herschel knew about the censer as an item, but not that the group had it. But if they did have it, hypothetically, it would be worth "millions" (marks, franks, dollars or pounds? who knows?).

He knew all about the “archaeological” expeditions in the desert. Deutschland had a keen interest in furthering world historical knowledge.

Hypothetical end of world

Talk came around to the shrunken heads that he had got at the auction. He thanked the party again for the help he received from Mezmer regarding these items. Sadly, he and his "experts" had not made much progress with them since.

The group talked about a hypothetical release of an ancient baby skeleton and how it might bring about the end of the world. But Herschel said that was just hypothetical hyperbole.

But a hypothetical censer would be far more use where it could provide unlimited energy to fuel growth and industry to the betterment and purity of mankind! If such an item was in the hands of top men (like me) it could be put to good use! Top Men!

"Eine schöne neue Welt wird aus der Asche auferstehen. Und dann werde ich auf einem mächtigen Felsen einen riesigen Schatten über die ganze Welt werfen!

Und nie wieder werden sie es wagen, mich anzurufen: einen gesprenkelten, vieräugigen, schmächtigen kleinen Widerling!!"

Herschel paid for the meal. Then he said his good-byes and he left with his entourage. 

Gunter flagged down a taxi and followed him. 

Herschel was staying at a compound on the outskirts of Tunis, near the Belvedere Park velodrome.

Mirror of the Ghost

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

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

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

Cassandra la Belle, librarian
Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie

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

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

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

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

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

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

______________________

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

____________________________

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

Tala

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

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

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

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

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

___________________

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

That night, they camped in a ravine.

_____________________

Eskimo fetish

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

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

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

_____________________________

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

_______________________________

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

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

______________________________

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

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

It also hummed when near mythos things.

 

_____________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

________________________________

Herschel's heads

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

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

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

___________________________

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

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

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

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

"Well done!" said Cooper.

__________________________________

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

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

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

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

Baal censer

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

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

Hook and Eye

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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