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.