Without a Whimper

The entire band, Wonton [Darryl], Bernard [Jamie], Cooper [Ian], Hubert [Kevin], Gunter [Jeff], Mezmer [Shane], Jacob [Chris], Fleur [Steven], and Reinhold [Tim], were cowering up the top of the lighthouse on Plane Island. Mezmer and Hubert were unconscious.

Gazala got out the Tala mirror (Mirror of the Ghost) carefully stored in her backpack, and pointed Tala's face facing down the spiral stairs. She had better vision than the group, and she could see shadows and flickering wispy things moving below.

Fleur and Jacob worked on the unconscious two, and with smelling salts and dexterous tongue licks got them both awake.

Some time passed and nothing happened, so Cooper decided to go for a scout. Plus, the group had seen a blow-torch in the generator shed earlier and Cooper would need to retrieve it. They had decided that a blow-torch would be a viable way to melt the silver ingot that they carried, so that they could pour the molten silver over the head of the shadow creature. Well, that was the plan. 

There was a lightning rod on the outside of the lighthouse tower. Cooper used this to climb down. He was roped up for safety.

When he was down, Tala indicated to Gazala that the Shadow had moved from the base of the stairs, so they warned Cooper, with a shout. In a panic, he tried to scramble back up the rod, but he failed to climb, so he ran off to find some rough rock to hide behind.

There was a half moon and it was a clear night, so it wasn't all dark even with the lighthouse lamp off. From the lighthouse balcony, they spotted a figure sprint out in a shambling dash, so guessed it was the fourth ghoul. They shot at with the submachine guns, scored some tenuous hits, and it withdrew (CR submachine guns are not very accurate at this range).

Cooper returned after an hour, and went to the generator room. The generator was well-broken. Something had clawed at it and had broken pipes and wires. 

But there was a white-spirit blow-torch here in the shed, so he grabbed that and returned.

He returned to the base of the lighthouse, roped himself up, and managed to climb up again with the help of the group yanking on the rope.

He had just got up, when suddenly, the ghoul came rushing up the stairs, in perfect narrative timing. There was a hail of gunfire, and it closed on Cooper (!) and clawed at him. 

bandage

Reinhold yelled something at it in Carthaginian, but there was no reaction.

Since the ghoul was clawing at Cooper, they had to shoot him and the ghoul. It was eventually dropped, and Cooper was severely wounded. But the doctors, Jacob and Fleur, tended his wounds and managed to patch the bullet holes and shattered bones with plasters and crepe bandages.

The party now had the blow-torch which ran on white spirits (paraffin), but they needed more white spirits. They knew there was a jerry can in the kitchen below. 

 

But before they could mount a retrieval mission to get the jerry can, Gazala and Bernard started to act strange and paranoid. They kept seeing strange things out of the corners of their eyes. Gazala saw Hubert furtively reach for his gun. Bernard saw Mezmer's face fester and peel, but when he looked at the skin closely, there was no change.

And Tala started to say strange things that only Gazala could hear: "Can you trust them?" "Mezmer is planning to sacrifice you to his dark gods", "Wonton wants to boil you to make dumplings from your flesh, and a stylish peignoir from your flayed skin.", "Va te faire foutre avec le bout rugueux d'un ananas."

Mezmer tried to cast Sanctify on Gazala in the hope that it would fix this. As far as Gazala was concerned, he was summoning a demon and this was the last straw, so she kicked him in the head. He was still pretty wounded, so collapsed, unconscious again. Fleur had to tend him with more band aids and camomile lotion.

The rest of the group pounced on Gazala, and tied her up. 

"Je t'avais prévenu !" gloated Tala. "Maintenant, ils vont vous écorcher vif."

Gazala bit Cooper when he tried to remove her knife.

With Gazala tied down, Cooper took over the holding of Tala's mirror. Which was a good thing because the shadow then came up the stairs.

Bernard had his camera ready for exactly this, and he took a picture with the bright flash. This was enough to scare it away, but Cooper, Gunter and Hubert saw it in all its horrendous glory.

Cooper's soap-stone eskimo started to hum. Hubert saw he had some creeping malaise on his skin, and now he was seeing Mezmer and Wonton with their skin hanging in tatters. Gunter was starting to see things too. He saw the party weapons as snakes. He dropped his own submachine gun in disgust.

____________

The final hour of the night passed, and it was morning.

 There were two more snakes on the lighthouse balcony, so he kicked them off the tower. He was too scared to go down the stairs into the darkness, so he climbed down the outside, down the lightning rod.

 

The others all just barrelled down the staircase into the dark kitchen, Mezmer first. Luckily, the shadow was not here.

Mezmer did not tarry. He was still worried about being attacked by Gazala - the others had finally freed her - so he fled to the generator room, and locked himself inside.

Wonton got a cast iron pot from kitchen and the others recovered the jerry can of white spirits.

It took a bit of wheedling and whining to get Mezmer to come out of the shed.

Silver ingots

Then they all headed for the crashed plane, the Junkers 31.

Fleur wore the medallion again, and confirmed that the skull gem now pointed to the inside of the plane's fuselage.

As it was day, there wasn't any dark spots in the fuselage, but Gunter, Bernard, Gazala and Hubert (not Cooper) could see flitting shadows, like bats, but unnatural and misshapen. They could also hear a high-pitched whining too. The others of the group saw and heard nothing.

Wonton started to heat the silver ingot, in the pot, using the blow-torch. Silver melts at 962C, so the blow-torch flame could supply this heat. 

[ Silver's specific heat is 0.235 kJ/kg/deg (c.f. water is 4.1).

Silver's latent heat of fusion is 105 kJ/kg (c.f. water is 334).

So, to melt a 1 kg ingot of silver requires ( 962 - 20 ) * 0.235 + 105 = 326 kJ of energy. 

But at those temperatures, you'd be lucky to get 1% of the blow-torch flame energy into the silver. Still, 1.5 litres of white spirits is enough to do this.  ]

The crashed Junkers was ferrying the three stone slabs that the German's had removed from the dig site and the annex. They had the Baal words of power carved into them. These 200kg stone slabs (2m x 2m x 0.19m) happened to be lying on their backs in the fuselage, with the carved symbols face up. 

So, Wonton planned to pour the molten silver into the carved indentations of each of the words of power. 

After consulting Reinhold and Mezmer, he decided to do it in the least-to-most order: Tanit, Hammon, Baal. So, he gingerly poured the yellow-hot flowing silver into the carved channels, and then he said those words loud and clear.

There was no mighty explosion, or great tremor, or even a whine. Not even a whimper. But Gunter, Bernard, Gazala and Hubert saw that the flitting shadows had suddenly vanished. The noises they could hear suddenly stopped too.

Mezmer did a Detect Mythos. It revealed nothing significant, apart from the various items that the group was carrying.

"I wonder if the fisherman can fit these slabs on his boat," someone mused despondently. "We need to drop them in deep water, far away from land."

"Alors Gazala peut être écorché vif," Gazala heard Tala say, even though it was day. "Mezmer peut faire la première incision."