) Present: Bernard (Jamie), Cooper (Ian), Felix (Kevin), Gazala (Richard), Jacob (Chris), Jean (Jeff), Mesmer (Shane), Wonton (Darryl)
Marmalading – Fleur (Steven)
As we were heading off to visit the desert compound of Tariq Nadir, aka Tariq the nasty, that collector of Mythos relics that we had briefly met at the auction some months back, Jacob requested that we stop off in the Jewish Quarter of the city to visit the Rabi of the Or Thora Synagogue. Apparently, times were tough for the Jews in the Hara of Tunis.
Jacob jumped out of the truck with his green duffle bag and gave a knock on the door. After a few moments the door swung open, and a well-appointed rabbi beckoned Jacob inside. He was out in less than ten minutes, without his duffle.
"Hopefully that'll help" he muttered.
"They are going to build a new synagogue you know, over in the European Quarter. It'll be good for the faithful to get out the Hara" Jacob stated.
"So long as those damn German's don't arrive in numbers" he qualified, "A good thing that Hershell and his Brown Shirt rabble are out of the picture now"
"So" asked Bernard, "We only have these three magic things with us, right?
He was referring to Mesmer's Three Heads, Gazala's knife, and Cooper's Soapstone Amulet. Due to the unknown but potentially extremely high risk of carrying magic items into Tariq the Nasty's home turf, we had discussed leaving everything else back at the camp, under armed guard by the Legion.
"What about this control necklace?" queried Mesmer, "It's definitely magic"
"Um..." noted Jacob, "And I bought the magic skull and it's paired amulet"
"What?" yelled Bernard, "How did you idiots overlook all that?"
But we were already approaching a stone fence stretching left and right, with a well-guarded gate blocking the sandy track in front of us. Beyond the gate, the track led on towards an old stone fort about five hundred meters away. Just behind the gate stood a stone shed, and six armed Tuaregs had emerged. They were all armed with old rifles, their heads cover in the traditional blue tagelmust, with just their dark eyes visible.
"He wants to know what we want" translated Gazala.
"Talk to the Boss" replied Cooper, pointing to Bernard in the front passenger seat.
"Matrid?" the guard asked Bernard.
"He wants to know what we want" translated Gazala.
"We want to speak with Tariq Nadir, we may have some items that might interest him" responded Bernard.
Gazala said some stuff to the guy, and he went over to the guard post to call back to the main Fort. Then he came back and said something to Bernard.
"He said to wait here" translated Gazala.
After a few minutes we saw four horses being ridden out from the fort and down the track towards us. Three of the horses carried more armed Tuaregs, but the fourth one carried a young girl. She must have only been around eight-year-old, and as she got closer to us, we could see that her lips had been crudely stitched shut. No speaking for her! (Hafsa)
"What the" gasped Gazala, tensing up with her hand dropping to her knife hilt.
"Be calm" whispered Bernard, "We are the Guests here."
The three slid off their horses and one of them lifted the girl down. She was staring at the truck, and immediately started to shuffle sideways around us. Her eyes never left the truck as she made a full circuit completely round us, and when she got back to the man who had lifted her down, she looked up at him and held us six fingers. He must have been their leader, and she had correctly counted each of the magical items we had bought with us!
"Mr Nadir is interested" said the leader.
"Leave your weapons here and follow us" he commanded.
We had a quick discussion and decided that Bernard, Gazala, Jean, and Mesmer would head up to the fort, while the others would remain in the truck. While Bernard, Jean, and Mesmer unloaded their weapons into the wooden crate in the guard post, Gazala launched into a rapid discussion with the leader. She waved her arms a lot, and eventually convinced the leader that she should be able to carry her knife. [Richard made a successful Charm role]
As we started off to walk to the fort behind the riders, the strange girl tugged on the leader's cloak and pointed emphatically back towards the truck. Apparently, Jacob's skull and paired amulet was a significant item, and she was very interested in that. But it remained "safe" in the truck with Jacob and the others.
The perimeter walls looked sturdy and well maintained, although the rest of the small structures of the fort looked pretty run down and worn. The centre of the fort compound contained a collection of tents, and we were led to the largest one in the centre.
"Gazala" whispered Jean, "Remember that you are playing my betrothed and need to be a tad submissive. This could go majorly wrong if you get aggressive, or Tariq decides he still doesn't like you"
"Although how could he not?" adds Jean as Gazala stares daggers.
As we brushed through the large double flap doors into the central tent, we noted that it was richly appointed with amazing antique looking rugs on the floor and hung around the walls, cushions scattered across the space, with armed guards standing unobtrusively in the shadows around the outside of the tent. A small harem of semi-clad females was performing in front of Tariq, who was lounging on a couch at the back of the space.
Gazala bit her tongue when he complained to Jean.
"You let your woman carry a knife then?" he asked derogatorily.
"Of course" replied Jean, "It is a family heirloom"
Let me see" Tariq commanded, holding his hand out to Gazala.
Jean had to request Gazala hand the knife over for his inspection, which she did. And she didn't even cut his fingers off, which you could tell she was itching too.
"You'll keep" Gazala muttered quietly to herself.
Having decided to be relatively open with him, we relate some of our experiences with Hershell, and what we had concluded about his summoning of the Ghouls. Tariq was in agreement and noted that Hershell was a fool meddling with forces well beyond his understanding.
He looked over the three items that we had bought with us and confirmed that Mesmer's amulet was a control amulet, able to control creatures of the type whose blood was stored in the crystal of the amulet.
"A low power item" he scoffed, "I have a number of those"
He confirmed that Mesmer's three shrunken heads were a summoning device and commented that they were more trouble than they were worth.
He offered to buy Gazala's knife, to which Gazala forcibly noted that it wasn't on offer. He seemed to know about the robbery of our bank vault and knew that Hershell was responsible. He asked us if we had recovered the Censer from Hershell, and where it was currently held. Bernard noted that despite a thorough search of Hershell's residence, where the shrunken heads were obtained, there was no sign of the Censer there. [Absolutely true, we had already recovered it from the floor of the Church crypt after Hershell was sucked into the other realm by the amorphous tentacle creature]
He said that he would be interested if we found the Censer, or wanted to sell or trade the Mirror, Rings, or Boots, which he knew we had purchased at the auction. He didn't seem to know too much about the Mirror, he didn't even know it could communicate. He told us that the Skeletal Hand, if fitted to a living person, would cause them to go mad in just a matter of months, He asked us about the Skull of Seeking, which we informed him that we had heard of, but understood it was not currently operating.
He also knew that Hershell had found an item of "world changing" power, and that it had disappeared while being transported by Hershell's German aircraft some weeks ago. He suggested that if he had this item, he would store it out of harms way, "somewhere safe"
This Tariq Nadir character seemed to know an incredible lot. But he was being relatively cooperative, and eventually agreed to trade Mesmer's three shrunken heads for access to his private research library. Wonton was summoned from the truck to search the library with Mesmer, since he had studied the most about the baby skeleton and arrived soon after.
"How is your Triad?" Tariq asked of Wonton when he arrived.
"What I twy?" Wonton responded confusedly.
"The Triad. Oh, never mind" laughed Tariq.
 |
| Naseeba |
"You want to partake of my women?" Tariq asked Wonton.
Wonton was speechless and could only nod his head.
"Be my guest" Tariq commanded, and the girl, Naseeba, jumped up and led Wonton through a flap in the back.
"I luf you werrrrry long time" Wonton muttered as she led him out by the hand,
"Only one of you can enter the library anyway" Tariq noted, "Mesmer, you best go"
"Bernard, perhaps you would like one of my other girls? Tariq offered.
Mesmer followed one of the guards out of the tent and down into a massive subterranean library below the original fort structure. Books of all kinds and ages were stacked into shelves, all around the walls and free standing through the centre of the space. Mesmer didn't know where to start he was so excited. But in his logical and systematic way he attempted to find the most heavily used section of the library [Using the Spot Hidden ability, but failed] and then just picked a corner and started reading titles.
"Bingo" he yelled quietly, and used his eidetic memory to commit the instructions to memory.
In a strange quirk of fate, as Mesmer returned to the main tent from his long library research, Wonton returned from his long loving and offered to buy the girl from Tariq.
"How much to buy?" Wonton asked Tariq.
"A mere ten thousand francs" Tariq offered.
"Ohhh, I come vack latter den" Wonton suggested, "I only haf nine at moment"
"Well" suggested Tariq, "I could accept nine thousand with one of the other magic items"
"Ohhh, not got thousands, just haf nine" replied Wonton.
"Yes, later then" scoffed Tariq.
Making polite excuses, we all then headed back to the truck and rumbled off back towards camp.
To be continued .....
Now we had two extra rifles, extra ammunition, a spare jeep. complete with reserve petrol and food supplies, and two bodies which had to "disappear"
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