The Visitation

Umar al-Ghaffari

It was early afternoon. 

Miriam [Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Gazala [Richard], Mezmer [Shane] and Cooper [Ian] were at Umar's apartment with Inspector Heroux, some gendarmes and some Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops. Since Bernard and Mario had slumped to the ground, marmalading, the others arranged for Heroux to please deliver them to Ahmed's Coffee House. Best not to leave marmaladers in this place!

Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim] were back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building. Fleur was there too, marmalading in the party's apartment. Toulouse was down in the darkroom with his lab assistant Selima. He had a theory. Are there any Friday the 13ths coming up? No. Today was September 7th. The only Friday 13th in 1930 was in June.

Miriam, Mezmer, Wonton, Gazala and Cooper left Umar's apartment and headed towards the "pentagram building" (place of the third murder).

They had to walk through the streets because their Citroen was left by the coffee house. Part way through the trip, Gazala noticed that they were being followed by someone, so she held back and intercepted him. It was on of the Deacons from the Saint Croix church. He was genuinely worried for the party's immortal souls and claimed that they reeked of evil. They didn't want him to follow, so Gazala distracted and diverted him enough with her feminine wiles, that he never did discover where they were headed.

A squad of soldiers were still guarding this building. The group entered. 

In the actual pentagram room, Miriam saw Umar standing in the corner. When she pointed him out to Mezmer, Mezmer could not see him. Nor could Gazala. Nor could the soldiers. He was somehow invisible. But Wonton could. It didn't take Umar long to twig that Miriam and Wonton could see him, so he hurriedly left the building. She tried to follow. He entered the Medina, and when he went down an alley, she was too scared to follow. So, she returned to the group.

They racked their brains trying to work out why only Miriam and Wonton could see him. No theories.

Cooper took twelve of the thirty sticks of stolen dynamite (from the box stored in the boot of the Citroen) and some fuse and detonators. Wonton took four sticks for himself.  Cooper then snuck them into the building's ground floor, and he started to place them into random holes in the floor, carefully avoiding the soldiers. Wonton helped him calculate the fuse lengths.

While they were doing this, Mezmer performed a Sanctify in the pentagram room above. After the ritual's hour, there was the usual mini quake and the whole building shook.

Cooper was still placing sticks of dynamite at this time, so he wet himself, thinking some had exploded. The soldiers were not very happy with the jolt either, and ran out into the street.

Back at the paper, Toulouse got the faecal samples (previously scraped off the ceiling of the Men's toilet by Jacob and Fleur). He watered them down, and placed them on a microscope slide. They were textbook samples of human faeces. And the man who deposited them had hook worm too.  

Round worm, vanilla worm,
hookworm

Later that day, Toulouse and Selima took the tram to the two asylums of Tunis. The first was the asylum for women L'Asile de Tunis pour les Putes Impudique (Tunis Fallen Women Asylum), but not being a doctor nor a woman (despite Selima's presence), Toulouse was denied entry by the gate guards. The second was the asylum for men L'Asile de Tunis pour les Encules Fous (Tunis Crazy Fools Asylum). Here, Toulouse mentioned Inspector Heroux's name and the Calomnie de Tunis paper name and they were happy to let him in ("Oh, that group") , wheelchair and all, but supervised.

After that foray, back at base, Toulouse took the negatives from Bernard's photographs of the crypt and enlarged some of the pictures of the alcoves. Some had inscriptions beneath. It was Latin, and they were early Christian saints. No surprises there.

Toulouse sent Selima to the St Vincent de Paul Cathedral (the main Catholic cathedral of Tunis) to get some holy water. She got back just before dark, with a jug of it.

It was now night.

__________________________________________________________

Toulouse took the (monochrome) negative of the crypt cylinder, still with the unusual 3D effect, and loaded it into the enlarger. He exposed it on to a large piece of photographic paper, big as the tray, big enough to get good details (like A3), zooming in to the dark cylinder, despite the image turning his stomach. He had used the holy water (instead of normal water) to make the batches of developing solution and fixer solution. The print slowly appeared on the photographic paper as he swirled it about, but was hard to see well in the gloomy red light of the darkroom, but it was still 3D. Next, he swirled the print through the stop bath. And finally into the tray of fixer solution. At this stage, it was safe to turn on the darkroom lights, so he did.

Peering close, he could swear the image was moving; not when he stared straight at it, but out of the corner of his eye. While he watched, fascinated, the black and white photo suddenly turned to colour, and the fixer solution suddenly drained away, as if it poured into the print. The 3D effect became even more spectacular when a tentacle, febrile yellow, glistening with pus, and thick as his arm, snaked out of the print, as if it was a window. 

Toulouse screamed.

_______________

Back at the pentagram building, some time later,  Heroux arrived with two gendarmes. He insisted that there was trouble at the newspaper building and that he had to take them; "actuellement!"

"Je vous expliquerai les détails pendant le voyage," he said. (I will explain on the trip.)

But the five were very suspicious and thought that Heroux was possessed or forced. So, they only sent Cooper and Mezmer (i.e. sacrificial lambs). Wonton, Gazala and Miriam stayed back. Wonton stayed in the courtyard where the fuse to the dynamites began, Gazala stayed in the observing room across the courtyard from the building, and Miriam stayed on rooftop.

Cooper and Mezmer took the Citroen and followed Heroux. At the Calomnie de Tunis building there were some police cars out front, two army trucks, a fire engine, and a large group of people. There was smoke coming out of a second floor window (the typing pool), and water was being hosed in there.

The soldiers were obviously waiting for Heroux and the party to arrive, and they crowded around the cars.

Just then there was a large angry bellow from within the building, loud enough to rattle the windows. It sounded like a bear or a tiger. Then a crashing noise, in the ground floor, as if heavy furniture was being moved around. People in the street backed away further. The firemen stepped back. The soldiers gripped their rifles

Inspector Heroux thrust Mezmer and Cooper forward. "Ces deux braves hommes vont montrer la voie. Ce sont des experts en ours!" (These two brave souls will lead the way. They are bear experts.)

Cooper facetiously asked for a rifle, and he was surprised when one of the soldiers actually gave him one. Then he entered the building with the squad of troops, a sergeant, Mezmer, Heroux, and four gendarmes. 

The heavy moving noise was up the stairs, so they ascended. There was a trail of thick pus-yellow slime coating the stairs. The power had gone off, so the noisy generator on the roof had started up, and the building lights dimmed and brightened as it came up to speed. This was normal; it always took a while to settle.

When the group got to the landing, the noise of heavy furniture was above them, on the top floor - the party's apartment. 

Then there was another roar. Like an angry bear in pain. The whole building shook, and pieces of plaster rained down from the ceiling onto them. But the brave soldiers, et al, continued upwards, following the slime path. 

There was the noise of breaking of glass above them, and the generator suddenly got noisier. They carried on creeping up, and got to the top floor. The slime trail went through the party's apartment's living room (every door was smashed) and out through the french doors, which were now matchwood and broken glass, and on to the roof.

They crept out onto the flat roof, guns at the ready. The air was stinking of diesel fumes from the rust holes in the muffler. The wide slime trail ended at the edge of the building. Cooper peered down the two storeys to the narrow street below, but there was no sign of the "bear". Mezmer looked into the sky. Did it have wings? Or maybe it jumped. It was 5 m across to another same-height building across Rue de Chekli.

The sergeant shouted down to some soldiers on the ground and ordered a truck be brought around to shine its headlights down the street. No sign of movement.

Two soldiers were left to guard up here while everyone went down ground level. Soldiers and gendarmes were ordered into adjacent buildings and streets. Some soldiers, Mezmer, Cooper and Heroux went down to the cellar level, following the slime trail backwards. At the base of the cellar stairs was a broken wheelchair. Through some splintered doors they came to the darkroom. There was a decapitated head lying on its side in the darkroom's broken doorway. Mezmer recognized Toulouse. A soldier vomitted. Pieces of Toulouse were all about the darkroom. He had been violently torn apart. Some bits had been chewed. His was the only body, and no sign of his assistant Selima. 

Mezmer had enough presence of mind to pick up the fallen enlarger, wipe off the spattered blood, and retrieve the negative from within it. Interestingly, it was no longer 3D, and the cylinder in the picture was just a plain black cylinder now.

The gendarmes and soldiers searching adjacent buildings and streets found no slime on any of their roofs. And no splats on the surrounding roads and alleys. So, the "bear" had vanished, or flown away.

Cooper and Mezmer got Heroux's permission to return to the others, so they drove back to the pentagram building. Cooper managed keep hold of his rifle through some clever subterfuge, and luck.

Back on the rooftop the reunited group spent the rest of night with soldiers. It was a peaceful night; no beams.

_________________________________

In the morning, the five took the Citroen to the Saint Croix church.

The priest & two deacons were there; one deacon was the same one who followed Gazala yesterday. But there was a second priest too, standing at the back by the altar. Miriam looked; it was Umar! She squealed. Like yesterday, only she and Wonton could see him.

He hurried to the main doors of the nave, down the aisle. Miriam beat him to the doors and slammed them. He drew a large knife and menaced her with it, while he pulled the bolts back.

Gazala gave Wonton her police Lebel revolver. His first few shots went wild. Cooper rushed down too. Wonton wounded Umar in the shoulder, but his next shot hit Cooper. Then Umar stabbed Cooper straight in his gut and he went down. But then Wonton shot again, and Umar dropped.

Worried about being caught in possession of a gun, Wonton, scurried off to hide in the surrounding streets. By now the priests had used the church telephone to call the gendarmes. 

Umar was dead. His body suddenly appeared to all, and his blood became visible on the floor by the church door. As did his large knife, which Miriam hid on her person. He also had a strange medallion around his neck. It was on a leather cord and had a strange ampule on the end with glass faces containing a thick red liquid. Mezmer took this.

Cooper was patched up to stop him bleeding out, but he was unconscious [when you hit 0hp, you are unconscious and need medical aid to regain consciousness]. He was gently placed on a pew.

Heroux and two gendarmes arrived. He summoned another car to take Umar's body away. Mezmer warned Heroux to have the body cremated as soon as he can; just in case. Heroux didn't pry too much on the use of the revolver; in normal times, Wonton would be executed for using one.

After Heroux was gone, Mezmer,  Miriam, and Gazala headed down to the undercroft, under the church's altar. There were four soldiers down here, still guarding (they had not heard any of Wonton's gun shots through the thick floors). The soldiers knew the group, so let them pass.

The three went down to the crypt. The black cylinder was now gone, and there was a greasy circle on the floor in the pentagram of the cylinder's size, and matching one on the ceiling. The five candles were still burning at each spike of the pentagram. 

They checked inside the sarcophagi. There was no movement; just an old dusty skeleton.

Gazala and Miriam asked Mezmer if they should extinguish the candles. Mezmer thought on this for a while, but then gave the same answer as last time. If it was a summoning, then yes. But if it was a summoned, then no. So, we do not know.

The two girls said they would blow them out anyway, so Mezmer vacated the crypt.

Miriam and Gazala blew the candles out one at a time. After each one, they felt a shudder go up their backs. Then there were two left. So they both knelt next to each, and blew. 

The room went dark... But only because those candles were the only source of light.

Back in the church above, one of the deacons had some medical knowledge and he had roused Cooper [on 2 hp]. And, Wonton had returned. It was now near noon, so they rested, intending to be awake for that night. Was the "bear" still out there?

Saint Croix

It was after nightfall. 

Umar al-Ghaffari

The party was split into three groups.  

1. Mezmer [Shane], Miriam [Jeff], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton [Darryl], and Cooper [Ian] who had woken from his marmalading. In Ahmed's Coffee House. 
2. Gazala [Richard] and Mario [Kevin]. On the roof of the pentagram house. 
3. Fleur [Steven], Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim]. Back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building.

Toulouse had done some research and had updated the party on his discoveries:

"

Toulouse suspected that the ancient Saint Croix church was at the centre of a pentagram demarcated by the three murder sites already found and a further two. 

His research determined that this church was built in 1837, but on the site of a much older pre-schism Christian church. The site was left abandoned after the Christian schism in AD 1054 and left for hundreds of years until 1837. Going back further before the schism, the Umayyad Muslim caliphate had invaded Tunis in the 700s. They allowed the local Christians and Jews to stay, but they stomped out other religions.

Before the caliphate, on this site, was a temple to Baal Hammon, which was itself preceded by a temple to Baal Karnaim in Carthaginian times. Baal Hammon was the "nice face" of Baal. Baal Karnaim expected the sacrifice of children burned alive.

"

On the rooftop of the place of the last murder, the derelict "pentagram house", Gazala and Mario waited. Miriam and Wonton joined them. This left Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper in the coffee house.

The four briefly thought about opening the trapdoor here (after all, it went straight into the pentagram room below), but it was bolted, and it was easier to use that as an excuse and not try, rather than risk any horrors that might be below.

While they were pontificating, a group of eight figures left the building, in a perfectly straight line, all walking in lock-step, escorted by one "normal-walking" figure. It was too dark to make out any features, and this could almost pass as a group of normal people, apart from the perfectly unison marching.

After this group had gone, Gazala snuck down to street level, snuck across the street, pulled out her police Lebel revolver, and fired three times at the doorway (there was no door to this building, just a doorway). She was hoping to get some shots inside to attract their attention.  But she missed, and only hit the side of the building. Despite being a quiet night, the shots were still quite loud, but no-one inside noticed. Not wanting to waste any more bullets, she stopped.

So, she plucked up some bravery, and she went inside. There was a man just inside the door. He was reading something. He looked up rather irritated, grabbed a piece of pipe, and strode over to her.

Gazala played the damsel in distress, and batted her big brown eyes at the man [and rolled an 11]. He was taken by her story, and took her to a side room. He identified himself as Abdul, and kept looking to the side and upwards, worried, and saying "هذا المنزل غير آمن للعاهرات الجميلات!" (You can not stay here, woman!) 

Niqab

Abdul took Gazala outside into the street, and walked in to the Medina with her, physically chaperoning her. After a short trip, he delivered her to a side building of the Zaytuna Mosque. This was the "lady entrance" where women were allowed to enter the mosque precincts. An elderly lady in a niqab took over from him and showed Gazala into a dormitory for stray women. She assured Gazala that she would be safe here for the night.

_________________________________

Back at the Calomnie de Tunis building, Fleur and Jacob carefully took a scraping off the ceiling of the toilet to get faecal sample. This was at Toulouse's request to analyze them. (The cleaners had cleaned the mess earlier in the day, and the ceiling residue was the only bits they had missed.) Toulouse had a microscope, so was planning to check them.

_________________________________

Back on the rooftop, Mario, Wonton and Miriam settled in to stay the night up here. Glancing over the side of the building, they could see light in the pentagram room. Flickering candle-light.

Ahmed's Coffee House was closing, so Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper had an idea. They asked Ahmed if there were any quarries out of town. He knew of one to the northwest, and gave directions.

They had the newspaper's Citroen, so they bundled into it, and headed off to the to the quarry. 

About now, back on the rooftop, Wonton, Mario and Miriam suddenly felt tinging in the backs of their necks. The air around them felt electric, but smelled of cloying sweetness; rotting dates and pomegranates. 

Suddenly, there was a beam of light shining through the concrete of the rooftop and into sky, perfectly vertical. It was a dirty febrile yellow, and not at all pleasant to look at. The beam was the width of a person's torso, and it had movement within, like strange extra-worldly ropes, or intestines, plaited and twisting in a slow random dance, but moving upwards. They watched in awe, but did not put their hand through the beam, nor stand on it. It gave off no heat. It was an overcast night and the beams went into the cloud.

Saint Croix marks the spot

Out over the city, in the distance, maybe half a kilometre away, were four other beams, also shining skyward. They guessed that two of them were at the site of the first two murders - Safar's house and the other unoccupied one. And they estimated that all five were neatly spaced on a circle.

So, they cast their eyes to the centre of that giant circle, to see a beam of similar coloured light, but thicker, come downwards, from the sky. At this spot was the Saint Croix ancient church, exactly as Toulouse predicted.

The beams lasted for half an hour. Not sure what to do now, the Miriam and Wonton headed back to the paper. Mario wanted to stay the night on the rooftop.

Two hours later, Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper arrived at the quarry. It was an easy matter to cut through the chain-link fence and sneak in to one of the sheds. Here, they took a box of dynamite, a box of fuses and a plunger thing. "We will work out how to use this stuff when the time comes" was the general theory. 

And then they returned into the city and to the newspaper building. 

___________________

At first light, the plan was to all meet up at the coffee house. Gazala had spent the night in the women's shelter, so she joined them. Mario was still on the pentagram building rooftop. In the light of day, he could see that there was a black circle on the roof in the spot where the beam was last night. It was a sticky substance as if it had been sprayed with tar. He didn't touch it.

Mezmer and Wonton were dropped off at the library.

When the rest of the party got to the coffee house, there was a platoon (about 40) of Légion Etrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops in the streets, plus their trucks. Inspector Heroux had recovered from yesterday's ordeal of terror, and he was back with a large group of gendarmes. Heroux was in charge of the whole operation; the FE troops' lieutenant took orders from him.

At the party's suggestion, Heroux ordered troops into the pentagram house. Mario was on the rooftop. The trigger-happy soldiers saw this suspicious figure on the roof, so they opened up with their rifles before Heroux could stop them. Mario was hit and he screamed, wounded. When the smoke had cleared, he limped down and rejoined the party. Jacob and Fleur tended him.

The building was empty inside. And all the candles out.

They went to the other two pentagram sites that they knew. These were empty, but the candles showed signs of being burned. They all tried to guess where the two new sites were. Wonton's navigational prowess came to the fore, and using his observations last night, and the map of Tunis and a pentagram shape, he worked out the rough locations of the two new sites. Some gendarmes and a squad of FE troops were dispatched to both. 

Everyone else went to the Saint Croix ancient church itself. At the church, the priest protested about weapons entering his church, but Heroux, the gendarmes and the soldiers ignored him. 

As expected, on the floor of the chancel, was a big circle, and a matching one on the ceiling, made of the same sticky tar-like substance that Mario had seen on the rooftop. This silenced the doubting priest and his two deacons somewhat. The crowd all went down to the undercroft and then down to the crypt, weapons drawn and army torches out. The undercroft level was lit by electric lights, but not the crypt. Down here was a pentagram, larger than the others they had encountered, with candles lit on each point. There were no figures and no movement, except for a column of swirling darkness in the centre of the pentagram.

"Best to not touch anything!" someone hissed. "And don't extinguish the candles."

The crypt had some sarcophagi and tombs, some very old. The walls were lined with small alcoves, each with a statue of an ancient pre-schism (1054) saint.

Bernard had his Speed Graphics camera out, and he started to take photographs.

Cooper thought he heard movement in a sarcophagus, so he opened the lid a crack. There was movement in the darkness. Then a skeletal hand poked out and a skull leered at the opening. He screamed, dropped the lid, and scurried away, whimpering [SAN loss].

Bernard came over and a gendarme with a chauchat submachine gun, just in case.

Bernard put the lens of the camera to the lid gap, angled the detachable flash bulb so that it would illuminate what was within, and took a photograph. In the brief bright flash there was a decayed dusty skeleton hunched over, its arms extended to the gap. Did it move? They slammed the lid.

Bernard and Cooper repeated this for a few more sarcophagi. The flash showed each had a decayed skeleton in a different pose.

The swirling column was about two metres wide, as wide as the crypt ceiling was tall. It was a perfect cylinder, and as looked like it was made of glass holding thick black oily smoke which danced and swirled. No one touched it, which was probably sensible.

Bernard took some photos of it. In the bright flash he was sure he saw a figure in the cylinder. And eyes. And mouths. And tentacles? Maybe it was a distortion of the light. Everyone felt sick.

They all left the place, up to the calm of the church's nave. Inspector Heroux asked the army to station some troops in the undercroft and not to let any one go to the crypt.

The priest agreed that St Croix would be closed today. So the group hung around in the church while Bernard returned to Calomnie de Tunis to develop the photographs.

Speed Graphics Camera
(note film cartridge pulled out)

Speed Graphics camera film is in cartridges - one cartridge per photograph. The negatives are the size of a cartridge; big as your palm.

Toulouse developed the crypt room-shots and alcove statue photographs first. The statues came out clear but they looked like they had skeleton bones superimposed upon them. Almost like some talented artist had painted skeleton bones on the actual stone statues, but more see-through.

The sarcophagus photographs each showed a fully formed skeletal creature with teeth and claws, and even some skin. It was much clearer and more formed than the dusty bones that were actually there.

But the central column photograph was something else entirely.  When Toulouse developed the negative, it looked three dimensional. In the red light of the darkroom they could see the side of the cylinder actually projecting out of the negative. When you turned the negative in your hand, the cylinder moved. Toulouse reached out and touched the projection. His finger passed through it, but he recoiled it in shock. "Ugh" 

Being a negative, the black-and-white image was reversed, of course, and this helped lessen the discomfort Bernard and Toulouse felt by looking at the many-eyed tentacled thing in that cylinder. Was it moving? Can't be.

Toulouse persevered, and he loaded the negative into the enlarger, and projected it onto the printing paper. In each step of this process, the image was 3D. So, he developed the print, and fixed it, avoiding looking too closely throughout, and only holding things by the edge of the paper. The print was 3D too.

"Maybe do not make another print, Toulouse" said Bernard.

Bernard returned to St Croix in the Citroen, with all the photographic prints. Mezmer and Wonton had finished their stint in the library, so he picked them up en route.

 

Mezmer commented that they did the right thing by NOT extinguishing the candles. If this was a summoning, then candles OUT will prevent the arrival. But if this was a summoned, then the candles may be what is maintaining its "cage", so candles must be ON. "We do not know which."

Wonton's research had established that the crypt of this place was indeed the Carthaginian Baal temple layer, and that there ought not to be any deeper layers.

Bernard passed around the prints. The group was intrigued, but they did not like the look of the 3D cylinder in the bright light of day, nor what it contained. In fact, it was enough to physically give Miriam a turn [SAN loss], and she sat in the corner whimpering and rocking. 

Mezmer snatched the print and burned it. "Not good."

They all summoned Heroux and some troops and revisited Umar's apartment. It was empty, but had been cleaned somewhat. The faecal mess was all gone.

The cold room door was closed. Rather than open it, Heroux put a padlock on it. "Nous attendons des armes de gros calibre avant d'ouvrir cette porte." (We'll await heavier weaponry for here.)

It was late afternoon.

Three goes Live

The group (Mezmer [Shane], Miriam [Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Dr Jacob [Chris], Bernard [Jamie], Mario [Kevin], Gazala [Richard] and Fleur [Steven] - Cooper was marmalading) was with Inspector Heroux (Tunis Police) and eight gendarmes at the derelict two-storey building on the corner of Rue Al Jazira and Rue de Epernay, (south-eastern corner of the Tunis Medina). There had been a murder here and Heroux was using the skills of the party, Calomnie de Tunis journalists, to help him with the strange occurrences.

Just then, a new journalist arrived. He was a French man in a wheelchair, named Toulouse [guest-star Tim Robinson], Science Correspondent for the Calomnie de Tunis.

Two beggars had found the murder victim, so Gazala and Miriam took them aside and questioned them, out of earshot of the gendarmes. One of them slipped up and said he saw the murdered guy with clothes covered in blood. But the corpse had been dressed in beggars' clothes that were clean, with no blood.

Realizing the game was up, one beggar ran away. Gazala tried to stop him by threatening him with her "borrowed" police revolver, but he was too quick and got away. However, the other one didn't manage to escape, and under Gazala's questioning, he broke, and told the story: His name was Mohammed. This abandoned building was a regular haunt for the homeless. He and the other beggar, Ahmed, had come upon a rich guy kneeling down doing something on the floor here. Ahmed stabbed the rich guy in the back, intending to rob him. He had valuable clothes, so they undressed him to steal them, and dressed him in beggar rags (which were lying around). But a passing gendarme spotted them from the street, so they quickly hid the rich clothes (covered in blood) and reported that they "had found" the body here. 

Further questioning confirmed that the two had not been into the pentagram room.

Gazala wanted to turn Mohammed over to the law, but Miriam instead paid him, and they let him go.

Mezmer and Toulouse joined Jacob and Fleur at the Morgue. The pathologist, by now, had taken photographs of the body, and he let the group have a print. The gendarmes had identified the body as Kabeer el-Banguin, of the Tunis mafia.

Umar al-Ghaffari

Mezmer, now carrying a photograph of Kabeer plus the names of his killers (Ahmed and Mohammed, the beggars), used his streetwise [Underworld Contacts skill] to locate a Tunis mafia address in the Medina, so he took Toulouse, Jacob and Fleur there. Mezmer's plan was to find more information on Hassan Khan (the "whittler"), or information on Umar al-Ghaffari, who they now suspected was the ring-leader. The contact was very interested to find out who had killed Kabeer. The names weren't good enough by themselves (chances are they were fake anyway), but Mezmer managed to sketch a good enough caricature of beggar Ahmed. He handed all this over in exchange for the identity of the Mafia’s employer in the various occult activities.

The contact was awkward about revealing too much information about Hassan Khan, and held him in too high regard to betray him. Mezmer walked a delicate line between getting information versus being killed for asking too many questions; his adroit and adept lines of questioning served him well.

 

The contact did admit that Hassan worked for Umar - but party knew that.

While this was happening Miriam and Bernard went to Mademoiselle Pelletier's Occult souk, and staked it out. (This was where they had previous found fat black candles, like the ones found at the corners of the pentagram stars). On the off-chance that more of the candles would be bought.

Wonton went looking throughout the huge Medina for other souks that sold the fat black candles. In those few hours he found one place.

Back at the murder site, the gendarmes finished their investigation. They surrounded the derelict building with police string. Then they left.

Mario and Gazala, and Gazala's two police bodyguards stayed behind. They found a second abandoned building, across the way from the site of the murder, and kept watch. They chose a location where they could see into the pentagram room (second storey) through a side window.

A couple of hours passed. They saw some movement in that room. At least two figures. No faces, just movements. Gazala's two gendarme bodyguards Armond and Maurice were having a nap, so they did nothing [the DM completely forgot about these two, but then so did Richard!]

Mario snuck up to the doorway of the surveilled building - no doors. He knocked on the edge of the door, then quickly ran away.

A face appeared; a Caucasian face. He looked around, concerned, then withdrew.

Mario did it again

The same guy appeared. Looking annoyed.

Mario did it again. This time the guy was waiting. He had a gun. He stepped out and fired immediately. Mario squealed and leapt away. Luckily, the shot went wild [Kevin threw a 10] and brave Mario got away - running down the road.

Gazala woke up her two bodyguards [remembered they existed] and updated them. They had a Lebel revolver each, and entered the building with guns drawn. 

Bang bang bang bang bang! Then silence. Oh dear.

"We need to tell the police," said Gazala.

Chauchat-Ribeyrolles
submachine gun
"show-shah RE-be-roll"

So she hurriedly grabbed a taxi, and went to the Commissariat de Police. Luckily Inspector Heroux was there. After hearing Gazala's pleas, he grabbed four gendarmes, and they all armed up with Chauchat-Ribeyrolles submachine guns. Then they took a police car to the building (with Gazala). This whole retrieval trip took more than an hour. 

All five, plus Gazala, rushed into the building. The gendarmes and Heroux ran up the stairs to the pentagram room, guns drawn. Gazala held back, and did not ascend the stairs herself.  

There was gunfire, a lot of gunfire as the submachine guns emptied their 16-round magazines in staccato blasts (10Hz). This was followed by wet tearing noises and hysterical screams.

Two gendarmes and Inspector Heroux, their faces white with terror, scrambled down the stairs, rushed past the stunned Gazala and sprinted outside, then fled down down the road. 

Gazala, now alone, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and she fled too.

Giving up on Heroux, and his fleeing men, Gazala slunk back to join Mario in the building across the way, and continued to surveille the target building. After quarter of an hour they saw Umar himself glance out the window. This was soon followed by a skinned-face walking corpse, who peered out, making over-exaggerated "looking around" moves. And then a third man (an Arab man, not the one who shot at Mario) looked out.

Like the Medina, the buildings around here were very close together, so it was possible for Gazala and Mario to skulk across the rooftops, and get onto the roof of the pentagram building. There was a trapdoor here, which opened into the actual pentagram room. They recalled a ladder on the end wall of the room. But they were not brave enough to open it.  

After half an hour, two men left the building - one them was Mario's shooter and the second was the Arab who looked out the window. They both headed off into the Medina. Gazala tried to track them from the rooftops, while Mario stayed on watch. But after ten minutes of tailing, she lost sight of them in the twisty alleys of the Medina.

The two returned half an hour later, shepherding a group of eight beggars. These unfortunates were marshalled into the building. There was some fitful screaming and hysterical sobbing, but it didn't last long, and soon all was silent.

 

Gazala and Mario waited on the roof top and considered their options. 

An hour passed, then two gendarmes (a regular patrol, maybe) walked by in the street. Gazala rushed down to them and updated them. The gendarmes looked at the building, wisely did not enter, then rushed down the road and found a tobacconist with a telephone. They rang for backup.

It was sunset and getting dark.

_______________________________.

As it was dark, the whole party had arrange to meet up at Ahmed's Coffee House. This, they did.

Wonton phoned the police and passed in a bomb threat at the pentagram building. But the police had reports from their own men, and were already sending in the gendarmes: "Nous avons déjà une escouade de gendarmes qui s'y rend. Espèce chinetoque de merde."

Battleship Bretagne

Bernard had a liaison in the French navy, Second-maître (Second Petty Officer) Francois Pienaar from the battleship Bretagne currently moored in the harbour. So, he telephoned this contact, who was currently stationed ashore in the naval base. Francois didn't seem too interested in Bernard's bluster but he said he would contact the gendarmes.

Three to Get Ready

Umar al-Ghaffari

When we last left the party, Bernard [Jamie], Miriam [Jeff], Gazala [Richard], Jacob [Chris], Mezmer [Shane], and Cooper [Ian]), they were in the second floor kitchen of Umar al-Ghaffari's apartment. They were with Inspector Heroux and four Tunis gendarmes. Wonton [Darryl] was safe, still researching at the Bibliotheque Nationale de Tunisie.

It was almost midnight, and it was dark, because they dared not have any light. Across the courtyard from their three storey building, was an active shooter, with a rifle, taking the occasional shot at any movement.

Down stairs, at ground level in the lounge, was a revolting stench of sewage and excrement, and ominous sounds of movement; another faecal shambling horror. 

Miriam quickly asked the gendarmes to turn the kitchen bench on its side to try to block the stairs, in case it came up.

Then they all noisily argued what to do next:

• Stay and wait for the police reinforcements to arrive, but risk more faecal surprises? 
• Make a break for it out the front door, at the risk of faecal surprises and then being shot? 
• Make a break out of the roof door, and scurry away across the roofs, at the risk of being shot? 
• Sneak over the roof and engage the shooter, at the risk of being shot?

The last option was decided, and Cooper was volunteered to do the task. The plan was that he would be given a Lebel revolver, and then would sneak over the roof-tops to end up behind the gunman, and shoot him. 

So, brave Cooper snuck up the ladder into the bedroom above, quiet as the grave and invisible as a shadow, preparing to begin his journey of sneaking and skulking.

There was a loud CRACK and a breaking of glass, and Cooper tumbled down the ladder, unconscious, onto the floor, spurting blood, with a rifle bullet hole in his shoulder. Ow.

Dr Jacob was there in a flash, and he put a widdle sticking pwaster onto the widdle hole and kissed it all bwetter. This stopped the bleeding.

They changed tack and decided maybe running out the front door might be easier after all, and risk the faecal surprises.

Speaking of which, there was now something solid, bashing and pushing on the bench that was blocking the stairs. It wasn't strong enough to dislodge the four sturdy gendarmes, but the bench-top wood was starting to bend and splinter.

So, the party swapped places with the gendarmes; they held the bench. Then the gendarmes all drew their guns, stepped back. The bench was pulled back.

The shooter

Sure enough, it was another faecal surprise; a humanoid figure covered in excrement. All the gendarmes fired, and fired. And fired. The figure dropped. Two gendarmes kept firing and emptied their guns; click click.

Bernard, Mezmer, Jacob and Miriam carried the unconscious Cooper down the stairs, followed by Gazala, and lead by the four gendarmes and Inspector Heroux.

The gendarmes left the front door first, and they provided some covering fire towards the shooter while everyone bolted. Sadly, two gendarmes were dropped during this manoeuvre, but everyone else got clear.

Mario Berlusconi [Kevin] was conveniently waiting around the corner, and he had with him another French lady called Fleur Jardin [Steven Krijnen - it was lockdown, so we were playing by Discord and this Steven could join]. Fleur worked for the paper too, and she was a medic, so she checked Cooper over and declared him stable.

Now that they were clear, Heroux gave his strained goodbyes. He would return here with more police forces.

"C'est trop dangereux pour vous tous," he said. "Retournez chez vous. Dieu vitesse!" (Go home. It's too dangerous.)

They found their Citroen outside the Medina, still intact, and drove back to the newspaper and their  flat.

Wonton was there, so they updated him. Cooper was tended by the two medics.

Bernard was first to make ablutions for bed, but down in the basement toilet he made an alarming discovery. The male toilet end-cubicle was suspiciously messy. Fresh faeces spattered all over he floor, on the walls and some on the ceiling. This was ominous.

Mezmer was summoned, so he cleared a spot in the mess, knelt down and emptied his mind of all distractions. But he sensed no mythos disturbances. 

"Maybe someone just had an irritable bowel," he said.

Fleur tried to clean the horrid mess, with a bucket and mop, but it was so disgusting that her delicate constitution was overwhelmed, and she vomitted herself silly. 

After purging her stomach of all of her dinner, she used a fire hose to spray everything off. At least the water pressure down here was good.

They all retired for the night. The three women and the sickly Cooper claimed the bunk room tonight. The men slept in the living room and outside on the roof, next to the generator.

Cooper's wounds had been tended, so he was at least healing now. [D3 hp from the quacks, plus 1 hp per night of rest].

They kept guard in turns just in case. 

Everyone got a restless haunted sleep - not helped by the diesel generator (and its shot bearings, and rust holes in the muffler), starting and stopping periodically during the whole night.

_____________________________________

They were having breakfast when one of the Calomnie receptionists came up to the flat. There was a man looking for Gazala. So Gazala, Miriam and Bernard went down.

The man was the Arab gentleman in Ahmed's Coffee House whom Gazala had insulted and threatened with a knife [two session's ago]. He had come here to beat her, or to witness her husband beating her. For her insolence.

Bernard bare-faced lied and told him that Gazala's husband was currently in Albania*, after all he was an Albanian. But that story didn't hold much water, and they final had to relent and "admit" that it was Cooper who was in fact Gazala's husband. But he was sick (that, at least, was true - he was still wounded in bed from the gun shot).

The man went up to the flat with the three, and spoke to Cooper (still in bed). Much abuse and invective was hurled: كنت الديوث وجلد كس !! Cooper was called a cuck and a simp, and how could he live with himself with such a prostitute wife. But the Arab gentleman was forced to leave it at that- he was severely outnumbered by the whole party. So, he went away fuming.

[ * = Gazala was from Algiers. But Richard mistakenly mixed up "Albania" and "Algeria" as to where Gazala's fictitious husband was. So it stuck.]

They went down to their offices and the editor, JK Simmons, was looking forward to printing the exciting story of last night's action. It would run on the front page of Calomnie de Tunis tomorrow. 

"But why aren't there any photographs?" he shouted. "You fools!"

Miriam got out her sketch pad and did some drawings; drawings of the brave party, the brave police, the evil sniper. But she did not draw the faecal men. And she never saw the "gorilla".

They all went to the Commissariat de Police - the police station. The desk Sergeant told them that Heroux wasn't there, and that he was investigating a murder in Medina. Then he did a double-take:

"You are the Calomnie journalists!" he shouted. "Do not publish anything about last night."

The party sheepishly nodded, then left and returned to their paper. They would need to somehow convince the Editor not to run with the story.

Inspector Heroux

Some time later that day, Inspector Heroux telephoned them, and they went in to the station for his update:

• The gendarme that Heroux had sent for reinforcements last night never showed up. He is now officially missing.
• Earlier this morning, Heroux and a large group of gendarmes, with heavy weapons, went to Umar's apartment. The faecal mess was still all over the floors as they had left it when they fled last night.
• The cold room door was thrown open, but it was just an empty room. No cold. No blackness. Just empty. Though there was a chalk pentagram on the floor.
• They found the site of the sniper last night. No sign of anything except some cigarette butts and rifle casings. It was a .30 06. 
• The bodies of the gendarmes killed in the courtyard were recovered.

Gazala was impatient to do something about the Arab man who was harassing her. So, she got Miriam to draw a sketch, but it was crap. However, the gendarmes had a dedicated artist, and Gazala described her harasser to the artist as Miriam jealously looked on, and a perfect caricature resulted.

Heroux identified him as Subhi el-Asad. Mr el-Asad was on the police register because his wife went missing last year; he was suspected, but there was no evidence to arrest him.

The party asked if they could get a firearms carry permit. Heroux said certainly not. But he was impressed by their utility last night at Umar's, and could technically deputize them. They still could not carry, unless they went on a firearms training course. But that would take several weeks. And it would not be in Tunis. "Mais ..." but... "L'Arbitre dit que vous pouvez vous entraîner au maniement des armes pour le prochain module d'aventure." [The DM says maybe for the next adventure module]

Gazala protested that she needed protection. So, Heroux assigned two rookie gendarmes to the group: Armond and Maurice Seins.

Later on that day, the group got a call from the police. There had been a new occult murder on Rue Al Jazira, just off the SE corner of the Medina. So the group hopped in their Citroen and headed there.

Inspector Heroux and a gaggle of gendarmes were there poking around, and the party was let through. Heroux briefed them.

A body was found in deserted two-storey building by two homeless beggars who reported it when a passing gendarme saw them. These two were now sitting in the corner looking sheepish, and were chewing away nervously - probably the cheap chewing-tobacco. Or hashish.

This murder was different to others. And there wasn't a faceless corpse wandering around. The victim was found on the ground floor. He had been stabbed in back,

Medina & murder locations
Scale: "1" to "2" is about 300m

In common with the other two, a pentagram had been drawn with black chalk on second storey floor. And there were five black candles on each corner. But they had never been lit.

The group had their map of Tunis, so they drew on the three murder locations ("1", "2" and "3") and also Umar's apartment, and linked them up to see if there was any pattern.

Party medics Fleur and Jacob wanted to examine the body. So, they took the Citroen and headed off to the Hôpital Militaire hospital, and down to the morgue. They had a note from Heroux this time, so didn't need to bluff their way inside. The pathologist told them that the victim had not been IDed yet. He had been killed by a stab to the back, a few times. One stab had hit the heart. He came in dressed in beggar rags, but they were not the clothes he was killed in. And teeth, skin, hair, soles, and general health showed he was not a beggar.

Back at the scene, Mezmer did a purification ritual. Like last time, the whole floor jolted when the ritual was complete. It was a smaller shake than last time, but it was enough to dislodge some items off the top of a nearby shelf; some clothes fell out. They had blood on them, and they were high quality clothes - this must have been the victim's clothes

L'Appartement

The party, Gazala [Richard], Miriam [Jeff], Mezmer [Shane], Wonton [Darryl], Jacob [Chris], Mario [Kevin] were at the at the scene of the murder. 

Umar al-Ghaffari

Suddenly, Mario collapsed spluttering marmalade. At the same time, Bernard [Jamie], and Cooper [Ian] arrived.

They all decided to leave the gendarmes to tidy up at the second murder scene, and headed off to Umar's place. Gazala knew exactly where it was - about fifteen minute walk through the Medina alleys.

So Cooper, Miriam and Gazala, being the sneaky quiet ones, went up ahead. 

 

They arrived in the quiet courtyard in front of Umar's apartment. There was a bearded man, sitting in the sun, whittling. He was working on a piece of bone.

Cooper snuck around the side and climbed up a drain-pipe, and onto the flat roof of the three storey dwelling. There was a door up here, which was locked. But Cooper made short work of the lock and was soon inside. It was a clean tidy bedroom; the double bed was neatly made. And the room had a hole in the floor with a ladder going down.

Cooper could hear talking somewhere below - the room where the ladder went was empty.

So he snuck down. This level was a kitchen-dining room, and had a door off it. And there was a stair-way downwards. He could hear talking below. It was three men, and one of them was Umar al-Ghaffari himself.

Cooper investigated the side door. It was very thick and solid with reinforced iron hinges, and quiet to listen to. It wasn't locked, so he opened it. It was unnaturally dark inside, like it was filled with a cloud of darkness that absorbed all light. It was cold like a fridge, and smelt of off-meat and rancid fat. He felt a wave of cold seep over him, and it filled him with revulsion and horror. Even though he had been very quiet, the instant the door was opened, the talking in the room suddenly ceased, like a switch. And then, just as quickly, there were footfalls on the stairs.

He sprang for the ladder and clambered up it, as people entered the room. Soon followed by shouts and curses in Arabic.

Cooper rushed through the bedroom, out the door, and onto the roof, sprinting and jumping away.

The Medina as so closely packed with buildings cheek-by-jowl, that it was easy to traverse, building to building. And most of the alleyways were easily jumpable.

Miriam and Gazala, down below, heard the commotion and pursuit on the roof, so they quickly left too, staying clear of the whittler who was also looking upwards, and went to the pre-arranged rendezvous

Cooper's pursuers gave up the chase, and so Cooper joined the two girls, and they all headed back to the party to update them.

Upon hearing this tale about Cooper's fridge, Wonton decided to go to the library (Bibliotheque Nationale de Tunisie) to check on this information. So, he left them [which, in hindsight, proved to be a mistake, because only a few hours passed in the game world, which was barely enough time for Wonton just to travel to the library and start his research. So no Wonton for any of tonight's adventure.]

 

Miriam turned out to be quite the artist, so she did a sketch of the bearded whittler. It was a good enough caricature for Inspector Heroux to recognize him as Hassam Khan of mafia tunisoise ("Tunis Mafia").

About then, a suspicious character beckoned Mezmer over to a side alley, out of sight of the gendarmes.

Colt Sheriff .22

Mezmer had earlier used his (abstract/contrived) Connections skill to contact the black market. He wanted a gun. This guy, a "running boy", had one. It was a 1873 Colt Sheriff's Model .22 rim-fire revolver with a box of 20 bullets. He wanted 2000 francs (French francs was Tunisia's currency; in 1930, 2000F was two month's wages). The party did a whip-around, and that drained all their petty cash.

The Tunis police were very strict on firearms in the 20s and 30s. Illegally possessing one would get you the firing squad. Unless you were a French citizen (basically, "if white") - then you would be shipped back to Paris for the guillotine. Or the French Foreign Legion often got these condemned reprobates.

It was 4pm-ish. Heroux was about to leave with his men. They had neatly and literally wrapped up the whole crime scene in the police string.

Gazala took Heroux aside, and tried to get him to arrest Umar. Heroux kept insisting that they had no evidence, and what the party had seen was just circumstantial. And no-one of any import had anything on Umar. Gazala could not, of course, reveal any of Cooper's discoveries.

But Gazala insisted, and she batted her stunning big brown eyes, with their over-mascaraed lashes and the smoky eye-shadow (and threw a 12 on 2D6 plus 2 for APP), and he changed his mind.

So, Inspector Heroux, with six gendarmes in tow, plus the party, headed to Umar's.

Mister whittler was gone by now and there were no noises of talking within. It was getting late and the shadows were long. The whole apartment had a foreboding feel about it.

The police broke down the door and rushed inside. The lower level (which Cooper had not scouted earlier because it was occupied) had a dining room with two doors off it. Heroux told the party to stay outside, but Cooper ignored him deftly snuck inside with the gendarmes, hidden at the rear.

Two gendarmes went up the stairs, Cooper was about to follow when there was a horrible scream, hysterical with terror. It was abruptly cut short, then followed by a meaty rending tearing noise. Brave Cooper continued up, and nearly tripped on a bloody detached human arm (still in a police shirt) at the top of the stairs. One gendarme, (with both arms intact) was sitting on the floor rocking. The solid "fridge" door was wide open, and the strange darkness still filled that cold room. There was a meaty tearing noise coming from within that darkness. Cooper rushed across floor, slick with fresh blood, and grabbed at the door. He managed to get his hands on it when a fleshy tentacle, the thickness of an arm, with barbed bone hooks on it, snaked out of the dark pall, and ripped across his leg, tearing skin and fascia. He managed to keep his wits, and pushed the door closed, as the tentacle slipped back inside to avoid being crushed. He realized he was screaming himself.

Hearing the screams, the whole party barrelled on in. Everyone rushed upstairs. Dr Jacob tended Cooper's wounds. Heroux questioned the rocking gendarme and Cooper.

Cooper tried to say what it was; some kind of tentacle, like from a giant squid.

"Était-ce comme un tentacule de calmar géant?" asked a gendarme in disbelief. Then got abusive, accusing Cooper for lying: "Tu es un menteur. Va te faire foutre, espèce de branleur menteur."

The Inspector had it firmly in his head that it was a leopard. Only a leopard could rip an arm off. Only a leopard could kill his man like that. Mezmer and Bernard helpfully pointed out that a gorilla could this too, so the rattled Heroux settled upon that. 

No-one was brave enough to open the heavy door. So, Heroux sent one of his (now five) men back to the police station to get reinforcements. He should take an hour. They would shoot this gorilla down when he returned. 

Lebel revolver

The gendarmes and Heroux each had a Modele 1892 "Lebel" revolver (8mm), so the gendarme that departed left his gun with Jacob, who gave it to Gazala to hold. Each gun had 6 bullets with another six in the belt. Mezmer had his 22 Colt gun as well, but he was not going to reveal that to the gendarmes.

Cooper thought that the iron catch on the heavy door was sufficient to hold it.

Everyone thoroughly searched the apartment. There was plenty of food, oil, linen and candles, but the upstairs bedroom was completely unused; the dresser and wardrobe up there had nothing in them.

None of the windows had curtains. They did find another bone dagger - like the one used in the murder.

It was getting dark now. The apartment had no electricity (this was common in the Medina), so had candles and lanterns for light.

One of the doors off the ground floor lounge had a cupboard for food store. 

The other door went to a short passage to a second door behind which was a small toilet cum washroom. It was a "starting-block" toilet over an unusually large hole down to the sewer, and there was a single tap and a basin. But it was disgusting. There was faeces all over the floor, spattered up the walls, and even on the ceiling. Whoever had these bowel movements, had really gone to town; imagine a Mills bomb in a bucket of poo. Even the water tap itself was caked in it. It was a mix of dried excrement and fresh runny stuff - lumpy well-formed  and watery diarrhoea. The stench was eye-watering.

Holding back bile and retching, they slammed the door; both doors.

Bernard thought he'd go for a walk (pike off), but when he stepped out the door, there was a rifle shot from somewhere, and the bullet smashed into the architrave. He quickly withdrew. All the gendarmes drew their Lebel guns. Everyone crouched down and extinguished the candles.

Gazala and Miriam, with their keen eyes and compact mirrors, spotted a figure up on the roof. Gazala wondered if she could take a shot with her Lebel, but it would be exceedingly hard. And risky.

Then, they heard a splintering of wood from within the internal toilet door. Oh dear.

The four gendarmes, sans Heroux, moved in position in the lounge. The Outer toilet door started to creak and groan as if something was pushing it. Then the door splintered and broke in half.

Faecal surprise

Followed by a stench, that hit everyone like a wave; rotting sewerage, sweet and revolting.

The room was dark. There was a little bit of light outside coming through the windows. Enough to see a humanoid figure stagger in through the ruined door. All four gendarmes fired, and fired, and fired.

In the gun flashes, the horrid figure was illuminated; it looked like a misshapen man, completely covered in faeces, stumbling and lurching. But those lidless eyes were not human.

The bullets were working, however. The figure stumbled and reacted to being hit by the 8mm rounds. It collapsed in a big pile of poo, and then stopped moving. The gendarmes kept firing and firing until their guns just went click click.

The revolting stench was unbearable. Two of the gendarmes vomitted. Everyone rushed upstairs to the kitchen.

There were more noises of movement from the toilet. Another one?!!!

And another sacrifice

The group headed back to the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper's offices just as Bernard [Jamie] and Cooper [Ian] slumped down, drooling marmalade.

JK Simmons, the editor, summoned Wonton [Darryl], Jacob [Chris], and Miriam [Jeff] to his office. He had three new reporters, and demanded they joined the group: 

• Mezmer the Magnificent [Shane], a mystic from France
• Mario Berlusconi [Kevin], a journalist from Italy.
• Gazala Haddad [Richard], an explorer from Algiers. 

Introductions were made, but all eyes were on the 24-year-old Berber girl Gazala, for she was quite beautiful.

Umar al-Ghaffari

The new group headed back to Ahmed's Coffee House. Today's mission was to find Henri, a French gentleman and alleged friend of Safar, the murder victim. Safar's work colleague and friend Umar al-Ghaffari had told them about Henri.

Ahmed, the proprietor, didn't know of any specific Henri. And "well-dressed French man" did not narrow down his options.

Gazala was dressed in western apparel, similar to Miriam, but unlike Miriam, she wasn't white. So, the locals in the mostly-male coffee shop started making snide "slut", "whore" and "prostitute" comments. Gazala overheard this and she took umbrage, but that only inflamed things. She drew a knife and the other man did too. Ahmed, the proprietor, stepped in. The assailant yelled at her that he would tell her father about his reporter whore, ... or else he'd deal with her himself.

As this was cooling down, Umar, himself, entered the shop, saw the waiting party, and he promptly turned around and walked out. Gazala got up, and quickly followed him.

Gazala had a tracking-tailing skill, and she did it superbly. Umar wound his way into the heart of the Medina, and Gazala stayed on him like a bloodhound. And he never saw her. She spotted him enter an apartment, so she noted its location down, and headed back to the group at the coffee house.

While Gazala was away, Miriam used her underworld connections [skill] to find some "running boys" and sent them out for info on this elusive Henri.

A small boy returned took them all (including Gazala who had returned) to meet a guy who knew of a Henri. But that lead turned out futile.

It  was now dark, and the Medina was dangerous after dark, so they returned to the coffee house, clambered into the Citroen, and drove back to their flat (on the top floor of the paper's building).

This was the first night for the new staff, so they were awoken by the noisy generator as it spluttered to life for the one am power-cut

_______________________________________

The next day, they were in the editor's office and one of the receptionists came up. She had taken a telephone call from Inspector Heroux of the Tunis Gendarmes. (Like electricity, telephones were a recent arrival in Tunis, so every call was an event.) Heroux had an urgent message; a story for them.

The group took the Citroen down to the police station Commissariat de police de Tunis.

Inspector Heroux had some disturbing news: the bone dagger that was recovered from the scene of the crime the other day, was missing. It had disappeared from the evidence lock-up during the night. The door to this sealed room had been guarded all night. Two guards were assigned to it. The group interviewed them; they seemed trustworthy and competent. At no time was the guard post left empty.

Why had Heroux called reporters in for an obvious police procedural matter? Well, after the previous murder, Heroux knew the group had certain skills that he wanted to exploit. Plus they were ones who had found the dagger last time.

They were taken into the lock-up and shown the cabinet and shelf where the dagger was housed. Mezmer used his Mythos ability and sensed the presence of mythos - a mystical marker.

Tunis Police String

Unable to do any more here, they decided to revisit the scene of the murder. (But they didn't tell Heroux.)

The main door to the apartment was blocked by police string (it was 1930, and plastic tape had yet to be invented). They cut through the string, and went upstairs to the murder room on the top floor. The room was untouched.

Mezmer could still sense mythos traces here, so knelt down in the centre and began a sanctification of the area. This would take an hour.

Aleister Crowley

While waiting for Mezmer to work, Wonton went to the Library, Bibliotheque Nationale de Tunisie . This library had an excellent occult section. It was in a locked area and you needed a Restricted Access pass. Wonton did. Wonton found one of Aleister Crowley's books, the Book of the Dead in English and Latin. It talked about a ritual where the face was skinned. The raised corpse would do the bidding of the summoner.

Doctor Jacob and Gazala went to the hospital Hopital Militaire, which housed the morgue that the Tunis gendarmes used. Jacob posed as a doctor with his sexy nurse Gazala, and they got down to the morgue with no trouble. 

Safar's headless body (his head had been shot to pieces by Heroux) was in one of the body drawers. Jacob slid the drawer out, and checked the body thoroughly. The cause of death was a slot below the rib cage, and the entry hole matched the bone knife. The thrust was angled upwards to get the heart. Interestingly, it had been pushed in slowly and with a lot of force; in fact, so much force that it almost came out the back of the body.

Also, there was no sign of restraint cuts or bruises on the limbs of the body, so it did not look as if Safar was tied or chained down.

Mezmer finished his cleansing, when there was a loud bang in the room, and it felt like an earthquake. Miriam and Mario, on the floor below, saw the ceiling shake, and plaster dust rained down. They ran up.

Mezmer was there looking rather sheepish and covered in dust.

"I crossed the paths," he said.

Wonton, Jacob & Gazala returned then, and updated everyone on the findings.

Just then, a gendarme arrived; probably he'd heard the bang and felt the shake. He saw that the police string had been broken, and came up, gun drawn.

The group had to explain themselves, and he looked rather relieved.

"Heroux has been looking for you," he said. "There has been another murder. I take you there tout de suite."

He led them through the streets.

It was another three-storey apartment, like last time. The gendarmes were grouped outside the front door, with Inspector Heroux, and nervously watching. All had revolvers drawn.

"I called for renforts," he said. "I am worried there are problems like the last time."

The party didn't wait, they scurried up the stairs, led by Wonton, Mario and Miriam. 

On the top floor, Wonton could smell burning wax. He crept up the stairs when suddenly a figure lurched it him. Like last time, it was a naked bloodied body. The skin had been peeled off the face and as Wonton stared at the hideous and revolting visage, he collapsed on the floor as a bout of insanity overcame him. Such was the horror, he was struck blind.

The creature barrelled over Wonton, and ploughed into Mario, then both rolled down the stairs. Miriam deftly side-stepped the two. The figure was trying to claw at Mario and eat his face.

Miriam hurried upstairs, past the blind Wonton, and took the room in with a glance. There was another chalk pentagram drawn on the floor, with five black candles, one at each star point. Like last time, she moved them out of the star and blew them out.

Downstairs, at this moment, the creature collapsed onto Mario. Like last time, it was well and truly dead. Doctor Jacob took a closer look. Like last time, the cause of death was the stab under the ribs with the familiar bone dagger entry wound. They had a quick look through the apartment; there was no sign of the bone dagger.

Wonton's psychosomatic blindness lasted eight minutes. After that he was still shaken but physically okay.

When Heroux heard that the corpse was defeated, he and the other gendarmes rushed upstairs. When things had been secured, the brave Inspector was happy to pose next to it for the camera. Gazala took a series of heroic Heroux photographs.

The gendarmes were still finding out who owned this house. Locals nearby had said it was unoccupied. 

Also, no-one actually knew who the corpse was.

"Who reported this to the gendarmes?" asked Miriam

"Abdul Khan," came the reply. That was the Tunisian equivalent of "John Smith".