<Updating asap because we’re not playing next weekend and I don’t want to forget what happened since I’ll have to tell the three that weren’t playing. Time for Plan B.
What an incredible night of absolutely stunningly bad rolling. I think we could have counted on one hand our successful rolls. Two 100s in one night? And max damage to character rolls twice? I largely rolled poorly but was absolutely outdone by how badly everyone else rolled…>
We picked up the action just as the last of Seamus O’Shea’s giblets and shattered teeth came to rest after having been bounced out of him at a great height.
Tandyanne’s brain hadn’t signed up for this and she experienced a bout of temporary insanity and turned to run. However, she simply ran directly into Ernst and her crocodile brain telling her that he was in her way, she began pummeling him with her fists. He sidestepped and deflected the blows and then she moved around hitting Tom, the hotel doorman, and then trying to bite Jimmy as he restrained her.
As this small, ineffectual whirlwind of violence took place, Tom stooped and had a quick search of O’Shea’s ruined overcoat pockets, finding both the end of a femur that had ripped through, copious amounts of blood and a wad of paper. He looked up to the sky for where O’Shea may have been dropped, but could see nothing out of the ordinary.
Tandyanne calmed, everyone headed inside as the police and ambulance arrived and a general fuss kicked off out front. It was considered best if she just get a good night’s rest and chill out. They shared their information (that the interrogation of Paul Rodgers hadn’t gone well, but somehow the interrogation of his girlfriend had gone worse). Before they all hit the hay they examined the wad of bloody paper and found a telephone number and a name, Mabel: calling the operator, she told them that it was the number for the office that handled property deed records for the county.
The next morning they called the office as soon as was reasonable and got through to Mabel. On asking, she was happy to recall her conversation with O’Shea and his “lovely Irish brogue” (he sounded like a tuba full of gravel when Jimmy talked to him, but maybe he had a second gear). He had been inquiring about the old Slaughterhouse by Blood Creek – this matched the scrap of paper that they’d found at Paul’s place. The place had been derelict for 30 years and had been bought a few months ago by one Jacob Dover.
They decided to head directly there.
They took a taxi out that way and were dropped off about a mile away, so they schlepped up River Road, which was barely a road at all having not seen any maintenance for a good long while. That hadn’t stopped one car from making it up here though: as the big dark shape of the slaughterhouse came into view they could see a O’Shea’s distinctive wheels wrapped around a metal fence post. Furthermore, they could see that the hard top of the car had been peeled, front to back and opened like a can of sardines.
The car was all messed up, given that this was before just about all safety features were added to cars. It usually isn’t safe to drive around with a loaded sawn-off* shotgun (Sean-off, get it?) but that lay in the footwell of the car. Tom saw it, but Tom doesn’t like guns, so he left it there.
When you absolutely, positively have to make a sieve out of anything in 5 yards, but can’t get the hang of aiming.
The slaughterhouse reeked, the same stench that came from the boots in Paul’s home. It was dilapidated, most rusting corrugated iron, with obvious wear and tear. Broken down corrals and pens were long overgrown with brush surrounding the yard. The faded and peeling sign told them that they were in the right place though. Heading across the overgrown loading area to two large open doors, they could make out some tracks in the mud. Boots, some bike wheels, all reasonably new.
At this point, Jimmy got caught up in searching for tracks, and wandered off from the rest of the party, and no-one noticed that he had gone. He was so intent on looking for trails that he became separated from the group, which now entered into the darkness of the slaughterhouse. So no one was around to see Jimmy get yanked into the air.
Working on just Ernst’s penlight, not much could be made out inside the meatpacker’s building. There was a wide open space and some rooms off to the right, with the machinery of the stunning pen and killing floor at the far end and rails suspended from the rafters for hanging the carcasses.
They had a short time to glance in the room areas, before the sound of breathless laughter and boots descending metal stairs drew them back out. Tandyanne lingered by the main doors, but Tom and Ernst had walked further into the gloom.
From one of the rafters, Jimmy was dangled head down and while they couldn’t see what held his feet, they could see one or two whip-like cords slither around him, in and out of his clothing as he writhed uncontrollably, gasping for air amidst laughter.
Two men descended the machinery at the end of the room, pistols drawn. One broad-shouldered fella and one tall handsome guy. Tom began some incredibly effective fast talking, which seemed to take them somewhat by surprise: he was there because he had heard that this was a lucrative business and that it was starting to get noticed… however he did it took them in (to be fair, they kinda had the upper hand so could afford to be patient) and Handsome even holstered (yes, he had a hip-holster) his gun.
But Ernst had the situation clocked: these guys weren’t particularly worried, something or somethings were holding Jimmy at a precarious height, they couldn’t see shit and they were not prepared for this. Ernst started running.
Jimmy struggled, and struggled and struggled. But he was simply unable to get out from the grasp of whatever it was he was held by.
Whatever it was he was held by, another one detached itself from the darkness of the rafters and swooped down to grab Ernst, and lifted him into the rafters too. While it began its paralysing tickle attack, Ernst was still able to wriggle out from it’s grasp, hitting the ground HARD.
Tom had tried the old Reverse Headbutt Surprise on Handsome when this kicked off, but was thrown to the mud for his trouble. As Ernst picked himself up out of the same stinking mud and hared off in the direction of Arkham, Tom pulled out a smokepot. As a spindly humanoid creature with long bat-like wings and a featureless, smooth face dropped down and grabbed him, he detonated it. Chaos!
Tandy, meanwhile had spotted a generator, but, as a proud member of the Union of Librarians she is prohibited from knowing how to Operate Heavy Machinery** and so could not get it started, instead, she picked up a rusty metal cattle goad, shouted some nonsense Latin warcry and charged the broad-shouldered guy. She hit him once before Tom’s smokepot went off and then after that swung a few time in the cloudy dark as he returned fire where he thought she was (she wasn’t).
With Ernst already hurdling the fence and heading for the woods, Jimmy FINALLY managed to get himself free, falling and hurting himself a lot. Tandyanne gave up trying to club this goon and ran for the bright light of the doorway.
But Handsome had also made his way out of the dissipating smoke cloud and he wasn’t a bad shot at all. He shot her, but didn’t kill her, she kept running desperately for outside, she made it out into the daylight, before clawed hands snatched her up, up, up, before eventually letting her go. It wasn’t the fall that killed Tandyanne, it was the landing.
Jimmy made a break for it too, but it was all too easy for Handsome and in a well-practiced motion he took aim and killed the youngest remaining member of the Society of Abydos.
So that left Ernst, running across country as hard as he could to get back to Arkham, to try to alert the authorities without sounding insane.
Tom was captive and after having seen the Nightgaunts, on the brink of insanity. His captors brought him down to the tripery, forced black liquid between his teeth and the drugs kicked him over that brink.
He saw time peel back. He saw scenes from long ago and then watched continents slide and strange fungal forests grow, mountains rose, the oceans covered the earth, he saw strange cities, with tall windowless towers of immense size. Then he watched the formation of the planets, the coalescing of the sun, the great chaotic spin of the galaxy, before being brought to a point where all things rushed out from a central point. He learned things, terrible things about time.
And at the edge of his perception he felt something looking back and felt the padding of feet as something loped, with increasing speed towards him. The images reversed themselves and the feeling of being followed receded as the suns and planets formed and Tom was rushed back to his own time. He distinctly remembers that the loping foot pads did not stop, but simply faded as he moved away from them. But I’m not sure I’d trust anything Tom says though, because he is temporarily insane.
Woof, rough morning.
*I realise that Sawn-off as opposed to Sawed-off may be a regional variant, but Sod-off is implied in the nature of the device and is therefore unnecessary.
**Amongst many many other things.
