GM: Sam Tillis
Players: Adrienne Mueller, Dylan Arena, James Lawton, Sean Nittner, Sarah Terman, Matthew Fisher
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition
This is a short summary of the game – to be filled in later with more detais.
Goals for this game
- Dr. Kalfour – Ask about temple of Pnoktis (buried in Egypt?)
- Yith Artifact – Learn to draw energy and/or use it as a weapon
- Clive Expedition – Go get em!
- Ask Iris about drugs to slow heartbeat down.
Recap
- Catherine working on a Yith device.
- Visiting the Cairo Bulletin.
- We’ve got to find Omar’s ritual location in Giza.
- The ritual takes place at 11:54 PM.
- Torn slips of the penhew business card
- Hakim brought Jimmy a knife!
Intro
The wind blasts through the Cairo streets. It does not care about the fate of elder gods, it does not care about the fate of humans.
The hazards of Learning
Francois stays up late at night reading Life as a God. [5 sanity lost].
As he skimmed through he got the sense that knows more about Mythos than the book does. The author became a minor priest of the Black Pharaoh. Moved from England to Ottoman Egypt where he performed horrible human sacrifices. He describes a journey to a mythic place of tunnels pulsing through stone like arteries and people throwing themselves into the waters. The book could be a guidebook for sacrificing people.
In trying to understand the meaning Francois could not get the visions of violence out of his head. He began understanding the motivation of crushing other people to lift yourself up. At that moment he had to make a choice of destroying the book itself or harming another [result of sanity loss].
Francois lashes out with the Yith artifact that Cahterine had been working on and stabbed Iris (who was watching over him) with it, charging the device.
The commotion woke everyone up and the responded accordingly.
- Colby tackled Francois and pinned his arms back.
- Catherine, asking Francois what he did and working backwards from there, powered down the device (though it is still charged)
- Francois muttered in French.
- Iris was hurt, but but would be okay. Amos bandaged her wound.
- We collectively discussed the need for reading manacles.
Reggie’s Emerald
The next morning Winston Thackery returned to Evangeline with Reggie’s emerald set into a silver chain modeled off our understanding of the jewels of Queen Nitocris.
Evangeline gave the emerald to Catherine, who was tempted to use it to “reconnect” with Reggie, but for now she would keep it safe (wearing the necklace under her clothes).
Plans to win over the Clive expedition
- Francois and Amos discussed jargon that might sound compelling to them.
- We could tell them Omar sabotaged Penhew (Shafik was working for him and betrayed Gavigan)
- If they don’t act now, they will be left out of the Grand Plan
Pyramids of Giza
Iris, Amos, and Evangeline hire a car (Evangeline is not taking the tram) to Giza. There are many pyramids and smaller structures (see the pictures below). This is an active site with explorers, police patrolling certain cites, and tourists snapping pictures.
There is a scar on the pyramid of Menkaruke. At some point (around the Crusades) one of the Arabic invaders tried to dismantle the pyramid.
The talked to Dr. Emile Vabreaux, an archeologist working in the area and posed as interested financers. Amos asked about primary sources and showed a photo of the glyphs and said that he obtained them from Omar Al-Shakti, which raised the hackles of Vabreaux. “Al-Shakti is like the Penhew Foundation…disreputable. I don’t know him personally, but I know he has control over the police, and there are places we are not allowed to go.” After some back and forth he revealed specifically that the posterior of the Sphynx is off limits, but he knows there is an ancient stele between the paws and the body that he was itching to look at. As far as he knows the Sphyx is solid and cannot be entered.
Iris asked about tunnels that might intersect with rivers and [based on a successful geology roll] determined that there shouldn’t be water near any of the pyramids (no maps of it, plus it would be very dangerous for the foundation).
Memphis
Francois, Colby, and Catherine (team Faux Penhew) drove out to the Memphis dig site with Jimmy and found the place impressively guarded. It was only lacking a minefield and mounted machine guns to make it impenetrable.
It was clear from the outside that there was a single expedition going on, and it was a weak attempt to look busy while not actually doing any archeological work.
With a bit of charm we convinced the guards at the gate that we should speak with someone in charge. After waiting 20 minutes we were greeted by a young man (Martin Winfield) and taken to a pavilion tent.
We told him our fabricated version of the story of what happened at Misr house, the death of Gavigan, and how Omar betrayed us (Catherine showed the torn up pieces of Gavigan’s card).
Martin, who was part of the Brotherhood but not associated with the Pewnhew Foundation officially said that his hands were tied. He’d strike out against Al-Shakti but the American archeologist Clive was in charge. He heavily implied that if we just murdered Clive, all would we be well. Man, effing cultists! He also told us about the rest of the expedition:
- James Gardner, Clive’s loyal assistant
- Johanna Spect, unknown loyalties, sourced by Clive.
- Agatha Broadmoor, one of “ours” but Martin wasn’t sure why Gavigan sent her.
Back at Giza
From talking to Vabreaux, the investigators learned that no excavation is happening at the Sphynx, but there is a packed path leading to the stele.
With a pair of binoculars the were able to see that there was little activity right now during the day. The Stele is impossibly old with text inscribed on it.
They took a tourist rest stop to get a drink of date wine and send a message to Flazone that they needed the assistance one of the officers that he had paid to look the other way.
After some time a young officer picked them up to take them on a tour than “never happened.” They went to the guarded area and in its presence realized the Sphinx is just huge! The also found the stele was covered in hieroglyphs.
The packed earth could be staging ground for an expedition but there were no tracks past the stele itself. It seemed to be the center of everyone’s attention [thanks to a successful archelogy roll]. The young officer confirmed that when Al-Shakti comes to Giza, this is where he goes.
Amos made sketches of the hieroglyphs, and in doing so recognized the, now becoming familiar, runes hidden amongst them.
Memphis, p2.
Realized we needed more information to take our next steps, we split up to talk to the rest of the expedition .
Francois talked to Agatha, a woman in her late 60s drinking from a jug of water under an umbrella. She seemed entirely too pleasant to really be part of the cult. She knew they were digging for some kind of artifact or another and that they were very concerned about the missing mummy, but none of that really phased Agatha.
When asked, Agatha said “I’m here to channel the voices of the past. You know, the pharaohs and such. The spirts have been quiet…but they will speak to us when they are ready.” When asked about queen Nitocris Agatha again, didn’t seem to worried “I feel as if I’m meant to speak to her.” More generally “I was sent along to whomever chose to speak. I was raised in the theosophic school as an empty vessel for the spirits to inhabit.”
As for the affairs of the expedition itself? “Beauracracy! I never touch the stuff!”
Meanwhile Catherine visited Johanna Spect (Who later Adrienne remembered was the author of the book about the Fatherland supremacy). Catherine could barely get her attention until she spoke to her in German. Johanna saw the emerald and dragged Catherine into the tent. “I want that. I need that!” She pulled a gun and pointed it at Catherine’s head! [Why do I KEEP waking into situations where people are ready to kill me?!]
Catherine bluffed “If you shoot me now, with this on, it will have dire consequences. We should work together to secure the other artifacts.” After some very dangerous back and forth Johana agreed to send men with guns to assault Al-Shakti if Catherine told her where the girdle was…and terrified as she was, she told Spect the truth!
Colby approached James Gardener, a junior partner to Dr. Clive, and the best hieroglyphs interpreter in the group. Gardner noticed the glyphs on the wall in Giza but didn’t want to say anything to Martin because the man was so volatile. Clive was scared when the mummy was stolen, but Martin was mad!
Colby told Gardener that Clive is going to be let go of and asked if he wanted to stay attached to the expedition. He was torn between his loyalty to Clive and his own curiosity. Finally he said “I’d very much like to follow up on my theories at Giza.” Gardener didn’t believe that the sarcophagus was taken out the entrance they had opened, but rather a set of secret tunnels he believes connects all the pyramids. His theories about the tunnels are more based on myth than geography, but he kept finding passages about entering “the nether realm…the passages beneath” and he believed they must exist. The tunnels belonged to the “Children of the Sphynx”. What a network!
Egypt Library
Evangeline, Amos, and Iris visited Dr. Kalfour again and showed him the runes the found on the stele. Some of the runes are tied to the bloody tongue. Some are unknown. There are 12 unique runes, inlcuding
- inverted anch
- bloated woman (in kanji)
- Karasiri symbol
- Bloody tongue (which looks like mouth / tongue / blood)
- Winged keys or one eyed bat
- A cross engulfed in flames
- Three eyed shadow
Dr. Kalfour confirmed what information he could and said that in work on the Pnoktic manuscripts was going slowly. More time would be needed.
With regards to the marking themselves, some of the books that contained that information had been burned (he would neither confirm nor deny if they were burned while being read). When he saw the runes however, he touched many of his protective wards and speculated the stele at the Sphinx was perhaps not a gate, but a throughfare connecting many gates. Most of what he knew about the gates came from text about King Tutankhamen about finding the Sphinx.
“Mighty is the god whose breath brings death and whose form means madness.”
There is power in this place (Giza) and power in these words. He warned us not to say them lightly.
Regarding elder signs. The sigils that seal a doorway would be hard (but not impossible) to breath through. The utility of an elder sign is to seal a portal. It will close the door to beings of darkness. But you have to seal both ends. Your enemy is chaos. It is entropy.
If the massive stone stele is destroyed, it seems like it would put a crimp in their plans . Seeing Kalfour’s distain for the idea of destroying the historical artifact, Iris retorted “There’s no point in preserving ancient history if the world is destroyed!”
And that would have been a nice button on the scene, but we had more questions.
These books are very dangerous. How do you read them safely? The answer is that there is no way to wholly protect ourselves, but he did have two recommendations:
- Take time to ground yourself in reality between reading them.
- Create a padded room that locks from the outside to prevent you from hurting yourself or others (I think my idea of reading manacles is still a pretty decent one).
Regarding passages with water. At face value in the physical realm, that doesn’t make sense. However in the context of gates however, perhaps they do lead to lead waters within their infrastructure.
He sent us with a final blessing to be well and not take any unnecessary risks.
Memphis p.3
Francois asked and Agatha confirmed that voices of the past do include those of the recently dead… “I wouldn’t be much of a Medium if I couldn’t talk to the dead.” She said with a smile.
We learned that gems can be imbued with power. The ritual described that would raise the dead. That much power would turn someone into…something else. [From Sean’s notes, not sure where we leaned this]
Physical geography (all over the world) plus metaphysical pathways. Pyramids are nodes (or more likely are holding down the notes). But are the pyramids themselves the gateways, or are they wards or seals blocking those gateways. [From Sean’s notes, not sure where we leaned this]
We fired Clive. He took it very badly (we had to push hard) but at least he went. Had we not done it, we would have surely been killed.
Martin, with Clive out of the picture, accepted the plan to send men to Giza and then *looks at you in Cultist*.
Two women meet at a bar
Catherine used the means Johanna had provided to contact her and set up a meet. In their first encounter she had accidentally told too much of the truth and pointed Johanna at the Ulema. She was determined to correct that.
In the shadow corners of the bar Catherine told her that she should go after the circlet at the Al-Shakti estate (“for the Fatherland!”) and that Catherine would get the girdle from the priests. Johanna would only go with some assurances so Catherine gave up the emerald necklace and as Johanna put it on, under the table she activated the yith device and electrocuted her (all to sell the bit that it was an item of great power). Johanna didn’t notice the ruse and was elated by the power that she felt course through her.
Outside what looked like a panther and then a moment later was clearly a woman approached Colby and Francois and told them that Janwillem had taken something that didn’t belong to him, and that they needed to get it back from him!
Regroup
Assembled again at the Shephard’s Hotel we shared our collective (and terrifying) information.
- When asked about cats that could turn into people, Hakim said that cats are very special and that we should take any messages or omens from them very seriously. They are a force to be revered and respected. People often try to invoke them by pray to cat figurines or in temples.
- We decided to help the cats and see if they could tell us any more about the gates.
- We’re going to get some dynamite from Clive (from the expedition) and use it in some way (blow up the stele, the horror, another gate, etc).
- We’ll coordinate with Martin to attack Omar’s entourage at Giza.
- We’ve sent Johanna to attack Al-Shakti’s compound.
- Further research revealed stories of the Egyptian goddess Bastet (pronounced Bast) changed over time. Cats were used to scare off rats which ruined grain fields. As much of the Egyptian pantheon died off (at least in terms of awareness), Bastet persisted. There was a point in history where Isis faded away but Bastet continued.
Back to Giza
Colby and Francois found Janwillem locked in his room. The door and the windows barricaded and surrounded by cats. After much cajoling (and a few threats to break down the door) they finally convinced the archeologist to let them in. He looked as though he had not slept. He have a fevered look in is eyes and his arms were covered with cat scratches.
When they looked at his work they could see he was translating scrolls into Dutch and from what he descried, these scrolls contained mythos lore. He told the story of finding them in a cat temple underground in the old city. “I found as statute with a secret compartments. I there I found it! The Black Rites of Bast!”. The work was on papyrus scrolls in hieroglyphs. They looked to be incantations.
Colby and Francois urged him to return them, that it was the only way to save his life, but he wasn’t willing to until he completed the translation. It would be his greatest work!!!
Eventually he relented and promised he would bring them back if they just gave him one more night to finish his work…
That night
In the Shephard’s hotel, Catherine reviewed Johanna’s texts again. They were mostly raving about the betrayal of her people and how they need to be strong again. Catherine speculated that she wanted to use the gems to create and Übermensch.
Amos slept and visiting dreaming to inquire about the Sphynx. In the dream his clothes turned to robes but the sword came with him! He studied the Sphynx and cats in the great library. He learned many things but they were lost to dream. The Sphynx is real. It is a herald with an impossible maw of teeth. There was more, but it was lost.
A night with Janwillem
For some time the was perpetual cat scratching at the door, but Colby said through the door that we had struck a deal and that the scrolls would be returned tomorrow. After that the scratching abated.
Janwillem said as he worked that most of the text was about warding off enemies of the cats. Bastet is an entity of the same “genus” as Nyarlathotep.
Colby and Francois were supposed to take turns staying awake and watching over Janwillem but after the exhaustion of the past few days, both fell asleep. Janwillem tried to sneak away when they were both asleep but Colby woke as as the archeologist tried to move him away from the door and instinctively stabbed him with his deadly blade. This woke Francois who held him down and tried to compress the wounds so Janwillem wouldn’t bleed to death. Janwillem screamed “I need to finish my work!” and struggled violently but was eventually subdued (and saved).
Francois took Janwillem to the hospital (with the Dutch translations in hand) while Colby (scrolls in hand) asked the cats where to take them. He was guided through an old city, down a dark staircase, and at one point right into a clothesline where his head got wrapped up in a dress (see how he likes being put in a bag!). Eventually he made his way into a underground dome temple with hundreds of cats in it. In the center was a seven foot tall statue of a cat-headed woman. At the base (as Janwillem described) there was a secret compartment and he returned the scrolls there. He said out loud (for anyone that was listening) “I’m sorry about the bag thing. I thought you were sent by Omar Al-Shakti. I realize now I was wrong. I hope all is well now.”
As he meant to leave the woman he met the night before appeared in the entrance and told Colby “It is infrequent that my mistress forgives, but you have done a good deed today. My name is Neris. I serve Bastet. You will not find this place again. We will not meet again. But Bastet does not forget those who do her favors” and then she began to sing a lullaby “Not all gods wish to do you ill.”
After he left Colby found a small cat figuring in his pocket on a leather cord. Perhaps uncharacteristically, he donned it around his neck.
One more request from Clive
Evangeline, Amos, and Iris (all of the people that didn’t fire Clive) found him at another hotel and told him they were enemies of the Penhews and that they wanted him to steal explosives from the dig site to get back at them.
“So this is how Miskatonic university does archeology? What you are proposing is insane. I don’t want my name associated with any of this, but I plan on having strong words with professor Slater and I will liberate their dynamite for you.
Mosque at Ibn Tulin
Catherine returned to the Ulema and tried once again to get them to flee with the girdle. They said that if all other plans failed they would allow her to leave with it, but they would not stop in their duty to protect it.
We discussed so many different possibilities to use the explosives. Possibly shoving it through the gate when it opens and lighting it. Possibly blowing up the gates instead. It’s so hard to know what it would do.
As she left the Mosque Cahterine touched Ahmed and saw so many of his futures. Only a vanishing few where he survives!
Felix Falzone
Falzone reached out to Evangeline to tell her of startling news! There was an armed assault on Omar’s compound led by a woman with terrible burns. He was given to understand that bandits raided the house of Al-Shakti but none emerged.
Preparing for Pecongition
With so many things uncertain, Catherine wanted to look into the future again, but hoped that Iris could help her reproduce the effects of meditating with the priests via pharmaceutical means She wanted to slow her resting heartrate down from 85 to 50 beats per minute. With great reluctance and firm insistence that this only be used for this purpose, Iris provided some opium and administered a very small dose. For the next two hours Catherine slowed down and her mind and her body and concentrated on futures from now until 11:54 PM (when she knew the gate would open and the Ulema and she saw:
- Omar (unhurt) angrily shouting at his men to regain order. // A purple and black star flying through the sky with eight black stars orbiting it.
- Omar driving to the firefight, his car exploding. // Satellites falling fall from the purple black start, but it proceeds.
- Omar goes through the stele and says words in Arabic (“Mighty is the god whose breath brings death and whose form means madness.” ) and then steps through the gate // As more of the satellites fall fall, the purple and black star gets more powerful.
- He enterers the tunnels and the vision flickers (the modern description is that the frame rate alters). He enters at 10pm and spend several hours in the tunnels before 11:54 pm arrives. Then the horrors proceed as she had seen before.
We’ve got to destroy that gateway before he can make it through!
Book: The Canterbury Tales.
Quote: “And high above, depicted in a tower, sat Conquest, robed in majesty and power, under a sword that swung above his head, sharp-edged and hanging by a subtle thread.”
