Masks of Nyarlathotep (6/9/2024)

GM: Sam Tillis
Players: Adrienne Mueller, Dylan Arena, James Lawton, Sean Nittner, Sarah Terman, Matthew Fisher
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition

Investigations in London continue. After the raid of the Ivory Wind and the discovery of machine parts from Amos’ vision, the contents were taken by customs into holding.

That same evening though, fleeing the fog monster we took refuge in in the warehouse where the goods had been loaded from…and found we weren’t alone. Puneet Chaudhary, owner of the warehouse, and several of his staff appeared, wondering what we were doing.

Dockside Warehouse

Thankfully we didn’t have to buy too much time as HMRC officer Bessel was soon in the warehouse making more arrets. We did glean a few things from the meeting however.

• Colby found a tommy gun in one of the crates, that he stowed away for later use.
• Francois made his way to the office and grabbed a hold of the shipping manifests, which showed the shipments bound for Ho Fang in Singapore.
• Catherine was able to spend a few minutes with Puneet before he was arrested and despite offers to help him, he was too scared to talk. Anything the authorities could do to him weren’t as bad as what the Penhew Foundation could do.

The shipping manifest once reviewed, revealed that Edward Gavigan knew there was trouble and had instructed Puneet to destroy the Ivory Wind to prevent the machines from being discovered. We beat them to it… but even now a Ferris and Sons (company know to work with Penhew) moving truck was parked outside the customs office. We believed they planned to bomb the office… which led to an unfortunate encounter.

Customs Office

HMRC officer Bessel wasn’t exactly excited to see us, but when we asked him questions about what they found in the crates (clearly something that disturbed him) and getting access to the machines, he was not convinced. When Catherine pressed it came down to a gamble. Go with us now, order the movers to open the back of the truck, and if there are bombs in there, believe us. Otherwise throw us out…we got thrown out!

Despite this we kept persisting and eventually were allowed to look at the items recovered. Many of them occult and disturbing. Foot glove made of foot…no thanks. But we also found the machine parts. Catherine tried to figure out how to put them together…and failed, breaking a piece and cutting herself in the process. She made a fool of herself and was angry at Bessel for not giving more time and at herself for not being able to figure out how it all went together. She carried a broken piece of the machine in her hand, bleeding but bandaged.

The Black Pharaoh

Outside, Colby and Reggie followed some of he movers when the had a shift change. After many twists and turns, the realized the they were made, but Colby continued follow them onto the subway. They kept splitting up, but he followed the one we had seen earlier with the inverted ankh, the sign of the Black Pharaoh.

Knowing they each recognized each other Colby approached the cultist and sat beside him. “Do you want to know who we are? Why we do what we do? What great purpose we serve? Come with me and all will be revealed.” That was the gist of the conversation. Colby declined the offer!

Michael Cross

Amos and Francois meanwhile followed up on a lead. Francois research into Hyperborea led to Michael Cross, a children’s book author who told fairy tales about wizards of yore. In person, however they discovered he was a man only partially in touch with reality… because he had visited the Dreaming and wanted more than anything to find a way to to travel there… a way Amos teased we could offer.

Michael too Amos into the Dream and there he discovered a library full of wonders…wonders he could almost remember when he woke.

Regrouping

Together we continued our studies, read books we probably shouldn’t have, tried to understand machines that were unfathomable, and made a plan to split up. We also tried to learn spells and that did not go well.

Kissy Time

At the end of last session Catherine realized that we was actually having real feelings from Reggie, and bolstered by talking to Iris about them and realizing they weren’t just a fleeting thought, she tried, very awkwardly to tell Reggie how she felt. “You see…I think that… I might feel a certain way… and you might say it’s not really true… but I think it is…and” and Reggie thankfully short circuited this painful attempt a apply logic to love by kissing Catherine right there.

Stunned, she took his cigarette and took a long drag…and then coughed profusely. Very elegant.

Many Deaths, Bessel Changes His Tune

We received a notice from HMRC Bessel and learned that Puneet died in his cell (cut a thousand times, as would later happen to our private investigator right in front of us) and that Lars Torvak (captain of the Ivory Wind) hung himself in his cell. Also, the Penhew foundation lawyers pushed his hand and he had to return the machine parts.

He let us seem the items they still had in holding (the cultural artifacts) which included a Shipley painting that Amos recognized as a portal into the Dreaming. There were other disturbing items, but they didn’t seem germane to our investigation.

Mickey Mahoney and The Scoop

We had a lot of leads that told us Jackson Elias had talked to an editor from The Scoop, Mickey Mahoney. He seemed to be in the know of supernatural goings on, even if he just liked the way the looked in the rags.

Catherine talked to Mahoney and he shared some articles. Most of them were about leads we already knew but one pointed towards animal attacks, big dogs spotted, and other strange activity in Lesser Edale. A lead we would turn up never to follow, but had us interested just the same.

Blue Pyramid Club

Reggie knew that Thomas Kinnery had been seen going to The Blue Pyramid Club (Catherine has growing theories about pyramids, mountains, and other triangle shapes being part of the gates opened to other worlds, but more on that later). Since we were all splitting up this seemed like a safe thing for Reggie to explore on his own.

Just a bit of carousing and getting to know folks and learn a thing or two. He did overhear word of a woman named Zahra Shafik who they had been trailing and well as the actions of Edward Gavigan. All seemed like they had potential but he needed to get more information. So he pressed… he found someone who seemed like they might open up to him, a man who had had been giving him the eye and was up for going somewhere more private.

That somewhere turned out to be a dungeon either used for torture, murder, or holding people for future torture or murder. Reggie had just a moment before two others came and boxed him…and so he did the only thing he could do… he ran and ran and ran and burst out of the Pyramid Club where thankfully Jimmy was waiting to drive him away. Phew!

Empire Spices

Following a lead from a private detective Francois and Iris visited the Empire Spice Shop, a location Gavigan was seen frequenting. There they met Zahra Shafik who admitted to being part of the cult, but wanted to get out. She told us about a ritual that Gavigan would perform soon, one where his protections would be weakened. During a sacrifice made to the servitor.,. She gave us all the details we needed.

The Paintings of Miles Shipley

One of the things we saw in the customs office (that came from the Ivory Wind) was a Miles Shipley painting that clearly depicted the portal into The Dreaming that Amos had followed. Michael Cross said Shipley was moving too fast… he must know something.

So Amos and Colby went to pay him a visit. They met his very protective mother, feigned interest in buying one of his paintings, and was led to the top floor where mile pained away under barely any light (all the windows were covered and a feint gas lamp was the only thing that provided a dim light).

The paintings themselves were a terrifying sight, more portals to worlds much less pleasant than the The Dreaming. After some maneuvering (Amos distracting his mother with the offer to buy something), Colby was able to ask Shipley if he was okay (he seemed anything but) and eventually realized that Shipley was a) creating these paintings under duress and b) that was not his mother.

Violence ensued. Colby tried to slit her throat only to find that her human skin just sloughed off to reveal the monster beneath. Colby was paralyzed and Amos had to fend off monster until he recovered…thankfully it was just long enough.

Together they defeated the monster, found the “keystone” art that would build a gate, destroyed it, and brought Miles to Michael with the hope that they two could help each other.

Revisiting the Dream

Amos, connecting Michael Cross and Miles Shipley, revisited Dream one more and came back remembering something…equations that would help Catherine understand the spell!

Downtime

We had a week before the ritual so we decided to make the most of it. The session ended as a some of too some downtime actions.

• Catherine spend time with Reggie talking about her family and wanting to get to know is. She also—bolstered by Amos’ discover—reapplied herself to learning as spell to contact the outisders1
• Downtime continued at the start of the next session.

Book: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen