karohemd | [Gaming] Call of Cthulhu writeup

Covering the two sessions so far. I'm not a writer, these are just scribbles. More of an expansion of my notes so I won't forget things (other than those I've already forgotten) than trying to write a diary/novel or whatever. I still need to proofread it but now it's time for bed.

The adventures of Rupert Bulmer, Esq.

It was a normal afternoon down at my London club, I'd just had a spot of lunch and had my nose in the latest crime novel while nursing a fine brandy, when a letter arrived.
It was from my old friend William Wright, with whom I had shared many an adventure in Africa and the ruins of Mesoamerica. His old man, the Colonel, was turning 80 and he invited me to the celebrations, hoping that reminiscing about our past adventures would alleviate the boredom the event would surely cause.
I thought it a splendid opportunity to take out the Rolls again so I scooted over to my flat and instructed good Dunbar (who thought it a splendid idea, too) to pack and prepare the car. I prepared some hunting and adventuring gear (you never know, there might be pheasants or grouse to hunt on the Isle of Wight or cliff caves to explore) and off we went the next morning.
The drive down to Portsmouth was reasonably pleasant but the closer we got to the coast the worse the weather turned and when we reached the port, the fog was as thick as pea soup.
Having just missed the previous one, we had to wait for the last ferry of the day, which saw us crammed on with a variety of farm and commercial vehicles and several herds of livestock. Quite undignified, if you ask me but there was nothing we could do.
Having arrived on the other side, I found someone who would give the Rolls a bit of a wash so we could get to the castle in style.

Our gracious host welcomed us with open arms, clearly glad to have someone else to talk to. We caught up on old times and settled into our quite splendid rooms. Some other guests had also arrived, all of them friends of William's. I'm writing down their names here as for some reason we would all get involved in some odd and, quite frankly, out this world business but more of that later:
Reverend Jones; Jeremy Carter, an archaeology professor from Cambridge; Thomas Gladstone Salisbury, an arts dealer from London; and Robert Walker, owner of a clock shop in London and Great War veteran, who all seemed to be fine fellows.
More guests to be expected included James Hill (with whom William and I had shared many an adventure) and two Boer War veterans of the Colonel's troop.
Later that evening, we walked into town, had a few drinks at the pub and as we came back, Robert mentioned that he saw an odd green light out at sea but it had disappeared later. There were also some men shuffling crates around at the docks but when Dunbar checked, he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.

The less said about the birthday celebrations on the next day the better (all dry talk about the Boer War bored us to death, with James never turning up) until we managed to extract ourselves and have a look through the crates William brought back from his latest trip to Africa.
There was the usual tat but a few things caught our eye:
- a crudely carved ivory statuette
- a "crocodile head" carved from wood
- an intricately and very finely worked wooden box, almost like a puzzle box

We fiddled around a bit with the things when Thomas suddenly recognised something carved into the base of the ivory statuette, it was some sort of curved squiggle, almost like an ear. He got quite excited and left the cellar to get something from his room. He returned with a rather odd painting (just colours, a gray rectangle with two yellow "windows" or lights). The main thing was on the back, though. A number of odd squiggles (the professor called them pictograms) and one of them was identical to the thing on the statue.
Still not much help as nobody could discern what the thing meant but that was a huge coincidence.
There were some Latin inscriptions on the back of the paintings which didn't make much sense, either.

We also took the box apart which broke away in several sections to reveal a ball made of some metal (and having what almost looked like a weld line around the perimeter). There was a peculiar story attached to it, too. The shopkeeper first didn't want to sell it to William but he got it later, after all.

(apologies for mixing things up. for reasons that might become clear later, I might not be able to remember everything in sequence)

There was a nutter at the pub who claimed he could smell something odd at the cemetery so we went with him but nobody could smell anything apart from the professor but he couldn't locate the source of the odd smell, either. It was a normal sort of graveyard with the exception of the rather large tomb which was in quite a bad state, delapitated and almost crumbled to a pile of bricks. Not even the inscription was legible anymore, just "Lord something".

Anyway, after a few more whiskies we decided to call it a night and retired to our rooms and that's when the first signs of weirdness started. I fell asleep quickly but then had a bit of a nightmare. I was back in Africa, out in the Savannah, when suddenly a huge herd of wildebeests stampeded over me, pretty much trampling me into a bloody pulp. As much as I'm loath to admit it, I awoke screaming. I only really mention it because the others had a similar experience (not wildebeests but similar nightmares). Now, the scream was just not from the experience but also from the pain in my left hand. I looked at it and there was the symbol from the ivory statuette burned into my palm! The others were similarly marked.

Quite distracted and unable to go back to sleep, we assembled for an early breakfast and tried to figure out what to do with our time.
Randomly, someone spotted that one of the "lights" in Thomas' painting had gone out and the "window" was now dark...
The metal ball was still intriguing and we thought it might be hollow and contain something interesting so we found the blacksmith/mechanic the butler Jenkins had mentioned to ask him for his assistance. He said he'd look into it. We decided not to wait but take a stroll along the cliffs while Thomas spoke to the fishermen.
As we walked, I felt a bit peckish so thought I reach for the packed lunch Jenkins had kindly given to us when I felt a searing pain behind my eyes, one hell of a headache. I'd had a few hangovers in my time but this was nothing like that. After having recovered a bit, I looked up only to see that my companions had suffered a similar fate (except Dunbar, for some reason but we later figured it was because he had never actually touched the ball).

We made our way back to the blacksmith who complained about having broken a hacksaw blade, having only made a small groove into the ball (as it turned out at the same time we felt the pain). The good man changed the blade and set to work again and what happens? We're in serious pain again, I throw up, the others fall over, begging him to stop. We grab the ball (and some of the metal filings) and hoof it back to the castle, catching our breaths, and getting some decent lunch and a few sips of brandy into us to calm us down.

Right, so, now. There was definitely something peculiar about this ball. Not only were its origins unclear but there seemed to be some kind of connection between it and our little group (William, me, Robert, Jeremy, the Reverend and Thomas). Thinking about it, it seems only those who actually handled the ball were affected.
While we were deliberating, Jenkins came in to report that the basement had been broken into and the pieces of the box that used to hold the ball had been stolen. Blimey, another mystery.
By then, it was time to attend the Evensong at the church as our good Reverend had an idea that taking the ball there and blessing it might break the, er, curse or whatever was on it and caused us so much trouble.
The service was a bit tedious but not so bad and afterwards we assembled in the small side chapel. The Reverend did his thing, spoke a few nice words, sprinkled the ball with holy water and all that. We tried to damage the ball a little bit by cracking it against a stone and - the headaches were back so that hadn't worked, either. Too bad.

William headed to the pub while we made our way back to the castle. Having arrived there, Jenkins had another piece of bad news: Miss Fry, the maid, hadn't returned from her day off and the butler was a bit worried. So Thomas, Robert and I headed off into the village again while the Reverend opted to stay at the castle to "guard the ball" (you'll learn the significance of the quotes later).
Oh, you might ask why I hadn't mentioned the professor in a while, well, he had been feeling poorly all day and excused himself from our company.
So, we found the maid's mother's house, knocked and managed to just start our conversation with the lady (who hadn't seen her daughter all day but suggested she might be with her fiancee) when the headaches started again. Argh. So, feeling a bit worse for wear, we made our way to the fiance's house who hadn't seen Miss Fry either and the headaches again got worse. Something must have going on with the ball, so we stopped by the pub to pick up William who had just been talking to some gentleman (a Dr Parsons as we found out later) and was also concerned about his missing maid so we returned to the castle.
Having arrived there, Jenkins reported that nothing else had been taken from the house but a side door had been forced (but was now fitted with a bolt to secure it).
There was also a game of hide and seek and some scuffling as we found out that the Reverend had "experimented" with the ball by heating it in the oven. It now shone quite brightly which was even odder.
We also talked a little more and found out that there was one other person who'd known about the box/ball: James Hill, our adventure companion who had never turned up to the birthday party.
As it was now very late, we decided on a course of action for the next day: report the missing maid to the constabulary and send a telegram to find out whether James had left or where he was. The ball was put in the safe after William changed the combination.

Exhausted, we all retired to our rooms and that's when things started to go really wrong...

I woke after I thought I heard some noise from outside my door so I got up to investigate, opened the door and ... closed it again because that was just odd. I opened it again, sure enough, there wasn't the corridor I expected but a high, vaulted octagonal room with a door in each side. The others had emerged from other doors (except the professor who just appeared and disappeared again). Astonishment and incredulity was written on everybody's faces, nobody knew what was going on. Oh, I should mention the people in the room were Robert, Thomas, the Reverend (who, for some reason was punched in the face by Robert, again), William, and I. No sign of Dunbar or the staff and no idea what was going on. There were two more doors, one that wouldn't open and another one.
I opened the door and on the other side ... was a huge vista of an ancient city, crumbling and partially overgrown like the Maya cities when they were first discovered in the jungle. No-one around, though, just the vast city and some ... large thing flying overhead in the night sky. I closed the door, opened it again, it was still there.
I went back to my room to check a few things. Behind the window was utter blackness and the frame was stuck. I picked up my pocket watch to check the time and saw that the second hand was moving very slowly indeed. I checked with the others and everybody had a different malfunction, Robert's was going a lot faster, Thomas' was even going backwards. The same applied to the clocks in our rooms. How peculiar!

There was nowhere we could go except our rooms, there was no exit to the rest of the house, the windows were blocked but there was the city. I was intrigued by it, anyway so I went to my room and got dressed. As I came back, Robert had opened the door to the city and was looking out with his binoculars. He seemed to look at the giant eagle or whatever it was and seemed to be quite shocked at what he saw. I finally wanted to get a good look, too so I took the binoculars and searched for the beast, thinking its head might find a good place above my fireplace back home. Now, forgive me if the next bit is a tad disjointed. What I saw couldn't be real, let's put it like that. It had the head of an eagle, sort of, and a almost human body but all wrong and tiny wings. That's what I remember.
I then remember a knocking on my room door and William coming into my room. For some reason I was *under* my bed, wrapped in blankets and bathed in sweat.

That's when I had enough and suggested we all go to bed which we did. It took me a while to fall asleep again but I eventually did.

When I woke up, it was a bright, sunny morning. I opened the window and there was a nice breeze. Just a dream, then, but what a dream. I don't think I'd want another one like that...

to be continued