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karohemdAfter a rather long hiatus, we finally managed to reconvene and restart the campaign. It's been a while so you might want to read up here. Now, back to the evening after the battle:
Back at the inn, Robert was made as comfortable as possible and the rest of us quickly agreed to attempt to rescue Dunbar by sleeping while the ball was out of the box. We quickly prepared and then went to sleep in the same room, not bothering to get undressed.
True enough, a distant screeching woke us up but looking out of the window was a bit of a shock. The now familiar cyclopean cityscape was clearly visible outside the window... Checking outside the door, we found the inn's first floor corridor and the guest from down the corridor running screaming and then falling down the stairs. He had hit his head badly and was unconscious so Prof. Carter and I carried him upstairs to his room, put him on his bed and closed the door again. Downstairs, the door to the inn was oddly changed, it and the wall half fused into one of those buildings in the strange city. However, the door worked and we were able to enter the city. Nothing had changed much except that there were now two moons in the sky! It took us a while to get our bearings but we soon found the place where we had last been, coming across the remains of a horse's carcass on the way. Pike's car was still there but almost destroyed with various claw marks visible. We looked around for a while and also found two bloody smears on the ground, one of which was identified as the remains of my faithful erstwhile companion, Dunbar. I'm not quite sure what followed as I was in a bit of state after this realisation but I gather Prof. Carter collected the remains, we walked back to the building from which we entered the city, went upstairs to our room and Prof. Carter put the ball back into the box. For some reason, we all thought this was a good idea at the time until we felt that odd wrenching pain again. When I came to, everybody was there except for Carter... He mustn't have made it through, just like Dunbar... Going back to sleep didn't work (when I woke up again, I was still in the real world). As it looked like we had to wait til the next night, we decided it was time to head back to London. I had to make arrangements with Dunbar's agency and there was an appointment at the university to keep. Access to the strange city seemed to be possible wherever ball and box were so it didn't matter if we tried in London next time.
Back in London, Robert rested while I contacted Dunbar's agency and dealt with his matters and Thomas visited the university. The professors there had conducted various experiments with the metal filings from the ball and their basic conclusion was that the material was a catalyst or accelerant that would greatly enhance any chemical or electrical reaction to the point that during one experiment involving acids, the lab was destroyed. Thankfully, nobody was injured. The pod (containing the honeylike substance) was some part of an organism similar to a whelk. The liquid inside had regenerative properties or simply accelerate biological processes in a similar way the ball filings accelereated chemical reactions.
There also had been a message from William at the club, directing me to a London address where I would find a Silas Torrance who would apparently be able to help with our questions. Thomas accompanied me there (a B&B as it turned out) and we met this Torrance character who turned out to be a steamer captain who used to ply his trade along the Athi and Tana Rivers in Kenya. He was a likeable fellow so we soon got talking. It turned out he had met mysterious Jim (Parsons' alleged former valet) on one of his trips and had seen the ear symbol as well. Sadly, this didn't bring us any further than the indication that the tribe who Jim had been talking about and might be the origin of the box/ball was located in that area rather than South Africa (where William had picked up the box).
Mr. Torrance (who insisted we call him Skipper) seemed to be quite taken with our tale and fate and offered to help us search for Prof. Carter. Good man. [OOC: John's replacement character]
After some considerable discussion as to where we should go (we didn't want to risk dragging the club's residents into the dream city like we had the inn's), a plan was hatched to use one of the huts in Hyde Park, surely abandoned at this time of night. We made our way over the fence, found a hut (looked like storage for one of the music pavillions) and Thomas managed to pick the lock. Inside we made a few makeshift beds, took the ball out of the box and went to sleep. When we woke up, we were in the dream world, Skipper screaming. I realised we forgot to tell him that the first time usually involved nightmares of sorts and pain as the ear symbol was burned into one's palm. Oh well, he didn't seem to be too bothered by it.
We opened the door and tried to find our bearings. The two moons were a bit closer to each other than the night before and possibly the odd light skewed our vision as it took us quite a while before we found the building we had entered from the inn. We looked around for a while and soon enough found Prof. Carter hiding behind some ruins, alive and well! As we had no reason to stay around for much longer and possibly fall prey to one of those screeching beasts, we made our way back to where we had come from, again with some difficulty - blast this odd light! - but eventually we found the "hut" again. We went back to sleep and ... woke up with birds singing in Hyde Park, everyone accounted for. As the park opened we gradually made our way out without raising suspicion. Phew.
To be continued...
As usual, please comment if there's anything I missed or got blatantly wrong. Cheers! It'll probably be about four weeks before we meet again as we want to find a Sunday afternoon so we can have a nice long session to move things along a bit and also to get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oml404 back into the game.
Back at the inn, Robert was made as comfortable as possible and the rest of us quickly agreed to attempt to rescue Dunbar by sleeping while the ball was out of the box. We quickly prepared and then went to sleep in the same room, not bothering to get undressed.
True enough, a distant screeching woke us up but looking out of the window was a bit of a shock. The now familiar cyclopean cityscape was clearly visible outside the window... Checking outside the door, we found the inn's first floor corridor and the guest from down the corridor running screaming and then falling down the stairs. He had hit his head badly and was unconscious so Prof. Carter and I carried him upstairs to his room, put him on his bed and closed the door again. Downstairs, the door to the inn was oddly changed, it and the wall half fused into one of those buildings in the strange city. However, the door worked and we were able to enter the city. Nothing had changed much except that there were now two moons in the sky! It took us a while to get our bearings but we soon found the place where we had last been, coming across the remains of a horse's carcass on the way. Pike's car was still there but almost destroyed with various claw marks visible. We looked around for a while and also found two bloody smears on the ground, one of which was identified as the remains of my faithful erstwhile companion, Dunbar. I'm not quite sure what followed as I was in a bit of state after this realisation but I gather Prof. Carter collected the remains, we walked back to the building from which we entered the city, went upstairs to our room and Prof. Carter put the ball back into the box. For some reason, we all thought this was a good idea at the time until we felt that odd wrenching pain again. When I came to, everybody was there except for Carter... He mustn't have made it through, just like Dunbar... Going back to sleep didn't work (when I woke up again, I was still in the real world). As it looked like we had to wait til the next night, we decided it was time to head back to London. I had to make arrangements with Dunbar's agency and there was an appointment at the university to keep. Access to the strange city seemed to be possible wherever ball and box were so it didn't matter if we tried in London next time.
Back in London, Robert rested while I contacted Dunbar's agency and dealt with his matters and Thomas visited the university. The professors there had conducted various experiments with the metal filings from the ball and their basic conclusion was that the material was a catalyst or accelerant that would greatly enhance any chemical or electrical reaction to the point that during one experiment involving acids, the lab was destroyed. Thankfully, nobody was injured. The pod (containing the honeylike substance) was some part of an organism similar to a whelk. The liquid inside had regenerative properties or simply accelerate biological processes in a similar way the ball filings accelereated chemical reactions.
There also had been a message from William at the club, directing me to a London address where I would find a Silas Torrance who would apparently be able to help with our questions. Thomas accompanied me there (a B&B as it turned out) and we met this Torrance character who turned out to be a steamer captain who used to ply his trade along the Athi and Tana Rivers in Kenya. He was a likeable fellow so we soon got talking. It turned out he had met mysterious Jim (Parsons' alleged former valet) on one of his trips and had seen the ear symbol as well. Sadly, this didn't bring us any further than the indication that the tribe who Jim had been talking about and might be the origin of the box/ball was located in that area rather than South Africa (where William had picked up the box).
Mr. Torrance (who insisted we call him Skipper) seemed to be quite taken with our tale and fate and offered to help us search for Prof. Carter. Good man. [OOC: John's replacement character]
After some considerable discussion as to where we should go (we didn't want to risk dragging the club's residents into the dream city like we had the inn's), a plan was hatched to use one of the huts in Hyde Park, surely abandoned at this time of night. We made our way over the fence, found a hut (looked like storage for one of the music pavillions) and Thomas managed to pick the lock. Inside we made a few makeshift beds, took the ball out of the box and went to sleep. When we woke up, we were in the dream world, Skipper screaming. I realised we forgot to tell him that the first time usually involved nightmares of sorts and pain as the ear symbol was burned into one's palm. Oh well, he didn't seem to be too bothered by it.
We opened the door and tried to find our bearings. The two moons were a bit closer to each other than the night before and possibly the odd light skewed our vision as it took us quite a while before we found the building we had entered from the inn. We looked around for a while and soon enough found Prof. Carter hiding behind some ruins, alive and well! As we had no reason to stay around for much longer and possibly fall prey to one of those screeching beasts, we made our way back to where we had come from, again with some difficulty - blast this odd light! - but eventually we found the "hut" again. We went back to sleep and ... woke up with birds singing in Hyde Park, everyone accounted for. As the park opened we gradually made our way out without raising suspicion. Phew.
To be continued...
As usual, please comment if there's anything I missed or got blatantly wrong. Cheers! It'll probably be about four weeks before we meet again as we want to find a Sunday afternoon so we can have a nice long session to move things along a bit and also to get
oml404 back into the game.
