IC: The Penhew Foundation - Andrei, Caroline & Timour

[SuAside]

Timour curses under his breath as he wants to hurry into the corridor, but he thinks better of it. With a swift stride and with his weapon shouldered, he checks the rear of the corridor before he commits himself to sidestepping out into the hallway facing the direction he last saw Helen.

Spoiler:

It's more complicated,but I don't want to bother you guys with all kinds of tactical nonsense.

PS: If Andrei wants to cut in front by running in, he has the opportunity to do so.

[coffee demon]

Andrei grabs the flashlight and stands hesitantly at the top of the stairs. He flashes the light downwards.

This is what we came here to do. I can't waste time. The sooner I find something against Gavigan, the sooner we can leave.

The big Russian feels a twinge of guilt. There's more to it than the greater good. It's impossible to ignore his deep desire to find some mystical treatise or idol that might enlighten his research into these strange worlds they've started to discover.

He plunges down the stairwell, shouting back in English to alleviate his fear of what lies in the darkness below:

"I'M GOING DOWN! I'll BE FIVE MINUTES!"

OC,Classic Cthulhu! This is as good as it gets, my friends!

[Raiko]

In the Corridor

Timour sees that the back door is clear (and still closed) as he moves through the door to face Helen. At the same time Caroline re-enters the corridor from Gavigan's office.

They both see Helen and the cleaning lady grappling on the floor close to the body of the dead guard. The cleaner has taken the knife from where Timour kicked it and straddling Helen's prone body.

Helen meanwhile is using both her hands desperately to try to keep the cleaner's knife at bay.

"Help me!" she pleads as she sees Timour appear.

[Raiko]

Under the Storeroom

Meanwhile Andrei descends the steep staircase, his torch lighting the way.

At the bottom he finds the bricked off cellar area. Across the room from him is a cosy seating area, with six leather chairs arranged around a table; various items are piled on the table including an automatic handgun and an ornate looking chest. A glass-fronted bookcase stands nearby, stuffed with tomes and scrolls. At least a dozen crates are piled against the wall to Andrei's right (the one with the brick up windows), several of which have been opened, and all the walls are decorated with ancient mosaics, bas-reliefs and statues stolen from digs around the world, and all depicting dreadful monsters and demons.

An unlit electrical light hangs from the ceiling, and Andrei can hear the faint sound of an electric fan providing ventilation to the hidden room.

The shadows cast by the crates in the torchlight, combined with the monstrous things depicted in the artwork gives the room an eerie atmosphere.

[Decrepit]

Unless Timour acts first, Caroline reaches for the nearest heavy object she can find and attempts to club Helen's attacker into submission.

[SuAside]

Timour kneels, rests his support arm on his knee and stabilizes his body against the door frame. Slowly his finger starts depressing the trigger as soon as he sees that the front and the back of the target are clear. As the 2-stage trigger breaks sharply under the constant pull and is quickly released again, a single shot rings throughout the hallway.

For a split second, there is no noise in the world, except for the sharp ping of the shiny brass .30-06 casing hitting the stone tiles of the corridor and bouncing off.

Spoiler:

This better not be a critical fail.

[coffee demon]

Andrei tries to ignore the horrific shapes and rushes straight for the the table. He picks up the chest to check its weight,

OC,How big is it?

then quickly puts it back down. He can feel the eyes of the creatures on the walls watching him, and has a horrible feeling that something is going to grab him from behind. He spins around quickly and shines his flashlight behind him. The hairs are standing up on the back of his neck.

He swallows, turns back around and tries to open the chest. If it's locked, he rushes to the bookcase and tries to open the glass front. If the glass front is locked, he'll smash the glass with the butt of his pistol (which is in his pocket) and stuff his satchel full of random scrolls and tomes.

His actions feel sacrilegious. He feels sick, afraid and powerless.

[Raiko]

Timour kneels, rests his support arm on his knee and stabilizes his body against the door frame. Slowly his finger starts depressing the trigger as soon as he sees that the front and the back of the target are clear. As the 2-stage trigger breaks sharply under the constant pull and is quickly released again, a single shot rings throughout the hallway.

For a split second, there is no noise in the world, except for the sharp ping of the shiny brass .30-06 casing hitting the stone tiles of the corridor and bouncing off.

Timour's shot hits the woman as she half turns towards him; from the momentary look of shock on her face in the instant before he pulled the trigger it is clear that whatever she was expecting to see it wasn't the muzzle of his automatic rifle.

The bullet strikes her in the left-side of her chest just in front of her left arm, exits behind her right arm and destroys her heart on the way through, leaving a gory mess on the opposite wall. As the spent casing rolls across the floor, the cleaner's body twitches once and then falls onto Helen. The moment of silence is broken as Helen shrieks and attempts to pull herself out from under the corpse.

Andrei tries to ignore the horrific shapes and rushes straight for the the table. He picks up the chest to check its weight,

OC,How big is it?

then quickly puts it back down. He can feel the eyes of the creatures on the walls watching him, and has a horrible feeling that something is going to grab him from behind. He spins around quickly and shines his flashlight behind him. The hairs are standing up on the back of his neck.

As Andrei reaches the table and spins around, he senses a presence lurking silently in the far corner of the room, but before his flash-light beam penetrates the darkness of that corner, the hairs on his arms stand up on end as the air hums faintly with static.

Andrei's torch flickers once, crackles and dies. Yet although his world is plunged into darkness, in his minds eye Andrei can visualise the far corner of the room, to the left of the entrance stairway, it is the shadowy corner of Miles Shipley's eerie masterpiece, the corner towards which he Andrei Zatisov was depicted running, the corner where the formless monster lurked waiting.

OOC,SAN Roll please, Loss is 1/1d6, Andrei cannot suffer temporary insanity at the moment.

As Andrei's eyes quickly adjust to the flash-light failing, he can see the staircase dimly illuminated from above, and in the corner of the room, a blackness darker than the other shadows unfolds itself, impossibly illuminated from within by the sparkling of a million distant stars. Slowly, inexorably it extends it's smoke like tentacles across the room towards him - between him and the exit! Andrei smells the peculiar aroma of burnt hair, and knows that the Chimera has been waiting for him, down here in the darkness, a vicious trap left for him by Edward Gavigan.

[coffee demon]

Andrei stumbles backwards, hits the back of his knees on the low table, and falls seated onto the table. He rights himself quickly and gets behind the table, holding his satchel between himself and the Chimera, as though it contains words of power than might hold it back. He is suddenly drenched in sweat.

Thinking quickly, he tears open the top of his shirt to reveal the ink marks (mostly washed off by now) that he drew on himself the night before.

He's standing behind one of the leather chairs now, with the satchel upheld and his chest bared to the creature. He only barely has the presence of mind to croak out, dryly,

"help, HELP! Light!"

OC,Lost 3 SAN. I changed my character sheet accordingly. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3375081/ http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3375082/

[SuAside]

Timour sees his bullet hit home, well recognizing that no man, zealot or not, would survive such a hit. The two outcries for help melt together.
For but a split second he contemplates going to help Helen, and leaving Andrei to his fate. Real or imagined.

The thought shames him, as he stands up and quickly takes his flashlight in hand.

"Caroline, help Helen!" Timour shouts, as he carefully decends the staircase with his rifle leveled and his flashlight along the barrel.

[Decrepit]

Caroline scampers to help Helen, first checking the assailant's body for signs of life even though it would seem obvious there were none, and then (if all goes as she suspects it will), tries to aid the living woman up from where she lay and examine her for injuries.

[Raiko]

OOC,[quote="coffee demon"]Thinking quickly, he tears open the top of his shirt to reveal the ink marks (mostly washed off by now) that he drew on himself the night before. [/quote] Make a Cthulhu Mythos roll.

[Raiko]

Caroline scampers to help Helen, first checking the assailant's body for signs of life even though it would seem obvious there were none, and then (if all goes as she suspects it will), tries to aid the living woman up from where she lay and examine her for injuries.

Caroline finds that the 'cleaning lady' is quite dead.

Helen is cover in blood, but almost all of it appears to be from her attacker. Her worst injury is a fairly deep cut in the palm of her left hand, the injury should be something that Caroline can patch up easily enough.

She is also in shock, past crying now she asks Caroline, "What is happening tonight? These people have worked here for longer than me! I thought they were my friends."

"She tried to kill me! She called me a bitch, and said this would be a quicker death than I deserved! Who are these people? What have they done to Paul?"

[coffee demon]

OC,Not quite: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3376955/

[Raiko]

While Caroline is helping Helen, Timour cautiously descends the secret staircase. His flash-light is illuminating the steps ahead of him, but it doesn't look like the there are any other lights on in the cellar. For a second he thinks that maybe Andrei has just dropped his torch, then he smells the familiar scent of burning hair the tell-tale of the dreadful fog creature that attacked them the night before!

OOC,I'll wait overnight for Coffee Demon to make his roll - There haven't been many opportunities to make real use of Cthulhu Mythos skill, so I'd rather he made his own roll. :) If he's not had chance to roll before I get to work tomorrow, then I'll make the roll for him so that I can describe the situation that Timour finds. I've linked above to both the newspaper handout about the fog creature (later named the Chimera by Andrei), and to the moment it's attack started the night before. [url=http://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=51628#p51628]Here[/url] is the point a few pages later where Maksim and Timour used flashlights to drive off or slay the creature, by which time Nethaniel was dead (Caroline resuscitated him). [b][color=#FF0000]EDIT: Coffee's posted while I was reading the old posts... I shall write the next post now.[/color][/b]

[Raiko]

The insane markings that Andrei has marked upon his body have no effect on the terrifying entity. He feels the cruel caress of the abomination's insubstantial tentacles wrapping around his neck, his right arm and his waist and then the crushing force as they tighten around him. He is lifted off his feet and is overwhelmed by the stench of burnt hair other tentacles join the attack probing through his lips and his nostrils.

Then for a second, just as he feels himself slipping out of consciousness the Thing is illuminated by the powerful beam of Timour's flashlight. Caught in the beam it is suddenly both visible and tangible, a shimmering, sparking grey octopus formed from liquid star light.

It drops Andrei at once. He lands on the hard floor with a thud, gasping desperately for breath, as the beast pours itself impossibly up onto the ceiling and then seeps into the air-vent and disappears.

OOC,Andrei is only battered and breathless from the attack, and from being dropped, but must make another SAN check or loose 1d8 SAN due to the attack (or possibly the realisation that his magic defences failed). Timour gets a good look at the Thing for that split second that it's caught in his torchlight. He must make a SAN roll as well. Loss is only 1 if successful, but 1d10 if he fails. The air vent is pumping clean air into the the sealed secret room. It likely leads out of the building. You have however "defeated" the beast. So you both regain 1d10 SAN as well. :)

[SuAside]

Timour gags at the sight of the beast, the visual distortion being too much for him to pile on top of the foul stench.

He tries to keep his cool, and his mind on the job at hand. He quickly sweeps the room with his rifle and flashlight, making sure nothing else is in the room with Andrei.

Spoiler:

1d10=4: SAN - 1 + 4 = +3

[coffee demon]

Andrei lies gasping on the floor, shirt wide open, soaked in sweat. He stares bug-eyed at Timour and the vent in the ceiling.

OC,Lost 7 SAN, regained 4 for a net loss of 3, and total loss of 10 in the last few minutes. Do I go temporarily insane? http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3377790/

[Raiko]

Timour sweeps the room with his torch, but doesn't locate any other threats. The artwork around the secret room is creepy, but nothing like as bad as the paintings that Timour viewed at Miles Shipley's house. He also notices for the first time that Andrei has drawn weird arcane looking symbols all over his body under his shirt, these have partially washed or rubbed off, but they are still clearly visible now that he's ripped his shirt open.

OOC,Yes Andrei suffers short term temporary insanity. If I remembered correctly he's already indefinitely insane, but this was connected to his faith in the "magic symbols" that he was using to protect himself. You may choose (or roll if you prefer) a short term effect, that lasts for 10 minutes. After that you can also decide what long term effect this had on Andrei's indefinite insanity - if the Cthulhu Mythos roll had been successful then the symbols wouldn't have been as crazy as we thought! :) As you posted the symbols are partially washed off now, so you can keep his insanity the same if you like.

[Decrepit]

Temporarily leaving Helen, Caroline calls down the staircase to Timour and Andrei: "Is everything all right down there? is anyone hurt?" She's almost afraid of the answer.