Play@YSDC

The Baggage Car has a cheap grey-on-brown patterned carpet across the floor. This section of the car is quite broad and open, but for the crates and sacks of food for the Kitchen Car that sit in one stall in the corner (open one side, walled on the other with bar topped wooden panels) with passenger luggage in another stall and a large dog cage (empty) in the third stall. A narrow passageway extends down the length of the Baggage Car with the middle section containing an opening which reveals four bunks with space for staff luggage. Further down the aisle sits the Train Manager's office and a room where staff can sleep. Beyond that would lie the actual storage space for baggage.

Return to the Dining Car.

Jonathan runs into the baggage car, closing the door behind him. His heart is pounding, and he finds his hands are shaking again. I must find a way out, out of this train and out of this madness. He nods, convincing himself that this is the best course of action. There should be another exit further on.

Jonathan looks around the car warily, trying to spot anything dangerous before it has a chance to stab him... or worse.

He only has a limited amount of time to prepare himself, search this place, or hide. He just knows the conductor will eventually follow him down here.... How long it'll take is unknown. The Baggage Car itself feels empty, though. Quiet. The threats are all outside of the car.

Jonathan stops in front of the Train Manager's office. He knows by now there won't be any help in there... but there might be some information. Or something useful. Like a weapon. He breathes in and tries to open the door.

The office door is locked, but as he draws nearer to it he can see that someone battered it down awhile ago. The door itself is mostly intact, but the wood around the jamb is splintered from the force. The office itself is quite cramped and very dark, just as with the rest of the baggage car, but there's enough stray light from the entry way's sole remaining light bulb (from where you entered) that you can make out most of the details. There is a chair pushed up against a desk that backs up against one wall which has three locked drawers. A bunk sits behind it with more cupboards underneath -- which is currently folded into its sofa position. A mirror hangs on the wall, cracked, and there's blood spatter all around it and running down the walls from the base of the mirror. No blood on the mirror, though. None at all.

Jonathan walks towards the mirror and checks the blood to see if it's dried or fresh.

The blood is certainly wet, though it has congealed and is no longer dripping wetly down the wall.

Evidence Collection 1-pt spend,There are strands of short dark hair caught within the shards of glass, that contain the root of the hair as though ripped out by someone smashing their forehead into the glass. Yet there is no blood anywhere on the mirror.... The blood spatter around the mirror, however, is consistent with blood flung from someone's face being smashed into the wall right where the mirror is so it should certainly be bloody. Has someone cleaned the mirror? Or did the mirror simply avoid getting bloody in some other fashion? Or is the mirror hiding the place where the real damage lay?

Forensics,Coagulation typically occurs in 15 minutes. A droplet of blood in this cool environment would take around an hour before it would completely dry. None of the spatters here are completely dry so this incident must have occurred between 15 minutes and an hour.

First of all, Jonathan will wrap a shard of glass in a handkerchief, or should that not be available, a piece of cloth torn from its dress, until it could be handled as a knife. Then, he will remove the mirror from the wall to check behind it (both the back of the mirror itself, and the wall).

OOC:   I made the Evidence Collection spend and updated my sheet.

Jonathon finds no reasonably sized pieces of glass loose on the ground. It seems that the cobweb of cracks hasn't shattered any of the actual larger shards free from their housing. If he attempts to prise out a piece of glass but finds that the glass is stuck in place and finds that though he can pull the mirror free from its housing, checking behind it to see a plain and unmarred wall, it feels drawn back to the wall with quite a distinctive pull. The creepiest part of the situation is how the congealed blood looks a little more wet than he had first thought. How strange! Resisting the magnetic pull of the mirror back to its place of rest, he runs his free hand over the back of it to check for odd lumps. It seems intact and there doesn't appear to be any way to remove it. There is, however, something scratched into the back of the housing that can only be vaguely made out in the gloom:

Ticks from 12 to 11 and 9 to 8 and 6 to 5 but why

It looks like its been scratched quite desperately into the back of it, perhaps by the nip of a pen.

The blood spatter on the wall is glistening quite a bit now.

Jonathan watches the blood with disgust and a bit of morbid fascination. Then he shakes his head and goes back to searching the room, starting from the desk, then moving on to the rest. In particular, he'll look for keys to open what's locked.

The first drawer is locked. The second drawer of the desk contains stationary, a notepad, a work diary, and three copies of different timetables all set for the same day. There's something scratched into the bottom of the drawer that he can't make out in the gloom. The third drawer of the desk contains more stationary and a passenger manifest for the train as well as a letter that seems to be regarding the private car. He can't read anything in the gloom of this office.

The cupboards beneath the bunk contain clothing, namely uniforms with one set of normal clothing. There's also a grooming kit and a shoe shine kit down there as well as a shoe box containing an exorbitant amount of money -- 80 pounds!

Jonathan will pick up the letter to read it outside. After that, he'll turn to leave... but he won't resist checking on the blood one last time.

The letter says:
The letter ends there without any blood drops or scrawl to suggest it ended in an attack.

The blood drops are very glossy now. They appear to be running up in rivulets back to the mirror. As he watches, the last few drops roll up into position and the mirror pops into place, the cracks disappearing with a snap. He hears the door to the train car open....

STABILITY LOSS 1 Point if you fail.

Jonathan takes a step back, started, then turns towards the door, ready to defend himself.

He can hear footsteps entering from the direction of the Dining Car, dragging a dead weight along with them. From this angle, Jonathon can't see anyone nor can he be seen until whomever it is walks down the corridor past the office.

Jonathan will move around as silently as possible, trying to hide somewhere he can't be seen from the corridor.

His best bet would be to slip into the actual baggage section of the train car. He will need to be quite stealthy to do so....

Jonathan will try to sneak out of the office and reach somewhere safer.

Stealth roll,Really don't want to mess this up, I spent three points and updated the sheet. Result: 8 http://orokos.com/roll/490881

The door to the baggage section of that has a lock on it but it looks like someone has broken down the door awhile ago. Now the door only barely sits in place, making it quite easy to push it open and close it behind you. Thankfully, since turning the knob would add that extra bit of noise. The baggage car itself is mounded high with crates and boxes and hessian sacks of flour and other produce. There's even a whole bunch of mail in a few satchels marked with various train stations to allow a speedy drop off. Some of the crates in here are quite large but without a light source you can't make out any labels. The blinds are all mostly shut but a ghostly light suffuses the area from the mist-shrouded outside world and provides enough light to see the various silhouettes.

You hear the crack of flesh against glass in the other room you have just vacated. It seems he went there first.... Whoever "he" might be.

There is a big roller door along one side for the movement of cargo and a locked door at the end of the baggage car that would lead toward the locomotive.

Jonathan will quietly head to the roller door and see if it can be opened.

OOC:   If the roller door opens quietly, I'll try to sneak outside. If it makes noise, I'll run back to hide among the luggage, as there should still be a monster outside. With some luck, it could take care of the conductor. One can hope, right? If it doesn't open, I'll think of something else.

He puts his shoulder in it and manages to push it open an inch (a rattlingly noisy but not incredibly loud inch) before it's stopped by a chain. It seems that the roller door is secured with a padlock that can potentially be picked from the inside.

"Shit", Jonathan curses with a whisper. He doesn't know how to open the lock, and he's trapped. He can feel the fear rising like a tide inside him, and springs him to action. Jonathan starts running back towards the Dining Car, uncaring of the noise.

He glimpses the train conductor in his office, holding something wet and glistening red, smacking it against the mirror with a horrible wet sound. But he only glimpses it, only from the corner of his eye, and the horror of what it could be hardly enters his mind in the moment as he races for the door and opens it without trouble, entering into the connection between train cars. The lock on this door has been busted, who knows how long ago, and it hangs slightly ajar, allowing in tendrils of fog from the outside world. When he stops, seeing this, he nearly slips on something wet but perhaps he doesn't look down in the darkness. Perhaps he doesn't care to know what that could be.

Enter through running through the kitchen into the Dining Car.

Leave the train car and end up on the dirt near the platform.

OOC,If you choose the dining car you can just post in THAT threat running through the kitchen segment and I'll describe what you see. If you wish to peek outside or enter the platform, let me know by posting in THIS thread and I'll put up a new post regarding the area you're stepping out into as the fog narrows vision to a smaller range.

Jonathan stops for a second. He could leave the train. One step, and he'd be out of that madness. But there's a monster still out there. He could take the chance, maybe make it out into the wild alive. Ahead, the dining room, and perhaps more armed enemies.

Jonathan makes his choice, and he silently leaves the train for the platform.

Stealth Roll,In case it's needed, I rolled a 3. http://orokos.com/roll/499883

The connection between the Baggage Car and the Dining Car (with its kitchen sub-compartment) has unpainted flooring and yellow curtain walls which now have a gash in them leading back outside. Tendrils of fog curl creepily around its edges but seems to only hang low across the floor.

Artemis wriggled into the opening that was cut, having offered to go first when the opening was made. He pulled himself into the opening and took a place where he could offer a hand to the other two to help them through the cut in the boot.

"Once you get inside," says Kate when she sees Artemis squeezing inside, discarding the broken saw and drawing her scalpel, "find the bolt cutters and break the chain to let us in. If you run into trouble, scream and we'll follow you in."

Artemis looked about, pulled out his torch and scanned the floor of the boot for the bolt cutters that Ms. Kate mentioned.

There are no bolt cutters on the floor of this small covered connection between train cars. The door to the baggage car sits to your right, which is unlocked. The door to the left leads into the kitchen area of the dining car ... you can hear movement coming from inside.

Artemis looked about in growing frustration. There were no bolt cutters anywhere. Damn it, damn it, damn it, he thought aloud and then he heard the movement in the other car. He looked back at the hole and the to where he heard the movement. He leaned back to the cut hole and said, "No cutters here, but something is moving on the other side of the door. It could be one of our colleagues stuck in there."

Kate squeezes inside. "Did you check the baggage car?" she whispers. "That's where Mr. Hagan said he left them."

"Oh, alright, let me check," Artemis turned and entered the baggage car. He cast his torch about the floor.

The Baggage Car has a cheap grey-on-brown patterned carpet across the floor. This section of the car is quite broad and open, but for the crates and sacks of food for the Kitchen Car that sit in one stall in the corner (open one side, walled on the other with bar topped wooden panels) with passenger luggage in another stall and a large dog cage (empty) in the third stall. A narrow passageway extends down the length of the Baggage Car with the middle section containing an opening which reveals four bunks with space for staff luggage. Further down the aisle sits the Train Manager's office and a room where staff can sleep. Beyond that would lie the actual storage space for baggage.

The office door is locked, but as you draw nearer to it you can see that someone battered it down awhile ago. The door itself is mostly intact, but the wood around the jamb is splintered from the force. The office itself is quite cramped and very dark, just as with the rest of the baggage car, but there's enough stray light from the entry way's sole remaining light bulb (from where you entered) that you can make out most of the details. There is a chair pushed up against a desk that backs up against one wall which has three locked drawers. A bunk sits behind it with more cupboards underneath -- which is currently folded into its sofa position. A mirror hangs on the wall.

There is a big roller door along one side for the movement of cargo and a locked door at the end of the baggage car that would lead toward the locomotive.

Kate reaches through the slashed canvas and beckons for Jonathan to come join them.

"Oh dammit, too late to turn away now", Jonathan mutters to himself as he follows the others inside.

Artemis moved down the corridor to the office and it's bashed open doorway. He heard movement behind him, glanced back and saw Miss Kate working her way off the floor and standing. Then she knelt down and was speaking through the opening. He presumed she was talking to Jonathan, and so he stepped into the office. He swept the beam of light from his flashlight across the desk top looking for anything that might explain the train's origins. He glanced up and over at the mirror, then back at the desk.

Train car example. The office is that little box. You have entered from the left. Ignore the dots, that's just to remove the weird spacing issue that occurs without them.
___________________________________________
|........................................................ |
| . . . . |------| ....................................... |
|______|____|_____________________________|

There's a translucent and shimmering document that sits upon the desk, seemingly out-of-phase with reality, winking out of existence the moment the light passes it by. For a moment you think it's an optical illusion, but when you return the light across it the document shimmers back into partial existence. Something labelled A2186 EYES ONLY.

"Do we have time for this?" whispers Kate. "Miss Aston and the others need our help." She quietly cracks open the door to the kitchen car and peeks inside, her scalpel in her free hand.

Artemis saw the glimmer and the words that seemed to shine in the darkness. He heard Miss Kate's admonition about wasting time, but Artemis ignored it and turned back to document. He shone the torch's light back on it and stepped to where he could actually read it. He focused the light onto the document and read it.

His head buzzes and tingles. It seems there's more to this than just focusing the light upon it. There's a sort of ... way ... of looking at it that would help. A sort of mental squint. But it hurts your head to try and see it in the way it is intended to be seen. A way that buzzes through your brain like the snap and snarl of a split second migraine.

If you spend 1 Sanity to focus on the document,the problem is that you're trying to read something that doesn't quite sit in the same three dimensional space that you do. If you wish to read it, to understand it, you need to comprehend the geometries at work here. You see, in four dimensional space, once you include time, the document is here at one point. It was also open at another point. Focusing along those lines you manage to focus your attention to where the folder was flipped open. Now that you know how to do it, you can come back to this folder at any time to review it at no further cost. Unfortunately you have no way to move the folder. There's details of a train's itinerary here, going from London to the final destination along the track, and something about ensuring things move precisely along to schedule. Reading more will require more time...

Kate peeks through the open door and can make out the bulk of someone in the train conductor's uniform standing and facing the wall, swaying slightly. He jerks as though his strings have been pulled and turns your way, though he doesn't seem to be seeing you. His face is entirely slack, jaw hanging open, cold dead eyes staring sightlessly in your direction. (Roll Stability to avoid 1 Stability loss).

Keeping her panic in check, Kate silently tries to close the door before he notices her.

OOC,Stability roll (no points spent) for seeing the conductor: [dice]0[/dice]

As his mind began to scream at him, Arty blinked and turned away. Something wasn't right about this, he thought tohimself and the pain faded as he closed his eyes. His neck and jaw muscle spasmed and he walked back to where Miss Kate had been. "Miss Kate, Miss Kate," he whispered as he walked back the flashlight's beam swinging across the floor.

There's a tense moment as Miss Kate waits to see if the door creaks open but ... nothing.

"It's the conductor," whispers Kate, trembling in abject fear.

Jonathan finally crawls inside the baggage car, only to find his friends in a terrible state. He scans the area for any sign of immediate danger, then says: "Perhaps... perhaps it was a mistake coming back here".

"We have to save the others, if we're not too late," whispers Kate. "I didn't see anyone in there with him, but we know he attacked Miss Aston. We'll all have to be here and ready before we open that door again."

Artemis moved through the baggage compartment and the buzzing in his head seemed to fade as he moved. He opened the door and saw Jonathan and Miss Kate in the boot. Miss Kate looked worried and was whispering to Jonathan. Artemis missed what she said, but made a point of cautiously closing the door behind him to the luggage car. "Something odd on the desk back there, couldn't bring myself to focus on it. Hurt my eyes, behind my eyes actually."

He turned off the flashlight and rubbed his right cheek with his knuckles while still holding onto the torch.

"I got the same feeling from the people eating in the dining car," whispers Kate. "Best not to even look at them. The conductor's right on the other side of this door, but I don't think he saw me. I think we're going to have to confront him if we're going to find the others. If there's no sign of Miss Aston back there, she must be through the door."

"Alright then, we confront him. But what do we have? My cane, your wit, and Jonathan what do you have to add to this?" Artemis asked.

"I have my scalpel too," whispers Kate.

"I struggled with him, earlier, when he first attacked Miss Aston", Jonathan shivers for a second, "He is strong... but I could pin him to the ground for a few seconds... it could be enough... enough to land a killing blow", he looks down at the end of the sentence, feeling a little dizzy.

Kate gulps. "It's hard for me to imagine killing someone," she whispers, "but after what he did to Miss Aston, I think I can do what's necessary. We are at war, after all."

'Miss Kate, if we had cuffs or irons, we could slap those on him, but I am starting to feel that taking a prisoner isn't really an option in all of this," Arty said with a coldness that carried too much experience within it. "Who knows, maybe he'll just cooperate and help us find everyone."

Arty's chuckle and nod of the head made it clear he was being sarcastic.

Kate grips the door handle with her free hand while holding her scalpel behind her back with the other. Her syringes are where she can grab one quickly "I've also got some morphine," she whispers. "If I can inject him while you pin him, that should bring him down. Ready?"

Jonathan exhales deeply: "As ready as I'm going to be", he answers.

Arty took a firm grip on his walking stick to where he could use it to swing at a person. He nodded at Miss Kate indicating he was ready for her to open the door and for him to go through first. He looked back at Jonathan and gave him a reassuring nod as well. "Let's do this."

Kate quietly opens the door and steps aside.

The little larder space between the connection compartment where you all stand and the kitchen itself is cramped with sacks and jars and shelving, but there is no sign of the conductor. Perhaps he moved further down into the kitchen? The kitchen itself sounds rather quieter than before, though they can hear the steady and strangely rhythmic smacking of something hard against the side of a pot.

"Let's sneak inside," whispers Kate. "We must find the others before it's too late."

Jonathan nods and leads the way towards the kitchen.

Arty followed along after Jonathan passing by Miss Kate with a nod and a face determined. When he heard the consistant banging, he looked about the kitchen trying to find the source of the sound and moved that direction to investigate.

You move cautiously into the kitchen segment of the Dining Car.

The Baggage Car has a cheap grey-on-brown patterned carpet across the floor. This section of the car is quite broad and open, but for the crates and sacks of food for the Kitchen Car that sit in one stall in the corner (open one side, walled on the other with bar topped wooden panels) with passenger luggage in another stall and a large dog cage (empty) in the third stall. A narrow passageway extends down the length of the Baggage Car with the middle section containing an opening which reveals four bunks with space for staff luggage. Further down the aisle sits the Train Manager's office and a room where staff can sleep. Beyond that would lie the actual storage space for baggage.

The office door is locked, but as you draw nearer to it you can see that someone battered it down awhile ago. The door itself is mostly intact, but the wood around the jamb is splintered from the force. The office itself is quite cramped and very dark, just as with the rest of the baggage car, but there's enough stray light from the entry way's sole remaining light bulb (from where you entered) that you can make out most of the details. There is a chair pushed up against a desk that backs up against one wall which has three locked drawers. A bunk sits behind it with more cupboards underneath -- which is currently folded into its sofa position. A mirror hangs on the wall.

There is a big roller door along one side for the movement of cargo and a locked door at the end of the baggage car that would lead toward the locomotive.

Train car example. The office is that little box. You have entered from the left. Ignore the dots, that's just to remove the weird spacing issue that occurs without them.
___________________________________________
|........................................................ |
| . . . . |------| ....................................... |
|______|____|_____________________________|

"We're going to be all right," Kate says to Artemis in a soothing tone, but she cannot even convince herself, so there's little chance of convincing him.

OOC,Psychoanalysis roll to treat [b]Artemis[/b]: [dice]0[/dice]

"we just need to get off this train, out of the station and back to the village," Artemis said and tried to give a slight smile. He headed down the car towards the office. "We might find something in this place."

"Okay," says Kate, following him.

"No, not inside... blood... there's blood... and I've had enough... seen enough blood. I'll sit here... and write", he then sits down, back against the wall, and starts writing in his notebook.

"So,should we look about or just figure out a way to get out of here and back to the station's main room? At least there, if something is going to attack us, we can try to make a stand." Artemis asked Miss Kate as he watched Jonathan begin to write in his notebook.

"We need to find out what's going on," says Kate, "and the answers may be in the that office."

Artemis stepped into the office and began to try the various drawers and cabinets. "So what would we be looking for in here?"

Kate shrugs, following him inside and helping him search. "I dunno," she says, "Papers or documents, maybe. Something that would explain all this."

"Got it, something that might help," Arty looked shined the beam of his torch about the place and focused on the cupboards underneath the bunk. He bent down and tried opening one of the doors with one hand and while he used the torch to illuminate what was inside.

The cupboards under the bunk have a few old pairs of socks that look like they're starting to decay from old age, rather than wear and tear. There is a letter, however, folded up. It's very fragile to the touch and has to be very carefully unfolded.

Letter,If you were looking for clothes to stay warm or to clean oneself after a rather bloody mess then I do apologise but I rather needed them myself. If you are the conductor, then I have nothing more to say to you. I do believe I made myself quite clear with that chef's knife through your gullet that I have tired of being hunted through the train and I am equally upset by your callous mistreatment of my previously alive companions. There does seem to be rather a low chance of survival, I'm afraid, judging by all these little notices I've found about the place from other people. As far as I can tell, it can be traced back to 1938. Not entirely sure why the date is relevant, but it could be, and so I deliver it unto you as a gift. Oh, another gift! The warmer rooms, those that are already warm, there's no fixing the cold yourself, they seem to be rather safe from those entities but I have the dreadful suspicion that there is a time limit and so delaying too long will

There's also a train schedule, but it just has this one train station written on it. Oddly enough, the arrivals seem to be timed to the very second. Strange.

"Curious," says Kate, handling the letter with care. "I wonder what it was that happened in 1938 that started this all. The letter says there's a time limit. I wonder if this timetable may be connected. Let's see what time the next train is due." She examines the schedule and checks her watch to see when the next train arrives and how long they have until then.

Wait, that can't be right? It looks like only 7 minutes have passed since the last train came through but there's been no sign of it. Wait, no, it's the same train listed over and over. The next train is due to arrive in three minutes and 13 seconds, presuming your watch is fully synchronized with this schedule which would be ... disconcerting to say the least. The listing before that is twenty six minutes ago ... roughly when this whole mess started. That looks to be the first listing on the schedule. The last listing is in three hours, thirty nine minutes and 18 seconds.

"Okay, this is strange," says Kate, showing Artemis and Jonathan the timetable. "I guess we have a little over three and a half hours to ...do something. And there's a few minutes before the train arrives again. I wonder what happens if we're still aboard at that time."

"Miss Kate," Arty said as he looked over her shoulder at the schedule. "Have you ever seen such a precise train schedule? Ever?"

He looked about the office. "I just can't see us being on this damnable train, pardon, when it's supposed to depart. I don't know what is meant by the warm places. The Station maybe?"

"No, I've never seen the like," says Kate. "Nobody can time a train down to the second. They're usually late, sometimes by hours. With the war on, trains are always being delayed to let troop trains pass. Yes, let's get back to the station. I don't think we want to be here when the train pulls in again. I hope we'll be safe there until the Home Guard shows up. I did manage to get through to them earlier."

"Agree, we need to get out of this damn train," Arty found himself looking more and more at the schedule. He also read the letter again. Miss Kate, what type of things happened around here in 1938? I mean the world started to unravel, Chamberlain, Hitler and such. But here, in this area,
anything?"

"We'll talk on the way out," says Kate, leading the way back to the opening they had created. "Let me think...I was living here back then, still in school..."

OOC,Will History help, or is it too recent? What about Oral History?

"1938 was when it looked like there was no way to avoid war," says Kate as they hurry out of the train. "I still remember the Munich crisis. As it happened, the war was only postponed, but that was when serious preparations began. The ARP started in '38, and there was also some work done on the station at the time that may also have been related to the impending war. They shut down the station for a few months and put up these huge fences. There were children who peeked through and saw that the building wasn't really changed, except that there were these horseshoe-looking things on the doors and windows. The nails in the tracks were all new, but the tracks themselves had been pulled up and replaced with older sleepers. They looked different and seemed to come from various places. Maybe there were tunnels or basements built under the station, but nobody ever found any, so people kind of forgot about it."

"So, someone rebuilt the station, redid the doors and possibly built something underneath. Redid the tracks. Huh, now that is interesting," Arty rubbed his chin and and looked back over his shoulder. "S"Could there be a way of disrupting all of this, some way of undoing what might have been done during that construction?

"We'll just have to search the station and find out," says Kate, "and we haven't much time."

Arty shook his head in agreement and started to make his way towards the boot that they had cut their way into. "Let's see if we can figure out if there was something we missed on the first floor of the station."

"I'm sure we did," says Kate. "We hardly looked around at all down there, and there were whole rooms we never saw. Of course, that maniac may still be around too, so we'll have to be careful and stick together."

"Agreed, we stick together, we see if there is something left under the building that might be able to send this train back to where it came from." Arty walked and stopped at where they cut their way into the boot between the cars. "I can go first, and then you folks can follow? We keep Miss Kate between us guys, right?"

"Cheers, gents," says Kate, following Artemis.