Play@YSDC

He shrugs and sits back down. 'You do that boy, you see what he got to say.'

"I will," says Laurent. "Au revoir." He leads the younger Pierre back to the houngan.

It's pretty dark by the time Pierre and Laurent arrive at the hounfor. There's no street lighting in Dame Marie and what little illumination there is comes from the moon or the lanterns in people's windows. The hounfor is particularly dark. No lights visible. Banging on the door brings nobody. There's no sound from inside.

Laurent tries the door to see if it's locked.

Turning the handle, Laurent feels no resistance. Giving the door a little tug it begins to open. It wasn't locked.

Laurent takes a look inside.

The door swings open. The air inside the building is still. He walks slowly through the narrow corridor, the decorations lining the narrow space, strips of cloth and sack, shells and animal skulls, they all look a bit more sinister than before, leering at him in the darkness.

There's the slightest tang of smoke and incense but nothing recent. He looks into the room with the black tin cross riveted to the wall, where Lazaire had been. There's no Lazaire. No cot. Nothing.

Going through to the hounfor proper, with its earthen floor and brightly painted walls, that too is empty. He looks around, but there's no Lazaire, no Ramses. There's a few wooden stools and chairs, a couple of drums, candles, bowls, spoons, water jars and other things used for offerings.

Pierre has followed Laurent in. While Laurent is searching the room for anything, Pierre points at the blue-painted wooden column in the centre. 'What's that?'



Now his attention is drawn, Laurent can see that someone has drawn something on the pole. It's a small drawing, in some kind of paint. It seems to be a bearded man with the lower half of a fish, like a merman. The pain itself is very dark but the image has been made with some skill.

"Look at this," says Laurent. "I think Auxian must have painted it."

Does it look like something I saw in my vision?

The painting doesn't look like anything Laurent saw in his vision. Those things were...fish-like, even remembering those round, unblinking eyes makes him shudder involuntarily. But this, this is just a drawing of man's torso and a fish's tail. It's skilfully drawn, but doesn't really look like it represents anything real. It's more...representational, like a motif, like the veve of the loa. But the veve are much more abstract.

The only things that Laurent has ever seen represented like this are mermaids and mermen. Lasirenn is sometimes drawn as a mermaid, a sirèn, so conceivably this could be Agoué, although he's never seen him depicted this way.

OOC:   You can roll to see if you remember seeing it anywhere else. That'd be 1 human die and you could risk insight if you like.

Laurent doesn't think he's seen this anywhere before. He checks the rest of the place to see if there is any trace of Auxian or anyone else.

Roll (human die only) to recognize the painting:
1d6

There's something nagging him at the back of his mind about the painting but Laurent can't recall ever seeing it before. He and Pierre search the whole hounfor. There's no sign of Ramses or Lazaire. No evidence of a struggle or that anyone left in a hurry. But there's no clothes either. It's odd, the whole place seems like it hasn't been lived in for some time. No food. No clothes. No personal effects.

"Where could they have gone?" wonders Laurent aloud. "Wherever it is, I don't think there's anything more we can do about it tonight."

Pierre shrugs his shoulders. 'What did old Monsieur Labas say?'

He strums the air.

'Him and the Devil, was walking side by side
And now the Devil's got him and ain't gonna be satisfied'

"If the Devil's got him," says Laurent, "then it's up to us."

Pierre looks unconvinced. 'The Devil, or someone right here in Dame Marie?'

"Do you suspect someone in particular?" asks Laurent. "Could it be Ti-Jean Lazaire, or the spirit that was in him? He's gone too."

Pierre smiles and shrugs. 'No. I mean...no. It's just, I've not seen many loa, but I've seen plenty of men. Plenty of mean men. Sometimes it's just men being men. There's something strange going on in Dame Marie, but that doesn't mean it's Agoué or whoever. Strange men do strange things. He points at the odd drawing. What's this. Is it a message? Is it a message for us? A warning?'

"Could be," says Laurent, studying the drawing again. "It reminds me of Pierre Labas's stories of the sirèn. We should tell him what we found here."

Giving a weak laugh Pierre says, 'Old Pierre Labas, he says a lot of things. I think he makes most of them up. he's just a crazy old man Don't rely on what he has to say.'

OOC:   Done here? Want to go looking for Pierre Labas? Where would you look?

"I'll take what he says with a grain of salt," says Laurent, "but if he makes up most of what he says, that means there are some things he doesn't make up, and we just need to tell the difference. He's been around a long time, and he's seen a lot of things. That may be what made him crazy."

Yes, let's go look for him. We'll try the same place we saw him on our way here.