January 07 - Paris - Bois de Vincennes (Whole group)

[robertod]

Arriving to the island of the park, Andrew and Archie meet Felicity and Archie. Felicity and Archie are wet up to their knees and their teeth chatter. They are chilled by the frozen Parisian winter air. With them is a young man wearing a light dressing rope. He´s wet too. He´s face is pale and his breath is panting. He looks around as if he has just landed on a new planet. He seems completely confused and bewildered. He is Etienne, one of the patients of ward 7.

Felicity and Clarence found two documents in the Catacombs. One is a set of papers concerning the Comte Fenalik’s Villa.

OOC:   When the group has some time to study the papers, see the Paris handout thread

The other is a parchment. It has a handwritten text in the Latin alphabet, but part of the text have no meaning.

OOC:   When the group has some time to study the papers, see the Spell thread

[Mr. Handy]

"Let's get back to the hotel," says Felicity, her teeth chattering. "I need a hot bath, and quickly! We explored all there was to explore down there, and we found some interesting things, but we can discuss them later."

[Mephistophilis]

Looking at Archie's bloody and drained appearance, Andrew nods grimly. 'A freshen up and a cup of tea are in order.'

[SaintMeerkat]

doctor.png (27.27 KiB) Viewed 382 times

Archie laughs a little grimly. "The clothes are going straight into the trash." Then after a pause, "Or perhaps the jacket and shirt should be burned. All that blood could cause a lot of unwelcome attention and uncomfortable questions."

[Mr. Handy]

"It's nothing a little shopping spree and some money can't replace - and then some," says Felicity, "and Paris fashions are top of the line. That settles it, we have to go shopping tomorrow."

[aine]

“T T There I w w was, thinking you were lost in the d d depths of the earth!” Clarence chatters crossly, but he’s relieved to see his friends. “Are you well, Archie?” Archie looks rather ill.
“L l let’s hope they let us into the hotel looking like this.”
He turns to the young man,
“Etienne, would you like to come back with us? We can get you cleaned up and sorted out.”

[robertod]

Returning to the hotel, the investigators take a hot bath. With a herbal tea and a hot soup, they eventually find comfort and can move to discuss the next steps of their adventure. Etienne follows the detectives to the hotel but he is clearly uncomfortable and restless. Sometimes he seems to have difficulty breathing the open air. The outdoor environment scares him. He agrees to change his clothes. He finds some peace of mind as he move in the hotel room, from which, however, he seems to have a lot of difficulty getting out.

[Mr. Handy]

"We found the piece of paper with seeming gibberish in those creatures' room," says Felicity, who has changed into a flowing evening gown. "I think it's a code of some sort. Does anyone know anything about how to break codes?"

[aine]

Clarence sits with his feet in a bowl of steaming hot water, his head and neck wrapped in a scarf of flannel and brown paper. There is a disconsolate sniff.
“I’ve poured over hundreds of ancient manuscripts, give me half an hour with it.” is the muffled reply.

[robertod]

Studying the ancient scroll, Clarence discovers that the document appears to be a summoning spell. Reciting the text in a graveyard that is more than a hundred years old on full moon nights, creatures called ghouls would be summoned. Clarence knows that the ghoul, according to Muslims, is a supernatural entity or a spirit, whose origins predate the advent of Islam.
In pre-Islamic stories, the ghoul is an entity halfway between men and demons. They inhabit cemeteries and feed on corpses. The text of the scroll claims that ghouls instead mostly inhabit another world, a place called Valley of Path. and they sometimes migrate to inhabit the cemeteries of our world. The summoning litany is in an unknown language that is not like anything Clarence already knows. Based on the sounds the words would make if uttered and based on the noise the investigators heard in the catacombs, it appears to be the very language of these creatures.

[SaintMeerkat]

Archie comes out of the bathroom sighing happily. The shoes and pants had gone straight into the trash, but the blood soaked jacket and shirt got a little different treatment. After wrapping the bundle so that no blood showed, he crept down to the hotel incinerator, stopping to enjoy the warmth for a moment as he dropped it inside and made sure that it burned entirely before rejoining his friends.

As he joined the other two, he shook his head. "Maths was never my strong suit, but I guess it wouldn't hurt for all of us to take a look."

[Mr. Handy]

"Jacques escaped through a strange portal," says Felicity, taking out the apparently coded parchment. "It may have taken him to another world, but we don't know if there's any way back, so we didn't follow him. Wherever he is, I hope he's happy there."

[aine]

“Fascinating, fascinating.” Clarence pours over the parchment. “I do believe this is a spell for summoning creatures from another plane. Ones just like we heard in the catacombs! So that’s where they came from.”

[Mr. Handy]

"Perhaps we should refrain from doing so," says Felicity. "Such things are probably best avoided."

[robertod]

Previously said:   "I'm more interested in that coded message."

OOC:   There´s no coded message other than the words that must be uttered to perform the Contact Ghoul spell. The message in the unknown language I had mentioned is the spell procedure, which is written in ghoul language. This is explained by the latin writings in the same document

[Mr. Handy]

Edited.

[SaintMeerkat]

doctor.png (27.27 KiB) Viewed 315 times

Archie looks over the words of the spell and shudders a bit involuntarily as he does. "You know, I have to agree with Miss Heyward," Archie said as he poured himself a drink. He then proffered the bottle to the others.

"That spell should be an absolute last resort -- that is, if we even use it at all."

[Mephistophilis]

'And could we even communicate with these ghouls, even if we summoned them?' shudders Andrew.

[Mr. Handy]

"Well, the ones we met earlier spoke French," says Felicity.

[SaintMeerkat]

"Would anyone else care for a drink?" Archie filled the glass of anyone who asked.

Archie took a sip and gestured with his own glass. "I could help with the French. Given that my only exposure to French came from a textbook and in a school classroom, we would have to hope that there aren't any dated idiomatic phrases or any technical and/or occult terms that we couldn't figure out from context clues."