Play@YSDC

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

"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."

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

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."

"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."

“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.”

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.

"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?"

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.

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.

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."

"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."

“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.”

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

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

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."

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

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

"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."

Clarence points to the spell,
“But don’t you see? This proves the existence of other planes! It’s incredible. Do you think our time on the train was such a place? Or even the same one the ghouls came from?”
He starts.
“Felicity, the glowing wall! That might be a gateway to another plane.”

"I'm quite sure you're right," says Felicity. "I do think the train was some sort of other dimension or something, just like the Professor told us in his lecture, as well as the glowing wall through which Jacque left. But we'd best be careful who we tell this, or we might end up in Ward 7 ourselves."

Clarence looks somewhat miffed and subsides with mutters of ‘scientific breakthroughs’ and ‘answers to historical mysteries’ as he pours over every detail of the spell.

'Speaking French?' huffs Andrew. 'I should have known,' he says, as if that piece of information just confirms everything he's always suspected about the French people.

'But the last time we saw these ghouls we quite sensibly hid. Even if we could contact them, do we really want to? Can they help us in our task, to find the pieces of the Sedefkar Simulacrum?'

He pointedly avoids talk of other dimensions. Rather too metaphysical for his tastes.

"We do need a lead on those statue pieces," says Felicity, "but I think talking to those creatures should be a last resort. We were right to avoid them. What else do we know about where to find the piece that's here?"

"I realize that it is difficult to talk about this...this..." Archie struggles to find the right words as he makes a plea to Clarence. It's almost like the scientist portion of his brain is rebelling, refusing to utter the words 'spell' or 'ghouls' or 'magic' "...weird bollocks..." he finally manages. "But we may have no other choice than to be successful on our quest. I am becoming increasingly sure of that."

"Let's see if we can find another way first," says Felicity. "If we can't, then we can talk to those...chaps. At least we'd be doing it on our terms."

Clarence looks up,
“We could always follow Jaques through the luminous wall to the other dimension. I say, I’ve had a thought, do you think it was the ghouls that attacked the nurse at the asylum?”

"It's possible," says Felicity. "Or it could have been the man we went there to find. Where has he gone, and what is he doing? I'm reluctant to follow Jacque until we can be sure the trip isn't one way. We might want to research the phenomenon and see if we can find out more about it. But what about the statue piece? What do we know about it?"

Looking confused, Andrew says, 'Let's take a little step back for a second. Jacque was one of the patients from the asylum? And he escaped through to another dimension? Exactly how and where did he do that and how do you know that's what happened?'

"Yes, he went down the tunnel we didn't choose when we first arrived," says Felicity. "At its end, past an intersection by which we reached that tunnel, he arrived at a glowing wall. He said farewell to us, touched the wall, and vanished. Etienne was with him at first, but he got cold feet and left. When we caught up to him, he explained it to us."

Archie watched Felicity intently as she shared the story about the glowing wall. "Did he say anything about whether it was a one way trip or if you could freely pass back and forth? Because if it is a two way trip, that might be our next site to investigate."

"All he said was 'Goodbye, people of consciousness,'" says Felicity. "Then he went through the glowing circle."

'Our last trip beyond the confines of this world didn't go terribly well!'

“Jaques seemed a rational man when we last saw him, it was if he was just catching a cab and we’d him later. Certainly not someone who was entering peril or not expecting to return.

I vote we make a plan for continuing our search on the mundane plane or we divert to the new plane and maybe find some real answers there.” Clarence replies.

"A rational man wouldn't be in Ward 7," says Felicity. "And he said 'Goodbye' in English, not 'au revoir.' I don't think he intends to come back. Let's see what we can find in this world first before we think about going to another one."

Archie leaned forward and nodded. "Yes, let's comb all of the locations here in Paris. Then, if we still don't have enough clues to find the item, then we can resort to the supernatural and the 'weird bollocks.'"

Andrew frowns at Archie, 'Language sir, we are still gentlemen! But I concur.'

"Then it's agreed," says Felicity, whose own mouth has uttered fouler things. "Now, what leads do we still have in Paris?"

Clarence shrugs, somewhat disappointed. He rolls up the spell and puts it safely in his inside jacket pocket.
“Then there’s these.” He opens out the architectural plans. “We found them in the same room. I think it’s likely that Jaques was the thief at the library.” He points to the basement on the plans.
“And there’s a cellar here I think would be worth exploring- if only we could find the building. Do you think it’s worth talking to local land agents who might recognise it from these plans?”

'If the location of the house is still unclear, perhaps a little trip to Poissy to question the locals is in order?' asks Andrew. 'If they don't know what happened to the count's house they might recognise its...unique style.'

"Yes, perhaps a land agent might know. Or we could ask someone one of the local reporters, police, or whatever Paris has for a mail service. All of those may have come across the house in their lines of work."

"Excellent ideas," says Felicity. "I could talk to the reporters. They love me. Can't say as I blame them."

Clarence shakes his head, he just can’t adjust to the modern woman.

'Poissy must be ten or twenty miles,' says Andrew. 'Shall we call a cab?'

“Absolutely. I’ve had enough of trains for a bit.” Clarence agrees.

Archie nods in agreement, grinning darkly at the train reference. "Let's take a cab this time."

'Unless the Paris cabs don't go out that far,' says Andrew.

OOC:   Which they don't! See here.