misku2024

[misku2024]

Session 30 Notes

After kicking the zombie out of the window, Chesterton and Felix walked up and down the train to figure out why the creature attacked them and who might be responsible for it. Unfortunately, however, they didn’t find anything. Felix also questioned why the now less robed Jay was turning into a snake and noticed a white crescent-shaped symbol on Jay’s neck. Jay danced around the subject long enough for Joe to say he recognized what was going on. Jay spoke with Albert and Joe about Obeah - a spiritual practice otherwise known as “voodoo” that asserts spiritual and magical forces exist and must be respected. There are both good and bad applications of Obeah, according to its practitioners and believers. The group attached quilts to the wall to cover up the broken window and went to sleep.

The next morning, as the group disembarked, Felix played lookout to see if he noticed anyone suspicious. He clocked a familiar looking person who, after making eye contact with Felix and looking shocked, ran from the party. Felix and Chesterton gave chase. While Chesterton weaved his way through the throng of people in pursuit, Felix yelled that the man robbed him and violated a corpse Felix was transporting. This got the attention of some people who, in moral outrage, interfered with the mysterious man’s attempt to flee. They stopped him and security interfered, demanding an answer. Unfortunately, Felix couldn’t persuade the security that the man was a menace to society and he was let free.

The party then regrouped in the parking lot. Albert said he needed to go to the Sherriff’s office to let the latter know Albert was in town. He volunteered that his friend, Elihu, the party’s chauffeur around town, would be willing to take people to whatever errands they needed to perform in Charleston before the group left for the plantation.

[misku2024]

Session 26 Notes

While at the pub/boarding house, Jackson Elias explained his proposition to Jay and Chesterton. Under the cover of an assumed identity, Elias reached out to Augustus Larkin, who was recruiting adventurous people to explore a system of caves that spans New England. The purpose of the caves is undetermined (if there is one at all), so Larkin is gathering a group of people to study a part of the network near South Woodstock, Vermont, and to gather whatever they can find for study or sale or whatever. Elias isn’t completely interested in the cave system but instead wants to research the Wendigo myth in Native Algonquin history. As Elias explained it, Wendigo are spirits that possess the bodies of people, driving them mad with hunger for human flesh and avarice. While Elias give any credence to the myth, wounds inflicted in recent murders in Vermont South Woodstock match those described in old Wendigo myths. Elias, in need of potential help researching or other forms of assistance, is looking for help.

As Elias pitched the job to Chesterton and Jay, Felix, someone Elias seeks for assistance when fast talk and falsified documents are needed, walked in the door. Felix introduced himself to Chesterton and Jay and asked if the two current party members were “feds or pricks.” Satisfied with their denial, Felix accepted the job and the three agreed to meet Elias in Burlington at a later date while they shopped in Arkham for incidentals. The group retired for the evening but not before Felix burglarized a drunk man’s room, taking period appropriate clothes for Chesterton and Jay.

In the morning Chesterton, Jay, and Felix went to Unconsidered Trifles at the suggestion of the bartender/boarding house manager. There, Jay and Chesterton saw a surprisingly familiar person - the owner, Abner Wick, looking exactly the same as when they saw him in 2020. However, Wick seemed to not remember either of them.

Wick asked if the party was from out of town. When they answered yes, wick asked if they were traveling with a shoeless young boy named Joe, about 8 or 9, who stopped by the shop to ask for Albert Gist’s address. Jay recognized the description of Joe from Father Yig’s prophetic messaging while Chesterton recognized the name “Gist” as his mother’s maiden name and the name of his family’s historic family property. When Chesterton asked where he and his friends might procure means to protect themselves on a trip up north for the low cost of free (as he and Jay realized that they have no money in the year 1924), Wick made them a deal: each party member could get some kind of weaponry if they brought back whatever they could muster from the caves, which Wick would purchase at a fair price. Felix took a torch, Chesterton took a bullwhip (and matching hat), and Jay took a machete.

Later, Felix forged a receipt of sale for 3 9mm handguns from Smith, West & Sons, a gun store. Confident in his work, Felix swindled the shopkeep out of the weapons as well as some ammunition. After the “sale” was complete, the trio agreed to find Albert Gist’s house so Jay could meet his destiny.

[misku2024]

Session 25 Notes

Upon returning to Arkham, the party quickly tried to devise a plan to break up whatever was happening beneath the event tent on the Twisted Quad before the clock struck midnight. Jay snuck up to the tent to try to figure what was happening beneath it. He didn’t peak his head inside but he did overhear some periodic thumping noise. He snuck back to the group to relay this information. Ela, acting quickly, instructed the group to look for a brick. Jay found one, which Ela put on top of her car's gas pedal. Unfortunately, the vehicle struck a wall at the stroke of midnight. As church bells rung out over the town, the ritual (whatever it entailed) completed, and a tear in the night sky mirroring the mural beneath St. John’s church. A shriek, emanating from the tear in the sky pierced the darkness, nearly paralyzing Ela. The group started pulling up tent stakes in an effort to further disrupt the ritual. Fissures split open the ground, nearly sending both Jay and Ela into some abyss below before they caught one another. Ela ran to the tent nearest Philips Gateway, throwing open some of the flaps. She found a swirling gateway not unlike the one found beneath the Winscott home. Chesterton and Jay ran through it but, before Ela had a chance, some enormous flying creature, visible from miles away, flew out of the tear in the sky and toward earth. Ela, accepting the being as her new god, kneeled on the ground and awaited its arrival.

Somewhere in the nearby forest, Perry was wondering around in an attempt to reconnect with herself and nature. She, too, saw the flying thing from the tear in the sky. At the same moment, a portal appeared in front of her. Cacophonous, repeated voices whispered “welcome” from the opening. Perry, accepting the sign as a summons, walked through the dimensional door.

Chesterton and Jay erupted through their own gate and into a version of the Twisted Quad both unfamiliar and not. While the buildings around the area looked more or less the same as before they traveled through the portal, there was no tent or fissures in the ground. Moreover, no snow was falling. The two looked around and they saw two things: one, a man pinning a flier to a cork board; and two, a banner hanging from a building that read “Congratulations Miskatonic University class of 1924.”

The pair ran over to the man pinning the flier to the cork board. When he turned to greet them, Chesterton recognized the man from an ad for a speech performed by Jaclyn Elias about her grandfather, the famous occult writer, Jackson. He asked what they were doing out in the cold and if they’d like to join him in getting out of it by grabbing a drink at a nearby pub.

Chesterton remembered the year 1924 as the one in which a young boy, Joe, fled his ancestral home to escape the sharecropper lifestyle. The boy fled somewehre north but was returned by the employees of the plantation and died shortly thereafter. Jay remembered that the boy was integral to his bond with Father Yig, who told Jay he must find and save Joe.

While strolling up town to find a bar, Jay noticed a sign: one that read “Unconsidered Trifles: antiquaries curated by Abner Wick.” Both Chesterton and Jay recognized both the name of the store owner as well as the peculiarity that he managed the same store they knew in 2020.

At the pub found by Jackson Elias, the author asked what these two were doing in town. Jay (canonically still wrapped in a motel comforter to hide his transformation into a snake person), lied to Elias and told him Chesterton was checking out colleges while Jay looked after him. Elias, impressed with the two of them, lamented that he wish he knew more about colleges as a self-taught person: how else would he know not to come recruiting students for a project during winter break! Jay wondered about the work available. Elias told them something about Augustus Larkin (something the DM hadn’t prepared yet), and Chesterton recognized the name as a petty criminal with a distinct, grotesque tattoo of a spiraling tongue on his chest who disappeared and was never found. Recognizing that there was some (currently unknown) connection between the lashing tongue tattoo on Larkin’s chest, a string of murders in New York in which victims had their tongues cut out, and the murders connected to the founders of Chesterton’s fraternity, the duo offered to work with Elias on figuring out this mystery.

[misku2024]

Session 24 Notes

On the way to the Methodist Episcopal Church, Chesterton and Jay walked near a solemn, empty-looking man leaving a decrepit home wearing some sort of restaurant uniform. Our party members kept their distance but noted his uniform, and continued on their way to the church.

While attending the morning service and after Chesterton made a scene sitting at the front of the service, he and Jay listened to a transcendental sermon from Reverend Fitzgerald, the head of the church. They also listened to a trumpet performance from Raymond Lowry, a townmember with incredible musical ability. While some in attendance loved Lowry’s performance, most others (including Chesterton and Jay) found the music uncomfortable. Some folks had an even worse reaction to the music and began seizing in the pews. After the service, Chesterton spoke with Rev. Fitzgerald, who suggested Chesterton stop by the evening service after the latter asked about Professors Maussey and Hart. Fitzgerald also suggested the our heroes check out Elmer’s Steak House for “the best diner food in the world.”

At Elmer’s, Chesterton attempted conversation with Betty, a patron of Elmer’s. However, Betty was very clearly distracted while trying to get the attention of a man she could see through the kitchen window - the same solemn man Chesterton and Jay saw walking earlier that day. When the manager of the restaurant, Felix Tamaarine, asked if Chesterton if he could be of any help, Chesterton explained that the man in the kitchen was ignoring Betty. Felix promptly walked into the kitchen and began savagely beating the kitchen staffer with a frying pan. When he walked out, covered in blood, and standing over an openly weeping and inconsolable Betty, he calmly asked if Chesterton needed anything else. Chesterton declined and left the restaurant for the auto-body shop, where he paid for snow tires to be put on the G Wagon and then killed time until the evening service.

Back in Arkham, Dr. Rice and Ela poked around the tent to see if they could find any evidence of Alpha Psi’s intentions for the event. While they found no one inside the tent, they did find long benches like those found beneath St. John’s church, as well as a roughly seven foot tall cross. After spending some time thinking about the tent and its position at the Philips Archway, Dr. Rice and Ela came to a few conclusions. The first was that crosses were originally designed with “a practical intention;” the second was that the archway was in many ways similar to the one found in the snake person’s lair, which allowed the snake to create a gateway and teleport. After thinking for a very long time about what to do with this information, including driving Chesterton’s car into the gateway to destroy it (the arch is made of stone and they would do more damage to the car than to the gate) and to also set off kerosene bombs (this would absolutely kill anyone and everyone in a several block radius, including themselves), before ultimately deciding to go back to Dr. Rice’s house.

While at Dr. Rice’s home, she and Ela were chatting for some time before Ela noticed someone moving outside the window. While she couldn’t tell specific details, the way the figure moved reminded Ela of the creature beneath St. John’s church. She ran outside, threatening it, before seeing three other backwards people standing in the shadows. She and Dr. Rice ran back into the house, ran for Dr. Rice’s car, and drove to Stowell to hopefully get the group back together.

At the evening service, Jay and Chesterton saw Betty, who had a steely calm about her. The sportsballers realized that there would be no church sermon; instead, this was a cover for an invitation-only meeting was to be held at the home of Professors Maussey and Hart. They piled into a church van and drove to the house, Chesterton texting Ela on the way.

At the home, the group was greeted by vacant, solemn looking people all wearing butler uniforms. They met the professors, who told them of their work and discoveries that they wanted to share. The professors led the party members, as well as the other guests, to the attic and invited each person to look through a telescope. One by one, people looked through the telescope for about a minute. While some walked away with impressive abilities and heightened skills, others were vacant and withdrawn, where they were taken to be fitted for butler uniforms. Jay, wanting to figure out what people were seeing, looked through the telescope but only grew frustrated and felt his capacities diminish. Chesterton noticed Jay now had a vacant expression on his face. Chesterton then charged at the telescope and broke it, which sent all folks with lessened capacities in the house into a frenzy and brought them (including Jay) back to clarity, wherein they started attacking the “chosen.” Chesterton then pocketed the lens of the telescope, which was visually similar to the stone the snake person used to create the portal, the space rock from the Crystal Palace, and the “Shining Trapezohedron,” an asteroid fragment said to come from the planet Yuggoth that possesses time and space bending properties.

As that was happening, Dr. Rice and Ela pulled up to the house after following a location pinned by Chesterton’s phone. In what was essentially a Benny Hill montage, Chesterton, Dr. Rice, Ela, and Jay ran and hid throughout the three story home and kidnapped one of the professors to get answers. They strapped Dr. Maussey to a gurney in the back of Ela’s car and drove away, back to Arkham. En route, Chesterton interrogated the professor for the reason behind the telescope and then kicked him out of the moving car, into the snow bank in the middle of night.

[misku2024]

Note from Genai Hiraga and the Wickies

A note stuffed into the corner that reads “this is our best gift to you. We have discussed at great lengths with my fellows Franklin, Toda, Daniels, and Fann. We have tried to cast a net around the world. We leave it in your hands to finish the weave. To be known, even itself is to destroy. Therefore it fears our sight and would drag us back into its shadows. Good luck. May light and knowledge prevail - Genai Hiraga and the wickies”

[misku2024]

The Elekiter

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[misku2024]

Pinhole Camera Diagram

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Vase in Iraq/Sumeria section

[misku2024]

Map of Stowell

[misku2024]

Jensen retrieves the corpse

[misku2024]

Session 23 Notes

On the day of the 19th, Perry walked into the woods to with the intent to contemplate life for several months. In her stead, Ela and Dr. Rice went to the Crystal Palace to look for any more clues about the space rock while Chesterton and the soon-to-be-dickless Jay went to Stowell to speak with the Doctors Hart and Maussey about their work.

At the Crystal Palace, Dr. Rice lied to the on duty security guard, John D. Enver, saying she was still an employee of the university visiting the Crystal Palace. Convincing Enver that she was going to look for an item left for her by the anthropology department, Dr. Rice let Ela in through the loading dock side entrance. The two then snuck into different sections of the warehouse - Dr. Rice into Iraq/Sumeria, Ela into the United States - to poke around for stuff. Dr. Rice found a diagram of a pinhole camera as invented by Hasan Ibn al-Haytham and a vase decorated with snakes with human-like features and heads. In the U.S. section, Ela found several things:

A diagram of a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, as invented by Ken Jordan and John Birden. Next to it is a small model version.

Books from each of their libraries on the blackfoot indians; specifically on Natosi, the Blackfoot sun god, and an allegory called “The Snake with the Big Feet.”

Inside one of the books is a diagram of how to remove the Heat Source Support and replace it with a flat disc matching the description of the stone Perry found in the chest in the Rome section during the group’s first visit to the Crystal Palace.

Ela pocketed the book and snuck into the Egypt section with Dr. Rice. There they found it entirely unaltered since Dr. Rice’s last visit and Vance’s death. Realizing they couldn’t keep sneaking about the room while John D. Enver watched from the security desk (especially while he had some record of Dr. Rice’s name on a note pad), Dr. Rice asked for the guard’s help in locating the rock while Ela snuck to the front desk, spilled coffee on John’s notes, and then went out the front door. She was almost caught doing so, but Dr. Rice distracted John by flashing him.

Dr. Rice then inspected the Japan section of the Anthropology wing. There, she found the following:

A model Elekiter, a static electricity generator invented by Hiraga Gennai in 1776, as well as the instruments to run it.

A note stuffed into the corner that reads “this is our best gift to you. We have discussed at great lengths with my fellows Franklin, Toda, Daniels, and Fann. We have tried to cast a net around the world. We leave it in your hands to finish the weave. To be known, even itself is to destroy. Therefore it fears our sight and would drag us back into its shadows. Good luck. May light and knowledge prevail - Genai Hiraga and the wickies” stashed in a secret compartment.

Dr. Rice recognized the term “wickies” as a sort of slang historically used for professional lighthouse keepers. She then joined John in looking around the England room, where she saw a display showing the works of Johnathan Swan, an inventor of one of the early filament lightbulb models. Dr. Rice noticed something wrapped around the filament, but didn’t look into it. She then left the Crystal Palace and she & Ela retired for the evening.

En route to Stowell, Chesterton and Jay had car trouble so they didn’t arrive until late that night. They eventually arrived at the Swift House Inn, a bed and breakfast full of comfy furniture, incredible artwork, and delicious food smells. Chesterton rung the front desk bell and a very charming woman named Daisy Cubby met them and got them checked in. She then fed them “something she just whipped up in the kitchen,” which was perhaps the best meal either Chesterton or Jay had ever eaten. They then met Bud, Daisy’s husband and the painter of the many fine works of art on the wall. Chesterton and Jay asked the Cubbies if they knew anything about the professors Hart and Maussey. Both were elusive, saying they didn’t know much about them. Skeptical of the food provided by Daisy, Chesterton and Jay both threw up their dinners before going to bed.

On the morning of the 20th, both party members feigned loss of appetite before planning to set about Stowell for the day. Before they could leave, however, a man best described as “feral”, draped in dirty burlap, and covered in frostbite, burst through the door and pounced on Jay. Jay wriggled out of his grasp as the man was attempting to bind Jay while Chesterton swung at the man with his lacrosse stick, dazing him. Then, suddenly, someone shot the man through the head, killing him. The assailant was soon revealed to be Stanley Alexander, a police deputy so talented at using his service weapon that he could shoot the feral man from outside the building and across the street. He was accompanied by Freddie Jensen, who silently bound the dead man in a tarp and dragged the body out to his truck. While that happened, Stanley asked if everyone present was okay after “that thing” assaulted them. Querying after the professors, Stanley, like the Cubbies, was elusive. He did tell Chesterton that the snowstorm that came in through the night would make it difficult for the group to leave so they should get comfy in town - perhaps checking out the church for an incredible service. Stanley then left. Chesterton and Jay then had separate but complementary thoughts - that something about this town was giving people incredible, world class talents while something else was causing people to lose their faculties, generating a schism in society. Jay figured it would be worth checking out some of the places around town to learn what might be going on.

[misku2024]

A Dimensional Shambler

[misku2024]

Session 22 Notes

The evening of the 17th, the entire group ubered from Danvers to Arkham. While driving through town, the group did notice that everyone they saw was wearing some manner of clothing that referenced the fraternity, be it letters, shirts of a specific shade of blue, or something else. The entire party then drove to Perry’s where they slept for the night and planned out what to do the next morning. While Jay and Dr. Rice researched anything they could find about the planet Yuggoth and Perry did….something, Chesterton and Ela plotted to kidnap an AIP member the next morning so that Perry could interrogate them about the event. After plotting, Chesterton theorized that Bryce Fallon was not an immortal being but rather a time traveler.

While looking into Yuggoth, Dr. Rice and a perpetually shedding Jay found several pieces of information. According to fringe science fiction blogs and some books from the 1920s, Yuggoth is a planet that sits on the edge of the solar system roughly 4.6 billion miles from earth. It is, according to those same out-there sources, home to a race of aliens called the “Mi-Go.” The Mi-Go live on the edge of a massive pit, in which dwells “an ancient and horrifying entity.”

Chesterton and Ela theorized that staking out the hotel bar might be a good place to find a kidnap victim. Indeed, at the restaurant in the Hotel Miskatonic they found a try hard in his 30s who was partying there a little longer than anyone else. Ela successfully seduced him into coming back to “her place” with her and the two (followed discretely by Chesterton) left the hotel. There, Chesterton ambushed the man with his lacrosse stick, knocking him unconscious. With the man in the back seat, Ela and Chesterton drove back to Perry’s.

After unloading the unconscious man from the vehicle, Perry explained her plan; using specific (yet, for the table’s sake, not detailed) methods of torture, she and Ela would extract from him any information that they could regarding the fraternity event and Alpha Iota Psi in general. Perry learned the following information (this is all that I can remember it may not be everything): that the man was not aware of any sinister motive behind the event; that the “ritual” that was to be performed is standard practice at any AIP event designed to mark a period of change in the fraternity; that, while that ritual would take place on the 21st, people would begin filing into the tent on the 20th to begin it; and that the man was unfamiliar with the names “Sebek” or “Father Yig.” After finding out this info, Perry dismissed Ela from the room and then, over the next hour, summoned a “dimensional shambler” from some outer plane of existence and commanded the creature - a nine foot tall, gorilla-and-cricket-like monstrosity to kill the tortured man. From outside the room, the group heard Perry begin chanting an undecipherable incantation for 45 minutes, heard a tearing noise akin to thousands of shrieking voices, and then the screams and horrifying noises of a man being torn limb from limb. They then saw Perry leave the room and essentially command Ela to begin cleaning up the remains of the body while the rest of the group stayed the night at Dr. Rice’s house.

That night, the group set about planning to investigate different things. While Dr. Rice and Perry planned to go back to the Crystal Palace to see if they could track down the stone from the very first session - what the group now believes is a fragment from the same stone that delivered the Shining Trapezohedron to earth. Meanwhile, Jay and Chesterton planned to go to Stowell. There they hoped to meet with Claude Massey, a retired geologist who studied the fractal nature of off-planet elements and some of their properties.

[misku2024]

Session 21 Notes

The party stood just outside the gates of the hospital as cop cars and ambulances sped through. The last two in the seemingly endless line of vehicles stopped for the party and asked them why they were outside. Lying, Ela told the cops that they were on a hike, noticed smoke, and wandered toward the hospital. The party got a lift back to the hotel with the cops and spent much of the rest of the evening watching the news as reports of abuse leveled against the hospital administrator were captured by the news. When the group was reassured that Berger was in custody and Cecil (as well as the rest of the inmates) were to be transported from the hospital, the group retired to their suite to start planning.

While in the room, Dr. Rice received emails from Jaclyn Elias. It contained 3 pictures. One was Bryce Fallon’s composite picture from his time in Alpha Iota Psi during undergrad; one was of Aubrey Penhew from his time at Miskatonic; and one was of Enoch Bowman, the founder of St. John’s church in Providence. These three men, all in their 20s, all looked uncannily similar, leading Chesterton to believe that Bryce Fallon is immortal. The group then planned to return to Providence by way of Uber the next morning.

While outside the church, the group tried to contact Jaclyn Elias several times, but to no avail. Concerned that something may have happened to her, the group searched through public records and her website for hints as to her whereabouts. While they found no speaking engagements beyond the one at Miskatonic this past 13th, they did track down information about her normal residence - a hotel room at The Chelsea Hotel in New York. Chesterton tried calling the hotel to see if Elias was presently staying there, but couldn’t talk his way past the front desk attendant.

When the group entered St. John’s church, the party initially came up empty for clues. Only after Chesterton did an in depth google search of Robert Blake - a worshipper at St. John’s church who died under mysterious circumstances around the time that Enoch Bowman went missing in 1883 - did the group start to put together clues. In a serialized article, Chesterton found the following information: Blake was a regular attendee of services at church until the last night he was seen alive by a friend of his (or anyone else for that matter), Edward Lillibridge. Lillibridge reported that, in a fit, Blake told him “I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- the three-lobed burning eye-- the Haunter in the Dark" before running to the church.That night there was a power outage in the city that rendered it near-completely dark. He also found mention of an item called the “Shining Trapezohedron,” another favorite mumbling of Blake’s.

With renewed vigor, the party split up. Chesterton and Jay scoured the internet looking for hints about the Shining Trapezohedron while Ela and Dr. Rice poked around the church. The former duo found fringe, science fiction websites that discussed the Trapezohedron - a small rock that was part of an asteroid directed at Earth from the planet Yuggoth. However, this asteroid broke apart upon entering Earth’s atmosphere and sent pieces all over the globe. Because of the interesting fractal structures of the crystals inside the rock, it has been theorized that this stone, as well as others like it, serve as “a window through all space and time.” If used properly, some have even theorized that one could travel transdimensionally, moving great distances in mere moments and entering different timelines.

Searching the church’s main chamber, Ela and Dr. Rice found a trapdoor underneath one of the pews. Climbing down into it, the two found a few things of note: clearing away the cobwebs, this duo saw long, parallel wooden benches that faced the center of the room, affixed at which there was a marble podium. While flat on the top, the plinth had carved into it a number of gruesome looking creatures active in some kind of carnage. When Ela looked up, she saw a mural on the ceiling of the room; one of a menagerie of colors, against which was an enormous, drooling, translucent bat-like creature with a glowing third eye in the middle of its forehead.

While taking pictures of the scene, Dr. Rice noticed a familiar, horrifying sight: just beyond the edge of Ela’s flashlight stepped a backward facing person in old time-y clothes. When Dr. Rice told Ela to turn around (something that confused Ela), a mouth appeared on the back of the backward human’s head that sunk its teeth into Ela’s shoulder. She quickly backed up into one of the long benches, knocking the creature to the ground. Just as Ela turned her flashlight on the creature to get a good look at it, Dr. Rice magically pushed the creature across the room, knocking it unconscious in the process. The two then called for assistance from Chesterton and Jay, who helped them climb out of the room. Ela showed these two the pictures on her phone after tending to her wounds. Now late at night on the 17th, the group got a new Uber back to Miskatonic.

[misku2024]

Andrew McBride death announcement

[misku2024]

Session 20 Notes

Near the bakery, Chesterton began questioning the orderly whom they later discovered was sent by Dr. Berger to follow them. He attempted to shove Chesterton, but slipped on ice, giving Chesterton the opportunity to get the orderly into a rear naked chokehold. Dr. Rice searched the orderly’s pockets but found little to identify him beyond a cell phone and some cash. Elsewhere in town, Ela heard sirens but was absolutely gassed from running and instead started briskly walking toward where she believed they were destined. When the police did arrive they found a crowd of people around Chesterton and the restrained orderly on the street. They separated Chesterton, Dr. Rice, and the orderly while taking statements from them and the crowd. The investigators proved more persuasive and the orderly was taken to the police station for questioning, but only after Chesterton was grilled about how he knew the orderly’s profession if the group didn’t know him. After hours of questioning and Jay & Ela’s eventual return, the group went to Waffle House to plan their next steps.

At the Waffle House, Jay came clean about his complicated personal and professional history so the group could begin to plot. In the middle of their conversation the party was alerted by abrupt pounding on the window of the Waffle House: it was a frantic looking man wearing what looked like a recently stolen coat and a hospital gown. Thinking it was Andrew McBride, ally to Cecil Hunter, Dr. Rice tried to lure him inside the Waffle House by waving food at him. The person confirmed that they were Andrew McBride but resisted the summons by waffle and instead chose to warn Dr. Rice of Cecil Hunter’s impending doom as a sacrifice victim on the new moon. Andrew McBride then ran into the night. The group debated chasing after him but ultimately ruled against it, choosing instead to stay put and plan. Dr. Rice, realizing that this month’s new moon converged with other astrological events - those being a solar eclipse and the shortest day of the year - began to theorize that this event was tied to the Alpha Iota Psi event that ended on the same day. However, others were more skeptical. Regardless, the group agreed that Cecil Hunter needed to be rescued - or, at the very least, temporarily removed from the facility - in order to interrupt the ritual so that he can forge the Witch Trial Papers. They devised a plot to have Jay anonymously tip off the police from a burner phone, saying that there was ongoing abuse of a specific patient, Andrew McBride, at Danvers hospital. After the call was placed, the group left for the hotel.

The next morning, Jay continued to shed. The group attempted to figure out how to slow or stop this process happening to the party’s PI and realized that the only to do so would be to figure out how to go back in time. The group also received a push notification to their phones saying that Andrew McBride had died the previous night in an apparent suicide. Hearing the news Jay made a second call to the police; he said that he was the person who called the previous night about Andrew McBride and urged the police to shut down Danvers immediately. After some collective brainstorming, the group realized that they had two opportunities break Cecil Hunter out of the hospital; either before the ritual by breaking into the hospital or during the ritual by interrupting it while it takes place outside. They then devised a plan that involved Dr. Rice making explosives to plant on the site of the ritual while also somehow trying to tie Bryce Fallon to the ongoings of the hospital. The group then went to the hospital grounds to case the facility before moving forward with any plans.

While on the hospital grounds the group inspected the ampitheater. Chesterton spotted a plaque at the top of the steps that read “construction of this site was made possible due to a gracious donation from the Friends of Miskatonic University” before an invisible force unsuccessfully tried to force him down the steps. Now cautioned by the space, Chesterton walked down the steps to inspect the bottom of the ampitheater and saw the ground stained dark browns and reds. Meanwhile Ela kept a look out and noticed someone at the popping the hood of the group’s vehicle and closing the entrance gates to the facility. She ran back to tell the rest of the group before running off to the car with Dr. Rice in tow while Chesterton and Jay stayed behind a little longer. However, this didn’t last long, as these latter two were flanked by hospital staff members. When Ela and Dr. Rice got to the parking lot they noticed other hospital staff members approaching them with syringes in their hands. Ela attempted to inject morphine into the staff member messing with the car’s engine but was knocked backwards, breaking the syringe in the process. Using a power for the first time, Dr. Rice channeled magic to forcibly push the staff member, knocking them unconscious. This scared some advancing staff into fleeing before a similar fate happened to them but others were not rebuffed. Chesterton attempted to start the car but couldn’t so he instead crawled underneath the vehicle to cut fuel lines. Ela fled the parking lot and called the police, stating that she and three other people were being assaulted by hospital staff members. Dr. Rice and Jay joined Ela in fleeing to the street while Chesterton attempted to blow up their vehicle with mixed results. He then also ran out to the street with the rest of his fleeing group.