#and now...the Cell Block Rocko

[bornagainkishin]

"Pop." "Six." "Squish." "MOO!" "Cicero." "Lipschitz."

[austinplaysrpgs-blog]

Call of Cthulhu, Part 2

Part 1 here

Part 3 here

October 11th, 1925

We awaken a couple of hours later. Jasper requests to stop by his apartment and feed his cat, Loki. The door to his apartment is ajar. We walk in to find his apartment has been destroyed. Furniture upended, books and papers strewn about. Jasper cries out when he walks to his kitchen, seeing Loki dissected on the kitchen table, bones broken. What sort of monster would do such a thing? Jasper vows to find whoever did this and make them pay. It does seem likely that Berger gave the order.

With no leads to speak of regarding the granite disk, we decide to sneak out to the asylum and poke around the new amphitheatre. Security is pretty lax, so we’re able to walk right up to it. Upon further inspection, there’s a large circular patch of dirt underneath the seating. We find chips of malachite in the dirt. It must have come from the disk. But there’s no drag marks or other indicators of where the disk was moved. Berger and a handful of orderlies approach us soon afterwards, ordering us to leave before the authorities are called. 

Instead of leaving outright, we decide to retreat to a nearby hill and observe the asylum. We need to get Larry out of there. If we strike tonight, we can catch them off guard, but we’ll have to break in to get him. If we wait until tomorrow, Larry should be out in the open, but so will lots of other people who could stop us. We figure, fuck it, let’s try tonight and see how it goes. So we formulate a ballsy plan. Since we left, the asylum has increased security. Guards make the rounds about the property. Later this evening, Maurice will create a distraction while Jasper and Lawrence break into J Block and extract Larry.

Maurice creeps up to the chapel on the opposite side of the property. Upon closer inspection, the chapel looks abandoned. Through the window, Maurice sees that it is in a state of disrepair: dust covers the pews that are stacked up and scattered about the chapel. He creates a makeshift molotov cocktail in his hat, breaks the window, and tosses it in. His toss is true, and the fire catches. However, a guard hears the glass break and comes to investigate. He comes around the corner and sees Maurice outside the chapel. Maurice runs for it, leading the man towards the next set of buildings, hoping to lose the man or get the jump on him. There’s a struggle, but Maurice gets the upper hand, knocking him unconscious and doubling back to the meetup point. The chapel is burning now, and the alarm goes up. The orderlies form a bucket brigade to fight the blaze.

Jasper and Lawrence see the smoke and hear the shouting and spring into action. Giving the reservoir and amphitheatre a wide berth, we approach the exterior door to J Block. It’s locked. Jasper fiddles with it for a minute and is able to pick the lock. We enter, guns drawn, catching the orderlies off guard. Some of the patients must be asleep, there’s not near as much noise as last time.

“Get down on the ground,” Lawrence says, keeping his voice low. The orderlies comply.

Jasper grabs the key ring from Phil’s waist and checks the cell Larry had been in the other day. He’s not there. Instead, another patient lunges out. He takes a swipe at Jasper and goes out the back door. Patients begin waking up, the droning wall of sound from before returning.

“Where is Larry Croswell?” Lawrence asks the orderlies.

“Don’t say anything, Billy,” Phil says.

The younger orderly, who we don’t recognize, is not as composed as his more experienced coworker.

“I’ll give you 5 seconds before I blow your brains out unless you tell me what I need to know. Understand?”

5

4

“I don’t know anything!” Billy is panicking.

3

Lawrence cocks his shotgun.

2

1

“Alright, alright!” Billy screeches. “The super moved him yesterday. Said they needed to get him ready for somethin’. I don’t know. Just please don’t kill me.”

The whole plan may be shot. We hadn’t planned to go further in. But we don’t want to leave empty handed. Lawrence forces the orderlies to their feet and herds them into the empty cell, and Jasper locks them in. Now it’s time to improvise. Jail break? We have the keys, maybe we can use the chaos of loose patients to go deeper without being trapped? We see if any of the patients are coherent and less threatening. We hear a man yell somewhere in the block, “WHAT DO YOU KNOW?” Definitely not that guy. 

We decide to try one particularly active patient and see what happens. He attacks Jasper and chases him around the block. We herd the patient towards the door and pull off a pretty sweet maneuver to propel him into I Block. The orderlies in I Block pounce on the man to restrain him, not noticing us following behind, guns drawn. They freeze when ordered to. We ask these men about Larry, they don’t seem to know where he is. We herd them and the patient they’re restraining into a cell and lock them in. Should we keep going with the jailbreak plan? None of these patients seem capable of such a thing. They barely seemed to register our presence at all.

The door to H Block opens and an orderly walks in. He sees the guns and backs out quickly, cursing and closing the door behind him. Word is going to spread quickly from here. After some debate, we push forward to H Block. It’s chaos. The orderlies are forcing patients to evacuate inward towards the main hall and the sea of bodies is too thick for us to push through. Jasper fires his pistol into the ceiling hoping to move the crowd forward. It does, but not in the way he’d intended. Patients go into a frenzy trying to get out and the way is even more jammed than before. We can see orderlies trying to make their way back towards our position. 

Afraid to be trapped and apprehended, we make our way back to J Block with the key ring. We make it back outside with little trouble. The burning chapel has been handled and the bucket brigade is returning to work. The fire department never showed, they must not have been contacted.

“Where’d that one guy go?” 

Over by the reservoir, we hear a man’s voice say “Daddy!”, followed by a splash. We have no desire to investigate that and take off for the meetup point. We hop in the car with Maurice and retreat to his home. 

October 12, 1925

Lawrence is locked in an asylum cell. He hears splashing in the toilet. He turns around. Before he sees the source of the noise, he wakes up.

We buy supplies for the evening rescue. Rifle, shotgun, ammunition, binoculars, and so on.

“How much dynamite can I buy?” Maurice’s player asks. And thus, a plan is born.

Jasper and Lawrence stake out the asylum from the neighboring hill while Maurice drives his car around, loaded with roughly 100 pounds of dynamite, intending to use it as a bomb and drive it into the reservoir or asylum and blow them sky high.

Through their binoculars, they spot people filing out of J Block in white robes. Berger leads the group, barking orders. Behind him, some of the men are pushing a gurney. Strapped to that gurney is Larry Croswell. Now is the time to move.

Maurice looks for an opening to drive the car up the hill but each of the roads are blocked by armed guards and vehicles. The hill is too steep to drive, especially loaded up with all the dynamite. So Maurice improvises. He pulls up to one of the roadblocks and gets out, a stick of dynamite in one hand, a lit cigar in the other. All six guards pull their pistols and train them on Maurice.

“Y'all would be wise to not shoot at me. You might hit all this dynamite and blow us all up, you know,” Maurice says from behind the car door, gesturing inside. “So why don’t y'all just step aside and let me through?”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir. Please turn around and leave the premises or we’ll be forced to shoot,” one of the guards replies, standing his ground.

“Well if you shoot me, you’d better kill me, otherwise I’ll be taking you all-”

They did, and they did. All six open fire, hitting him several times. Maurice is dead before he hits the ground.

Hearing the gunshots, Berger sends Rocko and a couple other orderlies to investigate. They’re not pleased to be sent away. Lawrence and Jasper move in from their vantage point. Whatever Maurice is doing to distract them is working.

Berger begins the ritual. Turning his back to the reservoir, he begins chanting in a language we don’t recognize. The effect on the gathered crowd is immediate. They begin tearing into each other. Clawing, biting, ripping chunks of flesh in an orgy of blood. Several bite into Larry, helplessly strapped to the gurney. He lets out a blood-curdling scream. The water of the reservoir is completely still. Then, the water level rises suddenly. A dark, scaly form surfaces, approaching the amphitheatre. We’ve never seen anything like it before. It looms over Berger, seeming to breathe in the bloodshed.

Jasper sprints up the hill to free Larry while Lawrence provides cover fire with his rifle. The worshippers don’t seem to notice either of them in their revels. Jasper unstraps Larry from the gurney, maneuvering around the mass of bodies. Larry is in really rough shape and is bleeding from several places. Jasper props Larry up on his shoulder and they limp away from the amphitheatre.

Lawrence shoots Berger in the head, hoping to disrupt the ritual. Instead, the spray of blood and brain matter only seems to empower the creature. Lawrence considers shooting the creature, but he still can’t wrap his mind around it. It just can’t be real. He sees that Jasper is fleeing with Larry in tow and wisely chooses to follow. They make it to Lawrence’s car unhindered and drive off into the night.

Epilogue

Victory, if you could call it that, is bittersweet. We saved the life of a friend at the cost of another. Larry, in his paranoia, had acquired a secret residence upstate. Unwilling to return to his apartment, Jasper moves in as his caretaker. Lawrence returns to his office and dives back into work, hoping to keep his mind from straying to that dark place. Life returns to normal, but not for long. Once you’ve seen into that world, it’s impossible to step away for good.