Keeper Note: As Arthur was able to join us tonight, Jimmy Wispa was (had always been) part of the reinforcements and had been with the half of the platoon left on the surface all the time. Really..Voices Inside My Head |
Playlist: Voices Inside My Head - The Police |
| Keeper Note: As Arthur was able to join us tonight, Jimmy Wispa was (had always been) part of the reinforcements and had been with the half of the platoon left on the surface all the time. Really.. |
Realizing that hand grenades were about the most effective answer to the armoured Mi-Go, Joe Vandeleur jogged back up the ramp and out into the sunshine, where he found Anné, Jimmy and the rest of the soldiers all watching the entrance warily - the sound of lightning strikes and grenades had been audible above. Rummaging in the stores Lethbridge-Stewart had brought with him, he found a case of grenades and re-equipped with them, passing some to Birapeer as he headed back towards the ruins.
He and Anné re-installed their tripwire trap in the corridor down which the Mi-Go walkers had come, but this time they used three grenades and wires, located at different heights.
| Keeper Note: At the table I was sure it was Cyril had punched Marcus's lights out the previous week, but I was wrong; Pte Smith shot him. With a Lee-Enfield. Lucky to be alive really! |
Meanwhile, in the store-room where the bottled brain of the archaeologist Douglas Mowell still rambled and occasionally sang away in the background, Cyril took the slightly unwise step of applying some magical healing to Marcus, who was unconscious after taking a .303 rifle bullet. He winced as he willingly connected his quailing mind to the hideous, unknowable outer powers, but smiled as he saw Marcus' wound heal up and the distorted bullet work its way out to clink on the stone floor.
Marcus blinked and opened his eyes. Bending over him was a hideous monster, all tentacles and probes of dire purpose, poised to violate him in the most dreadful manner imaginable. Yelling in panic and rage, he jabbed a punch up at the startled Cyril, who had forgotten that Marcus had been overwhelmed by the muttering, buzzing Mi-Go voices they could all hear in their heads. He shoved back, bouncing Marcus' head off the floor and dazing him slightly, and Pte Mason sprang over and tried to restrain the madly thrashing professor. A second haymaker punch from Cyril put Marcus' lights out all over again, and Cyril sat back, wryly wondering why he had bothered to heal him in the first place...
As Joe reached the ramp, he encountered Lethbridge-Stewart dragging himself up, trailing his wounded leg. Joe opened his Section M standard medical kit and looked at the wound to see what he could do; but there wasn't much. The green beam had left a perfectly circular cauterized hole right through the Lieutenant's thigh. All he could do was administer a shot of morphia to control the pain.
At that point, Birapeer re-emerged from the ruins guiding Pte Dawson, who had fled in mentally unhinged terror down the passage to the workface. He'd resisted violently when the Sikh went to collect him, but once he realized he was being led to the surface - away from the horrors with which his mind couldn't cope - he had relaxed and complied, though his mind was still broken. Neither Joe nor Birapeer were able to help him, albeit their approach to psychoanalysis was of the "snap out of it, man, come along now" level of sophistication. They had to handcuff him to the truck.
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Out of interest, Anné had wandered a bit further through the site, and by the time she reached the far side of the Finds tent, the whispering voices inside her head had ceased. Returning, she got the casualties shifted to that distance, and a canteen of water was emptied over Marcus. Now lucid, the Professor decided to use a Healing on his own battered face, but he had already worked quite a bit of magic that day; as the Heal slowly did its' work, the mental energy to fuel it was expended and intense pain racked him as the spell started consuming his very life energy to complete its work. Shaken, and with blood dribbling from his ears, he contemplated the hazards of over-use of magic.
Joe and Cyril had returned to the room with the half cylinders in - tentatively identified as some kind of Mi-Go accomodation. After fooling with them for a while, they decided to try and move one, and shoved hard sideways until - with a crack and crackle of energy it suddenly shifted. As they straightened up, they noticed that the lights on the cylinder they had moved had all gone out.
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Birapeer meanwhile had moved along to the corner and was watching the junction, ready to give the alarm should more monstrosities appear. Nothing had appeared, so he got curious and very carefully advanced down the hallway to the room where they had originated. He was rather surprised to find no living creature there. What he did find was a large, curved piece of the same Mi-Go machinery, mounted at a 45 degree angle facing what at first appeared to be a large, framed lamp 10' square. Gradually it dawned on the Sikh that what he had here was a control panel, and opposite that, quite possibly some kind of portal. Finding a copper penny in his pocket, he lobbed it at the shimmering surface, and it vanished silently and utterly. Being of a creative frame of mind, he followed it up with a pinless hand grenade. The missile disappeared through the opening - and a moment later, a volley of bits of shrapnel zipped soundlessly back through the surface and smacked against the console, behind which he'd taken cover. A two-way portal then. He unclipped another grenade and sat down with his back to the console and with it between him and the portal to await developments.
A few minutes later, Cyril and Anné appeared around the corner, and stopped, staring at the portal Birapeer had discovered. As he watched, a distortion appeared in the surface, and another Mi-Go walker stepped through and on to the stone floor with a metallic click. Using the sound as a guide, Birapeer yelled "More of them!" and flicked his readied grenade backwards up over his head and into the 'face' of the newly-arrived creature, where it exploded.
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The response was instant. The green beam of the disintegration ray lanced out over his head and drilled Cyril straight through the chest, dropping him instantly. At the same time, the Mi-Go shimmered and faded from view into invisibility. Blinking in horror, Anné threw herself back round the corner and backed away to the junction with the exit ramp. She passed Joe, who stuck his head around and released a volley of shots at it. As he did so, Birapeer threw another grenade backwards over his head and was sent sprawling forwards as the badly abused console disintegrated from the blast. A loud crash betrayed the fall of the Mi-Go.
Birapeer siezed his moment and leaped for the corner, grabbing Cyril's motionless form as he did so. It looked a bit futile - he could see the floor through the hole in his chest - but he dragged him around the corner out of the firing line. As he did, both he and Joe heard the distinctive metallic footfall of another coming through the portal - and another.
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"Fall back!" said Joe urgently. "Let the tripwires do their job!" With Birapeer and Marcus' help, he threaded Cyril's inert form through the tripwires, while Anné, Lethbridge-Stewart and Pte Mason covered their backs. Jimmy Wispa followed his professional instincts and popped his head around the corner, camera ready, and snapped a couple of photographs of the approaching aliens. It was his first good look at the aliens and as he lowered his camera, the wrongness of what he was seeing hit him like a physical blow. The hideous blend of living creature and alien metal, the unpleasant way they moved and not least the whacking great guns the things were carrying, sent a wave of fear ripping through him. Spinning, he lurched away back towards the exit and clean daylight.
With everyone past the tripwires, the party retreated rapidly up the ramp (again) and into the sunshine. A series of swift orders from Lethbridge-Stewart soon had the soldiers in an arc around the ramp, in good cover among the ruins, rifles ready. The surviving agents did likewise, Anné setting herself a bit further away to better suit L'Etranger's range. Jimmy huddled down near Cyril's still form, wondering what he'd gotten himself into.
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A tense couple of moments passed. Then, with a rippling triple detonation, the three grenades attached to the tripwires went off, followed almost instantly by a much bigger explosion that lifted the whole hillside above the tunnels and then dropped it to settle slightly lower. A huge cloud of dust and pebbles blew out of the ramp entrance, and then silence fell. The endless whispering of the Mi-Go voices was gone.
Anné stepped over to Cyril and knelt down, wincing as the tainted power of the Healing spell flowed through her into his body. The parapsychologist coughed and opened his eyes, which travelled down his chest to the perfectly circular hole burned in his shirt and the puckered scar underneath. He gasped his thanks as the others cautiously headed down the ramp to see what was left. Great chunks of rock filled the opening a little past the inscribed archway; there was no way they were getting back into the complex.
After a pause, someone said, "What was our mission remit exactly?" Another pause. "To stop whatever was going on here," said someone else. Quiet descended once more. The portal hadn't stopped working when the console fell apart, and the room with it in was outside the radius of the apparent collapse; so it was possible that it remained operational. "They can't get out," said someone hopefully. "They got in," said a saner voice.
There was a thoughtful pause.
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"We'll need excavation equipment," said Marcus, "no way we'll get the native workers back." Joe nodded at the frightened-looking soldiers. "We'll also need bigger guns," he said, "Machine guns and something armour-piercing, preferably."
Leaning on an improvised crutch, Lethbridge-Stewart gave his remaining men orders to withdraw to the ridge above the site and guard it until he and the party returned. They were distinctly unhappy about being left, and he had to assert his authority to make the orders stick. That done, the party, the Lieutenant and the mentally-collapsed Pte Dawson boarded the Army lorry and the desert truck and headed back to Cairo.
On their return to Cairo, the party parked the truck at SIME and reported back to RJ, who had them thoroughly debriefed and their collected evidence sent for analysis. The building had a small darkroom, so Cyril and Jimmy's films were taken for development along with the ones sent back earlier.
RJ agreed thoroughly with their conclusion that the site needed re-visiting with better equipment. Specifically, he sent a truck straight back with a radio set, and set about organizing bigger weapons - a mortar, a Vickers machine gun and a Boys anti-tank rifle.
Over the next couple of days, the agents resupplied, studied various texts and recovered from their adventures. Joe and Birapeer held a couple of sessions training for the others, showing them the basics of accurate grenade-throwing (excepting Cyril whose chest muscles were still healing) and shooting with the machine gun.
The photos came back from developing, and while the pictures of the artifacts and ruins were fine, every single one that should have shown a Mi-Go showed nothing of the sort. They simply weren't there. RJ was not surprised; he'd been in contact with Clemens Park and Section M had mentioned that reported encounters with Mi-Go had included the comment that photos of them didn't work.
The prisoners sent back with the first truck-load proved equally unhelpful. Even under severe interrogation, they were unable to remember to where they had taken the loads of extracted pitchblende. At one point, Marcus went around them and quietly took blood samples, without explaining why.
After two days, the soldiers on site radioed back to advise that the native workers had showed up again, looking for employment. Apparently their commercial instincts had overridden their fear. They were told to come back in a couple of days when there would indeed be work for them to do.
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Joe was determined to add a Bren gun to the party's equipment before facing Augmented Mi-Go again, but RJ was unable to source one through regular channels. However, Achmed suggested he might know a man... Joe gave him a budget of e£100 and sent him to see what he could do.
The next morning, Achmed pulled Joe aside and told him he had a contact who could furnish the required hardware; he'd set up a meeting that night. It was in the Berka, Cairo's Red Light district, in a night club called Djo Loh's Bar.
Late that night, after evading the ever-present redcaps, Joe, Birapeer and Marcus followed Achmed into Djo Loh's bar deep in the Berka. The place was thick with smoke from various sources, and sultry temptresses swayed past as low, sleazy jazz played in the background.
As they crossed the crowded room, Joe spotted a scrawny youth sliding his hand inside Marcus' jacket, and whirled on him, placing the barrel of his pistol flat against the man's forehead. Everyone froze and silence fell, and Marcus felt his wallet drop back down into his pocket. "Go away!" said Joe quietly. Very, very carefully, the pickpocket backed away, then fled. After a pause, people went back to what they were doing.
From that point on, the agents had a fair amount of space at the bar.
Achmed introduced them to a swarthy, evil-looking Egyptian whom he named as Mohammed Shava. He handed him a wad of the currency Joe had given him (without allowing him to see how much!) and Shava bowed his head rather formally. His foot kicked gently at a bag under the table which clinked. "A pleasure doing business with you," he said in an oily voice. Birapeer leaned closer. "Remember," he said, "we know who you are." Shava appeared unworried. "Likewise," he said, "I know who you are..."
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Joe lifted the bag and the group left the bar, eyes peeled for trouble but finding nothing. A little surprised at getting away with it so easily, they headed back towards Shepheards. A couple of blocks later, still deep in the Berka, they realized they were being followed. A moment later, shadows detached themselves from the darkness, and two local thugs appeared, walking towards them, objects in their hands that looked unconducive to a nice evening.
 Keeper Note: Critical strike and successful Martial Arts, which means double damage, doubled. Or in other words, don't even bother rolling dice... . |
Marcus accelerated, calling out in greeting and extending a hand as if meeting an acquaintance, while Joe and Birapeer pretended to fall into an argument. Achmed shrank back, clearly afraid. Then Birapeer suddenly sprinted forwards to close range. His tulwar rang softly as it was drawn and in one move lashed across the neck of the nearest bruiser. Trailed by a great spout of blood, his head arced through the air to drop onto the floor with a meaty smack.
Joe hefted his nasty little commando weapon, in its club format, and walloped the other man ahead of them with it; he too went down, stunned. Marcus spun, and fired his horribly illegal sleeve gun at one of the men behind, winging him slightly. Birapeer's sword slashed past him and the man went down, coughing blood. The fourth turned to flee but Marcus pulled a heavy combat knife from a pocket and hurled it. More by luck than judgement he stuck it in the man's leg, dropping him to the cobbles. Running after it, he pulled it out of the man's neck and cut his throat before he could recover.
Joe blinked at this fairly bloodthirsty behaviour from the older academic, then turned to tying up the man he'd stunned. While he did this, Birapeer took the severed head and doubled back to the club, where the bouncers on the door declined to let him in carrying it. "Do you recognize him?" he asked, holding it up. One shook his head, but the other cried "It's Omar! He does occasional 'work' for people who come here; but I've not seen him for weeks." Birapeer grinned his frightening grin. "He met with a terrible accident. He was hit by a fly."
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Session Date: 8th May 2018 |
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Keeper Note: "Three grenades at once - will that damage whatever they use for power?" said the players. "Pff! No chance," sez I and rolled dice. 01. Well, there's a thing...