A Sea of...What did you say?

Sunday, Jan. 27th, 1925, 2am

The gang stands in the middle of the dark road on this moonless night, wondering why one of the drivers ran off screaming. Huh. Something must have bothered him. In any case, the giant, dead flying worm lies across the top of the front taxi, and it reeks likes nobody's business. Eight cultists lay dead. The building from which they came looms on the side of the road, no light or sound. The gang decides to investigate.

Just before opening one of the large doors, a car starts up around the side of the building and zooms off towards Manhattan. Half the gang decides to stay and search, while the other half hops in a car and gives chase. Pancho, everyone learns, has terrific driving skills, so he takes the wheel while Sullie, Ambrosch, and Dr. I pull out what guns they have and start shooting at the vehicle ahead.

They are definitely cultists in the car ahead, and the cultists start shooting back. Pancho takes a nasty bullet in the shoulder but keeps his cool and drives like a pro. Ambrosch takes a serious hit to the head, and though he remains conscious, he deeply wonders what on earth he thinks he is doing with these people. Ambrosch shoots out a tire on the cultists's car. It loses speed but the thing keeps going. It eventually pulls up to the very Waldorf Astoria where the gang has rooms. The four in the taxi trade shots with the cultists before the cultists run inside.

Sullie decides to take the two wounded investigators to the hospital rather than chase the cultists. Sullie realizes then too that the giant winged worm has not fallen off the car. He thinks it best to drive out of the city, camouflage the car, and walk back. During all this, Dr. Iaokai and Sullie spend a couple of hours getting acquainted. Dr. I does not catch everything Sullie is saying, but he understands the comment about his mother perfectly well.

Meanwhile Mickey, Oscar, Babe Ruth, and the cab driver who did not run off in terror all look for the best entrance to this dark building. They turn on taxi headlights to discover a few things: there are three sets of doors in front, there are tons of animal tracks leading into the huge center door, and there's a sign on the building reading "Balley Bros. Meat Packing." The sound of metal scraping is heard from inside.

They enter the left-most front door--Mickey leading with The Punisher (his slug shotgun), Babe wielding a tire-iron, and Oscar thinking that everything's going to be fine. Mickey finds a light switch. It's a slaughterhouse--tables, giant saws and knives, lots of meat hooks, one of which seems to hold the rest of poor Hank. Four cultists are standing on an upper balcony, and Mickey takes three of them out immediately. The fourth, out of sight now, yells, "GIVE BACK THE MASK!" He then starts to chant something. Before anyone can do much else, what appears to be a sea of slaughtered pig heads starts rolling into the building from out back, each head chomping fiercely at the air as it rolls. The cab driver loses it and runs straight into the oncoming wave of animated pig heads, where he is soon overcome. The other three investigators do not stay to hear the last of his screams.

Back at the hotel, the gang discovers that the cultists had apparently tried to break into Oscar & Pancho's room, were surprised by local police, and they all ended up killing each other. Though the room is filled with the corpses of cultists and police, nothing seems to be missing. Oscar requests a new room.

They decide to have the mask locked in the hotel safe for now. A note has been left at the desk for them: YOU HAVE WON THE BATTLE YOU WILL LOSE THE WAR. Collecting their thoughts, they decide that they have all the information they can get in New York, and it's time to start investigating their lead in London. They call Tex. ("No, Nishy, not Texas.")

Tex assures them that he and the government are both on their side, and urge the gang to get to the bottom of all this un-American nonsense. Tex has in fact been in contact with J. Edgar Hoover, and the government has an interest in helping the investigations, so they are sending along an agent to assist. Tex will arrange passage to London, and will even send along a medical team to help ensure the healing of any wounded investigators. Two of the three nurses will even be real nurses. Ambrosch, though, decides that his place is here in America. He cannot imagine depriving the world of 95% violin skills.

Babe Ruth's 1925 stats...

Party's Just Getting Started

Saturday night (January 27)

The group spends several more hours socializing at the Carlyle mansion. Ambrosch wows the crowd with his playing. Pancho attracts a group of ladies. Hank ends up playing fruit-ball with Babe Ruth in the backyard. Sullie talks to the guard outside patrolling with the dogs. Apparently he foiled a break-in at the Carlyle mansion a month ago by cultists, presumably looking for the books which you now have in your keeping.

The group also makes the acquaintance of a Dr. Nashingu Iaokai, a Japanese parapsychologist who is interested in helping you with your work. His English is a little rusty, so he's not sure what to think about Texas, but he's ready to go anywhere else with you. Plus he needs a ride back to the city.

The gang learns a few more details about the Carlyle Expedition members (perhaps Hypatia's joining the group had something to do with an abortion; Robert Huston treated both Erica and Roger Carlyle before going off on this expedition) and finally the gang decides to leave.

On the way home, on the street in the dark stand three cultists, one chanting with his hands up. Before Mickey has a chance to take him out with his shotgun, a giant flying worm with a bearded face swoops down out of the sky and lands on the front car. This is all finally too much for Hank, who flees into the dark screaming. Cultists are now attacking from several sides.

A relatively short fire-fight leaves the worm thing dead on top of the front car, all the cultists on the road dead (total of about eight?), but not before one of them tosses the macheted-off head of Hank at you. Hank will not be returning. Probably.

Once things quiet down, anyone who can draw his attention from the scene of carnage long enough notices a large, dark building here in the middle of nowhere. These cultists came out of there, didn't they?

Of Worms and Men: 

Friday & Saturday (Jan. 26-27, 1925)

With poor old Silas tethered to the wall above the pit, the gang (at Oscar's insistence) decides to move the eight-foot stone cover that seems to be keeping something down in that pit. Whatever it is, it's making a strange wailing noise, and the noise only grows louder and more strange when the cover is lifted. It takes two men on the pulley to get the stone cover out of the way. Mickey and Pancho choose not to be present and opt to guard the top of the stairs.

A flashlight reveals the source of what sounds like people wailing in torment, a horror beyond imagining: ten feet down, taking up almost the entire width of the pit, is a giant, translucent, undulating purple skin--like a huge alien worm, but when it moves, a dozen human faces push against the skin from within and scream, tortured mouths surfacing and then retracting into the bulging mass. Sanity is lost, and the sight is far too much for Hank, who loses control. Oscar grapples Hank into control before he is able to hurl himself into the pit in a mad fit. And the thing starts to emerge.

After a few seconds of heated debate, and bullet from Ambrosch that seems to do no damage whatsoever, the gang flees the Ju-Ju House basement, and with a final glimpse over their shoulders, they see the wormy horror rise up, and a collection of mouths start chewing into Silas.

On the way out of the building, Hank spots a worm on the ground, a phobia is born. Worms are now Hank's special nightmare. The group hails a taxi and ends up punching out the frenzied Hank so as not to attract too much of Harlem's attention.

The gang calls Tex, and speaks directly to him this time. He assures them of his support to continue the investigations. Things like that should not exist in New York City, or anywhere in the world. He will place a call to the authorities about what you saw, and he has offered to pay for the next eventual stage of the journey, to London, where he has contacts. He also promises to have one of the best psychiatrists he can find visit Hank tomorrow morning.

In the morning the psychiatrist comes and gives Mickey some sedative injections, to be given to Hank once a day, which will help keep him manageable. He explains, however, that Hank is incredibly fragile and will only improve with six months in a sanitarium.

Once evening arrives, the group taxis up to the Carlyle mansion north of NYC. They split up at the gala event and each find bits and pieces of helpful information about Roger Carlyle, his sister Erica, and his fateful expedition.

Erica Carlyle was horribly frustrated with her brother, who squandered their family's money and nearly lost them their fortune. His disappearance, which she blames on his infatuation with some African woman, provided her and the estate's secretary with great relief. Erica, a competent business woman, has not only kept the Carlyle textile and lumber business out of trouble, she has improved it since she took over, and the idea of her brother returning irks her greatly. When Dr. Finnegan (Mickey) suggests to her that her brother Roger might still be alive, she wants nothing to do with the news. "As long as he never returns to New York, I don't care what you discover about him. He always used to spend time reading those awful books. They're in the west library. Look for Poe."

A search of the west library, observed by some east-Indian gentlemen, reveals a book about Edgar Allen Poe, a combination for a safe, and then the safe itself. Four old, strange books. Oscar will be busy reading for a long time.