Crack’d and Crook’d Manse.P2 Conclusion

Crack’d and Crook’d Manse.P2 (Essie, Peter, Jimmy, Richie)

Saturday noon, April 4th, 1924: Jimmy had just fired his flaregun which caused the Pseudopod to exit back up the fireplace flue. “What the hell was that?!” As they gathered their senses, Essie caught sight of the saltshaker under the sitting chair inside the room. Richie happened to notice a kitchen canister lying under the divan. Jimmy quickly discarded his cloak as parts of the creatures’ gore dripped from it.

[Sanity check: 1/2] As they pondered what next, they jumped at the sight of ripples along the wall: to imply the creature moved within the walls. “No wonder the wallpaper cracked and moisture everywhere. It’s like a slim trail.” Apprehensive, Jimmy reentered the Den to gather the shotgun and emptied shells. That’s when he saw the cannister labeled “Salt”. He quickly began loading the empty shells with gun-powder and salt (2 minutes per shell as a delicate operation).

Peter stood guard in the hallway door to the Master-bedroom while Essie and Richie searched the room filled with expensive furnishings. Richie pocketed the gold-plated cigar case and diamond tiepin from the nightstand. Essie pondered the ring of salt around the bed and also salt lining the windowsills. [Occult] She remembered salt used as protection from witches and evil spirits and negative energy. Yet before she could comment, Richie bolted from the room (fear of mirrors). Thankfully Peter was in position to corral him and shook him to his senses, “Woo, buddy, we’re better off in numbers. Remember it attacked Jimmy when he was alone in the Den.”

Essie went down the hallway to search the last room, “Jimmy, save some of that salt for me to coat my arrows. First, I need to find something sticky.” Luckily she found the bathroom and its medicine cabinet. Confidence infused her as she read “NaCl” drawn in the dust-coated mirror. “Remember Cornthwaite’s crumpled note about a simple solution for its weakness? Salt!” And that’s when she saw the ripple climbing the bathroom wall!

Meanwhile, as Richie joined Jimmy crafting salted shotgun shells, Peter searched the nearest Guest-bedroom in hopes of finding… Cornthwaite’s body or more evidence? Already on edge, scratching from under the bed sent him running from the room.

Essie’s report of the creature in the bathroom compared to Peter’s suspicion it in the Guest-bedroom confirmed his worse fear, “There’s more than one!” [20% Sanity loss= Bout-Of-Madness (Crazy Plan)] He snatched the salt cannister from Jimmy and ran through the hallway slinging salt left and right and into the Guest-bedroom, “We’ll create our own protective ring!” A raccoon scrambled from under the bed. Peter threw his coat over it to then grab the bundle. “We’ll use this as bait to draw the creature to the bathroom where we can attack from two doors!”

Essie rolled her wax-tipped arrows into what was left of the salt. They impatiently waited for the creature to take the bait. [His BOM subsided] Peter gave up the wait, untied the raccoon and tossed it out the window, “What? Cats land on their feet and raccoons are just a larger version.”

Richie entered the room to the south and discovered it a Trophy-room filled with collections from ancient tombs (pots, vases, statuettes, carvings, idols, paintings, etc.). 

[Occult] He recognized one idol statue, “Multi-arms and eyes; this looks like Earth Mother or what I read described as Goat-mother of a Thousand Young.” As he carried it out of the room, something crashed behind him. He hustled to join the others with the idea, “I beat the creature to it. Maybe it has been searching for this. We could use it as bait.” [Hard-INT] Essie doubted the idea, “The thing has free roam of the house and the idol was just sitting exposed on a shelf. Maybe it was baiting YOU.”

And that’s why Peter came up with a new plan, “OK, I’ll volunteer as bait holding the idol while alone in the Den. But first someone needs to cast Flesh Ward on me.” [Ironic how Jimmy cast the spell: bestowing 12 armor on Peter at the expense of 3 Sanity lost by himself and injured to boot (excess Magic-Points roll into damage).]

CLIMAX

And that’s when they heard creaking from the stairs. They dared to look… the reporter Joe Virelli stared back at them, “Hey, did you find a bathroom leak? Why all the moisture in the house? Anyway, I imagine you found Mr. Cornthwaite? I came to interview him. The truck driver outside said he was delivering an order…”

It wasn’t Joe who scared the crap out of them. It was the monstrosity bubbling up the stairs from behind Joe, that filled the entire downstairs! And without warning, it lashed out with one of many Pseudopods and snatched Joe from his feet and pulled him into its gelatinous mass! [Sanity check: 1d4/(1d20+2)]

• Richie raised his shotgun… the target filled the downstairs…how could he miss? Fright: he peppered the balcony railing.
• [Bout-Of-Madness (Relaxed)] Peter confidently stepped in front of Richie, “I got this.” He leveled his double-barreled sawed-off shotgun and fired both barrels loaded with salt-shells: the salt spray took a divot out of the creature that only continued to bubble forth up the stairs.
• [20% Sanity loss= Bout-Of-Madness (Gloat)] Jimmy scoffed at their feeble efforts as he pulled the pin on his last grenade, “You’re hitting too light. Gotta go big.” His confidence was infused by the sight of the crater the blast caused. But in actuality: the blog was barely hurt and flowed back unto itself as it reached the last step.
• Essie paused with the thought of burning down the house but settled for firing a salt-tipped arrow that melted through the creature that now seemed to flow around the arrow tip.
• Richie broke the idol over his knee as if it a voodoo-doll affect to break the spine of the creature. [Brawl 01: critical] He grabbed Peter’s collar and pulled him from the stairs in retreat to the bathroom window.
• Peter laughed as went along willingly as he reloaded his shotgun, “Hee, hee. Not a big deal. The next blast will do the trick.”
• Jimmy picked up the broken idol pieces and threw them at the creature before bolting towards the Guest-bedroom for his own escape out a window. “This one has a desk under the window to aid your climb out.”
• Essie followed Richie and Peter into the bathroom.

Richie exhaled with relief when he saw the trellis outside the window and began to climb out. [Climb- fail; DEX- hard] He failed to realize the soaked house meant loosened nails: the trellis easily separated from the house and came crashing down. Richie somehow managed to roll with the landing.

Realizing that escape compromised, a relaxed Peter strolled into the master-bedroom to collect the salt from around the bed and windowsills as a delaying defense for his own escape. No rush: he lit up a cigar before opening the window and jumped. The height didn’t scare him… overconfident in his plan. Not that he remembered his Flesh-Ward armor would protect him from the fall.

Jimmy closed the guest-bedroom door before climbing on the desk to open the jammed window. As a last gesture of defiance, he fired his flaregun at the bed hoping the fire (and salt Peter had slung into the room) would deter the creature. He surveyed the nearby tree and jumped for the nearest branch. [Jump+Luck] Thankfully a lightweight [SIZ40 and Build -1], the branch held.

Essie straddled the bathroom window and called out, “Richie, catch me.” [her Hard Jump; Richie’s failed Brawl to catch] Minor injuries to both was worth the escape.

EPILOGUE

Essie and Richie came upon the scene of Peter helping Jimmy out of the tree. They didn’t linger as Pseudopods sprang forth from the side of the house.

They hustled past Cornthwiate’s car and down the gravel driveway till they came to a dump-truck parked outside the gate. The driver announced, “My apologies to Mr. Cornthwaite. Took me almost a month to gather a truckload of salt. Where do you want it dumped?” Peter edged the driver over to the passenger seat as he took control and drove into the estate. At the first sight of a Pseudopod, the truck-driver bailed out and ran for the gate and kept running all the way to town.

They thought about shoveling the salt one shovel-full at a time into the house. They settled for ringing the house with a barrier of salt and then dumping the rest down the coal-chute into the basement.

The Dodge brothers were reluctant to pay the offered reward, “But you didn’t find Mr. Cornthwaite.” Richie spoke up with a false bravado of lawyerese, “Au contraire monsieur. Mr. Cornthwaite has returned. Just ask the delivery man who trucked in a load a salt. As for the house itself, I’m afraid it suffered water damage during the man’s absence.”

At least the newspapers mentioned Peter’s agency in the Gamwell story of a local reporter now missing and a crazed truck driver’s delusional story of a possessed house. Hey, any news is good advertising… gets your name out there.

BACKGROUND

Arthur Cornthwaite, a brilliant and wealthy archaeologist, purchased the Fitzgerald Manse in 1919. He spent many a happy hour researching for what he planned to be his greatest expedition: to discover the final secrets of a lost civilization of South America. After extensive preparations, in 1923 Arthur Cornthwaite departed for the jungles of South America. His expedition traveled deep into the jungle where they set to work searching for the huge stone structure that was the lost civilization's temple. Despite constant harassment by the present-day inhabitants of the area (who were far from happy to see these meddling interlopers in their ancestral lands), they found the temple.

Inside, great carvings told the history of the missing civilization, a people who worshipped the earth with passion and fervor. According to the carvings, they had raised this temple to the Earth Mother (Shub-Niggurath) in their efforts to entice their god to manifest herself and live among them as detailed in the glyphs.

Cornthwaite's expedition paid the carvings' warnings no more heed than one would any other quaint local legend, and ventured deeper into the bowels of the temple where they encountered the spawn of Shub-Niggurath: an unearthly mass of gelid consistency and enormous size, a huge pulsing pool of corpulent organic horror. Strange mouths and   weird eyelike organs formed and dissolved amid its squirming bulk. Some of the expedition members were caught by it. Some gladly threw themselves into it, preferring death rather than acknowledge the existence of such a thing in a rational world. Some escaped only to be killed in ambushes laid for them by the local population (desperate to keep the terrible secret away and unknown to the rest of the world).

Arthur Cornthwaite was the lone team member to reach civilization. He left the horror far behind him, locked his exploring gear away in a chest in the attic, and vowed never again to travel south of Mexico. Or so he thought. Inadvertently, he'd carried the nightmarish thing's spores back with him from the temple in his clothing. In the sheltering darkness of the attic, the spores woke, grew stronger, joined, and expanded until a tiny monster crawled into the walls to search for food. Soon meat and other foodstuffs went missing from the kitchen. As the thing grew, insects, rats, and mice became its first kills, before it graduated onto small animals on or near the property. Its size increased rapidly, along with its slow and patient hunger. Soon, a local pet or two went missing. Then, the gardener took a nap under a shady tree and was never seen again.

Cornthwaite came to realize the threat and released his remaining staff. He dared not leave the house, even briefly, for fear the creature would escape in the meantime. He dared not enlist outside aid for fear that more would die. So, instead, he resolved to stay and fight to the end. Then purely by accident, Cornthwaite discovered its weakness: an aversion to salt. He phoned for an order to be delivered. But before he could exploit this, the wily creature trapped him in the monk hole where he lined a salt barrier for protection. Protection from the creature but not starvation. Since the nearby area was void of life (it had already been consumed), it ventured further from the house and consumed a drowsy horse from a nearby field. And now fresh human meat has entered its parlor.