Session 15
From Tatters of the King
Session Report - Played Monday 25th September, 2006
Thursday February 16th 1930
--continued--
The investigators stand at the threshold of Drakmar, in kingdom of Mustang, the final destination of Malcolm Quarrie's Pilgrimage of Grace.
A quick count shows there are somewhere between 50 and 100 caves spread across the cliffs at heights between 30 and 150 feet about the valley floor. The investigators cross the valley for a closer look. En route they locate the remnants of the Italian expedition’s campsite and nearby a large flat stone stained with a large amount of blood. Though the blood is not fresh, nor is it more than a few weeks old.
Following a trail of blood spots Withers locates a fresh cairn under which it is assumed a body has been buried. The investigators discuss disturbing the dead, but decide against it.
Browne and Saunders climb up to the nearest cave. It is worn smooth as if by centuries of feet and leads to a small chamber whose walls are covered in thousands of tally marks in groups of nine. In the centre of the chamber is a small pile of bones which appear to be mix of birds and human finger bones.
Umberto thinks he catches a glimpse of something from the corner of his eye and sees a stone falling down the cliff. He climbs to where he thinks it came from and discovers a cave with a narrow crawlspace heading back into the cliff. He thinks better of crawling inside.
Several more caves are explored before night falls. Saunders finds a small pit filled with strips of dried human scalps. Other caves are connected by internal tunnels, but there is no sign of life or of fresh activity, and no further sign of Quarrie or his companions.
The investigators camp for the night in the first cave they had explored. During the night both Browne and Umberto have dreams of bestial savagery which feel like the intrusions of an alien intelligence, but which have none of the terrible beauty of Hastur. Each of them awakens, heart pounding.
Friday February 17th 1930
As dawn approaches, Umberto is on watch, and it is he who first hears a disturbing human sobbing sound coming from a cave mouth high above the campsite. Taking his gun and a torch, Umberto climbs to investigate, waking nobody else.
When Saunders wakes up, Umberto is gone. He wakes the others and they hear the sobbing sound. Taking their packs and their weapons they clamber up towards the noise and enter the cave from which it issues. In leads into a tunnel that twists through the rock until a pale glow can be seen in the distance. The sobbing, oddly, is fading, but as it fades the deep slow heartbeat sound heard by Browne the day before is clearly audible to all.
Nervously the party edges forward as the passage opens up into a large chamber dominated by an archway on the far side which is lit up with a pearly glow. Beyond the arch can be seen the silhouette of a vast immobile bulk, a great squatting buddha with the head of an elephant, over the surface of which smaller creatures scurry. Despite the lack of any clarity in the image it is very disturbing.
There are two other entrances into the chamber and it is through one of these that Umberto now emerges, being held at spearpoint by a hideous black-skinned humanoid. The creature is a mass of naked muscle, but only 4ft tall. Its bald head is mis-shapen, its features inhuman. Before anyone can react a dozen more of the creatures emerge from the other entrance, and from behind the investigators can be heard many more, who have clearly entered the tunnel that they are using.
The creatures do not speak, but from the archway emerges a man - or rather what remains of a man. Despite his hideous injuries and bizarre deformities, this appears to be Anzalone. Naked, with his eyes put out, his mouth a droolong, bloody, toothless hole and most horrible of all his nose and ears stretched, ragged and moving on their own in sick parody of the trunk and ears of an elephant.
Both Withers and Browne raise their guns and fire, putting an end to Anzalone's obvious misery. The black creatures, clearly having never encountered firearms, swarm over the investigators. Saunders fails to get a shot off, but both Withers and Browne shoot a couple dead before they are disarmed. The creatures show no anger or distress at the deaths of some of their number, and do no violence to the investigators beyond disarming them.
The apparent chief of the creatrures goes to Anzalone's corpse and examines it in apparent annoyance, then gives an order in a language that sounds vaguely Tibetan. Umberto is dragged over towards the gate and his hand held out. The chief uses a knife to cut his hand open and then paints a crude Yellow Sign on the wall beside the gate using Umberto's bloody palm.
The light from the gate changes to a pale cold blue, and the shadow of Chaugnar Faughn (as Umberto will shortly identify it to his companions) disappears.
The helpless investigators are forced through the gate, where a horrible high pitched sound overwhelms their senses. The time spend travelling through the gate seems simultaneously to be mere seconds and endless aeons. As the sound fades the investigators find themselves standing in the middle of an endless icy plain under a starlit sky. They are still surrounded by the black humanoids, and there in front of them, with his own retinue of the creatures, stands Malcolm Quarrie.
Leng
NB: Whilst in Leng the investigators' watches refuse to keep time in any consistent manner. Within a few hours nobody has any idea how long they have been there, their very sense of time has become unreliable.
Astonished at the appearance of Westerners, Quarrie is full of questions. He soon discovers the gist of their purpose and how it was they came to be here. He is unsurprised, and not unhappy, to discover that Bacon and Edwards are dead, and pleased to find that Roby reached Carcosa and that his wife and daughter are well.
He amswers the investigators' questions, explaing how the black humanoids, who he calls the Tcho-Tcho worship the elephant god Chaugnar Faughn and have waited centuries for the White Acolyte believing that he will bring Chaugnar Faughn to Earth. In truth it was the King in Yellow who tricked them long ago into believing this, for it is the King that awaits the Acolyte.
He explains how Carlo Schippone, maddened by the dreams of the elephant god, slew Major Delnegro in the night and fled and how Anzalone was taken by the Tcho-Tcho to be Chaugnar Faughn's companion as had been promised to them long ago. Quarrie regrets the deaths of the rest of his expedition, but believes their sacrifice worthwhile.
He explains that one of the five people here now must be the White Acolyte, though obviously he hopes that he himself will be the one. The Tcho-Tcho are ready to leave now - they are to go to 'the Upper House', the place where the King will come down from Aldebaran to Leng. The task of the Acolyte will be to lead him from there to Earth.
Quarrie is erudite, charming and has a pleasant nature, but he is absolutely immovable in his resolve to guide the King to Earth. As the strange party of humans and Tcho-Tcho starts its trek across the cold wastes of Leng, the investigators start to work on trying to convince Quarrie that what he aims to do is misguided and terribly dangerous. He sees this as a test of faith and sets about trying to convince the others, especially Browne of the rightness of his cause.
Several hours into the trek across the featureless waste a great flying creature appears in the dstance. As it gets closer its true size and hideous appearance becomes obvious. Even though a couple of the investigators still carry revolvers (the Tcho-Tcho didn't recognise those as weapons and only took longarms) they decide against drawing them now, as the Tcho-Tcho would likely seize them. The monster screeches and dives at the group. Most dive to the ground, but Withers tries to seize a spear from a Tcho-Tcho and as they grapple for the weapon the great alien bird snatches the Tcho-Tcho and flies up with its prey. there is a crunch, a spray of blood and the Tcho-Tcho's severed head falls, striking Withers on the way down.
"Amazing," says Quarrie, "A shantak bird. this truly must be Leng!"
The Tcho-Tcho chief picks up the severed head and as the group moves on, begins to chew lumps off of it. The humans decide not to look.
The trek continues for hours, and the invetsigators and Quarrie are echausted. Saunders is suffering especially badly, having not yet recovered from the trip to Drakmar. Browne realises that they are heading towards a bright star close to the horizon. he points it out to Quarrie and they agree it must be Albebaran. It is Browne who first notices that Aldebaran has dipped behind some sort of a strcuture on the horizon. The Upper House is at last in sight.
