Oneirocritica
From Gothic Earth Wiki
| Oneirocritica | |
|---|---|
| Chapter: | Surrey |
| Play Date: | December 5, 2011 |
| Story Date: | March 16-23, 1899 |
| Players in Attendance | |
| Evan Coopes (Fang, Lyon Omen) Jeff Coopes (Caleb Lonergan) Kelly Lee (Elise LeBlanc) Scott Hardie (GM) | |
| Character Appearances | |
| Clementine Grose, Gao, Melchitt, Moon-Face, Rose Malveau, Thomas Carnacki | |
| Character References | |
| Ambrosia Moreshead, Coraline Harrington, Douglas Quint, Enoch, Exra, Fayt Leigngod, Flora Quint, Franklin Jackson, Fredric Delaplane, Gant Harrington, Grace Jessel, Herne the Hunter, Mabel Scioto, Miles Quint, Number 1, Number 3, Peter Quint, Roy Harrington, Solomon Kane, Susan Newby Quint, William StricklandTemplate:UnidentifiedCharacters | |
| Order | |
| Overall Session #: | 82 |
| Previous Session: | Hic Sunt Dracones |
| Next Session: | Strange Bedfellows |
The fourth game session in Chapter XVII: Surrey was played on December 5, 2011.
Aaron Shurtleff was unavailable, so Gao was played as an NPC.
Contents |
Plot
Mrs. Grose's Room
Getting frustrated by the haunted House of Bly, Lyon Omen decided to start smashing every mirror in sight. He started with the mirror that Gao had carried into Mrs. Grose's room, sending a tiny shard of glass into Caleb Lonergan's eye and distracting the aged escapist. Beneath the cracked glass, Elise LeBlanc spotted a scrap of paper, and pulled out a faded scrap of newspaper. It was an excerpt from the New York Daily News, dated September 13, 1897:
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...And the vagrancy problem has taken a darker turn here in New York City. The numbers of homeless people has nearly doubled in the past decade, and violence among the homeless is also increasing. Many citizens are opposed to the vagrant problem, and advocate forcibly removing them from town. However, advocacy groups say this could be a disaster in the making. "Shipping these people out will not solve the basic problems in our society," says Mabel Scioto, spokeswoman for Hand Up, Not Hand Out. "If people could come to see the homeless as people instead of an issue, we could really move forward with helping them raise themselves up from the situation in which they find themselves. Just today, I saw a young boy, couldn't have been older than 11 or 12, panhandling for food in the City Park. I think he might have had an eye infection, because his left eye seemed raw and inflamed. I tried to talk to him, but he grunted and ran off into the bushes. Is this where we are as a society? That our children, although ravaged with illness, need to beg for food on the street corners? We need to educate these homeless children, so they can get themselves jobs and become productive members of society!" |
The group recognized Gao's description. Caleb became excited by the prospect of a reward and joked that Gao was worth money. "No!" the child protested. "No sell!" The group didn't notice her run out of the room at first. Lyon smashed another mirror, this one mounted on the wall. Behind the glass was a tiny notebook with a sheet of paper wrapped around it:
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Property of City of New York P.D. Records Room These pages, apparently from a journal that I theorize belonged to the deceased, were found at the crime scene in the abandoned building at 464 Elm Street. The pages were discovered around (and in one case, within) the corpse, and the condition of the pages was terrible. Many pages are missing and/or illegible. Please see attached transcripts of our best estimates of what the pages read. Due to the incomplete nature of the pages, it was difficult to determine the proper order of the passages, but based on the context of the writings, we believe that this could be the proper sequence. The passage preceded by an asterisk is the only legible part of the page discovered in the corpse, and it is of note that the handwriting seems different. Original pages are sealed within 2 bags (the page discovered within the corpse’s throat is bagged separately), and are also available upon request. Attempts to discover the child mentioned in the passages have turned up nothing, and inquiries made at area orphanages have also led nowhere. I remain available for further questioning if you require it at a later date, for I would truly like to see this horrific case solved. Regards. Detective Strickland |
The journal itself, about the size of a passport, was missing many pages. Others were crumpled or stuffed loosely back into the notebook after having been torn out. In order, the remaining pages read:
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2 April I have just returned from the orphanage. The child is as indicated. At last I believe that our project can move forward. I was uncertain at first that our efforts would ever see the light of day, but this child makes it all possible. I almost regret what the future holds in regards to it, but we must move forward before the end of the century. My research has shown that there is much power in the liminal times, and the shifting of the century should bring about The Conception. Huzzah that it comes in our times! 13 April The agent has acquired the child. It is a mewling thing, and I do not relish being involved in its care. However, Number 3 has indicated that she believes that a connection between the child and the Practictioner who performs the ultimate ritual will enhance the favorability of the outcome. I believe that she is jealous of my rise within The Organization, and pettily seeks to fill my time with child care! It matters not. The orders from Above are clear: the child is my responsibility. The child follows me with its eyes as I write this. I know that it is far too young for true understanding, but in my mind, I can almost imagine it knows its fate. I shall not waver. The Preparation begins tonight. 21 June The plan moves forward well! The Solstice Sacrifice has been accepted! There is no doubt that this child shall be the one! I was uncertain when the North candle became extinguished. It almost seemed that it was extinguished by an unseen hand more than it was blown by the wind. I cannot express this to the Eldars. They will think I am on the brink of mental exhaustion, and my fall within The Organization will be swift. If the Eldars have declared the sacrifice a success, only a fool would gainsay them. I am no fool. 16 November Still the child still refuses to speak! It must have some kind of malformation in its vocal apparatus. This wrinkle does not please me. The Eldars do not seem concerned, so things continue to progress. I am more than a little concerned. The child follows me, interacts with me, but refuses to learn the slightest form of communication. Even its hand motions are nearly impossible to decipher! I have my doubts that this child’s grasp on reality is firm. Still, it seems to comprehend well what I say to it, and with few exceptions, it responds as I would wish. The Ritual shall not fail for the ignorance of one child, I shall see to that! 11 February The child grows like a dandelion! I suspect it intends for me to go broke clothing it. It smiles at me, almost as if it can see what I am writing, but that would be impossible from its vantage point across the room. I often wish I could penetrate that stare, and plumb the depths of the secrets it holds. Unfortunately, the husk that would be left would be unsuitable for The Ritual. A pity, for its eyes are most remarkable. I find it odd that a child could have two eyes of differing hues, but the left eye is a piercing cerulean, while the right is most assuredly a chestnut brown. I should discreetly inquire if this could lead to further health problems for it. I did have a minor setback today. I could not find one of my ritual tools today, and after hours of fruitless searching, it turned up back on my altar, where I had originally thought I had laid it. By that time, of course, the omens had passed, and the ritual could not have been performed at its peak. I find myself wondering if the child had not taken it and replaced it later, thwarting my ritual. I cannot believe that I had missed it sitting right there the whole day, and the child is the only one who could have moved it. How could the child have possibly known that one blessed item was the lynchpin to the entire ritual, however? It looks at me innocently, but I suspect that there is more going on in that child's mind than I shall ever know. It was only a minor cleansing ritual, however, and I will have ample opportunities to cleanse the child. I must confess that I am piqued that I missed such a rare opportunity! If this child is attempting to sabotage this Ritual, I shall punish it most severely! 6 September I cannot believe that child scribbled in my journal! If only it knew letters, perhaps I could discover its intent. These scribbles tell me nothing. Now my journal is a page short, and I shall have a tear in it where the page should be. My vexation is high. 18 May I wish this child's walking skill was as impaired as its communication skills! I am seriously considering chaining it to a wall. 21 December At last the day has arrived! All is set for this evening's ritual, and The Organization in its entirety will be on hand. My time with this child is finally over. I believe I shall miss its presence, oddly. However, this must be done. The child seems restless. Perhaps I should perform a ritual to make it more pliable. It would not do for it to disrupt matters. [Date Illegible] Ah! The child is grunting and getting agitated! I believe my minor ritual of compliance is more than called for. Tonight is your big night, my child. We shall make the world ready for The Conception! [Date Illegible] Your Conception is a joke. You toy with forces you cannot understand. You make innocents your victims. Do not meddle further in our affairs, Number One. |
Noticing Gao's absence, the others talked about her freely. Elise said this journal must have been written by the man who "raised" Gao, who she had once seen in another communal dream.[22] Caleb, Lyon, and Thomas Carnacki felt like they understood Gao better now. Carnacki asked if it was possible the Fellowship was studying her; Elise said there had been no previous indication of it. Elise pointed out that everything in the house seemed to revolve around Gao somehow, as if parts of her subconscious were populating this dream. Carnacki asked where the dream started, since they hadn't gone to sleep for the night yet. Was it on the family farm? No, Roy Harrington's ghost was gone from his grave and turned up inside the house, so those were connected. The group tried to remember the last time Gao had slept, and traced it back to her waking from her coma, alone in The Manor, which happened at the very beginning of this case.[79] Elise speculated that Gao might not have woken up from her coma at all, and this whole experience might be in her imagination. Unable to verify this, they decided to forge ahead with the investigation.
From Mrs. Grose's open front window, Elise could see a moonlit garden in front of the house. Searching her nightstand, Caleb found a framed photograph of two young women holding parasols and dressed in fancy spring dresses. He recognized a young Mrs. Grose, who they had already identified as "Clementine" from The Fellowship of the Crimson Dawn. Elise pointed out the other woman as her friend Ambrosia Moreshead. Rifling through Grose's papers in the desk, Lyon found a handwritten list of girls' names:
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Lyon also turned up a spell diagram showing how to seal a doorway permanently, using very similar symbols as those used to create a portal spell, as with The Manor. The door was to be sealed with a large master symbol, which worked best as a two-word phrase: One was too easy to guess; three or more would be too complex for the magic. The spellcaster was to place her hand on the large symbol and say aloud what it meant. If an interloper tried to do this and said the wrong phrase, the door would become permanently sealed off to that person and never open for them again. They recognized this spell as the one sealing the door to Elise and Gao's guest room in the second-floor hallway, on which was drawn a symbol with three vertical lines and one connecting horizontal line.[81] The spell clarified that the circle around them was not part of the symbol. Thinking that the list of girls' names must contain the password, Caleb walked up to the sealed door and placed his hand on the large symbol, saying aloud, "Enid!" The door creaked and groaned as if starting to move, and then suddenly stopped.
Encounters
Meanwhile, Lyon sought more mirrors to smash, to vent his frustration. He entered the bedroom next to Mrs. Grose's, which had previously taken the group to Fayt Leigngod's apartment in Chicago, but now opened to a girl's bedroom. Instead of Flora Quint, he encountered Tiny, the kindergarten-aged ghost that the group had met when they first entered the house.[80] The girl seemed even younger now, and played with two dolls. Lyon asked her what Tiny was short for; she said "Clementine" and confirmed that her last name was Grose. Elise entered the room and befriended her, although she mispronounced her name "Elise Ma Bonk." Elise got her to say that her parents were gone and she was waiting for them to come back, and she couldn't leave this room; she was scared to go outside. When Elise asked her if the Quints were ghosts, she said no, and that Miles and Flora were nice to play with her but were supposed to keep her a secret from Miss Jessel and "the mean old woman." When Elise asked if she knew of any ghosts, she gave a physical description of a man in the woods matching Herne the Hunter. When Elise asked who she was scared of, she said there was a scary man with no eyes and a big gaping crater for a mouth, who she said stared at her in her dreams; she called him "Moon-Face" because of his strange appearance, and she could hear him sucking air at night. The group wondered if Gao had sensed this same presence.
Heading downstairs with to find more clues (or mirrors), Lyon heard a crying baby and followed the sound to a cabinet, where he found a black newborn swaddled in a blanket. He asked Carnacki to fetch Elise, since she knew some black people. She came downstairs and checked the baby's foot, identifying her right away as Rose Malveau, a previous incarnation of her own soul. Elise speculated that time must still be moving backwards and forwards, as Lyon continued looking younger and younger.
Sitting with Tiny so that she didn't disappear on them, Caleb noticed a visitor at the door: Melchitt. The cat shook his head at Caleb and said, "You made Gao cry." When Caleb protested and asked why, Melchitt shrugged and said, "You should apologize." Unable to convince Tiny to come with him, Caleb left her and headed downstairs, following the sound of crying to the dining room. Lifting up the fine tablecloth on the dinner table, he found Gao crying underneath. "No sell! Fayt no sell! Caleb no sell!" she protested, alluding to a previous incident where she mistakenly thought Fayt wanted to sell her.[45] Caleb apologized for joking about the reward money and promised never to sell her, and asked for forgiveness. She crawled out and gave him a hug.
Elise speculated that Gao was the password to the sealed doorway, since everything else in the house seemed to be about her. She asked Melchitt if Gao's real name was Enid, and the cat said no, definitely not. When Elise plied the cat with the bottle of wine from the kitchen and made the most of her interrogation skills, Melchitt was compelled to admit the truth: Enid was indeed Gao's real first name. Delighted to learn this information about her friend, Elise asked Gao if she knew her name was Enid, to which she answered, "Gao?" When Elise asked her what her true name was, she insisted: "Gao."
Opening the Door
Leading the entire group back upstairs to figure out the sealed doorway once and for all, Elise speculated that the reversed E superimposed atop a regular E suggested that it was Enid reversed. So as not to waste her own chance, she asked Gao to put her hand on the symbol and say aloud, "dine Enid." The girl did so, and again the door began creaking, but stopped suddenly without opening. The group began aggressively trying to decode the message, thinking back over everyone they had known since their adventures began. Convinced that Tiny was the nickname that Clementine Grose had used to seal the doorway, Lyon put his hand on the symbol and said "Tiny," but nothing happened. Carnacki pointed out that the answer would be someone relevant to this dream or relevant to Grose; he suggested various ways to interpret the symbol, but none that led to resolution. When he suggested that mirrors seemed to be the key to understanding this dream, Elise held up a large sliver of mirror to the symbol and looked at it in reverse, but it appeared normal.
Lyon, now about kindergarten aged himself, re-entered Flora's room across the hall to ask Tiny if she knew more, but the girl was gone. Just when he was thinking about how Flora and Miles looked so much alike despite being different genders, he noticed that the branding on the side of his musket was reversed in Flora's mirror. Fetching as many papers as he could grab from Grose's desk, he held them up one by one in the glass. None looked any different in their reflection, until he got to the list of girls' names. The note scribbled in the margin read "The girl's name is Enid!" when read directly, but held up to the glass, it said "!hconE si eman s'yob ehT"
Translating the reversed text, Elise realized the answer to the puzzle. She put her own palm on the symbol and said aloud, "Enid, Enoch." The door began creaking and groaning again, this time continuing until the wood splintered and cracked in half, falling off of its hinges. She pushed the shards of door open, letting them fall to the floor of the bedroom, and entered. Her possessions on one side of the room were exactly as she left them, but Gao's possessions on the other side had all turned pitch-black. Lyon began to rifle through them for answers, but came upon her underwear and tossed it back, not wanting to see more. Keeping her suspicions as to the meaning of "Enoch" and Gao's shadowy belongings to herself, Elise spotted a red key on the dresser in the back of the room, a key that hadn't been there before. It felt waxy and smooth in her hand.
Waking Up
Lyon remembered a locked doorway in the kitchen, which they approached together and unlocked with the key. Beyond was a cloudy red mist, and a horrific sucking sound like a slurping of soup. Letting Lyon take Elise's lantern and lead them down the stairs, the group found themselves in the unfinished basement of the house, their shoes setting into damp dirt with each step. In the red mist, which Elise recognized as the Red Death, they came upon a table resembling a surgeon's operating table, where Caleb lay unconscious with a worsening flesh-rotting rash visibly extending to his neck and wrists. On another table was Elise, apparently fine if pale, also unconscious. On the next table was Lyon, sound asleep and unable to be roused no matter how they shook him. They found an invisible lump asleep on the ground next to him; Fang was alive but could not be awakened.
Following the sound of sucking to the next table, they found Gao unconscious, being pinned by a fat, naked, brown creature sitting on her chest: With peeling burlap-like skin and large black craters in its face, Elise recognized it as a succubus. It kept sucking red mist from Gao's nose and mouth, as if it had given up sucking the Red Death from the rest of the group but found an unlimited source of it in Gao. Elise speculated that "she's made of the Red Death!" Eager to rescue Gao, Caleb drew his iron short sword and swatted at the creature as if swinging a baseball bat, but hit it with the sharp end and cut into its side. It fell from Gao onto its back in the dirt and seized its arms and legs in a death pose. On the table, Gao suddenly snapped awake and gasped for air, with the creature no longer crushing her chest.
In an instant, the group found themselves lying on the tables instead of standing around Gao. Slowly and painfully, they sat up, as if they had been immobile for a long time; Caleb in particular had trouble stretching his necrotic limbs. The red mist faded quickly. From the degree of progress of Caleb's rash, Elise judged that the group had been asleep for about a week. Lyon, back to adult age, was relieved to be reunited with Fang. Caleb, though suffering from his illness, was glad to be young again. Carnacki climbed off of another table and asked about the succubus, which was still dead in the room with them; Elise said it may have been a faerie creature that wandered in from Windsor Forest, attracted by the group's presence and Gao in particular. Just to be sure things were back to normal, Elise created a portal to the Manor and peeked through it; their possessions were still there. Although her book detailing the group's adventures was gone, Elise remembered the spell to re-create it, and determined to do so as soon as possible. Caleb was thrilled to find his sword cane in fine condition again, not broken as he had misremembered it.
When Carnacki began asking where this got started, their memories began to come back to them: After Gao had awaken in the Manor, they were indeed approached by Carnacki with a case to clear the House of Bly of spirits, but it was explicitly the spirits of Peter Quint and Susan Newby Quint, the twins' parents who had died in the house and left them in the care of their uncle Douglas Quint. When they stopped at Rumjaw Harrington's farm, Gant Harrington had been so moved by the plight of his family that he had decided to stop adventuring with the group, and decided to remove his mother from the Manor so that he could get her re-instated at the mental hospital while he sought his job back at the University of Oxford. He wasn't in the carriage when Solomon Kane attacked them, much to the group's relief. They remember arriving at the house and talking to Grace, Flora, and Miles, but there was no Mrs. Grose at all, so they wondered how she became such a prominent part of the dream. They went to sleep, but it was still night when they awakened, and at every turn, it continued to be night. They felt very confused by the confluence of false memories, dream-like half-truths, and unanswered questions, but counted their blessings that they were finally awake, or so they thought.
Trivia
The newspaper clipping and files of Detective Strickland were written by Aaron Shurtleff and taken verbatim from Gao's biography.
Scott Hardie had predicted that the group would see either the letters "HH" (Herne the Hunter) or "FL" (Fayt Leigngod) in the puzzle, but neither of these were among the players' many unofficial guesses.
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