Masks of Nyarlathotep: session 4
We started the New York section of the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. The party consisted of:
Lillian Fogg- Museum Curator
Lydia Lisbon- Drug Dealer using Photographer as a cover
Chomden Tsomo- Mountaineer
Curtis Flanagan- Author
Violet Adair- Dancer/Occultist
Warning: If you’re planning on playing the campaign and not running it for others, you should stop reading now.
It’s been four years since the investigators have had their horrible experience in Peru with Elias. He’s kept in touch with them from time to time, just to talk as friends, but nothing too frequent. Then one day in early January of ’25, they each received a radiogram from him, telling them to be that he had found something out about the Carlyle Expedition of recent past.
He needed them in New York City by the 15th of January. Coming from different parts of the world, some as close as the Bronx while others had to come from Berlin and Nepal, they got into NYC to find out what their friend was on about. Looking into the Carlyle Expedition, they found it was meant to be an expedition to Kenya by way of Egypt, but tragedy befell the expedition and they were massacred. Beyond that, the investigators had no idea why Elias was concerned with it.
The investigators get to New York during one of the worst winters in history and get settled, waiting to hear from Jackson. Finally on Jan. 15th they each get a call from him, curtly asking if they’re each alone then telling them to meet him at the Hotel Chelsea that night at 8pm. He was curt, anxious, almost frightened. None of the things Jackson was known for.
The investigators, not know who else he had called, were surprised to see each other at the Hotel Chelsea entrance and quickly caught up. Heading towards the stairs, Lydia invites a few prostitutes upstairs to do some blow, because why wouldn’t you. This also splits up the team, so Lillian, Lydia, Chomden, Curtis, and Violet get to room 410 before Lydia and her new friends arrive.
Curtis takes the lead and knocks on Jackson’s door. There’s no response, but he does hear a breathless scream come from inside the room. Kicking in the door the group see’s three men, one white and two black, wearing read sashes on their heads. One of them is standing by the open window, prepping to go out the window. Another was looking at papers strewn across the bed. And most horribly, the last man was standing with a wicked curved knife over their friend Jackson, disemboweled with a horrible wound carved into his forehead.
Lillian immediately fell to the floor, screaming and banging her head against the wall with the loss of her friend and a newly found fear of hotel rooms. The rest of the investigators sprang into action. Curtis ran towards the man holding Jackson, laying a serious haymaker on him, causing Jackson’s assailant to drop the body. Violet leapt through the air towards the man by the window, executing a perfect grand jeté resulting in the man’s jaw dislocating and losing some teeth. Chomden leveled her pistol towards the man by the papers on the bed, promptly turning the man’s head into a flower pot.
The investigator’s made very short work of the men, binding up the ones still alive with their sashes. The one who had murdered Jackson roared curses at the group, telling them how it would not end with him, and more would come. Lillian had ditched her new “friends” and got to the room in time to see the aftermath.
Hearing police sirens, the group gather together the papers on the bed and make their way out to the hall, just in time to hear the elevator go “ping!” and its doors open to reveal a heavy-set man in a trench coat with two of New York’s finest behind him. Pulling out a gun and showing a badge, the man in a trenchcoat asks the investigators if they’re the cause of all the ruckus they were called in for. Lillian tried the damsel in the distress act, but trench coat wasn’t having it. He had the two officers detain the investigators while he checked room 410.
That didn’t take too long. He roared for them to bring the investigators to the room. They were herded back to the room to find trenchcoat standing over Elias’ body, totally ignoring the two yelling, bound men and the corpse. A couple of the investigators noticed he was focusing on the wound carved in Elias’ forehead. He was disturbingly calm when he said “This is where we’re going to have to be very honest and careful with what we say.”
He introduced himself as Lieutenant Poole and got everyone’s names. Curtis showed him Elias’ radiogram and explained what they knew. Poole took it all in and told them they’d be taken to the 7th Precinct around the corner to continue the interrogation. The snow was dumping even harder than before, so thankfully it was a relatively short walk.
The two officers who had been with Poole got the men in Elias’s room taken care of while the investigators were taken to the lieutenants office. After interrogating them and being reliably sure they weren’t responsible for Elias’ death, he explained how their friend had been the ninth person to be murdered in this fashion in the last two years. One of the big problems was that the suspect in the murders, one Hilton Adams, was currently sitting in Sing Sing.
Poole was very concerned about what this could mean. He asked the investigators more about Elias’ life, and grew more concerned when told that Jackson primarily wrote about death cults. There was a lot that still needed to be figured out, but told the investigators they could go but not to leave New York City anytime soon.
The investigators went back to Lillian’s home to collect their thoughts and look over the papers from Jackson’s room. What they found were letters, business cards, articles and other items from New York, China, Egypt, England, and other places all over the globe. One of the papers was a flyer for a lecture by one Prof. Anthony Cowles, being given that very night at New York University regarding cults in Polynesia and the South Pacific. It was far past the time when the lecture had started, but they thought they would try to get to the lecture hall and see what they could find.
Unfortunately, luck was not on their side. They got to the lecture hall to find lights off and only a handful of students loitering outside. Asking the students if Cowles was still around, the investigators found that the professor had long since gone, and they missed an excellent talk about the Cult of the Sand Bat, which some of the investigators knew of from Australian folklore but little else. They were told the professor had office hours from 10am to 1pm Monday through Thursday for the next couple weeks before he heads back to Arkham. Cutting their losses, they decide to talk to him later.
Looking at a matchbook bearing the logo for the Stumbling Tiger bar, they decide to make their way to Chinatown to find it. Taking the El to Chinatown then trying to get a cabbie to take them to 10 Lantern St. where the bar is, the cabbie informs them that there is no 10 Lantern street. The investigators then proceed to New Yorksplain to the cabbie, which just pisses him off. They show him the matchbox, causing him to laugh and say that’s in Shanghai and no, he won’t take them there.
The investigators decide that the night is late and no more can reasonably found at the hour, so they headed back to Lillian’s to try to get some sleep after a generally horrible day.