Masks of Nyarlathotep: Session 2
I had to have teeth yanked last Friday, so tasty regional Peruvian food did not happen this time around. This saddened me greatly, as I think it's an immersive element of running the campaign, Will be well-healed up for the next session.
This month's party consisted of:
Lillian Fogg- Museum Curator
Lydia Lisbon- Photographer
Chomden Tsomo- Mountaineer
Curtis Flanagan- Author
Violet Adair- Dancer
WARNING: IF you're planning on playing the campaign and not running it for others, you should stop reading now.
Continuing from the last session, the group that went to the storeroom to find Prof. Sanchez's assistant Trinidad found only her desiccated corpse suck dry, a large ragged hole in her chest. Deciding to take the gold inlay with them, they go upstairs to tell Prof. Sanchez what happened.
While they were in the storeroom, Luis de Mendoza sprang the second part of his attack. Knocking Chomden and Jackson unconscious, Mendoza sprang upon Sanchez and infected him with a Kharisiri larva. As much as a wrench in the works Elias could be, Mendoza only had one larva and Prof. Sanchez knew enough of the pyramid to be dangerous to Sanchez and the foul god he served.
Lillian, Lydia and Curtis return to Prof. Sanchez's office to find the professor thrashing on the floor, Chomden and Jackson, laying against the walls like rag dolls, and de Mendoza straightening his shirt as he walked towards the door.
His eyes filled with hate as he saw the rest of the investigators. With a moist, popping sound (Get used to reading that term. Fair warning.) they saw de Mendoza's mouth transform into a horrible lamprey-like maw. Lydia shrieked and fell to the floor, trying to crawl like a crab backwards away from this abomination. Grabbing onto to Lilly, the two of them wrestled back and forth as she tried to get a good shot at him and he tried to rip her face apart.
Lydia, still in the maddening throes of terror, could only think to take a picture of the foul scene as it unfolded. Lilly came within a literal inch of her life when de Mendoza delivered a grievous claw wound to torso. Curtis beat Mendoza's about the head and shoulders, enraging him even further. Lydia regained her senses enough to shoot de Mendoza in the neck, at which point he too dropped like a rock.
That clash over, Chomden went to Prof. Sanchez to see how she could help. Noticing that he was clawing frantically at his stomach, she opened his shirt to see something crawling under his abdomen. Taking quick action she used a concoction she had with her to induce vomiting. Everyone was stunned to see a large maggot/beetle-looking thing fly from the professor's mouth. The thing started to crawl back towards the group, but Curtis made short work of it.
Finally waking Elias up, everyone was brought up to speed on what happened. Prof. Sanchez grieved to hear Trinidad had died horribly, but that fell by the wayside when it was noticed that de Mendoza's neck wound was healing. Lydia pumped another shot into de Mendoza's head, but the neck wound kept healing. Finally Lydia decapitated de Mendoza, at which point the tide of ages caught up, turning the Kharisiri's body into a bubbling goo.
Chomden stabilized Lilly, bringing her back from Death's door. It dawned on Elias that everything he had been hunting, thinking it to be based in fanciful folklore, was actually true. While the realization was terrifying, he wanted to go to the pyramid more than ever. Elias and Prof. Sanchez worked out logistics while everyone rested up.
When everyone left to go clean up before dinner at the Bar Cordano, they were approached outside the university by Violet Adair, Elias' paramour, a paramour who is really not keen on him sneaking around with four very un-publisher looking types when he said he'd be meeting with a publisher. Violet made it very clear that she was going to be sticking to Elias like glue and, as the rest of the group took an immediate liking to her, Elias realized he had very little choice in the matter. Violet was officially part of Team What the Actual Hell Are We Doing.
During dinner, Elias explained the plan. The next morning, the would board a steamer south to Mollendo that would get them into town around 3am, then catch a 5am train to Puno which would get them in mid-afternoon. The topic came up regarding what to do about Larkin.
Violet said to leave that to her. She visited the nearby Lima police department, charmed the desk sergeant, and explained how a horrible man propositioned her for sex and tried to get her on heroin. This was enough for the desk sergeant, him and four other horribly bored officers headed over to the Hotel Espana to take Larkin out of the picture,
Even Elias was impressed.
The next morning, the investigators met at Prof. Sanchez's office to head to the dock where the steamer was waiting. The trip down the coast was uneventful enough, but while they were waiting for their train in the early morning in Mollendo, they noticed a very gaunt old Peruvian man and child sitting across the street from the small train station, glaring at the party.
While on the train to Puno, the train had a long delay. When the investigator's asked a conductor what was going on, he told them that he had heard there was someone on the tracks. Whether this person was alive or dead, the conductor was unsure. The train eventually resumed its journey, but no more info regarding the reason for delay could be found. Overall, the party was rather tense at this point.
Getting into the Puno later than expected, the group stayed hyperaware as they walked the streets. They did notice one young boy with a group of children playing, standing stock still and glaring at them, but chose not to react. They got to their hotel room, two joined suites, and got a good sleep in after an exhausting trip. They had watch shifts, but nothing they could notice happened.
The next morning, Elias went to go get expedition supplies and to set up a meeting with Nayra, a local folklorist who had warned him of the Kharisiri earlier. The rest of the group explored Puno. Lilly went looking for talisman's against the Kharisiri. This caused no little bit of consternation among the locals, who told her that if she knows where Kharisiri are, her best bet is to avoid that place. One merchant tried to charge an exorbitant price for a talisman that may or may not've been gold, but Violet was able to talk the peddler down to a much cheaper price. Lilly still got gouged.
The group met at the hotel room later. Elias learned that Nayra had gone into hiding since the last time he had seen her. Apparently the Kharisiri threat was worse than they thought. She was now sequestered away at the home of some friends on a floating island on Lake Titicaca. They would take a boat out to her after nightfall to meet with her.
A little before full nightfall, Nayra's two sons meet the investigators on the lake's shore to boat them to Nayra. As they travel across the water, it is suspected that someone is following them but they cannot be sure. When they get to Nayra, she chastises Elias kindly for not listening to her more about the Kharisiri the first time, but is still more than happy to help.
She tells the group about the evil god who fell from the sky and the trickster god Ekeko who trapped it under the earth with a spell wrought in gold. The party realizes that the chunk of gold inlay has something to do with the Kharisiri and possibly something greater. Returning the inlay to where it belongs in the temple may do something.
Just then, Nayra's oldest son came flying through the door. Following him was a small child the group had seen earlier in Puno, its mouth a lamprey nightmare. Thinking quickly, Curtis shoves the gold inlay chunk in the Kharisiri's face. It emits a gurgling scream and runs off into the night.
Giving chase so the little evil twerp doesn't warn others, they follow it through the streets of the island, but it gets away. Do our brave and intrepid investigators go down the dark alley to look for it?
Of course they do. Why wouldn't they?
As these things often go, partway down the alleyway the investigators hear three distinct MOIST POPPING noises and find themselves surrounded by three Kharisiri, two men and one woman. The child is nowhere to be seen.
The fight that occurs can be summed up with "The investigators are really tired of the Kharisiri's shit." After a brief but brutal firefight, there was some decapitating and corpse burning. Investigators: 3, Kharisiri: 0.