January 13, 1926

Tortured for months at the hands of Ho Fong, the investigators are finally rescued by Thomas – sleeves ripped off to the shoulders – and Jack Brady, along with a healthy compliment of Japanese soldiers. Jack Bing is unresponsive, and the soldiers attend to him while Tam, Henry, Iris, and Marvo listen to Thomas and Brady’s story.

Thomas explains that he has been trying to find them for months. He was unable to reach Jonah, but fortunately Brady made contact with him, and eventually they were able to conduct a rescue operation with the imperial army’s help.

Brady explains his understanding of the cult’s plans: the cult, under Penhew’s leadership, intends to open a “gate” from Grey Dragon Island to let untold horror into the world. As it happens, tomorrow at noon a solar eclipse will occur. Brady believes this is no coincidence.

Despite Tam dislocating his arm, the captured Ho Fong laughs and refuses to provide more information, attempting to crush a false tooth with cyanide before they can question him further. Marvo splashes wine in his mouth, delaying the reaction… and giving Brady enough time to turn Ho Fong into a sacrificial font of health.

Brady believes he can ward Grey Dragon Island, potentially preventing the gate from opening. But he will need their help.

The investigators realize time is of the essence, and decide to try to raid the island by stealing Penhew’s boat The Dark Mistress and using it to navigate to the island. Tam, once abducted by the leader of the Japanese soldiers before being released for clearly being too dumb to know anything, manages to convince that same leader to potentially provide his help.

The investigators head to dock and find the strange crew of the boat fast asleep. Marvo, recalling an incident by one of Jonah’s teams recently on an island off the coast of Maine, recognizes them as Deep One half-breeds. Tam falls in the water. The crew wakes up. The investigators take the crew and captain hostage. Marvo inspects the engine and discovers a strange, glowing green lump of coal in the coalbox. He begins to feel ill, but fails to realize he is now dying of alien radiation poisoning.

Tam attempts to commandeer the boat herself. Marvo punches her in the nose.

The boat, powered by this alien meteorite, cruises to Grey Dragon Island. The island is small, centered around a dormant volcano several hundred feet high. They dock and put on the captured crews’ clothes, hoping to blend in, then head up the path toward the volcano. Before leaving, Marvo disables the boat so it can’t leave without them. This proves unnecessary, as Thomas – once a gentle, honorable butler for a minor british lord – sneaks back into the hold and sadistically and quietly slits the throat of each captured crew member.

They find a cave at the base of the volcano, and a path leading inside. In the center chamber they discover what can only be described as a towering “bullet” made of alien metal with fins at the base, at least a hundred feet tall, suspended via scaffolding over a magma pool below. Cultists are scurrying around on the scaffolding platforms, frantically welding metal plates to the rocket and configuring wiring. Beyond, at the end of the chamber, stands an enormous black statue of The Bloated Woman – yet another aspect of Nyarlathotep. Dozens of feet high, tentacles protruding where limbs should be, and covered in decaying human arms, the statue is not particularly welcoming to the group.

Attempting to not draw attention to themselves, they move quickly into an adjoining room.  It is filled with Egyptian artifacts that Iris appraises to be worth millions of dollars. They also discover a hidden room with a sarcophagus that Brady suggests is shaped like Penhew. Marvo gets inside and enters suspended animation for 15 seconds. Nobody realizes it, least of all him.

They head to the other room and discover Penhew’s workshop. There they confirm his evil plans: launch the rocket at the center of the now de-warded triangle (between the Red Pyramid, Australia, and Grey Dragon Island) to presumably open up the gate. This is not particularly comforting. Even less comforting is Penhew’s presence as he walks into the workshop moments later.

Without hestitation, Brady opens fire and misses Penhew. Penhew attempts to cast some sort of spell in response but fails, and is forced to dive behind an overturned table for cover as Thomas’s Thomas [sic] gun leaves a string of bullets in the air behind him. Tam slams against the table, and Henry and Iris run over to help put bullets in Penhew. Before they can, he mutters some Eldritch words punctuated by “Nyarlathotep,” and suddenly they hear screams of fear and ecstasy erupt from the main chamber.

Brady realizes his time is up and runs to cover on the other side of the room and slowly begins the spell to place the ward. As Tam crushes Penhew’s windpipe with her elbow, killing him, Marvo runs over to help Brady finish the spell. Both Marvo and Brady can feel the spell fading, despite their best efforts. Realization washes over Brady, and he sadly hands a knife to Marvo, explaining the spell needs blood to work.

He asks Marvo to take care of Roger Carlyle, currently housed in a sanatorium in Hong Kong. Marvo nods, and slits Brady’s throat. Marvo feels the ward get set, but has no way of knowing if it will work correctly.

Iris grabs a strange black cube covered in occult symbols from Penhew’s body.

The group, realizing their time is nearly up, runs back into the main chamber. There they find Japanese soldiers engaging in combat with cultists – it appears Tam’s request for assistance was answered. This, on the whole, is good news. They also discover that Nyarlathotep answered Penhew’s call by entering this reality through the Bloated Woman statue. This is not good news.

The sight of this corporeal form affects the group differently. Henry, Tam, and Thomas shrug it off, too focused on the impending apocalypse. Iris acquires mad determination for her task, and psychotically runs to the scaffolding that surrounds the rocket, ascending it as quickly as she can. And Marvo, at Tam’s suggestion, recklessly attempts to attack Nyarlathotep himself.

Thomas and Henry, recognizing Iris’s crazed ascension, attempt to protect her from harm and mercilessly attack any cultist in her way. Henry takes a sword wound to the arm but keeps going. Iris, in her panic, throws the black navigational cube into the magma below. Magma erupts and begins to melt the support beams, slowly sinking the Rocket toward the magma. Henry, however, seems unconvinced that magma can melt steel beams.

Back on the ground, Tam seems uncertain on what she should be doing. She briefly ponders the idea of collapsing the rocket into the magma pool below as the support the girders weaken… but then she takes a sword to the side and decides that she’d really prefer to hang out alone in the room with the Egyptian artifacts. Tam hides there, nursing her wounds.

Marvo, a now insane untrained sorcerer, materializes crocodiles from thin air and commands them to attack the Bloated Woman aspect of Nyarlathotep. This plan fails, and a tentacle wraps around him and brings him into the mouth of the Bloated Woman, where a “kiss” causes him to convulse painfully. He begins to be sucked into her gaping mouth….

Thomas, Iris, and Henry finally reach the the top of the rocket, where a gangplank leads into a small room in the nose of the rocket. They find dynamite littered all over the gangplank and in the rocket itself. It is clear Penhew intended to use this explosive power to detonate the rocket when the time came.

However, before they have time to fully digest this information, timed charges trigger around the top of the volcano, and the chamber’s ceiling opens up to reveal the nearly full solar-eclipse directly above them. The explosions cause sticks of dynamite to fall off the gangplank… and somehow land directly in Marvo’s hands below, moments before he gets swallowed by the Bloated Woman.

Marvo does not hesitate. While being swallowed he casts the wasting burn… and turns himself and the dynamite into a living radiation bomb.

The Bloated Woman explodes, and cultists and soldiers alike are blown apart. The door to the Egyptian room where Tam is hiding flies open and bodies and heat fly through. Nyarlathotep leaves the form of the Bloated Woman in irradiated pieces. Marvo dies, again, for the last time.

The eclipse approaches totality. Thomas, with incredible rationality, tries to shoot the dynamite inside the rocket. This does not work. Thomas apparently had never used a gun before, and didn’t realize they needed to be reloaded.

Henry, finally realizing that perhaps he had made a mistake joining in on this “adventure,” decides to try to jump back down to the ground below and make a run for it. He leaps off the platform, realizing as he does that his trajectory is actually sending him toward the magma pit below.

Iris, visions of an underground Egyptian temple and fire dancing in her eyes, pulls out her lighter and gives one sad sigh. She brings the lighter toward the dynamite right as the eclipse reaches totality…

A mushroom cloud escapes from the volcano, and the island explodes.

---

Several weeks later, Jonah Kensington finally comes out of hiding after being targeted by the Cult of the Bloody Tongue. Flanked by Anastasia and Sloppy Joe, he returns to his ransacked office, and begins the arduous task of cleaning it up.

Sloppy Joe helps him lift the enormous bulletin board where he had been tracking the progress of the Yellow King Company. In the bottom right corner are headshots of every investigator that had traveled the world as part of that fabled Yellow King Company, all trying to uncover the mystery of Jackson Elias’ death:

• Marvo – the “train engineer” who went into a painting and survived the time of serpent people before returning; fell into the dreamlands while turning to stone before rescuing his wife with a ghoul army, raiding the dreamlands moon and entering the previous universe before surviving the heat death of that universe and creation of a new one; and then ultimately died as a living radiation bomb inside the Bloated Woman aspect of Nyarlathotep
• Peter – the bishop of New York who was ripped to shreds by a werewolf in an English dungeon he had willingly locked himself in
• Millie – the teacher and Marvo’s wife, tragically killed by her own husband’s bullet as she desperately attempted to return him from the time of serpent people to her horrifying present: surrounded by insane cultists on an English island during a cult sex ritual to summon flying horrors
• Addison – the minor English viscount who went mad translating “cat scrolls” and then had his head implode into a maw of death while wearing an ancient mask in an Egyptian hotel lobby
• Riley – the fisherman that folded inside the maw of death that had previously been Addison’s head before his body parts (and others) exploded out of it… ironically after being the person to place the mask on Addison’s insane face
• Rory – the photo journalist who attempted to improvise a molotov cocktail attack on the Black Pharaoh aspect of Nyarlathotep before getting casually and indiscriminately vaporized by Nyarlathotep’s wrath
• Harvey – the Arkham librarian who, in the insanity of the birth of the spawn of Nyarlathotep, succumbed and became a devoted member of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue
• Marvolo – the Big Game Hunter who missed a once-in-a-lifetime Safari before following in Harvey’s footsteps and joining the Cult of the Bloody Tongue
• Johann-Sebastian Devito – the policeman who had a foot then didn’t have a foot then had a ghoul foot and then was consumed by the eyelid of the Spawn of Nyarlathotep, leaving only that ghoulish foot behind
• Gene – the cobbler who had apparently never made a single pair of shoes and finally found peace inside the stomach of a giant Chameleon
• Jack Bing – the New York reporter, currently MIA, last seen in a Shanghai hospital
• Henry – the rich dilettante and partner of Kensington, who threw himself off a rocket into a magma pool
• Tam – the Wisconsin crop duster that had a chance to survive the Grey Dragon Island explosion by hiding in Penhew’s sarcophagus, but instead exploded into pieces while hiding in the Egyptian artifact room
• Thomas – Addison’s butler, perhaps the most irrationally rational member of the YKC and known for dealing with visual horror by actively blindfolding himself, who finally died reloading his gun while trying to blow Penhew’s rocket up
• Iris – the Chinese bookseller who had been burned alive at the base of the Giza pyramids and ultimately took fate into her own hands by blowing up Penhew’s rocket, Grey Dragon Island, and ultimately Nyarlathotep’s most recent, but perhaps not the last, attempt to open a “gate….”

Jonah, sighs sadly, and slowly begins dismantling the board. He finally closes  The Yellow King Company’s investigation into the death of his dear friend, Jackson Elias.

Anastasia picks up a leather bound book in the corner of the room. Jonah explains it had been anonymously sent to him recently, but that he hadn’t been able to make sense of it yet.

She opens the journal and begins reading.

The Simplon Orient Express

Jan 1, 1923….

The group, finally healthy (with the exception of Thomas, who came down with an unfortunate case of food poisoning moments earlier), head to the newspaper to track down their lead. They find it on fire. The same kind of fire from the train.

Re-Barbara is standing over the fire. She is clearly summoning the same “fire vampires” from the train attack.

She dies as a spear pierces her head. A strange man threw it. He says nothing to them, but lets them follow him into an old part of town and into a one room hut, where an old man is mediating inside. Their guide explains that he is there to protect the old man, who is “not there” at the moment. Brenden, not known for being quick witted, points out the man is actually there.

Gene obsesses over an eldritch symbol in the hut and accidentally calls the Red Sign. This causes the old meditating man to convulse, leading to the room no longer being part of any universe, leading to Johann sticking his foot outside of the universe and losing his foot, which he now never remembers having.

Marvolo gets a chameleon.

The next day Johann has a new foot. It is a gross foot. Some might say it is a ghoul-like foot. He always remembers having this foot. Gene offers to make him a shoe for this foot. The group discovers Gene never actually knew how to make shoes, despite a lifelong career as a cobbler.

The group heads to the Mountain of the Black Wind. They pose as cultists of the Bloody Tongue. There are lots of other cultists there. The group tries to coyly ask questions. A cult member talks about the ceremony happening that night, and the investigators all nod knowingly, trying not to blow their cover. Brenden asks about the ceremony, blowing their cover. Marvolo explains that Brenden is stupid and to ignore him.

The cultists all get naked. So do the investigators.

M’weru appears. She summons Nyarlothotep. He appears enormous in the aspect of the bloody tongue and begins crushing cultists at random. Those who are chosen feel lucky to be sacrificed to their God. The rest pass through his giant legs upward through the mountain.

Harvey loses what little grip on sanity he has left and realizes he has always been a devoted servant of the bloody tongue. Brenden Kyle, a farmer from Kansas, realizes he has a fear of crowds but in the excitement of what is happening follows the thousands of cultists up through the mountain. Marvolo discovers he has a fear of being alone, making it a much easier sell to ascend the mountain with the crowd of cultists. Gene follows, somehow still sane after all this time. Unsure of what else to do, Johann, sane as can be expected, follows as well.

Tam Toomey leaves.

They enter a large temple deep in the heart of the mountain. They find Hypatia Masters sprawled on a dais, pregnant and bursting with the spawn of Nyarlothotep. They see the spawn’s eyes through the thin membrane of her stomach.

The cultists begin to kill each other in ecstasy, led initially by Marvolo. Hypatia’s head explodes, and the spawn rips through the membrane of her stomach to emerge into the world. It slowly morphs into a perverted form of Hypatia Masters. Nyarlothotep reappears and screams in pleasure before transforming into the black wind and tearing out of the mountain across the night.

Tam gets tossed by the black wind on her way back to the village, but because she is “sturdy” she does not move very much.

The sight of all this finally ends Gene’s grip on sanity, and Marvolo follows him. Harvey, already permanently insane, has begun lifting naked cultists and dropping them into death pits of snakes and rats and fire ants. He also takes any books from them as possible. Gene, his hammer blessed with the deadly sacrifice of that shopkeeper in JuJu house, sacrifices his fellow cult members to the great god of the bloody tongue. Nyarlothotep is pleased.

The permanently insane Marvolo joins in, opening the cage to the chameleon, which immediately grows dozens of feet tall and licks up a hundred cultists with it’s enormous tongue, swallowing them.

Unfortunately, one of those cultists happens to be Gene, and his illustrious investigation into his friend Jackson Elias’s murder ends with him being swallowed by a comically large chameleon before it winks out of existence.

Brenden, in a rare moment of bewilderment and sanity, takes this cue to get the fuck out. Meanwhile, Johann, having somehow used his police instincts to prevent himself from accepting the insanity of what he was witnessing, tries to go attack the spawn of Nyarlathotep.

He takes aim and shoots one perfect bullet with his revolver between the glowing yellow eyes of the demented form of Hypatia Masters. Purple and black sludge seeps from the bullet’s entry and exit holes. The creature’s neck snaps a bit….

And then Hypatia’s left eyelid slowly droops down and a tentacle covered in dripping teeth and maws emerges and snaps around Johann, killing him instantly. It pulls him back into that gaping eye lid, squeezing him into liquid form as it slowly consumes him.

Only his grotesque, ghoul-like foot remains. It spasms once on the ground beside the evil spawn. And then it remains still forever.

Tam finds an airplane at the town as well as dynamite, because of course she does. She flies the airplane directly into the mountain and lands it. She grabs the dynamite and heads up into the temple. There she finds cultists finally collapsing in exhausted ecstasy, their ritual night of sacrifices leading to the spawn of a god finally ending. Harvey is still piling bodies into the sacrifice pits to his enjoyment.

Spotting her, the insane Marvolo tries to use his remaining bullet from his elephant gun to kill her. The gun backfires, clearly not having been kept clean by Harvey previously, and Marvolo collapses to the ground.

Tam takes one look at this and elects to leave. She flies back to the town, where eventually Brenden meets her hours later. The two fly back to Nairobi together, the last sane, surviving members of the night.

A timeline of events:

September, 1689
Robert Martinson, a ship captain, loses his ship and crew to a powerful storm off the coast of Ireland. He eventually washes up on a beach raving and drooling about “Sea Serpents.” Two-weeks later, after recovering, he begins to create a strange religious following preaching about the worship of these creatures among superstitious fisher-folk.

June 14, 1692
Roger Martinson and his followers flee religious persecution and settle in Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine.

1692-1777
Every year the islanders, led by Martinson and eventually his descendants, conduct a sacrificial ceremony on the beach of Monhegan Island in which one or multiple islanders are “given up” to the creatures from deep below. The islanders discover their reward in bountiful harvests from the sea the following season.

A day after the ceremony the Martinson family will find trinkets and treasure, presumably from ships long-lost to sea, graciously dumped in the cellar of their house. This cellar coincidentally has a trap door and tunnel that leads directly to the ocean.

1778
Richard Martinson (Robert’s grandson) grows concerned by the declining population on the island. As it turns out, small communities of inbreeding tend to suffer health issues. Richard decides that all future sacrifices will be “outsiders” (mainlanders). From that year on, the islanders begin luring unsuspecting victims, often loners and outcasts, to the island to act as sacrifices.

May 5, 1894
Alan Martinson dies suddenly at the age of 48. He does not pass the secret of the ceremony to his son, Roger. The ceremony is forgotten, and the book describing its details remains hidden in an attached bedroom in the Martinson house.

1921
The catch for Monhegan Island’s fishermen drops off dramatically. Concern grows amongst the inhabitants of the island.

1922
The catch is even worse than the year before. The people on the island pressure Roger Martinson, the youngest and last descendant of the Martinson family, to resume the ceremony. Martinson agrees, re-discovers the book, and begins preparations.

June 14, 1923
The ceremony is successful. Angela Blackwood takes the role of “sea nymph” and is found after to have lost all sense of self. This does not particularly bother Roger Martinson.

June 14, 1924
The ceremony is once more successful, with Brandy Collier acting as sea nymph this time. The islanders are happy; the catch of fish the previous season increased dramatically.

June 1, 1925
No suitable outsiders have been found for this year’s ceremony. In desperation, Martinson puts a plan in action, faking Sara Goodwin’s death. In reality, she is hiding in the woods of the island per his instructions.

June 3, 1925
Detective Sam Poole, cousin of Lt. Martin Poole (now of Boston PD), arrives to conduct the investigation, but is forced to conclude she “drowned” due to lack of evidence and uncooperative islanders… despite his many suspicions and misgivings.

June 12, 1925

Martinson contacts Jonah Kensington to have some private investigators look into Sara’s “disappearance” as the police were unable to help. His true intention is to find a few people that will not invite too many questions when they are mysteriously “lost at sea.”

June 13, 1925
The investigators bang around Bangor, looking into potential leads. It is clear that the mainlanders hold no love for the islanders, to the point where a young woman’s disappearance on the island does not make the local news. The whale vet discovers she has somewhat of an unnatural affinity for the ocean.

June 14, 1925
The investigators arrive on the island. Roger greets them warmly. Despite his affable nature, the investigators do not seem to fully trust him. This may be because he has two seemingly brain-dead women following him around. He invites them to explore the house and the island, asking only that they respect his privacy and locked doors. Surprisingly, the investigators are polite and do adhere to this, although Anastasia does insult their host by insinuating he’s a pedophile.

Exploring the village at the docks, they find most of the islanders unhelpful and malevolent in disposition. Only the owner of the pub and his waitress will speak to them, and the owner cuts the conversation off quickly when he overhears his waitress make reference to a “ceremony” that night. She is clearly nervous. Gertrude hides under a table overhearing this, before subtly escaping back into the street.

The investigators return to the house for dinner. Chaz switches plates with Anastasia, knowing revenge for her earlier insult likely occurred. Martinson retires to bed after smoking some cubans, while the investigators discuss their day.

Martinson heads downstairs later that night. He is not particularly quiet. In fact, he is almost intentionally loud enough for the investigators to hear him, allowing them to follow him out the house and through the woods of the island to the beach where the ceremony will take place. The investigators spread out and hide in the woods, watching as multiple islanders and the “missing” girl Sara show up. There is a general feeling of excitement from the group of islanders.

Sara drinks a concoction and then heads into the water, conducting some horrible chant in a dead and evil language. At the same time, Brenda and Leonard are captured by islanders – Roger knew the investigators would follow them to the beach. Brenda and Leonard are tied to a peculiar stone slab on the beach just in time to witness six giant reptilian fish/frog hybrid “creatures” emerge from the water toward them. The islanders, their work done and not particularly feeling the need to remain, flee quickly.

Strangely, Brenda is not surprised to see the creatures, and does not feel particularly threatened by them, although she’s not sure why.

Anastasia, totally-not-a-spy instincts kicking in, decides to try the chant she recently learned in the book from Corbitt’s house. Successfully saying the dark words, her gun melts and then reforms into a towering, dark, planar “Shambler” of death. Despite this being intended, this snaps Anastasia’s mind temporarily, and a lust for murder overtakes her.

Chaz, unsure of what to do, runs over to help Anastasia, attempting to spray her with holy water. This is not particularly effective, and the Shambler protects its summoner by sinking its night claws into Chaz’s shoulder-blades.

On the beach Leonard manages to free himself from his bindings with his knife, but rather than run himself, stays to help free Brenda. As soon as the bindings around her feet are cut, Brenda bolts to the woods, leaving Leonard behind.

Leonard is abducted by the water creatures, who take him back into the ocean. His friends, otherwise occupied, last see him thrashing against their hold as they forever submerge him into the depths of the ocean.

Chaz attempts to shoot the Shambler, but is unable to get a shot off with the claws muscle deep in his shoulders. The Shambler folds space and both Chaz and it leave this quantum universe behind.

Gertrude runs and tackles Anastasia as all this is happening, hoping to stop Anastasia from accidentally killing a friend with her remaining gun. This angers Anastasia further, and in her blood rage attempts to shoot the 16 year old girl detective. Due to the force of Gertrude’s tackle (she is a homely girl afterall), Anastasia’s arm swings wildly while shooting, and her own bullet pierces her thigh. The shock of pain pulls her out of her stupor, where she wakes to find two friends missing and a bullet in her leg.

Feeling an urgent need to cut their losses, they flee through the now deathly quiet island to the wharf, where they find Martinson’s body-man, Alen Krebs, loading their things on the boat. It appears his orders were to crash the boat and dump their belongings out at sea, faking their deaths plausibly. Under threat of impalement from Brenda’s harpoon gun, he instead takes the three remaining women back to the mainland.

June 15, 1925
While Anastasia receives medical treatment, Gertrude and Brenda return to Sam Poole to report the evils of the island. Unfortunately he is unable to corroborate their story, as Martinson denies ever having met the investigators (the investigators also failed to notify Poole who had originally hired them to investigate Sara’s disappearance), and nobody on the island will confirm they were even there.

June 18, 1925
A headless body washes up on the shores of Maine. The police are unable to identify the victim. This is likely because Alan Kreb’s head is buried deep underground on the island.

A summary of events:

Jonah sends his latest fine group of investigators to look into what’s going on in a mysterious house, informally known as the “Corbitt House,” in Boston:

• Anastasia, the Amerussian who totally isn’t a spy, and one of the few surviving members of the Dead Light episode
• Sloppy Joe, a boxer who has lost every fight (including against his mother), but apparently has never taken a punch to the ear
• Leonard, a bum who somehow found his way into Jonah’s employment
• Gertrude, an ambitious 16 year old girl

The house apparently has been the source of a couple violent events in the past. In an effort to learn more, they split up to do some research.

Sloppy Joe and Leonard head to the “libary” to look up previous articles about the house. This ends abruptly when Sloppy Joe gets into a fight with an old, fat librarian who lost money betting on him. Sloppy Joe keeps his losing streak alive, and they are both tossed out of the library.

Gertrude and Anastasia head to the Hall of Records and without much trouble find some information suggesting that the Corbitt House’s original owner, Walter Corbitt, might have links to a “Church of Contemplation” that apparently ran into some legal trouble.

The group reconvenes then switches pairs; Anastasia and Leonard head to investigate the church while Sloppy Joe and Gertrude (disguised as a young boy now, for reasons unknown to all) head to the police station to investigate the Church’s legal issues.

Anastasia and Leonard discover the church is long-abandoned, but they do discover a weird “eye” symbol on the church. Anastasia falls through rotting floorboards but lands with catlike agility. She finds a strange latin book, a couple of long-deceased corpses, and a creepy journal that suggests Corbitt was involved in some weird stuff. Leonard steals a ladder to get her out.

At the police station, Sloppy Joe and Gertrude speak to Lt. Martin Poole, a recent transfer to Boston from the NYPD. He had moved from NY to get away from weird stuff that had been happening there over the last half a year. Unfortunately Sloppy Joe and Gertrude do not make his life any easier. He tracks down a redacted police report suggesting something horrible happened during a police raid on the chapel, as well as a court dockett suggesting all arrested church members were released through shady help of a local councilman.

Stalling as much as possible, the entire group heads to the Roxbury Sanatorium, hoping to speak to people involved in the church raid. Instead they speak to someone recently involved in a violent episode in the Corbitt house, who gives them some advice that wasn’t really intended to be meaningful while clutching a bible. The investigators take this as gospel.

They finally head to the house at night time, because that seems the most logical. Leonard brings his stolen ladder.

They enter the house and explore room by room, encountering increasingly strange phenomena: doors that open or close when they’re not looking, fresh and rotten food on the table that appears to be consumed when they’re not in the room, noises with no trace, a bathtub faucet that drains blood momentarily, and a strange book detailing occult experiments and some sort of chant that for some reason none of the investigators try to say out loud.

While investigating an upstairs bedroom, Leonard opens up a door to the balcony. This apparently angers the bed and bedframe, which fly across the room to knock him over the balcony and down to the ground far below. Sloppy Joe destroys the bed frame while Gertrude helps Leonard to his feet.

Anastasia, possibly cranky because she had intended to sleep in that bed, runs down to the basement to investigate a noise she hears. Sloppy Joe follows, and they sift through the junk in the basement. Sloppy Joe spots a knife. The knife spots Sloppy Joe, and flies through the air to attack him. Gertrude, showing up just in time, uses a wooden board to impale the knife and prevent it from tinkerbelling its way into their bodies any further.

Searching the basement Sloppy Joe finds that one of the wooden-planked walls hides a crawl space. After allowing the rats in it to flee, he enters, and emerges into a large adjacent room that appears to contain the dead body of Mr. Corbitt. Anastasia and Gertrude are not terribly interested in joining him. Leonard is outside the house, possibly urinating.

Sloppy Joe inspects the gross, mummifying body of Corbitt while holding the knife embedded in the board over the corpse. Corbitt apparently finds this rude, opens his undead eyes, and grabs onto Sloppy Joe’s wrist. Sloppy Joe screeches and slaps the board-knife down. Corbitt doesn’t seem to care and gets up unnaturally.

Gertrude and Anastasia crawl through to help, emerging to find Sloppy Joe now finding a way to lose a boxing match against a dead guy. Corbitt whispers a few words and Sloppy Joe finds a new purpose in life, grabbing the knife out of the board and running at the 16 year old girl crawling out of the crawlspace. He slashes her, and she falls to the ground with a gaping wound. Covered in Gertrude’s blood, the knife stops believing it can fly.

Anastasia attempts furiously to save Gertrude’s life, which she barely manages to do. Sloppy Joe continues to get into a boxing/knife sparring match with Corbitt, as Leonard finally enters the area with his flaming torch. He throws it at Sloppy Joe. He probably meant to throw it at Corbitt. But he throws it at Sloppy Joe, who has his hair light on fire.

Delirious from being scratched by Corbitt’s claw-like fingernails, and on fire, Sloppy Joe collapses to the ground as Gertrude and Anastasia attempt to throw a switch blade and shoot a bullet at Corbitt respectively. Both miss. Leonard decides to apologize to Sloppy Joe by smothering the fire engulfing him with the blanket Corbitt’s dead body had been lying on top of for dozens of years.

Anastasia, realizing just how far past her bedtime it is, grabs the formerly-floating knife and runs at Corbitt, stabbing him. In a fit of complete coincidence that in no way was planned but somehow worked out regardless, Corbitt’s own weapon pierces and kills him, crumbling his body and the knife into ash. As Anastasia drops the hilt, the house appears to be restore itself to normal. The investigators slowly leave the house, somehow alive to die another day.

 

Jonah Kensington calls his latest team of investigators (or as he prefers to think of them, “warm bodies”) to the hospital bedside of a clinically insane man. This group had previously been tasked with investigating the remains of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue in New York, and while it had mostly been an uneventful investigation, they did discover that some woman going by the name of “Rebarbara” was alive and at large.

Margery Greenwald – a spiritualist who ‘believes’ probably more than she should

Jessica Freeman – a young con woman

Dr. Gustav Schroeder– An Austrian alienist

Doris Travers – an elderly grandmother with a slightly unhealthy hobby of occult studies

At Bellevue hospital, the investigators listen to the man rant and rave – he mentions a broken boat, someone he left behind, and that someone named “Selene” was a lying temptress. He utters random gibberish as well, such as “I am your father” and “got milk,” that the party generally does not understand.

Jonah explains that the man is a John Doe, discovered in the middle of Massachusetts somewhere near a long-abandoned military base “Selene.” Curiously, the man was carrying a gray/black orb marked with strange “crater-like” patterns. As the group handles the orb, it appears to not obey the laws of gravity as quickly as might be expected. The strangeness of the orb, not to mention the John Doe, clearly nags at Jonah, and he asks the investigators to investigate.

Dr. Schroeder attempts to review the chart of the man, and as the group studies him, the man breaks into a fervent rant about “the tallest of them all in the center” and how it “didn’t start and in the end it’s the only way to survive the end of the start or the start of the end….”

On their way to the military base, the group makes a quick pit-stop in Newbury, a small town about 30 miles from the abandoned base. There they find a newspaper article describing the discovery of the John Doe, along with some seemingly other irrelevant articles, including details on a presumed meteorite that crashed locally that same night and a triple-homicide in the town of Ross’s Corner. Jessica tries to flirt with a local farmer, but Doris puts a stop to things before anything gets to improper.

They also confirm that the base has been long abandoned, and that even the townsfolk found it strange that a military training base would have been located in the middle of the Massachusetts’ woods, far from any town or port. Curious.

They head to the military base next, which they find in a state of disrepair. It’s barbed wire fence is falling down, trees and foliage are overgrown, and every barrack looks deserted. The base clearly backs a large, rocky hill, and at the bottom of the hill they discover a man-made tunnel.

They cautiously explore the tunnel (Margarey assures them that there is definitely “something” coming from the end of that tunnel), but Dr. Schroeder rediscovers why he was never picked first in sports, and sets off a trip-wire. Moments later they hear an explosion behind them, and the sound of rushing water gets louder and louder as it approaches them. Sprinting to the end of the tunnel they discover a sheer, shiny, metallic wall. Jessica does not hesitate and starts slamming her fist against the wall… causing her to seemingly fold into the wall and disappear.

Doris, although generally fleet of foot when chasing her 27 grandchildren, cannot outrun the wave of water flying at her from behind, and get shoved with the other two members into that same shiny wall….

Coughing up water, the group finds themselves washed to the shore of an enormous placid lake. They seem to be in an enormous underground cavern of sorts, and next to them lies a gorgeous city that looks almost European and modern… except every building is a strange pyramid. An enormous pyramid, far taller than the rest, stands at the heart of the city and reaches to the top of the cavern’s ceiling.

Across the lake, several miles away, they see a second, similar city. But this city seems to be in ruin, long abandoned; a pale imitation of the beautiful city that lies before them. It almost looks fake, like a poor reflection on the water.

Looking up at the ceiling of the cavern, they see spots where the rock opens up, and through it they see a dark night of stars. The light reflects through those opening strangely, bringing notice to the glass window paneled over the ceiling. Through one opening in particular they notice the blue sphere of their home planet, Earth.

Doris concludes quite immediately that they are on the moon. Margarey, as confidently but perhaps less factually, concludes that they are all dead.

Meandering into the city the discover that the city is full of people in fancy dresses wearing wooden, masquerade-like masks. They are all abuzz about the premier of a new play that evening, and seem interested in talking about little else. Conversation with these individuals proves to be difficult, particularly in regards to basic concepts such as where and when (some might say, space and time), and the group slowly moves with the rest of the city’s inhabitants toward a silver pyramid where the play will be debuted.

From time to time, Jessica catches strange glimpses that seems to shatter the image of the otherwise perfect city: a room with rotten fruit falling apart, a decrepit alley with trash and rubble and broken objects. Uneasy, she tries to slip out of the crowd back the way they came, only to discover a perimeter of guards “ensuring everyone is able to attend the play.” She also discovers the painful end of one of the guards’ pitch-black batons as he reprimands her for interrupting the march to the play.

The group grows concerned that none of them have any masks on, particularly considering a vague answer from a passerby that promised “some of us” will be performing in the play. Jessica tries to find an escape alley with no luck. Changing tactics, she has the other investigators start loudly hyping the play, creating a small distraction that she uses to steal a mask right from the face of a random passerby.

Unfortunately, removing the mask exposes the real face of the city’s inhabitants. Underneath the mask they find an eyeless alien humanoid with sickly yellow skin. Doris immediately has a mental snap and discovers that yes, actually, she is quite excited about the play. She also discovers she quite likes lying, and uses this newfound compulsion to indicate someone in the crowd behind her is not excited about the play, which leads to an immediate physical reprimanding of that unfortunate person at the hands of a guard.

The group is forced into the silvery pyramid to watch the play with the rest of the city. The play proves to be a quite boring discussion on the nature of time between two “gods” – one argues that time is an endless and identical circle of creation, destruction, and rebirth, while the other argues that time is cyclical, and that it simply oscillates through successive creation periods and creates similar but not necessarily identical universes. It is hardly riveting, but the rest of the crowd seems to quite enjoy it.

The group does not ponder the deeper meaning of the play that suggests the nature of free will depends on whether or not each universal cycle can differ in details. This is likely because before they can discuss it they realize that people are flinging themselves ritually to their deaths at the conclusion of the play, mirroring the performance of the two gods on stage.

A guard approaches, clearly expecting to choose a “volunteer” to be sacrificed if the group does not self-select. Jessica reaches down for her gun, only to discover that she must have lost it in her lake escapade, and instead apparently has a dead fish in her pocket.

She impulsively throws the fish over the balcony. The guard, satisfied by the offering, leaves.

Back on the city streets, the group tries to question more inhabitants about the play, but they do not seem to understand that the play just occurred. Their only focus is on a new play that has yet to premier. Through a series of strange conversations, the group aggravates a group of guards, and runs toward a gondola heading up to the central tall pyramid – their presumed escape route, per the ravings of the mysterious crazy man in Bellevue hospital. The guards chase closely behind in a separate gondola, shooting bolts of lightning from their batons.

At the central pyramid, the group runs into a very strange sight: a room littered with random objects, and at its center, an enormous crystal egg with a ramp leading into an oval opening. But perhaps most interestingly, at the base of the crystal egg is a bald – actually completely hairless – human man in his mid-thirties, fiddling with wires and controls at the egg. He appears shocked to see other humans, but quickly recovers and yells that he needs help fixing the egg and to hold off the approaching guards or they won’t be able to escape.

In the ensuing battle, Jessica quite convincingly acts that she is injured while trying to surrender; Margery grabs a baton from the ground and uses it to shoot lightning at the guards and then breaks it to create “space dynamite” that she throws at them; Dr. Schroeder discovers a cube that he uses to “capture” an incoming space dynamite and lock it into a pocket dimension, along with an approaching guard; and Doris furiously fixes the crystal egg with the help of the mysterious stranger.

Doris crosses the last wire and finally fixes the egg, and her and the mysterious bald man jump inside of it. The rest of the group follows, using the low lunar gravity to dodge the guards. One guard nearly makes it onto the egg with them, but for some reason evaporates as he passes through the entrance. With them all on board the egg “activates” and… time accelerates.

Within moments millions of years pass, and the Egg is suspended in space between the Earth and moon. Time continues to accelerate and they see the eventual death of Earth, with strange, enormous, terrifying creatures escaping from it moments before. Soon the Sun dies, and the galaxy collapses on itself, and everything drifts towards one cosmic point as space collapses on itself….

The egg does not seem to be affected, and hovers outside the death of this universe. Other points of light similarly seem to exist outside of the cosmic collapse, and the abnormal entities they saw flee from Earth similarly orbit the extinguishing light of the universe, seemingly unaffected by the great collapse.

An infinite amount of time later, a new universe explodes into being, and stars and galaxies are formed and eventually they see a star that resembles the Sun, and then the gas and particles around it cool slowly and planets coalesce and the Egg drifts toward a newly formed surface of a planet that very closely resembles Earth. Millions of years pass and life begins to appear on this planet, giant reptiles that turn to skeletons and crumble into dust, serpent people, etc., etc. etc., until eventually they see humans and modernity and… the craft slams into the ground.

The abrupt shock of landing knocks everyone out except for grandmother Doris, who slips into a state of mania having just witnessed the death and birth of space-time.

Days later the investigators find themselves in a familiar hospital: Bellevue hospital, where they had been transported after a group of hunters had discovered them several miles from an abandoned military base in Massachusetts. Attempting to convince the medical staff of their sanity, they ask for Jonah Kensington to be contacted.

Jonah shows up, but something is different about him. His stripe of gray hair is on the wrong side of his head. The buttons of his shirt, and (they suddenly realize) all men’s shirts in fact, are on the wrong side. Everything seems… slightly different.

Jonah walks in with a look of confusion on his face. He apologizes: he doesn’t know who they are. Doris begins to fully understand the implications of this strange new universe, and realizes she will never see her grandchildren again.

And then, suddenly, a strange look overtakes Jonah’s face. Shock and dread perhaps? Guilt? Recognition? It’s hard to say. But his mouth is agape as he catches sight of their mysterious companion, the bald man who came with them on the egg.

The man, strapped to his hospital bed, looks Jonah directly in the eye, his face trembling with a mix of sorrow and rage and regret. A single tear drops from his eye.

The man opens his mouth, voice trembling, and croaks a single word.

“..Millie…”

Each member of the group has been called to the hospital bedside of their close friend Rupert Merriweather, a former literary professor at Arkham University.

Cynthia [Rob] – A doctor in private practice that has been Rupert’s longtime neighbor. Harvey [Jimmy]- A young librarian and former grad student of Rupert.
Tom [Brad]- An unskilled laborer and former Detroit auto worker, who met Rupert at a speakeasy and defended him in a bar fight.
Orazio [Jeff]- A local undertaker who has had many discussions with Rupert, trying to convince him to talk about the occult in more than strictly academic terms.

The four individuals meet at hospital and introduce themselves, where Orazio immediately sets himself at odds with the group. They meet Rupert’s wife and his angry/sneering son Bertrand, the latter of whom is not pleased to see the group.

Rupert explains why he has called on them by telling the story of his youth – as young men, he and some friends accidentally unleashed a dark evil “creature” while “innocently” exploring the occult. The “creature” has been bound to their small farmhouse so long as they all lived, but Rupert is the last surviving member, and when he passes….

Rupert provides them a box containing a few items, including a key to the farmhouse, a gold sarcophagus with strange symbols, and a journal documenting Rupert and his friends’ dangerous mistakes.

Rupert spasms into a coma and passes away, and the group, putting asside their grief, are determined to find out the truth of the task Rupert has left them (after Harvey awkwardly expresses his condolences to Rupert’s son).

The group looks heads to the library to do some research. Harvey accidentally lights a stack of papers on fire. The group is kicked out of the library.

Tom and Orazio consider “coming back to the library later that night,” but Harvey astutetly points out that the “library actually closes at 10.”

The group heads to speak to Professor Montana Smith of the Egyptology department, who helps analyze the gold sarcophagus. He dates the sarcophagus to the third dynasty of Egypt, at the time of a little known ruler called “The Black Pharaoh.” He is unable to translate the strange symbols inside the sarcophagus, but he is able to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs: “The girdle leashes her. He of many faces frees her. Hotep.” The investigators determine this message does not apply to their current task.

Feeling their investigation is reaching a dead end, the group plans to head to the old house the next day… in Orazio’s Hearse.

On their way to the house, they drive through the town center of Ross’s Corner, where the few locals milling about give them suspicious looks. The group never stops to inquire why, and thus never learn that a young farmer’s wife went missing the day before.

Walking up to the house, Tom discovers a raccoon that’s chest cavity has been opened and heart seemingly eaten straight out of it’s rib cage.

The group enters the house via the unlocked backdoor (whilst noting the warding symbols all around the house supposedly carved to keep evil out), and Cynthia quickly points out that a hobo has been likely squatting there based on the trash. The group does not notice the small warding signs carved into the molding around the cieling.

They also discover faded papers that describe the chant that “awoke” the creature, along with vials of materials used to summon it. The group concludes that if the chant/ritual is reversed, it would banish the creature. That is, if any of this is real – Cynthia still doubts.

Harvey tries to translate the latin chants, but stops paying attention to his surroundings, causing him to fall down the stairs to the cellar. He is surprised to discover the hobo, hiding in fear in the cellar, who tries to smack him with a table leg before running upstairs to escape the house.

Orazio, in a moment of panic, blindly shoots at the fleeing hobo with his shotgun. He misses and instead blows the backdoor off its hinges, through which the hobo then escapes. Cynthia disarms Orazio and then unloads the shotgun with a flourish.

Cynthia and Harvey boost the surprisingly weak laborer Tom through the trapdoor in the ceiling to inspect the attic. Tom immediately discovers the creature is real as a wind of boiling color flies through the attic at him, slamming loudly through the house and causing ceiling tiles to fall.

Tom’s chest gets torn open and he gets thrown back down to the ground, knocking him unconscious immediately. The attic trapdoor slams closed, and the group can now confirm the existence of Rupert’s grave mistake. Cynthia binds Tom’s wounds and wakes him up. They hear the creature leave the house through the attic window. Tom tells Orazio to shut up.

Bertrand shows up at the farmhouse unexpectedly and demands the investigators leave – he claims the house has been left to him and they’re trespassing. When they refuse to comply, he leaves, and unbeknownst to the investigators, tries to convince the local sheriff to come kick the investigators out. The sheriff is not eager to help, so Bertrand heads back to the house…

Through the frame where the backdoor used to be, the group sees the hobo far away from the house explode into a mist of blood. They decide now would perhaps not be the best time to leave, and coincidentally now would also be a good time to fortify the house. They put the door back in its frame, hoping that will suffice. They then decide to try the ritual in reverse to hopefully banish the creature.

Harvey attempts to help people prepare to speak the chant (in latin), but stutters over the words unhelpfully. Orazio instead helps using his italian expertise. They begin the ritual chanting.

The chanting seems to pull the creature back into the attic, which angrily tramples through the attic above them, unable to cross the warding signs on the molding. Orazio blows a hole in the ceiling with the shotgun in fear, allowing him to see the strange shadowy wisps of the creature above. Thick acidic goo drips down from the ceiling, burning everyone in the group. Tom barely continues to chant.

After an hour of chanting, the group hears a man’s voice crying for help from outside the house. The group is unsure of what to do until the door slams down off its hinges again and a zombified version of the hobo walks through the door and approaches Tom. Orazio, eyes closed and hands over his ears, continues chanting desperately.

Tom blows a hole through the hobo’s head twice with his trusty hand gun, and the gibs of of Hobo Joe, a man they never knew, fly threw the room.

Two more zombies show up: the farmgirl the investigators never knew about, and poor Bertrand, murdered by his father’s sin. The lurker in the attic is getting more violent and angrier as the chant approaches the end. Miraculously, Harvey manages to not stumble over his words as he takes over the final few minutes of the chant.

Tom struggles against the farmgirl, who bites him in the arm as he misses his shot against her. He is close to death. Orazio uses the butt of his shotgun to flip Bertrand, somersault flipping him 360 degrees back onto his feet.

Tom, muscles spasming and unable to hit the farmgirl, dives for cover behind a broken table. Bertrand, having always hated gymnastics as a child, bites into Orazio’s jugular, immediately incapacitating Orazio. Orazio falls to the ground unconscious, bleeding profusely from his neck, unmoving. Cynthia grabs the last, mysterious vial that rolls out of Orazio’s coat.

Tom impales the farm girl on the jagged leg of the broken table. Cynthia struggles against Bertrand, missing with the shotgun, and Bertrand runs into the pentagram at the chanting Harvey. Harvey blindly and fortuitously sidesteps the attack, and Bertrand trips and falls down into the Cellar as Harvey did earlier.

Cynthia stabilizes the dying Orazio, but takes note of the severe nerve damage to the neck, and realizes Orazio will be paralyzed from the neck down if he survives the night. Tom shoves the farmgirl zombie down into the cellar after Bertrand, killing her and knocking into Bertrand. He attempts to seal the staircase down to the cellar with the table.

As Harvey finishes the chant and the thing is pulled into the pentagram, Cynthia throws the mysterious powder into the fire, assuming it is the final ingredient. Instead, it seems to make the creature finally visible, shocking Cynthia into what undoubtably would be insanity… but the creature evaporates so quickly she is unable to process what she saw. The sound of Bertrand in the cellar disappears immediately.

The threat finally gone, the group takes a second to breath… until the sheriff’s department rushes in and arrests them all. Cynthia is casually pistol whipped. Orazio is taken to St. Mary’s hospital in Arkham, where he will never regain the ability to speak and will live out his remaining few days eating and drinking through a straw. The rest of the group is held in jail for a week without being allowed to contact anyone, including a lawyer.

Over that week, a man from New York reads in the paper about the horrible scene discovered in that farmhouse (the pentagram and disgusting corpses). He conducts some research into the groups backgrounds, finding most notably that the 73 year old undertaker Orazio has been selling corpses on the side for science experiments. He convinces the sheriff, with a healthy amount of cash, to pin the violence on Orazio, and secures the release of the other three investigators.

At their release he introduces himself as Jonah Kensignton, and inquires about their interest in an effort he calls “The Yellow King Company.”