We started by going back a bit to the previous scene, with professor Sanchez being struck by a bout of madness. In a panic, he rushed out. Huston just laughed, reminisced about the time he and his cultists lost their minds for the first time, then prodded us to go after him, just so a flying squid doesn't get him.
Excuse me, but what the fuck?
Dodge, Amos and some cultists ran after Sanchez, while Huston explained about the monsters lurking in the darkness of the sunken city.[1] Then he departed after Sanchez as well, leaving me to investigate.
They chased Sanchez through the updated map of the city.
With the elderly Huston and his guard walking at the back.
As Sanchez reached the wooden house, he met a mob of Aboriginal zombie miners and their two cultist handlers. How do we know they were zombies? Sanchez tried to push through, move them aside, melting a couple of hands and arms, to no reaction. Dodge and Amos followed him, their movements also restrained by the mob. Then the cultists shouted: stand to the wall! at the miner zombies, and they complied.
Sanchez ran towards the dome, and there broke a generator to plunge the caves into darkness. The chase carried on using flashlights.
Finally, Sanchez reached the stairs, and passed his running endurance CON check flawlessly.[2] With a little luck, Amos caught up to him on the surface, just as Sanchez was shouting at our companions to start the engines. Amos decked him in the back of the head, to no effect. Fortunately, Sanchez finally failed a check, and came through as a raging lunatic. The others subdued him, as Amos beat him into unconsciousness. Dodge then noticed some cultists coming up the stairs, and the guys set up an ambush, killing all 4 bad guys.
In the meantime, Lucy was looking around the place, when the Ythian initiated telepathic contact.[3] I got the same spiel as Sanchez did, but being alone, I could actually act on it. We hammered out a deal: me releasing it in exchange for learning about the cultists' plans and how to use weapons left behind by the Ythians against the flying squids; and then us doing some manual labor to unblock access to a 'library' and help it go home, in exchange for knowledge. The key to the fuse box was inside another box in the room, so I just let the creature out.
Well, I could have lived perfectly fine without knowing what is coming up. Not for long, mind you, but perfectly fine.
The cults of Nyarlathotep are planning a world wide event. On the 14th of January, 1926, they will launch a rocket infused by alien technology that, aided by a massive ritual involving the simultaneous release of large amounts of magical energies, would tear a hole in reality and let monsters come through to devour the entire human race. The statues we touched function as reservoirs for raw magical energies to be released at this point.
Oh, and the weapons are the camera-like devices we saw on the cultists.
As the Ythian let me know where to meet it for the final stage of our bargain and left, I turned the force field back on and put the key back in its box, just in case, and hurried out towards the surface. I stopped at Huston's place to maybe steal a lightning gun camera, but Huston was home. I declined his offer of tea, tried to identify a misbehaving clock that looked eerily similar to something in the Juju House, and hurried out. Unwilling to try a new route, I went towards the pit, but had to do a climb check over the rubble. Slip and slide, take 3 damage by tearing up your back. The smell of blood sent the creatures in the pit into a frenzy as I ran past them. Still, nowhere as bad as the second climb check, which I also failed. This time I took care not to get hurt, but triggered a rock slide and a terrible noise. Hearing a low whistle - the tell tale sign of the flying squid, as Huston said - I ran full tilt back up. Right into the double barrels of Amos' shotgun.
The guys had already disposed of the cultist bodies and were planning to go back down. I got them up to speed on the bargain. Our mission was clear anyway: barring suicide, our only way out was to stop the world wide ritual. This meant killing Huston and destroying the statues; and also stopping his other buddies the Ythian let me know about: Ho Feng, Achia Sing, and the Penhew Foundation.
We geared up with guns and armor, and cooked up a plan to get the cultists in the barracks drunk, and possibly take them out silently. Unfortunately, this did not work. Mistrust ran high in the cult, so much so that the cultists slept with all their gear on, and a hand on a knife. So they did not dare drink themselves into oblivion. I pumped them for information on their total numbers[4] and additional possible exits[5]. We also found a crumpled note mentioning a lone human hiding out in the city and being hunted by the cult. Then we excused ourselves and left, to find a way to deal with Huston.
[1] 'It cost me a lot of cultists until we learned how to keep them at bay.'
[2] 'Roll a constitution check!' 'So I don't shit myself? Oh wait, that's constipation.'
[3] 'I've been penetrated before, and I'm fine! I let him in.'
[4] Besides the ones already dead: 10 in the barracks with us, 4 with Huston, 1 on generator repair duty, and two handling the miners.
[5] None that they knew about.
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