NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4360757" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #32: Mr. Chang's Miraculous EscapePART 1: Chang's StoryFireworks explode over Cuncudgerie, bathing the investigators in bursts of colored light.  It is New Years Eve, 1926, and they have 14 days until the end of the world when Nyarlathotep's plan comes to fruition.  They discuss their options: first and foremost they need a plane, it's the fastest way to get anywhere, but they haven't seen any planes. They're very rare and expensive. They also need to resupply, and Hans figures he might have time to return to his house in Port Hedland where the others can regather their stashed supplies. And they might want to give Mortimer Wycroft a visit, because they know he has worked with Huston and the cultists, and more importantly, he owns a shop with lots of stuff to steal.Ronnie Talltree, one-time PC relegated to NPC, bids adieu to these whitey weirdos.  He's seen enough crazy <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> recently to last him a lifetime.Hans Hazzenbaum looks around for the blink-dingo...but it is nowhere around.  Unsurprising; this beast seems to have no normal modes of eating, drinking, or defecation. Hans  feels that it is lurking in the corridors between Time, waiting for the vile Hounds of Tindalos to spring again on the victimized time traveler's from Huston's mad schemes...The others head back to the Oily Rag Inn where they initially stayed many months ago, but WHO do they see sitting at the bar pounding shots of whiskey?Chin Chang!Chang slouches on a barstool, deep into his cups, looking far more weathered and downtrodden than ever before.  His head has been shaved, but hair is growing back in patchy tufts that he keeps hidden beneath a crumpled felt hat.  His expression upon seeing his companions is one of disbelief, then confusion, and then drunken exultation. “Good Christ, you’re alive!” he slurs.“Mr. Chad, and Lester, I…I thought I would never see you again!  Is this real?  What happened to you?  The last Dodge and I saw, the four of you had stepped onto that red dais, where the Abo was sitting with some dog.  As soon as you started heading back the wind began to blow and clouds of dust spun up.  We were afraid it was one of those Living Winds, so we backed off the path and waited, but you never came out.  A few minutes later it cleared up, and all we could see was that black fellow sitting out there as if nothing had happened.  It was a trap, we knew it, and we called out for you as loud as we dared, waiting hours for you to return.  We were scared to go out and vanish just like you did, so we finally gave up and kept going.We kept going, God help us, trying to find a way out of those caves.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/lights.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />We followed the trail of bulbs.  The prisoners could barely keep up. Moaning and dragging their feet, it was all Dodge and I could do to push them on.  We finally saw more lights in the distance, but…but they were waiting for us.Sixty at least. They’d barricaded themselves behind these small buildings with guards everywhere.  But more cultists were hiding off to the sides, in the dark, watching us struggle along the trail.   It was the only way out and they knew it.  Came at us from both sides.They killed some of the prisoners first, hacking them down in cold blood, but me and Dodge fought back.  I still had that lightning gun, and I burned a dozen of them to a crisp before the rest mobbed me.  They beat me and Dodge senseless, and I admit, chunks of my memory aren’t so good anymore.  Or maybe I don’t want to remember.They trussed us up like pigs and carried us off, I don’t know where, and left us in a dark, dark room.  They finally threw in scraps of bread and water, and I wondered why they bothered keeping us alive. Well. I found out.Huston finally came, and for the first time I put a real face to the man who I’d been searching for since New York City.  If only Morty and Arnold knew how far into this mess I’ve come, they would be glad they died already.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/huston.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Huston is mad! A loony, you can see it in his eyes.  He’s doesn’t have a lick of sense anymore, and he raves on and on and on about gods and destiny and eternal prosperity.  Dr. Dodge, now, he didn’t fully understand this whole Dark God business.  We never told him all our experiences.  Like we never told Oscar Ochenta, or that Dr. Blume in Cairo…the less they know the better, but they died all the same.All the same.Huston interrogated us.  And it hurt.  It hurt bad.  And when he thought we were lying, he dragged me to that room where we found that weird alien.  There was a cot in there with…with this helmet thing.  He strapped me down and plugged me into it.  Oh Lord, he wanted to read my mind, to peel me apart one layer at time!  For hours it felt like hot needles were poking into my head. They shaved me. I could smell skin burning.  I could feel my brain melting in my skull while he rummaged around inside.  I never stayed conscious for long; I would pass out, wake up in darkness hours or days later, only to repeat the process!I tried to resist, I tried my hardest, but he found what he wanted.  All my memories, all the way back to when we first found Jackson Elias dead in that hotel room in January. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/jackson%20elias.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I can’t even remember all that happened now. He knows where we went, who we talked to.  He knows that me, Morty and Arnold got that fellow Gavigan in London arrested.  He knows we killed that mummy under the pyramids in Giza; he knows we destroyed the monster in the Black Mountain in Kenya; he knows everything!And he knows your faces.  Every little detail that I could remember he etched into his own mind.  I had actually forgotten what you looked like until you stepped into the bar, and then it all started flooding back.  This went on for I don’t know how long.  Days or weeks or months.  Dodge was tortured too, and I could hear his screams.  Always screaming.  That poor man, he just wanted to find a Lost City.  Well, I suppose he got his wish.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/dodge2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />But Huston got what he wanted from Dodge, too.  He and Hans knew each other professionally, and Huston discovered where Hans lived, in Port Hedland.  Huston knew that we had stolen that Golden Machine from the warehouse, and we had stashed it Han’s home!  Huston told me all of this, gloating the whole time, the evil bastard.  He sent his cronies to retrieve it, and they found that old woman still there, what’s her name, the old biddy in the wheelchair?  She’d been looking after Ma’Moud until our return, along with Han’s housemaid.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/mamoud.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I think they killed her.  I don’t know about the boy, but Huston said they took what they needed and burned the house down.  Probably burned our trunks too, I don’t know for sure. The fools were just there for the machine.  I guess they had found it in the City and were shipping it off to another cult branch.Huston wanted to know where you were.  And how you escaped. How did we find his hideout? Did we know his plans?  Answers I wanted to know myself, but it was like you had just disappeared into thin air.  But Huston told me, after he knew that you had vanished in the Red Plaza, he said this, laughing:‘“Rotted to dust!  Even their bones are lost forever.  You’re friends did not escape, foolish mortal.  The sands of Time consumed them!’”Anyways, I don’t know how long we were there.  It all just blurred together into a haze.  One day they tied me and Dodge up and dragged us into the city.  We were led along with a bunch of other Aboriginal prisoners just as pathetic and weak as us.  They took us to that Purple Dome Plaza, where all those blasted statues were.  I think you told me you fellas had dynamited it a long while back. Four or five months ago I guess it was.Well, it was still in poor shape, but they’d been rebuilding.  The big Sand Bat statue was erect again, and they were ready for some bloodletting.I’d seen this song and dance before and knew our time was up.Huston was there in full regalia, accompanied by dozens of his servants.  They beat prisoners to a pulp with bat-teeth clubs, but they saved the worst for me and Dodge.  Huston took Dodge first, hauled him naked and screaming onto the obelisk, chanting those horrible prayers the whole time.  I couldn’t bear to watch, but they forced me to, pried my eyes wide apart. Huston cut his chest open with a stone knife and ripped his beating heart out, holding it up in the electric blue buzz of that dome.  Then Huston ate his heart.  And then the cultists ate what was left of Dodge.I was up next, and I admit, I’ve never been so scared in all my life.  I would have pissed myself again if there were anything left to piss.  They dragged me onto that slick hot slab, and…and…‘“A worthy foe,”’ I remember him saying. ‘“Your blood will be sweet to my Master.  But not even your ignorant meddling can stop the Rending of the Veil.”’He raised that stone dagger, so I just whispered my last prayers, confident that I had done the best a man can hope to do……but then I felt pain in my head and body the likes of which I can barely describe.  It’s like every cell in my body was quivering.  Huston screamed, and I heard every single one of those boys screaming in pain too.  I rolled off the altar, unable to see straight, this sonic shriek so harsh in my head that my teeth rattled in my gums……and that’s when I saw it.That damn alien had come back.  It was carrying what looked like a lightning gun, but it had this vibrating funnel on the end, and all kinds of tubes coming out, attached to its back.  It slithered slowly across that wide plaza and put a metal circlet around my head, and all of sudden, just like that, the pain stopped.And then…and then that thing spoke into my mind.‘“I have failed,”’ it told me.  ‘“I can never return.  Never to leave this zone. Flee while you can human. Follow the lights south and then west.  Do not stop. Do not look back. Find the surface, and enjoy the short time Earth has left.  In the sun.I shall remain here.  This device will falter soon, and they will come after you. Do not stop.  Do not look back.I can offer nothing more, except…Remember.”’<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/kak.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It put an appendage on my face when it said that.  Remember.  Strange thing to say, huh? Like how could I forget? [                                              GM Note: Savvy players got my Star Trek 2 reference!]Anyway, I stumbled out of there without another word, but in retrospect, I wish I had killed the hell out of Huston.  But I didn’t. I ran for my life.I could still feel that big alien in my head even when I was staggering under that long trail of light. Running through a Blue Plaza I could feel his thoughts, even when I was climbing these tall stairs smeared in bat guano.  And I could feel his thoughts when knives and clubs pummeled him to death soon afterward, his cries echoing in my brain like a dying voice in a canyon…That big stupid alien gave itself up to free me, but it wouldn’t raise a finger—or claw—to hurt anyone else.  It just didn’t want to be here anymore.There were no guards at all, everyone was at the ritual. I got a truck running outside.  It had some onions and a pouch of warm water in the backseat; that was it.  I tore off into the desert, not having a clue where to go, just knowing that I had to get as far away as possible.  I heard dim explosions later, and saw a plume of dust far behind me.I drove for hours. I can barely remember this part, but I ended up driving straight into a ditch and couldn’t get out. I started walking, straight into the night, with just a bag of onions and a thimble of piss-warm water.I walked for days, not knowing where I was going, expecting any second for someone to slide a stone knife between my ribs, or plant me on a spit and eat me.  I started hallucinating.  I would see these dingoes sometimes out of the corner of my eye, and sometimes I thought they were real…but sometimes they weren’t.I even saw that big stone on the hill, and that goddamned Tall Man up there, beckoning me to come closer! Just a little closer…or maybe it was just a dream…<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/tall.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />At some point a bunch of cow herders found me nearly dead out in the middle of nowhere.  Snakebit, sunburned, dehydrated, delirious and amnesic, they took me back to Cuncudgerie and patched me up.<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Esaasha/Masks/desert2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I’ve been here for weeks.  I don’t even know how long exactly.  I haven’t seen you since August, and I figured without your help, there was nothing to do but wait.Wait for the end, just like that big alien said.  Enjoy these last days we have.So I can do that, can’t I?Can’t I?Are…are we?”               </blockquote>

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