12th Session
This session has a few post-game retcons, which I try to indicate clearly below.
Someone came up with the following introduction to the evening's session:
- Lillian is scary.
- Joyce is a pirate, er, pilot.
- Martin is gay.
- Darla is young.
- Vito isn't here.
Cat expanded and explained the source:
Joyce is a pilot, afraid of nothing she's done this before...
Chorus: afraid of nothing, she's done this before
Context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg-QF3RT_oM
I gave Lillian's player a couple of letters.
Chris, who plays Vito, couldn't make the session. I asked him if it would be all right if I damseled Vito.
Chris: I sense that Vito will end up in a dress tied up to tracks, but feel free.
Shadowing and Spying
That said, Vito started out present, albeit as an NPC. He and Lillian had been spotted by Waen / Lowman, whom they'd tried to tail after the man spotted Martin. Lillian and Vito got out of their quarry's sight and decided to do some practice stealth / shadowing, though not of Lowman. Alden rolled without a spend, just to see how well it went. He rolled poorly, and we decided that each kept trying to teach the other tactics that were too tailored to themselves.
Joyce and Darla were in Lowman's townhouse. My original plan had been that one of Lowman's bodyguards would open the front door, and the women could attack, hide, or perhaps chase a fleeing Lowman. But, things went differently.
First, when I asked Martin's player what Martin would do, she said he'd go to Lowman's neighborhood and see if he returned. Second, Cat said that Joyce would have had one of urchins on watch to give warning if Lowman returned. This was reasonable; she had made a 2 point Oral History spend to send up "urchin mail" last session. There are limits to what that can do, but the limits are very broad, and this was well within them.
For Martin, I kept things player facing, so the player rolled to see if Lowman spotted his former tail. Lowman did.
As the urchin was an NPC, I decided to roll for Lowman. I rolled a 6 on the die, so Lowman spotted the kid.
So, from Martin's point of view, Lowman and his bodyguards eventually came to the area. Lowman spotted Martin. The urchin made whatever noise or signal had been agreed upon to give Joyce a heads up. Lowman spotted the kid giving the signal. Now thoroughly spooked, Lowman turned and walked quickly away from his townhouse.
Martin decided to follow, the player making a big spend and rolling well. Lowman didn't expect the person he'd just spotted to start tailing him again.
Joyce and Darla left the townhouse. The urchin told them that she'd been spotted by the man they were looking for, and that he had fled. She was very sorry. Joyce assured the kid that she wasn't angry and gave the kid some money. Then, she and Darla went to a previously agreed upon rendezvous point, where they met Lillian and Vito. This was likely a tea shop or restaurant.
Martin sent an urchin to the rendezvous point to let them know he was tailing Lowman.
GM: What do they call Martin?
Martin's player: Viceroy.
Alden explained that this came from Lillian calling him "silly viceroy" last session. He explained that the Monarch butterfly is poisonous, but the Viceroy only -pretends- to be poisonous to scare off predators.
A second urchin arrived after a time with a message that Martin had tracked his quarry to the Fragrant Honey Shop, which the group knew was where one entered to go to the fights. Martin planned to follow the man in.
This made his friends uneasy, especially as the next evening of fights was not that night, but the night after. They decided to stake out the place.
Alden: Lillian finds the only gargoyle in Bangkok and hides behind it.
I suggested that it was a Buddha statue rather than a gargoyle, and he was fine with that. We talked him out of having Lillian acquire monk's robes so that anyone seeing her wouldn't think she was a woman, on the grounds that Lillian was being stealthy and trying not to be seen.
Joyce set up a sniper's nest where she had a good view of the door of the Fragrant Honey Shop. Darla disguised herself as some other female tourist and did some shopping in the neighborhood of the Fragrant Honey Shop, which did, after all, actually sell honey.
Rewinding a bit, when Martin arrived, he waited for Lowman and his bodyguards to enter the shop and get out of hearing range. Then, he made a 1 point Bargain spend to bribe the doorman to let him in, just to look at the place where the fights would occur. He explained that he'd be betting on a particular fighter and wanted to get some idea of the odds.
The doorman took the bribe and pointed looked away so that he didn't see Martin entering. I thought about whether he would have gotten a description of Martin, and decided that the cultist leaders figured that Martin would enter openly, as Martin, or not at all, so they had not yet put people on alert, though that was likely to change soon.
Martin Looks Around
Martin was amazingly stealthy, so he got a good look at at least part of the area. RETCON ALERT: I'm doing a little post-session retconing to correct an error I made a bit later, so Martin actually learned more than originally described. I doubt it needs to change anything else from the session.
He was inside The Labyrinth, aka the place where the death fights take place in Bangkok. Here:
- He got a look at the fighting area. There was a central pit with a sharpened bamboo fence stained with blood and with some bits of viscera. There was a grate in the center.
- Around the pit on three sides were bleachers where spectators were meant to stand. On the fourth side was an empty dentist's chair. There was a nearby bonfire. A couple of torches were in the farther parts of the area, but the place was fairly dark and smokey.
- This area had been a warehouse once. It was part of a warren of buildings that now connected to each other in a maze of passages. Martin has the Architecture skill, so was starting to get a feel for the borders of the place.
- The Bangkok Mouth was under the arena. It generated Nectar, which was gathered by people using various implements and buckets. Fights would occasionally break out among those doing the gathering as they were affected by breathing in the fumes of the Bangkok Nectar, which increased violent impulses.
- The Nectar was bottled in a central area on the same underground level. I pointed out that Martin, the Nectar addict, was in close proximity to a Whole Lot of Nectar. MP decided to spend 4 points of Stability to guarantee that Martin wouldn't try to grab some Nectar, as that struck both player and character as a stupid way to get caught, especially given that this Nectar would make Martin violent, not lustful, and Martin is not the most effective at pure violence.
- There were several cells where folks who volunteered for the fights waited. The cell doors did not have locks, but were closed in various ways ranging from a bar across the door to a portcullis. This would prove useful later.
- The underground level was filthy and smelly, and often had ankle deep water running through it.
RETCONNING NOTE -- There were three individuals who stood out. NOTE THE RETCONNING HERE:
- Waen / Lowman. This was the American who fearlessly terrorized a man who wanted to set up a competitor death match ring. However, Lowman was now clearly terrified. Specifically, he was terrified of the PCs, whom he had been told would be coming. They were everywhere! They were following his every move! They were in his neighborhood -- they were probably in his home! He did not like the Labyrinth, but he was too afraid to go home. But, he preferred his private stash of Nectar, which was at home. Lowman did not go anywhere near the Bangkok Mouth nor did he discuss it or the manufacture of Nectar. He did discuss, in Thai, at length, how worried he was about the folks who were clearly coming to get him and kill him. Lowman is in charge of certain day to day daylight operations of the cult.
- Thawi Udom, dubbed Sir Nose-a-lot by Martin because his nose has been broken so often it almost looks absent. Bald, covered in scars and tattoos, Siamese, in charge of the death fights. Like Lowman, he's a Nectar addict, but he has no objection whatsoever to taking the Bangkok Nectar. That said, given that he wanted to capture the group alive (though he didn't mind if they got damaged in the process), he intended to make sure that the folks he sent after the group were not on Nectar at the time. Unlike Lowman, he wasn't worried about them. After all, the cultists knew by now where they were staying.
- A man in a tattered uniform whom Martin dubbed Sir Mask-a-lot because he had the equivalent of a surgeon's mask over his nose and mouth for working to harvest Nectar from the Bangkok Mouth. None of the others working near the Mouth were so protected, which is why they get into fights. (There's nothing preventing them from covering up. They just don't.) Everyone else gave him a generous amount of personal space. He didn't seem to be interested in throwing his weight around, just in doing his job without becoming affected by the Nectar. He also seemed to be making at least some effort at keeping himself clean.
Martin made his way out through the Fragrant Honey Shop.
Doorman: So, who are you betting on?
Joyce (from sniper's nest, hence inaudibly): Marty, this isn't a time to be chatting.
Martin: You'll know when you see.
Martin looked around for an urchin with whom to send a message for the others, but couldn't find one. Darla, spotting Martin, got into a rickshaw and had it drive past him. She called to him to get in, and he did. We got a little whimsical discussing her disguise as some other tourist.
Josh: She's wearing clothes.
Lillian: I've been trying to break her of that habit.
Vito Vanishes
The three women were much relieved to have retrieved Martin safely. All four met at a second rendezvous point. Vito, however, did not show up, nor did an urchin come with a message from him.
Lillian: Vito can take cadre of himself.
Joyce: Have you -met- Vito?
Lillian: Martin can take care of -himself-.
Folks exchanged information and pondered the merits of changing living quarters. They decided against it, as they didn't want the cultists to know that they knew that the cultists were on to them.
REMINDER: I'm totally fine with how things went, and loved that we got Amelia Earhart on screen, but that said -- there's the network of contacts via Joyce's Oral History via Martin via Jeremiah's contacts. You've paid for that, should you choose to use it. (This doesn't make them immune to bloody cultist-dealt death, of course.)
Joyce: You know what I find works in situations like these? Foreign mercenaries! You think I'm joking.
Lillian: You think foreign mercenaries are the answer to everything.
Martin reviewed what they knew about Lowman.
Martin: I think we can buy him off.
Joyce: He's being protected. That means he's very valuable to them. Not shooting it down, you understand.
Martin described what he had learned and what he had seen and smelled.
Martin: If it wasn't rainy season, I'd say we burn it all down -- but as it is --- I need a shower.
Darla: I wasn't going to say anything -- actually, I was.
Martin (fondly): You would, sweet girl.
Dueling Aviatrixes
They talked about how to be safe in their hotel and came up with the idea of having Amelia Earhardt come there, which would result in far too much scrutiny for someone to grab someone else easily. And, I think, someone brought up the idea of Joyce being able to pass as Amelia, apart from her not wanting to do so.
Joyce: We look nothing alike! She's got short hair! ... 'Scuse me, folks, I got a lady to see.
Someone (summing up the real reason for getting Amelia to come to the hotel): We're doing this so Martin can take a shower.
Lillian began to have second thoughts about volunteering for the death matches.
Lillian: I don't want to fight in that ring.
I asked if they'd set a watch, under the circumstances, and if so, who was on watch.
Cat: Well, whoever's awake and at the bar and not too drunk is on watch duty.
Martin noted the rivalry Joyce felt for her fellow aviatrix.
Martin: Your girlfriend [Cissy] once told me there was a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.
Joyce: It's not as if I want her to die or have her plane go down over the Pacific!
Martin had far too much fun referring to Sir I Haven't Got A Nose.
Martin: I think our best bet might be to pick off the nose.
Lillian: You're twelve.
Martin: Yes.
Joyce: We could do a Ho Fong on him.
She reminisced about the good old days of drive by shootings. Martin made sketches of Lowman and Udom to distribute to the urchin network. I don't know whether he also drew pictures of Sir Maskalot.
Joyce met Amelia and the two women talked shop in the hotel bar. There was some more or less polite oneupwomanship, and digs. Joyce said, probably genuinely believing it, that the rest of Amelia's flight would likely be a piece of cake.
Either Nyarlathotep visited Joyce's dreams or Joyce dreamed of Nyarlathotep. Perhaps there is no difference. The Messenger offered her help on matters great and trivial, including getting her a hot dog, which he assured her would be the best hot dog she ever had. He asked where she wanted a witch mark. She refused all offers, including the witch mark.
Josh tells me he found Helpful Nyarlathotep creepy.
Martin had a more pleasant dream, probably. There was a building on fire, and Jeremiah rose from the fire like a phoenix from the ashes and went to Martin. They had sex, and Martin work up crying.
Either late that night or early the next morning, one of Joyce's urchin network told the group that Thawi had been spotted. The man had gotten out of a truck at the docks and loaded a small boat with something wrapped in blankets. It might or might might not have been a live or dead body. The boatman went off with Thawi and the bundle aboard.
The group asked more questions, but did not learn much more. However, the urchins agreed to let them know when the boat came back.
Going to the Fights
Still without Vito, the group pondered whether or not to continue with the plan to go to the death matches. Having Lillian fight in them looked increasingly like a bad idea.
Lillian / Alden: I get the feeling that --
GM (criticaling her Read Player's Mind roll, for a change): No. The GM does not want you to do this or not to do this. The GM is not trying to steer you.
Alden: Right. What does -Lillian- want?
That was indeed the correct question, and he pondered it. Then, the group came up with a fine idea: The PCs would attend the fights in disguise. The Disguise roll was high enough to cover everyone and succeed against the most paranoid cultist, which was probably Lowman or Thawi.
Cat: I assume they check for weapons?
GM: Actually, no.
Indeed, as Lee Dempson (***ckspelling) had told Lillian, he'd seen a match where someone from the audience had tossed a knife into the pit, but the contestants ignored it, intent of ripping each other apart bare handed. So, no machine guns or rifles, but knives? Pistols? No problem!
Joyce: That's bad. That's very bad.
GM: Why?
Joyce: It's like the Wild West in there.
Lillian's disguise was enhanced by her dressing colorfully, for a change. Joyce dressed as her male alter ego, Josh Winters. Well, this time he was a Frenchman.
Folks paid the doorman the appropriate sum and gave the appropriate passphrase. He let them in, completely failing to recognize Martin. They were led to where the pit was and took their places on the bleechers with about a hundred other people. Most of these were destitute locals, but some were decadent rich people, either locals or tourists. The group looked around for anyone who might be Savitree Sirikhan, but failed to find any likely candidates.
The dentist's chair Martin had seen was now in use. Spectators wishing to purchase Nectar would pay, then sit in the chair. One man would tilt their heads back and pinch their nostrils closed, while a second would pour a dose of Nectar down their throats. This disgusted the group. Martin noted that there were much more pleasant ways to take Nectar.
The first two contestants came up from below the arena. They were both clearly on Nectar, as were all of the other fighters over the night.
Joyce (to Lillian): If you're gonna fight here, you have to look like you're on Nectar and act really crazy. Kind of like you're me.
The first fight triggered a Stability test. Lillian and Joyce made theirs. Martin and Darla failed theirs, and Josh noted after the session that I need to hit Darla, and possibly others, up with additional Stability tests. Darla's never seen anyone killed in front of her. The easiest way to handle this is to give folks a copy of the Stability loss chart. I can and will still call tests on people, but if I forget, or if someone thinks something would affect his or her PC, this will help.
[NB: I have conflicting notes on whether it was supposed to be a 1-point loss or a 3-point loss. As I called for a 1-point loss in session, and changing that might well have changed people's decisions on spending, I am sticking to what I said in session.]
Darla was sickened. Martin was trying not to look and failing. He was also on the lookout for Lowman.
Both Lowman and Thawi were there.
RETCONNING NOTE: As I said in email, I plain forgot that Thawi's presence meant that the boatman had to have returned. I don't think that changes anything, as folks would still have met the boatman as planned. Possibly it meant the meeting happened a little earlier, but as that doesn't affect much, I'm fine either way. END RETCONNING NOTE.
Thawi was the one deciding whether a winner fought again or went back down to the cells until the Nectar wore off. He decided how many fights there would be in an evening, and when and whether to break up regular matches with things like having Nectar maddened animals fight. We decided that the way to do a dog vs sheep fight was to have the sheep on Nectar, but not the dog. With regret, I vetoed the suggestion for a komodo dragon on Nectar, as I didn't want quite that much chaos at that point.
The Bangkok fights, like the Los Angeles orgies, were essentially rituals of worship to the Liar and its local mouth. The spectators had their own jargon, calling out "Comsume him!" or "Mouths be praised!" The main difference was that the lens of worship was violence, not sex. But, that said, they did not know consciously what they were doing.
POSSIBLE RETCONNING -- I don't recall whether I was clear on this:
The only people who were consciously worshipping the Liar and the Mouth were Thawi Udom and his cultist minions, the ones who worked to harvest the Nectar. Lowman was NOT consciously doing this. He was also disgusted by the death matches.
END POSSIBLE RETCONNING
That said, Lowman was a Nectar addict, and he was clearly Jonesing. Fortunately for him, one of the cultists delivered to him his stash, which a couple of culitsts had taken from his townhouse. (The urchins watching the place had seen them come and go, but would not be able to find the PCs until the next day. Most, if not all, of these urchins have families, and they do go to sleep for most of the night.)
Martin Has Another Plan
Martin looked at the situation and figured that, given Lowman's distaste for the local Nectar, and given that the Nectar packaging was not something he'd seen before, Lowman probably was taking Malta Nectar. He made a plan and told Joyce and Darla that he was going to talk to Lowman, taking Lillian with him.
Martin (to Joyce): I need some Nectar.
Joyce: Now, wait a minute!
Martin: I don't want to take it! I mean, yes, I do, but I'm not going to.
She handed over a bottle from his stash.
Lowman's bodyguards kept them from getting close, but did agree to deliver a note. Martin wrote it and wrapped it around the bottle of Nectar so that Lowman would have to read it before finding the Nectar.
"R"'s, aka Ramsey's, aka Martin Locksley's Note to D. Lowman, aka Waen
In the note, Martin claimed that he was from Malta, working for Montgomery Donovan. The Nectar was a gift, and he wanted to talk with Lowman.
Lowman read the note and was delighted. He and his bodyguards brought Martin and Lillian (clearly Martin's bodyguard) down to the underground level to talk.
RETCON: They did NOT go past the Bangkok Mouth. END RETCON.
Lowman asked Martin's name, as Martin had only identified himself as "R." in the note. Martin had to think fast, as he didn't want to identify himself as "Rhodes", since he had reason to believe that Lowman would recognize the name Jeremiah Rhodes. So, he identified himself as Ramsey.
[Was that supposed to be the first name or the last name? I forget, though I assume the last.]
Now, the initial set up was pretty good. Lowman knew the name Montgomery Donovan. He knew that Donovan was the head of the Malta operation. He preferred Malta Nectar to Bangkok Nectar. And, while it's possible that neither he nor Martin and Lillian knew it, Martin and Lillian were probably dressed perfectly for representatives of the Malta Cult. But, there were several ways in which this could go wrong.
Martin quickly found one of them. He told Lowman that they were trying to hire him away from Savitree Sirikhan. IIRC, he also said that Sirikhan was experiencing troubles, and that, as something of her competitor (and not particularly enamoured of the Bangkok Nectar or the death matches), he wanted to poach Lowman.
Lowman asked for details, as Lillian thought to herself that Martin might have overplayed his hand just a bit. I forget exactly what Martin said, but he mentioned Samson Trammel.
Lowman: Who's Samson Trammel?
Martin: He's the head of the Los Angeles cult.
Lowman: What happened to Ramon Echevarria?
Martin: Trammel pushed him out.
All of this was perfectly true, but it was clearly news to Lowman, whose Los Angeles information was clearly 13 years out of date. Interesting, that.
Lowman told them to wait. Martin asked him not to reveal the reason for their visit to Savitree Sirikhan, and Lowman said that he didn't plan to.
Martin and Lillian were left alone for a while. Above, Darla and Joyce were getting nervous, especially when Thawi announced the last fight of the evening. Joyce covered well, chatting in French with a rich, decadent French woman.
Below, Sir Maskalot walked past Martin and Lillian, utterly uninterested in them. More time passed.
RETCON: They DID still see Sir Maskalot, probably with his mask down, as he was heading away from the chamber with the Mouth. As far as Martin was concerned, he's just this guy, Sir Maskalot, in a tattered uniform.
As far as Lillian was concerned: Sir Maskalot is almost certainly not a Nectar addict. He's also got an odd calm, a little like her own, basically someone who is content / at peace / in a semi-Zen state (if I understand the term) with who he is and what he is doing. He's looked into the darkness and accepted it as simply part of the universe. END RETCON
Then, Lillian heard the sounds of a lot of people coming towards them from both potential exit routes.
Alden: The cells, are they nearby? Near enough that Lillian could open them?
I was good with that solution to the problem. In theory, Bangkok is supposed to be fairly combat heavy. In practice, for this group, it's turning out to be more cat and mouse, though exactly who is the cat and who is the mouse is unclear. Martin thinks that he and his companions need to be both cat and mouse.
I ruled that, given Lillian's unusual tactic, there would be enough chaos that Martin's usual tactic of pressing himself into a corner would work for long enough for Lillian to try to use Scuffling to make enough of an opening in the growing wall of people that she could then grab Martin and use their Athletics to get them out of there. A different story or a different point of the evening (real time, not game time) might have tilted my mind in the other direction, but for then and there, it felt like the right call.
They got out from a different exit than the Fragrant Honey Shop. Above, Thawi called an end to the evening's entertainment, and Darla prevailed on Joyce to head out, reasoning that if Martin and Lillian were prisoners, the correct course of action would be to get out and then sneak back in to rescue them. Martin went around to the Fragrant Honey Shop and paid the doorman to deliver a note to Joyce and Darla when they emerged. The doorman did this, and folks rendezvoused somewhere far away from that neighborhood.
Lillian: Good news: Your brother's safe. Bad news: He screwed up.
Darla was glad to hear that her brother was safe, though still shaken by the events of the evening.
Martin: We released a bunch of Nectar maddened thugs, and hopefully, they're killing people.
Joyce: You're taking that well in stride, Marty. You're making progress.
Martin, going white around the lips: Yes.
While he might not have been happy with how he was changing, he was still very clear on what he wanted.
Martin: I want as many if them dead in as many different ways as possible so they can be even more dead.
They hired some foreign mercenaries to pose as normal hotel guests, in case they were attacked. They weren't.
Talking to the Boatman
By the next morning at the latest, possibly earlier, they knew that the cultists had delivered Lowman's stash to him and that the boatman had returned. They set up a meeting with the boatman, claiming to want to hire him for a private charger.
Joyce and Lillian decided to play crazy lady and crazier lady.
Joyce: Which of us is crazier?
(Lillian grins.)
Joyce: Right. Darla will be the nice lady.
They told the boatman that they wanted him to take them to the same place he took his last passenger. He tried to talk them out of it. They eventually reached an accommodation: He would tell them what he knew, and they wouldn't make him take him there.
Roughly once a month, sometimes more often, he would take Thawi or Lowman to an island called Ko Krok. It was about 50 miles from Bangkok -- and about 5 miles from a village on the mainland called Pattaya. Sometimes he carried baggage as well as one of the two men, but he was paid well to ask no questions.
As far as he could tell, no one lived on the island. He tied up the boat at a decrepit dock, and watched his passenger go into a compound of buildings. He would wait nervously until his passenger arrived and then gratefully leave the island as quickly as possible. Joyce paid him the sum he claimed his passenger paid for a trip.
The boatman left. Martin said that he'd walk around visibly, with Lillian keeping a stealthy eye on him, while Darla went, in disguise, to look up appropriate records and maps. Joyce asked why Martin couldn't go to the library openly while the three women disguised themselves and watched over him.
Martin: No. Because they'll know I'm research in something, and I don't want them wondering what.
There was definitely some logic in this. So, Darla went to look up records, while Martin walked visibly around Bangkok, "obsessively checking Urchin Mail".
Cat: Obsessively checking Urchin Mail -- so typical of when you first get on Urchin Mail.
As Darla looked through various books and records, and reached for a volume she needed, it seemed almost to fall into her hand. However, Joyce saw Nyarlathotep tip it off the shelf for Darla.
Joyce: Don't you have a day job?
Darla learned that the Sirikhan clan owned the island Ko Krok. In theory, about two dozen Sirikhan family members lived there, along with servants and servants' families. But, official correspondence reports that the patriarch and governor of the island, Kongdech Sirikhan, hadn't answered minor official inquiries (the equivalent of taking census -- the government wasn't concerned, just noting it for bureaucratic reasons). Savitree Sirikhan was a cousin at some remove in the extended family.
Martin continued checking in with various urchins to see if they saw anything, spotted any of the people he was looking for, and so on. One of the urchins told Martin he'd been given a message to deliver.
[How was it phrased? I vaguely recall something like: "When you're ready to see him, come to the Labyrinth by the Fragrant Honey Shop." That sound right? Anyone remember it differently?]
In other words, while spending two points on an urchin network will indeed get lots of eager urchins delivering messages and watching people, Lowman had spotted one of them at work, and Martin had been openly walking around Bangkok obsessively checking in with the urchins.
We slipped into bad jokes again, Cat / Joyce complaining about Martin blowing the security of her Urchin Network.
Cat: Now, I gotta change all of my Urchin Passwords!
Martin wandered about in a bit of a conflicted daze, then went to a bar where he proceeded to give a credible appearance of getting far more drunk than he actually was. Lillian joined him, with Darla and Joyce meeting them later, after they doffed their disguises. IIRC, Joyce could see Martin was drinking. Darla thought Martin was drunk. Lillian realized that Martin was (partly, at least) putting on an act. He brought them up to date and started to sketch out a new plan as the group went to Pattaya, the village about 5 miles from the island of Ko Krok.
The villagers confirmed that the island belonged to the Sirikhan family, which was well liked, albeit reserved, but over the last ten years, traffic to and from the mainland gradually stopped. No one knew where the people on the island had gone, when, or why the residents on the island (the Sirikhans, their servants, their servants' families) left. (Actually, they don't really even know if they left.)
The island was now shunned by locals with any sense. Boats gave it a wide berth when sailing to the nearby, larger island, Ko Lan. The villfsagers said that those known to go to the island over the last few years vanished, neither they nor their boats being seen again. But, Lillian, using Martin as an interpreter, flirted with a young man who admitted that the body of a local fisherman who folks thought landed on Ko Krok washed up on shore about a month ago, and there was something deeply disturbing about the body which the young man declined to tell Lillian, adding that the body was cremated as is Buddhist custom.
Lillian said the appropriate thing Buddhists say under such circumstances (one of her Pillars being Tibetan Buddhism) and agreed that young ladies should perhaps not hear certain things. She let Martin Reassure the man that there were some terrible things that happened, but things did get better with time, something Martin privately considered a complete lie. The man agreed to tell Martin more, at a secret midnight meeting, for a price that seemed large to him, but was actually very minor by the standards of the PCs.
At the meeting, after the money was handed over, he explained to Martin that when the body was discovered, it had a grotesque and misshapen mouth on its shoulder where the arm should have been. The body was clearly dead, completely dead -- except for the mouth, which continued to slowly, but steadily, gnaw on the dead man's bloated, water-logged flesh, consuming it.
The body was burned almost immediately. As it burned, the mouth screamed and howled horrible curses in a strange, perhaps an unearthly, tongue.
Martin tried to comfort the man while resisting the urge to vomit. Ironically, Lillian would have been better at both.
Martin's current plan, which is actually quite viable: He walks openly into the Labyrinth. Meanwhile, Joyce, Lillian, and Darla go to Ko Krok.
As I understand it, everything except for the brain in a cylinder and perhaps Vito, if he's a prisoner, is fair target in both locations -- presuming no other prisoners (or presuming folks don't care about other prisoners) and presuming no other considerations apply.
