1st Session

Our investigators were:

Joyce Buffy Summers (Cat): a plucky aviatrix who went through the events of Masks of Nyarlathotep in 1927. She had friends in the New York mafia, Lucky Luciano's group, I think. (Who were the other PCs from that run, and what's their current situation?) 34

Tony Santo (Rob): A young man who, while not a made man, has connections with the New York mafia. He's had no brush with the supernatural that he knows of. He does not care for drug dealers, as he lost his girlfriend to addiction (heroin?). 22

Elaine Joy White (Ken): Nurse, considered a quadroon. 24

Vito de Gennara (Chris): Jersey mafia man who went through the events of Tatters of the King in 1928-1929. He is also a lawyer. 40s.

We detailed Drives, Pillars, Sources, and connections between the investigators and between the investigators and their mysterious patron.

Joyce's and Tony's mutual mafia friends suggested that she take him on as a mechanic.

MFriend (played by Ken): He's my cousin.

Joyce: He doesn't have the same last name.

MF: On my mother's side. My... third cousin.

Tony had no objection to working for Joyce. He wanted to make connections, and Joyce knew a lot of important people.

Joyce had a black co-pilot whose niece was her lover. I think the two were somehow related to Elaine.

Vito had some kind of connection to Elaine, and I need to be reminded of what that was.

Eternal Lies begins in 1937, with Janet Winston-Rogers asking the PCs to find out what had happened to her recently deceased father in 1924. It made sense to ask Joyce, as she knew lots of people and can fly a plane. It just so happens that Janet has a plane (and a pilot) she can place at the group's disposal. And, we decided, Joyce had flown people from the Winston pharmaceutical company, perhaps to pharmaceutical conferences. And Tony was Joyce's mechanic, although in retrospect, I should have built more of a hook for him. I did bring up the idea of Janet's father, Walter Winston, having donated money to fight against drug addiction and help victims of same, but I should have made that connection firmer.

Elaine was the live-in nurse for Walter Winston, and whether or not there was anything carnal between them, certainly there were folks who assumed that there was. Mr. Winston was definitely on the paranoid side, and felt it good to have a nurse who was quite proficient in poisons. And, she had probably used some of her knowledge, whether of poisons or of more hands on force on people who might perhaps have been bothering Mr. Winston, not that either let Janet know. She didn't know what happened to him in 1924, but I'm fine with her remembering details as they start unfolding elsewhere in the campaign. Mr. Winston had practically raised Elaine, and someone asked if she were his bastard daughter. As far as she knew, this was not the case; certainly, it isn't what her mother said. But, who knows? I have no problem if that should turn out to be the case.

As for Vito, he and Mr. Winston had been at some social event together, and Vito had let slip something vague about his experiences, something that Mr. Winston, with his own experiences, noticed. I think Chris even said more or less what Vito had said, but I forget what that was. Regardless, it made Mr. Winston feel that there was a connection, and so he decided that he wanted Vito as his lawyer.

I think I have the basic outline of Joyce's experiences in the Masks game. I ran the Tatters game Vito first appeared in. Vito still exchanges Christmas cards and family pictures with his fellow survivors (John Simons and Remy Piper). He is still heartbroken and furious at the loss of Amelia Burroughs, the young art student he'd considered as a niece, much as he's considering Elaine in this game.

After listening to Vito talk about Amelia, I said, "I'm... going to go out on a limb here and guess your Drive is Revenge."

Yep.

He is trying to keep his fellow mobsters safely away from the mythos, which is part of why he's seeing an Irish priest as his confessor. He still attends church despite having lost faith.

Vito: Father, I know this is bullshit, but it's _our_ bullshit.

Father Bragah takes this in stride and has no idea that everything Vito told him is absolutely, literally true.

I figured that Janet had contacted Elaine, Vito, and Joyce, and that Joyce had contacted Tommy. Vito took his own car, as he had particular items he preferred to have available in his trunk. Elaine had been working at various jobs in Harlem since Mr. Winston had died, and Janet probably sent a car for her. Janet sent a message to Joyce, which was waiting for her when she landed, informing her that Janet Winston-Rogers had some work for her and would send a car around. No details were given. As I recall, Joyce rolled her eyes and made a comment to Tony about how rich folk did things.

Janet met the group in an airplane hanger somewhere in upstate New York. One corner of the hangar was set up like a small sitting room or outdoor campsite with some electricity. There was a plane in the hanger, and Joyce immediately started examining it. I pictured Janet as looking like Sean Young in Blade Runner, if she were 40 and wearing a red version of one of her outfits.

It was March of 1937. Prohibition was over, to Vito's dismay. Mr. Winston had died maybe a month ago, six weeks tops. Vito expressed condolences for Janet's loss. Janet started to explain what she wanted.

Mr. Winston had made his money in pharmaceuticals and, especially in the last decade of his life, donated much of it to hospitals. Something had happened in 1924, however.

For some time before that year, Mr. Winston had an interest in the occult, and had been having secret meetings with people of whom his wife had disapproved. At this point, Joyce and Vito were already saying, "Oh, no. Oh, no."

Mr. Winston had spent most of 1924 away from home (for values of "most" that end before September). Something had happened in August of 1924, something that brought Mr. Winston home a pale shadow of himself. There were no more secret meetings after that. All Janet knew was that her father and his associates had been "on the trail" of what he called "bad people".

Vito: You _do_ realize that _I'm_ what you call "bad people"?

Janet said that her father was distinguishing between Vito's sort of bad people and some other sort, but she wasn't sure of further details. Her father never went into any detail when he was alive. He'd barely noticed his wife passing away in 1932. Janet somewhat pointedly did not look at Elaine when she said that last.

Janet Wisnton-Rogers wanted to know what had happened in 1924. Should she be apologizing for her father or defending him? Had he left something undone that needed to be finished? Was she in any danger?

Joyce tried to convince both Janet and herself that everything was fine. Sure, if what was going on was what she might possibly be allowing herself to think, there'd been a problem, but it'd been fixed! She'd been there herself when it was fixed, so this was probably nothing. Almost certainly nothing.

Vito asked about Mr. Winston's library. Just as there were regular bad people like himself and very bad people, traitors to the human race, there were books that were crap for stupid people, and then there were books that needed to be --

Vito: If you find any of those -- well, don't burn them. But lock them away. Don't read them.

Joyce: Actually, I'm fine with burning them.

Vito: No, you have to keep them. Sometimes, you need what's in those books.

I noted that, given that Vito was Mr. Winston's lawyer and would probably have helped prepare the Will, and would probably have helped with an inventory of the estate. If there had been any of Those Books, Vito would have noticed. Oh, there had been the Other kind of books -- occult books, maybe even stuff like Margaret Murray's Witch-Cult in Western Europe, but nothing dangerous. Elaine hadn't seen any books beyond the ones inventoried either.

Janet: There were some books and papers that he burned after he came home in 1924. But, I do have some letters.

These were a dozen letters written by a Mr. Douglas Henslowe, from two different addresses, both in Savannah, Georgia. They started from the first address, shifted to the second for a few letters, and then returned to the first. Joyce predicted, correctly, that at least one of those addresses was from a loony bin.

I gave folks the handout, letting them know that the 12 excerpts -- a sentence or three from each letter -- was all the text supplied. And I understand why, as there's really no more information to be had from the letters. If there were, the group might decide to skip Savannah, which is not desirable. But it would be nice if someone created full text some day.

The letters alternated between pleading with Mr. Winston to write down what he knew so that Mr. Henslowe's doctors might believe his story and telling Mr. Winston that Mr. Henslowe would stop bothering him. Mr. Henslowe also wanted to be reassured that "they" didn't die for nothing, and that a presumably different "they" hadn't gotten away with "it". He also said that he'd hidden a book he'd made about everything, but that he'd tell Mr. Winston where it was, if only Mr. Winston would ask him.

(Side note: The players thought that "it wasn't real" was "it wasn't red". This hadn't occurred to me, as I'd read the text without the handouts first, but looking at the handout version, I see why they thought the word was "red".)

Joyce agreed to go to Savannah, even though this was clearly nothing. It would get cleared up quickly. Elaine agreed to go, as she was loyal to the Winston family, something Vito respected, even though it reminded him very uncomfortably of Amelia. And, of course, Vito was going. He was going to make whoever had been responsible for whatever had happened pay.

But, Vito asked Tony why Tony was going. After all, he was a young man, mechanically gifted, with connections in the right places. Vito could help him out. And, it wasn't too late for him to turn back.

They discussed this in greater detail after they left the hangar, Joyce telling Janet that she didn't need an extra pilot, and heck, she might even just take her own plane. Tony asked why he was at all needed to go to Savannah. He didn't think he had any reason to do so, and he didn't think Joyce needed a mechanic there that much. It wasn't so much that Vito was persuasive as that player and character saw no good reason to go down there.

I had been counting on the connection with Joyce to get Tony as far as Savannah, at which point, I was pretty sure I could use the Revenge Drive to get him on board. With 20-20 hindsight, this was a bit lazy on my part. I rolled with Tony's absence from the next few scenes. Joyce, Elaine, and Vito prepared to go to Savannah. In what we saw as parallel Arming the Hero scenes, Joyce went through her various firearms, describing their good points to Tony, while Vito went through his firearms, by himself. Joyce had considered her co-pilot, Fred, but Elaine pointed out that, as they were taking going to Georgia, and Fred was black, this might perhaps be suboptimal. Joyce reluctantly agreed, as did her lover, Sissy.

By now, Vito was getting on Joyce's nerve, calling her "hillbilly". The fact that he had no objection to folks calling him "wop" or "dago" did not make it better. Elaine quietly explained that Uncle Vito liked to talk a lot and was like that all the time.

Somehow, Joyce refrained from trying to toss Vito out of the plane. She also did the last thing she wanted to do: She put on a dress. She and Elaine cautioned Vito about, well, saying anything to anyone, because folks were quieter and slower here.

Vito: You mean they're lazy.

And he stuck to that, never mind how very hot and humid it was in Savannah, although it was early Spring, not Summer.

Ironically, Tony, who'd stayed behind in New York, was the one character who had Library Use. Fortunately, finding out that Douglas Henslowe's last known address was indeed an asylum was a simple matter of searching local directories. The trio went to Joy Grove, the asylum in question, and Elaine went in the servants' entrance, trying to blend in with the rest of the staff. The doctors didn't notice, and she wasn't trying to deceive most of the staff members into thinking she was a co-worker.

She did get the staff to allow her to access the records, which is a special ability of nurses and doctors. It didn't hurt that the staff was not precisely incorruptable. Staff members were also willing to talk a bit about Joy Grove as well, but they did warn her that if she was caught looking through the files, she was on her own. That said, walking into the asylum in broad daylight was a much better plan than sneaking in at night.

The head of Joy Grove was Dr. Lawrence Teake, but he was on the verge of retirement. Dr. Jonathan Keaton was the logical successor, as well as the doctor overseeing Douglas Henslowe's case. Elaine looked at Mr. Henslowe's file, which discussed another patient, a Mr. Edgar Job. Elaine read both files and started to make her way out.

This took her past some of the areas where patients were, most quietly lining up for their meds, the ocassional biter or someone slapping his head. This was certainly nothing an experienced nurse like Elaine couldn't handle.

Then, she saw a water damaged wall split into an open mouth that seemed to speak inaudibly. The mouth closed and vanished almost immediately, and Elaine hurried out of the building. She rejoined Joyce and Vito, and summarized what she'd learned and what she'd seen.

Elaine: You know the saying "If these walls could talk"?

Among the information Elaine had learned was the home address of Dr. Keaton. The trio decided to visit him at home. Vito brought a gift with him, some wine, I think, despite the protests of the women who tried to get him to let them do all the talking. But, as he said when they spoke with Dr. Keaton, he had a way of doing things, and that meant bringing a gift when he came to someone's house.

The story the group gave was that Vito had been retained by an estate -- he was not at liberty to say whose -- for some business, and this involved the need to talk to Mr. Henslowe. Dr. Keaton saw potential donations and had a vague memory, which he confirmed after the group left. That is, I reasoned he would know that Mr. Henslowe had written to Mr. Winston, as most of the letters had been sent from Joy Grove, and he could find out the Mr. Winston had recently passed away. Mr. Winston had been quite rich, so anything involving his estate meant a potential influx of cash, something Joy Grove could always use.

The doctor revealed much of what Elaine had already discovered in the files. Douglas Henslowe's situation was tangled up with Edgar Job's. Both men had been involved in some incident in 1924, and they could not internalize what had happened, so they externalized it as some sort of monster. But, if Mr. de Genarra and his assistants would come to Joy Grove the next day, they could speak with both men.

Naturally, there were some things in the files that Dr. Keaton didn't mention. He'd pulled strings to get Edgar Job transferred to Joy Grove. Job had a couple of small time criminal charges (armed robbery) and had pled his way down to manslaughter for his actions in 1924. Dr. Keaton was thinking of writing a book, or at least a chapter about Henslowe and Job and their rich, shared delusion. In 1931, when the money from the State of California to keep Job institutionalized ran out, Dr. Keaton wrote to ask if Joy Grove could keep Job there at its own expense rather than sending him to a California prison. The State of California essentially told him to go ahead and keep Job.

The group also knew that Mr. Henslowe was an associate of Mr. Winston's, and pretty clearly part of the fight against cultists who worshipped strange gods and would betray the human race, and it was pretty clear that Mr. Job was a cultist. Dr. Keaton had arranged "confrontation therapy", situations where the two men found themselves together. When both men were on their medications, they vaguely recalled being angry with each other and both sought to end their encounter quickly.

When they interacted off their medication, they each eyed the other "angrily", and Job rushed Henslowe, repeatedly yelling, "You tried to kill me, but I'm still alive!"

Elaine disguised herself enough so that the staff wouldn't recognize her as the woman who'd come in the previous day. Dr. Keaton had the group sign the usual legal waivers and gave the group the tour of Joy Grove.

At one point, when he and Vito were a bit ahead of the women, one of the patients broke away from the orderlies and rushed at Joyce, biting her. Elaine injected him with a strong sedative (using the Weapons skill). Vito swung at the man with his brass knuckles, but missed. The orderlies took the man, Fred Culver, away.

Dr. Keaton was very apologetic, as, waiver or no waiver, this looked bad. Vito ranted about whether this was what his client could expect, but did allow himself to be calmed down and given copies of the files he'd requested. Then, the group was taken to see Douglas Henslowe.

As Elaine provided a silent, but reassuring presence as a nurse, Joyce and Vito led Douglas Henslowe to believe that they'd been sent by Mr. Winston who was at last responding to his letters.

Douglas: You _read_ my letters?

Joyce: I did.

His face lit up. Finally, after 13 years, someone was listening to him! Well, someone who wasn't a doctor convinced he was insane was listening to him.

Joyce winced to herself, but listened. Douglas identified the members of his group of investigators. In addition to himself, there were:

--Walter Winston, their leader and patron. He was also the only survivor of their group, apart from Douglas. --Vince Stack, a fixer with a gun --Katherine Clark, archivist and camera woman with an abiding hatred of those who would cover up vileness and depravity rather than revealing it for what it was --F. C. Kullman, a wheelchair-bound expert in the occult

These five people had learned about a cult that was using drug money to fund its operation and planning to summon up a being called The Thing With a Thousand Mouths. They'd learned that the ceremony would be taking place in a barn outside of Los Angeles, and Winston had said that the stars were right. But the group hadn't had time to come up with a plan beyond "Get Them!"

So, they stormed the barn with guns and firebombs and the like, or at least, most of them did, as Kullerman was staying in the car. Vince Stark, Katherine Clark, and F. C. Kullerman died in the resulting shootout. Douglas had shot people, probably killing at least some. It was chaos, with cultists running, some jumping into the group's line of fire, some just jumping into the fire the group had started with their firebombs.

And then, Douglas got a glimpse of the Thing With a Thousand Mouths. So did Walter Winston. Douglas had never seen Walter panic before, but Walter panicked and fled, and Douglas ran as well. He considered himself a coward for having done so.

Joyce and Vito assured him that he wasn't, that sometimes, that's all one can do. And he had survived, and he had reported what he had seen. And, say, hadn't he said in his letters that he'd put it all down in a book?

Douglas said he had, and that they should ask Frank Hickering for it, back at his estate -- and the address for the estate happened to be the second address his letters had come from. He also wrote them a note to show the caretaker, saying that the caretaker should give them full cooperation ad full run of the grounds and should give Douglas's love to Douglas's mother.

Vito asked if Douglas felt safe at Joy Grove. Douglas said he did, and that he and Edgar Job kept up magical wards (I think). Joyce told Vito that taking the crazy person out of the asylum was not the way to go.

During this interview, Dr. Keaton stayed mostly out of the way, but he was very much hovering as the group prepared to see Edgar Job. Vito pointed out legal requirements that Dr. Keaton not be present (and Vito's player made a Law spend), and the doctor reluctantly left.

Edgar Job asked if it was all right if he smoked, and Joyce assured him that it was. She decided she knew what was going on, more or less, and it obviously tied back into her experiences in the 1920s. So, she told Edgar that it was all right to tell her everything -- she was from the Messenger. The Black Pharoah. Nyarlathotep.

Edgar (blankly): Who?

Joyce (sighing): It was worth a try.

Actually, Edgar had no problem with talking to them. But, he was on several medications and a little uncertain about just what was real, and he was caught between two imperatives. On the one hand, he wanted to cooperate and tell them everything he remembered. On the other, Dr. Keaton didn't want him reliving the past or externalizing his fears or talking about monsters who weren't Edgar Job.

Nevertheless, he told them what he could. He said that the cult to which he had belonged didn't have a name. They were just Echevarria's people. Edgar had met him while Edgar was attending UCLA, and had been introduced to him by a George Avery or Ayers -- he wasn't quite sure of the last name any more, eve though he could remember George's voice.

Echevarria held wild parties with lots of sex and drugs, and Edgar had been high from 1923 through August 1924, he reckoned. The drugs were the most potent, and the sex was great. And Echevarria promised everyone power, telling them they'd all get whatever they wanted whe Gol-Goroth, the Fisher from Outside, arrived. But what happened was not what Edgar had wanted.

Vincent Stack had blown Echevarria away, killing the man with his shotgun. The, Edgar stabbed Vincent Stack to death with Echevarria's knife, convinced that if he didn't, Stack would kill him. It was actually a reasonable assumption, although Edgar knew that killing Stack was wrong. He said that he saw the man's face every night. But, Dr. Keaton told him that he couldn't undo it, so it was best if he just moved on.

Echavarria had put spells on the cult. Well, Echevarria had put spells on Edgar Job, at least, on the night of the summoning, August 13, 1924. Edgar had no idea what the spells were supposed to do for or to him, but this was clearly a big deal, and it happened right before the Thing showed up. Also, Edgar had survived the night, so perhaps the spells had done somethig.

He only got a glimpse of the summoned thing, something with "long, weird limbs, and mouths, lots of mouths". He did't get a clear look at it -- and didn't try to. He started screaming. Ad the Stack killed Echevarria, and he killed Stack and fled. He said that whatever the summoned creature was, it wasn't what he'd been promised or what Echevarria said it would be, and it was still out there.

He confirmed what Douglas said about warding Joy Grove. Both men grafittied on the wall. Vito recognized the marks as occult, but ineffective. Elaine's player decided that Elaine recognized them as well, and that Mr. Winston had drawn them on his walls as well, and I thought that made sense.

Edgar had learned the marks from Echevarria's library. He said that this was where he leared that the creature was also called the Thing With a Thousand Mouths, noting that "these old things" have "a lot of names".

Vito and Joyce spoke privately.

Vito: I know there are many reasons not to do him. Give me one that makes sense to me as a man.

Joyce: You know how you said you shouldn't burn dangerous books because you might need them?

Vito: I hate it when you're right, hillbilly.

Joyce called Tony.

Joyce: You know how I said this was probably nothing? Well, it's -probably- nothing. It's been upgraded to -probably- nothing.

She filled him in on what they'd learned and asked him to do some research. Tony did and found

• a guy he knew who'd come to New York from Los Angeles about the right number of years ago, not a cultist, just someone who knew about the drug scene back then
• an article that defaults to being a handout for when the investigators do the same sort of research in Los Angeles.

From these sources, Tony learned that Echevarria's first name was Ramon. He may or may not have learned the name of the drug the cultists sold; I forget. He learned about an actor who died in a drug orgy along with many others on August 13, 1924.

Meanwhile, Joyce, Elaine, and Vito went to the Henslowe estate. Currothers (they were surprised he was white, until they remembered he was the caretaker) let them in after seeing Douglas's note and told them not to bother Mrs. Henslowe. Naturally, the first thing they did when he withdrew to his shack was go upstairs in the house to Mrs. Henslowe's room.

Once more, Vito had a gift and explained that this was his custom when he first visited someone's home. Once again, Joyce let her southern (Tennessee) accent go thicker, cringing inside and hating herself. Elaine realized that Mrs. Henslowe was not well. It wasn't anything unusual; she was just a very old woman and not that long for the world.

Joyce and Vito assured Mrs. Henslowe that her son was quite right to spare her a description of whatever had broken his mind in California. She stressed that her son was a good person, but had been attacked by "folks of loose morals", and that when he came back home from Joy Grove for a year, she became afraid of her own son. He would yell while alone in his room. He had cuts and bruises he couldn't explain. He drew and sketched incessantly. He wandered the grounds at night with shovel, camera, and ball of twine.

The trio exchanged glances and asked if they could look at Douglas's study, where these items were. Mrs. Henslowe said they could, and that no one had touched it since he'd returned to Joy Grove. They told her, truthfully, that Douglas sent his love. (This was in the note for Currothers, who will presumably pass along the message as well.)

They took their leave of Mrs. Henslowe, and they found Douglas's study in the condition she said it was. The study also had a book by Francis J. Hickering. In it was a photo of the house, with "#1" scratched into it. On the back was a list of items numbered 2-5. 2. was a name. 3 and 4 were pairs of names. 5 was "back to one".

Joyce figured out that the list referred to tombstones. #1 was the tombstone where Henslowe stood when he took the picture. The twine got wrapped around each tombstone in turn, matching the blue paint marks on each. This meant that there was a four sided polygon formed by the twine, with a knot in each side. One had to draw two imaginary lines from the knots. Where these intersected was where the group had to dig.

Joyce noted that, as she was currently being a southern lady, in a dress and all, she couldn't help. Elaine noted that she had better help, just in case anyone was watching. Seeing the white man dig and the black woman not dig? Bad idea.

About three feet down, they found a sealed metal box. Then, it started raining. The text actually advises having the rain start as soon as the group opens the box in the cemetery, but this group had absolutely no intention of opening the box until they were somewhere they considered safe. I forget whether that was their hotel room in Savannah or back in the hangar in New York, where Tony brought Joyce, Vito, and Elaine up to date on what he had leared and vice versa.

Somewhere around here, Joyce reiterated that it was not smart for Vito to call the pilot who would have his life in her hands "hillbilly" and that being fine with being called "wop" did not make up for that. Vito called her Amelia Earhart, and Joyce gave him an even more sour look.

Vito (amused): I think you find that more insulting that "hillbilly".

Joyce went on a short tirade about Earhart's shortcomings as a pilot and her glory hogging. As it was March of 1937, Earhart hasn't yet vanished.

Eventually, folks openned the box. It contained a stone, an envelope with a letter, and a book wrapped in plastic with a safe deposit box key tucked inside. The note explained about the rest of the items. The key was for a safe deposit box in the First Bank of Long Beach. Douglas, writing to Walter Winston, said that the box had "our materials".

The stone came from the barn, and Douglas thought it had been Echevarria's. Unlike the graffiti on the walls of Joy Grove, this had real power to block scrying spells and magical surveillance. Recognizing this, the group made sure to keep book and stone together.

The book was a combined sketchbook and diary. It counted as a mythos tome, and no one wanted to read it.

GM: So, Vito, you do know someone who'd be happy to read it. Heck, he'd even gladly take it and that rock off your hands for a fair price, if you wanted.

This was Remy Piper, a Canadian business man who'd been with Vito during the events of Tatters of the King. He'd been shot, non-fatally, by another of that group, Geoffrey Whitcombe, who was understandably, but mistakenly, convinced that Remy was about to betray the world to the King in Yellow. Geoffrey, like Amelia, never returned from Carcosa.

Remy had developed a strong interest in matters occult, and was something of a collector. Vito neither liked him nor trusted him, but Vito also did not want to read the book or have one of his trusted companions read it.

Sighing, Vito showed the book and the stone to Remy, but refused to let Remy keep them. Remy was a bit disappointed, but not too crushed. After all, he had a good life, especially now that that silly Prohibition is over (it's 1937). Vito pointed out that it was harder to make a dishonest living. Remy said he could sell booze and smuggle guns, just like always.

Vito: We're going to get Amelia back! (more in the "someday" than in any particular day, you understand)

Remy (humoring him): Yes, of course, Vito. Are we also going to get Geoffrey back?

Vito: Of course! We don't leave a man behind!

Remy: Yes, of course, Vito. You sure you don't want me taking those things off your hands?

And he wonders why Geoffrey shot him. Vito came pretty close to doing that himself when Remy started a whistle collection, and to this day, Vito detests the sound of flutes.

Despite the puzzle to finding the book, and despite it being a mythos tome (granting +1 to Cthulhu Mythos rating), it really did not have much new information. Douglas wrote in a stream of consciousness, jumping back and forward in time (no samples of this in the book). He sketched the creature he had glimpsed, along with some of its victims (two pages of some of this are in the book, and these I passed around to the players), and he sketched his fellow investigators (no samples of this in the book). The note and key were more useful.

Folks took their leave of Remy and prepared to depart for Los Angeles. Joyce and Tony planned their route and fuel stops. Vito spoke to his superior in the Jersey mob about his upcoming trip so that letters of introduction and lists of things Vito might do while out there could be prepared.

And suddenly the GM was informed about various relatives who live in or quite near the Long Beach area. If I recall correctly, this includes Elaine's mother and brother (Aaron Williams and Dahlia Mitchell). Joyce's brother, Charlie, lives in Santa Barbara, and it's possible I got him and Elaine's brother confused. Joyce is also planning to bring Fred and Sissy with her to Los Angeles.