Session 02

Gaylord gave us a heads up that he'd be late, so we planned accordingly. Masha, Sarah, and Helen were already going to go to Erica Carlyle's party, and Father O'Connor wasn't, so we decided that Xian Shen would accompany Sarah as her personal physician.

I was expecting them to steal the books in Erica Carlyle's safe. Heck, I even made sure they knew a book agent was there on behalf of someone who wanted to buy the books, using the Masks Companion for that.

Helen interviewed Erica in the library and made sure to accidentally leave her camera there. When Sarah was due to sing, Helen slipped out, but found the library occupied. One of the guest was playing with the camera She tried to remonstrate with him, and he tried to get her to interview him because he was Obviously important. One of the household staff came to Helen's rescue, making sure she retrieved the camera safely and herding them -- but mostly the obnoxious guest -- to where Sarah was trying to give her performance.

How to interpret a blown roll? We decided that one of the party guests accidentally spilled wine on her dress. Sarah retired to change, having packed a spare. That is, she had a regular party guest dress and an I am the entertainment dress. She arrived in the first and changed to the second. She now changed back.

Xian When and Maria were learning what they could about the Carlyles and their social circle and the members of the Carlyle expedition. Much of this information came from the increasingly drunken Freddie Blakely, whose wife had a host of reasons for not having sex with him, one for each day of the week.

Eventually, Sarah started again, and this time went well. Helen successfully got into the library alone.

She did not, however, attempt to steal the books. She removed them and photopraphed them, photographing sample pages, particularly those with hand written annotations, then returned them to the safe. Theft would be too obvious, she figured.

Sarah finished her performance and decided to see if she could outbid the book dealer's agent.

Xian Shen's services as an acupuncturist fascinated Freddie and Olivia Blakely, and an appointment was made.

Eventually, the group split up and headed home. Helen pondered what had been learned. Erica Carlyle had a gangster in her employ, and shortly after he entered Erica's employ, his old boss had had a fatal, ah, accident. Roger Carlyle had gotten a man off a murder rap and then hired him.

Erica Carlyle seemed honestly innocent of whatever had happened to her brother. Helen thought that perhaps Erica's lawyer, Bradley Grey, and the board of trustees very much preferred Erica being in charge to Roger being in charge, and perhaps they had arranged for an accident in Nairobi? Possibly Jack Brady was even in their pay?

Julian: I know this is almost certainly wrong, but Helen doesn't.

Xian Shen went to the shop / apartment he shared with his grandfather only to discover that his grandfather had been kidnapped. He knew that the kidnappers were part of the Bloody Tongue cult in the city. (Possibly he found confirmation?)

Asking around the neighborhood, as his grandfather paid for protection from one of the tongs, he learned that, yes, folks had seen strangers in the area shortly before. He gave the appropriate unofficial authorities a carefully abridged version of just why his grandfather had been kidnapped.

I did the math and figured that

• Xian Shen had been poking his nose where it didn't belong
• Normally, therefore, anything that happened to him was his own problem
• But, he hadn't been harmed. Instead, his grandfather had been kidnapped, and would probably be killed if nothing were done. That was Just Wrong, especially as protection was paid up and the grandfather hadn't been poking his own nose in anywhere.

Xian Shen sent his friends outside of Chinatown a telegram: BREAK IN AT CH TOWN SHOP LAST NIGHT STOP COME SOONEST STOP SIGNED XIAN.

I'd pondered all of this after the previous episode and confirmed that Xian Shen was the only one of the PCs who visited the JuJu House who could be identified by name, as he was the only one giving a name, and it was his real name, and he'd said he was thinking that he and his grandfather might want to expand their antique business.

Folks did some hasty legwork on the other victims, besides Jackson Elias, of the Bloody Tongue, and paid a visit to the Harlem reverend who had succeeded a reverend who had been killed by the Bloody Tongue. Xian Shen pleaded with him for help, as he was well aware that time was running out for his grandfather. This night would be the night of the new moon, the day of the month when people often went missing around the neighborhood where the JuJu House was.

The reverend, a young man, but not a stupid one, realized that there was an opportunity here. Many people in Harlem were aware of the existence of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, but were too terrified to act, and too cynical or realistic to go to the police. But, they could allow Xian Shen and his friends to stay in their homes for a few hours, to spy on the JuJu House, and to signal each other about the right time for an attack.

My notes say that Helen looked into Carlyle's Harlem activities and Silas M'Kwane, to see if he had a police record, but these were not fruitful lines of inquiry.

But, the PCs had a plan. They would scout ahead and signal Xian Shen's tong friends when it was time to storm JuJu House and attack the cultists.

Someone: Congratulation -- we've just started a gang war.

GM: Yes!

The PCs were not necessarily sanguine about this.

Sarah: You're involved in a gang? Is everyone in Chinatown involved in a gang?

Xian Shen: Well, not everyone. Everyone who's still in business is.

Around now, Gaylord came in, and we brought him up to date.

Other Players: So, Chinatown's going to war with Harlem, only most of Harlem's actually on our side. The tong men are fighting the Harlem cultists.

Gaylord (easily following the math): Right, no one's going to care.

The stealthy folks snuck in stealthily after most of the cultists, and realized that a) there was a secret tunnel in the shop leading to an underground chamber and b) nearly all the bad guys stripped naked before going into the underground chamber.

Inside, Xian When's grandfather and an African American woman were both hanging from their bound wrists. Cultists, both black and white, were chanting and dancing. Their high priest was robed and wearing lion claws on his hands.

Masha snuck in and started cutting the woman loose, as that was the person nearest her. I think the rest of the PCs started shooting. I'm a little vague on the details.

The priest started cutting the mark of the Bloody Tongue into the forehead of Xian When's grandfather. Horrified, Xian Shen moved to stop him. I think Masha was injured, but I'm not sure. I remember that both prisoners were cut loose and handed out of the room to some of the NPC cavalry.

The priest grabbed a scepter and revealed four shambling people, apparently the walking dead. One of them was Jackson Elias, as I figured the cult was ruthless and nasty enough to steal the corpse. This caused some Sanity loss, particularly to Helen and Father O'Connor.

Helen: I start shooting -- everyone but Elias. Well, not everyone -- just the ones who killed Elias.

Meanwhile, Father O'Connor felt a pain in his chest. The priest was trying to use magic to pull out the father's still beating heart.. Father O'Connor chalked that up to his old war wound and getting older. He kept firing until the priest died.

Prter O'Connor: Here's the crazy -- I shoot the dead priest.

Meanwhile, the cultists hoisted up a stone over a pit revealing an impossible creature, a sort of giant worm, with many human faces. Its mouths wailed, making a Sanity chilling noise.

Alas, the creature could not leave the pit. The walking dead dropped when the priest was killed. Only naked, unarmed cultists opposed the well armed force. Tong members killed and burned the place, including the monster to thwpe ground.

The toll on the PCs' Sanity was fairly high. Sarah was offended NY the monster's caterwauling.

Sarah: It's OUT OF TUNE! I'll show them what -real- singing is!

And she sang an aria as her friends and allies dragged her away. Helen was also deeply affected. Father O'Connor managed, at least at first, to convince himself that the walking dead men hadn't been walking. It was just a trick of the light. The priest had no magic. He did need to see a doctor about the chest pains, of course.

Xian When was shaken, but certainly had enough presence of mind to take all the interesting items from the room, including:

• Lion's Claws that could be strapped to one's hands
• Wooden Mask
• Scepter with African writing upon it
• Headband of strange metal
• Bowl of a different strange metal
• The copy of Africa's Dark Sects that had vanished from Widener Library at Harvard University.

Masha was not shaken by what she had witnessed. No doubt she'd seen worse in Russia. A quick cigarette was enough to restore her equilibrium.

Over the next few days, Sarah managed to make arrangements to buy the books in Erica Carlyle's safe. The original bidder had been a wealthy white man who was killed in the attack on JuJu House. An all but disinherited black sheep of his family, his death, while unfortunate, was clearly the inevitable result of mixing with the Wrong Sort of people. After all, he'd been Harlem and had died in a hidden basement in a store clearly not run by a good Catholic, obviously in some sort of sex orgy, when the building, no doubt violating the fire code (assuming one was in effect), which meant it was hardly surprising that the place burned down. Locals saw very little, they assured authorities, but confirmed the general unsavoury nature of the shop and its clientele.