17th Session

I did a quick check of folks' Stability.

• Vito: down 5
• Martin: down 3
• Lillian: down 3

Everyone was in Kolluli, preparing to travel to the site of the 1924 dig where Bartolo Acuna and George Ayers worked before the 1926 explosion. After that, they figured they would deal with Dallol.

Joyce: So, are we going to go with the Marty Insertion Plan? That came out wrong.

Vito: No, it didn't.

Vito's Player: Martin's like the Hunter Thompson of Cthulhu.

[Actually, no. Hunter Thompson in Bill White's "All Along the Watchtower" is the Hunter Thompson of Cthulhu. Fun scenario. Also has Gary Gygax, Jimi Hendrix, Robin Morgan, Hillary Rodham, and Todd Gitlin.]

The Dig Site Near Dallol

The group set out with three guides from Kolluli: Jerome, one of the guardians who was in the know about the foe they fought, and Richard and Charles, who were not. The guides were fine, as this was their home turf. Joyce, Vito, and Lillian did suffer from the heat, but were able to keep functioning. Heck, Joyce / Josh was actually looking better as a result of the rough living.

Lillian to Joyce: The desert's doing remarkable things for your freckles.

Martin, however, was not doing as well. He was hot. His companions decided that it was high time they pulled him off alcohol, since, as I believe pointed out, it was dehydrating him. He also needed to be kept from drinking all of the water at once, if I recall correctly.

And the wind was howling, and his clothing wasn't even sticking to him, as he was bone dry. And there was a pain in his hand --

And his companions realized that he'd just bitten a chunk out of his primary hand. (I think he's right handed?) Folks bandaged him and, after a short rest, got him to the dig site, and then settled in the shade where he could begin to recover from the effects of the heat. The guides kept a careful eye on him, while the others started exploring the 1926 crater that overlapped the dig site, bringing things to Martin to inspect, as he was the one who knew what folks were looking for.

One of the things that folks had discussed was searching Savitree's library to see if a rock with the same properties as the one Douglas Henslowe had buried with his journal could be created. I had pondered this, as the book gives absolutely no information whatsoever on whether this is intended to be possible, but does suggest Savitree's library as a place to plant useful spells and whatnot.

I didn't want something uberpowerful and easy to create, but the network of folks reading and running Eternal Lies came up with what seemed a reasonable idea: The only place to get the material to make an anti-Liar-scrying rock is in the area around the Dallol volcano. The group had acquired sufficient knowledge to figure that out and was in the area, so that worked out. The other suggestion was to make sure that it took a certain amount of time to make one of these things. So, this is a one-time thing, but it's a reasonable time to do it.

Of course, it would probably be better to wait until folks were in a cooler clime before doing the actual work to make the anti-scrying device.

Lillian: We're looking for magic rock. We'll make magic limestone of it later.

Joyce: Yeah, I remember when people didn't use to say that to me.

GM: Really?

Lillian: I -wish- I remembered that.

Joyce: I didn't say I remember it -well-.

Joyce found her patience being sorely tested.

Joyce: Lord, it's me, Joyce, again. Just give me another reason not to shoot my companions again.

(Why, yes, she has shot her companions in the past. Twice, as I recall.)

Folks discussed Vito's options regarding the mouth on his arm in light of what they had learned thus far about the rituals of self-denial. This involved giving up sex and only eating and drinking minimal amounts of food.

Joyce: You also have to SHUT UP, so it would never work.

And, he'd also have to give up on violence (and make no more than one Spend of investigative abilities total per day, and no combat spends whatsoever). He's probably pondering the amputation option.

Joyce: Are you right handed or left handed?

Vito (with surprising (to me) equanimity): I'm left handed now.

As folks studied the dig site, they quickly discovered a cairn, which had the remains that had been gathered of people who died in the expedition. More remains, fragmentary, were scattered over a great distance. Lillian confirmed that there was absolutely nothing indicating that the cause of death was anything other than being at ground zero of a volcanic explosion. There were also remnants of tools and of bits of the excavated site.

There were also a few calcified teeth. There were not human teeth, nor were they the teeth of any known animal. Lillian realized that these were the teeth from the large calcified mouth that used to be in the area until the guardians destroyed it by causing the volcano to erupt. (It had been calcified for millennia before that, and they had refrained from destroying it until the need became pressing because of the 1924 dig.)

Lillian organized folks, saying that:

• Any remains were to be brought to the cairn.
• Any magic rock was to be brought to Martin.
• Any of the calcified teeth were to be brought to Lillian.

I called for a Sense Trouble roll, which Lillian made, with Vito and Joyce piggybacking. They spotted a man on a camel watching them through binoculars. He was an Afar tribesman, but they couldn't tell anything more about him. They guessed, correctly, that he was from Dallol.

Once he realized he'd been seen, he turned his camel and started to ride away. Joyce went for her rifle, which meant I needed to decide whether or not the rider was in range. I think the text implies he's not, but I wanted to make a quick call, so I said he was in long range -- that is, where you can spend two points of firearms to double the weapon's range. I also utterly forgot that he had his own rifle.

Joyce shot the camel's leg, as I'd expected. I decided that the rider would dismount and start walking, leaving his stuff behind, under the mistaken assumption that the person shooting at him was a bandit and would be satisfied with the wounded camel and the loot on it. I used this to justify his leaving the rifle after I remembered he'd have one. He didn't expect anyone to bother chasing him, and anyway, he knew running would be no more useful than walking if he were chased.

Lillian rode ahead of Joyce, Vito, and Jerome, cutting in front of the man and dismounting, making it clear that she intended no hostile actions. She took her canteen and drank from it, then offered it to him. He took a sip or two of water and handed the canteen back to her. She sat down on the ground, and he did likewise, as the others rode up to them.

Jerome translated between the man and the others. He explained that he was just watching them, and that, yes, he had come from Dallol. The people at Dallol had begun worshiping a being they called the Agony on the Wind.

Joyce (thinking of her earlier adventures in East Africa): Wind. Why did it have to be wind?

He explained how his people worshiped by slowly pulling out a knife and, as hands tightened on various other weapons, including Lillian's hand on her kukri behind her back, cutting himself.

Lillian (to Jerome): Tell him he's doing it wrong.

Jerome passed this information on, and the man offered his knife to Lillian, hilt first. As he did so, she drew her kukri and tried to decapitate him. While decapitation didn't quite happen, she successfully killed him, with a deep, fatal stroke to the neck, which the player described when I asked as "severing the left internal and external jugular veins and left carotid artery, and probably the larynx as well".

Joyce: Lillian. First, well done. Second, -you- have to search the corpse, and clean up after yourself, because there might be jackals.

I think Lillian probably pushed the body off the dune they were on and pushed sand on top of the body from above, as she didn't want to risk heat stroke, and, as the player noted, "burying a body is a great way to overexert."

Joyce, Vito, and Jerome returned to Martin.

Joyce: Marty! Hey, sheik! Wake up!

Vito: Hey, Valentino!

Martin's Player: Martin draws himself up languidly, looking like Valentino.

After the session, I did a google image search on Rudolph Valentino as the Sheik and sent the link to Martin's player:

https://www.google.com/search?q=valentino&client=firefox-a&hs=qSv&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=H9KGU7mTCcvMsQS21oDABw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1138&bih=528#channel=sb&q=rudolph+valentino+the+sheik&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&imgdii=_

Martin's Player: Y'know, Martin doesn't look unlike Valentino.

I have no idea what prompted any of the following Joyce quotes:

Joyce: Jesus Christ!

Joyce: I will not shoot Marty today. I will not shoot Marty today. I will not shoot Marty today.

Joyce: Like a Swathmore girl who just got a Dear Jane letter.

[ANYONE RECALL?]

Folks decided to continue to stick to the basic plan.

Martin: We're going to insert me first and shoot everything up later.

Lillian remained scientifically curious.

Lillian (looking from the calcified teeth to Vito's extra mouth): What if we fed one of these to the mouth?

Folks agreed to set a watch. Jerome took the first watch. When Joyce took over from him, Lillian decided to seduce Jerome. I think she removed his shirt, making her intentions abundantly clear as the player made a logical Spend.

Meanwhile, Vito joined Joyce and talked about how beautiful the desert was. One of his pillars, after all, is The Beauty of Nature.

Joyce (quoting Rilke): Beauty is the beginning of terror.

Vito: Sh*t.

Lillian went to talk to Martin after she and Jerome were finished having sex. I forget what she said to Martin, if anything -- Lillian's player thinks Martin simply drew the obvious and correct conclusion and spoke first.

Martin: Does that mean that you didn't f*ck him, or that you did and you're sad?

Lillian: I f*cked him.

Martin: Good. I'd be jealous if I weren't so f*cking hot. I want some Scotch.

Lillian: I'm not going to let you -- and I mean this literally -- kill yourself with Scotch.

Martin: I want some Scotch.

He complained about the sand getting into annoying places. I think Lillian found that this made her itchy.

Martin: Now you're having sympathy pains, except you're not because you're a girl.

Lillian: It gets in analagous bits.

If I recall correctly, Martin was not unsympathetic. He and Lillian joined Joyce and Vito.

Vito: Who -is- this f*cking Rumi? He's beautiful!

Martin: This is -exactly- the sort of sh*t Jeremiah did.

Vito quoted some line of poetry.

[ANYONE RECALL WHAT?]

Vito: What the f*ck does that mean?

Joyce: It means go to sleep!

Lillian: That is what I've been -trying- to tell you!

Joyce: What is this, a theologian debating society?

Eventually, folks returned to the question of their plan for Dallol.

Lillian: No one does insertion better than Marty.

Joyce: Hey, I see what you did.

Folks decided that someone should go with Martin to Dallol, and that Vito was the most logical choice because of the mouth on his arm. This made a reasonable amount of sense. Then, folks started coming up with an elaborately complicated explanation for the people of Dallol, involving Martin and Vito escaping from Joyce and Lillian, perhaps killing them. Martin tried to rein this in.

Martin: The thing about lies, boys and girls, is that if they get too complicated, they stop working.

Joyce: How do those principles fit into the girl is interested in a desert romance?

Martin: That, boys and girls, is what I'm talking about!

All well and good, and correct as far as it went. But, the others tried to veto Martin's plan of looking for Luc Fauche at Dallol to tell him that what he wanted was brain fluid to keep Jeremiah alive.

Lillian: Lie about what you want, and lie about what you're willing to pay for it.

Vito: You're going to be really tempted to tell the truth.

Still, folks did agree on the basics. Vito would stagger into Dallol, supporting Martin, and they'd do this in the heat of noon.

Martin: When it gets to heatstroke o'clock in sh*tland --

Vito: Which it will --

Martin: Which it will --

I forget how the discussion ended, but the gist was clear. Richard and Charles would stay far, far away from Dallol, as they knew nothing about the guardians or the Liar. Jerome would come with Joyce and Lillian to prepare to do whatever was necessary to retrieve Martin and Vito and / or deal with whatever they found in Dallol.

Dallol Village

Joyce set up a shooting blind from a distance. Originally, Lillian planned to be with her, but given the limited number of Stealth points available, and who had them, this changed. Jerome may have started with Joyce, but Lillian decided that, when someone gave a signal, she'd come in from a different angle. I think the signal involved a flare gun, and there was some discussion about different colors of flares.

Vito and Martin entered Dallol as planned. There were roughly 80 people there, men, women, and children. The villagers practiced self-mutilation, an older woman taking a shard of glass from a child cutting herself, only to plunge it into her own leg, a boy maybe 14 years old offering Martin a friendly smile and a rusty knife. No one in sight spoke English, but all were friendly to the visitors.

Vito: Marty, I don't want to have to kill all those people.

Martin: Now you're starting to sound like me.

Everyone indicated that Martin and Vito should go into one of the few buildings. Two salt blocks made up the entrance, and as the villagers went in, each ran a hand down one of the entrance walls, which were a reddish brown and soon dripped with fresh blood. Martin followed suit to murmurs of approval.

Martin's Player: Martin's in sub space.

Vito showed the villagers his right arm, with its extra mouth, and made it clear that only he got to feed it. He didn't run his hand down the salt wall, nor did anyone attempt to convince him to do so.

Inside the small building, Vito and Martin sat, along with as many villagers as could cram inside. Outside, Joyce was not thrilled that they were out of sight.

In addition to the villagers who accompanied them, there were two other people. One was the spiritual leader of the villagers, a woman named Tshombe. Unlike most Afar women, she did not go bare breasted, but covered her upper body with a shawl. Underneath, Vito and Martin could see the curve of only one of her breasts. They had a pretty good idea of what was in the place of the other (and I think there were some comments or jokes about amazons, but I don't recall who made them and whether they were in or out of character, but I suspect the latter).

The other person in the hut was Phajol, one of Luc Fauche's team. That was a change I made -- the book has Habte, another villager, and the only one able to translate into a European language, here. But, it worked just as well to have the interpreter be an outsider, and given the way I've been using Luc's people, it made sense that one of them would be here.

Luc and his other people were in Malta, but Phajol was a mystic and a seer. He had come to Dallol because of what was happening there. The Afar of Dallol had taken him in, and he joined in their worship and self-mutilation. His eyes were gone. His feet had been cut off, as had his right arm at the shoulder. His speech was odd, for while he could understand and speak both the Afar language and Italian (which Vito and Martin could understand), and while he did not yet speak the Tongue of Lies, he spoke with an odd accent, as if from a country whose native language was the Tongue of Lies. He explained / translated what was happening in Dallol.

As the guardians had feared, destroying the inert, calcified mouth in the volcanic explosion of 1926 had indeed attracted the Liar's attention. The Afar in Dallol had been nomads at the time, like the other groups of Afar, but they heard the Liar's voice and called it The Agony on the Wind. Tshombe heard it first, and over the years, she taught her tribe how to hear it as well. They reshaped their lives as they learned how to worship the Agony on the Wind, ceasing their nomadic ways. Tshombe's husband and children were dead, having died, willingly, of their self-inflicted injuries as she urged them on.

All of the elaborate lies people had considered telling the villagers were unnecessary, even if Martin and Vito had told them to Phajol and Phajol had translated them. As far as the villagers were concerned, the two newcomers had heard the Agony on the Wind, and that was why they were in Dallol. They heard. They knew, they understood, and so they were there.

Tshombe asked to see the relics of their god. She had been granted visions of them and knew what they were. While the book doesn't clearly define what constitutes a relic, I made a list:

• Douglas Henslowe's book (in a safety deposit box protected by the anti-Liar-scrying rock, so Tshombe didn't know about it)
• Samuel Trammel's testament (in the same box, thus also protected
• Vito de Genarra's right arm, as it had a mouth in it. Apart from Tshombe, none of the Dallol villagers were so afflicted / blessed.
• Savitree Sirikhan's pickled arm, with its live, active mouth. Lillian had that in a box.
• Nectar. None of the Dallol cultists had ever seen any.
• The calcified teeth that Lillian had dug up
• The Locksley Overcoat, lined with Martin's notes in his personal shorthand. Martin was surprised, and perhaps a little creeped out that this woman who'd never seen him knew about the Locksley Overcoat. Only Martin's companions knew about it (UNLESS REMY ALSO KNOWS?), and it was in a footlocker, back with the group's camels.

Of these, they had with them only Vito's arm and Nectar. As Martin started to say that they would bring the others, Phajol reached blindly for Tshombe with his remaining hand. She took it and guided it under her shawl. Phajol was wracked with ecstatic pain, and blood dripped beneath the shawl down Tshombe's belly.

Still in "sub land" and half expecting this, Martin, if I recall correctly, made his Stability roll. Vito did not make his.

(I think this is where Vito's Stability went negative.)

Vito: -Explain- why I shouldn't unload my Tommy gun into all of them.

Martin: We haven't found out everything we need to know.

Vito: Tell them I've had the Bangkok Nectar.

Martin: Thank you.

Martin told Phajol about Vito having taken Bangkok Nectar. I forget whether Phajol passed that on, but mostly, folks were too ecstatic to notice Vito's precarious self control. One of the men carried Phajol past a curtain into the other room of the building, then returned to the main room and filed out with the rest of the villagers, other than Tshombe.

Tshombe held out her hand to Martin, and he was very tempted to take it, knowing full well she would guide it under her shawl to be bitten by her second mouth. Instead, he went to the inner room, with Vito.

Phajol was crawling on the dirt floor, where there was a depression about ten feet by five, edged with salty dirt stained with blood. It was shaped like a mouth. Phajol was smearing his blood around the perimeter.

It was clear that, while the depression was not currently a mouth, and was months away from becoming one, if something did not happen to stop it, it would indeed become a mouth, like the ones in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Bangkok, and Malta.

Martin (sincerely): It's beautiful.

Vito (behind him, either quietly enough Phajol didn't hear or in a language he hoped Phajol didn't understand or both): Listen here, little boy, how are we gonna call this? (as Martin hesitates) You -are- pretty.

Vito was fully prepared to fight dirty, whether that meant playing dom to Martin's sub or, Like Lillian last session, using the Jeremiah guilt button to keep Martin on track. And, by Vito's logic, "on track" meant killing Tshombe and Phajol while they were alone.

Vito: How am I gonna explain it to Jerry when I get back? We have to do this -now-. Get her to turn her back on you.

Martin: Him first.

Vito (handing Martin a handgun): Here.

Martin handed it back. He has absolutely no skill with firearms, which makes it a rather bad idea to give him one and expect him to use it.

He called to Tshombe, and she came into the back room. Both knelt on the floor by the mouth, and by Phajol. Tshombe, having no idea of what was going on, tried to communicate past the language barrier and to reassure Martin that everything would be all right.

That's when Vito took out the garotte he'd borrowed back from Lillian. As he was about to loop it around Tshombe's neck, however, the mouth on his arm cried out a warning.

Tshombe turned, but Vito still managed to get the garotte around her throat.

Vito: That mouth is on LENT and so are you!

He started strangling her, and oh my, garottes are deadly. I do not recommend running afoul of them.

(It may have helped that Vito's player decided to add two of his spare points to Scuffling, and it definitely didn't hurt that he added his remaining 2 points to Stability.]

Phajol opened his mouth, probably to call out for help. Martin took out a dose of Nectar, and his player spent Stability so that he could resist drinking it himself. He poured it into Phajol's open mouth.

As I recall, the roll for this was one shy, at least until Lillian's player asked an important question.

Lillian's player: Is this guy addicted to Nectar?

Yes, he was. He couldn't resist swallowing it. As Vito strangled Tshombe, Martin tried to keep Phajol distracted. (Or maybe he was trying to distract himself. Or both.) He kissed Phajol and tried to lick the Nectar that remained in the other man's mouth.

The wind howled as Tshombe died, and the villagers, who had all left the building by that point, now turned and quickly headed back towards the building. Hearing the noise and seeing the mass about face, Joyce and Lillian decided it was time to get Vito and Martin out of there.

Lillian went out to make a distraction so that Joyce could fire at will.

Joyce: Bon chance, mon brave.

Lillian (a prayer before battle): Oh Kali help me.

She walked towards the village, rifle in one hand, kukri in the other, taking great care to stay out of Joyce's line of fire.

Vito's Player: You know what we're doing? We're massacring a village.

Joyce's Player: No, we're not!

Martin's Player: Martin's f*cking this cripple and trying not to think about that.

Once Tshombe was dead, Vito came over to where Phajol and Martin were fumbling with each other's clothing. He pulled Phajol's head back and garotted the cultist while Phajol was on top of Martin.

Martin gaped in understandable shock for a moment. Then, he and Vito staggered towards the exit / entrance of the building, Vito trying to gag the mouth on his arm. It wiggled free, having shifted position.

Juggling between arm, Martin, and weapons, Vito tried to hand his Thompson to Martin.

Vito: Marty, use this!

Having grown no more adept in the use of firearms over the last few minutes, Martin ignored this. He grabbed Vito's arm and started wrapping it. Then, he jabbed his own hand into one of the salt blocks making up the doorway, grabbing as much salt as he could. He jammed the salt into the mouth on Vito's arm, then started tying it down.

By now, Joyce had shot the first two or three people who tried to enter the building, so the two men stepped out over their corpses. Lillian fought in a frenzy. She was shot, but kept focusing on attacking people with rifles first, as did the others, including Jerome.

Someone: Everyone's a sicko in this game!

Lillian (to Kali as she kills): All of their lives have ended long ago. I am reminding them that their bodies belong to you.

I wasn't entirely sure how one is supposed to run a fight like this. I think I let it go for two or three rounds, then had villagers from Kolluli show up as the group fell back. The Kolluli villagers didn't invade Dallol, but did provide covering fire so that everyone could escape. By that point, the group had killed at least a tenth of the villagers without outside aid, Vito numbly noting the ages and genders of those he killed.

At this point:

• Lillian was at +1 Stability.
• Martin was at 0 Stability. (NB: Our house rule is that the penalty for losing Stability kicks in at -1. For some reason, that's just more intuitive.)
• Vito was at -2 Stability.
• Joyce, who walked calmly through the village shooting folks, reloading and changing weapons as needed, and whose player did not spend any points on the Stability rolls -- lost no Stability whatsoever. This was oddly appropriate. She looked even better than before.

Back in Kolluli, Jerome bandaged Lillian, not understanding what she was saying as she prayed to Kali.

Lillian: Mistress, it is a hard thing you ask of me. A hard thing you ask me to do. But it will be done.

Vito was silently weeping. I think he took out his handgun and looked at it. Martin took it from Vito, started to unload it, and then realized he didn't know how.

Vito (reclaiming the weapon): Marty, you do it like this. You check the chamber first.

He demonstrated for Martin, both of them trying to hold on to some semblance of normality or equilibrium.

Soon, Vito was warning Martin about allowing himself to succumb to his Nectar addiction.

Vito: It's going to eat Jeremiah inside you up. Yeah, I'm a son of a bitch, but one of us has to stay sober, and it's probably not gonna be me.

Meanwhile, Joyce / Josh went to talk to the guardians, Muhoho and Maathai. They agreed that the villagers in Kolluli could probably deal with Dallol from here. They were concerned about Dallol, but also about Vito and his extra mouth, which Jerome had seen as folks made their hasty retreat.

They understood, of course, that Vito was not a cultist, like George Ayers had been. And Joyce assured them that Vito was a good man (in context of fighting against the mythos) and that neither Vito nor Josh / Joyce would allow Vito to become a threat.

Now, in the book as written, the ONLY way to get the guardians to tell what they know about where George Ayers is, something essential to finding the man, is to use Interrogation, either gently or roughly. Leaving aside that only one person in the group has Interrogation, it doesn't seem very Gumshoe to require that specific hoop.

Sure, technically, it's not a core clue to talk to Ayers. But, if a group has come all the way to Ethiopia and decides to look for George Ayers, well, just as the detective in the movie isn't going to miss the clue, folks looking for the mysterious missing person aren't simply going to fail to find him, at least, not in this sort of circumstance.

So, I was looking for other possibilities, and one of the first ones I thought of was the guardians learning about Vito's mouth. Vito is clearly fighting on the right side. He needs to know as much about George Ayers's practices as he can, whether or not he decides to follow them. Vito's mouth has started sliding around on his arm, evading the steel cable he's using to gag it, so Jerome saw it and told the other two guardians about it.

And, Joyce had a point of Reassurance. That worked for me.

(Hey, was I basically using the mouth on Vito's arm as what Trail calls a Leveraged Clue?)

The guardians did not know exactly where George Ayers was, of course. He'd gone off to become a hermit over ten years ago. But, they did know that he was generally in the desert in the area around Adua, which was somewhat less hot than the area around Dallol.

(To put this in perspective, quoting from http://www.cracked.com/article/184_the-6-best-towns-to-live-in-if-you-have-death-wish/

If you survive somehow, you'll find a nightmare of salt flats, active volcanoes, regular ground-shattering earthquakes and a little town called Dallol--affectionately known by the local Afar people as "the Gateway to Hell."

This is the region of the world where human life began, and life has been comparatively smooth sailing for those of us who escaped this hellhole. It's officially the hottest inhabited place on Earth, with an average annual temperature of 94 degrees (Fahrenheit). If that doesn't sound as bad as you imagined, consider that it's just an average, offset by lower temperatures in winter. The summer gets up to 148 degrees (Fahrenheit))

The two women could not leave to guide the group, but they said that Jerome could.

Joyce / Josh: We will take Jerome and bring him back in one piece.

She also had some contact information for them, in case they needed help with Dallol or, if I recall correctly, the Italians. I think she gave them the name, or at least the contact information, for the local Comintern / KGB station chief.

[IS THAT CORRECT?]

Joyce: Tell them that Comrade Rodriguez sent you.

Meanwhile, Lillian, Vito, and Martin were having an intense conversation about how they were going to slaughter the Dallol villagers. None of them liked that this was going to happen.

[ANYONE HAVE ANY DETAILS ABOUT WHAT WAS SAID?]

Joyce: Saddle up, losers! I know where Ayers is.

Vito: I wish this were over money. '29 was over money.

'29 was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And, as he noted, that was men getting killed, not children.

Joyce tried to convince the others that things were well in hand, but they were adamant that they, not the villagers of Kolluli, had to take care of the problem at Dallol. Vito didn't want to make anyone else have to do something that ugly.

Sure, if Lillian found it easier to sleep at night, she could say that she was killing for Kali, that the villagers in Dallol were already dead. But, Vito refused what he considered false comfort. They were going to massacre the rest of Dallol village, he knew, even though the villagers did not choose to become twisted by the Liar / the Agony on the Wind.

Vito: We are committing mass murder.

Joyce: Okay, I am going to do it the clean and efficient way and do it from the air.

Folks talked about what kind of ammunition / weapons of mass destruction Joyce could get with that plane.

Martin: We don't need a flamethower. It's too f*cking -hot-.

Joyce decided to take Martin with her. She told Lillian and Vito to get the folks in Kolluli to pack down sand to make a landing for the plane. Vito and Lillian had advice / instructions for Martin.

Lillian: Don't drink more than someone Vito's size should, and try not to get kidnapped.

Vito: And no more sex with bad guys.

I forget how space monsters got into it.

Vito: Space monsters don't count as bad guys.

Martin: I'm not going to have sex with any of -them-!

A couple of days later, Joyce and Martin arrived safely in Massaua, and went to Captain Guido Renato's office. Now, I'd thought that Josh / Joyce and Guido were more or less friends, especially as Guido had previously loaned "Josh" a plane, but Josh hit Guido hard and demanded to borrow the plane again and that Guido arrest Martin. Supposedly, all of this was because Guido owed "Josh" for something that had happened when they both flew for the Spanish Civil War. I'm hoping Joyce's player will tell me what that was, so that I have some idea of how I should have been playing Guido.

I think that Josh / Joyce explained that there might be people trying to kidnap Martin, and that the safest place for him was in custody of the Italians. Guido was willing to accept that. He also, reluctantly, loaned "Josh" the plane.

Josh / Joyce: I'll return it in no fewer than two pieces!

I really wish I had some idea of what happened during their time in the Spanish Civil War, or whether this was some kind of act on Joyce's part. (I'm fine with a player making up backstory; I'd just like to know what that backstory is.)

Martin made himself comfortable in prison. At least the food was good. And, no one had told the Italians not to bring Martin as much alcohol as he wanted.

I forget the context of this, whether it was before or after Dallol:

Vito (as player pretends to flip through Martin's sketches, I think looking for one of Ayers? Fauche?): Trammel... Trammell... Trammell, Nyarlathotep... Trammel... Trammel!... Jeremiah... Jeremiah... Jeremiah Brain... Jeremiah Body... Fauche

Vito's player asked if we could skip actually playing out massacring 70 or so men, women, and children, and I was fine with that. So, next time, I think the conceit is that the opening credits will roll over the smoldering remains of tents and buildings in Dallol. Lillian's player asked about making sure that no one escaped. I said that once folks got to Dallol (which they probably were doing while Joyce and Martin went to Massaua) they could probably make sure no one left the village alive. But, they wouldn't necessarily know whether anyone had left the village between the time they retreated from Dallol and the time they returned.