On Monday September 11^th 1950 at 11.15am Mr Robert Stillwell, a Harley Street gynaecologist, appeared at the Whitcomb Street offices of Shenney & Addingtons Bank (estd 1602). He asked for access to his safety deposit box number 1104, and was taken into the basement area. There, as is usual, he was asked to fill out an index card with his chosen codewords. Senior Clark Stepford Carney took the card into the filing room and verified that both the phrase and handwriting were correct before returning with the second key necessary to open the deposit box. Carney led Stillwell into the actual vault and removed the container, one of the largest present at three feet by four feet by two feet (and requiring a trolley). This was taken into a private side room. Mr Carney waited until Mr Stillwell had produced his key and undone the first lock before undoing the second with the bank’s key. He then left Mr Stillwell in privacy to open his container.

Mr Stillwell’s cry of horror brought Mr Carney back almost immediately, along with Fred Shaughnessy the watchman. Mr Stillwell gestured to the now opened deposit box. Packed tightly inside was a corpse, the nude and bloody body of a young girl.

The police were summoned immediately. They judged the corpse to be that of a girl aged between ten and fourteen, caucasian and fair-haired. The blood came from two deep parallel wounds on her back and from the sides of her head where her ears had been removed. She had been dead somewhere between two and four days. Her only jewellery was a heavy golden choker. According to Shenney & Addington’s files, the deposit box was last accessed by Mr Stillwell two months ago, on July 13^th. Mr Stillwell was more concerned about the loss of the rare books he kept in the box, which he claims were worth £120,000 and were not insured. He intends to sue the bank for his loss.

Old Mr Shenney, at eighty-seven still a spry Chairman of the Board of his family’s bank, has been advised by fellow board member Evan Holdernesse (himself Chairman of the London Necropolis Company – yes, THAT Necropolis Company!), to consult the Monster Hunters Club on this occasion. He therefore invites the MHC to conduct their own investigation, hoping to save the good name of the bank from scandal and ruin.

So what do the Monster Hunters do first?

The Monster Hunters arrive at the bank around noon on Tuesday, September 12^th to conduct a preliminary inspection of the site. Revell (shadow mage, Tony Janes) has negotiated a retainer of £10,000, plus a bonus of £10,000 for demonstrating that the bank was not responsible for the incident. Whilst Richard Selkirk (architect mage, Nick Robinson) and Giles Meridian (planar specialist mage, Ian Clarke) amuse themselves tapping walls, measuring things and generally disrupting the regular routine of the establishment the rest of the Club seek answers to the points made by various players.

The officers in charge of the investigation are Detective Inspector Chatterley and DS Fratterhill, whom the Club have encountered before. Chatterley reluctantly accedes to the bank’s insistence that the Monster Hunters be allowed access to the materials of the case.

Flaxton (cleric, Mike Cook) attempts to reconstruct the scene, although this is somewhat hampered by police attempts to reconstruct the scene. From what he can see the sequence of events is as described in the last instalment. Revell finds the locks to be of excellent quality (-10% to pick locks chance) and the security precautions to be low-tech but adequate providing the employees who implement them are trustworthy. Magda does not stay long in the actual vault (which has LOTS of iron boxes lining it) and is later discovered with Albrecht Arnheim (elementalist, Chris Mortimer) sharing a bacon buttie with security guard Fred Shaughnessy and getting his side of the story. Shaughnessy confirms senior clark Carney’s account but adds that Bank Manager Mr Forsite is in a terrible mood over the whole affair and has given Mr Carney notice after twenty-eight years loyal service.

A number of people were keen to investigate procedures for accessing the safe deposit boxes. The current operating team has quite a few people who are rather good questioning staff, not least of them Jimmy Max (gallant bard, Dave Spence) who seems able to get the lady tellers to tell and Emanuelle le Clair (thief acrobat, Nikki Saunders) who is not short of an office boy or two to fetch her a chair. So to the procedures: the main safeguards are that two keys are needed to open any box; the bank holds one of them and the box owner the other. Thus only in the presence of a bank official and the owner can the container be opened. It would presumably be possible for an unscrupulous employee to gain access to the bank’s keys (Mr Carney or Mr Forsite would have access, for example), but they would not be able to open the second lock. In additional to requiring two keys, owners are not allowed into the vault unless they fill out a card with their pre-arranged codewords on it. The senior clerk then matches both words and handwriting before producing the bank’s keys and allowing access to the box. These cards are kept on file as a record of who has been into the vault. There have been sixteen visits in the last seven days from nine individuals. The bank is seeking permission from the six whom they have names for to reveal this information to the Club. The bank takes its security procedures very seriously – Mr Carney is professionally devastated by the scandal of this terrible preach of protocol.

Charlotte suggested that the Club should check for bodies in other safe deposit boxes. The Bank is not keen on allowing access without owners permissions, and they do not know who some of the owners are. Moreover they would have to force the boxes as they do not have both keys. However, they agree to attempt to locate some of the known owners and seek permission to access their boxes.

The safe deposit boxes might possibly have been switched. Each box has its number written on an index card and slotted into a plate on the front which could presumably be exchanged. To switch the boxes someone would have had to use a trolley or had extraordinary strength (18/50+).

As the Club get down to the laborious process of establishing who was where when, preparing files for background checks on Carney, Shaughnessy, and other staff, establishing duty rosters etc, Meridian and Selkirk complete their report: the vault of Shenney & Addington’s bank is cut off from both the astral and ethereal planes and apparently has wards against teleportation and its variants! A scan with Meridian’s Astral Awareness spell suggests that the actual masonry is cemented with trolls’ blood (the plasterwork is over a century old) and there are other complex, high level spells at work – including one which inhibits identify. The site detects of magic (abjuration) but not of good or evil.

Selkirk intends to get hold of some plans for the bank to investigate this phenomenon further. This will also answer the question of whether there are any tunnels beneath the building. I have noted Jimmy Max’s willingness to go sewer-crawling and as soon as Selkirk locates some he can have a go. Anyone going with him?

Aveyard arranges to try hypnosis on Fred Shaughnessy tomorrow. Fred consents as long as Albrecht is present "to keep an eye on that there scary bugger."

The nightwatchmen report no alarms of any kind in the recent past, not even a sighting of "Old Tom", the bank ghost who is said to glide down the stairs to the vault whenever a young new nightwatchman has his first shift alone down there.

Twenty-four hours into the case the girl remains unidentified. A full autopsy report is due tomorrow, but cause of death is not immediately obvious despite the mutilations. The pathologist is Dr Larry Whirlow, whom the Club have worked with before. He is quite young but helpfully open-minded, which is probably as well bearing in mind Revell’s elf theory, Zany’s wings question, and Flaxton’s subsequent suspicion of troll king (and you better believe it) Loreg Knope.

The two parallel marks on the girl’s back were about fifteen inches long, symmetrically vertical just on the outside of the shoulder blades. They are gouges rather than cuts or claw-marks as if someone has ripped skin, flesh and muscle out. A quick scan of the familiar monsters and lower planar creatures throws up many that could probably do it but none for which this is a characteristic attack. The injuries to the ears were also caused more by gouging than cutting. The pathologist does not consider that the choker could have been forced over the girl’s head removing the ears. The choker was quite form-fitting around the neck. More on all of this when the autopsy results are available.

Angherad ap Griffeths (Academic, Liz Cullerton) will arrange to have a look at some photographs of the body. Details of these findings next time.

Aveyard and Qayrawun (Genie-binder mage, Clive Duerden) take the appointment to see Mr Stillwell (who is a consultant and therefore prefers Mr to Dr) at his Harley Street practise. Stillwell is basically unhelpful until Aveyard (psychiatrist mage, NPC),who, as detailed, is using ESP, determines that Stillwell’s safe deposit contained his rather exotic collection of Victorian gynaecological texts with the hand-painted plates. With this piece of information Aveyard is able to completely shred the poor doctor into a full confession of the lurid original contents of his box. The value of the missing texts has been exaggerated but is still around £6,000. ESP verifies that Stillwell did not recognise the dead girl and has no idea how she came to be in his safe deposit box. A background check into Mr Stillwell by MHC researcher Adele Walker turns up what Dr Underwood (non-member MHC physician) thinks are quite good and Dr Aveyard describes as "adequate" professional credentials. Revell and Jimmy Maxtible uncover his purchase of several rare books of the kind described, but other than this rather odd taste in literature he seems to be an unpleasant but unremarkable character. There is no evidence of any back street abortions or other unpleasantness.

Mr Stillwell is not aware of his keys ever leaving his possession. When he does not have his safe deposit key on his person it is kept in his safe at his Harley Street offices. There have been no suspicious incidents of the kind that Nikki asked about. Mr Stillwell’s client list is confidential. It is fair to say that all his patients are female.

Genevieve Fauconburg (spelldancer mage, Sally Watson) and Emmanuelle probably swarm down to Scotland Yard to examine the choker. The evidence locker manifest describes this as "a gold circle with Celtic designs upon it, with a hinge clasp, about an inch deep and a quarter-inch thick". That’s as far as the investigation gets, because the actual evidence locker is empty! An internal investigation is launched to discover how an important and valuable piece of evidence could vanish from a secure holding area.

Mr Spence raised the occult or historical significance of a torc and suggested some research. The staff at the Edward Endelby Memorial library love this kind of question and go at it with a vengeance. They do however quickly point out the difference between a hinged choker such as was described on the girl and a torc which is usually a single solid circlet with a break so it can be removed. Nobody has a very good description of the item so their eventual research roll will have a –35% penalty.

Meanwhile Meridian, Flaxton, and Dawn D’Aosta (weather priestess, NPC) go to visit Evan Holdernesse of the London Necropolis Company. Holdernesse is a precise, fussy sort of fellow, a bit like an undead Fulton Mackie. The Club now know that the LNC is again under the ownership of one Mr Q. Rex, and Mr Holdernesse works for him. Holdernesse assures the MHC that he is most sincere in his desire to know what is going on at the bank – after all, the Lych banks there! That is why "appropriate precautions" were taken to protect the safe deposit vault from magical intrusion in 1793. That is also why divinations even of the order of contact other plane are of no avail in finding out what happened; scrying even by cosmic powers and principalities is prohibited in that area.

A few minor points still to respond to:

The available personnel for the investigation include Tanzania "Zany" Quilp (alchemist thief, Charlotte Baden) and Hank "Raygun" Radshaw (scientist, Phil Harris), but not Felix Brockenby (wastrel, Phil again), who has vanished into the Void at this point whilst possessed by a rakshasa. Dawn D’Aosta (weather priestess, NPC) is available until full moon on September 14^th, and will thereafter be replaced by her twin Aurora (enchantress mage, NPC). Qui Tsu (oriental cat-mage, Ken Flatters) is not around unless Ken gets connected to the internet, in which case he might suddenly turn up.

Finding no eligible young men to interview over dinner at the Club’s expense, Emmanuelle is almost saved by Jimmy Maxtible gallantly offering to be interviewed about the case himself before the Club treasurer Revell unfairly intervenes and interrupts what might have been a very interesting investigation.

Anton Caradoc is undead now, under the control of the Lych, who is keeping him on a short leash and making his unlife terribly, terribly miserable. There is nothing to link Caradoc with this case except very tenuously via the Lych and the LNC.

Here we are with an epic response to a record number of e-mails (48 I think, since last episode). From the Monster Hunters’ perspective it is now the second day of their investigation, Wednesday 13^th September, two days after the discovery of the body.

Shocking Disappearance of a Gold Choker: The police are reluctant to allow Monster Hunters into their secure holding area, where chain-of-evidence stuff is kept in absolute security. Sadly they have to deal with Genevieve and Emmanuelle (who still look remarkably alike in certain lights), and Emanuelle’s fainting ploy is a good start. Genevieve uses a quick Detect Magic on the file drawer and doesn’t get anything. There’s no locks on the files because the whole area is supposed to be secure. All officers entering sign in and only the staff of this department are allowed access to the evidence lockers. No coats or bags are allowed, so someone would have to go to significant lengths to conceal a gold choker. Beating a hasty retreat whilst the filing clerk is still trying to detach his buttons from Emmanuelle’s blouse and apologising profusely through his blushes, Genevieve does determine that the original scene of crime photos depicted the circlet.

The choker (not a torc) is a complete circlet, about an inch and a quarter deep, hinged at one side and with a delicate fastener at the other. It has engraved parallel lines at top and bottom running around the circle. It has characters on it in a writing which Jimmy Max identifies as Alko, a decadent hieroglyphic script used first by worshippers of Azathoth the Cthulic deity on the Plateau of Leng around a million years ago. Selkirk also recognises the characters since he is currently conducting research into that period. Neither Monster Hunter can actually translate it. Fortunately, Giles Meridian has the spell Comprehend Languages. Because the photographs do not clearly show all the characters, the best the spell can translate is "Find Truth in Delusions…"

The Club can put in motion enquiries amongst antique dealers etc. regarding the choker. They will quickly find that the police have already done exactly the same.

The Autopsy Results: Dr Larry Whirlow has now conducted not one but two full autopsies on the body from the bank. This is because he discovered certain anomalies in his first examination which made him come back and verify things. Whirlow provides one set of autopsy results to Detective Sergeant Fratterhill and a second, more honest set to the Monster Hunters; he wants to keep his professional reputation intact, but he would REALLY like Zany’s opinion on the unofficial report.

The official report details the girl as caucasian, apparently aged around fourteen, unusually fit, sexually active, unused to wearing shoes, not having eaten in the last two days before her death (no stomach contents). She probably died around 7^th or 8^th September, before but not long before being placed in the safe deposit box. Cause of death was choking (but not, before you ask, strangulation by a choker; this was an internal blockage of the windpipe). But the item on which she was choking has not been discovered. Her other injuries occurred either just before or just after death.

All of this is correct so far as it goes. The unofficial report details the results of two very different autopsies. In the first of the examination, the coroner could not determine the girl’s blood type. Her blood was very thin, lacking the usual coagulants, which meant that time of death was hard to pin. The musculature of her back had been significantly damaged by the gouging, which had ripped and severed several major muscles which are not detailed in Gray’s Anatomy. This was remarkably consistent with Zany’s proposition that wings had been removed. It is difficult to prove Revell’s proposition about elven ears. There were no signs of a vampire’s bite. There were however strange additional components to the girl’s eyes which were neither rods nor cones. There were several discolorations on the girl’s flesh where it had rubbed against the sides of the box, something like a mild allergy rash. Finally, the girl’s body-weight was four stone seven ounces, which was remarkably low even for a petite fourteen-year-old.

Whirlow therefore came back to verify his results, six hours after the initial autopsy had concluded. By this time the blood had thickened and was definitely type O. The unusual back musculature was not evident, and previously removed samples now proved to be of regular tissue type. The eyes appeared perfectly normal and the red patches on the skin had vanished. The corpse now weighed seven stone thirteen ounces. It is this latter information which appears in the official report.

The body is still being held in the forensics lab until the police can identify parents or other next of kin. Dr Whirlow would have no unofficial objection to Zany’s second opinion, as long as it remains off the record.

Angherad has taken all this new information with her and disappeared into the depths of the library. An player wanting some extra experience points has got until her return next mailing to tell me things about the girl. There will be a fuller discussion of the elf physiology question in the next mailing, reflecting the research time required by Zany and Angherad to put all the data together.

Entering the Vault: The bank has now contacted those known customers who made use of the safe deposit vault in the week before the incident was discovered. The reconstruction looks like this:

Sept 4^th, 10.15-10.30am: Sir Michael Harrier VC (Chairman of Milk Marketing Board)

Sept 4^th 11.35-11.40am Sir Michael Harrier VC

Sept 4^th 1.55-3.10pm: Dame Margaret Gouvenier

Sept 4^th 2.30-2.35pm: Client who wishes to remain anonymous #1

Sept 5^th 10.05-10.35am Client who wishes to remain anonymous #1

Sept 5^th 11.40am-12.00pm Frederick Sanderson (Stockbroker)

Sept 5^th 1.45pm-1.55pm Client #3225

Sept 6^th 11.10am-11.55am Client who wishes to remain anonymous #1

Sept 6^th 11.30am-11.55am Lesley Kerwell (Antique Dealer; brought a large box with him)

Sept 6^th 2.25-2.45pm Client who wishes to remain anonymous #1

Sept 6^th 2.30-2.50pm Dame Margaret Gouvenier

Sept 7^th 1.50pm-2.50pm Major Sir Joshua Courage (retired military gentleman)

Sept 8^th 10.45-11.05am Mrs Amelia Pagitt (wife of oil tycoon Frederick Pagitt)

Sept 8^th 11.15-11.30am Sir Joshua Courage

Sept 8^th 1.55-2.05pm Client #3225

Sept 11^th 10.00-10.15am Client who wishes to remain anonymous #2

Sept 11^th 11.15am Robert Stillwell – as described

There has been considerable discussion amongst players about whether to use either illicit or magical means to fill in the missing information. As I understand it the prevailing sentiment is "not yet", based on both the ethics of the situation and an uncertainty about whether one or more of the suspects might be more powerful than they seem.

That said, Aveyard and Magda identify "client who wishes to remain anonymous #2" as romance author Shadwell Courntey through discussion with a junior clerk who is a big fan of his (don’t ask how they got this info, just walk away…).

Charlotte asked how many of these visitors were known to staff. All the named visitors except Frederick Sanderson and Sir Joshua Courage were known at least to Mr Carney, who would recognise them on sight. However, Lesley Kerwell has an arrangement that anybody who shows up with the key and the next codeword from a pre-arranged list should have access to his box, as he often sends staff on his behalf. The staff are fond of Dame Margaret Gouvenier, who tends to remember the names of their children and so forth. The dislike Dr Stillwell, who is often very curt with them. Staff do not recall anybody arriving just after Mr Stillwell’s previous visit some months ago.

An analysis of shift patterns shows that it would require at least two bank staff to be colluding to smuggle anything as big as the corpse into the bank, or to fail to spot any of the customers doing so. Just to complicate matters, Selkirk has now managed to determine that the door to the vault is set to Detect Invisible.

Meanwhile, Back in the Vault: A number of questions regarded the layout of the bank and the arcane defences have been asked. Selkirk now has plans for the site, and is trying to get a feel of the changes that have been made over centuries. The Vaults are the oldest part of the site, as you might expect. The actual "magical" defences are only around the vault proper and the four adjoining private inspection rooms. Regarding what spells might work in the bank (invisibility, item, knock, etc.), I think I would need to know who is testing this and how before I can answer. Qayrawun’s little gen (genie imp) helpers would prefer not to have a go at unravelling the defensive spells as they think it would be like sticking their fingers into the back of an electric generator.

Directly outside the safe door which is the only entrance to these areas is a vestibule where Fred Shaughnessy or another guard sits and where visitors fill out their cards at a desk. The match-cards and keys are kept in locked files in the main vault itself, so no client would ever see the card or keys of another client because these would once more be locked away before they have access to the vault.

Whilst we’re on this bank security thing, the keys are all made by the Chubb Lock and Safe Co, to a pattern not easily replicable from standard uncut keys. Each box requires a different key from the bank’s key box (which is in the vault proper). There is a double-blind safety method used in that Chubb do not know the serial number assigned to each deposit box and the clerk at the bank does not know the serial number of the keys for the box. Despite Emanuelle’s best attempts, the embarrassed clerk is not going to leave her alone in the vault with the key box. The procedure remains as outlined at the start of the first mailing and is not varied. No client is left alone in the vault on any occasion. They are locked into their private booths and ring a bell when they wish to come out. As previously stated, Shenney & Addington’s take their security seriously.

It would probably be evident if a box was already unlocked when a key user came to unlock it.

There are thirty deposit boxes of the size that the girl was found in (the largest type present), over a thousand boxes of various smaller sizes. Without opening them it is not possible to detect if the contents are magical or evil. Meridian believes that the arcane defences here may be similar in nature to the spells which bound the Hand of Justice to manifest in protection of the Chillwater Street Museum – spells crafted by Qualius and later modified by Club sage Nathan Rumbustle - although it is hard to tell without identify. If they are, then there is presumably a guardian on the vault which is triggered under certain circumstances.

Fingerprinting offers a wealth of prints on both the box with the corpse in it and others. Some can be identified as bank staff. Stillwell’s appear only on his box. There are at least one set of unidentified prints on the murder box. Metallurgical analysis suggests that all the large boxes are of one minting. X-raying the boxes would be difficult without removing them from the vault which the bank is unwilling to do without owners’ permission, would be viewed as a breach of confidentiality by the bank, and would be difficult as they do have a lead content. Weighing the boxes finds only two boxes which weight more than five stone (although all of them weight three stone because they are, as described, partly lead).

The vault is dusted regularly, but of interest is a small pile of silvery powder sufficient to fill a thimble neatly stacked in one corner of the floor. Neither the MHC or the police noticed this in their previous apparently-thorough investigations. Alerted by this the MHC check the floor even more thoroughly and find granules of what feels like invisible sand (of a texture not much thicker than flour) scattered across the surface. This is so insignificant that although it would actually become visible to Meridian during his original spellcasting he may not have noticed it (on an 87%).

Clarification of the Knock spell: This spell undoes two "levels" of lock within an area of effect, in order of proximity to the centre of the spell. This is quite sufficient for a standard mortice lock or latch, and can even open a bolt, but some modern safes use up to four levels of lock. People aware of the existence of the spell often arrange three-level locks which require two knocks to open them, and further complicate things with spring-loaded mechanisms which relock immediately unless all three levels are opened at once.

The locks on the boxes in the vault are two independent two-level locks, requiring a separate knock spell for each of the two locks on any given box.

The Maxtible Hypothesis: Jimmy Max posits a method of entry involving magical or psionic charm or suggestion, wherein the clerk is made to believe he has seen a suitable codeword and therefore lets the visitor in to the vault. So far this seems plausible, as the Club have not tested any magical defences against this on the vault. However, bank procedure insists that the customer unlocks their lock of the box first in the presence of the clerk before the clerk opens their own lock and leaves with the bank’s key. There are probably ways of causing a clerk to act differently and forget that they did, but these require several medium level spells or a psionic discipline like domination. If the visitor did not have the second key they would presumably need to either pick locks or use magic to open the second lock whilst preventing the clerk from noticing or remarking on this.

The variant which has been suggested for producing the access code, using ESP, would not work, because the client is expected to fill out a card before the clerk goes to compare it with the one on file. Hence the information on how to fill out the card would not yet be in the clerk’s mind to ESP.

The Meridian/Qayrawun Speculation: Giles checks on the people who might see the bank daily, like street vendors. Nobody, not even the nurse selling poppies on the corner from a tray, has noticed anything odd. The street is remarkably free from road works or other suspicious bank-robber type activities. Regarding a night infiltration, the bank would be quite tough to crack, given that it has six armed security guards including one right outside the vault, a four-stage vault door lock (which usually requires two simultaneous knock spells to open or a pick locks at –30%) and as yet undetermined additional defences.

Meridian and Qayrawun have a fascinating theoretical conversation regarding an "Astral intranet" before Radshaw spoils it all by suggesting someone does an empirical test in the vault. There is no ethereal or astral component there. Still, the DM has noted the suggestion and a suitable scenario will appear shortly…

Qayrawun’s spell-snaffling gens fail to locate a Scrying Pool today, but tomorrow is another day. Meridian’s view is that scrying inside the vault would be inhibited by a lack of astral connections.

Where Old Tom Walks: Old Tom is said to walk down the stairs from the ground floor and vanish into the vault doorway. Up to that point there is a border ethereal which would allow a ghost to exist in the usual way; beyond there is not. That said, the Club’s initial investigations suggest that Old Tom may be an office legend rather than an actual apparition. Old hands on the night shift have no qualms about rattling the new ‘un’s, but stop short of actually manufacturing a ghost. Armed security guards are not good people to scare from under a sheet. Flaxton’s Spirit Sense spell does not detect any presence – but read on.

Where the Sewers Run Free: Jimmy Max leads a brave party into the old storm-tunnels off the River Fleet to check beneath Whitcomb Street. I’m guessing the lucky individuals include Selkirk, Revell, and Albrecht grumbling all the way. Two smelly and unpleasant hours later they conclude that there is nothing very out-of-the ordinary about the two-foot sewer pipe beneath the bank. However, just as they are leaving Revell notices a silver-backed mirror taped to the top of the pipe shaft for no apparent reason.

Aveyard’s Hypnosis: Fred Shaughnessy, the security guard who was first at the scene with Mr Carney when Stillwell cried out after apparently finding the body, is first on the couch. He proves to be a good subject, recalling details like how Stillwell had dropped his key onto the floor, and a strange smell of poppies (Fred is a keen gardener).

Aveyard also questions Fred on "Old Tom", the alleged bank ghost. The Club had more or less written this off to the sort of lore that lots of workplaces have until Fred recalls his one sighting of the apparition, as a new young employee twenty years back. A transparent middle-aged man in old fashioned clothes came at him down the stairs, actually passing right through him and vanishing through the closed entrance to the deposit box vault. Fred has never admitted to this before except in jest.

Officers at the Evidence Locker decline to be hypnotised by the Monster Hunters Club. Tomorrow Aveyeard intends to have a go at Senior Clerk Stepford Carney.

Hunting for Porn: The idea of missing books horrifies Brother indexer, an NPC at the Edward Endelby Memorial Library. Armed only with a mental catalogue of every obscure book ever printed he set out to seek word of the missing volumes. Qayrawun and Aveyard can get the names for the asking from Stillwell – Aveyard’s got this chap just where he wants him. Mr Stillwell’s entire collection was in the deposit box; he has no copies.

The Background of Stepford Carney: The Club wished to take an interest in the bank’s previously most trusted senior clerk. Emanuelle tries to intervene for him to Mr Forsite, who has given the old man notice. It becomes apparent that Mr Forsite has decided that Carney is responsible for this mess and Carney will suffer for it. Carney has been given two weeks notice and will leave without references. Mr Forsite further adds that the Monster Hunters were brought into this investigation against his advice and that the sooner they conclude their interferences and leave the better.

Investigations by Flaxton and Dawn go quite well initially, with a number of suspicious payments, almost a third of his monthly salary, being made by Carney to a range of sources and carefully concealed . In addition, there appears to be something that Carney is terrified the investigators will discover. The line of enquiry collapses when they discover that these payments are to various church-run charities and orphanages – Mr Carney simply doesn’t like to be obvious about his philanthropism. His dark secret is that his eyesight is failing and he finds figures blurring after a lot of close work, and he fears this will disqualify him from another position even if he can find one without a reference.

Mr Carney’s other interests include stamp collecting, fishing, Arthur Askey, and Mrs Carney (whom he brings home a rose every Friday evening and has done for the last nineteen years).

The Background of Edward Forsite: Mr Forsite has been the General Manager of Shenney & Addington’s main branch for four years. Before that he served as manager at a lesser site for five years. He impressed the Board by proposing "changes and modernisations which would bring the institution into the twentieth century". Mr Forsite is forty-three with an ambitious wife who expects him to gain a place on the board before he is fifty.

Amongst the many changes that Mr Forsite is bringing in will be methods of ensuring security on the site which do not depend upon the integrity of clerks. The current incident is an example of the sort of thing he has been warning the board about for months, and is another reason for the board to get rid of old Mr Shenney who has been blocking him all that time.

Mr Forsite’s little secret is a lady who lives off Lombard Street who takes a very firm line with him when he’s been naughty. He has been visiting Miss Lashina for almost a year now and appears to be her principal source of income.

The MHC have no way of checking if Mr Forsite is psionic.

Appealing to Old Mr Shenney: The old man is perturbed to hear of Mr Carney’s dismissal, but points out that he cannot interfere in the day-to-day running of the firm. Even if he could, he is currently fighting to remain on the board and his championing of Mr Carney would probably do the employee more harm than good.

Regarding access to confidential client information, Mr Shenney arranges to come down to the bank tomorrow to go into the client files in the presence of Mr Forsite and the Monster Hunters. Whilst he will not allow the identity of the clients who have expressed a wish for anonymity to be breached he will allow the Club access to the index cards of the others, including client #3325, providing that no images of the cards are taken and they do not leave the index room.

Regarding the possibility of testing bank security by attempting to break in to the safe deposit boxes, Mr Shenney is willing to countenance this on condition that nobody is hurt, no damage is caused, and the Club actually break into box #977 – his. However, agreeing to this will seriously stretch his credibility with the Board, and so this is probably the last help he can give the Club if they decide to take him up on it.

In response to one of Nikki’s questions, do the Club wish to approach the London Necropolis Company again to seek out what they know of the Shenney & Addington’s client list? Or to seek more information of the vault’s defences?

In response to Tony’s suggestion, do the Club want to send Revell in as a security guard to meet Old Tom? How do the Club expect Magda to fit in to this plan (if at all)?

Do the Club wish to attempt a mock break-in to test bank security? And do they want to do this with the permission of the board of Shenney & Addingtons? I need to know which members of the Club will form this operating team, and whether this is attempted during the day or at night. I also need a detailed description of how they will overcome the various problems of getting to the box - spells, abilities, etc.

Elven Physiology: The AD&D system’s tenet for interbreeding seems to be that humans can interbreed with damn near anything that’s humanoid, and given a bit of magical help can breed with quite a lot that isn’t. There are a set of spells from a fairly early DRAGON magazine which help out with this. Other humanoid and demi-human races have rather more difficulty interbreeding, which is why you don’t find lots of half-orc/half-elves for example (orcs take their fun where they can, and captured elves are pretty good fun from an orc’s perspective).

That said, the Elves (and Drow) whom the Club have most commonly met are very similar to humans except that they have certain adaptations to allow for their infravision, and a few strange genetic features which ensure their long lifespans etc. Psychologically they also differ, being much better at resisting sleep and charm, for example.

But the High Elves are just the shallow end of the Faerie Races, so far removed from True Faeriedom now that they no longer shun iron and have an existence quite separate from the arcane field of the world (although they retain some affinity for magic, of course). There are other races who also describe themselves or have been described as elves who resemble the sort of sap-blooded entities that Charlotte posits. These appear to be natural by-products of an animistic world life-force, and are not far removed from dryads, naiads, nymphs, etc. Beyond these are creatures formed largely from belief or memory or imagination, entities of glamour and fascination. These include the Seelie Court Elves (and there’s probably also room for some of those Terry Pratchett-style elves in here as well), and they are made not of flesh or even plant fibres but of stardust and illusion.

The more magical the race of elves is, the less likely it is to be encountered on the Prime Material Plane (i.e. Earth), and the shorter the time it can endure here without either fading away (as per Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid) or becoming gross matter; either is fatal.

There is no race of AD&D style elves indigenous to the Monster Hunters’ world, although there has been a little bit of colonisation long ago, and both Elves and Drow have settled in the Many Coloured Faerie Lands sometimes attached to Earth. Any history in which elves were native to this world has long since been terminated so that it never was.

AD&D elves do not detect as intrinsically magical. They are not winged.

Here are the accounts of the Monster Hunters doings on Thursday 14^th September 1950. Dawn D’Aosta is running around like mad trying to solve the problem before midnight tonight, the full moon, when she will replace and be replaced by her twin sister Aurora who is currently part of the fabric of Faerie (long story, available on request by separate e-mail). She’s sort of like Charlotte was the day she had to give her laptop back during the last scenario. Selkirk is not around too much today. Having done all the interesting things in the vault he has shuffled off to talk to his friend Babbage about some sort of "difference engine".

Forensics Results: A third autopsy on what is left of the poor girl confirms the results of the second one. The body does not resemble the D’Aosta twins. The body has been continually guarded since the MHC learned of the disappearance of the choker. It does not detect as magical or evil, and does not appear to be an illusion. The girl apparently choked on an organic or "soft" item around four inches in diameter which was pressed down her throat and withdrawn after death. Police investigations have not yet discovered any suitable missing person to match her to.

Once out of the vault it is possible to identify the spell upon the invisible granules as invisibility, although possibly a slight variant on the more standard version (but similar level and effects). The granules themselves are largely carbonised compounds, but alas not powdered diamonds. A lucky break in Zany’s researches (07%) helps here, and after a very exhaustive and exhausting stretch in the lab she is able to identify them as the dust that remains after something has been disintegrated.

The silvery powder appears to be powdered silver and glass. There is a faint dweomer of illusion/phantasm magic remaining upon it, but it is so faint that only a very good percentile from Magda (17%) spotted it. This was once, as Clive suggests, actually a small mirror which has now been crushed into tiny fragments..

The mirror from the sewer is not magical. In fact it is one of Woolworth’s modestly-priced (middle range) ladies mirrors, available for 2/- at all good outlets. As such it is easy to locate a replacement. In its original placement it would reflect anybody approaching up the passageway from the main drain towards the bank.

After extensive empirical research, Albrecht reports that opium smoke does not smell of poppies.

A Visit to the Bottom of the Garden: Magda and Angherad run down to Cornwall and visit one of the Club’s occasional contacts, Dame Edith Chanterness, who has a fair knowledge of Faerie lore. The Dame is most interested in the case. She agrees with Flaxton that if a true faerie were killed inside what amounts to a metal box detached form all other planes it might well revert to gross matter rather than melt to nothingness, and that this could explain the altered autopsy results as the creature metamorphosised into the nearest mortal counterpart of itself.

One of Qayrawun’s gens does finally manage to find StJohn Ercildoune, herald of the Seelie Court, on the outer plane of Arborea. She will be back tomorrow with his news.

The Bank’s Layout: The five inspection rooms attached to the vault come within the vault’s defences. There are sewer pipes beneath the bank, but Jimmy Max has crawled up all the ones accessible to human-sized creatures Revell’s going to flinch at his laundry bill.

The Bank cannot tell you which if any box or boxes belong to the Lych. They have no cards in the index under the name Qualius. The bank does not usually exchange the position of boxes.

Hypnotising Mr Carney: Aveyard again uses his skills to question a key witness. On a 47% he cannot find any altered or lost memories in the senior clerk. He does recall that Sir Michael Harrier made his visits to the vault for the purpose of collecting some legal papers and then returning them, that Dame Margaret left and returned with a jewel case, and that Sir Joshua Courage collected and later returned his war medals.

The only other slight oddity Mr Carney recalls is that he was reprimanded on September 8^th by Mr Forsite for locking the vault up twelve minutes late. Mr Carney admitted that he was at fault, and that it was the second time in a week that his old watch had let him down as it was also running twelve minutes late three days earlier. Mr Carney subsequently left the watch to air over a jar of turpentine and it has not given him any trouble since.

Whilst on the subject of Mr Carney, a cure blindness will not assist him as his slow deterioration of eyesight is a result of natural ageing rather than any illness.

Checking out the Vault Users:

Sir Michael Harrier VC (Chairman of Milk Marketing Board) – happy to talk about his visit, removed then replaced share certificates needed for business purposes, will open his box and show the Club if they like.

Dame Margaret Gouvenier – took out her old heirloom jewellery for the deMomfreigh coming out ball, darlings, you just had to be there… Returned the jewels once she had sobered up. Will allow examination of her box with police present.

Frederick Sanderson (Stockbroker) – his business is private and so are the contents of his box. Blasted impudence!

Client Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous #1 – described elsewhere in this mailing.

Client #3225 – well-dressed gentleman in his late twenties

Lesley Kerwell - Antique Dealer (specialising in nineteenth century paintings) who says he stored various pieces of artwork until they could be valued for insurance purposes. Did have several pieces of artwork recently valued. Has since both added and removed other valuables. Has no objection to showing that his box is currently empty.

Major Sir Joshua Courage – Says he took medals out from Regimental Reunion. Willing to open his box if police require it, but it seems a rum imposition, dammit!

Mrs Amelia Pagitt - wife of oil tycoon Frederick Pagitt, refuses to explain her visit or allow access to her private property. Comments that country is going to the dogs and she blames the government. Didn’t send husband to fight world war to be annoyed like this by snoops and spies.

Client who wishes to remain anonymous #2 – identified without the bank’s knowledge as romance writer Shadwell Courntey. A direct approach would give away that the Club knows something it shouldn’t.

Pursuing Client Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous #1: The best description comes from Dame Margaret Gouvenier, who was present at the time of the client’s visit on 4^th September. She describes the client as "a rather false blonde in a cheap fur coat trying too hard to look sophisticated." She had one of the smallest deposit boxes, 8"x7"x6".

Investigating Mrs Forsite: Mrs Forsite is a sharp-nosed woman in her mid thirties with short brown hair and a good deal of ambition for her husband and his social status. She has been married for seven years. She does not appear to have any dark secrets although she loves to gossip about other peoples’.

Mr Shenney’s Visit: Old Mr Shenney comes to the site and is present as the Club consult the key box and card index. The major and glaring thing here is that there are no cards filled in for Client #3225, but there are two incorrectly filled out cards filed in the correct spots, dated 5^thand 8^th September. The first of these bears the scrawled phrase "THE UNIVERSE IS VAST AND INDIFFERENT", the second "BLESSED ARE THE TAINTED". Neither of these is the correct phrase for Client #3225, which is "Knowledge is Insanity", nor the correct handwriting. Client #3225’s deposit box is 1’x 2’x 2’, numbered 1704. The unidentified fingerprints from the large box are also on this one.

Mr Shenney is pleased at the progress the Club is making. He invites the MHC up to his seldom-used private office and shows the club some pen-sketches of the bank trustees from his youth. He has difficulty finding one of them as it has been taken down and stacked under his desk to make room for a handsome new wall-mirror. Also of interest in Shenney’s cabinet of memorabilia are an old quill pen and ink set and a long-broken magnifying lens dating back at least two centuries.

Paranoia and Poppies: Jimmy Max volunteers to be the one to check out the pretty nurse selling Armistice Day poppies. It is slightly strange that she is here again today. Doesn’t she have any work to do? Jimmy is chatting merrily with her (and fifteen minutes of merry chatting with a Gallant Bard causes a person of the opposite sex to save vs non-magical charm) and slips up a Detect Magic just in case. She is. Rumbled, she collapses to the floor, a pile of straw and old sticks inside a nurse’s uniform. Her poppies scatter across the pavement and a small silver hand-mirror shatters on the stones.

Another Interview with Mr Holdernesse: The London Necropolis Company does indeed keep items of value in the vaults at Shenney & Addingtons, and this is why the vaults have long been protected. Without going into too much detail, Mr Holdernesse explains that in addition to being detached from other planes, the vault inhibits identify and any divination spell of higher than second level (the low level ones being useful for checking out customers in the old days when staff here could cast them). It would not enable know alignment as it is not consecrated ground. The vault door detects invisible or polymorphed creatures, (causing an aura to appear around them as is common with detection spells). In addition to these defences, there are a series of contingencies which trigger the appearance of a genuine ghost (Old Tom) with all the effects thereof – sudden ageing, fear, insanity, etc. These include the casting in the vault of knock, warp wood, reduce, enlarge, any mind-affecting spell (charm, forget, memory) and basically most other magics if used to break into deposit boxes. Holdernesse does not go into how this is possible in a room sealed off from the ethereal plane. Of course, none of this would preclude the use of spells on staff etc. outside the vault proper or its adjoining private rooms. Nor would it prevent the casting of disintegrate in the vault if the boxes or their contents remained unharmed.

In addition, Holdernesse adds, Old Tom visits any new guard to familiarise himself with them and to ensure that they are no more than they seem to be. He appears as a transparent figure in old-style but not Elizabethan clothes. Evan Holdernesse does not know the origin of Old Tom or the full nature of his commission, but he does know that he’s there because the Lych told him to be.

Holdernesse knows that Qualius has also used the bank for non-LNC business, but does not know what. The Lych is not available for comment (see forthcoming MHC session for details).

Holdernesse is interested by the presence of the mirrors in the case. Striding out of his office into his receptionists’ room he seizes an identical Woolworth’s one which has been placed on the mantelshelf there – but it is non-magical. Nobody admits to bringing it into the building. Curiously, a similar mirror rests in the common room at the Edward Endelby Memorial Library (where the MHC are currently residing). None of them appear to be magical.

Another Interview with Mr Stillwell: Stillwell is reluctant to divulge his clients’ names for reasons of professional confidentiality. If Qayrawun really wants to get them he can, but I have assumed for today that his gens concentrated on getting him magic mirror (successfully, see below) and taking a message to the outer planes.

Mr Stillwell is reluctant to be hypnotised, especially by Dorian Aveyard. Magda and Zany’s view is that any toxins would probably be out of Stillwell’s system by now.

Menacing Mr Forsite: As there does not yet appear to be consensus about casting spells on the Manager of the Bank I have assumed that none have yet been attempted. Albrecht takes Magda for lunch as a small but good cellar bistro he happens to know just round the corner to soothe her vengeful mind. Afterwards they wander along Drury Lane to get an answer to Qayrawun’s question about theatrical productions with winged women in them. Does Peter Pan count?

Miss Lashina of Lombard Street: There are no shortage of male researchers willing to investigate Mr Forsite’s mistress. When she is not entertaining Forsite three nights a week she seems to live a fairly quiet life, walking her poodle and occasionally meeting with female friends at the beauty salon. The significant second part of her income is paid direct into her bank account and in the relatively short period the Club have observed her there is nobody around to account for it.

A good bit of research from Revell and Albrecht turns up a one-reel short "health" film made by Della Stippling – Miss L’s real name, back before she became a platinum blonde - in 1946, entitled "Della and the Donkey". Selkirk’s view of it is that the harness could be a lot more efficiently designed.

Scrying for Chokers, and Other Methods: Whilst Qayrawun prepares the cellar at the Endleby memorial library for an attempt at scrying the choker, the mundane investigations continue.

The police are baffled at how the item could have vanished from the evidence locker, and take this very seriously. Revell and Flaxton see enough of the investigation to come away assured that if there was a non-supernatural means of removing it, the police investigation WILL find it. Chief Constable Sir Wendell Radwell is taking a personal interest in the case, which must be quite uncomfortable for Detective Inspector Chatterley. However, it is clear to the Monster Hunters that a middle-to-high level spellcaster could easily remove the item, and a low level one could probably accomplish it with some risk and ingenuity. Flaxton previously speculated that the motive of the murder was to get either the girl or the choker outside the defences of the vault. One of those two items has now disappeared.

Locate object has a very limited range and is probably not helpful on this occasion except perhaps to verify that it is not back in the vault (which it isn’t). Disbelieving the writing on the photographs does not change them.

The choker has not turned up on the black market (neither have Stillwell’s books, by the way). Nor have the socially-active Monster Hunters been able to pick up any leads. The late Edward Endelby (don’t ask) has however found an oblique reference to "The Golden Band of Shadowed Vengeance" associated with the phrases "Truth in Delusions" and Knowledge is Insanity" in one variant and incomplete printing of Le Cult de Ghoules, a tome recounting knowledge mined by ghoulkind from forgotten buried cities predating humankind. It does not appear in the older and more authodox edition. The Club may wish to contact the Abyssal Greye, leader of the Scholar Ghouls of Notre Dame (with whom the MHC get on remarkably well, actually), to see if he has any further insights into the matter.

So to the Qayrawun scrying. Assisted by Dawn and Genevieve, the sha’ir peers deep into the glass and tries to seek out the golden collar. Suddenly he shrieks in some foreign tongue (the Club later manage to reconstruct what he said as "Madness is your release!") at something looking back at him through the mirror. The glass shatters, sending shards into his face and chest.

Genevieve moves swiftly, tumbling forward in a graceful leap which surrounds Qayrawun with a Tower of Iron Will. Dawn hurries to tend his wounds, and is in time to see the fragments of glass seem to sink deeper into his flesh. She quickly places a cure light wounds into him and the glass slides to the surface again before once again beginning to burrow. Three cures later the last of the shards is picked free. When Albrecht arrives he discerns them as residually evil. Qayrawun recovers to 3 hit points and feels 5 sanity points worse off. He is certain he saw the collar, and what is currently wearing it.

The latest set of correspondence and a few bits previously referred to a few old villains that the Club has faced. In the interests of not confusing anyone with references to campaign continuity, the ever-helpful DM provides this glossary, in which the aforementioned characters and any faerie-related characters not firmly placed in the deceased villains file are summarised:

Abyssal Greye, the King of the Scholar Ghouls of Notre-Dame: the Abyssal and his colleagues devour the brains of learned men who have died to preserve their knowledge and insights for all time. They also tend an ancient library in the secret tunnels beneath Notre Dame de Paris. The Club have remarkably cordial relations with these undead and last met them at the Christmas Party at Dame Edith Chanterness’ house. There is virtually no difference between them and Selkirk except a pulse, so it’s no wonder Selkirk is perfectly happy to chat with Babbage.

Amnizu Tallivi, Lord of Memory, Guardian of the River Styx: diabolic ambassador from the Nine Hells, first encountered trying to break open a mysterious and very sealed Astral portal, most recently thwarted from establishing embassies of Hell on Earth. Unregenerate PH I players might recognise him as a Styx Devil.

Baba Yaga, the "Old Woman of the Woods" of Slavonic myth and fairy tale, an iron-taloned hag who devours children but teaches certain young girls to fulfil their destinies. In the modern age she is running a finishing school for young ladies in Hungary. These young ladies tend to develop magical prowess and go on to marry some of the brightest and most powerful men of Europe. The D’Aosta twins spent two years under her tyrannical tutelage.

The Black Librarian: former keeper of the Library of Unwritten Books, who betrayed his commission by releasing the Necronomicon into the waking world and now dwells in Pandemonium’s Library of Bone, from which he extends his influence to absorb mortal libraries of interest. He is served by many former librarians, now Crypt Things. He is very keen to add Meridian and Albrecht to his collection.

Osgood Chessard: degenerate debauched arch-sybarite movie mogul, a satyr able to appear human. A former minion of Chia Caraques los Llanos (see below), last heard of outfitting her yacht for his own private use.

Chia Caranques los Llanos, one of the more significant villainesses to plague the Club in times past. Chia was once a Faerie, but was given by them as part of the Tiend, the slave sacrifice of the best of the fey to the Devil in exchange for their independence. After millennia of torment as a larva she eventually clawed her way up the hierarchy of evil to become an Erynes (beautiful female temptress), setting up operations from her luxury yacht and becoming a specialist in gathering and selling information. Amongst her many ex-husbands she counts Jimmy Maxtible, whose former fiancée she ordered murdered. However, Chia finally fell and was last seen dragged back to Hell to be cast for three years into the Pit of Pain to be remade as her deeds deserved. That was just over forty months ago…

Galeili Worldsedge, the Nymph of Lammermuir: sylvan denizen of the overgrown and dangerous area of Lammermuir, which was modified by a powerful druid a decade ago. Galeili remains of quite good terms with some of the Club, especially the high-charisma males.

Gaston leClaire: international jewel, art, and literary thief and con-man, infamous with every police agency in Europe. He recently managed to get all thieves everywhere level-related magic resistance to detection spells. He never uses violence and has never harmed any of his "marks". He is the father of Emmanuelle leClair. His relationship to Genevieve Fauçonburg remains unexplained.

Robyn Goodfellow, the Puck: the trickster of ancient Faerie power, the Jack-in-the Green, a spy, a messenger, a herald, a bloody psychopath with a cruel sense of humour. The Puck has all the powers of a pooka – time-slipping etc., and all the powers of a greater Faerie – including the possibility of making his magics endure beyond midnight etc. He was last seen running from several annoyed Pantheons after his last little joke…

The Kaluk, once Nagasaki gangster Miura Kamako, now the Oriental manifestation of greed and avarice. The Kaluk’s traditional form is that of a bipedal elephant-headed spirit dressed in a cloak of golden-scaled joss paper. The Kaluk can make amazing supernatural bargains for mortals – if the price is right.

The Morrigan, the Queen of Air and Darkness: a manifestation of the ancient triple-goddess, lunar deity of fertility, was, and mystery, a fey entity of immense power and subtlety. The Club have promised to do her a thirteen-part quest in exchange for Angherad’s release from the being her Herald.

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, messenger of the Elder Gods, heart and soul of the Beings for Old Time who manifests in a thousand different incarnations, including that of the fairies’ and witches’ Black Man. He has previously failed to get on fairly severely with the Lych (see below).

Qualius, King over Atlantis, a Ptomaic Revenant Lych: the villain who first gathered the monster Hunters together, who intends to rule the world for its own good, who is set on a cosmic plan of revenge against the higher powers that forced him to destroy Atlantis. A very powerful mage, a quite powerful cleric and academic, and a puissant weaver of plots.

StJohn Ercildoune, knight errant of the Faerie hosts of the Upper Planes. He is not really a villain (in fact he was a member of the short-lived League of Good), merely… very elvish. The bad news is that Qayrawun still owes him and the Seelie Court a favour.

Time Elementals: natives of the realms of time, able to impinge upon human experience for brief periods. As their name implies they have time-manipulating abilities which grow stronger the more of them are present. Recently they have not been very happy with the Monster Hunters.

There. I hope that’s a comfort to you all to know who’s out there.

IW

Questions and Answers:

How many safe deposit boxes are there? Around seven hundred all told. Some clients have more than one, but none of those on the visitors list previously distributed do.

Is Carney’s watch residually magical? No, but any dweomer from several days ago would be long gone by now anyway. The two occasions were September 5^th and 8^th. These coincide with the days of client #3225’s visits. No other staff member reported any chronological failures. Mr Forsite’s watch was precisely correct. He checked it with the BBC pips at 1pm when he called into a local restaurant for lunch.

What villains can do Time Stop? I sent a list out between the last main mailing and this one. Time Stop would not produce the effect on Mr Carney’s watch, as it stops ALL time outside a small area. If Carney was in the unaffected core, his watch would be fast not slow. Otherwise it would be stopped along with all other clocks everywhere and there would be no discrepancy at all.

Was the disintegrated stuff made invisible before or after disintegration? A tough call requiring a series of analyses and Selkirk’s specialist spell repertoire. Selkirk’s view is that it was made invisible afterwards, but he will certainly discuss the matter with Mr Babbage and see what he thinks.

Was the disintegrated stuff ears and wings? Probably not, or not them alone. Judging by the residue, Meridian calculates that there must have been several stones of material disintegrated.

Does Mr Forsite detect of anything? He does not register as evil, magical, extraplanar, charmed or invisible.

Does Miss Lashina’s description match that of Client Who Does Not Wish to Be Identified #1? Yes. The fingerprints match. Both Dame Margaret and several guards remember her well. A small delegation of the guards approach Albrecht to see about borrowing the Donkey film so they can be absolutely certain.

What was down the murdered girl’s throat? Some of you have very lurid imaginations. The closest suggestion to the evidence is probably that she choked on a tentacle. It protruded down her throat almost as far as her lungs.

What does Speak With Dead on the victim tell us? The MHC don’t usually currently have access to anyone who can do this spell, but it just so happens that the London Necropolis Company will oblige in this case, casting Speak with Dead and Detect Lie. However, there is no spiritual essence remaining to question. This is either highly sinister if the girl is a girl, or entirely normal if the girl is a Faerie. The LNC do not think these spells would work on the dust of a disintegrated person.

What is in the various opened deposit boxes? Pretty much what was expected - medals, jewellery, important papers, etc. The most interesting thing from this point of view is that Major Sir Joshua Courage sends his step-son to open his box for him (due to gout), a six-foot two guardsman whom Emmanuelle further interviews over dinner.

What relationship do Tweens and mirrors have? None. Tweens are ethereal entities which attach themselves to humans, bending probability around them to benefit their host and disadvantage everyone else. A Tween could not exist inside the vault.

Who is playing Tinkerbell in the Drury Lane Peter Pan? J.M. Barrie’s play is in year-round production, starring Miss Dorothy O’Shea as Tinkerbell to indifferent reviews. Stage door rumour (via Genevieve) has it that the show might close soon. Tinkerbell has not disappeared. Several of her colleagues wish she would.

Qayrawun and anyone who wishes to accompany him spend a pleasant afternoon at the matinee performance. Locate Object doesn’t, and ESP is useless because of the range. Nothing is magical except the faces of the children when Peter flies across the stage. The gens love it, and vanish off afterwards. They reappear later in new outfits identical to those of Peter and Tink from the performance and bring Qayrawun a big hook.

Are there sordid night clubs which can cater to depraved tastes such as the people who watch Miss Lashina’s debut film? Undoubtedly. There are potential leads from the Club’s old friend Paula Manowski of the Blue Lagoon Cellar Bar and streetwise Inspector Harry Gilvers along with an amazingly comprehensive address list from French attaché Emile Zobar. Checking them all out will take a lot of time.

Have sewer workers elsewhere spotted mirrors? There was a nice one this chap retrieved from somewhere just under the LNC’s building. Good as new, it was, just wedged there. The things you find down here, I could tell you some stories…

What about Speak with Animals in the sewers? I’m not sure any of the current team can do this. If you can, tell me.

Can we make some black paint bombs / paint dispenser water pistols? Hank Radshaw is delighted to at last have something to do in the scenario. He retreats into his workshop with a furrowed brow and emerges about two hours later with a whole range of ink and paint delivery systems just waiting to be tried out (and another huge laundry bill for getting the stains out of these lab coats – lets not even mention the walls and carpet just now, eh?). Twenty minutes later he disappears again having thought of half a dozen improvements to the focus nozzles and targeting systems.

Is Albrecht Arnheim a responsible adult? These are not two words usually associated with the character I must admit. Albrecht, the D’Aosta twins, and Magda are all legally minors.

Can Emmanuelle visit Shadwell Courntey? Yes. He’s pleased to meet her, and he seems very interested in looking down her cleavage. In fact, he’s fascinated by her underwear. He fancies some just like it for the gardener’s boy.

What did Qayrawun see when he was scrying? Aveyard is keen to do a hypnotherapy session to help him recall it all, although he warns that it might possibly drive Qayrawun insane. Aveyard further points out that there is no reason why Magda shouldn’t ESP Qayrawun whilst he is in hypnotic recall (except a certain sanity issue, of course). The players, especially those directly concerned, need to let me know what they want to do.

Can Magda scry the choker with a bowl of water? If she wants to try she’s welcome to have a go. Any precautions before you start?

Do the nurse’s poppies smell? No. They are made of waxed paper. A scent could last in the vault for some time given its poor ventilation.

What animates straw nurses? The straw golem can be created fairly easily using a sixth level Unearthed Arcana spell. Some sort of glamour is necessary to make a straw golem appear human. Some sort of added intelligence is necessary to make it react like a human. These things are presumably detectable if the right method is devised.

The Return of Aurora: Dawn’s quiet, some would say mousy, competence and earnest dedication are replaced by Aurora’s boundless enthusiasm and irrepressible glee at having an adventure. Albrecht stops hiding his wacky baccy for another month. Aurora has Detect Charm, being an Enchantress mage specialising in such spells. Nobody at the bank is charmed, and nor are Mr Stillwell or Mr Forsite. Miss Lashina is though, and so is Mrs Forsite.

The Quill Pen and Magnifying Glass: Old Mr Shenney’s keepsakes from the olden days of the bank cannot be repaired with Mending, because it does not work on magical items. Enough dweomer remains upon the items to suggest that these were once something like a Pen of Truth Writing and Glass of True Seeing, two useful items in countering fraudulent intrusion into the vault. Their purpose is long since forgotten and their absence has left opportunities to infiltrate the bank in ways which players have suggested. It is so long since they were used nobody can even remember when they were broken.

Mirrors, Mirror, On the Wall: No particular recurring villain with a mirror fetish is known. The Club have preciously had trouble with a variant Mirror of Opposite Alignment (sometime around 1906) and have (probably at this point in the timeline) recently recovered their own Mirror of True Seeing. An initial trawl through the library (and by the DM through the various Monster Manuals) fails to find any mirror-related monsters, a sad lack in the arsenal against good.

The prevalence of mirrors is quite disturbing once the Club come to look for them. Small hand mirrors are propped up in several locations in the bank, always where they will reflect the comings and goings or business of the day. Nobody can explain their presence – everyone just assumed someone else brought them. Revell turns the mirror in old Shenney’s office around, but it is not rectified.

Eleven similar hand mirrors or new wall mirrors have somehow found their way into the Edward Endelby Memorial Library. These are eventually traced back to Children’s Section librarian Mrs Elis Finney, who cannot explain her actions. Flaxton notices she is wearing an Armistice poppy and anyone there can confirm that there is a dweomer of necromancy and charm on it. Qayrawun’s suggestion of Aurora detecting charm on the staff at the Library confirms Mrs Finney’s being affected. Mrs Finney got it from a pretty nurse on the street outside. The nurse is long gone. Interestingly, the mirrors have been brought in over the last six weeks – long before the Club got involved in this scenario.

I like Tony’s ideas for tormenting mirrors with photos. Have an xp, Tony.

None of the mirrors found so far anywhere (except as noted below) appear to be evil or magical, glyphed, invisibly glyphed, or anything other than plain, ordinary mirrors, even when repeatedly disbelieved in an iron box touching shamrocks.

Tyne’s (a long-ago club member) grandfather clock is either an advanced piece of technology or magic which can detect time anomalies. Zany, who understands it as well as anyone nowadays (around 10%) is able to use it to determine that the powdered glass and silver from the vault was once a small mirror which crumbled to dust through accelerated ageing. The weight of the powder is suggestive of but not confirmation of this having once been a Woolworth’s hand mirror. The silver value is negligible. Meridian’s view is that the mirror would be useless as a scrying instrument in the vault.

The fragments removed from Qayrawun detect as evil and magical, although this fades with time. A hasty identify determines the use of Animate Object and Possess Object in the fragments. The necromantic signature is quite distinctive, although not one any of the people present recognise. They would, however, recognise necromancies in the same style again. The lab rat experiment is something of a failure as the magic is now fading from the shards.

No standard spells project though mirror except when they are used for scrying, and then the spells are almost exclusively detections.

Charlotte gets 3xp for suggesting a trip to the local Woolworths (near the Bank). They do remember "Smelly Eric" coming in and buying up all kinds of mirrors on many occasions. He is in every few days. They don’t know his real name but they describe him as a man in his mid-thirties with lanky, greasy hair, badly shaven, with prominent googly eyes and acne. As his sobriquet suggests, he has a personal hygiene problem.

The Evidence of the Abyssal Greye: The Scholar-Ghouls of Paris are quick to spot the quotes. "Blessed are the Tainted" and those other catchy sayings are phrases from the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan. "Blessed…" was most recently noted in the writings of the late Gerrard Foley, whose Cthulically-frozen body the Club recently ran over with a steam engine. The Cryptical Books refer to seven alleged human or pre-human interludes of history between seven former ice ages. One of these refers to the Plateau of Leng.

Angherad gets quite excited here, explaining that Nodens is one of the neutral god-like creatures who sometimes thwarts the Elder Gods for his own purposes.

All complicated Cthulhu mythos questions should be referred to Chris Mortimer, whose Cthulhu mythos score is far higher than mine.

Blessings of the Seelie Court: Qayrawun’s female gen returns from the upper outer plains humming a catch folk melody. StJohn Ercildoune can identify the murdered girl as Ember Shimmerweb, once lady-in-waiting to the Faerie Queene but surrendered up to Amnizu Tallevi, ambassador to the Nine Hells at the last Tiend Tithe (along with twelve other faeriekin; the Faeries have to periodically sacrifice from their number or substitutes to remain independent from the lower planar hosts). In mortal terms that was somewhere between seven years ago and next week. Ember was a common Faerie, which meant she had powers of glamour, illusion, and charm, could change shape between "tinkerbell", mortal size and corpse candle, could bless and curse, and could create minor items. All her spells faded at sunrise or sunset. She had no protection against cold iron and could work no magic in contact with it. She was last seen shackled by such iron (including a cruel spiked neck collar) and dragged away weeping by the Dark Host.

So shocked are the Faerie Court by the tale that has been brought to them that they are willing to count dealing with this as the next part of Qayrawun’s debt to them.

On the Subject of Client #3225:

Is client #3225 the Lych? You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment. Even Mr Holdernesse doesn’t know. The description is not too far off Qualius masquerading as the Watchman of the Night or several million other people. Qualius is not known to be fond of Elder Creatures. The Lych does not really have fingerprints anymore, merely parchment-smooth ancient skin. They would recognise the handwriting he used to communicate with them when he was masquerading as the Time Exile. They haven’t yet seen that script in this case. There is no obvious Faust anagram. Q’s involvement here predates Lucius Faust be over a century.

If that’s not the Lych’s box, which is? Client #1’s box is one of the smallest in the vault and has been in continuous use since 1793 when the vault was reconstructed in its current form. Old Tom’s clothing as described is of about this vintage.

What do we know about client #3225? The bank do not know this client’s identity. Apart from information previously given, the Club can determine that he first deposited in 1945 and has not visited since apart from his two recent forays. He was dark-haired, with a conservative and expensive suit. He had no facial hair. Nobody can agree on his eye colour although all are sure they are correct in their recollection of it. Mr Carney escorted him to the vault on both occasions. Client #3225’s fingerprints are on his two recently filled out index cards (but not the original), his own box, and Mr Stillwell’s. They also appear upon the evidence locker at Scotland Yard. Based upon all of this the police procure a warrant to open client #3225’s box. It is empty except for a small Woolworth’s mirror, which DI Chatterley takes as evidence.

There is a major clue around this bit of the case that everyone has missed so far.

Old Tom Walks: Revell bravely waits alone at the guard station by the vault door. Silence shrouds the building and only the shadows comfort him. Time drags slowly, each moment both tense and monotonous.

Then he notices a blurring movement at the top of the stairs. A wash of fear runs over him as a translucent shape shimmers into being atop the stairs. It is already ghosting its way down towards him, lighting its way with a phantom lantern. Where the light plays over the walls they are momentarily transformed into the décor of yesteryear.

Revell fights back what he tells himself is only supernaturally-induced terror and addresses the apparition as it glides over to inspect the new guard. The ghost reacts to its name, turning ancient and burning eyes upon the Monster Hunter. Revell finds himself speaking, introducing himself, mentioning the Lych, asking about the girl and about intruders. Revell suddenly senses a profound anger, a bitterness that such things could happen here. Not one breech, but two! But the fool took the lesser treasure not knowing of the greater. Better he had tried for the greater for then he would have been destroyed by the King even though he laughed at Old Tom’s power. But it was not the king’s treasure that was taken…

Then the ghost whirls suddenly and stalks away through the vault door, leaving Revell weak and trembling (and incidentally on 1 hit point and temporarily down six constitution).

Silence continues to shroud Shenney & Addington’s bank.

And Now the DM’s Questions:

Do you want to go ahead with exposing Mr Forsite’s affair with Miss Lashina, or with any of the other unpleasant stuff you have planned for him?

What, if anything, do you want to do about the charmed people?

What, if anything, do you want to do regarding investigating the porn industry?

Do you want Magda to try her Scrying Pool spell? This is a limited ability and must be performed at night, in a special area, alone.

Do you eat the cake the Ghouls of Paris sent for you?

We begin today with the awarding of experience points. 3 xp to Nikki for positing that the missing Victorian gynaecological texts were disintegrated. Someone presumably needed to make space in the box for a corpse. 3xp to Tony for seeking a connection between Miss Lashina and satyr porn-movie mogul Osgood Chessard. Such a link does exist (he directed the donkey movie), and she is currently charmed by magics consistent with a sylvan creature.

Tony can additionally have 5xp for his spotting the similarity in box numbers between Client #3225’s and Mr Stillwell’s, and for noting Mr Carney’s failing eyesight may have confused the two – the clue I referred to as having not been spotted last time. However, the pathology evidence suggests that Ember was more likely placed in the box on the second visit. The witnesses indicate that it was a male who visited as client #3225 on both occasions. Ember’s fingerprints appear nowhere in the vault.

Mr Courntey is most gratified by Emmanuelle’s revelations on her underwear. His gardener’s box is most grateful for alternative employment – he was getting tired of his current position. Mr Courntey does not react in any special way to talk about bank security, from which Emmanuelle may suspect that he is not involved in the case to his knowledge.

Zany’s opinion of how long the fingerprints would remain on the bank’s index cards is that they would degrade over time but would still be noticeable if not attributable even a century later under dry, undisturbed conditions. Zany further judges that a Sepia Snake Sigil, which effectively freezes the subject in a frozen amber block of time until they are released by the caster or it is magically dispelled, could produce the effects on Mr Carney’s watch.

Jimmy Max spends several happy hours doing experiments with the mirrors at the Endelby Memorial Library as described in his e-mail. Then he joins Qayrawun on another sewer crawl, the djinni-summoner equipped with Speak with Animals. After a dirty, smelly day they manage to find a rat that remembers a pungent human male placing the shiny things in the tunnels. Meanwhile Radshaw disturbs the peace of the library with a series of ear-0shattering experiments on ways to break mirrors sonically until resident vampire Edward Endelby asks him to desist. Ray-gun adjourns to the Greenwich Development Site. Meridian dusts off the file-notes on Sylvester Skatheim, the debonair industrialist in charge of Skatheim Industries who were last encountered using a possessed Zany to make a Pestilence Golem. Over a rather convivial drink Skatheim denies any involvement with the case but suggests an analysis of the golem straw might be useful to determine the kinds of pesticide etc. that were used upon the crops from which it was cut.

The paper poppies on the nurse’s tray had no arcane signature whatsoever, necromantic or otherwise. Apart from an odour of poppies reported by Mr Carney at the time Ember’s corpse was found there have been no other incidents of inexplicable poppies.

Revell re-examines the testimony of Mr Stillwell. The gynaecologist dropped his key in surprise when he discovered the body. He cannot explain the smell of poppies. Qayrawun gets the chance to examine Stillwell’s keys but doesn’t find anything untoward about them. There is no discernible connection between Stillwell and Miss Lashina. Stillwell will resist hypnosis and defend his patient list, but will confirm that he has had no contact with poppy sellers except to buy an Armistice Poppy from a veteran in Trafalgar Square. This poppy does not appear to be magical. There are a number of mirrors in Stillwell’s premises, including some on his instrumentation, but none of the Woolies’ mirrors which are so prevalent in the rest of the case.

Magda consults her herblore. There are spells which use poppies as part of the spell (the only "standard" one is True Seeing), but they do not usually leave a residual odour. It would be not be hard to get poppies in September in the UK. Zany’s research indicates that invisibility is an illusion/phantasm spell and as such does not require the presence of an ethereal plane. The confusion here is probably because Detect Invisibility does make creatures in the border ethereal visible as well.

Dame Edith Chanticleer examines her house for unwanted mirrors but cannot find any. However, she points out that there are existing mirrors in most of her rooms anyway. She does undertake to try and discover what became of the other twelve Faeries who formed part of the Tiend Tithe which surrendered by Ember Shimmerweb to the Nine Hells.

Amnizu Tallevi has only been directly encountered by the Club on one occasion, at the court of the Astral Dragons in the Astral Plane. The mystery of the portal he was trying to breech has not yet been resolved. As a guardian of the River Styx, this devil might well have access to methods of playing with people’s memories.

On the Deposit Boxes: There are 1,064 boxes, of which 702 are currently in use. They were first used in 1793 when the bank was remodelled in its current form, and so box #1 has been in continuous use since then. There are no records of it ever being accessed, but the fee for its use is paid annually by solicitors Malegrim and Blanchford (or, in some records, Malegrave and Blanchford).

I think one or two players have mixed up Deposit Box no. 1 and Client Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous #1, whose deposit box is numbered #233 (note that the box numbers are not consecutive, the first digit or two digits refer to which section the box is in for most boxes). There is no known association between box no. 1 and anonymous client #1 (now identified as Miss Lashina). The police and the bank therefore have no reason to search box #1.

Tony’s hypothesis about smuggling an invisible something into the vault in antiquities-dealer Kerwell’s large package is possible. The defences would only pick it up if it attempted to breach a deposit box. The vault does not detect charm unless it is actually cast inside its demesnes, nor does it dispel it. The original system for discerning that employees of the bank were not suborned in that way has long since been forgotten.

The bank will allow the two heaviest boxes to be examined but not opened outside the vault itself in the presence of Mr Shenney and Fred the guard.

Mr Evan Holdernesse’s expert opinion is that a "fourth rank ghost or higher" might have the super-age ability which could destroy a mirror to powder in the way that the one in the vault was. It is not clear what night the ageing took place so it is impossible to determine which guard was on duty at the vault. Holdernesse does not believe that the disintegrate residue is due to a defence of the vault. Holdernesse suspects that there is some generation of a "pocket ethereal" plane by the vault’s defences to enable Old Tom to manifest within it when required. It would not be possible to gate into the vault even then, as this temporary pocket ethereal plane has no connection to the larger one, and there is no link to the astral (the only two media through which gate works).

It would be possible for Qayrawun to Sepia Snake Sigil the box of client #3225, but this box is now open and has been established to be empty. Detect Invisibility on the bank site does not throw up any additional evidence.

Qayrawun also experiments with fitting a mirror in the vault where the one powdered to dust might be surmised to have been placed. It is not easy to find a site where this would have been placed to be consistent with the placing of the dust pile. Flaxton wonders if the mirror was actually being carried at the time of the attack.

Rattling Mr Forsite: The Monster Hunters pay some more attention to Edward Forsite and his, um, affairs. They now have a full background dossier on him, including his career to date including his previous management of the Chigwell branch of Shenney & Addington’s bank. He has had a remarkably bland life until Miss Lashina.

Aurora examines Mrs Forsite’s charm dweomer and concludes that the "flavour" of the spell is actually warlock or witch-magic. Aurora would not usually be able to be this specific but she is familiar with Magda’s charm person, which is of a similar signature. Aurora could attempt a counter-charm, as described in the information sent out on charm in the previous internet scenario. ESP and Hypnosis may not help here unless the victim recognised that charm had been cast upon them. The Club cannot find any links between either Mrs Forsite or Miss Lashina and a nurse selling poppies.

There are no discernible connections between Mrs Forsite and Miss Lashina except through Mr Forsite. Miss Lashina’s history of banking at Shenney & Addinton’s predates her affair with Mr Forsite. They met as a result of her using the bank.

There was a difference of view amongst the players, with Jo, Nikki, and I think Tony wanting to confront Forsite and Clive arguing for caution. I have therefore assumed that the majority view prevails.

Confronted by the Monster Hunters and old Mr Shenney (who enjoys this) Forsite has no option but to confess everything. It becomes clear that he has been very expertly pumped by the young lady about bank security procedures including the arcane defences, although his ignorance of the latter must have proved very galling to her. In the best traditions of loose pillow-talk, at no time did he realise that he was giving away sensitive information. ESP confirms that he is now telling what he believes to be the truth.

Mr Shenney suspends the broken Edward Forsite and appoints Mr Carney as acting Manager pro tem.

Truth in Delusions: As described last time, the various unpleasant quotes are references from the Pnakotic Manuscript, one of the more notorious of the "Cthulic" writings. Meridian, losing only two sanity for his efforts, attempts to research this a little further. The only two people who have published on this in the last half-century are now both dead (Gerrard Foley who was mentioned last time, and an old friend of the Club Ettiene-Laurent de Marigny). However, the Arkham Miscatonic Librarian Dr Armitage is aware of an unpublished text by a reclusive Dumfriesshire scholar Jedekiah Thoad entitled "Truth in Delusions: the Asexuality of Nightmare in Primitive Pagan Dream-Myths and the Use of Reflections to Typify Changing Archetypes." This paper was withdrawn from publication a decade ago and has never been disseminated.

If the MHC want to travel to Dumfriesshire they need to tell me who’s going.

On the subject of hypnotising Qayrawun, Aveyard is more than willing to take the risk (especially as it’s not his risk), but suggests that Magda has ESP up whilst he does it so as to get a second view of Qayrawun’s recollections. He reiterates that this experiment may be dangerous. Do the Club wish to attempt it?

And Finally, the Ears Appears: The missing ears from Ember Shimmerweb’s corpse appear at last – on the pillow of Inspector Chatterley, one to each side of his head, as he wakes up this morning. The ears appear to be entirely human.

Hypnotising Qayrawun: At the cost of another two sanity points, Qayrawun is assisted by Aveyard in recalling more of what he saw in his scrying. He recalls a gaunt face, obscured as of covered by a caul (a flap of skin covering the whole face). Its owner was mantled in yellow tatters that flickered in a non-existent breeze. It was holding up a mirror and regarding the image but Qayrawun could not see the reflection. It wore the choker, which was rimed with bloody gore. For reasons he cannot fully explain, Qayrawun felt that the creature had an immense sense of satisfaction, as if it had finally completed a long-waited task.

The whole experience of recalling this left Qayrawun shaken and sweating, convinced that he had never been so close to something so far removed from human experience. Aveyard administers a forget spell, erasing the sanity loss that would otherwise have pushed the genie-summoner over the edge. Never let it be said that Aveyard’s not one of the good guys!

Neither Ears Nor There: Inspector Chatterley has been involved in all aspects of the case so far except the esoteric ones. He has interviewed all the people who visited safe deposit boxes during the ten days before the murder was discovered, along with many expert witnesses and all the bank personnel. As the most public of the people trying to solve the case (which has now made it into the press) he was perhaps the logical choice to receive the important missing pieces of evidence.

The Inspector is not charmed, and nor are any of those close to him that the MHC investigate. He has mirrors in his house but they are entirely mundane.

Forensics suggest that these ears were torn off with brute force before or very shortly after the time of death. They have decomposed at a rate consistent with the remainder of the body. There are small holes through the centre of each ear consistent with them having been threaded on a string or chain.

Despite diligent research, the staff at the Endelby library cannot find any spells requiring elven ears as components. Mind you, there are no orcish grimoires in the collection. Old Endelby himself points out that if they were taken for spell use they were unused because spell components usually vanish when the magic is cast.

The Fate of the Tithed Faeries: Dame Edith Chanticleer reports that she is reliably informed that the thirteen Faeries were auctioned in Dis, the Iron City of the Hells. Each was purchased by a different devil for a different fate, although as always the one judged fairest and most powerful was selected for torture, degradation, and finally immersion in the Pit of Souls to return as a Larvae (as Chia once was). Ember Shimmerweb was purchased by a Night Hag known as Cracking-of-Bones, who allowed her to be summoned and bound to the mortal world in exchange for the souls of thirteen corrupted clergymen. Dame Edith suggests that the only way of learning where the summoning took place would be to somehow find out from Amnizu Tallevi, who collected the Tithe in the first place and whose permission musty have been sought to allow this victim to leave the Nine Hells. She does not offer any help as to how to make such an enquiry, nor explain how she could even learn this much.

Unknown owner: box #1

Major Sir Joshua Courage: box #12

Client Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous #1 (Miss Lashina): box #233

Frederick Sanderson: box #720

Client Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous #2 (Shadwell Courntey): box #480

Sir Michael Harrier VC: box #788

Dame Margaret Gouvenier: box #844

Robert Stillwell: box #1104

Lesley Kerwell: box #1127

Mrs Amelia Pagett: box #1133

Client #3225: box #1704

More on the Vault: The vault is airtight. A single normal human could last for about fourteen hours locked inside. The vault would not detect the casting of invisibility inside its portals unless it was on a box. The Club have not yet triggered any of the detections on the vault door; there is a possibility that these might attract the attention of Old Tom. Sneaking inside the vault would not trigger the defences, although it would be hard to get in unseen because of the guard’s presence.

A study of Client #1’s box detects a moon rune, an imprint visible only with detect magic or under circumstances decided by the caster at the time of casting. It is no bigger than a farthing and is in the shape of a letter Q.

Nice Old Mr Carney: Seems to be what he is, an old banking gentleman, rather less of a hard-case in business than he was in his prime perhaps, but still able to mix it up with the big boys if he has to. He does not detect as magical, evil, or charmed.

Clever Old Mr Kettlewell: A very sharp businessman and a brilliant haggler, Kettlewell owns a little antiques place just off Bond Street. Revell makes a few enquiries but the worst he can find is a suspicion about the provenance of some supposedly Thomas Girtin watercolours. Neither Kettlewell nor his shop detect as magical, evil or charmed. There is a good chance that Kettlewell stored a series of Thomas Gainsborough sketches prior to auction during the time of the mystery.

Slimy Young Mr Stillwell: A combined Jimmy Max / Emmanuelle raid on the Stillwell practise does finally manage to get a glimpse at the doctor’s client list. It is remarkably unhelpful. There are no names which leap out and alarm the Club. Still, Jimmy does have a very enjoyable date with the receptionist and turns up late for the briefing meeting the following morning.

A Pretty Nurse Selling Poppies from a Tray: A straw golem would not have been detected entering the vault. However, a standard straw golem would not have been able to speak and interact as the nurse did. Her actions were more akin to those of a woodwife, a stock of wood animated by Faerie glamour to appear as a beautiful woman and seduce a man for the faeries’ sport. In this case however, the nurse confined herself to merely smiling nicely to the gentlemen passing as they bought her Armistice poppies.

There are a few questions which the Monster Hunters have failed to ask around this nurse so far.

Charming Ladies: Aurora has an attempt at breaking the charm on Mrs Forsite and Miss Lashina. This means she has to make some contact with them and speak to them, the eponymous "hair-salon" gambit. The charm spell signature on Mrs Forsite is in no way necromantic, and therefore does not resemble the dweomer on the shards of mirror which went for Qayrawun.

Aurora does manage to displace the charm on Mrs Forsite, and strikes up a conversation about any strange events which the lady might have experienced recently. The only troubling thing apart from police interviewing her husband and his recent suspension from his job was the appearance of a gypsy girl selling pegs at her door a day or two back. Mrs Forsite was intending to send her away but they got chatting and eventually she found herself rather liking the ragamuffin. She describes the girl’s clothing and it sounds remarkably like some old garments that Emmanuelle had no further use for.

Leaving this mystery aside for the moment, Aurora next turns her attention to Miss Lashina. This one is a little more dangerous, so I think the players need to give me a little more detail on their plans and precautions for the operation. It is clear from an inspection of the lady’s accounts that she is receiving monies from a certain film company, and rather more than one might expect from royalties of a nasty little flick made years ago.

A Direction for Osgood Chessard: Satyr movie-producer Chessard has refitted and relaunched Chia’s pleasure yacht The Bartered Bride, although apparently without its dimensions-hopping capabilities. Emmanuelle, who is not a known Monster Hunter and has a certain celebrity, could probably get a few invites to his deck party on Wednesday if she’s able to stand a little bit of pawing from theatrical agent Benton Biggins, "an old dear friend of darling Ossie’s."

My Heart is in the Highlands: Qayrawun sets off to visit reclusive scholar Jedekiah Thoad. Since the reclusive scholar has not replied to any of the Club’s telegrams. Since Aveyard is unsure about how effective his forget on Qayrawun was he suggests sending a keeper. Selkirk is unable to go as he is discussing the case with his friend Babbage, so Emmanuelle gets to travel north as well. That nice young man she keeps referring to, Lt. Rupert Redvers-Ainderbury of the Guards, gets dragged along for the ride (hi, AJ!).

They set off on the sleeper on Monday evening. This should give them time to visit Thoad of Thoad Hall and get back to Southend in time for Chessard’s soiree if the Club are going.

However, by 12 noon on Tuesday the expected coded message saying all is well has not been received at the Endelby Memorial Library…

So, In Summary: the players need to comment on at least the following things:

1. How is the Miss Lashina interrogation to be handled?

2. Do the MHC (or some of them) go to Chessard’s party? If so, who do you suggest?

3. What about the ominous silence from Scotland?

A summary of the scenario so far:

The MHC are investigating the discovery of a body, now presumed to be that of faerie Ember Shimmerweb, in a safe deposit box at the Shenney & Addington Bank. It has been posited that the mysterious anonymous Client #3225 or someone purporting to be him may be involved or responsible, since this person’s deposit box number is only one digit off that of the box where the girl’s body was discovered, the short-sighted clerk may have mistaken the box numbers, and on each of "Client #3225"’s two recent visits this clerk had ten minutes’ missing time by his usually-reliable watch.

The only item on the murdered girl was a large gold necklace, referred in some occults texts as "Ye Slave-Band of Nodens". This item vanished from secure police holding and the Club’s attempt to scry it cost Qayrawun sanity. A trio of investigators travelling to Dumfriesshire to consult a scholar on this subject have failed to report in since.

A curiosity of the bank vault is that it has arcane protections upon it, including a ghost. The Club believe that the Lych set these wards to protect deposit box #1, which may be his property. This ghost may be responsible for the aged to powder mirror found in the vault.

Mirrors are prevalent in this case, both in some obscure references to the "Slave-Band" and appearing mysteriously even in the Monster Hunters sites. One was found in the remains of a straw-golem-type creature disguised as a pretty nurse selling poppies outside the bank. Many of the mirrors were purchased at the local Woolworths by a seedy man the staff nicknamed "Smelly Eric."

Another complication in this case is the Bank Manager’s illicit relationship with his mistress "Lashina", and this woman’s attempts to pump her lover for information on the bank’s mundane and arcane security. Lashina herself is charmed, and the club assume this to be the work of satyr porn-film producer Osgood Chessard, for whom she has previously worked. The Club have worked an invitation to a party on Chessard’s yacht on Wednesday night (tomorrow, gametime). They have yet to confront Lashina.

Now play on…

You should receive the following e-mails, hopefully in the following order:

The next segment of the DM’s narrative, "The Case of the Sinister Slave and Other Contradictions". This includes a reprint of the "for your eyes only" material I sent to the missing players about where their characters were.

Some restricted e-mail correspondence with the players of the missing characters which can now be shared with the rest of the group.

A couple of minor posts on individual points to individual players if I find I’ve missed anything in the main mailing.

Far out across the plains of Leng, where the city of Carcosa sometimes exists beside the black waters of a rippleless sea, strange stars shine down over the masque parade. As the people move so that their torches cover the reflections of the stars above and sing their songs of worship to the King In Yellow over the tortured ruined corpses of their own royal family, the still waters mirror another city, very different from the basalt dwellings of the men of Leng. High above, strange things which are not birds wheel and call between the stars Formhalaut, Aldebaran, the Hyades, and Sirius. And Qayrawun, Emmanuelle, and Lt Redvers-Ainderbury watch as something dark and formless reflects the doom of this age of mankind back onto the degenerate regicides.

As the awesome, sanity-mangling vista wheels around them the trio try to remember the exact events leading up to this strange and baffling transportation to their new locale, a different land under alien stars. They recall the train, the carriage ride to the old house in the glen, and then nothing. Qayrawun gibbers quietly, clinging onto his sanity by a fingernail. The solid guardsman at Emmanuelle’s side tries hard to convince himself that this is a mass hallucination – drugs, hypnotism, something like that. Emmanuelle, who has heard of such places as this but never experienced them, realises that she is far, far away from anything she has ever known, with no apparent way of ever getting back…

[The above paragraphs cheered the existences of the three players of the affected characters last Sunday. A selection of forwarded e-mails following this one refer to their responses to this situation.]

Then the memory fragment is gone, leaving the Monster Hunters breathless and frightened by the intensity of the alien images that they have just experienced; not just the sights and sounds but also the feel of an age ending as the Elder Gods return.

Qayrawun, Emmanuelle, and Rupert slowly remember once again who and where they are. The Dumfriesshire retreat of reclusive scholar Jedekiah Thoad remains silent and deserted – except for the invisible shards of experience into which first one then another of the visitors has blundered into. The first image was of the masque ball at which the Pallid Mask is revealed as no mortal being, as the ruler of Leng understands the truth about his decadent people and his family meet their dooms one by one. The second caused Emmanuelle to briefly relive the final sufferings of the Princesses Camilla and Cassilda as the dynasty fell. Now this third, even more vivid, shard has proved that stray memories are scattered around the corridors of the old hunting lodge.

Interestingly, Rupert Redvers-Ainderbury finds that he can tell where the memory shards lie by a strange tingling on the hairs at the back of his neck as he approaches them. This feeling is invaluable to the team in detecting and avoiding over a dozen other shards of memory either randomly strewn around the house (or perhaps laid as traps for the unwary).

Each memory slice has taken around two hours to endure, and the trio edge around the house as cautiously as if they were on a minefield. They cautiously enter Thoad’s study. There the old scholar lies dead, his corpse perhaps three weeks old (today is Monday 18^th September, one week after the discovery of Ember’s body). Books lie strewn around him, their pages shredded, apparently by Thoad’s own hand. He has especially concentrated on his own manuscripts. A wad of papers protrudes from the dead man’s mouth. As the papers are removed from Thoad’s mouth, the memory fragments scattered like mines around the house disappear.

The MHC to the rescue – except Selkirk: Meanwhile two operating teams of rescuers speed to the Scottish group’s rescue. The overt squad of Meridian, Flaxton, Albrecht, Zany, and Radshaw take a direct approach whilst the covert squad of Revell, Jimmy Max, Angherad, and Genevieve approach by stealth. They arrive in time to participate with the mop-up at the house. Selkirk is not with the team; he is talking with Babbage; or was. Since Revell asked, he explains that he is chatting with Mr Babbage via the mirror in his laboratory. The Club may well have viewed Selkirk’s eccentric behaviour in a different light because of this. You tell me.

Interesting Events in a Nurses Home: Whilst most of the team assemble in the North, Magda and Eve conduct an investigation into the nurse’s uniform which proves interesting. This is a St Bart’s uniform, available only from the Matron of the Nurses’ Home. She describes the theft of such a uniform in what she disgustedly assumes was a medical undergraduate panty raid two weeks or so back. Talking to the nurses too there may be more to it than that. An intruder or intruders (accounts differ) broke in through the laundry and knotted every piece of underwear there into one long chain. The lights were fused and in the confusion many nurses found themselves locked in their rooms. All door locks in the building were found to have been moved one door along the corridor. In the darkness no less than sixteen nurses report having their uniforms stripped off them by "hot grabby hands". Fifteen uniforms were later found blocking the top of the nurses’ home chimney. The sixteenth is unaccounted for. Several nurses were kissed in the dark – with tongues; some were terrified, others rather liked it. By the time Matron had summoned the porters and got the lights on the intruders had fled. Only ten minutes had passed since the panic began. One of the stripped nurses found her childhood teddy bear, lost since she was nine, tucked into her bed afterwards.

The missing uniform may have ended up on the fake nurse outside the bank, who appears to have been present every day since September 8^th, the day of the second visit of client #3225.

More Poppies and More Hypnosis: Aurora and Aveyard attempt to trace the poppy-seller who sold Stillwell his poppy. Actually it is club researcher Adele Walker who tracks down the vendor, an old Great War veteran with the Chelsea Pensioners. He had a stand right by Stillwell’s building where Stillwell claims to have bought the poppy.

Aurora and Aveyard then turn their attention to the staff at the bank once more, compiling detailed descriptions of the alleged client #3225. He was a clean-shaven dark-haired man, perhaps in his mid to late twenties. He wore a conservative blue business suit of good quality under a black Burbury overcoat and carried a furled umbrella. He wore a black Trilby. At his first appearance he seemed amused at some secret joke as he entered but slightly puzzled and irritated when he left. The second time he seemed more serious.

Neither Fred Shaughnessy nor Mr Carney can remember a Sepia Snake Sigil going off. Aurora remembers that time runs differently in Faerie.

A Few Random Answers to Random Questions: Night Hags are traders from the Grey Wastes (the outer plane of neutral evil), collecting and bartering souls. They have powerful sleep abilities and can "ride" a sleeper ethereally until dawn, draining constitution from them until they die and become the hag’s possession. They can polymorph at will and use ray of enfeeblement and magic missile (4 missiles) in combat. They are harmed only by weapons of +3 virtue or better.

It is feasible but unusual that a Night Hag could somehow harness Faerie magic. Hags are highly intelligent and horde knowledge even as they horde souls, so might be capable of the kind of research required to do such a thing.

Ettienne Fauçonburg, Genevieve’s sinister husband, did indeed have a Night Hag retainer up to the Club’s last encounter with him. That Hag cannot now leave the Grey Wastes for another ninety-nine years yet.

The damage to the severed ears is not consistent with ear-ring piercing. It is consistent with being strung on a rope. There are fragments of hemp in the wounds.

Stillwell went to the bank to exchange the volume he had been keeping for his bedtime reading for another of his collection.

The writing on the client cards for clients #1 and #3225 are not similar. The London Necropolis Company is old but does not date back to the days of Atlantis. It was incorporated in its present form in 1552.

A mirror placed inside the vault would not have been able to be used for scrying in the normal way because of the vault’s planar disconnection. The mirror’s ageing is consistent with the attack of a powerful ghost. The ashes were caused by disintegrate, not ageing. It is not possible to determine whether there were human parts disintegrated in the area of effect. The remnant ashes’ invisibility has yet to be explained., as has the sudden appearance of the aged mirror fragments after the initial search of the vault.

Jo posits Ember being smuggled into the vault in Tinkerbell form. This is possible and would not set the alarms off as it would not be a polymorph spell, merely one of her two natural forms (just as a werewolf in either form is not polymorphed).

The Secrets of Thoad Hall: The Monster Hunters get to spend the night in the lonely house with only the corpse of their host for company. Well, actually, the local constable – who is well out of his depth – takes statements, is awed by Jimmy Max’s credentials, and leaves to make a report to his superiors (who will be here in the morning). In the meantime the Monster Hunters are very careful not to disturb the evidence whilst examining it all very very closely (an Unseen Servant leaves no fingerprints).

Zany’s investigation will determine Thoad’s death as caused by choking on paper. He has been dead for more than a week or ten days. Flaxton’s reconstruction suggests that the man probably tried to swallow the papers himself. The readable material of the wad is all in Thoad’s handwriting. There are three significant fragments the first in Latin, the second French, and the third Classical Greek:

And Finally… Tracy from Woolworths rings up for Jimmy Max to say that Smelly Eric’s been in to buy some more mirrors. She has cleverly questioned his cheque and got him to write his name and address on the back for verification purposes: 19b Sherell Street, Peckham. Oh, and she’s still OK from Saturday.

By the way, the Club have just about enough time to fly back down to London in time for Chessard’s party if they really push it. They’ll have to leave a token presence in Scotland to handle the police. Who goes partying, if anybody? And what about Lashina? Wednesday night is Mr Forsite’s "regular" visit, and she’ll suss something’s wrong when he doesn’t turn up tomorrow.

Good luck with drawing all this lot together. Believe it or not, I reckon you’re not too far off solving all this. Of course, then you have to put it right.

Wednesday, 20^th September 1950, 4.55pm: Despite the low cloud over the Midlands, most of the Monster Hunters make it back to the airstrip beside the old Chillwater Street mansion in time to carry out their operations. Of the team who were in Scotland only Meridian and Qayrawun have remained behind, to deal with the local police investigation and to sift through the remaining evidence at Thoad’s house. Already Meridian has conformed that there are residual Faerie magics upon the mushroom rings. The reading are indeed similar to the magics previously encountered when the club met that merry wanderer of the night, the psychopathic Puck.

In the meantime Aurora has identified and undone the charm on Selkirk (although he currently thinks that young miss D’Aosta is wonderful). Freed of the charm which has spellbound him for the last few days, Selkirk is concerned because he sees the improbability of a long-dead mathematician talking to him through a mirror. They first got talking late one night after Selkirk had got particularly baffled by an obscure passage in the Seven Cryptical books of Hsan. And Selkirk has told him so much, including describing every case that he’s been on with the Monster Hunters Club. Babbage was especially interested in the adventures relating to the Western Mystical Tradition.

Now Richard Selkirk is sometimes vague and disorganised, so people sometimes forget that he also has a brilliant mind when he applies it. Selkirk therefore does not allow the Monster Hunters to destroy the mirror until he has one last conversation with Babbage, after he has set up the right diagnostic equipment to work out exactly how the conversation is taking place. Carefully monitored by Aveyard, Aurora, and Magda, Selkirk shuffles into his lab and communes with the old cracked mirror there. Magda watches with detect magic up but there isn’t even a flicker. Then again, neither Cthulhic magic or psionics detect with this spell. A detect evil, on the other hand, that shines beautifully bright.

The conversation doesn’t go well. Clearly Babbage is aware of Selkirk’s freedom from control instantly. The shards shatter (as they did during the Qayrawun scrying), bouncing off the reinforced glass screen Selkirk had previously placed between him and the mirror. The next half hour is spent with Selkirk frantically noting down readings from the various thaumaturgic instruments he had set up. Given a day’s peace and quiet and a slide rule he believes he can do something interesting with this data. Mr Selkirk is miffed.

Leaving Selkirk to be assisted by Magda (a horrifying combination if ever there was one), Aveyard and Aurora then paid another visit to the bank. Further hypnosis reveals no recollection of a third visit by client #3225. The visitor claiming to be client #3225 did not remove his hat.

6.10pm: Flaxton, Revell, Jimmy Max, and Raygun, complete their thorough scouting of the area around the rather seedy Sherell Street. Radshaw has noted a new telephone line attached to 19a, unusual for this part of Peckham. Revell has inadvertently knocked two small, strategically placed mirrors on the street into the gutters in his guise as Passing Drunk.

Jimmy Max chats with the landlady about the possibility of a room in number 19. After fifteen minutes she agrees to let him have the key for Mr Pogwell’s room upstairs so he can see what a furnished flat might look like. She even surprises herself in agreeing to this, because for the last month or so, Mr Pogwell’s been insistent that nobody enters his flat. She believes he may have begun sniffing glue as there was a strong smell of it in the hall outside his flat a few weeks back.

Revell finds his recent experiences of the Atlantean Taverners’ Guild (read Thieves Guild) useful in examining the door to Smelly Eric’s room. His inspection uncovers a faintly sticky outline of some complicated glyph on the door. He carefully sponges this away before entering (later research proves it to have been a Glyph of Slay Living).

Flaxton looks in first, his silver cross prominent in his hand, his eyes narrowed with that penetrating look he gets when he has cast detect evil. The room is covered with Woolworths’ mirrors glued to every wall, floor, and ceiling. Smelly Eric sits naked in the centre of the room amidst a pile of unwashed clothing and food debris. He sees the intruders, screams in a high-pitched falsetto, and hurls himself against a mirrored wall shrieking , "Mistress, save me!"

Blood trickles down the looking glasses as he cuts himself on the sharp edges of the mirrors.

Five mirror-distorted images of Smelly Eric shimmer through the glass (they are evil). Flaxton reacts quickly, casting darkness into the room. Somehow, despite the darkness, shadow mage Revell manages to find Mr Pogwell and render him unconscious. Radshaw notes a very high-pitched keening sound and shouts for the team to get out.

Every mirror in the room explodes into lethal shards. Flaxton and Revell are both slashed but stagger from the chamber. The already motionless Pogwell has a shard protruding from his eye. He is clearly dead. Revell and Flaxton cry out as bits of glass worm their ways into their bodies. Remembering what Dawn did for Qayrawun, Flaxton casts cure light wounds upon Revell and then himself, just as he stumbles ready to fall unconscious. The shards fall out.

The Monster Hunters are left with a shattered room and a dead body. Apart from radioing back to base about what has happened, what do they do?

6.25pm: Miss Lashina answers the door, expecting to find her lover Mr Edward Forsite arrived for his usual Wednesday night "session". Instead she finds two young women selling pegs. As she talks to them, suggesting they go away, the less ragged of the two asks to be invited in. For some reason Lashina agrees. It all gets a bit confusing after that. A well dressed man and woman also arrive, but Aurora (for it is she) suggests that they should be let in as well. The other gypsy (Magda Maledicta - who else?) makes her a funny-tasting cup of tea and they settle down to chatting. Everybody is very interested in what she has to say, although the well dressed, graceful woman (Genevieve) moves around the apartment covering up mirrors and the gentleman speaks very little, merely frowning and staring up at her when he’s not writing in his notebook.

Miss Lashina - born Della Stippling - tells a sad tale of her descent into prostitution, aided in no small part by what appears to have been a satyr’s charm. She appears to be quite fond of Forsite, whom she was set to seduce by Mr Osgood Chessard, her real employer. She thinks Mr Chessard is planning a bank robbery, because he made her remember a whole lot of questions she didn’t really understand to ask her lover. It seemed sometimes as if he didn’t understand them either. These questions were things like, "What are the code keywords for the first arcane circuit?" – although she had to be circumspect and not ask them directly.

On one occasion about three weeks ago, Chessard made a rare appearance at her flat. He had another of his girls with him, a young one who certainly wasn’t legal age. He called her Ember. She spent a lot of her time fiddling with a pair of iron bangles on her wrists. He had Della describe the entire layout of the Shenney & Addington bank as she knew it from her visits and from Forsite. A young man arrived to collect Ember and deliver her somewhere. She never saw her again.

Genevieve feels rather sorry for Della, who is not particularly bright and has had a rather hard life. She arranges for her to stay with night club owner Paula Manowski, an old friend of the Monster Hunters, until all of this is over. Della, still willing to do whatever Aurora suggests, agrees to this arrangement. Miss Lashina is next due to telephone Chessard with a report tomorrow morning.

8.25pm: Fashionably late by twenty-five minutes, Emmanuelle LeClair and her escort Lt Redvers-Ainderbury walk up the gangplank onto the Bartered Bride and join the glittering throng of minor celebrities, rich playboys, and fashion-setting wannabees on the opulent luxury yacht. The night is bright and moonlit, and a million stars reflect in the perfect mirror of the motionless sea.

Chessard, in human guise of course, wears a formal white toga, a circlet of vine leaves in his hair. He is flanked by two perfect girls and two perfect boys, all wearing short white dryad tunics. He welcomes his newest guests, leers down Emmanuelle’s cleavage as he snuffles her hand, and admires the line of Rupert’s trousers.

Only a few hundred feet away the sleek speedboat Santa Maria houses a back-up team of Monster Hunters. Albrecht carefully keeps their boat unobtrusive, instinctively gauging the gentle currents of the ebbing tide and following the pleasure launch as it glides out into the North Sea. Eve, Zany, Angherad, and Selkirk take turns to watch the Bride through field glasses. Eve and Zany, both people with tidy minds, occupy their time by working out a timeline for some of the events of the scenario (Emmanuelle was baffled earlier). By their best calculations, events happened in this order:

Smelly Eric starts buying mirrors

The death of Mr Thoad in Scotland (from a surfeit of manuscript)

Lashina meets Ember

Client #3225 visits the bank for the first time

Pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray appears outside bank

Client #3225 visits the bank for the second time

Ember’s body discovered in Stillwell’s box

Eve reports on her conversation earlier this evening with Penny Phillips, the nurse who found her long-lost teddy bear. It was given away to a jumble sale long ago by parents who thought that Penny "should have outgrown that tatty thing by now." She is delighted to have it back, but can’t imagine how it got there. It almost makes up for having all her clothes ripped off and being given that wonder… that awful kiss.

Zany has the results of independent examination of the nurses carried out by the Monster hunters’ physician, Dr Underwood. None of them seem the worse for wear for their scare. The whole thing seems a bit unreal in the cold sober light of day. The engineers from the Greenwich Development site can find no way that the locks could have been moved in the way they apparently were. Most of the nurses had mirrors in their rooms somewhere.

Angherad has been checking Club records for references to the King in Yellow (for example, #1149, "The Case of the King in Yellow"). This is actually a play now banned in France because of the riots at its first and only performance. An American revival was thwarted by the MHC. Set in the mystical, mythical city of Carcosa, act one depicts the downfall of an ancient dynasty. The ancient king (not the King in Yellow – he is that which is expected to rise and doom the dynasty) and his family, including twin princesses and other decadent revellers, gather for a masque. One reveller is more than he seems, a herald of the King in Yellow, perhaps the King himself. Act one ends with the unmasking, and the revelation of what lies behind everybody’s masks. It is not possible to read or see act two without losing sanity. Perhaps Emmanuelle, Qayrawun, and Redvers-Ainderbury glimpsed some of it during their time in Dumfriesshire?

Meanwhile, aboard the yacht the party has begin to get lively. A number of young women present appear to have lost all of their clothes and to be falling into the swimming pool giggling. Redvers-Ainderbury is glowering at some of the asinine young men here who really need a lesson in manners. Five minutes in the boxing ring, that’s all he asks. He also doesn’t drink the punch. He has a rather funny feeling about that stuff. Emmanuelle contrives to get close to Chessard, choosing a time when the satyr’s hands are full with other amusements. Rumour has it that later on he might give a flute recital, and self-preservation instincts suggest to Emmanuelle that it might be a good idea to retire with a headache before then.

Emmanuelle chats with the movie mogul. He has seen some of her work and wonder what she is doing now. For a moment Emmanuelle almost explains that she is here working with the Monster Hunters, but she bites her tongue at the last moment. She turns the conversation to art and jewellery, describing an antique choker that’s been in the family for years. Chessard’s mask of drunken lechery slips for the merest fragment of a moment.

Back on the Santa Maria, something prompts Albrecht to look out to sea. A strange mist seems to be rippling under the water out on the moonlit horizon, as if a sea-fog were being reflected. Slowly the mist approaches, seeping up from the glassy surface of the lake, gliding over the water like a vaporous wall.

Albrecht alerts the rest of the team. Whilst Angherad radios the other Monster Hunters through rising interference, Selkirk mutters some words and draws geometric shapes in the air. "More Meridian’s field than mine, that one," he frowns. "Definitely a dimensional anomaly. Bit of a necromantic signature, actually. Has anyone seen my notebook?"

Emmanuelle’s conversation with Chessard is interruped just as it was getting good by Lt Redvers-Ainderbury taking her by the arm and politely but firmly dragging her away. He mutes her protests by pointing out to the east. The stars are going out.

The bank of fog roils down towards the Bartered Bride. What do the Monster Hunters do next?

One or Two Notes that I Couldn’t Fit into the Narrative: Grey Ops Special Resources Executive is not currently available for some reason. That’s why Radshaw is still with the MHC. What happened is a scenario for another time.

Regarding the deployments used above, I have tried to take on board everybody’s points and reconcile as much of their declared intents as possible. Aveyard approved the plans in the absence of the President. Although there are three teams operating out there the missions were staggered so that team three (the boat) could abandon their mission and back up either of the other two if required. Team two (Miss Lashina) are now at Chillwater Street where the MHC’s sea-plane is stored, waiting to set off if required to back-up team three. Team one… well, depending on what their actions are , they might be almost anywhere by 8.30pm, doing anything. You tell me.

19b Sherell Street: The mop-up after the bizarre confrontation with Smelly Eric begins. Tony’s plan is: "Revell thanks Flaxton for the timely CLW and makes sure everyone who needs it gets basic first aid. While Jimmy Max takes tea with the landlady well out of sight of 19a Revell goes to Woolies (we know there is a well stocked one locally) and buys some heavy duty overalls, thick rubber gloves and some brushes."

The one error here is that Smelly Eric is in flat 19b. The new phone line is to flat 19a, nice Mr Docherty’s lodgings. He’ll be home from his work at the taxidermist’s shop fairly soon.

Tony continues: "With Raygun standing guard we carefully sweep up all the glass and search for clues."

Well, the mirrors have been glued to the walls and to every available surface. Amongst the things beneath unpleasant accumulations of rancid clothing are an army disability pension book, a set of street plans of London with lots of red marks on them - some circles and some circles with a tick over them, a female’s underslip embroidered with the initials PP (Eric is wearing the matching bra and panties under his clothes), and around two hundred exercise books filled with the phrase "Truth in Delusions". Neatly put away in a magazine rack is a manila folder containing six glossy photographs and a short biography of the Monster Hunters’ old, now-deceased, ally, Ettienne Laurent de Marigny.

Tony makes a point around the phone line which need reconsidering given that the phone is not in this flat. He then continues: "Once the place is thoroughly searched and tidied up we dress Pogwell in a spare set of overalls and carry him out to the car looking for all the world like a workman who has had an injury." The Club accomplish this with no difficulty, thanks to the persistent distraction of Mrs Fettering the landlady by Jimmy Maxtible. They are also able to convince this totally charmed lady to rent them Pogwell’s rooms.

In view of the fact that this team may wish to interview nice Mr Docherty or rifle his room, Mr Pogwell’s body is sent to the London Necropolis Company, but the players need to tell me who if anybody will accompany it.

I have noted the list of things the Club would like to ask this corpse via an LNC Speak with Dead, and I will address this event in my (probably penultimate) next instalment.

Worse Things Happen at Sea: The turbulent clouds boil across the ocean, the sinister mists almost forming screaming faces as they roil towards the Bartered Bride. Before the radio splutters and dies in a haze of static, Magda’s speculation that these may be the mists of Ravenloft spreads alarm amongst the operating team on the Santa Maria (2xp Jo). Angherad has to admit that they do resemble the Club’s written accounts of the mysterious fogs which form the moveable dimensional boundaries of the Demiplane of Dread. She quickly briefs the others on the parasite evil plane which absorbs fragments of concentrated evil from other planes to add to its own territory. But its mistress, the mad gypsy-queen mother of the Grand Thane Samoath is gone, destroyed by the MHC, her kingdom faded and falling. Chia’s attempt at becoming the new ruler was likewise thwarted by the Club, and contributed to her eventual downfall. Yet still the mists shimmer nearer.

On the pleasure yacht, Emmanuelle casually draws Osgood Chessard’s attention to the approaching darkness. The disguised satyr at first frowns in puzzlement, and then his eyes widen in terror. He drops his drink, shaking off the floozies flanking him, and waddles with all the speed he can muster towards the bridge. Redvers-Ainderbury steps out of his way – the soldier just happened to be standing on the bridge at the time, quite near the pilot actually. RA doesn’t like the look of that storm front, it looks dangerous to him.

Chessard pushes the pilot aside and tries to turn the boat about. Then he screams and recoils from the wheel. Wrapped around the ship’s wheel is a silver chain with two elven ears threaded upon it. Later enquiry will show two human ears missing from the police evidence locker, another headache for DS Fratterhill. The engines of the pleasure boat die, and the bright gaily strung lights go out. There are screams from the main deck.

Then the sky to the west, away from the cloud, is illuminated by a distinctive Q-shaped flare, the trademark danger signal of the Monster Hunters Club. Angherad (or rather that nasty staff she carries everywhere with her these days) has recognised the same necromantic signature in those clouds as the one on the mirror shards that assaulted Qayrawun, and Selkirk has discerned a similar dimensional signature as he recorded in his last Babbage conversation. Albrecht isn’t sure what the boat is now sailing on, but it doesn’t feel like any water he’s ever known.

A strange fear seems to have come upon the crew and guests of the Bartered Bride, as if they somehow know that something terrible is descending upon them. Osgood Chessard is huddled on the bridge screaming "I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!" over and over again. A ghostly St Elmo’s fire flickers over the high tops of the yacht’s superstructure. Alerted by Emmanuelle as to the significance of the warning flare, Redvers-Ainderbury leads her down through the panicking partygoers, landing a satisfying punch on the receded chin of one of the revellers and heading for a lifeboat. After a minor scuffle and a lucky incident where the man behind RA would have got him with that wine bottle if he hadn’t inexplicably fallen over clutching his back just beside Emmanuelle, the duo manage to spin one of the boats over the starboard side of the Bride. This starts a frantic scramble of partygoers vying for the other dinghies.

Albrecht pilots the Santa Maria in close and Eve and Zany help their allies aboard. Then the mists well around the two vessels and they vanish from sight into the clammy pall of the vapours.

And So To Other Questions:

Rupert is due back on duty on Friday. The Western Mystical Tradition story arc happened after Chia’s unfortunate being dragged back to Hell and hurled into the Pit of Pain. Ember was not observed to change shape whilst wearing iron bracelets. Dame Chanterness’ view on this is that such things might well trap a Faerie in whatever shape it was currently in – but they would hurt. Ember could certainly get into the vault in her diminutive "tinkerbell" form, but she would have been unable to get through those nasty iron keyholes to enter the deposit boxes, because the locks are only on the outside.

Meanwhile, at Three Thousand Feet: The Monster Hunters seaplane swoops over the sea bearing Aveyard, Magda, Genevieve, and Aurora to the aid of their comrades on the Santa Maria. Pilot Toby Heath and young assistant engineer Rupert Fecklewell of the (MHC owned) Greenwich Development Company’s subsidiary Shackleborough Avionics form the flight crew. Rupert rather bravely (and somewhat awkwardly) asks Magda to the pictures next Saturday whilst the team race to the rescue. Magda suspects Aurora.

From the air the fog bank seems even more suspicious, completely detached from the perfectly calm clear night around it. There is no sign of either vessel. Genevieve notices that the stars reflected around the mist are different to the ones in the skies above.

One engine of the biplane dies.

Down below a sleek sixty-foot pleasure launch arrows from the mists, moving with a speed which belies its apparent purpose. The magics of the mists have been temporarily thwarted by Eve Adamson’s ability to psionically suppress magic (she has a really huge headache now, but Zany has a tonic for that). Angherad found that she could turn and control the mists like an undead, but only momentarily before a far more terrible will wrenched mastery back from her. Selkirk did something complicated with a small pocket mirror which he then threw over the side to cause a really interesting ripple through both the water and the mist, which he described as feedback from two mirror-gates infinitely reflecting one another (just like he and Magda discussed). And that opened a small gap in the fog, and Albrecht gunned the throttle.

The second biplane engine splutters out, and all goes quiet at five thousand feet.

"In trouble?" a pleasant, youthful voice asks from a previously unoccupied seat at the back of the plane. A lively-looking young boy garlanded in leaves has his feet up on the parachute box and is chewing a sprig of mistletoe. "I will keep you safe," he promises. "Link hands with me." And Robin Goodfellow smiles a mischievous grin with a child’s lips and old eyes.

Note that although the Club is effectively split into three groups at the moment I’m happy to hear suggestions about any of the teams’ actions from any of the players, or even those players without a character in the scenario. For our next deadline of 10pm on Saturday 6^th March I’m particularly keen to be told:

What if anything is happening at 19a?

Any actions the group in the Santa Maria wish to attempt.

Whether the group on the plane accept Robin’s kind offer, or what else they choose to do.

How Rupert Fecklewell gets on with his bold proposition.

So we come to the penultimate chapter in the case, and the time has come for the DM to pose the hard questions at the end of the mailing. In the meantime, let’s see what the Monster Hunters are up to in their last minute investigations…

The Rustling of Ancient Pages: Meridian and Qayrawun work late into the night going over the writings of Jedediah Thoad, trying to make sense of his work, his death, and his involvement in the case. Clearly Thoad has for some reason attempted to eat all relevant research notes. Key pages are ripped from ancient and irreplaceable books, and these are now soggy, part-digested messes being cut from the dead scholar’s gut on the autopsy table.

Research is somewhat hampered by Meridian’s fear of libraries and Qayrawun’s misgivings about the Cthulhu mythos, but the two scholars together manage to get some feel for the nature of the work that Thoad was doing and why he was doing it.

The why is easy, a four figure sum paid quarterly into his account at the Royal Bank of Scotland. As for the work, Meridian and Qayrawun try to put together the various things they know about the Slave-Band of Nodens and the Lord of Truth in Delusions.

As the darkness gathers in and rain lashes the windows of the study where Thoad met his end, Meridian and Qayrawun speculate on the last part of the puzzle. How did Nodens’ Slave-Band, designed to enslave the Lord of Truth in Delusions who is behind all mirrors and is the gateway to dreams and nightmares, come to be in a vault in the Shenney & Addington Bank? And if it was used to finally bind this entity, how was that done? The Pnakotic Manuscript passage implies that in order to bind and neutralise the Lord of Truth in Delusions then someone else must take up their office, inherit their power. Who might do that? And what part do the recent upheavals in the Dreamlands play in all of this?

[Footnote for those not up on current continuity: the Dreamlands of Earth have recently been invaded by Mind Flayers, who have opened a portal to allow their allies, the Thought Priests of the (Cthulhic Atlantean) Divinities to pass through into the Dreamlands also. Together they are working to corrupt mankind through the erosion of their dreams. The MHC spent quite a bit of time speculating on how ballistic Qualius would go when he learned his ancient enemies were here, but were appalled to find out recently that he wanted them here, had in fact made it possible, so that he could have one last fight with them and save Atlantis, at the cost of our own world. The Club judged this a bad thing.]

Necromancy and the Necropolis Company: Whatever spell the undertaker-garbed gentlemen cast upon the body of "Smelly Eric" is certainly isn’t anything as trivial as Speak with Dead. But then, the London Necropolis Company is rather expert at death-magics and Evan Holdernesse, the current Chairman, is eager to discover the truth behind the intrusion at the Bank.

Hence dead Cedric Pogwell speaks, his voice bubbling from his bile-drenched throat, his soul writhing because he is being forced to speak in spite of the wardings which were placed upon him from ever doing so. He tells of the day three months since when his mirror first spoke to him. He tells of the beautiful lady who looked at him from the other side. She was very pale with long, black hair, and she wore a gown that shimmered in translucent silver (before you ask, Chia was beautiful, dark-haired, and tanned – think Catherine Zeta-Jones; Symmetry was pale – think Lilith from Cheers). The only name he knows her by is "La Belle Dame sans Merci", and he loved her. Holdernesse cannot find any charm by which this love was compelled. Flaxton and Radshaw, who are present at this gruesome ritual as a matter of professional courtesy, can well believe that a man whose life was as bleak and lonely as Smelly Eric’s could have easily fallen for such a mysterious and fascinating woman.

La Belle Dame had Pogwell buy and place mirrors around London and elsewhere. Lots of mirrors. Around three thousand of them. Sometimes he had to go and reposition mirrors that were already in place. About two months ago she had him contact Mr Docherty, a taxidermist living in Warwick, and give him a mirror. When Mr Docherty had to move to London shortly after that, La belle Dame told Eric to make sure a room was available for him at Shannon Street. Willing by now to do anything to please the Lady, Pogwell killed and hid the tenant of 19a so that the landlady would be willing to re-rent the flat. At Mr Docherty’s suggestion, Eric ate the body to make sure that no-one would find it.

Eric is not responsible for the mirrors at the LNC or at the Endelby Memorial Library.

On the matter of the nurse, Eric remembers Mr Docherty stitching together a crude dummy using animal hides and straw. Eric himself was sent to mug a poppy seller for his tray, although they made him go all the way to Chelmsford to do it so it wouldn’t be traced. Then a handsome youngish man which dark hair came to the flat. Mrs Fettering the landlady wasn’t sure about letting him up but he smiled at her and she went and danced on the lawn.

Mr Docherty asked the strange if he’d been followed. The stranger said oh, yes, but he’d put the little waif out of time for a while. He thought it was quite amusing how she thought she could fool one such as he, and since she insisted on hiding under his coat and hadn’t worked out who he really was yet, well then he might as well work her into his game.

The stranger had a nurse’s clothes with him (although Eric kept the underwear since it wasn’t required). When Mr Docherty put them on the dummy the stranger kissed her and she came to life! Eric was sent away then but Mr Docherty was giving the nurse lots of instructions about a bank.

By this point in his testimony, the corpse of Pogwell is writhing in agony, screeching his answers as if under torture. Flaxton is about to intervene when he notices smoke rising from the orifices of the body. Holdernesse quickly continues his interrogation. Eric is just explaining how once Mr Docherty was angry with him and pressed a pin into a lump of meat and how much it had hurt him when he bursts into flames and is consumed.

"Arcane backlash," Holdernesse shrugs, "Only to be expected with the level of inhibitions placed upon him. The necromancies are definitely from Ravenloft, of course. Very distinctive character. Nasty, soul-twisting, but inefficient because they are needlessly malevolent." With a sniff the Chairman of the London Necropolis Company dismisses the Demi-Plane of Dread and returns to his next item of business.

By the way, Smelly Eric was not wearing a Thought Priest Organic Response Adjuster. Tony has no need to worry at all.

Jolly Boating Weather: The Santa Maria flies over the water with the mists billowing after it. In AJ’s last post he suggested that Redvers-Ainderbury would have taken Osgood Chessard with him when he left, so I am assuming that with the help of a suitably placed right hook that has been accomplished. The fat satyr is, after all, basically a ball of lardy terror at the moment. Now awake but suitably restrained with handcuffs and a gag he still struggles for release. His horror peaked at the moment that the Santa Maria was actually engulfed by the fog-bank, when even the cabin itself was invaded by the icy questing tendrils. Zany was able to prevent him from swallowing his gag. R-A did not retrieve the ears as they appeared very seriously entangled with the Bartered Bride’s wheel and he didn’t have time to struggle with them.

The radio is not working. All Eve can get is a strange rhythmical interference that sounds like "doom-doom-doom" to the sensitised ear.

Now the mists are spreading in from the sides. Selkirk unpacks a strange metallic sphere with polished inner surfaces. He is of the opinion that whoever is scrying through mirrors will probably use the best mirror available in the locality, and he intends to provide one. In the meantime if Angherad would be so kind as to inscribe a binding circle in the galley?

The Secrets of 19a: As its number implies, 19a is the ground floor flat of the house in Sherell Street, directly below Smelly Eric’s rooms. Mrs Fettering lives in the basement. The curtains are closed. While the landlady is making that charming Jimmy Maxtible another cup of tea, that sneaky Revell is able to drill spyholes through the ceiling plaster from the rooms above 19a. From this vantage point he can use his wide-angle lens to see the door into the flat and the stitched-together animal golem that is guarding it. The beast appears to be largely made up of bull and bear parts, with an ape’s head. Straw sticks out from the places where the stitching has given up. It is crouching in a bipedal squatting posture, watching the door intently.

Revell therefore drills another hole through the ceiling of the other room of the two-room flat, the bedroom. There is a remarkable lack of obvious taxidermical nightmares in this room, which appears fairly commonplace. The dressing table has been used as a desk and a number of letters, papers, maps, and books are neatly piled up in front of that lovely big hinged three-part mirror.

An inspection of the door to the flat suggests a certain almost-invisible smearing of diamond dust in some sort of pattern. The windowframes are similarly decorated on the inside of the glass.

Jimmy Max admits that there are a number of possibilities regarding former conquests with the initials PP. He does however remind Revell that the nurse whose teddy was returned had those initials.

There are over a thousand locations marked upon the maps of London, which males it unfeasible to visit even a significant proportion of them before Flaxton and Radshaw return. This team needs to decide what they want to do regarding 19a and Mr Docherty. The taxidermist is due back from his Masonic evening around 10.20pm, about half-an hour after Flaxton and Radhsaw return.

What Goes Up Must Come Down: "Ah, Mr Puck. Delighted to meet you. I have not previously had the opportunity to interview an anachronistic juvenile personification of peasant folk-myth before," Aveyard says pleasantly to the young man in vine leaves who is sending the Monster Hunters plane to its doom.

Keep us safe?" Magda smiles at the Puck. "Where? Safe from Ravenloft or in Ravenloft ....or somewhere else we don't really want to go?" She gently moves to open the parachute box. Pilot Toby Heath believes that parachuting would be risky but possible. The winds would take the chutes into that fog bank that is seething across the ocean down below.

Magda wracks her herblore for the significance of mistletoe. It is, of course, the druids’ "golden bough", the "thunder plant" that protects a house from storms, and the antedate to poison. It a definitely a symbol of fertility, as Dame Edith Chanterness’ Christmas party demonstrated. None of that seems immediately helpful to the witch.

Genevieve remains silent, pondering the situation. She feels that there is some aspect of all this that she is missing…

"How does it feel to be doing the bidding of your masters?" Aveyard asks the Puck. "Do they allow you any leeway at all in what you do, or are you entirely the minion of other, more puissant entities?"

Robin Goodfellow frowns for a moment, then snorts with amusement. "You’re very good!" he grins. "Of course, I’ve been doing this a lot longer."

"Crashing us into the sea with no possible escape isn’t a very good game," Aurora points out. "But we have no interest in a free trip to Ravenloft or Leng or Carcosa."

"Perhaps there should be a game?" proposes Aveyard. "If we answer your questions about the plot of your exploits with the Slave-Band of Nodens you go away, leave this plane of existence for, oh, a year and a day, and you let us get out of this crash dive unharmed in any way and without anything happening to us that we wouldn’t want to. And you likewise rescue our friends in the boat below…"

"And if you can’t?" grins the Puck.

"Then we’ll take you hand and you can save us from this place," Magda promises.

"But we must also be able to confer with our colleague Monster Hunters, to know what they know now," adds Aurora quickly.

"The current team only," the boy with the vine leaves agrees. "And you must answer before the plane hits the waters."

Magda eyes the rapidly approaching sea. Below and to the east a small fast boat is racing the storm. "Alright," she answers nervously, not relishing the idea of an impact with that flat starry water.

"A deal," the Puck cries, clasping her hand. Magda can detect the magic.

"Ask your questions," Aveyard says.

The Vital Questions: Note that these questions were set at the beginning of the scenario before the Club began their investigations, and so the answers to some may be very simple whilst others may be impossible to answer. The answers to these questions are likely to form the basis of the MHC’s answers to the riddles of the Puck. They also form the basis of some of the experience points for the scenario.

1. Who was the girl found dead in the vault at the Shenney & Addision Bank and what was unusual about her?

2. Who killed her, how, and why?

3. Who was client #3225, and who pretended to be client #3225?

4. What became of the original contents of Mr Stillwell’s deposit box and why was the body in there?

5. Who is Della working for, and what was she commissioned to do?

6. Who is Penny Phillips, who stole her clothing and why, and who liked wearing her underwear?

7. What was stolen from the vault, how, and why?

8. Who is Cedric Pogwell, and whom does he work for (two names)?

9. Who is Jedediah Thoad, who killed him, how, and why?

10. Who is now the Lord of Truth in Delusions, and where may they be found?

Answers should reach me by 10pm on Friday, 12^th March, along with instructions about what to do in any of the situations the Club find themselves in, and any additional actions as part of the epilogue. The final chapter of the saga should reveal the sinister truth that can only be found… in delusions.

Sent Friday 12^th March:

Team one is on a motor-launch speeding away from the mists of Ravenloft, but the circling wall of foggy faces is hooking in around it.

Team two prepares a daring infiltration of the sinister taxidermist’s flat at 19a Sherell Street, despite the motionless monster of stitched animal parts which crouches sentry in the next room.

Team three travel by night-mail back towards London in the hopes of assisting their comrades, knowing they may well be too late.

And team four plummet towards their doom in an aircraft whose engines have inexplicably failed, their only source of escape the mischievous, psychopathic Puck, who has waged their freedom on their ability to explain the events of the adventure.

Now read on…

The Hollow Satyr: As it becomes clear that the Santa Maria is not going to outrun the supernatural mists, Redvers-Ainderbury turns upon the captive Osgood Chessard for some answers. Was Chessard working with his former mistress, the literally diabolical Chia Caranques los Llanos? Of course not. Chessard hoped to be free from her shadow forever, to be her inheritor. That was why he cultivated Thoad, why he sought the Slave-Band of Nodens that had so interested her before her… mishap. He had used so many of his resources to get close to the bank, to subvert the other plot he discovered to steal the collar to his own ends. He had even used the Faerie wench he had purchased for his own personal pleasures. And all for nothing, for nothing. Now he is in Ravenloft, facing his terrible mistress, brought to horrific account for his independence.

"Chia’s not got us yet," snarls Albrecht, arcing the boat to avoid yet another questing column of mist.

Chessard’s hysterical laugh prompts Eve to lay a soothing hand upon the porn king. As she does the faerie glamour of his presence here is disrupted by her magic-inhibiting psionic gift. All that remains is a small corn-dolly wrapped in a bloody strip of satyr-hide. The mistress of Ravenloft has already acted to reclaim her former minion, moving in that moment when the Santa Maria passed momentarily through the mists. The fake satyr spoke nothing but the truth when he told of Chia’s lust for vengeance.

Suddenly the boat rocks as every glass object on the vessel shatters simultaneously. Albrecht Arnheim reels from the wheel as he is sliced with fragments of windscreen, but shakes off Zany’s assistance and staggers back to his post, bleeding. He mutters a few words and the worst of the wounds close. The others pick themselves up, brushing off shards of broken glass.

"Got him!" Selkirk exaults, peering out from the wrecked galley.

"Got who?" Zany demands.

"Babbage… or whoever was watching. Or a piece of them at least."

Angherad and Selkirk reappear from the galley, where a hastily-inscribed magic circle daubs the hardwood floor. The spherical mirror-globe that Selkirk prepared is wedged in the centre of the diagram. Albrecht at least can see that the figure is intended to entrap a mind watching through a mirror.

"It’s fair to say they didn’t like it," Angerhad adds dryly.

But still the mists approach…

Consortium Correspondence: Revell drops quietly onto the floor of Mr Docherty’s flat through the hole Radshaw has just cut from Smelly Eric’s apartment above. His even-more-than-usual silence is accounted for by the small coin provided by M. Antony Flaxton, dweomered with a silence 15’ radius spell.

In the next room the monster of stretches and pelts shifts its weight as if sensing something is amiss. It sniffs with its several noses but decides with what little brain it had to obey its primary orders and watch the front door.

Jimmy Max follows Revell into the bedroom and the two of them rapidly search for more of the strange, expensive sigils which they have learned to recognise as glyphs of warding. The shadow mage discovers one on the top drawer of the dresser. After carefully wiping it clean he eases open the cabinet and finds bundles of papers inside.

Many of these papers will be meaningless until much more study has been done on them, but it is clear from those in languages which the Club can understand that there are two themes to the correspondence. The first is a set of instructions for Docherty’s part in setting up the local part of a worldwide network of mirrors, in the expectation that the person who "owns him" will soon become "That Which Dwells on the Other Side of Reflection", the Lady of Truth in Delusions in a Universe which is Vast and Indifferent.

The second theme is that of alliances made. Names familiar to the Monster Hunters appear here. Clearly there has been a certain trade off of assistance and information. The Lord LaVesper, Archcleric of the Divinities who are trying to conquer Earth’s Dreamlands, is named as one who benefits from the removal of the current, Cthulhic, Lord of Truth in Delusions when it is bound and diminished by the usurpation from a new office holder. In exchange for the loan of psionic power sufficient to use the Slave Band on the Lord of Truth in Delusions - the tattered King in Yellow – the new Lady of Truth in Delusions, who has chosen the aspect of La Belle Dame Sans Merci cedes all claim to the Dreamlands in exchange for the ability to draw the demi-plane of dread known as Ravenloft through the Dreamlands to link it so close to earth that it lies behind every mirror. The tense of the last letters on this subject make clear that this has now been accomplished.

There is also correspondence regarding the alliance with "the Gaunt-Hob" (another variant name for Puck), who had agreed to lend his assistance in gaining the slave-band in exchange for refuge in Ravenloft from the angry deities who were relentlessly pursuing him.

With this correspondence discovered and the clock ticking against the sinister taxidermist’s return, the MHC take their leave the way they came and are gone before ever Mr Docherty arrives to find that his bedroom ceiling needs serious redecorating.

Terror at 5,000 feet… 4,000 feet… 3, 000 feet… The Puck allows the team in the plane brief radio contact with the other groups to confer. Genevieve stays out of the conversation, still frowning in deep thought. Of all the mages in the group, she is the one most linked to senses and motions, and something is bothering her.

Then the Puck asks his questions, similar to those posed by the DM last time. The Monster Hunters get most of it right. They identify Chia as the prime mover behind the mirrors, and are horrified when the Puck confirms their suspicions. Apparently the new Mistress of Ravenloft, the Lady of Truth in Delusions, the Reflection in the Glass, emerged from the Pit of Pain where she had been cast not as a devil at all but back again in Faerie form. Somehow she still managed to get out of the Nine Hells, but was unable to return to either Earth of Faerie because of the Tiend Bond which had long ago led to her fall. Hence she had utilised her contingency plan and found herself a new power base from which to plot her remorseless rise to power.

The Club’s answers are a little confused over the events around the infiltration of Shenney & Addision’s bank, a little off in detail although right in basic principle. And they had not realised that the original client #3225 was none other than their own late friend, the Dreamer Ettienne-Laurent de Marigny, guarding the Slave-Band for Nodens.

And this is enough to cause the Puck to crow that they did not answer his questions correctly.

Aveyard agrees. "Not that this matters, of course," he adds, with his small, irritating smile. "Since the agreement was only that we answer your questions. Nothing was stipulated about answering them accurately."

The Puck’s sense of humour is less broad when he is the butt of the joke. "A clever point," he snarls. "But since you only really did half of what you should, I can only save half your number. I will either deliver you safe from this plane before it crashes, or else keep the mists of Ravenloft from the boat below. But not both."

"We might be able to compel him to his original oath," Magda judges, reckoning she has about a 5% chance of not being destroyed if she tries.

"No. If we fight him and lose neither team is saved," Genevieve interjects. "Rescue the people in the boat below, you cunning fiend."

The mists surrounding the Santa Maria part and the boat skims away towards shore free at last. The Puck does not admit that he could only do that because the Lady of Ravenloft was wounded by the actions of the team aboard the launch.

"So, will you die or come with me?" he asks the Monster Hunters on the plane pleasantly. "I can make sure you get to somewhere… fun."

"Neither," Genevieve snaps. She turns to the awe-struck young apprentice engineer Rupert Fecklewell. "I’m not very good at mechanics," she admits. "But just confirm for me, are aeroplane motors made out of iron?"

The earnest young man nods.

"Magda…" Genevieve begins to ask.

"You’re right," the young witch answers, her mind running ahead. "Faerie magic can’t affect iron. So those engines can’t really be stopped. And the radios can’t really have been filled with static."

"Illusion and glamour," sighs Aveyard, hearing the engines still droning now and wondering how he could have ever missed that noise. He whispers something in the pilot’s ear, and suddenly Toby Heath pulls the plane up from its dive, skimming the sea’s very surface as he saves the aircraft from destruction. "You can go now, Puck," the Vice-President tells Robin Goodfellow. "It has been mildly amusing, but we have serious work to do, and we haven’t got time to play with you any more."

"Think carefully," Aurora sweetly warns the ancient Faerie as his face darkens with rage. "You must have used up a lot of power to diver those mists, and you’re inside what is effectively a metal tube in the air. Is this really the time to pick a fight with the Monster Hunters Club?"

Without a word the Puck vanishes in a burst of stenching smoke.

"And he didn’t even say goodbye," pouts Aurora D’Aosta.

All Together Now: The next day the Monster Hunters make their reports to Mr Shenney and to Evan Holdernesse. Old Mr Shenney is satisfied that the incident in his bank will not re-occur. The Club have unearthed enough evidence to place the blame for lack of security on Mr Forsite. Mr Carney will be taking the Manager’s job on for a few months whilst his failing eyesight allows, and then Mr Shenney thinks he might do well on the Board of Directors. Inspector Chatterley has concluded that the corpse was placed in the vault by an accomplished safe-breaker who was using the girl and Pogwell (Smelly Eric) as accomplices in stealing a valuable necklace. This is about as close to the truth as a mundane police investigation is going to get. Mrs Forsite divorces her husband and takes up with a wealthy stockbroker in Bootle. Mr Stillwell does not collect on the insurance for his missing items as there is some question about his original value estimate and Mr Petherbridge the Lloyds claims adjuster, tipped off by the MHC, suggests that he forget his claim and the insurers will forget a fraud charge. Della Stippling has got herself a job as a trainee hairdresser and is starting to put her life back together under the eminently sensible supervision of Monster Hunter’s friend Paula Manowski. The police question Forsite’s mistress but cannot bring any charges against her (especially with the intervention of her legal council, Mr Augustin Hamble). Lieutenant Redvers-Ainderbury retruns to duty, glad to have been of some assistance in what appears to be a very baffling case of drugs and hallucinations. Emmanuelle LeClair also vanishes, apparently keen to do a little research into orphanages on the Continent. Mr Docherty is gone, his flat deserted; doubtless the Club will never hear from him again.

And behind the mirrors, the Lady of Truth in Delusions recovers from the wound Selkirk has dealt her. When she is whole again the world will learn of it.

The Technical Bits: So we come to the end of the scenario, where it is traditional for the DM to award some experience points. The amounts here reflect three things: the experience gained by the characters from the actions described in the plot, the additional experience added because of the insight of their players, and experience for being played well. Hence those characters whose players have been most involved do best out if this. On top of these amounts are more experience points for working out the mystery.

The base Xp’s: Revell, 80; Flaxton, Emmanuelle, Magda, Qayrawun, Zany, 75; Meridian, Redvers-Ainderbury, Jimmy Max 70; Selkirk, Aveyard, Aurora, 65; rest of the team, 60

In addition there are up to five xps for the correct answers to each of these questions. Players can mark themselves on how close their understanding of the plot came to these answers.

1. Who was the girl found dead in the vault at the Shenney & Addision Bank and what was unusual about her?

Ember Shimmerweb was a member of the Seelie (Faerie) Court, given in slavery to the lower planes as part of the Tiend Tithe, sold by Amnizu Tallevi and eventually purchased, summoned to Earth, and bound on behalf of pornographer satyr Osgood Chessard. Ember was therefore a Faerie. When she died on Earth, the special circumstances of her summoning prevented her disappearing and the strong field of "science" in the police forensics labs transformed her into the nearest human equivalent of her form.

2. Who killed her, how, and why?

Ember was set by Chessard to follow the mysterious man who was showing such an interest in the bank. Neither Ember nor Chessard knew this to be the Puck, who of course was well able to spot the lesser Faerie following him. The Puck allowed her to conceal herself under his coat as he entered the bank, and once inside killed her by taking the shape of a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath (a tentacled animal/plant hybrid) and forcing a tentacle down her throat to teach her the error of spying on an Elder Faerie. He had already planned this, because it seemed like an amusing way of bypassing the guardian to have someone take the Slave-Band of Nodens he had come to retrieve out on the corpse when she was discovered. It was a simple matter to place a suggestion on Stillwell to visit his collection thereafter and so prompt the discovery.

3. Who was client #3225, and who pretended to be client #3225?

Client #3225 was Ettienne-Laurent de Marigny, a regular Dreamer (one with the gift of entering the Dreamlands at will by sleeping, and who is quite powerful there). Marigny was given the Slave-Band for safekeeping, brought it back to the waking world, and concealed it in the vault knowing of this bank’s mystical protections. When Marigny was finally dominated by the Thought Priests via an Organic Response Adjuster (in his final appearance, the scenario where he died), they learned of the Slave-Band and contacted someone who could make use of that information for their mutual benefit.

The fake client #3225 who visited twice just before the discovery of the murder was of course the fun-loving, murderous Puck. He used glamour to make Mr Carney see what he wanted him to (the correct writing on the index cards), he used the Faerie ability to twist time to hold Mr Carney in temporal stasis whilst he examined the box, he used his polymorph other ability to transform a sprig of mistletoe into the appropriate second key, and so gained access to the boxes.

4. What became of the original contents of Mr Stillwell’s deposit box and why was the body in there?

The problem that baffled the Puck for a while was that he was actually brought the wrong box on his first visit. Mr Carney’s failing eyesight had led him to read Box #1104 (Stillwell’s) instead of 1704 (Marigny’s). Since the Puck had already slain Ember by the time he discovered this, and because he did not work out the substituted box problem at that point, he cleared out Stillwell’s box and placed Ember’s corpse within. The Puck disintegrated the box contents, Stillwell’s dodgy books collection, and made the ashes invisible. He then left.

After he and his ally worked out what must have happened he returned a second time. On this occasion he had to access both boxes, and this breech of protocol was enough to activate Old Tom, but the Puck was immune to his attacks. The mirror the Puck was carrying for the one who had commissioned him (by offering him sanctuary in Ravenloft) was the only thing on him which the ghost’s ageing attack could affect. The Puck also disguised those mirror remains with Faerie glamour as well, but Meridian saw through it when the spells weakened in the iron vault.

The Puck therefore retrieved the collar on his second visit, fitted it onto Ember, and again departed.

5. Who is Della working for, and what was she commissioned to do?

Della Stippling, Miss Lashina, is a young woman who was long ago charmed and ruined by Osgood Chessard. She became Bank Manager Edward Forsite’s mistress at Chessard’s command when Chessard learned of some occult treasure in the Shenney & Addington bank vault. Chessard hoped to use her to gain information from Forsite about the arcane defences of the site, a plan which failed utterly since Forsite knew nothing of them. This is why Chessard had to use a valuable resource like Ember to gain information instead.

6. Who is Penny Phillips, who stole her clothing and why, and who liked wearing her underwear?

Penny Philips was the nurse whose uniform was stolen to put on the Pretty Nurse Selling Poppies on a Tray which was a wood-wife, an stock of wood and straw animated by Faerie magics. Her clothing and that of a number of other nurses was stolen by the mischievous Puck. Her underwear, which was not really required for the simulacrum, was commandeered by Smelly Eric to wear himself.

7. What was stolen from the vault, how, and why?

The Slave-Band created by Nodens to bind the Cthulic creation called the Lord of Truth in Delusions was stolen. Technically, it was removed by the police as evidence since it was placed on Ember’s corpse, and was taken by the Puck from the police locker later. In this way ghostly Old Tom did not react since the Bank’s Manager and other senior officials were present when it was extracted.

The Slave-Band was then used for its original purpose, although aeons too late to prevent the Elder Gods from gaining access to the Dreamlands. The Lord of Truth in Delusions was bound as another claimed his power and became the Dweller Behind Reflections.

8. Who is Cedric Pogwell, and whom does he work for (two names)?

Cedric Pogwell, nicknamed "Smelly Eric" by the staff at Woolworths, took his orders from taxidermist Lisdern Docherty. Both of them worked for the entity who became the Dweller Behind Reflections.

9. Who is Jedediah Thoad, who killed him, how, and why?

Thoad was a scholar and Dreamer, long ago retained by Chia Caranques los Llanos to research the Dreamlands on her behalf. He continued his work even after Chia had been defeated and her empire fragmented. Osgood Chessard kept a casual eye on the academic, and was thus alerted to Thoad’s discovery of the whereabouts of the Slave-Band (which he had learned of in turn from the Thought Priests in the Dreamlands). Chessard charmed Thoad to reveal what he knew and then sent Ember after the mysterious stranger who had consulted with the scholar.

The Puck, who was that mysterious stranger, did not take well to being betrayed. He therefore returned to Thoad Hall and cast an enchantment on the scholar, placing in his mind a terrible, ravenous hunger which could only be satisfied by eating his most precious manuscripts. The Puck watched laughing as Jedediah Thoad choked on his own worlds.

10. Who is now the Lord of Truth in Delusions, and where may they be found?

The new Lord of Truth in Delusions is La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the new incarnation of Chia Caranques los Llanos. She is no longer a devil, and has once more regained her Faerie form. She has brokered a deal with Lord LaVesper of the Thought Priests which has allowed her to gain control of Ravenloft, bringing it closer to Earth through the mirror-power she now possesses, whilst in turn securing the approaches to the Dreamlands for the Mind Flayers and their allies. Chia can not actually enter the prime material plane in her current form, and so must operate through reflections and minions.

She has very recently reclaimed her boat. Now she has other things to sort out regarding her absence and the reasons for it.

That’s all folks. I make that around 272 e-mails plus my original messages, and in terms of play-time arguably the longest scenario ever. As always, any follow-up can be dealt with through roleplay in subsequent scenarios.

I have to go now. My mirror is whispering to me.