"As always, I am at your disposal," Agent L says blandly with a bow.
"Then we have our course. I'd prefer violence to be an absolute last resort here. I joined to fight Nazis, not disenfranchised Irishmen," Shrike said, his voice cool and hard.
"Can anyone think of any other leads to follow up tomorrow before this meeting? I'd like to get a look at the other two victims if they haven't been disposed of yet."
"I have some tricks for messy situations, I can turn myself or somebody else invisible for around five minutes, a few times a day. Additionally, I am fluent in Gaelic, and Doherty seemed to be using it patriotically." Sam taps her fingers along her arm. "I could create a disguise for myself magically, and pose as Pvt Doherty. L could be a local recruit to the cause. As for your exit strategy, Agent Brosnan..."
Sam reaches under her collar and pulls out a small amulet on a string. She removes it and holds out the Snapleaf. "By breaking this in half, you and you alone will turn invisible for five minutes, and if you are falling, you will descend at a safe speed for about thirty seconds, long enough to safely descend from most buildings in this area quite easily."
Pierce takes the minor magic item "much obliged"
"I as well would like to see the other bodies. It may be we can conduct a more thorough examination."
"I could take a look at them if we have access to them"
As evening approaches, a military car brings you to the city morgue. As luck has it, the two bodies haven't yet been cremated, and the wintry temperature has preserved them enough. Kelly's body has been moved here too. They have not been autopsied, apparently they are only stored here to be certain that they aren't carrying diseases. They can be returned to Mosley after you are done with them.
The coroner is not present, but an aide is, and he shows you to the mortuary with a bored expression on his face.
It wasn't Tomasz's first time seeing a body, and hardly the first time he'd needed to dissect one. Still...
When the Ahnenerbe-SS took the Saxon Palace, the first waves had been the bodies of captured Polish soldiers. Tomasz could remember staring out through the rain-streaked window at the sea of wriggling, glowing eyes as they marched heedlessly into the wards. He'd never felt more helpless.
Back in the present, with scalpel and hammer Tomasz cut quickly if messily into the body. He was belatedly happy that he had though to appropriate a set of scrubs.
No stranger to blood and gore himself, Shrike also lends a hand where he can. This mostly involves him suctioning away various fluids and passing tools to the more qualified members of the party. He also makes a point to study all the points of interest on the body so that they may be reproduced and referenced later if necessary.
As the one who spotted the taint on the first body and the most medically trained individual on the team (as far as he was aware) pierce takes point on the autopsies, cutting delicately and precisely, though very much appreciative of the aid the others provided
With their bloody work done, Shrike is quick to wash up. As he cleans up and before pulls his customary gloves back on, the others are afforded a good look at the Laundry-issue brand on the back of his right hand. Waxy tracers of scar tissue wind away from the mark, clearly secondary injuries acquired during the branding process, but the design itself remains incredibly clear against his flesh. The lines of scar tissue were thin and precise, describing an incredibly complex arcane figure that seems to shift slightly when one is not paying attention.
"Shall we fetch the others? I believe dinner is in order. We want to be hale and hearty for our operation."
The three hearts are completely necrotic: it's certain that these people were killed by necromancy. But your examination doesn't stop there, and it's good that you are thorough, as you uncover something crucial in the nervous system: the spinal cord and the large nerves are damaged as if by heat or electrical discharge. The damage is more severe near to the brain, then spreads out towards the extremities.
Yes, it was necromancy that killed these poor souls, but they weren't the target of a spell. They were sacrificed, their life forced sapped out of their body to get power for some ritual: what kind, you can't say.
[b]"S#!$... this isn't just a necromatic serial killer, this has the hallmarks of a ritual... that means that the culprit is either a well organized group... or we're talking crazy dedicated and probably crazy powerful..... a well organized group is more likely still bad news"
"Mein Gott." Mina breathes. There are so many questions rattling around in her brain, instantly. Thinks she must know, things she needs to know. Knowing that Mr Brosnan didn't know the answers was the only thing that kept her from shouting them all out, from demanding he tell her. Still, there was one question that must have been on everyone's lips, and she couldn't help but ask that one. "Is zere any evidence of Nazi involvement?" She wanted the answer to be no, wanted to believe that even they had limits, that maybe they weren't the heartless monsters she'd heard so much about. If they were involved, it meant her father... She tried to force herself to stop thinking about it, staring instead of Pierce as she waits for his answers.
The question seems to focus pierce, who previously was mostly just floored from his own revelation "evidence? Like what a convienient swastika branded somewhere, or maybe a signed confession? I don't know. They'd certainly have the resources required for an operation this scale, though it disturbs me to think of the implication that they might already be here....." pierce racks his brain to try to think of any evidence.
The bodies don't bear any evidence suggesting the perpetrators, but the Ahnenerbe-SS are renowned for their skill with necromancy, as Tomasz can attest. And your superior officers had reason to suspect Nazi presence, so while you can't be a hundred percent sure... it's quite the clue.
"Regardless, for now our course is set. We should focus on the IRA stakeout. They know the city better than us and if someone new is moving around here, they should know it."
"No. Any working requiring this much power, it would be... bzitka yaknotz. It would be bad."
Dinner is a stew, or something that passes for a stew; the dull-tasting grub is mostly mad of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots, you'd be hard-pressed to find any trace of meat. But perhaps it's for the best, after the grisly examinations you have just performed.
You go to bed in your quarters, trying to think of any lead that you may have missed, but as luck would have it, it's a lead to find you in the dead of the night.
A cry of warning wakes you from your slumber, followed by gunshots and a clangor of metal. As you rush outside, a thick mist is rising, together with a deep chill that has nothing to do with winter. And in the mist, you spot a horrific apparition.
A black-clad man riding a black horse is standing in the main gate, which has swung open with enough strength to bend the frame. To your horror, the rider's head is not on his neck, but being hold in his left arm, a wicked grin in his deathly pale face, and his right arm is holding a whip that looks like a human spine.
As you take in the sight, a terrified soldier draws his sidearm and shoots at the monster, to no avail. The black rider spurs his steed and the whip traces a large arc in the misty air, cutting the soldier's head clean off.
This headless rider is known as a Dullahan. It's an omen of death, akin to banshees. As a corporeal spirit of death, it has the strengths and weaknesses of the undead.
Unlike a banshee, a dullahan is not tied to a family, but to a territory. The legends say that those whose name is spoken by the monster will die soon after, but that's just superstition: dullahans are monsters born of hatred, grudge and unjust killings. A dullahan murders without reason. They can regenerate lesser wounds, their whips bring the chill of the grave, and just being near one is nerve-wracking.
Agent L moves in to try to wrestle the Dullahan
"is everyone else seeing this?"
"It's a Dullahan! Undead!" Sam cries, even if she can't remember much more, but it's enough to know that this will be messy, even if she does have some tricks for dealing with undead.
She moves to be at 30ft range from the Dullahan, focuses her Hypnotic Stare on the rider, and if she still has an action remaining, implants Compel Alacrity in herself.
Sam focuses her power on the monster, overcoming the undead's alien mind with her own mental power. Sadly, her moving forward turned her into the spirit's next target. The black horse rides quickly, its hooves hitting the stone floor, and the whip comes down in coils against the small woman, razor-sharp vertebrae opening bleeding gashes in her flesh. As soon as the weapon has passed over, a layer of frost covers them, biting painfully.
And as the ghastly rider reins his horse to a stop, the horrid head gazing over you with glazed eyes, you feel an unnatural fear welling up from your soul, your instincts screaming to get the hell away.
Mina stirs from her sleep slowly, but rapidly shakes it off as she hears the gunshots. Racing outside with her own pistols drawn, she arrives just in time to hear Sam call out what the creature is. As she looks at it, Mina's heart catches in her chest. She opens her mouth to deny what she's seeing, instead muttering a Hebrew prayer and enchanting her weapons before raising her arms and beginning to fire at the creature on horseback.
As L closes in on the rider, he gets caught in the eerie whip's backslash, cutting into his arm and freezing the wound. Perhaps due to the damage, perhaps due to the unnatural fear, his grip fails to connect with the dullahan.
Pierce ducks behind cover before firing at the monster, aiming for it's head
"That's quite enough of that. This is not some folktale, we will not be ridden down. We are going to have words." Shrike said as he turned to face the horror, with all the crisp coldness of a school teacher staring down upon the perpetrators of some manner of nasty prank.
Placing the tip of his cane smartly against the cobblestones with an audible, if understated, crack. His eyes begin to leak a grey fog, glowing softly with a disturbing similarity to those of other, less eloquent and far more ravenous occult creatures. He makes no outward gesture but behind him the air is suddenly full of barely tangible weapons. It was as though the spectral armory had unobtrusively slipped out from behind a curtain. They moved in complex patterns, forming a halo of ancient war behind the scholar's head.
Like sharks, a pair of chipped and battered battle axes and a broken claymore, the two halves of the blade moving as though secured by an invisible frame, swept out from the deadly halo. Malignant energy seemed to play over them as all three sped not towards the undead terror, but his mount.
"Let's see about keeping his head intact, shall we? Try the hands instead."
Daggers: 6/6
Light: 6/6
One Handed: 6/6
Two Handed: 3/6
Diving for cover behind a car and cursing as he bruises his knee, Tomasz takes a moment to appreciate his teammate's skills while he fumbles through his jacket. Finally, he draws another of his little mechanical devices and winds it with a quick twist of his wrist before peaking around the corner and throwing it underhanded at the headless rider.
And, for a moment, it is bright as day.
Rather than dissipate, the light... settles, forming a cloak of many colors smothering the dullahan and fouling it's attacks. Deep in the bones of those nearby, they can hear an impossibly deep note echoing on and on.
(Hits Touch AC, +1 if it gets the benefit from PBS)
Two Handed 1 (Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, PBS): 25
Damage (Deadly Aim, Psychic Strike, PBS): 22
Two Handed 2 (Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, PBS): 14
Damage (Deadly Aim, Psychic Strike, PBS): 23
Two Handed 3 (Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, PBS): 18
Damage (Deadly Aim, Psychic Strike, PBS): 27
Sam cries out at the hit, but grits her teeth and resists the Dullahan's aura. She steps back, moving fifteen feet in a single step as she expends the trick she just placed on herself. She then moves to Mina and touches her on the arm.
Both Mina's and Pierce's attacks connect with the monster. Its heads flies off its grip, only for a black-armored arm to shoot out and catch a handful of hair.
A split second later, Shrike's blades impact the horse, which explodes into a cloud of acrid ash. The rider lands gracefully on the ground, but its sudden movement causes L's attack to miss again.
The body turns and presents the severed head to James, the ghastly vestige maimed by the rifle shot grinning as its mouth moves to speak in a shrill, cackling voice. "James... Alwin... Shrike!"
Taking a full round action to make a single called shot to the hand holding its head
For a moment, Shrike heard his own mortality in the Dullahan's voice. He could feel hundreds of small probabilities try to line themselves up with the dreadful will that animated the thing. However, it was not the only thing with a dreadful will.
Behind him, his halo of antique and forgotten death swirled and shifted in agitation, like the coils of a snake half buried in the fabric of reality. He snapped the tip of his cane against the cobbles again, this time the crack came like the little brother of one of Mina's or Pierce's shots.
"I said, that's enough," Shrike said, his voice cold as steel and his eyes luminous now with glowing grey fog. He most certainly was not the main character in some tawdry ghost stories. Reality remembered itself and slipped from the Dullahan's dread working. As a terrible sword, a blunt tipped executioner's blade, drifted down from behind Shrike. It scythed out through the night, the edge sweeping up with grim grace to come down upon the Dullahan's wrist.
Seeing the way that the monster moves, how it's head shrieks at James, is enough to make Mina's hands start to shake as she continues to pull her triggers at it, mouthing the same prayers over and over under her breath.
Sam moves forward enough to focus her stare on the Dullahan, and takes a shot at the creature, no fancy tricks, just focus on the task at hand.
Standing behind the bonnet, Tomasz draws his pistol and puts a shot into the Dullahan's chest for good measure.
Agent L moves to a flanking position and attempts to punch the horror.
Pierce closes his eyes briefly to quickly regain his focus before firing at the monster again, this time aiming center mass, trying to hurt it as much as possible.
Critical Called Shot: A critical hit deals 1d4 points of charisma damage. In addition, the target is nauseated for 1d4 rounds and sickened for 1d6 minutes. A successful Fortitude saving throw (DC=damage dealt) negates the nauseated condition. While the target is sickened from the blow, it cannot run or charge.
Debilitating Blow (50+damage to qualify): A debilitating blow to the vitals deals 1d6 points of Charisma drain, nauseates the target for 1d4 rounds, and sickens it for 2d6 minutes. A successful Fortitude save reduces the drain to damage and the nausea to 1 round. If the save fails by 5 or more, the target is disemboweled or otherwise horrifically wounded, and takes 1 point of Charisma bleed damage. The Charisma bleed damage caused by a debilitating blow to the vitals can only be stopped by regeneration (spell or special ability), magical healing that heals as many points of damage (from one or more sources) as the original blow dealt, or a DC 20 Heal check that takes 1d4 rounds to complete.
Shrike's sword severs the Dullahan's hand at the wrist, and the head falls to the ground with a ghastly sound, rolling towards you. The body motions to pick it back, but the barrage of shots incoming against him staggers it, and the armor falls to the ground. In a few seconds, all of the body turns to black ash, and the mist dissolves. Only a rotten, withered, dead head remains at your feet as a trophy, proving that you destroyed this omen of death.
Lieutenant Cavendish arrives moments later, accompanied by a squad of riflemen. "What's going on? I've got three dead soldiers, the gate's torn down, and the boys were screaming about the Riders of the Apocalypse! Mother of God, you're bleeding! Are we under attack?"
As the soldiers rush in, Shrike's blades vanish like a bad dream in the first rays of morning. With remarkable speed, he goes from avatar of war to well dressed Englishman. "Enemy action at night can have a lad seeing all sorts of strange things," he said, turning his full attention on the unfortunate Lt. Cavendish, grey eyes appraising but certainly not glowing softly or leaking grey mist. That would be silly. "Unfortunately, the particulars fall under the Official Secrets Act and you do not have clearance. For now, double your perimeter defenses and have all points check in, I want to make sure this was not a distraction."
Cavendish turns somewhat purple at SHrike's words. Luckily, he doesn't notice the gray, decayed head sitting on the ground. "Well it's bloody ******* easy like that, eh? You don't reckon I should know what killed me men? There ain't no enemies bodies that I can see here around, and that guy's covered in blood! Am I to believe that the bloody Nazis just came in, murdered three folks and ran away without leaving a trace? Or some sort of gas, like in the last war? Or maybe you want to sign the report, where I'll look like a bloody idiot for having my men killed by something beyond my clearance?"
"No, Lieutenant, I expect you to do your job. I expect you to act like a soldier. I expect you to help me and my team keep any more of your men, or locals, or homeless, or even the IRA from dying to whatever is going on here," Shrike began to limp closer to the officer, his voice sharp and cold, "Afterwards, I expect you to pray that you never end up on our front of this war where you have to stonewall good soldiers over the deaths of their men and deal with the hidden face of what we are fighting. Do you understand me?"
While James is so efficiently distracting Cavendish, Tomasz sidles over to the side and picks up the head, carrying it out of view so he can stuff it in a pack for later study.
A vein pulsates in Cavendish's forehead, but restraint prevails as he deflates, returning to his natural colour. His eyes are weary as he glances towards the entrance, where the corpses are being carried away. "Alright then. Thank you for taking care of the situation. I'll- I'd better write down a report for that. I'd appreciate if you could drop a note for the higher-ups to attach to it. For... whatever clearance level this was."
With a sigh, he salutes and moves to help with the dead.
There are ways of dealing with non-cleared personnel, if you wish so. The one you were taught involves writing a small ward causing the message to be protected from uncleared eyes, and to be redirected to Laundry channels. Or you could just leave Cavendish be.
Agent L will calmly leave the scene and head back to his room to finish his sleep. He seems no longer affected by the dullahan's overwhelming appearance and has reverted back to his blank expression.
Pierce will disassemble, clean and then reassemble "Lucille" (his gun) and then top off his ammo supply before going to bed.