None of you are sure exactly what to expect while Evelyn and Cora concentrate on moving the Observatory. You don't think it worked until you have a moment of vertigo and your electric torches flicker for a moment.
A great deal of noise carries to you from outside of the pyramid from Chichén Xoxul, like a great crowd of people amassed on the pyramid steps.
Shouting and cheering carries from the ball court to the west and you can see torchlight in the gloom outside. Screams and songs echo down from the altar room above you.
Amadeus moves to the nearest slit and peers outside.
Amadeus sees a huge crowd of Maya-like people painted or tattooed in black and red gathered on the steps of the pyramid. They bear torches, spears and bows much like the ones they attacked you with; some even have the macabre shields stretched with human faces. Mayan men are carried across the crowd of Xoxul and up the step pyramid, where fresh screams ring out above you.
Amadeus' jaw drops wide open. For a moment he just stares. Then he eases back, creeping slowly back to the others. "We.. traveled... through... TIME. There are Mayans out there, SACRIFICING PEOPLE. We are strangers in a strange land, my friends." He speaks with an artificially calm voice, but his hands are shaking violently.
Freddy looks at Amadeus in shock. "It actually worked??" The PI walks over to a slit on the opposite side from Amadeus and looks out.
Freddy sees the same things that Amadeus saw.
A scream rises from above amid the noise and calamity. The trapdoor in the ceiling swings open on its hinges and everyone in the center of the room can see a Xoxul man in a headdress stooping toward the trapdoor with bloody hands. Seeing you all within, he recoils, startled, before pointing at you and shouting something in Mayan!
You hear voices raised in alarm on the pyramid outside as the Xoxul notice Freddy and Amadeus through the slits! They ready bows and spears while the shaman/priest tries to grab Joseph!
Evelyn is just about to remind everyone the room is an observatory - that they should under no circumstances leave or be seen by the people of Xoxul - when the trapdoor suddenly opens.
"Joseph!" she cries out, reaching out to grab Joseph and pull him out of the way.
Arrows fly through the slit as the shaman tries to grab Joseph out of the Observatory!
Amadeus, Cora and Freddy brace for impact- but the arrows fly through them, with a sting like static discharge! Joseph's assailant tries to grab him as Evelyn grapples him out of the way, but the shaman's fingers pass right through the wealthy playboy's arm!
But while she's taking care of Joseph, Evelyn isn't paying attention to her own safety- an arrow flies straight into her shoulder. It feels all too real as warm blood starts spreading from the puncture wound amid a great deal of pain.
"WHAT the HOLy HELL is going on?!?" Amadeus sees the arrow hit Evelyn and rushes toward her, his hands outstretched.
Whatever the hell it is. They do not shoot at me and get away with it. Cora snarls And they sure as hell aren't going to kill anymore people.
She tries to find some cover from the slits and then fires at the bloody handed person in charge of the madness.
Evelyn cries out and clutches her wound, looking at the blood pouring out of it with disbelief. She pulls out her gun and shakily aims at the shaman before pulling the trigger, either oblivious to or uncaring of his seemingly intangible nature.
Whatever the hell it is. They do not shoot at me and get away with it. Cora snarls And they sure as hell aren't going to kill anymore people.
She tries to find some cover from the slits and then fires at the bloody handed person in charge of the madness.
1d6+1
Freddy pops off a couple shots through the slits for cover fire. "Evelyn, Cora, we're in it deep. Can you get us out of here?"
Amadeus remembers he brought a gun and shakingly draws it. He barely gets it up before it goes off!
Gunfire breaks out as the investigators scramble away from the Xoxul attackers! Cora's bullet hits the shaman squarely, knocking him away from the hatch in a spray of blood!
Evelyn and Amadeus shoot wildly, not managing to strike anyone (including their friends, thankfully). Joseph grabs the lever to the open hatch and frantically holds it closed, the circular hatch swinging shut above his head.
From the outside, the Xoxul remain enraged by your presence and fire more arrows into the slits!
The arrows rattle off the red stone of the pyramid chamber, falling to the floor. One passes straight through Freddy's hand with little more than a static shock!
There's another wave of vertigo as you crouch in cover, Joseph desperately holding the lever closed. All of the ghastly noise from outside of the pyramid ceases- and you're left with silence.
Evelyn sits still in the silence for an uncomfortable length of time before lowering her gun and staggering over to one of the arrow slits.
"Are we back? Or... had we not yet reached our destination?" she asks herself aloud, as she looks outside and tries to get a grasp on where - or when - they are now.
Hope I killed that bastard Cora says as she goes to check on Evelyn. Hey you okay? Let me look at that wound
The view outside of the pyramid brings Evelyn up short- it's almost exactly like Chichén Xoxul. The ball court is to the west, the hundred columns are to the south... but it sits in the midst of alien red foliage under a clear night sky dominated by a vast and cloudy brown planet. A thin cloud of atmosphere seems to cling to the surface of whatever moon you now find yourselves on- it billows off and swirls like clouds of dry ice.
Xoxul priests, warriors and common folk mill about in the dust, playing games in the ball court and worshiping in the plaza of columns. They seem unmoved by the fact that they are not on Earth. The only sound you can hear from their activity is completely muffled.
An enormous foot, long-toed and froglike drapes down the side of the pyramid.
"What the hell? Those aren't OUR STARS!" Amadeus murmurs in a rising panicked voice.
Evelyn backs away from the arrow slit and right into Cora. Her face has gone pale, and not just from the blood loss.
"How are they not floating around? How are we breathing?" the doctor says, shaking her head. She didn't need to be a physicist to know the laws of physics - both of those things should be impossible. "And what is that thing out there?"
Hells if I know. Cora mutters I just helped move this damn thing here with my mind. she concentrates on trying to fix up the good Doctor. Aren't you guys tryin' to find out what happened in the real world... in OUR world back in '24 or something? Maybe we should try and go there... then.. whatever.
Can't work in this light. Cora mutters as she does a poor job of tending to the Doctor.
Another wave of vertigo overtakes you and there is a static charge in the air. The view from the Observatory shifts once again.
The red foliage of the alien moon is replaced with craters and ash. The brown gas giant dominates the sky, but it roils with storms. The Observatory seems to sit at an angle, the ruins of the pyramid strewn around it.
In the plaza, a massive frog-like form with too many tails lies half-buried in the ashes, massive black wings pulled around it. Its mouth gives off steam in the cold outside as it slurps up ashes and bones with its serpent-headed tongues. Smaller creatures identical to the frog-like demigod are attached to its bulk like lampreys. Six (or eight?) jaguar eyes scan the skies- and settle upon you.
An arc of white lighting leaps from the vast frog-thing and strikes the observatory. You all spasm and twitch, babbling each others' thoughts with the wrong voices. A presence fills your mind, rifling through your thoughts and memories without regard for what belongs to who.
You see Joseph Van Horne leaving West Virginia on a bus first to Philadelphia and then on to New York city, a set of tarot cards laid out on the suitcase in his lap. He will be "Amadeus Ra", he decides, as his old life slips away behind him.
Private Elliot is up to his knees with water in the trenches, his brown uniform muddy and soaked as he clutches his rifle, fired up and ready for action. The signal comes from his CO and Freddy crawls with the rest of his unit through the muddy No Man's Land. It will be another night of fire, blood and violence- but it's far better than letting your toes rot off in the trenches.
Insignificant lifeforms though they are, the Xoxul are your favorite. Fattened by blood and worship, you squat atop the pyramid built in your honor while across an infinite span of space and time another part of you slumbers beneath the ice- not dead, but dreaming.
Joseph Westmore is playing billiards at the Gentlemen's Club on a Wednesday night and it's dreadfully boring. He strikes the four ball too hard, a loud crack breaking through the low murmur of the other members' conversation. Walter Winston, enjoying an after dinner cherry in the corner jumps with a start from the noise. "By god, easy on the break son! Some of us have lived through a thing or two, let me tell you..."
Even behind the surgical masks, Evelyn can tell that the other med students are smirking at her. She's wasting everyone's time. Taking a spot a man should have had. But when it's time to work with the cadavers, she's the first to start. There's no going squishy now, let the boys get squeamish. One of the first years faints from the smell as she opens the cadaver. "Someone help him.", Evelyn says, dismissively,"My hands are dirty."
The violin hustle is one of the oldest games in the books, according to Charlie. Cora, her meal at the lunch counter finished, pushes the open violin case toward the skeptical manager. "I just need to run to the bank to cover this check. My father owned this violin and it's the only way I can make a living- it's passed down from his father before him, too, so it's a family heirloom. I'll be back for it, I swear. I just gotta hit the First National down the street." Reluctantly, the manager takes the violin case and Cora gets up just as Charlie (all dolled up respectable-like) asks to inspect the instrument and sell the con. Hey, it only works if the mark is greedy- it's really their own fault.
Despite the flood of memories, his and others, Amadeus seems to gather himself.
Cora's mouth opens to scream but instead gibberish comes out as she is overwhelmed with a succession of images. It takes her a long time to realize that it's her fellow group members whose memories she's experiencing.
That's bad enough but when it gets to delving into her own memories... Cora remembers being a 21 year old and a five year veteran of the criminal underwold. In a fit of hubris, she'd planned and pulled off a bank heist all on her own. It had worked. She had almost gotten away with the money with only a warning shot being fired when a figure had suddenly rushed in the front door. She'd whirled and fired... only to find an elderly gentleman.. who looked disturbingly like her long dead grandfather... clutching his chest as blood bloomed through his shirt. It hadn't even been a copper!
Evelyn shudders and clasps her hands over her mouth, as she realizes exactly what it is she is seeing.
After that day, they would not let Evelyn see Matthew. The doctors insisted that they had already performed the autopsy, that they already knew what it was that killed him. But that just wasn't good enough. She had to see it for herself, before they put her baby in the ground forever. She had the right connections, knew which buttons to press, which strings to pull. She knew that a certain doctor had a morphine addiction, that another had an ongoing affair with at least one of the hospital's nurses.
Just a few days before the funeral, Evelyn gets her wish. A night in the surgery room, with only Matthew and some implements at her disposal. Her face is an icy mask as she lowers her scalpel to make the first incision...
Amadeus looks down at his hand, shaking with worry. The old woman was dying, he told himself, just a matter of time. Holding the pillow over her face as she struggled hadn't even been hard, just ... well, it was hard to watch the legs shake, the hands stop slapping at him, the moans fade to nothing. But physically? Like leaning over. And now he was wealthy. Well, not wealthy, exactly, but well off. Better than he was. He could use the money to buy an apartment, a wardrobe, a new life. And all it took was one dead woman who was going to die in a few years anyway. What had he really done wrong? Except. He knew, deep in his soul, what he had done wrong. He had killed a human being. He had knowingly smothered her to death. But he could live with that. Couldn't he?
When Sully, Freddy's partner on the force, came to him about his daughter's drug addiction, there were tears in his eyes. Sully figured that she had been using heroin for two years, meaning the kid started when she was just 14. Jessica had started running with a kid named Jacob around that time. The kid was a notorious trouble maker but Sully was too wrapped up in the job to realize until it was too late. Freddy promised that he would check this Jacob kid out, maybe lump him up a bit and send a message to stay the hell away from Jessica Sullivan. Only Jacob didn't take his lumps willingly and pulled a blade. Freddy drew a pistol and fired.
That night, Freddy Elliot and George Sullivan watched a sixteen year old boy sink to the bottom of the Savannah River. Jacob may have been a trouble maker. He may have gotten Jessica hooked, but he was just a kid whose family would never know what happened to him.
More arcs of white lightning strike the shattered pyramid. You all spasm and twitch with each strike, keeping your eyes closed to the hideous form just outside of the Observatory.
In your minds, Gol-Goroth is ripping you out of the Observatory slits with his long serpentine tongues, devouring you in bloody gobs. There is a petty mirth in the images it forces into your minds. But it doesn't approach any closer from where it still rests, feasting on the ashes of what was once Golxumal.
Joseph Westmore croaks in a voice not his own.
What do you seek on Golxumal? Why do you defile my adherents' vessel?
"Mighty one! Forgive the intrusion, but we seek the thing with many Mouths, or knowledge of how it has come into our world and how to eject it!" AMadeus screams in pain as the words rip from him.
"Its name!" Evelyn gasps out, her mind being stretched beyond the limits of mortal reason. "We must know its name!"
Lightning dances across the Observatory as Gol-Goroth digs through all of your memories.
A classy woman with sad eyes sits in a posh sitting room in an airplane hangar. She talks about business left undone by her late father- and the toll it left on his health and sanity.
In a humid asylum in Savannah, Douglas Henslowe begs you to dig up his materials and continue the work. Edgar Job, the former cultist and failed mathematician, describes Ramon Echavarria's ritual on that fateful night in 1924.
He promised me power. He said that: Power. It didn't work out the way I thought it would, though...
In a Los Angeles accountant's office, the 1924 cult leader's accountant describes the last meeting with his client.
Out of the blue he said to me: 'Abraham, would you like to know something truly perverse? Those who follow me in the way of Gol-Goroth are deceived. My work goes deeper than any of them know. Prepare yourself, Abraham. Prepare yourself for that end.'
In a Pasadena mansion, a vast grotesque mouth grows from the wall. Human beings writhe and fornicate before it as an amber drool collects in lined trash cans beneath it. A grenade thrown in its mouth erupts it in a shower of viscera. Trammel himself crawls away leaving a trail of blood, clutching his mad Testament.
In an outdoor coffee shop in Valletta, Montgomery Donovan looks weary and resigned- hardly the megalomaniac you expected to find leading the most profitable arm of the cult. You know he sacrificed his wife to the Mouth at the Thing's request, all in pursuit of greater profit. And it broke him.
I have to get my son out of this. He's all I have left since... Portia...
After crawling through dusty catacombs, you come to the shrine of the Knights of Malta, Godfrey Welles the old Hospitaller revealing a fresco of the Knights battling a multi-headed thing come out of the sea at the Strait of Gibraltar.
This evil has many names- but we know it to be Nyarlathotep.
Beneath the warehouse in Valletta, your friend Anatoly Dudko clutches a lit bundle of dynamite as the enormous Mouth in the ceiling devours him. He thrusts the dynamite into Mouth and they are both destroyed.
Joseph croaks in the invasive, inhuman voice of Gol-Goroth.
"This 'Thing With a Thousand Mouths' is known to be 'The Liar From Beyond', hated throughout the cosmos. It steals our names, our legends and hides behind them, growing fat on worship that should be ours- that should be MINE!"
Massive jaguar-like eyes peer in at you from outside of the Observatory as you twitch and shudder from the "conversation".
"It claims to be forgotten Gol-Goroth or Nyarlathotep, the soul and the messenger- but its true name in Y'golonac, the whelp, the coward."
A flood of foreign images flood your mind. The toad-like and multi-tailed, winged monstrosity of Gol-Goroth tears into a headless, corpulent human-like form with mouths on its hands. A chanting Xoxul man cuts the throats of his captives and devours a snake whole, bones and all, throwing a piece of the Pyramid of the Sorcerer before him.
"*I* will slay Y'golonac on Earth for his crimes against me. Summon me to his body thusly."
Detailed and arcane incantations (or are they equations?) flood your minds- you all know that if you wish to summon Gol-Goroth's Aspect, it must be at the hidden body of Y'golonac.
Even more information floods your minds and those of you that know of Physics and the laws of nature know that it is a blasphemy to all you understand of the world. A spell to bridge two points in space-time.
"Things must be at their worst for this bridge to lead to betterment."
The colossal eyes withdraw.
"If any of you return to Chichén Xoxul, it will be to die."
Another wave of vertigo takes you- and Gol-Goroth is gone from your vision.
Outside of the Observatory, blood and fire rain from the sky and Chichén Xoxul burns. The jungle smoulders around the ritual site and strange sounds- is it music?- echo out of nowhere. The earth shakes. The moon is a black shadow. Thunderstorms roll through and tear the sky with green lightning. Ash blankets all.
Everything before this had been like something out of some deranged funny book or bad novel, but the communion with Gol-Goroth is completely beyond Cora's imagination.
Y'golonac, the whelp, Y'golonac, the coward she finds herself gibbering as the insanity recedes and a different kind of craziness asserts itself.
Amadeus just can’t take seeing the literal apocalypse playing out before his eyes, after all he’s been through today.
Cora barely registers what’s happening outside- she’s too busy trying to seperate which memories are really hers.
Amadeus collapses to his knees, his mouth just working without any sound coming out.
"God... that thing.. what was." Freddy puts hs back to the wall of the observatory and slides down onto into a sitting postoning, rubbing at his eyes as if it would erase the images now stained into his brain.
[dice=Stability Test]1d6
Evelyn’s psychological defenses can’t take another blow. She could retreat into a clinical mindset from the Xoxul attack, even hypothesizing some kind of shared hallucination of the god-thing and the time travel. But witnessing a biblical apocalypse outside is too much.
James Martin
