The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Australia pt 1

Extracts from the Personal Diary of James Elliott

 

I am still in two minds as to whether this is a good idea, but I have agreed to join Delta Green. This is the American equivalent of MI13. The commander (or at least the most senior person we have met) is Mr Green. I am pretty sure that this is a codename rather than his actual name.

Wednesday 3rd December 2008

I was flown to a camp in the north-west of the Arabian desert. It is probably in Jordan, perhaps in Saudi, or quite possibly the border is not well enough defined to be sure. They may well be denying the camp’s existence to both governments.

On arrival, I found that four of the team were already present. I had already met Dr Eliza Jamieson, originally in 2005 when we were both in involved in the Gallows Hill debacle. John Zwaiter and Fatima El-Ahmed I knew from the reports of the recent Egyptian episode, but I had not met before. There is also an enormous black American called Marshall Winters who is also going to be in our team, who was entirely new to me. A few days later we were joined by Freddy Wincanton, who I had met at Lionel’s funeral. It seems that the six of us are to be working together.

We started with a period of training. I learnt three new spells:

  • Healing
  • Levitate
  • Sense Life

I also got some training in rifle shooting and moving stealthily. As the best (rifle) shot in the team, I have been nominated the team’s sharp-shooter should one be necessary.

I am not at all surprised that I am also the team’s computer hacker. I have been issued a lap-top with some very dangerous computer hacking software. I have a couple of USB sticks. One is a reasonably simple bootable stick to allow breaking in, if you have physical access (not much more than a bootable stick with some analysis utilities on) and the other is a ‘trash-this-computer’ stick (which I cannot see myself ever using except perhaps if I am in one hell of a hurry).

I have also been issued with Nyarlathotep’s sceptre and flail. Magically useful bits of kit, but I have to say that given that we are trying to thwart the Crawling Chaos, there may be a downside to using his gifts.

The Mission

Delta Green believes that the events in Kenya and Egypt that MI13 have been investigating since Elton Jackson’s murder in July are going to come to a head at the total eclipse of next 22 July. The intelligence is that there will be three sites of great significance: one in Africa, one in the East China Sea and one in Australia.

The African site is almost certainly the Mountain of the Black Wind. This area seems to be swarming with militia, probably cultists. It would require a very sizable military intervention to actually put people on the ground. At this site, we will be limited to remote (satellite) observation.

The path of the total eclipse starts on the west coast of India, crosses India, Bhutan and China, goes offshore at Shanghai and continues out into the Pacific. It seems almost certain that the East China Sea site is in the path of the totality (neither of the other sites can be). We suspect that will be ‘Grey Dragon Island’, the address of Penhew’s company of the same name, but no island of that name has been found.

The third site is in Western Australia but, as that is a million square miles, it isn’t much to go on. Our best clue is that the Australian aboriginal Sand Bat Cult is probably involved, so we need to try to find what sites are sacred to this cult. We also believe that the Dark Mistress (a large private yacht that we believe is involved) has been sighted in Port Hedland and Port Darwin (both on the Australian north coast). We know that at least one artefact shipped to Penhew Place was sent by Randolph Shipping of Port Darwin.
Our first trip is to follow up these clues to pin down where in Western Australia is our mystery site.

Wednesday 9th February 2009

We are all heading to Oz. We are all to be issued with fake identities. I am David Grey. Freddy is Winston Frederickson. Fatima is Sayeed Abbas. Fatima is Abbia Syed. Marshall is Leroy Oswald. Eliza is Laura Clarke. Freddy, John and Fatima are going to Sydney to consult with Prof. Anthony Cowles the premier authority on the Sand Bat cult. Eliza, Marshall and I are going to Port Darwin, to investigate Randolph Shipping.

Preliminary background checking indicates that Randolph Shipping is a company in decline. It is still located at an old and rather run-down wharf unlike its more successful competitors that have relocated to newer facilities. It has been prosecuted for shipping contraband, and we suspect that it is now the go-to place for dodgy cargo.

After inspecting from outside, we decided that its security is poor and we are best just burgling the place. We arrive quite early in the night and Eliza uses her lock opening spell to break-in and open the office door. I manage to shutdown the alarm. I then disable the CCTV and copy the files from a week ago over tonight’s files. Unless they already have reason to be suspicious, they won’t notice. If they do notice, there will be no footage of us. I backed everything up to analyse later and we left.

Searching the data quickly showed up about a dozen consignments to Penhew, two of which were still in the ware house. We decided to return to inspect these.

This time we went into the warehouse and easily located the relevant crates. The larger crate was being sent to Penhew’s company in Shanghai, this contained a statue about a metre high made of dark wood incised with a geometric pattern of white lines. It is in the form of an obese woman with tentacles in place of her arms and nose, and further smaller tentacles around her waist. It is a truly disturbing bit of aboriginal art and clearly mythos inspired. Eliza recognised this as the ‘Bloated Woman’, an avatar of Nyarlathotep.

The smaller crate, which was addressed to Penhew Place, contained a strange contraption of tubes and mirrors with buttons and an obvious eye piece. We reclosed the crates and put them back on the shelves, taking their contents with us. Beyond what looks like a front door that they forgot to lock, and two crates in the warehouse being lighter than they should be, we don’t think we have left any obvious trace of our visits. With any luck, nothing will be noticed until the shipments arrive empty.

(It being the middle of the day on the U.S. east coast,) we immediately phoned in to Mr Green to report progress and ask what we should do with the bounty. We were told to fly with it to Canberra where it would be shipped under diplomatic bag cover to the USA.

Thursday 10th February 2009

In the morning, we phoned up the other half of the party and we agreed to meet in Canberra. It took us most of the day to purchase crates, pack the items up securely and get them on a flight to Canberra. In Canberra, we were met by the others and we got the results of their discussions with the professor.

They think they have learnt of the Australian site, albeit not quite pin-pointed its precise location. Prof. Cowles has four photographs of what is believed to be to an ancient city many thousands of years old. These were taken in 1921 by a man called Macwhirr who discovered the place while prospecting close to the Canning Stock Route. This was cattle drive route over a thousand miles long which was established at great expense but used less than once a year in its half century of existence. We have a copy of his journal, which will help in the search. One problem is that his journal uses names for the wells on the stock route, whereas all of the maps that we have use numbers.

The first place to start is the allegedly abandoned town of Cuncudgerie, which Macwhirr mentions as his base. However it seems that it is not entirely abandoned as the originator of the two shipments we intercepted was ‘Mortimer Mycroft of Cuncudgerie’.

Before the artefacts were handed over to the embassy staff, the rest of the team wanted to have a look at them. Fatima said she could see how the odd device worked. With any further explanation, she looked into the eye piece, pressed a couple of buttons and promptly fell into a coma.

The artefacts were collected for shipment later that evening.

Thursday 10th February 2009

Fatima came round in the morning, except that she no longer seemed to be Fatima. Her body seems to have been taken over by something else. Initially it seemed to be trying to learn how to operate her body. Once it learnt to communicate it seemed to be enormously intelligent and curious. Freddy was very gung-ho about helping it. I very much doubted this was wise. I think we would have been better restricting it to soap-operas, to numb its mind.

That evening we decided to visit the Dreamlands in search of wisdom about Fatima’s condition. I have wanted to visit for a long time and this seemed as reasonably safe jaunt. The more experienced dreamers decided to use the spell Chant of Vloor to enable us to dream together. We sat on cushions, chewed the herb, and chanted…

We were naked in the temple in Dylath-Leen, as I had been told to expect. In the ante-room there were black robes for us. Thus clad we ventured outside and walked to Ulthar. There we were granted an audience with the High Priest, I think because we could claim friendship with Alex Douglas, who is held in high regard there. He was unable to help and suggested that we travelled to Celephais.

This was easier said than done, as we had no money. On the way back to Dylath-Leen, we all attempted to dream ourselves funds, but none managed. However on arrival at the docks, I managed to dream ourselves an invitation onto a ship bound for Celephais as protection, the captain being concerned about the risk of piracy.

In fact, our voyage was untroubled by pirates. We were however attacked by Deep-Ones which climbed over the gunnels in the night. We were rather inadequately armed, with crude clubs and the Deep Ones had spears. In the fight, I was quite badly wounded in the leg and tried (but failed) to wake up, to get out of it. However the others prevailed and the Deep Ones were repelled. Eliza cured me with a spell and I was fit again when we arrived in Celephais. The captain was sufficiently pleased with us as marines, that he rewarded us with two gold pieces each.

On arrival in Celephais, we initially consulted with Ezekiel Corathan, a sage that my companions had used in the past. He was unable to help us. We did finally get an explanation from Olondor (the dead and now permanently dreaming ex-MI13 agent, formerly known as Jimmie Wainwright).

Olondor explained that Fatima has been taken over by the member of the Great Race of Yith. Although they have been physically extinct for eons, they are capable of mental time-travel to swap minds with creatures in their far future, largely to learn about later cultures. Once they have learnt all that they are interested in, they built themselves devices to reverse the swap. The device Fatima used was probably one of these devices and resulted in an unplanned (by the Yithian) mind-swap. Once it gets bored, we will get Fatima back. I feel vindicated; if we had subjected it to back-to-back Neighbours, it would probably have given up within a few hours.

Friday 11th February 2009

Fatima is still mind-swapped with the Yithian. We are hoping this won’t take too long to resolve itself. We are going to have to delay any further investigation of the Western Australian site until it does.

While we waited, I did a bit of research into the potential locations of the East China Sea site. We can be pretty sure that the size will be in the path of the total eclipse, probably reasonably close to the centre line. It is almost certainly on an island, probably the elusive ‘Grey Dragon Island’. So I started looking for islands in the path of the totality.

There are a number of potential sets of islands. East to West the possibilities are:

  1. Yehuang Island, due South of Shanghai (the centre line is approximately on its northern coast), and the uninhabited smaller islands to the south of it.
  2. The islands of the Yangshan Deep-Water Port, the centre line pass through them.
  3. Caiyuan Island (to the north) and Qushan Island (to the south), and there are number of small islands in between but none precisely on the centre line.
  4. The Japanese islands of Yaku-shima and Kaketoma-jima, and a number of smaller islands between. Akuseki-shima is closest to the centre line. There are also a number of smaller uninhabited islands in the area.
  5. There is also Kitaio Jima further east that is close to the centre line, and Iwo Jima which is in the path of the totality but some way from the centre.

Of these the Japanese, islands seem the least likely. Had one of these been chosen, we would have expected the Dark Mistress to have docked in a Japanese port and not Shanghai.

The most likely seems to be around the Yangshan Deep-Water Port. It seems an impossible coincidence that the Donghai Bridge that is 20 miles long only completed in 2005 leads from Shanghai to these islands. I cannot help suspecting the Nyarlathotep had something to do with that being built. I think the best prospects are not the connected islands, which will lack the necessary privacy, and are north of the centre line. There is a line of islands just south of the port, the that centre line runs through, that look like the best prospects.

Recommendations: I recommend comparison of satellite images from (ideally) five to ten years ago, with the last available images for the islands in the following areas. Primarily we are looking for new structures on previously uninhabited islands, or inaccessible parts of inhabited islands.

The islands in the following areas to examine are (in order of priority):

  1. 30.562-30.601N / 121.958-122.170E (south of Yangshan)
  2. 30.550-30.621N / 121.562-121.742E (Yehuang)
  3. 30.577-30.610N / 122.320-122.390E (between Caiyuan & Qushan )
  4. 28.758-30.027N / 128.947-130.030E (between Yaku-shima and Kaketoma-jima)

Whereas some of these are large areas of sea, the area of land mass to be search is far smaller.

I also note that I have been unable to establish the names of most of these islands. Most of them are too small to have any name that is available from any of the normal global mapping services. Nevertheless they will all have names, even if they are only known locally. I recommend that enquiries are made to determine if any of them are called ‘Grey Dragon Island’ or a related name.