The Masks of Nyarlathotep:
A field report by Capt
Sandy Wood
Investigations
Continue…
We visited the Red and Bent
pyramids. They are a bit away from the main tourist areas, and October is not
high season so there are few tourists around. However there are enough for a
bunch of foreigners with cameras to be entirely inconspicuous.
Neither pyramid tells us very much. The Red
Pyramid is open to the public but we found nothing of interest inside. My Detect
Enchantment spell detected nothing.
The Bent Pyramid was being guarded
by four soldiers. They were armed with AK47s, but seemed entirely relaxed. They
did keep an eye on us, but certainly seemed to look on us as just typical tourists.
They confirmed that the pyramid is currently closed for maintenance. The door
on the west face which Dr. Clive used seemed to be firmly locked, but the
guards prevented a close inspection. Other than a cursory external survey, we
didn't achieve anything.
We returned to
He reported that Carlyle was in the thrall
of Anastasia, real name Mweru who he referred to as ‘my
priestess’. Without even a full-name, she is going to be very difficult to
identify.
The final entry seems to indicate that
There we used the secure communications to
send some enquiries back to H.Q.
• What, if any, is the relationship between
the ‘Cult of the Bloody Tongue’, the ‘Brotherhood of the Black
Pharaoh’ & the ‘God of the Black Wind’.
• Any information on Mweru
• Any information on the Bosch Incident.
Spent most of the day killing time: waiting
for new leads. I went shopping for climbing gear as I intend scaling the Red
Pyramid tonight.
Black Cat and Sphinx went off to visit Ali Khafour at the museum. He told them that Sneferu's pyramid building seems to have been mainly to
incarcerate the Black Pharoah. The first attempt was
the Collapsed Pyramid at Meidum which was
magically damaged. He was more successful with the next prison, the Bent
Pyramid. Ali Khafour will attempt to arrange for
us to get access to. This is very good news. Even a failure could be
instructive, as it will tell us something about those blocking the request. He
also introduced us to a young egyptologist
called Fatima El-Ahmed who may be able to help us, especially as it seems she
has some magical abilities.
Night
of
Ice Maiden and I went on an expedition to
climb the Red Pyramid. I selected the middle of the western face, as
being the least conspicuous. We are potentially observed from the road (passing
to the North) and the guards on the Bent Pyramid (a little east of due South).
It turns out Ice Maiden is a competent climber, not that it was in any way a
technically difficult climb. I determined that a piece of capstone has been
removed in the recent past. There seems to be some residue from an enchantment.
It seems very likely that this was the ‘eye” that had been observing the
Bent Pyramid.
Meanwhile El-Ahmed, Zwaiter
and Hussein had been indulging in a little necromancy. They had located the
grave of Warren Besart in a local Christian cemetery,
and they had opened his grave to cast ‘Command Ghost’ on him. They would
have been extremely unlikely to be able to do this in a Muslim cemetery as they
usually have a number of destitute living residents. I was bit surprised that
they had gone through with it, especially as they were not MI13 staffers. Nevertheless
they did, and produced some very valuable intelligence. Besart's
shade did appear and was willing, indeed eager, to tell his story.
Besart had been employed by the Carlyle
expedition. He had been present when certain rituals had been performed inside
the Bent Pyramid. The principal participants had disappeared inside the monument.
[They had entered and a subsequent thorough search had failed to find them.] The
next day they had re-appeared. This seems to strongly suggest that there are
secret chambers, which are accessible if you know how. Of course, ‘how’ could
be magical.
Subsequently at the dark of the moon, he
observed some foul rituals at the collapsed pyramid of Meidum.
This ritual had included summoning of an ‘elephant-sized’ monster with five shaggy
heads, which had eaten a dozen human sacrifices, swallowing them whole. [This,
of course, implies considerably larger than elephant-size; Besart
is not an entirely reliable narrator as his account also suggests that the
experience drove him at least temporarily insane.]
After this experience, Besart
was taken in by Ayesha, a ‘priestess’, and her son
Ahmed. While Ahmed was absent, they were visited by the cultists who beat both Ayesha and Besart with their
hooked clubs. This killed Besart but Ayesha survived.
We hired a suitable large car for six (Ice
Maiden, Sphinx, Zwaiter, Hussein, El-Ahmed &
myself) and set out to try to find Ayesha and her
son. Besart had said they lived in Al Wasta, a town on west bank of the
After a while of asking around, one of the
groups of men sitting around chatting knew who we were talking about. We were
directed to a house on the outskirts of town. I got a definite impression that
the immediate vicinity was shunned by the locals. Knocking on the door produced
no answer. Then a man arrived, and it was soon clear that this was the son
Ahmed. He was rather hostile and wished us to leave.
While we were talking and trying to
persuade him of our good intentions, Ayesha appeared
at the door. She had clearly suffered horrendous injuries, was unable to talk
properly and may well have been insane.
She went into the house, which must have
been an enormous and painful effort, and returned with an amulet that she
offered to John. She seemed insistent that John, and no-one else should have
it. Ahmed expressed the hope that it might do him more good
than it had done his mother. We took this to mean that it is a protection of
some sort. It is, of course, possible that it prevented her from dying
when she and Besart were attacked, in which case it
may be quite powerful.
Ahmed asked us to stay put and walked off
into the desert, returning some time later with a small bundle which he had
evidently disinterred from some hiding place. It was a piece of stone wrapped
in a cloth. I am reasonably certain that it is the missing bit from the
cap-stone of the Red Pyramid. He gave it to us as though it were a burden off
his hands. Detect Enchantment confirmed that both the amulet and the
piece of stone are magical; the spell on the stone seems to be broken.
Ahmed works as a guide showing tourists the
local antiquities. We asked him to show us round the Meidum
pyramid. He denied that he would be able to tell us any more than any other
guide, nevertheless we asked him if he would in the hope that he might reveal
some more clues. He said he would but that it could not be today, and in any
event not at the dark-of-the-moon. [The moon was dark last Monday so is
currently waxing.] We agreed on tomorrow. John gave him some money. He was
a little reluctant to accept it, evidently he still has some pride, but he did
take it.
In spite of agreeing to a guided-tour
tomorrow, we nevertheless visited the Meidum pyramid
on the way back to
While I was doing this it seems that Sphinx
was notably upset by the place. He thinks the place is evil and says he will
never visit it again. I am in two minds what to make of this. MI13 personnel
can be particularly sensitive to supernatural dangers and I know damn well that
such dangers can be very real. On the other hand, they can also be unstable. I
very much regret that I don't yet know these colleagues well enough to know how
much credence I should give this. I am not sure which is a worse prospect, this
mission with flakey colleagues or the level of danger
implied if they aren't. Either way I am getting the distinct impression that
this mission could turn out very nasty indeed.
The potential danger at Meidum
won't prevent me coming back tomorrow with Ahmed; too many tourists come here
for there to be any real danger in the day. But I shall not visit the place at
night without a damned good reason.
We all returned to
Perhaps I am getting paranoid, but it
occurs to me that we don't actually know if the man calling himself Ahmed
really is who he claims to be. I think it is unlikely, but it is just possible
that Ahmed is dead and Ayesha is being guarded by the
cult as lure to identify anyone investigating them. There would have to be ways
of learning about Ayesha other than summoning Besart's shade for this to be worth doing, but we cannot
know what we have missed. If so, the so-called Ahmed is the guardian and the
request for us to return tomorrow was the invitation to an ambush.
I don't think that that will be a problem
if we are on the look-out for it. Indeed if there is an ambush set, we should
be able to spot it. We will then be in a position to track the ambushing party and
see where they go.