coc recap - chrisman/skookums-and-dragons GitHub Wiki

• 2020-10-29
  • Alex, Archibald "Not Archie" Appleton, Diver
  • Zigs, Barnabus White, Medical Doctor
  • Linda, Wilhelm Goettel, Professor of the Occult
  • Hood, Tony "The Diamond" Flynn, Private Eye

Barnie gets back in town just in time to receive a letter from his uncle Norbert, who is in the process of purchasing an allegedly haunted house out on the edge of town. His plan is to open the house as a "Haunted Bed & Breakfast," and he asks Barnie to learn as much as he can about the sordid past of the house in three days time, after which the sale will be complete if all goes according to plan, and he will send his solicitor to meet them at the house so they can conclude their report with a tour of the premises.

Barnie calls up some friends he think will be helpful: Professor Wilhelm Goettel, expert on the occult; Tony "The Diamond" Flynn, local street-wise private investigator; and Archibald, a diver.

Hall of Records

They decide to head straight to the hall of records, despite Norbert telling them explicitly in the letter that he had reached out to a contact at the newspaper to help them get started on their investigation. They meet a friend of Tony's and she helps them find records of the sale of the property--19 Sheafe Street, in the Copps Hill neighborhood--from the original owner to mister Walter Corbitt, who died almost fifty years ago. It is still being managed by his estate (which is in the process of selling it to Uncle Norbert), namely by Michael Thomas, the executor of Corbitt's will, and pastor of the Chapel of Contemplation & Church of Our Lord Granter of Secrets.

They further find a record that the Church was shut down in 1912 following an incident, the details of which are on file at the police station.

Police Station

They head over to the police station, which makes Tony nervous because he often walks a fine but meandering line when it comes to the law. Sure enough, when they walk inside, the intake desk is being staffed by Kim Debrun, an old acquaintance of Tony's, sometimes an ally, sometimes at odds. When they ask for information about the incident involving the church, she unscrupulously asks for a bribe. Barnie gives her a very generous payment, which she takes and pockets, and then goes on to ignore them, say she's never met them, and eventually she leaves and walks into the back.

"I think we just got robbed," says Archibald.

Tony tries to sneak a peek at the police ledger, but knocks over a cup of pens as he pulls it across the count toward himself. The ledger is disappointingly just a log of front desk activity, and not helpful at all. As a second officer comes out, he scrambles to set the desk back in order as best he can.

The second officer blushes when he thinks Tony is flirting with him, and is very helpful. He gives them a public copy of the report, which includes a heavily redacted statement by one Officer Barrister, who Archibald happens to know is currently working down by the docks as a Boat Cop.

They learn from the reports that the church had been tied to the disappearance of neighborhood children. There was a raid which resulted in a shootout and a fire in which several church members and officers were killed.

Over 50 church members were arrested, and all but 8 of them were released. It is suggested that the illegal interference of an influential local politician kept the more sordid parts of the story out of the news, gagged the coroner's report, and kept most of the church members out of jail.

The church pastor, and executor of Corbitt's will, Michael Thomas was sentenced to life in prison, but escaped in 1917 and hasn't been seen since.

Boat Cop Bar

The investigators leave the station, and head over to Keith's Urban Bait & Tackle, a downtown fishing supply shop, next to the library. It's late, after hours. Archibald gives a secret knock and they are let in and escorted into the back room. A secret speakeasy where the Boat Cops hang out!

Everybody is given red and green navigation lights to wear on their lapels when they enter, so that the inebriated Boat Cops can more easily navigate around each other in the dim light without collision.

They find Boat Cop Barrister. "A total buzzkill," according to Archibald. "Buzzkill Barrister, that's what we call him."

"Well, he did apparently survive a harrowing shootout and structure fire," counters Barnie.

Barrister is slumped, three sheets to the wind, clinging to the edge of a small high top table designed to look like a buoy. He's standoffish at first, but Barnie buys a round of drinks, which a bar boy rows over in a dinghy, and Barrister loosens up.

Nonetheless, he remains staunchly button lipped when asked about the chapel incident. Until, that is, Barnie appeals to his sense of duty as a Boat Cop.

Barrister recites the Boat Cop oath to himself in a voice that begins quiet and trembling, but grows in confidence and resolve by the end:

To tread the water
and never falter
To deliver hope
From your boat
To never stop
And be a Boat Cop!

With a shaky hand, Barrister reaches into this thick peacoat, which he wears despite the sticky summer heat, and produces the original, unedited copy of his statement.

"God save you. Because now no man can. I wash my hands of you!" Barrister unmoors himself and sails away into the night.

The unredacted report included stark details of the horrors conducted by the church, who indeed had kidnapped a bunch of children and had involved them in dark ritualistic attempts to summon their Dark Lord from beyond the planes.

It was Barrister himself who set fire to the church to try to cleanse the earth of the taint of the foul cultists and their unnatural rites.

Costume Shop

The investigators decide to follow up on a certain clue from the police report: all of the cultists were wearing the same black silken robes.

So they head over to Zip Zap Zoop's Zany Costume Closet!

The shop has seen better days. It's been void of customers for some time and the shelves are mostly bare.

Zip himself is at the counter, and is delighted to see somebody--anybody!--come into the shop.

He tells them that three generations of the Thomas family had basically kept his shop in business with constant, bulk orders of the same black silk robes. But since the church was closed in '12, business has been a little slow.

He still has some of the robes in the back, and agrees to sell each of them some cultist robes.

He is delighted to have made a sale.

Library

They head over to the library next, and apply their knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System to find books on witches, satanists, and the occult. And they find some old newspaper clippings about the house.

Corbitt had been sued by his neighbors, who wanted to force him out of the neighborhood because of his terrible demeanor. They lost and he remained.

There was a second lawsuit to prevent the execution of his will, which stipulated he be buried on the property. The outcome of this suit is unknown.

Wilhelm starts to put the pieces of the story together, and makes connections to the occult, and gains insight into the true nature of things, and goes the tiniest bit insane.

Newspaper

Lastly, they head over to the Boston Globe, where an editor name Arty is annoyed to see them and annoyed that Uncle Norbert thought that he owed him any kind of favor.

They do some quick fast talking, and eventually convince Arty to show them down to "the morgue," the dead clippings room, where Tony's friend Rose works.

They ask about the Corbitt house, and Rose helps them find an unpublished story, its publication was interfered with, once again, by a local politician. This time they get a name: Councilman Ellsworth.

The story is a sort of biography of the house, starting with the original builder and owner, who got sick and sold it to Corbitt. And then after Corbitt's death, the series of families who rented the house from Corbitt's estate all suffered horrible fates, usually ending in madness or violent death.

Dooley's Newsstand

The investigators head over to Sheafe Street.

First they chat up Mr. Dooley, who owns and operates a small newsstand / soda fountain on the block. They all drink 7-Up, and Archibald reads romance story magazines which he buys "for his mom" while Dooley, an incorrigible gossip, tells them all he knows about the block and the Corbitt house and the church.

He tells them how the most recent tenants of Corbitt House, the mother and father both went crazy, ranting and raving about dark shadows with burning eyes, and both now reside uptown at the Roxbury Sanitarium. The children, poor things, were taken away to live with the aunt and uncle.

He then points them to the burnt out ruins of the chapel at the end of the block.

Chapel of Contemplation

As they start poking around the church, they find a freshly painted glyph of a watchful eye bound by three forked Y's, and all of them start to feel an oppressive, tingling headache for however long they remain at the site.

With little warning, the weak floor boards collapse, and Archibald watches as Wilhelm, Barnie, and Tony all leap acrobatically aside, avoiding falling into the basement below.

In the basement, they find the abandoned ritual site. Circles and sigils drawn on the floor, burned candles and charred black silk robes.

They find what seems to be Thomas's journal, detailing the dark rites and Corbitt's attempts to summon the "the Dark Man".

They also find a massive worm-eaten tome bound in strange leather. The contents are written in Latin, and when Barnie tries to read the text, madness presses down on him.

Corbitt House

They leave the church and head to the house, where Uncle Norbert's solicitor, Barnabus Tolliver, is waiting for them with a key to the house.

Barnabus and Barnie have a bit of a laugh over having the same name, and then they head in to the darkened house.

They immediately split the party: Wilhelm and Tony head upstairs, while Barnie and Archibald search the ground floor.

Upstairs, Wilhelm and Tony are confronted with their own personal fears: Tony finds an egg sac that explodes in front of him with tiny, baby spiders. He runs away back downstairs.

In the bathroom, the brackish water in the bathtub suddenly becomes clear and shows Wilhelm a reflection of his face covered small lesions, the "devil's kiss" he fears so.

Back downstairs, Tony has caught up with Barnie and Archibald, and they have explored most of the floor. In one of the storage rooms they find a boarded up cabinet that, when they force it open, reveals Corbitt's personal diaries, detailing various occult experiments, including the summoning of some unearthly spirit and other magic, and clearly describes a spell entitled "Call Forth the Opener of Ways". (This will be important momentarily.)

They call Wilhelm down, who reluctantly rejoins them, and they head down to the basement.

There are heaps of rubble in the basement. They search through it and find a wicked dagger, the handle wrapped in leather tape, the guard curling down around the hand, the blade black obsidian with flecks of red stone.

Wilhelm and Barnie then decide to put this whole story to the test, and perform the "Call Forth the Opener of Ways" blood ritual from Corbitt's diaries and try to summon a demon.

Yep! That's what they decide is the best course of action is at this particular junction.

They draw a binding circle on the ground, and a summoning circle. Tony backs slowly away as Wilhelm, Barnie, and Archibald use the sacrificial dagger to let their blood. The circles glow, and writing tentacles burst forth and thrash about, blindly groping but unable to escape their binding.

As though in direct response, a resonant glowing light can be seen between the slats of the wood paneled wall on the far side of the room. They pull down the loose boards to reveal the final resting place of Walter Corbitt, small, shriveled, and drawn, his body laid out on a narrow altar, his unseeing eyes gazing up at the ceiling, his lips drawn back revealing a long toothed grimace.

Tony is taking photographs of all this, as with a creak and a grown, the Corbitt's corpse rises from the altar and advances on them. At the same time, the dagger writhes in Wilhelm's grasp and tries to stab him!

Wilhelm shucks the dagger, which floats in midair and poises to strike again. Wilhelm then turns and runs toward the tentacles, crosses the binding circle and leaps into their embrace. They draw him into their center, and he is never seen again.

Was he driven to his end by madness after finally cracking under the burden of true knowledge of the unknown? Was this merely the ultimate academic research opportunity? We will never know.

Then, while he is momentarily distracted by Wilhelm's sacrifice, Tony (?) runs and shoves Corbitt as hard as he can, and manages to knock him also across the binding circle and into the arms of the tentacle monster, which, having finally claimed the two mortals who had managed to summon and bind it in their lifetimes, retreats and vanishes back into the outer planes.

Barnie, Tony, and Archibald are crowded around a table in the back of Boat Cop Bar, hunched over a legal pad as Barnie finishes writing up their final report and recommendations to Uncle Norbert.

"This is going to be the best Haunted Bed & Breakfast, ever!"

fin.