Tatters of the King: Fried Bacon

More Call of Cthulhu this Friday. As with all posts related to Tatters of the King, this post contains spoilers. We last left our heroes plotting the downfall of Bacon, a North London antiques dealer living in self-imposed isolation in Islington, who we had been reliably told (via a mysterious informant who had written to Ben's PC Thaddeus Price) was still an active member of the Hastur cabal we were seeking to crack. Last time, we had used magic to plot Bacon's exact route to his victim on the 27th of November. This allowed the team to lie in wait for him with a view to kidnapping him (Hemingway counselled something more serious, but was ignored - AGAIN!)

Jonathan Crust (Seb) and Harold Fisher (Manoj) lay in wait for Bacon with shotguns loaded with rock salt. Ernest Hemingway (yes, THAT Hemingway) trailed the antiques dealer at a distance, armed with Fisher's cosh. Bacon was duly blasted with rock salt before he could do anything, then handcuffed, and was in the process of being bundled into a car when the group was surprised by a patrolling London bobby (constable).

Price tried to bluff his way out of the situation, claiming Bacon was a drunk friend, but the policeman noticed he was hand cuffed, and wanted to take a closer look. Hemingway, sitting at the wheel of the car with the engine running, was shouting "Get in the car!" As it became apparent Price and Fisher were thinking of escaping without Bacon, a scenario which would have freed up the occultist to hunt us down at his leisure, Hemingway leaped out of the car and struck the bobby down. The plod fell to the ground unconscious, and Price poured whiskey over him in the hopes that he would be too ashamed to report the incident.

The investigators drove to Bacon's abode where they entered his house and searched it. Bacon himself had another of the strange bone whistles used to summon horrors out of the sky, and was wearing an Elder Sign amulet carved from strange stone. He owned a large number of occult books in his extensive upstairs library, which was duly looted. Hemingway took a copy of the Turner Codex to read.

A weird chime, obviously magical, was found in Bacon's bed room. We believe he used this to protect himself from some of the creatures he summoned. We took it.

"Professor Price will see you now...mwa hahaha!"

Eventually, Price suggested exploring the basement, and here we discovered a concealed entrance to what looks like a network of tunnels. We began exploring it, but eventually each of the investigators - apart from Crust - chickened out and withdrew. Crust came with us as he didn't want to continue exploring on his own.



Price now hypnotised Bacon and managed to extract a fair amount of information from him. We now know that:

1. Bacon and his cabal are planning to summon Hastur using the obelisks we found in Suffolk, BUT, they need Alexander Robey or whatever lives in Robey to complete the ritual;
2. Edwardes, the mysterious leader of the cabal, is keeping tabs on Robey at the asylum in Herefordshire;
3. The Hastur cult in Britain may be much bigger than we thought;
4. The tunnels under Bacon's house are used by his underground 'helpers';
5. Coombes was meant to be with Bacon, or at least at his house, when we attacked him, but for some reason was absent (we suspect Gresty may have had a hand in this)

Price now came up with a stroke of genius: rather than murder Bacon in cold blood, he used his contacts and status as a leading psychiatric authority to have Bacon committed to an asylum. This removes him from the scene, his collaborators won't know where he is, and it is highly unlikely he will be released until Price says so.

We now proceeded to Herefordshire, stopping briefly at our respective homes/hotels for a wash and sleep after a lively night in North London. Price found he had a second letter from the mysterious Gresty, in which Gresty confirmed our suspicions that Edwardes is lurking somewhere up in the West Midlands, but the epistle also warbled on about some kind of odd inheritance and mentioned Quarrie, another member of the cabal who seems to have disappeared a couple of years ago. I'm sure our paths will cross Gresty's in the not too distant future.

Asylums: far too many of these in Call of Cthulhu...

We have started to speculate that Highsmith, the doctor in charge of the asylum, may actually be Edwardes himself. Travelling to Hereford, we met him at the asylum itself less than 24 hours before the hearing in which Robey's case will be reviewed. Price tried to persuade him to keep Robey incarcerated, but it seems that Highsmith has determined to release him, further reinforcing our suspicion that he is in fact Edwardes in disguise. Fisher used the Yellow Sign to see whether Highsmith would react adversely to it, which he certainly seemed to do, running out into the snow to throw up. A stand up row between Price and Highsmith finally led to the investigators repairing to a nearby village to consider their next move.

"No more Mr Nice Hemingway..."

Fisher and Price decided to go on a pub crawl in the village. While they were sampling the local beer and chatting up the local talent, Hemingway and Crust tooled up with their .30-06 rifles and headed out into the snow, trekking back to the asylum in the blizzard and staking out the place. At 02h00 they espied a car leaving the grounds of the asylum at high speed. Hemingway made a called shot to one of the front tyres, in the dark, in the snow. The driver, however, masterfully kept his vehicle on the icy road and sped off into the blizzard. Hemingway's efforts to shoot again at another tyre were foiled when his rifle jammed...Whoever was driving the car seems to have escaped.

TO BE CONTINUED...