MoN 19: Alas, Poor Reginald

Without hesitation, Ikil Lit shot the man. While the bodyguard’s bullet took the filthy man in the chest, he still had enough vigour to leap at brave Ikil. Ikil clubbed him with his rifle butt and shot him again. The man fell dead.

By this time, the rest of the party had struggled out of their tent. As they nervously watched, Jacob bent over the body to search it. As he did so, the man seemingly came back to life and grabbed the hapless reporter. However, Jacob was not easy prey. He smashed the man’s head in with his heavy electric torch.

Clearly, there was something strange about the attacker. Fearing he might be of a similar ilk to Mendoza—an assumption confirmed shortly thereafter by Dr Dudley—Ikil Lit cut the kharisiri’s head off. After the body was examined, the party burnt the remains.

The next morning, the party pushed on. Continuing south, they slowly began to climb higher into the highlands. In the late afternoon, they heard a frenzy of gunshots ring out from over a hill.

Cautiously advancing, the expedition eventually came upon the bodies of two native farmers. Both had suffered the same terrible wounds Rizo had suffered. The implication was clear: kharisiris were in the vicinity. Ikil Lit confirmed that suspicion when he glimpsed two figures moving away through the grasslands. Sadly, they were too far away to pursue, but they were heading in the general direction of the pyramid.

With no time to lose, Jacob said a short prayer over the two dead farmers, and then the expedition pushed on.

3rd April 1921

The next day, the party drew ever closer to their goal. However, tragedy was in their future.

In the afternoon, the expedition again spied the two figures they had seen the day before. One seemed to be a tall man wearing a hat and a light white shirt. Reginald, convinced they were the two responsible for the farmers’ murders, dashed off after them, quickly leaving his new friends behind.

Thus it was that when Reginald caught up to the two, he had no help and backup. His first wild and opportunistic shots went wild, and sadly he did not have time for a second volley. With blinding speed, the two were upon him…

An hour later, Reginald’s companions looked down at his mangled corpse with a mix of confusion and sadness. What had prompted the explorer to act so rashly?

Alas, there was nothing the surviving members of the expedition could do for him. They said a quick prayer and push onwards.

As dusk began to creep across the land, the expedition finally reached its goal and received a welcome surprise in the form of Jezebel Slaughter. The capricious woman had undergone another change of heart. Having decided to abandon the expedition, she had had second thoughts at Puno railway station when she spotted Luis de Mendoza and two of his minions eyeing her from across the crowded platform. Realising she might be trapped on a train for two days with a pack of murderous vampires, Jezxebel had fled (again) and followed her friends into the wilderness. (And probably led yet more kharisiris to the party’s location, remarked Dr Dudley).

In any event, the expedition had finally reached its goal. Standing atop a bleak and windswept rocky plateau, they looked down upon a low pyramid set at the end of a box canyon. Ruins—half-drowned by windblown silt and fine grey soil—surrounded the pyramid. A strange, high-pitched keening sound filled the air and as the expedition members watched first one and then the other of the kharisiris clambered up the low pyramid to vomit a horrible white substance—fat, guessed Dr Dudley—into a thin crack at the pyramid’s zenith.

Clearly, they were feeding something or engaged in some diabolical ritual. Ikil Lit—incensed by recent events—shot one of the kharisiri. Although the shot knocked the woman down, she promptly got up and ran away to another part of the ruins. With their foes alerted to the presence of intruders, the party fell to discussing a plan involving the “clever” use of dynamite…

This post is a session summary for my weekly 7th edition Call of Cthulhu Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign.