The Edge of Darkness

[Commando]

As the monsterous creature dissipates into nothingness and the ritual comes to an end, William lets out a huge sigh of relief and sinks to the floor. Looking around the room he smiles at the other four, feeling the exhaustion he's been holding back finally start to hit him. "I think it's over. And I hope I never have to see anything like that again."

Suddenly he remembers the prisoner tied up in the cellar. Struggling back to his feet he picks up a torch and goes to the top of the cellar stairs to peer down.

[Greentitch]

William sees the man in the cellar curled up in a ball, seemingly asleep. Given that he has been screaming and gibbering for most of the day, this hardly seems a surprise now the farmhouse is quiet.

[Brechnar]

"Did we succeed? I can almost not believe it. When that creature came...I...I'm just glad it's over. I feel completely drained right now."

[ash]

Breathing heavily Danny sits down on the floor, glad to be alive.

[Commando]

Heading back to the group, William rubs his eyes wearily. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I could sleep for a week. Before we go, though, we need to decide what to do about our guest downstairs. It looks as though he's fallen asleep, but whether or not he'll wake up as crazy as he was when we found him I've no idea. We need to decide what to do with him."

He looks around the room to see what people are thinking. "Setting him free would be the simplest answer, but who knows if he'll start trouble again as soon as he wakes up. Alternatively we could take him to the hospital, but if we do that there will probably be questions that we can't really answer."

[Brechnar]

"He's sleeping now right? Can't we just leave him be? We'll probably be gone when he wakes up anyway."

[Greentitch]

PS. Feel free to carry on with this game. I posted the conclusion to get some thoughts while I planned for the next game. There's no need to actually stop as if you carry your character on to the next game, they might be affected by what happened in this one.

[Commando]

William nods at Arthur. "It's definitely the simplest solution. Hopefully, with the creature banished, he might even regain his sanity. And if not, I guess he's too crazy for anyone to believe him if he told them what happened here. I'll cut him free when we leave here."

Taking the bucket of sand, William uses it to extinguish the fire. He then puts out the candles and sweeps over the chalk markings on the floor. Gathering up as much of the supplies as he can, he loads them into his car with help from some of the others. He makes sure to take all the elements of the ritual such as the boxes of powders, candles, notes, journal and the sarcophagus with him. Finally he takes the knife and creeps down into the cellar to cut the bonds that hold the prisoner before coming back upstairs.

"I'm heading back to the hotel for some rest. If anyone wants a lift there you're welcome to join me."

(William heads back to the hotel, parks up and goes to his room to sleep, after dropping off whoever wants a lift in his car.)

[Greentitch]

The tramp seems to not notice you cutting his bonds. As you leave the cellar he rolls over and begins to snore on the cold floor. You leave the farmhouse much as you found it, in fact due to your earlier efforts it is cleaner, if a little burnt in places from the drops of acid.

The journey back to Arkham is uneventful and you don't see another car the entire way, hardly surprising at around 3am.

[Orube]

Evelyn feels exhausted by the time she staggers into her hotel room. After having thanked William whats-his-name for giving her a lift to the hotel all she wants is to get some sleep, so she kicks off her shoes, falls on the bed, and is out before her head as much as touches the pillow.

[Commando]

(I'm guessing we should just assume that Arthur, James and Danny are actually going to bother to go home or to the hotel and won't be spending the night at the farmhouse. Shall we skip ahead to the next morning?)

[Greentitch]

Sounds like a good plan to me.

[Commando]

William wakes in his hotel room at the sound of a knock at the door from the maid wanting to clean his room. Glancing at the clock he discovers that the time is already past midday. Asking the maid to come back later he quickly showers and gets dressed.

As he does so, William thinks about what is left to do before he heads back to Boston. A visit to Mr Merriweather is the first item on the list, though there's a chance the man might actually have passed away already. The attorney would also need to be contacted, though the office may not be open on a Sunday.

Seeing that the time is approaching 1pm, William heads to the hotel reception and uses the telephone there to call James, Mr Gill and Evelyn in their hotel rooms and Arthur at the bookstore and ask them to meet him in the hotel restaurant. While he waits he heads straight to the restaurant and, though too late for breakfast, finds himself very hungry and orders a large lunch.

[Greentitch]

Entering the restaurant you see Dr Armitage at the bar. As you take a seat he comes over to your table.
"Good afternoon, Mr Jennings. I wanted to see you but discovered that you were still resting so I decided to wait. Do you mind if I join you? I'm not hungry myself, except for information on what happened to you and your associates."

[Commando]

William smiles at at the librarian. "By all means, take a seat. I'm waiting for the rest of our little group to join us. As you may have guessed, our experiences last night have left us all in need of plenty of rest."

As Dr Armitage sits down the waiter arrives and William orders his lunch. He considers briefly how much to tell of what happened the previous night - after all, imprisoning an insane homeless man isn't the sort of thing he wants to tell just anyone about, and neither is the fact that they burned a woman to death, despite the fact that she was obviously already dead. Still, the librarian did give them the information they needed to complete the ritual and encouraged them, so could be considered as much a part of events as the rest of them.

Starting from their discovery of the man in the cellar, William begins to tell Dr Armitage the full story of what happened at the farmhouse.