TOPIC: R4: Realms of Cthulhu Death in Luxor

Management meeting this morning at school brilliantly changed the date of our prom to next Thursday which unfortunately is in contracted hours so \i cant get out of it, so apologies i wont be there next week...29th June grrrrrrrr.

Sorry folks.
On this subject i also wont be there 13th July and 27th of July as have residentials and holiday booked. Maybe i should have checked my diary before offering this rotation, fully understand if anyone jumps ship.

Realms of Cthulhu / Death in Luxor

Journal of Chris Cuttler (Week One)

Today I received a telegram from an old friend, Professor Aaron Bullacher of the Chicago University. I hadn’t heard from the old bull for over five years, when we collaborated on Louisiana Smith and the Pagoda of Peril. By Christ, has it really been so long since I last put pen to paper? No small wonder my publisher is ready to drop me like a hot rock.

Apparently, Bullacher and his wife are down in Luxor with their colleague Jamieson, digging up more old bones in the middle of the desert. For some reason, he seems to think that my presence at the excavation could be useful. Christ only knows what help he imagines I’ll be, but this trip sounds like just the thing to stir up the creative juices lying stagnant in my skull since Beatrice passed.

I packed my suitcase, although there was precious little space for clothes after cramming in my old typewriter and a few spare ink ribbons. I left a note for my housekeeper and jumped in a taxi cab to the dockyards. I planned to cross the ocean by sea and then fly from Portugal to Egypt.

---

I bumped into some familiar faces at the airport, that old married couple Frederick and Amelia Harrington-Jones. We chatted a while as our winged chariot taxied along the sunny runway and it soon became clear that they too had received a mysterious summons from our mutual acquaintance, Professor Bullacher. What on earth was the old devil up to anyway? Both halves of the Harrington-Jones’ duo were as mystified as myself.

Boarding the plane, I spotted another old friend struggling to cram his bulging hand luggage into an overhead locker; Daniel ‘Squawk’ Peterson (so called for his unfortunate penchant for shooting at small birds with a high caliber rifle). I remembered Daniel as being a taciturn fellow who had worked security on a number of Bullacher’s more aggressively contested digs. He was a man who spoke little and usually let his guns do the talking. I dreaded to imagine what manner of artillery he had packed into that innocuous looking suitcase and fervently prayed we did not hit any turbulence during our journey to Egypt.

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It was raining when we landed in Luxor. The plane descended through a bank of dark cloud into a veritable deluge, hammering the wings of our aircraft like the wrath of a vengeful god. It never used to bother me, but flying has made me anxious ever since the accident. If you can call it that. The investigators never established what it was that caused my wife's plane to go down. Perhaps I’ll never know.

Despite the inclement weather, our pilot bought the plane down in one piece and we disembarked into the storm. While it was all very wet and miserable, nothing struck me as particularly unusual until Amelia commented on how strange it was to experience such “determined precipitation” at this time of year.

A group of uniformed men stood nearby, members of the local militia. A dog-eared cigarette was being passed from hand to hand, though Christ alone knows how they kept it going in spite of the rain. It soon became clear that these grunts weren’t here for us specifically, rather, they made it their business to shake down any and all tourist traffic entering their loathsome little corner of the desert. The small group was led by an officer whose single redeeming quality was that he was not quite so unpleasant as the men under his command. One of the men took an immediate fancy to Freddy’s wardrobe. Frederick is as fine a man as you could hope to find, but he does dress like a bit of a dandy. I scarcely believed this brutish churl could flaunt it with quite the same flair, but it took Daniel’s meaty paw on his shoulder to finally get the message across. The militia skulked off grudgingly, leaving us alone on the tarmac under a glowering sky.

mikeawmids wrote:
And the award for most stupid thing said today goes to me.

Great write up, unless you are planning doing the next bit i can do it.. As stated i won't be there next week unfortunately..

Hi,

That was a great write-up. Your writing is really getting good these days.

Thanks Andy.
.

Sant wrote:
Go on then, you've twisted my arm.

Since Sant will be absent next week, does anyone want to run a one shot? I've written a short adventure called 'Dwarven Spirits' that could do with being playtested, although I am happy to play if someone else wants to GM something.