The Tower and the Madness

The plane met up with the Belle in mid-flight, but the landing was very tense, with drawn guns on both sides. Priestly was able to prevent conflict though and Meyer asked Anderson (who he wrongly assumed was the polar expert) to lead the way. Halperin remained to guard the planes at the investigators request, as they still mistrusted the Germans. Meyer was anxious to press on up the tower once they were inside, and when Priestly suggested that down seemed a better alternative, Professor McKeowan broke in and stated that since the Pym text said up, up it should be. Meyer was not pleased to hear that they were the ones to have stolen his documents...

A quick council of war was held, with the SME members decidedly against the Priestly/Meyer "kill the Things" faction. Acacia Lexington was just able to persuade Priestly to toe the line, but was clearly struggling hard against fear herself. Moving up and mostly ignoring the heritage hall, the players shed their outer clothes and oxygen masks as they entered the lower construct. All the player were affected by the construct, and Weiss, anxious to learn all he could, willingly entered the construct to learn its secrets. After learning a good deal, he fell victim to the forces and became the Mute Witness, unable to speak and suffering physical lack of coordination.

Despite this setback, Meyer and Lexington persuaded the party upwards (the Mute Witness desperately trying to get his comrades to turn back and bring the others with them). At the next level Anderson looked into each of the side chambers, but as his purpose was purely to find Starkweather, only entered the chamber full of bones, where he found what he assumed where Starkweather's remains. Professor McKeowan was with Meyer, distracting him from exploring (they felt he might make a rash attack on elder Things) by helping him decipher the writings. After initial success, Meyer became discouraged and started exploring. After the Shoggoth in the tank found him, he became somewhat less interested in exploring and more interested in lying on the floor and whimpering.

Almost certain that Starkweather and Greene had been killed as in the Pym text and their heads carried off, the party ascended. They ignored the blue light at the next level and found the wall of skulls at the top. The players and Meyer stared, stunned. Priestly urged them to destroy it and Acacia Lexington just stood and wept. Eventually she asked McKeowan to help her cut off Starkweather's head and as they moved forward, Weiss attempted to grab at her, causing McKeowan to pause. As Acacia continued on in her resolute purpose, McKeowan was convinced by Weiss's performance to stop her, but was unable to stop her machete blow that cut the head from the wall (her fencing training well in evidence). The earthquake that followed was terrifying, as were the slippages in time that caused everything to become confused and disorienting. The arriving Shoggoth drive Weiss over the edge in a different way, as his bout as the Mute Witness was replaced by a period as a homicidal maniac. His initial target was Acacia Lexington, but she retained enough sense and force of will to urge him to shoot at the Elder things, but not before suffering 6 points of damage to her shoulder. Anderson managed to hit one of the arriving Elder Things with the elephant gun, doing 6 points of damage after its tough hide was taken into account, but it became clear that they were not going to win this fight, even with the Shoggoth taking a passive roll and protecting the wall, so they fled downwards, Weiss at the rear as his short episode of insanity ended.

When they paused to pick up clothes, they realized that Lexington and Meyer had continued on without picking theirs up. Weiss explained that someone had to be sacrificed to the wall to prevent the Elder God from arising, and under his breath suggested Priestly. Priestly heard though and threatened to shoot his brains out the moment they tried. Weiss contemplated summoning a Byakhee to bring Meyer to them (at this point he actively hated Meyer), but Anderson was able to overpower Priestly when he started waving his gun at Weiss. Priestly was fed to the Shoggoth and placed in the wall. The party then left rapidly, picking up Lexington and Myer shivering from cold and fear atthe exit, but were slowed when Weiss yet again suffered a fit of insanity on glimpsing the presence of the Elder God. this time it was all too much for him and he simply sat down and refused to do anything. Meyer and Lexington helped carry him back to the landing site. At the site they rapidly showed their faces to the deranged Halperin, who started flying them out and told them that Baumann and Rucker has been taken over. Lexington voiced her opinion that they had to be stopped, Halperin flew manically into the cold, thin air, Meyer whined and crawled around on the floor and Weiss sat staring into infinity. Carlisle and Marcus regarded each other dourly and started planning how to retake the Belle from Halperin.

When the plane landed, Halperin became more and more deranged, until eventually action had to be taken. Anderson, ever obliging with his pistol, blew his brains out with customary élan. At that point Acacia Lexington departed to take photographs and film to prove that the plateau was simply boring (she took Sykes with her) and the investigators started to track down the Germans. Flying the plane over the mountains, Dr. Weiss decided a Chant of Thoth would help McKeowan's dubious flying skills and with his arcane assistance the plane got through easily. Anderson, a cartographer, had no problem at all remembering/working out where the germans were flying to. The investigators ignored Lake's camp, flew very rapidly to the cache, landing a mile or so and approaching the camp in the open. Baumann was taken in by their pretence at friendliness and didn't notice that while attempting to set up the antenna, Anderson cut through the lead wire. Dr Weiss poisoned Rucker, who was not in great shape anyhow (losing sanity as his Hippocratic oath is broken) and the other was shot by the ever-happy-to-kill Anderson. They rigged up the area to look like a fight had broken out between the germans and then just left. No messages were broadcast from the radio.

Working out the fuel situation, they planned to fly over the mountains again, pick up the team, including a spare pilot, fly back to the cache, pick up the spare plane, refuel both and then head back to Lake's camp.

It didn't work out that well.

They flew in and landed, leaving McKeowan on the plane as the others headed off to the tower, taxiing as close as was safe. Anderson (who still had three shots left for Starkweather's elephant gun) went inside to talk, while Weiss stayed outside on lookout. At that point the Elder Things attacked, attempting to destroy the plane and leave the humans trapped on the plateau. Alerted by Dr. Weiss, Anderson severely wounded one with the big gun, and McKeowan managed to drive them off the aeroplane. However Weiss finally realized the full horror of what the Elder Things are and went temporarily insane yet again; this time triggering a flight reflex. His insane summoning of a byakhee to take him home was misinterpreted by everyone. They assumed it was something else trying to attack Weiss. Anderson went indefinitely insane (The air is evil -- anything in the air is evil; flying is evil) and blew away the byakhee. Weiss summoned another (by now Weiss was insane as well, paranoid delusional schizophrenia, but it won't matter ..) and was successfully carried off by his second Byakhee. Succeeding on his LUCK check, the byakhee interpreted his last command "take me home" to mean Weiss's home in the Black Forest, not the byakhee's home. The byakhee dropped him off in Berlin (that's about as good as the byakhee could manage from Weiss's distinctly cloudy thoughts) where he was rapidly found, hospitalized and then re-committed to the same hospital as he had been in previously. However, everyone knew that Weiss was at the South pole, so this must be ... his twin brother? Strange little puzzle for the German authorities.

Back on the plateau, it was pull the sled to freedom time. Anderson made his WILL check to move towards the evil plane-airflying-soulswallowing thing. but when a Shoggoth appearing it sent Anderson more insane again, now reverting to childhood. His BB gun (elephant gun) at half skill hurt the shoggoth a tiny bit. At that time only the Irish mechanic (Murphy) and McKeowan were sane. McKeowan was only a short step from insanity, and had stated that he'd just take off and go if the situation looked hopeless. Anyway, he lost only a small amount of insanity on seeing the Shoggoth, successfully understood Anderson's condition and used his poor persuade skill to convince Anderson that Daddy is very angry and he has to get on the plane right now and sit in the corner. Murphy pulled Moore on board and off they went. The Shoggoth had captured three people from the Lake party, dragging two off the sled as they fled and so was able to retreat from the painful cold back to the warm depths...

McKeowan made it to the depot, crashing the plane irrepairably. They decided against flying any more -- Anderson was now no longer in childhood and so violently opposed to flying, not to mention still being a crack shot with his pistol. They called in the Zeppelin for Lake's camp and then asked it to come and pick them up, but Anderson managed to get on the radio by himself and tells the Zeppelin that they'll walk back, no problem. Murphy and McKeowan drugged Anderson when they realized (much later) what had happened. A plane picked them all up and they headed back to the ship, stating that everyone else was killed by the earthquakes on the plateau.