This week's Cthulhu - "One In Darkness", by Doug Lyons and L.N.Isinwyll, from Great Old Ones. And to my incoherent raving disbelief, my damned Karma Houdini players not only managed to get through an unusually deadly scenario without so much as a single scratch, they prevented all but one of the deaths that should have been a certainty, AND all got massive rewards to sanity, cash, public appreciation AND magical power at the end of it.

On the other hand, the three player-characters this week did manage to sow a certain amount of mistrust of each other this week, mostly on account of the rich racial epithets that they were throwing at each other with abandon, and increasing suspicion about what McGinty has really been up to with his new and not inconsiderable magical ability.

Anyway, whilst he had a few days off from building a four-engine speedboat for a rumrunner ( they were waiting for more airplane engines to arrive ) McGinty decided to finally try out this Resurrection spell that Lancaster's Brain has been trying to teach him. He has a suitable candidate, too - the brother of the New York lunatic he's been keeping locked in the secret room in his house in Arkham. The late brother he's been keeping in a chest freezer in the next room. Reading up on the elaborate procedure, McGinty makes a few inquiries and decides to best place to cast the ritual is the Unvisited Isle in the middle of the Miskatonic River. Naturally, those of us that knew about the history of the island in question were left with bulging eyes and stupefied expressions, but despite many rolls by me the spell went off without a hitch, and without anybody noticing him setting the thing up. They probably noticed the sudden freak storm, madly howling dogs across half the town, and the earsplitting voice that bellowed something arcane out of a churning sky, however.

You bet this is going to have consequences. For one thing McGinty is completely ignorant of the side effects of a successful Resurrection, but will shortly be hearing news of what he's just unleashed.

But after reuniting the brothers, and understandable catatonic withdrawal of one, McGinty is back off to Boston's South Side for a midnight showing of his engineering project to his occasional 'legitimate businessman' employer. The demonstration is interrupted by the arrival of 20 armed police in the street outside. Amazingly, they're not here for McGinty, or his boss. They're here to apprehend the Crimson Gang, currently hiding out in a building further up King-of-Ireland Street. Somehow, storming the building turns into a rout, with some of the gangsters escaping, 7 cops dead, and many of the corpses in distressingly incomplete condition.

Despite the news coverage, and a reward that rapidly climbs to over $20,000, Rondale & Guiliano are initially reluctant to help McGinty track down and eliminate some competition. For one thing, Guiliano & McGinty differ entirely on who should be considered culpable for the New York Incident.

McGinty : Ignorance is no excuse.
The Amazing Julius : I'll remember that.
GM : Quite. We all know somebody in this group that's ignorant. *all turn to glare at McGinty*

Regarding previous Incidents of which Guiliano was hitherto unaware

The Amazing Julius OOC : I've already learned - DON"T ASK

Alas for Guiliano's fondest wish to have had McGinty along on last week's Flophouse Fatalities case, just see if McGinty really would have helped himself to glass after glass of wood alcohol -

McGinty : Yeah, heard all about that from Rondale. Apparently the still was busted. Pumping out the wrong stuff.
The Amazing Julius ( other end of phoneline ) : *silently curses*

Guiliano has other reasons to avoid McGinty's scheme, too. His 'Family', for one, and his career as stage magician entertaining holidaying New Yorkers in the Borscht Belt.

The Amazing Julius : If I go around apprehending Irish gangsters, and the word gets back to my neighbourhood but leaves out the Irish bit, I won't be breathing for long.

The Amazing Julius : Some of us work for a living, you damn Mick.
McGinty : Don't lie, you've never worked a day in your life. Selling your arse on street corners isn't working.
The Amazing Julius : Selling my arse on street corners would be easier. Some of those ladies from the Old Country can be a bit grabby.

By the end of the week the escapees are still in hiding, and the reward has climbed to $40,000. That's tempting enough to get Rondale and Julius into Boston, which is crawling with hundreds of cops and militiamen, some of whom are towing field guns around. They're taking the manhunt very seriously. Happily, McGinty splashed out for a quality hotel, so they can eat in their rooms and won't have to disturb the other patrons as they read the morning's papers and McGinty boasts about his latest achievements. Such as all the stuff he's learned from the Honore-Balfour's Cultes de Goules.

McGinty : You don't speak French, do you?
The Amazing Julius : No, I only speak real languages.

McGinty : *demonstrates his new fluency in the glibbering, meeping languages of what the book describes as 'Our Family From Below'*
The Amazing Julius : You drank from the drainpipe, didn't you?

McGinty : Oh, and I can raise the dead now.
The Amazing Julius, & Rondale : *stare*
Rondale : Wait, is that to do with that trumpet Amy and Lucy won't let you use?
McGinty : Oh, no. Now I can point at a corpse, and tell it to get up and go kill those fellas over there.
GM : How very ... suspicious. McGinty's been in Boston for weeks, he's suddenly flush with cash, and last week the rest of you had that little encounter with a moonshining still and the walking dead. That tableau of Zombies Playing Poker is just the kind of thing McGinty would do, too...
The Amazing Julius, & Rondale : Hmmmmm *eye McGinty suspiciously*

Rondale : I don't need to understand my enemy. I just need to understand how to kill them.

In the apparently unlikely event something manages to kill McGinty, after everything else else I've thrown at him, funeral arrangements are considered.

GM : If the alcohol hasn't killed him yet...
Rondale : I know. The .38s would probably just get him angry.

Rondale : Dragonsbreath rounds are the way he would have wanted to go...
GM : With his alcohol content you wouldn't even need that.
Rondale : True. Just throw a match.

Curious news items - Apparently the gang's leader sent threatening letters to two art dealers demanding they hand over certain statuary. But this story is promptly retracted as a hoax in the the next edition. They head down to the Boston Leader, McGinty already the worse for drink, but so far is somehow avoiding the long-term effects of his problem.

GM : Eight in the morning and he's already swaying.
McGinty : It's an inner-ear problem. There's not enough alcohol in it.

GM : You take no precautions regarding the quality of what you're actually drinking.
McGinty : Yes I do! I brew me own!
GM : I rest my case.

The party splits up, and to my alarm their befriending of a fired reporter, romancing of phone-operators, waving fist-fulls of cash at art-dealers, and talking their way into police records, breaking and entering, and harassment of low-life losers, leaves them in possession of the curious serpentine bookends and everything they need to track down Malone and the Crimson Gang in less that a day.

GM : Just how much money do you carry around?? It's not a moneybelt, it's a bloody flak-jacket made of $20 bills.

GM : Apart from that, the only thing you know about the statuary is that an Irish gangster is willing to kill to get them back.
The Amazing Julius : *eyeing McGinty* An Irish gangster already has them.

The Amazing Julius : *leaning thoughtfully on his cane* It's not easy pimping in the 1920s. And if you make any comment about Charity being the first of my stable I will thwack you.

Alas, one of the people the investigators threatened left it a little too late to follow the advice they gave him, and turns up shot dead. Still, they're moved so quickly that everybody else is still safe, for the moment. Julius, the reporter, and the cab driver wait out in the street whilst McGinty and Rondale tool up and move in to investigate the likely hideout.

And this starts the bit that makes me want to cry. They elect to circle the building clockwise. The gangster on watch was, by chance, doing the same. So as McGinty and Rondale moved around trying all the windows, the watcher was working his way around the other side of the building, completely oblivious. They spot somebody twitchily asleep on a sofa inside, and attempts his first casting of yet another spell - Mental Suggestion, a hypnotic compulsion of formidable strength. McGinty wanted him to come open the window. Instead, McGinty lost a large chunk of his own mind, and developed sudden amnesia.

GM : McGinty was peering in through the crack in the glass, and making strange gestures and muttering disturbing gibberish under his breath. Now he's suddenly straightened up, and is looking around himself in obvious bafflement.
McGinty : I'm going to get meself a drink. *heads for the gate*
Rondale : *slaps hand over McGinty's mouth and hisses explanations before they wake up any of the gangsters*

He needn't have bothered - the gangsters sleep through it. *headdesk* And being reminded of the $40,000 at stake soon gets McGinty back on track.

The Amazing Julius OOC : I'm not surprised. He's used to coming around in strange places and asking 'how the fook did I end up here?'

In the end, they manage to get a window open, and climb in, and pummel Malone unconscious, and kick another sleeping gangster in the head until same, before anybody else in the building is even aware of their presence. After that it's mostly down to gunfire, and to my growing incredulity they not only take three of the gangsters alive, bound and gagged, but they find another small fortune in Malone's stash. Which McGinty proceeds to stuff down his shirt.

GM : Guess I wasn't joking about that flak jacket

Outside, the triumphant trio lash the living captives onto or into the cab, and decide to have a good long gloat.

GM : Malone is staring daggers at you. Clearly he wants to say something, probably a fine selection of old Irish colloquialisms.
McGinty : Aw, now isn't that nice. I bend down and pull my sock from his mouth. Now what did you want to tell me, Pat, hmm?
Malone : *stares viciously at McGinty and spits two syllables* N'GRAL
*all hear what sounds like a heavy steel object being flung aside with some force, and a pig-like squeal of unearthly rage*
McGinty : ...aw, fook...

Thus begins the climax of the adventure. A scene I was sure would give me a gratifying amount of carnage and insanity to keep me warm at night, as they pile into the cab and scream at the driver to Go! Go! Go! as they are pursued across South Boston by a shrieking black hairy thing with poisonously green glowing eyes, McGinty and Rondale leaning out the back windows with machine guns and Julius screaming at the driver to keep his eyes on the road, and motorcycle cops and militiamen pour forth like enraged army ants.

Driver : What? What? What's after us?
The Amazing Julius : Nepalese Attack Boar! Keep driving!!!

Rondale, at least, does go slightly bonkers, and develops an unnatural fixation on the power of the Thompson machine gun.

GM : The way it judders in your hand, the way the barrel is so long and hot, you just want to pump bullet after bullet into the body of the thing....

Eventually they resort to magic. This is even better as far as Rondale's new perversion is concerned. He feels so potent. To my even greater incredulity, it works brilliantly. By the time the adventure has gone nicely circular and they're back on King-of-Ireland Street at midnight frantically trying to find McGinty's boss, the thing has been so injured that even as it's tearing the cab apart McGinty and Julius manage to take it down, despite being almost unconscious from exhaustion. And the cab driver loses only a single point of SAN for the experience. A single point??? Talk about unflappable!!!!

It gets worse, for me. Even after they split the huge reward between themselves, and earn appropriate kudos from the Bostonian public for their heroic takedown of the Crimson Gang and it's leader, McGinty shifts as much gratitude as possible onto his employer, thus easing that man's entry into Bostonian High Society. The Amazing Julius is guaranteed sell-out performances for the rest of the year, if he can turn his experiences into a stage show. The police, already furious about the investigator's interference in the case, are now doubly so, since despite obvious gangsterism, as prominent citizens and heroes they now can't be touched. And when the players roll their SAN rewards and make their "How Sorcerers Get That Way" checks for all the spells they were throwing around, they not only succeed on the majority, but they maxx out!!! It all goes to Rondale's head. Or one of his heads, anyway.

So as a result of their unbelievably good rolling this week the player characters are now all rich, highly esteemed, magically formidable, and have copious sanity and POWER points to spare.

At least they didn't get to roll any of the other SAN rewards, or I would have cried. And Malone's family is still out there. And they're NOT happy.....