The Scooby Doo Hallway Routine
The group moves back and forth between rooms at somewhat
dizzying speed. A brief, but likely incomplete overview:
- Luci Martin, at Vivian’s request, calls Dr. Black into her cabin to tend to Vivian. Dr. Black gives three warning knocks on the wall of the train.
- Johnny and Kane, hearing those knocks, leave Smith’s cabin and return to their own cabins.
- Judge Putnam remains in his cabin talking with Craegen. Worried that whatever tried to possess him might do so again, he removes the bullets from his cane gun and other weapons.
- Liam leaves his cabin and breaks into Featherstone’s cabin.
- Mikhail calms Pushok and goes out into the hallway to join the others.
- Kane returns to Smith’s room and attempts a meditation. He notes that there is a presence in the room (the same one that tried to possess him), but this time it doesn’t bother him. Kane doesn’t feel anything else. On further searching the room, he finds that Smith’s battered trench coat has an extradimensional pocket in it.
- Kane leaves to show the coat to Johnny.
- Johnny reads the Astral Projection scroll and begins to put the pieces together as to what’s going on.
- Dr. Black confirms that Vivian is all right. He begins to suspect that a group meeting might be in order. He gets the group together and tries to muster them to head to the Recreation Car.
- Liam breaks into Featherstone’s steamer trunk and finds a large quantity of what appear to be drugs. He is surprised by Featherstone, who puts the barrel of a gun to his forehead. He is unable to reason with Featherstone. Featherstone orders him out into the hallway.
The scene ends with most of the group clustered at the
Recreation Car side of the hallway as Featherstone escorts Liam out of his
cabin at gunpoint.
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| The Incriminating Note in Smith's Pocket, Which I Forgot To Show You Earlier |
A Double Arrest
Featherstone begins shouting, quite loudly, that he found
Liam in his cabin, and so Liam must be the murderer. The group, distrusting
Featherstone, manages to tackle him and get the gun away from him. Mikhail
draws his Masonic blade and holds Featherstone at swordpoint just as Jannsens
the conductor and Inspector Thorne arrive.
Jannsens searches Featherstone’s cabin and confirms that the man was carrying a very large quantity of opium in his trunk. Inspector Thorne, convinced that both men are guilty of something, drags them to the Recreation Car and handcuffs them across the table from one another while the investigation continues.
Thorne then speaks to Mikhail and, while commending the young lawyer on helping to detain a criminal, explains that deadly weapons are not allowed on the train. Despite Mikhail’s protestations, Thorne confiscates his Masonic sword.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group convenes and goes over what they learn. They suspect that someone on the train is astrally projected and is repeatedly attempting to possess people for their own ends. Dr. Black seems to think that whoever is doing this is trying to delay or prevent them from getting to Syria. Johnny notes that, according to the scroll, if someone resists possession by the astrally projected person, they cannot ever successfully be possessed by that person. The group realizes that the astral projector must have left their body behind, which winnows down their list of suspects.
Inspector Thorne orders everyone to return to their cabins, which they do. At this point, Kane shows Johnny the coat he took from Mr. Smith’s room. Johnny experiments with the pocket and realizes he can pull items from it by concentrating very hard. He immediately puts the coat on.
The group is unsure of what to do next. Their hands are forced, moments later, when the train lurches into motion.
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| Dwight Featherstone, Opium Runner |
Runaway Train
The group encounters a pair of porters, running toward the
front of the train and shouting in French. Liam is able to translate that the
two men don’t think the train should be moving, that pulling the emergency
brake didn’t stop it, and that they need to find one of the conductors.
Liam bribes Johnny to pick the lock on his handcuffs, which Johnny does. Liam then remains in the Recreation Car to taunt Featherstone. Liam eventually gets close enough to Featherstone for the other man to punch him and then slap the cuffs back on him. All the while, Luci presides over the insanity and tries not to take sides.
The rest of the group pushes forward as far as they can, only to find Jenssens and Thorne in one of the passenger cars, unable to get the door open. At someone’s suggestion, Thorne uses the gun he took from Featherstone to shoot out the lock on the door. The door still refuses to open, and Jannsens and Thorne both think that whoever has started the train has somehow jammed the door on the other side.
While two porters retreat to the dining car to get a coffee urn to use as a battering ram, Dr. Black studies the door and notes that several mystical runes have been hastily carved into the lintel. He begs a penknife off of Jannsens, climbs on a bench, and starts defacing the mystical runes.
In the midst of the chaos, Mikhail manages to coerce Thorne into giving him his Masonic sword back.
Just before doing this, Dr. Black notes that Jannsens’ penknife has traces of wood shavings in its mechanism, which leads Dr. Black to suggest that Jannsens may have carved the symbols himself while possessed.
The porters return with their coffee urn battering ram just as Dr. Black destroys the last symbol. The group opens the door and proceeds into the next car, only to find that the forward door to that car has also been warded…
The group now notes that the train is moving at increasing speed through the Italian Alps, and several in the group suspect that the mysterious possessing spirit is trying to get the train to derail or crash.
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| One of the Doors that Blocked the Group's Path |
Throw Eastman From the Train
While Johnny and Dr. Black destroy the wards on the next
door, Vivian and Kane climb the access ladder between the cars and head for the
roof of the train. Their plan is to cross the top of the car, descend on the
ladder on the other side, and head through the coal car to the engine.
This daring maneuver is cut short when the train goes around a steep curve and Kane is nearly thrown off the train. He manages to hang on, and Johnny sees Kane’s kicking feet through the windows of the car. Johnny steals the coffee urn and uses it to smash out the train car’s window, so that he can grab Kane and drag him inside the train. This proves to be unnecessary, as Vivian grabs Kane and hauls him back up onto the roof of the train.
Taking greater care, Kane and Vivian make their way down the ladder on the far side of the car and into the coal car. They reach the engine car just as the rest of the group removes the wards on the last door and forces it open.
Engine Showdown
Kane and Vivian arrive in the engine to find the train’s
fireman unconscious in a pool of his own blood. Nearby, the engineer is hunched
over the smashed controls. Looking on with anticipation as the train hurtles on
along a tall and narrow bridge.
Vivian grabs the fireman’s shovel and uses it to knock the engineer unconscious. She and Kane look at the controls, trying to figure out how to repair or deactivate them, when the rest of the team barges into the engine compartment.
Judge Putnam slots the tip of his cane into the remains of the throttle mechanism. Using the cane as an impromptu lever, he is able to safely bring the train to a stop on the bridge.
Dr. Black tends to the fireman as Jannsens, Thorne, and the others try to figure out what happened and why the engineer started up the train without orders.
In the midst of this Johnny notes a strange shimmering in the air, as if of rising heat, coming off of the engineer’s unconscious body. Thinking quickly, he casts some of the POWDER OF IBN GHAZI into the air, revealing an apparition with the face of one Mr. Smith. Smith flies toward the back of the train, his presence terrifying and terrorizing the train staff. The group follows after Smith, suspecting that he is going to try to return to his body.
Liam, seeing the group passing through the Recreation Car, picks the lock on his handcuffs and follows after them. He leaves a sputtering and disbelieving Featherstone chained to the table.
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| The Bridge |
Dealing with Baggage
The group arrives in the baggage car to see that something
is stirring beneath the bloody cloth on the stretcher within. The group, now
certain that Smith is regenerating himself, surround the stretcher and attempt
to hurt him badly enough to keep himself from healing. Johnny does very little
damage and is seized and strangled by Smith. Vivian, amped up on terror and
adrenaline, manages to pull Smith’s hand off of Johnny’s neck.
Dr. Black casts the Wrack spell on Smith, only to have it rebound on him and strike him with full force. Dr. Black curls up in an agonized fetal ball, and is out for the rest of the fight.
The group inflicts superficial damage on Smith, but not enough to keep him from acting. He sits up and, with a word and a gesture, blows out the side wall of the baggage car.
Mikhail, in a last-ditch effort to keep Smith from leaving, stabs at him with his enchanted Masonic blade. Smith snatches the sword from Mikhail’s grasp and leaps for the hole in the side wall.
Just as Smith leaps clear of the train, Judge Putnam raises his cane gun and opens fire, blasting Smith and filling the air with a red mist. Smith drops lifeless into the crevasse below, thus ending the fight and this stage of the adventure.
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