Syria and the Movies Part Eleven: Where Time Has No Meaning

The Second Challenge

The group, still bleeding profusely from their hands, climbs a steeply sloping tunnel that leads out into a vast, dark cavern, whose walls and ceilings cannot be seen. Savage, hurricane-force winds blow across around the cavern, stirring up great clouds of hard, gritty sand. Far off in the distance, the group sees a light streaming through a trapezoidal opening.

Everyone starts across. Despite their best efforts to remain together, they become separated from one another. Blown about and battered by the storm, the struggle to reach their far-off objective. Initially,  only Johnny, Kane, Ron, and Pushok make it to the door, where they resolve to wait for the others.

The rest find themselves lost in the storm, unable to see the guiding light shining through the distant doorway. They wander lost, through hummocks of windblown sand, until they are each assaulted by half-made, partially delimbed creatures that crawl out of the earth to attack them. These creatures gabble about how only they will survive this challenge, and that the group will give them the strength to progress. Judge Putnam, Vivian, Mikhail, and Dr. Black each confront one of the creatures, who seizes them by the leg and proceeds to drain away their life force.

Vivian and Judge Putnam fend off their attackers and flee into the dust storm, while Mikhail and Dr. Black, who are more conversant in the ways of the occult, use their magical skills to pull their stolen life force out of the creatures that grabbed them. Both Mikhail and Dr. Black take too much of the creatures’ essence, healing themselves, killing the creatures, and also stealing some of the creatures’ eons-old memories. 

Those lost in the storm eventually see the light coming from the doorway and approach it, soon joining their companions. They all feel notably weaker, due to their exertions and blood loss, and many of them are concerned that they will not survive the rest of the journey.

Realizing that there is nothing else for it, they proceed through the brightly lit doorway.

The Third Challenge

They find a spiral staircase that leads an impossible distance upwards. The group ascends, stopping several times to catch their breaths, and eventually step out onto a stone landing many, many miles up.

Johnny is the last person up, as he has been covering the group from behind. The moment his feet leave the spiral staircase, it silently detaches from the landing and accordions down into the abyss, lost to sight.

The group now faces a 30’ wall, covered in vines and slime. Kane realizes that everyone is going to have to eventually make it up and over this all, and so volunteers to climb up first and lower down a rope to the others.

Kane struggles up the wall, at one point coming perilously close to sliding off. As he attempts to recover his grip, a fibrous tentacle lashes out from a gap in the wall and wraps itself tightly around one of Kane’s wrists. The tentacle then bores into the open wound on Kane’s hand and greedily begins to sup on his blood.

Seeing Kane’s plight, Dr. Black casts his Wrack spell on the tentacle, causing it such grievous pain that it snaps off of Kane’s arm, becomes rigid, and retreats back into its hole. Kane, a little lightheaded but otherwise all right, manages reaches the top of the wall and lowers the rope, as promised. He then disappears into the darkness above.

The rest of the group climb up the wall, one after the other. Thanks to Kane’s rope, their ascents are without incident.

The Blood Fountain and the Plinths

Despite all traveling to the same place, the group finds that they are all curiously separated from one another once they reach the top of the wall. From here, until the end of the next section, they experience the same environments, but are, for all intents and purposes, alone.

The first thing that they see is a great fountain, its central statuary carved into the shape of four intertwined snakes. From the mouths of these snakes, hot, frothy blood pumps into the basin below. Most of the group, walks past the fountain and down a nearby corridor, wanting little to do with it. A few that experiment with the blood, such as Dr. Black, finds that it heals the wounds in his hands.

Kane and Judge Putnam are brave enough to drink from the fountain. This closes the wounds in their hands and fully heals them. Both men dare to drink from the fountain again, finding their minds abuzz with new and forbidden knowledge.

Beyond the fountain, at the end of the hallway, each member of the group sees a pair of closed leaden portals. The portals have a dial on them, and an indicator that points to one quadrant of the dials.

However, each of the members of the group instinctively realizes that they must first deal with four tall plinths arranged in a semi-circle across the passageway. All four are identical in shape and size, and all have a deep hole in them capable of admitting a single human arm. Bronze statuettes atop each plinth differentiate them as possibly being altars of the various gods of the Nameless City. They include, from left to right: a goat, a faceless sphinx, a serpent, a collection of spheres—or eyes.

The plinths react differently to each member of the group. For most, they are inert. For some, however, they either broadcast waves of sympathy or waves of antipathy. Notable examples include:

• The Sphinx Plinth calls to Vivian and attempts to draw Ron to it with unseemly eagerness.
• The Serpent Plinth is repellent to Judge Putnam and Mikhail, and seems to actively hate Vivian and Ron.
• All of the Plinths seem to hate Dr. Black more or less equally.

One by one, the members of the group choose a plinth and slide their forearm into the hole inside of it. Metal rings clamp around their elbows and wrists, and a symbol is painfully burned into their wrists. Their results are as follows:

• Dr. Black: Chooses the Serpent Plinth, which seems to hate him least. Just as the brand touches his wrist, he hears a cold, distant voice in his mind say, “no. This one is mine.” He is marked with a symbol of three gently waving lines, the sigil of Nodens of the Great Abyss.
• Vivian:  Chooses the Sphinx Plinth. A voice tells her, “I knew you would play for me eventually!” She is marked with the symbol she spotted long ago on the bottom of the Jade Sphinx.
• Ron: Chooses the Sphinx Plinth. A voice tells him, “Ah, Ronald, you were always mine!” He is marked with the same symbol as Vivian, which is the sigil of Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.
• Mikhail: Chooses the Sphinx Plinth. He gets a mark identical to Ron and Viv, but receives no special treatment.
• Judge Putnam: Chooses the Serpent Plinth. The branding process is especially painful. He is marked with the symbol of a coiled snake, the sigil of Yig, Father of Serpents. Yig is astonished at the hubris of the judge, who dared to raise his hand against one of Yig’s children, but is interested to see what the judge will do in the future.
• Kane: Chooses the Spheres Plinth. He is branded with a mark that looks like a cluster of spheres, the sigil of Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate.
• Johnny: Chooses the Spheres Plinth. He, too, is branded with the sigil of Yog-Sothoth.

Having received their brands, the members of the group withdraw their arms from their respective plinths. They find that they are all together again, the wounds in their hands all healed. Pushok is also there, looking confused and worried.

Dr. Black spends the next little while tending to his wounded friends and patching them up as best as he can.

The Leaden Doors

The London Group, relieved to be together again, moves forward to inspect the disc upon the leaden doors. It has four quadrants which depict: Some kind of tentacled worm; a sun-like symbol; a step pyramid; and a serpent’s skull.

Johnny uses the ritual that he learned from the Necronomicon to track Carl Stanford’s phylactery. As he sprinkles the Powder of Ibn-Ghazi upon the journal that contains the instructions for the Gate Box ritual, a beam of blue-white light erupts from the book and passes through the doors.

After some discussion, Johnny remembers that the Veiled Sage said that, “Carl Stanford’s phylactery lies within the catacombs of the Nameless City.” He assumes that the serpent’s skull, being a symbol of death, might indicate the pathway to the catacombs. The rest of the group agrees that this is plausible and turns the disk until the serpent skull rests beneath the indicator.

The doors unlock and swing open, revealing a long, trapezoidal hallway lined with niches. Crystal boxes stand in these niches. Spheres of glass, half-full of silver liquid, and set into the walls on metal sconces, burn with ethereal flames that illuminate the hallway with a dim, fitful light.

The beam of Johnny’s spell continues down the hallway. The group follows it.

The Cult of the Silver Twilight

Did You Miss Us?

The catacombs of the city are large and maze-like, and so the group proceeds with caution. After traveling for some time, they notice two people in robes and masks standing over a low, wooden table.

Realizing that the habiliments of the cultists are identical to the ones that the group found in Duncan MacBain’s stores back in the Canyon of Devils, the group retreat, disguise themselves in those robes and masks, and attempt to approach the cultists as equals.

The two cultists are very bored and, at least initially, accept the group’s presence without question. They have been tasked with guarding the table, which is actually a makeshift wooden stretcher with folding legs. A third person, dressed in full cultist regalia, has been secured to the board with metal bands. A long, slender box, which seems to be attached to the wooden stretcher, rests uncomfortably between the trapped person’s legs.

Through careful interrogation, the group learns that most of the cultists went forward to, “prepare the way,” and to meet with various serpent priests who were already at the Bone Ziggurat. The bored cultists are hopeful that the London Group have been sent back by the other cultists to let them know it’s time to bring their imprisoned charge into the city proper.

One of the bored cultists becomes suspicious of the group, but only realizes that they are not his erstwhile companions when Vivian starts talking. He pulls a gun from beneath his robes and points it at Vivian.

“There’s no women in the Order of Silver Twilight,” says the cultist, with smug triumph.

Johnny, who had been prepared for this, blows the cultist away with his shotgun.

The other cultist tries to draw his gun, only to have it catch on his voluminous robes. He runs. Ron chases him down, but Dr. Black manages to Wrack the cultist before Ron can reach him. The cultist collapses, howling in insensate, brutal agony. Johnny calmly walks up to the helpless cultist and blows him to smithereens.

Old Enemies

The man affixed to the board is none other than Bryan Slim. He is raving, weeping, and insane, but is very, very happy to realize that he has been rescued (sort of) by the London Group. He begs the group to free him and warns that the other cultists could come back at any time.

While he talks, Ron removes the Ouroboros Ring from Slim’s finger and puts it on. Dr. Black opens up the slender box between Slim’s legs and discovers that it contains Carl Stanford’s enchanted cane.

Talk quickly turns to figuring out how to destroy the enchanted cane. Slim panics, and tells the group that they don’t need to do that. He tells the group that they should bring the cane with them and retreat back to the cultists’ base camp. He explains that there is a book there that contains a spell which will allow the group to banish Carl Stanford’s soul from his body.

Ron, suspicious of Slim’s sudden lucidity, asks Mikhail and Judge Putnam what to make of the man. The judge and Mikhail agree that Slim sounds like a different person, and are fairly certain that he has, once again, been possessed by Carl Stanford’s more assertive and stronger personality. Ron, infuriated at the deception, punches the imprisoned Slim, knockout out a tooth and severely concussing the trapped man. Slim gurgles and sinks into unconsciousness.

While the rest of the group decides what to do next, Dr. Black takes up the blade of Marcus once again and chops Carl Stanford’s cane cleanly in half. Sparks flash and pop as the stored magic within departs.

Ron, meanwhile, feels called to awaken the magical power of his new Ouroboros Ring. He does so, but the necessary psychic energy needed to energize the ring is too much for him physically and mentally. He collapses. Vivian, realizing what has happened, grabs Ron’s hand and expends her psychic energy, hoping it will be enough to both power the ring and save Ron’s life.

As Dr. Black resuscitates Ron, Mikhail notices a very tall person in cult regalia coming down the hallway toward them. Mikhail goes to intercept this figure, only for them to laugh and call to Mikhail by name. The figure then removes his mask, revealing the handsome, albeit completely hairless, face of an Egyptian man. Mikhail falls back. Ron, who has by this point regained consciousness, approaches the man he knows to be an aspect of the Many-Faced Stranger and tries to talk with him.

The conversation rambles all over. It involves the Stranger taking the shape of Turki Nazar to taunt Ron and the London Group, the Stranger yelling at Ron for allowing Nodens to find and destroy the Dagger of Nephrem-Ka, the Stranger giggling at the machinations of both the London Group and the Silver Twilight, and Ron desperately trying (and failing) to get a straight answer about anything.

Ron attempts to remove the ring from his finger, so that he can give it to the Stranger, and is dismayed to discover that the ring will not come off. The Stranger says, “no no. You keep that. We will do this again in a month. Is there anything else, Ronald?”

Ron then asks the Stranger to heal him. This leads to a very unpleasant scene where the Stranger demands to know which member of the London Group Ron likes the least.

“And I know it’s not Vivian, so don’t even try it.”

Ron, loyal to his friends, refuses to name anyone. The Stranger quickly grows bored and, with a wave of his hand, takes a small amount of vitality from everyone in the London Group (including Pushok) and transfers it into Ron. He then departs.

The moment he is out of sight, the Ouroboros Ring slides off of Ron’s finger and clatters onto the stones.

It is also at this point that Kane and Judge Putnam, their minds reeling from the overwhelming presence of the Stranger and from the secret knowledge they had gained from the Blood Fountain, collapse screaming in terrified madness.

The Real Turki Nazar? Or Merely A Disguise?