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Welcome to A Ravenous Hunger, a second edition Trail of Cthulhu actual play performed by
the 12-sided stories radio theater.
Now your keeper, Wes Otis.
Welcome to A Ravenous Hunger, episode two, a second edition Trail of Cthulhu actual play.
I'm your keeper, Wes Otis, and this episode is sponsored by Pelgrane Press.
Right now you can back Trail of Cthulhu second edition on Backer Kit.
We'd like to thank the wonderful people at Pelgrane Press for sponsoring this episode.
Now without further ado, let's meet our wonderful cast.
Let's start with Lev.
Hello, I am Lev.
I use they, them pronouns and today I'll be playing Matilda Mendoza.
I also use the they, them pronouns, a medical student with some kind of a history with the
building with the old swimming pool.
Hi, I'm Jen, aka Youngles, aka Jen.
I'll be playing Mack, who is as annoying as they sound.
Hello everyone.
My name is Candice, also known as Candice the Magnificent.
My pronouns are they, she, and I am playing Lashawn Roberts, the journalism student that's
all about the vibes, not the story.
Everyone's going to have the story.
We've got to have the vibes.
A journalism student at Miss Katana Q.
Hey, I'm Michelle and I am playing Dot, your friendly history major who probably has zero
idea of what she's getting herself into.
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Head to 12-sided stories Patreon today.
This is a great place for a recap.
In the last episode, we met all of our wonderful players and their characters and how they
got introduced into going to Missatonic.
We also learned that Matilda has this obsession with a building that they all decided, hey,
we're going to break into this building because we're going to help Matilda out.
Obviously, being on the outside is not what they need.
I didn't ask for this.
I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that.
As they were getting prepped, some of them were getting prepped, others were eating cold
pancakes and dressing in a nightgown.
Carbs is a prep?
Come on.
Carbs is a prep.
Yeah, definitely.
A storm rolled in and dumped feet of snow, a huge blizzard, onto the campus.
The campus was in the middle of the yearly shutdown where people are finishing up their
courses and heading back home for the holidays.
There's not as many people on campus, but it also hadn't been that cold.
The day was perfectly sunny.
There's been some snow, but not really sticking.
For people who are used to the cold, you all have gotten used to it over the last couple
of years of being there.
You spend your days outside while you can because you know, obviously, in a few hours
in this instance, but soon you would not be able to hang out outdoors anymore.
You heard glass break, you heard some screaming, and you all found each other.
Well, three of them found each other.
One of them was eating pancakes.
And then you went upstairs to where Lashon's favorite reefer place is to look around because
it's on the roof of the building.
And you ran into Professor Wilkes, who is a art teacher.
She's very discombobulated by all of this.
Told you to meet her in the mess hall and then went down while you were going back upstairs.
You saw that the ladder was down, which means that Edward, who also smokes up there every
once in a while, probably went up there as well.
They are notorious for leaving the ladder down.
When you got up there, sure enough, Edward was there, but he's lying on the ground and
he had large portions of himself missing.
It looks like maybe bite marks, but you can't tell you haven't gotten close enough.
And we ended with him turning his head towards you and starting to rise up, even though the
bite of his neck is so bad that there's no way that he is living.
So that's where we pick it up right now.
Edward is starting to get up off the ground.
It is extremely cold.
And you look out and you see that there snow has blanketed everything.
What do you want to do?
He's not moving that quick and I believe one of you has outdoor survival.
I do.
Okay.
Yeah, you have two points.
Okay.
So here's the deal with the investigation points really quick.
If you have a point, you are in a scene and you say, hey, I've got a point for X, Y and
Z. Is there any clues?
You get the clue.
There's no rolling for it.
Okay.
Which is why I like the system is because you guys will never miss a clue.
It's about giving information and then you do what you want with that information.
That's the key part.
The second thing is you'll notice you have multiple points and stuff.
You can spend those points to get little bonuses and things like that.
It's a shorter game.
You will want to make sure that you use your points wisely, but there are also going to
be opportunities where I will give you a pool of points that you can use together as well.
So Michelle, I will say just because you have outdoor survival straight off the bat, you
feel like the wind and the cold is so bad that you're looking at frostbite within the
next 10 to 15 minutes and even possibly hypothermia.
I will say because I know that Matilda is a medical student, it's really cold and the
storm hit maybe 15 minutes ago, maybe 20 minutes ago at most.
Depending on when this happened, Edward shouldn't be able to move as easily as he seems to be
moving.
So those are the two things that I will point out as this corpse is getting up.
I'll also ask for a stability check.
So everybody roll against your stability.
You're trying to get a four.
You can spend your stability points if you want.
But remember, this is the first real fright, except for poor Lev.
All of you can spend points from your stability pool.
This is a shorter game, so you're not going to regenerate these points like we do in like
sort of the serpentine.
So just spend them wisely.
Tell me how many you want to spend.
Roll your die, add the two together, try to beat a four.
All right, I'm going to spend two.
I spent two and I rolled a two.
I'm going to also spend two just in case.
OK.
Hedging your bet.
I gambled and rolled a five.
Didn't spend any.
I got six.
OK.
I got a three.
With the points?
Yeah.
Oh.
Excellent.
What are you all upset about?
That's great.
Michelle?
I rolled a two and I had two points, so four.
Oh, right there.
Great.
All right.
Great.
I'm going to leave you guys.
I'm going to just leave Lashawn to deal with the horrors by themselves.
I will say, the dice are telling a story right now because Lashawn is the only person who
actually knows this guy.
Yeah, that's true.
That is true.
So let's start with Lashawn.
What does Lashawn do?
I'm going to leave it up to you.
Do you freak out and run away?
Do you attack it?
Do you faint?
You know, what are the classic reactions to, holy shit, there's a walking corpse?
I think Lashawn stops dead in their tracks and they're the first one out the door, so
they're the closest to it.
And they hold up a mom arm when you slam on the brakes.
They hold up the arm to stop everyone else.
And they see it and they just slap themselves in the face a couple of times.
Blink.
And then I think they rush it, try to shoulder check it.
Oh shit.
OK, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Let me take a look real quick.
They deal with creeps all the time, like at the club.
There were a lot of people diving at jazz band members in the 30s.
I totally get that.
Well, you know, parking lot.
People get thrown out for being too drunk and then you got to face them when you leave
the parking lot.
I mean, and then you got to remember it wasn't just drinking.
All that heroin makes people really excited.
That right there.
Something.
And this is why Reefer Madness was a good thing.
In hindsight, true.
Let's go ahead and do scuffle.
How many points do you want to put in it?
Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to spend one point.
Let me know what you get.
A three.
So that's a four.
Excellent.
So you run at Edward full bore, slam into him.
You both fall to the ground.
His neck was already damaged.
So when his head hits the ground, you can hear a snap as his spinal cord gives way.
And then his head rolls several feet away.
He stops moving.
Fuck.
Oh, fuck.
I told you they'd be killing.
They double over and kind of excuse themselves and get sick like behind one of the turbines.
OK.
And they come back.
Oh, that's my buddy, Eddie.
Or what was my buddy, Eddie.
We come up here and we fucking we smoke and we talk about our day.
He's an accounting major.
I don't fuck while they're talking.
Can I go like look at just like the bites and the way his body is?
It's so cold that like like this shouldn't have been possible.
I mean, besides the obvious, it shouldn't have been possible, but it extra shouldn't
have been possible.
Yeah, absolutely.
Obviously you have medicine.
So you walk over and you notice that he has carvings on his chest.
Some weird symbol.
It has a lot of markings on it.
You can't quite figure out what they represent.
So I don't think you have a cult, but maybe you can show it to somebody that has experience
in a cult.
I have a cult.
OK.
Well, if you go and look over Matilda's shoulder at the markings on the chest, there's a circle
with a lot of Greek letters.
You know Greek, but some of this might be ancient Greek and that's a little outside
of your knowledge, but you do recognize some of it.
There's also a slash in the middle of circle.
It too looks incomplete, but it doesn't seem like it's going to be a pentagram.
It looks fresh.
So this just happened recently, probably around the time he was attacked.
The bite marks there of all different sizes, but they are not human.
None of them are human.
They all do.
They all look like canine teeth or like not not canine.
It isn't like dog, but canine isn't like elongated sharp sharp teeth.
It looks like elongated sharp teeth, but all of the teeth are elongated and sharp, not
just like sharky almost almost sharky.
Correct.
So do they like, do they bite in and hold and then release or do they bite in and rip
out?
Bite in and rip.
Like they're taking big chunks out.
Okay.
I think Matilda has fully disregarded the fact that they're the full letter to their
sister on the inside of this folded paper, but it's just like writing all of this down
and trying to think of what kind of land animal has teeth like that and really clinically
moving them around, not disrespectfully, but just very like, all right, this was a person
and now it is not.
Well like a coroner would.
Yeah.
After doing all that, you only have five minutes left until hyperthermia and all that starts
setting in.
Is there anything else you want to do right now or do you want to get back inside?
Do you want to take the body with you or do you want to leave it up here?
So I think Lashawn stands up and like after kind of staring at this corpse's face for
like a couple of seconds, they kind of snap back to it and they take their notebook out
and they start taking notes.
The things that they look for are like any footprints that are out here.
They go through his pockets to see if there's anything on him that might indicate who or
what could have done this to him.
And then I feel like they just squat there next to the corpse for a minute, just kind
of again taking him in and they take out a cigarette this time and smoke that.
And it's like the first cigarette I think any of you have ever seen them smoke.
It's almost like they keep a few in their cigarette case full of joints for like special
occasions or whatever.
They're smoking that cigarette and just kind of staring, memorizing the wounds in his face
since they don't have a camera.
Okay.
So you pull out the cigarette.
What kind of lighter do you have?
Oh, it's an old fashioned one, like a silver one that has their initials monogrammed on
it.
And you keep clicking at it and clicking at it and the wind keeps just blowing hard
and you're looking at the corpse and a few feet away is his face staring back sideways
at you.
And you just feel this overwhelming sense of frustration trying to light this goddamn
cigarette.
All you need is this tobacco right now.
And so for some fucking reason, you cannot get this thing to light.
You're just compulsively trying to start it as your fingers get colder and your face gets
numb.
You might come kneel next to them and just be a shield for the flame.
I don't think I'm going to say anything.
I think Matilda has gotten used to dead bodies in more ways than one.
And I think they forget that other people, well, they're a corner student and also like
they see a dead lady in their dreams every night.
They've kind of forgotten that this is unnatural for a lot of people.
So I think trying to like offer support in a not obtrusive way.
Right.
And to be clear, the only reason you needed to make a stability check was the whole moving
corpse thing.
So for sure.
All right.
So, yeah, finally you get that cigarette lit and the smell of tobacco and everything else
hits your nose and fills your lungs and it definitely calms you down.
But it is definitely very cold.
Jen, what does Mac want to do?
Mac wants to go get the camera out of the art building.
OK, so but you're going to have to figure out how to do that.
Because I feel like Mac is like internally upset, but externally, like this is no big
deal.
So it's kind of like, why don't you take a picture to last longer?
And then it's like, we wait a minute.
We should we should take pictures.
OK, cool.
Yeah, I'm trying.
I'm trying to get everything down in my mind so that I can tell somebody about it.
I know there's a few art students that do like realistic sketches.
I figure if I if I take enough notes, I can get something that looks pretty.
But there's a Derby in the art build that new camera that's like this big.
We could get we could get we could get it.
Listen, walking corpses, don't try to sway me from the real problem.
There's a real problem here.
No one's going to believe us if we don't have a footage journalist.
No one's going to hear us if we're frozen.
You're right.
That's a very good point.
We need to go inside.
LeSean goes inside and does not put the cigarette out.
No, of course not.
Why would you?
It's the 30s.
They don't give a fuck.
They let you smoke inside.
You smoke in a hospital.
That's true.
I was going to say you can smoke in a hospital.
I don't even know if they're washing their hands at this point.
Yeah, they do that.
But just barely.
It really just barely.
Depends on the hospital.
Smoke alarms, sprinklers.
Those are things of the future.
You know, nurse, I'm not sure what this black lung disease is that all these people are
dying from.
Nobody knows.
But I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Anyway.
Doc told me I should start up to help with my hanged hands.
Yeah, lucky strikes are the most healthy cigarettes.
That's what I've been told.
Anyway, all of you, get back down inside.
Do you do anything with the corpse?
You just leave it up there.
I mean, it's refrigerated, so I mean, it's up to you.
Yeah, no, I'm leaving it up there.
It's probably better outside.
Yeah, I'd say we leave it.
Before we go back inside with the last of my like shuddering cold before it turns into
not good warm.
To numbness.
Yeah, to numbness.
I'd like to look over the side of the building and see how high the snow has come, if it's
gotten higher than the door.
And if there are any, again, just like looking for tracks or figures or if anyone is trying
to make a trek.
It's eight feet.
And if anyone's in it, they're under it.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, that's better than tracks like eight foot up on the snow.
That's so true.
That is better.
It could be worse.
If there were tracks, it would be upsetting.
Yes, it kind of would be.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like I said, there's no sunlight, but the snow has stopped.
There is just the whipping wind.
There's no no more snow is accumulating.
OK, you all climb back down inside the building.
Your hands are half frozen.
Your bodies are half frozen.
Let me tell you what's going on.
The art teacher is in the kitchen.
You have not discovered where the breaking glass is.
Or if there's any other students or faculty in this building at this point, you haven't
really seen people move around.
And one of you at some point will remember that there is a basement and more than likely
that is where the furnace and the generator is, you know, that with all of that information,
where would you like to go next?
I love a basement reveal in a TTRPG.
Yeah, I feel like everyone's like, yeah, is there a basement?
We got to go.
Obviously, we need to go.
There could be all their cameras in the basement.
It's going to be horrible, but we're going to the basement.
We might even find a secret tunnel.
I feel like Leshawn has checked out.
They're just smoking through their cigarette at this point.
I think the only thing they say is Eddie's room.
When you guys are like, where should we go?
That's our sole contribution.
We're not going there.
We're going to go to the basement.
I think we should check there at some point.
It's a good idea.
The furnace is down there.
Yes, I meant we should check Eddie's room at some point.
But yes, about the furnace, because it's fucking cold in here and it's going to get colder.
The snow stopped falling, but it is eight-ish feet deep.
Yeah.
I also think that maybe the thing that bit him is in his room.
Maybe we shouldn't go in there.
That's true.
If it's in his room, it might find a way out of its room.
In there, it's at least contained.
Right.
If it comes out of his room, it's less contained.
Shouldn't we hit it while it's contained?
Or we should just not go get our necks chomped at and go to maybe the basement.
What happened to murder?
What happened to doing death?
I mean...
Oh, I'll do the death, but I don't know what bit him.
I mean, I hate to say this.
If whatever bit him is looking for more food, it's going to go where all the people are.
And I'm pretty sure that anybody in their right mind is going to go to the furnace room.
So maybe we're two birds with one stone zinging.
All right.
So the basement?
Can we grab knives from the kitchen first?
If you want to.
Yeah.
Before we enter the kitchen though, LaShawn holds up their now-patented mom arm and says,
but guys, what's her name?
Wilkes?
Professor Wilkes.
Professor Wilkes is in the kitchen.
So unless we want to become a party of five, I think we should probably maybe, I don't
know, send one or two people in rather than all of us going in there.
So do only two of you go in?
I love a split party.
That made me not confident.
That's my job.
Mack could go in because Mack often steals from the kitchen.
So it wouldn't be unlike them to be there.
I was going to say for the same reasons.
I nominate Mack to go in because out of all of us, they're the most likely to be grabbing
a knife from the kitchen.
Sorry, Mack.
No, no.
I work hard for that reputation.
I'll take it.
I love the Urkel-esque way you're doing this character with the voice.
That's good.
That's pretty awesome.
So is anyone going to go with Mack or are all of you scared?
I think LaShawn's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's just go.
I can distract her with some bureaucratic mumbo jumbo if she asks any questions.
I love that.
Maybe Matilda and I just kind of hang on the other side of the door.
That way we're not too far apart.
Okay.
If anything weird happens though, are you going to send a signal?
Of course.
Yeah, screaming in Muppet arms.
Yeah, if I was going to say, if by a signal you mean screaming, help, help.
Yeah, I'll send a signal.
Cool.
Okay.
You two, Mack and LaShawn, walk into the mess hall downstairs while the others are in the
main room and you see Professor Wilkes standing on top of one of the tables completely still.
Oh, fuck.
I'll get right back to the two of you.
Uh oh.
Dot and Matilda, you hear the sound of people yelling from the second floor.
Is anyone there?
Anybody?
Hello?
We don't have any lights up here.
And you can tell that it's Tilly, who is a science student.
And you can also hear Rob yelling, who is a history student and kind of a prick.
So it's up to you two if you want to go help them out, but they obviously don't have the
flashlights or torches as they might have been called.
I'm going to turn my flashlight on up the stairs.
I'm not going to yell or anything, but so that they can see a light.
Yeah.
All right, cool.
Jumping back inside.
That makes me nervous.
Professor Wilkes is standing on this table completely still.
She is usually very nervous, very energetic, but now she's completely still standing.
So what do the two of you do when you see this?
She's standing on a table?
She's standing on a table.
With her shoes?
Yeah, with her shoes.
I mean, come on.
LaShawn's like, Professor Wilkes, I understand the lights are out.
And I get there's a freak storm, but that seems very unlike you.
You're a pretty professional person.
Is everything all right?
We found something scary upstairs.
You don't want to be roaming around here.
She doesn't respond.
She just stands there.
Oh, maybe she's asleep.
All right, I'm going to grab the knife.
You just keep an eye on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm going to keep an eye on her.
I think LaShawn slowly starts back up towards the door and calls over their shoulder.
Little help in here.
Hello?
A little help.
So back to the other two.
Dot and Matilda, you see Tilly and Rob come to the top of the stairs and they go, thank
God there's more people around.
And they come down.
What happened?
What's why is it so dark all of a sudden?
I can't even really look out the windows.
There's snow out there?
Yeah, it's a freak storm.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Tilly's very nervous and Rob goes, I think we'll be okay.
Who's in the kitchen?
Is that LaShawn in there?
Are they looking for more food?
Got to get off that fucking reefer they're smoking all the time.
You know, I've read stuff that it's bad and they're just blowing their brains out with
that stuff.
Meanwhile, LaShawn is saying, help, please, please help.
There is a situation.
I think Matilda and Dot shoot each other a look and then I would go straight in.
I'm going to speak for Matilda.
I think I give Rob a look of like, don't be a jackass.
That's a valid look.
Yeah.
And then I think Matilda also has a soft spot for Tilly because I think we have the same
name but there were two Matildas in the dorm room and one of us had to change.
So the other Matilda changed to Tilly.
And so I think I have a soft spot for her for singularly that reason.
And I'll say, you should go bundle up.
It's going to get cold in here.
Yeah.
I'll do that.
And take Captain Stupid Ass over with you.
Yeah, I will.
Just so you all know, because I didn't do this in the first place, Tilly Rose is tall,
like six foot, very thin, dark brown skin.
She keeps her hair short.
She sometimes goes by they, but also goes by she.
She is usually very calm person, but is also a science student, so kind of awkward too.
Rob is 5'11", always kind of arrogant and self-centered, light olive skin, really big
brown curly hair, that Greek, like really cool curly thing of hair on top of his head,
and green eyes.
The two of them kind of look at each other and Rob goes, can we borrow your flashlight
until we get back?
Because we don't have one and it's kind of dark.
I mean, unless you want to go with us to get clothes.
No I don't.
Here, I'll give him mine.
You're a peach.
And then he turns around and starts going the opposite way of someone yelling for help.
All right, so let me jump over to Mac real quick.
Mac, you start walking across the mess hall towards the kitchen, correct?
Mm-hmm.
So this is a large cafeteria room.
It's a huge rectangle.
She is on the right hand side towards the windows, towards the outside wall.
Do you want to go towards her and see what's going on with her at all or are you going
directly back?
I think Mac has more of a one track mind because they suppress all of their emotions and have
massive daddy issues.
They're not walking away from her, but they're not really walking towards her either.
They're kind of freaked the fuck out, I think, and just want to focus on, okay, get knives,
get knives, get knives, get knives.
So whatever is happening over here, LaShawn's got it.
I don't have to worry about it.
I'm just going to get knives.
Are you trying to be stealthy at all?
No.
You start making your way across this huge room pretty much down the middle.
It's completely dark, but you can feel the professor following you with her eyes.
She's not moving at all.
And behind you, you sense a presence.
It's not making any noise and you know it's not human, but you know it's there.
Love that for me.
Okay.
I think that Mac would start picking up the pace, but like refusing to look behind them.
Okay, cool.
Like someone who has just seen the ring for the first time.
Excellent.
That is very, yeah, that's a good way to go.
You have your flashlight.
Yeah.
Everybody has a flashlight at this point of the four of you, except for Matilda, who gave
up theirs.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, the two of you run in and you see, you flash your light over Dot and you see
the art teacher on the table.
She's not moving.
You also see Mac walking briskly on the other side down towards where the kitchen is.
And there is a very large figure right behind her that is following.
I'm gonna start following Mac with the thing behind them.
Okay.
What about the other two?
We can see it too.
Yeah, it's there.
It's a shadowy figure.
It seems to be, I like the word undulating as it's moving right behind Mac about maybe
three or four feet.
And Mac's not at the door yet, right, to the back room?
No, Mac's not at the door to the kitchen yet.
Hey, Mac, I'm gonna need you to hang a right around those tables up there and make your
way on back here so that we can go into the kitchen together.
I know you're gonna want to ask a bunch of questions, friend, but now is not the time.
And I think Mac just does what LaShawn says because LaShawn never tells me what to do
ever.
They know better that I will probably do the opposite.
And so I don't do the opposite for once in my life and do exactly what they say and take
a right and come back.
I'd like a fleeing roll.
I believe you have that.
And tell me how many points you'd like to spend before you make the roll.
I have 10, so I'm gonna do three just in case.
Okay, cool.
I got a five.
Excellent.
So you beat feet, not actually run because you're too cool for that, but you walk quickly.
It's definitely an 80s power walk kind of vibe and you make your way around.
And as soon as this thing starts coming around the corner back towards all of you and you're
kind of shining your light, you notice that when you hit it with light, it dissipates.
And by the time Mac arrives back, it has disappeared altogether.
You guys good?
Yeah, there was a there was a there was a dot.
Do you want to take this one?
The best I can describe it is like a walking shadow that was following you.
But like not your shadow.
It wasn't like it was on its own.
It was a shadow without a person making it.
Lashawn draws like their best approximation of it in their field notebook and then shows
it to Mac.
As I'm behind Mac, I'm gonna like I'm gonna make enough noise so that they know it's me
and I'm gonna touch your back just so you know it's me.
And I'm gonna like pat down their back to make sure it didn't, I don't know, like slither
into their coat or something and just see if something shakes out.
Nope, nope, nothing shakes out.
Very confused right now as to why they are being touched.
But Mac, look at the picture.
I don't think knives are gonna help much then.
No, but I will say Lashawn's picture, they are a jazz musician.
So it more looks like a shadowy chateau and not so much of a large shadowy figure.
This is the general shape, okay?
I never said I was an artist.
I mean it was big, sure.
It was big, yeah.
Any of the details.
Hmm.
Right.
But size-wise, you got it.
I'm really worried about this thing because you know if light disturbs it, I mean it could
be anywhere.
Did it go away?
Is it in another plane of dimension?
What?
It literally seemed like it evaporated when you hit it with light.
And what's she doing?
Lashawn like points up like there's a weird shadowy creature in this room and she's just
standing there staring.
Matilda, I feel like this is your territory.
Yeah.
You sit and stare a lot so what's going on with it?
Yeah, thanks.
You hear Rob behind you suddenly.
Alright ladies, what's going on in here?
First off, not all of us are ladies.
Not all of us, yes.
Oh god.
Thank you.
Fuck.
Second off, give me my fucking flashlight back and I'll snap you out of this again.
Alright, no need to get all angry at me.
Jeez.
Stay in the light.
Just stay in the light.
Tilly, why didn't you leave him upstairs?
I did try.
I'll be honest, but he won't say this but he's very afraid.
I'm not afraid.
I'm fine.
Look, I just want to know what's going on.
I'm sorry I forgot about the whole ladies thing and what that does to everyone.
I apologize.
But I think that as the senior here, I am probably the most capable of figuring out
how to help us in this situation.
I'm absolutely ignoring him and I'm shining the flashlight in Dr. Wilkes' face to see
if it does, if she reacts, like if her eyes contract or whatever.
No, they don't.
And she's muttering something very low under her breath.
You can kind of see her mouth moving a little bit.
Can I look for like if she has a concussion?
If her like, if there's like blood on her head, if she looks like any kind of injury?
You'd have to get closer.
Fuck, okay.
I'm going to climb up on the table and try to just get her to make eye contact with me
because like from what I've learned when I pay attention in class, if she's conscious,
you should get their attention and try and get their side of it, symptoms and signs and
all that shit.
So Matilda just walks in straight for the table and Rob literally goes, wait a minute,
are we sure this is the right thing to do?
I mean, what happens?
I mean, she seems like she's fine.
I thought you were the big man on campus.
I thought you wanted to handle all the little ladies.
Why don't you go over there and work your man magic?
Yeah, you come up here.
Why don't you come up here?
Yeah, that's a really good point.
No, no, I think that you all need your independence right now and that's fine.
And you're obviously all upset about what's going on.
If you're not going to help, you're out on your ass.
You can't be in the group if you're not going to be in the group.
Either you go up there and you inspect her or you go back to your room.
All right, fine.
I'll help out.
And he walks a few feet behind Matilda.
Tilly's like, guys, we need to get out of here quick.
Let's get out of here.
Where are we going to go, Tilly?
I don't know.
Just somewhere besides here.
Who's going to pick her up?
I mean, the furnace is going to let off a lot of light as well as heat.
So maybe that's still our trajectory.
That sounds good to me.
And the generator is down there too.
Yeah, warmth.
That's good too.
So the two of you, Matilda first, get up on the table and she's muttering something.
I'm going to pass him down the flashlight and I'm going to say you keep it trained on
her unless there's a shadow that moves.
Don't ask questions.
That's your job.
Got it?
Uh oh.
Okay.
And then I'll...
When you get up to her, you notice that she has blood seeping through her shirt.
It is the carving that Edward had, but different.
It has a different mark on it.
You're looking around and she does have some bite marks in her, but they're not as big.
And she is alive.
You can see that because the blood that's coming out of her chest, it looks like it's
almost syncopated with her heart, which is very low.
And she just sits there and she's muttering something.
You can make it out if you want to write it down, but she's not responding to your presence
at all.
If she's not responding to my presence at all, I'm going to start repeating what she's
saying so LaShawn can hear me.
And then I'm going to just start trying to guide her down to not standing so that I can
put pressure on her wounds.
Because if it's pulsing with her heart, that's not a good thing, I'm pretty sure.
No, it's not good at all.
It's in fact very bad as I remember it.
So I'm going to try and lay her down and get her any extra bits of shirt that anyone has.
I'm going to just start pressing down on her.
So when you try to move her, it's like moving a statue because all of her muscles are engaged
and she is rigid, standing as straight as possible, which freaks you out a little bit
because if she was doing this the whole time, her heart would be going faster.
So that doesn't make any sense.
And she's very heavy, rubs behind you holding the flashlight up.
What do you want to do?
Do you want to call over to the others and get help?
And what do the others want to do?
Are you just flashing your flashlight over?
I think that's basically what Lashawn is doing.
Lashawn is like head on a swivel looking around for this thing to come back.
I'm going to say to Mac, I know the knives may not do us any good, but do you want to
go to the kitchen and see if they have extra flashlights?
Yeah, totally.
Batteries too, probably.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the two of you start going there.
Lashawn, you notice suddenly it's just you and Tilly and Tilly's like, hey, this is
weird that we're, you know, stuck in the snow.
I really don't know what to say right now.
You're cooler than I am.
So what should we be doing?
I mean, I think right now we should be keeping a close eye on our friends, make sure they're
okay.
And by friends, I mean, Matilda.
Yeah, no, I get that.
I mean, Rob drives me nuts.
He's constantly hitting on me and it's just, anyway, should we go help them?
Let's get a little bit closer, but I'm still trying to keep an eye out.
You don't understand.
Before you guys came in, this thing was, it wasn't overly fast, but it was creepy and
I don't know how long or how far it can stretch to get someone.
We found a body upstairs.
It can stretch?
I think so.
It's a shadow.
Oh, I thought you guys were kidding.
No, unfortunately, I'm being very serious right now.
Okay, let's go in.
She takes your hand.
Yeah.
I'm just going to take my hand and like, I just keep kind of shining the flashlight around
and like looking left, back, center, right.
And then I'll turn around, do side, side, and then the other side.
Candice is totally doing the sniper moves from a video game.
Correct.
But with the flashlight.
Yeah, exactly.
Matilda, you're trying to move this body and you hear Rob behind you goes, need any help?
No.
Sure.
It kind of looks like you need some help.
Shut up.
So she's looking straight up, right?
She's looking straight ahead.
Straight ahead.
Because she was following with her eyes Mac when Mac tried the first time.
Now she's following Mac and Dot as they're making their way across.
So she's been locked on Mac the entire time?
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm going to cover her eyes then and see if that makes a difference.
So I just.
She doesn't move.
She stays completely still, still mumbling her words.
Can I tell what she's saying?
Yes.
It is some kind of string of Greek.
She is not Greek.
I'll turn to Rob.
Hey.
You've, you talked about going to visit family in like Athens, right?
Yeah, I have.
This is, she's, I mean, do you know, I'm not, I'm not like going to make an assumption because
your family's Greek that you know Greek because like my family's, I don't, anyway.
Do you know what, can you tell what she's saying?
I mean, my grandmother always speaks Greek to me and I can pick up a few words if you'd
like my help.
Are you going to make me say it?
Well, I mean, you were very mad at me just a few minutes ago.
That hasn't changed.
It's nice knowing you need help.
Every once in a while though, everybody needs help.
Rob, will you please help me understand what Dr. Wilkes is saying?
Sure.
He jumps up on the table, hands you the flashlight and starts to listen.
I'm going to keep her eyes covered because I don't like her following Mac with her eyes.
Right.
Absolutely.
We'll get back to you.
Mac and Dot, the two of you are going across the way.
Every once in a while, you'll see the flash of Lashawn's light and you finally make it
to the kitchen and nobody's following you this time.
What do you want to grab from here?
We want to see if there's extra extra flashlights, if there are any batteries.
Where's the junk drawer?
Yeah, there's one junk drawer.
You grab batteries, you grab the flashlights, there are knives, you can have knives.
So you grab all this stuff together and you notice that the walk-in freezer is open and
inside the walk-in freezer is Dr. Bowen, one of the medical teachers.
He's older, he's in his 50s and Jane is in there and Francis is in there.
They're both students and they've left the door open, but you can tell that they're all
in shock.
I'm going to say, you guys should come out.
It's dangerous to be in there for too long.
Francis replies to you.
We turned off the electricity.
It's not cold in here.
He seems very dazed, like he's not going to elaborate.
He's a journalism student.
He's got light brown skin, brown eyes.
His hair is usually braided and he looks and he goes, there was something following us
and we ran into here.
Yeah, but you're right.
We should go with you two.
And they come out.
Yeah, and we know it was following you, or at least we saw it.
Light gets rid of it.
Oh, okay.
I toss them a flashlight.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
They take the flashlight and we'll get right back to all of you because I want to see what
happens with Matilda and Rob and Lashawn.
What's up, Michelle?
And just it was Dr. Bowen, Francis and Jane.
Jane is a medical student as well.
She's from Montana and she's got really light skin, blue eyes and is very nice.
She's willing to help in a pinch kind of thing.
All of you are now in the kitchen together.
They are suffering from shock, so you're not sure how much information they can really
relay, but they follow you out of the kitchen.
Back in the mess hall, Rob turns to Matilda and says, the words are kind of hard for me
to understand.
I don't get all of them, but she's saying the same five words over and over again.
And one of them I know is the word for darkness.
Yeah, and at that point, Lashawn, if you're moving towards, you can be with them.
Yeah, I think I'm going to move up.
Yeah.
Okay, since all of you are there together, the three of you can take the professor out
to the main room and everybody from the kitchen will meet you there.
So everyone's all together.
I think once she's down, I'm going to start just like actively trying to tend to her wounds
and just like patch them up so she's not bleeding out.
Not necessarily trying to wake her up or anything because it seems like that's...
Yeah, it's just the state she's in.
I have psychoanalysis.
Can I spend two and roll to see if I know what's wrong with her or can break through
to ask her what happened?
Absolutely.
That's a great idea.
I spent two?
Six.
Perfect.
You start trying to get through to her and in a few minutes, she starts to come out of
this trance.
What happened?
What's...
I was...
I was in the mess hall.
Do you speak Greek, ma'am?
I don't.
I don't speak Greek.
Why?
Ow!
Why is my chest hurt?
Ah!
Something attacked you.
You didn't see anything?
You were saying these five words in the Sean Shows, the like the copied down passage in
their book.
Since I'm there, can I go look at the words because I have Greek.
Okay, cool.
So yeah, you look at the words.
They are not current Greek.
They are ancient Greek and they seem to be, from what you can tell, part of some sort
of spell.
One part of a spell, to be exact.
Rob goes, I mean, now that we have a couple of experienced adults here, what do you all
want to do?
Are we going to go any place but here?
Do you want to trek through eight feet of snow and get hypothermia and then have all
of your organs shut down and then have all of your body parts freeze and then die in
the snow where no one can find you?
Is that what you want?
Jane goes, oh God, let's not talk about that.
That sounds pretty terrible.
Excellent.
And the doctor says, oh, I don't know what's going on.
Whatever that thing was that attacked us, it was big.
It had a bunch of different like strange faces in it.
I feel like I've seen one of them before.
I can't figure out where I saw it before.
What did it look like?
This face that you saw that you didn't know but knew?
The main face that I saw was a woman, middle-aged.
She looked like a Puritan with black clothes and a stern look on her face.
Her face was towards the top, but then there were all these other faces inside of that.
We need to get more light in here.
Yeah.
We could get generators downstairs.
We could get that going.
All right.
Well, that's step two.
Do we want...
I mean, someone needs to stay with Dr. Wilkes.
She's not in any state to move as I've finished tying off the last bandage.
Jane goes, I can stay here with her.
Yeah, you can monitor her.
You're better with the actual living patients than I am.
I nominate Rob.
Rob does...
Yeah, Rob knows Greek.
Rob will be able to understand it.
I also nominate Rob.
Right when Francis was going to say, hey, I'll stay, he stops short when you say Rob
can stay.
Jane gives you a look of utter disappointment, but knows that this is just going to happen.
I know, but I look at Jane and I'm out.
Sorry.
The doctor says, you know what?
I'll stay with her as well.
She's really damaged.
It's going to be safer down there with the heater.
It's possible that George is down there anyway.
George is the janitor.
So, check on him real quick and see if the generator's going and we'll take care of her.
I think Lashonk wordlessly starts to move in the direction of the heater.
Their attention is still clearly on checking to see if this thing comes back.
And I think they snap out of it for a split second and say, Dot, you're good at history,
right?
Like you're...
Do you remember seeing any pictures on campus maybe of an old woman with a black shawl?
Like that description?
Do you remember anything like that?
Yeah, there's a painting.
I know you've seen it.
It's on the second floor.
I think so.
You know what?
Now that you say it, I'm starting to...
It's kind of creepy, so I kind of avoid looking.
Yeah, it is creepy.
Since I have art history, do I know what the painting is?
Yes, you do.
It was painted by a student in 1874.
His name was Jeremy Stone.
Does the painting have a name with it?
It does not.
But there is...
If you mention that name, Mac, it will put a light on in Dot's mind.
And you don't remember what happened with Jeremy Stone, but you know something happened.
You'd have to get back to your building to look up stuff in the library over there.
Okay, and I express that.
Okay.
So do you want to check out the painting or are you guys going to go downstairs to find
out what's going on down there?
I'm of the mind that we should have heat and light a way to stop this thing, whatever it
is, before we maybe necessarily know what it is.
Is that logical?
That sound, right?
That makes sense.
I mean, there's no point freezing to death on the way.
Yeah, that's the bigger issue.
There's eight feet of snow outside and we can't leave, so...
So it's going to be the four of you plus Tilly and Francis heading to the basement.
If you let Tilly, Lashawn, she kind of sticks near you and will frequently take your hand
if you allow her.
The six of you open up the door and you hear what sounds to be like an axe hitting wood
and that's where we're going to end this episode.
I don't like walking into a scene where an axe is already present.
Check out the axe, but you know it's being used.
Right.
Well, thank you all so much for playing.
Thank you all so much for listening and thank you to Pelgrim Press for sponsoring the show.
Let's find out where all these wonderful players are.
Let's start with Candice.
Hello everybody.
I have been Candice Magnificent.
You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky at the Candice Marie and at Candice Magnificent
everywhere else.
If you would like to hear more of Jen and myself playing at Miskatonic University, but
perhaps just a different universe, please check out Shadows Among the Stacks, which is
a live from the Apocalypse production.
You can hear me in Partial Vale, which is a Cosmic Horror meets Fargo audio drama, as
well as the new three Black Halflings podcast, City of the Black Rose, Herald of Shadows.
And if you want more spooky stuff from 12 Sided Stories, you can hear me and a full
cast of characters, including Michelle and Wes as GM in Mothership Beyond the Outer.
And you can catch that as a Patreon or Ko-fi subscriber.
Hello, I'm Love.
You can find me on Twitter at Lego M2, the number 2 RS.
If you want to hear me say more words, you can catch me over at Mayday Roleplay, where
we are hitting a Vampire the Masquerade Chronicle called Vegas by Night.
We're also closing out our last season of Doom to Repeat, the Delta Green actual play
in the coming year.
You can also hear Candice and I on Ghostfy, which is currently running all through the
end of October, made by the wonderful Eli, a system to say goodbye to characters that
you have loved and lost.
Yeah, check it out.
Hi, I'm Jen slash Youngles.
You can find stuff that I do on the internet, usually on Twitter.
I yell into the void there.
But I'm also in God Complex, which is somewhere an interview morium.
And I have some cool stuff coming up, but if you miss me and you don't want to wait
that long, you can check out Voices in the Wood, which is amazing.
You can check out Eat, Say, One Bite Night, which is there's two seasons.
So that's that's plenty of stuff that you can listen to me talk in until the new stuff
comes out.
Hey, I'm Michelle and you can find me on all of the socials at Michoulu.
That's M-I-C-H-U-L-H-U.
You can also find my music and Wes's amazing sound effects if you go to DriveThruRPG and
look for Plate Mail Games.
And I'm Wes Otis and you can find me at Plate Mail Games on all the different socials.
You can find the show at 12, the number, Sided Stories on all the socials.
And then our website is 12SidedStoriesAllwrittenOut, AllOneWord.com.
Come over there to find links to everything.
If you want to talk with us, jump on our Discord and come and tell us how your games are going
and all that good stuff.
If you want to help out the show, join our Patreon or give us a review or give us a shout
out.
Any of those things are helpful.
Whichever one you feel you can do is a big help.
Thank you all so much for playing.
Thank you all so much for listening.
This has been a lot of fun and we will talk to you soon.
Bye everybody.
Bye.