Cthulhu in Anchorage Alaska 

Agent Samantha's Journal-Final Update

When we arrived in Moscow, and met with Eckloff, he told us that he too, had been held captive.  His place of capture had been the Moscow Tractor Factory, and we had to go back there and get more information about what was going on in Tibet. He had overheard that Dumont and company were coming.  Because after Dumont arrived any information would be lost. Eckloff borrowed a truck and drove out there.

It seemed deserted when we arrived.  Since Eckloff and I were the only team members with this type of experience, we snuck in, leaving the others to guard our escape route. With both of us searching, it did not take long to find the paperwork we were looking for (Moscow papers #3) and it did prove useful, as you will see.

We exited the building, and had gotten back to the vehicle just in time.  At some point Gerald Moore had arrived, as had Delmont.  As we to the rendezvous, everyone noticed a thick mist forming. It was pretty apparent they weren’t working together, since the respective groups began fighting with one another.  More of the large flappy bat winged critters appeared, along with some other critters that we couldn’t quite make out. And it was looking to be one of those moments where things were going to go very badly for us.

That’s about when we saw the Egyptian-looking guy.  I can’t really describe him, because when I try to think about him, and what he looked like, the image in my mind is just…gone, replaced with a mouth and big red tongue.  We chatted with him (yes, I know…chatting while all of that was going on.  It doesn’t seem right) for a few minutes, and then he said something about things getting interesting, and walked straight to the building. The stranger yelled something like, “That’s enough!”, and everything just stopped. Some of the critters just disappeared.  I don’t know who or what he was.

As it turns out, I didn’t have much time to look, because that’s when we saw the wolves coming.  The wolves chased the truck for quite some distance.  Looking back on it, I wonder if the wolves were real.  We damn near crashed several times just getting out of the woods.

We made it back to the train station, and caught our next connection.  It was long, boring, and nothing much happened worthy of reporting, other than I saw the Egyptian guy on the train.  It didn’t look like him, but it was him.  I realize that this sounds insane, but FattyB noticed him too, and remarked on it.  I spotted him in the club car bar.  I decided to talk to him, and started walking over to him.  I heard a large explosion from the front of the train, but I kept my focus on the guy.  He got up and walked away.  No one else in the club car gave any indication of an explosion, so I guess that it was just for me.  I went to the bar and ordered a double.  FattyB came in a few minutes later and mentioned that he’d seen the guy.  I just nodded.

Things didn’t start getting interesting until the trip from Lhasa to Khun Li.  That’s the part where we had to ride in a truck caravan.  We bartered, and ended hitching a ride the same day we got to Lhassa.  It was a stroke of luck.  We had to split up, in order to fit everyone in the cabs of the trucks.  I took the first truck, Eckloff took the last, and everyone else was somewhere in between.  My driver told me that Khun Li was having some trouble.  People were disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving bloody trails behind, and that TemCo was in town causing problems.  He said that they were good to work for at first, but that things had changed for the worse lately.  I wasn’t surprised—everything attached to TemCo seems to die.

About 3/4 of the way to Khun Li, I noticed that the third truck had crashed into the back of the second truck.  The drivers stopped the caravan, and we ran to the truck.  The truck had smashed into the side of the mountain. The windshield broken out and the occupants were missing, leaving bloody trails behind.  It was the truck that Curtis, Eckloff’s assistant had been riding in.  DocM had examined the site, and pretty much said that with the amount of blood covering the truck and ground, no one could have survived.   We followed the bloody trail but thought better of it and went back to the caravan.

We helped the drivers move the cargo from the damaged truck to the other trucks and were on our way.  A bit later, we met a caravan coming from Llassa.  Our caravan stopped and the drivers talked, and when mine came back he looked serious.  Things, he said, were getting worse in the village.

Eventually we arrived there, and made our way to the general store, where we began making purchases for our trek to the mountain.  Eckloff met his contact, and we went to a small burned out inn where we talked things over.  It was decided that we would hire some local sherpas, and take a less direct route to the mountain, seeking the secret back door that the old journal (Nyhuus Journal) told us about.  We headed out the next morning.

The sherpas didn’t take us in the right direction.  We talked about that for a while.  Apparently there was an old temple hidden in the mountains, and they wanted our help in getting “the Dragon’s Egg” (this is a euphemism for weapons) that the villagers had cached there.  It seems that the villagers wanted to rid themselves of TemCo’s presence.   While I was sympathetic with that goal, the voice in my head was getting more insistent about getting there soon, so I was damned either way.  However, the distraction that the villagers could provide might actually benefit us once we were in the underground city, so I decided go with it.  Besides, there wasn’t much likelihood that we could get there without the help of the sherpas anyway.

After that there we spent 3 days on the mountain, climbing and freezing the entire time.  The only thing of note on the climb is that we were attacked just before we made it to the temple.  We were attacked by…well; I don’t know what the proper term for them is.  They looked like zombified hairy people with claws.  Only, they were fast – really fast.  One jumped me, clawed me, and that’s pretty much all that I remember.  The sherpas said that a yeti saved us, but I couldn’t tell you that.  DocM said that I died there.  If I did, then let me tell you, there is no light, no tunnel, nothing.  It just fades to black like the end of a film noir.

The next thing I know, I was looking up at a monk in colorful robes wondering what in the hell was going on, and I slowly starved to death.  At least I felt like I was dead…

We spent the better part of that day piecing together aged M16’s for the villager.  I think every gun had about 10 rounds in it.  In any case, they would make effective clubs.

Finally, we were able to set out on the rest of the trek to the underground city.  It was cold, as my clothing was ventilated, but we eventually found what we were looking for.  The sherpas agreed to wait while we entered the cave system.  It took a while, but we came to a ledge where we could look out over the place.  Surprisingly, it looked deserted.

From our vantage point high up on the wall, it was immense. It was a city under the mountain. It looked as if it were at least a mile across. In the center of the city was a huge building that almost up to the top of the cavern.

The reason why soon became apparent, as Needle Man from Tokyo’s (Kage’s) voice came out over loudspeakers announcing that there was a 20 minute warning to evacuate the place.  The Machine, where the psychics were imprisoned was somewhere in the middle of the city.  There was nothing for it at that point but to haul ass.  We got to the machine, and BoomBoomBarbie noticed that there was a device placed upon it.  Closer inspection revealed that it was a bomb.  BBB told us that there appeared to be a couple of hours on the timer, and that any attempt to manipulate it would result in a very BIG BOOM.  The wires were all black, and there was an alpha numeric code panel. There wasn’t enough time. Nothing could be done.

We found Uri strapped high up on the machine—wires and tubes coming out of his body. We worked to get Uri out of the contraption (and hopefully out of my head).  He was barely alive…but he managed to tell us about Professor Levitz, and the fact that there was apparently still one more way to stop the machine.  All he could get out was “B”.   I know it sounds strange, but I knew where the Professor’s office was.  It was as if I had a map of the compound in my head.  We went into Levitz’s office, and happened to find a scrap of paper with GPS coordinates on it. Though what we could do to stop it was still very much a mystery. We could only hope that Levitz was still alive.

Having done all we could do in the underground city, and with the clock ticking, we ran for it, and barely escaped from the mountain before the blast went off.  The sherpas heard the blast and were heading down the trail.  We finally caught up with them that night.  After a couple of more drafty days of hiking, we made it back to Kuhn Li.  Fortunately, we were able to purchase horses for our trek into the Gobi desert, because TemCo had destroyed all communication equipment.  It was the option available.

So we rode horses to the SH1 crash site. The only saving grace in the desert were the watering holes along the way.  We knew where we had to go, but finding was another thing.  Fortune smiled on us though, since we knew that we didn’t want to head to the main gate.  We found an encampment of Khalkha tribesmen that were apparently doing the manual labor for TemCo.  They pointed us in the right direction, which was a lone building just down the fence.  A guard standing watch, as we rode up.  By pre-arrangement, Fattyb did the talking.  I’ll admit, he’s sure a good talker, but the guy wasn’t buying what he was selling.  He did keep him distracted long enough for Timothy and me to shoot him.

We used the used the code that we got from Moscow Tractor Works, and entered the building.  The professor was there.  It really didn’t take any persuading for him to help us attempt to reverse the course of the asteroid.  In fact, it appeared that he was locked in this particular building, since he didn’t have any code to exit it.  He said that he was locked out of the system, and that we would have to help him from outside the building, up on the tower.  Fatty had learned how to hack the HUDMC (see Medical Tools) displays that were connected to the HUDMC Medical Monitors and use it as a type of IM. He went with the Professor Levitz to relay information.  The rest of us climbed.  Eckloff stayed on a lower vantage point with the sniper rifle to distract any oncoming threats.

I didn’t see any of the stuff that went on—I was too busy falling off the tower. I think I fell about three times… Perhaps I should spend some time on the climbing wall. Apparently, dying really takes it out of you.  FattyB screamed at me that Gerald Moore showed up.  Fattyb fired his shotgun into Gerald’s gut to no avail--twice. Then the guy that was in the hospital after we got fished out of the North Sea ( I think he said his name was Graham) showed up and started fighting with Moore. It was quite spectacular.  I think they were wearing some kind of electrically powered shield of some kind. There were lots of sparks and their shapes kept changing.

The team got the switches flipped, because the next thing I remember is running for the horses, and riding off to watch the place go Boom!  Levitz’s plan worked, I guess.  The world is still here, and the asteroid’s gone.

I think some serious R&R is in order…

Agent Samantha

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Administrator’s notes and epilog:

-Begin Transmission-

Another sucessfull mission. The world has been saved. Cliche, I know, but it is true. Eckloff has accepted our offer and will be assigned to head up and rebuild Cell G after their devastating loss. Agent T will be a fine asset in the field. When Cell Q is finally cleared by psych branch, I am recommending Compartmentalized Specialized Training testing. Any of the team who shows aptitude will be offered training - we will only train volunteers. I will offer paid R&R, but knowing this cell, they will want to just hole-up somewhere and vegetate. But the offer is there, two week paid vacation.

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