The Descent - The Statements of Gwen Baines

[Grognardsw]

"Sorry newshawk, talk to the manager, them's the rules," answers the singer to Baines' further plea.

The BOI agents glances into the dressing room beyond. It appears to be what one would expect, with some couches, chairs, a few tables littered with food and drink, and instrument cases scattered about. There is a door in the north wall in Baines' line of sight. He cannot tell if there are others.

The door abruptly closes. The bouncer stands before it.

"No, I never heard of these strange birds," answers the bouncer to Baines' question. "The came up from New York."

Ezy agrees to Baines' plan to play the newspaper reporter and talk with Carcosa - Ambrose Carcosa - about an interview with the Hepcats of Ulthar. He walks off in search of the man. About 15 minutes pass.

Ezy comes back with a black eye. "I was talking to him outside the men's room. He was agreeing and we went into the john. The next thing I knew I'm jumped from behind. Two big guys. I was out for a few minutes. When I woke, they and Carcosa were gone, along with my wallet! I don't know who it was, or if Carcosa was in on it. Aren't you suppose to meet him today at 12:00?"

[thesniperknight1]

Baines checks Ezy's black eye, "Are you okay?", he asks the waitress for a bag of ice and gives it to Ezy, "How much was in the wallet? And was there an identification there or your badge? If Carcosa is behind this, then we are in trouble". Baines remembers the meeting and checks the time, "I think we can catch some sleep before that".

He leaves with Ezy to take a few hours of sleep to sober up and get ready for the meeting with Carcosa. He calls the narcotics department and asks about Carcosa, he gives them the full name and the name of the drug. And the band and if there is anytime, he checks Carver's notes again to see if there is anything that resembles the band's symbol other than the close resemblance to the actual dead bodies. And also checks to see if there is any mention of their name in there.

After a well earned rest, they go to the promised place to meet Carcosa an hour earlier to stake out the place.

[Grognardsw]

"I'm okay now," Ezy admits. "Yeah my wallet had my BOI card. I'm not sure if Carcosa was behind it."

It's been a long day. The agents head back to their hotel. "We got Carver's roomate tomorrow. You want me to go with you to Carcosa? If my cover's blown, then you'd be made quick," Ezy says.

Baines finally turns into bed. The next morning he makes some BOI calls. The results are unfruitful: No drug by that name is known, and neither Carcosa nor the Hepcats of Ulthar are in their records. Carver's notebooks don't have any doodlings that resemble the band's symbol.

Will you be going with Ezy? I'll pick up then.

[thesniperknight1]

"If your cover is blown then it would be dangerous to come with me, it would be dangerous to go alone as well but it's better this way. Go and meet the roomate I will try to catch up with you as fast as I can"

[Grognardsw]

August 11, 1925, 11:00 am
Providence, Rhode Island
93 Court Street
Meeting with Carcosa
Federal Agent Gwen Baines


Ezy agrees to interview Carver's roommate, Robert Angell, while Baines handles Carcosa. Baines drives to to 93 Court Street to meet with him. The Courtyard apartments, comprising numbers 91, 93, 95, are three old tenement buildings, their brick turned the color of scab, that huddle and eye each other across a bleak courtyard. The iron gate to the courtyard is unlocked.



Broken bottles litter the cobbles with glass. A cat’s cradle of washing lines are above, bare save a child’s vest that might have been hung there for years. Puddles, clearly not rain, are in the yard’s dips and sinkages. Vile centipedal graffiti covers some tenement steps in its writhings. A breeze flitters litter about the courtyard.



On the courtyard’s east face there is a mural, realistic enough that Baines thinks for a moment he’s looking at something through a hole in the wall. A trompe l’oeil-effect landscape barren and harsh; distant hills jut rather than roll. The sky beyond is livid and stormy. In the foreground is a silhouette of something that Baines supposes may be a tree.



Baines is early. A few people are loitering about in the courtyard. On the left building's stair stoop, a wino is vomiting.

[thesniperknight1]

Baines takes an empty bag and puts his badge and wallet in it, leaving only what Ezy gave him, and hides it the bag in a nearby trashcan. He stares at the mural for a while, "Tree....Crow?..", he murmurs to himself. He calls for the wino, "Hey!! What does that look to you?", then he remembers what he is here for, "Oh and do you know anyone selling good junk around here?"

[Grognardsw]

"A mushroom," says the wino.

"Buddy can you spare a dime? Do I look like I can buy junk? Try over there." He points to the number 93 building.

[thesniperknight1]

"How about this, I will give you a dime but you watch this place and I will be back in an hour or so. Anything suspicious, you remember it and tell me, there might be another dime in it for you", he throws a dime at the wino and gives him a pat on the shoulder, "Mushroom....I suppose you are right, with a few hands and legs". He leaves for building 93.

[Grognardsw]

The wino takes Baines' dime. "Alright, me eyes are peeled," he slurs.

Baines approaches the building. He hears a voice yell down to him from above. It's Carcosa sticking his head out a fourth story window.

"Come on up," he says. "The elevator is broken."

[thesniperknight1]

Baines looks up, "4 flights of stairs, what you got better be as good as they say", he gives a small chuckle. As he enters the building, he looks around the lobby for a minute then heads over to the stairs and goes to the forth floor.

[Grognardsw]

Baines enters the building. The foyer smells, pieces of mail litter the floor, and a puddle of vomit is in the corner. The left wall is a bank of mailboxes, each labeled with apartment number and last name. Baines does not see Carcosa listed. An inner door leads into the apartment building proper.

An inverted whirlpool of concrete and shadow, the tenement stairwell drags up Baines past bad smells, baby screams, staticky radios. On the fourth floor, leaning over the stair railing, is Carcosa. "Sorry about the stairs. They won't fix the damn thing."

He walks Baines to his door and through to the possibly two-bedroom apartment. It is better appointed than Baines would expect for this building. The walls are covered with strange and exotic drawings; foreign books are scattered about; strange small statues and sculptures sit atop the books. Baines sees a pile of old pages ripped free from an unseen book; he thinks they are written in German. Piles of mail are littered about, many bearing return addresses from the Netherlands and New York. The place stinks of incense and after shave and something else, something pungent and bitter, a reptile house perfume. Red light from scarf-shrouded bulbs fall in submarine dapples across the walls.

Carcosa sits at the coach spreading out a pile of prints. "This stuff is great. This artist is inspired." He holds up one picture.

"Anyway, you wanted xaqloui?"

[thesniperknight1]

Baines goes into Carcosa's apartment and looks around, he felt like he was in a circus freak show. Art never really inspired or captivated him, he always felt that it was all just a big lie, a couple of brushes of paint on an empty piece of paper. "This place is really something, like a private exhibit of unknown artists.....I like it, didn't think you were the artsy type, but I guess it's hard to tell who is which these days", he let a laugh go while looking at the paintings in more detail to get a general idea of the theme, "But what is this weird smell?"

When Carcosa showed him the picture, Baines eyes widened, somehow it had the same sort of feel about it as the dead bodies. He didn't have any basis to go on but it was just a feeling he had, "Certainly interesting, it has the same feeling as the mural downstairs. Ambiguity and a strange power surrounds it, sorry, that mural is really bothering me for some reason. Forget about it", he was trying to bait Carcosa into talking about the mural.

"YES", he said trying to sound eager, "I used to do junk from the Chinese but my buddy Tim pointed me to you. I am sort of an amateur writer in my spare time and junk gave me.....inspiration, and he told me that yours is the real deal. Will I speak that weird language if I take it though? That was really weird, everyone there was speaking it."

[Grognardsw]

"Don't mind the mural," comments Carcosa. "Language? That's just street talk."

There's an old fashion writing desk bursting with drawers at which Carcosa sits down on a spindly chair and commences some business with spoons, jars and baggies. He hums to himself, something slow and atonal. Baines sits in a chair, tearing his eyes away from a disturbing Pickman print entitled 'Miss Lowell is Laid in Mt. Auburn.'

Carcosa turns from the writing desk, holding a spoonful of white powder. "Try some."

I've mentioned several times in various threads that certain paragraphs come from Moore or Lovecraft, as is the case here. But it's getting tedious so just assume it going forward around Carcosa-related text. Thanks.

[thesniperknight1]

In a split second, a thousands thoughts rushed through Baines's head. He never done any drugs in his life, his parents did a lot but he was too young to participate at the time. He thinks of drugs as a half-assed way to escape life, he tries to face life head on, the good and the bad, even though the bad was more in volumes he never complained. He didn't really have any problem from a law perspective, since he himself ironically doesn't respect authority and thinks really poorly of it, nonetheless he always tried his best to follow the rules regardless.

He hesitated but he didn't show it and within a split second he smiled, "This is what I was waiting for", holding one nostril close and sniffing hard from the other, taking in a portion of the drug. He took it as an opportunity to try and see the world from Carver's eyes.

[Grognardsw]

Baines takes the spoon, takes a pinch of white powder in his fingers. Though the BOI agent hasn't partaken of it before, he thinks it has the look and consistency of cocaine. He snorts it, waits, wonders, closes his eyes, feels a slow build of euphoria. The subdued rush brings with it a vivid stream of hypnagogic imagery, but Baines feels able to handle it. He opens his eyes and the images cease.

"Now five dollars for xaqloui," Carcosa says.

Baines almost feels confused but hands over the money. Carcosa nods, pockets it. He leans in close to Baines' ear and whispers:

"Wza-y'ei."

The word bursts inside Baines like summer thunder, sends scarabs, swastikas and upside down crosses rippling over the screen of his eyelids. 'Wza-y'ei' A mental floor gives way beneath Baines. He realizes he knows what the word means; have known all along. Wza-y-ei is a word for the negative conceptual space left surrounding a positive concept, the class of things larger than thought, being what thought excludes. It applies to so many things, not just anomaly theory but everything that is conceived.

Baines reels, eyes closed, from the resonances and implications when Carcosa brushes his ear and gives another hit, another word murmured. "Dho-Hna."

Beaines drinks it in. That force which defines, lends significance to its receptacle as with the hand in the glove, wind in millvanes, the guest or the trespasser crossing a threshold and giving it meaning. Dho-Hna. How could Baines have forgotten? Ancient and huge grammatical structures collapse into place.

Xaqloui isn't a drug. There's no drug with mind-altering properties halfway as powerful. Xaqloui is a language. Ur-syntax, the primal vocabulary giving form to those pre-conscious orderings wrung from a hot incoherence of stars, from our birthmuds pooled in the grandmother lagoon; a stark, limited palette of earliest notions, lost colors, forgotten intensities.

The old falls away as new dendrites twitch blindly together. Unthinkable fusions occur as Carcosa leans in to deliver the third hit...

Please roll 1d100 twice. Thanks.

[thesniperknight1]

Baines trembles with fear and wonder, it was almost like he was being reborn or to be more accurate....born. It's as if he lived a full life long ago but he completely forgot about it, something within him just blew up in a giant wondrous flame filled with endless possibility, "It's enough to drive a man mad" he thought.

[1d100] = 60, [1d100] = 66

am I still in control? Have something within me changed? Should I act differently?

[Grognardsw]

Baines sits in wonder at the revelations of the xaqloui world view, pulled in by the words-that-are-more-than words. Epiphanies drip from each syllable.

Carcosa delivers the third hit, one more chain of terrible syllables whispered in Baines' ear: "Yr Nhhngr." Beneath him a vortex of foreign coinage is made opened. He lets go and falls.



Now it's later. Baines doesn't know how long. The xaqloui has worn off but his mouth and mind are full with new language. He opens his eyes. Carcosa is watching him closely.

Events have a new continuity now, disassociate clusters of data in pregnant, post-linear arrays.   

- New and terrible vistas have been revealed. Realizations are unfolding as you assimilate new but ancient truths. Baines looses 18 Sanity from the experience and has a certain insanity. I'll PM you the nature and duration of it, and impact on play.
- Baines San loss 1st hit [1d8] = 8
- Baines San loss 2nd hit [1d6] = 6
- Baines San loss 3rd hit [1d4] = 4

[thesniperknight1]

Baines sits up and looks around frantically, "What was that?....how...how...what is the meaning of all of this.....I...I know now...wait...how did I forget to begin with......You knew from the start....but how? Everyone there knows too.....how did everyone forget?", he tries hard to steady himself and reorganise his thoughts and remember the words that the band sung,"Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.
fthtagn in cractory whine-yards, beloke sleepled r'lyeh nga'haa tekeli-li
Dreams bring us close—but ancient lore repeats
Ygolo crash the bridgelict eyeloins, crobble yog ngh'hha ygnaiith
That human tread has never soiled these streets

Now gnh'gua equalling y'nghai are tekel'd to mhhf-gthaa,
uguth an Y'golonac N’gaii fhtagn e’hucunechh R’lyeh.
Ia, G’harne ep ygg Rhan Tegoth n’thyleii yr gnh’gua?
Shagghai, humuk Dho-Hna, g’yllgnaii ygg yr nggngr shoggoth,
hrr yll’ngngr Nyarlathotep. Gh’ll mhhggthaa tekeli-li Y’golonac rrthnaa..." he says to Carcosa with a mischievous smile.

xaqloui language (75): [1d100] = 22

[Grognardsw]

Carcosa nods. "Golonac glaaki to lloigor."

Baines gets up to leave, his mind post human. His first steps up the building stairs are embedded in those now taken to depart. In the hallway a tenant is at the stairwell, about to go down. Baines watches the man pass Baines on his way up.

The BOI agent is on Court Street. He must have left Carcosa's apartment already, which can be seen as an extended arrival. The Wzay'ei of this is, of course, that the future extrudes a curtailing force into the present.

The wino looks at Baines' unsteady approach. "You okay?" he asks.

[thesniperknight1]

Baines stares at the tenant as he goes down. He smiles at the wino, "Never been better, what happened? Anything suspicious?"