"It isn't exactly what I call a ... nice place."

OOC:
12:39, Today: Jake Lawrence rolled 5,3 using 1d10+2,1d6+2, rerolling max with rolls of 3,1. Common Knowledge.

"I'm with ye," Danny mutters, "though I don't know just what good it'll do. This buildin's solid stone. Perhaps we should get some dynamite. A little bang-bang to wake up the neighborhood."

Jake also recalls hearing that Caleb Feigenbaum had died...that excitable man had been looking for his inheritance, because apparently Feigenbaum had a residence in town. Why was a dead man getting corpses in the mail?

Danny looks over the desk, opening drawers and rifling through them. "Hey! Paper!" he says, pulling a few sheets from one of the drawers. "Maybe ye can show us those markings ye were talking about?" He asks Alouette, though he hasn't produced any ink bottles or nibs to write with.

His eyes scan the area looking for further clues to what is going on in this madhouse.  "Yes we're all out of pens, quills and ink it would appear."

Jake mutters, "Either Feigenbaum isn't as dead as generally thought or someone is using his name."

OOC:
12:25, Today: Jake Lawrence rolled 12,11 using 1d8,1d6, rerolling max with rolls of (8+4)12,(6+5)11. Notice.

On a hunch, William pulls a crowbar from the tool section and takes the few steps over to the human-sized crate.
"I'd like to take a look at this fella."
And with that, he tries to pry the crate open.

20:18, Today: William Pierce rolled 0,3 using d10-1,d6-1, rerolling max with rolls of 1,4. Strength.

He slips and the crowbar shatters on the floor.
"Damn... somebody care to lend me a hand? I've got something of a hunch about this Feigenbaum fellow."

"Think he's in the box or guarding the door?" Jake asks. The huckster grabs whatever sort of tool he feels will do the job and lends a hand.  "Alright, let me help ya."

OOC: Cooperative strength!
14:27, Today: Jake Lawrence rolled 1,5 using 1d6,1d6, rerolling max with rolls of 1,5. Strength.
Good for a +1 to William's roll

"We might know in a minute, I guess."

The crate opens at the pair's efforts...revealing an empty box. The crate wasn't even secured. It's certainly long enough to have held a human body at one time, though.

((OOC: The crate may have other clues, though...make Notice checks for a deeper search.))

21:24, Today: William Pierce rolled 14,10 using d6+3,d6+3, rerolling max with rolls of (6+5)11,(6+1)7. Super-Notice. But one wound.

William's eyes flicker with an unnatural light as he scans the inside of the box.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:25, Fri 07 Sept 2012.

The clank, meanwhile, has been poking about at the jars and other equipment, looking for something to make marks with.

[[20:25, Today: Alouette rolled 2,4 using d4,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 2,4. Notice?]]

"! ...self found sticky!"

Inside the box William finds evidence that something was in here at one time. There are traces of hair and the faint odor of decay. Most interesting it the lid. Several long scratches score the lid about halfway up, and a few of the grooves have pieces of rotting flesh and dried blood in them.

William follows through one of the scratches with his own fingernail.
"Whoever was stuck in here didn't like it."
He sniffs at a tusk of hair.
"The question is... did someone die in here... or come back to life?"

Alouette transcribes the little marks onto the paper with the sticky with great rapidity, making another couple of trips to the shelf before its object is complete.

"Y'all can see the little marks now," it chirps, looking on with apparent fascination at the spare sheet of paper now stuck to the side of its hand. Deputy Chicken seems to have relaxed and is foraging about the far end of the cellar for any maggots, beetles, spare bits of corpse etc., clucking quietly in galliform commentary.

In reply to William Pierce (msg # 49):

"Or both?" Danny asks, looking at Alouette's scribblings. "Why mail corpses to a dead man, though?" He blinks at the markings. "I can't make head nor tail o' this. Can any o' you folk read it?" He looks up at Alouette thoughtfully. "Say...can ye tell us anythin' about that box over there? Any witchery clingin' to it?"

Alouette patters up and examines the box.

"It is made of dead trees," it informs those present very seriously, then goes around to look at it from the other side and briefly looks up at the ceiling.

"Okay," it responds to no-one in particular. Static murmurs softly as the brass fingertips trace the scratches in the lid.

[[22:45, Today: Alouette rolled 13,4 using d8-1,d6-1, rerolling max with rolls of (8+6)14,5. go go gadget impossible knowledge!]]

some mood music

Alouette peers into the Aether...


And then the scene melts, and dissolves into impressions, warping the aether like a rock hurled into a stream.

"Arthur buried a lady in the ground in the crate," the clank reports, old blood staining bright fingertips.

"She did not want to be buried in the crate and made lots of loud noises that weren't words...but Arthur must have dug the lady up again, because he wanted to be together with her and not with her father, and she is not here," it chirps, clearly blithely ignorant of the likelihood of the lady in question having suffocated underground and been reanimated by her would-be 'friend'.

Then static surges and the 'angel' looks up, lenses burning brightly. "A demon nears."

"I think perhaps anyone's name could've been used... though if this Caleb Feigenbaum was a member of this friendly little cult then that's probably the reason his name was used. If not then we'd have to ask someone who is a member." Jake says with a bit of authority.

The huckster looks at the box and decides not to let his first instinct of using his arcane powers to learn more be what he does. Instead he looks at the marking that Danny Boy can't seem to make out.

The scribbles Alouette wrote down seem to be notes in shorthand. At a brief glance, they appear to be the minutes of one of the Enlightened Society's meetings...but before he has more time to look them over, Danny looks up at Alouette, alarmed.

"Demon? What demon? Where?"

"A Fore-Goer: lead-spitter-smoke-coiler, squeezed fist of...paleface cowardice, hatred. Yonder." It points with precision as though the men could also see through walls and earth.

"Cause that's what this town needs, demons." Jake mutters quietly, his eyes drawn to the tomb in his hands then to the scribblings of the clank. The huckster goes and has a look if Danny Boy will let him

"That sounds lovely." Pierce grumbles.
"I've got some experience in dealing with demons. Is it coming here, clank?"
A second later, he amends, in a softer tone: "I mean, Alouette?"

"Town, Texas, requires minus demons, Bitter Waters," the clank informs Jake.

"-angel-" it corrects William, before he uses its name instead, then tilts its head up a moment as though listening.

"Refine definition 'here'?"

"Is it coming here to this... building? Or where is it going?"

"Doesn't everywhere require minus demons?" Jake mutters before heading back towards the ladder that brought him down to this strange lab.

"'everywhere requires minus demons,' he says, to the group composed o' dead men animated by critters from the dephts o' hell." Danny mutters as he follows Jake up the ladder.