Horror on the Orient Express, Ghost Train, Part 2

{This is the third of a new campaign of Horror on the Orient Express}

 Cast:

John as Prof. Robert Hartford, Curator at The British Museum

Kathy as Violet Carol Arey, Dillittant, American EXPAT

Marco as Charles Mcgee, Student at London University

Mike as Dmitri Feodorovna, refugee Russian noble/ Big Game Hunter

Maria as Weiss Voigt, German Engineeress

At the end of last session, Charles and the Proffessor had chosen to NOT try the model train and wait to let the others know of their find. After work and class the next day, the whole party met up at the Proffessor's townhome. They charried the train out into the courtyard that evening to give it a try. Proffessor Hartford activated the train and the group watched (holding umbrellas as it was raining) as it went round and round the figure eight. Nothing seemed to be happening, yet the party presisted even while discussing that perhaps this was a dead-end. With the 26th circuit  of the train however, everything chnged.

  A shimmering track and the shunting of a large locomotive in a gathering cloud of steam announce the arrival of the train. Engine and coal car pass through objects in the small cortyard and disappear into the townhomeon the other side. Once the first passenger car comes into view (there are only two), the train stops. Sanity feels several of the investigators. .

The train is full of people dressed in 1890s costume. They glide off the train as though onto a platform, and ask the investigators questions, the answers to which they do not listen.“What time do we reach Liverpool?” “Where is the conductor?” “What has been the delay?” “How has the day become so cloudy and dark?” “Is another train following? My husband was to be on board.”

Swirling round, drawn like water to a drain, the passengers close around the Proffessor Hartford. They speak as one, “Come with us. Come with us.” The Proffesor seems suddenly powerless to resist; indeed, no physical action is taken on the part of the passengers—after they surround the investigator, the summoner finds himself or herself in nineteenth century dress and aboard the train, in the first carriage, surrounded by dreadful companions.

Meanwhile the other investigators hear cries for help coming from the second carriage. Weiss sees someone who might be Henry Stanley pressed up against the glass of the second passenger car, eyes wide, mouth screaming. 

Perhaps this or a wild flight of fancy causes Weiss and Charles to jump aboard the train to attempt to retreive their friend Proffessor Hartford. 

Once aboard the train, the bland, blank faces of the passengers darken and become insistent. As the train begins to pull out, their eyes roll up until only the whites are exposed, and like sharks they close in around the Proffessor. They reach out slowly, expectantly. Their skins are bluish and cold, their hair matted and coarsened, and their lips, eyes, and nails unnaturally livid. They smell of old, wet wood.

Fighting back and with Weiss and Charles fighting to free him, Robert and his companions flee to the far end of the car. 

Just as they seem trapped, the curtained door between the first and second carriages bangs open, and a small bald man cries, “Through here! Quickly!”

Another great sigh passes through the attacking dead. The investigators fight off the undead and reach the opening. 

Strange symbols are sketched on the door, principal among which is the inverted ankh. After the last (Charles) is in, the man bangs the door shut, while the dead passengers moan outside, unable to pass the sigils.

“Welcome to the 9:15 A.M. to Liverpool,” pants the man, “although we are currently running, um, rather late. My name is Randolph Alexis.”

Alexis, the Victorian Occultist, has a plan to get them back. Before he can really express it, Hartford and Charles wander back towards the front to find Henry Stanley (who has NOT Human combuisted, but eneded up on this Doom Train). Stanley is a wrech, and shares a little of the horror he has endured with the two men.

Meanwhile, Alexis has shown Weiss his plan to get out...a mockup of the toy train but made out of human intestine...but it doesn't work. Weiss immediately sees the problem (yup, she is her own kind of nuts)...the track does not have the hills and valleys (like a roller coaster) that the toy had. She is sure that she can replicate it...so Randolf runs and provides more gore and entrials to allow Weiss to complete the task.  Pleased, and a little smitten, Alexis offers Weiss the honor of returning them home, she need only replicate the movement of the train with THIS - a rotting human heart!

Around this time, Weiss kinda figures out what she has been doing and with what...and throws up a little in the back of her mouth. With a "peace-out" she runs off looking for the Proffessor and Charles...who are, freaked out by the freaked out Henry Stanly are coming back...

...meanwhile in the sane world, Violet in desperation has reactivated the toy train in an effort to get her freinds back - unbenounced to her and Dimitri, the clock is now ticking for them whether the ones on the train can complete the return spell before they can complete the summoning spell...

Back on the doom train, Weiss and Robert begin the proccess of running the heart around the track while Randolf tells Charles to prepare himself for an onslaught of undead...Randolf casts a a spell and then brandishes a knife, with the smile of a madman and a glance at the intestine track (...of his son! - see below) he tells Charles, "No guts, no glory!"

Around this time, zombies begin crawling through the nothingspace outside of the train all spider-like to assault the passanger car. One falls off arms windmilling but falling silently into the Nothingspace surrounding the train.

Then the windows begin to shatter...

As the wind of the void echos through the carraige, a wild battel royale begins, surrounding the proffessor of history and the woman engineer as they drag a human heart over the entrials of the good-son of Randolf Alexis. Charles fights with a mondern firearm as the Victorian wizard fights with an enscorcelled knife rusted with the blood of his only son (whose body he ate) against undead spirits empowerd by the void...even as the poor Henry Stanley cowers underfoot. 

In the end, it is just enough...for while it seems as though both the innocent Stanley and the mad wizard surcome to the undead wave...who can tell? Robert and Weiss complete the spell and pull the Doom Train back onto the London and Liverpool tracks that it left 30 years before...only to run into a cargo train...head on.

The three characters leap from the train, with the Proffessor taking majot injuries. As Charles and Weiss care for him, they see a damaged Stanley hobbling towards them...and an ancient stooped old man...Randolf? Creeping away.  

In our world, Dimitri and Violet continue to try to use the train to re-sommon the Doom Train, but to no avail. Eventually, hours later giving up, they go get drunk and consider the need to recruit new investigators...but the next day hear of a horrific train accident on the London-Liverpool run. Hoping they are not going to collect bodies, they hire a limosine and head to the village of Mary Meade and soon find their damaged freinds. 

The Professor is checked into a London hospital, the others are bandaged, Stanley checks himself into a sanitarium, a diary arrives in the mail from Bedows, and...Randolf Alexis? 

Well, I am sure he'll turn up sooner or later. :)