Part 1: The end and the beginning.

It's nearly half past six in the evening when each of you arrive at St. Mary's hospital in central Arkham, the gothic spires of Miskantonic university rising impressively behind you. The sun setting, it is still nearly 72 degrees outside, making the beginning of fall feel a bit more like summer. An indian summer, perhaps. Each of you had received word that your dear friend, Rupert Merriweather, was near the end of his time on this Earth.
"Mr Lidstrom, I would strongly suggest you come this Sunday evening. I fear Rupert may only have days left. The cancer has spread." The nurse at St. Mary's had sounded very serious indeed as she phoned Steve Lidstrom a day earlier. A telegraph delivered to James Legatte at Cambridge University came a week earlier urging him to make the journey over the Atlantic as soon as he possibly could. Maxmillian Swift found out the earliest as he was across the way at the university working. "Did you hear that Rupert is not doing well?" Swift's colleague, a certain Edward Vitton, said one day sitting across from him at lunch. You all felt utterly compelled to visit the man in his final days.
"Third floor, room 313," the nurse at the front desk informed you motioning to the bank of elevators behind her. Arriving to the third floor you find Merriweather's room door open. Inside you see the bed-ridden man you have all know for a large portion of your lives. He is barely recognizable. His eyes are sunk deep into his excruciatingly thin face, a head totally lacking of hair. Brown splotches cover his face, the corners of his lips cracked and caked with blood. He figure he can't weigh more than 80 pounds at this point.
Sitting at a chair to his left you recognize his wife, Ester. She is weeping gently holding her husband's hand of some forty years. Across in the other corner of the room sits a young man roughly your own ages. He eyes you all suspiciously before returning his gaze to the dying man in the bed.
"Thank you," he rasps. "Thank you so much for coming." He stops to cough and spit out what you see to be blood into a tissue. "You all know Ester," he says, looking over at his wife. "This is my son, Charles." You can't help but notice a tone of indifference regarding the young man in Rupert's voice. After the pleasantries have been exchanged, Rupert asks his wife and son to leave so he may speak with his dear friends. His wife kisses him on the forehead and makes her way while Charles shoots a cold glare to each of you on the way out of the room. He motions for James to shut the door.

"I couldn't agree more Steven, Rupert says with a smile. He coughs yet again and the smile disappears and is replaced with a look of pain and concern.

Rupert's face turns serious as he looks at you each in turn. "I'm afraid that my days are over," he says holding back another fit of coughing. "But before I go I need help. More help than I have ever needed in my life." In the days of his youth, the old man says, he and some fellow students became involved in what they believed to be an innocent exploration of the occult. Led by a slightly older man named Marion Allen, the six men purchased an old farmhouse a few miles west of Arkham near the village of Ross's Corners. There they could conduct their seances and other psychic research in privacy. The unexpected result of their last experiment, lead to the summoning of some evil force into this world. "I am still unsure as to what the true nature of this force is, but it is certainly malevolent," he adds, looking now out the window. "We were fools." he says in a voice louder and more firm than you have heard so far.

"lnstead of attempting to expel the thing, we abandoned the old house. confident that the magic which brought the evil to this would keep it confined to the vacant house. However, I learned later through painstaking research that the spell that binds the being to the house lasts only as long as the casters live." He shakes his head in disbelief and brings about another fit of coughing. "I.....I am the last one."

Silence fills the room for minutes as each of you stare at your old friend. Suddently, as if remembering something, he gestures towards the table in the corner of the room near the window. "Take the box" he says pointing to an innocuous little box on table. "All the aid I can offer you lies within. Please, do this for me."

Rupert drinks the water with considerable effort, spilling a good deal of it on his shirt. He looks up at Sven. "Don't look at me like I'm crazy Sven. This is all frightfully real." He coughs again, harder and more violently than you have seen yet. Bright red pin-sized drops of blood splatter onto the bleached white hospital sheets.

No, no nurse," he gasps. "Just take the box!" He gestures for Sven to pick up the box. Just before he can open it, Rupert is hit by an incredibly violent spasm. The coughing continues for almost a minute straight, drops of blood shooting out of his mouth staining the sheets further. Rupert catches his breath and then lets out a horrific scream followed by a tremendous gout of blood and tissue. A chunk of lung tissue the size of a golf ball smacks into Max's shirt. He shakes with a force you have never seen before. Moments later the room is flooded by nurses and doctors. The three of you are quickly ushered out the room and around the corner to a small waiting lounge where Rupert's wife and son stand.

"What did you say to him?" his son asks in an accusing tone. You each think of an answer but it would have been missed as the sounds of Rupert's screaming and coughing become the only thing that anyone can focus on. It continues for well over twenty minutes before it comes to a sudden stop. Moments later a doctor, his pristine white lab coat now covered in splattered blood walks to the lounge with a crestfallen look upon his face. "I'm sorry, but we lost him."


OOC: Roll sanity for seeing Rupert cough up part of his lung. If you pass no loss, if you fail 1 point of sanity loss.

OOC: The edits above were in trying to figure out how to roll - I of course only rolled once.

The nurse nods and begins to motion you to a room when Rupert's son steps towards Max. "What could you possibly have to say that you can't say in front of us?" young Charles demands.

OOC: Which of us knows the family best?

Given your backgrounds, I would imagine that you all know the family members only in passing save for Rupert himself. Charles isn't singling any one of you out in particular.

Charles shoots an icy glance at Sven. "Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that?!" he challenges, his voice raising quite loudly. A few of the nurses exchange nervous glances while Ester rushes over and puts her arm around her son. He shrugs it off and stares down Max. "What work commitments are you talking about? He never mentioned anything about work commitments." His staring makes you feel a bit uncomfortable.

Charles frowns and takes the slightest step back from Max, his laziness betraying him. "No, I don't need any reading list. I just want-" Before he can finish his sentence, Agnes breaks down into tears. Charles, still the dutiful son, turns and walks over putting his arm around her. She collapses into his arms. "Nurse!" Charles yells. "Please call for our car. My mother needs to get home to bed." He shoots the three of you an icy glare before turning back to attend to his mother. The nurse returns shortly with a tea set that she sets on the small table in the waiting room. Fifteen minutes later Charles and Agnes leave down the hallway and out into the night. After the orderlies arrive some minutes later to transfer Rupert's remains to the morgue, you find the time to be half past seven and the three of you essentially alone with the box.

The three of you sit around the small table in the hospital waiting room and place the wooden box in the center. The wood is aged and cracked in places along the sides, but is still quite sturdy. A simple brass clasp latches it closed. Sven opens the box slowly, a strong musty odor creeping out that makes each of you turn a face.

A yellowed envelope sits on top with the address of the farm at Ross's Corner Rupert spoke of before his passing, a slim leather journal, and an ornate sarcophagus-shaped box. Inside the envelope you find a key, presumably to the front door or gate , and the deed showing ownership to one Rupert Merriweather. The sarcophagus is covered in hieroglyphs.

The sarcophagus flips open with ease but to Sven's disappointment, it is quite empty. The carvings on the inside of the box are very different from those on the outside.

Max frowns as he looks over the markings. Nothing comes to mind. Perhaps the tea will be of some help.

The evening is cool and calm as you leave the hospital and make your way to the university. The sun set is gorgeous; vibrant oranges and reds color the horizon and for a few minutes you each feel at ease despite what you have all seen in the past few hours.

Passing by the Egyptology department, you find it dark and locked up; not surprising for this last in the evening on a Sunday. Shrugging, you make your way to Max's office. He unlocks the door, flips on the lights, and you take your seats at a small round table away from his desk. Max walks to the back of the room and turns on a small hotplate for the kettle. You all stare in silence at the leather-bound book in the center of the table, lost in your thoughts. A few minutes later the whistle of the kettle cuts through the emptiness. Three cups are laid out and tea bags, a high quality Earl Grey, are dropped in.

Opening the book you find pages filled with journal entries from June 1881 to March 1882. The ink is very faded in sections, but never so much you can't read it. A number of sections particularly catch your eyes:

A group of friends. playfully calling themselves the Dark Brotherhood held their first meeting in the early spring of 1881. Rupert Merriweather became their recording secretary. The members numbered six induding Marion Allen. the founder and their nominal leader.

You all look up to realize that nearly two hours has passed since you began reading the book. You pause to reflect.

In June of 1881 they purchased an old farmhuuse outside Ross's Corners, a place where they could conduct their experiments in privacy. Representing themselves as a student literary fraternity, they cleaned and furnished the place while Marion Allen carved special warding (protective) signs over the wooden doors and windows. At the time, the others were amused at such precautions.

There are sections dealing the attempts (all failures) at contacting the dead and spirit worlds.

An entry dated February 1882 notes Marrion's acquisition of an Egyptian artifact. A small sarcophagus containing a piece of amber entrapping a specimen of some species of arthropod. Allen is very excited as this box matches a description he found in a reference book in the library. He continues on to say that a thick book written in Latin, the de Vermiss Mysteriis explained that the creature in the box was "an aid to the spirit world" A date is then set to conduct this "experiment" in mid March.

You are just about to move to the library when you each come to the realization that it is quite late, and the library will be closed since it is a Sunday. Taking a sip of tea, you turn back to the journal to finish the last fifty pages or so.

Journal

OOC: It is nearly midnight when you finish reading through, digesting, and discussing what you have just read. You each gain one mythos point but lose 1d2 sanity.

Max looks at Sven quietly for a moment, takes a deep sigh and fills his pipe, then lights it.

"Rupert is not the joking kind, and though eccentric he had his full faculties. I have... seen some things in the War, and crazy as it sounds I think Rupert has laid a heavy and real burden on us. Because he trusted us. I would bet this is in fact that artifact. And I am not looking forward to it, but we have to go to that place."

He thinks longer.

"I think a refreshing sleep is in order... Or, if we can't sleep, at least restful meditation. "

Sleeping arrangements are made and each of you settle in for the night, your minds racing with a cacophony of images, thoughts, and ideas. What has Rupert gotten us into? you each think more than once. Eventually, you drift off to sleep. Although restless, you awake the next morning feeling mildly refreshed. Max makes tea as you decide your first course of action for the day.

Sun filtered though the light shades in the hallway of offices for Miskatonic's department of Egyptology. At 9.00 am, it was a bit early for most of the faculty to be in but Max was certain Erman would be in. Johann Peter Adolf Erman; professor of Egyptology, expert in the grammar of the Middle Kingdom. Even in his seventies, Erman came to the office early and worked a full day.

"Max? Is that you?" Adolf said, obviously surprised to see him. After the small talk, Max quickly produced the sarcophagus and placed it on a small table in front of Erman, littered with pieces of papyrus and note paper. The old man's eyes lit up immediately and quickly began looking the piece over, deciphering the symbols. "Middle Kingdom for certain," he mumbled, turning the piece over in his hands. "Yes, Middle Kingdom." He stared intently at the symbols inside the box, a quizzical look etched into his wrinkled skin. "These markings here, on the inside. They are not any form of Egyptian," he said, looking up at Max. "Where did you come across this piece?"

Adolf lowers his head in respect upon hearing of Rupert's passing. "I am sorry," he states after a minute. He stares out the window of his office for a minute before turning back to the box. "I can't be certain of most of it," Adolf says after a few more minutes of inspection. "However, this marking here looks like the sign of the Mu an occult group in the Pacific islands." he furrows his brow at the markings.

"I believe I have read about this box," he says, rising and going to a shelf near by overflowing with books. He picks a slim volume off of a shelf up high and flips through the pages. "There!" he exclaims, laying the book down to a page with a sketch of the box. "The best theories state that this box belonged to Nophru-Ka, a would be usurper to the throne. It is believed the box was given to him by the gods themselves containing spirits he could call upon to aid him in his taking of the throne. He flips through a few more pages before resting the book down yet again. "It was supposed to contain an insect preserved in amber but the box was last seen in 1874." He points to a few lines of inscription on the right side of the box:

Seeker of Wisdom, Seeker of Setheth

Deliverer of the Slaves of the water,

Bearer of the spirit of NarLothhotep,

child of Thoth, Seeker of Wisdom

"Not the most uplifting verse," he adds with a wry smile.

Sven pours through the book with concerted effort and focus. While there is no direct mention of the insect, there are multiple passages mentioning what Adolf had already mentioned; the sarcophagus holding spirits that Nophru-Ka could call upon. "It certainly was common for Egyptians to link insects with spirits. Perhaps the bug is the spirit?" Adolf says.