The Danwich Horror - Part 2

0:00 Daniel's Dread Tails is a show for grownups. It may contain adult language and adult themes. Please check the episode description for content warnings. Welcome back to Daniel's Dread Tails. I'm your host, Daniel Fernandez. This week we reached the thrilling conclusion of our Trail of Cthulhu game with special guests Chris Lackey.

0:43 Will our heroes, heroes? Will our investigators be able to solve the mystery before they're all driven insane? Like, probably not. But let's see. Enjoy. And there's no missing the missing parts, the extra parts that he purchased. Did he say that he had a a lab somewhere workshop that he used worked at a a tool and die shop before he got hired by the Professor Williams, But he ever since then he's just worked for Mr. Williams. Outside of that he he worked in the basement to fix up the radiator every once a while and he would fix up the the the the roof when it would be broken, but you know. So he'd spent time down, down in the basement and also up on the roof.

1:33 Yes, Yes. All right. Maybe we should take a look down there. What do you think guys? You want to go to the boiler room. Absolutely, sure. Makes sense to me the the boiler room itself looks like a relatively typical boiler room, is a mostly empty, remarkably empty sort of basement with a boiler and a couple of boxes here and there. If you would like to use any skills. Again, you might be able to find something. Yeah, this time again, collect evidence collection and. OK, evidence collection. I mean, the evidence collection is going to get you right away. There's a spot on the walls and floor where dust pattern suggests that a number of boxes have recently been taken away.

2:16 And if you would like, you can learn a little bit more if you spend a point of evidence collection. Absolutely. I got, I got a lot. So you got a lot. Yeah. I will do that. I have 4:00, so yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, you're you're good. There is a crumpled up piece of paper that was shoved under the boiler's foot, or maybe it fell underneath it when things were getting moved around or something. It's as you unravel it. It's a page of handwritten notes in faded ink, and it's written in Latin. Oh, I've got languages. Do you speak Latin? Definitely. OK, Archaeologist speaks Latin. It's not the craziest thing. Makes sense. What does it say? All right, I got a big I got another big read to give you while you were looking.

2:58 Well, we'll talk about it. The floutest, blindly piping at the court of Azithoff, both reinforce and penetrate its boundaries. Ultimate chaos is falsely claimed by many necromancers, molder included, to occupy a specific place in physical space at the center of the universe. But logic dictates that this cannot be true, for chaos abhors locational specificity. Rather, ultimate chaos is never more than an eye blink or dream away. It fills the space between space, the emptiness at the heart of our bodily components, and then written in English in parentheses. Cells, question mark and by magic's dire can be made visible, though at enormous threat to the seer. OK, so good news and bad news.

3:49 Actually, no good news. This is bad news. I've got one in Kathulu Mythos, so some of those words made sense to me. Oh, OK, yes. Also, as you look up from the the paper, you look at the boiler, the boiler catches your eye. There's something wrong, something strange you can't quite. And as you're looking at it, you realize the boiler has more sides than it should. Well I found that's cool that cubes missing side. This is going to be a possible two point stability loss. I need you to make a roll. Everyone, everyone. Or just him. Just him, cuz he's the only one who sees it. I didn't just point it out though. Oh, thanks. I I rolled it too. Yeah, I'll take a look cuz I gotta see I'm a reporter. I'm not gonna spend any points, cuz I'll probably lose them anyway.

4:37 Well, no. So here's the thing. He points it out to you. You don't see it. It looks like a normal boiler to you. Oh, OK. And I'm like, yeah, what are you talking about? It's just a boiler. Must have imagined it. I failed. And so I'm now at -, 2 stability, so at -, 2 you're you are now considered. Little loopy, unstable, I believe you are shaken. Any abilities that you, any general abilities that you roll for are plus one. Difficult, but he points it out to you and you don't see anything in particular. He seems to be acting kind of mad. Is the boiler on? Is it? Is it running? No, it's not on. It's it's it's a summer day in Los Angeles. The the boiler is not on.

5:18 Is there a way to open it, to look inside of it? You can try to open it up. Yeah, yeah, you could do that. All right. I will opening it up, it looks. I mean, you're not. You're no boiler expert. I'm not a boiler expert, but it seems like a typical boiler. It seems OK, I just thought maybe there'd be some crazy. Parts inside or something like that we've seen before, but no, no. OK that that could make sense. But no. If there are any crazy parts, they might have been in those boxes that were here, but there are no longer any boxes here. Yeah. OK. So where do the boxes go? Where did the boxes go? Well, let's try the roof. Are we sure? Sure what? How? How would he hide things on the roof? Well, I guess he could do something to the roof itself. Already got a tarp?

6:02 All right. Well, there might be sometimes roofs have like storage areas on them, those types of things. Well, so long as I'm not the one climbing the ladder. Well, there are stairs that lead up to the roof. There are stairs. I'll be explaining my theory on this note on the way up. Oh yeah, you're you're talking about the note? Yeah. What do you say about it? Well, if this has anything to do with anything, it looks like he was trying to figure out something to do with the ultimate chaos. And as a thought, and really I'm getting the impression that this Why scope thing wasn't safe at all. What? What are you talking about? What is as a thought and whatever your what is this? Oh, right. It's probably best if you don't know. I don't.

6:43 I don't know if the reporter is gonna take that. Yeah, no, I'm not explain. Oh, it's like this, You know, Weird God and his blind idiot God at the center of the universe. But according to this note, Ultimate Chaos doesn't like specificity like that. Yeah, it's it's a basketball, Huh. What? You know what? I think this is making sense that your mind has cracked slightly. Yeah, yeah, because basketball. OK, As you make your way up to the roof, there is indeed a little storage area up on the roof. All right, I'm going to. Is it locked? Is it? It's actually it's unlocked and when you look inside, I'm not going to ask, you do see that there were probably boxes here as well.

7:25 Darn it. All right. Shoot. OK, so where did he take the boxes? There's got to be some place we're not thinking of. Well, maybe we talked to his mom. Work her over a little bit and she'll tell us. I still think going to that shop is worth at least a little bit of a try. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the the place where he used to work. Yeah. Actually, no. No, actually, I think you're right. But let's ask his mom and see if there's any other place. But she didn't seem, she didn't seem to think of anything besides that. All right, so we'll go back to his mom and. And just ask if there's any other place that maybe he frequented or was familiar with. Some place that he felt comfortable. He never really felt comfortable anywhere. I think Williams brought him around to the he never seemed particularly comfortable.

8:14 I know that he made friends with, he was friends with the Mr. Vok. He actually used to room here and that's that's actually how they they got to know each other. That's why he was at that party when when Mr. Vox wife died and they say that he killed him but it must have been something those rich people were doing to him. I he would occasionally go to those parties, but that's that's all I know. He he was friends with with Mr. Vox. Do we know? Sorry, out of character? Do we know if Vox and Williams? Were they connected? Was Vox at the party? Or the At the unveiling, Vok was not at the party, no. No, he wasn't at the unveiling.

9:01 OK? So maybe VOK. I mean, he was over there talking with those folks. Maybe that was something, something we got to check out, OK. I agree. Where would you like to go? Should we go check out the for the Vox now? Seem like a product. They're involved in some way here, but maybe we should go check out the old place where used to work. What do you think? Well, Mrs. Vok is certainly involved. Well, yeah. She was murdered. So you want to go to the old the tool and die shop where he where he was working? Yes. I'll drive us over room, room. You get there a right around when the shop is getting ready to close. It's sort of in the evening at this point. Perfect.

9:43 No customers to get in our way. A gruff, sort of heavy set Hispanic gentleman is agreed to as you come into the door, he says. I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to do any more jobs today. If you're looking to buy something, look around. But we got to be we're closing in about half an hour. No, no. Hey, hey. Sorry. I'm just we got some questions about a guy that used to work here. Fern. Fern. Yeah, Fern. Oh, that weirdo. Yeah. When's the last time you seen him? Few months ago. There was a professor. Gentleman came in, talked about how great he was, and then Fern just quit on the spot. That's the main reason I remember him. He was in the middle of doing a job. He quit on the spot to go work for this Williams guy. So he, did he have a an area of the shop that he worked in? Did he have, you know, some place that was kind of special to him?

10:31 Yeah, that he stored stuff here. No, no. And I mean he he quit months ago. We don't really have anything left of his around. I'm sorry, I. No, no, no. That's think that. I'm sorry, are you looking? Did he leave something around? I don't think he left anything. No, no, he ain't seen him in a while. He didn't have any keys to the place he had a key, but he turned it in. What was he any good at? The job, oh, he had a quite a mind. Problem was he was always, I always caught him trying to work on, like, side projects around here. I'd always have to yell at him about that. Whatever happened there? Did he find a better spot for it? Where did he? Where'd he train? Well, he doesn't work here anymore. I don't know what to tell you. Really. I don't know.

11:13 I I almost feel like I might be a dead end. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, I got that pipe. All right. Well, thanks for your help. All right. Yeah. So, well, thank, thank you for your help. All right. So let's head over to the VOK Estate Mansion House apartment. He lives in a manner on the edge of town, but are you just going to, like, drive up? Yeah. Hey, whatever works. All right, It's like 630 now. Perfect. You reach the gate and a a sort of servant looks up. It says, Can I help you, gentlemen and and Madam?

11:56 Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. It's. I'm Chip Stone with Los Angeles Times. Again, A few questions we'd like to ask you about the incident that happened last night, and about about Fern. No, I'm sorry I wasn't working here last night. You would have to, and honestly, you would need to speak to Mr. Voch. He's currently, I think he's still at work in the sanitarium at the moment. If you'd like, we could try to set up an appointment to to meet with him tomorrow, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, that that that'd be great. It would be better to to meet with him at the the sanitarium. But I'll let you, I'll let him know that. I'm sorry. What's your name, Sir?

12:37 Chip. Well, people call me Chip. Charles Stone, Los Angeles Times. Oh, the Times, of course. Of course I don't. He is a bit sensitive about what's going on. But if he's. Of course, yeah. We would just want to make sure we explain what happened in the most sensitive light and we are aware of of the Vox family and we don't, you know, we want to make sure. Everything is on the up and up and that we paint the family in a favorable light of course, But you know we got a few questions of course. Well, I will leave a message for him. Is there a number that I could reach you at that we could try to call you? Yes, of course. Here's my card. All right. Thank you. I will be in touch with him. I I can't promise that he will call you back, but thank you. No, of course.

13:24 Offer him our sincerest condolences as well. He's a colleague of mine, I think. Yes, yes. Well, not Vok. I don't think Vok would be a colleague of yours. Vok works at the sanitarium. Oh, right. Yeah. Hey, Chip. Yes. You don't, you know, it's 6:00 O'clock in Los Angeles in the summer. You know, the sun is not down, but you do see the moon in the sky. You know, it's one of those days you can sort of see the moon that's up there. Sure, sure. Is it? Give us? Yeah. And you can't. At first you get the feeling that something's watching you. You don't really know what it is like Something above you is looking at you. Something and then. All right. I look around and then eventually you look up and you see that the moon has one huge eye.

14:06 It's staring down just at you. No, you see it for a moment, it fixes its pitiless gaze upon you, and then a blink shut. Yes, this is a loss of a potential loss of four. So. Well, I'm gonna. I'll spend some points. I'll spend two points on this, this for this, because I'm afraid that this is going to be a lot for me. So yeah, I've got, I've got a five with my 3 + 2 is 5. Is that enough? So you are good, Yeah. But you definitely saw this. Or maybe I didn't I? Yeah. Maybe you're just tired. I've reconciled. Maybe you're just. I'm probably tired. It's probably it. Look, I'm just gonna, instead of walking directly to the car, I want to do a little sneaky sneaky and see if there's maybe a servants entrance or yeah, you could do that. Absolutely.

14:55 I could do shadowing or filt here. Yeah, shadowing would be sneaking around. There you go. If you'd like to make a shadowing, roll difficulty 3 so you know you can spend the points in advance. In fact, you could spend two points if you'd like and assure that you'll succeed. I'm gonna spend 2 same. Yeah, I'm spent two. I got six so. Bye, Helen. Helen, are you gonna try to sneak around? Yes, not going to go great, but I am going to try what you got. 6. OK. There you go, that one pretty well. There is a you can sort of sneak around, you actually find a sort of hole in the the the fence around you could get in there and in fact a sneak your way into a servants entrance if you would like. Yeah, absolutely. OK. Never been a fan of appointments. You make your way inside the house. It's not like there's a ton of servants. It's not like a huge manner or anything. It looks like they just have, you know, maybe two people who work for them and they're not really around. The issue is the door is locked when you get up to the servants entrance.

15:52 Could I spend some scuffle points on it? I don't know if that's what you would want to do. If any of you are a locksmith, you could maybe try to pick the lock. Or I can't. Yeah. OK. I got a locksmith. All right, you know what? I'll let you get in. You're knowledgeable enough. Yeah. It's not a particularly complicated lock. All right, You can get in. It's, you know, quiet inside Again. It seems like the Mr. Vock is not here. As you're looking around, you do see the the dining room is one of the first places you come across, and you do see that there are some blood stains on the carpet there. Anything in particular? Any place you would want to look around here? Anything you'd want to look for? Yeah, like if there's like we're looking for boxes there. At least that's what I'm looking for, to see.

16:33 If looking for boxes, yes of course. Let's spoke about. See what we can. Find so you Know places. You know, places people would get. I assume they would just keep them out in the open. They're probably on a cellar. They would be in a closet somewhere, maybe in a backroom. You succeeded at your shadowy test, so you're able to sort of move around quietly in here. Unfortunately, you can't really find any boxes, and at least nothing that looks like the mechanical parts. Boxes that you would think that by our murderer. Is there? There's nothing else, nothing else that seems out of the ordinary that we find there. Nothing in particular, I mean, it just looks like a well off couples house.

17:13 You do notice they have separate beds. Ouch. Well, you know, that's that's not the kind of thing that we're looking for here, so. But it is juicy. It is juicy. Well, let's let's go back out the way we came in and. You know, head on down to the sanitarium. By the time you get to the sanitarium, it'll be about 7:00 o'clock. Well hopefully maybe he's he's done being processed by this point and we might be able to get in and orderly greet you at the door and says I'm sorry visiting hours are over for the day we're not really taking anybody we need to start getting the the patients quieted down if you could come back tomorrow. I think you could make an exception for us. Well, right.

18:00 No, we're actually here to talk to Dr. Vox. I'm, I'm started. Doctor Vok is is extremely busy. He actually just left as well, so you'll need to speak to him. You need to go to his home if you wanted to speak to him. Assess honesty. That orderly has no reason to lie to you about this, and he is not lying. We literally just missed him. Son of a bitch. I'm sorry. If you want to come back during visiting hours, the around 11:00 tomorrow. All right. Thank you. I was thinking I'd use intimidation to get to visit with our Fern fella. Oh, oh.

18:42 My God. All right. You could try to do that. I think you're going to make an exception for us on those visiting hours. Do you want to spend a point of intimidation on this guy? Sorry. What was that? I'm sorry. Do you want to spend a point of intimidation? Because just normal intimidation is not going to do it, but if you really get threatening. I will absolutely spend. Point I've got 2. They're just sitting there doing nothing. How do you intimidate? Oh, the thing I just said. What do you say? Say it again. I think you're gonna make a exception for us regarding those visiting hours. I'll just flex a little bit and, you know, crack my knuckles. Oh yeah, physically. He's physically threatened me. Just physically threatening the guy, yes. I thought you were gonna, like, threaten to get him fired or something like that.

19:22 Oh. No, no, no, no. This is a kneecap situation. OK, got it. Do you have like a weapon? Do you like, pull a gun on this guy or something? Or? I am the weapon. Oh, you are the weapon. Hey, I'm a professor with a lot of points and physical things. Hey, whatever works. I sure I I can. You need to talk to the the new guy who just got in. That is correct. I could you could ask him like 2 questions, OK. But then you have to be going. Work for you guys? We got two questions. Let's make them count all. Right. This is not how I thought this is gonna go. I thought you were gonna be him the next day. But whatever. I'll let you spend a point to threaten the guy. That certainly won't come back and bite you later. It definitely won't make you unwelcome here. That's good, good stuff.

20:09 Glad to hear it. Speed. Run speed. Run stress. Oh, I'm going to tip this orderly on the way. You're going to threaten him and then you're going to tip him, yes. Hopefully that'll that'll balance out to Annette doesn't get us banned forever. Thank you for your cooperation. Fern has just now been admitted into here. He was in state custody for a little while, but he's recently been put in here. He is in an agitative state as you come in there and. He sort of looks up and is surprised and shocked to see anybody even visiting him. The orderly that says all right, be done with him quickly. He looks up at you just a little confused all. Right.

20:58 What should we ask? Hello. What? What's going on? Well, we're here to ask you some questions. I'm gonna start by reassuring here. I'm gonna start by reassuring him that we're not here to hurt him, just. I don't want this to go too horribly. I don't. I don't want to hurt anyone either. You were there. You saw it too, right? We did, yes. Yeah. But we didn't kill anybody though for it. I I know, I I remember this is vok was passing the sugar and the next thing I remember I was covered in blood.

21:39 I oh God, oh Jesus. Look, I had some questions about your your device that you built. When you when you built the device, there was extra stuff, extra parts like you were going to build multiple devices. Did you? What I don't I don't understand what you're talking about. Is he being truthful about that? What? Is he being truthful about that? He genuinely doesn't know what we mean. He is extremely agitated and he's working overtime to appear calm and sane because that's all you could really get with your assess honesty that he is putting on a show with all of this, which means it's on. You can't quite tell. Is he lying about that or is he just lying about feeling better? But I think you maybe already have your ideas about if he's lying about that.

22:28 Sure, sure. Look the X-ray scope, the device that you built for Professor Williams. The the Y scope, yes. OK, look it on your forms. It showed that you ordered multiple parts, enough to build multiple machines. What happened to those extra parts? I I ordered those for. For Williams, I Williams wanted spare parts so we could could make more. He was going to set up them up in in in a laboratory. Yeah. Where's this laboratory I? I don't know. I I I just gave him the parts. Like I can't, I can't remember anymore. Right.

23:11 Do you do you hear it? Don't you hear it? Hear what? And he he looks up as if he's listening. No to something. Does Helen hear it? Oh, Helen, you hear it, by the way. You've been hearing it the whole time, by the way. Helen. Oh. Great. For asking, we're gonna have another stability check. Of course. Difficulty 3. Possible loss of three, Difficulty 4. Gotcha. Who I did not succeed that. Perfect. You hear the music. It's getting louder. Williams did something with that device. We need to to stop it before Williams did. Yes, I I need to be put away for life because of the things that I saw you. You need to be careful. Does it have something to do with Ultimate Chaos? At that phrase you see that he is surprised that you saying that.

23:56 But then he immediately sort of goes back into his sort of a look, I suppose. I I I was made. I I feel chaotic and mad. Yeah. Does the name, as a thought mean anything to you? He starts yelling and pounding his head against the wall as you say that. There we go. Oh geez, there we go. And the order looks like OK, we we can't be doing this anymore. You guys got to get out of here. All right. Thank you again. Would you like to spend the point of Assess honesty? Yes, please. Yeah, yeah, I am unable to. I can't. He made a big when you asked about as a soft, he started putting on a show.

24:37 He was. That was not a that was not a genuine reaction. OK, so we're we got to get out of there obviously now so. Get out of here. Get it. Get out of here. I Sprint out. And I think that's probably your day, unless you want to do anything late into the day here. Yeah, no, no, we'll wait to talk to the so it seems like I just want to talk with them after we leave the place. It seems like he he's lying. He's pretending he's insane and he's not. Yeah, that's quite the twist. So. I mean, he wrote all the stuff about, you know, chaos and has thought, and it seemed like that facade slipped a few times that he was there.

25:18 He was trying to pin this on Williams. I don't think Williams knows what the Hell's going on, especially since his blueprints didn't match what we saw. So I'm going to stick with him. I'm inclined to agree. Now, my gut instinct is telling me that Vox is it. Maybe I'm saying it wrong. It's not, is it? VOK, VOK. VOCK, Voc. Bach, Bach, VOC. VOC. OK, VOC is somehow involved with this, and maybe him being institutionalized is exactly what he wants to happen. VOC would be involved even though it led to the death of his wife. Yeah, some people don't like their wives very much. In fact, they had separate beds.

26:01 They did have separate beds. They are sleeping in two separate beds. It doesn't confirm anything, but it is possible. Yeah, we got to find out if there's a this location, wherever these boxes are, that's that's going to be the key and whoever owns that property is going to help us know who's involved in this. So the next step is to try and figure out where those boxes went. And I think voxes are only real lead here. Well, so do we sneak around his house. It's probably bedtime, unless you want to go back to the Vaca state, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's bedtime. No, no, no. I mean, we know he's there. Maybe we should sneak in again. I don't know about roughing him up, because, you know, this is just the this is a gut, a guess.

26:42 We don't really have any proof to back this up. What? What do you got? What do you think, Helen? You seem like a little bit more reasonable. Thank you. That said, I definitely don't think we should resort to violence anytime soon, if that's what you're asking. Well, no, no, no. Just should we wait tonight? Should we go tonight and and and talk to him there? I mean, maybe this is a good opportunity. It's going to be evening. Maybe he's a bit relaxed. I'll just tell you guys, you're not gonna be able to talk to him. They're not. He's not gonna let you win. That's fair. Yeah, I didn't think so. Yeah, let's not waste our time on that. Let's keep Let's keep moving. Let's get some sleep. All right, You're gonna get some sleep. You guys are gonna have some dreams. Yay. Of course. I need you to make some stability roles Difficulty 5. Now it's getting harder.

27:29 OK, let's roll that. Difficulty 5 and keeping with the theme I ever came, failed. Let's roll it 6:00. Nice. Very nice. OK, you're good. Five. I got a 5. Bad dreams. Whatever. Professor, you remember your dream this time. No good stuff. You you didn't go to your cousin's birthday party and because of that your cousin was arrested and sentenced to death. You know, it doesn't really make sense, you know, dreams and whatnot, but it is upsetting and it's your fault. That he died. Oops. Well, he wasn't my favorite cousin. Lose 3 stability. That brings me to minus 5. And also, while that is going on, you feel a wait as you watch him be hung. You notice that the gallows has too many sides on it the next day.

28:22 I assume you'll all get together in the morning. Where were you guys planning on meeting? Yeah, French Place. Maybe at the sanitarium? Yeah, the sanitarium, cuz he's got to come in. For work. So we'll maybe get try to get to the parking lot early so that we can get him at the parking lot. You do receive you see a report in the paper again your editor actually calls you Chip. It says OK, you got to tell me what's going on with this because a Mr. A doctor binder who was one of the other people at the the observation has just been found having shot to death a.

29:04 The Man in Chinatown. He He shot a man to death in Chinatown or he was shot by a man in Chinatown? He shot a man in Chinatown. Oh, he's been looking at this wrong, haven't we? Well, not entirely, but. What do you mean? You should look into this and everyone else who was there, shouldn't we? Well, you think that everyone there, it was part of a plot. You were there. No, I think everyone who. Yeah. No, no, I. I think everyone who was there saw something they shouldn't have. Oh man, are we all gonna murder each other. God I. Help not. But look, yeah, I agree that that those people who witnessed what we saw, it's affecting us as well. I'm feeling it. I know you're feeling it. But we're not the perpetrators.

29:45 We're victims here. And I believe you know the Benders as well, without even talking to him. Somebody made this device intentionally. Well, obviously. It's Fern. Fern did this, but definitely did Fern do it on his own? Why is he making multiple devices? Is this some kind of mind control thing? Is that what's going on? And if he can make multiple ones, that means he could have lots of people under this mind control thing and have him do is bidding like killing people. But he's but why would he use it on himself? He wouldn't. So that makes me think somebody else has these and that only the only possible lead I've got is Fox. Indeed, I don't think that any of these murders were done with intention or.

30:27 At least I don't think mind control is the exact right answer here. Seems really chaotic. But definitely, somehow they're being manipulated. We should talk to Vox, yes. Chip this morning, yes, As you're heading towards the Yeah, yeah, the sanitarium. You feel like something's looking at you again. Something's watching you. Ah. God damn it, I'm not gonna look up. I'm not gonna look at the moon. Well, it's not the moon. Or the sky. I'm just good. Oh Jesus. I need you to make a stability check. Something is watching you. Difficulty 5 now possible. The loss of. God. OK, OK. I'm going to not, not going to spend any points on this. Yeah, I'm going to just take the hit. If I do 05, I roll the five. God, you're feeling really good about this. However, you do look up and you see that now the sun, that there is an eye in the sun staring down at you. And let's have you take one point of health damage from looking at the sun.

31:19 Oh my God Oh my eyes. My eyes. I know you didn't want to look, but you can't help yourself. I got an extra pair of sunglasses in the car, man. I can't help it. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah, I should have. Oh my God. I've got 12 Health. I'm a healthy guy. Yeah, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Everything's fine. You can go negative in this game. Yeah, exactly. So you reach the sanitarium and what do you do? We're gonna wait in the parking lot to, you know, when he arrives. To and then I I think we should approach him before he gets into the ambushing. Oh, interesting. You're trying to ambush. Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah, ambush him. You succeed in doing this. You see Doctor Otto Vock. He's got wildly tussled hair, deep set eyes at a bushy single eyebrow.

32:08 He's got a, he's got a sort of charisma to him, but he wouldn't necessarily call him the handsome and he's sort of getting out of his car and and going into the sanitarium. And what do you do? I jump out of the bushes. No, please, I don't know. I am not the one who should be doing the talking here. Clearly. Excuse me, excuse me please. I must get to work. I'm sorry, we got some questions for you. We've been trying to track you down for much longer than you'd expect. Well, if you need to speak with me, you could set up an appointment. We do have an appointment. We're just, you know, jumping the gun a little. I don't have any appointments today. Oh, we're going to have to have some words with that servant. This and this is about Fern and his cult practices. A cult.

32:53 Does that, does that, does that get a rise out of him? Do I see? Do I see him raising his? A Fern at a cult. He's like, look, no, I I'm no young Ian, OK? I don't believe in the occult, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Does the name Azathoth mean anything to you? He has no reaction to that. Trying to assess honesty. In particular. It's us honesty. Does he seem like he's? He is. He feels uncomfortable by you ambushing him in particular, talking about. Sure Ferd is making him uncomfortable, but the AS is off thing he has. He definitely has not heard that name before, no. Oh, you folks were were also there with Fern that evening, is that correct? We were, yeah, during the Williams display. Oh, fascinating.

33:41 You know, I actually maybe would like to speak with you about what you saw. Perhaps we can compare notes and we could figure out what happened to Fern. OK, absolutely. Sure, I guess. Yes. Come, come on inside. Let's, let's, let's speak. Let's, let's speak. We could speak briefly. I I can't give you too much of my time today, he says as he's sort of coming in. He's hanging up his coat in his office. That one orderly is looking at you a little funny, but you're with the boss, so he's not saying anything. Uh huh. Yes. So what do you wish to know about Fern? You could ask me a few questions if you allow me to ask you a few questions in return. Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Also, now that you're seeing the the sanitarium, this place is huge.

34:28 It's it's a sprawling sort of campus, three stories tall. There's there's a lot of space here and he leads you into his office on the 2nd floor. So what? What do you wish to know about Fern or I suppose myself? Though I must admit I'm not particularly interesting, though my dear Lucy is. Well, look, Fert, Fert. Well, see, sorry about the loss of your wife, Sir, but it's come to in our investigation that Fern was involved with some occult beliefs and practices, like as in magic, magic, that kind of thing. Well, look, I'm not saying it's it's a real thing, but this is something that we're sure that he believed in and that he was a worshipper of chaos and all this crazy, crazy stuff. He was building, you know, this machine for the professor. It also looks like he was secretly building more machines. Now, to me, it looks like that these machines might be able to affect people's minds.

35:31 I know I feel unsettled deeply by it, as do my colleagues here. So I'm I'm wondering if you might have any insight to where he might have stashed these things because we've looked at his house, we've looked at. Williams Place. We've looked around. We can't find anywhere where these might be. Is there some place that maybe he said before, you know, some secret lab that he might have or something that hasn't told anybody about, like a cabin in the woods? Something along those lines? These questions are making him visibly uncomfortable. Well, not visibly uncomfortable, but with your assessed honesty.

36:11 It's very specifically asking where did he put stuff. This is very much bothering Doctor Voch here. I could not tell you where anything would be stored. I he he lives he lived with his at his mother's boarding house and and now he lives here. I I don't know where he would have stored anything else. I. I do must have. I must apologize. If you've been to his home, there's nowhere else he could have put. You said he was building other things that that doesn't seem right to me. Other devices. Oh, OK, yeah. Then he's got these extra parts. He's building extra devices For who? Why?

36:57 Why doesn't that seem right to you? He's. He would not. Why would he have a need to make? More devices. He seems so shaken up by the device that he saw it. It led him to commit the acts that he did. So your friends, you were friends with him before all this happened? Yes, yes, it dates back to my arrival in this country. How did you meet him? He was the son of the my landlady, and it was so nice to talk to somebody who wasn't a highbound academic, but somebody who could, you know, think outside of the box, as it were. I I no longer live there. You know? Actually, when I I married my my beloved Lucy, we were able to move into her estate with some of her family's money. Which has helped me actually found this sanitarium She she truly believed in the work that we were doing here. But since then I have remained friends with Vok. He he visits occasionally to to the house. Not Vok.

38:03 I ever made friends with Fern. He visits occasionally to the the house but I know he's been working with Professor Williams on his the the why scope that I suppose he shouldn't have been working on. It drove him mad. On a related note, would you still consider him a friend? His psychosis is not his fault. I like to think of him as a friend. Still, perhaps we could find a way to save him. But and also, wasn't your wife just murdered? Why are you spending so much time at work? Jesus Christ. I must ask you to leave now. I believe this this conversation is over. If you need to speak to Fern, you may speak to him for a short period of time.

38:51 I would like to observe that. But for now, I think this conversation is over. I don't. I don't want to speak of this anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Thank you. He this whole sort of vibe here, he was not telling you the whole truth and what was going on here? It seems like he's hiding something really. Is that so? What are the odds? What are the odds that those extra machines are here? Do you think they're in the sanitarium? Yeah, plenty of space, possibly. I get to feeling he can't tell us where they are, but I bet he could show us. I mean, I guess you could look around the sanitarium if you'd like. Yeah, I've tried to be sneaky about it, definitely. Hey, Helen. Yeah, you're gonna see something. Boy.

39:31 Helen. Poor Helen. We keep seeing things. Should I just roll the D6 just get it over with? As you were traveling around the sanitarium, as you sort of moved out, you see. That one of the the patients here there are formless bacterial creatures floating all around them like the things that you saw around the bizarre cue. And you see them reach out and grab this person and move them around on strings, manipulating their arms and legs, whispering thoughts into their ears. And then they see you. They swarm into this being all at once, who then begins to dance a mad and capering jig.

40:16 And he's laughing. He's laughing and laughing. So everyone's going to have to make a role at this because you see a guy who just is japering around and laughing. It's a little uncomfortable to the two of you who didn't see it, but it is an insane asylum, so perhaps it doesn't bother you too much. It'll be a loss of two. It's the difficulty. But for me it'll be like difficulty at this point though is 6 for everybody. Oh, perfect. Oh geez. Things are getting harder as your mind is getting worse. I failed 5. So I lost two. Oh, no. Oh yeah. For you it's two. For Helen, she'll lose 5. Yeah, I'm going to burn 2 Sandy points just to make this role better. Oh, thank God. That was a six. All right. I failed. Just barely.

40:56 You failed. I failed as well. You said it was 6, right? Was the difficulty it was six, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I failed two, so I'm, I'm down to four stability now. So just just so you know, that's that's sort of uncomfortable there. Where do you want to look? What do you think you're going to do to try to find stuff in this asylum? Well, we've been in his office, so it obviously wouldn't be there. There's got to be storage here, or maybe it wouldn't be storage. Maybe it would be like because orderlies and things would access storage and he wouldn't want them. Maybe there's an old office that's not use.

41:36 I think that might be a better angle, so do you guys want to split up and look for it? Sure, I need all of you to make. Are you trying to be sneaky while you're doing this? Definitely. Oh yeah, absolutely. OK, All right, so I'll need you all to make shadowing rolls. Difficulty 3. It's not that hard to move around here. I succeeded. I'm gonna spend 2 points. I'm gonna spend 3 because I want to succeed at this and. My checks are a little harder. It's a + 1 difficulty. Yeah. So. I roll the six so. I'm good. Yeah. I spent two. Yeah, I got 7. So I'm. I'm like a ninja. A sweaty ninja. You are all looking around this place honestly. Mostly you find nothing, you know? You know, that makes sense.

42:25 It's it's difficult to find anything. But eventually, let me roll to see who finds something. Professor. Hello. Yeah, you find a basement door. That seems like it is. There's something about it. Seems to be calling to you like a basement. Of course. Of course, that's where the the machine was built before. Maybe it would be in this basement. Unfortunately, the door is locked scuffle, but there's something about it that's, you know, giving you a place that you might want to go. Well, I guess I'll have to direct someone who can open the store over here. I can pick locks. You saw me pick a lock earlier, so. OK, yeah, we'll make it a basement door. It's fine.

43:08 The basement door is locked. But if you want to try to pick the lock, you could absolutely do that. I can't do that myself. I need either A reporter, Yeah. I'm gonna give it a go. I can. I'm. It's a role, right? You could just spend a point of locksmith to get in. Yeah, spend a point. Yes, it's technically an investigative skill that lets you find clues. All right, exactly. Before we go down though, Professor, we're gonna have to make a role over here. Okay. You realize it's all come together. You figured out what's going on. Excellent. It's your husband, Renee, of. Course he did it. They are an agent of the blind idiot God, and they have been so for as long as you've known them. They stuck it to Williams Lab that that night and reoriented the Y scope.

43:52 You've been used to confuse the case because they're waiting to end all of existence. There's only one thing you could do. You have to go and kill them right now to save the world. Of course, it's also obvious now this is a difficulty 6 stability test with a possible loss of 6. Nelly I. Should probably spend some points on this one. This ain't gonna go well. You probably want to succeed on this one, is what I'm saying. Yeah, probably. I will spend 4 points as that is what I have to spend and that would be additionally 1 difficulty higher as well. Cool. So I need a four or No 3. That's a six.

44:34 OK, nice. You you shake your head and realize no, no, that's that's crazy. Why were you thinking that? I shouldn't have skipped breakfast. Oh, Dan, you just reminded me that I skipped breakfast in real life. Maybe I should eat something when we're done. Thankfully, it seems like you guys maybe have solved this case fast enough that the truly horrible visions might not hit you. But as you make your way down into this basement that you see there, you start to hear music. If you could even call it music, It's yeah, it sounds familiar. Everyone this time, Not just Helen. Everyone could hear it this time. OK. Oh, thank God.

45:14 Wait, that's bad. And you see a laboratory at the bottom of the stairs here. Ha. Of course, a laboratory slash temple, and in the middle of the room you see Fern jumping up and down with a A flute in his hands that sharp and jagged and around the room are six projector devices that look like the Y scope but are larger and more of overtly sinister. Each of their beams are going together into the center of the room and where they intersect A5 sided cube hangs in the air. That is now about the size of an automobile and it rise and intermittently also displays instead a 7th or 8th side on its cube like self and probably maybe the thing I should have mentioned.

46:09 This is probably the first thing you saw when you got into the room. Dancing around the chamber, wailing on bloodied razortipped flutes are man sized versions of the bacterial entities that you witnessed through the Y scopes all. Right, so this isn't really my area, but this is bad, right? This is extremely bad. You also see that beneath the cube are several like a dozen patients that steam to have stab marks all over their bodies and the ones that are alive are screaming. Oh my God, this is going to be a bit of a stability test here.

46:53 Stability test I that would make sense. Difficulty 5 If you fail it will be a lose 9 stability situation. I have no points left to spend. Oh, oh, If that's the case, then I will spend some of my remaining stability. I feel like we're. Approach at the end of the game, so I could probably afford to. Let's spend 3 and just hope I don't get A1. I'm gonna spend 2 and pray. And oh, I got a six Boo. I got a 50. Thank God. I rolled A5 but it's increased difficulty for me. So how's everybody's stability doing then? I'm my stability is currently at 3:00. Flat 0. -, 14 Oh.

47:38 Whoo oh, OK, so actually you can't really handle this my guy. This is really not my area. Really. Isn't Oh you are now incurably insane? Oh no. Well, I'm in the right place where it expose. You may commit one last crazy if you would like. You could commit a crazy act of self-destructive heroic Ness, or self-destructive self destructiveness, or just be out of the game. I'm gonna go after one of the projectors or the Y scopes and just try to take it apart with my bare hands and I teeth.

48:18 That feels extra crazy too. You know what you do? Run to the Y scope. You throw yourself on the gears over and over again, biting, smashing, breaking, and your body is pulled into the machine itself. Perfect. You break it. But it also breaks you. Whoops. There are two of these bizarre beings. There were three, but as the Professor destroyed the machine, one of those beings began to fade away. However, there are several machines in here, and these monstrous creatures and the Mad Fern are now looking at you. What do you do? I continue being dead.

49:00 Yeah, you're Yeah, you're. What the hell is going on here? I've only torched the room and run. Do you have something to torch the room? What is in the room that I could potentially use to set it on fire? There's just big electrical. It looks almost like a fucking Frankenstein laboratory. It's just like electrical things all over the place, but you don't see any like gasoline or anything that light on fire. Fern begins to cackle and say his gaze is upon us and he starts running at you, waving this flute that's covered in razor blades or razor sharp flute at you. Cool razor flute. Great.

49:40 Just one of those fucking days, huh? I I guess I would say. Do you think you have any weapons? Oh, no, I He's just a reporter. He wouldn't have thought that it was going to go this way. So now he wouldn't. He wouldn't have any. I have a yeah, you are. You know how to use weapons. I think you have like a weapons training. Like I think you may have, like defended yourself in a knife fight or something, but you don't necessarily have anything with you. I don't. I don't think you would. Yeah. I was the weapon. Yeah, well, you are dead. You know what? I do have five points in preparedness. OK, so can I use these five points in preparedness to say that I have a large flask of alcohol for personal use and a lighter?

50:24 Yes, if you'd like preparedness. Also, if you don't know what that means, you could make A roll with preparedness to say that you had something with you that it didn't make sense for you to have. I'd like to do that. Sure. Difficulty 3. Cool. I'm going to. Let's see. To get difficulty 3, I'm going to roll 2, burn two points of preparedness just to guarantee I would succeed. Now you could do that. That's not going to make that big of an explode. No, we just need to start the fire. I mean it's the it's the 30s. Like there's not going to be like this place isn't probably isn't safe to stand in. It's a concrete basement. Well, there are boxes down here.

51:04 The boxes that were all of the box, you know, all of the wooden boxes are down here. You're absolutely right. All the wooden boxes are down here. Of course, there's absolutely something you could burn. We finally found them. Let's start a fucking fire. All right, so now we are technically in initiative order. Combat isn't really the focus of this game that we're doing here. Let's see, so we How many points of athletics do each of you have? 10. I have 8:00, So Helen will go first, then you will go chip, and then the creatures will go. So I'm using my turn to start a fire. All right, I need you to make me a roll of some sort to do that. What would be appropriate for this? I don't know.

51:50 I mean, scuffling is the generic fight thing. You could use athletics if you're trying to move over and light something on fire. I'd say firearms, but I don't think you have it. Yeah. Athletics. Athletics makes sense. So I'm gonna burn two points of athletics and roll 7. All right, you know what? You'll light up the laboratory. It begins to burn. Oh fuck, yeah. Now we can die and we'll still technically succeeded. Chip, what do you do seeing this scene? Chip is gonna make his way to the door and get out of there. And hopefully, I mean, he's gonna try. He doesn't want to just leave Helen in the dust, but also he wants to. To make sure that he's going to be able to get out. So I'm going to Chip is going to move to the door and avoid being grabbed or whatever these things are going to try and do to us or stab us with the knife, pollute, whatever. Yeah, the the, the Flute knife.

52:45 The flute knife. I'll I'll going to spend 2. You know I don't think this is going to go on very long, so I'll spend 3:00. I've got an 8 Athletics. OK, you need a four to succeed, so you'll you'll succeed automatically with that, yeah? I got a I got. Yeah. Yeah. OK. All right, So Helen, you're still kind of in the room, though these two creatures are going to try to hit you with their flutes. Of course. Oh no. What's your hit threshold? Did you write that down? Helen's hit threshold is for, so they are going to try to hit you with their flutes. They're going to spend two points of scuffling to do that. Oh boy. OK, the first one hits you and the second one hits you.

53:29 The first one deals 5 damage to you and the second one, oh boy, does 6 damage to you. So I'm at -, 1 yeah, they just these creatures sort of float towards you and just stab you through with their razor sharp flutes. Oh my God. And then go back to piping on them. So Helen is dead? No, no, no, no, no. That's not how health works, actually. -, 1 does it. You're still in the game, you're just hurt. Yes, I'm hurt. Surrounded by bacterial flute monsters and a burning and the room is about to burn. My odds aren't looking great.

54:10 I mean, I will say this fire is a thing that could hurt these guys a lot more than if you tried to stab them. So that's good. Let's check your health here. Believe there's an up check you are hurt. A zero to minus 5 means you have minus difficulty and you cannot spend points. Oh no. And you see that Fern is now running over to the fire and like, trying to, like, throw away a blanket on top of it to try to put it out. He's having difficulty doing that, though. What would you like to do, Helen? Ron. These things and the machines can can burn to death for all I care I need to. Run Hell and Ron.

54:51 I need to. No. I need to stop. I need to stop Fern from putting out the fire because does he look like he will succeed? If we leave him alone? He might. It's a little unclear. I need to stop him from putting out the fire, Not like I can spend any points on anything anyway so. I guess that would just be scuffling, yeah. Make a scuffling check. His hit threshold is 3. 6 Yeah. OK. Better than a 50? Yay. So roll a D6 and subtract 1. That's how much damage he'll do unarmed. One damage? Whoo. Nice. All right, it is. It does knock him away though, and he starts screaming and waving his fluid at you again.

55:31 Of course, as the fire burns behind him. So that's good. Hey, Chip, what do? You do. Chip's going to. They're not coming after him, right? There's that, there's they're not, no. And Chip is not a fighter. I have no scuffling at all, so it would just be pure die chance here and it looks like things aren't going to work out, so he's going to just wait at the steps and if there's like a last minute. I'm going to hold my action, basically, is what I'm doing, OK? You're going to hold your action, OK, Helen, these things are going to attack you. What are the odds only one of them, though one of them is consumed by the fire? Oh, hell yeah.

56:11 And it seems to scream in a way that is fluty. The whole thing is I'm not making big roll any other roles because the whole scene itself has been so damaging to you that anything else is not going to bother you too much. But this other one is going to up. He hits you and he does 5 damage to you. -, 6 You are seriously wounded and you need to roll to remain conscious. I rolled A3, so the difficulty on this is your absolute value of your health. So what? You're at -, 6, he said. So the difficulty is 6. You're going to roll D6. You can spend health points to try to stay up. However, if you reach -, 12, you will die completely. I have failed.

56:58 You failed. You're up, OK? You pass out in the fire, or you pass out as smoke begins to fill the room. All right, seeing that, I'm going to just run up the stairs and close the door. Behind me, eventually, the order, a bunch of orderlies come over to you. It says What? What are you doing? What's going on? We have to contain the fire as even they are starting to hear fluting and stuff. We have to contain the fire. There's a fire, a fire and the the fire department is called. Chaos reigns. Everyone's running around the the sanitarium trying to figure out what's going on, and eventually when the fire department makes its way down into the the basement, it is blazing full of fire.

57:43 The things are starting to spread. Whatever, we sort of get a scene of of of all the burning and all that's left in the laboratory is a bunch of burnt up equipment and some charred corpses. I mean, horrible. Also, Dr. Vach is nowhere to be found after the fire. Oh, his body's not found? No, no. Well, his body was not down there originally, but he during the fire he disappeared, he seems. To have left gotcha. And they all lived happily ever after. Except for me and you. Oh. Yeah, I mean everybody else. And I was going to give this vision to the person with the least stability at the end. But there's only one person left alive. Sure.

58:29 Yeah. So I'm going to give this to you. Uh, huh. You realize the truth as you were looking at those awful things as you ran up the stairs and tried to forget them. It is not the beings of dimension. Why that are half real. We are. What is half real? We are the absurd dreams of malign and in different beings, and they have been kept at Bay this time. One day they will. They will come and reclaim their playthings for good. We need you to make one last stability test. All righty. Difficulty 6 for a six point loss. Difficulty 6. I'm going to spend the last of my stability, which is 3.

59:11 But the hopes of not doing this roll here and I rolled the five. So 8 you have. This is not necessarily broken your mind completely, but maybe we'll see how it goes for the rest of your reporting. Yeah, the the thought, the thought. He's able to push out this thought and and continue with his job figuring out how how am I going to report this, you know, all these things that happened. What what am I going to say? Do I? You know he's going to believe me and something well obviously Fern escaped and and was harming other people in the institution that happened but all the details about the machine that'll be left out and Vox's involvement you know he yeah so we'll have to that won't be in the in the report either. Thanks for listening GO schools and those who lay beyond our cast this week featured special guest Chris Lackey. He wrote the excellent and any awardwinning Colts of Cthulhu and hosts the top notch Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast, where they look at all sorts of classic genre fiction. It's become one of my favorites,

1:00:45 and they have an extensive back catalog. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, and let's not forget podcast regulars from the Dread Tail, screw Russell and Nathan. Russell, as always, is an enigma. But Nathan, you can find on the Kingdom Hearts A Forgotten Era podcast at KH under score, a Fe on Twitter and I'm on Twitter at LOTR under score Dan. I treat some good stuff there sometimes, although I guess maybe the website's called X. Now that's a whole other horror. Special thanks to our editor Dominic, who's really knocking it out of the park as usual. And just a friendly reminder that we would love for you to join us on the Daniel's Dread Tails Discord. You could find a link to it in our episode description, or you could go to our Twitter, which is at Dan's Dread Tails all one word.

1:01:42 You could talk to the cast about the show, suggest we should play next, or talk about all sorts of fun stuff. We'd love if you would review the podcast or tell a friend. We'll see you in two weeks for a new, exciting game that I think you're going to like. Bye and have a horrifying day.