Thursday 21 November 1957. Late morning.
After last night’s events Lucille and Diana wakes up late and makes it down for breakfast around 10.
Afterwards they visit Jonas as they want to visit the chapel ruin again, but he is busy especially as he is organising the search party trying to find Einar who disappeared in the storm last night.
The investigators borrow his car and drives to the meteorological station where Malcolm quickly confesses that the station is an MI6 listening outpost rather than a weather monitoring station.
Malcolm, and his younger colleague Nigel, are capturing communications and other patterns to locate Soviet ships and submarines.
Malcolm mentions Operation Whalesong which 3 years earlier captured a dolphin with Soviet listening equipment strapped to its body. This is why he theorises that the beached creature is a failed Soviet experiment in underwater recognisance.
Nigel is an expert linguist and looking at the symbols Lucille have captured from the beached creature and from carvings in the chapel ruil alter, he concludes that some symbols have been seen in cave drawings and have yet to be deciphered. Other than that, he is at a loss.
Thursday 21 November 1957. Lunchtime.
The investigators feel Rúna Einarsson, the local Brýnna, is a key figure to investigate and visits the home of her and her husband Jonas.
Nobody is home and as the frontdoor is unlocked, they walk in to investigate. They find an odd wooden figure in Rúna’s beside drawer alongside a diary where the last few days only has the word “Friday” written on each page.
Jonas comes home and the investigators quickly exit after which they knock on the front door and are invited in for lunch.
Thursday 21 November 1957. Afternoon.
As Jonas is still busy, the investigators drive back to the weather station to ask for Malcolm’s assistance in staking out the chapel ruin.
The ruin is as they left it, but there are two woven banners of sea green/blue colour with a white spiral in the middle laying on the ground left of the alter.
On the right there is a rucksack with candles, matches and lighters.
The trio hide the car in the forest and waits patiently for 3 hours in the rain. Their patience pays off as when darkness falls, a car arrives with 3 men in heavy oilskin coats.One man hangs the banners, one man sticks candles in the candle sticks and the last man stays in the doorway.
While the two first men chat about the weather and just doing as they are told, the last man never utters a word.
The three leaves unaware their actions has been seen by the investigators and Malcolm.
Diana captures the license plate and asks Malcolm to find out whose car it is.
Thursday 21 November 1957. Evening.
The investigators return the car to Jonas who invites them in for coffee.
Here they finally get a chance to talk with Rúna about her role as Brýnna, which she is handing over to Yrsa after the Turning Tide on Friday.
She speaks in riddles, not so much by choice but because it is hard for her to put words to her role.
As they talk she mentions that members of the three elder families are called Driftborn and also refers to the sea as The Current that Dreams several times.
But before the investigators can follow up on this, there is a commotion outside with people running through the rain towards the beach.
At the beach the creature is standing erect now having legs and flailing boneless arms. it sways back and forth as a gigantic baby learning to walk before it falls backwards in the ocean and is taken out to sea by the currents.
Confused but relieved the citizens of Skeljavik leaves the beach leaving the investigators and Karl Angakkuq, the one-eyed leader of the fishermen.
Karl is convinced that his theory that the sea creature was the returned spirit of Bjarn is now proven. Especially as Yrsa, the supposedly cheating wife of Bjarn, has not been seen since lunchtime.
Karl theorises that Tómas, the shopkeeper that allegedly is involved with Yrsa, is also gone never to be seen again.
The investigators return to the guest house where they agree to find out it Yrsa and Tómas indeed have disappeared and to investigate the car of the three men further once they know who it belongs to.
Epilogue
Diana, exhausted left Lucille to her tea and withdrew to get some sleep.
Lucille couldn’t sleep. Strange ancient alphabets, spirals, mysterious men at the otherwise abandoned chapel ruin, the sea creature’s abrupt departure, the current that dreams, Rúna’s odd way of talking….
For a moment it all seems to add up. For a moment she sees the bigger picture. She understands something. Something she is not meant to understand.
It won’t fix in her mind. it’s gone.
But she felt she learned something.
But now it was time for bed.
Thanks to one of my players for capturing the story beats
A lot goes on in Eldritch Hack as it is so story driven, so it is easy for me to forget what happened so I am grateful one of my players wrote down the story beats.
