Case Goblin Willow

From Lexicanum

Down in The Country

Another day another meeting

Monday morning – the characters get in to work only to discover a meeting has appeared in their calendar over the weekend for a meeting in meeting room 101 at 10:30 under the aegis of facilities.

As the characters contemplate the full horror of yet another focus meeting on which shade of puce green would be preferred in the New Annexe they notice three facts:

Everyone on the to list are their colleagues from the laptop incident,
There is a note to clear your diaries for the next two days
Its copied in to auditing

At the appointed time in meeting room 101 they are met by a surprised looking manager from facilities called Ron Brickley who explains that the characters are being sent to the countryside, to the village of Quaere, to run a software audit. He is clearly worried by the number of people being dispatched but after confirming that it isn’t coming out of his budget he loses interest in that fact. He issues to each of the characters with their mission pack which consists of:

Travel documents showing the location of the office and return rail tickets for the afternoon train from Paddington.
A note stating that the local office will pick up the officers from the local station and arrange appropriate accommodation.
A note detailing the basic computer arrangements at the office.
A note stating the budget allowance for this mission (being somewhat lower than the per head Christmas party allowance)

At the end of the meeting the characters return to their desks, collect their “grab bags”, requisition the appropriate software/equipment required and stock up on stationery.

Welcome to Quaere

After a three hour journey which involves two changes on to progressively smaller and older trains the party arrives at the station halt of Quaere. Waiting at on the platform is an elderly man in a rumpled and somewhat ratty suit, and his hat looks like it came out of the wrong end of a DEEP SEVEN. His tiepin writhes alarmingly. He steps up to a pair of Australian backpackers and flashes his warrant card and gets confused when they do not show him theirs in response. The party saves the situation by making their presence known and the old man introduces himself as Director Brown. He dodders over to a battered old army land rover with old military plates whilst talking about

how nice it is to have visitors from London,
They’re here to fix the… blinky light boxes, or so Wainwright tells him,
Marvellous, what they can do with beige boxes these days

He then wanders off in some anecdote about a botch mission in Syria involving pillars of salt. The characters’ notice that Brown has a nervous twitch and a habit of dropping… those mouth noise things you make when you say something.

Brown explains that

Mr. Wainwright – invaluable and a jolly good chap – has … them into the best guesthouse in town.
It’s just across the road from the Quaere Office. They used … be up at Quaere House, when he …. working for the Laundry, but the National Trust took Quaere House back in…1969, was it?
They still have ….. to some facilities on the grounds, up at TRANQUIL and WESTMINSTER. They have …… up there too – the characters should pop up there and fix their bleepy boxes too.
Once they drop their …. off at the guest house, they should come over to the office and he will put the kettle on

The Laurels

The guest house is attached to the village pub opposite the office. On arrival at the reception the owner asks if they are up from London. Apparently, Mr. Wainwright told her they would be coming, and they’re up on the second floor.

The four rooms they have been allocated on the top floor are clearly little used and smell musty. Major Travis notices warding glyphs scratched into the windows and doors. After waking Gideon up he confirms they are Laundry designs effective but dating back to the 1950’s. Its old magic but still effective as a level two ward.

Once the characters unpack, they head over to the office. The Laundry office in Quaere is a dingy two-storey building. It’s unmarked – to most people. The characters, however, see the sigil above the door.

The Office
The characters enter the office past the warded front door and the sight that confronts them reminds them of what they Imagine the sales office of a small and unusually dull agricultural feed supplier would look like. Brown walls with cheap calendars, two-bar electric heaters, corkboards with pinned notes, an air of grinding dullness.

As soon as they arrive Brown introduces them to John Wainwright, the office manager, who gives them the “grand tour”

Downstairs

·         Director Browns Office

·         Operations – “The nerve centre of the operation” consisting of 6 desks. Three of which are occupied

·         Armoury

·         Kitchen

·         Bathroom

·         Backdoor

Upstairs

·         Computer room consisting of an old Windows NT server, NAS backup, dedicated server that runs a gate straight to London head office.

·         A small room with the UPS system within it

·         Ritual Chamber

·         Records – apparently the concept of the paperless office has yet to reach Quaere.

He also points out that the computer systems up at the Quaere House section in Project TRANQUIL are also technically part of the office assets, so the characters will have to visit there too. Wainwright also asks the team for a favour – he’s short on field-qualified agents right now. If something comes up that needs field experience, like a confirmed sighting or a transient possession, can he borrow them for a few hours? To which the party agree.

The party decide to start the audit despite the lateness of the hour.

Paul started on the servers
Angus helped Paul by looking at some of the client machines before reviewing the records room.
Major Travis decided to interview Clive Miller (an office drone) and regretted it.
Lizzy and Emma decided to go to the country house to poke around.

Almost as soon as he started Paul noticed something odd about the e-mail server and after further investigation found an odd e-mail account called “secure”. Paul discovered that secure’s in-box was full of some very juicy emails (Handout#1). The emails started several months ago; the most recent was sent only a few hours ago.

Meantime Angus noticed that in the records room that a file had its ward broken and its contents removed except for a single sheet which was covered in muddy fingerprints (Handout#2).

On the closure of the office for the evening the party retired to the pub for a meal and then held a meeting in one of their rooms to discuss what they had uncovered as well as what to do the following day.

Goblin Willow

Not so tranquil

In the morning the party decide to head to the Project Tranquil building which is an old converted stable block next to the chapel and graveyard. The party is met by Dr Tabitha Laws, well not met, assaulted is a better word. She assumed that the party was here to shut down her project so she launched into a rant about genius it is and must not be stopped. In summary the party gather from her rant that the project is GENIUS AND MUST NOT BE STOPPED. The party calm her down and explain they are here to do a computer audit.

To avoid any misunderstandings and just in case you were not listening to the important bit, i.e. MUST NOT BE STOPPED, she gives the party code word clearance and issues them the summary of the project. (Handout#3)

Touring the lab facilities, she hands the party over to Dr Holsted who is an elderly expert in GRAVEDUST techniques. He joined in the 1970’s and it shows – he’s gone a little ghoulish. He introduces the party to the staff and gives them the tour. The facilities consist of:

·         Main door reinforced and warded

·         Degaussing chamber to remove psychic residue

·         Main corridor

·         Law’s office

·         Server room

·         Pyschic Cleanroom where 5 GRAVEDUST control units hum away.

·         Laboratory where staff spend their time analysing signal data or on Myspace

·         Stores

Dr Holstead suggests that the party may want to talk to Barry, but not to disturb him at lunch Barry

.

The party start the audit with Paul looking at the servers and Angus checking the logs.

Paul notices that although the server is up to date there is odd traffic between TRANQUIL and the Quaere Office intranet indeed it looks like some tried to hack into the network from here.

Angus comes across the equipment log and notices although all the GRAVEDUST equipment is present all the spare parts are gone. All the forms for wear and tear are present and correct, but they’re all dated on the first of nine successive months.

Angus, Major Travis and Gideon decide to check out the church and graveyard where they meet Barry who they discover is a ghoul, although a loyal Laundry employee. Angus notices there is something odd about all the GRAVEDUST units and cabling running throughout the graveyard and points this out to Gideon who recognizes as being based on the Nazi soul capacitors at Peenemunde.

Down at the farm

At this point Wainwright appears and asks the party if they can do him a favour and spend a couple of hours doing a routine sweep of Moon Farm as he is short of field qualified officers and they are overdue to do their monthly checks on the property. The party agrees and he gives them code word clearance to LUNAR BLIGHT files (Handout#4), keys to the property, as well as directions on how to get there.

The party borrow the land rover and set off towards Moon Farm. On arriving at the farm they discover that it is fenced off with MOD keep off signs littered around. On entering the farm, they notice that:

·         The farm consists of a few acres of overgrown semi-wilderness. A belt of oak trees surrounds the dilapidated farmhouse.

·         As they approach the farm house they see that it is boarded up but some has broken in and there is graffiti as well as general rubbish. It could be squatters.

·         The surrounding plant life is weirdly lush and vibrant. There’s an apple tree near the house that bends under the sheer weight of its fruit, weeds cover every surface, and those oak trees seem even bigger and more impressive when you get close to them.

Gideon gets out his Thaumometer and discovers that the area is hot with magical energy.

Paul and Angus decide to enter the farm house where they discover 4 sleeping bags, a smouldering fire and other signs of habitation. Meantime Major Travis and Gideon decide to check out the well where they discover that there is signs that the plywood cover had been removed and replaced recently. At that point the Major hears chanting coming from the woods and the clouds part to review a moon whilst the farm seems to darken. Gideon notices his Thaumometer spike and realises with horror a gate is being opened. The Major shouts a warning to the rest of the party who respond by coming. At this the Major spots 2 figures emerge from the woods chanting, all with glowing eyes, approaching them. Gideon meanwhile looks behind him at the well to see a glowing from beneath the plywood cover.

Moon Farm

As the two figures approached Major Travis stepped forward and demanded that they surrender. Unfortunately, they did not respond and it became clear to Paul that they were reenacting events of 50 years ago. The first figure was a woman of mid-twenties but was speaking to the second as if an older male whilst the second figure, who was a mid-twenties male, was speaking as if a small frighten child. Combat was then joined as the Major punched the first figure whilst Paul tried to banish the spirit by loading the spell on his laptop and trying to bash the second figure with it only to discover it was a good plan if a different spell was used as well as the laptop not falling apart on impact.

Meanwhile Emma, coming out of the Land Rover, spotted the combat and hastily

approach whilst preparing a syringe to knock out the possessed civilians. Gideon made his way to the door of the farmhouse to hide and Angus rushed forward to help in the combat. As Emma made her way forward she got struck by a nightmare vision of a 1940’s Christmas tree with bodies underneath it as though horrific presents. The Major struck his opponent with a solid punch knocking her out. Angus joined the combat by grappling the second figure to the ground. Gideon, seeing the combat was going the character’s way, decided to investigate the glowing well. Emma, now recovering from the sight of the vision made her way forward and administered the syringe to the final conscious figures. Angus decided to tie the figures up whilst the Major decided to investigate the chanting from the wood which hand reached a crescendo.

On approaching the edge of the wood the Major saw something that unhinged his mind and routed him to the spot. One of the oak trees had Dark Young

metamorphosed into a hideous 4 legged hoven monster with tentacles up routed itself and was heading to the party. Paul saw the Major routed to the spot pointing at the trees and spotted the creature. Shouting a warning he headed to the Major to help. Emma meanwhile, on hearing the warning and seeing the moving tree monster, headed to the Land Rover to get the jerry can of petrol. Angus retreated to the farmhouse whilst preparing his zippo.

The monster advanced passing the routed Major towards the unconscious bound figures whilst Paul, on meeting the Major, spotted his state and grabbed the shotgun. He then shot the monster in back with it. The monster did appear to notice but instead scooped up the unconscious figures and headed towards the well. Gideon cleverly spotting what the monster was planning leaped on to the plywood cover of the well to stop the creature throwing the civilians down the well. Unfortunately, at that point the thought occurred to Gideon that, given it was at least 10 years old, the plywood would not take his weight never mind he jumping on to it. As he crashed through the plywood and fell down shotgun2

the well he was partially comforted by the fact that he was proved right and he was safe from the monster. Approximately 1.4 seconds later he was further comforted by the fact that the soft mud, of which he was knee deep in cushion his fall. Meanwhile Emma returned with the can of petrol and Angus prepared his lighter. Paul put another shotgun round into the back of the monster which collapsed dead whilst the impact of the creature falling killed its passengers.

Around this time the Major recovered his senses to see two further figures charging out of the woods towards Glock

him. Somewhat surprised to discover his shotgun was suddenly missing, he drew his Glock -17 and proceeded to engage them with Paul’s help. The figures were soon dead as a result of the Major’s accurate rapid shooting.

Meanwhile Gideon, after checking he had no broken bones, investigate the glowing plastic bag next to him to discover that it contained a Laundry-made GRAVEDUST unit connected via an odd electric arrangement to a small piece of masonry from the Quaere church using Sympathetic magic. Paul is winched down the well to help Gideon and examine the what he had found. After examining it notes that the Sympathetic Magic spell is brutally inefficient. It’s not that it’s badly designed per se, but it’s very, very old-fashioned. In fact, it reminds him of magic of the old Thule Society designs from the Atrocity Archives. Whoever did this studied old Nazi magic and nothing else. Paul then disable the device and the area around Moon farm returned to normal as normal reality reasserted control. At this point Angus gets a panicky phone call from Wainwright that TRANQUIL has contacted something and it’s trying to force its way through. He has contacted head office but they are some hours away and this could be a full-scale incursion. The party rapidly retrieves Paul and Gideon from the well and, given the Major’s new found phobia of trees, decide he will not drive back to Quaere.

The Devourer from Beyond

Driving back to the village Emma had another vision, this time of Mahogany row with all the office doors open and at each door an old man staring at her. As the party approached the village they felt the same oppressive atmosphere as moon farm reasserting itself. The locals looked sullen and above the stable block swirling clouds were forming. At the office there were met by a panicky Wainwright who directed the party to the stable block.

On reaching the stable block the party found Dr Laws and Dr Halstead arguing on what to do. Dr Laws wanted someone to go into the main lab past the growing rift in the lab and shut down the GRAVEDUST units. Dr Halstead however wanted to use the deathward installed in Dr Laws office to destroy the lab. The downside of which that it will destroy everything, including frying the computers with the research data on them, and everyone not carrying a warrant card.

The party decided to shut down the GRAVEDUST units but Paul secretly took the key from Dr Halstead to activate the death ward as a backup. The Major led the party into stable block with his trusty shotgun in his hands. On entering the main corridor, the party saw almond smelling clouds of smoke billowing out of the lab. The Major then advanced towards the lab with Gideon following closely with a tartan blanket ready to throw over the Major if necessary. Meanwhile Paul went into Dr Laws office to prepare to activate the ward if necessary whilst Angus decided to find and trip the circuit breakers to the stable block. Angus soon found the circuit breakers only to discover that they had been sabotaged. The Major entered the lab to see the rift surrounded by lots of class one exonomes who promptly attack. Fortunately, his Laundry issued class 2 ward was more than sufficient to deal with these attacks. A larger entity then entered the lab via the rift, a Devourer from Beyond, and proceeded to attack the Major. Gideon, unfortunately, was badly affected by the sight of the Devourer and clutching his blanky tightly used a hand of glory to go invisible. Meanwhile Angus entered the lab to give assistance. Whilst under attack the Major used his shotgun to destroy three of the GRAVEDUST units ignoring the electrical damage from the rift. Angus was struck by the Devourer as was the Major. Finally, the Major managed to destroy the last two GRAVEDUST units at which point the rift and the Devourer vanished leaving a scene of devastation.

As the party congratulated themselves a call came from the Laundry office that Director Brown had died. Paul and Emma went over to his office to investigate. Director Brown was slumped at his desk next to a half drunk cup of tea. Emma on investigating noticed that:

· his cat was also dead and looked like it had been dead for years.

· the tea looked suspicious so she took a sample for analysis.

Paul noticed that his personal ward was on his desk and not on him. Around this time helicopters and anonymous vans turned up from London. From them a number of senior officials disembarked along with squads of Plumbers, Baggers, Toshers and Cleaners. The party were then interrogated for several hours, where Gideon stated that it was all Wainwright’s fault, each before told to go back to London.

A Funeral

Over the next few weeks the Party were subjected to extreme bureaucracy including days of form filing. The Party are then invited to attend Directors Brown’s funeral which involved a return to Quaere. At the funeral Several senior Laundry staff came down for the funeral, including BROWN

Angleton. It’s a grey, rainy day that promises to be a dark and stormy night. Barry the Ghoul already prepared the grave, with a white marble headstone that said only ‘BROWN.’ The assembled mourners looked like a flock of grim crows with pasty faces and serious expressions. Part way through the ceremony Wainwright left, clearly overcome with emotion. Gideon tried to follow quietly only to cause a commotion by knocking over a pile of hymn books but the Major, Angus and Emma managed to get away to see Wainwright standing in the graveyard away from the marked graves. The Major approached Wainwright whilst, in the Church, Barry shut down the protective ward around the graveyard and at this point Wainwright body was engulfed in a bright yellow glow emanating from the ground. The Major enquired whether he was ok Wainwright replied in an odd accent stating he was fine. When the Major pushed the point Wainwright suddenly turned and ran towards the edge of the graveyard. The Major, Emma, and Angus chased Wainwright but he turned out to be a surprising good runner dodging between the headstones and sometimes doubling back on himself for no reason. Emma managed to use her trusty syringe and plunge it into his bum. Despite this, he managed to dive over the wall of the graveyard with the syringe still sticking out of him. After landing badly, he shouted some words in Enochian he vanished. Angleton then questioned the party over Wainwright and after inspecting the point where Wainwright vanished dismissed them.

Over the next few weeks the repercussions of Case Goblin Willow rumble across the new annex corridors before eventually the party are summoned by HR……

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