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[inkyvendingmachine]

Avedone With All of This Season 4, Episode 4

💀 Call of Cthulhu: Haunted Hijinx Masterpost 💀 Call of Cthulhu Season Four Masterpost (Coming Soon)

Warning: This campaign is an edited version of  a Call of Cthulhu scenario from the Tales of the Crescent City book. While a lot has been changed, there IS spoilers for it throughout these posts.

GUESS WHO FINALLY SHOWED UP!!! and also a lot of other stuff happened. I'm sorry, this one is very long because I didn't take notes, and struggle to leave out details when I'm writing from the records instead of the notes.

Art Credit: @inkdemonapologist : sketching + inking @inkyvendingmachine : concept + colouring

Somehow Jack’s car, with all its original passengers and no extras, manage to make it back to the studio. Joey immediately rushes into the studio, to go rant at Bendy about everything that happened… and possibly to go fuse with Bendy because he feels utterly helpless now after completely draining himself with panicked magic. 

But it’s probably just the first one.

Sammy and Henry arrive as well to find Jack and Peter quietly picking glass out of his broken car in something like shock. Upon getting no responses from Jack about what happened, Sammy storms off to find Joey.

Joey is all too happy to start his entire rant over again for Sammy as he works on fusing with Bendy. They were just following Peter’s leads and driving from location to location and then all of the sudden this ASSHOLE shows up out of nowhere and just stands in front of the car. Busts the car, terrifies poor Jack, and then on top of that tries to break INTO the car and abduct Peter?? It’s a good thing Joey managed to blast him out, but they weren’t even DOING ANYTHING that would have possibly summoned him NOTHING AT ALL... And on top of all that, being an absolute PRICK as he’s doing it! 

… Anyways, how was the moooob?

Sammy updates Joey on everything that happened with Johnny Nero, which is pretty much just that he had seen the Yellow sign, that Henry removed it, and that Nero was pretty intent on getting his hands on whatever the Phantom wants first. Which like… yeah, if you wanna solve all our problems and fix this mess, go ahead! But Joey’s pretty sure that’s not going to happen, so he goes back to working on his ritual.

Sammy leaves to go back to Jack, and right as Joey feels ready to start the ritual his phone rings. The special one. And it’s… Avedon??

Avedon immediately starts info dumping on Joey about everything that’s been going on already… like, all the information Joey already knows. A lot of flat “yeah?”s in reply as Avedon rambles on, until he mentions that it’s already gotten to Norman. Wait, what?? But Avedon doesn’t stop, telling Joey to meet him at his hotel room in NYC so they can go over more information. Before Joey manages to get any clarification, he hangs up. 

That’s Joey’s thing!!!

Joey is the one who hangs up on others!!!!!!!

Frustrated, Joey does try to call Norman, and… Yeah, Norman is talking in weird riddles and speech that doesn’t fit with the Normal Norman Vibes. That call is also ended with little information gained… but at least it DOES seem like Avedon knows what he’s talking about this time, so Joey’s willing to meet with him, even though he’s also feeling done with him already.

Joey finishes the ritual and merges with Bendy.

On his way downstairs, Sammy is still turning over the car event he just heard about… and the increasing evidence that Peter might actually be the Phantom’s target?? Why else would he be trying to drag him out of the car?

Sammy approaches Peter, who has since started exchanging information with Henry as they all get the last of the glass shards out of the car, and says that he wants to see if Prophet can tell anything about what happened. Sammy looks distracted for a moment, and [lack of surprise because it was actually somewhat communicated beforehand,] Prophet is here!

Prophet concentrates, and with no hesitation, mushes his hands all over Peter's face. 

The good news is that, while Prophet can tell that Peter’s been grabbed by the Phantom recently, that’s actually all that he can detect. No additional eldritch stuff, he’s not possessed, he’s not weirdly marked or damaged in a way that can’t normally be seen. Great!

But Prophet can’t tell if Peter is the target or not. For his part, Peter has been muttering that it seemed like the phantom was trying to pull information from Peter on someone else he was looking for, someone who “followed us out”, but there’s nothing Prophet can sense to confirm that… but he realizes he can sense the distortions to reality increasing throughout NYC. They’re in the air, moving about… getting stronger.

Henry can feel it too.

But that’s all the energy Prophet has, and he unfortunately misses Joey showing up and dumping his new plan of action on everyone. He, Henry and Peter are going to go find Avedon’s dumb hotel room and figure out what’s going on with him, while Sammy and Jack are going to go check up on Susie and Norman because Norman is definitely acting weird now and he’s not quite sure if Susie is in over her head or not…

Nobody objects to the plan. And with NYC losing more and more of its reality to the yellow mist rolling in, it seems important that they do something.

Henry, Joey and Peter do make a detour to Henry’s house though to make sure all is well there. The car is gone, the lights are out, things seem as they should if Linda managed to follow through and get the kids out of the city. Peter is concerned when he notices some of Henry’s wards, but don’t worry, those are supposed to be there. Henry checks them over, and they all seem good. Bendy finds a bucket of clay he and Henry's kids had played with before, and brings it along to entertain himself on any following sleepovers, since that is a thing that will probably keep happening. For once, it seems like everything is actually left alone? 

Until they look out back and find the treehouse Henry built for his kids is gone. Actually, it’s almost like all the landscaping and such in the area was just… cleared away? Or never happened. Joey meanwhile is tabbing through Henry's photo albums and makes sure everyone is still there, which they are. But the treehouse isn’t. And, perhaps even worse, there’s also an extra guy in the JDS staff photo now? Joey pockets it, since this guy seems to be in the music department according to the photo, but Joey is sure he’s never seen him before. And it’s not Alan. So. Hopefully the music boys can shed some light on this.

Henry grabs some supplies and his gun, and Joey turns him around to fix his outfit and make sure the gun is properly hidden. Avedon is 2 trigger happy, we don’t want to say our hellos by instantly showing off the weapons we brought.

Meanwhile Jack and Sammy’s drive to Norman’s is more fraught than the previous ones. Not only has he moved house again, (though at least this time they have evidence of his new address from the junk mail they took last time) but… many other roads are starting to move too. Also Sammy is driving, so, speed has been cut in the engine department too… don’t need to hit two things in a single day with all this mist building up, and any sort of navigation trouble puts even more delays in.

At least they do manage to find the place and head on in, with hope that also maybe now that Avedon has arrived Norman will stop being so “sticking it out in a house that keeps wandering off apparently.” Things seem kinda fine at first at least, like they’re not immediately shooed out or attacked or have any weird monsters hanging over the house waiting for them to try the door… But upon Sammy questioning Susie while Jack goes to find Norman in the back, the music boys find out that things are very much not fine.

Susie is… very confident with a knife all of a sudden, and very confident that she will be able to just stab the Phantom when given the word to go out and hunt him down. Y’know just… stab the guy who couldn’t be damaged by a 2 ton vehicle slamming square on into him. And when Sammy tries to argue this logic, it just becomes more and more obvious that Susie and Norman are both… in character. Susie’s speech cadence is even reminiscent of when she’s performing rather than talking normally. But they don't seem aware that their actions seem more scripted than decided.

Jack finds Norman in the back, with a hatchet and a very similar plan to Susie’s. But whatever is happening isn’t strong enough to make them completely forget themselves, and with some facts being pointed out and reminders of who they are, the boys manage to get these two actors back to themselves... kind of. There's still some weirdness going on, and this also doesn't answer the question of what could be done to prevent this happening again?

Neither Susie nor Norman really realized when it started to happen, and it took some serious outside convincing to snap them out of it at all… Do they need Henry to expel something to truly get back to themselves again??

ALSO, IF THE PHANTOM CAN’T BE HARMED WITH A CAR, WHAT ARE THEY GONNA DO ABOUT THAT TOO?? THAT SEEMS CONCERNING!!!!

Meanwhile, Henry parks near the hotel they were directed to by Avedon, and the trio look upon it in… concern. First of all, it doesn’t even look like a hotel, or look like it belongs in NYC. And the entire place is surrounded by a yellow mist… and while they could wait it out or try to somehow call Avedon and tell him to come out, it just feels like the longer they wait the worse it will get. 

Really, it’s starting to feel that way for a lot of things.

But even though everything about this feels bad, they press on and enter the “hotel”. What should be the hotel lobby is abnormally empty, and when they start up the stairs… well, that’s not normal either, the stairs just keep going. Joey is flipping any rugs he finds though to make sure they don’t have stupid destabilization spells underneath them.

After a few rounds of strange rooms, weird hallways, some alien screeching outside the windows, and Henry noticing that NYC is not the city outside said windows, he stops everyone out of worry that they’re walking into a trap… and Joey agrees. But not that this hotel is specifically a trap.

All of New York is a trap.

It doesn’t matter where they go next, the longer they don’t solve this issue, the more of a trap everything will be.

They just gotta press on.

…

Aaaaand start yelling for Avedon because clearly they aren’t gonna be just walking up to his hotel room at this point.

Good news! Avedon replies! Bad news!! Only Henry can hear it for some reason!! And… Avedon can hear Joey but not Henry?? 

It’s all very confusing. They find Henry’s reading glasses on a table. Those were in his pocket how did they get there excuse me. All of this isn't fine actually.

But after a few rounds of Avedon Polo, they finally stumble across each other in a… garden. In the middle of a hotel. And of course, the first thing Avedon says is that they need to leave immediately. He didn’t know it was going to be like THIS, he just stepped out to get a coffee and suddenly the whole place is weird??? Well, now that they’re here, time to immediately leave because YEAH THAT WAS THE PLAN FROM THE START. 

Going through another door leads out into a familiar courtyard, at least familiar to Joey. He had been here a few nights ago, while invading Y’s dream, and indeed, right where he’d expect, he finds the Y twins chatting amongst themselves. Marching up to them, Joey demands to know what they’re doing and what’s going on.

They respond by addressing him as royalty.

✧･ﾟ: *Joey Drew, as Your Highness･ﾟ: *✧

Normally, this would probably inflate Joey’s ego! Currently, it sinks like a stone into his stomach!! He does not want to be part of the play!!!

Unless…

Joey suddenly wonders, because it’s the same courtyard, if they are in a dreamscape of some sort… Does he appear different than himself… and that's why they're addressing him this way?

But no, he looks like Joey, and Henry looks like Henry, and Peter looks like Peter, and Avedon is still here… except Joey also notices some of their hands are starting to turn transparent…………. That's probably fine.

He still doesn’t want to be part of their play.

The Y twins try to get Joey to go somewhere with them, and he makes up a story why they need to not do that rn, so that the group of normal fading humans can attempt once again to leave this place. 

Since it's all weird here, Joey tries his little will-what-he-wants-into-reality trick and… well it doesn't work. Instead, he finds a throne room?? and realizes that they aren’t just in Carcosa, they’re in the castle where the Yellow King’s play takes place. And Joey manages to follow his intuition from here to find some kind of portrait hallway, covered with familiar faces… all labeled as characters from the play. Not recognizing all of them, Henry starts drawing them so we have a record of it later.

But there's a few he doesn't have to draw.

One is Alan Leroy, the guy that they're becoming sure is the target of the Pallid Mask. Part of the royal family, apparently. He's a slender man, black hair slicked back, young looking, quite pretty … kinda looks like Joey…

Which makes more sense perhaps when the portrait of the eldest son in the royal family is none other than Joey himself. Guess this is why he was being addressed as royalty… but that means the Y twins are not quite in their right minds, and anything he finds them doing here is probably just play nonsense.

Also Denis is the youngest prince but who cares about that guy.

What they DO care about is the fact they’re getting more and more transparent, so the boys go to find Avedon, who is oh so helpfully knocking shit over and muttering in french, and Joey manages to get his door trick to actually work this time; he opens the door and there’s…

STAIRS!!

Everyone starts running down them, managing not to get turned around when they start making twisty turns, and get to the front door of this stupid castle in a hotel lobby.

They peek outside.

Sure enough, on the side of the building, there’s a shadow shaped suspiciously like nothing they can really identify, so it must be some sort of angel monster or something.

At this point, there’s really only one option they have: try sneaking to the car and hope it’s looking the other way, and if not, run!

Everyone agrees that this is a great plan.

And then they do that.

There’s a bit of fumbling in the middle, but the car was parked outside of the yellow mist for once, so the creature just fades out as soon as it leaves the mist to chase them. 

Well! Okay then!! That problem is solved!! Let’s go deliver Avedon to Norman so that he can take responsibility for his mad man and then maybe stop hiding at home or something!

Henry drives off, and things seem fine for now…

Until Joey swivels around in the front seat to question Avedon, and out the back window, sees something flying after them, only visible whenever it passes through the mists…

Problem… not solved.