Incident at Trase’s Tourist Court

Familiar with the investigators’ recent brushes with the unknown, Dr. Henry Armitage invites them to meet him in his Miskatonic University offices. He has a matter of some delicacy to resolve and hopes that they might help him.

Recently, two colleagues from the university’s geology department undertook an expedition to nearby Springfield, MA. On their return, both confided peculiar and contradictory narratives to him, their mutual friend.

Dr. William Dyer and Dr. William Moore, cheekily known by their graduate students as “the Two Stony Wills,” visited Springfield in response to a report of dinosaur bones uncovered during foundation excavations for the city’s new post office. It occasioned some excitement, as a partial anchisaurus skeleton was discovered there in 1855, significantly damaged by blasting during the building of its armory. Unfortunately the bones found at the future post office site were cattle ribs, buried perhaps half a century ago.

With budget in mind the two professors stayed outside Springfield at Trase’s Motor Court on the evening prior to this disappointing revelation. Afterwards Dyer told Armitage that he had awoken in the night to find Moore missing, and the door to their motel room open. Dyer found Moore near the road outside, in a daze. He said that he had seen a two-foot tall humanoid with a metallic body and a simian face peering through their window. When he went out to confront this being, it spoke with a strange buzzing voice. Identifying itself as Anafalxis, it warned Moore not to delve any further into his current studies, lest he awaken a force that could inundate the entire area, from Boston to Arkham. With difficulty Dyer guided Moore back to their room. The next day he steadfastly denied any recollection of the incident, even as a dream he might have had.

Not knowing what to make of this, Armitage sought out Moore in the faculty lounge. Moore told him quite another story: he woke in the night to see a bright light shining through the window onto Dyer’s face. Dyer was sitting up in bed, his face impassive and slack-jawed, his body locked in an apparent paralysis. Dyer muttered under his breath in Latin, repeating the sentence, “Quod sepultum est, non debet exhumari.” (That which has been interred, must not be exhumed.) Unable to rouse Dyer from his eerie trance, Moore rushed out of the room to search for the light’s source. He thought he saw a tall, thin, perhaps inhuman figure beaming it at the tourist court from the shoulder of Boston Road. Instantly the beam snapped off. He searched for signs of its origin but found nothing, not even tracks.

By now quite concerned, Armitage called the Two Stony Wills together for a meeting. Now neither of them recalls any untoward incident at Trase’s, or indeed having described any such nonsense to Armitage on their return. Their denials strike Armitage as entirely convinced and sincere, though clearly wrong, as he absolutely remembers both of their unnerving anecdotes.

Given some of his own inexplicable experiences, Armitage wonders if the investigators would do him the favor of looking discreetly into this matter, starting with a visit to Trase’s Tourist Court.

Trail of Cthulhu is an award-winning 1930s horror roleplaying game by Kenneth Hite, produced under license from Chaosium. Whether you’re playing in two-fisted Pulp mode or sanity-shredding Purist mode, its GUMSHOE system enables taut, thrilling investigative adventures where the challenge is in interpreting clues, not finding them. Purchase Trail of Cthulhu and its many supplements and adventures in the Pelgrane Shop.