COVENANT — Part Two

Last time, on Trail of Cthulhu: Covenant...


•  In Iolanthe's sweltering apartment/psychic studio, Carmenelli hands Iolanthe a note about a seance he's hastily arranged.

• Needham begins his investigation into the financial history of Michael Thomas, pastor of the Chapel of Contemplation by talking to Father O'Leary, a salty old priest in the North End.

• Jacob interviews a new maid to care for his children, and lays out the rules governing their care. Esther hands him an address.

• George, Marty, Ephraim Weaver, Carl Standford and Ralph Gilman and sundry others are relaxing in the Silver Twilight lounge; Ralph invites them to a seance he's arranged in one of his father's properties.

• Fred gets a call from Carmenelli, inviting her to a seance that night.

• Needham, tracing the way to the old Chapel of Contemplation, talks to a few more characters in the North End, which point him to a narrow, empty lot down a North End alley. He avoids falling into the crumbling floor tiles, and finds his way into a hidden subterranean section of the old building. There, he found skeletal remains of former members, a mysterious, crumbling book, and a selection of their old records. He takes the book and financial records for consultation later.

On the way out, he's accosted by two local youths of unpleasant disposition, but some skillful gunplay and the crumbling architecture allows him to make his escape.

• Iolanthe hits some local archives to do some research for the sake of making her act more convincing, uncovering the history of madness that surrounds the residence. She picks up a likely name to pin on the 'restless spirit' she'll contact later: Walter Corbitt.

• Fred grabs some occult 'artefacts' to salt around the house, when she arrives.

• Jacob gets dressed for the evening, and delivers further instructions to the maid to avoid the 'artefact' room.

• Needham, on the way to an address he discovered in the Chapel records, encounters an odd man doing a painting study of the house.

• Carmenelli introduces everybody, the Hermetic Order members and Cecile X arrives, and Marty checks out the rooms upstairs and peers down the basement steps.

• The seance begins.

As Iolanthe invokes the spirits, they hear scratching noises from below and a thumping from above. Events come to a crescendo as Iolanthe, continuing her act, asks if Corbitt is the one disturbing the house, and what they want—at which point, she croaks out "DIE!" and blood begins to splatter the table from above.

• Needham, Iolanthe and few others decide to book it. Marty, George and Jacob decide to investigate the source of the blood by revisiting the rooms upstairs. The people outside see something send the glass from one of the bedroom windows flying outward—Jacob narrowly avoided being hurled out the window into the alley of junk by a rusty bedframe.