A Study in Dust and Stone, Session 2: Dreams and Visions

Scene setup

Story Direction Roll
[D100]: [91] => Dice roll

Dice Roll
[D100]: [89] => Something happens

Random event table roll
[D100]: [2] => Make a Spot Hidden roll, standard. If successful, you notice that someone is following you. You don’t give anything away just yet, but they’ve been shadowing you for several days. What are their motives? Could it be to do with what you’ve been investigating recently?

Regular Spot Hidden roll:
[D100]: [51] => Success

Q: Who is following me?
Verbs table roll
[D10 + D100]: [1 + 94] => enchant
[D10 + D100]: [2 + 42] => follow
A magic user is following me and the empty train is an effect of some spell or enchantment.

I chose a spell from the Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu

Dream Vision
Brings forth dreams or nightmares portending to the future. May be cast upon the wizard him or herself, or at a chosen target (the wizard must be able to see the target). The spell may involve the ingestion of certain hallucinogenic plants or compounds. The dreams are unusually vivid, although the information related is usually cryptic and metaphorical in nature and imagery—may also cost Sanity points, depending on the content of the dream.

Q: What do I see in the prophetic dream?
Verbs table roll
[D10 + D100]: [4 + 84] => drop
[D10 + D100]: [0 + 34] => sing
A a black skinned mermaid is sitting on a rock. A giant golden squid is nearby, minding its own business. The mermaid starts singing, which attracts the attention of the squid. the giant squid attacks and eats her. => Remy's sister is in danger if she does not quit singing.

Sanity check for the vision: 0/1 sanity points
Sanity check roll:
[D100]: [64 < 70] => success, no sanity loss

I am then woken up by Remy. He tells me he's going to Baton Rouge to hear her sister singing at the golden kraken.

October 27th, 1925 9:00 a.m. | On a train en route to Baton Rouge

The morning sun over the Louisiana flatlands is mocking in its brightness. I boarded the train to Baton Rouge with a heavy mind, but the crowds and the smell of cheap tobacco offered a temporary sense of normalcy.

[Spot Hidden Success]. Amidst the rustle of newspapers and the hum of travelers, I feel a gaze. Someone has been shadowing me for days. Is it a rival from the Dante Alighieri Society? Or someone sent from Fiesole to ensure the Bartolini secret stays buried? I cannot discern who among the crowd is my shadow.

I sought refuge in the bar wagon. The coffee was bitter—burnt and chemical. I returned to my seat, the rhythmic thrum-thrum of the tracks lulling me into a slumber that was far from peaceful.

The world slipped away. I awoke to a silence that possessed a physical, suffocating weight. The train was a tomb; passengers vanished, coffee still steaming on abandoned trays.

Driven by a buzzing in my skull, I stepped out of the iron carriage and found myself not in the Bayou, but on a shoreline of jagged rock and impossible geometry.

A mermaid with skin like midnight sat upon a salt-stained rock, bathing in the sun. Beneath the waves, a mountain of gold stirred—a giant squid, its metallic hide gleaming with a predatory luster.

She sang, and the gold moved. The water erupted. The event was gruesome: the squid did not just kill her, it erased her.

"Sir! Sir, you all right?"

The world snapped back into focus with a jolt. The sun was still bright, the passengers were back, and a man was shaking my shoulder. He was rugged, with the steady hands of someone who worked with machines—or guns.

"You were screaming in your sleep, sir," the man said, a curious glint in his eye. "Sounded like you were fighting a ghost."

I looked at him suspiciously. "I’m sorry... do I know you?"

"The name’s Remy Fontenot, but folks call me Red," he said, extending a hand calloused by labor. I introduced myself, and perhaps it was the lingering dread of the dream, but I found myself confessing the details of the vision. I described the black-skinned mermaid and the golden kraken that consumed her.

Remy’s face went stone-cold. The casual "neighborly" mask dropped, revealing the calculating man beneath.

"A kraken?" Remy asked, his voice low. "Made of gold?"

"That’s what I saw," I replied. "A weird dream, Mr. Fontenot."

"It ain't a dream, Mr. Bartolini. It’s a problem." Remy leaned in, the smell of chicory and gun oil following him. "I'm headed to Baton Rouge because my sister, Camille, is the headliner at a fancy 'white-only' joint in the Garden District. I’m her shadow. I make sure her life stays in the spotlight."

He paused, his eyes narrowing.

"The club is called The Golden Kraken."

Mythos points +1 for unsettling event
Sanity check 0/1d4-2
Lorenzo: [D100]: [16 < 70] => No sanity loss
Remy: [D100]: [16 < 40] => No sanity loss

The air in the car suddenly felt as thin as it had in the dream. I told him I wasn't a man of nightclubs,

"May I inquire about the reason of your trip to Baton Rouge, Mr. Bartolini?"

I saw no reason to withhold the truth. I showed him the photograph of the Bartolini sigil—the stone floor hidden under the rot.

Remy looked at the photo, then back at me. "You’re into this occult shit?"

"I don't believe in coincidences, Mr. Fontenote. I believe that dream was a warning. My research and your sister's stage are connected by a thread I can't yet see."

Remy looked out the window at the passing cypress trees, likely calculating the trajectory of a .38 slug versus a golden monster from a dream. Finally, he gave a grim smile.

"Camille is my life, Mr. Bartolini. If your dream is a premonition, I’m gonna need someone who speaks the language of the 'impossible' to help me stop it. You want to see the Kraken? I'll get you in."