#cause that's my reaction to it i just heckin keel over and curl up

[inkyvendingmachine]

“Is there ink in this room...?” “Is there a party in this room?”

💀 Call of Cthulhu: Haunted Hijinx Masterpost 💀

First though:  Spoilers for the First Scenario from Tales of the Crescent City, which has been reprinted out of the Great Old Ones; We are actively playing, please no spoilers, but also we will have spoilers from it ourselves as we play. Read at your own risk.

aaayyeee gets another one out right away too... now it’ll bet 8 more years for the next one (hopefully not)

Staff in hand, the five run towards the exit only to encounter a weird foggy door, clearly magic, no telling what’s on the other side. Moonlight was ready to sick some goons on them, but a gunshot rings out, which was probably Avedon?? Attempting to kill Fowler or Moonlight?? Who knows, thanks for the distraction dude!! Joey struggles for a moment, fighting Party!Bendy who really wants to go eat, and slips down a stability level (now has starry eyes + tail!! Can’t stop grinning!!! This will be great.), though Joey does manage to go through the door, everyone else following near.

We end up in a kind of castley looking room… that contains no ink, Sammy immediately notices. Meanwhile, Henry notices that the room has a weirdly similar layout to his living room, and there’s literally photographs of his family on the walls. Joey insists that it’s an illusion, a trick to keep us here scared, and insists we go on through the next door. Meanwhile, Sammy tries to snap Jack out of… whatever he’s doing, but Jack just is worried about the fact we’re probably snooping around where we shouldn’t belong, and wants to get back to the party. As everyone heads towards the door, Henry’s family starts fading out of the pictures, only he is in them now… 2 SPOOKY LETS GO.

We end up in a hallway, which seems to be back in Fowler’s Mansion. There’s decorations and the same writing on the walls as was at the studio. But this time, the ink is black… and calling for Sammy. He starts to go for it, and Henry manages to grab him and steer him towards the end of the hall. As they move towards the door, realizing how much of a danger Sammy is in right now, it’s noticed that there’s a mirror on the back… and Sammy sees something in that, and starts running towards it. Joey, having no idea bout this though, simply opens the door and ushers everyone through.

We pile into a new room that’s castley again, but this one doesn’t seem to have an exit. Actually, it seems to be made not to have an exit, as it is a prison cell. The door they came through is bars now instead of being foggy. Joey screams in frustration. Sammy meanwhile, breaks down muttering about how “he was there, he can help,” as Jack tries to console him… Jack knows Sammy doesn’t like parties, but this seems to be more upsetting than usual. Otherwise, he doesn’t notice anything is wrong beyond “we’ve still not gone back to the party.” As this happens, Sammy grabs Jack by the lapels and starts trying to beg for him to get out of this weird party mode he’s stuck in… but it’s not getting through. 

Meanwhile, Joey has toon-ed his way through the bars and manages to pick the lock open on the other side. It takes some convincing to get everyone heading down the hall again, but he’s not going to leave anyone in that prison cell. As they reach another foggy door, Joey finally picks up on some of Peter’s mumbling about how Carcosa works, and gets an idea about using the door. Like usual, he ushers everyone through, though this time he holds himself back. Joey closes his eyes and walks through the door, thinking less of a specific place, and more “take me where I need to be to fix all of this.” As he moves forwards into darkness, the hallway gets smaller and smaller, until eventually he hits a locked door. There’s something glowing though…

Meanwhile, the other four pile into what seems to be the room where Sammy knew the vault holding the slick stone was. Some of reality is wonky in here, being half castle, half mansion… but there’s still two guards standing in front of the giant safe hidden by large painting. Henry decides to try “Pulling a Joey” since he’s dressed up as staff, and walks up claiming it’s an emergency and they need the contents of the safe. The two guards seem… wary, and only then does everyone notice, by his lack of  stepping in, Joey is… missing? Sammy steps up behind him and tries to help out, or at least make sure he’s ready to help fight if they try to attack Henry… but they manage to convince the guards to let them open the safe. Henry puts in the code, a birthday he got from Fowler’s diary, and opens the safe to… Joey???

Yeah somehow Joey managed to door his way into the safe, which contains the stone!! Very carefully and with Bendy’s help, he manages to take off his comically large bow tie and wrap the stone up in it, then Bendy tucks it in an inner pocket of his vest. He walks out of the safe like nothing is weird about the situation, though the guards are sort of worried about his face… as it seems to fit some of the description of the Yellow King’s… messenger??? who’s been causing issues… but he doesn’t exactly fit, and when Jack steps in to reassure that it’s all fine, they manage to head towards the exit without much more difficulty. 

There IS a plate of sandwiches right next to the door, which Bendy stacks up and eats in all one bite… just like in the cartoons!! Except he was still in Joey’s body as all this happens so uhhhh EVERYONE TAKES SANITY DAMAGE FOR WITNESSING THAT.

With a little more confidence on how to control the door, they try to head towards the room with the pictures and ritual circle again… though end up at a gazebo?? Perhaps outside of Fowler’s house, but the garden is really nice at least. Too nice…

We head out towards the mansion, and then uhh a person falls from the sky?? And based on Peter’s screaming, it’s indeed the same reporter guy that started his entire investigation into these matters. Seems weird to be happening here and now and everyone is uneasy,,, especially Joey who miiiiight have a thing about watching people fall to their death. Just a little bit. But the main fact is that Peter does NOT want to be in open air and tries to run back to the gazebo, at which point we all grab him and run back towards the mansion instead. 

When we reach the doors going in, they’re foggy again, so Joey takes this as another opportunity to try and get into the ritual room by doing what he’s been doing. Turns out… the less sane you are attempting this feat, the better the results will be.

They end up in the room with the inky circle and the pictures and everything, though half of the room has melted into a hill that leads back down to the lake, and most things are weirdly strewn about now because of it. Sammy immediately goes for the inky circle though gets caught by Henry, who also tries to stop Joey from tampering with the circle since there’s protection runes around it. For whatever reason, Joey believes they cannot hurt him, and goes for the circle anyways, indeed getting hurt and turning into an inky goo creature. Sammy pulls away from a distracted Henry and immediately goes to the ink, while others in the party behold the inky demonic form of Joey/Bendy. Prophet Sammy, however, walks up and reaches out to touch the ink creature's face, asking “My lord, what do you need of me?” 

Joey and Bendy have no way to communicate in this form. Internally though, they’re both making a lot of noise at each other.

MEANWHILE, Jack just really wants to get back to the party and suddenly believes he can get there if he just gets through this wall, starts ripping down photos and stuff as…

Fowler shows up.

He demands to know what they thought they were doing, obviously he would know if they were messing with the circle. While Henry tries to talk to him, Prophet grabs the rocking horse and tries to smash Fowler in the back of the head with it. 

Fowler seems… pretty unphased by this, and turns to grab Sammy’s face after saying “This isn’t how the story goes.” And starts trying to attack the masked messenger out of Prophet’s system and turn him to the Yellow King. Jack is still foggy brain, but can realize that his friend is being harmed and manages to shove Fowler away from Sammy. Henry steps between Fowler and everyone else, making it clear that if Fowler tries to do anything to hurt them he will attack back. Fowler raises a hand and says “It’s too late, nothing can be done,” before trying to shift the room, and Henry takes a swing at him but… again, just doesn’t seem to affect him. He does get to see the bullet hole though; Fowler did indeed get shot earlier.

Joey finally manages to recompose, at which point he toons out his arm to just… gRAB??? FOWLER??? And fLING?!?? AT LAKE?!?!? Bye dude,

After Joey flings him, there’s a distant splash, as well as some distant ramblings of Avedon that we could hear go silent. That bought us a little time: Joey and Prophet instantly start to put together the spell to convert the stone. Also Prophet removes his mask, it’s a false mask and he refuses to wear it. 

Joey actually lets Prophet take the lead on converting the stone, wanting to make sure they get this done right and as quickly as possible so they can move on with all of this. But as soon as the spell starts up, there’s an upset “NO!!” in the distance, and the room starts to shift more. Henry tries to run down to the lake and confront Fowler, stop him?? Inform him that we have a way to get his family back, without doing all this! But Fowler simply replies for him to prove it, before teleporting all of them away. Joey and Prophet both tackle the stone the moment they notice they won’t be able to complete the ritual, and Joey actually manages to grab it… as they end up back at the party. 

Prophet and Henry end up seeing the Yellow Sign again, but Henry is able to push it out of himself, and Prophet is... a bit more filled with other things and has less room for sign. Joey starts trying to plan with Henry to get out to the lake; get the family back, then go to the picture room again. Prophet obviously disagrees, though eventually goes along with it when the other two point out that Fowler will probably just continue to kick them out until the situation has changed. Jack objects because we finally got back to the party, at which point Joey turns to him, grabs him, and starts trying to boss-voice demand him out to fight through the sign. For a moment, it works, and Jack looks horrified… and then he slips away again. Prophet also tries a softer approach…?  Trying to lead his sheep away from the lies of the false king, but it doesn’t get though… Jack is handed off to Peter to watch and they head towards the door that was found earlier to head out to the lake. 

Jack does have some issues with doors now, so it takes multiple people to shove him through and head out into a hut near the ritual site they had been at earlier. Also, Norman is here!! Dressed kinda like the Cheshire cat and peeking out the window of the hut, down to one of the monoliths where Avedon is tied up and being questioned by Doc Moonlight, who’s very sure that he’s with JDS??? (While Avedon thinks JDS is with the yellow king?? It’s a very confusing conversation.) 

Well, Norman wants to get his buddy back, and this seems like a good time to try and take out moonlight, so Prophet borrows Henry’s whackity stick and tries to knock him out. That fails though, and the moment he’s threatened, Joey bounds out, turning his arm into a giant cartoon hand claw and going for Moonlight on the way. The doc actually manages to dodge and gets a spell off on Prophet that causes him to Bleed From Face, at which point Jack runs out with Peter nearby to help get Sammy out of danger while he is blind and screaming. Henry also runs out and scoops up the stick to whack Moonlight with, giving opportunity to Joey to pin him down, and then Henry knocks him out. Carefully but with big-ol-cartoony claws, Joey unties a very frazzled Avedon and uses the ropes to tie Moonlight to the thing instead. 

With a moment of quiet, they try to start planning out the next step… but there’s only a moment of quiet, as Angels scream in the distance.

#call of cthulu: haunted hijinx #batim #joey drew #sammy lawrence #Jack Fain #Henry Stein #peter sunstram #norman polk #ayyye i had this one typed up already #accedentally went a little harder on this art than i meant to bc i had a neat idea #man this is really what it felt like as we were running all over creation #anyways the next one won't be until next week i can promise you that #today i get my second vaccine shot!!! which also means tomorrow im gonna be DEAD #cause that's my reaction to it i just heckin keel over and curl up