Session 16 Notes
Recorded August 3, 2024
General Summary
- All of the women are in the dining room. Germaine Cazenave actually helps conceal that Boris and the Doc are coming from the direction of the Count's study.
- The Doc and Cillian talk about what we are going to do and we decide that it would be best to head toward the restaurant for our scheduled dinner at the count's restaurant.
- Germaine offers to drive us to the restaurant and Josette Cazenave appears to think that Boris chaperoning Germaine to the restaurant.
- Which freaks Boris out.
- We are able to convince her however to allow Jon to drive to the restaurant so she can talk to Boris after we learn that she is not the most experienced driver.
- The rain is still pouring down, but we do make it to Bourbon Street and into the area where the restaurant is.
- The door of the The Count's Spot is open. There is no sign over the restaurant, just a sodden French flag that marks it.
- The restaurant is very nice, the air is heavy with the scent of food and spices. There is a lot of traffic from the kitchen, a side room, and the main dining room.
- A man materializes, likely the maitre d, who asks us for a reservation and looks at us a bit disdainfully.
- He tells us that the side room is where the dinner party is.
- We move toward an extremely crowded room that is full of the smells of cigarette smoke and food.
- The group is eclectic and does not appear to belong together.
- Over the noise of the restaurant we hear that a very attractive woman with auburn hair who is talking about increasing her sales by selling potions and spells in addition to grimoires.
- Her face lights up as we become visible in the doorway and she seems to recognize Boris and asks him to join the table.
- This woman is Irina Martin, the bookstore owner.
- An older gentleman, introduces himself as Mordecai Lemming who claims to be a scholar of esoteric knowledge introduces himself to the doctor.
- Irina said that Jackson Elias stopped by her book store yesterday.
- Boris tells her that he was in Peru with Jackson.
- Another attendee is a Harvard Librarian by the name of Miriam Atwright.
- She knows Jackson's books and is very keen to meet him, but he has not shown yet.
- Madelyn Brown, has a light Australian accent, who says that she is just a traveler that is there for the symposium.
- Jasmine Pink is a little older, dressed in an outdated Victorian outfit that has pink ribbons all over it. She claims to be a psychic.
- She states she is from England.
- Germaine does show up at the door at one point, but then disappears.
- Musgrove asks the guard to the corridor to north where Germaine went and he says he hasn't seen anything but seems very shifty and evasive.
- The Maitre D says she left, so Cillian looks and sees that the car is still there but she is nowhere to be seen.
- Irina begins to do a tarot reading for Boris.
- She is very nimble with the cards and very skilled in working the deck.
- She first pulls the emperor that she says indicates a victory over some sort of male figure in his past.
- She then pulls the Magus, it was at first upside down, however, she flips it around so that it faces Boris, and said it meant new beginnings. Boris knows that flipping the card around changes the meaning, he knows that it is more related to evil conjurings or losing one's way
- She pulls Judgement from the bottom of the deck and claims that it means an end of era. Boris knows that she pulled the card from the bottom of the deck and laid it upside down and then turned it to face him.
- Boris knows that an upside down judgement card represents the apocalypse.
- He also knows that the card that she pulled from the bottom of the deck was not what she intended to pull.
- The cards from the reading can be viewed at Boris's Tarot Reading.
- She is very nimble with the cards and very skilled in working the deck.
- Irina doesn't seem to think much of Tristan Torne. She says that he is an egotistic megalomaniac who she describes as a disgusting depraved person.
- She reaches down and pulls up an albino alligator skin bag and puts the deck back in and pulls out an Invitation to a Collaborative Jazz Operetta that she slide to Boris.
- They were all to meet at the Absinthe House before the Operetta.
- Irina also said that she gave a Torne a special set of Crypt Keys that were in her shop when she took it over. They are very valuable and Torne convinced her to loan him the keys, but she got them back.
- She asks a favor of Boris. She said that the count purchased a certain book from her and she has discovered selling him the book was an error. She has tried to get the Count to sell her the book back. She offers to do ANYTHING for him if she is able to convince the Count to sell the book back.
- Boris asks where we might find the count since he isn't here. She says that he may be at his coffee shoppe around the corner or the Absinthe House
- Madelyn tells us where the Absinthe House is, 400 Bourbon Street
- We decide to head toward the Absinth House.
- As we turn up the block we turn and see there is a guy guarding the door to Café Epreuve. The count's coffee shop.
- In Irina's book store window at Le Petit Arcane there is a sign saying there is dinner and drinks on the count at his restaurant.
- The storm seems to be picking up as we approach a 4 story building and we find a door that leads directly to a set of stairs that goes up three flight to the 3 floor.
- As we move up the stairs we hear a slow paced, off-putting clarinet playing with a dolorous piano. Inside it is very dimly lit and hazy. Each table has an absinthe fountain on it, much more basic than the one at the counts manor.
- They seem to be more decoration than functional.
- The atmosphere is very subdued.
- As we move up the stairs we hear a slow paced, off-putting clarinet playing with a dolorous piano. Inside it is very dimly lit and hazy. Each table has an absinthe fountain on it, much more basic than the one at the counts manor.
- We look around to see if we see Germaine and it is very hard to make anything out in the haze of the room. There is a strange scent in the air as well that we cant quite place.
- We do not see Germaine. It is a mixed crowd economically.
- Cillian picks up that there is a thick layer of smoke along the floor that has an odd yellow color that matches the color of the candles on the table.
- There is a bar at the back that seems to have a bar tender who seems to be one of the only person moving around.
- The pianist is wearing a ostentatious mardi gras hat, that does not match the music.
- Cillian notices he has a strange moon shaped port wine birth mark that wraps around his neck.
- The room is not huge, about the same sized as the dining room in the restaurant.
- We do not see Germaine. It is a mixed crowd economically.
- The doc gets down and checks out the yellow smoke and believes it is some sort of narcotic.
- It appears the fumes are coming from the candles.
- We walk over to the bar and find an african american man tending the bar. He is clearly affected by the yellow smoke.
- He calls Germaine the bosses daughter.
- He tells us to go check out the Jones Trio at the Cafe.
- He also says the the boss is passed out in the back.
- The Doc and Cillian head back behind the bar, heading in the direction that this guy says the boss is in.
- On the other side of the door there is an older gentleman laying in on a cot. The back wall is covered in crates and boxes. There are various bottles of absinthe. There is a case for a clarinet.
- He turns toward us as we move in and he tries to focus on us as we do. He is disheveled, confused, and doesn't know where he is. He identifies himself as Arnaud Cazenave.
- He claims to not want to talk to Irina because she is always going on about some book.
- We tell him that we are friends of Jackson.
- He claims to not have seen him since last night.
- He says they went to Torne's production, that was horrible, Jackson insisted on staying until the end, but he cant remember much about the night.
- He tells us that they started at the Absinthe House and then walked somewhere close, perhaps a large factory.
- He says that the yellow candles were part of Torne's production.
- He says that Torne had hired Terrance "Tarantula" Jones.
- The Doc smelling salts him.
- With that Cillian is able to scoop him up and help him out of the room and toward the front door.
- While we are doing that Jon talks to the bar tender and learns that there is some sort of sludge in the bottom of the absinthe bottles that shouldn't be there.
- Jon grabs the bottle out of the bar tenders hand so that he can inspect the sludge.
- There is a heavy smell of licorice, but there is a heavy brown residue with white powder. John believes that the chunks are likely to be mushrooms of some sort.
- Says that everyone was here last night but left around 10 to head to the show. He doesn't know where show was.
- However, as we leave Floyd notices that he is feeling very lethargic and sluggish. Boris is also similarly affected.
- Floyd gives himself some cocaine to try and counteract the feeling and then treats Boris.
- We plan to head to the cafe to try and find Germaine and more information on Jackson and Torne.
Session 16:
You're Invited to a Party
I soon found that I had stayed too long contemplating the rising storm and linking my early fancies with its grandeur, for an icy rain began spotting down, bringing a more uniform gloom upon a scene already too dark for the hour.~H. P. Lovecraft
Report Date
03 Aug 2024
Primary Location
Secondary Location
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