The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[The Whistler]

Righto, been looking over the Book in a futile attempt to figure out what the heck is going on, and noticed a few things that I don't think have been brought up (or maybe they have, in which case apologies for not paying enough attention). Otto hasn't been privy to all this stuff so I can't say it in the IC thread, but figured I'd mention it anyway.

One of the most peculiar, and conversely, least horrific, scenes was that of three shadowed figures burying a chest. One was short and stout, the other willowy and beautiful, the third austere and commanding. They buried the chest beneath a stone, and then they departed.

The three keys belonged to the priest, the Baanou, and the Bey, and when you unscramble the letters on them you get either CELL BLOCK 49 or 94. I'm guessing, if we're gonna go looking for something to unlock with those keys, we're going to find it there.

Also, since Idris had glowing red eyes in the flashback, and the demon has been spying on us using similar eyes (like Rock pointed out), might Idris have been possessed by the local archvillain when he sold out Ishmael, or something? And if so, what's his motive? Could Ishmael have been falsely accused? Also, this is just a hunch, but I'm pretty sure Mr. Flayed-Alive *was* Ishmael once, if that's relevant to anything.

While we're at it, anyone have any ideas about the solutions to the riddle?

"Innocent's tears to cleanse it.
Adamant knife to cut it.
Breath of the twice-traitor to silence it.
Heart-fire to burn it forever."

I figure we have the "adamant blade" already...

Anyway, I don't mind if any of you guys bring this up IC; Otto's not in a position to do it anyway. Hope some of it helps, at least.

[Nathan of the FoS]

The three keys belonged to the priest, the Baanou, and the Bey, and when you unscramble the letters on them you get either CELL BLOCK 49 or 94. I'm guessing, if we're gonna go looking for something to unlock with those keys, we're going to find it there.

Ah! Very nice. But it's a 0, not an O, on the key...I think your interpretation is still almost certainly correct, but we may want to keep that in mind when we go looking for the cell number.

[NeoTiamat]

So close, and yet so very far. There is a method to my madness, if you can but find it.

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Also, listen up! Show's on the road again. Sometime tonight, (that is, in five to eight hours) I shall advance to the next morning, whereupon I'll be asking you your plans for the day, and tomorrow I'll distribute you wherever.

Questions? Comments? Lamentations? Observations?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

My only lamentation is about the 'five to eight hours' bit ... I need to get some sleep. : (

[The Whistler]

Couple more things to discuss; this is me thinking out loud pointlessly...

Based on the transcription of the Anubis cultist's conversation, and the material in the liturgical records suggesting the keep was haunted when the Bey & Co. got there, we can probably assume that Sikarba'al was the first one to summon our devil, who then stuck around for whatever reason (bound to the keep somehow?) to (possibly?) possess Ishmael and either falsely accuse the Baanou or bring a legit affair to light.

So, brainstorming motives, here: what could the devil possibly want from the setup he (might've) engineered? If the devil was already imprisoned during the Bey's tenure, he might've arranged it so that the Bey would free him (or do something else that benefited him, who knows what) in exchange for revenge on the lovers. If that was the case, then the Bey's "discovery" of the Sefer might also have been planned in advance by the devil, so that the general would have the right tool to make the exchange. If that seems too wild, then maybe the execution of an innocent couple might somehow feed into the devil's power, and the Bey didn't even know what the evil guy was planning--he just got manipulated into killing them anyway.

In either case, the devil wouldn't actually have gotten what he wanted, since he's still imprisoned now. Of course, this all hinges on the "Ishmael is an agent of darkness" theory, which all hinges on the fact that his eyes were glowy that one time, so I might be way off base. If it is true, though, I can't think of many other motives for the devil besides "kill off some lovers for evil kicks," so I guess the above two justifications are all I got.

Also, anyone have any ideas as to how the Mordentish bodies fit in? I'm banking on just "late-coming exploratory party that snuffed it horribly trying to do what we're doing," but there could be more to it. I'unno.

Also also, and this'll probably be cleared up if and when we find that chest, but *when* (and why) do you think the trio buried it? It'd have to be before the Baanou came under suspicion for her and her husband to be in on the burial together, but there doesn't seem like much *reason* for them to be so conspiratorial about hiding something away, before everything in the keep went pear-shaped. And why'd the priest be in on it, too?

Anyway...anybody have any ideas or stuff?

[NeoTiamat]

You're mixing up Idris with Ishmael, but otherwise seems to be a reasonable summation of events.

Idris is the one with the Fiendish eyes, Ishmael is the fellow who met the hook.

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Oh, and how's this for a question. Where'd all the bodies come from? What did Ishmael's execution trigger?

[The Whistler]

Oops--my bad. As for results, I'm thinking...er...something bad? ...Maybe.

If that *was* the trigger for a supernatural "hey look everybody dies now" moment, it would argue for the execution of Ishmael playing into the devil's hands somehow. Maybe it was the ritual that let him exert physical control over the keep, to the point where he could kill the people in the kitchen with flying knives/close the portcullis on us/and stuff. Or. Maybe that was what triggered a soldiers' mutiny of some sort, if Ishmael was popular enough?

Wait a tick--going back to that first one, how do fiend-ties-itself-to-the-land rituals work, again? This falls into the "stuff I really should know about the campaign setting I'm playing in" category...

[NeoTiamat]

As a side note... the little riddle above is a two-parter. One part is figuring out what Adamant Knife, Innocent's Tears, Breath of the Twice-Traitor and Heart-Fire are, but the second part is 'It'. What is this 'It'?

[The Whistler]

Oh, and this is belated, but Nathan, I hear you on the 0/O thing on the keys, and that it's probably a good idea to look for a Cell Block 49...but it bugs me that they don't actually anagram to anything if the O is taken out.

Just in case...any sign of wear on any of the keys? Maybe one of the letters got scratched out or something. I can't think of any other way they could be encoded...bleh.

[Kaitou Kage]

Just dropping a note in from the Land of the Rising Sun. It's GREAT here, and being a part of the festival is an AMAZING high. If any of you want to see my travelogue so far, you can find it my LJ. I'll be updating every day through Sunday at least. Any time beyond that is rather up in the air.

I won't be back for another week, but good luck tackling that demon guy

[The Whistler]

Jealous, Kage...that sounds pretty mind-blowing.

Also, that demon has a wolf's head, and I just realized how inconvenient that could be. Do unbelievably intimidating murderous hell-beasts count under the terms of Otto's fey bargain? Can I just make sure that nobody attacks him above the shoulders?

[Kaitou Kage]

The festival just ended tonight and I'll be heading out in the morning to spend the rest of the week sightseeing in Tokyo and surrounding areas. We've got karaoke, shrine visits, a trip to hot springs, and some other things planned.

The catch is that I probably won't have access to the internet where I'm staying in Tokyo. Therefore, I expect you guys to pick up some slack here and kick that demon's butt by the time I get back on Friday night If you haven't, then I shall be very sad.

[The Whistler]

More timetable speculations under the category of Things That Should Not Be Mentioned In Front Of Evil Incarnate:

The Ishmael/Baanou setup might've been engineered as an excuse to get the Bey to use the Sefer somehow, in service of weakening the bonds on the demon (Yalenus, I think you're right on the ball with Andre's last comment). The Bey falls for the ruse, and Supernatural Stuff Goes Down. Then, maybe the Bey, his wife, and the priest have an understandable change of heart about the book (before the Baanou is executed) and bury the thing wherever they buried it to keep other folks from using it to make things worse--and then they're offed by the devil anyway.

...Anyways, that's a roundabout way of guessing that our current MacGuffin is probably in the lockbox. And if every single ghost in the place is trying to keep us from getting the devil free, *and* is making that riddle known to us, maybe the "it" in the riddle is the Sefer? And we gotta do something suggested by the riddle to destroy it? Or something? Your guess is as good as mine.

On that topic, if Ishmael really was falsely accused by Possessed Idris, he could be the innocent whose tears we need to cleanse "it" with. Which would be great, if self-annihilating zombies cried. Ooh! And if the devil himself counts as a twice-traitor whose breath we need, anyone have a jar to catch some of the smoke he's blowing out?

...Any thoughts? I'm probably grasping at straws, here, but it's the best I've got.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I'm kind of hoping Kaitou wasn't anywhere near the events of this news item I just read about ... Yikes.

[NeoTiamat]

Possible, though I doubt it. Crazy people kill other people all over the world, all the time.

Anyways, on a related note, I'd like to say that I will no longer be on AIM for extended periods of time during the week. I've just started a new job as an intern at City Hall, which sadly is a 9-5 job, with about an hour and a half transportation each way. Interesting job, pays well, looks very nice on the resume, but leaves me with very few hours in the day and even less energy to be chatty and vivacious.

I'm still going to be posting daily, but my online time is going to be limited to twice a day (I check in before I leave for work and before I go to bed).

I'll still be around a lot on Friday evenings and on the weekend, and this is only till August 1st (then its more summer vacation and then equally lazy college time).

Plus, there's a benefit. Sitting around on a bus or a subway train for almost three hours a day gives you a lot of time to think, and a fair portion of that is a way to serve you, my loyal audience, with ever increasing conundrums.

Anyhoo, the Public Service Announcement is over, and I'm off to post.