Our heroes learn their plaice, they mussel their way into the club, Dawson gets the squids

Okay there was a bit of a delay but here we are again.

On leaving the Miskatonic Club our noble protagonists set out to unearth more clues. De'ath had to get her beauty sleep and Shambles went to do whatever shambles does but Kalabos and Dawson had other things on their minds.

Kalabos immediately went down to the Arkham docks to find out more about the yacht club. When I say immediately I actually mean he stopped off to sell his ill-gotten gains and borrowed suit before anything else. Not much was forthcoming but he did learn that hobos had been disappearing in the vicinity of the club though as they were hobos they may have just headed west.

Dawson called his trusty secretary Nancy to see if she could find out more about the yacht club and Oliver Gardiner. He also mentioned that Kalabos would be sleeping at the office and advised to her to lock up the whiskey and the valuable, he never revealed what the valuable is. Nancy got back to him in the morning saying she'd been hanging out with some of the boys from the precinct and learned some interesting news, whilst there's no hard evidence our Mr Gardiner has been linked to the mobster Horace "Diamond" Walsh. It may be nothing but perhaps there's something deeper going on. She also revealed that Walsh had recently married a Zora Smallidge, a girls from a small coastal village, only weeks after his wifes death. Rumour is that she is with child.

Armed with rumours and innuendo our stalwart bunch headed out to the Kingsport Yacht Club that evening, De'ath being surre to have a brace of her best purdeys in the trunk of the car. On arrival they found the club to not be quite what they envisioned. Though palatial it felt cramped, there was a film of yellowy cigar residue over everything and amongst pictures of dignitaries there were may paintings of eviscerated animals. Ushered through the club they were shown to the office of the president emeritus himself, Oliver Gardiner!

Gardiner failed to impress most of them. Whilst obviously well-bred he seemed just a little too bug-eyed, his handshake a touch too slimy and in general a smidgen too scaly for their tastes. None of our group held this against the man and were happy to engage in small-talk whilst Lady Lautrec-De'aths memebership details were taken. None that is except for Sam Dawson! Dawson seemed uncharacteristicly shaken and couldn't be brought into the conversation or even into the reach of Gardiner. Sharp eyes would have noticed the feverish gleam in his eye and how his hand kept moving towards his revolver.

Once our dear Lady was signed up our comrades removed to the dining room for their repast. Though Dawson was convinced to order he would not eat the food there whilst the others dug into the fine victuals with relish. Kalabos amused himself by trying to chat up a poor women whilst Shambles made firm friends with Colonel Haddock, an old English warhorse, and reminisced with him at length about killing natives in the far reaches of the empire. Meanwhile Dawson wandered over to the bar where the gnarled old barman, whilst giving him his Jack Daniels, warned him that he was in danger and passed him a note. Brave, stalwart Dawson immeditaely cacked his pants and demanded they leave. Lady De'ath agreed with him though this had more to do with the increasingly boorish behaviour of Shambles and Kalabos than anything else. Suffice to say they decamped to the Lautrec-De'ath residence before having the opportunity to sample the coffee and cigars.

Away from the club Dawson was able to reveal what had shaken him so much. The reported disappearances of the hobos, the closeness of Kingsport to a certain ill-fated town called Innsmouth and finally the meeting with Oliver Gardiner had given him susspicions which could only be confirmed by accessing knowledge he had repressed deep within his mind. Knowledge that could drive him to the very brink of madness and beyond but which he must plumb! When he did this he realised that Gardiner was not human he was a Deep One! A half-human, hald-fish creature bent on the destruction of humanity and bringing back the reign of the old gods who would wipe us from the earth! Naturally this had made him a bit jittery.

There were rumours that this all had something to do with an organisation called The Esoteric Order Of Dagon which had operated out of Innsmouth until that ill-haunted town was cleared out by government forces in 1928 but no hard facts. Dagon could be an ancient fertility god, a creation of a mad writer or an ancient god of the sea but who knows?

Finally they turned to the note handed to Dawson at the bar. It revealed little but that his name is Lem Finlayson, he believes that they are investigators just as he is and that the club is too dengerous a place to talk so they should meet him at his boardinghouse on the afternoon of the next day.

After much discussion the party decided to talk to the Armitage Inquiry first thing in the morning then go on to the meeting with Finlayson. With that they retired to bed.