The Industrial Heart of Detroit (September 3rd, 1930)
The investigators—Professor Lilian Neill, Teddy Harris, Sophia Picado, and Peter Goodman—left the leafy, haunted streets of Arkham behind, to find themselves in a very alien place. As the Federated Oil and Chemical (FOC) Rolls-Royce descended into the underground garage of the company’s five-story headquarters, the transition felt absolute. Detroit in 1930 is a city of relentless energy, a sprawling landscape of factories belching smoke and machinery that never stops humming, even as the rest of the country tightens its belt after the Great Crash. While soup kitchens line the blocks near the Art Deco skyscrapers, the money and power within the FOC building remain untouched and formidable.
Guided by the mute Scotsman, Peter Murdoch, and the impeccably polished Selena Preston, the group was ushered into an elevator with a traditional dial that slowly rose to the fifth floor. Selena explained the hierarchy of this industrial fortress: the first three floors for business, the fourth for staff and logistics, the fifth for residents and guests, and the sixth—Abelard’s private domain—accessible only by invitation. The basement, she noted with a clinical detachment, housed the laboratories.
A Gilded Imprisonment
Life within FOC’s guest quarters proved to be a startling display of Abelard’s reach. In their respective rooms, the investigators discovered wardrobes filled with expensive, tailored clothes perfectly fitted to their physiques, ranging from fine evening wear to rugged outdoor gear. “It’s as if they were sizing us up during dinner in Arkham,” Sophia remarked, “or perhaps they knew our measurements before we even arrived”.
However, the luxury carried a claustrophobic edge. Every window in the guest and common areas was fully shuttered and sealed, blocking out all natural light and any view of the Detroit skyline. Peter Goodman, always the hunter, noted the unsettling parallel to the boarded-up windows of the farmhouse where the Mi-go had made their exodus. “It’s a fortification,” Peter whispered to the group. “Whether it’s meant to keep something out or keep us in remains to be seen”.
Shadows in the Stacks
Before their scheduled dinner with Abelard, the group sought refuge in the FOC library, a vast collection organized geographically rather than topically. Lilian Neill quickly homed in on New England folklore, discovering a rare, typed manuscript titled Abenaki and the Sky Creatures. The text, though short, mirrored the petroglyphs they had seen in Vermont—ancient depictions of stick figures fleeing from winged, extraterrestrial shapes.
Teddy Harris, meanwhile, conducted a more practical inventory. He compared a list of books mutilated or stolen from the Orne Library and was disturbed to find identical, pristine copies of those very volumes sitting on Abelard’s shelves. “He’s been collecting the evidence the Mi-Go were trying to burn,” Teddy noted, leafing through the pages to find the secrets that had been surgically excised back in Arkham. Peter Goodman scoured the shelves for any mention of the planet Pluto—recently discovered and potentially the ‘Yuggoth’ mentioned in the Mi-Go’s buzzing tongue—or the name Ludendorff, the identity of the agent who had inhabited Harry Higgins’ shell.
A Table Set for War
At 7:00 PM, Selena Preston, now dressed in a sharp evening gown, escorted the group via a keyed elevator to the sixth floor for a formal dinner. There, Michael Abelard presided over a table of specialists who would form the core of the return mission to Cobb’s Corners.
The new faces were as varied as they were specialized. There was Professor David Drake, a man with a magnificent mustache and a bookish intensity, who specialised in the intersection of history and abnormal psychology. Beside him sat the”owlish” Dr. Sarah Matherson, the chief scientist and forensic pathologist, a slight woman whose clinical manner and sharp eyes suggested a mind as precise as a scalpel. Security was represented by Sam “Captain” Morrison, a rigid veteran of the 77th Infantry Division who had survived the Argonne Woods. Finally, there was Larry Neckler, the group’s mechanical whiz, who seemed as uncomfortable in a tuxedo as the investigators felt in their new, borrowed lives.
Abelard presented the group with a mission manifest that confirmed the lethality of the upcoming excursion: Tommy guns, grenades, and high-powered two-way radios. “We are serious,” Abelard stated, his voice commanding despite his physical frailty. “Whatever you need to rid this earth of that alien scum, you shall have”.
The Ethics of Inquiry
The dinner was a study in psychological friction. Sophia found herself under the analytical gaze of Prof. Drake, who prodded her about the “occult” meaning of things hidden just below the surface of the world. Sophia often looked at chemicals under a microscope, but Prof. Drake’s scrutiny made her feel like a slide under examination.
Lilian challenged Captain Morrison on the nature of his loyalty to Abelard, while Teddy made a social gaffe that chilled the room. “Perhaps we should seek to understand why these creatures are doing what they are doing before we speak only of eliminating them,” Teddy suggested. Abelard’s response was cold and final: “There are no shades of grey with these things, Mr. Harris. It is black and white. They are the enemy”.
As the evening wound down, Peter and Lilian shared a quiet concern over a noticeable pause when Abelard and Preston spoke of the “Project”. “They’re holding something back,” Peter warned. “It’s not that they can’t describe what this is—it’s that they won’t”.
The Midnight Vigil with Abelard’s Journal
That night, Teddy was entrusted with Abelard’s personal journal, a thick collection of notes dating back to the Pyrenees accident in 1922. Consumed by a feverish need for answers, Teddy stayed up until dawn, scattering the pages across his bed in a haphazard investigation.
The journal revealed a man driven by a single-minded obsession, sending teams across the Himalayas and the Andes to chase whispers of the Mi-Go. Most disturbing were the sketches: insectoid heads with writhing tentacles that matched Lilian’s sightings in the Vermont woods. As the sun rose behind the shutters, Teddy found a cryptic passage suggesting that Abelard believed these creatures could be summoned. The weight of the revelation, coupled with the disarray of the journal, left Teddy in a state of fragile, guilt-ridden exhaustion.
Specimens in the Deep (4th September 1930)
The following morning, Dr. Matherson led the group into the subterranean labs for a tour that shattered any remaining illusions. She first showed them a “Zoog,” a small, rat-like creature with tendrils and tools—the very thing Lilian had sketched in Cobb’s Corners. “Biologically, it is different from anything on this earth,” Matherson explained. “It is sentient, and it is not of our world”.
The horror intensified as they were shown mummified remains discovered in a derelict Mi-Go base in the Andes. These strange forms were almost aquatic. Several of the bipedal monstrosities were being rehydrated in large, agitating vats of water. “We don’t know if they are Mi-Go experiments or something they captured,” Matherson admitted. “We’re hoping the rehydrated corpses will be easier to dissect.”
The tour concluded with a chilling audio recording from 1926. The investigators listened to the high-pitched, mechanical buzzing of a captured Mi-Go being interrogated with electric shocks. The creature spoke of “Yuggoth,” of a planet the human race had not yet discovered, and of a desperate need for “food” it could not find on Earth. The recording ended with the creature’s death and Dr. Matherson’s clinical assessment of its rapid, browning putrefaction.
A Pact in the Dark
Standing among obsidian knives and a greenish-black tablet covered in indecipherable script, the investigators realized the magnitude of the faction they had joined. As they prepare for a week of weapons training with Captain Morrison and occult research with Dr. Drake, the group is left with a daunting question. They have the equipment, the funding, and the expertise of FOC behind them, but as Peter Goodman noted, they are heading back to Vermont unsure of who their true masters are.
“We’re going back to the belly of the beast,” Peter said as they gathered in the fourth-floor mess. “And this time, we aren’t just bringing notebooks and flashlights. We’re bringing an army”.
Until next time,
Owen