A pale and tremulous sun had broken through the gray London skies, its light diluted by a haze that smelled faintly of coal dust and decay. Icy drizzle slicked the cobblestones and turned every street into a corridor of softly clattering umbrellas. The city, draped in sickly winter hues, offered no comfort to those who wandered through its weathered heart. It was beneath these cheerless clouds that the investigators found themselves drawn once more into mysteries too dreadful to name, each footstep heralding a deeper descent into the uncanny shadows that even the capital’s gaslights could not entirely expel. Their minds were still troubled by the business with the three identical men—all named Mehmet Makryat—found dead in a hotel room. Too many questions hung in the stale London air, and too few answers emerged from the mouths of policemen and inspectors whose eyes darted nervously from windows to doors. Arthur Zorba, scarred by war and haunted by old terrors, held suspicion like a shield, each unspoken doubt etched into the tension between his eyes. Claire Corning, whose earnest curiosity had once comforted her, now seemed as unsettled as the rest, unsettled enough that even the familiar company of their circle—Walter Lake, Viola Sutcliffe, Per Oskarson—offered only a small anchor against the storm of uncertainties.
Their thoughts drifted to Professor Julius Smith, rumored to be missing after a suspicious blaze devoured his home. It was a cruel twist: the old scholar, who had guided them through other bewildering inquiries, now absent just when unnatural horrors seemed poised to slip their leash. A half-burnt newspaper article, stamped into their memories, recounted the fire in St. John’s Wood. A strange silence followed this recollection, for each wondered the same thing without daring to give it voice: what dreadful hand had reached out for the Professor, and why?
They gathered at Per Oskarson’s flat—somewhere safe, with carefully drawn curtains and the hush of old books for company. This sanctuary provided a momentary respite. Viola’s timeless composure, the gentle candlelight reflecting off her unwavering gaze, steadied their hearts. Walter paced, quietly muttering to himself, as if hoping that prayer or recollection might form a bulwark against what they sensed lurking beyond the threshold of ordinary life. Claire hovered near the window, parted lace curtains in hand, scanning the streets for watchers who never showed themselves. In the silence, Arthur Zorba cradled old injuries both visible and unseen, remembering battlefields and blood while steeling himself for another kind of war—one of secrecy and shadow.
Then a sudden knock at the door—a taxi driver with a sealed note. It bore Professor Smith’s wax seal, as though conjured from the very ashes of his ruined home. “Come quickly. Don’t be followed.” The note’s script seemed hurried, desperate. With no time for argument, they prepared themselves to slip through London’s crowded arteries as specters, leaving no trace behind. They spoke little as they ventured out, each wrapped in heavy coats and heavier thoughts. They hailed a cab and rode it only partway, disembarking near St. Paul’s Cathedral so as not to draw attention. The bitter wind and sooty slush underfoot offered no kindness. Clouds of breath shimmered before them as they advanced, step by cautious step, through Cheapside’s narrow streets.
The address guided them to a worn boarding house, its peeling paint and sagging shutters a sorry façade that matched their dread. Up creaking stairs to a third-floor flat, they discovered only silence. When they knocked, James Beddows appeared in the doorway. The valet’s trembling form and bandaged hands spoke of horrors endured without words. He beckoned them inside, and there, on a narrow bed beneath dim lamplight, lay Professor Julius Smith. His once scholarly visage now blackened and blistered by the flames of a terrible night, his hair burnt away, his eyes swollen nearly shut. The stink of antiseptic and scorched flesh made them recoil, and Arthur, who had seen so many wounded soldiers, closed his eyes in grim recognition. Viola knelt at the bedside, applying what comfort she could offer, her calm composure a shield against despair.
Smith’s voice, ragged and low, emerged from cracked lips. He spoke of being hunted, of a great task unfinished. Somehow he had escaped death’s grasp, pulled from a furnace of malevolence by Beddows’ loyal hands. Now, half-blind and near delirious with pain, he placed upon their shoulders a burden too heavy to name: The Sedefkar Simulacrum. An artifact of monstrous repute. A puzzle scattered across Europe. A thing that menaced reason and faith, sanity and flesh. He warned them of evil men who lurked just beyond the frame of their known world, and of a need for swift action. No heroism, he said, was to be found in trembling before the darkness. They must act, for the sake of a good work that few would understand, let alone dare undertake.
Beddows, grim and resolute, placed before them a valise stuffed with banknotes, a fortune that could carry them across borders and into foreign realms. Notes and documents, scrawled in Smith’s learned hand before the disaster, revealed fragments of a terrible mosaic: The Devil’s Simulare, a 13th-century manuscript rumored to hold keys to the Simulacrum’s secrets; a Comte Fenalik, whose decadent revelries on the cusp of the French Revolution whispered of a past laced with unspeakable deeds; references to Constantinople’s museums and Paris’s grand libraries. Each clue, each location, like stepping-stones laid across an unfathomable chasm. They would have to follow these traces, assembling the Simulacrum’s pieces before others, far less scrupulous, did the same.
Leaving the flat, they did so with hearts weighted by a task that would drag them far from London’s soot-blackened skyline. The next day brought hurried preparations. They split their efforts—some bent over dusty tomes in the British Museum’s reading room, chasing down faint echoes of Sedefkar and Fenalik in pages long forgotten by living scholars. Others gathered what they might need for a journey by rail, a journey that would carry them along the spine of Europe to places where the known world frayed at the edges. In quiet corners of that museum’s hushed halls, Per Oskarson and Walter Lake pored over old indexes, while Viola ran careful fingers across old parchment. The silence of that reading room was not peaceful; it was charged with dread, as though the very mention of the Simulacrum had awoken slumbering malevolence in the library’s dark corners. Pages rustled like quiet warnings, and even the librarians, when asked, shook their heads, insisting no one had recently sought such blasphemous knowledge.
They learned of the Devil’s Simulare in Paris, of references that danced around the truth like frightened children around a graveyard at dusk. They learned of Constantinople and relics that vanished in wartime upheavals. They learned that what they sought would not yield to easy inquiry. Still, they pressed on. Each revelation seemed to peel away another layer of safety, leaving them more exposed to vast currents of hidden history and malignant intention.
As Sunday slipped into Monday, preparations were in full swing. Gathering suitable wardrobes for the Orient Express, they endeavored to appear as ordinary travelers—cosmopolitan and unremarkable. Arthur visited his grandmother, the old fortune teller whose once-dangerous Fez had long since been replaced by crystal gazing. She warned him in hushed tones: beware the temptations of dark artifacts, and never trust the promises of strange headwear. In her simple admonition lay a profound understanding of the horrors lurking beyond mortal ken.
Per Oskarson, ever the diplomat, reached out across borders by telegram, hoping old acquaintances or their heirs might provide a safe harbor in distant lands. Meanwhile, Walter penned letters to his superiors, arranging to vanish from his usual routines so that he might confront something infinitely more wicked than mere moral failings. Claire assembled her tools—some practical, some meant to keep predators at bay—just in case the civilized veneer of the journey failed them. Viola, quietly scribbling notes and passing messages to trusted inspectors, safeguarded Beddows’ reputation so the poor valet and his grievously wounded master could slip quietly into hiding, even as the investigators pressed on.
By the time they stood poised to depart London, all felt the tremors of fate beneath their feet. The Orient Express—legendary and elegant—would be their initial path, carrying them across borders and centuries of history into a dark riddle that stretched back before the war, before any of them were even born. Beneath the waning London light, each clenched their coat tighter and wondered what monstrous revelations awaited them. The train’s journey would begin soon, and with it, a pilgrimage into lands where old ghosts do not rest and ancient terrors wait in silent patience. With steeled hearts and quiet resolve, they prepared to leave behind all that was familiar, each aware that the path ahead would forever alter their minds, their souls, and their understanding of what truly crawls beneath the thin veneer of the world.
Session Notes