Part 1: Les Fleurs Du Mal

The investigators are invited to London to attend a presentation by a Professor Smith. After attending the presentation the investigators do some tourist things then head to their hotel for the night. In the morning the investigators read in the newspapers about Professor Smith’s house burning down. They check it out, finding nothing left of Smith’s house but charred rubble. The investigators decide to head back to their hotel and wait to hear if the professor survived the fire. That evening a note is slipped under Raechka’s door. The note is from professor Smith and asks the investigators to meet him at a run down hotel in the bad part of the city.

Arriving at the hotel the investigators talk to a badly burned professor smith. Smith talks about how he had been doing research into something called the Sedefkar Simulacrum, an ancient artifact of great power, and great evil. He asks the investigators to take up his search for the pieces of the statue, which had been scattered across Europe, and take them to Constantinople to be destroyed. He tells them the likely locations of the statue pieces and asks them to hurry. Someone else is after the statue pieces, the same someone how tried to kill professor smith and destroyed all his research. The investigators agreed to help and were given enough cash to support their trip across Europe on the famous Orient Express.

The professor mentioned that the last owner of the statue, a conte Fenalik, lived near Paris. The investigators decided to start their search by finding the conte’s mansion. Arriving in Paris the investigators do some research on the conte, finding that he was a German who had moved to France just before the Revolution, specifically a small town called Poissy. He had been arrested for various crimes and locked away in an insane asylum.

The investigators decided to check out the asylum first. Going in directly didn’t work so William decided to have himself committed. While inside William learned that Fenalik had been committed, but there was no record of him ever leaving or dying. Further research turns up two things, the first is an orderly who tells of meeting some human-like creature in the cellar, the second is the private journal of a Dr. Delplace, who worked in the asylum until dying just a few days ago, which tells of how he learned of the orderly’s encounter and had the creature captured for study. Dr. Leroux mentions several unusual facts about the creature, mainly that it appears to be a human, even though he must have survived in the cellar for many years and spoke gibberish in ancient forms of Greek and Latin. The journal ends before providing any more details. William searches the asylum for the mystery man but can’t find him, discovering instead that a “patient” recently escaped. William assumed it was the mystery man who escaped as all the other patients seemed to be accounted for. With nothing else to do William breaks out of the asylum and the investigators head to Poissy.

Upon arriving in Poissy the investigators try to figure out where Fenalik's villa was located. They bribe their way into the town records and soon work out a likely location for land Fenalik used to own. they also uncover the fact that the villa was burned down and the land sold off. Determined to see if anything of Fenalik's survived the investigators arrive at the spot where the villa was most likely to have been, a piece of land now owned by the Lorien family. The investigators meet with the Loriens and are relieved to discover Christian Lorien is a bit of a history buff and would be more than happy to help the investigators see if anything of Fenalik's villa survived the burning. He even shows the investigators a letter he recently received from an Edgar Wellington who lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. The letter talked about how Edgar had recently come into possession of a scroll that had to do with the Sedefkar Simulacrum. The letter asked for any information on the statue and any local legends. Christian didn't know who Edgar was, nor did he know anything about the statue or any scroll. During the conversation the investigators learn that Christian has a nasty cut on his left hand that wont heal, and that Veronique is sick in bed due to a nasty case of arthritis in her left arm and hand. A nasty accident interrupts the conversation when Quitterie, the daughter, spills hot coffee on her left arm, leaving a bad burn.

It took several hours of digging before the investigators located the undamaged cellar of Fenalik's villa. The investigators went in first and discovered that the "cellar" was more like a dungeon, complete with cells filled with skeletons still manacled to the walls and floor. One room was full of rose bushes covered in black roses. Against the far wall sat another skeleton, the left arm of a statue resting in it's lap. William offered to go in, making sure to avoid the thorns of the rose bushes. Very carefully he made his way to the skeleton, picked up the arm, and made his way back out of the room. During all of this Raechka and Gareth noticed a mist starting to flow across the floor. More focused on William the pair ignore the mist. Once the arm is removed from the room the roses quickly begin to decay. Not wanting anything more to do with the strange cellar the investigators head back to the surface. Christian is distracted long enough to get the arm out of the cellar and then the investigators are off back to Paris, leaving Christian to figure out what to do with Fenalik's cellar.

Back in Paris the investigators get some tickets for the Orient Express and begin their journey across Europe. Next stop: Lausanne, Switzerland to talk to Edgar Wellington about what he knows about the Sedefkar Simulacrum and hopefully get a look at the scroll in Edgar's possession.