A Residence at the Bay 09: Hold Fast

### Players

Joseph Chance as Dr. Henry Carrig-Muir, Dan Wheeler as Rev. Peregrine McCutcheon, Dominic Allen as Lady Helen Marjorie Bjalmier Potts

### Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-u6fzf-130269c

## Synopsis (Spoiler Warning)

The episode begins with Peregrine quoting several hand-related bible passages, after which the scene fades into his dream, where he, Dr Henry, Lady Marjorie, Thomson and Blackwell have a drink before Robert has to go on stage, presumably to speak about his recent finds. Once most members of the party leave, Peregrine congratulates him on his achievements, but soon Robert leaves and Peregrine is forced to look for him; as he does, Sidney and Edward appear suddenly and call him over, claiming to have his ticket. Once they get to "the pit", they tease him, refer to other characters from A Christmas Inheritance, and begin to manhandle him until Peregrine wakes up panting in bed. His subsequent prayers fade out as the intro plays.

In the Crowe's cellar, Peregrine finds their Hand of Glory and decides that in order to put it out of action he should "warp it in faith", so he places it on his bible and begins to cut each of its fingers off while quoting some passages. Upstairs, Peter frantically looks for Dr Henry and Lady Marjorie, the latter of which is processing the fact that she just murdered June, and the two of them try to find some ammunition; Peter then rushes through the house and up towards them, calling out for his son. Dr Henry injures him on the way by whacking him from the back, and Lady Marjorie then kicks him in the face as Jamesian puppet shows and crocodiles are invoked by the players. Meanwhile, Peregrine achieves his goal and as Lady Marjorie dodges out of the way of the lantern Peter's hurling at her, it crashes into the wall and begins to set the house aflame. Dr Henry then finishes the job by putting Peter out of his misery while Lady Marjorie begins to giggle out of madness and a strong wind picks up outside the house. Scarecrows appear at the front door while something upstairs "learns how to use its vocal chords" and Peregrine himself looks for ammo (which he finds bundled up in some old clothes) and a tool to cut chains; he ends up also noticing a hatch in the back wall of the cellar, covered by several barrels which he tries to move aside. Upstairs, Dr Henry suggests they should leave as he moves towards the back door with Lady Marjorie, but a scarecrow is positioned there as well, and the creature from the mysterious room seems to be descending the stairs. It arrives as a flaming, Christ-like, three-armed figure moving into the kitchen, and causing an indefinitely insane Lady Marjorie to run towards it believing it to be Robert: she tries to remove the cloth from its face with the intention of kissing him, but Dr Henry stops her and the two realize that its eyeless face is actually covered in "thrice folded skin" while its limbs are sharpened at the ends. At this point Peregrine begins to climb out of the cellar with the bullets and a bone-saw, Dr Henry picks up a shotgun and shoots "Billy", beheading it, and a thumping noise from the doors begins to echo across the house.

Dr Henry and Lady Marjorie head down through the trap door (while she quotes parts of Beowulf) and into the cellar with Peregrine while the guesthouse proceeds to burn down: Dr Henry moves the last remaining barrel, revealing another owl symbol, and opens the hatch. A stone tunnel distends in front of them all, and they walk through it for hours and hours until the passage starts to tip upwards and they reach a wooden doorway and exit. The characters realize they're now finally in Boggle Hole, with the Crowe's guesthouse burning above, and a light from a nearby boat shining towards them: a fisherman calls out to them as Dr Henry examines what fossils he can see. The man turns out to be Jack, who they met previously in Robin Hood's Bay, and he leads them into the boat (named Sarah Lee II) to bring them over to Whitby. The characters pass out for some time, and subsequently wake up; Peregrine in particular notices a vegvísir engraved into the wood and asks Jack about it, who mentions that the original Sarah Lee fishing boat was destroyed when Billy Crowe sailed out with it on the night he died. He mentions that several carvings were also present on the first boat, and that he bought this replacement from a man wearing a strange hat, who called himself Sidney Wagner...

## Important NPCs

* Peter Crowe
* Jack Reynolds, the young fisherman

## Places

* Boggle Hole guesthouse
* Boggle Hole

## Quotes

* "We've come a long way from you being so squeamish about the idea of exorcisms at the start of A Christmas Inheritance, to going full catholic." (Danann)
* "What would be the way that a pagan would turn a relic against God? Well, to do the opposite of what made it holy in the first place- so instead of pissing on it, you shove it up your ass!" (Danann)
* "This is the bit where the entirely M. R. Jamesian scenario ends with all of you kicking a man to death on a staircase." (Danann)
* "[Robert] might still be out there, a part of him, in the fractals- which isn't even a word I'd know- but I'm gonna say it anyway!" (Joseph as Dr Henry)
* "I bring up the rear- I *literally* bring up her rear..." (Dan)
* "I speak the old Latin motto of our old school...What the fuck is our school called?" (Dan)

## Trivia

1. ↑ 2 Timothy 1:6-9, Judges 5:26, exodus 15:6, Judges 20:16, Daniel 5:5-6, 2 Timothy 1:6, all from the King James Version.
2. ↑ *The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance*: "I believe someone once tried to re-write Punch as a serious tragedy; but whoever he may have been, this performance would have suited him exactly".
3. ↑ *Canon Alberic's Scrapbook*: "the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font".
4. ↑ A name also present upon one of the graves within Warham Hall's family plot in A Christmas Inheritance.
5. ↑ Old Norse compass, relevant here because of its also being engraved upon a ritualistic bowl the players found in one of Warham Hall's libraries in A Christmas Inheritance.