Missed Classic: Daughter of Serpents – Murder in Mesopotamia

Written by Vetinari

“Mesopotamia” means “between two rivers”, and look! Alexandria is between two branches of the Nile, so... okay, I just didn't know what title to choose.

So, last time the god of knowledge gave me a gift, and somehow I don't remember anything at all after that. This strikes me as counter-productive somehow.

Anyway, we were going to examine the warehouse of Elytis Import Export Company, where three months ago a poor sod named Yusuf Al Raschid was found dead and tied to a chair, most probably murdered.

I don't know why, but the folders on the desk were green when I took this screenshot.

Bimbashi Cameron says that they already turned the place upside down and found that the import/export warehouse was used as a cover for dispatching drugs into and out of the country.

See? It's green!

The files on the desk are particularly suspicious, and with a cursory glance at them Sven determines that they must have been used to set out the arrangements for bringing drugs into Alexandria. Also, he confirms that the lock on the door, as Cameron said, was leveraged from the inside. We then proceed down the stairs to the cellar.

Do you notice anything unusual in this place?

Even if there is a very conspicuous trapdoor in the middle of the floor, the game won't let me do anything with it until I finish examining all the other parts of the crime scene.

The ashes near the chair are vegetable matter, and my toxicology expertise allows me to recognize them as a mixture of henbane, hemlock and opium, even without a lab analysis. I am also pretty sure that this combination is highly toxic and hallucinogenic, even in a fairly wide space such as this. Al Raschid must have been drugged before he was killed.

The manipulation screen is back.

Examining the rope in a close-up view, I notice that there are blood stains on it, so that would indicate that Yusuf was alive and struggling when he was tied. This also means that he was indeed killed here, and not just murdered elsewhere and then dumped to confuse the investigation.

After this, Sven muses that the only reason that the killers would have had to force the door from the inside would be if they entered the cellar from another entrance, not the door to the outside. Maybe they came in through the sewers?

When I try to suggest this to Cameron, he says that he hadn't thought of that, but that there shouldn't be any abandoned sewers here.

In less than ten seconds I find some rope fibers in the cracks of the (not at all obvious) slab in the middle of the floor, and open the “secret” passage that the police hasn't been able to find in three months.

Yes, that was it.

I tie the rope to a column and throw it in the hole in order not to fall down (the game helpfully gives me a warning when I try to move inside the hole without having used the rope first) and then we are off exploring the underground tunnels of Alexandria.

But somehow you just said that there shouldn't be any.

Cameron provides some amusing anecdotes of past Alexandrian history with these subterranean passages, like the one about the bride who, during the wedding procession, was swallowed by a sinkhole that opened in the middle of the street, and that from then on was never seen nor heard of again. Okay, maybe they are not very amusing.

Thanks, I can see that.

The tunnels proceed for quite a bit...

There is a nice ambient music in this part.

… with me, Cameron and the other unnamed police officer failing to find anything along the way...

They reused the same image for Cameron as in the other tunnel. Sloppy.

… the more we go on, the more it seems that all this ancient architecture is still inhabited and not at all disused...

This room seemed like it could have had something interesting in it, but no dice.

… until we finally arrive in a huge cavern where a big Egyptian-style temple has been built.

Yes, Sven, I also don't understand why you are at the bottom of the room while the other two guys happened to turn up on the upper ledge.

Sven finds out some discarded clothing, amidst which there are a couple of very interesting things: a journal written in Turkish (which I don't understand) and something which is very obviously an Eye of Ra (or maybe an inverted Eye of Horus).

But the game still insists that it's an Eye of Thoth. Whatever.

Giving the journal to Cameron in order to translate it, he says that it belongs to someone called Kamuran Imran, and he wonders why he thinks to have heard that name before. Then he suddenly remembers, says that he needs to think about it, and orders all of us back to his office at the police station.

And we're just going to leave that huge temple unexplored? If you say so.

Once there, he gives me a folder with two autopsy reports, the first one of the serpentman who was shot at the docks, and the other one of Al Raschid. Apparently (as I suspected) Yusuf died because of asphyxia due to the combination mixture of the three vegetable substances, while the autopsy of the serpentman revealed nothing significant.

Called it.

However, Cameron adds that the victim of the serpentman was none other than Kamuran Imran himself. Judging from the contents of his notebook, he was obsessed with the study of the occult, in particular with reconstructing a lost masterwork, the “Biblion Kayrukeion” or “Book of the Serpent Staff”.

Where have I heard that name before? Oh, right!

Since the hybrid race of half-humans/half-serpents which was described in the manuscript that Professor Stone translated matches very well with the description of the killer, Sven draws the conclusion that Imran was killed because he had trespassed into their holy of holies temple, and that the penalty for that transgression was death.

Cameron comments that it seems amazing that nobody has come across members of a race like that before, but then again, you could hide an army in that labyrinth of tunnels, and maybe many of them could pass for humans.

We then connect the dots by saying that Imran was always looking for papyrus manuscripts, while Ariadne Elytis and Yusuf Al Raschid were selling them. Maybe if Al Raschid was stealing the scrolls from the serpentmen temple, which is probable, he had taken Imran there to show him the place, and then went back alone to purloin the golden case which Ariadne was selling to me.

Wait a minute. I though Imran had just arrived in Alexandria with the SS Dacia when he was killed? Maybe all of this had happened during a previous visit to the city? I have no idea.

Anyway, since the manuscript was their sacred text, in order to bring it back the serpent people must have followed Al Raschid's trail to the warehouse, broken out of the cellar, captured him and used drugs and poisons to find out what he had done with the scroll and finally caught up with it at the museum. There the shock of seeing them killed the professor, and then they kidnapped me, holding me in their labyrinth until I managed to escape.

If not for the fact that that is not what happened at the museum at all.

I already know where this is going.

When I try to relate to Cameron what really happened, he just shrugs and says that I must have been under hallucinogenic drugs, and that would also account for my amnesia. So everything is perfectly rational and scientifically plausible.

(By the way, for no real reason the account of this night told by Sven to Cameron is a flashback with the same exact cutscenes that happened in the museum, dialogues and all, but this time in black and white).

If you are interested, this is what your notes have to say about that particular incident.

In any case, Cameron says that it looked like the serpent people had been preparing for a great ceremony down there, but we still don't know when that was going to be.

The Eye of Thoth that we found fit in the picture because when it was offered to “the sun without light” it would show when “the stars are right” for some grand transformation. According to his journal, Imran went down there to complete this part of the ritual, i.e. offering the eye to the lightless sun, so maybe there was something in that temple that he needed.

Sven and the gang decide to get back to the underground temple, and once there he immediately sees that above the spirit door behind the altar there is a solar disk, a representation of the sun but which gives no light.

We could have been here earlier, if Cameron hadn't insisted to get back to his office.

Making an offering of the Eye of Thoth at the solar disk inside the temple, the eye, through his pupil/lens, shows an animation of stars aligning, which then transform in a baleful serpent.

Complete with ominous music.

At this point it is clear that the ceremony could begin any moment now, so we need to formulate a plan to disrupt it and prevent the end of the world.

Sven puts forth that the ritual consists in the high priestess of the cult, “she who is Isis”, using the summoning spell from the “Biblion Kayrukeion” to call forth Thoth by announcing its true name. That would be their great ceremony. The only thing going for us is that if we destroyed their scroll before the ritual was completed, the priestess would be unable to use the spell and so to conclude the ceremony.

Cameron says that it's a good idea, but that the scroll case is not here at the moment, and when it will be, there will also be the whole cult as well. How do we get the scroll without meeting the same fate as Imran?

Sven then has the idea to use the same incense mixture that was used in the cellar and put it in the braziers. A few whiffs of that, and they wouldn't even know if they were coming or going. That would give our heroes a chance to run in, holding their breath, and grab the scroll.

Luckily for us, in the box at the feet of the altar there is a good amount of that incense, and I put it all into the braziers to let it burn.

Then we hide at the back of the cavern, waiting for the cult to show up, which happens very soon.

The ceremony starts and Cameron finally has his own action hero one-liner: “You'd better hope that incense does its job or that lot down there will tear us from limb to limb.”

Nice shot of the cultists inside the temple right there.

Will our heroes manage to thwart the cultist ceremony? With this cliffhanger I leave you until the next post.

Session Time: 2 hours 00 minutes
Total Time: 5 hours 00 minutes

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