Need some advice on Sermon Bishop (Condemned and Dunwich spoilers)

[Figment]

So my husband's character Colin and NPC Billy (15-year-old Billy Prescott from Dunwich) are in Arkham where Billy is learning a bit of magic in the hopes that they and Peter Crait (another NPC from Dunwich who's also reluctantly in Arkham with them) can go back and defeat the Son of Yog-Sothoth. Colin is dating Marie Bishop (the Believer/teacher from Dunwich), who is currently in town visiting him. I led him into "The Condemned" backwards, so he already has "Strange Legends of New England" (so he knew the Witch Bridge/Bishop story) and the "Testament Of Carnamagos." The storm has happened, Sermon has escaped, and Colin and Pete found Cardigan's body and Atwater trapped in Bishop's body. A whole bunch of time in the library has also explained the use of the Testament, and that it can be used both to make Sermon immortal again and to kill him. But Colin's decided that he's gotten too caught up in Arkham's problems and since he still considers Dunwich his home, he needs to quit trying to help everyone in Arkham and focus on getting back there before the Son escapes. (A dramatic increase in earthquakes seems to indicate the Son may be renewing his attempts.) So now that Colin is in the exact mindset I want him, I want to mess with him a bit.

Through a roundabout way I won't bother explaining, Sermon is going to find out Colin has the Testament and decide to kidnap Marie and hold her hostage in exchange for Colin giving him the book. So here's where I'm stuck.

• Marie has no idea who Sermon is or what's going on. Colin has no idea she's a Believer and has kept her sheltered from stories of his adventures. But she's not helpless. If she starts trying to defend herself, would Sermon conveniently bind her with the Sign of Barzai? It'd be a nice way for Colin to end up with it for future use...
• The only reason he wouldn't kill her outright would obviously be because Colin would demand to know she's alive before even considering a trade. But it's not like he can make an untraceable cell-phone call. Maybe they face off on opposite sides of the Miskatonic?
• Hostage trades are obviously tricky when Sermon can just kill both of them in a number of nasty ways. Exactly how would the trade work? And what possible reason could he have for deciding to let them live?
• Or maybe he doesn't have any plans to let them live, but "helpless" Marie casts something or other catching him completely by surprise and allowing them to escape? That would be worth it just to see Colin's reaction. I just noticed that Sermon and Marie actually are equal in POW... If she successfully bound him, that would only protect her, not Colin. What happens if she casts "Call Horned Man"? Nyarlathotep wanders in and hilarity ensues?

Bishop's nasty and I know it's REALLY stretching it to let them out of this alive. I'm not going to make it at all easy on Colin if he decides to go after Bishop after this, but right now I just want to give him the chilling realization that he just barely escaped someone a LOT more dangerous than anything he's met before, including the Son. (That, and have him have to live with knowing he give Sermon his immortality back in exchange for the woman he loves. Especially nasty once Sermon starts killing people left and right. Unless he surprises me by deciding her life isn't worth giving him his immortality, in which case he has to live with that.) As much as I love the idea of Marie surprising everyone involved with her power, I actually find it more chilling for Sermon to decide to let them live for some reason that works in his favor. I just can't think of what that might be. I did decide that he and Marie are actually distant relatives, but I don't see Sermon being sentimental enough to spare her just because of that.

Thoughts? The more dramatic the better. I'm in the mood for something mind-blowing.

[Numania]

How does Sermon know about Marie and what she means to Colin? It sounds like they've never encountered Bishop in Atwater's body. How does he know they have the book?
In the scenario, he doesn't find Carnamagos until the fifth murder, so it's not like he knows where it is at all times.

[Figment]

Apologies for the length, this takes a bit of explaining.

This all started when I was researching "Edge of Darkness" and wanting more information about what that box was, what was in it, and where it came from. The description made it sound like they were going for the box holding the Shining Trapezohedron, but as far as I know, there were no Egyptian carvings on that, and the inside inscription wouldn't have been Muvian, it would have been Elder Thing Cypher. And there's the whole problem of it showing up in 1935... So I decided that Elisha Bishop, who'd found the actual Shining Trapezohedron in Nephren-Ka's tomb and left with it to form the Church of Starry Wisdom, had tried to buy the Edge box from the British museum, thinking it was related. Failing that, he stole it, and upon being voted out of the Chapel, he took the box with him, ultimately selling it to Marion Allen. And obviously someone knows this happened, since Allen was killed by people looking for the box. (An article in "The Unspeakable Oath" helped me put all that together.)

In the Condemned, it didn't quite sit right with me that these people would consider Bishop so dangerous that they'd go through all that trouble to get rid of him, but then casually keep his "evil" book and pass it down as a family heirloom. (Did no one ever start flipping through that and suffer the drastic aging?) It also didn't sit right with me that a bunch of random citizens (who didn't exactly sound like sorcerers) would be able to so easily get Bishop's book, capture him and figure out how to use the spell to bind him. (Especially since he's supposed to be such a formidable foe to the current experienced investigators even in his current weakened state.) Colin also jumped on that immediately when he read the history. He thinks Bishop's partner was behind the whole thing, which isn't a bad idea. But I'm thinking maybe the Dunwich Bishops were behind it. He did disappear on the way back from Dunwich, after all. (That just now occurred to me, actually.)

Anyway, it made more sense to me that the Bishop line somehow ended up with the book, with it ending up with Elisha Bishop, who sold it to Marion Allen. (Bishop knew Allen was interested in such things, and maybe Allen hoped something in the book would help with the Lurker in the Attic.) If people knew Allen had the box, they'd probably also know he had the book.

My original idea (which I like even more now thinking of the idea of the Dunwich Bishops being involved in Sermon's entrapment) was to have Sermon end up contacting Marie's father in Dunwich, trying to find out if the book was still owned by a Bishop somewhere. Her father really isn't up for receiving guests, but someone in town gets the message back to Marie that there's a distant relative in Arkham trying to get in touch with the family. So Colin comes back from a trip into town to find a note from Marie about how she was excited to find out that a distant relative named Henry Bishop is in town and she's meeting him for lunch. Oops, guess he REALLY should have told her about the whole Sermon Bishop problem. While that does leave me a bit stuck on how he finds out Colin has the book, Colin did actually mention it to Marie (he knows she is familiar with magic, just not that she's a Believer herself), so Sermon could end up finding that out from Marie, one way or another.

The alternate easier way I had been planning to go with was that Sermon found out Allen had the book the same way people found out he had the box, and he somehow puts together the connection with Merriweather and pays the widow a visit. She knows nothing about a book, but mentions the nice man who bought her husband's trunk that she'd sold to an antique store after his death, and was so kind to return the house deed to her. Maybe the book was in there? It's not hard to track down Colin - he's staying at the Hotel Miskatonic and left the contact info with the widow. Sermon finds him and sees him wandering around with Marie, and realizes it would be much easier to snatch her at some convenient moment and hold her for ransom than to try to do a full-on bloody raid of the very well-staffed hotel right next to the university where his body went to school. Especially since he did just escape from the hospital and people are still actively looking for him.

My OCD is showing here, definitely, but I love how this ties together everything we've done, including the Chapel of Contemplation loose ends from "The Haunting."

[Gaffer]

Figment, you are masterful with this stuff.

[Figment]

Aw, thank you. Probably because I've never been a Keeper before. (I'd never even PLAYED CoC before.) I had no idea what I was getting myself into. LOL Really, I just like puzzles and involved mysteries. And I HATE loose ends. I still want to know EXACTLY what was in that stupid box. I now know enough about ancient magic I could probably start summoning and binding stuff myself yet I've still not found an answer to that question that satisfied me. I did manage to come up with a version of the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the box, though, which someone who actually knows about such things would probably find hilarious. I haven't had the guts yet to post it on any appropriate sites for advice.

I did stop myself when I realized I was trying to teach myself Elder Things Cipher. Only four billion possible "words." How hard could it be?

At least you can see now why I'm not treating the main characters as disposable.

[Sir Wulf]

And I HATE loose ends.

They aren't 'loose ends': They're "plot hooks waiting to happen".

[Figment]

I mean more loose ends like the lack of ANY info on the Chapel of Contemplation until I found the Unspeakable Oath article.

As far as hooks, this monster I have going here has more hooks than the fishing supply aisle at Wal-Mart.

[Figment]

My husband and I haven't played for a while because we got slammed with work and then slammed with the flu. That, and I'm still stuck on how to proceed with this, although I could just ignore it for now and have Sermon come to Dunwich to grab Marie at a later time once I do figure it out.

Anyway, so today he casually commented, "Hey, next time we play, remind me where that poor kid is that's stuck in Sermon's body. I want to go and talk to him and his doctors, and make sure he ends up wherever he'll get the absolute best care. Whatever the cost, I'll take care of it."

See what I'm dealing with here?

That's what I get for making that mysterious uncle that lured Colin from Montana to Dunwich a rich Whateley. (Colin arrived in Dunwich to find, aside from Deep Ones "issues," a dead uncle and a will naming him sole heir.)

But there's wealthy, and there's affording permanent nursing care for a guy who is IMMORTAL. I just know his next idea will be to find an appropriate nurse (???) and bring the nurse and Henry back to Dunwich with him.