====== Aftermath - Forever Wondering ======

**//After the campaign was completed, several of the players contributed to an Afterward. This details the Investigators' perceived  'success'(?) in stopping the [[the_king_in_yellow|King in Yellow]], as well as what the future was to hold for the two survivors. //** 

Having located [[francesca_nicholson|Francesca]] in Bombay, [[Nathaniel Browne]] asks her to return to England with him; a request to which she happily agrees. The two elope near the end of April, 1931,  having attended the Inverness memorial service for [[Andrew Saunders]]. Finding themselves in America, Browne finally meets with Robert Chambers, where, although neither speaks of the King, they each know that they have felt its influence and witnessed its horrors.  The two return to England shortly afterwards, and settle in the West Country.

Meanwhile, [[captain_george_withers|Captain Withers]] marries the widow [[delia_hartston|Morrison]] in a small, private church ceremony on the 14th of December, 1931. Over the next few years, he and Browne meet on occasion to reminisce, and to wonder if, and when, the King in Yellow's presence on Earth might be felt. When war stirs in Europe, both believe this is the King's influence, and worry whether armies united under the banner of the yellow sign might soon be marching across the continent. There is relief when this is discovered to not be the case...

The Brownes' first child arrives stillborn in the February of 1932, and despite trying, they have difficulty conceiving again. 

Nathaniel continues his writing, and despite never turning in an adequate sequel to "The Tatters of the King", he garnered quite a reputation for his horror fiction. His book "The Frozen Tomb" about an ancient horror buried beneath the Antarctic Ice who's dreams invade those of researchers in the southern continent, enjoys some popularity, however, especially after the tragic Starkweather-Moore expedition of 1933 makes the news. 

Eventually a living son, Andrew Frederick Browne, is born on the 18th of February, 1937 although the birth is difficult and Francesca almost perishes during the labour. After this, Nathaniel's stories become, like Chambers before him, light romances, and social melodramas. Fortunately, in wartime England, these prove massively successful, although critically reviled. Indeed one, "Love At Sea", which tells the tale of an author meeting a beautiful woman on an ocean liner to India, is eventually made into a film starring Alec Guinness in the 1950s.

{{:blitz.jpg?direct&300 |}}In 1941, during the blitz, disaster strikes. Visiting relatives in the outskirts of London, Francesca is killed when a building, weakened by enemy munitions, collapses. Andrew, who was with Francesca at the time, is also assumed dead, the body unrecoverable. In fact, Andrew, traumatized by the event, wanders, dazed, into London where he is eventually picked up by the police and put into an orphanage. Utterly traumatized, the boy does not speak a word for the next 3 years.

 With the death of his wife and son, Nathaniel's writing becomes, again, dark. His stories are now haunted, disjointed things, full of faustian bargains and unutterable sacrifices. Nathaniel begins planning an archaeological excavation to the Nepalese highlands, a journey to be funded from his own, not insubstantial, fortune. On the morning of November 1st, 1947, however, he is found dead in his study, shot through the head...a revolver laying in his right hand. Neighbors say that on the previous evening they recall a large car parked outside the house - possibly an army staff car - but no one is able to say for certain. What was heard, however, was a heated argument took place in Browne's home, which the word //'Carcosa'// was mentioned, and also something about a //'King'//.  Unable to find any trace of foul play and discovering copious supplies of opium in Nathaniel's study and blood, the case is deemed a suicide. Thankfully, the police do not notice the burned remains of several maps, notes and books in the fireplace.

To everyone's surprise, Nathaniel has left his estate to a long absent second cousin, thought to be living  in Australia. With the executors unable to find this heir, and strictly forbidden from dispersing Browne's holdings, the house - and all the rest of the author's assets - are simply locked up and left in a trust. 

Withers, by now a Colonel and a veteran of two world wars, attended Browne's funeral, but declined to say any words about his friend, instead simply stating that the author's past was best left a closed book. Happily married, and settled in his career, Colonel Withers had returned to a life that had long ago left behind the horrors of Carcosa and Leng behind... except occasionally in dreams. As the only true survivor of the entire incredible affair, he privately mourned the loss of all his old companions (none more so than [[doctor_frederick_bartlett| Frederick]]), but would never really know to what extent they could be said to have triumphed.

{{ :dark-pilgrimage-a-nathaniel-browne-novel.jpg?direct&300|}}In the years after Nathaniel's death, his books experience an incredible upsurge in popularity due, in no small part, to the mysterious circumstances surrounding his demise. His publishers arrange for his last unfinished work to be completed by a leading author of the day. This turned out to be a magnum opus, a fiction of great emotional power which borrowed heavily - although the readers will never know it - from the real world adventure of Nathaniel and his friends. This novel is seen as so unique that scholars would continue to debate the symbolism and meaning of this work for decades to come.

In 1965, undergoing hypnosis as part of this psychotherapy (by sheer coincidence, at the Bartlett Clinic of the Tavistock Institute In London), the now adult Andrew Browne - known to everyone as Alan Tate - remembers his real name and his family. To his surprise he finds that, as the only surviving member of the Browne family, and after some legal challenges gains entitlement to his father's house and belongings. 

Taking up residence in the old house, which has become much overgrown and run down, he learns much of family history, and while cleaning up the fireplace in his father's study, he discovers a loose brick. After some effort, it falls free with a jolt, revealing  behind a journal, embossed with a strange yellow sign...