Okay so it feels like weeks but actually it was ‘only' ten hours we were down.  I understand this dislocation of time is a common feature of life in Dreamlands but boy does it play havoc with your senses - I am glad we had the chance to rest before we returned, else I'd be more tired than before I closed my eyes.

Well, we found Dr Atwan under the alias of Khemwaset - he's a wizard in service to this King Kuranes guy, based at Celephais, which as imaginary - sorry, dreamed - cities go, is a real doozy.  Kuranes ‘agents' of which Dalton was one and, it now emerges our Homeland Security friend Liz is another are worried about these Iron Army guys, led by a real WW2 vintage Nazi who should be on a zimmer frame by now.  Clearly it's hard to keep a bad guy down and this Gald guy seems to top a list of bad pennies.  We saw his goons at Ulthar, negotiating with some High Priest - about what though, we never found out.  Basically, other than a haggle over a magic dagger, an amusing encounter with a pugilistic cat named Tom (okay it was funny for everyone except Marty) and a trip to the Elder Ones Temple to talk with the man with stars in what were his eyes (wasn't that a hit for some English girl with an unfortunate name...Kate Bush?  Gotta google that), we kept a low profile.

In the real world, Atwan is in a coma after something broke into the mosque via the foundations and spirited Nitocris's relics away - yeah those ones, the ones that if they are ever partnered with her soul means yadda yadda yadda.  Khem thinks this has already happened. Atwan was a regular goldmine.  We now know we're looking for one Mohammed Jaseem Ali, survivor of a wedding party catered by Scarface, courtesy of some careless US Marines who were clearly in need of some R&R.  How the Mil boys kept that one under their hat, I don't know - I suppose believing they left no witnesses alive was possibly a good start to a cover up. 

Anyway, Mohammed came to speak with Atwan, his scholastic mentor after events gave him a serious revenge complex.  Serious enough to steal one of Atwan's blasphemous books being ‘kept safe from others', using it to contact and sell his soul to the Black Pharaoh, AKA Nyarlath-hotep.  The Pharaoh made him a Black Djinn with 101 days to carry out his vengeance before he spends the rest of eternity enslaved to N's will.  That's too long in anyone's book (the 101 days - eternity is a given), so we have to take him down.  Problem is, he can't be killed by regular means. 

Only sure way to put a Djinn down? Destroy the item into which his soul was bound.  This is likely to be located in the place that pact was made.  Atwan thinks this is in Cairo's City of the Dead, home to millions who live among the ruins.  He believes there is a Temple to the Black Pharaoh there, probably underground and beneath a modern tenement block, no doubt guarded by the Pharaonic faithful.  Nice - CQB in an urban hell.  This morning I'll check the Green Box and see what toys we have to play with.  We also have a lead to a guy called Najir - an underworld occult figure that might be able to assist our enquiries and feed us some info on the Pharaoh's cult.  Guy's a neutral apparently and utterly buyable - that could come in handy.

I'm tired but I can feel an end in sight.  It's midnight in D.C. and Marie is probably sorting out the Christmas decorations - we always leave it to the last minute.  I guess Isabelle is out partying before hitting the Amtrak tomorrow for the journey home.  I love you guys - I just hope I get to say that in person one more time...