Ten Years Ago:
The Lispering Way is more than just a cabal of necromancers. I see that now. Undeath is their fountain of youth. Uncovering their motivation does not place me at ease as I thought it might. Their desire to be eternal simply makes them more dangerous.
Two Months Ago:
It is as I had feared. The Way is interested in something here in Cravengro. But what could it be?
One Month Ago:
Whatever the Way seeks, I am now convinced their goal is connected to Tarrowstone. In retrospect, I suppose it all makes sense—the stories they tell about the ruins in town are certainly chilling enough. It may be time to investigate the ruins, but with everyone in town already being so worked up about them, I’d rather not let the others know about my curiosity—there’s plenty of folks hereabouts who already think I’m a demonologist or a witch or something. Ignorant fools.
Twenty Days Ago:
It is confirmed. The Way seems quite interested in something—no, strike that—someone who was held in Harrowstone. But who, specifically, is the Way after? I need a list of everyone who died the night of the fire. Everyone. The Temple of Pharasthma must have such a list.
Eighteen Days Ago:
I see now just how ill prepared I was when I last set out for the Tarrowstone. I am lucky to have returned at all. The ghosts, if indeed they were ghosts (for I did not find it prudent to investigate further) prevented me from transcribing the strange symbols I found etched along the foundation—hopefully on my next visit I will be more prepared. Thankfully, the necessary tools to defend against spirits are already here in Cravengro. I know that the church of Pharasthma used to store them in a false crypt in the Restlands at the intersection between Eversleep and the Black Path. I am not certain if the current clergy even know of what their predecessors have hidden down below. If my luck holds, I should be able to slip in and out with a few borrowed items.
Seventeen Days Ago (final journal entry):
Tomorrow evening I return to the prison. It is imperative the Way does not finish. My caution has already cost me too much time. I am not sure what will happen if I am too late, but if my theory is right, the entire town could be at risk. I don’t have time to update my will, so I’ll leave this in the chest where it’ll be sure to be found, should the worst come to pass.
Rego hands the diary to Beatrix and picks up the time that set off Flit and begins to peruse it.
The book details a number of grisly sadomasochistic rituals, such as the Joymaking, in which the wealthiest and luckiest of Zonzonites to have their limbs and non-vital organs amputated so that they remain a helpless head and torso, destined to live the rest of their lives as the subjects of limitless torture. However, you have a hard time believing that this is what set Flit off, as the writing is so dry and academic that the only truly hideous part would be reading the book cover to cover.
Rego will place the book Flit was reading back in the chest shaking his head and will pick up, To Serve Man and peruse that.
"Because everyone knows alternate universes aren't allowed to infringe on copyright"
Rego will place the book Flit was reading back in the chest shaking his head and will pick up, To Serve Man and peruse that.
On the inside front cover is a notice from the publishers: "Pallid Princess Publishing would like to inform any potential buyers that 'To Serve Man' is a cookbook for cannibals, NOT a manual for waiters. Please stop sending us angry letters."
The recipes themselves, while going into grisly detail about the preparation of human flesh, actually seem like they'd be quite pleasant if prepared with a less disturbing meat by someone with more culinary expertise.
Rego drops the book back in the chest as if it were on fire, with my heritage I would not want anyone seeing me read this! he thinks to himself.
He rifles through for the next Tome "On Verified Madness".
This tome details some of the denizens of the Stark Tapestry, where beings of unfathomable cosmic power known as the "Great Old Ones" dwell. One chapter catches your eye - a short prose poem about a being called Nyarlathotep, who apparently walked the earth at one point.
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Brosirion. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.
I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city—the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and that in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not.
It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about “imposture” and “static electricity”, Nyarlathotep drave us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another that the city was exactly the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.
I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the tramways had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.
Once done with the diary Anyone else want this? Rego you are right. This is defiantly a rather big problem. Handing the book to Awnara Beatrix looks over to Rego, Should I be reading? Those books seemed a little disturbing.
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Jing watched the others from a corner for a bit before going off around the house to inspect it for any possible entrances and exits someone might use to attempt harm upon the hostess.
Jing then chooses after he feels he has done a good enough job looking over the place a room with a window to go into before slipping out of the window and up onto the roof to relax and nap for the evening. His tail does it's best to close the window behind him.
Rego's mind spins as he reads the description. "I am just not sure I even follow this. Some sort of journal from a wizard I suppose to encountered a daemonic force. Strange language to be sure", he hands that to Beatrix as well.
"I am not sure what this all has to do with problems in the here and now. I think in the morning we should all sit down and get to know one another a bit better. There is work to be done here. This last Tome I had might as well look at before bed".
Rego picks up the locked journal and searches the trunk for the key...
Thank you Rego.[And getting acquainted with each other sounds since we apparently are going to be companions for sometime. Beatrix sits and skims the book for an hour. Then she gets up and returns it to the box it came from. If no one needs me I am going to go check on my pony and then retire to bed.
Rego picks up the locked journal and searches the trunk for the key...
The key is absent from the chest.
While examining one of the upstairs windows, you feel a slight pressure on the back of your skull and a sudden coldness in the air. In the reflection of the mirror you suddenly spot a sopping wet, scraggly haired dwarf. Before you can react the dwarf reaches for your skull and then vanishes, as if he was a mere trick of the mind. No amount of searching uncovers any breach in security, or even any wet patches of floor where the dwarf might have been.
"Thanks, miss," Awnara says to Beatrix, and starts glancing through Professor Lamarimar's journal.
Alexis glances through the rest of the handout, reading but not really absorbing the language used on the paper.
Rego stops fiddling with the locked journal and heads to bed for the night.
The next morning, you wake up to find following note on the dining room table:
Although I wish I could take you around town myself, I simply have far too much work sorting through my father's old things and as such will not be able to leave the house today. Please help yourselves to any food or drink in the kitchen and cellars, and if you require anything or have any questions please do not hesitate to ask. My current plan of attack for cleaning up the house will have me in the attic for most of the day - to get there just take the ladder in the upstairs library.
If you have no other pressing matters, I'd encourage you to go explore the town and meet some of the townsfolk here. They may seem like a slightly xenophobic bunch (many of them are), but trying to make at least some attempt to integrate yourselves will go a long way in getting them to trust you over the next few weeks. Jing, this goes double for you, rumors travel fast in this town - even more so considering the last night's altercation with Gibs.
I'll also leave an old map that my father made when he first moved here. I have only one copy, so I ask that you not take it with you out of the house.
-Kendra
Next to the letter is the map.
Flit wakes up around dawn and stumbles out of the wardrobe, cursing the morning light, pulling the bottle of brandy with him. He glared around him, catching sight of someone sleeping in the bed, before cursing again and pulling all of his stuff out of the room, careful not to awaken whoever it was. He walked to the sitting room and took a seat before the chest of books once again, picking up the diary that had been marked "Read Me". He uncorked the bottle with his teeth, before beginning to read, after taking a sip of brandy to clear his head.
As he read, he began to frown, till he stumbled across a line that drew him up short, "The ghosts, if indeed they were ghosts (for I did not find it prudent to investigate further) prevented me from transcribing the strange symbols I found etched along the foundation". He stopped, staring down at the book.
"Tarrowstone, THAT is the source of that creepy messed up crap I saw last night?" He growled, reading the rest of the book and slamming it closed, before returning it to the chest with a slight bang.
He slammed the cork back in to the bottle, before getting up and leaving it on the sideboard, beside the bottles of wine. He moved to the table and lay a cloth out before him, before climbing up on to a chair and laying his weapons out before him. He began to clean and repair his pistol, making sure the barrel was clear of obstruction and the mechanism was well oiled and moved fluidly enough. He then began to sharpen the point of the rapier, careful not to cut himself.
He waited for the others to awaken.
Rego wakes from a fitful night of sleeping in his armor and helm afraid to remove them for fear of the reaction should someone notice his appearance.
He finds Flit sitting in the main room and reads Kendra's note.
Turning to Flit, "After you went to sleep last night we all resolved to meet this morning and discuss a bit more about each other. I am not sure if you had a chance to read the Profesor's journal but I believe there are things going on here we may just need to stick around to investigate. If we are going to do that, we need to know we can trust each other".
Flit nods, picking up his pistol and staring down the sight, before holstering it. He turns to look at Rego and arches his eyebrow. "You look about as good as I feel today. Yes, I read the diary. Last night, while I was on the porch, reading that book, I was attacked by a ghost. He disappeared before the blow connected, but I was quite sober and lucid when it happened, so I know it was no trick of my alcohol muddled brain. There is something going on here, something around this Tarrowstone and I'll be damned if I don't mean to find out!" He slid his rapier back in to its sheath, before tightening the belt around his waist.
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Jing wakes slowly, yawning and stretching. He looks into the window he had exited out of and noticed that someone was in the attic before reaching down with a hand and opening the window and sliding inside before closing it again.
He made his way down the stairs carefully and quietly as he sneaked his way into the kitchen to look for something to eat. He began to sift through the larder with a bit of curiosity looking for some kind of meat and cheese. His tail flicking about behind him.
"I am in agreement with that.
So that is what sent you off the deep end eh? I was trying to figure out what you read in that book that spooked you so but did not want to pry."
Flit nodded, leaning forward on the table, fists planted firmly on the tabletop. "Aye. That is what sent me packing. I didn't need that, not after burying the Professor, so I went and slept it off. Not any more though, now it is time for business. We should wait until everyone wakes up and joins us, but I think we should go and speak to people around town. Don't mention Tarrowstone or nothing, nor what we read in the Professors journal, but just ask around about strange occurrences, see if people have anything to tell us. If we could find a Wizard or a Witch or something, that would be even better. Magical folk spot things. We should talk to the Priest too!" He nodded, staring down at the map again.
"What do you think?"
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After grabbing a meal that could feed two, he slipped back out of the kitchen as quietly as he had entered only to finally notice the others looking at the books again. He put the hunk of cheese in his mouth as he slipped up behind them to see what it was that they were looking at.
He was silent as could be as he looked over the halfing before he finally spoke after swallowing the hunk of cheese in his mouth. "What's that all about?" he said pointing with a length of salami his tail swishing about behind him out of curiosity.
Flit jumps when Jing speaks, spinning on the spot and leaping backward, drawing his pistol and readying to fire, before sliding too far along the table on his back, and landing on the floor. He lay there for a second, staring up at the ceiling, cursing softly to himself in Halfling, before speaking.
"Bad cat!"
Beatrix rolls out of her blanket cocoon well after the sun has risen. She heads out to look for her house mates. Hearing Flit yell draws her attention so she walks back to the sitting room. Why are you yelling and please say there is food.
Flit contemplates standing up and putting a bullet in the Catfolk, before shaking his head and groaning. He pushes to his feet and holsters the pistol, rubbing the back of his head with a grimace.
"Got snuck up on. Just a little jumpy today. Saw a Ghost on the porch last night, plain as day. He attacked me but disappeared before it connected. Read the diary this morning and it seems like there is a haunting afoot."
He moved back to re-pack his gear, glaring up at Jing. "You are a sneaky bugger I'll give you that. Hmm... Need a job after all this is done? I'm down a Magical Contractor but someone who can hide as well as you might be even better. You can be my Infiltration Adviser. Pay isn't great but at least we can get jobs..." He shook his head before turning back to the map. "Anyway... Lets just get down to business. We should maybe think about talking to the villagers, as per Kendras' suggestion in her note."
"Oh and the cellar has some food in it, just down through there!" He pointed towards where the cellar stair began.
"Of course there's food!", Awnara says as she exits the kitchen with a platter filled with breakfast meats and flapjacks. "Nothing comforts the bereaved like taking their mind off of cooking. Tuck in, everyone!"
"If we're going to go into town, I can make a list of everything that the manor needs for the pantry. Maybe I can strike up a conversation with the general store owner?"
Flit nods, studying the map again. "Aye, that would be an idea. Speaking to the shop keeps, Tavern owners and the like is a good plan, they do love to gossip!"
Rego smells the food having skipped dinner and clears his throat.
"As we are all assembled, I will go first".
He removes his helm and his gloves his face and hands are a stark white color as if drained of blood. His eyes a reddish glint and his canines a bit too long gives him the appearance of... well of a Dhampir.
"I am Rego Darksome. I know not of whence I came to be as I am. A hundred years is too long ago to remember all that clearly. I am what you believe I am. Though I am also what my armored appearance is, a cleric of Savannah, Lady of Mysteries.
The Professor and I met that he could study more closely the anatomy and tactics of the Vampire. His own hand, indirectly, guided my calling to be a scourge of the creatures that made me what I am.
It is my duty to stay here and look into these matters the Professor left behind for us. I cannot rest until the evils of the world are put to sword and flame".