Joseph Curwen's page

Doctor Curwen is a varisian man of somewhat indeterminate age. He has curious, wandering blue eyes, sharp cheekbones, a tidy brown goatee and moustache, and he cuts a tall, lean figure.

He dresses like a professional expecting mud: a dark woolen longcoat somewhat worn at the hem over a plain waistcoat, high-collard shirt, gloves, sturdy boots, and a tall felt hat that has a habit of obscuring his eyes. A pipe usually hangs from the side of his mouth, though he lights it less than people might expect. When thinking, he simply chews on the stem and stares. He carries a walking cane - actually a hidden blade disguised as a cane - with a silver handle, more for fashion than function, though it has it's uses as a measuring stick or similar.

He is no defenseless desk jockey. Despite his somewhat anemic appearance, he is quite ready to defend himself. The world of forbidden books and possessed antiques can be more dangerous than one assumes. A fine, masterfully crafted rapier hangs at his side and a gossamer shirt of mithral chain is hidden under his vest. He is fond of carrying multiple light sources, lest the shadows hide secrets.

His voice is calm, dry, and precise. His handwriting is exacting and immaculate. He carries all the standard tools for investigation: notebooks, pens, measuring tape, evidence envelopes, empty vitals, a field surgeons kit and more. He is not warm, but he is reliable. Controlled, logical, and courteous. He has an eidetic memory, a broad scope of knowledge, and is a polyglot.

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Doctor Joseph Curwen is a varisian forensic physician, alienist, and field agent of the Sleepless Detective Agency. Educated at the University of Lepidstadt in forensic medicine, Curwen first made his reputation not as an adventurer, but as a consulting investigator or expert witness in cases involving impossible testimony, ritualized murder, missing persons, and alleged hauntings. His colleagues consider him calm, exacting, and difficult to deceive. Curwen considers this a compliment. There is no room for emotions in science.

His interest in the occult began years earlier during an expedition to Osirion, when he was still a young student assisting an archaeologist in the examination of a sealed chamber beneath a ruined and long forgotten pyramid. A sudden magical darkness swallowed the excavation. Curwen heard something moving in the sand - not walking, not slithering, but crawling. The archaeologist screamed somewhere in the darkness and was forevermore silent. Curwen hid inside an open sarcophagus that was seated upon a raised dais and waited for hours - maybe a whole day - in the blackness, listening to the thing drag itself through the chamber, occasionally bumping terrifyingly into the base of the dais. When the laborers returned, they revealed that only moments had passed, for they had only left to retrieve fresh water and torches from the camp outside the entrance to the excavation. Joseph was alone under the pyramid. The archaeologist was gone, though the chamber had only one exit and the workers had been standing outside it the entire time. They must have seem him leaving, if ever he left... Though the experience was traumatic, it awoke something in Joseph, something in his mind. Since then, he has had an odd, some might say 'supernatural' ability to read people and objects, the effects of which only growing over time.

Curwen never accepted the common explanations. Fever, panic, gas, illusory hallucination from a forgotten trap - all insufficient. He returned to Ustalav with a working knowledge of the ancient Osiriani language, a distaste for darkness, and the conviction that the world contains truths which resist the laws of math and science. Since then, he has pursued the occult - not as a mystic, but as a detective. Everything has an explanation.

Now attached to the Thrushmoor office of the Sleepless Detective Agency, Curwen has been assigned to investigate Count Haserton Lowls IV and four of the Count’s recently returned associates. Officially, he is to observe the group, earn their confidence, and determine what they know of Lowls’s activities. Unofficially, Curwen suspects the associates are not merely conspirators. They may be victims, witnesses, or even evidence. He intends to discover which, and, if necessary, to protect the evidence from itself.

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Fears
The dark, enclosed spaces, unanswered questions, sarcophagi, missing time

Joseph has seen the missing archeologists distinctive, blocky handwriting several times since the incident. Once in the margin of a book in Lepidstadt, one only recently unearthed from a buried sepulchre only recently unsealed. Once on the back of a Sleepless Agency evidence tag. Once, perhaps, in his own notebook.