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of the mortal hunters as otherworldly elfin figures in the middle of the room was a billiards table spattered with blood a corpse sprawled on the table amidst the billiard balls his neck ripped open his stiff fingers still clutched a broken pool cue which was curious since he was also armed with a short sword and hand crossbow judging from his dark clothing and half mask he was a burglar of some description close inspection of the corpse revealed a thief s mark and a ravenswing broach as well as the gloves of thief s sight which garvin carefully took these could be used to look through walls and doors to see what lay beyond enabling the thief to scout the next chambers noting the pool cue yam immediately surmised the possibility of vampires and took the improvised stake next the party went to the music room a beautifully furnished baroquely decorated chamber filled with instruments a flute dulcian chalumeau violin bass viol viola pomposa hurdy gurdy sackbut and harpsichord the instruments were beautifully enamelled and made from precious metals and exotic wood the party helped themselves to several but avoided the macabre looking instrumments placed amongst them a flute fashioned from a human femur covered in abstract etchings and a set of drums made from two bisected human skulls whose open tops were covered in flayed human skin armand disgusted and alarmed by these objects broke them apart and burnt them with fire bolts yam s player s annotations garvin used his newly acquired gloves to investigate the portrait gallery but recoiled from a scene of dismemberment and death let s just avoid that room he said and moved on to the study noting its large window ornate writing desk strewn with papers and numerous bookshelves on one wall was a map of the city of hex while on the other sprawled a map of the known world including the nearby lands of new ulthar nornhold sempiternia teratopolis tetractys verdigris and erubescence and other places more distant the city states and kingdoms such as the vassen empire blodvinter purulence ganglion finchport and xell the map even included more mysterious realms such as the distant continent to the east across the blushing ocean and the entropic wastes to the south the study also included a large bust of master melchior famed enchanter archmage founder and still living president of master melchior s school of thaumaturgy enchantment and another bust of keziah elderwold founder of the metamorphic scholarium and mother of modern alchemy the two busts stared at one another from either side of the room the party first investigated the papers on the desk which proved to be the diary of leopold van lurken mazeday 10 th of the month of crones jasper set out for erubescence today nicolet is fretting of course but the boy is old enough to begin taking an active hand in the business and now that things have settled down between hex and the crimson lands the time is ripe for trade the sanguine lords and ladies have skill in necromancy to rival the finest of the académie macabre but they lack technological know how they ve relied so long on undead labour they re centuries behind the things gnomes are building now in hex between that and the sap we should make a fortune i m sure jasper is fit for the job and besides there ll be plenty of more experienced men with him here at home annette has sent off her application to umbral university she s tried her hand at a few cantrips to great effect she ll make a skilled illusionist even if i would have preferred if she d chosen master melchior s school of thaumaturgy enchantment or the metamorphic scholarium even fiend s college something useful illusion is just so frivolous i suppose it makes a good school for a daughter on the marriage market however not that we re in any urgent need of a match i expect that every penniless noble for leagues will be battering down our door soon enough in hopes of getting their manicured fingers on our money goatday 16 th of the month of snails jasper returned today after some weeks in erubescence and is full of strange tales of the bone giants and the tower of teeth of the nurseries and the grey matrons of the blood church and its great rival the cult of the pallid worm who finds some small favour here in the guise of mordiggia the charnel goddess he has brought back with him much gold and contracts for further trade signed with various nobles and merchants in the crimson lands and objects also for sale here in hex these include a number of mysterious crates which he has insisted we store in our own cellars jasper claims the contents are far too valuable to leave in our warehouse in the swelter the boy seems invigorated by his journey and full of an almost feverish excitement though truth be told he is somewhat pale and thin of cheek this is perhaps no surprise given the shroud of darkness that prevails over much of erubescence conjured by the sanguine lords and ladies so they may walk freely even at noon when their kind would normally be turned to ash still i dislike the wild look in his eyes or the curious twitchy way he has taken to fidgeting meanwhile a pair of nicolet s earrings seem to have gone missing she suspects the maid miranda claiming to have found her once in the midst of trying on a necklace miranda claimed to have simply been cleaning the piece i have had geoffrey search the house including the servant s quarters but he has turned up nothing if miranda did steal the earrings she must have already sold them but without evidence i cannot bring myself to dismiss her scaleday 22 nd of the month of snails i fear for poor jasper s health the boy seems averse to sunlight and has acquired an unhealthy pallor were he not quite free of bite marks happy to eat garlic and perfectly visible in mirrors i would think him stricken with vampirism courtesy of some erubescent un dead he now spends all of his hours either cooped up in his room or else down in the basement gazing on the artefacts he has amassed most particularly a large and singularly hideous stone idol dedicated to the pallid worm i do quite understand his obsession with the outré and bizarre after all i myself possess a cabinet of curiosities filled with treasures from half a hundred lands gleaned through years of meticulous collection and have spent hours gazing on such oddities as the instant maze or the skeleton of a zoog or speaking with the curious stone elemental gabbro who walked the earth as a giant many aeons past and now through the slow action of wind and rain has dwindled to the size of a pebble i m sure one day he will have his own collection of such items but still it is unhealthy to spend so much time in the damp and dark mould will get into his lungs and only worsen the queer hacking cough he seems to have developed annette has been accepted to umbral university and has already begun experimenting with more advanced spells she even ensorcelled the mirror in her room so that it could change your reflection making it wear different clothes or altering your hair and i dared think illusion magic frivolous can you imagine what blushing young ladies and vain dandies would pay for such an object there are more than enough such folk in fanghill we could make our fortune over again selling such things on the domestic front nicolet is concerned that the house has developed an infestation of some sort perhaps some animal has died in the walls the cook found an alarming number of cockroaches in the pantry and only this evening i discovered a maggot in my mutton i quite lost my appetite mossday 3 rd of the month of blushes the physiker the alchemist and a priestess of the magistra have all been by the house but none can do anything for poor jasper and nicolet is starting to panic neither spell nor prayer nor vigorous leeching nor medicinal potion has had any effect on him and he retains an increasingly ghastly pallor he looks like one of those horrible degenerate ghouls one sees lurking in shambleside and his skin has a slick slimy texture as from a fever he babbles strangely keeping us awake late and night with gibberish chants and often refuses to open his eyes but bumbles about the house with them closed his hands wrapped about his body it is most strange his room has taken on a rank stench even with frequent cleaning and seems infested even more thickly with the vermin that now plague the house in distressing numbers and of course we still find him sneaking down to the cellars despite having locked the door he must be stealing the key i must make arrangements to remove the thing from the house i fear some strange madness has taken him a sickness contracted in the crimson lands if he does not improve soon the authorities may well come knocking to put the boy in catch all i would not let such a fate befall him for even the thought of that pestilential slum makes my skin crawl with horror but to escape the plague district he may need to be smuggled out of the city perhaps sent to one of the sanitaria in the mountains or some quiet place in the country the whole house has taken on a horrid gloominess in light of jasper s condition the shadows denser the light dimmer mildew and mould seem to be spreading up from the basement paintings that once were bright now seem grim the faces of portraits ill favoured even the grandfather clock chiming in the front hall seems to groan with an unhealthy sound as if the mechanism itself were taken ill there is a queer rustling sound in the walls even annette seems subdued i only pray she has not contracted whatever sickness plagues my eldest son more than once jasper has been found out of bed lingering at his sister s door in a way that is most disquieting his eyelids squeezed shut his clammy hands pawing at the door starday 12 th of the month of blushes gods preserve me i have locked myself here in the study but fear i will not live out the night or if i do i shall not be unchanged there are things which creep under the door even now there is no escape unless perhaps i risk leaping from the window i can hear the servants screaming elsewhere on this floor as jasper and annette wreak their blood havoc i scarce recognized her nor jasper either for what stood before me smeared in blood was not my son but some awful white eyeless thing spewing blasphemous prayers to an unclean goddess whatever he touched began to decay maggots bursting forth from furnishings and floorboards at his touch great tides of writhing worms and beetles and flies swarmed through the halls and filled the mouths and bodies of the servants making them into grotesque puppets there are chittering sounds coming from outside the door and somewhere a flute is playing a shrill and malignant tune i pray only that nicolet is spared and that when the corruption that has taken this place is discovered it will be rooted out and expunged should anyone find this journal i plead with you kill whatever it is that i have become and my children as well and burn this house to the ground whatever evil has seized this place it must not spread next the group began investigating the bookshelves and busts in search of a trigger for the secret door implied by the map eventually discovering that the eyes of the two busts were buttons which could be depressed when melchior and keziah seemed to be winking at one another a bookshelf swung open revealing the cabinet of wonders beyond behind the secret door lay a small room in which all manner of strange objects were jammed these ranged from the merely odd to the fabulously strange even by the standards of hex these objects included a stuffed wyvern hatchling a medusa s death mask a perfectly reproduced miniature model of hex that had been enchanted to include illusions of tiny little people moving about in the streets and in and out of buildings a lengian skull a zoog skeleton a puzzle box engraved with maze like symbols a small painting of a vegetable lamb a gnomish automaton soldier approximately 1 foot tall a gnomish automaton angel approximately 1 foot tall that when wound up offers patronizing sermons in the name of the magistra a bottle of greyish green liquid the bubbles of which contain weird surreal visions of strange landscapes as well as scenes of everyday life six eyeballs of indeterminate species floating in liquid a minotaur horn a beautifully realistic child s doll of ambiguous sex the doll had a minor enchantment when the drawstring on its back is pulled it temporarily assumed the semblance of a real child a dark blue rhomboid stone a shrunken cat s head a letter of some kind an orchid made entirely out of pink crystal a potion of gaseous form a flask of endless coffee a miniature shovel large enough for a gnome or a small child a tiny cosmological model made of intricate clockwork showing speculative locations of the dreamlands the underworld faerie anathema and the mortal plane a tiny potted plant that produces small multi coloured berries a small green fish in a glass bowl a librarian voidcraft in a bottle modeled on the vessel glimpsed through powerful telescopes at the edge of the solar system a gently snoring stone which is in fact a minor earth elemental as the party discovered called gabbro a porcelain mask an ornate pocket watch engraved with the letter a on the back after rifling greedily through these riches and plundering the cabinet thoroughly the party heard something approaching from down below an eerie skittering slithering noise garvin crept quickly and stealthily through the corridors while the rest of the party remained near the study the thief was first to spy the source of the noise a flushed fleshy creature creeping up the stairs out of the gloom on limbs that seemed inadequate for its corpulent worm like bulk bloated and blotched with pink the monstrosity was clad in the tattered remnants of what might have been a finely tailored dress twisted round its sinuous body its neckless face had vestigial features though its mouth remains rather horribly humanoid with full red womanly lips and pointed white fangs a few patches of long dark hair sprouted from the creature s scalp the thing seemed mostly blind but remained cognizant of the world around it the remains of the snapped off pool cue protruded from its body still concealed garvin crept through the corridors of the house and fired at the horror but his bolt embedded itself in the thing s bulk to little noticeable effect the monstrosuty surged towards the rest of the party and a fierce battle ensued vespidae hurling javelins and performing waspkin battle dances while yam and armand desperately assailed the monster with acid and fire spells the latter of which proved highly effective garvin firing more bolts was scratched by one of the monstrosity s clawed appendages a terrible wound that tore through leather and flesh blood pouring from this great tear he slipped into unconsciousness while vespidae in desperation cast dissonant whispers...
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