Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme

General Summary

Zaketh, Kingra, Ryke, MJ, Mortimer
A strange cursed affected a dozen or so individuals in the vicinity of the Erudite Bastion. One that caused the afflicted to be compelled to hum the same tune over and over incessantly. A supernatural earworm that spread to each individual that heard it.
A senior scribe named Varnyr recognised the symptoms as being similar to an incident from the past, some 150 years earlier, when she first came to the Bibliopolis. Then, it spread through the staff and students, causing disruption and eventually madness and violence in those afflicted. It was contained with strict quarantine, and considerable expenditure of curse-removing magic. To halt the spread, she informed the library staff and retreated to the Firefly Cellar, a somewhat run-down area underneath the Erudite Bastion that she and her staff had been renovating. There, locked behind the cellar door, the affected would stay until the appropriate abjuration spells could be prepared.
Caught up in the outbreak were Kingra, MJ, and Ryke, who had come into contact with a scribe named Ebder Smallstone and his daughter Gailby, who had left the Firefly Cellar on errands for the renovation. The girl had been happily humming the tune as she went, while the widowed father tried to suppress it in himself. Procella, with assistance of a priest of Jaxhyde named Herbuk Blessedforged, ushered them to the Firefly Cellar under the protection of a silence spell aura.
Back at Goblin Manor, Procella explained the situation to Zaketh, proposing that they investigate and research the curse. She was convinced it had to be another ploy by the hag coven. Then, a goblin arrived at the manor door. Introducing himself as Mortimer Piss, he was some relative of the late Master Goblin, and had come to visit. While they wondered how to break the news, Mortimer began to hum the cursed tune. Procella was able to protect her ears in time, but Zaketh was afflicted. The two were sent to the Firefly Cellar.
In the circular, tiered cellar, beneath the enormous stone statue of a book chained from the ceiling, the cursed took stock of their situation. There were books, beds, food, water, and most went about trying to make themselves comfortable and pass the time. An energetic tabaxi named K'Tulah was nervous and claustrophobic about the confinement, and Crinkle, the cellar's grouchy kenku custodian, bristled at the influx of strangers into her space. The elderly kenku went to tend to the many thousands of living fireflies that lent their gentle light to the cellar.
Curious about the kenku's duties, Ryke discovered words scratched into the floor of the storeroom Crinkle used as a feeding station and terrarium storage for the insects: FINISH THE RHYME. He tried to question Crinkle about events, using some charm magic to assist. Reluctantly, she told him to "speak to the girl".
The party investigated the mystery of the curse, amidst a sequence of increasingly unsettling paranormal phenomena and a rising sense of fear and panic among the cellar residents. The lyrics of the rhyme revealed themselves, telling of a cruel spirit named "Shemshime" that caused violent or self-destructive acts in those it haunted. And they discovered humanoid remains from the time of the earlier outbreak over a century ago, including a fatally fractured skull that still sang the rhyme from beyond the grave. They uncovered the source of the tune: a gnomish-made music box in the shape of a book titled Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme, that had laid undisturbed until the renovations in the cellar. Crinkle, a petty thief with a penchant for interesting curios, had stolen it from the bindery where it awaited repair, and she had shared the find with the equally curious Gailby, inflicting them both with the singing curse, and initiating the spread.
The book's mechanism was damaged in a way that caused the tune to skip back to the the beginning and never reach the end. Using his tinkering know-how Ryke began to affect repairs. The evil spirit in the book lashed out at him psychically, and began to manipulate the others into turning their weapons on each other, just like in the rhyme. Locking himself in a bedchamber, Ryke completed the repair. The tune played to its end, and the final verse became known to all, that described the spirit's defeat by being crushed beneath a millstone.
Then, summoned by the ritual of the cellar inhabitants' collective chanting of the rhyme, Shemshime became manifest as a shadowy specter. With sadistic glee, it caused friend to strike against friend. The party fought it with blade and magic, but it could not be destroyed. Finally, as the spirit turned its attention to the other, more helpless inhabitants, the party came up with a plan. With some deft spellcasting, Ryke and Kingra dislodged the chains that held the massive book statue hanging above the cellar. The huge weight crashed down. And missed.
In a final, desperate ploy, Mortimer ran to the upper balcony, and Ryke tossed him a small fabric patch. A magical patch of useful items he had discovered in Dedric Eregast's offices. Tearing the patch apart, Mortimer caused a fully grown, saddled, and tacked riding horse to appear in the air above the spirit. The resulting impact banished the spirit back to the book, which was bound in chains and taken away to Fastandia's Mansion for safekeeping. Kingra was able to heal the horse's injuries from the fall, and Ryke named her: Shemshime.
The curse lifted, Varnyr unlocked the cellar door, and all of the inhabitants were free to go.

Notes

See a mother scything wheat
Sleeping husband hidden near
With one swing she took his feet
Another took his ear
Why?
Thinks it a game
Avoids the blame
Its Name?
SHEMSHIME
SHEMSHIME
See a dog that knows to heel
Never heeds plea nor command
Mother gave a tasty meal
Instead dog eats her hand
Why?
Thinks it a game
Avoids the blame
Its Name?
SHEMSHIME
SHEMSHIME
See a son doing his chores
Washing clothes for folk in town
Fell into the river’s roar
Sank to the depths and drowned

Why?
Thinks it a game
Avoids the blame
Its Name?
SHEMSHIME
SHEMSHIME
See a daughter grinding grain
Wish the spirit’s time was through
Trap set for the shadow bane
Her millstone killed it true

Why?
Thinks it a game
Avoids the blame
Its Name?
SHEMSHIME
SHEMSHIME

Report Date

23 Feb 2022

Primary Location

Firefly Cellar