Givesday, Tailormoon, 1313
General Summary
Slept in Understacks.
Hugo’s court stats have remained the same (good cancelling out bad).
Hugo no longer has Shakes.
Lovelorn
Lindie explores the Sphinx's Lair
A date in a calendar system that is no longer used - in common it is Givesday, Sailormoon, 581.
Connie makes her a star chart.
Hugo uses All-Seeing Eye twice.
Detect Thoughts
To Hugo it’s a jumbled chaos of images and scrolling text in hieroglyphs and words being sung in Sphinx, but he can understand enough that the hieroglyphs, songs and images are all legends and stories and myths that this sphinx has collected references to over the years. Has exchanged with other sphinxes for. This is a collection of cultural knowledge in the form of an unorganised (to Hugo) or to some artistic principle or arrangement beyond human or kitsune instinct to understand but is all just multiple versions and variations and retranslations of legends and myths that share certain throughlines of reference points. She’s following the lines to assemble a kind of image or web or tapestry of the whole. What do the legends of Palimpsest (or the world as a whole) have to say about this topic?
Detect Alignment on Bastet: True Neutral.
Gives a lot of legends and stories about the apocalypse. Many folklores have their own individual apocalypse narrative that will come or may come if not averted or would come but won’t because it is averted. Most of those don’t have a connecting thread other than terrible changes to the world. The Prisoners escape the Bridewell, the Terrier catches the Prince of Rabbits, the Door to the Downstairs is Breached, the Walking Wounded remembers the Brass, the Hyades finish their Song. All possible things that according to their respective folklores, would or could trigger a cataclysmic shift in the nature of cultures ceasing to be. Entire world being destroyed or replaced.
A story not obviously connected to the folklores of an entity called Apokyllon or the onrushing cataclysm. The herald of the end. The god of Armegeddon. The legends said dwelt in the future at the end of all things and spread slowly forwards towards the present at all times.
Almost by accident, here that the first solid connecting thread of multiple legends of the apocalypse that can be tied to each other is first seen. The legend of Apokyllon is not told as a legend that is currently true – not any more. It is told by the “universal church in mourning”, or so the stories that the Sphinx sings, that the universal church in mourning consists or consisted of clerics who had lost their deity and who kept the names and legends that they could remember of the deity they once had alive as a sort of tribute to the fallen. Apokyllon the onrushing cataclysm is a legend told in that sense as a deity that once was, a legend that was once true, the wrong apocalypse got here first, and that cosmology was wiped out, overwritten, with a new paradigm, and new stars, and Apokyllon wasn’t part of it any more.
This idea of an event that is not foreseen by the folklore that the legend comes from suddenly comes and wipes the slate clean prematurely and overwrites it with an new version of the world – that kind of apocalypse has a connecting thread from multiple legends from different sources.
Bastet sings a few of them each with its own name:
Selah: A reflective gratefulness for a thought-provoking performance of music or art.
Bastet: There exists in the library, that treasure that is so rare and precious and delicate that one could not speak its name to you without breaking it. I would have you bring it to me.
(Answer: Silence)
Trapdoors have magic runes become calligraphic script in the same hand but in own first language:
Hugo is Common, Lindie is Vishkanyan, Connie is Terran.
Trace the current runes to reveal what came before. “Waking” “Closure” “Healing” “Escape”.
Well... I suck.
+1 Amulet of Elemental Strife
+1 West Star from Understacks Orrery
Alhazred, the Saffron Grimoire
Big ghostflame wax homunculus with halfling on shoulder
Dido Saint-Germain! (Much older, wearing sterile scrubs and a lab coat in the colours of the Candleman’s Cartel)
The Candleman
2 constructs (Candleman Grunts)
Saint-Germain is on edge and afraid by the scenario (doesn’t recognise Hugo as anything other than probably a noble)
+300 gp
+1 candle man suit +4 AC, 0 AC check (max Dex +4)
+1 Dido Saint-Germain's Lab Book
+2 candle rods
+ then minus 1 Alchemical grease (which I used to set fire Saint-Germain’s corpse).
+1 alchemical resin
+1 ectoplasmic residue
+4 unknown alchemical substances
+1 candlemaker’s tools
Book of the Grave (did not take!)
Father: Ulysses Winthrop Academic and a Company man. He refused to marry because he didn’t want an Undine wife.
Provides birthdate, academic qualifications, story about becoming a noble, births of her children.
Gives an incomplete account of Castor's homosexuality (and does mention Hugo).
Stargazer sphere of influence. Stargazer Observatory second only to the Royal Observatory of the Amira's Court.
Stargazer Library is the largest collection restricted materials.
Rooftop Garden has a little contemplative garden area with a pool of sea water. Actually an enchanted gate to West Star. Secretly maintained unbenknowst to anyone outside the Stargazer family (As far as Bartleby knew). That contemplative garden space with its pool that is actually a planar spring fed by seawater from the West Star has been used by Andromeda for the purposes of calling forth visitors to trade information with and discuss with. Various Aquatic Creatures from the Plane of Water. Nixies. Nyriads. Lindworms. Also on extremely special occasions was used as a means of contacting the Sailor himself and divine associates and messengers thereof. Although that required Angel Dust to pull off. Nippers does not know the identity of Andromeda’s Angel Dust supplier.
Nippers also knows that the Stargazers in general (Andromeda in particular) were major patrons and supports of Elderton University Library. The university as a whole and the library in particular in Andromeda’s case. A lot of their donations were earmarked for the library. She maintained a good relationship with the library mistress Madam Prefecta Thecarius and with her Seneschal, Hydra. The two were frequently permitted basically unquestioned access to the Understacks. The Stargazers had a private room where all the forbidden books in Elderton’s collection that the university was permitted to obtain but not permitted to make available on the wider basis went in there. As everything sank into Understacks, everything was left but sealed off. Andromeda and hydra used it to get reference materials. They would sometimes confiscate materials for their own library. Some of the things in the bone room are dangerous enough that it is not wise to put these with other normal books.
Andromeda and Hydra did come down here to refer to the Bone Room on occasion. Rarely spoke to Andromeda for information. Nippers will be able to provide a list of books that Andromeda has had Nippers find for her. (Calum will provide list at some point).
One thing that Nippers does know about Andromeda that is completely new to us, is that concealed even from her own family, but not successfully concealed from Bartleby was the fact that driven by her natural inclination towards curiosity, even occasionally against her own better judgement, there were a couple of Andromeda’s interplanar contacts from the Plane of Water with whom her relationship had gone beyond intellectual and had developed romantic elements.
Nippers has name of two of them:
Andromeda’s response was: There’s something that I know that others don’t.
Nippers also knows the last time that Andromeda was down here, which was while hugo and victor were trying to sort out Candleman stuff. Day of menagerie revolt (Day before Cage Fight). Andromeda came down and made special request for Nippers to point her to any books they have down here that would contain the name of any Divs. True names of Divs. That she hadn’t confiscated already. They had three books that had a couple of names each.
Second Ears of the City is the most recent time when she came looking for the names of Divs. Summoned Bartleby to crossreference.
The time when she was with Hydra would have been them coming to confiscate or locate some other book, that they both occasionally do. They both would have come to see Nippers when they didn’t want anyone else knowing what they were after. When they were okay with Head Librarian knowing what they were here for. When they were doing something more clandestine than usual, usually the two of them together, and would frequently speak to Nippers because they trusted a Scrivener more than they trusted other members of staff. They knew Scriveners were easier to control.
Her middle name is Caliope.
Bartleby Relationship. Efficiently professional. It was she who had him summoned from his native plane and bound to her library and serve her whims. It is he who manages the library under her watch. There are few if any that Andromeda trusts more than Bartleby. Bartleby has no intentions to vacate his ink well.
Familiar Relationships. Led to understand that her relationship with her children is strained though courteous in the case of the younger twin, particularly frought. Relationship with her daughter-in-law, is one mostly based in fear and mutual distaste. I am given to understand that her relationship with her husband is entirely cordial. Andromeda Stargazer has never voiced an opinion on Ursula Stargazer. And Ursula has never, to my knowledge, voiced. The Viziera’s sister, I know, is exceedingly loyal. I know very little of the family beyond that. Bartleby has never personally met any of the extended relations.
Who does she trust most at court? Trusting, although wary, of the Bakerstreet Vizier, and of the House of Underhand. She has also been known to reliably form alliances of pragmatism with the Carterholds (historically) and the Darktusks. I would suspect this latter is largely through the orc connection. I believe the Ironsides Viziera has been known to visit Andromeda Stargazer at her estate more often than most other Vizieras.
Least? Very easily answered. Guinevera Dargent. By a considerable margin.
Who does she allow to attend the library most frequently? Absent an appointment she has only ever allowed 3 non-stargazers immediate access to the library. Vizier Bakerstreet, and the Viziera Crepuscule and Vizier Haruspex Underhand. Bartleby has presumed she would have allowed his access sans appointment if asked, but the Company has always been impeccable at record keeping and bureaucracy.
Her most trusted individual amongst her own relatives, would be Forecastle. She is a black and white cat. Bratleby didn’t specify if magical. I do know that she doesn’t speak Aquan. Bartleby tried.
Languages: Aquan (accent is Mid-Northwestern surface), Terran (only a minor material plane accent), Common, Ancient, Aklo, Auran, Ignan (Nippers considers this the less refined of the elemental languages), Celestial, Infernal, Dark Folk. Not Necril. Has divine incantations that grant her the gift of tongues. Those incantations she prefers to speak in Celestial, though she has been known to mix the odd aquan word in there for flavour. Does not understand the language of cats, even when gifted with Tongues. A report of her while under the influence of Tongues, “What are you mewling about now, you foolish cat?” in Common, which was her first language, although the Aquan was taught to her by her family as a small child.
(Nippers is from quite far beneath the surface himself.) Her natural hair colour is blue, eyes are also blue, although slightly flecked with pinpoints of silver and gold (like stars).
Deanton Blackwell: human, North Town University Alumnus and founder of Blackwell’s Purveyors of Quality Secondhand Textbooks
Swiles has purchased:
Johann(a): Would it be too much of a coincidence that this would be the gnome named Grimoire?
Altercation!
Connie: Mister Beozar, sir. I think I’m going to have to destroy them.
Beozar: What?!
Notably, none of the Patchwork Empire actually harm Connie (Beozar grapples, Ramstein casts Greater Thunderstomp to trip her, and even Johann(a) only gets up to holding her razor to Connie’s neck)
Johann(a): Drop the spell, Connie.
Connie made Beozar sad :(
She gives him Castlereigh's Summoning book, but also accidentally mentions Cassie!!!!!
Connie: Oh, she’s my friend.
Beozar is definitely going to report back to Johann(a), who now has the peerage and will be able to find Cassiopeia’s name… but also Cassilda Shajara's so that’s good?? (Castor probably safe on account of being male).
Dargent Parents believe that the fake Angel Dust substance we created was done by the Candleman, allowing us to keep 14g of Angel Dust (7 doses) for our own use.
Hugo’s court stats have remained the same (good cancelling out bad).
Hugo no longer has Shakes.
Lovelorn
- If a creature dies while heartbroken and the body is sufficiently desecrated (e.g. if it had spent most of the previous day being disturbed by a Fox, a Snake and a Bunny climbing and falling on it), the lingering flicker of grief from its heartbroken state can reanimate the broken heart.
- We splattered the corpse open and let the heart out.
- Dual moral ghost story in the Warren: this is why you always burn your dead, and the importance of commitment to community.
Lair of the Sphinx
Asked to know about the Apocalypses- Where they came from?
- What happened in the previous ones?
Looking for page on Sphinxes immediately opens to page on Sphinxes. Connie is able to scratch down what she sees and Hugo can translate. Takes 10 minutes of reading.
Find as the pages are turned, there are always somehow more pages on sphinxes. Book allows Knowledge Arcana check untrained (trained gives +5 circumstance bonus).
More pages come with illustrations, diagrams (no star charts), city maps and in once case a desert map, showing habitats of the sphinxes. Various bits of personal writing by Ahab Ebari.
Sphinxes are mostly extinct (Belived to be). Were very populus once. Sphinxes are actually natives of the Screaming Desert. It seems they once had cultures of their own in other places or locations in the screaming desert, all of which no longer exist as so far as the Ebaris can tell.
The Sphinx naming convention, as they have never put value on family lineage, but they value a sense of place. They don’t have surnames but they have geographical epithets. They were named after their territory. They were grouped by shared territory rather than the family they are from. The vanishingly few sphinxes that have ever existed in living memory are considered one family. The sphinxes of palimpsest. Sphinx lore speaks of other names from other territories.
Sailorite (including Ahab himself) explorers have attempted to find these places. There is evidence of ruins out there in some of the places that sphinxes say there were territories. Before they were solely a species of palimpsest like everyone else.
The sphinxes are quite guarded, insular, enigmatic species. Renowned for speaking in riddles and not giving straight answers. Not a lot known about their species’ origins. They appear to be split into four categories (biologically distinct kinds of sphinx). They have different traits, biologically and magically.
They are all considered ancient beastfolk. Sphinx (the language) is considered an ancient dead language (Alongside Ancient and Aklo – Draconic is still spoken and Celestial is language of the gods).
All primarily leonine, believed to be progenitors of catfolk. More feral, earlier evolved, mostly died-out version. Four genders or insect-like role (queen, worker, drone for bees): these groupings are referred to as:
Very old sphinxes’ metabolism slows down, and they can go decades without eating. Can get carried away in their own thoughts.
“Sphinxes have peculiar breeding habits.” Ebari is putting a patronising humany spin on things. Unproductive gender dynamics between the “deeply desire to form bond with the Androsphinxes, but for their part consider any kind of settling down to be a waste of energy that could be better spent on loftier pursuits”. Criosphinxes are generally obsessed with trying to win the favour of the gynosphinxes. Ahab did not know the modern slang term “simp”. Ebari considers the Hirarchosphinxes as incels. Hierarchy is maybe an Ebari invention.
When they do mate, a sphinx litter is 2-4. One litter in lifetime. Not a lot of Sphinxes. No real pattern to what sexes or genders (type) the members of a given litter will be.
Have their own language (Sphinx). Sphinxes themselves have adopted Common. Almost all seem to speak Draconic, and in many cases also speak Ancient and/or Aklo. Old languages seem to be of interest to Sphinxes (although Ahab doesn’t know why).
Sphinxes are noted to be big on politeness and correct phrases and etiquette. Tend to enjoy conversing and discussing things. Hirachosphinxes have evolved (or eugenically bred) to be more inclined to setting things with physical action.
Known in stories as guardians of great treasures, secrets and sacred places.
Obligate carnivores, which could have contributed to their more recent death rate (living in a city). Spinxes nests are often cluttered affairs full of books, papers and the detritus of academic pursuits. Give them something to pursue or a subject to research. Giving them the opportunity to fulfil their academic role.
Gynosphixes use she or they pronouns interchangeably. Have own pronouns in sphinx.
Find as the pages are turned, there are always somehow more pages on sphinxes. Book allows Knowledge Arcana check untrained (trained gives +5 circumstance bonus).
More pages come with illustrations, diagrams (no star charts), city maps and in once case a desert map, showing habitats of the sphinxes. Various bits of personal writing by Ahab Ebari.
Sphinxes are mostly extinct (Belived to be). Were very populus once. Sphinxes are actually natives of the Screaming Desert. It seems they once had cultures of their own in other places or locations in the screaming desert, all of which no longer exist as so far as the Ebaris can tell.
The Sphinx naming convention, as they have never put value on family lineage, but they value a sense of place. They don’t have surnames but they have geographical epithets. They were named after their territory. They were grouped by shared territory rather than the family they are from. The vanishingly few sphinxes that have ever existed in living memory are considered one family. The sphinxes of palimpsest. Sphinx lore speaks of other names from other territories.
Sailorite (including Ahab himself) explorers have attempted to find these places. There is evidence of ruins out there in some of the places that sphinxes say there were territories. Before they were solely a species of palimpsest like everyone else.
The sphinxes are quite guarded, insular, enigmatic species. Renowned for speaking in riddles and not giving straight answers. Not a lot known about their species’ origins. They appear to be split into four categories (biologically distinct kinds of sphinx). They have different traits, biologically and magically.
They are all considered ancient beastfolk. Sphinx (the language) is considered an ancient dead language (Alongside Ancient and Aklo – Draconic is still spoken and Celestial is language of the gods).
All primarily leonine, believed to be progenitors of catfolk. More feral, earlier evolved, mostly died-out version. Four genders or insect-like role (queen, worker, drone for bees): these groupings are referred to as:
- Androsphinx: Boy sphinx. The bits that aren’t leonine are either aquiline (eaglelike) or human. Traditionally most powerful and socially dominant – which is why the humans refer to them as male. Philosopher caste – thought leaders. Most often good aligned, and lawful.
- Gynosphinx: Girl sphinx. Bastet is a gynosphinx. The bits that aren’t leonine are either aquiline (eaglelike) or human. Second in hierarchy. Intellectual caste – teachers. Impressive intellects, scholars. Almost always beautiful, even by human standards okay, Ahab. Big on logic, puzzles and riddles. One of the more territorial kinds of sphinx. Known for allowing travellers to visit their domain, and barter for trinkets or information in exchange for providing them either an insight into a subject of their interest, or providing them an intellectual pursuit suited to their inclinations, that they can then entertain themselves by pursuing. The fervour with which they pursue enigmas are not necessarily aligned with how useful those are. Hover around neutral.
- Criosphinx: Third in hierarchy. Alongside lion and eagle, third thing present in anatomy is ram or goat (rather than primate). Mercantile caste – traders and information brokers. Around chaotic neutral region.
- Hierarchosphinx: Furthest down – least powerful and high class. Just lion and bird. No third set of traits. Warrior and physical labourer caste. Trend evil (true but simplification).
Very old sphinxes’ metabolism slows down, and they can go decades without eating. Can get carried away in their own thoughts.
“Sphinxes have peculiar breeding habits.” Ebari is putting a patronising humany spin on things. Unproductive gender dynamics between the “deeply desire to form bond with the Androsphinxes, but for their part consider any kind of settling down to be a waste of energy that could be better spent on loftier pursuits”. Criosphinxes are generally obsessed with trying to win the favour of the gynosphinxes. Ahab did not know the modern slang term “simp”. Ebari considers the Hirarchosphinxes as incels. Hierarchy is maybe an Ebari invention.
When they do mate, a sphinx litter is 2-4. One litter in lifetime. Not a lot of Sphinxes. No real pattern to what sexes or genders (type) the members of a given litter will be.
Have their own language (Sphinx). Sphinxes themselves have adopted Common. Almost all seem to speak Draconic, and in many cases also speak Ancient and/or Aklo. Old languages seem to be of interest to Sphinxes (although Ahab doesn’t know why).
Sphinxes are noted to be big on politeness and correct phrases and etiquette. Tend to enjoy conversing and discussing things. Hirachosphinxes have evolved (or eugenically bred) to be more inclined to setting things with physical action.
Known in stories as guardians of great treasures, secrets and sacred places.
Obligate carnivores, which could have contributed to their more recent death rate (living in a city). Spinxes nests are often cluttered affairs full of books, papers and the detritus of academic pursuits. Give them something to pursue or a subject to research. Giving them the opportunity to fulfil their academic role.
Gynosphixes use she or they pronouns interchangeably. Have own pronouns in sphinx.
Lindie explores the Sphinx's Lair
- 4 secret doors on the floor of the room. Trapdoors that are by some magic sealed into the floor such that paying very close attention can be seen to merge with the floor.
- Main door lock has been magically amplified.
- Books and antiques.
- Qu’onan book where he encounters a gynosphinx. It’s called Riddle of the Heart. (In Bastet’s lair).
- Clearly a few books that are dictionaries in various languages. Tomes of magical knowledge. Dream journal recording a bunch of weird dreams and visions. Spellbooks, grimoires, and at least one that looks to be some kind of translation of a bunch of scroll fragments. Gold and coins and stuff.
- Basil's recording of the bottom of the pit contains a minute of whispering breezes, dripping water, some kind of distant rumbling as of a mine cart going past. Insectile clicking noise (threatening) as if creatures are communicating.
A date in a calendar system that is no longer used - in common it is Givesday, Sailormoon, 581.
Connie makes her a star chart.
Hugo uses All-Seeing Eye twice.
Detect Thoughts
To Hugo it’s a jumbled chaos of images and scrolling text in hieroglyphs and words being sung in Sphinx, but he can understand enough that the hieroglyphs, songs and images are all legends and stories and myths that this sphinx has collected references to over the years. Has exchanged with other sphinxes for. This is a collection of cultural knowledge in the form of an unorganised (to Hugo) or to some artistic principle or arrangement beyond human or kitsune instinct to understand but is all just multiple versions and variations and retranslations of legends and myths that share certain throughlines of reference points. She’s following the lines to assemble a kind of image or web or tapestry of the whole. What do the legends of Palimpsest (or the world as a whole) have to say about this topic?
Detect Alignment on Bastet: True Neutral.
The Prince's Yarns
- Anecdotes, fairytales and adventure stories. All just long enough to hold the attention of a child.
- Spectrum where some are short enough to tell a three year old. Some long enough to tell a 12 year old.
- All have a moral, educational point to them, but woven into a imaginative or adventuresome story such that the message is obviously there but comes across as sort of incidental to the story.
- Gets the idea that this has intentionally been designed to be morally simplistic enough for children to grasp but morally subtle enough to not feel moralising or trying to teach you things.
- The things it is trying to teach you comes across as cool stuff, the stuff that is less cool but also important is incidentally communicated.
- There are a bunch of stories that are mostly either about adventures of Wards of the Prince of Orphans, with the Prince of Orphans themself being a recurring mentor figure and supporting character but generally not the protagonist or focus of any of them, the Prince seems to be kind of a mentor and protector and also a fast-talker and a story teller and a person who is inclined to talk their way out of trouble. Where the can’t talk their way out, the thing they fall back on is inventing needlessly complicated rubegoldberg contraptions to solve their problems with. There’s a couple of stories where the Prince is depicted taking a bunch of mechanical bits and bobs from the pockets of their coat, partially dismantling them and reassembling them into a contraption to reach a window or open a door.
- Vibe is generally Russell T Davis era doctor who written by excitable child.
- Morals: stuff that one might want to teach an orphaned child. Usual kind of lessons for children about obeying ones parents and relying on adults is notably absent. More about children being taught to be self-sufficient and relying on each other. The Prince themselves being one of few trustworthy adult characters that shows up. There’s a definite sense of harsh truths in the situations where you are at the adults that you encounter are not going to have your best interests at heart. One of the most important skills is learning how to figure out who to trust and how to keep yourselves and fellow orphans safe from the threats of the adult world. This is sugar coated. The importance of not giving up, learning new things, being clever and brave.
- There is perhaps a bit of “you can’t trust the other adults but you can trust me” if you want to be suspicious, in any kind of be careful around strangers for children. If the parents tell you, there is a vibe you can trust them. If the school tells them, you can tell a teacher. Adults in general are not trustworthy, but the moraliser can be trusted.
- Old-school adventure stories with recurring theme of being able to pick up on red flags “young Jim Hawkins knew a pirate when he saw one”.
- Indication that the book was compiled from multiple sources. The Princes Yarns is less a single, coherent holy text, rather the name given to any collected bunch of stories like this. This is a genre of stories told by the orphans in orphanages.
- This book belongs to: Little Ginger Annie.
- Names include Tybalt and Mercutio, but the names the Prince of Orphans and the Orphan Maker.
Bastet’s Legend Lore
Sings in the style of ancient, pre invention of scales:Gives a lot of legends and stories about the apocalypse. Many folklores have their own individual apocalypse narrative that will come or may come if not averted or would come but won’t because it is averted. Most of those don’t have a connecting thread other than terrible changes to the world. The Prisoners escape the Bridewell, the Terrier catches the Prince of Rabbits, the Door to the Downstairs is Breached, the Walking Wounded remembers the Brass, the Hyades finish their Song. All possible things that according to their respective folklores, would or could trigger a cataclysmic shift in the nature of cultures ceasing to be. Entire world being destroyed or replaced.
A story not obviously connected to the folklores of an entity called Apokyllon or the onrushing cataclysm. The herald of the end. The god of Armegeddon. The legends said dwelt in the future at the end of all things and spread slowly forwards towards the present at all times.
Almost by accident, here that the first solid connecting thread of multiple legends of the apocalypse that can be tied to each other is first seen. The legend of Apokyllon is not told as a legend that is currently true – not any more. It is told by the “universal church in mourning”, or so the stories that the Sphinx sings, that the universal church in mourning consists or consisted of clerics who had lost their deity and who kept the names and legends that they could remember of the deity they once had alive as a sort of tribute to the fallen. Apokyllon the onrushing cataclysm is a legend told in that sense as a deity that once was, a legend that was once true, the wrong apocalypse got here first, and that cosmology was wiped out, overwritten, with a new paradigm, and new stars, and Apokyllon wasn’t part of it any more.
This idea of an event that is not foreseen by the folklore that the legend comes from suddenly comes and wipes the slate clean prematurely and overwrites it with an new version of the world – that kind of apocalypse has a connecting thread from multiple legends from different sources.
Bastet sings a few of them each with its own name:
- The Unmaking Rage
- The Final Shot
- The Story They Will Not Tell
- The Howling
- The Scouring Blight
- The Breach Unseen
- The Sickness of the Stars, or the White Death
- The Ancient Drought
Selah: A reflective gratefulness for a thought-provoking performance of music or art.
Bastet: There exists in the library, that treasure that is so rare and precious and delicate that one could not speak its name to you without breaking it. I would have you bring it to me.
(Answer: Silence)
Trapdoors have magic runes become calligraphic script in the same hand but in own first language:
Hugo is Common, Lindie is Vishkanyan, Connie is Terran.
Trace the current runes to reveal what came before. “Waking” “Closure” “Healing” “Escape”.
Well... I suck.
The Cry in the Dark
- Unpleasant text. Central philosophy seems to be nihilistic and ruthless. Generally bleak and very little room in there for concepts like kindness, optimism. Definite feel for wolf at the door and its worshippers.
- It is a thing within Worgoth religion that sometimes the wolf at the door just chooses people. Sometimes the Wolf at the Door arbitrarily either bestows mercy and allows someone to live where they otherwise would have died or bestows bad luck and brings someone back to square 1 when they thought they’d found a way out. Or grants magical visions. Hugo has been around Connie enough to know that’s something that Bramble can do as well. For maybe no reason at all, Worgoth chose Princess to be its oracle and gave her vision of the apocalypse in order to equip her specifically with the task of trying to prevent it. Maybe even less reason than that “I want this person to know.”
- Pointless cruel random.
- The teaching seems to be that the doorstep is in some metaphysical sense waiting at every door. The garden beyond the stars is not something that gets mentioned a lot in the Cry in the Dark, but can intuit from own knowledge and book references, that Garden is a Walled garden with a door, or entry way. In some metaphysical sense, it too has the doorstep waiting outside it. Lurking. Giving Worgoth a path to potentially arrive and sew the destruction that is the Wolf being at the Door. For the Wolf to be at the Door means you are barely holding on. There’s a concept of those who work paycheck to paycheck, they are said to be keeping the Wolf from the Door. Circumstances are as dire as they can get without becoming completely unsurvivable. The Wolf can be at Any door, but somethings innately keep the wolf away from the door. The most obvious example is silver and gold keep the wolf from the door. If you have money, you can buy your way out of distress.
- Worgoth’s avatars are vulnerable to silver weapons. In reality, Worgoth is almost always at the doors of the poor and destitute and only occasionally, when people are unlucky or Worgoth is very clever, do richer people find the wolf at their door.
- Garden is innately paradisical. There is still a door for the wolf to be at. But it’s so difficult and unlikely for somebody to be in that garden and not have their needs easily met, in reality, Worgoth doesn’t really have any foothold in the garden. Connie with her curse being in the garden would give Worgoth more of a foothold.
- Hugo has a better understanding of the purpose of oracles from a divine point of view. The eight don’t need oracles – they have clerics, paladins warpriests. They have entire churches openly studying them and representing their interests on mortal plane.
- Survivor stars don’t have the same power on an institutional level. It is much more worth it to the survivor stars to have an oracle. An oracle is a voice for the divine within the material plane. An oracle is a representative or embodiment of the power of that deity. If you are a deity who is struggling to get influence in a particular place. Getting an oracle of yours into that place opens up massive opportunities you didn’t have before. The eight are so ubiquitously powerful, but the idea of oracles being chosen to bring forth the god’s will in a place where the god cannot directly exercise it on their own, seems to be implied by both of the survivor star religions he has now read into and Brambleson’s relationship with Connie. Brambleson had a crazy, one-in-a-million plan.
- Sometimes Worgoth’s chosen one can turn into a wolf.
Passages through the Briarpatch
- Much lighter in tone – fluffy and twee. Vewy Serious Advices In How To Live In Way that will be Good for Brambleson and will get you to the Briarpatch.
- The writers of this book didn’t seem to consider that question (can a kitsune be a worshipper of the Prince of Rabbits). The question of those who aren’t rabbits being a worshipper of the Prince of Rabbits does occur occasionally. The Bramble Church clerics that wrote this book seem to have assumed that where there are subjects of the prince of rabbits who aren’t actually rabbits, have assumed that they’re never canids. There is an assumption that canids – foxes, called out specifically – are definitely an oppositional concept to rabbits. Dogs, foxes, wolves, snakes, falcons, owls, cats. There seems to be an assumption that all of the carnivore animals are inherently antithetical to rabbits. It’s an assumption that they haven’t addressed or gone into.
- Since Hugo became a Rose Warden, something has been enhancing his abilities beyond his own natural kitsune magic. Rose Warden might be one of the classes that is granted by a deity. Only one deity that Hugo has a positive relationship with. Doesn’t have enough of an understanding of how to square this with each other. Both Tito and his own Rose Warden ability, imply the possibility of Brambleson having a functioning relationship with a predator animal.
- Hugo gets the sense that there may be something of an entrenched orthodoxy in the church that wrote and compiled this book. He starts to get the impression that while these may be some passages that go through the briarpatch. And they may not be the only passages that they are. Brambleson may also have ways of opening passages outside the orthodoxy. Hinted around the edges of things. Non-rabbit brambleites have existed so clearly something works there.
- There is a concept that he finds in the book mentioned a couple of times, in a way that explaining or exploring the existence wasn’t something that the writers cared about, there’s a concept the symbol of the Wolpertinger. The Wolpertinger is a message, or intentional creation of Brambleson, a symbol that Brambleson intentionally brought about and seeks to make use of. Text doesn’t seem to be putting in a lot of effort but what a Wolpertinger is is a rabbit with non-rabbit features naturally mixed in with it. A creature that is definitely a rabbit, but not biologically a rabbit: it is a mixture, patchwork of rabbit and non-rabbit together. Passages through the Briarpatch doesn’t mention, but Hugo knows and considers possibly relevant, when puzzling out symbolism of the Wolpertinger, one of the non-rabbit features is canine teeths – they have wolf fangs. The teeth of a carnivore.
Hatch Room (Maintenance Room)
Ooze mephit- Speaks Aquan – maybe terran too? Nope.
+1 Amulet of Elemental Strife
- glowing blue/green
- Moderate abjuration aura
- Stars at cardinal points
- Wearer gains resistance 5 vs. elemental
- Prisoner’s Ring: Dull black metal band. Moderate divination aura.
- Ring of Arcane Signets: Attunes to whoever last wore it. Signet ring with Baharat crest. Faint universal aura.
- Ring of Perseverance: 3 little gems (red,white,red). Flowers gems. Tarnished, chipped gold. Faint transmutation aura. 1/day: allows wearer to ignore staggered condition for five rounds (and then you become staggered).
- Silvery wire with four charms, tiny heart-shaped picture frames.
- Strong Conjuration Aura.
- Bracelet of friends. Owner can key people known to them to come to them.
- Once a charm has been used once, it disappears.
+1 West Star from Understacks Orrery
Alhazred, the Saffron Grimoire
- 1st language: Necril
- 2nd language: dripping, liquid gold, language of excess
- 3rd language: linguistics from Hugo (related to Celestial)
- 4th language: Old Elven
Big ghostflame wax homunculus with halfling on shoulder
Dido Saint-Germain! (Much older, wearing sterile scrubs and a lab coat in the colours of the Candleman’s Cartel)
The Candleman
2 constructs (Candleman Grunts)
- Larger and oily and blobby
- Made from leftover tallow drippings (have wicks and flames)
Saint-Germain is on edge and afraid by the scenario (doesn’t recognise Hugo as anything other than probably a noble)
+300 gp
+1 candle man suit +4 AC, 0 AC check (max Dex +4)
+1 Dido Saint-Germain's Lab Book
+2 candle rods
+ then minus 1 Alchemical grease (which I used to set fire Saint-Germain’s corpse).
+1 alchemical resin
+1 ectoplasmic residue
+4 unknown alchemical substances
+1 candlemaker’s tools
Book of the Grave (did not take!)
- Necril language
- Spellbook of Necromancer
- Wizard
- Rare Penumbra cantrip, lesser version of Protective Penumbra
- Lindie copied down Protective Penumbra spell (but cannot cast it)
- Lindie copied down Disguise Self, Shield and True Strike formulae
- Ritual: Breath of the Grave – as a swift action, may breathe a 15 foot cone of rotting stench. Creatures within cone must succeed DC10 + CL saving throw (Fort) or be sickened for 1 round. After casting, caster takes -4 penalty on Diplomacy and Stealth checks until preparing spells again.
- Doesn’t say who “grandfather” is
- Written in Necril
- 3 Arcane locks on front made from finger bones
- Embossed on cover is a family seal incorporating holy symbol of the moon track. Gold flecks are peeling away to reveal same tattoo on the skin that the book is bound in.
Nippers provides all the information that she knows about Andromeda Stargazer:
Heritage: Karina, Professor Aquarius Quartermaster & father (unmarried), Andromeda & Hydra Quartermaster.Father: Ulysses Winthrop Academic and a Company man. He refused to marry because he didn’t want an Undine wife.
Provides birthdate, academic qualifications, story about becoming a noble, births of her children.
Gives an incomplete account of Castor's homosexuality (and does mention Hugo).
Stargazer sphere of influence. Stargazer Observatory second only to the Royal Observatory of the Amira's Court.
Stargazer Library is the largest collection restricted materials.
Rooftop Garden has a little contemplative garden area with a pool of sea water. Actually an enchanted gate to West Star. Secretly maintained unbenknowst to anyone outside the Stargazer family (As far as Bartleby knew). That contemplative garden space with its pool that is actually a planar spring fed by seawater from the West Star has been used by Andromeda for the purposes of calling forth visitors to trade information with and discuss with. Various Aquatic Creatures from the Plane of Water. Nixies. Nyriads. Lindworms. Also on extremely special occasions was used as a means of contacting the Sailor himself and divine associates and messengers thereof. Although that required Angel Dust to pull off. Nippers does not know the identity of Andromeda’s Angel Dust supplier.
Nippers also knows that the Stargazers in general (Andromeda in particular) were major patrons and supports of Elderton University Library. The university as a whole and the library in particular in Andromeda’s case. A lot of their donations were earmarked for the library. She maintained a good relationship with the library mistress Madam Prefecta Thecarius and with her Seneschal, Hydra. The two were frequently permitted basically unquestioned access to the Understacks. The Stargazers had a private room where all the forbidden books in Elderton’s collection that the university was permitted to obtain but not permitted to make available on the wider basis went in there. As everything sank into Understacks, everything was left but sealed off. Andromeda and hydra used it to get reference materials. They would sometimes confiscate materials for their own library. Some of the things in the bone room are dangerous enough that it is not wise to put these with other normal books.
Andromeda and Hydra did come down here to refer to the Bone Room on occasion. Rarely spoke to Andromeda for information. Nippers will be able to provide a list of books that Andromeda has had Nippers find for her. (Calum will provide list at some point).
One thing that Nippers does know about Andromeda that is completely new to us, is that concealed even from her own family, but not successfully concealed from Bartleby was the fact that driven by her natural inclination towards curiosity, even occasionally against her own better judgement, there were a couple of Andromeda’s interplanar contacts from the Plane of Water with whom her relationship had gone beyond intellectual and had developed romantic elements.
Nippers has name of two of them:
- One was Stromkarl a fostdrim (male neirid). Water fairy mermaid singer type guy.
- The other one was Targatis who was a shapeshifting water dragon. Who was also (notable to Hugo) female.
Andromeda’s response was: There’s something that I know that others don’t.
Nippers also knows the last time that Andromeda was down here, which was while hugo and victor were trying to sort out Candleman stuff. Day of menagerie revolt (Day before Cage Fight). Andromeda came down and made special request for Nippers to point her to any books they have down here that would contain the name of any Divs. True names of Divs. That she hadn’t confiscated already. They had three books that had a couple of names each.
Second Ears of the City is the most recent time when she came looking for the names of Divs. Summoned Bartleby to crossreference.
The time when she was with Hydra would have been them coming to confiscate or locate some other book, that they both occasionally do. They both would have come to see Nippers when they didn’t want anyone else knowing what they were after. When they were okay with Head Librarian knowing what they were here for. When they were doing something more clandestine than usual, usually the two of them together, and would frequently speak to Nippers because they trusted a Scrivener more than they trusted other members of staff. They knew Scriveners were easier to control.
Her middle name is Caliope.
Bartleby Relationship. Efficiently professional. It was she who had him summoned from his native plane and bound to her library and serve her whims. It is he who manages the library under her watch. There are few if any that Andromeda trusts more than Bartleby. Bartleby has no intentions to vacate his ink well.
Familiar Relationships. Led to understand that her relationship with her children is strained though courteous in the case of the younger twin, particularly frought. Relationship with her daughter-in-law, is one mostly based in fear and mutual distaste. I am given to understand that her relationship with her husband is entirely cordial. Andromeda Stargazer has never voiced an opinion on Ursula Stargazer. And Ursula has never, to my knowledge, voiced. The Viziera’s sister, I know, is exceedingly loyal. I know very little of the family beyond that. Bartleby has never personally met any of the extended relations.
Who does she trust most at court? Trusting, although wary, of the Bakerstreet Vizier, and of the House of Underhand. She has also been known to reliably form alliances of pragmatism with the Carterholds (historically) and the Darktusks. I would suspect this latter is largely through the orc connection. I believe the Ironsides Viziera has been known to visit Andromeda Stargazer at her estate more often than most other Vizieras.
Least? Very easily answered. Guinevera Dargent. By a considerable margin.
Who does she allow to attend the library most frequently? Absent an appointment she has only ever allowed 3 non-stargazers immediate access to the library. Vizier Bakerstreet, and the Viziera Crepuscule and Vizier Haruspex Underhand. Bartleby has presumed she would have allowed his access sans appointment if asked, but the Company has always been impeccable at record keeping and bureaucracy.
Her most trusted individual amongst her own relatives, would be Forecastle. She is a black and white cat. Bratleby didn’t specify if magical. I do know that she doesn’t speak Aquan. Bartleby tried.
Languages: Aquan (accent is Mid-Northwestern surface), Terran (only a minor material plane accent), Common, Ancient, Aklo, Auran, Ignan (Nippers considers this the less refined of the elemental languages), Celestial, Infernal, Dark Folk. Not Necril. Has divine incantations that grant her the gift of tongues. Those incantations she prefers to speak in Celestial, though she has been known to mix the odd aquan word in there for flavour. Does not understand the language of cats, even when gifted with Tongues. A report of her while under the influence of Tongues, “What are you mewling about now, you foolish cat?” in Common, which was her first language, although the Aquan was taught to her by her family as a small child.
(Nippers is from quite far beneath the surface himself.) Her natural hair colour is blue, eyes are also blue, although slightly flecked with pinpoints of silver and gold (like stars).
“We the undersigned agree to the terms herewith, that the scrivener Nippers, henceforth the scrivener, shall refrain from bestowing to any member of the House of Stargazer or additionally, to the scrivener Bartleby (all collectively henceforth the Stargazers) any mention, indication, or otherwise provision of information regarding the activities of the individuals Katib Hugo Dargent and associates Lindie and Connie (henceforth the dealmakers) within the bounds of structural territory formerly owned and governed by the Elderton University library colloquially “the Understacks”. And that in return, the dealmakers shall bestow upon the scrivener without corollary or condition a single dosage (2 grams) of the potent divine narcotic, “Angel Dust” in untampered and usable form. Sigil “Nippers”. Hugo’s Arcane Signet.”Contract under Hugo's chestTweezle: is a ratfolk wizard who lives in the sewers and sometimes informs for the Undergazette. He is trying to teach himself wizardry from abandoned and stolen magic books.
Deanton Blackwell: human, North Town University Alumnus and founder of Blackwell’s Purveyors of Quality Secondhand Textbooks
- Human shopkeeper woman
- Fancies Hugo (which he uses to get a hefty markup on the price of the items he’s selling!)
- Ms Alicia
- Sold Beginner's Universalist Spellbook and Phileus Danforth's Book of Harms for +1,150 gp!
Swiles has purchased:
- Elixir of Amnesia: legal because it can usually only be used consensually, allows the same forgetting effect as Cassiopeia’s Dust of Forgetting but only for specified information (which must be brought to mind by the imbiber)
- Potion of Contagion: Illegal
Johann(a): Would it be too much of a coincidence that this would be the gnome named Grimoire?
Altercation!
Connie: Mister Beozar, sir. I think I’m going to have to destroy them.
Beozar: What?!
Notably, none of the Patchwork Empire actually harm Connie (Beozar grapples, Ramstein casts Greater Thunderstomp to trip her, and even Johann(a) only gets up to holding her razor to Connie’s neck)
Johann(a): Drop the spell, Connie.
Connie made Beozar sad :(
She gives him Castlereigh's Summoning book, but also accidentally mentions Cassie!!!!!
Connie: Oh, she’s my friend.
Beozar is definitely going to report back to Johann(a), who now has the peerage and will be able to find Cassiopeia’s name… but also Cassilda Shajara's so that’s good?? (Castor probably safe on account of being male).
Dargent Parents believe that the fake Angel Dust substance we created was done by the Candleman, allowing us to keep 14g of Angel Dust (7 doses) for our own use.