Notes
Read Beauty before reading this venture.
An Idran complex meant to seed your gang’s minds with the potential of ancient sorcery and test their willingness to use it.
Intended for cutters with a little experience under their belts. Appropriate to run after Internal Growth (since it’s regionally nearby.) Meant for use with the Incunabuli system, but do hack it for whatever you see fit.
Content note
Body horror, forced surgery, abduction, loss of bodily autonomy.
context
Setting: The southern Firlish border. Late winter.
Let this be a bank assignment or a location discovered and freebooted by the Gang. If it’s assigned by the bank, either:
- Send a bank representative with the Gang. The rep knows what the bank wants within. Other items are free to keep. The bank will buy some of it, but at a meager price.
- Allow the gang to sell what they find inside. The bank offers a poorer price than a dedicated buyer, offering 30-40%. Finding a buyer is an effort in its own; one that exposes the Gang to the local Digirati wherever they sell.
Strange Happenings
Rumors. Grumbled in a roadside pub in a respite from winter weather.
- An evil-looking raven was seen nearby. It is tarred and re-feathered and flies poorly. It approaches windows, tapping on them, croaking “kill you, kill you.” It retreats to the forbidden berryhill when chased.
- Rumors of a neosorcerer nearby, unleashing his minions on the countryside. In evidence, a local photogravist has an eerie photo of one such minion: The corpse of a gaunt man in a snowy gulch. He is shiny and slick in the winter sun, unfrozen. Naked save for articulated, tarnished brass plates anchored in his bones. A domed bulletlike helm lies bolted over his eyes and nose. Alternatively, let the gang find this body and investigate themselves. Either way, tracks from the gulch, barefoot, lead to the berryhill.
- The berryhill is a “bad old place.” Forbidden to children. Frequented by feral hogs, fairies, ragwretches. Anyone who’s ever actually been to the hill says it’s innocuous enough and that the berries are huge and succulent.
The raven and the dead man are facts. The neosorcerer is not.
Lore
Ancient Idra is obscure knowledge. Relevant lore topics are rolled at -4 [Esoteric]. Reference Beauty for Idran lore to share. Remember that topics can be rerolled when its skill level increases or when a relevant lore book is found.
Abduction
The helots in this venture are tough. If the gang retreat from a fight and leave an unconscious member behind, that member will be operated upon. Follow the order of procedures the medical helot performs. If the door to 1.1.5 is open, the helots use the catalyst within to chalybize them.
If you want particularly threatening helots, make them shove often like riot troops and take ground after downing a cutter. Make them intentionally drive away the gang and abduct the downed member.
Head nails
The Idran head loom in this venture uses neurological nails to ensorcell minions and bestow them with skills. Nail are 2–3 inches long. The shafts are riddled in weird coralline complexities inlaid with precious metals. Silver, gold, platinum. The heel (head) of each nail bears a symbol denoting its use:
- Subjugation: “X” symbol — Extra long. Inserted through the forehead of every helot. Reduces Intellect to 0. Frontal lobe; high level functions and individuality
- Loyalty: a triskelion — Driven behind the right ear on all helots. Should remove free will, but no longer works, since the Beauty it was linked to is dead. Sybil macrossa; brain area unique to humans. Controls dreams and connection to faith.
- War: crossed sickles — Crown of the skull. Present in all combat helots. Provides Melee: Hack and Slash 4 or Melee: Crush and Smash 6. Motor cortex.
- Language: a curling tongue — Behind left ear. Grants Language: Ancient Idran 4 (granting literacy.) Language center.
- Skill modification: various. Grant varied individual skills. Spiral—Swim 2. Heart—Butchery 2. Frond—Medicine 2. Flower—Herbalism 2. Comb—Barbery 2. Entwined circles—Instruction 2.
- Surgery, four fronds — Hairline, central. Grants Surgery 8. Between premotor cortex and frontal lobe.
- Music: a lyre — Left temple of the dulcimer helot — Grants Play: Dulcimer 8. Temporal lobe.
Helots, if taken apart or examined, bear nails in their sallow skulls. Each has a subjugation nail, a loyalty nail, and a war nail, unless otherwise specified.
Maps
Start
Late winter in the woods. Cool wind and yellow sun. Crisp juniper. The thin scent of slush.
Up through the trees, a hill looms. Its bald top crowned by oaks, alder, and spruce over an understory of juniper, snowdrops, and twiggy shrubs. Icy and beading in the sun.
Animal tracks abound heading towards the hill. Mostly wild pigs.
0.0 | berryhill-top
A sweet tomato-y smell over the crisp air. A whiff of dung.
A curiously flat clearing atop a broad hill.
An open-top stone rotunda lies here, central. A ring supported by heavy, frosted, lichen-y pillars.
- Between the pillars are the remnants of leading and glass. Stained glass windows once hung between the pillars.
- The rotunda’s center is slightly lower than the surrounding earth. Smooth concrete. Curiously, it’s bereft of snow; wet, unfrozen. Around the edge lies a gap, filled with dirt, between the center disc and the concrete that rings it.
Berry mounds: Sprawling, thick, dark green vines with heart-shaped leaves trail from head-high mounds of snow, bearing pomegranate-sized berries. Deep bloody red. Shaped like blueberries. Filled with tomato-like seeds.
- The plants are vital, unfrozen. The stems are sticky and bristly like cucumber stems and smell like tomato vines.
- 4 berries remain. They heal 1 Bleed stress each. They stain the skin blood red and taste like sickly-sweet tomato.
- Large concrete planters lie within the mounds. Cracked by roots and the frost-heaving of millennia.
Four hairy piglets root around the berry mounds, muzzles gory with fruit. They squeal and rumpus if approached, altering their mother. She appears up the opposite slope when the piglets cry.
A hole in the hilltop, ragged and deep. A concrete structure is buried mere feet underfoot. A portion of its ceiling has given way. A rubble pile shows 6 m down in the dark.
- Dangling to drop down onto the rubble requires a Might roll. Two sequential failed rolls sends a cutter falling 4 m.
If the gang dawdle on the hilltop, the tarry raven appears, crowing its line (“kill you”) and taunting with a thin silver knife in its beak. It is a wretched bird; half plucked then tarred and re-feathered. Its eyes are fish eyes, probably a trout’s.
Topic: Botany, ancient history, Idra, etc.
On the berries
1.0 | helot storage
Dim light. Dried blood and a pungent, indolic odor.
6 meters down: A pile of frozen earth, broken concrete slabs, and shattered black tile in a dark, long room with a vaulted 8-meter ceiling.
At the foot of the rubble lies a frozen dead male boar beside a waxen corpse in metallic green armor. Frozen blood from the boar mingles with yellow, greasy fluid from the corpse. This fluid produces the pungent odor.
- The boar bears deep stab wounds.
- The waxen corpse is like the naked figure in the photograph, but better armored. It has been gored. Pale organs spill from under the armor plates. It grips a punching dagger of antique design. It’s attached to the hand—seared to the flesh.
Southward stand three bronze gibbets. Half-cages of riblike tarnished bronze. Each has an iron plinth at the foot and a heavy hook mounted overhead. 2 meters tall. Silver threads drape the ribs like broken spiderwebs.
A keg-sized crystal vessel hangs over each gibbet, gleaming. Golden yellow like olive oil. Anchored in the ceiling.
The farthest gibbet contains a second waxen figure. Partly clad in green armor. Festooned with silver threads piercing its skin like metal slivers. A huge-gauge needle on a heavy, desiccated tube is thrust under its green metal breastplate as if to pierce the aorta. It leads up to the crystal vessels in the ceiling like the line off an IV bottle.
- The helot is slackly supported under pale, muscled arms. It wears ancient, green armor hung on brackets anchored in bone. The head, eyes, and nose are concealed by a bullet skullcap. A small keyhole shows in the back of the helmet. The lower face, abdomen, and limbs are veiled in green, diamond-patterned fin maille. Drapey, harem-like.
- Passing close to the silver threads disturbs them, featherlight in the wake of air, waking the helot. It steps forward, threads breaking like gossamer. Hostile.
The door to 1.1 is heavy brass. It’s stuck, requiring a Might roll -4 to open.
- Above the door, there’s a large transom with a catwalk running through it.
Topic: Ancient history, Sorcery, Idra, etc.
On Helots
1.1 | helot hall
The door opens with a hiss, like the seal on a canning jar breaking. A powdery, hot iron aroma of aldehydes spills from inside.
The door opens into the terminus of a hallway. Like the previous chamber, the walls are tiled in reflective black with white grout up to head level then smooth concrete up to the arched ceiling over the catwalk. Strangely medical in nature.
5 gibbets stand here; 4 occupied by helots, shrouded in their weird silver threads and hooked to crystal reservoirs of oil with the same high-gauge needles plunged into their guts.
Walking past the helots without waking them requires a successful Subtlety roll as if to move silently.
Overhead, outside the lanternlight, under the 8-meter ceiling, hangs a catwalk of iron. Decorated in tangled rose tendrils and blooms wrought in black. It is 7 meters up with 1 meter between it and the ceiling.
- A ladder leads up to it on the eastern curve of the hallway. It must be pulled down on rails like an attic access.
- Climbing it, the metal is covered in a varnish of oxidized, dry oil, free of rust. There’s room to crouch between ceiling and catwalk.
- The underside of the catwalk hosts a rail system, evidently meant to move heavy items.
The door to 1.1 is green metal crazed with hand-carved hatching. It’s locked. The lock is intricate, utilizing weird radial tumblers: -4 to lockpick. The door is thin green metal and gives way easily to snips or an axe.
Dissecting the helots
If the gang dissect the helots (a distressing task,) they find:
- The helots have pungent yellow olive-oil liquid in place of blood. It’s quite slippery, and doesn’t freeze. Their tissues are sallow and greasy.
- Their bones are coated in steel, and are holed like the structure of a lotus fruit.
- Under their skullcaps, which are seared on, as if by high heat or chemical action, the skulls are studded with meal discs: the heads of long nails driven deep into the greasy brain. Each nail has a symbol on its head depending on it’s property.
1.1.5 | storage
A hiss of air as the door’s seal is breached. A breath of dust.
In the ceiling is a crystalline dome grouted into the tile. An old light fixture. Nonfunctional. If broken, dust falls out.
The room is lined with shelves. On them are vessels of colored glass and porcelain. Many are full of dust, but some are yet full:
- 6 cylindrical white pots, lids sealed with wax. Full of crystallized honey. (Each is 1# and holds 12 servings honey.)
- 2 meter-long glass bottles. Necky, red-brown, corked with wax. Wine. Inexplicably fresh. Redolent of violets and almonds.
- Gives 1 comfort when drunk but elicits a feeling of emptiness after it fades. Such a delight might never be had again. Each is 2# and hold 10 glasses of wine. Each worth £80+.
- 6 clear glass phials reinforced with brass struts and ferrules. Sockets at either end for hypodermic needles.
- Filled with clear, neutral-smelling incarnadine toxin. Deadly dangerous.
- 2 large phials similar to the above but without reinforcement. Filled with liquid metal suspended in oily yellow fluid. Pungent like helot blood, but cleaner, more metallic.
- Secret: This is chalybization catalyst. When injected into bone marrow, it begins the process of chalybization.
- A massive glass urn containing a coil of smooth, wrist-wide arterial tubing. Preserved, wet. Coiled up like pickled bologna.
- This is replacement histic tubing for feeding oil into helots.
Several smaller bottles. Like little perfume flacons sealed with ancient baudruchage of gold thread and helot skin. All size XS.
- 3 red teardrop vials. Tastes like coins. Gold leaf letters in Ancient Nór spell the word autoscopy on each.
- Potion of liquid strategy. Out of body combat potion. Character hallucinates entering third person mode, granting them -2 pain, +1 reaction per turn, an edge on attacks, and 2 distress. Lasts 10 minutes.
- A dropper flask of brown liquid. Tastes like strong black tea. Four full droppers worth (4 doses.)
- Anabolic decoction. Get an extra heal roll that day, but get 2 hungry stress at end of day if you don’t eat quadruple required food.
- 6 purple ampoules. Tastes like chamomile.
- Twilight elixir. Don’t sleep for two days, then roll sleep at -2.
Finally, a small box woven from brass wire like wicker. Contains six random skill modification neurological nails.
If the gang linger here, they hear “kill you, kill you,” croaking from a small vent in the ceiling. A gross black feather falls out.
1.2 | ambush hall
A hiss of running water to the north.
If the gang aren’t sneaking, they hear a clink of metal to the west.
- As they near the arch to 1.2.5, two helots step from the darkness of that room. Each has a punching dagger. Everyone rolls for surprise at -2.
If approached in stealth, the helots remain in their gibbets just within 1.2.5 | surgery.
1.2.5 | surgery
Dry metallic odors, jasmine, and a familiar indolic odor.
A brutal iron T-shaped surgical table stands here. The headrest accepts a head face-down, like a massage table. Overhead, in the dark, the catwalk rail system culminates over the table, positioned to deposit cargo. Shallow drains line the smooth concrete floor.
A surgical halo surrounds the table headrest, squatting over it like an offensive arthropod ready to dine. It is a ring of steel equipped with pins and drill-like bits, all pointed inwards at the head. It pivots forward and back, and the pins and instruments track along the inner curve, allowing access to a patient’s cranium from any angle.
- One of the tools on the halo is clearly intended to drive nails. Its bolt-action is loaded with a subjugation nail.
Those who lay on the surgery are operated on by the surgical helot.
A delicate iron shelf protrudes from the north wall. On it:
- A high-gauge chest needle sans tubing
- Nails: a subjugation nail and a loyalty nail
- A baroque hypodermic gun, like a caulk gun
- Suture needles and a large spool of silver suture wire.
- Black, curving scalpels (x3)
An anatomical diagram is scrawled in gold lacquer on the southern wall. It depicts an open human cranium, brain visible, with radiating lines connecting a halo of icons. The icons match those on the neurological nails’ heads.
- Topic: Anatomy or Neurology can be used to guess at the nails’ function based on their region of insertion. See the nail list.
Topic: Ancient history, Sorcery, Idra, etc.
On the surgical halo
A nude helot slumps in a gibbet on the southern wall. Gracile, waxy, smelling strongly of jasmine. Her bare scalp richly studded with nails. If awakened, she’s nonhostile.
- She bears all the nails on the nail list save for the war nail. She’s suited for medical practice, not combat. She takes commands only in Formal Idran. If addressed this way, she speaks only medical status updates and requests for supplies.
procedures
The medical helot systematically alters anyone laying on the surgical table—willing or otherwise.
She screws fastening pins into the skull, then drives a succession of head nails.
- Each inflicts a tier-2 piercing wound to the skull.
She works slowly and can easily be interrupted to stop a nail being driven or to swap the nail she means to drive next.
- Language nail—Grants Language: Ancient Idran 4
- Loyalty nail—Nothing.
- Subjugation nail—Reduces Intellect to 0.
Afterwards, if 1.1.5 | storage is open, she proceeds to chalybize the patient using the catalyst in that room. It is a grotesque process: They’re bled near-dry, then injected with an entire tube of catalyst into the pelvis, spine, collarbones, and femurs with the grim hypodermic gun.
- This inflicts 4 minor (tier-1) piercing wounds.
After, they’re deposited in a gibbet and connected an overhead tank via histic tubing and giant catheter needle—to fill with oil.
- The needle inflicts a tier-3 piercing wound to the abdomen.
If the patient died mid-procedure, they’re revived by the oil infusion: All pain and bleed stresses disappear.
Since their loyalty nail doesn’t work, they are free to leave.
Being chalybized
A chalybized character (a “chalybite”) is immune to incarnadine toxin. Within 2 hours of receiving the catalyst, they require an infusion of helot oil—or they die. Infused, they expel all remaining human blood from their pores, becoming dependent on helot oil for blood. Afterwards, they:
- Gain +2 Fortitude
- Become immune to fractures and pain stress
- Can’t gain Intellect levels.
- Require intravenous helot oil in order to heal Bleed stress. Each overhead crystalline tank of helot oil contains enough to ease 20 Bleed stress.
1.3 | waterfall arch
A hiss of falling water. A smell of wet concrete.
A high, broad arch covered in acanthus bas reliefs.
A decorative waterfall fills the arch. Crystal clear. Smoothed by laminar flow, it falls perfectly into a slot in the floor, producing little spray. It’s impossible to pass through the arch without walking through the waterfall. The water is scentless.
- Anyone standing nearby the waterfall for long, finds their skin beading with blood where touched by the mild spray. Like needle-pricks. Harmless, but messy.
Past the waterfall, a pair of ornate chains with weights carved like rosebuds hang from the ceiling against the curve of the northern wall.
Trap: The waterfall flows with incarnadine toxin, an Idran invention of incredible lethality. Indistinguishable from water. On contact with skin, it causes blood to bead and pour from a victim’s pores, fleeing the flesh in splattering hot red sheets. It causes a severe bleed per body area touched. Immunity can’t resist it. It stops only after 1d6+4 rounds or if the body area is removed. Helots are immune to it.
Above the waterfall, the overhead catwalk-and-rail structure continues through a round transom high above the arch. The transom is shut by thick bronze shutters—locked, controlled by 1.3.5 | pull-chains.
1.3.5 | pull-chains
Dark.
Two chains extend from holes where the ceiling meets the wall. The ceiling is 8 m high. The chains’ weights 1.5 m off the floor.
Left chain: Turns off the waterfall and shuts rail transom.
Right chain: Turns on waterfall and opens rail transom.
The door to the north, to 1.4, is made of brass bars twisted like wicker. It’s stuck, requiring Might -2 to open. A transom is open above it, permitting the catwalk and rail to pass through.
1.4 | vacant storage
An avian stink, like the birdhouse at the zoo.
The floor is dusty and littered with tarry feathers.
- Amidst the feathers: a tiny violet vial. A powerful, soothing aroma that steadies the hand. +2 Subtlety and 1 Poison stress if drunk.
Hanging from the overhead rail is an articulated iron crook connected to a trolley which rides the rail. It can slide out of this room (if someone can reach the hook, which is 5.5 m off the floor.)
If someone enters the room via the catwalk, they’ll see that the hook-trolley has a set of crank controls. The controls raise and lower the hook and release it’s articulated joint (and whatever’s in its grasp.) It’s used to transfer large items (gibbets, crystal tanks) between rooms.
At the northern end of the catwalk squats a nest. A pile crafted from the bony corpses of birds. It contains a golden hastella, 3 golden pounds, and a gleaming silver stiletto, its blade cut with teeth like a key (fits the helots’ head-keyholes.) It also contains a single tar-covered feather, pale with age.
1.5 | door helot
The arch ahead glitters in lamplight.
An arch of silver-struck marble blocked by great brass doors. Green with age. Four meters high.
The life-sized figure of an armored horned warrior overlaps the double doors 1.5 meters up. Carved to overlap the where the double doors meet, like an astragal. She has corkscrew antelope horns and a huge-eyed expression of cold disdain. She is green with tarnish.
She holds a curious broadsword directly overhead with both hands, well out of reach. Both edges of the blade are cut with the bitting of a key (like the silver knife in 1.4.) Similarly green with age.
The warrior’s stylized muscle breastplate has a slot in the sternum. Clearly meant to accept the sword blade. A word is graven above it in a knotted, branching script. It reads “obey” in Ancient Idran.
- The woman is a door helot, concealed by ample armor and a crust of green verdibeauté. If read the word on her chest, she takes her sword, and—with a grinding of old metal—unlocks herself and the lock behind her. She steps down from the alcove of her bas relief and opens the door, beckoning entry.
- If someone tries to take the sword key or move her from her plinth, the helot wakes. She grips the sword tight and attacks.
If the door helot is removed from her door, she reveals a keyhole like the one in her chest behind her. Her sword-key unlocks the door. Unlocked, the door is immensely heavy, requiring a Might roll at -4 to open.
1.6 | preserved corps
The pungency of helot oil.
Down a curving hallway stand five helots in gibbets, a crystal oil tank dangling above each. All are garlanded with silver thread.
- A Subtlety roll is required to move past without waking them.
Potentially, the gang might choose to bypass them by:
- Creeping up and individually using the silver key knife from 1.4 on them.
- Creeping overhead on the catwalk. Jumping down from the catwalk into 1.7 is hazardous, but brings the climber close to one one helot.
- Cutting down the crystal tanks over their heads, either by shooting them down or cutting them from above.
1.7 | elevator
A smell of soil. A subtle warmth.
A ring of pillars rises high into the ceiling. Within them is a huge central column.
Behind a pillar hang a pair of chains similar to the ones in 1.3.5, with a life-size iron skull for one weight and a green-bronze one for the other.
- If the bronze skull is pulled, a grinding rocks the chamber. Ice and dirt fall from above around the sides of the column. It recedes down into the floor, revealing itself as a huge elevator platform. It lands on room 2.0.
- If the iron skull is pulled, the elevator grinds back up to the surface.
Both chains are within reach of the platform.
2.0 | lower platform
Glimmering. Metallic, dry odor of ancient air.
Mirror-silvered streaks run through the marble walls, brilliant. Otherwise, this room is a ditto of 1.7, complete with a second pair of skull-weight pull-chains for operating the elevator. The platform is ensoiled and damp, but the surrounding platform is spotless.
2.1 | rose hall
Silver streaks glitter in the white marble walls.
The lowered elevator platform—wet, dirty, recently exposed to the outdoors—stands in remarkable contrast to this hall.
A soaring 8 m high passage of white marble patterned with thick silver veins. The delicately tiled floor depicts a trail of roses set in onyx: Olive green leaves, silver thorns, and ivory rosebuds. Subtle jasper blood droplets adorn the thorns as if feet had bled treading them.
Trap: Each jasper blood-drop is a minuscule pressure plate. There are hundreds. 1-in-4 chance of triggering one per m advanced. When triggered, a 6-inch spike darts upwards, inflicting 1d4+1 P. A successful Perception roll to scrounge is required to progress without triggering any. If the gang examine the floor in good light, they’ll notice the droplets are thinnest towards the hall’s edge, earning +2 to avoid them when walking there.
2.2 | fountain
No light sources. In lanternlight, the room is brilliant.
The walls’ silver veins join to form two huge mirrors filling the east and west walls. They flank a circular fountain quietly rippling with clear fluid. Lanternlight redoubles in the mirrors and receding into the darkness of the illusory infinite space.
- Above the pool, seemingly floating, is an onyx ball pouring clear fluid (incarnadine toxin.)
- The pool’s surface is nearly flush with the marble floor. Deep. A foot beneath the surface, the untarnished shiny bronze skullcaps of four muscular helots gleam. Dormant, standing on the bottom.
- At the bottom of the pool is a large black coin with silver reliefs. It rests nearby the foot of a helot.
- It bears a large-eyed horned woman’s face on the obverse and an eyeless skull on the reverse.
- It controls the tarry raven, which takes commands from the coin’s owner and can repeat the last sentence it hears spoken.
Four thin pillars surround the fountain. Each bears an embedded bloodstone cabochon at head height, hand-sized, facing the mirrors. Clearly push-buttons.
Puzzle: The mirrors create an infinite hallway effect. Duplicate rooms recede into black. Only in these reflected rooms does one of the cabochons appear deep red and not mottled green-red bloodstone. If it is pressed, the door to 2.3 unlocks with a thunk. If the wrong button is pressed, a grinding sounds in the floor: The fountain drains. The four helots rise, dripping, naked save for their skullcaps. Ready to punch.
The doors to 2.3 are set in a massive black marble arch. They are solid bronze. They are yielding. They unseal only with the secret button. Unlocked, they require a Might roll -4 to heave open. When cracked, they emit a scream of pressurized air like a burst airlock.
2.3 | sanctum
A stately space illuminated by dim horizontal bands of blue light cast from the huge window. A scent of dust.
A broad circular study. The walls are black marble. The floor is red petrified wood parquet. Six meters up, the ceiling is glassy, deeply gleaming, as if a mass of clear glacier hung overhead.
A massive curved window to the southeast is dressed in slatted blinds. Light lances through the slats, patterning the room in bands of celestial blue.
- The windows are meter-thick crystal reinforced with bronze struts and brackets for the blinds.
- Beyond the blinds lies a subterranean crevasse, craggy and silty, planted in jewel-like ropes of bioluminescent algae. Yellow beetles flit about like tropical birds amid drips of mineral-white water and clouds of steam. The crevasse appears fathomless.
Ceiling-high shelves of exquisite petrified wood line the northwest, northeast, and southwestern walls, all piled with artifacts. Metal oddities, glass bottles, and thousands of scrolls.
- Exposed to air, the scrolls are actively slumping, disintegrating. Collapsing into piles of velum dust.
The furniture is outsized. Built for someone a half meter taller than a human.
- All petrified wood. Deep red and carved with acanthus leaves, corbels, and medallions. Masterful.
A dulcimer lies on the floor, by the window. A waxen, nude, bald figure slumps beside it like a discarded doll.
- The dulcimerist is a dead-eyed beautiful helot with long fingers tipped with steel nails. When neared, she wakes to play. Her song is arranged nothing like modern music. Metal fingertips over wire elicit animalistic shivers.
- If examined: She bears a musical head-nail granting Play: Dulcimer 9, a subjugation nail, a loyalty nail, and a language nail. Each of her hands contains a “beauty’s hand” magic knucklebone. She doesn’t speak; she only plays.
- The dulcimer is ebony inlaid with bone. Wire strings and bone fittings.
A broad staircase leads down, to the west.
Atop two pedestals on the southern side.
- A silver tray (worth £30) like a handprint with divots corresponding the bones of the hand. In the palm lay two tarnished brass metacarpals with dusty, green glass joint ends (bones of woe.) XS, £230/ea. The other slots are filled with white, fragile natural handbones.
- On a stand: A golden skull mask sans mandible. The teeth are long and metallic, sporting two more canines than usual. Examination suggests it’s the facial bones of a real skull, sliced from the cranium and plated in gold. S, £60, or £180 to an Idran scholar.
Two petrified wood workbenches with drawers:
- Iron tube containing 6 shiny, long syringe needles. 4” long. S £2
- Leather roll, frayed and falling apart, full of long-handled lancets. Very fine, fragile blades. Far larger and more baroque than modern versions. 4, total. S £3
- 12 bulbous vials. Slightly organic, in shape. Like bodily sacs. XS, each. 1s, each
- Ruby ring: A wide gold ring set with a fat, rudely-cut ruby. A thumb ring, by modern standards, though an ugly one. Surrounds a long finger bone. Won’t come off the bone: the knuckles are too wide. The bone is fragile with age and conspicuously blackened. XXS £15
- Crystal perfume bottle. Has a stopper with a rose of folded silver on top. Silver wire legs. Filled with a pinch of dust. 3” tall. S, £3
- Exotic surgical tools in a rusted case. Silver steel inlaid with faint gold. Contains curettes, forceps, clamp forceps, tendon/muscle retrievers, tenolysis knives, shears. 1#, £5
On the desk:
- A large hand-written book. Thick, with boards covered in tarnished silver. Spine and corners reinforced with lacquered iron. Half filled with a scrawling, light hand in red ink. A knotted, branching script (Idran.) Approximately 200 pages of delicate leaves. Smooth vellum (but probably something worse.) 3#, £???
- A black glass ink pot shaped like a 1:1 scale disembodied heart. Space for dipping in the atrial hole. Filled with the gummy remnants of red resin. 1#, £8
- Long onyx pen. Silver nibbed. 1#, £6
- Tarnished silver box with gold hinges. Two eyeballs inside on dusty cushioned divots. Eyeballs are green glass and irregularly-shaped in the back, like organic versions. Oddly convoluted inside, like jelly and fish eggs. Gold leaf Irises under the surface S, £36
Northwestern shelves:
- A lacquered rosewood rack containing two bottles of the Idran wine described in 1.1.5. #1 each. £35 each
- 3 golden, jointed rings on a porphyry hand. Like the fingers of a gauntlet. Too-long, built for someone with 4 finger joints. Culminate in decorative pointed claws. XS, each. £10 each
- Small spool of fine golden wire. S. £5
- A tiny, exotic sailing ship in a crystal sphere, fashioned of jade chips and silver wire and sailing in a pool of quicksilver. S, £45
- Gold scissors: fine, crescent-bladed scissors with long handles. Large enough to shear off a finger, if need be. S, £8
- Rectangle-bladed knife: Chisel-like knife with a flat end. Blade faintly inlaid with acid scrollwork obscured by rust. Handle smooth onyx. 10”, and heavy-gripped. As combat knife, S, £12
Northeastern shelves:
- Grey, dusty glass tube filled with big, salt-like granules. Silvered end caps sealed with wax. 6” long.
- Small gold box. Oddly heavy-duty hinges. No clasp. Sealed shut, and won’t budge. Quite heavy. 3#, £???
- 4 sturdy, short syringes. Dull, silvery hardware and heavy glass barrels wrapped in rose scrollwork of silver. Plungers with thumb loops. Two are needleless. Seals decayed and need replacement. XS each, £2 each
Southwestern shelves:
- Preserved serpent in a stout glass urn with long catfish whiskers and crumpled bat wings. Floating in yellow liquid. Flakey and decayed. Urn is sealed with flakey wax. 3#
- Dark wooden case shaped like a book. Fine inset hinges and dial-like latch. Heavy. Unfolds into a molded, palm-sized plate and spidery stand with several clamp-laden arms radiating from its underside, designed to couch and immobilize a splayed hand, finger, and thumb. Intricate, finely made in slightly rusty steel and gold inlay. This is a palmar vice, meant to aid in the installation of knucklebones. 1# £300
- Lozenge-shaped silver tin. Filled with rancid yellow grease. Rose motif on lid. S, £2
2.4 | balneary
A bronze pocket door engraved with supple, en deshabille dancing figures frolicking in fountains overhung by wide, weird fronds under a sun with rays like tentacles. If pulled open, the door hisses, and a wash of blue light and moldy steam falls from inside.
The interior was once, clearly, a luxurious bath and toilet with a great window overlooking the crevasse. The window seal has clearly failed, and the blue algae outside now grows prolifically on the balneary’s marble fixtures. A broken water fixture still spews hot water, which floods the room, blooming with ameban life.
Trap: The algal spores are toxic. Whoever opens the door or enters the balneary must roll Immunity -4 or take 2 Poison stress.
2.5 | bedchamber
Under an artistic tangle of hanging, unlit light orbs lies a decayed, huge bed. The bedclothes are cracking and decaying, turning to dust after sudden exposure to air.
On the bed is a corpse. A mummified women, with a strange, long sword thrust through her desiccated ribs. Her hair is uncannily unaged, yellow and darkly golden. She’s still draped in a luxurious, gem-encrusted dark metal body chain. A weird torc, like a gross, sadistic item of body jewelry is pierced through her sternum.
- Body chain: Four-tiered gunmetal body chain hung with lustrous, dark green droplets of emeralds. Two ties connect in the back, and one more behind the neck. 24 small gems, total. 1#, £290
- Thorn sword: Rapier-like sword found in the corpse. Shaped like an elongated rose thorn. A thin blade, wider at the base. Red-silver steel, unrusted. Identifiable as an odite alloy. Masterwork quality. 3.4’ long. 1#, £160
- Sternal torc. Gunmetal grey. Seems to fit violently into the bones of the sternum. Has holes through the ends as if a pin were meant to set there. 1#, £90, or 320 to an Idraphile collector
Vault door
In a niche in the hall, stands a tall black door. It is plain obsidian, save for a handprint cut into its center. Long, sinister, with an extra row of phalanges.
12356
Diary entries
The large hand-written book found on the desk in 2.3 is a diary belonging to the Beauty who built this complex. It is written in dense, extravagant Formal Idran, couched in hubris and lexiphanicism. In 8 hours of translation, a reader of Ancient Idran can roll Language: Ancient Idran to produce one of the following entries (produced in order.)
Entry 1:
I have seized that dreaming Palatine near Molmorra and fixed him in a sepulcher of my own design. I have spun out his sinews and his heartstrings and made him profane, such that the pestilential, rutting Agadese of that ville will find no more use in their lucid nights. I have cursed them. He is housed neath the ramshackle temple atop the stair-carved mountain, where installed I am confident the foul folk will dream no more.
Entry 2:
Discussion of an archaic “dowsing box” acquired from an ally, an instrument the sorcerer was determined to understand. He describes the observed use of only one unusual dial, a dial he noted always twitched higher while pointed at the crevasse beyond the window of his second sanctum. He seems satisfied that the dial detects interstiction points between worlds, proven by his knowledge that the crevasse leads down to the underworld. The rest of his observations on the thing are less cogent. This entry allows the reader to gain training in Aartimetry, permitting them to gain a level.
Entry 3:
On a bored whim, tiring of helots’ alalic company and the doldrums of an unused mind, I have acquired a slave of Ferencalian stock from a chattel driver of the old blood. A scrawny thing with goodly eyes and bronze hair, for which he charged a high sum. Certainly, she has not failed to occupy me. Her scornful tongue is long and dripping and she lashes me with it unceasingly. Even with a retaining ring hooked raw through the bone of her breast, she still scolds. I am unused to such an importunate will, even less from vaeli. She irks and amuses dually. Perhaps I shall make an odalisque of her.
Entry 4:
Scores of pages of surgical notes, namely on the topic of self-administered hand surgery.
Skill book—Surgery 5
Entry 5:
I have acquired the gift of an undying raven by my rival, Souret, made loyal by some binding to an enchanted coin featuring her own besotted face. Oh, how she knows my jealousy at her prowess. I churn out helots and ekheinum unmatched in rich lineament and utility, and she still bests me with these mocking chimerae, the merest of her arts. How she tempts me with this gift. Sharing all the fruit but the seed of what we all desire of her, that vital germ that is the sorcerer’s stone.
Entry 6:
Notes on meditation, only marginally successful.
Skill book—Peace 1
Entry 7:
Extensive notes on how to raise and feed glow worms. They grow best on a humus of human flesh, evidently.
Skill book—Topic: Worms 6
Entry 8:
The pestilential dreamers are at my doorstep. Rattling spears and gnashing teeth at what I made of their Palatine. Though my helots repulsed them quick enough, I grow concerned they found me here at Golgora. How? I will take my Odalisque and my work to my manufactory for the season so as to avoid further harassment and clear my mind of noise.
Entry 9:
An entire study on how much flesh can be removed from a human before they succumb.
Skill book—Topic: Physiology 2
Entry 10:
Returning to Golgora Fastness, I find my ekheinum are developing at a lusty pace. The alpha-grade specimens introduced shortly before my departure have integrated well into the harem, and have put up their stock in all the does, save one. We dined upon her flanks, this eve, for she was fallow. my odalisque eagerly awats the doe’s ribs, for tomorrow. She has a Beauty’s palate, now. It pleases me. Perhaps I will bring her among our cortege, soon.
Entry 11:
Notes on a personal project: The development of a neurological nail imbued with the knowledge of a virtuoso dulcimerist (a slave harvested for brain tissue.) The sorcerer has already picked a favorite helot girl of his, for the nail. He admits to taking an unexpected liberty with her by implanting “beauty’s hands” (knucklebones were evidently reserved for Beauty’s only.)
Entry 12:
On an overeager to gather the remains of my poisoned rival, the foul Souret, I allowed the curse Agadese dreamers to catch me in an ambuscade. I was forced to conceal many of my carried goods and flee with naught but my bronze odalisque and a single, flagging war helot. I hid my carried remnants of Souret, her soft hands, and will have to return for them, once my ehkeinum secure the area. I can only wonder at the dreamers’ continual, houndish sniffing-out of my location. For now, I am in refuge at my helot manufactory, in all its hidden strength. Notes on the location of the stashed hands, buried in a rare golden oak in the Highlands.
Entry 13:
Betrayal. I have been betrayed. A great conspiracy I uncovered, levered against me, as I heard my dear, damned odalisque whispering my whereabouts to that foul raven. An informant for slain Souret, and the damnable dreamers both. Curse her. How could I have been so deceived as to welcome a spy to close to my side? Tonight, I will pierce her as she sleeps, and burst her bulging serpent’s eyes. Then, I must flee to Golgora Fastness. What I cannot carry, I will lock away in the vault, penetrable only by my own hand. I must flee. Curse them all. Notes on the location of the stashed hands, buried in a rare golden oak in the Highlands.
After reading the entire diary, the translator can use it as a skill book granting Topic: Ancient Idra 6 and Language: Ancient Idran 6.
If the gang investigate the locations named in the diary, they find: Molmorra is now Bokkeveldt. The “stair carved mountain” is likely Mnt. Oberkopf or Mnt. Nebligheit. The Highlands are certainly a reference to southern Gesselchundt. “Golgora” may refer to the river Golga, now called the Wiszc.
Refer to the map for the modern locations.
12356
Monster stats
mother-boar
1. head (2|1,) stun
2. neck (2|1)
3–4. foreleg (2|1,) stagger
5. torso (2|1)
6. abdomen (2|1,) stagger
7. rump (2|1)
8. rear leg (2|1,) stagger
idran helot
Ball caestus+4 to hit, reach 0: 1d4+2 B [+1 wear to blocking or countering weapon];
1. head, daze
2. neck,
3. arm, disarm
4. chest,
5. abdomen, stagger
6. leg, stagger
door helot
1. head, daze
2. neck,
3. arm,
4. chest,
5. abdomen, stagger
6. leg, stagger
The helots’ punching daggers, caesti, and armor are seared on. If anyone is determined to tear it from their greasy flesh, they suffer an unavoidable distress and risk a 1-in-6 chance per armor item to roll Agility to avoid cutting themselves amidst the slippery oilblood (tier 2/moderate wound.)