VVitching Hour - Static Tongue

{ # (set: $game to (dm: 'version', '0.1.0', 'author', 'Lily Ounekeo', 'title', 'Static Tongue', 'series', 'VVitching Hour', 'startPassage', 'startPassage' )) # (set: $savefile to "(print: $game's series) - (print: $game's title) v(print: $game's version)") # (display: 'characters') (display: 'nametags') # (display: 'locations') (set: $startPassageLocation to 'sceneParlour') # (display: 'items') (display: 'entries') (display: 'notes1') (display: 'notes2') (display: 'observations') (display: 'score') # (display: 'variablesBase') (display: 'variablesTrack') # (set: $player to $lorcis) (display: 'addEntryGetAssistance') (display: 'addItemSedative') (display: 'addItemSack') }

{ # (set: $endStoryEnabled to 0) # (set: $currentLocationName to '') (set: $currentFloorName to '') (set: $currentSceneName to '') (set: $currentMapImageName to '') # (set: $return to $startPassageLocation) # (set: $oReturn to 'Return.') (set: $returnLink to "<div class='o'>(linkgoto: $oReturn, $return)</div>") # (set: $oSave to 'Save') (set: $oLoad to 'Load') (set: $oSaved to '<span class="b-grey">Saved</span>') (set: $oLoadNoFile to '<span class="b-grey">Load</span>') # (set: $gameInfo to "(print: $game's series): (print: $game's title)") (set: $mapName to 'Map') (set: $inventoryName to 'Inventory') (set: $noteName to 'Notes') (set: $observationName to 'Observations') (set: $observationHidden to "<div class='grey'>&#8212</div>") # (set: $close to "(linkgoto: 'Return', $return)") (set: $oTop to "<div class='oc'>(linkrepeat: '^')[(goto-url: '#top')]</div>") (set: $goToItemHeader to "(goto-url: '#itemHeader')") (set: $endStoryRestart to "<div class='oc'>(linkrepeat: 'END')[(reload:)]</div>") # (set: $scoreItem to "(print: $score's itemCount)/(print: $score's itemMax) (print: $score's itemName)") (set: $scoreItemDone to "**(print: $score's itemCount)/(print: $score's itemMax) (print: $score's itemName)**") (set: $scoreEntry to "(print: $score's entryCount)/(print: $score's entryMax) (print: $score's entryName)") (set: $scoreEntryDone to "**(print: $score's entryCount)/(print: $score's entryMax) (print: $score's entryName)**") (set: $scoreNote to "(print: $score's noteCount)/(print: $score's noteMax) (print: $score's noteName)") (set: $scoreNoteDone to "**(print: $score's noteCount)/(print: $score's noteMax) (print: $score's noteName)**") (set: $scoreObservation to "(print: $score's observationCount)/(print: $score's observationMax) (print: $score's observationName)") (set: $scoreObservationDone to "**(print: $score's observationCount)/(print: $score's observationMax) (print: $score's observationName)**") }

{ <header> #(print: $game's title) ##<div class='game-series'>(print: $game's series)</div> </header> } { <div class='grid-card'> <div class='col-card'>(display: 'bPortraitPlayerFeature')</div> <div class='col-info-card'>(display: 'synopsis')<br>(display: 'displayTitleOptions')</div> </div> }

{ (link: 'Begin a new story.')[(goto: $game's startPassage)] }

{ (link: 'Start the story over.')[(replace: ?textInfo)[(display: 'oStartGameNewConfirm')]] }

{ (linkgoto: 'Continue the current story.', $return) }

<div class='m left'>Starting over means the game will reset, and you will lose unsaved progress made in your current game. Confirm if you would like to reset the game.</div> <div class='o'>(link: 'Start the story over.')[(reload:)]</div>

{ # (print: "<script>$('tw-story').removeClass(\)</script>") (if: (passage:)'s tags's length > 0)[(print: "<script>$('tw-story').addClass('" + (passage:)'s tags.join(' ') + "'\)</script>")] # (unless: (passage:)'s tags contains 'menu' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event')[(set: $return to (passage:)'s name)] # (unless: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event')[(display: 'navMenu')] }

{ # (if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn')[$returnLink] (if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'endStory')[ (display: 'displayScoreNoLink') $endStoryRestart ] }

{ # (set: $experimentName to 'On the Subject of Vocal Mechanical Reproduction: The Initial Induction of Calberus and the Phonograph as a Potential, Applicable Apparatus for Chronicling, Repositing, and Referencing') # (set: $floor1 to 'First Floor - ') (set: $floorB to 'Basement - ') (set: $floorG to 'Ground Floor - ') }

{ # (if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'eventReturn' or (passage:)'s tags contains 'event')[](else:)[(display: 'gameMenu')] }

{ (if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'menu')[ <footer><div class='grid-footer'> <div class='col-footer-left'>(display: 'bGameInfo')</div> <div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bClose')</div> </div></footer>] (elseif: (passage:)'s tags contains 'endStory')[ <footer><div class='grid-footer'> <div class='col-footer-left'>(print: $game's series)</div> <div class='col-footer-right'>(print: $game's title)</div> </div></footer> ] (else:)[ <footer><div class='grid-footer'> <div class='col-footer-left'>(display: 'bGameInfo')</div> <div class='col-footer-right'>(display: 'bSave')(display: 'bLoad')</div> </div></footer>] }

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'journalMenu')[(linkgoto: "(print: $player's journal)", 'journalMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>(print: $player's journal)</span>", '$return')] }

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'inventoryMenu')[(linkgoto: $inventoryName, 'inventoryMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$inventoryName</span>", '$return')] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #(print: $player's name)'s (print: $player's journal) ##$experimentName </header> } { # (if: $entryInductionEnd's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryInductionEnd')] # (if: $entryInductionBegin's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryInductionBegin')] # (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryPrepare')] # (if: $entryCalDecisionSex's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryCalDecisionSex')](elseif: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryCalDecisionSmoke')](elseif: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 1)[(display: 'entryCalDecisionFood')] # (if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 1 or $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 1)[ (display: 'entryConvene') (if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 1)[(display: 'entryConveneAsylon')] (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 1)[(display: 'entryConveneHandmaiden')] ] # (display: 'entryGetAssistance') }$oTop

{ <a name='top'><header> #(print: $player's name)'s $inventoryName </header> } { <div class='grid-menu'> <div class='col-list'>(display: 'itemList')</div> <div class='col-info'>|textInfo>[]</div> </div> }

{ # (set: $player to (dm: 'name', 'PLAYER NAME', 'nameFull', 'PLAYER NAME FULL', 'title', 'PLAYER TITLE', 'gender', 'PLAYER GENDER', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>', 'journal', 'JOURNAL', 'journalLC', 'JOURNAL', 'description', 'PLAYER DESCRIPTION' )) # (set: $companionParty to (dm: 'companionCount', 0, 'hasCompanion1', 0, 'hasCompanion2', 0, 'hasCompanionAsylon', 0, 'hasCompanionHandmaiden', 0 )) (set: $companionSelected to (dm: 'name', 'COMPANION NAME', 'nameFull', 'COMPANION NAME FULL', 'title', 'COMPANION TITLE', 'gender', 'COMPANION GENDER', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>', 'journal', 'COMPANION JOURNAL', 'journalLC', 'COMPANION JOURNAL', 'description', 'COMPANION DESCRIPTION' )) (set: $companion1 to (dm: 'name', 'COMPANION 1 NAME', 'nameFull', 'COMPANION 1 NAME FULL', 'title', 'COMPANION 1 TITLE', 'gender', 'COMPANION 1 GENDER', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>', 'journal', 'COMPANION 1 JOURNAL', 'journalLC', 'COMPANION 1 JOURNAL', 'description', 'COMPANION 1 DESCRIPTION' )) (set: $companion2 to (dm: 'name', 'COMPANION 2 NAME', 'nameFull', 'COMPANION 2 NAME FULL', 'title', 'COMPANION 2 TITLE', 'gender', 'COMPANION 2 GENDER', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-blank"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-blank small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-blank decision"></div>', 'journal', 'COMPANION 2 JOURNAL', 'journalLC', 'COMPANION 2 JOURNAL', 'description', 'COMPANION 2 DESCRIPTION' )) # (set: $lorcis to (dm: 'name', 'Lorcis', 'nameFull', 'Lorcis Layeras', 'title', 'The Warlock', 'gender', 'male', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-lorcis-scholar"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-lorcis-scholar small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-lorcis-scholar decision"></div>', 'journal', 'Records', 'journalLC', 'records', 'description', "The Warlock is an antiquarian dedicated to discovering, preserving, and applying knowledge in various obscure fields of study, particularly of archaic subjects endangered or forgotten. He welcomes discourse on the plurality of truths and possibilities, as broad familiarity with contradictory perspectives fuels not merely the acquisition of more knowledge but of different knowledge. He bears a cool and charming intellect, yet overconfidence can counter his aspirations." )) (set: $asylon to (dm: 'name', 'Asylon', 'nameFull', 'Asylon Fragaria', 'title', 'The Mystic', 'gender', 'female', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-asylon-dress-bonnet"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-asylon-dress-bonnet small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-asylon-dress-bonnet decision"></div>', 'journal', 'Documents', 'journalLC', 'documents', 'description', "The Mystic is an investigator determined to unshroud the shrouded, answer questions yet to be asked, and discover meanings and significance through the confluence of signs, omens, harbingers, evidence, and facts. Serious and guarded, she takes long-term consequences and conquests into consideration before acting, but as she would rather deceive than be deceived, her suspicions may mislead her initiative." )) (set: $handmaiden to (dm: 'name', 'Handmaiden', 'nameFull', 'Handmaiden of Seht', 'title', 'The Priestess', 'gender', 'female', 'portrait', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training"></div>', 'portraitS', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training small"></div>', 'portraitD', '<div class="portrait-handmaiden-training decision"></div>', 'journal', 'Duties', 'journalLC', 'duties', 'description', "The Priestess is a champion of her god and a warrior honing mind, body, and spirit. Her endless strife for perfection sends her on a mission to safeguard knowledge, the wellspring of development, in all its forms. She bears little hesitation to cutting down obstacles and offering blood sacrifices in order to achieve her goals. With such devotion to her god's truth, and divine authorization to perform sacred rites, she can be aloof and single-minded in her pursuits." )) (set: $calberus to (dm: 'name', 'Calberus', 'nameFull', 'Calberus', 'title', 'The Ogre' )) }

{ (set: $endStory to (dm: 'name', 'End' )) (set: $hour to (dm: 'name', 'Voices' )) (set: $institution to (dm: 'name', 'Hemlock Weald Institution', 'forecourt', 'Forecourt', 'entranceHall', 'Entrance Hall', 'parlour', 'Parlour', 'library', 'Library', 'firstFloorHall', 'First Floor Hall', 'cellblock', 'Cellblock', 'lavatory', 'Lavatory', 'basementHall', 'Basement Hall', 'kitchen', 'Kitchen', 'dungeon', 'Dungeon', 'yard', 'Yard', 'conservatory', 'Conservatory', 'springHouse', 'Spring House', 'shed', 'Shed' )) }

{ (set: $LORCIS to 'LORCIS:') (set: $ASYLON to 'ASYLON:') (set: $HANDMAIDEN to 'HANDMAIDEN:') (set: $VOICES to 'VOICES:') (set: $LORCIS_REC to 'LORCIS (RECORDING):') (set: $ASYLON_REC to 'ASYLON (RECORDING):') (set: $HANDMAIDEN_REC to 'HANDMAIDEN (RECORDING):') }

#IFID 6B806D16-915F-4EFF-BEE5-C7236058FBF5

- Name for header passage is blank. - Name for footer for return link in dynamic text is one space. - Name for footer for game menu is two spaces.

Main game menus.

Game title, shown on START.

{ <div class='o'> (for: each _item, ...$inv)[(linkrepeat: _item's list)[(replace: ?textInfo)[(set: $item to _item)(display: 'itemDescription')$goToItemHeader]]] </div> } <a name='itemHeader'>

Character card portraits.

{ (set: $inv to (a:)) (set: $item to (dm: 'name', 'ITEM NAME', 'list', 'ITEM LISTED NAME', 'description', 'ITEM DESCRIPTION' )) (set: $itemSedative to (dm: 'name', 'Bovine Sedative', 'list', 'Bovine Sedative', 'description', "Within a thick-walled syringe topped by a particularly low gauge hypodermic needle is a concentrated formula designed to sedate cattle, specifically bulls, which are transported in box cars for breeding with dairy cows or for castrating to serve as draught animals. Without official endorsement, it is used recreationally as an adulterant for euphoric effect among county-run farmers who have the means of adopting the technology for its intended purpose. Independent owners who possess underhanded access to the network also find room for them in the corners of their medicine cabinets, and it was from one of these felicitous acquaintances where Ivie had obtained a crate of vials. The sedative, which can immobolize a bull several times the weight of a grown man, is to be administered as part of Lorcis's contingency plan." )) (set: $itemSack to (dm: 'name', 'Burlap Sack', 'list', 'Burlap Sack', 'description', "This coarse sack, woven from jute fiber and produced in County Duskair, had once contained potatoes from Aspencroft. Lorcis had laundered it in preparation for the experiment." )) (set: $itemHoney to (dm: 'name', 'Blister Honey', 'list', 'Blister Honey', 'description', "Blister Honey is made from crushed nettle bees--actually beetles--which feed off the nectar of the blue blistering plant. The neurotoxin dilutes pupils, increases heart palpitations, and irritates the groin with a fire upon micturation--relatively relieving for women within minutes of voiding, but up to hours of a distressing internal rash for men, leading to swelling, a subsequent protracted erection, and sometimes, consequently, death. Ivie concocts Blister Honey along with an assortment of other poisons, electuaries, embrocations, and mendicaments properly diluted for recreational use, for the market and for her own bureau. She and Gavril regularly service themselves from her collection while pursuing pleasures of the flesh. Lorcis, not so convinced into such hedonism and more dearly enjoying good health, does not partake of these volatile substances." )) (set: $itemTobacco to (dm: 'name', 'Jscethycan Tobacco', 'list', 'Jscethycan Tobacco', 'description', "A tobacco box from Jscethyca, with a carved ophidian design in obsidian and containing fragrant coarse leaves, is a rare import. This one was crafted by a contemporary designer, but Lorcis is not familiar with the artist or its origin. Lorcis's father had an obsidian box such as this, the contents of which were shared only with his most intimate companions--those of the innermost circle of his cult, which included the maker of the box herself, who had since fled the continent. The Handmaiden also fashions these boxes out of wood, a material most common in Harrow Les, and sells them where the witches gain most of their mercantile experience: the black market. The intricate container is as prized as the tobacco seated in its hold. People do not simply trade unique and authentic Jscethycan boxes and quality tobacco with the general public. Gavril surely must have stolen this one, and somewhere out there, there was a livid, possibly vengeful connoisseur without the remedy of good tobacco to alleviate theft-related anxieties." )) (set: $itemHare to (dm: 'name', 'Blackberry Hare', 'list', 'Blackberry Hare', 'description', "One of the largest in its species, the blackberry hare is a common leporid in Harrow Les, making its nest among the thorny cover of blackberry canes. When Gavril had first volunteered to accompany Ivie and the youths to go berry picking, Marleau thought he meant it, Asylon believed he would be acting as a guard, and Ivie anticipated a roll among the undergrowth. In fact, he did all that was expected of him, in addition to sniping at hares as the witches unwittingly closed in on their nests. After he had achieved some unspoken quota of the hunt, he secured the game, abandoned his berry basket to the witches, and vanished without a proper farewell, and they did not see him again until the next time they were going berry picking, where the same situation, like a theatrical tour of an overplayed idyllic romp, was performed all over again. While the season for blackberries has passed, this particular leporid specimen has been recently shot, and its fur is silky soft." )) }

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitPlayer')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitPlayerHover')", 'portraitPlayer')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitPlayerHoverHighlighted')", $return)] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #Portrait of (print: $player's title) ##(print: $player's nameFull) </header> } { <div class='grid-card'> <div class='col-card'>(display: 'bPortraitPlayerFeature')</div> <div class='col-info-card'>(print: $player's description)<br><br>$oTop</div> </div> }

Messages using <div class='m'></div>

{ <div class='m'>(if: $player's gender is 'male')[(print: $player's name) updated his (print: $player's journalLC).](elseif: $player's gender is 'female')[(print: $player's name) updated her (print: $player's journalLC).](else:)[(print: $player's name) updated their (print: $player's journalLC).]</div> }

{<span class='b'> (link: $oSave)[ (if: (savegame: $savefile))[$oSaved] (else:)['Error - Game was not saved.'] ]</span> }

{<span class='b'> (if: (saved-games:) contains $savefile)[ (link: $oLoad)[(loadgame: $savefile)] (else:)['Error - No game could be loaded.']] (else:)[$oLoadNoFile]</span> }

<div class='card'>(print: $player's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $player's title)</h1>(print: $player's nameFull)</div></div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's forecourt) </header> } (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'institution0')](else:)[(display: 'institutionEnd')] { <div class='o'> (display: 'toEntranceHall') (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'toYard')] </div> }

{ (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall')[(linkgoto: 'Exit to the forecourt.', 'locationInstitution')] (elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go to the forecourt.', 'locationInstitution')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the Hemlock Weald Institution.', 'locationInstitution')] }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) </header> } { (if: $endStoryEnabled is 1)[(display: 'parlourEnd')] (elseif: $entryPrepare's owned is 1 and $entryPrepare's done is 0)[(display: 'parlour1')] (else:)[(display: 'parlour0')] } (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 0)[(display: 'searchParlour') ](display: 'toInstitutionScenesEntranceHall')

{ (if: $entryConvene's done is 1 and $entryCalDecision's owned is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Convene in the parlour.', 'sceneParlourConvene')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the parlour.', 'sceneParlour')] }

(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall')[{ <div class='o'> (display: 'toParlour') (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'toLibrary')] </div> } { <div class='o'> (display: 'toFirstHall') (display: 'toBasementHall') </div> } { <div class='o'> (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'toYard')] (display: 'toInstitution') </div> }](else:)[{<div class='o'>(display: 'toEntranceHall')</div>}]

{ (print: $entryGetAssistance's title) (print: $entryGetAssistance's description) }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Lorcis's Room </header> } From his desk and out his window, Lorcis could see the sky between intersecting tree branches, smell the brightness of the fog and evergreens, and feel a splendid breeze. The boundless atmosphere open above, and it seemed the voices could explore the entire world, if they wanted to, and leave him a few hours of peace. His room contained the desk, a bed, a nightstand, and a wardrobe, all constructed by Gavril, who had made most of the witches' furniture. The wooden furnishings were sturdy pieces, not as comfortable or spacious or aesthetically lavish, yet proving to be enduring. He did yearn for city luxuries. He missed buoyant mattresses and cumulus duvets, heated rooms and water, plumbing, and a ceiling that did not, from time to time, rain dust upon one's head and shoulders. He did not wish to admit to himself, but his heart ached more than once for the Room of the One Gaze, an empty garret in his father's manor, which was a place of punishment but which he had, over time, made his own. The circle he had drawn in blood over its floorboards was most likely scrubbed away by now. The manor would not have sold well with traces of witchcraft, sacrifice, and suicide hanging in the air. (unless: $noteList contains $noteLorcis)[ (display: 'addNoteLorcis')](if: $entryPrepare's owned is 1 and $observation's lorcisPortraitChange is 0)[ <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Change into ritual garb.', 'changeRitualGarb')</div>]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Asylon's Room </header> } Asylon's room was furnished only with necessities, and her belongings were hidden out of sight inside boxes fitted within the nightsand drawer or under the bed. Her items were also meager: uniformly folded clothes; art supplies including quills, dip and fountain pens, ink, and charcoals for drawing and for carving out ritual circles; and balms, fragrances, and cosmetics for special events, which she rarely attended and if then, only in the company of Ivie.(if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 0)[ She was not in her room at the moment, and she had taken her satchel and bonnet, which meant she had gone outside, most likely in search of something that might inspire work.]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Handmaiden's Room </header> } (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 0 and $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon is 1)[Asylon's footfalls had slowed, then ceased, as Lorcis had entered the priestess's room without her. ]The Handmaiden had mounted shelving on the walls to hold her collection of swords, censers, incense, smudgesticks, a ritual headdress and jewelry, and other accessories radiating properties mystical and potent. She had constructed a small altar to Aruseht on the windowsill, fashioning sticks, twine, and metal wire into the bisected pentagram of the Horned Serpent. Lorcis appreciated her attention to turning decorative props into serviceable apparatuses. Beneath the shrine's tongue, she had integrated a shallow bowl for incense or blood offerings, whichever she had on hand. (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 0)[ The Handmaiden, seated on a wooden bench by the window, was polishing one of her swords. She had pulled a few ritual blades from the shelves to be maintained. She gave Lorcis a dismissive glance, neither asking him what he needed from her nor requesting his leave. (unless: $noteList contains $noteHandmaiden)[ (display: 'addNoteHandmaiden')] (display: 'dialogueHandmaiden')] <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Return.', 'sceneCellblock')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###The Offering of All </header> } Lorcis approached the operation bed carefully, as he always did, believing sudden movements would disturb the ogre. At the table, he opened his satchel and, one by one, drew out the offerings and lined them along the edge. Calberus did not acknowledge them. <div class='d'>$LORCIS They're gifts, Cal. For you. They're for you to enjoy before we begin our experiment.</div> Calberus kept his head and eyes down on his cervid project. (display: 'calGiveEnd') { (display: 'removeItemHoney') (display: 'removeItemTobacco') (display: 'removeItemHare') (display: 'removeCompanionAll') (display: 'addEntryCalGiveAll') } <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin final preparations before the induction.', 'sceneBasementHall')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###The Offering of Carnality </header> } Lorcis picked the aphrodisiac from his satchel and popped off the cork. Calberus's eyes slid in his direction, then drifted back to the hollowed head. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, I have gift for you. You remember Blister Honey? </div> Lorcis took several slow steps toward the operating table. He set the vial on the corner. A shadow swooped before him, obscuring his vision, and the voices screeched, and before he realized he had blinked, Calberus had downed the aphrodisiac and had replaced the vial where it had been on the corner. The dead deer had shifted, and Calberus's eyes were on him. (display: 'calGiveEnd') { (display: 'removeItemHoney') (display: 'removeCompanionAll') (display: 'addEntryCalGiveSex') } <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin final preparations before the induction.', 'sceneBasementHall')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $endStory's name) </header> } As Lorcis approached the bound man's side, he wondered if Calberus could not be so unfathomable. (if: $observation's asylonReading is 1)[He could not help but look back at the experiment in the fashion of Asylon's pen strokes. It was a likeness of Calberus he had not known someone else could have imagined, and he held dear regard for Asylon, who had chosen to reveal that much of herself to him. It was also the first illustrated record of Calberus he knew to exist, and as he stood before the ogre on the table, he kept thinking of it and the aftermath--the aftercare. ]He thought of Calberus cradling him and of the quiet parlour. The Handmaiden, her pride as raw as her wounds, would have resented that peace. As well, she would have considered Calberus undeserving of it(if: $observation's handmaidenVoices is 1)[, even if madness were a gift of her god, for she was mortal, too, with mortal susceptibilities]. Was the quiet they shared truly peace, or love, he wondered. He could not be certain at all. The key to the brank was by Calberus's ear. Lorcis turned out the padlock, which was the size of his fist, swung open the device, and leaning over Calberus, unhooked it from under his tongue. As he lifted it away, it tipped out of his grip and clattered on the floor. Calberus, untroubled by the clanging, closed his mouth and swallowed. Then his tongue reemerged to circle his lips and reclaim the blood there. Lorcis unfastened the leash from one of the several mounts on the operation bed and unwound it from the ogre's neck. Long and steady breaths vibrated his hands as he worked at it. He continued unlatching locks and unwinding chains, resting for intervals between with the ache in his own bruised neck, until he had completely freed the ogre. Lorcis wandered the dungeon in search of Calberus's apron or skirt. He pulled them out of the refuse pile, along with the sackcloth hood. When he returned to Calberus, he found the ogre had closed his eyes. He is insane. He is profane. He is humane. Although the naked creature before him bared signs of such willful translation, Lorcis found his confidence in those words shaken. Was Calberus not lord of his own soundness? Was his existence no less than that of others? No one could match him, this singular wonder. The phonograph's transmission had been a truth fashioned by Lorcis's imagination. They were only words he had chosen to make out of noise. He had wanted to believe himself special. The one Calberus did not devour. The one who tamed the beast. The one who solved the mystery of the man in the basement. It was all absolute rubbish. Any given moment, Calberus could have pinched his head off his neck and crushed it within a single fist. He set the clothing on the floor, by the stag's head, which he found just then, and stood very near to the sleeping giant. He wondered if the induction had indeed brought Calberus into a darkness even he did not recognize, if somewhere within his mind festered repressed thoughts that could fill him with terror. Lorcis traversed the disfigurements spanning Calberus's mountainous chest, taking ridges and gorges wherever they led. Long, thick scars crested across his lower abdomen, as if his skin had been splayed and a fetus rendered from him. Their deepest crevices might have once swollen with pain and fire. He felt warm now, a pale canvas alive and aglow in the dim night. The ogre's breast rose and fell with the sound Lorcis had heard so much of in the day. In this moment, it was all he wanted to listen to, and it was all he could hear.

{ <div class='grid-decision'> (linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalCalmPlayer')", 'calCalmSelectedPlayer') (linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalCalmAsylon')", 'calCalmSelectedAsylon') (linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalCalmHandmaiden')", 'calCalmSelectedHandmaiden') </div> }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-image'>(display: 'portraitPlayerDecision')</div> <div class='col-option-info'>I propose we offer Cal a bit of encouragement, via a supplement, to engage in a stress-relieving bout of carnal exhiliration. The rush of excitement and its culmination will leave him docile.</div> </div> }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $asylon's name)[(display: 'portraitCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCompanion2Decision')]</div> <div class='col-option-info'>Cal looks calm whenever he smokes his pipe. I know where to get tobacco.</div> </div> }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-image'>(if: $companion1's name is $handmaiden's name)[(display: 'portraitCompanion1Decision')](else:)[(display: 'portraitCompanion2Decision')]</div> <div class='col-option-info'>He needs the thrill of a hunt and a kill to be satisfied. As it is the instinct of predators, so it is with the ogre.</div> </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Calming Calberus with an Aphrodisiac </header> } Lorcis began pacing, eager to carry on the plan. <div class='d'>$LORCIS We'll need to acquire one of Ivie's aphrodisiacs, preferrably one that can be ingested. Cal is more amenable to drink than to intravenous procedures when it comes to his own intake. Once I offer him the altered drink, we must quickly flee the room before the aphrodisiac begins to take effect, or else a terrible occurrence would befall us. If we are properly out of his perception, Cal should become receptive to his dolls and prey on them, rather than on us. He'll tire himself out well enough on the inanimates--or the mechanized figures--such that once we return for him, any danger to us will have passed.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Why does everything have to be complicated with you?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS This is hardly complicated. It only sounds complicated because I've laid out contingencies and consequences to be accounted for. The details are in the arrangements.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Must we accompany you into the dungeon?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Only one fool needs to set the bait, and it sounds as if you've already delegated this role to yourself.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Excellent observations, all. Certainly, you may wait in the hall while I offer the aphrodisiac to Cal.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN A Sehtian ritual would ensure less running around like idiots. As you said, we have the proper bindings to contain him, and the ritual will have a much more direct outcome.</div> Lorcis shook his head. The Handmaiden had earlier jested about dominating the ogre. Lorcis did not believe it to be possible, not by zealotry. Calberus's mind worked differently from others. A Sehtian ritual might have no effect on him, and if it did fail--which he fully expected it to--Lorcis had made no designs to handle the aftermath, which was sure to be a dreadful inconvenience. Additionally, he had no desire to see Calberus immolated. The overlapping scars and sutures over his monumental body appeared to be evidence of countless violations which had been done to him already. Lorcis could not trace their origins, but his fingers had run along them, and Calberus had not flinched. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Forcing Cal would only result in an angrier ogre. The purpose of our careful considerations is to calm him, not take advantage of his trust.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Trust?</div> It was the Handmaiden's turn to shake her head. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Anointed, you're deep within your own delusion. Perhaps this experiment is just what you need to awaken. Very well, let's get on with it. Stoke the fire. Stroke the beast.</div> The Handmaiden moved out into the hall. Lorcis, offering Asylon a sure smile, hid the thumping of his heart and the snickering of the voices behind his back. (display: 'addEntryCalDecisionSex') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Go find an aphrodisiac for Calberus.', 'sceneEntranceHall')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Calming Calberus with Tobacco </header> } Asylon was more observant of Calberus than Lorcis expected. He had never seen her in the dungeon, but she did have the propensity to wander the building in search of oddities and curiosities to record. There was a small window on the dungeon's heavy door. If she had approached during an opportune time of day, she would have been able to see the operation table under a faint haze of light, then beyond the mutated figures, a pedestal roll top desk in a corner and the ogre writing and smoking a pipe there. Of course, she would have had to boost herself atop a step stool or on the back of a nearby partner--a role filled usually by Ivie, Marleau, or Gavril. <div class='d'>$LORCIS So tell us about this tobacco.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Gavril came into the shed earlier this morning. He was carrying a fancy box. After he left, I investigated. Expensive goods, by the look of it.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Convenient.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Convenient, indeed.</div> Lorcis heard the disinterest in her tone. Asylon seemed to ignore her, but he knew better than to believe the mystic lacked perception. She waited for Lorcis to follow the Handmaiden into the hallway before falling in step behind him. He smiled over his shoulder for her, and she raised her gaze to acknowledge it. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I hope you found considerable persuasion to not have partaken of a sample. Although your organs are your prerogative, I would advise caution on the consumption of certain substances which bequeath irreversible adverse effects.</div> In the motion of her hand moving to rest upon her satchel, Asylon shrugged. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Rather, discovering the box caused me to consider a proposal for Gavril, but it's an idea in development. The tobacco could benefit us now. Collecting it should be a simple matter.</div> Lorcis did not object to simplicity, and Asylon was one to do things efficiently. She often researched potential solutions and consequences in day-to-day decisions, but she was not without her own moments of spontaneity and hedonism, inclinations no doubt encouraged by the witch and the rogue. However their temptations, she did limit her indulgences. Smoking all the tobacco in the box would have been a fine yet short-lived experience. Asylon aimed instead for long-term insurance. (display: 'addEntryCalDecisionSmoke') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Go find tobacco for Calberus.', 'sceneEntranceHall')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Calming Calberus with Fresh Meat </header> } The Handmaiden moved toward the center of the parlour, satisfied with the decision in her favor. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN We need no ceremony, but nevertheless, Aruseht would be pleased to see you carry this through. You can set out toward the little settlement down the path. There will likely be a merchant or missionary troubled at the crossroads, and if not, I'm sure you'll find a way to seduce a peasant from the village.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Is that what you wish to spend your day doing? Wooing a random villager from Aspencroft, escorting the fellow on the long trail in return, then convincing him to enter a dark and forbidding dungeon with no trouble at all? We do have the actual experiment yet to conduct after this.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN That would be <i>your</i> day, and I do anticipate trouble. Should the chosen attempt to flee, I will cut his ankles.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Let's make a compromise and say the end result itself should be our aspiration. We'll do away with the hunt and give Cal ready meat, preferrably from our storage, and not something we'd have to chase down. And certainly not the inconvenience of a live human being, please.</div> The Handmaiden was a true Sehtian. While she preserved her own mortality, the lives of others existed to serve her and the desires of Aruseht, whatever whims or interpretations agreed with her cause and hardened her perceptions. Lorcis saw no difference from Calaieans. The birthright of believers was the bodies of others, and voices heard were only the voices believed. Lorcis had accidentally let his guard down. The Handmaiden saw the past in him, and he quickly recovered a demeanor of the present. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN All right, Anointed. We'll secure the ogre decomposing meat.</div> She turned away from him, as she did often when she could barely tolerate acceding to her ward. (if: $companion2's nameFull is $asylon's nameFull)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN If we're going to be feeding Cal a trifle, anyway, what about that bird?</div> Asylon gripped the strap of her satchel. <div class='d'>$LORCIS It must be feathers more than anything. I doubt it would even constitute a nibble.</div> ] <div class='d'>$ASYLON We can check the spring house.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN We may find more promise in the rat's nest. Earlier, he had a hare slung over his shoulder.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Certainly, let's take a tour of the spring house or Gavril's shed. We'll be sure to find game somewhere on the premises.</div> Lorcis extended his arm to direct Asylon and the Handmaiden to the hall. Whispers tickled the inside of his head, and he did not want his aides to see him pinching his eyes and squeezing the voices out. (display: 'addEntryCalDecisionFood') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Go find fresh meat for Calberus.', 'sceneEntranceHall')</div>

{ <div class='o'> (display: 'oLoadGame') (display: 'oStartGame') </div> }

{ <div class='m'>(print: $item's name) added to inventory.</div> }

{ (set: $item to $itemTobacco) (display: 'invAdd') }

{ (set: $item to $itemHare) (display: 'invAdd') }

{ (set: $item to $itemHoney) (display: 'invAdd') }

{ (set: $item to $itemHoney) (display: 'invRemove') }

{ <div class='m'>(print: $item's name) removed from inventory.</div> }

{ (set: $item to $itemTobacco) (display: 'invRemove') }

{ (set: $item to $itemHare) (display: 'invRemove') }

<div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $player's portraitS)</div>

{ <div class='m'>(print: $player's name) noted (print: $note's name).</div> }

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'noteMenu')[(linkgoto: $noteName, 'noteMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$noteName</span>", '$return')] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #(print: $player's name)'s $noteName </header> } { <div class='grid-menu'> <div class='col-list'>(display: 'noteList')</div> <div class='col-info'>|textInfo>[]</div> </div> }

{ <div class='o'> (for: each _item, ...$noteList)[(linkrepeat: _item's name)[(replace: ?textInfo)[(set: $note to _item)(display: 'noteDescription')$goToItemHeader]]] </div> } <a name='itemHeader'>

{ (set: $noteList to (a:)) (set: $note to (dm: 'name', 'NOTE NAME', 'description', 'NOTE DESCRIPTION', 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteForest to (dm: 'name', 'Harrow Les', 'description', "The towering forest Harrow Les spread like an infection coast to coast, moors to mountains. A maze of ancient evergreen and deciduous flora, the forest held a great assemblage of people, beasts, vegetation, and mysteries under its canopy. Lawmen and guardians warned of dangers prowling in the forest's darkest thickets, while poets and outlaws compelled the beauty of its tangles. A breathing fog thickened the air. Landmarks under shadow, moving figures, and faces of elusive shape and vague existence crept from and faded into the pale depths. Distance, direction, and time were lost amidst trees and their cover. The forest cradled dens and burrows, isolated dwellings, ruined castles, and--as if a hole growing infinitely deeper--an indeterminate number of burial grounds, cursed lands, ritual sites, and berths of the unknown. Lorcis had fled Gallowvalsk and into Harrow Les by necessity, as decades of human sacrifice performed by his father's cult were coming to light. He had entrusted his identity to his father's schemes, ensnared by his own willing ignorance, indifference, and disowning of autonomy. In the manor, his knowledge was fashioned and controlled with great care. He had little perception of the world outside his father's atlases and encyclopedias, and even as he was gaining a comprehensive education, a particular Sehtian persepctive contaminated all. He was not allowed to leave the manor without a guardian, and his outings were bound to curfew. His father limited his exposure to the printing enterprise, Saker & Layeras Publishing, by sending him to study dances and rituals, rather than to sit in on business meetings. During dinner parties, where his father discussed all manner of important subjects with a concentrated selection of the elite, Lorcis would be put on stage to perform for the guests. He was adored. He was the son of the high priest. He was the Anointed, chosen and commanded by the voices of Aruseht. His doctor had the papers, and it was official. Lorcis had wanted to be special and wanted to believe himself special. He cut open his wrists for the Sehtians, bled the hearts of many, and prostrated himself as a true Slave, yet he had always known he did not believe. He did not think the voices believed. Moreover, he persisted in this contradiction, seeing no other way to be, always looking to his father--not Aruseht--for direction, for confirmation, for approval, and for his own existence. Then came the war--the Confessions--and the still turbulent years after. Calaiean auhorities had come to arrest and execute the cult leader, but they had hoped to rehabilitate his son. By then showing signs of his disenchantment with all organized persuasions of worshippers, Lorcis declined their insistence. After his father's suicide, he left the manor and preserved himself within the tenements of the industrial district, paying rent with money earned by offering language lessons in Jscethycan and Scarsk, among others. It was a nontheistic way of puposefully contributing to an acceptance of diverse knowledge, providing others opportunities to gain skills and absorb a plurality of cultures and perspectives, and allowing him to engage with the world and its people unfettered. He was weary of societies of people ready to cut each other down for their differences. Sehtians murdered, and Calaieans did, too. One of Lorcis's pupils turned out to be an informer. A Calaiean witchhunter was dispatched after him. A Sehtian, a witch, a heathen, or demon-possessed--more or less synonyms to Calaieans--who would not be rehabilitated into the Circle would have to be expunged. That was written in Gallowvalsk law within a line which was a persistent remnant of the Great Winter Mandate, which the treaty had failed to abolish. Ambushed by the witchhunter, Lorcis fled to where the voices were calling: down the alleys, beyond the walls, into the forest. After the initial scare, which left him with nothing but the traveling robe on his back, his small sword, his father's obsidian athame, and a satchel of books not especially his favorites, he began learning how to survive in the forest, and that was an ugly endeavor. He looked back often at himself during his many failings, reflecting, regretting, challenging, and most of all, analyzing. Harrow Les had a dampening, calming effect on his psyche. He was not angry with the Slaves, nor with the Circle. He made logical reasons for them and for their beliefs, but not excuses, and pondered over things he did not know and might never know. The eerie forest, with all its legends and lies, seemed unconquerable and endless, and he, too, began to feel boundless. The voices dashed and floated and flew all around him. The forest was his freedom. They frightened him, the forest and his freedom.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteInstitution to (dm: 'name', "(print: $institution's name)", 'description', "The Hemlock Weald Institution was abandoned over fifty years ago after the massacre of its committed inhabitants. The Circle had repurposed an old manor to house individuals officially declared insane, bewitched, religiously or politically insufficient, or otherwise dispensible to the progress of society as a whole. Patients--inmates, rather--turned up dead every now and then, and the institution's local reputation suffered. When came the Great Winter Mandate, Calaiean authorities commanded the institution administrator, Father Olivio Veredae Malvecanto III, to line up what was left of the confined, make them kneel in supplication, and, one after another, shoot them dead. Their bodies were left to scavengers, and the Circle moved out. Although Lorcis had never been accosted by restless ghosts of Hemlock Weald, he was quite often too anxious to go digging through the institution's grim halls, especially at night. In theory, knowledge combatted fear of the unknown, yet the more he knew, the more he knew what to be afraid of. He kept his eyes downcast when crossing reflective surfaces, worried that a flash of his face would not be his own or that it would not respond accordingly. If he heard a door opening, he was indundated with images of a decomposed hand and crumbling fingers clacking on the wood, for he had seen the old mad scratches on doors all around the building. He did not like to look over his shoulder, shuddering should he meet the eyes of a terrible wraith who might have been lingering just there. He had taken down several water-damaged paintings and empty picture frames, for viewing them seemed to be an unintentional conjuring of the dead. Among the haunting surroundings, which were all explained quite rationally--a strong draft, shifting sunlight, old beams, rats or beetles in the walls--the voices in his head were cruel ventriloquists, throwing whispers, laughter, or screams down long corridors or on the other side of doors, daring him with aural fabrications of frights not truly there. And that infernal rogue, who might slip out from the shadows so suddenly, or Asylon coming and going in the middle of the night, or Ivie forgetting to dismantle an uncanny effigy after a ritual--even his own coven could make his heart stop for a moment too long.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteLorcis to (dm: 'name', "(print: $lorcis's nameFull)", 'description', "When Lorcis was a tiny lad, he would purposefully get into trouble so that his governess would call him a naughty boy, bend him over her knee, and spank him hard. He cried, for it did smart, but the stinging thrummed deeper. His childish thoughts defined the disciplining as a form of enlightenment. His governess had said he was to learn his lesson, and he, consequently, became light in the head. The first time it had happened, he was seven years old, and she was twenty, new to the Layeras household. She lived within the manor and was privileged to her own room, but she did not converse idly with his father or him or the servants, and she dined alone, as was proper for her station as governess. More than once, he tried to make her break rules by breaking them himself. He told her the voices made him do things, which was not true. He heard them, but they spoke in languages not his own, so he did not understand them or what they wished of him. Nevertheless, his provocations worked. He dared her, wouldn't she like to hit him, not expecting her to have the nerve. She had finally tired of the little terror he was and gave him a slap on the chin. He had never been hit before and retaliated. There was a bit of a scuffle, consisting of them swatting at one another like chickens, before she snatched his wrist, hauled him into her lap, wrangled his breeches down, and snapped her palm on his exposed backside. He began manipulating situations in order to seek the sensations, unconcerned with why or what it meant beyond a rush in his blood. As he came into his first decade, he realized that the spankings were one of the few occasions of intimacy which he had with another human being, and where skin on him was not his own. He did not tell anyone, and neither did she. When he acted out again, which he did often over the next few years, she would serve him a spanking quickly, generously. Eventually, one of the servants informed the lord of the manor. His father was a sensitive and perceptive man--a respectable poet--and understood that Lorcis was benefitting from his punishments in the wrong way. There was wrath befitting a Slave, then there was wrath shaping one's character. He gave the governess a reference and dismissed her. He placed his son in a new corrective environment, the manor's vacant garret called the Room of the One Gaze, where Lorcis was to reset himself and reassess the missteps which had diverted him from progress. The voices whispered, laughed, shrieked, and wept. He occupied himself by attempting to decipher and make sense of them, and although he did not come to any precise conclusions before his father returned to bring him back into society, he felt he had never been alone. They kept him sane. The Room of the One Gaze was an ideal site for their proliferation, and he would return to it in his later years to listen, to think, and--once and for all--to grieve. Lorcis's mischievous behavior carried on into adolescence, calculated and insidious now where they had once been spontaneous and juvenile. Additionally, while he studied, attended balls and dinner parties, practiced his rituals, engaged in long sessions with his doctor about the voices, and performed his role as the pious son admirably, the emptiness his governess had once filled widened. His doctor said he craved erogenous gratification. What he wanted from the governess as a child, and now, was for her to give him her breast, hand, and finger, to become his mother, father, and lover. Lorcis let the doctor write down whatever made the sessions all the more entertaining and even embellished some trivia for the dreary fellow. The doctor was a Sehtian charlatan, as were many in his father's entourage. Lorcis already knew what he was missing. He was missing enlightenment, but with faith in religions depreciating swiftly, he had little idea of what it was or how to go about acquiring it, and he remained in his father's cult for many years on.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteCalberus to (dm: 'name', 'Calberus', 'description', "Lorcis had named the man in the basement Calberus, after the Ogre of Telmacchus. Centuries-old legends told of an aristocrat who advanced his singular interest in taxidermy beyond woodland creatures and exotic beasts. In his basement, out of the flesh of the human dead, he stitched together his masterpiece: an amalgamation of colossal stature. He named the giant Calberus after Calaiel, the God of Life and Death. By the power of hubris, a misguided heart, science, alchemy, necromancy, a spiteful god, or anything translators and storytellers concluded or devised, the monstrosity came to life. Although it lived, it could only sustain animation by replenishing the fuel which oiled the mechanisms inside its husk. It did this by feeding on humans. The aristocrat's servants continued raiding morgues, and when their sources became unreliable, they complied with orders to slay merchants and pilgrims met on the road. The aristocrat devoted himself wholly to nourishing this transcendental child, who was not only sustaining but growing. All the while, he began to instruct the man in human speech, languages, literature, law and politics, mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, history, music, art, and all he deemed the comprehensive classical education known to mortal machinations. He educated the giant in etiquette and showed him how to groom himself. He demonstrated sex. And of course, he taught the ogre the creative field of taxidermy. He then requested live specimens so that his child could investigate the processes and meanings of human life and death. When rumors spread of people going missing near the estate, and travelers began avoiding the road, the aristocrat fed Calberus his wife and children. In time, he served his servants. Finally, he and his manufactured son were alone. The legends diverged at this point. The aristocrat might have offered himself as a sacrifice to Calberus, having slaved under him as an idolater of a heathen god. The ogre might have attacked unprovoked, savagery indelible to his being regardless of his education and enlightenment. The pair might have argued or had a misunderstanding over some high concept involving existence, resulting in an accidental fatal blow teaching them both their final lesson. Even Calaiel might have interfered by introducing the ogre to religion, which had been pointedly disregarded in his studies, and turning him conflicted; thus, mad. In the end, the aristocrat's own creation feasted upon him. The ogre escaped the basement and into the forest, where he supposedly continued to hunt for human flesh to the present day. Such, more or less, was the bedside story to keep children from wandering after dark, and such were the variations told to Lorcis by his governess. Lorcis entertained the thought that Calberus might have been the very ogre from the legend, but as marvelous as he was, the man in the institution basement seemed human enough, not a thousand-year-old golem fashioned from the hide of the dead, despite uncanny similarities. His skin appeared to be a patchwork of various shades of ash, taut by reddish scars and aged sutures wrapping like barbed wire around his body. He had a monumental, godly form which was not simply a structure but a singular architecture. His face was craggy and scarred like a cliff, just as ageless. He could not speak, but he displayed intelligence far beyond Lorcis's own comprehension. He was an exceptional clockwork doll maker, surgeon, and vivisectionist--and he did eat people. Rather, he used to. Lorcis recalled the night he had awakened to a most distressing, most fetid bouquet which had ever assaulted his nostrils--and the continuous shrieking of someone dying, which was not, for once, the voices inside his head. The voices were silent to his pumping heart and cacophanous surroundings. He found himself in Calberus's domain, later determined to be the Hemlock Weald basement, after having been knocked unconscious while fleeing from a Calaiean witchhunter. The witchhunter would trouble Lorcis no longer, for Calberus, having gathered both parties inside his dungeon, was copulating with and devouring raw--at the same time and with equal lust--Lorcis's pursuer before his very eyes. The witchhunter's own eyes were shockingly white, fixated on Lorcis as if begging salvation from his own prey. The horror faded, the fear wilted, and Calberus put his mouth on the face and it became less. Lorcis had yet to figure out why Calberus had not finished him off as well. Perhaps the witchhunter had been sufficient sustenance that night. While the ogre digested, Lorcis told him stories, but he was more likely rambling to himself, as the voices had fled and he needed someone to talk to. It was in his mind already that Calberus was obviously an ogre, a term he meant as endearingly as the name he bestowed upon him. From then on, Lorcis spent several nights chatting with--or rather, to--him. Calberus said nothing and did not always appear cognizant of their discussions, but he would acknowledge their discourse in other ways, one being that Lorcis was still very much alive. Furthermore, by their association with the warlock, the other witches of the weald appeared exempt from Calberus's appetite for the time being.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteIvie to (dm: 'name', 'Ivie Fragaria', 'description', "A pact with a demon produced Ivie. That was what her mothers were proud to announce, in any case. Lorcis found several similar anecdotes--some less jovial about the prospect--of incapable husbands and wives begetting children from the womb only after an earnest entreaty and suitable offering to a demon. In some versions, the demon would enter the husband and send its seed through his body into the wife's. In others, the husband watched the demon make love to his wedded one. Sometimes, the demon possessed the wife and forced her lover's seed. A lone woman or man might ride the demon across the night sky, then awaken in a vibrant orchard, bearing his or her own fruit. Pairs, groups, and entire communities as a whole solicited the power of demons to beget children. Ivie had hardly studied anything of these origins. When Lorcis shared old articles or entertaining nonsense on the topic, she listened with genuine interest, but she was busy distilling oils, baking cookies, gardening, chatting with her sister, helping Marleau with lessons, making shopping errands for the Handmaiden, lying with the rogue or attempting to with the sage, and being generally occupied by the present. She seemed to be always moving forward, searching for the next fun thing, the next rush, the next happiness, something more. She did not dwell--perhaps not even on the joyous moments in her life. If her birth had been rendered by a demon, something would have been sacrificed for her existence, but Lorcis had not yet discovered what that was. Ivie had grown up as a witch of the field before she had become a witch of the weald. She matriculated at The University of the Free City of Gallowvalsk in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, but she abandoned formal studies before she could earn her degree. She was knowledgeable and experienced in her field and could have made an excellent career in academia, but she had already moved on to other things, namely, the war. She had got into the business of running for the resistance effort, making deliveries not only of packages but of souls as well. The war seemed far from her now, although Lorcis suspected Ivie was only adept at mitigating evidence of any of its repercussions. Unlike concerns for the rest of the coven, Lorcis had little worries over her and her priorities. Her presence did encourage him to let his guard down so that he did not need to keep close watch on her daily affairs, interpret hidden agenda woven between her words, question her motivations and goals, or go out of his way to make special accommodations ensuring her a proper enviornment in which to thrive. He thought, rather, it was <i>she</i> who looked after <i>him</i>. She eased the creases in his brow, massaged away the stiffness in his shoulders, and placated his migraines. He had once told her she need not stress on his account, but it was all at her insistence. Helping others made her happy, and he could not deny her that happiness. Her sincere generosity allowed her to get on quite well with him and the others, and he himself found pleasure in accomodating her, even as her ability to soothe had proved deadly.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteAsylon to (dm: 'name', "(print: $asylon's nameFull)", 'description', "Asylon had grown up in a Calaiean convent in Gallowvalsk since the age of seven, when she lost her mother and fled her father. She was picked off the streets by a nun of the Circle. In the convent, she learned to hone her artistic skills in drawing and painting fauna and flora, rather than icons and busts of saints. She discovered she disliked singing, and her breath was better spent on a tin whistle, where lyrics did not invade her voice. She was not a believer and could not be made to believe, not by rote, not by a scourge, and not by canting compassion. After a few beatings and lashings, she learned to act her role, and from her perch, she observed, made notes and maps in her head, and began scheming escape before they pressed her into vows or married her off to a good man. While on a street corner begging for alms, she met Ivie. They became blood sisters, and Ivie helped her leave the convent. She did not elaborate, and neither did Ivie. Lorcis had made their acquaintance when he heard a rapping on the door in the night, and they were shivering on the institution stoop, soaked through by rain and blood. He brought them to the hearth, which was dying but quickly revived, and Asylon did not speak to him for a long time. In the passing days, he would see Ivie tilt her head toward Asylon's lips so that she might whisper something only for her sister's ear. There were secrets, rituals, and words between only the sisters. When Asylon did speak to him for the first time, it was because Ivie had gone with Gavril to the village down the path, and she was left alone with him. Terror had peeled at her expressionless face. She had frozen from afar and with a look so forlorn that before Ivie departed, the witch had to whisper a great many reassurances to her while Lorcis and Gavril turned out the parlour to wait for them. After Ivie and Gavril headed out, Lorcis brought Asylon a plate of pan-seared tinned sardines and pickled mushrooms--an adaption of a Scarsgarian recipe which called for fresh fish and a bouquet of vegetables. He left her alone because she did not seem to want to move in his presence. After two hours, wherein he had lost himself in a book on Calaiean convents, she approached him in the library and returned to him the cleaned plate. Rather, she more appeared than approached, and startled Lorcis into delivering the pages and the plate into the air. Asylon was affected by none of this nonsense and spoke directly to him, quiet and composed. She had gone investigating deeper inside the building, and she had found something, a game table, and asked if he might not mind if they could bring it out. The conversation eventually turned to the history of the place, to the collection in the library, then to the warlock and the rogue in residence. Asylon was curious not in a cordial sense but in a fact-gathering manner. Lorcis saw she was assessing the place and--through his dialogue, his mannerisms, and his beliefs, as he did nearly all of the talking--him. Gaining and keeping her trust would require careful maintenance, but whatever she had concluded of him that day, it allowed her to grant him one admission: she disliked tinned sardines.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) }

{ (set: $note to $noteAsylon) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Enter Ivie's room.", 'searchCellIvie') (linkgoto: "Enter Asylon's room.", 'searchCellAsylon') (linkgoto: "Enter the Handmaiden's room.", 'searchCellHandmaiden') (linkgoto: "Enter Lorcis's room.", 'searchCellLorcis') </div> ](else:)[ <div class='o'> (if: $observation's asylonReading is 0)[(linkgoto: "Enter Asylon's room.", 'searchCellAsylonEnd')] (if: $observation's handmaidenVoices is 0)[(linkgoto: "Enter the Handmaiden's room.", 'searchCellHandmaidenEnd')] (linkgoto: "Enter Lorcis's room.", 'searchCellLorcisEnd') </div> ] }

{ <div class='grid-decision'> (if: $inv contains $itemHoney)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalGiveSex')", 'calGiveSexSelected')] (if: $inv contains $itemTobacco)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalGiveSmoke')", 'calGiveSmokeSelected')] (if: $inv contains $itemHare)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalGiveFood')", 'calGiveFoodSelected')] (if: $inv contains $itemHoney and $inv contains $itemTobacco and $inv contains $itemHare)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'optionCalGiveAll')", 'calGiveAllSelected')] </div> }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-info'>Offer everything.</div> </div> }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-info'>Offer the Blister Honey.</div> </div> }

{ (if: (saved-games:) contains $savefile)[ (link: 'Load the last saved story.')[(loadgame: $savefile)] (else:)['Error - No saved story could be loaded.']] (else:)[] }

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#(print: $item's name) (print: $item's description) $oTop

#(print: $note's name) (print: $note's description) $oTop

Manage items.

Manage notes.

Manage journal entries.

{ (set: $entry to (dm: 'title', 'ENTRY TITLE', 'description', 'ENTRY DESCRIPTION', 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryGetAssistance to (dm: 'title', '#I. Acquire Aides, Asylon and the Handmaiden', 'description', "Thanks to an obliging Gavril, I've come into the possession of a phonograph, a marvel of a device which boasts the capabilities of recording and reproducing sound by engraving a functional representation of that sound's vibrations onto a wax cylinder, which when readdressed, replicates the sound, as it had resonated in that moment in history, through a horn-shaped amplifier. I shall be utilizing it in conjunction with an experiment I'd long hoped to conduct, as the timing is apt. This experiment comes in two parts: hypnotizing Cal so that I may learn more about him through his own words--if he can speak at all--and training one of the other witches in using the phonograph, which will come into play for later experiments. The target outputs of the induction are, firstly, to determine if Cal is susceptible; secondly, to discover whether he does bear an oral vocabulary beyond grunts and growls; thirdly, contingent on an affirmative of the previous target, to learn more about his character and history in his own words; and finally, optionally, should the induction take effect at all and the phonograph be properly handled, to obtain a record of his deeply sonorous voice. I had previously approached him and requested his participation, but this morning, he appeared entirely too distracted for a proper session, as if agitated or frustrated. I'm not certain how I read such moods in him--this time, it's in the way his breathing sounds. He's inconsistent. In the future not quite so distant, I should attempt to define my interpretations of his nonverbal communication and compare my notes over time to see if he actually possesses a pattern of physiological indicators of various emotions. Returning to the topic at hand, I'd like Cal admitted into a state of calm before this session goes underway. I believe relaxing him shall alleviate any stress-related resistences to induction. I shall need assistance from two willing individuals--someone to operate the machine whilst I direct Cal into a state of heightened concentration, as well as an additional person I may rely on to aid my efforts in calming him and then to act as transcriptionist during the session. Ivie has taken Marleau to County Daley, as her mothers tend to be more generous when the boy is present to dote upon. The institution should be receiving ample contributions upon the pair's return, although I cannot expect their presence soon enough. I've sent Artrius on reconnaissance in the moors to survey the Circle's projects there, so he won't be available for a while, either. It's just as well, since we disagree on the definition, applicability, and potential of hypnosis. I've no idea where Gavril is at this time, but he has played his part already, and I needn't occupy him further for the experiment. My options remain optimal. Asylon's curiosity and eagerness to learn makes her suitable for training in using the phonograph, but she has little patience for communicating with Cal and is understandably uneasy in his presence. The Handmaiden will most likely have opposite interests--the phonograph would be but another one of my toys, whereas she would relish witnessing Cal devouring a kill, should that be how we decide to place him at ease. I should search for them around the institution and ask them if they would like to be employed for these respective potential contributions. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryConvene to (dm: 'title', '#II. Convene with Asylon and the Handmaiden in the Parlour', 'description', "The Handmaiden, Asylon, and I shall convene in the parlour, which will be the setting of the induction. We must discuss how to pacify Cal before the session, for we must draw him from his endless work in such a way as to not perturb him. I have a plan, although I'm interested in hearing from Asylon and the Handmaiden. Allowing the expression of opinions not only strengthens the bond of a community but also brings great insight into character. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryConveneAsylon to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "Asylon is intrigued by the phonograph but has reservations about Cal, understandably so. I assured her of all our safety, for she is an essential part of the session and will be for following recordings. She is an ideal witch for this role, and above of all the others, I would prefer and can depend on her vigilance for and dedication to the future experiment concerning my voice. With passion, however understated, in the phonograph, she would also be an effective instructor to anyone else interested in a comprehensive lesson on the device. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryConveneHandmaiden to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "The Handmaiden is eager for blood, although I may have to disappoint her. She does wish to witness my methods in acting a dominator, a ridiculous notion, she seems to think. First of all, domination is not always an overt physical aggression or command, and I have other ways to bend others to my will. Secondly, the line of thinking which observes a master possessing a slave within a setting of entrancement does not sufficiently encompass the entirety of the methodology, and may lead to conclusions dangerously false. In her chants and dances, she may aim to subjugate her bound and gagged sacrifices, but this is no Sehtian ritual. I shall not be forcing Cal under my power. I will simply be his guiding hand. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalDecision to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', '', 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalDecisionSex to (dm: 'title', '#III. Placate Cal by Way of Coition', 'description', "Excellent. We have elected to pacify Cal by allowing the disspation of energy through carnal stimulation. We can help him understand and go about it by presenting him with an aphrodisiac. These sorts of potions are Ivie's business. As she isn't here, I'll have to help myself to her supply from her bedroom. Asylon and the Handmaiden, however, seem truly unconvinced of this method. Asylon wishes to give Cal some tobacco for his pipe, and the Handmaiden believed fresh meat would secure a more complacent subject. If we find any of these items, I suppose I could reconsider our course of actions. There seems to be benefits to each option all around. When I have the appropriate appeasing article for Cal, I should find him in his dungeon and give it to him. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalDecisionSmoke to (dm: 'title', '#III. Encourage Calm in Cal with Good Tobacco', 'description', "Asylon has suggested we pacify Cal by giving him good tobacco for his pipe. We have seen Cal sit at his desk to write and to smoke after working all day in his laboratory. Asylon had spied a box of tobacco in the shed. If Gavril is in the shed, I can ask him for it. Otherwise, I don't think he would mind if I took a pinch or two. The Handmaiden and I remain unconvinced this would work as effectively as my initial idea to subdue Cal with sex via an aphrodisiac. The Handmaiden thinks fresh meat would secure a more complacent subject. If we find any of these items, I should reconsider our course of actions. There seems to be benefits to each option all around. When I have the appropriate appeasing article for Cal, I should find him in his dungeon and give it to him. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalDecisionFood to (dm: 'title', '#III. Satiate Cal with Fresh Meat', 'description', "A fight for survival never looks pretty. Cal has not had fresh, raw meat in some time, and a morsel or two may settle his irritability. The Handmaiden's brilliant plan to lure and capture a hapless traveler must be set aside, owing to its lack of convenience and its questionable legality and necessity. Additionally, I have been attempting to wean Cal off devouring humans coming and going in Harrow Les, and I hardly think us preying on passers-by sets a proper example. Instead, we shall settle for sustenance less troublesome to obtain. The Handmaiden mentioned Gavril had earlier returned from a lark in the woods with game. I should visit his shed and, if he's there, ask him for his bounty. I would be willing to part with a bit of money, if he hedges. Although she did not voice her concerns over this method, Asylon seems to believe giving Cal food will only rile him up. Tobacco would be a better pacifier. Better yet would be an aphrodisiac. If we find any of these items, I should reconsider our course of actions. There seems to be benefits to each option all around. When I have the appropriate appeasing article for Cal, I should find him in his dungeon and give it to him. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalGiveAll to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "I've presented Cal with all the items we've obtained for him. Perhaps he would like to make the choice himself, or have them all. It doesn't matter so long as he's calm by the end of it. I've informed my aides that within an hour's time, I'd like to begin the experiment. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalGiveSex to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "I've given Cal the aphrodisiac. I'm sure the exertion it induces will deliver relief and satisfaction to him. I've also informed my aides that within an hour's time, I'd like to begin the experiment. Cal should be radiant with a post-coital glow by then. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalGiveSmoke to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "Cal is already making use of the fine tobacco we've given him and seems to be working off his earlier frustrations. I've informed my aides that within an hour's time, I'd like to begin the experiment. Cal should be relaxed by then, and satisfied with the application of our offering to him. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryCalGiveFood to (dm: 'title', '', 'description', "The hare will be a good burst of blood for Cal. He won't have had the rush of a hunt, and it may not satisfy his hunger, but the little treat will surely improve his mood. I've informed my aides that within an hour's time, I'd like to begin the experiment. Cal would be finished with the morsel far earlier than that, but this should give him some time to play with the bones. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryPrepare to (dm: 'title', '#IV. Make Final Preparations', 'description', "While Cal tires himself out, I would be well-deserving of my practice as a witch were I to retreat to my chamber and don the accroutrements of ritualism. Whenever I'm ready, I can seek out the Handmaiden to let her know she may bring Cal into the parlour. Then, we may finally begin the induction. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryInductionBegin to (dm: 'title', '#V. Perform the Induction', 'description', "I have assigned Asylon operation of the phonograph, and the Handmaiden, concurrent transcription. The induction appears to have succeeded, and my subject awaits my questions. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $entryInductionEnd to (dm: 'title', '#VI. Conclusion', 'description', "The experiment proceeded as conventionally as my past experiments have here at Hemlock Weald, which is to say, something somewhere went terribly wrong. The induction appeared successful, as I, employing the light-to-dark passage, was able to bring Cal's body into relaxation, and he obeyed my initial commands. However, when I began the questioning, his compliance fully dissolved, yet neither did he protest. His posture and the lack of mannerisms typical of him, such as rhythmic movements in parts of his body, signalled a subject under influence, but he made no perceptible response or effort to respond to my inquiries. Because I couldn't determine if he were under my influence or had come out of it, I elected to bring him out of hynposis as a precaution. Upon attempting to do so, he became aggressive and grappled me, which ultimately concluded the experiment. Notably, the voices had overwhelmed me the moment before then. Additionally, a magpie my aides and I believed to be quite deceased regained consciousness. Asylon released it, and that was--if my recollections are accurate--when Cal seized me, began to choke and suffocate me, and in the end, injected me with the cattle sedative intended for the contingency plan to subdue <i>him</i>. The irony is not lost on me. Poetic, yet less fatal than circumstances in </i>The Ogre of Telmacchus</i>, fortunately. The Handmaiden warned me prior to the experiment of the mortal's inclination to an exaggeration of pride. Perhaps it was not pride, not satisfaction, but curiosity, a need for satisfaction. Must one fault another for such a longing? A more comprehensive account and analysis of the expierment shall be recalled after the effects of the sedative have fully cleared. For now, I leave my thoughts in fragments to be reviewed with a fresh mind in the morning: I previously suspected Cal had reached into my throat to silence my incantation. There are more possibilities, of course, more speculation. The force of his fingers seemed desperate, as if he desired to explore inside of my body, perhaps in search of something. In search of a source? Do Cal and the voices speak the same langauge, and is this language only possible in another (unattainable?) mode of being? I'm getting ahead of myself. My aides observed Cal holding me after I had fallen unconscious. During this time, I was sleep talking in what I've long suspected to be the language of the voices, as no waking person has been able to understand me, and as I've not been able to understand the voices myself (reminder--this correlation is unproven and based solely on suspicions arising from my studies in demonology, possession, and auditory stigmata; I have long suspected the voices to be of a demonic variation, with the term demonic used synonymously to divine, which itself is broadened in the secular form of exceptional wisdom or discernment; a perception beyond our perception, the traces of which are seemingly contrarily detected within our perception). The Handmaiden said Cal appeared to be listening to me, although listening is not tantamount to understanding. And perhaps it was not an act of hearing but of feeling those vibrations, or otherwise perceiving through processes not like our own. Perhaps a bias for making sense of the world by fabricating connections and relationships to create meaning and patterns also creates a flawed methodology. His intentions are elusive, and what other options have I in the limited capacity of mortality? Am I looking at Cal wholly inaccurately? All of demonology? Certainly, demonology is a human-centric study, classifying humanity as a homogenous whole against an oppositional force likewise grouped as a single unit, by nature of our limited perception. In what other way can a mortal understand the world if not to identify, name, and classify? Although I must not force my subject's participation in convolution, nor coerce the subject into conforming to my biases, I wonder if Calberus, our man in the basement, is more than a man. He hears the voices, too. Perhaps. I must close this experiment but not before seeing if the Handmaiden's transcription and the phonograph, although replicators, may reveal new information or stimulate additional theories which could be utilized in the our awakening from this ontological nightmare. Then, one last thing before I retire for the night: I must go to my dear ogre. ", 'owned', 0, 'done', 0, 'scored', 0 )) }

{ <nav> <div class='nav-left'><div class='b'> (display: 'bMap') (display: 'bInventory') (display: 'bJournal') (display: 'bNotes') (display: 'bObservations') </div></div> <div class='nav-right'> (display: 'cardMenu') </div> </nav> }

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{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) </header> } The voices doubted him again. Lorcis could not comprehend their language, but their tones could sound judgmental and condescending. They took shape by echoes in his head and around him. They were as disruptive as solid bodies, interfering with his ongoing lines of research, including the very thread in which they were the subjects. It seemed they discouraged him from cultivating certain strains of knowledge, particularly of them. Lorcis had acquired a phonograph, which he hoped to make a supplemental staple of chronicling. He had already attempted, more than half-convinced of the silliness, to record the voices in the open air. They clamored aloud only for him, inside of him, but he humored himself and was appropriately disappointed and resigned to confirm his idiocy on the matter. The phonograph did pick up noises--the birds outside his window, the scraping of rats in the walls, and other irrelevant ambiance. He simply needed another point of access to the voices, and he determined that point would be his own vocalizations. Lorcis could describe through pen and paper his aural hallucinations--manifestations--but only by secondhand accounts could he do likewise for his own cryptic cant, which surfaced during sleep and was as obscure as the voices themselves. Ivie had described his somniloquy as a one-sided interrogation in a forgotten language. Gavril had said Lorcis "heaved aback a lop-eye," or raved like a gravedigger, a madman. Neither the witch nor the rogue could replicate the exact phrases uttered, not with any alphabet in their repertoire. Lorcis would not be able to comprehensively study the voices without hearing his own errant mutterings for himself. Before initiating a new investigation into glossolalia, Lorcis required a reliable aide who could operate the phonograph while he slept. To his knowledge, none of the other witches had experience with such a device, which necessitated training in order for the aide to repeat the process unsupervised. He needed to ensure that when time came for his own role as subject, the operator of the phonograph would, frankly, not foul it all up. This training would be accomplished through a second experiment, one where a recording, or the loss of it, would be of little substantial consequence to the trial itself, without diverging into frivolous parlour entertainment put on by citizens whose occupation was company, leisure, and amusement. A limited number of cylinders for the phonograph disinclined Lorcis to wasting any more of them on trivia, and implementing them for the second experiment, while also educating an operator, would accomplish double what a paltry exercise might have done. It had the potential to open additional paths for various other interests of his, for the subject would be the man in the basement. Lorcis would conduct a hypnosis session to bring the nonverbal Calberus into a state of deep concentration, which might allow him the resources necessary in articulating mysteries of his mind through speech. The experiment had two objectives: to learn of Calberus's susceptibility to hypnosis, and to train at least one of the other witches in using the phonograph. The two witches currently in the vicinity were Asylon and the Handmaiden. Asylon would be inclined to tinkering with the phonograph, and the Handmaiden had ample experience handling the ogre. Lorcis would begin the experiment, <i>$experimentName</i>, by asking them both for assistance. <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin preparations.', 'sceneParlour')</div>

{ <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Release Calberus.', 'endStory')</div> }

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{ (if: $entryGetAssistance's owned is 0)[(set: $entryGetAssistance's owned to 1) (if: $entryGetAssistance's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryGetAssistance's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ (if: $entryGetAssistance's done is 0)[ (set: $entryGetAssistance's done to 1) ] }

{ (set: $observation to (dm: 'asylonDrawing', 0, 'handmaidenSword', 0, 'ivieBureau', 0, 'dungeonWindowLook', 0, 'lorcisPortraitChange', 0, 'asylonInvestigation', 0, 'calDolls', 0, 'calReassure', 0, 'calObserve', 0, 'calQuestionName', 0, 'calQuestionFrom', 0, 'calQuestionUnderstand', 0, 'transcriptionRead', 0, 'phonographPlayAgain', 0, 'thinkAboutFriends', 0, 'asylonReading', 0, 'handmaidenVoices', 0 )) # (set: $obsAsylonDrawing to "<div class='bullet'>Discussed art with Asylon.</div>") (set: $obsHandmaidenSword to "<div class='bullet'>Asked the Handmaiden about her collection of swords.</div>") (set: $obsIvieBureau to "<div class='bullet'>Rummaged through Ivie's bureau.</div>") (set: $obsDungeonWindowLook to "<div class='bullet'>Looked through the dungeon observation window to witness the effects of the offering on Calberus.</div>") (set: $obsLorcisPortraitChange to "<div class='bullet'>Changed into ritual garb for Calberus.</div>") (set: $obsAsylonInvestigation to "<div class='bullet'>Checked on Asylon and her card reading in the parlour before the experiment.</div>") (set: $obsCalDolls to "<div class='bullet'>Examined Calberus's dolls.</div>") (set: $obsCalReassure to "<div class='bullet'>Reassured Calberus about the experiment.</div>") (set: $obsCalObserve to "<div class='bullet'>Observed Calberus working.</div>") (set: $obsCalQuestionName to "<div class='bullet'>Asked Calberus for his name.</div>") (set: $obsCalQuestionFrom to "<div class='bullet'>Asked Calberus where he comes from.</div>") (set: $obsCalQuestionUnderstand to "<div class='bullet'>Asked Calberus if he could understand.</div>") (set: $obsTranscriptionRead to "<div class='bullet'>Read the Handmaiden's transcription of the session.</div>") (set: $obsPhonographPlayAgain to "<div class='bullet'>Played the phonograph again.</div>") (set: $obsThinkAboutFriends to "<div class='bullet'>Thought about the other witches and the rogue.</div>") (set: $obsAsylonReading to "<div class='bullet'>Talked with Asylon about her card reading and saw her drawing of Lorcis and Calberus.</div>") (set: $obsHandmaidenVoices to "<div class='bullet'>Got lectured by the Handmaiden about sacred diseases and the voices of Seht.</div>") }

{ (set: $score's observationCount to it + 1) }

Manage observations.

{ (set: $observation's asylonDrawing to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

Manage companions.

{ # (set: $companionParty's companionCount to it + 1) # (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'title')[(display: 'messageCompanionAdd')] }

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitCompanion1')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCompanion1Hover')", 'portraitCompanion1')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCompanion1HoverHighlighted')", $return)] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #Portrait of (print: $companion1's title) ##(print: $companion1's nameFull) </header> } { <div class='grid-card'> <div class='col-card'>(display: 'bPortraitCompanion1Feature')</div> <div class='col-info-card'>(print: $companion1's description)<br><br>$oTop</div> </div> }

<div class='feature'>(display: 'portraitCompanion1FeatureNoHover')</div>

<div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $companion1's portraitS)</div>

<div class='card'>(print: $companion1's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $companion1's title)</h1>(print: $companion1's nameFull)</div></div>

{(linkgoto: 'Go to the library.', 'sceneLibrary')}

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's library) </header> } { (display: 'library0') } (display: 'searchLibrary') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesEntranceHall')

(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[{ <div class='o'> (display: 'toConservatory') (linkgoto: "Go to the spring house.", 'sceneSpringHouse') (display: 'toShed') </div> } { <div class='o'> (display: 'toEntranceHall') (display: 'toKitchen') (display: 'toInstitution') </div> }](else:)[{<div class='o'>(display: 'toYard')</div>}]

{ (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the kitchen.', 'sceneKitchen')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the kitchen.', 'sceneKitchen')] }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's kitchen) </header> } { (display: 'kitchen0') } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')

{ (linkgoto: 'Go to the cellblock.', 'sceneCellblock') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) </header> } { (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'cellblock0')](else:)[(display: 'cellblockEnd')] } (display: 'searchCellblock') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesFirstFloor')

{(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneDungeon' or (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[(linkgoto: 'Go to the basement hall.', 'sceneBasementHall')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go downstairs to the basement.', 'sceneBasementHall')]}

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's basementHall) </header> } { (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'basement0')](else:)[(display: 'basementEnd')] } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')

{ (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneEntranceHall' or (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[(linkgoto: 'Exit to the yard.', 'sceneYard')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the yard.', 'sceneYard')] }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's yard) </header> } { (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 1 and $entryPrepare's done is 0)[(display: 'yard1')] (else:)[(display: 'yard0')] } (display: 'searchYard') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')

{ (linkgoto: 'Go to the conservatory.', 'sceneConservatory') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's conservatory) </header> } { (display: 'conservatory0') } (display: 'searchConservatory') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')

{(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'searchShedLoft')[(linkgoto: 'Go down the ladder.', 'sceneShed')](else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the shed.', 'sceneShed')]}

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) </header> } { (display: 'shed0') } (display: 'searchShed') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')

{ (linkgoto: 'Go to the lavatory.', 'sceneLavatory') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's lavatory) </header> } { (display: 'lavatory0') } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesFirstFloor')

(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneFirstHall')[{ <div class='o'> (display: 'toCellblock') (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'toLavatory')] </div> } {<div class='o'>(display: 'toEntranceHall')</div> }](else:)[{<div class='o'>(display: 'toFirstHall')</div>}]

{ <div class='o'> (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 0 and $entryCalDecision's owned is 1 and ( not($inv contains $itemTobacco) or not($inv contains $itemHare)))[(linkgoto: "Search the shed floor.", 'searchShedFloor1')] (else:)[(linkgoto: "Search the shed floor.", 'searchShedFloor0')] (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 0 and $entryCalDecision's owned is 1 and not($inv contains $itemHoney))[(linkgoto: "Search Gavril's loft.", 'searchShedLoft1')] (else:)[(linkgoto: "Search Gavril's loft.", 'searchShedLoft0')] </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Floor </header> } The shed opened by double doors and boasted a full-height loft. There was not much business for Lorcis inside or around the shed. Still, he was intrigued by the assortment of so many things which he had not really ever had either the occasion or the compulsion to touch: a workbench with an attached vise, various pieces of lumber, heavy work tools, sacks bulging with contents, barrels empty and filled, crates of things someone thought were worth saving. Gardening, farming, and land maintenance tools filled one corner, along with several musical instruments left by the Circle, including a domra and an oud. Pelts and game hung from the beams of the loft beside a cold, shaded window in the furthest end of the shed. In that same alcove under the loft, a cabinet and wardrobe framed a stove, fronted by two mismatched wooden chairs loose around a square table. A deck of playing cards was laid out on the table, abandoned mid-game in spread for a solitary player. (unless: $noteList contains $noteGavril)[ (display: 'addNoteGavril')]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Gavril's Loft </header> } Gavril's loft was at the top of an upright ladder. He had reinforced the area with railings, beams, and posts from which to hang hooks, drapes, laundry, nets, traps, and an assortment of blades. Crates nestled against the casement formed a sniper's roost, sighting into the thicket and not, Lorcis was relieved to see, toward the institution proper. Among the rogue's stash of arms were pistols, rifles, a coach gun, a crossbow, and a recurve bow. Ammunition, scopes, and bayonets were also collected nearby, as were a number of empty beer bottles, vials, ampoules, and syringes. A tin plate and fork had been left atop a smaller crate, cleaned so that he would not have to bed with the rats. His straw pallet was piled under the slope of the roof, sheltered from the sunlight and covered with one of the old furniture sheets and a wool blanket. He most likely slept with a dagger under his pillow, and a loaded pistol beside. (if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 0)[(if: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[ The Handmaiden remained on ground level, leaning against the wall with an expression of apathy encompassing her stance. That was fine with Lorcis, for there was no need to crowd the loft. ] Asylon sat at the edge of the sunbeams from the window, beside the ladder. She had heard Lorcis approaching, but it was no occassion to tear herself away from her notebook. She was sketching a dead magpie, which she had laid on the floor in the sunlight. (unless: $noteList contains $noteAsylon)[ (display: 'addNoteAsylon')](elseif: not($noteList contains $noteGavril))[ (display: 'addNoteGavril')] (display: 'dialogueAsylon')] <div class='o'>(display: 'toShed')</div>

Rising though Harrow Les's fog, the ruins of the (print: $institution's name) stood among sprawling overgrowth, gripped by the limbs of oaks, alder, spruce, and ash. Double rows of witheroaks arched overhead, crossing branches like a woven cage separating dwellers of the land from the matte grey sky. The trees' roots had overturned stones that made up the mottled plaza, and the three-storied house was considerably aged, depressed by vegetation, crumbling lime mortar, and weathered calcimine. By the low stone wall and broken gate were the stables and stable house, which were all crushed by a fallen tree. Although Harrow Les had been creeping into the building, the institution was a tranquil location, a necessity for its previous inhabitants. Yet its forlorn setting contributed to its downfall. When undesireables were so far away, they were easy to ignore and to forget. Now, vermin and pests made the halls their home, and the witches too. In the overcast daylight, ravens stalked the grounds, and the lightless windows belied the institution's occupation. (unless: $noteList contains $noteInstitution)[ (display: 'addNoteInstitution')(unless: $noteList contains $noteForest)[(display: 'addNoteForest')]]

Lorcis had set the phonograph on an end table beside an armchair, the seat for the subject. He would dictate while standing to the subject's right side, and Asylon would control the phonograph standing on the left. The Handmaiden was to sit at the writing table by the window, to transcribe by hand all that was spoken. He had temporarily banished the typewriter to the library, beside the other one, for the clacking of the operation would cause too much of a disturbance for the subject and for the recording. A hutch held vials, books, and trinket boxes in one corner of the room, and a game table was in the corner opposite. Dust motes and moths glowed over them in the cloudy light of tall sash windows. The subject would face the unfurnished wall between the windows, rather than toward the center of the room and beyond the doorway, as the armchair was normally situated. Lorcis believed Calberus was an inquisitive individual, needing to understand what was happening as it happened, what had happened, and what was to happen, all while preoccupied with further stimuli from his environment, which was sure to overburden his perceptions. He could appear distracted and concentrated all at once, and Lorcis suspected a blank wall, much like a featureless darkness, might be inoffensive to his senses. (if: $entryCalDecision's owned is 0)[(if: $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon is 1)[ Asylon stood in front of the phonograph, examining its mechanisms without touching. Her lips held the slightest pout of impatience, for she would not get to play with the machine until after Lorcis acquired the Handmaiden's aid. ](elseif: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[ The Handmaiden waited for Lorcis in the hall, expecting him to join her shortly, for they had yet to acquire Asylon's aid. ]]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Game Table </header> } The game table and the hutch were two of the few stately furnishings left in the institution after the Circle departed. The table was constructed of a dark wood top and a heavy cast iron base, as was the severe artistry of Calaiean craftsmanship. Asylon had uncovered it from under a sheet inside a storage closet while exploring, undeterred by fatigue from travel and from the structural inconsistencies threatening sound footing throughout the building. Having hesitated by the potential dangers in every creak and groan, Lorcis himself had not yet ventured into that area of the building, and when Asylon returned with news of her finding, he cautioned her on treading the rotting corridors and then sent the rogue to assist. She and Gavril retrieved the heavy thing and hauled it to the shed behind the yard, where they spent hours together restoring it. It was Asylon's first time handling the tools and the varnish, and Lorcis remembered being pleasantly surprised by the tender manner in which the rogue guided her. Now, the table served Asylon's card readings. As with all her belongings, she tended to it with the intention of making it last. She had oiled it so that metal and wood shone. She dusted it every first day of the week. After a reading, she wiped down the surface and topped it with a small vase of plants picked from the yard. She had little ownership while living at the convent, not even of her own voice or body. Now that she could have her own things, she treasured them. (unless: $noteList contains $noteAsylon)[ (display: 'addNoteAsylon')]

{ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Examine the game table.", 'searchParlourGameTable') </div> }

{ (set: $note to $noteGavril) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (if: $entryConvene's done is 1)[(print: $entryConvene's description)] (print: $entryConveneAsylon's description) }

{ (if: $entryConveneAsylon's owned is 0)[ (set: $entryConveneAsylon's owned to 1) # (display: 'addEntryConvene') (display: 'doneEntryConveneAsylon')] }

{ (if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 0)[ (set: $entryConveneAsylon's done to 1) (display: 'messageJournalUpdate') # (display: 'doneEntryConvene')] }

{ (set: $note to $noteHandmaiden) (display: 'noteAdd') }

The forest surrounding Hemlock Weald Institution groaned with the wind, and ghostly calls and cries were swept along the thicket depths. Beyond the grounds within arm's reach, Lorcis could see almost nothing but the blackness that was Harrow Les. He expected Ivie, Marleau, and Artrius to have secured shelter somewhere to sleep away the night. He wondered if Gavril had returned to his shed, was camped out with the nocturnal creatures, or had found a country bed to warm and share. Bats flickered between darkness and stars among the witheroak branches overhead, folding in and out of the eaves of the highest roofs. The faint glow from the oil lamp in the parlour windows fluttered, too, as if people were weaving between the window and the light and lingering, but Lorcis knew no one was there.(if: $observation's thinkAboutFriends is 0)[(display: 'addObservationThinkAboutFriends')] (unless: $noteList contains $noteInstitution)[ (display: 'addNoteInstitution')]

{ (set: $note to $noteInstitution) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ <div class='o'> (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Speak with Asylon.', 'asylon0')](else:)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Asylon about the magpie and her card reading.', 'asylon1Reading')] </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $asylon's nameFull) ##(print: $asylon's title) </header> } Lorcis stood by the window, listening to the trees in the wind, the songbirds and an occasional hawk, and the scratch of Asylon's pen over the paper. Her hand moved quickly as she shaped out the feathers. On the previous page, she had drawn a sallow moth, labeled its parts, and recorded details of her finding: the moth's common and scientific names, date found, time found, location found. Potential causes of death. He heard a voice singing in the distance, outside the window--an aria, at first--taunting him to turn toward the thicket. The voice divided, became one, and spread again. They were fluid, deceptive, and demanded him as their audience, but he would spend his time as he saw fit, with whom he saw fit. He kept his eyes on Asylon, her notebook, and the black lines which were becoming a bird. { <div class='o'> (if: $observation's asylonDrawing is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Asylon about her drawing.', 'asylon0Drawing')] (linkgoto: 'Ask Asylon for aid in the experiment.', 'asylon0Join') </div> }

The muddy trail wound behind a bushel of overgrowth and led to an old gambrel shed. When the institution had been running, the shed's lot and interior were workshops for carpentry, butchery, and light smithing, as well as a storage facility and shelter for the groundskeeper. There were piles of stone for wall repairs, now nearly cemented by layers of leaves and other forest debris. Beside the stones lay other containment materials which had ended up unused--wooden rails, painted pickets, and wrought iron balusters. Ivy plastered old spare wheels and firewood stacks against the wall next to a stone forge, and broken vessels had been left strewn about under creeping flora. Gavril lived alone at the shed, apart from the witches in the house. He had erected a spit over a campfire in front of the main structure, where he made his own meals. More often than not, he did not join the others at the dining table, although Lorcis and Ivie extended multiple invitations. Some days, they could not find him at all, but he was there, in the shed or in the forest beyond. Despite his tendency toward solitude, he did not reject their company. Lorcis had seen Ivie disappear around the thicket in the direction of the shed, then return no earlier than the day after. The Handmaiden and Artrius found uses in the workshop while Gavril was up and about the lot, and none had a scuffle about it. Even Asylon and Marleau made occasions to infiltrate the area, and the rogue made no trouble to shoo them. Lorcis himself hardly crossed the bridge, and while he was not looking, the shed had grown into something of a fort. It appeared the lone wolf was denning.

(if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneBasementHall')[{ <div class='o'> (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'toKitchen')] (display: 'toDungeon') </div> } { <div class='o'>(display: 'toEntranceHall')</div> }](elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneKitchen')[{ <div class='o'> (display: 'toBasementHall') (display: 'toYard') </div> }](else:)[{<div class='o'>(display: 'toBasementHall')</div>}]

{ (if: $endStoryEnabled is 1)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the dungeon.', 'sceneDungeonEnd')] (elseif: $entryPrepare's owned is 1 and $entryInductionBegin's done is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Look through the dungeon observation window.', 'sceneDungeonWindow')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the dungeon.', 'sceneDungeon')] }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's dungeon) </header> } { (display: 'dungeon0') } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')

{ (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneFirstHall')[(linkgoto: 'Go downstairs to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')] (elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneBasementHall')[(linkgoto: 'Go upstairs to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')] (elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneYard')[(linkgoto: 'Go into the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')] (elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'locationInstitution')[(linkgoto: 'Enter the institution.', 'sceneEntranceHall')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go to the entrance hall.', 'sceneEntranceHall')] }

The yard was partially circumscribed by a stone fence and wild hedges and trees left long to their own course. The flattened dirt made a versatile ground and offered a clear path to the conservatory, an outhouse, and wooden gates leading further into the forest. The conservatory, a glass room adjacent to the building proper, was tucked in the hedges. Lavender, lilac, honeysuckle, and jasmine masked the outhouse. One wooden gate opened to a once-tamed mossy patch of Harrow Les, where inmates would have been able to roam with supervision. Ivie had hoped to make use of the glade by raising a few chickens for eggs--she had more than once dropped a delicate dozen while gamboling through the forest from the nearest village, quite a precarious ways from the institution, apparently--but Gavril had yet to construct either the chicken coop or the foraging corral. He had, however, set up a swing on one of the independent trees near the clearing's boundary, which Ivie and the young witches enjoyed. Beside the glade and stone fence, a stream provided the institution's inhabitants fresh water for cooking and washing. Downstream flowed over a modest precipice. Upstream, there was a stone spring house, where the witches stored dairy, fruits, vegetables, and meat. A plank bridge over the channel in front of the spring house extended the institution's domain to the groundskeeper's shed, which stood out of sight in the thicket. (unless: $noteList contains $noteForest)[ (display: 'addNoteForest')]

The conservatory was a skeletal structure housing vegetables, fruit, and herbs for medicinal and culinary uses. Although it was boarded up and sealed by woody ivy where glass had broken, enough sunlight passed through to sustain the small garden, planted in the ground and in pots. The witches' latest additions were lemon, lime, and fig saplings. Lorcis had established a routine for Asylon and Marleau--and sometimes the rogue--to take part in maintaining the greenhouse, to impart upon them an appreciation for the labors of sustainability and to keep them attuned to time and the efficient use of it. Yet their minds wandered easily, for instead of weeding, the young witches might sit together on a bench and help themselves to a few berries throughout a discussion of the latest unsolved murder. They could complete their tasks in a timely manner if Ivie were supervising, if she, too, did not chat away the hours. She headed the conservatory efforts in conjunction with her herbal business. Her apothecary table stood beside the bench and potting station, just in front of a sprawling pumpkin patch.

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's entranceHall) </header> } { (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'hall0')](else:)[(display: 'hallEnd')] } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesEntranceHall')

{ (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneCellblock' or (passage:)'s name contains 'sceneLavatory')[(linkgoto: 'Go to the hall.', 'sceneFirstHall')](else:)[(linkgoto: 'Go upstairs to the first floor.', 'sceneFirstHall')] }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's firstFloorHall) </header> } { (if: $endStoryEnabled is 0)[(display: 'firstHall0')](else:)[(display: 'firstHallEnd')] } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesFirstFloor')

A transom over the entrance's double doors and matching side lights opened the vestibule to the ashen hues and fog of the outdoors. A high ceiling accommodated a tall window which allowed sunlight upon the stairs leading up to the witches' rooms. The ground floor hall opened to the parlour on one side and the library on the other, then out the back to the yard. Other rooms and paths had yet to be cleared and renovated, and in the crevices of the ruins lurked vermin, perhaps ghosts, and the unknown. Abandoned ritual scrawlings, artistic renditions in paint or blood or other media, and some floriferous language defaced the peeling walls on all levels of the building, evidence of previous vagrant or shortlived inhabitants in the years following the Circle's desertion.

The room, connected to the corridor by two sets of double doors, had been the patients' sleeping quarter, suitable for housing twenty efficiently yet comfortably, although the cots and old rosters indicated there had been at least twice that number at one time. Paned windows on the doors, along with interior windows set above whitewashed wainscotting, ensured visual access at the attendants' convenience. The beds had been arranged between ceiling-high windows along the wall furthest from the vestibule, providing the monitors a systematic approach to accounting for each and every patient without the need to set foot in the room. A fireplace, shielded by a cast iron screen, stark and evocative of the Calaiean iconography, created a source of heat and an incentive for gathering, which was insight into the Circle's behavioral studies. The fire both warmed the institution's reputation and encouraged the patients from wandering too far from supervision. Of course, it also produced the minor consequence of keeping patients from freezing to death. When they were first settling down, Lorcis had Gavril remove the unusable furnishings, namely the brittle cots and the musty bedding, which rats, spiders, and snakes had become fond of. The rogue took some items into his shed behind the institution, perhaps to salvage scraps for a market lucrative enough for the effort. If the mercenary mind was fed generously, he had little reason to complain over sweating for the reward. After a good airing out, sweeping, and scrubbing, the room revealed itself to be one of the better preserved locations in the building. Lorcis stored his meager possessions--his books and papers--in the safest place on the premises. Now, with the addition of shelving and storage, a few artifacts, some rare tomes and scrolls, documents, a long hardwood table, and a suitable sitting area for reading and tea, the old patient room had transformed into the witches' library.

The witches lived on one side of the upstairs hall. The other way had collapsed, and the gap in the landing was too far of a leap, never mind the instability of the flooring. Asylon and Gavril had been on the other side, scaling the exterior wall and entering through a broken window, or they had broken the window to get in. Ivie and Marleau had exhibited some curiosity, and the Handmaiden and Artrius had made no commentary. The voices sometimes beckoned from the depths across the hole, but Lorcis turned invariably toward the window at the end of the cellblock hall.

A narrow corridor opened to a series of numbered rooms, once solitary confinement cells for patients held by the Circle. Each cell had an iron-barred window and a door with a peephole for attendants to look into. The witches had salvaged six cells for their present population. Lorcis, who took initiative in the selection, made room number six at the end of the corridor his own. Ivie settled into room three, and Asylon, wishing to be across the hall from her sister, claimed number four. Marleau, daunted by choice, turned into the first room by the stairwell. The Handmaiden moved into five, across from Lorcis. The final room went to Artrius. Calberus remained in the dungeon, and Gavril made his bed in the shed on the outskirts of the institution. (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 0)[ All the doors were shut except the Handmaiden's, and the husky spices of incense lay heavy over the hall. ]

Out in the middle of Harrow Les, Lorcis missed Gallowvalsk's advanced plumbing systems, including hot water at his convenience. At the institution, the witches had been making use of the stream for water, for neither a well nor a pump were at their disposal. However, the Circle's rituals of cleanliness meant they were enthusiastic to install lavatories exemplary of the time. The walls were white tile, glazed by sunlight through a large window and lunette. A window on the door gave observers a view, too. Attendants maintained patients' safety by sacrificing their privacy, and they upheld the institution rules stating that the use of the facilities were forbidden to the servants who maintained them. The business with servants was of no great consequence, for the Circle could always secure the services of another chambermaid who would do the work for half the pay and half the fussing; whereas, the Circle's reputation and sponsorship relied on the wellbeing--or perceived wellbeing--of their patients. The lavatory was outfitted with a spacious hardwood washstand, a matching wooden commode with a hinged lid and a chamber pot hidden inside, a cast iron heating stove, and a shower system consisting of an enameled bathtub and a perforated vessel attached to a pulley. All these were repaired and restored by Lorcis and Gavril the first days of their habitation at Hemlock Weald, for Lorcis had been dreadfully exhausted amusing the wilderness.

The basement was the warren connecting the institution from one end to the other. There were secret doorways for prudent servants, camoflauged into the surrounding wall on the public side, but these were not currently accessible to the witches either by unsafe passage or by rubble and other physical obstructions. The closed passages suited Lorcis well, for he was not sure if he needed people, or ghosts, leaping out of walls so unexpectedly. A row of interior windows and a set of glass-paned double doors revealed a majority of the kitchen to the basement hall. The hall ended down a short flight of stairs to the dungeon door, which was a weighty block of iron rusting about its face, edges, and the welding of its bar handle. Whenever opened, the door let out a groan as if in the throes of a prolonged death. Gavril had oiled the hinges but noted, with some foreboding, that they were likely not to last for many more turns. A grated slot window with a hinged cover cut into the door's body, saving the witches from opening it unnecessarily should they wish to view the dungeon's resident. Odors of organisms ancient and forgotten rolled out in plumes through the iron screen, promising sights before they were seen.

Food preparation and cooking were both done in the main kitchen room. The witches' command of fire consisted of a fireplace, a cast iron range, a bread oven, and stone kiln where they made charcoal. The kitchen extended through an archway into the pantry and through another in the opposite direction into the scullery alcove. The witches stored flour, bread, alcoholic beverages, boxed goods, linens, tableware and utensils, and cleaning supplies in the pantry. Fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, dairy, and meat were kept in the colder temperatures within the spring house outside. Dish-washing and laundry were done in the scullery, which contained a copper, a wash basin on legs and with a spigot, and a postern to the yard, allowing access to the outdoors for deliveries and restocking, transferring clothing to the laundry lines, or collecting water from the stream. Lorcis had accidentally come upon Gavril and Ivie having many a fumble in the cover of the scullery alcove. The rogue had ambushed him there a few times, as well.

(if: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[The Handmaiden let Lorcis enter the dungeon alone. Neither did she fear the room nor find it abhorrent, but she had no immediate purpose within. ](if: $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon is 1)[Although Asylon had wandered through several hazardous perches the institution offered, she (if: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[also ]stopped short of entering the dungeon. She seemed uneased by the oppressive air. ]Hemlock Weald's dungeon was once its morgue. Calberus lived in the postmortem chamber. It was his bed, his study, and his laboratory. He stored tools, surgical equipment, chemicals, and human organs in the shelves which once bore bodies awaiting disposal. At the height of the institution's operation, a mass poisoning caused by the morning porridge eliminated thirty-eight of the forty-six patients. Official correspondence of the time contradicted itself on whether the bad breakfast had been accidental or intentional. The bodies of the dead were carried from the morgue and burned outside in the yard or glade, a procession which was certainly no funeral imparted by the Circle's administration. It was merely a way to dispose of corpses not worthy of Calaiel. Strains of light came from narrow rectangular windows on ground level--high on the dungeon walls and obstructed by overgrowth and erosion--and gave faint outlines to objects in the darkness. A table in the center of the room, barely brushed by light, was both Calberus's butcher block and operation bed. The ogre himself was there, a hulking shadow doing something very quietly and repetitively. He was sewing. After feasting on its meat and entrails, he had found use for a great hart carcass. The hollows of the deer's severed head, which was set atop the table, stared at Lorcis. It had been a massive creature with shreds of its challengers hanging upon the tines of its wing-like antlers. Behind those deadly clutches came and went the ogre's tremendous hands. Wild beasts had not always been his medium. He possessed an almost supernatural ingenuity in human anatomy, and his research and expertise had come from the sacrifice of many. Silhouettes of dark branches, clumps, and arching shapes gave form to the dungeon void. They appeared to be dead trees, but closer inspection, and the recognition of a nauseating olfactory permeance, revealed them to be the lineaments of the human figure. (unless: $noteList contains $noteCalberus)[ (display: 'addNoteCalberus')] (display: 'dialogueCalberus') (display: 'searchDungeon')

<div class='feature'>(display: 'portraitCompanion2FeatureNoHover')</div>

<div class='card'>(print: $companion2's portrait)<div class='card-name'><h1>(print: $companion2's title)</h1>(print: $companion2's nameFull)</div></div>

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'portraitCompanion2')[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCompanion2Hover')", 'portraitCompanion2')](else:)[(linkgoto: "(display: 'portraitCompanion2HoverHighlighted')", $return)] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #Portrait of (print: $companion2's title) ##(print: $companion2's nameFull) </header> } { <div class='grid-card'> <div class='col-card'>(display: 'bPortraitCompanion2Feature')</div> <div class='col-info-card'>(print: $companion2's description)<br><br>$oTop</div> </div> }

<div class='card-small hover-opacity'>(print: $companion2's portraitS)</div>

<div class='card-decision'>(print: $player's portraitD)</div>

{ (set: $player's portrait to '<div class="portrait-lorcis-warlock-hood"></div>') (set: $player's portraitS to '<div class="portrait-lorcis-warlock-hood small"></div>') (set: $player's portraitD to '<div class="portrait-lorcis-warlock-hood decision"></div>') (display: 'addObservationLorcisPortraitChange') }

<div class='card-decision'>(print: $companion1's portraitD)</div>

<div class='card-decision'>(print: $companion2's portraitD)</div>

{ <header> #(print: $asylon's nameFull) ##(print: $asylon's title) ###The Art of Evidence </header> } Asylon had the notebook on her lap, nestled in the spread of her plain pinafore. She seemed to not mind the simple cloths of the Calaiean habit she had grown up wearing. Attired in dark greys of her own choosing, and with a waxy white face and small angular hands, she looked much like the magpie, splayed out in the light and pinned to the floorboards before her. Although she was in good health, she bore the aspect of one afflicted, a pervasive pale grimness ideal for rainy weather, grave news, and funerals. As far as Lorcis understood, Asylon did not consider herself an artist. She was dismissive of "art," the purely decorative curios cluttering spaces and serving little purpose beyond stirring pretentious conversation and nurturing overdrawn sentimentality. The Calaiean convent had made her illustrate pleasing things, useless things. By their sharp delineations between high and low art, the refined and unrefined, and masters and amateurs, she had come to despise the beauty of those things which they glorified. She had little opportunity to study how alike art and science were, despite her own practice merging the creation of accurate visual representations with systematic problem solving. Lorcis suspected part of her denial in being an artist was to excuse the stark form of her drawings. Under scrutiny of Calaiean cognoscenti, her scientific illustrations were technical exercises devoid of passion, intended for study and not for introspection; she would have been disparaged as an amateur of the arts. At Hemlock Weald, she was not among those critics. Lorcis hoped by spending more time together, he could ease her into shedding the Circle's less desirable influences and, with as much regard as she held for pragmatism, appreciate art and its place in histories, cultures, and ideas. <div class='d'>$LORCIS How did it come to this?</div> He knelt beside her, and she shrugged without lifting her pen from the paper. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Blood on the beak indicates it was picking at a wound, probably livestock--the cows at Aspencroft. No external trauma. I'll dissect it, to see what it's ingested.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Where did you find the poor thing?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON In the center of a parliament. I chanced upon their investigation.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I suppose they hadn't much evidence to share, not quite as demonstrative as the diagram you're making.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON The birds did show a sign. They were gathered in a brimstone cross formation, from head to tail, wingtip to wingtip. So that will be the spread for my reading.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS When will your drawing come into play?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON We preserve without prejudice, that we'll not have to eat potatoes day after day. Isn't that what you said?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Well said at that, if I may add.</div> She took her intellectual lessons seriously. Ivie was thrilled to discover the institution had a library for her little sister to explore, and Asylon was no doubt eager to uncover the written words of the scant obscure texts and compendiums, although she left the classical plays and novels to Marleau. She sketched in the notebook Ivie had bought for her from Aspencroft, but she had not kept any sort of diary before Lorcis provided her with a separate blank book and gave her assignments to complete. Then she took off on her own, and he was quite proud to see her commanding her own investigations. Her prudence would have made her a wonderful scholar and teacher, yet traces of Calaiean repression, or her modesty, interfered with her progress. She did not want to recognize her own potential, only to see a case documented and closed. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Your illustration is strikingly lifelike, and you'll come to solve the poor bird's death soon enough, yet...</div> Asylon's shoulders sloped down at what she might have perceived as doubt. She turned to him, a look of consignment tinting her impassivity. <div class='d'>$LORCIS What if you drew something that wasn't there? Something not a representation of reality but an abstraction which indirectly constitutes reality?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON What would that accomplish?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS That's what I'm asking you.</div> Her eyes darkened in distrust. He knew she did not like to be held by the hand into traps, and previous lessons he had given her and Marleau made her understand his questions were tricky grounds to tread. She picked up her pen and returned to her drawing. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Nothing productive.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Is a productive life so reliant on tangible and material things?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Not on trinkets or baubles. Something has to show for your efforts.</div> She continued her work. With time and encouragement, perhaps she would be less harsh upon herself and her possibilities. (display: 'addObservationAsylonDrawing') (display: 'returnAsylon')

{ (set: $note to $noteCalberus) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (set: $note to $noteIvie) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (set: $note to $noteMarleau) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (set: $note to $noteArtrius) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (set: $note to $noteLorcis) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ (print: $entryConveneHandmaiden's description) }

{ (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's owned is 0)[ (set: $entryConveneHandmaiden's owned to 1) # (display: 'addEntryConvene') (display: 'doneEntryConveneHandmaiden')] }

{ (if: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 0)[ (set: $entryConveneHandmaiden's done to 1) (display: 'messageJournalUpdate') # (display: 'doneEntryConvene')] }

{ (print: $entryCalDecisionSex's title) (print: $entryCalDecisionSex's description) }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionSex's owned is 0)[(set: $entryCalDecisionSex's owned to 1)(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')] # (display: 'addEntryCalDecision') }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionSex's done is 0)[ (set: $entryCalDecisionSex's done to 1) ] }

{ (print: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's title) (print: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's description) }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's owned is 0)[(set: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's owned to 1)(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')] # (display: 'addEntryCalDecision') }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's done is 0)[ (set: $entryCaDecisionlSmoke's done to 1) ] }

{ (print: $entryCalDecisionFood's title) (print: $entryCalDecisionFood's description) }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 0)[(set: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned to 1)(display: 'messageJournalUpdate')] # (display: 'addEntryCalDecision') }

{ (if: $entryCalDecisionFood's done is 0)[ (set: $entryCalDecisionFood's done to 1) ] }

{ (print: $entryPrepare's title) (if: $entryCalGiveAll's done is 1)[(print: $entryCalGiveAll's description)] (elseif: $entryCalGiveSex's done is 1)[(print: $entryCalGiveSex's description)] (elseif: $entryCalGiveSmoke's done is 1)[(print: $entryCalGiveSmoke's description)] (elseif: $entryCalGiveFood's done is 1)[(print: $entryCalGiveFood's description)] (print: $entryPrepare's description) }

{ <header> #(print: $asylon's nameFull) ##(print: $asylon's title) ###Fascination of the Mystic </header> } Lorcis waited for a transition in Asylon's illustration from feathers to detailing its legs and feet before he cleared his throat. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Asylon, would you like to join me in running an experiment?</div> She gave him a brief, jaded look before returning to the magpie. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Like the last time? The awful offal affair?</div> (if: $hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[ He heard the Handmaiden make an insinuating grunt at the base of the ladder. ] <div class='d'>$LORCIS It does have to do with Cal, yes.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON So it <i>is</i> like the last time.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Perhaps, yes.</div> She folded her notebook, securing it and knotting her pen to it with an attached piece of twine. <div class='d'>$ASYLON What are you planning?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS It wouldn't have anything to do with us ingesting anything, certainly. I have acquired a phonograph.</div> Asylon looked up at him. <div class='d'>$ASYLON A phonograph? I saw one at the market. You really have one?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I do, and it's yours, too. This experiment is intended to grant you the practical opportunity to learn how to use and maintain it.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON What do I have to do?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Nothing strenuous. Simply operate the machine. I'm preparing for the experiment right now, in fact, and the phonograph is set up and ready for you in the parlour. Would you like to come along to see it?</div> Asylon's gaze lowered to her drawing. She remained silent for a moment, and Lorcis thought he heard her say something, but it was only the voices. <div class='d'>$ASYLON This experiment involves Cal, but how?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'll be bringing him into a deep state of concentration, where he may be open to answering a few of our questions.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON He doesn't talk.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS One of my hypotheses is that he can, or that he understands our spoken language and would like to communicate likewise, but he is inhibited in some way from expressing his thoughts through words. I'd like to test if hypnosis can help him navigate the trenches of his mind. And if you're there to help me, we may acquire an audio record of this development--the first for our institution archives.</div> Asylon did like a good mystery, but Calberus was another matter altogether. Madness was. Although she would detest the comparison, she seemed to share the fundamental ideology of madness as the Circle--not their methods securing research and solutions but their belief that madness, by definition, held no sense or meaning. Many societies were structured as such, not only the Circle's, and Lorcis did not judge harshly families, doctors, and literary masters for effectively concluding their relationships at the onset of a character's derangement, delirium, or insensibility. To the asylum, these poor wretches had to go, by no fault of their own. Society did not question their madness after it had bourgeoned into an identity, a stasis. People resigned to it, without further study or insight into alternative possibilities, for there need not be any more possibilities. What more was there to say? Madness was a state of being, a state of ending. Thus, Calberus was simply Calberus, always and to the end. Asylon would not want to debate. She had more immediate concerns, which Lorcis was certain he could read on her blank face. <div class='d'>$LORCIS It may console you to know there will be sufficient measures ensuring our safety.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON You said that last time.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Artrius and I have devised additional implements to hold up that promise. Cal has an iron muzzle now, and we've chains so that we may govern his mobility.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Has Artrius returned?</div> The soft lift in her voice made Lorcis slightly saddened to offer her a response in the negative. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'll be conducting the experiment with you and the Handmaiden alone.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON If Cal escapes his binds?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS The Handmaiden will move in.</div> Asylon appeared almost convinced.(if: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden is 1)[ She straightened her back and propped herself up on her knees to speak over the edge of the loft. <div class='d'>$ASYLON What will you do?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's expected that a heathen would be blinded by the very evidence she faces.</div> Again, Asylon glowered at Lorcis. He chuckled away some of her uncertainty.] <div class='d'>$LORCIS Well, then. Shall we be off?</div> Asylon pulled a handkerchief out of her satchel, unpinned the magpie and wrapped it inside the cloth, and tucked it gently inside the bag. She stood, brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt, adjusted her bonnet, and waited for Lorcis to go down the ladder first. (display: 'addCompanionAsylon')(display: 'addEntryConveneAsylon') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'sceneShed')</div>

{ (set: $observation's handmaidenSword to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's lorcisPortraitChange to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Gavril's Loft </header> } The Handmaiden and Asylon waited for Lorcis on ground level as he explored Gavril's loft. He did not have to dig much to find Gavril's stash of drugs scattered around the bed pallet. More than once, Lorcis had to remind Gavril to take medication suppressing his fits, for his prosperity as well as for the whole of the institution's. He had made note of the medicine's additional effects stifling both the rogue's rampant libido and excessive vigilance. A destructive persuasion, fear, or paranoia emerged when he was made to feel most vulnerable, which Lorcis had discovered one night when they were more or less strangers with a passion. Rather than succumb to the rogue's sudden bite and knife, Lorcis had retreated into the dungeon and sheltered within the ogre's incidental protection. The pursuit and siege only ended when Gavril went silent at the door, then groaned and collapsed into convulsions. Weeks later when the sisters had joined the coven, Ivie provided a remedy to the rogue's ailment. Asylon, distant initially, shared with him how to read her mystic cards. Gavril complained about and did make maneuvers to avoid doses, and he did dismiss the card games because they excluded betting and winning, but it was the coven's company which had, perhaps for the first time in his life, allowed him peace and home. To compensate for the medication's sedating effects when she wanted him, Ivie plied Gavril with an abdundance and a variety of aphrodisiacs. She did like him to degrade her. When verbal attacks were not enough, and despite Lorcis's warnings against rage-induced biting, she would administer more potent drugs to transform Gavril into a veritable beast, hungry, cruel, savage, and yet bridled. Although the witch was not of the persuasion, she could have been an exemplar of Seht, having confident command of the powers of her own submission. Lorcis searched among Gavril's stash for Blister Honey, a viscous substance which could be mixed into a drink for easier and safer absorption. Ivie would have already blended the aphrodisiac into appropriate dosages when dispensing it to the market or to the rogue, so Lorcis had no need to further dilute it. The rogue had consumed a few vials of the liquid already, but Lorcis found one unopened. It would be mild for a man of Calberus's mass, acting as a suggestion rather than a persuasion, yet compelling nonetheless. (unless: $noteList contains $noteGavril)[ (display: 'addNoteGavril')] <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Take the Blister Honey.', 'takeHoney')</div> <div class='o'>(display: 'toShed')</div>

{<div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Speak with the Handmaiden.', 'handmaiden0')</div>}

{ <header> #(print: $handmaiden's nameFull) ##(print: $handmaiden's title) </header> } The voices hushed momentarily, as if fleeing the Handmaiden's presence. Her hood was drawn back from her face, which was stern and almost always so. She dressed in dark linen, and with the sword in her lap and an oiled rag in her hand, she resembled a hostile peasant, rather than the adorned fanatic of the Horned Aspis she would become during a crescent hour. However, the painted scars coiling down the length of her arms made her devotion no secret, and her arms, stalwart in both strength and submission, were most often bared to brandish her piety and her lethality. { <div class='o'> (if: $observation's handmaidenSword is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Ask the Handmaiden about her swords.', 'handmaiden0Sword')] (linkgoto: 'Ask the Handmaiden for aid in the experiment.', 'handmaiden0Join') </div> }

{ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Examine Calberus's dolls.", 'searchDungeonDolls') </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's dungeon) ###Calberus's Dolls </header> } The gnarled configurations gathered around the dungeon were the amalgamation of individuals upon individuals. Out of the textured darkness and ripples of faint sunlight, Lorcis made out hints of a superhuman conglomerate. A pair of hands, cupped in vespers, was the gargantuan compilation's jaws. Rearrangement was as often applied as subtraction, addition, and repetition. An auto-icon, with its doors opened to a glass pane, enclosed three headless abstractions of the human form, each hand on a shoulder of the others, their neck stumps caved in toward the center of their tribunal and fused into one jointure. Severed heads, eyeballs in their mouths and teeth in their eye sockets, were dedicated to a nosegay seated behind the other mannequins and under a window. The heads were harvested onto twisting arms and hands, which were splayed like stems, leaves, and petals. Some of the figures were puppets, controlled by inserting one's own parts to manually manipulate their arms or legs or mouths. For what practical purpose, Lorcis had no idea. He had yet to determine whether they were artistic sculptures, tools, furnishings, ritual totems, or something else altogether. The figures and body sleeves were disturbing enough, but most fascinating, and most terrifying, were the clockwork dolls. They could be wound up with a key and would perform a set routine. Automata included a diminutive character with twenty elongated fingers which could play a duet on a miniature harspichord. Another one of the machines shuddered and simulated stigmata. Then there were the lovemaking dolls. Calberus's statues of woven flesh gave material insight into the enigma that was his mind. He bore a morbid, seemingly divine understanding of the human body and the possibilities of form, function, and makeup. Estimating upon the rough count of victims in the dungeon, it appeared the ogre had resided within the institution for a very long time. No one of his description could be found in the records of patients, administration, or hired help Lorcis had salvaged, but the papers were far from comprehensive. He was not convinced there was nothing recorded on someone as forbidding as the man in the basement. (if: $observation's calDolls is 0)[(display: 'addObservationCalDolls')]

{ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Examine the newspapers on the table.", 'searchLibraryNewspapers') </div> }

{ (set: $observation's calReassure to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's library) ###Newspapers </header> } The witches dined on the long table, but as many of them were engaged in business elsewhere, Lorcis had made use of one end to hold books and reams of paper he had been meaning to organize. One of the stacks was of mutilated issues of <i>The Necro Nightly</i>, cut in pieces by Marleau for his project. Marleau had collected headlines, articles, and pictures from several of the latest papers, selecing the most shocking and mystifying pieces to paste into his notebook. Lorcis remembered a few of the selected entries: Man Falls into Vat, "No one would've known"; Woman Hangs Herself by Her Own Hair, "We used to tell her how beautiful it was"; Boy Cries Out Worms, "His brain was infested." Lorcis encouraged Marleau's hobbies. They gave him something to do and to develop. Otherwise, he would sit around, dreaming, and Lorcis would miss opportunities to observe in a more controlled environment. (unless: $noteList contains $noteMarleau)[ (display: 'addNoteMarleau')]

{ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Examine the dirt lot.", 'searchYardLot') </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's yard) ###Ritual Ground </header> } As much as Lorcis preferred paved plazas, the dirt yard permitted the drawing of circles without the need for stocks of chalk or for losing a bit of blood. At the institution, witches gathering for a dance, a bonfire, and a summoning were not as common as rumors made them seem, although Lorcis's coven had their moments. Most days and nights, the yard was simply a crossways, and traces of treading, rather than sigils, indicated so. The witches sometimes sparred together in the area as well. Lorcis had been trained in the discipline of the small sword, but he had not been bred to be a warrior, and he had not been such a social swine as to have impressed himself into any mortal duels. Much of his athleticism involved mainly dance. The Handmaiden wielded two curved swords with spellbinding refinement, precision, and conviction. All Sehtian forms could be performed barehanded, but masters of advanced forms brandished blades, imparting each sweep and strike a brilliant flourish. Artrius, who often knew more than he ever let on, was capable of slipping in and out of multiple disciplines at will. He was no mere mimic--he knew what they knew, and better. During one sparring match, Artrius had countered the Handmaiden using her own techniques. Afterward, she asked him about his history with the Corrupter. In studying theology, he had dedicated himself to learning the rituals of several religions. He could chant melodies of Calaiean plainsong. He could recite entire Saracielean verses from memory. And he could attack and feint in the Sehtian style. The Handmaiden considered this blasphemy, as he was merely a pretender, an arrogator, and a defiler. He did not pretend, he said, for he had bested her. Lorcis saw the Handmaiden slit her arm later that night and drop the blood over her windowsill shrine to Aruseht. She was asking Aruseht for answers, but Lorcis did not know if she ever received them. Meanwhile, Artrius was in the bath, washing away the scourge blood off his back. (unless: $noteList contains $noteArtrius)[ (display: 'addNoteArtrius')(unless: $noteList contains $noteHandmaiden)[(display: 'addNoteHandmaiden')]]

{ (set: $companionSelected to $asylon) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon to 1) (display: 'companionAdd') }

{ (set: $companionSelected to $handmaiden) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden to 1) (display: 'companionAdd') }

{ <header> #(print: $handmaiden's nameFull) ##(print: $handmaiden's title) ###Swords and Slaves </header> } The Handmaiden had been diligent adding to her collection of curved blades, from the khopeshes and yatagans of Jscethycan tradition to the cutlasses and sabres of Duskain romances. She was currently polishing one of a pair of shashkas. The sword's guardless hilt and sleek shape made it a signature weapon and ritual instrument of Aruseht's followers. The only equipment she had kept after leaving behind the trappings of her old cult had been these serpentine swords. <div class='d'>$LORCIS You've amassed quite an assortment. Where did they all come from?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Are you interested, or is your cordiality prelude to a request?</div> When she was not obscure and distant in her finery and mannerisms as a high priestess, she was generous with her bluntness. It was no bother to Lorcis, for he found observing distinctions of address, depending on time, people involved, spatial and emotional proximity, and circumstance to be a great game. The priestess seemed perpetually annoyed in any company. <div class='d'>$LORCIS As you know, we all have a blade or two. I have my father's athame and the small sword I received for the year of my Third Coil.</div> The Handmaiden turned the shashka in the sunlight, examining the sheen of oil riding metal and, at the same time, leveling her gaze onto Lorcis. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I was thinking of updating my personal effects, or at least having another sword in reserve.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Some were from the black market. Some are trophies from my encounters. The others were given to me by a benefactor I've known since my own Third Coil.</div> He had not known the Handmaiden had acquaintances of the faith outside of her old cult, but it was preposterous of him to think otherwise. He seemed to be getting too comfortable in the company of his coven, settled away from civilization outside the institution grounds. Of course, all the witches had relationships in the world beyond the bounds of their haven. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I see. I don't suppose your benefactor might...</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He wouldn't like you. You've strayed.</div> The blade flashed in her hand, and the sting of clove oil cut into his nostrils. She had finished flourishing the sword before his reaction, and had he been a half-step closer, she might have shaven off a shred of epidermal tissue. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN However, my man at the market isn't so particular, so long as you have the coin or a fair trade.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Excellent. I expect he'd be happy for more business.</div> She turned the blade in her palm, then inclined her thumb along the cutting edge and spoke in her mother tongue, which she did when she thought it might make her more convincing. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You should know, my benefactor would welcome you as our own if you bend once more to the Master. His voice commands you. His blood is in your veins. One of the six joys of the Anointed Ithscerah was to bleed for Him.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS The last joy of Ithscerah was to hang for him.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The noose is the embrace of Seht.</div> His riposte had little effect on her, even when matched in language. Instead, he felt slightly perturbed himself. His father had chosen to go to Seht by manner of the loop, an initiative Sehtians would have belauded. A martyr was second to a saint, and a dead person--no longer burdened by the privilege of imperfection--was above any mortal. Less fatal displays of devotion, though no less harrowing, were also well regarded, as the Handmaiden alluded to. Blood was one of the sacred fluids of Aruseht, and Slaves bled for the god by sacrifice, battle, menstruation, or body scarring--so-called marking. Lorcis could make small slits to his arms, wrists, and palms when necessary for his coven's rituals and his own research, but the marks of Seht were intricate designs carved from intense ceremony testing the body, mind, and spirit. They were made by cutting into flesh, then applying on the opened skin permanent dyes. The incisions and tattooing represented Aruseht's venomous bite and the injection of his toxins, or carriers of knowledge: cerebrospinal fluid, saliva, tears, sweat, semen, and blood. Lorcis's own mark splayed over his upper back in the shape of Aruseht's head--horns from shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the shoulder blades, and tongue creeping down the spine. For each Coil, a birthday counted by numbers ending with three or six, another carving would be added to the mark, which meant another days-long ritual of preparation, then the excrutiating ritual itself, followed by an even harsher recovery. If he were still bound to the Slaves of Aruseht, he would soon relive such suffering. His Seventh Coil was approaching. Knowing and experiencing the marking rituals allowed him to hold the Handmaiden's resilience in high regard. He had been in awe of her mark and had not yet fully accustomed himself to looking at it for long, for it made him ill to think of the pain she had endured. Her mark was divided onto both arms and had already wound from shoulders to fingertips. The incisions depicted the Aspis and his many tongues, each snakes with their own tongues, coiling around her arms in undulating patterns symbolizing the sways and bites of Sehtian forms, which in turn mimicked the viper's stalk and ambush. She had overcome the trials of her Eighth Coil, and he wondered what more she would add to the design for the Ninth. He suspected her benefactor might serve as the high priest for the ritual, for the mysterious individual was sending her gifts as indicative as weaponry. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Now that I've answered your question, you may go.</div> The Handmaiden sheathed the shashka and picked up the other, ending the conversation. (display: 'addObservationHandmaidenSword') (display: 'returnHandmaiden')

{ <header> #(print: $handmaiden's nameFull) ##(print: $handmaiden's title) ###Enlistment of the Priestess </header> } The Handmaiden kept on her business with her weapons, but she gave Lorcis a glance and then relented. He was, after all, her charge, and in order to guide his return to Aruseht, she had to suffer in his company. Lorcis knew she could not ignore him for long. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I see you want something, Anointed.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Would you like to aid me in an experiment?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN So that we can be subjected to another feast of forbidden meats?</div> She sounded open to the idea. Despite her understandable aversion to consuming questionable substances, she had enjoyed the last experiment involving Calberus and digestibles. It was one of the few times she had permitted some semblance of amusement, as cynical as it was, to cross her lips. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What do you have planned?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal has agreed to be my subject of induction.</div> The Handmaiden lowered the sword to her lap, mirroring the deflation of her interest. Like the others of the coven, she believed deciphering Calberus was a futile undertaking. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN How do you know he agreed to that?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS He didn't protest.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN When you talk to him and he doesn't talk back, that's not a conversation.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS The most telling parts of a conversation are the parts not spoken.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Yes, it would be quite telling when Cal has a significant portion of your flesh in his jaws. Remember the Ogre of Telmacchus. The greatest flaw of mortals is our pride.</div> She began working on the sword again. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Tell me how you'll control him.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Hypnotism is not about control so much as--</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You had better control him, or does your plan include a cannibalistic monster rampaging around in a state of heightened concentration?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Would I propose any plan without the proper precautions? We have Cal's muzzle and chains. Additionally, I have this, which may be employed if the situation should happen to take a dire turn.</div> Lorcis produced the bovine sedative from his satchel. The syringe caught the sunlight, which glinted off the liquid inside, the sword blade, and the Handmaiden's vibrant dark eyes. <div class='d'>$LORCIS In fact, as with the previous occasion, you'll be our handler for this experiment. I can depend on you to help me bring the subject to the location of the session, then you must remain alert for all our sakes, including our dear Cal's.</div> There was a time, place, and person for flattery, but Lorcis was sincere in his delegations. In addition to strength, the Handmaiden had the sense and quick wits to wrestle with Calberus. Unarmed, she would not be able to overtake him alone--perhaps none could--but with tools made available to her, Lorcis could rest the security of the experiment on her with confidence. The Handmaiden twirled the sword, which was quite perilous in the room's confines, and sheathed it in one continuous motion. She gathered the pair of shashkas on her way out of the room, attaching them to her sword belt, and allowed her Jscethycan to trail behind her in a sigh. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN All right. Aruseht lead your wayward soul, or your fancies will be your downfall.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS As you say.</div> (if: $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon is 1)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What does she want?</div> Lorcis looked over her shoulder. Asylon was a shadow in the hall, lips as sealed as the dead. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Asylon is the other assistant for this experiment.</div> His answer seemed sufficient, for the Handmaiden did not linger long on the mystic, and Asylon herself dismissed the priestess with what Lorcis perceived to be sullen glower. ] <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Let's see if the Anointed can dominate the ogre.</div> She was already at the stairwell, waiting on him with a wry lift of her brow. (display: 'addCompanionHandmaiden')(display: 'addEntryConveneHandmaiden') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'sceneCellblock')</div>

{ (set: $companionParty's companionCount to 0) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanion1 to 0) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanion2 to 0) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanionAsylon to 0) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanionHandmaiden to 0) (display: 'messageCompanionRemoveAll') }

Asylon had spread one of her card decks on the game table into the brimstone formation, a shape recalling the slanted cross indicating, for the pious, heathenism and the depravity or symbolic death of religion within a forsaken individual. Across the empire, the brimstone rood was the sigil branded over the hearts of convicted and condemned murderers to forbid the living from and to petition the spirits of the afterlife against honoring the marked dead. Asylon had also laid the magpie on the table where she could observe it as she read the cards. Lorcis had not delved much into cartomancy, but he understood Asylon used it to guide her thoughts and open her mind to possibilities she might have been overlooking. It was a creative side of her that she embraced, something Ivie had introduced to her while she was a ward in the convent. Lorcis reminded himself to inquire about the progress of her investigation after the session with Calberus. He was glad to see she made efficient use of her time and that his request for her assistance had not derailed her own projects. (if: $observation's asylonInvestigation is 0)[(display: 'addObservationAsylonInvestigation')]

{ <div class='m'>(print: $companionSelected's name) has joined (print: $player's name).</div> }

{ <div class='o'> (if: $entryInductionEnd's owned is 1)[(linkgoto: 'Unbind Calberus.', 'endStory')] (elseif: $inv contains $itemHoney or $inv contains $itemTobacco or $inv contains $itemHare)[(linkgoto: 'Approach Calberus with an offering.', 'calberus1')] (else:)[(linkgoto: 'Approach Calberus.', 'calberus0')] </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###How to Prepare the Subject </header> } Lorcis brought Asylon to the phonograph. The Handmaiden leaned against the back of the subject's designated chair and crossed her arms over her chest, barely giving the device a glance. Her attention went instead to the knickknacks and baubles populating the windowed hutch and the twigs in a vase on the game table. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN How did you end up with this one?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I sent Gavril out for it. It was to be a simple task, really, but of course, something else entirely happened. He'd a black eye and said he was heather-heeled by way of the tors--not literally, mind you. He was on the run.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN So he got it by...</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Yes, by unscrupulous appropriation.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON How old-fashioned.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Quaint. If the offended party traces it to us, you know who to throw to the dogs.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Certainly. Now, what you've been waiting for, Asylon: allow me to introduce you to the next greatest innovation of our record keeping.</div> Lorcis was quite warmed by the curiosity and eagerness which brightened Asylon's wan features. She did not smile, but attentiveness brewed in her eyes, and her lifted chin exposed a sliver of bare skin above the high collar of her dress. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I don't see why you needed me so soon if you two were going to be playing with your toys.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS You're most welcome to join us in this lesson, Handmaiden of Seht, God of Knowledge.</div> The Handmaiden sometimes permitted those beneath her to bite. Fortunately for him, this was one of those times. Asylon was the primary pupil, but Lorcis had anticipated the success of his attempt to draw in another willing audience. When coaxing the Handmaiden, he had to act like a dog testing his master's level of tolerance, and he found her to be most tolerant of her pet Anointed. Lorcis guided the witches through the phonograph's parts. He refrained from going into minute detail about sound vibrations and mechanizing sound, which would be another lesson for interested parties, and concentrated instead on the straightforward operation of the machine. The phonograph was a wax cylinder type, more durable and versatile than its tin foil predecessor. Asylon would have to turn the hand crank to rotate the cylinder, allowing a needle to engrave sound vibrations as they applied pressure on a diaphragm. Each cylinder could hold three to four minutes, so they had to be switched in and out throughout the session. Lorcis had about thirty safe minutes to record the session from beginning to end. He had allotted two to three cylinders for the induction and two for the rousing from hypnosis, leaving the remaining for questions. He showed Asylon how to remove the cylinders, seat them correctly, and set the needle. He gave Asylon a moment to run through the process herself--without actually turning the crank, to preserve the cylinders for the session--while commencing with the next steps. <div class='d'>$LORCIS As I've informed the both of you, I'll be bringing Cal into a state of heightened concentration, and he was amenable to the plan when we first conceived it. Yet last I checked this morning, he was unsettled, so we need find a way to calm him before we can begin the experiment.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Why don't we do this when he's not in a mood for mauling?</div> A simpleton's thought would be that Calberus was no more than a destructive colossus, set off on ruinous whims unprovoked. Lorcis had experienced a different kind of beast and knew this to be far from the truth. He had spent many nights in the basement, speaking to Calberus, sharing with him local and worldly news, fascinating pieces of history, and legends and fantastic stories, without incident. The ogre appeared to be listening, although Lorcis had to admit he made no overt outward signs of acknowledgment. He worked quietly, even more so while Lorcis spoke to him, and that signalled something significant. Calberus was in a foul mood now, evidently, but not in a murderous way. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal is only frustrated with his work. If we draw him from it, gently, then his disposition will soften. Today, as there are fewer distractions from the others, we shall proceed without delay.</div> Asylon ran a finger along the phonograph's amplifier, and the Handmaiden disengaged from the people in the room, moving to one of the windows and gazing at the overgrown trail to Aspencroft behind a line of trees. Lorcis took their silence to mean their concession. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I don't mean to discourage you from contribution. I have a thought on how we may calm Cal, and it would be but a simple errand. Yet if you have your own suggestions, I shall be happy to consider them.</div> He regained their attention, as Asylon liked to come up with solutions, and the Handmaiden saw an opportunity to direct the Anointed down a suitable path. (display: 'decisionCalCalm')

{ (set: $noteMarleau to (dm: 'name', 'Marleau Faire', 'description', "Marleau had come from a petty traveling circus troupe, which featured daring performances alongside oddities and curiosities. Marleau was a child acrobat billed as the Butterfly Knife, quiet and morose behind a painted smile. When he was not flying on the highwire, aerial hoops, and the trapeze, he was grounded in urchin garb, skimming through the crowd, picking pockets and cutting purses. After his mother's death, he retreated from the performer life to remain with Lorcis's coven but continued honing his tumbling skills with the hazardous landscape the institution provided. Lorcis had warned him about the state of deterioration in certain parts of the building, but like Asylon, Marleau quietly made his own ways anyway. He kept to the walls more often than not. On Asylon's mystery adventures, he was deputy to her inspector. He entertained Ivie with costumes of her liking, dressing up as a fisherman or a prince while acting as her shop assistant. He enjoyed sharing news from the papers with Lorcis, articles which he believed would interest the warlock. When Lorcis asked Marleau what interested <i>him</i>, the boy brought out his journal. He had collected grisly stories from newspapers, woodcuttings, daguerreotypes, and photographs of mysterious crimes, unsolved murders, and untimely demises into the notebook. He liked to read them more than once and to look at the details in the pictures, but he could not articulate why. Giving an opinion was an unnerving act to him. He was easily intimidated by others. Gavril and the Handmaiden were sometimes unkind to him, which gave Lorcis some cause to be concerned for them all. Marleau's mother had been unkind, too, and now she was dead because Marleau had dreamt her dead. Lorcis was not certain. He did not discount the possibility of Marleau's ability to move and act willfully in dreams--in his own and in others. While induced, the boy admitted outright to murdering his mother by flying out of his body, burrowing into her head while she slept, and strangling her in her own dream. And he enjoyed it. He described the scene quite lasciviously. Yet upon being roused from hypnosis, he could not remember what he had revealed and was terribly embarrassed and withdrawn. Lorcis maintained the confidentiality of the session, and in his waking hours, Marleau was oblivious to having played any part in his mother's passing. Somnology was a subject Lorcis had not much experience in, despite practices with hypnotism. Observed habits among his coven did renew his interest to delve deeper into the theories. His own somniloquy aside, he had witnessed Gavril sleepwalking and noted the occasional nocturnal lagophthalmos; Asylon had raised the household several times in the quiet hours under the force of night terrors; Ivie embraced her frequent episodes of sleep paralysis, when she was bound by visiting demons. Lorcis had considered Marleau perhaps being the key to further study and possible answers for all of them. Yet day after day, watching the boy study, read, or play would allay his ambitions, and he would leave the little acrobat be. Marleau's pastime appeared to be daydreaming, which was less harmless than one might suppose, if Lorcis's evidence proved meaningful. The acrobat would sit on a high windowsill, in a tree, or on the swing at the glade and lose himself to his thoughts, or he would watch the others from afar. He thought them more talented, more worldly, and more confident. Lorcis could not always read his face, which was often a little sad, but it was no secret that Marleau wished dearly to be like Artrius: skilled, intelligent, wise, athletic, and impervious to pain, weakness, and passion. He was a hard-working, if sometimes indecisive, pupil to the sage, and as Artrius dedicated hours, days, and weeks to the dreamer, the attachment appeared to be growing mutual. Lorcis was not yet sure how dreams played out in their relationship, if at all. It, too, required further study.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteGavril to (dm: 'name', 'Gavril Corragain', 'description', "Gavril had been reared in a Calaiean orphanage on the shores of Duskair. Duskair, the county and the cliffside capital, harbored sceneries of mournful waters and lavender moors. Privateers, lone outcasts drifting among crags and tors, and convicts escaped into heather and fog made up the legends of its population. A diffusion of informalities in language, as Duskains evolved to skirt the laws set upon them by centuries of various hostile occupiers, allowed an abundance of expressions for ideas and imagery previously tying up conventional tongues. For all Lorcis's formal studies in languages, his lessons had neglected the Duskain-Alaisean dialect, for it was considered neither consequential nor fashionable to socialize with the moorland denizens and their bastardized language. Popular opinion did not regard all of them as bad people, only degraded and subsequently deficient or barbaric in modern manners and ideologies. Yet after meeting Gavril, Lorcis became enthralled by the lyrical lilt in his cadence, the poetic brogue flowing, rising, and crashing like the waves of Duskain lore. He picked up books; studied Duskain culture to better understand his new acquaintance's words, motivations, and intentions; and weaned him on deep conversations. He learned that when a Duskain asked for a kiss, that meant a cigarette, or truly, a kiss. One had to read the situation and the character of a person to not make an absolute fool of oneself, but asking which definition was meant ensured the making of a fool. When the rogue was in a most impassioned state, inebriated, overstimulated, or brooding, he could be delightfully unintelligible. In circumstances necessitating clarification, Lorcis acquired it simply by politely asking, and the rogue was eager to make his case in common terms. One needed not grumble much if only to be understood. One choice of words unique to Gavril was what he called sinking--his periodic yielding to the convulsive loss of consciousness. He believed the episodes inevitable until Ivie acquainted him with a clear solution to swallow, which would lessen the excitement overwhelming him as long as he continued to take the medication on a schedule. He regarded doses with suspicion each time and grumbled about their ineffectiveness. Even now, he lapsed in administration and dedicated less than a full effort to maintaining the prescribed regiment. He had been beaten into the notion in the orphanage, in prison, and in an asylum that he was a lost cause. Lorcis found the lifelong devaluation particularly difficult to reverse in him. Along with recklessness, unstable moods, deadly impulses, and resistence to pledged commitments, the ease at which Gavril threw himself away made him friend one moment and foe the next. Lorcis was building a structure of stability for him in the form of congregation and permanence. Should he stray, he could always find home in the coven.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteHandmaiden to (dm: 'name', "(print: $handmaiden's nameFull)", 'description', "The Handmaiden had yet to reveal a name apart from her title. She was a Sehtian priestess, a champion of Aruseht, the Horned Aspis, God of Knowledge, Domination and Submission, Independence and Servitude, and Coiling and Uncoiling. Knowledge was a venom infecting the free and the bound, which were neither incongruous nor wholly separate, weakening some while strengthening others. Merely possessing knowledge or freedom gave little power to anyone who did not make use of them. One was not to be idle, self-indulgent, nor miserly once one was knowing and knowledgeable, Lorcis's father was fond to remind him. For his father, for the Handmaiden, and many others Lorcis had encountered, there was only one true truth: the truth commanded by the gods. For zealots narrowing their landscape further, truth resided only within their own god's definition alone. The Handmaiden was of the fanatical sort, bearing scant patience for heathens and other lowlifes who would oppose her worldview. Lorcis would be the object of her scorn if he questioned her, for she believed if he lost confidence in her, he faltered against their god. Their god--she kept faith in his return to Seht, which was perhaps why she had not wholly rejected his company or carved out his heart. She did encourage him by commending his efforts in assembling a library and pursuing a quest for the preservation of fading history, culture, and controversial ideas. Beyond that, he was not much more than a means to an end for her good graces with Aruseht. Many of the witches of Hemlock Weald enjoyed unobtrusive fellowship. They liked to be left to their own research, their own rituals, and their own devices, assured that should they require company, a likeminded witch was on the premises to assist and provide. The Handmaiden was not one of them. She was part of Lorcis's coven, as certainly as he had invited her, but she kept to herself and the deity who defined her. Her initial encounter with the Hemlock witches had been belligerent, and she appeared unable to fully accept their welcoming. She had been wandering after ending her own coven, where she had once exercised absolute command as high priestess. Lorics could only imagine the humiliation and shame someone of her position must have suffered when she could no longer control her own people, but he was also certain she felt neither humilitaion nor shame. Vindication, perhaps. Ecstasy. In the trance-like fury of Sehtian legends, she had destroyed them all. After leaving their corpses behind, she came across Hemlock Weald. Asking gods for answers meant sacrifice. Some required hours of fervent prayers or a flogging, and others required blood, virginal or provisional. Over the course of some nights after Gavril had gone to the theatre in the city, the Handmaiden gathered materials from the shed and fashioned her ritual circle in the cover of the thicket. She remained concealed, watching Lorcis, Ivie, Asylon, and Marleau going about their daily activities around the institution. None of the witches had reason to go to the shed or beyond in that direction, so she did not have a convenient target until the rogue returned. When Gavril retired to his shed alone, she remained patient yet, stalking him and studying his habits, until the ideal moment to ensnare him. She bound him to a log cross in the center of her ritual circle and was about to impale him with six spears--rather, wrought iron fence balusters with spire finials--in the design of the Horned Serpent's head. Asylon and Marleau's interloping allowed Lorcis time to arrive and convince the Handmaiden to lay down her fencing. He revealed his own past affiliation with the Sehtians by presenting the mark etched on his back. Aruseht had answered the Handmaiden's prayers, and she had found her next mandate: returning the defiant Anointed into the Corrupter's coils.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) (set: $noteArtrius to (dm: 'name', 'Artrius Alecsus', 'description', "Lorcis admitted to himself, and confided into Calberus alone, that despite their hours of discourse before the library fireplace, he grasped little of the Scarsman as a character within the scope of some sort of history and association among humankind, and Artrius seemed content to leave it that way. Artrius was a sage who documented missions and findings thoroughly, if dryly. He was aligned with a nontheistic sense of spirituality concerning his own enlightenment and, accordingly, lived a stark life. He did not imbibe. He did not consume meat. He abstained from romantic overtures and intercourse. He scourged himself. He gave no name to this eclectic creed. It was a purely individual endeavor, and he had no interest in teaching it to others, which Lorcis thought was for the best. It was a poor excuse for a lonely existence, with not even a god to blame for his woes. With no god to turn against for such arbitrary criteria, he had only to turn against others or himself, which did not seem sustainable in the long term. Instead of propagating this austere system, Artrius spread knowledge of the worldly things he knew, such as philosophies, theories, studies, and observations, or practical techniques to handling tools, weapons, and one's own body as mediation and self-defense. He displayed great interest in information, facts, and the way things worked and the way people thought. There was another contradiction: he could be so fond of learning and teaching and treated artifacts, people, cultures, and knowledge with respect; yet he restrained himself from experiencing specific wonders and sensations which could bring a human joy. Few distractions from humanity meant he completed missions efficiently and exceptionally, but not everything in and beyond the known world was under his control. If he were required to preserve an operation and to rectify any lapses in perfection, he permitted himself to maim or to kill. The sage expected no mercy either way. Undeterred by Artrius's standards--perhaps even in awe of them--Marleau looked up to the dignified manner in which the sage carried himself, equating his cold methods with surviving a colder world. Asylon, herself prone to an unembellished and serious way of life, found commonality with Artrius, as well as a paragon of order to strive toward. Lorcis too admired his qualities, appreciated his tutelage of the adolescent witches, and enjoyed their fireside discourse, but he was also alert, being manager of the household. He had been used to his position as the keeper of information, the librarian, and the living encyclopedia of the coven. Now had come along someone who not only shared this role but surpassed it, who had more knowledge, had different knowledge, and was as eloquent and more physically formidable besides. Lorcis's reservations were borne neither out of envy nor jealousy, for Artrius was an asset to the coven and contributed much by way of wisdom, resources, and labor since his arrival. Rather, Lorcis was perceptive of reception from the others. Gavril, devil of instinct he was, took to furtively stalking Artrius the first days of the sage's welcoming. Ivie did not dislike him, but a hint of frustration lay beneath her kindness, for her persuasions proved ineffectual on him. The Handmaiden, in her high priestess tone of voice, spoke of an authority in servitude. In some ways, a slave possessed as much power as the master, and perhaps more, if volatile conditions were met. The voices did not change, or Lorcis detected no acknowledgement on their part of Artrius's presence. And Calberus, deep within the workings of his mind, appeared as oblivious as the voices. Vague history and bits of elusive knowledge, which were neither substantiated by the sage nor uncovered in records, did sometimes keep Lorcis's candle alight through the night.", 'owned', 0, 'scored', 0 )) }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) </header> } Calberus had divided the deer's hide into sections, and he was sewing a selection together. His creations had begun to be formed from animal parts, rather than humans, as Lorcis made allowances for the shift. A half-hidden, half-ruined gate and iron door connected the dungeon directly to the forest, but a crumbled flight of stairs, sprays of devil's porridge, and thorny tangles discouraged many. In the times when Calberus went out this way on his own--sometimes in the darkest hours and sometimes in broad daylight, as was his unpredictable nature--he would drag back deer, elk, wild boars, or bears to slaughter. He consumed the large beasts not specifically because he understood Lorcis's intention to wean him off a human diet but because animals, including humans, had always been his source of nourishment. Lorcis observed that when the ogre had these creatures made available, travelers setting foot within the institution's vicinity were not often doomed. He tasked the Awful Three--Artrius, the Handmaiden, and Gavril--to take turns procuring game for the ogre. Still on occasion, they might discover a stranger or a few in the dungeon, too late to be turned out. { <div class='o'> (if: $observation's calReassure is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Reassure Calberus.', 'calberus0Reassure')] (linkgoto: 'Observe Calberus.', 'calberus0Observe') </div> }

{ (set: $observation's phonographPlayAgain to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <div class='o'> (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'asylon0')[(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'asylon0')] </div> }

{ <div class='o'> (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'handmaiden0')[(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'handmaiden0')] </div> }

{ (replace: ?textScore)[] (link: 'Reveal progress.')[(replace: ?textScoreView)[(display: 'oViewScoreConfirm')]] }

{ (replace: ?textScore)[(display: 'displayScore')] (link: 'Conceal progress.')[(replace: ?textScoreView)[(display: 'oViewScore')]] }

{ <div class='map'> (set: $currentLocationName to $institution's name) (if: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'floor1')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floor1)] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'floorB')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floorB)] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'floorG')[(set: $currentFloorName to $floorG)] (if: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'forecourt')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's forecourt) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-forecourt') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'entranceHall')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's entranceHall) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-entrance-hall') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'library')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's library) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-library') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (if: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'parlour')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's parlour) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-parlour') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'firstFloorHall')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's firstFloorHall) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-first-floor-hall') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'lavatory')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's lavatory) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-lavatory') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'cellblock')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's cellblock) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-cellblock') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'basementHall')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's basementHall) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-basement-hall') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'kitchen')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's kitchen) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-kitchen') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'dungeon')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's dungeon) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-dungeon') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'yard')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's yard) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-yard') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'conservatory')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's conservatory) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-conservatory') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'glade')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's glade) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-harrow-les-north') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'springHouse')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's springHouse) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-spring-house') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (elseif: (passage: $return)'s tags contains 'shed')[ (set: $currentSceneName to $institution's shed) (set: $currentMapImageName to 'institution-shed') (display: 'mapCurrentLocation')] (else:)[] </div> }

{ # <header class='map-header'> (link-repeat: "(display: 'map')")[ (if: (passage:)'s tags contains 'mapMenuExpand')[(goto: 'mapMenu')] (else:)[(goto: 'mapMenuExpand')] ] </header> # <div class='map-plaque'>$mapPlaque</div> }

{ # (print: "<img src='images/maps/" + $currentMapImageName + ".jpg'>") # (set: $mapPlaque to '(print: $currentLocationName) - (print: $currentFloorName)(print: $currentSceneName)') }

{ (print: $entryConvene's title) }

{ (if: $entryConvene's owned is 0)[(set: $entryConvene's owned to 1)(display: 'doneEntryGetAssistance') (if: $entryConvene's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryConvene's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ # (if: $entryConveneAsylon's done is 1 and $entryConveneHandmaiden's done is 1 and $entryConvene's done is 0)[ (set: $entryConvene's done to 1) ] }

{  }

{ (if: $entryCalDecision's done is 0)[ (set: $entryCalDecision's done to 1) (display: 'messageJournalUpdate') # (display: 'addEntryPrepare') ] }

{ (if: $entryCalDecision's owned is 0)[(set: $entryCalDecision's owned to 1)(display: 'doneEntryConvene') (if: $entryCalDecision's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryCalDecision's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ (set: $item to $itemSedative) (display: 'invAddNoMessage') }

{ (set: $item to $itemSedative) (display: 'invRemove') }

{ <div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Examine the apothecary table.", 'searchConservatoryTable') </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's conservatory) ###Apothecary Table </header> } The apothecary table was where Ivie prepared her potions, perfumes, and poisons. She moved her completed wares from the conservatory to a bureau in her bedroom, to keep her work table ready for her to concoct the next batches.(if: not($inv contains $itemHoney) and $entryCalDecisionSex's owned is 1 and $entryCalDecision's done is 0)[ Lorcis checked the table for any aphrodisiacs she might have set aside, but it appeared she had cleaned up before leaving for Daley. He would have to seek out the desired item (if: $observation's ivieBureau is 0)[in her bedroom](else:)[in Gavril's shed, as Asylon had suggested].] During the first week Ivie had spent with Gavril in Aspencroft, the village down the path, she had purchased gardening implements, seeds, a mortar and pestle, a distiller, jars and other vessels, and other alchemical tools in order to build a garden and supply her apothecary table. She had also acquired a samovar for Lorcis, a sketchbook for Asylon, and a butcher apron with pockets for Calberus so that they, too, could indulge in their crafts and interests. Lorcis had not been privy to what she had given Gavril, but he suspected it to have been more than sufficient, as the rogue trudged at her heels with the full cargo on his back and in his arms, and he deposited them by the apothecary table without a single dent, scratch, or shattering. A pumpkin patch was beginning to creep out of its allotted space behind the table. A straw-stuffed sackcloth scarecrow with button eyes, a tall pointed hat, and a high-collared cloak stood in the center of the leafy vines. His arms dangled off nails hammered into a log cross, which was his support, base, and legs. Ivie called him--or, specifically, the demon of the fields he incarnated--Dark Lord Herbaceous the Pumpkin Prince. Aside from his principal duty to discourage crop thieves, the Pumpkin Prince had served her County Daley hamlet as an idol in harvest rituals. When she was younger, she would draw a circle and write his true name around his feet, light candles, and converse with him about the state of the season. Eventually, a new effigy took his place. He had become decrepit, had once caught fire but was saved when slung into a pond, and had long been by ravaged by songbirds tugging out his innards. When Ivie and Gavril visited the hamlet, she found Dark Lord Herbaceous laid to rest inside a coffin in her mothers' storage shed. She entrusted her reliable pack mule to bear him, along with the community's bountiful donations, from the verdant farm fields into the forest thicket and to his new home. (unless: $noteList contains $noteIvie)[ (display: 'addNoteIvie')]

{ (if: $entryPrepare's owned is 0)[(set: $entryPrepare's owned to 1) (if: $entryPrepare's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryPrepare's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ (if: $entryPrepare's done is 0)[ (set: $entryPrepare's done to 1) (display: 'messageJournalUpdate') ] }

{ (set: $entryCalGiveAll's owned to 1) (set: $entryCalGiveAll's done to 1) # (display: 'doneEntryCalDecision') }

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-info'>Offer the Jscethycan tobacco.</div> </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###The Offering of Smoke </header> } Lorcis pulled out the Jscethycan box of tobacco and lifted the lid. He was certain Calberus had smelled the contents before then, but he wanted to be sure Calberus understood the invitation. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, I have a gift for you. This may help you relax before we begin the session.</div> He took several slow steps toward the operating table, slid the opened box onto the nearest corner, then backed away. Calberus acknowledged the offering by taking a deep breath, which filled the dungeon with a grainy and lascivious sound. (display: 'calGiveEnd') { (display: 'removeItemTobacco') (display: 'removeCompanionAll') (display: 'addEntryCalGiveSmoke') } <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin final preparations before the induction.', 'sceneBasementHall')</div>

{ <div class='grid-decision-option'> <div class='col-option-info'>Offer the blackberry hare.</div> </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###The Offering of Food </header> } Lorcis pulled the blackberry hare out of his satchel and patted it so that its fur was smoothed. Calberus, still sewing, appeared to be looking at the hand holding the hare. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, I have gift for you. A little bite before the session.</div> He lay the animal at the edge of the operation table, then backed away. Calberus watched him go. (display: 'calGiveEnd') { (display: 'removeItemHare') (display: 'removeCompanionAll') (display: 'addEntryCalGiveFood') } <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin final preparations before the induction.', 'sceneBasementHall')</div>

{ (set: $entryCalGiveSex's owned to 1) (set: $entryCalGiveSex's done to 1) # (display: 'doneEntryCalDecision') }

{ (set: $entryCalGiveSmoke's owned to 1) (set: $entryCalGiveSmoke's done to 1) # (display: 'doneEntryCalDecision') }

{ (set: $entryCalGiveFood's owned to 1) (set: $entryCalGiveFood's done to 1) # (display: 'doneEntryCalDecision') }

{ (print: $entryInductionBegin's title) (print: $entryInductionBegin's description) }

{ (if: $entryInductionBegin's owned is 0)[(set: $entryInductionBegin's owned to 1)(display: 'doneEntryPrepare') (if: $entryInductionBegin's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryInductionBegin's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ (if: $entryInductionBegin's done is 0)[ (set: $entryInductionBegin's done to 1) (display: 'messageJournalUpdate') ] }

{ (print: $entryInductionEnd's title) (print: $entryInductionEnd's description) }

{ (if: $entryInductionEnd's owned is 0)[(set: $entryInductionEnd's owned to 1)(display: 'doneEntryInductionBegin')(display: 'doneEntryInductionEnd') (if: $entryInductionEnd's scored is 0)[ (set: $entryInductionEnd's scored to 1) (display: 'addScoreEntry')] ] }

{ (if: $entryInductionEnd's done is 0)[ (set: $entryInductionEnd's done to 1) ] }

{ (set: $observation's calQuestionName to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's calQuestionFrom to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's calQuestionUnderstand to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $note to $noteForest) (display: 'noteAdd') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Places, Please </header> } The parlour had become much smaller with Calberus towering in the middle of it. His head moved tenderly as if to tune his sensitive ears or nose to each and every sensation drifting in the air on the backs of blurry motes. The crags of the scars running across his visage appeared deeper in the light, contours part shadow, part razor. From the deadness in his pallor flowed signs of life along the web of thick blue veins grasping his temples. The iron muzzle was a grill over his mouth, seated under his jaw and held in place by hardy leather straps secured around his head. Lorcis had instructed Artrius to design a device which would not interfere with most normal mandibulary functions, such as mastication and verbal articulation. He had only needed it to prevent Calberus from employing his mouth parts in the act of dismemberment. Lorcis touched Calberus's elbow. The iron links of the leash clattered when he moved, but they would sit still enough during the session. Lorcis led him to the chair and applied a slight pressure to indicate that he take the seat. Calberus remained standing, tilting his head one way, then another, blinking, breathing. The Handmaiden jerked the leash, and Calberus sat but not because of the force, for he was hardly jolted despite the leash being attached to a ring under his chin. He took his seat serenely, as if fascinated by and anatomizing whatever was in the air that the others could not perceive, and selecting an optimal place for prolonged observation. Even as he had lowered himself, his presence remained overbearing such that Asylon had backed into the wall and had nearly molded herself into it. She had a hand on the corner of a window shutter. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Shall I close the shutters?</div> She understood that Calberus was a creature of the dark. She had hoped to adjust the environment to keep him complacent. Otherwise, space in the parlour would not permit anyone coming out unscathed. <div class='d'>$LORCIS No, as contradictory as this may seem. I need the sunlight to gauge the degree of his suggestibility. You may take up your position at the phonograph. Handmaiden, I would like you to transcribe the dialogue among us for the duration of the session.</div> He had expected her glare. Monks, acolytes, and slaves were more often copiers and transcriptionists of texts and speeches, humbled by the menial yet monumental duty of preserving Aruseht's word. A Handmaiden, grown from her nights in repetition, would have gained responsibilities beyond copying--she would have been composing her own texts, expanding his word, rather than merely repeating it. Nevertheless, Lorcis suspected the Handmaiden would play the scribe if cast by an Anointed. <div class='d'>$LORCIS An accurate, contemporaneous written record must be made, regardless of the phonograph's convenience. As I'll be preoccupied with the subject, and Asylon will have all hands on the crank, this duty--the creation of a material outcome of our experiment--is bestowed upon you. Are we here not all keepers of knowledge?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I didn't disagree. You could have let me know about your plans for my full involvement. Next time, I may decide to not play along.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'll remember for next time.</div> Many things annoyed her, but little hurt. Lorcis saw she was tiring of his games, his larks, and his whims as a whole. Although the Handmaiden was ruthless, and Aruseht encompassed all that had to do with domination and submission, especially unwillful servitude, she had not once attempted to force his return to the coils of the serpent god. He did wonder about the reasons behind her stay at the institution, her tolerance of his heathenism with a patience he knew to be limited. He gave the bovine sedative to her. Asylon eyed the syringe as it passed hands, but there was no label for her to read. The Handmaiden sat at the desk, prepared to transcribe. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Now, Cal, we shall begin.</div> He turned to the ogre in the room. Calberus had closed his eyes. The sun had been in them. (display: 'removeItemSedative')(display: 'addEntryInductionBegin') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin the induction.', 'sceneParlourInductionBegin')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Ivie's Room </header> } Heavy braids of ivy coiled along the window and touched potted plants hanging from the ceiling, seated on the windowsill, and arranged on the floor. A herbarium sprouted off one wall, surrounded by arrangements of animal skulls which were adorned with branches, dyed strings, shells, beads, feathers, and dried plants. Admist the enchanted garden was the bed, upgraded by a system of ropes fastened to the posts and the jougs affixed to the wall over the headboard. From the black market, Ivie had obtained a bureau with a hutch featuring cabinets and several small drawers for organizing her potions. The storage compartments opened by a combination of puzzle knobs and keys, which Ivie kept with her at nearly all times. Lorcis had more than once heard the keys jangling and had seen the rogue sidle up to her like a wretch trained by a mocking gaoler. (if: not($inv contains $itemHoney) and $observation's ivieBureau is 1 and $entryCalDecision's owned is 1 and $entryCalDecision's done is 0)[ Lorcis could not access the hutch's contents without the keys, but there was another stash elsewhere on the institution premises. He was certain to find a selection of mood-enhancing tonics in Gavril's shed. ](elseif: not($inv contains $itemHoney) and $observation's ivieBureau is 0 and $entryCalDecision's owned is 1 and $entryCalDecision's done is 0)[ Lorcis slipped on his spectacles and pored over the bureau together with Asylon, inspecting the handwritten labels on each drawer and the labels of bottles sitting on the desktop. Ivie's penmanship was intricate and floriferous, relevant for the promotion of her wares but difficult on Lorcis's eyes. The mystic, having no trouble with the sweeping letters, turned around a crystal containing deep red liquid in her hand, then a cylinder beside it filled with something bearing a pus-like consistency. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Lycanthrope's Blood Call. Bile of the Beguiled.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS The former is to be injected. You'll be transformed into a beast overcome by carnal lust. The latter is quite sweet, I hear, like confectionary. Ingesting it is usually fatal. Ivie ought to lock that one up.</div> Asylon returned the bottles to the desk. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I can't seem to find the particular concoction I need... Ah, but here we are. In this drawer right here.</div> He indicated the selection by tapping it above its bronze ring handle, and a clink of glass jars rattled inside. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Blister Honey.</div> (if: $entryCalDecisionSex's owned is 0)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Are you dallying, Anointed? Shouldn't we be offering the ogre (if: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 1)[fresh meat](else:)[tobacco]?</div> Lorcis adjusted his glasses. <div class='d'>$LORCIS We can't be too narrow in our methods. If one direction leads to a cliff and we've not blazed other paths, we'd certainly become lost seeking our way back to the objectives of our experiment. Hence, cutting another walkway, retrieving our reserve, ensuring a fallback.</div> ] He tugged at the bronze ring, but the drawer was, as he had expected, locked. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Asylon, may we insist upon your legerdemain expertise to make this drawer's contents available to us?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON I haven't been in practice.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS No need for modesty. I have full confidence in your abilities.</div> Asylon had taken a step back, nearly fading into the dust motes tumbling down the sunbeams. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Ivie might very well flay you.</div> She was an earnest character, which amused Lorcis. While many of her expressions were subdued beneath her logical and efficient mannerisms, her emotions did flare up now and then. He would have to reason with her in this manner, swathing sentimentality within practicality. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'll take the fall. See here, I'll even write a note for her this very minute and relay that this was all my grand idea, which, I should say, it is.</div> Something in Asylon's posture might have affected the Handmaiden, for as Lorcis rifled through his bag for some paper and a pencil, the priestess's presence became much more apparent beside him, and Asylon's, lesser. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN She won't do it. Just break it open.</div> The Handmaiden advanced, but Asylon stepped between the warrior and the bureau, clutching the strap of her satchel as if for stability. <div class='d'>$ASYLON That won't be necessary. We can acquire it elsewhere. Gavril might have some. There are piles of drugs up in his loft.</div> Lorcis recalled the musk of Gavril's nest. He removed his reading glasses, wiped a lens on his shoulder, and returned them to his coat pocket. He knew both Asylon and the Handmaiden were perceptive enough to notice and to understand, and the cessation of activities concerning Ivie's bureau put them at ease. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Excellent point. Ivie keeps inventory of her supplies and her products for the market, and perhaps it's best we don't disturb her stock, seeing as how she manages the institution's finances. And now that you mention it, I was keen to notice the love liquors littering the loft, which she would have already written off when she gave them to Gavril. He won't miss one. I suppose you have no qualms taking from the rogue?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON If it's not locked away.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Then let us be off to the shed.</div> The Handmaiden led the way to the hall, a languid sway of annoyed resignation in her gait.(display: 'addObservationIvieBureau') ](unless: $noteList contains $noteIvie)[ (display: 'addNoteIvie')]

{ (set: $observation's ivieBureau to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###Reassurance of the Ogre </header> } The dusty sunlight that fell from the window highlighted bloodstains over the swatches of skin patching up Calberus's leather butcher apron. He had been unclothed, and morbidly engorged, the night Lorcis had first set eyes upon him. Lorcis had offered him one of the large sheets covering the institution's old furniture. He did not take it, but Lorcis, numbed by a number of harrowing events in his life back then, had the sweet ignorance to approach the ogre, to wrap his arms around his scarred waist, and to knot the cloth in place. The ogre smelled and felt like the dead. So near him, there emanated a coldness, a quietness, and peace. The voices had been silent. Calberus still wore the furniture sheet, once white, yellowed over the years after the Circle's abandonment, and now a stained rusty grey beneath his butcher apron. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I thought you might like to know, I'm still in the process of making preparations.</div> Calberus's hands maintained their rhythm, swooping the needle and twine with the sort of dexterity adopted by one beset with purpose and intention. As usual, Lorcis was not sure what he was fashioning. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Feeling better?</div> The needle glinted over and over. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'll return in a moment with something most enriching for you. Then, we may begin our experiment. You'd like that, wouldn't you?</div> The ogre stopped the pattern to bite the twine. He had a jaw like stone gates and teeth like beasts of legends. As he turned the sewing project around one way, then back the other, Lorcis stepped away to allow him room. (display: 'addObservationCalReassure') (display: 'returnCalberus')

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Floor </header> } Lorcis let Asylon lead them through the shed. Over her many visits delving into the dark corners, she had mapped its points of interest. The back of the shed was Gavril's living and dining area, where he took his leisure time late at night by candle or stove light, moonlight, or in darkness. Cigarette smoke lingered in the air in the alcove under the loft, sitting in the pores of the shed's wooden walls. The window on the furthest wall was closed, partially blockaded by a bundle of hares hanging off a hook on a cabinet.(unless: $inv contains $itemTobacco)[ A few tins and some loose paper were scattered upon the open shelves on the cabinet, and a hint of light running along the darkness on the shelf beneath them revealed a polished obsidian tobacco box, inconsistent with its distressed surroundings.] { <div class='o'> (unless: $inv contains $itemHare)[(linkgoto: 'Take one hare.', 'takeHare')] (unless: $inv contains $itemTobacco)[(linkgoto: 'Take the obsidian tobacco box.', 'takeTobacco')] </div> } <div class='o'>(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'sceneShed')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Take the Hare </header> } Gavril had knotted several hares together, looping their legs down a braid of twine. Lorcis plucked the animal that looked to have been the friendliest. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Here we are. A treat for Cal.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN That one?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS What's wrong with this one?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's small.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS They're of comparable girth. This one is soft.</div> The Handmaiden turned toward the shed doors, permitting as she was dismissive. She was most likely vexed by the sanitized intepretation of her idea to acquire fresh meat. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It'll hardly be a bite.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS He'd be appreciative of an offering, nonetheless.</div> Lorcis tucked the hare into his satchel, settling the matter. (if: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 0)[ <div class='d'>$ASYLON Will we be feeding him now, too?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Although we've agreed on another method, having a varied selection of options will do no harm.</div> Asylon concurred with a slight nod. Lorcis believed the Handmaiden approved, as well, although she had turned her back to him. ] (display: 'addItemHare') <div class='o'>(if: $inv contains $itemTobacco)[(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'sceneShed')](else:)[(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'searchShedFloor1')]</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Take the Tobacco Box </header> } Lorcis took the tobacco box in his hands, and the blackness gleamed like steady snake eyes. He opened it, and the spicy, nutty aromatic memories of his father's manor rushed into his head. The voices delivered him from the drawing room, to the den, to the dining hall, and to the Room of the One Gaze. He shut the box. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Is it a true Jscethycan import?</div> The Handmaiden took the box, opened it, then closed it. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The tobacco is. Not the box.</div> The Handmaiden thrust the box into Lorcis's hands. Lorcis welcomed her swift conclusion, as the box had appeared genuine to him, but he was inclined to believe her. She was a box carver herself, and he had not much experience with the craft aside from examining his father's treasures as a little boy. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Excellent, nonetheless.</div> (if: $entryCalDecisionSmoke's owned is 0)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN We don't have to waste our time with it.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Ensuring the success of an experiment is no waste of time. Should Cal reject our other offerings, we may as well have this to test his receptibility. It's the tobacco that matters, in any case.</div> ] He pushed aside some papers and booklets inside his satchel to seat the tobacco box upon them, then tried to shake away the voices, but they clung to the fragrance. (display: 'addItemTobacco') <div class='o'>(if: $inv contains $itemHare)[(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'sceneShed')](else:)[(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'searchShedFloor1')]</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's shed) ###Take the Blister Honey </header> } The vial contained enough for one tilt of substance. He had never taken Blister Honey himself, especially not after Ivie had described its effects the first time she had tied him to her bed. Although she assured him of the potion's safety, he politely declined. She and Gavril downed a vial each, then the rogue struck her with a force throwing her to the bed. She fled into Lorcis's presence, not much his embrace, for he could not wrap his arms around her on account of them being strung up to the posts. As her body shivered against his, the aphrodisiac's immediate effects grew like a glow. Her pupils had dilated till her countenance transformed into that of feverish obedience, and her breath pulsed hotly through his skin into muscle, quickening and quaking as the shadow of the rogue lengthened upon them. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Here's the agent to replenish Cal's vigor. Blister Honey is potent and acts quickly, so we needn't worry about idling for long while he indulges himself.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Is this a good idea?</div> She was faint--Lorcis guessed she already knew the spirit of his reply. He put on his spectacles, polished the glass with his sleeve, and read the label to be sure he had the correct item. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Would I ever propose bad ideas? We know this is one of Cal's favorite pasttimes. He wouldn't mind a bit of help going about it.</div> (if: $entryCalDecisionSex's owned is 0)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN We've already decided on another method. The only one indulging in this affair is you.</div> Because the Handmaiden could not see him up in the loft, he grinned. <div class='d'>$LORCIS In the event that Cal does not find (if: $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 1)[meat](else:)[tobacco] acceptable, we shall have to attempt to execute my original plan, which will certainly draw a result favorable to the experiment.</div> ] Lorcis tucked his glasses into his coat pocket and placed the vial in his satchel. Calberus would be pleased. As he started down the ladder, he saw Asylon leaving a note for Gavril, most likely informing him of the appropriation and some other formalities, so that there would be no mystery where none was needed. Her gesture was not without its own game, as the note itself would have been a puzzle, for the rogue could not much read. (display: 'addItemHoney') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: '$oReturn', 'sceneShed')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###Observation of the Ogre </header> } Lorcis found himself unable to draw away from Calberus. He was more than an interesting subject, a horror, or a marvel to behold. He was a joy. Calberus took another flap of skin from a pile on the table and affixed it to his project. His face was serious and concentrated. He appeared to be in his late forties or fifties, but Lorcis could not truly place his years. His body was simply magnificent. His mind, even grander. He seemed out of place, in the wrong time, and in the wrong world, like a primordial aberration--the first, the only, and the last of his kind. (if: $observation's calObserve is 0)[(display: 'addObservationCalObserve')] (display: 'returnCalberus')

{ <div class='o'> (if: (passage:)'s name contains 'calberus0')[(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'calberus0')] (elseif: (passage:)'s name contains 'calberus1')[(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'calberus1')] </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) </header> } Calberus set aside the leather, needle, and twine of his sewing project and turned the cervid's head to face him. The deer had been a titan of a creature, with shaggy hair like a mane on its neck, and eye sockets as large as fists. Calberus stared into them, although he appeared to be looking beyond what Lorcis could see. The ogre's eyes were vague like the Harrow Les fog, pale as the moonlight, and milky like the opening of a third eye. His responses to the world around him, especially in the light when he was uncloaked from the darkness that was his habitat, appeared to be generated not from sight but from sounds, scents, tastes, textures, and perhaps even ether--a sense wholly commanded by no mere human. The hart's severed head appeared to be some sort of gateway to him, as his breaths, voluminous and patient, enumerated the passage of time. (display: 'decisionCalGive')

{ (set: $observation's calObserve to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's calDolls to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's basementHall) ###Dungeon Observation Window </header> } { (if: $entryCalGiveSex's owned is 1)[(display: 'dungeonWindowSex')] (elseif: $entryCalGiveSmoke's owned is 1)[(display: 'dungeonWindowSmoke')] (elseif: $entryCalGiveFood's owned is 1)[(display: 'dungeonWindowFood')] (else:)[(display: 'dungeonWindowAll')] }(if: $observation's dungeonWindowLook is 0)[(display: 'addObservationDungeonWindowLook')]

The oil lantern's light made the glass on the floor glitter like thousands of eyes, and shadows of the cabinet's wreckage seemed to march like an army of miniature flesh dolls, all configurations and reconfigurations of the ruined and misshapen. {<div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Read the Handmaiden's transcription.", 'readTranscription') (linkgoto: 'Play the phonograph again.', 'playPhonographAgain') </div>}

{<span class='b'>$close</span>}

The Handmaiden was presently blinding the afternoon sun with the flourishes of her shashkas. Her forms, performed daily, allowed her to remain close to her god when she was not able to grant him blood sacrifices. Lorcis had once practiced dance and ritual forms, but because he had not been pressured into exercising battle forms, he was spared the wasting of his life in combat in the name of Aruseht. The Handmaiden's ambitions lay in the fields of war, not so much under tents of sensual pleasures. Lorcis's father, known among Sehtians as the Poet of Seht, was an orator specialized in leading Sehtian rituals, wielding consecration daggers and pens over swords. The techniques in all forms were interchangeable, universal movements of human motion and momentum. Masters of the forms, among their many other achievements, were bestowed the title of Serpent of Seht. They were artists, spellbinders, and warriors all at once, and they were the finest of Aruseht's Slaves. As the Handmaiden demonstrated her proficiency before him, each step and stance precise, Lorcis allowed himself to witness the finesse of her power, which made apparent her dedication to her calling and purpose in life. He wondered if she might miss a step, falter, and how much more powerful she might become then, torn free from her own convictions. <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Inform the Handmaiden that the time has come to begin the experiment.','yardPrepareGetCal')</div>

{ <div class='o'> (if: $observation's calQuestionName is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Calberus for his name.', 'calQuestionName')] (if: $observation's calQuestionFrom is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Calberus where he comes from.', 'calQuestionFrom')] (if: $observation's calQuestionUnderstand is 0)[(linkgoto: 'Ask Calberus if he is able to understand.', 'calQuestionUnderstand')] (if: $observation's calQuestionName is 1 or $observation's calQuestionFrom is 1 or $observation's calQuestionUnderstand is 1)[(linkgoto: 'Rouse Calberus from hypnosis and end the session.', 'calQuestionAwaken')] </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###Ask Him for His Name </header> } After having introduced himself the night they came into acquaintance, Lorcis had asked the ogre for his name. He soon discovered the ogre's cavernous voice resounded only through grunts, groans, murmuration, and susurration which accompanied fleshy operations. Up to the present day, he had yet to divulge a nominal confession. It seemed a second attempt now would be as good a time as any. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Calberus, I would like you to tell me your name. What is your name?</div> They waited for him to speak. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's not working.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS It may yet. It's normal for a subject to take a moment to process the new habitat. We must have patience as he orients himself to his surroundings.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Orienting him was <i>your</i> responsibility.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON We could try an inquiry with a yes or a no answer.</div> Lorcis allowed Calberus another few seconds for a chance to enlighten them, then followed Asylon's suggestion. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Do you have a name? If you have a name, please fully extend three fingers on your left hand.</div> His fingers did not move except to ride the rising and falling of his chest. Lorcis did not wish to pressure the subject, for the state he was in was fragile. If the ogre had any name to go by, it had been Calberus. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Is your name Calberus?</div> Lorcis could have waited for half an hour more without the glare of his aides on him. This topic had been worn out, and the Handmaiden and Asylon were easily disenchanted. (display: 'addObservationCalQuestionName')

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###Ask Him from Where He Comes </header> } Lorcis had often speculated about Calberus's origins, although he had to admit his hypotheses were based more on physiognomy than on conclusive facts. He had only cursory familiarity with studies in physiognomy. The doctors and hobbyists who were his father's acquaintances liked to gather around a table and assemble the Circle's research in order to compose counterpoints based on their own predispositions. His father had explained to him that to Calaieans, the way someone looked--a combination of the shape of their eyes or nose, their hair texture, their skin color, their height and weight, and so on--determined their personality and temperament, their beliefs, their station in life, and their worthiness to the gods. Sehtians approached physiognomy through anthropology, categorizing societies and cultures by the physical appearance of people who comprised them, because appearance was an indicator of purity in bloodline. Neither viewpoints liked challenges to their unadultered cultural essentialism. Lorcis had hardly been a participant in his father's conferences, not in a studious way, for he had other duties more relevant to his hallowed position as a chosen of Seht; nor did he feel much desire to be a part of their clouds. As a social construct, purity was misleading. The infallible, the immaculate, or the virgin had been bestowed an invention of innocence, which begot conflict stemming from its persistent preservation in the idolization of its intactness, or in the voracious censure of its failings. Valorization of purity, chastity, and withholding from designated corruptions was a form of moral and societal oversight, and the relationship one bore with the idolized--god or mortal--placed power with the worshipper, not with the entity constrained to upholding those values. This self-adopted guidance itself could shift from internal to external demonstrations. It could become a cult, then a religion. To the crusader, it was not one's own body which needed to be regulated to desirability--it was the bodies of others. Although considering all the talk of purity, Lorcis could not help but perceive Calberus as someone unlike any other--someone with another definition of innocence and purity. Yet he must have had origins somewhere, someplace, for he existed in their space and in the flesh. The color of his hair, skin, and eyes was starkly cadaverous, like a painting of winter where things were slumbering, dead, and monochrome. Lorcis suspected he had migrated into Caireleon from the northern mountains of Scarsgar, a scathing landscape which mirrored the majesty of his anatomy. It was sentimental to correlate one matter with another solely by mating likenesses, for Calberus had offered no supporting evidence of his origins in narration or in mannerisms. Lorcis would see now if the experiment could allow him his own voice and end the hazards of sympathetic association and assumption. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Calberus, I would like you to tell me where you were born. Where were you born?</div> Calberus appeared content sitting in the darkness, wandering within his own mind. Perhaps he had never known where he had been born. Perhaps it no longer existed. Perhaps it could not be pronounced. Lorcis began to worry that perhaps it had never had the description with which to enter history. <div class='d'>$ASYLON Has he fallen asleep?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS No, he hasn't fallen asleep.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON If his hands weren't tied, he might have been able to draw a map. Or a house.</div> Lorcis had not anticipated binding Calberus's hands when they had devised the experiment. It had been the Handmaiden's initiative, and he agreed with her on the principle of security, no more. Furthermore, he doubted Calberus would have produced any illustration meaningful to them if he were able to take a writing instrument to paper. Lorcis had gone through the reams Calberus had been composing on in the basement long before any of the witches had come to live upstairs. The material consisted of scratches with no pattern or consistent form Lorcis could decipher. Additionally, Calberus wrote over his own writing, over and over, and some papers were thinned to powder by the copious mass and volume of ink, charcoal, lead, or bodily fluids disintegrating them. The language--if it was one or several--was yet another puzzle preventing the ogre's categorization into any existing land or culture. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I suppose we could move on to other questions.</div> The Handmaiden and Asylon seemed to nod in agreement, although they were only shifting in their assigned positions. Calberus held no evident opinion. (display: 'addObservationCalQuestionFrom')

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###Ask Him if He Understands </header> } Lorcis had already asked Calberus for verification of his altered state, which the ogre had replied to by following commands regulating his breath. Now, Lorcis wished to see if Calberus could validate the state through verbal communication. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Calberus, when I brought you into the dark, you breathed in pace with my voice. When you did so, were you following my instructions?</div> Calberus hardly denied or confirmed, for he made no outstanding motions. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Do you understand what I am saying this very moment?</div> Lorcis moved closer to the subject, although the adjustment in proximity would have been insignificant to maintaining Calberus's heightened state of concentration. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Can you understand this language?</div> There was, yet again, no reply. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Calberus, do you understand me?</div> Lorcis counted Calberus's breaths, trying to convince himself there was a pattern or sign he was overlooking. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Command him to respond to you in kind.</div> Lorcis drew back from the ogre. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I can't force him to acquire abilities he hasn't had previously. He may understand us, but he may not be able to wield the speech to communicate.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Perhaps he is deaf?</div> Lorcis did suspect the possibility. When he had first met the ogre, he believed him to be blind, deaf, and mute. Several gruesome incidents appeared to prove none was applicable. Yet now, as Calberus sat silently and unresponsive in the chair, he was again not so certain. <div class='d'>$LORCIS He has responded to sounds before, and I believe he can replicate language, if only we help him.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What you're doing now is clearly not working.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Not wholly yet, but delicate operations require patience.</div> The Handmaiden twirled the pen in her fingers, like a miniature dagger. She and Asylon were actively avoiding his gaze, waiting for the session to end. Calberus, too, it seemed. (display: 'addObservationCalQuestionUnderstand')

{ <header> #(print: $calberus's nameFull) ##(print: $calberus's title) ###His Awakening </header> } Lorcis did not want the session to end. He wanted to take Calberus's hands and wring words out of him but instead rubbed together his own hands. They were so close. He only needed one word, one syllable, one constonant, the smallest fragment of any recognizable language. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Perhaps you're expecting too much of him, Anointed. Your experiments are ambitious, but knowledge can neither be rushed nor intimidated.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON It can be enough for now to know he's suggestible.</div> The sunlight rippled over the monument before him, yet Calberus remained stubbornly still, almost as if to sabotage the session after such a promising start. Lorcis set aside this suspicion and doubt, for his projections onto the subject were unwarranted and would mar the experiment's underlying language. Beyond the primary goals, the experiment comprised too many variables and dependencies, and the subject was unable to cooperate. The rest, he himself had initially determined, was gratuitous. The definition of Calberus was nonessential. He tried to convince himself of this aloud as the voices were burgeoning inside his head. <div class='d'>$LORCIS That shall be it, then. We have fulfilled the primary goals of the experiment: teaching you to use the phonograph and determining the subject's suggestibility.</div> He would have to devise another experiment to delve specifically into Calberus's communication. He already had a thought in mind--exploration of nonverbal methods, although he knew Calberus's penmanship to be illegible scrawlings and his illustrations and diagrams to rely on unknown measurements. He wondered if he could teach Calberus a new pattern of communication. The inspiration and formulation of this new plan cheered him, and he turned to Calberus, now more eager to end the induction experiment so that he could begin preparations for the next. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, it's time to return to the parlour. We must rise to the surface, toward the light, and bid the darkness farewell--</div> The voices pierced his head, from spine to eyes. Their presence rang loudly, accompanied by visual disturbances and a torrid wave of nausea. Although they had entered, they stormed and thrashed within his skull as if to break out, desperate and distorted. Then he heard the slinking chains. Calberus arose. The motion was accompanied by a cascade of noise and other movement, all at once: the metal rings, Calberus's breathing, a sudden raspy squall--a bird--and a fluttering thud. A black and white dart, flung into the upper corner of the room, soared over Lorcis's head and hit the wall behind him, then floundered like a moth against the window pane. Asylon's magpie was, most apparently, not dead. The bird screeched and beat against the window for a moment that seemed as if time had become trapped within itself, with the voices clashing and crashing in confusion, too, until Asylon opened the window, and the bird shot out into the forest sky. The racket of the voices chased after it, then turned round right back at Lorcis and further behind him, and he began to follow them. While all this was happening--which was, in Lorcis's perception, somehow occurring in a time fluid, nonbinary, and neither stationary nor moving--he was thrown face-first into the wall, then pinned there. The sound, smell, and weight of Calberus's respiration flooded his ears and drowned out the voices, spread over his neck and shoulders, and changed the shape of sound, space, and time. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal--</div> Calberus turned him so that he came to face the sackcloth hood and the breathing beast beneath it. More precisely, he was crushed between the wall and his captor. The heavy rope restraints, now failed scraps, swung from the ogre's wrists and beat against his chest. Calberus clutched him around the throat and high under his jaw. The other hand fell upon his cheek, fingers spreading along the textures and shapes that made up his face. Lorcis tried to look through the weaves of the sack, to seek out Calberus's eyes and know if he were truly seeing. He thought to rouse Calberus from hypnosis, as it seemed a logical thing to do, but a sinking realization made him pause. He had not offered any suggestion that might have compelled the ogre to approach or to touch him. The notion that he had <i>not</i> hypnotized the ogre at all, and furthermore that he believed this to be true, paralyzed him. In a welcoming change, the surge of violence receded and the dust began to settle, although the hands on him remained. Lightly, Calberus stroked his brow, then his eyelashes. He saw the Handmaiden out of the corner of his eye, but he raised a hand to stay her. His reasoning prevailed, and he would awaken the subject before the situation called for her interception. He motioned for Asylon to return to the phonograph, which she did hesitantly. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, you are still with me. You are still safe with me. Do not be afraid of the light. Let us rise together, slowly now.</div> The palm on his face tickled his lips, and the smell of many fleshes nearly staggered him. Calberus's breaths billowed through the weave of the sack. The giant's heartbeat, thrashing against his own, began to quicken. Lorcis attempted to set an example of calmness for him. <div class='d'>$LORCIS It's all right. You want to return to the parlour with me. Follow my voice. The light is serene, soothing, and inviting. The darkness follows as shadows as we rise. Follow me up, and up, and--</div> Calberus gripped his face, then breached his lips with fingers thick and hard. The savor of the putrid filled his mouth, and the fingers clawed deeper into his throat the more his reflexes responded. It appeared the ogre was trying to silence him. Perhaps he <i>had</i> been hypnotized and, lulled into a dimension wondrous and eternal, did not wish to leave the darkness. If the solution to remaining forever in the dark was to quell any forces in opposition--such as a guide tempting him toward the light--then, Lorcis gathered, the predicament he was in had become much more alarming. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Ah--ah--ah--</div> He tried to say, "Awaken," then to the Handmaiden, "Administer the sedative," but his struggling only opened his throat to the invasion. Calberus seemed to be attempting to forge entrance into him, which was a persistence made impossible by his dimensions, lest the ogre split the encasement altogether. As Lorcis managed to emit a strain bearing some semblance of a cry for help, the fingers retreated only then for the hand to crush his nose and mouth, mold to his face, and close off the passages for breath and command. The clamp around his neck tightened, and the sackcloth hood loomed closer. The muzzle beneath it thrust against his head and prodded his cheek, pushing and pushing as if the parts beneath it desired connection, but the hood separated them from him. The rasps through Calberus's own nose and mouth were amplified by the metal encasing them. He inhaled Lorcis as if to consume all evidence and history of him. Lorcis began losing his vision. His eyes kept turning up toward the white ceiling, and his eyelids fluttered and blinked away the room a few patches at a time. He was not sure if his hands were doing anything useful--obviously not. His entire body jerked within the ogre's hold, against the ogre's mass, until the corporeal form containing him seemed to vanish altogether. The light was coming at him. He was rising, and in his mind he heard his own voice beckoning himself to rise. There were other voices. The Handmaiden. Asylon. A chattering. They sounded so far away. The wind and world rushed by him. He seemed to have been thrown out of a nightmare. He gasped in air even as the shock of it pained his lungs. He was still in Calberus's grasp. The cabinet had been knocked over, and all the trinkets it had contained had spilled in pieces across the parlour floor. The Handmaiden lay in shattered glass, fighting off a daze. Bright red blood streamed down one side of her face. He could not locate Asylon. The magpie had reappeared. It was perched on the lip of the overturned phonograph's amplifier, looking at him out of one eye. He met the wall once again, which he had by now become more intimate with than any other. Calberus raised a hand. In it was the syringe. Lorcis heaved one more deep, painful breath as the ogre's cinch allowed. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, you can stay in the darkness. It's quite all right. You don't have to do anything you don't want to.</div> Calberus pointed the syringe needle upward where the afternoon light clipped it, and Lorcis winced at the sharp spurt of liquid flashing out of the tip. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Cal, you don't want to do this. You want to awaken. Wake up now, Cal. Wake up. Wake up--</div> The needle indulged in the taut flesh between his shoulder and neck. Time swung in a loop yet again. The needle itself seemed endless, and the length his body could take, infinite. The prolonged sting and the icy trickle deep in his vessels made his limbs and organs foreign to him. He did feel Calberus kneading or milking the point of insertion, massaging the body he was leaving behind. The red afternoon whirled around the sack hood which examined Lorcis, eyeless and clinical. A voice or voices dredging low became lost in the atmosphere. Lorcis abandoned his body and, drawn into the ogre's arms and breast, sank into the darkness gathering within. <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Sleep.', 'recovery')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $hour's name) </header> } Lorcis steadied himself on the end table after turning it upright. The bruises over his neck seemed to cloak his shoulders and back, as well, and remnants of the sedative made him think even the light from the oil lantern was heavy. He set the lantern on the end table, collected the phonograph pieces and put them together by the light, then gathered the cyliders all into one place. He inserted the first cylinder and began replaying the audio. To his relief, sounds creaked in. It was the induction. He switched it out and followed with the other cylinders until he found the one he sought: the awakening. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN_REC Perhaps you're expecting too much of him, Anointed. Your experiments are ambitious, but knowledge can neither be rushed nor intimidated.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON_REC It can be enough for now to know he's suggestible.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS_REC That shall be it, then. We have fulfilled the primary goals of the experiment: teaching you to use the phonograph and determining the subject's suggestibility.</div> The quality of the replication impressed him. His aides were recognizable and distinguishable beneath the crackling, whirring, and mechanical humming. He turned the crank steadily, bracing himself for the din that would be the magpie's flight. <div class='d'>$LORCIS_REC Cal, it's time to return to the parlour. We must rise to the surface, toward the light, and bid the darkness farewell--</div> He had made a gasp then. It was a small intake of breath, when the voices had hit him in the head. He was a little embarrassed at hearing his vulnerability. He wondered how he sounded in sleep. He kept turning the crank. Sounds of the background seemed to come to the foreground after his recorded voice dropped away. He turned for another several seconds. Something should have been happening by then. Of course, Asylon had stopped recording, for the magpie would have startled her, and she was the one who had opened the window for it. Then the strangling and the suffocating and all that excitement--she would not have been so foolish as to have run back to the phonograph instead of doing something more sensible, such as saving Lorcis's life. He was torn on whether he would have rather preferred an audio record of the event. An auditory presence dripped from the amplifier. He had been mindlessly turning the crank, but a change in the output alerted him. It was a microscopic, intimate sound in the beginning. It seemed to be something of an organic nature, close and contained, like the sound of eyeballs compressed together within a palm, or a mouth fornicating with its own tongue. Following the pattering of indistinct viscosity came a mechanical reaking and whining unlike that of the phonograph itself. The sounds grated together, a rising static, painful in the ears as in the head and heart, like a cry not meant to be heard. Beneath that unrecognizable screech, Lorcis detected something else that was becoming louder, clearer: a voice, or many, a wail or a hiss or a song--all and none--backwards, gurgling, suffocating, lost, multilingual, staggered, simultaneous, running together and over one another. <div class='d'>$VOICES He is <span class='voices'>insane humane profane! insane humane insane! profane humane!</span>.</div> His hand jumped off the crank. Only after he had stood long enough, shaking in silence--the silence of the phonograph--did he realize he had understood the words which had played from the recording. The languages were his own. Those voices were not <i>his</i> voices. Despite the distortion, they--voices many or one, he could not be sure--sounded human, like people in anguish, fear, or panic, even as their delivery remained detached and dead. They sounded like victims. Variations of their words began to solidify in his mind in a garbled echo: He is insane. He is profane. He is humane. He looked around the room, thinking he had seen something on the ceiling. The magpie, or a moth, or ghosts. It was only the ceiling and the light and shadows. He stared at the phonograph, its solid base and clawed feet, its eyeless trumpet, and its long, incising needle. It seemed suddenly malicious. He put on his spectacles and looked around again, this time wishing to see the Handmaiden or Asylon coming down the stairs to join him. He wanted a fellow witness, but he also wanted a companion. Where were his voices? Hesitantly, he set the needle back and bolstered himself in preparation for repeating the tortured sounds. He played the recording again. <div class='d'>$LORCIS_REC Cal, it's time to return to the parlour. We must rise to the surface, toward the light, and bid the darkness farewell--</div> Then nothing. He had turned the crank until the needle scratched against the edge of the cylinder's end. He pulled the needle back and tried again. <div class='d'>$LORCIS_REC Cal, it's time to return to the parlour. We must rise to the surface, toward the light, and bid the darkness farewell--</div> He adjusted his glasses and tried once more. <div class='d'>$LORCIS_REC Cal, it's time to return to the parlour. We must rise to the surface, toward the light, and bid the darkness farewell--</div> He removed the cylinder and brought it nearer to the lamplight. He determined the etching of the beginning was where he and his aides were speaking. After his direction to Calberus, the wax cylinder was completely smooth. He set the cylinder down. He looked around himself again, over his shoulder, and became much more aware of the darkness shifting in the room. (set: $endStoryEnabled to 1) <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Look around yet again.', 'sceneParlour')</div>

Gone were the deer head and hide. One of the human figures lay sprawled on the operation bed. The legs were removed from its central trunk, and beams of sunlight seared its emergent, reconfigured ribs. The silhouette of a machete in the ogre's hand fell against the light, down and up and down again, and the cadent thwacking, dull into the flesh and sprays, resounded within the dungeon.

A conflagration was consuming the tobacco inside the obsidian box, much more intensely than any pile of tobacco leaves alone could offer. The firelight defined Calberus's form, highlighting his angles from below. He had the deer's head in both hands, low beneath the table, and the antlers spread out like legs, lurching by moving shadows.

Calberus was crushing something glistening, rippling the sludge between his fingers as if to savor the textures within it. His other hand had sunk beneath the operation table, obscured by the darkness. Stretched across the spikes of the deer's antlers, like a web or tent, was the stripped and splayed skin of the hare, soft fur matted by wetness.

Lorcis could see no movement within light or darkness, and he heard nothing but the humming draft and the voices tickling his ear. Aside from the shackles mounted on the operation bed, the surface was bare. Calberus had taken the offerings and dematerialized into one of the furthest nebulae of the dungeon, where senses and sanity were traitorous or lost.

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's yard) ###Bring the Subject to the Parlour </header> } With a hidden strike amongst a whirlwind, the Handmaiden's form brought her right-hand blade in alignment with Lorcis's throat. All forms were honed to mesmerize, to lure and lock enemies, sacrificial offerings, and slaves within a spell before they knew themselves to be the victims of the Serpent's envelopment. Lorcis was not immune to such artistry, but he was aware. He smiled, the Handmaiden resumed the next motions, sweeping away from him, seamlessly returning, and falling back again. A stamp extended her stance to a final bite, then a flurry of the blades around her outstretched arms ended the form. She sheathed her swords, drawing in their place her even sharper Jscethycan. (if: $observation's lorcisPortraitChange is 1)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Ready? Took you long enough.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Come now, it was hardly a wait. I believe Cal should be well-adjusted by this time. Would you kindly bring him to the parlour?</div>](else:)[ <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Surely the time hasn't yet come.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS It, in fact, has. I believe Cal should be well-adjusted by now. His mood shifts are quite unpredictable, so let's take advantage of this opportunity before we lose it. Would you kindly bring him to the parlour?</div>] <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Very kindly.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Please, be gentle.</div> The Handmaiden walked through the kitchen's back door, and Lorcis followed, knowing her gentle ways were atypical of his own. He would await her and Calberus nearby, overseeing the process at the dungeon door. Although none of the coven, with the exception of the rogue, had ever been pursued by the man in the basement, Lorcis had set precautions. The younger witches were forbidden from entering the dungeon without his presence, and he requested no one attempt to bind Calberus alone. The Handmaiden would have to fit the iron muzzle around Calberus's face. When Lorcis and Artrius had first tested the device, Calberus had systematically--surgically--dismantled it off his face and discarded it into a refuse gutter where he cast away clothing, jewelry, money, or other objects and body parts he did not need for his projects. Artrius made notes to redesign the straps out of stronger material and more complex fasteners. Lorcis asked him, rather, to make the article more comfortable to wear. On their next attempt, Calberus did not protest its equipment, as if he did not remember the first iteration, neither did he know what it was nor why it was on him. Perhaps he did know. Lorcis trusted the Handmaiden could handle the task of binding him, even if he were to struggle initially, for she, like Artrius, had done so more than once. Lorcis did not like to see Calberus in irons, but there were possibilities of him not acting according to his confines. Sometimes, he required the ogre leashed if they needed him to be somewhere, such as out of sight of a witchhunter searching for enchanters and godless to stake, hang, and burn in the forest. While leashed, Calberus might aim toward other avenues beyond the limits of the line, so the Handmaiden or Artrius would have to ground the chain with their own weight and resistance, as Lorcis had once been dragged along and did not wish a reoccurrence of such excitement. Other times, Lorcis could take Calberus lightly by the hand or even stand near a threshold, with no motion but intent, and appropriate movement would be underway, without prodding or begging. With Calberus satiated, Lorcis expected the latter experience. He watched the Handmaiden from the dungeon window. It happened so uneventfully that he almost laughed, but he did not enjoy the scene before him. The Handmaiden secured Calberus with additional bindings, including the lead and rope fashioned into gyves and manacles, which immobilized his arms crossed against his chest. He allowed her. Lorcis recognized what he disliked seeing: Calberus's indifference to ligatures. Perhaps the scars and sutures on him were not from struggles or trials. Perhaps he had let them happen. Perhaps he knew no better, or perhaps he did. The ogre's calmness was beneficial all around, Lorcis assured himself, and he did laugh--at his own acuity, for momentarily wishing upon himself, his coven, and the experiment an opinionated ogre and subsequent catastrophe. <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Proceed to the parlour with the subject.', 'sceneParlourPrepare')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###The Questioning </header> } With each breath, Calberus's great shoulders, arms, and chest heaved as one, rising and sinking under the anchor of ropes and chains. Hidden beneath the sackcloth hood was a countenance terrifyingly inert, removed from the physicalities and consciousness which had once entrapped it. (display: 'displayCalQuestions')

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's dungeon) </header> } Lorcis squinted to try seeing better in the dark, now that the sun was down and the moon was not full, although he was sure that did little to aid him. It appeared the Handmaiden had sought retribution. Calberus, wearing nothing but chains and metals, was bound to his own operation bed. The leash was wound and twisted taut around his neck so that he could not raise his head off the bed. He had been gagged by a brank, or a witch's bridle, which was secured around his head as his muzzle had been, only more menacing and damaging. Lorcis recognized the device immediately, first through an emotional impulse, then as the logical reality it was. It was an artifact adopted by Calaieans and Sehtians alike to contain their slaves. Its characteristic design was the thick iron spike positioned beneath the victim's tongue, raising the tongue to the palate to discourage speech--thereby preventing any pronouncement of curses and hexes--but of course, Calberus neither spoke nor adhered to instructions and expectations. His jaw was wet, and his breathing was abyssal, all-consuming as deep as ocean currents overtaking the sunken. In the undertow, a fresh slurry of blood and saliva would run down his chin. A bulge would force itself up and down his throat against the chains, and Lorcis could hear the working organs of the ogre swallowing the mixture. (display: 'toEndStory') (display: 'toInstitutionScenesBasement')

{(linkgoto: 'Go to the spring house.', 'sceneSpringHouse')}

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's springHouse) </header> } { (display: 'springHouse0') } (display: 'toInstitutionScenesYard')

The spring house was a small single-room stone building with a vaulted ceiling and iron-barred windows. The construction kept out leaves, twigs, and other forest dross from a portion of the stream, and warded the interior from plundering animals. Inside, a trough running along the wall allowed the water to pass through the building, providing cold storage for especially perishable products. Milk and butter from Aspencroft were stored in lidded pottery crocks set in the water. Above the trough, protruding stones and wooden shelves with hooks on their underside could bear other foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and meats, which were cooled by the air circulating off the stream's flow. With Artrius away, and Gavril and the Handmaiden tending to their own interests, the witches had not yet replenished their meat supply. Ivie had presented the last fowl before she set off with Marleau to County Daley, and it had been a luxurious feast. (if: not($inv contains $itemHare) and $entryCalDecisionFood's owned is 1 and $entryCalDecision's done is 0)[ Lorcis surveyed the stock once more, if there might have been some meat stowed away out of sight or inside a container. The results were as he suspected. The Handmaiden had suggested searching Gavril's shed, as the rogue did look after himself and would have most likely made preparations for his own solitary meals. ]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###The Induction </header> } Lorcis signalled for Asylon to begin recording and gave the Handmaiden a nod likewise. He took his own place before Calberus, whose nose was tilted upward toward the source of the sunlight, and whose eyes were shut still. <div class='d'>$LORCIS The light is bright, isn't it? Blinding. Even behind your eyelids, the light burns. You want cover. You want comfort. You want darkness.</div> Lorcis slowed the tempo of his delivery, measuring Calberus's breaths with each word. Intermittent movement beneath Calberus's eyelids declined. <div class='d'>$LORCIS There is a pool of darkness deep within your mind. You can't swim there from the surface. You must plunge. Let me take you under. Slowly, now. Follow my voice and sink with me. Sink.</div> Calberus's head lowered as slowly as the dust motes wavering in the afternoon radiance. <div class='d'>$LORCIS The light fades as you continue down, down, down. You are following my voice into the blackest of blacks. All is quiet around you, but my voice grows clearer, closer. Come closer.</div> Calberus's head raised slightly, toward Lorcis's lips. Lorcis moved closer to him and almost reached out, but he refrained from wiping off a teardrop which had run down the ogre's cheek behind the cage on his face. <div class='d'>$LORCIS You are here with me now, beside me, in the dark. Please open your eyes.</div> Calberus's eyes opened, which startled Lorcis. The gaze speared directly into him, through him, nearly aglow by the sunlight. Lorcis's gut recoiled more than his outward appearance did, and he shifted his stance, almost catching himself reflected in the lustrous white glaze. The eyes held steady with the illumination in them. Calberus was not seeing. He was staring, as the success of the induction seemed near, into his own mind. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Come deeper with me still. It will be darkest where I am, where you will be. Follow my voice. Come closer. Closer, closer.</div> Lorcis drew out the burlap sack from his satchel and moved behind the chair, continuing his soothing beckons as Calberus's eyes remained glass. The leather straps of the iron muzzle had been drawn tightly around the back of his head, imprinted upon the long scars and sutures cutting across his scalp. The Handmaiden had spared him no chances. Lorcis opened the sack, raised the opening over Calberus's head, and hooded him. <div class='d'>$LORCIS This is it, Calberus. This is pure black. If it's black where you are, inhale deeply.</div> There was a prickle of heat at first, then a rush, flowing through Lorcis's veins and nerves, through his core and heart, and to his brain. The hypnosis was working. He could not harry Calberus, who might still provide no words, but the small steps of progress were quite promising. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Now, gently, exhale. Gently, gently.</div> Calberus's exhalation was gravelly, almost corrosive. It did not trouble Lorcis, for the ogre's breaths at any given time varied from silent to harsh. The release at command itself was more significant. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Breathe in, and out. In, and out. Now, breathe in. The darkness is complete here, so dark that it seems as if you are nowhere, but you are, in fact, everywhere. The darkness is you. You are the darkness. When you next exhale, you, Calberus, shall be master of your mind.</div> Calberus showed no signs of discomfort, neither vital, as if he had become a ghost in this plane, a sentient but faceless edifice self-erected from nightmares yet lying dormant beneath waking denizens unaware of the life they tread. Although Lorcis's manner did not betray him, he shook feverishly inside. He waited for the end of the cylinder to draw very near. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Now, exhale.</div> Calberus's exhalation flooded through Lorcis's heart and rocked the marrow in his bones. For an embarrassingly unprofessional and wholly inaccurate second, he thought this was it, Calberus was his, and he wanted to stroke him and keep him forever. He pressed that second to quickly flee. He indicated Asylon to end the audio recording, and she stopped turning the crank. As she replaced the cylinder, she wondered aloud. <div class='d'>$ASYLON How do we know if he's truly gone under?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Normally, I would check for catalepsy by sticking a needle through the subject's hand, but that's a demonstrative performance more than a true indicator. We don't have the time for show in our recording. The shifts in Calberus's physical status, including lethargic respiration, lacrimation, and his positive responsiveness to my suggestions, are sufficient.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The proof will be if he speaks.</div> Asylon looked to Lorcis in agreement with the Handmaiden. Lorcis did not agree, as he would be unable to force Calberus into doing anything he was incapable of doing. He returned to his subject to see just what Calberus was capable of. (display: 'removeItemSack') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Begin the questioning.', 'sceneParlourInductionQuestioning')</div>

{ (set: $item to $itemSack) (display: 'invAddNoMessage') }

{ (set: $item to $itemSack) (display: 'invRemove') }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Futile Replication </header> } Lorcis was not certain about playing the recording again, but curiosity overcame reason and dread. He put the cylinder of the awakening in the phonograph and turned the crank. He heard the Handmaiden, Asylon, himself, and his gasp. The wax was smooth from there on, and the amplifier emphasized so. The erasure was absolute. Whatever--whomever--he had heard that one time could not be heard again, but the words he thought were spoken replayed from his memory: He is insane. He is profane. He is humane. (if: $observation's phonographPlayAgain is 0)[(display: 'addObservationPhonographPlayAgain')]

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Ritual Garb </header> } Lorcis shrugged off his coat, loosened his cravat, and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He opened the wardrobe and brought his old travel robe into the light. It had a capacious hood and open sleeves with interior pockets, properties which convinced him to keep it even after it had been ripped apart. On his first night in the dungeon, Lorcis had awakened disoriented and disrobed, lying among separated skins and bones on a moist and pestilent floor. Dermestid beetles, heavy biting flies, and other miniature horrors with far too many legs were exploring his skin and burrowing in his hair. Meat hooks dangled over his head, with a few bodies distributed between. A rudimentary drainage gutter beside him funneled fluids into a grate-covered black hole from where the cold night seeped and the voices hissed faintly. From that gutter, he retrieved his satchel and its contents, which were in good condition, if a bit soiled from the juices of the dead, but his robe was in pieces. Calberus had torn it for some reason, then discarded it. It would not have been much trouble to simply pull the garment over Lorcis's head, if that was what he had been after. Lorcis had shaken out the rags and put them on despite their condition, including the hood, hoping to feel less vulnerable to the draft, the insects, and the strange man who had, incidentally, rescued him. Calberus detected movement and then loomed over him, but instead of tearing off the robe again, stroked the material over Lorcis's thigh, arm, and cheek, and Lorcis endured the tenderizing of his flesh under the ogre's solemn hand. Since then, Lorcis had laundered and mended the robe as well as he had been able. He had learned to better appreciate and retain his own possessions after his expulsion into the forest. The robe was constructed of good material for traveling, rough enough to guard against wind and debris yet light on the back, but in present times, he wore it mainly for rituals, for lounging at the end of the day, and for Calberus. (display: 'changePortraitPlayer')

Lorcis reunited with Asylon and the Handmaiden outside the dungeon, shutting the door behind him. He discouraged the shakiness in his hands by wringing them out and smoothing down his coat. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Well, that's been accomplished.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Now we wait.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON How long?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS We may reconvene in the parlour once more within the hour. That should permit Cal sufficient time for the deed. In the meantime, do as you will, and I shall see you in a little while.</div> The Handmaiden headed out through the kitchen. Asylon turned for the stairs up. Lorcis remained where he had been standing since shutting the dungeon door, and the voices seemed momentarily trapped on the other side.

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'observationMenu')[(linkgoto: $observationName, 'observationMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$observationName</span>", '$return')] }

{ <a name='top'><header> #(print: $player's name)'s $observationName </header> } { (if: $observation's asylonDrawing is 1)[$obsAsylonDrawing](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's handmaidenSword is 1)[$obsHandmaidenSword](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calReassure is 1)[$obsCalReassure](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calObserve is 1)[$obsCalObserve](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calDolls is 1)[$obsCalDolls](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's ivieBureau is 1)[$obsIvieBureau](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's dungeonWindowLook is 1)[$obsDungeonWindowLook](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's asylonInvestigation is 1)[$obsAsylonInvestigation](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's lorcisPortraitChange is 1)[$obsLorcisPortraitChange](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calQuestionName is 1)[$obsCalQuestionName](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calQuestionFrom is 1)[$obsCalQuestionFrom](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's calQuestionUnderstand is 1)[$obsCalQuestionUnderstand](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's transcriptionRead is 1)[$obsTranscriptionRead](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's phonographPlayAgain is 1)[$obsPhonographPlayAgain](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's thinkAboutFriends is 1)[$obsThinkAboutFriends](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's asylonReading is 1)[$obsAsylonReading](else:)[$observationHidden] (if: $observation's handmaidenVoices is 1)[$obsHandmaidenVoices](else:)[$observationHidden] } $oTop

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) </header> } { Aside from the ambiance of the Harrow Les night, the parlour was soothingly quiet. The voices were not having conversations or performances, and Lorcis was able to organize his thoughts. He wished to compare his notes with those of the Handmaiden's, as well as to see if he could gather anything useful from the phonograph, if possible. } {<div class='o'> (linkgoto: "Read the Handmaiden's transcription.", 'readTranscription') (linkgoto: 'Play the phonograph.', 'voices') </div>}

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Recovery </header> } The voices came to him in the dark, invisible but palpable. They drifted around him, singing, and he followed them one way and then another, although he had no sense of direction or movement. A flare broke out from the darkness--they gasped as a crowd beneath fireworks. The fiery orb undulated across the black canvas until it rested in one spot undifferentiated from the rest, other than that spot was now aglow. An evergreen breeze brushed his face, and distant calls of wolves lured the voices away. The night was no longer young, and the windows were open. The parlour room began to form around the oil lamp on the floor in front of him. Lorcis was seated in the subject's armchair, facing the blank wall and the windows. He wanted to get up, but despite a drowsy giddiness tingling through him, the ache in his body anchored him to the chair. His shoulders were as heavy as boulders, and the entirety of his neck and all within it pulsed under the tenderness of a thorough bruising. A cold sting and an eye-watering liquid prodded his lips. A different kind of fire--brandy--invigorated him, and he eagerly drank all the cup had to offer. The cup drew away, and the Handmaiden appeared. Her hair was pulled back from her face, away from the raw but cleaned lacerations splitting her forehead, brow, and temple. With the light behind her, he had only a hint of the damage, as well as the unmistakable scowl few wounds could mar. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Good evening.</div> He felt numb and shaky, and his voice demonstrated it. When he coughed, the Handmaiden huffed, then walked out of sight. Asylon replaced her. Lorcis was relieved to see no visible physical harm had come to the mystic. She reached into her satchel and showed him an empty vial. <div class='d'>$ASYLON An agent to counteract the effects of the bovine sedative. Of course Ivie told me about it. Warned me. She said to use this in the case your ambitions got the best of you.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS She knows me too well. You all do, I suppose.</div> He turned to the Handmaiden, who was gazing out one of the windows. She would want him to pay her back for the injuries she sustained on his behalf. Asylon would be too humble to demand anything of him, although promises about the safety of his experiments had yet again been broken. He would have to rebuild trust in her. He could not argue with his responsibilities over the consequences. If not for them, he might have been dead. Or with Calberus. <div class='d'>$LORCIS What of Cal?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He's in the basement. Where he should be.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS What happened? I mean, after the... administration.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You started convulsing, and she handed the ogre the neutralizing agent.</div> The Handmaiden made a curt nod toward Asylon. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He was the one who administered it.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Although not immediately.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS How significant of a time lapse was there, to warrant that mention?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON You were overdosing in his arms, and he simply observed, I think. He hadn't taken off the potato sack.</div> Lorcis nodded and tried to imagine it: himself, debased in a precarious state within Calberus's arms, and the vacancy of Calberus's emotions and intentions beneath the sackcloth hood. He could not quite picture the exchange of the neutralizing agent. He had never thought of Asylon approaching the ogre. That she had given it to him to administer--trusted him to administer it--made him wonder how much he had been misreading their relationship. By then, Calberus was surely no longer under hypnosis. The belief that he had not been hypnotized at all, or had come out of it on his own long before the session's end, grew more and more convincing. Inversely, the goal of deciphering him grew less and less attainable. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN He sat with you for hours, listening to you mumbling in your sleep.</div> If Lorcis had the energy, he would have stood in alertness. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Mumbling? What did I say? Did you record it? Tell me you did.</div> The Handmaiden turned away from him, and Asylon looked toward the end table, which lay on its side. <div class='d'>$ASYLON The phonograph...</div> In the fray, the phonograph had been tipped and had come apart. The parts themselves did not appear broken. Lorcis was sure it could be put back together, yet too late for capturing a moment now lost and reduced to memory and written notation. He must have appeared visibly disappointed, for the Handmaiden laid a hand on his shoulder near the bruise of the first injection as if to remind him of it. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN One thing at a time, Anointed. Now, you should rest.</div> He had half-risen out of the chair, and he sank into it at her insistence. He could hardly think of anything about the experiment, foreseen or not, that had been advantageous to his research. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Well, no matter about the recording. What was I mumbling on about? What did I say?</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You spoke in the voices of Seht.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS So I was speaking in tongues again, Sehtian or otherwise, and not one individual in our current population here can understand a single word uttered. Except...</div> He nearly leapt up again. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Except Cal.</div> The Handmaiden shoved him down into the seat, no longer considerate of his bruises. He observed then that while Calberus had inserted the sedative into one side of his neck, the counteracting agent had gone into the other, for both sides and his entire upper body radiated soreness. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN What did I just tell you? Another experiment, another day.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS You said yourself he was <i>listening</i> to me. Handmaiden, your brilliance has inspired a revelation, which must be notated immediately. Where is my satchel?</div> Asylon retrieved it for him. He pulled out his spectacles, which were undamaged throughout the afternoon's events, and began scrawling internal deliberations into his journal. The shoulder of his dominant arm was heavy and made his strokes ungainly, but the implications and hypotheses were too overwhelming for thought alone. He was urged on in glee. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN I'm through. Transcription is on the desk.</div> She started for the hall, but Lorcis called after her. She looked over her shoulder, and the glow of the oil lamp played with the wounds reaching down the side of her face. <div class='d'>$LORCIS You have my thanks.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN It's to Aruseht's amusement that I'm to be the guardian, watcher, keeper, and escort of an Anointed who is a danger to, most of all, himself.</div> She continued out and up the stairs, and Asylon began to follow after her shadow. <div class='d'>$LORCIS You, too, Asylon. Thank you.</div> She turned her gaze down again--a little bashfully, he thought--and ascended the stairs in the hall. Alone in the parlour, Lorcis continued jotting down memoranda lest he lose those ideas forever. (display: 'addEntryInductionEnd') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Conclude the experiment.', 'parlourRecovery')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's parlour) ###Handmaiden's Transcription </header> } The Handmaiden had made a faithful transcription. Lorcis found himself disinterested in it. It ended when Calberus had grabbed him. There was another page labelled Transcriptionist's Notes. The Handmaiden had written her own summary most likely after the threat had subsided and her injuries had been tended to. She ended the summary with two suggestions for the lead investigator: 1) Leave the subject be, and 2) When you doubt yourself, follow the voices of Seht. (if: $observation's transcriptionRead is 0)[(display: 'addObservationTranscriptionRead')]

{ (set: $observation's transcriptionRead to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's asylonReading to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ (set: $observation's handmaidenVoices to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

{ <div class='grid-score-padded'> <div class='b'>(if: $score's itemCount is not $score's itemMax)[$scoreItem](else:)[$scoreItemDone]</div> <div class='b'>(if: $score's entryCount is not $score's entryMax)[$scoreEntry](else:)[$scoreEntryDone]</div> <div class='b'>(if: $score's noteCount is not $score's noteMax)[$scoreNote](else:)[$scoreNoteDone]</div> <div class='b'>(if: $score's observationCount is not $observation.size)[$scoreObservation](else:)[$scoreObservationDone]</div> </div> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Asylon's Room </header> } Barefoot and in her shift, Asylon was sitting on her bed, looking out the window at the clouded stars, and brushing her hair. It had been in a bun all day, as it was every day. Asylon had not appeared particlarly upset about the scattering and damage to some of her deck boxes and the cards themselves. Although her belongings were well-loved, she was practical enough to understand the circumstances under which they had become damaged. To her good fortune, her card table was still in agreeable condition. Lorcis suspected, though, that she and the Handmaiden deemed him the sole person responsible for tidying up the following morning, which he admitted was a quite fair assessment. (display: 'dialogueAsylon')

{ <header> #(print: $asylon's nameFull) ##(print: $asylon's title) ###The Art of the Moment </header> } Lorcis did not want to keep Asylon late, as she had lessons to return to in the morning, and he, as her tutor, would need to be ready at that time as well. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I hope it's not too late for me to intrude.</div> Asylon shook her head and moved along the edge of the bed to give him room to sit beside her. <div class='d'>$LORCIS I wanted to make sure you were all right after today's occasions.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Why wouldn't I be?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Much had transpired, and--</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON You almost died.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Yes, well... And you're implying you would have been all right with that?</div> She spun the tips of her hair around her fingers, avoiding his smile, as if she could hide her own slight hint of one by not looking at him. <div class='d'>$LORCIS How did your reading turn out?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON The Sick Woman showed face as the axis of the brimstone spread, the guidance. I try not to doubt you, but sometimes you make it difficult.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Your effort is most appreciated. What does it mean when the Sick Woman is revealed as the guidance?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON She could mean a possibility of succumbing to ailments, complications, or misunderstandings. She could mean demise in pursuits, enduring obscenity of being, insidious deception, or depravity. She also suggests resilience through critical times, persistence, solidarity, and survival. Facing adversity, she lingers or perseveres, though she may be weak, scarred, perverted, or profane.</div> He recalled the words and the panic crackling out of the phonograph. <div class='d'>$LORCIS And what is your interpretation?</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Then, when I first met her, I thought it meant the magpie had died so that it could foreshadow your failure in the experiment.</div> She continued quickly, before Lorcis could comment. <div class='d'>$ASYLON The magpie was dead. I know it was dead. I checked. It was cold and stiff. It didn't have a heartbeat. I picked ants out of its eyes.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I believe you.</div> She set her hairbrush on the nightstand and let her hands fall idly into her lap. <div class='d'>$ASYLON And then it came back to life. We can't be too convinced one way or another with the Sick Woman. She and her circumstances are volatile.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I suppose this means you have cause for a follow-up investigation.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON And you.</div> She reached behind him to retrieve her notebook and took out a sheet that had been separated from it. She gave the drawing to him, and he moved closer to her candle to view it alongside her. It was a sketch--impressionistic at first, then defined by more precise lines and filled in with more detail--of two people, one seated in the armchair and the other draped across his lap, cradled in his arms. <div class='d'>$LORCIS Asylon. Magnificent.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON It was after he had given you the neutralizing agent, and you had fallen asleep.</div> Calberus's head was shrouded by the sack hood, but the angles of the strokes turned his face down toward the figure that was Lorcis, whose gentle arc of the neck and curving arm captured the suppleness, vulnerability, and pity of deathly serenity. <div class='d'>$ASYLON The Sick Woman can't be brought down so easily. Even if she's fallen, the pestilence lingers on.</div> Lorcis looked up from the drawing, and Asylon turned away to fluff her pillow. <div class='d'>$ASYLON You can keep it or burn it. I don't want it.</div> He was tempted very much to keep it. <div class='d'>$LORCIS No, I want you to keep it. For your reference.</div> <div class='d'>$ASYLON Reference for what?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS For when you've forgotten you'd drawn it.</div> She gave him that reflexive look of insolence whenever she found him to be nonsensical, which he had learned to recognize throughout her lessons. They bid one another a good night and, as he left the room, he saw her return the drawing into the notebook and slide it under her bed. She blew out her candle, and he closed the door for her. (display: 'addObservationAsylonReading') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'sceneCellblock')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $handmaiden's nameFull) ##(print: $handmaiden's title) ###Sacred Diseases </header> } The Handmaiden shut the door. Not only did she begin speaking in Jscethycan, she tuned her tone to the persuasive resonance she had long ago adopted in her years as a high priestess. Her pacing was pensive and patient. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN When you first revealed your mark to me and spoke of the voices in your head, I knew then that Aruseht had sent me into this filth of a forest to find you and to reclaim you as our own. Although you have made progress with your library and made many efforts aligning with His creed, I wish to direct your return to higher pursuits. To your role as Anointed.</div> She ended her steps and turned her eyes on him. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Instead, you waste your time on parlour tricks, dallying with the man in the basement. He's insane. That's all.</div> The voices in the static--the words he might have understood--played again in his head. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Madness is one of the sacred diseases, along the likes of terminal illnesses, incurable maladies, addictions, and paroxysms, which grant the afflicted a wisdom beyond our own knowing. The Horned Aspis blesses those whose body, mind, and soul are consumed in a perception remarkably distinct from ours. They are allowed that unique knowledge, and it is our duty to not toil in attempting to decipher them but, rather, to witness and to safeguard this divine privilege of theirs. Aruseht does not proclaim we must know all there is to know. Leave the wretched and the gifted to their individual literacy.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS Handmaiden, I don't mean to be the impertinent pupil, but I'm familiar with all of this.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Familiar enough to persist in the futile? Or not familiar enough to know that you do? Do you know how we may obtain such arcane knowledge for ourselves? Is that what you've been after? The answer is that we can't, not unless we become one of the wretched ourselves. Yet we may seek the divine in our own way, our own being, through slumber. Sleep is a disease of the gods, which we each bear as our mortal burden in their place. It's the common altered state amongst all mortals, and it's this sacred time when we, who are not sick or mad, can be like the sick and the mad and, willingly or not, obey his command and submit to Him.</div> She stood over him, at his knees, bearing an igneous presence down upon his inferior position. The candle flames seemed to blaze into one another, and the smoky incense lingering on her skin filled his nostrils and gathered as clouds around his brain. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN In your sleep, you speak in a language we can't understand. In waking, you're haunted by voices who speak in a language you can't understand. You see--you hear--but you refuse to believe. You have His gift, Anointed. The infinite, incomprehensible knowledge He feeds you in your slumber can cross over into your hours of wakefulness, and it's then when you may become His mouth, His fangs, His tongue, and His voice. Yet you refuse to allow this.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I can hardly refuse when it's not a choice.</div> She leaned down, bringing the lacerations on her face close to him, to imprint her image into his eyes. They maintained one another's gazes. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN You strike and don't know you've bitten. You <i>can</i> control this. Did the Anointed Ithscerah not doubt before he believed? Were the voices not riddles before they were his wit?</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS I'm no longer an Anointed. I'm no longer Sehtian.</div> <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The voices say otherwise.</div> He shook her scent out of his mind and got up despite her standing nearly on his toes. The candles blurred as he went to the door, and only after he opened it and escaped the miasma did he allow himself to close his eyes and inhale deeply. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN The coils of Seht loosen only on His command.</div> <div class='d'>$LORCIS He can squeeze all he wants. I'm not even there.</div> The Handmaiden's gaze became difficult to challenge. He refused to be intimidated by her religion, but she herself was more than theoretical air. She was physical, and she was present. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN If you speak in tongues after you crawl into bed, Anointed, let us pray you don't make a fool of yourself to Him, as you did to me this night, this day.</div> She shut the door. (display: 'addObservationHandmaidenVoices') <div class='o'>(linkgoto: $oReturn, 'sceneCellblock')</div>

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Handmaiden's Room </header> } Because her door was open, Lorcis thought to visit the Handmaiden, to be sure her injuries were as benign as she let on. Several votive candles were lit on her shelves, bench, and the window sill. She had been throwing the ashes of the incense in her shrine out the window when she turned around and saw him. <div class='d'>$HANDMAIDEN Anointed, I want to talk to you.</div> Lorcis entered the room as she replaced the shrine on the sill. She nodded toward the bench, and he took a seat beside a small tree of nightlights. She remained standing. <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Prepare to be lectured.', 'handmaiden1Voices')</div>

{ (set: $observation's dungeonWindowLook to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

The witches' bedrooms, lined up evenly in a bare hall, were much more apparent as solitary confinement cells in the dark than they were in the daylight. { (display: 'cellblockEndAsylon') (display: 'cellblockEndHandmaiden') }

{ <header> #(print: $game's title) ##(print: $game's series) ###(print: $game's author) ###(print: $game's version) </header> } (display: 'synopsis') |textScore>[]<div class='o'>|textScoreView>[](display: 'oViewScore')</div> { <div class='o'> (display: 'oContinueGame') (display: 'oLoadGame') (display: 'oStartGameNew') </div> |textInfo>[] }

{ <span class='b'> (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'gameInfo')[(linkgoto: '$gameInfo', 'gameInfo')] (else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$gameInfo</span>", '$return')] </span> }

{ <header> #(print: $institution's name) ##(print: $institution's cellblock) ###Lorcis's Room </header> } Lorcis's bedroom was dark but not completely blotted out. The window and the opening in the branches overhead allowed a soft ray to cut through the space, revealing his desk along with the clutter of books and an unlit candle upon it. His bed was not too far there, and he was sorely tempted to lie down for the remainder of the night. A greater desire, which ached from within him like a visceral ailment, kept him awake. Before his own oblivion, he had to go to Calberus's. (unless: $noteList contains $noteLorcis)[ (display: 'addNoteLorcis')](if: $entryPrepare's owned is 1 and $observation's lorcisPortraitChange is 0)[ <div class='o'>(linkgoto: 'Change into ritual garb.', 'changeRitualGarb')</div>]

(if: $observation's asylonReading is 0)[ A small line of candlelight cut into the hall from Asylon's doorway, where the door was ajar. ]

(if: $observation's handmaidenVoices is 0)[ The Handmaiden had left her door wide open, and her shadow occassionally disrupted the bloom of light radiating from within her room. ]

{ (set: $observation's asylonInvestigation to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

Lorcis prepares a phonograph for an induction session in order to record Calberus's history in the ogre's own words. Discoveries are not always certain, and some voices can only be preserved as fading echoes in the mind.

{ (set: $observation's thinkAboutFriends to 1) (display: 'addScoreDiscovery') }

Some shadows which defined the corridor were fanned by the gentle pulse of the oil lantern shining through the parlour doorway. The shadows untouched by firelight, inert yet not impotent, were at once solid and intangible. Lorcis remained on floorboards visible by faint moonlight falling through the windows.

A sparing stream of moonlight from the window at the end of the hall rushed down the floorboards to the full-width hole in the landing, where it was abruptly erased.

The basement corridor opened before Lorcis like a hall of the dead, lifeless, motionless, and silent but for aimless dust and his own presence. Hints of light from the kitchen windows spotted the darkness in even paces, and as he walked down the hall, each footstep echoed, sepulchral and hallowed.

{ (unless: (passage:)'s name contains 'mapMenu')[(linkgoto: $mapName, 'mapMenu')](else:)[(linkgoto: "<span class='grey'>$mapName</span>", '$return')] }

(display: 'displayMap')

{ <div class='m'>(print: $companion1's name) and (print: $companion2's name) have left (print: $player's name).</div> }

{ (set: $inv to it + (a: $item)) (display: 'addScoreItem') (display: 'messageItemAdd') }

{ (if: $inv contains $item)[ (set: $inv to it - (a: $item)) (display: 'messageItemRemove')] }

{ (set: $noteList to it + (a: $note)) (display: 'addScoreNote') (display: 'messageNoteAdd') }

{ (set: $inv to it + (a: $item)) (display: 'addScoreItem') }

{ (if: $companionParty's companionCount < 1)[ (set: $companion1 to $companionSelected) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanion1 to 1)] (else:)[ (set: $companion2 to $companionSelected) (set: $companionParty's hasCompanion2 to 1) (set: $companionSelected to $companion2)] (display: 'setCompanionDone') }

<div class='card-small opacity-highlight'>(print: $player's portraitS)</div>

<div class='card-small opacity-highlight'>(print: $companion2's portraitS)</div>

<div class='card-small opacity-highlight'>(print: $companion1's portraitS)</div>

(display: 'displayMap')