Eversion

Eversion Chapter of Hypolethia
Chapter 3 of The First Incision
Chronology
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In which a Poison Jar is named, a corridor opens into nothing, and the Offices disclose their hidden anatomy.

What Happened

• Cephalophore arrives without fanfare, a quieter and more unassuming man that was expected for a Councilor. He finds the location uncomfortable and disagreeable, especially around the giant cauldron full of seething goetic fragments. He referred to it as the Poison Jar but could not explain why. Simply that the name fit. He, Wotann, and Titania examined the Jar further and learned strange and terrible things.
• Cephalophore also identified that space within the building was twisted and distorted out of sight. He unpicked it and unveiled door where there were none before. Exploration revealed rooms arranged without regard for the normal structures and restrictions of space. In addition to personal quarters - presumably used by Dr Ponder – there was a 19th-century library, a greenhouse, and other rooms that could not fit within the footprint of the building, several with windows that pointed in impossible directions.
• Kassandra took the opportunity to sample and acquire some of the rather excellent brandy in the library, along with several other things from the more mundane parts of the building under the explanation that she still had rent to pay. Also, the alcohol made the spatial weirdness easier to deal with.
• Up a flight of stairs that were revealed when space was unfolded, was a corridor that seemed to extend into infinity. It was lined with solid and bland closed doors and no other identifying marks. Most of the doors did not open, and seemed to lack locks or even the ability to move in their frames. Behind the fourth door checked was a room arrayed for 19th century medicine, full of tools for embalming.
  • Fuelled by brandy, Kassandra adds some of the embalming tools to her ill-gotten gains.
  • Vánagandr tested a selection of other doors, finding that the 4th,6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 12th opened but did not enter any of the other rooms. She theorised a pattern that only the non-prime numbered doors would open. She attempted to work an improvised Space spell to project her senses around the closed doors but something went awry. As soon as her perception spread past the door she found herself on the other side, in absolute nothingness where only she and the door were the only real things. An instinctive Space rote wrenched her back into reality and put a stop to that investigation.
• Titania wielded serendipity to find one more secret. In the library, under the well-worn rug, was a concealed trap door, and beneath that was a dungeon that felt more medieval European than 19th-century New England. There she found a great door frozen in a single moment of time and a ghost that seemed to speak as a woman from Renaissance Italy, lingering at the bones of her son taken as a sacrifice by "the Baron."

Plot Developments & Facts Discovered

• The building where Dr Ponder held her offices is considerably stranger than it first appeared, with rooms and doors that do not align to normal space. There are suspicions of something being closer to Pandemonium here.
  • Above the more mundane rooms is an endless corridor lined with doors. Some doors lead to rooms. At least one leads into an absence where ordinary reality does not persist.
  • Beneath the library is a room that resembles a dungeon containing a door frozen in time, human remains, and at least one ghost lingering there.
• The giant cauldron, aka the Poison Jar, is made of a triple-layered construction of perfected metals. An outer layer of apeiron (perfected lead) is separated from an its inner layer of lunargent (perfected silver) by a layer of liquid hermium (perfected mercury). This forms a perfect seal against any sort of ephemeral passage through the jar.
  • The age of the Jar seems to be impossible to determine.
  • The Jar also seems to contain destinies and fates that have been cut away from people, just as the goetic fragments have been. Titania found that she knew this information without understanding how, and that the knowledge itself felt like an injected splinter lodged in her mind. She chose not to share the burden of this terrible knowledge.

People Appearing (in order of appearance)

• Kassandra
• Titania
• Vánagandr
• Wotann
• Cephalophore (first appearance)
• Dr Candace Ponder. (mentioned, to be handed to the Guardians of the Veil).
• The nameless receptionist and the victim, both unconscious but medically stable. To be removed for mundane medical care.

Locations

• Dr Ponder's office, Fallon Heights. Revealed to be so much stranger...

Notes

• XP: 3 beats mundane and arcane from previous session, plus 1 mundane experience and (2 or 3) arcane beats.
• Titania gained the Madness condition related to the terrible knowledge she gained about severed fates.