Underneath System, Insight Resolution System, Campaign Intro, Encounters, GM Forward.
Ghost Ship / Missing Isle
Lighthouse History
Finished in 1885, commissioned by Edmund DeVart. There's a plaque buried in the tall grass near the Lighthouse that will say so. Built by The Wizard back when he was young and newly rich. He and his wife used to come here, sometimes. She loved the view.
She's still here. Twisted and blackened by age and her husband's cruel magic, she lurks beneath the bridge before the Lighthouse, in a dark cave at the base of the ravine. She is now The Troll.
The Approach
The Sharps Point Lighthouse is a pale pillar against an overcast grey sky. It seems old and yet ageless. Perched upon a cliff overlooking Lake Superior, it is separated from the footpath leading to the beach by a big rocky gorge about 60ft deep and 20ft across. A well-maintained wooden bridge crosses it.
If it is night (5:30pm-8am), the Lighthouse will ward off potential intruders by sweeping its beam across the bridge. Those who fail a Body Check are Lost in Space and Time as the light rakes over them.
Hidden Troll Cave: Down in the gorge, there is a small cave. It cannot be seen from above. The climb is impossible without tools. Filled with bones and fly-covered viscera, the Troll will be there if it's day. You can hear it breathing: something large and terrible. Investigators within the cave receive -2 to all checks against the Troll.
| Courtesy of Loch |
The Troll
In shadow its form is dark and vague. It seems a bear, but long in the snout. Its drooling maw is full of sharp bloody teeth. Its eyes reflect a dull red light. It is quiet, it is patient, and it shows no mercy.
3 HD. She is always hungry. She is always vengeful. She cannot be reasoned or talked with. She will follow intruders forever until killed. Putting her down delays her by 2d10 Hours. Burning the body delays her 1 Day. She can only be permanently killed with the Banishment of the Troll spell. Empathy checks may keep her at bay like other means.
Contingency: If the Troll ever meets the Wizard face to face, they will kill each other off. She will tear his guts out, and he will melt her flesh away with nuclear fire. Accomplishing this should be very, very dangerous.
The Puzzle of the Lighthouse
The Lighthouse looks 50ft tall from the outside. It's exterior is devoid of windows or other features. Scaling it is impossible. No matter what device might be used, it will fail.
The interior is a maze. In each room, there is a single binary choice to make. Which choice is made determines what the next room ascended to will be. If the party sticks together, they'll remain together from room to room. If the party is split and they make different choices, then they will come into different rooms. Sounds weigh heavy in the Lighthouse. Verbal communication between rooms (except the first and the outside) is impossible. The sound is lost in the plaster and metal.
Rooms are categorized by Tier (T#), indicating how many choices deep they're in.
T0 - The Rusty Door
A rusty metal door at the base of the Lighthouse. It has an old, old lock on it, practically falling apart and functionally useless. The key to this lock is found within The Asylum, although the lock is so fragile the key is not needed. It's practically falling apart, and can be broken without challenge.
Choice: Break the Lock / Use the Asylum Key
The Troll Comes: After the Door is passed through, 20 minutes will pass, and The Troll will awake and proceed into the Lighthouse, following the Investigators from behind. If they backtrack they'll run into it. It has 3 HD. (See above.)
T1 - The Lantern Room (Break)
It's dark as pitch. An layer of dust coats everything. The room is filled with dozens upon dozens of light sources on tables and shelves, ranging from modern to antique: children's flashlights, whale oil lanterns, industrial torches, candles, kerosene lamps, expended glow sticks.
A narrow metal stair spirals up the interior wall to the next floor.
Empathy/Instinct: Reminds you of the grail scene in the third Indiana Jones movie, doesn't it? Let your feeling guide you, and with a successful check you can find the Old Lantern among the others.
Old Lantern: Like that an old-fashioned railway conductor might use. Has 3 Uses. Requires human-derived oil to replenish. Casts a strange blue flame, which reveals the higher Insight form of creatures as long as the light is cast upon them.
Choice: Take a Light Source / Go Up in Darkness
T1 - The Lantern Room (Key)
As previous Lantern Room entry, except: careful observation reveals shoe footprints in the dust, leading to the Old Lantern, then to the stairs.
There is an additional copy of the Old Lantern here.
Choice: Take a Light Source / Go Up in Darkness
T2 - The Black Gate (Light)
It's dark. A grate of black metal spans the room. The metal seems to slowly twist or shift in the uneven light, casting the room full of dark and fleeting shadows. The grate contains no obvious fastenings or breaks, and does not yield to casual use of force.
Wherever the light of the Old Lantern is shown the metal disappears, reappearing at the light's edge. Stand back far enough and you can make a hole big enough to crawl through. Crawling through requires a Body check at +1, or the sharp metal lunges out and pierces the flesh, dealing 1 Resolve damage. Putting the Lantern out while somebody is crawling through will lose a limb (resulting in 2 Body damage).
Using brute force to destroy the gate will require tools and a Body check. Each failure deals 1 Resolve damage. Brute force without tools will be a Body check at -2. The metal will groan with agony.
Choice: Use the Old Lantern / Break the Gate Apart
T2 - The Black Gate (Darkness)
The Black Gate above is absent in total darkness. The lead Investigator will need to blindly grope around in the dark to reach the far side. If illumination is activated, the Black Gate reappears, potentially cutting the party off from one another. There is a 3 in 6 chance if this happens that it reappears around someone, dealing 1 Resolve damage, rending and bleeding their limbs, trapping them like barbed wire.
Choice: Someone is Bleeding / All in Good Health
T2 - The Black Gate (Source)
As The Black Gate (Light)
Choice: Use the Old Lantern / Break the Gate Apart
T2 - The Black Gate (Up)
As The Black Gate (Darkness), except: blindly groping around, the lead Investigator will feel something: a person, ahead of them, standing still in the dark. Suddenly, they'll be pushed backward. The person in the darkness will race up the stairs, with resounding metal clanks as their shoes clang upwards.
Illuminate fast enough (with a Body check) and you'll be able to see the sneakers on the person climbing the stairs. (The the Black Gate will appear)
Choice: Chase to the Person Up / Take it Slow
T3 - Library (Lantern)
A dusty miniature reading room, with a comfy-looking reclinable sofa chair and several wooden bookshelves lined with well-worn books. A single beam of light from a small head-height window illuminates the room. The bookshelf contains mostly old novels, fairy tale anthologies, and dull nonfiction books on Upper Peninsula history. Or imagine a mix of books between what your grandmother keeps and the books in a waiting room.
Books: contained in one of them (GM's choice), an old-timey photograph. A young woman in prim attire stands next to an industrious young man in a black suit whose face has been smudged with a bloody fingerprint (unclear if entirely human). Written in cursive on the backside: "You always get the best things. -Heather"
Resolve Check: Spend time thoroughly searching through the books, and you will find 1 Random Spell. It's been manically scrawled into the margins - diagrams, incantations, notes on pronunciation and geometry, pitfalls and consequences of mistakes.
Reclining Chair: Leans back with a dusty snap and the sound of grinding gears. It opens a small secret door in the wall, big as a crawl space. It contains a ladder that ascends.
Choice: Have the Photograph / Leave It
T3 - The Gate's Vengeance (Gate)
The climb is dangerous. It's dark. The metal stairs seem rustier and less secure. Even if they're tested, the stairs will betray you. The first person ascending will require Instinct/Body check when the rusty stairs give. Failure, and they'll fall down into the bloody embrace of the Black Gate below, dealing 2 Resolve and 1 Body damage.
Subsequent attempts after the initial pathfinding may be done at +2 bonus.
When you climb enough, you cannot tell anymore which way is up and which way is down. Gravity seems uncertain. Have you been ascending this whole time, or are you merely flipped upside-down?
Ask them rhetorically: "Are you going up? Or are you going down?"
Choice: They're Going Up / They're Going Down
T3 - The Altar (Bleeding)
It's quiet. Quiet enough for the blood dripping on metal to crowd out any other sounds. It's dark. In the darkness there is an altar of stone. On the altar is a bowl. The bowl is made of brass, the altar of lead. Both are covered in fresh blood. There is also a grimoire - The Banishment of the Northern Wind. (Note: for each instance of this grimoire that is obtained, the GM may be asked one question about the ritual.)
There are handprints, smears, small pools of it. It smells metallic, rusty, devoid of the usual sweet blood smell. It drips down onto the floor and falls through the metallic grate to who-knows-where. Perhaps the Black Gate? Were the Gate the incisors, The Altar is the molars. The walls are like a machine that grinds bones. The empty space above is like a long unending throat.
To bleed upon the altar, it will demand any combination of 3 damage from up to 3 people. Any less won't feel necessary.
Stone steps lead upwards.
Choice: Give It Your Blood / Keep Your Blood
T3 - The Pool of (Health)
The sound of running water comes first. A gentle burbling, like a tiny stream. Within the room there is a fountain embedded in the wall. From the mouth of some empyrean man comes a steady stream of water, pooling in a basin. In bas-relief around the basin are depicted various woodland life, coming to drink.
The water from the Pool of Health restores 1 damage when drunk. There are exactly 3 uses of it present, and no vessels to carry it. The water will never replenish.
A set of stone steps goes up.
Choice: Drink from the Pool / Don't Drink the Water
T3 - Cave Paintings (Old)
Metal grate stairs become smooth stone steps. The walls become smooth natural stone. It's like stepping into a neolithic cave. The walls are covered in hand paintings. A fire pit in the room's center contains no fuel. Light it up, and the cave paintings will seem alive. When they're alive, you can almost hear them speak. When you almost hear them speak, they will whisper you how many Days you have left. The End comes, the End comes, the End of humanity comes!
Paintings: They're old. Very old. Faded from time. Thousands of years, genuinely. But they depict things that were impossible for the age: pump jacks and oil pools, early airplanes and smokestacks, circuit diagrams and lightbulbs, barbed wire, electrical plug outlets, tubes and tubes and black black tubes.
And there is a Black Key in the middle of it all. It is lucid - more lucid than anything else, even you. It persists in your vision as you turn away, longer than it should. It almost seems to project from the wall. You'll see it in your dreams.
Choice: Commune with the Black Key / Do Not Commune
T3 - A World (Apart)
The stairs culminate in a strange hallway, projecting horizontally outward, as if the Lighthouse extended a hundred feet to the side. The area is illuminated in a dim rusty light, but there are no sources of illumination present. The walls are made of the same kind of white plaster as the Lighthouse exterior. The floor has a red carpet.
At the end of the hallway there are two doors, side by side. Metal, pristine. When one is opened the other will lock. It will not unlock for 1 Day.
Choice: The Left Door / The Right Door
T3 - The Black Cauldron (Slow)
Five large vats of a viscous golden liquid on the periphery. A great black cauldron dominates the middle. Four of the vats and the Cauldron are empty. The fifth vat contains a fuel derived from melted human tallow, enough to replenish the Old Lantern or to use in a Spell.
The Black Cauldron lies atop a lattice of cinderblocks and a pile of wood ash. Depicted in bas-relief on the cauldron's sides are scenes of its use: the slaying and flaying of fat children and the elderly. Cutting their fat and tossing it into the pot. Feeding the remaining flesh to a bear-woman-like creature under a bridge (which looks eerily like the bridge to the Lighthouse).
At the base of the Black Cauldron is a grimoire of the Banishment of the Northern Wind.
There is no sign of the person in the darkness from before.
There is a metal spiral staircase in the corner.
Choice: Oil in Their Inventory / No Oil
T3 - Up and Up and... (Up)
The stairs spiral upwards seemingly infinitely. The person is already three flights ahead of you. How are they that fast? You can hear their shoes clanging on the metal, driving upward with a practiced endurance. By the time you reach the top, you will be tired, and 2 Hours will have passed. Body checks for everyone, or lose 1 Resolve. Lose 1 Body regardless.
At the one Hour point, you'll hear metal clanging from below: the Troll pursues you as you pursue the person. You're boxed in. If you want to go back, you'll need to fight.
Choice: Up / Fight
The Lantern Light
| Source |
For all following instances of the Lighthouse Lantern, assume the following:
- A large reflector, 1 meter tall. Its combustion chamber is hidden somewhere down below.
- A gallery beside the reflector allows 360-degree view of Venture. You can easily identify all town locations. You can see the autumn colors of the Magic Woods, and the Veil of Winter beyond that. You can see the Ghost Ship.
- Instinct Check: Off in the distance to the south, you may notice a strange cloud that hugs the land many miles off. It does not move and maintains its position despite the wind. This is the hidden Wizard's Tower.
- If it is nighttime (5:30pm-8am), the Lantern Light will be active. This makes the top of the lighthouse the most dangerous place one can possibly be. Merely touching the shining light sends one hurtling into Lost in Time and Space. The lantern radiates the sensation of an active, intelligent malice, like a shark about to rip something living apart.
- If it is daylight (8am-5:30pm), the Lantern Light can be safely explored. (For the most part)
- Smashing the Lantern Light does functionally nothing. It operates on a haunting logic: repairing itself when least expected or convenient. It is a portal for dimensions we cannot understand and is not beholden to the forces and logics of this universe.
T4 - Gallery (Photograph)
From the ladder, a latch opens up into the ceiling. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. Along the floors and window panes are attached hundreds photographs, from old-timey Victorian-like to modern instant, all containing the same two people: the woman from the Library photograph, and a man whose face has been smudged.
The longer you look at the collection, the more malicious it gets. As a function of time: the woman ages, the man does not; the woman saddens, the man does not; the woman fears, the man does not. The man seems young across the ages, despite his invisible face. You can feel the hatred slowly boil over the course of the collage - visceral, in the guts: a bile hatred.
Eventually, you can come to the finale:
- photographs in which the man's visage is hatefully torn at - shredded with fingernails and seemingly claws
- dried blood on the ground, too much for a person to survive
- claw marks on the glass, from a bear??
- shredded photographs, in tiny little bloody pieces. Make an Instinct check every hour to piece them together.
- a mansion in the woods (the DeVart mansion), the woman smiles happily in front of it held in a bridal carry by the man
- a grimoire (Banishment of the Northern Wind), written hatefully on the back side: "You lied to me"
- a view from the underside of the bridge just outside the lighthouse, from just outside the hidden cave
- a blurry portrait photograph of the man, slightly less blurry than the others. It actively resists attempts to recognize it, requiring mental strain. Make a Resolve check every time this is attempted. Failure results in Strain: 1 Resolve damage. Take a -3 penalty to the check unless: an Insight score of 10+, or having seen The Wizard.
T4 - (Leave)
From the ladder, a latch opens up into the ceiling. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. Coiled up beside the lantern is a long knotted rope secured firmly to a concrete fixture. Cast over the side, the rope allows safe descent. If the Troll is still in pursuit, it will simply glare down from the top of the rope when the party has escaped.
T4 - The Flame (Up)
The rusty spiral staircase culminates in a ceiling latch. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. A small pilot flame burns just beneath the lens. Covered by a shield of black metal, it shines like a candle in the dark, burning its image into your eyesight... permanently.
Everywhere the Flame's light is seen leaves a radiant afterimage in one's vision. Look at it unhindered for more than a couple of seconds and you will be rendered permanently blind. Anywhere the flame spreads to has a similar effect, so long as it has never been put out - Olympic torch rules.
The Flame can blind any friend or foe that has eyes, causing 2 HD of damage to foes and 2 permanent Instinct damage to friends. It spreads quickly onto other fuels, including flesh. Trying to spread it with hostility onto someone else invokes a 1 in 10 chance of backfire, combusting the user. Against the Troll, the Flame deals a unrecoverable 2 HD worth of damage (making it a 1 HD monster, dangerous but more pathetic), but it cannot permanently kill it.
T4 - The Troll's Lair (Down)
You fall. Through the maze of metal and wire. Into a deep black pit with seemingly no end. Everything goes dark.
They wake up 1d4 Hours later, in the Troll Cave beneath the Lighthouse (see above). The Troll is nowhere to be found. The way you fell from is nowhere to be seen.
Empathy: Something is different about one of the Investigators (GM's Choice). It's something in the eyes, in the teeth - a certain bloody redness that catches the light, a certain recession of the gums and sharpening of the canines.
...In truth, the Troll is now in them. At some point in the future, it will come out to initiate some savagery. Perhaps against the investigators, perhaps against something else. If the Wizard is found, then definitely against him. Until this point the Troll will not stalk the party. Telegraph this possibility every so often - make it clear that something isn't quite right.
T4 - Asylum Furnace (Give)
The higher you climb, the hotter is gets. The darker it gets. It's like climbing up into a furnace. When you touch the warm metal, you can feel a slow irregular pulse - faint and unrecognizable at first, then strong and terrifying. Your hair starts to stand up on end. Like delving into the belly of a great metal beast.
At the end of the stair, there is a small latched door, big as a crawlspace entrance. It's so hot you'll be sweating. Through it one will emerge in the furnace within The Asylum. If the Investigators encounter the Electric Cult after doing this, the cultists will be utterly shocked, receiving a -2 penalty to all attacks in the first round of whatever happens. Be quiet enough and they'll be caught totally off guard.
T4 - Escape! (Keep)
The Lighthouse groans like a hungry beast. The walls and the stairs shake. It does not like being denied its meal. The walls above begin to collapse inward, like it were being crushed by a giant's bite from the outside. The metal screeches as it bends and breaks. Anyone who stays will be crushed, devoured.
Treat the Lighthouse as a 4 HD monster, with a -1 penalty to do damage. Perform a series of checks to escape back the way you came, or get crushed. The Troll is nowhere to be found. The Lighthouse bites, gnaws, snares and binds. Metal sawing teeth seem everywhere. The walls groan and crumble underneath the impossible force. It's like a soda can being crushed.
If or when the Investigators escape, the Rusty Iron door behind them slams shut and crumples up against its threshold: the Lighthouse will not offer entrance again today. Tomorrow it will be reset.
T4 - Ponder (Drink)
From the stone steps, a latch opens up into the ceiling. Where the Lantern would be it is empty. There is only the lighthouse gallery and the panoramic view. You can see many things from up here: the town, the beach, the Ghost Ship, the Magic Woods, the Veil of Winter.
It's quite a lovely view. If there are any weather effects active, they temporarily aren't while up here. If any of the Investigators are carrying beer, you can inform them that if they drink it they'll recover 1 damage.
The highest Instinct player may ask the GM one question about anything they can physically see. The GM must answer truthfully, without reservation. I recommend holding nothing back about the answer.
T4 - The Hunter's Lance (Don't)
From the stone steps, a latch opens up into the ceiling. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. Propped up inside of the lens, like an arrow pointing the way of the beam, is the Hunter's Lance. It appears an old old spear, broad-leaved and very sharp. Inscribed on its shaft are images of hunting dogs and men gleefully pursuing towards the spear head. It feels like a holy relic.
The Hunter's Lance - Feels indelibly weighted and sure-handed in the presence of beasts, like it wants to leap from the hand to pierce the flesh of wild things. Against beast-like monsters, The Unicorn, and Artemis, the Hunter's Lance instantly slays them without the need for roll. It must simply be declared by the Investigator that they attack.
T4 - The (Black Key) In Hand
The Black Key seems to project out from the wall, like a shadow on an invisible prism. No, it's not just a projection, it's really there! You could reach out and pluck it from the walls. As you reach out, you can hear a myraid of sounds: electric buzzing and distant turbines, the roar of a fire and the rumble of engines, people screaming, people dying, people silent in sheer awe. Within the darkness of the Key there is light. Within the light, even greater darkness...
Empathy: On success, you pluck the Black Key from the wall. You have come to an understanding about something: have you ever not had the Key in the palm of your hand? It feels familiar, like a cell phone you've had for years. On failure, you are stricken with electricity for 1d4 Resolve damage. You may try again, at your peril.
The Black Key: It opens any door, any lock. Even combination locks. But only once. After which it disappears. While holding it you cannot be electrified.
T4 - The Lantern (Not)
The Black Key, it seems, is just a shadow. Just another symbol. You can see now a metal stair in the room, leading up. The rusty spiral staircase culminates in a ceiling latch. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last.
There's a switch on the back side of the lantern. If you turn it off, the Lighthouse will no longer shine its foul light at night.
T4 - Reverse World (Left)
The door leads... back outside. If it was daylight it's now night, if it was night it's now day. The time remains the same. Daylight hours and night hours are now swapped (8:30am-5pm). There is an additional celestial body in the night sky: a dark moon. Nothing else is different.
If you feel like it, you can mirror everything else, or just the things the players have seen.
If the Investigators return through the Lighthouse by the same set of circumstances, they can return to their normal earth; however, there will be doppelgangers waiting for them, with as many HD as there are Investigators. The doppelgangers will be utterly hostile.
T4 - Up is Down (Right)
The door leads... back outside. But something isn't right. Everything looks upside down! It's as if you all are standing on the ceiling, looking down into a neverending endless pit of the sky. Nothing changes, except for this perspective, and how Insight now works.
Strangers and friends alike may note how the Investigators always seem to be staring upwards...
Insight works in reverse now. If Insight is lower than Insight score then the monster's 'true form' is revealed. If Insight is higher than Insight score, then a monster's 'ordinary form' remains the case. The way Insight is generated does not change.
If the Investigators return through the Lighthouse by the same set of circumstances, they can return to their normal earth; however, there will be doppelgangers waiting for them, with as many HD as there are Investigators. The doppelgangers will be utterly hostile.
T4 - True Death Beam (Oil)
The spiral staircase culminates in a ceiling latch. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. It has an oil pan and two levers: up/down and left/right. You can point that light wherever you want. With the oil burning in the pan, you can sweep the beam of the Lighthouse over anything, deleting people, monsters, and buildings as you see fit. Such things are removed permanently from the campaign.
It can sweep over any feature in Venture or on the Beach. It cannot reach any Forest, DeVart, or Highway location unless everything else has been deleted. If they delete something important (such as the Ghost Ship, the 8/11, the Church, the Chinese Theater)... sucks to be them!
So They Want to Death Beam Everything: when everything else is gone, the Lantern light will turn on the door latch to escape, and then on them, one by one. The Investigators may decide amongst themselves who goes first and who goes subsequently. That's the only choice they have. It's the end of the world, man...
When there is only one of them left, the Lantern turns upon itself and disappears, leaving the Investigator alone in an empty world. Perhaps The Elf will be there, for a final deposition.
T4 - Horrible Knowledge (No Oil)
The spiral staircase culminates in a ceiling latch. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. Within the depths of its lens there is a faint spot of light, like the sun as seen from Pluto. To the first person to really gaze at it:
- Gain 2d4 Insight
- 1d4 Empathy damage, reducing max Empathy by the same amount. This may leave the Investigator permanently dissociated.
- Gain the Foresight spell.
- Be cast into Lost in Time and Space, but if you survive you return to this time and place instantly as if you'd never left.
- The Light... The Light... The terrible terrible Light... It burns, it yearns, it shines so bright!
T4 - Wizard Tower (Up)
Up and up and up and up. Add 2d4 Hours onto the travel time up the stair. At the top there is a latched trap door. It opens up into the Astrology Library in the Wizard's Tower. As long as the door is kept open one can return back through. As long as the door remains open the Troll will come through.
The Wizard will know someone has intruded upon his tower...
T4 - Shade in the Void (Fight)
Surviving the Troll, you may continue.
The spiral staircase culminates in a ceiling latch. The Lighthouse's Lantern, at last. But where the lens would be, there is a hole. A great big terrible hole that goes who-knows-where. It's silent, about a meter wide vertically. You could step into it like hopping a fence, or dive in. There's no trace of whoever you were pursuing. The edges of the hole are smooth like car hood plastic. It's quiet inside.
A few minutes walking around with deadened footsteps, and you'll see who you were pursuing: a woman. She's old, very old, in a white dress lying on the ground. Heather DeVart.
She'll ask: "Is it dead?" (Referring to the Troll).
Assuming it hasn't been banished: "That won't be enough."
She is Heather DeVart, wife of Edmund DeVart, or so she believes... Some little humanity of hers that remains is kept here as a kind of shade. She is not Heather DeVart. That would be the Troll. She is a copy. This place is a magical prison. She can never leave. She can tell you some things about her life, but her descriptions are always like they were somehow externally observed, like someone recounting their memories like history.
- She was born in 1866 in Providence, Rhode Island
- She had three sisters. The youngest of them died at the age of 4.
- Her family was wealthy. They owned several textile mills. She hated sewing.
- She married Edmund when they were young. Her father arranged it. She liked that he bought her expensive things and made grand gestures.
- Over time they grew distant. They had two children: a boy and a girl. They both died after becoming adults. Edmund focused more on his copper and iron extraction businesses.
- She killed a man. She and a few friends had martinis and went driving. Couldn't see him at night. "He was so dark". They covered it up, buried it with high priced lawyers and sympathetic judges. Edmund owned the local newspapers. Nobody would stand with the man's family.
- She started finding things of Edmund's: strange old books, arcane devices, blood stains. She never saw him much after that. She didn't care. She liked being apart then. He had grown cruel, and she dispassionate.
- The last thing she remembers is coming back here, to the Lighthouse. She liked coming here sometimes, when she was young. They used to have picnics on the beach. She would read while watching the ships pass. She couldn't hear the whispers then. She couldn't see the monsters underneath the skin.
- She'll tell you anything for a drink. For anything that might lower Insight. Anything regarding the Wizard or DeVart.