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Narration:
Correspondence and some other routine matters got a bit behind during the three nights of torpor Erika had recently endured. While working on getting caught up, she notices in among her mail something unusual: a thick, padded envelope addressed to her, c/o the shop's address, and with no return address. The postmark is local.
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Erika sits in her office chair, going through the mail, when she notices the envelope. Her eyes settle on the envelope, and she frowns, curious, but cautious as she picks it up. She turns it over in her hands, trying to get a feel for what might be inside.
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By the size and weight and general feel, Erika guesses the envelope to contain a thin book of some sort.
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Erika frowns, and continues to turn the package over in her hands, her eyes going completely white behind the scarf as she goes into a trance.
Spoiler
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Narration:
Erika manages to connect deeply to the psychic impressions on the item, enough to watch a strange scene unfold. She sees a rather bored clerk in a package and mail store watch the clock, waiting for closing time to appear. Then she sees a man enter the store, hand the clerk a book with dark bindings and instruct the man to package it for shipping. Next she sees the man hand the clerk a note with an address on it, and watches as the clerk writes out a mailing label addressed to her. Finally, she sees the man put the book in a padded envelope and affix the mailing label.
Through all this, the clerk's emotional state was one of boredom and anticipation of the end of a workshift.
What was vastly more interesting to Erika was the man who hired the clerk for this task.
In the memories imprinted onto the package by the bored clerk, she sees that man was her own sire.
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Erika shakes her head as she delves back into reality, and then tears open the package, dumping the contents gently out upon the table.
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Narration:
The contents of the envelope consist of one thin book, the one she'd seen in the vision. Other than that, the envelope is empty. The book's black covers are sturdy, and the binding is black leather. The binding and covers are in very good, though not new, condition, and neither bears any markings. Erika notices that the book's pages are not in such good condition.
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Erika picks up the book carefully, and opens the book as slowly and lightly as she possibly can, sliding it open to the first page.
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Narration:
The first page, inked in a handwriting Erika does not recognize, reads:
The following was found among the belongings of a mortal thief caught ransacking the San Francisco chapter house of the Ordo Dracul in 1914. The thief took his own life, apparently to avoid interrogation, but the Dragons were able to trace his movements back to where he'd been staying and were thus able to recover his belongings. The Dragons' records indicate that the thief carried upon his person unspecified "items of mystic power," which is intriguing given the content of the present text.
The code was not particularly difficult to break, but the locations mentioned are unfortunately too obscure to provide much in the way of guidance. Thus, pending further information, this remains a tantalizing enigma deserving of continued investigation.
N.Q.
3 March, 1922
The following pages are in poor condition: yellow, stained, folded and torn in a few spots. They are of uneven size and do not match the size of the first page. Erika notices the edges of pieces of a different type of paper in between the first and second page and between each of these later pages; this suggests to her that pages were cut from the bound volume.
These later pages are handwritten in a small cramped style, and in a language Erika recognizes as Greek.
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Erika doesn't know enough Greek herself to begin the translation, and so she calls for one of her assistants to bring up a book on Greek Translation. After they've left, she pulls open the second book, pulls out a pen and pad, and begins the process of learning what the handwritten text might say.
Draft this Post
Presence
Striking Looks