Cautiously, you descend down the stairs
of the tenement building into the basement. You expect to smell damp
mustiness, but you do not. There is a comfortable warmth and dryness
to the air and as you come to the bottom landing you happen upon a great
chamber that must be a study.
In the room you see a fireplace with a small fire
cheerfully crackling upon the grate. Over the mantle of the fireplace
is a large portrait of a man with thin, pale features and long, auburn
hair. His crystal blue eyes bore into you and you stand transfixed
for moment, looking intently at the painting and feeling somehow trapped
by the figure's stare. He sits in a chair in studious repose.
Behind him is the scape of the Imperial City and an evening sky.
He looks strangely regal, imperious in this pose, with the old city of
the Imperium behind him.
Looking across the rest of the room you see a massive
mahogony desk, ancient and beautiful in its design. Thinking upon
the dimensions of the doors in this building and the width of the staircase
you ponder on how it was brought down here. But that is a minor mystery
and knowing what you do of the arts of lunaromancy it does not seem that
improbable.
There is all manner of typical desk rubbish upon
it. Papers, books, teacups and personal knick-knacks that make a
person's desk his or her own. Some of the books and scrolls seem
ancient and you wonder if they would blow away to dust with but a simple
gust of the breath. The chair that sits beside the desk is high-backed
and plush with cushiony crushed burgundy velvet.
Behind the chair and desk is a mammoth bookcase
filled to overflowing with an assortment of books, artifacts and scrolls.
There are objects carved in many of the dweomered minerals of the land
as well as two skulls, one of human bone, polished to a sheen and inset
with traceries of platinum, ebony and chips of precious stones; the other
is of solid crystal and its resemblance in meticulous detail to the human
bone skull is eerily apparent.
But the bookcase is not the only wonder in this
room of wonders. Upon a table along the far
end of the room is a carefully carved box of ebony. On a perch overlooking
the table sits a raven whose eyes seem to follow you with a wariness and
knowledge that no bird should possess.
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