The Campaign Builder's Guild

Strange indeed. Getting no response and feeling slightly uneasy, Mildred heads back down the hallway towards her father's study.

[ic=Study Door]The door to your father's study is slightly ajar.  Dull red light streams from the crack in the door.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit)[/ic]

Mildred stops by the door, hesitating. How could the light be so red? She stands there for a long moment staring at the odd illumination, before finally raising her free hand to gently widen the crack in the doorway, so as to get a peek into the room beyond.

[ic=Study]An oil-lamp bubbles on the desk of your father's study, though the light it casts isn't the usual warm sepia glow but a garish red.  The curtains are drawn on the study window, so the only source of light comes from the evil glimmer of the lamp.  Your father's marble bust of Lord Byron, which is normally so handsome and gentlemanly-looking, leers at you from its plinth, its features twisted grotesquely.  The walls of the study are, of course, lined with bookshelves filled with books on a variety of topics.

Sitting on your father's splendidly carved oak writing desk, next to the hissing oil lamp, is a small silver key, as well as a half-full brandy decanter and a brandy snifter.  You are, of course, strictly forbidden from drinking brandy, though in your current parched state you are sorely tempted to break the rule.  In the unwholesome lamplight the drink looks ever so vile, more like blood than spirits.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit)[/ic]

Mildred's urge to leave joins forces with her rising alarm over the current events. But there's the lingering thirst, a grainy dryness as if the distant wastes of Africa had visited London just to set up residence in her mouth. She knows that it's probably not nearly as bad as she's making it out to be but the growing dread hasn't helped. It almost seems to strengthen all the negative around her heightening the awareness of her own pitiful misery. Mildred tentatively approaches her father's desk picking up the decanter, unstoppering the decorative glass stopper to sniff at the contents within. In the back of her mind she's almost wishing her father would walk in now and catch her. Even his stern punishment would be better than this foreboding emptiness.

[ic=Into the Study]You step into the room and walk over to the desk to unstopper the decanter.  As you pick it up the door to the study suddenly slams shut behind you, and you hear what sounds like the click of a key turning in the lock.

The brandy's smell attacks your nostrils and throat, prickling at them.  The sensation is overwhelming, but not totally unpleasant.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit), Decanter (Half-full)[/ic]

Mildred gasps and jumps a little, startled by the sudden noise. She almost drops the decanter and the candlestick she's holding, but manages to maintain her grip on both. "Father? Is that you?" she whimpers, turning around.

[ic=No Response]Your question goes unanswered, though you think you hear someone walking down the hall with swift, clicking steps.  The crimson light of the lamp throws your small shadow against the door.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit), Decanter (Half-full)[/ic]

[ic=Unusual Sound]Quite suddenly, you hear a strange fluttering sound outside, followed by a tapping on the glass of the window, currently concealed behind the curtains.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit), Decanter (Half-full)[/ic]

Mildred, forgetting her thirst for the moment moves to the door and attempts to open it.

[ic=Voice]You put down the decanter and make for the door.  It appears to be locked - it won't budge an inch.  The tapping on the windowpane continues.

As you're wrestling with the door, a haughty male voice speaks: "Aren't you going to go see what's making that noise?  I would go myself, but as you can see, I lack the requisite limbs..."[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit)[/ic]

"What?! Who's there? Who said that?" Mildred looks around frantically for the source of the voice.

[ic=Lord Byron]Your gaze settles on the bust of Lord Byron, which winks sardonically at you.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit)[/ic]

Mildred takes a step back and feels a bit dizzy. Putting her hand to her head she attempts to regain her composure despite what she just witnessed. "...You can talk? Oh, I must surely be caught in a dreadful dream."

[ic="The Dream"]"Our life is twofold," the bust of Byron says.  "Sleep hath its own world, a boundary between the things misnamed death and existence: sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality, and dreams in their development have breath and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; they leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, they take a weight from off waking toils, they do divide our being; they become a portion of ourselves as of our time, and look like heralds of eternity; they pass like spirits of the past - they speak like sibyls of the future; they have power - the tyranny of pleasure and of pain; they make us what we were not - what they will, and shake us with the vision that's gone by, the dread of vanished shadows - are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind? The mind can make substances, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh..."  The bust trails off, looking rather pleased with itself.  "Perhaps you sleep, my dear; or perhaps your soul has passed from the world of light and life entirely.  Both the shades of the dead and the semblances of the slumbering have been known to frequent this land."

The tapping on the window intensifies, and you hear what sounds like muffled squeaking sounds from outside.[/ic]

[ic=Inventory]Nightshirt, Candlestick (Lit)[/ic]