Hush House is a maze, a warren of unknown and the unknowable. Let what is hidden come to light.
This guide is work in progress. Obviously. But thanks for being here and I hope you find the information you need!
Keeper’s Lodge
For five hundred years – in the times we call Baronial, Curia, Nocturnal – there was always a keeper to watch the ways, weed the gardens, mend the roof when the sun was shining. There is no keeper now, but the Lodge’s roof still weathers the storms of Brancrug Bay.
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This room contains a bed, a fireplace, a serving station, and, notably, the Hush House Key which you will need to get into the manor itself. Zoom in on the room really close to pick up objects.
Beds are used to recover soul maladies, and refresh fatigued ones.
Watchman’s Tower: Gatehouse
Back in the eleventh century, Brian of Brittany built the Tower and its gate to protect St Brandan’s Abbey – as Hush House was then known. Later, the Barons Dewulf strengthened the gate against their many enemies. But it’s a long time now since Hush House was any kind of fortress… and by the time the scholars of the Curia took possession, this place had long been a comfortable waiting room for visitors to the House too minor to merit immediate attention.
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Welcome to Hush House. Nothing super noteworthy in here, but enjoy your stay nonetheless.
Watchman’s Tower: First Floor
The notorious Eva Dewulf, first and last Baroness Brancrug, liked this room. Because this side of the house carried fewest memories of her poor father Valentine? So she could eavesdrop on the conversations of visitors waiting below? Or just because of how the pale light slanted through the windows in the last days of winter?
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This room contains your first Desk, the Eva Desk, and two tools: the Mirrorscope, and the Astrolabe. It also has the bust of Walter Dewulf.
Watchman’s Tower: Observatory
Thomas Dewulf, second Baron Brancrug, who they called ‘Baron Silence’, built this observatory in 1576 – by happy coincidence, just in time to observe the passage of the Great Comet in 1577.
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The biggest thing of note in this room is the Telescope, a crafting station of sorts, which you can use to evolve (upgrade) your soul elements.
St Brandan’s Cloister
The sisters and brothers of the Abbey built these gardens in the thirteenth century – at the height of the period we now call Solar Gothic. Walk here a while and breathe the peace they left.
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The two bushes on the left and right can be harvested during summer or winter. You’ll need a soul element with Nectar (usually Health) and a skill with Nectar as one of the aspects.
Practic Garden
In the early days of St Brandan’s Abbey, the brothers practiced the arts of war here. So it was that in Baronial times the garden became a favourite of the martial, quarrelsome Dewulfs.
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Two pear trees on the left and right, which can be harvested in summer and autumn, and a Practic Garden Dummy, another crafting station of sorts, where you can evolve (upgrade) soul elements.
Long Tower: Solomon’s Study
In 1818, the Very Reverend Solomon Husher became third Librarian of the Curia of the Isle. He took rooms in the Long Tower as his quarters. Husher’s tastes were spartan; although the Curia generally liked a little more luxury, no-one ever quite dared to redecorate the place after his disappearance.
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A new desk, Pale!
Long Tower: Solomon’s Quarters
Generally reckoned the chilliest room in the House. The Long Tower was usually called the Winter Tower until Julian Coseley – magus, epistler, reputed Long – dwelt here briefly in the seventeenth century. Solomon Husher was the second known to sleep in the room. Evidently they didn’t mind the cold.
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A new bed, another place to rest and recover. Likely the first bedroom you’ll discover inside the manor, other than the gatehouse. Beds are used to recover soul maladies, and refresh fatigued ones.
Entrance Hall
The beginning of the House proper. The Curia used to issue gloves and slippers of soft leather to protect the books and premises. Visitors were often asked to remove their shoes. Pause a moment and listen to the Histories.
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A transitional room of art and history. Not much to do here, other than the various busts, wall art, and comforts that you may find useful. Or you might not.
Scent Garden
This too dates from the time of the Abbey… but in summer, neither sisters nor brothers were permitted to spend more than a single hour here, lest the ‘temptation of savours’ overwhelm them.
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Four flower gardens here:
– 2x Moth orchids in spring and summer, honeyscar jasmine in autumn.
– 2x Fragrant chalice in summer, lenten rose in winter. Rarer plants might flourish in Numa.
Physic Garden
The nuns of the Knot planted this garden of healing herbs in the Dawn Period. Natan of Regensburg and Gideon Dewulf both expanded it, and the Curia of the Isle tended it. Even the Branch and the Bureau made use of it in the grim days that Brancrug served as a prison.
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Two flowerbeds in this garden:
Catsclaw in spring, trumpeter’s lily in summer. Rarer plants might flourish in Numa.
Infirmary
In the fifteenth century, Natan of Regensburg came to Brancrug. The brothers of St Brandans granted sanctuary, but they would not permit a Jew – and his family! – to live on abbey grounds. Still they built this tower for him to dwell in and practice his healing arts. It has changed greatly since that time, but a place of healing it remains.
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A room for recovery. A few beds you can move to, should the mood strike you, lots of beverages and concoctions, and a bust of Musgrave Dewulf.
Examination Room
Hendrik Dewulf evicted the family of the healer Natan from the Barber’s Tower – as it was then called. (‘I have rooted out the barber’s brood,’ he is recorded to have gloated.) But his great-great-grandson Gideon – ‘the Motley Baron’, for his brindled hair – restored the Tower and made it a place of healing again.
Of course the equipment in this room dates from the current century. But Gideon’s other nickname was ‘the Cutter’. It was rumoured that he bought corpses for dissection – even that he was a vivisectionist. The latter was probably a slander, but one way or another, scholars have been cutting up corpses in here for a very long time.
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Most notable for the Necropsy Table, a crafting station where you can use carcasses and remains as reagents.
Patients’ Lounge
In this room, the accursed of the Great War gathered to recuperate – those who had suffered something no more horrible, but somewhat more mysterious, than the War’s usual wounds to body and spirit – an irruption of Worms, perhaps, or the risks at the military end of Suppression Bureau activities. Among them were minor luminaries of the invisible world – Christopher Illopoly, Zachary Wakefield, Harvey Hattington. But not Brian Levinsen, who had been ninth Librarian, and under whose tenure the Infirmary had flourished. He enlisted; he served for a time as a medical officer on the Western Front; his body was never found.
Of course the equipment in this room dates from the current century. But Gideon’s other nickname was ‘the Cutter’. It was rumoured that he bought corpses for dissection – even that he was a vivisectionist. The latter was probably a slander, but one way or another, scholars have been cutting up corpses in here for a very long time.
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And here we have the Projector! Got any film reels you couldn’t read at a desk? This is where they go.
Motley Tower: Illopoly’s Nook
Christopher Illopoly – poet, painter, archivist, ruiner of seances – stayed on for a while at Hush House after the Great War. The Librarian, Serena Blackwood, arranged rooms for Illopoly in the Motley Tower, ostensibly so he could help with the collecion, but perhaps also because she saw a potential ally against the Governor of the Cucurbit… relations between the Cucurbit and the House were badly strained at the time.
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A room with some unsettling wall art, a bust of Fraser Strathcoyne, and a Barber’s Chair. The chair is a crafting station (of sorts) where you can evolve (upgrade) your soul elements.
Motley Tower: Second Floor / Motley Tower: Dispensary
Unlock requirements: 6 Heart or 6 Moth
Locked text:
A nasty theoplasmic miasma hangs around the room above. It’s no longer strong, but it’ll take years to dissipate to the point of safety. With the right help, I can raise counter-influences.
This room may originally have served as a working dispensary, but some at least of its more eccentric fittings were added by Christopher Illopoly in his time here. By that point he had severed ties with his adoptive father. He’d been using the Illopoly name for years and had no access to the Strathcoyne fortune – but ‘Traveling at Night’ had sold surprisingly well (much better than his poetry) and he had a little money of his own by then – enough to indulge his preferences.
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Make sure you familiarise yourself with all the teeny tiny tools in this room, they will definitely come in handy!
Motley Tower: Third Floor / Motley Tower: Regensburg Room
Unlock requirements: 6 Heart or 6 Sky
Locked text:
The theoplasmic miasma that hung around the room below is a little stronger here, and a little different, with a rotten, musky scent that suggests a decaying reptile house. Perhaps something laired here after the inhabitants departed; perhaps the inhabitants dreamed unwisely. In any case, the right counter-influences will dispel it.
The physician Natan lived here in the fifteenth century – and his family after that, tolerated by the monks – until King Henry dissolved the foundation and granted the Isle to Hendrik. Hendrik turfed them out of the tower and furnished the place more to his own taste. But when Christopher Illopoly moved in four hundred years later, he restored what he could. Illopoly wrote at the time of his sympathy, as a rootless foundling, for the outcast Natan: ‘I don’t know what I am, but I don’t think I’m English.’
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A new bed; a new desk, and books! Also take note of the valise (bag) under the table. Open that badboy up to see what’s inside.
Servants’ Hall
Hendrik Dewulf, 1st Baron Brancrug, was granted Hush House after the dissolution of St Brandan’s by ‘Old Coppernose’, King Henry VIII. In an act of unusual generosity for that tight-fisted King, the grant came with the title of Baron, and rights sicut regale – ‘like a king’, the quasi-independence traditionally accorded to Marcher Lords. Hendrik was clearly determined to live as befitted his new rank, and he expanded the house accordingly to support sufficient staff.
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Two new workstations await:
– Piano, a musical instrument used to craft with omens and soul of Sky and Moth.
– Loom, where you can craft with Fabric and Fibre.
Grand Ascent – Ground Floor
The staircase that served as the spine of the House: Baron Walter’s great project, executed by the master mason Gregory Wheelock.
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You’ll notice the empty slots on the walls, with inscriptions of various Barons. You’ll have questions about what goes into those slots. I’m working on the answers!
Veiled Chamber / Chancel of the Abbey Church
Unlock requirements: 9 Heart, 9 Lantern, 9 Moon, or 9 Winter
Locked Text:
This has long been a very holy place – too holy to be left untended safely for this long. There are seventy-seven candles, and each one burns with a chill blue flame, each flame inhabited by a watchful spirit. I should not enter until each flame has been cleansed or extinguished.
The Church of the Unconquered Sun acknowledges only a handful of Hours: the Sun in Rags or Splendour; the Meniscate; the Madrugad; the Watchman; and, reluctantly, the Wolf-Divided. Any other so-called ‘Hours’ must be lesser powers, wicked impostors, or superstitions.
So the Church denies two of the three Hours of the Chancel. And yet it’s the Chancel who are said to determine which of their peers qualify as Hours. That’s theology for you.
Abbot Geffrey decreed that all three should be venerated in this holiest of rooms. To avoid actual heresy, he would not permit any of the three to be named. That’s theology, too.
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A new crafting station, the Shrine of the Chancel! This one lets you evolve (upgrade) soul elements.
Serpent-Haunted Bedroom / Violet Chamber
Unlock requirements: 6 Knock or 6 Scale
Locked Text:
Bright-scaled, watchful snakes lie coiled on every surface. I think some of them might be real.
In the days of the Dewulfs, this chamber was reserved for the lady of the House. Later, the Librarians Willem Harries and Gervinus van Lauren both preferred it to the Librarian’s Quarters. Harries established a little shrine to St Agnes in the far corner, and there it remained for many years until van Lauren ordered it to be removed.
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A new bed, which requires Knock to occupy. Beds are used to recover soul maladies and refresh fatigued ones.
Wounded Room / Servants’ Quarters – North
Unlock requirements: 8 Heart or 8 Knock
Locked Text:
Blood drips from wet-edged cracks in the ceiling here, pooling on the floor. Another rage-fuelled presence that I could use help to lay.
This was once the private chamber of the formidable Ernestine Peterhans, Seneschale of Brancrug. Baron Hendrik, and afterwards his son Thomas, would both descend the back stairs to visit her in person. For counsel, most said; for prayers, others insisted. Only the very foolish ever suggested there was any improper motive for their visits.
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Not the most exciting room, especially if you’ve already unlocked the servants quarters to the right. Most notable is the locked case and bolt of cloth on top of the dresser in the middle.
Collapsed Cellar / Earth Cellar
Unlock requirements: 11 Heart, 11 Nectar, or 11 Scale
Locked Text:
The roof has fallen in. We’ll need to dig it out.
In the time of the Abbey, this was a shrine to St Lucia the Eyeless. Since the heresies of the Intercalate, the Church of the Unconquered Sun considers her an aspect of the Hour called Meniscate, but back then she was just the patron saint of stained-glass workers and eye doctors. The tree in Earl Brian’s Field outside was traditionally hung with stained-glass ornaments on St Lucia’s day.
Since the dissolution of the Abbey, though, it’s mostly been vegetables in here.
Icy Bedroom / Pale Chamber
Unlock requirements: 7 Moth or 7 Winter
Locked Text:
A thick and freezing murk, like a clinging black mist, roils at floor level. Not theoplasma exactly – the ragged remnants of some chilly Wood-thing? Or a good old-fashioned ghost, decayed to half-elemental energies? Some local will probably know.
In the time of the Dewulfs, this magnificent bedroom was reserved for the Baron… or in Lady Eva’s time, the Baroness. Eva had the whole room decorated in black as a gesture of permanent mourning for her father Valentine (or, according to ribald rumours, to set off her own paleness for her lovers). It was Kitty Mazarine, much later, who freshened the furnishings and made it the Pale Chamber.
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A new bed, with the Sky aspect, and a bust of Thirza Blake.
Abandoned Librarian’s Quarters / Librarian’s Quarters
Unlock requirements: 3 Forge, 3 Heart, 3 Lantern, or 3 Scale
Locked Text:
A bright haven on the House’s seaward side, innocent of protections and menacing influences – though it’ll take some work to set it right and clean it.
When the Curia of the Isle acquired the deed to the abandoned Dewulf estate, Ambrose Westcott became first Librarian, and had this cosy nook constructed above the north wing to fit his preferences. His successor Kitty preferred the room next door (she lamented that the reek of Westcott’s pipe remained long after his death) and her successor, Solomon Husher, preferred the Long Tower for his own chilly reasons. But most Librarians have enjoyed the peace and the sea view.
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Discovering this room made me happy. Lore out the wazoo, a new bed, and books!? Yes please!
Creeper-Crowded Descent / Well Descent
Unlock requirements: 8 Moon, 8 Nectar, or 8 Scale
Locked Text:
Leaves, flowers, and thorns. Especially thorns.
Rungs line the well’s side. This must lead down to the oldest part of the Isle, to the shrines of the Sisterhood. It may be that the servants of the Dewulf family still came here in secret, even while they paid lip service to the rites of the Unconquered Sun.
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Most notably, a Moth tool (the shears)!
Blockaded Stairs / Back Stairs
Unlock requirements: 9 Heart, 9 Knock, 9 Lantern, 9 Moon, 9 Rose, or 9 Scale
Locked Text:
Not sure. I lost the text. 🙁
The secret artery of the House. All those abbots and barons and all their crowds of retainers needed their chamber pots emptying and their boots cleaning. These are the stairs that the boots and the chamber pots went up and down. They were notoriously cramped and treacherous. It was a rare year some poor scullion didn’t crack an ankle. It was the Suppression Bureau, at very long last, who remodelled the stairs and put in electric lights. And people say the Suppression Bureau never did Hush House any good!
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Stairs! Yeah, that’s it.
Shrouded Stair / Radiant Stair
Unlock requirements: 6 Edge, 6 Forge, 6 Knock, or 6 Lantern
Locked Text:
This has long been a holy place, but the Meniscate has withdrawn her favour now. Someone has shattered a mirror on the floor. The shards wink from the gloom – something half-seen flits from shard to shard, avoiding my gaze, unseen no matter how quickly I turn my head. Only once it’s pacified will I be able to pass safely.
The Watchman’s shrine here is decorated with the Eye Elagabaline – a controversial variant of the Watchman’s Eye. The Elagabaline rites have always had a shaky doctrinal status. It would not often have been seen, of course. These stairs were reserved for the choir monks who sang the liturgy of the Hours, the only ones permitted to enter the Chancel. Still, it is a little surprising that the Eye was allowed to remain, when the monastery was dissolved and the Isle given to the Dewulfs.
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A new Shrine to the Watchman. You can use this one to upgrade soul elements with Illumination, and use Gems in the Remembrance slot, which I hadn’t seen before. Neat!
Dim Hall / Duelling Hall
Unlock requirements: 8 Edge or 8 Grail
Locked Text:
The walls are hung with weapons. As I essay the threshold, a whisper troubles the still air, and a pair of wall-hung swords glints menacingly. More of Van Lauren’s protections. They seem much stronger on the seaward than the landward side of the House. One might begin to wonder if they were intended to protect against outsiders at all.
In Baronial times, this was a ballroom, but in the nineteenth century, during Brulleau’s time as Librarian, a dyad of eternally duelling Edge-long agreed to stay at Hush House for a year and a day to allow Natalia to study them, if she satisfied certain conditions. A properly equipped space was one of those conditions. (Ultimately, the business turned out to be a trap or trick played by one or both of the dyad, and they left after only a single battle.) Their names are recorded as ‘Mistress Dearday’ and ‘Father Torgue’.
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A rather impressive collection of wall art and wooden items (which you can give to the coffinmaker, among other things). Most noteworthy is the upgrade station and a bust of Natalia Brulleau.
Rattling Bridge / Vestibulum Transitus
Unlock requirements: INK. Any ink with 2 Edge, 2 Heart, 2 Knock, 2 Lantern, 2 Moon, 2 Scale or 2 Winter
Locked Text:
Each time the wind makes its rounds, the whole bridge shakes. On its threshold, there’s a serpentine knot-mark in browned blood. The mark is fading, but it still trembles with the power of the spirit that waits in it – a great servant of the old House, perhaps the last of the Fine-Takers themselves. I must pacify it with a suitable offering before I can pass.
‘Vestibulum Transitus’ was the wry name the Curia gave this structure. Before that it was ‘Valentine’s Bridge’, the sheltered crossing beyond which Baron Valentine’s solitude was assured.
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BOOKS! And a rather powerful Mark in the middle, which you can use at any crafting station that asks for Devotion.
Root-Thronged Descent / Deep Well Descent
Unlock requirements: 9 Heart, 9 Nectar, or 9 Scale
Locked Text:
The roots here are a labyrinth of years. How long is it since anyone passed this way?
Each of the great roots here carries a garden of fruiting fungus. Great black bumblebees buzz improbably between them, gathering spores, droning peace.
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A way down, that’s about it. Pick up the package while you’re at it!
Wind-Prowled Gallery / Windlit Gallery
Unlock requirements: 8 Forge, 8 Lantern, or 8 Sky
Locked Text:
This has long been a holy place, but the rites have gone too long unperformed. The windows are shattered and only the wind walks here now.
In the days of the brethren, every day this gallery would ring with the Liturgy of the Hours. In the times of the Dewulfs and of the Curia, there were services here every Sunday. All those times are long gone. This is a house of echoes now.
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A few books, a new workbench that accepts Woven and Wood items, and a bust of Gideon Dewulf.
Gloomy Stair / Glorious Stair
Unlock requirements: 6 Edge, 6 Forge, or 6 Winter
Locked Text:
This has long been a holy place, but the Madrugad has withdrawn her favour now, and a chillness waits here where dawn will not touch it. Only once it is pacified can I safely pass.
Each stair tread is decorated with a quotation from the Book of Suns, so that the congregation might be edified as they ascend. The quotes are worn to half-legibility by the passage of all those worshipful feet, which may be why some of these quotations differer troublingly from any orthodox version.
It has of course been claimed that the Sisterhood of the Knot, who first held the Isle, also held a copy of the long-suppressed Shuritic version of the Book….
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A Shrine to The Madrugad, which can be used to upgrade your soul elements!
Mist-Sunk Meadow / Earl Brian’s Field
Unlock requirements: 6 Edge, 6 Forge, or 6 Winter
Locked Text:
There’s grass beneath my feet and a mingle of wildflower scents, but above all the damp salt vapours of a thick sea-fog. Somewhere in the fog I think I hear a distant bell – far away – as it were beneath the sea…
Perhaps this can be blown away, perhaps sung away, if I bring the right powers and the right assistance.
‘Brian’ is another one of those leitmotif names that recur all through Brancrug’s long histories. This one was Brian of Brittany, who is named Earl of Cornwall by King William after the Conquest. In 1068, the sons of the deposed King Harold mount raids on Cornwall and Brian funds the construction of a fortified gate and the Watchman’s Tower – initially in wood – to protect the abbey. In return, the Abbey ‘gives shelter’ to a yew tree he’s brought from Brittany, that flowers in ‘divers colours’. This is that tree, hollow now and rotting slowly from within, taking its time to die gracefully.
It has not flowered in living memory and the colours of its flowers cannot now be told; but Brian’s brothers were called Alan the Red and Alan the Black.
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I can’t really say this in a spoiler-free way, but do not interact with the grave in this room unless you want your game to end. This is one of the possible endings.
Heart-Haunted Room / Stores
Unlock requirements: 8 Grail, 8 Heart, or 8 Moon
Locked Text:
The light in this room dims in pulses of sunset red, over and over, in a half-heard heartbeat that matches the crashing of the waves below. It’ll need careful exorcism from someone attuned to these influences.
At the time of the Prayer Book Rebellion, in 1549, Hendrik used this room as a prison cell for unfortunate locals – including the cunning-man and rebel ringleader, Red William, who had boasted of the curse he placed on Hendrik’s heirs: ‘There will be no seventh of his line.’
There is a story told in Brancrug Village that Hendrik came to speak with the imprisoned William in person. ‘There will be no second of your line,’ he told him – and had him gelded here in this very cell, and cast into the darkness of the caves below the House.
There is another story, that Eva Dewulf once answered an importunate suitor by bringing him here to this room and pointing out a stain upon the stones…
—
A bunch of exciting stuff in this room, including a few packages full of goodies!
Ill-Omened Tower / Church Tower
Unlock requirements: 9 Forge, 9 Lantern, or 9 Sky
Locked Text:
The stairway has been chained off – more than chained off. The whole thing is wrapped or swathed in chains. Authoritative sigils forbid entry.
The bells in this tower rang every Sunday, even in Solomon Husher’s time, until Thirza Blake finally cancelled services so she could save money by sacking the priest. This brought a deputation of angry locals from Brancrug Village, where there was a fearful superstition that when the bells of Brancrug fell silent, the bells of Ys would be heard.
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We’re going up the church tower now! This room is the beginnings of somehing more… and a Heart tool, which was the first I saw.
Stopped Clock / Tower Clock
Unlock requirements: 10 Forge, 10 Sky or 10 Winter
Locked Text:
With maniacal but methodical care, someone has dissassembled the clock and scattered it round the room. Wheels and parts have been piled and leant on every surface. A W has been marked on the stairs in soot.
George Collers, governor of Brancrug Gaol, oversaw the design and installation of this great clock, with the reluctant help of the Librarian Serena Blackwood. She might have refused ouright, had she known how he intended to reuse the horologist’s techniques for his so-called ‘condignator’.
An inscription on the greatest wheel reads ‘STRIKE THE HOURS’.
—
Up and up we go. This one’s got a new soul upgrade / crafting bench, the clock itself.
Squawkful Loggia / Gullscry Loggia
Unlock requirements: 9 Rose or 9 Sky
Locked Text:
Birds crowd every corner of this place, glaring at me with malevolent yellow eyes. Guano cakes the walls and feathers drift the floor. Something has drawn them here – it’ll need to be dealt with. Once it has, the place will take an awful lot of cleaning.
When Baron Valentine’s melancholia and his acusis became too much to bear, he began to take his meals here, with none of those sounds that he found troubling – only the wind, the sea, and the cries of his beloved birds. After the Dewulfs were gone, the Librarians of the Curia would come here when they needed to think in peace.
—
One of my favourite looking rooms (so far), it even has another crafting bench where you can make paintings. Or upgrade your soul.
Fallen Bells / Bells
Unlock requirements: 11 Forge, Heart or Sky
Locked Text:
Someone has smashed the headstocks of the bells so that they fell to the floor here. The stone is cracked beneath them – the noise must have been unbearable. One has fallen against the stairs to the tower top.
Giver, Teller, Shur’s Tongue, Lady Janice and Great Paycock are the names of these bells, though they’re older than the Abbey itself and those names have certainly been corrupted over the years. By 1915, Shur’s Tongue and Lady Janice were too cracked to ring, and the Suppression Bureau paid for them to be recast – Serena Blackwood’s quid pro quo for the assistance she gave George Collers with his clock project.
—
One more crafting bench where you can upgrade your soul or make music with sounds and omens.
Echoing Chamber / Chapter House
Unlock requirements: 9 Lantern, Moon or Winter
Locked Text:
This has long been a holy place, but the voices of the monks have outlasted their prayers. A surly muttering circles the room, picking up speed as it goes. Each time it passes me, it almost manages to articulate my name.
Here the monastic superiors would meet to manage the affairs of St Brandan’s and to resolve its disputes. Here in 1349, the last trial of the last nuns of St Brandan’s took place. Two were executed for the murder of Abbess Nonna, supposedly with ‘perversions of the healing arts’. Nonna was the last abbess of St Brandan’s, and after the trial, the monastery never accepted female novices again. From the wide windows, the sea is always visible, beating on the rocks far below.
—
A new desk! At this point it’s been a little while since I last found one.
Weeping Chamber / Gullscry Tower: Valentine’s Room
Unlock requirements: 10 Forge, Heart or Sky
Locked Text:
Water trickles like tears from broken pipes in the ceiling, splashing over the cages that hang here. The floor is inches deep in water. The wind flutters mournfully in the cage bars.
In his youth, Baron Valentine inclined to religion, and he made pilgrimages to holy sites on the Continent. After he made his final pilgrimage – to Fermier Abbey – the dreams began – of blood seeping from the earth; of a vast and pulsing Wheel crushing the temples of men; and, which troubled him most, of twisted birds, shrieking in pain, growing like fruit in the branches of an ancient yew.
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A crafting bench, woo! If you’ve been keeping up with some toolmaking, you’d be excited too. Otherwise, a pet! But also maybe… three?
Wheel-Filled Spring / Sacred Spring
Unlock requirements: 10 Moon or Nectar
Locked Text:
The pool here is filled with rusting and rotting wheels. Was this some attempt to block it? Or were the wheels thrown down the well above as offerings? In either case, it’ll need to be cleaned out, and suitable offerings made to appease the powers to whom this place is holy.
The Eye marked on the rocks here is not the Watchman’s Eye that decorates the church above, but the Eye that marks the Temple of the Wheel in dreams. The priests of the Sun would tell you there was no sight before the rising of the Sun; but those who’ve drunk from this spring will dream of another sun, one that swung lower in the sky, one that would speak with us, one that would accept friendly gifts of blood from us.
—
A veery interesting crafting station here, but also one of the first real peeks into the depths below Hush House!
Wyrd-Cursed Spire / Spire
Unlock requirements: 12 Lantern, Moth or Sky
Locked Text:
Seven years ago, someone pronounced a curse here, in the name of the Sun and its many selves. This place was not the curse’s target, and nor was I, but its poison fills the air around me. I should not enter here until it’s cleansed.
Here Hendrik Dewulf met in secret with King Henry – once the Bronze King, now ‘Old Coppernose’, for the Great Debasement had ended the supremacy of the Leashed Flame, and Henry’s heirs were no more than human. There is a story that Hendrik’s son Thomas listened from the rafters – that three times he heard Henry ask his father to break a certain promise in the matter of Caer Ys beyond the wave, and the third time, the father did not refuse the king. This, says the story, is why Thomas never liked to make a promise thereafter, for fear of breaking it.
—
One more way to increase your soul elements! These have been hard to come by and catalogue, so it’s always exciting!
Shrieking Gull-Cloud / Gull Colony
Unlock requirements: 12 Lantern, Moth or Sky
Locked Text:
The gulls have made this their kingdom, and they have grown intolerant of interlopers. We’ll have to pacify or discourage them.
Through all the Isle’s long years, the gulls, heedless of our affairs, have taken their due from the sea and returned it to the rocks. Careful where you step.
—
Oooh, a new exploration location! This one is just like the beach or the moor, with chances to find some cool stuff!
Howling Chamber / Gullscry Tower: Eales’ Room
Unlock requirements: 11 Knock, Sky or Winter
Locked Text:
Great chunks have been torn from the walls of this room. The wind roams the place like a trapped beast, battering to and fro.
Eales Dewulf inherited his father Valentine’s madness, and was found unfit to inherit, so his sister Eva held the Isle in his stead. When his fits of violence became uncontrollable, he was confined here in the tower, where his sister would visit him three times a week – until his escape, some time in the late 1720s. Eales’s ultimate fate remains unknown.
—
Interesting and somewhat distressing. Other than a cute new pet, the Cage is a crafting station that lets you craft by using the animals found in Hush House and the surrounding areas. Does this return the pet unharmed? I am not yet brave enough to find out…
Shadowed Stair / Stair Tenebrous
Unlock requirements: MEMORY; NOT weather with 3 aspect, not including Grail or Knock
Locked Text:
The shadow here is a sentinel. To enter it unprepared is to risk dissolution. I must bear a memory, like a torch in the dark.
There were shadows here in the earth, long before the foundations of the House were laid. They retreated before the Romans’ burrowings, they quailed before the sun-hymns of the brethren, they slunk away before the blades and pistols of the Barons Dewulf. Over all those centuries they shrank, until at last when the Curia of the Isle sunk this stair, they could recruit one as a watch-dog.
—
Honestly the easiest way to unlock this is to push into the tower above. If you have found the cage room, interact with the “beast” inside for a memory that’ll work. Otherwise there are craftable memories with 3 aspects.
Screaming Summit / Gullscry Tower: Summit
Unlock requirements: 12 Rose, Sky or Winter
Locked Text:
Here the wind’s rage is so great that I can barely stand upright. It forces me to retreat back to the stairs. I can hear the voice in the wind now, crying out in sorrow as great as the wind’s rage.
In 1721, Valentine fell – or leapt – from the tower top. There were no witnesses, and his body was not found for three days. His daughter Eva was the last to see him alive, and of their last conversation, she would say only that he had begun to fear the sun.
—
Congrats on making it all the way up here. Yet another crafting station with a way to upgrade your soul!
Room of Rusts / Upper Pump Room
Unlock requirements: 11 Forge or Scale
Locked Text:
The ceiling has collapsed. Rusting machinery pokes out here and there through the rubble.
See the pickaxe marks on the walls. Before the Sisterhood came to the Isle, the Romans or the Phoenicians dug these tunnels, scratching in the ground for tin and for gold. For centuries those pumps kept the sea at bay, driven by slaves or votaries who saw the sun one day in nine. When those pumps fell silent, the sea crept in – until, much later, the Curia brought in their own machines to open up the lower levels again.
—
A challenge! In order to progress further, you’ll need to interact with the pump…
And if you don’t mind spoilers, read on!
To power the pump, you will need two metals objects and a liquid fuel.
– One option for fuel is created with 10 Forge and a liquid at the Forge crafting station above, in the main house (the skill Anbary & Lapidary works for sure, but so do some others. Not all skills create the same ingredients.). There is also liquid fuel in a storage room deeper in the house.
– Metal is harder. At this stage, I think the only sure way to get it is finding it around the house (there is metal wire in the forge above, and another in a storage room in the left side of the house). You can also find it out in the Moors (or the beach) but that’s betting on luck.
– 7 Forge should be easy enough, especially given that liquid fuel mostly has Forge on it. Good luck!
Glaring Room / Solarium
Unlock requirements: 10 Heart, Lantern or Winter
Locked Text:
This has long been a holy place, but now the Sun-in-Rags has withdrawn his peace from it, and the light here cannot be borne. In the day the sun’s light dazzles, in the night the moon’s light freezes. Only once a peace has been laid on the room will I be able to enter safely.
This room was once for the meditation of favoured visionaries. Here White Matilda prophesied the victory of the Iron King in the Wars of the Roads, much as it would occur three hundred years later. (She got his name wrong, though.)
—
BOOKS! If you don’t get unreasonably excited at the prospect of more books to catalogue, you’re playing the wrong game. And a bust of Willem Harries.
Flooded Level / Pumps: Lower Level
Unlock requirements: Resolve the pump challenge in the room above
Locked Text:
Gleaming black water, still as bone. I’ll need to find some way to lower the water level before I can descend.
These machines are of different and newer manufacture than the ones above. They include something like a generator, too. But they’re in even worse condition. I’ll need to provide materials and fuel – and I’ll need Scholar-level of Forge to jury-rig them.
—
Another pump puzzle! If you’ve got this far, you know what to do, just harder this time!
Silent Hall / Hall of Voices
Unlock requirements: 15 Moth or Rose
Locked Text:
The hearth is cold, the floor thick with dust, the walls streaked with nitre. Old invocations and forbiddings squeak and whisper like rats.
Here the higher initiates of the Threefold Mysteries would meet to manage the affairs of the Black Dove and to resolve its disputes. Here they voted to blind and expel the Chorates of the Thunderskin, who had trespassed in the inner chambers and spied on the Mysteries. From that time on, the rites of the Thunderskin were not permitted on the Isle, and the sacred drums fell silent. But the waves still beat in the bones of the rock. Even now that slow pulse comes.
—
A new crafting area and a Forge/Nectar tool. And another bit of concerning lore.
Crystallised Chamber / Rowenarium
Unlock requirements: 13 Rose or Winter
Locked Text:
My path is blocked by shining surfaces like curdled light. Dark shapes shift beneath. We can tap away the crystal if we’re careful. But we must, we must be careful.
Once there was a brother and sister who loved each other greatly. They resolved that they were one soul split into two bodies, and their greatest wish was to become one. They found the hidden isle where the Twins, the Sister-and-Witch, had arrived when they crossed the great ocean, and a sacred pool on which the moon shone only once a year. There they spoke with the Twins in dreams, and they learnt how they might become conjoined as one flesh, and immortal.
Now the brother’s resolution failed her, and though he loved his sister, he could not choose to spend eternity joined in one flesh. The sister could not persuade him, and she would not abandon him or force him. So they used their arts to live long lives, close but separate, and they made a double foundation of monks and nuns, as chaste as they had always been, but each nun had her brother-twin and none could enter alone.
In time, the sister found her own immortality, and to this day she walks the world by moonlight. The brother died, and her bones are buried in the room beneath the well. But his children live on.
—
A disturbing read, for sure, but at least this is probably the first Skolekosophy soul upgrade altar we’ve got!
And while you’re here, check which items go into the slot on the bottom-right. One is special that you might recognise.
Sealed Vault / Silver Vault
Unlock requirements: 14 Grail or Knock
Locked Text:
A heavy marble door sealed with red wax; a triple lock chased with silver.
Did the Curia of the Isle construct this vault? They were not Long – most of them were not Long. So they were not the Obliviates, that society of unseen immortals bound by three oaths. But this vault does seem to reference the oath called the Silver Chain, which forbade men to lie with woman, or women with men: ‘for what may come is not always the Crime of the Sky, yet that is a furious danger.’
—
Well isn’t this a curious room? What this holds are some treasures, and two Numens – perhaps the most powerful books of all. I’ll let you read them yourself to discover what happens.
Gaping Darkness / Hermit Cell
Unlock requirements: 12 Heart or Moth
Locked Text:
Thunder prowls the entrance to this cave – a dying curse, or a capricious storm-spirit? It must be dealt with carefully.
The words RED WILLIAM are scratched into the wall by the bed-nook. This was the name of the cunning-man who laid a curse on Hendrik Dewulf, that there would be no seventh of his line – the cunning-man that Hendrik Dewulf gelded and imprisoned beneath the House.
But this doesn’t look like a cell. There could have been no locks. Perhaps that other story is true – that William was an initiate of the Thunderskin, secretly maintained by Hendrik to prophesy for him ‘in the ancient manner.’ Who were the Dewulfs, really?
—
Interesting lore, a new bed, a new crafting station that can work with stone and wood, and more books to read! Very interesting…
Fluttering Crypt / Columbic Crypt
Unlock requirements: 12 Moon or Winter
Locked Text:
The darkness here beats with wings. Bats? The sound is more like birds, but there is a timpani quality that suggests more bones than feathers. One more step, and I sense the possibility of talons.
St Columba, with twelve companions, brought the word of the Unconquered Sun to Scotland, where he founded a monastery on the blessed isle of Iona. There he died and there his bones remained until the Northmen came.
But in Cornwall they speak of his thirteenth companion, a ‘hybrid beauty’ called Rowena who was perhaps his tutor, perhaps his seducer, or perhaps his daughter. At his death, the monks sought to stone her for her impurities. She bore Columba’s bones away so the monks would not have them – substituting, out of tact or mischief, the bones of a horse. She brought the bones to a hidden Isle, where she made a double foundation of nuns and monks, and become its first abbess: but she would admit none to her order who was a virgin, nor innocent of any crime. Since then, the Isle has been a refuge for all the world might consider impure.
—
Who would’ve thought that the depths of a mysterious manor inhabited with practitioners of otherworldly arts would be so depressing… Either way, a new crafting station with a soul upgrade tag!
Shrouded Space / Night Gallery
Unlock requirements: 10 Winter (or 10 moth I think)
Locked Text:
If the wards on this place were real, they would be heavy curtains of black velvet that stung the grazing hand. They aren’t real in any meaningful sense of the world. I’ll still need to dispose of them before I can enter safely.
In the 1850s, and in deep secrecy, Natalie Brulleau built the Night Gallery into the foundations of the Gullscry Tower. Behind this heavy steel door the Curia, and later the Suppression Bureau, kept treasures too difficult for common view, but too relevant to consign to a deeper vault. If anything difficult might, hypothetically, have been inclined to creep up the stairs from below, it would also have been discouraged by that door.
—
Oh man, I cannot tell you how excited I am to see a Skolekosophy soul upgrade station!
Shrouded Space / Smuggler’s Den
Unlock requirements: 12 Forge or Grail
Locked Text:
A drunken whirl of bats drives me back! Perhaps literally drunken. There’s a faint but definite brandy smell.
In the last years of the eighteenth century, the Dewulf line ended and the estate lay empty. Enterprising smugglers spread rumours of the ghosts that walked the Isle, and quietly brought their tea, brandy and tobacco in through the old mines e on the seaward side of the Isle. But the remnants here are much newer than the eighteenth century. Perhaps even after the Curia took possession, they permitted the smugglers to use this place. Ambrose Westcott did love his baccy so. Perhaps even the Suppression Bureau found the smugglers useful enough to turn a blind eye.
—
An in-between room for lore and a few goodies within!
Broken Bridge / Lesser Bridge
Unlock requirements: 9 Edge, Forge or Knock
Locked Text:
The gaol bridge still stands, but charred and twisted. It groans dangerously in the wind. A fire, then, but what fire does this? It’s as if someone had trailed a match-flame along a bridge of wax.
On the far side, the gate stands wide. When the bridge is repaired, I can enter the gaol.
Brancrug Gaol: built in 1896 at the behest of Nocturnal Branch, to contain ‘troubles unseemly and occult’. A mere six years later, after the Ortucchio Incident, the Branch came itself to be considered ‘unseemly and occult’, and its functions were absorbed into the Suppression Bureau. But the Gaol still stands.
Over the gate is the Bureau’s motto: ALLIS SI LICET, TIBI NON LICET, commonly rendered as IT IS PERMITTED TO US; IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO YOU.
—
Nothing but flavour here, flavour-town!
Blackened Yard / Gaol Yard
Unlock requirements: 10 Grail, Heart or Winter
Locked Text:
A ferocious heat has scorched, even melted, the stones. But as at the bridge, it’s only here and there. Horribly, ‘here’ and ‘there’ mostly seem to be where people happened to be standing. Charred, cracked bones scatter the yard.
The gaol was nicknamed the ‘Cucurbit’, for the alchemist’s flask that distils and refines. Prisoners would become better versions of themselves, realigned to responsibility. Hence, though it would have been much safer to confine the more potent inmates to their sealed cells, Governor Collers insisted that even they should be allowed fresh air and exercise.
—
A bit more lore here, and a new crafting station!
Rattling Tunnels / Catacombs
Unlock requirements: 15 Grail or Winter
Locked Text:
The dead do not walk here; but their eyes are upon me. I can quell them, or I can feed them.
In the days of honey, those who remembered brought the bones of their dead to the grey rock in the sea. In the time of the Eagles, those who remembered brought the bones of their dead to the grey rock in the sea. In the time of the Bear-king, the clans brought the bones of their dead to the grey rock in the sea. When the Wolf-kings came, those who remembered brought the bones of their dead to the grey rock in the sea. Through all the years of Sun and Bronze, those who remembered brought the bones of their dead to the grey rock in the sea. Much is taken; much abides.
—
And here you thought everything was fine and dandy in Hush House, right? Right? Hmm. Well there’s a new crafting station here, and some high-level craftable items that will help you unlock other rooms.
Worm-Eaten Hall / Gaol Hall
Unlock requirements: 11 Forge, Moth or Winter
Locked Text:
This place bears the unmistakable traces of Worms – the ‘serpents which are no serpents’. They are almost certainly gone… but we’ll take no chances. Worms are difficult to evict from buildings, but much harder to evict from people.
Here the guards and the prisoners would take their meals. Sometimes Collers, too, would descend from his tower and discuss philosophy with poisoners, ethics with Antaians, theology with labhites. Afterwards he would generally burn his notes.
—
If you pronounce “hall” like “haul” you can make Gaol Hall rhyme and I found that unreasonably funny. Hope you do too!
Perilous Path / Boathouse
Unlock requirements: 13 Moon or Rose
Locked Text:
This route was never safe, even before the last round of storms had their way with it.
The best way to come to Brancrug unnoticed. Most recently, an unofficial means for Suppression Bureau officials to come and go.
—
Another, sneakier, way to get rid of your hidden shame. Seems like there should be further interactions here, but I have not found any.
Submerged Sea-Caves / Sea-Caves
Unlock requirements: Solve the Lower Pump Puzzle to get a Circumstance
Locked Text:
The sea has claimed these caves. The tide thunders below. I’ll need to find some way to lower the water level before I can enter.
The Curia’s last secret. Right under Governor Collers’ nose, Levinsen, Blackwood and van Lauren all continued their careful investigations of the Brancrug sea-caves. Many of the species here are unknown to Cornwall. Some have not been seen anywhere under this Sun.
—
Another place to gather, this one is underwater with all manner of new treasures.
Worm-Gnawed Kitchen / Gaol Kitchen
Unlock requirements: 12 Grail, Heart or Winter
Locked Text:
This kitchen has clearly been penetrated and polluted by Worms – the ‘parasites of the Sun’. The Worms are long gone. But the kitchen will need scouring, it will need decontaminating, and then it will definitely need all its food throwing out. Even if it’s tinned.
‘There are no Hours at Brancrug,’ Collers used to say – even before he was Governor of Brancrug Gaol, when he was only Secretary Vigilant of the Curia. By way of reminder, the hands were confiscated from every timepiece within the prison walls. The warders could still rely on the chimes of the great Clock in the abbey spire. But it did make life harder for the cooks.
—
Lots of neat things here to feed your visitors, and a rather useful crafting bench!
Ravaged Cellar / Gaol Cellar
Unlock requirements: 13 Forge, Scale or Winter
Locked Text:
This room too has been visited by Worms, the ‘abomination of the relict-kind’… but almost no traces remain.
The entrance to the sub-cellar was barred, locked, chained, warded, both physically and otherwise. Whatever was kept down there, they took it extremely seriously.
It looks very much as if the questing Worms broke the seals, drawn by the power below. It looks very much as if they regretted it.
—
A few things to investigate and an ominous precursor of what’ to expect ‘s in the room below.
Abandoned Church / Our Lady Beneath
Unlock requirements: LIQUID with 4 Knock, Moth, Nectar or Winter
Locked Text:
This is a holy place of the Sisterhood of the Triple Knot. The Hours they worshipped are not worshipped now, but those Hours are not dead, nor even sleeping. I should not enter this place without pouring out a sufficient offering.
Who is ‘Our Lady’? The Red Grail, which gives life, which takes life, which is not sated? The Horned-Axe, who bears two blades, who waits and the threshold, who sunders that which should not be joined? The Ring-Yew, who is succulent, who is renewed, who encompasseth? Or a fourth, who is always signified but never named?
A Librarian might phrase the question differently: who was first?
—
Finally, a Bosk upgrade altar! Also one of the prettiest rooms in the House for me.
Incandescent Hollow / Oubliette
Unlock requirements: 15 Forge, Knock or Winter
Locked Text:
Sullen heat still roils below. Its originator must be long gone, but it must be quelled before I can descend safely.
Here in a vessel shaped by fire and fate, George Collers confined a flame in human flesh, a blazing shadow of a blazing future, a Name of greed and time. Greene called it ‘the Sun’s bastard grandchild.’ Van Lauren warned of ‘the Second Dawn’s first spark’. But Collers spoke of it reverently: as ‘the Leashed Flame’s true heir’.
—
Wow. All I have to say. This is an Ithastry upgrade altar.
Sealed Vault / Iron Vault
Unlock requirements: 16 Edge or Knock
Locked Text:
A heavy iron door sealed with black wax; a triple lock of unornamented iron.
Where did the Curia of the Isle come from? Across the western ocean from Noon, where the Ordo Limiae made their home? That would raise more questions than it answered. But this vault would seem to be of their making, and it would also seem to reference the oath called the Iron Chain, which binds every resident of Noon, to remain hidden from the world, ‘so that the Calyptra might not look upon us, so that the Chancel might not hear our names, so that the Hours might not devour us.’
—
I believe this is the hardest room in Hush House to open, congratulations! We’ve got a bunch of House secrets here, which you should definitely not look through. Nope, not at all.
Menacing Phosphorescence / Deeplight Caves
Unlock requirements: 14 Moon or Nectar
Locked Text:
The pumps have drained enough water to splash through, but everything is spatched and splotted with sickly, alien, wonderous, mesmeric light. When I retreat, I find the same glow on my boots. Whatever I do, I should not do it hastily.
When the gods-from-stone were swept away, the Carapace Cross who had served them were swept away too. The Seglaz-kind, the Wyrmefota-kind, the Glaeterfloge-kind, all those wise and mighty ones are gone, into Nowhere or hiding or us. Here in the fire-warmed waters, away from the justice of sunlight, their legacy quietly thrives.
—
A friend? Well… maybe. He’d probably eat you. But it’s a new soul element upgrade station!
Riddling Stair / Whispering Stair
Unlock requirements: 12 Rose or ???
Locked Text:
Half-seen faces mouth half-heard riddles. This is none of van Lauren’s work – these defences are much older than the Curia. But the Curia found a way to answer these riddles, and so will we.
This was the stair that the priestesses walked, in the time that this was the Abbey of the Black Dove. Their carved faces still guard the walls. Their prayers may still be heard when the airs of the Isle are exceptionally still.
—
Absolutely nothing in this room. Well, okay, no, there’s a candle I guess. What did I expect from a stair!?
A Red Forbidding / Chapel Calicite
Unlock requirements: 14 Grail or Nectar
Locked Text:
Crimson mists beckon and sway.
The Red Grail says: Never speak of this Mystery. I was always the first, and I must always be greatest. When we spilt the blood of the Thunderskin, I feasted and I grew strong, stronger again than the Twins. There is always a feast, and nothing is truly wasted.
—
A Bosk upgrade altar! I wish I knew this was here before I went all the way into the depths to find the other one…
Blackened Staff-Room / Staff-Room
Unlock requirements: 11 Grail or Heart
Locked Text:
The same story as the yard below – seared bones, blackened walls, furniture half-consumed by fierce fire. But much of the room remains untouched.
The warders at Brancrug were a cut above your usual prison warder – former Bureau constables, repentant Know, turncoat Tragulari, veterans of the Légion du Seuil. When the end came, none of that mattered. But here, for a while, when the winter storms battered the walls, they hunkered close to this glowing stove to share tea and comradeship and stories of their very different lives.
—
Doggo! If you haven’t found one yet, here’s a loyal pet!
Smoky Chamber / Crucible Tower: Governor’s Office
Unlock requirements: 12 Forge or Heart
Locked Text:
The room is almost untouched, but little fires still burn here, blithely ignoring the absence of fuel, filling the room with seven years of smoke.
The Governor’s office – quietly luxurious, at least by the standards of the Cucurbit. Collers was devoted to his cause and his service, but he did insist on his little pleasures.
—
A new desk here. I didn’t think we’d find one this far out.
Pulsing Darkness / Shrine to St Tentreto
Unlock requirements: 15 Moth or Scale
Locked Text:
If the Isle had a heart, we would hear its pulse.
The Carapace Cross, the hybrid race who in their many kinds were winged, legged, eyed, bright, dark, scaled, feathered, chitinous… and us? The Cross are gone; the Cross were always History; but to their children, their enemies, they leave this hushed legacy.
—
Welp. It’s an upgrade shrine I guess? Let’s pretend this isn’t here.
Mazed Cell / Cell: ?
Unlock requirements: 14 Grail, Moth or Scale
Locked Text:
A leathery burgundy mesentery has spread out of and around the doorway of this cell. Chitin? Fungus? It crumbles beneath my hands, emitting choking fumes. It will be impossible to enter the cell without clearing it.
This was the last prisoner to be admitted to the Gaol, but only the date has been recorded. No record of its origin, crime, or arrest remains. Collers was a man of many secrets. Sometimes, however. he was also a generous man, and he insisted it be provided with a bed and with writing materials, should it ever feel the need for them.
—
Uhhhh… the Chrysalis. If you work out what it does, please let me know!
Sagging Dock / Loading Dock
Unlock requirements: 14 Moon or Rose
Locked Text:
The storms have had their way with this since the prison was abandoned. It won’t last much longer.
Here the supplies came in, from every continent that the seas touch – from the Bounds, and beyond. Now and then prisoners would try to escape, but the sea is always hungry.
—
A bunch of things that now belong to youuuuuuu!
Impermeable Cell / Cell: Worm-Inhabited
Unlock requirements: 15 Forge, Knock or Sky
Locked Text:
A sign outside this cell reads WARNING: NOT TO BE SPOKEN WITH, NOR LOOKED UPON. The protections that still hang in the air lend force to the injunction.
The occupant of this cell could not be allowed fresh air and exercise. It could not have reasonably expected to leave this cell ever again, even while it wore human shape. But it could not be confined forever; in the end, somehow, it found its way into the walls.
—
This room is mostly lore. Seems like whatever was housed here (Worms with a capital W) made its way out, and then down this tower into the basement, destroying plenty along the way.
A Wintry Forbidding / Chapel Ascite
Unlock requirements: 14 Edge or Knock
Locked Text:
Icy mists coil and drift.
The Horned-Axe says: Never speak of this Mystery. When the Thunderskin was mortal, he served the Hours who slew my kind. I required the Thunderskin’s death, and so the Grail gave him up.
There is always a reckoning, and nothing is truly forgiven.
—
Okay you know there were sacrifices in here… Though that’s probably true of most other rooms down in the caves, to be fair.
A Honeyed Forbidding / Chapel Malachite
Unlock requirements: 14 Heart or Nectar
Locked Text:
The air is thick with the scents of honey and yew-berries – enough to daze the heart and mind.
The Ring-Yew says: Never speak of this Mystery. When the Thunderskin was mortal he loved me first, and so the Grail destroyed him. Now the Thunderskin delights forever in my succulence. There is always a renewal, and nothing truly ends.
—
Altars out the wazoo ’round these parts. Who knew!
Stifling Chamber / Crucible Tower: Governor’s Quarters
Unlock requirements: 13 Forge or Winter
Locked Text:
No fires are visible, no scorch marks, no smoke, but this room pulses with sultry heat. My head swims as I approach the threshold.
In this room, the Governor was Collers the artist, Collers the dreamer. It was a side of him that almost no-one saw, especially when, after the death of his wife, he grew so much more solitary. That said, there is a connection to be drawn between his enthusiasm for sculpture, and his ambitions for his human subjects.
—
Longs and gentlehours, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… a Phonograph! Ta-dah!
Sealed Cell / Cell: Adepts
Unlock requirements: 12 Forge or Knock
Locked Text:
A sign outside this cell reads WARNING: DO NOT INSERT KEYS WITHOUT FIRST INVOKING ADEQUATE AUTHORISATION. The key is in the Staff-Room, but I shouldn’t turn it without invoking powers to provide a reasonable facsimile of authorisation.
Seventy-seven days in the Cucurbit was considered enough to soften the passions of the most unrepentant adept. After that, they were usually charged and tried in closed court; very occasionally released; sometimes taken upstairs for one of Collers’ experimental interviews.
—
Just in case you ever thought to yourself: “I’d love to spend my nights sleeping in a nice prison cell”, here’s a bed! Or maybe you don’t want to enter the Mansus in your dreams. That’s cool too.
Charred Chamber / Crucible Tower: Interview Laboratory
Unlock requirements: 14 Knock, Moth or Winter
Locked Text:
The iron door here stands ajar – but it still glows faintly red, even after all these years. This is not a natural heat, and there is no entirely natural way to quell it.
When a prisoner resisted all other interventions, Collers would bring them here, to test and refine their worth. His successes might be transferred to Zurich, or turned over to the Légion du Seuil to earn their humanity, or even, at least once, released. But his successes were not numerous.
Here, at last, is where the fire began and where it ended. When the power below the prison was released, it came here to interview Collers. Perhaps it intended to put him in his own device; but it seems there was not nearly enough left of him for that.
—
Oof.
Slithering Fountain / Narthex
Unlock requirements: 14 Edge, Knock or Scale
Locked Text:
After all these years, the fountain in this hall is blocked. That’s not a surprise. A little more surprising is this: the blockage appears to be mostly snakes; a great many snakes. This, no doubt, is why we have seen so few rats.
If you were a pilgrim to the Abbey of the White Crow, you’d purify yourself here. You didn’t want to track profane Dumnonian mud or alien Mare Britannicum salt into the holy precincts. Or unclean thoughts. Especially not unclean thoughts. The priestesses here were a little more merciful than the Hours they served, but only a little.
—
I looked this up, a Narthex is an actual term for the antechamber in a church. Which makes sense, given what’s in the rooms nearby.
Sealed Vault / Ivory Vault
Unlock requirements: 14 Knock or Scale
Locked Text:
A heavy granite door sealed with white wax; a triple lock ornamented with ivory and black nephrite.
How did the Curia of the Isle begin? There is no evidence they began with the House of Lethe, that society of unseen immortals bound by three oaths. But this vault – much newer than the tunnels above – does seem to reference the oath called the Ivory Chain, which forbade commerce with the Hours – except, sometimes, with the winter Hour known as the Elegiast, or the Ivory Dove. Solomon Husher remarked that this might be considered less an oath of rejection of the Hours, and more an oath of loyalty to the Elegiast. But Solomon, of course, vanished into the snow.
—
Oooooh boy. Better get reading and opening. This one’s packed!
Trapped Cell / Cell: Long
Unlock requirements: 13 Edge or Knock
Locked Text:
A sign outside this cell reads WARNING: DO NOT ENTER WHILE SAFETY MEASURES ARE ARMED.
The few Long at Brancrug were kept in cells triple-buttressed with silver and steel and sanctioned spells. The Bureau knew their weaknesses, but never relied upon them. This cell last housed two immortals – an Edge-long dyad. This would have required not only ferocious and eternal vigilance, but also frequent replacement of shattered furniture.
—
Well damn. This was the final room I unlocked. There are 106 of them, in case you were curious.
