So you thought the Museon was a happy, safe place? Think again
Dangers of the Museon
Dr. Clarence Swinehold, when he built his entrance to the Museon, envisioned it as a relatively prosaic place. By and large, it is. Assuming you don’t dig too deeply. The danger comes not from ancient tomes of lore or from present-day publications. Most of the hazards of the Museon come from the future. Books with a publication date from next year or later can be dangerous, especially if they refer to the reader in any way–think about it. Did knowing the future really do Cassandra any good? Beyond the perils of Books That Should Not Be are the troubles you bring in with you. Hope and pray you don’t die here: your body is unobtrusively buried underneath the slate floor of the Courtyard and your spirit stays on; trapped in the Museon and inflicting punishment on future visitors. Just like Dr. Swinehold’s student, Patricia Brown.
Dangerous Reading–Books from the Future<\b>
Books from the future are easy to spot: although the binding, cover and pages are crisp and new, the writing is faded and almost impossible to read. In most cases, only the title and (maybe) the author are legible. Interior print becomes clearer the closer to publication date is to the present day. A book from a decade in the future has faint discolorations where lines of type and illustrations will appear. A book from five years from now is legible with squinting under a strong light. Finding a reference to yourself (and let’s face it, that’s why most people go looking for future books) is a Rank-10 Helplessness challenge–your future is there, in black and white. Hope you enjoy it. Most don’t. When such a book is dropped or set down, it disappears, reshelved in some other part of the Stacks. Seeking (and finding) another future book about yourself reveals a different future, and is worth another Helplessness challenge.
Worse still are reference books from the future: dictionaries, encyclopedias and thesauri all provide a danger to hunters after the future. A blank dictionary or encyclopedia could define you: failing a Soul check means you’re sucked bodily into the book and a clearly printed and illustrated new entry appears, detailing you in an often unflattering, overly honest way. A major Bibliomancy charge might be able to pull an unlucky soul back out of the book. Those succeeding on the Soul check face a Rank-5 Self check provoked by a sudden wondering of exactly who, and what they are.
Thesauri are more insideous: picking up and leafing through a future thesaurus leads to synonymation: skills, obsessions, and memories of the reader are shifted in some unknown way (GM’s are encouraged to be fiendish) without their knowledge while physical appearance remains the same. The poor Synonym faces a severe number of Self checks as details from their life turn out not to be as they remember.
The Ghost in the Library
Patricia Brown was a promising student of Dr. Clarence Swinehold’s who turned on him, deciding the last time they had come here that the Museon would be a nice, quiet place to kill the man and dispose of his body. Presumably, her aim was to steal his library (indeed, a little digging will discover a Ryder truck rented in her name and then never returned). Poor Clarence died, but not by her hands: she ended up eating three .38 caliber bullets from the hold-out piece she never knew he had.
Name: Patricia Brown
Speed: 45 (Faster than She Looked)
Mind: 70 (Sharp as a Tack)
Soul: 75 (Illuminated)
Obsession: All the Knowledge Are Belong to Her!
Patty will attempt to possess anyone she can and continue her Bibliomantic career, pitching fits in the form of Unnatural phenomenae if she cannot.
Leaving the Museon–the Exit Ritual
Leaving the Museon is easier than getting in, actually: there’s no chanting in foreign tounges, no mystic circles. The only requirement is creativity. All you need to do is return to the Courtyard and its slate floor and write an original composition in chalk. The composition doesn’t have to be particularly good, but it should start at the edge of the courtyard and spiral in towards the center. Originality is key, plagerism will get you nowhere. The writer should have just enough room to sit cross-legged when he or she is finished, whereupon they vanish and return to the location of the Runestone.
As an aside, attempting to leave with a work found at the Museon apparrantly doesn’t work–one always arrives back empty-handed. However, attempting to find that same book again in the Museon always fails.