It Belongs to a Museum

It has occurred to you that the castle on Fire Serpent Island is more than just a convenient site for your museum, but a historical relic in itself, as the home of the Pirate King between his arrival on the Vampire Coast and his conquest of the Temple-City of Huatl. The castle in question is perhaps more of a stoney plateau, a sharp five-meter cliff lined by stone pillars with a single gateway and ramp allowing access from the harbour that backs into the side of the volcano towering overhead, with tunnels carved into the stone linking together long-dormant chambers and caverns that had once flowed with magma, interspersed with more regular and conventionally carved rooms.

Awakening has a number of people who might be considered experts on fortification, though generally from the direction of how those fortifications might be overcome. What you learn from them is that the structure that you've been thinking of as a castle is a bit of a typological quandary, and the sort of thing that starts arguments that last all night in the more cerebral taverns. The slightly more common position is that the structure in question is an entirely typical Norscan ring fortress, a form of fortification easily built anywhere reasonably close to a forest as long as you have enough shovels, axes, and labour to throw at it, and that a half-ring built into the side of a mountain is a common enough variation to barely be notable. The other points out that a ring fortress is made of soil piled up behind a barrier of logs, and while the structure in question was clearly made in imitation of this, the fact that it was carved out of the volcanic rock and ringed with pillars of stone makes this a 'true' castle, and that opens up further debates.

Now, stone fortifications occupied by Norscans are far from unknown, but these generally break down into three groups - those originally built by Dwarves, those built in styles copied from the less northern northerners, and the so-called Dark Fortresses built on places of power to impossible specifications by incredible amounts of magic and slaves. What does not exist, according to this school of thought, is a native Norscan stone fortification - except for this one. Which raises immediate counterarguments and then only slightly less immediate counter-counterarguments. One is that Luthor Harkon might not have been Norscan by birth, but there are a lot of beings in Awakening who would draw steel if you tried to argue that Haakon was not a proper Norscan, as most tribes care less about birthright than they do about general attitude and aptitude. Another is that the Norscans doing most of the work were dead, but again, in Awakening the idea of the dead being somehow lesser is also the one that should be voiced with care.

'Earliest Known Example of Norscan Stonework', is the phrase that will make it onto the big letters on the signage. The rest of it will go into the smaller writing further down.



New Relic:
Fire Serpent Fortress - Age, History, Architecture, Siege Warfare, Piracy, Vampire, Norsca
Full historical context, detailed cultural context.

A five-meter cliff ringed by stone pillars and backing up against the side of the volcano, used as a base of operations for the Pirate King Luthor Harkon before his conquest of Huatl and the construction of Awakening. this fortress might not have ever seen combat, but it can also be considered significant for being a stone reproduction of a style of Norscan fortification that is usually made of timber and soil, arguably making it one of the first truly Norscan stone castles.

---

Most of the time you would say that you are no artist, but there's one field that you would take a quiet pride in: that of the depiction of faces. Most practically this is a matter of the application of cosmetics to maintain your personal appearance, because though the preservatives and elixirs of the Mortuary Cult do a lot of the work, you much prefer to keep your appearance merely aged, rather than outright decrepit, even when circumstances might take their toll on your body. Some of your peers are difficult to tell apart from the dead they serve, and you have no desire to follow their example. But there's also the matter of death masks, the uppermost portion of the funerary panoply of the Nehekharan dead, which needs to bear the face of the interred.

The main purpose of a death mask is to ensure that a spirit will be able to recognize the body it's supposed to call home. Preservatives and cosmetics can go a long way, but many deaths can leave marks, and even when they don't, the face a person wears on the day they die is very often not the face their spirit would most readily recognize. Determining whether a body should wear the face they died with or that of them in their prime, whether and which scars should be represented or left off, whether they should be smiling or frowning or resting, these are just some of the innumerable factors the Mortuary Cult was required to consider when properly preparing a person for their dormancy. In this case, you opt for an expression of focused determination that was one of the standards for more militaristic members of the nobility.

The symbols put on a death mask are typically very formulaic, but as this one does not need to preserve or protect the body within, there's no reason not to replace them with symbols more significant to the Vampire in question. Complicating things is that the Vampire in question is not as singular as most, and you gather two of the instances of Lutr are relevant here: Haakon the Bloody, who sailed out of Fire Serpent Island, and Luthor Harkon the Sorcerer, who conquered Huatl. You make a habit of dropping in until you get one of them - Haakon the Bloody, as it turns out - and have him sketch out symbols of significance to him. Some are Nehekharan, others are Norscan, and still others you don't recognize at all, but you copy them onto the death mask with a shrug. What's the worst it's going to do, cause the dead to walk?



New Relic:
Death Mask of Haakon the Bloody - Piracy, Vampire
Full historical context, partial understanding of personal significance

A Nehekharan death mask crafted in the likeness of Luthor Harkon and inscribed with runes and glyphs of significance to the facet of Luthor Harkon known as Haakon the Bloody, the captain of a Norscan longship and ruler of Fire Serpent Isle.



The other matter you see to is a set of counterparts to the reptilian skeletons you've been acquiring, with the general idea of depicting Luthor Harkon's invasion of the mainland. Statues might be the tasteful way of achieving this, but for lack of a Necrotect or even a regular sculptor, your eye turns to a much more common raw material, one that neither you nor the Mortuary Cult are a stranger to: bone. Unlike more typical necromantic civilizations, the Vampire Coast has a surfeit of unused bodies, as the availability of the willing dead means few bother with binding the unwilling or finding replacements for the absent. Some bodies are given some semblance of proper rites - the Cult of Stromfels is the most prominent of these, but there is a battered temple of a northern echo of Usirian tucked away - but most are simply consigned to the waves or the swamp after they pass. The most common source of these bodies are those that never saw Awakening in life and have no desire to serve it in death, but crossed blades with the Vampire Coast's pirates at sea and had their fallen taken back to Awakening to feed its Ghoul population.

To one as intimate with the Wind of Death as you are, discarded corpses are trivial to find and only slightly less so to recover. You scrutinize them to make sure their former inhabitants are fully departed, then begin preparing their bodies as you would that of a fallen Nehekharan soldier - bathed in a solution to clean their skeleton, then dressed and armed, albeit in a different style than you are used to. The Norscan Wights generally refer to themselves as Draugr, the Norscan term for bodies naturally mummified by the cold, dry air of the far north and then animated by the gaze of Sakhmet or being stumbled upon by a vagrant spirit or Daemon, and their dress of choice is a similar outfit of leather and chain to what they wore in life.

---

The third matter you see to is overseeing the receipt of quite a cache of Lizardman artefacts that had been excavated by Elven miners on Fuming Serpent Island. Normally these are supposed to be turned over to the Lizardmen immediately to maintain the uneasy coexistence between the two peoples on the island, but some amount of the miners inevitably believe themselves capable of smuggling them out of Lustria and back to Ulthuan, and some amount of those inevitably fail in their endeavours and are discovered by the Citadel's authorities while in transit. This has created a loose collection of orphaned artefacts, the authorities responsible for them usually too law-abiding to continue the journey and pocket the profits, but too cautious to return them to the Lizardmen and risk them learning of the existence of the smuggling pipeline.

But to turn them over to the Vampire Coast, notorious pillagers of treasures in general and Lizardman treasures specifically, that is a perfect solution. Who would see Lizard trinkets in a prestige project of Luthor Harkon, infamous pillager of Lizardman cities, and think they originated from Elven smugglers?

From going over the contents of the nondescript crates that trickle in from the Citadel of Dusk, you begin to get an impression of the buried Temple-City on Fuming Serpent Island as a prestigious necropolis, a place for those of the dead whose merit exceeded their social class to be specially interred. Jewellery is the most common item stolen from the tombs for obvious reasons, but a close second is various kinds of weaponry, which is not unexpected considering the reputation of the Lizardmen. But also present and subsequently stolen were various artisans tools, from hammers and axes to chisels and brushes and a set of small but extremely sharp golden spikes you theorize were used for piercings. But the centrepiece is a palanquin that Fjolnir says would have once carried the rarest variety of Lizardman, the large, frog-like Mages of supposedly enormous puissance that only rarely leave survivors to contribute to Fjolnir's collection of stories.

It's a good haul, and for now it will be the last one. The remaining relics in the Citadel of Dusk are duplicates of ones you now have, retained in case anyone else remembers they exist and asks after them, and the current Harbourmaster is either good enough at his job that nobody's trying to smuggle relics through any more, or bad enough at it that they're all getting by him without getting intercepted. To extract further relics from Fuming Serpent Isle via the Princess would require her to suborn or create smuggling rings instead of merely accumulating relics from them getting caught, and you judge that that would be a step beyond her current level of cooperativeness. You'd need to deepen her debt to you in some way before she'd be willing to go that far.



New Relics:
Palanquin - Lustria, Lizardmen, Magic
Partial combat understanding, no magical understanding.

Lined with gold over the same stone that the Lizardmen Temple-Cities are made out of, the purpose of this platform is made clear by the very distinct imprint left by its passenger over what must have been years, if not decades, of sitting in the same pose. The rarely-seen Mages of the Lizardmen are said to be carried into battle atop these.


Jagged Clubs - Lustria, Lizardmen, Weaponry
Partial combat understanding.

Melee weapons favoured by the medium-sized Lizardmen, these clubs are made of bone or wood and lined with obsidian shards or teeth from large predators. Although primitive in appearance, they can do terrible damage.


Spears - Lustria, Lizardmen, Weaponry
Partial combat understanding.

These spears come in larger sizes for the medium-sized Lizardmen, and smaller sizes of both spears and javelins for the smaller ones, all made of the same combinations of wood or bone and ivory or stone. The Lizardmen seem to have no knowledge of metalworking apart from gold.


Blowpipes - Lustria, Lizardmen, Weaponry, Alchemy
Partial combat understanding, negligible alchemical understanding.

The silence and accuracy of these weapons becomes a major threat when combined with the innumerable poisons and venoms of the Lustrian jungles, which the Lizardmen seem to have a full understanding of. Traces of colour on the darts hint at a poison coating that evaporated long ago.


Jewellery - Lustria, Lizardmen, Value
Negligible understanding.

Golden armbands of various sizes. Necklaces and bracelets bearing lines of polished stones. Tablets worn as piercings bearing unknown glyphs.


Artisan Tools - Lustria, Lizardmen, Culture
Negligible understanding.

Too small to be comfortably used by an adult human but sized just right for the smallest form of Lizardmen, these tools suggest a level of intelligence and organization beyond what many are willing to credit the Lizardmen with. These aren't just limited to the likes of metalworking and carpentry, but also include tools used to decorate and adorn.

---

You have three actions to undertake this year. For now, this is what Paht is doing between renovating the island, getting to know the locals, and learning the languages most often spoken by the beings of Awakening; in the future it will be while managing the museum and maintaining its displays.



Spend Goodwill

[-] New Affiliate
[-] New Museum Staff
[-] Develop Affiliate
[-] Develop Museum Staff

[-] New Contact (specify a Patron or Affiliate)
[-] New Relics (specify a Patron)



Develop Museum

[ ] Create Exhibit (specify what)
An exhibit consists of at least one centrepiece and any number of relics, combined by some sort of theme. For example, combining Luthor Harkon's original flagship with a number of Lustrian skeletons could create an exhibit centered around the Conquests of the Pirate King, describing Luthor Harkon's early history in Lustria and his conquest of Huatl. Exhibits can be altered, added to, or dismantled later.

[ ] Research Relic (specify which)
There is a great deal of difference between a display that is just a sword and one that tells you what type of sword it is, which people made it and used it, what was special about it, and what it developed from and into. Items that you or your staff already have requisite knowledge of will have that understanding automatically applied, but you can also personally research a specific item to seek out that specific set of answers yourself.

[ ] Acquire Relic (specify what or where)
Pahtsekhen can seek to acquire something specific personally, or can venture somewhere and see what he finds. While this will usually get worse results than using a Contact, it can be useful if there's something very specific you want, or if you've got surplus actions you don't know what else to do with. Keep in mind that though he is hardier than the average gentleman of his apparent age and a skilled Death Mage, he is not immune to consequences. Think less 'daring heists' and more 'let's go antiquing'.

[ ] Investigate (specify what)
Research a specific person, place, event, or people to discover Leads: clues that might be followed to discover and possibly acquire particularly impressive or meaningful relics of the past.



Broaden Horizons

[ ] Learn (specify what)
Surface can be learned as long as you have somewhere it can be reasonably learned from. Detailed requires either a very cooperative expert or a contact with influence over a centre of formal learning. Minutiae and higher are not currently available to be learned.

[ ] New Audience - Sea Elves
Affinity: Value, Naval Warfare, Sea Beasts
Elven nobility are infamously starved for novelty, and not averse to at least the appearance of danger. Through Princess Aelsabrim, the more seagoing of them could be tempted into venturing onto your island.

[ ] New Audience - Arabyan Academics
Affinity: Age, Magic, Nehekhara
Pahtsekhen has had a number of students over the years, and not all of them have ended infamously. If you think you have displays that may be of interest to them, you could spread word of your museum among the learned classes of Araby.

[ ] Cultivate Audience (specify who and what)
Sometimes you must make the iron hot by striking it. Convince a specific audience to take an interest in something that's plausibly aligned with their interests and place in the world, but currently isn't driving them to visit museums. This will be more flexible if you have something suitably impressive to spark interest.



Acquire Relics - via Princess Aelsabrim Fallenstar

[ ] Critters
Lustria is home to various kinds of fascinating and unique forms of wildlife, the smaller and more manageable examples of which are in demand as pets and exhibits in Ulthuan and the Old World. You might decide that they're also in demand on Fire Serpent Island. Depending on what exactly you get you might not have the skills to keep them alive here, in which case you will kill and preserve them as lifelike display.

[ ] Beasts
Lustria's more impressive beasts are rarer, more dangerous, and even more sought after, both by Elven hunters and by the native Lizardmen that use them as mounts and as living siege engines, but one can be diverted from the trickle flowing through the Citadel to go towards your island. You do not have the skills to keep them alive here, so you will kill and preserve them as lifelike display.

[ ] Plants
Princess Aelsabrim roped in a local ally of hers, the Mage Telsomar Greendale, to make sure you didn't mishandle her husband's spirit. Her claimed area of expertise is carnivorous plants, and she seems to be quite competent. You could arrange for seeds and samples from this collection if you foresee a botanical wing to your museum.

[ ] Skeletons (choose one: small, large, rare)
Most places would consider the skeletons you have to be very large indeed, but in Lustria, they're strictly medium-sized. They're also only the more common specimens. You could have the expeditions also start crating up the smaller skeletons, less individually impressive but greater in quantity, or have them seek out the remains of rarer and more impressive beasts, or gathering portions of larger, rarer, older, and less complete skeletons they encounter in the hopes of being able to eventually piece them together into a future centerpiece.

[ ] Gems
Honestly, there's not much historical value in freshly-mined jewels, but they are extremely pretty. Uh, they were mined on Fuming Serpent Island, so they are tangentially related to the Vampire Coast. And Elven faceting techniques are some of the most advanced in the world. You could come up with some excuse to indulge in corvid instincts.

[-] Relics
You will need to develop this contact further before they are willing to directly funnel stolen Lizardmen relics from Fuming Serpent Island to you.



- There will be a two hour moratorium. Voting will be in plan format.
- The highlight of the relic haul was rolled for here.