The Free curse is passed on as Spectral Vision: a compulsion to identify those capable of communication, with the Spectres and others, entities whose corporeality can be experienced with the help of the artifacts of Unnatural History, gathered throughout history, only as necessary, by the Archeologists of Mind (AoM).
The Central Archivist has written a letter, left on their desk before their journey to the Black Heart Forest, a whole forest comprising one solitary tree, standing among its reflection in a copse of volcanic glass mirror towers:
“I am, this weekend, embarking on a journey to the Forest Martial; only upon my departure shall this letter be revealed to those outside the AoM.””I go to entreat the Martial, who don’t acknowledge how the strange sounds emanating from their forest reach our souls and call out some primal act of initiation into a culture of vigilance and armed defense whose origin has been traced by the Forest Sentry to the action that evoked the defense, our shared sense of the dimming of the Forest Mirror Glass.”
“Our Society of Friends, still in its youth, has permitted the Affirmation Artifact to be invoked; we can only hope it remains effective against the aggressions the Sentries have described in the Tomes of Artifice, effective in the past in tracing the risk of failures that result, across time, from the defense of dimming; our journey will prove its power to surface in these forest creatures’ minds their impotence and anger, which can be reflected back upon them to compel harmony.”
“I travel this time with Ursula, whose life, as you know, is spent in the study of Prevarication, and The Crimean, whose powers of artifice and abilities remain shrouded in deepest mystery.”
“Let the Society know, we embark to discover who are those transmitting these strange sounds from the Forest Martial that disturb our harmonious world, and how they find us even in our sentried enclaves; we shall send return notice, which of their friends and neighbors are self-sacrificing in their faith in the cause of Undark, and which remain Friend to the Artifact Chaotic; we seek those who find now our Friends strange, and who remains afar who will come to the aid of another, and in doing so create enough resistance to enmity for you, yourselves, oh Friends of Society, to compel the return to operation of the harmony of systems whose cardinal virtue tests the unity of the unmarked and unspoken borders.”
“Persevere, so that we soon can together observe the harmony in that same green world.”
“We entreat you, in the interim of our return, remain not indifferent to your Friends’ lack of earnestness, when describing the urgency with which we must regard the Southeast Quadrant where Forest Mirror is found. Less we embrace too heartily the conflicts emerging here, which summon the attention within our enclave to the need to heal, once more, our neighbors.”
FIN