Susan's Journal

## General Information

Susan's Journal is located in The Dining Room on the dining room table. Reading the various pages can give the player hints and clues to make progress towards being able to leave the mansion. The player can find torn pages throughout the mansion to complete the missing ones in the journal. Page 1, Page 3, Page 4, Page 7, Page 17, Page 24, Page 26, Page 35, Page 42 and Page 83 are able to be read from the very start.

If you found a torn page you can insert it into the journal by typing:

```
put page in journal

```

and then you will be able to read them with:

```
read page *<number>*

```

## List of Pages

* Page 1
* Page 3
* Page 4
* Page 7
* Page 8
	+ found in The Dining Room
* Page 15
	+ found in The Foyer
* Page 17
* Page 21
	+ found in The Winter Cabin
* Page 24
* Page 26
* Page 33
	+ found wadded up in one of the Fuzzy Slippers in The Walk-In Closet
* Page 35
* Page 42
* Page 83

## Pages

### Page 1

April 26th

I entered the house on April 23rd, and am no closer to finding a method of escape.  What good would it do me?  The front windows show a different location every day, and none I recognize as Alturnalia.  The only thing that remains constant is the garden, and a brief foray yesterday proved the error of exploring there.  Luckily, whatever was chasing me would not cross the picket fence, or I would not be writing this today. I have spent the last three days exploring the house, and I have still to discover its purpose.  Why does it exist?  To trap people? Surely there must be some kind of energy involved to move it around, but I have yet to find the source.  The whole thing is baffling.  God save Mallifluence, and me.

### Page 3

April 28th

My entry yesterday was incorrect.  I thought I had seen every room, but today I tripped on a fold of rug, and apparently hit a hidden switch.  A whole new passage opened off of the hallway.  Who knows how deep this twisting maze will go?  I have started drawing a map to keep track of all the rooms.

### Page 4

April 30th

I threw away the map.  What good would it do?  I have discovered no less than 4 hidden rooms, and I have the feeling there are many more, waiting to be discovered.  Mapping them proves useless.  I discovered a hidden door in the bathroom that should have led into the guest bedroom, but it led into a courtyard!  I paced out the dimensions of the room, and they overlap

### Page 7

May 1st

I had gotten tired of wearing the same thing for almost a week, so I started to examine the clothes in the house.  They are miraculously all my size.  I hope that it is a coincidence, because the alternative is too terrifying for words.  They don't seem to have a rhyme or reason:  Costumes next to ballgowns, work clothes next to sleepwear.  Some of them look comfortable, some elegant, and some downright strange.  I found a dress that seems to have two sets of cleavage... I shuddered at that.  I found a nice sun dress, that tingled as I put it on.  I want to go home.

### Page 8

May 7th

I have chosen the dining room as my point of reference, due to its central location in the house.  While I was reviewing my previous journal entries, one of the pieces of equipment on the wall peaked my interest.  It looked like a curved spade.  When I tried to pull it off the wall, a trapdoor opened beneath my feet!  I managed to catch myself, but it scared the Goddess out of me.  Strange smells wafted from the pit, further reducing my desire to explore it.  I suppose I will have to, eventually.  Anything is worth being back in Alturnalia.

### Page 15

May 27th

I found another potion book today.  Like the last one, it seems to focus on changes to the person.  I am hoping that this one will provide a cure for my malady.

A tail!  A Goddess-cursed tail!  I am a freak.  Could I even go home now, providence providing I find a method of escape?

The book is in a language I have not seen before, but I am starting to work through it.  I found a section on changes affecting the mind.  One of them claims to, as best as I can translate, "return to base state".  Apparently, the recipe calls for adding an enhancer like Unicorn Nettle to a mental degenerator.  I am always hesitant to take any mind-affecting potions, for fear of losing my faculties, but anything would be better than keeping this.

### Page 17

May 31st

Today was wonderful.  The house was in a world in autumn, and soft orange light lit the front room.  I lounged in the library until noon and combed my tail, a habit which has developed in my idle time.  I find sharing a body part with my beloved horse Amily... surprisingly comforting.  A reminder of a place I used to belong.  I don't know if I would give it up, even if I knew how.

I have been going through the books in the library, and as far as I can tell, no two of them are from the same world.  Can you imagine, a country not ruled by a queen?  Laughable.  I think I am starting to get a handle on the terms in the magical books.  Hopefully, I will find something that allows me to return to my home world.

### Page 21

June 8th

I woke up this morning to a thunderous knocking on the front door.  After hiding for over an hour, I realized that no one had entered, but it made me worried.  Goddess knows who else could wander in here.  Just to be safe, I have started writing my entries in the lab journal in code.

ABCD -> EFGH

Simple, I know, but no good if I cannot translate to and from it with ease.  All those years of grammation school will finally be for something.

### Page 24

June 15th

I was poking through the library shelves on the other side of the hidden catch, and I found another book on basic magic theory.  It must be elementary to whoever wrote it, but it blew my mind.  Magic is objective!  All those tonal modifiers I found in the first book can be used on any spell!  I never would have guessed.  What we spend years learning in schools could be done in 10 seconds with the right spell!  I have a duty to the queen to learn all I can before I return home.

### Page 26

June 23rd

I can finally click my tounge to make the ק.  It is embarassing how happy I am to complete the homework in the first chapter.  I feel giddy doing something that 6-year-olds finish after school.  But to an outsider, this is all fascinating.  I am starting to see the connection between magic items and alchemy.  I am particularly interested in attempting an empowerment I found in a book the other day.  "Pearls of Power" are, essentially, a magical version of a voltaic storage device.  Once charged, they maintain functionality indefinitely.  And when the spell is no longer required?  The magical energies can be dissipated, to allow the pearl to be reused.  There are different ways of charging the pearl for different effects, but the most intriguing is using a mental accelerator to power-up single use spells.  ...You know, if you would have told me two months ago that I was going to be a magician, I would have laughed.  I think I am ready to go past the fence once again.

### Page 33

July 3rd

Every house has pests, and this place is no exception.  These ones, however, are of the more... magical persuasion.  Objects have been disappearing, and reappearing elsewhere.  Things misplaced.  Pages of my very journal, missing.  I set up a scrying spell while I was away, and saw objects floating through the air!  After some heavy research, I have come to believe I am afflicted with Pixies.  Perhaps they are attracted the large amount of magic the manor emanates.  Regardless, I will have to find a way to get rid of them before they start messing with something important.

### Page 35

July 5th

I have decided to set up a safe in the study, to protect my work, and the front door key.  Wouldn't want some traveller bumbling in here and stealing my escape route, would I? The construction of the protection spell was fascinating.  Like most useful things, the spell required three keys.  Spiritual, Physical, and Mental.  I chose my old sapphire necklace for a physical key, thinking that it would be unlikely that someone would have Alturnalian sapphires.  For mental, I chose the name the queen, of course.  That should sufficiently alienate anyone not from my home dimension.

### Page 42

July 17th

Happy Summerfest!  I write that first, but I am ashamed to admit, I did not remember until well after dark.  My sense of time has been strained, and I am not even entirely sure that it is Summerfest.  It would have been easy to miss a day or two.

Today marks my tenth excursion outside.  While not as exciting as my first or fifth, I did discover something interesting today.  A tower appeared, not far from the house.  I am positive that I would have seen it if it had been there last week.  That means that the garden is not static, and makes me worried about what might happen if I am out there when a change comes.  I have been spending my time working on an astral tether, in case I get shifted.  I hope I never have to use it.

### Page 83

February 19th

Oglethorp returned.  The fool.  I told him what I would do.  Even after I cut his head off, he wouldn't shut up, so I empowered a pearl with a spell of paralyzation and put it in his mouth.  It gives me no end of pleasure, let me tell you, to see his head mounted above the mantle, unable to comment, let alone move.  The body also appeared deathless, so I tied it up out behind the barn.  I remain convinced that in him lies the secret to immortality.