The Impossible Library

A strange and impossible library found in the apartment of Michelle Vanfitz after dark.

## Books

### The Bells and the Flowers

Language: English. Study Time: Hours. Sanity: 0/1

This is a typed manuscript with Michelle Vanfitz listed as the author.

It is a sad story about an unnamed town in the Midwest where the residents start to fall ill, slowly at first, and then en masse. It turns out that radioactive waste from a nearby disposal site has contaminated the town’s water reservoir.

The doctors say it is too late to do anything for them. The town’s people have little to look forward to but slow, painful deaths. Some of the people in the town are angry and spend their last days raging and trying to sue. Some of the people don’t want to waste away and die and so they choose a quicker release. Some of the people make peace with their fate and decide to celebrate what life they have left.

The book ends with a strange scene where those people are dancing in a field of flowers that have begun to glow with an eerie, purplish hue due to the contamination.

The bell of the nearby church begins to toll and each time it does one of the people collapses, left there among the flowers.

### **A World Without Doors**

Language: English. Study Time: Hours. Sanity: 0/1
A hardcover fiction book from 1936 by Emeline F. Fitzroy, published by Torbitt Books.

The cover is an image of a palace tower, inverted above a city in which there are no doors. The book concerns a little girl named Allie and her journeys to a magical, unnamed land. She travels there by drowning herself.
In the world without doors, she battles a nameless foe called the Phantom to free people from “the dance,” a music which forces the people to live boring, repetitive lives. If caught, she escapes the world without doors by drowning herself, only to appear back on Earth. She returns again and again, and in the end, the Phantom is defeated.
But the girl soon realizes the city is collapsing into chaos without the song. She puts on the mask, becomes the phantom, and begins the song again

### **A History of the Russo-Germanic Hegemony, 1911–1921**

Language: English. Study Time: Hours. Sanity: 0/1

A slim, hardcover history book filled with black and white photographs. The book is overly wordy but does not list an author.
It discusses a Russian-German alliance (which never occurred) fighting the Black Wind, an enemy force which appears to have invaded Europe through Turkey in 1910 (perhaps coming from North Africa before that). The book focuses mostly on the forces arrayed under the “Russo-Germanic” pact and not the Black Wind.
One of the chapters concerns “The Siege of Yhtill,” and shows a black and white photograph of a grand Palace in the center of a sprawling city being beset by shadowy invaders at the edge of the image.
The book was published in 1924 by Ebon Publishers of Alar, Carcosa.
No such location exists… at least in this world.

### **The Reputation Book**

Language: English. Study Time: Days. Sanity: 0/1

This small, leather-bound notebook is shoved between printed volumes as if hidden there. Inside, on each page is a maze of tiny, chicken-scratch writing.
It lists names, dates, dollar amounts, and some sort of note for each entry. The names and items seem to blend together in a way which makes parsing the book extremely difficult… and almost… nauseating.

### **Allie Goes to the Masked Ball**

Language: English. Study Time: Minutes. Sanity: None

A thin, hardcover children’s book, sparsely told but illustrated by lavish color plates. A young girl named Allie becomes lost in an unnamed city. Allie enters an “ironworks” where she meets an old man named Ambrose. He fashions her a clockwork mask that moves and smiles.
Then, in exchange for “giving her voice” to the Wilde Man, a man who secretly pulls the strings behind the royals of the city, Allie gets an invitation to the masquerade. At the ball she is pursued by a strange prince in gold wearing a white mask.
The last page is a color plate where the prince has removed his mask, but the top half of the color plate has been ripped off and the revealed face cannot be seen. Allie looks shocked.

The book was apparently published in 1925 by Finkelstein Books, but no records or history of it can be found in the real world.

### **A Child by Degrees**

Language: Unknown. Study Time: Days. Sanity: 0/1

An oversized, ponderous, artwork-laden hardcover medical text with a painstakingly diagrammed and impossibly detailed anatomical side view of a child. Each acetate page peels away (there are hundreds) revealing more and more of the inner workings of the subject. The writing is tiny, block-like, and almost mechanical looking, but doesn’t match up to any known language.

There is no decipherable publisher information in the book.

The child appears to be Peter Devoras, one of Daribondi's known victims.

### **English-Tartessian Dictionary**

Language: English and Tartessian. Study Time: Days. Sanity: None

A hardcover dictionary, published in 1931 by University Press (no university is indicated) to define an entire language called Tartessian.

This language utilizes a unique alphabet somewhat like Cyrillic and seems unrelated to European tongues, though the book implies it is counted amongst them.

### **The Sad Story of Emeline F. Fitzroy, Child Genius**

Language: English. Study Time: Minutes. Sanity: None

An article clipped from the Chicago Tribune sits on one of the tables.

Emiline F. Fitzroy (1924–1950) was a child genius born to the Fitzroy pork fortune. The family controlled many of the slaughterhouses and shipping yards that made Chicago a hub for meat production. They were so wealthy that the patriarch, Dr. Thomas Fitzroy, had a unique house built for them in the Oak Park neighborhood by the “Picasso of architecture,” Asa Daribondi.

Fitzroy’s house, the bizarre Bellefleur House, was completed in 1911. With interleaved, curving rooms and odd, sinuous lines throughout, it was topped by strange spires of glass and metal filagree that made it an eyesore to some. Emeline was born in the Bellefleur House late in the Fitzroys’ marriage. She proved more than welcome.

Emeline spoke in complete sentences at two, could read and write at four, and completed her first poem at five. By ten, she had completed the equivalent of a college level program with tutors, could speak six languages, and had written several complete manuscripts. Her first and only book was published on her 12th birthday.

*A World Without Doors* proved to be a hit (so much so, it is still printed in the modern era), and Emeline’s popularity and youth rode the headlines for years.

Soon, that star faded as it became known that Emeline refused to leave the Bellefleur House and could often be heard speaking to herself in empty rooms. With a scandal surrounding her family and the subsequent death of her father in 1941, she remained the only one in the house.
At age 26, she vanished in the Bellefleur House.

She left a note that read:

> “In an ending, we find the world. The play is the only thing. All else orbits it as an afterthought. I go to him now because there is no other path. And I know now, there never was.”
>
>

After an extensive search of the grounds, her brother Mark Fitzroy (1912–1977) had her declared dead in 1955. Her death is listed officially as a suicide, though no body was ever recovered.

### **Hygromanteia**

Language: Latin. Study Time: Weeks. Sanity: 1. Occult +2%.

> *Sed Rehoboam patri Salomoni dixit, ‘O pater, in qualibus operibus potestas operum sedet?’ Et Salomon illi dixit, In herbis et in verbis et in saxis sedet omnis ars et gratia et potestas cognoscentium.*
>
>

Hygromanteia is a 15th-century grimoire by an unknown author referred to as Solomon. Some books on occult history hint that it may have been written by a French noble named Augustus Castaigne or his son, Gabriel Castaigne.

Its actual provenance is unknown.

Hygromanteia contains the seals of 72 demons identical to those in the Ars Goetia with slight name alterations. The book is believed to be the origin for later magical texts like Grimorium Verum, Ars Goetia, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, De Praestigiis Daemonum, and others.

This copy seems old enough to be the original. Unfortunately for collectors, it has been annotated in blue ink in English with handwritten notes in the cover, certain margins, and in the back. The notes include such observations as:

> » Thee I invoke, the Bornless One.
>
>
>   Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.
>
>
>   Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day.
>
>
>   Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light.
>
>
>   Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no man has seen at any time.
>
>
>   Carve symbol Primeumaton.
>
>
>   Do not leave the circle.
>
>
>   Ritual calling announce the 72 names.
>
>
>   Inscribe chosen seal.
>
>
>   Wait.
>
>
> » Beneath Broadalbin is a door
>
>
> » Bael and Wilde each
>
>
> » Ambrose and the child in the pavilion costumes
>
>
> » Boat down into the fog lake to the real city
>
>
> » Bottles contain secrets as individual as those marked upon them
>
>
> » All drawn in, closing in a dance, like a loop, leading to the masquerade
>
>
> » It is all the play, I’m afraid
>
>
> » Wist notes check out.
>
>
> » B. is Solomon.
>
>
> » One call each except Asmoday.
>
>
> » Bitru is friend of V. Not B but S. Akkadian?
>
>
> » The play is still going on somewhere.
>
>
> » DRD middle name Foras - 29 legions (employees).
>
>
> » Logic, ethics and precious stones. Recover lost things. Makes sense.
>
>
> » Purson answers truly of all secret and divine things of Earth and the creation of the world
>
>
> » Marbas Goetic. President! 36 servants (just like MSPFS). B not M.
>
>
> » Overlay Marbas and Bitru equals Foras?
>
>
>
> » Urizen the starry king and the gong?
>
>

### **Le Roi en Jaune**

Language: French. Study time: Hours. Sanity: 1D6 / 1D10

A small, black book with a golden sigil engraved into the cover. (SAN 1/1D4) Once opened the reader must succeed in a Power Roll to avoid reading it… devouring it. One does not simply skim the King in Yellow.

It is a two-act play. In the play, a stranger arrives at a masked ball in the royal court of Yhtill, a once grand city in the kingdom of Carcosa.

Calling himself the Phantom of Truth, he reveals that of all the partygoers only he wears no mask. He claims his own pallid mask, a porcelain rictus, is his true face. This revelation signals the end of the partygoers’ world.

The reader gains +1D4 in any one Art WSkill and +1D4 Unnatural.

## Events

* Within *The Reputation Book* Frost found her name and her darkest secret.
* As Bug began to turn the pages of *Child by Degrees* she realized the child within seemed to actually be alive, and that the page turning was causing them pain. It was decided to keep the book closed.
* Frost began to read *Le Roi en Jaune* but was stopped by Bug.

* Applewhite got lost at one point and wound up in the upper levels of the building.