The Mesmerist's Pendulum

The following transcription is a record of a hypnotherapy session for Lord Hugh Wescote, conducted by Doctor Germaine d'Honaire on the 2nd of Octyavr. In attendance were Drakos Warbinder, Galdheim Lutgehr-Deepaxe, Shade, and Severa Xorlarrin. Panic, Pidlwick, and Sister Summer waited with Lady Virginia Weathermay in the parlor on the floor below.

The session was abruptly ended by an odd and violent riot, incited by one of the sanitarium's patients.

## **Introduction**

Dr. d'Honaire glances about with his penetrating eyes as he waits for you all to adjust and get comfortable. When all is arranged, he stands staring back and forth at you all through his monocle as though he would burn a hole to your very cores. Then, he reaches into his doublet pocket and pulls forth a crystal fixed to the end of a polished chain, the very crystal he spoke of when you were in Barovia. He swings the pendulum gently, the chain spinning very slowly. The light through the crystal plays across your faces; the deep murmur of the doctor's voice washes like waves over you.

Your eyelids close and you begin to lapse into a deep sleep. You can hear Doctor d'Honaire's soft timber in the background of your mind. "I wish you to relax... relax... ah, yes. Now you are perfectly relaxed and asleep. You hear my voice and you will respond to it. I will count backwards from eight and when I reach zero and snap my fingers, you will awaken and remember what has been revealed to you. Do you understand? As I count I will ask you questions and you will answer them truthfully. Are you prepared? We will begin:

EIGHT! Tell me... where are you?"

## **Eight**

Drakos Warbinder speaks:

"I am floating above the ground. Fog slowly spins me across the moors. The stars no longer burn in the sky though somehow they should. There is a castle, or a building, its jaws open to devour me! I scream as I look down its throat filled with lightning and agony! I am devoured, yet I live. I cannot see... the lightning again flashes. The room is alive with power!"

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Yes! Tell me... this... thing, this devourer... where is it?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"It is no creature! It is a construct, an infernal machine! No longer does it lair beneath that great dome, but it stands among the graves of the common folk."

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"SEVEN! Please... describe this place further... tell us more!"

## **Seven**

Severa Xorlarrin speaks:

"Towering steel and glass holds the world in place. Lightning pierces my soul and tears me in twain. I see myself, twice... one dark and terrible, the other light and powerless. There is a town below... a town of good people. They mill about me, yet some are not who they seem to be. I see a bright circle, a disc of golden light through which my eyes know the truth of the soul."

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Strange. Where is it? Where is this circle... this... eye?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"In the grip of madness and terror, before the blackest sea, under an unrelenting shadow do I find it. As I gaze through it, the eye shows some of the people as terrors!"

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"SIX! Tell us! What is happening about you now?"

## **Six**

Shade speaks:

"From the faces of strangers comes a great darkness... death beyond death. My life falls from me as he drinks it with unquenched thirst. I wrest myself from his grasp and seek to flee, but I find myself in a strange place, the people have shifted and gone away. The lightning freezes the dark and I stumble in the blackness towards a shining book."

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Focus! Look around! Where do you find this book?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"In a room with bodies all around, whose heads have been hollowed clean."

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"FIVE! Can you read the book? What does it say?"

## **Five**

Drakos Warbinder speaks:

"The book tells a tragic tale of insatiable evil, feeding on the land. Yet something of its wisdom is incomplete and I know I must search further. I climb up a well of tangled thorns. I weaken and slow, though the top is near. Now I see a figure in the opening above... it reaches for me..."

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Who is this? Describe this mysterious figure!"

Lord Wescote responds:

"The soft hands I know, which have brought my love her needs since she was but a child, now take from me my very life! I scream!"

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"FOUR! By all the Morninglord's light, what do you do next?"

## **Four**

Shade speaks:

"I run! I run without moving. My steps are mired in the soft ground and move in unreal motion. I stumble to the edge of a crevice. Friends, whose faces are filled with loathing and hate, stare up at me. A ringed band hangs before me, I reach for it but the inscription burns."

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"You must read it, you must! What does the inscription say?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"'Dearest Marguerite,' it blazes. It lies in the rats' nest, in the cache of the rat queen herself, a most worthy beneficiary."

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"THREE! What do you do with the ring?"

## **Three**

Galdheim Lutgehr-Deepaxe speaks:

"The ring blazes with a brilliant light! By its radiance, friends corrupted are friends again. It shines upon the sundered book, its words softly aglow. I seek the parts to mend it, so I may see where the key lies to unlocking the terrible truth of this land!"

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Where? Where do you seek?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"Atop a sacred altar held by stone gryphons. As I near the gryphon's roost with the book in hand, the great storm parts and bids me enter."

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"TWO! Now that the book is whole, where is the key that unlocks the truth of this cursed land?"

## **Two**

Galdheim Lutgehr-Deepaxe speaks:

"It leads me to a palace of dreams, caught somewhere between reality and twilight. I flee down twisting halls as the light from the dying torches fails, the darkness is behind me, pursuing me... devouring me! There! It lies ahead!"

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"What lies ahead?! We are so close!"

Lord Wescote responds:

"A rod of flawless crystal that unlocks the great infernal machine! It is the key I seek, glowing in the heart of darkness before the heir of twilight."

Dr. d'Honaire continues:

"ONE! Now that the book is whole, where is the key that unlocks the truth of this cursed land?"

## **One**

Severa Xorlarrin speaks:

"Yes! It is time to unlock the great infernal machine! I can now sever the wretched darkness from the one so dear to me, afflicted by evil and driven to wickedness. I can save the townsfolk, so corrupted by this storm of souls. But the darkness will not let itself be destroyed so easily, its most royal servant stands before me."

Dr. d'Honaire asks:

"Must you face the darkness alone? Is there no one who will lend aid in this hour of despair?"

Lord Wescote responds:

"There is one... a rat in noble's jewels. She is a scion of an ancient line, and could be as much an enemy as an ally."

You can hear Doctor d'Honaire's voice like a tremulous hum in the back of your head.

"And?! Can this land be saved? Can the darkness be vanquished?..."

Suddenly, Doctor d'Honaire's words are interrupted by a large crash and a distant scream.

"By the Morninglord, what in... my friends, you must awake... Awake!"

As you rouse from your trance, you see Doctor d'Honaire standing nervously before you and you can smell smoke in the distance.

"Something is not right, my friends, not right at all," Doctor d'Honaire utters, "I beg of you, secure the sanitarium, I fear for my staff and patients."