The Crail Artifact
"Vessel that was asleep."
Overview
A grey rectangular tablet taken from Lord Oswin Crail's trophy room in Session 06. It is the object Harland Ashworth spent years trying to buy from the Crail family and was refused every time — described in his notes only as something that does not seem to be of this world.
It is the key to the sealed lower level of Calthar.
The party has no name for it. "The Crail Artifact" is a convenience, not its own.
Description
- Shape — Rectangular and flat; roughly the dimensions of an oversized book or a pizza box.
- Weight — About 50 lb. Heavy, but far too light for a slab of stone that size.
- Material — Grey, unidentifiable. Not recognizably stone, metal, ceramic, or anything else anyone at the table could name.
- Inscriptions — Three of its faces are covered in a dense script. Nobody recognizes the writing, Vivienne Ashworth included.
- Glow — It emits a faint light.
The Magic Problem
Detect Magic finds nothing. The tablet registers no aura at all — while visibly glowing in front of the party.
Either it is not magic as Caligo understands magic, or it is concealing itself from divination. Both readings are unsettling, and the second is worse.
The Inscriptions
Comprehend Languages produced three fragments:
| Fragment | Reading |
|---|---|
| "Vessel that was asleep" | The session's title, and the only phrase that reads like a description of the object itself |
| "Account seven" + a mark reading as three | Suggests numbering — an index, a ledger entry, or a serial position |
| "The first working knows its own" | Implies precedence, and implies recognition |
Taken together they imply a system: that this tablet is one numbered item in a series, and that there are others.
Transcript note: the second fragment was partly garbled in the recording — "account seven and then a mark that... can be best translated to three." Worth confirming with the GM.
Reaction to Lefty
The artifact and EMBR's grafted parts respond to each other.
On contact, EMBR's left arm gripped it involuntarily — the arm moved without him choosing it. The chitin tendrils rooted in his shoulder grew toward his collarbone. He reported a yearning for assimilation that was not his own wanting.
The party's response was to hand the tablet to Jorath. That is a stopgap. Whatever is in EMBR's arm knows what this object is, and the recognition appears to be mutual — which lines up with Harland's field notes on Calthar describing warforged frames fused with biological material.
Custody
Carried by Jorath Hroth'Dar as of the end of Session 06, deliberately kept away from EMBR.
Open Questions
- What is a "vessel," and what was it asleep for?
- Where are accounts one through six?
- What is "the first working," and what does it mean that it "knows its own"?
- Does the tablet open Calthar's sealed level, or is opening it merely one of the things it does?
- Does it want EMBR, or does Lefty want it?
Role in Session 07
- Provenance. Questioned with Speak with Dead, Lord Crail said the tablet came from an auction decades ago. A group of travelers, "an assortment of mixed breeds," came in from the wastelands and traded everything they owned to the garrison to be brought over the wall. Their belongings were auctioned at a friend's private event, and Crail bought the tablet because he liked the look of it. He had no idea what it did: "Sits on a shelf and looks pretty."
- Lefty's pull has become an addiction. EMBR's left eye is now permanently red. He can't stop staring at the tablet. The pull gets stronger the more he thinks about it, and Lefty now talks him toward it, saying it would be no problem to just hold it for the night. On the first night outside Ashmark he crept up to the sleeping Jorath, left five silver as "payment," and forced himself to walk away. Distance helps a little.
- Wrapped in Jorath's cloak since leaving the Fold.
Status
Carried by Jorath, wrapped in his cloak, at the Last Lamp inn in Farrow, on the eve of trying to cross the outer wall. EMBR is holding off its pull, barely.