In Chapter 183, Pandora performed psychometry on the metal ring the party found inside the Soul of the Mysterium:
She first saw Haserton Pragmus Lowls IV standing on a city street outside of a small storefront. He looked up at the silvery-metal sign hanging above the door. He took in the highly stylized logo of a tiny object traversing the vastness of outer space. He read the sign: STARS OUR DESTINATION, A. Umbra, proprietor. Arcane & technological oddities. And he knew he was at the right place. He opened the door and entered.
Inside, the store was positively jam-packed with metal devices and implements and oddities on dozens of shelves, all well-ordered and neatly organized and displayed. The whole place was a living testament to a lifetime of love and care and commerce. Not that Lowls gave a shit, of course.
The proprietor approached. Average build, average height, average face, totally forgettable. Which Lowls promptly did, as he started scanning through the devices for any sign of something useful.
But the shopkeeper was hovering. And gave every sign of being someone who wouldn’t stop hovering. Fine. Lowls would go through the motions. He’d play it cool.
In a totally deranged chortle, Lowls said, “Mun said you might be able to help me with a problem that requires an unconventional solution. That you have devices. Ancient technologies. And magics.”
In Lowls’ mind, that sounded like the way a perfectly normal human being would talk. But he could tell from the worry lines pinching the shopkeeper’s face that he might have sounded a little off.
The shopkeeper said, “You know Miacknian Mun?”
Lowls just laughed. But it didn’t really come out as a laugh, more like a demonic giggle.
The shopkeeper continued, “What is it you seek? What is the problem you need to solve?”
On and on, the pestering little worm tried to commandeer Lowls’ attention. Fuck that guy. Lowls removed his glasses and spun around to face Archi. “Xhamen-Dor!”
Lowls paid no mind as perhaps the most traumatic set of experiences Archimedes had ever undergone played out for him. His choking cries and gasps faded into background noise as Lowls flitted along the shelves… looking, looking, looking…
And THERE IT WAS. Lowls recognized it at once. Well, them. He recognized them. For some reason, Thema had always been interested in the creations of the Mi-go. Specifically, how their tools were driven not only by their particular alien technologies, but also by psychic magic. She had been incapable of processing how that kind of magic worked, but some small sliver of her soul seemed so drawn to it… to what it could do, to how it could seemingly break so many of what she understood to be The Rules. Blah blah blah. Whatever, Thema. She wouldn’t have had those books to read about them if Lowls hadn’t bought them for her. Ungrateful bitch. She got what she deserved. They all did. Fuck ‘em.
“These will do nicely.” Lowls grabbed the linked pair of rings and walked out of the store.
That vision faded, and then a second one came to Pandora:
She saw the Soul: this vast chamber carved from sandstone, its walls polished so smooth that they nearly shone like glass. And it was all clear, not cloudy or streaked with char marks. The tiles covering the floor were, at that time, a beautiful mosaic of multicolored squares, numerous shades of blue and white, all creating the visual impression, when taken in whole, of a radiant, almost heavenly sky. The braziers in the four corners of the room were lit, but giving off large, warm, orange flames, and none of the rancid smoke that issued from them in the present day. The burned, charred husks of shattered wood that currently dotted the chamber were, at the time, grand podiums, all standing within easy reach of a cluster of the dozens of books hanging from their long chains bolted to the ceiling, fifty feet above.
The Keeper walked their eternal vigil. 30 feet tall and beautiful: robes clean and white, skin perfectly smooth and a warm brown in hue, mouthless face still, but the eyes were warm and penetrating: not quite kind, but definitely not mad. And their wings were radiant yellow and orange flame, shedding light and warmth but no noxious black smoke.
A solid black, five-foot-square portal opened in the center of the depression at the heart of the Soul, and out stepped Haserton Pragmus Lowls IV. He was dressed to travel, in full adventurer’s get-up, not dressed to relax and read. He wore his weird little hat he liked so much. And even though he was indoors, he wore his dark glasses, and even though they covered the empty holes where his eyes once sat, they didn’t cover the rivulets of dark, thick blood leaking out of them. Among his many physical quirks and tics, Lowls had developed a new one over the previous few months: he continually slid his tongue into the corners of his mouth, absentmindedly slurping up little dribbles of the blood leaking out of his eyes. He held the ring in his hand. It was an audacious act to flaunt it so openly, but he needed to know immediately if the Keeper recognized its function.
And then the dance began.
“Hello… friend,” Lowls said. He used that word, friend, because some small part of his brain told him that it made people trust you, even though it was clear that he had no idea any more what that word meant. It was an empty designation, as empty as the sockets of his eyes. And it was equally clear that he didn’t really comprehend the vibe he was giving off.
The Keeper responded, telepathically, with their customary terseness. MORTAL.
The Keeper, once again, tried to cast Detect Thoughts and Discern Lies on Lowls, and the spells, once again, failed. Lowls glanced quickly down at his Ring of Mind Shielding and flashed a sinister smile from behind his dark glasses. “Uh-uh. Naughty, naughty.”
I THOUGHT YOUR WORK HERE WAS DONE. THAT’S WHAT THE OTHER ONE SAID. AND YOU AGREED.
It’s true. Yesterday WAS supposed to have been their last day. But…
“Tellya what,” Lowls said, “Zone of Truth me and ask if I have the Elder’s blessing to enter and read today.”
While the Keeper cast their spell, Lowls tossed the ring from hand to hand and observed no reaction from the angel. It didn’t know what he was holding! And with this act, this tossing of the ring back and forth, Pandora noticed Lowls’ fingers: they were burnt and charred black.
Lowls submitted to the Zone of Truth, and when the Keeper asked him if he had Lythiin’s permission, Lowls could honestly answer, “Yes.” Of course, he left out the bit about how he got that permission: Seeding the man and then offering the “cure” if he let him go below for one last session. The old man fell for it, but there was no saying for how long. Mustn’t dilly-dally.
WILL IT BE THE NECRONOMICON AGAIN?
“That’s right.”
WHAT IS IT YOU SEEK WITHIN ITS PAGES?
“None of your fucking business. Now do your job, and fetch it for me.”
Lowls went to his favorite podium, one of the ones against the exterior walls, while the Keeper strode to a particular book, hanging thirty feet in the air by its chain, bound all around by bars of cold iron and silver. With a single touch from the angel, the bars opened and into their hands dropped the terrible book: bound in leather cured from the faces of numerous men and women, their agony forever preserved in the grimaces that adorned the book’s hideous covers. Its touch ignited the angel’s hands in flame that scalded their flesh but didn’t harm the tome itself. When the Keeper handed the book over to Lowls, it did the same thing to him, and Lowls screamed in agony as his fingers burned and burned, but the screams came from a mouth leering in a hideous smile and shivers of ecstasy coursed through his frame.
Lowls set the book down on the podium and looked up at the Keeper. “Say… you know when anyone steps foot inside the building, don’t you?”
THIS IS CORRECT.
“I expect my friend will be coming to fetch me soon. Do me a favor and tell me when he enters so I can wrap things up here while he’s on his way down. There’s no need for him to bother you any further and I’m nearly done here.
VERY WELL.
Lowls turned back to the book and contemplated it. He didn’t open it. He just stared at it. Like he was… waiting for something.
Time passed.
The Keeper grew more and more unsettled. Just like the simple sailors aboard the Aurora who found Lowls’ vacant, lumpish, malignant sitting and staring to be profoundly unsettling, so too did this mighty warrior of Heaven. But the visitor was not breaking any of the rules, and he wasn’t even reading any of the forbidden text at the moment, so there was nothing they could really do, except wait and hope that the return of the other man would mean the end of this unsettling chapter in their long vigil.
Eventually, the Keeper spoke. THE MAN HAS ENTERED. WITH HIS INVISIBLE COMPANION.
“Oh, he brought Akie? Good. Be a pal and tell me when he hits the third level.”
And, again, Lowls just stood there. Blankly. Smiling and licking at his own blood leaking down his cheek.
Finally: THE MAN HAS REACHED THE CIPHER OBSCURA.
“Very good. Let’s give him a minute or two. Whaddya say?”
A minute or two later: ELDER LYTHIIN HAS ENTERED NOW, WITH SIXTEEN OTHERS AS WELL.
“Oh? Wonderful! The more the merrier.”
Lowls set the ring on the ground and whipped a scroll out of his rucksack. All the way across the chamber, the Angel knew exactly what spell was inscribed upon it, instantaneously and automatically, but knowing that it wasn’t harmful, they did not act. They continued to concentrate their focus on what Elder Lythiin was doing: a few floors up, but half a planet away.
While, meanwhile, Lowls read his scroll of Reduce Person and immediately shrank down to half his size and one-eighth of his weight. He became a Halfling-sized bloody-eyed malignant lump in a weird four-cornered hat. He reached down and touched a series of buttons on the ring. Immediately, it came to life, the crystals light up, the ring slightly vibrated on the floor, and the open center of it suddenly filled with a pale blue glow.
The Keeper narrowed their eyes in terrible understanding, but there simply wasn’t time.
Lowls grabbed the Necronomicon, screamed in pain as his fingers burned, and then dropped down into the ring feet first. Through it he fell, having to wrench himself a bit to wrestle his gut through, but he’d been practicing, and within a mere moment, he was gone…
Through a portable Gate. Crafted with alien technology and powered by psychic magic.
And so it was that the Necril Necronomicon simultaneously left the extradimensional space of the Mysterium—where it had been, essentially, outside of Reality—and it re-emerged onto the Prime Material Plane for the first time in centuries. And as it tore through the thin skin of Reality, its perversions and profanities seeped into that skin, infecting this once-sacred space with the corruption of the Outer Gods:
Azathoth. Abhoth. Nhimbaloth. Yog-Sothoth. Shub-Niggurath. Nyarlathotep.
For it is not only damage to the Necronomicon that draws the direct attention of Nyarlathotep, but its re-emergence can as well. The Veiled Voice, after all, knows when any dread secret spills from darkness into light. And his faithful believed that it was HIS will, and his will alone, that drew the Outer Gods into any semblance of a true pantheon, a collection of disparate entities sharing anything even close to what could be considered a shared view of what Reality SHOULD be. That he represented a web of sorts. A connection point between all of them.
A Nexus.
Azathoth. Abhoth. Nhimbaloth. Yog-Sothoth. Shub-Niggurath. Nyarlathotep.
ALL of the Outer Gods heard the cry of the Faceless Sphinx, and they sent entities… harbingers… through the fragile cracks in reality that HAD ALREADY BEEN OPENED by the audacious creation of the Guardian Mirrors so long ago. The artifacts were crafted with the sole purpose of tearing living weapons from the Great Beyond and forcing them into servitude inside this vault. The cracks they made, the mirrors, functioned as doors.
And Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, OPENED THEM.
And so much happened, so quickly, in so many places.
At ground zero, inside the Soul, sheets of hellfire coursed through the space, burning the podiums, charring the walls, destroying almost everything except for the books in their magical shackles. And a tiny sliver of Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God’s, consciousness slid into the Soul. Azathoth, the Formless Chaos That Lies Behind The Stars, was pure insanity. And when this simple SLIVER of his broken mind entered the space, the Keeper went immediately mad. Simultaneously, their body—which was their soul—was burned and cut and rent and shredded, and terrible wounds opened up all over it, and their mind shattered as they came face to face with the knowledge that they’d failed in their eternal duty. They were Broken. The Keeper screamed, NOOOOOOOOOOO!
And the wards went off.
From the metaphysical “top” of the Mysterium, to its metaphysical “bottom,” the bell atop the pyramid was heard. On every level. And from the depths of the Soul to the peak of that pyramid, the Keeper’s cry was heard as well. On every level.
Inside the antechamber to the Soul, level four, where the puzzlebox lay, all sentient beings were immediately Dimensionally Locked. Unfortunately, it was only Soulbound Shells in there at the time, who were unable to leave anyways. But they heard the terrible cry of the Keeper ricochet through the tiny space at a volume that would be deafening had they been living creatures.
Inside the Cipher Obscura, level three, it was pure chaos. The cry of the shattered angel echoed through the halls as the walls began leaking blood, the doors slammed shut (and then most of them vanished), the hallways filled with fog, the lights went out, and then horrors leaked out of the mirrors.
In the Chamber of Creation, three crustacean/arachnoid monstrosities appeared. In the Worlds Beyond Collection, it was three amoeboid terrors. Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, has birthed a Thousand Young, after all, so there were plenty of options for her to choose from. Chelaracs and Emrakhs would do nicely.
Nyarlathotep dispatched a Corpse Rider of Xoar into the Chamber of Calling and Binding.
Abhoth, the Primal Clay of Life’s First Lurch, the Source of All Uncleanliness, the Outer God of fecundity and oozes, latched on to the mirror next to the alchemy lab and sendt forth its own spawn: four Proto-Shoggoths. They merged. And merged AGAIN.
Meanwhile, Miacknian Mun was making a brief pit stop in the alchemy lab on his way down to grab Lowls and get the hell out of here. They got what they’d come here for: Lowls knew where Neruzavin was.
So why in the Hells did he come back? What’s his game here?
Then, Mun realized what Lowls’ game was as he was standing there, handfuls of stolen alchemical reagents and texts in his hands: Lowls was abandoning him. Leaving him for dead.
And this man, with one of the most raging cases of Main Character Syndrome in the history of Golarion, came face to face with not only his own ultimate insignificance in the story that was playing out, but the knowledge that he was just beaten—OUTSMARTED—by that flatulent, vapid toad. And he snapped. He simply snapped. One second into what would be a WEEK spent in that room.
The Outer Gods continued sending questing tendrils into the Mysterium.
Inside the Arcana, level two, the cry of the shattered angel echoed through the halls as a pale echo of Nhimbaloth, the Empty Death, goddess of despair, entropy, isolation, and ghosts slowly phased into reality. She just wanted a peek. As she peeled through the layers of reality, the reek of burning seeped into the air. As she got further, the air throughout the level erupted in an avalanche of soot, which fells and settled on everything. Brother Ebrahim, who had been taking his shift walking the floors this day, just happened to be here as this happens. And he watched the falling soot with, at first, a sense of wonder. It was almost beautiful: all these motes in the air, catching the light off of his quarterstaff. He circled the crossroads a few times, taking it in, and then he heard a whispered invitation. He took a few steps to the east and for a split-second laid eyes on the twisting mass of glistening blue fluid that stood in as the face of Nhimbaloth, and Ebrahim instantly died. He became a shade that could walk through reality and spawn an endless army of shades.
Abhoth was having a field day, fecundity was his bailiwick, after all, and more Proto-Shoggoths emerged up here.
Yog-Sothoth, the Lurker at the Threshold, was also curious, and sent one single microscopic cell of himself through the mirror in the menagerie. It found a host. And it began… to Become.
Finally, up on the University Level, as the Stewards of the Vault, along with Stazi, Tharivol, Stanhope, and Nheb, heard the angel’s cry and the tolling of the bell, the door sealed, the lights went out, and Nyarlathotep linked the final mirror directly to Tindalos, whose inhabitants, he knew, would revel in the feast about to happen.
Meanwhile:
Over in his cabin, aboard the ship docked on the Pashman River, completely clueless as to what he’d just unleashed, completely clueless as to how he’d just irrecoverably corrupted that sacred, sacred space, out popped mini-Lowls—with the Necronomicon in hand—from the other ring in the linked set. He returned to his normal size, took the ring abovedeck, tossed it into the river, and told the captain to set sail.
“Turns out Mun won’t be joining us after all!”
But the impacts of this breach were not only felt in Katheer, but also much, much further away.
For example: inside his little gray hut beyond the borders of the Dreamlands, the Mad Poet felt an icy coldness shiver through the dread tome always clutched in his burnt fingers. And for the first time ever, he dropped his copy of the Necronomicon. His focus was interrupted. For one brief moment. And thus it was
that inside a little flat in the shadow of Greyguard’s Castle, four sleepers bound to the Mad Poet’s will FINALLY began to stir. Beginning with Dabwick.
It wasn’t that Abdul Alhazred had strictly been keeping them asleep, but he was a singularity of sorts, and when you make contact with him, if he continues to think about you… consciously, even just a little bit… you simply cannot escape the pull of his oh-so-powerful mind upon your unconscious soul.
But, his attention faltered, for one brief moment, and so the Sleepers began to stir.
And while Dabwick sat at their little table, in their cozy little flat, waiting for the other Dreamers to wake, learning the fate of the Starling from Chester and Jaydove…
In a terrible city, by a bottomless lake, on a forsaken planet whose name has been lost to time, orbiting two ghastly twin black suns in a galaxy far, far away…
The King in Yellow smiled.
It. Is. INEVITABLE.
And the vision faded.
First Reference: Chapter 183
Other Notable References: —