[ So: this house is full of skeletons.

There are skeleton servants. There are skeletons guards. Batcat skeletons sit as silent sentinels along the front wall and gate. You swear you saw the white shamble of a Nightmare skeleton among the gnarled trees at the property's edge. Even in the foyer, where the marble flooring has cracked or broken, someone has patched it with eerie whorls of off-white.

Maybe you muttered a comment. Maybe you've been caught staring. Maybe a skeleton brushed against you in the hall and you whipped around and screamed.

One way or another, a voice comes from just behind you-- warm and human, a little amused: ]

I promise they don't bite.

[ So you've decided to fuck around and find out.

God's own study is guarded by nothing more than a flimsy door lock. It is the only locked room in the house. Should you jimmy the lock, or force your way inside, or break in by magic-- maybe you're here on a dare, maybe you're suspicious of the nameless man with all-black eyes and a million undead-- you will find...

A boring study. Cluttered with paper, notebooks, and abandoned mugs of tea. But there are interesting things on the shelves: vials of blood that still roils like something alive. Lengths of bone that seem to whisper to you. The skull of something horrible: the skeletons of Beasts.

The stuff in here is cursed as fuck. The stuff in here is the Trench equivalent of a horrifying biohazard. Even touching some of it could tip a person into Beasthood. Of course, upon close inspection, each is surrounded by a tidy ring of blood runes. The magically-inclined can tell that this place is warded to hell and back.

Crossing a necromantic ward line isn't recommended. But maybe you're very curious or very stupid. ]

[ If you're not a resident, and you climb the stairs-- to snoop around, to hook up, whatever-- you will be stopped on the landing by the skeletons. There are at least two in your path, a livid red spark in each eye socket. When you move, they turn their silent skulls to look at you.

If you brave that undead stare and squeeze past them, they will each begin to scream.

Scream isn't quite the word. It's a low, inhuman wail that builds and builds from within each skull, til the skeletons shudder with sound. It's like some kind of necromantic air-ride siren. It is horrifying, and probably deeply embarrassing.

If for some reason this doesn't send you running, the skeletons will try to scruff you and usher you back down the stairs. But they never do harm. They are unarmed and fragile; if you shatter one, it goes down in a pathetic pile of bones.

So: what are you going to do? ]

[ Find me at ochrona or Rona#7132 if you need me! ]