Penny Arcade - On The Rainslick Precipice Of Darkness: Episode 3

Prologue: Enter The Raven

The keeping of secrets is mankind's constant enterprise.

Reasons to hide an idea are manifold and various, though the methods tend to fall into a few major themes. Murder is classic, if a bit traditional; these days, one rarely sees this sort of thing in the finer sects.

Even the ways these wretched creatures keep their secrets are themselves secrets! To wit, the malhyrium harus ja has so witched their horgumir that it cannot even be friggen. The Inculcate Order never consists of more than a single individual at any given time, and upon whispering their mysteries to another, they disappear altogether. The Gelded Acolytes, upon reception of their order's revelatory payload, are castrated. The lesson there is that when one is considering a cult, they should pay very close attention to the name.

A third method is incredibly straightforward:

to do nothing.

The number of people genuinely in the market for terrible wisdom is incredibly small, after all. People don't actually want to know what sinister force suspends the Earth in space; they'd die on the spot if they knew why a Maple's cunning leaf sprouts its three blades. Not only do they not want to know them, they aren't aware that these are things to know. There are innumerable caches of eldritch scholarship yawning wide, wide as the jowling megacraw, simply because nobody in their right mind gives a shit.

For example, "breaking into" The Startling Developments Detective Agency consists of

1. Wanting to do so, and then

2. Opening the door.

Chapter One: The Family Business

A father and a son walk together, in a park, along a stream, holding hands.

They are walking as though there is a crack in the very earth between them, starving and treacherous, apart as they can be while still nominally being together. It might not be entirely appropriate to say that they are holding hands. It may be more correct to say that the father is holding his son's fist. The weight of it is tremendous.

"Father," says the boy, pausing to assemble the thought entire.

"Yes, son?"

"At the Dusk of Man..."

Ah, this. The father recalls how the answers once evaded him also, glinting like minnows, his mind seeking but empty. In the end, his brother Erasmus - his son's namesake - made him understand the right of it. But this son has no brother. At least, no brother worth the name of Brahe.

"At the Dusk of Man," he says, the notion picking up speed, "What will happen to my friends at school?" An idea explodes. "What will happen to my school?"

"Nothing," came the father's reply. "Nothing will happen, because there will be nothing." He pats the shoulder reassuringly, notes that it appears to be having the intended effect, and decides to embellish. "There will be only peace."

"Peace isn't nothing," replies the son. "Peace is a thing."

Not a great idea, all things told.

"Sometimes I let the poetry of it get the better of me," sighs the father. "It will be nothing, and nothing. Be patient; you'll know for yourself, soon enough," and this last bit comes with a smile attached. "It won't be long now."

His son's hand drops out.

"Then why can't we make the most of it?" he screams. "Why do we have to ruin everything?"

"Why can't we keep it?" says he, as though the child were speaking of some ragged stray. Ragged stray wasn't a bad way of considering it, actually - it being the universe, of course, filthy, exhausted thing that it was. "We could keep it," he repeated, rephrasing it, trying without hope to spin the tumbler on his father's heart; to find it. "We could... We could make it better."

The father kneels, enfolding the child. The boy's tear-slicked cheek is hot as a brand.

"No," he says, "That is not good enough."

Chapter Two: The Raven Done Entered

My one, calls the voice. My only one.

Dr. Blood snorts. "Not the only one, diabolus. Your dalliances are numerous beyond reckoning."

None of any consequence, it purrs.

"What of the Machinist, then? Von Mundo, in his tower of sorcerous steel."

Okay, well, yeah, it coos. I guess there was The Machinist.

"There was also an entire cult."

I get lonely sometimes, replies the voice, its tone matter-of-fact.

Dr. Blood's fist tightens twice, without apparent effect. The third such maneuver is different: in this last squeeze, it is as though something roars to life in his palm: deep violet, and searing, but above all quiet. He exhales, slow and shuddering, as this phenomenon engulfs him.

The knob turns slow and then opens, a chik followed by a creeee, but wisps of hot smoke bite these sounds and they are devoured.

He sees The Scholar first, slumbering soundlessly. Nearly entombed in books, black Omnibus is laid over his crossed legs. Fixed in its grimoire-mount is a volume on Attenuation Theory, compiled by Professor Tycho Emeritus Brahe. The Scholar's mouth curves ever so slightly upward, no doubt at some wholly illusory victory taking place deep some useless dream.

Face down on his chest is a volume of poetry by Samantha Whiting. Dr. Blood manages to suppress his vomit.

From within a leaning sarcophagus, snoring of a profound and dedicated sort bursts in a staccato rhythm. The Brute, then. Good. He did not sense things as others did, and a cage of gold and iron suited the Doctor's purpose.

The "Vault" - which could just as easily and just as truthfully be called the "Closet" - held all manner of items which would ordinarily have been of tremendous interest to Doctor Blood. An evil comb, most likely mephit in origin. A grim calendar, whose kittens belied its hideous catalogue of alien observances and subterranean festivals. To his left, a chalk-white skull bobs in a great jar. That's great as in "large," as opposed to great as in "truly amazing." The jar wasn't anything to write home about. Unless your mother had specifically asked you to find a big jar, and then write immediately home.

To the right,

Here I am, said the voice. And it was.

Take me up, said the Necrowombicon, the ancient wombus on the cover gaping in its perpetual rictus. Seize me, and we will claim your Hesti-

"I will assemble your accursed collection, diabolus," spits Dr. Blood, incisor touching incisor, his jaw hanging like a dog's, gripping the volume with a rough hand, turning quickly on his heel. "But you will hide that name in your spine, secret beneath the binding, and speak it never."

Hestia, says the book.

Hestia.

Chapter Three: The Silent Partner

"I know I said that after the incident, we'd always have a position for you. A position on the shelf, at the very least," submits The Scholar, and it sounds genuine. "But I don't know how else to say this. The experiment is over. You are uniquely unqualified to act as head of security."

We should establish that The Scholar is standing in a closet, and he is speaking to a jar. In addition to a human skull, the jar in question contains several quarts of green fluid which - as if in response to the comment - shifts in color to a milky white.

The Brute pokes his head in, his brow knitted with disgust. "Plus, your jar is dumb."

"Gabriel."

The Brute, who is Gabriel, and another name besides, is unmoved by this call for civility. "Whatever. His jar sucks," he asserts, his stance on the jar issue absolute. "It's dumb, and I hate it."

The Scholar assesses the battlefield. The jar wasn't great, and there'd be no profit in defending it. It was the first jar he could find; there had been no care taken in its selection. He could substitute another jar in its place, but he honestly didn't know what effect decanting this demiconscious skull would have on Jim. Anyway, it wasn't about the jar.

It is at this precise moment that the phone rings.