Fragment seven led through famous works of literature and, spoiler warning, ended with quite a bang. Sullivan’s third journal began to display an intricate triptych of pages talking about his feelings about his life, and the lengths he went to to protect his young daughter, Deidre. Mixed in with this outpouring of his thoughts and fears, however were mysterious clues and and request to follow him to ‘the first location’. There were words crossed out several times, only to be repeated and underlined. No rhyme or reason was readily apparent but one clue was solved quickly. A single word in red, Study led the Mountaineers to look into the very first Sherlock Holmes story, a Study in Scarlet.
Using the clues and the story as reference we were able to identify key words within the text that Sullivan clearly had meant for us to find. It took quite some time to figure out what to do with this information until a lucky post from Laureen talking about the readiness of Cagliostro’s final performance and floor plan included the simple addition of a UTM location code. When we took The Study in Scarlet words counts we discovered and used them in this format, the first clue led us to Gansu, China.
More text from Sullivan started coming rapidly with more to his story, and more clues underneath. As he talked about how he longed for one day his daughter to see the truth, even while he sought to hide it from her, he left us more stepping stones along our path. The Call of the Wild let us to Brierley, England. The Red Badge of Courage found us in Mor, Hungary, and Love and Freindship by Jane Austin led us to Lye, France.
While we pondered what to do with this information one of our members had the brainstorm that these locations were not stops on an itinerary, but segments of a whole. Mor, Gansu, Lye, Brierly…these locations were hints at a place not unknown to Mountaineer history, the Morgan Library. Clearly, that was the locaiton Sullivan had hid the spell he used to hide Deidre from the world, and the means to free her from the prison he built.
Lauren had not been idle this time. Desperate for some means to protect her mentor, the Cagliostro, from the imminent end of his life at the hands of those that pulled his strings, she also sought the means to shield Cagliostro from magic, as Sullivan had done for one he cared for. Seeking the spell for her own reasons she quickly also came to the conclusion it rested at the Morgan Library, which it turned out was an ideal spot to hide magic, as it inheritently interferred with the abilities of practitioners.
On a cold Tuesday morning, both Lauren and our friend, Cole Sumner arrived at the Morgan Library to check out a very special book. We discovered one of the lost Ackerly Green tomes, Seven Cradle Songs, was the book we sought. Cole, with our help, and Lauren aided by magiq and her mentor from afar came upon the book at nearly the same time. When Cole valiantly broke the book out of its locked cage, Lauren used her magic to steal the book and create a diversion by setting the library on illusory fire to make her getaway.
Defeated, the mountaineers worried about Cole, but not only had he come through unscathed he also managed to find a note, handwritten from Sullivan to Deidre in the book and manage to keep hold of it in the chaos. Within it lay Sullivan’s instructions for how to break Deidre’s spell and our seventh fragment, the word Furomaris.
Someone will likely have to edit it down for time.