It has been just over a week since I made my first statement to this subject, yet it only feels like yesterday when I uncovered the strange box left behind by Madame Crowley. I still cannot figure out what it contains, however any attempts to use magick to study it have quite literally…Blown up in my face. It seems to be protected by an extremely complex Anti-Magick Field that most definitely has her signature on it. Expected of her, and I am frankly unsure if I will manage to uncover its mysteries before the shepherd takes me to the Porled gates for my more than welcomed judgment.   

But I digress – I just need more time to figure out a general idea on what the specimen could be whilst I scour the archives for any possible logs of it or links to what it may be. Crowley was always the sort to find strange things and hide them, so this isn’t the first time I have encountered something strange. But it is the first time where I, a man who is not one that falls unto his own intuition before analysis, have a bad feeling about this. I personally have witnessed countless artefacts and peculiar things that Crowley has either made or found on her ventures, but I am dumbfounded on what this thing is. Is it alien perhaps? Some fragment of eldritch abominations that she had somehow procured? Lest I ramble on about what it could be, I lose time on finding out what it actually is. Part of me wants to approach Sir Elias about this, however I feel that would be a bad move, perhaps due to madame’s disdain for the man – It would be akin to backstabbing her.  

Alas, after the surge of rumours spreading about her conducting horrendous experiments and dabbling in the taboo, I do not know where my loyalties lie. Part of me thinks they are asinine, because Sir Elias was more than vocal about her abominations. That is the main reason why he must not find out about this, despite his unquestionable knowledge on the esoteric and arcane.  

On the note of cleaning up the study; the findings of hidden passages and nooks full of strange and wonderful things is not something that seems to lessen no matter how much time I spend here. I sometimes wonder if this place is endless in its ability to form its own labyrinth of knowledge, which wouldn’t be a surprise considering Madame Crowley was the type to use her powers in such ways and I am currently the only man on this god forsaken planet that best knows her tact, and I’ll be damned if my age tries to get the best of me. Though it does help using some of her old toys to help me out. She was always one who loved tampering with dolls and as she would call them ‘Homunculi’ which in her words are artificial life forms, and that she herself was the first of her kind. I never so much believed her, as such things were only rooted in myth and pipe dreams of scholars and alchemists alike. But possibly; she may have been telling the truth.  

Aside from the generic ramblings of this old man, I will also note a few other things that I will endeavour to follow up on in my next instalments. The first being the more than welcomed letters and notes hidden all over the archives, possibly written by hers truly however the handwriting seems foreign. That, as well as a strange door that was located beneath her desk. I cannot open it, as it too is sealed shut with an even more complicated array of barriers. Strange, and more than unnerving.  

One thing that plays in my mind is why she did not place the seal on the box itself, rather than the object is beyond me. Perhaps it was as if she wanted me to find this, or she was simply messing with me to the bitter end. I do not know. But I do know that this is something that I, and I alone must figure out.   

But the note of “The Quiet” still speaks to me. I do not know why, but it is unsettling. 

Signed, 

Dr. Asimov Samford - Head Magicks Archivist of the Imperial Library, Candria