Edna. Come in here.
It's okay. There're no ghosts. No matter what that shaman said.
Because there are no ghosts... Except for that one ghost woman in The Den and she was put to
rest a long time ago. Yes, vampires are real, sort of. And zombies are real, but they're
not THAT kind of zombie. Well, some people do believe in voodoo and
magical zombies, and even think that ghouls are created by black magic instead of radiation.
I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you a story about magical zombies, if you promise to come
inside this cave with me afterwards. Okay. A long time ago in a far-off land there was
a war in which brother fought against brother for the fate of a nation. When the soldiers
from the North captured men from the South, they took them to a prison camp in a place
called Point Lookout. It eventually became an amusement park, but four hundred years
ago, it was horrible place, where many men died. They were buried in a mass grave beneath
the swamp, and the people who came to live there afterwards said that the swamp was haunted
by the vengeful spirits of the dead. No, there were no holotapes four hundred years ago.
But you can grab any history book and look up the role that the place had during America's
Civil War. All of those dead bodies under the swamp are responsible for the methane
gas that bubbles up from under the water. One of the old energy companies thought they
might sell the gas for profit during the resources wars. But foetid gas wasn't the only thing
that rose up from the swamp, according to local legends. They say restless spirits walked
the land, and that one of the aristocratic families, the Blackhalls had made unholy pacts
with eldritch creatures from the primeval past before men walked the Earth.
They had a book of unknowable arcana called the Krivbeknih. An evil tome that, once written
could not be destroyed by any means known. For generations the Blackhalls lived in a
mansion in the Western parts of the swamp, and they led the locals in daemonic rites,
invoking nameless entities from realms beyond the ken of humanity!
At the time of the Great War, the book had come into the hands of Constance Blackhall,
a woman who carried its loathsome beliefs into the twenty-second century. She had married
into the Blackhall family, but her own ancestry was no less depraved. Born Constance Dunwich,
her brother Richard had established the Dunwich Borer company, and constructed its headquarters
over a cyclopean cavern. There beneath the seemingly innocent drilling company, ichorous
pagans conducted their jibbering rituals mere miles from the nation's capitol!
Generations after the Great War, Constance Blackhall was still alive – perhaps a mutation
– or it might have been the unutterable influence of that book. She eventually did
die, but only after an unknown person stole the Krivbeknih from her.
At some point, the book made its way into the Capitol Wasteland. A traveler brought
it to the Dunwich building for purposes no sane man could fathom. What happened to him
is known only to the mouldering fiends from beyond. However his son followed in his wake,
leaving holotapes as he descended into the abysmal catacombs beneath the building, toward
a fate too diabolical to speak! In Point Lookout, the swampfolk had developed a superstition
about the Blackhall family and their Mansion. They chattered the ancient chants, and hung
talismans about their swamp, but never dared enter the Blackhall house, where there dwells
the last of the Blackhall line, a decrepit old man who roams the halls of his decaying
mansion, restlessly seeking the lost tome of forbidden horrors.
The monstrous book, the Krivbeknih, has vanished, but is certainly in the clutches of some degenerate,
tenebrous beast. What sinister connection it has to the Deep Temple beneath the Dunwich
Building, I cannot say, but on nights when the stars are right, and the winds blow from
the East, travelers in the Mojave can hear whispered words carried on the breeze...
“Ug-Qualtoth is returned. Alhazred G’yeth G’yeth.”
What? Why are you still scared? The evil book
of unknowable horrors was probably destroyed. And the mass grave of restless spirits is
thousands of miles away. Well how about I tell you a happy story. One about a man who
spent his life helping other people, and never took credit for his good deeds? The only way
you'll learn the whole story is if we go in that spooky old cave over there... Does it
have a happy ending? In a way it has a happy ending. Not many in the wasteland do, but
we have a lot of places to visit before I can show you the ending, so that- is a story
for another day.