text: [Themes: female protagonist, Comedy]
  
  > Look around
  Workroom (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a circular chamber, walled in the same decaying brickwork which runs all through the manor's basement. A ritual bound of oddly-angled runes has been carved around the perimeter of the room. The only exit is west.
  
  A majestic filing cabinet stands in one corner, stuffed to overflowing with antique journals. Next to it is a full-length, badly fogged mirror.
  
  The lunar sphere on the wall is entirely white.
  
  > look at bound
  (the 'Pataphysical Approaches to Quantum Superfluids
  (smelling faintly of mildew))
  The book is bound in a cheap, rough, green cloth, with the title 'Pataphysical Approaches to Quantum Superfluids and the name
  Aster Cragne embossed in gold leaf. The pages appear to have
  been printed on continuous paper, then separated and gathered together—a dissertation, perhaps? There's a sticker with a Dewey number stuck to the spine, and on the title page you see the stamp of the insignia of the Backwater Public Library.
  
  Frost lines the edges of the library insignia.
  
  > look at the runes
  The runes are made of jagged, irregular marks. They make your eyes ache.
  
  You now recognize the runes as a ritual bound. The bound encloses the entire workroom. Within it, magic might work as it did in the old days, before the stars changed and the old knowledge faded from the Earth.
  
  > Polish mirror
  The glass is so cold that it burns your skin.
  
  > Irnath
  You chant the Word of Winter. The chill deepens to a numbing, aching wave of cold.
  
  A coarse layer of frost grows over the surface of the mirror, leaving it opaque.
  
  > Vulle
  You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.
  
  Glacial Cirque (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a bowl-shaped hollow beneath a towering mountain peak. The lower end is blocked by a wall of ice. The air is achingly cold.
  
  A full moon hangs in the clear starry sky.
  
  The chill turns into an icy blast of wind coming down from the mountaintop. Stones and chunks of ice are caught up in the gale.
  
  > Maleth
  You chant the Word of Summer. The stabbing cold around you lessens.
  
  The frost sublimes from the surface of the mirror, leaving it clear as ice.
  
  > Vulle
  You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.
  
  Glacial Cirque (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a bowl-shaped hollow beneath a towering mountain peak. The lower end is blocked by a wall of ice. The air is chill but you are sheltered from the wind.
  
  A full moon hangs in the clear starry sky.
  
  You suddenly perceive a pattern in the depths of the ice.
  
  > examine the pattern
  The end of the valley runs up against a barrier of striated white ice, no doubt the edge of a mountain glacier.
  
  The crystalline structure of the ice forms a pattern, and the pattern forms a name: "Shireen Vega was here." Okay.
  
  > Zok
  You speak the Word of Unsealing. The dream-world flares with grey light and fades. You awaken.
  
  Workroom (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a circular chamber, walled in the same decaying brickwork which runs all through the manor's basement. A ritual bound of oddly-angled runes has been carved around the perimeter of the room. The only exit is west.
  
  A majestic filing cabinet stands in one corner, stuffed to overflowing with antique journals. Next to it is a full-length, badly fogged mirror.
  
  The lunar sphere on the wall is entirely white.
  
  > look up vega
  You root through the disorganized heap, and are rewarded!
  
  The only trace left by this Shireen Vega is an aspect chart, drawn up in careful ink like a homework assignment. The two notable lines are "Summer trance, gibbous moon, invocation&enlightenment" and "Winter trance, crescent moon, redoubled invocation".
  
  > Vulle
  You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.
  
  Jungle Ruin (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a mazy jungle of towering, vine-strung tree boles. The air is thick and humid. To one side rises a crumbling stone wall.
  
  A full moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
  
  > look at the wall
  You stand at the foot of a ruined stone wall, perhaps the remains of some lost jungle ziggurat.
  
  > look at Tree
  Moldering tree trunks rise all around you.
  
  > Vulle
  You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.
  
  Jungle Ruin (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a mazy jungle of towering, vine-strung tree boles. The air is thick and humid. To one side rises a crumbling stone wall.
  
  A gibbous moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
  
  > Ulnur
  You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.
  
  > Khion
  You intone the Word of Enlightenment. The world takes on a peculiar, hollow clarity.
  
  With imperceptible slowness, a glyph draws itself across the face of the moon.
  
  > look at the glyph
  Shadows and scars form a glyph across the surface of the gibbous moon.
  
  You memorize the glyph; it looks like one of the missing symbols from Malford Cragne's journal.
  
  > Zok
  You speak the Word of Unsealing. The dream-world flares with grey light and fades. You awaken.
  
  Workroom (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a circular chamber, walled in the same decaying brickwork which runs all through the manor's basement. A ritual bound of oddly-angled runes has been carved around the perimeter of the room. The only exit is west.
  
  A majestic filing cabinet stands in one corner, stuffed to overflowing with antique journals. Next to it is a full-length, badly fogged mirror.
  
  The lunar sphere on the wall is mostly white.
  
  > Vulle
  You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.
  
  Glacial Cirque (Andrew Plotkin)
  You are in a bowl-shaped hollow beneath a towering mountain peak. The lower end is blocked by a wall of ice. The air is chill but you are sheltered from the wind.
  
  A crescent moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
  
  > Ulnur
  You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.
  
  > Ulnur
  You incant the Word of Invocation again. The sense of listening becomes unbearably intense.
  
  A new constellation burns among the stars.
  
  > examine the constellation
  The stars are veiled by a high shredding haze, but a crescent moon shines through. A constellation of unusually bright stars forms a glyph above the moon.
  
  You memorize the glyph. You now know two glyphs.
  
  > recall malford
  Malford "the Warlock" Cragne, the black sheep of the family. Sheep as in rather dim and basically harmless, despite his self-chosen monicker. Malford desperately desired to create the Word of Chaos, an arcane tool of ruin and decay. Unfortunately for him, his diagram lacked several important hieroglyphs. In trying to complete it, he journeyed unwisely into the Otherworlds. His body was found, mindless and mumbling, in 1850.
  
  You recall the Chaos diagram. It's a complex arrangement which defines a word in the system of old Kteh Nyare. However, three key glyphs are missing. You have discovered two of them.