Plot:Ghosts of Grimshaw's
The dusty tailor shop in Knockturn Alley has long been known as a den where the dodgy and the desperate make underhanded deals. But it has greater secrets lurking in its walls and beneath its floorboards. It harbors ghosts, a crypt of bones, and the light and song that lure in its victims and would-be saviors.
One cold night in December, a runaway and a werewolf hunter rush inside after hearing a scream coming from the brightly lit shop. Though they see no sign of anyone living within, the ossuary below reveals the dead. Haunted since by the shop and the flute of bone, Nemo and Bagnold join forces with the Reid sisters to uncover a ritualistic series of murders happening every 28 years.
The year of the next murder? 2012. Our heroes must fight against time and a seemingly ageless Inferius to break the centuries-old curse. They may find allies in ghosts and ravens, enemies in necromancers old and new, and answers in the very song and light that entrap them.
How to Get Involved
Who?
We would like to keep the scope of this plot small, so if you're interested, please reach out to the Primary Contacts below.
Plotting Resources
- Wiki Page(s) on Relevant Subjects: Grimshaw Tailoring and Alterations, music magic
- Tags: The Ossuary, Our Friend Trouble
- Primary Contact: User: Sparky, User: Niobe, User: Ellefauna
Characters
The Living
![[[Trouble]]](/wiki/images/thumb/b/ba/Troubletheraven.jpg/271px-Troubletheraven.jpg)
![[[Kurby Bagnold]]](/wiki/images/7/75/Kurby_Bagnold.jpg)
![[[Fauna Blake]]](/wiki/images/7/74/Fauna_Blake.jpg)
![[[Lorelei Hunt]]](/wiki/images/5/5d/0e78ac26ada25af8e989a02140e04aba--ruth-wilson-female-celebrities.png)
![[[Natalie Morrow]]](/wiki/images/8/82/Nemo.png)
![[[Abigail Reid]]](/wiki/images/d/d6/Abigail_Reid.jpg)
![[[Aileen Reid]]](/wiki/images/2/20/Aileen_Reid.jpeg)
![[[Jonas Trevelyan]]](/wiki/images/d/d4/Jonas_Trevelyan.jpg)
The Dead
![[[Clementine Calvares]]](/wiki/images/thumb/3/3d/Clem.png/138px-Clem.png)
The Mostly Dead
The Events Unfold
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- Quoting:
- Caldonia Clearwater
“It could still be vampires,” said a representative of the Being Division of the Department for the Regulation and Contorl of Magical Creatures, Caldonia Clearwater. “I know the rumors are swirling and I regret to say we can’t rule it out. Just because we can’t find the bite marks doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Who else could it be? What else would do that? Vampires are, after all, highly unpredictable. Except when they are.”Salvatore Rowenstaff
Quickly, she moved forward to snip up her wand, then took a few steps back and looked up. She saw Kurby peering down and waved.
"Have you ever heard the word ossuary? No reason... just... found one," she shrugged and shook her head.
It was hard to know what the shake in her hands was - stunned excitement at tumbling down a rabbit hole, or the drive to follow the fire drill. Or a concussion.
She looked up again, not wanting to leave her massive hint to chance. She beckoned him down sharply.Natalie Morrow
"So as uncle Bagnold is kindly directing me to go to my room, there! A heart-rending scream from the very mouth of Knockturn Alley. It cuts through us like a ghost. It's just us on the street. Whoever, or whatever, is wailing wails for us. There's no one else. So I, Nemo, without hestiation, speed with all haste towards the cries.
"Bagnold, attempting to be responsible (if I'm being charitable), wants me to rejoin my tour group and let him handle it because he is a big strong man with a man brain and a twelve inch ... wand."
Nemo shook her head slowly. "Not... likely..." She paused quick to reach for her cider before it got cold.
"In retrospect, I probably should have listened to him more. But he was being an asshole. Anyway, the cries keep coming but they're dissipating like smoke. And then, like a beacon in the dark gutter of Knockturn Ally, is ... Grimshaw's Tailoring and Alterations. Glowing. Warm. Welcoming... And we? Moths."Natalie Morrow
"Most people don't even know it exists. Only ever been walked in on once. Which brings me back: who told you I was there, Bagnold? You roll up on my evening knowing a single fact, like you found a hairy hard candy under the sofa, and I'm supposed to do something with it? Come on." Nate sneered at the werewolf hunter, getting well sick of entertaining whatever vigilante nonsense this was and growing more and more resentful of the ambush.Nathan Briggs
A feathery etching bordered one side of the pendant, and on the other side, in the center she saw...
A rose.
She stared at the pendant for a long moment, her face calm, her blue eyes intent. The wind rushed cold and ruffled her hair over her ears.
"Rosemary?" She murmured under her breath, not quite knowing where the name had come from.Fauna Blake
Lorelei Hunt. That had been one of the last names in the Grimshaw ledger, dated the 11th of November and listed just above Nathan Briggs. The amounts next to their names had been complimentary to each other; Kurby had assumed that meant that she was Briggs' buyer, for whatever illegal product the hell the two-rate criminal had been selling. That meant that she was still alive, still active in the magical community more two decades after Duncan claimed she had murdered his cousin.
"No, I don't know her," he said at last. He kept his expression carefully unreadable, but there was no way to hide the tight line of his jaw or the tension in his shoulders. "I've heard her name, though. It was, uh --" He paused for only an instant as he decided on the best lie to tell. "-- from someone in Knockturn that we thought was sellin' ingredients for wolfsbane potion illegally. It was a couple of weeks back."
He couldn't bring up the adventure of the tailor shop, the seemingly ancient ledger with so many names in it that had been left open so he would see. Kurby took another long drink of beer, and then hunched over slightly, rested his elbows on his knees and letting the can dangle between them.
"So she killed your cousin twenty-two years ago, then?" he asked, brows knitting as he met Duncan's gaze squarely. "And then your cousin somehow got turned into one of those pentral things?"Kurby Bagnold
"I met her only once. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd ... turned to dust in front of me. One of those old sorcerers held together with string and nightshade."Zelda Sellaphix
“I’ve been doin’ a bit of diggin’, though,” he said, a beat more quietly. “I tracked down Nathan Briggs last week, the arse whose name was on the last line of the ledger. He admitted that he was there on the eleventh of November makin’ a sale. He called the place ‘neutral ground’ — said as far as he knows, there’s no shopkeeper, and the building is always deserted and empty, so the Knockturn crowd uses it sometimes for illegal tradin’... I've also got a friend who works in another shop in Knockturn," he said after a beat. "Up until a couple of years ago, I guess someone was usin' Grimshaw's name to place orders for stuff. Lots of odds and ends, different things. The deliveries were always to different locations, and they only met the witch supposedly placin' the orders once. Said she looked like an old sorceress, ready to crumble to dust."Kurby Bagnold
"But nothing's out of place here. Or everything. Shame what happened to that girl." He tsk-tsked and stood back straight, unaware he may have said anything newsworthy.Lazarus Blackburn
"Nemo," Abby shook her head. "I just said that more creepy stuff has happened and that it's dangerous. I know you're brave and you don't care, but I care. I don't want you getting hurt."
Cops were involved in this already complicated situation. A girl had died. Girls had died. Nemo wanted to know if what had happened to her had happened to the others, the dead others, but to know could make her next. Couldn't it? Wouldn't Abby be encouraging this strange compulsion?
"If you're asking me to give you this information so that you can go back to the shop and figure it out, I can't do that."Abigail Reid
She walked into the kitchen and started opening cabinets. "Abby told me that Aurors had already been to Grimshaw's and that something went down. Do you have any food?"Natalie Morrow
- With:
- Kurby Bagnold
- Aileen Reid
The machine had printed what looked to be an entire page written in strange, bonelike-looking runes, similar to the symbol that he'd seen at Grimshaw Tailoring. At the bottom of the parchment on the left side, offset from the rest of the text and written in an archaic-looking hand that he could only barely make out, was a signature in English: J.F. Grimshaw. Next to it on the right was the same strange symbol that he and Nemo had found in the ossuary.Kurby Bagnold
- With:
- Natalie Morrow
Sitting in a corner, she saw herself, holding her teeth in her hands, crying and crying. Natalie realized she wasn’t herself anymore, but a little boy with a shaved head. A knife was sticking out from his chest but it didn’t hurt.
“Are you okay?” he asked the girl in the corner.
The girl, Natalie, herself, looked up from the teeth in her hands.
“You abandoned me.”
"I find myself asking," she said before taking a sip of cold water. "What it is about teenage girls that make us just so murder-able. I mean," she sipped the water again. "When's the last time you heard of a good necromancy scroll that was looking for thirty-five year-old bachelors? I've never seen one." She dug into her bag for her black-cat cigarette case, foolishly lost and foolishly found. "Can't go anywhere these days," she said, using a plastic lighter in shaky hands.Natalie Morrow
"This could be star-crossed, Abbers. Nothing about any of this hasn't been sketch. Kurby and your sister found records of murdered girls. I can't stop dreaming, not for a moment. Are you sure you want to come?" As soon as she asked, Nemo realized how much she needed Abby to come because there was nothing - no threat - that would stop Nemo now.Natalie Morrow
Nemo took one last look at the parchment again then let it fall from her fingers.
Without another thought, she closed her eyes and put the flute to her lips, feeling suddenly utterly weightless. The pads of her fingers found the tone holes without any stretch or curl. The flute drew out of Nemo all the breath in her lungs as if in a lengthy sigh. Six notes it took for itself, up down, down and up again, clear and chilling, fuller than the small simple instrument might be capable of.
And then curiously, a base note, lower than a heartbeat. A deep earth-borne grinding.Natalie Morrow
Over the years, she'd found the most safety and surety in total silence. Dealing with problems on her own. Protecting her sister on her own, partially from problems she'd caused.
But Lorelei Hunt was out there, and had already attacked Duncan. Bagnold would find out about Abby from his friend, if not from her. She and Bagnold had sealed a tomb together and formed an alliance over a centuries-old murder mystery, and she had to hope that he could be trusted with Abby's life. Because that was what this meant.
She looked at him again, her gaze clearing. When she spoke, her voice was just as cautious, her expression just as guarded as his.
"Abby is the one who escaped the lakehouse with Iona last year. Abby, with Iona as the pentral."Aileen Reid
"It's a key," she told Fig in a hushed, excited voice, missing his earlier question. She placed the silver key in her palm again, and pointed at the circular indentation in the metal, and the tiny metal rod hanging from it by one hinge. "I mean, not a house key. But a key from a musical instrument. It looks like something from a clarinet, or an oboe, or a flute, even. I'm not sure which."Fauna Blake
Kurby paused a few paces back, attempting to look nonchalant as he examined the objects scattered across the table. A small, dusty book, no bigger than his palm but twice as thick, caught his eye. On the cover, under gold-leafed words that read 'Hymns, Rytes, & Maledyctions,' a tiny woman wearing a medieval-looking headdress puffed out her cheeks as she blew on a flute outlined in silver. Next to her, an eerie-looking man clapped his hands to his face in a silent scream, as he seemingly rose from the chest of a bone-white skeleton lying prone before the flautist.Kurby Bagnold
Gone. He was gone. Leaving only the stench of fear in the air and a streak of blood across her palm. Still warm.
Lorelei stared at her hand, then looked down at her feet.
A single finger seeped blood into the stones.
A gift! He'd left her a gift.Lorelei Hunt
- With:
- Fauna Blake
- Olivia Foley
"Phyllis' pendant I am pretty sure." She said standing up. "I think she gave it to Rosemary because she couldn't wear it anymore after becoming a werewolf," Ollie said it so easily where others might have perhaps paused. "You know us and our silver," Ollie said with a little bit of a laugh. But if memory served she was pretty sure. Though maybe it was something similar and not Phyllis' at all. "I wonder how it ended up in a place to be picked up by Trouble?"Olivia Foley
- With:
- Lorelei Hunt
Lorelei took a skull, large in her hand, holding it by the eyeholes, its yellowed bone chalky like the skin dust that had drifted from her palm. She floated up, out of the shop. She'd return when she had one less pentral. She'd return with her brother or Av-i-ad. The light didn't want her, but she had her cloak, her borrowed body, her shielded mind, her pentral, her false face, everything she needed to find the light and trap it.
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