8268/The Secret Life of Jack Drake: Read, if you dare...

The Secret Life of Jack Drake: Read, if you dare...
Date of Scene:	16 October 2021
Location:	The Drake Estate, Hidden Room
Synopsis:	Tim calls Zatanna in for a consult. She reveals some of the history of the Book of Skelos.
Cast of Characters:	Lonnie Machin, Tim Drake, Zatanna Zatara

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Lonnie Machin has posed:
    Tim recently had the half-destroyed Drake house leveled, and the demolition crew foreman called him to show him a hidden room that they found. Inside, the real legacy of Jack Drake's life as an archaeologist and relic-hunter. But one specific book that Drake kept locked away has gotten his son's attention, and led him to call the Mistress of Magic.
    Access to the room is restricted from the rest of the opened basement with security partitioned and a locked mobile gate. Inside, a host of artifacts and locked bookcases line the walls. A steel safe in one far corner has a keypad lock on it.

Tim Drake has posed:
    It's late into the afternoon when Tim, sitting on the hood of his car parked just inside the gates of the Drake family estate, sends a rapid-fire series of texts to the number he has for Zatanna in his phone.

Tim: hey, are you busy?
Tim: dumb question sorry i'm sure you're busy

Tim: anyway do you have any idea what this could be?
        <Image attached: Picture of static.>
Tim: wait, sorry, let me try that again
Tim: here
        <Image attached: Picture of slightly different static.>
Tim: okay so apparently it doesn't like to be photographed! big magic tome, possibly covered in human skin leather, bound by chains with a skull lock except there's no keyhole. my gut says probably cursed but i locked it back in the safe i found it and haven't touched it.
Tim: everything's fine! no need to worry! just let me know, okay, thanks, later!

    He lays back against his car and stares bleakly up at the overcast Gotham sky.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
            *TING*    Ting    Ting

    Zatanna startles from the doze she fell into, luxuriating in a deep Japanese bath filled to the brim with hot water perfumed with flowers and herbs.

    She reaches for the phone and bats at the steam so she can read the texts streaming in from her fave nephew. The picture he sends is interesting enough so that not a half an hour later, supremely relaxed from her soak in the cypress tub, she portals to the site of the nearly demolished Drake house dressed in a black tuxedo and white tie. Her iconic hat in hand.

    She studies him a moment before saying softly so as not to startle him,"Not much in the way of stars tonight, Tim."

Tim Drake has posed:
    For a while after his texts go out, Tim stares intently at his phone, waiting. But, as it turns out, most people aren't as attached to his phone as he is--literally, he's wearing a smart watch synced up to it--so eventually he sits back up and resumes his desolate stare-off with the mostly demolished remains of his former family home.

    The house wins, though. Inanimate object and all. He goes back to looking up at the sky. At some point he'll make the drive back into the city, but right now the effort required for even that just seems too much. His mind is filled with questions. Why was this hidden? What kind of trouble had his father gotten into? And what was he doing with all of those artifacts? As far as Tim knew, almost all of the finds Jack Drake had made in his career as an archaeologist had ended up in museums, aside for a couple of oddities that had been scattered around the manor. And those were all destroyed in the fire.

    He isn't actually aware that he's lost in his thoughts until Zatanna's voice cuts through them. His head tilts to the side lightly, and then with a faint groan--turns out, cars aren't super comfortable for laying on--he pushes himself up. "Not really, no," he says. And for a moment or two he manages to put on a brave face, before his shoulders slump and he rubs his hand against his forehead. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this, I just didn't--I don't know what--." He exhales heavily, and then shakes his head. "I don't know what to do."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "Whoa, Tim. Whoa. Dragging me into what? Let me get into trouble before you start apologizing for it. And even then, Auntie is a big girl who can make her own decisions."

    Zatanna, archivist of the occult, gazes over the ruins, wondering aloud, "Your father recognized something valuable. I'm not sure he knew how powerful it might be. I need to look at it before apologies begin. Shall we go take a closer look?

With a half smile curving up one side of her mouth, she offers him her arm, "Did it bite?"

Tim Drake has posed:
    Thankfully Zatanna pumps the breaks before Tim really has a chance to work himself up, and he covers his face with both hands. He gives himself a moment to take a deep breath and follows it up with a long, slow exhale. "Sure. Yeah. Okay." His hands drop, and he still has a sort of desperate look to the way his eyes flick back and forth, but he nods at Zee and steps over, taking her arm.

    "No, it just... I wasn't expecting to find anything. I've been sitting on this property for years, ever since my dad was killed. Never knew what to do with it," he explains. He leads Zatanna through the remains of the house, which is almost totally gone. Equipment and other expected signs of a construction crew recently in residence are scattered throughout, with the most recent work obviously being the pile of concrete rubble near where a doorway has been excavated in a one-foot-thick wall that had been used to block off a room in the basement. "If Lonnie hadn't convinced me it was time to move on, I'm not sure if I would have ever..."

    He doesn't immediately finish the sentence. Instead he takes Zatanna through the makeshift doorway hastily assembled to block the area off. "...found any of this."

Lonnie Machin has posed:
Inside, it's a gallery of artifacts from cultures across the entire world. Locked bookcases, a leering mask - originating from the pre-indigenous peoples of Central America, since Zatanna would know that, with more artifacts mounted on the walls - a Zulu iklwa, a Japanese tanto blade. Shelves full of books in locked glass cases. Fossils. Cuneiform tablets.
    The safe stands in a corner, steel, about Tim's height, with a keypad lock on it.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "Good advice on his part. If the book is what I suspect it is...." Zee doesn't complete her thinking out loud, keeping her idea that it may have gotten tired of languishing in the ruins, to herself.

    High heels teeter on uneven surfaces, she looks down at her feet still holding on to Tim's arm and mutters, ".seohs elbisneS," (Sensible shoes,) which has the effect of lowering her height by 3 inches. "Oh, much better! Still under lock and key, isn't it. Good." Turning in place she admires the treasures displayed on the walls and shelves.

    "My! Your father had an eye beauty, Tim," she exclaims with soft sadness.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim acknowledges the benefit of Lonnie basically telling him to deal with his crap--well, phrased nicer than that--with a tip of his head and a huff of breath. "Yeah, he's usually right about this stuff. But don't tell him I admitted to that, he's already got a huge ego."

    When Zee has to pause because of her heels, Tim does as well. His sneakers are thoroughly sensible already, after all, and they fit in with the awkward college student vibe of his oversized hoodie (repping the Gotham Knights, at present) and jeans. He shakes his head. "I don't know if I'll ever get used to that," he says as her magic does its work, and as Zatanna starts to look around, so too does Tim. Though he isn't quite able to bring himself to appreciate it in the way she is. "He usually didn't keep any of his finds. Not that I knew of at least," and then he shrugs, gesturing with one hand at all of the 'trophies'. Obviously Tim was wrong about that.

    "I'm no expert but I'd guess this thing is a likely reason for why he buried this room and built a conservatory on top of it." Tim crouches down in front of the safe so that he can quickly tap in the sequence of eight numbers into the digital keypad that unlocks it. "Bound in human skin and chained up just seems curse-y to me." He steps out of the way as the safe door swings open, so that Zatanna can see the book for herself.

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    The book is three feet by three feet. Bound in black leather - Tim is right about its provinence and blue-black iron. It's wrapped about by eight iron chains linking together in the front in the form of a keyless lock all in the same iron as the book, in the shape of a leering human skull.
    It is a bound copy of the Book of Skelos, the Book of Skulls, a treatise on Necromancy penned by Skelos of the First Men, a race of sorcerers who were foes of the ancient Atlanteans, before the Cataclysm.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    The look Zee throws him suggests eloquently, 'How the hell would you know it was human skin?' aloud, she only says sharply, "What?"

    Then, she makes use of her sensible black running shoes to walk over to where he stands to crouch and examine the book more closely.

    "Human skin, generally suggests curses, yes," she ruminates. "Certainly the person who provided the skin had a cursed day," she says with a quick humorless smile up at him then removes a collapsible wand from her tux pocket and telescopes it open to hook under the heavy chain attaching it to the safe.

    "First order of business is to remove this from the safe. Tim," she says, gravely, "this has all the signs of something sorcerers would kill for. Smart of your father to bury it. I probably can undo the chain with a spell. I don't feel any wards on it."

Lonnie Machin has posed:
    As Zatanna hooks her wand under the lock, it suddenly *tightens* its chains. And the skull-lock opens its mouth, and *screams*. It's the scream of an anguished, grieving widow, the scream of a bereaved mother.
    The book itself is almost a living thing - and sensing the presence of a descendant of the Hated Atlanteans, it resists.
    It is said, though, that the key to the lock on the Book of Skelos was a passphrase, one that, like a virus, mutated from language to language, but always worked.
    How did it start?
    Into the west, unknown of man,
Ships have sailed since the world began...

Tim Drake has posed:
    "I mean, it could be leather from another animal," Tim says, "But it's a giant magic tome wrapped in chains, what are the odds it *isn't* human skin? I don't know any magic but I've watched the whole Evil Dead series!" And then Zatanna is coming over, so Tim does what he's been doing since this room was uncovered, namely staying out of the way as the professionals handle things.

    So he takes a few steps back and crosses his arms over his chest, shoulders vaguely hunched. The discomfort of just being down here radiates off him in waves. "It shouldn't be kept here, then. I have cameras and motion detectors set up but that's pretty much it." He leans to one side so that he can peer into the safe from afar, trying to see what Zatanna is doing. "Do you think that--"

    Well, whatever Tim was going to say gets cut off when the book starts to scream. Or the lock starts to scream? Something is screaming and Tim doesn't know what. And Tim has enough Bat training so he doesn't start screaming along with it, but he does stumble a few steps backwards and frantically ask, "What the--is it supposed to do that?" with his voice raised to be heard over the noise.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "Famous last words," she gasps, thrown backward by the force of the magic unleashed, startled by the scream.

    Reflexively, she bites off the word,".ecneliS" (Silence) with all her magical acumen. "Well, we know that its warded and particularly doesn't want me around to judge from that reaction."

    Occult nerdiness, a lifelong trait of the magician, overcomes the adrenaline rush of being screamed at by a locked book or by the lock on the book. She gets on her hands and knees to peer more closely at the giant tome, saying cryptically, "Ahuh! I might know what this is."

Tim Drake has posed:
    What has Tim taken to hiding behind? It's some sort of statue, and he hazards a glance upwards at its face, which looms over him. But at least it's not screaming, so loom away, statue. His shoulders have almost risen up to his ears at this point, even after Zatanna's magic has managed to silence the book. Or the lock on the book. Tim still isn't sure about that.

    "That was, uh, a pretty strong reaction," is all Tim can say to that. Which, little bit of an understatement. He grimaces faintly, teeth gritting together as he watches from an even more respectable distance than before as Zee returns to her mystical investigation. "Oh, great." Tim certainly sounds relieved, even if he continues to peer around the statue, mostly shielded.

    Then he brings himself to take one full step out from behind it. "Do you know where my dad would have found it? Did he dig it up from somewhere?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Bits of arcana begin to form in her mind, "Yag-kosha," she whispers, less a statement then a question.

    "Nephew, I might come off sounding like a two-bit crystal ball reader. But I hear the wind whistling through the Shamla Pass. This book is so old it puts the pyramids to shame."

    She doesn't venture another poke with her wand. "This is a book of lost lore. Good that it was lost, too, if it is the one, I think it is. People will kill over it. It could start wars. Did your father even have an inkling?" This is just from looking at the cover and the protection put on it. "Locks don't scream without having some sentience. And that means, it is demon-ridden," she says with deadly finality.

Tim Drake has posed:
    It isn't until the pyramids are mentioned that Tim understands anything Zatanna has said. But he doesn't really need to know any of it to get, just from the way she's talking, that this is some kind of big deal. Perhaps the significance of it is lost on Tim, but... well, he knows enough to be concerned.

    It shows in the furrow of his brow as he watches Zee pointedly not try at the lock again. He can only shake his head when the conversation returns to his father. "I don't know," he admits. And then Zatanna says the word demon.

    Now that makes a shiver run up Tim's spine. There is a limited amount of supernatural that Tim has no problem accepting in his day-to-day (or, rather, night-to-night) life. Were-creatures, reanimated dead (sorry, Jason), even vampires? Okay, sure.

    But demons? "I don't understand how he could be involved in anything like that. He was just a..." What? A man with too much money and time on his hands. Is that what drove Jack Drake to get mixed up in all of this? Tim steps back and his eyes sweep the room as if seeing it all for the first time, and now, at this hour, it's so much more terrifying than when he first discovered it.

    "I don't like this," is what comes out of him eventually, voice gone quiet.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
    "Good instinct! There is a lot to not like about this. You father somehow managed to lock up one of the scariest books in existence in a secret room below his house." She stands still facing the book as though reluctant to take her eyes off of it. She throws Tim a troubled glance as he wrestles with his father's secrets, wanting to comfort him. Nothing like conflicted grief to grease the wheels of existence.

    ""Would you trust me to talk to someone I trust? This is not your everyday potion or poultice we are looking at but the real deal, there is a soul locked into protecting that book."

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim is still visibly uncomfortable with being down here, growing more closed in on himself by the moment. The more he hears about this book, about what his father was up to, the worse it gets. "I had my tenth birthday party in the greenhouse that was built above this room," he says. "I--my parents and I dressed up like rangers from Jurassic Park and hunted for dinosaurs in the plants. This is--."

    He turns away, towards the doorway. "Yeah, sure, um--whatever you think is best."

    In the meantime, Tim is going to set up a much more serious security system.