Dear Paladins of Justice in the Estrin Chapterhouse

Please read this letter carefully before opening the box. It will explain and prepare you – just in case it isn’t as dead as I hope and believe it is. I wouldn’t want you to think I am trying to harm any of you.

There are details you need to know to fight this. Please allow me to explain.

The cult that calls itself the Family is luring in followers. There’s a Family house here in Estrin, near the docks on a street that leads to a yellow warehouse.

The Family accommodates, clothes and feeds the people they lure in and on the surface it’s a loving group that does good works. Underneath, there is the ritual of the Joyful Union that siphons energy under false pretences from the followers who engage in it and feeds it to monsters which the gods once imprisoned. Now, according to what has been gleaned, the prison cell is cracking, and the monsters are leaking out.

I have personally witnessed two of them, enormous, spiky, tentacled, too many eyes. One hid itself somehow in that part of your vision from which you omit conscious impressions. One simply sat in the vaulted ceiling over the pool it was summoned from and when it attacked, it easily picked up a table that could seat sixteen people and threw it across a dining hall. My weapons did nothing but annoy it and not even magic could harm it. I'm still slightly surprised I'm alive to tell about it.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Now, the thing in the box – There is a chant used by the priesthood of the Family that forces the Joyful Union to happen so they can steal the energy of the participants. Then there is a chant that calls forth a thing like the one in the box and feeds it the energy stolen. Then the boxed beast attaches itself to a victim, taken from among the faithful, and begins to make a twin version of them.

Dig around inside it. Maybe you will see the embryo. I think the creature was attached long enough to have gotten a good bit of the way before dying.

As soon as a twin is created, the original is destroyed. I believe every single one of the priests of the Family are monstrously created twins, working to call forth their superiors by breaking the prison the gods built. And I think they are close to succeeding.

Unsurprisingly, that’s where you come in.

The Family has houses in all the big cities and some smaller ones too. How many, I don’t know. But many more than a few people can hope to fight.

I don’t know if Justice was one of the deities that imprisoned the ‘Primordial Powers’ (as they term themselves) in the first place, or why it happened, but I know that they are very eager to come back and if they do, it won't be pretty.

Careful, the thing in the box exudes some sort of acid when threatened, and although it’s dead, it might still be able to harm you.

Please, go and see for yourself. If you investigate the Family, you will find that I'm being truthful.

What are you waiting for? Stop reading and open the damned box!