Museum of the Winter King

Though never a top attraction amid the wondrous sights and gargantuan entertainments of the capitol city, still this was in its heyday a popular museum. This interesting series of rooms deep within the collapsed 29th 'Arc' tower of the House Absolute houses a strange assortment of mementos and oddities associated with the winter king, a popular but possibly fictional hero of centuries past in the north of the Empire.
Its curator is a non-confrontational Mezzoloth named Problo who was clearly assigned to this duty from a contract he should have read more closely, and after the earthquake in 12002 that collapsed what was once a seven-floor tower into the sub-basement, he has remained here, bound to the letter of the law rather than the intent. He tends to be talkative and more approachable than the average evil fiend, seeing as sentient visitors are so few.
He is an expert on the contents though even he is sometimes pained to explain how a given thing came to end up in a museum, even an abandoned one. It's likely he only knows what Archivists of generations past may have told him; he evidently never knew or met this winter king personally.

Purpose / Function

Ostensibly, this was a place for the Archivists guild to publicly display artifacts and mementos associated with the (possibly fictional) personage known as the winter king.

Design

The space is divided into an upper and lower gallery and vault, accessed by a stairwell of black basalt which leads from the upper gallery to the two-story arched main hall, a blunt arch that resembles the inside of a flattened loaf of bread. The three spaces contain a mishmash of intact and trashed displays of items and small cards indicating the nature of the display.

Entries

Two separate entries, one in the north wall and another in the northern corner of the west wall connect to what was once a restaurant and refreshment area of fairly significant size, now completely in ruins. Another door in the central portion of the northern wall is a hallway that once led somewhere, but is now cut off by later construction incursion into a toppled-T-shaped dead end. The door in the eastern wall is the main entrance under the stairs to the upstairs gallery of the museum, and that hall in turn leads to the stairs down to lower levels in the tower, as well as to the Ambassadorial chambers and private conference room on the same level.

Sensory & Appearance

The room is both musty and vaguely rotten at the same time due to the age of the dusty contents as well as its tendency to flood to a depth of nearly a foot during any significant rainstorm. The wood near the bottom of the room on the floors has all rotten away and water damage is extensive. the display cabinets are alabaster and basalt, so mostly unaffected by the water though the glass on most of the displays is broken or missing entirely.

Denizens

A mezzoloth named Problo has been assigned to keep the museum since its inception, though exactly how this arrangement came to be is not really known; though the Archivists guild may have had - and may still have - some dealings with Yugoloths, the records explaining how this museum even came to be built - and located well within the Royal precinct, and directly connected to an Ambassadorial suite - are suspiciously missing, or at least, not forthcoming from the Archivists guild.
Problo offers daily tours that never seem to start when people are actually there, but he's helpful enough at explaining the contents and much more friendly than a Mezzoloth might be under the usual circumstances of an encounter with one.
The only other arguably sentient denizens are among the displays: the halved automaton, which is some sort of metal golem that has been cloven from under the right arm down to the left thigh joint in a seamless cut, with the bottom half missing and presumably long lost. His head, arms, and most of his torso remain intact, but without a power source he/she/it remains inert. There is also a disembodied skull head, covered in a leathery but soft skin of a peculiar lavender color, that sometimes chatters its teeth but doesn't speak or give other signs of being sentient.

Contents & Furnishings

A sign hangs on the east wall alongside the entrance, written in a looping, artistic hand: "All Hail the Winter King".
The room is strewn with a collection of oddly sliced items including broken swords, cut-open armor, and even coins sliced into pieces. These are scattered around as if they were in displays that had been smashed or partially looted, but many of the displays remain intact though the glass is usually at least cracked or broken if not completely missing. The displays include:

• An automaton or metal golem of unknown provenance, sliced on an angle from shoulder to the opposite hip, held up with pegs to a crosspiece. It appears to be rusted solid, and likely can't function without a source of power. If any card existed to explain its origins, it's missing, but the Mezzoloth speculates this is a creature native to Mechanus, the plane of true neutrality.
• A disembodied skull-head covered in thin but supple leather 'skin' of a soft lavender color. It has no visible severed neck junction, and resembles a large purple potato. It chatters unnervingly from time to time due to unknown and evidently random triggers. A label just says Mimir Chatterer.
• A pair of gauntlets that appear to be carved from solid black stone.
  Show spoiler

  When worn, the wearer can expend one charge to summon 1d4 trolls from thin air who will be friendly to the wearer as long as there remains other creatures or people to eat; they will turn on the wearer when the food runs out. The gloves regain their charge at midnight and have no other magical or mundane properties of note other than being very heavy and useless for other purposes.
• Several large curving timbers from a ship identified as the Malice, once belonging to the man who became the winter king; the ship was lost in battle with what is described as a whale-sized aboleth named Gorgasuul; a crude drawing of this aboleth is also on display, as are several pieces of gray shell or beak reputed to have come from the creature.
• A long, flowing cape that has shrunk over the years unevenly, made entirely of weasel pelts.
• A blood-red, goat-skull-topped walking staff, broken in a splintering, twisting fashion, labeled the Staff of Ice and Darkness.
• A long, lacy, sky-blue wedding dress with six arms, sized for a giant.
• Reddish stone, probably iron ore, labeled as originating in the Hellfurnace Mountains.
• Three large clear jars of what looks to be ordinary seawater, labeled as originating in the Azure Sea. One also has the word Elsie, and another, Marpenoth.
• A metal toy chariot with toy soldiers, labeled belonging to Leah.
• A suit of adamantine breastplate on a clothing mannequin. Not only is the (critical-hit-immune) metal cut into like tinfoil, but the silk tunic underneath is split at the same point as if by tailor scissors, with no tearing; the otherwise white shirt is black on that side from bloodstains. It is labeled Belonging to Tarzir, with no additional information.
• A wall-hanging brass mirror with the glass intact but shattered; it has been absolutely pulverized. It's unclear whether it started off like this, or if this reflects damage suffered in the earthquake or from vandals in the meantime. The label simply states Panagea's Mirror.
• A glass case with a lock of black hair in a small silver clamp on a chain, perched on a stand. The hair is giving off a faint but noticeable black shadow or smoke that pools at the bottom of the case before disappearing.
• A wooden box with a glass panel on the top containing a small, ugly, black stone vase stopped with a cork. The box is labeled "Shrine of Evil Chaos"; the vase has a small card on a string saying 'do not touch' in common, Elven, and Dwarven.
• A pretty medal of faded cloth and tarnished metal embossed with a picture of the Governor's palace, except that one of the three towers isn't where it should be; the award says "For Valor, Our Thanks" and the name Falgrave Cazaxanes (The current governor is Evan Cazaxanes; his father, now the Autarch, was previously the governor Haarold Cazaxanes).
• A poem written in a looping hand with a messy quill: "The wise man knows there is no Profit in Deceit; the Good man knows Revenge does not taste Sweet." Reading the poem aloud seems to cause the 'Mimir Chatterer' to chatter emphatically - or maybe that's just coincidence.

Architecture

This is a significant space in a number of small galleries split up by wooden columns and draperies, in an overall rectangular space approximately 220' east to west and 140' north to south. The interior walls are a mix of fired brick, fitted stone, and plaster over brick or wood, with flattened vault arches that give the whole place an overbearing rather than uplifting feel.
Wrecked and occasionally flooded since the earthquake, strips of peeled wood paneling, paint and splotchy wallpaper hang from the walls and litter the floor, exposing the structural support beams which have left bloody streaks of rust in long lines on most of the walls. The style is a mongrel mix of a dozen different time periods, making it uniquely Absolutian in character.

History

Founded by the Archivists guild in relatively recent history - about 140 years ago - this museum was as much a place to store the odd and mostly sentimental gear donated or collected by enthusiasts of the winter king legend at that time. Less than 50 years later the museum was already all but forgotten by the time it fell, along with everything else in the arc tower, several stories below the ground after a significant shift of rubble due to the most recent earthquakes.
Nevertheless its immortal curator, a mezzoloth, was not and most likely still has not been freed from his vow to maintain the museum and assist interested visitors seeking more information about this enigmatic figure from history, or perhaps from the imagination of history. Still, the items themselves are real enough, and more than a few of them are certainly peculiar and suggest a strange and fabled history.

RUINED STRUCTURE
12002

Type

Museum

Parent Location

Khazigur

Owner

The Autarch Ulyrius IV