“The exhibits don't move, they say. But that’s only true when you’re lookin’ right at ’em.”
Description - Exterior
The Field Museum stands like a tomb for gods—massive columns, wide staircases, and blank-eyed statues staring west over the park. Built in a neoclassical style, its bulk dominates the southern lakefront like a mausoleum. The stone is pale, but in the rain it darkens to the color of old bone. A carved frieze along the roofline has one face no one can identify.Description - Interior
Inside, the air is dry and quiet, and the exhibits loom taller than memory. Fossils, taxidermy, mummies, and relics of countless civilizations stand behind glass—except the ones that aren’t sealed. Some rooms seem colder, others too warm. The ancient Egypt wing hosts the dead. The halls of anthropology house things that look human. The janitors say the museum shifts slightly after midnight.History
Founded in 1893 with the wealth of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Field Museum was meant to preserve the past. But some of what it preserves doesn’t want to stay buried. It holds artifacts looted from sacred sites, relics lost in transit, and Veil-imbued items once held in private collections that mysteriously found their way to its vaults. Officially, the museum denies supernatural activity. Unofficially, staff have stopped asking questions about certain storage levels.Owned By
Managed by the Field Museum Trust with ties to the University of Chicago and several wealthy North Side donors. Certain subcollections are maintained by private interests, including a few connected to the federal government’s Arcane Registry.Employees
- Dr. Reginald Brook – Chief curator of antiquities, often forgets what year it is
- Marina “Moss” Choi – Assistant conservator, Veil-marked, keeps protective wards on her cart
- Karl Novak – Security night shift, doesn’t carry a gun, carries salt
- Nancy Brenner – PR manager, has a sealed file labeled “Do Not Photograph Room 41”
- Bishop – No one knows his real name, runs “deep storage” like a monastery
Regulars
- Cece Fields – Attends select galas and occasionally hosts Veil diplomacy here
- Sister Odessa – Has been seen silently praying in front of a fossil no one can identify
- Professor Dieter Klein – Former German occultist turned “visitor scholar” under assumed name
- Charlie Mullen – Claims the taxidermied tiger winked at him once. He wasn’t drinking that day
- “Tam” from the Horn – Rumored to have broken into the storage vault and made it out alive, but changed
Notes
- The "Hall of the Moon Kings" is not open to the public and appears on no tour route, but lights are often on
- A mummy in the Egyptian exhibit has a sigil carved into its sarcophagus that predates language
- The dinosaur wing has a Veil vibration so strong it scrambles radio waves—and causes recurring dreams of stampedes
- The archives beneath the museum are larger than the blueprints suggest; one corridor simply ends in darkness
- A recent “unclassified” exhibit was quietly closed after a child visitor vanished for three hours and came back speaking Nahuatl
- Dr. Brook once found a bird’s nest in a sealed display case—still warm, with two eggs glowing faint blue
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