Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Not every object of unusual origin has to be dangerous or significant, but that also does not mean they aren’t interesting. After all, a world filled with aliens is also a world filled with things that to those aliens are mundane. The text below contains two excerpts describing these mundane supernatural objects, held in a museum.
The Black Idol
The day that crate arrived wasn’t a memorable one. We let it sit for a while, as we had a few other shipments to take care of first — Elben sculptures and metalwork. It took us a few days to document and catalogue those and move them into more permanent storage.
And then we opened that box, and there was just pure, featureless black in there. I can only speak for myself, but the moment I looked inside and saw that shape of absolute blackness inside, a chill ran down my spine.
I reached out and touched it. The hole in my vision felt smooth and cold, not unlike jade. And it was intricately detailed. I could not visualise what it was just from the touch, but the curves I felt under my fingers felt pleasant. Sweeping and complex, they entangled with each other.
At that moment, it felt like a weight fell from my heart.
Of course, it wasn’t anything praeternatural. It was a material that merely did not reflect any light in the visible spectrum — an idol carved from the blackest stone.
To us.
We ran many tests and discovered it to have a complex, opalescent hue, deep into ultra-violet, and a deep, sparkling shine in the infra-red. But to us, it remained black. It was not something we could see, not in any form that wasn’t filtered through our tools and instruments.
It was not for us to see, an exquisitely detailed sculpture rendered in a colour that we couldn’t imagine. Its form depicting, most likely, a beautiful, maybe even young, specimen of an alien species posed among exotic vegetation. Perhaps an idol of a deity, maybe someone’s lover.
But to us, more than anything, a mystery and a reminder that our senses do not encompass the whole world. There are things we cannot even imagine or dream about.
The Richard Tablet
The Richard Tablet is one of the more curious objects in our possession. It’s nothing special, at face value, a large circular tablet, carved from a pale, rosy marble, with a hole in the middle. An inscription in high Elben runs around its face; it is the reason why this object is so interesting.
Read by an inexperienced xenolinguist, the story appears to be a retelling of an Elb encountering some mythical creature. Or maybe, a run-in with a cryptid, described in flowery prose.
This strange entity appears to a lost Elb, trapped within a series of caverns on some world it was unfamiliar with. Described as a queerly shaped and ethereally flat entity, the apparition leads the Elb out of the cavern, from where it finds its way home.
Of course, no direct translation from high Elben to English (or any human language) is possible. However, between our own analysis of the text and confirmation from a few Elben experts we’ve contacted, this tablet describes an encounter with Richard Lawrence. The tablet was authored by The Morning Sun Caressing My Branches, a mage and a poet, to commemorate the event and the nigh ritualistic gratitude it felt towards Richard, the event finding some reflection within Elben mythology and thus resonating with its symbolic thinking.
Richard wrote down his version of the encounter and published it in the Journal for Elb Research. A printout of the article is framed and hang next to the Richard Tablet.
Esoteric Musings... 