Galápagos Islands: Lowell’s Cave

15) Lowell’s Cave
Volcán Wolf, June 29-30, 1845

A) General Overview
Lowell’s cave is a near-perfect hemisphere with a level floor supporting curved walls and a domed ceiling. More a cavern than a cave, the hemisphere has a diameter of 80 yards and rises 30 yards at its apex. The walls and ceiling are formed from smooth, pahoehoe-type ripples, and the floor is a plane of hardened lava. There are two entrances/exits—the passage leading up to the caldera, and another tunnel exactly opposite, its mouth sealed by a thatched door. A deep fissure in the southern wall leads to an adjacent chamber, but this “side cave” is self-contained. The cavern floor is littered with thatch mats, tortoise shells, and jerry-rigged utensils. The exact center is punctured by a deep pit—Lowell’s “oubliette.” A plank gibbet has been erected above this pit, a naked man suspended by rusty manacles. A wooden shack dominates the rear of the cavern, next to the thatched door. The cave is dimly illuminated by a pair of campfires, the smoke vented through fissures in the ceiling. A few ship’s lanterns provide additional lighting, but even so, most of the cavern is cloaked in subterranean gloom. The air carries the familiar scent of sulfur.

But none of these features are the first thing anyone notices about the cave. What they’ll notice first is the writing.

B) The Volcán Wolf Testimony
During his nine-month residency in the cave, Professor Lowell covered every accessible surface with writing—sentences, fragments, equations, entire treatises etched into the igneous rock with a sharp stylus. At first glance, there’s little rhyme or reason: paragraphs explode into complex mathematical equations, shockingly-detailed scientific diagrams are glossed with musical notation, Biblical verses are explicated with cosmological theory indistinguishable from Qabbalistic metaphysics. Furthermore, Lowell’s “testimony” is expressed in several different languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Latin, and even Greek. At times these languages are jumbled together or interlaced into complex neologisms—a prose that anticipates James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake in its allusive density and general inscrutability.

Getting the Gist of It
Whether characters read the original inscriptions or Quiring’s handwritten copy, the general thrust of Lowell’s “testimony” can be understood by skimming through the English sections. This takes 24 hours of reading, minus 4 hours for each successful roll on Intelligence, Education, Language (English), and Library Use. (So making three out of these four rolls would require 24 – 12 = 12 hours of study.) Once the required time has been spent, the character may be given Handout: Lowell’s Testimony. This provides a broad overview of Lowell’s radical scientific theories and metaphysical speculations. It also provides the needed information to open the Zodiac Door and the Gate to Thal’n’lai, and strongly hints at the role of stolen Elder Thing technology in the fall of the Drowned Ones and the rise of mammals. Perhaps more disconcertingly, skimming the testimony sheds light on Lowell’s tenure on Albemarle Island. While his darker confessions are encoded in a personalized form of Latin, the English sections allude to acts of murder, experimentation, and even cannibalism. (See “Books: Volcán Wolf Testimony” for full details on understanding Lowell’s writings.)

Flash Revelations
The Keeper may allow player characters with fluency in Spanish, German, French, Latin, or Greek to obtain “flash revelations” from skimming certain sections of the testimony. Most of these are scientific or philosophical in nature, and may result in an immediate Development Check for a particular Science-based skill. If the Keeper wants to make things interesting, she may declare that a Language (Latin) roll opens a window into Lowell’s more nefarious activities, particularly those involving treachery against his former crewmates.

A Deeper Study
A detailed study of Lowell’s testimony requires a significant investment in time, something the Quiddity’s officers cannot afford to grant. This makes Quiring’s journals even more important: whoever has access to these, has access to Lowell’s groundbreaking revelations. Needless to say, Lowell may consider the “Volcán Wolf Testimony” his personal property, and may be reluctant to share it with other characters.

How Much Does Lowell Remember?
Entering the cave evokes an intense feeling of déjà-vu for Lowell. After that, it’s up to the Keeper to determine how much of his Lacuna begins to dissolve. Lowell has been repressing these memories pretty tightly, so finally recognizing what he did to Castro and his fellow shipmates should trigger a significant loss of Sanity! (A 1D6/1D10 Sanity roll sounds about right.) The Keeper is advised to unlock Lowell’s memories gradually, flashes of horror mixed with excitement—yes, Lowell devoured his friends, but he also understands plate tectonics! Still, the exact nature of Sarah-as-Elder-Thing should be reserved as the Big Reveal for Encounter 21.

Rafael Castro
Lowell’s cave has an unusual effect on Rafael Castro, who’s been repressing a few memories of his own. He appears excited to be “back home,” and scuttles from one section of the cave to the next, happily relating memories in Spanish—“¡Aquí es donde solía dormir!” (“This is where I slept!”) At times he points excitedly to certain diagrams and mimes gripping a stylus—“¡Dibujé esto!” (“I drew this!”) More chillingly, at one point Castro peers into the slave pit and begins calling out names—“¡Oye señores! ¡Antonio, Douglas, Carlos! ¿Dónde estáis?” The Keeper is free to call for a 1/1D3 Sanity roll from Lowell upon hearing the names of his former shipmates; this may also trigger a few unpleasant culinary associations. (“Mmmm…the piquant flavor of Brophy’s frontal lobe…”)

C) The Slave Pit
The exact center of the cave features a “slave pit”—or as Lowell called it, the “oubliette.” Just over 12 feet in diameter and 22 feet deep, the pit is perfectly round, clearly bored into the floor by artificial means. There’s no writing in the interior of the pit, but Lowell has inscribed its rim with a monograph on animalcules written in iambic pentameter. Anyone who reads the circular poem is allowed a Library Use roll to notice occasional non-sequiturs intruding on the verse—“they won’t stay quiet,” “ignore their pleas,” and “damn them to hell.”

The Calibans have erected a gibbet over the pit. A segment of topmast with an intact cross-tree, its base has been wedged into a fissure running along the floor and bolstered by heavy rocks. A 12-foot whaling lance is braced against the mast. Used to keep unruly prisoners in line, the barb is stained with the recent blood of Carlos Moreno—he won’t try climbing the pit again! A crude rope ladder attached to the gibbet may be unrolled to grant access to the pit.

As one might expect, the pit is cramped and filthy. Sulfurous fumes creep through hairline fissures, creating a yellowish miasma that clings to the damp floor. There’s no furniture or bedding; just a wooden bucket used as a chamber pot. Iguana bones, bird skeletons, and rancid globs of tortoise fat adhere to the floor, and the walls are covered with the obligatory scratch marks. Carlos Moreno’s severed fingers are among the muck, already attracting vermin. Worse of all, the prisoner Geoffrey Turrick has been suspended above the pit, voiding his bowels directly onto the prisoner’s heads.

The Black Hole of Y’ha-n’thal
Anyone spending more than a few moments in the pit feels a tremendous psychic heaviness, like the rock has been impregnated with generations of untold misery. Indeed, this pit was created to house Deep Ones permanently damaged by contact with the Elder Thing, and their psychic impression remains two millennia after their extinction. The effect is worth a 0/1 Sanity roll, with failure promising many nightmares to come. (See Encounter 22-B for details on the Deep One “oracles.”)

D) The Prisoner
A lanky sailor dangles from the gibbet, his suppurating wrists swollen with sores and his naked body covered with bruises. A former crewman from the New Bedford whaler Osprey, Geoffrey Turrick became lost during a turpining mission and was captured by the Calibans on June 20. A deeply religious man, Turrick began pleading with his captors in the name of Christian charity. Believing he had a possible convert, Father Ingo Quiring exposed Turrick to the Elder Thing the morning of June 27. (Hence the electrical storm that pinned down the Lowell Expedition.) The experience snapped Turrick’s sanity. Upon returning to the cave, he attempted to kill Black Mary’s “antichrist child” by lunging at her belly with a splinter of basalt. She deflected the blow with a cast-iron skillet, then used the skillet to bash his skull. Since then, Turrick has been strung above the slave pit, “fed like Jesus” using a water-soaked sponge fixed to the barb of a whaling lance.

Geoffrey Turrick
Geoffrey Turrick is detailed in “NPC Profiles—Republic of Caliban.” Once a cheerful sailor, he’s now a shell of his former self, suffering from Indefinite Insanity and barely aware of his surroundings. If rescued, he babbles about “drowning in the tank” or “how bright she was, how bright.” He occasionally becomes quiet and weeps, “I didn’t know, I just didn’t know.” Despite his disordered state, Turrick responds well to medical attention.

E) The Goat Pen
A fissure in the southern wall opens on an adjacent cave, like a smaller bubble connected to the main hemisphere. Not part of Lowell’s original environment, this chamber was created during the partial eruption that flooded the entrance. Fortunately for Lowell, the fissure damaged a nonessential part of his testimony—the cleft runs straight through the center of a vindictive broadside aimed at Georges Cuvier and the prevailing notions of “seminal vapor.” The stench of rotting meat wafts from the fissure.

Tropical Flesh Mandala
Until recently, this cave was where the Republic penned their goats, tortoises, ducks, and iguanas. But after communing with the Elder Thing, Carlos Moreno butchered the goats and formed a sprawling mandala of flayed skin, stretched sinews, and violently interconnected tissue and bone. The ducks were defeathered and turned inside-out, their bills and webbed feet incorporated into the hircine mandala. Moreno then decapitated the tortoises and iguanas, switched their heads, and sewed them on the wrong bodies. While the subterranean temperatures have slowed the rate of spoilage, the carcasses are crawling with a myriad of pale white crustaceans, something between a small shrimp and a large earwig. (The Calibans also eat these insects, usually pounding them into cakes.) A blind albino cave höek clings to the ceiling, occasionally snatching one of the insects with its long tongue.

The gruesome mandala costs 0/1D3 Sanity points to witness, as much from the horrible suggestiveness of the pattern as from the shock of the carnage. If Beckett is present, the mandala calls to mind the flayed children of the Arkham cult, a nightmare observation that automatically fails his Sanity roll. Gazing at the mandala, he can almost see it breathe—covered in pink scales, feathers, its valves slowly opening and closing… The name YOG SOTHOTH rises unbidden to his mind, and an Idea roll suggests that Moreno was trying to open a gate to some other dimension. This revelation is enough to grant Beckett an immediate 1D3 skill points in Cthulhu Mythos. For his own part, Moreno was just obeying a compulsion that emerged from his last visit to the Cloven Pine, and has little understanding of why he sacrificed the goats. (Though switching the heads was his own inspired touch.)

F) The Shack
The Caliban’s shack stands at the far end of the cave near the thatch-covered passage. Constructed from scavenged wood, barrels, and sailcloth, the shack holds three bunks and five hammocks, a tortoise-shell washbasin, and a rickety table with flattened stones serving as chairs. It’s illuminated by ship’s lanterns burning tortoise oil. A wooden cabinet holds a supply of hardtack and salted meat, along with several half-filled cans of paint, a box of nails, a sack of rusty tools, and Mary Roberts’ tattooing needles. A barrel of spring water is accessed using a copper ladle. Isolated from its source, the water’s phosphorescence is barely noticeable, but an oily sheen coats the surface.

The Prints
A Spot Hidden roll observes a row of crimson “fingerprints” staining the shack’s canvas wall—a series of bloody spots organized in clusters of three, four, and five. (They were made by Carlos Moreno using his bloody finger stumps.) Whether they’re intended as abstract art or some form of lunatic telegraphy, the prints convey a profound sense of melancholy that’s difficult to explain. Anyone with Language (Elder Thing) recognizes them as dot glyphs; a successful roll interprets them as “50 million years castaway/divorced from the Space of All Colors.”

The Larder
The shack contains a larder with some hardtack, dried iguana jerky, fresh-butchered tortoise, and few cakes of pounded insect-meat. A wooden cask is filled with grog—rum procured from a passing whaler mixed with phosphorescent springwater, mango juice, and salted with a pinch of gunpowder. Clay jars hold rudimentary spices, including hot peppers stolen from Tarnmoor’s garden. A bloodstained handkerchief may be unrolled to reveal a delicacy Mary was preparing for herself—Carlos Moreno’s tongue, cured with herbs and sea-salt.

The Sycorax Shelf
A shelf nailed to the larder is devoted to making Quiring’s Sycorax. It contains a mortar-and-pestle carved from tuff, a clay jar of dried crimson flowers, a jar of tortoise grease, and a centipede vivarium improvised from a large glass lantern. The vivarium contains between three to five centipedes of a particularly large, particularly nasty, and particularly horrific appearance. (These would never be used to extract information from prisoners, right?)

The Masque of Milan
A rusty steel helmet hangs from a peg near Quiring’s bunk. A History roll recognizes it as a harquebusier’s helmet dating from the English Civil War—the so-called “lobster-tail pot” worn by Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces. Found in the same buccaneer’s stash that supplied Silas Grant’s hanger sword, the helmet has been painted red and decorated with feathers. Quiring calls it the Masque of Milan, and forces the Calibans to wear it backwards when they pass through the Zodiac Door. The “lobster tail” serving as blindfold, the Masque prevents disciples from seeing the Deep One temple and Thal’n’lai. The Masque is removed before the disciple enters the Cloven Pine, then replaced for the return voyage. The only disciples not required to wear the Masque are Nigel Vox and Mary Roberts.

English harquebusier helmet, 1635

Quiring’s Sea-Chest

The shack contains a single item of “civilized” furniture—Quiring’s sea-chest, a walnut coffer painted with baroque rosettes and reinforced with iron straps. In his haste to escape the cave, Quiring has left the key in the lock. The trunk contains three leatherbound journals, the metal stylus Lowell used to make his etchings, extra powder and shot for the muskets, the Whittier’s supply case, a sealskin pouch filled with hashish, and a small Japanese box decorated with mother-of-pearl waves. A Spot Hidden roll discovers a secret compartment beneath the candle till. The compartment is accessed by inserting the bow of the key into a tin slot. Inside this cavity is a leather bag with three 8-escudo gold doubloons (minted in Quito in 1838, each is worth $16 U.S. dollars), a Prussian spyglass, and a pair of scrimshaw puzzle boxes, each engraved with the Egyptian ka hieroglyph and sporting a tag made from paper and twine. The first tag reads “N-7-Mai-45,” the second “P-1-Juni-45.”

The Journals
The journals contain a meticulous recording of Lowell’s etchings, organized and sequenced by Quiring’s best guess as to thematic and chronological order. These facsimiles are annotated by Quiring’s copious notes in German. Together these journals comprise the “Volcán Wolf Testimony.” (See “Books: Volcán Wolf Testimony” for a complete description, and Handout: Lowell’s Testimony for player character excerpts.)

The Stylus
A tapering baton of grayish metal that ends in a needle-thin point, the stylus may be used to effortlessly etch any substance softer than quartz. It’s impossible to blunt, and doesn’t require sharpening. A Science (Chemistry) or Science (Geology) roll cannot identify the metal, but a Hard success hypothesizes that it might be some kind of titanium alloy.

The Japanese Box
The Japanese box contains a reddish unguent that smells like tortoise oil and crushed insects. A Spot Hidden roll reveals a few bits of centipede amidst the ointment. It’s the poison Quiring calls “Sycorax,” and 1D4+1 doses remain.

The Whittier Case
Although the Whittier revolving rifle is carried by Silvio Marroquín, Quiring keeps its supply case in his sea-chest. A handsome box varnished ebony black, the case features metalwork of engraved German silver and a plaque reading “Otis W. Whittier, Windsor, Vermont.” Inside are twenty-two percussion caps, fourteen .59 caliber balls, cleaning equipment, and a bullet mold. A Firearms roll raises an eyebrow at the maintenance gear—there’s some strange tools in there! What kind of rifle is this, anyway?

The Scrimshaw Puzzle Boxes
The puzzle boxes are the physical components of Quiring’s Bind Soul spell, and contain the souls of Noobaloo and Piri Pat. It requires a Hard Spot Hidden roll to figure out the sequence of presses, twists, and slides required to open each box. Doing so reveals a pitch-black core; a second later, the blackness dissipates and a Power roll senses a presence escaping the box. If the corresponding zombie remains “alive,” his soul returns home. (See Piri Pat and Noobaloo in “NPC Profiles—Republic of Caliban” for the effects of returning their souls.) (Spoiler: it’s not good.) An empty puzzle box may be reused, but trapping a soul requires knowledge of the Bind Soul spell. If used for trivial purposes, each box conceals an object the size of a plum.

G) The Defenders
If the Caliban’s sneak attack was unsuccessful, Quiring makes his escape the moment Inez appears with Vox’s warning. Dispatching Silvio Marroquín and Mary Roberts through the passage to the temple, he frees the remaining slaves and instructs them to “earn their emancipation” by defending the cave. (Geoffrey Turrick is left to hang.) Howard Shell lights a torch, Noobaloo hefts his trusty harpoon, and Moreno arms himself with a whaling lance. The defenders are insane and disorganized, but they’ll certainly put up a fight! (All but Inez, who retreats to the shack trembling with confusion—didn’t she deliver the message faithfully? Why was she left behind?) Shell and Noobaloo fight to the death, but Moreno surrenders if he receives a Major Wound. Inez only fights if attacked.

Taking Prisoners
There’s little the player characters can learn from the slaves. Howard Shell remains catatonic, Carlos Moreno’s had his tongue removed, and Noobaloo is a soulless automaton. If Noobaloo is examined, he appears much like Piri Pat—apparently “dead,” the back of his neck is marked by the Egyptian ka tattoo. His body is in a more advanced state of decay than Piri Pat’s, a fact that triggers a 0/1 Sanity roll for everyone except Pynchon and Quakaloo. The only Caliban capable of holding a conversation is Inez Apaza, who dons the Masque of Milan and pretends nothing bad is happening—“El padre Próspero no me ha dejado. Él regresará.” (“Father Prospero has not left me. He will return.”)

Pynchon orders the male survivors confined to the slave pit. If left up to him, they’ll be left there to rot! If a more compassionate player character intervenes, Pynchon agrees to release Shell and Moreno before the Lowell Expedition leaves the caldera. Inez is a different matter, and poses no immediate threat. Pynchon suggests they escort her back to Banks Cove and install her at the lean-to with a supply of food and water—“Surely a passing whaler will rescue her, or take her back to Charles Island?” If a player character wins an opposed Persuade roll against Joab’s Religion skill, the captain can be convinced to sail her back to Asilo de la Paz himself. Otherwise he agrees with Pynchon.

Prisoner Scenario: Lowell’s Cave

If the characters have been brought to the cave under duress, they are stripped naked, their hands and feet are shackled, and they’re lowered unceremoniously into the slave pit. Only Professor Lowell is treated with any dignity, washed clean with springwater and laid in a bunk to recover. Steamboat Pete and Howard Shell are treated with a cup of grog from the larder, then returned to the pit with a reward of fried turtle-meat. Piri Pat returns to his post, guarding the thatched door and staring blankly into space.

Once the player characters have recovered, Ingo Quiring emerges from the shack and introduces himself as “Prospero.” He explains his role as “protector” of the Republic of Caliban, a “growing nation” of castaways who commune directly with a “daemon named Ariel.” He lowers a spit of roasted höek and a keg of sulfurous water into the pit, then address the captives with a sincere magnanimity—“If you behave yourselves, and hearken to my teachings, you may be worthy of becoming disciples. But until then, you shall remain our guests.” If any prisoner needs medical attention, he’ll be raised from the pit and attended to. If Quiring is feeling particularly generous, he may even dole out some grog.

Quiring and Lowell
After speaking to the prisoners Quiring focuses his attention on Lowell. He treats the Professor like a captive dignitary, offering him fresh water and turtle soup. Quiring is well aware that Lowell is the original inhabitant of the cave, and is genuinely excited to welcome home the “Testifier” like a prodigal son. He’s eager to discuss Lowell’s theories, and it’s clear that Quiring possesses a good deal of scientific insight himself—in fact, if roleplayed well, a conversation with Quiring may be quite refreshing to Lowell! Quiring suggests that one day Lowell might rule by his side, assisting the Jesuit scholar in the “translation and further understanding of the Testimony, your—our—Great Work.” Lowell may be starved for intellectual conversation, but a Psychology roll reveals an edge to Quiring’s flattery. The Jesuit has no intention of ceding any real authority, and Lowell remains a prisoner in every way that matters. Any attempt to exert meaningful independence earns the “Testifier” a jab in the ribs from one of Quiring’s henchmen.

If Lowell convinces Quiring that he’s interested in some form of partnership, the Jesuit agrees that Lowell should be taken to see Ariel—“After a good night of sleep, of course. Would Aaron let Moses revisit the Burning Bush when he’s physically and spiritually exhausted?” Quiring offers Lowell his own bunk, but chains his ankle to a post—“For your own safety.” Meanwhile, Inez fawns over Lowell like a second-rate Mary Magdalene, anointing his feet with tortoise oil and refreshing him with sips of gunpowder grog.

If Lowell resists Quiring, the Jesuit sighs—“Maybe after you’ve rested you’ll see things differently.” Lowell is escorted to a filthy bedroll near the shack, secured by manacles, and guarded by the sleepless Noobaloo. Quiring repeats his offer the following day, but a second refusal earns the Testifier a place on the gibbet with Geoffrey Turrick.

Life with the Calibans
Whether or not Lowell cooperates with Quiring, life goes on for the player characters in the slave pit. They’re given food and water, may “socialize” with Carlos Moreno and Howard Shell, and may quietly plan their escape and/or revenge. If any character becomes too unruly, they’re jabbed with a whaling lance. Once per day the waste bucket is hauled up and emptied. Geoffrey Turrick eventually regains consciousness, and may even be talked down from his madness. Quiring occasionally attempts to proselytize, and seems eager to engage in philosophical conversations. If his attempts to convert Lowell aren’t going well, he begins sounding out other player characters.

The Baptism
If Lowell refuses to cooperate with Quiring, on the third day of captivity a different player character is selected to be Baptized at the Cloven Pine. Quiring selects a “viable” candidate, one who’s expressed curiosity or seems open to religious conversion. A few Fast Talk or Persuade rolls may convince Prospero that a particular candidate is more willing than he truly is, and the Keeper should encourage some clever roleplaying here. No matter which candidate is selected, he’s raised from the pit, his wrists are shackled, and he’s forced to wear the Masque of Milan. Quiring asks Nigel Vox and Black Mary to help him “escort” the candidate to the Cloven Pine, where he’s subjected to first-stage Contact as described in Encounter 22.

White Leviathan, Chapter 4—Galápagos Islands
[Back to Encounter 14, Approaching Lowell’s Cave| White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Encounter 16, Temple Passage]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 24 November 2023
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]