Project NEMESIS

Built by the deranged moorish Comte Juan LaCastaigne in the 13th century, Castaigne Castle rapidly gained a disturbing local reputation as a haunted ruin after the Comte's mysterious disappearance. It was hastily rebuilt during the Napoleonic wars by a French collaborator claiming to be the heir of Castaigne. Alessandro Castaigne filled the newly refurbished castle with strange and bizarre works of art collected from all over the world. His descendants kept up the family tradition and within several generations, the unusual family had amassed the world's largest collection of eccentric and grotesque artworks.

Seized by SS troops in Italy during World War Two, the Castle de Castaigne was originally designated for an SS divisional headquarters until the arrival a scant week later by scholars from Himmler's personal staff. These aryan archeologists quickly deduced that the site was an ancient armanist temple and began delving into the castle's secrets. The Castaigne Collection was quietly packed up and shipped to Berlin.

In November of 1944, the Art Looting Investigation Unit of the Office of Strategic Services interrogated a suspected Karotechia officer. They discovered that records concerning the Castaigne Collection were being held at an SS office in Stuttgart. The civilian led American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission") was never informed of this, and the matter became classified Delta Green.

The recovery of the documents as part of Operation SUMMER BREEZE went smoothly, and the German records contained strong hints about the unusual nature of the collection. However, no trace of the stolen artworks could be found. War and Chaos had swallowed the nightmare menagerie, and the Castaigne Collection was lost, concealed within the swirling mists of history. 

A slightly water-damaged wooden box of the kind used for carrying playing cards aboard of vessels (brass anchor set on the lid, brass finishing), now containing three blue granodiorite cubes (the side being roughly 5 cms) on the faces of which numbers were carved, probably for them to be used as playing dice, and obviously of great antiquity.

A glass cabinet (0,6x0,6x1,7 m) enclosing a mechanical doll.The doll body (standing 1,40 m) is carved in black wood, and is anatomically quite accurate; the hands, arms and legs are fully articulated, the feet sculpted to resemble dancing shoes. Compared to the high detail of the general design, the doll's head is thus quite surprising, as it appears to be completely featureless, except for a single square-headed iron nail set squarely in the middle of the doll's forehead.While it is quite possible that the doll originally wore a wig of some kind, none was found, nor is any kind of headwear documented in the original Castaigne collection catalog. 

The Nightingale is a life-sized, gold-plated, brass songbird on a hollow brass branch. It appears slightly tarnished but is in otherwise excellent repair. The bird's eyes are an unidentifiable blue gemstone set in ivory. The detail work on the bird is astonishing, right down to the lacework of the filigree and gilt foil feathers.

Within the society of the Deep Ones, there exist certain rare sports or mutants called, by their piscine peers, the A'koz-Shattarhu, which roughly means "the favored of the God" or "the speakers of the God", or, most simply, "oracle". The Deep Ones enjoy an extremely close kinship with their race-god, Great Cthulhu, and display considerable sensitivity to his mental emanations. It would appear that those emanations sometimes exert a physical effect upon a developing Deep One foetus and lead to the birth of an A'koz-Shattarhu. 

Cats are and can be residents of both the Dreamlands and the real world; stats presented represent Cats abilities within the Dreamlands. Large cats (lynx, lions, tigers, etc.) might also be roaming the Dreamlands, but would be a less frequently encountered. In such instances, adjust the Body stat, attack and armor accordingly.

Aklo is a surreal binary ritual. This two-stage occult act involves a bizarre white powdery alkaloid which is used in conjunction with the spoken word. The substance has hallucinatory and hypnogogic effects which renders one receptive to the UR-language subreality that is AKLO.