Investigator's Handbook

If you are reading this, then I am no longer around to guide new recruits into the arms of the Hidden Archives. So I have written this, so that it might help guide people well into the future.

— Bifrost, Late Member of the Hidden Archives, May his soul rest in peace

What is the Hidden Archives? We were founded as the Spirit Bureau a couple of years ago, as we took residence in Foxhollow Ranch, and discovered just how many strange and weird things were going on in this world. At first we would take odd jobs, and more and more we would encounter ghosts, spirits, demons, and even stranger creatures.

We also met a man, dressed quite fine in a red coat, black trousers, and a top hat, with a scar over his left eye, who is determined to summon beings he can't possibly fathom or understand unto our world. He is called Xulgoth Alduin, and he is the leader of a cult called the Scions of the Void. He is also apparently the uncle of Crystal Dawn. He is a complicated man I have tried tireless to understand, to no avail. I fear by the time you read this I still have yet to understand him. I think he was traumatized in his past and that might explain in some way why he is the way he is now.

Hello, my name is Soma. Since Bifrost wrote these notes some years ago, a lot has changed, so I will interject where things have changed and include my own insight.

Xulgoth has now since been defeated and is no longer a threat. What remains of the mess he left behind is hard for me to say. However there are new threats that have now taken his place that will take an entire page for me to explain, so I'll include that at the end.

As for the truth of Xulgoth, and why he was the way he was. He was indeed traumatized in his past, and then he found love. But then his foster father murdered the girl he loved and made him believe he had done it. This shattered whatever was left of his psyche to the point he had dissociative identity disorder, quite severely I might add. He had a host of different personas. He also had absolutely terrible fashion sense and no sense for matching colours.

In the end though, once we were able to help his real self claw his way out, he had a lot of remorse for all of the terrible things his personas had done. He chose to have his soul imprisoned in a soul prison of his own accord, with his heart wrought with guilt. It was a solemn and melancholic end to his evil. A few of us have mixed feelings about it.

— Soma, Current Member of the Hidden Archives

But we have allies. We have a great many allies. So many friends I have come to love and adore.