Cronache della Sindone

“Survey”

Saturday, December 17th, 1994

This night was eventful. I was getting ready to continue examining the exterior walls of  the temple, when, much to my surprise, two kindred and a ghoul literally fell out of the front door. One was an obese, weak looking Malkavian, and the other was an average built black man wearing medical scrubs, whose clan I have not determined. The ghoul was allowed to be called ‘Benjamin’, the Malkavian was named Zachariah, and the unknown specimen was called Asa.

It was at this point we introduced ourselves. I feel unthreatened by two newborn fledgelings and their pet, so I decided to use them to potentially ascertain more previously unknown facts or insights surrounding the temple. They did, after all, just fall out of it. After introductions, we continued investigating the anomaly (this time from within), but I will get to that after speaking further on the topic of the fledgelings. 

Firstly, it appears that the one dubbed Zachariah is something of a prophet, receiving visions of the future and of the world’s end on a near daily basis. He at one point seemed to contact someone via his mirror, but I know little more. More interestingly than a lunatic speaking to an inanimate object, Zachariah has professed and proven that he is capable of reading the runes I see on the temple walls. He translated the markings I previously transcribed into my journal, the results of which I will show on the next page, as well as my deductions. He claims to have learned to read these markings by touching “pillars of sandstone” in a hidden library. Whatever the case, what I know is that he can, in fact, read these markings. He was unfortunately unable to produce a name for the language.

Anyway - the temple. Apparently, after the fledgelings “teleported” into the temple (their words) after disappearing a week prior, they had accidentally opened the doors when Asa scratched his hand on a piece of jagged stone, and got blood onto the door, opening it instantly. Following much trial and error, and nearly an entire human's worth of spilled blood, it became clear that this temple reacted in certain ways to vitae. The walls would glow red in seams as the blood worked its way into grooves in the stone. The whole room seemed almost computer-like, and the temple had a distinct feeling about it that makes me believe it is a living entity - to some extent. Unfortunately, this was all we could learn before sunrise.