"The corridor widened as he pressed on, farther and farther from the spiral stairs and the safety of the mundane world into the near pitch blackness of the catacomb. Mustering his concentration into a short invocation of Karakal, Horace thrust his left hand high in the air. He felt some of the moisture leave his hand, coalescing into a tiny ball of fluid floating nebulously in the air mere inches from his palm, then erupting into a powerful beacon, a pulsating swirl of flame guided by his movement and casting a flickering light in a wide arc about him.

He could now see the wet, basalt walls opening into a circular chamber he estimated must have been at least the size of his vast personal library. At even intervals about the circular room were openings that looked to connect this chamber to an extended collection of tunnels which he knew must surely be the catacombs deep beneath the Ngranek volcano and said to lead to the Underworld of the dreamlands! Around the edge of the floor was a recessed trough with a foul stream of dark fluid running into it via thinly cut channels that all led back to the center of the room.

Looking at these cess filled channels, Horace's gaze moved to the centerpiece of the chamber, a circular dais, assembled like a puzzle of basalt and green soapstone. The piece bore a kind of noxious, otherworldly combination of beauty and horror, it's surface carved into five evenly spaced sections, each section displaying a bowed angelic form, face turned up in agony. Wings protruded from the backs of the figures reaching up and out until touching one another to form the cradle in which sat the censer bowl of the morbid altar. Alien runes or some form of esoteric symbols spread out in hypnotic patterns around the outside of the bowl."