Madam Bois' Lore

Treasures Within

Madam Bois' Story

Originally posted in July 2025

- Chapter I -

Wood creaks as slim, but heavy, boots press against a dusty floor above. The warlock paces back and forth for most of the day between his alchemy library and the laboratory. The old wooden floor carrying him from room to room announcing his position to everything else within the wood and stone tower. The floor itself is nothing special, but it does exactly what it was created to do, so in a simple sense it’s a perfect construction of perfect value. The warlock doesn't pay any attention to the floor, or anything in the tower at all, he paces and paces thinking of how to cast these new powerful spells knocking around within his constantly shifting mind.

The warlock has been trying to create a Shrink spell and then an equally important Enlarge spell for weeks now. He's been looking for a way to reduce his accumulated horde into something more manageable. Golden dragon talons to a set of goblin pots and pans, arcane and magickal tomes to fossilized Shen egg shells. His mind has never thought about throwing any of his treasures away, or donating them to the local villages; his mind is incapable of thinking like that. His only option is to find another way to reduce the size of his individual treasures so his volume of overall treasures may continue to grow even further. Spending hours and hours each day organizing his treasure hoard in new ways to attempt to fit more of it into the same amount of space. His adventuring days are far from behind him, but this quest has been troubling him for so long he has needed to act on it now. Or else his hoard will consume the entire tower and he’d need to build another tower. … He thinks about building another tower, but then realizes that he’ll inevitably run into the same issues there as well. Plus the travel time between towers will be a nightmare. What was he thinking about? Oh right, the spells.

The spells don’t work and he’s been pacing on this old wooden floor for days now.

The warlock steps on a particularly squeaky floorboard as an idea strikes into the center of his magick-riddled mind. "I've been thinking of this all wrong," he says stepping off from the floorboard as it gives him a squeaky sound of agreement. Beginning his pacing again, "...Instead of reducing the size of the treasures, I'll simply move them away into a … void? Of sorts." His brain still tackling the idea, he briskly walks over the wooden floorboards, sets down a book on tower construction, and enters the laboratory to begin setting up a station to work. The wood settles in for a long evening of being stepped on.

After hours of toiling over a burning skull and some cooling potions, the warlock finally pours a clear liquid into a long, thin vial, "ha-ah-HA!" He screams at the ceiling while holding it aloft in triumph over reality and space itself. He brings the newly created potion down level with his evil eye and looks at it seductively, it pulses with an odd color and motion seemingly in response, "Now now, let's not get hasty. We can surely wait until the morning for our victorious moment." His brain not once thinking that poking fate like that could be a bad idea. He opens the closest container to him, that being a 5 foot tall chifferobe that he’s converted into storage for potions that are sensitive to light. "You need time to settle and I don’t have something readily here to cram inside you anyways." He furrows his brow at what he said, not liking it, but shakes it away from his face and places the newly created potion down within a long metal rack, picks up a blank piece of paper and writes the following:

Retrieval Void Potion.

He thinks for a moment, and then writes something else:

[?]

Adhering the paper to the vial he places it down into a slot next to the other potions within the rack:

Potion of Animation [L]

Necromancer Juice

A potion labeled "Lavender Y" with a crudely drawn skull.

Boot Polish [Extra Dark]

Vampirism [S]

An unlabeled potion that swirls like an unformed rainbow in water.

Some vials have teeth floating in them, while others seem to move and react to the candlelight from when the warlock opened the chifferobe. All of them look like corked caustic abominations chattering within the metal rack as the warlock jostles them. The warlock begins closing the doors and then stops, reaches deeper into the chifferobe, opens a back drawer, and pulls out a bright and vibrant orange fluffy night robe. He tosses the robe around himself and makes for his bedchamber, the floor creaking like a rustic alarm on every step.

Once the noise of the tower dies down and the flickering of the candles simmer and snuff, the creatures in the tower walls are allowed out of their hidey-holes to scrounge for food and tools. A rat wriggles out between two widened floorboards and the wall. Its whiskers darting up-and-down as it searches the darkened tower floor for something to eat or make into a nest. The vermin’s hardened footpads scamper over the asymmetric wooden floor and come to a wooden monolith that promises untold riches, and maybe some snacks. Circling it, the rat finds a broken foot from the chifferobe and a pile of old tomes propping the wooden treasure box up. Just enough room to sneak inside to pilfer and loot. Forcing itself in through the tiny space, it enters the chifferobe’s darkened husk, adjusting upwards to begin climbing inside. Something clacks and scraps on the top shelf and it pings the rat’s tiny ears. ‘Food! Treasures! Food!’ it thinks as it begins climbing up a long braided cord.

A sudden ‘creeeak’ noise tickles the back of the chifferobe and the rat barely notices, with its focus solely on the extravagant buffet it most definitely is going to get at the top of this wooden lunch box.

The rat lands on the top shelf of the chifferobe’s interior as it gazes upon the wondrous metal structure in front of it. This will be its final view, for the shadow creature that inhabits this chifferobe slashes it in half with its darkened claws pushing one half of the rat backwards down the chifferobe’s interior and the other, well, forwards and forcibly into the metal shelf carrying some of the most dangerous materials in the tower. The liquids pour out of each vial and slide over the varnished interior wood of the chifferobe. To the shadow creature’s credit, it recognized its mistake within seconds. Which is really something to behold. Most people would think these creatures are simply evil beings with little to no cognitive ability to understand things outside of their evil deeds. Partly true, but this one seemed to really understand more than what people gave it credit for. It doesn’t matter of course since what was done was already done, but it’s an interesting note to make.

The chifferobe blinks out of existence leaving ghostly trails of cold magick energy where it once stood for decades. The tower floorboards settle into the relieved weight and their new configuration with a tiny little squeak.

A long, drawn out, pause sits in the tower. I mean, like a really long pause. Some would call it a short rest at this point.

A small sound that no one could have possibly heard happens in one of the corners of the room. Or was it on the floor underneath?

Another small sound, ‘p-phfff. . .tettettet. POP!’ as the chifferobe emerges back into existence within the tower. Only slightly lower from where it left, somewhat merging with the obnoxiously squeaky floorboards and causing a shrapnel of timbers to shoot out in all directions.

“Uuwaoowu–” the chifferobe says before leaning forward and vomiting the remaining contents of the potion mixture and dead rat onto the destroyed, and at this point the slightly upset floorboards. They’ve been doing their job all day and they didn’t get asked to be teleported into by a chifferobe.

A small piece of paper floats by the chifferobe’s foot, “Lavendery?” the chifferobe says in a clear and perfect language it doesn’t truly understand yet. It wants it, for some reason it feels like it should have it. It reaches for the object with a long flowing ribbon that forms into a beautiful silken hand towards the tip. ‘Oh!’ She thinks, ‘What a pretty hand it has. I have? She has. Me. Yes, that feels right.’

She picks up the paper and the liquid soaking into it burns her ribbon hand slightly. “Ow! Little bastard!” she says as she drops the paper and looks towards the doorway that is now illuminated by a very startled and upset-looking wizard-type person-thing. The upset candle-holding-thing opens its mouth for a moment, but isn’t able to fully push air out between its lips before the poor floorboards finally just give up, they’ve been through it today and just finally don’t want to be part of it any longer. They crack in half and drop the chifferobe down through the tower and into the dungeon.

- Chapter II -

COMING SOON