A Description of the Cellar

	As Vernittousil lives in Firnost's cellars, his player was asked what she imagined down there. The following is an edited version of her description. Editing done by Kir and Arkane.

The steps don't look sturdy. Rough planks for the treads on rougher stringers; there are no risers. Cats and rats and small sluagh children could easily slip though. The steps are warped and sometimes creak, especially the third one down. They end about in the middle of the mostly open room.

The basement is a simple square and doesn't seem to be used much for anything but storage space and sometimes a place for unusual sorts to hang out for a few - until the spooks scare them away. The foundation of the building is, it would seem, stone blocks that absorb and hold a small amount of moisture after a few days worth of rain and in the wintertime. This is ideal for mold, fungus, and even a lichen or two to grow--so it does, in little spots, mostly in the cracks between the blocks. These blocks, porous and damp, also create homes for spiders, worms, centipedes and other unsavoury creepy crawlies.

	The redcap, Jackyl, once managed to climb to the beams of the cellar when imprisoned there. The floorboards were torn out by the escaping redcap, but later fixed by Lorna Scott.

The ceiling goes without any type of cover or insulation, and often voice from the main room can be heard through the floor. The main beams in the house and the underside of the floorboards for the upper level are exposed, dry, dusty, but rot-free. The beams are held, in a pattern, by thick but hollow metal poles with screws. It's somewhere between old peg-style post-and-beam and more recent nailed construction. Perhaps the pattern has some significance; perhaps it was simply the builders' trademark.

The lighting for the entire place is plain as well--a thick wire leading from the light-switch at the top of the steps, which breaks off into many, stapled up onto the beams, ending in about five or six light-bulbs, strewn about erratically, all of the bulbs broken or missing except one in Verns' "corner" of the cellar.

Behind the steps, shoved up against the wall, are dressers and cots that have gone unused for years. There's seven of each; they are uniform and appear to have once been used for some sort of boarding house. On top of the dressers is a thick sheet of dust. In fact, the whole cellar is covered in a fine coal dust.

	A few have rumoured that perhaps the original owner of Firnost, Grigori Ivanovich, may have hidden things within the walls and cellar of the Freehold. If true, the sluagh would surely have found them by now though?

The floor is a smoothly finished stone, with occasional damp cracks and a few missing patches. It is cool and soothing to bare feet. Other things are about in the basement, lying discarded on the floor. Some candles, a dresser drawer, empty, lays out undisturbed. I'm not sure all of the other things people shove down there, or toss away, but they're moved about now and then, organised by the ever-tidy Vern.

There's of course, behind a wooden box in once corner, a hot water heater, nearby it, a fuse box for the building. For the most part, the open space suggests possible dancing--were it not for the lack of chairs to rest on, the occasional jack holding up the building, and the heavy dust on the unwashed floor.

Vern's corner of the cellar starts about 5 ft from the bottom of the steps, with a low round table void of chairs of any sort, but a few feet further into the corner is a comfy looking footstool. Tucked away in the corner and now hidden behind a black bed sheet tacked to the ceiling are his things: a cot with fresh white bed sheets, his locked suitcase and a dresser drawer too, pulled from one of the bureaus. His corner is swept now and then, the cleanest, most lived in part of the cellar. There are few, if any, tracks in the farther corners.