February 10th, 1890 — Ministry of Magic Offices

It's been nearly a month since your expedition was cut short by a mysterious chest on board—one you dutifully turned over to the authorities. This exchange came with a very specific directive: Don't leave town.

Such a directive was quite irritating, as "leaving town" was precisely what you wanted to do.

In the weeks that followed, you began to wonder if they had forgotten about you—if you'd have to choose a life confined to London (or, let's be realistic here, Britain itself) or risk the Ministry's ire by getting on with your life. Recent days, however, have brought three Ministry of Magic summons your way, each from a different department.

You stand in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic offices, feeling altogether out of place. You know you have a decision to make.

WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. Report to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement
b. Report to the Department of Mysteries
c. Report to the Department of Magical Accidents & Catastrophes
d. Chicken out of the above and make a beeline for the nearest pub

---

— J. Alfred Darrow —

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   J. Alfred Darrow

---

Are your characters stuck in the smalltalk loop?
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Finally, something was happening, and for that Alfred was grateful. He did wish, however, that the Ministry was a little better at coordinating within itself. If they'd just sent him one letter, he wouldn't be standing in the Atrium like an idiot wondering what button to push when he got into the lift.

The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had been the one he was expecting, given what he'd seen on the ship. While it hadn't actually caused any catastrophes (that he was aware of), the chest certainly seemed as though it had the potential to, given what had happened when he'd tried to pry it open. He supposed he hadn't been surprised by the Department of Mysteries, either, because like most citizens of magical Britain he had no idea what the Department of Mysteries did, and the chest was certainly a mystery to him. Law Enforcement, though, made him nervous. Alfred was quite certain that he had done nothing wrong in finding the chest and promptly turning it over to the authorities, but he wasn't perfectly confident that the Department of Law Enforcement would see it the same way.

So, really, the decision came down to a few points: first, that Zelda worked in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, and going there would mean, possibly, talking to her. Was he ready to do that? He wasn't sure. Awkwardly trying to talk about this chest business with her, if she was involved in the investigation, while his mind was elsewhere did not seem particularly appealing. Second, there was a hopefully small but still nonzero chance that heading to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would see him arrested. Did he want to start his day by being arrested? No, he did not. Not particularly.

So the Department of Mysteries it was, then. The lift arrived and Alfred went inside and pushed the appropriate button. He would be lying if he tried to convince himself he wasn't at least a little excited to maybe see a touch behind the curtain of the mysterious department.

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   Aldous Crouch, Melody Crouch

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Having identified the lesser of three evils, you ask the lift attendant to take you to the Department of Mysteries. You are almost surprised to be let through the first door, and feel your hopes start to rise—

—only to crash back into reality as you see the large, black, double doors that block you from the department proper.

The secretary (the only other person in this strange holding area) escorts you to a meeting room (still not through the blasted double doors!) where you are left with a cup of tea to wait.

---

— J. Alfred Darrow —

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   Ophelia Devine

---

Are your characters stuck in the smalltalk loop?
Does your imagination feel like it just can't perform as it used to?
Mid-thread crisis getting you down?
Unable to get that post up?
Is your relationship suffering because of your inability to satisfy your partner?
SUFFER NO MORE!
With a little intervention from The Suggestionizer your RP life could be back on track in no time!

--> Click here for more details <--

Known side-effects include: chronic ridiculousness, immense satisfaction, itching, uncontrollable laughter, burning, deep regret, despair, shock, horror, incidental dismemberment, joy, and death. Use at your own risk!

A cup of tea? How anticlimactic. But nevermind. He had nothing else to do today except take care of this business, and they had a much clearer idea of how time sensitive the issue was than he did.

Hopefully they didn't keep him waiting too long. He didn't want to annoy the other two departments any more than was necessary.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

There were few outsiders who had much to gain from a visit to the Department of Mysteries. Most questions they had were unable to be answered for legal purposes, while others were conspiracy nuts who had to be talked down or escorted out by security. This time was different, though. This wasn't just some strange outsider—this was the man who'd discovered the chest. Now it was his head that was filled with questions, ones he pessimistically believed an ordinary citizen wouldn't be able to answer.

Lyre answered the meeting room and sat down at the meeting table with only a single piece of paper in front of him, the words written in a cipher that would look like nonsense to the average eye. He placed his black quillfeather pen on top of it, and then looked up at Mr. Darrow with an almost too-calm expression.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Darrow. I have a few questions for you."

---

  

The man who entered was almost as anticlimactic as the tea. He was tall, but otherwise unremarkable. Alfred wasn't sure what he'd been expecting an Unspeakable to look like, but this bloke didn't really fit. He wasn't old and wise, but rather he looked Alfred's age, or maybe even younger. He didn't look distinguished. His suit was nice, Alfred supposed (though he knew very little about what differentiated a standard suit from a nice suit, really), but otherwise he was just... exceptionally average. There was something mildly disappointing about him only having brought in a single piece of paper, too, and what appeared to be just a normal quill. No unexplained magical devices or anything flashy like that?

Oh, well. Maybe the Department of Mysteries really was just as boring as all of the other departments at the Ministry, and all Alfred was in for was a long day of monotonous and repetitive paperwork. "Sure," he said with a shrug. "Go ahead."

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   Melody Crouch

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lyre took his time reviewing the piece of paper, every so often glancing up at Mr. Darrow. After two minutes of silence, Lyre conjured another piece of paper and picked up his quill. It wasn't often that magical artifacts were turned in by unsuspecting citizens, but this was surprisingly not the first time something like this had happened during the past month.

"Where was your ship located when the chest appeared, and how long would you say it stayed on board?" he questioned dryly.

---

  

Oh, get on with it, Alfred thought impatiently as he watched the man leisurely read over his single sheet of paper. What was he trying to do, memorize it before he started asking questions? How complicated could it possibly be? Had this man never in his life held a conversation before? It occurred to him that this might have been some sort of tactic. An attempt to make him nervous before the questions started, perhaps? If he had been sitting in an interrogation room in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, it might have worked. As it was, he was just annoyed. He had other places to be — two of them in the Ministry, and one of them a hundred miles away out to sea — but sure, Unspeakable bloke, just take your damn time reviewing your notes. No rush.

The question annoyed him, too, because he was fairly certain he'd already answered it when he'd turned the thing in in the first place. It wasn't his fault if no one had thought to write down the details at the time — and it was quite rude, he thought, for them to have delayed his trip a month (and counting) because they apparently weren't very good at keeping notes. And here he'd thought paperwork was the only thing they were good at.

"Forty miles south of Brighton, by my reckoning. Just past the Greenwich Meridian," Alfred said, providing as much accuracy as possible even though a term like Greenwich Meridian might not mean much to someone who hadn't been using astronomy as a navigation system for the better part of their adult life. "That was when we found it. Could've been onboard a week before that, at most. Two days at least. It was another day and a half before we offloaded it and got it to you all."

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   The Suggestionizer

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Where Lyre had been slow before, the sudden revelation that the chest had gone that far out to sea and been around a group of sailors for forty miles was both alarming and exciting enough—purely from a research perspective—to make him speed up. He jotted down the notes in scribbled handwriting, all the while continuing to talk.

"And I presume something other than its presence led you to report it to the Ministry. The initial reports describe the chest as 'disturbed and active'. Did one of your crewman open it? Touch it? During or after you arrived back on land?" he continued.

---

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   The Suggestionizer

"I did," Alfred answered. He was still a bit annoyed to be recounting details he'd already given to someone else (because surely he must have said at least that when he was explaining the situation, or else why would they even have taken it in the first place?) but was relieved to at least see that they were putting the whole two-minutes-of-silence-before-a-question thing behind them. He could handle repeating the same thing, he supposed, as long as he wasn't waiting around to deliver the story in one-sentence-per-three-minute fragments.

"That's my knife that's in it — or was in it when I brought it in," he said with a shrug, not sure if the current state of the chest had changed in the last month. Presumably they'd done something with it. "I'd just started to get the lid off when it started — doing that thing," he said vaguely, not sure how to describe exactly what had happened on the ship. "So I stopped and we turned around and headed back to London. We tried to open it as soon as we found it," he explained. He paused, considering himself done with his story, but then had an inkling that maybe the Ministry folks would think that he had done something wrong in opening it when (or how) he had, even if he hadn't managed to get the lid entirely off. To that end, he added a tad defensively, "A captain needs to know what's onboard his ship."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lyre cast an unamused gaze at the unsuspecting captain. Clearly he had no idea what he'd messed with, and didn't seem regretful in the slightest. There was only so much information he could give, but fortunately he could give advice on how to move forward.

"The knife was found in the same condition as the chest," he hinted, continuing to scribble down his thoughts. It was difficult to describe the way cursed objects acted sometimes. The knife was almost buzzing, but only in appearance; it didn't vibrate or affect its surroundings on its own, but did things—unspeakable things—when prodded at.

"I suspect the ship itself may be in a similar state. I cannot demand possession of the ship, but I can advise you not to sail it out to sea and grant permission for the Ministry to send a curse-breaking crew to evaluate it—otherwise you might find yourself in a less desirable state," he warned with a slight arch of his brow.

---

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   The Suggestionizer

Alfred didn't know for sure what the knife was found in the same condition as the chest meant, but he supposed it probably meant he wasn't getting his knife back. That was rather inconsequential, however, compared to what came next.

"Possession of the ship?" Alfred repeated incredulously. Of course they couldn't demand possession of the ship — it was his bloody ship, and one that he'd worked quite hard to restore and maintain. He hadn't suffered through all those fancy fundraising events and talked to people he had no interest in for nothing. It was also his livelihood, and its ability to sail was a crucial factor in the livelihood of all of his men. Since when did the Ministry go about demanding possession of anything in the first place? Surely this man realized how ridiculous he sounded, talking like that. Or maybe he didn't, because normal people seemed to think that this sailing business was all some sort of elaborate hobby that Alfred just happened to have been indulging in for the past eighteen years. If they had been talking about a shop, or a factory, maybe that would have made it clearer to the man across the table just what a big ask he was making.

"And how long'll that take?" Alfred continued, face flushed with frustration. "We've lost a month already, waiting around on Ministry blokes. I can't afford to just sit around in harbor forever."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lyre was typically a level-headed man, but he found himself growing more and more impatient with the man's priorities. Surely he wouldn't want to sail aboard a cursed ship? Or did he, simply to prevent the Ministry from taking a look? Either way, Lyre was not about to let the man continue to whine.

"I understand your frustration, Mr. Darrow," he said, letting out a sigh, "but I imagine you'd be happier to see your ship docked for another month than sunk at sea. Curses are not to be taken lightly, especially on this scale. I implore you to grant the Ministry permission to take a look."

---

  

Alfred wasn't sure this man did understand, but at least he was making an effort not to be a complete and total ass about the whole situation, which he supposed he appreciated. He knew, at any rate, that he didn't really have a choice. Maybe the Ministry wouldn't hunt him down if he stormed out and sailed away, but he couldn't, in good conscious, ask anyone to set sail if there was even the possibility that the Voyager wasn't seaworthy. He was a responsible captain, and one who knew all to well how wrong things could go, given the chance. He wasn't trying to gamble his own life or the lives of his men just because he was frustrated.

"Alright," he agreed, though he was clearly not yet fully resigned to the issue. "Do what you like. But I'd like to be informed if anything — well, if anything permanent needs to happen," he said a bit vaguely. He didn't know exactly what would be included in a cursebreaking foray, but he didn't want to just let the Voyager out of his sight for a month and then realize in April that she no longer had a mast, for instance.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

You are not at all thrilled by how this has turned out, and as you depart from the department, you feel very much taken advantage of. Worse still, you know you still have two more departments demanding your time!

WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. Report to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement
b. Report to the Department of Magical Accidents & Catastrophes
c. Bail out. You've already lost sailing time—what if you lose The Voyager!?

---

— J. Alfred Darrow —

  

---

Are your characters stuck in the smalltalk loop?
Does your imagination feel like it just can't perform as it used to?
Mid-thread crisis getting you down?
Unable to get that post up?
Is your relationship suffering because of your inability to satisfy your partner?
SUFFER NO MORE!
With a little intervention from The Suggestionizer your RP life could be back on track in no time!

--> Click here for more details <--

Known side-effects include: chronic ridiculousness, immense satisfaction, itching, uncontrollable laughter, burning, deep regret, despair, shock, horror, incidental dismemberment, joy, and death. Use at your own risk!

Alfred had no particular desire to stay in the Ministry, since he'd gotten a (very unfavorable) answer to the one question that had been the most on his mind: if he and his crew would be allowed to leave yet. That being said, ignoring a summons from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement seemed like a recipe for disaster. With a heavy sigh, then, he asked the elevator porter to get him to the appropriate floor.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER