This post is to serve as an archive of the classics or treasures one can find in A Bringer of Doom I in the game mode, Cryptic Notes when they explore Winston Manor. Everything recorded here can be found in-game as well.
Note: This page is still being updated as I am still in the process of collecting Classics which serves to unlock the stories of each Classic. Currently 3 entries are unfinished but I hope to update them soon as I unlock their stories.
Jewelry Box
Story 1
This jewelry box was a wedding gift from London. Once, it held all of a lady’s treasured adornments. Each night before bed, she would place her jewels back inside one by one, then close the lid carefully, as though completing a ritual that promised safety in the dark.
Story 2
The jewelry box was forced open with unprecedented violence. Blood-streaked, mud-caked fingers tore it apart and emptied everything inside into a waiting pocket. Its mangled hinge can no longer close properly, leaving the box gaping like a mouth on the verge of confession.
Story 3
Now it lies quietly in a dust-choked drawer, beside the shattered mirror in the room, staring up at the same dim ceiling that has never changed. When intruders appear again, it serves only as proof. Proof of that night. Proof of the plunder that took place there.
Golden Spoon
Story 1
One of the family’s heirloom utensils, passed down through generations. Unlike the plain silver pieces in the set, this gold spoon stands out at once. It was usually brought out only for important banquets and moments of celebration, such as the birthday of the little mistress.
Story 2
That night, it lay quietly in the deepest pantry of the kitchen, unnoticed and untouched. It was neither found nor stolen. Because of that, the golden spoon remains in the finest condition of all, clean and flawless, as if nothing had happened at all.
Story 3
Once carried out of the story, it seems no more than an ordinary golden spoon. But when the next intruder finds another identical piece lying in that pantry once again, they finally understand that this place they explore has never been as simple as it first appeared.
Muse’s Secret
Story 1
Hidden beside the doorframe of some forgotten room in that vast house, it waits with an empty heart. It yearns to be made whole again. It longs to hold what was lost. The vacant wooden niche waits in silence, waiting for the song to rise again.
Story 2
This is a secret that belongs to the Muse alone, a delicate lyre. Find it. Return it. Set it down with care at the very center of the wooden niche. The Muse’s gift will soon appear, your reward for restoring what was hidden.
Story 3
Why is a nightingale carved upon the wooden niche? Why was its secret scattered through the corners of the house? Let the nightingale sing, and the final answer will reveal itself.
Haunted Doll
Story 1
A haunted doll of unknown origin lies in the shadow of a corner, its lips tightly stitched shut with black thread. Nothing about its appearance or craftsmanship suggests a gift meant for celebration. And yet the linen of its clothes is painfully familiar.
Story 2
An ashen face. Curls stripped of their luster. Eyes whose pupils can no longer be clearly seen. Her expression is so weary, so sorrowful, as though those little shoulders bore a secret too terrible and too heavy to imagine. But she cannot speak it. She can only remain silent.
Story 3
Pale flowers adorn the doll’s head, one on each side, like two white candle flames burned down to ash. This white lace dress once belonged to a little girl and was her favorite to wear. The red ribbon at the waist has darkened into a dull brown, like dried blood stiffened with age.
Large Painting
Story 1
An untitled painting bought from the country auction house, unmistakably Victorian in character. It hangs on the corridor wall like a false window, reflecting a landscape that does not exist anywhere within this house.
Story 2
On that night of carnage and blood, the great oil painting was too large, too heavy, and too awkward to carry away, and so the Shane Gang left it behind. The shadowed scenery and blurred figures upon its canvas held no appeal for looters with no eye for art. It was forgotten, buried beneath dust, just like the manor itself.
Story 3
The only mercy is that the canvas remains intact. Whether out of spite after the looting, or from some simpler cruelty, whoever caused the ruin did not vent their rage upon the decorations lining these halls. Perhaps, with cleaning and anew frame, they may one day shine again.
Fruit Tray
Story 1
It was once tended with care, filled each season with sweetness from orchards and distant fields. Cherries and strawberries in late spring. Raspberries and mulberries in high summer. Pears and apples in autumn. Now and then, even grapes from the warm south.
Story 2
Not all fruit was love equally. The plumpest and most fragrant were always taken first, and whatever remained was cleared away before flies could gather. Then, after a certain night, the fruit left behind was never touched again.
Story 3
A bitter orange from the Mediterranean became the last to remain. In the long, airless silence, green mold covered its skin, and insects hollowed it out from within. In the end, only two leaves were left on the stand, still holding the faint scent of bitter citrus.
Phantom Crystal
Story 1
An ancient crystal ore, clouded through with a hidden core. When it was first mined, it was mistaken for ordinary quartz awaiting the cutter’s hand. But no amount of grinding could erase the white haze inside. Once its true nature was revealed, its value fell at once.
Story 2
It began with a careless run. The girl was left with bruised knees. The crystal took a crack across its body, and one splinter vanished beneath the furniture. once, that flaw had been no more than a speck.
Story 3
Like mist, like a phantom, something shapeless has been sealed inside it since its birth. Even the later fracture could not force it fully into view. Only deep within the fissure, a different color stirs faintly, like an eye opening after millions of years in the dark.
Amethyst Ring
Story 1
Dignity, reason, piety. That was what the ring was meant to proclaim when it was commissioned as a family heirloom. More than wealth, the owner wanted legitimacy. Something polished, inherited, unquestioned.
Story 2
To pin virtue to a gemstone is almost absurd, yet few habits are older. That deep violet once appeared beneath the lights of London’s banquets, where it stood for pedigree, inheritance, and bloodline kept pure.
Story 3
That splendor has long since sunk into the family’s yellowing history. The ring still glints in the corner of a curio shop, but no one looks twice. Its value died with the lineage it once adorned, until at last a stone became only a stone.
Arc Light
Story 1
No one knows who this pen belonged to. It seems to belong to no one in the house at all. Its spotless nib has never touched ink. Bright and polished, it remains unnervingly new. When it was found, it lay there in silence, tempting the hand that discovered it. Pick it up. Write something.
Story 2
The first intruder to find it accepted its invitation without hesitation. He took up the pen and tried to write his name upon the wall. But the moment the nib touched the surface, a glimmer flashed. It flared for an instant, then died at once. In terror, he hurled the quill back onto the desk, where it resumed its patient wait for the next hand bold enough to use it.
Story 3
It rejects ink. It rejects paper. It rejects any attempt to write upon a flat surface. Only when someone finally carried this quill out of that story did its dim light fall upon the weapon once used to resist the horrors within. A single arc of light flashed, and reality itself began to be rewritten.
Silver Statue of Terpsichore
Story 1
A collector’s piece from Florence, Italy. An elegant goddess sits upon a pedestal, plucking the strings of her seven-stringed lyre. The silversmith who cast her claimed he had seen a true Muse with his own eyes, and that this statue was shaped from that single, blinding glimpse of the divine.
Story 2
Those who came here later could never understand how such a finely crafted statue, so obviously valuable, escaped the looting of that night. But the goddess offers no answer. Her shining surface only reflects one visitor after another.
Story 3
Whenever midnight falls, the goddess’ fingers seem to tremble in the dim candlelight. The silver statue plucks at the absent lyre from afar, and the drifting melody that follows is so distant and unreal that one cannot tell whether it is a trick of the mind or the true descent of a Muse. Ancient, sorrowful, and shaped like a farewell.
Silver Nightingale Candlestick
Story 1
A silver candlestick lay in the corner of the room, having rolled by some stroke of fortune into the gap between the bedpost and the cabinet, unseen by the intruding thieves. Stranger still, when it was later set upright on the table again, not a single scratch marked its silver surface.
Story 2
The silver eyes of the nightingale watch each visitor. Candlelight flickers in its round pupils. Though it is nothing but a cold, lifeless object, its gaze seems touched by something almost alive. It once watched many people this way, among them a little girl clutching a rag doll.
Story 3
Even with the doors and windows shut tight, the flame atop the candlestick will sometimes tremble. Hold your breath. Stop walking. A faint, clear birdsong seems to rise from somewhere just ahead. Beneath the frozen silver, a bird that does not exist is trying to sing, singing an ancient nursery rhyme.
Golden Tattered Page
Story 1
A golden scroll rumored to have been written in human blood by a Venetian alchemist, recording secret knowledge from forgotten corners of the European continent. It was once locked away on the deepest shelf of the library, where only those bearing the manor’s bloodline were permitted to touch it.
Story 2
Plainly, the bandits did not believe the library was a place of money or Classics to be hidden. They passed it by and made no attempt to force open its sealed door. Perhaps that was the Shane Gang’s one and only stroke of luck that night.
Story 3
TBA
Red Coral
Story 1
A vivid red treasure drawn from the Mediterranean and remade as an ornament. Rare and beautiful, it was said to hold the force of life itself, to ward off disaster, drive away evil, and above all protect the children of a house from harm.
Story 2
It was kept in a young owner’s room. As an ornament, it was awkward and still, like a reef stranded in a river. Yet its bright color and careful setting made its purpose plain. It was a charm made of love and prayer.
Story 3
In an age when factory chimneys climbed higher than church spires, coral, like pearl, was cherished as something born untouched by human hands and entrusted with human hope. But coral is only the calcified remains of tiny creatures. It could not turn away calamity. It could not go back to the sea.
Gilded Chalice
Story 1
A treasure of uncertain origin, gleaming through dust and cobwebs. Where the gilt has peeled away, the cup’s true weigh is revealed. It was never as solid as it wished to seem. The coins within, bright and untarnished, say nothing and prove everything.
Story 2
Each coin bears a four-leaf clover and is said to have come from an unmarked goldsmith’s shop in Dublin. Heaped in a tulip-shaped cup, they look ready to spill at the slightest touch. Their fine symmetry speaks of luck and wealth, and some whisper of ancient magic.
Story 3
Anyone who sees the chalice wants it. Not one coin, but all of them. Yet no matter who tries to carry it off, a few always slip free and roll away into nowhere, never to be found again.
Cursed Sapphire
Story 1
Legend has it that this sapphire necklace originated in 14th century Milan, Italy. It is inlaid with a “blessed” sapphire, oval-cut, containing silk-like rutile that forms a six-rayed star. The base was hand-forged by the Florentine Goldsmiths’ Guild of the same period. Some also say it was a former collection of the Visconti family, passing into England through the hands of continental collectors in the 16th century, and later inherited by the Winston family to this day.
Story 2
Among the common folk, the story of this necklace has another version. Like many “noble secrets,” it comes from “my relative who used to work at the manor.” According to that relative, old Winston, who died at the age of 99, wore this necklace his entire life and never took it off.
Although he ultimately didn’t survive that scarlet fever summer, in an era where ordinary people live to be sixty or seventy at most, his life was long enough. But saying he lived to be 99 isn’t entirely accurate. That relative said he worked at the manor for 5 years and only saw old Winston once. At that time, old Winston was around 80, but he looked far younger than that number.
However, he gave the impression of an old tree with a rotten core–the bark was still alive, but the inside had long been empty. He lived in isolation deep within the Winston Manor year-round. If his son hadn’t held a grand funeral for him that summer, everyone would probably have thought he had been dead for years.
Story 3
TBA
Story 4
Stay Tuned.
