[Fragmentary delusional recollections from within the
confines of Grimm's Hold Sanitarium:]
When Blackthorne returns from his expedition to Tiahuanaco
and the Peruvian jungle I shall duly tell him of the
catalyst which compelled me to those cursed black vaults
in ancient Ur, should Hildebrandt allow me another visit.
Yes...
Giza, Karnak, Thebes...
I see them now once more!
In the grip of a waking dream, I walk those restless sands again.
Egypt... here my journey began,
and here I took the first steps towards destiny and damnation.
[The events recounted here took place before "The Dreamer
in the Catacombs of Ur."]

[From the expeditionary journal of Doctor Ignatius X. Stone:]

Giza, Egypt (March 17, 1890)
The heat here is damnably oppressive,
and all day the omnipresent sand has been whipped up
by an impudent wind, making progress all the more difficult.
At dawn, I pinpointed the location of the Great Pyramid's
secret chamber which my old friend Professor Caleb
Blackthorne and his benefactor Lord Blackiston had
discovered several months previously,
but ingress to its concealed depths was denied me by
a partial collapse of the age old edifice's stone ceiling.
Excavation is evidently impossible,
lest more of the mighty tomb come crashing down about us.
At any rate, Blackthorne has studied the incredible
inscriptions within that hidden alcove exhaustively,
and in truth my own interests lie elsewhere in this
desolate sand-flayed landscape.
The traditionalists believe that,
in keeping with Egyptian tenets,
only mundane things such as new air shafts and ever
more ornate sarcophagi are yet to be discovered deep
within the tunnel networks of these cyclopean monuments.
Feh!
If only they knew the true extent of this great cosmic puzzle!
They are as fools who view a tapestry in a darkened
room by the light of only one candle,
seeing only small sections illuminated one by one,
and refusing to recognize or connect the darkened and
unseen areas to the entirety.
Working from the geometric calculations which I prepared
before our arrival here, I have studied the alignment
of Cheops, Chefren and Mykerinos.
It is as I suspected.
Tomorrow, I leave the imperious and hoary mausoleum
of Khufu and seek answers within the Great Temple of Karnak...

Karnak, Egypt (March 18, 1890)
What oblations to the grim chthonic deities of the
ancient world were once offered solemnly beneath the
stygian skies of this sweltering place, I wonder?
What sublime power awaits the aspirant,
the querent who dares seek answers in those shadowed
places where men of lesser fortitude fear to gaze?
Blackthorne often berates me for what he calls my preoccupation
with the arcane, the occult,
the sinistrous lore of the chthonic.
.. he insists no good will come of such delving into nighted realms.
Ha!
The path to elucidation is seldom devoid of thorns,
the road to knowledge rarely free of perils!
I seek enlightenment and by the erudite tongue of Herodotus,
I may have found it!
Ancient tradition of this land has long spoken of strange
flashes of light emanating from the depths of pyramid
passages and temple catacombs.
Over a thousand years ago the Arabs wrote of the transient
walls and hidden chambers of these monuments