PLAYING WITH FIRE

Transcript:
Von List: Tell me, Kortifex, what do you remember of the men and women who used to summon you to the Hotel Royal?
Kortifex: Is that how they put it? They “summoned” me...? Such gall...
Von List: The members of the Société Occulte were the wealthiest, most powerful people in Europe. Puppet-masters of the Western world.
Von List: They also dabbled in dark magic. Their seances and rituals at the Hotel Royal were the stuff of legend.
Kortifex: They were children playing with fire. And if I answered their call, it was only out of boredom.
Kortifex: After all, I was trapped in my Scepter. If some red-blood fool contacted me with their crystal ball, at least it gave me a glimpse of how far humans had come.
Kortifex: And for all the progress they thought they made, for all their riches and influence, the Société Occulte were tampering with forces beyond their understanding.
Kortifex: The one thing that impressed me was their spellbook -- the Tome of Rituals. Dark Aether rune magic, written by humans. But they could not have written it without help.
Von List: True. Over the centuries, they summoned others of your kind. And one of them -- most likely Bellekar -- gave those “children” all the matches they needed to burn their world to cinders.